transcriber's note printer errors have been changed and are listed at the end. all other inconsistencies are as in the original. man and his ancestor _a study in evolution_ by charles morris author of "civilization: an historical review of its elements," "the aryan race," etc. new york the macmillan company london: macmillan and co., ltd. _all rights reserved_ copyright, , by the macmillan company. norwood press j. s. cushing & co.--berwick & smith norwood mass. u.s.a. preface it would be difficult to find any intelligent person in this age of the world who has not some theory or opinion in regard to the origin of man, and perhaps almost as difficult to find any such person who can give a good and sufficient reason for the faith that is in him. this is especially the case with those who look upon man as a product of evolution, a natural outgrowth from the world of lower life, since here simple faith or ancient authority is not sufficient, as in the creation hypothesis, but scientific evidence and logical argument are necessary. it is to enable this class of readers to test the quality and sufficiency of their belief that this book has been prepared. the question of the evolutionary origin of man has been by no means neglected by recent authors, yet it has been dealt with chiefly as a side issue in works of a more extended purpose, and largely in technical language, simple to the scientist, but difficult to the general reader. the only work that makes this subject its leading theme, darwin's "descent of man," adds to it a still longer treatise on "sexual selection," so that the subject of man's evolutionary origin cannot be said to have been yet dealt with for itself alone. darwin's work, moreover, is now nearly thirty years old, and to this extent antiquated, while at best it cannot be considered as well suited for general reading. these considerations have given rise to the present work, in which an effort has been made to present the subject of man's origin in a popular manner, to dwell on the various significant facts that have been discovered since darwin's time, and to offer certain lines of evidence never before presented in this connection, and which seem to add much strength to the general argument. the subject is one of such widespread interest as to make it probable that a plain and brief presentation of it will be acceptable, both to enable those who are evolutionists in principle to learn on what grounds their acceptance of this phase of evolution stands, and to aid those who are at sea on the whole subject of man's origin to reach some fixed conclusion. for these purposes this little book has been set afloat, with the hope that it may carry some doubters to solid land and teach some believers the fundamental elements of their faith. contents chapter page i. evolution versus creation ii. vestiges of man's ancestry iii. relics of ancient man iv. from quadruped to biped v. the freedom of the arms vi. the development of intelligence vii. the origin of language viii. how the chasm was bridged ix. the first stage of human evolution x. the conflict with nature xi. warfare and civilization xii. the evolution of morality xiii. man's relation to the spiritual man and his ancestor i evolution versus creation in any consideration of the origin of man we are necessarily restricted to two views: one, that he is the outcome of a development from the lower animals; the other, that he came into existence through direct creation. no third mode of origin can be conceived, and we may safely confine ourselves to a review of these two claims. they are the opposites of each other in every particular. the creation doctrine is as old almost as thinking man; the evolutionary doctrine belongs in effect to our own generation. the former is not open to evidence; the latter depends solely upon evidence. the former is based on authority; the latter on investigation. the doctrine of direct creation can merely be asserted, it cannot be argued; the statement once made, there is nothing more to be said; it is an _ipse dixit_ pure and simple. the doctrine of evolution, on the contrary, founded as it must be on ascertained facts, is fully open to argument, and depends for its acceptance on the strength and validity of the evidence in its favor. if the doctrine of the direct creation of man had been originally presented in our own day, proof of the assertion would have been at once demanded, and the only evidence admissible would have been that of witnesses of the act of creation. there could, of course, have been no human witnesses, as there would have been no preceding human beings, and witnesses not human have, in the present day, no standing in our courts. as the case stands, however, the doctrine arose in an age when man did not trouble himself about evidence, but was content to accept his opinions on authority; and this, strangely enough, is held by many to be a strong point in its favor, it gaining, in their minds, authenticity from antiquity. it is claimed, indeed, to be sustained by divine authority, but this is a claim that has no warrant in the words of the statement itself, and one to which no form of words could give warrant. to establish it, direct and incontestable evidence from the creative power itself would be necessary, and it need scarcely be said that no such evidence exists. it is not easy, indeed, to conceive what form such evidence could take. it would certainly need to be something far more convincing than a statement in a book. it might have been better for civilized mankind if the opening pages of genesis had never been written, since they have played a potent part in checking the development of thought. as the case now stands, the cosmological doctrines they contain can no longer claim even a shadow of divine authority, since they have been distinctly traced back to a human origin. it has been recently discovered that they are simply a restatement of the babylonian cosmology, as given in a literary production ages older than the bible, an epic poem of very remote date. they are, doubtless, an outgrowth of the cosmological ideas of early man, and those who accept them must do so on the basis of belief in their probability; it is no longer permissible to claim for them the warrant of divine origin. modern science stringently demands facts in support of any assertion, the word "faith" having no place in its lexicon. facts are absolutely and necessarily wanting in support of the creation doctrine, and the only argument its advocates can advance is one that deals in negatives, and demands its acceptance on the ground that the opposite doctrine has not been proved. such an argument is valueless. disproof of one statement is never proof of another. its effect is simply to leave both unproved, and neither, therefore, in condition for acceptance. in the present case the weight of disproof is small. the facts in support of the evolution hypothesis are multitudinous, and many of them of great cogency; the facts against it are few, and none of them absolute. it is simply argued that some questions remain unsolved, and that there are facts which seem inconsistent with the darwinian theory of development, and which no supplementary hypotheses have explained. but no advocates of evolution hold that the darwinian theory is final. evolution is a growing doctrine. it has been expanding ever since it was first promulgated. various seeming difficulties have been explained away, and it is quite possible that all may disappear as investigation widens. no such arguments add any weight to the opposite view, which has not and never could have any standing in science, since it is impossible to adduce any facts to sustain it. we shall therefore dismiss it from further consideration, and proceed to state certain general facts in favor of the evolutionary hypothesis of the origin of man. ii vestiges of man's ancestry when, some centuries ago, men began to find fossil remains of animals in the rocks, a severe shock was given to the prevailing doctrine of the recent creation of the earth. the adherents of the old theology made strenuous efforts to explain away this unwelcome circumstance. the shells found had been dropped by pilgrims on their way to jerusalem; they were mineral simulations of shells; they had been created by the deity and placed where found; they were anything but what they appeared to be, the existing evidences of a long ancient period of animal life reaching back very far beyond the assumed date of creation. it need scarcely be said that these explanations, especially the one that god had created fossil forms to deceive man, for some incomprehensible purpose, could not long be maintained. some of them were inconsistent with the facts, others with common sense, and in due time it was everywhere admitted that the earth is of remote duration and has been inhabited by animals and plants for untold ages. its structure revealed its history; its annals were found to be written in the rocks; its anatomy was full of the evidences of its origin. when, not many years ago, men began to find the fossil remains of ancient structures in the body of man himself, theology was brought face to face with a problem as difficult to explain, from its special point of view, as that of the fossils in the rocks. as the latter had threatened and finally disproved the doctrine of the special creation of the earth, so the former assailed the doctrine of the special creation of man, and annihilated it in the minds of many eminent scientists. it formed a prominent argument in favor of the theory of organic evolution, and as such calls for consideration here, as a suitable groundwork for our special theme. the structures referred to may justly be called fossil, since they present strong evidence of being the useless remains of structures which played an active part in the bodies of some former animals. a significant example of this exists in the vermiform appendix, a narrow, blind tube descending from the cæcum of man, and detrimental instead of useful, since it is the seat of the frequently fatal disease known as appendicitis. this tube, usually from three to six inches long and of the thickness of a goose quill, is occasionally absent in man, occasionally of considerable size. it is quite large, as compared with the other intestines, in the human embryo, but ceases to grow after a certain stage of development. the cæcum is extremely long in some of the lower vegetable-eating animals, and the vermiform appendix seems to be a rudiment of the formerly extended portion of this organ. it is large in the anthropoid apes, especially in the orang, in which it is very long and spirally convoluted. its survival in man as a useless and dangerous aborted organ is a powerful argument in favor of his descent from the lower animals. in the brain of man and many of the lower vertebrates, hanging by two peduncles, or strands of nerve fibre, from the thalami, or beds of the optic nerve, is a small rounded or heart-shaped body of about the size of a pea, known as the pineal gland. it is so destitute of any evident function that descartes, in lack of any more probable explanation of its presence, ascribed to it the noble duty of serving as the seat of the soul. late research has been more successful in tracking this organ to its lair. it is larger in the embryo than in the adult man, still larger in some lower vertebrates, and in certain lizards has been found to exist as an eye, its parts plainly distinguishable under the microscope. it is placed in the middle of the forehead, between the other eyes, and was no doubt an active organ of vision in some ancient batrachians. the pineal eye, as it is now named, once useful, long useless, has persisted as a fossil structure through a far extended line of development. no more convincing evidence that man gained his body through descent from the lower animals could be asked for than the survival in the human brain of this wonderfully significant remnant of a formerly useful organ. like various other vestiges of ancient organs, it is not only useless but detrimental. it occasionally enlarges and becomes the seat of large and complicated tumors, which may cause death by their compression of the brain. two other structures common to most of the vertebrate animals exist in man, though they render him little or no service. these are the thymus and thyroid glands, apparently vestigial structures. the thymus gland attains a considerable development in the embryo and shrinks away to the merest vestige in the adult. it begins to form early in the embryo life as an epithelial ingrowth from the throat, and extends from the neck into the chest. it continues to grow after birth, but later begins to shrink and nearly disappears in the adult. the thyroid gland has a somewhat similar origin, it beginning as an ingrowth from the lower section of the pharynx and extending down to the lower part of the neck. it subsequently loses its connection with the pharynx, and in adult life is a bilobed structure on either side of the windpipe. like the thymus it is a ductless gland, abundantly supplied with blood-vessels, and possesses a vast number of small cavities, lined with cells and containing an insoluble jelly. so far as appears, both these glands are useless, or nearly so, to man; or if the thyroid performs any useful service it is a minor and obscure one. such functions as it may have could probably be performed by some of the other organs, while it is positively detrimental as the seat of goitre. this unsightly disease is due to its enlargement, either by a great increase of its blood-vessels or a development of the capsules and increase of their contained jelly. dr. s. v. clevenger considers these organs to have had a branchial or respiratory origin, saying that there are many reasons for believing them to be rudimentary gills. owen says that the thymus appears in vertebrates with the establishment of the lung as the main or exclusive respiratory organ. it is wanting in all fishes, also in the gill-bearing batrachians, siren and proteus. the thyroid appears in fishes, and gegenbaur believes that it may have been a useful organ to the tunicata in their former state of existence. dr. clevenger, in the _american naturalist_ for january, , points out another curious structure in man, whose significance does not seem to have been previously observed. this is a strange and striking fact relating to the formation of the veins. it is well known that these organs possess valves, which permit the free upward flow of the blood toward the heart, but resist its descent through the action of gravity, in this way aiding its return from the extremities. the rule holds good throughout the quadrupeds that the vertical veins possess valves, while they are absent from the horizontal veins, in which they would be of no utility. but the singular fact exists that in the human trunk the valves occur in the horizontal and are absent from the vertical veins. in other words, they exist where they are useless for their apparent purpose and are absent where they would be useful. the only conclusion that can reasonably be drawn from this strange fact is that we are here dealing with a fossilized structure, a functionless survival. it leads irresistibly to the inference that man has descended from a quadruped ancestor, and that when his body took the upright position the structure of the veins, not being seriously detrimental, remained unchanged. those which had been vertical became horizontal, and retained their now useless valves; those which had been horizontal became vertical, and remained destitute of valves. the veins of the arms and legs, vertical in both forms, retained their valves. dr. clevenger points out that the intercostal veins, which carry blood almost horizontally backward to the azygos veins and which would run vertically upward in quadrupeds, possess valves. these are not only useless to man, but when he lies upon his back they are an actual hindrance to the free flow of the blood. in like manner, the inferior thyroid veins, whose blood flows into the innominate, are obstructed by valves at the point of junction. we quote from him as follows: "there are two pairs of valves in the external jugular and one pair in the internal jugular, but in recognition of their uselessness they do not prevent regurgitation of blood nor liquids from passing upward. an apparent anomaly exists in the absence of valves from parts where they are most needed, as in the venæ cavæ, spinal, iliac, hæmorrhoidal, and portal. the azygos veins have imperfect valves. place men upon 'all fours' and the law governing the presence and absence of valves is at once apparent, applicable, so far as i have been able to ascertain, to all quadrupedal and quadrumanous animals: _dorsal veins are valved; cephalad, ventrad, and caudad veins have no valves._" of the few exceptions to this rule, he considers the valves of the jugular veins as in process of becoming obsolete, and the rudimentary azygos valves as a recent development. valves in the hæmorrhoidal veins would be out of place in quadrupeds, but their absence in man is a serious defect in his organization, since the resulting engorgement of blood gives rise to the distressing disease known as piles. the presence of valves would obviate this. no one can argue that this useless and, to some extent, injurious condition is a designed result of creation. there could not, indeed, be stronger evidence that man has descended from a quadruped ancestor. dr. clevenger points out other serious results of the upright position of the body, from which quadrupeds are free. one of these is the liability to inguinal hernia, or rupture, which leads to much suffering and frequent death in man. prolapsis uteri is another, and a third to which he particularly alludes is difficulty in parturition. it has been suggested above that the thyroid gland may possibly be of some minor functional importance, and that the thymus is developed in the embryo sufficiently to be functional. as regards the latter, no one is likely to maintain that an act of direct creation would include the production of an organ of some slight and obscure utility to the embryo and useless in later life. the strong probability is that this gland belongs in the same category with other embryonic survivals yet to be pointed out. as regards the seeming function of the thyroid, it may be said that the surviving relic of an ancient functional organ is quite capable of varying in structure and taking upon itself a new function, of minor value, which in its absence would be left undone or be performed by some of the other organs. a highly interesting example of this exists in the swim-bladder of the fish, which there is good reason to believe is a survival of an ancient structure used for quite a different purpose. it was originally developed, in the opinion of the writer,[ ] as an air-breathing organ, in a very ancient semi-amphibious class of fishes, from which the existing bony fishes have descended. when the latter resumed the gill-breathing habit, this organ lost its original function, and its subsequent history is a curious and significant one. in some modern fishes it has quite disappeared. in others it exists as a minute and useless remnant, no larger than a pea. in many it has been converted into the swim-bladder, and in this form serves a useful purpose, but varies very greatly in shape and size. finally, in a few instances, it retains some measure of its probably original function of air-breathing. it is a fact of much significance, that those fishes without a swim-bladder do not seem to be at any disadvantage from its absence, but are able to make their way vertically through the water quite as well as those which possess this organ. the presumption, therefore, is that it is of little utility to the fish, and that its employment for this purpose is a mere resultant of its survival and character. such an organ could never have been evolved as an aid in swimming, since its shrinkage to a useless rudiment in some cases and its complete extinction in others show that this function is in no sense a necessary one. it is there and has lost its old use, and is, in some cases, adapted to another purpose; that is all that can be said. man is the one hairless mammal,--or hairless except on a few parts of his body. yet the whole body is covered with a thin growth of hair, useless for any purpose of protection, and only explainable as a survival from the mammalian covering. the occasional considerable development of the hair is an indication pointing to such an origin. this applies not only to individuals, but to tribes or races, as in the instances of the ainos of japan and some of the pygmies of africa. the disappearance of the hair in man has been traced to no well established cause. darwin's view that it may have been a result of sexual selection seems the most probable explanation. certainly this is the case with the beard, whose absence in women shows it to be of no utility, and whose presence in man is in accord with the many structures in male animals apparently due to this form of selection. darwin has pointed out and explained a very curious peculiarity of the hair in man, which is absolutely inexplicable except on the theory of descent. this is the fact that the hairs on man's arms are directed toward the elbow from above and below, thus growing in opposite directions on the upper and lower arms. the same peculiarity exists in the larger anthropoid apes and in some of the gibbons, but is not found in the lower mammals. in the apes it is believed to be due to the habit of protecting the head from rain by covering it with the hands, the hairs turning so that the rain can run downward freely in both directions toward the bent elbow. this is so useless in man that it can be explained only as a survival. there are some other survivals in man of ancient structures to which a passing allusion must suffice. in man's eye is a minute membrane, the semilunar fold, which is absolutely useless in his economy. there is every reason to believe that this is the rudiment of a membrane which is fully developed in many animals, and is especially useful to birds, the nictitating membrane, or third eyelid. again, the muscles which move the skin in many animals, especially in horses, have left inactive remnants in many parts of the human body. these are normally active only in the forehead, where they serve to lift the eyebrows, but they occasionally become active elsewhere. thus there are some persons who can move the skin of the scalp. darwin cites some who could throw heavy books from the head in this manner. the same may be said of the rudimentary muscles of the ear. there are persons who can move their ears in the same way as is done by the lower animals. again, the whole external ear may be looked upon as a rudimentary structure, since it does not appear to aid the hearing in man. as regards the pointed ear of man's probable ancestor, darwin calls attention to what seems a trace in man of the lost tip. carrying this consideration farther, it may be asked, of what use are the five toes to man? would not a solid foot have answered the purpose of walking quite as well? but as survivals their presence is fully accounted for, since they are indispensable to many of the lower animals. question may also be made of the utility of the large number of bones in the wrist and heel of man. equal flexibility of the joint could certainly have been obtained with a smaller number of bones. it is only when these are traced back to their probable origin in the walking organs of the fish ancestor of the batrachians that their presence becomes explainable. they are apparently survivals of a very ancient structure, originated for swimming, and adapted to walking. as regards the wrist of man, a curious prediction that a certain bone found in some of the lower animals, the _os centrale_, would be found in man has been made and verified, it being discovered as a very small rudiment in the human embryo. the tail, so common a feature in the lower animals, but absent from the higher apes and from man, has not vanished without leaving its traces. in the human embryo it is plainly indicated; and while it vanishes in man beyond the embryo stage, it is simply hidden beneath the skin, where its vertebrae are still apparent, usually three, sometimes four or five, in number. in addition to this, the muscles which move the tail have left traces of their presence, which not infrequently develop into true muscles. in the human embryo, indeed, we find ourselves in the midst of highly significant indications of man's origin. the body of man passes in its early development through a series of stages, in each of which it resembles the mature or the embryo state of certain animals lower in the stage of existence. it begins its existence as a simple cell, analogous in form to the amoeba, one of the lowest living creatures, and later assumes the gastrula form supposed to have been that of the earliest many-celled animals. from this state it progresses by successive stages, each of which has some relation in form to a lower class. the most significant of these is that in which the embryo is closely assimilated to the fish, by the possession of gill slits. there are four of these openings in the neck of the human foetus, and they are at times so persistent that children have been born with them still open, so that fluids taken in at the mouth could trickle out at the neck, the opening being sufficient to admit a thin probe.[ ] these slits are utilized in the developing embryo, one of them being devoted to an important duty, that of conversion into the external and middle ear. thus the opening for hearing is an adaptation of what was once an opening for breathing. occasionally an ear-like outgrowth appears on the neck, indicative of the attempt of a second slit to develop into an ear. the purpose of the gill slits is made more apparent by the presence in the embryo of gill arches of the blood-vessels, like those normal to the fish. these disappear in common with the slits. the temporary appearance of these gill slits is the strongest evidence that could well be demanded that the human embryo passes through the various stages which the adult has assumed in its long development in past time, and that one of these stages was the fish. and these form only one of the evidences of man's origin to be found in the embryo. another which may be mentioned is the wool-like hair which covers the foetus, and whose presence is incomprehensible except on the theory of descent. its most probable explanation is that it appears as a passing survival of the first permanent coat of hair of the lower mammals. in the milk teeth of man we have another useless and often annoying survival of an ancient state of the dental organs. we cannot well imagine that in any direct creation a set of temporary teeth would have been provided as preliminary to a permanent set--an utterly useless provision. but when we find that in a lower stage of animal life the old teeth are periodically succeeded by new ones, we can understand how a trace of this condition has persisted in the mammalia. other evidences of man's origin in the lower animals could be drawn from the phenomena of atavism, or arrest of development in parts or organs of the body. atavism is usually confined within the line of human descent, conditions appearing in many of us which belonged to some of our human ancestors a few generations, occasionally many generations, in the past. but conditions now and then appear which are abnormal to man, but which are normal to some of the lower animals. this tendency is exhibited by all organisms. in an occasional horse the long-lost stripes of the zebra-like ancestor reappear. now and then a blue pigeon, like the ancestral form, crops up in a pure breed of domesticated birds. even in the details of anatomy some long-vanished character suddenly appears. many instances of this in man might be cited, embracing various features of the muscular and other internal organs. the abnormality of club-foot may be pointed to as a reversion to the shape of the foot in the anthropoid apes. this, however, is a retention of a condition existing in the foetus of man, the foot being drawn up and the sole turned inward and upward. it is simply a passing testimony to the ancestral condition of man. again, we have the fact that man possesses normally only twelve ribs, one less than is found in the gorilla and the chimpanzee. this leads to the possibility that man may have lost a rib in his development, and in significant evidence of this is the fact that occasionally a thirteenth rib appears in the human framework. the functionless organs in men are, as above said, closely analogous to the fossils in the rocks, in that both point back to a period in which they were active, vital forms occupying a definite place in the long line of animal life or animal structure. the argument that god directly created the fossils is no more absurd than the one that he directly created these useless and at times detrimental organs. it is impossible to offer a reason for such a futile exercise of creative power, unless that it was intended to make it falsely appear that man arose from the world of life below him. will any one in this age assert that god placed useless and dangerous structures in the body of man for the incredible purpose of deceiving him in regard to his origin? and will it be further asserted that the deity placed similar stumbling-blocks to the human reason in the embryo, in order to deceive those who should extend their researches to this low level? it would be difficult to conceive of a more preposterous idea, yet there is no other escape from what seems a self-evident fact, that man is a product of evolution from the lower animals, and bears the marks of his ancestry thick upon him. footnotes: [footnote : "on the air bladder of fishes." proceedings of the academy of natural sciences of philadelphia, .] [footnote : sutton, "evolution and disease."] iii relics of ancient man if now, instead of seeking for evidences of man's ancestry within the human body, in survivals of ancient anatomical structures, we seek for them within the crust of the earth, we find ourselves confronted with evidences of a great antiquity of the human race, partly in implements of human manufacture, partly in ancient or fossilized bones of primitive man. these indicate not only great remoteness of origin, but also a very gradual advance from the lowest stage of inventive ability to the high level now attained. these relics of primitive man are divided by dana into ten varieties, ( ) buried human bones; ( ) stone arrow and lance heads, hatchets, pestles, etc.; ( ) flint chips, left in the manufacture of implements; ( ) arrow heads and other implements made of bone and deer horn; ( ) bones, teeth, and shells bored or notched by human hands; ( ) cut or carved wood; ( ) bone, horn, ivory, or stone graven with figures, or cut into the shapes of animals; ( ) marrow bones broken longitudinally to obtain the marrow for food; ( ) fragments of charcoal and other indications of the use of fire; ( ) fragments of pottery. relics of the kinds above cited have been found at intervals for many years past, but their age and significance were doubted, and only within some forty years has the great antiquity of man upon the earth been generally acknowledged by scientists. the most important early find of ancient implements was made by boucher de perthes in and subsequently, in the high level gravels of the valley of the somme, in picardy, france. in deep layers of these gravels, which were deposited at a period when the river occupied a wider and higher channel than at present, he found rude flint weapons and tools, bearing plain evidences of human workmanship, and mingled with the teeth and bones of animals, both of living and extinct species. among the bones were those of the mammoth and the hairy rhinoceros, species evidently contemporary with man, though they have long since vanished from the earth. at a somewhat earlier date, implements of men, mingled with bones of the cave-bear, cave-lion, hyena, and other species, had been found in the caves of france and belgium. these were frequently buried beneath deposits of stalagmite and other materials that must have taken a long time to accumulate. the significance of these discoveries was long in forcing itself upon the attention of scientific men. nearly twenty years passed before boucher de perthes could get the noted geologists of france and england to investigate the somme gravels. when they did so they were quickly convinced of the genuine antiquity of these relics, and announced it as a fact beyond question that man had lived in the somme valley and fashioned rude implements out of flint during what was known as the quaternary or drift period of geology. the discoveries here made set men actively at work investigating elsewhere. excavations were made in other high level gravels, caverns were carefully and minutely examined, kent's cavern, england, was dug out to its rock bottom, dozens of important finds resulted, and the antiquity of man was proved to extend back from thousands to tens of thousands, if not to hundreds of thousands, of years. and the coexistence of man with the animals whose bones accompanied his relics was proved by unquestionable evidence, for drawings and carved forms of these animals were found, proving incontestably that man had gazed upon their living forms. thus the sketch of a mammoth, showing the long hair which served to protect this animal from the cold, was found engraved upon a piece of mammoth ivory, and one of a group of reindeer on a piece of reindeer horn. there were also drawings of the cave-bear, the seal, etc., and one very interesting group showing the aurochs, a number of trees, and a man with a snake apparently biting his heel. the carvings consisted of the horn handle of a dagger, cut into the shape of a reindeer, and other forms. that these relics belong to a far distant age is proved by the strongest evidence. it must suffice here to give some of the more striking of these proofs of antiquity. the flint hatchets found at st. acheul, france, were obtained from a gravel bed which lay below twelve feet of sand and marl. on the surface was a layer of soil, in which were graves of the gallo-roman period, showing that it had been there for at least fifteen hundred years. the time needed for the slow accumulation of the whole series of deposits must have been very considerable. a much more decisive proof of antiquity is given by the position in which this and similar gravel beds lie. they are found along the sides of rivers at a height often of a hundred or two hundred feet above the flood level of the streams. when they were deposited, the rivers must have run at this elevation, so that time has since elapsed sufficient for the streams to cut down their valleys to the present depths. the streams may have formerly been of greater volume, and had superior cutting powers, and they may have been aided by the ice of the glacial age, yet, however we estimate, the conclusion is inevitable that the men who dropped their implements into those gravels must have lived upon the earth ages before the beginning of historical times. the presence there of remains of animals which ages ago perished from the earth is another circumstance indicative of high antiquity. these embrace the mammoth,--the great hairy elephant of prehistoric times,--an extinct hair-clad rhinoceros, the large and powerful cave-bear and cave-lion, the great irish elk, and still other animals of whose existence we know only by their bones. others, which existed in common with men of later date, are the reindeer and the musk-ox, species of which now inhabit the coldest regions of the north, and whose presence in southern europe at that era seems to indicate a much colder climate than that of historic times. the evidences of human antiquity here briefly presented are accompanied by indications of a gradual development of the human intellect. if man has "fallen from his high estate," he has left no traces of this high estate on his downward path. we possess abundant indications of his upward climb, we find none of a preceding descent. if we base our opinions on known facts, the theory of development is the only one that can be sustained; the doctrine of a fall is absolutely without warrant outside the pages of genesis. the successive stages of man's mental development, as indicated in the work of his hands, are well and clearly marked. at the lowest level we find tools and weapons of the palæolithic or old stone age, made of roughly chipped stone, rude in form, and never ground or polished. these present some evidence of gradual improvement, but we must go to a higher level to find implements of a decidedly higher order, the neatly shaped and polished stone implements of the neolithic or new stone age. with the coming of these appears a much greater diversity in tools and weapons, and evidences of a growing skill in manufacture and a considerably greater power of invention. still higher lie the deposits of the bronze age, in which metal replaces stone in human implements. finally appears the age of iron, that in which we still remain. we need merely refer in passing to the lake-dwellings of switzerland, with their many interesting relics of man during the later stone, the bronze, and the early iron eras; and the kitchen-middens, or refuse-heaps, of the danish islands and elsewhere, which extend from the old stone age far down toward the historic period. these are but a portion of the evidences of man's antiquity and his gradual progress in the arts of manufacture. others have been found in many parts of the earth. many of them exist in america, proving that man resided on this continent at a very distant era. when we consider that late discoveries in babylonia appear to carry back the age of civilization and historical relics to some ten thousand years, and that semi-civilization must have extended very considerably beyond that time, the vista of man's gradual progress seems to recede interminably and the era of primitive man to stretch backward to an enormously remote period. in truth, discoveries have been made which are claimed to carry man back beyond the quaternary and into the tertiary period of geology, since cut and scratched bones have been found in pliocene deposits, which some geologists of experience believe to have been the work of human hands. still more remote are some seemingly chipped flints and bones cut in a way that suggests human action, which have been found in deposits of the very far-distant miocene age. the immense remoteness of this epoch and the rudeness of the work have cast much doubt on the human origin of these remains, though their authenticity as the work of man has been accepted by several competent observers, among them the able anthropologist, quatrefages. if we confine ourselves, however, to the conclusions regarding ancient man which are generally accepted, we must say that he has not been clearly traced back beyond the glacial period, though some of the relics found in the older river gravels and in the lowest cave accumulations may well be of pre-glacial age. many geologists believe that he reached europe as early as the extinct mammals with which he was contemporaneous there, but how far back in time this would carry his advent it is impossible to say. coming now to the consideration of more immediate human relics, the bones of man himself, it must be said that well-authenticated remains of palæolithic or early neolithic man are not numerous. as long as man left his bones to the unaided agencies of nature, they were little likely to be preserved. of the anthropoid apes of europe, probably numerous in individuals, a few remains of one or two species alone survive. of pre-glacial man none remain, but this may merely indicate that he has shared the fate of numerous other species that died out and left no trace. it was only when the growing cold drove man from the open woods to seek shelter in caves that remnants of his body were likely to be preserved, and only when a growing sense of human dignity led to the art of sepulture that the preservation of his bones became assured. the burial art was seemingly not practised by the hunters of the river-drift period or by men of still earlier date. the only remains of primitive man known are those found in caves and rock shelters. a number of human skulls have been discovered in these situations, and in a few instances skeletons have been exhumed. in the neolithic period interment became more common and more carefully performed, and the progress of this period is marked by many remains of man, which in later times were buried in elaborately constructed stone sepulchres, sometimes massive in materials and covered by great earth-mounds. what is meant by the glacial age is probably well-known to most readers, but its close relations to ancient man render it important for those who are not familiar with its meaning that a passing description of it should here be given. it will suffice to say that there are found over much of the northern portions of america and europe accumulations of clays, sands, and gravels, sometimes laid down in stratified beds, sometimes rudely piled together. in these occur blocks of stone, large and small, and other blocks, occasionally of great size, are found in isolated localities. the solid rocks which lie beneath these heaps are often scratched or polished, as if the material had been pushed over them with great force. all geologists now believe that these accumulations were made by ice, at some remote period when a very cold climate prevailed in the northern hemisphere, and great glaciers slowly made their way southward, grinding and rending as they went, and burying the land under their mountain-like heaps, which sometimes were a mile or more in depth. in north america the glacial ice pushed southward to the th degree of north latitude. in europe it extended to the alpine region, but failed to reach the countries bordering on the mediterranean. the elaborate and minute investigation of the glacial deposits has made it highly probable that there were two glacial eras, two periods in which the ice pushed down far to the south, and that these were separated by a period in which the ice retreated and an age of warmer weather intervened. this is known as the interglacial period. so far as can be positively ascertained, all the authentic relics of man belong to the glacial age. they seem first to become numerous in the interglacial period, and continue to increase and become diversified as we descend lower in time. how long ago it was that the sea of ice began its downflow over the earth it is impossible to say. some place it back six hundred thousand or seven hundred thousand years. some seek to bring it down to a quite recent date. it is still so uncertain and such a matter of controversy that the utmost we are able definitely to say is that it was very long ago. while there is no positive proof that men dwelt in europe before the coming on of the glacial chill, we have no just reason to doubt it. that he lived there during glacial times is unquestionable, and we may be very well assured that a naked tropical animal, destitute of the hairy covering of the other animals, would not have chosen that frozen period to migrate to the north. the fact that he was there during the ice age seems satisfactory evidence that he was there before that age, during the mild climate of late tertiary times, and that--for a reason which we shall hereafter consider--he was caught there and unable to retreat, and was forced to adapt himself to the new conditions. during the warm preceding period he probably wandered as a hunter through the european forests. but with the gradual coming on of a wintry chill, as the advance of the ice began, shelter of some kind became necessary, and he sought refuge in caves. from being a forest wanderer he became a troglodyte. everywhere in southwestern europe we find traces of this period of man's existence. there is hardly a cave or rock shelter in that region within which he has not left his marks. he made his way to england, which was probably then connected by land with europe, and dwelt long in its caverns. his period of cave residence, indeed, appears to have been a very extended one. while it continued, deposits many feet in depth gradually accumulated on the floors of the caverns, slowly filling them up. and that, in some cases at least, this cave residence ended a very long time ago, we are assured, for since then a great thickness of stalagmite, which is deposited with extreme slowness, has spread over the lower cave deposits and sealed them in. it is in these caves that we find, not only the rude stone spearheads, scrapers, hammers, etc., the bone awls, borers, and other implements of palæolithic man, but the bones of man himself. and it is significant of his primitive condition that these earliest relics indicate a man of a very low grade of development, mentally far above the ape, it is true, but mentally and physically much below modern man. the most ape-like of those human remains is the famous neanderthal skull, found in in a limestone cavern of the neanderthal valley, between düsseldorf and elberfeld, in rhenish prussia. the relics discovered consist of the brain cap, two femori, two humeri, and other fragments. the fragment of the skull attracted wide attention by its bestial aspect, it presenting a low, narrow and receding forehead, and an enormous thickness of the bony ridges over the eyes, like that seen in the gorilla. this skull, which was associated with remains of the cave-bear, hyena, and rhinoceros, is, with one exception, the most ape-like human relic yet found. yet its cranial capacity is far above that of the highest apes, and is assimilated with that of hottentot and polynesian skulls. it has been maintained that this is a pathological specimen, and does not represent normal man. but this theory has been disproved by the fact that other skulls of similar cranial characters are now known, indicating that the neanderthal cranium represents a type of man, not an abnormal individual. in the spy cavern, in the province of namur, belgium, there were found, in , two nearly perfect skeletons of a man and a woman, both of them with very prominent eye ridges, low, retreating foreheads, and large orbits. this was strikingly the case with the woman. the lower jaws in both were heavy, while the woman was almost destitute of a chin--a marked ape-like characteristic. the tibia was shorter than in any known race and stouter than in most. its curious feature was the articulation with the femur, which was such that to maintain the equilibrium the head and body must have been thrown forward, as is the case in the anthropoid apes. in the cave of naulette, near dinant, belgium, has been found the lower jaw of a man of decidedly ape-like aspect. its prognathism or protrusion is extreme, and the canine teeth were very strong, while the molars were evidently large and increased in size backward, a non-human characteristic. at la denise, in the upper loire, france, have been found the frontal bones of a man like the neanderthal man in type, the forehead being depressed and retreating, and the superciliary ridges large and thick. several other skulls of this general type are known, but the above will suffice as examples. remains of palæolithic man of considerably higher type are not wanting. in the rock shelter of cro-magnon, france, were found the bones of three men, one woman, and one child, of more advanced character. these, however, are of late date and may have been early neolithic. at engis, near liège, belgium, a deeply buried skull, associated with many remains of extinct animals, has been dug up, which is by no means ape-like in character. a still superior example of palæolithic man is the skeleton found in a cavern at mentone, east of nice, france, which represents a man six feet in height, with rather large head, high forehead, and very large facial angle ( °). the cave contained bones of extinct animals, but no trace of the reindeer. there is no occasion to speak here of the many remains of neolithic man that have been exhumed. sparse in the early part of the age of polished stone weapons, they gradually became numerous, and merged into the human remains of late prehistoric times. the american continent is not without its relics of ancient man, the most famous of which is the calaveras skull, found in in the auriferous gravels of calaveras county, california, at an extraordinary depth. the miners, in excavating a shaft, passed through several layers of lava and gravel, forming a total thickness of seventy-nine feet of lava and a considerable thickness of gravel, making nearly one hundred and thirty feet in all. at this depth a skull was found imbedded in the gravel, which, if authentic, must have been overflowed by several successive thick outpours of lava in the ancient volcanic era of that region. as its authenticity is, however, still a matter of controversy, nothing further need here be said about it. leaving these evidences of human antiquity, we come to the most remarkable and significant of all the known relics of man, if indeed it is man, for it seems to many a link between man and the ape,--not yet human, while no longer simian. this is the fossil find made by dr. eugene dubois in on the banks of the bengawan river, java, and named by him _pithecanthropus erectus_, he maintaining that it represents a new genus of upright animals, or even a new family. the remains found by him consisted of the upper part of a skull, a molar tooth, and a femur, possibly not belonging to a single individual, as they were somewhat separated. these were exhumed from a stratum of volcanic tufa, claimed to be of tertiary age, but perhaps quaternary, and lay at a depth of some forty feet beneath the surface. the femur very closely resembles that of a human being of average size, and its shape, articulating surface, and other characters show clearly that the animal stood habitually erect. the principal significance lies in the tooth and the cranium. the former is like that of the chimpanzee in shape, but less rugose on its grinding surface. it seems to lie between the ape and the human type of dentition. the cranium has a low, depressed arch, with a very narrow frontal region and highly developed superciliary ridges. the cranial capacity was apparently about one thousand, that of man being from thirteen hundred to fourteen hundred. it is therefore said to be "the lowest human cranium yet described, very nearly as much below the neanderthal as that is below the normal european." professor o. c. marsh, in a paper on the subject in the _american journal of science_, for february, , agrees with dr. dubois in his view of the distinct position of this form in the animal kingdom, and says that the discoverer "has proved the existence of a new prehistoric anthropoid form, not human, indeed, but in size, brain power, and erect posture much nearer man than any animal hitherto discovered, living or extinct." we have here given a short review of a long story. the evidences of man's former existence upon the earth are multitudinous, but any extended consideration of them is aside from our purpose, which is merely to show that the proofs of man's descent found in his physical structure are strengthened by evidences which he has left strewn behind him in his long march down the ages. only a single conclusion can be drawn from these vestiges of man excavated from caves and gravels, namely, that they indicate a gradual and steady progression upward from a very low condition, while they nowhere give evidence of the traditional fall of man. this is certainly the case with the relics of human workmanship. they begin with the rudest chipped stones, and very slowly improve in form and finish and become more varied, as we move upward in our search. the ground and polished stones follow, and the variety of implements considerably increases, until at length the age of metal, with its developed industries, is reached. the only seeming evidence of superior intellect to be found in this gradual progress is that of the drawings and carvings left us by one group of palæolithic men. but the actual mental development indicated by these becomes problematical when we consider that similar drawings are made to-day by the bushmen of south africa, a race of men occupying a very low mental stage. from this fact we may fairly conclude that the possession of a simple graphic art does not necessarily indicate any considerable intellectual advance. if we consider the remains of man himself, the few bones which mark his early pathway through time, a similar conclusion must be drawn. beginning with pithecanthropus, which science is yet in doubt whether to class with the apes or with men, we pass upward to the bestial neanderthal man and his fellows of the same low type. of the sparse remains of palæolithic man that exist, the most are of this degraded type. the cranial capacity is usually not small. they had the full brain development of man. but this simply assimilates them with the low races of existing savages, many of whom have not developed the simple art of chipping stone to form weapons and yet have brains of normal human weight. in truth, the influences under which the development of the brain took place were not what we now call intellectual. developing man used his mental powers actively in his dealings with the hostile forces of surrounding nature, and nearly all the forces of evolution were brought to bear upon the organ of the mind, the body remaining practically unchanged. his senses became acute, his cunning and alertness high, his use of weapons skilful, but his field of mental exercise was still the outer world, and the inner world of thought remained in its embryo state. the more recent development of the mind has been in its intellectual powers, while its physical aptitudes have somewhat declined. this has not yielded any marked increase in the dimensions of the brain, but it may have had a decided effect upon the proportion of its parts, the regions of the cerebrum devoted to intellectual activity probably increasing at the expense of the motor and sensory regions, while the convolutions may have grown considerably more complicated. iv from quadruped to biped in the question which now confronts us, that of the evolution of man from the lower world of animals, it is necessary first to state in what particulars he has evolved, what are the conditions which distinguish him from the lower animals. four marked distinctions may be named: his erect attitude, with the freeing of the fore limbs from use as agents in locomotion; his employment of natural objects, instead of his bodily organs, as tools and weapons; his development of vocal language; and his great mental superiority, with the general use of the mind in his dealings with nature. in none of these particulars does man stand quite alone; in all of them an affinity with the lower animals exists. steps of progress in these directions have been made by many animals, though none of them have gained any considerable advance. in man's strikingly developed social habit and organization he has no close counterpart among the vertebrates, but several among the insects. and it is of much interest to find that in the highest field of man's progress, his employment of the mind in his dealings with nature, he is chiefly emulated by such lowly-organized creatures as the ants and the bees. we do not need to look far among the lower animals for the species which come nearest to man in structure and which seem to have immediately preceded him in the line of descent. we find these forms in the monkeys or apes, and especially in their highest representatives, the anthropoid apes. these possess in a partial degree all the special characteristics of man. they are social in habit; some of them are semi-erect in posture, and their fore limbs partly freed from use in locomotion; they possess some imperfect means of vocal communication; they employ the mind to some extent in place of the body; in short, they seem arrested forms on the road from brute to man, signal-posts on the highway of evolution. in physical organization their approach to man is singularly close. in anatomy man and the higher apes are in most respects counterparts of each other. the principal anatomical distinction has been considered to be in the foot, which from the opposable character of the great toe was classed by cuvier with the hand, the apes being named quadrumana, or four-handed, and man bimana, or two-handed. fuller research has shown that this distinction does not exist, the foot of the ape being found to agree far more closely with the foot than with the hand of man. estimated according to use, the hand is, in the whole order, the special prehensile organ; the foot, however prehensile it may be, is predominantly a walking organ. and the opposability of the great toe is approached in some men, who have great mobility in this organ, and can use it for grasping. in regard to the brain, the organ of the mind, the difference between the higher apes and man is almost solely one of comparative size, the lower intelligence of the apes being indicated by the smaller size of their brains. the largest ape brain is scarcely half the size of the smallest human brain. but anatomically they are nearly identical. all the structural features of the brain are common to both, and the details are largely filled out in the anthropoid apes, the convolutions being all present and the pattern of arrangement the same. the brain of the orang may be said to be like that of man in all respects except size and the greater symmetry of its convolutions, which are less complicated with minor convolutions than in man. in truth, the difference between the brains of man and the orang is almost insignificant as compared with the difference between those of the orang and the lowest apes. mr. e. w. taylor, who has recently made an exhaustive study of the minute anatomy of the brain of the chimpanzee, remarks, "the similarity between the brain of the anthropoid apes and of man is one of the most singular and interesting facts of which we have knowledge." in any attempt, then, to consider the origin of man from the point of view of evolution, we are irresistibly drawn to the ape tribe as the next lower link in the long chain of development, and are led to consider the characteristics of the apes as the intermediate stage between the quadruped and the biped, the bridge crossing this great gulf in organic development. this is by no means to suggest that some one of the existing anthropoid apes is the direct ancestor of man. such an idea has never been entertained by scientists. these animals cannot even fairly be considered as brothers to man's ancestor, but must be looked upon as more or less distant cousins, with a physical organization less favorable to high development than that of man. man's ancestry lies much farther back in time, and his progenitor must have been constituted differently from any of the existing large apes. in the ape tribe we are able to trace nearly every step by which the gulf between quadruped and biped has been crossed, from the quadrupedal baboon to the nearly erect gibbon. and in seeking to follow this development through its successive stages, the first point to be considered is how the apes gained their special power of grasping, that characteristic to which they undoubtedly owe the partial freedom of their hands and their tendency to assume the erect attitude. the most distinguishing characteristic of the apes and of the nearly related lemurs has not hitherto been definitely pointed out. this is that they form the only group of strictly arboreal animals. the tree is not alone their native habitat, but they are specially adapted to it in their organs of motion, a fact which cannot be affirmed of any other animal group. if we consider, for instance, the squirrels, one of the best-known groups of tree-living animals, we find them to be members of the great order of rodents, whose native habitat is the land surface. though the squirrels have taken to the trees, there has been no adaptive change in the structure of their limbs and feet. the same may be said of almost all tree-dwellers except the lemurs and apes. the sloth, indeed, is specially adapted in organization to an arboreal residence, but this change is individual, not tribal, this animal being an aberrant form of the ground-dwelling edentata. in the apes and lemurs, on the contrary, the ground-dwellers are the aberrant forms, stray wanderers from the host. nearly all the species live in trees, to which they are specially adapted by the formation of their feet. it remains to inquire how this deviation in structure arose, what were the steps of development of the grasping foot and hand, the special characteristic of this group. in considering this question, the first fact to appear is that the apes and lemurs are plantigrade animals. their natural tendency is to walk on the sole of the foot, a habit which few other tribes of animals possess. most of the larger animals walk on the knuckles or the toes, and develop claws or hoofs, but the ancestral form of the ape, ages in the past, was doubtless a sole-walking quadruped, its toes apparently provided with nails instead of claws. what the story of this very ancient quadruped was we are quite unable to say. it may, in the exigencies of existence, have come to a parting of the ways; a section of the group, drawn by a love of fruit, developing the climbing habit; the remaining section continuing on the ground and following a separate line of evolution. perhaps only a single species took to the trees; for it is quite possible for a single form, in a new and advantageous habitat, to vary in time into a great number of species. of all this we can know nothing: but of one thing we may feel assured, which is that the plantigrade foot is the only one that could have developed into a grasping organ; such a development being impossible to the digitigrade or the hoofed animals. one can readily see how the habit of walking on the sole might tend to a spreading of the toes, in order to obtain a wider and firmer footing. and it is equally easy to see how a free and wide motion in the great toe would aid in this result. the animal may have been at first light in weight and able to support itself on its unchanged foot, but as it increased in size and weight it would need a firmer grasp, and the final result of spreading its toes for this purpose may well have been the opposable great toe. it must be borne in mind, in this consideration, that the apes differ from the other tree-dwellers in being destitute of claws. the squirrels, the opossums, and other arboreal animals have sharp claws, by whose aid they can easily cling to the surface of the bark-covered boughs. the nails of the apes are incapable of affording them this service, and it is not easy to perceive how a foot like theirs could become adapted to locomotion in the trees otherwise than by the gaining of mobile action and grasping power in the toes. the existing habits of the ape tribe lead us to the conclusion that the ancestral animal may have soon begun to seek support from upper limbs. the plantigrade foot is one capable of readily curving into an organ of support, and in the case of the forefoot the toes would tend to spread and gain flexibility of motion, and the first toe to become opposable to the others and yield a more complete grasping power. it does not seem difficult to comprehend, from this point of view, how the feet of a five-toed plantigrade animal may in time have developed into grasping organs, since there would be required only an increased flexibility of the joints, and a wider and fuller movement of the great toes. that such a change took place in this instance the facts appear to indicate, the most simple and probable explanation of the development of the grasping power in the hands and feet of the ape being seemingly that given above. the relation of the lemurs to the apes is not clearly defined. it may be an ancestral one, or the two animals may represent distinct lines of descent. in the latter case we would have two lines of animal evolution in which the grasping power was gained and adaptation to arboreal life completed. whatever their relationship, they both possess the opposable thumb as the hall-mark of their arboreal habitat, and whenever found walking on the ground they may be looked upon as estrays from their native place of residence. once the grasping power was gained, the first step of change from the quadrupedal to the semi-erect attitude was completed. the process may have begun in the effort to fit the sole of the foot to the rounded surface of boughs; or its first stage may have been in the seizing of overhead branches with the flexible hand; or both influences may have acted simultaneously. we see the result only, we cannot trace the exact process; but we have as an outcome the adoption of a method of locomotion different from that of all other tree-dwellers, the forefoot developing into the hand with its opposable thumb, and the hindfoot gaining a similar grasping power in the toes. the power of walking on a lower limb and grasping an upper one once attained, a succeeding step in evolution quickly appeared, and one of prime importance to our inquiry. the animal had ceased to be in a full sense a quadruped, while not yet a biped, and a variation in the length of its limbs was almost sure to take place. this is an ordinary result when animals cease to walk on all fours. in the leaping kangaroo and jerboa a shortening of the arms and lengthening of the legs appear. here the arms are relieved from duty and a double duty is laid on the legs, with the consequence stated. in the ancient dinosaurian reptiles, upright walkers, the same was the case. those varied from quite small to very large animals, but in all known instances the fore limbs were greatly reduced in size. a similar condition may be seen in the birds, the bones of whose fore-limbs have largely aborted from lack of employment as walking organs. in the case of the apes and lemurs, while a similar effect has taken place, an interesting difference appears, due to the difference in conditions. in these animals the fore limbs are not freed from duty as organs of locomotion. in many cases, on the contrary, they have an extra duty put upon them, with the result that they have grown longer instead of shorter. very likely these animals differed considerably in the past, as they do to-day, in the degree of use of their legs and arms. many of them walk in the quadruped manner, either on the ground or in trees. others make much use of their hands and arms in grasping and swinging. great differences in the use of the arms and legs may have arisen in different species. in some, the legs may have been mainly trusted to for support, and the hands used for steadying. in others the arms may have been the chief locomotive organs and the feet have given steadiness. here the legs may have grown the longer, there the arms, the limbs developing in accordance with their degree of employment. in the lower monkeys and the lemurs, the bones of the pelvis are altogether quadrupedal in character. this is not the case in the higher forms, and in the highest apes the pelvic bones approach those of man. highly interesting examples of these varied results may be seen in the existing anthropoid apes. in all of them it would appear that the arm was a prominent factor in locomotion, for in each instance it is longer than the leg,--but it differs in proportional length in every instance. it is shortest in the chimpanzee, somewhat longer in the gorilla, still longer in the orang, and remarkably long in the gibbon. in all these instances the fact that the arms exceed the legs in length indicates that they must have played a large and important part in the work of locomotion, and especially so in the case of the gibbon. it is well known, in fact, that the gibbons progress very largely by the aid of their arms, swinging from limb to limb and from tree to tree with extraordinary strength and facility. the legs lend their aid in this, but the arms are the principal organs of motion, and seem to have developed in length accordingly. as regards the other anthropoid species, wallace's observations on the habits of the orang are of interest. this animal usually walks on all fours on the branches in a semi-erect crouching attitude, but our naturalist saw one moving by the use of its arms alone. in passing from tree to tree the arms come actively into play. the animal seizes a handful of the overlapping boughs of the two trees and swings easily across the intervening space. while seeming to move very deliberately, its actual speed was found to be about six miles an hour. the organization of man, as he now exists, shows an interesting and important deviation from that of the manlike apes, and one which serves as strong evidence that none of these apes occupied a place in his line of descent. this is that he is a long-legged and short-armed animal, a condition the reverse of that seen in the anthropoid apes. while man's hands reach barely to the middle of the thigh, those of the chimpanzee reach below the knee, of the gorilla to the middle of the leg, of the orang to the ankle, and of the gibbon to the ground. all these apes have short legs and long arms. man, on the contrary, has long legs and short arms. the natural presumption from this interesting fact is that man's ancestor, which we may provisionally call the man-ape, differed essentially in its mode of progression from the other apes. the smaller forms of these usually move on all fours in the trees, though the arms are always ready for a swing or a climb. the anthropoid apes also show a tendency to a similar mode of progression, though with a difference in their mode of walking, which, as we shall see later on, is never that of the quadruped. as for the man-ape, it may have originally walked in the same manner as the related species, if we surmise that the variation in the length of the limbs was a subsequent development. certainly after its limbs attained the proportions of those of man, its facility of swinging from tree to tree must have been diminished, while it would have found it inconvenient to move in the crouching attitude of the orang and its fellows. its easiest attitude must then have been the erect one, and its motion a true biped walk, not the swinging and jumping movement of the other anthropoids. in short, the development of man's ancestor into a short-armed animal, however and whenever it took place, could not but have interfered seriously with its ease of motion in the trees. though this change may have begun in the trees, it probably had its full development only after the animal made the ground its habitual place of residence. it is of interest to find that all the existing large apes are arboreal, the gorilla being the least so, probably on account of its weight. though they all descend at times to the ground, their awkward motion on the surface shows them to be out of their element, while they move with ease and rapidity in the trees. the organization of man renders it questionable if his primeval ancestor was arboreal to any similar extent. the indications would seem to be that it made the ground its habitual place of residence at an early period in its history, and that the result of this new habit and of its erect attitude was a change in the relative length of its limbs. that this animal dwelt mainly in trees in the first stage of its existence, and possessed a powerful grasping power in its hands, we have corroborative evidence in recent studies of child life. the human infant, in its earliest days of life, displays a remarkable grasping power, being able to sustain its weight with its hands for a number of seconds, or a minute or more, at an age when its other muscles are flabby and powerless. it appears in this to repeat a habit normal to the ancestral infant, an instinct developed to prevent a fall from its home among the boughs. yet it is doubtful if the man-ape long remained a specially arboreal animal. the varied length of arm in the anthropoid apes was doubtless of early origin, and in all probability man's ancestor had originally a shorter arm than its related species. if so, this must have rendered it less agile in trees than other forms. if we could see this ancient creature in its arboreal home, we should probably find it more inclined to stand erect than the other apes, walking on a lower limb, and steadying itself by grasping an upper limb. this would be a more natural and easy mode of progression to a short-armed animal than the crouching attitude of the orang or the swinging motion of the gibbon, and its effect would be to make the erect attitude to a large extent habitual with this animal. in short, man's ancestor may have become in considerable measure a biped while still largely a dweller in the trees, and to that degree set its arms free for other duties than that of locomotion. like the other apes, it probably often descended to the ground, where its habit of walking erect on the boughs rendered the biped walk an easy one, or where this habit may have been originally acquired. while this is conjectural, it is supported by facts of organization and existing habit, and for the reasons given it seems highly probable that the ancestor of man took to a land residence at an early period in its history, climbing again for food or safety, but dwelling more and more habitually on the earth's surface. even at this remote era it may have become essentially human in organization, its subsequent changes being mainly in brain development, and only to a minor extent in physical form and structure. fossil apes have not been found farther back than the miocene age of geology. it is quite probable, however, that they may yet be found in eocene strata, since examples of their highest representatives, the anthropoid or manlike apes, have been found in miocene rocks. the fact that these large apes are now few in number of species, is no proof that many forms of them may not have formerly existed, and among these we may class the ancestor of man. v the freedom of the arms man's ancestor is by no means the only form of ape that has made the earth's surface its place of residence. the baboon is one example of a number of forms that dwell habitually upon the ground, though they have not lost their agility in climbing. but these species have returned to the quadruped habit, to which the equal length of their limbs adapts them. all the anthropoid apes dwell to some extent upon the ground, but these can neither be called quadrupeds nor bipeds, their usual mode of progression being an awkward compromise between the two. the same may be said of one of the lemurs, the propithecus, the only member of its tribe that attempts to move in the erect attitude. it does not walk, however, but progresses by a series of jumps, its arms being held erect, as if for balancing. of the apes, though many can stand upright, the gibbon is the only one that attempts to walk in this position. this is a true walk, though not a very graceful one. the animal maintains a fairly upright posture, but walks with a waddling motion, its body rocking from side to side. its soles are placed flat on the ground, with the great toes spread outward. its arms either hang loosely by its side, are crossed over its head, or are held aloft, swaying like balancing poles and ready to seize any overhead support. its walk is quickly changed to a different motion if any occasion for haste arises. at once its long arms are dropped to the ground, the knuckles closed, and it progresses by a swinging or leaping motion, the body remaining nearly erect, but being swung between the arms. none of the other anthropoid apes ever walk erect, though they assume at times the upright posture. but though they use all their limbs as walking organs, they show no tendency to revert to the habit of the quadrupeds. their motion is like that of the gibbon when in haste, a series of jumps or swings between the supporting arms. the shortness of their arms, however, prevents them from standing erect, like the gibbon, in doing this; and they bend forward to a degree depending on the length of their arms, the chimpanzee the most, the orang the least. as a rule, the flat sole of the foot is set on the ground, with the toes extended, as in man, but the toes are sometimes doubled under in walking. the orang rarely touches the ground with the sole or the closed toes, but walks on the outer edge of the foot, the feet being bent inward as if clasping the rounded sides of a bough. the other species have a tendency in the same direction, the legs being bowed and the gait rolling. in using the hands in walking, the closed knuckles are usually placed on the ground, though occasionally the open palm is employed. the whole movement of these animals is strikingly awkward, and goes to indicate that there can be no satisfactory compromise between life in the tree and on the ground. the significant fact in these attempts to walk is that none of the anthropoid apes show any inclination to revert to the quadruped habit. their attitude is in all cases an approach toward the erect one, which posture is attained by the gibbon. the arms are used not as walking but as swinging organs. evidently their mode of life in the trees has overcome all tendency toward the quadruped motion in these apes and developed a tendency toward the biped. but none of them have gained the muscular development of the leg known as the calf, nor an adjustment of the joints to the erect attitude, since none but the gibbon walks erect, and it does so only at occasional intervals. the conclusion to be derived from all this is that the man-ape was in its early days much more truly a biped than are any of the species named. like them, it had no tendency to revert to the quadruped habit. the shortness of its arms was unsuited to this, while rendering it impossible for the animal to progress in the semi-erect, swinging fashion of the other anthropoid apes. as a result of its bodily formation, it may have begun to walk erect at a very remote date, with a consequent straightening of the joints and muscular development of the legs. when this condition was fully attained, it was practically a man in physical conformation, though mentally still an ape, and with a long development of the brain to pass through before it could reach the human level of mind. the far-reaching conclusions here reached are all based on one important fact, the shortness of man's arms as compared with the disproportionate length of arm in the anthropoid apes. this, for the reasons given, rendered the adaptation of the man-ape to life in the trees inferior to that of the long-armed apes; while, as has just been said, it unfitted it to walk on the ground either as a quadruped or in the jumping method of its fellow anthropoids. in short, the biped attitude was much the best suited to its organization and the one it was most likely to assume. this once adopted as its habitual posture, efficiency in walking would be gained by practice. when once this animal became a ground walker, its facility of motion in the trees was in a measure lost. when the feet became accustomed to the flat surface of the ground, they became less capable of grasping the rounded surface of the bough. fitness to the one situation entailed loss of fitness to the other. the feet of the apes can clasp the bough firmly, by curving around its opposite sloping sides, and to this these animals doubtless owe their bowed legs and their disposition to walk on the outer edge of the foot. this disposition the man-ape lost as its foot fitted itself to the surface of the ground. it was probably retained in a measure by the young, after it had been lost by the mature form, and is still manifested in the position of the foot in the human embryo. these considerations bring us to an important question: why did the man-ape gain a length of arm not the best suited to its arboreal habitat? why, in fact, do changes in physical structure ever take place? how does an animal succeed in passing from one mode of life to another, when during the transition period it is imperfectly adapted to either, and therefore at a seeming disadvantage in the struggle for existence? the study of animal development has given rise to certain difficult problems of this character, some of which have been solved by showing that the supposed disadvantage did not arise, or that it was balanced by some equal advantage. in this way a considerable gap in life conditions has perhaps occasionally been crossed. small gaps have doubtless been frequently passed over in the same manner. in the case of the anthropoid apes, we perceive a considerable variation in the length of the arms, from the very long arms of the gibbon to the comparatively short ones of the chimpanzee. these differences are probably the result of some difference in their life habits, and accord with the possibility of a still shorter arm in the man-ape. there is, however, some reason to believe, as we shall show later on, that the arm of this animal was longer and the leg shorter than in man himself, their comparative length perhaps not differing greatly from that of the chimpanzee. aside from all other considerations, the use of the legs as the sole organs of locomotion could not well fail to produce this result, the legs growing longer and stronger in consequence of the increased duty laid upon them, and the arms growing shorter and weaker through their release from duty in locomotion. the case does not differ in character from those of the dinosauria and the kangaroos, in both of which instances a release of the arms from duty in walking was followed by a considerable decrease in length and strength, while the legs grew proportionally stronger. if any disadvantage attended the shortening of the arms of the man-ape, to the extent that this may have taken place in the tree, it was probably correlated with some advantage. in the various instances of short-armed animals cited this appears to have been the case, and it was probably so in man's ancestral form. while the hands continued useful in grasping and enabling the animal to maintain its place on the boughs, they may have been gradually diverted to some other service, with the result that the animal found the tree less desirable than before as a place of residence and sought the ground instead. this would be particularly the case if the new duty was one best exercised upon the ground. shall we offer a suggestion as to this new use? such changes are usually the result of some change of habit in the animal, frequently one that has to do with its food. change of diet or of the mode of obtaining food is the most potent influencing cause of change of habit in animals, and the one that first calls for consideration. the apes are frugivorous animals, though not exclusively so. carnivorous tendencies are displayed by many of them. they rob birds' nests of their eggs and young, they capture and devour snakes and other small animals. in zoölogical gardens monkeys are often observed to catch and eat mice. it is evident that many of them might readily become carnivorous to a large extent under suitable conditions. the large apes are usually frugivorous, but some of them eat animal food. this is the case with both the chimpanzee and the gorilla. the latter, while living usually on fruit and often making havoc in the sugar-cane plantations and rice-fields of the natives, also eats birds and their eggs, small mammals and reptiles, and is said to devour large animals when found dead, though it does not attempt to kill them for food. the young gorilla which was kept in captivity at berlin became quite omnivorous in its diet. with all this readiness to eat animal food, none of the existing apes are carnivorous to any large extent, but the fact of this inclination makes it not improbable that some of the apes of the past may have been much more so. it is quite within the limits of probability, for instance, that the man-ape at an early date became omnivorous in its diet. its change in structure may well have been the result of a decided change in diet, such as that from fruit to flesh food. such a radical change as that from vegetable to animal food would certainly demand a more active employment of the arms as agents in capture. fruits and nuts wait to be pulled; animals must be caught before they can be eaten. the former is an easy matter to an arboreal animal; the latter might prove a difficult one, especially if large animals were to be captured. in short, the pursuit and capture of any of the larger animals for prey could not fail to modify to a great degree the use of the arms. their employment in locomotion would interfere seriously with their utility in this direction. to succeed in capturing nimble prey by an animal with the ape form of hands a considerable freedom of the arms would be necessary, and the feet would have to be mainly, if not wholly, depended upon for motion. the ape has not the sharp claws of the carnivora with which to seize and hold its prey. it must have been obliged to use its palms for this purpose, and this it could not well have done unless they were free in their action. it is conceivable, indeed, that the man-ape may have run down its prey, or sprung upon it from covert, and seized it with the hands, but there is good reason to believe that this was not its mode of capture. the organization of the ape tribe gives it a characteristic action which is not to be found in any other group of the vast animal kingdom, that of handling and throwing missiles. in this it necessarily stands alone, since no other animal has a grasping palm. the power is one of prime importance, for without it we cannot perceive how man could ever have emerged from the general animal kingdom. the use of missiles is by no means uncommon with the monkeys. we cannot safely accept the story that american monkeys will throw cocoanuts from tree-tops at those who hurl stones at them from below, from the fact that the cocoanut seems too heavy and too firmly fixed to its support for the strength of those small species, but it is not uncommon for them to throw lighter objects. yet in doing this they usually seem to have no idea of aim, but toss the missile aimlessly into the air. of the large apes, the orang will break off branches and fling them at its tormentors, or will throw the thick husks of the durian fruit, but with similar lack of aim. the most skilful in this exercise are some species of baboons, which can hurl branches, stones, or hard clods with much dexterity. it is of interest to find existing apes availing themselves of their grasping power in this manner, since it leads us irresistibly to the conclusion that the man-ape may have done the same thing. the species which use missiles fail to take aim for two reasons, one that they employ them only occasionally, often in imitation of human action, the other that their arms are ill suited to this motion from their constant employment in another duty. in the case of the man-ape we may justly look for a more effective result, since if the arms became relieved from duty in locomotion they were free to gain facility of action in other directions. if in addition to this the man-ape began to use missiles with a definite purpose in view, that of striking down animal prey, so that the use of such weapons became habitual instead of occasional, it would soon gain some power of aim and a growing strength and skill in the throwing motion. it is quite probable, also, that an early use of weapons was in the form of clubs, which were retained in the grasp to strike down the prey when overtaken. in this case, we may imagine our primitive biped running swiftly after its prey, club in hand, striking at it when within reach; or, if it should prove too swift, hurling the club or a stone through the air with the hope of bringing it down in this manner. such a flinging action, if now and then successful, would be likely soon to become habitual; while the arm would grow accustomed to this new motion, and attain skill in taking aim. we may reasonably infer, also, that the club would be used for defence as well as for offence, in case the man-ape were in its turn pursued by larger animals. instead of fleeing to the nearest tree, it might now stand its ground and beat off its enemy. all must admit the probability, in a large tribe of animals with grasping power in their hands, and in the habit of using missiles occasionally, of one or more species coming to use them habitually. all the anthropoid apes are certainly intelligent enough to do this, if it should prove advantageous to them. its principal advantage, however, would seem to be to a species that became largely carnivorous and needed to capture running or flying prey. the habit of using implements is one of supreme importance in animal evolution. to it we owe man as he exists to-day. while animals confined themselves to their natural weapons of teeth and claws, their development must have remained a very slow one and been confined within narrow limits. when they once began to add to their natural powers those of surrounding nature, by the use of artificial weapons, the first step in a new and illimitable range of evolution was taken. from that day to this, man has been occupied in unfolding this method, and has advanced enormously beyond his primal state. a crude and simple use of weapons gave him, in time, supremacy over all the lower animals. an advanced use of weapons and tools has given him, in a measure, supremacy over nature herself, and raised him to a stage almost infinitely beyond that of the animal which trusts solely to teeth and claws. so far as we know, only one of the innumerable species of animals attained this development; unless, indeed, the various races of men had more than one ape ancestor. for the appearance of man there became necessary, first, the development of an order of animals with power of grasp in their hands; and, second, the development of one or more biped species, with hands freed from duty as walking organs and capable of use in other directions. a third necessity was very probably the exchange of the frugivorous for the carnivorous habit, which would act as a predisposing agency in inducing the animal to desert the tree for the ground, and to employ weapons in the chase. the final result of all this would be an erect, walking, and running animal, with arms and hands quite free from their old duty, except during an occasional return to the tree, and with the necessary straightening of joints and development of supporting muscles. what has been advanced above is, no doubt, largely a series of assumptions and conjectures, few of which are sustained by known facts. but as the matter stands, no other method of dealing with it can be adopted, since the facts in the case have in great part vanished. what we know positively is that man exists, and that in physical structure he is very closely related to the anthropoid apes. what we have excellent reason to feel assured of is that man has descended from the lower animals, and in all probability from an ape-like ancestor. we know that one or more species of anthropoid apes have become extinct, and can reasonably conjecture that one ancient species became modified into the form of man. we know that human remains have been found that, to some small extent, fill the gap between man and the ape. correlative evidence exists in the variations in length of limb in the existing anthropoids, their efforts to walk upright, their varied degree of dependence upon the arms for locomotion, and the occasional use of missiles by these and lower forms. to these may be added the carnivorous tastes shown by many members of the ape family, with the indication that more decided carnivorous habits might readily be assumed. taking the stand that such a partly carnivorous anthropoid ape, biped in structure, appeared and made the ground its usual place of residence, we find ourselves on the direct trail of man. long ago as this may have been, and far and difficult as was the journey to be made, the way was thenceforth straight and well-defined. such an animal, living largely on animal food, and using weapons superior to its natural ones in the capture of prey, was essentially a man, however low may still have been its level of intelligence. its feet were firmly fixed upon the upward track, and only time and stress of circumstance were needed to carry it upward to the high level of civilized man. we may, indeed, go further than this. we are in a measure justified in saying what this man-ape was like, this creature which had left its early home in the trees and began to walk upright upon the earth, pursuing the larger animals and capturing them for food. it was probably much smaller than existing man, little if any more than four feet in height and not more than half the weight of man. its body was covered, though not profusely, with hair, the hair of the head being woolly or frizzly in texture, and the face provided with a beard. the complexion was not jet black, like the typical negro, but of a dull brown hue, the hair being somewhat similar in color. the arms were lank and rather long, the back much curved, the chest flat and narrow, the abdomen protruding, the legs rather short and bowed, the walk a waddling motion, somewhat like that of the gibbon. it had small, deep-set eyes, greatly protruding mouth with gaping lips, huge ears, and in general a very ape-like aspect. our warrant for this description of man's ancestor must be left for a later portion of our work. we shall only say here that it is based on known fact, not on fancy. vi the development of intelligence the full adoption of the erect attitude gave the ancestor of man an immense motor supremacy over the lower animals, for it completely released his fore limbs from duty as organs of support and set them free for new and superior purposes. in all the animal kingdom below man there exists but a single form that emulates him in this possession of a grasping organ which takes no part in walking or in other modes of locomotion. this is the elephant, whose nose and upper lip have developed into an enormous and highly flexible trunk, with delicate grasping powers. the possession of this organ may have had much to do with the intellectual acumen of the elephant. yet it is far inferior in its powers to the arm and hand of man; while the form, size, and food of the elephant stand in the way of the progress which might have been made by an animal possessed of such an organ in connection with a better suited bodily structure. for a period of many millions of years the world of vertebrate life continued quadrupedal, or where a variation from this structure took place the fore limbs remained to a large extent organs of locomotion. finally a true biped appeared. for a period of equal duration the mental progress of animals was exceedingly slow. then, with almost startling suddenness, a highly intellectual animal appeared. thus the coming of man indicated, in two directions, an extraordinary deviation from the ordinary course of animal development. both physically and mentally evolution seemed to take an enormous leap, instead of proceeding by its usual minute steps, and in the advent of man we have a phenomenon remarkable alike in the development of the body and the mind. so far our attention has been directed to the evolution of the human body, now we must consider that of the human mind. in seeking through the animal kingdom for the probable ancestor of man in his bodily aspect, we were drawn irresistibly to the ape tribe, as the only one that made any near approach to him in structure. in considering the case from the point of view of mental development we find a similar irresistible drawing toward the apes, as the most spontaneously intelligent of the mammalia. while many of the lower animals are capable of being taught, the ape stands nearly alone in the power of thinking for itself, the characteristic of self-education. innumerable testimonials could be quoted from observers in evidence of the superior mental powers of the apes. hartmann says of them that "their intelligence sets them high above other mammals," and romanes that they "certainly surpass all other animals in the scope of their rational faculty." it is scarcely necessary here to give extended examples of ape intelligence. hundreds of instances are on record, many of them showing remarkable powers of reasoning for one of the lower animals. the ape, it is true, is not alone in its teachableness. nearly all the domestic animals can be taught, the dog and the elephant to a considerable degree. and evidences of reasoning out some subject for themselves now and then appear in the domesticated species; but these are rare instances, not frequent acts as in the case of the apes. the apes, indeed, rarely need teaching. they observe and imitate to an extent far beyond that displayed by any others of the lower animals, and the more remarkable from the fact that in nearly every instance the animals concerned began life in the wild state, and had none of the advantages of hereditary influence possessed by the domesticated dog and horse. among the most interesting examples of spontaneous acts of intelligence of the ape tribe are those related by romanes, in his "animal intelligence," of the doings of a cebus monkey, which he kept for several months under close observation in his own house. instead of selecting general examples of ape actions, we may cite some of the doings of this intelligent creature. the cebus did not wait to be shown how to do things, but was an adept in devising ways to do them himself. he had the monkey love of mischief well developed, and not much that was breakable came whole from his hands. when he could not break an egg cup by dashing it to the ground, he hammered it on the post of a brass bedstead until it was in fragments. in breaking a stick, he would pass it down between a heavy object and the wall, and break it by hanging on its end. in destroying an article of dress, he would begin by carefully pulling out the threads, and afterward tear it to pieces with his teeth. his nuts he broke with a hammer precisely as a man would have done and without being shown its use. ridicule was not pleasant to him; he strongly resented being laughed at, and would throw anything within reach at his tormentor and with a skill and force not usual with monkeys. taking the missile in both hands and standing erect, he would extend his long arms behind his back and hurl the article by bringing them forcibly forward. if any object he wanted was too far away to reach, he would draw it toward him with a stick. failing in this, he was observed to throw a shawl back over his head, and then fling it forward with all his strength, holding it by two corners. when it fell over the object, he brought this within reach by drawing in the shawl. in his gyrations, the chain by which he was fastened often became twisted around some object. he would now examine it intently, pulling it in opposite ways with his fingers until he had discovered how the turns ran. this done, he would carefully reverse his motions until the chain was quite disentangled. the most striking act of intelligence told of this creature was his dealings with a hearth-brush which fell into his hands, and of which the handle screwed into the brush. it took him no long time to find out how to unscrew the handle. when this was achieved, he at once began to try and screw it in again. in doing so he showed great ingenuity. at first he put the wrong end of the handle into the hole, and turned it round and round in the right direction for screwing. finding this would not work, he took it out and tried the other end, always turning in the right direction. it was a difficult feat to perform, as he had to turn the screw with both hands, while the flexible bristles of the brush prevented it from remaining steady. to aid his operations he now held the brush with one foot, while turning with both hands. it was still difficult to make the first turn of the screw, but he worked on with untiring perseverance until he got the thread to catch, and then screwed it in to the end. the remarkable thing was that he never tried to turn the handle in the wrong direction, but always screwed it from left to right, as if he knew that he must reverse the original motion. the feat accomplished, he repeated it, and continued to do so until he could perform it easily. then he threw the brush aside, apparently taking no more interest in that over which he had worked so persistently. no man could have devoted himself more earnestly to learn some new art, and become more indifferent to it when once learned. these are a few only of the many acts of intelligence observed by mr. romanes in the doings of this animal. they will suffice as examples of what we mean by spontaneous intelligence. the cebus did not need to be shown how to do things; it worked them out for itself much as a man would have done, performing acts of an intricacy far beyond any ever observed in other classes of animals in captivity. it may be said further that the displays of spontaneous intelligence shown by dogs, cats, and similar animals have usually been intended in some way for the advantage of the animal; few or none are on record which indicate a mere desire to know without ulterior advantage; no persevering effort, like that with the brush, which is purely an instance of self-instruction. examples of intelligence of this advanced character could be cited from observation of monkeys of various species. the anthropoid apes have not been brought to any large extent under observation, but are notable for their intelligence in captivity. it is not easy to observe them in a state of nature, and nearly all we know is that the orang makes itself a nightly bed of branches broken off and carefully laid together, and is said to cover itself in bed with large leaves, if the weather is wet. the chimpanzee has a similar habit, and the gorilla is said to build itself a nest in which the female and the young sleep, the old male resting at the foot of the tree, on guard against their dangerous foe, the leopard. it is the young animals of these species which are the most social and docile and most approach man in appearance. as they grow older, their specific characters become more marked. fierce and sullen as is the old gorilla, the young of this species is playful and affectionate in captivity and is given to mischievous tricks. the one that was kept for a time in berlin showed much good-nature, playfulness, and intelligence, and some degree of monkey mischievousness. it was very cunning in carrying out its plans, particularly in stealing sugar, of which it was very fond. the chief examples of anthropoid intelligence are told of the chimpanzee, which has been most frequently kept in captivity. it is usually lively and good-tempered and is very teachable. some of the stories of its intelligence may be apocryphal, as those told by captain grandpré of a chimpanzee which performed all the duties of a sailor on board ship, and of one that would heat the oven for a baker and inform him when it was of the right temperature. but there are authenticated stories of chimpanzee intelligence which give it a high standing in this respect among the lower animals. the emotional nature of the ape is also highly developed. it displays an affection equal to that of the dog, and a sympathy surpassing that of any other animal below man. the feeling displayed by monkeys for others of their kind in pain is of the most affecting nature, and brehm relates that in the monkeys of certain species kept under confinement by him in africa, the grief of the females for the loss of their young was so intense as to cause their death. more than once an ardent hunter has seen such examples of tender solicitude among monkeys for the wounded and of grief for the dead as to resolve never to fire at one of the race again. james forbes, in his "oriental memoirs," relates a striking instance of this kind. one of a shooting party had killed a female monkey in a banian tree, and carried it to his tent. forty or fifty of the tribe soon gathered around the tent, chattering furiously and threatening an attack, from which they were only diverted by the display of the fowling-piece, whose effects they seemed perfectly to understand. but while the others retreated, the leader of the troop stood his ground, continuing his threatening chatter. finding this of no avail, he came to the door of the tent, moaning sadly, and by his gestures seeming to beg for the dead body. when it was given, he took it sorrowfully up in his arms and carried it away to the waiting troop. that hunter never shot a monkey again. this deep feeling for the dead is probably not common among monkeys. the gibbon, for instance, is said to take no notice of the dead. it is, however, highly sympathetic to injured and sick companions, and this feeling seems common to all the apes. no human being could show more tender care of wounded or helpless companions than has often been seen in members of this affectionate tribe of animals. without giving further examples of the intelligence and sympathy of the apes, we may say that they possess in a marked degree the mental powers to which man owes so much, viz. observation and imitation. the ape is the most curious of the lower animals--that is, it possesses the faculty of observation in an unusual degree. what we call curiosity in the ape is the basic form of the characteristic which we call attention or observation in man. its seeming great activity in the ape is what might naturally be expected in an observant animal when removed from its natural habitat to a location where all around it is new and strange. man under like circumstances is as curious as the ape, while the latter in its native trees probably finds little to excite its special attention. in both man and the ape it needs novelty to excite curiosity. again, the ape is imitative in a high degree. this faculty also it does not share with the lower animals, but does with man, imitation being one of the methods by which he has attained his supremacy. observation, imitation, education, are the three levers in the development of the human intellect. the first two of these the ape possesses in a marked degree. it is susceptible also to the last, being very teachable. education certainly exists to some extent among the apes in their natural habitat, perhaps to as great an extent as it did in primitive man. in the latter case it is doubtful if there was much that could be called designed education, the young gaining their degree of knowledge by observing and imitating their elders. the same is certainly the case among the apes. we may reasonably ask what there is in the life and character of the apes to give them this mental superiority over the remaining lower animals. it is certainly not due to the arboreal life and powers of grasp of these animals, for in those respects they resemble the lemurs, which are greatly lacking in intelligence. whether the monkeys emerged from the lemurs or the two groups developed side by side is a question as yet unsettled; at all events they are closely similar in conditions of existence. yet while the monkeys are the most intelligent and teachable of animals, the lemurs are among the least intelligent of the mammalia. there is here a marked distinction which is evidently not due to difference of structure or habitat, and must have its origin in some other characteristic, such as difference in life habits. there is certainly nothing in the diet of the ape to develop intelligence. the frugivorous and herbivorous animals do not need cunning and shrewdness to anything like the extent necessary in carnivorous animals. they do not need to pursue or lie in wait for prey; and they escape from their enemies mainly through strength, speed, concealment, or other physical powers or methods. escape may occasionally develop mental alertness, but does not usually do so. certainly if the alert, watchful, suspicious habits of the apes are due to the requisite of avoiding dangerous enemies, we might naturally look for similar habits in the lemurs, which are similarly situated. and if we consider the wide distribution of the apes throughout the tropics of both hemispheres, and their great diversity in species and condition, it seems very unlikely that in all these localities their relations with other animals would be such as to develop the mental alertness which they so generally display. the fact appears to be that, while this may be a cause, it is not a leading cause, of mental development in animals, and that we must seek elsewhere for the origin of animal intelligence. research, indeed, leads us to examples of intelligence where we should least expect to find it. among the mammalia we perceive one marked example in the beavers, the only one in the great class of the rodents, with their nine hundred or more of species. but we must go still lower, to the insects, for the most striking examples, finding them alone in the ants, the bees, and the termites, among the vast multitude of insect forms. less marked instances appear in the elephants, in some of the birds, and in certain other gregarious animals. from these examples, and what is elsewhere known of animal intelligence, one broad conclusion may be drawn, that all the strikingly intelligent animals are strongly social in their habits, and that no decided display of intelligence is to be found among solitary species. this conclusion becomes almost a demonstration in the case of the ants and bees. the ants, for instance, comprise hundreds of species, spread over most of the world, mainly social, but occasionally solitary. the social species, while varying greatly in habit, all display powers of intelligence, and these so diversified as to indicate many separate lines of evolution. the solitary ants, on the contrary, manifest no special intelligence, and do not rise above the general insect level. the same may be said of the bees. the hive bee, the most communal in habit, shows the highest traits of intelligent activity. the bees which form smaller groups and the social wasps stand at a lower level, and the solitary bees and wasps sink to the ordinary insect plane. we arrive at like conclusions from observation of the social termites, or white ants, some species of which are remarkable for their intelligent coöperation and division of duties. examples similar in kind may be drawn from the vertebrates. among the birds there are none more quick-witted than the social crows, none with less display of intelligence than the solitary carnivorous species. birds are rather gregarious than social. there are few species whose association is above that of mere aggregation in flight. those more distinctively social usually have special habits which indicate intelligence--as in the often cited instances of their seemingly trying and executing delinquents. among the carnivorous mammals the social dog or wolf tribe displays the intelligent habit of mutual aid. the horses, oxen, deer, and other gregarious hoofed animals have a degree of division of duties, but their intelligence is of a lower grade than that of the dogs and the elephants. on the whole, it may be affirmed that the social habit is frequently accompanied by instances of special intelligence to which we find no counterpart among the solitary forms, and that the highest manifestations of intelligence in the lower animals are found in those forms which possess communal habits, as the ants, bees, termites, and beavers. one important characteristic of the communal animals is that they become mentally specialized. they round up their powers, build barriers of habit over which they cannot pass, perform the same acts with such interminable iteration that what began as intellect sinks back into instinct. each individual has fixed duties and is confined within a limited circle of acts, whose scope it cannot pass, or only to the minutest extent. the non-communal social animals, on the contrary, are not thus restricted. their intelligence is of a generalized character, and is capable of developing in new channels. none are tied down to special duties, each possesses the full powers of all, and they are thus more open to a continued growth of the intellect than the communal forms. to this class belongs the ape. its intelligence is general, not special; broadly capable of development, not narrowed and bound in by the limitation of certain fixed and special duties. the suggestions above offered point to three grades of community among animals, which may be designated the communal, the social, and the solitary. among these there are, of course, many stages of transition from one to the other. the specially communal, including the ants, bees, termites, and beavers, are those in which there is almost a total loss of individuality, each member working for the good of the community as a unit, not for its personal advantage. the result consists in organized industries, division and specialization of duties, a common home, food stock, etc. at a lower level in animal life, that of the hydroid polyps, communism has become so complete that the community has grown into an actual individual, the members not being free, but acting as organs of an aggregate mass, in which each performs some special duty for the good of the community. the social animals differ from the communal in that the individuality of the members is fully preserved. there is some measure of work for the group, some degree of mutual aid, some evidence of leadership and subordination, but these are confined to a few exigencies of life, while in most of the details of existence each member of the group acts for itself. the solitary animals are those which do not form groups larger than that of the family, and into whose life the principle of mutual aid, outside the immediate family relations, does not enter. each acts for itself alone, and intercourse between the individuals of the species is greatly restricted. the advantages of social habits among animals are evident. there is excellent reason to believe that all animals, and especially such advanced forms as the vertebrates and the higher arthropods, have some power of mental development, some facility in devising new methods of action to meet new situations. though their reasoning power may be small, it is not quite lacking, and many examples of the exercise of the faculty of thought could be cited if necessary. what we are here concerned with, is the final result of such exercises of individual thought powers. in the case of the solitary forms, such new conceptions die with the individual. though they may exert an influence on the development of the nervous system, and aid in the hereditary transmission of more active brain powers, they are lost as special ideas, fail to be taken up and repeated by other members of the species. this is not the case with the social animals. each of these has some faculty of observation and some tendency to imitation, and useful steps of advance made by individuals are likely to be observed and retained as general habits of the community. anything of importance that is gained may be preserved by educative influences. the facility of mental communication between these creatures is perhaps much greater than is generally supposed, and acts of importance which are not directly observed might in many cases be transmitted through repetition for the benefit of the group. we know this to be the main agency in human progress. new ideas are of rare occurrence with man. ideas of permanent value do not occur to one per cent., perhaps not to one hundredth of one per cent., of civilized mankind, yet few of such ideas are lost, and that which has proved of advantage to an individual soon becomes the common possession of a community. among the lower animals new and advantageous ideas are probably of exceedingly rare occurrence. when they do occur, their advantage to solitary forms is very slight, being that of minute steps of brain development and hereditary transmission of the same. to social forms they are doubly advantageous, since, while they tend to brain development, they may also be preserved in their original form, and transmitted directly to members of the group. they are still more advantageous to the communal animals, from the closer intercourse of these, and their constant association in acts of mutual aid. but in the latter instance their influence is usually exerted for the benefit of the community as a unit, while in the case of social animals it is of advantage to the individual. the result of such a process of evolution in the case of the communal animals is a strict specialism. a series of acts of advantage to the community are slowly developed, and are repeated so frequently that they become instinctive, while a fixed circle of duties arises, through whose links it is almost impossible to break. there is no reason to believe that the individual initiative is wanting. the varied round of duties of a community of ants, for instance, could only have arisen through step after step of progress from the condition of the solitary ants. if such steps have been made, others may be made, and are likely to be preserved if found advantageous. the ant individual preserves its powers of observation and thought and may initiate new processes. but most of the ant communities are already so excellently adapted to the conditions of their life as to leave little opportunity for improvement, so that the adoption of new and advantageous habits are certain to be exceedingly rare. it is an interesting fact that communalism has been confined to animals of comparatively low organization. the most complete examples of it exist in the polyps and some other low forms, in which each community has become a compound individual, the members remaining attached to the parent stock. the next higher examples to be met are the frequently cited ants and bees, belonging to the lowly organized class of arthropoda, yet, through the advantage of association and mutual aid, developing actions and habits only found elsewhere in the human race. the only example among vertebrates is that of the beavers, members of the low order of rodents. with these the results are less varied and intricate than with the ants, in accordance with the much smaller size of the community. all the higher vertebrates are either social or solitary in habit, and among them the narrow specialism of the communal forms does not exist. each individual works in large measure for itself, its mental powers remain generalized, and it is not tied down to the performance of a series of fixed hereditary acts from which escape is well-nigh impossible. of the social animals, man presents the most complete type, and the one from which we can best deduce the conditions of the class. a human community is made up of individuals of many degrees of intellectual ability, the mass remaining at a low level, the few attaining a high level. yet those of high powers of intellect set the standard for the whole, teach the lower either by precept or example, and aid effectively in advancing the standard of the community. a rope or chain is said to be as weak as its weakest part. a human community, on the contrary, may be said to be as strong as its strongest part. the standing of the whole is dependent upon the thoughts and acts of the few, from whom the general mass receive new ideas and gain new habits. the existing intellectual and industrial position of mankind is very largely a result of ideas evolved by individuals age after age, and preserved as the mental property of the whole. destroy the books and works of art and industry of any community, cut off its intellectual leaders, remove from the general mind the results of education, and it would at once fall back to a low level and be obliged to begin again its slow climb upward. the intellectual standing of any civilized nation depends upon two things: the preservation in books, in memory, and in works of art and industry, of the ideas of ancient workers and thinkers; and the mental activity of living thinkers and inventors, whose work takes its start from this standpoint of stored-up thought. rob any community of all its basic ideas, and it would quickly retrograde to a primitive condition of thought and organization, from which it might need many centuries to emerge. it has been said above that man is the highest example of the social animal. while that is the truth, it is not the whole truth. he is at the same time the highest example of the communal animal. mutual aid, organization into strictly rounded communities, labor for the good of the whole, is as declared in him as in the most developed community of the ants, and we admire the work of the latter simply because they repeat at a lower level the work of man. in truth, in man we have a splendid example of the existence of the individual initiative in connection with the communal organization. specialism exists in a hundred forms. some nations have been tied down by it to conditions almost as fixed as those of the ants. but generalism exists in as full a measure, new ideas are constantly modifying or replacing the old, and the communism of man is a progressive one, steadily borne upward on the wings of new ideas. individual thought has the fullest swing, and it is to the system of special reward for useful thought and act that man owes much of his great advance. on the other hand, reward without useful service has been one of the leading agencies that have acted to check human progress. the lower animals do not possess the advantage of man in his power of preserving the thoughts and products of the past as a foundation for new steps of progress. memory may aid them to a slight degree, but they have no special means of recording useful ideas. this cannot fairly be said of the communal forms, which possess the result of the labors of former generations as useful object lessons. but in the higher animals no means exist for the permanent preservation of ideas, and each step of progress must be due to the direct influence of living individuals and the indirect result of natural selection. this is one cause of the slow mental advance of the lower animals. a second is the deficiency in educational influences, which have had so much to do with human progress. education is not quite wanting in the brute creation. there are many instances on record of instruction given by the adults to the young. but this agency is in its embryo stage, and its influence must be small. again, each tribe of lower animals is apt to fall into a fixed circle of life acts, to become so closely adapted to some situation or condition that any change of habits would be likely to prove detrimental. this is a state of affairs tending to produce stagnation and vigorously to check advance. many instances of this could be cited from human history, while it is the common condition with the animals below man. to return to the apes, the considerations above taken lead to the conclusion that it is chiefly, if not solely, to their social habits that they owe their mental quickness. while only in minor traits communal, they are eminently social, and have doubtless derived great advantage from this. the lemurs, which share their habitat and resemble them in organization, are markedly unsocial, and are as mentally dull as the apes are mentally quick. possibly, the thought powers of the apes once set in train, there may have been something in the exigencies of arboreal life that quickened their powers of observation; but we are constrained to believe that the main influence to which they owe their development is that of social habits, in which they stand at a high, if not the highest, level among the distinctly social animals. the thought capacities of the ape intellect are general, not special. the mind of these animals remains free and capable of new thought in new situations. it is fully alive to the needs and dangers of arboreal life, and advances no farther in its native habitat because there is nothing more of importance to be learned. but while fixed it is not stagnant. when the ape is taken from its native woods and put among the many new conditions arising on shipboard and in human habitations, we quickly perceive indications of its mental alertness. its faculties of observation and imitation are actively exercised, and new habits and conceptions are quickly gained. could the apes be made to breed freely in captivity, so that a domestic race, comparable to that of the dogs, could be obtained, their mental powers might, perhaps, be cultivated to an extraordinary degree, yielding instances of thought approaching that of man. the ape is especially notable for its tendency to attempt new acts of itself, not waiting to be taught, as in the case of other domesticated animals. in short, it seems by all odds to be the animal best fitted mentally to serve as the basis of a high intellectual development, as it is the best fitted physically to change from the attitude of the quadruped to that of the biped. the anthropoid apes in general manifest a reversion from the social toward the solitary state, this condition reaching its ultimate in the orang, which is one of the most solitary of animals. the smaller forms are the most social, the gibbons being decidedly so. there is very good reason to believe that the man-ape was highly social, if we may judge from what we find in all races of men, and all grades, from the savage to the civilized. this animal was thus in a position to avail itself of all the advantages of the social habit, and to gain the mental development thence arising. how long ago it was when it left the trees and made its home upon the ground, it is impossible to say. it may have been as far back as the early pliocene or the late miocene period, or even earlier. as yet its brain was probably no more developed than in the case of the other anthropoids, perhaps less so than in the existing species. but in its new habitat it was exposed to a series of novel conditions that must have exerted a healthful and stimulating influence upon its mind. if it had remained in the trees we should probably to-day have only a man-ape still. leaving their safe shelter for the ground, it became exposed to new dangers and was forced to fit itself to fresh conditions. prowling carnivorous animals haunted its new place of residence, and these it had to avoid by speed or alertness of motion, or combat them by strength and the use of weapons. the carnivorous tastes which it had in all probability gained, made it a creature of the chase, pursuing swift animals, capturing them by fleetness or stratagem, or bringing them down with the aid of clubs and missiles. such a new series of duties and dangers could not fail to exert a vigorous influence upon a brain already quick of thought and susceptible to fresh impressions, and we may well conceive that the man-ape then entered upon a new and rapid phase of mental progress, its brain developing in powers and growing in dimensions as it slowly became adapted to its new situation and grew able to cope with fresh demands and critical exigencies. there is still another influence which has had its share, perhaps a very prominent share, in the intellectual development of animals, yet which no writer seems to have considered from this point of view. the probable effect of this influence needs to be taken into account, in conclusion of this section of our subject. it is that of the comparative agency of the senses in the development of the mind, and the effects likely to arise from the dominance of some one of the senses. in the lowest animals touch was the predominant, if not the only sense, taste perhaps being associated with it. but these senses, which demand actual contact with objects, obviously could give none but the narrowest conception of the conditions of nature. the other senses, sight, hearing, and smell, give intimations of the existence and conditions of more or less distant objects, and their development greatly widened the scope of outreach in animals and must have exerted a powerful influence upon the growth of mental conditions. it need scarcely be said that the sense which gives the fullest and most extended information about existing things is necessarily the one that acts most effectively upon the mind, and that this sense is that of sight. hearing and smell yield us information concerning certain local conditions of objects, but sight extends to the limits of the universe, while in regard to near objects it has the advantage of being practically instantaneous in action and much fuller in the information it conveys. sight, therefore, is evidently the most important of the senses, so far as the broadening of the mental powers is concerned, and any animal in which it is predominant must possess a great advantage in this respect over those species controlled to any great degree by one of the lower senses. it may be said here that sight only slowly gained dominance in animal life. though the eye, as an organ of vision, is found at a low level in the animate scale, the indications are that it long played a subordinate part, and has gained its full prominence only in man. during long ages life was confined to the sea, hosts of beings dwelling in the semi-obscurity of the under waters, and great numbers at too great a depth for light to reach them. to vast multitudes of these sight was partly or completely useless. the same may be said of hearing, the under-water habitat being nearly or completely a soundless one. the only one of the higher senses likely to be of general use to these oceanic forms is that of smell, and it may be that their knowledge of distant objects was mainly gained through sensitiveness to odors. of invertebrate land animals the same must be said. the land mollusks and the great order of insects and other land arthropods only to a minor extent dwell in the open light. very many species haunt the semi-obscurity of trees or groves, hide among the grasses, lurk under bark, sticks, and stones, or dwell through most of their lives underground. hosts of others are nocturnal. to only a small percentage of insects can sight be of any great utility, while hearing seems also to be of slight importance. smell is probably the principal sense through which these animals gain information of distant objects. there is existing evidence that the sense of smell in some insects is remarkably acute. the imprisoned female of certain nocturnal species, for instance, will attract the males from a comparatively immense distance, under conditions in which neither sight nor hearing could have been brought into play. the emission of odors and acute sensibility to them is the only presumable agency at work in those instances. as regards the most intelligent of the insects, the ants and the termites, the former are largely subterranean, the latter not only subterranean, but blind. in the one case, sight can play only a minor part, in the other, it plays no part at all. touch and smell seem to be the dominant senses in these animals, and the degree of intelligence they display shows of how high a development these senses are susceptible. yet the intelligence arising from them must necessarily be local and limited in its application; it cannot yield the breadth of information and degree of mental development possible under the dominance of sight. in the vertebrates we find a fully developed and broadly capable organ of vision, and it might be hastily assumed that in those animals sight is the dominant sense. but there are numerous facts which lead to a different conclusion. many of the vertebrates are nocturnal, many dwell in obscure situations, many in the total darkness of caverns, underground tunnels and excavations, or the ocean's depths. to all these sight must be of secondary importance. hearing also can be of no superior value, and the dominant sense must be that of smell. in the bats there would appear to be a remarkably acute power of touch, if we may judge from the facility with which they can avoid obstacles at full flight after their eyes have been removed. it might, however, be supposed that in the higher land vertebrates sight is predominant, and that the diurnal mammals depend principally upon their eyes for their knowledge of nature. but there are facts which throw doubt upon this supposition. these facts are of two kinds, external and internal. that the quadrupeds, in general, are highly sensitive to odors is well known, and also that they trust very largely to the sense of smell. hunters are abundantly aware of this, and have to be quite as careful to avoid being smelt by their game as to avoid being seen. we have abundant evidence of the remarkable acuteness of this sense in so high an animal as the dog, which can follow its prey for miles by scent alone, and can distinguish the odors, not only of different species, but of different individuals, being capable of following the trail of one person amid the tracks of numerous others. the internal evidence of this fact is equally significant. in the vertebrates, in general, the olfactory lobe of the brain is largely developed, much exceeding in size the lobe of the optic nerve. it forms the anterior portion of the cerebrum, and in many instances constitutes a large section of that organ, being marked off from it by only a slight surface depression. if we can fairly judge, then, by anatomical evidence, the sense of smell plays a very prominent part in the life of all the lower vertebrates. if we take our domestic animals as an example, the olfactory lobe of the horse is considerably larger than that of man, though the brain, as a whole, is very much smaller, so that, comparatively, this organ constitutes a much larger portion of the total brain. the other domestic animals yield similar evidence of the great activity of the sense of smell. while there is no doubt that sight is an active sense in all the higher quadrupeds, it evidently divides this activity with smell to a much greater degree than is the case with man, in whom smell plays a minor part, sight a major part, among the organs of sense. this fact shows its effect in the comparative mental development of man and the lower animals. man, depending so largely on vision, gains the broadest conception of the conditions of nature, with a consequent great expansion of the intellect. the quadrupeds, depending to a considerable degree upon smell for their conceptions of nature, are much narrower in their range of information and lower in their mental development. as regards the ape family, it occupies a position between man and the quadrupeds, and its intellectual activity may well be due in great measure to an increased trust in sight and a decreased trust in smell in gaining its conception of nature. the question may arise, why, if sight has this superiority over smell, did it not long since gain predominance, and relegate smell to a minor position? it may be answered that the superiority of sight is not complete. in one particular this sense is inferior to smell. the leading agency in the development of the sense organs of animals has been the struggle for existence, including escape from enemies, and the perception of food-animals or material. in these processes acuteness of smell plays a very important part. it has, moreover, the advantage of gathering information from all directions, while sight is very limited in its range. the eye is so subject to injury that its multiplication over the body would be rather disadvantageous than otherwise, while, localized as it is, a movement of the head is necessary to any breadth of vision, and the whole body must rotate to bring the complete horizon under observation. it seems evident, from these considerations, that sight is much inferior to smell in the timely perception of many forms of danger. light comes in straight lines only, and a movement of the body is necessary to perceive perils lying outside these lines. odors, on the contrary, spread in all directions, and make themselves manifest from the rear as well as the front. in all probability this fact has had much to do with the continued dependence of animals on smell. in fishes and reptiles a full sweep of vision is so slowly gained that some more active sentinel sense is requisite to safety. in mammals the head rotates more easily, but valuable time is lost in the rotation of the whole body. these animals, therefore, depend on both sight and smell, in some cases equally, in some more fully on one or the other of these senses. when we reach the semi-upright ape, we have to do with a form capable of turning the body and observing the whole surrounding circle of objects more quickly and readily than any quadruped. as a result, these animals have grown to depend more fully on vision and less on smell than the quadrupeds. finally, in fully erect man, the power of quick turning and alert observation of the whole circle of the horizon reaches its ultimate, and in man sight has become in a large degree the dominant sense, and smell has fallen to a minor place. with this change in the relations of the senses has come a change in the degree of mental development. it is highly probable that the dependence of the apes on vision instead of smell has had much to do with their mental activity, quickness of observation, and active curiosity. in man there can be no question that it has played a great part in the rapid development of his intellectual powers, and in the extraordinary breadth of his conception of nature as compared with that of the lower animals. while hearing and smell advise us of neighboring conditions only, and have their chief utility as aids to the preservation of existence, sight makes us aware of the conditions of nature in remote localities, extending far beyond the limits of the earth. while this sense plays its part as one of the protective agencies, it is still more useful as an agent in the acquisition of knowledge in general, and has much to do with the development of the intellectual faculties. we may look, therefore, upon the increasing dominance of the sense of sight as a leading agency in the making of man as a thinking being, and may ascribe to this in a considerable measure the thirst for information and faculty of imitation so marked in the apes. vii the origin of language one of the characteristics of man, of which we spoke as among those to which his high development is due, is that of language. there is nothing that has had more to do with the mental progress of the human race than facility in the communication of thought, and in this vocal language is the principal agent and in the fullest measure is the instrument of the mind. human speech has, in these modern times, become remarkably expressive, indicating all the conditions, relations, and qualities, not only of things, but of thoughts and ideal conceptions. and the utility of language has been enormously augmented by the development of the arts of writing and printing. originally thought could only be communicated by word of mouth and transmitted by the aid of the memory. now it can be recorded and kept indefinitely, so that no useful thought of able thinkers need be lost, but every valuable idea can be retained as an educative influence through unnumbered ages. in this instrumentality, which has been of such extraordinary value to man, the lower animals are strikingly deficient. they are not quite devoid of vocal language, though it is doubtful if any of the sounds made by them have a much higher linguistic office than that of the interjection. but emotional sounds, to which these belong, are not destitute of value in conveying intelligence. they embrace cries of warning, appeals to affection, demands for help, calls for food supplies, threats, and other indications of passion, fear, or feeling. and the significance of these vocal sounds to animals may often be higher than we suppose. that is, they may not be limited to the vague character of the interjection, but may occasionally convey a specific meaning, indicative of some object or some action. in other words, they may advance from the interjection toward the noun or the verb, and approach in value the verbal root, a sound which embraces a complete proposition. thus a cry of warning may be so modulated as to indicate to the hearer, "beware, a lion is coming!" or to convey some other specific warning. we know that accent or tone plays a great part in chinese speech, the most primitive of existing forms, a variation in tone quite changing the meaning of words. the same may be the case with the sounds uttered by animals to a much greater extent than we suppose. we know this to be the case with some of the birds. the common fowl of our poultry yards has a variety of distinct calls, each understood by its mates, while special modulations of some call or cry are not uncommon among birds. the mammalia are not fluent in vocal powers, their range of tones being limited, yet they certainly convey definite information to one another. recent observers have come to the conclusion that the apes do, to a certain extent, talk with one another. the experiments to prove this have not been very satisfactory, yet they seem to indicate that the woodland cries of the apes possess a certain range of definite meaning. we are utterly ignorant of what powers of speech the man-ape possessed. it must, in its developed state as a land-dwelling, wandering, and hunting biped, have needed a wider range of utterance than during its arboreal residence. it was exposed to new dangers, new exigencies of life affected it, and its old cries very probably gained new meanings, or new cries were developed to meet new perils or conditions. in this way a few root words may have been gained, rising above the value of the interjection, and expressing some degree of definite meaning, though still at the bottom of the scale of language, the first stepping stones from the vague cry toward the significant word. between this stage and that of human language an immense gap supervenes, a broad abyss which it seems at first sight impossible to bridge. as the facts stand, however, it has been largely bridged by man himself. side by side with the highly intricate languages which now exist, are various primitive forms of speech which take us far back toward the origin of human language. so advanced a people as the chinese speak a language practically composed of root words, the higher forms of expression being attained by simple devices in the combination of these primitive word forms. the same may be said, in a measure, of ancient egyptian speech. we can conceive of an early state of affairs in which these devices of word compounding were not yet employed, and in which each word existed as a separate expression, unmodified by association with any other word. among the savage races of the earth very crude forms of language often exist, the methods of associating words into sentences being of the simplest character, though few surpass the chinese in simplicity of system. but all this represents an advanced stage of language evolution, a development of thought and its instrument which has taken thousands of years to complete. we cannot fairly judge from it what the speech of primitive man may have been, for in every case there has been a long process of development; aided, no doubt, in many cases, by educative influences acting from the more advanced upon the speech of the less advanced races. if we seek to analyze any of these languages, the most intricate as well as the least advanced, we find ourselves in most instances able to isolate the root word as the basic element of speech. from this simple form all the more developed forms seem to have arisen. take away their combining devices, and the root words fall apart like so many beads of speech, each with a defined significance of its own and fully capable of existing by itself. the aryan and the chinese especially offer themselves to this analytic method. strip off the suffixes and affixes from aryan words, get down to the germinal forms from which these words have grown, isolate these germs of speech, and we find ourselves in a language of root forms, each of which has grown vague and wide in significance as the modifying elements that limited its meaning have been removed. in the chinese the problem is a much simpler one. we need simply to take the existing words out of their place in the sentence and let them stand alone, and we have root words at first hand. we may go through the whole range of human speech and, with more or less difficulty, arrive at a similar result. in short, the evidence seems conclusive that the language of mankind began in the use of isolated words of vague and broad significance, and that all the subsequent development of language consisted in the combination of these words, with a modification and limitation of their meaning, the families of speech differing principally in the method of combination devised. it must, indeed, be said that in isolating the root forms of modern languages we reach conditions still far removed from those of primitive speech. these roots are in a measure packed with meaning. time has added to their significance, and they lack the simplicity they probably once possessed. in particular, they have gained ideal senses, entered in a measure into that broad language of the mind which has been gradually added to the language of outer nature. the recognition of the existence of mind and thought doubtless came somewhat late in human development. man long knew only his body and the world that surrounded it. step by step only did he discover his mind. and when it became necessary to speak of mental conditions, no new language was invented, but old words were broadened to cover the new conditions. the mind is analogous to the body in its operations, ideas are analogues of things, and it was usually necessary only to add to the physical significance of words the corresponding ideal significance. in this way a secondary language slowly grew up, underlying and subtending the primary language, until the words invented to express the world of things were employed to include as vast a world of thoughts. in getting down, then, to the language of primitive man we are obliged to divest the root forms of speech of all this ideal significance, and confine them to their physical meanings. in dealing with the languages of the least advanced existing tribes of mankind, indeed, little of this is requisite. the language of the mind with them has not yet begun its growth or is in its first simple stages. only half the work of the evolution of language is completed. there is, indeed, no tribe so undeveloped as to use the primitive forms of speech. the most savage of the races of mankind have made some progress in the art of combining words, gained some ideas of syntax and grammatical forms. yet in certain instances the progress has been very slight, and in all we can see the living traces of the earlier method of speech from which they emerged. it is to the ability to think abstractly and to form words with an abstract significance that human language owes much of its high development. but this ability is largely confined to civilized mankind, savages being greatly or wholly lacking in it. this deficiency is indicated in their modes of speech. thus a native of the society islands, while able to say "dog's tail," "sheep's tail," etc., has no separate word for tail. he cannot abstract the general term from its immediate relations. in the same way the uncivilized malay has twenty different words to express striking with various objects, as with thick or thin wood, a club, the fist, the palm, etc., but he has no word for "striking" as an isolated thought. we find the same deficiency in the speech of the american indians. a cherokee, for instance, has no word for "washing," but can express the different kinds of washing by no less than thirteen distinct words. all this indicates a primitive stage in the evolution of language, one in which every word had its immediate and local application, while in each word a whole story was told. the power of dividing thought into its separate elements was not yet possessed. as thought progressed men got from the idea of "dog" to that of "dog's tail." they could not think of the part without the whole. then they reached a word for "dog's tail wags." but the idea of "wags" as an abstract motion was beyond their powers of thought. they could not think of action, but only of some object in action. the language of the american indians was an immediate derivation from this mode of word formation, every proposition, however intricate it might be, constituting a single word, whose component parts could not be used separately. the mode of speech here indicated is one form of development of the root. other forms are the compounding of the chinese and the mongolian and the inflection of the aryan and the semitic, all pointing directly back to the root form as their unit of growth. the inference to be drawn from all this is that the language of primitive man consisted of isolated words, sounds which may originally have been mere cries or calls, but which gradually gained some definiteness of meaning, as signifying some of the varied conditions of the outer world. this is the conclusion to which philologists have now very generally come. the recognition that language consists of root words, variously modified and combined, leads back irresistibly to a period in which those roots had not yet begun to be modified and combined. the roots are the hard, persistent things in human speech. grammatical expedients are the net in which these roots have been caught and confined. free them from the net, and it falls to pieces, while the roots remain intact, the solid and persistent primitive germs of speech. yet in isolating root language as the basis of grammatical language we go far toward closing the gap between animal and human speech. it is still, doubtless, of considerable width, yet the distinction is no longer one of kind, but is simply one of degree. primitive man had a much greater scope of language than is possessed by any of the lower animals, and the vocal sounds used had a clearer and more definite significance; but their nature was the same. they doubtless began in calls and cries like those in use by animals, and though these had increased in number and gained more distinct meanings, the difference in character was not great. in short, the analytic method employed by modern philologists has gone far to remove the supposed vast distinction between brute and human speech, and has traced back the language of man to a stage in which it is nearly related in character to the language of animals. the distinction has been brought down to one of degree, scarcely one of kind. a direct and simple process of evolution was alone needed to produce it, and through that evolution man undoubtedly passed in his progress upward from his ancestral stage. the language of the lower animals is a vowel form of speech. it lacks the consonantal elements, the characteristic of articulation. in this man seems to have at first agreed with them. the infant begins its vocal utterances with simple cries; only at a later age does it begin to articulate. if we may judge from the development of language in the child, man began to speak with the use of sounds native to the vocal organs, and progressed by a process of imitation, endeavoring to reproduce the sounds heard around him: the voices of animals, the sounds of nature, etc. this tendency to imitate is not peculiar to man. it exists in many birds, and in some attains a marked development. the mocking bird, for instance, has an extraordinary flexibility of the vocal organs and power of imitating the voices of other birds. the parrot and some other birds go farther in this direction, being capable of using articulate language and clearly repeating words used by man. none of the mammalia possess this facility. it is not found in the apes, and probably was not possessed by the ancestor of man. but it is not difficult to believe that in the efforts of the latter to gain a greater variety of vocal utterance, its organs of speech became more flexible, and in time it gained the power of articulation. there are races of existing men whose powers of language seem still in the transition stage between articulate and inarticulate speech. this seems the case with the bushmen and hottentots of south africa, whose vocal utterances consist largely of a series of peculiar clicks that are certainly not articulate speech, though on the road toward it. the pygmies of the central african forests seem similarly to occupy an intermediate position in the development of language. those who have endeavored to talk with them speak of their utterance as being inarticulate in sound. it appears to be a sort of link between articulate and inarticulate speech. in short, the great abyss which was of old thought to lie between the languages of man and the lower animals has largely vanished through the labors of philologists, and we can trace stepping-stones over every portion of the wide gap. the language of man has not alone been evidently a product of evolution, but also one of development from the vocal utterances of the lower animals; and the man-ape, in its slow and long progress from brute into man, seems to have gradually developed that noble instrument of articulate speech which has had so much to do with subsequent human progress. viii how the chasm was bridged in his bodily formation the man-ape differed little from man. the differences which existed were probably of a minor character, no greater than could readily exist within the limits of a species. if this assertion be questioned, it seems sufficient to call attention to the recent researches into the anatomy of the anthropoid apes, which differ in species, if not in genera, from man, yet are closely similar to him in all their main features of organization. even in the brain, to whose great development man owes his superiority, the only marked difference is in size. structurally, the distinctions are unimportant. if, then, these distant relatives so closely resemble man in physical frame, his immediate relative in the line of descent must have approached him still more closely in organization. after this ancestor had become a true, surface-dwelling biped, the differences in structure were probably so slight that physically the two forms were in effect identical. the man-ape was, as there is reason to believe, considerably smaller than man, perhaps about equal in size and stature to the chimpanzee, but that does not constitute a specific difference. there may have been some differences in the skeletal and muscular structure. the vocal organs, for instance, probably differed, the evolution of language in man being accompanied with certain changes in the larynx. the skull was certainly much more ape-like. yet variations of this kind, due to differences in mode of life, are minor in importance, and may easily come within the limits of a species. while the great features of organization remain intact, small changes, due to new exigencies of life, may take place without affecting the zoölogical position of an animal. the most striking difference between man-ape and man, that of the development of the brain to two or three times its size and weight, is similarly unessential in classification while the brain remains unchanged in structure. that it has remained unchanged we may safely deduce from the close similarity between the brain of man and those of the existing anthropoid apes. the cause of the increase in size is so evident that it need only be referred to. since the era of the man-ape, almost the whole sum of the forces of development have been centred in the mental powers of this animal, with the result that the brain has grown in size and functional capacity, while the remainder of the body has remained practically unchanged. that man as an animal has descended from the lower life realm, none who are familiar with the facts of science now think of denying. this has attained to the scientist, and to many non-scientists, the level of a self-evident proposition. but that man as a thinking being has descended from the lower animals is a different matter, concerning which opinion is by no means in unison. even among scientists some degree of difference of opinion exists, and such a radical evolutionist as alfred russell wallace finds here a yawning gap in the line of descent, and is inclined to look upon the intellect of man as a direct gift from the realm of spirits. his explanation, it is true, is more difficult than the problem itself. there are no facts to sustain it, and even if he were not able to see how man's mind could be developed by natural selection, it is a sort of _reductio ad absurdum_ to call in the angels to bridge the chasm. romanes has dealt with the subject from a different and more scientific point of view, and seems to have succeeded in showing that man's intellect at its lowest level is not different in kind from the brute intellect at its highest level. controversy on this subject is too apt to be based on the difference between the intellect of the brute and that of enlightened man, in disregard of the great mental gap which exists between the latter and the thought powers of the lowest savage. in the preceding section an effort was made to show how crude and imperfect must have been the language of primitive man. its imperfection was a fair gauge of that of his powers of thought. his intellect stood at a very low level, seemingly no further above that of the highest apes than it was below that of enlightened man. in fact, enormous as is the interval between the mind of the brute and that of the man of modern civilization, the whole long line of mental development can be traced, with the exception of a comparatively small interval. this is the gap between the intellect of the anthropoid ape and that of primitive man, the one important last chapter in the story of mental evolution. supernaturalism, driven from its strongholds of the past, has taken its last stand upon this broken link, claiming that here the line of descent fails, and that the gap could not have been filled without a direct inflow of intellect from the world of spirits or an immediate act of creation from the deity. this view of the case is not likely to be accepted as final. science has bridged so many gaps in the kingdom of nature that it is not likely to retire baffled from this one, but will continue its investigations in place of accepting conclusions that have not the standing even of hypothesis, since they are unsupported by a single known fact. at first sight, indeed, the facts which bear upon this question seem stubborn things to explain by the evolution theory. the gap in intellect between the highest apes and the lowest man is a considerable one, which no existing ape seems likely ever to cross. however the anthropoid apes gained their degree of mental ability, it does not appear to be on the increase. they are in a state of mental stagnation and may have remained so for millions of years. something similar, indeed, can be said of the lowest savages. they also are mentally stagnant. the indications are that for thousands, or tens of thousands, of years in the past their intellectual progress has been almost nothing. yet it is beyond reasonable question that the advanced thinker of to-day has evolved from an ancestor as low in the mental scale as this savage, probably much lower; and this renders it very conceivable that a similar process of evolution covered the interval between the ape intellect and that of primitive man. somewhere, at some time in the far past, the mental stagnation of man was broken, and the development of the mind began its long progression toward enlightenment. this was not in the localities in which the lower savages are now found, the equatorial forests of africa and south america and other realms of savage life, the change in all probability taking place elsewhere, under new and severe exigencies of life. similarly we have much justification in saying that somewhere, at some time, the mental stagnation of the ape was broken, and the long development of the mind from ape to man began. this did not take place in the instances of the existing anthropoids, and, as in the analogous case of civilized man, its influencing cause must be looked for in exigencies of existence acting upon some form different in character and habitat from these apes. the existing anthropoid apes may justly be compared in condition with the existing low savages. in both cases a satisfactory adaptation to their situation has been gained. these apes are still arboreal and frugivorous, as their remote ancestors were. they have for ages been in a state of close adaptation to their life conditions, and the influences of development have been largely wanting. such evolution as took place must have been extremely slow. in like manner the lowest savages live in intimate relations with the conditions surrounding them. all problems of food-getting, habitation, climate, etc., have long since been solved, and in the tropical forests in which so many of them dwell they are in thorough accord with the situation. mentally, therefore, they are practically at a standstill and have remained so for thousands of years. the two cases are parallel ones. we can safely say that the later development of man took place in other situations and under other conditions. we may fairly say the same in regard to the ape. vigorous influences must have been brought to bear upon the ancestor of man as the instigating causes of its mental development into man; and similarly vigorous influences must have been brought to bear upon primitive man to set in train his mental development into intellectual man. and the general character of these influences in both cases may readily be pointed out. an extraordinary development has taken place in the human intellect within a few thousands, or tens of thousands, of years, yielding the difference which exists between the cultivated man of to-day and the debased savage who probably preceded him, and whose counterpart still exists. this has undoubtedly been due to influences of the highest potency. if we can show that influences of equal potency acted upon man's ancestor, we shall have done much toward indicating how the ape brain may have grown into the brain of man. in both cases the main agency was in all probability that of conflict. both ape and man, as we take it, developed through some form of warfare. in the former case it was warfare with the animal kingdom; in the latter it was warfare with the conditions of nature and with hostile man. each of these has been potent in its effects, and to each we owe the completion of a great stage in the evolution of man. in the tropics, the home of the anthropoid apes of to-day and, probably, of the animal we have named the man-ape, war between man and nature scarcely exists. nature is not hostile to man. there is no occasion for clothing and little for habitation. food is abundant for the sparse populations. little exertion is called for to sustain life. mental stagnation is very likely to supervene. yet there, as elsewhere, conflict has had much to do with such mental progress as exists. mastery in warfare is due to superior mental resources, which gradually arise from the exigencies of conflict, and manifest themselves in greater shrewdness or cunning, superior ability in leadership, better organization, fuller mutual aid, and the invention of more destructive weapons and more efficient tools. war acts vigorously on men's minds, peace acts sluggishly. in the former case man's most valued possession, his life, is in jeopardy, and his utmost powers are exerted for its preservation. every resource within his power is brought to bear to save himself from wounds or death and to destroy his enemies. if the foes are equal physically, victory is apt to come to those which are superior mentally, which are quicker at devising new expedients, more alert in providing against danger, more skilful in the use of weapons, abler in combining their forces to act in unison. in short, the whole story of mankind tells us that mental evolution has been greatly aided by the influences of warfare, the reaction upon the mind of the effort at self-preservation, the destruction of those at a lower level of intellectual alertness, the preservation of the abler and more energetic, the effect of conflict in bringing into activity all the resources of the intellect, and the hereditary transmission of the powers of mind thus developed. it is, undoubtedly, to war between man and man, and the conflict with the adverse conditions of nature in the colder regions of the earth, that man's development from his lowest to his highest intellectual state has been largely due. this is by no means to say that war is still necessary for this result. other influences are now at work, of equal or superior potency, and while the conflict with nature and the conditions of society is still of importance, war between man and man is no longer necessary as a mental stimulant. the time was, and that not very far in the past, when it was an essential element in human development. if we descend to the lowest existing savages, however, it is to find this agency almost non-existent. we can perceive in them no organized warfare and no alert conflict with nature. they are as yet at the very beginning of this stage of evolution, and it certainly exerts little influence upon them. nature is not adverse, life needs little thought or exertion, they accept the world as they find it, without question or revolt, and their thoughts and habits are as unchangeable as the laws of the medes and persians. but the fact that active warfare does not now exist among the lowest tribes of mankind, does not argue that such a state has never existed. in truth, we maintain that primitive man is the outcome of an active and long-continued warfare, and that his settled and sluggish condition to-day is the ease that follows victory. he has conquered and is at rest after his labors. for if we compare primitive man with the anthropoid apes, it is to find one striking and important difference between them. the anthropoids are at a level in position with their animal neighbors. man is lord and master of the animal kingdom, the dominant being in the world of life. he has no rival in this lordship, but stands alone in his relation to the animal kingdom. he is feared and avoided by the largest and strongest beasts of field and forest. he does not fight defensively, but offensively, and whatever his relation to his fellow-man, he admits no equal in the world of life below him. he is the only animal that has made a struggle for lordship. the gorilla is said to attack the lion and drive it from its haunts. if it does so, it is not with any desire for mastery, but simply to rid itself of a dangerous neighbor. the battle for dominion has been confined to man, and in the winning of it no small degree of mental development must have taken place. the supremacy of man was not gained without a struggle, and that a severe and protracted one. the animal kingdom did not yield readily to man's lordship, and the war must have been long and bitter, settled as the relations now seem. rest has succeeded victory. the lower animals are now submissive to man, or retire before him in dread of his strength and resources, and the strain upon his powers has ceased. so far as this phase of evolution is concerned the influences aiding the mental development of man have lost their strength. the warfare is over, and man reigns supreme over the kingdom of life. of all animals the man-ape was the best adapted for such a struggle. the other anthropoid apes, while favored by the formation of their hands, lacked that freedom of the arms to which man mainly owes his success. no other animal has ever appeared with arms freed from duty in locomotion and at the same time endued with the power of grasping, and these are the features of organization to which the evolution of the human intellect was wholly due in its first stages. the man-ape was not able to contend successfully with the larger animals by aid of its natural weapons. its diminutive size, its lack of tearing claws, and its lesser powers of speed, left it at a disadvantage, and had it attempted to conquer by the aid of its strength and the seizing and rending powers of teeth and nails, its victory over the larger animals would never have been won. even with the aid of the cunning and alertness of the apes, their power of observation, their combination for defence and attack, and their general mental superiority to the tenants of the animal world, their supremacy in the event of their becoming carnivorous must have been confined to the smaller creatures, and could not have been established over the larger animals of their native habitat except through the aid of other than their natural powers. it was by the use of artificial weapons that the conquest was gained. the tendency to use missiles as weapons of offence and defence, which is shown by various species of monkeys, was in all probability greatly developed by the man-ape, the only carnivorous member, if our premises are correct, of the whole extensive family of the apes, and the only one with the free use of its hands and arms. by the use of weapons of this kind the powers of offence of this animal were enormously increased. as skill was acquired in their use, and more efficient weapons were selected or formed, the man-ape steadily advanced in controlling influence, and the lower animal world became more and more subordinated. no doubt the struggle was a protracted one. the previously dominant animals did not submit without a severe and long-continued contest. thousands of years may have passed before the larger animals were subdued, for it is probable that the invention of superior weapons by an animal of low mental powers was a very slow process. each stage of invention gave higher success, but these stages were very deliberate ones. however this be, we can be assured that the superiority of the ancestral man lay in his mental resources, and that his victory was due to the employment of his mind rather than of his body. as a result, the developing influence of the conflict was exerted upon his brain, the organ of the mind, far more than upon his physical frame, and this organ gradually increased in size, while the body as a whole remained practically unchanged. the conflict began with the man-ape on a level in power and dominance with animals of its own size and inferior to those of greater size and strength. it ended with man dominant over all the lower animals. such a progress, if made by any animal through variation in physical structure, must have caused radical and extraordinary changes in size, strength, and utility of the natural organs of offence. if made, as in the instance in question, through development of the organ of the mind alone, it could not but have produced a great increase in the size and power of this organ; and the dimensions of the brain in primitive man, as compared with those of the brain in the anthropoid apes, do not seem too great for the magnitude of the result. the conflict ended, a new animal, man, finally and fully emerged from the family of the apes and settled down in the restful consciousness of victory, with a much larger brain and greatly superior mental powers than were possessed at the beginning of the struggle, yet in physical aspect not greatly changed from his ancestral form after it had first fully gained the erect attitude. the powers gained enabled early man easily to hold the position he had won, and there was no further special strain upon his faculties until a new contest began, that between man and nature, supplemented by a still more vital struggle, that between man and man. to return to the point from which we set out, it may be said that, as the man-ape gained facility in walking in the erect attitude, and its hands and arms became fully adapted to the use of weapons, its standing in the animal kingdom changed essentially from that before held. fear and flight ended, retreat ceased, attack began, pursuit succeeded flight, and the great battle for mastery entered upon its long course. an element which aided materially in the victory was the social habit of the animal in question, and the mutual aid which the members of any group gave one another. educative influences also naturally follow association, every invention or improvement devised by one becomes the property of the whole, and nothing of importance once gained is lost. the stages of this progress were, undoubtedly, in their outer aspect, stages of improvement in weapons. we seem to see ancestral man, in his early career as a carnivorous animal, seizing the stones and sticks that came readily to hand, and flinging them with some little skill at his prey, in the same manner as we can perceive the baboon doing the same thing. in like manner we observe him breaking off branches from the trees and using them as clubs. one of the first steps of development from this crude stage in the use of weapons would be the selection of stones suited by size and shape for throwing, and the choice of clubs of suitable length and thickness, the latter being stripped of their twigs. for a long time fresh weapons, those immediately at hand, would be seized and used for every new conflict; but as the idea of the superiority of some weapons to others arose, a second stage of evolution must have begun. the selected club, broken from the tree and prepared for use with some care, and thus embodying a degree of choice and labor, would be too valuable to fling idly away, and might be retained for future use, the first personal possession of inchoate man. similarly, stones carefully chosen for their suitability for throwing would be probably kept, and a small store of them collected. in short, we may conceive of the man-ape thus gathering a magazine of weapons,--clubs and stones,--sought or shaped during hours of leisure for use in hours of conflict. in this way our animal ancestor doubtless slowly became a skilful hunter, carrying his weapons with him in the chase, and using them efficiently in the conquest of prey. a third stage in this progress was reached when to some wise-headed old man-ape came the idea of combining the two forms of weapon in use, of fastening in some way the stone to the club in order that a more effective blow might be struck. the vegetable kingdom furnishes natural cords, flat stones with more or less cutting edges could be chosen and bound to the end of the club, and the earliest form of the battle-axe would be produced. with its formation the man-ape made another important step of progress and added greatly to his powers of offence. stage by stage he was bringing his animal competitors under his control. the formation of an axe or hatchet, however crude it may have been, would naturally lead to another step in advance. with it the ancestral man had passed beyond the possession of a weapon into the possession of a tool. the shaping of his clubs previously had been done by a rude tearing or hammering off of their twigs. these could now be cut off, and in addition the club might be wrought into a better shape. manufacture had begun. our ancestor stood at one end of a long line, at the other end of which we behold the steam-engine, the electric motor, and an interminable variety of other instruments. primitive manufacture was not confined to the shaping of wood. the shaping of stone followed in due time. if a tree branch could be made more suitable for its purpose by cutting it into shape with a rude stone axe or hatchet, a stone of better shape might be obtained by hammering. doubtless the chipping effect of striking stone upon stone had been often observed before the idea arose that this could be made useful, and that where stones of the desired shape were not to be found, the shape of those at hand might in this way be improved. if we seek for some turning-point, some stage of progress, in which the man-ape fairly emerged into man, perhaps it would be well to select that which we have now reached, that in which the animal in question, which had hitherto used the objects of nature in their natural form, first gained the idea of manufacture and began to shape these objects by the use of tools. in truth, the dividing line between man-ape and man was imperceptibly fine. various points of demarcation might be chosen, each founded on some important step in evolution. but among them all that in which the effort to convert the objects of nature into better weapons by the use of tools is perhaps the best, as it was probably the first step in that long process of manufacture to which man owes his wonderful advance. with this early effort at manufacture, man had reached a stage in which he was first able to make a permanent record of his existence upon the earth--aside from that of the very infrequent preservation of his bones as fossil remains. a chipped stone is a permanent object. even a very rudely shaped one bears some indications of its origin upon its surface, some marks pointing back to man in his early days. unfortunately for anthropologists, natural agencies sometimes produce effects resembling those achieved by man's hands, and some degree of skill in manufacture and well-marked design is necessary before one can be sure that a seeming stone weapon has not been shaped by nature instead of man. within a recent period research for the evidence of early man in the shape of chipped stones has been diligently made, with an abundance of undoubted and a number of doubtful results. some of these reach very far back in time, and if actually the work of man he must have lived upon the earth as a manufacturing animal for years that may be numbered by the million. seemingly chipped stones have been found that belong to the remote miocene geological age. with the latter are some scratches upon bones that also seem the work of tools. but these miocene relics are questionable. they do not seem to surpass the shaping power of nature herself. unless some more indubitable relics are found, we must place the advent of man as a tool-using animal at a much later date. how far back he may have existed as a man-like biped is another question, which we are not likely soon to solve. it is scarcely necessary to pursue this branch of our subject farther. we have reached one end of a line of development, the succeeding course of which is well known. from the earliest rudely chipped stones and flints that are certainly the work of man, we can easily trace his progress upward through better examples of the chipped and later through those of the polished stone implement, until the age of metal began. and with these stones have been found many other indications of the progressing powers of man, in the shaping of bone, the invention and use of a considerable variety of implements and ornaments, and the earliest efforts of art, as stated in a preceding section. there is no occasion to go into the detail of these steps of progress. when they are reached, this section of our work ends. we are concerned here simply with man's ancestor and man in his earliest stage of existence, not with man in his later course of development. ix the first stage of human evolution the question has often been asked, if man has descended from an ape ancestor why is it that no traces of this ancestral form have been found in a fossil state? if man has gone through such an extended course of development, why has he left no remains? this question, looked upon as unanswerable by many of those who ask it, is really of minor importance. a half-dozen answers, each of considerable weight, could easily be made to it. in the first place, it may be said that the absence of remains referred to is far from a single instance, but one out of thousands. it is generally admitted that the species of animals found fossil are very far from representing all the species that have existed upon the earth, and probably form but a minute percentage of them. in the second place, the remains of man's ancestor have not been sought for in its native locality, the tropical regions. in the third place, man belongs to the class of animals least likely to be preserved in the fossil state, since they dwell in the depths of forests and at a distance from the lakes and streams in whose muddy bottoms the remains of so many animals have been fossilized. another answer is, that of the various species of anthropoid apes that probably existed in the past, a few relics only of a single species have been found. if there were this one species alone, its number of individuals must have reached into the millions, yet of those hosts only a few fugitive bones are known to exist. there could not well be a more striking instance of the imperfection of the geological record. the sparse remains of dryopithecus, the species in question, with some few other fossils of doubtfully anthropoid species, save us from a total blank, and open the vista to a myriad of active arboreal creatures which had their dwelling-place in the old-time european forests, but have almost utterly vanished from human knowledge. these are not the only answers that can be made to the question propounded. though the bones of the man-ape have not been found, relics of several stages of developing man exist. most significant among these, until recently, was the celebrated neanderthal skull, which in facial aspect departs widely from the ordinary human and approaches the simian type. more significant still is the pithecanthropus cranium, indicative of an animal that stood midway between man and ape, a creature fully erect in posture, as its thigh bone proves, but with a brain that had attained but the halfway stage of development. in this notable find we seem to see man in the making, the body already fully man-like, the brain advanced much beyond the stage of the ape intellect, but still far below that of man. it is the remnant of a creature significantly on the dividing line between man-ape and man. so much for the response to the question as hitherto made. as the case stands, we are not obliged to stop at this point. within the latter section of the nineteenth century discoveries have been made which fit in admirably with our argument. rediscoveries, perhaps, we should call them, for they were imperfectly known in ancient times, but only recently have they fairly come within human ken. we refer to the pygmy tribes of the african forests, not definitely offered hitherto as aids to the elucidation of this problem, yet which seem to adapt themselves closely to it, and certainly help essentially in filling the gap between civilized man and his ape-like ancestor. we have already said that there appear to have been two separate and distinct stages in the evolution of man: one, that of his conflict with the animal world, ending in his mastery of the brute creation; the second that of his conflict with nature, ending in his mastery of the resources of the earth. overlapping and succeeding the second there has been a third, that of the conflict of man with man, ending in the survival of the fittest of the human race. in the discussion of this problem, as hitherto made, these distinct stages of evolution, with their intermediate resting stages, have not been recognized; argument being based on man as a whole, and no thought directed to the possibility that existing man may represent several separate processes of development, with broad lapses between. the argument we propose to offer is that man as he was at the completion of his first stage, that of the subjugation of the animal world, and before the beginning of the conflict with nature, still exists, the first derivation from the man-ape, living in the location and possessing much of the appearance and many of the habits of this ancestral form. late travellers in africa have found more than trees and streams in the forest depths. they have found there a distinct and peculiar race of men, negro-like in many particulars, yet differing from the negroes in others, and specially marked by their dwarfish stature, which is indicated in the name of pygmies, usually given them. these diminutive beings were known as long ago as the days of homer, and their legendary combats with the cranes are spoken of by him in his poems. he was not aware of what is known now, that these forest dwarfs would disdain the cranes as antagonists, and are quite capable of overcoming the lordly elephant. in truth, they know no equals in the forest, and, while destitute of any knowledge of agriculture, are the most skilful, considering the primitive character of their weapons, of the hunters of the earth. the forest is the home of the pygmy, as in all probability it was of the man-ape. he dwells in its deepest recesses, its moist and sultry depths, and pines when removed from his native realm in the heart of the tropic woods. in truth, he is almost as fully arboreal as was his tree-dwelling ancestor and as are his forest relatives, the anthropoid apes of to-day; not inhabiting the limbs of trees, indeed, but living under their shade, and forming the true man of the woodland, the nomad hunters of the vast equatorial forests. it must be said, however, that this is not wholly the case. there are tribes seemingly belonging to this race in south africa who dwell in the open desert, but retain there, in great measure, the habits of their forest kin. the first of modern travellers to see the pygmies was du chaillu, in his journey through the african woodlands in . he describes them as averaging four feet seven inches in height, their complexion of a pale yellow brown, the hair of their head short, but their bodies covered with a thick growth of hair, as if the loss of their ancestral covering had not been completed. the tribe seen by him was known as the obongo, and dwelt in ashango land, occupying the forest region between the gaboon and the congo. dr. schweinfurth, whose exploration extended from to , was the next to meet these nomads of the forests, of whom he has given an interesting description in his "heart of africa." he met with them in the country of the manbuttoo, on the welle river, between three degrees and four degrees north latitude. the tribe seen by him, known as the akka, was made up of very diminutive individuals, none being over four feet ten inches high, and some only four feet. their bodies were in due proportion to their height, so that they resembled half-grown boys in size. the akkas, as described by him, have large heads, huge ears, and very prognathous faces. their arms are long and lank, the chest flat and narrow, widening below to support a huge hanging abdomen, the legs short and bandy, and the walk a waddling motion, there being a sort of lurch with each step. in this latter respect they recall the gibbon in its effort to walk. the gaping aspect of the mouth has a suggestive resemblance to that of the ape. they are also ape-like in their incessant play of countenance, twitching of eyebrows, rapid gestures of hands and feet, nodding and wagging of the head, and remarkable agility. their skin is of a dull brown color, "like partly roasted coffee," and destitute of the covering of hair seen by du chaillu on the obongos. the hair of the head and the beard is scanty and of woolly texture. stanley, who frequently met those forest dwarfs in his expedition for the relief of emin pacha, gives much information concerning them in his "in darkest africa." he found, indeed, two types of dwarfs, one the wambutti, who were of attractive aspect, having large, round eyes, full and prominent round faces with broad foreheads, jaws slightly prognathous, hands and feet small, figures well formed though diminutive, and complexion of a brick red hue. the other type, the akka, he describes as having "small, cunning, monkey eyes, close and deeply set." one woman described by him had "protruding lips overhanging her chin, a prominent abdomen, narrow flat chest, sloping shoulders, long arms, feet strongly turned inward, and very short lower legs." she was "certainly deserving of being classed as an extremely low, degraded, almost a bestial type of a human being." the language of the akka is of a very undeveloped type, and seems a link between articulate and inarticulate speech. stanley, in his journey down the congo, heard many stories of the forest dwarfs, who were described to him as a yard high, with long beards and large heads. other traditional accounts of them similarly speak of their long beards, though stanley saw none answering to this description. the first individual seen by him in this journey was four feet six and a half inches high, and measured thirty inches round the chest. he was of a light chocolate color, with a thin fringe of whiskers, his legs bowed and with thin shanks, the calf being undeveloped. his body was covered with a thick, fur-like hair, nearly half an inch long, in this respect agreeing with those described by du chaillu. the batwas, seen and measured by dr. ludwig wolfe in the middle congo basin in , were of an average height of four feet three inches. they resemble the akka in general appearance, and have longish heads, long narrow faces, and small reddish eyes. they bounded through the tall herbage "like grasshoppers" and were remarkably agile in climbing. for several years past there have been rumors of a race of pygmies in the interior of the cameroons, but these reports were not verified until the year , when the bulu expedition of the german military force succeeded, with much difficulty, in seeing several individuals of this race, secured through the aid of a native chief. one woman was measured and proved to be just four feet high. the color was from chocolate-brown to copperish, except the palms, which were of a yellowish white. the hair was deep black, thick, and frizzled; the skull broad and high; the lips full and swollen. like other pygmy tribes, these are very shy, wandering from place to place in the forest, and avoiding frequented routes of travel. they are skilful hunters and collect much rubber, which they dispose of to the negro tribes. in the same year mr. albert b. lloyd made a journey in central africa, following stanley's route down the congo. he was alone, with the exception of a few carriers, and had the good fortune of passing through the country of the pygmies and that of the cannibals of the aruwimi without conflict or injury, entering into cordial relations with both peoples. he journeyed for three weeks in the pygmy forest and had excellent opportunities for examining its inhabitants. after entering the great primeval forest mr. lloyd went west for five days without the sight of a pygmy. suddenly he became aware of their presence by mysterious movements among the trees, which he at first attributed to the monkeys. finally he came to a clearing and stopped at an arab village, where he met a great number of the diminutive nomads. "they told me," says mr. lloyd, "that, unknown to me, they had been watching me for five days, peering through the growth of the forest. they appeared very much frightened, and even when speaking covered their faces. i asked a chief to allow me to photograph the dwarfs, and he brought a dozen together. i was able to secure a snap-shot, but did not succeed in the time exposure, as the pygmies would not stand still. then i tried to measure them, and found not one over four feet in height. all were fully developed, the women somewhat slighter than the men. i was amazed at their sturdiness. the men have long beards, reaching halfway down the chest. they are very timid, and will not look a stranger in the face, their bead-like eyes constantly shifting. they are, it struck me, fairly intelligent. i had a long talk with a chief, who conversed intelligently about their customs in the forest and the number of the tribesmen. both men and women, except for a tiny strip of bark, were quite nude. the men were armed with poisoned arrows. the chief told me the tribes were nomadic, and never slept two nights in the same place. they just huddle together in hastily thrown-up huts. memories of a white traveller,--mr. stanley, of course,--who crossed the forest years ago, still linger among them." the discovery of these forest pygmies has directed attention to the bushmen of south africa, a desert-dwelling race, long known though comparatively little regarded in their ethnological significance. they are now by many regarded as an outlying branch of the forest pygmies, the chief difference being in the shape of the skull, which is rather long in the bushmen, rather short in the pygmies. these degraded wanderers inhabit an area extending from the inner ranges of the mountains of cape colony, through the central kalahari desert, to near lake ngami, and thence northwestward to the ovambo river. into these, the most barren portions of the south african deserts, they have been driven by the encroachments of kaffirs, hottentots, and europeans. they closely resemble the akka tribes of the north, averaging about four and a half feet in height, and possessing deep-set, crafty eyes, small and depressed nose, and a generally repulsive countenance. their complexion is of a dirty yellow. their hair grows in small, woolly tufts. in the vicinity of lake ngami, livingstone found them to be of larger stature and darker color, while baines measured some in this region who were five feet six inches in height. in disposition the bushmen are strikingly wild, malicious, and intractable, while their cerebral development is classed by humboldt as belonging to almost the lowest class of the human species. close in affinity with the bushmen, and in various respects unlike the dark races around them, are the hottentots, the original inhabitants of cape colony, a race of herdsmen who are much superior in culture to the degraded desert nomads. they are not dwarfish, being of medium stature, but they resemble the bushmen in complexion, in which and in general cast of features they present some similarity to the chinese. their hair, like that of the bushmen, grows in tufts, with spaces between, and they are like them in language, their method of speech consisting largely in a series of clicking sounds. their manner of talking has been compared to the clucking of a hen, and by the dutch to the "gobbling of a turkeycock." the hottentots present every appearance of being a developed branch of the pygmy family, or the result of a cross between bushmen and negroes. these tribes of dwarfs, now extended throughout the equatorial forests and over the south african deserts, were probably once far more widespread, inhabiting much of the continent and reaching as far as madagascar, where a branch of them, known as kinios or quinias, are thought still to exist. they extended north to the mediterranean, and have left their representatives in morocco in a tribe of dwarfs, about four feet high, who differ widely in appearance from all other people of that country. as to their origin, there is a diversity of opinion. some anthropologists look upon them as a primeval race, distinct from the negroes, who came among them later. professor virchow, on the contrary, is of the opinion that their only important difference from the negroes is that of size, and regards them as the remains of a primitive population from whom the negroes have descended. in a preceding section a statement was made as to what was the probable general appearance of the man-ape. it was based upon the physical aspect of the pygmies, whom we hold to form the immediate derivative of man's ape ancestor, and to have made no radical change in personal appearance, if we may judge from the various ape-like characteristics which they still present. mentally they have made a very considerable advance, and have reached the stage of men of low intellectual powers; but while their brains have been growing their bodies have not greatly changed, and the marks of their origin are thick upon them. there has probably been little change in size, the diminutive stature and small bodily dimensions being in accord with their incessant activity, while the difficulties of traversing the thick growth of the tropical forest may have helped to keep them small. as it is, they are of about half the size of civilized man, the weight of a full grown adult male being probably not over ninety pounds. taking the pygmies as a whole, it may be said that, though many of the akkas are disproportionate in shape and tottering in gait, on the whole these people are well made, their protuberant paunch being probably a result of their habits of eating. captain guy burrows says that a pygmy will eat twice as much as would suffice a full-grown man, and that one of them will devour a whole stalk of bananas at a meal, with other food. some tribes are described as physically and mentally degenerate, and prognathism is in many cases strongly declared, the lower part of the face having an ape-like contour, and the protruding chin, that feature peculiar to man, being very deficient. in their great abdominal development the adult akkas resemble the children of arabs and negroes. this, therefore, seems the retention of a primitive feature which has become a passing characteristic in the more advanced types of mankind. the pygmies are not destitute of intelligence, and are capable of receiving some of the elements of education. two of them were brought to italy about , who within two years' time learned to read and write and to speak italian with much fluency. they showed themselves superior in school studies to european children of ten or twelve years of age, and one of them became somewhat proficient in music. in their habits they resembled children, being sensitive and impulsive, fond of play, and very quick in their motions. their readiness in gaining the elements of education is in accord with experience in the case of other savages. it is when studies requiring abstruse thought are reached that the facility in acquisition of the savage races comes to an end. with this consideration of the characteristics and habitat of the pygmies we may proceed to a review of their habits. the weapons which they seem to have developed during their long upward progress, and to which their supremacy over the wild beasts of the forest is probably due, consist of two, the bow and arrow and the spear. the bow and arrow are small and insignificant in appearance, and would be of little value but for the poison which the pygmies have somehow learned how to obtain, and which makes them dreaded, not only by beasts, but by men. wherever found, from the deserts of the south to the forest of the welle and aruwimi on the north, the poisoned arrow is a mark of affinity as decided in its way as their physical resemblance. its wide distribution goes to indicate that it was the general weapon of the pygmies ages ago, when, presumably, they had all africa for their own, and ruled supreme over the animal world in that continent. it is true, indeed, that the use of the poisoned arrow is not peculiar to them, but is a somewhat common possession of savage tribes in all parts of the earth. this makes it quite possible that it was not original with the pygmies, but was derived by them from other tribes. on the other hand, in view of its great value in giving them supremacy over the lower animals, it may well have been a primeval pygmy invention, and these tribes the original source of its existing wide distribution. they possess more than one poison; one being a dark substance of the color and consistence of pitch, which is supposed to be made out of a species of arum. it is laid in the splints of their wooden arrows, or spread thickly upon their iron arrowheads, when they possess these. another poison is of a pale glue color, which is supposed by stanley to be made of crushed red ants. when fresh these poisons are deadly, producing excessive faintness, palpitation of the heart, nausea, and deep pallor, soon followed by death. in stanley's experience one man died within a minute, from a mere pin prick in the breast. others lived during different intervals, extending up to one hundred hours. the difference in virulence seems to have depended on the degree of freshness of the venom, which apparently lost its strength as it became dry. the possession of a weapon so deadly as this, together with the agility and daring and the unerring marksmanship of the forest dwarfs, seem sufficient to give them absolute control of the animals of the african wilds. the lion, the elephant, and the buffalo, the largest and fiercest of the beasts of field and forest, are powerless before the virulent venom of the arrows of the pygmies, and doubtless for ages they have held dominion as the fearless rulers of wood and wild. captain burrows says of the skill with the bow of the pygmy that "he will shoot three or four arrows, one after the other, with such rapidity that the last will have left the bow before the first has reached its goal." the bow and spear are not their only means of obtaining food. they have certain of the arts of the trapper, perhaps original with them, perhaps borrowed from their larger neighbors. they sink pits in the pathways of their game, covering them with light sticks and leaves and sprinkling earth over the whole. they build hut-like structures, and lay nuts or plantains beneath, for the purpose of tempting chimpanzees, baboons, or other apes. a slight movement causes the hut to fall on the incautious animals. bow traps are placed along the tracks of civets, ichneumons, and rodents, which snap and strangle them. the pygmies do not hesitate to attack the elephant, spearing it from beneath, and hunting it for its ivory, which they trade with the settled tribes. in short, they are of unsurpassed agility, and are the best of woodsmen and hunters, their skill being taken advantage of by the settled tribes, who trade with them vegetables, tobacco, spears, knives, and arrows for meat, honey, the feathers of birds, the ivory of the elephant, and other forest spoil. so destructive are they of game that they would soon denude the surrounding forest if they stayed long in one spot, so that they are compelled to move frequently. schweinfurth speaks of them as cruel and fond of tormenting animals. they serve the settled natives in other ways, acting as scouts and informing them of the coming of strangers while still distant. every forest road runs through their camps, their villages command every crossway, and no movement can take place in the forest without their knowledge, while they are adept in the art of concealment. the superior woodcraft, the malicious disposition, and the poisoned arrows and good marksmanship of these forest folks make them formidable enemies, and the settled tribes hold them in dread and are glad to keep on good terms with them. yet they find them much of a nuisance, since their dwarfish neighbors claim free access to their gardens and plantain fields, where they help themselves to fruit in return for small supplies of meat and furs. in short, they are human parasites on the larger natives, who suffer from their extortions, yet fear to provoke their enmity. burrows says that they will never steal, but that they pay very inadequately for the plantains they take, leaving a very small package of meat in return for an ample supply of food. the pygmies build their camps two or three miles away from the negro villages, living in groups of sixty to eighty families. a large clearing may have eight to twelve of these pygmy camps around it, with perhaps two thousand inmates. their dwellings are of the shape of an oval cut lengthwise, and are built in a rude circle, the residence of the chief occupying the centre. the doors are two or three feet high. on every track leading to the camp, at about one hundred yards' distance, is a sentry house large enough to hold two of the little folks, its doorway looking up the track from the camp. while wandering in the forest they build the flimsiest of leaf shelters. the intelligence of the pygmies is of a very low order. in the arts which they have been developing for ages they are experts, they are thoroughly familiar with the habits of animals, and as hunters they are unsurpassed. but in intellect they are decidedly lacking. they are destitute of agriculture, possess no animals except a few dogs, and have none of the elements of culture. the bushmen, for instance, can count only up to two; all beyond that is "many." yet this low tribe of desert nomads is, as we have said, skilled in the art of drawing, its sketches of men and animals being widely distributed through cape colony. the pygmies seem greatly lacking in the social sentiments. burrows, in his "land of the pygmies," says that they do not possess even the most ordinary ties of family affection. such common and natural feelings of affinity as those between mother and son, brother and sister, etc., seemed to be wanting in them. it is a fact of great interest that the pygmy race does not seem confined to africa, for tribes of men resembling the pygmies in stature and in various other particulars are found in widely removed localities, as in malacca, the andaman islands, and the philippine archipelago, while there are indications that they once spread widely over this island region of the earth. those of the philippines, known as negritos or aetas, have been somewhat closely observed and may be briefly described. the negritos are similar in stature to the pygmies of africa, the men averaging four feet eight inches high, and they are like them in general appearance. they are darker in complexion, some being as sable as negroes, and all of them darker than the african pygmies. their features are coarse and ill-shaped, their nose depressed, lips full, hair black and frizzled. in body, like the pygmies, they are thin and spindle-legged. the calf of the leg is not developed in any of these dwarfish people. the negritos possess one marked and significant characteristic,--the separation of the great toe. this, while it has not the full power of movement shown in the apes, is much more separated from the others than in the whites, and can be readily used in grasping. by its aid the negrito can not only pick up small objects, but can descend the rigging of a ship head downward, holding on like a monkey by his toes. it may be said that among uncivilized and barefoot people the great toe is usually very mobile. the artisans of bengal can weave, the chinese boatmen can row, with its aid, and it adds much to facility in climbing. the negritos wear little clothing, have no fixed abodes, and pass a wandering life in the forests, living on game, honey, wild fruits, roots of the arum, and other forest food. their weapons consist of a bamboo lance, a bow of palm wood, and a quiver of poisoned arrows. it is certainly a striking fact that, wherever found, from south africa to the far east, the pygmy tribes possess the art of poisoning their weapons. this art is not practised by the surrounding peoples, and is the strongest evidence of a community of origin. it seems to point back to a remote period when the pygmy peoples spread far through the tropics of the eastern hemisphere, though in the region now under consideration they have almost vanished through the assaults of the malays. the negritos are very alert physically, being remarkably fleet of foot, while they can climb like monkeys. they live in groups of about fifty families, shelter being obtained by a simple erection of sloping poles and leaves, though in their more settled locations they built bamboo huts like those of the malays. they are a short-lived race, seldom living more than forty years. mentally, they are stupid and apparently incapable of improvement, seeming to stand at the foot of the human scale. attempts to instruct them have been made, but all proved failures. efforts to make agriculturists of them have proved similarly futile. they are hereditarily hunters, and hunters they are likely to remain. the only eastern locality of which the pygmy race remained in full possession until recent times is that of the andaman islands. this is no longer the case. great britain made a penal settlement of these islands after the mutiny in india, and as a consequence the mincopies, as their native inhabitants are called, have begun to disappear. these islanders are rather taller than the philippine negritos, ranging from four and a half to five feet in height, but otherwise there is a somewhat close resemblance between them. their color is dark brown or black, their hair woolly, and inclined to grow in tufts, like that of the bushmen. the head, though large in proportion to the body, is really very small and of low cranial capacity. that of the men is only cubic centimetres, as contrasted with cubic centimetres of a large number of male parisians measured by broca. that of the women differs in the same proportion. flower says that the mincopies rank lowest among the human races in this respect; but it must be remembered that the brain usually decreases in size with decrease in stature. small as these islanders are, however, their strength is relatively great. they use with ease bows which the strongest english sailors cannot string, though practice may have much to do with this facility. and they can send arrows with a force that seems out of accord with their size. their agility is remarkable. travellers speak of the speed of the bullet in describing their running--doubtless with some exaggeration. their senses are strikingly acute. it is said that they can distinguish fruits by their odor when hidden in the foliage of the jungle, and have wonderful powers of sight and hearing. as in the case of the aetas, their life is short, though the age of puberty is nearly as great as with us. fifty is extreme old age with these people, and twenty-two is said to be their average length of life. mentally, they are at a low level, the lowest, in the opinion of owen, among the races of mankind. in counting they have words for only one and two, but can count up to ten by touching the nose with each of the fingers in succession, saying each time, "this one also." their language is of a primitive type, and in various respects they manifest low intelligence. yet, as in the case of the akkas mentioned, they can be taught to the level of other children of twelve or fourteen years. their mind, in the opinion of dr. brander, seems rather to be asleep than incapable. one child was taught to read and write, and to speak english fluently, and gained some knowledge of arithmetic; and this was not an exceptional case. it does not seem at all remarkable, when we consider the ease with which monkeys can be taught many arts and acts new to them, that those dwarfish men, like other savages, greatly superior as they are in brain power to the apes, should be capable of acquiring the minor elements of education. it is not what they can be taught, but what they have taught themselves, that we must consider in assigning them to their comparative place in intellectual development. in this respect the mincopies are on a very low plane. they have not even acquired the art of making a fire, though this is almost universal with mankind. all they know is how to keep a fire alive, and in this they are very assiduous. it is probable that they may have obtained fire at first from volcanoes on neighboring islands. they are lacking, like the pygmy races in general, in the art of chipping stone, one of the earliest arts acquired by man. their only means of shaping stone is to put it into the fire until it breaks or splinters, when they can use the sharp splinters for their purposes. they are quite destitute of the art of drawing, and have no means of communicating their thoughts except by speech. yet with these deficiencies, they have made some progress in the industrial arts. they make wooden vessels, and can produce pottery which stands the fire and in which they cook most of their food. they make nets of considerable size, which they use to fish with in the narrow streams. they have arrows and harpoons, whose points are fastened to the shaft by a long cord. the fish or land animal struck unwinds this cord in trying to get away, and its speed being checked by the shaft which it drags along, it is easily caught. the mincopies possess boats, and these seem to have been early possessions of the negrito populations, by whose aid they were able to migrate from island to island. their canoes have nautical qualities which have astonished english sailors. at one time they were probably bold and daring fishermen and navigators, until driven to the forests and mountains by the invasion of the malays. as the pygmies were in all probability the aborigines of africa, so the negritos appear to have been the aboriginal people of the eastern islands, if not of india. quatrefages, in his work "the pygmies," finds reason to believe that even at the present day traces of them, pure or mixed, can be found from southeast new guinea to the andaman islands, and from the sunda islands to japan. on the continent their range extends, according to him, "from annam and the peninsula of malacca to the western ghauts, and from cape comorin to the himalayas." in one part of india the negrito-like population are called _bander-lokh_ (literally "man-ape") by the neighboring tribes. the semangs of malacca are jet-black in color, with thick lips, flat nose, and protruding abdomen. in regard to the characteristic of prognathism, it is possessed in various degrees, the most pronounced instance being seen in the photograph of one of the kalangs of java, a tribe which has recently become extinct. the face of this individual is strikingly ape-like in profile. everywhere that these dwarfish people are found, whether in africa, india, or malaysia, they present the appearance of being an aboriginal race, now largely annihilated by the incursions of larger and better-armed people, but once widespread and numerous. as to their place of origin, whether in africa, india, or the island region, it is useless to speculate, as the facts on which an opinion could be based are not known. wherever found they are in close relation to the black races, the negroes of africa, the papuans of polynesia, and evidences of a considerable degree of mixture of races exist. this is especially the case in polynesia and india, where the negritos appear to shade off into the full-sized blacks through an intermediate series of half-breeds. yet one fact of ethnological importance needs to be mentioned. the negritos and pygmies are everywhere brachycephalic, or short-headed, with the exception of the bushmen, who are dolichocephalic, or partially so. negroes and papuans are strongly dolichocephalic. in this respect the pygmy peoples agree more closely with the short-headed mongolian or yellow races than with the long-headed negro or black races, though in general features they come near the latter. in truth, this race of dwarfs may be the primitive stock from which the mongolians branched off on the one hand, and the negroes on the other, since they are in some measure intermediate between the two. latham says of the rajmalis mountaineers, "some say their physiognomy is mongolian, others that it is african." quatrefages is strongly of the opinion that the negro is of indian origin, and reached africa through migration. he bases his opinion on the negroid characters of existing tribes in india, persia, and elsewhere in asia, and on the similar characters of the aboriginal polynesians. as regards the pygmies, they probably spread over the whole of this section of the earth at a period of remote antiquity, and very long ago developed the racial differences which appear to exist between separate tribes. distinctions of this kind can be seen in the east, and a marked one is pointed out by stanley between the wambutti and the akka, as already stated. wherever found the pygmies are hunters, usually making the deep forest their home, and are masters through their agility, cunning, and deadly weapons of the whole world of lower animals. physically they are probably not far removed from the man-ape, their remote ancestor, for they retain various ape-like characters, as in aspect of face, shape of body, occasional hairiness, diminutive size, shortness of legs, imperfect development of the calf, occasional waddling gait in walking, and the other particulars above pointed out. there are certainly abundant reasons for believing them to be, as we have suggested, the final result of the first great conflict in the evolution of man, that with the lower animals. this assured mastery once gained, the occasion for further development of this people ceased while they remained in the forest habitat which they had inherited from their ape ancestors. here the problem of food getting was fully solved and there was nothing to instigate any new step in evolution. the period of conflict ended, a period of rest supervened, and, so far as the pygmies are concerned, this period still continues. though later races, their probable descendants, have left the forest and set up new stages of development through new conflicts with adverse conditions, the pygmies remain in their resting state, and, if left to themselves, might continue in this state for ages in the future as they have done for ages in the past. as the case now stands, however, annihilation threatens some of them, while educative and other influences from without may bring to an end the physical and mental isolation of the others. in considering the pygmies as they exist to-day, in fact, it is impossible to say how far their habits and possessions are original with themselves and how far they have been derived from others. there can be no question that they have been influenced by the customs of surrounding peoples of higher culture, and that they have received implements and methods from without. to get down to the pure pygmy, as an outcome of evolution within himself, we would need to strip off all these adventitious aids, if we could distinguish them from the conditions native to the race, and thus behold him as he was before he fell under the influence of men of higher grade. were it possible to isolate him in this way, and present his original self, we should have before us an ethnological specimen of the highest interest and importance, as the ultimate resultant of the first great stage in the evolution of man from his ape ancestor. x the conflict with nature it has been a frequently debated question whether man comprises a single species or two or more species of animal descent. if a line be drawn from the gold coast in tropical africa to the steppes of tartary in central asia, it will present two markedly distinct races of men at its two extremities. at its southwestern end we find the most long-headed, prognathous, frizzly-haired, dark-skinned race of mankind. at its northeastern end is the most round-headed, orthognathous, straight-haired, and yellow-skinned race. midway between these appear intermediate peoples, with heads round, oval, or oblong, hair straight or curly, skin fair or dark, faces upright or protruding, men possibly, to judge from their physical character, a result of the amalgamation of these two distinct races. these differences may be the result of original difference in species or may be due to climatic and other influences of nature. some writers accept the one view, some the other, and neither is sustained by any great weight of facts. the pygmy race presents somewhat similar differences. usually round-headed, these small men are in some instances long-headed, while such marked distinctions appear at times that stanley classed two neighboring tribes as separate races. here they present features of the mongolian, there they are similar to the negro. this goes to indicate that the distinction between the negro and the mongolian began far back in time, but it does not prove that it is the result of original difference in species, or that two distinct forms of ape separately developed into man. while this is quite possible, the theory of a single species has been most widely accepted. the chief writers on the subject think that the differences arose during that undeveloped stage of mankind when resistance to the transforming influences of nature was still weak, and when the structure of the human frame may have yielded readily to agencies which would have little or no effect upon it now. of one thing we can be sure, which is that there was a wide migration of the apes in remote times. leaving the tropics, many species spread to the north, extending into europe, which at that time seems to have been connected by land bridges with africa, and spreading far through asia. there was probably nothing at that time in atmospheric conditions to check such a migration. the tertiary climate of europe is believed to have been quite mild. and the ape family is by no means necessarily confined to warm regions. monkeys are found to-day at high elevations on the mountains of india, enduring the chill of ten thousand feet of altitude. of the migration to europe abundant evidence exists, fossil remains of monkeys having been found in many localities of that continent. among these residents of early europe was at least one representative of the anthropoid apes, the fossil species known as dryopithecus, from the middle miocene deposits of st. gaudens, france. this species, apparently most nearly allied to the chimpanzee, was taller than any existing ape. two or three other fossil remains, possibly of anthropoid apes of smaller size, have been found, and europe seems to have been well supplied with apes of a considerable degree of development at a remote geological period. among those may have been the form we have designated the man-ape, the ancestor of the human race, though no fossil relic attributable to such a species has been recognized. coming down to a much lower period, we begin to find traces of man, first in his rudely chipped and later in his polished stone weapons and tools. and the bones of man himself appear, extending through what is known as the quaternary or pleistocene period. nearly all these remains have been preserved by the art of burial, a fact indicating some degree of mental progress, though their residence in caves and the rudeness of their implements are evidence that the race was still low in culture. an interesting fact in connection with these ancient human remains is that most of them indicate a small race, with narrow skulls and prognathous jaws, recalling the pygmies in general structure. this rude and small race continued until a late period of prehistoric time. it extended down from the cave bear and mammoth period through the later reindeer period, as is proved by discoveries made in the caves of the belgian province of namur. and there is good reason to believe that it continued into the age of bronze, for the small size of the handles of bronze weapons show they must have been intended for men with small hands. these diminutive people seem to have been not over four feet eight inches high. they were not alone, however. men of normal height were in europe with them. the northward migration of the pygmies seems to have been accompanied or followed by that of a full grown people. yet the pygmies have held their own in europe as in africa, with certain modifications. in sicily and sardinia, which form part of a supposed former land bridge between africa and europe, a small people about five feet high still exist, whom dr. kollman looks upon as representing a distinct race, the predecessors of the tall europeans. in the lapps of northern europe we possess another small race, possibly the lineal descendents of the quaternary pygmies. everywhere the small man has been forced to retire into forests, deserts, and icy barrens before the taller and stronger man. the folk-lore of europe is full of traditions of a race of dwarfs, and its conflict with men of larger mould, and there are various indications that this race was once widespread. what has been said here of the migration of man into europe and his development in that country is preliminary to a consideration of the second great stage of human development, that due to the conflict with nature. the conflict with the animal world appears to have ended in the production of a dwarfish, forest-dwelling variety of man, in the lowest human stage of mental evolution. the conflict with nature ended in the development of a full-sized variety of man, dwelling largely in the open country and much superior in intellect, as indicated by his higher powers of thought and advanced degree of organization. the conflict with nature took several forms, in accordance with the conditions of the several regions inhabited by man. its result was to subdue nature to the use and benefit of mankind, and the methods, in the tropical localities of original man, consisted in the reduction of animals to the domestic state and a similar domestication of food plants. in other words, one of its early stages was the development of the herding habit, while a far more important one was that of the appearance of the agricultural industries. in europe a third and still more vigorous influence supervened, that of the conflict with cold and man's gradual adaptation to the conditions of a frigid climate. if the nomad dwarfs were the aboriginal men, all later races must have developed from them. while remaining in the forest and retaining their primitive habits, the pygmies presented an instance of arrested evolution. for a new development to begin it was necessary to abandon the old locality and with it the old habits, and this they probably began to do at a remote period. when, indeed, the earth was their dominion, there was no reason for their remaining restricted to a forest residence, as they have been since the larger races took possession of the open country. we do not need to go back far in time in the east to find the pygmy race in full control of the philippine and other islands, and probably of malacca and parts of hindostan. their present restriction and partial extermination have been due to the incursions of the warlike malays. the andaman mincopies remained undisturbed until a recent date, and added fishing to their hunting pursuits. and the canoes which these islanders now possess were probably the invention of their race, and furnished the means by which the aborigines spread from island to island of those thickly studded seas. in africa the only existing indication of a migration of the forest folk into the open country is found in the bushmen and hottentots of the far south. the former, confined to the desert, remain nomad hunters and present no step of advance beyond the akka and other equatorial tribes. the hottentots, on the contrary, have made an important step of progress. while still nomads and addicted to hunting, they have domesticated cattle and sheep and become essentially a herding people, though mentally the lowest race of herders on the face of the earth. with this change in habits, the hottentots have significantly increased in stature. while still of medium height, they are considerably larger than their bushmen kindred, to whom they present a close resemblance in other respects. this increase in size is a common result of a change in habits which insures a fuller supply of food with less strain upon the muscular organization in obtaining it; a fact of which the lower animal world is full of illustrations. the life of the forest and desert hunters is one of incessant activity, and their food supply is precarious. the hottentots, on the contrary, take life easily and are inclined to indolence, their herds supplying them with food in abundance with little exertion. they retain enough of the primeval strain to be fond of hunting, and while thus engaged display the activity of their ancestral race, but ordinarily they pursue an idle, wandering life, and their increase in size may well be a result of their change in habits. the hottentots, while still low in the human scale, are mentally a stage in advance of the bushmen, they having a more developed social organization and superior powers of thought. the latter is indicated by their myths and legends, of which they have a considerable store, though they are in great measure destitute of religious conceptions, such religion as they possess taking in great part the primitive form of ancestor worship. under the influence of europeans they are gradually abandoning their old habits and adopting those of civilized life, but while improving in social and industrial conditions there is little evidence of intellectual advance. the development in method of food-getting displayed by the hottentots was really but the completion of the old battle for dominion with the animal host. it consisted in subjecting some of the docile herbivora more fully to human mastership. the hunter has to do with hostile beasts, victims but not servants of man. the herder has reduced some of these animals to servitude, and no longer has to overcome them through the arduous labors of the chase. he is able to obtain, as we have said, more food with less exertion, a larger population can live in a limited district, and the beneficial effects upon the mind of a closer social intercourse are shown. but the most important event in this stage of evolution was the subjection of the plant world to man. for ages of interminable length this was not thought of. fruits and other vegetable products formed part of man's food; but these were the growth of wild nature, and the plant world was left to its own will, with no effort to bring it under human control. there is nothing to show that the idea of agriculture ever entered the mind of a pygmy. of the plants surrounding him, far the greater number were useless for food, only the few were available; but the conception of favoring the few at the expense of the many apparently never occurred to him. there is, indeed, some crude and simple agriculture pursued by a few of the negritos of luzon, but evidently as an imitation of the malay agriculture or as a result of direct teaching, certainly not as an original conception. the conflict of the pygmies with nature has been confined to the animal world, and reached its highest level in the herding industries of the hottentots. where and when the subjugation of the plant world began it is impossible to say. it very probably had its origin in the fertile open lands of the tropics. but that it originated in the central region of africa, or that the agriculturists of that region were of native origin, are both subjects open to question. the forest folk may have spread into the open country, there developed a crude agriculture, favored the growth of food plants at the expense of useless shrubs and trees, and gradually advanced in this new form of industry. this would be in accordance with the opinion of virchow, who looks upon the negro as the descendant of the pygmy. no great change was necessary to convert the one into the other. the pygmy is negro-like in cast of countenance and bodily formation. he differs in size, in complexion, and in shape of head. but new conditions may have given rise to these differences. the fierce suns of the african lowlands may well have caused an increased deposit of pigment, changing the yellowish hue of the pygmy to the deep black of the negro. an increase in size is a natural result when exertion diminishes and food increases. and a tendency for the head to change from the short to the long shape is shown in the bushmen. on the other hand, certain anthropologists, of whom we may name quatrefages, take an opposite view, and believe that the negroes migrated from asia or the eastern islands to africa, being, like the negro-like papuans, descendants of the sable or dark brown negritos of the east. in this case agriculture may have originated in asia and have been brought by migrants to africa. all we know historically concerning it is that the earliest traceable seats of agriculture appear to have been the fertile valleys of india, babylonia, and egypt. but the known culture of the earth in these regions goes back only a few thousands of years, while for the first crude stages of agriculture we must probably measure years by tens of thousands. the degree of subjection of nature to man's needs, as displayed in tropical agriculture, was comparatively small, and its effect on the development of the human intellect, while important, was limited. it had the highly useful result of a great increase in population, the growth of village and town life, an advance in social relations, and the beginning of political relations. new implements were needed, better houses were erected, the settled condition of the people gave rise to direct efforts at education, and added the important element of commerce, in its earliest form, to the industries of mankind. the result must have been a fresh start in the development of the intellect, though one that probably soon reached its culminating point in the central tropics. the highest results of the development of agriculture in tropical countries, unaided by secondary influences, seem to have been those existing in the highly fertile regions of egypt and babylonia at the opening of the historical period. the density of population in those countries, due to their prolific production of food stuffs, gave rise to considerably developed political and social institutions, and laid the foundations for a great subsequent advance under the influence of warfare, invasion, and the other more potent causes of human progress. only for such ulterior influences the agriculturists of these countries would perhaps to-day remain dormant in the stage of mental progress they had attained ten thousand years ago. in considering the existing conditions of the forest nomads and the african agriculturists, it is not safe to credit them with the origination of all the arts and implements they possess. the negroes, for instance, have been for ages in more or less close association with the pygmies, and may have taught them many things which they would not have attained through their own limited powers of thought. the bow and poisoned arrow are very likely original with them. they possess this weapon throughout the wide range from the african hottentots to the philippine negritos, while it is not a weapon of the surrounding peoples. the spear is probably also original. the same cannot safely be said of their traps and snares for game. these seem beyond their power of invention, and may well have been taught them by the negro tribes. their habitations, aside from the mere leaf shelters, had probably a similar origin. in africa the huts doubtless had their model in those of the negroes. in the philippines they are pile-supported bamboo huts of the pattern of those of the malays. if, then, we take from the forest folk the arts taught them or imitated by them, we reduce them to a very low level of intellect and a remarkable paucity of products from their own powers of thought. similar reasoning may be applied to the settled natives of africa. for thousands of years past they have been in contact on their northern borders with civilized peoples, numerous immigrants have made their way into the country, and a considerable degree of amalgamation has very likely taken place. we cannot, therefore, safely credit them with all the arts and implements they possess nor with all their political and social progress. no doubt much came to them from without, much was taught them from within, and a mixture of blood with superior races may have aided considerably in improving their stock. we are justified, then, in their case as in that of the pygmies, in believing that their stage of mental and social development is only in part original with them, and is largely due to the influences of education and amalgamation. the pure negro is not a very numerous element of the population of africa. he stands in a measure intermediate between the nomad pygmies of the forest and the desert, and the mixed races who may be called negroid but cannot strictly be called negro. with their foreign blood, most of these have obtained foreign arts and elements of culture, and stand at a distinctly higher physical and mental level than the unamalgamated negro. for the pure or nearly pure negro we must seek the lowlands of the guinea coast, the seat of the most pronounced existing negro type. other localities are in the region of the gaboon, along the lower zambesi, and in the benue and shari basins. here we find the true native african, a race strikingly uniform in aspect, and, next to the pygmies, the lowest in physical characteristics of mankind. the features of structure in which the negro appears to occupy a position intermediate between the white man and the man-ape--lower than the former and approaching the latter--are the following: first, his abnormal length of arm, which averages about two inches longer than that of the caucasian, and, when in the erect position, sometimes reaches the knee-pan, being little shorter proportionately than that of the chimpanzee. second, his prognathism, or projection of the jaws--his index of facial angle being about , as compared with the caucasian . third, his weight of brain--average european ounces, negro , highest gorilla . fourth, his short, flat, snub nose, deeply depressed at the base, wide and with dilated nostrils at the extremity. fifth, his thick protruding lips. sixth, his high and prominent cheek bones. seventh, his great thickness of cranium, which resists blows that would break the skull of an average european. eighth, the weakness of his lower limbs, the broad, flat foot and low instep, the projecting heel and somewhat prehensile great toe. these characteristics the negroes possess in common with the pygmies and the negritos. others of less significance could be named. one important character is that of the cranial sutures, which close much earlier in the negro than in higher races, thus checking the development of the brain while the body is still growing. to this many ascribe the mental inferiority of the negro race. a close observer records, as a result of long observation on the plantations of the southern united states, that "the negro children were sharp, intelligent, and full of vivacity, but on approaching the adult period a gradual change set in. the intellect seemed to become clouded, animation giving place to a sort of lethargy, briskness yielding to indolence." this is very probably the case with the pygmies, who similarly reach a mental limit beyond which they cannot advance; but this limit is set in the adult period. in other words, the adult pygmy is on the mental level of the negro child. if the african pygmy is as short lived as his eastern congener, he does not survive, as a rule, many years beyond the age of adolescence, and continues in a stage of childhood, mentally considered, until death. the conclusion to be derived from this interesting fact would appear to be that the negro has made a distinct and important advance mentally beyond the pygmy, reaching at adolescence the limit of mental evolution which the pygmy reaches at death. but the negro stops here, or goes little beyond this limit. his cranial sutures close, the growth of the brain is arrested, and the development of his mind comes to an end. in the white the brain continues to expand, and the closing of the sutures takes place later in life. probably the latter is a result of the former, mental development having overcome the tendency of the sutures to close in early life. it may be further said of the negro that, mentally, he is emotional far more than intellectual, and unmoral rather than immoral, he being apparently incapable of comprehending the moral conceptions of advanced man. if we seek the malaysian and australasian region of the eastern seas, we find there another branch of the negro race, similarly in contact with, and apparently derived from, a pygmy stock. this papuan race of blacks covers a wide island region, but, like the african race, has become greatly modified by mixture with alien peoples, largely of malay origin. its purest type is to be found in new guinea, where it approaches the negro in general character, though with distinctive features of its own. the papuan is of medium height; fleshy rather than muscular; color a sooty brown; forehead high, but narrow and retreating; nose sometimes flat and wide at nostrils, but oftener hooked with depressed point; lips thick and projecting; high cheek bones; prognathism general; hair black and frizzly. he is negroid in appearance, and is said to resemble the african of the coast region opposite aden. we need not pursue this subject further. it will suffice to offer the general conclusion that the negroid race, while, through its change of habits from the hunting to the agricultural status, it has made an advance both mentally and physically beyond the pygmy aborigines, does not appear to have advanced greatly in either particular, the negro reaching a mental limit at a low level, and being arrested physically while still possessing marked characteristics of the man-ape. for the higher development of man, under the stress of a more energetic conflict with the conditions of nature, we must seek the continent of europe, whose human inhabitants had not only to subdue the wild beasts and teach the earth to bring forth wholesome food in place of useless plants, but also to battle with wintry climates, and overcome the adverse influences of cold, sterility of soil, and other hostile conditions of the northern zones. one of the chief problems of biology has long been that of the production of new varieties and species of animals as an effect of gradual variation in structure. this is believed to be ordinarily due to changes in the conditions of nature, animals and plants which have made accordant changes in structure being preserved, those which have not changed in accordance with the new conditions perishing. where the conditions of nature remain uniform, species may persist for long ages unchanged, though even in the latter case changes in structure are apt to occur, since variation in species is not wholly dependent upon external changes. to a considerable extent it is due to causes existing within the organism itself, fortuitous variations being occasionally preserved when not out of harmony with the state of affairs prevailing in the external world. or variation may occur through the establishment of new relations between the species inhabiting some locality while inanimate nature remains uniform, or through migration into new inanimate or animate surroundings. variations, in short, may arise under the influence of any change in the general environment which renders necessary adaptive changes in structure. but this adaptation in some cases takes place in the mind, new actions or methods of meeting the contingency being adopted which render physical changes unnecessary. the problem is a highly complicated one, and no doubt many causes have to do with the multiplicity of effects. there have very likely been many occasions where the changes in structure took place rapidly, in consequence of sudden variations in natural conditions. such rapid changes in conditions necessarily exert a severe stress or strain on organisms, either destroying them or causing an equally rapid adaptation, physical or mental. in such instances it is likely that many species perish, the change demanded being too great; others escape by migration to better fitted localities; and others, more mobile or less affected by the change, survive through adaptive variations. of such periods of strain upon organic nature we know of only one in recent geological times, that known as the glacial age, the vast variation in climate which took place when the ice of the far north flowed down in mighty billows over northern europe and america, burying everything beneath its crushing weight, and bringing many forms of life to a sudden and untimely end. no doubt a considerable number of species of animals and plants perished before this frightful invasion. a notable instance among these was perhaps that of the american horse, which disappeared at about this period. other species survived by a retreat to more tropical regions, to return after the invasion had spent its force. still others may have survived by adapting themselves to the changed conditions, emerging as new species or well-marked varieties. among the beings which passed unscathed through this extraordinary change in climate was apparently man. and it seems safe to affirm that man's contest with the glacial conditions, whose force was exerted upon his mind instead of on his body, was one of the most potent influences in the evolution of the human race. man entered the contest at a low level of mental development; he emerged from it at a comparatively high level. no one to-day questions that man was an inhabitant of europe during the glacial age. the proofs of this are too numerous and positive to be doubted. he may have inhabited america in the same period, though of this there still remains some doubt. claims have been made of the discovery of evidences of man in europe long before the glacial epoch, reaching as far back as the pliocene and even the miocene age. but these claims have not been established beyond question, and the earliest generally acknowledged traces of man are confined to glacial europe. yet we are forced to acknowledge that if man existed in europe during the prevalence of the ice age, he, or his ancestor, must have been there before that period. it is absolutely certain that no animal accustomed to tropical conditions would have chosen this period of extreme cold to migrate from the warm tropics to the frozen north. the fact that man was in europe during glacial times is the very strongest evidence that he reached there during the milder preceding period, when a genial and uniform climate is believed to have prevailed throughout southern and central europe. if we could accept as fact the seeming very ancient evidences of man's handiwork, we would be obliged to consider him an inmate of europe long ages before the glacial epoch. if, as there is reason to believe, the man of africa at that remote period was the ancestor of the forest-dwelling pygmy of to-day, lower in mental level and more bestial in aspect than any of his descendants, yet much advanced in mind beyond the man-ape of earlier ages, then we may with some assurance accept this as the type of the primitive man of europe. he could have reached there by the land bridges which are thought to have connected europe and africa at that time, one closing the straits at gibraltar, the other extending south from italy by way of sicily. these were the routes by which the apes are supposed to have entered europe, and by which man may well have followed in a later age. it is possible, indeed, that man reached the northern continent from another locality, the habitat of the negrito race in southeastern asia and the malaysian islands. the fossil man-ape of java, pithecanthropus, is a strong argument that this was the region, or one of the regions, in which the development of man took place. however this be, we can be assured that primitive man was far more likely to widen his field of occupation through migration than any other animal, and may conjecture that he spread over europe and asia in the mild preglacial times, and perhaps even reached america, giving rise to the early man of that hemisphere. the advent of man in europe was not probably followed by any considerable intellectual development. the mild and equable climate which at that time seems to have prevailed, was not likely to make a stringent demand on his mental resources. food was very likely abundant and easily obtained, animals of the chase being plentiful, and edible roots and fruits by no means lacking. thus he could readily obtain the means of subsistence by aid of the arts and weapons employed by him in the tropical forests. it is not unlikely that some changes, both physical and mental, took place, but these were probably not great. there may have been some change in color and form, a first step toward the distinctions which separate the white from the black man, and a degree of mental adaptation to certain exigencies of the new situation; but in neither direction were the variations likely to be very decided. such, as we conceive it, was the man of early europe, in great measure a counterpart of the forest nomad of the tropics of africa and the east, the monarch of the animal kingdom, but not the lord of the earth. he may have made some progress in the contest with inanimate nature. vegetable food in his new home was less abundant than in his old, and the instigation to agricultural pursuits was stronger. and though europe was thickly wooded, it probably presented more open land than africa. both the incitement to agriculture and the facilities for its exercise were, in all probability, greater than in africa, and man may have begun to cultivate the earth here at an earlier date than in his native realm. we are free at least to speculate that european man gained some slight knowledge of agriculture in the pre-glacial period, but this is doubtful, and the relics of early man yield no evidence in its favor. mentally it is questionable if he was advanced beyond the level of the least developed negro tribes, and perhaps not beyond that of the forest pygmies. but at length the shadow of a mighty coming change began to fall upon the fair face of europe. year by year the winters grew colder. the ice sheet, which was in time to bury half of europe under its chilly mantle, had begun its slow movement toward the south. it advanced very slowly. centuries elapsed during its deliberate march. had it moved with rapidity, few animals could have survived its effects. some of them found time for changes in structure to fit themselves to the new conditions. others perished as the wintry chill increased. constituted for tropical warmth, they were unable to endure severe cold. the apes and monkeys may have been among the early victims. to-day the apes of gibraltar are the only ones existing in a wild state in europe, and it is doubtful if they are of an original stock. there is good reason to believe that escape by migration southward was cut off by the sinking of the ancient land bridges, so that the animals north of the mediterranean had no choice between adaptation and annihilation. among the animals thus taken prisoner by the glacial chill was european man. he could not escape, and was forced to remain, exposed to the alternatives of perishing from cold and hunger, or fitting himself to endure the new conditions which were coming upon his northern home, perhaps the most adverse to animal life that had ever been known. man was about to be subjected to an extraordinary strain, which he could only meet by an extraordinary adaptation. the changes by which he met these new conditions were in a very small degree physical; they were almost wholly mental. in all animals of the higher orders, adaptive variations are apt to be in a measure of this character, the body being relieved from the need of structural change through some new activity of the mind. in man this was undoubtedly the case in great, probably in very great, measure. there may have been an increase in size and strength, some variations in color, in the breathing organs, in power of resistance of the cuticle to cold, etc., but the principal physical change was in a growth of the brain and expansion of the cranium, giving rise to a less bestial physiognomy and an advanced mental power. one physical change that would seem necessary to enable an animal to endure severe cold, the development of a thick protective covering of fur or hair, did not take place in man. the change was more likely in the other direction, since the hairy cover which is possessed by many of the forest folk has disappeared. this loss of hair by man has been referred by darwin to sexual selection, that powerful influence to which animals seem to owe so many physical structures of no apparent use, and some of them seemingly disadvantageous. in the case of man in the circumstances now under consideration, exposed without natural covering to the growing chill of the advancing ice sheet, the influence of sexual selection would certainly have found a strong counteracting force in natural selection, had not some other means of escaping the influence of the cold been found. as it was, the difficulty was undoubtedly overcame in great measure by the adoption of artificial clothing. the mind came to the aid of the body. the man who could chip a stone into the shape of an axe or spear head, was sufficiently advanced mentally to conceive the idea of covering his body with leaves fastened together in some way, with other vegetable fabrics, or with the skins of slain animals. protection from the cold was also sought in caverns and rock shelters, and for a very long period man remained a cave-dweller. there is hardly a cavern in western europe in which he has not left some trace of his residence. where caves were not available, rude artificial shelters were probably built. even the orang builds a shelter of this kind, and we can readily conceive of man at a very early period making himself a shelter of leaves and boughs, from which, as the cold increased, he might easily evolve a hut composed of a wooden framework covered with skins such as he used for clothing. when and where the most important of discoveries, that of fire, was made, it is impossible to say. fire arising from natural causes, such as conflagrations started by lightning, no doubt early taught man the advantage of this agency as a protection from cold, but the artificial production of fire was a process too intricate to be arrived at by undeveloped man except as a result of accident. it has never been achieved, as we have seen, by the andaman mincopies. the rudiments of the fire-making art were possessed by primitive man. in chipping flints into arrow or lance heads sparks must frequently have been struck from the hard stone, and at times these may have fallen upon and kindled inflammable material. the rubbing requisite in shaping and polishing war clubs may have yielded a heat occasionally causing fire. in boring the holes necessary to make the needles found among primitive implements, a process resembling that of the fire-drill must have been employed. in short, it is not difficult to conceive of more than one way in which the fire-making art could have been gained by accident, though it may have been late in coming, since some, perhaps all, of the arts described were not attained until the glacial age. once possessed, this important art would scarcely have been suffered to disappear. with its aid man could defy the effects of the glacial chill, so far as its direct action upon his body was concerned; and with it he also gained a new and efficient means of defence against carnivorous animals, which have ever since feared fire more than weapons. the discovery of methods of artificial fire-making was perhaps preceded by a utilization of the flames caused by lightning and other natural causes, the fire being conveyed by torches from hearth to hearth and kept alive with sedulous care. even after artificial methods of fire-making were invented, our savage ancestors were exceedingly careful to keep their fires alive, as the mincopies are to-day, and this heedful attention left its traces until very recent times. so important was the apparatus for kindling a flame deemed that in india the fire-twirl was made a god and became one of the chief deities of that polytheistic land. in many other places, especially in persia, the element of flame was raised to the dignity of a deity and worshipped among the higher gods. among the semi-civilized americans the peril of the loss of fire gave rise to a serious religious ceremony. at certain set intervals all the fires within the limits of a tribe or nation were extinguished, and a period of gloom, despondency, and dread of the malignant powers succeeded. then the "new fire" was kindled on the temple altar, and the flame was conveyed by swift messengers from hearth to hearth throughout the land. this done, the period of gloom was followed by one of general joy and festivity. the malignant deities were banished; the gods of light and warmth were dominant again; happiness and security had returned to man. the beginning of the use of clothing, of artificial shelter, and of fire formed one of the most vital periods in the history of human evolution. coincident with them was the production of a much greater variety of implements than had been previously possessed, and many of these much superior to the older and ruder forms. the struggle with the glacial cold had roused man's mind out of its old sluggishness, and brought it actively into operation in devising means of counteracting the perils of his situation and fitting him to the new conditions of existence. among the important steps of progress was very likely a considerable advance in the use of language, enabling the men of that period more readily to consult with and advise one another, to give adequate warning of danger, to aid in the chase or in industrial pursuits, to educate the young and impart new ideas or teach new discoveries to the old. the mental powers of the best-trained individuals then as now served the whole community, and nothing of value that was once gained was likely to be lost. discovery and invention at that early period probably went on with interminable slowness as compared with the progress in later ages, yet even then new ideas, one by one, came into men's minds, and step by step the methods of life were improved. one important effect of the glacial chill needs to be adverted to. the severity of the weather was not the only thing to be provided against. the discovery of fire and the invention of clothing and habitation were not enough to insure man's preservation. for the severe cold must have greatly changed the conditions of the food supply, and the man of the period found it a difficult matter to obtain the first necessaries of life. the easy-going man of the earlier age, living amid an abundance of fruits and vegetables and surrounded by numbers of game animals, or dwelling beside streams which were filled with easily taken fish, probably found the question of subsistence one of minor importance. the coming on of the glacial age made this question one of major importance. the supply of fruits and vegetable substances was greatly decreased by the biting chill, and the number of food animals was correspondingly reduced; while through much of the year the effects of frost drove the fish from the streams, and cut off effectually this source of food. man was brought into a situation in which only the most active exertion of his powers of thought could preserve him from annihilation. he now found the exercise of the art of hunting more difficult than ever before, one that needed a new development of courage, cunning, alertness, and endurance, the scarcity of animals obliging him to make long journeys and attack the strongest creatures. whether or not he possessed the poisoned arrow, which the pygmies now find so effective, cannot be said, but in all probability he was forced to invent new and more destructive weapons, a necessity that gave fresh exercise to his powers of invention. so far as our actual knowledge goes, the art of chipping stones into weapons and implements was not possessed before this period, and it may have been a result of the severe exigencies of the situation and the mental stimulation thence resulting. this art is not possessed by any of the pygmies, the nearest approach to it being the splitting of stone by fire and using the splinters as weapons. very likely preglacial man was similarly destitute of this art. under the severe strain of the glacial conditions the weak and incapable doubtless succumbed to the cold and deficiency of food; the strong and capable survived, gained superior powers, devised new weapons and implements, and became adapted to a new and decidedly adverse situation. from long depending, in considerable measure, on his physical powers, man came to trust more fully than before in his mental faculties, the result being a much greater variation in the size and activity of his brain than in other portions of his physical structure. while it had become more difficult to find and capture food animals, he was at the same time in greater danger from carnivorous beasts, which were forced by partial starvation to overcome their dread of man. he was thus obliged to become as alert and ready in defence as he was in attack, to associate himself more fully with his fellows in his hunting excursions and his other labors, and to adapt the forms and forces of nature still more to his needs, his career as a tool-making animal being greatly stimulated by the necessities of his situation. it is conceivable that the art of agriculture may have been one of the outcomes of the situation in which man now found himself. the decrease in the food supply must have put all his powers of invention to the test, and the probable diminution in number and productiveness of food plants may have served as an instigation to the cultivation of useful plants, and the preservation of their products, where possible, for winter supply. it is not unlikely that in this way and under this stimulation agriculture began, and that it made its way subsequently from this locality to more southern regions. in this, however, we cannot go beyond conjecture. it seems useless to pursue this topic further, since the absence of facts forces us to confine ourselves largely to suggestions and probabilities. we have arrived at two definite hypotheses: first, that the original stage of man's progress upward from the apes was completed when he gained dominion over the animal kingdom and attained the condition of the forest pygmies; second, that an advanced stage was reached when he achieved the conquest of nature, so far as overcoming the exceedingly adverse conditions of the glacial age was concerned. at the close of this period of frigid cold man emerged as a higher being than the forest nomad or the agricultural people of the tropics, possessed of much superior arts and implements and with largely enhanced mental powers. the long and bitter struggle for existence through which he had passed had lifted him to a much higher level in the upward progress of life. he was a savage still, and at the close of the struggle he settled down into a second stage of stagnation. the conflict was at an end, he was the victor in the fight, he could rest upon his laurels and take life easy. in addition to his mechanical gains, man had advanced much in social and political relations, and continued to advance until his primitive form of organization was perfected. at the end of it all we find him existing under two conditions, depending upon differences in the character of the country in which he lived. in the steppes and deserts of asia and the deserts of africa he was a nomad herdsman, his life being spent in the care of his flocks and herds, his political organization the patriarchal, his possessions few, his needs small, his mind at rest, his progress largely at an end. thus he still lives, and this organization and mode of life still persist, little affected by the long centuries that have passed and not greatly modified by the many wars in which he has been engaged. mentally, the man of the steppe and the desert is to-day little advanced beyond his predecessors of thousands of years ago. in the more fertile regions of the earth man had become an agriculturist, each clan holding its section of the earth as common property. a different though primitive form of political organization arose here, that of the village community, in which there was no distinction of rich and poor, all men were equal in rights and privileges, all were content with their situation, and the mental condition was largely that of stagnation. this political condition we find to have been widespread over the earth, alike in the eastern and western hemispheres, as the one into which all developing agricultural communities emerged, and in which they persisted unchanged until forced to adopt new relations through a new influence still to be described. as the patriarchal clan is persistent on the asiatic steppes and deserts, so is the village community on the russian plains and among the aryans of hindostan. it has been generally overcome in other localities, but it was broadly extended until within comparatively recent times, and traces of it may still be found in many parts of the earth. the political organization of these primitive communities of herders and farmers was of the simplest. over the herding clan a patriarchal chief presided, his authority based on his position as representative of the ancestor of the community. the head man of the agricultural clan was elected by the free choice of his fellows, his equals in rank and station. but the supposed most direct descendant from the clan ancestor was apt to be chosen. in both cases the political organization was of the family type, being but an extension of family government, and the widely prevailing system of ancestor worship had much to do with the reverence in which the chief was held and the authority which he exercised. the development of this phase of human progress did not stop here. kingdoms and empires arose as direct resultants of this condition of affairs. in some localities, such as egypt and babylonia, the great fertility of the soil in the time gave rise to a dense population, largely gathered in towns and villages, where industries other than agriculture developed and closer social relations existed. the simple organization of the village or the clan was not sufficient for such a population, and a more intricate governmental system arose; but it seems to have been simply an extension of the older system of chieftainship, based on the family or paternal relation, and on the growth of religious influence and priestly control. it seems, in fact, to have been through the influence of religious ideas that men first rose to power and became supreme over their fellows. we have no concern here with the development of religious systems, other than to say that in the primitive agricultural community a succession of ideas of man's relation to the unseen arose, yielding, in addition to the widespread ancestor worship, a system of shamanism, or belief in the presence and power of malignant spirits, and one of fetichism, which developed into mythology, or worship of the great powers of nature. what we are concerned in is the fact that from these religious conceptions a priesthood everywhere arose, beginning in the simple conjurer or the healer by spells and incantations, and developing into a priestly establishment whose leading members had a vigorous control over the people through their beliefs, fears, and superstitions. this priestly system was the basis of the first imperial organization. kingly authority was not gained at first through power over men's bodies, but through influence over their minds. there is much reason to believe that the chief of the clan or tribe, who led in its public worship and was looked upon as the representative of its divine ancestor, retained the influence thence arising as the tribe developed into the nation, adding the power and position of the high priest to that of the tribal chief. there is abundant evidence that in this simple and direct manner the imperial organization everywhere grew out of the primitive village and patriarchal systems. in the early days of egypt, before its era of conquest began, the pharaoh was the high priest of the nation, weak in temporal, strong in spiritual power; and the political organization in general probably grew out of the sacerdotal establishment. very likely the babylonian kingdom was organized in the same manner, though wars and changes of dynasty have obscured its early state. in china the patriarch of a nomad horde became emperor of a nation retaining ancestor worship as its chief religious system. he held, and still holds, the position of father of his people, the representative of the original ancestor, and high priest of the nation. in india the priestly establishment was differently organized. it was a democracy instead of an aristocracy. there was no high priest to seize the reins of government. as a result, no empire arose in india. a simple outgrowth of the tribal system developed, each tribe under its chief, while the priesthood as a whole remained the real rulers of the people. if we come to america, we discover a similar condition of affairs, the head of the religious establishment becoming everywhere the head of the nation. this was the case in mexico, where the montezuma was high priest, and derived his power largely from this position. it was the case in peru, where the inca was the direct representative on earth of the solar deity. it was the case with the agricultural communities of the southern united states, whose mico was at once high priest and autocrat. it was doubtless the case with the mound builders, of whom these communities were probably the descendants. such seems to have been the final outcome of the contest with nature, where permitted to develop in its natural and unobstructed way. a series of empires of a simple type of organization arose, their rulers uniting temporal and spiritual power, and becoming autocrats in a double sense, supreme lords of body and soul. it was in its nature a persistent type. once reached, it tended to continue indefinitely, stagnation following the era of growth. but war and invasion have broken it up everywhere except in china, a country largely defended by nature against invasion and inhabited by an innately peaceful people. as the forest pygmy group represents to-day the completion of the first stage of human evolution, so the patriarchal empire of china represents that of the second. stagnation there long since succeeded development. for several thousand years china has almost stood still. it comes down to us as the fossilized representative of an antique system, physically active but mentally inert, its organization rigidly fixed, and not to be disturbed unless the empire itself is rent to pieces. xi warfare and civilization long before the second phase of the evolution of man had been completed the third phase had begun, that of the conflict of man with man. the animal kingdom once subdued, and nature made man's friend and servant, the human race increased and multiplied until the borders of communities met and hostile relations arose between them. a fight for place began, a struggle for dominion, a fierce and incessant contest for supremacy, and for ages men locked arms in a terrible and merciless strife, in which the weak and incompetent steadily went to the wall, the strong, daring, and aggressive rose to power and control. it was the final act in the great drama of "natural selection," which had been played upon the stage of the earth since the first appearance of living forms; the last and most ruthless of them all, for the instigating cause was no longer merely the pressure for a share of the food supply, but to this was added the lust for power and place, the hunger for wealth and dominion, the insatiable appetite for autocratic control. millions upon millions of men were swept away by the sword, and by its attendant demons, famine and pestilence; and still the stronger and abler climbed to the top, the weaker and inferior succumbed; and the intellectual evolution of man went on with enhanced rapidity as the harvest of the sword was gathered in, and the merciless reapers of men swept in successive columns over the earth, each a stage higher in mental ability than the preceding. this phase of human evolution is that of the era of human history. before its advent man had no history. it would be as useful to attempt to give the history of the gorilla as of man in the early stages of his progress. history is the record of individuality, and in primitive times equality and communism prevailed, and the individual had not yet separated himself from the mass. man had settled into the dull inertness of a stagnant pool, and the fierce winds of war were needed to break up his mental slothfulness and stir thought into healthful activity. there must be leaders before there can be history; the annals of mankind begin in hero worship; the relations of superior and inferior need to be established; and individual action and supremacy are the foundations upon which all history is built. only by stirring up the deep pool of human life into seething turmoil and unrest could the tendency to stagnation be overcome, the best and most aspiring rising to the top, the dull and heavy sinking to the bottom, and the element of thought permeating the whole with its vitalizing spirit. when this phase of evolution is reached, we cease for the first time to deal with species and genera in the mass and begin to deal with individuals, who now emerge from the general group and stand above and apart like great signal posts on the highway of progress. these heroes are not alone those of the sword. they are the leaders in art, in literature, in science, in thought, in every domain; the men who stand, above, supreme and shining, and toward whose elevation the whole mass below surges slowly but strenuously upward. the third phase of human evolution, therefore, is that of the emergence of the individual as the leader, lawgiver, teacher of mankind, each leader forming a goal for the emulation of all below. and this condition is the legitimate outcome of war, which, terrible as it always has been, was the only agency that could rapidly break up the stagnancy of early communism and send man upward in a swirl toward the heights of civilization. to give the history of this phase of evolution would be to give the history of mankind, and would be aside from the purpose of this work. all that need be attempted, in support of our argument, is to present some general deductions from human history, indicating the leading features of the service man has received from war. conflict between man and man was at first vague and inconsequential. it was only after settled and organized communities, based originally on the family relation, and held together by the possession of property in common, had been formed, that war became more effective in its results. the chief of these results, in the early days, were two: the breaking up of the old equality of power and possession, and the development of larger and more powerful communities. the head man of the village community, or the herding clan, possessed some delegated authority but no political supremacy over his fellows. equality existed alike in theory and in fact. battle between neighboring clans was the first step toward breaking this up. the conquered clan became subordinated to the victorious one, and the chief of the victors, as the representative of his clan, exercised an authority over the subject community which he did not possess at home. the degree of subordination differed from the mild form of tribute-paying to that of personal slavery. but in either case we see the old condition of equality vanishing, and that of class distinctions and the relation of superior and inferior arising, while the power of the chief advances from a delegated authority to an established supremacy. the second outcome of this early phase of war was an increase in the size of political groups. the conquered were forced to aid the conquerors in war as in peace; clans combined to resist aggression; minor communities grew into organized tribes; tribes developed into nations as a result of warlike operations. this growth in political organization was a necessary and inevitable result of continued warfare. the aggressors gathered all the strength possible. the assailed peoples did the same. temporary alliances grew into permanent ones. larger armies were formed, larger communities were organized, national development advanced at a rate tenfold, probably a hundredfold, more rapidly than it would have done had peaceful conditions persisted. side by side with tribal and national consolidation went on the growth in leadership. the head man became a war chief, the war chief a king. success made him a hero to his people. he grew to be the lord of conquered tribes; into his hands fell the bulk of the spoils; the relation of equality of possessions vanished as the plunder taken by the army was distributed unequally among the victors. below the principal leader came his ablest followers, each claiming and receiving a proportionate share in the new division of power and wealth. in short, when the era of war had become fully inaugurated, the old social and political relations of mankind were broken up with great rapidity; equality of power was replaced by inequality, which steadily grew more and more declared; equality of wealth in like manner vanished; in all directions the individual emerged from the mass, class distinctions became intricate, and the relations of rich and poor, of king, noble, citizen, and slave, completely replaced the old communal organization of mankind. war was the great agent in this evolution. it might have emerged slowly in peace; it came with almost startling rapidity in war, and reached a degree of power on the one hand and subordination on the other that could scarcely ever have appeared had conditions of peace prevailed. with this growth of great nations came a rapid development in political science, in legal institutions, in social relations. an enormous advance was made, in a limited period, in the civilization of mankind; as a result, not of the devastation and slaughter of war, but of its influence upon human organization. it was the principle of reward for ability to which the leaders of men owed their supremacy. when nations were organized this same principle took another and very useful form. the distribution of wealth had become strikingly unequal. there were endless grades of distinction between the supremely wealthy and the absolutely poor. the wealthy were ready to lavish their money in return for articles of pleasure and luxury. the poor, in their thirst for a share of wealth, were strongly stimulated to inventive activity in producing new and desirable wares. inequality became the mainspring of business activity; thought and inventive ingenuity were strongly exercised; a rapid progress went on in the production of new devices, new methods, and new articles of necessity and luxury; manufacture flourished, commerce increased, civilization appeared, the whole as a legitimate outcome of the conditions brought about by war. this phase of human evolution, as may be seen, was radically different from that already considered, arising from the development of sacerdotal influence and priestly power. they worked together, no doubt. the establishment of the great primitive empires, as a peaceful process, was greatly complicated by war, which tended steadily to increase the temporal power of the ruler and enable him in time to control by the sword alone. but it is interesting to find that long after the old system was practically overthrown its shadow still lay upon the nations. the powerful war monarchs of assyria led their armies to conquest in the name of the national deity, whose vicegerents they claimed to be. the autocratic emperors of rome went so far as to claim in some cases to be gods themselves. even in modern russia some of this dignity pertains to the emperor, as the supreme head of the national church. old ideas are proverbially hard to kill. but the mission of the priesthood by no means stopped here. the priests rose to influence as the teachers as well as the leaders of the people. the members of this class, set aside from manual occupations, and devoted to thought upon the relations of man to the divine, played an important part in the development of the human mind. as a result of their speculative activity of thought the old religious systems sank into the background; the simple worship of primitive times was overshadowed by intricate mythological systems, splendid in worship and creed; cosmogonies and philosophies were devised; and human thought, once fairly set loose in this field, went on with great energy and imaginative fervor. literature arose as a result of this activity of thought. it took at first the form of hymns, speculative essays, magical formulas, dogmas, ordinances of worship, etc. by degrees it grew more secular in form, until in the end secular literature arose. this was greatly stimulated by the conditions of inequality arising from war. in the same manner as the reward for merit in invention stimulated men to activity in the mechanical arts, so the hope of reward for literary production stirred up men to the composing of poems, histories, and other works of thought. in both directions, physical and mental, men were stimulated to the most active exertions by the conditions of inequality in wealth and power, and the consequent desire to obtain a share of the money lavished by the rich and the authority similarly lavished by the powerful. the broad general view here taken must suffice for our consideration of this phase of human evolution. it brings the story of the development of man closely up to the present stage of political and social organizations and relations. it may be said, in conclusion of this section of our work, that the powerful agency of war, so active and important in the past, has in great part lost its utility in the present, and bids fair to be brought to an end before the world is much older. it is no longer needed, nearly or quite all that it is capable of doing for mankind being accomplished, while the equally powerful agencies of commerce, travel, leagues of nations, and other conditions of modern origin have taken its place. war, while yielding many useful results, has given rise to others whose utility is questionable, and whose ill-effects it will take much time and effort to set aside. the inequality of power to which war gave rise continues in many parts of the world, and the inequality of wealth shows signs of increase instead of diminution. once useful, they have developed to an injurious extent. the result is a state of unrest, discontent, and more or less active opposition, which constitutes a condition of permanent conflict, a deep dissatisfaction with existing institutions abnormal to a justly organized society. war has become in great measure useless; but the scaffolding from which it built up the edifice of civilization remains, and stands as a tottering ruin threatening to engulf mankind in its fall. ever since the triumph of autocracy in the roman empire, the masses of mankind have steadily protested against an inequality that is alien to the natural rights of man. for century after century the struggle against undue exercise of power has gone on, and the hereditary lords of mankind have lost, stage by stage, their usurped power, until in the modern republic they have been replaced by the servants and chosen agents of the people. but the autocracy of wealth still holds its own, and is growing more and more formidable, and against this the wave of opposition is now rising. everywhere man is earnestly and sternly demanding an equitable distribution of the productions of nature and art. what the outcome of this demand will be it is impossible to say. it must inevitably lead to some readjustment of the wealth of mankind; but only the slow process of social evolution can decide what this shall be. we have endeavored in this brief treatise to trace the development of man from his primeval state as a tree-dwelling animal in the depths of the tropic woods, through the phases of his later condition as an erect surface dweller, his conflict with and dominion over the animal kingdom, his subsequent contest with the adverse powers of nature, and his final warfare with his fellows and emergence into civilization. each of these contests has left its results; the first in the forest nomads of the eastern tropics, the second in the patriarchal herding tribes of the steppes and deserts, the village communities of russia and the paternal empire of china, the third in the enlightened nations of europe and america. for how long a period this mighty drama of evolution has continued it is impossible to say. its first phase must have been of interminable slowness; its second, while more rapid, still very deliberate; its third of much greater rapidity, yet extending over several thousands of years. millions of years have probably passed away since it began, yet the period involved is none too long for the magnitude of the results, whose greatness can be seen if we contrast man's mental development with that of the lower animals during this period. physically, the development of man has been inconsiderable--much less apparently than that of many other animals. mentally, it has been enormous. the whole of nature's influences, in new and often adverse situations, have been brought to bear upon man's mind, and as the result we have civilized man as contrasted with the anthropoid ape. and the end is not yet. the era of war in man's development is near its close, and a new era of peace, under conditions of advanced mental and physical activity, seems about to begin. its outcome no man can predict, but it may far surpass in beneficial results all that has gone before, and carry man upward to an extraordinarily elevated mental plane. xii the evolution of morality the evolution of man from his animal ancestry has been a composite phenomenon, one by no means confined to the physical and intellectual conditions which we have so far considered, but embracing also features of moral and spiritual progress. the origin and growth of these need also to be reviewed, if we would present a fully rounded sketch of human evolution. so far as his physical form is concerned, man became practically completed ages ago, as the supreme effort of nature in the moulding and vitalizing of matter. when the arena of the struggle for existence became transferred from the body to the mind, variation in the body, once so active, rapidly declined; and with the full employment of the intellect in the conflict with nature, physical evolution ceased, except in minor particulars, and the organic structure of man became practically fixed. the human animal, therefore, as a physical species, has reached a stage of permanence. and this may be regarded as the supreme result of material evolution in animals; or at least it may be affirmed that, while man continues to exist, no member of the lower animal tribes can possibly develop to become his rival. but though man is not markedly distinct as a physical species from his anthropoid ancestor, the process of evolution has not ceased, but has gone on in him rapidly and immensely. the strain has simply been transferred from the body to the mind, and to the extent that the mental characteristics are more flexible and yield more readily to formative influences, the mind has surpassed the body in rapidity of evolutionary variation. within a period during which the lower animals have remained almost unchanged, man has varied enormously in mental conditions, and to-day may be looked upon, not merely as a distinct species, but practically as a new order, or class, of animals, as far removed intellectually from the mammals below him as they are from the insects or mollusks. if now we turn from the physical and intellectual to the ethical stage of development, it will be to perceive as marked and decided a process of evolution. the change has, perhaps, been even greater, since in the lower animals the moral faculties are more rudimentary than the intellectual. but, on the other hand, the moral development in man has been much inferior to the intellectual. therefore, though the foundation was lower, the edifice has not reached nearly so great a height, and man to-day stands in moral elevation considerably below his intellectual level. it was formerly the custom to look upon man as the only intellectual and moral animal, the forms below him being credited solely with hereditary instincts. this belief is no longer entertained by those familiar with the results of modern research. evidences of unquestionable powers of thought have been traced in the lower animals, imagination and reason being alike indicated. the elephant, for instance, is evidently a thinking animal, and is capable of overcoming difficulties and adapting itself to new situations, using methods not unlike those which man himself might display under similar circumstances. its gratitude for favors and remembrance of and revenge for injuries are evidences of its possession of the moral attributes. the recorded instances of displays of reason in the dog, man's constant companion, are innumerable. intellectual attributes are still more pronounced in the ape tribe, as indicated in a preceding chapter, where it was argued that man began his development in intellect at a somewhat advanced stage. the same cannot be said in regard to his moral evolution. in this respect the level from which man emerged was a much lower one. if his moral growth may be symbolized as a great tree, it is one not very deeply rooted in the world below him. yet it doubtless has grown out of the soil of animal life, and its finer tendrils and fibres may be traced to a considerable depth in this fertile soil. before proceeding with this subject, it is important to devote some attention to the characteristics of the moral attributes, concerning which there is much diversity of opinion. there has been abundance of theorizing upon the principles of ethics, thinkers dividing themselves into two widely separated groups. in the one school, the intuitive, the principles of morality are looked upon as inherent in the soul of man, unfolding as the plant unfolds from its seed. in the other school, the inductive, morality is claimed to be founded upon selfishness, the moving principle of human actions being the desire to avoid pain and attain pleasure. each school makes a strong argument, which goes far to indicate that each is based upon a truth, and therefore that neither has the whole truth. the fault would appear to lie in the attempt to make morality a unit. in our view this unity does not exist. while both schools may be partly right, neither would seem to be wholly right, and they appear to be pulling at the two ends of a single chain. ethics, in short, may be regarded as composed of unlike halves, which unite centrally to form a whole. it may aid to reconcile the conflicting systems of theorists if it be held that the inductive half of ethics is the product of the reasoning powers and outer experience, the intuitive half the product of feeling and inner development; while both meet and harmonize in life as reason and feeling harmonize in the mind. it is interesting to find that it is the intuitive, not the inductive, element of the moral attributes that we find principally developed in the lower animals. this is the outgrowth of instinct, not of thought; the development of that principle of attraction which manifests itself in all nature, and which, when associated with consciousness, becomes what we know as love, affection, or sympathy. it is a powerful and pervading force in all matter, intelligent and unintelligent, and in conscious beings falls naturally among the emotions. like all the passions, it is instinctive in origin, though it may come under the control of the intellect as the mind develops. in the lower animal world it is manifested as a vigorous attraction, the sexual. in the higher animals this attraction expands and grows complex. the attraction between the sexes becomes love, and in its full unfoldment may join two individuals together for life and influence most of their actions. to the attraction between the sexes should be added that between parents and children, the parental and filial, and that between associates, the tribal or social, the latter, though weaker, of the same character. with these bonds reason has nothing to do. it does not form them and would seek in vain to sever them. they belong to a part of the mental constitution which lies outside the kingdom of thought, and they, therefore, often act counter to the selfish consideration of personal safety. the love bond, indeed, in its full strength, seems to constitute a partial loss of individuality. mates will suffer pain and endure physical injury for each other or for their offspring to as great an extent as if these constituted a part of themselves, and as if their actions were performed in self-defence. with this brief review of the philosophy of the ethical sentiments, we may proceed to a consideration of the facts. while the rudimentary form of the sentiment in question is manifest far down in the descending grades of animal life, it expands into what we may fairly term love or affection only in the higher forms. romanes, in his "animal intelligence," remarks: "as regards emotions, it is among birds that we first meet with a conspicuous advance in the tenderer feelings of affection and sympathy. those relating to the sexes and the care of progeny are in this class proverbial for their intensity, offering, in fact, a favorite type for the poet and moralist. the pining of the 'love-bird' for its absent mate, and the keen distress of a hen on losing her chickens, furnish abundant evidence of vivid feelings of the kind in question. even the stupid-looking ostrich has heart enough to die for love, as was the case with a male in the rotund of the jardin des plantes, who, having lost his mate, pined rapidly away." among social and communal animals the sentiment of sympathy widens to embrace all the members of the tribe, a characteristic which is very strongly manifested in so low an organism as the ant. as an example of this feeling among birds, romanes quotes an interesting illustration from edward, the naturalist. the latter had shot and wounded a tern, but before he could reach it, the helpless bird was carried off by its companions. two of these took hold of it by the wings and flew with it several yards over the water. they then relinquished their burden to two others, and the process continued in this way until they at length reached a rock at some distance. when the hunter, eager for his prize, pursued them, the sympathetic birds again took up their wounded companion and flew off with it again over the water. abundant instances of this sentiment of social affection could be quoted from the mammalia. it is by no means confined to members of a species, but may extend to very unlike species. no one needs to be told of the warm affection so often shown by the dog for its master, a love which will lead it to dare wounds or death in his service, or in the protection of his property. this altruistic sentiment strongly exists in the monkeys. examples of the ardent feeling of these animals for their fellows have been given in a preceding chapter, and many more might be quoted, if necessary. it must suffice here to quote a single further instance cited by romanes, and relating to a small monkey which was taken ill on shipboard, where there were several others of different species. "it had always been a favorite with the other monkeys, who seemed to regard it as the last born and the pet of the family; and they granted it many indulgences which they seldom conceded to one another. it was very tractable and gentle in its temper, and never took advantage of the partiality shown to it. from the moment it was taken ill, their attention and care of it redoubled; and it was truly affecting and interesting to see with what anxiety and tenderness they tended and nursed the little creature. a struggle often ensued between them for priority in these offices of affection; and some would steal one thing and some another, which they would carry to it untasted, however tempting it might be to their own palates. they would take it up gently in their forepaws, hug it to their breasts, and cry over it as a fond mother would over her suffering child." with the human race the love sentiment does not usually display the singleness of energy shown among the lower animals. it is affected and often checked in its development by an intricate series of influences, which act on savage and civilized man alike. the family formed the primitive human group, its linking elements being the sexual attraction between man and woman and the fervent affection between parents and children. these feelings, while strong in certain directions, were crude and uneven. in savage tribes to-day the wife is an ill-treated drudge. yet the husband will protect his wife and children from danger at risk of his life. the maternal instinct seems still stronger. the mother often acts as if the child were an actual part of herself. danger or injury to it produces in her a mental agony, the close equivalent of its fear or pain, and she will endure suffering and peril in its protection with an impulse beyond the control of reason. this sentiment, in a weakened form, extended from the family to the group; and the success of man in gaining the mastery over the other animals was doubtless greatly aided by the strong bond of social affinity existing between the members of a group. they worked together in a fuller sense than any other animals except the ants and bees. from the original social group another and closer community seems gradually to have developed, the group of kindred. this was a natural outgrowth from the family, whose bond of affection was extended to include more distant relatives, until there emerged the organized group of kindred known as the "village community," which seems everywhere to have preceded civilization. this bond of kindred gradually extended, combining men into larger and larger groups, until the clan, the horde, and the tribe emerged, their members all linked together by the reality or the fiction of common descent. such was the form of organization that existed in greece and rome in their early days, and made its influence felt far down into their later history. it existed indeed, at some period, over almost all the earth. as the group widened, the bond of sympathy weakened. love in the family found its counterpart in fellow-feeling in the tribe, in patriotism in the nation. it is undoubtedly true that desire for personal protection is one of the strong influences which bind men into societies. the hope of advantage in other directions and the pleasure of social intercourse are other combining forces. yet below these rational elements has always abided the emotional element, the sympathetic attraction which binds kindred closely together, and which exerts some degree of influence on all members of the same group or nation. the development of the ethical principle in mankind is largely due to the extension of the sentiment of social sympathy. for ages it was confined to the immediate group. such was the case even in civilized greece, intellectually one of the most advanced of peoples, but morally very contracted. the greeks were long divided into minor groups, with the warmest sentiment of patriotism uniting the members of each community, while their common origin bound all the hellenes together. but this feeling failed to cross the borders of the narrow peninsula of greece, all peoples beyond these borders being viewed as barbarians, in whose pleasures and pains no interest was felt, and whose misfortunes produced no stir of sympathy in the grecian heart. even aristotle taught that greeks owed no more duties to barbarians than to wild beasts, and a philosopher who declared that his affection extended to the whole people of greece was thought to be remarkably sympathetic. the romans were equally narrow in their early days, and not until the empire extended to the outer borders of the civilized world did this narrowness give way to a more expanded sympathy. the brotherhood of mankind, indeed, was taught by socrates, cicero, and others of the ancient moral philosophers, yet these seeds of philosophy fell in very sterile soil and took root with discouraging slowness. philosophers elsewhere taught the dogma of universal love,--confucius among the chinese, gautama among the hindoos,--but their teachings have borne little fruit in the great, stagnant peoples of asia, in whom the narrowness of semicivilization prevails. the teachings of christ, whose code of morality was the intuitive one, "love one another," have been far more effective. christianity became the religion of europe, since then the most progressive part of the world, and with every step of progress in civilization the christ doctrine of charity and sympathy reached a higher and broader stage. to-day it has attained, in europe and america, a wide degree of development, and the vast extension of human intercourse through the mediums of travel, commerce, and telegraphic communication is, for the first time in human history, beginning to lift the doctrine of the universal brotherhood of man from the plane of a philosophic dogma toward that of an established fact. the range of sympathy is narrow yet, selfishness predominates, the truly altruistic are the few, the feebly sympathetic and coldly selfish are the many; yet it must be admitted that there has been a great development of altruism during the nineteenth century, and the promise of the coming of christ's kingdom on the earth is greater to-day than at any former period in the history of mankind. the love principle is the innate moral element of the universe. its rudimentary form is the attraction between atoms, which expands into the attraction between spheres. we see a development of it in the magnetic and electric attractions, and a higher one in the sexual attraction that exists in the lowest organisms. its expansion continues until it reaches the high level of human love and social sympathy. but throughout its whole development consciousness takes no part in its origin. while conscious of its existence, we do not consciously call it into existence. men and women "fall in love"; they do not reason themselves into affection. those we love become in a measure a part of ourselves, we feel their sufferings and endure their afflictions, not through the nerves of the body, but through the finer ones of the mind,--a plexus of spiritual nerves which stretch unseen from soul to soul. so strong is this sympathetic affinity that comte was induced to look upon mankind as an organism, and it gave rise in the mind of leslie stephens to the conception of a common "social tissue." love and law rule the universe. it is this second moral element, that of law, which we have next to consider. inductive morality had its origin in experience; it assumed the form of social restriction, then of fixed law and precept, and culminated in the sense of duty--a conscientious avoidance of that which was thought to be wrong, and an earnest desire to do what was looked upon as right. the history of this phase of morality differs essentially from that of the phase we have just considered. the sense of duty, the conscientious sentiment, so highly developed in man, seems largely non-existent in the lower animals, so far as observation has taught us. yet it is not quite wanting, its rudiment is there, and this rudiment is capable of development. it may be, indeed, that a highly developed sense of duty exists in the ants and bees, to judge from their diligent labors for the benefit of the community. but the clearest examples of conscientious performance of duty are those seen in the case of the dog, in which animal intimate association with man has developed something strongly approaching a conscience. a dog needs only to be well treated to display a sense of dignity and a self-respect analogous to these feelings in man. a sensitive resentment against injustice in high-caste and carefully nurtured dogs has often been observed; while shame for an act which the animal knows to be forbidden has been seen in a hundred instances. the sense of duty is occasionally very strongly developed. many striking examples of this are on record. a dog will often defend his master's property with the greatest devotion, letting no temptation draw him away from the path of duty. an instance has been related to the writer in which an extraordinary display of this feeling was made. a gentleman, on coming home at night, found he had forgotten his key, and attempted to enter the house by the window of a room in which his dog was on duty as a night-watch. to his surprise and annoyance the animal would not permit him to enter, and attacked him every time he tried to climb in. the animal knew him well, responded to his attempts to fondle it, but the moment he made an attempt to enter the window it became hostile and seemed ready to spring upon him. in its small brain was the feeling that no one, master or stranger, had the right to enter that house at night by the window, and it was there to perform its duty without regard to persons. in the end, the gentleman was obliged to leave and seek shelter elsewhere. the development of the sense of duty and the growth of moral restriction in primitive man were probably very slow, much more so than the evolution of intelligence. the social habit of man doubtless rendered necessary, at an early period, some restraints on the actions of individuals, and these in time gained the strength of unwritten law; but many of them were scarcely what we should call moral obligations. many such restrictions exist among savage tribes to-day, and to these we must turn for examples of their character. we, for instance, look upon theft and lying as immoral practices, but such is not the case with savages generally, most of whom will steal if the opportunity offers, while they will lie in so transparent and useless a manner as to indicate that they see nothing wrong in this practice. and yet the aborigines of india, many of whom are very immoral according to our standard, are often strongly averse to untruthfulness. "a true gond," says mr. grant, "will commit a murder, but he will not tell a lie." it is well known that truthfulness was one of the chief virtues of the ancient persians, a virtue that was accompanied by much which we would call immoral. the hindoo devotee is exceedingly tender of the lives of animals, while he is often callous to human suffering. disregard of human suffering, indeed, showed itself strongly through all the past ages, men being slaughtered with as little compunction as if they were so many wild beasts, while frightful tortures were inflicted with an extraordinary absence of humane feeling. and these excesses were committed by persons who in the ordinary affairs of life were frequently tender in feeling and conscientious in action. in truth, moral development from this point of view has always shown a one-sidedness that goes far to discredit the doctrine of intuitive conceptions of right and wrong. the indications are strong that rules of conduct are not inherent in the human mind, that men become moral to the extent that they are taught the principles of justice, and grow one-sided in their ideas of virtue through incompleteness in their moral education. what we call sinfulness is largely a matter of custom and convention. men cannot properly be said to sin when their actions are checked by no conscientious scruples, and what one people would consider atrocious instances of wrong-doing, might be looked upon as innocent and even estimable by a people with a different moral standard. religion has much to do with this. the human sacrifices and cannibal feasts of the aztec indians, for instance, were regarded by them as good deeds, obligations which they owed to their gods. yet this people had attained to some of the refined practices and moral ideas of civilization. the leading principles of correct human conduct are few and simple. they were arrived at early in the history of human thought, and little has since been added to them. they arose as results of human experience, as necessary principles of restraint in developing communities, and were nearly all extant in prehistoric times as the unwritten laws of social organization. what creed-makers did was to put these ancient axioms of morality on record, and offer them to the world as codes of religious observance. they could not have been of primitive origin, since the most of them do not exist among the savage tribes still with us. there is nothing, indeed, to show that any idea of sinfulness exists in the minds of the lowest savages, the rules of conduct which they possess being such regulations as are necessary to the existence of the most undeveloped community. of the various codes of morals, much the best known to us is that given to the israelites by moses, the famous "ten commandments." the most of these--as of all such codes--were evidently legal in origin, rules necessary for the existence of a civilized society, restrictions controlling the conduct of men toward one another. it was the creed-makers who first gave such legal restrictions the strength of moral obligations, and announced that their infraction would be punished by divine agencies, even if they should escape human retribution. many hurtful acts, indeed, came to be viewed as crimes alike against god and man, and punishable in the interests of both. political and moral obligations thus shaded together; some of the evils of the world being punished by human agencies alone, some by divine, some by both. it must be said, however, that throughout the whole progress of human civilization the influence of moral obligations has been rising, while the necessity for political laws has declined in like proportion. in ancient times the penalties for crimes against the community were terribly severe, while religion threatened those who offended the divine powers with frightful future punishments. the necessity for such severe restrictions has long been decreasing, and the more vividly it is felt that immoral deeds or debased thoughts and purposes will be visited by a spiritual retribution, the less necessity is there for laws and penalties. thus the limitation of human actions by government is growing less necessary than of old, in conformity with the growing sense of spiritual degradation in evil and of spiritual elevation in good deeds. mild laws have succeeded the severe edicts of the past, and with a considerable section of the community restrictive laws have become useless, conscience taking the place of law. in such men the impulse to evil deeds dies unfulfilled, and the penalty for wrong-doing within themselves may be more severe than that which the community would inflict. in the souls of such men sits a spiritual tribunal by which evil thoughts are tried and punished before they can develop into evil acts. this consideration of the development of the moral principles and dogmas has been necessarily brief. in what direction it is leading must be evident to all, and we can with assurance look forward to a condition of human society in which conscience will have become a stronger element of the intellect than now, the sense of moral obligation a more prevailing sentiment, and legal restriction a less necessary governmental requirement. of all the isms of the day altruism is far the noblest and most promising. in this opponent of selfism, this regard for the rights and happiness of others equally with our own, we find the link which binds together the two halves of the moral principle. the love sentiment on the one hand, the sense of duty on the other, meet and combine in the zeal of altruism, for which a truly developed conscience is merely another term. those who have the good of others strongly at heart, who are truly christian in a practical realization of the brotherhood of mankind, can safely be set free from all the reins of law, and trusted to do the right thing from innate feeling instead of outside compulsion. and, trusting in the future full development of the altruistic sentiment, we can hopefully look forward to a time in which the moral law will exist alone, conscience become the controlling force in human actions, and government let fall the whip which it has so long held in threat over the shrinking back of man. xiii man's relation to the spiritual the purpose of this work has been to trace the evolutionary origin of man, in his ascent from the lower animal world to his full stature as the physical and intellectual monarch of the kingdom of life. but to round up the story of human evolution it seemed necessary to consider man from the moral standpoint, and it now appears equally desirable to review his relations to the spiritual element of the universe. having dealt with the development of man as a mortal being, we have now to regard him as a possibly immortal being. this outlook into the supreme domain of nature lifts us, for the first time in our work, definitely above the lower world of life. there is nothing to show that the animals below man have any conception of the spiritual. it is true that there are various statements on record which seem to indicate in some animals, the horse and the dog, for instance, a dread of unseen powers, a recognition of some element in nature which is invisible to the eyes of man. but what these facts indicate, what influences affect the rudimentary intellect of these animals in such instances, no one is able to say. though some vague recognition of powers or existences beyond the visible may arise in their narrow minds, it does not probably pass beyond the level of instinct, and doubtless lies almost infinitely below man's conception of the spiritual. in this stage of intellectual development, then, we have to do with a condition which seems to belong solely to man, or has but a germinal existence in the lower organic kingdom. in fact, primitive man may well have been as devoid of the conception of a realm of spirit as was his anthropoid ancestor. the lowest savages of to-day are almost, if not quite, lacking in such a conception, and are destitute of anything that can fairly be called religion. where apparent religious ideas exist among them we cannot be sure to what extent they have been infused by civilized visitors, or how far ardent missionaries, in their anxiety to discover some trace of religion in savages, have themselves inadvertently suggested the beliefs which they triumphantly record. the pygmies of africa, the negritos of oceanica, and various debased tribes elsewhere, may possibly be quite destitute of native religious conceptions, at least of a higher grade than those which move the horse and dog to a dread of the unseen. it should be borne in mind that these tribes have for thousands of years been in some degree of contact with more developed races and subject to educative influences, and the crude religious conceptions which some travellers attribute to them may well have been derived, not original. investigation in this field certainly gives us abundant warrant to believe that primitive man, on whose mind no influences of education could act, was destitute of religion, and that man's conception of the unseen arose gradually, as one important phase of the development of his intellect. any attempt to trace the stages of this religious development is far beyond our purpose, even if we were capable of doing it. it must suffice to say that man everywhere, when he emerges into history as a semicivilized being, is abundantly supplied with mythological and other religious conceptions which indicate a long preceding evolution in this field of thought. for extended ages the realm of the unseen has been acting upon the mind of man; filling him with dread of malevolent and reverence for beneficent powers, inspiring him to acts of worship, peopling his imagined heavens with imagined deities, and giving rise to an extraordinary variety of deific tales and mythological ideas. the literature of this subject would fill a library in itself, and is almost abundant enough to supply one with reading for a lifetime. yet it is largely, if not wholly, ideal; it is in great part based on false conceptions and misdirected imaginings; it rarely adduces evidence, and such evidence as is offered is always questionable; in short, scientific investigation and the critical pursuit of facts have taken no part in the development of religious systems, and a deep cloud of doubt envelops them all. it is by no means our purpose to seek to throw discredit on any of the great religions of the world. to say that they have been products of evolution is not to invalidate them. much that is true and solid has arisen through evolution. to say that they lack scientific evidence is not to question their validity. many of the subjects with which they deal lie beyond the reach of scientific evidence. science has hitherto dealt strictly with the physical; it has made almost no effort to test the claims of the spiritual. in fact, the highest of these claims, that of the existence of a deity, must lie forever beyond its reach. god may exist, and science grope for him through eternity in vain. finite facts can never gauge the infinite. proofs and disproofs alike have been offered of the existence of an infinite deity, but the problem remains unsolved. none of these proofs or disproofs are positive; they all depend on ideal conceptions, and ideas are always open to question; positive facts on either side of the argument are, and are always likely to be, wanting, and the belief in god must be based on other than scientific grounds. but when we come down to the lower levels of the domain of the spiritual we find ourselves on firmer ground. here we are dealing with the finite, not with the infinite, and nothing that is finite can lie beyond the boundaries of investigation, however long it may take to reach it. the question of the existence of spirits, for instance,--that much mooted problem of the immortality, or at least of the future existence, of man, which forms so prominent an element in modern religion,--dwells within the possible reach of science, and the attempt to deal with it by scientific evidence may reasonably be made. when we pass beyond the realm of the senses we find ourselves in a kingdom peopled by stupendous forms and forces,--space, time, matter, energy, and perhaps infinite consciousness,--all in their ultimate conditions too vast for the finite mind to grasp, all presenting problems open to speculation, but beyond the reach of demonstration. but below these lie finite possibilities which the human mind may now be, or may become, capable of comprehending, and prominent among these lies the problem just mentioned, that of the existence of a spiritual substratum in man, a soul which is capable of surviving the death of the body. this is a subject with which all of us are deeply and intimately concerned, and it may be well to close this volume with a brief glance at its status as a scientific question. the belief in the immortality of man is comparatively modern in origin. there is no satisfactory evidence that any such belief existed among the old jews, or that it arose in palestine before the time of christ. it arose at an earlier period in india and persia, but everywhere it was late in its appearance as a well-defined doctrine. yet, while positive evidence is wanting, there can be little doubt that crude and vaguely formulated ideas of the existence of man after death have been very long entertained. the traditions of all peoples that have a faith above that of fetichism contain stories of the apparition of spirits of human origin, and when we reach civilized peoples and more advanced religions we find these in abundance. the annals of christendom are full of them. they are equally abundant in the centres of other developed forms of faith. if we could accept these legends of the emergence of spirits through the thin veil that separates time from eternity as established facts, the problem would no longer need solution. as it stands, however, the great mass of such narratives are utterly lacking in evidence of a character which science can admit. they are bare, unsustained statements, thousands of which would be far outweighed by a single one fortified by demonstrated facts. occasionally, indeed, the story of an apparition has been closely investigated, and there are a few cases of this kind handed down from the past which seem reasonably well established. but any statement coming from prescientific days is open to doubt; methods of investigation then were not what they are now; the dogma of the existence of spirit is too important a one to be accepted on any but incontrovertible evidence, and the vast sum of statements of apparitions which have come to us from the past, or from the non-scientific peoples of the present, must be dismissed with the one verdict, not proven. there is one important fact, however, connected with the question of spiritual appearances, which is worthy of some consideration. it is a fixed rule in the history of opinions that beliefs founded on imagination or misconception have declined with the advance of enlightenment, and many conceptions, once strongly entertained, have faded and vanished in the light of new thought, or where retained have been so only by the ignorant and unreasoning. it is of interest to find that this has not been the case with the belief in spiritual manifestations. this has held its own to the present time, and, while it is largely sustained by the unintelligent and credulous, it can claim a considerable body of intelligent adherents to-day, even in the most enlightened nations. this belief, known as spiritism, with the manifestations upon which it is founded, lies open, therefore, to modern scientific investigation; and this has been, to some extent, applied to it, with, in various instances, rather startling results. it is certainly of significance to find that a number of prominent scientists, thoroughly skilled in the arts of investigation, have attacked this problem with the purpose of annihilating it, and have ended in becoming convinced of the truth of spiritism. it may suffice to mention two of the most striking instances of this. in the early days of the spiritist propaganda, robert hare, a famous chemist of philadelphia, entered upon an investigation of the so-called spiritual phenomena with the declared purpose of proving them to be fraudulent. his observations were long continued, his tests varied and delicate, and he ended by himself ardently adopting the belief he had set out to abolish. somewhat later william crookes of london, an equally famous chemist and physicist, entered upon a similar investigation, and with like results. the tests applied by these men were strictly scientific, and of the exhaustive character suggested by their long experience in chemical investigation; and their conversion to the tenets of spiritism, as a result of their experiments, was a marked triumph to the advocates of the doctrine. various others of admitted high intelligence, who made a similar investigation and were similarly converted, might be named. two of the best known of these were judge edmonds, of the circuit court of new york, and alfred russel wallace of england, who shared with darwin the honor of originating the theory of natural selection. while these, and others of scientific education, were converted to spiritism, many investigators came to an opposite conclusion, while a similar negative result was reached in the investigations of several committees of scientists. the latest and most persistent attempt to search into the reality of phenomena of this character has been that made by the london society for psychical research, whose investigations have extended over years and have yielded numerous striking and suggestive results. the most important conclusion at which the members of this society have so far arrived is the hypothesis of telepathy, or the seeming power of one mind to influence the thoughts of another, occasionally over long distances, in a method that appears analogous to that of wireless telegraphy. the evidences in favor of this doctrine are so numerous that it has been somewhat widely accepted, and the title applied to it has come into general use. it indicates, if true, remarkable powers in the mind of man, capabilities that seem far to transcend those of the ordinary intellectual activities. this is one side of the case. the other side now calls for presentation. this is that the great body of scientists utterly reject the theory of spiritism, and look upon its manifestations as due to fraud, misconception, credulity, or some other of the weaknesses to which human nature is liable. as regards the opinions arrived at by the prominent scientists mentioned, these men are looked upon by their fellows of the great scientific body as mentally warped, or as having allowed themselves to be victimized by impostors. the fact that professor crookes has continued one of the most acute and deep searching of investigators into the phenomena of physics, and that his results in this direction are accepted without question, and that professor wallace is acknowledged to be one of the leading thinkers of the day, has not sufficed to clear them of the doubt which rests upon their sanity or their critical judgment in this particular, and the very attempt of any one to investigate the so-called spiritual manifestations is widely looked upon as an evidence of credulity or some greater mental weakness. this result may seem singular, yet it is not without abundant warrant. it must be borne in mind that the phenomena in question differ essentially in character from those with which science is usually concerned. the field of scientific investigation is distinctly the material; the facts with which it deals are those apparent to the senses, or which can be tested by material instruments; its discoveries are generally susceptible of but one interpretation; its methods are capable of being indefinitely repeated, and its results, if justly interpreted, are unvarying in character. none of these postulates fully applies to the spiritistic investigation. here the conditions differ, the results vary, the methods can rarely be exactly repeated, conscious beings, instead of unconscious instruments, are the agents employed, and the secret thoughts and purposes of such agents are very likely to vitiate the result, and open a field of doubt which does not exist in the investigation of the inorganic world. this is one of the causes of the doubt of scientists. it is not the only or the chief cause. the latter is the fact that the claims of spiritism lift man into an entirely new domain of the universe, remove him from the great field of the material with which he is physically affiliated and to which his senses are closely adapted, and place him in a region beyond the scope of the senses, a vast kingdom which is held to underlie or subtend the physical, and which the ordinary outlook of the scientist fails to perceive. it requires no strain of the imagination to admit the existence of a new constituent of the atmosphere. it requires a great strain to admit the existence of a new constituent of the universe, a vast spiritual substratum to the domain of matter. religion, with its ideal tests, has long maintained this to be a fact. science, with its rigid material tests, sternly questions it, and demands that the existence of an inhabited spiritual realm shall be incontestably proved by scientific evidence before it can be accepted. this demand is a reasonable one. the world is growing rapidly more scientific, and the old method of arriving at conclusions is daily losing strength. beliefs based on ideal or imaginative postulates, once strong, are now weak. faith founded on ancient authority is active still, but promises to become obsolete. the way of science is growing to be the way of the world, and in the time to come intelligent men will doubtless demand incontestable evidence of any fact which they are asked to accept. as regards the phenomena in question, however, it cannot be said that they have been fairly or fully investigated by scientists. they have been set down as the work of charlatans, and their apparent results ascribed to fraud, collusion, credulity, and mental obliquity in general. the fact, that of the scientists who have exhaustively investigated the spiritistic phenomena, a considerable number have accepted them as valid, has had no effect upon scientists as a body, who, in this particular, occupy the position which they accuse non-scientists of maintaining, that of forming opinions without investigating phenomena. this attitude of the scientific world toward these problematical occurrences is quite comprehensible. throughout the nineteenth century the attention of scientists has been almost wholly directed toward the investigation of the forms and forces of matter, the phenomena and principles of the visible universe. in this they entered, at the opening of the century, upon an almost virgin field, which they have wrought with great diligence and with remarkable results. it is very possible, however, that in the twentieth century no such undivided allegiance will be given to the phenomena of matter, but that the attention of scientists will be largely diverted from the physical to the psychical field of investigation, which may prove to be a far broader and more intricate domain than we now have any conception of. psychical phenomena have attracted some attention during the recent century. one by one the problems of hypnotism, unconscious cerebration, double consciousness, telepathy, spiritism, and the like, all at first set down as unworthy of consideration, have forced themselves upon the attention of observers, and each of them has been found to present conditions amply worthy of investigation. this work has hitherto been performed by occasional individuals, but the number of workers in experimental psychics is steadily increasing, and their domain of research broadening, and we may reasonably look forward to results approaching, perhaps exceeding, in interest those reached in material investigation. there is a whole world before us, that of the mind and its phenomena, fully equal in interest and importance to the world of matter, and presenting as numerous and difficult problems. hitherto it has largely been dealt with from the ideal or metaphysical standpoint; only recently has it been subjected to physical analysis, and already with striking results. during the century before us it is likely to attract a wide and active circle of investigators, with what results it is impossible to predict. this is the only way in which the problem of the existence or non-existence of a spiritual life can be solved to the satisfaction of those of a scientific turn of mind, and this solution must be left to the future to attain. in the present work we are concerned with man's past rather than his future. it is what man has come from, not what he is going to, that forms the subject of our inquiries. we have been led into these remarks simply as an outcome of a brief consideration of man's relations to the spiritual element of the universe, and may close our work with the suggestion that the problem of human evolution may be immensely greater than that involved in the study of the ancestry of man. the dawn of reason or, mental traits in the lower animals by james weir, jr., m.d. _author of "the psychical correlation of religious emotion and sexual desire" etc._ mo. cloth. $ . * * * * * review of reviews. "this book presents evidences of mental action of the lower animals in a clear, simple, and brief form. the author has avoided technicalities, and has also resisted the temptation of the psychologist to indulge in metaphysics. dr. weir has relied for evidence on the results of his own independent study of biology at first hand, disregarding the second-hand data used by many of the authors once regarded as standard authorities in this department of research." the nation: "the title raised in our mind some vague fears that we might find physiology and psychology mixed up inexpertly with metaphysics; but we see in the writer a close observer, who takes his stand on firm ground, and goes into the objective world of animals for his facts." * * * * * the macmillan company fifth avenue, new york * * * * * transcriber's note the following changes have been made to the text: page : "these forests dwarfs" changed to "these forest dwarfs". page : "adepts in the art of concealment" changed to "adept in the art of concealment". the destiny of man viewed in the light of his origin by john fiske twentieth edition. boston houghton, mifflin and company copyright, , by john fiske. to my children, maud, harold, clarence, ralph, ethel, and herbert, this essay _is lovingly dedicated._ preface. having been invited to give an address before the concord school of philosophy this summer, upon some subject relating to the question of immortality there under discussion, it seemed a proper occasion for putting together the following thoughts on the origin of man and his place in the universe. in dealing with the unknown, it is well to take one's start a long way within the limits of the known. the question of a future life is generally regarded as lying outside the range of legitimate scientific discussion. yet while fully admitting this, one does not necessarily admit that the subject is one with regard to which we are forever debarred from entertaining an opinion. now our opinions on such transcendental questions must necessarily be affected by the total mass of our opinions on the questions which lie within the scope of scientific inquiry; and from this point of view it becomes of surpassing interest to trace the career of humanity within that segment of the universe which is accessible to us. the teachings of the doctrine of evolution as to the origin and destiny of man have, moreover, a very great speculative and practical value of their own, quite apart from their bearings upon any ultimate questions. the body of this essay is accordingly devoted to setting forth these teachings in what i conceive to be their true light; while their transcendental implications are reserved for the sequel. as the essay contains an epitome of my own original contributions to the doctrine of evolution, i have added at the end a short list of references to other works of mine, where the points here briefly mentioned are more fully argued and illustrated. the views regarding the progress of human society, and the elimination of warfare, are set forth at greater length in a little book now in the press, and soon to appear, entitled "american political ideas." petersham, september , . contents. i. man's place in nature as affected by the copernican theory. ii. as affected by darwinism. iii. on the earth there will never be a higher creature than man. iv. the origin of infancy. v. the dawning of consciousness. vi. lengthening of infancy and concomitant increase of brain-surface. vii. change in the direction of the working of natural selection. viii. growing predominance of the psychical life. ix. the origins of society and of morality. x. improvableness of man. xi. universal warfare of primeval men. xii. first checked by the beginnings of industrial civilisation. xiii. methods of political development, and elimination of warfare. xiv. end of the working of natural selection upon man. throwing off the brute-inheritance. xv. the message of christianity. xvi. the question as to a future life. the destiny of man. i. man's place in nature, as affected by the copernican theory. when we study the divine comedy of dante--that wonderful book wherein all the knowledge and speculation, all the sorrows and yearnings, of the far-off middle ages are enshrined in the glory of imperishable verse--we are brought face to face with a theory of the world and with ways of reasoning about the facts of nature which seem strange to us to-day, but from the influence of which we are not yet, and doubtless never shall be, wholly freed. a cosmology grotesque enough in the light of later knowledge, yet wrought out no less carefully than the physical theories of lucretius, is employed in the service of a theology cumbrous in its obsolete details, but resting upon fundamental truths which mankind can never safely lose sight of. in the view of dante and of that phase of human culture which found in him its clearest and sweetest voice, this earth, the fair home of man, was placed in the centre of a universe wherein all things were ordained for his sole behoof: the sun to give him light and warmth, the stars in their courses to preside over his strangely checkered destinies, the winds to blow, the floods to rise, or the fiend of pestilence to stalk abroad over the land,--all for the blessing, or the warning, or the chiding, of the chief among god's creatures, man. upon some such conception as this, indeed, all theology would seem naturally to rest. once dethrone humanity, regard it as a mere local incident in an endless and aimless series of cosmical changes, and you arrive at a doctrine which, under whatever specious name it may be veiled, is at bottom neither more nor less than atheism. on its metaphysical side atheism is the denial of anything psychical in the universe outside of human consciousness; and it is almost inseparably associated with the materialistic interpretation of human consciousness as the ephemeral result of a fleeting collocation of particles of matter. viewed upon this side, it is easy to show that atheism is very bad metaphysics, while the materialism which goes with it is utterly condemned by modern science.[ ] but our feeling toward atheism goes much deeper than the mere recognition of it as philosophically untrue. the mood in which we condemn it is not at all like the mood in which we reject the corpuscular theory of light or sir g.c. lewis's vagaries on the subject of egyptian hieroglyphics. we are wont to look upon atheism with unspeakable horror and loathing. our moral sense revolts against it no less than our intelligence; and this is because, on its practical side, atheism would remove humanity from its peculiar position in the world, and make it cast in its lot with the grass that withers and the beasts that perish; and thus the rich and varied life of the universe, in all the ages of its wondrous duration, becomes deprived of any such element of purpose as can make it intelligible to us or appeal to our moral sympathies and religious aspirations. and yet the first result of some of the grandest and most irrefragable truths of modern science, when newly discovered and dimly comprehended, has been to make it appear that humanity must be rudely unseated from its throne in the world and made to occupy an utterly subordinate and trivial position; and it is because of this mistaken view of their import that the church has so often and so bitterly opposed the teaching of such truths. with the advent of the copernican astronomy the funnel-shaped inferno, the steep mountain of purgatory crowned with its terrestrial paradise, and those concentric spheres of heaven wherein beatified saints held weird and subtle converse, all went their way to the limbo prepared for the childlike fancies of untaught minds, whither hades and valhalla had gone before them. in our day it is hard to realize the startling effect of the discovery that man does not dwell at the centre of things, but is the denizen of an obscure and tiny speck of cosmical matter quite invisible amid the innumerable throng of flaming suns that make up our galaxy. to the contemporaries of copernicus the new theory seemed to strike at the very foundations of christian theology. in a universe where so much had been made without discernible reference to man, what became of that elaborate scheme of salvation which seemed to rest upon the assumption that the career of humanity was the sole object of god's creative forethought and fostering care? when we bear this in mind, we see how natural and inevitable it was that the church should persecute such men as galileo and bruno. at the same time it is instructive to observe that, while the copernican astronomy has become firmly established in spite of priestly opposition, the foundations of christian theology have not been shaken thereby. it is not that the question which once so sorely puzzled men has ever been settled, but that it has been outgrown. the speculative necessity for man's occupying the largest and most central spot in the universe is no longer felt. it is recognized as a primitive and childish notion. with our larger knowledge we see that these vast and fiery suns are after all but the titan like _servants_ of the little planets which they bear with them in their flight through the abysses of space. out from the awful gaseous turmoil of the central mass dart those ceaseless waves of gentle radiance that, when caught upon the surface of whirling worlds like ours, bring forth the endlessly varied forms and the endlessly complex movements that make up what we can see of life. and as when god revealed himself to his ancient prophet he came not in the earthquake or the tempest but in a voice that was still and small, so that divine spark the soul, as it takes up its brief abode in this realm of fleeting phenomena, chooses not the central sun where elemental forces forever blaze and clash, but selects an outlying terrestrial nook where seeds may germinate in silence, and where through slow fruition the mysterious forms of organic life may come to take shape and thrive. he who thus looks a little deeper into the secrets of nature than his forefathers of the sixteenth century may well smile at the quaint conceit that man cannot be the object of god's care unless he occupies an immovable position in the centre of the stellar universe. ii. man's place in nature, as affected by darwinism. when the copernican astronomy was finally established through the discoveries of kepler and newton, it might well have been pronounced the greatest scientific achievement of the human mind; but it was still more than that. it was the greatest revolution that had ever been effected in man's views of his relations to the universe in which he lives, and of which he is--at least during the present life--a part. during the nineteenth century, however, a still greater revolution has been effected. not only has lyell enlarged our mental horizon in time as much as newton enlarged it in space, but it appears that throughout these vast stretches of time and space with which we have been made acquainted there are sundry well-marked changes going on. certain definite paths of development are being pursued; and around us on every side we behold worlds, organisms, and societies in divers stages of progress or decline. still more, as we examine the records of past life upon our globe, and study the mutual relations of the living things that still remain, it appears that the higher forms of life--including man himself--are the modified descendants of lower forms. zoölogically speaking, man can no longer be regarded as a creature apart by himself. we cannot erect an order on purpose to contain him, as cuvier tried to do; we cannot even make a separate family for him. man is not only a vertebrate, a mammal, and a primate, but he belongs, as a genus, to the catarrhine family of apes. and just as lions, leopards, and lynxes--different genera of the cat-family--are descended from a common stock of carnivora, back to which we may also trace the pedigrees of dogs, hyænas, bears, and seals; so the various genera of platyrrhine and catarrhine apes, including man, are doubtless descended from a common stock of primates, back to which we may also trace the converging pedigrees of monkeys and lemurs, until their ancestry becomes indistinguishable from that of rabbits and squirrels. such is the conclusion to which the scientific world has come within a quarter of a century from the publication of mr. darwin's "origin of species;" and there is no more reason for supposing that this conclusion will ever be gainsaid than for supposing that the copernican astronomy will some time be overthrown and the concentric spheres of dante's heaven reinstated in the minds of men. it is not strange that this theory of man's origin, which we associate mainly with the name of mr. darwin, should be to many people very unwelcome. it is fast bringing about a still greater revolution in thought than that which was heralded by copernicus; and it naturally takes some time for the various portions of one's theory of things to become adjusted, one after another, to so vast and sweeping a change. from many quarters the cry goes up,--if this be true, then man is at length cast down from his high position in the world. "i will not be called a mammal, or the son of a mammal!" once exclaimed an acquaintance of mine who perhaps had been brought up by hand. such expressions of feeling are crude, but the feeling is not unjustifiable. it is urged that if man is physically akin to a baboon, as pigs are akin to horses, and cows to deer, then humanity can in nowise be regarded as occupying a peculiar place in the universe; it becomes a mere incident in an endless series of changes, and how can we say that the same process of evolution that has produced mankind may not by and by produce something far more perfect? there was a time when huge bird-like reptiles were the lords of creation, and after these had been "sealed within the iron hills" there came successive dynasties of mammals; and as the iguanodon gave place to the great eocene marsupials, as the mastodon and the sabre-toothed lion have long since vanished from the scene, so may not man by and by disappear to make way for some higher creature, and so on forever? in such case, why should we regard man as in any higher sense the object of divine care than a pig? still stronger does the case appear when we remember that those countless adaptations of means to ends in nature, which since the time of voltaire and paley we have been accustomed to cite as evidences of creative design, have received at the hands of mr. darwin a very different interpretation. the lobster's powerful claw, the butterfly's gorgeous tints, the rose's delicious fragrance, the architectural instinct of the bee, the astonishing structure of the orchid, are no longer explained as the results of contrivance. that simple but wasteful process of survival of the fittest, through which such marvellous things have come into being, has little about it that is analogous to the ingenuity of human art. the infinite and eternal power which is thus revealed in the physical life of the universe seems in nowise akin to the human soul. the idea of beneficent purpose seems for the moment to be excluded from nature, and a blind process, known as natural selection, is the deity that slumbers not nor sleeps. reckless of good and evil, it brings forth at once the mother's tender love for her infant and the horrible teeth of the ravening shark, and to its creative indifference the one is as good as the other. in spite of these appalling arguments the man of science, urged by the single-hearted purpose to ascertain the truth, be the consequences what they may, goes quietly on and finds that the terrible theory must be adopted; the fact of man's consanguinity with dumb beasts must be admitted. in reaching this conclusion, the man of science reasons upon the physical facts within his reach, applying to them the same principles of common-sense whereby our everyday lives are successfully guided; and he is very apt to smile at the methods of those people who, taking hold of the question at the wrong end, begin by arguing about all manner of fancied consequences. for his knowledge of the history of human thinking assures him that such methods have through all past time proved barren of aught save strife, while his own bold yet humble method is the only one through which truth has ever been elicited. to pursue unflinchingly the methods of science requires dauntless courage and a faith that nothing can shake. such courage and such loyalty to nature brings its own reward. for when once the formidable theory is really understood, when once its implications are properly unfolded, it is seen to have no such logical consequences as were at first ascribed to it. as with the copernican astronomy, so with the darwinian biology, we rise to a higher view of the workings of god and of the nature of man than was ever attainable before. so far from degrading humanity, or putting it on a level with the animal world in general, the darwinian theory shows us distinctly for the first time how the creation and the perfecting of man is the goal toward which nature's work has all the while been tending. it enlarges tenfold the significance of human life, places it upon even a loftier eminence than poets or prophets have imagined, and makes it seem more than ever the chief object of that creative activity which is manifested in the physical universe. iii. on the earth there will never be a higher creature than man. in elucidating these points, we may fitly begin by considering the question as to the possibility of the evolution of any higher creature than man, to whom the dominion over this earth shall pass. the question will best be answered by turning back and observing one of the most remarkable features connected with the origin of man and with his superiority over other animals. and let it be borne in mind that we are not now about to wander through the regions of unconditional possibility. we are not dealing with vague general notions of development, but with the scientific darwinian theory, which alleges development only as the result of certain rigorously defined agencies. the chief among these agencies is natural selection. it has again and again been illustrated how by the cumulative selection and inheritance of slight physical variations generic differences, like those between the tiger and the leopard, or the cow and the antelope, at length arise; and the guiding principle in the accumulation of slight physical differences has been the welfare of the species. the variant forms on either side have survived while the constant forms have perished, so that the lines of demarcation between allied species have grown more and more distinct, and it is usually only by going back to fossil ages that we can supply the missing links of continuity. in the desperate struggle for existence no peculiarity, physical or psychical, however slight, has been too insignificant for natural selection to seize and enhance; and the myriad fantastic forms and hues of animal and vegetal life illustrate the seeming capriciousness of its workings. psychical variations have never been unimportant since the appearance of the first faint pigment-spot which by and by was to translate touch into vision, as it developed into the lenses and humours of the eye.[ ] special organs of sense and the lower grades of perception and judgment were slowly developed through countless ages, in company with purely physical variations of shape of foot, or length of neck, or complexity of stomach, or thickness of hide. at length there came a wonderful moment--silent and unnoticed, as are the beginnings of all great revolutions. silent and unnoticed, even as the day of the lord which cometh like a thief in the night, there arrived that wonderful moment at which psychical changes began to be of more use than physical changes to the brute ancestor of man. through further ages of ceaseless struggle the profitable variations in this creature occurred oftener and oftener in the brain, and less often in other parts of the organism, until by and by the size of his brain had been doubled and its complexity of structure increased a thousand-fold, while in other respects his appearance was not so very different from that of his brother apes.[ ] along with this growth of the brain, the complete assumption of the upright posture, enabling the hands to be devoted entirely to prehension and thus relieving the jaws of that part of their work, has coöperated in producing that peculiar contour of head and face which is the chief distinguishing mark of physical man. these slight anatomical changes derive their importance entirely from the prodigious intellectual changes in connection with which they have been produced; and these intellectual changes have been accumulated until the distance, psychically speaking, between civilized man and the ape is so great as to dwarf in comparison all that had been achieved in the process of evolution down to the time of our half-human ancestor's first appearance. no fact in nature is fraught with deeper meaning than this two-sided fact of the extreme physical similarity and enormous psychical divergence between man and the group of animals to which he traces his pedigree. it shows that when humanity began to be evolved an entirely new chapter in the history of the universe was opened. henceforth the life of the nascent soul came to be first in importance, and the bodily life became subordinated to it. henceforth it appeared that, in this direction at least, the process of zoölogical change had come to an end, and a process of psychological change was to take its place. henceforth along this supreme line of generation there was to be no further evolution of new species through physical variation, but through the accumulation of psychical variations one particular species was to be indefinitely perfected and raised to a totally different plane from that on which all life had hitherto existed. henceforth, in short, the dominant aspect of evolution was to be not the genesis of species, but the progress of civilization. as we thoroughly grasp the meaning of all this, we see that upon the darwinian theory it is impossible that any creature zoologically distinct from man and superior to him should ever at any future time exist upon the earth. in the regions of unconditional possibility it is open to any one to argue, if he chooses, that such a creature may come to exist; but the darwinian theory is utterly opposed to any such conclusion. according to darwinism, the creation of man is still the goal toward which nature tended from the beginning. not the production of any higher creature, but the perfecting of humanity, is to be the glorious consummation of nature's long and tedious work. thus we suddenly arrive at the conclusion that man seems now, much more clearly than ever, the chief among god's creatures. on the primitive barbaric theory, which mr. darwin has swept away, man was suddenly flung into the world by the miraculous act of some unseen and incalculable power acting from without; and whatever theology might suppose, no scientific reason could be alleged why the same incalculable power might not at some future moment, by a similar miracle, thrust upon the scene some mightier creature in whose presence man would become like a sorry beast of burden. but he who has mastered the darwinian theory, he who recognizes the slow and subtle process of evolution as the way in which god makes things come to pass, must take afar higher view. he sees that in the deadly struggle for existence which has raged throughout countless aeons of time, the whole creation has been groaning and travailing together in order to bring forth that last consummate specimen of god's handiwork, the human soul. to the creature thus produced through a change in the direction in which natural selection has worked, the earth and most of its living things have become gradually subordinated. in all the classes of the animal and vegetal worlds many ancient species have become extinct, and many modern species have come into being, through the unchecked working of natural selection, since man became distinctively human. but in this respect a change has long been coming over the face of nature. the destinies of all other living things are more and more dependent upon the will of man. it rests with him to determine, to a great degree, what plants and animals shall remain upon the earth and what shall be swept from its surface. by unconsciously imitating the selective processes of nature, he long ago wrought many wild species into forms subservient to his needs. he has created new varieties of fruit and flower and cereal grass, and has reared new breeds of animals to aid him in the work of civilization; until at length he is beginning to acquire a mastery over mechanical and molecular and chemical forces which is doubtless destined in the future to achieve marvellous results whereof today we little dream. natural selection itself will by and by occupy a subordinate place in comparison with selection by man, whose appearance on the earth is thus seen more clearly than ever to have opened an entirely new chapter in the mysterious history of creation. iv. the origin of infancy. but before we can fully understand the exalted position which the darwinian theory assigns to man, another point demands consideration. the natural selection of psychical peculiarities does not alone account for the origin of man, or explain his most signal difference from all other animals. that difference is unquestionably a difference in kind, but in saying this one must guard against misunderstanding. not only in the world of organic life, but throughout the known universe, the doctrine of evolution regards differences in kind as due to the gradual accumulation of differences in degree. to cite a very simple case, what differences of kind can be more striking than the differences between a nebula, a sun, a planet like the earth, and a planet like our moon? yet these things are simply examples of cosmical matter at four different stages of cooling. the physical differences between steam, water, and ice afford a more familiar example. in the organic world the perpetual modification of structures that has been effected through natural selection exhibits countless instances of differences in kind which have risen from the accumulation of differences in degree. no one would hesitate to call a horse's hoof different in kind from a cat's paw; and yet the horse's lower leg and hoof are undoubtedly developed from a five-toed paw. the most signal differences in kind are wont to arise when organs originally developed for a certain purpose come to be applied to a very different purpose, as that change of the fish's air-bladder into a lung which accompanied the first development of land vertebrates. but still greater becomes the revolution when a certain process goes on until it sets going a number of other processes, unlocking series after series of causal agencies until a vast and complicated result is reached, such as could by no possibility have been foreseen. the creation of man was one of these vast and complicated results due to the unlocking of various series of causal agencies; and it was the beginning of a deeper and mightier difference in kind than any that slowly evolving nature had yet witnessed. i have indicated, as the moment at which the creation of mankind began, the moment when psychical variations became of so much more use to our ancestors than physical variations that they were seized and enhanced by natural selection, to the comparative neglect of the latter. increase of intellectual capacity, in connection with the developing brain of a single race of creatures, now became the chief work of natural selection in originating man; and this, i say, was the opening of a new chapter, the last and most wonderful chapter, in the history of creation. but the increasing intelligence and enlarged experience of half-human man now set in motion a new series of changes which greatly complicated the matter. in order to understand these changes, we must consider for a moment one very important characteristic of developing intelligence. the simplest actions in which the nervous system is concerned are what we call reflex actions. all the visceral actions which keep us alive from moment to moment, the movements of the heart and lungs, the contractions of arteries, the secretions of glands, the digestive operations of the stomach and liver, belong to the class of reflex actions. throughout the animal world these acts are repeated, with little or no variation, from birth until death, and the tendency to perform them is completely organized in the nervous system before birth. every animal breathes and digests as well at the beginning of his life as he ever does. contact with air and food is all that is needed, and there is nothing to be learned. these actions, though they are performed by the nervous system, we do not class as psychical, because they are nearly or quite unattended by consciousness. the psychical life of the lowest animals consists of a few simple acts directed toward the securing of food and the avoidance of danger, and these acts we are in the habit of classing as instinctive. they are so simple, so few, and so often repeated, that the tendency to perform them is completely organized in the nervous system before birth. the animal takes care of himself as soon as he begins to live. he has nothing to learn, and his career is a simple repetition of the careers of countless ancestors. with him heredity is everything, and his individual experience is next to nothing. as we ascend the animal scale till we come to the higher birds and mammals, we find a very interesting and remarkable change beginning. the general increase of intelligence involves an increasing variety and complication of experiences. the acts which the animal performs in the course of its life become far more numerous, far more various, and far more complex. they are therefore severally repeated with less frequency in the lifetime of each individual. consequently the tendency to perform them is not completely organized in the nervous system of the offspring before birth. the short period of ante-natal existence does not afford time enough for the organization of so many and such complex habitudes and capacities. the process which in the lower animals is completed before birth is in the higher animals left to be completed after birth. when the creature begins its life it is not completely organized. instead of the power of doing all the things which its parents did, it starts with the power of doing only some few of them; for the rest it has only latent capacities which need to be brought out by its individual experience after birth. in other words, it begins its separate life not as a matured creature, but as an infant which needs for a time to be watched and helped. v. the dawning of consciousness. here we arrive at one of the most wonderful moments in the history of creation,--the moment of the first faint dawning of consciousness, the foreshadowing of the true life of the soul. whence came the soul we no more know than we know whence came the universe. the primal origin of consciousness is hidden in the depths of the bygone eternity. that it cannot possibly be the product of any cunning arrangement of material particles is demonstrated beyond peradventure by what we now know of the correlation of physical forces.[ ] the platonic view of the soul, as a spiritual substance, an effluence from godhood, which under certain conditions becomes incarnated in perishable forms of matter, is doubtless the view most consonant with the present state of our knowledge. yet while we know not the primal origin of the soul, we have learned something with regard to the conditions under which it has become incarnated in material forms. modern psychology has something to say about the dawning of conscious life in the animal world. reflex action is unaccompanied by consciousness. the nervous actions which regulate the movements of the viscera go on without our knowledge; we learn of their existence only by study, as we learn of facts in outward nature. if you tickle the foot of a person asleep, and the foot is withdrawn by simple reflex action, the sleeper is unconscious alike of the irritation and of the movement, even as the decapitated frog is unconscious when a drop of nitric acid falls on his back and he lifts up a leg and rubs the place. in like manner the reflex movements which make up the life of the lowest animals are doubtless quite unconscious, even when in their general character they simulate conscious actions, as they often do. in the case of such creatures, the famous hypothesis of descartes, that animals are automata, is doubtless mainly correct. in the case of instincts also, where the instinctive actions are completely organized before birth, and are repeated without variation during the whole lifetime of the individual, there is probably little if any consciousness. it is an essential prerequisite of consciousness that there should be a period of delay or tension between the receipt of an impression and the determination of the consequent movement. diminish this period of delay and you diminish the vividness of consciousness. a familiar example will make this clear. when you are learning to play a new piece of music on the piano, especially if you do not read music rapidly, you are intensely conscious of each group of notes on the page, and of each group of keys that you strike, and of the relations of the one to the other. but when you have learned the piece by heart, you think nothing of either notes or keys, but play automatically while your attention is concentrated upon the artistic character of the music. if somebody thoughtlessly interrupts you with a question about egyptian politics, you go on playing while you answer him politely. that is, where you had at first to make a conscious act of volition for each movement, the whole group of movements has now become automatic, and volition is only concerned in setting the process going. as the delay involved in the perception and the movement disappears, so does the consciousness of the perception and the movement tend to disappear. consciousness implies perpetual discrimination, or the recognition of likenesses and differences, and this is impossible unless impressions persist long enough to be compared with one another. the physical organs in connection with whose activity consciousness is manifested are the upper and outer parts of the brain,--the cerebrum and cerebellum. these organs never receive impressions directly from the outside world, but only from lower nerve-centres, such as the spinal cord, the medulla, the optic lobes, and other special centres of sensation. the impressions received by the cerebrum and cerebellum are waves of molecular disturbance sent up along centripetal nerves from the lower centres, and presently drafted off along centrifugal nerves back to the lower centres, thus causing the myriad movements which make up our active life. now there is no consciousness except when molecular disturbance is generated in the cerebrum and cerebellum faster than it can be drafted off to the lower centres.[ ] it is the surplus of molecular disturbance remaining in the cerebrum and cerebellum, and reflected back and forth among the cells and fibres of which these highest centres are composed, that affords the physical condition for the manifestation of consciousness. memory, emotion, reason, and volition begin with this retention of a surplus of molecular motion in the highest centres. as we survey the vertebrate sub-kingdom of animals, we find that as this surplus increases, the surface of the highest centres increases in area. in the lowest vertebrate animal, the amphioxus, the cerebrum and cerebellum do not exist at all. in fishes we begin to find them, but they are much smaller than the optic lobes. in such a highly organized fish as the halibut, which weighs about as much as an average-sized man, the cerebrum is smaller than a melon-seed. continuing to grow by adding concentric layers at the surface, the cerebrum and cerebellum become much larger in birds and lower mammals, gradually covering up the optic lobes. as we pass to higher mammalian forms, the growth of the cerebrum becomes most conspicuous, until it extends backwards so far as to cover up the cerebellum, whose functions are limited to the conscious adjustment of muscular movements. in the higher apes the cerebrum begins to extend itself forwards, and this goes on in the human race. the cranial capacity of the european exceeds that of the australian by forty cubic inches, or nearly four times as much as that by which the australian exceeds the gorilla; and the expansion is almost entirely in the upper and anterior portions. but the increase of the cerebral surface is shown not only in the general size of the organ, but to a still greater extent in the irregular creasing and furrowing of the surface. this creasing and furrowing begins to occur in the higher mammals, and in civilized man it is carried to an astonishing extent. the amount of intelligence is correlated with the number, the depth, and the irregularity of the furrows. a cat's brain has a few symmetrical creases. in an ape the creases are deepened into slight furrows, and they run irregularly, somewhat like the lines in the palm of your hand. with age and experience the furrows grow deeper and more sinuous, and new ones appear; and in man these phenomena come to have great significance. the cerebral surface of a human infant is like that of an ape. in an adult savage, or in a european peasant, the furrowing is somewhat marked and complicated. in the brain of a great scholar, the furrows are very deep and crooked, and hundreds of creases appear which are not found at all in the brains of ordinary men. in other words, the cerebral surface of such a man, the seat of conscious mental life, has become enormously enlarged in area; and we must further observe that it goes on enlarging in some cases into extreme old age.[ ] putting all these facts together, it becomes plain that in the lowest animals, whose lives consist of sundry reflex actions monotonously repeated from generation to generation, there can be nothing, or next to nothing, of what we know as consciousness. it is only when the life becomes more complicated and various, so that reflex action can no longer determine all its movements and the higher nerve-centres begin to be evolved, that the dawning of consciousness is reached. but with the growth of the higher centres the capacities of action become so various and indeterminate that definite direction is not given to them until after birth. the creature begins life as an infant, with its partially developed cerebrum representing capabilities which it is left for its individual experience to bring forth and modify. vi. lengthening of infancy, and concomitant increase of brain-surface. the first appearance of infancy in the animal world thus heralded the new era which was to be crowned by the development of man. with the beginnings of infancy there came the first dawning of a conscious life similar in nature to the conscious life of human beings, and there came, moreover, on the part of parents, the beginning of feelings and actions not purely self-regarding. but still more, the period of infancy was a period of plasticity. the career of each individual being no longer wholly predetermined by the careers of its ancestors, it began to become teachable. individuality of character also became possible at the same time, and for the same reason. all birds and mammals which take care of their young are teachable, though in very various degrees, and all in like manner show individual peculiarities of disposition, though in most cases these are slight and inconspicuous. in dogs, horses, and apes there is marked teachableness, and there are also marked differences in individual character. but in the non-human animal world all these phenomena are but slightly developed. they are but the dim adumbrations of what was by and by to bloom forth in the human race. they can scarcely be said to have served as a prophecy of the revolution that was to come. one generation of dumb beasts is after all very like another, and from studying the careers of the mastodon, the hipparion, the sabre-toothed lion, or even the dryopithecus, an observer in the miocene age could never have foreseen the possibility of a creature endowed with such a boundless capacity of progress as the modern man. nevertheless, however dimly suggestive was this group of phenomena, it contained the germ of all that is preëminent in humanity. in the direct line of our ancestry it only needed that the period of infancy should be sufficiently prolonged, in order that a creature should at length appear, endowed with the teachableness, the individuality, and the capacity for progress which are the peculiar prerogatives of fully-developed man.[ ] in this direct line the manlike apes of africa and the indian archipelago have advanced far beyond the mammalian world in general. along with a cerebral surface, and an accompanying intelligence, far greater than that of other mammals, these tailless apes begin life as helpless babies, and are unable to walk, to feed themselves, or to grasp objects with precision until they are two or three months old. these apes have thus advanced a little way upon the peculiar road which our half-human forefathers began to travel as soon as psychical variations came to be of more use to the species than variations in bodily structure. the gulf by which the lowest known man is separated from the highest known ape consists in the great increase of his cerebral surface, with the accompanying intelligence, and in the very long duration of his infancy. these two things have gone hand in hand. the increase of cerebral surface, due to the working of natural selection in this direction alone, has entailed a vast increase in the amount of cerebral organization that must be left to be completed after birth, and thus has prolonged the period of infancy. and conversely the prolonging of the plastic period of infancy, entailing a vast increase in teachableness and versatility, has contributed to the further enlargement of the cerebral surface. the mutual reaction of these two groups of facts must have gone on for an enormous length of time since man began thus diverging from his simian brethren. it is not likely that less than a million years have elapsed since the first page of this new chapter in the history of creation was opened: it is probable that the time has been much longer. in comparison with such a period, the whole recorded duration of human history shrinks into nothingness. the pyramids of egypt seem like things of yesterday when we think of the cave-men of western europe in the glacial period, who scratched pictures of mammoths on pieces of reindeer-antler with a bit of pointed flint. yet during an entire geologic æon before these cave-men appeared on the scene, "a being erect upon two legs," if we may quote from serjeant buzfuz, "and wearing the outward semblance of a man and not of a monster," wandered hither and thither over the face of the earth, setting his mark upon it as no other creature yet had done, leaving behind him innumerable tell-tale remnants of his fierce and squalid existence, yet too scantily endowed with wit to make any written disclosure of his thoughts and deeds. if the physiological annals of that long and weary time could now be unrolled before us, the principal fact which we should discern, dominating all other facts in interest and significance, would be that mutual reaction between increase of cerebral surface and lengthening of babyhood which i have here described. thus through the simple continuance and interaction of processes that began far back in the world of warm-blooded animals, we get at last a creature essentially different from all others. through the complication of effects the heaping up of minute differences in degree has ended in bringing forth a difference in kind. in the human organism physical variation has well-nigh stopped, or is confined to insignificant features, save in the grey surface of the cerebrum. the work of cerebral organization is chiefly completed after birth, as we see by contrasting the smooth ape-like brain-surface of the new-born child with the deeply-furrowed and myriad-seamed surface of the adult civilized brain. the plastic period of adolescence, lengthened in civilized man until it has come to cover more than one third of his lifetime, is thus the guaranty of his boundless progressiveness. inherited tendencies and aptitudes still form the foundations of character; but individual experience has come to count as an enormous factor in modifying the career of mankind from generation to generation. it is not too much to say that the difference between man and all other living creatures, in respect of teachableness, progressiveness, and individuality of character, surpasses all other differences of kind that are known to exist in the universe. vii. change in the direction of the working of natural selection. in the fresh light which these considerations throw upon the problem of man's origin, we can now see more clearly than ever how great a revolution was inaugurated when natural selection began to confine its operations to the surface of the cerebrum. among the older incidents in the evolution of organic life, the changes were very wonderful which out of the pectoral fin of a fish developed the jointed fore-limb of the mammal with its five-toed paw, and thence through much slighter variation brought forth the human arm with its delicate and crafty hand. more wondrous still were the phases of change through which the rudimentary pigment-spot of the worm, by the development and differentiation of successive layers, gave place to the variously-constructed eyes of insects, mollusks, and vertebrates. the day for creative work of this sort has probably gone by, as the day for the evolution of annulose segments and vertebrate skeletons has gone by,--on our planet, at least. in the line of our own development, all work of this kind stopped long ago, to be replaced by different methods. as an optical instrument, the eye had well-nigh reached extreme perfection in many a bird and mammal ages before man's beginnings; and the essential features of the human hand existed already in the hands of miocene apes. but different methods came in when human intelligence appeared upon the scene. mr. spencer has somewhere reminded us that the crowbar is but an extra lever added to the levers of which the arm is already composed, and the telescope but adds a new set of lenses to those which already exist in the eye. this beautiful illustration goes to the kernel of the change that was wrought when natural selection began to confine itself to the psychical modification of our ancestors. in a very deep sense all human science is but the increment of the power of the eye, and all human art is the increment of the power of the hand.[ ] vision and manipulation,--these, in their countless indirect and transfigured forms, are the two coöperating factors in all intellectual progress. it is not merely that with the telescope we see extinct volcanoes on the moon, or resolve spots of nebulous cloud into clusters of blazing suns; it is that in every scientific theory we frame by indirect methods visual images of things not present to sense. with our mind's eye we see atmospheric convulsions on the surfaces of distant worlds, watch the giant ichthyosaurs splashing in jurassic oceans, follow the varied figures of the rhythmic dance of molecules as chemical elements unite and separate, or examine, with the aid of long-forgotten vocabularies now magically restored, the manners and morals, the laws and superstitions, of peoples that have ceased to be.[ ] and so in art the wonderful printing-press, and the engine that moves it, are the lineal descendants through countless stages of complication, of the simple levers of primitive man and the rude stylus wherewith he engraved strange hieroglyphs on the bark of trees. in such ways, since the human phase of evolution began, has the direct action of muscle and sense been supplemented and superseded by the indirect work of the inquisitive and inventive mind. viii. growing predominance of the psychical life. let us note one further aspect of this mighty revolution. in its lowly beginnings the psychical life was merely an appendage to the life of the body. the avoidance of enemies, the securing of food, the perpetuation of the species, make up the whole of the lives of lower animals, and the rudiments of memory, reason, emotion, and volition were at first concerned solely with the achievement of these ends in an increasingly indirect, complex, and effective way. though the life of a large portion of the human race is still confined to the pursuit of these same ends, yet so vast has been the increase of psychical life that the simple character of the ends is liable to be lost sight of amid the variety, the indirectness, and the complexity of the means. but in civilized society other ends, purely immaterial in their nature, have come to add themselves to these, and in some instances to take their place. it is long since we were told that man does not live by bread alone. during many generations we have seen thousands of men, actuated by the noblest impulse of which humanity is capable, though misled by the teachings of a crude philosophy, despising and maltreating their bodies as clogs and incumbrances to the life of the indwelling soul. countless martyrs we have seen throwing away the physical earthly life as so much worthless dross, and all for the sake of purely spiritual truths. as with religion, so with the scientific spirit and the artistic spirit,--the unquenchable craving to know the secrets of nature, and the yearning to create the beautiful in form and colour and sound. in the highest human beings such ends as these have come to be uppermost in consciousness, and with the progress of material civilization this will be more and more the case. if we can imagine a future time when warfare and crime shall have been done away with forever, when disease shall have been for the most part curbed, and when every human being by moderate labour can secure ample food and shelter, we can also see that in such a state of things the work of civilization would be by no means completed. in ministering to human happiness in countless ways, through the pursuit of purely spiritual ends, in enriching and diversifying life to the utmost, there would still be almost limitless work to be done. i believe that such a time will come for weary and suffering mankind. such a faith is inspiring. it sustains one in the work of life, when one would otherwise lose heart. but it is a faith that rests upon induction. the process of evolution is excessively slow, and its ends are achieved at the cost of enormous waste of life, but for innumerable ages its direction has been toward the goal here pointed out; and the case may be fitly summed up in the statement that whereas in its rude beginnings the psychical life was but an appendage to the body, in fully-developed humanity the body is but the vehicle for the soul. ix. the origins of society and of morality. one further point must be considered before this outline sketch of the manner of man's origin can be called complete. the psychical development of humanity, since its earlier stages, has been largely clue to the reaction of individuals upon one another in those various relations which we characterize as social.[ ] in considering the origin of man, the origin of human society cannot be passed over. foreshadowings of social relations occur in the animal world, not only in the line of our own vertebrate ancestry, but in certain orders of insects which stand quite remote from that line. many of the higher mammals are gregarious, and this is especially true of that whole order of primates to which we belong. rudimentary moral sentiments are also clearly discernible in the highest members of various mammalian orders, and in all but the lowest members of our own order. but in respect of definiteness and permanence the relations between individuals in a state of gregariousness fall far short of the relations between individuals in the rudest human society. the primordial unit of human society is the family, and it was by the establishment of definite and permanent family relationships that the step was taken which raised man socially above the level of gregarious apehood. this great point was attained through that lengthening of the period of helpless childhood which accompanied the gradually increasing intelligence of our half-human ancestors. when childhood had come to extend over a period of ten or a dozen years--a period which would be doubled, or more than doubled, where several children were born in succession to the same parents--the relationships between father and mother, brethren and sisters, must have become firmly knit; and thus the family, the unit of human society, gradually came into existence.[ ] the rudimentary growth of moral sentiment must now have received a definite direction. as already observed, with the beginnings of infancy in the animal world there came the genesis in the parents of feelings and actions not purely self-regarding. rudimentary sympathies, with rudimentary capacity for self-devotion, are witnessed now and then among higher mammals, such as the dog, and not uncommonly among apes. but as the human family, with its definite relationships, came into being, there must necessarily have grown up between its various members reciprocal necessities of behaviour. the conduct of the individual could no longer be shaped with sole reference to his own selfish desires, but must be to a great extent subordinated to the general welfare of the family. and in judging of the character of his own conduct, the individual must now begin to refer it to some law of things outside of himself; and hence the germs of conscience and of the idea of duty. such were no doubt the crude beginnings of human morality. with this genesis of the family, the creation of man may be said, in a certain sense, to have been completed. the great extent of cerebral surface, the lengthened period of infancy, the consequent capacity for progress, the definite constitution of the family, and the judgment of actions as good or bad according to some other standard than that of selfish desire,--these are the attributes which essentially distinguish man from other creatures. all these, we see, are direct or indirect results of the revolution which began when natural selection came to confine itself to psychical variations, to the neglect of physical variations. the immediate result was the increase of cerebrum. this prolonged the infancy, thus giving rise to the capacity for progress; and infancy, in turn, originated the family and thus opened the way for the growth of sympathies and of ethical feelings. all these results have perpetually reacted upon one another until a creature different in kind from all other creatures has been evolved. the creature thus evolved long since became dominant over the earth in a sense in which none of his predecessors ever became dominant; and henceforth the work of evolution, so far as our planet is concerned, is chiefly devoted to the perfecting of this last and most wonderful product of creative energy. x. improvableness of man. for the creation of man was by no means the creation of a perfect being. the most essential feature of man is his improvableness, and since his first appearance on the earth the changes that have gone on in him have been enormous, though they have continued to run along in the lines of development that were then marked out. the changes have been so great that in many respects the interval between the highest and the lowest men far surpasses quantitatively the interval between the lowest men and the highest apes. if we take into account the creasing of the cerebral surface, the difference between the brain of a shakespeare and that of an australian savage would doubtless be fifty times greater than the difference between the australian's brain and that of an orang-outang. in mathematical capacity the australian, who cannot tell the number of fingers on his two hands, is much nearer to a lion or wolf than to sir rowan hamilton, who invented the method of quaternions. in moral development this same australian, whose language contains no words for justice and benevolence, is less remote from dogs and baboons than from a howard or a garrison. in progressiveness, too, the difference between the lowest and the highest races of men is no less conspicuous. the australian is more teachable than the ape, but his limit is nevertheless very quickly reached. all the distinctive attributes of man, in short, have been developed to an enormous extent through long ages of social evolution. this psychical development of man is destined to go on in the future as it has gone on in the past. the creative energy which has been at work through the bygone eternity is not going to become quiescent to-morrow. we have learned something of its methods of working, and from the careful observation of the past we can foresee the future in some of its most general outlines. from what has already gone on during the historic period of man's existence, we can safely predict a change that will by and by distinguish him from all other creatures even more widely and more fundamentally than he is distinguished today. whenever in the course of organic evolution we see any function beginning as incidental to the performance of other functions, and continuing for many ages to increase in importance until it becomes an indispensable strand in the web of life, we may be sure that by a continuance of the same process its influence is destined to increase still more in the future. such has been the case with the function of sympathy, and with the ethical feelings which have grown up along with sympathy and depend largely upon it for their vitality. like everything else which especially distinguishes man, the altruistic feelings were first called into existence through the first beginnings of infancy in the animal world. their rudimentary form was that of the transient affection of a female bird or mammal for its young. first given a definite direction through the genesis of the primitive human family, the development of altruism has formed an important part of the progress of civilization, but as yet it has scarcely kept pace with the general development of intelligence. there can be little doubt that in respect of justice and kindness the advance of civilized man has been less marked than in respect of quick-wittedness. now this is because the advancement of civilized man has been largely effected through fighting, through the continuance of that deadly struggle and competition which has been going on ever since organic life first appeared on the earth. it is through such fierce and perpetual struggle that the higher forms of life have been gradually evolved by natural selection. but we have already seen how in many respects the evolution of man was the opening of an entirely new chapter in the history of the universe. in no respect was it more so than in the genesis of the altruistic emotions. for when natural selection, through the lengthening of childhood, had secured a determinate development for this class of human feelings, it had at last originated a power which could thrive only through the elimination of strife. and the later history of mankind, during the past thirty centuries, has been characterized by the gradual eliminating of strife, though the process has gone on with the extreme slowness that marks all the work of evolution. it is only at the present clay that, by surveying human history from the widest possible outlook, and with the aid of the habits of thought which the study of evolution fosters, we are enabled distinctly to observe this tendency. as this is the most wonderful of all the phases of that stupendous revolution in nature which was inaugurated in the creation of man, it deserves especial attention here; and we shall find it leading us quite directly to our conclusion. from the origin of man, when thoroughly comprehended in its general outlines, we shall at length be able to catch some glimpses of his destiny. xi. universal warfare of primeval men. in speaking of the higher altruistic feelings as being antagonistic to the continuance of warfare, i did not mean to imply that warfare can ever be directly put down by our horror of cruelty or our moral disapproval of strife. the actual process is much more indirect and complex than this. in respect of belligerency the earliest men were doubtless no better than brutes. they were simply the most crafty and formidable among brutes. to get food was the prime necessity of life, and as long as food was obtainable only by hunting and fishing, or otherwise seizing upon edible objects already in existence, chronic and universal quarrel was inevitable. the conditions of the struggle for existence were not yet visibly changed from what they had been from the outset in the animal world. that struggle meant everlasting slaughter, and the fiercest races of fighters would be just the ones to survive and perpetuate their kind. those most successful primitive men, from whom civilized peoples are descended, must have excelled in treachery and cruelty, as in quickness of wit and strength of will. that moral sense which makes it seem wicked to steal and murder was scarcely more developed in them than in tigers or wolves. but to all this there was one exception. the family supplied motives for peaceful coöperation.[ ] within the family limits fidelity and forbearance had their uses, for events could not have been long in showing that the most coherent families would prevail over their less coherent rivals. observation of the most savage races agrees with the comparative study of the institutions of civilized peoples, in proving that the only bond of political union recognized among primitive men, or conceivable by them, was the physical fact of blood-relationship. illustrations of this are found in plenty far within the historic period. the very township, which under one name or another has formed the unit of political society among all civilized peoples, was originally the stockaded dwelling-place of a clan which traced its blood to a common ancestor. in such a condition of things the nearest approach ever made to peace was a state of armed truce; and while the simple rules of morality were recognized, they were only regarded as binding within the limits of the clan. there was no recognition of the wickedness of robbery and murder in general. this state of things, as above hinted, could not come to an end as long as men obtained food by seizing upon edible objects already in existence. the supply of fish, game, or fruit being strictly limited, men must ordinarily fight under penalty of starvation. if we could put a moral interpretation upon events which antedated morality as we understand it, we should say it was their duty to fight; and the reverence accorded to the chieftain who murdered most successfully in behalf of his clansmen was well deserved. it is worthy of note that, in isolated parts of the earth where the natural supply of food is abundant, as in sundry tropical islands of the pacific ocean, men have ceased from warfare and become gentle and docile without rising above the intellectual level of savagery. compared with other savages, they are like the chimpanzee as contrasted with the gorilla. such exceptional instances well illustrate the general truth that, so long as the method of obtaining food was the same as that employed by brute animals, men must continue to fight like dogs over a bone. xii. first checked by the beginnings of industrial civilization. but presently man's superior intelligence came into play in such wise that other and better methods of getting food were devised. when in intervals of peace men learned to rear flocks and herds, and to till the ground, and when they had further learned to exchange with one another the products of their labour, a new step, of most profound significance, was taken. tribes which had once learned how to do these things were not long in overcoming their neighbours, and flourishing at their expense, for agriculture allows a vastly greater population to live upon a given area, and in many ways it favours social compactness. an immense series of social changes was now begun. whereas the only conceivable bond of political combination had heretofore been blood-relationship, a new basis was now furnished by territorial contiguity and by community of occupation. the supply of food was no longer strictly limited, for it could be indefinitely increased by peaceful industry; and moreover, in the free exchange of the products of labour, it ceased to be true that one man's interest was opposed to another's. men did not at once recognize this fact, and indeed it has not yet become universally recognized, so long have men persisted in interpreting the conditions of industrial life in accordance with the immemorial traditions of the time when the means of subsistence were strictly limited, so that one man's success meant another's starvation. our robber tariffs--miscalled "protective"--are survivals of the barbarous mode of thinking which fitted the ages before industrial civilization began. but although the pacific implications of free exchange were very slowly recognized, it is not the less true that the beginnings of agriculture and commerce marked the beginnings of the greatest social revolution in the whole career of mankind. henceforth the conditions for the maintenance of physical life became different from what they had been throughout the past history of the animal world. it was no longer necessary for men to quarrel for their food like dogs over a bone; for they could now obtain it far more effectively by applying their intelligence to the task of utilizing the forces of inanimate nature; and the due execution of such a task was in no wise assisted by wrath and contention, but from the outset was rather hindered by such things. such were the beginnings of industrial civilization. out of its exigencies, continually increasing in complexity, have proceeded, directly or indirectly, the arts and sciences which have given to modern life so much of its interest and value. but more important still has been the work of industrial civilization in the ethical field. by furnishing a wider basis for political union than mere blood-relationship, it greatly extended the area within which moral obligations were recognized as binding. at first confined to the clan, the idea of duty came at length to extend throughout a state in which many clans were combined and fused, and as it thus increased in generality and abstractness, the idea became immeasurably strengthened and ennobled. at last, with the rise of empires, in which many states were brought together in pacific industrial relations, the recognized sphere of moral obligation became enlarged until it comprehended all mankind. xiii. methods of political development, and elimination of warfare. this rise of empires, this coalescence of small groups of men into larger and larger political aggregates, has been the chief work of civilization, when looked at on its political side.[ ] like all the work of evolution, this process has gone on irregularly and intermittently, and its ultimate tendency has only gradually become apparent. this process of coalescence has from the outset been brought about by the needs of industrial civilization, and the chief obstacle which it has had to encounter has been the universal hostility and warfare bequeathed from primeval times. the history of mankind has been largely made up of fighting, but in the careers of the most progressive races this fighting has been far from meaningless, like the battles of kites and crows. in the stream of history which, beginning on the shores of the mediterranean sea, has widened until in our day it covers both sides of the atlantic and is fast extending over the remotest parts of the earth,--in this main stream of history the warfare which has gone on has had a clearly discernible purpose and meaning. broadly considered, this warfare has been chiefly the struggle of the higher industrial civilization in defending itself against the attacks of neighbours who had not advanced beyond that early stage of humanity in which warfare was chronic and normal. during the historic period, the wars of europe have been either contests between the industrial and the predatory types of society, or contests incident upon the imperfect formation of large political aggregates. there have been three ways in which great political bodies have arisen. the earliest and lowest method was that of _conquest without incorporation_. a single powerful tribe conquered and annexed its neighbours without admitting them to a share in the government. it appropriated their military strength, robbed them of most of the fruits of their labour, and thus virtually enslaved them. such was the origin of the great despotic empires of oriental type. such states degenerate rapidly in military strength. their slavish populations, accustomed to be starved and beaten or massacred by the tax-gatherer, become unable to fight, so that great armies of them will flee before a handful of freemen, as in the case of the ancient persians and the modern egyptians. to strike down the executive head of such an assemblage of enslaved tribes is to effect the conquest or the dissolution of the whole mass, and hence the history of eastern peoples has been characterized by sudden and gigantic revolutions. the second method of forming great political bodies was that of _conquest with incorporation_. the conquering tribe, while annexing its neighbours, gradually admitted them to a share in the government. in this way arose the roman empire, the largest, the most stable, and in its best days the most pacific political aggregate the world had as yet seen. throughout the best part of europe, its conquests succeeded in transforming the ancient predatory type of society into the modern industrial type. it effectually broke up the primeval clan-system, with its narrow ethical ideas, and arrived at the broad conception of rights and duties coextensive with humanity. but in the method upon which rome proceeded there was an essential element of weakness. the simple device of representation, by which political power is equally retained in all parts of the community while its exercise is delegated to a central body, was entirely unknown to the romans. partly for this reason, and partly because of the terrible military pressure to which the frontier was perpetually exposed, the roman government became a despotism which gradually took on many of the vices of the oriental type. the political weakness which resulted from this allowed europe to be overrun by peoples organized in clans and tribes, and for some time there was a partial retrogression toward the disorder characteristic of primitive ages. the retrogression was but partial and temporary, however; the exposed frontier has been steadily pushed eastward into the heart of asia; the industrial type of society is no longer menaced by the predatory type; the primeval clan-system has entirely disappeared as a social force; and warfare, once ubiquitous and chronic, has become local and occasional. the third and highest method of forming great political bodies is that of _federation_. the element of fighting was essential in the two lower methods, but in this it is not essential. here there is no conquest, but a voluntary union of small political groups into a great political group. each little group preserves its local independence intact, while forming part of an indissoluble whole. obviously this method of political union requires both high intelligence and high ethical development in early times it was impracticable. it was first attempted, with brilliant though ephemeral success, by the greeks, but it failed for want of the device of representation. in later times it was put into operation, with permanent success, on a small scale by the swiss, and on a great scale by our forefathers in england. the coalescence of shires into the kingdom of england, effected as it was by means of a representative assembly, and accompanied by the general retention of local self-government, afforded a distinct precedent for such a gigantic federal union as men of english race have since constructed in america. the principle of federation was there, though not the name. and here we hit upon the fundamental contrast between the history of england and that of france. the method by which the modern french nation has been built up has been the roman method of conquest with incorporation. as the ruler of paris gradually overcame his vassals, one after another, by warfare or diplomacy, he annexed their counties to his royal domain, and governed them by lieutenants sent from paris. self-government was thus crushed out in france, while it was preserved in england. and just as rome achieved its unprecedented dominion by adopting a political method more effective than any that had been hitherto employed, so england, employing for the first time a still higher and more effective method, has come to play a part in the world compared with which even the part played by rome seems insignificant. the test of the relative strength of the english and roman methods came when england and france contended for the possession of north america. the people which preserved its self-government could send forth self-supporting colonies; the people which had lost the very tradition of self-government could not. hence the dominion of the sea, with that of all the outlying parts of the earth, fell into the hands of men of english race; and hence the federative method of political union--the method which contains every element of permanence, and which is pacific in its very conception--is already assuming a sway which is unquestionably destined to become universal. bearing all this in mind, we cannot fail to recognize the truth of the statement that the great wars of the historic period have been either contests between the industrial and the predatory types of society or contests incident upon the imperfect formation of great political aggregates. throughout the turmoil of the historic period--which on a superficial view seems such a chaos--we see certain definite tendencies at work; the tendency toward the formation of larger and larger political aggregates, and toward the more perfect maintenance of local self-government and individual freedom among the parts of the aggregate. this two-sided process began with the beginnings of industrial civilization; it has aided the progress of industry and been aided by it; and the result has been to diminish the quantity of warfare, and to lessen the number of points at which it touches the ordinary course of civilized life. with the further continuance of this process, but one ultimate result is possible. it must go on until warfare becomes obsolete. the nineteenth century, which has witnessed an unprecedented development of industrial civilization, with its attendant arts and sciences, has also witnessed an unprecedented diminution in the strength of the primeval spirit of militancy. it is not that we have got rid of great wars, but that the relative proportion of human strength which has been employed in warfare has been remarkably less than in any previous age. in our own history, of the two really great wars which have permeated our whole social existence,--the revolutionary war and the war of secession,--the first was fought in behalf of the pacific principle of equal representation; the second was fought in behalf of the pacific principle of federalism. in each case, the victory helped to hasten the day when warfare shall become unnecessary. in the few great wars of europe since the overthrow of napoleon, we may see the same principle at work. in almost every case the result has been to strengthen the pacific tendencies of modern society. whereas warfare was once dominant over the face of the earth, and came home in all its horrid details to everybody's door, and threatened the very existence of industrial civilization; it has now become narrowly confined in time and space, it no longer comes home to everybody's door, and, in so far as it is still tolerated, for want of a better method of settling grave international questions, it has become quite ancillary to the paramount needs, of industrial civilization. when we can see so much as this lying before us on the pages of history, we cannot fail to see that the final extinction of warfare is only a question of time. sooner or later it must come to an end, and the pacific principle of federalism, whereby questions between states are settled, like questions between individuals by due process of law, must reign supreme over all the earth. xiv. end of the working of natural selection upon man. throwing off the brute-inheritance. as regards the significance of man's position in the universe, this gradual elimination of strife is a fact of utterly unparalleled grandeur. words cannot do justice to such a fact. it means that the wholesale destruction of life, which has heretofore characterized evolution ever since life began, and through which the higher forms of organic existence have been produced, must presently come to an end in the case of the chief of god's creatures. it means that the universal struggle for existence, having succeeded in bringing forth that consummate product of creative energy, the human soul, has done its work and will presently cease. in the lower regions of organic life it must go on, but as a determining factor in the highest work of evolution it will disappear. the action of natural selection upon man has long since been essentially diminished through the operation of social conditions. for in all grades of civilization above the lowest, "there are so many kinds of superiorities which severally enable men to survive, notwithstanding accompanying inferiorities, that natural selection cannot by itself rectify any particular unfitness." in a race of inferior animals any maladjustment is quickly removed by natural selection, because, owing to the universal slaughter, the highest completeness of life possible to a given grade of organization is required for the mere maintenance of life. but under the conditions surrounding human development it is otherwise.[ ] there is a wide interval between the highest and lowest degrees of completeness of living that are compatible with maintenance of life. hence the wicked flourish. vice is but slowly eliminated, because mankind has so many other qualities, beside the bad ones, which enable it to subsist and achieve progress in spite of them, that natural selection--which always works through death--cannot come into play. the improvement of civilized man goes on mainly through processes of direct adaptation. the principle in accordance with which the gloved hand of the dandy becomes white and soft while the hand of the labouring man grows brown and tough is the main principle at work in the improvement of humanity. our intellectual faculties, our passions and prejudices, our tastes and habits, become strengthened by use and weakened by disuse, just as the blacksmith's arm grows strong and the horse turned out to pasture becomes unfit for work. this law of use and disuse has been of immense importance throughout the whole evolution of organic life. with man it has come to be paramount. if now we contrast the civilized man intellectually and morally with the savage, we find that, along with his vast increase of cerebral surface, he has an immensely greater power of representing in imagination objects and relations not present to the senses. this is the fundamental intellectual difference between civilized men and savages.[ ] the power of imagination, or ideal representation, underlies the whole of science and art, and it is closely connected with the ability to work hard and submit to present discomfort for the sake of a distant reward. it is also closely connected with the development of the sympathetic feelings. the better we can imagine objects and relations not present to sense, the more readily we can sympathize with other people. half the cruelty in the world is the direct result of stupid incapacity to put one's self in the other man's place. so closely inter-related are our intellectual and moral natures that the development of sympathy is very considerably determined by increasing width and variety of experience. from the simplest form of sympathy, such as the painful thrill felt on seeing some one in a dangerous position, up to the elaborate complication of altruistic feelings involved in the notion of abstract justice, the development is very largely a development of the representative faculty. the very same causes, therefore, deeply grounded in the nature of industrial civilization, which have developed science and art, have also had a distinct tendency to encourage the growth of the sympathetic emotions. but, as already observed, these emotions are still too feebly developed, even in the highest races of men. we have made more progress in intelligence than in kindness. for thousands of generations, and until very recent times, one of the chief occupations of men has been to plunder, bruise, and kill one another. the selfish and ugly passions which are primordial--which have the incalculable strength of inheritance from the time when animal consciousness began--have had but little opportunity to grow weak from disuse. the tender and unselfish feelings, which are a later product of evolution, have too seldom been allowed to grow strong from exercise. and the whims and prejudices of the primeval militant barbarism are slow in dying out from the midst of peaceful industrial civilization. the coarser forms of cruelty are disappearing, and the butchery of men has greatly diminished. but most people apply to industrial pursuits a notion of antagonism derived from ages of warfare, and seek in all manner of ways to cheat or overreach one another. and as in more barbarous times the hero was he who had slain his tens of thousands, so now the man who has made wealth by overreaching his neighbours is not uncommonly spoken of in terms which imply approval. though gentlemen, moreover, no longer assail one another with knives and clubs, they still inflict wounds with cruel words and sneers. though the free--thinker is no longer chained to a stake and burned, people still tell lies about him, and do their best to starve him by hurting his reputation. the virtues of forbearance and self-control are still in a very rudimentary state, and of mutual helpfulness there is far too little among men. nevertheless in all these respects some improvement has been made, along with the diminution of warfare, and by the time warfare has not merely ceased from the earth but has come to be the dimly remembered phantom of a remote past, the development of the sympathetic side of human nature will doubtless become prodigious. the manifestation of selfish and hateful feelings will be more and more sternly repressed by public opinion, and such feelings will become weakened by disuse, while the sympathetic feelings will increase in strength as the sphere for their exercise is enlarged. and thus at length we see what human progress means. it means throwing off the brute-inheritance,--gradually throwing it off through ages of struggle that are by and by to make struggle needless. man is slowly passing from a primitive social state in which he was little better than a brute, toward an ultimate social state in which his character shall have become so transformed that nothing of the brute can be detected in it. the ape and the tiger in human nature will become extinct. theology has had much to say about original sin. this original sin is neither more nor less than the brute-inheritance which every man carries with him, and the process of evolution is an advance toward true salvation. fresh value is thus added to human life. the modern prophet, employing the methods of science, may again proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. work ye, therefore, early and late, to prepare its coming. xv. the message of christianity. now what is this message of the modern prophet but pure christianity?--not the mass of theological doctrine ingeniously piled up by justin martyr and tertullian and clement and athanasius and augustine, but the real and essential christianity which came, fraught with good tidings to men, from the very lips of jesus and paul! when did st. paul's conception of the two men within him that warred against each other, the appetites of our brute nature and the god-given yearning for a higher life,--when did this grand conception ever have so much significance as now? when have we ever before held such a clew to the meaning of christ in the sermon on the mount? "blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." in the cruel strife of centuries has it not often seemed as if the earth were to be rather the prize of the hardest heart and the strongest fist? to many men these words of christ have been as foolishness and as a stumbling-block, and the ethics of the sermon on the mount have been openly derided as too good for this world. in that wonderful picture of modern life which is the greatest work of one of the great seers of our time, victor hugo gives a concrete illustration of the working of christ's methods. in the saintlike career of bishop myriel, and in the transformation which his example works in the character of the hardened outlaw jean valjean, we have a most powerful commentary on the sermon on the mount. by some critics who could express their views freely about "les misérables" while hesitating to impugn directly the authority of the new testament, monseigneur bienvenu was unsparingly ridiculed as a man of impossible goodness, and as a milksop and fool withal. but i think victor hugo understood the capabilities of human nature, and its real dignity, much better than these scoffers. in a low stage of civilization monseigneur bienvenu would have had small chance of reaching middle life. christ himself, we remember, was crucified between two thieves. it is none the less true that when once the degree of civilization is such as to allow this highest type of character, distinguished by its meekness and kindness, to take root and thrive, its methods are incomparable in their potency. the master knew full well that the time was not yet ripe,--that he brought not peace, but a sword. but he preached nevertheless that gospel of great joy which is by and by to be realized by toiling humanity, and he announced ethical principles fit for the time that is coming. the great originality of his teaching, and the feature that has chiefly given it power in the world, lay in the distinctness with which he conceived a state of society from which every vestige of strife, and the modes of behaviour adapted to ages of strife, shall be utterly and forever swept away. through misery that has seemed unendurable and turmoil that has seemed endless, men have thought on that gracious life and its sublime ideal, and have taken comfort in the sweetly solemn message of peace on earth and good will to men. i believe that the promise with which i started has now been amply redeemed. i believe it has been fully shown that so far from degrading humanity, or putting it on a level with the animal world in general, the doctrine of evolution shows us distinctly for the first time how the creation and the perfecting of man is the goal toward which nature's work has been tending from the first. we can now see clearly that our new knowledge enlarges tenfold the significance of human life, and makes it seem more than ever the chief object of divine care, the consummate fruition of that creative energy which is manifested throughout the knowable universe. xvi. the question as to a future life. upon the question whether humanity is, after all, to cast in its lot with the grass that withers and the beasts that perish, the whole foregoing argument has a bearing that is by no means remote or far-fetched. it is not likely that we shall ever succeed in making the immortality of the soul a matter of scientific demonstration, for we lack the requisite data. it must ever remain an affair of religion rather than of science. in other words, it must remain one of that class of questions upon which i may not expect to convince my neighbour, while at the same time i may entertain a reasonable conviction of my own upon the subject.[ ] in the domain of cerebral physiology the question might be debated forever without a result. the only thing which cerebral physiology tells us, when studied with the aid of molecular physics, is against the materialist, so far as it goes. it tells us that, during the present life, although thought and feeling are always manifested in connection with a peculiar form of matter, yet by no possibility can thought and feeling be in any sense the products of matter. nothing could be more grossly unscientific than the famous remark of cabanis, that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile. it is not even correct to say that thought goes on in the brain. what goes on in the brain is an amazingly complex series of molecular movements, with which thought and feeling are in some unknown way correlated, not as effects or as causes, but as concomitants. so much is clear, but cerebral physiology says nothing about another life. indeed, why should it? the last place in the world to which i should go for information about a state of things in which thought and feeling can exist in the absence of a cerebrum would be cerebral physiology! the materialistic assumption that there is no such state of things, and that the life of the soul accordingly ends with the life of the body, is perhaps the most colossal instance of baseless assumption that is known to the history of philosophy. no evidence for it can be alleged beyond the familiar fact that during the present life we know soul only in its association with body, and therefore cannot discover disembodied soul without dying ourselves. this fact must always prevent us from obtaining direct evidence for the belief in the soul's survival. but a negative presumption is not created by the absence of proof in cases where, in the nature of things, proof is inaccessible.[ ] with his illegitimate hypothesis of annihilation, the materialist transgresses the bounds of experience quite as widely as the poet who sings of the new jerusalem with its river of life and its streets of gold. scientifically speaking, there is not a particle of evidence for either view. but when we desist from the futile attempt to introduce scientific demonstration into a region which confessedly transcends human experience, and when we consider the question upon broad grounds of moral probability, i have no doubt that men will continue in the future, as in the past, to cherish the faith in a life beyond the grave. in past times the disbelief in the soul's immortality has always accompanied that kind of philosophy which, under whatever name, has regarded humanity as merely a local incident in an endless and aimless series of cosmical changes. as a general rule, people who have come to take such a view of the position of man in the universe have ceased to believe in a future life. on the other hand, he who regards man as the consummate fruition of creative energy, and the chief object of divine care, is almost irresistibly driven to the belief that the soul's career is not completed with the present life upon the earth. difficulties on theory he will naturally expect to meet in many quarters; but these will not weaken his faith, especially when he remembers that upon the alternative view the difficulties are at least as great. we live in a world of mystery, at all events, and there is not a problem in the simplest and most exact departments of science which does not speedily lead us to a transcendental problem that we can neither solve nor elude. a broad common-sense argument has often to be called in, where keen-edged metaphysical analysis has confessed itself baffled. now we have here seen that the doctrine of evolution does not allow us to take the atheistic view of the position of man. it is true that modern astronomy shows us giant balls of vapour condensing into fiery suns, cooling down into planets fit for the support of life, and at last growing cold and rigid in death, like the moon. and there are indications of a time when systems of dead planets shall fall in upon their central ember that was once a sun, and the whole lifeless mass, thus regaining heat, shall expand into a nebulous cloud like that with which we started, that the work of condensation and evolution may begin over again. these titanic events must doubtless seem to our limited vision like an endless and aimless series of cosmical changes. they disclose no signs of purpose, or even of dramatic tendency;[ ] they seem like the weary work of sisyphos. but on the face of our own planet, where alone we are able to survey the process of evolution in its higher and more complex details, we do find distinct indications of a dramatic tendency, though doubtless not of purpose in the limited human sense. the darwinian theory, properly understood, replaces as much teleology[ ] as it destroys. from the first dawning of life we see all things working together toward one mighty goal, the evolution of the most exalted spiritual qualities which characterize humanity. the body is cast aside and returns to the dust of which it was made. the earth, so marvellously wrought to man's uses, will also be cast aside. the day is to come, no doubt, when the heavens shall vanish as a scroll, and the elements be melted with fervent heat. so small is the value which nature sets upon the perishable forms of matter! the question, then, is reduced to this: are man's highest spiritual qualities, into the production of which all this creative energy has gone, to disappear with the rest? has all this work been done for nothing? is it all ephemeral, all a bubble that bursts, a vision that fades? are we to regard the creator's work as like that of a child, who builds houses out of blocks, just for the pleasure of knocking them down? for aught that science can tell us, it may be so, but i can see no good reason for believing any such thing. on such a view the riddle of the universe becomes a riddle without a meaning. why, then, are we any more called upon to throw away our belief in the permanence of the spiritual element in man than we are called upon to throw away our belief in the constancy of nature? when questioned as to the ground of our irresistible belief that like causes must always be followed by like effects, mr. mill's answer was that it is the result of an induction coextensive with the whole of our experience; mr. spencer's answer was that it is a postulate which we make in every act of experience;[ ] but the authors of the "unseen universe," slightly varying the form of statement, called it a supreme act of faith,--the expression of a trust in god, that he will not "put us to permanent intellectual confusion." now the more thoroughly we comprehend that process of evolution by which things have come to be what they are, the more we are likely to feel that to deny the everlasting persistence of the spiritual element in man is to rob the whole process of its meaning. it goes far toward putting us to permanent intellectual confusion, and i do not see that any one has as yet alleged, or is ever likely to allege, a sufficient reason for our accepting so dire an alternative. for my own part, therefore, i believe in the immortality of the soul, not in the sense in which i accept the demonstrable truths of science, but as a supreme act of faith in the reasonableness of god's work. such a belief, relating to regions quite inaccessible to experience, cannot of course be clothed in terms of definite and tangible meaning. for the experience which alone can give us such terms we must await that solemn day which is to overtake us all. the belief can be most quickly defined by its negation, as the refusal to believe that this world is all. the materialist holds that when you have described the whole universe of phenomena of which we can become cognizant under the conditions of the present life, then the whole story is told. it seems to me, on the contrary, that the whole story is not thus told. i feel the omnipresence of mystery in such wise as to make it far easier for me to adopt the view of euripides, that what we call death may be but the dawning of true knowledge and of true life. the greatest philosopher of modern times, the master and teacher of all who shall study the process of evolution for many a day to come, holds that the conscious soul is not the product of a collocation of material particles, but is in the deepest sense a divine effluence. according to mr. spencer, the divine energy which is manifested throughout the knowable universe is the same energy that wells up in us as consciousness. speaking for myself, i can see no insuperable difficulty in the notion that at some period in the evolution of humanity this divine spark may have acquired sufficient concentration and steadiness to survive the wreck of material forms and endure forever. such a crowning wonder seems to me no more than the fit climax to a creative work that has been ineffably beautiful and marvellous in all its myriad stages. only on some such view can the reasonableness of the universe, which still remains far above our finite power of comprehension, maintain its ground. there are some minds inaccessible to the class of considerations here alleged, and perhaps there always will be. but on such grounds, if on no other, the faith in immortality is likely to be shared by all who look upon the genesis of the highest spiritual qualities in man as the goal of nature's creative work. this view has survived the copernican revolution in science, and it has survived the darwinian revolution. nay, if the foregoing exposition be sound, it is darwinism which has placed humanity upon a higher pinnacle than ever. the future is lighted for us with the radiant colours of hope. strife and sorrow shall disappear. peace and love shall reign supreme. the dream of poets, the lesson of priest and prophet, the inspiration of the great musician, is confirmed in the light of modern knowledge; and as we gird ourselves up for the work of life, we may look forward to the time when in the truest sense the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever, king of kings and lord of lords. references. c.p., outlines of cosmic philosophy, ; u.w., the unseen world, ; d., darwinism and other essays, ; e.e., excursions of an evolutionist, . : c.p. ii. - . : c.p. ii. - . : c.p. ii. - ; d. . : u.w. - ; d. - ; e.e. - , , . : c.p. ii. - . : c.p. ii. - . : d. - ; e.e. - . : c.p. ii. . : e.e. - . : c.p. ii. - . : c.p. ii. - , - . : c.p. ii. - . : c.p. ii. - . : c.p. ii. . : c.p. ii. - . : u.w. ; e.e. - . : u.w. - ; d. . : d. - . : c.p. ii. . : c.p. i. - , ; ii. ; u.w. ; d. - . * * * * * john fiske's writings. myths and myth-makers: old tales and superstitions interpreted by comparative mythology, _ th edition_. mo, $ . . outlines of cosmic philosophy. based on the doctrine of evolution, with criticisms on the positive philosophy. _ th edition_. vols., vo, $ . the unseen world, and other essays, _ th edition_. mo, $ . . excursions of an evolutionist. _ th edition_. mo, $ . . darwinism, and other essays. _ th edition_. mo, $ . . the destiny of man, viewed in the light of his origin. _ th edition_. mo, $ . . the idea of god, as affected by modern knowledge. a sequel to "the destiny of man." _ th thousand_. mo, $ . . the critical period of american history. - . _ th edition_. crown vo, $ . . the beginnings of new england or the puritan theocracy in its relations to civil and religious liberty. _ th thousand_. crown vo, $ . . the war of independence. in riverside library for young people. mo, cents. the discovery and spanish conquest of america. with maps, _ th thousand_. vols., crown vo, $ . . the american revolution. _ th thousand_. vols., crown vo, $ . . civil government in the united states. considered with some reference to its origins. _ th thousand._ crown vo, $ . , _net_. houghton, mifflin & co. boston and new york. * * * * * american political ideas, viewed from the stand-point of universal history. _seventh edition_. mo, $ . . harper & brothers, new york. the writings of john fiske. the discovery of america. _with some account of ancient america and the spanish conquest. with a steel portrait of mr. fiske, reproductions of many old maps, several modern maps, facsimiles, and other illustrations. vols. crown vo, $ . ._ _large-paper edition. limited to copies. vols. vo, $ . , net._ this work forms the beginning of mr. fiske's history of america. it is, perhaps, the most important single portion yet completed by him, and gives the results of vast research. the american revolution. _with plans of battles, and a new steel portrait of washington, engraved by willcox from a miniature never before reproduced. vols. crown vo, gilt top, $ . ._ the reader may turn to these volumes with full assurance of faith for a fresh rehearsal of the old facts, which no time can stale, and for new views of those old facts, according to the larger framework of ideas in which they can now be set by the master of a captivating style and an expert in historical philosophy.--_new york evening post_. the freshness and vivid interest of the narrative and the comprehensive generalization which springs naturally from the author's plan of a large work on american history, of which the two volumes now published are no more than a third or a fourth part, make it a book of new and permanent interest.--_springfield republican_. civil government in the united states _considered with some reference to its origins. with questions on the text by frank a. hill, and bibliographical notes by mr. fiske. mo, $ . , net._ if this admirable volume (fiske's "civil government") can be fairly taught to our rising generation, the future, we believe, will show that mr. fiske has never done more useful work than in its preparation.--_the congregationalist_ (boston). the critical period of american history. - . _with map, notes, etc. crown vo, $ . ._ the author combines in an unusual degree the impartiality of the trained scholar with the fervor of the interested narrator.... the volume should be in every library in the land.--_the congregationalist_ (boston). an admirable book.... mr. fiske has a great talent for making history interesting to the general reader.--_new york times_. the beginnings of new england; _or, the puritan theocracy in its relations to civil and religious liberty. crown vo, $ . ._ it deals with the early colonial history of new england in the entertaining and vivid style which has marked all of mr. fiske's writings on american history, and it is distinguished, like them, by its aggressive patriotism and its justice to all parties in controversy.... the whole book is novel and fresh in treatment, philosophical and wise, and will not be laid down till one has read the last page, and remains impatient for what is still to come.--_boston post_. the war of independence. _in riverside library for young people. with maps. mo, cents._ john fiske's "war of independence" is a miracle.... a book brilliant and effective beyond measure.... it is a statement that every child can comprehend, but that only a man of consummate genius could have written.--mrs. caroline h. dall, _in the springfield republican_. the story of the revolution, as mr. fiske tells it, is one of surpassing interest. his treatment is a marvel of clearness and comprehensiveness; discarding non-essential details, he selects with a fine historic instinct the main currents of history, traces them with the utmost precision, and tells the whole story in a masterly fashion. his little volume will be a text-book for older quite as much as for young readers.--_christian union_ (new york). outlines of cosmic philosophy _based on the doctrine of evolution, with criticisms on the positive philosophy. in two volumes. vo, $ . ._ "you must allow me to thank you for the very great interest with which i have at last slowly read the whole of your work.... i never in my life read so lucid an expositor (and therefore thinker) as you are; and i think that i understand nearly the whole, though perhaps less clearly about cosmic theism and causation than other parts. it is hopeless to attempt out of so much to specify what has interested me most, and probably you would not care to hear. it pleased me to find that here and there i had arrived, from my own crude thoughts, at some of the same conclusions with you, though i could seldom or never have given my reasons for such conclusions."--charles darwin. this work of mr. fiske's may be not unfairly designated the most important contribution yet made by america to philosophical literature.--_the academy_ (london). darwinism, and other essays. if ever there was a spirit thoroughly invigorated by the "joy of right understanding" it is that of the author of these pieces. even the reader catches something of his intellectual buoyancy, and is thus carried almost lightly through discussions which would be hard and dry in the hands of a less animated writer.... no less confident and serene than his acceptance of the utmost logical results of recent scientific discovery is mr. fiske's assurance that the foundations of spiritual truths, so called, cannot possibly be shaken thereby.--_the atlantic monthly_ (boston). the unseen world, _and other essays. mo, $ . ._ to each study the writer seems to have brought, besides an excellent quality of discriminating judgment, full and fresh special knowledge, that enables him to supply much information on the subject, whatever it may be, that is not to be found in the volume he is noticing. to the knowledge, analytical power, and faculty of clear statement, that appear in all these papers, mr. fiske adds a just independence of thought that conciliates respectful consideration of his views, even when they are most at variance with the commonly accepted ones.--_boston advertiser_. excursions of an evolutionist. _ mo, $ . ._ among our thoughtful essayists there are none more brilliant than mr. john fiske. his pure style suits his clear thought. he does not write unless he has something to say; and when he does write he shows not only that he has thoroughly acquainted himself with the subject but that he has to a rare degree the art of so massing his matter as to bring out the true value of the leading points in artistic relief. it is this perspective which makes his work such agreeable reading even on abstruse subjects, and has enabled him to play the same part in popularizing spencer in this country that littré performed for comte in france, and dumont for bentham in england. the same qualities appear to good advantage in his new volume, which contains his later essays on his favorite subject of evolution.... they are well worth reperusal.--_the nation_ (new york). myths and myth-makers. _old tales and superstitions interpreted by comparative mythology. mo, $ . ._ mr. fiske has given us a book which is at once sensible and attractive, on a subject about which much is written that is crotchety or tedious.--w.r.s. ralston, in _athenæum_ (london). a perusal of this thorough work cannot be too strongly recommended to all who are interested in comparative mythology.--_revue critique_ (paris). the destiny of man, _viewed in the light of his origin. mo, gilt top, $ . ._ mr. fiske has given us in his "destiny of man" a most attractive condensation of his views as expressed in his various other works. one is charmed by the directness and clearness of his style, his simple and pure english, and his evident knowledge of his subject.... of one thing we may be sure, that none are leading us more surely or rapidly to the full truth than men like the author of this little book, who reverently study the works of god for the lessons which he would teach his children.--_christian union_ (new york). the idea of god, _as affected by modern knowledge. mo, gilt top, $ . ._ the charms of john fiske's style are patent. the secrets of its fluency, clearness, and beauty are secrets which many a maker of literary stuffs has attempted to unravel, in order to weave like cloth-of-gold.... a model for authors and a delight to readers.--_the critic_ (new york). *** _for sale by all booksellers. sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price by the publishers,_ houghton, mifflin & co. _ park street, boston; east th street, new york._ * * * * * [illustration: fossil man of mentone. (from popular science monthly, october, .)] was man created? by henry a. mott, jr., e.m., ph.d., etc., _member of the american chemical society, member of the berlin chemical society, member of the new york academy of sciences, member of the american association for the advancement of science, member of the american pharmaceutical association, fellow of the geographical society, etc., etc._ author of the "chemists' manual," "adulteration of milk," "artificial butter," "testing the value of rifles by firing under water," etc., etc. new york: griswold & company, nassau street. . copyright by henry a. mott, jr., . trow's printing and bookbinding co., _ - east th st._, new york. electrotyped by smith & mcdougal, beekman street, n. y. preface. this work was originally written to be delivered as a lecture; but as its pages continued to multiply, it was suggested to the author by numerous friends that it ought to be published in book-form; this, at last, the author concluded to do. this work, therefore, does not claim to be an exhaustive discussion of the various departments of which it treats; but rather it has been the aim of the author to present the more interesting observations in each department in as concise a form as possible. the author has endeavored to give credit in every instance where he has taken advantage of the labors of others. this work is not intended for that class of people who are so absolutely certain of the truth of their religion and of the immortality that it teaches, that they have become unqualified to entertain or even perceive of any scientific objection; for such people may be likened unto those who, "_seeing, they see, but will not perceive; and hearing, they hear, but will not understand._" this work is written for the man of culture who is seeking for truth--believing, as does the author, that all truth is god's truth, and therefore it becomes the duty of every scientific man to accept it; knowing, however, that it will surely modify the popular creeds and methods of interpretation, its final result can only be to the glory of god and to the establishment of a more exalted and purer religion. all facts are truths; it consequently follows that all scientific facts are truths--there is no half-way house--a statement is either a truth or it is not a truth, according to the _law of non-contradiction_. if, therefore, we find tabulated amongst scientific facts (or truths) a statement which is not a fact, it is not science; but all statements which are facts it naturally follows are truths, and as such must be accepted, no matter how repulsive they may at first seem to some of our poetical imaginings and pet theories. we cannot help but sympathize with the feelings which prompted president barnard to write the following lines, still we will see he was too hasty: "much as i love truth in the abstract," he says, "i love my hope of immortality more." * * * he maintained that it is better to close one's eyes to the evidences than to be convinced of the _truth_ of certain doctrines which _he regards_ as subversive of the fundamentals of christian faith. "if this (is all) is the best that science can give me, then i pray no more science. let me live on in my simple ignorance, as my fathers lived before me; and when i shall at length be summoned to my final repose, let me still be able to fold the drapery of my couch about me, and lie down to pleasant, even though they be deceitful, dreams."[ ] the limitations to the acceptance of truth that president barnard makes is wrong; for, as professor winchell has said, "we think it is a higher aspiration to wish to know 'the truth and the whole truth.' at the same time, we have not the slightest apprehension that the whole truth can ever dissipate our faith in a future life."[ ] let us "prove all things and hold fast unto that which is good," recognizing the fact that "the truth-seeker is the only god-seeker." author january , . table of contents. page preface v, vi chart of man's development - protoplasm cells life vital force analysis of man unity of organic and inorganic nature spontaneous generation the coming into existence of man evolution theories of the world's formation the bible kant's cosmogony , nature a perpetual creation laws of evolution survival of the fittest rudimentary organs reproduction by means of eggs double-sexed individuals inheritance artificial monsters acquired qualities geological record ontogeny the attributes of man muscular force thought force the attributes of animals the attributes of a savage language faith true conscience belief in god proof of the existence of god unity of all nature soul the finite senses of man the unseen universe manifestations of god hope of immortality - was man created? haeckel's chart of man's development, arranged by henry a. mott, jr., ph. d. = . americans.= (_indians._) | | esquimaux. | | | hyperboreans. magyars. | | | = . arctic men.= | | | fins. +------+------+ | | tungusians. calmucks. tartars. | samoides. | | | | | | +-----------+-------+----+-------+ +---+--+ | | altaians. uralians. | | +-----------------+-------+ japanese. chinese. siamese. | | | tibet. | | | | | | ural-altaians. coreans. +-------+-------+ | | | | | indo-chinese. | coreo-japanese. | | | | | +----+--------------+-----------------+ | indo-germanians. | semites. basques. | caucasians. | | | | | | +----------+--+--------+------------+ | | | = . mediteranese.= | | | singalese. | fulatians. | | | | | deccans. | dongolese. | | | = . dradidas.= | = . nubians.= | | | | | +----+--+--------+ | polynesians. | | | madagascars. euplocomi. = . negroes.= | | | | | | +-----+---+ | = . kaffirs.= | | | | | | | sundanesians. | +---+----+ | | | | = . mongols= = . malays= | eriocomi. | | | | +------------+--------------+ | promalays. = . hottentots=| | = . papuans.= | | | = . australians.= | | | | | +---+-------+ | +--+--+ | | | | | euthycomi. lophocomi. | | | | | +----+----------+ | | lissotrichi (_straight-haired_) ulotrichi (_woolly-haired_). | | +------------+----------+ | =alali= (_speechless men_). =pithecanthropi= (_ape-like men_). | v | primeval men. | | satyrus engeco gorilla | (_orang_). hylobates (_chimpanzee_). (_gorilla_). | | (_gibbon_). | | | | | +---------------+ +---------+------------+ | | african asiatic (_man-like apes_). (_man-like apes_). | | +-------------------------------------+ | | nasalis anthropoides semnopithecus (_nose apes_). (_man-like apes_). (_tall apes_). | | | | | +-------------+ | | arctopitheci labidocera | cercopithecus cynocephalus (_silk-apes_). (_clutch-tails_). | (_sea-cat_). (_pavian_). | | | | | +----------------+ +--------+---------------+ | | aphyocera catarrhina menocerca (_flap-tails_). (_tailed, narrow-nosed apes_). platyrhinæ catarrhinæ (_flat-nosed apes_). (_narrow-nosed_). | | +--------------------------------+ | simiæ (_apes_). brachytarsi | (_lemurs_). | | +--------------+ proboscidea | pinnipedia (_elephants_). | (_marine animals lamnungia | | of prey_). (_rock-conies_). | | nycterides | | | | (_bats_). carnivora +-------------+ | | (_land animals | | pterocynes of prey_). chelophora | (_flying foxes_). | (_pseudo-hoofed_). | | carnaria | | chiroptera (_animals rodentia | (_flying animals_). of prey_). (_gnawing animals_). | | | | | +------------------+ | leptodactyla | | | (_fingered | insectivora | animals_). | (_insect eaters_). | | | | +-----------+ | | | | | +----------------+------------------+ | prosimiÆ sarcoceta (_true whales_). prosimiÆ (_brought forward_,) | (_semi-apes_). sirenia (_sea-cows_). cetacea (_whales_). | ungulata edentata deciduata (_hoofed animals_). (_poor in teeth_). (_deciduous animals_). | | | +--------+----------------+ | | | indeciduous | (_indeciduata_). | | | +-------------------------------------+--------+ | placentalia (_placental animals_). | marsupialia | marsupialia botanophaga | zoophaga (_herbivorous_ | (_carnivorous_ _marsupials_). | _marsupials_). | | | +--------------------------+-------------+ | ornithostoma marsupialia (_beaked animals_). (_marsupial_). | | +---------------------------+-------+ | promammalia (_glacal animals_). mammalia (_mammals_). aves (_birds_). | | | reptilia (_reptiles_). | | | +---------------+---------+ | teleostei halisauria | (_osseous fish_). (_sea-dragons_). amniota (_amnion animals_). | dipneusta | | | (_mud-fish_). | amphibia (_batrachians_). ganoidei | | | (_ganoid fish_). +----------+-------+--------------+ | | | amphipneumones | (_vertebrate animals, breathing through lungs_). | | +--+------------------------------+ | selachii (_primeval fish_). | pisces (_fishes_). | | amphirrhina cyclostoma (_double nostrils_). (_round-mouthed_). | | +----------------------------------------------+--------+ | monorrhina (_single-nostriled_). craniota (_animals with skulls_). leptocardia | (_tube-hearted_). | | | thaliacea. +--------+--------+ (_sea-barrels_). ascidiæ. | | | acrania +--------+-------+ (_skull-less animals_). | tunicata vertebrata (_tunicate animals_). (_vertebrate animals_). | | +-------------------+---------+ | vermes (_worms_). | zoophytes | (_animal trees_). | | | +-----+-----+ | protozoa (_primeval animals_). animal monera. | | vegetable monera. | neutral monera. | | | +---------------------+-------------------+ | archigonic monera (_pieces of protoplasm which have originated by spontaneous generation._) was man created? what science can answer. "the object of science is not to find out what we like or what we dislike--the object of science is truth." in the discussion of the subject, "_was man created?_" our object will be--not to study the many ways god might have created him, but the way he actually did create him, for all ways would be alike easy to an omnipotent being. let us look at man and ask the question: what is there about him which would need an independent act of creation any more than about the "mountain of granite or the atom of sand"? the answer comes back: besides life, man has many mental attributes. let us direct our attention at first to the grand phenomena of life, and then to man's attributes. to discover the nature of life, to find out what life really is, it would be folly to commence by comparing man, the perfection of living beings, with an inorganic or inanimate substance like a brick, to discover the hidden secret; for, as professor orton says:[ ] "that only is essential to life which is common to all forms of life. our brains, stomach, livers, hands and feet are luxuries. they are necessary to make us human, but not living beings." instead of man, then, it will be necessary for us to take the simplest being which possesses such a phenomena; and such are the little homogeneous specks of protoplasm, constituting the group _monera_, which are entirely destitute of structure, and to which the name "cytode" has been given. in the fresh waters in the neighborhood of jena minute lumps of protoplasm were discovered by haeckel, which, on being examined under the most powerful lens of a microscope, were seen to have no constant form, their outlines being in a state of perpetual change, caused by the protrusion from various parts of their surface of broad lobes and thick finger-like projections, which, after remaining visible for a time, would be withdrawn, to make their appearance again on some other part of the surface. to this little mass of protoplasm haeckel has given the name _protanæba primitiva_. these little lumps multiply by spontaneous division into two pieces, which, on becoming dependent, increase in size and acquire all the characteristics of the parent. from this illustration, it will be seen that "reproduction is a form of nutrition and a growth of the individual to a size beyond that belonging to it as an individual, so that a part is thus elevated into a (new) whole." it is to this simple state of the monera the _fertilized_ egg of any animal is transformed--the germ vesicle; the original egg kernel disappears, and the parent kernel (cytococcus) forms itself anew; and it is in this condition, a non-nucleated ball of protoplasm, a true cytod, a homogeneous, structureless body, without different constituent parts, that the human child, as well as all other living beings, take their first steps in development. no matter how wonderful this may seem, the fact stares us in the face that the entire human child, as well as every animal with all their great future possibilities, are in their first stage a small ball of this complex homogeneous substance. whether we consider "a mere infinitesimal ovoid particle which finds space and duration enough to multiply into countless millions in the body of a living fly, and then of the wealth of foliage, the luxuriance of flower and fruit which lies between this bald sketch of a plant and the gigantic pine of california, towering to the dimensions of a cathedral spire, or the indian fig which covers acres with its profound shadow, and endures while nations and empires come and go around its vast circumference," or we look "at the other half of the world of life, picturing to ourselves the great finner whale, hugest of beasts that live or have lived, disporting his eighty or ninety feet of bone, muscle, and blubber, with easy roll, among the waves in which the stoutest ship that ever left dock-yard would founder hopelessly, and contrast him with the invisible animalcule, mere gelatinous specks, multitudes of which could in fact dance upon the point of a needle with the same ease as the angels of the schoolman could in imagination;--with these images before our minds, it would be strange if we did not ask what community of form or structure is there between the fungus and the fig-tree, the animalcule and the whale? and, _à fortiori_, between all four? notwithstanding these apparent difficulties, a threefold unity--namely, a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition--does pervade the whole living world."[ ] and this unit is protoplasm. so we see it is necessary for us to retreat to our protoplasm as a naked formless plasma, if we would find freed from all non-essential complications the agent to which has been assigned the duty of building up structure and of transforming the energy of lifeless matter into the living. even goethe (in ) almost stated this when he said: "plants and animals, regarded in their most imperfect condition, are hardly distinguishable. this much, however, we may say, that from a condition in which plant is hardly to be distinguished from animal, creatures have appeared, gradually perfecting themselves in two opposite directions--the plant is finally glorified into the tree, enduring and motionless; the animal into the human being of the highest mobility and freedom." let us examine for a moment this substance protoplasm, and see in what way it differs from inorganic matter, or in what way the animate differs from the inanimate--the living from the dead. felix dujardin, a french zoologist ( ) pointed out that the only living substance in the body of rhizopods and other inferior primitive animals, is identical with protoplasm. he called it _sarcode_. hugo von mohl ( ) first applied the name protoplasm to the peculiar serus and mobile substance in the interior of vegetable cells; and he perceived its high importance, but was very far from understanding its significance in relation to all organisms. not, however, until ferdinand cohn ( ) and more fully franz unger ( ) had established the identity of the animate and contractile protoplasm in vegetable cells and the sarcode of the lower animals, could max shultz in - elaborate the protoplasm theory of the sarcode so as to proclaim protoplasm to be the most essential and important constituent of all organic cells, and to show that the bag or husk of the cell, the cellular membrane and intercellular substance, are but secondary parts of the cell, and are frequently wanting. in a similar manner lionel beale ( ) gave to protoplasm, including the cellular germ, the name of "germinal matter," and to all the other substance entering into the composition of tissue, being secondary, and produced the name of "formed matter." "wherever there is life there is protoplasm; wherever there is protoplasm, there, too, is life." the physical consistence of protoplasm varies with the amount of water with which it is combined, from the solid form in which we find it in the dormant state to the thin watery state in which it occurs in the leaves of valisneria. as to its composition, chemistry can as yet give but scanty information; it can tell that it is composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, and phosphorus, and it can also tell the percentage of each element, but it cannot give more than a formula that will express it as a whole, giving no information as to the nature of the numerous albuminoid substances which compose it. edward cope, in his article on comparative anatomy,[ ] gives the formula for protoplasm (as a whole), c{ }h{ }n{ }o{ } + s and p, in small quantities under some circumstances. it is therefore, he says, a nitryl of cellulose: c{ }h{ }o{ } + nh{ }. according to mulder the composition of albumen, one of the class of protein substances to which protoplasm belongs, is (c{ }h{ }n{ }o{ }) + s{ }p. protoplasm is identical in both the animal and vegetable kingdom; it behaves the same from whatever source it may be derived towards several re-agents, as also electricity. is it possible, then, that the protoplasm which produces the mould is exactly the same composition as that which produces the human child? the answer is yes, so far as the elements are concerned, but the proportions of carbon, hydrogen, etc., must enter into an infinite number of diverse stratifications and combination in the production of the various forms of life. professor frankland, speaking of protein, for instance, says it is capable of existing under probably at least a thousand isomeric forms. protoplasm may be distinguished under the microscope from other members of the class to which it belongs, on account of the faculty it possesses of combining with certain coloring matters, as carmine and aniline; it is colored dark-red or yellowish-brown by iodine and nitric acid, and it is coagulated by alcohol and mineral acids as well as by heat. it possesses the quality of absorbing water in various quantities, which renders it sometimes extremely soft and nearly liquid, and sometimes hard and firm like leather. its prominent physical properties are excitability and contractility, which kühne and others have especially investigated. the motion of protoplasm in plants was first made known by bonaventure corti a century ago in the charoe plants; but this important fact was forgotten, and it had to be discovered by treviranus in . the regular motion of the protoplasm, forming a perfect current, may be seen in the hairs of the nettle, and weighty evidence exists that similar currents occur in all young vegetable cells. "if such be the case," says huxley, "the wonderful noonday silence of a tropical forest is, after all, due only to the dullness of our hearing, and could our ears catch the murmur of these tiny maelstroms, as they whirl in innumerable myriads of living cells, which constitute each tree, we should be stunned as with a roar of a great city." one step higher in the scale of life than the monera is the vegetable or animal cell, which arose out of the monera by the important process of segregation in their homogeneous viscid bodies, the differentiation of an inner kernel from the surrounding plasma. by this means the great progress from a simple cytod (without kernel) into a real cell (with kernel) was accomplished. some of these cells at an early stage encased themselves by secreting a hardened membrane; they formed the first vegetable cells, while others remaining naked developed into the first aggregate of animal cells. the vegetable cell has usually two concentric coverings--cell-wall and primordial utricle. in animal cells the former is wanting, the membrane representing the utricle. as a general fact, also, animal cells are smaller than vegetable cells. their size[ ] varies greatly, but are generally invisible to the naked eye, ranging from / to / of an inch in diameter. about four thousand of the smallest would be required to cover the dot put over the letter i in writing. the shape of cells varies greatly; the normal form, though, is spheroidal as in the cells of fat, but they often become[ ] many-sided--sometimes flattened as in the cuticle, and sometimes elongated into a simple filament as in fibrous tissue or muscular fibre. the cell, therefore, is extremely interesting, since all animal and vegetable structure is but the multiplication of the cell as a unit, and the whole life of the plant or animal is that of the cells which compose them, and in them or by them all its vital processes are carried on. it may sound paradoxical to speak of an animal or plant being composed of millions of cells; but beyond the momentary shock of the paradox no harm is done. the cell, then, can be regarded as the basis of our physiological idea of the elementary organism; but in the animal as well as in the plant, neither cell-wall nor nucleus is an essential constituent of the cell, inasmuch as bodies which are unquestionably the equivalents of cells--true morphological units--may be mere masses of protoplasm, devoid alike of cell-wall or nucleus. for the whole living world, then, the primary and a mental form of life is merely an individual mass of protoplasm in which no further structure is discernible. well, then, has protoplasm been called the "universal concomitant of every phenomena of life." life is inseparable from this substance, but is dormant unless excited by some external stimulant, such as heat, light, electricity, food, water, and oxygen. although we have seen that the life of the plant as well as of the animal is protoplasm, and that the protoplasm of the plant and that of the animal bear the closest resemblance, yet plants can manufacture protoplasm out of mineral compounds, whereas animals are obliged to procure it ready made, and hence in the end depend on plants. "without plants," says professor orton, "animals would perish; without animals, plants had no need to be." the food of a plant is a matter whose energy is all expended--is a fallen weight. but the plant organism receives it, exposes it to the sun's rays, and in a way mysterious to us converts the actual energy of the sunlight into potential energy within it. it is for this reason that life has been termed "bottled-sunshine." the principal food of the plant consists of carbon united with oxygen to form carbonic acid, hydrogen united with oxygen to form water, and nitrogen united with hydrogen to form ammonia. these elements thus united, which in themselves are perfectly lifeless, the plant is able to convert into living protoplasm. "plants are," says huxley, "the accumulators of the power which animals distribute and disperse." boussengault found long since that peas sown in pure sand, moistened with distilled water and fed by the air, obtained all the carbon necessary for their development, flowering, and fructification. here we see a plant which not only maintains its vigor on these few substances, but grows until it has increased a millionfold or a million-millionfold the quantity of protoplasm it originally possessed, and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of life. this and other proof led m. dumas to say: "from the loftiest point of view, and in connection with the physics of the globe, it would be imperative on us to say that in so far as their truly organic elements are concerned, plants and animals are the offspring of the air." schleiden,[ ] speaking of the haymakers of switzerland and the tyrol, says: "he mows his definite amount of grass every year on the alps, inaccessible to cattle, and gives not back the smallest quantity of organic substance to the soil. whence comes the hay, if not from the atmosphere." it has been seen, then, that plants can manufacture protoplasm, a faculty which animals are not possessed of; they at best can only convert dead protoplasm into living protoplasm. thus when vegetable or meat is cooked their protoplasm dies, but is not rendered incompetent of resuming its old functions as a matter of life. "if i," says huxley, "should eat a piece of cooked mutton, which was once the living protoplasm of a sheep, the protoplasm, rendered dead by cooking, will be changed into living protoplasm, and thus i would transubstantiate sheep into man; and were i to return to my own place by sea and undergo shipwreck, the crustacean might and probably would return the compliment, and demonstrate our common nature by turning my protoplasm into living lobster." as has been said before, where there are life manifestations there is protoplasm. life is regarded by one class of thinkers as the principle or cause of organization; and according to the other, life is the product or effect of organization. we must, however, agree with professor orton, who says: "life is the effect of organization, not the result of it. animals do not live because they are organized, but are organized because they are alive." in whatever way it is looked at, life is but a forced condition. "the more advanced thinkers, then, in science to-day," says barker, "therefore look upon the life of the living form as inseparable from its substance, and believe that the former is purely phenomenal and only a manifestation of the latter. during the existence of a special force as such, they retain the term only to express the sum of the phenomena of living beings. the word life must be regarded, then, as only a generalized expression signifying the sum-total of the properties of matter possessing such organization." in what manner, then, does this matter, possessing the phenomena of life, differ from inorganic matter, or in what manner does living matter differ from matter not living? the forces which are at work on the one side are at work on the other. the phenomena of life are all dependent upon the working of the same physical and chemical forces as those which are active in the rest of the world. it may be convenient to use the terms "vitality" and "vital force" to denote the cause of certain groups of natural operations, as we employ the names of "electricity" and "electrical force" to denote others; but it ceases to do so, if such a name implies the absurd assumption that either "electricity" or "vitality" is an entity, playing the part of a sufficient cause of electrical or vital phenomena. a mass of living protoplasm is simply a machine of great complexity, the total result of the work of which, or its vital phenomena, depend on the one hand upon its construction, and on the other upon the energy supplied to it; and to speak of "vitality" as anything but the names of a series of operations is as if one should talk of the "horologity" of a clock.[ ] when hydrogen and oxygen are united by an electrical spark water is produced; certainly there is no parity between the liquid produced and the two gases. at ° f., oxygen and hydrogen are elastic gaseous bodies, whose particles tend to fly away from one another; water at the same temperature is a strong though brittle solid. such changes are called the properties of water. it is not assumed that a certain something called "acquosity" has entered into and taken possession of the oxide of hydrogen as soon as formed, and then guarded the particles in the facets of the crystal or amongst the leaflets of the hoar-frost. on the contrary, it is hoped molecular physics will in time explain the phenomena. "what better philosophical status," says huxley,[ ] "has vitality than acquosity. if the properties of water may be properly said to result from the nature and disposition of its molecules, i can find no intelligible ground for refusing to say that the properties of protoplasm result from the nature and disposition of its molecules." "to distinguish the living from the dead body," herbert spencer says, "the tree that puts out leaves when the spring brings change of temperature, the flower which opens and closes with the rising and setting of the sun, the plant that droops when the soil is dry and re-erects itself when watered, are considered alive because of these produced changes; in common with the zoophyte, which contracts on the passing of a cloud over the sun, the worm that comes to the ground when continually shaken, and the hedgehog which rolls itself up when attacked." "seeds of wheat produced antecedent to the pharaohs," says bastain,[ ] "remaining in egyptian catacombs through century after century display of course no vital manifestations, but nevertheless retain the potentiality of growing into perfect plants whenever they may be brought into contact with suitable external conditions. we must presume that either ( ) during this long lapse of centuries the 'vital principle' of the plant has been imprisoned in the most dreary and impenetrable of dungeons, whither no sister effluence from the general 'soul of nature' could affect it; or else ( ) that the germ of the future living plant is there only in the form of an inherited structure, whose molecular complexities are of such a kind that, after moisture has restored mobility to its atoms, its potential life may pass into actual life. some of the lowest forms of animals and plants have such a tenacity to life that their vital manifestation may be kept in abeyance for five, ten, fifteen, or even twenty years. though not living any more than the wheat, they also retain the potentiality of manifestation of life; and for each alike, in order that this potentiality may pass into actuality, the first requisition is water with which to restore them to that possibility of molecular rearrangement under the influence of incident forces, of which the absence of water had deprived them, and without which, life in any real sense is impossible." analysis of a man. (by prof. miller.) a man feet inches high, weighing pounds. lbs. oz. grs. oxygen hydrogen carbon nitrogen inorganic elements in the ash: phosphorus calcium sulphur chlorine ounce = grains. sodium iron potassium magnesium silica total the quantity of the substances found in a human body weighing pounds: lbs. oz. grs. water gelatin albumen fibrine fat ashes total (from the "chemists' manual.") professor owen[ ] says: "there are organisms (vibrieo, rotifer, macrobiotus, etc.) which we can devitalize and revitalize--devive and revive--many times. as the dried animalcule manifest no phenomena suggesting any idea contributing to form the complex one of 'life' in my mind, i regard it to be as completely lifeless as is the drowned man, whose breath and heat have gone, and whose blood has ceased to circulate. * * * the change of work consequent on drying or drowning forthwith begins to alter relations or compositions, and in time to a degree adverse to resumption of the vital form of force, a longer period being needed for this effect in the rotifer, a shorter one in the man, still shorter it may be in the amoeba." "there is," says dumas,[ ] "an eternal round in which death is quickened and life appears, but in which matter merely changes its place and form." let us now compare the inorganic world with the organic--the inanimate with the animate--and see if there does exist an inseparable boundary between them. the fundamental properties of every natural body are matter, form, and force. one important point to be noticed is, that the elements which compose all animate bodies are the very elements that help to build up the inanimate bodies. no new elements appear in the vegetable or animal world which are not to be found in the inorganic world. the difference between animate and inanimate bodies, therefore, is certainly not in the elements which form them, but in the molecular combination of them; and it is to be hoped that molecular physics will, at some not far distant time, enlighten us as to the peculiar state of aggregation in which the molecules exist in living matter. as to the form, it is impossible to find any essential difference in the external form and inner structure between inorganic and organic bodies--for the simple monad, which is as much a living organism as the most complex being, is nothing but a homogeneous, structureless mass of protoplasm. but just as the inorganic substance, according to well-defined laws, elaborates its structure into a crystal of great beauty, so does the protoplasm elaborate itself into the most beautiful of all structures--the cell unit. just as gold and copper crystallizes in a geometrical form, a cube--bismuth and antimony in a hexagonal, iodine and sulphur in a rhombic form--so we find among radiolaria, and among other protista and lower forms, that they "may be traced to a mathematical, fundamental form, and whose form in its whole, as well as in its parts, is bounded by definite geometrically determinable planes and angles." now, as to the forces of the two different groups of bodies. surely the constructive force of a crystal is due to the chemical composition, and to its material constitution. as the shape of the crystal and its size are influenced by surrounding circumstances, there is, therefore, an external constructive force at work. the only difference between the growth of an organism and that of a crystal is, that in the former case, in consequence of its semi-fluid state of aggregation, the newly added particles penetrate into the interior of the organism (inter-susception), whereas inorganic substances receive homogeneous matter from without, only by opposition or an addition of new particles to the surface. "if we, then, designate the growth and the formation of organisms as a process of life, we may with equal reason apply the same term with the developing crystal." it is for these and other reasons, demonstrating as they do the "unity of organic and inorganic nature," the essential agreement of inorganic and organic bodies in matter, form, and force, which led tyndall[ ] to say: "abandoning all disguise, the confession that i feel bound to make before you is, that i prolong the vision backward across the boundary of experimental evidence, and discern in that matter which we in our ignorance, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of every form and quality of life." returning now to our protoplasm, let us ask the question: where did it come from? or, how did it come into existence? though chemical synthesis has built up a number of organic substances which have been deemed the product of vitality, yet, up to the present day, the fact stands out before us that no one has ever built up one particle of living matter, however minute, from lifeless elements. the protoplasm of to-day is simply a continuation of the protoplasm of other ages, handed down to us through periods of undefinable and indeterminable time. the question of where protoplasm came from--how it arose--chemistry is unable to answer; but the question is answered, probably, by spontaneous generation. only the merest particle of living protoplasm was necessary to be formed from lifeless matter in the beginning; for, in the eyes of any consistent evolutionist, any further independent formation would be sheer waste, as the hypothesis of evolution postulates the unlimited, though perhaps not, indefinite modifiability of such matter. as we have seen that there exists no absolute barrier between organic and inorganic bodies, it is not so difficult to conceive that the first particle of protoplasm may have originated, under suitable conditions, out of inorganic or lifeless matter. but the causes which have led to the origination of this particle, it may be said, we know absolutely nothing--as in the formation of the crystal and the cell--the ultimate causes remain in both cases concealed from us. at the time in the earth's history when water, in a liquid state, made its appearance on the cooled crust of the earth, the carbon probably existed as carbonic acid dispersed in the atmosphere; and from the very best of grounds, it is reasonable to assume that the density and electric condition of the atmosphere were quite different, as also the chemical and physical nature of the primeval ocean was quite different. in any case, therefore, even[ ] if we do not know anything more about it, there remains the supposition, which can at least not be disputed, that at that time, under conditions quite different from those of to-day, a spontaneous generation, which is now perhaps no longer possible, may have taken place. this point is now conceded by most all of the advanced scientists of the day, and is absolutely necessary for the completion of the hypothesis of evolution. the answer may come to this--well, suppose the first protoplasm did originate by spontaneous generation, where did the elements or force come from which compose it? science has nothing to do with the coming into existence of matter or force, for she proves both to be indestructible; when they disappear, they do so only to reappear in some other form. the coming into existence of matter and force, as also the ultimate cause of all phenomena, is beyond the domain of scientific inquiry. science has only to do with the coming in of the form of matter, not the coming in of its existence. [illustration: fig. i.--a moneron (protamoeba) in act of reproduction; _a_, the whole moneron, which moves like ordinary amoeba, by means of variable processes: _b_, a contraction around its circumference parts it into two halves; _c_, the two halves separate, and each now forms independent individuals. (much enlarged.)--_haeckel._] [illustration: fig. ii.--_a_, is a crawling amoeba (much enlarged).--_haeckel._ the whole organism has the form-value of a naked cell and moves about by means of changeable processes, which are extended from the protoplasmic body and again drawn in. in the inside is the bright-colored, roundish cell-kernel or nucleus. _b_, egg-cell of a chalk sponge (olynthus).--_haeckel._] [illustration: fig. iii.--represents the next higher stage, mulberry-germ or morula (synamoeba).--_haeckel._] the coming into existence of man, by the slow process of development. it is necessary now to take up the little mass of living matter, admitting its coming into existence by spontaneous generation as probable, and so probable that it almost amounts to a certainty, and follow it through the many changes it is about to make under the influence of the laws which govern evolution until it has culminated in man, and these laws still acting on the brain of man, perfecting it, and leading him on to the comprehension of a grander and nobler conception of the almighty and of his works. the start, then, must be made with a homogeneous mass of protoplasm, such as the existing _protamoeba primitiva_ of the present day, which is a structureless organism without organs, and which came into existence during the laurentian period. it is to this simplified condition, as i have previously stated, all fertilized eggs return before they commence to develop. the first process of adaptation effected by the monera must have been the condensation of an external crust, which, as a protecting covering, shut in the softer interior from the hostile influences of the outer world. as soon as, by condensation of the homogeneous moneron, a cell-kernel arose in the interior, and a membrane arose on the surface, all the fundamental parts of the unit were then furnished. such a unit was an organism, similar to the white corpuscle of the blood, and called _amoebæ_. here we have two different stages of evolution; the protoplasma (better plasson) of the cytod undergoes differentiation, and is split up into two kinds of albuminous substances--the inner cell-kernel (nucleus) and the outer cell-substance (protoplasma). edward von benden, in his work upon _gregarinæ_, first clearly pointed out this fact, that we must distinguish thoroughly between the plasson of cytods and the protoplasm of cells. an irrefutable proof that such single-celled primæval animals like the amoeba really existed as the direct ancestors of man, is furnished, according to the fundamental law of biogeny, by the fact that the human egg is nothing more than a simple cell. the next step taken in advance is the division of the cell in two;--there arise from the single germinal spot two new kernel specks, and then, in like manner, out of the germinal vesicle two new cell-kernels. the same process of cell-division now repeats itself several times in succession, and the products of the division form a perfect union. this organism may be called a community of _amoebæ_ (synamoebæ). from the community of amoeba morula, now arose ciliated larvæ. the cells lying on the surface extended hair-like processes or fringes of hair, which, by striking against the water, kept the whole body rotating--the lanceolate animals or amphioxus were thus first produced. here we find from the synamoebæ which crept about slowly at the bottom of the laurentian primeval ocean by means of movements like those of an amoeba, that the newly-formed planæa by the vibrating movements of the cilia, the entire multicellular body acquired a more rapid and stronger motion, and passed over from the creeping to the swimming mode of locomotion. the planæa consisted, then, of two kinds of cells--inner ones like the amoebæ, and external "ciliated cells." the ancestors of man, which possessed the form value of the ciliated larva, is, of course, extinct at the present day. [illustration: fig. i.--the norwegian flimmer-ball (magosphoera planula), swimming by means of its vibratile fringes; seen from the surface.--_haeckel._] [illustration: fig. ii.--the same in section. the pear-shaped cells are seen bound together in the centre of the gelatinous sphere by a thread-like process. each cell contains both a kernel and a contractile vesicle. (planÆa series.)--_haeckel._] [illustration: figs. iii and iv.--represents gastrÆa series. the body consists merely of a simple primitive intestine, the wall of which is formed of two primary germ-layers.--_haeckel._] [illustration: figs. i and ii.--represents the next higher stage (tubularia). fig. i, a simple gliding worm (rhabdocoelum); _m_, mouth; _sd_, throat-epithelium; _sm_, throat-muscles; _d_, stomach-intestine; _nc_, kidney-ducts; _nm_, opening of the kidneys; _au_, eye; _na_, nose-pit. fig. ii, the same gliding worm, showing the remaining organs; _g_, brain; _au_, eye; _na_, nose-pit; _n_, nerves; _h_, testes; [male symbol], male opening; [female symbol], female opening; _e_, ovary; _f_, ciliated outer-skin.--_haeckel._] [illustration: fig. iii.--represents soft worms (scolecida) and is a young acorn worm (balanoglossus), after _agassiz_. _r_, acorn-like proboscis; _h_, collar; _k_, gill-openings and gill-arches of the anterior intestine, in a long row, one behind the other, on each side; _d_, digestive posterior intestine, filling the greater part of the body cavity; _v_, intestinal vessel, lying between two parallel folds of the skin; _a_, anus.] out of the planula, then, develops an exceedingly important animal form--the gastrula (that is, larva with a stomach or intestine), which resembles the planula, but differs essentially in the fact that it encloses a cavity which opens to the outside by a mouth. the wall of the progaster (primary stomach) consists of two layers of cells: an outer layer of smaller ciliated cells (outer skin or ectoderm), and of an inner layer of large non-ciliated cells (inner skin or entoderm). this exceedingly important larval form, the "gastrula," makes its appearance in the ontogenesis of all tribes of animals. these gastræada must have existed during the older primordial period, and they must have also included the ancestors of man. a certain proof of this is furnished by the amphioxus, which, in spite of its blood relationship to man, still passes through the stage of the gastrula with a simple intestine and a double intestinal wall.[ ] by motion of the cilia or fringes of the skin-layer, the gastræa swam freely about in the laurentian ocean. the development of the gastræa now deviated in two directions--one branch of gastræads gave up free locomotion, adhered to the bottom of the sea, and thus, by adopting an adhesive mode of life, gave rise to the proascus, the common primary form of the animal plants (zoophyta). the other branch was originated by the formation of a middle germ-layer or muscular layer, and also by the further differentiation of the internal parts into various organs; more especially, the first formation of a nervous system, the simplest organs of sense, the simplest organs for secretion (kidneys), and generation (sexual organs)--this branch is the prothelmis, the common primary worms (vermes). like the turbellaria of the present day, the whole surface of their body was covered with cilia, and they possessed a simple body of an oval shape, entirely without appendages. these acoelomatous worms did not as yet possess a true body cavity (coelom) nor blood. no member of the next higher animals are in existence, neither are there any fossil remains, owing to the soft nature of their body. they are therefore called soft worms, or scoleceda. they developed out of the turbellaria of the sixth stage by forming a true body cavity (a coelom) and blood in their interior. the nearest still living coelomati is probably the acorn worms (balanoglossus). the form value of this stage must, moreover, have been represented by several different intermediate stages. out of the four different groups of the worm tribe, the four higher tribes of the animal kingdom were developed--the star-fishes (echinoderma) and insects (arthropoda) on the one hand, and the molluscs (mollusca) and vertebrated animals (vertebrata) on the other. out of certain coelomati, the most ancient skull-less vertebrata were directly developed. among the coelomati of the present day, the ascidians are the nearest relatives of this exceedingly remarkable worm, which connect the widely differing classes of invertebrate and vertebrate animals. to these animals have been given the name of sack-worms (himatega). they originated out of the worms of the seventh stage by the formation of a dorsal nerve marrow (medulla tube), and by the formation of the spinal rod (chorda dorsalis) which lies below it. it is just the position of this central spinal rod or axial skeleton, between the dorsal marrow on the dorsal side and the intestinal canal on the ventral side, which is most characteristic of all vertebrate animals, including man, but also of the larvæ of the ascidia. we now come to the second half of the series of human ancestors. the skull-less animal lancelet, which is still living, affords a faint idea of the members of this group (acrania). since this little animal, in its earliest embryonic state, entirely agrees with the ascidia, and in its further development shows itself to be a true vertebrate animal, it forms a direct transition from the vertebrata to the invertebrata. [illustration: fig. i.--appendicularia, seen from the left side, _m_, mouth; _k_, gill intestine; _o_, oesophagus; _v_, stomach; _a_, anus; _n_, nerve ganglia (upper throat-knots); _g_, ear vesicle; _f_, ciliated groove under the gill; _h_, heart; _e_, ovary; _c_, notochord; _s_, tail.--_haeckel._] [illustration: fig. ii.--represents sack worms (himatega), and is the structure of an ascidian, seen from the left. _sb_, gill-sac; _v_, stomach; _i_, large intestine; _c_, heart; _t_, testes; _vd_, seed duct; _o_, ovary; _o'_, matured eggs in the body cavity. after _milne-edwards_.] [illustration: fig. iii.--represents the acrania series. lancelet (amhioxus lanceolatus), twice the actual size, seen from the left. _a_, mouth-opening, surrounded by cilia; _b_, anal-opening; _c_, ventral-opening (porus abdominalis); _d_, gill-body; _e_, stomach; _f_, liver-coecum; _g_, large intestine; _h_, coelum; _i_, notochord (under it the aorta); _k_, arches of the aorta; _l_, main gill-artery; _m_, swellings on its branches; _n_, hollow vein; _o_, intestinal vein.--_haeckel._] [illustration: fig. i.--represents the monorhina series. lamprey (petromyzon americanus) from the atlantic--_orton._] [illustration: fig. ii.--represents the selachii. shark (carcharias vulgaris) from the atlantic--_orton._] [illustration: fig. iii.--represents the mud-fish (dipneusta). lepidosiren annecteus, one-fourth natural size; african rivers.--_orton._ form a link between typical fishes and the amphibians.] at this stage, most probably, the separation of the two sexes began. the simpler and most ancient form of sexual propagation is through double-sexed individuals (hermaphroditismus). it occurs in the great majority of plants, but only in a minority of animals; for example, in the garden-snails, leeches, earth-worms and many other worms. every single individual among hermaphrodites produces within itself materials of both sexes--egg and sperm. in most of the higher plants every blossom contains both the male organs (stamen and anther) and the female organs (style and germ). every garden-snail produces in one part of its sexual gland eggs, and in another sperm. many hermaphrodites can fructify themselves; in others, however, copulation and reciprocal fructification of both hermaphrodites are necessary for causing the development of the eggs. this latter case is evidently a transition to sexual separation (gonoehorismus). out of the members of the last group arose animals with skulls or craniata, having round mouths, and which are divided into hags and lampreys. the hags (myxinoides) have long cylindrical worm-like bodies. the lampreys (petromyxontes) includes those well known "nine eyes" common at the seaside. these single-nostril animals (monorrhina) arose during the primordial period out of the skull-less animals by the anterior end of the dorsal marrow developing into the brain, and the anterior end of the dorsal skull into the skull. by the division of the single nostril of the members of the last group into two lateral halves, by the formation of a sympathetic nervous system, a jaw skeleton, a swimming bladder and two pairs of legs (breast fins or fore-legs, and ventral fins or hind-legs), arose the primæval fish (selachii), which is best represented by the still-living shark (squalacei). out of the primæval fish arose the mud-fish (dipneusta), which is very imperfectly represented by the still-living salamander fish; the primæval fish adapting itself to land, and by the transforming of the swimming bladder into an air-breathing lung, and of the nasal cavity (which was now open into the mouth cavity) into air-passages. their organization _might_, in some respect, be like the ceratodus and proloptems; but this is not certain. the dipneusta is an intermediate stage between the selachii and amphibia. out of the dipneusta arose the class of amphibia, having five toes (the pentadactyla). the gill amphibians are man's most ancient ancestors of the class amphibia. besides possessing lungs as well as the mud-fish, they retain throughout life regular gills like the still-living proteus and axolotl. most gilled batrachia live in north america. the paddle-fins of the dipneusta changed into five-toed legs, which were afterwards transmitted to the higher vertebrata up to man. the gilled amphibia (sozobrachia) of the last group finally lost their gills but retained their tail, and tailed amphibians (sozura) were produced, such as the salamander and newt of the present day. out of the sozura originated the primæval amniota (protamnia) by the complete loss of the gills by the formation of the amnion of the cochlea, and of the round window in the auditory organ, and of the organ of tears. out of the protamnia originated the primary mammals (promammalia). the most closely related were the ornithostoma; they differed through having teeth in their jaws. no fossil remains of the primary mammals have as yet been found, although they lived during the trias period--they possessed a very highly developed jaw. from the primary mammal arose the pouched animals (marsupialia). numerous representatives of this group still exist: kangaroos, pouched rats and pouched dogs. the marsupial animals developed, very probably, in the mesolithic epoch (during the jura) out of the cloacal animals; by the division of the cloaca into the rectum and the urogenital sinus, by the formation of a nipple on the mammary gland, and the partial suppression of the clavicles. [illustration: figs. i and ii.--the ceratodus forsteri occur in the swamps of southern australia. form transition between fishes and amphibia.--_haeckel._] [illustration: fig. i.--represents the gilled amphibians (soyobranchia). the axolotl (siredon pisciforme), after tegetmeier. the ordinary form with persistent branchiæ.] [illustration: fig. ii.--proteus anguinus. europe.--_orton._] [illustration: fig. iii.--represents the tailed amphibians (soyura). great water-newt (triton cristatus), after _bell._] from the marsupialia originated a most interesting small group of semi-apes (prosimiæ), for they are the primary forms of genuine apes and consequently of man. they developed out of handed or ape-footed marsupials (pedumana), of rat-like appearance, by the formation of a placenta, the loss of the marsupium and the marsupial bones, and by the higher development of the commissures of the brain. the still-living short-footed semi-ape (brachytarsi), especially the muki, indie and lori, possess possibly a faint resemblance. out of the semi-apes developed two classes of genuine apes; but as the narrow-nosed or catarrhini class are the only ones related to man, the others will not be considered. these narrow-nosed apes originated by the transformation of the jaw, and by the claws on the toes changing into nails. the still-living long-tail nose-apes and holy apes (semnopithecus) probably resembled the oldest ancestors of this group. the tailed apes by the loss of their tail and some of their hair covering, and by the excessive development of that portion of their brain above the facial portion of the skull, developed into the man-like apes (anthropoides)--such as the gorilla and chimpanzee of africa, and the orang and gibbon of asia. the human ancestors of this group existed during the miocene period. from the anthropoides developed the ape-like men (pithecanthropi) during the tertiary period. the speechless primæval men (alali), then, is the connecting link between the man-like apes and man. the fore-hand of the anthropoides became the human hand, their hinder-hand a foot for walking. they did not possess the articulate human language of words and the higher developments, as consciousness and the formation of ideas must have been very imperfect. out of the pithecanthropi men developed genuine man, by the development of the animal language of sounds into a connected or articulate language of words--the brain also developed higher and higher. this transition took place, probably, at the beginning of the quaternary period, or possibly in the tertiary. we have now very briefly reviewed the principal outlines of the ancestors of man, showing that man has developed from the little mass of protoplasm, as have all animals and plants. he therefore was not _spontaneously_ created, but was developed. the question is often asked by simple-minded people, with much delight, why do we not behold the interesting spectacle of the transformation of a chimpanzee into a man, or conversely of a man by retrogression into an orang?--it only shows that they are not acquainted with the first principles of the doctrine of descent. "not one of the apes," says schmidt, "can revert to the state of his primordial ancestors, except by retrogression--by which a primordial condition is by no means attained--he cannot divest himself of his acquired characters fixed by heredity, nor can he exceed himself and become man; for man does not stand in the direct line of development from the ape. the development of the anthropoid apes has taken a lateral course from the nearest human progenitors, and man can as little be transformed into a gorilla as a squirrel can be changed into a rat." [illustration: fig. i.--salamandra maculata.--_haeckel_. the water newts and salamanders were the next higher stage after the proteus and the axolotl.] [illustration: fig. i.--represents primæval amniota (protamnia). lizard (lacerta), after _orton_.] [illustration: fig. ii.--represents primary mammals (promammalia). amniota series. duck-billed platypus (ornithorhynchus paradoxus).--_haeckel_.] "feeling evidently,"[ ] says haeckel, "rather than understanding, induces most people to combat the theory of their 'descent from apes.' it is simply because the organism of the ape appears a caricature of man, a distorted likeness of ourselves in a not very attractive form; because the customary æsthetic ideas and self-glorification of man are touched by this in so sensitive a point, that most men shrink from recognizing their descent from apes. it seems much pleasanter to be descended from a more highly developed divine being, and hence, as is well known, human vanity has from the earliest times flattered itself by assuming the original descent of the race from gods or demi-gods." evolution. in the last chapter a description was given of the various stages in man's development, from the microscopic monad up. it will be necessary now to describe briefly the various laws which have governed this evolutionary chain from the monad to man. but before proceeding directly to the subject, let us look at the doctrine of evolution as a whole, and trace it first in the formation of the world. the doctrine of evolution is also called the theory of development--it must not, however, be confused with darwinism--for they are not exactly synonymous. darwinism is an attempt to explain the laws or manner of evolution. strictly speaking, only the theory of selection should be called darwinism, which was established in . the theory of descent, or transmutation theory, or doctrine of filiation, should properly be called lamarckism, who for the first time worked out the theory of descent as an independent scientific theory of the first order, and as the philosophical foundation of the whole science of biology. "according to the theory of development (evolution) in its simplest form," says henry hartshorne,[ ] "the universe as it now exists is a result of 'an immense series of changes,' related to and dependent upon each other as successive steps, or rather growths, constituting a progress; analogous to the unfolding or evolving of the parts of a growing organism." herbert spencer defined evolution as consisting in a progress from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, from general to special, from the simple to the complex; and this process is considered to be traceable in the formation of worlds in space, in the multiplication of the types and species of plants and animals on the globe, in the origination and diversity of languages, literature, arts and sciences, and in all changes of human institutions and society. [illustration: fig. i.--skeleton of platypus.--_haeckel._] [illustration: fig. i.--represents pouched animals (marsupialia). kangaroo. (popular science monthly, feb., .)] let us now apply this theory of evolution to the physical world. no determined opposition by the mass of people is likely to be manifested to the doctrine of evolution as applied to the physical world, or even to the vegetable or animal world up to man; but the minute man is included--then is a voice raised up against it, and it was for this reason that darwin in his first work on the "theory of descent" did not mention man as being included in the evolutionary series. he knew too well the foolish human weakness that existed. in a recent work by prof. challes, he states that he regards the material universe as "a vast and wonderful mechanism of which the least wonderful thing is its being so constructed that we can understand it." the following is a brief description of the various theories of the world's formation: _first theory._--by the first theory the world is supposed to have existed from eternity under its actual form. aristotle embraced this doctrine, and conceived the universe to be the eternal effect of an eternal cause; maintaining that not only the heavens and the earth, but all animate and inanimate beings, are without beginning. to use huxley's illustration: if you can imagine a spectator on the earth, however far back in time, he would have seen a world "essentially similar, though not perhaps in all its details, to that which now exists. the animals which existed would be the ancestors of those which now exist, and like them; the plants in like manner would be such as we have now, and like them; and the supposition is that, at however distant a period of time you place your observer, he would still find mountains, lands, and waters, with animal and vegetable products flourishing upon them and sporting in them just as he finds now." this theory being perfectly inconsistent with facts, had to be abandoned. _second theory._--the second theory considers the universe eternal, but not its form. this was the system of epicurus and most of the ancient philosophers and poets, who imagined the world either to be produced by fortuitous concourse of atoms existing from all eternity, or to have sprung out of the chaotic form which preceded its present state. _third theory._--by this theory the matter and form of the earth is ascribed to the direct agency of a spiritual cause. it is needless to say that this last theory has for its basis the popular account, generally credited to moses in the first chapter of genesis. i say popular, for it certainly is not a scientific account, nor was it the intention of the writer to make it so. the supposed object was to show the relation between the creator and his works. if it had been an ultimate scientific account, the ablest minds of to-day would be unable to comprehend it, as science is progressive and constantly changing; in fifty thousand years to come, it would still appear utterly absurd. it cannot be said for this fact that the account is any the less true because it is not presented in scientific phraseology; for instance, when we remark in popular language "the sun rises," who shall say that though the expression is not astronomically true, we do not, for all practical purposes, utter as important a truth, as when we say, "the earth by its revolution brings us to that point where the sun becomes visible?" the language, also, in which the writer wrote was very imperfect; it had no equivalent to our word "air" or "atmosphere," properly speaking, for they knew not the words. "their nearest approaches," according to j. pye smith, "were with words that denoted watery vapor condensed, and thus rendered visible, whether floating around them or seen in the breathing of animals; and words for smoke from substances burning; and for air in motion, wind, a zephyr whisper or a storm." it must also be remembered, "that the hebrews had no term for the abstract ideas which we express by 'fluid' or 'matter.' if the writer had designed to express the idea, 'in the beginning god created _matter_,' he could not have found words to serve his purpose" (phin). [illustration: fig. i.--skeleton of kangaroo. (popular science monthly.)] [illustration: fig. i.--represents semi-apes (prosimiæ). the slow loris, after _tickel_ and _alp. miln-edwards_. (natural history, by _duncan_.)] it is unnecessary to state how the bible, which contains the so-called mosaic account, is regarded by the different church denominations, as undoubtedly that is familiar to every one. but with respect to the view entertained by the scientist and critical school of biblical scholars, represented chiefly by modern germans, i may state briefly: "they regard the bible as the human record of a divine revelation; not absolutely infallible, since there is no book written in any human language but must partake in a measure of the imperfections of that language. many of this school, while admitting the bible to contain the record of a true supernatural revelation, do not consider it to be without positive error of historical fact, not without false coloring from popular legend and tradition, but nevertheless a record as good as human hands could make a truly divine revelation."[ ] there is, though, a class of thinkers that altogether reject the bible; that is to say, refuse to believe it to be a divine revelation. hume, whom huxley calls "the most acute thinker of the eighteenth century," thus ends one of his essays: "if we take in hand any volume of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, _does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?_ no. _does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?_ no. commit it, then, to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." to this huxley says: "permit me to enforce this wise advice, why trouble ourselves about matters of which, however important they may be, we do know nothing, and can know nothing? we live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it. to do this effectually, it is necessary to be fully possessed of only two beliefs: the first, that the order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an extent which is practically unlimited; the second, that our volitions count for something as a condition of the course of events. each of these beliefs can be verified experimentally, as often as we like to try. each, therefore, stands upon the strongest foundation upon which any belief can rest, and forms one of our highest truths." the first words in the mosaic account are:[ ] "in the beginning god created the heaven and the earth."[ ] it is seen, then, that the so-called revelation points to a beginning. the beginning referred to is an absolute beginning, for we find: "in the beginning was the word, and the word was with god, and the word was god."[ ] * * * "all things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made."[ ] science points also to a beginning. geology points to a time when man did not inhabit the earth; when for him there was a beginning. so, too, for lower organisms; so, too, for the rocky minerals; so, too, for the round world itself. but the beginning that science points to is not an absolute beginning. science has to start from some point, and that point must have a scientific foundation--the foundation of science is matter, which is inseparable from form and force. natural science teaches that matter is eternal and imperishable; for experience has never shown us that even the smallest particle of matter has come into existence or passed away. "a naturalist," says haeckel, "can no more imagine the coming into existence of matter than he can imagine its disappearance, and he therefore looks upon the existing quantity of matter in the universe as a given fact." "the creation of matter, if, indeed," says haeckel,[ ] "it ever took place, is completely beyond human comprehension, and can therefore never become a subject of scientific inquiry. we can as little imagine a _first beginning_ of the eternal phenomena of the motion of the universe as of its final end."[ ] it is evident, then, that the absolute beginning of the universe and its absolute end are not questions of science, and can be known only as revealed by faith. paul says: "by faith we understand that the world was framed by the word of god, so that things which are seen were not made of things which appeared."[ ] [illustration: fig. i.--represents tailed apes (menocerca). proboscis monkey (presbytes larvatus). (mammalia.)--_louis figuier._ the natives of borneo pretend that these monkeys, or, as sometimes called, kahan, are men who have retired to the woods to avoid paying taxes; and they entertain the greatest respect for a being who has found such ready means of evading the responsibilities of society.--_figuier._] [illustration: gibbon. orang. chimpanzee. gorilla. man. fig. i.--photographically reduced from diagrams of the natural size (except that of the gibbon, which was twice as large as nature), drawn by _waterhouse hawkins_, from specimens in the museum of the royal college of surgeons. (_huxley's_ "man's place in nature.")] if, therefore, science makes the "history of creation" its highest and most difficult and most comprehensible problem, it must deal with "_the coming into being of the form_ of natural bodies." let us look for a minute at kant's cosmogony, or, as haeckel says,[ ] kant's cosmological gas theory: "this wonderful theory," says haeckel, "harmonizes with all the general series of phenomena at present known to us, and stands in no irreconcilable contradiction to any one of them. moreover, it is purely mechanical and monistic, makes use exclusively of the inherent forces of eternal matter, and entirely excludes every supernatural process, every prearranged and conscious action of a personal creator." compare this last statement with the following: "i will, however," says haeckel,[ ] "not deny that kant's grand cosmogony has some weak points." * * * "a great unsolved difficulty lies in the fact that the cosmological gas theory furnishes no starting-point at all in explanation of the first impulse which caused the rotary motion in the gas-filled universe." whewell[ ] has pointed out, that the nebular hypothesis is null without a creative act to produce the inequality of distribution of cosmic matter in space. it is seen, then, that according to kant's theory we are to suppose that millions of years ago there appeared a nebulous mass possessing a rotary motion, and unequally distributed through space. this is what science calls a beginning, and may assert that every physical event of a hundred million of ages existed potentially in that nebulous mass. but this is really no explanation of the ultimate and real cause of anything. reason demands the cause of this beginning, the source that gave to the nebulous mass its rotary motion; the power that distributed the matter in space; the antecedents of the cosmical vapor. in absence of antecedents, what was the cause of this fire-mist--of these forces active in it? reason will never remain satisfied until these questions are answered. but physical science can trace the thread no further back, and must be dumb to all ulterior inquiries. it is true, then, as physicists assert, "that their science does not mount actually to god." [illustration: fig. i.--represents man-like apes (anthropoides). the male gorilla. (natural history, by _duncan_.)] [illustration: fig. ii.--represents ape-like men (pithecanthropi). imaginative. (from scientific american.)] [illustration: fig. iii.--men (homines). from woolly-haired men developed the papuans. (scientific american, march , .)] [illustration: fig. i.--the monkey men of dourga strait. (natural history, by _rev. dr. wood_.)] to god then, in strict accordance with our reason, is to be attributed not only the origination of matter, but all its future developments. when i speak of matter, it must be understood that i mean force; for "if matter were not force, and immediately known as force, it could not be known at all, could not be rationally inferred. the operation of force could furnish no evidence of the existence of forceless matter. if force is not matter, then force can exist and operate without matter; its existence and operation are no evidence of the existence of matter. and as matter is forceless, it can itself give no evidence of its own existence, for that would be an exercise of force. if force cannot exist and operate without matter, then force depends for its existence and operation on the forceless, which destroys itself; or force depends for its existence on matter as some property or force, and so matter and force are identified, and force depends on itself only, as it must."[ ] the idea, then, that force is an attribute of matter and inherent in it, is absurd, for there is not a shadow of evidence that force is or can be an attribute of matter. we have no knowledge of the origin of any force save of that which emanates from human volition. all our knowledge of force presents it as an effort of intelligent will. "we are driven," says winchell, "by the necessary laws of thought, to pronounce those energies styled gravitation, heat, chemical affinity and their correlates, nothing less than intelligent will. but as it is not human will which energizes in whirlwind and the comet, it must be divine will." "in all cases, the creative power of god is an act of power, and the power does not perish with its inception, but continues to operate until the act is reversed and undone; so that everything that god has created constitutes a positive and intrinsic force, though borrowed from him. every incident runs back to god as its originator and real cause. the true philosophical doctrine makes god distinct from all his works, and yet acting in them. this doctrine has been held by the greatest thinkers the world has ever produced, such as descartes, lerbrisky, berkeley, herschel, faraday, and a multitude of others." "it seems to be required," says dr. mccosh, "by that deep law of causation which not only prompts us to seek for a law in everything but an adequate cause, to be found only in an intelligent mind." "our greatest american thinker, jonathan edwards," says dr. mccosh, (whom i can claim as my predecessor,) "maintains that, as an image in a mirror is kept up by a constant succession of rays of light, so nature is sustained by a constant forth-putting of the divine power. in this view nature is a perpetual creation. god is to be seen not only in creation at first, but in the continuance of all things." "they continue to this day according to thine ordinances." returning now to the history of the creation given by moses, haeckel says, "although moses looks upon the results of the great laws of organic development as the direct actions of a constructing creator, yet in his theory there lies hidden the ruling idea of a progressive development and a differentiation of the originally simple matter. we can therefore bestow our just and sincere admiration on the jewish lawgiver's grand insight into nature, without discovering in it a so-called 'divine revelation.' that it cannot be such is clear from the fact that two great fundamental errors are asserted in it, namely, first the _geocentric_ error, that the earth is the fixed central point of the whole universe, round which the sun, moon and stars move; and secondly, the _anthropocentric_ error that man is the premeditated aim of the creation of the world, for whose service alone all the rest of nature is said to have been created. the former of these errors was demolished by copernicus' system of the universe in the beginning of the sixteenth century, the latter by lamarck's doctrine of descent in the beginning of the nineteenth century." [illustration: fig. i.--australian savage.--_orton._] [illustration: fig. ii.--skull of orang-utan (simia satyrus).--_orton._] [illustration: fig. iii.--skull of chimpanzee (troglodytes niger).] [illustration: fig. iv.--skull of gorilla.--_duncan._] [illustration: fig. v.--skull of european.] [illustration: fig. vi.--skull of negro.--_orton._] prof. huxley, in his lecture on "evidences of evolution," spoke of the mosaic account as milton's hypothesis. first, "because," says huxley, "we are now assured upon the authority of the highest critics, and even of dignitaries of the church, that there is no evidence whatever that moses ever wrote this chapter, or knew anything about it;" and second, as this hypothesis is presented in milton's work on "paradise lost," it is appropriate to call it the miltonic hypothesis. "in the miltonic account," says huxley, "the order in which animals should have made their appearance in the stratified rocks would be this: fishes, including the great whale, and birds; after that all the varieties of terrestrial animals. nothing could be further from the facts as we find them. as a matter of fact we know of not the slightest evidence of the existence of birds before the jurassic and perhaps the triassic formations. if there were any parallel between the miltonic account and the circumstantial evidence, we ought to have abundant evidence in the devonian, the silurian, and carboniferous rocks. i need not tell you that this is not the case, and that not a trace of birds makes its appearance until the far later period which i have mentioned. and again, if it be true that all varieties of fishes, and the great whales and the like, made their appearance on the fifth day, then we ought to find the remains of these things in the older rocks--in those which preceded the carboniferous epoch. fishes, it is true, we find, and numerous ones; but the great whales are absent, and the fishes are not such as now live. not one solitary species of fish now in existence is to be found there, and hence you are introduced again to the difficulty, to the dilemma, that either the creatures that were created then, which came into existence the sixth day, were not those which are found at present, or are not the direct and immediate predecessors of those which now exist; but in that case you must either have had a fresh species of which nothing has been said, or else the whole story must be given up as absolutely devoid of any circumstantial evidence." it is for these and many other reasons that i feel bound to omit the mosaic account, no matter how near some portions of it coincide with the facts the earth has opened out to the scientist. kant's cosmogony. it is maintained by kant's cosmogony that every substance, be it solid or liquid, constituting the entire universe, was, inconceivable ages ago, in their homogeneous gaseous or nebulous condition. owing to an impulse being given to the nebulous mass, it acquired a rotary movement, which divided the nebulous mass up into a number of masses which, owing to the rotation, acquired greater density than the remaining gaseous mass, and then acted on the latter as central points of attraction. our solar system was thus a gigantic gaseous or nebulous ball, all the particles of which revolved around a common central point--the solar nucleus. this nebulous ball assumed by its continual rotation a more or less flattened spheroidal form. by the continual revolution of this mass, under the influence of the centripetal and centrifugal forces, a circular nebular ring separated (like the present ring around saturn) from the rotating ball. in time the nebulous ring condensed to a planet, which began to revolve around its own axis. when the centrifugal force became more powerful than the centripetal force in the planet, rings were formed, which, in turn, formed planets which revolved around their axes, as also around their planets, as the latter moved around the sun, and thus arose the moons, only one of which moves around our earth, while four move around jupiter and six around uranus. this order of things was repeated over and over again until thereby arose the different solar systems--the planets rotating around their central suns, and the satellites or moons moving around their planets. by a continuous increasing of refrigeration and condensation, a fiery fluid or molten state occurred in these rotating bodies. they then emitted an enormous amount of heat by rapid condensation, and the rotating bodies--suns, planets, and moons--soon became glowing balls of fire, emitting light and heat. the / part of a pound of magnesium wire, burning in the open air, will give a light which will last during one second, and can be seen at a distance of thirty miles; imagine, then, what the light would be from these huge balls of fire floating through space. the earth forms a small part--nay, even the sun whose mass is equal to , earths like ours, is but an infinitesimal portion of the whole. by the continual emitting of heat, however, these fiery balls had a crust form on the outside, which enclosed a fiery fluid nucleus. the crust for a time must have been a smooth sheet, but afterward very uneven, having protuberances and cavities form over its surface, owing to the molten mass within becoming condensed and contracted; the crust not following this change sufficiently close, must have fallen in, and thus produced the cavities. [illustration: mongolian.] [illustration: malay.] [illustration: ethiopian.] [illustration: american indian.] [illustration: facial angle, by _prof. nelson sizer_. , snake; , dog; , elephant; , ape; , human idiot; , the bushman; , the uncultivated; , the improved; , the civilized; , the enlightened; , the caucasian (highest type).] [illustration: caucasian (after _van evrie_).] [illustration: head of nose-ape (after _brehm_).] [illustration: julia pastrana (photographed by _hintye_).] [illustration: living idiot (on blackwell's island).] all the time, by the condensation, the diameter of the earth was being diminished. the irregular cooling of the crust caused irregular contractions on the surface, and as the diameter of the molten mass within was continually diminishing, many elevations and depressions were caused, which were the foundations of mountains and valleys. after the temperature of the earth had been reduced by the thickening of the crust--when it became sufficiently cool--the water which existed in steam was condensed and precipitated, falling in torrents, washing down the elevations, filling the depressions with the mud carried along, and depositing it in layers. it was not until the earth became covered with water that life was possible in any form, as both animals and plants consist to a very great extent of water. at this stage in the history of the earth, then, the little mass of protoplasm, which we have spoken so much about, came into existence in all probability, as has been stated, by spontaneous generation. laws of evolution. let us now examine some of the laws of evolution, as also some of the connecting links which blend one stage of man's development with another, which at first thought would seem unexplainable. haeckel[ ] summarizes the inductive evidences of darwinism as follows: . paleontological series (phylogeny); . embryological development of the individual (ontogeny); . the correspondence in the terms of these two series; . comparative anatomy (typical forms and structures); . correspondence between comparative anatomy and ontogeny; . rudimentary organs (dipeliology); . the natural system of organisms (classification); . geographical distribution (chorology); . adaptation to the environment (oecology); . the unity of biological phenomena. it will of course be impossible to consider even hastily all of the inductive evidence belonging to the several groups mentioned above, for the scope of this work would not permit of it. only such facts as present themselves most forcibly to the mind will be considered. darwinism, as has already been stated, is not the doctrine of evolution; it is, however, a successful attempt to explain the law or manner of evolution. the _law of natural selection_, pointed out by darwin, is called by herbert spencer, _the struggle for existence_. darwin discovered that natural selection produces fitness between organisms and their circumstances, which explains the law of _the survival of the fittest_. it is a well-known fact that man can, by pursuing a certain method of breeding or cultivation, improve and in various ways modify the character of the different domestic animals and plants. by always selecting the best specimen from which to propagate the race, those features which it is desired to perpetuate become more and more developed; so that what are admitted to be real varieties sometimes acquire, in the course of successive generations, a character as strikingly distinct, to all appearances, from those of the varieties, as one species is from another species of the same genus. it is evident that both natural and artificial selection depends on adaptation and inheritance. the difference between the two forms of selection is that, in the first case, the will of man makes the selection according to a plan, whereas in natural selection the struggle for life and the survival of the fittest acts without a plan other than that the most adaptable organism shall survive which is most fit to contend with the circumstances under which it is placed. natural selection acts, therefore, much more slowly than artificial selection, although it brings about the same end. adaptation in the struggle for life is an absolute necessity. in every act of breeding, a certain amount of protoplasm is transferred from the parents to the child, and along with it there is transferred the individual peculiar molecular motion. adaptation or transmutation depends upon the material influence which organism experiences from its surroundings, or its conditions of existence; while the transmission from inheritance is due to the partial identity of producing and produced organisms. organized beings, as a rule, are gifted with enormous powers of increase. wild plants yield their crop of seed annually, and most wild animals bring forth their young yearly or oftener. should this process go on unchecked, in a short time the earth would be completely overrun with living beings. it has been calculated that if a plant produces fifty seeds (which is far below the reproductive capacity of many plants) the first year, each of these seeds growing up into a plant which produces fifty seeds, or altogether two thousand five hundred seeds the next year, and so on, it would under favorable conditions of growth give rise in nine years to more plants by five hundred trillions than there are square feet of dry land upon the surface of the earth. slow-breeding man has been known to double his number in twenty-five years, and according to euler, this might occur in little over twelve years. but assuming the former rate of increase, and taking the population of the united states at only thirty millions, in six hundred and eighty-five years their living progeny would have each but a square foot to stand upon, were they spread over the entire globe, land and water included. but millions of species are doing the same thing, so that the inevitable result of this strife cannot be a matter of chance. evidently those individuals or varieties having some advantage over their competitors will stand the best chance to live, while those destitute of these advantages will be liable to destruction. nature may be said (metaphorically) to choose (like the will of man in artificial selection) which shall be preserved and which destroyed. that portion of the theory of development which maintains the common descent of all species of animals and plants from the simplest common origin, i have already stated with full justice should be called lamarckism. progress is recognized by all scientists to be a law of nature. some of the more important facts which sustain the theory of development, i propose now to present as briefly as possible. rudimentary organs. one of the strongest arguments in favor of the hypothesis of a genetic connection among all animals (including man), at least among all those belonging to the same great types, is the presence of rudimentary parts. by rudiments in anatomy are meant organs or structures imperfectly developed, so as to be almost or entirely without functional use. "each of them represents in germ, as it were, in one animal (or plant), that which is perfect and useful in another type." for a few examples: the little fold of caruncle at the inner margin of the eye in man, represents the nictitating membrane of birds. eyes which do not see form a striking example. these are found in very many animals which live in the dark, as in caves or underground. their eyes are often perfectly developed but are covered by a membrane, so that no ray of light can enter and they can never see. such eyes, without the function of sight, are found in several species of moles and mice which live underground, in serpents and lizards, in amphibious animals (proteus, cæcilia) and in fishes; also in numerous invertebrate animals which pass their lives in the dark, as do many beetles, crabs, snails, worms, etc. other rudimentary organs are the wings of animals which cannot fly. for example, the wings of the running birds, like the ostrich, emeu, cassowary, etc., the legs of which become exceedingly developed. the muscles which move the ears of animals are still present in man, but of course are of no use; by continual practice persons have been able to move their ears by these muscles. the rudiment of the tail of animals which man possesses in his - tail vertebræ, is another rudimentary part--in the human embryo it stands out prominently during the first two months of its development; it afterwards becomes hidden. "the rudimentary little tail of man is irrefutable proof that he is descended from tailed ancestors." in woman the tail is generally, by one vertebra, longer than in man. there still exists rudimentary muscles in the human tail which formerly moved it. another case of human rudimentary organs, only belonging to the male, and which obtains in like manner in all mammals, is furnished by the mammary glands on the breast, which, as a rule, are active only in the female sex. however, cases of different mammals are known, especially of men, sheep and goats, in which the mammary glands were fully developed in the male sex, and yield milk as food for their offspring. the vermiform appendix of the large intestine in man, is another illustration of a part which has no use, but in one marsupial is three times the length of its body. the rudimentary covering of hair over certain portions of the body, is not without interest. over the body we find but a scanty covering, which is thick only on the head, in the armpits, and on some other parts of the body. the short hairs on the greater part of the body are entirely useless, and are the last scanty remains of the hairy covering of our ape ancestors. both on the upper and lower arm the hairs are directed toward the elbow, where they meet at an obtuse angle--this striking arrangement is only found in man and the anthropoid apes, the gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, and several species of gibbons. the fine short hairs on the body become developed into "thickset, long, and rather coarse dark hairs," when abnormally nourished near old-standing inflamed surfaces.[ ] the fine wool-like hair or so-called lanugo with which the human foetus, during the fifth and sixth months, is thickly covered, offers another proof that man is descended from an animal which was born hairy, and remained so during life. this covering is first developed during the fifth month, on the eyebrows and face, and especially around the mouth, where it is much longer than that on the head. three or four cases have been recorded of persons born with their whole bodies and faces thickly covered with fine long hairs. prof. alex. brandt compared the hair from the face of a man thus characterized, aged thirty-five, with the lanugo of a foetus, and finds it quite similar in texture. eschricht[ ] has devoted great attention to this rudimentary covering, and has thrown much light on the subject. he showed that the female as well as the male foetus possessed this hairy covering, showing that both are descended from progenitors, both sexes of whom were hairy. eschricht also showed, as stated above, that the hair on the face of the fifth month foetus is longer on the face than on the head, which indicates that our semi-human progenitors were not furnished with long tresses, which must therefore have been a late acquisition. the question naturally arises, is there any explanation for the loss of hair covering? [illustration: fig. i.--the hairy-faced burmese family. (from scientific american, feb. , .)] darwin is of the opinion that the absence of hair on the body is, to a certain extent, a secondary sexual character; for, in all parts of the world, women are less hairy than men. he says: "therefore we may reasonably suspect that this character has been gained through sexual selection." as the body in woman is less hairy than in man, and as this character is common to all races, we may conclude that it was our female semi-human ancestors who were first divested of hair. professor grant allen[ ] has given much study to the subject of the loss of hair in the human being; and his investigations are worthy of careful consideration. he shows conclusively that those parts of an animal which are in constant contact with other objects are specially liable to lose their hair. this is noticeable on the under surface of the body of all animals which habitually lie on the stomach. the soles of the feet of all mammals where they touch the ground are quite hairless; the palms of the hands in the quadrumana present the same appearance. the knees of those species which frequently kneel, such as camels and other ruminants, are apt to become bare and hard-skinned. the friction of the water has been the means of removing the hair from many aquatic mammals--the whales, porpoises, dugongs, and manatees are examples. as the back of man forms the specially hairless region of his body, we must conclude that it is in all probability the first part which became entirely denuded of hair. the gorilla, according to professor gervais, is the only mammal which agrees with man in having the hair thinner on the back, where it is partly rubbed off, than on the lower surface. du chaillu states that he has "himself come upon fresh traces of a gorilla's bed on several occasions, and could see that the male had seated himself with his back against a tree-trunk." he also says: "in both male and female the hair is found worn off the back; but this is only found in very old females. this is occasioned, i suppose, by their resting at night against trees, at whose base they sleep." the gorilla has only very partially acquired the erect position, and probably sits but little in the attitude common to man. in man the case is different; in proportion as his progenitors grew more and more erect, he must have lain less and less upon his stomach, and more and more upon his back or sides, and this is seen in the savage man during his lazy hours--who stretches himself on the ground in the sun, with his back propped, where possible, by a slight mound or the wall of his hut. the continual friction of the surface of the back would arrest the growth of hair; for hair grows where there is normally less friction, and _vice versâ_. as man became more and more hairless, especially among savage and naked races, we should conclude that such a modification would be considered a beauty, and women would select such men in preference to more hairy individuals. the new zealand proverb is: "there is no woman for a hairy man." sexual selection, then, would play a very important part; and the difficulty of understanding how man became divested of hair is readily explained. haeckel says: "even if we knew absolutely nothing of the other phenomena of development, we should be obliged to believe in the truth of the theory of descent, solely on the ground of the existence of rudimentary organs." reproduction by means of eggs. it might be thought there existed a missing link between animals which lay eggs and those which do not; this, however, is done away with in many instances--one, for example, is found in our commonest indigenous snake. the ringed snake lays eggs which require three weeks time to develop; but when it is kept in captivity, and no sand is strewn in the cage, it does not lay eggs, but retains them until the young ones are developed. this only shows how powerfully influences affect the habit of animals. double-sexed individuals. another difficulty might be supposed to arise between animals which produce themselves other than by sexual reproduction. this has already been slightly touched upon; and it has been shown that numerous plants and animals propagate themselves through their double-sexed organs. it occurs in a great majority of plants, but only in a minority of animals; for example, the garden-snail, leeches, earth-worms, and many other worms. every garden-snail produces in one part of its sexual gland eggs, and in another part sperm. parthenogenesis offers an interesting form of transition from sexual reproduction to the non-sexual formation of germ-cells (which most resembles it). it has been demonstrated to occur in many cases among insects, especially by seebold's excellent investigations. among the common bees, a male individual (a drone) arises out of the eggs of the queen, if the eggs have not been fructified; a female (a queen or working bee), if the egg has been fructified. gonochorismus or sexual separation, which characterizes the more complicated of the two kinds of sexual reproduction, has evidently been developed from the condition of hermaphroditism at a late period of the organic history of the world. in this case the female individual in both animal and plant produces eggs or egg-cells. in animals, the male individual secretes the fructifying sperm (sperma); in plants, the corpuscles, which correspond to the sperm. inheritance. the remarkable facts of inheritance, extending to the reproduction of unimportant peculiarities of parts or organs (rudimentary parts) mentioned above, and the occasional outbreak of ancestral characters that have been dormant through several generations (some of which i will mention further on), might be thought perfectly unexplainable; but they are readily accounted for by the supposition that each part of an organism contributes its constituent and effective molecules to the germ and sperm particles. mr. sorby made numerous investigations with relation to the number of molecules in the germinal matter of eggs, and the spermatic matter supplied by the male. omitting the alkali, mr. sorby takes the formula, c{ }h{ }n{ }so{ }, as representing the composition of albumen. in a / of an inch cube, he reckons-- albumen , , , , molecules. water , , , , " -------------------------------- , , , , , molecules. or, in a sphere of the same diameter, , , , , of the two components. taking a single mammalian spermatozoon, having a mean diameter of / of an inch; "it might contain two and a half million of such gemmules. if these were lost, destroyed, or fully developed at the rate of one in each second, this number would be exhausted in about one month; but since a number of spermatozoa appears to be necessary to produce perfect fertilization, it is quite easy to understand that the number of gemmules introduced into the ovum may be so great that the influence of the male parent may be very marked, even after having been, as regards particular character, apparently dormant for many years." the germinal vesicle of a mammalian ovum being about / of an inch, mean diameter, might contain five hundred million of gemmules, which, if used up at the rate of one per second, would last more than seventeen years. if the whole ovum, about / in diameter, were all gemmules, the number would be sufficient to last, at this rate, one per second for , years! this, however, is not probable; but mr. sorby's remarks has completely removed all doubt as to its physical possibility from the darwinian theory; "and they prompt us," says slack, "to a wonderful conception of the powers residing in minute quantities of matter." the laws of inheritance are divisible into two series, conservative and progressive transmission; the laws of adaptation to direct (active) or indirect (potential) adaptation. external causes often influence the reproductive system, especially in organism propagating in a sexual way. this can be strikingly shown in artificially produced monstrosities. monstrosities can be produced by subjecting the parental organism to certain extraordinary conditions of life; and curiously enough, such an extraordinary condition of life does not produce a change of the organism itself, but a change in its descendants. the new formation exists in the parental organism only as a possibility (potential); in the descendants it becomes a reality (actual). most commonly, monstrosities with very abnormal forms are sterile, but there are instances where they reproduce their kind and become a species.[ ] geoffroy st. hilaire, who perhaps made the deepest investigations ever conducted into the nature and causes of their production, first conceived the idea of artificially producing them, and to this end he began modifications of the physical conditions of the evolution of the chicken during natural and artificial incubation. he determined the fact that monsters could be produced in this way, but scarcely carried his investigation further. this work has been taken up by m. dareste, and he has lately published a volume in paris which recounts the results of a quarter of a century's experimenting. eggs, he states, were submitted to incubation in a vertical instead of a horizontal position; they were covered with varnish in certain places so as to stop or modify evaporation and respiration. the evolution of the chick was rendered slower by a temperature below that of the normal heat of incubation. finally, eggs were warmed only at one point, so that the young animal, during development, was submitted at different parts to variable temperatures. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] these perturbations resulted in the most curious and unlooked for deformities in the embryo, some being not alone peculiar to the bird, but being similar to those which have been recognized in many other animals, and even in the human species. the data obtained have been deemed so important that m. dareste has recently received the lacaze prize for physiology from the french academy of sciences. it would be impossible to review even a fraction of the many forms of monstrosities which m. dareste has discovered. those that we give will, however, suffice to convey an idea of the wonderful variations produced. fig. is a chick embryo with the encephalon entirely outside the head, the heart, liver, and gizzard outside the umbilical opening, right wing lifted up beside the head, and the development of the left one stopped. in fig. the encephalon is herniated and marked with blood spots, the eye is rudimentary and replaced by a spot of pigment, the upper beak is shorter than the lower one, while the heart, liver, etc., are all outside. in figs. and the head is compressed, eyes well developed, but in the back instead of in the sides of the head; the body is bent, abdominal intestines not closed, heart largely developed and herniated. the literal references to the foregoing are: _am_, amnion; _al_, allantois; _v_, vitellus; _h_, encephalon; _i_, eye; _c_, heart; _f_, liver; _g_, gizzard; _ms_, upper, and _mi_, lower member. the commonest case of monstrosity observed by m. dareste has been that of the head protruding from the navel, and the heart or hearts above the head. this is a most extraordinary and new monster, and, if it persist, a chicken with its heart on its back, like a hump, may be expected. a curious fact discovered is the duplicity of the heart at the beginning of incubation, two hearts, beating separately, being clearly seen. another anomaly consists in heads with a frontal swelling, which is filled by the cerebral hemispheres. m. dareste's artificial monsters are all produced from the single germ or cicatricule (as the white circular spot seen in the yellow of the egg, and from which the embryo springs, is termed). he has not yet been able to determine artificially the production of monsters, the origin of which takes place in a peculiar state of the cicatricule before incubation. but having submitted to incubation some , eggs, he has obtained several remarkable examples of double monstrosities in process of formation, some representations of which are given herewith. fig. shows three embryos, all derived from a single cicatricule. fig. represents three embryos from two cicatricules. on one side of the line of junction are two imperfectly developed embryos, one having no heart. the single embryo on the other side is generally normal, but has a heart on the right side. in fig. are twins, one well formed, the heart circulating colorless blood, the other having no heart and a rudimentary head. fig. exhibits a double monster with lateral union. the heads are separate, and there are three upper and three lower members, those of the latter on the median line belonging equally to each of the pair. acquired qualities. when an organism has been subjected to abnormal conditions in life it can transmit any peculiarity it may have acquired. this is, however, not always possible, otherwise descendants of men who have lost their arm or leg would be born without the corresponding arm or leg--this shows that some acquired qualities are more easily transmitted than others--although there are cases, as, for instance, a race of dogs without tails has been produced by cutting off the tails of both sexes of the dog, during several generations. "a few years ago," says haeckel, "a case occurred on an estate near jena in which, by the careless slamming of a stable-door, the tail of a bull was wrenched off, and the calves begotten by this bull were all born without a tail. this is certainly an exception; but it is very important to note the fact that under certain unknown conditions such violent changes are transmitted in the same manner as many diseases." the transmission of diseases such as consumption, madness, and albinism form examples. albinoes are those individuals who are distinguished by the absence of coloring matter from their skins; they are of frequent occurrence among men, animals and plants. among many animals, such as rabbits and mice, albinoes with white fur and red eyes are so much liked that they are propagated. this would be impossible were it not for the law of the transmission of adaptations. hornless cattle have descended from a single bull born in of horned parents, but whose absence of horns was the result of some unknown cause. the law of interrupted or latent transmission, as illustrated in grandchildren who are like the grandparents, but quite unlike the parents. animals often resume a form which have not existed for many generations. one of the most remarkable instances of this kind of reversion, or "atavism," is the fact that in some horses there sometimes appear singular dark stripes similar to those of the zebra, quagga, and other wild species of african horse. nutrition directly modifies adaptation, as is well illustrated by animals which have been bred for domestic or other purposes. if a farmer is breeding for fine wool he gives much different food to the sheep than he would if he wished to obtain flesh or an abundance of fat. even the bodily form of man is quite different according to its nutrition. food containing much nitrogen produces little fat, that containing little nitrogen produces a great deal of fat. people who by means of banting's system, at present so popular, wish to become thin, eat only meat and eggs--no bread, no potatoes. man can breed for milk in cattle, for feathers in pigeons, for colored flowers in plants, and, in fact, for almost any desirable quality. geological record. _the geological record_ (palæontology) furnishes weighty evidence of man's descent; for the circumstantial evidence derived from this source is written without the possibility of a mistake, with no chance of error, on the stratified rocks. it is true that the geological record must be incomplete, because it can only preserve remains found in certain favorable localities, and under particular conditions; that this valuable record must be destroyed by processes of denudation, and obliterated by processes of metamorphosis, it cannot be doubted. "beds of rock of any thickness, crammed full of organic remains, may yet," says huxley, "by the percolation of water through them, or the influence of subterranean heat (if they descend far enough toward the centre of the earth), lose all trace of these remains, and present the appearance of beds of rock formed under conditions in which there was no trace of living forms. such metamorphic rocks occur in formations of all ages; and we know with perfect certainty, when they do appear, that they have contained organic remains, and that those remains have been absolutely obliterated." if we look at the geological record, we find: the first epoch.--_the archilithic_, or primordial epoch, constitutes the _age of skull-less animals and sea-weed forests_, and is made up of the laurentian, cambrian, and silurian period. the second epoch.--_the palæolithic_, or primary epoch, constitutes the _age of fishes and fern forests_, and is made up of the devonian, coal, and permian period. the third epoch.--_the mesolithic_, or secondary epoch, constitutes the _age of reptiles and pine forests, coniferæ_, and is made up of the triassic, jurassic, and chalk period. the fourth epoch.--_the cænolithic_, or tertiary epoch, constitutes the _age of mammals and leaf forests_, and is made up of the eocene, miocene, and phocene period. the fifth epoch.--the _anthropolithic_, or quaternary epoch, constitutes the _age of man and cultivated forests,_ and is made up of the glacial and postglacial period, and the period of culture. during the archilithic epoch the inhabitants of our planet, as has been already stated, consisted of skull-less animals, or aquatic forms. no remains of terrestrial animals or plants, dated from this period, have as yet been found. the archilithic period was longer than the whole long period between the close of the archilithic and the present time; for if the total thickness of all sedimentary strata be estimated as about one hundred and thirty thousand feet, then seventy thousand feet belong to this epoch. it was during this epoch that the little mass of protoplasm, which has been so often spoken of, came into existence. it has been stated above that palæontology is quite deficient. this is not only true of the record, but of the lack as yet of sufficient investigations. the greatest fields of investigation in this department have never been explored. the whole of the petrifactions accurately known do not probably amount to a hundredth part of those which, by more elaborate explorations, are yet to be discovered. the most ancient of all distinctly preserved petrifactions is the eozoon canadense, which was found in the lowest laurentian strata in the ottawa formation. probably no discovery in palæontology ranks higher than the discovery of the descendants of the horse. the horse, for example, as far as his limbs and teeth go, differs far more from extant graminivora than man differs from the ape. had not fossil ungulates been found, which demonstrate the common origin of the horse with didactyles and multidactyles, some would have deemed the horse a special miraculous creation. but now the links are complete, and the descent of the horse is found to follow exactly what the doctrine of evolution could have predicted. ontogeny. it has been stated that the palæontological record is quite incomplete, owing to many facts, some of which have been mentioned; fortunately, the history of the development of the organic individual, or ontogeny, comes in to fill up many deficiencies. ontogeny is a repetition of the principal forms through which the respective individuals have passed from the beginning of their tribe, and its great advantage is that it reveals a field of information which it was impossible for the rocks to retain; for the petrification of the ancient ancestors of all the different animal and vegetable species, which were soft, tender bodies, was not possible. the annexed plate illustrates the dog, rabbit, and man in their first stages of development. illustrations of a fish, an amphibious animal, a reptile, a bird, or any mammal, could also be given; for all vertebrate animals of the most different classes, in their early stages of development, cannot be distinguished, and the nearer the animal approaches man in the ascending scale, the longer does this similarity continue to exist--when reptiles and birds are distinctly different from mammals, the dog and the man are almost identical. the gill-arches of the fish exist in man, in dogs, in fowls, in reptiles, and in other vertebrate animals during the first stages of their development. man also possesses, in his first stages, a real tail, as well as his nearest kindred--the tailless apes (orang-outang, chimpanzee, gorilla), and vertebrate animals in general. the tail, as has been stated, man still retains, though hidden as a rudiment. [illustration: fig. i.--human embryo.--_ecker._] [illustration: fig. ii.--embryo of dog.--_bischoff._] [illustration: fig. iii.--dog embryo.--_huxley._] [illustration: figs. iv, v, and vi.--embryo of rabbit in three stages of development.--_haeckel._] [illustration: figs. vii, viii, and ix.--embryo of man in three stages of development.--_haeckel._ _v_, fore brain; _z_, twix brain; _m_, middle brain; _h_, hind brain; _n_, after brain; _r_, spinal marrow; _e_, nose; _a_, eye; _o_, ear; _k_, gillarches; _g_, heart; _w_, vertebral column; _f_, fore limbs; _b_, hind limbs; _s_, tail.] "man presents in his earliest stages of embryonic growth, a skeleton of cartilage, like that of the lamprey; also, five origins of the aorta and five slits on the neck, like the _lamprey_ and the _shark_. later, he has but four aortic origins, and a heart now divided into two chambers, like _bony fishes_; the optic lobes of his brain also having a very fish-like predominance in size. three chambers of the heart and three aortic origins follow, presenting a condition permanent in the _batrachia_; then two origins with enlarged hemispheres of the brain, as in _reptiles_. four heart chambers and one aortic root on each side, with slight development of the cerebellum, agree with the characters of the _crocodiles_, and immediately present the special mammalian conditions, single aortic root, and the full development of the cerebellum. later comes that of the cerebrum, also in its higher mammalian or human traits." at no time in the development of the egg, save at the start, do the embryos of the various vertebra assume the _exact_ or _entire_ characteristics of one another, but they assimilate so closely that it requires the eye of the expert to distinguish them; and, as has already been stated, the more closely an animal resembles another, the longer and the more intimately do their embryos resemble one another; so that, for example, the embryo of the snake and of a lizard remain like one another longer than do those of a snake and of a bird; and the embryo of a dog and of a cat remain like one another for a far longer period than do those of a dog and a bird, or a dog and an opossum, or even those of a dog and a monkey. surely it must be admitted that the short brief history given by the development of the egg, is far more wonderful than phylogeny or the long and slow history of the development of the tribe, which has taken thousands of years. compare this time with the time required for the development of the smallest mammals--the harvest mice which develops in three weeks, or the smallest of all birds, the humming-bird, which quits the egg on the twelfth day, or with man who passes through the whole course of his development in forty weeks, or with the rhinoceros who requires - / years, or the elephant who requires ninety weeks. how insignificant are these various periods to the long period originally required; yet in these short periods the whole phylogeny is run through in the ontogeny or the history of the development of the egg. the attributes of man. we must now consider briefly some of the attributes of man, and see if he really possesses attributes which are in no inferior degree possessed by animals. before proceeding directly to the consideration of the attributes of man, it will be best to show the correlation that exists between what are called man's vital forces and the physical forces of nature. to do this let us choose three forms of its manifestation: these shall be heat evolved within the body; muscular energy or motion; and lastly, nervous energy or that form of force which, on the one hand, stimulates a muscle to contract, and on the other appears in forms called mental. it will not take any extensive argument to demonstrate that the heat of the body does not differ from heat from any other source. it is known that the food taken into the body contains potential energy, which is capable of being in part converted into actual heat by oxidation; and since we know that the food taken into the body is oxidized by the oxygen of the air supplied by the lungs, the heat of the body must be due to the slow oxidation of the carbon, perhaps also hydrogen, sulphur, and phosphorus in the food. now since this so-called vital heat is developed by oxidation, is recognized by the same tests and applied to the same purposes as any other heat, it is as truly correlated to the other forces as when it has a purely physical origin. the amoeboid activity of a white blood corpuscle is stimulated within certain limits by heat. hatching of eggs and the germination of seeds may be likewise hastened or retarded by access or deprivation of heat. it was considerations such as these which led to the doctrine of correlation of the vital and physical forces. with respect to the muscular force exerted by an animal, it was supposed that it was created by the animal. dr. frankland[ ] says to this: "an animal can no more generate an amount of force capable of moving a grain of sand, than a stone can fall upwards or a locomotive drive a train without fuel." as the amount of co{ } exhaled by the lungs is increased in the exact ratio of work done by the muscle, it cannot be doubted that the actual force of the muscle is due to the converted potential energy of the food. since every exertion of a muscle and nerves involves the death and decay of those tissues to a certain extent, as shown by the excretions, prof. orton[ ] has been led to say: "an animal begins to die the moment it begins to live." "a muscle," says barker,[ ] "is like a steam-engine, is a machine for converting the potential energy of carbon into motion; but unlike a steam-engine, the muscle accomplishes this conversion directly, the energy not passing through the intermediate stages of heat. for this reason the muscle is the most economical producer of mechanical force known." the muscles which give the downward stroke of the wing of a bird are fastened to the breastbone, and their power in proportion to the weight of the bird is as , to . this great power is needed, for the air is times lighter than water; the hawk being able to travel miles an hour. the last of the so-called vital forces under consideration, is that produced by the nerves and nervous centres. barker says: "in the nerve which stimulates a muscle to contract, this force is undeniably motion, since it is propagated along this nerve from one extremity to the other." this force has been likened unto electricity, the gray or cellular matter being the battery, the white or fibrous matter the conductors. du bois reymond[ ] has demonstrated that this force is not electricity, though by showing that its velocity is only ninety-seven feet a second. the velocity varies, though, in different animals; it is, according to prof. orton,[ ] "more rapid in warm-blooded than in cold-blooded animals, being nearly twice as fast in man as in the frog." wheatstone, by his method, gives the velocity of electricity in copper wire at , geographical miles per second; but as neither fizeau, gould, gonnelle and others could arrive at the same result, the method was shown to be incorrect, and it remained for dr. siemen[ ] to discover the true method, which gives the velocity just one-half that of wheatstone's estimate, or , geographical miles per second. in the opinion of bence jones, the propagation of a nervous impulse is a sort "of successive molecular polarization, like magnetism." but that this agent is a force as analogous to electricity as is magnetism, is shown not only by the fact that the transmission of electricity along a nerve will cause the contraction of a muscle to which it leads, but also by the important fact discovered by marshall, that the contraction of a muscle is excited by diminishing its normal electrical current,[ ] a result which could take place only with a stimulus, says barker, "closely allied to electricity. nerve force must therefore be transmuted potential energy." prof. huxley says,[ ] "the results of recent inquiries into the structure of the nervous system of animals, converge toward the conclusion that the nerve-fibres which we have hitherto regarded as ultimate elements of nervous tissue, are not such, but are simply the visible aggregations of vastly more attenuated filaments, the diameter of which dwindles down to the limits of our present microscopic vision, greatly as these have been extended by modern improvements of the microscope; and that a nerve is, in its essence, nothing but a linear tract of specially modified protoplasm between two points of an organism, one of which is able to affect the other by means of the communication so established. hence it is conceivable that even the simplest living being may possess a nervous system." herbert spencer[ ] says all direct and indirect evidence "justifies us in concluding that the nervous system consists of _one_ kind of matter. in the gray tissue this matter exists in masses containing _corpuscles_, which are soft and have granules dispersed through them, and which, besides being thus unstably composed, are placed so as to be liable to disturbances to the greatest degree. in the white tissue this matter is collected together in extremely slender _threads_ that are denser, that are uniform in texture, and that are shielded in an unusual manner from disturbing forces, except at their two extremities." the last consideration is that form of force (thought power) which appears in manifestations called mental. it must be noticed at the outset, that every external manifestation of thought force is a muscular one, as a word spoken or written, a gesture, or an expression of the face always takes place; hence this force must be intimately correlated to nerve force. it is very certain, then, that thought force is capable in external manifestations of converting itself into actual motion. but here the question arises, can it be manifested inwardly without such a transformation of energy? or is the evolution of thought entirely independent of the matter of the brain? this question can be answered by actual experiment, strange as it may appear. experiments have demonstrated that any change of temperature within the skull was soonest manifested externally in that depression which exists just above the occipital protuberance. here lombard[ ] fastened to the head at this point two little bars, one made of bismuth, the other of an alloy of antimony and zinc, which were connected with a delicate galvanometer;[ ] to neutralize the result of a gradual rise of temperature over the whole body, a second pair of bars, reversed in direction, was attached to the leg or arm, so that if a like increase of heat came to both, the electricity developed by one would be neutralized by the other, and no effect would be produced by the needle unless only one was affected. by long practice it was ascertained that a mental torpor could be induced, lasting for hours, in which the needle remained stationary. but let a person knock on the door outside of the room, or speak a single word, even though the experimenter remained absolutely passive, the reception of the intelligence caused the needle to swing twenty degrees. "in explanation of this production of heat," says barker,[ ] "the analogy of the muscle at once suggests itself. no conversion of energy is complete, and as the heat of muscular action represents force which has escaped conversion into motion, so the heat evolved during the reception of an idea is energy which has escaped conversion into thought, from precisely the same cause." dr. lombard's experiments have shown that the amount of heat developed by the recitation to one's self of emotional poetry, was in every case less when recitation was oral; this is of course accounted for by the muscular expression. chemistry teaches that thought-force, like muscle-force, comes from the food, and demonstrates that the force evolved by the brain, like that produced by the muscle, comes not from the disintegration of its own tissue, but is the converted energy of burning carbon.[ ] "can we longer doubt," says barker,[ ] "that the brain too, is a machine for the conversion of energy? can we longer refuse to believe that even thought force is in some mysterious way correlated to the other natural forces? and this even in the face of the fact that it has never yet been measured.[ ] have we not a right to ask 'why a special force (vital force) should be needed to effect the transformation of physical forces into those modes of energy which are active in the manifestation of living beings, while no peculiar force is deemed necessary to effect the transformation of one mode of physical force into any other mode of physical force?" richard owen says:[ ] "in the endeavor to clearly comprehend and explain the functions of the combination of forces called 'brain,' the physiologist is hindered and troubled by the views of the nature of those cerebral forces which the needs of dogmatic theology have imposed on mankind. * * * religion, pure and undefiled, can best answer how far it is righteous or just to charge a neighbor with being unsound in his principles who holds the term 'life' to be a sound expressing the sum of living phenomena, and who maintains these phenomena to be modes of force into which other forms of force have passed from potential to active states, and reciprocally, through the agency of the sums or combinations of forces impressing the mind with the ideas signified by the terms 'monad,' 'moss,' 'plant,' or 'animal.'" we have now shown that the very forces which give vent to the attributes of man, are correlated to the physical forces. let us now consider his attributes as manifested by his mental powers. there is no doubt the difference between the mental faculties of the ape and that of the lowest savage, who cannot express any number higher than four and who uses hardly any abstract terms for common objects or for the affections,[ ] is still very great and would still be great, says darwin, "even if one of the higher apes had been improved or civilized as much as a dog has been in comparison with its parent form, the wolf or jackal." but when we examine the interval of mental power between one of the lowest fishes, as a lamprey or a lancelet, and one of the higher apes, and recognize the fact that this interval is filled up by numberless gradations, it does not become so difficult to understand the interval between an ape and man, which is not by far so great. as in finding out what is peculiar to a living body in distinction to a body not living, we found it absurd to take man as the perfection of the animal scale--the microscopic monad possessing life as well as him--so in the case of man's mental attributes, which have always been increasing, always perfecting, since the first genuine man came into existence, it would be equally absurd to compare the intellectual man of to-day with an ape to see what attributes he possesses which the ape does not possess; but if we go down in the scale and compare the savage with the ape, the difficulty is not by far so great. it will be found on close examination, though, that man and the higher animals, especially the primates, have many instincts in common. "all," says darwin, "have the same senses, intuitions and sensations; similar passions, affections, and emotions; even the more complex ones, such as jealousy, suspicion, emulation, gratitude and magnanimity; they practice deceit and are revengeful; they are sometimes susceptible to ridicule and even have a sense of humor; they feel wonder and curiosity; they possess the same faculties of imitation, attention, deliberation, choice, memory, imagination, the association of ideas, and reason, though in very different degrees. the individuals of the same species graduate in intellect from absolute imbecility to high excellence; they are also liable to insanity, though far less often than in the case of man."[ ] nevertheless, in the face of these facts, many authors have insisted that man is divided by an inseparable barrier from all the lower animals in his mental faculties. it only shows the improper or imperfect consideration of the subject they have under discussion. it may be thought at first that some of the mental attributes mentioned above are not possessed by animals. i therefore will briefly consider a few of the more complex ones. we can dismiss the consideration of such attributes as happiness, terror, suspicion, courage, timidity, jealousy, shame, and wonder, as well-known attributes. _curiosity_ in animals is often observed. an instance mentioned by brehm will serve to illustrate: brehm gives a curious account of the instinctive dread which his monkeys exhibited for snakes; but their curiosity was so great that they could not desist from occasionally satiating their horror in a most human fashion, by lifting up the lid of the box in which the snakes were kept. _imitation_ is also found among the action of animals, especially among monkeys, which are well known to be ridiculous mockers. it is unnecessary to refer to the faculty of attention, as it is common to almost all animals, and the same may be said of memory as for persons or places. one would hesitate to believe an animal possesses _imagination_, but such is the case. dreaming, it will be admitted, gives us the best notion of this power. now as dogs, cats, horses, and probably all the higher animals, even birds, have vivid dreams--this is shown by their movements and the sounds uttered--"we must admit," says darwin, "they possess some power of imagination. there must be something special which causes dogs to howl in the night, and especially during moonlight, in that remarkable and melancholy manner, called baying. all dogs do not do so; and, according to housyeau,[ ] they do not look at the moon, but at some fixed point near the horizon. housyeau thinks that their imaginations are disturbed by the vague outlines of the surrounding objects, and conjure up before them fantastic images; if this be so, their feelings may almost be called superstitious." the next mental faculty is _reason_, which stands at the summit; but still there are few persons who will deny that animals possess some power of reasoning. a few illustrations will be all that is necessary to satisfy the inquiring mind on this point. reugger, a most careful observer, states that when he first gave eggs to his monkey in paraguay they smashed them, and thus lost much of their contents; afterward they gently hit one end against some hard body, and picked off the bits of shell with their fingers. after cutting themselves _once_ with any sharp tool, they would not touch it again, or would handle it with the greatest caution. lumps of sugar were often given them, wrapped up in paper; and reugger sometimes put a live wasp in the paper, so that in hastily unfolding it they got stung; after this had _once_ happened, they afterward first held the packet to their ears to detect any movement within. the following cases relating to dogs are described by darwin: mr. colquhoun winged two wild ducks, which fell on the farther side of a stream; his retriever tried to bring over both at once, but could not succeed; she then, though never before known to ruffle a feather, deliberately killed one, brought over the other, and returned for the dead bird. colonel hutchinson relates that two partridges were shot at once--one being killed, the other wounded; the latter ran away, and was caught by the retriever, who, on her return, came across the dead bird; "she stopped, evidently greatly puzzled, and after one or two trials, finding she could not take it up without permitting the escape of the winged bird, she considered a moment, then deliberately murdered it by giving it a severe crunch, and afterward brought away both together. this was the only known instance of her ever having wilfully injured any game. here we have reason, though not quite perfect; for the retriever might have brought the wounded bird first, and then returned for the dead one, as in the case of the two wild ducks. i give the above cases as resting on the evidence of two independent witnesses; and because in both instances the retrievers, after deliberation, broke through a habit which was inherited by them (that of not killing the game retrieved), and because they show how strong their reasoning faculty must have been to overcome a fixed habit."[ ] it has often been said that no animal uses any tool, but this can be so easily refuted on reflection, that it is hardly worth while considering; for illustration, though, the chimpanzee in a state of nature cracks nuts with a stone; darwin saw a young orang put a stick in a crevice, slip his hand to the other end, and use it in a proper manner as a lever. the baboons in abyssinia descend in troops from the mountains to plunder fields, and when they meet troops of another species a fight ensues. they commence by rolling great stones at their enemies, as they often do when attacked with fire-arms. the duke of argyll remarks that the fashioning of an implement for a special purpose is absolutely peculiar to man; and he considers this forms an immeasurable gulf between him and the brutes. "this is no doubt," says darwin, "a very important distinction; but there appears to me much truth in sir j. lubbock's suggestion,[ ] that when primeval man first used flint-stones for any purpose, he would have accidentally splintered them, and would then have used the sharp fragments. from this step it would be a small one to break the flints on purpose, and not a very wide step to fashion them rudely. the later advance, however, may have taken long ages, if we may judge by the immense interval of time which elapsed before the men of the neolithic period took to grinding and polishing their stone tools. in breaking the flints, as sir j. lubbock likewise remarks, sparks would have been emitted, and in grinding them heat would have been evolved; thus the two usual methods of 'obtaining fire may have originated.' the nature of fire would have been known in many volcanic regions where lava occasionally flows through forests." it becomes a difficult task to determine how far animals exhibit any traces of such high faculties as _abstraction_, _general conception_, _self-consciousness_, _mental individuality_. there can be no doubt, if the mental faculties of an animal can be improved, that the higher complex faculties such as abstraction and self-consciousness have developed from a combination of the simpler ones; this seems to be well illustrated in the young child, as such faculties are developed by imperceptible degrees. these high faculties are very sparingly possessed by the savage; as buchner[ ] has remarked, how little can the hard-worked wife of a degraded australian savage, who uses very few abstract words and cannot count above four, exert her self-consciousness or reflect on the nature of her own existence. if there exist a class of people so inferior in their mental faculties as these, it is not difficult for us to understand how the educated animal who possesses memory, attention, association, and even some imagination and reason, can become capable of abstraction, &c., in an inferior degree even to the savage. it certainly cannot be doubted that an animal possesses mental individuality--as when a master returns to a dog which he has not seen for years, and the dog recognizes him at once. one of the chief distinctions between man and animals is the faculty of language. let us look at this for a moment. "the essential differences," says prof. whitney, "which separate man's means of communication in kind as well as degree from that of the other animals is that, while the latter is instinctive, the former is in all its parts arbitrary and conventional. no man can become possessed of any language without learning it; no animal (that we know of) has any expression which he learns, which is not the direct gift of nature to him." any child of parents living in a foreign country grows up to speak the foreign speech, unless carefully guarded from doing so; or it speaks both this and the tongue of its parent with equal readiness. a child must learn to observe and distinguish before speech is possible, and every child begins to know things by their name before he begins to call them. "if it were not for the added push," says prof. whitney, "given by the desire of communication, the great and wonderful power of the human soul would never move in this particular direction; but when this leads the way, all the rest follows." no philologist now supposes that any language has been deliberately invented; it has been slowly and unconsciously developed by many steps. there can be no question that language owes its origin to the imitation and modification of various natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man's own instinctive cries, aided by signs and gestures; and this is the opinion of max müller. and prof. whitney remarks that "spoken language began, we may say, when a cry of pain, formally wrung out by real suffering, and seen to be understood and sympathized with, was repeated in imitation, no longer as a mere instinctive utterance, but for the purpose of intimating to another." darwin says that "the early progenitor of man probably first used his voice in producing true musical cadences, that is, in singing, as do some gibbon-apes at the present day. it is therefore probable that the imitation of musical cries by articulate sounds may have given rise to words expressive of very complex emotions." the nearest approach to language are the sounds uttered by birds. all that sing exert their power instinctively, but the actual song, and even the call notes, are learned from their parents or foster-parents. these sounds are no more innate than language is in man, as has been proved by davies barrington.[ ] the first attempt to sing "may be compared to the imperfect endeavor in a child to babble." prof. whitney says, if the last transition forms of man "could be restored, we should find the transition forms toward our speech to be, not at all a minor provision of natural articulate signs, but an inferior system of conventional signs, in tone, gesture, and grimace. as between these three natural means of expression, it is simply by a kind of process of natural selection and survival of the fittest that the voice has gained the upper hand, and come to be so much the most prominent that we give the name of language (tonguiness) to all expression." a single utterance or two at first had to do the duty of a whole clause; afterward man learned to piece together parts of speech, and thus arose sentences. although no language, as has already been said, has been deliberately invented, "still each word may not be unfitly compared to an invention; it has its own place, mode, and circumstances of devisal, its preparation in the previous habits of speech, its influence in determining the after progress of speech development; but every language in the gross is an institution, on which scores or hundreds of generations and unnumbered thousands of individual workers have labored."[ ] there is no question at all but that the mental powers in the earliest progenitors of man must have been more highly developed than in the ape, before even the most imperfect form of speech could have come into use; but the constant advancement of this power would have reacted on the mind to enable it to carry on longer trains of thought. "a complex train of thought," says darwin, "can no more be carried on without the aid of words, whether spoken or silent, than a long calculation without the use of figures in algebra. it appears also that even an ordinary train of thought almost requires or is greatly facilitated by some form of language; for the dumb, deaf, and blind girl, laura bridgman, was observed to use her fingers while dreaming.[ ] nevertheless a long succession of vivid ideas may pass through the mind, without the aid of any form of language, as we may infer from the movements of dogs during their dreams." the struggle for existence is going on in every language; one after another will be swept out of existence, and the languages best fitted for the practical uses of the masses of people will alone survive. max müller has well remarked: "a struggle for life is constantly going on amongst the words and grammatical forms in each language. the better the shorter; the easier forms are constantly gaining the upper hand, and they owe their success to their own inherent virtue."[ ] it must not be thought for a moment that that which distinguishes a man from the lower animals is the understanding of articulate sounds--for, as every one knows, dogs understand many words and sentences; and darwin says, at this stage they are at the same stage of development as infants, between the ages of ten and twelve months, who understand many words and sentences, but still cannot utter a single word. it is not the mere articulation which is our distinguishing character; for parrots and other birds possess the power. nor is it the mere capacity of connecting definite sounds with definite ideas; for it is certain that some parrots, which have been taught to speak, connect unerringly words with things, and persons with events." the lower animals, as has already been stated, differ from man solely in his almost infinitely larger power of associating together the most diversified sounds and ideas; and this obviously depends on the high development of his mental powers. we now come to the consideration of a very delicate subject--a subject which is certainly at best very unsatisfactory to handle, as far as popular sentiment is concerned; for, no matter how successfully it may be handled, according to one class of thinkers, to another class of more orthodox thinkers it would be entirely at fault. the subject is, _man's moral sense, belief in god, religion, conscience, and hope of immortality_. it has been stated by some writers that where "faith commences science ends." how erroneous is such a statement as this! for, as krauth has said, "the great body of scientific facts is actually the object of knowledge to a few, and is supposed to be a part of the knowledge of the many, only because the many have faith in the statements of the few, though they can neither verify them, nor even understand the processes by which they are reached."[ ] "we believe," says lewes, "that the sensation of violet is produced by the striking of the ethereal waves against the retina more than seven hundred billions of times in a second. * * * these statements are accepted _on trust_ by us who know that there are thinkers for whom they are irresistible conclusions." it is evident that it is to faith that science owes, to a very great extent, her progress and development; for it is impossible for man to prove by experimental demonstration all the facts of science, and since a certain number of facts have got to be accepted before a new experiment can be attempted, he has to accept on faith that such and such a statement is a fact, because such and such a scientist has claimed to have demonstrated it. "we are not _responsible_ for the fact," says krauth, "that under the conditions of knowledge we _know_, or in defect of them do not know; we are responsible if, under the conditions of a well-grounded faith, we disbelieve."[ ] let us look, then, at the belief in god. the question under consideration at first will not be whether there exists a god, the creator and ruler of the universe--for this will be afterward considered--but is there any evidence that man was aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in the existence of an omnipotent god. schweinfurth relates that the niam-niam, that highly interesting dwarf people of central africa, have no word for god, and therefore, it must be supposed, no idea; and moritz wagner has given a whole selection of reports on the absence of religious consciousness in inferior nations. the idea that conscience is a sort of permanent inspiration or dwelling of god in the soul, i think, on consideration, any reasonable man will not assume. "it is a purely human faculty," says savage, "like the faculty for art or music; and it gets its authority, as they do by being true, and just in so far as it is true. consciousness is our own knowledge of ourselves and of the relation between our own faculties and powers. conscience is our recognition of the relations, as right or wrong, in which we stand to those about us, god and our fellows. _con-scio_ is to know with, in relation. there is such a thing, of course, as a _false conscience_ and a _true conscience_. all the false "conscientiousness grows out of the fact that men suppose they stand in certain relationships that do not really exist. thus they imagined duties that are not duties at all." the virtues which must be practised by rude men, so that they can hold together in tribes, are of course important. no tribe could hold together if robbery, murder, treachery, etc., were common; in other words, there must be honor among thieves. "a north-american indian is well pleased with himself, and is honored by others, when he scalps a man of another tribe; and a dyak cuts off the head of an unoffending person, and dries it as a trophy. the murder of infants has prevailed on the largest scale throughout the world, and has been met with no reproach; but infanticide, especially of females, has been thought to be good for the tribe, or at least not injurious. suicide during former times was not generally considered as a crime, but rather, from the courage displayed, as an honorable act; and it is still practised by some semi-civilized and savage nations without reproach, for it does not obviously concern others of the tribe. it has been recorded that an indian thug conscientiously regretted that he had not robbed and strangled as many travelers as did his father before him."[ ] see how weak the conscience of even more highly civilized men are in their dealings with the brute creation; how the sportsman delights in hunting-scenes, spanish bull-fights, cock-fights, etc.; how indignant was the sensitive cowper, if any one should "needlessly set foot upon a worm"! the rights of the worm are as sacred in his degree as ours are, and a true conscience will recognize them. what, then, is a true conscience? savage states in a few words, it is "one that knows and is adjusted to the realities of life. when men know the truth about god, about themselves--body and mind and spirit--about the real relations of equity in which they stand to their fellow-men in state and church and society, and when they appreciate these, and adjust their conscience to them, then they will have a true conscience. an absolutely true conscience, of course, cannot exist so long as our knowledge of the reality of things is only partial." it is evident, then, that the conscience of man depends on his education and environments, and therefore is the subject of improvement. it becomes, then, the duty of every man to search for truth, for his conscience is not infallible, and by so doing he will bring it to accord with the real facts of god. "throw away," says savage, "prejudice and conceit, seek to make your conscience like the magnetic needle. the needle ever and naturally seeking the unchanging pole." as conscience, then, is but a faculty capable of development, it is not so difficult to understand a race of people whose conscience was in just the first stages of development; and, finally, a race which did not possess this faculty at all, as in the inferior nations which wagner speaks of. [illustration: fig. i.--butcher's shop of the anziques, anno . (from man's place in nature, by _huxley_.)] what kind of conscience and intelligence had the people near cape lopez, called the anziques, which m. du chaillu describes. they had incredible ferocity; for they ate one another, sparing neither friends nor relations. their butcher-shops were filled with human flesh, instead of that of oxen or sheep, for they ate the enemies they captured in battle. they fattened, slayed, and devoured their slaves also, unless they thought they could get a good price for them; and moreover, for weariness of life or desire for glory (for they thought it a great thing and a sign of a generous soul to despise life), or for love of their rulers, offered themselves up for food. there were, indeed, many cannibals, as in the east indies and brazil and elsewhere, but none such as these, since the others only ate their enemies, but these their own blood relations. there is therefore, combining the fact mentioned by wagner with the fact that some nations have no idea of one or more gods, not even a word to express it (proving that they have no idea), i say, there is therefore no evidence that man was aboriginally endowed with any such belief as the existence of an omnipotent god; and in this assertion almost all the learned men concur. "if, however," says darwin, "we include under the term religion, the belief in unseen or spiritual agencies, the case is wholly different; for this belief seems to be universal with the less civilized races. nor is it difficult to understand how it arose." the savage has a stronger belief in bad spirits than in good ones. "the same high mental faculties which first led man to believe in unseen spiritual agencies, then in fetishism, polytheism, and ultimately in monotheism, would infallibly lead him, as long as his reasoning powers remained poorly developed, to very strange superstitions and customs. many of these are terrible to think of: such as the sacrifice of human beings to a blood-loving god, the trial of innocent persons by the ordeal of poison, of fire, of witchcraft, etc.; yet it is well occasionally to reflect on these superstitions, for they show us what an infinite debt of gratitude we owe to the improvement of our reason, to science, and to our accumulated knowledge."[ ] as sir j. lubbock has well observed: "it is not too much to say that the possible dread of unknown evil hangs like a thick cloud over savage life, and embitters every pleasure. these miserable and indirect consequences of our highest faculties may be compared with the incidental and occasional mistakes of the instincts of the lower animals." the belief, then, of the existence of an omnipotent god came with the development of the mental faculties; and although there does exist such a belief in the minds of men whose conscience is in a normal condition, still there are temptations to unbelief, and these have led men to atheism. i cannot think of an atheist unless i associate in my thoughts the words: "the ruling passion, be it what it may-- the ruling passion conquers reason still." the atheist has decided not to believe in the existence of a god, unless he can see him and understand him; in other words, the finite would comprehend the infinite. following the logical method of reasoning of an atheist, the simple fact of seeing god in no way ought to prove his existence. for when you say you see a person, and that you have not the least doubt about it, i answer, that what you are really conscious of is an affection of your retina. and if you urge that you can check your sight of the person by touching him, i would answer, that you are equally transgressing the limits of fact; for what you are really conscious of is, not that he is there, but that the nerves of your hand have undergone a change. all you hear and see and touch and taste and smell are mere variations of your own condition, beyond which, even to the extent of a hair's-breadth, you cannot go. that anything answering to your impression exists outside of yourself is not a _fact_, but an _inference_, to which all validity would be denied by an idealist like berkeley, or by a skeptic like hume.[ ] thomas cooper[ ] said: "i do not say--there is no god; but this i say--i know not." mr. bradlaugh says: "the atheist does not say, 'there is no god'; but he says, i know not what you mean by god; i am without idea of god; the word 'god' is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation. i do not deny god, because i cannot deny that of which i have no conception, and the conception of which, by its affirmer, is so imperfect that he is unable to define it to me." austin holyoake[ ] says: "the only way of proving the fallacy of atheism is by _proving_ the existence of a god." if it is logical proof that is wanted, there is plenty. the following arguments, although not all meeting my approbation, are still of interest: the _ontological argument_ has been presented in different forms. . anselm,[ ] archbishop of canterbury ( - ), states this argument thus: we have an idea of an infinitely perfect being. but real existence is an element of infinite perfection. therefore an infinitely perfect being exists; otherwise the infinitely perfect, as we conceive it, would lack an essential element of perfection. . descartes[ ] ( - ) states the argument thus: the idea of an infinitely perfect being which we possess could not have originated in a finite source, and therefore must have been communicated by an infinitely perfect being. . dr. samuel clark[ ] ( ) argues that time and space are infinite and necessarily existent, but they are not substances. therefore there must exist an eternal and infinite substance of which they are properties. . cousin[ ] maintained that the idea of the finite implies the idea of the infinite as inevitably as the idea of the "me" implies that of the "not me." the _cosmological argument_ may be stated thus: "every new thing and every change in a previously existing thing must have a cause sufficient and pre-existing. the universe consists of a series of changes. therefore the universe must have a cause exterior and anterior to itself. the _teleological argument_, or argument from design or final causes, is as follows: design, or the adaptation of means to effect an end, implies the exercise of intelligence and free choice. the universe is full of traces of design. therefore the "first cause" must have been a personal spirit. the _moral argument_ may be thus stated: "in looking at the works of god there is," says rev. dr. hopkins, "i suppose, evidence enough, especially if interpreted by the moral consciousness, to prove to a candid man the being of god." the educated man is a religious being. the instinct of prayer and worship, the longing for and faith in divine love and help, are inseparable from human nature under normal conditions, as known in history. it is evident from the above that it is not for logical reasoning or arguments that the atheist is led to say, "that up to this moment the world has remained without knowledge of a god."[ ] it is from the folly of his heart; and, as solomon says, that "though you bray him and his false logic in the mortar of reason, among the wheat of facts, with the pestle of argument, yet will not his folly depart from him."[ ] i fully agree with hobbes when he says, "where there is no reason for our belief, there is no reason we should believe," but i think the several arguments given above, which could be greatly expanded, affords sufficient reason for a perfect belief in an infinite god. for-- "god is a being, and that you may see in the fold of the flower, in the leaf of the tree, in the storm-cloud of darkness, in the rainbow of life, in the sunlight at noontide, in the darkness of night, in the wave of the ocean, in the furrow of land, in the mountain of granite, in the atom of sand; gaze where ye may from the sky to the sod-- where can you gaze and not see a god." yes, the infinite god must include all. if he is not in the dust of our streets, in the bricks of our house, in the beat of our hearts, then he is not infinite, but is finite, having boundaries. yes, god's power it was that set the nebulous mass into vibration, and caused the world to be formed; it was his force which first shaped the atoms into molecules, and then into more complex chemical products, till finally "organizable protoplasm" was reached, which, by evolution, climbed up to man. 'tis god we see in the family, in society, in the state, in all religions, up to the highest outflowings of christianity. 'tis him we see in art, literature, and science; and so proclaims evolution. "god is the universal causal law; god is the source of all force and all matter." "for us," says haeckel, "all nature is animated, _i. e._, penetrated with divine spirit, with law, and with necessity." we know of no matter without this divine spirit. the "ultimate repulsion, constituting the extension and impenetrability of the atoms of matter," says dr. samuel brown, "could be conceived of in no other way than as the persistent existence of the will of god himself, in whom we live and move and have our being, and which, if but for an instant withdrawn, the whole material universe and its forces in all their vastness, glory, and beauty, would collapse and sink in a moment into their original nothingness." the advancement of science, instead of depriving man of his god, only deprives men of their earlier and ruder conceptions of deity, only to impart a larger and grander thought of him. "it is true, in the educational process some few minds have lost sight of him altogether, but these are the exceptional, and therefore notable instances; with the great body of men, the conception of god has steadily enlarged with the progress of science."[ ] if science can demonstrate that evolution is true, then it is god's truth, and as such it is man's religious duty to accept it; if he rejects it, superstitiously or unreasonably, he not only defrauds himself but insults the author of truth. what, then, has science demonstrated? science has demonstrated the unity of the forces: light, heat, electricity, magnetism, motion, are all correlated to one another, and are all mutually convertible one into another. heat may be said to produce electricity--electricity to produce heat; magnetism to produce electricity--electricity, magnetism, and so on for the rest. unity of matter and force.--"for if matter were not force, and immediately known as force, it could not be known at all--could not be rationally inferred." unity of the life substance in all organic and animal bodies.--"a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition." unity of animate and inanimate nature in matter, form, and force. unity of the laws of development.--hence we can proclaim the unity of all nature and of her laws of development. in the beautiful words of giordano bruno: "a spirit exists in all things, and no body is so small but contains a part of the divine substance within itself, by which it is animated." hence we arrive at the sublime idea, since we can in no other way account for the ultimate cause of anything, that it is god's spirit which pervades and sustains all nature. by this admission we are not led to say: "there is no god but force;" but rather, "there is no force but god." god is infinite, and therefore includes nature; but is nature all? it is all that our finite minds can discover, 'tis true; but can there not exist another nature or world unknown to us; and if so, since god is infinite, he will include that world also. let us look to this and see what science can answer. it will be necessary for us to consider before proceeding, what is meant by the term soul; and this becomes a somewhat difficult task, as the term has been variously applied to signify the principle of life in an organic body, or the first and most undeveloped stages of individualized spiritual being, or finally, all stages of spiritual individuality, incorporeal as well as corporeal.[ ] the popular belief is, that the soul is not material but substantial, a divine gift to the highest alone of god's creatures; but scientific men, such as carl vogt, moleschott, büchner, schmidt, haeckel, consider the phenomena of the soul to be functions of the brain and nerves. schmidt says: "the soul of the new-born infant is, in its manifestations, in no way different from that of the young animal. these are the functions of the infantine nervous system, with this they grow and are developed together with speech." the idea of the immortality of the soul was not aboriginal with mankind, as sir j. lubbock has shown that the barbarous races possess no clear belief of this kind, and rajah brook, at a missionary meeting in liverpool, told his hearers there that the dyaks, a people with whom he was connected, had no knowledge of god, of a soul, or of any future state. darwin remarks, that "man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future." the belief in a future life amongst the civilized race of mankind is almost universally prevalent. the proofs of immortality are various. the desire that man has to live forever and his horror of annihilation is one; the good suffer in this world and the wicked triumph--this would indicate the necessity of future retribution. the infinite perfectibility of the human mind never reaches its full capacity in this life; the faculty of insight which sees in an individual all its past history at a glance is the immortal attribute and is continually on the increase; and it is possible that aristotle was right so far as he stated that the lower faculties of the soul, such as sensation, imagination, feeling, memory, etc., are perishable. no matter if this be so or not, it is certain that in the next life, where all is perfection, only the fittest attributes will exist, the others would have perished. the doctrine of the immortality of the soul has been defended by marhemeke, blasche, weisse, hinnichs, fecham, j. h. fichte, and others. let us look for a moment at the visible universe and see if it is not reasonable, on a scientific basis, to admit of the existence of another universe, although it remains unseen to us. one can not help but be struck with the fact that energy is being dissipated in this visible universe, that the visible universe is apparently very wasteful. look at the sun which pours her vast store of high-class energy into space, at the rate of , miles per second. what will be the result of this? the answer is simple: the inevitable destruction of the visible universe. yes, just as the visible universe had its beginning it will have its end. but there existed a power before the visible universe came into existence, and which is acting in the visible universe as the ultimate cause of all phenomena. "for we are obliged," says herbert spencer in his first principles, "to regard every phenomenon as a manifestation of some power by which we are acted upon; though omnipresence is unthinkable, yet, as experience discloses no bounds to the diffusion of phenomena, we are unable to think of limits to the presence of this power, while the criticisms of science teaches us that this power is incomprehensible." and so we should expect, for a finite cannot comprehend an infinite. it is for this and other reasons one is led to believe that the visible universe is only an infinitesimal part of "that stupendous whole which is alone entitled to be called the universe."[ ] as there existed an invisible universe before the visible one came into existence, we can conclude that there still exists an invisible universe now, and that this invisible universe will still exist when the present visible one has passed away. let us see what light our finite senses can throw on this. it is well known that all our senses have only a certain narrow gauge within which they are able to bring us into sensible contact with the world about us. all outside this range we are unable to reach. for example, we do not see all forms and colors; we do not hear all sounds; we do not smell all odors; we cannot conscientiously touch all substances; we cannot taste all flavors. vision depends on the wave motion of light. the length of a wave of mean red light is about / th of an inch, that of violet / th of an inch. but the number of oscillations of ether in a second, necessary to produce the sensation of red, are , , , , , all of which enter the eye in one second. for the sensation of violet, the eye must receive , , , , oscillations in one second, as light travels , miles in one second. but when waves of light having all possible lengths act on the eye simultaneously, the sensation of white is produced. so, as has been previously stated, without eyes the world would be wrapped in darkness, there being no light and color outside of one's eye. so we see our sense of sight has its limits, and we know how finite these are. that there are vibrations of the ether on each side of our limits of vision cannot be doubted; and if our eyes were acute enough to receive them, we could have the sensation of some color, which must under present conditions remain forever blank. the owl and bat can see when we cannot; their eyes can receive oscillations of ether, which pass by without affecting us. so with sound, which "is a sensation produced when vibrations of a certain character are excited in the auditory apparatus of the ear."[ ] the longest wave which can give an impression has a length of about ft., which is equal to - / vibrations per second; when the wave is reduced to three or four tenths of an inch, equal to from , to , vibrations per second, sound becomes again inaudible. the piano, for instance, only runs between - / vibrations in a second up to , . sound travels about , feet per second, and the human voice can be heard feet away, whilst a rifle can be heard , feet ( . miles), and very strong cannonading , feet, or miles. that there are vibrations above and below - / and , , there is no room to doubt, as there exist ears which can hear them, such as the hare; but to us they are as though they did not exist. of all our senses, the sense of smell far surpasses that of the other sense. valentine has calculated that we are able to perceive about the three one-hundred-millionth of a grain of musk. the minute particle which we perceive by smell, no chemical reaction can detect, and even spectrum analysis, which can recognize fifteen-millionths of a grain, is far surpassed. but this sense in man is far surpassed by the hound. our sense of taste is also limited, and as has been already stated, cannot distinguish all flavors. we can recognize by taste one part of sulphuric acid in parts of water; one drop of this on the tongue would contain / of a grain ( / of a grain) of sulphuric acid. the length of time needed for reaction in sensation has been determined by vintschgau and hougschmied, and in a person whose sense of taste was highly developed, the reaction time was, for common salt, . second; for sugar, . second; for acid, . second; and for quinine, . second. reviewing, then, the above, it is evident there are eyes which can see what we cannot, there are ears which can hear what we cannot, and there are animals who can smell and touch what we cannot. "for anything we know to the contrary, then," says savage, "a refined and spiritualized order of existences may be the inhabitants of another and unseen world all about us." as milton has said: "millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep." if there is a life very much different from and very much higher than our present one, it is not strange we are ignorant of it. it is impossible to make a person understand anything which is entirely unlike all that has ever been seen or heard, for every idea in the world that man has came to him by nature. man[ ] cannot conceive of anything the hint of which has not been received from his surroundings. he can imagine an animal with the hoof of a bison, with the pouch of a kangaroo, with the wings of an eagle, with the beak of a bird, and with the tail of a lion; and yet every point of this monster he borrowed from nature. everything he can think of, everything he can dream of, is borrowed from his surroundings--everything. "so, if an angel should come and tell of another life, it would mean nothing to us, unless we could translate it into terms of our own experience. we could not understand a 'light that never was on land or sea.' our ignorance is not even then a probability against our belief."[ ] as has already been stated, the visible universe must have its doom, must end as it began, by consisting of a single mass of matter; but is there not a more primitive state of matter than the matter such as we know it? yes; and the so-called ether is that matter. it is unlike any of the forms of matter which we can weigh and measure. it is in some respects like unto a fluid, and in some respects like unto a solid. it is both hard and elastic to an almost inconceivable degree. "it fills all material bodies like a sea in which the atoms of the material bodies are as islands, and it occupies the whole of what we call empty space. it is so sensitive that a disturbance in any part of it causes a 'tremor which is felt on the surface of countless worlds.' it exerts frictions; and although the friction is infinitely small, yet as it has an almost infinite time to work in, it will diminish the momentum of the planets, and diminish their ability to maintain their distance from the sun, the consequence of which will be the planets will fall into the sun, and the solar system will end where it begun."[ ] according to sir william thompson, the ultimate atoms of matter are vortex rings, which professor clifford describes as being more closely packed together (finer grained) in ether than in matter. and he says, "whatever may turn out to be the ultimate nature of the ether and of molecules, we know that to some extent at least they obey the same dynamic laws, and that they act on one another in accordance with these laws. until therefore it is absolutely disproved, it must remain the simplest and most probable assumption that they are finally made of the same stuff, that the material molecule is in some kind of knot or coagulation of ether."[ ] the molecule of matter such as we know, then, may have been, and very probably was, produced by evolution from the atoms or vortex rings of ether, according to the theory advanced by the authors of the work called the "unseen universe," which i have referred to. the world of ether is to be regarded in some sort the obverse complement of the world of sensible matter, so that whatever energy is dissipated in the one is by the same act accumulated in the other; or, as fiske describes it, "it is like the negative plate in photography, where light answers to shadow and shadow to light." every act of consciousness is accompanied by molecular displacements in the brain, and these of course are responded to by movements in the ethereal world. views of this kind were long ago entertained by babbage, and they have since recommended themselves to other men of science, and amongst others to jevon, who says: "mr. babbage has pointed out that if we had power to follow and detect the manifest effects of any disturbance, each particle of existing matter must be a register of all that has happened. * * * the air itself is one vast library on whose pages are forever written all that man has ever said or whispered. there in their mutable but unerring characters, mixed with, the earliest as well as the latest sighs of mortality, stand forever recorded vows unredeemed, promises unfulfilled, perpetuating in the united movements of each particle the testimony of man's changeful will."[ ] so thought affects the substance of the present visible universe; it produces a material organ of memory. "but the motions which accompany thought," say the authors,[ ] "will also affect the invisible order of things," and thus it follows that "thought conceived to affect the matter of another universe, simultaneously with this, may explain a future state."[ ] death, then, is for the individual but a transfer from one physical state of existence to another, according to the "authors'"[ ] idea; and so, on the largest scale, the death or final loss of energy by the whole visible universe has its counterpart in the acquirement of a maximum of life, the correlative unseen world. according to this theory, therefore, as the psychical or spiritual phenomena of the visible world only begins to be manifested with some complex aggregate of material phenomena, therefore it is necessary for the continuance of mind in a future state to have some sort of material vehicle also, which the ether is supposed to supply. "the essential weakness of such a theory as this," says fiske, "lies in the fact that it is thoroughly materialistic in character. we have reason for thinking it probable that ether and ordinary matter are alike composed of vortex rings in a quasi-frictionless fluid; but whatever be the fate of this subtle hypothesis, we may be sure that no theory will ever be entertained in which analysis of ether shall require different symbols from that of ordinary matter. in our authors' theory, therefore, the putting on of immortality is in nowise the passage from a material to a spiritual state. it is the passage of one kind of materially conditioned state to another." this theory, dealing with matter, should receive support by actual experience, as matter is a subject of investigation. to accept it, therefore, as being possible without any positive evidence for its support, it remains but a weak speculation, no matter how ingenious it may seem. to support an after life, which is not materially conditioned, i agree with mr. fiske, that although it will be unsupported by any item of experience whatever, it may nevertheless be an impregnable assertion. if all were to agree, what we call matter is really force, as it certainly is, for if matter were not force it would be unthinkable, being force it becomes thinkable; this point i have touched on before, but it may be well to elaborate on it a little just here. the great lesson that berkeley taught mankind was that what we call material phenomena are really the products of consciousness co-operating with some unknown power (not material) existing beyond consciousness. "we do very well to speak of matter," says fiske, "in common parlance, but all that the word really means is a group of qualities which have no existence apart from our minds." the ablest modern thinkers, then, believe that the only real things that exist are the mind and god, and that the universe is only the infinitely varied manifestation of god in the human conscience. it is evident, then, that _matter_, the only thing the materialist concedes real existence, is simply an orderly phantasmagoria; and god and soul, which materialists regard as mere fictions of the imagination, are the only conceptions that answer to real existence.[ ] for instance, let us see what it is we know about a table. you say you can see it; i can respond that all you are conscious of is that the nerves of your eye have undergone a change. you say, i can check my sight of it by touching it; to this i reply, all that you are really conscious of is a sensation, and that something outside of you has produced it. but that all that is outside of me is anything more than the manifestation to me of a power or of god, is an inference and cannot be proven. to constant manifestations of this power, always assuming the same form and characters which can be studied, different names have been given; but that the dust of the street or beat of our heart is anything else but that peculiar manifestation of the infinite god, cannot be contradicted. mr. savage says, "the movement of electricity along a telegraph-line is accompanied by certain molecular changes in the wire itself; but the wire is not electricity, neither does it produce it. thus modern science has found it utterly impossible to explain mind either as a part or a product of matter. it is perfectly reasonable, then, for any man to believe in a purely intellectual and spiritual existence, apart from any material form or substance." to comprehend the immortal life is an impossibility; it transcends any earthly experience of man. the caterpillar probably knows nothing about any life higher than that of his toilsome crawling on the ground; but that is no proof against the fact that we know he is to become a butterfly. the boy knows nothing about manhood, and cannot know. though he sees men and their labors all about him, he has and can have no conception whatever of what it means to be a man; it transcends all experience.[ ] "the existence," says fiske, "of a single soul, or congeries of psychical phenomena, unaccompanied by a material body, would be evidence sufficient to demonstrate this hypothesis. but in the nature of things, even were there a million such souls round about us, we could not become aware of the existence of one of them; for we have no organ or faculty for the perception of soul apart from the material structure and activities in which it has been manifested throughout the whole course of our experience. even our own self-consciousness involves the consciousness of ourselves as partly material bodies. these considerations show that our hypothesis is very different from the ordinary hypothesis with which science deals. _the entire absence of testimony does not raise a negative presumption, except in cases where testimony is accessible._" my object has not been to prove the purely spiritual theory of a future life, but to show that it is a theory that intelligent people can entertain as a foundation for their belief "in the hope of immortality." but that the spiritual life instead of the material life is the state in which we can hope for immortality, i think there can be no question; and such was the opinion of paul[ ] when he wrote: "now this i say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of god, neither does corruption inherit incorruption.... so when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, 'death is swallowed up in victory.' o death, where is thy sting? o grave, where is thy victory?" footnotes: [ ] the law of disease, in college courant, vol. xiv. [ ] winchell. evolution, p. . [ ] comparative zoology, p. . . [ ] huxley. physical basis of life. [ ] johnson, ency. [ ] comparative anatomy--orton, p. . [ ] analytical anatomy and phys.--cutter, p. . [ ] biography of a plant. [ ] see huxley--invertebrate animals, anatomy of. [ ] phys. basis of life. [ ] beginnings of life, p. , vol. i. [ ] monthly micros. jour., may , ' , p. . [ ] chem. and phys. balance of organic nature, , p. (trans.). [ ] inaugural address, aug. , . [ ] haeckel--hist. of creation. [ ] see haeckel--evol. of man. [ ] evolution of man, vol. ii, p. . [ ] johnson's cyclopedia, article "evolution." [ ] sumner, in johnson's cyc. [ ] christian union, vol. xiii, no. , p. . [ ] gen. i. . [ ] st. john i. . [ ] st. john i. . [ ] hist. of creation, p. . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] heb. xi. . revised english ed. [ ] _loc. cit._, vol. i, p. . [ ] _loc. cit._, vol. i, p. . [ ] indications of the creator. [ ] evolution and progress, p. , rev. wm. i. gill. [ ] natürl. schöpfungsgesch., pp. - . [ ] paget, lectures on surgical pathology, , vol. i, p. . [ ] ueber die richtung der haare am menschlichen körper. [ ] pop. sci. monthly, june, , p. . [ ] see sci. am., may , . [ ] source of muscular power, proc. roy. inst., june , . am. i. sci., ii, xlii, , nov. . [ ] comparative zoology, p. . [ ] correlation of the vital and physical forces, p. . [ ] on the time required for the transmission of volition and sensation through the nerves, proc. roy. inst. [ ] comparative zoology, p. . [ ] sci. amer., nov. , , p. . [ ] marshall, outline of physiology. amer. ed., , p. . [ ] macmillon's magazine, pop. sci. monthly, april, . [ ] "principles of psychology," , no. , p. . [ ] j. s. lombard, n. y. med. jour., vol. v, , june, . [ ] _loc. cit._, p. . [ ] the apparatus employed is illustrated and fully described in brown-sequard's archives de phys., vol. i, , june, . by it the - th of a degree centigrade may be indicated. [ ] l. h. wood, "on the influence of mental activity on the excretion of phosphoric acid by the kidneys." proc. conn. med. soc., nov., , p. . [ ] _loc. cit._, p. . [ ] address of dr. f. a. p. barnard, as retiring president, before the am. ass. for adv. of sci., chicago meeting, aug. . "thought cannot be a physical force, because thought admits of no measure." [ ] derivation hypothesis of life and species, forming fortieth chapter of his anatomy of vertebrates, republished in am. jour. sci., ii, xlvii, , jan. . [ ] prehistoric times, p. , by lubbock. [ ] madness in animals, jour. mental sci., july, . dr. w. l. lindsay. [ ] facultés mentales des animaux, , tom. xi, p. . [ ] primeval man, , pp. - . [ ] prehistoric times, , p. . [ ] "conferences ser les théorie darwinienne," , p. . [ ] philosoph. trans., , p. . [ ] prof. whitney, p. . [ ] phys. and pathol. of mind. dr. maudsley. d ed., , p. . [ ] nature, january , , p. . [ ] problems i. . [ ] johnson's cyc. article "faith." c. p. krauth. [ ] darwin's descent of man, p. . [ ] see descent of man, p. . [ ] see tyndall's belfast address. [ ] purgatory of suicides. [ ] thoughts on atheism, p. . [ ] monologium and proslogium. [ ] meditations de primaphilosophia prop. , p. . [ ] demonstration of the being and attributes of god. [ ] elements of psychology. [ ] thoughts on atheism, by holyoake, p. . [ ] proverbs xvii. . [ ] henry ward beecher. [ ] see w. t. harris. johnson's encyc. "soul." [ ] unseen universe. [ ] rood. "sound," johnson's encyc. [ ] see r. g. ingersoll's lecture on hell. [ ] savage. [ ] "the unseen world." john fiske, p. . [ ] fortnightly review, june , p. . [ ] ninth bridgewater treatise. [ ] of the unseen universe. [ ] anagram. nature, oct. , . [ ] of the unseen universe. [ ] fiske. unseen world, p. . [ ] savage. relig. of evol., p. . [ ] corinthians, xv., verses - (part of). _revised english ed._, . transcriber's notes: passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_. passages in bold are indicated by =bold=. numbers enclosed in {brackets} are subscripted in the original text. additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as presented in the original text. images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the closest paragraph break. the following misprints have been addressed: "hæckel" standardized to "haeckel" (page ) missing "the" added (page ) "paleontology" standardized to "palæontology" (page ) "cerebelbellum" corrected to "cerebellum" (page ) some quotation marks in the original are not paired. obvious errors have been silently closed, while those requiring interpretation have been left open. other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained. influences of geographic environment on the basis of ratzel's system of anthropo-geography by ellen churchill semple to the memory of friedrich ratzel hither, as to their fountain, other stars repairing, in their golden urns draw light. milton. preface the present book, as originally planned over seven years ago, was to be a simplified paraphrase or restatement of the principles embodied in friedrich ratzel's _anthropo-geographie_. the german work is difficult reading even for germans. to most english and american students of geographic environment it is a closed book, a treasure-house bolted and barred. ratzel himself realized "that any english form could not be a literal translation, but must be adapted to the anglo-celtic and especially to the anglo-american mind." the writer undertook, with ratzel's approval, to make such an adapted restatement of the principles, with a view to making them pass current where they are now unknown. but the initial stages of the work revealed the necessity of a radical modification of the original plan. ratzel performed the great service of placing anthropo-geography on a secure scientific basis. he had his forerunners in montesquieu, alexander von humboldt, buckle, ritter, kohl, peschel and others; but he first investigated the subject from the modern scientific point of view, constructed his system according to the principles of evolution, and based his conclusions on world-wide inductions, for which his predecessors did not command the data. to this task he brought thorough training as a naturalist, broad reading and travel, a profound and original intellect, and amazing fertility of thought. yet the field which he had chosen was so vast, and its material so complex, that even his big mental grasp could not wholly compass it. his conclusions, therefore, are not always exhaustive or final. moreover, the very fecundity of his ideas often left him no time to test the validity of his principles. he enunciates one brilliant generalization after another. sometimes he reveals the mind of a seer or poet, throwing out conclusions which are highly suggestive, on the face of them convincing, but which on examination prove untenable, or at best must be set down as unproven or needing qualification. but these were just the slag from the great furnace of his mind, slag not always worthless. brilliant and far-reaching as were his conclusions, he did not execute a well-ordered plan. rather he grew with his work, and his work and its problems grew with him. he took a mountain-top view of things, kept his eyes always on the far horizon, and in the splendid sweep of his scientific conceptions sometimes overlooked the details near at hand. herein lay his greatness and his limitation. these facts brought the writer face to face with a serious problem. ratzel's work needed to be tested, verified. the only solution was to go over the whole field from the beginning, making research for the data as from the foundation, and checking off the principles against the facts. this was especially necessary, because it was not always obvious that ratzel had based his inductions on sufficiently broad data; and his published work had been open to the just criticism of inadequate citation of authorities. it was imperative, moreover, that any investigation of geographic environment for the english-speaking world should meet its public well supported both by facts and authorities, because that public had not previously known a ritter or a peschel. the writer's own investigation revealed the fact that ratzel's principles of anthropo-geography did not constitute a complete, well-proportioned system. some aspects of the subject had been developed exhaustively, these of course the most important; but others had been treated inadequately, others were merely a hint or an inference, and yet others were represented by an hiatus. it became necessary, therefor, to work up certain important themes with a thoroughness commensurate with their significance, to reduce the scale of others, and to fill up certain gaps with original contributions to the science. always it was necessary to clarify the original statement, where that was adhered to, and to throw it into the concrete form of expression demanded by the anglo-saxon mind. one point more. the organic theory of society and state permeates the _anthropo-geographie_, because ratzel formulated his principles at a time when herbert spencer exercised a wide influence upon european thought. this theory, now generally abandoned by sociologists, had to be eliminated from any restatement of ratzel's system. though it was applied in the original often in great detail, it stood there nevertheless rather as a scaffolding around the finished edifice; and the stability of the structure, after this scaffolding is removed shows how extraneous to the whole it was. the theory performed, however, a great service in impressing ratzel's mind with the life-giving connection between land and people. the writer's own method of research has been to compare typical peoples of all races and all stages of cultural development, living under similar geographic conditions. if these peoples of different ethnic stocks but similar environments manifested similar or related social, economic or historical development, it was reasonable to infer that such similarities were due to environment and not to race. thus, by extensive comparison, the race factor in these problems of two unknown quantities was eliminated for certain large classes of social and historical phenomena. the writer, moreover, has purposely avoided definitions, formulas, and the enunciation of hard-and-fast rules; and has refrained from any effort to delimit the field or define the relation of this new science of anthropo-geography to the older sciences. it is unwise to put tight clothes on a growing child. the eventual form and scope of the science, the definition and organization of its material must evolve gradually, after long years and many efforts of many workers in the field. the eternal flux of nature runs through anthropo-geography, and warns against precipitate or rigid conclusions. but its laws are none the less well founded because they do not lend themselves to mathematical finality of statement. for this reason the writer speaks of geographic factors and influences, shuns the word geographic determinant, and speaks with extreme caution of geographic control. the present volume is offered to the public with a deep sense of its inadequacy; with the realization that some of its principles may have to be modified or their emphasis altered after wider research; but also with the hope that this effort may make the way easier for the scholar who shall some day write the ideal treatise on anthropo-geography. in my work on this book i have only one person to thank, the great master who was my teacher and friend during his life, and after his death my inspiration. ellen churchill semple. louisville, kentucky, _january_, . contents preface chapter i. operation of geographic factors in history man a product of the earth's surface--persistent effect of geographic barriers--recurrent influences of nature-made highways--regions of historical similarity--persistence of climatic influences--relation of geography to history--multiplicity of geographic factors--evolution of geographic relations--interplay of geographic factors--direct and indirect effects of environment--indirect effects in differentiation of colonial peoples--general importance of indirect effects--time element--previous habitat--transplanted religions--partial response to environment--the larger conception of environment--unity of the earth and the human race. chapter ii. classes of geographic influences four classes of influences--physical effects of environment--stature and environment--effects of dominant activities--physical effects of climate--pigmentation in relation to heat and light--pigmentation and altitude--difficulty of generalization from geographic distribution--psychical effects--in religion--in mind and character--in language--the great man in history--economic and social effects--size of the social group--effects on movements of peoples--segregation and accessibility--change of habitat. chapter iii. society and state in relation to the land people and land--political geography--political versus social geography--land basis of society--morgan's _societas_--land bond in primitive hunter tribes--in fisher tribes--in pastoral tribes--land and state--strength of the land bond in the state--evolution of land tenure--land and food supply--advance from natural to artificial basis of subsistence--land basis in relation to agriculture--migratory and sedentary agriculture--geographic checks to progress in economic and social development--native animal and plant life as factors in progress--density of population under different cultural and geographic conditions--its relation to government--territorial expansion of the state--artificial checks to population--extra-territorial relations of state and people--theory of progress from the standpoint of geography--progressive dependence of man upon nature. chapter iv. movements of peoples in their geographical significance universality of such movements--the name historical movement--its evolution--its importance in history--geographical interpretation of historical movement--mobility of primitive peoples--civilization and mobility--migration and ethnic mingling--cultural modification during migration--the transit land--war as form of historical movement--slavery--military colonies--withdrawal and flight--natural regions of asylum--emigration and colonization--commerce as a form of historical movement--movements due to religion--historical movement and race distribution--zonal distribution--movements to like or better geographic conditions--their direction--return movements--regions of attraction and repulsion--psychical influences in certain movements--two results of historical movement--differentiation and area--differentiation and isolation--geographic conditions of heterogeneity and homogeneity--assimilation--elimination of unfit variants through historical movement--geographical origins. chapter v. geographical location the importance of geographical location--content of the term location--intercontinental location--natural versus vicinal location--naturally defined location--vicinal location--vicinal groups of similar or diverse race and culture--thalassic vicinal location--complementary locations--continuous and scattered location--central versus peripheral location--mutual relations between center and periphery--inland and coastward expansion--reaction between center and periphery--periphery in colonization--dominant historical side--change of historical front--contrasted historical sides--one-sided historical location--scattered location--due to adverse geographic conditions--island way stations on maritime routes--scattered location of primitive peoples--ethnic islands of expansion and decline--discontinuous distribution--contrasted location--geographical polarity--geographical marks of growth and decline--interpretation of scattered and marginal location--contrast between ethnic islands of growth and decline. chapter vi. geographical area the size of the earth--relation of area to life--area and differentiation--the struggle for space--national area an index of social and political development--the oikoumene--the unity of the human species in relation to the earth--isolation and differentiation--monotonous race type of small area--wide race distribution and inner diversities--large area a guarantee of racial or national permanence--weakness of small states--protection of large area to primitive peoples--contrast of large and small areas in bio-geography--political domination of large areas--area and literature--small geographic base of primitive societies--influence of small, confined areas--the process of territorial growth--historical advance from small to large areas--gradations in area and in development--preliminaries to ethnic and political expansion--significance of sphere of influence or activity--nature of expansion in new and old countries--relation of ethnic to political expansion--relation of people and state to political boundary--expansion of civilization--cultural advantages of large political area--politico-economic advantages--political area and the national horizon--national estimates of area--limitations of small tribal conceptions--evolution of territorial policies--colonial expansion--the mind of colonials. chapter vii. geographical boundaries the boundary zone in nature--oscillating boundaries of the habitable area of the earth--wallace's line a typical boundary zone--boundaries as limits of expansion--boundary zone as index of growth or decline--breadth of boundary zone--broad frontier zones of active expansion--value of barrier boundaries--the sea as the absolute boundary--natural boundaries as bases of ethnic and political boundaries--primitive waste boundaries--alien intrusions into border wastes--politico-economic significance of the waste boundary--common boundary districts--tariff free zones--boundary zones of mingled race elements--assimilation of civilization in boundary zones--relation of ethnic and cultural assimilation--the border zone of assimilation in political expansion--tendency toward defection along political frontiers--the spirit of colonial frontiers--free border states as political survivals--guardians of the marches--lawless citizens deported to political frontiers--drift of lawless elements to the frontiers--asylums beyond the border. chapter viii. coast peoples the coast a zone of transition--the inner edge--shifting of the inner edge--outer edge in original settlement--in early navigation--in colonization--inland advance of colonies--interpenetration of land and sea--ratio of shore-line to area--criticism of the formula--accessibility of coasts from hinterland--accessibility of coasts from the sea--embayed coasts--contrasted coastal belts--evolution of ports--influence of offshore islands--previous habitat of coast-dwellers--habitability of coasts as a factor in maritime development--geographic conditions for brilliant maritime development--scope and importance of seaward expansion--ethnic contrast between coast and interior peoples--ethnic amalgamations of coastlands--_lingua franca_ a product of coasts--coast-dwellers as middlemen--differentiation of coast from inland people--early civilization of coasts--progress from thalassic to oceanic coasts--importance of geographic location of coasts--historical decline of certain coasts--complex interplay of geographic factors in coastlands. chapter ix. oceans and enclosed seas the water a factor in man's mobility--oceans and seas the factor of union in universal history--origin of navigation--primitive forms--relation of river to marine navigation--retarded and advanced navigation--geographic conditions in polynesia--mediterranean versus atlantic seamanship--three geographic stages of maritime development--enclosed seas as areas of ethnic and cultural assimilation--assimilation facilitated by ethnic kinship--importance of zonal and continental location of enclosed seas--thalassic character of the indian ocean--limitations of small area in enclosed seas--successive maritime periods in history--contrasted historical rôles of northern and southern hemispheres--size of the ocean--neutrality of the seas--_mare clausum and mare liberum_. chapter x. man's relation to the water the protection of a water frontier--pile villages of ancient times--modern pile dwellings--their geographic distribution--river-dwellers in old and popular lands--man's encroachment upon the sea by reclamation of land--the struggle with the water--mound villages in river flood-plains--social and political gain by control of the water--a factor in early civilization of arid lands--the economy of the water--fisheries--factors in maritime expansion--fisheries as nurseries of seamen--anthropo-geographic importance of navigation. chapter xi. the anthropo-geography of rivers rivers as intermediaries between land and sea--sea navigation merges into river navigation--historical importance of seas and oceans influenced by their debouching streams--lack of coast articulations supplied by rivers--river highways as basis of commercial preëminence--importance of rivers in large countries--rivers as highways of expansion--determinants of routes in arid or semi-arid lands--increasing historical importance of rivers from source to mouth--value of location at hydrographic centers--effect of current upon trade and expansion--importance of mouth to upstream people--prevention of monopoly of river mouths--motive for canals in lower course--watershed canals for extension of inland waterways--rivers and railroads--natural unity of every river system--in arid lands as common source of water supply--tendency towards ethnic and cultural unity in a river valley--identity of country with river valley--rivers as boundaries of races and peoples--rivers as political boundaries--fluvial settlements and peoples--boatman tribes or castes--river islands as protected sites--river and lake islands as robber strongholds--river peninsulas--river islands as sites of trading posts and colonies--swamps as barriers and boundaries--swamps as regions of survivals--swamps as places of refuge--the spirit of the marshes--economic and political importance of lakes--lakes as nuclei of states--lakes as fresh-water seas. chapter xii. continents and their peninsulas insularity of the land-masses--classification of land-masses according to size and location--effect of the size of land-masses--independence due to location versus independence due to size--continental convergence and ethnic kinship--africa's location--the atlantic abyss--geographical character of the pacific--pacific affinities of north america--the atlantic face of america as the infant orient of the world--the atlantic abyss in the movements of peoples--races and continents--contrast of the northern and southern continents--effects of continental structure upon historical development--structure of north and south america--cultural superiority of pacific slope indians--coast articulations of continents--importance of size in continental articulations--peninsular conditions most favorable to historical development--the continental base of peninsulas--continental base a zone of transition--continental base the scene of invasion and war--peninsular extremities as areas of isolation--ethnic unity of peninsulas--peninsulas as intermediaries. chapter xiii. island peoples physical relationship between islands and peninsulas--character of insular flora and fauna--paradoxical influences of island habitat on man--conservative and radical tendencies born of isolation and accessibility--islands as nurseries and disseminators of distinctive civilizations--limitation of small area in insular history--sources of ethnic stock of islands on nearest mainland. ethnic divergence with increased isolation--differentiation of peoples and civilizations in islands--differentiation of language--unification of race in islands--remoter sources of island populations--double sources--mixed population of small thalassic isles--significant location of island way stations--thalassic islands as goals of maritime expansion--political detachability of islands--insular weakness based upon small area--island fragments of broken empires--area and location as factors in political autonomy of islands--historical effects of island isolation in primitive retardation--later stimulation of development--excessive isolation--protection of an island environment--islands as places of refuge--islands as places of survival--effects of small area in islands--economic limitations of their small area--dense population of islands--geographic causes of this density--oceanic climate as factor--relation of density to size--density affected by a focal location for trade--overflow of island population and colonies to the mainland--precocious development of island agriculture--intensive tillage--emigration and colonization from islands--recent emigration from islands--maritime enterprise as outlet--artificial checks to population--polyandry--infanticide--low valuation of human life. chapter xiv. plains, steppes and deserts relief of the sea floor--mean elevations of the continents--distribution of relief--homologous reliefs and homologous histories--anthropo-geography of lowlands--extensive plains unfavorable to early development--conditions for fusion in plains--retardation due to monotonous environment--influence of slight geographic features in plains--plains and political expansion--arid plains--nomadism--pastoral life--pastoral nomads of arctic plains--historical importance of steppe nomads--mobility of pastoral nomads--seasonal migrations--marauding expeditions--forms of defense against nomad depredations--pastoral life as a training for soldiers--capacity for political organization and consolidation--centralization versus decentralization in nomadism--spirit of independence among nomads--resistance to conquest--curtailment of nomadism--supplementary agriculture of pastoral nomadism--irrigation and horticulture--scant diet of nomads--effects of a diminishing water supply--checks to population--trade of nomads--pastoral nomads as middlemen--desert markets--nomad industries--arid lands as areas of arrested development--mental and moral qualities of nomads--religion of pastoral nomads. chapter xv. mountain barriers and their passes man as part of the mobile envelope of the earth--inaccessibility of mountains--mountains as transit regions--transition forms of relief between highlands and lowlands--piedmont belts as boundary zones--density of population in piedmont belts--piedmont towns and cities--piedmonts as colonial or backwoods frontiers--mountain carriers--power of mountain barriers to block or deflect historical movement--significance of mountain valleys--longitudinal valleys--passes in mountain barriers--breadth of mountain barriers--dominant transmontane routes--height and form of mountain barriers--contrasted accessibility of opposite slopes--political and ethnic effects--persistence of barrier nature--importance of mountain passes--geographic conditions affecting the historical importance of passes--passes determine the transmontane routes--navigable river approaches to passes--types of settlement in the valley approaches--pass cities and their markets--pass peoples--their political importance. chapter xvi. influences of a mountain environment zones of altitude--politico-economic value of a varied relief--belief and climate--altitude zones of economic and cultural development--altitude and density belts in tropical highlands--increasing density where altitude confers safety--geographic conditions affecting density of mountain population--terrace agriculture--its geographical distribution--terrace agriculture in mountainous islands--among savage peoples--fertilizing terrace lands--economy of level land--mountain pastures and stock-raising--life and industry of the summer herdsmen--communal ownership of mountain pastures--hay making in high mountains--winter industries of mountain peoples--overpopulation and emigration--preventive checks to increase of population--religious celibacy--polyandry--marauding tendencies in mountaineers--historical consequences of mountain raiding--conquest of mountain regions--political dismemberment of mountain peoples--types of mountain states--significance of their small size--mountain isolation and differentiation--survival of primitive races in mountains--diversity of peoples and dialects--constriction of mountain areas of ethnic survival--isolation and retardation of mountain regions--mental and moral qualities of mountain people. chapter xvii. the influences of climate upon man importance of climatic influences--climate in the interplay of geographic factors--its direct and indirect effects--climate determines the habitable area of the earth--effect of climate upon relief and hence upon man--man's adaptability to climatic extremes--temperature as modified by oceans and winds--rainfall--temperature and zonal location--mutual reactions of contrasted zones--isothermal lines in anthropo-geography--historical effects of compressed isotherms--historical effects of slight climatic differences--their influence upon distribution of immigration--temperature and race temperament--complexity of this problem--monotonous climatic conditions--effects of arctic cold--effect of monotonous heat--the tropics as goals of migration--the problem of acclimatization--historical importance of the temperate zone--contrast of the seasons--duration of the seasons--effect of long winters and long summers--zones of culture--temperate zone as cradle of civilization index list of maps. density of population in the eastern hemisphere density of population in the western hemisphere powell's map of indian linguistic stocks primitive indian stocks of south america ethnographical map of india ethnographical map of asia ethnographical map of africa distribution of wild and civilized tribes in the philippines distribution of population in the province of finmarken distribution of population in the united states in the slav-german boundary in europe ethnographical map of russia the german north sea coast ancient phoenician and greek colonies riparian villages of the lower st. lawrence lake of the four forest cantons the annual rainfall of the world the cultural regions of africa and arabia distribution of religions in the old world density of population in italy mean annual isotherms and heat belts chapter i the operation of geographic factors in history [sidenote: man a product of the earth's surface.] man is a product of the earth's surface. this means not merely that he is a child of the earth, dust of her dust; but that the earth has mothered him, fed him, set him tasks, directed his thoughts, confronted him with difficulties that have strengthened his body and sharpened his wits, given him his problems of navigation or irrigation, and at the same time whispered hints for their solution. she has entered into his bone and tissue, into his mind and soul. on the mountains she has given him leg muscles of iron to climb the slope; along the coast she has left these weak and flabby, but given him instead vigorous development of chest and arm to handle his paddle or oar. in the river valley she attaches him to the fertile soil, circumscribes his ideas and ambitions by a dull round of calm, exacting duties, narrows his outlook to the cramped horizon of his farm. up on the wind-swept plateaus, in the boundless stretch of the grasslands and the waterless tracts of the desert, where he roams with his flocks from pasture to pasture and oasis to oasis, where life knows much hardship but escapes the grind of drudgery, where the watching of grazing herd gives him leisure for contemplation, and the wide-ranging life a big horizon, his ideas take on a certain gigantic simplicity; religion becomes monotheism, god becomes one, unrivalled like the sand of the desert and the grass of the steppe, stretching on and on without break or change. chewing over and over the cud of his simple belief as the one food of his unfed mind, his faith becomes fanaticism; his big spacial ideas, born of that ceaseless regular wandering, outgrow the land that bred them and bear their legitimate fruit in wide imperial conquests. man can no more be scientifically studied apart from the ground which he tills, or the lands over which he travels, or the seas over which he trades, than polar bear or desert cactus can be understood apart from its habitat. man's relations to his environment are infinitely more numerous and complex than those of the most highly organized plant or animal. so complex are they that they constitute a legitimate and necessary object of special study. the investigation which they receive in anthropology, ethnology, sociology and history is piecemeal and partial, limited as to the race, cultural development, epoch, country or variety of geographic conditions taken into account. hence all these sciences, together with history so far as history undertakes to explain the causes of events, fail to reach a satisfactory solution of their problems largely because the geographic factor which enters into them all has not been thoroughly analyzed. man has been so noisy about the way he has "conquered nature," and nature has been so silent in her persistent influence over man, that the geographic factor in the equation of human development has been overlooked. [sidenote: stability of geographic factors in history.] in every problem of history there are two main factors, variously stated as heredity and environment, man and his geographic conditions, the internal forces of race and the external forces of habitat. now the geographic element in the long history of human development has been operating strongly and operating persistently. herein lies its importance. it is a stable force. it never sleeps. this natural environment, this physical basis of history, is for all intents and purposes immutable in comparison with the other factor in the problem--shifting, plastic, progressive, retrogressive man. [sidenote: persistent effect of remoteness.] history tends to repeat itself largely owing to this steady, unchanging geographic element. if the ancient roman consul in far-away britain often assumed an independence of action and initiative unknown in the provincial governors of gaul, and if, centuries later, roman catholicism in england maintained a similar independence towards the holy see, both facts have their cause in the remoteness of britain from the center of political or ecclesiastical power in rome. if the independence of the roman consul in britain was duplicated later by the attitude of the thirteen colonies toward england, and again within the young republic by the headstrong self-reliance, impatient of government authority, which characterized the early trans-allegheny commonwealths in their aggressive indian policy, and led them to make war and conclude treaties for the cession of land like sovereign states; and if this attitude of independence in the over-mountain men reappeared in a spirit of political defection looking toward secession from the union and a new combination with their british neighbor on the great lakes or the spanish beyond the mississippi, these are all the identical effects of geographical remoteness made yet more remote by barriers of mountain and sea. this is the long reach which weakens the arm of authority, no matter what the race or country or epoch. [sidenote: effect of proximity.] as with geographical remoteness, so it is with geographical proximity. the history of the greek peninsula and the greek people, because of their location at the threshold of the orient, has contained a constantly recurring asiatic element. this comes out most often as a note of warning; like the _motif_ of ortrud in the opera of "lohengrin," it mingles ominously in every chorus of hellenic enterprise or paean of hellenic victory, and finally swells into a national dirge at the turkish conquest of the peninsula. it comes out in the legendary history of the argonautic expedition and the trojan war; in the arrival of phoenician cadmus and phrygian pelops in grecian lands; in the appearance of tyrian ships on the coast of the peloponnesus, where they gather the purple-yielding murex and kidnap greek women. it appears more conspicuously in the asiatic sources of greek culture; more dramatically in the persian wars, in the retreat of xenophon's ten thousand, in alexander's conquest of asia, and hellenic domination of asiatic trade through syria to the mediterranean. again in the thirteenth century the lure of the levantine trade led venice and genoa to appropriate certain islands and promontories of greece as commercial bases nearer to asia. in begins the absorption of greece into the asiatic empire of the turks, the long dark eclipse of sunny hellas, till it issues from the shadow in with the achievement of greek independence. [sidenote: persistent effect of natural barriers.] if the factor is not one of geographical location, but a natural barrier, such as a mountain system or a desert, its effect is just as persistent. the upheaved mass of the carpathians served to divide the westward moving tide of the slavs into two streams, diverting one into the maritime plain of northern germany and poland, the other into the channel of the danube valley which guided them to the adriatic and the foot of the alps. this same range checked the westward advance of the mounted tartar hordes. the alps long retarded roman expansion into central europe, just as they delayed and obstructed the southward advance of the northern barbarians. only through the partial breaches in the wall known as passes did the alps admit small, divided bodies of the invaders, like the cimbri and teutons, who arrived, therefore, with weakened power and at intervals, so that the roman forces had time to gather their strength between successive attacks, and thus prolonged the life of the declining empire. so in the middle ages, the alpine barrier facilitated the resistance of italy to the german emperors, trying to enforce their claim upon this ancient seat of the holy roman empire. it was by river-worn valleys leading to passes in the ridge that etruscan trader, roman legion, barbarian horde, and german army crossed the alpine ranges. to-day well-made highways and railroads converge upon these valley paths and summit portals, and going is easier; but the alps still collect their toll, now in added tons of coal consumed by engines and in higher freight rates, instead of the ancient imposts of physical exhaustion paid by pack animal and heavily accoutred soldier. formerly these mountains barred the weak and timid; to-day they bar the poor, and forbid transit to all merchandise of large bulk and small value which can not pay the heavy transportation charges. similarly, the wide barrier of the rockies, prior to the opening of the first overland railroad, excluded all but strong-limbed and strong-hearted pioneers from the fertile valleys of california and oregon, just as it excludes coal and iron even from the colorado mines, and checks the free movement of laborers to the fields and factories of california, thereby tightening the grip of the labor unions upon pacific coast industries. [sidenote: persistent effect of nature-made highways.] as the surface of the earth presents obstacles, so it offers channels for the easy movement of humanity, grooves whose direction determines the destination of aimless, unplanned migrations, and whose termini become, therefore, regions of historical importance. along these nature-made highways history repeats itself. the maritime plain of palestine has been an established route of commerce and war from the time of sennacherib to napoleon.[ ] the danube valley has admitted to central europe a long list of barbarian invaders, covering the period from attila the hun to the turkish besiegers of vienna in . the history of the danube valley has been one of warring throngs, of shifting political frontiers, and unassimilated races; but as the river is a great natural highway, every neighboring state wants to front upon it and strives to secure it as a boundary. the movements of peoples constantly recur to these old grooves. the unmarked path of the voyageur's canoe, bringing out pelts from lake superior to the fur market at montreal, is followed to-day by whaleback steamers with their cargoes of manitoba wheat. to-day the mohawk depression through the northern appalachians diverts some of canada's trade from the great lakes to the hudson, just as in the seventeenth century it enabled the dutch at new amsterdam and later the english at albany to tap the fur trade of canada's frozen forests. formerly a line of stream and portage, it carries now the erie canal and new york central railroad.[ ] similarly the narrow level belt of land extending from the mouth of the hudson to the eastern elbow of the lower delaware, defining the outer margin of the rough hill country of northern new jersey and the inner margin of the smooth coastal plain, has been from savage days such a natural thoroughfare. here ran the trail of the lenni-lenapi indians; a little later, the old dutch road between new amsterdam and the delaware trading-posts; yet later the king's highway from new york to philadelphia. in it became the route of the delaware and raritan canal, and more recently of the pennsylvania railroad between new york and philadelphia.[ ] the early aryans, in their gradual dispersion over northwestern india, reached the arabian sea chiefly by a route running southward from the indus-ganges divide, between the eastern border of the rajputana desert and the western foot of the aravalli hills. the streams flowing down from this range across the thirsty plains unite to form the luni river, which draws a dead-line to the advance of the desert. here a smooth and well-watered path brought the early aryans of india to a fertile coast along the gulf of cambay.[ ] in the palmy days of the mongol empire during the seventeenth century, and doubtless much earlier, it became an established trade route between the sea and the rich cities of the upper ganges.[ ] recently it determined the line of the rajputana railroad from the gulf of cambay to delhi.[ ] barygaza, the ancient seaboard terminus of this route, appears in pliny's time as the most famous emporium of western india, the resort of greek and arab merchants.[ ] it reappears later in history with its name metamorphosed to baroche or broach, where in the british established a factory for trade,[ ] but is finally superseded, under portuguese and english rule, by nearby surat. thus natural conditions fix the channels in which the stream of humanity most easily moves, determine within certain limits the direction of its flow, the velocity and volume of its current. every new flood tends to fit itself approximately into the old banks, seeks first these lines of least resistance, and only when it finds them blocked or pre-empted does it turn to more difficult paths. [sidenote: regions of historical similarity.] geographical environment, through the persistence of its influence, acquires peculiar significance. its effect is not restricted to a given historical event or epoch, but, except when temporarily met by some strong counteracting force, tends to make itself felt under varying guise in all succeeding history. it is the permanent element in the shifting fate of races. islands show certain fundamental points of agreement which can be distinguished in the economic, ethnic and historical development of england, japan, melanesian fiji, polynesian new zealand, and pre-historic crete. the great belt of deserts and steppes extending across the old world gives us a vast territory of rare historical uniformity. from time immemorial they have borne and bred tribes of wandering herdsmen; they have sent out the invading hordes who, in successive waves of conquest, have overwhelmed the neighboring river lowlands of eurasia and africa. they have given birth in turn to scythians, indo-aryans, avars, huns, saracens, tartars and turks, as to the tuareg tribes of the sahara, the sudanese and bantu folk of the african grasslands. but whether these various peoples have been negroes, hamites, semites, indo-europeans or mongolians, they have always been pastoral nomads. the description given by herodotus of the ancient scythians is applicable in its main features to the kirghis and kalmuck who inhabit the caspian plains to-day. the environment of this dry grassland operates now to produce the same mode of life and social organization as it did , years ago; stamps the cavalry tribes of cossacks as it did the mounted huns, energizes its sons by its dry bracing air, toughens them by its harsh conditions of life, organizes them into a mobilized army, always moving with its pastoral commissariat. then when population presses too hard upon the meager sources of subsistence, when a summer drought burns the pastures and dries up the water-holes, it sends them forth on a mission of conquest, to seek abundance in the better watered lands of their agricultural neighbors. again and again the productive valleys of the hoangho, indus, ganges, tigris and euphrates, nile, volga, dnieper and danube have been brought into subjection by the imperious nomads of arid asia, just as the "hoe-people" of the niger and upper nile have so often been conquered by the herdsmen of the african grasslands. thus, regardless of race or epoch--hyksos or kaffir--history tends to repeat itself in these rainless tracts, and involves the better watered districts along their borders when the vast tribal movements extend into these peripheral lands. [illustration: density of population in eastern hemisphere] [illustration: density of population in western hemisphere] [sidenote: climatic influences.] climatic influences are persistent, often obdurate in their control. arid regions permit agriculture and sedentary life only through irrigation. the economic prosperity of egypt to-day depends as completely upon the distribution of the nile waters as in the days of the pharaohs. the mantle of the ancient egyptian priest has fallen upon the modern british engineer. arctic explorers have succeeded only by imitating the life of the eskimos, adopting their clothes, food, fuel, dwellings, and mode of travel. intense cold has checked both native and russian development over that major portion of siberia lying north of the mean annual isotherm of degree c. ( degrees f.); and it has had a like effect in the corresponding part of canada. (compare maps pages and .) it allows these sub-arctic lands scant resources and a population of less than two to the square mile. even with the intrusion of white colonial peoples, it perpetuates the savage economy of the native hunting tribes, and makes the fur trader their modern exploiter, whether he be the cossack tribute-gatherer of the lower lena river, or the factor of the hudson bay company. the assimilation tends to be ethnic as well as economic, because the severity of the climate excludes the white woman. the debilitating effects of heat and humidity, aided by tropical diseases, soon reduce intruding peoples to the dead level of economic inefficiency characteristic of the native races. these, as the fittest, survive and tend to absorb the new-comers, pointing to hybridization as the simplest solution of the problem of tropical colonization. [sidenote: the relation of geography to history.] the more the comparative method is applied to the study of history--and this includes a comparison not only of different countries, but also of successive epochs in the same country--the more apparent becomes the influence of the soil in which humanity is rooted, the more permanent and necessary is that influence seen to be. geography's claim to make scientific investigation of the physical conditions of historical events is then vindicated. "which was there first, geography or history?" asks kant. and then comes his answer: "geography lies at the basis of history." the two are inseparable. history takes for its field of investigation human events in various periods of time; anthropo-geography studies existence in various regions of terrestrial space. but all historical development takes place on the earth's surface, and therefore is more or less molded by its geographic setting. geography, to reach accurate conclusions, must compare the operation of its factors in different historical periods and at different stages of cultural development. it therefore regards history in no small part as a succession of geographical factors embodied in events. back of massachusetts' passionate abolition movement, it sees the granite soil and boulder-strewn fields of new england; back of the south's long fight for the maintenance of slavery, it sees the rich plantations of tidewater virginia and the teeming fertility of the mississippi bottom lands. this is the significance of herder's saying that "history is geography set into motion." what is to-day a fact of geography becomes to-morrow a factor of history. the two sciences cannot be held apart without doing violence to both, without dismembering what is a natural, vital whole. all historical problems ought to be studied geographically and all geographic problems must be studied historically. every map has its date. those in the statistical atlas of the united states showing the distribution of population from to embody a mass of history as well as of geography. a map of france or the russian empire has a long historical perspective; and on the other hand, without that map no change of ethnic or political boundary, no modification in routes of communication, no system of frontier defences or of colonization, no scheme of territorial aggrandizement can be understood. [sidenote: multiplicity of geographic factors.] the study of physical environment as a factor in history was unfortunately brought into disrepute by extravagant and ill-founded generalization, before it became the object of investigation according to modern scientific methods. and even to-day principles advanced in the name of anthropo-geography are often superficial, inaccurate, based upon a body of data too limited as to space and time, or couched in terms of unqualified statement which exposes them to criticism or refutation. investigators in this field, moreover, are prone to get a squint in their eye that makes them see one geographic factor to the exclusion of the rest; whereas it belongs to the very nature of physical environment to combine a whole group of influences, working all at the same time under the law of the resolution of forces. in this plexus of influences, some operate in one direction and some in another; now one loses its beneficent effect like a medicine long used or a garment outgrown; another waxes in power, reinforced by a new geographic factor which has been released from dormancy by the expansion of the known world, or the progress of invention and of human development. [sidenote: evolution of geographic relations.] these complex geographic influences cannot be analyzed and their strength estimated except from the standpoint of evolution. that is one reason these half-baked geographic principles rest heavy on our mental digestion. they have been formulated without reference to the all-important fact that the geographical relations of man, like his social and political organization, are subject to the law of development. just as the embryo state found in the primitive saxon tribe has passed through many phases in attaining the political character of the present british empire, so every stage in this maturing growth has been accompanied or even preceded by a steady evolution of the geographic relations of the english people. owing to the evolution of geographic relations, the physical environment favorable to one stage of development may be adverse to another, and _vice versa_. for instance, a small, isolated and protected habitat, like that of egypt, phoenicia, crete and greece, encourages the birth and precocious growth of civilization; but later it may cramp progress, and lend the stamp of arrested development to a people who were once the model for all their little world. open and wind-swept russia, lacking these small, warm nurseries where nature could cuddle her children, has bred upon its boundless plains a massive, untutored, homogeneous folk, fed upon the crumbs of culture that have fallen from the richer tables of europe. but that item of area is a variable quantity in the equation. it changes its character at a higher stage of cultural development. consequently, when the muscovite people, instructed by the example of western europe, shall have grown up intellectually, economically and politically to their big territory, its area will become a great national asset. russia will come into its own, heir to a long-withheld inheritance. many of its previous geographic disadvantages will vanish, like the diseases of childhood, while its massive size will dwarf many previous advantages of its european neighbors. [sidenote: evolution of world relations.] this evolution of geographic relations applies not only to the local environment, but also to the wider world relations of a people. greeks and syrians, english and japanese, take a different rank among the nations of the earth to-day from that held by their ancestors , years ago, simply because the world relations of civilized peoples have been steadily expanding since those far-back days of tyrian and athenian supremacy. the period of maritime discoveries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries shifted the foci of the world relations of european states from enclosed seas to the rim of the atlantic. venice and genoa gave way to cadiz and lagos, just as sixteen centuries before corinth and athens had yielded their ascendency to rome and ostia. the keen but circumscribed trade of the baltic, which gave wealth and historical preeminence to lübeck and the other hanse towns of northern germany from the twelfth to the seventeenth century, lost its relative importance when the atlantic became the maritime field of history. maritime leadership passed westward from lübeck and stralsund to amsterdam and bristol, as the historical horizon widened. england, prior to this sudden dislocation, lay on the outskirts of civilized europe, a terminal land, not a focus. the peripheral location which retarded her early development became a source of power when she accumulated sufficient density of population for colonizing enterprises, and when maritime discovery opened a way to trans-oceanic lands.[ ] meanwhile, local geographic advantages in the old basins remain the same, although they are dwarfed by the development of relatively greater advantages elsewhere. the broken coastline, limited area and favorable position of greece make its people to-day a nation of seamen, and enable them to absorb by their considerable merchant fleet a great part of the trade of the eastern mediterranean,[ ] just as they did in the days of pericles; but that youthful aegean world which once constituted so large a part of the _oikoumene_, has shrunken to a modest province, and its highways to local paths. the coast cities of northern germany still maintain a large commerce in the baltic, but no longer hold the pre-eminence of the old hanse towns. the glory of the venetian adriatic is gone; but that the sea has still a local significance is proven by the vast sums spent by austria and hungary on their hand-made harbors of trieste and fiume.[ ] the analytical geographer, therefore, while studying a given combination of geographic forces, must be prepared for a momentous readjustment and a new interplay after any marked turning point in the economic, cultural, or world relations of a people. [sidenote: interplay of geographic factors.] skepticism as to the effect of geographic conditions upon human development is apparently justifiable, owing to the multiplicity of the underlying causes and the difficulty of distinguishing between stronger and weaker factors on the one hand, as between permanent and temporary effects on the other. we see the result, but find it difficult to state the equation producing this result. but the important thing is to avoid seizing upon one or two conspicuous geographic elements in the problem and ignoring the rest. the physical environment of a people consists of all the natural conditions to which they have been subjected, not merely a part. geography admits no single blanket theory. the slow historical development of the russian folk has been due to many geographic causes--to excess of cold and deficiency of rain, an outskirt location on the asiatic border of europe exposed to the attacks of nomadic hordes, a meager and, for the most part, ice-bound coast which was slowly acquired, an undiversified surface, a lack of segregated regions where an infant civilization might be cradled, and a vast area of unfenced plains wherein the national energies spread out thin and dissipated themselves. the better baltic and black sea coasts, the fertility of its ukraine soil, and location next to wide-awake germany along the western frontier have helped to accelerate progress, but the slow-moving body carried too heavy a drag. [sidenote: land and sea in co-operation.] the law of the resolutions of forces applies in geography as in the movement of planets. failure to recognize this fact often enables superficial critics of anthropo-geography to make a brave show of argument. the analysis of these interacting forces and of their various combinations requires careful investigation. let us consider the interplay of the forces of land and sea apparent in every country with a maritime location. in some cases a small, infertile, niggardly country conspires with a beckoning sea to drive its sons out upon the deep; in others a wide territory with a generous soil keeps its well-fed children at home and silences the call of the sea. in ancient phoenicia and greece, in norway, finland, new england, in savage chile and tierra del fuego, and the indian coast district of british columbia and southern alaska, a long, broken shoreline, numerous harbors, outlying islands, abundant timber for the construction of ships, difficult communication by land, all tempted the inhabitants to a seafaring life. while the sea drew, the land drove in the same direction. there a hilly or mountainous interior putting obstacles in the way of landward expansion, sterile slopes, a paucity of level, arable land, an excessive or deficient rainfall withholding from agriculture the reward of tillage--some or all of these factors combined to compel the inhabitants to seek on the sea the livelihood denied by the land. here both forces worked in the same direction. in england conditions were much the same, and from the sixteenth century produced there a predominant maritime development which was due not solely to a long indented coastline and an exceptional location for participating in european and american trade. its limited island area, its large extent of rugged hills and chalky soil fit only for pasturage, and the lack of a really generous natural endowment,[ ] made it slow to answer the demands of a growing population, till the industrial development of the nineteenth century exploited its mineral wealth. so the english turned to the sea--to fish, to trade, to colonize. holland's conditions made for the same development. she united advantages of coastline and position with a small infertile territory, consisting chiefly of water-soaked grazing lands. when at the zenith of her maritime development, a native authority estimated that the soil of holland could not support more than one-eighth of her inhabitants. the meager products of the land had to be eked out by the harvest of the sea. fish assumed an important place in the diet of the dutch, and when a process of curing it was discovered, laid the foundation of holland's export trade. a geographical location central to the baltic and north sea countries, and accessible to france and portugal, combined with a position at the mouth of the great german rivers made it absorb the carrying trade of northern europe.[ ] land and sea coöperated in its maritime development. [sidenote: land and sea opposed.] often the forces of land and sea are directly opposed. if a country's geographic conditions are favorable to agriculture and offer room for growth of population, the land forces prevail, because man is primarily a terrestrial animal. such a country illustrates what chisholm, with attic nicety of speech, calls "the influence of bread-power on history,"[ ] as opposed to mahan's sea-power. france, like england, had a long coastline, abundant harbors, and an excellent location for maritime supremacy and colonial expansion; but her larger area and greater amount of fertile soil put off the hour of a redundant population such as england suffered from even in henry viii's time. moreover, in consequence of steady continental expansion from the twelfth to the eighteenth century and a political unification which made its area more effective for the support of the people, the french of richelieu's time, except those from certain districts, took to the sea, not by national impulse as did the english and dutch, but rather under the spur of government initiative. they therefore achieved far less in maritime trade and colonization.[ ] in ancient palestine, a long stretch of coast, poorly equipped with harbors but accessible to the rich mediterranean trade, failed to offset the attraction of the gardens and orchards of the jezreel valley and the pastures of the judean hills, or to overcome the land-born predilections and aptitudes of the desert-bred jews. similarly, the river-fringed peninsulas of virginia and maryland, opening wide their doors to the incoming sea, were powerless, nevertheless, to draw the settlers away from the riotous productiveness of the wide tidewater plains. here again the geographic force of the land outweighed that of the sea and became the dominant factor in directing the activities of the inhabitants. the two antagonistic geographic forces may be both of the land, one born of a country's topography, the other of its location. switzerland's history has for centuries shown the conflict of two political policies, one a policy of cantonal and communal independence, which has sprung from the division of that mountainous country into segregated districts, and the other one of political centralization, dictated by the necessity for coöperation to meet the dangers of switzerland's central location mid a circle of larger and stronger neighbors. local geographic conditions within the swiss territory fixed the national ideal as a league of "sovereign cantons," to use the term of their constitution, enjoying a maximum of individual rights and privileges, and tolerating a minimum of interference from the central authority. here was physical dismemberment coupled with mutual political repulsion. but a location at the meeting place of french, german, austrian and italian frontiers laid upon them the distasteful necessity of union within to withstand aggressions crowding upon them from without. hence the growth of the swiss constitution since has meant a fight of the confederation against the canton in behalf of general rights, expanding the functions of the central government, contracting those of canton and commune.[ ] [sidenote: local and remote geographic factors.] every country forms an independent whole, and as such finds its national history influenced by its local climate, soil, relief, its location whether inland or maritime, its river highways, and its boundaries of mountain, sea, or desert. but it is also a link in a great chain of lands, and therefore may feel a shock or vibration imparted at the remotest end. the gradual desiccation of western asia which took a fresh start about , years ago caused that great exodus and displacement of peoples known as the _völkerwanderung_, and thus contributed to the downfall of rome; it was one factor in the saxon conquest of britain and the final peopling of central europe. the impact of the turkish hordes hurling themselves against the defenses of constantinople in was felt only forty years afterward by the far-off shores of savage america. earlier still it reached england as the revival of learning, and it gave portugal a shock which started its navigators towards the cape of good hope in their search for a sea route to india. the history of south africa is intimately connected with the isthmus of suez. it owes its portuguese, dutch, and english populations to that barrier on the mediterranean pathway to the orient; its importance as a way station on the outside route to india fluctuates with every crisis in the history of suez. [sidenote: direct and indirect effects of environment.] the geographic factors in history appear now as conspicuous direct effects of environment, such as the forest warfare of the american indian or the irrigation works of the pueblo tribes, now as a group of indirect effects, operating through the economic, social and political activities of a people. these remoter secondary results are often of supreme importance; they are the ones which give the final stamp to the national temperament and character, and yet in them the causal connection between environment and development is far from obvious. they have, therefore, presented pitfalls to the precipitate theorizer. he has either interpreted them as the direct effect of some geographic cause from which they were wholly divorced and thus arrived at conclusions which further investigation failed to sustain; or seeing no direct and obvious connection, he has denied the possibility of a generalization. montesquieu ascribes the immutability of religion, manners, custom and laws in india and other oriental countries to their warm climate.[ ] buckle attributes a highly wrought imagination and gross superstition to all people, like those of india, living in the presence of great mountains and vast plains, knowing nature only in its overpowering aspects, which excite the fancy and paralyze reason. he finds, on the other hand, an early predominance of reason in the inhabitants of a country like ancient greece, where natural features are on a small scale, more comprehensible, nearer the measure of man himself.[ ] the scientific geographer, grown suspicious of the omnipotence of climate and cautious of predicating immediate psychological effects which are easy to assert but difficult to prove, approaches the problem more indirectly and reaches a different solution. he finds that geographic conditions have condemned india to isolation. on the land side, a great sweep of high mountains has restricted intercourse with the interior; on the sea side, the deltaic swamps of the indus and ganges rivers and an unbroken shoreline, backed by mountains on the west of the peninsula and by coastal marshes and lagoons on the east, have combined to reduce its accessibility from the ocean. the effect of such isolation is ignorance, superstition, and the early crystallization of thought and custom. ignorance involves the lack of material for comparison, hence a restriction of the higher reasoning processes, and an unscientific attitude of mind which gives imagination free play. in contrast, the accessibility of greece and its focal location in the ancient world made it an intellectual clearing-house for the eastern mediterranean. the general information gathered there afforded material for wide comparison. it fed the brilliant reason of the athenian philosopher and the trained imagination which produced the masterpieces of greek art and literature. [sidenote: indirect mental effects.] heinrich von treitschke, in his recent "politik," imitates the direct inference of buckle when he ascribes the absence of artistic and poetic development in switzerland and the alpine lands to the overwhelming aspect of nature there, its majestic sublimity which paralyzes the mind.[ ] he reinforces his position by the fact that, by contrast, the lower mountains and hill country of swabia, franconia and thuringia, where nature is gentler, stimulating, appealing, and not overpowering, have produced many poets and artists. the facts are incontestable. they reappear in france in the geographical distribution of the awards made by the paris _salon_ of . judged by these awards, the rough highlands of savoy, alpine provence, the massive eastern pyrenees, and the auvergne plateau, together with the barren peninsula of brittany, are singularly lacking in artistic instinct, while art nourishes in all the river lowlands of france. moreover, french men of letters, by the distribution of their birthplaces, are essentially products of fluvial valleys and plains, rarely of upland and mountain.[ ] this contrast has been ascribed to a fundamental ethnic distinction between the teutonic population of the lowlands and the alpine or celtic stock which survives in the isolation of highland and peninsula, thus making talent an attribute of race. but the po valley of northern italy, whose population contains a strong infusion of this supposedly stultifying alpine blood, and the neighboring lowlands and hill country of tuscany show an enormous preponderance of intellectual and artistic power over the highlands of the peninsula.[ ] hence the same contrast appears among different races under like geographic conditions. moreover, in france other social phenomena, such as suicide, divorce, decreasing birth-rate, and radicalism in politics, show this same startling parallelism of geographic distribution,[ ] and these cannot be attributed to the stimulating or depressing effect of natural scenery upon the human mind. mountain regions discourage the budding of genius because they are areas of isolation, confinement, remote from the great currents of men and ideas that move along the river valleys. they are regions of much labor and little leisure, of poverty to-day and anxiety for the morrow, of toil-cramped hands and toil-dulled brains. in the fertile alluvial plains are wealth, leisure, contact with many minds, large urban centers where commodities and ideas are exchanged. the two contrasted environments produce directly certain economic and social results, which, in turn, become the causes of secondary intellectual and artistic effects. the low mountains of central germany which von treitschke cites as homes of poets and artists, owing to abundant and varied mineral wealth, are the seats of active industries and dense populations,[ ] while their low reliefs present no serious obstacle to the numerous highways across them. they, therefore, afford all conditions for culture. [sidenote: indirect effects in differentiation of colonial peoples.] let us take a different example. the rapid modification in physical and mental constitution of the english transplanted to north america, south africa, australia and new zealand has been the result of several geographic causes working through the economic and social media; but it has been ascribed by darwin and others to the effect of climate. the prevailing energy and initiative of colonists have been explained by the stimulating atmosphere of their new homes. even natal has not escaped this soft impeachment. but the enterprise of colonials has cropped out, under almost every condition of heat and cold, aridity and humidity, of a habitat at sea-level and on high plateau. this blanket theory of climate cannot, therefore, cover the case. careful analysis supersedes it by a whole group of geographic factors working directly and indirectly. the first of these was the dividing ocean which, prior to the introduction of cheap ocean transportation and bustling steerage agents, made a basis of artificial selection. then it was the man of abundant energy who, cramped by the narrow environment of a norwegian farm or irish bog, came over to america to take up a quarter-section of prairie land or rise to the eminence of boston police sergeant. the scotch immigrants in america who fought in the civil war were nearly two inches taller than the average in the home country.[ ] but the ocean barrier culled superior qualities of mind and character also--independence of political and religious conviction, and the courage of those convictions, whether found in royalist or puritan, huguenot or english catholic. [sidenote: indirect effect through isolation.] such colonists in a remote country were necessarily few and could not be readily reinforced from home. their new and isolated geographical environment favored variation. heredity passed on the characteristics of a small, highly selected group. the race was kept pure from intermixture with the aborigines of the country, owing to the social and cultural abyss which separated them, and to the steady withdrawal of the natives before the advance of the whites. the homogeneity of island peoples seems to indicate that individual variations are in time communicated by heredity to a whole population under conditions of isolation; and in this way modifications due to artificial selection and a changed environment become widely spread. nor is this all. the modified type soon becomes established, because the abundance of land at the disposal of the colonists and the consequent better conditions of living encourage a rapid increase of population. a second geographic factor of mere area here begins to operate. ease in gaining subsistence, the greater independence of the individual and the family, emancipation from carking care, the hopeful attitude of mind engendered by the consciousness of an almost unlimited opportunity and capacity for expansion, the expectation of large returns upon labor, and, finally, the profound influence of this hopefulness upon the national character, all combined, produce a social rejuvenation of the race. new conditions present new problems which call for prompt and original solution, make a demand upon the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the individual, and therefore work to the same end as his previous removal from the paralyzing effect of custom in the old home country. activity is youth and sluggishness or paralysis is age. hence the energy, initiative, adaptability, and receptivity to new ideas--all youthful qualities--which characterize the anglo-saxon american as well as the english africander, can be traced back to the stimulating influences, not of a bracing or variable climate, but of the abundant opportunities offered by a great, rich, unexploited country. variation under new natural conditions, when safe-guarded by isolation, tends to produce modification of the colonial type; this is the direct effect of a changed environment. but the new economic and social activities of a transplanted people become the vehicle of a mass of indirect geographic influences which contribute to the differentiation of the national character. [sidenote: general importance of indirect effects.] the tendency to overlook such links between conspicuous effects and their remote, less evident geographic causes has been common in geographic investigation. this direct rather than indirect approach to the heart of the problem has led to false inferences or to the assumption that reliable conclusions were impossible. environment influences the higher, mental life of a people chiefly through the medium of their economic and social life; hence its ultimate effects should be traced through the latter back to the underlying cause. but rarely has this been done. even so astute a geographer as strabo, though he recognizes the influence of geographic isolation in differentiating dialects and customs in greece,[ ] ascribes some national characteristics to the nature of the country, especially to its climate, and the others to education and institutions. he thinks that the nature of their respective lands had nothing to do with making the athenians cultured, the spartans and thebans ignorant; that the predilection for natural science in babylonia and egypt was not a result of environment but of the institutions and education of those countries.[ ] but here arise the questions, how far custom and education in their turn depend upon environment; to what degree natural conditions, molding economic and political development, may through them fundamentally affect social customs, education, culture, and the dominant intellectual aptitudes of a people. it is not difficult to see, back of the astronomy and mathematics and hydraulics of egypt, the far off sweep of the rain-laden monsoons against the mountains of abyssinia and the creeping of the tawny nile flood over that river-born oasis. [sidenote: indirect political and moral effects.] plutarch states in his "solon" that after the rebellion of kylon in b.c. the athenian people were divided into as many political factions as there were physical types of country in attica. the mountaineers, who were the poorest party, wanted something like a democracy; the people of the plains, comprising the greatest number of rich families, were clamorous for an oligarchy; the coast population of the south, intermediate both in social position and wealth, wanted something between the two. the same three-fold division appeared again in b.c. on the usurpation of peisistratus.[ ] here the connection between geographic condition and political opinion is clear enough, though the links are agriculture and commerce. new england's opposition to the war of , culminating in the threat of secession of the hartford convention, can be traced back through the active maritime trade to the broken coastline and unproductive soil of that glaciated country. in all democratic or representative forms of government permitting free expression of popular opinion, history shows that division into political parties tends to follow geographical lines of cleavage. in our own civil war the dividing line between north and south did not always run east and west. the mountain area of the southern appalachians supported the union and drove a wedge of disaffection into the heart of the south. mountainous west virginia was politically opposed to the tidewater plains of old virginia, because slave labor did not pay on the barren "upright" farms of the cumberland plateau; whereas, it was remunerative on the wide fertile plantations of the coastal lowland. the ethics of the question were obscured where conditions of soil and topography made the institution profitable. in the mountains, as also in new england, a law of diminishing financial returns had for its corollary a law of increasing moral insight. in this case, geographic conditions worked through the medium of direct economic effects to more important political and ethical results. the roots of geographic influence often run far underground before coming to the surface, to sprout into some flowering growth; and to trace this back to its parent stem is the necessary but not easy task of the geographer. [sidenote: time element.] the complexity of this problem does not end here. the modification of human development by environment is a natural process; like all other natural processes, it involves the cumulative effects of causes operating imperceptibly but persistently through vast periods of time. slowly and deliberately does geography engrave the subtitles to a people's history. neglect of this time element in the consideration of geographic influences accounts equally for many an exaggerated assertion and denial of their power. a critic undertakes to disprove modification through physical environment by showing that it has not produced tangible results in the last fifty or five hundred years. this attitude recalls the early geologists, whose imaginations could not conceive the vast ages necessary in a scientific explanation of geologic phenomena. the theory of evolution has taught us in science to think in larger terms of time, so that we no longer raise the question whether european colonists in africa can turn into negroes, though we do find the recent amazing statement that the yankee, in his tall, gaunt figure, "the colour of his skin, and the formation of his hair, has begun to differentiate himself from his european kinsman and approach the type of the aboriginal indians."[ ] evolution tells the story of modification by a succession of infinitesimal changes, and emphasizes the permanence of a modification once produced long after the causes for it cease to act. the mesas of arizona, the earth sculpture of the grand canyon remain as monuments to the erosive forces which produced them. so a habitat leaves upon man no ephemeral impress; it affects him in one way at a low stage of his development, and differently at a later or higher stage, because the man himself and his relation to his environment have been modified in the earlier period; but traces of that earlier adaptation survive in his maturer life. hence man's relation to his environment must be looked at through the perspective of historical development. it would be impossible to explain the history and national character of the contemporary english solely by their twentieth century response to their environment, because with insular conservatism they carry and cherish vestiges of times when their islands represented different geographic relations from those of to-day. witness the wool-sack of the lord chancellor. we cannot understand the location of modern athens, rome or berlin from the present day relations of urban populations to their environment, because the original choice of these sites was dictated by far different considerations from those ruling to-day. in the history of these cities a whole succession of geographic factors have in turn been active, each leaving its impress of which the cities become, as it were, repositories. [sidenote: effect of a previous habitat.] the importance of this time element for a solution of anthropo-geographic problems becomes plainer, where a certain locality has received an entirely new population, or where a given people by migration change their habitat. the result in either case is the same, a new combination, new modifications superimposed on old modifications. and it is with this sort of case that anthropo-geography most often has to deal. so restless has mankind been, that the testimony of history and ethnology is all against the assumption that a social group has ever been subjected to but one type of environment during its long period of development from a primitive to a civilized society. therefore, if we assert that a people is the product of the country which it inhabits at a given time, we forget that many different countries which its forbears occupied have left their mark on the present race in the form of inherited aptitudes and traditional customs acquired in those remote ancestral habitats. the moors of granada had passed through a wide range of ancestral experiences; they bore the impress of asia, africa and europe, and on their expulsion from spain carried back with them to morocco traces of their peninsula life. a race or tribe develops certain characteristics in a certain region, then moves on, leaving the old abode but not all the accretions of custom, social organization and economic method there acquired. these travel on with the migrant people; some are dropped, others are preserved because of utility, sentiment or mere habit. for centuries after the settlement of the jews in palestine, traces of their pastoral life in the grasslands of mesopotamia could be discerned in their social and political organization, in their ritual and literature. survivals of their nomadic life in asiatic steppes still persist among the turks of europe, after six centuries of sedentary life in the best agricultural land of the balkan peninsula. one of these appears in their choice of meat. they eat chiefly sheep and goats, beef very rarely, and swine not at all.[ ] the first two thrive on poor pastures and travel well, so that they are admirably adapted to nomadic life in arid lands; the last two, far less so, but on the other hand are the regular concomitant of agricultural life. the turk's taste to-day, therefore, is determined by the flocks and herds which he once pastured on the trans-caspian plains. the finished terrace agriculture and methods of irrigation, which the saracens had learned on the mountain sides of yemen through a schooling of a thousand years or more, facilitated their economic conquest of spain. their intelligent exploitation of the country's resources for the support of their growing numbers in the favorable climatic conditions which spain offered was a light-hearted task, because of the severe training which they had had in their arabian home. the origin of roman political institutions is intimately connected with conditions of the naturally small territory where arose the greatness of rome. but now, after two thousand years we see the political impress of this narrow origin spreading to the governments of an area of europe immeasurably larger than the region that gave it birth. in the united states, little new england has been the source of the strongest influences modifying the political, religious and cultural life of half a continent; and as far as texas and california these influences bear the stamp of that narrow, unproductive environment which gave to its sons energy of character and ideals. [sidenote: transplanted religions.] ideas especially are light baggage, and travel with migrant peoples over many a long and rough road. they are wafted like winged seed by the wind, and strike root in regions where they could never have originated. few classes of ideas bear so plainly the geographic stamp of their origin as religious ones, yet none have spread more widely. the abstract monotheism sprung from the bare grasslands of western asia made slow but final headway against the exuberant forest gods of the early germans. religious ideas travel far from their seedbeds along established lines of communication. we have the almost amusing episode of the brawny burgundians of the fifth century, who received the arian form of christianity by way of the danube highway from the schools of athens and alexandria, valiantly supporting the niceties of greek religious thought against the roman version of the faith which came up the rhone valley. if the sacred literature of judaism and christianity take weak hold upon the western mind, this is largely because it is written in the symbolism of the pastoral nomad. its figures of speech reflect life in deserts and grasslands. for these figures the western mind has few or vague corresponding ideas. it loses, therefore, half the import, for instance, of the twenty-third psalm, that picture of the nomad shepherd guiding his flock across parched and trackless plains, to bring them at evening, weary, hungry, thirsty, to the fresh pastures and waving palms of some oasis, whose green tints stand out in vivid contrast to the tawny wastes of the encompassing sands. "he leadeth me beside the still waters," not the noisy rushing stream of the rainy lands, but the quiet desert pool that reflects the stars. what real significance has the tropical radiance of the lotus flower, the sacred symbol of buddhism, for the mongolian lama in the cold and arid borders of gobi or the wind-swept highlands of sterile tibet? and yet these exotic ideas live on, even if they no longer bloom in the uncongenial soil. but to explain them in terms of their present environment would be indeed impossible. [sidenote: partial response to environment] a people may present at any given time only a partial response to their environment also for other reasons. this may be either because their arrival has been too recent for the new habitat to make its influence felt; or because, even after long residence, one overpowering geographic factor has operated to the temporary exclusion of all others. under these circumstances, suddenly acquired geographic advantages of a high order or such advantages, long possessed but tardily made available by the release of national powers from more pressing tasks, may institute a new trend of historical development, resulting more from stimulating geographic conditions than from the natural capacities or aptitudes of the people themselves. such developments, though often brilliant, are likely to be short-lived and to end suddenly or disastrously, because not sustained by a deep-seated national impulse animating the whole mass of the people. they cease when the first enthusiasm spends itself, or when outside competition is intensified, or the material rewards decrease. [sidenote: the case of spain.] an illustration is found in the mediæval history of spain. the intercontinental location of the iberian peninsula exposed it to the saracen conquest and to the constant reinforcements to islam power furnished by the mohammedanized berbers of north africa. for seven centuries this location was the dominant geographic factor in spain's history. it made the expulsion of the moors the sole object of all the iberian states, converted the country into an armed camp, made the gentleman adventurer and christian knight the national ideal. it placed the center of political control high up on the barren plateau of castile, far from the centers of population and culture in the river lowlands or along the coast. it excluded the industrial and commercial development which was giving bone and sinew to the other european states. the release of the national energies by the fall of granada in and the now ingrained spirit of adventure enabled spain and portugal to utilize the unparalleled advantage of their geographical position at the junction of the mediterranean and atlantic highways, and by their great maritime explorations in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, to become foremost among european colonial powers. but the development was sporadic, not supported by any widespread national movement. in a few decades the maritime preëminence of the iberian peninsula began to yield to the competition of the dutch and english, who were, so to speak, saturated with their own maritime environment. then followed the rapid decay of the sea power of spain, followed by that of portugal, till by even her coasting trade was in the hands of the dutch, and dutch vessels were employed to maintain communication with the west indies.[ ] [sidenote: sporadic response to a new environment.] we have a later instance of sporadic development under the stimulus of new and favorable geographic conditions, a similar anti-climax. the expansion of the russians across the lowlands of siberia was quite in harmony with the genius of that land-bred people; but when they reached bering sea, the enclosed basin, the proximity of the american continent, the island stepping-stones between, and the lure of rich sealskins to the fur-hunting cossacks determined a sudden maritime expansion, for which the russian people were unfitted. beginning in , it swept the coast of alaska, located its american administrative center first on kadiak, then on baranof island, and by placed its southern outposts on the california coast near san francisco bay and on the farralone islands.[ ] russian convicts were employed to man the crazy boats built of green lumber on the shores of bering sea, and aleutian hunters with their _bidarkas_ were impressed to catch the seal.[ ] the movement was productive only of countless shipwrecks, many seal skins, and an opportunity to satisfy an old grudge against england. the territory gained was sold to the united states in . this is the one instance in russian history of any attempt at maritime expansion, and also of any withdrawal from territory to which the muscovite power had once established its claim. this fact alone would indicate that only excessively tempting geographic conditions led the russians into an economic and political venture which neither the previously developed aptitudes of the people nor the conditions of population and historical development on the siberian seaboard were able to sustain. [sidenote: the larger conception of the environment.] the history and culture of a people embody the effects of previous habitats and of their final environment; but this means something more than local geographic conditions. it involves influences emanating from far beyond the borders. no country, no continent, no sea, mountain or river is restricted to itself in the influence which it either exercises or receives. the history of austria cannot be understood merely from austrian ground. austrian territory is part of the mediterranean hinterland, and therefore has been linked historically with rome, italy, and the adriatic. it is a part of the upper danube valley and therefore shares much of its history with bavaria and germany, while the lower danube has linked it with the black sea, greece, the russian steppes, and asia. the asiatic hungarians have pushed forward their ethnic boundary nearly to vienna. the austrian capital has seen the warring turks beneath its walls, and shapes its foreign policy with a view to the relative strength of the sultan and the czar. [sidenote: unity of the earth.] the earth is an inseparable whole. each country or sea is physically and historically intelligible only as a portion of that whole. currents and wind-systems of the oceans modify the climate of the nearby continents, and direct the first daring navigations of their peoples. the alternating monsoons of the indian ocean guided arab merchantmen from ancient times back and forth between the red sea and the malabar coast of india.[ ] the equatorial current and the northeast trade-wind carried the timid ships of columbus across the atlantic to america. the gulf stream and the prevailing westerlies later gave english vessels the advantage on the return voyage. europe is a part of the atlantic coast. this is a fact so significant that the north atlantic has become a european sea. the united states also is a part of the atlantic coast: this is the dominant fact of american history. china forms a section of the pacific rim. this is the fact back of the geographic distribution of chinese emigration to annam, tonkin, siam, malacca, the philippines, east indies, borneo, australia, hawaiian islands, the pacific coast states, british columbia, the alaskan coast southward from bristol bay in bering sea, ecuador and peru. as the earth is one, so is humanity. its unity of species points to some degree of communication through a long prehistoric past. universal history is not entitled to the name unless it embraces all parts of the earth and all peoples, whether savage or civilized. to fill the gaps in the written record it must turn to ethnology and geography, which by tracing the distribution and movements of primitive peoples can often reconstruct the most important features of their history. anthropo-geographic problems are never simple. they must all be viewed in the long perspective of evolution and the historical past. they require allowance for the dominance of different geographic factors at different periods, and for a possible range of geographic influences wide as the earth itself. in the investigator they call for pains-taking analysis and, above all, an open mind. notes to chapter i [ ] george adam smith, historical geography of the holy land, pp. - . new york, . [ ] a.p. brigham, geographic influences in american history, chap. i. boston, . [ ] r.h. whitbeck, geographic influences in the development of new jersey, _journal of geography_, vol. v, no. . january, . [ ] hans helmolt, history of the world, vol. ii, p. . london and new york, - . [ ] jean baptiste tavernier, travels in india, - . vol. i, chap. v and map. london, . [ ] sir thomas holdich, india, p. . london, . [ ] bunbury, history of ancient geography, vol. ii, pp. - , . london, . [ ] _imperial gazetteer for india_, vol. iii, p. . london, . [ ] g.g. chisholm, the relativity of geographic advantages, _scottish geog. mag_., vol. xiii, no. , sept. . [ ] hugh robert mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] joseph partsch, central europe, pp. - . london, . [ ] h.j. mackinder, britain and the british seas, pp. - . london, . [ ] captain a.t. mahan, influence of sea power upon history, pp. - . boston, . [ ] g.g. chisholm, economic geography, _scottish geog. mag_., march, . [ ] captain a.t. mahan, influence of sea power upon history, pp. - . boston, . [ ] boyd winchester, the swiss republic, pp. , , - . philadelphia, . [ ] montesquieu, spirit of the laws, book xiv, chap. iv. [ ] henry buckle, history of civilization in england, vol. i, pp. - . [ ] heinrich von treitschke, _politik_, vol. i, p. . leipzig, . this whole chapter on _land und leute_ is suggestive. [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, . [ ] _ibid._, - , - . [ ] joseph partsch, central europe, pp. - , - . london, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, p. . new york, . [ ] strabo, book vii, chap. i, . [ ] strabo, book ii, chap. iii, . [ ] plutarch, solon, pp. , , . [ ] hans helmolt, history of the world, vol. ii, pp. - . new york, - . [ ] roscher, _national-oekonomik des ackerbaues_, p. , note . stuttgart, . [ ] captain a.t. mahan, influence of sea power upon history, pp. - , - . boston, . [ ] h. bancroft, history of california, vol. i, pp. , - . san francisco. [ ] agnes laut, vikings of the pacific, pp. - . new york, . [ ] bunbury, history of ancient geography, vol. ii, pp. , - . london, . chapter ii classes of geographic influences into almost every anthropo-geographical problem the element of environment enters in different phases, with different modes of operation and varying degrees of importance. since the causal conception of geography demands a detailed analysis of all the relations between environment and human development, it is advisable to distinguish the various classes of geographic influences. [sidenote: physical effects.] four fundamental classes of effects can be distinguished. . the first class includes direct physical effects of environment, similar to those exerted on plants and animals by their habitat. certain geographic conditions, more conspicuously those of climate, apply certain stimuli to which man, like the lower animals, responds by an adaption of his organism to his environment. many physiological peculiarities of man are due to physical effects of environment, which doubtless operated very strongly in the earliest stages of human development, and in those shadowy ages contributed to the differentiation of races. the unity of the human species is as clearly established as the diversity of races and peoples, whose divergences must be interpreted chiefly as modifications in response to various habitats in long periods of time. [sidenote: variation and natural conditions.] such modifications have probably been numerous in the persistent and unending movements, shiftings, and migrations which have made up the long prehistoric history of man. if the origin of species is found in variability and inheritance, variation is undoubtedly influenced by a change of natural conditions. to quote darwin, "in one sense the conditions of life may be said, not only to cause variability, either directly or indirectly, but likewise to include natural selection, for the conditions determine whether this or that variety shall survive."[ ] the variability of man does not mean that every external influence leaves its mark upon him, but that man as an organism, by the preservation of beneficent variations and the elimination of deleterious ones, is gradually adapted to his environment, so that he can utilize most completely that which it contributes to his needs. this self-maintenance under outward influences is an essential part of the conception of life which herbert spencer defines as the correspondence between internal conditions and external circumstances, or august comte as the harmony between the living being and the surrounding medium or _milieu_. according to virchow, the distinction of races rests upon hereditary variations, but heredity itself cannot become active till the characteristic or _zustand_ is produced which is to be handed down.[ ] but environment determines what variation shall become stable enough to be passed on by heredity. for instance, we can hardly err in attributing the great lung capacity, massive chests, and abnormally large torsos of the quichua and aymara indians inhabiting the high andean plateaus to the rarified air found at an altitude of , or , feet above sea level. whether these have been acquired by centuries of extreme lung expansion, or represent the survival of a chance variation of undoubted advantage, they are a product of the environment. they are a serious handicap when the aymara indian descends to the plains, where he either dies off or leaves descendants with diminishing chests.[ ] [see map page .] [sidenote: stature and environment] darwin holds that many slight changes in animals and plants, such as size, color, thickness of skin and hair, have been produced through food supply and climate from the external conditions under which the forms lived.[ ] paul ehrenreich, while regarding the chief race distinctions as permanent forms, not to be explained by external conditions, nevertheless concedes the slight and slow variation of the sub-race under changing conditions of food and climate as beyond doubt.[ ] stature is partly a matter of feeding and hence of geographic condition. in mountain regions, where the food resources are scant, the varieties of wild animals are characterized by smaller size in general than are corresponding species in the lowlands. it is a noticeable fact that dwarfed horses or ponies have originated in islands, in iceland, the shetlands, corsica and sardinia. this is due either to scanty and unvaried food or to excessive inbreeding, or probably to both. the horses introduced into the falkland islands in have deteriorated so in size and strength in a few generations that they are in a fair way to develop a falkland variety of pony.[ ] on the other hand, mr. homer davenport states that the pure-bred arabian horses raised on his new jersey stock farm are in the third generation a hand higher than their grandsires imported from arabia, and of more angular build. the result is due to more abundant and nutritious food and the elimination of long desert journeys. the low stature of the natives prevailing in certain "misery spots" of europe, as in the auvergne plateau of southern france, is due in part to race, in part to a disastrous artificial selection by the emigration of the taller and more robust individuals, but in considerable part to the harsh climate and starvation food-yield of that sterile soil; for the children of the region, if removed to the more fertile valleys of the loire and garonne, grow to average stature.[ ] the effect of a scant and uncertain food supply is especially clear in savages, who have erected fewer buffers between themselves and the pressure of environment. the bushmen of the kalahari desert are shorter than their hottentot kindred who pasture their flocks and herds in the neighboring grasslands.[ ] samoyedes, lapps, and other hyperborean races of eurasia are shorter than their more southern neighbors, the physical record of an immemorial struggle against cold and hunger. the stunted forms and wretched aspect of the snake indians inhabiting the rocky mountain deserts distinguished these clans from the tall buffalo-hunting tribes of the plains.[ ] any feature of geographic environment tending to affect directly the physical vigor and strength of a people cannot fail to prove a potent factor in their history. [sidenote: physical effects of dominant activities.] oftentimes environment modifies the physique of a people indirectly by imposing upon them certain predominant activities, which may develop one part of the body almost to the point of deformity. this is the effect of increased use or disuse which darwin discusses. he attributes the thin legs and thick arms of the payaguas indians living along the paraguay river to generations of lives spent in canoes, with the lower extremities motionless and the arm and chest muscles in constant exercise.[ ] livingstone found these same characteristics of broad chests and shoulders with ill-developed legs among the barotse of the upper zambesi;[ ] and they have been observed in pronounced form, coupled with distinctly impaired powers of locomotion, among the tlingit, tsimshean, and haida indians of the southern alaskan and british columbia coast, where the geographic conditions of a mountainous and almost strandless shore interdicted agriculture and necessitated sea-faring activities.[ ] an identical environment has produced a like physical effect upon the canoemen of tierra del fuego[ ] and the aleutian islanders, who often sit in their boats twenty hours at a time.[ ] these special adaptations are temporary in their nature and tend to disappear with change of occupation, as, for instance, among the tlingit indians, who develop improved leg muscles when employed as laborers in the salmon canneries of british columbia. [sidenote: effects of climate.] both the direct and indirect physical effects of environment thus far instanced are obvious in themselves and easily explained. far different is it with the majority of physical effects, especially those of climate, whose mode of operation is much more obscure than was once supposed. the modern geographer does not indulge in the naive hypothesis of the last century, which assumed a prompt and direct effect of environment upon the form and features of man. carl ritter regarded the small, slit eyes and swollen lids of the turkoman as "an obvious effect of the desert upon the organism." stanhope smith ascribed the high shoulders and short neck of the tartars of mongolia to their habit of raising their shoulders to protect the neck against the cold; their small, squinting eyes, overhanging brows, broad faces and high cheek bones, to the effect of the bitter, driving winds and the glare of the snow, till, he says, "every feature by the action of the cold is harsh and distorted."[ ] these profound influences of a severe climate upon physiognomy he finds also among the lapps, northern mongolians, samoyedes and eskimo. [sidenote: acclimatization] most of these problems are only secondarily grist for the geographer's mill. for instance, when the aryans descended to the enervating lowlands of tropical india, and in that debilitating climate lost the qualities which first gave them supremacy, the change which they underwent was primarily a physiological one. it can be scientifically described and explained therefore only by physiologists and physico-chemists; and upon their investigations the geographer must wait before he approaches the problem from the standpoint of geographical distribution. into this sub-class of physical effects come all questions of acclimatization.[ ] these are important to the anthropo-geographer, just as they are to colonial governments like england or france, because they affect the power of national or racial expansion, and fix the historical fate of tropical lands. the present populations of the earth represent physical adaptation to their environments. the intense heat and humidity of most tropical lands prevent any permanent occupation by a native-born population of pure whites. the catarrhal zone north of the fortieth parallel in america soon exterminates the negroes.[ ] the indians of south america, though all fundamentally of the same ethnic stock, are variously acclimated to the warm, damp, forested plains of the amazon; to the hot, dry, treeless coasts of peru; and to the cold, arid heights of the andes. the habitat that bred them tends to hold them, by restricting the range of climate which they can endure. in the zone of the andean slope lying between , and , feet of altitude, which produces the best flavored coffee and which must be cultivated, the imported indians from the high plateaus and from the low amazon plains alike sicken and die after a short time; so that they take employment on these coffee plantations for only three or five months, and then return to their own homes. labor becomes nomadic on these slopes, and in the intervals these farm lands of intensive agriculture show the anomaly of a sparse population only of resident managers.[ ] similarly in the high, dry himalayan valley of the upper indus, over , feet above sea level, the natives of ladak are restricted to a habitat that yields them little margin of food for natural growth of population but forbids them to emigrate in search of more,--applies at the same time the lash to drive and the leash to hold, for these highlanders soon die when they reach the plains.[ ] here are two antagonistic geographic influences at work from the same environment, one physical and the other social-economic. the ladaki have reached an interesting resolution of these two forces by the institution of polyandry, which keeps population practically stationary. [sidenote: pigmentation and climate.] the relation of pigmentation to climate has long interested geographers as a question of environment; but their speculations on the subject have been barren, because the preliminary investigations of the physiologist, physicist and chemist are still incomplete. the general fact of increasing nigrescence from temperate towards equatorial regions is conspicuous enough, despite some irregularity of the shading.[ ] this fact points strongly to some direct relation between climate and pigmentation, but gives no hint how the pigmental processes are affected. the physiologist finds that in the case of the negro, the dark skin is associated with a dense cuticle, diminished perspiration, smaller chests and less respiratory power, a lower temperature and more rapid pulse,[ ] all which variations may enter into the problem of the negroes coloring. the question is therefore by no means simple. yet it is generally conceded by scientists that pigment is a protective device of nature. the negro's skin is comparatively insensitive to a sun heat that blisters a white man. livingstone found the bodies of albino negroes in bechuana land always blistered on exposure to the sun,[ ] and a like effect has been observed among albino polynesians, and melanesians of fiji.[ ] paul ehrenreich finds that the degree of coloration depends less upon annual temperature than upon the direct effect of the sun's rays; and that therefore a people dwelling in a cool, dry climate, but exposed to the sun may be darker than another in a hot, moist climate but living in a dense forest. the forest-dwelling botokudos of the upper san francisco river in brazil are fairer than the kindred kayapo tribe, who inhabit the open campos; and the arawak of the purus river forests are lighter than their fellows in the central matto grosso.[ ] sea-faring coast folk, who are constantly exposed to the sun, especially in the tropics, show a deeper pigmentation than their kindred of the wooded interior.[ ] the coast moros of western mindanao are darker than the subanos, their malay brethren of the back country, the lightness of whose color can be explained by their forest life.[ ] so the duallas of the kamerun coast of africa are darker than the bakwiri inhabiting the forested mountains just behind them, though both tribes belong to the bantu group of people.[ ] here light, in contradistinction to heat, appears the dominant factor in pigmentation. a recent theory, advanced by von schmaedel in , rests upon the chemical power of light. it holds that the black pigment renders the negro skin insensitive to the luminous or actinic effects of solar radiation, which are far more destructive to living protoplasm than the merely calorific effects.[ ] [sidenote: pigmentation and altitude] coloration responds to other more obscure influences of environment. a close connection between pigmentation and elevation above sea level has been established: a high altitude operates like a high latitude. blondness increases appreciably on the higher slopes of the black forest, vosges mountains, and swiss alps, though these isolated highlands are the stronghold of the brunette alpine race.[ ] livi, in his treatise on military anthropometry, deduced a special action of mountains upon pigmentation on observing a prevailing increase of blondness in italy above the four-hundred meter line, a phenomenon which came out as strongly in basilicata and calabria provinces of the south as in piedmont and lombardy in the north.[ ] the dark hamitic berbers of northern africa have developed an unmistakable blond variant in high valleys of the atlas range, which in a sub-tropical region rises to the height of , feet. here among the kabyles the population is fair; grey, blue or green eyes are frequent, as is also reddish blond or chestnut hair.[ ] waitz long ago affirmed this tendency of mountaineers to lighter coloring from his study of primitive peoples.[ ] the modification can not be attributed wholly to climatic contrast between mountain and plain. some other factor, like the economic poverty of the environment and the poor food-supply, as livi suggests, has had a hand in the result; but just what it is or how it has operated cannot yet be defined.[ ] [sidenote: difficulty of generalization] enough has been said to show that the geographer can formulate no broad generalization as to the relation of pigmentation and climate from the occurrence of the darkest skins in the tropics; because this fact is weakened by the appearance also of lighter tints in the hottest districts, and of darker ones in arctic and temperate regions. the geographer must investigate the questions when and where deeper shades develop in the skins of fair races; what is the significance of dark skins in the cold zones and of fair ones in hot zones. his answer must be based largely on the conclusions of physiologists and physicists, and only when these have reached a satisfactory solution of each detail of the problem can the geographer summarize the influence of environment upon pigmentation. the rule can therefore safely be laid down that in all investigation of geographic influences upon the permanent physical characteristics of races, the geographic distribution of these should be left out of consideration till the last, since it so easily misleads.[ ] moreover, owing to the ceaseless movements of mankind, these effects do not remain confined to the region that produced them, but pass on with the wandering throng in whom they have once developed, and in whom they endure or vanish according as they prove beneficial or deleterious in the new habitat. [sidenote: psychical effects.] ii. more varied and important are the psychical effects of geographic environment. as direct effects they are doubtless bound up in many physiological modifications; and as influences of climate, they help differentiate peoples and races in point of temperament. they are reflected in man's religion and his literature, in his modes of thought and figures of speech. blackstone states that "in the isle of man, to take away a horse or ox was no felony, but a trespass, because of the difficulty in that little territory to conceal them or to carry them off; but to steal a pig or a fowl, which is easily done, was a capital misdemeanour, and the offender punished with death." the judges or deemsters in this island of fishermen swore to execute the laws as impartially "as the herring's backbone doth lie in the middle of the fish."[ ] the whole mythology of the polynesians is an echo of the encompassing ocean. the cosmography of every primitive people, their first crude effort in the science of the universe, bears the impress of their habitat. the eskimo's hell is a place of darkness, storm and intense cold;[ ] the jew's is a place of eternal fire. buddha, born in the steaming himalayan piedmont, fighting the lassitude induced by heat and humidity, pictured his heaven as nirvana, the cessation of all activity and individual life. [sidenote: indirect effect upon language] intellectual effects of environment may appear in the enrichment of a language in one direction to a rare nicety of expression; but this may be combined with a meager vocabulary in all other directions. the greatest cattle-breeders among the native africans, such as the hereros of western damaraland and the dinkas of the upper white nile, have an amazing choice of words for all colors describing their animals--brown, dun, red, white, dapple, and so on in every gradation of shade and hue. the samoyedes of northern russia have eleven or twelve terms to designate the various grays and browns of their reindeer, despite their otherwise low cultural development.[ ] the speech of nomads has an abundance of expressions for cattle in every relation of life. it includes different words for breeding, pregnancy, death, and slaughtering in relation to every different kind of domestic animal. the magyars, among whom pastoral life still survives on the low plains of the danube and theiss, have a generic word for herd, _csorda_, and special terms for herds of cattle, horses, sheep, and swine.[ ] while the vocabulary of malays and polynesians is especially rich in nautical terms, the kirghis shepherd tribes who wander over the highlands of western asia from the tian shan to the hindu kush have four different terms for four kinds of mountain passes. a _daban_ is a difficult, rocky defile; an _art_ is very high and dangerous; a _bel_ is a low, easy pass, and a _kutal_ is a broad opening between low hills.[ ] to such influences man is a passive subject, especially in the earlier stages of his development; but there are more important influences emanating from his environment which affect him as an active agent, challenge his will by furnishing the motives for its exercise, give purpose to his activities, and determine the direction which they shall take.[ ] these mold his mind and character through the media of his economic and social life, and produce effects none the less important because they are secondary. about these anthropo-geography can reach surer conclusions than regarding direct psychical effects, because it can trace their mode of operation as well as define the result. direct psychical effects are more matters of conjecture, whose causation is asserted rather than proved. they seem to float in the air, detached from the solid ground under foot, and are therefore subject matter for the psychologist rather than the geographer. [sidenote: the great man in history.] what of the great man in this geographical interpretation of history? it seems to take no account of him, or to put him into the melting-pot with the masses. both are to some extent true. as a science, anthropo-geography can deal only with large averages, and these exclude or minimize the exceptional individual. moreover, geographic conditions which give this or that bent to a nation's purposes and determine its aggregate activities have a similar effect upon the individual; but he may institute a far-seeing policy, to whose wisdom only gradually is the people awakened. the acts of the great man are rarely arbitrary or artificial; he accelerates or retards the normal course of development, but cannot turn it counter to the channels of natural conditions. as a rule he is a product of the same forces that made his people. he moves with them and is followed by them under a common impulse. daniel boone, that picturesque figure leading the van of the westward movement over the allegheny mountains, was born of his frontier environment and found a multitude of his kind in that region of backwoods farms to follow him into the wilderness. thomas jefferson of virginia, in the louisiana purchase, carried out the policy of expansion adumbrated in governor spottswood's expedition with the knights of the golden horseshoe over the blue ridge in . jefferson's daring consummation of the purchase without government authority showed his community of purpose with the majority of the people. peter the great's location of his capital at st. petersburg, usually stigmatized as the act of a despot, was made in response to natural conditions offering access to the baltic nations, just as certainly as ten centuries before similar conditions and identical advantages led the early russian merchants to build up a town at nearby novgorod, in easy water connection with the baltic commerce.[ ] [sidenote: economic and social effects.] iii. geographic conditions influence the economic and social development of a people by the abundance, paucity, or general character of the natural resources, by the local ease or difficulty of securing the necessaries of life, and by the possibility of industry and commerce afforded by the environment. from the standpoint of production and exchange, these influences are primarily the subject matter of economic and commercial geography; but since they also permeate national life, determine or modify its social structure, condemn it to the dwarfing effects of national poverty, or open to it the cultural and political possibilities resident in national wealth, they are legitimate material also for anthropo-geography. [sidenote: size of the social group.] they are especially significant because they determine the size of the social group. this must be forever small in areas of limited resources or of limited extent, as in the little islands of the world and the yet smaller oases. the desert of chinese turkestan supports, in certain detached spots of river-born fertility, populations like the , of kashgar, and from this size groups all the way down to the single families which younghusband found living by a mere trickle of a stream flowing down the southern slope of the tian shan. small islands, according to their size, fertility, and command of trade, may harbor a sparse and scant population, like the five hundred souls struggling for an ill-fed existence on the barren westman isles of iceland; or a compact, teeming, yet absolutely small social group, like that crowding malta or the bermudas. whether sparsely or compactly distributed, such groups suffer the limitations inherent in their small size. they are forever excluded from the historical significance attaching to the large, continuously distributed populations of fertile continental lands. [sidenote: effect upon movements of peoples.] iv. the next class belongs exclusively to the domain of geography, because it embraces the influence of the features of the earth's surface in directing the movements and ultimate distribution of mankind. it includes the effect of natural barriers, like mountains, deserts, swamps, and seas, in obstructing or deflecting the course of migrating people and in giving direction to national expansion; it considers the tendency of river valleys and treeless plains to facilitate such movements, the power of rivers, lakes, bays and oceans either to block the path or open a highway, according as navigation is in a primitive or advanced stage; and finally the influence of all these natural features in determining the territory which a people is likely to occupy, and the boundaries which shall separate from their neighbors. [sidenote: river routes.] the lines of expansion followed by the french and english in the settlement of america and also the extent of territory covered by each were powerfully influenced by geographic conditions. the early french explorers entered the great east-west waterway of the st. lawrence river and the great lakes, which carried them around the northern end of the appalachian barrier into the heart of the continent, planted them on the low, swampy, often navigable watershed of the mississippi, and started them on another river voyage of nearly two thousand miles to the gulf of mexico. here were the conditions and temptation for almost unlimited expansion; hence french canada reached to the head of lake superior, and french louisiana to the sources of the missouri, to the lot of the english fell a series of short rivers with fertile valleys, nearly barred at their not distant sources by a wall of forested mountains, but separated from one another by low watersheds which facilitated lateral expansion over a narrow belt between mountains and sea. here a region of mild climate and fertile soil suited to agriculture, enclosed by strong natural boundaries, made for compact settlement, in contrast to the wide diffusion of the french. later, when a growing population pressed against the western barrier, mountain gates opened at cumberland gap and the mohawk valley; the ohio river and the great lakes became interior thoroughfares, and the northwestern prairies lines of least resistance to the western settler. rivers played the same part in directing and expediting this forward movement, as did the lena and the amoor in the russian advance into siberia, the humber and the trent in the progress of the angles into the heart of britain, the rhone and danube in the march of the romans into central europe. [sidenote: segregation and accessibility.] the geographical environment of a people may be such as to segregate them from others, and thereby to preserve or even intensify their natural characteristics; or it may expose them to extraneous influences, to an infusion of new blood and new ideas, till their peculiarities are toned down, their distinctive features of dialect or national dress or provincial customs eliminated, and the people as a whole approach to the composite type of civilized humanity. a land shut off by mountains or sea from the rest of the world tends to develop a homogeneous people, since it limits or prevents the intrusion of foreign elements; or when once these are introduced, it encourages their rapid assimilation by the strongly interactive life of a confined locality. therefore large or remote islands are, as a rule, distinguished by the unity of their inhabitants in point of civilization and race characteristics. witness great britain, ireland, japan, iceland, as also australia and new zealand at the time of their discovery. the highlands of the southern appalachians, which form the "mountain backyards" of kentucky, tennessee and north carolina, are peopled by the purest english stock in the united states, descendants of the backwoodsmen of the late eighteenth century. difficulty of access and lack of arable land have combined to discourage immigration. in consequence, foreign elements, including the elsewhere ubiquitous negro, are wanting, except along the few railroads which in recent years have penetrated this country. here survive an eighteenth century english, christmas celebrated on twelfth night, the spinning wheel, and a belief in joshua's power to arrest the course of the sun.[ ] an easily accessible land is geographically hospitable to all new-comers, facilitates the mingling of peoples, the exchange of commodities and ideas. the amalgamation of races in such regions depends upon the similarity or diversity of the ethnic elements and the duration of the common occupation. the broad, open valley of the danube from the black sea to vienna contains a bizarre mixture of several stocks--turks, bulgarians, various families of pure slavs, roumanians, hungarians, and germans. these elements are too diverse and their occupation of the valley too recent for amalgamation to have advanced very far as yet. the maritime plain and open river valleys of northern france show a complete fusion of the native celts with the saxons, franks, and normans who have successively drifted into the region, just as the teutonic and scanter slav elements have blended in the baltic plains from the elbe to the vistula. [sidenote: change of habitat.] here are four different classes of geographic influences, all which may become active in modifying a people when it changes its habitat. many of the characteristics acquired in the old home still live on, or at best yield slowly to the new environment. this is especially true of the direct physical and psychical effects. but a country may work a prompt and radical change in the social organization of an immigrant people by the totally new conditions of economic life which it presents. these may be either greater wealth or poverty of natural resources than the race has previously known, new stimulants or deterrents to commerce and intercourse, and new conditions of climate which affect the efficiency of the workman and the general character of production. from these a whole complex mass of secondary effects may follow. the aryans and mongols, leaving their homes in the cool barren highlands of central asia where nature dispensed her gifts with a miserly hand, and coming down to the hot, low, fertile plains of the indian rivers, underwent several fundamental changes in the process of adaptation to their new environment. an enervating climate did its work in slaking their energies; but more radical still was the change wrought by the contrast of poverty and abundance, enforced asceticism and luxury, presented by the old and new home. the restless, tireless shepherds became a sedentary, agricultural people; the abstemious nomads,--spare, sinewy, strangers to indulgence--became a race of rulers, revelling in luxury, lording it over countless subjects; finally, their numbers increased rapidly, no longer kept down by the scant subsistence of arid grasslands and scattered oases. in a similar way, the arab of the desert became transformed into the sedentary lord of spain. in the luxuriance of field and orchard which his skilful methods of irrigation and tillage produced, in the growing predominance of the intellectual over the nomadic military life, of the complex affairs of city and mart over the simple tasks of herdsman or cultivator, he lost the benefit of the early harsh training and therewith his hold upon his iberian empire. biblical history gives us the picture of the sheik abraham, accompanied by his nephew lot, moving up from the rainless plains of mesopotamia with his flocks and herds into the better watered palestine. there his descendants in the garden land of canaan became an agricultural people; and the problem of moses and the judges was to prevent their assimilation in religion and custom to the settled semitic tribes about them, and to make them preserve the ideals born in the starry solitudes of the desert. [sidenote: retrogression in new habitat.] the change from the nomadic to the sedentary life represents an economic advance. sometimes removal to strongly contrasted geographic conditions necessitates a reversion to a lower economic type of existence. the french colonists who came to lower canada in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries found themselves located in a region of intense cold, where arable soil was inferior in quality and limited in amount, producing no staple like the tobacco of virginia or the wheat of maryland or the cotton of south carolina or the sugar of the west indies, by which a young colony might secure a place in european trade. but the snow-wrapped forests of canada yielded an abundance of fur-bearing animals, the fineness and thickness of whose pelts were born of this frozen north. into their remotest haunts at the head of lake superior or of hudson bay, long lines of rivers and lakes opened level water roads a thousand miles or more from the crude little colonial capital at quebec. and over in europe beaver hats and fur-trimmed garments were all the style! so the plodding farmer from normandy and the fisherman from poitou, transferred to canadian soil, were irresistibly drawn into the adventurous life of the trapper and fur-trader. the fur trade became the accepted basis of colonial life; the _voyageur_ and _courier de bois_, clad in skins, paddling up ice-rimmed streams in their birch-bark canoes, fraternizing with indians who were their only companions in that bleak interior, and married often to dusky squaws, became assimilated to the savage life about them and reverted to the lower hunter stage of civilization.[ ] [sidenote: the boers of south africa] another pronounced instance of rapid retrogression under new unfavorable geographic conditions is afforded by the south african boer. the transfer from the busy commercial cities of the rhine mouths to the far-away periphery of the world's trade, from the intensive agriculture of small deltaic gardens and the scientific dairy farming of the moist netherlands to the semi-arid pastures of the high, treeless _veldt_, where they were barred from contact with the vivifying sea and its ship-borne commerce, has changed the enterprising seventeenth century hollander into the conservative pastoral boer. dutch cleanliness has necessarily become a tradition to a people who can scarcely find water for their cattle. the comfort and solid bourgeois elegance of the dutch home lost its material equipment in the great trek, when the long wagon journey reduced household furniture to its lowest terms. house-wifely habits and order vanished in the semi-nomadic life which followed.[ ] the gregarious instinct, bred by the closely-packed population of little holland, was transformed to a love of solitude, which in all lands characterizes the people of a remote and sparsely inhabited frontier. it is a common saying that the boer cannot bear to see another man's smoke from his _stoep_, just as the early trans-allegheny pioneer was always on the move westward, because he could not bear to hear his neighbor's watch-dog bark. even the boer language has deteriorated under the effects of isolation and a lower status of civilization. the native _taal_ differs widely from the polished speech of holland; it preserves some features of the high dutch of two centuries ago, but has lost inflexions and borrowed words for new phenomena from the english, kaffirs and hottentots; can express no abstract ideas, only the concrete ideas of a dull, work-a-day world.[ ] the new habitat may eliminate many previously acquired characteristics and hence transform a people, as in the case of the boers; or it may intensify tribal or national traits, as in the seafaring propensities of the angles and saxons when transferred to britain, and of the seventeenth century english when transplanted to the indented coasts of new england; or it may tolerate mere survival or the slow dissuetude of qualities which escape any particular pressure in the new environment, and which neither benefit nor handicap in the modified struggle for existence. notes to chapter ii [ ] darwin, origin of species, chap. v, p. . new york, . [ ] e. virchow, _rassenbildung und erblichkeit_, bastian festschrift, pp. , , . berlin, . [ ] darwin, descent of man, pp. - . new york, . [ ] darwin, origin of species, chap. i, pp. - . new york, . [ ] p. ehrenreich, _die urbewohner brasiliens_, p. . braunschweig, . [ ] ratzel, _die erde und das leben_, vol. i, pp. , . leipzig and vienna, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - , , . new york, . [ ] t. waitz, anthropology, pp. - . edited by j.f. collingwood. london, . [ ] schoolcraft, indian tribes of the united states, vol. i, pp. - , . philadelphia, . [ ] darwin, descent of man, p. . new york, . [ ] d. livingstone, missionary travels, p. . new york, . [ ] alaska, _eleventh census report_, pp. , . washington, , and albert p. niblack, the coast indians of southern alaska and northern british columbia, p. . washington, . [ ] fitz-roy, voyage of the beagle, vol. ii, pp. - , , . london, . [ ] h. bancroft, native races, vol. i, pp. - . san francisco, . [ ] s. stanhope smith, essay on the causes of the variety of complexion and figure in the human species, pp. - . new brunswick and new york, . [ ] for full discussion see a.r. wallace's article on acclimatization in encyclopedia britanica, and w.z. ripley, races of europe. chap. xxi. new york, . [ ] d.g. brinton, races and peoples, pp. - . philadelphia, . [ ] darwin, descent of man, pp. - . new york, . [ ] e.f. knight, where three empires meet, pp. - . london, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - , map. new york, . [ ] _ibid._, p. . d.g. brinton, races and peoples, pp. - . philadelphia, . [ ] d. livingstone, missionary travels, p. . new york, . [ ] williams and calvert, fiji and the fijians, p. , new york, . [ ] p. ehrenreich, _die urbewohner brasiliens_, p. . braunschweig, . [ ] t. waitz, anthropology, pp. - . edited by collingwood, london, . [ ] _philippine census_, vol. i, p. . washington, . [ ] f. ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, p. . london, . [ ] major charles e. woodruff, the effect of tropical light on the white man, new york, , is a suggestive but not convincing discussion of the theory. [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - . new york, . [ ] quoted in g. sergi, the mediterranean race, p. . london and new york, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. - , - . [ ] t. waitz, anthropology, pp. - . edited by j.f. collingwood, london, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, p. . new york, . [ ] for able discussion, see topinard, anthropology, pp. - . tr. from french, london, . [ ] j. johnson, jurisprudence of the isle of man, pp. , . edinburgh, . [ ] charles f. hall, arctic researches and life among the eskimo, p. . new york, . franz boas, the central eskimo, _sixth annual report of the bureau of ethnology_, pp. - . washington, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, p. . london, - . [ ] roscher, _national-oekonomik des ackerbaues_, p. , note . stuttgart, . [ ] elisée reclus, the earth and its inhabitants, _asia_, vol. i, p. . new york, . [ ] alfred hettner, _die geographie des menschen_, pp. - in _geographische zeitschrift_, vol. xiii, no. . leipzig, . [ ] s.b. boulton, the russian empire, pp. - . london, . [ ] e.c. semple, the anglo-saxons of the kentucky mountains, _the geographical journal_, vol. xvii, no. , pp. - . london, . [ ] e.c. semple, american history and its geographic conditions, pp. - . boston, . the influence of geographic environment on the lower st. lawrence, bull. _amer. geog. society_, vol. xxxvi, p. - . new york, . [ ] a.r. colquhoun, africander land, pp. - . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. - . james bryce, impressions of south africa, p. . new york, . chapter iii society and state in relation to the land [sidenote: people and land.] every clan, tribe, state or nation includes two ideas, a people and its land, the first unthinkable without the other. history, sociology, ethnology touch only the inhabited areas of the earth. these areas gain their final significance because of the people who occupy them; their local conditions of climate, soil, natural resources, physical features and geographic situation are important primarily as factors in the development of actual or possible inhabitants. a land is fully comprehended only when studied in the light of its influence upon its people, and a people cannot be understood apart from the field of its activities. more than this, human activities are fully intelligible only in relation to the various geographic conditions which have stimulated them in different parts of the world. the principles of the evolution of navigation, of agriculture, of trade, as also the theory of population, can never reach their correct and final statement, unless the data for the conclusions are drawn from every part of the world, and each fact interpreted in the light of the local conditions whence it sprang. therefore anthropology, sociology and history should be permeated by geography. [sidenote: political geography and history.] in history, the question of territory,--by which is meant mere area in contrast to specific geographic conditions--has constantly come to the front, because a state obviously involved land and boundaries, and assumed as its chief function the defence and extension of these. therefore political geography developed early as an offshoot of history. political science has often formulated its principles without regard to the geographic conditions of states, but as a matter of fact, the most fruitful political policies of nations have almost invariably had a geographic core. witness the colonial policy of holland, england, france and portugal, the free-trade policy of england, the militantism of germany, the whole complex question of european balance of power and the bosporus, and the monroe doctrine of the united states. dividing lines between political parties tend to follow approximately geographic lines of cleavage; and these make themselves apparent at recurring intervals of national upheaval, perhaps with, centuries between, like a submarine volcanic rift. in england the southeastern plain and the northwestern uplands have been repeatedly arrayed against each other, from the roman conquest which embraced the lowlands up to about the -foot contour line,[ ] through the war of the roses and the civil war,[ ] to the struggle for the repeal of the corn laws and the great reform bill of .[ ] though the boundary lines have been only roughly the same and each district has contained opponents of the dominant local party, nevertheless the geographic core has been plain enough. [sidenote: political versus social geography.] the land is a more conspicuous factor in the history of states than in the history of society, but not more necessary and potent. wars, which constitute so large a part of political history, have usually aimed more or less directly at acquisition or retention of territory; they have made every petty quarrel the pretext for mulcting the weaker nation of part of its land. political maps are therefore subject to sudden and radical alterations, as when france's name was wiped off the north american continent in , or when recently spain's sovereignty in the western hemisphere was obliterated. but the race stocks, languages, customs, and institutions of both france and spain remained after the flags had departed. the reason is that society is far more deeply rooted in the land than is a state, does not expand or contract its area so readily. society is always, in a sense, _adscripta glebae_; an expanding state which incorporates a new piece of territory inevitably incorporates its inhabitants, unless it exterminates or expels them. yet because racial and social geography changes slowly, quietly and imperceptibly, like all those fundamental processes which we call growth, it is not so easy and obvious a task to formulate a natural law for the territorial relations of the various hunter, pastoral nomadic, agricultural, and industrial types of society as for those of the growing state. [sidenote: land basis of society.] most systems of sociology treat man as if he were in some way detached from the earth's surface; they ignore the land basis of society. the anthropo-geographer recognizes the various social forces, economic and psychologic, which sociologists regard as the cement of societies; but he has something to add. he sees in the land occupied by a primitive tribe or a highly organized state the underlying material bond holding society together, the ultimate basis of their fundamental social activities, which are therefore derivatives from the land. he sees the common territory exercising an integrating force,--weak in primitive communities where the group has established only a few slight and temporary relations with its soil, so that this low social complex breaks up readily like its organic counterpart, the low animal organism found in an amoeba; he sees it growing stronger with every advance in civilization involving more complex relations to the land,--with settled habitations, with increased density of population, with a discriminating and highly differentiated use of the soil, with the exploitation of mineral resources, and finally with that far-reaching exchange of commodities and ideas which means the establishment of varied extra-territorial relations. finally, the modern society or state has grown into every foot of its own soil, exploited its every geographic advantage, utilized its geographic location to enrich itself by international trade, and when possible, to absorb outlying territories by means of colonies. the broader this geographic base, the richer, more varied its resources, and the more favorable its climate to their exploitation, the more numerous and complex are the connections which the members of a social group can establish with it, and through it with each other; or in other words, the greater may be its ultimate historical significance. the polar regions and the subtropical deserts, on the other hand, permit man to form only few and intermittent relations with any one spot, restrict economic methods to the lower stages of development, produce only the small, weak, loosely organized horde, which never evolves into a state so long as it remains in that retarding environment. [sidenote: morgan's societas.] man in his larger activities, as opposed to his mere physiological or psychological processes, cannot be studied apart from the land which he inhabits. whether we consider him singly or in a group--family, clan, tribe or state--we must always consider him or his group in relation to a piece of land. the ancient irish sept, highland clan, russian mir, cherokee hill-town, bedouin tribe, and the ancient helvetian canton, like the political state of history, have meant always a group of people and a bit of land. the first presupposes the second. in all cases the form and size of the social group, the nature of its activities, the trend and limit of its development will be strongly influenced by the size and nature of its habitat. the land basis is always present, in spite of morgan's artificial distinction between a theoretically landless _societas_, held together only by the bond of common blood, and the political _civitas_ based upon land.[ ] though primitive society found its conscious bond in common blood, nevertheless the land bond was always there, and it gradually asserted its fundamental character with the evolution of society. the savage and barbarous groups which in morgan's classification would fall under the head of _societas_ have nevertheless a clear conception of their ownership of the tribal lands which they use in common. this idea is probably of very primitive origin, arising from the association of a group with its habitat, whose food supply they regard as a monopoly.[ ] this is true even of migratory hunting tribes. they claim a certain area whose boundaries, however, are often ill-defined and subject to fluctuations, because the lands are not held by permanent occupancy and cultivation. an exceptional case is that of the shoshone indians, inhabiting the barren utah basin and the upper valleys of the snake and salmon rivers, who are accredited with no sense of ownership of the soil. in their natural state they roved about in small, totally unorganized bands or single families, and changed their locations so widely, that they seemed to lay no claim to any particular portion. the hopeless sterility of the region and its poverty of game kept its destitute inhabitants constantly on the move to gather in the meager food supply, and often restricted the social group to the family.[ ] here the bond between land and tribe, and hence between the members of the tribe, was the weakest possible. [sidenote: land bond in hunter tribes.] the usual type of tribal ownership was presented by the comanches, nomadic horse indians who occupied the grassy plains of northern texas. they held their territory and the game upon it as the common property of the tribe, and jealously guarded the integrity of their domain.[ ] the chief algonquin tribes, who occupied the territory between the ohio river and the great lakes, had each its separate domain, within which it shifted its villages every few years; but its size depended upon the power of the tribe to repel encroachment upon its hunting grounds. relying mainly on the chase and fishing, little on agriculture, for their subsistence, their relations to their soil were superficial and transitory, their tribal organization in a high degree unstable.[ ] students of american ethnology generally agree that most of the indian tribes east of the mississippi were occupying definite areas at the time of the discovery, and were to a considerable extent sedentary and agricultural. though nomadic within the tribal territory, as they moved with the season in pursuit of game, they returned to their villages, which were shifted only at relatively long intervals.[ ] the political organization of the native australians, low as they were in the social scale, seems to have been based chiefly on the claim of each wretched wandering tribe to a definite territory.[ ] in north central australia, where even a very sparse population has sufficed to saturate the sterile soil, tribal boundaries have become fixed and inviolable, so that even war brings no transfer of territory. land and people are identified. the bond is cemented by their primitive religion, for the tribe's spirit ancestors occupied this special territory.[ ] in a like manner a very definite conception of tribal ownership of land prevails among the bushmen and bechuanas of south africa; and to the pastoral hereros the alienation of their land is inconceivable.[ ] [see map page .] a tribe of hunters can never be more than a small horde, because the simple, monotonous savage economy permits no concentration of population, no division of labor except that between the sexes, and hence no evolution of classes. the common economic level of all is reflected in the simple social organization,[ ] which necessarily has little cohesion, because the group must be prepared to break up and scatter in smaller divisions, when its members increase or its savage supplies decrease even a little. such primitive groups cannot grow into larger units, because these would demand more roots sent down into the sustaining soil; but they multiply by fission, like the infusorial monads, and thereafter lead independent existences remote from each other. this is the explanation of multiplication of dialects among savage tribes. [sidenote: land bond in fisher tribes.] fishing tribes have their chief occupation determined by their habitats, which are found along well stocked rivers, lakes, or coastal fishing grounds. conditions here encourage an early adoption of sedentary life, discourage wandering except for short periods, and facilitate the introduction of agriculture wherever conditions of climate and soil permit. hence these fisher folk develop relatively large and permanent social groups, as testified by the ancient lake-villages of switzerland, based upon a concentrated food-supply resulting from a systematic and often varied exploitation of the local resources. the coöperation and submission to a leader necessary in pelagic fishing often gives the preliminary training for higher political organization.[ ] all the primitive stocks of the brazilian indians, except the mountain ges, are fishermen and agriculturists; hence their annual migrations are kept within narrow limits. each linguistic group occupies a fixed and relatively well defined district.[ ] stanley found along the congo large permanent villages of the natives, who were engaged in fishing and tilling the fruitful soil, but knew little about the country ten miles back from the river. these two generous means of subsistence are everywhere combined in polynesia, micronesia and melanesia: there they are associated with dense populations and often with advanced political organization, as we find it in the feudal monarchy of tonga and the savage fiji islands.[ ] fisher tribes, therefore, get an early impulse forward in civilization;[ ] and even where conditions do not permit the upward step to agriculture, these tribes have permanent relations with their land, form stable social groups, and often utilize their location on a natural highway to develop systematic trade. for instance, on the northwest coast of british columbia and southern alaska, the haida, tlingit and tsimshean indians have portioned out all the land about their seaboard villages among the separate families or households as hunting, fishing, and berrying grounds. these are regarded as private property and are handed down from generation to generation. if they are used by anyone other than the owner, the privilege must be paid for. every salmon stream has its proprietor, whose summer camp can be seen set up at the point where the run of the fish is greatest. combined with this private property in land there is a brisk trade up and down the coast, and a tendency toward feudalism in the village communities, owing to the association of power and social distinction with wealth and property in land.[ ] [sidenote: land bond in pastoral societies.] among pastoral nomads, among whom a systematic use of their territory begins to appear, and therefore a more definite relation between land and people, we find a more distinct notion than among wandering hunters of territorial ownership, the right of communal use, and the distinct obligation of common defense. hence the social bond is drawn closer. the nomad identifies himself with a certain district, which belongs to his tribe by tradition or conquest, and has its clearly defined boundaries. here he roams between its summer and winter pastures, possibly one hundred and fifty miles apart, visits its small arable patches in the spring for his limited agricultural ventures, and returns to them in the fall to reap their meager harvest. its springs, streams, or wells assume enhanced value, are things to be fought for, owing to the prevailing aridity of summer; while ownership of a certain tract of desert or grassland carries with it a certain right in the bordering settled district as an area of plunder.[ ] the kara-kirghis stock, who have been located since the sixteenth century on lake issik-kul, long ago portioned out the land among the separate families, and determined their limits by natural features of the landscape.[ ] sven hedin found on the tarim river poles set up to mark the boundary between the shah-yar and kuchar tribal pastures.[ ] john de plano carpini, traveling over southern russia in , immediately after the tartar conquest, found that the dnieper, don, volga and ural rivers were all boundaries between domains of the various millionaries or thousands, into which the tartar horde was organized.[ ] the population of this vast country was distributed according to the different degrees of fertility and the size of the pastoral groups.[ ] volney observed the same distinction in the distribution of the bedouins of syria. he found the barren cantons held by small, widely scattered tribes, as in the desert of suez; but the cultivable cantons, like the hauran and the pachalic of aleppo, closely dotted by the encampments of the pastoral owners.[ ] the large range of territory held by a nomadic tribe is all successively occupied in the course of a year, but each part only for a short period of time. a pastoral use of even a good district necessitates a move of five or ten miles every few weeks. the whole, large as it may be, is absolutely necessary for the annual support of the tribe. hence any outside encroachment upon their territory calls for the united resistance of the tribe. this joint or social action is dictated by their common interest in pastures and herds. the social administration embodied in the apportionment of pastures among the families or clans grows out of the systematic use of their territory, which represents a closer relation between land and people than is found among purely hunting tribes. overcrowding by men or livestock, on the other hand, puts a strain upon the social bond. when abraham and lot, typical nomads, returned from egypt to canaan with their large flocks and herds, rivalry for the pastures occasioned conflicts among their shepherds, so the two sheiks decided to separate. abraham took the hill pastures of judea, and lot the plains of jordan near the settled district of sodom.[ ] [sidenote: geographical mark of low-type societies.] the larger the amount of territory necessary for the support of a given number of people, whether the proportion be due to permanent poverty of natural resources as in the eskimo country, or to retarded economic development as among the indians of primitive america or the present sudanese, the looser is the connection between land and people, and the lower the type of social organization. for such groups the organic theory of society finds an apt description. to quote spencer, "the original clusters, animal and social, are not only small, but they lack density. creatures of low type occupy large spaces considering the small quantity of animal substance they contain; and low-type societies spread over areas that are wide relatively to the number of their component individuals."[ ] in common language this means small tribes or even detached families sparsely scattered over wide areas, living in temporary huts or encampments of tepees and tents shifted from place to place, making no effort to modify the surface of the land beyond scratching the soil to raise a niggardly crop of grain or tubers, and no investment of labor that might attach to one spot the sparse and migrant population. [see density maps pages and .] [sidenote: land and state.] the superiority over this social type of the civilized state lies in the highly organized utilization of its whole geographic basis by the mature community, and in the development of government that has followed the increasing density of population and multiplication of activities growing out of this manifold use of the land. sedentary agriculture, which forms its initial economic basis, is followed by industrialism and commerce. the migratory life presents only limited accumulation of capital, and restricts narrowly its forms. permanent settlement encourages accumulation in every form, and under growing pressure of population slowly reveals the possibilities of every foot of ground, of every geographic advantage. these are the fibers of the land which become woven into the whole fabric of the nation's life. these are the geographic elements constituting the soil in which empires are rooted; they rise in the sap of the nation. [sidenote: strength of the land bond in the state.] the geographic basis of a state embodies a whole complex of physical conditions which may influence its historical development. the most potent of these are its size and zonal location; its situation, whether continental or insular, inland or maritime, on the open ocean or an enclosed sea; its boundaries, whether drawn by sea, mountain, desert or the faint demarking line of a river; its forested mountains, grassy plains, and arable lowlands; its climate and drainage system; finally its equipment with plant and animal life, whether indigenous or imported, and its mineral resources. when a state has taken advantage of all its natural conditions, the land becomes a constituent part of the state,[ ] modifying the people which inhabit it, modified by them in turn, till the connection between the two becomes so strong by reciprocal interaction, that the people cannot be understood apart from their land. any attempt to divide them theoretically reduces the social or political body to a cadaver, valuable for the study of structural anatomy after the method of herbert spencer, but throwing little light upon the vital processes. [sidenote: weak land tenure of hunting and pastoral tribes.] a people who makes only a transitory or superficial use of its land has upon it no permanent or secure hold. the power to hold is measured by the power to use; hence the weak tenure of hunting and pastoral tribes. between their scattered encampments at any given time are wide interstices, inviting occupation by any settlers who know how to make better use of the soil. this explains the easy intrusion of the english colonists into the sparsely tenanted territory of the indians, of the agricultural chinese into the pasture lands of the mongols beyond the great wall, of the american pioneers into the hunting grounds of the hudson bay company in the disputed oregon country.[ ] the frail bonds which unite these lower societies to their soil are easily ruptured and the people themselves dislodged, while their land is appropriated by the intruder. but who could ever conceive of dislodging the chinese or the close-packed millions of india? a modern state with a given population on a wide area is more vulnerable than another of like population more closely distributed; but the former has the advantage of a reserve territory for future growth.[ ] this was the case of kursachsen and brandenburg in the sixteenth century, and of the united states throughout its history. but beside the danger of inherent weakness before attack, a condition of relative underpopulation always threatens a retardation of development. easy-going man needs the prod of a pressing population. [compare maps pages and for examples.] [sidenote: land and food supply.] food is the urgent and recurrent need of individuals and of society. it dictates their activities in relation to their land at every stage of economic development, fixes the locality of the encampment or village, and determines the size of the territory from which sustenance is drawn. the length of residence in one place depends upon whether the springs of its food supply are perennial or intermittent, while the abundance of their flow determines how large a population a given piece of land can support. [sidenote: advance from natural to artificial basis of subsistence.] hunter and fisher folk, relying almost exclusively upon what their land produces of itself, need a large area and derive from it only an irregular food supply, which in winter diminishes to the verge of famine. the transition to the pastoral stage has meant the substitution of an artificial for a natural basis of subsistence, and therewith a change which more than any other one thing has inaugurated the advance from savagery to civilization.[ ] from the standpoint of economics, the forward stride has consisted in the application of capital in the form of flocks and herds to the task of feeding the wandering horde;[ ] from the standpoint of alimentation, in the guarantee of a more reliable and generally more nutritious food supply, which enables population to grow more steadily and rapidly; from the standpoint of geography, in the marked reduction in the per capita amount of land necessary to yield an adequate and stable food supply. pastoral nomadism can support in a given district of average quality from ten to twenty times as many souls as can the chase; but in this respect is surpassed from twenty to thirty-fold by the more productive agriculture. while the subsistence of a nomad requires to acres of land, for that of a skillful farmer from to acres suffice.[ ] in contrast, the land of the indians living in the hudson bay territory in averaged square miles per capita; that of the indians in the united states in , subsidized moreover by the government, - / square miles.[ ] [sidenote: land in relation to agriculture.] with transition to the sedentary life of agriculture, society makes a further gain over nomadism in the closer integration of its social units, due to permanent residence in larger and more complex groups; in the continuous release of labor from the task of mere food-getting for higher activities, resulting especially in the rapid evolution of the home; and finally in the more elaborate organization in the use of the land, leading to economic differentiation of different localities and to a rapid increase in the population supported by a given area, so that the land becomes the dominant cohesive force in society. [see maps pages and .] [sidenote: migratory agriculture] agriculture is adopted at first on a small scale as an adjunct to the chase or herding. it tends therefore to partake of the same extensive and nomadic character[ ] as these other methods of gaining subsistence, and only gradually becomes sedentary and intensive. such was the superficial, migratory tillage of most american indians, shifting with the village in the wake of the retreating game or in search of fresh unexhausted soil. such is the agriculture of the primitive korkus in the mahadeo hills in central india. they clear a forested slope by burning; rake over the ashes in which they sow their grain, and reap a fairly good crop in the fertilized soil. the second year the clearing yields a reduced product and the third year is abandoned. when the hamlet of five or six families has exhausted all the land about it, it moves to a new spot to repeat the process.[ ] the same superficial, extensive tillage, with abandonment of fields every few years, prevails in the tartar districts of the russian steppes, as it did among the cattle-raising germans at the beginning of their history. tacitus says of them, _arva per annos mutant et superest ager_,[ ] commenting at the same time upon their abundance of land and their reluctance to till. where nomadism is made imperative by aridity, the agriculture which accompanies it tends to become fixed, owing to the few localities blessed with an irrigating stream to moisten the soil. these spots, generally selected for the winter residence, have their soil enriched, moreover, by the long stay of the herd and thus avoid exhaustion.[ ] often, however, in enclosed basins the salinity of the irrigating streams in their lower course ruins the fields after one or two crops, and necessitates a constant shifting of the cultivated patches; hence agriculture remains subsidiary to the yield of the pastures. this condition and effect is conspicuous along the termini of the streams draining the northern slope of the kuen lun into the tarim basin.[ ] [sidenote: geographic checks to progress.] the desultory, intermittent, extensive use of the land practised by hunters and nomads tends, under the growing pressure of population, to pass into the systematic, continuous, intensive use practised by the farmer, except where nature presents positive checks to the transition. the most obvious check consists in adverse conditions of climate and soil. where agriculture meets insurmountable obstacles, like the intense cold of arctic siberia and lapland, or the alkaline soils of nevada and the caspian depression, or the inadequate rainfall of mongolia and central arabia, the land can produce no higher economic and social groups than pastoral hordes. hence shepherd folk are found in their purest types in deserts and steppes, where conditions early crystallized the social form and checked development. [rainfall map chap. xiv.] [sidenote: native animal and plant life as factors.] adverse conditions of climate and soil are not the only factors in this retardation. the very unequal native equipment of the several continents with plant and animal forms likely to accelerate the advance to nomadism and agriculture also enters into the equation. in australia, the lack of a single indigenous mammal fit for domestication and of all cereals blocked from the start the pastoral and agricultural development of the natives. hence at the arrival of the europeans, australia presented the unique spectacle of a whole continent with its population still held in the vise of nature. the americas had a limited variety of animals susceptible of domestication, but were more meagerly equipped than the old world. yet the eskimo failed to tame and herd the reindeer, though their precarious food-supply furnished a motive for the transition. moreover, an abundance of grass and reindeer moss (_cladonia rangiferina_), and congenial climatic conditions favored it especially for the alaskan eskimo, who had, besides, the nearby example of the siberian chukches as reindeer herders.[ ] the buffalo, whose domesticability has been proved, was never utilized in this way by the indians, though the spaniard gomara writes of one tribe, living in the sixteenth century in the southwestern part of what is now united states territory, whose chief wealth consisted in herds of tame buffalo.[ ] north america, at the time of the discovery, saw only the dog hanging about the lodges of the indians; but in south america the llama and alpaca, confined to the higher levels of the andes ( , to , feet elevation) were used in domestic herds only in the mountain-rimmed valleys of ancient peru, where, owing to the restricted areas of these intermontane basins, stock-raising early became stationary,[ ] as we find it in the alps. moreover, the high ridges of the andes supported a species of grass called _ichu_, growing up to the snowline from the equator to the southern extremity of patagonia. its geographical distribution coincided with that of the llama and alpaca, whose chief pasturage it furnished.[ ] in contrast, the absence of any wild fodder plants in japan, and the exclusion of all foreign forms by the successful competition of the native bamboo grass have together eliminated pastoral life from the economic history of the island. the old world, on the other hand, furnished an abundant supply of indigenous animals susceptible of domestication, and especially those fitted for nomadic life, such as the camel, horse, ass, sheep and goat. hence it produced in the widespread grasslands and deserts of europe, asia, and africa the most perfect types of pastoral development in its natural or nomadic form. moreover, the early history of the civilized agricultural peoples of these three continents reveals their previous pastoral mode of life. north and south america offered over most of their area conditions of climate and soil highly favorable to agriculture, and a fair list of indigenous cereals, tubers, and pulses yielding goodly crops even to superficial tillage. maize especially was admirably suited for a race of semi-migratory hunters. it could be sown without plowing, ripened in a warm season even in ninety days, could be harvested without a sickle and at the pleasure of the cultivator, and needed no preparation beyond roasting before it was ready for food.[ ] the beans and pumpkins which the indians raised also needed only a short season. hence many indian tribes, while showing no trace of pastoral development, combined with the chase a semi-nomadic agriculture; and in a few districts where geographic conditions had applied peculiar pressure, they had accomplished the transition to sedentary agriculture. [sidenote: land per capita under various cultural and geographic conditions.] every advance to a higher state of civilization has meant a progressive decrease in the amount of land necessary for the support of the individual, and a progressive increase in the relations between man and his habitat. the stage of social development remaining the same, the per capita amount of land decreases also from poorer to better endowed geographical districts, and with every invention which brings into use some natural resource. the following classification[ ] illustrates the relation of density of population to various geographic and socio-economic conditions. hunter tribes on the outskirts of the habitable area, as in arctic america and siberia, require from to square miles per capita; in arid lands, like the kalahari desert and patagonia, to square miles per capita; in choice districts and combining with the chase some primitive agriculture, as did the cherokee, shawnee and iroquois indians, the dyaks of borneo and the papuans of new guinea, / to square miles per capita. pastoral nomads show a density of from to to the square mile; practicing some agriculture, as in kordofan and sennar districts of eastern sudan, to to the square mile. agriculture, undeveloped but combined with some trade and industry as in equatorial africa, borneo and most of the central american states, supports to to the square mile; practised with european methods in young or colonial lands, as in arkansas, texas, minnesota, hawaii, canada and argentine, or in european lands with unfavorable climate, up to to the square mile. pure agricultural lands of central europe support to the square mile, and those of southern europe, ; when combining some industry, from to . but these figures rise to or more in lowland india and china. industrial districts of modern europe, such as england, belgium, saxony, departments nord and rhone in france, show a density of to to the square mile. [see maps pages and .] [sidenote: density of population and government.] with every increase of the population inhabiting a given area, and with the consequent multiplication and constriction of the bonds uniting society with its land, comes a growing necessity for a more highly organized government, both to reduce friction within and to secure to the people the land on which and by which they live. therefore protection becomes a prime function of the state. it wards off outside attack which may aim at acquisition of its territory, or an invasion of its rights, or curtailment of its geographic sphere of activity. the modern industrial state, furthermore, with the purpose of strengthening the nation, assists or itself undertakes the construction of highways, canals, and railroads, and the maintenance of steamship lines. these encourage the development of natural resources and of commerce, and hence lay the foundation for an increased population, by multiplying the relations between land and people. [sidenote: territorial expansion of the state.] a like object is attained by territorial expansion, which often follows in the wake of commercial expansion. this strengthens the nation positively by enlarging its geographic base, and negatively by forcing back the boundaries of its neighbors. the expansion of the thirteen colonies from the atlantic slope to the mississippi river and the great lakes by the treaty concluding the revolution was a strong guarantee of the survival of the young republic against future aggressions either of england or spain, though it exchanged the scientific or protecting boundary of the appalachian mountains for the unscientific and exposed boundary of a river. the expansion to the rocky mountains by the louisiana purchase not only gave wider play to national energies, stimulated natural increase of population, and attracted immigration, but it eliminated a dangerous neighbor in the french, and placed a wide buffer of untenanted land between the united states and the petty aggressions of the spanish in mexico. rome's expansion into the valley of the po, as later into trans-alpine gaul and germany, had for its purpose the protection of the peninsula against barbarian inroads. japan's recent aggression against the russians in the far east was actuated by the realization that she had to expand into korea at the cost of muscovite ascendency, or contract later at the cost of her own independence. [sidenote: checks to population.] if a state lacks the energy and national purpose, like italy, or the possibility, like switzerland, for territorial expansion, and accepts its boundaries as final, the natural increase of population upon a fixed area produces an increased density, unless certain social forces counteract it. without these forces, the relation of men to the land would have tended to modify everywhere in the same way. increase in numbers would have been attended by a corresponding decrease in the amount of land at the disposal of each individual. those states which, like norway and switzerland, cannot expand and which have exploited their natural resources to the utmost, must resign themselves to the emigration of their redundant population. but those which have remained within their own boundaries and have adopted a policy of isolation, like china, feudal japan during its two and a half centuries of seclusion, and numerous polynesian islands, have been forced to war with nature itself by checking the operation of the law of natural increase. all the repulsive devices contributing to this end, whether infanticide, abortion, cannibalism, the sanctioned murder of the aged and infirm, honorable suicide, polyandry or persistent war, are the social deformities consequent upon suppressed growth. such artificial checks upon population are more conspicuous in natural regions with sharply defined boundaries, like islands and oases, as malthus observed;[ ] but they are visible also among savage tribes whose boundaries are fixed not by natural features but by the mutual repulsion and rivalry characterizing the stage of development, and whose limit of population is reduced by their low economic status. [sidenote: extra-territorial relations.] there is a great difference between those states whose inhabitants subsist exclusively from the products of their own country and those which rely more or less upon other lands. great industrial states, like england and germany, which derive only a portion of their food and raw material from their own territory, supply their dense populations through international trade. interruption of such foreign commerce is disastrous to the population at home; hence the state by a navy protects the lines of communication with those far-away lands of wheat fields and cattle ranch. this is no purely modern development. athens in the time of pericles used her navy not only to secure her political domination in the aegean, but also her connections with the colonial wheat lands about the euxine. the modern state strives to render this circle of trade both large and permanent by means of commercial treaties, customs-unions, trading-posts and colonies. thus while society at home is multiplying its relations with its own land, the state is enabling it to multiply also its relations with the whole producing world. while at home the nation is becoming more closely knit together through the common bond of the fatherland, in the world at large humanity is evolving a brotherhood of man by the union of each with all through the common growing bond of the earth. hence we cannot avoid the question: are we in process of evolving a social idea vaster than that underlying nationality? do the socialists hint to us the geographic basis of this new development, when they describe themselves as an international political party? [sidenote: geography in the philosophy of history.] it is natural that the old philosophy of history should have fixed its attention upon the geographic basis of historical events. searching for the permanent and common in the outwardly mutable, it found always at the bottom of changing events the same solid earth. biology has had the same experience. the history of the life forms of the world leads always back to the land on which that life arose, spread, and struggled for existence. the philosophy of history was superior to early sociology, in that its method was one of historical comparison, which inevitably guided it back to the land as the material for the first generalization. thus it happens that the importance of the land factor in history was approached first from the philosophical side. montesquieu and herder had no intention of solving sociological and geographical problems, when they considered the relation of peoples and states to their soil; they wished to understand the purpose and destiny of man as an inhabitant of the earth. [sidenote: theory of progress from the standpoint of geography.] the study of history is always, from one standpoint, a study of progress. yet after all the century-long investigation of the history of every people working out its destiny in its given environment, struggling against the difficulties of its habitat, progressing when it overcame them and retrograding when it failed, advancing when it made the most of its opportunities and declining when it made less or succumbed to an invader armed with better economic or political methods to exploit the land, it is amazing how little the land, in which all activities finally root, has been taken into account in the discussion of progress. nevertheless, for a theory of progress it offers a solid basis. from the standpoint of the land social and political organizations, in successive stages of development, embrace ever increasing areas, and make them support ever denser populations; and in this concentration of population and intensification of economic development they assume ever higher forms. it does not suffice that a people, in order to progress, should extend and multiply only its local relations to its land. this would eventuate in arrested development, such as japan showed at the time of perry's visit. the ideal basis of progress is the expansion of the world relations of a people, the extension of its field of activity and sphere of influence far beyond the limits of its own territory, by which it exchanges commodities and ideas with various countries of the world. universal history shows us that, as the geographical horizon of the known world has widened from gray antiquity to the present, societies and states have expanded their territorial and economic scope; that they have grown not only in the number of their square miles and in the geographical range of their international intercourse, but in national efficiency, power, and permanence, and especially in that intellectual force which feeds upon the nutritious food of wide comparisons. every great movement which has widened the geographical outlook of a people, such as the crusades in the middle ages, or the colonization of the americas, has applied an intellectual and economic stimulus. the expanding field of advancing history has therefore been an essential concomitant and at the same time a driving force in the progress of every people and of the world. [sidenote: man's increasing dependence upon nature.] since progress in civilization involves an increasing exploitation of natural advantages and the development of closer relations between a land and its people, it is an erroneous idea that man tends to emancipate himself more and more from the control of the natural conditions forming at once the foundation and environment of his activities. on the contrary, he multiplies his dependencies upon nature;[ ] but while increasing their sum total, he diminishes the force of each. there lies the gist of the matter. as his bonds become more numerous, they become also more elastic. civilization has lengthened his leash and padded his collar, so that it does not gall; but the leash is never slipped. the delaware indians depended upon the forests alone for fuel. a citizen of pennsylvania, occupying the former delaware tract, has the choice of wood, hard or soft coal, coke, petroleum, natural gas, or manufactured gas. does this mean emancipation? by no means. for while fuel was a necessity to the indian only for warmth and cooking, and incidentally for the pleasureable excitement of burning an enemy at the stake, it enters into the manufacture of almost every article that the pennsylvanian uses in his daily life. his dependence upon nature has become more far-reaching, though less conspicuous and especially less arbitrary. [sidenote: increase in kind and amount.] these dependencies increase enormously both in variety and amount. great britain, with its twenty thousand merchant ships aggregating over ten million tons, and its immense import and export trade, finds its harbors vastly more important to-day for the national welfare than in cromwell's time, when they were used by a scanty mercantile fleet. since the generation of electricity by water-power and its application to industry, the plunging falls of the scandinavian mountains, of the alps of switzerland, france, and italy, of the southern appalachians and the cascade range, are geographical features representing new and unsuspected forms of national capital, and therefore new bonds between land and people in these localities. russia since has built , miles ( , kilometers) of railroad in her european territory, and thereby derived a new benefit from her level plains, which so facilitate the construction and cheap operation of railroads, that they have become in this aspect alone a new feature in her national economy. on the other hand, the galling restrictions of russia's meager and strategically confined coasts, which tie her hand in any wide maritime policy, work a greater hardship to-day than they did a hundred years ago, since her growing population creates a more insistent demand for international trade. in contrast to russia, norway, with its paucity of arable soil and of other natural resources, finds its long indented coastline and the coast-bred seamanship of its people a progressively important national asset. hence as ocean-carriers the norwegians have developed a merchant marine nearly half as large again as that of russia and finland combined-- , , tons[ ] as against , , tons. this growing dependence of a civilized people upon its land is characterized by intelligence and self-help. man forms a partnership with nature, contributing brains and labor, while she provides the capital or raw material in ever more abundant and varied forms. as a result of this coöperation, held by the terms of the contract, he secures a better living than the savage who, like a mendicant, accepts what nature is pleased to dole out, and lives under the tyranny of her caprices. notes to chapter iii [ ] h.j. mackinder, britain and the british seas, p. . london, . [ ] gardner, atlas of english history, map . new york, . [ ] hereford george, historical geography of great britain, pp. - . london, . [ ] lewis morgan, ancient society, p. . new york, . [ ] franklin h. giddings, elements of sociology, p. . new york, . [ ] schoolcraft, the indian tribes of the united states, vol. i, pp. - , . philadelphia, . [ ] _ibid._, vol. i, pp. - , . [ ] roosevelt, the winning of the west, vol. i, pp. - , . new york, . [ ] mcgee and thomas, prehistoric north america, pp. - , , vol. xix, of _history of north america_, edited by francis w. thorpe, philadelphia, . _eleventh census report on the indians_, p. . washington, . [ ] hans helmolt, history of the world, vol. ii, pp. - . new york, - . [ ] spencer and gillen, northern tribes of central australia, pp. - . london, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, p. . london, - . [ ] roscher, _national-oekonomik des ackerbaues_, p. . stuttgart, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, p. . london, - . [ ] paul ehrenreich, _die einteilung und verbreitung der völkerstämme brasiliens_, peterman's _geographische mittheilungen_, vol. xxxvii, p. . gotha, . [ ] roscher, _national-oekonomik des ackerbaues_, p. , note . stuttgart, . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] albert niblack, the coast indians of southern alaska and northern british columbia, pp. - , , - . washington, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, p. . london, - . [ ] _ibid._, vol. iii. pp. - . [ ] sven hedin, central asia and tibet, vol. i, p. . new york and london, . [ ] john de plano carpini, journey in , p. . _hakluyt society_, london, . [ ] journey of william de rubruquis in , p. . _hakluyt society_, london, . [ ] volney, quoted in malthus, principles of population, chap. vii, p. . london, . [ ] genesis, chap. xiii, - . [ ] herbert spencer, principles of sociology, vol. i. p. . new york. [ ] heinrich von treitschke, _politik_, vol. i, pp. - . leipzig, . [ ] e.c. semple, american history and its geographic conditions, pp. - . boston, . [ ] roscher, _grundlagen des national-oekonomik_, book vi. _bevölkerung_, p. , note . stuttgart, . [ ] edward john payne, history of the new world called america, vol. i, p. - . oxford and new york, . [ ] roscher, _national-oekonomik des ackerbaues_, pp. , . stuttgart, . [ ] _ibid._, p. , note . [ ] for these and other averages, sir john lubbock, prehistoric times, pp. - . new york, . [ ] roscher, _national-oekonomik des ackerbaues_, pp. - , p. , note . stuttgart, . william i. thomas, source book for social origins, pp. - . chicago, . [ ] capt. j. forsyth, the highlands of central india, pp. - , . london, . [ ] tacitus, _germania_, iii. [ ] roscher, _national-oekonomik des ackerbaues_, p. , note on p. . stuttgart, . [ ] e. huntington, the pulse of asia, pp. , , , , - . boston, . [ ] sheldon jackson, introduction of domesticated reindeer into alaska, pp. , - , - . washington, . [ ] quoted in alexander von humboldt, aspects of nature in different lands, pp. , . philadelphia, . [ ] edward john payne, history of the new world called america, vol. i, pp. - . - , - . new york, . [ ] prescott, conquest of peru, vol. i, p. . new york, . [ ] mcgee and thomas, prehistoric north america, vol. xix, pp. - , of _the history of north america_, edited by francis w. thorpe, philadelphia, . [ ] ratzel, _anthropo-geographie_, vol. ii, pp. - . [ ] malthus, principles of population, chapters v and vii. london, . [ ] nathaniel shaler, nature and man in america, pp. - . w.z. ripley, races of europe, chap. i, new york, . [ ] justus perthes, _taschen-atlas_, pp. , . gotha, . chapter iv the movements of peoples in their geographical significance [sidenote: universality of these movements.] the ethnic and political boundaries of europe to-day are the residuum of countless racial, national, tribal and individual movements reaching back into an unrecorded past. the very names of turkey, bulgaria, england, scotland and france are borrowed from intruding peoples. new england, new france, new scotland or nova scotia and many more on the american continents register the trans-atlantic nativity of their first white settlers. the provinces of galicia in spain, lombardy in italy, brittany in france, essex and sussex in england record in their names streams of humanity diverted from the great currents of the völkerwanderung. the romance group of languages, from portugal to roumania, testify to the sweep of expanding rome, just as the wide distribution of the aryan linguistic family points to many roads and long migrations from some unplaced birthplace. names like cis-alpine and trans-alpine gaul in the roman empire, trans-caucasia, trans-caspia and trans-baikalia in the russian empire, the transvaal and transkei in south africa, indicate the direction whence the advancing people have come. [sidenote: stratification of races] ethnology reveals an east and west stratification of linguistic groups in europe, a north and south stratification of races, and another stratification by altitude, which reappears in all parts of the world, and shows certain invading dominant races occupying the lowlands and other displaced ones the highlands. this definite arrangement points to successive arrivals, a crowding forward, an intrusion of the strong into fertile, accessible valleys and plains, and a dislodgment of the weak into the rough but safe keeping of mountain range or barren peninsula, where they are brought to bay. ethnic fragments, linguistic survivals, or merely place names, dropped like discarded baggage along the march of a retreating army, bear witness everywhere to tragic recessionals. [sidenote: the name historical movement.] every country whose history we examine proves the recipient of successive streams of humanity. even sea-girt england has received various intruding peoples from the roman occupation to the recent influx of russian jews. in prehistoric times it combined several elements in its population, as the discovery of the "long barrow" men and "round barrow" men by archaeologists, and the identification of a surviving iberian or mediterranean strain by ethnologists go to prove.[ ] egypt, mesopotamia, and india tell the same story, whether in their recorded or unrecorded history. tropical africa lacks a history; but all that has been pieced together by ethnologists and anthropologists, in an effort to reconstruct its past, shows incessant movement,--growth, expansion and short-lived conquest, followed by shrinkage, expulsion or absorption by another invader.[ ] to this constant shifting of races and peoples the name of historical movement has been given, because it underlies most of written history, and constitutes the major part of unwritten history, especially that of savage and nomadic tribes. two things are vital in the history of every people, its ethnic composition and the wars it wages in defense or extension of its boundaries. both rest upon historical movements,--intrusions, whether peaceful or hostile, into its own land, and encroachments upon neighboring territory necessitated by growth. back of all such movements is natural increase of population beyond local means of subsistence, and the development of the war spirit in the effort to secure more abundant subsistence either by raid or conquest of territory. [sidenote: evolution of the historical movement.] among primitive peoples this movement is simple and monotonous. it involves all members of the tribe, either in pursuit of game, or following the herd over the tribal territory, or in migrations seeking more and better land. among civilized peoples it assumes various forms, and especially is differentiated for different members of the social group. the civilized state develops specialized frontiersmen, armies, explorers, maritime traders, colonists, and missionaries, who keep a part of the people constantly moving and directing external expansion, while the mass of the population converts the force once expended in the migrant food-quest into internal activity. here we come upon a paradox. the nation as a whole, with the development of sedentary life, increases its population and therewith its need for external movements; it widens its national area and its circle of contact with other lands, enlarges its geographical horizon, and improves its internal communication over a growing territory; it evolves a greater mobility within and without, which attaches, however, to certain classes of society, not to the entire social group. this mobility becomes the outward expression of a whole complex of economic wants, intellectual needs, and political ambitions. it is embodied in the conquests which build up empires, in the colonization which develops new lands, in the world-wide exchange of commodities and ideas which lifts the level of civilization, till this movement of peoples becomes a fundamental fact of history. [sidenote: nature of primitive movements.] this movement is and has been universal and varied. when most unobtrusive in its operation, it has produced its greatest effects. to seize upon a few conspicuous migrations, like the _völkerwanderung_ and the irruption of the turks into europe, made dramatic by their relation to the declining empires of rome and constantinople, and to ignore the vast sum of lesser but more normal movements which by slow increments produce greater and more lasting results, leads to wrong conclusions both in ethnology and history. here, as in geology, great effects do not necessarily presuppose vast forces, but rather the steady operation of small ones. it is often assumed that the world was peopled by a series of migrations; whereas everything indicates that humanity spread over the earth little by little, much as the imported gypsy moth is gradually occupying new england or the water hyacinth the rivers of florida. louis agassiz observed in that "the boundaries within which the different natural combinations of animals are known to be circumscribed upon the surface of the earth, coincide with the natural range of distinct types of man."[ ] the close parallelism between australian race and flora, eskimo race and arctic fauna, points to a similar manner of dispersion. wallace, in describing how the russian frontier of settlement slowly creeps forward along the volga, encroaching upon the finnish and tartar areas, and permeating them with slav blood and civilization, adds that this is probably the normal method of expansion.[ ] thucydides describes the same process of encroachment, displacement, and migration in ancient hellas.[ ] strabo quotes posidonius as saying that the emigration of the cimbrians and other kindred tribes from their native seats was gradual and by no means sudden.[ ] the traditions of the delaware indians show their advance from their early home in central canada southward to the delaware river and chesapeake bay to have been a slow zigzag movement, interrupted by frequent long halts, leaving behind one laggard group here and sending out an offshoot there, who formed new tribes and thereby diversified the stock.[ ] it was an aimless wandering, without destination and purpose other than to find a pleasanter habitat. the vandals appear first as "a loose aggregation of restless tribes who must not be too definitely assigned to any precise district on the map," somewhere in central or eastern prussia.[ ] far-reaching migrations aiming at a distant goal, like the gothic and hunnish conquests of italy, demand both a geographical knowledge and an organization too high for primitive peoples, and therefore belong to a later period of development.[ ] [sidenote: number and range.] the long list of recorded migrations has been supplemented by the researches of ethnologists, which have revealed a multitude of prehistoric movements. these are disclosed in greater number and range with successive investigation. the prehistoric wanderings of the polynesians assume far more significance to-day than a hundred years ago, when their scope was supposed to have its western limit at fiji and the ellice group. they have now been traced to almost every island of melanesia; vestiges of their influence have been detected in the languages of australia, and the culture of the distant coasts of alaska and british columbia. the western pioneers of america knew the shoshone indians as small bands of savages, constantly moving about in search of food in the barren region west of the rocky mountains, and occasionally venturing eastward to hunt buffalo on the plains. recent investigation has identified as offshoots of this retarded shoshonean stock the sedentary agriculturalists of the moqui pueblo, and the advanced populations of ancient mexico and central america.[ ] here was a great human current which through the centuries slowly drifted from the present frontier of canada to the shores of lake nicaragua. powell's map of the distribution of the linguistic stocks of american indians is intelligible only in the light of constant mobility. haebler's map of the south american stocks reveals the same restless past. this cartographical presentation of the facts, giving only the final results, suggests tribal excursions of the nature of migrations; but ethnologists see them as the sum total of countless small movements which are more or less part of the normal activity of an unrooted savage people. [map page .] otis mason finds that the life of a social group involves a variety of movements characterized by different ranges or scopes. i. the daily round from bed to bed. ii. the annual round from year to year, like that of the tunguse orochon of siberia who in pursuit of various fish and game change their residence within their territory from month to month, or the pastoral nomads who move with the seasons from pasture to pasture. iii. less systematic outside movements covering the tribal sphere of influence, such as journeys or voyages to remote hunting or fishing grounds, forays or piratical descents upon neighboring lands eventuating usually in conquest, expansion into border regions for occasional occupation or colonization. iv. participation in streams of barter or commerce. v. and at a higher stage in the great currents of human intercourse, experience, and ideas, which finally compass the world.[ ] in all this series the narrower movement prepares for the broader, of which it constitutes at once an impulse and a part. [sidenote: importance of such movements in history.] the real character and importance of these movements have been appreciated by broad-minded historians. thucydides elucidates the conditions leading up to the peloponnesian war by a description of the semi-migratory population of hellas, the exposure of the more fertile districts to incursions, and the influence of these movements in differentiating dorian from ionian greece.[ ] johannes von muller, in the introduction to his history of switzerland, assigns to federations and migrations a conspicuous rôle in historical development. edward a. ross sees in such movements a thorough-going selective process which weeds out the unfit, or rather spares only the highly fit. he lays down the principle that repeated migrations tend to the creation of energetic races of men. he adds, "this principle may account for the fact that those branches of a race achieve the most brilliant success which have wandered the farthest from their ancestral home.... the arabs and moors that skirted africa and won a home in far-away spain, developed the most brilliant of the saracen civilizations. hebrews, dorians, quirites, rajputs, hovas were far invaders. no communities in classic times flourished like the cities of asia created by the overflow from greece. nowhere under the czar are there such vigorous, progressive communities as in siberia."[ ] brinton distinguishes the associative and dispersive elements in ethnography. the latter is favored by the physical adaptability of the human race to all climates and external conditions; it is stimulated by the food-quest, the pressure of foes, and the resultant restlessness of an unstable primitive society.[ ] the earth's surface is at once factor and basis in these movements. in an active way it directs them; but they in turn clothe the passive earth with a mantle of humanity. this mantle is of varied weave and thickness, showing here the simple pattern of a primitive society, there the intricate design of advanced civilization; here a closely woven or a gauzy texture, there disclosing a great rent where a rocky peak or the ice-wrapped poles protrude through the warm human covering. this is the magic web whereof man is at once woof and weaver, and the flying shuttle that never rests. given a region, what is its living envelope, asks anthropo-geography. whence and how did it get there? what is the material of warp and woof? will new threads enter to vary the color and design? if so, from what source? or will the local pattern repeat itself over and over with dull uniformity? [sidenote: geographical interpretation of historical movement.] it was the great intellectual service of copernicus that he conceived of a world in motion instead of a world at rest. so anthropo-geography must see its world in motion, whether it is considering english colonization, or the westward expansion of the southern slave power in search of unexhausted land, or the counter expansion of the free-soil movement, or the early advance of the trappers westward to the rockies after the retreating game, or the withdrawal thither of the declining indian tribes before the protruding line of white settlement, and their ultimate confinement to ever shrinking reservations. in studying increase of population, it sees in switzerland chalet and farm creeping higher up the alp, as the lapping of a rising tide of humanity below; it sees movement in the projection of a new dike in holland to reclaim from the sea the land for another thousand inhabitants, movement in japan's doubling of its territory by conquest, in order to house and feed its redundant millions. the whole complex relation of unresting man to the earth is the subject matter of anthropo-geography. the science traces his movements on the earth's surface, measures their velocity, range, and recurrence, determines their nature by the way they utilize the land, notes their transformation at different stages of economic development and under different environments. just as an understanding of animal and plant geography requires a previous knowledge of the various means of dispersal, active and passive, possessed by these lower forms of life, so anthropo-geography must start with a study of the movements of mankind. [sidenote: mobility of primitive peoples.] first of all is to be noted an evolution in the mobility of peoples. in the lower stages of culture mobility is great. it is favored by the persistent food-quest over wide areas incident to retarded economic methods, and by the loose attachment of society to the soil. the small social groups peculiar to these stages and their innate tendency to fission help the movements to ramify. the consequent scattered distribution of the population offers wide interstices between encampments or villages, and into these vacant spaces other wandering tribes easily penetrate. the rapid decline of the indian race in america before the advancing whites was due chiefly to the division of the savages into small groups, scattered sparsely over a wide territory. hunter and pastoral peoples need far more land than they can occupy at any one time. hence the temporarily vacant spots invite incursion. moreover, the slight impedimenta carried by primitive folk minimize the natural physical obstacles which they meet when on the march. the lightly equipped war parties of the shawnee indians used gorges and gaps for the passage of the allegheny mountains which were prohibitive to all white pioneers except the lonely trapper. finally, this mobility gets into the primitive mind. the _wanderlust_ is strong. long residence in one territory is irksome, attachment is weak. therefore a small cause suffices to start the whole or part of the social body moving. a temporary failure of the food supply, cruelty or excessive exaction of tribute on the part of the chief, occasions an exodus. the history of every negro tribe in africa gives instances of such secessions, which often leave whole districts empty and exposed to the next wandering occupant. methods of preventing such withdrawals, and therewith the diminution of his treasury receipts and his fighting force, belong to the policy of every negro chieftain. [sidenote: natural barriers to movement.] the checks to this native mobility of primitive peoples are two: physical and mental. in addition to the usual barriers of mountains, deserts, and seas before the invention of boats, primeval forests have always offered serious obstacles to man armed only with stone or bronze axe, and they rebuffed even man of the iron age. war and hunting parties had to move along the natural clearings of the rivers, the tracks of animals, or the few trails beaten out in time by the natives themselves. primitive agriculture has never battled successfully against the phalanx of the trees. forests balked the expansion of the inca civilization on the rainy slope of the andes, and in central africa the negro invaded only their edges for his yam fields and plantain groves. the earliest settlements in ancient britain were confined to the natural clearings of the chalk downs and oolitic uplands; and here population was chiefly concentrated even at the close of the roman occupation. only gradually, as the valley woodlands were cleared, did the richer soil of the alluvial basins attract men from the high, poor ground where tillage required no preliminary work. but after four centuries of roman rule and roman roads, the clearings along the river valleys were still mere strips of culture mid an encompassing wilderness of woods. when the germanic invaders came, they too appropriated the treeless downs and were blocked by the forests.[ ] on the other hand, grasslands and savannahs have developed the most mobile people whom we know, steppe hunters like the sioux indians and patagonians. thus while the forest dweller, confined to the highway of the stream, devised only canoe and dugout boat in various forms for purposes of transportation, steppe peoples of the old world introduced the use of draft and pack animals, and invented the sledge and cart. [sidenote: effect of geographical horizon.] primitive peoples carry a drag upon their migrations in their restricted geographical outlook; ignorance robs them of definite goals. the evolution of the historical movement is accelerated by every expansion of the geographical horizon. it progresses most rapidly where the knowledge of outlying or remote lands travels fastest, as along rivers and thalassic coasts. rome's location as toll-gate keeper of the tiber gave her knowledge of the upstream country and directed her conquest of its valley; and the movement thus started gathered momentum as it advanced. cæsar's occupation of gaul meant to his generation simply the command of the roads leading from the mediterranean to the northern sources of tin and amber, and the establishment of frontier outposts to protect the land boundaries of italy; this represented a bold policy of inland expansion for that day. the modern historian sees in that step the momentous advance of history beyond the narrow limits of the mediterranean basin, and its gradual inclusion of all the atlantic countries of europe, through whose maritime enterprise the historical horizon was stretched to include america. in the same way, mediæval trade with the orient, which had familiarized europe with distant india and cathay, developed its full historico-geographical importance when it started the maritime discoveries of the fifteenth century. the expansion of the geographical horizon in to embrace the earth inaugurated a widespread historical movement, which has resulted in the europeanization of the world. [sidenote: civilization and mobility.] civilized man is at once more and less mobile than his primitive brother. every advance in civilization multiplies and tightens the bonds uniting him with his soil; makes him a sedentary instead of a migratory being. on the other hand every advance in civilization is attended by the rapid clearing of the forests, by the construction of bridges and interlacing roads, the invention of more effective vehicles for transportation whereby intercourse increases, and the improvement of navigation to the same end. civilized man progressively modifies the land which he occupies, removes or reduces obstacles to intercourse, and thereby approximates it to the open plain. thus far he facilitates movements. but while doing this he also places upon the land a dense population, closely attached to the soil, strong to resist incursion, and for economic reasons inhospitable to any marked accession of population from without. herein lies the great difference between migration in empty or sparsely inhabited regions, such as predominated when the world was young, and in the densely populated countries of our era. as the earth grew old and humanity multiplied, peoples themselves became the greatest barriers to any massive migrations, till in certain countries of europe and asia the historical movement has been reduced to a continual pressure, resulting in compression of population here, repression there. hence, though political boundaries may shift, ethnic boundaries scarcely budge. the greatest wars of modern europe have hardly left a trace upon the distribution of its peoples. only in the balkan peninsula, as the frontiers of the turkish empire have been forced back from the danube, the alien turks have withdrawn to the shrinking territory of the sultan and especially to asia minor. [sidenote: diffusion of culture.] where a population too great to be dislodged occupies the land, conquest results in the eventual absorption of the victors and their civilization by the native folk, as happened to the lombards in italy, the vandals in africa and the normans in england. where the invaders are markedly superior in culture though numerically weak, conquest results in the gradual permeation of the conquered with the religion, economic methods, language, and customs of the new-comers.[ ] the latter process, too, is always attended by some intermixture of blood, where no race repulsion exists, but this is small in comparison to the diffusion of civilization. this was the method by which greek traders and colonists hellenized the countries about the eastern mediterranean, and spread their culture far back from the shores which their settlements had appropriated. in this way saracen armies soon after the death of mohammed arabized the whole eastern and southern sides of the mediterranean from syria to spain, and arab merchants set the stamp of their language and religion on the coasts of east africa as far as moçambique. the handful of spanish adventurers who came upon the relatively dense populations of mexico and peru left among them a civilization essentially european, but only a thin strain of castilian blood. thus the immigration of small bands of people sufficed to influence the culture of that big territory known as latin america. [sidenote: ethnic intermixture.] that vast sum of migrations, great and small, which we group under the general term of historical movement has involved an endless mingling of races and cultures. as professor petrie has remarked, the prevalent notion that in prehistoric times races were pure and unmixed is without foundation. an examination of the various forms of the historical movement reveals the extent and complexity of this mingling process. in the first place, no migration is ever simple; it involves a number of secondary movements, each of which in turn occasions a new combination of tribal or racial elements. the transference of a whole people from its native or adopted seat to a new habitat, as in the _völkerwanderungen_, empties the original district, which then becomes a catchment basin for various streams of people about its rim; and in the new territory it dislodges a few or all of the occupants, and thereby starts up a fresh movement as the original one comes to rest. nor is this all. a torrent that issues from its source in the mountains is not the river which reaches the sea. on its long journey from highland to lowland it receives now the milky waters of a glacier-fed stream, now a muddy tributary from agricultural lands, now the clear waters from a limestone plateau, while all the time its racing current bears a burden of soil torn from its own banks. now it rests in a lake, where it lays down its weight of silt, then goes on, perhaps across an arid stretch where its water is sucked up by the thirsty air or diverted to irrigate fields of grain. so with those rivers of men which we call migrations. the ethnic stream may start comparatively pure, but it becomes mixed on the way. from time to time it leaves behind laggard elements which in turn make a new racial blend where they stop. such were the six thousand aduatici whom cæsar found in belgian gaul. these were a detachment of the migrating cimbri, left there in charge of surplus cattle and baggage while the main body went on to italy.[ ] [sidenote: complex currents of migration.] a migration rarely involves a single people even at the start. it becomes contagious either by example or by the subjection of several neighboring tribes to the same impelling force, by reason of which all start at or near the same time. we find the cimbri and teutons combined with celts from the island of batavia[ ] in the first germanic invasion of the roman empire. jutes, saxons and angles started in close succession for britain, and the saxon group included frisians.[ ] an unavoidable concomitant of great migrations, especially those of nomads, is their tendency to sweep into the vortex of their movement any people whom they brush on the way. both individuals and tribes are thus caught up by the current. the general convergence of the central german tribes towards the danube frontier of the roman empire during the marcomannic war drew in its train the lombards from the lower elbe down to the middle danube and theiss.[ ] the force of the lombards invading italy in included twenty thousand saxons from swabia, gepidae from the middle danube, bulgarians, slavs from the russian ukraine, together with various tribes from the alpine district of noricum and the fluvial plains of pannonia. two centuries later the names of these non-lombard tribes still survived in certain villages of italy which had formed their centers.[ ] the army which attila the hun brought into gaul was a motley crowd, comprising peoples of probable slav origin from the russian steppes, teutonic ostrogoths and gepidae, and numerous german tribes, besides the huns themselves. when this horde withdrew after the death of attila, gepidae and ostrogoths settled along the middle danube, and the slavonic contingent along the alpine courses of the drave and save rivers.[ ] the vandal migration which in invaded spain included the turanian alans and the german suevi. the alans found a temporary home in portugal, which they later abandoned to join the vandal invasion of north africa, while the suevi settled permanently in the northwestern mountains of spain. the vandals occupied in spain two widely separated districts, one in the mountain region of galicia next to the suevi, and the other in the fertile valley of andalusia in the south, while the northeastern part of the peninsula was occupied by intruding visigoths.[ ] add to these the original iberian and celtic stocks of the peninsula and the roman strain previously introduced, and the various elements which have entered into the spanish people become apparent.[ ] [sidenote: cultural modification during migration.] the absorption of foreign elements is not confined to large groups whose names come down in history, nor is the ensuing modification one of blood alone. every land migration or expansion of a people passes by or through the territories of other peoples; by these it is inevitably influenced in point of civilization, and from them individuals are absorbed into the wandering throng by marriage or adoption, or a score of ways. this assimilation of blood and local culture is facilitated by the fact that the vast majority of historical movements are slow, a leisurely drift. even the great _völkerwanderung_, which history has shown us generally in the moment of swift, final descent upon the imperial city, in reality consisted of a succession of advances with long halts between. the vandals, whose original seats were probably in central or eastern prussia, drifted southward with the general movement of the german barbarians toward the borders of the empire late in the second century, and, after the marcomannic war ( a.d.), settled in dacia north of the lower danube under the roman sway. in they were located on the middle danube, and sixty years afterwards in moravia. later they settled for seventy years in pannonia within the empire, where they assimilated roman civilization and adopted the arian form of christianity from their gothic neighbors.[ ] in spain, as we have seen, they occupied galicia and andalusia for a time before passing over into africa in . here was a migration lasting two centuries and a half, reaching from the baltic to the southern shores of the mediterranean, starting on the bleak sterile plains of the north amid barbarous neighbors, ending in the sunny grain fields and rich cities of roman africa. the picture which we get of the victorious vandals parceling out the estates of roman nobles, and, from the standpoint of their more liberal faith, profiting by the dissensions of the two catholic sects of africa, shows us a people greatly modified by their long sweep through the civilized outskirts of the empire. so it was with the lombards and goths who invaded italy. among primitive tribes, who move in smaller groups and must conform closely to the dictates of their environment, the modifying effects of people and land through which they pass are conspicuous. ratzel describes the gradual withdrawal of a hottentot people from western cape colony far into the arid interior before the advance of kaffirs and europeans by saying: "the stock and name of the namaquas wandered northward, acquiring new elements, and in course of time filling the old mold with new contents."[ ] this is the typical result of such primitive movements. the migration of the delaware indians from an early home somewhere northwest of the great lakes to their historical habitat between the hudson and potomac rivers was a slow progress, which somewhere brought them into contact with maize-growing tribes, and gave them their start in agriculture.[ ] the transit lands through which these great race journeys pass exercise a modifying effect chiefly through their culture and their peoples, less through their physical features and climate. for that the stay of the visitants is generally too brief. [sidenote: effect of early maritime migration.] even early maritime migrants did not keep their strains pure. the untried navigator sailing from island to headland, hugging the coast and putting ashore for water, came into contact with the natives. cross currents of migration can be traced in polynesian waters, where certain islands are nodal points which have given and received of races and culture through centuries of movement. the original white population of uruguay differed widely from that of the other spanish republics of south america. its nucleus was a large immigration of canary islanders. these were descendants of spaniards and the native guanches of the canaries, mingled also with norman, flemish and moorish blood.[ ] the norse on their way to iceland may have picked up a celtic element in the islands north of scotland; but from the faroe group onward they found only empty iceland and greenland. this was an exceptional experience. early navigation, owing to its limitations, purposely restricted itself to the known. men voyaged where men had voyaged before and were to be found. journeys into the untenanted parts of the world were rare. however, the probable eastward expansion of the eskimo along the arctic rim of north america belongs in this class, so that this northern folk has suffered no modification from contact with others, except where alaska approaches asia. [sidenote: the transit land.] the land traversed by a migrating horde is not to be pictured as a dead road beneath their feet, but rather as a wide region of transit and transition, potent to influence them by its geography and people, and to modify them in the course of their passage. the route which they follow is a succession of habitats, in which they linger and domicile themselves for a while, though not long enough to lose wholly the habits of life and thought acquired in their previous dwelling place. although nature in many places, by means of valleys, low plains, mountain passes or oasis lines, points out the way of these race movements, it is safer to think and speak of this way as a transit land, not as a path or road. even where the district of migration has been the sea, as among the caribs of the antilles islands, the moros of the philippines, and the polynesians of the pacific, man sends his roots like a water plant down into the restless element beneath, and reflects its influence in all his thought and activities. [sidenote: war as a form of the historical movement.] every aggressive historical movement, whether bold migration or forcible extension of the home territory, involves displacement or passive movement of other peoples (except in those rare occupations of vacant lands), who in turn are forced to encroach upon the lands of others. these conditions involve war, which is an important form of the historical movement, contributing to new social contacts and fusion of racial stocks. raids and piratical descents are often the preliminary of great historical movements. they first expand the geographical horizon, and end in permanent settlements, which involve finally considerable transfers of population, summoned to strengthen the position of the interloper. such was the history of the germanic invasions of britain, the scandinavian settlements on the shores of iceland, britain, and france, and the incursions of saharan tribes into the sudanese states. among pastoral nomads war is the rule; the tribe, a mobilized nation, is always on a war footing with its neighbors. the scant supply of wells and pasturage, inadequate in the dry season, involves rivalry and conflict for their possession as agricultural lands do not. failure of water or grass is followed by the decline of the herds, and then by marauding expeditions into the river valleys to supply the temporary want of food. when population increases beyond the limits of subsistence in the needy steppes, such raids become the rule and end in the conquest of the more favored lands, with resulting amalgamation of race and culture.[ ] [sidenote: primitive war.] the wars of savage and pastoral peoples affect the whole tribe. all the able-bodied men are combatants, and all the women and children constitute the spoils of war in case of defeat. this fact is important, since the purpose of primitive conflicts is to enslave and pillage, rather than to acquire land. the result is that a whole district may be laid waste, but when the devastators withdraw, it is gradually repopulated by bordering tribes, who make new ethnic combinations. after the destruction of the eries by the iroquois in , ohio was left practically uninhabited for a hundred and fifty years. then the iroquoian wyandots extended their settlements into northwestern ohio from their base in southern michigan, while the miami confederacy along the southern shore of lake michigan pushed their borders into the western part. the muskingum valley in the eastern portion was occupied about by delawares from eastern pennsylvania, the scioto by shawnees, and the northeast corner of the territory by detachments of iroquois, chiefly senecas.[ ] the long wars between the algonquin indians of the north and the appalachian tribes of the south kept the district of kentucky a no man's land, in convenient vacancy for occupation by the white settlers, when they began the westward movement.[ ] [map page .] [sidenote: slavery as form of historical movement.] this desolation is produced partly by killing, but chiefly by enslavement of prisoners and the flight of the conquered. both constitute compulsory migrations of far-reaching effect in the fusion of races and the blending of civilizations. the thousands of greek slaves who were brought to ancient rome contributed to its refinement and polish. all the nations of the known world, from briton to syrian and jew, were represented in the slave markets of the imperial capital, and contributed their elements to the final composition of the roman people. when we read of ninety-seven thousand hebrews whom titus sold into bondage after the fall of jerusalem, of forty thousand greeks sold by lucullus after one victory, and the auction _sub corona_ of whole tribes in gaul by cæsar, the scale of this forcible transfer becomes apparent, and its power as an agent of race amalgamation. senator sam houston of texas, speaking of the comanche indians, in the united states senate, december , , said: "there are not less than two thousand prisoners (whites) in the hands of the comanches, four hundred in one band in my own state.... they take no prisoners but women and boys."[ ] it was customary among the indians to use captured women as concubines and to adopt into the tribe such boys as survived the cruel treatment to which they were subjected. since the comanches in were variously estimated to number from nine to twelve thousand,[ ] so large a proportion of captives would modify the native stock. in africa slavery has been intimately associated with agriculture as a source of wealth, and therefore has lent motive to intertribal wars. captives were enslaved and then gradually absorbed into the tribe of their masters. thus war and slavery contributed greatly to that widespread blending of races which characterizes negro africa. slaves became a medium of exchange and an article of commerce with other continents. the negro slave trade had its chief importance in the eyes of ethnologists and historians because, in distributing the black races in white continents, it has given a "negro question" to the united states, superseded the native indian stock of the antilles by negroes, and left a broad negro strain in the blood of colombia, venezuela, and brazil. this particular historical movement, which during the two centuries of its greatest activity involved larger numbers than the tartar invasion of russia or the turkish invasion of europe, for a long period gave to black africa the only historical importance which it possessed for the rest of the world.[ ] [sidenote: fusion by deported and military colonies.] in higher stages of political development, war aiming at the subjugation of large territories finds another means to fuse the subject peoples and assimilate them to a common standard of civilization. the purpose is unification and the obliteration of local differences. these are also the unconscious ends of evolution by historical movement. with this object, conquerors the world over have used a system of tribal and racial exchanges. it was the policy of the incas of ancient peru to remove conquered tribes to distant parts of the realm, and supply their places with colonists from other districts who had long been subjected and were more or less assimilated.[ ] in b.c. the assyrian king, sargon, overran samaria, carried away the ten tribes of israel beyond the tigris and scattered them among the cities of media, where they probably merged with the local population. to the country left vacant by their wholesale deportation he transplanted people from babylon and other mesopotamian cities.[ ] the descendants of these, mingled with the poorer class of jews still left there, formed the despised samaritans of the time of christ. the kingdom of judah later was despoiled by nebuchadnezzar of much of its population, which was carried off to babylon. this plan of partial deportation and colonization characterized the roman method of romanization. removal of the conquered from their native environment facilitated the process, while it weakened the spirit and power of revolt. the romans met bitter opposition from the mountain tribes when trying to open up the northern passes of the apennines. consequently they removed the ligurian tribe of the apuanians, forty-seven thousand in number, far south to samnium. when in b.c. the region of the rhaetian alps was joined to the empire, forty thousand of the inhabitants were transplanted from the mountains to the plain. the same method was used with the scordisci and dacians of the danube. more often the mortality of war so thinned the population, that the settlement of roman military colonies among them sufficed to keep down revolt and to romanize the surviving fragment. the large area of romance speech found in roumania and eastern hungary, despite the controversy about its origin,[ ] seems to have had its chief source in the extensive roman colonies planted by the emperor trajan in conquered dacia.[ ] in iberian spain, which bitterly resisted romanization, the process was facilitated by the presence of large garrisons of soldiers. between and b.c. the troops amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand, and many of them remained in the country as colonists.[ ] compare the settlement of scotch troops in french canada by land grants after , resulting in the survival to-day of sandy hair, blue eyes, and highland names among the french-speaking _habitants_ of murray bay and other districts. the turks in the fifteenth century brought large bodies of moslem converts from asia minor to garrison macedonia and thessaly, thereby robbing the anatolian plateau of half its original population. into the vacuum thus formed a current of nomads from inner asia has poured ever since.[ ] [sidenote: withdrawal and flight.] every active historical movement which enters an already populated country gives rise there to passive movements, either compression of the native folk followed by amalgamation, or displacement and withdrawal. the latter in some degree attends every territorial encroachment. only where there is an abundance of free land can a people retire as a whole before the onslaught, and maintain their national or racial solidarity. thus the slavs seem largely to have withdrawn before the germans in the baltic plains of europe. the indians of north and south america retired westward before the advance of the whites from the atlantic coast. the cherokee nation, who once had a broad belt of country extending from the tennessee valley through south carolina to the ocean,[ ] first retracted their frontier to the appalachian mountains; in they were confined to an ever shrinking territory on the middle tennessee and the southern end of the highlands; in they began to retire beyond the mississippi, and in beyond the western boundary of arkansas.[ ] the story of the shawnees and delawares is a replica of this.[ ] in the same way hottentots and kaffirs in south africa are withdrawing northward and westward into the desert before the protruding frontier of white settlement, as the boers before the english treked farther into the veldt. [see map page .] where the people attacked or displaced is small or a broken remnant, it often takes refuge among a neighboring or kindred tribe. the small siouan tribes of the carolinas, reduced to fragments by repeated iroquois raids, combined with their siouan kinsmen the catawbas, who consequently in included twenty dialects among their little band.[ ] the iroquoian tuscaroras of north carolina, defeated and weakened by the whites in , fled north to the iroquois of new york, where they formed the sixth nation of the confederation. the yamese indians, who shifted back and forth between the borders of florida and south carolina, defeated first by the whites and then by the creeks, found a refuge for the remnant of their tribe among the seminoles, in whom they merged and disappeared as a distinct tribe[ ]--the fate of most of these fragmentary peoples. [see map page .] [sidenote: dispersal in flight.] when the fugitive body is large, it is forced to split up in order to escape. hence every fugitive movement tends to assume the character of a dispersal, all the more as organization and leadership vanish in the catastrophe. the fissile character of primitive societies especially contributes to this end, so that almost every story of indian and native african warfare tells of shattered remnants fleeing in several directions. among civilized peoples, the dispersal is that of individuals and has far-reaching historical effects. after the destruction of jerusalem, the jews were scattered over the earth, the debris of a nation. the religious wars of france during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries caused huguenots to flee to switzerland, germany, holland, england, and south carolina; they even tried to establish a colony on the coast of brazil. everywhere they contributed a valuable element to the economic and social life of the community which they joined. the great schism in the russian church became an agent of emigration and colonization. it helped to spread the russian nationality over remote frontier regions of the empire which previously had been almost exclusively asiatic; and distributed groups of dissenters in the neighboring provinces of turkey, roumania, austria, poland and prussia.[ ] [sidenote: natural regions of retreat.] the hope of safety from pursuit drives fugitive peoples into isolated and barren places that are scarcely accessible or habitable, and thereby extends the inhabited area of the earth long before mere pressure of population would have stretched it to such limits. we find these refugee folk living in pile villages built over the water, in deserts, in swamps, mangrove thickets, very high mountains, marshy deltas, and remote or barren islands, all which can be classified as regions of retreat. fugitives try to place between themselves and their pursuers a barrier of sea or desert or mountains, and in doing this have themselves surmounted some of the greatest obstacles to the spread of the human race. districts of refuge located centrally to several natural regions of migration receive immigrants from many sides, and are therefore often characterized by a bizarre grouping of populations. the cluster of marshy islands at the head of the adriatic received fugitives from a long semi-circle of north italian cities during the barbarian invasions. each refugee colony occupied a separate island, and finally all coalesced to form the city of venice. central mountain districts like the alps and caucasus contain "the sweepings of the plains." the caucasus particularly, on the border between europe and asia, contains every physical type and representative of every linguistic family of eurasia, except pure aryan. nowhere else in the world probably is there such a heterogeneous lot of peoples, languages and religions. ripley calls the caucasus "a grave of peoples, of languages, of customs and physical types."[ ] its base, north and south, and the longitudinal groove through its center from east to west have been swept by various racial currents, which have cast up their flotsam into its valleys. the pueblos of our arid southwest, essentially an area of asylum, are inhabited by indians of four distinct stocks, and only one of them, the moquis, show clearly kinship to another tribe outside this territory,[ ] so that they are survivals. the twenty-eight different indian stocks huddled together in small and diverse linguistic groups between the pacific ocean and the eastern slope of the sierra nevada and cascade range[ ] leave the impression that these protected valleys, similar to the caucasus in their ethnic diversity, were an asylum for remnants of depleted stocks who had fled to the western highlands before the great indian migrations of the interior.[ ] making their way painfully and at great cost of life through a region of mountain and desert, they came out in diminished bands to survive in the protection of the great barrier. of the twenty-one indian linguistic stocks which have become extinct since the arrival of the white man, fifteen belong to this transmontane strip of the pacific slope[ ]--evidence of the fragmentary character of these stocks and their consequently small power of resistance, [see map page .] [sidenote: emigration and colonization.] advance to a completely sedentary life, as we see it among modern civilized nations, prohibits the migration of whole peoples, or even of large groups when maintaining their political organization. on the other hand, however, sedentary life and advanced civilization bring rapid increase of population, improved methods of communication, and an enlarged geographical horizon. these conditions encourage and facilitate emigration and colonization, forms of historical movement which have characterized the great commercial peoples of antiquity and the overcrowded nations of modern times. these forms do not involve a whole people, but only individuals and small groups, though in time the total result may represent a considerable proportion of the original population. the united states in contained , immigrants from canada and newfoundland,[ ] or just one-fifth the total population of the dominion in that same year. germany since has contributed at least five million citizens to non-european lands. ireland since has seen nearly four millions of its inhabitants drawn off to other countries,[ ] an amount only little less than its present population. it is estimated that since emigration has carried off from county clare and kerry seventy-two per cent. of the average population; and yet those counties are still crowded.[ ] among those who abandon their homes in search of easier conditions of living, certain ages and certain social and industrial classes predominate. a typical emigrant group to america represents largely the lower walks of life, includes an abnormal proportion of men and adults, and about three-fourths of it are unskilled laborers and agriculturists.[ ] colonization, the most potent instrument of organized expansion, has in recent centuries changed the relative significance of the great colonial nations of europe. it raised england from a small insular country to the center of a world power. it gave sudden though temporary preëminence to spain and portugal, a new lease of life to little holland, and ominous importance to russia. germany, who entered the colonial field only in , found little desirable land left; and yet it was especially germany who needed an outlet for her redundant population. with all these states, as with ancient phoenicia, greece and yemen, the initial purpose was commerce or in some form the exploitation of the new territory. colonies were originally trading stations established as safe termini for trade routes.[ ] colonial government, as administered by the mother country, originally had an eye single for the profits of trade: witness the experience of the thirteen colonies with great britain. colonial wars have largely meant the rivalry of competing nations seeking the same markets, as the history of the portuguese and dutch in the east indies, and the english and french in america prove. the first punic war had a like commercial origin--rivalry for the trade of _magna græcia_ between rome and carthage, the dominant colonial powers of the western mediterranean. such wars result in expansion for the victor. [sidenote: commerce.] commerce, which so largely underlies colonization, is itself a form of historical movement. it both causes and stimulates great movements of peoples, yet it differs from these fundamentally in its relation to the land. commerce traverses the land to reach its destination, but takes account of natural features only as these affect transportation and travel. it has to do with systems of routes and goals, which it aims to reach as quickly as possible. it reduces its cortege to essentials; eliminates women and children. therefore it surmounts natural barriers which block the advance of other forms of the historical movement. merchant caravans are constantly crossing the desert, but not so peoples. traders with loaded yaks or ponies push across the karakorum mountains by passes where a migrating horde would starve and freeze. the northern limit of the mediterranean race in spain lies sharply defined along the crest of the pyrenees, whose long unbroken wall forms one of the most pronounced boundaries in europe;[ ] yet traders and smugglers have pushed their way through from time immemorial. long after etruscan merchants had crossed northward over the alps, roman expansion and colonization made a detour around the mountains westward into gaul, with the result that the germans received roman civilization not straight from the south, but secondhand through their gallic neighbors west of the rhine. [sidenote: commerce a guide to various movements.] commerce, though differing from other historical movements, may give to these direction and destination. the trader is frequently the herald of soldier and settler. he becomes their guide, takes them along the trail which he has blazed, and gives them his own definiteness of aim. the earliest roman conquest of the alpine tribes was made for the purpose of opening the passes for traders and abolishing the heavy transit duties imposed by the mountaineers.[ ] fur-traders inaugurated french expansion to the far west of canada, and the russian advance into siberia. the ancient amber route across russia from the baltic to the euxine probably guided the goths in their migration from their northern seats to the fertile lands in southern russia, where they first appear in history as the ostrogoths.[ ] the caravan trade across the sahara from the niger to the mediterranean coast has itself embodied an historical movement, by bringing out enough negro slaves appreciably to modify the ethnic composition of the population in many parts of north africa.[ ] it was this trade which also suggested to prince henry of portugal in , when campaigning in morocco, the plan of reaching the guinea coast by sea and diverting its gold dust and slaves to the port of lisbon, a movement which resulted in the portuguese circumnavigation of africa.[ ] every staple place and trading station is a center of geographical information; it therefore gives an impulse to expansion by widening the geographical horizon. the lewis and clark expedition found the mandan villages at the northern bend of the missouri river the center of a trade which extended west to the pacific, through the agency of the crow and paunch indians of the upper yellowstone, and far north to the assiniboine and saskatchewan rivers. here in conversation with british and french fur-traders of the northwest company's posts, they secured information about the western country they were to explore.[ ] similarly the trade of the early jesuit missions at la pointe near the west end of lake superior annually drew the indians from a wide circle sweeping from green bay and the fox river in the south, across the mississippi around to the lake of the woods and far north of lake superior.[ ] here marquette first heard of the great river destined to carry french dominion to the gulf of mexico. [sidenote: movements due to religion.] trade often finds in religion an associate and coadjutor in directing and stimulating the historical movement. china regards modern christian missions as effective european agencies for the spread of commercial and political power. jesuit and fur-trader plunged together into the wilds of colonial canada; spanish priest and gold-seeker into mexico and peru. american missionary pressed close upon the heels of fur-trader into the oregon country. jason lee, having established a methodist mission on the willamette in , himself experienced sudden conversion from religionist to colonizer. he undertook a temporary mission back to the settled states, where he preached a stirring propaganda for the settlement and appropriation of the disputed oregon country, before the british should fasten their grip upon it. the united states owes hawaii to the expansionist spirit of american missionaries. thirty years after their arrival in the islands, they held all the important offices under the native government, and had secured valuable tracts of lands, laying the foundation of the landed aristocracy of planters established there to-day. their sons and grandsons took the lead in the revolution of , and in the movement for annexation to the united states. thus sometimes do the meek inherit the earth. [sidenote: religious pilgrimages.] the famous pilgrimages of the world, in which the commercial element has been more or less conspicuous,[ ] have contributed greatly to the circulation of peoples and ideas, especially as they involve multitudes and draw from a large circle of lands. their economic, intellectual and political effects rank them as one phase of the historical movement. herodotus tells of seven hundred thousand egyptians flocking to the city of bubastis from all parts of egypt for the festival of diana.[ ] the worship of ashtoreth in bambyce in syria drew votaries from all the semitic peoples except the jews. as early as a.d. christian pilgrims flocked to jerusalem from armenia, persia, india, ethiopia, and even from gaul and britain. jerusalem gave rise to those armed pilgrimages, the crusades, with all their far-reaching results. the pilgrimages to rome, which in the jubilee of brought two hundred thousand worshipers to the sacred city, did much to consolidate papal supremacy over latin christendom.[ ] as the roads to rome took the pious wayfarers through milan, venice, genoa, florence, bologna, and other great cities of italy, they were so many channels for the distribution of italian art and culture over the more untutored lands of western europe. though mecca is visited annually by only seventy or eighty thousand pilgrims, it puts into motion a far greater number over the whole mohammedan world, from westernmost africa to chinese turkestan.[ ] yearly a great pilgrimage, numbering in eighty thousand souls, moves across africa eastward through the sudan on its way to the red sea and mecca. many traders join the caravans of the devout both for protection and profit, and the devout themselves travel with herds of cattle to trade in on the way. the merchants are prone to drop out and settle in any attractive country, and few get beyond the populous markets of wadai. the british and french governments in the sudan aid and protect these pilgrimages; they recognize them as a political force, because they spread the story of the security and order of european rule.[ ] the markets of western tibet, recently opened to indian merchants by the british expedition to lhassa, promote intercourse between the two countries especially because of the sacred lakes and mountains in their vicinity, which are goals of pilgrimage alike to hindu and tibetan buddhist. they offer an opportunity to acquire merit and profit at the same time, an irresistible combination to the needy, pious hindu. therefore across the rugged passes of the himalayas he drives his yaks laden with english merchandise, an unconscious instrument for the spread of english influence, english civilization and the extension of the english market, as the colonial office well understands.[ ] [sidenote: historical movement and race distribution.] the forms which have been assumed by the historical movement are varied, but all have contributed to the spread of man over the habitable globe. the yellow, white and red races have become adapted to every zone; the black race, whether in africa, australia or melanesia, is confined chiefly to the tropics. a like conservatism as to habitat tends to characterize all sub-races, peoples, and tribes of the human family. the fact which strikes one in studying the migrations of these smaller groups is their adherence each to a certain zone or heat belt defined by certain isothermal lines (see map chap. xvii.), their reluctance to protrude beyond its limits, and the restricted range and small numerical strength of such protrusions as occur. this seems to be the conservatism of the mature race type, which has lost some of its plasticity and shuns or succumbs to the ordeal of adaptation to contrasted climatic conditions, except when civilization enables it partially to neutralize their effects. [illustration: primitive indian stocks of south america (from helmolt's _history of the world_. by permission of dodd, mead & co.)] [sidenote: migrations in relation to zones and heat belts.] in south america, caribs and arawaks showed a strictly tropical distribution from hayti to the southern watershed of the amazon. the tupis, moving down the parana-la plata system, made a short excursion beyond the tropic of capricorn, though not beyond the hot belt, then turned equator-ward again along the coast.[ ] in north america we find some exceptions to the rule. for instance, though the main area of the athapascan stock is found in the frigid belt of canada and alaska, north of the annual isotherm of °c. ( °f.) small residual fragments of these people are scattered also along the pacific coast of oregon and california, marking the old line of march of a large group which drifted southward into arizona, new mexico, texas and the northern part of mexico. the shoshone stock, which originally occupied the great basin and western intermontane plateau up to the borders of canada, sent out offshoots which developed into the ancient civilized tribes of tropical mexico and central america. both these emigrations to more southern zones were part of the great southward trend characterizing all movements on the pacific side of the continent, probably from an original ethnic port of entry near bering strait; and part also of the general southward drift in search of more genial climate, which landed the van of northern siouan, algonquin and iroquoian stocks in the present area of south carolina, georgia, alabama, mississippi and louisiana, while the base of their territory stretched out to its greatest width in southern canada and contiguous parts of the united states. [see map page .][ ] [illustration: ethnographical map of india from the indian census of .] [illustration: ethnographical map of asia. vertical shading in the north is slav.] [sidenote: range of movements in asia.] if we turn to the eastern hemisphere, we find the malays and malayo-polynesians, differentiated offshoots of the mongolian stock, restricted to the tropics, except where polynesians have spread to outlying new zealand. the chinese draw their political boundary nearly along the tropic of cancer, but they have freely lapped over this frontier into indo-china as far as singapore.[ ] combined with this expansion was the early infiltration of the chinese into the philippines, borneo, and the western sunda isles, all distinctly tropical. the fact that the chinese show a physical capacity for acclimatization found in no other race explains in part their presence into the tropics. in contrast, the aryan folk of india, whether in their pure type as found in the punjab and rajputana desert, or mingled with the earlier dravidian races belong to the hot belt but scarcely reach the tropic of cancer,[ ] though their language has far overshot this line both in the deccan and the ganges delta. one spore of aryan stock, in about b.c., moved by sea from the bay of cambay to ceylon; mingling there with the tamil natives, they became the progenitors of the singhalese, forming a hybrid tropical offshoot. europe, except for its small sub-arctic area, has received immigrants, according to the testimony of history and ethnology, only from the temperate parts of asia and africa, with the one exception of the saracens of arabia, whose original home lay wholly within the hot climate belt of °c. ( °f.). saracen expansion, in covering persia, syria, and egypt, still kept to this hot belt; only in the barbary coast of africa and in spain did it protrude into the temperate belt. though this last territory was extra-tropical, it was essentially semi-arid and sub-tropical in temperature, like the dry trade-wind belt whence the saracens had sprung. [illustration: ethnographical map of africa and arabia.] [sidenote: range of movements in africa.] the semitic folk of arabia and the desert hamites of northern africa, bred by their hot, dry environment to a nomadic life, have been drawn southward over the sahara across the tropic into the grasslands of the sudan, permeating a wide zone of negro folk with the political control, religion, civilization and blood of the mediterranean north. here similar though better conditions of life, a climate hotter though less arid, attracted hamitic invasion, while the relatively dense native population in a lower stage of economic development presented to the commercial semites the attraction of lucrative trade. south of the equator the native bantu kaffirs, essentially a tropical people, spread beyond their zonal border to the south coast of africa at ° s.l., and displaced the yellow hottentots[ ] before the arrival of the dutch in ; while in the early nineteenth century we hear of the makololo, a division of this same kaffir stock, leaving their native seats near the southern sources of the vaal river at ° s.l. and moving some nine hundred miles northward to the barotse territory on the upper zambesi at ° s.l.[ ] this again was a movement of a pastoral people across a tropic to other grasslands, to climatic conditions scarcely different from those which they had left. [sidenote: colonization and latitude.] the modern colonial movements which have been genuine race expansions have shown a tendency not only to adhere to their zone, but to follow parallels of latitude or isotherms. the stratification of european peoples in the americas, excepting spanish and portuguese, coincides with heat zones. internal colonization in the united states reveals the same principle.[ ] russian settlements in asia stretch across siberia chiefly between the fiftieth and fifty-fifth parallels; these same lines include the ancient slav territory in germany between the vistula and weser. the great efflux of home-seekers, as opposed to the smaller contingent of mere conquerors and exploiters, which has poured forth from europe since the fifteenth century, has found its destinations largely in the temperate parts of the americas, australia, new zealand, and south africa. even the spanish overlords in mexico and peru domiciled themselves chiefly in the highlands, where altitude in part counteracts tropical latitude. european immigration into south america to-day greatly predominates in the temperate portions,--in argentine, uruguay, paraguay, southern brazil and southern chile. while argentine's population includes over one million white foreigners, who comprise twenty per cent. of the total,[ ] venezuela has no genuine white immigration. its population, which comprises only one per cent. of pure whites, consists chiefly of negroes, mulattoes, and sambos, hybrids of negro and indian race. in british guiana, negroes and east indian coolies, both importations from other tropical lands, comprise eighty-one per cent. of the population.[ ] the movement of europeans into the tropical regions of asia, australasia, africa and america, like the american advance into the philippines, represents commercial and political, not genuine ethnic expansion. except where it resorts to hybridization, it seeks not new homesteads, but the profits of tropical trade and the markets for european manufactures found in retarded populations. these it secures either by a small but permanently domiciled ruling class, as formerly in spanish and portuguese america, or by a body of european officials, clerks, agents and soldiers, sent out for a term of years. such are the seventy-six thousand britishers who manage the affairs of commerce and state in british india, and the smaller number of dutch who perform the same functions in the dutch east india islands. the basis of this system is exploitation. it represents neither a high economic, ethical, nor social ideal, and therefore lacks the stamp of geographic finality. [sidenote: movement to like geographic conditions.] a migrating or expanding people, when free to choose, is prone to seek a new home with like geographic conditions to the old. hence the stamp once given by an environment tends to perpetuate itself. all people, especially those in the lower stages of culture, are conservative in their fundamental activities. agriculture is intolerable to pastoral nomads, hunting has little attraction for a genuine fisher folk. therefore such peoples in expansion seek an environment in which the national aptitudes, slowly evolved in their native seats, find a ready field. thus arise natural provinces of distribution, whose location, climate, physical features, and size reflect the social and economic adaptation of the inhabitants to a certain type of environment. a shepherd folk, when breaking off from its parent stock like abraham's family from their mesopotamian kinsmen, seeks a land rich in open pastures and large enough to support its wasteful nomadic economy. a seafaring people absorb an ever longer strip of seaboard, like the eskimo of arctic america, or throw out their settlements from inlet to inlet or island to island, as did malays and polynesians in the pacific, ancient greeks and phoenicians in the subtropical mediterranean, and the norse in the northern seas. the dutch, bred to the national profession of diking and draining, appear in their element in the water-logged coast of sumatra and guiana,[ ] where they cultivate lands reclaimed from the sea; or as colonists in the vistula lowlands, whither prussia imported them to do their ancestral task, just as the english employed their dutch prisoners after the wars with holland in the seventeenth century to dike and drain the fens of cambridgeshire and lincolnshire. moreover, the commercial talent of the dutch, trained by their advantageous situation on the north sea about the rhine mouths, guided their early traders to similar locations elsewhere, like the hudson and delaware rivers, or planted them on islands either furnishing or commanding extensive trade, such as ceylon, mauritius, the east indies, or the dutch holdings in the antilles. much farther down in the cultural scale we find the fisher tribes of central africa extending their villages from point to point along the equatorial streams, and the river indians of south america gradually spreading from headwaters to estuary, and thence to the related environment of the coast. the tupis, essentially a water race, have left traces of their occupation only where river or coast enabled them to live by their inherited aptitudes.[ ] the distribution of the ancient mounds in north america shows their builders to have sought with few exceptions protected sites near alluvial lowlands, commanding rich soil for cultivation and the fish supply from the nearby river. mountaineer folk often move from one upland district to another, as did the lombards of alpine pannonia in their conquest of lombardy and apennine italy, where all their four duchies were restricted to the highlands of the peninsula.[ ] the conquests of the ancient incas and the spread of their race covered one andean valley after another for a stretch of one thousand five hundred miles, wherever climatic and physical conditions were favorable to their irrigated tillage and highland herds of llamas. they found it easier to climb pass after pass and mount to ever higher altitudes, rather than descend to the suffocating coasts where neither man nor beast could long survive, though they pushed the political boundary finally to the seaboard. [map page .] [sidenote: movement to better geographic conditions.] the search for better land, milder climate, and easier conditions of living starts many a movement of peoples which, in view of their purpose, necessarily leads them into an environment sharply contrasted to their original habitat. such has been the radial outflow of the mongoloid tribes down from the rugged highlands of central asia to the fertile river lowlands of the peripheral lands; the descent of the iran pastors upon the agricultural folk of the indus, ganges and mesopotamian valleys, and the swoop of desert-born conquerors upon the unresisting tillers of well-watered fields in all times, from the ancient hyksos of the nile to the modern fulbe of the niger valley. [sidenote: southward and westward drifts in the northern hemisphere.] the attraction of a milder climate has caused in the northern hemisphere a constantly recurring migration from north to south. in primitive north america, along the whole broad atlantic slope, the predominant direction of indian migrations was from north to south, accompanied by a drift from west to east.[ ] on the pacific side of the continent also the trend was southward. this is generally conceded regardless of theory as to whether the indians first found entrance to the continent at its northeast or northwest corner. it was a movement toward milder climates.[ ] study of the _völkerwanderungen_ in europe reveals two currents or drifts in varied combination, one from north to south and the other from east to west, but both of them aimed at regions of better climate; for the milder temperature and more abundant rainfall of western europe made a country as alluring to the goths, huns, alans, slavs, bulgars and tartars of asiatic deserts and russian steppes, as were the sunny mediterranean peninsulas to the dwellers of the bleak baltic coasts. this is one geographic fact back of the conspicuous westward movement formulated into an historical principle: "westward the star of empire takes its course." the establishment of european colonies on the western side of the atlantic, their extension thence to the pacific and ever westward, till european culture was transplanted to the philippines by spain and more recently by the united states, constitute the most remarkable sustained movement made by any one race. [sidenote: eastward movements.] but westward movements are not the only ones. on the pacific slope of asia the star has moved eastward. from highland mongolia issued the throng which originally populated the lowlands of china; and ever since, one nomad conqueror after the other has descended thence to rule the fruitful plains of chili and the teeming populations of the yangtze valley.[ ] russia, blocked in its hoped for expansion to the west by the strong powers of central europe, stretched its dominion eastward to the pacific and for a short time over to alaska. the chief expansion of the german people and the german empire in historical times has also been from west to east; but this eastward advance is probably only retracing the steps taken by many primitive teutonic tribes as they drifted rhineward from an earlier habitat along the vistula. [sidenote: return movements.] since the world is small, it frequently happens that a people after an interval of generations, armed with a higher civilization, will reënter a region which it once left when too crude and untutored to develop the possibilities of the land, but which its better equipment later enables it to exploit. thus we find a backward expansion of the chinese westward to the foot of the pamir, and an internal colonization of the empire to the ili feeder of lake balkash. the expansion of the japanese into korea and saghalin is undoubtedly such a return current, after an interval long enough to work a complete transformation in the primitive mongolians who found their way to that island home. sometimes the return represents the ebbing of the tide, rather than the back water of a stream in flood. such was the retreat of the moors from spain to the berber districts of north africa, whither they carried echoes of the brilliant saracen civilization in the iberian peninsula. such has been the gradual withdrawal of the turks from europe back to their native asia, and slow expulsion of the tartar tribes from russia to the barren asiatic limits of their former territory. [see map page .] [sidenote: regions of attraction and repulsion.] voluntary historical movements, seeking congenial or choice regions of the earth, have left its less favored spots undisturbed. paucity of resources and isolation have generally insured to a region a peaceful history; natural wealth has always brought the conqueror. in ancient greece the fruitful plains of thessaly, boeotia, elis and laconia had a fatal attraction for every migrating horde; attica's rugged surface, poor soil, and side-tracked location off the main line of travel between hellas and the peloponnesus saved it from many a rough visitant,[ ] and hence left the athenians, according to thucydides, an indigenous race. the fertility of the rhine valley has always attracted invasion, the barren black forest range has repelled and obstructed it. the security of such unproductive highlands lies more in their failure to attract than in their power to resist conquest. when to abundant natural resources, a single spot adds a reputation for wealth, magnificence, an exceptional position for the control of territory or commerce, it becomes a geographical magnet. such was delphi for the gauls of the balkan peninsula in the third century, rome for the germanic and hunnish tribes of the _völkerwanderung_, constantinople for the normans, turks and russians, venice for land-locked austria, the mississippi highway and the outlet at new orleans for our trans-allegheny pioneers. [sidenote: psychical influences in certain movements.] sometimes the goal is fabulous or mythical, but potent to lure, like the land of el dorado, abounding in gold and jewels, which for two centuries spurred on spanish exploration in america. other than purely material motives may initiate or maintain such a movement, an ideal or a dream of good, like the fountain of eternal youth which brought ponce de leon to florida, the search for the islands of the blessed, or the spirit of religious propaganda which stimulated the spread of the spanish in mexico and the french in canada, or the hope of religious toleration which has drawn quaker, puritan, huguenot, and jew to america. it was an idea of purely spiritual import which directed the century-long movement of the crusades toward jerusalem, half latinized the levant, and widened the intellectual horizon of europe. a national or racial sentiment which enhaloes a certain spot may be pregnant with historical results, because at any moment it may start some band of enthusiasts on a path of migration or conquest. the zionist agitation for the return of oppressed jews to palestine, and the establishment of the liberian republic for the negroes in africa rest upon such a sentiment. the reverence of the christian world for rome as a goal of pilgrimages materially enhanced the influence of italy as a school of culture during the middle ages. the spiritual and ethnic association of the mohammedan world with mecca is always fraught with possible political results. the dominant tribes of the sudan, followers of islam, who proudly trace back a fictitious line of ancestry to the arabs of yemen, are readily incited to support a new prophet sprung from the race of mecca.[ ] the pilgrimages which the buddhists of the asiatic highlands make to the sacred city of lhassa ensure china's control over the restless nomads through the instrumentality of the grand lama of tibet. [sidenote: results of historical movement.] historical movements are varied as to motive, direction, numerical strength, and character, but their final results are two, differentiation and assimilation. both are important phases of the process of evolution, but the latter gains force with the progress of history and the increase of the world's population. [sidenote: differentiation and area.] a people or race which, in its process of numerical growth, spreads over a large territory subjects itself to a widening range of geographic conditions, and therefore of differentiation. the broad expansion of the teutonic race in europe, america, australia and south africa has brought it into every variety of habitat. if the territory has a monotonous relief like russia, nevertheless, its mere extent involves diversity of climate and location. the diversity of climate incident to large area involves in turn different animal and plant life, different crops, different economic activities. even in lowlands the relief, geologic structure, and soil are prone to vary over wide districts. the monotonous surface of holland shows such contrasts. so do the north german lowlands; here the sandy barren flats of the "geest" alternate with stretches of fertile silt deposited by the rivers or the sea,[ ] and support different types of communities, which have been admirably described by gustav frenssen in his great novel of jön uhl. the flat surface of southern illinois shows in small compass the teeming fertility of the famous "american bottom," the poor clay soil of "egypt" with its backward population, and the rich prairie land just to the north with its prosperous and progressive farmer class. when the relief includes mountains, the character not only of the land but of the climate changes, and therewith the type of community. hence neighboring districts may produce strongly contrasted types of society. madison county of kentucky, lying on the eastern margin of the bluegrass region, contains the rich landed estates, negro laboring class and aristocratic society characteristic of the "planter" communities of the old south; and only twenty miles southeast of richmond, the center of this wealth and refinement, it includes also the rough barren hill country of the cumberland plateau, where are found one-room cabins, moonshine stills, feuds, and a backward population sprung from the same pure english stock as the bluegrass people. [sidenote: contrasted environments.] here is differentiation due to the immediate influences of environment. the phenomenon reappears in every part of the world, in every race and every age. the contrast between the ancient greeks of the mountains, coasts and alluvial valleys shows the power of environment to direct economic activities and to modify culture and social organization. so does the differences between the coast, steppe, and forest indians of guiana,[ ] the kirghis of the pamir pastures and the irtysh river valley, the agricultural berbers of the atlas mountains and the berber nomads of the sahara, the swiss of the high, lonely engadine and those of the crowded aar valley. contrasted environments effect a natural selection in another way and thereby greatly stimulate differentiation, whenever an intruding people contest the ownership of the territory with the inhabitants. the struggle for land means a struggle also for the best land, which therefore falls to the share of the strongest peoples. weaklings must content themselves with poor soils, inaccessible regions of mountain, swamp or desert. there they deteriorate, or at best strike a slower pace of increase or progress. the difference between the people of the highlands and plains of great britain or of france is therefore in part a distinction of race due to this geographical selection,[ ] in part a distinction of economic development and culture due to geographic influences. therefore the piedmont belts of the world, except in arid lands, are cultural, ethnic and often political lines of cleavage, showing marked differentiation on either side. isotherms are other such cleavage lines, marking the limits beyond which an aggressive people did not desire to expand because of an uncongenial climate. the distinction between anglo-saxon and latin america is one of zone as well as race. everywhere in north america the english stock has dominated or displaced french and spanish competitors down to the mexican frontier. as the great process of european colonization has permeated the earth and multiplied its population, not only the best land but the amount of this has commenced to differentiate the history of various european nations, and that in a way whose end cannot yet be definitely predicted. the best lands have fallen to the first-comers strong enough to hold them. people who early develop powers of expansion, like the english, or who, like the french and russians, formulate and execute vast territorial policies, secure for their future growth a wide base which will for all time distinguish them from late-comers into the colonial field, like germany and italy. these countries see the fecundity of their people redounding to the benefit of alien colonial lands, which have been acquired by enterprising rivals in the choice sections of the temperate zone. german and italian colonies in torrid, unhealthy, or barren tropical lands, fail to attract emigrants from the mother country, and therefore to enhance national growth. [sidenote: two-type populations.] when colonizers or conquerors appropriate the land of a lower race, we find a territory occupied at least for a time by two types of population, constituting an ethnic, social and often economic differentiation. the separation may be made geographical also. the indians in the united states have been confined to reservations, like the hottentots to the twenty or more "locations" in cape colony. this is the simplest arrangement. whether the second or lower type survives depends upon their economic and social utility, into which again geographic conditions enter. the indians of canada are a distinct economic factor in that country as trappers for the hudson bay company, and they will so remain till the hunting grounds of the far north are exhausted. the native agriculturists in the tropics are indispensable to the unacclimated whites. the negroes of the south, introduced for an economic purpose, find their natural habitat in the black belt. here we have an ethnic division of labor for geographical reasons. castes or social classes, often distinguished by shades of color as in brahman india, survive as differentiations indicating old lines of race cleavage. there is abundant evidence that the upper classes in germany, france, austria, and the british isles are distinctly lighter of hair and eyes than the peasantry.[ ] the high-class japanese are taller and fairer than the masses. nearly all the african tribes of the sudan and bordering sahara include two distinct classes, one of lighter and one of darker shade. many fulbe tribes distinguish these classes by the names of "blacks" and "whites."[ ] the two-type people are the result of historical movements. [sidenote: differentiation and isolation.] differentiation results not only from contrasted geographic conditions, but also from segregation. a moving or expanding throng in search of more and better lands drops off one group to occupy a fertile valley or plain, while the main body goes on its way, till it reaches a satisfactory destination or destinations. the tendency to split and divide, characteristic of primitive peoples, is thus stimulated by migration and expansion. each offshoot, detached from the main body, tends to diverge from the stock type. if it reaches a naturally isolated region, where its contact without is practically cut off, it grows from its own loins, emphasizes its group characteristic by close in-breeding, and tends to show a development related to biological divergence under conditions of isolation. since man is essentially a gregarious animal, the size of every such migrating band will always prevent the evolution of any sharply defined variety, according to the standard of biology. nevertheless, the divergent types of men and societies developed in segregated regions are an echo of the formation of new species under conditions of isolation which is now generally acknowledged by biological science. isolation was recognized by darwin as an occasional factor in the origin of species and especially of divergence; in combination with migration it was made the basis of a theory of evolution by moritz wagner in ;[ ] and in recent years has come to be regarded as an essential in the explanation of divergence of types, as opposed to differentiation.[ ] [sidenote: differentiation and digression.] the traditions of the delaware indians and sioux in the north of the united states territory, and of the creeks in the south, commence with each stock group as a united body, which, as it migrates, splits into tribes and sends out offshoots developing different dialects. here was tribal differentiation after entry into the general stock area, the process going on during migration as well as after the tribes had become established in their respective habitats. culture, however, made little progress till after they became sedentary and took up agriculture to supplement the chase.[ ] tribes sometimes wander far beyond the limits of their stock, like the iroquoian cherokees of east tennessee and north carolina or the athapascan navajos and apaches of arid new mexico and arizona, who had placed twenty or thirty degrees of latitude between themselves and their brethren in the basins of the yukon and mackenzie rivers. such inevitably come into contrasted climatic conditions, which further modify the immigrants. [see map page .] wide digressions differentiate them still further from the parent stock by landing them amid different ethnic and social groups, by contact with whom they are inevitably modified. the namaqua hottentots, living on the southern margin of the hottentot country near the frontier of the european settlements in cape colony, acquired some elements of civilization, together with a strain of boer and english blood, and in some cases even the dutch vernacular. they were therefore differentiated from their nomadic and warlike kinsmen in the grasslands north of the orange river, which formed the center of the hottentot area.[ ] a view of the ancient germans during the first five or six centuries after christ reveals differentiation by various contacts in process along all the ragged borders of the germanic area. the offshoots who pushed westward across the rhine into belgian gaul were rapidly celticized, abandoning their semi-nomadic life for sedentary agriculture, assimilating the superior civilization which they found there, and steadily merging with the native population. they became _belgae_, though still conscious of their teutonic origin.[ ] the batavians, an offshoot of the ancient chatti living near the thuringian forest, appropriated the river island between the rhine and the waal. there in the seclusion of their swamps, they became a distinct national unit, retaining their backward german culture and primitive type of german speech, which the chatti themselves lost by contact with the high germans.[ ] far away on the southeastern margin of the teutonic area the same process of assimilation to a foreign civilization went on a little later when the visigoths, after a century of residence on the lower danube in contact with the eastern empire, adopted the arian form of christianity which had arisen in the greek peninsula.[ ] the border regions of the world show the typical results of the historical movement--differentiation from the core or central group through assimilation to a new group which meets and blends with it along the frontier. [sidenote: geographic conditions of heterogeneity and homogeneity.] entrance into a naturally isolated district, from which subsequent incursions are debarred, gives conditions for divergence and the creation of a new type. on the other hand, where few physical barriers are present to form these natural pockets, the process of assimilation goes on over a wide field. europe is peculiar among the family of continents for its "much divided" geography, commented upon by strabo. hence its islands, peninsulas and mountain-rimmed basins have produced a variegated assemblage of peoples, languages and culture. only where it runs off into the monotonous immensity of russia do we find a people who in their physical traits, language, and civilization reflect the uniformity of their environment.[ ] africa's smooth outline, its plateau surface rimmed with mountains which enclose but fail to divide, and its monotonous configuration have produced a racial and cultural uniformity as striking as europe's heterogeneity. constant movements and commixture, migration and conquest, have been the history of the black races, varied by victorious incursions of the hamitic and semitic whites from the north, which, however, have resulted in the amalgamation of the two races after conquest.[ ] constant fusion has leveled also the social and political relations of the people to one type; it has eliminated primordial groups, except where the dwarf hunters have taken refuge in the equatorial forests and the bushmen in the southwestern deserts, just as it has thwarted the development of higher social groups by failure to segregate and protect. it has sown the bantu speech broadcast over the immense area of central africa, and is disseminating the hausa language through the agency of a highly mixed commercial folk over a wide tract of the western sudan. the long east-and-west stretch of the sudan grasslands presents an unobstructed zone between the thousand-mile belt of desert to the north and the dense equatorial forests to the south, between hunger and thirst on one side, heat and fever and impenetrable forests on the other. hence the sudan in all history has been the crowded broadway of africa. here pass commercial caravans, hybrid merchant tribes like the hausa, throngs of pilgrims, streams of peoples, herds of cattle moving to busy markets, rude incursive shoppers or looters from the desert, coming to buy or rob or rule in this highway belt. [see map page .] [sidenote: differentiation versus assimilation.] historical development advances by means of differentiation and assimilation. a change of environment stimulates variation. primitive culture is loath to change; its inertia is deep-seated. only a sharp prod will start it moving or accelerate its speed; such a prod is found in new geographic conditions or new social contacts. divergence in a segregated spot may be overdone. progress crawls among a people too long isolated, though incipient civilization thrives for a time in seclusion. but in general, accessibility, exposure to some measure of ethnic amalgamation and social contact is essential to sustained progress.[ ] as the world has become more closely populated and means of communication have improved, geographical segregation is increasingly rare. the earth has lost its "corners." all parts are being drawn into the circle of intercourse. therefore differentiation, the first effect of the historical movement, abates; the second effect, assimilation, takes the lead. [sidenote: elimination by historical movement.] the ceaseless human movements making for new combinations have stimulated development. they have lifted the level of culture, and worked towards homogeneity of race and civilization on a higher plane. since the period of the great discoveries inaugurated by columbus enabled the historical movement to compass the world, whole continents, like north america and australia, have been reclaimed to civilization by colonization. the process of assimilation is often ruthless in its method. hence it has been attended by a marked reduction in the number of different ethnic stocks, tribes, languages, dialects, social and cultural types through wide-spread elimination of the weak, backward or unfit.[ ] these have been wiped out, either by extermination or the slower process of absorption. the indian linguistic stocks in the united states have been reduced from fifty-three to thirty-two; and of those thirty-two, many survive as a single tribe or the shrinking remnant of one.[ ] in africa the slave trade has caused the annihilation of many small tribes.[ ] the history of the hottentots, who have been passive before the active advance of the english, dutch and kaffirs about them, shows a race undergoing a widespread process of hybridization[ ] and extermination.[ ] strong peoples, like the english, french, russians and chinese, occupy ever larger areas. where an adverse climate precludes genuine colonization, as it did for the spanish in central and south america, and for the english and dutch in the indies, they make their civilization, if not their race, permeate the acquired territory, and gradually impose on it their language and economic methods. the poles, who once boasted a large and distinguished nationality, are being germanized and russified to their final national extinction. the finns, whose scandinavian offshoot has been almost absorbed in sweden,[ ] are being forcibly dissolved in the muscovite dominion by powerful reägents, by russian schoolmasters, a russian priesthood, russian military service. [sidenote: no new ethnic types.] no new types of races have been developed either by amalgamation or by transfer to new climatic and economic conditions in historic times. contrasted geographic conditions long ago lost their power to work radical physical changes in the race type, because man even with the beginnings of civilization learned to protect himself against extremes of climate. he therefore preserved his race type, which consequently in the course of ages lost much of its plasticity and therewith its capacity to evolve new varieties.[ ] where ethnic amalgamations on a large scale have occurred as a result of the historical movement, as in mexico, the sudan and central africa, the local race, being numerically stronger than the intruders and better adapted to the environment, has succeeded in maintaining its type, though slightly modified, side by side with the intruders. the great historical movements of modern times, however, have been the expansion of european peoples over the retarded regions of the world. these peoples, coming into contact with inferior races, and armed generally with a race pride which was antagonistic to hybrid marriages, preserved their blood from extensive intermixture. hybridism, where it existed, was an ephemeral feature restricted to pioneer days, when white women were scarce, or to regions of extreme heat or cold, where white women and children could with difficulty survive. even in spanish america, where ethnic blendings were most extensive, something of the old spanish pride of race has reasserted itself. [sidenote: checks to differentiation.] improved communication maintains or increases the ranks of the intruders from the home supply. the negroes in north america, imported as they were _en masse_, then steadily recruited by two centuries of the slave trade, while their race integrity was somewhat protected by social ostracism, have not been seriously modified physically by several generations of residence in a temperate land. their changes have been chiefly cultural. the englishman has altered only superficially in the various british colonial lands. constant intercourse and the progress of inventions have enabled him to maintain in diverse regions approximate uniformity of physical well-being, similar social and political ideals. the changed environment modifies him in details of thought, manner, and speech, but not in fundamentals. moreover, civilized man spreading everywhere and turning all parts of the earth's surface to his uses, has succeeded to some extent in reducing its physical differences. the earth as modified by human action is a conspicuous fact of historical development.[ ] irrigation, drainage, fertilization of soils, terrace agriculture, denudation of forests and forestration of prairies have all combined to diminish the contrasts between diverse environments, while the acclimatization of plants, animals and men works even more plainly to the same end of uniformity. the unity of the human race, varied only by superficial differences, reflects the unity of the spherical earth, whose diversities of geographical feature nowhere depart greatly from the mean except in point of climate. differentiation due to geography, therefore, early reached its limits. for assimilation no limit can be forseen. [sidenote: geographical origins.] in view of this constant differentiation on the one hand, and assimilation on the other, the historical movement has made it difficult to trace race types to their origin; and yet this is a task in which geography must have a hand. borrowed civilizations and purloined languages are often so many disguises which conceal the truth of ethnic relationships. a long migration to a radically different habitat, into an outskirt or detached location protected from the swamping effects of cross-breeding, results eventually in a divergence great enough to obliterate almost every cue to the ancient kinship. the long-headed teutonic race of northern europe is regarded now by ethnologists as an offshoot of the long-headed brunette mediterranean race of african origin, which became bleached out under the pale suns of scandinavian skies. the present distribution of the various teutonic stocks is a geographical fact; their supposed cradle in the mediterranean basin is a geographical hypothesis. the connecting links must also be geographical. they must prove the former presence of the migrating folk in the intervening territory. a dolichocephalic substratum of population, with a negroid type of skull, has in fact been traced by archaeologists all over europe through the early and late stone ages. the remains of these aboriginal inhabitants are marked in france, even in sparsely tenanted districts like the auvergne plateau, which is now occupied by the broad-headed alpine race; and they are found to underlie, in point of time, other brachycephalic areas, like the po valley, bavaria and russia.[ ] the origin of a people can be investigated and stated only in terms of geography. the problem of origin can be solved only by tracing a people from its present habitat, through the country over which it has migrated, back to its original seat. here are three geographical entities which can be laid down upon a map, though seldom with sharply defined boundaries. they represent three successive geographic locations, all embodying geographic conditions potent to influence the people and their movement. hence the geographical element emerges in every investigation as to origins; whether in ethnology, history, philology, mythology or religion. the transit land, the course between start and finish, is of supreme importance. especially is this true for religion, which is transformed by travel. christianity did not conquer the world in the form in which it issued from the cramped and isolated environment of palestine, but only after it had been remodelled in asia minor, egypt, greece and rome, and cosmopolized in the wide contact of the mediterranean basin. the roman speech and civilization, which spread through the romance speaking peoples of europe, were variously diluted and alloyed before being transplanted by french, spaniard and portuguese to american shores, there to be further transformed. [sidenote: large centers of dispersion.] in view of the countless springs and tributaries that combine to swell the current of every historical movement, anthropo-geography looks for the origin of a people not in a narrowly defined area, but in a broad, ill-defined center of dispersion, from which many streams simultaneously and successively flow out as from a low-rimmed basin, and which has been filled from many remoter sources. autochthones, aborigines are therefore merely scientific tropes, indicating the limit beyond which the movement of people cannot be traced in the gray light of an uncertain dawn. the vaguer and more complex these movements on account of their historical remoteness, the wider their probable range. the question as to the geographical origin of the aryan linguistic family of peoples brings us to speculative sources, more or less scientifically based, reaching from scandinavia and lithuania to the hindu kush mountains and northern africa.[ ] the sum total of all these conjectural cradles, amounting to a large geographical area, would more nearly approximate the truth as to aryan origins. for the study of the historical movement makes it clear that a large, highly differentiated ethnic or linguistic family presupposes a big center end a long period of dispersion, protracted wanderings, and a diversified area both for their migrations and successive settlements. [sidenote: small centers.] the slighter the inner differences in an ethnic stock, whether in culture, language or physical traits, the smaller was their center of distribution and the more rapid their dispersal. the small initial habitat restricts the chances of variation through isolation and contrasted geographic conditions, as does also the short duration of their subsequent separation. the amazing uniformity of the eskimo type from bering strait to eastern greenland can only thus be explained, even after making allowance for the monotony of their geographic conditions and remoteness from outside influences. the distribution of the bantu dialects over so wide a region in central africa and with such slight divergences presupposes narrow limits both of space and time for their origin, and a short period since their dispersal.[ ] small centers of dispersion are generally natural districts with fixed boundaries, favored by their geographical location or natural resources or by both for the development of a relatively dense population. when this increases beyond the local limits of subsistence, there follows an emigration in point of number and duration out of all proportion to the small area whence it issues. ancient phoenicia, crete, samos, mediæval norway, venice, yemen, modern malta, gilbert islands, england and japan furnish examples. such small favored areas, when they embody also strong political power, may get the start in the occupation of colonial lands. this gives them a permanent advantage, if their colonies are chosen with a view to settlement in congenial climates, as were those of the english, rather than the more ephemeral advantage of trade, as were those of the dutch and portuguese in the tropics. it seems also essential to these centers of dispersion, that, to be effective, they must command the wide choice of outlet and destination afforded by the mighty common of the sea. only the inca empire in south america gives us an example of the extensive political expansion of a small mountain state. [sidenote: tests of origin.] the question arises whether any single rule can as yet be formulated for identifying the original seats of existing peoples. by some ethnologists and historians such homes have been sought where the people are distributed in the largest area, as the athapascan and algonquin indians are assigned to a northern source, because their territories attained their greatest continuous extent in canada, but were intermittent or attenuated farther south. the fact that colonial peoples often multiply inordinately in new lands, and there occupy a territory vastly greater than that of the mother country, points to the danger in such a generalization. of the ten millions of jews in the world, only a handful remain in the ancient center of dispersion in palestine, while about eight millions are found in poland and the contiguous territories of western russia, roumania, austria-hungary and eastern germany. moreover, history and the german element in the "yiddish" speech of the russian jews point to a secondary center of dispersion in the rhine cities and franconia, whither the jews were drawn by the trade route up the rhone valley in the third century.[ ] a more scientific procedure is to look for the early home of a race in the locality around which its people or family of peoples centers in modern times. therefore we place the cradle of the negro race in africa, rather than melanesia. density often supplies a test, because colonial lands are generally more sparsely inhabited than the mother country. but even this conclusion fails always to apply, as in the case of samos, which has a population vastly more dense than any section of the grecian mainland. the largest compact area including at once the greatest density of population and the greatest purity of race would more nearly indicate the center of dispersion; because purity of race is incompatible with long migrations, as we have seen, though in the native seat it may be affected by intrusive elements. when this purity of race is combined with archaic forms of language and culture, as among the lithuanians of aryan speech among the baltic swamps, it may indicate that the locality formed a segregated corner of the early center of dispersion. it seems essential to such an original seat that, whether large or small, it should be marked by some degree of isolation, as the condition for the development of specific racial characteristics. the complexity of this question of ethnic origins is typical of anthropo-geographic problems, typical also in the warning which it gives against any rigidly systematic method of solution. the whole science of anthropo-geography is as yet too young for hard-and-fast rules, and its subject matter too complex for formulas. notes to chapter iv [ ] h.j. mackinder, britain and the british seas, pp. - . london, . w.z. ripley, the races of europe, pp. - , - . new york, . [ ] compare observations of georg schweinfurth, the heart of africa, vol. i, pp. - . london, . [ ] nott and gliddon, types of mankind, p. lvii. philadelphia, . [ ] d.m. wallace, russia, pp. - . new york, . [ ] thucydides, book i, chap. ii. [ ] strabo, book ii, chap. iii, . [ ] mcgee and thomas, prehistoric north america, pp. - , vol. xix of _history of north america_, edited by t.n. thorpe. philadelphia, . [ ] hodgkin, italy and her invaders, vol. ii, p. . oxford, . [ ] sir john lubbock, prehistoric times, p. . new york, . [ ] d.g. brinton, the american race, pp. - . philadelphia, . [ ] o.t. mason, primitive travel and transportation, pp. - . _smithsonian report_, washington, . [ ] thucydides, book i, chap. ii. [ ] edward a. boss, foundations of sociology, pp. - , - . new york, . [ ] d.g. brinton, races and peoples, pp. - . philadelphia, . [ ] john richard green, the making of england, vol. i, pp. - , - , - , , . london, . [ ] james bryce, the migration of the races of men considered historically, _scottish geographical magazine_, vol. viii, pp. - , and _smithsonian report_ for , pp. - . [ ] cæsar, _de bello gallico_, book ii, chap. . [ ] motley, rise of the dutch republic, vol. i, p. . new york, . [ ] john richard green, the making of england, vol. i, p. . london, . [ ] hodgkin, italy and her invaders, vol. v, pp. - . oxford, . [ ] _ibid._, vol. v, pp. - . [ ] hodgkin, italy and her invaders, vol. ii, pp. , . oxford, . [ ] _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. - , . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - . new york, . [ ] hodgkin, italy and her invaders, vol. ii, pp. - . oxford, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. ii, p. . london, - . [ ] mcgee and thomas, prehistoric north america, pp. - , vol. xix of _history of north america._ philadelphia, . [ ] hugh r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] roscher, _national-oekonomik des ackerbaues,_ pp. - . stuttgart, . [ ] cyrus thomas, the indians of north america in historical times, p. . vol. ii of _history of north america,_ philadelphia, . [ ] roosevelt, winning of the west, vol. i, pp. - , . new york, . justin winsor, the westward movement, p. . boston, . [ ] eleventh census, _report on the indians_, p. . washington, . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] hans helmolt, history of the world, vol. iii, p. . new york, - . [ ] edward john payne, history of the new world called america, vol. ii, pp. - . oxford, . [ ] _ii kings_, chap. xvii, - . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - . new york, . [ ] hans helmolt, history of the world, vol. v, pp. - . new york, - . [ ] _ibid._, vol. vi, p. . [ ] d.g. hogarth, the nearer east, p. . london, . [ ] roosevelt, winning of the west, vol. i, p. . new york, . [ ] c.c. royce, the cherokee nation of indians, pp. - . maps viii and ix. _fifth annual report of bureau of ethnology_, washington, . [ ] albert gallatin, report on the indians in , reprinted in eleventh census, _report on the indians_, p. . washington, . [ ] cyrus thomas, indians of north america in historical times, pp. , . vol. ii of _history of north america_, philadelphia, . [ ] _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. - . [ ] anatole leroy-beaulieu, the empire of the tsars, vol. iii, pp. - . new york, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - . new york, . [ ] d.g. brinton, the american race, pp. - . philadelphia, . [ ] h. bancroft, the native races, vol. iii, pp. , - . san francisco, . [ ] cyrus thomas, indians of north america in historical times, pp. - , vol. ii of _history of north america_. philadelphia, . [ ] eleventh census, _report on the indians_, p. . washington, . [ ] eleventh census, _report on population_, vol. i, p. cxxxviii. washington, . [ ] justus perthes, _taschen atlas_, p. . gotha, . [ ] richmond mayo-smith, emigration and immigration, p. . new york. [ ] _ibid._, pp. - , - . [ ] capt. a.t. mahan, influence of sea power upon history, pp. - . boston, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. , - . new york, . [ ] cæsar, _bella gallico_, book iii, chap. i. [ ] hodgkin, italy and her invaders, vol. i, part i, pp. - . oxford, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, pp. , , , . london, - . [ ] john fiske, discovery of america, vol. i, pp. - . boston, . [ ] elliott coues, history of the lewis and clark expedition, vol. i. pp. - , - , . new york, . [ ] francis parkman, la salle and the discovery of the great west, pp. - , note . boston, . [ ] george g. chisholm, commercial geography, pp. - . london, . [ ] herodotus, book ii, . [ ] encyclopædia britanica, article pilgrimages. [ ] e. huntington, the pulse of asia, p. . boston, . [ ] boyd alexander, from the niger to the nile, vol. ii, pp. - . london, . [ ] c.a. sherring, western tibet and the british borderland, pp. - , - , - . london, . [ ] hans helmolt, history of the world, vol. i, pp. - . map p. . new york and london, - . [ ] j.w. powell, map of linguistic stocks of american indians, annual report of bureau of ethnology, vol. vii. [ ] archibald little, the far east, ethnological map, p. . oxford, . [ ] census of india, , general report by h.h. risley and e.a. gait, vol. i, part i, pp. - ; and ethnographic appendices by h.h. risley, vol. i, map, p. . calcutta, . p. vidal de la blache, _le peuple de l'inde, d'après la série des recensements_, pp. - , _annales de géographie_, vol. xv. paris, . [ ] hans helmolt, history of the world, vol. iii, pp. , , - . new york, - . [ ] d. livingstone, missionary travels, pp. - . new york, . [ ] james bryce, migrations of the races of men considered historically, _scottish geographical magazine_, vol. viii, pp. - , may, . [ ] justus perthes, _taschen atlas_, p. . gotha, . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] hugh r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] hans helmolt, history of the world, vol. i, pp. - . new york, - . [ ] hodgkin, italy and her invaders, vol. vi, pp. - , - , - , - . oxford, . [ ] mcgee and thomas, prehistoric north america, chap. xxi, vol. xix of _history of north america_, philadelphia, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. , , map of migrations, p. . [ ] archibald little, the far east, pp. - . oxford, . [ ] strabo, book viii, chap. i, . [ ] heinrich barth, travels in north and central africa, vol. ii, p. . new york, . [ ] joseph partsch, central europe, pp. - . london, . [ ] e.f. im thurn, among the indians of guiana, pp. - , - . london, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, p. . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] h. barth, human society in northern central africa, _journal of the royal geog. society_, vol. xxx, p. . london, . [ ] moritz wagner, _die entstehung der arten durch räumliche sonderung_. basel, . [ ] h.w. conn, the method of evolution, pp. - . new york, . [ ] mcgee and thomas, prehistoric north america, pp. , , vol. xix of _history of north america_. philadelphia, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. ii, pp. - . london, - . [ ] cæsar, _bella gallico_, book ii, chap. iv. [ ] h. helmolt, history of the world, vol. vi, pp. - . new york, - . [ ] hodgkin, italy and her invaders, vol. i, part i, pp. , , . oxford, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. , - . new york, . [ ] h. helmolt, history of the world, vol. iii, pp. , , new york, - . [ ] a.c. haddon, the study of man, p. xix. new york and london, . [ ] james bryce, migrations of the races of men considered historically, _scottish geographical magazine_, vol. viii, pp. - . may, . [ ] eleventh census, _report on the indians_, pp. - . washington, . [ ] h. helmolt, history of the world, vol. iii, p. . new york, - . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. ii, pp. - , london, - . [ ] jerome dowd, the negro races, vol. i, pp. - , - . new york, . [ ] sweden, its people and its industries, p. . edited by g. sundbärg, stockholm, . [ ] sir john lubbock, prehistoric times, pp. - . new york, . [ ] g.p. marsh, the earth as modified by human action, new york, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. - . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. ii, pp. - . london, - . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - . map, p. . new york. . chapter v geographical location [sidenote: importance of geographical location.] the location of a country or people is always the supreme geographical fact in its history. it outweighs every other single geographic force. all that has been said of russia's vast area, of her steppes and tundra wastes, of her impotent seaboard on land-locked basins or ice-bound coasts, of her poverty of mountains and wealth of rivers, fades into the background before her location on the border of asia. from her defeat by the tartar hordes in to her attack upon the mongolian rulers of the bosporus in , and her recent struggle with japan, most of her wars have been waged against asiatics. location made her the bulwark of central europe against asiatic invasion and the apostle of western civilization to the heart of asia. if this position on the outskirts of europe, remote from its great centers of development, has made russia only partially accessible to european culture and, furthermore, has subjected her to the retarding ethnic and social influences emanating from her asiatic neighbors,[ ] and if the rough tasks imposed by her frontier situation have hampered her progress, these are all the limitations of her geographical location, limitations which not even the advantage of her vast area has been able to outweigh. area itself, important as it is, must yield to location. location may mean only a single spot, and yet from this spot powerful influences may radiate. no one thinks of size when mention is made of rome or athens, of jerusalem or mecca, of gibraltar or port arthur. iceland and greenland guided early norse ships to the continent of america, as the canaries and antilles did those of spain; but the location of the smaller islands in sub-tropical latitudes and in the course of the northeast trade-winds made them determine the first permanent path across the western seas. the historical significance of many small peoples, and the historical insignificance of many big ones even to the _nil_ point, is merely the expression of the preponderant importance of location over area. the phoenicians, from their narrow strip of coast at the foot of mount lebanon, were disseminators of culture over the whole mediterranean. holland owed her commercial and maritime supremacy, from the thirteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century, to her exceptional position at the mouth of the great rhine highway and at the southern angle of the north sea near the entrance to the unexploited regions of the baltic. the iroquois tribes, located where the mohawk valley opened a way through the appalachian barrier between the hudson river and lake ontario, occupied both in the french wars and in the revolution a strategic position which gave them a power and importance out of all proportion to their numbers. location often assumes a fictitious political value, due to a combination of political interests. the turkish power owes its survival on the soil of europe to-day wholly to its position on the bosporus. holland owes the integrity of her kingdom, and roumania that of hers, to their respective locations at the mouths of the rhine and the danube, because the interest of western europe demands that these two important arteries of commerce should be held by powers too weak ever to tie them up. the same principle has guaranteed the neutrality of switzerland, whose position puts it in control of the passes of the central alps from savoy to the tyrol; and, more recently, that of the young state of panama, through which the isthmian canal is to pass. [sidenote: content of the term location.] geographical location necessarily includes the idea of the size and form of a country. even the most general statement of the zonal and interoceanic situation of canada, the united states, mexico, and the russian empire, indicates the area and contour of their territories. this is still more conspicuously the case with naturally defined regions, such as island and peninsula countries. but location includes a complex of yet larger and more potent relations which go with mere attachment to this or that continent, or to one or another side of a continent. every part of the world gives to its lands and its people some of its own qualities; and so again every part of this part. arabia, india and farther india, spurs of the asiatic land-mass, have had and will always have a radically different ethnic and political history from greece, italy and spain, the corresponding peninsulas of europe, because the histories of these two groups are bound up in their respective continents. the idea of a european state has a different content from that of an asiatic, or north american or african state; it includes a different race or combination of races, different social and economic development, different political ideals. location, therefore, means climate and plant life at one end of the scale, civilization and political status at the other. [sidenote: intercontinental location.] this larger conception of location brings a correspondingly larger conception of environment, which affords the solution of many otherwise hopeless problems of anthropo-geography. it is embodied in the law that the influences of a land upon its people spring not only from the physical features of the land itself, but also from a wide circle of lands into which it has been grouped by virtue of its location. almost every geographical interpretation of the ancient and modern history of greece has been inadequate, because it has failed sufficiently to emphasize the most essential factor in this history, namely, greece's location at the threshold of the orient. this location has given to greek history a strong asiatic color. it comes out in the accessibility of greece to ancient oriental civilization and commerce, and is conspicuous in every period from the argonautic expedition to the achievement of independence in and the recent efforts for the liberation of crete. this outpost location before the mediterranean portals of the vast and arid plains of southwestern asia, exposed to every tide of migration or conquest sent out by those hungry lands, had in it always an element of weakness. in comparison with the shadow of asia, which constantly overhung the greek people and from to enveloped them, only secondary importance can be attributed to advantageous local conditions as factors in greek history. it is a similar intercontinental location in the isthmian region between the mediterranean on the west and the ancient maritime routes of the red sea and persian gulf on the east, which gave to phoenicia the office of middleman between the orient and occident,[ ] and predestined its conquest, now by the various asiatic powers of mesopotamia, now by the pharaohs of egypt, now by european greeks and romans, now by a succession of asiatic peoples, till to-day we find it incorporated in the asiatic-european empire of turkey. proximity to africa has closely allied spain to the southern continent in flora, fauna, and ethnic stock. the long-headed, brunette mediterranean race occupies the iberian peninsula and the berber territory of northwest africa.[ ] this community of race is also reflected in the political union of the two districts for long periods, first under the carthaginians, then the romans, who secured hispania by a victory on african soil, and finally by the saracens. this same african note in spanish history recurs to-day in spain's interest in morocco and the influence in moroccan affairs yielded her by france and germany at the algeciras convention in , and in her ownership of ceuta and five smaller _presidios_ on the moroccan coast. compare portugal's former ownership of tangier. in contradistinction to continental and intercontinental location, anthropo-geography recognizes two other narrower meanings of the term. the innate mobility of the human race, due primarily to the eternal food-quest and increase of numbers, leads a people to spread out over a territory till they reach the barriers which nature has set up, or meet the frontiers of other tribes and nations. their habitat or their specific geographic location is thus defined by natural features of mountain, desert and sea, or by the neighbors whom they are unable to displace, or more often by both. [sidenote: natural versus vicinal location.] a people has, therefore, a twofold location, an immediate one, based upon their actual territory, and a mediate or vicinal one, growing out of its relations to the countries nearest them. the first is a question of the land under their feet; the other, of the neighbors about them. the first or natural location embodies the complex of local geographic conditions which furnish the basis for their tribal or national existence. this basis may be a peninsula, island, archipelago, an oasis, an arid steppe, a mountain system, or a fertile lowland. the stronger the vicinal location, the more dependent is the people upon the neighboring states, but the more potent the influence which it can, under certain circumstances, exert upon them. witness germany in relation to holland, france, austria and poland. the stronger the natural location, on the other hand, the more independent is the people and the more strongly marked is the national character. this is exemplified in the people of mountain lands like switzerland, abyssinia and nepal; of peninsulas like korea, spain and scandinavia; and of islands like england and japan. to-day we stand amazed at that strong primordial brand of the japanese character which nothing can blur or erase. [sidenote: naturally defined location.] clearly defined natural locations, in which barriers of mountains and sea draw the boundaries and guarantee some degree of isolation, tend to hold their people in a calm embrace, to guard them against outside interference and infusion of foreign blood, and thus to make them develop the national genius in such direction as the local geographic conditions permit. in the unceasing movements which have made up most of the historic and prehistoric life of the human race, in their migrations and counter-migrations, their incursions, retreats, and expansions over the face of the earth, vast unfenced areas, like the open lowlands of russia and the grasslands of africa, present the picture of a great thoroughfare swept by pressing throngs. other regions, more secluded, appear as quiet nooks, made for a temporary halt or a permanent rest. here some part of the passing human flow is caught as in a vessel and held till it crystallizes into a nation. these are the conspicuous areas of race characterization. the development of the various ethnic and political offspring of the roman empire in the naturally defined areas of italy, the iberian peninsula, and france illustrates the process of national differentiation which goes on in such secluded locations. a marked influence upon this development is generally ascribed to the protection afforded by such segregated districts. but protection alone is only a negative force in the life of a people; it leaves them free to develop in their own way, but does not say what that way shall be. on the other hand, the fact that such a district embraces a certain number of geographic features, and encompasses them by obstructive boundaries, is of immense historical importance; because this restriction leads to the concentration of the national powers, to the more thorough utilization of natural advantages, both racial and geographical, and thereby to the growth of an historical individuality. nothing robs the historical process of so much of its greatness or weakens so much its effects as its dispersion over a wide, boundless area. this was the disintegrating force which sapped the strength of the french colonies in america. the endless valleys of the st. lawrence and the mississippi and the alluring fur trade tempted them to an expansion that was their political and economic undoing. russia's history illustrates the curse of a distant horizon. on the other hand, out of a restricted geographical base, with its power to concentrate and intensify the national forces, grew rome and greece, england and japan, ancient peru and the thirteen colonies of america. [sidenote: vicinal location.] if even the most detached and isolated of these natural locations be examined, its people will, nevertheless, reveal a transitional character, intermediate between those of its neighbors, because from these it has borrowed both ethnic stock and culture, great britain is an island, but its vicinal location groups it with the north sea family of people. even in historic times it has derived ancient belgian stock, roman, anglo-saxon, danish and scandinavian from the long semi-circle of nearby continental lands, which have likewise contributed so much to the civilization of the island. similarly, japan traces the sources of its population to the north of asia by way of the island of sakhalin, to the west through korea, and to the malay district of the south, whence the kuro siwa has swept stragglers to the shores of kiu-siu. like england, japan also has drawn its civilization from its neighbors, and then, under the isolating influence of its local environment, has individualized both race and culture. here we have the interplay of the forces of natural and vicinal location. a people situated between two other peoples form an ethnic and cultural link between the two. the transitional type is as familiar in anthropo-geography as in biology. the only exception is found in the young intrusion of a migrating or conquering people, like that of the hungarians and turks in southeastern europe, and of the berger tuaregs and fulbes among the negroes of western sudan; or of a colonizing people, like that of the russians in mongolian siberia and of europeans among the aborigines of south africa. even in these instances race amalgamation tends to take place along the frontiers, as was the case in latin america and as occurs to-day in alaska and northern canada, where the "squaw man" is no rarity. the assimilation of culture, at least in a superficial sense, may be yet more rapid, especially where hard climatic conditions force the interloper to imitate the life of the native. the industrial and commercial hollander, when transplanted to the dry grasslands of south africa, became pastoral like the native kaffirs. the french voyageur of canada could scarcely be distinguished from the indian trapper; occupation, food, dress, and spouse were the same. only a lighter tint of skin distinguished the half-breed children of the frenchman. the settlers of the early trans-allegheny commonwealths, at least for a generation or two, showed little outward difference in mode of life from that of the savage community among which they dwelt.[ ] [sidenote: vicinal groups of similar or diverse race and culture.] the more alike the components of such a vicinal group of people, the easier, freer and more effective will be the mediating function of the central one. germany has demonstrated this in her long history as intermediary between the nations of southeastern and western europe. the people of poland, occupying a portion of the baltic slope of northern europe, fended by no natural barriers from their eastern and western neighbors, long constituted a transition form between the two. though affiliated with russia in point of language, the poles are occidental in their religion; and their head-form resembles that of northern germany rather than that of russia.[ ] the country belongs to western europe in the density of its population ( to the square kilometer or to the square mile), which is quadruple that of remaining european russia, and also in its industrial and social development. the partition of poland among the three neighboring powers was the final expression of its intermediate location and character.[ ] one part was joined politically to the slav-german western border of russia, and another to the german-slav border of germany, while the portion that fell to the austrian empire simply extended the northern slav area of that country found in bohemia, moravia, and the slovak border of hungary. [map page .] if the intermediate people greatly differs in race or civilization from both neighbors, it exercises and receives slight influence. the mongols of central asia, between china on one side and persia and india on the other, have been poor vehicles for the exchange of culture between these two great districts. the hungarians, located between the roumanians and germans on the east and west, slovaks and croatians on the north and south, have helped little to reconcile race differences in the great empire of the danube. [sidenote: thalassic vicinal location.] the unifying effect of vicinal location is greatly enhanced if the neighboring people are grouped about an enclosed sea which affords an easy highway for communication. the integrating force of such a basin will often overcome the disintegrating force of race antagonisms. the roman empire in the mediterranean was able to evolve an effective centralized government and to spread one culture over the neighboring shores, despite great variety of nationality and language and every degree of cultural development. a certain similarity of natural conditions, climatic and otherwise, from the iberian peninsula to the borders of the syrian desert, also aided in the process of amalgamation. where similarity of race already forms a basis for congeniality, such circumthalassic groups display the highest degree of interactive influence. these contribute to a further blending of population and unification of culture, by which the whole circle of the enclosing lands tends to approach one standard of civilization. this was the history of the baltic coast from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, when the german hansa distributed the material products of europe's highest civilization from russian novgorod to norway. the north sea group, first under the leadership of holland, later under england's guidance, became a single community of advancing culture, which was a later reflection of the early community of race stretching from the faroe and shetland islands to the rhine and the elbe. this same process has been going on for ages about the marginal basins of eastern asia, the yellow and japan seas. community of race and culture stamps china, korea and japan. a general advance in civilization under the leadership of japan, the england of the east, now inaugurates the elevation of the whole group. [sidenote: complementary locations.] an even closer connection exists between adjoining peoples who are united by ties of blood and are further made economically dependent upon one another, because of a contrast in the physical conditions and, therefore, in the products of their respective territories. numerous coast and inland tribes, pastoral and agricultural tribes are united because they are mutually necessary. in british columbia and alaska the fishing indians of the seaboard long held a definite commercial relation to the hunting tribes of the interior, selling them the products and wares of the coast, while monopolizing their market for the inland furs. such was the position of the ugalentz tribe of tlingits near the mouth of the copper river in relation to the up-stream athapascans; of the kinik tribe at the head of cook's inlet in relation to the inland atnas,[ ] of the chilcats of chilkoot inlet to the mountain tinnehs. similarly, the hunting folk of the kalahari desert in south africa attach themselves to influential tribesmen of the adjacent bechuana grasslands, in order to exchange the skins of the desert animals for spears, knives, and tobacco.[ ] fertile agricultural lands adjoining pastoral regions of deserts and steppes have in all times drawn to their border markets the mounted plainsmen, bringing the products of their herds to exchange for grain; and in all times the abundance of their green fields has tempted their ill-fed neighbors to conquest, so that the economic bond becomes a preliminary to a political bond and an ethnic amalgamation growing out of this strong vicinal location. the forest lands of great russia supplement the grain-bearing black lands of little russia; the two are united through geographico-economic conditions, which would not permit an independent existence to the smaller, weaker section of the south, ever open to hostile invasion from asia.[ ] [sidenote: types of location.] leaving now the ethnic and economic ties which may strengthen the cohesive power of such vicinal grouping, and considering only its purely geographic aspects, we distinguish the following types: i. central location. examples: the magyars in the danube valley; the iroquois indians on the mohawk river and the finger lakes; russia from the th to the th century; poland from to its final partition in ; bolivia, switzerland, and afghanistan. ii. peripheral location: ancient phoenicia; greek colonies in asia minor and southern italy; the roman empire at the accession of augustus; the thirteen colonies in ; island and peninsula lands. iii. scattered location: english and french settlements in america prior to ; indians in the united states and the kaffirs in south africa; portuguese holdings in the orient, and french in india. iv. location in a related series: oasis states grouped along desert routes; islands along great marine routes. [sidenote: continuous and scattered location.] all peoples in their geographical distribution tend to follow a social and political law of gravitation, in accordance with which members of the same tribe or race gather around a common center or occupy a continuous stretch of territory, as compactly as their own economic status, and the physical conditions of climate and soil will permit. this is characteristic of all mature and historically significant peoples who have risen to sedentary life, maintained their hold on a given territory, and, with increase of population, have widened their boundaries. the nucleus of such a people may be situated somewhere in the interior of a continent, and with growing strength it may expand in every direction; or it may originate on some advantageous inlet of the sea and spread thence up and down the coast, till the people have possessed themselves of a long-drawn hem of land and used this peripheral location to intercept the trade between their back country and the sea. these are the two types of continuous location. in contrast to them, a discontinuous or scattered location characterizes the sparse distribution of primitive hunting and pastoral tribes; or the shattered fragments of a conquered people, whose territory has been honeycombed by the land appropriation of the victors; or a declining, moribund people, who, owing to bad government, poor economic methods, and excessive competition in the struggle for existence, have shrunk to mere patches. as a favorable symptom, scattered location regularly marks the healthy growth of an expanding people, who throw out here and there detached centers of settlement far beyond the compact frontier, and fix these as the goal for the advance of their boundary. it is also a familiar feature of maritime commercial expansion, which is guided by no territorial ambition but merely aims to secure widely distributed trading stations at favorable coast points, in order to make the circle of commerce as ample and resourceful as possible. but this latter form of scattered location is not permanently sound. back of it lies the short-sighted policy of the middleman nation, which makes wholly inadequate estimate of the value of land, and is content with an ephemeral prosperity. [sidenote: central versus peripheral location.] a broad territorial base and security of possession are the guarantees of national survival. the geographic conditions which favor one often operate against the other. peripheral location means a narrow base but a protected frontier along the sea; central location means opportunity for widening the territory, but it also means danger. a state embedded in the heart of a continent has, if strong, every prospect of radial expansion and the exercise of widespread influence; but if weak, its very existence is imperilled, because it is exposed to encroachments on every side. a central location minus the bulwark of natural boundaries enabled the kingdom of poland to be devoured piecemeal by its voracious neighbors. the kingdom of burgundy, always a state of fluctuating boundaries and shifting allegiances, fell at last a victim to its central location, and saw its name obliterated from the map. hungary, which, in the year , occupied a restricted inland location on the middle danube, by the th century broke through the barriers of its close-hugging neighbors, and stretched its boundaries from the adriatic to the euxine; two hundred years later its territory contracted to a fragment before the encroachments of the turks, but afterwards recovered in part its old dimensions. germany has, in common with the little sudanese state of wadai, an influential and dangerous position. a central location in the sudan has made wadai accessible to the rich caravan trade from tripoli and barca on the north, from the great market town of kano in sokoto on the west, and from the nile valley and red sea on the east. but the little state has had to fight for its life against the aggressions of its western rival bornu and its eastern neighbor darfur. and now more formidable enemies menace it in the french, who have occupied the territory between it and bornu, and the english, who have already caught darfur in the dragnet of the egyptian sudan.[ ] [sidenote: danger of central location.] germany, crowded in among three powerful neighbors like france, russia, and austria, has had no choice about maintaining a strong standing army and impregnable frontier defenses. the location of the central european states between the baltic and the balkans has exposed them to all the limitations and dangers arising from a narrow circle of land neighbors. moreover, the diversified character of the area, its complex mountain systems, and diverging river courses have acted as disintegrating forces which have prevented the political concentration necessary to repel interference from without. the muscovite power, which had its beginning in a modest central location about the sources of the dwina, dnieper and volga, was aided by the physical unity of its unobstructed plains, which facilitated political combination. hence, on every side it burst through its encompassing neighbors and stretched its boundaries to the untenanted frontier of the sea. central location was the undoing of the transvaal republic. its efforts to expand to the indian ocean were blocked by its powerful british rival at every point--at delagoa bay in by treaty with portugal, at santa lucia bay in , and through swaziland in . the orange free state was maimed in the same way when, in , she tried to stretch out an arm through basutoland to the sea.[ ] here even weak neighbors were effective to curtail the seaward growth of these inland states, because they were made the tools of one strong, rapacious neighbor. a central position teaches always the lesson of vigilance and preparedness for hostilities, as the boer equipment in , the military organization of germany, and the bristling fortresses on the swiss alpine passes prove. [sidenote: mutual relations between center and periphery.] how intimate and necessary are the relations between central and peripheral location is shown by the fact that all states strive to combine the two. in countries like norway, france, spain, japan, korea and chile, peripheral location predominates, and therefore confers upon them at once the security and commercial accessibility which result from contact with the sea. other countries, like russia, germany and austro-hungary, chiefly central in location, have the strategic and even the commercial value of their coasts reduced by the long, tortuous course which connects them with the open ocean. therefore, we find russia planning to make a great port at ekaterina harbor on the northernmost point of her lapland coast, where an out-runner from the gulf stream ensures an ice-free port on the open sea.[ ] an admirable combination of central and peripheral location is seen in the united states. here the value of periphery is greatly enhanced by the interoceanic location of the country; and the danger of entanglements arising from a marked central location is reduced by the simplicity of the political neighborhood. but our country has paid for this security by an historical aloofness and poverty of influence. civilized countries which are wholly central in their location are very few, only nine in all. six of these are mountain or plateau states, like switzerland and abyssinia, which have used the fortress character of their land to resist conquest, and have preferred independence to the commercial advantages to be gained only by affiliation with their peripheral neighbors. [sidenote: inland and coastward expansion.] central and peripheral location presuppose and supplement one another. one people inhabits the interior of an island or continent whose rim is occupied by another. the first suffers from exclusion from the sea and therefore strives to get a strip of coast. the coast people feel the drawback of their narrow foothold upon the land, want a broader base in order to exploit fully the advantages of their maritime location, fear the pressure of their hinterland when the great forces there imprisoned shall begin to move; so they tend to expand inland to strengthen themselves and weaken the neighbor in their rear. the english colonies of america, prior to , held a long cordon of coast, hemmed in between the appalachian mountains and the sea. despite threats of french encroachments from the interior, they expanded from this narrow peripheral base into the heart of the continent, and after the revolution reached the mississippi river and the northern boundary of the spanish floridas. they now held a central location in relation to the long spanish periphery of the gulf of mexico. true to the instincts of that location, they began to throw the weight of their vast hinterland against the weak coastal barrier. this gave way, either to forcible appropriation of territory or diplomacy or war, till the united states had incorporated in her own territory the peripheral lands of the gulf from florida strait to the rio grande. [see map page .] [sidenote: russian expansion in asia.] in asia this same process has been perennial and on a far greater scale. the big arid core of that continent, containing many million square miles, has been charged with an expansive force. from the appearance of the aryans in the indus valley and the scythians on the borders of macedonia, it has sent out hordes to overwhelm the peripheral lands from the yellow sea to the black, and from the indian ocean to the white sea.[ ] to-day russia is making history there on the pattern set by geographic conditions. from her most southerly province in trans-caspia, conquered a short twenty-five years ago, she is heading towards the indian ocean. the anglo-russian convention of august st, , yielding to russia all northern persia as her sphere of influence, enables her to advance half way to the persian gulf, though british statesmen regard it as a check upon her ambition, because england has secured right to the littoral. but russia by this great stride toward her goal is working with causes, satisfied to let the effects follow at their leisure. she has gained the best portion of persia, comprising the six largest cities and the most important lines of communication radiating from the capital.[ ] this country will make a solid base for her further advance to the persian gulf; and, when developed by russian enterprise in railroad building and commerce, it will make a heavy weight bearing down upon the coast. the muscovite area which is pressing upon england's persian littoral reaches from ispahan and yezd to the far-away shores of the arctic ocean. [sidenote: periphery as goal of expansion.] in the essentially complementary character of interior and periphery are rooted all these coastward and landward movements of expansion. where an equilibrium seems to have been reached, the peoples who have accepted either the one or the other one-sided location have generally for the time being ceased to grow. such a location has therefore a passive character. but the surprising elasticity of many nations may start up an unexpected activity which will upset this equilibrium. where the central location is that of small mountain states, which are handicapped by limited resources and population, like nepal and afghanistan, or overshadowed by far more powerful neighbors, like switzerland, the passive character is plain enough. in the case of larger states, like servia, abyssinia, and bolivia, which offer the material and geographical base for larger populations than they now support, it is often difficult to say whether progression or retrogression is to be their fate. as a rule, however, the expulsion of a people from a peripheral point of advantage and their confinement in the interior gives the sign of national decay, as did poland's loss of her baltic seaboard. russia's loss of her manchurian port and the resignation of her ambition on the chinese coasts is at least a serious check. on the other hand, if an inland country enclosed by neighbors succeeds in somewhere getting a maritime outlet, the sign is hopeful. the century-old political slogan of hungary, "to the sea, magyars!" has borne fruit in the adriatic harbor of fiume, which is to-day the pride of the nation and in no small degree a basis for its hope of autonomy. the history of montenegro took on a new phase when from its mountain seclusion it recently secured the short strip of seaboard which it had won and lost so often. such peripheral holdings are the lungs through which states breathe. [sidenote: reaction between center and periphery.] history and the study of race distribution reveal a mass of facts which represent the contrast and reaction between interior and periphery. the marginal lands of asia, from northern japan, where climatic conditions first make historical development possible, around the whole fringe of islands, peninsulas and border lowlands to the aegean coast of asia minor, present a picture of culture and progress as compared with the high, mountain-rimmed core of the continent, condemned by its remoteness and inaccessibility to eternal retardation. europe shows the same contrast, though in less pronounced form. its ragged periphery, all the way from the balkan gibraltar at constantinople to the far northern projections of scandinavia and finland, shows the value of a seaward outlook both in culture and climate. germany beyond the elbe and austria beyond the danube begin to feel the shadow of the continental mass behind them; and from their eastern borders on through russia the benumbing influence of a central location grows, till beyond the volga the climatic, economic, social and political conditions of asia prevail. africa is all core: contour and relief have combined to reduce its periphery to a narrow coastal hem, offering at best a few vantage points for exploitation to the great maritime merchant peoples of the world. egypt, embedded in an endless stretch of desert like a jewel in its matrix, was powerless to shake off the influence of its continental environment. its location was predominantly central; its culture bore the stamp of isolation and finally of arrested development. australia, the classic ground of retardation, where only shades of savagery can be distinguished, offered the natives of its northern coast some faint stimuli in the visits of malay seamen from the nearby sunda islands; but its central tribes, shielded by geographic segregation from external influences, have retained the most primitive customs and beliefs.[ ] expanding europe has long been wrestling with africa, but it can not get a grip, owing to the form of its antagonist; it finds no limb by which the giant can be tripped and thrown. asia presents a wide border of marginal lands, some of them like arabia and india being almost continental in their proportions. since europe began her career of maritime and colonial expansion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, she has seized upon these peripheral projections as if they were the handles on a pilot wheel, and by them she has steered the course of asia ever since. these semi-detached outlyers of the continent have enabled her to stretch a girdle of european influences around the central core. such influences, through the avenues of commerce, railway concessions, missionary propaganda, or political dominion, have permeated the accessible periphery and are slowly spreading thence into the interior. china and persia have felt these influences not less than india and tongking; japan, which has most effectually preserved its political autonomy, has profited by them most. this historical contrast between center and periphery of continents reappears in smaller land masses, such as peninsulas and islands. the principle holds good regardless of size. the whole fringe of arabia, from antioch to aden and from mocha to mascat, has been the scene of incoming and outgoing activities, has developed live bases of trade, maritime growth, and culture, while the inert, somnolent interior has drowsed away its long eventless existence. the rugged, inaccessible heart of little sardinia repeats the story of central arabia in its aloofness, its impregnability, backwardness, and in the purity of its race. its accessible coast, forming a convenient way-station on the maritime crossroads of the western mediterranean, has received a succession of conquerors and an intermittent influx of every ethnic strain known in the great basin. [sidenote: periphery of colonization.] the story of discovery and colonization, from the days of ancient greek enterprise in the mediterranean to the recent german expansion along the gulf of guinea, shows the appropriation first of the rims of islands and continents, and later that of the interior. a difference of race and culture between inland and peripheral inhabitants meets us almost everywhere in retarded colonial lands. in the philippines, the wild people of luzon, mindoro and the visayas are confined almost entirely to the interior, while civilized or christianized malays occupy the whole seaboard, except where the rugged sierra madre mountains, fronting the pacific in luzon, harbor a sparse population of primitive negritos.[ ] for centuries arabs held the coast of east africa, where their narrow zone of settlement bordered on that of native blacks, with whom they traded. even ancient greece showed a wide difference in type of character and culture between the inland and maritime states. the greek landsman was courageous and steadfast, but crude, illiterate, unenterprising, showing sterility of imagination and intellect; while his brother of the seaboard was active, daring, mercurial, imaginative, open to all the influences of a refining civilization.[ ] to-day the distribution of the greeks along the rim of the balkan peninsula and asia minor, in contrast to the turks and slavs of the interior, is distinctly a peripheral phenomenon.[ ] the rapid inland advance from the coast of oversea colonists is part of that restless activity which is fostered by contact with the sea and supported by the command of abundant resources conferred by maritime superiority. the anglo-saxon invasion of england, as later the english colonization of america, seized the rim of the land, and promptly pushed up the rivers in sea-going boats far into the interior. but periphery may give to central region something more than conquerors and colonists. from its active markets and cosmopolitan exchanges there steadily filter into the interior culture and commodities, carried by peaceful merchant and missionary, who, however, are often only the harbingers of the conqueror. the accessibility of the periphery tends to raise it in culture, wealth, density of population, and often in political importance, far in advance of the center. [illustration: philippine islands. distribution of civilized and wild peoples] [sidenote: dominant historical side.] the maritime periphery of a country receives a variety of oversea influences, blends and assimilates these to its own culture, hellenizes, americanizes or japanizes them, as the case may be, and then passes them on into the interior. here no one foreign influence prevails. on the land boundaries the case is different. each inland frontier has to reckon with a different neighbor and its undiluted influence. a predominant central location means a succession of such neighbors, on all sides friction which may polish or rub sore. the distinction between a many-sided and a one-sided historical development depends upon the contact of a people with its neighbors. consider the multiplicity of influences which have flowed in upon austria from all sides. but not all such influences are similar in kind or in degree. the most powerful neighbor will chiefly determine on which boundary of a country its dominant historical processes are to work themselves out in a given epoch. therefore, it is of supreme importance to the character of a peopled history on which side this most powerful neighbor is located. russia had for several centuries such a neighbor in the tartar hordes along its southeastern frontier, and therefore its history received an asiatic stamp; so, too, did that of austria and hungary in the long resistance to turkish invasion. all three states suffered in consequence a retardation of development on their western sides. after the turmoil on the asiatic frontier had subsided, the great centers of european culture and commerce in italy, germany and the baltic lands began to assert their powers of attraction. the young roman republic drew up its forces to face the threatening power of carthage in the south, and thereby was forced into rapid maritime development; the roman empire faced north to meet the inroads of the barbarians, and thereby was drawn into inland expansion. all these instances show that a vital historical turning-point is reached in the development of every country, when the scene of its great historical happenings shifts from one side to another. [sidenote: the mediterranean side of europe.] in addition to the aggressive neighbor, there is often a more sustained force that may draw the activities of a people toward one or another boundary of their territory. this may be the abundance of land and unexploited resources lying on a colonial frontier and attracting the unemployed energies of the people, such as existed till recently in the united states,[ ] and such as is now transferring the most active scenes of russian history to far-away siberia. but a stronger attraction is that of a higher civilization and dominant economic interests. so long as the known world was confined to the temperate regions of europe, asia and africa, together with the tropical districts of the indian ocean, the necessities of trade between orient and occident and the historical prestige of the lands bordering on the mediterranean placed in this basin the center of gravity of the cultural, commercial and political life of europe. the continent was dominated by its asiatic corner; its every country took on an historical significance proportionate to its proximity and accessibility to this center. the papacy was a mediterranean power. the crusades were mediterranean wars. athens, rome, constantinople, venice, and genoa held in turn the focal positions in this asiatic-european sea; they were on the sunny side of the continent, while portugal and england lay in shadow. only that portion of britain facing france felt the cultural influences of the southern lands. the estuaries of the mersey and clyde were marshy solitudes, echoing to the cry of the bittern and the ripple of celtic fishing-boat. [sidenote: change of historical front.] after the year inaugurated the atlantic period of history, the western front of europe superseded the mediterranean side in the historical leadership of the continent. the breton coast of france waked up, the southern seaboard dozed. the old centers in the aegean and adriatic became drowsy corners. the busy traffic of the mediterranean was transferred to the open ocean, where, from trafalger to norway, the western states of europe held the choice location on the world's new highway. liverpool, plymouth, glasgow, hamburg, rotterdam, antwerp, cherbourg, lisbon and cadiz were shifted from shadowy margin to illuminated center, and became the foci of the new activity. theirs was a new continental location, maintaining relations of trade and colonization with two hemispheres. their neighbors were now found on the atlantic shores of the americas and the peripheral lands of asia. these cities became the exponents of the intensity with which their respective states exploited the natural advantages of this location. the experience of germany was typical of the change of front. from the tenth to the middle of the sixteenth century, this heir of the old roman empire was drawn toward italy by every tie of culture, commerce, and political ideal. this concentration of interest in its southern neighbor made it ignore a fact so important as the maritime development of the hanse towns, wherein lay the real promise of its future, the hope of its commercial and colonial expansion. the shifting of its historical center of gravity to the atlantic seaboard therefore came late, further retarded by lack of national unity and national purposes. but the present wide circle of germany's transoceanic commerce incident upon its recent industrial development, the phenomenal increase of its merchant marine, the growth of hamburg and bremen, the construction of ship canals to that short north sea coast, and the enormous utilization of dutch ports for german commerce, all point to the attraction of distant economic interests, even when meagerly supported by colonial possessions. location, therefore, while it is the most important single geographic factor, is at the same time the one most subject to the vicissitudes attending the anthropo-geographical evolution of the earth. its value changes with the transfer of the seats of the higher civilizations from sub-tropical to temperate lands; from the margin of enclosed sea to the hem of the open ocean; from small, naturally defined territories to large, elastic areas; from mere periphery to a combination of periphery and interior, commanding at once the freedom of the sea and the resources of a wide hinterland. [sidenote: contrasted historical sides.] even in europe, however, where the atlantic leaning of all the states is so marked as to suggest a certain dependence, the strength of this one-sided attraction is weakened by the complexity and closeness of the vicinal grouping of the several nations. germany's reliance upon the neighboring grain fields of russia and hungary and the leather of the southern steppes counteracts somewhat the far-off magnet of america's wheat and cattle. england experienced a radical change of geographic front with the sailing of the cabots; but the enormous tonnage entering and passing from the north sea and channel ports for her european trade[ ] show the attraction of the nearby continent. oftentimes we find two sides of a country each playing simultaneously a different, yet an equally important historical part, and thus distributing the historical activities, while diversifying the historical development of the people. the young united states were profoundly influenced as to national ideals and their eventual territorial career by the free, eager life and the untrammeled enterprise of its wilderness frontier beyond the alleghenies, while through the atlantic seaboard it was kept in steadying contact with england and the inherited ideals of the race. russia is subjected to different influences on its various fronts; it is progressive, industrial, socialistic on its european side in poland; expansive and radical in a different way in colonial siberia; aggressive in the south, bending its energies toward political expansion along the mediterranean and persian gulf seaboards. in all such countries there is a constant shifting and readjustment of extra-territorial influences. [sidenote: one-sided historical relations.] it is otherwise in states of very simple vicinal grouping, coupled with only a single country or at best two. spain, from the time hamilcar barca made it a colony of ancient carthage, down to the decline of its saracen conquerors, was historically linked with africa. freeman calls attention to "the general law by which, in almost all periods of history, either the masters of spain have borne rule in africa or the masters of africa have borne rule in spain." the history of such simply located countries tends to have a correspondingly one-sided character. portugal's development has been under the exclusive influence of spain, except for the oversea stimuli brought to it by the atlantic. england's long southern face close to the french coast had for centuries the effect of interweaving its history with that of its southern neighbor. the conspicuous fact in the foreign history of japan has been its intimate connection with korea above all the other states.[ ] egypt, which projects as an alluvial peninsula into an ocean of desert from southwestern asia, has seen its history, from the time of the shepherd kings to that of napoleon, repeatedly linked with palestine and syria. every asiatic or european conquest of these two countries has eventually been extended to the valley of the nile; and egypt's one great period of expansion saw this eastern coast of the mediterranean as far as the euphrates united to the dominion of the pharaohs. here is a one-sided geographical location in an exaggerated form, emphasized by the physical and political barrenness of the adjacent regions of africa and the strategic importance of the isthmian district between the mediterranean and indian ocean. [sidenote: scattered location due to geographic conditions.] the forms of vicinal location thus far considered presuppose a compact or continuous distribution, such as characterizes the more fertile and populous areas of the earth. desert regions, whether due to arctic cold or extreme aridity, distribute their sparse population in small groups at a few favored points, and thus from physical causes give rise to the anthropo-geographical phenomenon of scattered location. districts of intense cold, which sustain life only in contact with marine supplies of food, necessitate an intermittent distribution along the seaboard, with long, unoccupied stretches between. this is the location we are familiar with among the eskimo of greenland and alaska, among the norse and lapps in the rugged norwegian province of finmarken, where over two-thirds of the population live by fishing. in the interior districts of this province about karasjok and kantokeino, the reindeer lapps show a corresponding scattered grouping here and there on the inhospitable slopes of the mountains.[ ] in that one-half of switzerland lying above the altitude where agriculture is possible, population is sprinkled at wide intervals over the sterile surface of the highlands. a somewhat similar scattered location is found in arid deserts, where population is restricted to the oases dropped here and there at wide intervals amid the waste of sand. but unlike those fragments of human life on the frozen outskirts of the habitable world, the oasis states usually constitute links in a chain of connection across the desert between the fertile lands on either side, and therefore form part of a series, in which the members maintain firm and necessary economic relations. every caravan route across the sahara is dotted by a series of larger or smaller tribal settlements. tripoli, sokna, murzuk, bilma and bornu form one such chain; algiers, el golea, twat, the salt mines of taudeni, arawan and timbuctoo, another. bagdad, hayil, boreyda and mecca trace the road of pilgrim and merchant starting from the moslem land of the euphrates to the shrine of mohammed.[ ] [illustration: distribution of settlement in the norwegian province of finmarken.] [sidenote: island way station on maritime routes.] not unlike this serial grouping of oasis states along caravan routes through the desert are the island way stations that rise out of the waste of the sea and are connected by the great maritime routes of trade. such are the portuguese madeiras, bissagos, and san thomé on the line between lisbon and portuguese loanda in west africa; and their other series of the madeiras, cape verde, and fernando, which facilitated communication with pernambuco when brazil was a portuguese colony. the classic example of this serial grouping is found in the line of islands, physical or political, which trace england's artery of communication with india--gibraltar, malta, cyprus, perim, aden, sokotra, and ceylon, besides her dominant position at suez. [sidenote: scattered location of primitive tribes.] quite different from this scattered distribution, due to physical conditions, in an otherwise uninhabited waste is that wide dispersal of a people in small detached groups which is the rule in lower stages of culture, and which bespeaks the necessity of relatively large territorial reserves for the uneconomic method of land utilization characteristic of hunting, fishing, pastoral nomadism, and primitive agriculture. a distribution which claims large areas, without, however, maintaining exclusive possession or complete occupation, indicates among advanced peoples an unfinished process,[ ] especially unfinished expansion, such as marked the early french and english colonies in america and the recent russian occupation of siberia. among primitive peoples it is the normal condition, belongs to the stage of civilization, not to any one land or any one race, though it has been called the american form of distribution. not only are villages and encampments widely dispersed, but also the tribal territories. the tupis were found by the portuguese explorers along the coast of eastern brazil and in the interior from the mouth of the la plata to the lower amazon, while two distant tribes of the tupis were dropped down amid a prevailing arawak population far away among the foothills of the andes in two separate localities on the western amazon.[ ] [see map page .] the athapascans, from their great compact northern area between hudson bay, the saskatchewan river, and the eskimo shores of the arctic ocean sent southward a detached offshoot comprising the navajos, apaches and lipans, who were found along the rio grande from its source almost to its mouth; and several smaller fragments westward who were scattered along the pacific seaboard from puget sound to northern california.[ ] the cherokees of the southern appalachians and the tuscaroras of eastern north carolina were detached groups of the iroquois, who had their chief seat about the lower great lakes and the st. lawrence. virginia and north carolina harbored also several tribes of sioux,[ ] who were also represented in southern mississippi by the small biloxi nation, though the chief sioux area lay between the arkansas and saskatchewan rivers. similarly the caddoes of louisiana and eastern texas had one remote offshoot on the platte river and another, the arikaras, on the upper missouri near its great bend. [see map page .] but the territory of the caddoes, in turn, was sprinkled with choctaws, who belonged properly east of the mississippi, but who in were found scattered in fixed villages or wandering groups near the bayou teche, on the red river, the washita, and the arkansas.[ ] their villages were frequently interspersed with others of the biloxi sioux. this fragmentary distribution appears in africa among people in parallel stages of civilization. dr. junker found it as a universal phenomenon in central africa along the watershed between the white nile and the welle-congo. here the territory of the dominant zandeh harbored a motley collection of shattered tribes, remnants of peoples, and intruding or refugee colonies from neighboring districts.[ ] the few weak bonds between people and soil characterizing retarded races are insufficient to secure permanent residence in the face of a diminished game supply, as in the case of the choctaws above cited, or of political disturbance or oppression, or merely the desire for greater independence, as in that of so many african tribes. [illustration: distribution of population in the united states in .] [sidenote: ethnic islands of expansion.] a scattered location results in all stages of civilization when an expanding or intruding people begins to appropriate the territory of a different race. any long continued infiltration, whether peaceful or aggressive, results in race islands or archipelagoes distributed through a sea of aborigines. semitic immigration from southern arabia has in this way striped and polka-dotted the surface of hamitic abyssinia.[ ] groups of pure german stock are to-day scattered through the baltic and polish provinces of russia.[ ] [see map page .] in ancient times the advance guard of teutonic migration crossed the rhenish border of gaul, selected choice sites here and there, after the manner of ariovistus, and appeared as enclaves in the encompassing gallic population. while the anahuac plateau of mexico formed the center of the aztec or nahuatl group of indians, outlying colonies of this stock occurred among the maya people of the tehuantepec region, and in guatemala and nicaragua.[ ] such detached fragments or rather spores of settlement characterize all young geographical boundaries, where ethnic and political frontiers are still in the making. the early french, english, dutch, and swedish settlements in america took the form of archipelagoes in a surrounding sea of indian-owned forest land; and in , beyond the frontier of continuous settlement in the united states long slender peninsulas and remote outlying islands of white occupation indicated american advance at the cost of the native. similarly the portuguese, at the end of the sixteenth century, seized and fortified detached points along the coast of east africa at sofala, malindi, mombassa, kilwa, lamu, zanzibar and barava, which served as way stations for portuguese ships bound for india, and were outposts of expansion from their moçambique territory.[ ] the snow-muffled forests of northern siberia have their solitudes broken at wide intervals by russian villages, located only along the streams for fishing, gold-washing and trading with the native. these lonely clearings are outposts of the broad band of muscovite settlement which stretches across southern siberia from the ural mountains to the angara river.[ ] [see map page .] [sidenote: political islands of expansion.] the most exaggerated example of scattered political location existing to-day is found in the bizarre arrangement of european holdings on the west coast of africa between the senegal and congo rivers. here in each case a handful of governing whites is dropped down in the midst of a dark-skinned population in several districts along the coast. the six detached seaboard colonies of the french run back in the interior into a common french-owned hinterland formed by the sahara and western sudan, which since link the guinea coast colonies with french algeria and tunis; but the various british holdings have no territorial cohesion at any point, nor have the spanish or portuguese or german. the scattered location of these different european possessions is for the most part the expression of a young colonizing activity, developed in the past fifty years, and signalized by the vigorous intrusion of the french and germans into the field. to the anthropo-geographer the map of western africa presents the picture of a political situation wholly immature, even embryonic. the history of similar scattered outposts of political expansion in america, india and south africa teaches us to look for extensive consolidation. [sidenote: ethnic islands of survival.] race islands occur also when a land is so inundated by a tide of invasion or continuous colonization that the original inhabitants survive only as detached remnants, where protecting natural conditions, such as forests, jungles, mountains or swamps, provide an asylum, or where a sterile soil or rugged plateau has failed to attract the cupidity of the conqueror. the dismembered race, especially one in a lower status of civilization, can be recognized as such islands of survival by their divided distribution in less favored localities, into which they have fled, and in which seldom can they increase and recombine to recover their lost heritage. in central africa, between the watersheds of the nile, congo and zambesi, there is scarcely a large native state that does not shelter in its forests scattered groups of dwarf hunter folk variously known as watwa, batwa, and akka.[ ] they serve the agricultural tribes as auxiliaries in war, and trade with them in meat and ivory, but also rob their banana groves and manioc patches. the local dispersion of these pygmies in small isolated groups among stronger peoples points to them as survivals of a once wide-spread aboriginal race, another branch of which, as schweinfurth suggested, is probably found in the dwarfed bushmen and hottentots of south africa.[ ] [see map page .] similar in distribution and in mode of life are the aborigines of the philippines, the dwarf negritos, who are still found inhabiting the forests in various localities. they are dispersed through eight provinces of luzon and in several other islands, generally in the interior, whither they have been driven by the invading malays.[ ] [see map page .] but the negritos crop out again in the mountain interior of formosa and borneo, in the eastern peninsula of celebes, and in various islands of the malay archipelago as far east as ceram and flores, amid a prevailing malay stock. toward the west they come to the surface in the central highland of malacca, in the nicobar and andaman islands, and in several mountain and jungle districts of india. here again is the typical geographic distribution of a moribund aboriginal race, whose shrivelled patches merely dot the surface of their once wide territory.[ ] the aboriginal kolarian tribes of india are found under the names of bhils, kols and santals scattered about in the fastnesses of the central indian jungles, the vindhyan range, and in the rajputana desert, within the area covered by indo-aryan occupation.[ ] [see map page .] [sidenote: discontinuous distribution.] such broad, intermittent dispersal is the anthropological prototype of the "discontinuous distribution" of biologists. by this they mean that certain types of plants and animals occur in widely separated regions, without the presence of any living representatives in the intermediate area. but they point to the rock records to show that the type once occupied the whole territory, till extensive elimination occurred, owing to changes in climatic or geologic conditions or to sharpened competition in the struggle for existence, with the result that the type survived only in detached localities offering a favorable environment.[ ] in animal and plant life, the ice invasion of the glacial age explains most of these islands of survival; in human life, the invasion of stronger peoples. the finnish race, which in the ninth century covered nearly a third of european russia, has been shattered by the blows of slav expansion into numerous fragments which lie scattered about within the old ethnic boundary from the arctic ocean to the don-volga watershed.[ ] the encroachments of the whites upon the red men of america early resulted in their geographical dispersion. the map showing the distribution of population in reveals large detached areas of indian occupancy embedded in the prevailing white territory.[ ] the rapid compression of the tribal lands and the introduction of the reservation system resulted in the present arrangement of yet smaller and more widely scattered groups. such islands of survival tend constantly to contract and diminish in number with the growing progress, density, and land hunger of the surrounding race. the kaffir islands and the hottentot "locations" in south africa, large as they now are, will repeat the history of the american indian lands, a history of gradual shrinkage and disappearance as territorial entities. [sidenote: contrasted location.] every land contains in close juxtaposition areas of sharply contrasted cultural, economic and political development, due to the influence of diverse natural locations emphasizing lines of ethnic cleavage made perhaps by some great historical struggle. in mountainous countries the conquered people withdraw to the less accessible heights and leave the fertile valleys to the victorious intruders. the two races are thus held apart, and the difference in their respective modes of life forced upon them by contrasted geographic conditions tends still farther for a time to accentuate their diversity. the contrasted location of the dislodged alpine race, surviving in all the mountains and highlands of western europe over against the teutonic victors settled in the plains,[ ] has its parallel in many parts of asia and africa; it is almost always coupled with a corresponding contrast in mode of life, which is at least in part geographically determined. in algeria, the arab conquerors, who form the larger part of the population, are found in the plains where they live the life of nomads in their tents; the berbers, who were the original inhabitants, driven back into the fastnesses of the atlas ranges, form now an industrious, sedentary farmer class, living in stone houses, raising stock, and tilling their fields as if they were market gardeners.[ ] in the andean states of south america, the eastern slopes of the cordilleras, which are densely forested owing to their position in the course of the trade-winds, harbor wild, nomadic tribes of hunting and fishing indians who differ in stock and culture from the inca indians settled in the drier andean basins.[ ] [see map page .] [sidenote: geographical polarity.] every geographical region of strongly marked character possesses a certain polarity, by reason of which it attracts certain racial or economic elements of population, and repels others. the predatory tribes of the desert are constantly reinforced by refugee outlaws from the settled agricultural communities along its borders.[ ] the mountains which offer a welcome asylum for the persecuted waldenses have no lure for the money-making jew, who is therefore rarely found there. the negroes of the united states are more and more congregating in the gulf states, making the "black belt" blacker. the fertile tidewater plains of ante-bellum virginia and maryland had a rich, aristocratic white population of slave-holding planters; the mountain backwoods of the appalachian ranges, whose conditions of soil and relief were ill adapted for slave cultivation, had attracted a poorer democratic farmer class, who tilled their small holdings by their own labor and consequently entertained little sympathy for the social and economic system of the tidewater country. this is the contrast between mountain and plain which is as old as humanity. it presented problems to the legislation of solon, and caused west virginia to split off from the mother state during the civil war.[ ] each contrasted district has its own polarity; but with this it attracts not one but many of the disruptive forces which are pent up in every people or state. certain conditions of climate, soil, and tillable area in the southern states of the union made slave labor remunerative, while opposite conditions in the north combined eventually to exclude it thence. slave labor in the south brought with it in turn a whole train of social and economic consequences, notably the repulsion of foreign white immigration and the development of shiftless or wasteful industrial methods, which further sharpened the contrast between the two sections. the same contrast occurs in italian territory between sicily and lombardy. here location at the two extremities of the peninsula has involved a striking difference in ethnic infusions in the two districts, different historical careers owing to different vicinal grouping, and dissimilar geographic conditions. these effects operating together and attracting other minor elements of divergence, have conspired to emphasize the already strong contrast between northern and southern italy. [sidenote: geographical marks of growth.] in geographical location can be read the signs of growth or decay. there are racial and national areas whose form is indicative of development, expansion, while others show the symptoms of decline. the growing people seize all the geographic advantages within their reach, whether lying inside their boundaries or beyond. in the latter case, they promptly extend their frontiers to include the object of their desire, as the young united states did in the case of the mississippi river and the gulf coast. european peoples, like the russians in asia, all strive to reach the sea; and when they have got there, they proceed to embrace as big a strip of coast as possible. therefore the whole colonization movement of western and central europe was in the earlier periods restricted to coasts, although not to such an excessive degree as that of the phoenicians and greeks. their own maritime location had instructed them as to the value of seaboards, and at the same time made this form of expansion the simplest and easiest. [sidenote: marks of inland expansion.] on the other hand, that growing people which finds its coastward advance blocked, and is therefore restricted to landward expansion, seizes upon every natural feature that will aid its purpose. it utilizes every valley highway and navigable river, as the russians did in the case of the dnieper, don, volga, kama and northern dwina in their radial expansion from the muscovite center at moscow, and as later they used the icy streams of siberia in their progress toward the pacific; or as the americans in their trans-continental advance used the ohio, tennessee, the great lakes, and the missouri. they reach out toward every mountain pass leading to some choice ultramontane highway. bulges or projecting angles of their frontier indicate the path they plan to follow, and always include or aim at some natural feature which will facilitate their territorial growth. the acquisition of the province of ticino in gave the swiss confederation a foothold upon lake maggiore, perhaps the most important waterway of northern italy, and the possession of the val leventina, which now carries the st. gotthard railroad down to the plains of the po. every bulge of russia's asiatic frontier, whether in the trans-caucasus toward the mesopotamian basin and the persian gulf, or up the murghab and tedjend rivers toward the gates of herat, is directed at some mountain pass and an outlet seaward beyond. if this process of growth bring a people to the borders of a desert, there they halt perhaps for a time, but only, as it were, to take breath for a stride across the sand to the nearest oasis. the ancient egyptians advanced by a chain of oases--siwa, angila, sella and sokna, across the libyan desert to the syrtis minor. the russians in the last twenty-five years have spread across the arid wastes of turkestan by way of the fertile spots of khiva, bukhara and merv to the irrigated slopes of the hindu kush and tian shan mountains. the french extended the boundaries of algiers southward into the desert to include the caravan routes focusing at the great oases of twat and tidekelt, years before their recent appropriation of the western sahara. [sidenote: marks of decline.] as territorial expansion is the mark of growth, so the sign of decline is the relinquishment of land that is valuable or necessary to a people's well-being. the gradual retreat of the tartars and in part also of the kirghis tribes from their best pasture lands along the volga into the desert or steppes indicates their decrease of power, just as the withdrawal of the indians from their hunting grounds in forest and prairie was the beginning of their decay. bolivia maimed herself for all time when in she relinquished to chile her one hundred and eighty miles of coast between the rio lao and the twenty-fourth parallel. her repeated efforts later to recover at least one seaport on the pacific indicate her own estimate of the loss by which she was limited to an inland location, and deprived of her maritime periphery.[ ] [sidenote: interpretation of scattered and marginal location.] the habits of a people and the consequent demands which they make upon their environment must be taken into account in judging whether or not a restricted geographical location is indicative of a retrograde process. the narrow marginal distribution of the haida, tlingit, and tsimshean indians on the islands and coastal strips of northwestern america means simply the selection of sites most congenial to those inveterate fisher tribes. the fact that the english in the vicinity of the newfoundland banks settled on a narrow rim of coast in order to exploit the fisheries, while the french peasants penetrated into the interior forests and farmlands of canada, was no sign of territorial decline. english and french were both on the forward march, each in their own way. the scattered peripheral location of the phoenician trading stations and later of the greek colonies on the shores of the mediterranean was the expression of the trading and maritime activity of those two peoples. centuries later a similar distribution of arab posts along the coast of east africa, madagascar and the western islands of the sunda archipelago indicated the great commercial expansion of the mohammedan traders of oman and yemen. the lack came when this distribution, normal as a preliminary form, bore no fruit in the occupation of wide territorial bases. [see map page .] [sidenote: prevalence of ethnic islands of decline.] in general, however, any piecemeal or marginal location of a people justifies the question as to whether it results from encroachment, dismemberment, and consequently national or racial decline. this inference as a rule strikes the truth. the abundance of such ethnic islands and reefs--some scarcely distinguishable above the flood of the surrounding population--is due to the fact that when the area of distribution of any life form, whether racial or merely animal, is for any cause reduced, it does not merely contract but breaks up into detached fragments. these isolated groups often give the impression of being emigrants from the original home who, in some earlier period of expansion, had occupied this outlying territory. at the dawn of western european history, gaul was the largest and most compact area of celtic speech. for this reason it has been regarded as the land whence sprang the celts of britain, the iberian peninsula, the alps and northern italy. freeman thinks that the gauls of the danube and po valleys were detachments which had been left behind in the great celtic migration toward the west;[ ] but does not consider the possibility of a once far more extensive celtic area, which, as a matter of fact, once reached eastward to the weser river and the sudetes mountains and was later dismembered.[ ] the islands of celtic speech which now mark the western flank of great britain and ireland are shrunken fragments of a celtic linguistic area which, as place-names indicate, once comprised the whole country.[ ] similarly, all over russia finnic place-names testify to the former occupation of the country by a people now submerged by the immigrant slavs, except where they emerge in ethnic islands in the far north and about the elbow of the volga.[ ] [see map page .] beyond the compact area of the melanesian race occupying new guinea and the islands eastward to the fiji and loyalty groups, are found scattered patches of negroid folk far to the westward, relegated to the interiors of islands and peninsulas. the dispersed and fragmentary distribution of this negroid stock has suggested that it formed the older and primitive race of a wide region extending from india to fiji and possibly even beyond.[ ] [sidenote: contrast between ethnic islands of growth and decline.] ethnic or political islands of decline can be distinguished from islands of expansion by various marks. when survivals of an inferior people, they are generally characterized by inaccessible or unfavorable geographic location. when remnants of former large colonial possessions of modern civilized nations, they are characterized by good or even excellent location, but lack a big compact territory nearby to which they stand in the relation of outpost. such are the portuguese fragments on the west coast of india at goa, damaon, and diu island, and the portuguese half of the island of timor with the islet of kambing in the east indies. such also are the remnants of the french empire in india, founded by the genius of françois dupleix, which are located on the seaboard at chandarnagar, carical, pondicherry, yanaon and mahe. they tell the geographer a far different story from that of the small detached french holding of kwang-chan bay and nao-chan island on the southern coast of china, which are outposts of the vigorous french colony of tongking. the scattered islands of an intrusive people, bent upon conquest or colonization, are distinguished by a choice of sites favorable to growth and consolidation, and by the rapid extension of their boundaries until that consolidation is achieved; while the people themselves give signs of the rapid differentiation incident to adaptation to a new environment. notes to chapter v [ ] anatole leroy-beaulieu, the empire of the tsars, vol. i. pp. - . new york. . [ ] george adam smith, historical geography of the holy land, pp. - , , , - , . new york, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - . new york, . [ ] monette, history of the valley of the mississippi, vol. ii, chap. i. . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. , . map. p. . new york, . [ ] j. partsch, central europe, p. . london, . [ ] eleventh census, report for alaska, pp. , , . washington, . [ ] livingstone, travels in south africa, p. . new york, . [ ] anatole leroy-beaulieu, the empire of the tsars, vol i, pp. , . new york, . [ ] boyd alexander, from the niger to the nile, vol. ii, pp. - , . london, . [ ] james bryce, impressions of south africa, pp. , , - . new york, . [ ] alexander p. engelhardt, a russian province of the north, pp. , - , , . translated from the russian. london, . [ ] for full and able discussion, see h. j. mackinder, the geographical pivot of history, in the _geographical journal_, april, . london. [ ] the anglo-russian agreement, with map, in _the independent_, october, , . [ ] spencer and gillen, the northern tribes of central australia, p. xii. london, . [ ] census of the philippine islands, vol. i, p. ; vol ii, pp. - , - and map. washington, . [ ] grote, history of greece, vol. ii, pp. - . new york, . [ ] w.z. ripley, the races of europe, pp. - , map. new york, . [ ] frederick j. turner, the significance of the frontier in american history, in the _annual report of the american historical association_ for , pp. - . washington, . [ ] hugh r. mill, international geography, pp. - . new york, . [ ] w.e. griffis, the mikado's empire, vol. i, pp. , . new york, . henry dyer, dai nippon, pp. , . new york, . [ ] norway, official publication, pp. , , , and map. christiania, . [ ] d.g. hogarth, the nearer east, pp. - , map. london, . [ ] heinrich von treitschke, _politik_, vol. i, p. . leipzig, . [ ] helmolt, history of the world, vol. i, pp. - . new york, - . [ ] eleventh census, _report on the indians_, pp. - . washington, . [ ] john fiske, old virginia and her neighbors, vol. ii, p. . boston, . [ ] eleventh census, _report on the indians_, pp. - . washington, . [ ] dr. william junker, travels in africa, - , pp. , , , , , - , , - , , - . london, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, pp. - . london, - . [ ] anatole leroy-beaulieu, empire of the tsars, vol. i, pp. - . hew york, . [ ] d.g. brinton, the american race, p. . philadelphia, . [ ] helmolt, history of the world, vol. iii, pp. , . new york, - . [ ] nordenskiold, the voyage of the vega, p. . new york, . [ ] h.m. stanley, through the dark continent, vol. ii, pp. - , . in darkest africa, vol. i, pp. , , - ; vol. ii, pp. - . [ ] georg schweinfurth, the heart of africa, vol. ii, chap. xi, rd edition, london. [ ] census of the philippine islands, vol. i, pp. , , , . washington, . [ ] quatrefages, the pygmies, pp. - . new york, . [ ] sir t.h. holdich, india, pp. - , map. london, . [ ] darwin, origin of species, vol. ii, chap. xii. new york, . [ ] anatole leroy-beaulieu, the empire of the tsars, vol. i, pp. - , maps facing pp. and . new york, . [ ] eleventh census of the united states, _report on population_, part i, map p. . washington, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, chapters , , . new york, . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. , . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, pp. , . london, - . [ ] e.c. semple, american history and its geographic conditions, pp. - . boston, . [ ] c.e. akers, history of south america, - , pp. - , - . new york, . [ ] e.a. freeman, historical geography of europe, p. . london, . [ ] helmolt, history of the world, vol. vi, pp. - , map. new york, - . ripley, races of europe, pp. , , , - . new york, . [ ] h.j. mackinder, britain and the british seas, pp. - . london, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. , , - . map. new york, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, - . london, - . chapter vi geographical area [sidenote: the size of the earth.] every consideration of geographical area must take as its starting point the , , square miles ( , , square kilometers) of the earth's surface. though some , , square miles ( , , square kilometers) about the poles remain unexplored, and only the twenty-eight per cent. of the total constituting the land area is the actual habitat of man, still the earth as a whole is his planet. its surface fixes the limits of his possible dwelling place, the range of his voyages and migrations, the distribution of animals and plants on which he must depend. these conditions he has shared with all forms of life from the amoeba to the civilized nation. the earth's superficial area is the primal and immutable condition of earth-born, earth-bound man; it is the common soil whence is sprung our common humanity. nations belong to countries and races to continents, but humanity belongs to the whole world. naught but the united forces of the whole earth could have produced this single species of a single genus which we call man. [sidenote: relation of area to life.] the relation of life to the earth's area is a fundamental question of bio-geography. the amount of that area available for terrestrial life, the proportion of land and water, the reduction or enlargement of the available surface by the operation of great cosmic forces, all enter into this problem, which changes from one geologic period to another. the present limited plant life of the arctic regions is the impoverished successor of a vegetation abundant enough at the eighty-third parallel to produce coal. that was in the genial period, when the northern hemisphere with its broad land-masses presented a far larger area for the support of life than to-day. then the glacial period spread an ice-sheet from the north pole to approximately the fiftieth parallel, forced back life to the lower latitudes, and confined the bio-sphere to the smaller land-masses of the southern hemisphere and a girdle north of the equator. the sum total of life on the globe was greatly reduced at the height of glaciation, and since the retreat of the ice has probably never regained the abundance of the middle tertiary; so that our period is probably one of relative impoverishment and faulty adjustment both of life to life and of life to physical environment.[ ] the continent of north america contained a small vital area during the later cretaceous period, when a notable encroachment of the sea submerged the atlantic coastal plain, large sections of the pacific coast, the great plains, texas and the adjacent gulf plain up the mississippi valley to the mouth of the ohio.[ ] the task of estimating the area supporting terrestrial life which the earth presented at any given time is an important one, not only because the amount of life depends upon this area, but because every increase of available area tends to multiply conditions favorable to variation. darwin shows that largeness of area, more than anything else, affords the best conditions for rapid and improved variation through natural selection; because a large area supports a larger number of individuals in whom chance variations, advantageous in the struggle for existence, appear oftener than in a small group. this position is maintained also by the most recent evolutionists.[ ] on purely geographical grounds, also, a large area stimulates differentiation by presenting a greater diversity of natural conditions, each of which tends to produce its appropriate species or variety.[ ] consider the different environments found in a vast and varied continent like eurasia, which extends from the equator far beyond the arctic circle, as compared with a small land-mass like australia, relatively monotonous in its geographic conditions; and observe how much farther evolution has progressed in the one than in the other, in point of animal forms, races and civilization. if we hold with moritz wagner and others that isolation in naturally defined regions, alternating with periods of migration, offers the necessary condition for the rapid evolution of type forms, and thus go farther than darwin, who regards isolation merely as a fortunate contributory circumstance, we find that for the evolution of mankind it is large areas like eurasia which afford the greatest number and variety of these naturally segregated habitats, and at the same time the best opportunity for vast historical movements. [sidenote: the struggle for space.] evolution needs room but finds the earth's surface limited. everywhere old and new forms of life live side by side in deadly competition; but the later improved variety multiplies and spreads at the cost of less favored types. the struggle for existence means a struggle for space.[ ] this is true of man and the lower animals. a superior people, invading the territory of its weaker savage neighbors, robs them of their land, forces them back into corners too small for their support, and continues to encroach even upon this meager possession, till the weaker finally loses the last remnant of its domain, is literally crowded off the earth, becomes extinct as the tasmanians and so many indian tribes have done.[ ] the superiority of such expansionists consists primarily in their greater ability to appropriate, thoroughly utilize and populate a territory. hence this is the faculty by which they hasten the extinction of the weaker; and since this superiority is peculiar to the higher stages of civilization, the higher stages inevitably supplant the lower. [sidenote: area an index of social and political development.] the successive stages of social development--savage, pastoral nomadic, agricultural, and industrial--represent increasing density of population, increasing numerical strength of the social group, and finally increasing geographical area, resulting in a vastly enlarged social group or state. increase in the population of a given land is accompanied by a decrease in the share which each individual can claim as his own. this progressive readjustment to a smaller proportion of land brings in its train the evolution of all economic and social processes, reacting again favorably on density of population and resulting eventually in the greatly increased social group and enlarged territory of the modern civilized state. hence we may lay down the rule that change in areal relations, both of the individual to his decreasing quota of land, and of the state to its increasing quota of the earth's surface is an important index of social and political evolution. therefore the rise and decline not only of peoples but of whole civilizations have depended upon their relations to area. therefore problems of area, such as the expansion of a small territory, the economic and political mastery of a large one, dominate all history. [sidenote: the oikoumene.] humanity's area of distribution and historical movement call the oikoumene. it forms a girdle around the earth between the two polar regions, and embraces the tropics, the temperate zones, and a part of the north frigid, in all, five-sixths of the earth's surface. this area of distribution is unusually large. few other living species so nearly permeate the whole vital area, and many of these have reached their wide expansion only in the company of man. only about , , square miles ( , , square kilometers) of the oikoumene is land and therefore constitutes properly the habitat of man. but just as we cannot understand a nation from the study of its own country alone, but must take into consideration the wider area of its spreading activities, so we cannot understand mankind without including in his world not only his habitat but also the vastly larger sphere of his activities, which is almost identical with the earth itself. the most progressive peoples to-day find their scientific, economic, religious and political interests embracing the earth. [sidenote: unity of the human species in the relation to the earth.] mankind has in common with all other forms of life the tendency toward expansion. the more adaptable and mobile an organism is, the wider the distribution which it attains and the greater the rapidity with which it displaces its weaker kin. in the most favored cases it embraces the whole vital area of the earth, leaving no space free for the development of diversity of forms, and itself showing everywhere only superficial distinctions. mankind has achieved such wide distribution. before his persistent intrusions and his mobility, the earth has no longer any really segregated districts where a strongly divergent type of the man animal might develop. hence mankind shows only superficial distinctions of hair, color, head-form and stature between its different groups. it has got beyond the point of forming species, and is restricted to the slighter variations of races. even these are few in comparison with the area of the earth's surface, and their list tends to decrease. the guanches and tasmanians have vanished, the australians are on the road to extinction; and when they shall have disappeared, there will be one variety the less in humanity. so the process of assimilation advances, here by the simple elimination of weaker divergent types of men, there by amalgamation and absorption into the stock of the stronger. this unity of the human species has been achieved in spite of the fact that, owing to the three-fold predominance of the water surface of the globe, the land surface appears as detached fragments which rise as islands from the surrounding ocean. among these fragments we have every gradation in size, from the continuous continental mass of eurasia-africa with its , , square miles, the americas with , , , australia with nearly , , , madagascar with , , and new zealand with , , down to guam with its square miles, ascension with , tristan da cunha with , and the rocky islet of helgoland with its scant acres. all these down to the smallest constitute separate vital districts. [sidenote: isolation and differentiation.] small, naturally defined areas, whether their boundaries are drawn by mountains, sea, or by both, always harbor small but markedly individual peoples, as also peculiar or endemic animal forms, whose differentiation varies with the degree of isolation. such peoples can be found over and over again in islands, peninsulas, confined mountain valleys, or desert-rimmed oases. the cause lies in the barriers to expansion and to accessions of population from without which confront such peoples on every side. broad, uniform continental areas, on the other hand, where nature has erected no such obstacles are the habitats of wide-spread peoples, monotonous in type. the long stretch of coastal lowlands encircling the arctic ocean and running back into the wide plains of north america and eurasia show a remarkable uniformity of animal and plant forms[ ] and a striking similarity of race through the lapps, the samoyedes of northern russia, the various mongolian tribes of arctic siberia to bering strait, and the eskimo, that curiously transitional race, formerly classified as mongolian and more recently as a divergent indian stock; for the eskimos are similar to the siberians in stature, features, coloring, mode of life, in everything but head-form, though even the cephalic indices approach on the opposite shores of bering sea.[ ] where geography draws no dividing line, ethnology finds it difficult to do so. where the continental land-masses converge is found similarity or even identity of race, easy gradations from one type to another; where they diverge most widely in the peninsular extremities of south america, south africa and australia, they show the greatest dissimilarity in their native races, and a corresponding diversity in their animal life.[ ] geographical proximity combined with accessibility results in similarity of human and animal occupants, while a corresponding dissimilarity is the attendant of remoteness or of segregation. therefore, despite the distribution of mankind over the total habitable area of the earth, his penetration into its detached regions and hidden corners has maintained such variations as still exist in the human family. [sidenote: monotonous race type of small area.] if the distribution of the several races be examined in the light of this conclusion, it becomes apparent that the races who have succeeded in appropriating only limited portions of the earth's surface, though each may be a marked variant of the human family, are characterized by few inner diversities, either of physical features or culture. their subdivisions feel only in a slight degree the differentiating effects of geographic remoteness, which in a small area operates with weakened force; and they enjoy few of those diversities of environment which stimulate variation. they form close and distinct ethnic unities also because their scant numbers restrict the appearance of variations. the habitat of the negro race in africa south of the sahara, relatively small, limited in its zonal location almost wholly to the tropics, poorly diversified both in relief and contour, has produced only a retarded and monotonous social development based upon tropical agriculture or a low type of pastoral life. the still smaller, still less varied habitat of the australian race, again tropical or sub-tropical in location, has produced over its whole extent only one grade of civilization and that the lowest, one physical, mental and moral type.[ ] [sidenote: wide race distribution and inner diversities.] the mongoloid area of distribution, on the other hand, is so large that it necessarily includes a great range of climates and variety of geographic conditions. [maps pages and .] representatives of this race, reflecting their diversified habitats, show many ethnic differentiations. they reveal also every stage and phase of cultural development from the industrialism of japan, with its artistic and literary concomitants, to the savage economy and retarded intellectual life of the chukches fisher tribes or the giljak hunters of sakhalin. the white race, identified primarily with europe, that choice and diversified continent, comprised also a large area of southwestern asia and the northern third of africa. it thus extended from the arctic circle well within the tropics. its area included every variety of geographic condition and originally every degree of cultural development; but the rapid expansion in recent centuries of the most advanced peoples of this race has made them the apostles of civilization to the whole world. it has also given them, through the occupation of australia and the americas, the widest distribution and the most varied habitats. as agents of the modern historical movement, however, they are subjected to all its assimilating effects, which tend to counteract the diversities born of geographic segregation, and to raise all branches of the white race to one superior cosmopolitan type. on the other hand, the vast international division of labor and specialization of production, geographically based and entailed by advancing economic development, besides the differences of traditions and ideals reaching far back into an historic past and rooted in the land, will serve to maintain many subtle inner differences between even the most progressive nations. [sidenote: area and language.] hence the wide area which darwin found to be most favorable to improved variation and rapid evolution in animals, operates to the same end in human development, and its influence becomes a law of anthropo-geography. it permeates the higher aspects of life. the wide, varied area occupied by the germanic tribes of europe permitted the evolution of the many dialects which finally made the richness of modern german speech. english has gained in vocabulary and idiom with every expansion of its area. new territories mean to a people new pursuits, new relations, new wants; and all these become reflected in their speech. languages, like peoples, cease to grow with national stagnation.[ ] to such stagnation movement or expansion is the surest antidote. america will in time make its contribution to the english tongue. the rich crop of slang that springs up on the frontier is not wholly to be deplored. the crudeness and vigor of cowboy speech are marks of youth: they are also promises of growth. language can not live by dictionary alone. it tends to form new variants with every change of habitat. the french of the canadian _habitant_ has absorbed indian and english words, and adapted old terms to new uses;[ ] but it is otherwise a survival of seventeenth century french. boer speech in south africa shows the same thing--absorption of new kaffir and english words, coupled with marks of retardation due to isolation. religion in the same way gains by wide dispersal. christianity is one thing in st. petersburg, another among the copts of cairo, another in rome, another in london, and yet another in boston. buddhism takes on a different color in ceylon, tibet, china and japan. in religion as in other phases of human development, differentiation must mean eventual enrichment, a larger content of the religious idea, to which each faith makes its contribution. [sidenote: large area a guarantee of racial or national permanence.] the larger the area occupied by a race or people, other geographic conditions being equal, the surer the guarantee of their permanence, and the less the chance of their repression or annihilation. a broad geographic base means generally abundant command of the resources of life and growth. though for a growing people of wide possessions, like the russians, the significance of the land may not be obvious, it becomes apparent enough in national decline and decay; for these even in their incipiency betray themselves in a loss of territory. a people which, voluntarily or otherwise, renounces its hold upon its land is on the downward path. nothing else could show so plainly the national vitality of japan as her tenacious purpose to get back port arthur taken from her by the shimonoseki treaty in . a people may decrease in numbers without serious consequences if it still retains its land; for herein lies its resources by which it may again hope to grow. the recurring loss of millions of lives in china from the wide-sweeping floods of the hoangho is a passing episode, forgotten as soon as the mighty stream is re-embanked and the flooded plains reclaimed. the civil war in the united states involved a temporary diminution of population and check to progress, but no lasting national weakness because no loss of territory. but the expulsion of the american indians from their well-stocked hunting grounds in the mississippi valley and atlantic plain to more restricted and barren lands in the far west, and the withdrawal of the australian natives from the fertile coasts to the desert interior have meant racial renunciation of the sources of life. hence a people who are conquered and dislodged from their territory, as were the ancient britons by the saxons, the slavs from the land between the elbe and the niemen by the mediæval germans, and the kaffirs in south africa by the dutch and english, the ainos from hondo by the japanese, and the whole original alpine race by the later coming teutons from the fertile valleys and plains into the more barren highlands of western europe, have little or no chance of regaining their own. when conquest results not in dislodgement, but only in the subjection of an undisturbed native population to a new ruling class, the vanquished retain their hold, only slightly impaired, perhaps, upon their strength-giving fields, recover themselves, and sooner or later conquer their conquerors either by absorption or revolution. this was the history of ancient egypt with its shepherd kings, of england with its norman lords, of mexico and peru with their spanish victors. [sidenote: weakness of small states.] a large area throws around all the life forms which it supports the protection of its mere distances, which facilitate defense in competition with other forms, render attack difficult, and afford room for retreat under pursuit. on the other hand, the small area is easily compassed by the invaders, and its inhabitants soon brought to bay. since there is a general correspondence between size of area and number of inhabitants, where physical conditions and economic development are similar, a small area involves a further handicap of numerical weakness of population. greece has always suffered from the small size of the peninsula and the further political dismemberment entailed by its geographic subdivisions. despite superior civilization and national heroism, it has fallen a victim to almost every invader. belgium, holland, switzerland exist as distinct nations only on sufferance. finland's history since shows that the day for the national existence of small peoples is passing.[ ] the fragmentary political geography of the danube basin gives the geographer the impression of an artist's crayon studies of details, destined later to be incorporated in a finished picture. their small areas promise short-lived autonomy. the recent absorption of bosnia and herzegovina by austria indicates the destiny of these danubian states as fixed by the law of increasing territorial aggregates. what is true of states is true also of peoples. the extinction of the retarded "provisional peoples" of the earth progresses more rapidly in small groups than in large, and in small islands more quickly than in continental areas. of the twenty-one indian stocks or families which have died out in the united states, fifteen belonged to the small bands once found in the pacific coast states, and four more were similar fragments found on the lower mississippi and its bayous.[ ] [see map page .] the native gaunches of teneriffe island disappeared long ago. the last tasmanian died in . new zealand, whose area is four times that of tasmania, and therefore gives some respite before the encroachments of the whites, still harbors , maoris, or little over one-third the native population of the island in .[ ] but these compete for the land with nearly one million english colonists, and in the limited area of the islands they will eventually find no place of retreat before the relentless white advance. to the australians, on the other hand, much inferior to the maoris, the larger area of their continent affords extensive deserts and steppes into which the natives have withdrawn and whither the whites do not care to follow. hence mere area, robbed of every other favorable geographical circumstance, has contributed to the survival of the , natives in australia. similarly the arawaks were early wiped out on the island of cuba and the caribs on san domingo and the smaller antilles by the truculent methods of the spanish conquerors, while both stocks survive on the continent of south america. even the truculent methods of the spanish conquerors could make little impression upon the relatively massive populations of mexico and peru, whose survival and latter-day recovery of independence can be ascribed largely though not solely to their ample territorial base. so the vast area of the united states and canada has afforded a hinterland of asylum to the retreating indians, whose moribund condition, especially in the united states, is betrayed by their scattered distribution in small, unfavorable localities. on the other hand, the vast extent of arctic and sub-arctic canada, combined with the adverse climatic conditions of the region, will guarantee the northern indians a longer survival. in tierra del fuego, the encroachments of sheep-farmers and gold-miners from patagonia twenty years ago, by fencing off the land and killing off the wild guanaco, threatened the existence of this animal and of the onas natives of the island. these, soon brought to bay in that natural enclosure, attacked the farmers, whose reprisals between and reduced the number of the onas from , to souls.[ ] [sidenote: contrast of large and small areas in bio-geography.] the same law holds good in bio-geography; here, too, area gives strength and a small territorial foothold means weakness. the native flora and fauna of new zealand seem involved in the same process of extinction as the native race. the maoris themselves have observed this fact and applied the principle to their own obvious fate. they have seen hardy imported english grasses offering deadly competition to the indigenous vegetation; the norway rat, entering by european ships, extirpating the native variety; the european house fly, purposely imported and distributed to destroy the noxious indigenous species.[ ] the same unequal combat between imported plants and animals, equipped by the fierce iliads of continental areas, and the local flora and fauna has taken place on the little island of st. helena, to the threatened destruction of the native forms.[ ] the preponderant migration of animals from the northern to the southern hemisphere is attributed by darwin to the greater extent of land in the north, whereby the northern types have existed in greater numbers and have been so perfected through natural selection and competition, that they have surpassed the southern forms in dominating power and therefore have encroached successfully.[ ] also the races and nations of the northern continents have seriously invaded the southern land-masses and are still expanding. it is the largest continent, eurasia, which has been the chief center of dispersal. [sidenote: political domination of large areas.] the temperate zone of north america will always harbor a more powerful people than the corresponding zone of south america, because the latter continent begins to contract and tapers off to a point where the other at the northern tropic begins to spread out. therefore north america possesses more abundantly all the advantages accruing to a continent from a location in the temperate zone. the wide basis of the north slavs in russia and siberia has given them a natural leadership in the whole slav family, just as the broad unbroken area of ever expanding prussia gave that state the ascendency in the german empire over the geographically partitioned and politically dismembered surface of southern germany. english domination of the united kingdom is based not only upon race, location, geographical features and resources, but also on the larger size of england. so in the united states, abolitionist statesmen adopted the most effective means of fighting slavery when they limited its area by law, while permitting free states to go on multiplying in the new territory of the vast northwest. in a peninsula political ascendency often falls to the broad base connecting it with the continent, because this part alone has the area to support a large population, and moreover commands a large hinterland, whence it continually draws new and invigorating blood. the geographical basis of the aryan and later the mongol supremacy in india was the wide zone of lowlands between the indus and the brahmaputra. [see map page .] the only ancient greek state ever able to dominate the balkan peninsula was non-hellenic macedonia, after it had extended its boundaries to the euxine and the adriatic. to-day a much larger area in this same peninsular base harbors the widespread southern slavs, who numerically and economically far outweigh albanians and greeks, and who could with ease achieve political domination over the small turkish minority, were it not for the european fear of a slavic bosporus, and its union with russia. the cisalpine gauls of the wide po basin repeatedly threatened the existence of the smaller but more civilized etruscan and latin tribes. the latter, maturing their civilization under the concentrating influences of a limited area, at last dominated the larger celtic district to the north. but in the nineteenth century this district took the lead in the movement for a united italy, and now exercises the strong influence in italian affairs which belongs to it by reason of its superior area, location, and more vigorous race. [see map of italy's population, chap. xvi.] the broad territorial base of the anglo-saxon race, slavs, germans and chinese promises a long ethnic life, whereas the narrow foothold, of the danes, dutch, greeks, and the turks in europe carries with it the persistent risk of conquest and absorption by a larger neighbor. such a fate repeatedly threatens these people, but has thus far been warded off, now by the protection of an isolating environment, now by the diplomatic intervention of some not disinterested power. the scattered fragments of osman stock in european turkey, which constitute only about ten per cent. of the total population, and are almost lost in the surrounding mass of slavs and greeks, provide a poor guarantee for the duration of the race and their empire on european soil. on the other hand, the osmani who are compactly spread over the whole interior of asia minor have a better prospect of national survival. [sidenote: area and literature.] an important factor in the preservation of national consciousness and the spread of national influence is always a national language and literature. this principle is recognized by the government of the czar in its russification of finland,[ ] poland, and the german centers in the baltic provinces, when it substitutes russian for the local language in education, law courts and all public offices, and restricts the publication of local literature. the survival of a language and its literature is intimately connected with area and the population which that area can support. the extinction of small, weak peoples has its counterpart in the gradual elimination of dialects and languages having restricted territorial sway, whose fate is foreshadowed by the unequal competition of their literatures with those of numerically stronger peoples. an author writing in a language like the danish, intelligible to only a small public, can expect only small returns for his labor in either influence, fame, or fortune. the return may be so small that it is prohibitive. hence we find the danish hans christian andersen and the norwegian ibsen writing in german, as do also many scandinavian scientists. georg brandes abandons his native danish and seeks a larger public by making english the language of his books. the incentive to follow a literary career, especially if it includes making a living, is relatively weak among a people of only two or three millions, but gains enormously among large and cultivated peoples, like the seventy million german-speaking folk of europe, or the one hundred and thirty millions of english speech scattered over the world. the common literature which represents the response to this incentive forms a bond of union among the various branches of these peoples, and may be eventually productive of political results. [sidenote: small geographic base of primitive societies.] growth has been the law of human societies since the birth of man's gregarious instinct. it has manifested itself in the formation of ever larger social groups, appropriating ever larger areas. it has registered itself geographically in the protrusion of ethnic boundaries, economically in more intensive utilization of the land, socially in increasing density of population, and politically in the formation of ever larger national territorial aggregates. the lowest stages of culture reveal small tribes, growing very slowly or at times not at all, disseminated over areas small in themselves but large for the number of their inhabitants, hence sparsely populated. the size of these primitive holdings depends upon the natural food supply yielded by the region. they assume wide dimensions but support groups of only a few families on the chill rocky coasts of tierra del fuego or the sterile plains of central australia; and they contract to smaller areas dotted with fairly populous villages in the fertile districts of the middle congo or bordering the rich coast fishing grounds of southern alaska and british columbia. but always land is abundant, and is drawn upon in widening circles when the food supply becomes inadequate or precarious. [sidenote: influence of small confined areas.] where nature presents barriers to far-ranging food-quests, man is forced to advance from the natural to the artificial basis of subsistence; he leaves the chase for the sedentary life of agriculture. extensive activities are replaced by intensive ones, wide dispersal of tribal energies by concentration. the extensive forests and grassy plains of the americas supported abundant animal life and therefore afforded conditions for the long survival of the hunting tribes; nature put no pressure upon man to coerce him to progress, except in the small mountain-walled valleys of peru and mexico, and in the restricted districts of isthmian central america. here game was soon exhausted. agriculture became an increasing source of subsistence and was forced by limited area out of its migratory or _essartage_ stage of development into the sedentary. as fields become fixed in such enclosed areas, so do the cultivators. here first population becomes relatively dense, and thereby necessitates more elaborate social and political organization in order to prevent inner friction. the geographically enclosed district has the further advantage that its inhabitants soon come to know it out to its boundaries, understand its possibilities, exploit to the utmost its resources, and because of the closeness of their relationship to it and to each other come to develop a conscious national spirit. the population, since it cannot easily spread beyond the nature-set limits, increases in density. the members of the compact society react constantly upon one another and exchange the elements of civilization. thus the small territory is characterized by the early maturity of a highly individualized civilization, which then, with inherent power of expansion, proceeds to overleap its narrow borders and conquer for itself a wide sphere of influence. hand in hand with this process goes political concentration, which aids the subsequent expansion. therefore islands, oases, slender coastal strips and mountain valleys repeatedly show us small peoples who, in their seclusion, have developed a tribal or national consciousness akin in its intensity to clan feeling. this national feeling is conspicuous in the english, japanese, swiss and dutch, as it was in the ancient city-states of greece. the accompanying civilization, once brought to maturity in its narrow breeding place, spreads under favorable geographic conditions over a much larger space, which the accumulated race energy takes for its field of activity. the flower which thus early blooms may soon fade and decay; nevertheless the geographically evolved national consciousness persists and retains a certain power of renewal. this has been demonstrated in the italians and modern greeks, in the danes and the icelanders. in the jews it has resisted exile from their native land, complete political dissolution, and dispersal over the habitable world. long and often as italy had to submit to foreign dominion, the idea of the national unity of the peninsula was never lost. [sidenote: the process of territorial growth.] in vast unobstructed territories, on the other hand, the evil of wide, sparse dispersal is checked only by natural increase of population and the impinging of one growing people upon another, which restricts the territory of either. when the boundary waste between the small scattered tribal groups has been occupied, encroachment from the side of the stronger follows; then comes war, incorporation of territory, amalgamation of race and coalescence, or the extinction of the weaker. the larger people, commanding its larger area, expands numerically and territorially, and continues to throw out wider frontiers, till it meets insurmountable natural obstacles or the confines of a people strong as itself. after a pause, during which the existing area is outgrown and population begins to press harder upon the limits of subsistence, the weight of a nation is thrown against the barrier, be it physical or political. in consequence, the old boundaries are enlarged, either by successful encroachment upon a neighbor, or, in case of defeat, by incorporation in the antagonist's territory. but even defeat brings participation in a larger geographic base, wider coöperation, a greater sum total of common national interests, and especially the protection of the larger social group. the transvaal and the orange free state find compensation for the loss of independence by their incorporation in the british empire, even if gradual absorption be the destiny of the boer stock. [sidenote: area and growth.] of adjacent areas equally advanced in civilization and in density of population but of unequal size, the larger must dominate because its people have the resistance and aggressive force inherent in the larger mass. this is the explanation of the absorption of so many colonies and conquerors by the native races, when no great cultural abyss or race antagonism separates the two. the long rule of the scandinavians in the hebrides ended in their absorption by the local gaelic stock, simply because their settlements were too small and the number of their women too few. the lowlands on the eastern coasts of scotland accommodated larger bands of norse, who even to-day can be distinguished from the neighboring scotch of the highlands; but on the rugged western coast, where only small and widely separated deltas at the heads of the fiords offered a narrow foothold to the invaders, their scattered ethnic islands were soon inundated by the contiguous population.[ ] the teutonic elements, both english and norwegian, which for centuries filtered into ireland, have been swallowed up in the native celtic stock, except where religious antagonisms served to keep the two apart. so the dominant anglo-saxon population of england was a solvent for the norman french, and the densely packed humanity of china for their manchu conquerors. on the other hand, extensive areas, like early north america and australia, sparsely inhabited by small scattered groups who have only an attenuated connection with their soil and therefore only a feeble hold upon their land, cannot compete with small areas, if these have the dense and evenly distributed population which ensures a firm tenure of the land. small, geographically confined areas foster this compact and systematic occupation on the part of their inhabitants, since they put barriers in the way of precipitate and disintegrating expansion; and this characteristic compensates in some degree and for a period at least for the weakness otherwise inherent in the narrow territorial base. [sidenote: historical advance from small to large areas.] every race, people, and state has had the history of progress from a small to a large area. all have been small in their youth. the bit of land covered by roma quadrata has given language, customs, laws, culture, and a faint strain of latin blood to nations now occupying half a million square miles of europe. the arab inundation, which flooded the vast domain of the caliphs, traced back to that spring of ethnic and religious energy which welled up in the arid plain of mecca and the arabian oases. the world-wide maritime expansion of the english-speaking people had its starting point in the lowlands of the elbe. the makers of empire in northern china were cradled in the small highland valley of the wei river. the little principality of moscow was the nucleus of the russian empire. penetration into a people's remote past comes always upon some limited spot which has nurtured the young nation, and reveals the fact that territorial expansion is the incontestible feature of their history. this advance from small to large characterizes their political area, the scope of their trade relations, their spheres of activity, the size of their known world, and finally the sway of their religions. every religion in its early stages of development bears the stamp of a narrow origin, traceable to the circumscribed habitat of the primitive social group, or back of that to the small circle of lands constituting the known world whence it sprang. first it is tribal, and makes a distinction between my god and thy god; but even when it has expanded to embody a universal system, it still retains vestigial forms of its narrow past. jerusalem, mecca and rome remain the sacred goal of pilgrimages, while the vaster import of a monotheistic faith and the higher ethical teaching of the brotherhood of man have encircled the world. when religion, language and race have spread, in their wake comes the growing state. everywhere the political area tends gradually to embrace the whole linguistic area of which it forms a part, and finally the yet larger race area. only the diplomacy of united europe has availed to prevent france from absorbing french-speaking belgium, or russia from incorporating into her domain that vast slav region extending from the drave and danube almost to the gulf of corinth, now parcelled out among seven different states, but bound to the muscovite empire by ties of related speech, by race and religion. the detachment of the various danubian principalities from the uncongenial dominion of the turks, though a dismemberment of a large political territory and a seeming backward step, can be regarded only as a leisurely preliminary for a new territorial alignment. history's movements are unhurried; the backward step may prepare for the longer leap forward. it is impossible to resist the conclusion that the vigorous, reorganized german empire will one day try to incorporate the germanic areas found in austria, switzerland and holland. [sidenote: gradations in area and in development.] throughout the life of any people, from its foetal period in some small locality to its well rounded adult era marked by the occupation and organization of a wide national territory, gradations in area mark gradations of development. and this is true whether we consider the compass of their commercial exchanges, the scope of their maritime ventures, the extent of their linguistic area, the measure of their territorial ambitions, or the range of their intellectual interests and human sympathies. from land to ethics, the rule holds good. peoples in the lower stages of civilization have contracted spacial ideas, desire and need at a given time only a limited territory, though they may change that territory often; they think in small linear terms, have a small horizon, a small circle of contact with others, a small range of influence, only tribal sympathies; they have an exaggerated conception of their own size and importance, because their basis of comparison is fatally limited. with a mature, widespread people like the english or french, all this is different; they have made the earth their own, so far as possible. just because of this universal tendency towards the occupation of ever larger areas and the formation of vaster political aggregates, in making a sociological or political estimate of different peoples, we should never lose sight of the fact that all racial and national characteristics which operate towards the absorption of more land and impel to political expansion are of fundamental value. a ship of state manned by such a crew has its sails set to catch the winds of the world. [sidenote: preliminaries to ethnic and political expansion.] territorial expansion is always preceded by an extension of the circle of influence which a people exerts through its traders, its deep-sea fishermen, its picturesque marauders and more respectable missionaries, and earlier still by a widening of its mere geographical horizon through fortuitous or systematic exploration. the northmen visited the coasts of britain and france first as pirates, then as settlers. norman and breton fishermen were drawing in their nets on the grand bank of newfoundland thirty years before cartier sailed up the st. lawrence. japanese fishing boats preceded japanese colonists to the coasts of yezo. trading fleets were the forerunners of the greek colonies along the black sea and mediterranean, and of phoenician settlements in north africa, sicily and spain. it was in the wake of trapper and fur trader that english and american pioneer advanced across our continent to the pacific; just as in french canada jesuit priest and voyageur opened the way for the settler. religious propaganda was yoked with greed of conquest in the campaigns of cortez and pizarro. modern statesmen pushing a policy of expansion are alive to the diplomatic possibilities of missionaries endangered or their property destroyed. they find a still better asset to be realized on territorially in enterprising capitalists settled among a weaker people, by whom their property is threatened or overtaxed, or their trade interfered with. the british acquisition of hongkong in followed a war with china to prevent the exclusion of the english opium trade from the celestial empire. the annexation of the transvaal resulted from the expansion of english capitalists to the rand mines, much as the advance of the united states flag to the hawaiian islands followed american sugar planters thither. american capital in the caribbean states of south america has repeatedly tried to embroil those countries with the united states government; and its increasing presence in cuba is undoubtedly ominous for the independence of the island, because with capital go men and influence. when the foreign investor is not a corporation but a government, the expanding commercial influence looks still more surely to tangible political results; because such national enterprises have at bottom a political motive, however much overlaid by an economic exterior. when the british government secured a working majority of the suez canal stock, it sealed the fate of egypt to become ultimately a province of the british empire. russian railroads in manchuria were the well-selected tool for the russification and final annexation of the province. the weight of american national enterprise in the panama canal zone sufficed to split off from the colombian federation a peripheral state, whose detachment is obviously a preliminary for eventual incorporation into united states domain. the efforts of the german government to secure from the sultan of turkey railroad concessions through asia minor for german capitalists has aroused jealousy in financial and political circles in st. petersburg, and prompted a demand from the russian foreign office upon turkey for the privilege of constructing railroads through eastern asia minor.[ ] [sidenote: significance of sphere of activity or influence.] beyond the home of a people lies its sphere of influence or activities, which in the last analysis may be taken as a protest against the narrowness of the domestic habitat. it represents the larger area which the people wants and which in course of time it might advantageously occupy or annex. it embodies the effort to embrace more varied and generous natural conditions, whereby the struggle for subsistence may be made less hard. finally, it is an expression of the law that for peoples and races the struggle for existence is at bottom a struggle for space. geography sees various forms of the historical movement as the struggle for space in which humanity has forever been engaged. in this struggle the stronger peoples have absorbed ever larger portions of the earth's surface. hence, through continual subjection to new conditions here or there and to a greater sum total of various conditions, they gain in power by improved variation, as well as numerically by the enlargement of their geographic base. the anglo-saxon branch of the teutonic stock has, by its phenomenal increase, overspread sections of whole continents, drawn from their varied soils nourishment for its finest efflorescence, and thereby has far out-grown the germanic branch by which, at the start, it was overshadowed. the fact that the british empire comprises , , square kilometers or exactly one-fifth of the total land area of the earth, and that the russian empire contains over one-seventh, are full of encouragement for anglo-saxon and slav, but contain a warning to the other peoples of the world. [sidenote: nature of expansion in new and old countries.] the large area which misleads a primitive folk into excessive dispersion and the dissipation of their tribal powers, offers to an advanced people, who in some circumscribed habitat have learned the value of land, the freest conditions for their development. a wide, unobstructed territory, occupied by a sparse population of wandering tribes capable of little resistance to conquest or encroachment, affords the most favorable conditions to an intruding superior race. such conditions the chinese found in mongolia and manchuria, the russians in siberia, and european colonists in the americas, australia and africa. almost unlimited space and undeveloped resources met their land hunger and their commercial ambition. their numerical growth was rapid, both by the natural increase reflecting an abundant food supply, and by accessions from the home countries. expansion advanced by strides. in contrast to this care-free, easy development in a new land, growth in old countries like europe and the more civilized parts of asia means a slow protrusion of the frontier, made at the cost of blood; it means either the absorption of the native people, because there are no unoccupied corners into which they can be driven, or the imposition upon them of an unwelcome rule exercised by alien officials. witness the advance of the russians into poland and finland, of the germans into poland and alsace-lorraine, of the japanese into korea, and of the english into crowded india. the rapid unfolding of the geographical horizon in a young land communicates to an expanding people new springs of mobility, new motives for movement out and beyond the old confines, new goals holding out new and undreamt of benefits. life becomes fresh, young, hopeful. old checks to natural increase of population are removed. emigrant bands beat out new trails radiating from the old home. they go on individual initiative or state-directed enterprises; but no matter which, the manifold life in the far-away periphery reacts upon the center to vivify and rejuvenate it. [sidenote: relation of ethnic to political expansion.] the laws of the territorial growth of peoples and of states are in general the same. the main differences between the two lies in the fact that ethnic expansion, since it depends upon natural increase, is slow, steady, and among civilized peoples is subject to slight fluctuations; while the frontiers of a state, after a long period of permanence, can suddenly be advanced by conquest far beyond the ethnic boundaries, often, however, only to be as quickly lost again. therefore the important law may be laid down, that the more closely the territorial growth of a state keeps pace with that of its people, and the more nearly the political area coincides with the ethnic, the greater is the strength and stability of the state. this is the explanation of the vigor and permanence of the early english colonies in america. the slow westward protrusion of their frontier of continuous settlement within the boundaries of the allegheny mountains formed a marked contrast to the wide sweep of french voyageur camp and lonely trading-station in the canadian forests, and even more to the handful of priests and soldiers who for three centuries kept an unsteady hold upon the spanish empire in the western hemisphere. the political advance of the united states across the continent from the alleghenies to the mississippi, thence to the rocky mountains, and thence to the pacific was always preceded by bands of enterprising settlers, who planted themselves beyond the frontier and beckoned to the flag to follow. the great empires of antiquity were enlarged mechanically by conquest and annexation. they were mosaics, not growths. the cohesive power of a common ethnic bond was lacking; so was the modern substitute for this to be found in close economic interdependence maintained by improved methods of communication. hence these empires soon broke up again along lines of old geographic and ethnic cleavage. for rome, the cementing power of the mediterranean and the fairly unified civilization which this enclosed sea had been evolving since the dawn of cretan and phoenician trade, compensated in part for the lack of common speech and national ideals throughout the political domain. but the empire proved in the end to be merely a mosaic, easily broken. [sidenote: relation of people and state to political boundary.] the second point of difference between the expansion of peoples and of states lies in their respective relation to the political frontier. this confines the state like a stockade, fixing the territorial limits of its administrative functions; but for the subjects of the state it is an imaginary line, powerless to check the range of their activities, except when a military or tariff war is going on. the state boundary, if it coincides with a strong natural barrier, may for decades or even centuries succeed in confining a growing people, if these, by intelligent economy, increase the productivity of the soil whose area they are unable to extend. yet the time comes even for these when they must break through the barriers and secure more land, either by foreign conquest or colonization. the classic example of the confinement of a people within its political boundaries is the long isolation of japan from to . the pent-up forces there accumulated, in a population which had doubled itself in the interval and which by hard schooling was made receptive to every improved economic method, manifest themselves in the insistent demand for more land which has permeated all the recent policy of japan. but the history of japan is exceptional. the rule is that the growing people slowly but continually overflow their political boundary, which then advances to cover the successive flood plains of the national inundation, or yet farther to anticipate the next rise. this has been the history of germany in its progress eastward across the elbe, the oder, the vistula and the niemen. the dream of a greater empire embraces all the german-speaking people from switzerland, tyrol and steiermark to those outlying groups in the baltic provinces of russia and the related offshoot in holland.[ ] [see map page .] though political boundaries, especially where they coincide with natural barriers, may restrict the territorial growth of a people, on the other hand, political expansion is always a stimulus to racial expansion, because it opens up more land and makes the conditions of life easier for an increasing people, by relieving congestion in the older areas. more than this, it materially aids while guiding and focusing the out-going streams of population. thus it keeps them concentrated for the reinforcement of the nation in the form of colonies, and tends to reduce the political evil of indiscriminate emigration, by which the streams are dissipated and diverted to strengthen other nations. witness the active internal colonization practiced by germany in her polish territory,[ ] by russia in siberia, in an effort to make the ethnic boundary hurry after and overtake the political frontier. [sidenote: expansion of civilization.] just as the development of a people and state is marked by advance from small to ever larger areas, so is that of a civilization. it may originate in a small district; but more mobile than humanity itself, it does not remain confined to one spot, but passes on from individual to individual and from people to people. greece served only as a garden in which the flowers of oriental and egyptian civilization were temporarily transplanted. as soon as they were modified and adapted to their new conditions, their seed spread over all europe. the narrow area of ancient greece, which caused the early dissemination of its people over the mediterranean basin, and thereby weakened the political force of the country at home, was an important factor in the wide distribution of its culture. commerce, colonization and war are vehicles of civilization, where favorable geographic conditions open the way for trade in the wake of the victorious army. the imposition of roman dominion meant everywhere the gift of roman civilization. the crusaders brought back from syria more than their scars and their trophies. every european factory in china, every hudson bay company post in the wilds of northern canada, every arab settlement in savage africa is surrounded by a sphere of trade; and this in turn is enclosed in a wider sphere of influence through which its civilization, though much diluted, has filtered. the higher the civilization, the wider the area which it masters. the manifold activities of a civilized people demand a large sphere of influence, and include, furthermore, improved means of communication which enable it to control such a sphere. even a relatively low civilization may spread over a vast area if carried by a highly mobile people. mohammedanism, which embodies a cultural system as well as a religion, found its vehicles of dispersal in the pastoral nomads occupying the arid land of northern africa and western asia, and thus spread from the senegal river to chinese turkestan. it was carried by the maritime arabs of oman and yemen to malacca and sumatra, where it was communicated to the seafaring malays. these island folk, who approximate the most highly civilized peoples in their nautical efficiency, distributed the meager elements of mohammedan civilization over the malay archipelago. [see map of the religions of the eastern hemisphere, in chapter xiv.] [sidenote: cultural advantages of large political area.] the larger the area which a civilized nation occupies, the more numerous are its points of contact with other peoples, and the less likely is there to be a premature crystallization of its civilization from isolation. extension of area on a large scale means eventually extension of the seaboard and access to those multiform international relations which the ocean highway confers. the world wide expansion of the british empire has given it at every outward step wider oceanic contact and eventually a cosmopolitan civilization. the same thing is true of the other great colonial empires of history, whether portuguese, spanish, dutch or french; and even of the great continental empires, like russia and the united states. the russian advance across siberia, like the american advance across the rockies, meant access to the pacific, and a modification of its civilization on those remote shores. a large area means varied vicinal locations and hence differentiation of civilization, at least along the frontier. how rapidly the vivifying influences of this contact will penetrate into the bulk of the interior depends upon size, location as scattered or compact, and general geographic conditions like navigable rivers or mountains, which facilitate or bar intercourse with that interior. the russian empire has eleven different nations, speaking even more different languages, on its western and southern frontiers. its long line of asiatic contact will inevitably give to the european civilization transplanted hither in russian colonies a new and perhaps not unfruitful development. the siberian citizen of future centuries may compare favorably with his brother in moscow. japan, even while impressing its civilization upon the reluctant koreans, will see itself modified by the contact and its culture differentiated by the transplanting; but the content of japanese civilization will be increased by every new variant thus formed. [sidenote: politico-economic advantages.] the larger the area brought under one political control, the less the handicap of internal friction and the greater its economic independence. vast territory has enabled the united states to maintain with advantage a protective tariff, chiefly because the free trade within its own borders was extensive. the natural law of the territorial growth of states and peoples means an extension of the areas in which peace and coöperation are preserved, a relative reduction of frontiers and of the military forces necessary to defend them,[ ] diminution in the sum total of conflicts, and a wider removal of the border battle fields. in place of the continual warfare between petty tribes which prevailed in north america four hundred years ago, we have to-day the peaceful competition of the three great nations which have divided the continent among them. the political unification of the mediterranean basin under the roman empire restricted wars to the remote land frontiers. the foreign wars of russia, china, and the united states in the past century have been almost wholly confined to the outskirts of their big domains, merely scratching the rim and leaving the great interior sound and undisturbed. russia's immense area is the military ally on which she can most surely count. the long road to moscow converted napoleon's victory into a defeat; and the resistless advance of the japanese from port arthur to the sungari river led only to a peace robbed of the chief fruits of victory. the numerous wars of the british empire have been limited to this or that corner, and have scarcely affected the prosperity of the great remainder, so that their costs have been readily borne and their wounds rapidly healed. [sidenote: political area and the national horizon.] the territorial expansion of peoples and states is attended by an evolution of their spacial conceptions and ideals. primitive peoples, accustomed to dismemberment in small tribal groups, bear all the marks of territorial contraction. their geographical horizon is usually fixed by the radius of a few days' march. inter-tribal trade and intercourse reach only rudimentary development, under the prevailing conditions of mutual antagonism and isolation, and hence contribute little to the expansion of the horizon. knowing only their little world, such primitive groups overestimate the size and importance of their own territory, and are incapable of controlling an extensive area. this is the testimony of all travellers who have observed native african states. though the race or stock distribution may be wide, like that of the athapascan and algonquin indians, and their war paths long, like the campaigns of the iroquois against the cherokees of the tennessee river, yet the unit of tribal territory permanently occupied is never large. [sidenote: national estimates of area.] small naturally defined regions, which take the lead in historical development because they counteract the primitive tendency towards excessive dispersal, are in danger of teaching too well their lesson of concentration. in course of time geographic enclosure begins to betray its limitations. the extent of a people's territory influences their estimate of area _per se_, determines how far land shall be made the basis of their national purposes, fixes the territorial scale of their conquests and their political expansion. this is a conspicuous psychological effect of a narrow local environment. a people embedded for centuries in a small district measure area with a short yardstick. the ancient greeks devised a philosophic basis for the advantages of the small state, which is extolled in the writings of plato and aristotle.[ ] aristotle wanted it small enough, "to be comprehended at one glance of the statesman's eye." plato's ideal democracy, by rigid laws limiting the procreative period of women and men and providing for the death of children born out of this period or out of wedlock, restricted its free citizens to , heads of families,[ ] all living within reach of the agora, and all able to judge from personal knowledge of a candidate's fitness for office. this condition was possible only in dwarf commonwealths like the city-states of the hellenic world. the failure of the greeks to build up a political structure on a territorial scale commensurate with their cultural achievements and with the wide sphere of their cultural influence can be ascribed chiefly to their inability to discard the contracted territorial ideas engendered by geographic and political dismemberment. the little judean plateau, which gave birth to a universal religion, clung with provincial bigotry to the narrow tribal creed and repudiated the larger faith of christ, which found its appropriate field in mediterranean europe. [sidenote: estimates of area in small maritime states.] maritime peoples of small geographic base have a characteristic method of expansion which reflects their low valuation of area. their limited amount of arable soil necessitates reliance upon foreign sources of supply, which are secured by commerce. hence they found trading stations or towns among alien peoples on distant coasts, selecting points like capes or inshore islets which can be easily defended and which at the same time command inland or maritime routes of trade. the prime geographic consideration is location, natural and vicinal. the area of the trading settlement is kept as small as possible to answer its immediate purpose, because it can be more easily defended.[ ] such were the colonies of the ancient phoenicians and greeks in the mediterranean, of the medieval arabs and the portuguese on the east coast of africa and in india. this method reached its ultimate expression in point of small area, seclusion, and local autonomy, perhaps, in the hanse factories in norway and russia.[ ] but all these widespread nuclei of expansion remained barren of permanent national result, because they were designed for a commercial end, and ignored the larger national mission and surer economic base found in acquisition of territory. hence they were short-lived, succumbing to attack or abandoned on the failure of local resources, which were ruthlessly exploited. [sidenote: limitations of small territorial conceptions.] that precocious development characteristic of small naturally defined areas shows its inherent weakness in the tendency to accept the enclosed area as a nature-made standard of national territory. the earlier a state fixes its frontier without allowance for growth, the earlier comes the cessation of its development. therefore the geographical nurseries of civilization were infected with germs of decay. such was the history of egypt, of yemen, of greece, crete, and phoenicia. these are the regions which, as carl ritter says, have given the whole fruit of their existence to the world for its future use, have conferred upon the world the trust which they once held, afterward to recede, as it were, from view.[ ] they were great in the past, and now they belong to those immortal dead whose greatness has been incorporated in the world's life--"the choir invisible" of the nations. [sidenote: evolution of territorial policies.] the advance from a small, self-dependent community to interdependent relations with other peoples, then to ethnic expansion or union of groups to form a state or empire is a great turning point in any history. thereby the clan or tribe discards the old paralyzing seclusion of the primitive society and the narrow habitat, and joins that march of ethnic, political and cultural progress which has covered larger and larger areas, and by increase of common purpose has cemented together ever greater aggregates. nothing is more significant in the history of the english in america than the rapid evolution of their spacial ideals, their abandonment of the small territorial conception brought with them from the mother country and embodied, for example, in that munificent land grant, fifty by a hundred miles in extent, of the first virginia charter in , and their progress to schemes of continental expansion. every accession of territory to the thirteen colonies and to the republic gave an impulse to growth. expansion kept pace with opportunity. only in small and isolated new england did the contracted provincial point of view persist. it manifested itself in a narrow policy of concentration and curtailment, which acquiesced in the occlusion of the mississippi river to the trans-allegheny settlements by spain in , and which later opposed the purchase of the louisiana territory[ ] and the acquisition of the philippines. all peoples who have achieved wide expansion have developed in the process vast territorial policies. this is true of the pastoral nomads who in different epochs have inundated europe, northern africa and the peripheral lands of asia, and of the great colonial nations who in a few decades have brought continents under their dominion. in nomadic hordes it is based upon habitual mobility and the possession of herds, which are at once incentive and means for extending the geographical horizon; but it suffers from the evanescent character of nomadic political organization, and the tendency toward dismemberment bred in all pastoral life by dispersal over scattered grazing grounds. hence the empires set up by nomad conquerors like the saracens and tartars soon fall apart. [sidenote: colonial expansion.] among highly civilized agricultural and industrial peoples, on the other hand, a vast territorial policy is at once cause and effect of national growth; it is at once an innate tendency and a conscious purpose tenaciously followed. it makes use of trade and diplomacy, of scientific invention and technical improvement, to achieve its aims. it becomes an accepted mark of political vigor and an ideal even among peoples who have failed to enlarge their narrow base. the model of russian expansion on the pacific was quickly followed by awakened japan, stirred out of her insular complacence by the threat of muscovite encroachment. germany and italy, each strengthened and enlarged as to national outlook by recent political unification, have elbowed their way into the crowded colonial field. the french, though not expansionists as individuals, have an excellent capacity for collective action when directed by government. the officials whom louis xiv sent to canada in the seventeenth century executed large schemes of empire reflecting the dilation of french frontiers in europe. these ideals of expansion seem to have been communicated by the power of example, or the threat of danger in them, to the english colonists in virginia and pennsylvania, and later to washington and jefferson. [sidenote: the mind of colonials.] the best type of colonial expansion is found among the english-speaking people of america, australia and south africa. their spacial ideas are built on a big scale. distances do not daunt them. the man who could conceive a cape-to-cairo railroad, with all the schemes of territorial aggrandizement therein implied, had a mind that took continents for its units of measure; and he found a fitting monument in a province of imperial proportions whereon was inscribed his name. bryce tells us that in south africa the social circle of "the best people" includes pretoria, johannesburg, kimberley, bloemfontein and cape town--a social circle with a diameter of a thousand miles![ ] the spirit of our western frontier, so long as there was a frontier, was the spirit of movement, of the conquest of space. it found its expression in the history of the wilderness road and the oregon trail. when the center of population in the united states still lingered on the shore of chesapeake bay, and the frontier of continuous settlement had not advanced beyond the present western boundary of virginia and pennsylvania, the spacious mind of thomas jefferson foresaw the mississippi valley as the inevitable and necessary possession of the american people, and looked upon the trade of the far-off columbia river as a natural feeder of the mississippi commerce.[ ] emerson's statement that the vast size of the united states is reflected in the big views of its people applies not only to political policy, which in the monroe doctrine for the first time in history has embraced a hemisphere; nor is it confined to the big scale of their economic processes. emerson had in mind rather their whole conception of national mission and national life, especially their legislation,[ ] for which he anticipated larger and more catholic aims than obtain in europe, hampered as it is by countless political and linguistic boundaries and barred thereby from any far-reaching unity of purpose and action. canada, british south africa, australia and the united states, though widely separated, have in common a certain wide outlook upon life, a continental element in the national mind, bred in their people by their generous territories. the american recognizes his kinship of mind with these colonial englishmen as something over and above mere kinship of race. it consists in their deep-seated common democracy, the democracy born in men who till fields and clear forests, not as plowmen and wood-cutters, but as makers of nations. it consists in identical interests and points of view in regard to identical problems growing out of the occupation and development of new and almost boundless territories. race questions, paucity of labor, highways and railroads, immigration, combinations of capital, excessive land holdings, and illegal appropriation of land on a large scale, are problems that meet them all. the monopolistic policy of the united states in regard to american soil as embodied in the monroe doctrine, and the expectation lurking in the mental background of every american that his country may eventually embrace the northern continent, find their echo in australia's plans for wider empire in the pacific. the commonwealth of australia has succeeded in getting into its own hands the administration of british new guinea ( , square miles.) it has also secured from the imperial government the unusual privilege of settling the relations between itself and the islands of the pacific, because it regards the pacific question as the one question of foreign policy in which its interests are profoundly involved. in the same way the british in south africa, sparsely scattered though they are, feel an imperative need of further expansion, if their far-reaching schemes of commerce and empire are to be realized. [sidenote: colonials as road builders.] the effort to annihilate space by improved means of communication has absorbed the best intellects and energies of expanding peoples. the ancient roman, like the incas of peru, built highways over every part of the empire, undaunted by natural obstacles like the alps and andes. modern expansionists are railroad builders. witness the long list of strategic lines, constructed or subsidized by various governments during the past half century--the union pacific, central pacific, canadian pacific, trans-siberian, cairo-khartoum, cape town-zambesi, and now the proposed trans-saharan road, designed to unite the mediterranean and guinea colonies of french africa. the equipment of the american roads, with their heavy rails, giant locomotives, and enormous freight cars, reveals adaptation to a commerce that covers long distances between strongly differentiated areas of production, and that reflects the vast enterprises of this continental country. the same story comes out in the ocean vessels which serve the trade of the great lakes, and in the acres of coal barges in a single fleet which are towed down the ohio and mississippi by one mammoth steel tug. [sidenote: practical bent of colonials.] the abundant natural resources awaiting development in such big new countries give to the mind of the people an essentially practical bent. the rewards of labor are so great that the stimulus to effort is irresistible. economic questions take precedence of all others, divide political parties, and consume a large portion of national legislation; while purely political questions sink into the background. civilization takes on a material stamp, becomes that "dollar civilization" which is the scorn of the placid, paralyzed oriental or the old world european. the genius of colonials is essentially practical. impatience of obstacles, short cuts aiming at quick returns, wastefulness of land, of forests, of fuel, of everything but labor, have long characterized american activities. the problem of an inadequate labor supply attended the sudden accession of territory opened for european occupation by the discovery of america, and caused a sudden recrudescence of slavery, which as an industrial system had long been outgrown by europe. it has also given immense stimulus to invention, and to the formation of labor unions, which in the newest colonial fields, like australia and new zealand, have dominated the government and given a utopian stamp to legislation. yet underlying and permeating this materialism is a youthful idealism. transplanted to conditions of greater opportunity, the race becomes rejuvenated, abandons outgrown customs and outworn standards, experiences an enlargement of vision and of hope, gathers courage and energy equal to its task, manages somehow to hitch its wagon to a star. notes to chapter vi [ ] chamberlain and salisbury, geology, vol. iii, pp. - . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, p. and map p. . [ ] darwin, origin of species, vol. i, chap. iv, pp. - ; vol. ii, chap; xii, p. . new york, . h. w. conn, the method of evolution, p. . london and new york, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. - , - , - , - . [ ] ratzel, _der lebensraum, eine bio-geographische studie_, p. . tubingen, . [ ] d. g, brinton, races and peoples, pp. , - . philadelphia, . [ ] a. heilprin, geographical distribution of animals, pp. - . london, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, p. , maps pp. , . new york, . [ ] darwin, origin of species, vol. ii, chap. xii, pp. - . new york, . [ ] richard semon, in the australian bush, p. . london, . [ ] j.h.w. stuckenburg, sociology, vol. i, p. . new york and london, . [ ] e. g. semple, the influences of geographic environment on the lower st. lawrence. bulletin american geographical society, vol. xxxvi, pp. - . . [ ] b. limedorfer, finland's plight, _forum_, vol. xxxii, pp. - . [ ] eleventh census, report on the indians, p. . washington, . [ ] a.b. wallace, australasia, vol. i, p. . london, . [ ] w.s. barclay, life in terra del fuego, _the nineteenth century_, vol. , p. . january, . [ ] a.e. wallace, australasia, vol. i, pp. - . london, . [ ] darwin, origin of species, vol. ii, chap. xiii, p. . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, vol. ii, chap. xii, p. - . [ ] nesbit bain, finland and the tsar, _fortnightly review_, vol. , p. . e. limedorfer, finland's plight, _forum_, vol. , pp. - . [ ] archibald geikie, the scenery of scotland, pp. - . london, . [ ] railways in asia minor, _littell's living age_, vol. , p. . [ ] j. ellis barker, modern germany, pp. - . london, . [ ] the polish danger in prussia, _westminster review_, vol. , p. . [ ] heinrich von treitschke, _politik_, vol. i, pp. - . leipzig, . [ ] plato, critias, . aristotle, politics, book ii, chap. vii; book iv, chap. iv; book vii, chap. iv. [ ] plato, _de legibus_, book v, chaps. , , , . [ ] roscher, _national-oekonomik des handels und gewerbefleisses_, pp. - . stuttgart, . [ ] blanqui, history of political economy, pp. - . new york, . [ ] carl ritter, comparative geography, p. . new york, . [ ] e. c. semple, american history and its geographic conditions, pp. - , , . boston, . [ ] james bryce, impressions of south africa, pp. - . new york, . [ ] p. l. ford, writings of thomas jefferson, vol. viii. letter to john bacon, april , ; and confidential message to congress on the expedition to the pacific, january , . [ ] emerson, the young american, in nature addresses and lectures, pp. - . centenary edition, boston. chapter vii geographical boundaries [sidenote: the boundary zone in nature.] nature abhors fixed boundary lines and sudden transitions; all her forces combine against them. everywhere she keeps her borders melting, wavering, advancing, retreating. if by some cataclysm sharp lines of demarcation are drawn, she straightway begins to blur them by creating intermediate forms, and thus establishes the boundary zone which characterizes the inanimate and animate world. a stratum of limestone or sandstone, when brought into contact with a glowing mass of igneous rock, undergoes various changes due to the penetrating heat of the volcanic outflow, so that its surface is metamorphosed as far as that heat reaches. the granite cliff slowly deposits at its base a rock-waste slope to soften the sudden transition from its perpendicular surface to the level plain at its feet. the line where a land-born river meets the sea tends to become a sandbar or a delta, created by the river-borne silt and the wash of the waves, a form intermediate between land and sea, bearing the stamp of each, fluid in its outlines, ever growing by the persistent accumulation of mud, though ever subject to inundation and destruction by the waters which made it. the alluvial coastal hems that edge all shallow seas are such border zones, reflecting in their flat, low surfaces the dead level of the ocean, in their composition the solid substance of the land; but in the miniature waves imprinted on the sands and the billows of heaped-up boulders, the master workman of the deep leaves his mark. [see map page .] under examination, even our familiar term coastline proves to be only an abstraction with no corresponding reality in nature. everywhere, whether on margin of lake or gulf, the actual phenomenon is a coast zone, alternately covered and abandoned by the waters, varying in width from a few inches to a few miles, according to the slope of the land, the range of the tide and the direction of the wind. it has one breadth at the minimum or neap tide, but increases often two or three fold at spring tide, when the distance between ebb and flood is at its maximum. at the mouth of cook's inlet on the southern alaskan coast, where the range of tides is only eight feet, the zone is comparatively narrow, but widens rapidly towards the head of the inlet, where the tide rises twenty-three feet above the ebb line, and even to sixty-five feet under the influence of a heavy southwest storm. on flat coasts we are familiar with the wide frontier of salt marshes, that witness the border warfare of land and sea, alternate invasion and retreat. in low-shored estuaries like those of northern brittany and northwestern alaska, this amphibian girdle of the land expands to a width of four miles, while on precipitous coasts of tideless sea basins it contracts to a few inches. hence this boundary zone changes with every impulse of the mobile sea and with every varying configuration of the shore. movement and external conditions are the factors in its creation. they make something that is only partially akin to the two contiguous forms. here on their outer margins land and ocean compromise their physical differences, and this by a law which runs through animate and inanimate nature. wherever one body moves in constant contact with another, it is subjected to modifying influences which differentiate its periphery from its interior, lend it a transitional character, make of it a penumbra between light and shadow. the modifying process goes on persistently with varying force, and creates a shifting, changing border zone which, from its nature, cannot be delimited. for convenience' sake, we adopt the abstraction of a boundary line; but the reality behind this abstraction is the important thing in anthropo-geography. [sidenote: gradations in the boundary zone.] all so-called boundary lines with which geography has to do have this same character,--coastlines, river margins, ice or snow lines, limits of vegetation, boundaries of races or religions or civilizations, frontiers of states. they are all the same, stamped by the eternal flux of nature. beyond the solid ice-pack which surrounds the north pole is a wide girdle of almost unbroken drift ice, and beyond this is an irregular concentric zone of scattered icebergs which varies in breadth with season, wind and local current; a persistent decrease in continuity from solid pack to open sea. the line of perpetual snow on high mountains advances or retreats from season to season, from year to year; it drops low on chilly northern slopes and recedes to higher altitudes on a southern exposure; sends down long icy tongues in dark gorges, and leaves outlying patches of old snow in shaded spots or beneath a covering of rock waste far below the margin of the snow fields. in the struggle for existence in the vegetable world, the tree line pushes as far up the mountain as conditions of climate and soil will permit. then comes a season of fiercer storms, intenser cold and invading ice upon the peaks. havoc is wrought, and the forest drops back across a zone of border warfare--for war belongs to borders--leaving behind it here and there a dwarfed pine or gnarled and twisted juniper which has survived the onslaught of the enemy, now these are stragglers in the retreat, but are destined later in milder years to serve as outposts in the advance of the forest to recover its lost ground. here we have a border scene which is typical in nature--the belt of unbroken forest, growing thinner and more stunted toward its upper edge, succeeded by a zone of scattered trees, which may form a cluster perhaps in some sheltered gulch where soil has collected and north winds are excluded, and higher still the whitened skeleton of a tree to show how far the forest once invaded the domain of the waste. [sidenote: oscillating boundaries] the habitable area of the earth everywhere shows its boundaries to be peripheral zones of varying width, now occupied and now deserted, protruding or receding according to external conditions of climate and soil, and subject to seasonal change. the distribution of human life becomes sparser from the temperate regions toward the arctic circle, foreshadowing the unpeopled wastes of the ice-fields beyond. the outward movement from the tropics poleward halts where life conditions disappear, and there finds its boundary; but as life conditions advance or retreat with the seasons, so does that boundary. on the west coast of greenland the eskimo village of etah, at about the seventy-eighth parallel, marks the northern limit of permanent or winter settlement; but in summer the eskimo, in his kayak, follows the musk-ox and seal much farther north and there leaves his igloo to testify to the wide range of his poleward migration. numerous relics of the eskimo and their summer encampments have been found along lady franklin bay in northern grinnell land ( ° ' n. l.), but in the interior, on the outlet streams of lake hazen, explorers have discovered remains of habitations which had evidently, in previous ages, been permanently occupied.[ ] the murman coast of the kola peninsula has in summer a large population of russian fishermen and forty or more fishing stations; but when the catch is over at the end of august, and the arctic winter approaches, the stations are closed, and the three thousand fishermen return to their permanent homes on the shores of the white sea.[ ] farther east along this polar fringe of russia, the little village of charbarova, located on the jugor strait, is inhabited in summer by a number of samoyedes, who pasture their reindeer over on vaygats island, and by some russians and finns, who come from the white sea towns to trade with the samoyedes and incidentally to hunt and fish. but in the fall, when a new ice bridge across the strait releases the reindeer from their enclosed pasture on the island, the samoyedes withdraw southward, and the merchants with their wares to archangel and other points. this has gone on for centuries.[ ] on the briochov islands at the head of the yenisei estuary nordenskiold found a small group of houses which formed a summer fishing post in , but which was deserted by the end of august.[ ] [sidenote: altitude boundary zones.] an altitude of about five thousand feet marks the limit of village life in the alps; but during the three warm months of the year, the summer pastures at eight thousand feet or more are alive with herds and their keepers. the boundary line of human life moves up the mountains in the wake of spring and later hurries down again before the advance of winter. the himalayan and karakorum ranges show whole villages of temporary occupation, like the summer trading town of gartok at , feet on the caravan route from leh to lhassa, or shahidula ( , meters or , feet) on the road between leh and yarkand;[ ] but the boundary of permanent habitation lies several thousand feet below. comparable to these are the big hotels that serve summer stage-coach travel over the alps and rockies, but which are deserted when the first snow closes the passes. here a zone of altitude, as in the polar regions a zone of latitude, marks the limits of the habitable area. [sidenote: "wallace's line" a typical boundary zone.] the distribution of animals and races shows the limit of their movements or expansion. any boundary defining the limits of such movements can not from its nature be fixed, and hence can not be a line. it is always a zone. yet "wallace's line," dividing the oriental from the australian zoological realm, and running through macassar strait southward between bali and lombok, is a generally accepted dictum. the details of wallace's investigation, however, reveal the fact that this boundary is not a line, but a zone of considerable and variable width, enclosing the line on either side with a marginal belt of mixed character. though celebes, lying to the east of macassar strait, is included in the australian realm, it has lost so large a proportion of australian types of animals, and contains so many oriental types from the west, that wallace finds it almost impossible to decide on which side of the line it belongs.[ ] the oriental admixture extends yet farther east over the moluccas and timor. birds of javan or oriental origin, to the extent of thirty genera, have spread eastward well across wallace's line; some of these stop short at flores, and some reach even to timor,[ ] while australian cockatoos, in turn, have been seen on the west coast of bali but not in java, heilprin avoids the unscientific term line, because he finds his zoological realms divided by "transition regions," which are intermediate in animal types as they are in geographical location.[ ] wallace notes a similar "debatable land" in the rajputana desert east of the indus, which is the border district between the oriental and ethiopian realms.[ ] [sidenote: boundaries as limits of movements or expansion.] such boundaries mark the limits of that movement which is common to all animate things. every living form spreads until it meets natural conditions in which it can no longer survive, or until it is checked by the opposing expansion of some competing form. if there is a change either in the life conditions or in the strength of the competing forms, the boundary shifts. in the propitious climate of the genial period, plants and animals lived nearer to the north pole than at present; then they fell back before the advance of the ice sheet. the restless surface of the ocean denies to man a dwelling place; every century, however, the dutch are pushing forward their northern boundary by reclamation of land from the sea; but repeatedly they have had to drop back for a time when the water has again overwhelmed their hand-made territory. [sidenote: peoples as barriers.] the boundaries of race and state which are subjected to greatest fluctuations are those determined by the resistance of other peoples. the westward sweep of the slavs prior to eighth century carried them beyond the elbe into contact with the germans; but as these increased in numbers, outgrew their narrow territories and inaugurated a counter-movement eastward, the slavs began falling back to the oder, to the vistula, and finally to the niemen. though the mohawk valley opened an easy avenue of expansion westward for the early colonists of new york, the advance of settlements up this valley for several decades went on at only a snail's pace, because of the compact body of iroquois tribes holding this territory. in the unoccupied land farther south between the cumberland and ohio rivers the frontier went forward with leaps and bounds, pushed on by the expanding power of the young republic. [see map page .] anything which increases the expanding force of a people--the establishment of a more satisfactory government by which the national consciousness is developed, as in the american and french revolutions, the prosecution of a successful war by which popular energies are released from an old restraint, mere increase of population, or an impulse communicated by some hostile and irresistible force behind--all are registered in an advance of the boundary of the people in question and a corresponding retrusion of their neighbor's frontier. [sidenote: boundary zone as index of growth or decline.] the border district is the periphery of the growing or declining race or state. it runs the more irregularly, the greater are the variations in the external conditions as represented by climate, soil, barriers, and natural openings, according as these facilitate or obstruct advance. when it is contiguous with the border of another state or race, the two form a zone in which ascendency from one side or the other is being established. the boundary fluctuates, for equilibrium of the contending forces is established rarely and for only short periods. the more aggressive people throws out across this debatable zone, along the lines of least resistance or greatest attraction, long streamers of occupation; so that the frontier takes on the form of a fringe of settlement, whose interstices are occupied by a corresponding fringe of the displaced people. such was its aspect in early colonial america, where population spread up every fertile river valley across a zone of indian land; and such it is in northern russia to-day, where long narrow slav bands run out from the area of continuous slav settlement across a wide belt of mongoloid territory to the shores of the white sea and arctic ocean.[ ] [see maps pages and .] the border zone is further broadened by the formation of ethnic islands beyond the base line of continuous settlement, which then advances more or less rapidly, if expansion is unchecked, till it coalesces with these outposts, just as the forest line on the mountains may reach, under advantageous conditions, its farthest outlying tree. such ethnic peninsulas and islands we see in the early western frontiers of the united states from to , when that frontier was daily moving westward.[ ] [see map page .] [sidenote: breadth of the boundary zone.] the breadth of the frontier zone is indicative of the activity of growth on the one side and the corresponding decline on the other, because extensive encroachment in the same degree disintegrates the territory of the neighbor at whose cost such encroachment is made. a straight, narrow race boundary, especially if it is nearly coincident with a political boundary, points to an equilibrium of forces which means, for the time being at least, a cessation of growth. such boundaries are found in old, thickly populated countries, while the wide, ragged border zone belongs to new, and especially to colonial peoples. in the oldest and most densely populated seats of the germans, where they are found in the rhine valley, the boundaries of race and empire are straight and simple; but the younger, eastern border, which for centuries has been steadily advancing at the cost of the unequally matched slavs, has the ragged outline and sparse population of a true colonial frontier. between two peoples who have had a long period of growth behind them, the oscillations of the boundary decrease in amplitude, as it were, and finally approach a state of rest. each people tends to fill out its area evenly; every advance in civilization, every increase of population, increases the stability of their tenure, and hence the equilibrium of the pressure upon the boundary. therefore, in such countries, racial, linguistic and cultural boundaries tend to become simpler and straighter. [sidenote: the broad frontier zone of active expansion.] the growth is more apparent, or, in other words, the border zone is widest and most irregular, where a superior people intrudes upon the territory of an interior race. such was the broad zone of thinly scattered farms and villages amid a prevailing wilderness and hostile indian tribes which, in and , surrounded our trans-allegheny area of continuous settlement in a one to two hundred mile wide girdle. such has been the wide, mobile frontier of the russian advance in siberia and until recently in manchuria, which aimed to include within a dotted line of widely separated railway-guard stations, cossack barracks, and penal colonies, the vast territory which later generations were fully to occupy. similar, too, is the frontier of the dutch and english settlements in south africa, which has been pushed forward into the kaffir country--a broad belt of scattered cattle ranches and isolated mining hives, dropped down amid kaffir hunting and grazing lands. broader still was that shadowy belt of american occupation which for four decades immediately succeeding the purchase of louisiana stretched in the form of isolated fur-stations, lonely trappers' camps, and shifting traders' _rendezvous_ from the mississippi to the western slope of the rockies and the northern watershed of the missouri, where it met the corresponding nebulous outskirts of the far-away canadian state on the st. lawrence river. the same process with the same geographical character has been going on in the sahara, as the french since have been expanding southward from the foot of the atlas mountains in algeria toward timbuctoo at the cost of the nomad tuaregs. territory is first subdued and administered by the military till it is fully pacified. then it is handed over to the civil government. hence the advancing frontier consists of a military zone of administration, with a civil zone behind it, and a weaker wavering zone of exploration and scout work before it.[ ] lord curzon in his romanes lecture describes the northwest frontier of india as just such a three-ply border. [sidenote: economic factors in expanding frontiers.] the untouched resources of such new countries tempt to the widespread superficial exploitation, which finds its geographical expression in a broad, dilating frontier. here the man-dust which is to form the future political planet is thinly disseminated, swept outward by a centrifugal force. furthermore, the absence of natural barriers which might block this movement, the presence of open plains and river highways to facilitate it, and the predominance of harsh conditions of climate or soil rendering necessary a savage, extensive exploitation of the slender resources, often combine still further to widen the frontier zone. this was the case in french canada and till recent decades in siberia, where intense cold and abundant river highways stimulated the fur trade to the practical exclusion of all other activities, and substituted for the closely grouped, sedentary farmers with their growing families the wide-ranging trader with his indian or tunguse wife and his half-breed offspring. under harsh climatic conditions, the fur trade alone afforded those large profits which every infant colony must command in order to survive; and the fur trade meant a wide frontier zone of scattered posts amid a prevailing wilderness. the french in particular, by the possession of the st. lawrence and mississippi rivers, the greatest systems in america, were lured into the danger of excessive expansion, attenuated their ethnic element, and failed to raise the economic status of their wide border district, which could therefore offer only slight resistance to the spread of solid english settlement.[ ] yet more recently, the chief weakness of the russians in siberia and manchuria--apart from the corruption of the national government--was the weakness of a too remote and too sparsely populated frontier, and of a people whose inner development had not kept pace with their rate of expansion. [sidenote: value of barrier boundaries.] wasteful exploitation of a big territory is easier than the economical development of a small district. this is one line of least resistance which civilized man as well as savage instinctively follows, and which explains the tendency toward excessive expansion characteristic of all primitive and nascent peoples. for such peoples natural barriers which set bounds to this expansion are of vastly greater importance than they are for mature or fully developed peoples. the reason is this: the boundary is only the expression of the outward movement or growth, which is nourished from the same stock of race energy as is the inner development. either carried to an excess weakens or retards the other. if population begins to press upon the limits of subsistence, the acquisition of a new bit of territory obviates the necessity of applying more work and more intelligence to the old area, to make it yield subsistence for the growing number of mouths; the stimulus to adopt better economic methods is lost. therefore, natural boundaries drawn by mountain, sea and desert, serving as barriers to the easy appropriation of new territory, have for such peoples a far deeper significance than the mere determination of their political frontiers by physical features, or the benefit of protection. the land with the most effective geographical boundaries is a naturally defined region like korea, japan, china, egypt, italy, spain, france or great britain--a land characterized not only by exclusion from without through its encircling barriers, but also by the inclusion within itself of a certain compact group of geographic conditions, to whose combined influences the inhabitants are subjected and from which they cannot readily escape. this aspect is far more important than the mere protection which such boundaries afford. they are not absolutely necessary for the development of a people, but they give it an early start, accelerate the process, and bring the people to an early maturity; they stimulate the exploitation of all the local geographic advantages and resources, the formation of a vivid tribal or national consciousness and purpose, and concentrate the national energies when the people is ready to overleap the old barriers. the early development of island and peninsula peoples and their attainment of a finished ethnic and political character are commonplaces of history. the stories of egypt, crete and greece, of great britain and japan, illustrate the stimulus to maturity which emanates from such confining boundaries. the wall of the appalachians narrowed the westward horizon of the early english colonies in america, guarded them against the excessive expansion which was undermining the french dominion in the interior of the continent, set a most wholesome limit to their aims, and thereby intensified their utilization of the narrow land between mountains and sea. france, with its limits of growth indicated by the mediterranean, pyrenees, atlantic, channel, vosges, jura and western alps, found its period of adolescence shortened and, like great britain, early reached its maturity. nature itself set the goal of its territorial expansion, and by crystallizing the political ideal of the people, made that goal easier to reach, just as the dream of "united italy" realized in had been prefigured in contours drawn by alpine range and mediterranean shore-line. [sidenote: the sea as the absolute boundary] the area which a race or people occupies is the resultant of the expansive force within and the obstacles without, either physical or human. insurmountable physical obstacles are met where all life conditions disappear, as on the borders of the habitable world, where man is barred from the unpeopled wastes of polar ice-fields and unsustaining oceans. the frozen rim of arctic lands, the coastline of the continents, the outermost arable strip on the confines of the desert, the barren or ice-capped ridge of high mountain range, are all such natural boundaries which set more or less effective limits to the movement of peoples and the territorial growth of states. the sea is the only absolute boundary, because it alone blocks the continuous, unbroken expansion of a people. when the saxons of the lower elbe spread to the island of britain, a zone of unpeopled sea separated their new settlements from their native villages on the mainland. even the most pronounced land barriers, like the himalayas and hindu kush, have their passways and favored spots for short summer habitation, where the people from the opposite slopes meet and mingle for a season. sandy wastes are hospitable at times. when the spring rains on the mountains of abyssinia start a wave of moisture lapping over the edges of the nubian desert, it is immediately followed by a tide of arabs with their camels and herds, who make a wide zone of temporary occupation spread over the newly created grassland, but who retire in a few weeks before the desiccating heat of summer.[ ] [sidenote: natural boundaries as bases of ethnic and political boundaries.] nevertheless, all natural features of the earth's surface which serve to check, retard or weaken the expansion of peoples, and therefore hold them apart, tend to become racial or political boundaries; and all present a zone-like character. the wide ice-field of the scandinavian alps was an unpeopled waste long before the political boundary was drawn along it. "it has not in reality been a definite natural _line_ that has divided norway from her neighbour on the east; it has been a _band_ of desert land, up to hundreds of miles in width. so utterly desolate and apart from the area of continuous habitation has this been, that the greater part of it, the district north of trondhjem, was looked upon even as recently as the last century as a common district. only nomadic lapps wandered about in it, sometimes taxed by all three countries. a parcelling out of this desert common district was not made toward russia until . toward sweden it was made in ."[ ] in former centuries the bourtanger moor west of the river ems used to be a natural desert borderland separating east and west friesland, despite the similarity of race, speech and country on either side of it. it undoubtedly contributed to the division of germany and the netherlands along the present frontier line, which has been drawn the length of this moor for a hundred kilometers.[ ] [sidenote: primitive waste boundaries.] any geographical feature which, like this, presents a practically uninhabitable area, forms a scientific boundary, not only because it holds apart the two neighboring peoples and thereby reduces the contact and friction which might be provocative of hostilities, but also because it lends protection against attack. this motive, as also the zone character of all boundaries, comes out conspicuously in the artificial border wastes surrounding primitive tribes and states in the lower status of civilization. the early german tribes depopulated their borders in a wide girdle, and in this wilderness permitted no neighbors to reside. the width of this zone indicated the valor and glory of the state, but was also valued as a means of protection against unexpected attack.[ ] cæsar learned that between the suevi and cherusci tribes dwelling near the rhine "_silvam esse ibi, infinita magnitudine quae appelletur bacenis; hanc longe introrsus pertinere et pro nativo muro objectam cheruscos ab suevis suevosque ab cheruscis injuriis incursionibusque prohibere_."[ ] the same device appears among the huns. when attila was pressing upon the frontier of the eastern empire in a.d., his envoys sent to constantinople demanded that the romans should not cultivate a belt of territory, a hundred miles wide and three hundred miles long, south of the danube, but maintain this as a march.[ ] when king alfonso i. ( - a.d.) of mountain asturias began the reconquest of spain from the saracens, he adopted the same method of holding the foe at arm's length. he seized old castile as far as the river duoro, but the rest of the province south of that stream he converted into a waste boundary by transporting the christians thence to the north side, and driving the mohammedans yet farther southward.[ ] similarly xenophon found that the armenian side of the river kentrites, which formed the boundary between the armenian plains and the highlands of karduchia, was unpeopled and destitute of villages for a breadth of fifteen miles, from fear of the marauding kurds.[ ] in the eastern sudan, especially in that wide territory along the nile-congo watershed occupied by the zandeh, junker found the frontier wilderness a regular institution owing to the exposure of the border districts in the perennial intertribal feuds.[ ] the same testimony comes from barth,[ ] boyd alexander,[ ] speke,[ ] and other explorers in the sudan and the neighboring parts of equatorial africa. [sidenote: border wastes of indian lands.] the vast and fertile region defined by the ohio and tennessee rivers, lay as a debatable border between the algonquin indians of the north and the appalachians of the south. both claimed it, both used it for hunting, but neither dared dwell therein.[ ] similarly the cherokees had no definite understanding with their savage neighbors as to the limits of their respective territories the effectiveness of their claim to any particular tract of country usually diminished with every increase of its distance from their villages. the consequence was that a considerable strip of territory between the settlements of two tribes, cherokees and creeks for instance, though claimed by both, was practically considered neutral ground and the common hunting ground of both.[ ] the creeks, whose most western villages from to were located along the coosa and upper alabama rivers,[ ] were separated by miles of wilderness from the chickasaws to the northwest, and by a -mile zone from the choctaws. the most northern choctaw towns, in turn, lay miles to the south of the chickasaw nation, whose compact settlements were located on the watershed between the western sources of the tombigby and the head stream of the yazoo.[ ] the wide intervening zone of forest and canebrake was hunted upon by both nations.[ ] sometimes the border is preserved as a wilderness by formal agreement. a classic example of this case is found in the belt of untenanted land, fifty to ninety kilometers wide, which china and korea once maintained as their boundary. no settler from either side was allowed to enter, and all travel across the border had to use a single passway, where three times annually a market was held.[ ] on the russo-mongolian border south of lake baikal, the town of kiakhta, which was established in as an entrepôt of trade between the two countries, is occupied in its northern half by russian factories and in its southern by the mongolian-chinese quarters, while between the two is a neutral space devoted to commerce.[ ] [sidenote: alien intrusions into border wastes.] these border wastes do not always remain empty, however, even when their integrity is respected by the two neighbors whom they serve to divide; alien races often intrude into their unoccupied reaches. the boundary wilderness between the sudanese states of wadai and dar fur harbors several semi-independent states whose insignificance is a guarantee of their safety from conquest.[ ] similarly in the wide border district between the creeks on the east and the choctaws on the west were found typical small, detached tribes--the chatots and thomez of forty huts each on the mobile river, the tensas tribe with a hundred huts on the tensas river, and the mobilians near the confluence of the tombigby and alabama.[ ] along the desolate highland separating norway and sweden the nomadic lapps, with their reindeer herds, have penetrated southward to ° north latitude, reinforcing the natural barrier by another barrier of alien race. from this point southward, the coniferous forests begin and continue the border waste in the form of a zone some sixty miles wide; this was unoccupied till about , when into it slowly filtered an immigration of finns, whose descendants to-day constitute an important part of the still thin population along the frontier to the heights back of christiania. only thirty miles from the coast does the border zone between norway and sweden, peopled chiefly by intruding foreign stocks, lapps and finns, contract and finally merge into the denser scandinavian settlements.[ ] where the border waste offers favorable conditions of life and the intruding race has reached a higher status of civilization, it multiplies in this unpeopled tract and soon spreads at the cost of its less advanced neighbors. the old no man's land between the ohio and tennessee was a line of least resistance for the expanding colonies, who here poured in a tide of settlement between the northern and southern indians, just as later other pioneers filtered into the vague border territory of weak tenure between the choctaws and creeks, and there on the tombigby, mobile and tensas rivers, formed the nucleus of the state of alabama.[ ] [sidenote: politico-economic significance of the waste boundary.] this untenanted hem of territory surrounding so many savage and barbarous peoples reflects their superficial and unsystematic utilization of their soil, by reason of which the importance of the land itself and the proportion of population to area are greatly reduced. it is a part of that uneconomic and extravagant use of the land, that appropriation of wide territories by small tribal groups, which characterizes the lower stages of civilization, as opposed to the exploitation of every square foot for the support of a teeming humanity, which marks the most advanced states. each stage puts its own valuation upon the land according to the return from it which each expects to get. the low valuation is expressed in the border wilderness, by which a third or even a half of the whole area is wasted; and also in the readiness with which savages often sell their best territory for a song. for the same reason they leave their boundaries undefined; a mile nearer or farther, what does it matter? moreover, their fitful or nomadic occupation of the land leads to oscillations of the frontiers with every attack from without and every variation of the tribal strength within. their unstable states rarely last long enough in a given form or size to develop fixed boundaries; hence, the vagueness as to the extent of tribal domains among all savage peoples, and the conflicting land claims which are the abiding source of war. owing to these overlapping boundaries--border districts claimed but not occupied--the american colonists met with difficulties in their purchase of land from the indians, often paying twice for the same strip. [sidenote: common boundary districts.] even civilized peoples may adopt a waste boundary where the motive for protection is peculiarly strong, as in the half-mile neutral zone of lowland which ties the rock of gibraltar to spain. on a sparsely populated frontier, where the abundance of land reduces its value, they may throw the boundary into the form of a common district, as in the vast, disputed oregon country, accepted provisionally as a district of joint occupancy between the united states and canada from to , or that wide highland border which norway so long shared with russia and sweden. in south america, where land is abundant and population sparse, this common boundary belt is not rare. it suggests a device giving that leeway for expansion desired by all growing states. by the treaty of , the frontier between chile and bolivia crossed the atacama desert at ° south latitude; but the zone between ° and ° was left under the common jurisdiction of the two states, for exploitation of the guano deposits and mineral wealth.[ ] a common border district on a much larger scale is found between brazil and the eastern frontier of french guiana. it includes a belt miles ( kilometers) wide between the oyapok and arawary rivers, and is left as a neutral district till its fate is decided by arbitration.[ ] all these instances are only temporary phases in the evolution of a political frontier from wide, neutral border to the mathematically determined boundary line required by modern civilized states. [sidenote: tariff free zones.] even when the boundary line has been surveyed and the boundary pillars set up, the frontier is prone to assert its old zonal nature, simply because it marks the limits of human movements. rarely, for instance, does a customs boundary coincide with a political frontier, even in the most advanced states of europe, except on the coasts. the student of baedecker finds a gap of several miles on the same railroad between the customs frontier of germany and france, or france and italy. where the border district is formed by a high and rugged mountain range, the custom houses recede farther and farther from the common political line upon the ridge, and drop down the slope to convenient points, leaving between them a wide neutral tariff zone, like that in haute savoie along the massive mont blanc range between france and italy. allied to this phase, yet differing from it, is the "zona libre" or free zone, miles broad and , miles long, which forms the northern hem of mexico from the gulf to the pacific. here foreign goods pay only - / per cent., formerly only - / per cent., of the usual federal duties. goods going on into the interior pay the rest of the tariff at the inner margin of the zone. this arrangement was adopted in to establish some sort of commercial equilibrium between the mexican towns of the rio grande valley, which were burdened by excessive taxation on internal trade, and the texas towns across the river, which at this time enjoyed a specially low tariff. consequently prices of food and manufactured goods were twice or four times as high on the mexican as on the american side. the result was persistent smuggling, extensive emigration from the southern to the northern bank, and the commercial decline of the frontier states of mexico, till the zona libre adjusted the commercial discrepancy.[ ] since a tariff free zone a league wide has formed the border of french savoy along the canton and lake of geneva, thus uniting this canton by a free passway with the swiss territory at the upper end of the lake.[ ] [sidenote: boundary zones of mingled race elements.] when the political boundary has evolved by a system of contraction out of the wide waste zone to the nicely determined line, that line, nevertheless, is always encased, as it were, in a zone of contact wherein are mingled the elements of either side. the zone includes the peripheries of the two contiguous racial or national bodies, and in it each is modified and assimilated to the other. on its edges it is strongly marked by the characteristics of the adjacent sides, but its medial band shows a mingling of the two in ever-varying proportions; it changes from day to day and shifts backward and forward, according as one side or the other exercises in it more potent economic, religious, racial, or political influences. its peripheral character comes out strongly in the mingling of contiguous ethnic elements found in every frontier district. here is that zone of transitional form which we have seen prevails so widely in nature. the northern borderland of the united states is in no small degree canadian, and the southern is strongly mexican. in the rio grande counties of texas, mexicans constituted in from to per cent. of the total population, and they were distributed in considerable numbers also in the second tier of counties. a broad band of french and english canadians overlaps the northern hem of united states territory from maine to north dakota.[ ] in the new york and new england counties bordering on the old french province of quebec, they constitute from to per cent. of the total population, except in two or three western counties of maine which have evidently been mere passways for a tide of _habitants_ moving on to more attractive conditions of life in the counties just to the south.[ ] but even these large figures do not adequately represent the british-american element within our boundaries, because they leave out of account the native-born of canadian parents who have been crossing our borders for over a generation. [sidenote: ethnic border zones in the alps.] if we turn to northern italy, where a mountain barrier might have been expected to segregate the long-headed mediterranean stock from the broad-headed alpine stock, we find as a matter of fact that the ethnic type throughout the po basin is markedly brachycephalic and becomes more pronounced along the northern boundary in the alps, till it culminates in piedmont along the frontier of france, where it becomes identical with the broad-headed savoyards.[ ] more than this, provençal french is spoken in the dora baltea valley of piedmont; and along the upper dora riparia and in the neighboring valleys of the chisone and pellice are the villages of the refugee waldenses, who speak an idiom allied to the provençal. more than this, the whole piedmontese italian is characterized by its approach to the french, and the idiom of turin sounds very much like provençal.[ ] to the north there is a similar exchange between italy and switzerland with the adjacent austrian province of the tyrol. in the rugged highlands of the swiss grisons bordering upon italy, we find a pure alpine stock, known to the ancients as the rhaetians, speaking a degenerate latin tongue called romansch, which still persists also under the names of ladino and frioulian in the alpine regions of the tyrol and italy. in fact, the map of linguistic boundaries in the grisons shows the dovetailing of german, italian, and romansch in a broad zone.[ ] the traveller in the southern tyrol becomes accustomed in the natives to the combination of italian coloring, german speech, and alpine head form; whereas, if on reaching italy he visits the hills back of vicenza, he finds the german settlements of tredici and sette communi, where german customs, folklore, language, and german types of faces still persist, survivals from the days of german infiltration across the brenner pass.[ ] [illustration: slav-german boundary in europe.] [sidenote: the slav-german boundary.] where slavs and teutons come together in central europe, their race border is a zone lying approximately between and degrees east longitude; it is crossed by alternate peninsulas of predominant germans and austrians from the one side, czechs and poles from the other, the whole spattered over by a sprinkling of the two elements. rarely, and then only for short stretches, do political and ethnic boundaries coincide. the northern frontier hem of east prussia lying between the river niemen and the political line of demarcation is quite as much lithuanian as german, while german stock dots the whole surface of the baltic provinces of russia as far as st. petersburg, the eastern rim of the kaiser's empire as far south as the carpathians presents a broad band of the polish race, averaging about fifty kilometers ( miles) in width, sparsely sprinkled with german settlements; these are found farther east also as an ethnic archipelago dotting the wide slav area of poland. the enclosed basin of bohemia, protected on three sides by mountain walls and readily accessible to the slav stock at the sources of the vistula, enabled the czechs to penetrate far westward and there maintain themselves; but in spite of encompassing mountains, the inner or bohemian slopes of the boehmer wald, erz, and sudetes ranges constitute a broad girdle of almost solid german population.[ ] in the austrian provinces of moravia and silesia, which form the southeastward continuation of this slav-german boundary zone, per cent. of the population are czechs, per cent. are german, and per cent., found in the eastern part of silesia, are poles.[ ] an ethnic map of the western muscovite empire in europe shows a marked infiltration into white and little russia of west slavs from poland, and in the province of bessarabia alternate areas of russians and roumanians. the latter in places form an unbroken ethnic expansion from the home kingdom west of the pruth, extending in solid bands as far as the dniester, and throwing out ethnic islands between this stream and the bug. [illustration: ethnographical map of russia. mongoloid: kalmucks, kirghis, nogai, tartars, bashkirs, voguls, ostiaks, samoyedes. zirian: mingled mongoloid and finnish.] [sidenote: assimilation of culture in boundary zones.] in the northern provinces of russia, in the broad zone shared by the aboriginal finns and the later-coming slavs, wallace found villages in every stage of russification. "in one everything seemed thoroughly finnish; the inhabitants had a reddish-olive skin, very high cheek bones, obliquely set eyes, and a peculiar costume; none of the women and very few of the men could understand russian and any russian who visited the place was regarded as a foreigner. in the second, there were already some russian inhabitants; the others had lost something of their purely finnish type, many of the men had discarded the old costume and spoke russian fluently, and a russian visitor was no longer shunned. in a third, the finnish type was still further weakened; all the men spoke russian, and nearly all the women understood it; the old male costume had entirely disappeared and the old female was rapidly following it; and intermarriage with the russian population was no longer rare. in a fourth, intermarriage had almost completely done its work, and the old finnish element could be detected merely in certain peculiarities of physiognomy and accent." this amalgamation extends to their religions--prayers wholly pagan devoutly uttered under the shadow of a strange cross, next the finnish god yumak sharing honors equally with the virgin, finally a christianity pure in doctrine and outward forms except for the survival of old pagan ceremonies in connection with the dead.[ ] at the confluence of the volga and kama rivers, this boundary zone of russians and finns meets the borderland of the asiatic mongols; and here is found an intermingling of races, languages, religions, and customs scarcely to be equalled elsewhere. finns are infused with tartar as well as russian blood, and russians show tartar as well as finnish traits. the bashkirs, who constitute an ethnic peninsula running from the solid mongolian mass of asia, show every type of the mongrel.[ ] [see map page .] [sidenote: boundary zones of assimilation in asia.] if we turn to asia and examine the western race boundary of the expanding chinese, we find that a wide belt of mingled ethnic elements, hybrid languages, and antagonistic civilizations marks the transition from chinese to mongolian and tibetan areas. the eastern and southern frontiers of mongolia, formerly marked by the great wall, are now difficult to define, owing to the steady encroachment of the agricultural chinese on the fertile edges of the plateau, where they have converted the best-watered pastures of the mongols into millet fields and vegetable gardens, leaving for the nomad's herds the more sterile patches between.[ ] every line of least resistance--climatic, industrial, commercial--sees the chinese widening this transitional zone. he sprinkles his crops over the "land of grass," invades the trade of the caravan towns, sets up his fishing station on the great northern bend of the hoangho in the ordos country, three hundred miles beyond the wall, to exploit the fishing neglected by the mongols.[ ] the well-watered regions of the nan-shan ranges has enabled him to drive a long, narrow ethnic wedge, represented by the westward projection of kansu province between mongolia and tibet, into the heart of the central plateau. [see map page .] here the nomad si fan tribes dwell side by side with chinese farmers,[ ] who themselves show a strong infusion of the mongolian and tibetan blood to the north and south, and whose language is a medley of all three tongues.[ ] [sidenote: boundary zones of mountain tibet.] in easternmost tibet, in the elevated province of minjak ( , meters or , feet), m. hue found in a great number of chinese from the neighboring sze-chuan and yun-nan districts keeping shops and following the primary trades and agriculture. the language of the tibetan natives showed the effect of foreign intercourse; it was not the pure speech of lhassa, but was closely assimilated to the idiom of the neighboring si fan speech of sze-chuan and contained many chinese expressions. he found also a modification of manners, customs, and costumes in this peripheral tibet; the natives showed more of the polish, cunning, and covetousness of the chinese, less of the rudeness, frankness, and strong religious feeling characteristic of the western plateau man.[ ] just across the political boundary in chinese territory, the border zone of assimilation shows predominance of the chinese element with a strong tibetan admixture both in race and civilization.[ ] here tibetan traders with their yak caravans are met on the roads or encamped in their tents by the hundred about the frontier towns, whither they have brought the wool, sheep, horses, hides and medicinal roots of the rough highland across that "wild borderland which is neither chinese nor tibetan." the chinese population consists of hardy mountaineers, who eat millet and maize instead of rice. the prevailing architecture is tibetan and the priests on the highways are the red and yellow lamas from the buddhist monasteries of the plateau. "the country is a cross between china and tibet."[ ] even the high wall of the himalayas does not suffice to prevent similar exchanges of ethnic elements and culture between southern tibet and northern india. lhassa and giamda harbor many emigrants from the neighboring himalayan state of bhutan, allow them to monopolize the metal industry, in which they excel, and to practise undisturbed their indian form of buddhism.[ ] the southern side of this zone of transition is occupied by a tibetan stock of people inhabiting the himalayan frontiers of india and practising the hindu religion.[ ] in the hill country of northern bengal natives are to be seen with the chinese queue hanging below a hindu turban, or wearing the hindu caste mark on their broad mongolian faces. with these are mingled genuine tibetans who have come across the border to work in the tea plantations of this region.[ ] [see map page .] [sidenote: relation of ethnic and cultural assimilation.] the assimilation of culture within a boundary zone is in some respects the result of race amalgamation, as, for instance, in costume, religion, manners and language; but in economic points it is often the result of identical geographic influences to which both races are alike subjected. for example, scarcity of food on the arid plateau of central asia makes the chinese of western kansu eat butter and curds as freely as do the pastoral mongols, though such a diet is obnoxious to the purely agricultural chinese of the lowlands.[ ] the english pioneer in the trans-allegheny wilderness shared with the indians an environment of trackless forests and savage neighbors; he was forced to discard for a time many essentials of civilization, both material and moral. despite a minimum of race intermixture, the men of the cumberland and kentucky settlements became assimilated to the life of the red man; they borrowed his scalping knife and tomahawk, adopted his method of ambush and extermination in war; like him they lived in great part by the chase, dressed in furs and buckskin, and wore the noiseless moccasin. here the mere fact of geographical location on a remote frontier, and of almost complete isolation from the centers of english life on the atlantic slope, and the further fact of persistent contact with a lower status of civilization, resulted in a temporary return to primitive methods of existence, till the settlements secured an increase of population adequate for higher industrial development and for defence. a race boundary involves almost inevitably a cultural boundary, often, too, a linguistic and religionary, occasionally a political boundary. the last three are subject to wide fluctuation, frequently overstepping all barriers of race and contrasted civilizations. though one often accompanies another, it is necessary to distinguish the different kinds of boundaries and to estimate their relative importance in the history of a people or state. we may lay down the rule that the greater, more permanent, and deep-seated the contrasts on the two sides of a border, the greater is its significance; and that, on this basis, boundaries rank in importance, with few exceptions, in the following order: racial, cultural, linguistic, and political. the less marked the contrasts, in general, the more rapid and complete the process of assimilation in the belt of borderland. [sidenote: the boundary zone in political expansion.] the significance of the border zone of assimilation for political expansion lies in the fact that it prepares the way for the advance of the state boundary from either side; in it the sharp edge of racial and cultural antagonism is removed, or for this antagonism a new affinity may be substituted. the zone of american settlement, industry, and commerce which in projected beyond the political boundary of the sabine river over the eastern part of mexican texas facilitated the later incorporation of the state into the union, just as a few years earlier the baton rouge district of spanish west florida had gravitated to the united states by reason of the predominant american element there, and thus extended the boundary of louisiana to the pearl river. when the political boundary of siberia was fixed at the amur river, the muscovite government began extending the border zone of assimilation far to the south of that stream by the systematic russification of manchuria, with a view to its ultimate annexation. schleswig-holstein and alsace-lorraine, by reason of their large german population, have been readily incorporated into the german empire. only in lorraine has a considerable french element retarded the process. the considerable sprinkling of germans over the baltic provinces of russia and poland west of the vistula, and a certain teutonic stamp of civilization which these districts have received, would greatly facilitate the eastward extension of the german empire; while their common religions, both protestant and roman catholic, would help obliterate the old political fissure. thus the borderland of a country, so markedly differentiated from its interior, performs a certain historical function, and becomes, as it were, an organ of the living, growing race or state. [sidenote: tendency toward defection along political frontiers.] location on a frontier involves remoteness from the center of national, cultural, and political activities; these reach their greatest intensity in the core of the nation and exercise only an attenuated influence on the far-away borders, unless excellent means of communication keep up a circulation of men, commodities, and ideas between center and periphery. for the frontier, therefore, the centripetal force is weakened; the centrifugal is strengthened often by the attraction of some neighboring state or tribe, which has established bonds of marriage, trade, and friendly intercourse with the outlying community. moreover, the mere infusion of foreign blood, customs, and ideas, especially a foreign religion, which is characteristic of a border zone, invades the national solidarity. hence we find that a tendency to political defection constantly manifests itself along the periphery. a long reach weakens the arm of authority, especially where serious geographical barriers intervene; hence border uprisings are usually successful, at least for a time. when accomplished, they involve that shrinkage of the frontiers which we have found to be the unmistakable symptom of national decline. this defection shows itself most promptly in conquered border tribes of different blood, who lack the bond of ethnic affinity, and whose remoteness emboldens them to throw off the political yoke. the decay of the roman empire, after its last display of energy under trajan, was registered in the revolt of its peripheral districts beyond the euphrates, danube, and rhine, as also in the rapid teutonization of eastern gaul, which here prepared the way for the assertion of independence. the border satraps of the ancient persian empire were constantly revolting, as the history of asia minor shows. aragon, old castile, and portugal were the first kingdoms in the iberian peninsula to throw off saracen dominion. mountain ranges and weary stretches of desert roads enabled the rebellions in chinese turkestan and the border districts of sungaria in to be maintained for several years.[ ] [sidenote: centrifugal forces on the frontier.] a feeble grasp upon remote peripheral possessions is often further weakened by the resistance of an immigrant population from beyond the boundary, which brings with it new ideas of government. this was the geographical history of the texan revolt. a location on the far northern outskirts of mexican territory, some twelve hundred miles from the capital, rendered impossible intelligent government control, the enforcement of the laws, and prompt defence against the indians. remoteness weakened the political cohesion. more than this, the american ethnic boundary lapped far over eastern texas, forming that border zone of two-fold race which we have come to know. this alien stock, antagonistic to the national ideals emanating from the city of mexico, dominant over the native population by reason of its intelligence, energy, and wealth, ruptured the feeble political bond and asserted the independence of texas. quite similar was the history of the "independent state of acre," which in grew up just within the bolivian frontier under the leadership of brazilian caoutchouc gatherers, resisted the collection of taxes by the bolivian government, and four years later secured annexation to brazil.[ ] even when no alien elements are present to weaken the race bond, if natural barriers intervene to obstruct and retard communications between center and periphery, the frontier community is likely to develop the spirit of defection, especially if its local geographic, and hence social, conditions are markedly different from those of the governing center. this is the explanation of that demand for independent statehood which was rife in our trans-allegheny settlements from to , and of that separatist movement which advocated political alliance with either the british colonies to the north or the spanish to the west, because these were nearer and offered easier access to the sea. a frontier location and an intervening mountain barrier were important factors in the whisky rebellion in western pennsylvania, just as similar conditions later suggested the secession of the pacific states from the union. disaffection from the government was manifested by the trek boers of early south africa, "especially by those who dwelt in the outlying districts where the government had exerted and could exert little control." in the people of graaf-reinet, a frontier settlement of that time, revolted against the dutch south african company and set up a miniature republic.[ ] [sidenote: the spirit of colonial frontiers.] the spirit of the colonial frontier is the spirit of freedom, the spirit of men who have traveled far, who are surcharged with energy, enterprise and self-reliance, often with impatience of restraint. a severe process of elimination culls out for the frontier a population strikingly differentiated from the citizens of the old inhabited centers. then remoteness of location and abundance of opportunity proceed to emphasize the qualities which have squeezed through the sieve of natural and social selection. this is the type bred upon our own frontier, which, west beyond west, has crossed the continent from the backwoods of the allegheny mountains to the pacific. the siberian frontier develops much the same type on the eastern edge of the russian empire. here army officers find a compensation for their rough surrounding in the escape from the excessive bureaucracy of the capitals. here is to be noted the independence, self-reliance and self-respect characteristic of other colonial frontiers. the russian of the asiatic border is proud to call himself a siberian: he is already differentiated in his own consciousness. the force of moscow tradition and discipline is faint when it reaches him, it has traveled so far. even the elaborate observances of the orthodox greek church tend to become simplified on the frontier. the question naturally arises whether in the russian empire, as in the united states, the political periphery will in time, react upon the center, infuse it with the spirit of progress and youth.[ ] [sidenote: free border states as political survivals.] when to a border situation is added a geographic location affording conditions of long-established isolation, this tendency to maintain political autonomy becomes very pronounced. this is the explanation of so many frontier mountain states that have retained complete or partial independence, such as nepal, bhutan, the asturias, which successfully withstood saracen attack, and montenegro, which has repelled alike venetian, servian, and turkish dominion. europe especially has numerous examples of these unabsorbed border states, whose independence represents the equilibrium of the conflicting political attractions about them. but all these smallest fragments of political territory have either some commercial or semi-political union with one or another of their neighbors. the little independent principality of liechtenstein, wedged in between switzerland and the tyrol, is included in the customs union of austro-hungary. the small, independent duchy of luxemburg, which has been attached in turn to all the great states which have grown up along its borders, is included in the _zollverein_ of germany. the republic of andorra, far up in a lofty valley of the pyrenees, which has maintained its freedom for a thousand years, acknowledges certain rights of suzerainty exercised by france and the spanish bishopric of urgel.[ ] [sidenote: guardians of the marches.] oftentimes a state gains by recognizing this freedom-loving spirit of the frontier, and by turning it to account for national defence along an exposed boundary. in consequence of the long wars between scotland and england, to the scotch barons having estates near the border were given the wardenships of the marches, offices of great power and dignity; and their clans, accustomed only to the imperfect military organization demanded by the irregular but persistent hostilities of the time and place, developed a lawless spirit. prohibited from agriculture by their exposed location, they left their fields waste, and lived by pillage and cattle-lifting from their english and even their scotch neighbors. the valor of these southern clans, these "reivers of the border," was the bulwark of scotland against the english, but their mutinous spirit resisted the authority of the king and led them often to erect semi-independent principalities.[ ] [sidenote: border nomads as frontier police.] china has fringed her western boundaries with quasi-independent tribes whose autonomy is assured and whose love of freedom is a guarantee of guerilla warfare against any invader from central asia. the mantze tribes in the mountain borders of sze-chuan province have their own rulers and customs, and only pay tribute to china.[ ] the highlands of kansu are sprinkled with such independent tribes. sometimes a definite bargain is entered into--a self-governing military organization and a yearly sum of money in return for defence of the frontier. the mongol tribes of the charkar country or "borderland" just outside the great wall northwest of pekin constitute a paid army of the emperor to guard the frontier against the khalkhas of northern mongolia, the tribe of genghis khan.[ ] similarly, semi-independent military communities for centuries made a continuous line of barriers against the raids of the steppe nomads along the southern and southeastern frontiers of russia, from the dnieper to the ural rivers. there were the "free cossacks," located on the debatable ground between the fortified frontier of the agricultural steppe and marauding crimean tartars. nominally subjects of the czar, they obeyed him when it suited them, and on provocation rose in open revolt. the cossacks of the dnieper, who to the middle of the seventeenth century formed poland's border defence against tartar invasion, were jealous of any interference with their freedom. they lent their services on occasions to the sultan of turkey, and even to the crimean khan; and finally, in , attached themselves and their territory to russia.[ ] here speaks that spirit of defection which is the natural product of the remoteness and independence of frontier life. the russians also attached to themselves the kalmucks located between the lower volga and don, and used them as a frontier defence against their tartar and kirghis neighbors.[ ] in this case, as in that of the cossacks and the charkars of eastern mongolia, we have a large body of men living in the same arid grassland, leading the same pastoral life, and carrying on the same kind of warfare as the nomadic marauders whose pillaging, cattle-lifting raids they aim to suppress. the imperial orders to the charkars limit them strictly to the life of herdmen, with the purpose of maintaining their mobility and military efficiency. so in olden times, for the don cossacks agriculture was prohibited on pain of death, lest they should lose their taste for the live-stock booty of a punitive raid. a still earlier instance of this utilization of border nomads is found in the first century after christ, when the romans made the arabian tribe of beni jafre, dwelling on the frontier of syria, the warders of the eastern marches of the empire.[ ] [sidenote: lawless citizens deported to frontiers.] the advancing frontier of an expanding people often carries them into a sparsely settled country where the unruly members of society can with advantage be utilized as colonists. after centralized and civilized russia began to encroach with the plow upon the pastures of the steppe cossacks, and finally suppressed these military republics, the more turbulent and obstinate remnants of them she colonized along the kuban and terek rivers, to serve as bulwarks against the incursions of the caucasus tribes and as the vanguard of the advance southward.[ ] this is one principle underlying the transportation of criminals to the frontier. they serve to hold the new country. there these waste elements of civilization are converted into a useful by-product. they may be only political radicals or religious dissenters: if so, so much the better colonial material. the russian government formerly transported the rebellious sect of the molokans or unitarians to the outskirts of the empire, where the danger of contagion was reduced. hence they are to be found to-day scattered in the volga province of samara, on the border of the kirghis steppe, in the crimea, the caucasus, and siberia, still faithful and still persecuted.[ ] since the russian advance into siberia has planted its milestones in settlements formed of prisoners of war, political exiles, and worse offenders.[ ] penal colonists located on the shores of kamchatka helped build and man the crazy boats which set out for alaska at the end of the eighteenth century. china settles its thieves and cheats among the villages of its own border provinces of shensi[ ] and kansu; but its worst criminals it transports far away to the hi country on the western frontier of the empire, where they have doubtless contributed to the spirit of revolt that has there manifested itself.[ ] [sidenote: drift of lawless elements to the frontiers.] the abundance of opportunity and lack of competition in a new frontier community, its remoteness from the center of authority, and its imperfect civil government serve to attract thither the vicious, as well as the sturdy and enterprising. the society of the early trans-allegheny frontier included both elements. the lawless who drifted to the border formed gangs of horse thieves, highwaymen, and murderers, who called forth from the others the summary methods of lynch law.[ ] north carolina, which in its early history formed the southern frontier of virginia, swarmed with ruffians who had fled thither to escape imprisonment or hanging, and whose general attitude was to resist all regular authority and especially to pay no taxes.[ ] similarly, that wide belt of mountain forest which forms the waste boundary between korea and manchuria is the resort of bandits, who have harried both sides of the border ever since this neutral district was established in the thirteenth century.[ ] the frontier communities of the russian cossacks in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were regular asylums for runaway serfs and peasants who were fleeing from taxation; their hetmans were repeatedly fugitive criminals. the eastern border of russia formed by the volga basin in was described as "an asylum for malcontents and vagabonds of all kinds, ruined nobles, disfrocked monks, military deserters, fugitive serfs, highwaymen, and volga pirates"--disorderly elements which contributed greatly to the insurrection led by the ural cossacks in that year.[ ] "the debatable land," a tract between the esk and sark rivers, formerly claimed by both england and scotland, was long the haunt of thieves, outlaws and vagabonds, as indeed was the whole border, subject as it was to the regular jurisdiction of neither side.[ ] [sidenote: asylums beyond the border.] just beyond the political boundary, where police authority comes to an end and where pursuit is cut short or retarded, the fleeing criminal finds his natural asylum. hence all border districts tend to harbor undesirable refugees from the other side. deserters and outlaws from china proper sprinkle the eastern districts of mongolia.[ ] marauding bands of apaches and sioux, after successful depredations on american ranches, for years fled across the line into mexico and canada before the hammering hoof-beats of texas ranger and united states cavalry, until a treaty with mexico in , authorizing such armed pursuit to cross the boundary, cut off at least one asylum.[ ] our country exchanges other undesirable citizens with its northern and southern neighbors in cases where no extradition treaty provides for their return; and the borders of the individual states are crossed and recrossed by shifty gentlemen seeking to dodge the arm of the law. the fact that so many state boundaries fall in the southern appalachians, where illicit distilling and feud murders provide most of the cases on the docket, has materially retarded the suppression of these crimes by increasing the difficulty both of apprehending the offender and of subpoenaing the reluctant witness. [sidenote: border refugees and ethnic mingling.] dissatisfied, oppressed, or persecuted members of a political community are prone to seek an asylum across the nearest border, where happier or freer conditions of life are promised. there they contribute to that mixture of race which characterizes every boundary zone, though as an embittered people they may also help to emphasize any existing political or religious antagonism. the revocation of the edict of nantes in was followed by an exodus of huguenots from france to the protestant states of switzerland, the palatinate of the rhine, and holland, as also across the channel into southern england; just as in recent years the slav borderland of eastern germany has received a large immigration of polish jews from russia. when the polish king in executed the leader of the dnieper cossacks, thousands of these bold borderers left their country and joined the community of the don; and in after the dnieper community had been crushed by peter the great, a similar exodus took place across the southern boundary into the crimea, whereby the tartar horde was strengthened, just as a few years before, during an unsuccessful revolt of the don cossacks, some two thousand of the malcontents crossed the southern frontier to the kuban river in circassia.[ ] the establishment of american independence in saw an exodus of loyalists from the united states into the contiguous districts of ontario, new brunswick, and spanish florida, five years later discontent with the federal government for its dilatory opposition to the occlusion of the mississippi and the lure of commercial betterment sent many citizens of the early trans-allegheny commonwealths to the spanish side of the mississippi,[ ] while the natchez district on the east bank of the river contained a sprinkling of french who had become dissatisfied with spanish rule in louisiana and changed their domicile. these are some of the movements of individuals and groups which contribute to the blending of races along every frontier, and make of the boundary a variable zone, as opposed to the rigid artificial line in terms of which we speak. notes to chapter vii [ ] a.w. greely, report of the lady franklin bay expedition, vol. i, pp. - , . misc. doc. no. . washington, . [ ] a.p. engelhardt, a russian province of the north, pp. - . translated from the russian. london, . [ ] nordenskiold, voyage of the vega, pp. - . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. , . [ ] col. f.e. younghusband, the heart of a continent, pp. - . london, . [ ] a.r. wallace, geographical distribution of animals, vol. i, pp. - , - , - . london, . [ ] _ibid._, , . [ ] a. heilprin, geographical distribution of animals, pp. - . london, . [ ] a.r. wallace, geographical distribution of animals, vol. i, pp. , - . london, . [ ] anatole leroy-beaulieu, the empire of the tsars, vol. i, ethnographical map. new york, . [ ] eleventh census of the united states, _population_, part i., maps on pp. xviii-xxiii. [ ] l. march phillipps, in the desert, pp. - , . london, . [ ] fully treated in e.c. semple, american history and its geographic conditions, pp. - . boston, . [ ] sir s.w. baker, the nile tributaries of abyssinia, pp. , - , . hartford, . [ ] norway, official publication for the paris exhibition, pp. - and map. christiania, . [ ] j. partsch, central europe, p. . london, . [ ] cæsar, _bello gallico_, book iv, chap. and book vi, chap. . [ ] _ibid._, book vi, chap. . [ ] t. hodgkin, italy and her invaders, vol. ii, p. , note i. oxford, . [ ] helmolt, history of the world, vol. iv, p. . new york, - . [ ] grote, history of greece, vol. ix, chap. , pp. , . new york, . [ ] dr. wilhelm junker, travels in africa, pp. , , , , , , , , , , , , , . translated from the german. london, . [ ] h. barth, human society in north central africa, _journal royal geographical society_, vol. xxx, pp. - . london, . [ ] boyd alexander, from the niger to the nile, vol. ii, pp. - . london, . [ ] john h. speke, discovery of the sources of the nile, pp. , , , , , , - , . new york, . [ ] theodore roosevelt, the winning of the west, vol. i, pp. , , . new york, . [ ] c. c. royce, the cherokee nations of indians, p. . _fifth annual report of the bureau of ethnology_. washington, . [ ] albert j. pickett, history of alabama, pp. - , - , . reprint, birmingham, . james adair, history of the american indians, p. . london, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. - , . [ ] albert j. pickett, history of alabama, pp. - . . reprint, birmingham, . [ ] archibald little, the far east, p. . oxford, . [ ] m. huc, travels in tartary, thibet and china, - , vol. i, p. . translated from the french. reprint, chicago, . [ ] nachtigal, _sahara und sudan_, vol. i, pp. , ; vol. iii, pp. - , . leipzig, . boyd alexander, from the niger to the nile, vol. ii, p. . london, . [ ] albert j. pickett, history of alabama, pp. - . . reprint, birmingham, . [ ] norway, official publication for the paris exhibition, pp. , - . christiania, . [ ] albert j. pickett, history of alabama, pp. , , , . . reprint, birmingham, . [ ] c.e. akers, history of south america, - , p. . new york, . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] matias romero, mexico and the united states, pp. - . new york, . [ ] e. hertslet, the map of europe by treaty, - , vol. i, pp. , , ; vol. ii, p. . [ ] eleventh census of the united states, _population_, part i., map no. and p. cxliii. [ ] _ibid._ based on comparison of tables and for the states mentioned. [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - . new york, . [ ] w. deecke, italy, pp. , , . translated from the german. london, . [ ] sydow-wagner, _methodischer schul-atlas, völker und sprachenkarten_, no. . gotha, . w. z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. - . w. deecke, italy, p. . london, . [ ] sydow-wagner, _methodischer schul-atlas, völker und sprachenkarten_ no, . gotha, . [ ] hugh r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] d.m. wallace, russia, pp. - . new york, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, p. . new york, . [ ] archibald little, the far east. map p. and pp. - . oxford, . m. huc, travels in tartary, thibet and china, - . vol. i, pp. - , , - , . reprint, chicago, . [ ] _ibid._, vol. i, pp. - . [ ] _ibid._, vol ii, p. . [ ] _ibid._, vol. i, - . [ ] _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. - , . [ ] m. huc, journey through the chinese empire, vol. i, p. . new york, . [ ] isabella bird bishop, the yangtze valley and beyond, vol. ii, pp. - , , , , - , , , , , , , . london, . [ ] m. huc, travels in tartary, thibet and china, - , vol. ii, pp. - , . reprint, chicago, . [ ] c.a. sherring, western tibet and the british borderland, pp. , - , , - . london, . statistical atlas of india, pp. - , maps. calcutta, . _imperial gazetteer of india_, vol. i, p. - . oxford, . [ ] eliza e. scidmore, winter india, pp. - . new york, . [ ] m. huc, travels in tartary, thibet, and china, - , vol. i, pp. - . reprint, chicago, . [ ] alexis krausse, russia in asia, pp. - . new york, . [ ] charles e. akers, history of south america, - , p. . new york, . [ ] james bryce, impressions of south africa, pp. - . new york, . [ ] o.p. crosby, tibet and turkestan, pp. - . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . h. spencer, a visit to andorra, _fortnightly review_, vol. , pp. - . . [ ] wm. robertson, history of scotland, pp. - . new york, . the scotch borderers, _littell's living age_, vol , p. . [ ] isabella bird bishop, the yangtze valley and beyond, vol. ii, pp. - . london, . [ ] m. huc, travels in tartary, thibet and china, - , vol. i, pp. , , . reprint, chicago, . [ ] d.m. wallace, russia, pp. - . new york, . article on cossacks in encyclopedia britannica. [ ] pallas, travels in southern russia, vol. i, pp. - ; ; vol. ii, pp. - . london, . [ ] g. adam smith, historical geography of the holy land, p. . new york, . [ ] d.m. wallace, russia, p. . new york, . walter k. kelly, history of russia, vol. ii, pp. - . london, . [ ] d.m. wallace, russia, p. . new york, . [ ] alexis krausse, russia in asia, pp. , . new york, . [ ] francis h. nichol, through hidden shensi, pp. - . new york, . [ ] m. hue, travels in tartary, thibet and china, - , vol. i, p. . reprint, chicago, . [ ] theodore roosevelt, the winning of the west, vol. i, pp. - . new york, . [ ] john fiske, old virginia and her neighbors, vol. ii, pp. , - . boston, . [ ] archibald little, the far east, p. . oxford, . [ ] alfred rambaud, history of russia, vol. ii, pp. , - . boston, . [ ] malcolm lang, history of scotland, vol. i, pp. - . london, . the scotch borderland, _gentleman's magazine_, vol. cclx, p. . . [ ] friedrich ratel, history of mankind, vol. iii, p. , london, . [ ] a.b. hart, foundations of american foreign policy, pp. - . new york, . [ ] alfred rambaud, history of russia, vol. ii, pp. , . boston, . [ ] justin winsor, the westward movement, p. . boston, . chapter viii coast peoples [sidenote: the coast a zone of transition.] of all geographical boundaries, the most important is that between land and sea. the coast, in its physical nature, is a zone of transition between these two dominant forms of the earth's surface; it bears the mark of their contending forces, varying in its width with every stronger onslaught of the unresting sea, and with every degree of passive resistance made by granite or sandy shore. so too in an anthropo-geographical sense, it is a zone of transition. now the life-supporting forces of the land are weak in it, and it becomes merely the rim of the sea; for its inhabitants the sea means food, clothes, shelter, fuel, commerce, highway, and opportunity. now the coast is dominated by the exuberant forces of a productive soil, so that the ocean beyond is only a turbulent waste and a long-drawn barrier: the coast is the hem of the land. neither influence can wholly exclude the other in this amphibian belt, for the coast remains the intermediary between the habitable expanse of the land and the international highway of the sea. the break of the waves and the dash of the spray draw the line beyond which human dwellings cannot spread; for these the shore is the outermost limit, as for ages also in the long infancy of the races, before the invention of boat and sail, it drew the absolute boundary to human expansion. in historical order, its first effect has been that of a barrier, and for the majority of peoples this it has remained; but with the development of navigation and the spread of human activities from the land over sea to other countries, it became the gateway both of land and sea--at once the outlet for exploration, colonization, and trade, and the open door through which a continent or island receives contributions of men or races or ideas from transoceanic shores. barrier and threshold: these are the _rôles_ which coasts have always played in history. to-day we see them side by side. but in spite of the immense proportions assumed by transmarine intercourse, the fact remains that the greater part of the coasts of the earth are for their inhabitants only a barrier and not an outlet, or at best only a base for timorous ventures seaward that rarely lose sight of the shore. [illustration: german north sea coast.] [sidenote: width of coastal zones.] as intermediary belt between land and sea, the coast becomes a peculiar habitat which leaves its mark upon its people. we speak of coast strips, coastal plains, "tidewater country," coast cities; of coast tribes, coast peoples, maritime colonies; and each word brings up a picture of a land or race or settlement permeated by the influences of the sea. the old term of "coastline" has no application to such an intermediary belt, for it is a zone of measurable width; and this width varies with the relief of the land, the articulation of the coast according as it is uniform or complex, with the successive stages of civilization and the development of navigation among the people who inhabit it. along highly articulated coasts, showing the interpenetration of sea and land in a broad band of capes and islands separated by tidal channels and inlets, or on shores deeply incised by river estuaries, or on low shelving beaches which screen brackish lagoons and salt marshes behind sand reefs and dune ramparts, and which thus form an indeterminate boundary of alternate land and water, the zone character of the coast in a physical sense becomes conspicuous. in an anthropological sense the zone character is clearly indicated by the different uses of its inner and outer edge made by man in different localities and in different periods of history. [sidenote: the inner edge.] the old german maritime cities of the north sea and the baltic were located on rivers from to miles from the open sea, always on the inner edge of the coastal belt. though primarily trading towns, linked together once in the sovereign confederacy of the hanseatic league, they fixed their sites on the last spurs of firm ground running out into the soft, yielding alluvium, which was constantly exposed to inundation. land high enough to be above the ever threatening flood of river and storm-driven tide on this flat coast, and solid enough to be built upon, could not be found immediately on the sea. the slight elevations of sandy "geest" or detrital spurs were limited in area and in time outgrown. hence the older part of all these river towns, from bremen to königsberg, rests upon hills, while in every case the newer and lower part is built on piles or artificially raised ground on the alluvium.[ ] so utrecht, the ultrajectum of the romans, selected for its site a long raised spur running out from the solid ground of older and higher land into the water-soaked alluvium of the netherlands. it was the most important town of all this region before the arts of civilization began the conquest by dike and ditch of the amphibian coastal belt which now comprises one-fourth of the area and holds one-half the population of the netherlands.[ ] so ancient london marked the solid ground at the inner edge of the tidal flats and desolate marshes which lined the thames estuary, as the roman camulodunum and its successor colchester on its steep rise or _dun_ overlooked the marshes of the stour inlet.[ ] farther north about the wash, which in roman days extended far inland over an area of fens and tidal channels, cambridge on the river cam, huntingdon and stamford on the nen, and lincoln on the witham--all river seaports--defined the firm inner edge of this wide low coast. in the same way the landward rim of the tidal waters and salt marshes of the humber inlet was described by a semicircle of british and roman towns--doncaster, castleford, todcaster, and york.[ ] on the flat or rolling west african coastland, which lines the long shores of the gulf of guinea with a band to miles wide, the sandy, swampy tracts immediately on the sea are often left uninhabited; native population is distributed most frequently at the limit of deep water, and here at head of ship-navigation the trading towns are found.[ ] [sidenote: inner edge as head of sea navigation.] while, on low coasts at any rate, the inner edge tends to mark the limit of settlement advancing from the interior, as the head of sea navigation on river and inlet it has also been the goal of immigrant settlers from oversea lands. the history of modern maritime colonization, especially in america, shows that the aim of regular colonists, as opposed to mere traders, has been to penetrate as far as possible into the land while retaining communication with the sea, and thereby with the mother country. the small boats in use till the introduction of steam navigation fixed this line far inland and gave the coastal zone a greater breadth than it has at present, and a more regular contour. in colonial america this inner edge coincided with the "fall-line" of the atlantic rivers, which was indicated by a series of seaport towns; or with the inland limit of the tides, which on the st. lawrence fell above quebec, and on the hudson just below albany. [sidenote: shifting of the inner edge.] with the recent increase in the size of vessels, two contrary effects are noticed. in the vast majority of cases, the inner edge, as marked by ports, moves seaward into deeper water, and the zone narrows. the days when almost every tobacco plantation in tidewater virginia had its own wharf are long since past, and the leaf is now exported by way of norfolk and baltimore. seville has lost practically all its sea trade to cadiz, rouen to havre, and dordrecht to rotterdam. in other cases the zone preserves its original width by the creation of secondary ports on or near the outer edge, reserved only for the largest vessels, while the inner harbor, by dredging its channel, improves its communication with the sea. thus arises the phenomenon of twin ports like bremen and bremerhaven, dantzig and neufahrwasser, stettin and swinemünde, bordeaux and pauillac, london and tilbury. or the original harbor seeks to preserve its advantage by canalizing the shallow approach by river, lagoon, or bay, as st. petersburg by the pantiloff canal through the shallow reaches of kronstadt bay; or königsberg by its ship canal, carried for miles across the frisches haff to the baltic;[ ] or nantes by the loire ship canal, which in was built to regain for the old town the west indian trade recently intercepted by the rising outer port of st. nazaire, at the mouth of the loire estuary.[ ] in northern latitudes, however, the outer ports on enclosed sea basins like the baltic become dominant in the winter, when the inner ports are ice-bound. otherwise the outer port sinks with every improvement in the channel between the inner port and the sea. hamburg has so constantly deepened the elbe passage that its outport of cuxhaven has had little chance to rise, and serves only as an emergency harbor; while on the weser, maritime leadership has oscillated between bremen and bremerhaven.[ ] so the whole german coast and the russian baltic have seen a more or less irregular shifting backward and forward of maritime importance between the inner and the outer edges. [sidenote: artificial extension of inner edge.] the width of the coast zone is not only prevented from contracting by dredging and canaling, but it is even increased. by deepening the channel, the chief port of the st. lawrence river has been removed from quebec miles upstream to montreal, and that of the clyde from port glasgow miles to glasgow itself, so that now the largest ocean steamers come to dock where fifty years ago children waded across the stream at ebb tide. such artificial modifications, however, are rare, for they are made only where peculiarly rich resources or superior lines of communication with the hinterland justify the expenditures; but they find their logical conclusion in still farther extensions of sea navigation into the interior by means of ship canals, where previously no waterway existed. instances are found in the manchester ship canal and the welland, which, by means of the st. lawrence and the great lakes, makes chicago accessible to ocean vessels. though man distinguishes between sea and inland navigation in his definitions, in his practice he is bound by no formula and recognizes no fundamental difference where rivers, lakes, and canals are deep enough to admit his sea-going craft. such deep landward protrusions of the head of marine navigation at certain favored points, as opposed to its recent coastward trend in most inlets and rivers, increase the irregularity of the inner edge of the coast zone by the marked discrepancy between its maximum and minimum width. they are limited, however, to a few highly civilized countries, and to a few points in those countries. but their presence testifies to the fact that the evolution of the coast zone with the development of civilization shows the persistent importance of this inner edge. [sidenote: outer edge in original settlement.] the outer edge finds its greatest significance, which is for the most part ephemeral, in the earlier stages of navigation, maritime colonization, and in some cases of original settlement. but this importance persists only on steep coasts furnishing little or no level ground for cultivation and barred from interior hunting or grazing land; on many coral and volcanic islands of the pacific ocean whose outer rim has the most fertile soil and furnishes the most abundant growth of coco palms, and whose limited area only half suffices to support the population; and in polar and sub-polar districts, where harsh climatic conditions set a low limit to economic development. in all these regions the sea must provide most of the food of the inhabitants, who can therefore never lose contact with its waters. in mountainous tierra del fuego, whose impenetrably forested slopes rise directly from the sea, with only here and there a scanty stretch of stony beach, the natives of the southern and western coasts keep close to the shore. the straits and channels yield them all their food, and are the highways for all their restless, hungry wanderings.[ ] the steep slopes and dense forests preclude travel by land, and force the wretched inhabitants to live as much in their canoes as in their huts. the tlingit and haida indians of the mountainous coast of southern alaska locate their villages on some smooth sheltered beach, with their houses in a single row facing the water, and the ever-ready canoe drawn up on shore in front. they select their sites with a view to food supply, and to protection in case of attack. on the treeless shores of kadiak island and of the long narrow alaska peninsula near by, the eskimo choose their village location for an accumulation of driftwood, for proximity to their food supply, and a landing-place for their kayaks and bidarkas. hence they prefer a point of land or gravel spit extending out into the sea, or a sand reef separating a salt-water lagoon from the open sea. the aleutian islanders regard only accessibility to the shell-fish on the beach and their pelagic hunting and fishing; and this consideration has influenced the eskimo tribes of the wide kuskokwin estuary to such an extent, that they place their huts only a few feet above ordinary high tide, where they are constantly exposed to overflow from the sea.[ ] only among the great tidal channels of the yukon delta are they distributed over the whole wide coastal zone, even to its inner edge. the coast chukches of northeastern siberia locate their tent villages on the sand ramparts between the arctic ocean and the freshwater lagoons which line this low tundra shore. here they are conveniently situated for fishing and hunting marine animals, while protected against the summer inundations of the arctic rivers.[ ] the whole western side of greenland, from far northern upernivik south to cape farewell, shows both eskimo and danish settlements almost without exception on projecting points of peninsulas or islands, where the stronger effect of the warm ocean current, as well as proximity to the food supply, serve to fix their habitations; although the remains of the old norse settlements in general are found in sheltered valleys with summer vegetation, striking off from the fiords some miles back from the outer coast.[ ] cæsar found that the ancient veneti, an immigrant people of the southern coast of brittany, built their towns on the points of capes and promontories, sites which gave them ready contact with the sea and protection against attack from the land side, because every rise of the tide submerged the intervening lowlands.[ ] here a sterile plateau hinterland drove them for part of their subsistence to the water, and the continuous intertribal warfare of small primitive states to the sea-girt asylums of the capes. [sidenote: outer edge in early navigation.] in the early history of navigation and exploration, striking features of this outer coast edge, like headlands and capes, became important sea marks. the promontory of mount athos, rising , feet above the sea between the hellespont and the thessalian coast, and casting its shadow as far as the market-place of lemnos, was a guiding point for mariners in the whole northern aegean.[ ] for the ancient greeks cape malia was long the boundary stone to the unknown wastes of the western mediterranean, just as later the pillars of hercules marked the portals to the _mare tenebrosum_ of the stormy atlantic. so the sacred promontory (cape st. vincent) of the iberian peninsula defined for greeks and romans the southwestern limit of the habitable world.[ ] centuries later the portuguese marked their advance down the west coast of africa, first by cape non, which so long said "no!" to the struggling mariner, then by cape bojador, and finally by cape verde. in coastwise navigation, minor headlands and inshore islands were points to steer by; and in that early maritime colonization, which had chiefly a commercial aim, they formed the favorite spots for trading stations. the phoenicians in their home country fixed their settlements by preference on small capes, like sidon and berytus, or on inshore islets, like tyre and aradus,[ ] and for their colonies and trading stations they chose similar sites, whether on the coast of sicily,[ ] spain, or morocco.[ ] carthage was located on a small hill-crowned cape projecting out into the bay of carthage. the two promontories embracing this inlet were edged with settlements, especially the northern arm, which held utica and hippo,[ ] the latter on the site of the modern french naval station of bizerta. [illustration: map of ancient phoenician and greek colonies.] [sidenote: outer edge and piracy.] in this early hellenic world, when greek sea-power was in its infancy, owing to the fear of piracy, cities were placed a few miles back from the coast; but with the partial cessation of this evil, sites on shore and peninsula were preferred as being more accessible to commerce,[ ] and such of the older towns as were in comparatively easy reach of the seaboard established there each its own port. thus we find the ancient urban pairs of argos and nauplia, troezene and pogon, mycenæ and eiones, corinth commanding its aegean port of cenchreæ miles away on the saronic gulf to catch the asiatic trade, and connected by a walled thoroughfare a mile and a half long with lechæum, a second harbor on the corinthian gulf which served the italian commerce.[ ] in the same group belonged athens and its piræus, megara and pegæ, pergamus and elaæ in western asia minor.[ ] these ancient twin cities may be taken to mark the two borders of the coast zone. like the modern ones which we have considered above, their historical development has shown an advance from the inner toward the outer edge, though owing to different causes. however, the retired location of the baltic and north sea towns of germany served as a partial protection against the pirates who, in the middle ages, scoured these coasts.[ ] lubeck, originally located nearer the sea than at present, and frequently demolished by them, was finally rebuilt farther inland up the trave river.[ ] later the port of travemünde grew up at the mouth of the little estuary. [sidenote: outer edge in colonization.] the early history of maritime colonization shows in general two geographic phases: first, the appropriation of the islet and headland outskirts of the seaboard, and later--it may be much later--an advance toward the inner edge of the coast, or yet farther into the interior. progress from the earlier to the maturer phase depends upon the social and economic development of the colonizers, as reflected in their valuation of territorial area. the first phase, the outcome of a low estimate of the value of land, is best represented by the phoenician and earliest greek colonies, whose purposes were chiefly commercial, and who sought merely such readily accessible coastal points as furnished the best trading stations on the highway of the mediterranean and the adjacent seas. the earlier greek colonies, like those of the triopium promontory forming the south-western angle of asia minor, chalcidice, the thracian chersonesus, calchedon, byzantium, the pontic heraclea, and sinope, were situated on peninsulas or headlands, that would afford a convenient anchor ground; or, like syracuse and mitylene, on small inshore islets, which were soon outgrown, and from which the towns then spread to the mainland near by. the advantages of such sites lay in their accessibility to commerce, and in their natural protection against the attack of strange or hostile mainland tribes. for a nation of merchants, satisfied with the large returns but also with the ephemeral power of middlemen, these considerations sufficed. while the phoenician trading posts in africa dotted the outer rim of the coast, the inner edge of the zone was indicated by libyan or ethiopian towns, where the inhabitants of the interior bartered their ivory and skins for the products of tyre.[ ] so that commercial expansion of the arabs down the east coast of africa in the first and again in the tenth century seized upon the offshore islands of zanzibar, pemba, and mafia, the small inshore islets like mombasa and lamu, and the whole outer rim of the coast from the equator southward to the rovuma river.[ ] the sultan of zanzibar, heir to this coastal strip, had not expanded it a decade ago, when he had to relinquish the long thread of his continental possessions. [sidenote: inland advance of colonies.] but when a people has advanced to a higher conception of colonization as an outlet for national as well as commercial expansion, and when it sees that the permanent prosperity of both race and trade in the new locality depends upon the occupation of larger tracts of territory and the development of local resources as a basis for exchanges, their settlements spread from the outer rim of the coasts to its inner edge and yet beyond, if alluvial plains and river highways are present to tempt inland expansion. such was the history of many later colonies of the greeks[ ] and carthaginians, and especially of most modern colonial movements, for these have been dominated by a higher estimate of the value of land. after the long atlantic journey, the outposts of the american coast were welcome resting-places to the early european voyagers, but, owing to their restricted area and therefore limited productivity, they were soon abandoned, or became mere bases for inland expansion. the little island of cuttyhunk, off southern massachusetts, was the site of gosnold's abortive attempt at colonization in , like raleigh's attempt on roanoke island in , and the later one of popham on the eastern headland of casco bay. the pilgrims paused at the extremity of cape cod, and again on clark's island, before fixing their settlement on plymouth bay. monhegan island, off the maine coast, was the site of an early english trading post, which, however, lasted only from to ;[ ] and the same dates fix the beginning and end of a fishing and trading station established on cape ann, and removed later to salem harbor. the swedes made their first settlement in america on cape henlopen, at the entrance of delaware bay; but their next, only seven years later, they located well up the estuary of the delaware river. thus for the modern colonist the outer edge of the coast is merely the gateway of the land. from it he passes rapidly to the settlement of the interior, wherever fertile soil and abundant resources promise a due return upon his labor. [sidenote: interpenetration of land and sea.] since it is from the land, as the inhabited portion of the earth's surface, that all maritime movements emanate, and to the land that all oversea migrations are directed, the reciprocal relations between land and sea are largely determined by the degree of accessibility existing between the two. this depends primarily upon the articulation of a land-mass, whether it presents an unbroken contour like africa and india, or whether, like europe and norway, it drops a fringe of peninsulas and a shower of islands into the bordering ocean. mere distance from the sea bars a country from its vivifying contact; every protrusion of an ocean artery into the heart of a continent makes that heart feel the pulse of life on far-off, unseen shores. the baltic inlet which makes a seaport of st. petersburg miles ( , kilometers) back from the western rim of europe, brings atlantic civilization to this half-asiatic side of the continent. the solid front presented by the iberian peninsula and africa to the atlantic has a narrow crack at gibraltar, whence the mediterranean penetrates inland , miles ( , kilometers), and converts the western foot of the caucasus and the roots of the lebanon mountains into a seaboard. by means of the arabian sea, the indian ocean runs northward , miles ( , kilometers) from cape comorin to meet the indus delta; and then turns westward miles farther through the oman and persian gulfs to receive the boats from the tigris and euphrates. such marine inlets create islands and peninsulas; which are characterized by proximity to the sea on all or many sides; and in the interior of the continents they produce every degree of nearness, shading off into inaccessible remoteness from the watery highway of the deep. the success with which such indentations open up the interior of the continents depends upon the length of the inlets and the size of the land-mass in question. africa's huge area and unbroken contour combine to hold the sea at arm's length, europe's deep-running inlets open that small continent so effectively that kazan, russia's most eastern city of considerable size, is only miles ( , kilometers) distant from the nearest white sea, baltic, and azof ports. asia, the largest of all the continents, despite a succession of big indentations that invade its periphery from sinai peninsula to east cape, has a vast inland area hopelessly far from the surrounding oceans. [sidenote: ratio of shoreline to area.] in order to determine the coast articulation of any country or continent, carl ritter and his followers divided area by shoreline, the latter a purely mathematical line representing the total contour length. by this method europe's ratio is one linear mile of coast to square miles of area, australia's : , asia's : , and africa's : . this means that europe's proportion of coast is three times that of asia and four times that of africa; that a country like norway, with a shoreline of , miles traced in and out along the fiords and around the larger islands,[ ] has only square miles of area for every mile of seaboard, while germany, with every detail of its littoral included in the measurement, has only , miles of shoreline and a ratio of one mile of coast to every square miles of area. the criticism has been made against this method that it compares two unlike measures, square and linear, which moreover increase or decrease in markedly different degrees, according as larger or smaller units are used. but for the purposes of anthropo-geography the method is valid, inasmuch as it shows the amount of area dependent for its marine outline upon each mile of littoral. a coast, like every other boundary, performs the important function of intermediary in the intercourse of a land with its neighbors; hence the length of this sea boundary materially affects this function. area and coastline are not dead mathematical quantities, but like organs of one body stand in close reciprocal activity, and can be understood only in the light of their persistent mutual relations. the division of the area of a land by the length of its coastline yields a quotient which to the anthropo-geographer is not a dry figure, but an index to the possible relations between seaboard and interior. a comparison of some of these ratios will illustrate this fact. germany's shoreline, traced in contour without including details, measures miles; this is just one-fifth that of italy and two-fifths that of france, so that it is short. but since germany's area is nearly twice italy's and a little larger than that of france, it has square miles of territory for every mile of coast, while italy has only square miles, and france . germany has towns that are miles from the nearest seaboard, but in italy the most inland point is only miles from the mediterranean.[ ] if we turn now to the united states and adopt mendenhall's estimate of its general or contour coastline as , miles, we find that our country has square miles of area dependent for its outlet upon each mile of seaboard. this means that our coast has a heavy task imposed upon it, and that its commercial and political importance is correspondingly enhanced; that the extension of our gulf of mexico littoral by the purchase of florida and the annexation of texas were measures of self-preservation, and that the unbroken contour and mountain-walled face of our pacific littoral is a serious national handicap. [sidenote: criticism of this formula.] but this method is open to the legitimate and fundamental criticism that, starting from the conception of a coast as a mere line instead of a zone, it ignores all those features which belong to every littoral as a strip of the earth's surface--location, geologic structure, relief, area, accessibility to the sea in front and to the land behind, all which vary from one part of the world's seaboard to another, and serve to differentiate the human history of every littoral. moreover, of all parts of the earth's surface, the coast as the hem of the sea and land, combining the characters of each, is most complex. it is the coast as a human habitat that primarily concerns anthropo-geography. a careful analysis of the multifarious influences modifying one another in this mingled environment of land and water reveals an intricate interplay of geographic forces, varying from inland basin to marginal sea, from marginal sea to open ocean, and changing from one historical period to another--an interplay so mercurial that it could find only a most inadequate expression in the rigid mathematical formula of carl ritter. [sidenote: accessibility of coasts from hinterland.] as the coast, then, is the border zone between the solid, inhabited land and the mobile, untenanted deep, two important factors in its history are the accessibility of its back country on the one hand, and the accessibility of the sea on the other. a littoral population barred from its hinterland by mountain range or steep plateau escarpment or desert tract feels little influence from the land; level or fertile soil is too limited in amount to draw inland the growing people, intercourse is too difficult and infrequent, transportation too slow and costly. hence the inhabitants of such a coast are forced to look seaward for their racial and commercial expansion, even if a paucity of good harbors limits the accessibility of the sea; they must lead a somewhat detached and independent existence, so far as the territory behind them is concerned. here the coast, as a peripheral organ of the interior, as the outlet for its products, the market for its foreign exchanges, and the medium for intercourse with its maritime neighbors, sees its special function impaired. but it takes advantage of its isolation and the protection of a long sea boundary to detach itself politically from its hinterland, as the histories of phoenicia, the aegean coast of asia minor, dalmatia, the republics of amalfi, venice, and genoa, the county of barcelona, and portugal abundantly prove. at the same time it profits by its seaboard location to utilize the more varied fields of maritime enterprise before it, in lieu of the more or less forbidden territory behind it. the height and width of the landward barrier, the number and practicability of the passways across it, and especially the value of the hinterland's products in relation to their bulk, determine the amount of intercourse between that hinterland and its mountain or desert barred littoral. [sidenote: mountain-barred hinterlands.] the interior is most effectively cut off from the periphery, where a mountain range or a plateau escarpment traces the inner line of the coastland, as in the province of liguria in northern italy, dalmatia, the western or malabar coast of india, most parts of africa, and long stretches of the pacific littoral of the americas. the highland that backs the norwegian coast is crossed by only one railroad, that passing through the trondhjem depression; and this barrier has served to keep norway's historical connection with sweden far less intimate than with denmark. the long inlet of the adriatic, bringing the sea well into the heart of southern europe, has seen nevertheless a relatively small maritime development, owing to the wall of mountains that everywhere shuts out the hinterland of its coasts. the greatness of venice was intimately connected with the brenner pass over the alps on the one hand, and the trade of the eastern mediterranean on the other. despite austro-hungary's crucial interest in the northeast corner of the adriatic as a maritime outlet for this vast inland empire, and its herculean efforts at trieste and fiume to create harbors and to connect them by transmontane railroads with the valley of the danube, the maritime development of this coast is still restricted, and much of austria's trade goes out northward by german ports.[ ] farther south along the dalmatian and albanian coasts, the deep and sheltered bays between the half-submerged roots of the dinaric alps have developed only local importance, because they lack practicable connection with the interior. this was their history too in early greek and roman days, for they found only scant support in the few caravans that crossed by the roman road to dyrrachium to exchange the merchandise of the aegean for the products of the ionian isles. spain has always suffered from the fact that her bare, arid, and unproductive tableland almost everywhere rises steeply from her fertile and densely populated coasts; and therefore that the two have been unable to coöperate either for the production of a large maritime commerce or for national political unity. here the diverse conditions of the littoral and the wall of the great central terrace of the country have emphasized that tendency to defection that belongs to every periphery, and therefore necessitated a strong centralized government to consolidate the restive maritime provinces with their diverse galician, basque, catalonian, and andalusian folk into one nation with the castilians of the plateau.[ ] [sidenote: accessible hinterlands.] where mountain systems run out endwise into the sea, the longitudinal valleys with their drainage streams open natural highways from the interior to the coast. this structure has made the atlantic side of the iberian peninsula far more open than its mediterranean front, and therefore contributed to its leadership in maritime affairs since . so from the shores of thrace to the southern point of the peloponnesus, all the valleys of greece open out on the eastern or asiatic side. here every mountain-flanked bay has had its own small hinterland to draw upon, and every such interior has been accessible to the civilization of the aegean; here was concentrated the maritime and cultural life of hellas.[ ] the northern half of andean colombia, by way of the parallel atrato, rio cauco, and magdalena valleys, has supported the activities of its caribbean littoral, and through these avenues has received such foreign influences as might penetrate to inland bogota. in like manner, the mountain-ridged peninsula of farther india keeps its interior in touch with its leading ports through its intermontane valleys of the irawadi, salwin, menam, and mekong rivers. low coasts rising by easy gradients to wide plains, like those of northern france, germany, southern russia, and the gulf seaboard of the united states, profit by an accessible and extensive hinterland. occasionally, however, this advantage is curtailed by a political boundary reinforced by a high protective tariff, as holland, belgium, and east prussia[ ] know to their sorrow. these low hems of the land, however, often meet physical obstructions to ready communications with the interior in the silted inlets, shallow lagoons, marshes, or mangrove swamps of the littoral itself. here the larger drainage streams give access across this amphibian belt to the solid land behind. where they flow into a tide-swept bay like the north sea or the english channel, they scour out their beds and preserve the connection between sea and land;[ ] but debouchment into a tideless basin like the caspian or the gulf of mexico, even for such mighty streams as the volga and the mississippi, sees the slow silting up of their mouths and the restriction of their agency in opening up the hinterland. thus the character of the bordering sea may help to determine the accessibility of the coast from the land side. [sidenote: accessibility of coasts from the sea.] its accessibility from the sea depends primarily upon its degree of articulation; and this articulation depends upon whether the littoral belt has suffered elevation or subsidence. when the inshore sea rests upon an uplifted bottom, the contour of the coast is smooth and unbroken, because most of the irregularities of surface have been overlaid by a deposit of waste from the land; so it offers no harbor except here and there a silted river mouth, while it shelves off through a broad amphibian belt of tidal marsh, lagoon, and sand reef to a shallow sea. such is the coast of new jersey, most of the gulf seaboard of the united states and mexico, the coromandel coast of india, and the long, low littoral of upper guinea. such coasts harbor a population of fishermen living along the strands of their placid lagoons,[ ] and stimulate a timid inshore navigation which sometimes develops to extensive coastwise intercourse, where a network of lagoons and deltaic channels forms a long inshore passage, as in upper guinea, but which fears the break of the surf outside.[ ] the rivers draining these low uplifted lands are deflected from their straight path to the sea by coastwise deposits, and idly trail along for miles just inside the outer beach; or they are split up into numerous offshoots among the silt beds of a delta, to find their way by shallow, tortuous channels to the ocean, so that they abate their value as highways between sea and land. the silted mouths of the nile excluded the larger vessels even of augustus cæsar's time and admitted only their lighters,[ ] just as to-day the lower rufigi river loses much of its value to german east africa because of its scant hospitality to vessels coming from the sea. [sidenote: embayed coasts.] the effect of subsidence, even on a low coastal plain, is to increase accessibility from the sea by flooding the previous river valleys and transforming them into a succession of long shallow inlets, alternating with low or hilly tongues of land. such embayed coasts form our atlantic seaboard from delaware bay, through chesapeake bay to pamlico sound, the north sea face of england, the funnel-shaped "förden" or firths on the eastern side of jutland and schleswig-holstein, and the ragged sounds or "bodden" that indent the baltic shore of germany from the bay of lubeck to the mouth of the oder river.[ ] although the shallowness of the bordering sea and the sand-bars and sand reefs which characterize all flat coasts here also exclude the largest vessels, such coasts have nevertheless ample contact with both land and sea. they tend to develop, therefore, the activities appropriate to both. a fertile soil and abundant local resources, as in tidewater maryland and virginia, make the land more attractive than the sea; the inhabitants become farmers rather than sailors. on the other hand, an embayed coastland promising little return to the labor of tillage, but with abundant fisheries and a superior location for maritime trade, is sure to profit by the accessible sea, and achieve the predominant maritime activity which characterized the mediæval hanse towns of northern germany and colonial new england. [sidenote: maritime activity on steep embayed coasts.] subsidence that brings the beat of the surf against the bolder reliefs of the land produces a ragged, indented coast, deep-water inlets penetrating far into the country, hilly or mountainous tongues of land running far out into the sea and breaking up into a swarm of islands and rocks, whose outer limits indicate approximately the old prediluvial line of shore.[ ] such are the fiord regions of norway, southern alaska, british columbia, greenland, and southern chile; the rias or submerged river valley coast of northwestern spain; and the deeply sunken mountain flank of dalmatia, whose every lateral valley has become a bay or a strait between mainland and island. all these coasts are characterized by a close succession of inlets, a limited amount of level country for settlement or cultivation, and in their rear a steep slope impeding communication with their hinterland. inaccessibility from the land, a high degree of accessibility from the sea, and a paucity of local resources unite to thrust the inhabitants of such coasts out upon the deep, to make of them fishermen, seamen, and ocean carriers. the same result follows where no barrier on the land side exists, but where a granitic or glaciated soil in the interior discourages agriculture and landward expansion, as in brittany, maine, and newfoundland. in all these the land repels and the sea attracts. brittany furnishes one-fifth of all the sailors in france's merchant marine,[ ] and its pelagic fishermen sweep the seas from newfoundland to iceland. three-fifths of the maritime activity of the whole austrian empire is confined to the ragged coast of dalmatia, which furnishes to-day most of the sailors for the imperial marine, just as in roman days it manned the adriatic fleet of the cæsars.[ ] the haida, tsimshean, and tlingit indians of the ragged western coast of british columbia and southern alaska spread their villages on the narrow tide-swept hem of the land, and subsist chiefly by the generosity of the deep. they are poor landsmen, but excellent boat-makers and seamen, venturing sometimes twenty-five miles out to sea to gather birds' eggs from the outermost fringe of rocks. [sidenote: contrasted coastal belts.] as areas of elevation or subsidence are, as a rule, extensive, it follows that coasts usually present long stretches of smooth simple shoreline, or a long succession of alternating inlet and headland. therefore different littoral belts show marked contrasts in their degree of accessibility to the sea, and their harbors appear in extensive groups of one type--fiords, river estuaries, sand or coral reef lagoons, and embayed mountain roots. a sudden change in relief or in geologic history sees one of these types immediately succeeded by a long-drawn group of a different type. such a contrast is found between the baltic and north sea ports of denmark and germany, the eastern and southern seaboards of england, the eastern and western sides of scotland, and the pacific littoral of north america north and south of juan de fuca strait, attended by a contrasted history. a common morphological history, marked by mountain uplift, glaciation, and subsidence, has given an historical development similar in not a few respects to the fiord coasts of new england, norway, iceland, greenland, the alaskan "panhandle," and southern chile. large subsidence areas on the mediterranean coasts from the strait of gibraltar to the bosporus have in essential features duplicated each other's histories, just as the low infertile shores of the baltic from finland to the skager rack have had much in common in their past development. where, however, a purely local subsidence, as in kamerun bay and old calabar on the elsewhere low monotonous stretch of the upper guinea coast,[ ] or a single great river estuary, as in the la plata and the columbia, affords a protected anchorage on an otherwise portless shore, such inlets assume increased importance. in the long unbroken reach of our pacific seaboard, san francisco bay and the columbia estuary are of inestimable value; while, by the treaty of with mexico, the international boundary line was made to bend slightly south of west from the mouth of the gila river to the coast, in order to include in the united states territory the excellent harbor of san diego. the mere nicks in the rim of southwest africa constituting walfish bay and angra pequena assume considerable value as trading stations and places of refuge along that , -mile reach of inhospitable coast extending from cape town north to great fish bay.[ ] it is worthy of notice in passing that, though both of these small inlets lie within the territory of german southwest africa, walfish bay with miles of coast on either side is a british possession, and that two tiny islets which commands the entrance to the harbor of angra pequena, also belong to great britain. on the uniform coast of east africa, the single considerable indentation formed by delagoa bay assumes immense importance, which, however, is due in part to the mineral wealth of its transvaal hinterland. from this point northward for degrees of latitude, a river mouth, like that fixing the site of beira, or an inshore islet affording protected harborage, like that of mombasa, serves as the single ocean gateway of a vast territory, and forms the terminus of a railroad--proof of its importance. [sidenote: evolution of ports.] the maritime evolution of all amply embayed coasts, except in arctic and sub-arctic regions inimical to all historical development, shows in its highest stage the gradual elimination of minor ports, and the concentration of maritime activity in a few favored ones, which have the deepest and most capacious harbors and the best river, canal, or railroad connection with the interior. the earlier stages are marked by a multiplicity of ports, showing in general activity nearly similar in amount and in kind. england's merchant marine in the fourteenth century was distributed in a large group of small but important ports on the southern coast, all which, owing to their favorable location, were engaged in the french and flemish trade; and in another group on the east coast, reaching from hull to colchester, which participated in the flemish, norwegian, and baltic trade.[ ] most of these have now declined before the overpowering competition of a few such seaboard marts as london, hull, and southampton. the introduction of steam trawlers into the fishing fleets has in like manner led to the concentration of the fishermen in a few large ports with good railroad facilities, such as aberdeen and grimsby, while the fishing villages that fringed the whole eastern and southern coasts have been gradually depopulated.[ ] so in colonial days, when new england was little more than a cordon of settlements along that rock-bound littoral, almost every inlet had its port actively engaged in coastwise and foreign commerce in the west indies and the guinea coast, in cod and mackerel fisheries, in whaling and shipbuilding, and this with only slight local variations. this widespread homogeneity of maritime activity has been succeeded by strict localization and differentiation, and reduction from many to few ports. so, for the whole atlantic seaboard of the united states, evolution of seaports has been marked by increase of size attended by decrease of numbers. [sidenote: offshore islands.] a well dissected coast, giving ample contact with the sea, often fails nevertheless to achieve historical importance, unless outlying islands are present to ease the transition from inshore to pelagic navigation, and to tempt to wider maritime enterprise. the long sweep of the european coast from northern norway to brittany has played out a significant part of its history in that procession of islands formed by iceland, the faroes, shetland, orkneys, great britain, ireland and the channel isles, whether it was the navigator of ancient armorica steering his leather-sailed boat to the shores of cæsar's britain, or the modern breton fisherman pulling in his nets off the coasts of distant iceland. the dim outline of mountainous cyprus, seen against a far-away horizon from the slopes of lebanon, beckoned the phoenician ship-master thither to trade and to colonize, just as the early etruscan merchants passed from their busy ironworks on the island of elba over the narrow strait to visible corsica.[ ] it was on the eastern side of greece, with its deep embayments, its valleys opening out to the aegean, with its islands scattered thickly as stars in the sky, and its milky way of the cyclades leading to the deep, rich soils of the asia minor coast, with its sea-made contact with all the stimulating influences and dangers emanating from the asiatic littoral, that hellenic history played its impressive drama. here was developed the spirit of enterprise that carried colonies to far western sicily and italy, while the western or rear side had a confined succession of local events, scarce worthy the name of history. neither mountain-walled epirus nor corcyra had an hellenic settlement in b.c., at a date when the eastern greeks had reached the ionian coast of the aegean and had set up a lonely group of colonies even on the bay of naples. turning to america, we find that the antilles received their population from the only two tribes, first the arawaks and later the caribs, who ever reached the indented northern coast of south america between the isthmus of panama and the mouth of the orinoco. here the small islands of the venezuelan coast, often in sight, lured these peoples of river and shore to open-sea navigation, and drew them first to the windward isles, then northward step by step or island by island, to hayti and cuba.[ ] [sidenote: offshore islands as vestibules of the mainland.] in all these instances, offshore islands tempt to expansion and thereby add to the historical importance of the nearby coast. frequently, however, they achieve the same result by offering advantageous footholds to enterprising voyagers from remote lands, and become the medium for infusing life into hitherto dead coasts. the long monotonous littoral of east africa from cape guadafui to the cape of good hope, before the planting here of portuguese way-stations on the road to india in the sixteenth century, was destitute of historical significance, except that stretch opposite the islands of zanzibar and pemba, which arab merchants in the tenth century appropriated as the basis for their slave and ivory trade. the east indies and ceylon have been so many offshore stations whence, first through the portuguese, and later through the dutch and english, european influences percolated into southeastern asia. asia, with its island-strewn shores, has diffused its influences over a broad zone of the western pacific, and through the agency of its active restless malays, even halfway across that ocean. in contrast, the western coast of the americas, a stretch nearly , miles from tierra del fuego to the aleutian chain, has seen its aboriginal inhabitants barred from seaward expansion by the lack of offshore islands, and its entrance upon the historical stage delayed till recent times. in general it can be said that islandless seas attain a later historical development than those whose expanse is rendered less forbidding by hospitable fragments of land. this factor, as well as its location remote from the old and stimulating civilization of syria and asia minor, operated to retard the development of the western mediterranean long after the eastern basin had reached its zenith. [sidenote: previous habitat of coast-dwellers.] coast-dwelling peoples exhibit every degree of intimacy with the water, from the amphibian life of many malay tribes who love the wash of the waves beneath their pile-built villages, to the nama bushmen who inhabit the dune-walled coast of southwest africa, and know nothing of the sea. in the resulting nautical development the natural talents and habits of the people are of immense influence; but these in turn have been largely determined by the geographical environment of their previous habitat, whether inland or coastal, and by the duration in time, as well as the degree and necessity, of their contact with the sea. the phoenicians, who, according to their traditions as variously interpreted, came to the coast of lebanon either from the persian gulf or the red sea,[ ] brought to their favorable maritime location a different endowment from that of the land-trading philistines, who moved up from the south to occupy the sand-choked shores of palestine,[ ] or from that of the jews, bred to the grasslands of mesopotamia and the gardens of judea, who only at rare periods in their history forced their way to the sea.[ ] the unindented coast stretching from cape carmel south to the nile delta never produced a maritime people and never achieved maritime importance, till a race of experienced mariners like the greeks planted their colonies and built their harbor moles on the shores of sharon and philistia.[ ] so on the west face of africa, from the senegal southward along the whole guinea coast to benguela, all evidences of kinship and tradition among the local tribes point to an origin on the interior plains and a recent migration seaward,[ ] so that no previous schooling enabled them to exploit the numerous harbors along this littoral, as did later the sea-bred portuguese and english. [sidenote: habitability of coasts as factor in maritime development.] not only the accessibility of the coast from the sea, but also its habitability enters as a factor into its historical importance. a sandy desert coast, like that of southwest africa and much of the peruvian littoral, or a sterile mountain face, like that of lower california, excludes the people of the country from the sea. saldanha bay, the one good natural harbor on the west coast of cape colony, is worthless even to the enterprising english, because it has no supply of fresh water.[ ] the slowness of the ancient egyptians to take the short step forward from river to marine navigation can undoubtedly be traced to the fact that the sour swamps, barren sand-dunes, and pestilential marshes on the seaward side of the nile delta must have always been sparsely populated as they are to-day,[ ] and that a broad stretch of sandy waste formed their red sea littoral. on the other hand, where the hem of the continents is fertile enough to support a dense population, a large number of people are brought into contact with the sea, even where no elaborate articulation lengthens the shoreline. when this teeming humanity of a garden littoral is barred from landward expansion by desert or mountain, or by the already overcrowded population of its own hinterland, it wells over the brim of its home country, no matter how large, and overflows to other lands across the seas. the congested population of the fertile and indented coast of southern china, though not strictly speaking a sea-faring people, found an outlet for their redundant humanity and their commerce in the tropical sunda islands. by the sixth century their trading junks were doing an active business in the harbors of java, sumatra, and malacca; they had even reached ceylon and the persian gulf, and a little later were visiting the great focal market of aden at the entrance of the red sea.[ ] a strong infusion of chinese blood improved the malay stock in the sunda islands, and later in north borneo and certain of the philippines, whither their traders and emigrants turned in the fourteenth century, when they found their opportunities curtailed in the archipelago to the south by the spread of islam.[ ] now the "yellow peril" threatens the whole circle of these islands from luzon to sumatra. similarly india, first from its eastern, later from its western coast, sent a stream of traders, buddhist priests, and colonists to the sunda islands, and especially to java, as early as the fifth century of our era, whence indian civilization, religion, and elements of the sanskrit tongue spread to borneo, sumatra, bali, lombok, and even to some smaller islands among the molucca group.[ ] the hindus became the dominant commercial nation of the indian ocean long before the great development of arabian sea power, and later shared the trade of the east african coast with the merchants of oman and yemen.[ ] to-day they form a considerable mercantile class in the ports of mascat, aden, zanzibar, pemba, and natal. [sidenote: geographic conditions for brilliant maritime development.] on the coasts of large fertile areas like china and india, however, maritime activity comes not as an early, but as an eventual development, assumes not a dominant, but an incidental historical importance. the coastlands appearing early on the maritime stage of history, and playing a brilliant part in the drama of the sea, have been habitable, but their tillable fields have been limited either in fertility, as in new england, or in amount, as in greece, or in both respects, as in norway. but if blessed with advantageous location for international trade and many or even a few fairly good harbors, such coasts tend to develop wide maritime dominion and colonial expansion.[ ] great fertility in a narrow coastal belt barred from the interior serves to concentrate and energize the maritime activities of the nation. the -mile wide plain stretching along the foot of the lebanon range from antioch to cape carmel is even now the garden of syria.[ ] in ancient phoenician days its abundant crops and vines supported luxuriant cities and a teeming population, which sailed and traded and colonized to the atlantic outskirts of europe and africa. moreover, their maritime ventures had a wide sweep as early as b. c. quite similar to the phoenician littoral and almost duplicating its history, is the oman seaboard of eastern arabia. here again a fertile coastal plain sprinkled with its "hundred villages," edged with a few tolerable harbors, and backed by a high mountain wall with an expanse of desert beyond, produced a race of bold and skilful navigators,[ ] who in the middle ages used their location between the persian gulf and the arabian sea to make themselves the dominant maritime power of the indian ocean. with them maritime expansion was typically wide in its sweep and rapid in its development. even before mohammed's time they had reached india; but under the energizing influences of islam, by they had established a flourishing trade with china, for which they set up way stations or staple-points in canton and the sunda islands.[ ] first as voyagers and merchants, then as colonists, they came, bringing their wares and their religion to these distant shores. marco polo, visiting sumatra in , tells us the coast population was "saracen," but this was probably more in religion than in blood.[ ] oman ventures, seconded by those of yemen, reached as far south as east. the trading stations of madisha and barawa were established on the somali coast of east africa in , and kilwa miles further south in . in the seventeenth century the oman arabs dislodged the intruding portuguese from all this coast belt down to the present northern boundary of portuguese east africa. even so late as their capital, mascat, sent out fine merchantmen that did an extensive carrying trade, and might be seen loading in the ports of british india, in singapore, java, and mauritius. [sidenote: soil of coastlands as factor.] brittany's active part in the maritime history of france is due not only to its ragged contour, its inshore and offshore islands, its forward location on the atlantic which brought it near to the fisheries of newfoundland and the trade of the west indies, but also to the fact that the "golden belt," which, with but few interruptions, forms a band of fertility along the coast, has supported a denser population than the sterile granitic soils of the interior,[ ] while the sea near by varied and enriched the diet of the inhabitants by its abundance of fish, and in its limy seaweed yielded a valuable fertilizer for their gardens.[ ] the small but countless alluvial deposits at the fiord heads in norway, aided by the products of the sea, are able to support a considerable number of people. hence the narrow coastal rim of that country shows always a density of population double or quadruple that of the next density belt toward the mountainous interior, and contains seventeen out of norway's nineteen towns having more than , inhabitants.[ ] it is this relative fertility of the coastal regions, as opposed to the sterile interior, that has brought so large a part of norway's people in contact with the atlantic and helped give them a prominent place in maritime history. [sidenote: barren coast of fertile hinterland.] occasionally an infertile and sparsely inhabited littoral bordering a limited zone of singular productivity, especially if favorably located for international trade, will develop marked maritime activity, both in trade and commercial colonization. such was arabian yemen, the home of the ancient sabæans on the red sea, stretching from the straits of bab-el-mandeb north-westward for miles. here a mountain range, rising to , feet and bordering the plateau desert of central arabia, condenses the vapors of the summer monsoon and creates a long-drawn oasis, where terraced coffee gardens and orchards blossom in the irrigated soil; but the arid coastal strip at its feet, harboring a sparse population only along its tricking streams, developed a series of considerable ports as outlets for the abundant products and crowded population of the highlands.[ ] a location on the busy sea lane leading from the indian ocean to the mediterranean, near the meeting place of three continents, made the merchants of the yemen coast, like the oman arabs to the north, middlemen in the trade of europe with eastern africa and india.[ ] therefore, even in the second century these sabæans had their trading stations scattered along the east coast of africa as far south as zanzibar.[ ] in vasco da gama found arabs, either of oman or yemen, yet farther south in sofala, the port for the ivory and gold trade. some of them he employed as pilots to steer his course to india.[ ] history makes one fact very plain: a people who dwell by the sea, and to whom nature applies some lash to drive them out upon the deep, command opportunity for practically unlimited expansion. in this way small and apparently ill-favored strips of the earth's surface have become the seats of wide maritime supremacy and colonial empire. the scattered but extensive seaboard possession of little venice and genoa in the latter centuries of the middle ages are paralleled in modern times by the large oversea dominions of the english and dutch. seaward expansions of peoples are always of great moment and generally of vast extent, whether they are the coastward movements of inland peoples to get a foothold upon the great oceanic highway of trade and civilization, as has been the case with the russians notably since the early eighteenth century, and with numerous interior tribes of west africa since the opening of the slave trade; or whether they represent the more rapid and extensive coastwise and oversea expansions of maritime nations like the english, dutch, and portuguese. in either event they give rise to widespread displacements of peoples and a bizarre arrangement of race elements along the coast. when these two contrary movements meet, the shock of battle follows, as the recent history of the russians and japanese in manchuria and korea illustrates, the wars of swedes and russians for the possession of the eastern baltic littoral, and the numerous minor conflicts that have occurred in upper guinea between european commercial powers and the would-be trading tribes of the bordering hinterland. [sidenote: ethnic contrast between coast and interior peoples.] a coast region is a peculiar habitat, inasmuch as it is more or less dominated by the sea. it is exposed to inundation by tidal wave and to occupation by immigrant fleets. it may be the base for out-going maritime enterprise or the goal of some oversea movement, the dispenser or the recipient of colonists. the contrast between coast-dwellers and the nearby inland people which exists so widely can be traced not only to a difference of environment, but often to a fundamental difference of race or tribe caused by immigration to accessible shores. the greeks, crowded in their narrow peninsula of limited fertility, wove an hellenic border on the skirts of the black sea and eastern mediterranean lands, just as the carthaginians added a fringe of aliens to north africa, where the punic people of the coast presented a marked contrast to the berbers of the interior. [see map page .] an ethnographical map of russia to-day shows a narrow but almost continuous rim of germans stretching from the river niemen north through the baltic coast of courland, livland, and esthland, as far as revel; and again, a similar band of swedes along the seaboard of finland, from a point east of helsingfors on the south around to uleaborg on the north,[ ] dating from the time when finland was a political dependency of sweden, and influenced by the fact that the frozen gulf of bothnia every winter makes a bridge of ice between the two shores. [see map page .] [sidenote: ethnic contrasts in the pacific islands.] everywhere in the melanesian archipelago, where papuans and malays dwell side by side, the latter as the new-comers are always found in possession of the coast, while the darker aborigines have withdrawn into the interior. so in the philippines, the aboriginal negritos, pure or more often mixed with malayan blood, as in the mangyan tribe of central mindoro, are found crowded back into the interior by the successive invasions of malays who have encircled the coasts. [see map page .] the zamboanga peninsula of mindanao has an inland pagan population of primitive malayan race called subanon, who have been displaced from the littoral by the seafaring samal moros, mohammedanized malays from the east shores of sumatra and the adjacent islands, who spread northward about under the energizing impulse of their new religion.[ ] even at so late a date as the arrival of magellan, the subanon seem to have still occupied some points of the coast,[ ] just as the savage ainos of the island of yezo touched the sea about sapporo only forty years ago, though they are now surrounded by a seaboard rim of japanese.[ ] [sidenote: ethnic contrasts in the americas.] if we turn to south america, we find that warlike tupi, at the time of the discovery, occupied the whole brazilian coast from the southern tropic north to eastern guiana, while the highlands of eastern brazil immediately in their rear were populated by tribes of ges, who had been displaced by the coastwise expansion of the tupi canoemen.[ ] [see map page .] and to-day this same belt of coastland has been appropriated by a foreign population of europeans and negroes, while the vast interior of brazil shows a predominance of native indian stocks, only broken here and there by a lonely _enclave_ of portuguese settlement. the early english and french territories in america presented this same contrast of coast and inland people--the colonists planting themselves on the hem of the continent to preserve maritime connection with the home countries, the aborigines forced back beyond reach of the tide. wherever an energetic seafaring people with marked commercial or colonizing bent make a highway of the deep, they give rise to this distinction of coast and inland people on whatever shores they touch. the expanding angles and saxons did it in the north sea and the channel, where they stretched their _litus saxonicum_ faintly along the coast of the continent to the apex of brittany, and firmly along the hem of england from southampton water to the firth of forth;[ ] the sea-bred scandinavians did it farther north in the teutonic fringe of settlements which they placed on the shores of celtic scotland and ireland.[ ] [sidenote: older ethnic stock in coastlands.] as a rule it is the new-comers who hold the coast, but occasionally the coast-dwellers represent the older ethnic stock. in the balkan peninsula to-day the descendants of the ancient hellenes are, with few exceptions, confined to the coast. the reason is to be found in the fact that the slavs and other northern races who have intruded by successive invasions from the plains of southern russia are primarily inland peoples, and therefore have occupied the core of the peninsula, forcing the original greek population before them to the edge of the sea.[ ] this is the same anthropo-geographical process which makes so many peninsulas the last halting-place of a dislodged earlier race. but the greeks who line the northern and western shores of asiatic turkey are such only in language and religion, because their prevailing broad head-form shows them to be turks and armenians in race stock.[ ] sometimes the distinction of race between coast and interior is obliterated so far as language and civilization are concerned, but survives less conspicuously in head-form and pigmentation. the outermost fringe of the norwegian coast, from the extreme south to the latitude of trondhjem in the north, is occupied by a broad-headed, round-faced, rather dark people of only medium height, who show decided affinities with the alpine race of central europe, and who present a marked contrast to the tall narrow-headed blondes of pure teutonic type, constituting the prevailing population from the inner edge of the coast eastward into sweden. this brachycephalic, un-germanic stock of the norwegian seaboard seems to represent the last stand made by that once wide-spread alpine race, which here has been shoved along to the rocky capes and islands of the outer edge by a later teutonic immigration coming from sweden.[ ] so the largest continuous area of negrito stock in the philippines is found in the sierra madre mountains defining the eastern coast of northern luzon.[ ] facing the neighborless wastes of the pacific, whence no new settler could come, turned away from the sources of malay immigration to the southwest, its location made it a retreat, rather than a gateway to incoming races. [see map page .] [sidenote: ethnic amalgamations in coastlands.] where an immigrant population from oversea lands occupies the coastal hem of a country, rarely do they preserve the purity of their race. coming at first with marauding or trading intent, they bring no women with them, but institute their trading stations or colonies by marriage with the women of the country. the ethnic character of the resultant population depends upon the proportion of the two constituent elements, the nearness or remoteness of their previous kinship, and the degree of innate race antagonism. the ancient greek elements which crossed the aegean from different sections of the peninsula to colonize the ionian coast of asia minor mingled with the native carian, cretan, lydian, pelasgian, and phoenician populations which they found there.[ ] on all the barbarian shores where the greeks established themselves, there arose a mixed race--in celtic massilia, in libyan barca, and in scythian crimea--but always a race hellenized, born interpreters and mercantile agents.[ ] a maritime people, engrossed chiefly with the idea of trade, moves in small groups and intermittently; hence it modifies the original coastal population less than does a genuine colonizing nation, especially as it prefers the smallest possible territorial base for its operations. the arab element in the coast population of east africa is strongly represented, but not so strongly as one might expect after a thousand years of intercourse, because it was scattered in detached seaboard points, only a few of which were really stable. the native population of zanzibar and pemba and the fringe of coast tribes on the mainland opposite are clearly tinged with arab blood. these swahili, as they are called, are a highly mixed race, as their negro element has been derived not only from the local coast peoples, but also from the slaves who for centuries have been halting here on their seaward journey from the interior of africa.[ ] [see map page .] [sidenote: multiplicity of race elements on coasts.] coast peoples tend to show something more than the hybridism resulting from the mingling of two stocks. so soon as the art of navigation developed beyond its initial phase of mere coastwise travel, and began to strike out across the deep, all coast peoples bordered upon each other, and the sea became a common waste boundary between. unlike a land boundary, which is in general accessible from only two sides and tends to show, therefore, only two constituent elements in its border population, a sea boundary is accessible from many directions with almost equal ease; it therefore draws from many lands, and gives its population a variety of ethnic elements and a cosmopolitan stamp. this, however, is most marked in great seaports, but from them it penetrates into the surrounding country. the whole southern and eastern coast population of england, from cornwall to the wash, received during elizabeth's reign valuable accessions of industrious flemings and huguenots, refugees from catholic persecution in the netherlands and france.[ ] our north atlantic states, whose population is more than half ( . per cent.) made up of aliens and natives born of foreign parents,[ ] have drawn these elements from almost the whole circle of atlantic shores, from norway to argentine and from argentine to newfoundland. even the southern states, so long unattractive to immigrants on account of the low status of labor, show a fringe of various foreign elements along the gulf coast, the deeper tint of which on the census maps fades off rapidly toward the interior. the same phenomenon appears with asiatic and australian elements in our pacific seaboard states.[ ] the cosmopolitan population of new york, with its "chinatown," its "little italy," its russian and hungarian quarters, has its counterpart in the mixed population of mascat, peopled by hindu, arabs, persians, kurds, afghans, and baluchis, settled here for purposes of trade; or in the equally mongrel inhabitants of aden and zanzibar, of marseilles, constantinople, alexandria, port said, and other mediterranean ports. [sidenote: lingua franca of coasts.] the cosmopolitanism and the commercial activity that characterize so many seaboards are reflected in the fact that, with rare exceptions, it is the coast regions of the world that give rise to a _lingua franca_ or _lingua geral_. the original _lingua franca_ arose on the coast of the levant during the period of italian commercial supremacy there. it consisted of an italian stock, on which were grafted greek, arabic, and turkish words, and was the regular language of trade for french, spanish, and italians.[ ] it is still spoken in many mediterranean ports, especially in smyrna, and in the early part of the nineteenth century was in use from madagascar to the philippines.[ ] from the coastal strip of the zanzibar arabs, recently transferred to german east africa, the speech of the swahili has become a means of communication over a great part of east africa, from the coast to the congo and the sources of the nile. it is a bantu dialect permeated with arabic and hindu terms, and sparsely sprinkled even with english and german words.[ ] "pidgin english" (business english) performs the function of a _lingua franca_ in the ports of china and the far east. it is a jargon of corrupted english with a slight mixture of chinese, malay, and portuguese words, arranged according to the chinese idiom. another mongrel english does service on the coast of new guinea. the "nigger english" of the west african trade is a regular dialect among the natives of the sierra leone coast. farther east, along the upper guinea littoral, the eboe family of tribes who extend across the niger delta from lagos to old calabar have furnished a language of trade in one of their dialects.[ ] the tupi speech of the brazilian coast indians, with whom the explorers first came into contact, became, in the mouth of portuguese traders and jesuit missionaries, the _lingua geral_ or medium of communication between the whites and the various indian tribes throughout brazil.[ ] the chinook indians, located on our pacific coast north and south of the columbia river, have furnished a jargon of indian, french, and english words which serves as a language of trade throughout a long stretch of the northwest pacific coast, not only between whites and indians, but also between indians of different linguistic stocks.[ ] [sidenote: coast-dwellers as middlemen.] the coast is the natural habitat of the middleman. one strip of seaboard produces a middleman people, and then sends them out to appropriate other littorals, if geographic conditions are favorable; otherwise it is content with the transit trade of its own locality. it breeds essentially a race of merchants, shunning varied production, nursing monopoly by secrecy and every method to crush competition. the profits of trade attract all the free citizens, and the laboring class is small or slave. expansion landward has no attraction in comparison with the seaward expansion of commerce. the result is often a relative dearth of local land-grown food stuffs. king hiram of tyre, in his letter to king solomon, promised to send him trees of cedar and cypress, made into rafts and conveyed to the coast of philistia, and asked in return for grain, "which we stand in need of because we inhabit an island." the pay came in the form of wheat, oil, and wine. but solomon furnished a considerable part of the laborers-- , of them--who were sent, , at a time, to mount lebanon to cut the timber, apparently under the direction of the more skilful sidonian foresters.[ ] a type of true coast traders is found in the duallas of the german kamerun, at the inner angle of the gulf of guinea. located along the lower course and delta of the mungo river where it flows into the kamerun estuary, they command a good route through a mountainous country into the interior. this they guard jealously, excluding all competition, monopolizing the trade, and imposing a transit duty on all articles going to and from the interior. they avoid agriculture so far as possible. their women and slaves produce an inadequate supply of bananas and yams, but crops needing much labor are wholly neglected, so that their coasts have a reputation for dearness of provisions.[ ] along the , miles of west african coast between the senegal and the kunene rivers the negro's natural talent for trade has developed special tribes, who act as intermediaries between the interior and the european stations on the seaboard. among these we find the bihenos and banda of portuguese benguela, who fit out whole caravans for the back country; the portuguese of loanda rely on the ambaquistas and the mbunda middlemen. the slave trade particularly brought a sinister and abnormal activity to these seaboard tribes,[ ] just as it did to the east coast tribes, and stimulated both in the exploitation of their geographic position as middlemen.[ ] [sidenote: monopoly of trade with the hinterland.] the alaskan coast shows the same development. the kinik indians at the head of cook's inlet buy skins of land animals from the inland athapascans at the sources of the copper river, and then make a good profit by selling them to the american traders of the coast. these same athapascans for a long time found a similar body of middlemen in the ugalentz at the mouth of the copper river, till the americans there encouraged the inland hunters to bring their skins to the fur station on the coast.[ ] the chilcats at the head of lynn canal long monopolized the fur trade with the athapascan indians about chilkoot pass; these they would meet on the divide and buy their skins, which they would carry to the hudson bay company agents on the coast. they guarded their monopoly jealously, and for fifty years were able to exclude all traders and miners from the passes leading to the yukon.[ ] the same policy of monopoly and exclusion has been pursued by the moro coast dwellers of mindanao in relation to the pagan tribes of the interior. they buy at low prices the forest and agriculture products of the inland malays, whom they do not permit to approach either rivers or seaboard, for fear they may come into contact with the chinese merchants along the coast. so fiercely is their monopoly guarded by this middleman race, that the american government in the philippines will be able to break it only by military interference.[ ] [sidenote: differentiation of coast from inland people.] differences of occupation, of food supply, and of climate often further operate to differentiate the coast from the inland people near by, and to emphasize the ethnic difference which is almost invariably present, either inconspicuously from a slight infusion of alien blood, or plainly as in an immigrant race. sometimes the contrast is in physique. in finisterre province of western brittany, the people along the more fertile coastal strip are on the average an inch taller than the inhabitants of the barren, granitic interior. their more generous food supply, further enriched by the abundant fisheries at their doors, would account for this increased stature; but this must also be attributed in part to intermixture of the local celts with a tall teutonic stock which brushed along these shores, but did not penetrate into the unattractive interior.[ ] so the negroes of the guinea coast, though not immune from fevers, are better nourished on the alluvial lowlands near the abundant fish of the lagoons, and hence are often stronger and better looking than the plateau interior tribes near by. but here, again, an advantageous blending of races can not be excluded as a contributing cause.[ ] sometimes the advantage in physique falls to the inland people, especially in tropical countries when a highland interior is contrasted with a low coast belt. the wild igorotes, inhabiting the mountainous interior of northern luzon, enjoy a cooler climate than the lowlands, and this has resulted in developing in them a decidedly better physique and more industrious habits than are found in the civilized people of the coasts encircling them.[ ] [sidenote: early civilization of coasts.] where a coast people is an immigrant stock from some remote oversea point, it brings to its new home a surplus of energy which was perhaps the basis of selection in the exodus from the mother country. such a people is therefore characterized by greater initiative, enterprise, and endurance than the sedentary population which it left behind or that to which it comes; and these qualities are often further stimulated by the transfer to a new environment rich in opportunities. sea-born in their origin, sea-borne in their migration, they cling to the zone of littoral, because here they find the conditions which they best know how to exploit. dwelling on the highway of the ocean, living in easy intercourse with distant countries, which would have been far more difficult of access by land-travel over territories inhabited by hostile races, exchanging with these both commodities and ideas, food-stuffs and religions, they become the children of civilization, and their sun-burned seamen the sturdy apostles of progress. therefore it may be laid down as a general proposition, that the coasts of a country are the first part of it to develop, not an indigenous or local civilization, but a cosmopolitan culture, which later spreads inland from the seaboard. [sidenote: retarded coastal peoples.] exceptions to this rule are found in barren or inaccessible coasts like the pacific littoral of peru and mexico, and on shores like those of california, western africa and eastern luzon, which occupy an adverse geographic location facing a neighborless expanse of ocean and remote from the world's earlier foci of civilization. therefore the descent from the equatorial plateau of africa down to the atlantic littoral means a drop in culture also, because the various elements of civilization which for ages have uninterruptedly filtered into sudan from the mediterranean and the red sea, have rarely penetrated to the western rim of the highland, and hence never reached the coast. moreover, this steaming lowland, from the senegal river to the kamerun mountains, has been a last asylum for dislodged tribes who have been driven out by expanding peoples of the plateau. they have descended in their flight upon the original coast dwellers, adding to the general condition of political disruption, multiplying the number of small weak tribes, increasing the occasions for intertribal wars, and furthering the prevailing degradation. the seaboard lowlands of sierra leone, liberia and the ivory coast have all suffered thus in historic times.[ ] all this region was the original home of the low, typical "guinea nigger" of the southern plantation. the coasts of oregon and california showed a parallel to this in their fragmentary native tribes of retarded development, whose level of culture, low at best, sank rapidly from the interior toward the seaboard. they seem to have been intruders from the central highlands, who further deteriorated in their weakness and isolation after reaching the coast. they bore every mark of degradation in their short stature, linguistic and tribal dismemberment, their low morals and culture, which ranked them little above the brutes. in contrast, all the large and superior indian groups of north america belonged to the interior of the continent.[ ] [sidenote: cultural contrast of coast and interior.] the long, indented coast of the mediterranean has in all ages up to modern times presented the contrast of a littoral more advanced in civilization than the inland districts. the only exception was ancient egypt before psammeticus began to exploit his mud-choked seaboard. this contrast was apparent, not only wherever phoenicians or greeks had appropriated the remote coast of an alien and retarded people, but even in near-by thrace the savage habits of the interior tribes were softened only where these dwelt in close proximity to the ionian colonies along the coast, a fact as noticeable in the time of tacitus as in that of herodotus five hundred years before.[ ] the ancient philosophers of greece were awake to the deep-rooted differences between an inland and a maritime city, especially in respect to receptivity of ideas, activity of intellect, and affinity for culture.[ ] if we turn to the philippines, we find that per cent. of the christian or civilized population of the islands live on or near the coast; and of the remaining per cent. dwelling inland, by far the greater part represents simply the landward extension of the area of christian civilization which had manila bay for a nucleus.[ ] otherwise, all the interior districts are occupied by wild or pagan tribes. mohammedanism, too, a religion of civilization, rims the southernmost islands which face the eastern distributing point of the faith in java; it is confined to the coasts, except for its one inland area of expansion along the lake and river system of the rio grande of mindanao, which afforded an inland extension of sea navigation for the small moro boat. even the fiji islands show different shades of savagery between coasts and interior.[ ] [sidenote: progress from thalassic to oceanic coasts.] coasts are areas of out-going and in-coming maritime influences. the nature and amount of these influences depend upon the sea or ocean whose rim the coast in question helps to form, and the relations of that coast to its other tide-washed shores. our land-made point of view dominates us so completely, that we are prone to consider a coast as margin of its land, and not also as margin of its sea, whence, moreover, it receives the most important contributions to its development. the geographic location of a coast as part of a thalassic or of an oceanic rim is a basic factor in its history; more potent than local conditions of fertility, irregular contour, or accessibility from sea and hinterland. everything that can be said about the different degrees of historical importance attaching to inland seas and open oceans in successive ages applies equally to the countries and peoples along their shores; and everything that enhances or diminishes the cultural possibilities of a sea--its size, zonal location, its relation to the oceans and continents--finds its expression in the life along its coasts. the anthropo-geographical evolution which has passed from small to large states and from small to large seas as fields of maritime activity has been attended by a continuous change in the value of coasts, according as these were located on enclosed basins like the mediterranean, red, and baltic; on marginal ones like the china and north seas; or on the open ocean. in the earlier periods of the world's history, a location on a relatively small enclosed sea gave a maritime horizon wide enough to lure, but not so wide as to intimidate; and by its seclusion led to a concentration and intensification of historical development, which in many of its phases left models for subsequent ages to wonder at and imitate. this formative period and formative environment outgrown, historical development was transferred to locations on the open oceans, according to the law of human advance from small to large areas. the historical importance of the mediterranean and the baltic shores was transitory, a prelude to the larger importance of the atlantic littoral of europe, just as this in turn was to attain its full significance only when the circumnavigation of africa and south america linked the atlantic to the world ocean. thus that gradual expansion of the geographic horizon which has accompanied the progress of history has seen a slow evolution in the value of seaboard locations, the transfer of maritime leadership from small to large basins, from thalassic to oceanic ports, from lubeck to hamburg, from venice to genoa, as earlier from the piræus to ostia, and later from england's little _cinque ports_ to liverpool and the clyde. [sidenote: geographic location of coasts.] though the articulations of a coast determine the ease with which maritime influences are communicated to the land, nevertheless history shows repeated instances where an exceptional location, combined with restricted area, has raised a poorly indented seaboard to maritime and cultural preeminence. phoenicia's brilliant history rose superior to the limitation of indifferent harbors, owing to a position on the arabian isthmus between the mediterranean and the indian ocean at the meeting place of europe, asia, and africa. moreover, the advantages of this particular location have in various times and in various degrees brought into prominence all parts of the syrian and egyptian coasts from antioch to alexandria. so the whole stretch of coast around the head of the adriatic, marking the conjunction of a busy sea-route with various land-routes over the encircling mountains from central europe, has seen during the ages a long succession of thriving maritime cities, in spite of fast-silting harbors and impeded connection with the hinterland. here in turn have ruled with maritime sway spina, ravenna, aquileia,[ ] venice, and trieste. on the other side of the italian peninsula, the location on the northernmost inlet of the western mediterranean and at the seaward base of the ligurian apennines, just where this range opens two passes of only , feet elevation to the upper po valley, made an active maritime town of genoa from strabo's day to the present. in its incipiency it relied upon one mediocre harbor on an otherwise harborless coast, a local supply of timber for its ships, and a road northward across the mountains.[ ] the maritime ascendency in the middle ages of genoa, pisa, venice, and barcelona proves that no long indented coast is necessary, but only one tolerable harbor coupled with an advantageous location. [sidenote: intermediate location between contrasted coasts.] owing to the ease and cheapness of water transportation, a seaboard position between two other coasts of contrasted products due to a difference either of zonal location or of economic development or of both combined, insures commercial exchanges and the inevitable activities of the middleman. the position of carthage near the center of the mediterranean enabled her to fatten on the trade between the highly developed eastern basin and the retarded western one. midway between the teeming industrial towns of medieval flanders, holland, and western germany, and the new unexploited districts of retarded russia, poland, and scandinavia, lay the long line of the german hanseatic towns--kiel, lubeck, wiemar, rostock, stralsund, greifswald, anclam, stettin, and colberg, the _civitates maritimæ_. for three centuries or more they made themselves the dominant commercial and maritime power of the baltic by exchanging flemish fabrics, german hardware, and spanish wines for the furs and wax of russian forests, tallow and hides from polish pastures, and crude metals from swedish mines.[ ] so portugal by its geographical location became a staple place where the tropical products from the east indies were transferred to the vessels of dutch merchants, and by them distributed to northern europe. later new england, by a parallel location, became the middleman in the exchanges of the tropical products of the west indies, the tobacco of virginia, and the wheat of maryland for the manufactured wares of england and the fish of newfoundland. [sidenote: historical decline of certain coasts.] primitive or early maritime commerce has always been characterized by the short beat, a succession of middlemen coasts, and a close series of staple-places, such as served the early indian ocean trade in oman, malabar coast, ceylon, coromandel coast, malacca, and java. therefore, many a littoral admirably situated for middleman trade loses this advantage so soon as commerce matures enough to extend the sweep of its voyages, and to bring into direct contact the two nations for which that coast was intermediary. this is only another aspect of the anthropo-geographic evolution from small to large areas. the decline of the mediterranean coasts followed close upon the discovery of the sea-route to india; nor was their local importance restored by the suez canal. portugal declined when the dutch, excluded from the tagus mouth on the union of portugal with spain, found their way to the spice isles. ceylon, though still the chief port of call in the indian ocean, has lost its preëminence as chief market for all the lands between africa and china, which it enjoyed in the sixth century, owing to the "long haul" of modern oceanic commerce. [sidenote: political factors in this decline.] not only that far-reaching readjustment of maritime ascendency which in the sixteenth century followed the advance from thalassic to oceanic fields of commerce, but also purely local political events may for a time produce striking changes in the use or importance of coasts. the piræus, which had been the heart of ancient athens, almost wholly lost its value in the checkered political history of the country during the middle ages, when naval power and merchant marine almost vanished; but with the restoration of grecian independence in , much of its pristine activity was restored. up to the beginning of the seventeenth century, japan had exploited her advantageous location and her richly indented coast to develop a maritime trade which extended from kamchatka to india; but in an imperial order withdrew every japanese vessel from the high seas, and for over two hundred years robbed her busy littoral of all its historical significance. the real life of the pacific coast of the united states began only with its incorporation into the territory of the republic, but it failed to attain its full importance until our acquisition of alaska, hawaii, and the philippines. so the coast of the persian gulf has had periods of activity alternating with periods of deathlike quiet. its conquest by the saracens in the seventh century inaugurated an era of intense maritime enterprise along its drowsy shores. what new awakening may it experience, if it should one day become a russian littoral! [sidenote: physical causes of decline.] sometimes the decline in historical importance is due to physical modifications in the coast itself, especially when, the mud transported by a great river to the sea is constantly pushing forward the outer shoreline. the control of the adriatic passed in turn from spina to adria, ravenna, aquileia, venice, and trieste, owing to a steady silting up of the coast.[ ] strabo records that spina, originally a port, was in his time stadia, or miles, from the sea.[ ] bruges, once the great _entrepôt_ of the hanseatic league, was originally on an arm of the sea, with which it was later connected by canal, and which has been silted up since , so that its commerce, disturbed too by local wars, was transferred to antwerp on the scheldt.[ ] many early english ports on the coast of kent and on the old solid rim of the fenland marshes now lie miles inland from the channel and the wash. a people never utilizes all parts of its coast with equal intensity, or any part with equal intensity in all periods of its development; but, according to the law of differentiation, it gradually concentrates its energies in a few favored ports, whose maritime business tends to become specialized. then every extension of the subsidiary territory and intensification of production with advancing civilization increases the mass of men and wares passing through these ocean gateways. the shores of new york, delaware, and chesapeake bays are more important to the country now than they were in early colonial days, when their back country extended only to the watershed of the appalachian system. our gulf coast has gained in activity with the south's economic advance from slave to free labor, and from almost exclusive cotton planting to diversified production combined with industries; and it will come into its own, in a maritime sense, when the opening of the panama canal will divert from the atlantic outlets those products of the mississippi basin which will be seeking trans-pacific markets. [sidenote: interplay of geographic factors in coastlands.] a careful analysis of the life of coast peoples in relation to all the factors of their land and sea environment shows that these are multiform, and that none are negligible; it takes into consideration the extent, fertility, and relief of the littoral, its accessibility from the land as well as from the sea, and its location in regard to outlying islands and to opposite shores, whether near or far; it holds in view not only the small articulations that give the littoral ready contact with the sea, but the relation of the seaboard to the larger continental articulations, whether it lies on an outrunning spur of a continental mass, like the malacca, yemen, or peloponnesian coast, or upon a retiring inlet that brings it far into the heart of a continent, and provides it with an extensive hinterland; and, finally, it never ignores the nature of the bordering sea, which furnishes the school of seamanship and fixes the scope of maritime enterprise. all these various elements of coastal environment are further differentiated in their use and their influence according to the purposes of those who come to tenant such tide-washed rims of the land. pirates seek intricate channels and hidden inlets for their lairs; a merchant people select populous harbors and navigable river mouths; would-be colonists settle upon fertile valleys opening into quiet bays, till their fields, and use their coasts for placid maritime trade with the mother country; interior peoples, pushed or pushing out to the tidal periphery of their continent, with no maritime history behind them, build their fishing villages on protected lagoons, and, unless the shadowy form of some outlying island lure them farther, there they tarry, deaf to the siren song of the sea. notes to chapter viii [ ] rudolph reinhard, _die wichtigsten deutschen seehandelstädte_, pp. , . stuttgart, . joseph partsch, central europe, p. . london, . [ ] _ibid_, p. . [ ] john richard green, the making of england, vol. i, pp. - ; maps, pp. and . london, . [ ] _ibid_, vol. i, pp. , ; maps pp. xxii and . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, pp. , . london, - . [ ] joseph partsch, central europe, pp. - . london, . [ ] h.b. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] rudolph reinhard, _die wichtigsten deutschen seehandelstädte_, pp. - . stuttgart, . [ ] fitz-roy and darwin, voyage of the beagle, vol. ii, pp. , ; vol. iii, pp. - . london, . [ ] eleventh census, population and resources of alaska, pp. - . washington, . [ ] nordenskiold, the voyage of the vega, pp. , , , , , , , , . new york, . [ ] g. frederick wright, greenland icefields, pp. - , , . new york, . for eskimo of hudson bay and baffin land, see f. boas, the central eskimo, pp. , , - . _sixth annual report of the bureau of ethnology_. washington, . [ ] _bella gallico_, book iii, chap. . [ ] ernst curtius, history of greece, vol. i, p, . new york. [ ] strabo's geography, book ii, chap. v, . book iii, chap. i, . [ ] grote, history of greece, vol. iii, pp. - . new york, . [ ] thucydides, book vi, . [ ] grote, history of greece, vol. iii, p. . new york, . [ ] strabo's geography, book xvii, chap. iii, , . [ ] thucydides, book i, , , . [ ] strabo, book viii, chap. vi, , , , , . [ ] grote, history of greece, vol. iii, pp. , . new york, . [ ] j. partsch, central europe, p. . london, . [ ] rudolph reinhard, _die wichtigsten deutschen seehandelstädte_, p. . stuttgart, . [ ] grote, history of greece, vol. iii, p. . new york, . [ ] bunbury, history of ancient geography, vol. ii, pp. - , . london, . duarte barbosa, east africa and malabar coasts in the sixteenth century, p. - . hakluyt society, london, . [ ] ernst curtius, history of greece, vol. i, pp. - . new york. [ ] w.b. weeden, economic and social history of new england, vol. i, p. . boston, . [ ] norway, official publication, p. . christiania, . [ ] ratzel, _deutschland_, pp. - . leipzig, . [ ] j. partsch, central europe, pp. - . london, . [ ] elisée reclus, the earth and its inhabitants; europe, vol. , pp. - . new york, . [ ] ernst curtius, history of greece, vol. i, pp. - . new york. [ ] heinrich von treitschke, _politik_, vol. , p. . leipzig, . [ ] h.j. mackinder, britain and the british seas, pp. , . london, . [ ] william morris davis, physical geography, pp. - . boston, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, p. . london, - . [ ] strabo, book xvii, chap. i, . diodorus siculus, book i, chap. iii, p. . london, . [ ] j. partsch, central europe, pp. - . london, . ratzel, _deutschland_, pp. - . leipzig, . [ ] for geomorphology of coasts, see william morris davis, physical geography, pp. - , - . boston, . [ ] elisée reclus, europe, vol. ii, p, . new york, . [ ] j. partsch, central europe, p. . london, . [ ] g.g. chisholm, commercial geography, pp. , . london, . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . hereford george, historical geography of the british empire, pp. - . london, . [ ] j.e. thorold rogers, six centuries of work and wages, pp. - . new york, . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] diodorus siculus, book v, chap. i, p. . london, . strabo, book v, chap. vi, , . [ ] helmolt, history of the world, vol. i, pp. - , - . new york, - . [ ] strabo, book xvi, chap. iii, , . herodotus, book i, chap. i; book vii, chap. . j.t. brent, the bahrein islands of the persian gulf, proceedings of the royal geographical society, vol. xii, pp. - . london, . [ ] george adam smith, historical geography of the holy land, pp. - . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. , , . [ ] _ibid._, pp. - . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, pp. - , - . london, - . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] d.g. hogarth, the nearer east, pp. , . london, . [ ] j. naken, _die provinz kwangtung und ihre bevölkerung, petermanns geographische mittheilungen_, vol. , pp. , . . ferdinand von richthofen, _china_, vol. i, pp. - . berlin, . cathay and the way thither, vol. i, p. lxxviii. hakluyt society, london, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, p. . london, - . philippine census, vol. i, pp. , - . washington, . [ ] stanford's australasia, vol. ii, pp. , , - , . london, . helmolt, history of the world, vol. ii, p. . new york, - . [ ] _ibid._, vol. iii, pp. , . vol. ii, p. . [ ] roscher, _national-oekonomik des handels und gewerbefleisses_, pp. - , - . stuttgart, . capt. a.t. mahan, influence of sea power upon history, pp. - . boston, . [ ] d.g. hogarth, the nearer east, pp. - , . london, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. - , , . [ ] cathay and the way thither, vol. i, p. lxxx. hakluyt society. london, . helmolt, history of the world, vol. ii, p. . new york, - . [ ] the book of ser marco polo, edited by sir henry yule, vol. ii, book iii, pp. , , . new york, . [ ] p. vidal de la blache, _géographie de la france_, pp. - . paris, . [ ] elisée reclus, europe, vol. ii, p. . new york, . [ ] norway, official publication, pp. - , map p. . christiania, . [ ] d.g. hogarth, the nearer east, pp. , , - , , . london, . [ ] h.f. tozer, history of ancient geography, pp. - . cambridge, . strabo, book xvi, chap. iv, , . [ ] helmolt, history of the world, vol. iii, p. . new york, - . [ ] james bryce, impressions of south africa, pp. - , . new york, . [ ] anatole leroy-beaulieu, the empire of the tsars, vol. i, map p. . new york, . [ ] census of the philippine islands, vol. i, pp. - , , , ., washington, . [ ] _ibid._, vol. i, p. . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, p. . london, - . [ ] p. ehrenreich, _die eintheilung und verbreitung der völkerstämme brasiliens, petermanns mittheilungen_, vol. , pp. - . gotha, . helmolt, history of the world, vol. i, p. , map p. . new york, - . [ ] john richard green, the making of england, vol. i, chap. i. london, . [ ] h.j. mackinder, britain and the british seas, p. . london, . w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - , map. new york, . [ ] d.g. hogarth, the nearer east, p. . london, . w. z. ripley, races of europe, pp. , , map. new york, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. , - , - . [ ] _ibid._, pp. - , - . norway, official publication, pp. - . christiania, . [ ] census of the philippine islands, vol. ii, p. , map p. . washington, . [ ] grote, history of greece, vol. iii, pp. - , - . new york, . [ ] ernst curtius, history of greece, vol. i, pp. - . new york. [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. ii, pp. - . london, - . [ ] h.d. trail, social england, vol. iii, pp. - . london and new york, . [ ] twelfth census, bulletin no. , table . washington, . [ ] e.c. semple, american history and its geographic conditions, pp. - . boston, . [ ] g.g. chisholm, commercial geography, p. . london, . [ ] roscher, _national-oekonomik des handels und gewerbefleisses_, p. , note . stuttgart, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. ii, p. . london, - . [ ] _ibid._, vol. iii, pp. , . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] d.g. brinton, the american race, p. . philadelphia, . h.h. bancroft, the native races, p. , footnote p. . san francisco, . [ ] josephus, antiquities of the jews, book viii, chap. ii, , , . [ ] j. scott keltie, the partition of africa, p. . london, . ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, pp. - . london, - . [ ] _ibid._, vol. iii, pp. , - . [ ] _ibid._, vol. ii, p. . [ ] eleventh census, report on alaska, p. . washington, . [ ] _ibid._, p. . e.r. scidmore, guidebook to alaska, p. . new; york, . [ ] census of the philippine islands, vol. i, pp. - , , - . washington, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - , - , map pp. - . new york, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, pp. , . new york, - . [ ] henry gannett, the peoples of the philippines, in report of the eighth international geographic congress, p. . washington, . [ ] a.h. keane, africa, stanford's compendium, pp. - , - . london, . helmolt, history of the world, vol. iii, pp. , - , . new york, - . [ ] h.h. bancroft, the native races, vol. i, pp. - ; vol. iii, pp. , . san francisco, . mcgee and thomas, prehistoric north america, pp. - , , - , - . vol. xix of history of north america. philadelphia, . [ ] grote, history of greece, vol. iv, p. . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , . [ ] census of the philippine islands, vol. ii, pp. , . washington, . [ ] williams and calvert, fiji and the fijians, pp. - . new york, . [ ] strabo, book v, chap. i, , . [ ] strabo, book iv, chap. vi, , ; book v, chap. i, . [ ] dietrich schäfer, _die hansestädte und könig waldemar von dänemark_, pp. , . jena, . [ ] w. deecke, italy, pp. - . london, . [ ] strabo, book iii, chap. i, . [ ] roscher, _national-oekonomik des handels und gewerbefleisses_, p. , note . stuttgart, . chapter ix oceans and enclosed seas the water of the earth's surface, viewed from the standpoint of anthropo-geography, is one, whether it appears as atmospheric moisture, spring, river, lake, brackish lagoon, enclosed sea-basin or open ocean. its universal circulation, from the falling of the dews to the vast sweep of ocean current, causes this inviolable unity. variations in the geographical forms of water are superficial and constantly changing; they pass into one another by almost imperceptible gradations, shift their unstable outlines at the bidding of the mobile, restless element. in contrast to the land, which is marked by diversity of geologic structure and geographic form, the world of water is everywhere approximately the same, excepting only the difference in the mineral composition of sea water as opposed to that of spring and stream. therefore, whenever man has touched it, it has moulded him in much the same way, given the same direction to his activities, dictated the use of the same implements and methods of navigation. as maritime trader or colonist, he has sailed to remote, unknown, yet familiar coasts, and found himself as much at home as on his native shores. he has built up maritime empires, the centre of whose dominion, race and commerce, falls somewhere in the dividing yet uniting sea. [sidenote: the water a factor in man's mobility.] man must be grouped with the air and water as part of the mobile envelope of the earth's surface. the mobility which maintains the unity of air and water has caused the unity of the human race. abundant facilities of dispersal often give animal forms a wide or cosmopolitan distribution. man, by appropriating the mobile forces in the air and water to increase his own powers of locomotion, has become a cosmopolitan being, and made the human race reflect the unity of atmosphere and hydrosphere. always the eternal unrest of the moving waters has knocked at the door of human inertia to arouse the sleeper within; always the flow of stream and the ebb of tide have sooner or later stirred the curiosity of the land-born barbarian about the unseen destination of these marching waters. rivers by the mere force of gravity have carried him to the shores of their common ocean, and placed him on this highway of the world. then from his sea-girt home, whether island or continent, he has timidly or involuntarily followed the track which headland-dotted coast, or ocean current, or monsoon, or trade wind marked out for him across the pathless waters, so that at the gray dawn of history he appears as a cosmopolite, occupying every part of the habitable earth. these sporadic oversea wanderings, with intervals of centuries or milleniums between, opened to his occupancy strange and remote lands, in whose isolation and new environment he developed fresh variations of mind, body and cultural achievements, to arm him with new weapons in the struggle for existence. the sea which brought him bars him for a few ages from his old home, till the tradition of his coming even is lost. then with higher nautical development, the sea loses its barrier nature; movements of people, and trade recross its surface to unite those who have been long severed and much differentiated in their mutual remoteness. the ensuing friction and mingling weed out the less fit variations of each, and combine in the new race the qualities able to fortify a higher type of man. not only seas and oceans, but also mountains and deserts serve to isolate the migrant people who once has crossed them; but wastes of water raise up the most effective barriers. [sidenote: oceans and seas in universal history.] the transformation of the ocean into a highway by the development of navigation is a late occurrence in the history of man and is perhaps the highest phase of his adaptation to environment, because an adaptation which has placed at his disposal that vast water area constituting three-fourths of the earth's surface from which he had previously been excluded. moreover, it was adaptation to an alien and hostile element, whose violent displays of power recurrently stimulated the human adjustment between attack and defense. because adaptation to the sea has been vastly more difficult than to the land, commensurate with the harder struggle it has brought greater intellectual and material rewards. this conquest of the sea is entitled to a peculiarly high place in history, because it has contributed to the union of the various peoples of the world, has formed a significant part of the history of man, whether that history is economic, social, political or intellectual. hence history has always staged its most dramatic acts upon the margin of seas and oceans; here always the plot thickens and gives promise of striking development. rome of the seven hills pales before england of the "seven seas." [sidenote: the sea in universal history.] universal history loses half its import, remains an aggregate of parts, fails to yield its significance as a whole, if it does not continually take into account the unifying factor of the seas. indeed, no history is entitled to the name of universal unless it includes a record of human movements and activities on the ocean, side by side with those on the land. our school text-books in geography present a deplorable hiatus, because they fail to make a definite study of the oceans over which man explores and colonizes and trades, as well as the land on which he plants and builds and sleeps. the striking fact about the great world ocean to-day is the manifold relations which it has established between the dwellers on its various coasts. marine cables, steamer and sailing routes combine to form a network of paths across the vast commons of the deep. over these the commercial, political, intellectual, or even purely migrant activities of human life move from continent to continent. the distinctive value of the sea is that it promotes many-sided relations as opposed to the one-sided relation of the land. france on her eastern frontier comes into contact with people of kindred stock, living under similar conditions of climate and soil to her own; on her maritime border she is open to intermittent intercourse with all continents and climes and races of the world. to this sea border must be ascribed the share that france has taken in the history of north and south america, the west indies, north and equatorial africa, india, china and the south seas. so we find the great maritime peoples of the world, from the phoenicians to the english, each figuring in the history of the world of its day, and helping weave into a web of universal history the stories of its various parts. [sidenote: origin of navigation.] man's normal contact with the sea is registered in his nautical achievements. the invention of the first primitive means of navigation, suggested by a floating log or bloated body of a dead animal, must have been an early achievement, of a great many peoples who lived near the water, or who in the course of their wanderings found their progress obstructed by rivers; it belongs to a large class of similar discoveries which answer urgent and constantly recurring needs. it was, in all probability, often made and as often lost again, until a growing habit of venturing beyond shore or river bank in search of better fishing, or of using the easy open waterways through the thick tangle of a primeval forest to reach fresh hunting grounds, established it as a permanent acquisition. [sidenote: primitive forms.] the first devices were simply floats or rafts, made of light wood, reeds, or the hollow stems of plants woven together and often buoyed up by the inflated skins of animals. floats of this character still survive among various peoples, especially in poorly timbered lands. the skin rafts which for ages have been the chief means of downstream traffic on the rivers of mesopotamia, consist of a square frame-work of interwoven reeds and branches, supported by the inflated skins of sheep and goats;[ ] they are guided by oars and poles down or across the current. these were the primitive means by which layard transported his winged bull from the ruins of nineveh down to the persian gulf, and they were the same which he found on the bas-reliefs of the ancient capital, showing the methods of navigation three thousand years ago.[ ] similar skin rafts serve as ferry boats on the sutlej, shajok and other head streams of the indus.[ ] they reappear in africa as the only form of ferry used by the moors on the river morbeya in morocco; on the nile, where the inflated skins are supplanted by earthen pots;[ ] and on the yo river of semi-arid sudan, where the platform is made of reeds and is buoyed up by calabashes fastened beneath.[ ] [sidenote: primitive craft in arid lands.] in treeless lands, reeds growing on the margins of streams and lakes are utilized for the construction of boats. the buduma islanders of lake chad use clumsy skiffs eighteen feet long, made of hollow reeds tied into bundles and then lashed together in a way to form a slight cavity on top.[ ] in the earliest period of egyptian history this type of boat with slight variations was used in the papyrus marshes of the nile,[ ] and it reappears as the ambatch boat which schweinfurth observed on the upper white nile.[ ] it is in use far away among the sayads or fowlers, who inhabit the reed-grown rim of the sistan lake in arid persia.[ ] as the peruvian balsa, it has been the regular means of water travel on lake titicaca since the time of the incas, and in more primitive form it appears among the shoshone indians of the snake river valley of idaho, who used this device in their treeless land to cross the streams, when the water was too cold for swimming.[ ] still cruder rafts of reeds, without approach to boat form, were the sole vehicles of navigation among the backward indians of san francisco bay, and were the prevailing craft among the coast indians farther south and about the gulf of lower california.[ ] trees abounded; but these remnant tribes of low intelligence, probably recent arrivals on the coast from the interior, equipped only with instruments of bone and stone, found the difficulty of working with wood prohibitive. the second step in the elaboration of water conveyance was made when mere flotation was succeeded by various devices to secure displacement. the evolution is obvious. the primitive raftsman of the mesopotamian rivers wove his willow boughs and osiers into a large, round basket form, covered it with closely sewn skins to render it water-tight, and in it floated with his merchandise down the swift current from armenia to babylon. these were the boats which herodotus saw on the euphrates,[ ] and which survive to-day.[ ] according to pliny, the ancient britons used a similar craft, framed of wicker-work and covered with hide, in which they crossed the english and irish channels to visit their kinsfolk on the opposite shores. this skin boat or coracle or currach still survives on the rivers of wales and the west coast of ireland, where it is used by the fishermen and considered the safest craft for stormy weather.[ ] it recalls the "bull-skin boat" used in pioneer days on the rivers of our western plains, and the skiffs serving as passenger ferries to-day on the rivers of eastern tibet.[ ] it reappears among the arikara indians of the upper missouri,[ ] and the south american tribes of the gran chaco.[ ] the first wooden boat was made of a tree trunk, hollowed out either by fire or axe. the wide geographical distribution of the dug-out and its survival in isolated regions of highly civilized lands point it out as one of those necessary and obvious inventions that must have been made independently in various parts of the world. [sidenote: relation of the river to marine navigation.] the quieter water of rivers and lakes offered the most favorable conditions for the feeble beginnings of navigation, but the step from inland to marine navigation was not always taken. the egyptians, who had well-constructed river and marine boats, resigned their maritime commerce to phoenicians and greeks, probably, as has been shown, because the silted channels and swamps of the outer nile delta held them at arm's length from the sea. similarly the equatorial lakes of central africa have proved fair schools of navigation, where the art has passed the initial stages of development. the kingdom of uganda on victoria nyanza, at the time of stanley's visit, could muster a war fleet of boats, a hundred of them measuring from fifty to seventy feet in length; the largest were manned by a crew of sixty-four paddlers and could carry as many more fighting men.[ ] the long plateau course of the mighty congo has bred a race of river navigators, issuing from their riparian villages to attack the traveler in big flotillas of canoes ranging from fifty to eighty-five feet in length, the largest of them driven through the water by eighty paddlers and steered by eight more paddles in the stern.[ ] but the congo and lake boats are barred from the coast by a series of cataracts, which mark the passage of the drainage streams down the escarpment of the plateau. [sidenote: retarded navigation.] there are peoples without boats or rafts of any description. among this class are the central australians, bushmen, navigation. hottentots and kaffirs of arid south africa,[ ] and with few exceptions also the damaras. even the coast members of these tribes only wade out into the shallow water on the beach to spear fish. the traveler moving northward from cape town through south africa, across its few scant rivers, goes all the way to ngami lake before he sees anything resembling a canoe, and then only a rude dugout. still greater is the number of people who, though inhabiting well indented coasts, make little use of contact with the sea. navigation, unknown to many australian coast tribes, is limited to miserable rafts of mangrove branches on the northwest seaboard, and to imperfect bark canoes with short paddles on the south; only in the north where malayan influences are apparent does the hollowed tree-stem with outrigger appear.[ ] this retardation is not due to fear, because the south australian native, like the fuegian, ventures several miles out to sea in his frail canoe; it is due to that deep-seated inertia which characterizes all primitive races, and for which the remote, outlying location of peninsular south america, southern africa and australia, before the arrival of the europeans, afforded no antidote in the form of stimulating contact with other peoples. but the irish, who started abreast of the other northern celts in nautical efficiency, who had advantages of proximity to other shores, and in the early centuries of their history sailed to the far-away faroes and even to iceland, peopled southern scotland by an oversea emigration, made piratical descents upon the english coast, and in turn received colonies of bold scandinavian mariners, suffered an arrested development in navigation, and failed to become a sea-faring folk. [sidenote: regions of advanced navigation.] turning from these regions of merely rudimentary navigation and inquiring where the highest efficiency in the art was obtained before the spread of mediterranean and european civilization, we find that this distinction belongs to the great island world of the pacific and to the neighboring lands of the indian ocean. sailing vessels and outrigger boats of native design and construction characterize the whole sea-washed area of indo-malaysian civilization from malacca to the outermost isles of the pacific. the eastern rim of asia, also, belongs to this wide domain of nautical efficiency, and the coast indians of southern alaska and british columbia may possibly represent an eastern spur of the same,[ ] thrown out in very remote times and maintained by the advantageous geographic conditions of that indented, mountainous coast. adjoining this area on the north is the long-drawn arctic seaboard of the eskimo, who unaided have developed in their sealskin kayak and bidarka sea-going craft unsurpassed for the purposes of marine hunting and fishing, and who display a fearlessness and endurance born of long and enforced intimacy with the deep. driven by the frozen deserts of his home to seek his food chiefly in the water, the eskimo, nevertheless, finds his access to the sea barred for long months of winter by the jagged ice-pack along the shore. [sidenote: geographic conditions in polynesia.] the highest degree of intimacy is developed in that vast island-strewn stretch of the pacific constituting oceanica.[ ] here where a mild climate enables the boatman race to make a companion of the deep, where every landscape is a seascape, where every diplomatic visit or war campaign, every trading journey or search for new coco-palm plantation means a voyage beyond the narrow confines of the home island, there dwells a race whose splendid chest and arm muscles were developed in the gymnasium of the sea; who, living on a paltry , square miles ( , , square kilometers) of scattered fragments of land, but roaming over an ocean area of twenty-five million square miles, are not more at home in their palm-wreathed islets than on the encompassing deep. migrations, voluntary and involuntary, make up their history. their trained sense of locality, enabling them to make voyages several hundred miles from home, has been mentioned by various explorers in polynesia. the marshall islanders set down their geographical knowledge in maps which are fairly correct as to bearings but not as to distances. the ralick islanders of this group make charts which include islands, routes and currents.[ ] captain cook was impressed by the geographical knowledge of the people of the south seas. a native tahitian made for him a chart containing seventy-four islands, and gave an account of nearly sixty more.[ ] information and directions supplied by natives have aided white explorers to many discoveries in these waters. quiros, visiting the duff islands in , learned the location of ticopia, one of the new hebrides group, three hundred miles away. not only the excellent seamanship and the related pelagic fishing of the polynesians bear the stamp of their predominant water environment; their mythology, their conception of a future state, the germs of their astronomical science, are all born of the sea. though the people living on the uttermost boundaries of this island world are , miles (or , kilometers) apart, and might be expected to be differentiated by the isolation of their island habitats, nevertheless they all have the same fundamental characteristics of physique, language and culture from guam to easter isle, reflecting in their unity the oneness of the encompassing ocean over which they circulate.[ ] [sidenote: mediterranean versus atlantic seamanship.] midway between these semi-aquatic polynesians and those arctic tribes who are forced out upon the deep, to struggle with it rather than associate with it, we find the inhabitants of the mediterranean islands and peninsulas, who are favored by the mild climate and the tideless, fogless, stormless character of their sea. while such a body of water invites intimacy, it does not breed a hardy or bold race of navigators; it is a nursery, scarcely a training school. therefore, except for the far-famed dalmatian sailors, who for centuries have faced the storms sweeping down from the dinaric alps over the turbulent surface of the adriatic, mediterranean seamanship does not command general confidence on the high seas. therefore it is the german, english and dutch steamship lines that are to-day the chief ocean carriers from italian ports to east africa, asia, australia, north and south america, despite the presence of native lines running from genoa to buenos ayres. montevideo and new york; just as it was the atlantic states of europe, and only these and all of these, except germany, who, trained to venture out into the fogs and storms and unmarked paths of the _mare tenebrosum_, participated in the early voyages to the americas. one after the other they came--norwegians, spaniards, portuguese, english, french, dutch, swedes and danes. the anthropo-geographical principle is not invalidated by the fact that spain and england were guided in their initial trans-atlantic voyages by italian navigators, like columbus, cabot and amerigo vespucci. the long maritime experience of italy and its commercial relations with the orient, reaching back into ancient times, furnished abundant material for the researches and speculations of such practical theorists; but italy's location fixed the shores of the mediterranean as her natural horizon, narrowed her vision to its shorter radius. her obvious interest in the preservation of the old routes to the orient made her turn a deaf ear to plans aiming to divert european commerce to trans-atlantic routes. italy's entrance upon the high seas was, therefore, reluctant and late, retarded by the necessity of outgrowing the old circumscribed outlook of the enclosed basin before adopting the wider vision of the open ocean. venice and genoa were crippled not only by the discovery of the sea route to india, but also by their adherence to old thalassic means and methods of navigation inadequate for the high seas.[ ] however, these mediterranean sea folk are being gradually drawn out of their seclusion, as is proved by the increase of italian oceanic lines and the recent installation of an hellenic steamship line between piræus and new york. [sidenote: three geographic stages of maritime development.] the size of a sea or ocean is a definite factor in its power to attract or repel maritime ventures, especially in the earlier stages of nautical development. a broken, indented coast means not only a longer and broader zone of contact between the inhabitants and the sea; it means also the breaking up of the adjacent expanse of water into so many alcoves, in which fisherman, trader and colonist may become at home, and prepare for maritime ventures farther afield. the enclosed or marginal sea tempts earlier because it can be compassed by coastwise navigation; then by the proximity of its opposite shores and its usual generous equipment with islands, the next step to crosswise navigation is encouraged. for the earliest stages of maritime development, only the smaller articulations of the coast and the inshore fringe of sea inlets count. this is shown in the primitive voyages of the greeks, before they had ventured into the euxine or west of the forbidding cape malia; and in the "inside passage" navigation of the indians of southern alaska, british columbia, and chile, who have never stretched their nautical ventures beyond the outermost rocks of their skerry-walled coast. [sidenote: influence of enclosed seas upon navigation.] a second stage is reached when an enclosed basin is at, hand to widen the maritime horizon, and when this larger field is exploited in all its commercial, colonial and industrial possibilities, as was done by the phoenicians and greeks in the mediterranean, the hanse towns in the baltic, the dutch and english in the north sea. the third and final stage is reached when the nursery of the inshore estuary or gulf and the elementary school of the enclosed basin are in turn outgrown, and the larger maritime spirit moves on to the open ocean for its field of operation. it is a significant fact that the norse, bred to the water in their fiords and channels behind their protecting "skerry-wall," then trained in the stormy basins of the north and irish seas, were naturally the first people of europe to cross the atlantic, because the atlantic of their shores, narrowing like all oceans and seas toward the north, assumes almost the character of an enclosed basin. the distance from norway to greenland is only , miles, little more than that across the arabian sea between africa and india. we trace, therefore, a certain analogy between the physical subdivisions of the world of water into inlet, marginal sea and ocean, and the anthropo-geographical gradations in maritime development. the enclosed or marginal sea seems a necessary condition for the advance beyond coastwise navigation and the much later step to the open ocean. continents without them, like africa, except for its frontage upon the mediterranean and the red sea, have shown no native initiative in maritime enterprise. africa was further cursed by the mockery of desert coasts along most of her scant thalassic shores. in the americas, we find the native races compassing a wide maritime field only in the arctic, where the fragmentary character of the continent breaks up the ocean into hudson's bay, davis strait, baffin bay, gulf of boothia, melville sound and bering sea; and in the american mediterranean of the caribbean sea and gulf of mexico. the excellent seamanship developed in the archipelagoes of southern alaska and chile remained abortive for maritime expansion, despite a paucity of local resources and the spur of hunger, owing to the lack of a marginal sea; but in the caribbean basin, the arawaks and later the caribs spread from the southern mainland as far as cuba.[ ] [see map page .] [sidenote: enclosed seas as areas of ethnic and cultural assimilation.] enclosed or marginal seas were historically the most important sections of the ocean prior to . apart from the widening of the maritime horizon which they give to their bordering people, each has the further advantage of constituting an area of close vicinal grouping and constant interchange of cultural achievements, by which the civilization of the whole basin tends to become elevated and unified. this unification frequently extends to race also, owing to the rapidity of maritime expansion and the tendency to ethnic amalgamation characteristic of all coast regions. we recognize an area of mediterranean civilization from the isthmus of suez to the sacred promontory of portugal, and in this area a long-headed, brunette mediterranean race, clearly unified as to stock, despite local differentiations of culture, languages and nations in the various islands, peninsulas and other segregated coastal regions of this sea.[ ] the basin appears therefore as an historical whole; for in it a certain group of peoples concentrated their common efforts, which crossed and criss-crossed from shore to shore. phoenicia's trade ranged westward to the outer coasts of spain, and later barcelona's maritime enterprises reached east to the levant. greece's commercial and colonial relations embraced the crimea and the mouth of the rhone, and genoa's extended east to the crimea again. the saracens, on reaching the mediterranean edge of the arabian peninsula, swept the southern coasts and islands, swung up the western rim of the basin to the foot of the pyrenees, and taught the sluggish spaniards the art of irrigation practiced on the garden slopes of yemen. the ships of the crusaders from venice, genoa and marseilles anchored in the ports of mohammedanized syria, brought the symbol of the cross back to its birthplace in jerusalem, but carried away with them countless suggestions from the finished industries of the east. here was give and take, expansion and counter-expansion, conquest and expulsion, all together making up a great sum of reciprocal relations embracing the whole basin, the outcome of that close geographical connection which every sharply defined sea establishes between the coasts which it washes. [sidenote: north sea and baltic basins.] the same thing has come to pass in the north sea. originally celtic on its western or british side, as opposed to its eastern or germanic coast, it has been wholly teutonized on that flank also from the strait of dover to the firth of tay, and sprinkled with scandinavian settlers from the firth of tay northward to caithness.[ ] the eleventh century saw this ethnic unification achieved, and the end of the middle ages witnessed the diffusion of the elements of a common civilization through the agency of commerce from bruges to bergen. the baltic, originally teutonic only on its northern and western shores, has in historical times become almost wholly teutonic, including even the seaboard of finland and much of the coast provinces of russia.[ ] unification of civilization attended this unification of race. in its period of greatest historical significance from the twelfth to the seventeenth century, the baltic played the rôle of a northern mediterranean.[ ] the countless shuttles of the hanse ships wove a web of commercial intercourse between its remotest shores. novgorod and abö were in constant communication with lübeck and stralsund;[ ] and wisby, on the island of gotland at the great crossroads of the baltic,[ ] had the focal significance of the piræus in ancient aegean trade. [sidenote: bering sea.] if we turn to asia, we find that even the unfavorable arctic location of bering sea has been unable to rob it entirely of historical significance. this is the one spot where a native american race has transplanted itself by its natural expansion to asiatic shores. the circular rim and island-dotted surface have guided eskimo emigrants to the coast of the chukchian peninsula, where they have become partly assimilated in dress and language to the local chukches.[ ] the same conditions also facilitated the passage of a few chukches across bering strait to the alaskan side. at pak (or peck) on east cape and on diomed island, situated in the narrowest part of bering strait, are the great intercontinental markets of the polar tribes. here american furs have for many decades been exchanged for the reindeer skins of northern siberia and russian goods from far-away moscow.[ ] only the enclosed character of the sea, reported by the danish explorer vitus bering, tempted the land-bred russians, who reached the northeastern coast of siberia at the middle of the eighteenth century, to launch their leaky boats of unseasoned timber, push across to the american continent, and make this whole bering basin a russian sea;[ ] just as a few decades before, when land exploration of kamchatka had revealed the enclosed character of the sea of okhotsk, the russian pioneers took a straight course across the water to their pacific outpost of petropavlovsk near the southern end of the peninsula. but even before the coming of the slavs to its shores, the sea of okhotsk seems to have been an area of native commercial and ethnic intercourse from the amur river in siberia in a half circle to the east, through sakhalin, yezo, the kurile islands and southern kamchatka,[ ] noticeably where the rim of the basin presented the scantiest supply of land and where, therefore, its meager resources had to be eked out by fisheries and trade on the sea. [sidenote: red sea basin.] on the southwest margin of asia, the red sea, despite its desert shores, has maintained the influence of its intercontinental location and linked the neighboring elements of africa and asia. identity of climatic conditions on both sides of this long rift valley has facilitated ethnic exchanges, and made it the center of what ratzel calls the "red sea group of peoples," related in race and culture.[ ] the great ethnic solvent here has been semitic. under the spur of islam, the arabs by had made the red sea an arabian and mohammedan sea. they had their towns or trading stations at zeila on the african side of the strait of bab-el-mandeb, at dalaqua, the port of abyssinia, at massowa, suakin, and other towns, so that this coast too was called arabia felix.[ ] [sidenote: assimilation facilitated by ethnic kinship.] vicinal location about an enclosed basin produces more rapidly a unification of race and culture, when some ethnic relationship and affinity already exists among the peoples inhabiting its shores. as in the ancient and medieval mediterranean, so in the yellow sea of asia, the working of this principle is apparent. the presence along its coasts of divergent but kindred peoples like the chinese, koreans and japanese, allowed these to be easily assimilated to a yellow sea race and to absorb quickly any later infusion, like that of the tatars and manchus. china, by reason of its larger area, long-drawn coast, massive population, and early civilization, was the dominant factor in this basin; korea and japan were its culture colonies-a fact that justifies the phrase calling "china the rome of the far east." historical japan began on the island of kiu-sui, facing the yellow sea. like korea, it derived its writing, its fantastic medical notions, its industrial methods, some features of its government administration, its buddhism and its religion of confucius from the people about the lower hoangho.[ ] three centuries ago japan had its colony on korean soil at fusan, the calais of the east.[ ] for purposes of piracy and smuggling japanese penetrated far up the rivers of china. korea has kept in touch with china by an active trade and diplomatic relations through the centuries. but to-day china is going to school to japan. since japan renounced her policy of seclusion in along with her antiquated form of government, and since korea has been forced out of her hermit life, the potency of vicinal location around this enclosed sea has been suddenly restored. the enforced opening of the treaty ports of japan, korea and china simply prepared the way for this basin to reassert its power to unite, and to unite now more closely and effectively than ever before, under the law of increasing territorial areas. the stimulus was first communicated to the basin from without, from the trading nations of the occident and that new-born orient rising from the sea on the california shores. japan has responded most promptly and most actively to these over-sea stimuli, just as england has, of all europe, felt most strongly the reflex influences from trans-atlantic lands. the awakening of this basin has started, therefore, from its seaward rim; its star has risen in the east. it is in the small countries of the world that such stars rise. the compressed energies of japan, stirred by over-sea contact and an improved government at home, have overleaped the old barriers and are following the lines of slight resistance which this land-bound sea affords. helped by the bonds of geographical conditions and of race, she has begun to convert china and korea into her culture colonies. the on-looking world feels that the ultimate welfare of china and korea can be best nurtured by japan, which will thus pay its old debt to the middle kingdom. [sidenote: chinese expansion seaward.] despite the fact that china's history has always had a decidedly inland character, that its political expansion has been landward, that it has practiced most extensively and successively internal colonization, and that its policy of exclusion has tended to deaden its outlook toward the pacific, nevertheless china's direct intercourse with the west and its westward-directed influence have never, in point of significance, been comparable with that toward the east and south. here a succession of marginal seas offered easy water-paths, dotted with way stations, to their outermost rim in japan, the philippines and remote australia. about the south china sea, the gulf of siam, the sulu, celebes, and java seas, the coastal regions of the outlying islands have for centuries received chinese goods and culture, and a blend of that obstinately assertive chinese blood. the strength of these influences has decreased with every increase of distance from the indented coasts and teeming, seafaring population of south china, and with every decrease in race affinity. they have left only faint traces on the alien shores of far-away australia. the divergent ethnic stock of the widespread malay world has been little susceptible to these influences, which are therefore weak in the remoter islands, but clearly discernible on the coasts of the philippines,[ ] borneo, the nearer sunda islands, and the peninsula of malacca, where the chinese have had trading colonies for centuries.[ ] but in the eastern half of farther india, which is grouped with china by land as well as by sea, and whose race stock is largely if not purely mongolian, these influences are very marked, so that the whole continental rim of the south china sea, from formosa to the isthmus of malacca, is strongly assimilated in race and culture. tongking, exposed to those modifying influences which characterize all land frontiers, as well as to coastwise intercourse, is in its people and civilization merely a transcript of china. the coast districts and islands of annam are occupied by chinese as far as the hills of cambodia, and the name of cochin china points to the origin of its predominant population. one-sixth of the inhabitants of siam are chinese, some of whom have filtered through the northern border; bangkok, the capital, has a large chinese quarter. the whole economic life and no small part of the intellectual life of the eastern face of farther india south to singapore is centered in the activity of the chinese.[ ] [sidenote: importance of zonal and continental location.] the historical significance of an enclosed sea basin depends upon its zonal location and its position in relation to the surrounding lands. we observe a steady decrease of historical importance from south to north through the connected series of the yellow, japan, okhotsk, bering seas and the arctic basin, miscalled ocean. the far-northern location of the baltic, with its long winters of ice-bound ports and its glaciated lands, retarded its inclusion in the field of history, curtailed its important historical period, and reduced the intensity of its historical life, despite the brave, eager activity of the hanseatic league. the mediterranean had the advantage, not only of a more favorable zonal situation, but of a location at the meeting place of three continents and on the line of maritime traffic across the eastern hemisphere from the atlantic to the pacific. [sidenote: thalassic character of the indian ocean.] these advantages it shares in some degree with the indian ocean, which, as ratzel justly argues, is not a true ocean, at best only half an ocean. north of the equator, where it is narrowed and enclosed like an inland sea, it loses the hydrospheric and atmospheric characteristics of a genuine ocean. currents and winds are disorganized by the close-hugging lands. here the steady northeast trade wind is replaced by the alternating air currents of the northeast and southwest monsoons, which at a very early date[ ] enabled merchant vessels to break away from their previous slow, coastwise path, and to strike a straight course on their voyage between arabia or the east coast of africa and india.[ ] moreover, this northern half of the indian ocean looks like a larger mediterranean with its southern coast removed. it has the same east and west series of peninsulas harboring differentiated nationalities, the same northward running recesses, but all on a larger scale. it has linked together the history of asia and africa; and by the red sea and persian gulf, it has drawn europe and the mediterranean into its sphere of influence. at the western corner of the indian ocean a semitic people, the arabs of oman and yemen, here first developed brilliant maritime activity, like their phoenician kinsmen of the lebanon seaboard. similar geographic conditions in their home lands and a nearly similar intercontinental location combined to make them the middlemen of three continents. just as the phoenicians, by way of the mediterranean, reached and roused slumberous north africa into historical activity and became the medium for the distribution of egypt's culture, so these semites of the arabian shores knocked at the long-closed doors of east africa facing on the indian basin, and drew this region into the history of southern asia. thus the africa of the enclosed seas was awakened to some measure of historical life, while the africa of the wide atlantic slept on. [sidenote: the sea route to the orient.] from the dawn of history the northern indian ocean was a thoroughfare. alexander the great's rediscovery of the old sea route to the orient sounds like a modern event in relation to the gray ages behind it. along this thoroughfare indian colonists, traders, and priests carried the elements of indian civilization to the easternmost sunda isles; and oriental wares, sciences and religions moved westward to the margin of europe and africa. the indian ocean produced a civilization of its own, with which it colored a vast semi-circle of land reaching from java to abyssinia, and more faintly, owing to the wider divergence of race, the further stretch from abyssinia to mozambique. thus the northern indian ocean, owing to its form, its location in the angle between asia and africa and the latitude where, round the whole earth, "the zone of greatest historical density" begins, and especially its location just southeast of the mediterranean as the eastern extension of that maritime track of ancient and modern times between europe and china, has been involved in a long series of historical events. from the historical standpoint, prior to it takes a far higher place than the atlantic and pacific, owing to its nature as an enclosed sea.[ ] but like all such basins, this northern indian ocean attained its zenith of historical importance in early times. in the sixteenth century it suffered a partial eclipse, which passed only with the opening of the suez canal. during this interval, however, the portuguese. dutch and english had rounded the cape of good hope and entered this basin on its open or oceanic side. by their trading stations, which soon traced the outlines of its coasts from sofala in south africa around to java, they made this ocean an alcove of the atlantic, and embodied its events in the atlantic period of history. it is this open or oceanic side which differentiates the indian ocean physically, and therefore historically, from a genuine enclosed sea. [sidenote: limitation of small area in enclosed seas.] the limitation of every enclosed or marginal sea lies in its small area and in the relatively restricted circle of its bordering lands. only small peninsulas and islands can break its surface, and short stretches of coast combine to form its shores. it affords, therefore, only limited territories as goals for expansion, restricted resources and populations to furnish the supply and demand of trade. what lands could the mediterranean present to the colonial outlook of the greeks comparable to the north america of the expanding english or the brazil of the portuguese? yet the mediterranean as a colonial field had great advantages in point of size over the baltic, which is only one-sixth as large ( , , and , square kilometers respectively), and especially over the red sea and persian gulf, whose effective areas were greatly reduced by the aridity of their surrounding lands. but the precocious development and early cessation of growth marking all mediterranean national life have given to this basin a variegated history; and in every period and every geographical region of it, from ancient phoenicia to modern spain and italy, the early exhaustion of resources and dwarfing of political ideals which characterize most small areas become increasingly conspicuous. the history of sweden, denmark, and the hanse towns in the baltic tells the same story, the story of a hothouse plant, forced in germination and growth, then stifled in the close air. [sidenote: successive maritime periods in history.] growth demands space. therefore, the progress of history has been attended by an advance from smaller to larger marine areas, with a constant increase in those manifold relations between peoples and lands which the water is able to establish. every great epoch of history has had its own sea, and every succeeding epoch has enlarged its maritime field. the greek had the aegean, the roman the whole mediterranean, to which the middle ages made an addition in the north sea and baltic. the modern period has had the atlantic, and the twentieth century is now entering upon the final epoch of the world ocean. the gradual inclusion of this world ocean in the widened scope of history has been due to the expansion of european peoples, who, for the past twenty centuries, have been the most far-reaching agents in the making of universal history. owing to the location and structure of their continent, they have always found the larger outlet in a western sea. in the south the field widened from the phoenician sea to the aegean, then to the mediterranean, on to the atlantic, and across it to its western shores; in the north it moved from the quiet baltic to the tide-swept north sea and across the north atlantic. only the south atlantic brought european ships to the great world highway of the south seas, and gave them the choice of an eastern or western route to the pacific. every new voyage in the age of discovery expanded the historical horizon; and every improvement in the technique of navigation has helped to eliminate distance and reduced intercourse on the world ocean to the time-scale of the ancient mediterranean. it would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the larger oceanic horizon has meant a corresponding increase in the relative content and importance of history for the known world of each period. such an intense, concentrated national life as occurred in those little mediterranean countries in ancient times is not duplicated now, unless we find a parallel in japan's recent career in the yellow sea basin. there was something as cosmic in the colonial ventures of the greeks to the wind-swept shores of the crimea or barbarous wilds of massilia, as in the establishment of english settlements on the brimming rivers of virginia or the torrid coast of malacca. alexander's conquest of the asiatic rim of the mediterranean and rome's political unification of the basin had a significance for ancient times comparable with the russification of northern asia and the establishment of the british empire for our day. the ocean has always performed one function in the evolution of history; it has provided the outlet for the exercise of redundant national powers. the abundance of opportunity which it presents to these disengaged energies depends upon the size, location and other geographic conditions of the bordering lands. these opportunities are limited in an enclosed basin, larger in the oceans, and largest in the northern halves of the oceans, owing to the widening of all land-masses towards the north and the consequent contraction of the oceans and seas in the same latitudes. [sidenote: contrasted historical rôles of northern and southern hemispheres.] a result of this grouping is the abundance of land in the northern hemisphere, and the vast predominance of water in the southern, by reason of which these two hemispheres have each assumed a distinct rôle in history. the northern hemisphere offers the largest advantages for the habitation of man, and significantly enough, contains a population five times that of the southern hemisphere. the latter, on the other hand, with its vast, unbroken water areas, has been the great oceanic highway for circum-mundane exploration and trade. this great water girdle of the south seas had to be discovered before the spherical form of the earth could be proven. in the wide territory of the northern hemisphere civilization has experienced an uninterrupted development, first in the old world, because this offered in its large area north of the equator the fundamental conditions for rapid evolution; then it was transplanted with greatest success to north america. the northern hemisphere contains, therefore, "the zone of greatest historical density," from which the track of the south seas is inconveniently remote. hence we find in recent decades a reversion to the old east-west path along the southern rim of eurasia, now perfected by the suez canal, and to be extended in the near future around the world by the union of the pacific with the caribbean sea at panama; so that finally the northern hemisphere will have its own circum-mundane waterway, along the line of greatest intercontinental intercourse. [sidenote: size of the oceans] the size of the ocean as a whole is so enormous, and yet its various subdivisions are so uniform in their physical aspect, that their differences of size produce less conspicuous historical effects than their diversity of area would lead one to expect. a voyage across the , square miles ( , square kilometers) of the black sea does not differ materially from one across the , square miles ( , , square kilometers) of the mediterranean; or a voyage across the , square miles ( , square kilometers) of the north sea, from one across the three-hundredfold larger area of the pacific. the ocean does not, like the land, wear upon its surface the evidences and effects of its size; it wraps itself in the same garment of blue waves or sullen swell, wherever it appears; but the outward cloak of the land varies from zone to zone. the significant anthropo-geographical influence of the size of the oceans, as opposed to that of the smaller seas, comes from the larger circle of lands which the former open to maritime enterprise. for primitive navigation, when the sailor crept from headland to headland and from island to island, the small enclosed basin with its close-hugging shores did indeed offer the best conditions. to-day, only the great tonnage of ocean-going vessels may reflect in some degree the vast areas they traverse between continent and continent. coasting craft and ships designed for local traffic in enclosed seas are in general smaller, as in the baltic, though the enormous commerce of the great lakes, which constitute in effect an inland sea, demands immense vessels. [sidenote: neutrality of the seas, its evolution.] the vast size of the oceans has been the basis of their neutrality. the neutrality of the seas is a recent idea in political history. the principle arose in connection with the oceans, and from them was extended to the smaller basins, which previously tended to be regarded as private political domains. their limited area, which enabled them to be compassed, enabled them also to be appropriated, controlled and policed. the greek excluded the phoenician from the aegean and made it an hellenic sea. carthage and tarentum tried to draw the dead line for roman merchantmen at the lacinian cape, the doorway into the ionian sea, and thereby involved themselves in the famous punic wars. the whole mediterranean became a roman sea, the _mare nostrum_. pompey's fleet was able to police it effectively and to exterminate the pirates in a few months, as cicero tells us in his oration for the manilian law. venice, by the conquest of the dalmatian pirates in prepared to make herself _dominatrix adriatici maris_, as she was later called. by the thirteenth century she had secured full command of the sea, spoke of it as "the gulf," in her desire to stamp it as a _mare clausum_, maintained in it a powerful patrol fleet under a _capitan in golfo_, whose duty it was to police the sea for pirates and to seize all ships laden with contraband goods. she claimed and enforced the right of search of foreign vessels, and compelled them to discharge two-thirds of their cargo at venice, which thus became the clearing house of the whole adriatic. she even appealed to the pope for confirmation of her dominion over the sea.[ ] sweden and denmark strove for a _dominum maris baltici_; but the hanse towns of northern germany secured the maritime supremacy in the basin, kept a toll-gate at its entrance, and levied toll or excluded merchant ships at their pleasure, a right which after the fall of the hanseatic power was assumed by denmark and maintained till . "the narrow seas" over which england claimed sovereignty from to , and on which she exacted a salute from every foreign vessel, included the north sea as far as stadland cape in norway, the english channel, and the bay of biscay down to cape finisterre in northern spain.[ ] at the beginning of the sixteenth century the indian ocean was a portuguese sea. spain was trying to monopolize the caribbean and even the pacific ocean. but the immense areas of these pelagic fields of enterprise, and the rapid intrusion into them of other colonial powers soon rendered obsolete in practice the principle of the _mare clausum_, and introduced that of the _mare liberum_. the political theory of the freedom of the seas seems to have needed vigorous support even toward the end of the seventeenth century. at this time we find writers like salmasius and hugo grotius invoking it to combat portuguese monopoly of the indian ocean as a _mare clausum_. grotius in a lengthy dissertation upholds the thesis that "_jure gentium quibusvis ad quosvis liberam esse navigationem_," and supports it by an elaborate argument and quotations from the ancient poets, philosophers, orators and historians.[ ] this principle was not finally acknowledged by england as applicable to "the narrow seas" till . now, by international agreement, political domain extends only to one marine league from shore or within cannon range. the rest of the vast water area remains the unobstructed highway of the world. notes to chapter ix [ ] s.m. zwemer, arabia the cradle of islam, p. . new york, . [ ] a.h. layard, nineveh and its remains, vol. i, p. ; vol. ii, - . new york, . [ ] e.f. knight, where three empires meet, pp. , . london, . [ ] col. lane fox, early modes of navigation, _journal of anthropological institute_, vol. iv, p. . [ ] boyd alexander, from the niger to the nile, vol. i, p. . london; . [ ] _ibid._, vol. i, p. . [ ] james h. breasted, history of egypt, pp. , , . new york, . col. lane fox, early modes of navigation, _journal of anthropological institute_, vol. iv, pp. - . [ ] g. schweinfurth, the heart of africa, vol. i, p. . london, . [ ] e. huntington, the depression of sistan in eastern persia, _bulletin of the american geographical society_, vol. , no. . . [ ] schoolcraft, the indian tribes of the united states, vol. i, p. . philadelphia, . [ ] h.h. bancroft, the native races, vol. i, pp. - , , . san francisco, . d. g. brinton, the american race, pp. , . philadelphia, . [ ] herodotus, book , chap. . [ ] s.m. zwemer, arabia the cradle of islam, p. . new york, . [ ] cotterill and little, ships and sailors, pp. ix-x, , london, . [ ] m. hue, travels in tartary, thibet and china in , vol. ii, p. . chicago, . [ ] elliott coues, history of the lewis and clark expedition, vol. i, p. . new york, . [ ] col. lane fox, early modes of navigation, _journal of anthropological institute_, vol. iv, pp. - . [ ] h.m. stanley, through the dark continent, vol. i, pp. - . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , - , - , . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. ii, p. . london, - . [ ] _ibid._, vol i, pp. - . spencer and gillen, northern tribes of central australia, pp. - . london, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, pp. - ; vol. ii, pp. , . london, - . [ ] _ibid._, vol. i, pp. - . [ ] captain winkler, sea charts formerly used in the marshall islands, smithsonian report for , translated from the _marine rundschau_. berlin, . [ ] captain james cook, journal of first voyage round the world, pp. , , , , . edited by w.j.l. wharton. london, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, pp. , . london, - . [ ] the commercial and fiscal policy of the venetian republic, _edinburgh review_, vol. , pp. - . . [ ] h. helmolt, history of the world, vol. i, pp. - , - . new york, - . [ ] g. sergi, the mediterranean race, pp. - . new york, . w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - , - , - , , , . new york, . [ ] h.j. mackinder, britain and the british seas, pp. - . london, . [ ] sydow-wagner _schul-atlas, völker und sprachenkarten_, no. . gotha, . a. leroy-beaulieu, the empire of the tsars, map p. . new york, . [ ] helmolt, history of the world, vol. vi, pp. - . new york, - . [ ] e.c. semple, the development of the hanse towns in relation to their geographical environment, _bulletin american geographical society_, vol. xxxi, no. , . [ ] helen zimmern, the hansa towns, pp. - , - . new york, . [ ] nordenskiold, the voyage of the vega, pp. , , . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. , , , , . [ ] agnes laut, the vikings of the pacific, pp. - . new york, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, pp. , - . london, - . [ ] _ibid._, vol. iii, pp. - . [ ] duarte barbosa, the coasts of east africa and malabar, pp. - . hakluyt society publications. london, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, pp. - . london, - . [ ] angus hamilton, korea, pp. - . new york, . [ ] census of the philippine islands, vol. i, pp. - , , - . washington, . [ ] hans helmolt, history of the world, vol. ii, pp. - . new york, - . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, pp. - . london, - . [ ] pliny, natural history, book vi, chap. . [ ] bunbury, history of ancient geography, vol. ii, pp. , - , , . london, . [ ] for full discussion of indian ocean, see helmolt, history of the world, vol. ii, pp. - , - . new york, - . duarte barbosa, the coasts of east africa and malabar, pp. - , - , - , , , - , , , , , , , - , hakluyt society. london, . [ ] pompeo molmenti, venice in the middle ages, vol. i, pp. , - , . chicago, . the commercial and fiscal policy of the venetian republic, _edinburgh review_, vol. , pp. - , . . [ ] h.j. mackinder, britain and the british seas, p. , note. london, . [ ] hugonis grotii, _mare liberum sive de jure quod batavis competit ad indicana commercia dissertatio_, contained in his _de jure belli et pacis. hagae comitis_, . chapter x man's relation to the water despite the extensive use which man makes of the water highways of the world, they remain to him highways, places for his passing and repassing, not for his abiding. essentially a terrestrial animal, he makes his sojourn upon the deep only temporary, even when as a fisherman he is kept upon the sea for months during the long season of the catch, or when, as whaler, year-long voyages are necessitated by the remoteness and expanse of his field of operations. yet even this rule has its exceptions. the moro bajan are sea gypsies of the southern philippines and the sulu archipelago, of whom gannett says "their home is in their boats from the cradle to the grave, and they know no art but that of fishing." subsisting almost exclusively on sea food, they wander about from shore to shore, one family to a boat, in little fleets of half a dozen sail; every floating community has its own headman called the captain bajan, who embodies all their slender political organization. when occasionally they abandon their rude boats for a time, they do not abandon the sea, but raise their huts on piles above the water on some shelving beach. like the ancient lake-dwellers of switzerland and italy, only in death do they acknowledge their ultimate connection with the solid land. they never bury their dead at sea, but always on a particular island, to which the funeral cortege of rude outrigged boats moves to the music of the paddle's dip.[ ] [sidenote: protection of a water frontier.] the margin of river, lake and sea has always attracted the first settlements of man because it offered a ready food supply in its animal life and an easy highway for communication. moreover, a water front made a comparatively safe frontier for the small, isolated communities which constituted primitive societies. the motive of protection, dominant in the savage when selecting sites for his villages, led him to place them on the pear-shaped peninsula formed by a river loop, or on an island in the stream or off the coast; or to sever his connection with the solid land, whence attack might come, and provide himself with a boundary waste of water by raising his hut on piles above the surface of lake, river or sheltered seacoast, within easy reach of the shore. in this location the occupant of the pile dwelling has found all his needs answered--fishing grounds beneath and about his hut, fields a few hundred feet away on shore, easily reached by his dug-out canoe, and a place of retreat from a land enemy, whether man or wild beast. [sidenote: ancient pile villages.] such pile dwellings, answering the primary need of protection, have had wide distribution, especially in the tropics, and persist into our own times among retarded peoples living in small, isolated groups too weak for effective defence. they were numerous in the lakes of switzerland[ ] and northern italy down to the first century of our era, and existed later in slightly modified form in ireland, scotland, england and southern wales.[ ] in ancient ireland they were constructed on artificial islands, raised in shallow spots of lakes or morasses by means of fascines weighted down with gravel and clay, and moored to the bottom by stakes driven through the mass. such groups of dwellings were called _crannogs_; they existed in ireland from the earliest historical period and continued in use down to the time of queen elizabeth. in the turbulent twelfth century, the warring lords of the soil adopted them as places of refuge and residence.[ ] herodotus describes a pile village of the ancient thracians in lake prasias near the hellespont, built quite after the swiss type, with trap doors in the floor for fishing or throwing out refuse. its inhabitants escaped conquest by the persians under king darius, and avoided the fate of their fellow tribesmen on land, who were subdued and removed as colonists to asia.[ ] [sidenote: present distribution.] among europeans such pile villages belong to primitive stages of development, chiefly to the stone, bronze, and early iron ages. they are widely distributed in modern times among retarded peoples, who in this way seek compensation for their social and economic weakness. in south america, the small timid tribe of the native warraus till quite recently built their dwellings on platforms over the water in the river network of the orinoco delta and along the swamp coast as far as the essequibo. these pile villages, "_fondata sopra l'acqua come venezia_," as vespuccius says, suggested to him the name of venezuela or little venice for this coast.[ ] a pile village in jull lake, a lacustrine expansion in a tributary of the upper salwin river, is inhabited by the inthas, apparently an alien colony in burma. they have added a detail in their floating gardens, rafts covered with soil, on which they raise tomatoes, watermelons and gourds.[ ] in little lake mohrya, located near the upper lualaba river, a southern headstream of the congo, cameron found numerous pile dwellings, whose owners moved about in dug-out canoes and cultivated fields on land,[ ] as did their swiss confrères of twenty centuries ago. livingstone, in descending from lake nyassa by the shire river, found in the lakelet of pamalombe, into which the stream widened, similar water huts inhabited by a number of manganja families, who had been driven from their homes by slave raiders. the slender reeds of the papyrus thicket, lining the shore in a broad band, served as piles, number compensating for the lack of strength; the reeds, bent downward and fastened together into a mat, did indeed support their light dwellings, but heaved like thin ice when the savages moved from hut to hut. the dense forest of papyrus left standing between village and shore effectually screened their retreat, and the abundant fish in the lake provided them with food.[ ] [sidenote: malayan pile dwellings.] in the vast island world of indonesia, where constant contact with the sea has bred the amphibian malay race, we are not surprised to find that the typical malay house is built on piles above the water; and that when the coast malay is driven inland by new-comers of his own stock and forced to abandon his favorite occupations of trade, piracy and fishing, he takes to agriculture but still retains his sea-born architecture and raises his hut on poles above the ground, beyond the reach of an enemy's spear-thrust. the moro samal laut of the southern sulu archipelago avoid the large volcanic islands of the group, and place their big villages over the sea on low coral reefs. the sandy beaches of the shore hold their coco-palms, whose nuts by their milk eke out the scanty supply of drinking water, and whose fronds shade the tombs of the dead.[ ] the sea-faring malays of the sunda islands, in thickly populated points of the coast, often dwell in permanently inhabited rafts moored near the pile dwellings. palembang on the lower swampy course of the river musi has a floating suburb of this sort. it is called the "venice of sumatra," just as banjarmasin, a vast complex of pile and raft dwellings, is called the "venice of borneo," and brunei to the north is the "venice of the east."[ ] both these towns are the chief commercial centers of their respective islands. the little town of kilwaru, situated on a sandbank off the eastern end of ceram, seems to float on the sea, so completely has it surrounded and enveloped with pile-built houses the few acres of dry land which form its nucleus. it is a place of busy traffic, the emporium for commerce between the malay archipelago and new guinea.[ ] [sidenote: in melanesia.] farther east in melanesia, whose coast regions are more or less permeated by malayan stock and influences, pile dwellings, both over water and on land form a characteristic feature of the scenery. the village of sowek in geelvink bay, on the northern coast of dutch new guinea, consists of thirty houses raised on piles above the water, connected with each other by tree trunks but having only boat connection with the shore. similar villages are found hovering over the lapping waves of humboldt bay, all of them recalling with surprising fidelity the prehistoric lake-dwellings of switzerland.[ ] the papuan part of port moresby, on the southern coast of british new guinea, covers the whole water-front of the town with pile dwellings. in the vicinity are similar native pile villages, such as tanobada, hanuabada, elevara and hula, the latter consisting of pile dwellings scattered about over the water in a circuit of several miles and containing about a thousand inhabitants. here, too, the motive is protection against the attacks of inland mountain tribes, with whom the coast people are in constant war.[ ] the malay fisherman, trader and pirate, with the love of the sea in his blood, by these pile dwellings combines security from his foe and proximity to his familiar field of activity. the same objects are achieved by white traders on the west coast of africa by setting up their dwellings and warehouses on the old hulks of dismasted vessels, which are anchored for this purpose in the river mouths. they afford some protection against both fever and hostile native, and at the same time occupy the natural focus of local trade seeking foreign exchanges. [sidenote: river dwellers in populous lands.] when advancing civilization has eliminated the need for this form of protection, water-dwellers may survive or reappear in old and relatively over-populated countries, as we find them universally on the rivers of china and less often in farther india. here they present the phenomenon of human life overflowing from the land to the streams of the country; because these, as highways of commerce, afford a means of livelihood, even apart from the food supply in their fish, and offer an unclaimed bit of the earth's surface for a floating home. canton has , inhabitants living on boats and rafts moored in the river, and finding occupation in the vast inland navigation of the empire, or in the trade which it brings to this port of the si-kiang. some of the boats accommodate large families, together with modest poultry farms, crowded together under their low bamboo sheds. others are handsome wooden residences ornamented with plants, and yet others are pleasure resorts with their professional singing girls.[ ] in the lakes and swamp-bordered rivers of southern shantung, a considerable fishing population is found living in boats, while the land shows few inhabitants. this population enjoys freedom from taxation and unrestricted use of the rivers and fisheries. to vary their scant and monotonous diet, they construct floating gardens on rafts of bamboo covered with earth, on which they plant onions and garlic and which they tow behind their boats. they also raise hundreds of ducks, which are trained to go into the water to feed and return at a signal,[ ] thus expanding the resources of their river life. bangkok has all its business district afloat on the menam river--shops, lumber yards, eating-houses and merchants' dwellings. even the street vendor's cart is a small boat, paddled in and out among the larger junks.[ ] a far more modern type of river-dwellers is found in the "shanty-boat" people of the western rivers of the united states. they are the gypsies of our streams, nomads who float downstream with the current, tying up at intervals along the bank of some wooded island or city waterfront, then paying a tug to draw their house-boat upstream. the river furnishes them with fish for their table and driftwood for their cooking-stove, and above all is the highway for the gratification of their nomad instincts. there is no question here of trade and overpopulation. [sidenote: reclamation of land from the sea.] pile dwellings and house-boats are a paltry form of encroachment upon the water in comparison with that extensive reclamation of river swamps and coastal marshes which in certain parts of the world has so increased the area available for human habitation. the water which is a necessity to man may become his enemy unless it is controlled. the alluvium which a river deposits in its flood-plain, whether in some flat stretch of its middle course or near the retarding level of the sea, attracts settlement because of its fertility and proximity to a natural highway; but it must be protected by dikes against the very element which created it. such deposits are most extensive on low coasts at or near the river's mouth, just where the junction of an inland and oceanic waterway offers the best conditions for commerce. here then is a location destined to attract and support a large population, for which place can be made only by steady encroachment upon the water of both river and sea. diking is necessitated not only by the demand for more land for the growing population, but also by the constant silting up of the drainage outfalls, which increases the danger of inundation while at the same time contributing to the upbuilding of the land. conditions here institute an incessant struggle between man and nature;[ ] but the rewards of victory are too great to count the cost. the construction of sea-walls, embankment of rivers, reclamation of marshes, the cutting of canals for drains and passways in a water-soaked land, the conversion of lakes into meadow, the rectification of tortuous streams for the greater economy of this silt-made soil, all together constitute the greatest geographical transformation that man has brought about on the earth's surface.[ ] [sidenote: the struggle with the water.] though the north sea lowland of europe has suffered from the serious encroachment of the sea from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, when the zuyder zee, the dollart and jade bay were formed, nevertheless the counter encroachment of the land upon the water, accomplished through the energy and intelligence of the inhabitants, has more than made good the loss. between the elbe and scheldt more than , square miles ( , square kilometers) have been reclaimed from river and sea in the past three hundred years. holland's success in draining her large inland waters, like the haarlem meer ( square miles or square kilometers) and the lake of ij, has inspired an attempt to recover square miles ( , square kilometers) of fertile soil from the borders of the zuyder zee and reduce that basin to nearly one-third of its present size.[ ] one-fourth of the netherlands lies below the average of high tides, and in necessitated , windmills to pump the waste water into the drainage canals.[ ] the netherlands, with all its external features of man's war against the water, has its smaller counterpart in the , square miles of reclaimed soil about the head of the wash, which constitute the fenland of england. here too are successive lines of sea-wall, the earliest of them attributed to the romans, straightened and embanked rivers, drainage canals, windmills and steam pumps, dikes serving as roads, lines of willows and low moist pastures dotted with grazing cattle. no feature of the netherlands is omitted. the low southern part of lincolnshire is even called holland, and dutch prisoners from a naval battle of were employed there on the work of reclamation, which was begun on a large scale about this time.[ ] in the medieval period, the increase of population necessitated measures to improve the drainage and extend the acreage; but there was little co-operation among the land owners, and the maintenance of river dikes and sea-walls was neglected, till a succession of disasters from flooding streams and invading tides in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries led to severe measures against defaulters. one culprit was placed alive in a breach which his own neglect or criminal cutting had caused, and was built in, by way of educating the fenlanders to a sense of common responsibility.[ ] the fight against the water on the coast begins later than that against rivers and swamps in the interior of the land; it demands greater enterprise and courage, because it combats two enemies instead of one; but its rewards are correspondingly greater. the netherlands by their struggle have acquired not only territory for an additional half million population, but have secured to themselves a strategic position in the maritime trade of the world. [sidenote: mound villages in river flood-plains.] the abundant fertility of river flood-plains inevitably attracts population and necessitates some kind of artificial protection against inundation. the most primitive form of this protection is obvious and widespread, restricted in neither locality nor race. when the flood season converts the flat plain of the white nile below gondokora ( ° n. lat.) into an extensive marsh, countless hills of the white ant emerge over the waters. during the dry season, the ants build up their hills to about ten feet, and then live in safety in the upper section during the flood. they greatly surpass in intelligence and constructive ability the human occupants of the valley, the low and wretched kytch tribe of the dinka negroes, who like the ants are attracted by the natural vegetation of the flood-plain, and who use the ant-hills as refuge stations for themselves and their cattle during the flood.[ ] elsewhere in africa the natives are more intelligent, for flood-plain villages built on artificial mounds have existed from the earliest times. diodorus siculus tells us that those of ancient egypt, when the nile was high, looked like the cyclades islands.[ ] similar ones are constructed by the barotse tribe on the upper zambesi.[ ] the niger river, rising in the foota jallon and kong mountains which form a region of heavy rainfall from february to july, inundates a plain of several thousand square miles for a distance of miles above timbuctoo. here again the villages of the agricultural song-hoi duplicate those of egypt, built on the same clay mounds, wreathed in the same feathery palms, and communicating with one another only by small boats.[ ] the same picture is presented by the yangtze kiang plain during the summer overflow--low artificial hills rising from the expanse of muddy water and topped with trees and villages, while sampans moored to their base show the means of communication.[ ] in the broad flood-plain of the lower mississippi river, the chronicles of the de soto expedition state that the indian villages visited stood "on mounds made by art." the yazoo river indians, at the commencement of the eighteenth century, had their cabins dispersed over the low deltaic land on earthen mounds made by their own hands. there is also strong evidence that some of the works of the mound-builders in the "bottoms" of the middle and lower mississippi served as protected sites for the dwellings of their chiefs.[ ] [sidenote: diking of rivers.] such meager provisions against inundation suffice for the sparse population characterizing the lower stages of civilization, but they must be supplemented for the increasing density of higher stages by the embankment of the stream, to protect also the adjacent fields. hence the process of confining rivers within dikes goes back into gray antiquity. those of the po and its tributaries were begun before the political history of the lombardy plains commenced. strabo mentions the canals and dikes of venetia, whereby a part of the country was drained and rendered tillable.[ ] the main po has been embanked for centuries as far up as cremona, a distance of miles, and the adige to verona.[ ] but the most gigantic dike system in the world is that of the hoangho, by which a territory the size of england is won from the water for cultivation.[ ] the cost of protecting the far spread crops against the autumn floods has been a large annual expenditure and unceasing watchfulness; and this the chinese have paid for two thousand years, but have not always purchased immunity. year by year the yellow river mounts higher and higher on its silted bed above the surrounding lowlands, increasing the strain on the banks and the area of destruction, when its fury is uncaged. the flood of covered an area estimated at , square miles, wiped out of existence a million people, and left a greater number a prey to famine.[ ] so the fertile chengtu plain of the min river, supporting four millions of people on its , square miles of area, owes its prosperity to the embanking and irrigating works of the engineer heroes, li ping and his son, who lived before the christian era. on the temple in their honor in the city of kuan hsien is li ping's motto, incised in gold: "dig the bed deep, keep the banks low." for twenty-one centuries these instructions have been carried out. the stone dikes are kept low to permit a judicious amount of flooding for fertilization, and every year five to six feet of silt are removed from the artificial channel of the min. to this work the whole population of the chengtu plain contributes.[ ] [see map page .] [sidenote: social gain by control of the water.] in such organized struggles to reduce the domain of the water and extend that of the dry land, the material gain is not all: more significant by far is the power to co-operate that is developed in a people by a prolonged war against overwhelming sea or river. a common natural danger, constantly and even regularly recurring, necessitates for its resistance a strong and sustained union, that draws men out of the barren individualism of a primitive people, and forces them without halt along the path of civilization. it brings a realizing sense of the superiority of common interests over individual preferences, strengthens the national bond, and encourages voluntary subservience to law. this is the social or political gain; but this is not all. the danger emanating from natural phenomena has its discoverable laws, and therefore leads to a first empirical study of winds, currents, seasonal rainfall and the whole science of hydraulics. with deep national insight, the greeks embodied in their mythology the story of perseus and his destruction of the sea monster who ravaged the coast, and hercules' killing of the many-headed serpent who issued from the lernean marshes to lay waste the country of argos. even so early a writer as strabo states that yet earlier authorities interpreted hercules' victory over the river god of the achelous as the embankment of that stream and the draining of its inundated delta tract by the national benefactor.[ ] so the chinese, whose land abounds in swamps and devastating rivers, have a long list of engineer heroes who embanked and drained for the salvation and benefit of mankind. it is highly probable that the communal work involved in the construction of dikes and canals for the control of the hoangho floods cemented the chinese nationality of that vast lowland plain, and supplied the cohesive force that developed here at a very remote period a regularly organized state and an advancing civilization. [sidenote: control of water as factor in early civilizations of arid lands.] the history of egypt shows a similar effect of the yearly inundation of the nile valley. here, as in all rainless countries where irrigation must be practiced, the water becomes a potent factor of political union and civilization. its scarcity necessitates common effort in the construction and maintenance of irrigation works, and a central control to secure fair distribution of the water to the fields of the inhabitants. a stimulus to progress is found in the presence of a problem, perennial as the yearly threatenings of the hoangho, which demands the application of human intelligence and concerted labor for its solution. additional arable land for the growing population can be secured only by the wider distribution of the fructifying water; this in turn depends upon corporate effort wisely directed and ably controlled. every lapse in governmental efficiency means an encroachment of the desert upon the alluvial fields and finally to the river bank, as to-day in mesopotamia. the fact that the earliest civilizations have originated in the sub-tropical rainless districts of the world has been ascribed solely to the regular and abundant returns to tillage under irrigation, as opposed to the uncertain crops under variable meteorological conditions; to the consequent accumulation of wealth, and the emancipation of man for other and higher activities, which follows his escape from the agricultural vicissitudes of an uncertain climate. when draper says: "civilization depends on climate and agriculture," and "the civilization of egypt depended for its commencement on the sameness and stability of the african climate," and again, "agriculture is certain in egypt and there man first became civilized,"[ ] he seizes upon the conspicuous fact of a stable food supply as the basis of progress, failing to detect those potent underlying social effects of the inundations--social and political union to secure the most effective distribution of the nile's blessings and to augment by human devices the area accessible to them, the development of an intelligent water economy, which ultimately produced a long series of intellectual achievements.[ ] [sidenote: cultural areas in primitive america.] this unifying and stimulating national task of utilizing and controlling the water was the same task which in various forms prompted the early civilization of the hoangho and yangtze basins, india, mesopotamia, persia, peru, mexico, and that impressive region of prehistoric irrigation canals found in the salt, gila river, and upper rio grande valleys.[ ] here the arid plateaus of the cordilleras between the pueblo district and central america had no forests in which game might be found; so that the indian hunter had to turn to agriculture and a sedentary life beside his narrow irrigated fields. here native civilization reached its highest grade in north america. here desert agriculture achieved something more than a reliable food supply. it laid the foundation of the first steady integration of wandering indian hordes into a stable, permanently organized society. elsewhere throughout the north american continent, we see only shifting groups of hunter and fisher folk, practising here and there a half nomadic agriculture to supplement the chase. the primitive american civilization that arose among the pueblo indians of new mexico and arizona, the only strictly sedentary tribes relying exclusively on agriculture north of the mexican plateau, was primarily a result of the pressure put upon these people by a restricted water supply.[ ] though chiefly offshoots of the wild indians of the northern plains, they have been markedly differentiated from their wandering shoshone and kiowa kindred by local environment.[ ] scarcity of water in those arid highlands and paucity of arable land forced them to a carefully organized community life, made them invest their labor in irrigation ditches, terraced gardens and walled orchards, whereby they were as firmly rooted in their scant but fertile fields as were their cotton plants and melon vines;[ ] while the towering mesas protected their homes against marauding ute, navajo and apache.[ ] this thread of a deep underlying connection between civilization and the control of water can be traced through all prehistoric america, as well as through the earliest cultural achievements in north africa and asia. [sidenote: economy of the water: fisheries.] the economy of the water is not confined to its artificial distribution over arid fields, but includes also the exploitation of the mineral and animal resources of the vast world of waters, whether the production of salt from the sea, salt lakes and brine springs, the cultivation of oyster beds, or the whole range of pelagic fisheries. the animal life of the water is important to man owing not only to its great abundance, but also to its distribution over the coldest regions of the globe. it furnishes the chief food supply of polar and sub-polar peoples, and therefore is accountable for the far-northern expansion of the habitable world. even the reindeer tribes of arctic eurasia could hardly subsist without the sea food they get by barter from the fishermen of the coast. norway, where civilization has achieved its utmost in exploiting the limited means of subsistence, shows a steady increase from south to north in the proportion of the population dependent upon the harvest of the deep. thus the fisheries engross per cent. of the rural population in nordland province, which is bisected by the arctic circle; over per cent. in tromso, and about per cent. in finmarken. if the towns also be included, the percentages rise, because here fishing interests are especially prominent.[ ] proximity to the generous larder of the ocean has determined the selection of village sites, as we have seen among the coast indians of british columbia and southern alaska, among all the eskimo, and numerous other peoples of arctic lands. [see map page .] [sidenote: fisheries as factors in maritime expansion.] not only in polar but also in temperate regions, the presence of abundant fishing grounds draws the people of the nearest coast to their wholesale exploitation, especially if the land resources are scant. fisheries then become the starting point or permanent basis of a subsequent wide maritime development, by expanding the geographical horizon. it was the search for the purple-yielding _murex_ that first familiarized the phoenicians with the commercial and colonial possibilities of the eastern mediterranean coasts.[ ] the royal dye of this marine product has through all the ages seemed to color with sumptuous magnificence the sordid dealings of those tyrian traders, and constituted them an aristocracy of merchants. the shoals of tunny fish, arriving every spring in the bosporus, from the north, drew the early greeks and phoenicians after them into the cold and misty euxine, and furnished the original impulse to both these peoples for the establishment of fishing and trading stations on its uncongenial shores.[ ] to the fisheries of the baltic and especially to the summer catch of the migratory herring, which in vast numbers visited the shores of pomerania and southern sweden to spawn, the hanse towns of germany owed much of their prosperity. salt herring, even in the twelfth century, was the chief single article of their exchanges with catholic europe, which made a strong demand for the fish, owing to the numerous fast days. when, in , by one of those unexplained vagaries of animal life, the herring abandoned the baltic and selected the north sea for its summer destination, a new support was given to the wealth of the netherlands.[ ] there is a considerable amount of truth in the saying that amsterdam was built on herrings. new england, with an unproductive soil at home, but near by in the sea a long line of piscine feeding grounds in the submarine banks stretching from cape cod to cape race and beyond, found her fisheries the starting point and base of her long round of exchanges, a constant factor in her commercial and industrial evolution.[ ] [sidenote: fisheries as nurseries of seamen.] fisheries have always been the nurseries of seamen, and hence have been encouraged and protected by governments as providing an important element of national strength. the newfoundland banks were the training school which supplied the merchant marine and later the revolutionary navy of colonial new england;[ ] ever since the establishment of the republic, they have been forced into prominence in our international negotiations with the united kingdom, with the object of securing special privileges, because the government has recognized them as a factor in the american navy. the causal connection between fisheries and naval efficiency was recognized in england in the early years of elizabeth's reign, by an act aiming to encourage fisheries by the remission of custom duties to native fishermen, by the imposition of a high tariff on the importation of foreign fish in foreign vessels, and finally by a legislative enforcement of fasts to increase the demand for fish, although any belief in the religious efficacy of fasts was frankly disclaimed. thus an artificial demand for fish was created, with the result that a report on the success of the fishery acts stated that a thousand additional men had been attracted to the fishing trade, and were consequently "ready to serve in her majesty's ships."[ ] the fishing of the north sea, especially on the dogger bank, is participated in by all the bordering countries, england, the netherlands, germany and belgium; and is valued equally on account of the food supply which it yields and as a school of seamen.[ ] the pomors or "coasters" of arctic russia, who dwell along the shores of the white sea and live wholly by fisheries, have all their taxes remitted and receive free wood from the crown forests for the construction of their ships, on the condition that they serve on call in the imperial navy.[ ] the history of japan affords the most striking illustration of the power of fisheries alone to maintain maritime efficiency; for when by the seclusion act of all merchant vessels were destroyed, the marine restricted to small fishing and coasting vessels, and intercourse confined to japan's narrow island world, the fisheries nevertheless kept alive that intimacy with the sea and preserved the nautical efficiency that was destined to be a decisive factor in the development of awakened japan. [sidenote: anthropo-geographic importance of navigation.] the resources of the sea first tempted man to trust himself to its dangerous surface; but their rewards were slight in comparison with the wealth of experiences and influences to which he fell heir, after he learned to convert the barrier of the untrod waste into a highway for his sail-borne keel. it is therefore true, as many anthropologists maintain, that after the discovery of fire the next most important step in the progress of the human race was the invention of the boat. no other has had such far-reaching results. since water covers three-fourths of the earth's surface and permits the land-masses to rise only as islands here and there, it presents to man for his nautical ventures three times the area that he commands for his terrestrial habitat. on every side, the break of the waves and the swell of the tides block his wanderings, unless he has learned to make the water carry him to his distant goal. spacially, therefore, the problem and the task of navigation is the most widespread and persistent in the history of mankind. the numerous coaling-stations which england has scattered over the world are mute witnesses to this spacial supremacy of the water, to the length of ocean voyages, and the power of the ocean to divide and unite. but had the proportion of land and water been reversed, the world would have been poorer, deprived of all these possibilities of segregation and differentiation, of stimulus to exchange and far-reaching intercourse, and of ingenious inventions which the isolating ocean has caused. without this ramifying barrier between the different branches of the human family, these would have resembled each other more closely, but at the cost of development. the mere multiplicity of races and sub-races has sharpened the struggle for existence and endowed the survivors with higher qualities. but it was navigation that released primitive man from the seclusion of his own island or continent, stimulated and facilitated the intercourse of peoples, and enabled the human race to establish itself in every habitable part of the world. notes to chapter x [ ] census of the philippine islands, vol. i, pp. , - , . washington, . [ ] sir john lubbock, prehistoric times, pp. - . new york, . [ ] ferdinand keller, lake dwellings, vol. i, pp. - , . london, . english lake dwellings, _westminster review_, pp. - . . [ ] p.w. joyce, a social history of ancient ireland, vol. ii, pp. - . london, . [ ] herodotus, v. . [ ] alexander von humboldt, aspects of nature, pp. - . translated by mrs. sabine, philadelphia, . e.f. im thurn, among the indians of guiana, p. . london, . [ ] sir thomas holdich, india, p. . london, . [ ] verney l. cameron, across africa, pp. - . london, . [ ] david and charles livingstone, narrative of expedition to the zambezi, p. . new york, . [ ] census of the philippine islands, vol. i, pp. - , . washington, . [ ] stanford's australasia, vol. ii, pp. - . london, . [ ] a.r. wallace, the malay archipelago, pp. , . new york, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, pp. - , . london, - . [ ] richard semon, in the australian bush, pp. - , . london, . [ ] john l. stoddard, lectures, vol. iii, p. . boston, . [ ] john barrows, travels in china, pp. - . philadelphia, . [ ] william m. wood, fankwei, pp. - . new york, . [ ] edmondo de amicis, holland and its people, pp. - . new york, . [ ] g.p. marsh, the earth as modified by human action, chap. iv, pp. - . new york, . [ ] j. partsch, central europe, pp. - . london, . [ ] roscher, _national-oekonomik des ackerbaues_, p. , note . stuttgart, . [ ] elisée reclus, europe, vol. iv, pp. - . new york, . miller and skertchley, the fenland, past and present, pp. - . london, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. - . [ ] sir samuel w. baker, the albert nyanza, great basin of the nile, pp. - . london and philadelphia, . [ ] diodorus siculus, book i, chap. iii, p. . translated by g. booth. london, . [ ] david livingstone, missionary travels in africa, pp. - , , . new york, . [ ] felix dubois, timbuctoo, pp. - , . new york, . [ ] isabella b. bishop, the yangtze valley and beyond., vol. i, pp. , , . london and new york, . [ ] cyrus thomas, mound explorations, pp. , - . twelfth annual report bureau of ethnology, washington, . [ ] strabo, book v, chap. i, . [ ] w. deecke, italy, pp. - . london, . [ ] john barrows, travels in china, p. . philadelphia, . [ ] meredith townsend, asia and europe, pp. - . new york, . [ ] isabella b. bishop, the yangtze valley and beyond, vol. ii, pp. - - . new york and london, . for the future of land reclamation, see n.s. shaler, man and the earth, chap. v. new york, . [ ] strabo, book x, chap. ii, . [ ] john w. draper, intellectual development of europe, vol. i, pp. - . new york, . [ ] winwood reade, the martyrdom of man, pp. - . eighth edition, new york. [ ] irrigation, thirteenth report of the u.s. geological survey, part iii, pp. - . washington, . j.w. powell, twenty-third annual report of the bureau of ethnology, pp. xii, xiii. washington, . cosmos mindeleff, aboriginal remains in the verde valley, arizona, pp. , - , - . thirteenth annual report of bureau of ethnology. washington, . v. mindeleff, pueblo architecture, pp. , - . eighth annual report of bureau of ethnology. washington, . f. w. hodge, prehistoric irrigation in arizona, _american anthropologist_, july, . [ ] mcgee and thomas, prehistoric north america, pp. - , , , - , . philadelphia, . [ ] eleventh census, report on the indians, pp. , , . washington, . d.g. brinton, the american race, pp. - . philadelphia, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. , , , , , , , , - . m.c. stevenson, the zuni indians, pp. - . twenty-third annual report of bureau of ethnology, washington, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. - . h.h. bancroft, the native races, vol. i, pp. - . san francisco, . [ ] norway, official publication, pp. - . christiania, . [ ] ernst curtius, history of greece, vol. i, pp. - . new york. [ ] _ibid._, vol. i, p. . [ ] dietrich schaefer, _die hansestädte und könig waldemar von dänemark_, pp. - . jena, . helen zimmern, story of the hansa towns, pp. - . new york, . [ ] w.b. weeden, social and economic history of new england, vol. i, pp. , , , , - , . boston, . [ ] _ibid._, vol. i, p. . [ ] h.d. traill, social england, vol. iii, pp. - , . london and new york, . [ ] j. partsch, central europe, p. . london, . [ ] alexander p. engelhardt, a russian province of the north, pp. - . from the russian. london, . chapter xi the anthropo-geography of rivers [sidenote: rivers as intermediaries between land and sea.] to a large view, rivers appear in two aspects. they are either part of the general water envelope of the earth, extensions of seas and estuaries back into the up-hill reaches of the land, feeders of the ocean, roots which it spreads out over the surface of the continents, not only to gather its nourishment from ultimate sources in spring and glacier, but also to bring down to the coast the land-born products of the interior to feed a sea-born commerce; or rivers are one of the land forms, merely water filling valley channels, serving to drain the fields and turn the mills of men. in the first aspect their historical importance has been both akin and linked to that of the ocean, despite the freshness and smaller volume of their waters and the unvarying direction of their currents. the ocean draws them and their trade to its vast basin by the force of gravity. it unites with its own the history of every log-stream in laurentian or himalayan forest, as it formerly linked the beaver-dammed brooks of wintry canada with the current of trade following the gulf stream to europe. where sea and river meet, nature draws no sharp dividing line. here the indeterminate boundary zone is conspicuous. the fresh water stream merges into brackish estuary, estuary into saltier inlet and inlet into briny ocean. closely confined sea basins like the black and baltic, located in cool regions of slight evaporation and fed from a large catchment basin, approach in their reduced salinity the fresh water lakes and coastal lagoons in which rivers stretch out to rest on their way to the ocean. the muddy current of the yangtze kiang colors the yellow sea, and warns incoming chinese junks of the proximity of land many hours before the low-lying shores can be discerned.[ ] columbus, sailing along the caribbean coast of south america off the orinoco mouth, found the ocean waters brackish and surmised the presence of a large river and therefore a large continent on his left.[ ] the transitional form between stream and pelagic inlet found in every river mouth is emphasized where strong tidal currents carry the sea far into these channels of the land. the tides move up the st. lawrence river miles ( kilometers) or half way between montreal and quebec, and up the amazon miles ( , kilometers). owing to their resemblance to pelagic channels, the estuaries of the american rivers with their salty tide were repeatedly mistaken, in the period of discoveries, for the northwest passage to the pacific. newport in explored the broad sluggish course of the james river in his search for a western ocean. henry hudson ascended the hudson river almost as far as albany, before he discovered that this was no maritime pathway, like the bosporus or dardanelles, leading to an ulterior sea. the long tidal course of the st. lawrence westward into the heart of the continent fed la salle's dream of finding here a water route to the pacific, and fixed his village of "la chine" above the rapids at montreal as a signpost pointing the way to the indies and cathay. in the same way a tidal river at the head of cook's inlet on the alaskan coast was mistaken for a northeast passage, not by captain cook but by his fellow officers, on his pacific voyage of - ; and it was followed for several days before its character as a river was established.[ ] [sidenote: sea navigation merges into river navigation.] rivers have always been the great intermediaries between land and sea, for in the ocean all find their common destination. until the construction of giant steamers in recent years, sea navigation has always passed without break into river navigation. sailing vessels are carried by the trade wind miles up the orinoco to san fernando. alexander's discovery of the indus river led by almost inevitable sequence to the rediscovery of the eastern sea route, which in turn ran from india through the strait of oman and the persian gulf up the navigable course of the euphrates to the elbow of the river at thapsacus. enterprising sea folk have always used rivers as natural continuations of the marine highway into the land. the humber estuary and its radiating group of streams led the invading angles in the sixth century into the heart of britain.[ ] the long navigable courses of the rivers of france exposed that whole country to the depredations of the piratical northmen in the ninth and tenth centuries. up every river they came, up the scheldt into flanders, the seine to paris and the marne to meaux; up the loire to orleans, the garonne to toulouse and the rhone to valence.[ ] so the atlantic rivers of north america formed the lines of european exploration and settlement. the st. lawrence brought the french from the ocean into the great lakes basin, whose low, swampy watershed they readily crossed in their light canoes to the tributaries of the mississippi; and scarcely had they reached the "father of waters" before they were planting the flag of france on the gulf of mexico at its mouth. the tupi indians of south america, a genuine water-race, moved from their original home on the paraguay headstream of the la plata down to its mouth, then expanded northward along the coast of brazil in their small canoes to the estuary of the amazon, thence up its southern tributary, the tapajos, and in smaller numbers up the main stream to the foot of the andes, where detached groups of the race are still found.[ ] so the migrations of the carib river tribes led them from their native seats in eastern brazil down the xingu to the amazon, thence out to sea and along the northern coast of south america, thence inland once more, up the orinoco to the foot of the andes, into the lagoon of maracaibo and up the magdalena. meanwhile their settlements at the mouth of the orinoco threw off spores of pirate colonies to the adjacent islands and finally, in the time of columbus, to porto rico and haiti.[ ] [see map page .] [sidenote: historical importance of seas and oceans influenced by their debouching streams.] so intimate is this connection between marine and inland waterways, that the historical and economic importance of seas and oceans is noticeably influenced by the size of their drainage basins and the navigability of their debouching rivers. this is especially true of enclosed seas. the only historical importance attached to the caspian's inland basin is that inherent in the volga's mighty stream. the mediterranean has always suffered from its paucity of long river highways to open for it a wide hinterland. this lack checked the spread of its cultural influences and finally helped to arrest its historical development. if we compare the record of the adriatic and the black seas, the first a sharply walled _cul de sac_, the second a center of long radiating streams, sending out the danube to tap the back country of the adriatic and the dnieper to draw on that of the baltic, we find that the smaller sea has had a limited range of influence, a concentrated brilliant history, precocious and short-lived as is that of all limited areas; that the euxine has exercised more far-reaching influences, despite a slow and still unfinished development. the black sea rivers in ancient times opened their countries to such elements of hellenic culture as might penetrate from the greek trading colonies at their mouths, especially the greek forms of christianity. it was the danube that in the fourth century carried arianism, born of the philosophic niceties of greek thought, to the barbarians of southern germany, and made unitarians of the burgundians and visigoths of southern gaul.[ ] the dnieper carried the religion of the greek church to the russian princes at kief, smolensk, and moscow. owing to the southward course of its great rivers, russia has found the crux of her politics in the black sea, ever since the tenth century when the barbarians from kiev first appeared before constantinople. this sea has had for her a higher economic importance than the baltic, despite the latter's location near the cultural center of western europe. [sidenote: baltic and white sea rivers.] in other seas, too, rivers play the same part of extending their tributary areas and therefore enhancing their historical significance. the disadvantages of the baltic's smaller size and far-northern location, as compared with the mediterranean, were largely compensated for by the series of big streams draining into it from the south, and bringing out from a vast hinterland the bulky necessaries of life. hence the hanseatic league of the middle ages, which had its origin among the southern coast towns of the baltic from lubeck to riga, throve on the combined trade of sea and river.[ ] the mouths of the scheldt, rhine, weser, elbe and thames long concentrated in themselves the economic, cultural and historical development of the north sea basin. so the white sea, despite its sub-polar location, is valuable to russia for two reasons; it affords a politically open port, and it receives the northern dwina, which is navigable for river steamers from archangel south to vologda, a distance of six hundred miles, and carries the export trade of a large territory.[ ] similarly in recent years, bering sea has gained unwonted commercial activity because the yukon river serves as a waterway , miles long to the klondike gold fields. [sidenote: atlantic and pacific rivers.] if we compare the atlantic and pacific oceans in respect to their rivers, we find that the narrow atlantic has a drainage basin of over , , square miles as opposed to the , , square miles of drainage area commanded by the vastly larger pacific. the pacific is for the most part rimmed by mountains, discharging into the ocean only mad torrents or rapid-broken streams. the atlantic, bordered by gently sloping plains of wide extent, receives rivers that for the most part pursue a long and leisurely course to the sea. therefore, the commercial and cultural influences of the atlantic extend from the rockies and andes almost to the heart of russia, and by the nile highway they even invade the seclusion of africa. through the long reach of its rivers, therefore, the atlantic commands a land area twice as great as that of the pacific; and by reason of this fundamental geographic advantage, it will retain the historical preëminence that it so early secured. the development of the world ocean will mean the exploitation of the pacific trade from the basis of the atlantic, the domination of the larger ocean by the historic peoples of the smaller, because these peoples have wider and more accessible lands as the base of their maritime operations. [sidenote: lack of coast articulations supplied by rivers.] the geographic influence of abundant rivers navigable from the sea is closely akin to that of highly articulated coasts. the effect of the hardanger or sogne fiord, admitting ocean steamers a hundred miles into the interior of norway, is similar to that of the elbe and weser estuaries, which admit the largest vessels sixty miles upstream to hamburg and bremen. since river inlets can, to a certain extent, supply the place of marine inlets, from the standpoint of anthropo-geographic theory and of human practice, a land dissected by navigable rivers can be grouped with one dissected by arms of the sea. south america and africa are alike in the unbroken contour of their coasts, but strongly contrasted in the character of their rivers. hence the two continents present the extremes of accessibility and inaccessibility. south america, most richly endowed of all the continents with navigable streams, receiving ocean vessels three thousand miles up the amazon as far as tabatinga in peru, and smaller steamers up the orinoco to the spurs of the andes, was known in its main features to explorers fifty years after its discovery. africa, historically the oldest of continents, but cursed with a mesa form which converts nearly every river into a plunging torrent on its approach to the sea, kept its vast interior till the last century wrapped in utmost gloom. china, amply supplied with smaller littoral indentations but characterized by a paucity of larger inlets, finds compensation in the long navigable course of the yangtze kiang. this river extends the landward reach of the yellow sea miles inland to hanchow, where ocean-going vessels take on cargoes of tea and silk for europe and america,[ ] and pay for them in mexican dollars, the coin of the coast. hence it is lined with free ports all the way from shanghai at its mouth to ichang, a thousand miles up its course.[ ] [sidenote: river highways as basis of commercial preeminence.] navigable rivers opening passages directly from the sea are obviously nature-made gates and paths into wholly new countries; but the accessibility with which they endow a land becomes later a permanent factor in its cultural and economic development, a factor that remains constantly though less conspicuously operative when railroads have done their utmost to supplant water transportation. the importance of inland waterways for local and foreign trade and intercourse has everywhere been recognized. the peoples who have long maintained preëminence among the commercial and maritime nations of the world have owed this in no small part to the command of these natural highways, which have served to give the broad land basis necessary for permanent commercial ascendency. this has been the history of england, holland, france and the recent record of germany. the medieval league of the rhine cities flourished by reason of the rhone-rhine highway across western europe. the hanseatic league, from bruges all the way east to russian novgorod, owed their brilliant commercial career, not only to the favorable maritime field in the enclosed sea basins in front of them, but also to the series of long navigable rivers behind them from the scheldt to the neva and volchov. wherefore we find the league, originally confined to coast towns, drawing into the federation numerous cities located far up these rivers, such as ghent, cologne, magdeburg, breslau, cracow, pskof and novgorod.[ ] [sidenote: importance of rivers in large countries.] in countries of large area, where commerce and intercourse must cover great distances, these natural and therefore cheap highways assume paramount importance, especially in the forest and agricultural stages of development, when the products of the land are bulky in proportion to their value. small countries with deeply indented coasts, like greece, norway, scotland, new england, chile, and japan, can forego the advantage of big river systems; but in russia, siberia, china, india, canada, the united states, venezuela, brazil and argentine, the history of the country, economic and political, is indissolubly connected with that of its great rivers. the storm center of the french and english wars in america was located on the upper hudson, because this stream enabled the english colonies to tap the fur trade of the great lakes, and because it commanded the mohawk valley, the easiest and most obvious path for expansion into the interior of the continent. the spanish, otherwise confining their activities in south america to the caribbean district and the civilized regions of the andean highlands, established settlements at the mouth of the la plata river, because this stream afforded an approach from the atlantic side toward the potosi mines on the bolivian plateau. the yangtze kiang, that great waterway leading from the sea across the breadth of china and the one valuable river adjunct of maritime trade in the whole orient, was early appropriated by the discerning english as the british "sphere of influence." [sidenote: rivers as highways of expansion.] no other equally large area of the earth is so generously equipped by nature for the production and distribution of the articles of commerce as southern canada and that part of the united states lying east of the rocky mountains. the simple build of the north american continent, consisting of a broad central trough between distant mountain ranges, and characterized by gentle slopes to the atlantic ocean and the gulf of mexico, has generated great and small rivers with easy-going currents, that everywhere opened up the land to explorer, trader and settler. the rate of expansion from the "europe-fronting shore" of the continent was everywhere in direct proportion to the length of the rivers first appropriated by the colonists. north of chesapeake bay the lure to landward advance was the fur trade. the atlantic rivers of the coast pre-empted by the english were cut short by the appalachian wall. they opened up only restricted fur fields which were soon exhausted, so that the migrant trapper was here early converted into the agricultural settler, his shifting camp fire into the hearthstone of the farmhouse. expansion was slow but solid. the relatively small area rendered accessible by their streams became compactly filled by the swelling tide of immigrants and the rapid natural increase of population. in sharp contrast to this development, the long waterway of the st. lawrence and the great lakes leading to the still vaster river system of the mississippi betrayed the fur-trading french into excessive expansion, and enabled them to appropriate but not to hold a vast extent of territory. a hundred years after the arrival of champlain at montreal, they were planting their fur stations on lake superior and the mississippi, , miles ( , kilometers) back from the coast, at a time when the english settlements had advanced little beyond tide-water. and when after the westward movement swept the backwoodsmen of the english colonies over the appalachian barrier to the ohio, cumberland and tennessee, these long westward flowing streams carried them rapidly on to the mississippi, communicated the mobility and restlessness of their own currents to the eager pioneer, and their capacity to master great distances; so that in forty short years, by , settlements were creeping up the western tributaries of the mississippi. the abundant water communication in the mississippi valley, which even for present large river craft contains , miles of navigable streams and which had therefore a far greater mileage in the day of canoe and flatboat, afforded outlet for bulky, backwoods produce to the sea at new orleans. when the english acquired canada in , they straightway fell under the sway of its harsh climate and long river systems, taking up the life of the fur trader; they followed the now scarcer pelts from the streams of superior westward by lake winnipeg and along the path of the saskatchewan river straight to the foot of the rockies. [sidenote: siberian rivers and russian expansion.] rivers have played the same part in expediting russian expansion across the wide extent of siberia. here again a severe climate necessitated reliance on furs, the chief natural product of the country, as the basis of trade. these, as the outcome of savage economy, were gathered in from wide areas which only rivers could open up. therefore, where the siberian streams flatten out their upper courses east and west against the northern face of the asiatic plateau, with low watersheds between, the russian explorer and sable hunter struck their eastward water trail toward the pacific. the advance, which under yermak crossed the ural mountains in , reached the yenisei river in and planted there the town of turuchansk as a sort of milestone, almost on the arctic circle opposite the mouth of the lower tunguska, a long eastern tributary. up this they passed to the lena in , thence to bering sea by the kolima and anadyr rivers, because these arctic fields yielded sable, beaver and fox skins in greatest quantity.[ ] the lena especially, from its source down to its eastern elbow at yakutsk, that great rendezvous of siberian fur traders, was a highway for trapper and cossack tribute-gatherer.[ ] from the sources of the yenisei in lake baikal to the navigable course of the amur was a short step, taken in , though the control of the river, which was claimed by china, was not secured till two hundred years later.[ ] [see map page .] as the only highways in new countries, rivers constitute lines of least resistance for colonial peoples encroaching upon the territory of inferior races. they are therefore the geographic basis of those streamers of settlement which we found making a fringe of civilization across the boundary zone of savagery or barbarism on the typical colonial frontier. ethnic islands of the expanding people cluster along them like iron filings on a magnetized wire. therefore in all countries where navigable rivers have fixed the lines of expansion, as in the united states, the northern part of the russian empire, and the eastern or colonial border of germany and austria, there is a strong anthropo-geographic resemblance in the frontiers of successive decades or centuries. but in arid or semi-arid regions like south africa, the western plains of north america, the steppes of russian and chinese turkestan, the river highway _motif_ in expansion is lost in a variety of other geographic and geologic factors, though the water of the streams still attracts trail and settlement. [sidenote: determinants of routes in arid or semi-arid lands.] a river like the nile, lower volga, irtysh or indus, rising in highlands of abundant rainfall but traversing an arid or desert land, acquires added importance because it furnishes the sole means of water travel and of irrigation. the nile has for ages constituted the main line of intercourse between the mediterranean and equatorial africa. the tigris, euphrates, indus, and the niger where it makes its great northern bend into the sahara near timbuctoo,[ ] attest the value to local fertility and commerce inherent in these rivers of the deserts and steppes. such rivers are always oasis-makers, whether on their way to the sea they periodically cover a narrow flood-plain like that of the nile, or one ninety miles wide, like that of the niger's inland delta above timbuctoo;[ ] or whether they emerge into a silent sea of sand, like the murghab of russian turkestan, which spreads itself out to water the gardens of merv. even where such rivers have a volume too scanty to float a raft, they yet point the highway, because they alone supply water for man and beast across the desert tract. the oxus and sir daria have from time immemorial determined the great trade routes through turkestan to central asia. the platte, arkansas, cimarron and canadian rivers fixed the course of our early western trails across the arid plains to the foot of the rockies; and beyond this barrier the california trail followed the long-drawn oasis formed by the humboldt river across the nevada desert, the gila river guided the first american fur-trapping explorers across the burning deserts of arizona to the pacific, and the succession of water-holes in the dry bed of the mohave river gave direction to the spanish trail across the mohave desert towards los angeles. in the same way, livingstone's route from the orange river in south africa to lake ngami, under the direction of native guides, ran along the margin of the kalahari desert up the dry bed of the mokoko river, which still retained an irregular succession of permanent wells.[ ] [sidenote: wadi routes in arid lands.] in the trade-wind regions of the world, which are characterized by seasons of intense drought, we find rivers carrying a scant and variable amount of water but an abundance of gravel and sand; they are known in different localities as wadis, fiumares and arroyos. their beds, dry for long periods of the year, become natural roads, paved with the gravel which the stream regularly deposits in the wet season. local travel in sicily, italy[ ] and other mediterranean countries uses such natural roads extensively. trade routes across the plateau of judea and samaria follow the wadis, because these give the best gradient and the best footing for the ascent.[ ] wadis also determine the line of caravan routes across the highlands of the sahara. in the desert of southwest africa, the khiuseb is the first river north of the orange to reach the atlantic through the barrier dunes of the coast. hence it has drawn to its valley the trade routes from a wide circle of inland points from ottawe to windhoek and rehobeth, and given added importance to the british coast of walfish bay, into which it debouches.[ ] but just to the north, the broad dry bed of the swakop offered a natural wagon route into the interior, and has been utilized for the railroad of german southwest africa. [sidenote: increasing historical importance from source to mouth.] the historical importance of a river increases from its source toward its mouth. its head springs, gushing from the ground, and the ramifying brooks of its highland course yield a widely distributed water supply and thereby exercise a strong influence in locating the dwellings of men; but they play no part in the great movements and larger activities of peoples. only when minor affluents unite to form the main stream, enlarge it in its lower course by an increasing tribute of water, and extend constantly its tributary area, does a river assume real historical importance. it reaches its fullest significance at its mouth, where it joins the world's highway of the ocean. here are combined the best geographical advantages--participation in the cosmopolitan civilization characteristic of coastal regions, opportunity for inland and maritime commerce, and a fertile alluvial soil yielding support for dense populations. the predominant importance of the debouchment stretch of a river is indicated by the presence of such cities as london, rotterdam, hamburg, bremen, bordeaux, odessa, alexandria, calcutta, rangoon, bangkok, hongkong, canton, nanking and shanghai, montreal and quebec, new york, philadelphia, new orleans, buenos ayres and montevideo. this debouchment stretch gains in practical value and hence in permanent historical importance if it is swept by a scouring tide, which enables the junction of inland and maritime routes to penetrate into the land. even strabo recognized this value of tidal reaches.[ ] hence in tideless basins like the baltic and caribbean, the great river ports have to advance coastward to meet the sea; and the lower course of even mighty streams like the volga and nile achieve a restricted importance.[ ] the control of a river mouth becomes a desideratum or necessity to the upstream people. otherwise they may be bottled up. though history shows us countless instances of upstream expansion, nevertheless owing to the ease of downstream navigation and this increasing historical importance from source to mouth, the direction of a river's flow has often determined the course of commerce and of political expansion. [sidenote: location at hydrographic centers.] the possibility of radial expansion, which we have found to be the chief advantage of a central location, is greatly enhanced if that central location coincides with a hydrographic center of low relief. the tenth century nucleus of the russian empire was found about the low nodal watershed formed by the valdai hills, whence radiated the rivers later embodied in the muscovite domain. here in novgorod at the head of the volchov-ladoga-neva system, pskof on the velikaya, tver at the head of the navigable volga, moscow on the oka, smolensk on the dnieper, and vitebsk on the duna, were gathered the russians destined to displace the primitive finnish population and appropriate the wide plains of eastern europe. everywhere their conquests, colonization, and commercial relations have followed the downstream course of their rivers. the dnieper carried the rus of smolensk and kief to the euxine, into contact with the byzantine world, and brought thence religion, art, and architecture for the untutored empire of the north. the influence of the volga has been irresistible. down its current novgorod traders in the twelfth century sought the commerce of the caspian and the orient; and later the muscovite princes pushed their conquest of the tartar hordes from asia. the northern dwina, onega, mesen and petchora have carried long narrow bands of slav settlement northward to the arctic ocean. [see map page .] medieval russian trade from hanseatic pskof and novgorod, and later russian dominion followed the narva and neva to the baltic. "the dnieper made russia byzantine, the volga made it asiatic. it was for the neva to make it european."[ ] in the same way, when the early french explorers and traders of canada reached the hydrographic center of the continent about lakes superior and michigan, they quickly crossed the low rim of these basins southward to the mississippi, and northward to the rainy lake and winnipeg system draining to hudson bay.[ ] while it took them from to and to penetrate upstream from quebec to this central watershed, only nine years elapsed from the time ( ) marquette reached the westward flowing wisconsin river to , when la salle reached the mouth of the mississippi. [sidenote: effect of current upon trade and expansion.] the effect of mere current upon the course of trade and political expansion was conspicuous in the early history of the mississippi valley, before steam navigation began to modify the geographic influence of a river's flow. the wide forest-grown barrier of the appalachian mountains placed the western pioneers under the geographic control of the western waters. the bulkiness of their field and forest products, fitted only for water transportation, and the immense mass of downstream commerce called loudly for a maritime outlet and the acquisition from spain of some port at the mississippi mouth. for twenty years the politics of this transmontane country centered about the "island of new orleans," and in saw its dream realized by the louisiana purchase. for the western trader, the mississippi and ohio were preeminently downstream paths. gravity did the work. only small boats, laden with fine commodities of small bulk and large value, occasionally made the forty day upstream voyage from new orleans to louisville. flat boats and barges that were constructed at pittsburg for the river traffic were regularly broken up for lumber at downstream points like louisville and new orleans; for the traders returned overland by the old chickasaw trail to the cumberland and ohio river settlements, carrying their profits in the form of gold. the same thing happens today, as it also happened two thousand years ago, on the tigris and euphrates. the highlander of armenia or northern mesopotamia floats down the current in his skin boat or on his brushwood raft, to sell his goods and the wood forming the frame-work of his primitive craft in timberless bagdad and busra, as formerly in treeless babylon. he dries out his skins, loads them on his shoulders or on a mule brought down for the purpose, and returns on foot to his highland village.[ ] the same preponderance of downstream traffic appears to-day in eastern siberia. pedlers on the amur start in the spring from stretensk, miles up the river, with their wares in barges, and drift down with the current, selling at the villages _en route_, to the river's mouth at nikolaievsk. here they dispose of their remaining stock and also of their barges, the lumber of which is utilized for sidewalks, and they themselves return upstream by steamer. the grain barges of western siberia, like the coal barges of the mississippi, even within recent decades, are similarly disposed of at the journey's end.[ ] the tonnage of downstream traffic on the ohio and mississippi to-day greatly exceeds that upstream. the fleet of coal boats, carrying about , tons, which the great towboat sprague takes in a single trip from louisville down to new orleans, all return empty. of the , , net tons of freight shipped in on the ohio system, , , tons of coal, stone, sand and lumber were carried in unrigged craft, fitted chiefly for downstream traffic.[ ] [sidenote: importance of mouth to upstream people.] owing to the strong pull exerted by a river's mouth upon all its basin, current, commerce and people alike tend to reach the ocean. for a nation holding the terrestrial course of a stream, the political fate of its tidal course or mouth must always be a matter of great concern. to the early westerner of the united states, before the acquisition of the louisiana country, it was of vital importance whether belligerent france or more amenable spain or the republic itself should own the mouth of the mississippi. germany, which holds miles ( kilometers) of the navigable danube,[ ] can never be indifferent to the political ownership of its mouth, or to the fact that a great power like russia has edged forward, by the acquisition of bessarabia in , to the northern or kilia debouchment channel.[ ] such interest shows itself in sustained efforts either to gain political control of the mouth, or to secure the neutrality of the stream by having it declared an international waterway, and thus partially to deprive the state holding its mouth of the advantages of its transit location. the only satisfactory solution is undivided political ownership. after france pushed eastward to the rhine in , she warred for three centuries to acquire its mouth. napoleon laid claim to belgium and holland on the ground that their soil had been built up by the alluvium of french rivers. germany's conquest of schleswig-holstein in was significant chiefly because it dislodged denmark from the right bank of the lower elbe, and secured undivided control of this important estuary. the rhine, which traverses the empire from north to south and constitutes its greatest single trade route, gives to germany a more vital interest in holland than ever france had. her most important iron and coal mines and manufacturing industries are located on this waterway or its tributaries, the ruhr, mosel, saar and main. hence the rhine is the great artery of german trade and outlet for her enormous exports, which chiefly reach the sea through the ports of belgium and holland. these two countries therefore fatten on german commerce and reduce german profits. hence the empire, by the construction of the emden-dortmund canal, aims to divert its trade from rotterdam and antwerp to a german port, and possibly thereby put the screw on holland to draw her into some kind of a commercial union with germany.[ ] heinrich von treitschke, in his "_politik_," deplores the fact that the most valuable part of the great german river has fallen into alien hands, and he declares it to be an imperative task of german policy to recover the mouth of that stream, "either by a commercial or political union." "we need the entrance of holland into our customs union as we need our daily bread."[ ] [sidenote: prevention of monopoly of river mouth.] when the middle and upper course of a river system are shared by several nations, their common interest demands that the control of the mouth be divided, as in the case of the la plata between argentine and uruguay; or held by a small state, like holland, too weak to force the monopoly of the tidal course. the treaty of paris in extended the territory of moldavia at the cost of russia, to keep the russian frontier away from the danube.[ ] her very presence was ominous. the temptation to giant powers to gobble up these exquisite morsels of territory is irresistible. hence the advisability of neutralizing small states holding such locations, as in the case of roumania; and making their rivers international waterways, as in the case of the orinoco,[ ] scheldt, waal, rhine and danube.[ ] the yangtze kiang mouth, where already the treaty ports cluster thick, will probably be the first part of china to be declared neutral ground, and as such to be placed under the protection of the combined commercial powers,[ ] as is even now foreshadowed by the international conservancy board of .[ ] the united states, by her treaty with mexico in , secured the right of free navigation on the lower or mexican course of the colorado river and the gulf of california. the franco-british convention, which in confirmed the western sudan to france, also conceded the principle of making the niger, the sole outlet of this vast and isolated territory, an international waterway, and created two french _enclaves_ in british nigeria to serve as river ports.[ ] [sidenote: motive for canals in lower course.] the mouth of a large river system is the converging point of many lines of inland and maritime navigation. the interests of commerce, especially in its earlier periods of development, demand that the contact here of river and sea be extensive as possible. nature suggests the way to fulfill this requirement. the sluggish lowland current of a river, on approaching sea level, throws out distributaries that reach the coast at various points and form a network of channels, which can be deepened and rendered permanent by canalization. in such regions the opportunity for the improvement and extension of waterways has been utilized from the earliest times. the ancient egyptians, chaldeans, east indians, and the gauls of the lower po for thousands of years canaled the waters of their deltas and coastal lowlands for the combined purpose of irrigation, drainage, and navigation. the great canal system of china, constructed in the seventh century primarily to facilitate inland intercourse between the northern and central sections of the empire, extends from the sea at hangchow miles northward through the coastal alluvium of the yangtze kiang, hoang-ho and pie-ho to tientsin, the port of peking. only the canal system of the center, important both for the irrigation of the fertile but porous loess and for the transportation of crops, is still in repair. here the meshes of the canal network are little more than half a mile wide; farmers dig canals to their barns and bring in their produce in barges instead of hay wagons.[ ] holland, where the ancient romans constructed channels in the rhine delta and where the debouchment courses of the rhine, meuse and scheldt present a labyrinth of waterways, has to-day miles ( kilometers) of canals, which together with the navigable rivers, have been important geographic factors in the historical preëminence of dutch foreign commerce. so on the lower mississippi, in the greatest alluvial area of the united states, the government has expended large sums for the improvement of the passes and bayous of the river. the barataria, atchafalaya, terrebonne, black, teche and lafourche bayous have been rendered navigable, and new orleans has been given canal outlets to the sea through lakes salvador, pontchartrain and borgne. [sidenote: watershed canals.] as the dividing channels of the lower course point to the feasibility of amplifying the connection with the ocean highway, so the spreading branches of a river's source, which approach other head waters on a low divide, suggest the extension of inland navigation by the union of two such drainage systems through canals. where the rivers of a country radiate from a relatively low central watershed, as from the central plateau of france and the valdai hills of russia, nature offers conditions for extensive linking of inland waterways. hence we find a continuous passway through russia from the caspian sea to the baltic by the canal uniting the volga and neva rivers; another from the black sea up the dnieper, which by canals finds three different outlets to the baltic through the vistula, niemen and duna.[ ] the northern dwina, linked, by canals, with the neva through lakes onega and ladoga, unites the white sea with the baltic.[ ] sully, the great minister of henry iv. of france, saw that the relief of the country would permit the linking of the loire, seine, meuse, saône and rhine, and the mediterranean with the garonne. all his plans were carried out by his successors, but he himself, at the end of the sixteenth century, began the construction of the briare canal between the loire near orleans and the seine at fontainebleau.[ ] similarly in the eastern half of the united states, the long, low watershed separating the drainage basin of the st. lawrence and great lakes from that of the mississippi and the hudson made feasible the succession of canals completing the "great belt" of inland navigation from st. lawrence and new york bays to the gulf. albert gallatin's famous report of [ ] pointed out the adaptation of the three low divides to canal communication; but long before this, every line of possible canoe travel by river and portage over swamp or lake-dotted watershed had been used by savages, white explorers and french voyageurs, from lake champlain to lake winnebago, so that the canal engineer had only to select from the numerous portage paths already beaten out by the moccasined feet of indian or fur-trader. [sidenote: rivers and railroads.] the cheapness and ease of river travel have tended to check or delay the construction of highroads and railways, where facilities for inland navigation have been abundant, and later to regulate railway freight charges. conversely, riverless lands have everywhere experienced an exaggerated and precocious railroad development, and have suffered from its monopoly of transportation. even canals have in most lands had a far earlier date than paved highroads. this has been true of spain, france, holland, and england.[ ] in the hoang-ho valley of northern china where waterways are restricted, owing to the rapid current and shallowness of this river, highroads are comparatively common; but they are very rare in central and southern china where navigable rivers and canals abound.[ ] new england, owing to its lack of inland navigation, was the first part of the united states to develop a complete system of turnpikes and later of railroads. on the other hand, the great river valleys of america have generally slighted the highroad phase of communication, and slowly passed to that of railroads. the abundance of natural waterways in russia-- , miles including canals--has contributed to the retardation of railroad construction.[ ] the same thing is true in the netherlands, where miles ( kilometers) of navigable waterways[ ] in an area of only , square miles ( , square kilometers) have kept the railroads down to a paltry miles ( kilometers); but smaller belgium, commanding only miles ( kilometers) of waterway and stimulated further by a remarkable industrial and commercial development, has constructed miles ( kilometers) of railroad. [sidenote: relation of rivers to railroads in recent colonial lands.] if we compare the countries of central and south america, where railroads are still mere adjuncts of river and coastwise routes, a stage of development prevalent in the united states till , we find an unmistakable relation between navigable waterways and railroad mileage. the countries with ample or considerable river communication, like brazil, venezuela, colombia and paraguay, are all relatively slow in laying railroads as compared with mexico and argentine, even when allowance is made for differences of zonal location, economic development, and degree of european elements in their respective populations. mexico and argentine, having each an area only about one-fourth that of brazil but a railroad mileage nearly one-fourth greater, have been pushed to this development primarily by a common lack of inland navigation. similarly south africa, stricken with poverty of water communication south of the zambesi, has constructed miles of railroads[ ] in spite of the youth of the country and the sparsity of its white population. similar geographic conditions have forced the mileage of australian railways up to twice that of south africa, in a country which is still in the pastoral and agricultural stage of development, and whose most densely populated province victoria has only fourteen inhabitants to the square mile. in the almost unpeopled wastes of trans-caspia, where two decades ago the camel was the only carrier, the russian railroad has worked a commercial revolution by stimulating production and affording an outlet for the irrigated districts of the encircling mountains.[ ] in our own trans-missouri country, where the scanty volume of the streams eliminated all but the missouri itself as a dependable waterway, even for the canoe travel of the early western trappers, railroads have developed unchecked by the competition of river transportation.[ ] with no rival nearer than the straits of magellan and the isthmus of panama for transportation between the mississippi and the pacific coast, they have fixed their own charges on a monopoly basis, and have fought the construction of the isthmian canal. [sidenote: unity of a river system.] a river system is a system of communication. it therefore makes a bond of union between the people living among its remoter sources and those settled at its mouth. every such river system forms geographically an unbroken whole. only where a wild, torrent-filled gorge, like the brahmaputra's path through the himalayas, interrupts communication between the upper and lower course, is human life in the two sections divorced. but such cases are rare. even the river jhelam, which springs with mad bounds from the lofty vale of kashmir through the outer range of the himalayas down to its junction with the indus, carries quantities of small logs to be used as railway sleepers; and though it shatters a large per cent. of them, it makes a link between the lumber men of the kashmir forests and british railroad engineers in the treeless plains of the indus.[ ] [sidenote: the effect of common water supply in arid lands.] in arid lands, where the scant and variable streams are useless for navigation, but invaluable for irrigation, a rival interest in the limited water supply leads almost inevitably to conflict, and often to the political union of the peoples holding the upper and lower courses, in order to secure adjustment of their respective claims. the ancient salassi of the upper doria baltea valley in the alps drew off all the water of the stream for washing gold, and thus deprived the agricultural people lower down the valley of the water necessary for irrigation. the result was frequent wars between the two tribes.[ ] the offensive is taken by the downstream people, whose fields and gardens suffer from every extension of tillage or increase of population in the settlements above them. occasionally a formal agreement is a temporary expedient. the river firenze and other streams watering southern trans-caspia have their sources in the mountains of northern persia; hence the russians, in the boundary convention with persia of , stipulated that no new settlement be established along these streams within persian territory, no extension of land under cultivation beyond the present amount, and no eduction of the water beyond that necessary to irrigate the existing fields.[ ] russia's designs upon afghanistan aim not only at access to india, but also at the control of the upper murghab river, on whose water depends the prosperity of the pendjeh and merv oases.[ ] in such regions the only logical course is the extension of the political frontier to the watershed, a principle which russia is applying in western asia, and which california applied in drawing her eastern boundary to include even goose lake. [sidenote: union of opposite river banks.] rivers unite. ancient rome grew up on both banks of the tiber, and extended her commercial and political supremacy up and down stream. both sides of the rhine were originally occupied by the gallic tribes, whose villages were in some instances bisected by the river. cæsar found the menapii, a belgian people on the lower rhine, with their fields, farmhouses and villages on both banks.[ ] then the westward advance of the teutonic tribes gradually transformed the rhine into a german river, from the island of batavia at its mouth up to the great elbow at the foot of the jura mountains.[ ] to the american indians even the widest rivers were no barriers. christopher gist, exploring the ohio in , found a shawnee village situated on both sides of the river below the mouth of the scioto, with about a hundred houses on the north bank and forty on the south.[ ] the small and unique nation of the mandan indians were found by lewis and clark near the northern bend of the missouri in , in two groups of villages on opposite sides of the river. they had previously in occupied nine villages lower down the stream, two on the east bank and seven on the west.[ ] the connecticut river settlers of early colonial days laid out all their towns straight across the valley, utilizing the alluvial meadows on both banks for tillage, the terraces for residence sites, and the common river for intercourse.[ ] [sidenote: tendency toward ethnic and cultural unity in a river valley.] every river tends to become a common artery feeding all the life of its basin, and gradually obliterating ethnic and cultural differences among the peoples of its valley. the nile, with its narrow hem of flood-plain on either bank and barrier sands beyond, has so linked race and history in egypt and nubia, that the two countries cannot be separated. a common highway from mountains to sea, a common frontier of trackless desert have developed here a blended similarity of race, language and culture from the delta to kordofan. the hamitic race seems to have originated in the south and migrated northward down the nile towards the delta. later the whole valley, north and south, received the same semitic or arab immigration, which spread from cairo to the old sudanese capital of sennar, while a strain of negro blood has filtered in from the equatorial black belt and followed the current down to the sea.[ ] the culture of the valley originated in lower egypt, and, with that easy transmissibility which characterizes ideas, it moved upstream into ethiopia, which never evolved a culture of its own. just as noticeable is the political interplay. the rule of the pharaohs extended far up the nile, at times to the third cataract at ° n.l.; and at one period ethiopian kings extended their sway over egypt. at another, a large body of mutinous egyptian soldiers abandoned their country and their wives, and emigrated along the one line of slight resistance open to them into ethiopia, to found there a new state and new families by marriage with native women, thus contributing to the amalgamation of races in the valley. [sidenote: identity of country with river valley.] the most pronounced types of the identity of a country with a river valley are found where strongly marked geographical boundaries, like deserts and mountains, emphasize the inner unity of the basins by accentuating their isolation from without. this is especially the case in high mountain regions; here canton or commune or county coincides with the river valley. population hugs the margins of the streams where alone is soil fit for cultivation, and fairly level land suitable for dwellings. above are the unoccupied heights, at once barrier and boundary. in the alps, salzburg is approximately identical with the valley of the salzach, uri with that of the reuss, the valais with the upper rhone, the engadine with the upper inn, glarus with the linth, graubünden or grisons with the upper rhine, valtellina with the adda. so in the great upheaved area of the himalayas, the state of kashmir was originally the valley of the upper jhelam river, while assam, in its correct delimitation, is the valley of the brahmaputra between the himalayan gorge and the swamps of bengal.[ ] in mountain regions which are also arid, the identity of a district with a stream basin becomes yet more pronounced, because here population must gather about the common water supply, must organize to secure its fair distribution, and cooperate in the construction of irrigation channels to make the distribution as economical and effective as possible. thus in chinese turkestan, the districts of yarkand, kashgar, aksu and kut-sha are identical with as many mountain tributaries of the tarim, whose basin in turn comprises almost the whole of chinese turkestan. [sidenote: enclosed river valleys.] in all such desert and mountain-rimmed valleys, the central stream attracts to its narrow hem of alluvial soil the majority of the population, determines the course of the main highroad, and is itself often the only route through the encompassing barriers. hence the importance attached to the river by the inhabitants, an importance reflected in the fact that the river often gives its name to the whole district. to the most ancient greeks _aigiptos_ meant the river, whose name was later transferred to the whole land; for the narrow arable strip which constituted egypt was "the gift of the nile." the aryans, descending into india through the mountains on its northwest border, gave the name of _sindhu_, "the flood" or "the ocean," to the first great river they met. in the mouth of persians and greeks the name was corrupted into indus, and then applied to the whole country; but it still survives in its original form in the local designation of the sind province, which comprises the valley of the indus below the confluence of the five rivers, which again formed and named the original punjab. significantly enough the western political boundary of the sind extends into the barren foothills of baluchistan only so far as the affluents of the indus render the land arable by irrigation; for the indus performs for the great province of the sind, by annual inundation and perennial irrigation, the same service that the nile does for egypt. the segregation of such districts, and the concentration of their interests and activities along the central streams have tended to develop in the population an intense but contracted national consciousness, and to lend them a distinctive history. their rivers become interwoven with their mythology and religion, are gods to be worshipped or appeased, become goals of pilgrimages, or acquire a peculiar sanctity. the nile, ganges, jamna, jordan, tiber and po are such sacred streams, while the rhine figures in german mythology. [sidenote: rivers as boundaries of races and peoples.] from the uniting power of rivers it follows that they are poor boundaries. only mountains and seas divide sharply enough to form scientific frontiers. rivers may serve as political lines of demarcation and therefore fix political frontiers; but they can never take the place of natural boundaries. a migrating or expanding people tend always to occupy both slopes of a river valley. they run their boundary of race or language across the axis of their river basin, only under exceptional circumstances along the stream itself. the english-french boundary in the st. lawrence valley crosses the river in a broad transitional zone of mingled people and speech in and above the city of montreal. the french-german linguistic frontier in switzerland crosses the upper rhone valley just above sierre, but the whole canton of valais above the elbow of the river at martigny shows fundamental ethnic unity, indicated by identity of head form, stature and coloring.[ ] where the elbe flows through the low plains of north germany, its whole broad valley is occupied by a pure teutonic population--fair, tall, long-headed; a more brunette type occupies its middle course across the uplands of saxony, and speaks german like the downstream folk; but its upper course, hemmed in by the erz and riesen mountains, shows the short, dark and broad-headed people of the bohemian basin, speaking the czech language.[ ] on the danube, too, the same thing is true. the upper stream is german in language and predominantly alpine in race stock down to the austro-hungarian boundary; from this point to the drave mouth it is hungarian; and from the drave to the iron gate it is serbo-croatian on both banks.[ ] lines of ethnic demarcation, therefore, cut the elbe and danube transversely, not longitudinally. [see map page .] the statements of cæsar and pliny that the seine and marne formed the boundary between the gauls and belgians, and the garonne that between the gauls and aquitanians, must be accepted merely as general and preliminary; for exceptions are noted later in the text. parisii, for instance, were represented as holding both banks of the seine and marne at their confluence, and the gallic bituriges were found on the aquitanian side of the garonne estuary. [sidenote: scientific river boundaries.] only under peculiar conditions do rivers become effective as ethnic, tribal or political boundaries. most often it is some physiographic feature which makes the stream an obstacle to communication, and lends it the character of a scientific boundary. the division of the alpine foreland of southern germany first into tribal and later into political provinces by the iller, lech, inn, and salzach can be ascribed in part to the tumultuous course of these streams from the mountains to the danube, which renders them useless for communication.[ ] the lower danube forms a well maintained linguistic boundary between the bulgarians and roumanians, except in the northwest corner of bulgaria, where the hill country between the timok river and the danube has enticed a small group of roumanians across to the southern side. from this point down the stream, a long stretch of low marshy bank on the northern side, offering village sites only at the few places where the loess terrace of roumania comes close to the river, exposed to overflows, strewn with swamps and lakes, and generally unfit for settlement, has made the danube an effective barrier.[ ] similarly, the broad, sluggish shannon river, which spreads out to lake breadth at close intervals in its course across the boggy central plain of ireland, has from the earliest times proved a sufficient barrier to divide the plain into two portions, connaught and meath,[ ] contrasted in history, in speech and to some extent even in race elements.[ ] a different cause gave the thames its unique rôle among the larger english rivers as a boundary between counties from source to mouth. london's fortified position at the head of the thames estuary closed this stream as a line of invasion to the early saxons, and forced them to make detours to the north and south of the river, which therefore became a tribal boundary.[ ] where navigation is peculiarly backward, a river may present a barrier. an instructive instance is afforded by the river yo, which flows eastward through northern bornu into lake chad, and serves at once as boundary and protection to the agricultural tribes of the kanuri against the depredations of the tibbu robbers living in the sahara or the northern grassland. but during the dry season from april to august, when the trickling stream is sucked up by the thirsty land and thirstier air, the tibbu horsemen sweep down on the unprotected kanuri and retreat with their booty across the vanished barrier. the primitive navigation by reed or brushwood rafts, practiced in this almost streamless district, affords no means of retreat for mounted robbers; so the raiding season opens with the fall of the river.[ ] [sidenote: rivers as political boundaries.] for political boundaries, which are often adopted with little reference to race distribution, rivers serve fairly well. they are convenient lines of demarcation and strategic lines of defense, as is proved by the military history of the rhine, danube, ebro, po, and countless other streams. on the lower zambesi livingstone found the territories of the lesser chiefs defined by the rivulets draining into the main river. the leader of the makololo formally adopted the zambesi as his political and military frontier, though his people spread and settled beyond the river.[ ] long established political frontiers may become ethnic boundaries, more or less distinct, because of protracted political exclusion. to the romans, the danube and rhine as a northeastern frontier had the value chiefly of established lines in an imperfectly explored wilderness, and of strategic positions for the defense of an oft assailed border; but the long maintenance of this political frontier resulted in the partial segregation and hence differentiation of the people dwelling on the opposite banks. poor as a scientific boundary, a river is not satisfactory even as a line of demarcation, because of its tendency to shift its bed in every level stretch of its course. a political boundary that follows a river, therefore, is often doomed to frequent surveys. the plantations on the meanders of the lower mississippi are connected now with one, now with the other of the contiguous states, as the great stream straightens its course after the almost annual overflow.[ ] the rio grande has proved a troublesome and expensive boundary between the united states and mexico. almost every rise sees it cutting a new channel for itself, now through texas, now through mexican territory, occasioning endless controversies as to the ownership of the detached land, and demanding fresh surveys. recent changes in the lower course of the helmund between nasralabad and the sistan swamp, which was adopted in as the boundary between afghanistan and persia, have necessitated a new demarcation of the frontier; and on this task a commission is at present engaged.[ ] in a like manner strabo tells us that the river achelous, forming the boundary between ancient acarnania and aetolia in western hellas, by overflowing its delta region, constantly obliterated the boundaries agreed upon by the two neighbors, and thereby gave rise to disputes that were only settled by force of arms.[ ] [sidenote: fluvial settlements and peoples.] rivers tend always to be centers of population, not outskirts or perimeters. they offer advantages that have always attracted settlement--fertile alluvial soil, a nearby water supply, command of a natural highway for intercourse with neighbors and access to markets. among civilized peoples fluvial settlements have been the nuclei of broad states, passing rapidly through an embryonic development to a maturity in which the old center can still be distinguished by a greater density of population. only among savages or among civilized people who have temporarily reverted to primitive conditions in virgin colonial lands, do we find genuine riverine folk, whose existence is closely restricted to their bordering streams. the river tribes of the congo occupy the banks or the larger islands, while the land only three or four miles back from the stream is held by different tribes with whom the riverine people trade their fish. the latter are expert fishermen and navigators, and good agriculturists, raising a variety of fruits and vegetables. on the river banks at regular intervals are market greens, neutral ground, whither people come from up and down stream and from the interior to trade. their long riparian villages consist of a single street, thirty feet wide and often two miles long, on which face perhaps three hundred long houses,[ ] fisher and canoe people line the welle, the great northern tributary of the congo.[ ] the same type appeared in south america in the aboriginal caribs and tupis dwelling along the southern tributaries of the amazon and the affluents of the paraguay. these were distinctly a water race, having achieved a meager development only in navigation, fishing and the cultivation of their alluvial soil.[ ] the ancient mound-builders of america located their villages chiefly, though not exclusively, along the principal watercourses, like the mississippi, illinois, miami, wabash, wisconsin, and fox,[ ] on the very streams later dotted by the trading posts of the french voyageurs. [sidenote: riparian villages of french canada.] the presence of the great waterways of canada and the demand of the fur trade for extensive and easy communication made the early french colonists as distinctly a riverine people as the savage congo tribes. like these, they stretched out their villages in a single line of cabins and clearings, three or four miles long, facing the river, which was the king's highway. such a village was called a _côte_. one côte ran into the next, for their expansion was always longitudinal, never lateral. these riparian settlements lined the main watercourses of french canada, especially the st. lawrence, whose shores from beaupre, fifteen miles below quebec, up to montreal at an early date presented the appearance of a single street. along the river passed the stately trading ship from france with its cargo of wives and merchandise for the colonists, the pirogue of the _habitant_ farmer carrying his onions and grain to the quebec market, the birchbark canoe of the adventurous voyageur bringing down his winter's hunt of furs from the snow-bound forests of the interior, and the fleet of jesuit priests bound to some remote inland mission. [illustration: the riparian villages of the lower st. lawrence.] on this water thoroughfare every dwelling faced. hence land on the river was at a premium, while that two miles back was to be had for the taking. the original grants measured generally feet in width and , in depth inland; but when bequeathed from generation to generation, they were divided up along lines running back at right angles to the all important waterway. hence each _habitant_ farm measured its precious river-front by the foot and its depth by the mile, while the cabins were ranged side by side in cosy neighborliness. the _côte_ type of village, though eminently convenient for the indian trade, was ill adapted for government and defense against the savages; but the need for the communication supplied by the river was so fundamental, that it nullified all efforts of the authorities to concentrate the colonists in more compact settlements. parkman says: "one could have seen almost every house in canada by paddling a canoe up the st. lawrence and richelieu."[ ] the same type of land-holding can be traced to-day on the chaudiere river, where the fences run back from the stream like the teeth of a comb. it is reproduced on a larger scale in the long, narrow counties ranged along the lower st. lawrence, whose shape points to the old fluvial nuclei of settlement. similarly the early dutch grants on the hudson gave to the patroons four miles along the river and an indefinite extension back from the stream. in the early connecticut river settlements, the same consideration of a share in the river and its alluvial bottoms distributed the town lots among the inhabitants in long narrow strips running back from the banks.[ ] [sidenote: boatmen tribes or castes.] in undeveloped countries, where rivers are the chief highways, we occasionally see the survival of a distinct race of boatmen amid an intruding people of different stock, preserved in their purity by their peculiar occupation, which has given them the aloofness of a caste. in the kwang-tung province of southern china are , tanka boat people, who live in boats and pile-dwellings in the canton river. the chinese, from whom they are quite distinct, regard them as a remnant of the original population, which was dislodged by their invasion and forced to take refuge on the water. they gradually established intercourse with the conquerors of the land, but held themselves aloof. they marry only among themselves, have their own customs, and enjoy a practical monopoly of carrying passengers and messages between the steamers and the shore at macao, hongkong and canton.[ ] in the same way, the middle niger above gao possesses a distinct aquatic people, the somnos or bosos, who earn their living as fishermen and boatmen on the river. they spread their villages along the niger and its tributaries, and occupy separate quarters in the large towns like gao and timbuctoo. they are creatures of the river rather than of the land, and show great skill and endurance in paddling and poling their narrow dugouts on their long niger voyages.[ ] reference has been made before to the large river population of china who live on boats and rafts, and forward the trade of the vast inland waterways. these are people, differentiated not in race, but in occupation and mode of life, constantly recruited from the congested population of the land. allied to them are the trackers or towing crews whose villages form a distinctive feature of the turbulent upper yangtze, and who are employed, sometimes three hundred at a time, to drag junks up the succession of rapids above ichang.[ ] similarly the complex of navigable waterways centering about paris, as far back as the reign of tiberius cæsar, gave rise to the _nautae parisii_ or guild of mariners, from whom the city of paris derived its present coat of arms--a vessel under full sail. these lutetian boatmen handled the river traffic in all the territory drained by the seine, marne, and oise. later, in the reign of louis the fat, they were succeeded by the _mercatores aquae parisiaci_, and from them sprang the municipal body appointed to regulate the river navigation and commerce.[ ] [sidenote: river islands as protected sites.] the location of the ancient tribe of the parisii is typical of many other weak riverine folk who seek in the islands of a river a protected position to compensate for their paucity of number. the parisii, one of the smallest of the gallic tribes, ill-matched against their populous neighbors, took refuge on ten islands and sandbars of the seine and there established themselves.[ ] stanley found an island in the congo near the second cataract of stanley falls occupied by five villages of the baswa, who had taken refuge there from the attacks of the bloodthirsty bakuma.[ ] during the tartar invasions of russia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, bands of refugees from the surrounding country gathered for mutual defense on the islands of the dnieper river, and became the nucleus of the dnieper cossacks.[ ] the huron tribe of american indians, reduced to a mere fragment by repeated iroquois attacks, fled first to the islands of st. joseph and michilimackinac in lake huron, and in to the isle of orleans in the st. lawrence. but even this location under the guns of their french allies in quebec failed to protect them, for the st. lawrence was a highway for the war fleets of their implacable foe.[ ] [sidenote: river and lake islands as robber strongholds.] a river island not only confers the negative benefit of protection, but affords a coign of vantage for raids on the surrounding country, being to some extent proof against punitive attacks. it offers special facilities for depredations on parties crossing the river; here the divided current, losing something of its force, is less of an obstacle, and the island serves as a resting place on the passage. immunity from punishment breeds lawlessness. the ba toka who, fifty years ago, inhabited the islands in the great southern bend of the zambesi, utilized their location to lure wandering tribes on to their islands, under the pretext of ferrying them across, and then to rob them, till sebituane, the great makololo chief, cleaned out their fastnesses and opened the river for trade.[ ] the islands in the wide stretches of the lualaba river in the babemba country were described to livingstone as harboring a population of marauders and robbers, who felt themselves safe from attack.[ ] the same unenviable reputation attaches to the budumas of the lake chad islands. a weak, timid, displaced people, they nevertheless lose no chance of raiding the herds of the sudanese tribes inhabiting the shores of the lake, and carrying off the stolen cattle on their wretched rafts to their island retreats.[ ] [sidenote: river peninsulas as protected sites.] the protection of an island location is almost equalled in the peninsulas formed by the serpentines or meanders of a river. hence these are choice sites for fortress or settlement in primitive communities, where hostilities are always imminent and rivers the sole means of communication. the defensive works of the mound-builders in great numbers occupied such river peninsulas. the neck of the loop was fortified by a single or double line of ditch and earthen wall, constructed from bank to bank of the encircling stream.[ ] this was exactly the location of vesontio, now besançon, once the ancient stronghold of the sequani in eastern gaul. it was situated in a loop of the dubis, so nearly a circle that its course seems to have been "described by a compass," cæsar says, while fortifications across the isthmus made the position of the town almost impregnable.[ ] verona, lying at the exit of the great martial highway of the brenner pass, occupies just such a loop of the adige, as does capua on the volturno, and berne on the aare. shrewsbury, in the middle ages an important military point for the preservation of order on the marches of wales, is almost encircled by the river severn, while a castle on the neck of the peninsula completes the defense on the land side.[ ] graaf reinett, at one time an exposed frontier settlement of the dutch in cape colony, had a natural moat around it in the sunday river, which here describes three-fourths of a circle. [sidenote: river islands as sites of trading posts and colonies.] the need of protection felt by all colonists in new countries amid savage or barbarous people whom encroachment sooner or later makes hostile, leads them if possible to place their first trading posts and settlements on river islands, especially at the mouth of the streams, where a delta often affords the site required, and where the junction of ocean and river highway offers the best facilities for trade. a river island fixed the location of the english settlement at jamestown in virginia, the french at montreal and new orleans, the dutch at manhattan and van renssellær island in the hudson, the swedes at tinicum island in the delaware river a few miles below the mouth of the schuylkill.[ ] st. louis, located on a delta island of the senegal river, is one of the oldest european towns in west africa;[ ] and bathurst, founded in on a similar site at the mouth of the gambia, has for centuries now been the safe outlet for the trade of this stream.[ ] such island settlements at river mouths are a phenomenon of the outer edge of every coastal region; but inland stations for trade or military control also seek the protection of an island site. the russians in the seventeenth century secured their downstream conquest of the amur by a succession of river island forts,[ ] which recall colonel byrd's early frontier post on an island in the holston river, and george rogers clark's military stockade on corn island in the ohio, which became the nucleus of the later city of louisville. [sidenote: swamps as barriers and boundaries.] more effective than rivers in the protection which they afford are swamps. neither solid land nor navigable water, their sluggish, passive surface raises an obstacle of pure inertia to the movements of mankind. hence they form one of those natural boundaries that segregate. in southern england, ronmey marsh, reinforced by the wealden forest, fixed the western boundary of the ancient saxon kingdom of kent by blocking expansion in that direction, just as the bordering swamps of the lea and colne rivers formed the eastern and western boundaries of middlesex.[ ] the fenland of the wash, which extended in saxon days from the highland about lincoln south to cambridge and newmarket, served to hem in the angles of norfolk and suffolk on the west, so that the occupation of the interior was left to later bands who entered by the estuaries of the humber and forth.[ ] in northern germany, the low cross valleys of the spree, havel and netze rivers, bordered by alder swamps, were long a serious obstacle to communication, and therefore became boundaries of districts,[ ] just as the bourtanger moor drew the dividing line between holland and hanover. [sidenote: swamps as regions of survival.] swamp-bordered regions, as areas of natural isolation, guard and keep intact the people which they hold. therefore they are regions of survival of race and language. the scattered islets of the fens of england furnished an asylum to the early british celts from teutonic attacks,[ ] and later protected them against dominant infusion of teutonic blood. hence to-day in the fenland and in the district just to the south we find a darker, shorter people than in the country to the east or west.[ ] similarly the white russians, occupying the poor, marshy region of uncertain watershed between the sources of the duna, dnieper and volga, have the purest blood of all the eastern slavs, though this distinction is coupled with poverty and retarded culture,[ ] a combination that anthropo-geography often reveals. wholly distinct from the russians and segregated from them by a barrier of swampy forests, we find the letto-lithuanians in the baltic province of courland, speaking the most primitive form of flectional languages classed as aryan. the isolation which preserved their archaic speech, of all european tongues the nearest to the sanskrit, made them the last european people to accept christianity.[ ] the great race of the slavic wends, who once occupied all northern germany between the vistula and elbe, has left only a small and declining remnant of its language in the swampy forests about the sources of the spree.[ ] [see ethnographical map, p. .] the band of marshlands stretching through holland from the shallow zuyder zee east to the german frontier, has given to friesland and the coast islands of holland a peculiar isolation, which has favored the development and survival of the peculiar friesian dialect, that speech so nearly allied to saxon english, and has preserved here the purest type of the tall, blond teuton among the otherwise mixed stock of the netherlands.[ ] [sidenote: swamps as places of refuge.] inaccessible to all except those familiar with their treacherous paths and labyrinthine channels, swamps have always afforded a refuge for individuals and peoples; and therefore as places of defense they have played no inconspicuous part in history. what the dismal swamp of north carolina and the cypress swamps of louisiana were to the run-away slaves, that the everglades of florida have been to the defeated seminoles. in that half-solid, half-fluid area, penetrable only to the native indian who poles his canoe along its tortuous channels of liquid mud, the seminoles have set up their villages on the scattered hummocks of solid land, and there maintained themselves, a tribe of souls, despite all efforts of the united states government to remove them to the indian territory. the swamps of the nile delta have been the asylum of egyptian independence from the time king amysis took refuge there for fifty years during an invasion of the ethiopians,[ ] to the retreat thither of amyrtaeus, a prince of sais, after his unsuccessful revolt against the persian conqueror artaxerxes i.[ ] the isle of athelney among the marshes of the parret river afforded a refuge to alfred the great and a band of his followers during the danish invasion of wessex in ,[ ] while the isle of ely in the fenland was another point of sustained resistance to the invaders. it was the fenland that two hundred years later was the last stronghold of saxon resistance to william of normandy. here on the isle of ely the outlawed leader hereward maintained saxon independence, till the conqueror at last constructed a long causeway across the marshes to the "camp of refuge."[ ] [sidenote: the spirit of the marshes.] the spirit of the marshlands is the spirit of freedom. therefore these small and scarcely habitable portions of the land assume an historical dignity and generate stirring historical events out of all proportion to their size and population. their content is ethical rather than economic. they attract to their fastnesses the vigorous souls protesting against conquest or oppression, and then by their natural protection sustain and nourish the spirit of liberty. it was the water-soaked lowlands of the rhine that enabled the early batavians,[ ] ditmarscher and frieslanders to assert and to maintain their independence, generated the love of independence among the dutch and helped them defend their liberty against the spanish[ ] and french. so the fenland of england was the center of resistance to the despotism of king john, who therefore fixed his headquarters for the suppression of the revolt at lincoln and his military depôt at lynn. later in the conflict of the barons with henry iii, simon de montfort and other disaffected nobles entrenched themselves in the islands of ely and axholm, till the provisions of oxford in secured them some degree of constitutional rights.[ ] four centuries later the same spirit sent many fenlanders to the support of cromwell. [sidenote: economic and political importance of lakes.] a river that spreads out into the indeterminate earthform of a marsh is an effective barrier; but one that gathers waters into a natural basin and forms a lake retains the uniting power of a navigable stream and also, by the extension of its area and elimination of its current, approaches the nature of an enclosed sea. mountain rivers, characterized by small volume and turbulent flow, first become navigable when they check their impetuosity and gather their store of water in some lake basin. the whole course of the upper rhone, from its glacier source on the slope of mount furca to its confluence with the saône at lyon, is unfit for navigation, except where it lingers in lake geneva. the same thing is true of the reuss in lake lucerne, the upper rhine in lake constance, the aare in thun and brienze, and the linth in lake zurich. hence such torrent-fed lakes assume economic and political importance in mountainous regions, owing to the paucity of navigable waterways. the lakes of alpine switzerland and italy and of highland scotland form so many centers of intercourse and exchange. even such small bodies of water as the alpine lakes have therefore become goals of expansion, so that we find the shores of geneva, maggiore, lugano, and garda, each shared by two countries. switzerland, the austrian tyrol, and the three german states of baden, wurtemberg and bavaria, have all managed to secure a frontage upon lake constance. lake titicaca, lying , feet ( meters) above sea level but affording a navigable course miles ( kilometers) long, is an important waterway for peru and bolivia. in the central sudan, where aridity reduces the volume of all streams, even the variable and indeterminate lake chad has been an eagerly sought objective for expanding boundaries. twenty years ago it was divided among the native states of bornu, bagirmi and kanem; today it is shared by british nigeria, french sudan, and german kamerun. the erratic northern extension of the german boundary betrays the effort to reach this goal. [sidenote: lakes as nuclei of states.] the uniting power of lakes manifests itself in the tendency of such basins to become the nuclei of states. attractive to settlement in primitive times, because of the protected frontier they afford--a motive finding its most emphatic expression in the pile villages of the early lake-dwellers--later because of the fertility of their bordering soil and the opportunity for friendly intercourse, they gradually unite their shores in a mesh of reciprocal relations, which finds its ultimate expression in political union. it is a significant fact that the swiss confederation originated in the four forest cantons of lucerne, schwyz, uri and unterwalden, which are linked together by the jagged basin of lake lucerne or the lake of the four forest cantons, as the swiss significantly call it, but are otherwise divided by mountain barriers. so we find that lake titicaca was the cradle of the inca empire, just as lake tezcoco was that of the toltecs in mexico and an island in lake chalco later that of the aztec domain.[ ] the most stable of the short-lived native states of africa have apparently found an element of strength and permanence in a protected lake frontier. such are the petty kingdoms of bornu, bagirmi and kanem on lake chad, and uganda on victoria nyanza. large lakes, which include in their area islands, peninsulas, tides, currents, fiords, inlets, deltas, and dunes, and present every geographical feature of an enclosed sea, approach the latter too in historical importance. some of the largest, however, have long borne the name of seas. the caspian, which exceeds the baltic in area, and the aral, which outranks lake michigan, show the closest physical resemblance to thalassic basins, because of their size, salinity and enclosed drainage systems; but their anthropo-geographical significance is slight. the very salinity which groups them with the sea points to an arid climate that forever deprives them of the densely populated coasts characteristic of most enclosed seas, and hence reduces their historical importance. their tributary streams, robbed of their water by irrigation canals, like "the shorn and parcelled oxus", renounce their function of highways into the interior. to this rule the volga is a unique exception. finally, cut off from union with the ocean, these salt lakes lose the supreme historical advantage which is maintained by freshwater lakes, like ladoga, nyassa, maracaibo and the great lakes of north america, all lying near sea level. [sidenote: lakes as fresh water seas.] lakes as part of a system of inland waterways may possess commercial importance surpassing that of many seas. this depends upon the productivity, accessibility and extent of their hinterland, and this in turn depends upon the size and shape of the inland basin. the chain of the five great lakes, which together present a coastline of four thousand miles and a navigable course as long as the baltic between the skager rack and the head of the gulf of bothnia, constitutes a freshwater mediterranean. it has played the part of an enclosed sea in american history and has enabled the atlantic trade to penetrate miles inland to chicago and duluth. its shores have therefore been a coveted object of territorial expansion. the early dutch trading posts headed up the hudson and mohawk toward lake ontario, as did the english settlements which succeeded them. the french, from their vantage point at montreal, threw out a frail casting-net of fur stations and missions, which caught and held all the lakes for a time. later the american shores were divided among eight of our states. the northern boundaries of indiana and illinois were fixed by congress for the express purpose of giving these commonwealths access to lake michigan. pennsylvania with great difficulty succeeded in protruding her northwestern frontier to cover a meager strip of erie coast, while new york's frontage on the same lake became during the period of canal and early railroad construction, a great factor in her development. in , the tonnage of our merchant vessels on the great lakes was half that of our pacific, atlantic and gulf coasts combined,[ ] constituting a freshwater fleet greater than the merchant marine of either france or sea-bred norway. a remote but by no means faint echo of this fact is found in the five hundred or more boats, equally available for trade or war, which henry m. stanley saw the uganda prince muster on the shore of victoria nyanza lake. ocean, sea, bay, estuary, river, swamp, lake: here is nature's great circle returning upon itself, a circle faintly notched into arcs, but one in itself and one in man's uses. notes to chapter xi [ ] isabella b. bishop, the yangtze valley and beyond, vol. i, pp. - . new york and london, . [ ] fiske, discovery of america, vol. i, p. . boston, . [ ] capt. james cook, voyage to the pacific ocean, - , vol. ii, pp. - . new york, . [ ] john richard green, the making of england, vol. i, pp. - , - , , . london, . [ ] e. lavisse, _histoire de france_, vol. ii, part i, pp. - , - , - , - . paris, . [ ] helmolt, history of the world, vol. i, pp. - , map. new york, - . [ ] _ibid._, vol. i, pp. - . [ ] g.w. kitchen, history of france, vol. i, pp. - . oxford, . [ ] dietrich schaeffer, _die hansestädte und könig waldemar von dänemark_, p. . jena, . [ ] g.g. chisholm, commercial geography, p. . london, . [ ] capt. a.t. mahan, the problem of asia, pp. , , . new york, . [ ] isabella b. bishop, the yangtze valley and beyond, vol. i, pp. - . new york and london, . [ ] e.c. semple, development of the hanse towns in relation to their geographic environment, bulletin amer. geog. soc., vol. . no. . . [ ] nordenskiold, voyage of the vega, pp. - , . new york, . anatole leroy-beaulieu, the empire of the tsars, vol. i, note pp. - . new york, . [ ] agnes laut, voyagers of the northern ocean, _harper's magazine_, january, . [ ] alexis krausse, russia in asia, pp. - . new york, . [ ] felix dubois, timbuctoo, pp. - , - . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] d. livingstone, missionary travels, pp. , . new york, . [ ] w. deecke, italy, p. . london, . [ ] g. adam smith, historical geography of the holy land, map facing p. ; also pp. , - . new york, . [ ] f.m. stapff, _karte des unteren khiusebthal, petermanns mitteilungen_, p. . july, . [ ] strabo, book iii, chap. ii, . [ ] for full discussion, see roscher, _national-oekonomik des handels und gewerbefleisses_. stuttgart, . [ ] rambaud, history of russia, vol. i, pp. - . boston, . [ ] a.b. hulbert, historic highways of america, vol. vii, portage paths, pp. - , - . cleveland, . [ ] herodotus, book i, . a.h. layard, nineveh and its remains, vol. ii, pp. - . new york, . [ ] charles w. hawes, the uttermost east, p. . new york, . [ ] transportation by water in , table , p. . report of department of commerce and labor, washington, . [ ] g.g. chisholm, commercial geography, p. . london, . [ ] e.a. freeman, historical geography of europe, p. . london. . [ ] j. ellis barker, modern germany, pp. - . london, . [ ] heinrich von treitschke, _politik_, vol. i, p. . leipzig, . [ ] e.a. freeman, historical geography of europe, p. . london, . [ ] g.g. chisholm, commercial geography, p. . london, . [ ] j. partsch, central europe, p. . london, . [ ] ratzel, _politische geographie_, pp. - . munich, . [ ] annual register for , p. . new series, london and new york, . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, p. . london, - . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] g.g. chisholm, commercial geography, map p. . london, . [ ] blanqui, history of political economy, pp. , , . new york, . [ ] albert gallatin, american state papers, misc. doc., vol. i, no. . washington, . [ ] roscher, _national-oekonomik des handels und gewerbefleisses_, pp. , - . stuttgart, . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, pp. - . new york, . [ ] g.g. chisholm, commercial geography, pp. , . london, . [ ] j. partsch, central europe, p. . london, . [ ] statesman's yearbook for . [ ] henry norman, all the russias, pp. - , - . new york, . [ ] e.c. semple, american history and its geographic conditions, pp. - . boston, . [ ] e.f. knight, where three empires meet, p. . london, . [ ] strabo, book iv, chap. vi, . [ ] alexis krausse, russia in asia, pp. - . new york, . [ ] angus hamilton, afghanistan, pp. - . new york and london, . henry norman, all the russias, pp. - . new york, . [ ] _bella gallico_, book iv, chap. iv. [ ] _ibid._, book i, chap. xxxi; book ii, chap. iii; book iv, chap. i. [ ] journals of dr. thomas walker and christopher gist, p. . filson club publications, louisville, . [ ] h.r. schoolcraft, indian tribes of the united states, vol. iii, pp. - . philadelphia, . [ ] martha k. genthe, the valley towns of connecticut, bull. of amer. geog. society, vol. , pp. - . new york, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, pp. - , . london, . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, maps pp. , , . [ ] _ibid._, maps pp. , . [ ] j. partsch, central europe, pp. , . london, . [ ] _ibid._, p. . sydow-wagner, _methodischer schul-atlas_, compare maps no. and no. . [ ] elisée reclus, europe, vol. iv, pp. , - . new york, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, p. , map. new york, . [ ] h.j. mackinder, britain and the british seas, pp. - . london, . [ ] boyd alexander, from the niger to the nile, vol. i, pp. , , , - . london, . [ ] livingstone, missionary travels, pp. , . new york, . [ ] see century atlas, maps of mississippi, louisiana and arkansas for boundary line of . [ ] sir thomas holdich, india, p. . london, . [ ] strabo, book x, chap. ii, . [ ] henry m. stanley, through the dark continent, vol. ii, pp. - , - , , , , , , , - , . new york, . [ ] boyd alexander, from the niger to the nile, vol. ii, pp. , - . london, . [ ] helmolt, history of the world, vol. i, pp. , - . new york, - . [ ] cyrus thomas, mound explorations, pp. - , , . twelfth annual report of bureau of ethnology, washington, . [ ] parkman, the old regime in canada, pp. - . boston, . e.c. semple, the influences of geographic environment on the lower st. lawrence, bull. of amer. geog. society, vol. , pp. - . . [ ] martha krug genthe, valley towns of connecticut, pp. - , figures v. and vi, bull. of amer. geog. society, vol. , . [ ] j. nacken, _die provinz kwantung und ihre bevölkerung, petermanns mitteilungen_, vol. , p. , . w.m. wood, fankwei, pp. - . new york, . [ ] felix dubois, timbuctoo, pp. - , . new york, . [ ] isabella b. bishop, the yangtze valley and beyond, vol. i, pp. , - , , , , . london and new york, . [ ] william walton, paris, vol. i, pp. - , . philadelphia, . [ ] cæsar, _bella gallico_, book viii, chaps, , . [ ] henry m. stanley, through the dark continent, vol. ii, pp. - . new york, . [ ] article, cossack, encyclopedia britannica. [ ] parkman, the jesuits in north. america, pp. - , - , , . boston, . [ ] livingstone, missionary travels, pp. , . new york, . [ ] livingstone, last journals, vol. i, p. . london, . [ ] heinrich barth, travels in north and central africa, vol. ii, pp. , , . new york, . boyd alexander, from the niger to the nile, vol. i, pp. , - , , - ; vol. ii, pp. , - , - , - , - . london, . [ ] j.p. mclean, the mound builders, p. . cincinnati, . squier and davis, ancient monuments of the mississippi valley, pp. , , . new york, . [ ] cæsar, _bello gallico_, book i, chaps. , . [ ] elisée reclus, europe, vol. iv, pp. - . new york, . [ ] john fiske, dutch and quaker colonies in america, vol. i, p. . boston. [ ] h.e. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] h.b. george, historical geography of the british empire, pp. - . london, . [ ] alexis krausse, russia in asia, pp. - , . new york, . [ ] h.j. mackinder, britain and the british seas, pp. - . london, . [ ] john richard green, the making of england, vol. i, pp. , . london, . [ ] j. partsch, central europe, p. . london, . [ ] miller and skertchley, the fenland past and present, pp. , , - . london, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - . map p. . new york, . [ ] anatole leroy-beaulieu, the empire of the tsars, vol. i, p. . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. - . w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - , , . new york, . [ ] j. partsch, central europe, p. . london, . [ ] _ibid._, p. . w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - . new york, . [ ] herodotus, ii, , . [ ] thucydides, i, . brugsch-bey, history of egypt, vol. ii, p. . london, . [ ] john richard green, history of the english people, vol. i, chap. iii, p. . [ ] miller and skertchley, the fenland past and present, pp. , , , , . london, . [ ] tacitus, history of the germans, book vi, chap. vi. motley, rise of the dutch republic, vol. i, pp. - , . new york, . [ ] j. partsch, central europe, p. . london, . [ ] miller and skertchley, the fenland past and present, pp. - . london, . [ ] edward john payne, history of the new world called america, vol. i, pp. - , - . oxford, . ratzel, history of mankind, vol. ii, p. . london, - . [ ] u.s. report of commission of navigation, p. . washington, . chapter xii continents and their peninsulas [sidenote: insularity of the land-masses.] the division of the earth's surface into per cent. land and per cent. water is an all important fact of physical geography and anthropo-geography. owing to this proportion, the land-masses, which alone provide habitats for man, rise as islands out of the three-fold larger surface of the uninhabitable ocean. consequently, the human species, like the other forms of terrestrial life, bears a deeply ingrained insular character. moreover, the water causes different degrees of separation between the land-masses, according as it appears as inlet, strait, sea, an island-strewn or islandless ocean; it determines the grouping of the habitable areas and consequently the geographic basis of the various degrees of ethnic and cultural kinship between the divisions of land. finally, since the sea is for man only a highway to some ulterior shore, this geography of the land-masses in relation to the encompassing waters points the routes and goals of human wanderings. each fragment of habitable land, large or small, continent or islet, means a corresponding group or detachment of the vast human family. its size fixes the area at the service of the group which occupies it. its location, however, may either endow it with a neighborliness like that subsisting between africa and europe and involving an interwoven history; or remoteness like that of south america from australia, so complete that even the close net of intercourse thrown by modern commerce over the whole world has scarcely sufficed to bring them into touch. therefore the highly irregular distribution of the land areas, here compactly grouped, there remote, deserves especial attention, since it produces far-reaching results. finally, continents and islands, by their zonal situation, their land forms, rainfall, river systems, flora and fauna, produce for man varied life conditions, which in their turn are partially dependent upon the size and grouping of the land-masses. [sidenote: classification of land-masses according to size and location.] a comparison of the large and small land-masses of the from the standpoint of both physical and anthropological geography yields a classification based upon size and location on the one hand, and historical influences on the other. the following table indicates the relation between the two. i. independent land-masses. a. _continents_. independent by reason of size, which enables them to support a large number of people and afford the conditions for civilization. (a) insular continents, whose primitive and modern development are marked by remoteness. australia. (b) neighboring continents, separated by narrow seas and showing community of historical events. europe and africa. asia and north america around bering sea. b. _islands_. independent by reason of location. (a) oceanic islands, characterized by greatest remoteness from continents and other islands, and also by independent or detached history. st. helena and iceland. (b) member of a group of oceanic islands, therefore less independent. hawaii, fayal in the azores, tongatabu. (c) large islands, approaching by reason of size the independence of continents and thereby finding compensation for a less independent location. new guinea, borneo, madagascar; in a cultural sense, great britain and japan. ii. dependent land-masses. (a) inshore or coast islands, whose history is intimately connected with that of the nearby mainland. euboea, long island, vancouver, sakhalin, ceylon. (b) neighboring islands, showing less intimate historical relations. formosa, the canaries, ireland in contrast to great britain. (c) islands of enclosed or marginal seas, contained in a circle of lands and exposed to constant intercourse from all sides. jamaica, java, crete, sicily, zealand, gotland, st. lawrence in bering sea. (d) island groups not to be considered apart from other groups. samoa, fiji and friendly isles; philippine, sulu and sunda islands; greater and lesser antilles. [sidenote: effect of size of land-masses.] as the homes of man, these land-masses vary greatly owing to difference of size. only the six continents have been large enough to generate great bodies of people, to produce differentiated branches of the human family, and to maintain them in such numerical force that alien intermixtures were powerless essentially to modify the gradually developing ethnic type. the larger continents are marked by such diversity of climate, relief and contour, that they have afforded the varied environments and the area for the development of several great types or sub-types of mankind. australia has been just large enough to produce one distinct native race, the result of a very ancient blend of papuan and malayan stocks. but prevailing aridity has cast a mantle of monotony over most of the continent, nullifying many local geographic differences in highland and lowland, curtailing the available area of its already restricted surface, and hence checking the differentiation that results either from the competition of large numbers or from a varied environment. we find australia characterized above all other continents by monotony of culture, mode of life, customs, languages, and a uniform race type from the murray river to york peninsula.[ ] the twin continents of the americas developed a race singularly uniform in its physical traits,[ ] if we leave out of account the markedly divergent eskimos, but displaying a wide range of political, social and economic developments, from the small, unorganized groups of wandering savages, like the desert shoshones and coast fuegians, to the large, stable empire of the incas, with intensive agriculture, public works, a state religion and an enlightened government. even the largest islands of the world, such as borneo, new guinea and madagascar, show no such independent ethnic development. this is the distinguishing characteristic of the largest land-masses. europe, except on the basis of its size and peninsula form, has no title to the name of continent; certainly not on anthropo-geographical grounds. its classification as a continent arose in the mediterranean among the greeks, as a geographical expression of the antagonism between themselves and their carian, phoenician and persian enemies across the aegean; the idea had therefore a political origin, and was formed without knowledge of that vast stretch of plains between the black sea and the arctic ocean, where asia's climate and races lap over into europe, and where to-day we find the muscovite empire, in point of geographic conditions, its underlying ethnic stock and form of government, as much asiatic as european. the real or western europe, which the roman empire gradually added to the narrow europe of the greeks, and which is strikingly contrasted to asia in point of size, relief, contour, climate and races, only served to maintain the distinction between the two continents in men's minds. but from a geographical standpoint the distinction is an error. it has confused the interpretation of the history of the greeks and the development of the russians. it has brought disorder into the question of the european or asiatic origin of the aryan linguistic family, which the anthropo-geographer would assign to the single continent of eurasia. the independent development that falls to the lot of great world islands like the americas and australia is impossible in a peninsular continent like europe, large as it is. [sidenote: independence of location versus independence of size.] the independence of a land-mass is based not alone on size: there is also an independence of location. this, owing to the spherical form of the earth, tends to be neutralized by the independence based upon large area. the larger a land-mass is, the nearer it approaches to others. eurasia, the largest of all the continents, comes into close proximity and therefore close relations with africa, north america, and even australia; whereas australia is at once the smallest and the most isolated of the continents. the remote oceanic islands of the atlantic ocean, measuring only a few square miles in area, have a location so independent of other inhabited lands, that before the period of the great discoveries they had never appeared on the horizon of man. [sidenote: the case of asia.] asia's size and central location to the other continents were formerly taken as an argument for its correspondingly significant position in the creation and history of man. its central location is reflected in the hypothesis of the asiatic origin of the indo-european linguistic group of peoples; and though the theory has been justly called into question, these peoples have undoubtedly been subjected to asiatic influences. the same thing is true of the native american race, both as to asiatic origin and influences; because the approximation of siberia to alaska is too close to exclude human relations between the two continents. the malays, too, were probably sprung from the soil of southeastern asia and spread thence over their close-packed archipelago. even the native australians betray a malayan and therefore asiatic element in their composition,[ ] while the same element can be traced yet more distinctly in the widely scattered polynesians and the hovas of madagascar. this radiation of races seems to reflect asia's location at the core of the land-masses. yet the capacity to form such centers of ethnic distribution is not necessarily limited to the largest continents; history teaches us that small areas which have early achieved a relatively dense population are prone to scatter far their seeds of nations. [sidenote: location of hemispheres and ethnic kinship.] the continents harbor the most widely different races where they are farthest apart; where they converge most nearly, they show the closest ethnic kinships. the same principle becomes apparent in their plants and animals. the distribution of the land-masses over the earth is conspicuous for their convergence in the north and divergence in long peninsular forms toward the south. the contrasted grouping is reflected in both, the lower animals and the peoples inhabiting these respectively vicinal and remote lands. only where north america and eurasia stretch out arms to one another around the polar sea do eastern and western hemisphere show a community of mammalian forms. these are all strictly arctic animals, such as the reindeer, elk, arctic fox, glutton and ermine.[ ] this is the boreal sub-region of the holoarctic zoological realm, characterized by a very homogeneous and very limited fauna.[ ] in contrast, the portion of the hemispheres lying south of the tropic of cancer is divided into four distinct zoological realms, corresponding to central and south america, africa south of sahara, the two indian peninsulas with the adjacent islands, and australia.[ ] but when we consider the continental extremities projecting beyond the tropic of capricorn, where geographic divergence reaches a climax, we find their faunas and floras utterly dissimilar, despite the fact that climate and physical conditions are very similar.[ ] we find also widely divergent races in the southern sections of africa, australia or tasmania and south america, while arctic eurasia and america come as near meeting ethnically as they do geographically. here and here only both eastern and western hemisphere show a strong affinity of race. the eskimo, long classed as mongoloid, are now regarded as an aberrant variety of the american race, owing to their narrow headform and linguistic affinity; though in alaska even their headform closely approximates the mongoloid siberian type.[ ] but in stature, color, oblique eyes, broad flat face, and high cheek bones, in his temperament and character, artistic productions and some aspects of his culture, he groups with the asiatic hyperboreans across the narrow sixty miles of water forming bering strait.[ ] in the northern part of the earth's land area, the distribution of floras, faunas, and races shows interdependence, intercourse; in the southern, separation, isolation. [sidenote: continental convergence and ethnic kinship.] what is true where the hemispheres come together is true also where continents converge. the core of the old world is found in the mediterranean basin where europe, asia and africa form a close circle of lands and where they are inhabited by the one white mediterranean race. contrast their racial unity about this common center with the extremes of ethnic divergence in their remote peripheries, where teutons, mongols, malays and negroes differ widely from the mediterranean stock and from each other. eastern australia represents the ethnic antipodes of western asia, in harmony with the great dividing distance between them, but the sides of these continents facing each other across the bridge of the sunda islands are sparsely strewn with a common malay element. [sidenote: africa's location.] africa's early development was never helped by the fact that the continent lay between asia and south america. it was subjected to strong and persistent asiatic influences, but apparently to no native american ones. from that far-off trans-atlantic shore came no signs of life. africa appears in history as an appendage of asia, a cultural peninsula of the larger continent. this was due not only to the suez isthmus and the narrowness of the red sea rift, but to its one-sided invasion by asiatic races and trade from the east, while the western side of the continent lay buried in sleep, unstirred by any voice from the silent shores of america. semitic influences, in successive waves, spread over the dark continent as far as morocco, the senegal, niger, lake chad, nyanza, tanganyika and nyassa, and gave it such light as it had before the th century. only after the atlantic gulf was finally crossed did influences from the american side of the ocean begin to impinge upon the west african coast, first in the form of the slave and rum trade, then in the more humane aspect of the liberian colony. but with the full development of the atlantic period in history, we see all kinds of atlantic influences, though chiefly from the atlantic states of europe, penetrating eastward into the heart of africa, and there meeting other commercial and political activities pressing inland from the indian ocean. [sidenote: the atlantic abyss.] the long atlantic rift between the eastern and western hemispheres, which was such a potent factor in the primitive retardation of africa is, from the standpoint of anthropo-geography, the most important feature in the distribution of the land-masses over the globe. not till the discovery of america bridged this abyss did the known world become a girdle round the earth. except the norse ventures to the american continent by way of iceland and greenland between and , no account of pre-columbian intercourse between the two shores of the atlantic has ever been substantiated. columbus found the opposite land unfamiliar in race as in culture. he described the people as neither whites nor blacks, the two ethnic types which he knew on the eastern side of the atlantic abyss. he and his successors found in the americas only a stone age culture, a stage already outgrown by europe and africa. these continents from lapland to the hottentot country were using iron. prior to the voyage of the great genoese, europe gave nothing to america and received nothing from it, except the gulf stream's scanty cargo of driftwood stranded on bleak icelandic shores. the tertiary land-bridge across the north atlantic between norway and greenland may possibly have guided a pre-caucasic migration to america and given that continent part of its aboriginal population.[ ] however, no trace of any european stock remains. [sidenote: atlantic islands uninhabited.] the collapse of the bridge at the close of the glacial epoch left the atlantic abyss effectually dividing the two hemispheres. its islands, few and far between, were helpless to maintain intercourse between the opposite shores; this is proven by the fact that all of them from greenland to tristan da cunha, excepting only the canaries, were uninhabited at the time of their discovery. history records when the first bold voyagers came upon them in that unmarked waste of waters, and gave them their first occupants. the political upheavals of norway in king harfagr's time ( ) sent to the faroes and iceland their first settlers, though these islands were previously known to the celts of ireland. the norse colonists who went to greenland in the year seem to have been the first regular settlers on those inhospitable coasts. they found no native inhabitants, but numerous abandoned dwellings, fragments of boats and stone implements,[ ] which doubtless recorded the intermittent voyages thither of the eskimo, preliminary to permanent occupation. the scandinavians did not encounter natives on the island till the th century, when greenland probably received its first eskimo immigration.[ ] [sidenote: geographical character of the pacific.] while the atlantic thus formed a long north-and-south rift across the inhabited world at the period of the great discoveries, the pacific, strewn with islands and land-rimmed at its northern extremity by the peninsulas of alaska and eastern siberia, spread a nebula of population from the dense centers of asia across to the outskirts of america. the general mongoloid character of the american indians as a race, the stronger asiatic stamp of the western eskimo, the unmistakeable ethnic and cultural affinities of the northwest coast tribes both with southern polynesians and asiatics,[ ] all point to america as the great eastern wing of the mongoloid or asiatic area, and therefore as the true orient of the world. geographic conditions have made this possible or even probable. the winds and currents of the north pacific set from japan straight toward the american coast. junks blown out to sea from china or japan have been carried by the kuro siwo and the prevailing westerlies across the pacific to our continent. there is record of a hundred instances of this occurrence.[ ] [sidenote: pacific affinities of north american indians.] the broken bridge across bering strait formed by east cape, cape prince of wales and the diomede islands between, and further south the natural causeway of the commander and aleutian islands leading from the peninsula of kamchatka to that of unalaska, have facilitated intercourse between asia and america.[ ] justin winsor says, "there is hardly a stronger demonstration of such connection between the two continents than the physical resemblances of the peoples now living on opposite sides of the pacific ocean in these upper latitudes."[ ] this resemblance is by no means confined to the eskimo and chukches, who have exchanged colonists across bering sea. recent investigations have revealed a wider kinship. the population of northern siberia speaks in general ural-altaic languages, but it includes a few scattered tribes whose singular speech excludes them from this linguistic group, and who have therefore been placed by ethnologists in a distinct class called "paleasiatics" or "hyperboreans." this class is composed of the ostyak and kot on the yenisei river, the gilyak and ainos at the mouth of the amur and on the kurile, sakhalin and yezo islands, the kamchadal and koryak of kamchatka, and the chukches and yukaghir of extreme northeastern siberia. as far back as , the eminent philologist robert latham noted a marked linguistic agreement, both in structure and verbal affinity, between our northwest coast tribes and the peoples of the islands and peninsulas fringing northeastern asia. "koriak is notably american," he said.[ ] the recent jesup expedition to the northwest coast of america and the nearby coast of asia investigated the koryak, to determine whether in the past there had been any connection between the cultures and ethnic types of the old and new world. these investigations have proved beyond doubt a kinship of culture, attributable either to a remote common origin or to former contact, long and close, between these isolated siberian tribes and the american aborigines. they show that the koryak are one of the asiatic tribes standing nearest to the northwestern american indian.[ ] [see map page .] [sidenote: polynesian affinities.] w.h. dall finds the inhabitants of the pacific slope of north america conspicuously allied with oceanica in cultural achievements, whose origin he therefore assigns to that vast congeries of islands stretching from asia toward south america in latitude ° south. these islands, closely clustered as far as the paumota group, straggle along with widening spaces between, through easter isle, which carries the indestructible memorials of a strange civilization, through sala-y-gomez, san felix, and st. ambrose almost to the threshold of the peruvian coast. it is to be noted that these islands lie just outside the westward-bearing equatorial current and trade-winds, on the margin of the south pacific anti-cyclonic winds and a southern current which sets towards the peruvian coast.[ ] a more probable avenue for the introduction of these polynesian or malayan elements of culture is found in o.t. mason's theory, that primitive mariners of the southwestern pacific, led into migration by the eternal food quest, may have skirted the seaboard of east asia and northwest america, passing along a great-circle route through the succession of marginal seas and archipelagoes to various ports of entry on the pacific front of america. such a route, favored by the prevailing marine currents and winds from the southwest, and used repeatedly during long periods of time, might have introduced trans-pacific elements of race and culture into the western side of america.[ ] [sidenote: the real orient of the world.] moreover, primitive america resembled oceanica and northern asia in its ignorance of iron, in its stone age civilization, and its retarded social and political development. such affinities as it shows were predominantly pacific or trans-pacific.[ ] on its atlantic side, it stood out in striking contrast to the contemporaneous civilizations and races in europe and africa; this was its unneighbored shore, lying on the eastern margin of that broad zone of habitation which stretched hence westward on and on around the world, to the outermost capes of europe and africa. the atlantic abyss formed the single gap in this encircling belt of population, to which columbus at last affixed the clasp. the atlantic face of the americas formed therefore the drowsy unstirred orient of the inhabited world, which westward developed growing activity--dreaming a civilization in mexico and peru, roused to artistic and maritime achievement in oceanica and the malay archipelago, to permanent state-making and real cultural development in asia, and attaining the highest civilization at last in western europe. there was the sunset margin of the inhabited world, the area of achievement, the adult occident, facing across the dividing ocean that infant orient beyond. here the old world, the full-grown world, had accumulated in columbus' time the matured forces of a hemisphere; it was searching for some outlet across the shoreless distances of the atlantic, waiting for some call from its voiceless beyond. [sidenote: the atlantic abyss in historic movements of peoples.] this deep, unbridged chasm of the atlantic, closed only four hundred years ago, must be taken into account in all investigations of the geographical distribution of races, whether in prehistoric or historic times. the influences of those ages when it formed an impassable gulf are still operative in directing the movements of the peoples to-day inhabiting its shores, because that barrier maintained the continents of america as a vast territorial reserve, sparsely inhabited by a stone age people, and affording a fresh field for the superior, accumulated energies of europe. [sidenote: races and continents.] australia and the double continent of america show each the coincidence of an ethnic realm with an isolated continent. in contrast, when we come to the old world triad of europe, asia and africa, we find three races, to be sure, but races whose geographical distribution ignores the boundaries of the continents. the white race belongs to all three, and from time immemorial has made the central basin of the mediterranean the white man's sea. the mongolian, though primarily at home in asia, stretches along the coast of the arctic ocean to the atlantic shores of norway, and in historical times has penetrated up the danube to the foot of the alps. nor was the negroid stock confined to africa, though africa has always been its geographical core. the indian peninsula and malay archipelago, once peopled by a primitive negroid race, but now harboring only remnants of them in the deccan, malacca, the philippines and elsewhere, bridge the distance to the other great negroid center in melanesia and the derivative or secondary negroid area of australia.[ ] the negroid race belongs essentially to the long southern land pendants of the eastern hemisphere; and wherever it has bordered on the lighter northern stocks, it has drawn a typical boundary zone of mingled tints which never diverges far from the equator, from the atlantic shores of the sudan to pacific fiji.[ ] [see map page .] the effort of the old ethnology, as represented by blumenbach, to make a five-fold division of the races in agreement with the five continents was a mistake. to distinguish between the continents is one thing and to distinguish between the races is another. neither bio-geography nor anthropo-geography can adopt the continents as geographical provinces, although floras, faunas and races the world over give evidence of partial or temporary restriction to a certain continent, whence they have overflowed to other lands. a ground-plan for the geographical classification of races is to be found, as tylor says, in the fact that they are not found scattered indiscriminately over the earth's surface, but that certain races belong to certain regions, in whose peculiar environment they have developed their type, and whence they have spread to other lands, undergoing modifications from race intermixture and successive changes of environment on the way.[ ] [sidenote: contrast of the northern and southern continents.] from this general law of race movements it follows that certain groups of land-masses, favored by location and large area, play a great imperial rôle, holding other lands as appanages. the eastern hemisphere, as we have seen, enjoys this advantage over the western. still more the northern hemisphere, blessed with an abundance of land and a predominant temperate zone location, is able to lord it over the southern, so insular in its poverty of land. the history of the northern hemisphere is marked by far-reaching historical influences and wide control; that of the southern, by detachment, aloofness and impotence, due to the small area and isolation of its land-masses. a subordinate rôle is its fate. australia will always follow in the train of eurasia, whence alone it has derived its incentives and means of progress. neither the southern half of africa nor south america has ever in historical times struck out a road to advancement unaided by its northern neighbors. primitive south america developed the only independent civilization that ever blossomed in the southern hemisphere, but the peruvian achievements in progress were inferior to those of mexico and central america.[ ] [sidenote: isolation of the southern continents.] this subordination of the southern continents is partly due to the fact that they have only one side of contact or neighborhood with any other land, that is, on the north; yet even here the contact is not close. in australia the medium of communication is a long bridge of islands; in america, a winding island chain and a mountainous isthmus; in africa, a broad zone of desert dividing the mediterranean or eurasian from the tropical and negroid part of the continent. intercourse was not easy, and produced clear effects only in the case of africa. enlightenment filtering in here was sadly dimmed as it spread. moreover it was delayed till the introduction from asia of the horse and camel, which were not native to africa, and which, as ratzel points out, alone made possible the long journey across the sahara. the opposite or peninsular sides, running out as great spurs from the compacter land-masses of the north, look southward into vacant wastes of water, find no neighbors in those antarctic seas. owing to this unfavorable location on the edge of things, they were historically dead until four centuries ago, when oceanic navigation opened up the great sea route of the southern hemisphere, and for the first time included them in the world's circle of communication. but even when lifted by the ensuing europeanizing process, they only emphasize the fundamental dependence of the southern hemisphere upon the superior geographical endowments of the northern. [sidenote: effect of continental structure upon historical development.] the build of the land-masses influences fundamentally the movements and hence the development of the races who inhabit them. a simple continental structure gives to those movements a few simple features and a wide monotonous distribution which checks differentiation. a manifold, complex build, varied in relief and ragged in contour, breaks up the moving streams of peoples, turns each branch into a different channel, lends it a distinctive character through isolation, finally brings it up in a _cul de sac_ formed by a peninsula or mountain-rimmed basin, where further movement is checked and the process of local individualization begins. therefore great simplicity of continental build may result in historical poverty, as in the flat quadrangle of european russia, the level plateau of africa, and the smooth atlantic slope of north america, with its neatly trimmed outline. complexity, abounding in contrasted environments, tends to produce a varied wealth of historical development. africa lies on the surface of the ocean, a huge torso of a continent, headless, memberless, inert. here is no diversity of outward form, no contrast of zonal location, no fructifying variety of geographic conditions. humanity has forgotten to grow in its stationary soil. only where the suez isthmus formed an umbilical cord uniting ancient egypt to the mother continent of asia was africa vitalized by the pulse of another life. european influences penetrated little beyond the northern coast. asia, on the other hand, radiating great peninsulas, festooned with islands, supporting the vast corrugations of its highlands and lowlands, its snow-capped mountains and steaming valleys, stretching from the equator through all the zones to the ice-blocked shores of the arctic, knowing drought and deluge, tundra waste and teeming jungle, has offered the manifold environment and segregated areas for individualized civilizations, which have produced such far-reaching historical results. the same fact is true of europe, and that in an intensified degree. here a complex development of mountains and highlands built on diverse axes, peninsulas which comprise per cent. and islands which comprise nearly per cent. of the total area,[ ] vast thalassic inlets cleaving the continent to the core, have provided an abundance of those naturally defined regions which serve as cradles of civilization and, reacting upon the continent as a whole, endow it with lasting historical significance.[ ] even strabo saw this. he begins his description of the inhabited world with europe, because, as he says, it has such a "polymorphous formation" and is the region most favorable to the mental and social ennoblement of man.[ ] [sidenote: structure of north and south america.] in north and south america, great simplicity of continental build gave rise to a corresponding simplicity of native ethnic and cultural condition. there is only one marked contrast throughout the length of this double continent, that between its atlantic and pacific slopes. on the atlantic side of the cordilleras, a vast trough extends through both land-masses from the arctic ocean to patagonia; this has given to migration in each a longitudinal direction and therefore constantly tended to nullify the diversities arising from contrasted zonal conditions. on the pacific side of north america, there has been an unmistakeable migration southward along the accessible coast from alaska to the columbia river, and down the great intermontane valleys of the western highlands from, the great basin to honduras;[ ] while south america shows the same meridional movement for , miles along the pacific coast and longitudinal valleys of the andes system. there was little encouragement to cut across the grain of the continents. the eastern range of the cordilleras drew in general a dividing line between the eastern and western tribes.[ ] though athapascans from the east overstepped it at a few points in north america, the great divide has served effectually to isolate the two groups from one another and to draw that line of linguistic cleavage which major powell has set down in ms map of indian linguistic stocks. consequently, americanists recognize a distinct resemblance among the members of the north atlantic group of indians, as among those of the south atlantic group; but they note an equally distinct contrast between each of them and its corresponding pacific group. nor is this contrast superficial; it extends to physical traits, temperament and culture,[ ] and appears in the use of the vigesimal system of enumeration in primitive mexico, central america, among the tlingits of the northwest coast and the eskimo as also among the chukches and ainus of asia, while in the atlantic section of north america the decimal system, with one doubtful exception, was alone in use.[ ] [sidenote: cultural superiority of the pacific slope indians.] to the anthropo-geographer, the significant fact is that all the higher phases of native civilization are confined to the pacific slope group of indians, which includes the mexican and isthmian tribes. from the elongated center of advanced culture stretching from the bolivian highlands northward to the anahuac plateau, the same type shades off by easy transitions through northern mexico and the pueblo country, vanishes among the lower intrusive stocks of oregon and california, only to reappear among the haidas and tlingits of british columbia and alaska, whose cultural achievements show affinity to those of the mayas in yucatan.[ ] dall found certain distinguishing customs or characteristics spread north and south along the western slope of the continent in a natural geographical line of migration. they included labretifery, tattooing the chin of adult women, certain uses of masks, a certain style of conventionalizing natural objects, the use of conventional signs as hieroglyphics, a peculiar facility in carving wood and stone, a similarity of angular designs on their pottery and basketry, and of artistic representations connected with their common religious or mythological ideas. many singular forms of carvings and the method of superimposing figures of animals one upon another in their totem poles are found from alaska to panama, except in california. these distinguishing features of an incipient culture are found nowhere else in north america, even sporadically. dall therefore concludes that "they have been impressed upon the american aboriginal world from without," and on the ground of affinities, attributes their origin to oceanica.[ ] cyrus thomas, on the basis of the character and distribution of the archeological remains in north america, concurs in this opinion. he finds that these remains fall into two classes, one east of the rocky mountain watershed and the other west. "when those of the pacific slope as a whole are compared with those of the atlantic slope, there is a dissimilarity which marks them as the products of different races or as the result of different race influences." he emphasizes the resemblance of the customs, arts and archeological remains of the west coast to those of the opposite shores and islands of the pacific, and notes the lack of any resemblance to those of the atlantic; and finally leans to the conclusion that the continent was peopled from two sources, one incoming stream distributing itself over the atlantic slope, and the other over the pacific, the two becoming gradually fused into a comparatively homogeneous race by long continental isolation. yet these two sources may not necessarily include a trans-atlantic origin for one of the contributing streams; ethnic evidence is against such a supposition, because the characteristics of the american race and of the archeological remains point exclusively to affinity with the people of the pacific.[ ] john edward payne also reaches the same conclusion, though on other grounds.[ ] [sidenote: lack of segregated districts.] the one strong segregating feature in primitive america was the cordilleras, which held east and west apart. in the natural pockets formed by the high intermontane valleys of the andes and the anahuac plateau, and in the constricted isthmian region, the continent afforded a few secluded localities where civilization found favorable conditions of development. but in general, the paucity of large coast articulations, and the adverse polar or subpolar location of most of these, the situation of the large tropical islands along that barren atlantic abyss, and the lack of a broken or varied relief, have prevented the americas from developing numerous local centers of civilization, which might eventually have lifted the cultural status of the continents.[ ] [sidenote: coast articulations of continents.] it is necessary to distinguish two general classes of continental articulations; first, marginal dependences, like the fringe of european peninsulas and islands, resulting from a deeply serrated contour; and second, surface subdivisions of the interior, resulting from differences of relief or defined often by enclosing mountains or deserts, like the tibetan plateau, the basin of bohemia, the po river trough, or the sand-rimmed valley of the nile. the first class is by far the more important, because of the intense historical activity which results from the vitalizing contact with the sea. but in considering coast articulations, anthropo-geography is led astray unless it discriminates between these on the basis of size and location. without stopping to discuss the obvious results of a contrasted zonal location, such as that between labrador and yucatan, the kola peninsula and spain, it is necessary to keep in mind always the effect of vicinal location. an outlying coastal dependency like ireland has had its history impoverished by excessive isolation, in contrast to the richer development of england, jutland, and zealand in the same latitude, because these have profited from the closer neighborhood of other peripheral regions. so from ancient times, greece has had a similar advantage over the crimea, the tunisian peninsula of north africa over spain, the cotentin peninsula of france over brittany, and kent over cornwall or caithness in great britain. [sidenote: importance of size in continental articulations.] articulations on a vast scale, like the southern peninsulas of asia, produce quite different cultural and historical effects from small physical sub-divisions, like the fiord promontories and "skerries" of norway and southern alaska, or the finger peninsulas of the peloponnesus. the significant difference lies in the degree of isolation which the two types yield. large continental dependencies of the asiatic class resemble small continents in their power to segregate; while overgrown capes like ancient attica and argolis or the more bulky peloponnesus have their exclusiveness tempered by the mediating power of the small marine inlets between them. small articulations, by making a coast accessible, tend to counteract the excessive isolation of a large articulation. they themselves develop in their people only minor or inner differentiations, which serve to enrich the life of the island or peninsula as a whole, but do not invade its essential unity. the contrast in the history of hellas and the peloponnesus was due largely to their separation from one another; yet neither was able to make of its people anything but greeks. wales and cornwall show in english history the same contrast and the same underlying unity. [sidenote: historical contrast of large and small peninsulas.] in discussing continental articulations, therefore, it makes a great difference whether we draw our deductions from small projections of the coast, like wales, the peloponnesus, brittany and the crimea, whose areas range from to , square miles ( , to , square kilometers); or the four mediterranean peninsulas, which range in size from the , square miles ( , square kilometers) of the apennine peninsula to the , square miles ( ,- square kilometers) of asia minor and the , square miles ( , square kilometers) of the iberian; or the vast continental alcoves of southern asia, like farther india with its , square miles ( , , square kilometers), hither india with , square miles ( , , square kilometers) and arabia with , , square miles ( , , square kilometers).[ ] the fact that the large compound peninsula of western europe which comprises spain, portugal, france, jutland, belgium, holland, switzerland, italy and western germany, and has its base in the stricture between the adriatic and the baltic, is about the size of peninsular india, suggests how profound may be the difference in geographic effects between large and small peripheral divisions. the three huge extremities which asia thrusts forward into the indian ocean are geographical entities, which in point of size and individualization rank just below the continents; and in relation to the solid mass of central asia, they have exhibited in many respects an aloofness and self-sufficiency, that have resulted in an historical divergence approximating that of the several continents. india, which has more productive territory than australia and a population not much smaller than that of europe, becomes to the administrators of its government "the continent of india," as it is regularly termed in the statistical atlas published at calcutta. farther india has in the long-drawn pendant of malacca a sub-peninsula half as large again as italy. the deccan has in ceylon an insular dependency the size of tasmania. the whole scale is continental. it appears again somewhat diminished, in the largest articulations of europe, in scandinavia, the british isles, the iberian and balkan peninsulas. this continental scale stamps also the anthropo-geography of such large individualized fields. they are big enough for each to comprise one or even several nations, and isolated enough to keep their historical processes for long periods at a time to a certain extent detached from those of their respective continents. [sidenote: peninsular conditions most favorable to historical development.] the most favorable conditions for historical development obtain where the two classes of marginal articulation are combined, and where they occur in groups, as we find them in the mediterranean and the north sea-baltic basin. here the smaller indentations multiply contact with the sea, and provide the harbors, bays and breakwaters of capes and promontories which make the coast accessible. the larger articulations, by their close grouping, break up the sea into the minor thalassic basins which encourage navigation, and thus insure the exchange of their respective cultural achievements. in other words, such conditions present the pre-eminent advantages of vicinal location around an enclosed sea. the enormous articulations of southern asia suffer from their paucity of small indentations, all the more because of their vast size and sub-tropical location. the grecian type of peninsula, with its broken shoreline, finds here its large-scale homologue only in farther india, to which the sunda islands have played in history the part of a gigantic cyclades. the european type of articulation is found only about the yellow-japan sea, where the island of hondo and the peninsulas of shangtung and korea reproduce approximately the proportions of great britain, jutland and italy respectively. arabia and india, like the angular shoulder of africa which protrudes into the indian ocean, measure an imposing length of coastline, but this length shrinks in comparison with the vast area of the peninsulas. the contour of a peninsula is like the surface of the brain: in both it is convolutions that count. southern asia has had lobes enough but too few convolutions. for this reason, the northern indian ocean, despite its exceptional location as the eastward extension of the mediterranean route to the orient, found its development constantly arrested till the advent of european navigators. [sidenote: length of coastline.] although the peripheral articulations of a continent differ anthropo-geographically according to their size, their zonal and vicinal location, yet large and small, arctic and tropical, are grouped indiscriminately together in the figures that state the length of coastlines. for this reason, statistics of continental coastlines have little value. for instance, the fact that eurasia has , miles ( , kilometers) and north america , miles ( , kilometers) of contact with the ocean is not illuminating; these figures do not reveal the fact that the former has its greatest coastal length on its tropical and sub-tropical side, while the latter continent has wasted inlets and islands innumerable in the long, bleak stretch from newfoundland poleward around to bering sea. [sidenote: the continental base of the peninsulas.] peninsulas are accessible from the sea according to the configuration of their coasts, but from their hinterland, according to the length and nature of their connection with the same. this determines the degree of their isolation from the land-mass. if they hang from the continent by a frayed string, as does the peloponnesus, crimea, malacca, indian gutjerat, and nova scotia, they are segregated from the life of the mainland almost as completely as if they were islands. the same effects follow where the base of a peninsula is defined by a high mountain barrier, as in all the mediterranean peninsulas, in the two indias, and in korea; or by a desert like that which scantily links arabia to egypt, syria and mesopotamia; or by a blur of swamps and lakes such as half detaches scandinavia, courland, estland and finland from russia. held to their continents by bonds that often fail to bind, subjected by their outward-facing peripheral location to every centrifugal force, feeling only slightly the pull of the great central mass behind, peninsulas are often further detached economically and historically by their own contrasted local conditions. a sharp transition in geological formation and therefore in soil, a difference of climate, rainfall, drainage system, of flora or fauna, serve greatly to emphasize the lack of community of interests with the continental interior, and therefore produce an inevitable diversity of historical development.[ ] hence, many peninsulas insulate their people as completely as islands. it is hard to say whether the pyrenean peninsula or sicily, scandinavia or great britain, has held itself more aloof from the political history of remaining europe; whether korea is not more entitled to its name of the hermit kingdom than island japan could ever be; whether the peloponnesus or euboea was more intimately associated with the radiant life of ancient hellas. these questions lead to another, namely, whether a high mountain wall like the pyrenees, or a narrow strait like that of messina is the more effective geographical boundary. [sidenote: continental base a zone of transition.] peninsulas not infrequently gain in breadth as they approach the continent; here they tend to abate their distinctive character as lobes of the mainland, together with the ethnic and historical marks of isolation. here they form a doubtful boundary zone of mingled continental and peninsular development. such peninsulas fall naturally, therefore, into a continental and a peninsular section, and reveal this segmentation in the differentiated history of the two portions. that great military geographer napoleon distinguished the italy of the po basin as _italie continentale_, and the apennine section as _presqu'ile_. not only is the former broader, but, expanding like a tree trunk near the ground, it sends its roots well back into the massive interior of the continent; it is dominated more by the alps than by the apennines; it contains a lowland and a river of continental proportions, for which there is no space on the long, narrow spur of southern italy. if its geographical character approximates that of the mainland, so does its ethnic and historical. the po basin is a well defined area of race characterization, in which influences have made for intermixture. south of the crest of the apennines the italian language in its purity begins, in contrast to the gallo-italian of the north. this mountain ridge has also held apart the dark, short dolichocephalic stock of the mediterranean race from the fairer, taller, broad-headed celts, who have moved down into the po basin from the alps, and the germans and illyrians who have entered it from the northeast.[ ] northern italy is therefore allied ethnically, as it has often been united politically, to the neighboring countries abutting upon the alps, so that it has experienced only in a partial degree that detachment which has stamped the history of the apennine section. [sidenote: historical contrast between base and extremity.] the balkan peninsula tells much the same story of contrasted geographic conditions and development in its continental and peninsular sections. greece proper, in ancient as in modern times, reached its northern confines where the peninsula suddenly widens its base through macedonia and thrace. in this narrow southern section to-day, especially in isolated peloponnesus, attica, and the high-walled garden of thessaly, are found people of the pure, long-headed, hellenic type, and here the greek language prevails.[ ] but that broad and alien north, long excluded from the amphictyonic council and a stranger to aegean culture in classical times, is occupied to-day by a congeries of slavs, who form a southwestern spur of the slav stock covering eastern europe. its political history shows how often it has been made a danubian or continental state, by alexander of macedon, by the romans, bulgarians, and ottoman turks,[ ] as it may be some day by russia; and also how often its large and compact form has enabled it to dominate the tapering peninsular section to the south. in the same way, the vast ganges and indus basins, which constitute the continental portion of india, have received various tibetan, scythian, aryan, pathan, and mongol-tartar ingredients from central asia; and by reason of the dense populations supported by these fruitful river plains, it has been able to dominate politically, religiously and culturally the protruding triangle of the deccan. [see maps pages and .] the continental side of arabia, the mesopotamian valley which ties the peninsula to the highlands of persia and armenia, has received into its semitic stock constant infiltrations of turanian and aryan peoples from the core of asia. this process has been going on from the ancient elamite and persian conquests of mesopotamia down to the ottoman invasion and the present periodic visits of kurdish shepherds to the pastures of the upper tigris.[ ] here we have the same contrast of geographic conditions as in italy and india, a wide, populous alluvial plain occupying the continental section of the peninsula, and a less attractive highland or mountainous region in the outlying spur of land. [sidenote: continental base a scene of invasion and war.] these continental sections of peninsulas become therefore strongly marked as areas of ethnic characterization and differentiated historical development. their threshold location, by reason of which they first catch any outward migration from the core of the continent, and their fertility, which serves as a perennial lure to new comers, whether peaceful or warlike, combine to give them intense historical activity. they catch the come and go between their wide hinterland and the projection of land beyond, the stimulus of new arrivals and fresh blood. but tragedy too is theirs. the po valley has been called "the cockpit of europe." even the little eider, which marks the base of jutland, has been the scene of war between danes and germans since the tenth century.[ ] the indus valley has again and again felt the shock of conflict with invading hordes from the central highlands, and witnessed the establishment of a succession of empires. peace at the gates of the balkan peninsula has never been of long duration, and the postern door of korea has been stormed often enough. [sidenote: peninsular extremities as areas of isolation.] in contrast to these continental sections which stand in contact with the solid land-mass behind, the extremities of the peninsulas are areas of isolation and therefore generally of ethnic unity. they often represent the last stand of displaced people pressed outward into these narrow quarters by expanding races in their rear. the vast triangle of the deccan, which forms the essentially peninsular part of india, is occupied, except in the more exposed northwest corner, by the dravidian race which once occupied all india, and afterward was pushed southward by the influx of more energetic peoples.[ ] here they have preserved their speech and nationality unmixed and live in almost primitive simplicity.[ ] in the peninsular parts of great britain, in northern scotland. wales and cornwall, we find people of celtic speech brought to bay on these remote spurs of the land, affiliating little with the varied folk which occupied the continental side of the island, and resisting conquest to the last.[ ] the mountainous peninsula of western connaught in ireland has been the rocky nucleus of the largest celtic-speaking community in the island.[ ] brittany, with a similar location, became the last refuge of celtic speech on the mainland of europe,[ ] the seat of resistance to norman and later to english conquest, finally the stronghold of conservatism in the french revolution. [sidenote: ethnic unity of peninsulas.] the northern wall of the apennines and the outpost barrier of the alps have combined to protect peninsular italy from extensive ethnic infusions from the direction of the continent. this portion of the country shows therefore, as the anthropological maps attest, a striking uniformity of race. it has been a melting-pot in which foreign elements, filtering through the breaches of the apennines or along the southern coast, have been fused into the general population under the isolating and cohesive influences of a peninsular environment.[ ] the population of the iberian peninsula is even more unified, probably the most homogeneous in europe. here the long-headed mediterranean race is found in the same purity as in island corsica and sardinia.[ ] spain's short line of contact with france and its sharp separation by the unbroken wall of the pyrenees robs the peninsula of any distinctly continental section, and consequently of any transitional area of race and culture; hence the unity of spain as opposed to that twofold balanced diversity which we find in italy and india. the balkan peninsula, on the other hand, owing to the great predominance of its continental section and the confused relief of the country, has not protected its distinctively peninsular or greek section from the southward migrations of slavs, albanians, wallachians, and other continental peoples.[ ] it has been like a big funnel with a small mouth; the pressure from above has been very great. hellas and even the peloponnesus have had their peninsularity impaired and their race mixed, owing to the predominant continental section to the north. [sidenote: peninsulas as intermediaries.] peninsulas, so far as they project from their continents, are areas of isolation; but so far as they extend also toward some land beyond, they become intermediaries. the isolating and intermediary aspects can be traced in the anthropo-geographical effects of every peninsula, even those which, like brittany and cornwall, project into the long uncharted waste of the atlantic. in the order of historical development, a peninsula first isolates, until in its secluded environment it has molded a mature, independent people; then, as that people outgrows its narrow territory, the peninsula becomes a favorable base for maritime expansion to distant lands, or becomes a natural avenue for numerous reciprocal relations with neighboring lands beyond. korea was the bridge for mongolian migration from continental asia to the japan islands, and for the passage thither of chinese culture, whether intellectual, esthetic, industrial or religious.[ ] it has been the one country conspicuous in the foreign history of japan. conquered by the island empire in , it paid tribute for nearly three centuries and yielded to its foreign master the southeastern port of fusan, the calais of korea.[ ] since the treaty of portsmouth in made it subject to japan, it has become the avenue of japanese expansion to the mainland and the unwilling recipient of the modern civilization thrust upon it by these english of the east. in like manner the pyrenean peninsula has always been the intermediary between europe and northwest africa. its population, as well as its flora and fauna, group with those of the southern continent. it has served as transit land between north and south for the carthaginians, vandals and saracens; and in modern times it has maintained its character as a link by the portuguese occupation of the tangiers peninsula in the fifteenth century,[ ] and the spanish possession of ceuta and various other points along the moroccan coast from the year a.d. to the present.[ ] [sidenote: peninsulas of intercontinental location.] this rôle of intermediary is inevitably thrust upon all peninsulas which, like spain, italy, greece, asia minor, arabia, farther india, malacca, chukchian siberia, and alaska, occupy an intercontinental location. arabia especially in its climate, flora, races and history shows the haul and pull now of asia, now of africa. from it asiatic influences have spread over africa to morocco and the niger river on the west, and to zanzibar on the south, permeated abyssinia, and penetrated to the great equatorial lakes, whether in the form of that mecca-born worship of allah, or the creeping caravans and slave-gangs of arab trader. of all such intercontinental peninsulas, florida alone seems to have had no rôle as an intermediary. its native ethnic affinities were wholly with its own continent. it has given nothing to south america and received nothing thence. the northward expansion of arawak and carib tribes from venezuela in historic times ceased at cuba and hayti. the straits drew a dividing line. local conditions in florida itself probably furnish the explanation of this anomaly. extensive swamps made the central and southern portion of the peninsula inhospitable to colonization from either direction, transformed it from a link into a barrier. [sidenote: atlantic peninsulas of europe] peninsulas which conspicuously lack an intercontinental location must long await their intermediary phase of development, but do not escape it. the cornish, breton and iberian peninsulas were all prominent in the trans-atlantic enterprises of europe from the end of the fifteenth century. the first french sailors to reach the new world were breton and norman fishermen. plymouth, as the chief port of the cornish peninsula, figures prominently in the history of english exploration and settlement in america. it seems scarcely accidental that most of queen elizabeth's great sea captains were natives of this district--sir francis drake, sir john hawkins, sir humphrey gilbert, and sir walter raleigh, the latter holding the office of vice-admiral of cornwall and devon. it was the peninsula-like projection of south america about cape st. roque, twenty degrees farther east than labrador, that welcomed the ships of cabral and americus vespucius, and secured to portugal a foothold in the western hemisphere. notes to chapter xii [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, p. . london, - . [ ] d.g. brinton, the american race, p. . philadelphia, . [ ] d.g. brinton, races and peoples, pp. - . philadelphia, . ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, p. . london, - . [ ] a.e. wallace, island life, p. . new york, . [ ] a. heilprin, geographical distribution of animals, p. , map. . [ ] _ibid._, pp. , , , . [ ] darwin, origin of species, chap. xii. new york, . a.r. wallace, island life, p. . new york, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, map on p. . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. , , . ratzel, history of mankind, vol. ii, pp. - . london, - . [ ] a.h. keane, ethnology, pp. - , . cambridge, . [ ] mcgee and thomas, prehistoric north america, p. , vol. xix of history of north america. philadelphia, . [ ] fiske, discovery of america, vol. i, p. . boston, . [ ] for various asiatic and oceanic elements, see franz boas, the indians of british columbia, _bull. of the amer. geog. society_ vol. , p. . the northwest coast tribes, science, vol. xii, pp. - . niblack, the indians of the northwest coast, p. , washington. h.h. bancroft, the native races, vol. i, pp. , , footnote; pp. , . san francisco, . w.z. ripley, races of europe, map p. . new york, . [ ] t.w. higginson and william macdonald, history of the united states, p. . new york and london, . [ ] edward john payne, history of the new world called america, vol. ii, pp. - , - , , - . oxford, . [ ] justin winsor, narrative and critical history, vol. i, p. . boston, . [ ] cited by e.j. payne, history of the new world called america, vol. ii, p. , footnote p. . oxford, . [ ] waldemar jochelson, the mythology of the koryak, _the american anthropologist_, vol. vi, pp. - , - . . [ ] w.d. dall, masks, labrets, and certain aboriginal customs, third annual report of bureau of ethnology, pp. - . washington, . [ ] o.t. mason, migration and the food quest, pp. - . washington, . [ ] mcgee and thomas, prehistoric north america, pp. , - . philadelphia, . ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, pp. - , - , - . london, - . [ ] ripley, races of europe, map p. , pp. - . new york, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, p. . london, - . [ ] tylor, anthropology, pp. - . new york, . [ ] e.j. payne, history of the new world called america, vol. ii, pp. - . oxford, . [ ] justus perthes, _taschen atlas_, p. . gotha, . [ ] carl ritter, comparative geography, pp. - . translated by w.l. gage, philadelphia, . n.s. shaler, nature and man in america, pp. - , - . new york, . [ ] strabo, book ii, chap. v. . [ ] mcgee and thomas, prehistoric north america, p. , map. philadelphia, . [ ] d.g. brinton, races and peoples, pp. - . philadelphia, . [ ] d.g. brinton, the american race, pp. , - . philadelphia, . mcgee and thomas, prehistoric north america, p. . philadeladelphia, ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, pp. - , - , . [ ] _ibid._, p. . e.j. payne, history of the new world called america, vol. ii, p. . oxford, . [ ] _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. - . mcgee and thomas, prehistoric north america, pp. - . philadelphia, . [ ] w.h. dall, masks, labrets, and certain aboriginal customs, third annual report of bureau of ethnology, pp. - . washington, . [ ] cyrus thomas, report of mound explorations, pp. - , - . twelfth annual report of the bureau of ethnology, washington, . [ ] e.j. payne, history of the new world called america, vol. ii, pp. - . oxford, . [ ] n.s. shaler, nature and man in america, pp. , - . new york, . [ ] justus perthes, _taschen atlas_, p. . gotha, . [ ] carl ritter, comparative geography, pp. - . translated by w. l. gage, philadelphia, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. - . [ ] e.a. freeman, historical geography of europe, atlas, maps, , . london, . [ ] for race elements in mesopotamia, see d.g. hogarth, the nearer east, maps, pp. and . london, . [ ] e.a. freeman, historical geography of europe, pp. - , - , - , . london, . [ ] imperial gazetteer of india, vol. i, pp. - . oxford, . [ ] sir thomas holdich, india, ethnographical map, p. , pp. , - . london, . b.h. baden-powell, the indian village community, pp. , , , . london, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - . new york, . e. reclus, europe, vol. iv, pp. , - . new york, . [ ] h.j. mackinder, britain and the british seas, ethnographic map, p. , and p. . london, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. , , - . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. , , . [ ] _ibid._, pp. , . [ ] _ibid._, pp. - , and map. [ ] f. brinkley, japan, vol. i, pp. - , , - , - , . boston and tokyo, . w.e. griffis, the mikado's empire, vol. i, pp. , . new york, . [ ] henry dyer, dai nippon, pp. , . new york, . [ ] e.a. freeman, historical geography of europe, p. . london, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. , . gibbon, decline and fall of the roman empire, vol. v, p. . new york, . chapter xiii island peoples [sidenote: physical relationship between islands and peninsulas.] the characteristics which mark peninsulas, namely, ample contact with the sea, small area as compared with that of the continents, peripheral location, more or less complete isolation, combined, however, with the function of bridge or passway to yet remoter lands, are all accentuated in islands. a list of the chief peninsulas of the world, as compared with the greatest islands, shows a far larger scale of areas for the former, even if the latter be made to include the vast ice-capped land-mass of greenland ( , , square kilometers or , square miles). new guinea, the largest habitable island, has only one-fourth the area of arabia, the largest of the peninsulas.[ ] therefore, both the advantages and disadvantages incident to a restricted area may be expected to appear in an intensified degree in islands. peninsulas are morphologically transition forms between mainland and islands; by slight geological changes one is converted into the other. great britain was a peninsula at the end of the tertiary period, before subsidence and the erosion of dover channel combined to sever it from the continent. it bears to-day in its flora and fauna the evidence of its former broad connection with the mainland.[ ] in pliocene times, sicily and sardinia were united by a land bridge with the tunisian projection of north africa; and they too, in their animal and plant life, reveal the old connection with the southern continent.[ ] sometimes man himself for his own purposes converts a peninsula into an island. often he constructs a canal, like that at kiel or corinth, to remove an isthmian obstruction to navigation; but occasionally he transforms his peninsula into an island for the sake of greater protection. william of rubruquis tells us that in he found the neck of the crimea cut through by a ditch from sea to sea by the native comanians, who had taken refuge in the peninsula from the tartar invaders, and in this way had sought to make their asylum more secure.[ ] the reverse process in nature is quite as common. the shangtung peninsula rises like a mountainous island from the sea-like level of alluvial plains about it, suggesting that remote time when the plains were not yet deposited and an arm of the yellow sea covered the space between shangtung and the highlands of shansi.[ ] the deposition of silt, aided often by slight local elevation of the coast, is constantly tying continental islands to the mainland. the echinades archipelago off the southwest coast of ancient acarnania, opposite the mouth of the achelous river, strabo tells us, was formerly farther from shore than in his time, and was gradually being cemented to the mainland by achelous silt. some islets had already been absorbed in the advancing shoreline, and the same fate awaited others.[ ] farther up this western coast of greece, the island of leukas has been converted into a peninsula by a sickle-shaped sandbar extending across the narrow channel.[ ] nature is working in its leisurely way to attach sakhalin to the siberian coast. the strong marine current which sets southward from the okhotsk sea through the strait of tartary carries silt from the mouth of the heavy laden amur river, and deposits it in the "narrows" of the strait between capes luzarev and pogobi, building up sandbars that come dangerously near the surface in mid channel.[ ] here the water is so shallow that occasionally after long prevailing winds, the ground is left exposed and the island natives can walk over to asia.[ ] the close proximity of sakhalin to the mainland and the ice bridge covering the strait in winter rob the island of much of its insular character and caused it to pass as a peninsula until . yet that five-mile wide stretch of sea on its western coast determined its selection as the great penal station of the russian empire. the fact that peninsular india accords in so many points of flora, fauna and even primitive ethnic stock with madagascar and south africa, indicates its former island nature, which has been geographically cloaked by its union with the continent of asia. [sidenote: character of insular flora and fauna.] islands, because of their relatively limited area and their clearly defined boundaries, are excellent fields for the study of floral, faunal, and ethnic distribution. small area and isolation cause in them poverty of animal and plant forms and fewer species than are found in an equal continental area. this is the curse of restricted space which we have met before. the large island group of new zealand, with its highly diversified relief and long zonal stretch, has only a moderate list of flowering plants, in comparison with the numerous species that adorn equal areas in south africa and southwestern australia.[ ] ascension possessed originally less than six flowering plants. the four islands of the greater antilles form together a considerable area and have all possible advantages of climate and soil; but there are probably no continental areas equally big and equally favored by nature which are so poor in all the more highly organized groups of animals.[ ] islands tend to lop off the best branches. darwin found not a single indubitable case of terrestrial mammals native to islands situated more than three hundred miles from the mainland.[ ] the impoverishment extends therefore to quality as well as quantity, to man as well as to brute. in the island continent of australia, the native mammalia, excepting some bats, a few rodents, and a wild dog, all belong to the primitive marsupial sub-class; its human life, at the time of the discovery, was restricted to one retarded negroid race, showing in every part of the island a monotonous, early stone age development. the sparsely scattered oceanic islands of the atlantic, owing to excessive isolation, were all, except the near-lying canaries, uninhabited at the time of their discovery; and the canary islanders showed great retardation as compared with their parent stock of northern africa. [see map page .] [sidenote: endemic forms.] despite this general poverty of species, island life is distinguished by a great proportion of peculiar or endemic forms, and a tendency toward divergence, which is the effect of isolation and which becomes marked in proportion to the duration and effectiveness of isolation. isolation, by reducing or preventing the intercrossing which holds the individual true to the normal type of the species, tends to produce divergences.[ ] hence island life is more or less differentiated from that of the nearest mainland, according to the degree of isolation. continental islands, lying near the coast, possess generally a flora and fauna to a large extent identical with that of the mainland, and show few endemic species and genera; whereas remote oceanic islands, which isolation has claimed for its own, are marked by intense specialization and a high percentage of species and even genera found nowhere else.[ ] even a narrow belt of dividing sea suffices to loosen the bonds of kinship. recent as are the british isles and near the continent, they show some biological diversity from the mainland and from each other.[ ] [sidenote: paradoxical influences of island habitats upon man.] the influence of an island habitat upon its human occupants resembles that upon its flora and fauna, but is less marked. the reason for this is twofold. the plant and animal life are always the older and therefore have longer felt the effects of isolation; hence they bear its stamp in an intensified degree. man, as a later comer, shows closer affinity to his kin in the great cosmopolitan areas of the continents. more than this, by reason of his inventiveness and his increasing skill in navigation, he finds his sea boundary less strictly drawn, and therefore evades the full influence of his detached environment, though never able wholly to counteract it. for man in lowest stages of civilization, as for plants and animals, the isolating influence is supreme; but with higher development and advancing nautical efficiency, islands assume great accessibility because of their location on the common highway of the ocean. they become points of departure and destination of maritime navigation, at once center of dispersal and goal, the breeding place of expansive national forces seeking an outlet, and a place of hospitality for wanderers passing those shores. yet all the while, that other tendency of islands to segregate their people, and in this aloofness to give them a peculiar and indelible national stamp, much as it differentiates its plant and animal forms, is persistently operative. [sidenote: conservative and radical tendencies.] these two antagonistic influences of an island environment may be seen working simultaneously in the same people, now one, now the other being dominant; or a period of undisturbed seclusion or exclusion may suddenly be followed by one of extensive intercourse, receptivity or expansion. recall the contrast in the early and later history of the canaries, azores, malta, england, mauritius and hawaii, now a lonely, half-inhabited waste, now a busy mart or teeming way-station. consider the pronounced insular mind of the globe-trotting englishman, the deep-seated local conservatism characterizing that world-colonizing nation, at once the most provincial and cosmopolitan on earth. emerson says with truth, "every one of these islanders is an island himself, safe, tranquil, incommunicable."[ ] hating innovation, glorifying their habitudes, always searching for a precedent to justify and countenance each forward step, they have nevertheless led the world's march of progress. scattered by their colonial and commercial enterprises over every zone, in every clime, subjected to the widest range of modifying environments, they show in their ideals the dominant influence of the home country. the trail of the oxford education can be followed over the empire, east to new zealand and west to vancouver. highschool students of jamaica take oxford examinations in botany which are based upon english plant life and ignore the caribbean flora! school children in ceylon are compelled to study a long and unfamiliar list of errors in english speech current only in the london streets, in order to identify and correct them on the oxford papers, distributed with olympian impartiality to all parts of the empire. such insularity of mind seems to justify bernard shaw's description of britain as an island whose natives regard its manners and customs as laws of nature. yet these are the people who in the nile valley have become masters of irrigation, unsurpassed even by the ancient egyptians; who, in the snow-wrapped forests of hudson bay, are trappers and hunters unequalled by the indians; who, in the arid grasslands of australia, pasture their herds like nomad shepherd or american cowboy, and in the tropics loll like the natives, but somehow manage to do a white man's stint of work. [sidenote: the case of japan.] in japan, isolation has excluded or reduced to controllable measure every foreign force that might break the continuity of the national development or invade the integrity of the national ideal. japan has always borrowed freely from neighboring asiatic countries and recently from the whole world; yet everything in japan bears the stamp of the indigenous. the introduction of foreign culture into the empire has been a process of selection and profound modification to accord with the national ideals and needs.[ ] buddhism, coming from the continent, was japanized by being grafted on to the local stock of religious ideas, so that japanese buddhism is strongly differentiated from the continental forms of that religion.[ ] the seventeenth century catholicism of the jesuits, before it was hospitably received, had to be adapted to japanese standards of duty and ritual. modern japanese converts to christianity wish themselves to conduct the local missions and teach a national version of the new faith.[ ] but all the while, japanese religion has experienced no real change of heart. the core of the national faith is the indigenous shinto cult, which no later interloper has been permitted to dislodge or seriously to transform; and this has survived, wrapped in the national consciousness, wedded to the national patriotism, lifted above competition. here is insular conservatism. japan's sudden and complete abandonment of a policy of seclusion which had been rigidly maintained for two hundred and fifty years, and her entrance upon a career of widespread intercourse synchronously with one of territorial expansion and extensive emigration, form one of those apparently irreconcilable contradictions constantly springing from the isolation and world-wide accessibility of an island environment; yet underlying japan's present receptivity of new ideas and her outwardly indiscriminate adoption of western civilization is to be detected the deep primal stamp of the japanese character, and an instinctive determination to preserve the core of that character intact. [sidenote: islands as nurseries and disseminators of distinctive civilizations.] it is this marked national individuality, developed by isolation and accompanied often by a precocious civilization, in combination with the opposite fact of the imminent possibility of an expansive unfolding, a brilliant efflorescence followed by a wide dispersal of its seeds of culture and of empire, which has assigned to islands in all times a great historical rôle. rarely do these wholly originate the elements of civilization. for that their area is too small. but whatever seed ripen in the wide fields of the continents the islands transplant to their own forcing houses; there they transform and perfect the flower. japan borrowed freely from china and korea, as england did from continental europe; but these two island realms have brought asiatic and european civilization to their highest stage of development. now the borrowers are making return with generous hand. the islands are reacting upon the continents. japanese ideals are leavening the whole orient from manchuria to ceylon. english civilization is the standard of europe. "the russian in his snows is aiming to be english," says emerson. "england has inoculated all nations with her civilization, intelligence and tastes."[ ] [sidenote: ancient cretan civilization.] the recent discoveries in crete show beyond doubt that the school of aegean civilization was in that island. ancient phoenicia, argos, even mycenæ and tiryns put off their mask of age and appear as rosy boys learning none too aptly of their great and elderly master. borrowing the seeds of culture from asia and egypt,[ ] crete nursed and tended them through the neolithic and bronze age, transformed them completely, much as scientific tillage has converted the cotton tree into a low shrub. the precocity of this civilization is clear. at early as b.c. it included an impressive style of architecture and a decorative art naturalistic and beautiful in treatment as that of modern japan.[ ] from this date till the zenith of its development in b.c., crete became a great artistic manufacturing and distributing center for stone carving, frescoes, pottery, delicate porcelain, metal work, and gems.[ ] by b. c., seven centuries before phoenician writing is heard of, the island had matured a linear script out of an earlier pictographic form.[ ] this script, partly indigenous, partly borrowed from libya and egypt, gives crete the distinction of having invented the first system of writing ever practised in europe.[ ] yet all this wealth of achievement bore the stamp of the indigenous; nearly every trace of its remote asiatic or egyptian origin was obliterated. here the isolation of an island environment did thoroughly its work of differentiation, even on this thalassic isle which maintained constant intercourse with egypt, the cyclades, the troad and the greek peninsula.[ ] minoan art has a freshness, vivacity, and modernity that distinguishes it fundamentally from the formal products of its neighbors. "many of the favorite subjects, like the crocus and wild goat, are native to the islands.... even where a motive was borrowed from egyptian life, it was treated in a distinctive way," made tender, dramatic, vital. "in religion, as in art generally, crete translated its loans into indigenous terms, and contributed as much as it received."[ ] the curator of egyptian antiquities in the new york metropolitan art museum examined five hundred illustrations of second and third millenium antiquities from gournia and vasiliki in crete, made by mrs. harriet boyd hawes during her superintendence of the excavations there, and pronounced them distinctly un-egyptian, except one vase, probably an importation.[ ] all this was achieved by a small insular segment of the mediterranean race, in their neolithic and bronze age, before the advent of those northern conquerors who brought in an aryan speech and the gift of iron. it was in crete, therefore, that aegean civilization arose. on this island it had a long and brilliant pre-hellenic career, and thence it spread to the greek mainland and other aegean shores.[ ] [sidenote: limitation of small area in insular history.] a small cup soon overflows. islands may not keep; they are forced to give, live by giving. here lies their historical significance. they dispense their gifts of culture in levying upon the resources of other lands. but finally more often than not, the limitation of too small a home area steps in to arrest the national development, which then fades and decays. to this rule great britain and japan are notable exceptions, owing partly to the unusual size of their insular territory, partly to a highly advantageous location. minoan crete, in that gray antiquity when homeric history was still unborn, gave out of its abundance in art, government, laws and maritime knowledge to the eastern mediterranean world, till the springs of inspiration in its own small land were exhausted, and its small population was unable to resist the flood of northern invasion. then the dispenser of gifts had to become an alms-taker from the younger, larger, more resourceful hellenic world. the same story of early but short lived preëminence comes from other aegean islands. before the rise of athens, samos under the great despot polykrates became "the first of all cities, hellenic or barbaric," a center of ionian manners, luxury, art, science and culture, the seat of the first great thalassocracy or sea-power after that of cretan minos, a distributing point for commerce and colonies.[ ] much the same history and distinction attached to the island of rhodes long before the first olympiad,[ ] and to the little island of aegina.[ ] if we turn to the native races of america, we find that the haida indians of the queen charlotte archipelago are markedly superior to their tlingit and tsimshean kinsmen of the nearby alaskan and british columbian coast. in their many and varied arts they have freely borrowed from their neighbors; but they have developed these loans with such marvelous skill and independence that they greatly surpass their early masters, and are accredited with possessing the creative genius of all this coast.[ ] far away, on the remote southeastern outskirts of the island world of the pacific, a parallel is presented by little easter isle. once it was densely populated and completely tilled by a people who had achieved singular progress in agriculture, religion, masonry, sculpture in stone and wood carving, even with obsidian tools, and who alone of all the polynesians had devised a form of hieroglyphical writing.[ ] easter isle to-day shows only abandoned fields, the silent monuments of its huge stone idols, and the shrunken remnant of a deteriorated people.[ ] [sidenote: sources of ethnic stock of islands.] isolation and accessibility are recorded in the ethnic stock of every island. like its flora and fauna, its aboriginal population shows an affinity to that of the nearest mainland, and this generally in proportion to geographical proximity. the long line of deposit islands, built of the off-scourings of the land, and fringing the german and netherland coast from texel to wangeroog, is inhabited by the same frisian folk which occupies the nearby shore. the people of the channel isles, though long subject to england, belong to the franco-gallic stock and the _langue d'oïl_ linguistic family of northern france. the native canary islanders, though giving no evidence of previous communication with any continental land at the time of their discovery, could be traced, through their physical features, speech, customs and utensils, to a remote origin in egypt and the berber regions of north africa prior to the mohammedan conquest.[ ] sakhalin harbors to-day, besides the immigrant russians, five different peoples--ainos, gilyaks, orochons, tunguse, and yakuts, all of them offshoots of tribes now or formerly found on the siberian mainland a few miles away.[ ] [sidenote: ethnic divergence with increased isolation.] where the isolation of the island is more pronounced, owing either to a broader and more dangerous channel, as in the case of madagascar and formosa, or to the nautical incapacity of the neighboring coast peoples, as in the case of tasmania and the canary islands, the ethnic influence of the mainland is weak, and the ethnic divergence of the insular population therefore more marked, even to the point of total difference in race. but this is generally a case of survival of a primitive stock in the protection of an unattractive island offering to a superior people few allurements to conquest, as illustrated by the ethnic history of the andaman and kurile isles. [sidenote: differentiation of peoples and civilizations on islands.] the sea forms the sharpest and broadest boundary; it makes in the island which it surrounds the conditions for differentiation. thus while an insular population is allied in race and civilization to that of the nearest continent, it nevertheless differs from the same more than the several sub-groups of its continental kindred differ from each other. in other words, isolation makes ethnic and cultural divergence more marked on islands than on continents. the english people, despite their close kinship and constant communication with the teutonic peoples of the european mainland, deviate from them more than any of these germanic nations deviate from each other. the celts of great britain and ireland are sharply distinguished from the whole body of continental celts in physical features, temperament, and cultural development. in ireland the primitive catholic church underwent a distinctive development. it was closely bound up in the tribal organization of the irish people, lacked the system, order and magnificence of the latinized church, had its peculiar tonsure for monks, and its own date for celebrating easter for nearly three hundred years after the coming of st. patrick.[ ] the japanese, in their physical and mental characteristics, as in their whole national spirit, are more strikingly differentiated from the chinese than the agricultural chinese from the nomadic buriat shepherds living east of lake baikal, though chinese and japanese are located much nearer together and are in the same stage of civilization. the eskimo, who form one of the most homogeneous stocks, and display the greatest uniformity in language and cultural achievements of all the native american groups, have only one differentiated offshoot, the aleutian islanders. these, under the protection and isolation of their insular habitat from a very remote period, have developed to a greater extent than their eskimo brethren of the mainland. the difference is evident in their language, religious ceremonies, and in details of their handiwork, such as embroidery and grass-fiber weaving.[ ] the haidas of the queen charlotte archipelago show such a divergence in physique and culture from the related tribes of the mainland, that they have been accredited with a distinct origin from the other coast indians.[ ] [sidenote: differentiation of language in islands.] the differentiating influence is conspicuous in the speech of island people, which tends to form a distinct language or dialect or, in an archipelago, a group of dialects. the channel isles, along with their distinctive breeds of cattle, has each its own variant of the _langue d'oïl_.[ ] according to boccaccio's narrative of a portuguese voyage to the canaries in , the natives of one island could not understand those from another, so different were their languages. the statement was repeated by a later authority in in regard to the inhabitants of lancerote, fuerteventura, gomera and ferro, who had then been christianized. a partial explanation is supplied by the earlier visitors, who found the canary guanches with no means of communication between the several islands except by swimming.[ ] in the visayan group of the philippines, inhabited exclusively by the civilized visayan tribes except for the negritos in the mountainous interior, the people of cebu can not understand their brethren in the adjacent islands; in cuyos and calmanianes, dialects of the visayan are spoken.[ ] [see map page .] the differentiation of language from the nearby continental speech may be due to a higher development, especially on large islands affording very advantageous conditions, such as great britain and japan. japanese speech has some affinity with the great altaic linguistic family, but no close resemblance to any sub-group.[ ] it presents marked contrasts to the chinese because it has passed beyond the agglutinative stage of development, just as english has sloughed off more of its inflectional forms than the continental teutonic languages. [sidenote: archaic forms of speech in islands.] more often the difference is due to the survival of archaic forms of speech. this is especially the case on very small or remote islands, whose limited area or extreme isolation or both factors in conjunction present conditions for retardation. the speech of the sardinians has a strong resemblance to the ancient latin, retains many inflectional forms now obsolete in the continental romance languages; but it has also been enlivened by an infusion of catalan words, which came in by the bridge of the balearic islands during the centuries of spanish rule in sardinia.[ ] again, it is in minorca and majorca that this catalan speech is found in its greatest purity to-day. on its native soil in eastern spain, especially in barcelona, it is gradually succumbing to the official castilian, and probably in a few centuries will be found surviving only in the protected environment of the balearic isles. icelandic and the kindred dialects of the shetland and faroe islands had their origin in the classic norse of the ninth century, and are divergent forms of the speech of the viking explorers.[ ] the old frisian tongue of holland, sister speech to anglo-saxon, survives to-day only in west friesland beyond the great marshlands, and in the long-drawn belt of coastal islands from terschelling through helgoland to sylt, as also on the neighboring shores of schleswig-holstein.[ ] this region of linguistic survival, insulated partially by the marshes or completely by the shallow "wattenmeer" of this lowland coast, reminds us of the protracted life of the archaic lithuanian speech within a circle of sea and swamp in baltic russia, and the survival of the celtic tongue in peninsular brittany, cornwall, wales, in ireland, and the highlands and islands of scotland. [sidenote: unification of race in islands.] islanders are always coast dwellers with a limited hinterland. hence their stock may be differentiated from the mainland race in part for the same reason that all coastal folk in regions of maritime development are differentiated from the people of the back country, namely, because contact with the sea allows an intermittent influx of various foreign strains, which are gradually assimilated. this occasional ethnic intercrossing can be proved in greater or less degree of all island people. here is accessibility operating against the underlying isolation of an island habitat. the english to-day represent a mixture of celts with various distinct teutonic elements, which had already diverged from one another in their separate habitats--jutes, angles, saxons, danes, norse and norman french. the subsequent detachment of these immigrant stocks by the english channel and north sea from their home people, and their arrival in necessarily small bands enabled them to be readily assimilated, a process which was stimulated further by the rapid increase of population, the intimate interactive life and unification of culture which characterizes all restricted areas. hence islands, like peninsulas, despite ethnic admixtures, tend to show a surprising unification of race; they hold their people aloof from others and hold them in a close embrace, shut them off and shut them in, tend to force the amalgamation of race, culture and speech. moreover, their relatively small area precludes effective segregation within their own borders, except where a mountainous or jungle district affords a temporary refuge for a displaced and antagonized tribe. hence there arises a preponderance of the geographic over the ethnic and linguistic factors in the historical equation. the uniformity in cranial type prevailing all over the british isles is amazing; it is greater than in either spain or scandinavia. the cephalic indices range chiefly between and , a restricted variation as compared with the ten points which represents the usual range for central europe, and the thirteen between the extremes of and found in france and italy.[ ] japan stands in much the same ethnic relation to asia as britain to europe. she has absorbed aino, mongolian, malay and perhaps polynesian elements, but by reason of her isolation has been left free to digest these at her leisure, so that her population is fairly well assimilated, though evidences of the old mixture can be discerned.[ ] in corsica and sardinia a particularly low cephalic index, dropping in some communes to , and a particularly short stature point to a rare purity of the mediterranean race,[ ] and indicate the maintenance here of one ethnic type, despite the intermittent intrusion of various less pure stocks from the italian mainland, africa, phoenicia, arabia, and spain. the location of the islands off the main routes of the basin, their remoteness from shore, and the strong spirit of exclusiveness native to the people,[ ] bred doubtless from their isolation, have combined to reduce the amount of foreign intermixture. [sidenote: remoter sources of island populations.] islands do not necessarily derive their population from the land that lies nearest to them. a comparatively narrow strait may effectively isolate, if the opposite shore is inhabited by a nautically inefficient race; whereas a wide stretch of ocean may fail to bar the immigration of a seafaring people. here we find a parallel to the imperfect isolation of oceanic islands for life forms endowed with superior means of dispersal, such as marine birds, bats and insects.[ ] iceland, though relatively near greenland, was nevertheless peopled by far away scandinavians. these bold sailors planted their settlements even in greenland nearly two centuries before the eskimo. england received the numerically dominant element of its population from across the wide expanse of the north sea, from the bare but seaman-breeding coasts of germany, denmark and norway, rather than from the nearer shores of gaul. so the madeira and cape verde isles had to wait for the coming of the nautical portuguese to supply them with a population; and only later, owing to the demand for slave labor, did they draw upon the human stock of nearby africa, but even then by means of portuguese ships. [sidenote: double sources.] owing to the power of navigation to bridge the intervening spaces of water and hence to emphasize the accessibility rather than the isolation of these outlying fragments of land, we often find islands facing two or three ways, as it were, tenanted on different sides by different races, and this regardless of the width of the intervening seas, where the remote neighbors excel in nautical skill. formosa is divided between its wild malay aborigines, found on the eastern, mountainous side of the island, and chinese settlers who cultivate the wide alluvial plain on the western side.[ ] fukien strait, though only eighty miles wide, sufficed to bar formosa to the land-loving northern chinese till , when the island became an asylum for refugees from the manchu invaders; but long before, the wider stretches of sea to the south and north were mere passways for the sea-faring malays, who were the first to people the island, and the japanese who planted considerable colonies on its northern coasts at the beginning of the fifteenth century. [see map page .] in a similar way madagascar is divided between the malayan hovas, who occupy the eastern and central part of the island, and the african sakalavas who border the western coast. [see map page .] this distribution of the ethnic elements corresponds to that of the insect life, which is more african on the western side and more indo-malayan on the eastern.[ ] though the population shows every physical type between negro and malayan, and ethnic diversity still predominates over ethnic unity in this vast island, nevertheless the close intercourse of an island habitat has even in madagascar produced unification of language. malayan speech of an ancient form prevails everywhere, and though diversified into dialects, is everywhere so much alike that all malagasies can manage to understand one another.[ ] the first inhabitants were probably african; but the wide mozambique current ( miles), with its strong southward flow, was a serious barrier to fresh accessions from the mainland, especially as the nautical development of the african tribes was always low. meanwhile, however, successive relays of sea-bred malay-polynesians crossed the broad stretch of the indian ocean, occupied the island, and finally predominated over the original negro stock.[ ] then in historic times came arabs, swahilis, and east indians to infuse an asiatic element into the population of the coasts, while portuguese, english, dutch, and french set up short-lived colonies on its shores. but despite this intermittent foreign immigration, the fundamental isolation of madagascar, combined with its large area, enabled it to go its own slow historical gait, with a minimum of interference from outside, till france in began to assume control of the island. [sidenote: mixed population of small thalassic isles.] small thalassic islands, at an early date in their history, lose their ethnic unity and present a highly mixed population. the reasons for this are two. the early maritime development characterizing enclosed seas covers them with a network of marine routes, on which such islands serve as way stations and mid-sea markets for the surrounding shores. sailors and traders, colonists and conquerors flock to them from every side. such a nodal location on commercial routes insures to islands a cosmopolitanism of race, as opposed to the ethnic differentiation and unity which follows an outlying or oceanic situation. here the factor of many-sided accessibility predominates over isolation. the prevailing small area of such thalassic islands, moreover, involves a population so small that it is highly susceptible to the effects of intercrossing. too restricted to absorb the constant influx of foreign elements, the inhabitants tend to become a highly mixed, polyglot breed. this they continue to be by the constant addition of foreign strains, so long as the islands remain foci of trade or strategic points for the control of the marine highways. diomede island in bering strait is the great market place of the polar tribes. here siberian chukches and alaskan eskimos make their exchanges. the eskimo of st. lawrence island in bering sea, from long intercourse, have adopted certain articles of dress, the boats and part of the vocabulary of the chukches.[ ] kilwauru, located on a sand-bank at the eastern end of ceram, on the border between malayan and papuan island districts, is the metropolis of native traders in the far east. here gather the _praus_ of the sea-faring bugis bringing manufactured goods from singapore, and boats laden with the natural products of new guinea.[ ] the smaller these island marts and the wider their circle of trade, the more mixed is their population. thursday isle, an english coaling-station in torres strait, is a port of call for all steamers bound from europe or china for east australian ports, besides being a center of a big local trade in pearl shell and tripang. hence its population of souls comprises europeans of various nationalities, including british, germans, scandinavians, danes, spanish, portuguese, french and australians of european origin, besides south sea islanders, papuans, africans, philippines, chinese and other asiatics.[ ] [sidenote: mixed population of island markets.] antiquity shows the same thing on a smaller scale, which grew, however, with the expansion of the circle of commerce. ancient aegina in the saronic gulf received inhabitants from crete, argos, epidaurus in eastern argolis and athens; it became a central maritime market and its people sea-traders, whose goods of a certain small kind became known as "aegina wares."[ ] delos at the crossroads of the aegean was the center of longer radii. it became the inn for travelers and merchants sailing from asia and egypt to italy and greece, and hence drew to itself the trade and people of the whole mediterranean basin.[ ] the northwestern indian ocean had a similar emporium in the ancient dioscoridis, (sokotra) which focused on itself the trade between arabia and eastern africa.[ ] ceylon's location made it in ancient and medieval times the common meeting place for arab traders from the west and chinese merchants from the east; it thus became the sicily of the semi-enclosed north indian ocean. to-day its capital colombo is "the clapham junction of the eastern seas," where passengers change steamers for china, india and australia; a port of call for vessels passing from the straits of malacca to the persian gulf or mediterranean. hence ceylon's solid nucleus of singhalese and tamil population, protected against absorption by the large area of the island ( , square miles) is interspersed in the coastal districts with arabs, portuguese, eurasians dating from the old portuguese occupation, and some ten thousand europeans.[ ] the island of gotland, located at the crossroads of the baltic, was early adopted by the hanseatic merchants as their maritime base for the exploitation of swedish, finnish, and russian trade. here were "peoples of divers tongues," so the old chronicles say, while the archeological finds of byzantine, cufic, roman, anglo-saxon and german coins testify to the wide circle of trade whose radii focused at this nodal point of the baltic.[ ] [sidenote: significant location of island way stations.] the great importance of such islands has been due solely to their location. their size and resources are negligible quantities, but their natural position as way stations lent them preeminence so long as navigation held to short "laps," and was restricted to enclosed seas. in the wide expanse of the open ocean, similar sparsely scattered isles, like ascension, st. helena, the canaries and hawaii, assumed importance in proportion to their scarcity. though never the centers of rife intercourse like delos and gotland, those lying conspicuously in the track of commerce have succeeded in drawing to themselves the typical polyglot nodal population. mauritius, located at the southwestern entrance of the indian ocean about equally distant from aden, ceylon, bombay, singapore and west australia, and possessing the best harbor within many hundred miles, has been held successively by dutch, french and english, and to-day has a dense population of french, english and hindus.[ ] a situation at the northeast entrance to the caribbean sea, keystone of the vast arch formed by the greater and lesser antilles, made the island of st. thomas a natural distributing point for this whole basin. facing that much traveled virgin passage, and forming the first objective of vessels bound from europe to panama, it became a great ship rendezvous, and assumed strategic and commercial importance from early times. we find the same political owners here as in mauritius and in the same order--dutch, french and english, though in the island was occupied by the danes, then from to by the english again, and finally secured by the danes.[ ] the history of the falkland islands is a significant reflection of their location on the south oceanic trade route, where they command the entrance to the magellan straits and the passage round the horn, here on the outskirts of the world, where they form the only break in the wide blank surface of the south atlantic, they have been coveted and held in turn by the chief european powers having colonies in the orient,--by france, spain, england, spain again, england again, by argentine in , and finally by england since . their possession was of especial advantage to great britain, which had no other base in this part of the world intermediate between england and new zealand. [sidenote: thalassic islands as goals of expansion.] islands located in enclosed seas display the transitional character of border districts. they are outposts of the surrounding shores, and become therefore the first objective of every expanding movement, whether commercial or political, setting out from the adjacent coasts. such islands are swept by successive waves of conquest or colonization, and they carry in their people and language evidences of the wrack left behind on their shores. this has been the history of aegina, cyprus, rhodes, crete, malta, corfu, sicily and sardinia. that of cyprus is typical. it was the first island base for the ancient tyrian fleets, and had its phoenician settlements in b. c. from that time it was one of the many prizes in the mediterranean grab-bag for the surrounding nations. after the decline of tyre, it was occupied by greeks, then passed in turn to assyrians, egyptians, persians, romans, saracens, byzantines, and in was seized by the crusaders. later it fell to egypt again; but in was taken by genoa, in by venice, in by the turks, and finally in was consigned to england.[ ] all these successive occupants have left their mark upon its people, speech, culture and architecture. in the same way sicily, located at the waist of the mediterranean, has received the imprint of greeks, carthagenians, romans, saracens, normans, spaniards and italians.[ ] its architectural remains bear the stamp of these successive occupants in every degree of purity and blending. the sicilians of to-day are a mixture of all these intrusive stocks and speak a form of italian corrupted by the infusion of arabic words.[ ] in when the normans laid siege to palermo, five languages were spoken on the island,--greek, latin, hebrew, arabic and vulgar sicilian, evidence enough that it was the meeting ground of the nations of europe, asia and north africa.[ ] polyglot malta to-day tells the same story of successive conquests, the same shuttlecock history.[ ] almost every language of europe is spoken here; but the native maltese speech is a corrupt form of arabic mixed with modern italian and ancient phoenician words.[ ] the whole island is ethnographically a border hybrid of europe and north africa. the channel isles are to-day the only spot in europe where french and english survive side by side as official and commercial languages. french and italian meet on equal terms in corsica. chinese, japanese and malays have traded and warred and treated on the debatable land of formosa. the aru, ke, and other small archipelagoes of the banda sea link together the pure malay and the pure papuan districts, between which they lie. from the border character of many islands there follow often far-reaching historical effects. like all border regions they are natural battlegrounds. their historical episodes are small, often slow and insidious in their movement, but large in their final content; for they are prone to end in a sudden dramatic _denouement_ that draws the startled gaze of all the neighboring world. it was the destiny of sicily to make and unmake the fortunes of ancient carthage. ceylon, from the dawn of history, lured traders who enriched and conquerors who oppressed peninsular india. the advance of spain to the canary isles was the drowsy prologue to the brilliant drama of american discovery. the island of tsushima in the korean strait was seized by the forces of kublai khan in as the base of their attack upon japan;[ ] and when in the russian bear tried to plant a foot on this island, japan saw danger in the movement and ordered him off.[ ] now we find japan newly established in sakhalin, the elliot islands and formosa, by means of which and her own archipelago she blankets the coast of asia for twenty-two hundred miles. this geographical situation may be productive of history. [sidenote: political detachability of islands.] islands are detached areas physically and readily detached politically. though insularity gives them some measure of protection, their relatively small size and consequently small populations make them easy victims for a conquering sea power, and easy to hold in subjection. the security of an island habitat against aggression therefore, increases with its size, its efficiency in naval warfare, and its degree of isolation, the last of which factors depends in turn upon its location as thalassic or oceanic. islands of enclosed seas, necessarily small and never far from the close encircling lands, are engulfed by every tide of conquest emanating from the nearby shores. oesel and dago have been held in succession by every baltic power, by the teutonic orders, denmark, sweden and russia. gotland has acknowledged allegiance to the hanseatic league, to denmark and sweden. sardinia, occupying the center of the western mediterranean, has figured in a varied series of political combinations,--with ancient carthage, rome, the saracens of north africa, with sicily, pisa, aragon, piedmont, and finally now with united italy.[ ] to the land-bred teutonic hordes which swept over western europe in the early centuries of our era, a narrow strip of sea was some protection for sicily, corsica, sardinia, malta and the balearic isles. hence we find these islands slow in succumbing to their non-maritime conquerors, and readily regained by the energetic justinian. later they fell victim to the sea-wise saracens, but again gravitated back to their closer and more natural european connections. [sidenote: insular weakness due to small area.] more often the small area of an island facilitates its retention in bondage, when the large and less isolated continental districts have thrown off an unwelcome yoke. athens, with her strong navy, found it an easy task to whip back into the ranks of the delian confederacy her recalcitrant island subjects like naxos, samos and thasos; but her mutinous cities in peninsular chalcidice and isthmian megara, incited to revolt and aided by their neighbors,[ ] were less at her mercy. this principle was recognized by thucydides,[ ] and taken advantage of by the lacedæmonians during the great war for spartan supremacy. england has been able to hold ireland in a vise. of all her former french territory, she retains only the channel isles. cuba and porto rico remained in the crushing grasp of spain sixty-four years after mexico and the continental states of central and south america, by mutual help and encouragement, had secured independence. the islands found that the isolation which confers protection from outside aggression meant for them detachment from friendly sources of succor on the mainland. the desultory help of filibuster expeditions, easily checked at the port of departure or landing, availed little to supplement the inadequate forces of rebellion pent up on their relatively small areas. by contrast, mexico's larger area and population, continually stirred by american example and encouragement, reinforced by american volunteers and even by united states army officers, found revolt from to a comparatively easy task. cuba suffered from its geographic aloofness. so did little crete, which submitted to turkish oppression sixty years after the continental greeks had made good their claim to freedom. nor was this the first time that cretan liberty had suffered from the detachment of an island environment. aristotle recognized the principle when he wrote: "the people of crete have hitherto submitted to the rule of the leading families as _cosmi_, because the insular situation of crete cuts off the interference of strangers or foreigners which might stir up rebellion against the unjust or partial government." and then he adds that this insular exclusion of outside incitement long rendered the fidelity of the _perioeci_ or serf-like peasants of crete a striking contrast to the uneasy spirit of the spartan helots, who were constantly stirred to revolt by the free farmers of argos, messinia and arcadia.[ ] thus ancient like modern crete missed those beneficient stimuli which penetrate a land frontier, but are cut off by the absolute boundary of the sea. [sidenote: island remains of broken empires.] island fragments of broken empires are found everywhere. they figure conspicuously in that scattered location indicative of declining power. little st. pierre and miquelon are the last geographical evidences of france's former dominion in canada. the english bermudas and bahamas point back to the time when great britain held the long-drawn opposite coast. the british, french, dutch, danish, as once even swedish, holdings in the lesser antilles are island monuments to lost continental domains, as recently were cuba and porto rico to spain's once vast american empire. of portugal's widespread dominion in the orient there remain to her only the island fragments of timor, kambing, macao and diu, besides two coastal points on the western face of peninsular india. all the former continental holdings of the sultan of zanzibar have been absorbed into the neighboring german and british territories, and only the islands of zanzibar and pemba remain to him by the temporary indulgence of his strong neighbors. the sheik of the bahrein islands originally held also the large kingdom of el hasa on the nearby persian gulf littoral of arabia; but he lost this to the turks in , and now retains the bahrein islands as the residuum of his former territories.[ ] [sidenote: security of such remnants merely passive.] the insular remnants of empires are tolerated, because their small size, when unsupported by important location, usually renders them innocuous; and their geographic isolation removes them from international entanglements, unless some far-reaching anthropo-geographic readjustment lends them a new strategic or commercial importance. the construction of the suez canal gave england a motive for the acquisition of cyprus in , as a nearer base than malta for the protection of port said, just as the present panama canal project led the united states to re-open negotiations for the purchase of the danish isles. one cannot get away from the impression that the law of political detachability will operate again to make some new distribution of the parti-colored political holdings in the lesser antilles. the small size of these islands, and their thalassic location commanding approaches to a large region of only partially developed resources and to the interoceanic passway across it, will pitch them into the dice-box on the occasion of every naval war between their sovereign powers. the shifting fate of political detachability becomes moderated in islands of the open ocean, because of their remoteness from the colonizing or conquering movements emanating from the continents. in contrast to the changing political connections of thalassic isles, consider the calm or monotonous political history of outlying islands like the shetland, faroes, iceland, canaries, madeira, cape verde, azores, st. helena, ascension and hawaii. the norse colony of iceland, as a republic, maintained loose connections with its mother country from to ; then for nearly six centuries it followed the political fate of norway till , when an oversight left it in the hands of denmark on the dissolution of the union of denmark and norway. the azores have known no history except that which came to them from portugal; even their discovery goes back to a saracen navigator who, in , sailed from the mouth of the tagus a thousand miles straight into the sunset.[ ] for two hundred years thereafter extreme isolation kept them outside the pale of history till their rediscovery by prince henry, the navigator. [sidenote: political autonomy of islands based upon area and location.] land-masses, as we have found, are independent by location or independent by size. large islands, especially where they occupy an outskirt location, may long succeed in maintaining an independent national existence; but to render this permanent, they must supplement their area by the acquisition of continental lands, according to the law of increasing territorial aggregates. great britain and japan, though ethnically and culturally appendages of the nearby mainland, were large enough, aided by the dividing sea, to maintain political autonomy. they absorbed all the insular fragments lying about them to extend their areas, and then each in turn entered upon a career of continental expansion. to japan this movement as a determined policy came late, only when she faced the alternative of absorbing territory or being absorbed by all-devouring russia. the isolation of madagascar resulted in only slight community of race with africa, and combined with large area, has kept the island to a great extent distinct from the political history of africa. the impulses which swept the eastern coast of the continent reached the outlying island with abated force. arab, portuguese, dutch and english only scratched its rim. the character of its western coasts, of its vigorous malayan population, and of the intervening mozambique current rendered conquest difficult from the african shore. its large size, with the promise of abundant resources, offered a bait to conquest, yet put a barrier in its way. hence we find that not till , when the partition of continental africa was almost accomplished, did the french conquest of madagascar occur. by contrast, the closely grouped east indies, long coveted for their tropical products, suffered a contagion of conquest. the large size of these islands, so far from granting them immunity, only enabled the epidemic of portuguese and dutch dominion to pass from one to the other more readily, and that even when the spice and pepper trade languished from a plethora of products. but even here the size of the islands, plus the sub-equatorial climate which bars genuine white colonization, has restricted the effective political dominion of europeans to the coasts, and thus favored the survival of the natives undisturbed in the interior, with all their primitive institutions. the largest islands, like borneo and sumatra, have vast inland tracts still unexplored and devoted to savagery, thus illustrating the contrast between center and periphery. when australia, the largest of all the pacific island group, became an object of european expansion, its temperate and sub-tropical location adapted it for white colonization, and the easy task of conquering its weak and retarded native tribes encouraged its appropriation; but the natural autonomy which belongs to large area and detached location asserted itself in the history of british australia. the island continent is now erected into a confederation of states, enjoying virtual independence. in new zealand, we find the recent colonists taking advantage of their isolation to work out undisturbed certain unique social theories. here, against a background of arrested aboriginal development, another race evinces a radical spirit of progress; and to these contrasted results equally the detached island environment has contributed its share. [sidenote: historical effects of island isolation; primitive retardation.] the historical development of island peoples bears always in greater or less degree the stamp of isolation; but this isolation may lead to opposite cultural results. it may mean in one case retardation, in another accelerated development. its geographical advantages are distinctly relative, increasing rapidly with a rising scale of civilization. therefore in an island habitat the race factor may operate with or against the geographic factor in producing a desirable historical result. if the isolation is almost complete, the cultural status of the inhabitants low, and therefore their need of stimulation from without very great, the lack of it will sink them deeper in barbarism than their kinsmen on the mainland. the negroes of africa, taken as a whole, occupy a higher economic and cultural rank than the black races of australia and melanesia; and for this difference one cause at least is to be found in the difference of their habitats. the knowledge of iron, stock-raising, and many branches of agriculture were continental achievements, which belonged to the great eastern land-mass and spread from egypt over africa even to the hottentot country; the lack of them among the australians must be attributed to their insularity, which barred them from this knowledge, just as the ignorance of iron and other metals among the native canary islanders[ ] can only be ascribed to a sea barrier fifty-two miles wide. the scant acquaintance of the balearic islanders with iron in roman days[ ] points to insular detachment. the lack of native domesticable animals in the pacific archipelagoes illustrates another limitation incident to the restricted fauna of islands, though this particular lack also retarded the cultural development of primitive north america. [sidenote: later stimulation of development.] on the other hand, people who have already secured the fundamental elements of civilization find the partial seclusion of an island environment favorable to their further progress, because it permits their powers to unfold unhindered, protects them from the friction of border quarrels, from the disturbance and desolation of invading armies, to which continental peoples are constantly exposed. but even here the advantage lies in insulation but not in isolation,[ ] in a location like that of england or japan, near enough to a continent to draw thence culture, commerce and occasional new strains of blood, but detached by sea-girt boundaries broad enough to ward off overwhelming aggressions. such a location insures enough segregation for protection, but also opportunity for universal contact over the vast commons of the sea. [sidenote: excessive isolation.] excessive isolation may mean impoverishment in purse and progress even for an advanced race. ireland has long suffered from its outskirt location. it lies too much in the shadow of england, and has been barred by the larger island from many warming rays of immigration, culture and commerce that would have vitalized its national existence. the "round barrow" men of the bronze age, the romans, and the normans never carried thither their respective contributions to civilization. the scandinavians infused into its population only inconsiderable strains of their vigorous northern blood.[ ] in consequence the irish are to-day substantially the same race as in cæsar's time, except for the small, unassimilated group of antagonistic english and lowland scotch, both teutonic, in ulster.[ ] barred by great britain from direct contact with the continent and all its stimulating influences, suffering from unfavorable conditions of climate and topography, ireland's political evolution progressed at a snail's pace. it tarried in the tribal stage till after the english conquest, presenting a primitive social organization such as existed nowhere in continental europe. property was communal till the time of the tudors, and all law was customary.[ ] over-protected by excessive isolation, it failed to learn the salutary lesson of political co-operation and centralization for defense, such as scotland learned from england's aggressions, and england from her close continental neighbors. great britain, meanwhile, intercepted the best that the continent had to give, both blows and blessings, and found an advantage in each. the steady prosecution of her continental wars demanded the gradual erection of a standing army, which weakened the power of feudalism; and the voting of funds for the conduct of these same wars put a whip into the hand of parliament. [sidenote: the case of iceland.] the history of iceland illustrates the advantage and subsequently the drawback of isolation. the energetic spirits who, at the end of the ninth century, resented the centralization of political power in norway and escaped from the turmoil and oppression of the home country to the remote asylum offered by iceland, maintained there till the only absolutely free republic in the world.[ ] they had brought with them various seeds of culture and progress, which grew and flowered richly in this peaceful soil. iceland became the center of brilliant maritime and colonial achievements, the home of a native literature which surpassed that of all its contemporaries except dante's italy.[ ] but after the decay of the greenland colonies converted iceland from a focal into a remote terminal point, and after the progress of the world became based upon complex and far-reaching commercial relations, the blight of extreme isolation settled upon the island; peace became stagnation. [sidenote: protection of an island environment.] the concomitant of isolation is protection. though this protection, if the result of extreme isolation, may mean an early cessation of development, history shows that in the lower stages of civilization, when the social organism is small and weak, and its germs of progress easily blighted, islands offer the sheltered environment in which imported flowers of culture not only survive but improve; in less protected fields they deteriorate or disappear. when learning and christianity had been almost wiped out on the continent of europe by the ravages of barbarian invasion between and a. d., in ireland they grew and flourished. in the seventh and eighth centuries, the high scholarship of the irish monks and their enthusiastic love of learning for its own sake drew to their schools students of the noblest rank from both england and france.[ ] it was from irish teachers that the picts of scotland and the angles of northern england received their first lessons in christianity. these fixed their mission stations again on islands, on iona off southwestern scotland and on lindisfarne or holy isle near the east coast of northumbria.[ ] it was in the protected environment of the medieval iceland that scandinavian literature reached its highest development. insular protection was undoubtedly a factor in the brilliant cultural development of crete. the progress of the early civilization from the late stone age through the bronze age was continuous; it bears no trace of any strong outside influence or sudden transition, no evidence of disturbance like an invasion or conquest by an alien people till b. c. when the latest stage of minoan art was crushed by barbarian incursion from the north.[ ] [sidenote: factor of protection in ceylon and japan.] the early history of the singhalese monarchy in ceylon from b. c. to a. d., when even the narrow moat of palk strait discouraged tamil invasions from the mainland, shows the brilliant development possible under even a slight degree of protection.[ ] however, in the case of these ceylon aryans, as in that of the icelandic norse, we must keep in mind the fact that the bearers of this culture were picked men, as are early maritime colonists the world over. the sea selects and then protects its island folk. but the seclusion of ceylon was more favorable to progress than the mainland of india, with its incessant political and religious upheavals. japan, in contrast to china's long list of invasions, shows the peace of an insular location. she never suffered any overwhelming influx of alien races or any foreign conquest. the armada sent by kublai khan in to subdue the islands paralleled the experience of the famous spanish fleet three centuries later in english waters. this is the only attempt to invade japan that recorded history shows.[ ] in the original peopling of the island by mongolian stock at the cost of the aino aborigines, there is evidence of two distinct and perhaps widely separated immigrations from the mainland, one from korea and another from more northern asia. thus japan's population contained two continental elements, which seem to have held themselves in the relation of governing and governed class, much as norman and saxon did in england, while the ainos lingered in the geographical background of mountain fastness and outlying islands, as the primitive celts did in the british isles.[ ] in the case both of england and japan, the island location made the occupation by continental races a fitful, piecemeal process, not an inundation, because only small parties could land from time to time. the result was gradual or partial amalgamation of the various stocks, but nowhere annihilation. [sidenote: character of the invaders as factor.] but island location was not the sole factor in the equation. similarity of race and relative parity of civilization between the successive immigrants and the original population, as well as the small numbers of the invaders, made the struggle for the ownership of the island not wholly one-sided, and was later favorable to amalgamation in england as in japan; whereas very small bands of far-coming spaniards in the canaries, cuba, and porto rico resulted in the extinction of the original inhabitants, by the process operating now in new zealand and australia. prior to the arrival of the europeans in the antilles, the conquest of these islands by south american caribs had resulted in race intermixture. these sea-marauders brought no women with them in their small boats from the distant mainland, so they killed off the men and married the arawak women of the islands. here again insular location plus similarity of race and culture produced amalgamation, as opposed to extermination of the vanquished by over-sea invaders. while the insular security of a primitive folk like the tasmanians, hawaiians and malagasies is only passive, that of a civilized people like the english and modern japanese is active, consciously utilized and reinforced. it is therefore more effective, and productive of more varied political and cultural results. such people can allow themselves extensive contact with other nations, because they know it is in their power to control or check such contact at will. japan took refuge in its medieval period in a policy of seclusion suggested by its island habitat,[ ] relying on the passive protection of isolation. england, on the other hand, from the time of king alfred, built up a navy to resist invasion. the effect, after the political unification of great britain, was a guarantee of protection against foreign attack, the concentration of the national defenses in a navy,[ ] the elimination of the standing army which despotic monarchs might have used to crush the people, the consequent release of a large working force from military service, and the application of these to the development of english industry.[ ] [sidenote: islands as places of refuge.] islands, as naturally protected districts, are often sought places of refuge by the weak or vanquished, and thus are drawn into the field of historical movement. we find this principle operating also in the animal world. the fur seals of the north pacific have fled from the american coasts and found an asylum on the pribiloff islands of bering sea, where their concentration and isolation have enabled them to become wards of the united states government, though this result they did not foresee. the last rhytina or arctic sea-cow was found on an island in bering strait.[ ] so the veneti of northern italy in the fifth century sought an asylum from the desolating huns and, a century later, from the lombards, in the deposit islands at the head of the adriatic, and there found the geographic conditions for a brilliant commercial and cultural development. formosa got its first contingent of chinese settlers in the thirteenth century in refugees seeking a place of safety from kublai khan's armies; and its second in in a chinese chief and his followers who had refused to submit to the victorious manchus. in formosa was an asylum also for japanese christians, who escaped thither from the persecutions attending the discovery of jesuit conspiracies against the government.[ ] the azores, soon after their rediscovery in , were colonized largely by flemish refugees,[ ] just as iceland was peopled by rebellious norwegians. to such voluntary exiles the dividing sea gives a peculiar sense of security, this by a psychological law. hence england owing to its insular location, and also to its free government, has always been an asylum for the oppressed. the large body of huguenot refugees who sought her shores after the revocation of the edict of nantes added a valuable element to her population. [sidenote: convict islands.] islands find their populations enriched by the immigration of this select class who refuse to acquiesce in oppression and injustice. but the geographic conditions which make islands natural asylums make them also obvious places of detention for undesirable members of society; these conditions render segregation complete, escape difficult or impossible, and control easy. hence we find that almost all the nations of the world owning islands have utilized them as penal stations. from the gray dawn of history the isles of the blessed have been balanced by the isles of the cursed. the radiant garden of hesperides has found its antithesis in the black hell of norfolk isle, peopled by the "doubly condemned" criminals whom not even the depraved convict citizens of botany bay could tolerate.[ ] there is scarcely an island of the mediterranean without this sinister vein in its history. the archipelagoes of the ancient aegean were constantly receiving political exiles from continental greece. augustus cæsar confined his degenerate daughter julia, the wife of tiberius, on the island of pandateria, one of the ponza group; and banished her paramour, sempronius gracchus, to cercina in the syrtis minor off the african coast.[ ] other roman matrons of high degree but low morals and corrupt officials were exiled to corsica, sardinia, seriphos, amorgos and other of the cyclades.[ ] to-day italy has prisons or penal stations in ischia, the ponza group, procida, nisida, elba, pantellaria, lampedusa, ustica, and especially in the lipari isles, where the convicts are employed in mining sulphur, alum and pumice from the volcanic cones.[ ] [sidenote: penal colonies on uninhabited islands.] in modern times many remote oceanic islands have gotten their first or only white settlers from this criminal class. such are the citizens whom chile has sent to easter isle twenty-five hundred miles away out in the pacific.[ ] the inhabitants of fernando noronha, miles off the eastern point of south america, are convicts from brazil, together with the warders and troops who guard them.[ ] in ecuador began to use the uninhabited gallapagos islands, lying miles west of its coast, as a penal settlement.[ ] the history of st. helena is typical. its first inhabitants were some portuguese deserters who in punishment were marooned here from a portuguese ship with a supply of seed and cattle. they proved industrious and had cultivated a good deal of the land when four years later they were removed to portugal. the next inhabitants were a few slaves of both sexes who escaped from a slave ship that had stopped here for wood and water. these multiplied, worked and restored the overgrown plantations of their predecessors, till a portuguese vessel about twenty years later was sent to exterminate them. a few escaped to the woods, however, and were found there in prosperity in .[ ] from till st. helena was the prison of napoleon. many of these penal islands seem chosen with a view to their severe or unhealthy climate, which would forever repel free immigration and therefore render them useless for any other purpose. this is true of the french isles du salut off the guiana coast, of spanish fernando po in the gulf of guinea, of the andaman and nicobar islands, notoriously unhealthy, which receive the criminals of british india,[ ] and of numerous others. a bleak climate and unproductive soil have added to the horror of exile life in sakhalin, as they overshadowed existence in the falkland islands, when these were a penal colony of spain and later of argentine.[ ] [sidenote: island prisons for political offenders.] in the case of political offenders and incorrigibles, the island prison is as remote and inaccessible as possible. the classic example is napoleon's consignment to elba and subsequently to st. helena, whence escape was impossible. spain has sent its rebellious subjects, even university professors of independent views, to fernando po in the gulf of guinea and teneriffe in the canaries.[ ] russian political offenders of the most dangerous class are confined first in the schlüsselberg prison, situated on a small island in lake ladoga near the effluence of the neva. there they languish in solitary confinement or are transferred to far-off sakhalin, whose very name is taboo in st. petersburg.[ ] during our civil war, one of the dry tortugas, lying a hundred miles west of the southern point of florida and at that time the most isolated island belonging to the american government, was used as a prison for dangerous confederates; and here later three conspirators in the assassination of president lincoln were incarcerated.[ ] far away to the southeast, off the coast of south america, are the isles du salut, a french penal station for criminals of the worst class. the isle du diable, ominous of name, lies farthest out to sea. this was for five years the prison of dreyfus. its other inhabitants are lepers. isles of the cursed indeed! [sidenote: islands as places of survival.] what islands have they tend to hold, to segregate, secrete from meddling hands, preserve untouched and unaltered. owing to this power to protect, islands show a large percentage of rare archaic forms of animal and plant life. the insular fauna of australia, tasmania, new guinea and madagascar display a succession of strange, ancestral forms going back to the biological infancy of the world. the canaries in the atlantic and celebes in the pacific are museums of living antiquities, some of them dating probably from miocene times.[ ] such survivals are found elsewhere only in high mountains, whose inaccessible slopes also offer protection against excessive competition. hence some of the antiquated species of insular celebes, formosa, japan and hainon occur again on the asiatic mainland only in the himalayas.[ ] for man, too, islands and their sister areas of isolation, mountains, are areas of survivals. the shrinking remnants of that half-dwarf negrito stock which may have formed the aboriginal population of southern asia are found to-day only in the mountains of peninsular india and in island groups like the andaman and the philippines. but even in the philippines, they are confined either to the mountainous interiors of the larger islands, or to little coastal islets like polillo, alabat, jomalig, and others.[ ] [see map page .] yezo, sakhalin and the kurile isles harbor the last feeble remnants of the ainos, a primitive people who formerly occupied a long stretch of the asiatic coast south of the amur mouth. the protected environment of these islands has postponed the doom of extinction toward which the ainos are hastening.[ ] with insular conservatism they dress, live and seek their food on the sea to-day, just as depicted in japanese art and literature at the dawn of history.[ ] [see map page .] [sidenote: insular survivals of manners and customs.] it is chiefly on islands of harsh climatic conditions, like sakhalin, or of peculiarly restricted resources and area, like the andaman, or of remote, side-tracked location, like iceland, sardinia and cape breton, that the stamp of the primitive or antiquated is strongest. even when not apparent in race stock, owing to the ubiquitous colonization of maritime peoples, it marks the language and customs of even these late-coming occupants, because an island environment asserts always some power to isolate. this is due not only to the encircling moat of sea, but also to the restricted insular area, too small to attract to itself the great currents of human activity which infuse cosmopolitan ideas and innovations, and too poor to buy the material improvements which progress offers. if the tourist in sicily finds the women of taormina or girgenti spinning with a hand spindle, and the express trains moving only twelve miles an hour, he can take these two facts as the product of a small, detached area, although this island lies at the crossroads of the mediterranean. corsica and sardinia, lying off the main routes of travel in this basin, are two of the most primitive and isolated spots of europe. here the old wooden plow of roman days is still in common use as it is in crete, and feudal institutions of the middle ages still prevail to some extent[ ],--a fact which recalls the long survival of feudalism in japan. the little isle of man, almost in sight of the english coast, has retained an old norse form of government. here survives the primitive custom of orally proclaiming every new law from the tynwald hill before it can take effect,[ ] and the other ancient usage of holding the court of justice on the same hill under the open sky. the faroe islands and iceland are museums of norse antiquities. the stamp of isolation and therefore conservatism is most marked in the remoter, northern islands. surnames are rare in iceland, and such as exist are mostly of foreign origin. in their place, christian names followed by the patronymic prevail; but in the faroes, these patronymics have in a great many cases become recognized as surnames. so again, while the faroese women still use a rude spinning-wheel introduced from scotland in , in iceland this spinning-wheel was still an innovation in , and even to-day competes with spindles. hand-querns for grinding wheat, stone hammers for pounding fish and roots, the wooden weighing-beam of the ancient northmen, and quaint marriage customs give the final touch of aloofness and antiquity to life on these remote islands.[ ] [sidenote: effects of small area in islands.] as all island life bears more or less the mark of isolation, so it betrays the narrow area that has served at its base. though islands show a wide variation in size from the , square miles ( , square kilometers) of new guinea or the , square miles ( , square kilometers) of borneo to the private estates like the scilly isles, gardiner and shelter islands off long island, or those small, sea-fenced pastures for sheep and goats near the new england coast and in the aegean, yet small islands predominate; the large ones are very few. islands comprise a scant seven per cent. of the total land area of the earth, and their number is very great,--nine hundred, for instance, in the philippine group alone. therefore small area is a conspicuous feature of islands generally. it produces in island people all those effects which are characteristic of small, naturally defined areas, especially early or precocious social, political and cultural development. the value of islands in this respect belongs to the youth of the world, as seen in the ancient mediterranean, or in the adolescence of modern primitive races; it declines as the limitations rather than the advantages of restricted territory preponderate in later historical development. [sidenote: political dominion of small islands.] this early maturity, combined with the power to expend the concentrated national or tribal forces in any given direction, often results in the domination of a very small island over a large group. in the society islands, cook found little balabola ruling over ulietea (raitea) and otaha, the former of these alone being over twice the size of balabola, whose name commanded respect as far as tahiti.[ ] the fiji archipelago was ruled in pre-christian days by the little islet of mbau, scarcely a mile long, which lies like a pebble beside massive viti levu. it was the chief center of political power and its supremacy was owned by nearly all the group. the next important political center was rewa, no larger than mbau, which had for its subject big mbengga.[ ] in the same way, the solomon group was ruled by mongusaie and simbo, just as tiny new lauenberg lorded it over the larger islands of the bismarck archipelago.[ ] when the dutch in undertook the conquest of the coveted spice isles, they found there two rival sultans seated in the two minute islets of ternate and tidore off the west coast of gilolo. their collective possessions, which the dutch took, comprised all the moluccas, the ke and banda groups, the whole of northwestern new guinea, and mindanao of the philippines.[ ] it was no unusual thing for classic aegean isles to control and exploit goodly stretches of the nearest coast, or to exercise dominion over other islands. aristotle tells us that crete's location across the southern end of the aegean sea confirmed to it by nature the early naval empire of the hellenic world. minos conquered some of the islands, colonized others,[ ] and, according to the story of theseus and the minotaur, laid athens under tribute; but his suppression of piracy in these waters and his conspicuous leadership in the art of navigation point to a yet more significant supremacy. so insular venice ruled and exploited large dependencies. the island of zealand, strategically located at the entrance to the baltic, has been the heart and head and strong right arm of the danish dominion, through all its long history of fluctuating boundaries. england's insularity has been the strongest single factor in the growth of her vast colonial empire and in the maintenance of its loyal allegiance and solidarity. the widely strewn plantation of her colonies is the result of that teeming island seed-bed at home; while the very smallness of the mother country is the guarantee of its supremacy over its dependencies, because it is too small either to oppress them or to get along without them. now an asiatic variant of english history is promised us by growing japan. [sidenote: economic limitations of their small area.] though political supremacy is possible even to an island of insignificant size, both the advantages arid the grave disadvantages of small area are constantly asserting themselves. some developments peculiar to large territory are here eliminated at the start. for instance, robbery and brigandage, which were so long a scourge in peninsular greece, were unheard of on the small aegean islands. sheep-raising was at an early date safer in england than on the continent, because wolves were earlier exterminated there. bio-geography shows an increasing impoverishment in the flora and fauna, of small islands with distance from the mainland. in the pacific ocean, this progressive impoverishment from west to east has had great influence upon human life in the islands. in polynesia, therefore, all influences of the chase and of pastoral life are wanting, while in melanesia, with its larger islands and larger number of land animals, hunting still plays an important part, and is the chief source of subsistence for many new guinea villages.[ ] therefore a corresponding decay of projectile weapons is to be traced west to east, and is conspicuous in those crumbs of land constituting polynesia and micronesia. the limit of the bow and arrow includes the northeastern portion of the philippine group, cuts through the malay archipelago so as to include the moluccas and flores, includes melanesia as far as tonga or the friendly isles, but excludes micronesia, polynesia and australia, even in melanesia, however, bows and arrows are not universal; they are lacking in peripheral islands like new caledonia and new ireland.[ ] the restriction of trees, also, with the exception of the coco-palm and pandanus, has had its effect upon boat making. this general impoverishment is unmistakably reflected in the whole civilization of the smaller islands of polynesia and micronesia, especially in the paumota and pelew groups. in the countless coralline islands which strew the pacific, another restricting factor is found in their monotonous geological formation. owing to the lack of hard stone, especially of flint, native utensils and weapons have to be fashioned out of wood, bones, shells, and sharks' teeth.[ ] [sidenote: poverty of alluvial lowlands in islands.] nor does the geographical limitation end here. islands have proportionately a scanter allowance of fertile alluvial lowlands than have continents. this follows from their geological history, except in the case of those low deposit islands built up from the waste of the land. most islands are summits of submerged mountain ranges, like corsica and sardinia, the aegean archipelagoes, the greater antilles, vancouver, and the countless fiord groups; or they are single or composite volcanic cones, like the canaries, azores, lipari, kurile, fiji, ascension, st. helena and the lesser antilles; or they are a combination of highland subsidence and volcanic out-thrust, like japan, the philippines, the long sunda chain and iceland. both geologic histories involve high reliefs, steep slopes, a deep surrounding sea, and hence rarely a shallow continental shelf for the accumulation of broad alluvial lowlands. among the aegean isles only naxos has a flood plain; all the rest have steep coasts, with few sand or gravel beaches, and only small deposit plains at the head of deep and precipitous embayments. japan's area of arable soil is to-day only . per cent. of its total surface, even after the gentler slopes of its mountains have been terraced up two thousand feet. some authorities put the figure lower, at and per cent. [sidenote: dense populations of islands.] yet in spite of limited area and this paucity of local resources, islands constantly surprise us by their relatively dense populations. more often than not they show a density exceeding that of the nearest mainland having the same zonal location, often the same geologic structure and soil. along with other small, naturally defined areas, they tend to a closer packing of the population. yet side by side with this relative over-population, we find other islands uninhabited or tenanted only by sheep, goats and cattle. in the wide pacific world comprising australia and oceanica, islands take up fifteen per cent. of the total land area, but they contain forty-four per cent. of the population.[ ] the insular empire of japan, despite the paucity of its arable soil, has a density of population nearly twice that of china, nearly three times that of korea, and exceeding that of any political subdivision of continental asia; but japan, in turn, is surpassed in congestion only by java, with a density of to the square mile,[ ] which almost equals that of belgium ( ) and england ( ). great britain has a density of population ( to the square mile) only exceeded in continental europe by that of belgium, but surpassed nearly threefold by that of the little channel isles, which amounts to to the square mile.[ ] if the average density of the united kingdom is greatly diminished in ireland, just as italy's is in sardinia and france's in corsica, this fact is due primarily to a side-tracked or overshadowed location and adverse topography, combined with misgovernment. if we compare countries which are partly insular, partly continental, the same truth emerges. the kingdom of greece has fifteen per cent of its territory in islands. here again population reaches its greatest compactness in corfu and zante, which are nearly thrice as thickly inhabited as the rest of greece.[ ] similarly the islands which constitute so large a part of denmark have an average density of to the square mile as opposed to the of jutland. the figures rise to to the square mile in the danish west indies, but drop low in the bleak, subarctic insular dependencies of greenland, iceland and the faroes. portugal's density is tripled in the madeiras[ ] and doubled in the azores,[ ] but drops in the badly placed cape verde island, exposed to tropical heat and the desiccating tradewinds blowing off the sahara. spain's average rises twenty-five per cent. in the canary islands, which she has colonized, and france's nearly doubles in the french west indies. the british west indies, also, with the exception of the broken coral bank constituting the bahamas, show a similar surprising density of population, which in bermuda and barbadoes surpasses that of england, and approximates the teeming human life of the channel isles. [sidenote: density of population in polynesia.] this general tendency toward a close packing of the population in the smaller areas of land comes out just as distinctly in islands inhabited by natural peoples in the lower stages of development. despite the retarded economic methods peculiar to savagery and barbarism, the polynesian islands, for instance, often show a density of population equal to that of spain and greece ( to the square mile) and exceeding that of european turkey and russia. "over the whole extent of the south sea," says robert louis stevenson, "from one tropic to another, we find traces of a bygone state of over-population, when the resources of even a tropical soil were taxed, and even the improvident polynesian trembled for the future."[ ] he calls the gilbert atolls "warrens of men."[ ] one of them, drummond's island, with, an area of about twenty square miles, contained a population of , in , and all the atolls were densely populated.[ ] to-day they count , inhabitants in less than square miles. the neighboring marshall group has , on its square miles of area. the caroline and pelew archipelagoes show a density of to the square mile, the tonga or friendly group harbor about and the french holdings of futuma and wallis (or uea) the same.[ ] so the bismarck archipelago, solomon, hawaiian, samoan and marianne islands have to-day populations by no means sparse, despite the blight that everywhere follows the contact of superior with primitive peoples. [sidenote: various causes of this density.] in all these cases, if economic status be taken into account, we have a density bordering on congestion; but the situation assumes a new aspect if we realize that the crowded inhabitants of small islands often have the run of the coco plantations and fishing grounds of an entire archipelago. the smaller, less desirable islands are retained as fish and coco-palm preserves to be visited only periodically. of a low, cramped, monotonous coral group, often only the largest and most productive is inhabited,[ ] but that contains a population surprising in view of the small base, restricted resources and low cultural status of its inhabitants. the population of the wide-strewn paumota atolls was estimated as about , in . of these fully one-half lived on anaa or chain island, and one-fourth on gambier, but they levied on the resources of the other islands for supplies.[ ] the tonga islands at the same time were estimated to have , inhabitants, about half of whom were concentrated on tongatabu, while hapai and varao held about , each.[ ] [sidenote: crowded and vacant islands.] this is one of the sharp contrasts in island life,--here density akin to congestion, there a few miles away a deserted reef or cone rising from the sea, tenanted only by sheep or goats or marine birds, its solitude broken only by the occasional crunching of a boat's keel upon its beach, as some visitant from a neighboring isle comes to shear wool, gather coco-nuts, catch birds or collect their eggs. all the inhabitants of the westman isles off the southern coast of iceland live in one village on heimey, and support themselves almost entirely by fishing and fowling birds on the wild crags of the archipelago.[ ] an oceanic climate, free contact with the gulf stream, and remoteness from the widespread ice fields of iceland give them an advantage over the vast island to the north. only twenty-seven of the ninety islands composing the orkney group are inhabited, and about forty smaller ones afford natural meadows for sheep on their old red sandstone soil;[ ] but pomona, the largest orkney has , inhabitants on its square miles of territory or to the square mile. the shetlands tell the same story-- out of islands inhabited, some of the _holms_ or smaller islets serving as pastures for the sturdy ponies and diminutive cattle, and mainland, the largest of the group, showing inhabitants to the square mile. this is a density far greater than is reached in the nearby regions of scotland, where the county of sutherland can boast only to the square mile, and invernesshire . here again insularity and contracted area do their work of compressing population. the causes of this insular density of population are not far to seek. islands can always rely on the double larder of land and sea. they are moreover prone to focus in themselves the fishing industry of a large continental area, owing to their ample contact with the sea. shetland is now the chief seat of the scotch herring fishery, a fact which contributes to its comparatively dense population. the concentration of the french export trade of newfoundland fish in little st. pierre and miquelon accounts for the relatively teeming population ( to the square mile) and the wealth of those scraps of islands. so the lofoden islands of norway, like iceland, newfoundland and sakhalin, balance a generous sea against an ungenerous soil, and thus support a population otherwise impossible. [sidenote: oceanic climate as factor.] for these far northern islands, the moderating effect of an oceanic climate has been a factor in making them relatively populous, just as it is on tropical isles by mitigating heat and drought. the prosperity and populousness of the bermuda islands are to be explained largely by the mild, equable climate which permits the raising of early vegetables and flowers for english and american markets. like climatic conditions and a like industry account for the , souls living on the inhabited islands of the scilly group. here intensive horticulture supports a large force of workmen and yields a profit to the lord proprietor. syros in the cyclades fattens on its early spring vegetable trade with athens and constantinople.[ ] in the mediterranean lands, where drought and excessive heat during the growing season offer adverse conditions for agriculture, the small islands, especially those of fertile volcanic soil, show the greatest productivity and hence marked density of population. though the rainfall may be slight, except where a volcanic peak rises to condense moisture, heavy dews and the thick mists of spring quicken vegetation. this is the case in malta, which boasts a population of , to the square mile, exclusive of the english garrison.[ ] little limosa and pantellaria, the merest fragments of land out in the mid-channel of the mediterranean, have a population of to the square mile.[ ] the lipari group north of sicily average nearly on every square mile of their fertile soil;[ ] but this average rises in salina to , and in lipari itself, as also in ponza of the pontine group, to nearly . here fertile volcanic slopes of highly cultivated land lift vineyards, orchards of figs, and plantations of currants to the sunny air. but nearby alicuri, almost uncultivated, has a sparse population of some five hundred shepherds and fishermen. panaria and filicuri are in about the same plight. here again we find those sharp island contrasts. [sidenote: relation of density to area.] the insular region of the indian ocean, which is inhabited by peoples quite different in race and cultural status from those of the mediterranean, yet again demonstrates the power of islands to attract, preserve, multiply and concentrate population. this is especially true of the smaller islands, which in every case show a density of population many times that of the neighboring mainland of africa. only vast madagascar, continental in size, repeats the sparsity of the continent. an oceanic climate increases the humidity of the islands as compared with the mainland lying in the same desiccating tradewind belt. moreover their small area has enabled them to be permeated by incoming arab, english, and french influences, which have raised their status of civilization and therewith the average density of population. this culminates in english mauritius, which shows inhabitants to the square mile, occupied in the production of sugar, molasses, rum, vanilla, aloes, and copra. in zanzibar this density is to the square mile; in reunion ; in mayotte, the comores and seychelles, the average varies from to to the square mile, though mahe in the seychelles group has one town of , inhabitants.[ ] in the malay archipelago, an oceanic climate and tropical location have combined to stimulate fertility to the greatest extent; but this local wealth has been exploited in the highest degree in the smaller islands having relatively the longest coastline and amplest contact with the sea. the great continent-like areas of borneo, new guinea and sumatra show a correspondingly sparse population; java, smaller than the smallest of these and coated with mud from its fertilizing volcanoes, supports inhabitants to the square mile; but this exceptional average is due to rare local productivity. java's little neighbors to the east, bali and lombok, each with an area of only about square miles, have a density respectively of and to the square mile. this density rises suddenly in small amboina (area square miles), the isle of the famous clove monopoly, to ,[ ] drops in the other moluccas, where papuan influences are strong, even to , but rises again in the pure malayan philippines to . in the philippines a distinct connection is to be traced between the density of population and smallness of area. the explanation lies in the attraction of the coast for the sea-faring malay race, and the mathematical law of increase of shoreline with decrease of insular area. since per cent. of the whole philippine population inhabits coastal municipalities, it is not surprising that the islands from ten to a hundred square miles in area count inhabitants to the square mile, and those of less than ten square miles, of which there are nearly a thousand, have a density of .[ ] this same insular density, supported by fertility, fisheries and trade, appears again in the west indies, and also the contrast in density between large and small islands down to a certain limit of diminutiveness. the greater antilles increase in density from cuba through smaller haiti and jamaica down to little porto rico, which boasts inhabitants to the square mile. in the smaller area of the danish indies and guadeloupe about this same density ( and ) reappears; but it mounts to in martinique and to in barbadoes.[ ] [sidenote: island resorts.] climate advantages often encourage density of population on islands, by attracting to them visitors who make a local demand for the fruits of the soil and thereby swell the income of the islands. for instance, about the densely populated region of the gulf of naples, procida has , inhabitants on its one and a half square miles of area, while fertile ischia and capri have to the square mile. here a rich volcanic soil, peaks which attract rain by their altitude and visitors by their beauty, and a mild oceanic climate delightful in winter as in summer, all contribute to density of population. sicily, malta and corfu also gain in the same way in winter. the isle of man owes some of its recent increase of population, now to the square mile, to the fact that it has become the summer playground for the numerous factory workers of lancashire in england. [sidenote: density of population affected by focal location for trade.] sometimes climatic advantages are reinforced by a favorable focal point, which brings the profits of trade to supplement those of agriculture. this factor of distributing and exporting center has undoubtedly contributed to the prosperity and population of reunion, mahe, mauritius and zanzibar, as it did formerly to that of ancient rhodes and modern st. thomas at the angle of the antilles. barbadoes, by reason of its outpost location to the east of the windward isles, is the first to catch incoming vessels from england, and is therefore a focus of steamship lines and a distributing point for the southern archipelago, so that we find here the greatest density of any island in the west indies.[ ] the inhabitants of charlotte amalie on st. thomas and the , of willemsted on curaçao give these also a characteristic insular density. samos, blessed with good soil, an excellent position on aegean maritime routes, and virtual autonomy, supports a population of to the square mile.[ ] focal location alone can often achieve this density. syros, one of the smallest and by nature the most barren of the cyclades, though well tilled is the great commercial and shipping center of the aegean, and has in hermupolis with its , population by far the largest town of the archipelago.[ ] this development has come since greece achieved its independence. it reminds us of the distinction and doubtless also population that belonged to delos in ancient days. advantageous commercial location and density of population characterize kilwauru and singapore at the east and west extremities of the malay archipelago. the bahrein islands, which england has acquired in the persian gulf, serve as an emporium of trade with eastern arabia and have a local wealth in their pearl fisheries. these facts account for the , inhabitants dwelling on their square miles ( square kilometers) of sterile surface.[ ] [sidenote: overflow of island population to the mainland.] the concentration of population in these favored spots of land with inelastic boundaries, and the tendency of that population to increase under the stimulating, interactive life make the restriction of area soon felt. for this reason, so many colonies which are started on inshore islets from motives of protection have to be transferred to the mainland to insure a food supply. a settlement of huguenots, made in on an island in the harbor of rio janeiro, found its base too small for cultivation, but feared the attack of the hostile indians and portuguese on the mainland. after three years of a struggling existence, it fell a prey to the portuguese,[ ] de monts' short-lived colony on an island in the mouth of the st. croix river in had an excellent site for defence, but was cut off by the drifting ice in winter from mainland supplies of wood, water and game, while no cultivation was possible in the sandy soil.[ ] such sites suffice for mere trading posts, but are inadequate for the larger social group of a real colony. the early greek colonists, with their predilection for insular locations, recognized this limitation and offset it by the occupation of a strip of the nearest mainland, cultivated and defended by fortified posts, as an adjunct to the support of the islands. such a subsidiary coastal hem was called a _paraea_. the ancient greek colonies on the islands of thasos and samothrace each possessed such a paraea.[ ] the aeolian inhabitants of tenedos held a strip of the opposite troad coast north of cape lekton, while those of lesbos appropriated the south coast of the troad.[ ] in the same way tarentum and syracuse, begun on inshore islands, soon overflowed on to the mainland. sometimes the island site is abandoned altogether and the colony transferred to the mainland. the ancient greek colony of cyrene had an initial existence on the island of platea just off the libyan coast, but, not flourishing there, was moved after an interval of several years to the african mainland, where "the sky was perforated" by the mountains of barca.[ ] de monts' colony was removed from its island to port royal in nova scotia. [sidenote: precocious development of island agriculture.] where an island offers in its climate and soil conditions favorable to agriculture, tillage begins early to assume an intensive, scientific character, to supply the increasing demand for food. the land, fixed in the amount of area, must be made elastic in its productivity by the application of intelligence and industry. hence in island habitats, an early development of agriculture, accompanied by a parallel skill in exploiting the food resources of the sea, is a prevailing feature. in oceanica, agriculture is everywhere indigenous, but shows greatest progress in islands like tonga and fiji, where climate and soil are neither lavish nor niggardly in their gifts, but yield a due return for the labor of tillage. the society[ ] and samoan islands, where nature has been more prodigal, rank lower in agriculture, though george forster found in tahiti a relatively high degree of cultivation.[ ] the small, rocky, coralline paumotas rank lower still, but even here plantains, sugar-cane, sweet potatoes, yams, taro and solanum are raised. the crowded atolls of the gilbert group show pains-taking tillage. here we find coco-palms with their roots fertilized with powdered pumice, and taro cultivated in trenches excavated for the purpose and located near the lagoons, so that the water may percolate through the coral sand to the thirsty roots.[ ] to lonely easter isle nature has applied a relentless lash. at the time of cook's visit it was woodless and boatless except for one rickety canoe, and therefore was almost excluded from the food supplies of the sea. hence its destitute natives, by means of careful and often ingenious tillage, made its parched and rocky slopes support excellent plantations of bananas and sugar-cane.[ ] the islands of melanesia show generally fenced fields, terrace farming on mountain sides, irrigation canals, fertilized soils, well trimmed shade trees and beautiful flower gardens,[ ] proof that the cultivation of the ground has advanced to the aesthetic stage, as it has in insular japan. in tonga the coco-palm plantations are weeded and manured. here, after a devastating war, the victorious chief devotes his attention to the cultivation of the land, which soon assumes a beautiful and flourishing appearance.[ ] in tongatabu, which is described by the early visitors as one big garden, cook found officials appointed to inspect all produce of the island and to enforce the cultivation of a certain quota of land by each householder.[ ] here agriculture is a national concern. [sidenote: melanesian agriculture.] in the minute land fragments which constitute micronesia, fishing is the chief source of subsistence; agriculture, especially for the all important taro, is limited to the larger islands like the pelews. in the vast islands of western melanesia, agriculture is on the whole less advanced. new guinea, where the chase yields support to many villages, has large sections still a wilderness, though some parts are cultivated like a garden. in the smaller melanesian islands, such as new hebrides, new britain and the solomon group, we find extensive plantations laid out on irrigated terraces, in new hebrides and the banks islands every single village has its flowers and aromatic herbs.[ ] but it is in fiji that native island agriculture seems to culminate. here a race of dark, frizzly haired savages, addicted to cannibalism, have in the art of tillage taken a spurt forward in civilization, till in this respect they stand abreast of the average european. the german asparagus bed is not cultivated more carefully than the yam plants of fiji; these also are grown in mounds made of soil which has been previously pulverized by hand. the variety and excellence of their vegetable products are amazing, and find their reflection in an elaborate national cuisine, strangely at variance with the otherwise savage life.[ ] west of melanesia, the malay archipelago shows a high average of tillage. the inhabitants of java, madura, bali, lombok and sumbawa are skilled agriculturists and employ an elaborate system of irrigation,[ ] but the natives of timor, on the other hand, have made little progress. in the philippines a rich and varied agriculture has been the chief source of wealth since the spanish conquest early in the sixteenth century, proving a native aptitude which began to develop long before.[ ] [sidenote: intensive tillage.] the dense population of the mediterranean islands is the concomitant of an advanced agriculture. the connection between elaborate tillage and scant insular area is indicated in the earliest history of classic aegina. the inhabitants of this island were called myrmidons, strabo tells us, because by digging like ants they covered the rocks with earth to cultivate all the ground; and in order to economize the soil for this purpose, lived in excavations under ground and abstained from the use of bricks.[ ] to-day, terraced slopes, irrigation, hand-made soils, hoe and spade tillage, rotation of crops, and a rich variety of field and garden products characterize the economic history of most mediterranean islands, whether elba, the lipari, ponza, procida, capri, ischia, pantellaria, lampedusa,[ ] or the aegean groups. the sterile rock of malta has been converted for two-thirds of its area into fertile gardens, fields and orchards. the upper stratum of rock has been pulverized and enriched by manure; the surface has been terraced and walled to protect it against high winds. in consequence, the maltese gardens are famous throughout the mediterranean.[ ] in the cyclades every patch of tillable ground is cultivated by the industrious inhabitants. terraced slopes are green with orchards of various southern fruits, and between the trees are planted melons and vegetables. fallow land and uncultivated hillsides, as well as the limestone islands fit only for pastures, are used for flocks of sheep and goats.[ ] [sidenote: japanese agriculture.] it is in japan that agriculture has attained a national and aesthetic importance reached nowhere else. of the , square miles constituting japan proper, two-thirds are mountains; large tracts of lowlands are useless rock wastes, owing to the detritus carried down by inundating mountain torrents.[ ] hence to-day arable land forms only . per cent. of the whole area. during the two hundred and fifty years of exclusion when emigration and foreign trade were forbidden, a large and growing population had to be supplied from a small insular area, further restricted by reason of the configuration of the surface. here the geographical effects of a small, naturally defined area worked out to their logical conclusion, consequently agriculture progressed rapidly and gave the farmer a rank in the social scale such as he attained nowhere else.[ ] his methods of tillage are much the same as in overcrowded china, but his national importance and hence his ranking in society is much higher. in japan to-day farming absorbs per cent. of the population. the system of tillage, in many respects primitive, is yet very thorough, and by means of skilful manuring makes one plot of ground yield two or three crops per annum.[ ] every inch of arable land is cultivated in grain, vegetables and fruits. mountains and hills are terraced and tilled far up their slopes. meadows are conspicuously absent, as are also fallow fields. land is too valuable to lie idle. labor is chiefly manual and is shared by the women and children; mattock and hoe are more common than the plow.[ ] such elaborate cultivation and such pressure of population eventuate in small holdings. in japan one hectar ( - acres) is the average farm per family. [sidenote: the case of england.] while japan's agriculture reflected the small area of an island environment, and under its influence reached a high development, england's from the beginning of the fifteenth century declined before the competition of english commerce, which gained ascendency owing to the easy accessibility of great britain to the markets of europe. the ravages of the black death in the latter half of the fourteenth century produced a scarcity of agricultural laborers and hence a prohibitive increase of wages. to economize labor, the great proprietors resorted to sheep farming and the raising of wool, which, either in the raw state or manufactured into cloth, became the basis of english foreign trade. a distinct deterioration in agriculture followed this reversion to a pastoral basis of economic life, supplemented by a growing commerce which absorbed all the enterprise of the country. the steady contraction of the area under tillage threw out of employment the great mass of agricultural laborers, made them paupers and vagrants.[ ] hence england entered the period of maritime discoveries with a redundant population. this furnished the raw material for her colonies, and made her territorial expansion assume a solid, permanent character, unknown to the flimsy trading stations which mark the mere extension of a field of commerce. [sidenote: emigration and colonization from islands.] even when agriculture, fisheries and commerce have done their utmost, in the various stages of civilization, to increase the food supply, yet insular populations tend to outgrow the means of subsistence procurable from their narrow base. hence islanders, like peninsula peoples, are prone to emigrate and colonize. this tendency is encouraged by their mobility, born of their nautical skill and maritime location. king minos of crete, according to thucydides and aristotle, colonized the cyclades.[ ] greece, from its redundant population, peopled various aegean and ionian islands, which in turn threw off spores of settlements to other isles and shores. corcyra, which was colonized from the peloponnesus, sent out a daughter colony to epidamnos on the illyrian coast. andros, one of the cyclades, as early as b.c., colonized acanthus and stagirus in chalcidice.[ ] paros, settled first by cretans and then by ionians, at a very early date sent colonies to thasos and to parium on the propontis, while samos was a perennial fountain emitting streams of settlement to thrace, cilicia, crete, italy and sicily. [map page .] this moving picture of greek emigration is duplicated in the malay archipelago, especially in the smaller eastern islands. almost every malay tribe has traditions based upon migrations. the southern philippines derived the considerable mohammedan element of their populations from the samal laut, who came from sumatra and the islands of the strait of malacca.[ ] a malayan strain can be traced through polynesia to far-off easter isle. sometimes the emigration is a voluntary exile from home for a short period and a definite purpose. the inhabitants of bouton, binungku, and the neighboring islets, all of them located southeast of celebes, have for the past twenty-five years come in great numbers to the larger islands of ceram, buru, amboina and banda, where they have laid out and carefully cultivated plantations of maize, tobacco, bananas and coco-palms. generally only the men come, work two years, save their profits and then return home. these ambitious tillers look like savages, are shy as wild things of the woods, and work naked to the waist.[ ] polynesia, melanesia and micronesia, where every condition of land and sea tends to develop the migratory spirit, form a region of extensive colonization.[ ] settlements of one race are scattered among the island groups of another, making the ethnic boundaries wide penumbras. in some smaller islands of melanesia the polynesian colonists have exterminated or expelled the original inhabitants, and are found there now with all their distinctive race characteristics; but in the larger islands, they have been merged in the resident population, and their presence is only to be surmised from the existence of polynesian customs, such as father-right in new hebrides and solomon island side by side with the prevailing melanesian mother-right.[ ] in small islands, like tongatabu, samoa and fiji, emigration becomes habitual, a gradual spilling over of the redundant population and hence not a formidable inundation. in all this insular region of the pacific, the impulse to emigration is so persistent, that the resulting inter-insular colonization obliterates sharp distinctions of race; it annuls the segregation of an island environment, and makes everywhere for amalgamation and unification, rather than differentiation.[ ] [sidenote: modern emigration from islands.] among highly civilized peoples, where better economic methods bring greater density of population and set at the same time a higher standard of living, emigration from islands is especially marked. japan has seen a formidable exodus since an end was put to its long period of compression. this has taken the form of widespread emigration to various foreign lands, notably the hawaiian islands and the united states, and also of internal colonization in its recently acquired territory in formosa and korea.[ ] the maltese have spread from their congested island, and are found to-day as gardeners, sailors and traders along all the mediterranean coasts.[ ] majorca and the more barren cyclades[ ] tell the same story. the men of capri go in considerable numbers to south america, but generally return home again. the icelanders often pull themselves out of the stagnation of their lonely, ungenerous island to become thrifty citizens of western canada. [sidenote: maritime enterprise as outlet.] emigration from islands readily throws itself into the channel of navigation and foreign trade. the northern sporades, especially skiathos and skopelos, are the home of sailors who can be found over all the world.[ ] in this appetency for a nautical career, small inshore islets are often distinguished from the nearby mainland. nearly all the masculine population of the frisian islands were seamen prior to . in the eighteenth century a third of the hamburg vessels were commanded by captains from the little island of sylte, and a third of the greenland fleet of the netherlands by natives of föhr.[ ] in england the exodus took the form of trading expeditions and the foundation of commercial colonies long before the food resources of the island had been even considerably developed. the accessible sea offered lines of least resistance, while the monopoly of the land by a privileged aristocracy and the fiercely defended corn laws made the limitations of a small area more oppressive. in ireland, a landless peasantry in a grainless land, dulled by deprivation of opportunity, found in emigration an escape from insupportable evils. [sidenote: artificial checks to population.] while emigration draws off the surplus population, there tend to develop in islands, as also in barren highlands where population early reaches the point of saturation, various devices to restrict natural increase. the evils of congestion are foreseen and guarded against. abbé raynal, writing of islanders in general, remarked as far back as , "it is among these people that we trace the origin of that multitude of singular institutions which retards the progress of population. anthropophagy, the castration of males, the infibulation of females, late marriages, the consecration of virginity, the approbation of celibacy, the punishments exercised against girls who become mothers at too early an age," he enumerates as such checks. malthus, in his essay on population, commenting on this statement, notes that the bounds to the number of inhabitants on islands, especially small ones, are so narrow and so obvious that no one can ignore them.[ ] the checks to population practiced on islands are either preventive or positive. the extreme measure to restrict marriage is found among the wretched budumas who inhabit the small, marshy islands of lake chad. tribal custom allows only the chiefs and headmen to have wives. a brass crescent inserted in the ear of a boy indicates the favored one among a chief's sons destined to carry on his race. for his brothers this is made physically impossible; they become big, dull, timid creatures contributing by their fishing to the support of the thinly populated villages. the natives of the shari river delta on the southern shore of lake chad use buduma as a term of contempt for a man.[ ] [sidenote: polyandry.] in islands, as in unproductive highlands where hunger stalks abroad, marriage readily takes the form of polyandry. on the canary islands, at the time of their conquest in , polyandry existed in lancerote and possibly in fuerteventura, often assigning one woman to three husbands; but in the other islands of the group monogamy was strictly maintained.[ ] in oceanica polygamy, monogamy or polyandry prevails according to a man's means, the poverty of the islands, and the supply of women. a plurality of wives is always the privilege of the chiefs and the wealthy, but all three forms of marriage may be found on the same island. scarcity of women gives rise to polyandry in tahiti,[ ] and consigns one woman to four or five men. in old hawaii, where there were four or five men to one woman a kind of incipient polyandry arose by the addition of a countenanced paramour to the married couple's establishment.[ ] robert louis stevenson found the same complaisant arrangement a common one in the marquesas, where the husband's deputy was designated by the term of _pikio_ in the native vocabulary.[ ] polyandry existed in easter isle, among whose stunted and destitute population the men far exceeded the women, and children were few, according to reports of the early visitors.[ ] numerous other instances make this connection between island habitat, deficiency of women, need of checking increase, and polyandrous marriages an obvious one.[ ] [sidenote: infanticide.] this disproportion of the sexes in oceanica is due to the murder of female infants, too early child-bearing, overwork, privation, licentiousness, and the violence of the men.[ ] the imminence of famine dictates certain positive checks to population, among which infanticide and abortion are widespread in oceanica. in some parts of the new hebrides and the solomon groups it is so habitual, that in some families all children are killed, and substitutes purchased at will.[ ] in the well-tilled fiji islands, a pregnant girl is strangled and her seducer slain. the women make a practice of drinking medicated waters to produce sterility. failing in this, the majority kill their children either before or after birth. in the island of vanua levu infanticide reaches from one-half to two-thirds of all children conceived; here it is reduced to a system and gives employment to professional murderers of babies, who hover like vultures over every child-bed. all destroyed after birth are females.[ ] and yet here, as on many other islands of melanesia and polynesia, such offspring as are spared are treated with foolish fondness and indulgence.[ ] the two facts are not incompatible. [sidenote: approved by the state.] geographic conditions made infanticide a state measure in these crowded communities. on the small coral atolls, where the food supply was scantest, it was enforced by law. on vaitupu, in the ellice group, only two children were allowed to a couple; on nukufelau, only one. any violation of this unique sumptuary law was punished by a fine.[ ] on the congested gilbert atolls, a woman rarely had more than two children, never more than three. abortion, produced by a regular midwife, disposed of any subsequent offspring. affection for children was very strong here, and infanticide of the living was unknown.[ ] in samoa, also, turner found the practice restricted to the period before birth; but in tahiti and elsewhere it was enforced by the tribal village authorities on the born and unborn.[ ] in pre-christian hawaii, two-thirds of all children, and especially girls, were killed by their parents either before or after birth. the result was a decay of the maternal instinct and the custom of farming out children to strangers. this contributed to the excess of infant mortality, the degeneration of morals and the instability of the family.[ ] so in japan the pressure of population led to infanticide and the sale of daughters to a life of ignominy, which took them out of the child-bearing class.[ ] nor was either custom under the ban. the result is a deterioration of morals, an invasion of the family bond, and a decay of the finer sentiments therewith connected. captain cook in found in tahiti _eareeoie_ or _arreoys_ societies, which were free-love associations including in their number "over half of the better sort of the inhabitants." the children begotten of these promiscuous unions were smothered at birth. obscene conversations, indecent dances and frank unchastity on the part of girls and women were the attendant evils of these loose morals.[ ] cook was sure that "these societies greatly prevent the increase of the superior classes of people of which they are composed." malthus reports a similar association in the marianne islands, distinguished by a similar name, devoted to race suicide.[ ] everywhere in oceanica marriage is unstable, and with few exceptions unchastity prevails. stevenson thinks it chiefly accountable for the decline of population in the islands.[ ] however, in the detailed _taboos_ laid upon women in fiji, marquesas, and other polynesian islands we have the survival of an early measure to increase reserve between the sexes, long after regard for chastity has vanished.[ ] [sidenote: low valuation of human life.] the constant pressure of population upon the limits of subsistence throughout oceanica has occasioned a low valuation of human life. among natural peoples the helpless suffer first. the native hawaiians, though a good-natured folk, were relentless towards the aged, weak, sick, and insane. these were frequently stoned to death or allowed to perish of hunger.[ ] in fiji, the aged are treated with such contempt, that when decrepitude or illness threatens them, they beg their children to strangle them, unless the children anticipate the request.[ ] in vate (or efate) of the new hebrides, old people are buried alive, and their passage to another world duly celebrated by a feast.[ ] however, in the tonga islands and in new zealand, great respect and consideration are shown the aged as embodying experience.[ ] the harsher custom recalls an ancient law of aegean ceos, which, ordained that all persons over sixty years of age should be compelled to drink hemlock, in order that there might be sufficient food for the rest.[ ] [sidenote: cannibalism in islands.] many customs of oceanica can be understood only in the light of the small value attached to human life in this island world. the overpopulation which lies back of their colonization explains the human sacrifices in their religious orgies and funeral rites, as also the widespread practice of cannibalism. this can be traced in vestigial forms, or as an occasional or habitual custom from one end of the pacific to the other, from the marquesas to new guinea and from new zealand to hawaii. all melanesia is tainted with it, and micronesia is not above suspicion. the cause of this extensive practice, stevenson attributes to the imminence of famine and the craving for flesh as food in these small islands, which are destitute of animals except fowls, dogs and hogs. in times of scarcity cannibalism threatens all; it strikes from within or without the clan.[ ] ratzel leans to the same opinion.[ ] captain cook thought the motive of a good full meal of human flesh was often back of the constant warfare in new zealand, and was sometimes the only alternative of death by hunger. cannibalism was not habitual in the tonga islands, but became conspicuous during periods of famine.[ ] in far-away tierra del fuego, where a peculiarly harsh climate and the low cultural status of the natives combine to produce a frightful infant mortality and therefore to repress population, cannibalism within the clan is indulged in only at the imperious dictate of mid-winter hunger. the same thing is true in the nearby chonos archipelago.[ ] these are the darker effects of an island habitat, the vices of its virtues. that same excessive pressure of population which gives rise to infanticide also stimulates agriculture, industry and trade; it develops ingenuity in making the most of local resources, and finally leads to that widespread emigration and colonization which has made islanders the great distributors of culture, from easter isle to java and from ancient crete to modern england. notes to chapter xiii [ ] table of areas of peninsulas and islands, justus perthes, _taschen atlas_, p. . gotha, . [ ] h.j. mackinder, britain and the british seas, pp. - . london, . [ ] w. deecke, italy, p. . london, . [ ] journey of william de rubruquis, pp. , , hakluyt society publication, london, . [ ] archibald little, the far east, pp. , . oxford, . [ ] strabo, book x, chap. ii, . [ ] ratzel, _die erde und das leben_, vol. i. pp. - . leipzig, . [ ] charles h. hawes, in the uttermost east, p. . new york, . [ ] w.e. griffis, the mikado's empire, vol. i, pp. - . new york, . [ ] darwin, origin of species, vol. ii, chap. xiii, p, . new york, . [ ] a.r. wallace, geographical distribution of animals, vol. ii, p. . london, . [ ] darwin, origin of species, vol. ii, chap. xiii, p. . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, vol. ii, chap. xiii, pp. - . [ ] a.r. wallace, island life, pp. - , - , , , - , , - . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, , - . [ ] emerson, english traits, chap. vi. [ ] capt. f. brinkley, japan, vol. i, p. . boston and tokyo, . [ ] w.e. griffis, the mikado's empire, vol. i, p. . new york, . [ ] arthur m. knapp, feudal and modern japan, vol. i, pp. , , . new york, . [ ] emerson, english traits, chap. iii. [ ] ronald m. burrows, the discoveries in crete, pp. - , , , . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, chapters iv and v. [ ] _ibid._, p. . angelo mosso, the palaces of crete, pp. , - , - , . london, . [ ] ronald m. burrows, the discoveries in crete, pp. - , , , - . new york, . james baikie, the sea kings of crete, pp. - . london, . [ ] j.b. bury, history of greece, pp. - . new york, . [ ] r.m. burrows, the discoveries in crete, pp. , - , - , , - , . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, - . [ ] private communication from mrs. harriet boyd hawes. [ ] recent discoveries in crete, _the chautauquan_, vol. , p. . . r.m. burrows, the discoveries in crete, pp. , . new york, . [ ] grote, history of greece, vol. iv, pp. - . new york, . [ ] strabo, book xiv, chap. ii, - . [ ] strabo, book vii, chap. vi, . [ ] a.p. niblack, coast indians of southern alaska and northern british columbia, pp. - . house misc. doc. . washington. dr. george dawson, the haidas, _harper's monthly_, august, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, p. . london, - . [ ] article, the national academy of sciences, nation, vol. lxxx, p. . . capt. james cook, a voyage towards the south pole, - , vol. i, p. , - . london. . george forster, voyage round the world, vol. i, pp. - , - , - . london, . [ ] g. sergi, the mediterranean race, chap. vii. london and new york, . helmolt, history of the world, vol. iv, pp. - . new york, - . [ ] charles w. hawes, the uttermost east, pp. - . new york, . [ ] william bright, early english church history, pp. - . oxford. . p. w. joyce, social history of ireland, vol. i, pp. , , . london, . [ ] w.h. dall, masks and labrets, p. . third annual report of bureau of ethnology, washington, . [ ] a.p. niblack, coast indians of southern alaska and northern british columbia, pp. - . washington. [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] a.b. ellis, the west african islands, p. . london, . history of the conquest of the canaries, introduction, pp. xiii, xvii, xxxiii, xxxiv. hakluyt society, london, . [ ] henry gannett, people of the philippines, report of the eighth international geographical congress, washington, . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] w. deecke, italy, p. . london, . [ ] nelson annandale, the faroes and iceland, p. . oxford, . [ ] j. partsch, central europe, map, p. , and p. . london, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. , , , . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] _ibid._, map, p. , and p. . [ ] w. deecke, italy, p. . london, . [ ] darwin, origin of species, vol. ii, chap. xiii, pp. , , . new york, . a. e. wallace, island life, pp. - , - . london and new york, . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] ratzel, _die erde und das leben_, vol. i, p. . leipsig, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, pp. - . london, - . h.r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, p. . london, - . [ ] nordenskiold, voyage of the vega, pp. , , . new york, . [ ] a.r. wallace, malay archipelago, pp. , , . new york, . [ ] richard semon, in the australian bush, pp. - . london, . [ ] strabo, book viii, chap. vi, . [ ] pliny, _naturalis historia_, book iv, . [ ] _ibid._, book vi, chap, . [ ] hereford george, historical geography of the british empire, pp. - . london, . [ ] dietrich schaefer, _die hansestädte und könig waldemar von dänemark_, pp. - . jena, . [ ] hereford george, historical geography of the british empire, pp. - . london, . [ ] the danish west indies, pp. , . summary of commerce and finance for january, . washington. [ ] e.a. freeman, historical geography of europe, pp. , , , , , , - , , , . london, . [ ] _ibid._, , , , - , , , - , , , , . e.a. freeman, sicily, chaps. i, ii. new york and london, . [ ] w. deecke, italy, pp. , . london, . w.z. ripley, races of europe, p. . new york, . [ ] elisée reclus, europe, vol. i, p. . new york, . [ ] w. deecke, italy, pp. , . london, . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] david murray, story of japan, p. . new york, . [ ] henry dyer. dai nippon, p. . new york, . [ ] e.a. freeman, historical geography of europe, pp. , , , , , , . london, . [ ] thucydides i, ; iv, - , . [ ] _ibid._, iv, - . [ ] aristotle, politics, book xi, chaps. , . [ ] j.t. bent, the bahrein islands in the persian gulf, _proceedings of the roy. geog. soc_., vol. xii, p. . london, . [ ] w.f. walker, the azores, p. . london, . [ ] a.b. ellis, west african islands, p. . london, . [ ] strabo, book iii, chap. v, . [ ] h.j. mackinder, britain and the british seas, pp. - . london, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. , . new york, . [ ] h.b. george, historical geography of the british empire, pp. , , . london, . [ ] j.r. green, the making of england, vol. ii, pp. , , . london, . [ ] james bryce, holy roman empire, p. . london, . george webbe dasent, the story of burnt njal, or life in iceland at the end of the tenth century, vol. i, pp. lii-lxviii. edinburgh, . [ ] dahlmann, _geschichte van dänemark_, vol. ii, pp. - . hamburg, . james bryce, introduction to helmolt, history of the world, vol. i, p. xxii. new york, . [ ] george t. stokes, ireland and the celtic church, pp. - . london, . [ ] j.r. green, history of the english people, vol. i, pp. - . [ ] recent discoveries in crete, _the chautauquan_, vol. xliii, p. . . angelo mosso, the palaces of crete, p. . london, . [ ] helmolt, history of the world, vol. ii, pp. - new york - . [ ] david murray, story of japan, p. . new york, . w.e. griffis, the mikado's empire, vol. i, pp. - . new york, . [ ] j.r. green, history of the english people, vol. i, pp. - . new york. [ ] capt. f. brinkley, japan, vol. i, p. . boston and tokyo, . [ ] capt. a.t. mahan, influence of sea power upon history, p. . new york, . [ ] h.j. mackinder, britain and the british seas, pp. , . london, . [ ] ratzel, _die erde und das leben_, vol. i, p. . leipzig, . [ ] w.e. griffis, the mikado's empire, vol. i, p. . new york, . [ ] w.f. walker, the azores, p. . london, . [ ] f.w. wines, punishment and reformation, pp. - , - . new york, . [ ] tacitus, annals, book i, chap. xiii. [ ] _ibid._, book iv, chaps. iii, xv. book ii, chap. xix. [ ] w. deecke, italy, pp. , , , , . london, . [ ] longmans gazetteer of the world, article easter isle. [ ] darwin and fitzroy, voyage of the beagle, vol. ii, p. . london, . [ ] _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. - . [ ] a.b. ellis, west african islands, pp. - . london, . [ ] longmans gazetteer of the world, andaman and nicobar. [ ] darwin and fitzroy, voyage of the beagle, vol. iii, p. . london, . [ ] a.b. ellis, west african islands, pp. , , . london, . [ ] charles h. hawes, the uttermost east, p. . new york, . [ ] the dry tortugas, _harper's monthly_, vol. , p. . . [ ] a.r. wallace, island life, pp. , , , , - , . london, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. , , , . [ ] census of the philippine islands of , vol. i, p. . washington, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, pp. , , . london, - . [ ] w.e. griffis, the mikado's empire, vol. i, pp. - . new york, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, p. . new york, . [ ] hereford george, historical geography of the british empire, pp. - . london, . [ ] nelson annandale, the faroes and iceland, pp. , , , , - , , - , , , . oxford, . [ ] capt. james cook, voyage to the pacific ocean, - , vol. ii, pp. - , - . new york, . [ ] williams and calvert, fiji and the fijians, pp. - , , . new york, . basil thomson, the fijians, pp. - . london, . [ ] mahler, _siedelungsgebiete und siedelungslage in ozeanien_. melching _staatenbildung in melanesien_, leipzig, dissertations, . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] aristotle, politics, book ii, chap. . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, - . london, - . [ ] _ibid._, vol. i, map, p. , pp. , . [ ] _ibid._, vol. i, pp. - . [ ] justus perthes, _taschen atlas_, p. . gotha, . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] _ibid._, pp. , . [ ] lippincott's new gazetteer of the world, madeira and azores. [ ] r.l. stevenson, the south seas, p. . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] j.s. jenkins, united states exploring squadron under capt. wilkes, - , pp. - . new york, . [ ] justus perthes, _taschen atlas_, p. . gotha, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, pp. , . london, - . [ ] j.s. jenkins, united states exploring squadron under capt. wilkes, - , p. . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] nelson annandale, the faroes and iceland, pp. - . oxford, . [ ] elisée reclus, europe, vol. iv, p. . new york, . [ ] john murray, handbook to greece and the ionian isles, p. . london, . [ ] hereford george, historical geography of the british empire, p. . london, . [ ] w. deecke, italy, pp. - . london, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. - , - . [ ] statistics from justus perthes, _taschen atlas_, p. . gotha, . [ ] longmans gazetteer of the world, amboina. [ ] census of the philippine islands of . vol. ii, p. . washington, . [ ] justus perthes, _taschen atlas_, pp. , . gotha, . [ ] hereford george, historical geography of the british empire, pp. - . london, . [ ] d.g. hogarth, the nearer east, pp. - . london, . [ ] dr. a. philippson, the greek islands of the aegean, _scottish geographical magazine_, vol. xiii, p. . . [ ] j.t. brent, the bahrein islands in the persian gulf, _proceedings of the roy. geog. society_, vol. xii, pp. - , ; and justus perthes, _taschen atlas_, p. . gotha, . [ ] parkman, pioneers of france in the new world, pp. - . boston, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. - . [ ] thucydides, i, , . herodotus, vii, , . [ ] grote, history of greece, vol. iii, pp. , . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, vol. iv, pp. - . [ ] capt. james cook, voyage to the pacific ocean, - , vol. ii, pp. - , . new york. . [ ] george forster, voyage round the world, vol. i, p. , , , . london, . [ ] j.s. jenkins, united states exploring squadron under capt. wilkes, - , p. . new york, . [ ] george forster, voyage round the world, vol. i, pp. , , , . london, . [ ] r.h. codrington, the melanesians, pp. - . oxford, . [ ] william mariner, natives of the tonga islands, vol. ii, p. . edinburgh, . [ ] capt. james cook, voyage to the pacific ocean, - , vol. i, p. . new york, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, pp. - . london, - . [ ] williams and calvert, fiji and the fijians, pp. , - . new york, . basil thomson, the fijians, p. . london, . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, pp. , , . new york, . [ ] census of the philippine islands of , vol. iv, pp. - . washington, . [ ] strabo, book viii, chap. vi, . [ ] w. deecke, italy, pp. , - . london, . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] dr. a. philippson, the greek islands of the aegean, _scottish geographical magazine_, vol. xiii, pp. - . . john murray, handbook to greece and the ionian isles. london, . [ ] w.e. griffis, the mikado's empire, vol. i, pp. - . new york, . [ ] henry dyer, dai nippon, pp. - . new york, . arthur m. knapp, feudal and modern japan, vol. i, pp. , , , . new york, . [ ] alfred stead, japan by the japanese, p. . london, . [ ] sir rutherford alcock, three years in japan, vol. i, pp. , , - . new york, . [ ] h.d. traill, social england, vol. ii, pp. - , - ; vol. iii, pp. - , - , - , - . london, . [ ] thucydides, book i, . aristotle, politics, book ii, chap. , . herodotus, book vii, . [ ] thucydides, book iv, chaps. , . [ ] census of the philippine islands in , vol. i, pp. - . washington, . [ ] richard semon, in the australian bush, p. . london, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, pp. - . london, - . [ ] _ibid._, vol. i, pp. - . [ ] _ibid._, vol. i, pp. - , . [ ] henry dyer, dai nippon, pp. - , . new york, . [ ] elisée reclus, europe, vol. i, p. . new york, . hereford george, historical geography of the british empire, pp. - . london, . [ ] d.g. hogarth, the nearer east, p. . london, . [ ] dr. a. philippson, the greek islands of the aegean, _scottish geographical magazine_, vol. xiii, p. . . [ ] jensen, _die nordfrieschen inseln_, p. . . [ ] malthus, essay on population, book i, chap. v, p. . london, . this whole chapter on "checks to population in the islands of the south seas" is valuable. [ ] boyd alexander, from the niger to the nile, vol. ii, pp. - . london, . [ ] history of the conquest of the canaries, p. xxxix. hakluyt society, london, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, pp. , - . london, - . [ ] _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , - . adolf marcuse, _die hawaiischen inseln_, p. . berlin, . [ ] r.l. stevenson, the south seas, pp. - . new york, . [ ] george forster, voyage round the world, vol. i, p. , , , , , , . london, . [ ] westermarck, history of human marriage, pp. , , - , - , , . london, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, p. . london, - . [ ] r.h. codrington, the melanesians, p. . oxford, . [ ] basil thomson, the fijians, pp. - . london, . williams and calvert, fiji and the fijians, pp. , . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, p. . r.l. stevenson, the south seas, pp. , . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] j.s. jenkins, united states exploring squadron under capt. wilkes, - , pp. - . new york, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, pp. , . london, - . [ ] adolf marcuse, _die hawaiischen inseln_, p. . berlin, . [ ] g.w. knox, japanese life in town and country, p. . new york, . [ ] capt. cook's journal, first voyage round the world in the endeavor, - , pp. , . edited by w.j.l. wharton. london, . [ ] malthus, essay on population, book i, chap. v. [ ] r.l. stevenson, the south seas, p. . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] adolf marcuse, _die hawaiischen inseln_, p. . berlin, . [ ] williams and calvert, fiji and the fijians, pp. - . new york, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, p. . london, - . [ ] william mariner, natives of the tonga islands, vol. ii, pp. , - . edinburgh, . capt. cook's journal, first voyage round the world in the endeavor, - , pp. - . edited by w.j.l. wharton. london, . [ ] strabo, book x, chap. v, . [ ] r.l. stevenson, the south seas, pp. - . new york, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, pp. - . london, - . [ ] william mariner, natives of the tonga islands, vol. ii, pp. - . edinburgh, . [ ] darwin and fitzroy, voyage of the beagle, vol. ii, pp. , - . london, . chapter xiv plains, steppes and deserts [sidenote: relief of the sea floor.] anthropo-geography has to do primarily with the forms and relief of the land. the relief of the sea floor influences man only indirectly. it does this by affecting the forms of the coast, by contributing to the action of tides in scouring out river estuaries, as on the flat beaches of holland and england, by determining conditions for the abundant littoral life of the sea, the fisheries of the continental shelf which are factors in the food quest and the distribution of settlements. moreover, the ocean floor enters into the problem of laying telegraph cables, and thereby assumes a certain commercial and political importance. the name of the telegraph plateau of the north atlantic, crossed by three cables, points to the relation between these and submarine relief. so also does the erratic path of the cable from southwestern australia to south africa via keeling island and mauritius. submarine reliefs have yet greater significance in their relation to the distribution of the human race over the whole earth; for what is now a shallow sea may in geologically recent times have been dry land, on which primitive man crossed from continent to continent. it is vital to the theory of the asiatic origin of the american indian that in miocene times a land bridge spanned the present shallows of bering sea. hence the slight depth of this basin has the same bio-geographical significance as that of the british seas, the waters of the malay archipelago, and the melanesian submarine platform. the impressive fact about "wallace's line" is the depth of the narrow channel which it follows through lombok and macassar straits and which, in recent geological times, defined the southeastern shore of asia. in all these questions of former land connection, anthropo-geography follows the lead of bio-geography, whose deductions, based upon the dispersal of countless plant and animal forms, point to the paths of human distribution. [sidenote: mean elevations of the continents.] the mean elevation of the continents above sea level indicates the average life conditions of their populations as dependent upon relief. the meters ( feet) of asia indicate its predominant highland character. the meters ( feet) representing the average height of europe, and the meters ( feet) of australia indicate the preponderance of lowlands. nevertheless, anthropo-geography rarely lends itself to a mathematical statement of physical conditions. such a statement only obscures the facts. the meters ( feet) mean elevation of africa indicates a relief higher than europe, but gives no hint of the plateau character of the dark continent, in which lowlands and mountains are practically negligible features; while the almost identical figure ( meters or feet) for both north and south america is the average derived from extensive lowlands in close juxtaposition to high plateaus capped by lofty mountain ranges. such mathematical generalizations indicate the general mass of the continental upheaval, but not the way this mass is divided into low and high reliefs.[ ] the method of anthropo-geography is essentially analytical, and therefore finds little use for general orometric statements, which may be valuable to the science of geo-morphology with its radically different standpoint. for instance, geo-morphology may calculate from all the dips and gaps in the crest of a mountain range the average height of its passes, anthropo-geography, on the other hand, distinguishes between the various passes according as they open lines of greater or less resistance to the historical movement across the mountain barriers. it finds that one deep breach in the mountain wall, like the mohawk depression[ ] and cumberland gap in the appalachian system,[ ] truckee pass in the sierra nevada[ ] and the brenner in the alps,[ ] has more far-reaching and persistent historical consequences than a dozen high-laid passes that only notch the crest. pack-trail, road and railroad seek the former, avoid the latter; one draws from a wide radius, while the other serves a restricted local need. therefore anthropo-geography, instead of clumping the passes, sorts them out, and notes different relations in each. [sidenote: distribution of reliefs.] in continents and countries the anthropo-geographer looks to see not what reliefs are present, but how they are distributed; whether highlands and lowlands appear in unbroken masses as in asia, or alternate in close succession as in western europe; whether the transition from one to the other is abrupt as in western south america, or gradual as in the united states. a simple and massive land structure lends the same trait of the simple and massive to every kind of historical movement, because it collects the people into large groups and starts them moving in broad streams, as it were. this fact explains the historical preponderance of lowland peoples and especially of steppe nomads over the small, scattered groups inhabiting isolated mountain valleys. the island of great britain illustrates the same principle on a small scale in the turbid, dismembered history of independent scotland, with its highlanders and lowlanders, its tribes and clans separated by mountains, gorges, straits, and fiords,[ ] in contrast to the smoother, unified course of history in the more uniform england. carl ritter compares the dull uniformity of historical development and relief in africa with the variegated assemblage of highlands and lowlands, nations and peoples, primitive societies and civilized states in the more stimulating environment of asia.[ ] [sidenote: homologous relief and homologous histories.] the chief features of mountain relief reappear on a large scale in the continents, which are simply big areas of upheaval lifted above sea level. the continents show therefore homologous regions of lowlands, uplands, plateaus and mountains, each district sustaining definite relations to the natural terrace above or below it, and displaying a history corresponding to that of its counterpart in some distant part of the world, due to a similarity of relations. this appears first in a specialization of products in each tier and hence in more or less economic interdependence, especially where civilization is advanced. the tendency of conquest to unite such obviously complementary districts is persistent. hence the central highland of asia is fringed with low peripheral lands like manchuria, china, india and mesopotamia, into whose history it has repeatedly entered as a disturbing force. all the narrow pacific districts of the americas from alaska to patagonia are separated by the cordilleras from the lowlands on the atlantic face of the continents; all reveal in their history the common handicap arising from an overwhelming preponderance of plateau and mountain and a paucity of lowlands. colombia, ecuador and peru have in the past century been stretching out their hands eastward to grasp sections of the bordering amazon lowlands, where to-day is the world's great field of conflicting boundary claims. chile would follow its geographical destiny if it should supplement its high, serrated surface by the plateaus and lowlands of bolivia, as cyrus the persian married the plateau of iran to the plains of the tigris and euphrates, and romulus joined the alban hills to the alluvial fields of the tiber. [sidenote: anthropo-geography of lowlands.] well-watered lowlands invite expansion, ethnic, commercial and political. in them the whole range of historical movements meet few obstacles beyond the waters gathering in their runnels and the forests nourished in their rich soils. limited to meters ( feet) elevation, lowlands develop no surface features beyond low hills and undulating swells of land. uniformity of life conditions, monotony of climate as of relief, except where grades of latitude intervene to chill or heat, an absence of natural boundaries, and constant encouragement to intercourse, are the anthropo-geographic traits of lowlands, as opposed to the arresting, detaining grasp of mountains and highland valleys. small, isolated lowlands, like the mountain-rimmed plains of greece and the aegean coast of asia minor, the nile flood-plain, portugal, and andalusia in spain, may achieve precocious and short-lived historical importance, owing to the fertility of their alluvial soils, their character as naturally defined districts, and their advantageous maritime location; but while in these restricted lowlands the telling feature has been their barrier boundaries of desert, mountains and sea, the vast level plains of the earth have found their distinctive and lasting historical importance in the fact of their large and unbounded surface. such plains have been both source and recipient of every form of historical movement. owing to their prevailing fitness for agriculture, trade and intercourse, they are favored regions for the final massing of a sedentary population. the areas of greatest density of population in the world, harboring or more to the square kilometer ( to the square mile), are found in the lowlands of china, the alluvial plains of india, and similar level stretches in the neapolitan plain and po valley, the lowlands of france, germany, holland, belgium, england and scotland. such a density is found in upland districts ( to feet, or to meters) bordering agricultural lowlands, only where industries based upon mineral wealth cause a concentration of population. [see maps pages , , .] [sidenote: extensive plains unfavorable to early development.] the level or undulating surface of extensive lowlands is not favorable to the early development of civilization. not only do their wide extent and absence of barriers postpone the transition from nomadism to sedentary life, but their lack of contrasting environments and contrasted developments, which supplement and stimulate, puts chains upon progress. a flat, monotonous relief produces a monotonous existence, necessarily one-sided, needing a complement in upland or mountain. to the pioneer settlers in the lowlands of missouri the ozark plateau was a boon, because its streams furnished water-power for much needed saw and flour mills. treeless egypt even before b. c. depended upon the cedars of the lebanon mountains for the construction of its ships; so that the conquest of lebanon, begun by thutmose i. and completed by thutmose iii. in about b. c., had a sound geographical basis.[ ] similarly the exploitation of the copper, malachite, turquoise and lapis-lazuli of mount sinai, minerals not found in the nile plain, led the ancient egyptians into extensive mining operations there before b. c., and resulted in the establishment of egyptian political supremacy in b. c., as a measure to protect the mines against the depredations of the neighboring bedouin tribes.[ ] lowlands lack the distinctive advantages of highlands found in diversity of climate, water-power, generally in more abundant forests and minerals. the latter are earlier discovered and worked in the tilted strata of mountains and uplands. plain countries suffer particularly from a paucity of varied geographic conditions and of resulting contrasts in their population. their national characters tend to be less richly endowed; their possibilities for development are blighted or retarded, because even racial differences are rapidly obliterated in the uniform geographic environment, a small diversified country like crete, great britain, italy, portugal, saxony, or japan, is a geographical _multum in parvo_. the western half of europe bears the same stamp, endowing each country and nation with marked individuality born of partial isolation and a varied combination of environment. the larger eastern half of the continent embraced in the plains of poland and russia shows monotony in every aspect of human life. this comes out anthropologically in the striking similarity of head-form found everywhere north and east of the carpathian mountains, except in the secluded districts of lithuania and crimea, which shelter remnants of distinct races. over all this vast territory the range of cephalic variation is only five units or one-third that in the restricted but diversified territory of western europe. italy, only one-eighteenth the size of european russia, has a range of fifteen units, reflecting in the variety of its human types the diversity of its environment.[ ] [sidenote: conditions for fusion in plains.] in the plains geography makes for fusion. russia shows this marked homogeneity, despite a motley collection of race ingredients which have entered into the make-up of the russian people. without boundary or barrier, the country has stood wide open to invasion; but the intruders found no secluded corners where they could entrench themselves and preserve their national individuality.[ ] they dropped into a vast melting-pot, which has succeeded in amalgamating the most diverse elements. the long-drawn baltic-north sea plain of europe shows the same power to fuse. here is found a prevailing blond, long-headed stock from the gulf of finland to the somme river in france.[ ] yet this natural boulevard has been a passway for races. prehistoric evidences show that the dark, broad-headed celtic folk once overspread this plain east to the weser;[ ] it still tends to trickle down from the southern uplands into the baltic lowland, and modify the teutonic type along its southern margin throughout germany.[ ] the slavs in historic times reached as far west as the weser, while the expansion of the teutons has embraced the whole maritime plain from brittany to the finnish gulf. here it is difficult to draw an ethnic boundary on the basis of physical differences. the eastern prussians are slavonized teutons, and the adjacent poles seem to be teutonized slavs, while the purest type of letto-lithuanian at the eastern corner of the baltic coast approximates closely to the anglo-saxon type which sprang from the western corner.[ ] a similar amalgamation of races and peoples has taken place in the lowlands of england and scotland, while diversity still lingers in the highlands. in the lowlands of scotland, picts in small numbers, britons, scots from ireland, angles, frisians, northmen and danes have all been blended and assimilated in habits, customs and speech.[ ] [sidenote: retardation due to monotonous environment.] this uniformity is advantageous to early development in a small plain, because of the juxtaposition of contrasted environments, but is stultifying to national life in an immense expanse of monotony like that of russia. here sameness leaves its stamp on everything. language is differentiated with only two dialects, that of the great russians of the north and the little russians of the southern steppes, who were so long exposed to tartar influences. most other languages of europe, though confined to much smaller areas, show far greater diversity.[ ] while the russian of kazan or archangel can converse readily with the citizen of riga or st. petersburg, germans from highland bavaria and swabia are scarcely intelligible to prussian and mecklenberger. and whereas germany a few decades ago could count over a hundred different kinds of national dress or _tracht_, great russia alone, with six times the area, had only a single type with perhaps a dozen slight variations. leroy-beaulieu comments upon this eternal sameness. "the cities are all alike; so are the peasants, in looks, habits, in mode of life. in no country do people resemble one another more; no other country is so free from political complexity, those oppositions in type and character, which even yet we encounter in italy and spain, in france and germany. the nation is made in the likeness of the country; it shows the same unity, we might say the same monotony, as the plains on which it dwells." [sidenote: influence of soils in low plains.] the more flat and featureless a lowland is, the more important become even the slightest surface irregularities which can draw faint dividing lines among the population. here a gentle land-swell, river, lake, forest, or water-soaked moor serves as boundary. especially apparent is the differentiating influence of difference of soils. gravel and alluvium, sand and clay, chalk and more recent marine sediments, emphasize small geographical differences throughout the north german lowland and its extension through belgium and holland; here various soils differentiate the distribution of population. in the netherlands we find the frisian element of the dutch people inhabiting chiefly the clay soils and low fens of the west and northwest, the saxon in the diluvial tracts of the east, and the frankish in the river clays and diluvium of the south. all the types have maintained their differences of dialect, styles of houses, racial character, dress and custom.[ ] the only distinctive region in the great western lowland of france, which comprises over half of the country, is brittany, individualized in its people and history by its peninsula form, its remote western location, and its infertile soil of primary rocks. within the sedimentary trough of the paris basin, a slight cretacean platform like the meadow land of perche[ ] ( to meters elevation) introduces an area of thin population devoted to horse and cattle raising in close proximity to the teeming urban life of paris. the eastern lowland of england also can be differentiated economically and historically chiefly according to differences of underlying rocks, carboniferous, triassic, jurassic, chalk, boulder clays, and alluvium, which also coincide often with slight variations of relief.[ ] in russia the contrast between the glaciated surface of the north and the black mould belt of the south makes the only natural divisions of that vast country, unless we distinguish also the arid southeastern steppes on the basis of a purely climatic difference. [see map page .] the broad coastal plain of our south atlantic states contains only low reliefs; but it is diversified by several soil belts, which exert a definite control over the industries of the inhabitants, and thereby over the distribution of the negro population. in georgia, for instance, the rich alluvial soil of the swampy coast is devoted to the culture of rice and sea-island cotton, and contains over per cent. of negroes in its population. this belt, which is only miles wide, is succeeded inland by a broader zone of sandy pine barrens, where the proportion of negroes drops to only or per cent. of the total. yet further inland is another fertile belt, devoted chiefly to the cultivation of upland cotton and harboring from to over per cent. of negroes in its population.[ ] alabama shows a similar stratification of soils and population from north to south over its level surface. along the northern border of the state the cereal belt coincides with the deep calcareous soil of the tennessee river valley, where negroes constitute from to per cent. of the inhabitants. next comes the mineral belt, covering the low foot-hills of the appalachian mountains. it contains the densest population of the state, less than per cent. of which is negro. south of this is the broad cotton belt of various rich soils, chiefly deep black loam of the river bottoms, which stretches east and west across the state and includes over per cent. of negroes in its population. this is succeeded by the low, coastal timber belt, marked by a decline in the quality of the soil and the proportion of negro inhabitants.[ ] [sidenote: value of slight elevations.] in the dead level of extensive plains even slight elevations are seized upon for special uses, or acquire peculiar significance. the kurgans or burial mounds of the prehistoric inhabitants of russia, often twenty to fifty feet high, serve to-day as watch-towers for herdsmen tending their flocks.[ ] similarly the bou-bous, inhabiting the flat grasslands of the french congo between the shari and ubangui rivers, use the low knolls dotted over their country, probably old ant-hills, as lookout points against raiders.[ ] the sand hills and ridges which border the southern edges of the north german lowland form districts sharply contrasted to the swampy, wooded depressions of the old deserted river valleys just to the north. early occupied by a german stock, they furnished the first german colonists to displace the primitive slav population surviving in those unattractive, inaccessible regions, as seen in the spreewald near kottbus to-day. [sidenote: plains and political expansion.] the boundless horizon which is unfavorable to a nascent people endows them in their belated maturity with the power of mastering large areas. political expansion is the dominant characteristic of the peoples of the plains. haxthausen observed that handicapped and retarded russia commands every geographic condition and national trait necessary for virile and expansive political power.[ ] muscovite expansion eastward across the lowlands of europe and asia is paralleled by the rapid spread of american settlement and dominion across the plains and prairies of the mississippi valley, and hungarian domination of the wide danubian levels from the foot-hills of the austrian alps to the far carpathian watershed. it was the closely linked lowlands of the seine and loire which formed the core of political expansion and centralization in france. nearly the whole northern lowland of germany has been gradually absorbed by the kingdom of prussia, which now comprises in its territory almost two-thirds of the total area of the empire. prussian statesmen formulated the policy of german unification and colonial expansion, and to prussia fell the hereditary headship of the empire. lowland states tend to stretch out and out to boundaries which depend more upon the reach of the central authority than upon physical features. we have seen american settlement and dominion overleap one natural boundary after another between the mississippi river and the pacific, from to . russia in an equally short period has pushed forward its asiatic frontier at a dozen points, despite all barriers of desert and mountain. argentina, blessed with extensive plains, fertile soil and temperate climate, which have served to augment its population both by natural increase and steady immigration (one-fourth of its population is foreign), has expanded across the rio negro over the grasslands of the patagonian plain, and thereby enlarged its area by , square miles since . the statesman of the plains is a nature-made imperialist; he nurses wide territorial policies and draws his frontiers for the future. to him a "far-flung battle line" is significant only as a means to secure a far-flung boundary line. [sidenote: arid plains.] from these low, accessible plains of adequate rainfall, which at first encourage primitive nomadism but finally make it yield to sedentary life and to dense populations spreading their farms and cities farther and farther over the unresisting surface of the land, we turn to those boundless arid steppes and deserts which nature has made forever the homes of restless, rootless peoples. here quiescence is impossible, the _völkerwanderung_ is habitual, migration is permanent. the only change is this eternal restlessness. while the people move, progress stands still. everywhere the sun-scorched grasslands and waterless waste have drawn the dead-line to the advance of indigenous civilization. they permit no accumulation of productive wealth beyond increasing flocks and herds, and limit even their growth by the food supply of scanty, scattered pasturage. the meager rainfall eliminates forests and therewith a barrier to migrations; it also restricts vegetation to grasses, sedges and those forms which can survive a prolonged summer drought and require a short period of growth. [illustration: annual rainfall of the world.] [sidenote: distribution and extent of arid plains.] the union of arid plains and steppe vegetation is based upon climate, and is therefore a widely distributed phenomenon. these plains, whether high or low, are found in their greatest extent in the dry trade-wind belts, as in the deserts and steppes of arabia, persia, sudan, the sahara, south africa and central australia; and in vast continental interiors, where the winds arrive robbed of their moisture in passing intervening highlands, as in the grasslands of our western plains, the llanos and pampas of south america, and the steppes of central asia. but wherever they occur, whether in argentina or russian turkestan or the higher plains of mongolia and tibet, they present the same general characteristics of land surface, climate, flora and fauna, and the same nomadic populations of pastoral or hunting tribes. in them the movement of peoples reaches its culminating point, permanent settlement its nil point. here the hunting savage makes the widest sweep in pursuit of buffalo or antelope, and pauses least to till a field; here the pastoral nomad follows his systematic wandering in search of pasturage and his hardly less systematic campaigns of conquest. it is the vast area and wide distribution of these arid plains, combined with the mobility which they impose on native human life, that has lent them historical importance, and reproduced in all sections of the world that significant homologous relation of arid and well-watered districts. [sidenote: pastoral life.] the grasslands of the old world developed historical importance only after the domestication of cattle, sheep, goats, asses, horses, camels and yaks. this step in progress resulted in the evolution of peoples who renounced the precarious subsistence of the chase and escaped the drudgery of agriculture, to devote themselves to pastoral life. it was possible only where domesticable animals were present, and where the intelligence of the native or the peculiar pressure exerted by environment suggested the change from a natural to an artificial basis of subsistence. australia lacked the type of animal. though north america had the reindeer and buffalo, and south america the guanaco, llama and alpaca, only the last two were domesticated in the andean highlands; but as these were restricted to altitudes from , to , feet, where pasturage was limited, stock raising in primitive south america was merely an adjunct to the sedentary agriculture of the high intermontane valleys, and never became the basis for pastoral nomadism on the grassy plains. however, when the spaniards introduced horses and cattle into south america, the indians and half-breeds of the llanos and pampas became regular pastoral nomads, known as llaneros and gauchos. they are a race of horsemen, wielding javelin and lasso and bola, living on meat, often on horse-flesh like the ancient huns, dwelling in leather tents made on a cane framework, like those of the modern kirghis and medieval tartars, dressed in cloaks of horsehide sewn together, and raiding the argentinian frontier of white settlement for horses, sheep and cattle, with the true marauding instinct of all nomads.[ ] [sidenote: pastoral nomads of arctic plains.] aridity is not the only climatic condition condemning a people to nomadic life. excessive cold, producing the tundra wastes of the far north, has the same effect. therefore, throughout arctic eurasia, from the lapp district of norway to the inland chukches of eastern siberia, we have a succession of hyperborean peoples pasturing their herds of reindeer over the moss and lichen tundra, and supplementing their food supply with hunting and fishing. the reindeer chukches once confined themselves to their peninsula, so long as the grazing grounds were unexhausted; but they now range as far west as yakutsk on the lena river, the orochones of the kolima river district in eastern siberia, who live chiefly by their reindeer, have small herds. a well-to-do person will have to animals, and the wealthiest only , while the chukches with herds of , often seek the pasture of the kolima tundra.[ ] farther west, the samoyedes of northern siberia and russia and the zirians of the petchora river range with their large herds northward to the yalmal peninsula and vaygats isle in summer, and southward in winter. [see map pages , .] here a herd of fifty head, which just suffices for the support of one family of four souls, requires square versts, or . square miles of tundra pasturage.[ ] hence population must forever remain too sparse ever to attain historical significance. [see map page .] the russian lapps, too, lead a semi-nomadic life. each group has a particular summer and winter settlement. the winter village is located usually inland in the kola peninsula, where the forests lend shelter to the herds, and the summer one near the tundra of the coast, where fishing is accessible. in winter, like the nomads of the deserts, they add to their slender income by the transport of goods by their reindeer and by service at the post stations.[ ] [sidenote: historical importance of steppe nomads.] these nomads of the frozen north, scattered sparsely over the remote periphery of the habitable world, have lacked the historical importance which in all times has attached to the steppe nomads, owing to their central location. the broad belt of deserts and grasslands which crosses the old world diagonally between ° and ° north latitude from the atlantic in africa to the pacific in asia, either borders or encompasses the old domains of culture found in river oases, alluvial lowlands or coastal plains of the torrid and temperate zones. the restless, mobile, unbound shepherds of the arid lands have never long been contained by the country which bred them. they have constantly encroached upon the territory of their better placed neighbors, invading, conquering, appropriating their fields and cities, disturbing but at the same time acquiring their culture, lording it over the passive agriculturists, and at the same time putting iron into their weaker blood. it is the geographical contact between arid steppes and moist river valley, between land of poverty and land of plenty, that has made the history of the two inseparable.[ ] [illustration: cultural regions of africa and arabia.] [sidenote: mobility of pastoral nomads.] every aspect of human life in the steppes bears the stamp of mobility. the nomad tolerates no clog upon his movements. his dwelling is the tent of skin or felt as among kalmucks and kirghis, or the tent wagon of the modern boer[ ] and the ancient scythian as described by herodotus.[ ] "this device has been contrived by them as the country is fit for it," he says,--level, grassy, treeless. the temporary settlement of shepherd tribes is the group of tents, or the ancient _carrago_ camp of the nomadic visigoths,[ ] or the _laager_ of the pastoral boers, both a circular barricade or corral of wagons. [sidenote: tendency to trek.] constant movement reduces the impedimenta to a minimum. the orochones, a tunguse nomadic tribe of eastern siberia, have no furniture in their tents, and keep their meager supply of clothing and utensils neatly packed on sledges, as if to start at a moment's notice.[ ] the only desirable form of capital is that which transports itself, namely, flocks and herds. beyond that, wealth is limited to strictly portable forms, preferably silver, gold and jewels. it was in terms of these, besides their herds, that the riches of abraham and lot were rated in the bible. that the israelites when traveling through the wilderness should have had the gold to make the golden calf accords strictly with the verisimilitude of pastoral life.[ ] moreover, that these enslaved descendants of the sheik abraham, with their traditions of pastoral life, should have simply trekked-ruptured the frail ties of recently acquired habit which bound them to the nile soil, is also in keeping with their inborn nomadic spirit. similar instances occur among modern peoples. the great trek of the south african boers in , by which they renounced not only their unwelcome allegiance to england, but also their land,[ ] was another exodus in accordance with the instinct of a pastoral people. they adopted no strange or difficult course, but traveled with their families as they were wont in their every day life of cattle-tenders, took all their chattels with them, and headed for the thin pastures of the far-reaching veldt. the russian government has had to contend with a like fluidity in her cossack tribes of the steppes, who have been up and off when imperial authority became oppressive. in the summer of west siberia lost about kirghis, who left the province semipalatinsk to seek mongolia. [sidenote: seasonal migrations.] environment determines the nomadic habits of the dweller of desert and steppe. the distribution of pasture and water fixes the scope and the rate of his wandering; these in turn depend upon geographic conditions and vary with the season. the papago indians of southern arizona range with their cattle over a territory by miles in extent, and wander across the border into mexico. when their main water supply, derived from wells or artificial reservoirs near their summer villages, is exhausted, they migrate to the water-holes, springs or streams in the cañons. there the cattle graze out on the plains and return to the cañons to drink.[ ] every mongol tribe and clan has its seasonal migration. in winter the heavier precipitation and fuller streams enable them to collect in considerable groups in protected valleys; but the dry summer disperses them over the widest area possible, in order to utilize every water-hole and grass spot. the hotter regions of the plains are abandoned in summer for highlands, where the short period of warmth yields temporary pastures and where alone water can be found. the kirghis of russian turkestan resort in summer to the slopes and high valleys of the altai mountains, where their auls or tent villages may be seen surrounded by big flocks of sheep, goats, camels, horses and cattle.[ ] the pamir in the warm months is the gathering place for the nomads of central asia. the naked desert of arabia yields a rare herbage during the rainy season, when the bedouin tribes resort to it for pasturage;[ ] but during the succeeding drought they scatter to the hills of yemen, syria and palestine,[ ] or migrate to the valley of the nile and euphrates.[ ] the arabs of the northern sahara, followed by small flocks of sheep and goats, vibrate between the summer pastures on the slopes of the atlas mountains and the scant, wiry grass tufts found in winter on the borders of the desert.[ ] when the equatorial rains begin in june, the arabs of the atbara river follow them north-westward into the nubian desert, and let their camel herds graze on the delicate grass which the moisture has conjured up from the sandy soil. the country about cassala, which is flooded during the monsoon rains by the rivers from the abyssinian mountains, is reserved for the dry season.[ ] in the same way the tartar tribes of the dnieper, don, volga and ural rivers in the thirteenth century moved down these rivers in winter to the sea coast, and in summer up-stream to the hills and mountains.[ ] so for the past hundred years the boers of the south african grasslands have migrated in their tent wagons from the higher to the lower pastures, according to the season of the year, invading even the karroo desert after the short summer rains.[ ] [sidenote: marauding expeditions.] this systematic movement of nomads within their accepted boundaries leads, on slight provocation, to excursions beyond their own frontiers into neighboring territories. the growing herd alone necessitates the absorption of more land, more water-holes, because the grazed pastures renew their grass slowly under the prevailing conditions of drought. an area sufficient for the support of the tribe is inadequate for the sustenance of the herd, whose increase is a perennial expansive force. soon the pastures become filled with the feeding flocks, and then herdsmen and herds spill over into other fields. often a season of unusual drought, reducing the existing herbage which is scarcely adequate at best, gives rise to those irregular, temporary expansions which enlarge the geographical horizon of the horde, and eventuate in widespread conquest. such incursions, like the seasonal movements of nomads, result from the helpless dependence of shepherd tribes upon variations of rainfall. the nomad's basis of life is at best precarious. he and want are familiar friends. a pest among his herds, diminished pasturage, failing wells, all bring him face to face with famine, and drive him to robbery and pillage.[ ] marauding tendencies are ingrained in all dwellers of the deserts and steppes.[ ] since the days of job, the bedouins of arabia have been a race of marauders; they have reduced robbery to a system. predatory excursions figure conspicuously in the history of all the tribes. robber is a title of honor.[ ] pliny said that the arabs were equally addicted to theft and trade. they pillaged caravans and held them for ransom, or gave them safe conduct across the desert for a price. formerly the turkoman tribes of the trans-caspian steppes levied on the bordering districts, notably the northern part of khorasan, which belonged more to the turkomans, yomut and goklan tribes of the adjoining steppe than to the resident persians. the border districts of herat, khiva, merv and bukhara used to suffer in the same way from the raids of the tekkes, till the russians checked the evil.[ ] the tekkes had depopulated whole districts, invaded persian towns of considerable size, and carried off countless families into slavery. both turkomans and kirghis tribes prior to raided caravans and carried off the travelers to the slave markets of bukhara and samarkand.[ ] [see map page .] among these tribes no young man commanded respect in his community till he had participated in a _baranta_ or cattle-raising.[ ] for centuries the nomadic hordes of the russian steppes systematically pillaged the peaceful agricultural slavs, who were threatening to encroach upon their pasture lands. the sudden, swift descent and swift retreat of the mounted marauders with the booty into the pathless grasslands, whither pursuit was dangerous, their tendency to rob and conquer but never to colonize, involved russia in a long struggle, which ceased only with the extension of muscovite dominion over the steppes.[ ] [sidenote: depredation and conquests of african nomads.] all the saharan tribes are marauders, whether arabs, berber tuaregs, or negroid tibbus. the desert has made them so. the tuaregs are chronic freebooters; they keep the sahara and especially the caravan routes in constant insecurity. they stretch a cordon across these routes from ghadames and ghat in the east to the great oases of insalah and twat in the west; and from the oases and hills forming their headquarters they spread for pasturage and blackmail over the desert.[ ] they exact toll over and over again from a caravan, provide it with a military escort of their own tribesmen, and then pillage it on the way.[ ] this has been the experience of barth[ ] and other explorers. caravans have not been their only prey. the agricultural peoples in the niger flood-plain, the commerce on the river, and the markets of timbuctoo long suffered from the raids of the tuaregs of the sahara. they collected tribute in the form of grain, salt, garments, horses and gold, typical needs of a desert people, imposed tolls on caravans and on merchant fleets passing down the niger to timbuctoo. in they began to move from the desert and appropriate the fertile plains in the northern part of the niger valley, and in they conquered timbuctoo; but soon they had to yield to another tribe of pastoral nomads, the fulbes from the senegal, who in established a short-lived but well organized empire on the ruins of the tuareg dominion.[ ] [see map page .] the other agricultural states of the sudan have had the same experience. the tibbus, predatory nomads of the french sahara just north of lake chad and the river yo, mounted on camels and ponies, cross the shrunken river in the dry season and raid bornu for cattle, carry off women and children to sell as slaves, pillage the weekly markets on the yo, and plunder caravans of pilgrims moving eastward to mecca.[ ] nowhere can desert nomads and the civilized peoples of agricultural plains dwell side by side in peace. raids, encroachments, reprisals, finally conquest from one side or the other is the formula for their history. [see map page .] [sidenote: forms of defense against nomad depredations.] the raided territory, if a modern civilized state, organizes its border communities into a native mounted police, as the english have done in bornu, sokoto and the egyptian sudan, and as the russians did with their cossack riders along the successive frontiers of muscovite advance into the steppes; or it takes into its employ, as we have seen, the nearest nomad tribes to repress or punish every hostile movement beyond. among the ancient states the method was generally different. since the nomad invaders came with their flocks and herds, a barrier often sufficed to block their progress. for this purpose sesostris built the long wall of stadia from pelusium to heliopolis as a barricade against the arabians.[ ] ancient carthage constructed a ditch to check the depredations of the nomads of numidia.[ ] the early kings of assyria built a barrier across the plains of the euphrates above babylon to secure their dominion from the incursions of the desert medes.[ ] in the fifth century of our era, the "red wall" was constructed near the northern frontier of persia as a bulwark against the huns. it stretched for a hundred and fifty miles from the caspian sea at the ancient port of aboskun eastward to the mountains, and thus enclosed the populous valley of the gurgen river.[ ] in remote ages the neck of the crimean peninsula was fortified by a wall against the irruptions of the tauro-scythians.[ ] the russians early in their national history used the same means of defense against tartar incursions. one wall was built from pensa on the sura river to simbirsk on the volga, just south of kazan; another, further strengthened by a foss and palisades, extended from the fortress of tsaritzin at the southern elbow of the volga across the fifty-mile interval to the don, and was still defended in by the cossacks of the don against the neighboring kirghis hordes.[ ] the classic example of such fortifications against pastoral nomads, however, is the great wall of china. [sidenote: pastoral life as a training for soldiers.] the nomad is economically a herdsman, politically a conqueror, and chronically a fighter. strife over pasturage and wells meets us in the typical history of abraham, lot and isaac;[ ] it exists within and without the clan. the necessity of guarding the pastures, which are only intermittently occupied, involves a persistent military organization. the nation is a quiescent army, the army a mobilized nation.[ ] it carries with it a self-transporting commissariat in its flocks and herds. constant practice in riding, scouting and the use of arms, physical endurance tested by centuries of exertion and hardship, make every nomad a soldier. cavalry and camel corps add to the swiftness and vigor of their onslaught, make their military strategy that of sudden attack and swifter retreat, to be met only by wariness and extreme mobility. the ancient scythians of the lower danubian steppes were all horse archers, like the parthians. "if the scythians were united, there is no nation which could compare with them or would be capable of resisting them; i do not say in europe, but even in asia," said thucydides.[ ] in this opinion herodotus concurred.[ ] the nomad's whole existence breeds courage. the independent, hazardous life of the desert makes the arab the bravest of mankind, but the settled, agricultural arab of egypt and mohammedan spain lost most of his fighting qualities.[ ] [sidenote: military organization of nomads.] the daily life of a nomad horde is a training school for military organization. in the evening the flocks and herds are distributed with system around the camp to prevent confusion. the difficult art of a well ordered march, of making and breaking camp, and of foraging is practiced almost daily in their constant migrations.[ ] the usual order of the bedouin march could scarcely be surpassed by an army. in advance of the caravan moves a body of armed horsemen, five or seven kilometers ahead; then follows the main body of the tribesmen mounted on horses and camels, then the female camels, and after these the beasts of burden with the women and children. the encampment of tents with the places for men, arms and herds is also carefully regulated. more than this, the horde is organized into companies with their superior and subordinate leaders.[ ] john de carpini describes genghis khan's military organization of his vast tartar horde by tens, hundreds and thousands, his absolute dominion over his conquered subjects, and prompt absorption of them into his fighting force, by the compulsory enlistment of soldiers out of every freshly subjugated nation.[ ] in the same way the hebrew tribes, when preparing for the conquest of canaan, adopted from the desert midianites the organization of the horde into tens, hundreds and thousands under judges, who were also military leaders in time of war. [sidenote: capacity for conquest and political consolidation.] thus certain geographic conditions produce directly the habitual and systematic migration of the nomads, and through this indirectly that military and political organization which has given the shepherd races of the earth their great historical mission of political consolidation. agriculture, though underlying all permanent advance in civilization, is handicapped by the lack of courage, mobility, enterprise and large political outlook characterizing early tillers of the soil. all these qualities the nomad possesses. hence the union of these two elements, imperious pastor superimposed upon peaceful tiller, has made the only stable governments among savage and semi-civilized races.[ ] the politically invertebrate peoples of dark africa have secured the back-bone to erect states only from nomad conquerors. the history of the sudan cannot be understood apart from a knowledge of the sahara and its peoples. all the sudanese states were formed by invaders from the northern desert, hamitic or semitic. [see map page .] the galla or wahuma herdsmen of east africa founded and maintained the relatively stable states of uganda, kittara, karague, and uzinza in the equatorial district; the conquerors remained herders while they lorded it over the agricultural aborigines.[ ] in prehistoric times when the various peoples of the aryan linguistic family were spreading over europe and southern asia, the superiority of the shepherd races must have been especially marked, because in that era only the unobstructed surface of the steppes permitted the concentration of men on a vast scale for migration and conquest. everywhere else regions of broken relief and dense forests harbored small, isolated peoples, to whom both the idea and the technique of combined movement were foreign. [sidenote: scope of nomad conquests.] the rapidity and wide scope of such conquests is explained largely by the fact that nomads try to displace only the ruling classes in the subjugated territory, leaving the mass of the population practically undisturbed. thus they spread themselves thin over a wide area. how lasting are the results of such conquests depends upon the degree of social evolution attained by the herdsmen. genghis khan and tamerlane, after the manner of overlords, organized their conquered nations, but left them under the control of local princes,[ ] while their tribute gatherers annually swept the country like typical nomad marauders. the turks are still only encamped in europe. they too make taxation despoliation. and though their dominion has produced no assimilation between victor and vanquished, it has given political consolidation to a large area occupied by varied peoples. the hyksos conquest of egypt found the nile valley divided into several petty principalities under a nominal king. the nomad conquerors possessed political capacity and gave to egypt a strong, centralized government, which laid the basis for the power and glory of the eighteenth dynasty. the tartars in a.d. and the manchus in conquered china, extended its boundaries, governed the country as a ruling class, and left the established order of things undisturbed. the saracen conquest of north africa and spain showed for a time organization and a permanence due to the advanced cultural status of the sedentary arabs drawn into the movement by religious enthusiasm. the environment of spain tended to conserve the knowledge of agriculture, industry, architecture, and science which they brought in and which might have cemented spaniard and moor, had it not been for the intense religious antagonism existing between the two races. the history of nomad conquerors shows that they become weakened by the enervating climate and the effeminating luxury of the moist and fertile lowlands. they lose eventually their warlike spirit, like the fellatah or fulbe founders of the sudanese states,[ ] and are either displaced from their insecure thrones by other conquerors sprung from the same nomad-breeding steppe, as the aryan princes of india by the mongol emperor, and the saracen invaders of mesopotamia by the victorious turkomans; or they are expelled in time by their conquered subjects, as the tartars were from russia, the moors from spain, and the turks from the danube valley. [sidenote: centralization versus decentralization in nomadism.] nomad hordes unite for concerted action to resist encroachment upon their pastures, or for marauding expeditions, or for widespread conquest; but such unions are from their nature temporary, though a career of conquest may be sustained for decades. the geographically determined mobility which facilitates such concentration favors also dispersal, decentralization. this is the paradox in nomadism. geographic conditions in arid lands necessitate sparse distribution of population and of herds. pastoral life requires large spaces and small social groups. when abraham and lot went to canaan from egypt, "the land was not able to bear them that they might dwell together, for their substance was great." strife for the pasturage ensued between their respective herdsmen, so the two sheiks separated, lot taking the plains of jordan and abraham the hill pastures of hebron. jacob and esau separated for the same reason. the encampment of the kirghis shepherds rarely averages over five or six tents, except on the best grazing grounds at the best season of the year. the flow of spring, well or stream also helps to regulate their size. the groups of mongol yurts or felt tents along the piedmont margin of the gobi vary from four tents to a large encampment, according to water and grass.[ ] prevalsky mentions a population of families or souls in the lob nor district distributed in villages, or less than in each group.[ ] barth noticed the smallness of all the oasis towns of the sahara, even those occupying favorable locations for trade on the caravan routes.[ ] [sidenote: spirit of independence among nomads.] the nature-made necessity of scattering in small groups to seek pasturage induces in the nomad a spirit of independence. the bedouin is personally free. the power of the sheik is only nominal,[ ] and depends much upon his personal qualities. the gift of eloquence among the ancient arabs has been attributed to the necessity of persuading a people to whom restraint was irksome.[ ] political organization is conspicuously lacking among the tibbus of the sahara[ ] and the turkoman tribes of the trans-caspian steppes. "we are a people without a head," they say. the title of sheik is an empty one. custom and usage are their rulers.[ ] though the temporary union of nomadic tribes forms an effective army, the union is short-lived. groups form, dissolve and re-form, with little inner cohesion. the boers in south african grasslands showed the same development. the government of the dutch east india company in cape colony found it difficult to control the wandering cattlemen of the interior plateau. they loved independence and isolation; their dissociative instincts, bred by the lonely life of the thin-pastured veldt, were overcome only by the necessity of defense against the bushmen. then they organized themselves into commandos and sallied out on punitive expeditions, like the cossack tribes of the don against marauding tartars. scattered over wide tracts of pasture land, they were exempt from the control of either dutch or english authority; but when an energetic administration pursued them into their widespread ranches, they eluded control by trekking.[ ] here was the independent spirit of the steppe, reinforced by the spirit of the frontier. [sidenote: resistance to conquest.] though the desert and steppe have bred conquerors, they are the last parts of the earth's surface to yield to conquest from without. the untameable spirit of freedom in the shepherd tribes finds an ally against aggression in the trackless sands, meager water and food supply of their wilderness. pursuit of the retreating tribesmen is dangerous and often futile. they need only to burn off the pasture and fill up or pollute the water-holes to cripple the transportation and commissariat of the invading army. this is the way the damaras have fought the german subjugation of southwest africa.[ ] moreover, the paucity of economic and political possibilities in deserts and grasslands discourages conquest. conquest pays only where it is a police measure to check depredations on the bordering agricultural lands, or where such barren areas are transit lands to a desirable territory beyond. it is chiefly the "gates of herat" and the lure of india which have drawn russian dominion across the scorched plains of turkestan. france has assumed the big task of controlling the sahara to secure a safe passway between french tunisia and the rich niger basin of the french sudan. the recent british-egyptian expansion southward across the nubian steppes had for its objective the better watered districts of the upper nile above khartum. this desert advance is essentially a latter day phenomenon, the outcome of modern territorial standards; it is attended or secured by the railroad. to this fact the projected trans-saharan line is the strongest witness. nature everywhere postpones, obstructs, jeopardizes the political conquest of arid lands. the unstable, fanatical tribesmen of the egyptian sudan, temporarily but effectively united under the mahdi, made it necessary for kitchener to do again in the work of subjugation which gordon had done thirty years before. the body of the arabian people is still free. the turkish sovereignty over them to-day is nominal, rather an alliance with a people whom it is dangerous to provoke and difficult to attack. only the coast provinces of hejaz, yemen and hasa are subject to turkey, while the tribes of the interior and of the southeastern seaboard are wholly independent.[ ] the turkoman tribes of trans-caspia have been subordinated to russia largely by a process of extermination.[ ] china is satisfied with a nominal dominion over the roaming populations of mongolia and chinese turkestan. the french pacification and control of northwest africa meets a peculiar problem, due to the extreme restlessness and restiveness of the dominant arab race. the whole population is unstable as water; a disturbance or movement in one tribe is soon communicated to the whole mass.[ ] [sidenote: curtailment of nomadism.] the steppe or desert policy for the curtailment of nomadism, and the reclamation of both land and people is to encourage or enforce sedentary life. the french, to settle the wandering tribes on the atlas border of the sahara, have opened a vast number of artesian wells through the agency of skillful engineers, and thus created oases in which the fecund sands support abundant date-palm groves.[ ] the method pursued energetically by the russians is to compress the tribes into ever narrowing limits of territory, taking away their area of plunder and then so restricting their pasture lands, that they are forced to the drudgery of irrigation and tillage. in this way the yomuts and goklans occupying the caspian border of trans-caspia have been compelled to abandon their old marauding, nomadic life and become to some extent agriculturists.[ ] the method of the chinese is to push forward the frontier of agricultural settlement into the grasslands, dislodging the shepherd tribes into poorer pastures. they have thus reclaimed for grain and poppy fields considerable parts of the ordos country in the great northern bend of the hoangho, which used to be a nursery for nomadic invaders. a similar substitution of agriculture for pastoral nomadism of another type has in recent decades taken place in the semi-arid plains of the american west. sheep-grazing on open range was with difficulty dislodged from the san joaquin valley of california by expanding farms in the sixties. more recently "dry farming" and scientific agriculture adapted to semi-arid conditions have "pushed the desert off the map" in kansas, and advanced the frontier of tillage across the previous domain of natural pastures to the western border of the state. pastoral nomadism has been gradually dislodged from europe, except in the salt steppes of the caspian depression, where a vast tract, , square miles in area and wholly unfit for agriculture, still harbors a sparse population of asiatic kalmuck and kirghis hordes, leading the life of the asiatic steppes.[ ] in asia, too, the regions of pastoral nomadism have been curtailed, but in africa they still maintain for the most part the growing, expanding geographical forms which they once showed in europe, when nomadism prevailed as far as the alps and the rhine. in africa shepherd tribes cover not only the natural grasslands, but lap over into many districts destined by nature for agriculture. hence it is safe to predict that a conspicuous part of the future economic and cultural history of the dark continent will consist in the release of agricultural regions from nomad occupancy and dominion. [sidenote: supplementary agriculture of pastoral nomads.] though agriculture is regarded with contempt and aversion by pastoral nomads and is resorted to for a livelihood only when they lose their herds by a pest or robbery, or find their pasture lands seriously curtailed, nevertheless nomadism yields such a precarious and monotonous subsistence that it is not infrequently combined with a primitive, shifting tillage. the kalmucks of the russian steppes employ men to harvest hay for the winter feeding. the nogai tartars practice a little haphazard tillage on the alluvial hem of the steppe streams.[ ] certain arab tribes living east of the atbara and gash rivers resort with their herds during the dry season to the fruitful region of cassala, which is inundated by the drainage streams from abyssinia, and there they cultivate dourra and other grains.[ ] the bechuana tribes inhabiting the rich, streamless grassland of the so-called kalahari desert rear small herds of goats and cultivate melons and pumpkins; among the other bechuana tribes on the eastern margin of the desert, the men hunt, herd the cattle and milk the cows, while the women raise dourra, maize, pumpkins, melons, cucumbers and beans.[ ] [compare maps pages , .] such supplementary agriculture usually shifts with the nomad group. but where high mountains border rainless tracts, their piedmont districts regularly develop permanent cultivation. here periodic rains or melting snows on the ranges fill the drainage streams, whose inundation often converts their alluvial banks into ready-made fields. the reliability of the water supply anchors here the winter villages of the nomads, which become centers of a limited agriculture, while the pasture lands beyond the irrigated strips support his flocks and herds. where the piedmont of the kuen lun mountains draws a zone of vegetation around the southern rim of the takla makan desert, mongol shepherds raise some wheat, maize and melons as an adjunct to their cattle and sheep; but their tillage is often rendered intermittent by the salinity of the irrigating streams.[ ] along the base of the tian shan mountains, the felt yurt of the gobi nomad gives place to turki houses with wheat and rice fields, and orchards of various fruits; so that the whole piedmont highway from hami to yarkand presents an alternation of desert and oasis settlement.[ ] even the heart of arid arabia shows fertile oases under cultivation where the lofty nejd plateau, with its rain-gathering peaks over five thousand feet high, varies its wide pastures with well tilled valleys abounding in grain fields and date-palm groves.[ ] along the whole saharan slope of the atlas piedmont a series of parallel wadis and, farther out in the desert, a zone of artesian wells, sunk to the underground bed of hidden drainage streams from the same range, form oases which are the seat of permanent agriculture and more or less settled populations. the saharan highlands of tibesti, whose mountains rise to , feet, condense a little rain and permit the tibbus to raise some grain and dates in the narrow valleys.[ ] [sidenote: irrigation and horticulture.] the few and limited spots where the desert or steppe affords water for cultivation require artificial irrigation, the importation of plants, and careful tillage, to make the limited area support even a small social group. hence they could have been utilized by man only after he had made considerable progress in civilization.[ ] oasis agriculture is predominantly intensive. gardens and orchards tend to prevail over field tillage. the restricted soil and water must be forced to yield their utmost. while on the rainy or northern slope of the atlas in algiers and tunis farms abound, on the saharan piedmont are chiefly plantations of vegetables, orchards and palm groves.[ ] in fezzan at the oasis of ghat, barth found kitchen gardens of considerable extent, large palm groves, but limited fields of grain, all raised by irrigation; and in the flat hollow basin forming the oasis of murzuk, he found also fig and peach trees, vegetables, besides fields of wheat and barley cultivated with much labor.[ ] in northern fezzan, where the mountains back of tripoli provide a supply of water, saffron and olive trees are the staple articles of tillage. the slopes are terraced and irrigated, laid out in orchards of figs, pomegranates, almonds and grapes, while fields of wheat and barley border the lower courses of the wadis.[ ] in the "cup oases" or depressions of the sahara, the village is always built on the slope, because the alluvial soil in the basin is too precious to be used for house sites.[ ] [sidenote: effect of diminishing water supply.] the water supply in deserts and steppes, on which permanent agriculture depends, is so scant that even a slight diminution causes the area of tillage to shrink. here a fluctuation of snowfall or rainfall that in a moist region would be negligible, has conspicuous or even tragic results. english engineers who examined the utilization of the afghan streams for irrigation reported that the natives had exploited their water supply to the last drop; that irrigation converted the kabul river and the heri-rud at certain seasons of the year into dry channels.[ ] in the turkoman steppes it has been observed that expanding tillage, by the multiplication of irrigation canals, increased the loss of water by evaporation, and hence diminished the supply. facts like these reveal the narrow margin between food and famine, which makes the uncertain basis of life for the steppe agriculturist. even slight desiccation contracts the volume and shortens the course of interior drainage streams; therefore it narrows the piedmont zone of vegetation and the hem of tillage along the river banks. the previous frontier of field and garden is marked by abandoned hamlets and sand-buried cities, like those which border the dry beds of the shrunken khotan rivers of the tarim basin.[ ] the steppe regions in the new world as well as the old show great numbers of these ruins. barth found them in the northern sahara, dating from roman days.[ ] they occur in such numbers in the syrian desert, in the sistan of persia, in baluchistan, the gobi, takla makan desert, turfan and the lop nor basin, that they indicate a marked but irregular desiccation of central and western asia during the historical period.[ ] [sidenote: scant diet of nomads.] if a scant water supply places sedentary agriculture in arid lands upon an insecure basis, it makes the nomad's sources of subsistence even more precarious. it keeps him persistently on low rations, while the drought that burns his pastures and dries up well and wadi brings him face to face with famine. the daily food of the bedouin is meal cooked in sour camel's milk, to which bread and meat are added only when guests arrive. his moderation in eating is so great that one meal of a european would suffice for six arabs.[ ] the daily food of the shepherd agriculturists on the kuen lun margin of the takla makan desert is bread and milk; meat is indulged in only three or four times a month.[ ] the tartars, even in their days of widest conquest, showed the same habitual frugality. "their victuals are all things that may be eaten, for we saw some of them eat lice." the flesh of all animals dying a natural death is used as food; in summer it is sun-dried for winter use, because at that time the tartars live exclusively on mare's milk which is then abundant. a cup or two of milk in the morning suffices till evening, when each man has a little meat. one ram serves as a meal for fifty or a hundred men. bones are gnawed till they are burnished, "so that no whit of their food may come to naught." genghis khan enacted that neither blood nor entrails nor any other part of a beast which might be eaten should be thrown away.[ ] scarcity of food among the tibetan and mongolian nomads is reflected in their habit of removing every particle of meat from the bone when eating.[ ] a thin decoction of hot tea, butter and flour is their staple food. many turkoman nomads, despite outward appearance of wealth, eat only dried fish, and get bread only once a month, while for the poor wheat is prohibited on account of its cost.[ ] the saharan tibbus, usually on a starvation diet, eat the skin and powdered bones of their dead animals.[ ] the privations and hardships of life in the deserts and steppes discourage obesity. the koko-nor mongols of the high tibetan plateau are of slight build, never fat.[ ] the bedouin's physical ideal of a man is spare, sinewy, energetic and vigorous, "lean-sided and thin," as the arab poet expresses it.[ ] the nomadic tribesmen throughout the sahara, whether of hamitic, semitic or negro race, show this type, and retain it even after several generations of settlement in the river valleys of the sudan. the bushmen, who inhabit the kalahari desert, have thin wiry forms and are capable of great exertion and privations.[ ] [sidenote: checks to population.] though the conquering propensities of nomadic tribes make large families desirable, in order to increase the military strength of the horde, and though shepherd folk acquiring new and rich pastures develop patriarchal families, as did the jews after the conquest of canaan, nevertheless the limited water and food supply of desert and grassland, as well as the relatively low-grade economy of pastoral life, impose an iron-bound restriction upon population, so that as a matter of fact patriarchal families are rare. when natural increase finds no vent in emigration and dispersal, marriage among nomads becomes less fruitful.[ ] artificial limitation of population occurs frequently among desert-dwellers. in the libyan oasis of farafeah, the inhabitants never exceed eighty males, a limit fixed by a certain sheik murzuk.[ ] poverty of food supply explains the small number of children in the typical turkoman family. among the koko-nor tibetans, monogamy is the rule, polygamy the exception and confined to the few rich, while families never include more than two or three children.[ ] according to burckhardt, three children constitute a large family among the bedouins, much to the regret of the bedouins themselves. mohammedans though they are, few practice polygamy, while polyandry and female infanticide existed in heathen times.[ ] desert peoples seem to be naturally monogamous.[ ] [sidenote: trade of nomads.] the prevailing poverty, monotony and unreliability of subsistence in desert and steppe, as well as the low industrial status, necessitate trade with bordering agricultural lands. the bedouins of arabia buy flour, barley for horse feed, coffee and clothing, paying for them largely with butter and male colts. the northern tribes resort every year to the confines of syria, when they are visited by pedlers from damascus and aleppo.[ ] the tribes from hasa and the nejd pasture land bring horses, cattle and sheep to the city of koweit at the head of the persian gulf to barter for dates, clothing and firearms; and large encampments of them are always to be seen near this town.[ ] arabia and the desert of kedar sold lambs, rams and goats to the markets of ancient tyre.[ ] the pastoral tribes of ancient judea in times of scarcity went to egypt for grain, which they purchased either with money or cattle. the picture of jacob's sons returning from egypt to canaan with their long lines of asses laden with sacks of corn is typical for pastoral nomads; so is their ultimate settlement, owing to protracted famine, in the delta land of goshen. the kirghis of the russian and asiatic steppes barter horses and sheep for cereals, fine articles of clothing, and coarse wooden utensils in the cities of bukhara and the border districts of russia. occasionally the land of the nomad yields other products than those of the flocks and herds, which enter therefore into their trade. such is the salt of the sahara, secured at taudeni and bilma, the gums of the indus desert, and balm of gilead from the dry plateau east of jordan. [sidenote: pastoral nomads as middlemen.] the systematic migrations of nomads, their numerous beasts of burden, and the paucity of desert and steppe products determine pastoral tribes for the office of middlemen;[ ] and as such they appear in all parts of the world. the contrast of products in arid regions and in the bordering agricultural land, as also in the districts on opposite sides of these vast barriers, stimulates exchanges. this contrast may rest on a difference of geographic conditions, or of economic development, or both. the reindeer chukches of arctic siberia take russian manufactured wares from the fur stations on the lena river to trade at the coast markets on bering sea for alaskan pelts. the sons of jacob, pasturing their flocks on the judean plateau, saw "a company of ishmaelites come from gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to egypt."[ ] this caravan of arabian merchants purchased joseph as a slave, a characteristic commodity in desert commerce from ancient times to the present. the predatory expeditions of nomads provide them with abundant captives, only few of which can be utilized as slaves in their pastoral economy. in the same way the kirghis manage the caravan trade between russia and bukhara, sometimes adding captured travelers to their other wares. in ancient times nubian shepherd folk acted as migrant middlemen between egypt and meroe near the junction of the atbara river and the nile, as did also the desert tribe of the nasamones between carthage and interior africa.[ ] from remote ages an active caravan trade was carried on between the productive districts of arabia felix and the cities of mesopotamia, syria and egypt. mohammed himself was a caravan leader; in the faith which he established religious pilgrimages and commercial ventures were inextricably united, while to the mercantile spirit it gave a fresh and vigorous impetus.[ ] the caravan trade of the sahara was first organized by moorish and arab tribes who dwelt on the northern margin of the desert, rearing herds of camels. these they hired to merchants for the journey between morocco and timbuctoo, in return for cereals and clothing. hence morocco has been the chief customer of the great desert town near the niger, and sends thither numerous caravans from tendouf (taredant) morocco, fez and tafilet. algiers dominates the less important route via the oasis of twat, and tripolis that through ghadames to the busy towns in the lake chad basin.[ ] [sidenote: desert markets.] if the camel is "the ship of the desert," the market towns on the margin of the sandy wastes are the ports of the desert. their bazaars hold everything that the nomad needs. their suburbs are a shifting series of shepherd encampments or extensive caravanseries for merchant and pack animal, like the _abaradion_ of timbuctoo, which receives annually from fifty to sixty thousand camels.[ ] their industries develop partly in response to the demand of the desert or trans-desert population. the fine blades of damascus reflected the bedouin's need of the best weapon. each city has its sphere of desert influence. the province of nejd in central arabia is commercially subservient to bagdad, busrah, koweit and bahrein.[ ] the bazaars of samarkand and tashkent exist largely for the scattered nomads of turkestan. ancient gaza[ ] and askelon fattened on the egyptian trade across the desert of shur, as petra, bostra and damascus on the thin but steady streams of nomad products flowing in from the syrian desert. [sidenote: nomad industries.] the abundant leisure of nomadic life encourages the beginning of industry, but rarely advances it beyond the household stage, owing to the thin, family-wise dispersion of population which precludes division of labor. such industry as exists consists chiefly in working up the raw materials yielded by the herds. among the bedouins, blacksmiths and saddlers are the only professional artisans; these are regarded with contempt and are never of bedouin stock.[ ] in the ancient world, industry reached its zero point in arabia, and in modern times shows meager development there. on the other hand the saharan arabs developed an hereditary guild of expert well-makers, which seems to date back to remote times, and is held in universal honor.[ ] [sidenote: oriental rugs.] it is to the tent-dwellers of the world, however, that we apparently owe the oriental rug. this triumph of the weaver's art seems to have originated among pastoral nomads, who developed it in working up the wool and hair of their sheep, goats and camels; but it early became localized as a specialized industry in the towns and villages of irrigated districts on the borders of the grazing lands, where the nomads had advanced to sedentary life. therefore in the period of the caliphate, from to , we find these brilliant flowers of the loom, blooming like the persian gardens, in persian farsistan, khusistan, kirman and khorasan. we find them spreading the mediæval fame of shiraz, tun, meshed, amul, bukhara and merv. the secret of this preeminence lay partly in the weaver's inherited aptitude and artistic sense for this textile work, derived from countless generations of shepherd ancestors; partly in their proximity to the finest raw materials, whose quality was equalled nowhere else, because it depended upon the character of the pasturage, probably also upon the climatic conditions affecting directly the flocks and herds.[ ] a map showing the geographical distribution of eastern rug-making reveals the relation of the industry to semi-arid or saline pastures, and makes the mind revert at once to the blankets of artistic design and color, woven by the navajo indians of our own rainless southwest. rug weaving in the old world reached its finest development in countries like persia, turkestan, western afghanistan, baluchistan, western india and the plateau portions of asia minor, countries where the rainfall varies from to inches or even less, [see map page .] where nomadism claims a considerable part of the population, and where the ancestry of all traces back to some of the great shepherd races, like turkomans and tartars. these peoples are hereditary specialists in the care, classification, and preparation of wools.[ ] weavers of rugs form an industrial class in the cities of persia and asia minor, where they obey largely the taste of the outside world in regard to design and color;[ ] whereas the nomads, weaving for their own use, adhere strictly to native colors and designs. their patterns are tribal property, each differing from that of the other; and though less artistic than those of the urban workers, are nevertheless interesting and consistent, while the nomad's intuitive sense of color is fine.[ ] [sidenote: architecture of nomad conquerors.] the principles of design and color which these tent-dwellers had developed in their weaving, they applied, after their conquest of agricultural lands, to stone and produced the mosaic, to architecture and produced the alhambra and the taj mahal.[ ] whether saracens of spain or turkoman conquerors of india, they were ornamentists whose contribution to architecture was decoration. working in marble, stone, metals or wood, they wrought always in the spirit of color and textile design, rather than in the spirit of form. the walls of their mosques, palaces and tombs reproduce the beauty of the rugs once screening the doors of their felt tents. the gift of color they passed on to the west, first through the moors of sicily and spain, later through venetian commerce. their influence can be seen in the exquisite mosaic decoration in the cloister of mont reale of once saracenic palermo, and in the ducal palace and st. mark's cathedral of beauty-loving venice.[ ] this has been almost their sole contribution to the art of the world. pastoral nomads can give political union to civilized peoples; they can assimilate and spread ready-made elements of civilization, but to originate or develop them they are powerless. between the art, philosophy and literature of china on the one side, and of the settled districts of persia on the other, lies the cultural sterility of the central asia plateau. its outpouring hordes have only in part acquired the civilization of the superior agricultural peoples whom they have conquered; from kazan and constantinople to delhi, from delhi to peking they have added almost nothing to the local culture. [sidenote: arid lands as areas of arrested development.] deserts and steppes lay an arresting hand on progress. their tribes do not develop; neither do they grow old. they are the eternal children of the world. genuine nomadic peoples show no alteration in their manners, customs or mode of life from millennium to millennium. the interior of the arabian desert reveals the same social and economic status,[ ] whether we take the descriptions of moses or mohammed or burckhardt or more recent travelers. the bedouins of the nubian steppes adhere strictly to all their ancient customs, and reproduce to-day the pastoral nomadism of abraham and jacob.[ ] genealogies were not more important to the biblical house of david and stem of jesse than they are for the modern kirghis tribesman, who as a little child learns to recite the list of his ancestors back to the seventh generation. the account which herodotus gives of the nomads of the russian steppes agrees in minute details with that of strabo written five centuries later,[ ] with that of william de rubruquis in , and with modern descriptions of kalmuck and kirghis life. the gauchos or indian pastoral halfbreeds of the argentine plains were found by wappäus in to accord accurately with avara's description of them at the end of the eighteenth century.[ ] the restless tenants of the grasslands come and go, but their type never materially changes. their culture is stationary amid persistent movement. only when here or there in some small and favored spot they are forced to make the transition to agriculture, or when they learn by long and close association with sedentary nations the lesson of drudgery and progress, do the laws of social and economic development begin to operate in them. as a rule, they must first escape partly or wholly the environment of their pasture lands, either by emigration or by the intrusion into their midst of alien tillers of the soil. but while the migrant shepherd originates nothing, he plays an historical rôle as a transmitter of civilization. asiatic nomads have sparsely disseminated the culture of china, persia, egypt and yemen over large areas of the world. the semite shepherds of the red sea deserts, through their merchants and conquerors, long gave to the dark sudan the only light of civilization which it received, mohammed, a bedouin of the ishmaelite tribe, caravan leader on the desert highways between mecca and syria, borrowed from jerusalem the simple tenets of a monotheistic religion, and spread them through his militant followers over a large part of africa and asia. [sidenote: mental and moral qualities of nomads.] the deserts and grasslands breed in their sons certain qualities and characteristics-courage, hardihood, the stiff-necked pride of the freeman, vigilance, wariness, sense of locality,[ ] keen powers of observation stimulated by the monotonous, featureless environment, and the consequent capacity to grasp every detail.[ ] though robbery abroad is honorable and marauder a term with which to crown a hero, theft at home is summarily dealt with among most nomads. the property of the unlocked tent and the far-ranging herd must be safeguarded.[ ] the tartars maintained a high standard of honesty among themselves and punished theft with death.[ ] wide dispersal in small groups is reflected in the diversity of dialects among desert peoples;[ ] in the practice of hospitality, whether among bedouins of the nejd, kirghis of the central asia plateau,[ ] or semi-nomadic boers of south africa;[ ] in the persistence of feuds and of the duty of blood revenge, which is sanctioned by the koran. isolation tends to breed among nomads pride of race and a repugnance to intermixture. the ideal of the pastoral israelites was a pure ethnic stock, protected by stern inhibition of intermarriage with other tribes. therefore, moses enjoined upon them the duty of exterminating the peoples of canaan whom they dispossessed.[ ] while the urban arabs show a medley of breeds, dashed with a strain of negro blood, among the nomad bedouins, mixture is exceptional and is regarded as a disgrace.[ ] the same thing is true among the nomad arabs of algeria, and there it has placed a stumbling block in the way of the french colonial administration, by preventing the appearance of half-breeds who might bridge the gap between the colonials and natives. where pastoral semites have settled in agricultural lands, intermixture on a wide scale has followed, as in the sudan from niger to nile; but even here, when a tribe or clan has retained a strictly pastoral life in the grassland, and has held itself aloof from the agricultural districts of the negro villages, relatively pure survivals are to be found, as among the cow or bush fulani of bornu.[ ] on the other hand, the hausa, a migrant trading folk of mingled arab and negro blood, spread northward along the trans-saharan caravan route to the oasis of air before the fourteenth century, and there have infused into the local berber stock a strong negro strain.[ ] among the nomads of central asia, one wave of race movement has so often followed and overtaken another, that it has produced a confused blending of breeds. the mixtures are so numerous that pure types are exceptional,[ ] and the exclusiveness of the desert semites disappears. [sidenote: religion of pastoral nomads.] though all these desert-born characteristics and customs have a certain interest for the sociologist, they possess only minor importance in comparison with the religious spirit of pastoral nomads, which is always fraught with far-reaching historical results. the evidence of history shows us that there is such a thing as a desert-born genius for religion. huc and gabin testify to the deeper religious feeling of the buddhist nomads of the central asia plateaus, as compared with the lowland chinese. the three great monotheistic religions of the world are closely connected in their origin and development with the deserts of syria and arabia. the area of mohammedism embraces the steppe zone of the old world[ ] from senegambia and zanzibar in africa to the indus, tarim and the upper obi, together with some well watered lands on its margins. it comprises in this territory a variety of races--negroes, hamites, semites, iranians, indo-aryans, and a long list of mongoloid tribes. here is a psychological effect of environment. the dry, pure air stimulates the faculties of the desert-dweller, but the featureless, monotonous surroundings furnish them with little to work upon. the mind, finding scant material for sustained logical deduction, falls back upon contemplation. intellectual activity is therefore restricted, narrow, unproductive; while the imagination is unfettered but also unfed. first and last, these shepherd folk receive from the immense monotony of their environment the impression of unity.[ ] therefore all of them, upon outgrowing their primitive fetish and nature worship, gravitate inevitably into monotheism. their religion is in accord with their whole mental make-up; it is a growth, a natural efflorescence. therefore it is strong. its tenets form the warp of all their intellectual fabrics, permeate their meager science and philosophy, animate their more glorious poetry. it has moreover the fanaticism and intolerance characterizing men of few ideas and restricted outlook upon life. therewith is bound up a spirit of propaganda. the victories of the jews in palestine, syria and philistia were the victories of jehovah; the conquests of saladin were the conquests of allah; and the domain of the caliphate was the dominion of islam. [illustration: distribution of religions in the old world (world map showing distribution of christians, mohammedans, brahmans, buddhists, and heathen).] [sidenote: fanaticism as a force in nomad expansion.] the desert everywhere, sooner or later, drives out its brood, ejects its people and their ideas, like those exploding seed-pods which at a touch cast their seed abroad. the religious fanaticism of the shepherd tribes gives that touch; herein lies its historical importance. mohammedism, fierce and militant, conduced to those upheavals of migration and conquest which since the seventh century have so often transformed the political geography of the old world. the vast empire of the caliphate, from its starting point in arabia, spread in eighty years from the oxus river to the atlantic ocean.[ ] the rapid rise and spread between and of the wahaby clan and sect, the puritans of islam, which resulted for a time in their political and religious domination of much of arabia from their home in the nejd, recalls the stormy conquests of mohammed's followers. islam is to-day a persistent source of ferment in algeria, the sahara, and the sudan, on the other hand. buddhism serves to cement together the diverse nomadic tribes of the central asia plateaus, and keep them in spiritual subjection to the grand lama of lhassa. the chinese government makes political use of this fact by dominating the lama and employing him as a tool to secure quiet on its long frontier of contact with its restless mongol neighbors. moreover the religion of buddha has restrained the warlike spirit of the nomads, and by its institution of celibacy has helped keep down population below the boiling-point. [compare maps pages and .] [sidenote: the faith of the desert.] the faith of the desert tends to be stern, simple and austere. the indulgence which mohammed promised his followers in paradise was only a reflex of the deprivation under which they habitually suffered in the scant pastures of arabia. the lavish beauty of the heavenly city epitomized the ideals and dreams of the desert-stamped jew. the active, simple, uncramped life of the grasslands seems essential to the preservation of the best virtues of the desert-bred. these disappear largely in sedentary life. the bedouin rots when he takes root. city life contaminates, degrades him. his virile qualities and his religion both lose their best when he leaves the desert. contact with the cities of philistia and the fertile plains of the canaanites, with their sensual agricultural gods, demoralized the israelites.[ ] the prophets were always calling them back to the sterner code of morals and the purer faith of their days of wandering. jeremiah in despair holds up to them as a standard of life the national injunction of the pastoral rechabites, "neither shall ye build house nor sow corn nor plant vineyard, but all your days ye shall dwell in tents."[ ] the ascent in civilization made havoc with hebrew morals and religion, because ethics and religion are the finest and latest flower of each cultural stage. transition shows the breaking down of one code before the establishment of another. judaism has always suffered from its narrow local base. even when transplanted to various parts of the earth, it has remained a distinctly tribal religion. intense conservatism in doctrine and ceremonial it still bears as the heritage of its desert birth. islam too shows the limitations of its original environment. it embodies a powerful appeal to the peoples of arid lands, and among these it has spread and survives as an active principle. but it belongs to an arrested economic and social development, lacks the germs of moral evolution which christianity, born in the old stronghold of hebraic monotheism, but impregnated by all the cosmopolitan influences of the mediterranean basin and the _imperium romanum_, amply possesses. notes to chapter xiv [ ] figures taken from albrecht penck, _morphologie der erdoberfläche_, vol. i, p. . stuttgart, . [ ] a.p. brigham, geographic influences in american history, chap. iv. boston, . [ ] e.c. semple, american history and its geographic conditions, pp. - , , , . boston, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. , , . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] henry buckle, history of civilization in england, vol. ii, pp. - . new york, . [ ] carl ritter, comparative geography, pp. - , . philadelphia, . [ ] j.h. breasted, history of egypt, pp. , , - , - , - . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, , , , , , , , , , , , , , . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - , map. new york, . [ ] anatole leroy-beaulieu, the empire of the tsars, vol. i, pp. - . new york, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, maps, pp. and . new york, . [ ] hans helmolt, history of the world, vol. vi, p. , map of ancient distribution of germans and celts. new york, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, - , , . [ ] elisée reclus, europe, vol. iv, pp. - . new york, . [ ] anatole leroy-beaulieu, empire of the tsars, vol. i, p. . new york, . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, pp. - . new york, . [ ] vidal-lablache, _atlas général_, maps pp. , , . paris, . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, , - . new york, . [ ] twelfth census, bulletin of agriculture no. , p. , compared with eleventh census, statistics of population, map of negro distribution, p. xcvii. washington, . [ ] twelfth census, bulletin of agriculture, no. , p. . washington, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, p. . new york, . [ ] boyd alexander, from the niger to the nile, vol. ii, p. . london, . [ ] haxthausen, _studien_, vol. i, p. . _die ländliche verfassung russlands_, pp. , . leipzig, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. ii, pp. - . london, - . j. wappäus, _handbuch der geographie und statistik des ehemaligen spanischen mittel- und sud-amerika_, pp. - , . leipzig, - . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. ii, pp. - . london, - . [ ] nordenskiold, voyage of the vega, pp. , , . new york, . alexander p. engelhardt, a russian province of the north, pp. - . london, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. , - . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, pp. - . london. - . [ ] james bryce, impressions of south africa, p. . new york, . [ ] herodotus, melpomene, , . [ ] thomas hodgkin, italy and her invaders, vol. i, p. . oxford, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. ii, p. . london, - . [ ] genesis, xiii, , . [ ] james bryce, impressions of south africa, p. . new york, . [ ] eleventh census, indian report, pp. - . washington, . [ ] sven hedin, central asia and tibet, vol. i, pp. - . london and new york, . [ ] j.l. burckhardt, notes on the bedouins and wahabys, vol. i, pp. - . london, . [ ] george adam smith, historical geography of the holy land, pp. - . new york, . [ ] gibbon, decline and fall of the roman empire, vol. v, pp. - . new york, . [ ] l. march phillipps, in the desert, p. . london, . [ ] sir samuel w. baker, the nile tributaries of abyssinia, pp. , , , . hartford, . [ ] journey of john de carpini and william de rubruquis in , pp. , . hakluyt society, london, . [ ] james bryce, impressions of south africa, pp. , . new york, . [ ] wilhelm roscher, _national-oekonomik des ackerbaues_, p. . stuttgart, . [ ] a full discussion in malthus, principles of population, book i, chap. . [ ] j.l. burckhardt, notes on the bedouins and wahabys, vol. i, pp. - , - . london, . s.m. zwemer, arabia, the cradle of islam, - . new york, . [ ] vambery, _reise in mittelasien_, pp. , - . leipzig, . [ ] alexis krausse, russia in asia, pp. - . new york, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, pp. - . london, - . [ ] wallace, russia, pp. - . new york, . [ ] l. march phillipps, in the desert, pp. , - . london, . [ ] felix dubois, timbuctoo, pp. , - . translated from the french, new york, . [ ] heinrich barth, travels in north and central africa, vol. i, pp. - , , . new york, . [ ] felix dubois, timbuctoo, pp. - , , - , , , - . new york, . [ ] boyd alexander, from the niger to the nile, vol. ii, pp. - , , - , . london, . [ ] gibbon, decline and fall of the roman. empire, vol. v, p. . new york, . [ ] pliny, _historia naturalis_, v, . [ ] gibbon, decline and fall of the roman empire, vol. ii, p. . new york, . [ ] ellsworth huntington, the pulse of asia, p. . boston, . [ ] pallas, travels in the southern provinces of russia in - , vol. ii, p. . london, . [ ] _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , . [ ] genesis, xiii, - ; xxi, - ; xxvi, - . [ ] herbert spencer, principles of sociology, vol. i, p. . new york, . [ ] thucydides, book ii, . [ ] herodotus, iv, . [ ] meredith townsend, asia and europe, chapter on arab courage. new york, . [ ] wilhelm roscher, _national-oekonomik des ackerbaues_, p. . stuttgart, . [ ] j.l. burckhardt, notes on the bedouins and wahabys, vol. i, pp. - . london, . [ ] john de plano carpini, journey to the northeast, pp. - , - . hakluyt society, london, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, p. . london, - . [ ] j.h. speke, discovery of the source of the nile, pp. - . new york, . [ ] journey of william de rubruquis, pp. - , hakluyt society, london, . [ ] jerome dowd, the negro races, vol. i, pp. - . new york, . [ ] sir francis younghusband, the heart of a continent, pp. - . london, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, p. . london, - . [ ] heinrich barth, travels in north and central africa, vol. i, pp. , , , , . new york, . [ ] j.l. burckhardt, notes on the bedouins and wahabys, vol. i, pp. - , - , - . london, . [ ] gibbon, decline and fall of the roman empire, vol. v, pp. - . new york, . [ ] jerome dowd, the negro races, vol. i, pp. - . new york, . [ ] vambery, _reise in mittel asien_, pp. - . leipzig, . [ ] james bryce, impressions of south africa, pp. , , , , , - . new york, . [ ] for vivid description of desert defensive warfare, see gustav frensen, peter moore's journey to southwest africa. translated from the german, . based upon interviews with hundreds of returning german soldiers from the damara campaign. [ ] h.b. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] henry norman, all the russias, p. . new york, . [ ] l. march phillipps, in the desert, pp. - . london, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. - . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, p. . london, - . [ ] anatole leroy-beaulieu, the empire of the tsars, vol. i, pp. - . new york, . [ ] pallas, travels through the southern provinces of russia, vol. i, pp. - . london, . [ ] sir s.w. baker, nile tributaries of abyssinia, p. . hartford, . [ ] david livingstone, missionary travels, pp. - , . new york, . [ ] sven hedin, central asia and tibet, vol. i, pp. , , , new york and london, . ellsworth huntington, the pulse of asia, pp. , , , . boston, . [ ] sir francis younghusband, the heart of a continent, pp. , , , - , , - , , , . london, . [ ] s.w. zwemer, arabia the cradle of islam, pp. , . new york, . d.g. hogarth, the nearer east, pp. , . . london, . [ ] nachtigal, _sahara und sudan_, vol. i, pp. - , - . berlin, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, p. . london, - . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, pp. , . new york, . [ ] h. barth, travels in north and central africa, vol. i, pp. , , , . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, - , , - , , , , , , , . [ ] l. march phillipps, in the desert, p. . london, . [ ] sir thomas holdich, india, pp. - . london, . [ ] m.a. stein, the sand-buried ruins of khotan, pp. - , - . london, . [ ] h. barth, travels in north and central africa, vol. i, chap. iii. new york, . [ ] ellsworth huntington, the pulse of asia, pp. - , , , - , , . boston, . [ ] j.l. burckhardt, notes on the bedouins and wahabys, vol. i, pp. - , - . london, . [ ] e. huntington, the pulse of asia, pp. - . boston, . [ ] john de plano carpini, journey to the northeast, pp. - , . hakluyt society, london, . journey of william de rubruquis, pp. - , , . hakluyt society, london, . [ ] w.w. rockhill, the land of the lamas, p. . new york, . [ ] vambery, _reise in mittel asien_, p. . leipzig, . [ ] nachtigal, _sahara und sudan_, vol. i, pp. , . berlin, . [ ] e. huntington, the pulse of asia, p. . boston, . [ ] l. march phillipps, in the desert, pp. - . london, . [ ] d. livingstone, travels and researches in south africa, p. . new york, . [ ] w. roscher, _grundlagen der nationalökonomik_, book vi, chap. ii, p. . stuttgart, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, p. . london, - . [ ] w.w. rockhill, land of the lamas, p. . new york, . [ ] j.l. burckhardt, notes on the bedouins and wahabys, vol. i, pp. , . london, . s.m. zwemer, arabia the cradle of islam, pp. , . new york, . [ ] westermarck, history of human marriage, p. , notes and , p. , note , p. . london, . [ ] j.l. burckhardt, notes on the bedouins and wahabys, vol. i, pp. , , , , - , . london, . [ ] s.m. zwemer, arabia the cradle of islam, p. . new york, . [ ] ezekiel, chap. xxvii, . [ ] for economic principle, see w. roscher, _handel und gewerbefleiss_, pp. - . stuttgart, . [ ] genesis, chap. xxxvii, - , . [ ] w. roscher, _national-oekonomik des ackerbaues_, p. , note . stuttgart, . [ ] s.p. scott, history of the moorish empire in europe, vol. iii, p. . philadelphia, . [ ] felix dubois, timbuctoo, pp. - . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. - . [ ] s.m. zwemer, arabia the cradle of islam, p. . new york, . [ ] george adam smith, historical geography of the holy land, pp. - . new york, . [ ] j.l. burckhardt, notes on the bedouins and wahabys, vol. i, p. . london, . [ ] l. march phillipps, in the desert, pp. - . london, . [ ] f.r. martin, a history of oriental carpets before , pp. , , et seq., , . vienna, . g. lestrange, land of the eastern caliphates, pp. , - , , , . cambridge, . [ ] j.k. mumford, oriental rugs, pp. - , - . new york, . [ ] d.g. hogarth, the nearer east, pp. - . london, . [ ] j.k. mumford, oriental rugs, p. . new york, . [ ] j. ferguson, history of architecture, vol. ii, pp. - , , . new york. j. ferguson, history of indian and eastern architecture, vol. ii, pp. - . new york, . [ ] wilhelm bode, _vorderasiatische knüpfteppiche_, pp. - . leipzig. [ ] gibbon, decline and fall of the roman empire, vol. v, p. . new york, . [ ] sir s.w. baker, exploration of the nile tributaries of abyssinia, pp. - . hartford, . [ ] strabo, book vii, chap. iii, , ; chap. iv, . book xi, chap. ii, , , . [ ] j. wappäus, _handbuch der geographie und statistik des chemaligen spanischen mittel- und sud-amerika_, p. . leipzig, - . [ ] sir f. younghusband, the heart of a continent, pp. , . london, . alfred kirchoff, man and earth, pp. - . london. [ ] j.l. burckhardt, notes on the bedouins and wahabys, vol. i, pp. - . london, . l. march phillipps, in the desert, pp. - . london, . [ ] exodus, chap. xxii, - , . [ ] john de plano carpini, journey to the northeast in , pp. , , . hakluyt society, london, . [ ] gibbon, decline and fall of the roman empire, vol. v, p. . new york, . h. barth, travels in north and central africa, vol. i, p. . new york, . [ ] e. huntington, the pulse of asia, pp. - . boston, . [ ] james bryce, impressions of south africa, p. . new york, . [ ] deuteronomy, vii, - . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, p. . london, - . [ ] boyd alexander, from the niger to the nile, vol. i, pp. - . london, . [ ] h. barth, travels in north and central africa, vol. i, pp. , - . new york, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, p. . london, - . [ ] _ibid._, vol. iii, chapter on islam, pp. - . [ ] george adam smith, historical geography of the holy land, pp. - . new york, . l. march phillipps, in the desert, pp. - . london, . [ ] e.a. freeman, historical geography of europe, pp. - . london, . [ ] george adam smith, historical geography of the holy land, pp. - . new york, . [ ] jeremiah, chap. xxxv, - . chapter xv mountain barriers and their passes [sidenote: man as part of the mobile envelope of the earth.] the important characteristic of plains is their power to facilitate every phase of historical movement; that of mountains is their power to retard, arrest, or deflect it. man, as part of the mobile envelope of the earth, like air and water feels always the pull of gravity. from this he can never fully emancipate himself. by an output of energy he may climb the steepest slope, but with every upward step the ascent becomes more difficult, owing to the diminution of warmth and air and the increasing tax upon the heart.[ ] maintenance of life in high altitudes is always a struggle. the decrease of food resources from lower to higher levels makes the passage of a mountain system an ordeal for every migrating people or marching army that has to live off the country which it traverses. mountains therefore repel population by their inaccessibility and also by their harsh conditions of life, while the lowlands attract it, both in migration and settlement. historical movement, when forced into the upheaved areas of the earth, avoids the ridges and peaks, seeks the valleys and passes, where communication with the lowlands is easiest. [sidenote: inaccessibility of mountains.] high massive mountain systems present the most effective barriers which man meets on the land surface of the earth. to the spread of population they offer a resistance which long serves to exclude settlers. the difficulty of making roads up steep, rocky slopes and through the forests usually covering their rain-drenched sides, is deterrent enough; but in addition to this, general infertility, paucity of arable land, harsh climatic conditions, and the practical lack of communication with the outside world offer scant basis for subsistence. hence, as a rule, only when pressure of population in the lowlands becomes too great under prevailing economic methods, do clearings and cabins begin to creep up the slopes. mountains are always regions of late occupation. even in the stone age, we find the long-headed race of mediterranean stock, who originally populated europe, distributed over the continent close up to the foot of the high alps, but not in the mountains themselves, and only scantily represented in the auvergne plateau of france. the inhospitable highlands of switzerland, the german alps, and the auvergne received their first population later when the alpine race began to occupy western europe.[ ] the _mittelgebirge_ of germany were not settled till the middle ages. in the united states, the flood of population had spread westward by to the ninety-fifth meridian and the north-south course of the missouri river; but out of this sea of settlement the adirondack mountains, a few scattered spots in the appalachians, and the ozark highlands rose as so many islands of uninhabited wilderness, and they remain to-day areas of sparser population. in , the "bare spots" in the eastern mountains were more pronounced. [see map page .] great stretches of the rocky mountains, of the laurentian highlands of canada, like smaller patches in the scandinavian and swiss alps, are practically uninhabited. [sidenote: mountains as transit regions.] mountain regions, like deserts and seas, become mere transit districts, which man traverses as quickly as possible. hence they often lie as great inert areas in the midst of active historical lands, and first appear upon the historical stage in minor rôles, when they are wanted by the plains people as a passway to desirable regions beyond. then, as a rule, only their transit routes are secured, while the less accessible regions are ignored. cæsar makes no mention of the alps, except to state that he has crossed them, until some of the mountain tribes try to block the passage of roman merchants or armies; then they become important enough to be conquered. it was not till after the cimbri in b.c. invaded italy by the brenner route, that the romans realized the value of rhaetia (tyrol) as a thoroughfare from italy to germany, and began its conquest in b.c. this was the same value which the tyrol so long had for the old german empire and later for austria,--merely to secure connection with the po valley. the need of land communication with the rhone valley led the romans to attack the salyes, who inhabited the maritime alps, and after eighty years of war to force from them the concession of a narrow transit strip, twelve stadia or one and a half miles wide, for the purpose of making a road to massilia.[ ] the necessity of controlling such transit lands has drawn british india into the occupation of mountain baluchistan, kashmir and sikkim, just as it has caused the highlands of afghanistan to figure actively in the expansion policy of both india and russia. the conquest of such transit lands has always been attended by road building, from the construction of the roman highway through the brenner pass to the modern russian military road through the pass of dariel across the caucasus, and the yet more recent indian railroad to darjeeling, with the highway extension beyond to the tibetan frontier through himalayan sikkim. such mountain regions attain independent historical importance when their population increases enough to form the nucleus of a state, and to acquire additional territory about the highland base either by conquest or voluntary union, while they utilize their naturally protected location and their power to grant safe transit to their allies, as means to secure their political autonomy. therefore to mountain regions so often falls the rôle of buffer states. such were medieval burgundy and modern savoy, which occupied part of the same territory, navarre which in the late middle ages controlled the important passway around the western end of the pyrenees, and switzerland which commands the passes of the central alps. the position of such mountain states is, however, always fraught with danger, owing to the weakness inherent in their small area and yet smaller allowance of productive soil, to their diverse ethnic elements, and the forces working against political consolidation in their deeply dissected surface. political solidarity has a hard, slow birth in the mountains. [sidenote: transition forms of relief between highlands and lowlands.] in view of the barrier character of mountains, a fact of immense importance to the distribution of man and his activities is the rarity of abrupt, ungraded forms of relief on the earth's surface. the physiographic cause lies in the elasticity of the earth's crust and the leveling effect of weathering and denudation. everywhere mountains are worn down and rounded off, while valleys broaden and fill up to shallow trough outlines. transition forms of relief abound. human intercourse meets therefore few absolute barriers on the land; but these few reveal the obstacles to historical movement in perpendicular reliefs. the mile-high walls of the grand cañon of the colorado are an insuperable obstacle to intercourse for a stretch of three hundred miles. the glacier-crowned ridge of the bernese alps is crossed by no wagon road between the grimsel pass and the upper rhone highway around their western end, a distance of kilometers ( miles). the pennine alps have no pass between the great st. bernard and the simplon, a distance of kilometers ( miles). [sidenote: importance of transition slopes.] gentle transition slopes or terrace lands facilitate almost everywhere access to the lowest, most habitable and therefore, from the human standpoint, most important section of mountains. they combine the ease of intercourse characteristic of plains with many advantages of the mountains, and especially in warm climates they unite in a narrow zone both tropical and temperate vegetation. the human value of these transition slopes holds equally of single hills, massive mountain systems, and continental reliefs. the earth as a whole owes much of its habitability to these gently graded slopes. continents and countries in which they are meagerly developed suffer from difficulty of intercourse, retarded development and poverty of the choicest habitable areas. this is one disadvantage of south africa, emphasized farther by a poor coastline. the pacific face of australia would gain vastly in historical importance, if the drop from the highlands to the ocean were stretched out into a broad slope, like that which links our atlantic coastal plain with the appalachian highlands. there each river valley shows three characteristic anthropo-geographical sub-divisions--the active seaports and tide-water tillage of its lower course, the contrasted agriculture of its hilly course, the upland farms, waterpower industries and mines of its headstream valleys, each landscape giving its population distinctive characteristics. the same natural features, with the same effect upon human activities and population, appear in the long seaward slopes of france, germany and northern italy. [sidenote: piedmont belts as boundary zones.] at the base of the mountains themselves, where the bold relief begins, is always a piedmont zone of hilly surface but gentler grade, at whose inner or upland edge every phase of the historical movement receives a marked check. here is a typical geographical boundary, physical and human. it shifts slightly in different periods, according to the growing density of population in the plains below and improved technique in industry and road-making. it is often both an ethnic and cultural boundary, because at the rim of the mountains the geologic and economic character of the country changes.[ ] the expanding peoples of the plains spread over the piedmont so far as it offers familiar and comparatively favorable geographic conditions, scatter their settlements along the base of the mountains, and here fix their political frontier for a time, though later they may advance it to the crest of the ridge, in order to secure a more scientific boundary. the civilized population of the broad indus valley spread westward up the western highlands, only so far as the shelving slopes of the clay and conglomerate foothills, which constitute the piedmont of the suleiman and kirthar mountains, afforded conditions for their crops. thus from the arabian sea for miles north to the gomal river, the political frontier of india was defined by the line of relief dividing the limestone mountains from the alluvial plain, the marauding baluch and afghan hill tribes from the patient farmers of the sind.[ ] this line remained the border of india from pre-british days till the recent annexation of baluchistan. these piedmont boundaries are most clearly defined in point of race and civilization, where superior peoples from the lowlands are found expanding at the cost of retarded mountain folk. romans and rhaetians once met along a line skirting the foot of the eastern alps, as russians to-day along the base of the caucasus adjoin the territories of the heterogeneous tribes occupying that mountain area.[ ] [see map page .] the plains-loving magyars of hungary have pushed up to the rim of mountainous siebenburgen or transylvania from arad on the maros river to sziget on the upper theiss, while the highland region has a predominant roumanian population. a clearly defined linguistic and cultural boundary of indo-aryan speech and religion, both hindu and mohammedan, follows the piedmont edges of the brahmaputra valley, and separates the lowland inhabitants from the pagans of tibeto-burman speech occupying the himalayan slope to the north and the khasia mountains to the south. the highland race is mongoloid, while the bengali of an aryan, dravidian and mongoloid blend fill the river plain.[ ] such piedmont boundary lines tend to blur into bands or zones of ethnic intermixture and cultural assimilation. the western himalayan foothills show the blend of mongoloid and aryan stocks, where the vigorous rajputs of the plains have encroached upon the mountaineer's land.[ ] of almost every mountain folk it can be assumed that they once occupied their highlands to the outermost rim of the piedmont, and retired to the inner rim of this intermediary slope only under compulsion from without. [sidenote: density of population in piedmont belts.] the piedmont boundary also divides two areas of contrasted density of population. mountain regions are, as a rule, more sparsely settled than plains. the piedmont is normally a transition region in this respect; but where high mountains rise as climatic islands of adequate water supply out of desert and steppes, they concentrate on their lower slopes all the sedentary population, making their piedmonts zones of greatest density. low mountains in arid regions become centers of population; here their barrier nature vanishes. in the sudanese state of darfur, the marra mountains are the district best watered and most thickly populated. nowhere higher than feet ( meters), they afford running water at feet elevation and water pools in the sandy beds of their wadis at feet. below this, water disappears from the surface, and can be found only in wells whose depth and scarcity increase with distance from the central mountains.[ ] the neighboring kingdom of wadai shows similar conditions and effects.[ ] in the heart of australia, where utter desert reigns, the macdonnell ranges form the nucleus of the northern area occupied by the arunta tribe of natives; farther north the murchison range, usually abounding in water-holes, is the center and stronghold of the warramunga tribe.[ ] mineral wealth or waterpower in the mountains serves to collect an urban and industrial population along their rim, as we see it about the base of the erz mountains in saxony, the riesen range in silesia, the coal-bearing pennine mountains of northwestern england, and the highlands of southern wales, all which piedmont zones show a density of over to the square kilometer ( to the square mile). hence the original swiss confederation, which included only the mountain cantons of schwyz, uri and unterwalden, was greatly strengthened by the accession of the piedmont cantons of lucerne, zurich, zug and bern in the early fourteenth century, as later by st. gall, aargau and geneva. these marginal cantons to-day show a density of population exceeding to the square mile, and rising to in the canton of geneva. [sidenote: piedmont towns and roads.] piedmont belts tend strongly towards urban development, even where rural settlement is sparse. sparsity of population and paucity of towns within the mountains cause main of traffic to keep outside the highlands, but close enough to their base to tap their trade at every valley outlet. on the alluvial fans or plains of these valley outlets, where mountain and piedmont road intersect, towns grow up. some of them develop into cities, when they command transverse routes of communication quite across the highlands. the ancient _via aemilia_ traced the northern base of the apennines from ariminum on the adriatic to dertona at the foot of the ligurian range back of genoa, and connected a long line of roman colonies. the modern railroad follows almost exactly the course of the old roman road,[ ] while a transverse line southward across the apennines, following an ancient highway over the poretta pass to the arno valley, has maintained the old preëminence of bologna. a line of towns, connected by highways or railroads, according to the economic development of the section, defines the bases of the pyrenees, alps, jura, apennines, harz, vosges, elburz and numerous other ranges. along the elburz piedmont runs the imperial road of persia from tabriz through teheran to meshed. in arid regions these piedmont roads are an unfailing feature, but their towns shrink to rural settlements, except at the junction of transmontane routes. [sidenote: piedmont termini of transmontane routes.] piedmont cities draw their support from plain, mountain and transmontane region, relying chiefly on the fertile soil of the level country to feed their large populations. sometimes they hug the foot of the mountains, as bologna, verona, bergamo, zurich, denver and pittsburg do; sometimes, like milan, turin, and munich, they drop down into the plain, but keep the mountains in sight. they flourish in proportion to their local resources, in which mineral wealth is particularly important, and to the number and practicability of their transmontane connections. hence they often receive their stamp from the mountains behind them as well as from the bordering plain. the st. gotthard route is flanked by lucerne on the north and milan on the south. the brenner has its urban outlets at munich and verona. narbonne and barcelona form the termini of the route over the eastern pyrenees; toulouse commands the less used central passes, and bayonne the western. tiflis is situated in the great mountain trough connecting the black sea and the caspian; but over the caucasus by the pass of dariel come the influences which make it a russian town. peshawar, situated in the mountain angle of the punjab, depends more upon the khaibar pass and its connections thereby with central asia than upon the plains of the indus; its population, in appearance and composition nearly as much central asiatic as indian, is engaged in traffic between the punjab and the whole trans-hindu kush country.[ ] where a mountain system describes a semi-circular course, its transit routes tend to converge on the inner side, and at their foci fix the sites of busy commercial centers. turin draws on a long series of alpine and apennine routes from the pass of giovi ( feet or meters) leading up from genoa on the south, to the great st. bernard on the north. milan gets immense support from the st. gotthard and simplon railroads over the alps, besides wagon routes over several minor passes. kulm, balkh and kunduz in the piedmont of northern afghanistan are fed by twenty or more passes over the hindu kush and pamir. bukhara is the remoter focus of all these routes, and also of the valley highways of the western tian shan. it therefore occupies a location which would make it one of the great emporiums of the world, were it not for the expanse of desert to the west and the scantiness of its local water supply, which is tapped farther upstream for the irrigation of samarkand. in its bazaars are found drugs, dyes and teas from india; wool, skins and dried fruit from afghanistan; woven goods, arms, and books from persia; and russian wares imported by rail and caravan. english goods, which formerly came in by the kabul route from india, have been excluded since russia established a protectorate over the province of bukhara. across the highlands to the east, the cities of kashgar and yarkand, situated in that piedmont zone of vegetation where mountain and desert meet, are enclosed by a vast amphitheater formed by the tian shan, the pamir highlands, and the karakorum range. stieler's atlas marks no less than six trade routes over the passes of these mountains from kashgar to the headstreams of the sir-daria and oxus, and six from yarkand to the oxus and indus. kashgar is a meeting ground of many nationalities. to its bazaars come traders from china, india, afghanistan, bukhara, and russian turkestan.[ ] the russian railway up the sir-daria to andizhan brings european goods within relatively easy reach of the terek davan pass, and makes serious competition for english wares entering by the more difficult karakorum pass from india.[ ] [sidenote: cities of coastal piedmonts.] where mountains drop off into a desert, as these central asiatic ranges do, their piedmont cities are confined to a narrow zone between mountains and arid waste. bordering two transit regions of scant population and through travel, they become natural outfitting points, centers of exchange rather than production. where mountains drop off into the sea and the piedmont therefore becomes a coastal belt, again it borders two transit regions; but here the ports of the desert are replaced by maritime ports, which command the world thoroughfare of the ocean. they therefore tend to concentrate population and commerce wherever a good harbor coincides with the outlet of a transmontane route, as in genoa and bombay. [sidenote: piedmonts as colonial or backwoods frontiers.] since mountains are inhospitable to every phase of the historical movement, they long remain regions of retardation. hence to their bordering plains they sustain the relation of young undeveloped lands, so that life in their piedmont belts tends to show for a long time all the characteristics of a new colonial frontier. the rim of the southern appalachians abundantly illustrates this principle even to-day. during the westward expansion of the american people from to , the eastern rim of the rocky mountains was dotted with trading posts like that of the missouri fur company at the forks of the missouri river, forts laramie and platte on the north fork of the platte, vrain's fort and fort lancaster on the south fork, bent's fort at the mountain exit of the arkansas river, and barclay's in the high mora valley of the upper canadian. these posts gathered in the rich pelts which formed the one product of this highland area susceptible of bearing the cost of transportation to the far away missouri river. though they developed into way-stations on the overland trails, when the movement of population to california and oregon in the forties and fifties made the rocky mountains a typical highland transit region, yet they long remained frontier posts.[ ] later the abundant water supply of this piedmont district, as compared with the arid plains below, and the mineral wealth of the mountains concentrated here an agricultural and industrial population. in sze chuan province of western china, the piedmont of a vast highland hinterland shows a similar development. here the towns of matang, sungpan, kuan hsien, and even the capital chengtu, situated in the high min valley at the foot of the mountains walling them in on the west, are emporiums for trade with the tibetans, who bring hither furs, hides and wool from their plateau pastures, and musk from the musk deer on the koko nor plains.[ ] just to the north, sian (singan), capital of the highland province of shensi, concentrates the fur trade of a large mountain wilderness to the west. several blocks on the main street form a great fur market for the sale of mink and other skins used to line the official robes of mandarins.[ ] [sidenote: mountain carriers.] like seas, deserts, and other geographical transit regions, mountains too under primitive conditions develop their professional carriers. these collect in the piedmont, where highway and mule train cease, and where the steep track admits only human beasts of burden, trained by their environment to be climbers and packers. these mountain carriers are found on the pacific face of the coast ranges of north and south america from the peninsula of alaska to the straits of magellan. they are able to pack from to pounds up a steep grade. the chilkoot indians, men, women and children, did invaluable service on the white horse and chilkoot passes during the early days of the klondike rush. they had devised a well-arranged harness, which enabled them better to carry their loads. farther south in british columbia the piedmont tribes had once a like importance; there they operated especially from the town of hope on the lower frazer river as a distributing center. the mexican carrier is so efficient and so cheap that he enters into serious competition with modern schemes to improve transportation, especially as the rugged relief of this country makes those schemes expensive.[ ] the indians of the eastern slope of the andes pack india rubber, in loads of pounds each, from the upper purus and madeira rivers up to the andean plateau at a height of , feet, and there transfer their burdens to mules for transport down to the peruvian port of mollendo.[ ] the retarded mountain peoples on the borders of the central asia plateau employ the same primitive means of transportation. the roads leading from the sze chuan province of western china over the mountain ranges to tibet are traversed by long lines of porters, men, women and children, laden with bales of brick tea,[ ] the strongest of them shouldering pounds. the bhutia coolies of sikkim act as carriers on military and commercial expeditions on the track across the himalayas between darjeeling and shigatze. colonel younghusband found that these bhutias, who were paid by the job, would carry a pack of to pounds, or three times the usual burden of a central asia carrier. landon cites the case of a bhutia lady who was said to have carried a piano on her head from the plains up to darjeeling ( feet).[ ] in nepal, women and girls, less often men, have long been accustomed to carry travellers and merchandise over the himalayan ranges.[ ] in the marginal valleys of the himalayas, like kashmir and baltistan, the natives are regularly impressed for _begar_ or carrier service on the english military roads to strategic points on the high mountain frontier of the indian empire.[ ] so the igorots of the luzon province of benguet pack all goods and supplies from naguilian in the lowlands up feet in a distance of miles to their little capital of baguio; for this service they are now paid one peso ( cents in ) a day with food, or ten times as much as under the spanish rule.[ ] [sidenote: power of mountain barriers to block or deflect.] if the historical movement slackens its pace at the piedmont slope, higher up the mountain it comes to a halt. only when human invention has greatly improved communication across the barrier are its obstacles in part overcome. the great highland wall stretching across southern europe from the bay of biscay to the black sea long cut off the solid mass of the continent from the culture of the mediterranean lands. owing to these mountains central europe came late into the foreground of history, not till the middle ages. even the penetrating civilization of greece reached it only by long detours around the ends of the mountain barrier; by massilia and the rhone, by istria and the danube, greek commerce trickled through to the interior of the continent. where mountains fail to check, they deflect the historical movement. the wall of the carpathians, bulwark of central europe, split the westward moving slav hordes in the th century, diverting one southward up the danube valley to the eastern alps, and turning one northward along the german lowlands.[ ] the northward expansion of the romans, rebuffed by the high double wall of the central alps, was bent to the westward over the maritime, cottine and savoy alps, where the barrier offered the shortest and easiest transmontane routes. hence germany received the elements of mediterranean culture indirectly through gaul, second-hand and late. the ancient helvetians, moving southward from northern switzerland into gaul, took a route skirting the western base of the alps by the gap at geneva, and thus threatened roman provincia. cæsar's campaigns into northern gaul were given direction by the massive central plateau of france.[ ] the rugged and infertile area of the catskills long retarded the westward movement in colonial new york and deflected it northward through the mohawk depression, which therefore had its long thin line of settlements when the neighboring catskills were still a "bare spot." [sidenote: significance of mountain valleys.] in their valleys, mountains lose something of their barrier nature, and approximate the level of the plains. here they harbor oases of denser population and easier intercourse. valleys favor human settlement through the milder climate of their lower elevation, the accumulation of soil on their floors, their sheltered environment, and their command of such routes of communication as the highlands afford. they are the avenues into and within a mountain system, and therefore radically influence its history by their direction and location. the central plateau of france, through the valleys of the alliers and upper loire, is most accessible from the north; therefore in that direction it has maintained its most important historical connections,[ ] from the days of cæsar and vercingetorix. the massive highland region of transylvania, which opens long accessible valleys westward toward the plains of the theiss and danube, has since the eleventh century received thence hungarian immigration and political dominion.[ ] its dominant roumanian population, however, seems to have fled thither from the tartar-swept plains to the southeast. the anthropo-geography of mountain valleys depends upon the structure of the highlands themselves, whether they are fold mountains, whose ranges wall in longitudinal valleys, or dissected plateaus, whose valleys are mostly transverse river channels leading from the hydrographic center out to the rim of the highlands. longitudinal valleys are not only long, but also broad as a rule and often show a nearly level floor.[ ] they therefore form districts of considerable size, fertility, and individuality, and play distinct historical rôles in the history of their respective highlands. such are the upper rhone valley with its long line of flourishing towns and villages, the hither rhine, the inn of the tyrol and the engadine, the fertile trough of the meandering isère above grenoble,[ ] the broad orontes-leontes valley between the lebanon and anti-lebanon where kadesh and baalbec were once the glory of northern syria. such is the central trough of the appalachian mountains, known as the great appalachian valley, seventy-five miles wide, subdivided into constituent valleys of similar character by parallel, even-crested ridges following the trend of the mountains. these are drained by broad, leisurely rivers, bordered by fertile farms and substantial towns. transverse valleys, on the other hand, are generally narrow, with steep slopes rising almost from the river's edge and supporting only small villages and farms. a comparison of the spacious, smooth-floored valley of andermatt with the wild reuss gorge, of the fertile and populous shenandoah valley in the southern appalachians with the canon of the kanawha in the cumberland plateau, makes the contrast striking enough. [sidenote: longitudinal valleys.] longitudinal valleys, by reason of their length and their branching lateral valleys, are the natural avenues of communication within the mountains themselves. they therefore give a dominant direction to such phases of the historical movement as succeed in passing the outer barrier. the series of parallel ranges which strike off from the eastern end of the tibetan plateau southward into farther india have directed along their valleys the main streams of mongolian migration and expansion, heading them toward the river basins of burma and indo china, and away from india itself.[ ] while tibetan elements have during the ages slowly welled over the high himalayan brim and trickled down toward the gangetic plain, burma has been deluged by floods of mongolians pouring down the runnels of the land. a carriage road follows the axis of the central alps from lake geneva to lake constance by means of the upper rhone, andermatt, and upper rhine valleys, linked by the furca and oberalp passes. the roman and medieval routes northward across the central alps struck the upper rhine valley above coire, (the ancient curia rhaetorum); this natural groove gave them a northeastward direction, and made them emerge from the mountains directly south of ulm, which thereby gained great importance. the trade routes from damascus and palmyra which once entered the orontes-leontes trough in the lebanon system found their mediterranean termini south near tyre or north near antioch, and thus contributed to the greatness of those ancient emporiums. the great appalachian valley used to be a highway for the iroquois indians, when they took the warpath against the cherokee tribes of tennessee. later it gave a distinct southwestward trend to pioneer movements of population within the mountains, blending in its common channel the quakers, germans and scotch-irish from pennsylvania, with the english and huguenot french of the more southern colonies. in the civil war its fertile fields were swept by marching armies, all the way from chattanooga to gettysburg. [sidenote: passes in mountain barriers.] the barrier nature of mountains depends upon their height and structure, whether they are massive, unbroken walls like the scandinavian alps and the great smoky range; or, like the welsh highlands and the blue ridge, are studded with low passes. the pyrenees, caucasus and andes, owing to the scarcity and great height of their passes, have always been serious barriers. the pyrenees divide spain from france more sharply than the alps divide italy from france; owing to their rampart character, they form the best and most definite natural boundary in europe.[ ] epirus and aetolia, fenced in by the solid pindus range, took little part in the common life of ancient greece; but the intermittent chains of thessaly offered a passway between macedon and hellas. the alps have an astonishing number of excellent passes, evenly distributed for the most part. these, in conjunction with the great longitudinal valleys of the system, offer transit routes from side to side in any direction. the appalachian system is some three hundred miles broad and thirteen hundred miles long, but it has many easy gaps among its parallel ranges, so that it offered natural though circuitous highways to the early winners of the west. the long line ( miles) of the hindu kush range, high as it is, forms no strong natural boundary to india, because it is riddled with passes at altitudes from , to , feet.[ ] the easternmost group of these passes lead down to kashmir, and therefore lend this state peculiar importance as guardian of these northern entrances to india.[ ] the suleiman mountains along the indo-afghan frontier are an imperfect defence for the same reason. they are indented by passes capable of being traversed by camels. the mountain border of baluchistan contains more, the most important of which focus their roads upon kandahar. hence the importance to british india of kandahar and afghanistan. across this broken northwest barrier have come almost all the floods of invasion and immigration that have contributed their varied elements to the mixed population of india. tradition, epic and history tell of asiatic highlanders ever sweeping down into the warm valley of the indus through these passes; scythians, aryans, greeks, assyrians, medes, persians, turks, tartars, and mongols have all traveled these rocky roads, to rest in the enervating valleys of the peninsula.[ ] [sidenote: breadth of mountain barriers.] mountains folded into a succession of parallel ranges are greater obstructions than a single range like the erz, black forest, and vosges, or a narrow, compact system like the western alps, which can be crossed by a single pass. owing to this simple structure the western alps were traversed by four established routes in the days of the roman empire. these were: i. the _via aurelia_ between the maritime alps and the sea, where now runs the cornice road. ii. the _mons matrona_ (mont genevre pass, feet or meters [transcriber's note: printer's error incorrectly printed as kilometers.]) between the headstream of the dora riparia and that of the durance, which was the best highway for armies. iii. the little st. bernard ( feet or meters), from aosta on the dora baltea over to the isère and down to lugdunum (lyons). iv. the great st. bernard ( feet or meters) route, which led northward from aosta over the pennine alps to octodurus at the elbow of the upper rhone, where martigny now stands. across the broad double rampart of the central alps the roman used chiefly the brenner route, which by a low saddle unites the deep reëntrant valleys of the adige and inn rivers, and thus surmounts the barrier by a single pass. however, a short cut northward over the chalk alps by the fern pass made closer connection with augusta vindelicorum (augsburg). the romans seem to have been ignorant of the st. gotthard, which, though high, is the summit of an unbroken ascent from lake maggiore up the valley of the ticino on one side, and from lake lucerne up the reuss on the other. mountains which spread out on a broad base in a series of parallel chains, and through which no long transverse valleys offer ready transit, form serious barriers to every phase of intercourse. the lofty boundary wall of the pyrenees, a folded mountain system of sharp ranges and difficult passes, has successfully separated spain from continental europe; it has given the iberian peninsula, in the course of a long history, closer relations with morocco than with its land neighbor france. it thus justifies the french saying that "africa begins at the pyrenees." the andalusian fold mountains stretching across southern spain in a double wall from trafalgar to cape nao, accessible only by narrow and easily defended passes, enabled the moors of granada to hold their own for centuries against the spaniard christians. the high thin ridges of the folded jura system, poor in soil and sparsely populated, broken by occasional "cluses" or narrow water-gaps admitting the rivers from one elevated longitudinal valley to another, have always been a serious hindrance to traffic.[ ] [sidenote: circuitous routes through folded mountains.] such mountains can be crossed only by circuitous routes from pass to pass, ascending and descending each range of the system. the central alps, grooved by the longitudinal valleys of the upper rhone, rhine and inn, make transit travel a series of ups and downs. the northern range must be crossed by some minor pass like the gemmi, ( feet) or panixer ( feet) to the longitudinal valleys, and the southern range again by the simplon ( feet), san bernadino ( feet), splügen ( feet) or septimer ( feet) to the po basin. across the corrugated highland of the hindu kush, lying between the plains of the indus and the oxus, the caravans of western asia seek the market of the punjab by a circuitous route through the hajikhak pass ( , feet) or famous gates of bamian over the main range of the hindu kush, by the unai pass over the paghman mountains to kabul at feet, and then by gorges of the kabul river and the khaibar pass ( feet) down to peshawar. this road presents so many difficulties that caravans from turkestan to india prefer another route from merv up the valley of the heri-rud through the western hills of the hindu kush to herat, thence diagonally southeast across afghanistan to kandahar, and thence by the bolan pass down to the sind. the broad, low series of forested mountains consisting of the vindhyan and kaimur hills, reinforced by the satpura, kalabet, gawilgarh ranges, mahadeo hills, maikal range and chutia nagpur plateau as a secondary ridge to the south, forms a double barrier across the base of peninsular india. it divides the deccan from hindustan so effectually that it has sufficed to set limits to any aryan advance en masse southward. it kept southern india isolated, and admitted only later aryan influences which filtered through the barrier. to people accustomed to treeless plains, these wide belts of wooded hills were barrier enough. even a few years ago their passes were dreaded by cartmen; most of the carriage of the country was effected by pack-bullocks. even when roads were cleared through the forests, they were likely to be rendered impassable by torrential rains.[ ] [sidenote: dominant trans-montane routes.] where a broad, complex mountain system contracts to narrow compass, or is cut by deep reentrant valleys leading up to a single pass, the transmontane route here made by nature assumes great historical importance. the double chain of the mighty caucasus, from to miles wide and miles long, stretches an almost insuperable barrier between the black sea and the caspian. but nearly midway between these two seas it is constricted to only miles by a geographical and geological gulf, which penetrates from the steppes of russia almost to the heart of the system.[ ] this gulf forms the high valley of the terek river, beyond whose headstream lies the dariel defile ( feet or meters), which continues the natural depression across to the short southern slope. all the other passes of the caucasus are meters or more high, lie above snow line and are therefore open only in summer. the dariel pass alone is open all the year around.[ ] here runs the great military road from vladicaucas to tiflis, which the russians have built to control their turbulent mountaineer subjects; and here are located the ossetes, the only people among the variegated tribes of the whole caucasus who occupy both slopes. all the other tribes and languages are confined to one side or the other.[ ] moreover, the ossetes, occupying an exposed location in their highway habitat, lack the courage of the other mountaineers, and yielded without resistance to the russians. in this respect they resemble the craven-spirited kashmiri, whose mountain-walled vale forms a passway from central asia down to the punjab. [sidenote: brenner route.] the pass of dariel, owing to its situation in a retarded brenner corner of asia, has never attained the historical importance which attaches to the deep saddle of the brenner pass ( feet) in the central alps. uniting the reëntrant valleys of the inn and adige rivers only feet above the inn's exit from the mountains upon the bavarian plateau, it forms a low, continuous line of communication across the central alps. the brenner was the route of the cimbri invading the po valley, and later of the roman forces destined for frontier posts of the empire on the upper danube. in the middle ages it was the route for the armies of the german emperors who came to make good their claim to italy. by this road came the artists and artisans of the whole north country to learn the arts and crafts of beauty-loving venice. from the roman road-makers to the modern railroad engineer, with the concomitant civilization of each, the brenner has seen the march of human progress. [sidenote: pass of belfort.] farther to the west, the wall of highlands stretching across southern europe is interrupted by a deep groove formed by the mountain-flanked rhone valley and the pass of belfort, or burgundian gate, which lies between the vosges and jura system, and connects the rhone road with the long rift valley of the middle rhine. this pass, broad and low ( meters or feet) marks the insignificant summit in the great historic route of travel between the mediterranean and the north sea, from the days of ancient etruscan merchants to the present. this was the route of the invading teuton hordes which the roman marius defeated at aquae sextiae, and later, of the germans under ariovistus, whom cæsar defeated near the present mühlhausen. four centuries afterward came the alamannians, burgundians and other teutonic stocks, who infused a tall blond element into the population of the rhone valley.[ ] the pass of belfort is the strategic key to central europe. here napoleon repeatedly fixed his military base for the invasion of austria, and hither was directed one division of the german army in for the invasion of france. the gap is traversed to-day by a canal connecting the doubs and the rhine and by a railroad, just as formerly by the tracks of migrating barbarians. [sidenote: mohawk route.] the natural depression of the mohawk valley, only feet ( meters) above sea level, is the only decided break across the entire width of the long appalachian system. this fact, together with its ready accessibility from the hudson on the east and lake ontario on the west, lent it importance in the early history of the colonies, as well as in the later history of new york. it was an easy line of communication with the great lakes, and gave the colonists access to the fur trade of the northwest, then in the hands of the french. so when french and english fought for supremacy in the new world, the mohawk and hudson valleys were their chief battleground; elsewhere the broad appalachian barrier held them apart. again in the revolution, control of the mohawk-hudson route was the objective of the british armies mobilized on the canadian frontier, because it alone would enable them to co-operate with the british fleet blockading the coast cities of the colonies. in the war of , it was along this natural transmontane highway that supplies were forwarded to the remote frontier, to support perry's fight for control of the great lakes. the war demonstrated the strategic necessity of a protected, wholly american line of water communication between the hudson and our western frontier, while the commercial and political advantage was obvious. hence a decade after the conclusion of the war, this depression was traced by the erie canal, through which passed long lines of boats to build up the commercial greatness of new york city. [sidenote: height in mountain barriers.] other structural features being the same, mountains are barriers also in proportion to their height; for, with few exceptions, the various anthropo-geographic effects of upheaved areas are intensified with increase of elevation. old, worn-down mountains, like the appalachians and the ural, broad as they are, have been less effective obstacles than the towering crests of the alps and caucasus. the form of the elevation also counts. easy slopes and flat or rounded summits make readier transit regions than high, thin ridges with escarpment-like flanks. mountains of plateau form, though reaching a great altitude, may be relatively hospitable to the historical movement and even have a regular nomadic population in summer. the central and western tian shan system is in reality a broad, high plateau, divided into a series of smoothly floored basins and gently rolling ridges lying at an elevation of , to , feet above the sea. its pamirs or plains of thick grass, nourished by the relatively heavy precipitation of this high altitude, and forming in summer an island of verdure in the surrounding sea of sun-scorched waste, attract the pastoral nomads from all the bordering steppes and deserts.[ ] thus it is a meeting place for a seasonal population, sparse and evanescent, but its uplifted mass holds asunder the few sedentary peoples fringing its piedmont. the corrugated dome of the pamir highland, whose valley floors lie at an elevation of , to , feet, draws to its summer pastures kirghis shepherds from north, east and west; and their flocks in turn attract the raids of the marauding mountaineers occupying the hunza valley to the south. the pamir, high but accessible, was a passway in the tenth century for chinese caravans bound from "serica" or the "land of silk" to the oxus river and the caspian. here marco polo and many travelers after him found fodder for their pack animals and food for themselves, because they could always purchase meat from the visiting shepherds. the possibilities of the pamir as a transit region are apparent to russia, who in annexed most of it to the government of bukhara. [sidenote: contrasted accessibility of opposite slopes.] mountains are seldom equally accessible from all sides. rarely does the crest of a system divide it symmetrically. this means a steep, difficult approach to the summit from one direction, and a longer, more gradual, and hence easier ascent from the other. it means also in general a wide zone of habitation and food supply on the gentler slope, a better commissary and transport base whence to make the final ascent, whether in conquest, trade or ethnic growth. mountain boundaries are therefore rarely by nature impartial. they do not umpire the great game of expansion fairly. they lower the bars to the advancing people on one side, and hold them relentlessly in place to the other. to the favored slope they give the strategic advantage of a swift and sudden descent beyond the summit down the opposite side. the political boundary of france along the watershed of the vosges mountains is backed by a long, gradual ascent from the seine lowland and faces a sharp drop to the rift valley of the middle rhine, its boundary along the crest of the alps from mont blanc to the mediterranean brings over two-thirds of the upheaved area within the domain of france, and gives to that country great advantages of approach to the alpine passes at the expense of italy. with the exception of the ill-matched conflict between the civilized romans and the barbarian gauls, it is a matter of history that from the days of hannibal to napoleon iii, the campaigns over the alps from the north have succeeded, while those from the steep-rimmed po valley have miscarried. the brenner route favored alike the cimbri hordes in b.c. and later the medieval german emperors invading italy from the upper danube. the drop from the brenner pass to munich is feet; to rovereto, an equally distant point on the italian side, the road descends feet. [sidenote: its ethnic effects.] the inequality of slope has ethnic as well as political effects, especially where a latitudinal direction also makes a sharp contrast of climate on the two sides of the mountain system. except in the roman period, the southern face of the alps has been an enclosing wall to the italians. the southern cultivator penetrated its high but sunny valleys only when forced by poverty, while the harsh climate on the long northern slope effectively repelled him. on the other hand, switzerland has overstepped the alpine crest in the province of ticino and thrust its political boundary in a long wedge down to the lowland of the po near como; and the alpine race, spilling everywhere over the mountain rim into the inviting po basin, has given to this lowland population a relatively broad skull, blond coloring and tall figure, sharply contrasted with the pure mediterranean race beyond the crest of the apennines.[ ] the long northward slope of the alps in switzerland and tyrol, and the easy western grade toward france, have enabled germanic and gallic influences of various kinds to permeate the mountains. a strong element of blond, long-headed germans mingles in the population of the aar and rhine valleys up to the ice-capped ridge of the glarner and bernese alps,[ ] while the virile german speech has pushed yet farther south to the insuperable barrier of the monte rosa group. the abrupt southward slope of the himalayas has repelled ethnic expansion from the river lowlands of northern india, except in the mountain valleys of the punjab streams and nepal, where the highland offered asylum to the rajput race when dislodged by a later aryan invasion, or when trying their energies in expansion and conquest.[ ] the tibetan people, whose high plateaus rise almost flush with the himalayan passes, have everywhere trickled through and given a mongoloid mountain border to aryan india,[ ] even though their speech has succumbed to the pervasive aryan language of the piedmont, and thus confused the real ethnic boundary. [see map page .] the retarded and laborious approach of british "influence" up this steep ascent to lhassa, as opposed to the long established suzerainty of the chinese emperor in tibet, can be attributed in part to the contrasted accessibility from north and south. [sidenote: persistence of barrier nature.] mountains influence the life of their inhabitants and their neighbors fundamentally and variously, but always reveal their barrier nature. for the occupants of one slope they provide an abundant rainfall, hold up the clouds, and rob them of their moisture; to the leeward side they admit dry winds, and only from the melting snow or the precipitation on their summits do they yield a scanty supply of water. the himalayas are flanked by the teeming population of india and the scattered nomadic tribes of tibet. mountains often draw equally clear cut lines of cleavage in temperature. the scandinavian range concentrates upon norway the warm, soft air of the atlantic westerlies, while just below the watershed on the eastern side sweden feels all the rigor of a sub-arctic climate. in history, too, mountains play the same part as barriers. they are always a challenge to the energies of man. their beauty, the charm of the unknown beyond tempts the enterprising spirit; the hardships and dangers of their roads daunt or baffle the mediocre, but by the great ones whose strength is able to dwarf these obstacles is found beyond a prize of victory. such were hannibal, napoleon, suvaroff, genghis khan, and those lesser heroes of the modern work-a-day world who toiled across the rockies and sierras in the feverish days of ' , or who faced the snows of chilkoot pass for the frozen gold-fields of the yukon. [sidenote: importance of mountain passes.] for migrating, warring and trading humanity therefore, the interest of the mountains is centered in the passes. these are only dents or depressions in the great up-lifted crest, or gaps carved out by streams, or deeper breaches in the mountain wall; but they point the easiest pathway to the ultramontane country, and for this reason focus upon themselves the travel that would cut across the grain of the earth's wrinkled crust. their influence reaches far. the brenner, by its medieval trade, made the commercial greatness of augsburg, ratisbon, nuremberg, and leipzig to the north, and promoted the growth of venice to the south. the khaibar pass and the gates of herat in afghanistan have for long periods dominated the asiatic policy of russia and british india. the mohawk depression and cumberland gap for decades gave direction to the streams of population moving westward into the mississippi basin in the early history of the republic. where truckee pass ( feet) makes a gash in the high ridge of the sierra nevada, the california trail in sought the line of least resistance across the barrier mass, and deposited its desert-worn immigrants about the sacramento valley and san francisco bay. there they made a nucleus of american population in mexican california, and in became the center of american revolt. [sidenote: persistent influence of passes.] though modern engineering skill, especially when backed by a political policy, may cause certain passes to gain in historical importance at the cost of others, the rule holds that passes are never quite insignificant. their influence is persistent through the ages. they are nature-made thoroughfares, traversed now by undisciplined hordes of migrating barbarians, now by organized armies, now by the woolly flocks and guardian dogs of the nomad shepherd, now by the sumpter mule of the itinerant merchant, now by the wagon-trains of over-mountain settlers, now by the steam engine panting up the steep grade. nowhere does history repeat itself so monotonously, yet so interestingly as in these mountain gates. in the pass of roncesvalles, notching the western pyrenees between pamplona in spain and st. etienne in france, fell the army of charlemagne surprised and beset by the mountain tribes in ;[ ] through this breach the black prince in led his troops to the victory of navarette; in the peninsular war a division of wellington's army in moved northward up this valley, driving the french before them; and by this route soult advanced southward across the frontier for the relief of the french forces shut up in pamplona. the history of palestine may be read in epitome in the annals of the vale of jezreel, where the highlands of palestine sink to a natural trough before rising again to the hill country of galilee and the mountain range of high lebanon. this was the avenue for war and trade between the nile and euphrates, between africa and asia. here the canaanites expanded eastward from the coast, cutting off northern israel in galilee from samaria and judea. here gideon turned back the incursions of the midianites or western arabs. here was the open road for assyrians, egyptians, for greek armies under antiochus, and roman armies under pompey, mark antony, vespasian and titus. hither came the saracens from the east in a. d. to rout the greek army, and later the crusaders from the west, to secure with castle and fortress this key to the holy land. finally, hither came napoleon from egypt in on his way to the euphrates.[ ] [sidenote: geographic factors in the historical importance of passes.] the historical importance of passes tends to increase with the depth of the depression, since the lowest gap in a range relegates the others to only occasional or local use; and with their rarity, in consequence of which intercourse between opposite slopes is concentrated upon one or two defiles. the low dips of the central american cordilleras to feet ( meters) at panama, feet ( meters) in the nicaraguan isthmus, and feet ( meters) at tehuantepec, present a striking contrast both orographically and historically to the south american andes, where from the equator to the uspallata or bermejo pass ( , feet or meters) back of valparaiso, a stretch measuring degrees of latitude, the passes all reach or exceed , feet or meters. the southern or pennine range of the alps, stretching as a snow-wrapped barrier from mont blanc miles to the central alpine dome of the st. gotthard, is notched only by the great st. bernard and simplon passes, which have therefore figured conspicuously in war and trade, since very early times. the pass of thermopylæ, as the only route southward along the flank of the pindus system, figures in every land invasion of greece from xerxes to the greek war of independence. all movements back and forth across the caucasus wall have been confined to the pass of dariel and the far lower pass of derbent, or _pylæ albaniæ_; of the ancients, which lies between the caspian and the last low spurs of the mountains as they drop down to the sea. the latter, as the easier of the two passes, has had a longer and richer history. it alone enabled the ancient persians temporarily to force a wedge of conquest to the northern foot of the caucasus, and it has been in all ages a highway for peoples entering persia and georgia from the north. it has so far been the only practicable route for a railway from the russian steppes to the southern base of the caucasus. while vladicaucas and tiflis have direct connection by the military highway over the pass of dariel, the railroad between these two points makes a detour of miles to the east. [sidenote: intermarine mountains.] intermarine mountains as a rule offer the easiest passways where they sink to meet the flanking seas. the pyrenees are crossed by only two railroads, the bayonne-burgos line, along the shore of the bay of biscay, and the narbonne-barcelona line, overlooking the mediterranean. between these extremities the passes are very high and only two are practicable for carriages, the col de la perche ( feet or meters) between the valleys of the tet and the upper segre, and the port de canfranc ( feet or meters) on the old roman road from saragossa to oloron. the coastal road around the eastern end of the cheviot hills has been the great intermediary between england and scotland. it was the avenue for early teutonic expansion into the scotch lowlands, the thoroughfare for all those armies which for centuries made berwick a chronic battleground. for purposes of trade these intermarine mountains are less serious barriers, because they can be avoided by an easier and cheaper sea route. hence on each side of such ranges grow up active ports, like narbonne and barcelona, bayonne and bilbao with san sebastian, on the piedmont seaboard of the pyrenees; petrovsk and baku on the caspian rim of the caucasus, balancing the crimean ports and poti with trebizond on the black sea. analogous is the position of genoa and marseilles in relation to the maritime alps. such ports are inevitably the object of attack in time of hostilities. in the peninsular war almost the first act of the french was to seize barcelona, san sebastian and bilbao; and throughout the seven years of the conflict these points were centers of battle, blockade and siege. if russia ever tries to wrench the upper euphrates valley from turkey, trebizond will repeat the history of barcelona in the peninsular war. [sidenote: pass roads between regions of contrasted production] as the world's roads are used primarily for commerce, pass routes rank in importance according to the amount of trade which they forward; and this in turn is decided by the contrast in the lands which they unite. the passes of the alps and the pass of belfort have been busy thoroughfares from the early middle ages, because they facilitate exchanges between the tropical mediterranean and the temperate regions of central europe. or the contrast may be one of economic and social development. the mohawk depression forwards the grain of the agricultural northwest in return for the manufactured wares of the atlantic seaboard. the passes of the asiatic ranges connect the industrial and agricultural lowlands of india and china with the highland pastures of mongolia, tibet, afghanistan and russian turkestan. hence they forward the wool, skins, felts, cloth and carpets of the wandering shepherds in exchange for the food stuffs and industrial products of the fertile, crowded lowlands. where passes open a highway for inland countries to the sea, their sphere of influence is greatly increased. san francisco, new york, marseilles, genoa, venice, beirut and bombay are seaports which owe their importance in no small degree to dominant pass routes into their hinterland. [sidenote: passes determine trans-montane roads.] in plains and lowlands highways may run in any direction expediency suggests, but in mountain regions the pass points the road. in very high ranges there is no appeal from this law; but in lower systems and especially in old mountains which have been rounded and worn down by ages of denudation, economic and social considerations occasionally transcend orographical conditions in fixing the path of highways. scarcely less important than pass or gap is the avenue of approach to the same. this is furnished by lateral or transverse valleys of erosion. the deeper their reentrant angles cut back into the heart of the highlands, the more they facilitate intercourse and lend historical importance to the pass route. the alpine passes which are approached by a single valley from each side are those crossed by railroads to-day,--mont cenis, simplon, st. gotthard and the brenner. the alpine chain is trenched on its inner or southern side by a series of transverse erosion valleys, such as the dora baltea, sesia, tosa, ticino, adda, adige, and tagliamento, which carry roads up to the chief alpine passes. the coincidence of the roman and medieval roads over the alps with the modern railroads is striking, except in the single point of elevation. railroads tend to follow lower levels. modern engineering skill enables them to tunnel the crest, to cut galleries in the perpendicular walls of gorges, and to embank mountain torrents against the spring inundation of the roadbed, where it drops to the valley floor. [sidenote: navigable river approaches to passes.] where gaps are low and the approaching waters are navigable, at least for the small craft of early days, they combine to enhance the historical importance of their routes. the mohawk river, navigable for the canoe of indian and fur trader, greatly increased travel and traffic through the mohawk depression. the pass of belfort is the greatest historic gateway of western europe, chiefly because it unites the channels of the rhone, saône and rhine. lake lucerne brings the modern tourist by boat to the foot of the railroad ascent to the st. gotthard pass, as the long gorge of lake maggiore receives him at the southern end. lake maggiore is the water outlet also of the simplon pass from the upper rhone, the lukmanier ( feet or meters) from the hither rhine, and the san bernadino ( feet or meters) from the hinter rhine.[ ] this geographical fact explains the motive of swiss expansion in the fifteenth century in embracing the italian province of ticino and the upper end of lake maggiore. a significance like that of the swiss and italian lakes for the alpine passes appears emphasized in the sogne fiord of norway. this carries a marine highway a hundred miles into the land; from its head, roads ascend to the only two dents in the mountain wall south of the wide snowfield of the jotun fjeld, and they lead thence by the valleys of hallingdal and valders down to the plains of christiania. [sidenote: types of settlements in the valley approaches.] genuine mountain passes have only emergency inhabitants--the monks and dogs of the hospice, the road-keepers in their refuge huts or _cantonière_, or the garrison of a fort guarding these important thoroughfares. the flanking valleys of approach draw to themselves the human life of the mountains. their upper settlements show a certain common physiognomy, born of their relation to the barren transit region above, except in those few mountain districts of advanced civilization where railroads have introduced through traffic over the barrier. at the foot of the final ascent to the pass, where often the carriage road ends and where mule-path or foot-trail begins, is located a settlement that lives largely by the transmontane travel. it is a place of inns, hostelries, of blacksmith shops, where in the busy season the sound of hammer and anvil is heard all night; of stables and corrals crowded with pack and draft animals; of storehouses where the traveler can provide himself with food for the journey across the barren, uninhabited heights. it is the typical outfitting point such as springs up on the margin of any pure transit region, whether mountain or desert. such places are andermatt and airolo, lying at an altitude of feet or more on the st. gotthard road, st. moritz below the maloja pass, jaca near the pass de canfranc over the pyrenees, kugiar and shahidula[ ] at an elevation of , feet or meters on the road up to the karakorum pass ( , feet or meters), which crosses the highest range of the himalayas between leh in the upper indus valley and yarkand in chinese turkestan. [sidenote: lower settlements.] farther down the transverse valley the type of settlement changes where side valleys, leading down from other passes, converge and help build up a distributing center for a considerable highland area. such a point is chiavenna in northern italy, located above the head of lake como at the junction of the mera and liro valleys, which lead respectively to the splügen and maloja passes. it lies at an altitude of feet ( meters) and has a population of . such a point is aosta ( feet or meters elevation) in the dora baltea valley, commanding the italian approaches to the great st. bernard pass, and the less important col de fenêtre leading to the upper rhone, the little st. bernard highway to the valley of the isère, and col de la seigne path around the mont blanc range to the valley of the arve. aosta was an important place in the roman period and has to-day a population of about . kokan, in the upper sir-daria valley in russian turkestan, commands the approach to the passes of the western tian shan and the northern pamir. its well-stocked bazaars, containing goods from russia, persia and india, testify to its commercial location. [sidenote: pass cities and their markets.] when the highland area is very broad and therefore necessitates long transit journeys, genuine pass cities develop at high altitudes, and become the termini of the transmontane trade. such is the leh ( , feet or meters) on the caravan route from central asia over the karakorum pass down to kashmir, and such is srinagar ( feet or meters) in kashmir. to their markets come caravans from chinese turkestan, laden with carpets and brick tea, and tibetan merchants from lhassa, bringing wool from their highland pastures to exchange for the rice and sugar of lowland india.[ ] leh is conveniently situated about half way between the markets of india and central asia. therefore it is the terminus for caravans arriving from both regions, and exchange place for products from north and south. seldom do caravans from either direction go farther than this point. here the merchants rest for a month or two and barter their goods. tents of every kind, camels, yaks, mules and horses, coolie transports of various races, men of many languages and many religions, give to this high-laid town a truly cosmopolitan stamp in the summer time when the passes are open.[ ] kabul, which lies at an altitude of nearly feet near the head of the kabul river, is the focus of numerous routes over the hindu kush, and dominates all routes converging on the northwest frontier of the punjab.[ ] it is therefore the military and commercial key to india. its narrow winding streets are obstructed by the picturesque _kafilas_ of oriental merchants, stocked with both russian goods from the oxus districts and british goods from india in evidence of its intermediary location.[ ] occasionally a very high market develops for purely local use. the indian himalayan province of kumaon contains the market town of garbyang, at an elevation of , feet or about meters, on the kali river road leading by the lipu lekh pass ( , feet or meters) over to tibet. it has grown up as a trade center for the dokpa tibetans, who will not descend below , feet because their yak and sheep die at a lower altitude.[ ] farther east in the sikkim border, darjeeling ( feet or meters elevation) is center of the british wool trade with tibet. often the exchange point moves nearer the summit of the pass, dividing the journey more equally between the two areas of production. here develops the temporary summer market. high up on the route between leh and yarkand is sasar, a place of unroofed enclosures for the deposit of cotton, silk and other goods left there by the caravans plying back and forth between leh and sasar, or sasar and yarkand.[ ] nearly midway on the much frequented trade route between leh and lhassa, at a point , feet (nearly meters) above sea level, just below the schako pass, lies gartok in western tibet, in summer a busy market surrounded by a city of tents, and the summer residence of the two chinese viceroys, who occupy the only two substantial dwellings in the place. here at the end of august is held a great annual fair, which is attended by traders from india, kashmir, mongolia, chinese turkestan, china proper, and lhassa; but by november the place is deserted. the traders disperse, and the few residents of gartok, together with the viceroys, retire down the indus valley to the more sheltered village of gargunza ( , feet or meters elevation), which represents the limits of permanent settlement in these altitudes.[ ] the sutlej valley route from the punjab to lhassa is capped near its summit at an altitude of about meters by the summer market, of gyanema, whose numerous types of tents indicate the various homes of the traders from lhassa to india.[ ] [sidenote: pass peoples.] natural thoroughfares, whether river highways or mountain pass routes, draw to themselves migration, travel, trade and war. they therefore early assume historical importance. hence we find that peoples controlling transmontane routes have always been able to exert an historical influence out of proportion to their size and strength; and that in consequence they early become an object of conquest to the people of the lowlands, as soon as these desire to control such transit routes. the power of these pass tribes is often due to the trade which they command and which compensates them for the unproductive character of their country. in the eastern himalayas the tomos of the chumbi valley are intermediaries of trade between darjeeling and tibet, in the western himalayas, the kumaon borderland of northern india, which commands some of the best passes, has made its native folk or bhutias bold merchants who jealously monopolize the trade over the passes to the tibetan markets. they stretch for a zone of thirty miles south of the boundary from nepal to garhwal along the approach to every pass, each sub-group having its particular trade route.[ ] [sidenote: transit duties.] it is always possible for such pass tribes to levy a toll or transit duty on merchandise, or in lieu of this to rob. cæsar made war upon the veragri and seduni, who commanded the northern end of the great st. bernard pass, in order to open up the road over the alps, which was traversed by roman merchants _magno cum periculo magnisque cum portoriis_.[ ] the salassi, who inhabited the upper dora baltea valley and hence controlled the little st. bernard wagon road leading over to lugdunum or lyons, regularly plundered or taxed all who attempted to cross their mountains. on one occasion they levied a toll of a drachm per man on a roman army, and on another plundered the treasure of cæsar himself. after a protracted struggle they were crushed by augustus, who founded aosta and garrisoned it with a body of praetorian cohorts to police the highway.[ ] the iapodes in the julian alps controlled the mount ocra or peartree pass, which carried the roman wagon road from aquileia over the mountains down to the valley of the laibach and the save. this strategic position they exploited to the utmost, till augustus brought them to subjection as a preliminary to roman expansion on the danube.[ ] turning to another part of the world, we find that the afghan tribes commanding the passes of the suleiman mountains have long been accustomed to impose transit duties upon caravans plying between turkestan and india. the merchants have regularly organized themselves into bands of hundreds or even thousands to resist attack or exorbitant exactions. the afghans have always enforced their right to collect tolls in the khaibar and kohat passes, and have thus blackmailed every indian dynasty for centuries. in the british government came to terms with them by paying them an annual sum to keep these roads open.[ ] just to the south the gomal pass, which carries the main traffic road over the border mountains between the punjab and the afghan city of ghazni, is held by the brigand tribe of waziris, and is a dangerous gauntlet to be run by every armed caravan passing to and from india.[ ] the ossetes of the caucasus, who occupy the pass of dariel and the approaching valleys, regularly preyed upon the traffic moving between russia and georgia, till the muscovite government seized and policed the road.[ ] [sidenote: strategic power of pass states.] the strategic importance of pass peoples tends early to assume a political aspect. the mountain state learns to exploit this one advantage of its ill-favored geographical location. the cradle of the old savoyard power in the late middle ages lay in the alpine lands between lake geneva and the western tributaries of the po river. this location controlling several great mountain routes between france and italy gave the savoyard princes their first importance.[ ] the autonomy of switzerland can be traced not less to the citadel character of the country and the native independence of its people, than to their political exploitation of their strategic position. they profited, moreover, by the wish of their neighbors that such an important transit region between semi-tropical and temperate europe should be held by a power too weak to obstruct its routes. the amir of kabul, backed by the rapacious afridi tribes of the suleiman mountains, has been able to play off british india against russia, and thereby to secure from both powers a degree of consideration not usually shown to inferior nations. similarly in colonial america, the iroquois of the mohawk depression, who commanded the passway from the hudson to the fur fields of the northwest and also the avenue of attack upon the new york settlements for the french in canada, were early conciliated by the english and used by them as allies, first in the french wars and afterward in the revolution. notes to chapter xv [ ] for physical effects, see angelo mosso, life of man on the high alps. translated from the italian. london, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - . new york, . [ ] strabo, book iv, chap. vi, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - . new york, . [ ] sir thomas holdich, india, pp. - . london, . [ ] w.z. ripley, the races of europe, map p. . new york, . [ ] imperial gazetteer of india, vol. i, pp. - . oxford, . sir thomas holdich, india, relief map on p. compared with linguistic map p. . london, . [ ] census of india for , risley and gait, vol. i, part i, p. . calcutta, . b.h. baden-powell, the indian village community, pp. , , . london, . [ ] count gleichen, the egyptian sudan, vol. i, pp. , , . london, . [ ] gustav nachtigal, _sahara und sudan_, vol. iii, pp. , - . leipzig, . [ ] spencer and gillen, the northern tribes of central australia, pp. , . london, . [ ] w. deecke, italy, p. . london, . [ ] sir thomas holdich, india, pp. - . london, . g.w. steevens, in india, pp. - . new york, . [ ] francis younghusband, the heart of a continent, pp. , , , - . london, . [ ] e. huntington, the pulse of asia, p. . boston, . [ ] e.c. semple, american history and its geographic conditions, pp. - . boston, . [ ] isabella bird bishop, the yangtze valley and beyond, vol. ii, pp. - , , . london, . [ ] francis h. nichols, through hidden shensi, pp. - . new york, . [ ] otis t. mason, primitive travel and transportation, pp. - , - . _smithsonian report_, washington, . [ ] col. george e. church, the acre territory and the caoutchouc regions of southwestern amazonia, _geog. jour_. may, . london. [ ] m. huc, journey through the chinese empire, pp. - . new york, . [ ] perceval landon, the opening of tibet, pp. - . new york, . [ ] jean baptiste tavernier, travels in india. vol. ii, p. . translated from the french of . london, . [ ] e.f. knight, where three empires meet, pp. , , , - . london, . [ ] census of the philippine islands, vol. i, p. . washington, . [ ] joseph partsch, central europe, p. . london, . [ ] m.s.w. jefferson, cæsar and the central plateau of france, _journal of geog._, vol. vi, p. . new york, . [ ] p. vidal de la blache, _tableau de la géographie de la france_, p. . paris, . [ ] e.a. freeman, historical geography of europe, vol. i, p. - . london, . [ ] william morris davis, physical geography, p. . boston, . [ ] p. vidal de la blache, _tableau de la géographie de la france_, p. , map p. . paris, . [ ] indian census for , risley and gait, vol. i, part i, pp. , , calcutta, . [ ] hans helmolt, history of the world, vol. iv, p. . new york, . [ ] sir thomas holdich, india, p. , cartogram of hindu kush orography. london, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. - . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] j. partsch, central europe, p. . london, . [ ] b.h. baden-powell, the indian village community, pp. - , , . london, . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, pp. - . new york, . [ ] gottfried merzbacher, _aus den hochregionen des kaukasus_, pp. - . leipzig, . [ ] w.z. ripley, the races of europe, p. . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, maps pp. , , text p. . [ ] e. huntington, the pulse of asia, pp. - . boston, . [ ] w.z. ripley, the races of europe, pp. - . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, p. and cartogram, p. . [ ] sir thomas holdich, india, p. . london, . imperial gazetteer of india, vol. i, p. . oxford, . [ ] census of india, , ethnographic appendices, vol. i, p. , by h. h. risley, calcutta, . c. a. sherring, western tibet and the british borderland, pp. - . london, . [ ] b. lavisse, _histoire de france_, vol. ii, part , p. . paris, . [ ] george adam smith, historical geography of the holy land, pp. , , - , , . new york, . [ ] wilhelm deecke, italy, pp. , . london, . [ ] francis younghusband, the heart of a continent, pp. , , . london, . [ ] e.f. knight, where three empires meet, pp. , , - , . london, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. , . [ ] sir thomas holdich, india, map p. , pp. , . london, . [ ] vambery, _reise in mittelasien,_ pp. - . leipzig, . [ ] c.a. sherring, western tibet and the british borderland, p. . london, . [ ] o.p. crosby, tibet and turkestan, pp. - . new york, . [ ] elisée reclus, asia, vol. ii, pp. - . c.a. sherring, western tibet and the british borderland, pp. - , , , - . london, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. - . [ ] _ibid._, pp. , - , - . [ ] _bella gallico,_ book iii, chap. i. [ ] strabo, book iv, chap. vi, , . [ ] strabo, book iv, chap. vi, . [ ] sir thomas holdich, the indian borderland, p. . london, . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] pallas, travels through the southern provinces of russia, vol. i, p. . london, . [ ] e.a. freeman, historical geography of europe, vol. i, pp. - . london, . chapter xvi influences of a mountain environment [sidenote: zones of altitude.] there are zones of latitude and zones of altitude. to every mountain region both these pertain, resulting in a nice interplay of geographic factors. every mountain slope from summit to piedmont is, from the anthropo-geographical standpoint, a complex phenomenon. when high enough, it may show a graded series of contrasted complementary locations, closely interdependent grouping of populations and employments, every degree of density from congestion to vacancy, every range of cultural development from industrialism to nomadism. the southern slope of the monte rosa alps, from the glacier cap at meters to the banks of the po river, yields within certain limits a zonal epitome of european life from lapland to the mediterranean. the long incline from the summit of mount everest ( meters) in the eastern himalayas, through darjeeling down to sea level at calcutta, comprises in a few miles the climatic and cultural range of asia from arctic to tropic. [sidenote: politico-economic value of varied relief.] for the state, a territory of varied relief is highly beneficial, because it combines manifold forms of economic activity, a wide range of crops, areas of specialized production mutually interdependent. it induces a certain balance of urban and lief, rural life, which contributes greatly to the health of the state.[ ] the steep slopes of dai nippon, fertile only under spade tillage, will forever insure japan the persistence of a numerous peasantry. for geological and geographical reasons, as from national motives, therefore, japan will probably never sacrifice its farmer to its industrial class, as england has done. on the other hand, contrasted reliefs on a great territorial scale tend to invade political solidarity. tidewater and mountain virginia were poor running-mates for a century before the civil war, and then the mountain region broke out of harness. geographical contrasts made the unification of germany difficult, and yet they have added to the economic and national strength of the empire. the history of switzerland shows the high alpine cantons always maintaining a political tug of war with the cantons of the marginal plain, and always suffering a defeat which was their salvation. [sidenote: relief and climate.] the chief effect of a varied relief is a varied climate. this changes with altitude in much the same way as with latitude. heat and absolute humidity diminish, generally speaking, as height increases, while rainfall becomes greater up to a certain level. the effect of ascending and descending currents of air is to diminish the range of temperature on mountain slopes and produce rather an oceanic type of climate. the larger and more uniform a climatic district, the more conspicuously do even slight elevations form climatic islands, like the harz mountains in the north german lowlands. a land of monotonous relief has a uniform climate, while a region rich in vertical articulations is rich also in local varieties of climate.[ ] a highland of considerable elevation forms a cold district in the temperate zone, a temperate one in the tropics, and a moist one in a desert or steppe. especially in arid and torrid belts does the value of elevation for human life increase. [sidenote: altitude zones of economic and cultural development.] the highlands of mexico, south america and the himalayan rim of india show stratified zones of tropical, temperate, and arctic climate, to which plant, animal and human life conform. the response is conspicuous in the varying density of population in the successive altitude zones. central asia shows a threefold cultural stratification of its population, each attended by the appropriate density, according to location in steppe, piedmont and mountain. the steppes have their scattered pastoral nomads; the piedmonts, with their irrigation streams, support sedentary agricultural peoples, concentrated at focal points in commercial and industrial towns; the higher reaches of the mountains are occupied by sparse groups of peasants and shepherds, wringing from upland pasture and scant field a miserable subsistence. the same stratification appears in the atlas mountains, intensified on the southern slope by the contrast between the closely populated belt of the piedmont and the wandering tuareg tribes of the sahara on the one hand, and the sparse berber settlements of the atlas highlands on the other. the long slope of mount kilimanjaro in german east africa descends to a coastal belt of steppe and desert, inhabited by swahili cattle-breeders. its piedmont, from feet above the plain up to feet, constitutes a zone of rich irrigated plantations and gardens, densely populated by peaceful folk of mingled bantu and hamitic blood. at feet, where forests cease, are found the kraals, cattle, sheep and goats of the semi-nomadic masai of doubtful hamitic stock, who raid the coastal lowlands for cattle, and purchase all their vegetable food from the tillage belt.[ ] [see maps page and .] [illustration: density of population in italy.] this stratification assumes marked variations in the different geographical zones. in greenland life is restricted to the piedmont coastal belt; above this rises the desert waste of the ice fields. norway shows a tide-washed piedmont, containing a large majority of the population; above this, a steep slope sparsely inhabited; and higher still, a wild plateau summit occupied in summer only by grazing herds or migrant reindeer lapps. farther south the alps show successive tiers of rural economy, again with their appropriate density of settlement. on their lower slope is found the vineyard belt, a region of highly intensive tillage, large returns upon labor, and hence of closely distributed settlement. above that is the zone of field agriculture, less productive and less thickly peopled. higher still is the wide zone of hay farming and stock-raising, supporting a sparse, semi-nomadic population and characterized by villages which diminish with the altitude and cease beyond meters. on aetna, located in the tropical mediterranean, three girdles of altitude have long been recognized,--the girdle of agriculture, the forest belt, and the desert summit. but the tourist who ascends aetna, passes from the coast through a zone of orange and lemon groves, which are protected by temporary matting roofs against occasional frosts; then through vineyards and olive orchards which rise to meters; then through a belt of summer crops rising to meters, and varied between and meters elevation by stretches of chestnut groves, whose green expanse is broken here and there by the huts of the forest guards, the highest tenants of the mountain. from these lonely dwellings down to the sea, density of population increases regularly to a maximum of over to the square mile ( to the square kilometer) near the coast. [sidenote: altitude and density belts in tropical highlands.] in the tropical highlands of mexico, central and south america, on the other hand, concentration of population and its concomitant cultural development begin to appear above the meter line. here are the chief seats of population. mexico has three recognized altitude zones, the cold, the temperate and the hot, corresponding to plateau, high slopes and coastal piedmont up to meters or feet; but the first two contain nine-tenths of the people. while the plateau has in some sections a population dense as that of france, the lowlands are sparsely peopled by wild indians and lumbermen. ecuador has three-fourths of its population crowded into the plateau basins (mean elevation feet or meters), enclosed by the ranges of the andes. peru presents a similar distribution, with a comparatively dense population on a plateau reaching to , feet ( meters) or more, though its coastal belt, being healthful, dry, and fairly well supplied with irrigation streams from the andes, is better developed than any other similar district in tropical america.[ ] in bolivia, per cent of the total population live at an altitude of to , feet, while five out of the nine most densely peopled provinces lie at elevations over , feet.[ ] [see map page .] from mexico to central chile, the heavy rains from the trade-winds clothe the slopes with dense forests, except on the lee side of the high andean wall of peru and chile, and reduce much of the piedmont to malarial swamp and jungle. the discouragement to primitive tillage found in the unequal fight with a tropical forest, the dryer, more bracing and healthful climate of the high intermontane basins, their favorable conditions for agriculture by irrigation, and their naturally defined location stimulating to early cultural development, all combined to concentrate the population of prehistoric america upon the high valleys and plateaus. in historic times these centers have persisted, because the civilized or semi-civilized districts could be best exploited by the spanish conquerors and especially because they yielded rich mineral wealth. furthermore, the white population which has subsequently invaded tropical america has to a predominant degree reinforced the native plateau populations, while the imported negroes and mulattoes have sought the more congenial climatic conditions found in the hot lowlands. [sidenote: increasing density with motive of protection.] the relativity of geographical advantages in different historical periods warns us against assuming in all times a sparsity of population in mountains, even when the adjoining lowlands offer many attractions of climate and soil. in ages of incessant warfare, when the motive of safety has strongly influenced distribution of population, protected mountain sites have attracted settlement from the exposed plains, and thus increased the relative density of population on the steep slopes. the corrugated plateau of armenia and kurdistan, located on the uneasy political frontier of russia, persia and asiatic turkey, exposed for centuries to nomadic invasion from the east, shows a sparser population on its broad intermontane plains than on the surrounding ranges. security makes the latter the choicer places of residence. hence they are held by the overbearing and marauding kurds, late-comers into the land, while the older and numerically weaker armenians cower down on the lower levels.[ ] here is an inversion of the usual order. the militantly stronger intruders, with no taste for agriculture, have seized the safer and commanding position on the hills, descending in winter with their cattle and horses to pasture and prey upon field and granary of the valley folk, whose better soil is a questionable advantage. [sidenote: motive of protection in primitive peoples.] instances of this sort, rare in modern times, because of of general economic and social progress, multiply when we go into the history of primitive or ancient peoples. the cherokee indians of the southern appalachians, surrounded by powerful neighbors in the chickasaws, creeks and the encroaching whites of the seaboard colonies, attacked by war parties of shawnees and iroquois from the north, located the bulk of their nation in the mountains. the overhill and middle towns, numbering together thirty-three and situated wholly in the mountains, comprised four-fifths of their fighting force in , while the nine towns distributed in the flat lands of georgia and south carolina were small and unimportant. the indians themselves distinguished these two divisions of their country, the one as _otarre_ or mountainous, and the others as _ayrate_ or low.[ ] similarly in ancient gaul the three strongest tribes, the sequani, aedui, and arverni, all had a large mountain nucleus. the sequani held the jura range with part of the saône valley; the aedui held the northeast corner of the central plateau and some lands on the saône, while the arverni inhabited the western and central portion of the same highland. in a period of constant tribal migrations and war, the occupants of these high, protected locations were better able to defend themselves, and they maintained an adequate food supply by holding some of the adjoining lowland. archaeologists generally agree that in central and southern italy settlement first took place in the mountains, gradually extending thence down into the plains. the superiority of the upland climate, the more abundant rainfall, the greater security against attack offered by mountain sites, and the excellent soil for agriculture resulting from the geological make-up of the apennines, all combined to draw thither primitive and later settlement.[ ] [see map page .] similarly in britain of the bronze age, before the peoples of aryan speech began to swarm over the island, the primitive inhabitants, involved in constant clan or tribal warfare, placed their villages on the hills, and left in the indestructible terraces on their slopes the evidences of a vanished race and an outgrown social order.[ ] [sidenote: geographic conditions affecting density of mountain population.] the advance of civilization, which brought the ancient pirate-ridden city from the inner edge of the coastal zone down to the wave-washed strand, also drew the hill town down to the plain, and the mountain population from their inaccessible strongholds to the more accessible and productive valleys. these facts contain a hint. the future investigation of archaeological remains in high mountain districts may reveal at considerable elevations the oldest and hence lowest strata of prehistoric development, strata which, in the more attractive valleys, have been obliterated or overlaid by later invasions of peoples and cultures. ignoring this temporary attraction of population to protected mountain locations in ages of persistent warfare, we find that a comparison of many countries reveals a decreasing food supply and decreasing density of population, with every increase of height above a certain altitude, except in favored mining regions and in some tropical lands, where better climatic conditions and freedom from malaria distribute settlements far above the steaming and forest-choked lowlands. the density of population in mountains is influenced also by the composition of the soil, which affects its fertility; by the grade and exposure of the slopes, which determine the ease and success of tillage; by the proximity of the highlands to teeming centers of lowland population, and by the general economic development of the people. in great britain, the sparsest population is found in the sterile highland moors of scotland, where the county of sutherland has only inhabitants to the square mile, inverness only .[ ] these figures reveal also the remoteness of a far northern location. in the southern half of the island the sparsest populations are found in the welsh county of radnor, with to the square mile, and in english westmoreland with , both of them mountain regions, but reflecting in their larger figures their close proximity to the teeming industrial centers of south wales and lancashire respectively. in france the most thinly settled _départements_ are basses-alpes with to the square mile and hautes-alpes with , which again owe even these figures in part to their situation on the margin of the densely populated valley of the middle rhone. [see map page .] norway, almost wholly a mountain country, averages only souls to the square mile. less than a thousand square miles of its territory are under cultivation, and these are distributed in small deltas at the heads of the fiords, in low strips here and there along its western coasts, or in the openings of its mountain valleys to the southeast. here too is massed the larger part of its inhabitants. a barren granitic soil, unfavorable zonal location, excessive rainfall, paucity of level land, leaving the "upright farm" predominant, and remoteness from any thickly settled areas, together with the resulting enormous emigration, have combined to keep down norway's population. [sidenote: sparsity of population in the alps.] if we turn to switzerland, a country poor in the resources of its land but rich in the resourcefulness of its people, we find a high average density, to the square mile; but this is due to the surprising industrial development of the marginal plains, which show in the canton of geneva to the square mile, and in canton zurich , while the rugged upland of graubünden (grisons) shows only to the square mile, uri only , and wallis (valais) only . how limited is the food supply of the country is evident from the fact that only square miles, or fifteen per cent. of its area, can be ranked as arable land, fit for garden, orchard or grain field, while a larger proportion, or twenty-eight per cent. is made wholly useless by watercourses, glaciers, rock and detritus. one half of the entire country lies above the region where agriculture is possible. in the cantons of uri and valais, more than half the area is absolutely unproductive, scarcely less in the grisons, and a third even in sunny ticino.[ ] the three strictly alpine provinces of austria, tyrol, salzburg and carinthia, reproduce approximately these geographic conditions. nearly half of their area is uninhabited, and only one-seventh consists of arable land. in consequence they support only inhabitants to the square mile, while just outside the mountains, in the piedmont or alpine foreland, this density is doubled.[ ] many tracts of the carpathians, especially about the sources of the theiss and pruth and the wooded mountain borders of transylvania, are among the most sparsely inhabited parts of europe.[ ] japan, ridged by steep volcanic ranges, drenched by mountain-born rains, strewn with detritus from plunging torrents, can cultivate only . per cent. of its area, and is forced to leave per cent. in forest reserves.[ ] [sidenote: terrace agriculture.] these figures tell of the hard conditions of life characteristic of most mountain regions. population under normal circumstances settles in the narrow valleys between the ranges and along the borders of their drainage stream. soon, however, the food supply becomes inadequate for the growing numbers, so that artificial means have to be employed to expand the area of arable land. the soil on the mountain slopes is so thin that it yields only a scanty return to the labor of tillage. moreover, under the operations of ploughing and harrowing, it is exposed to the danger of washing; so that after a few croppings the underlying rock of the mountain side may be laid bare, and all that was valuable in the quondam field deposited in the valley as silt or swept away to enrich the distant delta of the nearest trunk river. to obviate this difficulty and to secure the desired increase of arable land, mountain peoples the world over have resorted to terrace agriculture. this means hand-made fields. parallel walls, one above the other, are constructed on horizontal lines across the face of the steep slopes, and the intervals between are filled with earth, carried thither in baskets on the peasants' backs. the soil must be constantly renewed and enriched by manure in the same way, and the masonry of the retaining walls kept in repair. whenever possible these costly terraced fields are located by preference on southward facing slopes, where the tilt of the land makes the fields catch the rays of the sun almost at right angles and thus counteracts the chill of the higher altitude, while the mountain behind protects the growing crops from cold northern winds. good arable land, being limited in amount, commands a high price; and especially do choice terraced fields in vine-growing countries, since they make the best vineyards. such fields in switzerland will bring from $ to $ , an acre, and are estimated to produce annually two bottles of wine for every square foot.[ ] [sidenote: geographical distribution.] terrace agriculture, rare in new countries, in the more densely populated old world is widely distributed in mountainous areas. in germany, where it is nearly identical with the culture of the vine, it is found along the steep slopes overlooking the valley of the moselle and the rhine; also in the vosges mountains, the black forest and the swabian jura, to the limited altitude in which the vine will flourish in these northern regions. in the alps it is widespread, and not confined to the culture of the vine. the traveler passing along the upper rhone through the sunny canton of valais follows these terraced fields almost as far as fiesch (altitude feet), beyond which agriculture proper becomes more and more restricted on account of the elevation, and passes rapidly into the mere hay-making of a pastoral community. between leak and sierre, not only the mountain sides, but also the steep gravel hills constituting the old terminal moraine deposited by the receding rhone glacier across the valley floor, are terraced to their very tops. terrace cultivation prevails in the mountains of italy; it is utilized not only for the vine, but for olives, maize, oats, hemp, rye and flax. on the gentler declivities of the apennines, the terraced walls are wider apart and lower than on the steep slopes of the ligurian apennines and along the riviera of the maritime alps, where the mountains rise abruptly from the margin of the sea.[ ] careful and laborious terrace cultivation has produced in italy a class of superior gardeners. the genoese are famous for their skill in this sort of culture. the men from the apennine plateau of the abruzzi readily find positions in the lowlands as expert gardeners.[ ] [sidenote: terrace culture of the saracens.] the saracens of spain in the tenth century converted every mountain slope into a succession of green terraces. they built walls of heavy masonry, and brought water, loam, and fertilizing materials from great distances. the slopes of granada back of malaga and almeria were covered with vineyards. every foot of land susceptible of cultivation was turned to account, every drop of water from the ill-timed winter rains was conserved for the growing season. the application of intelligence and labor to tillage enabled the hispano-arab provinces to support a dense population.[ ] these saracen cultivators had come from the severest training school in all eurasia. where the arid tableland of arabia is buttressed on the southwestern front by high coast ranges ( to , feet or to meters) is yemen, rich in its soil of disintegrated trap rock, adequately watered by the dash of the southwest monsoons against its towering ridges; but practically the whole country is atilt. consequently the mountains have been terraced from the base often up to feet. the country presents the aspect of vast agricultural amphitheaters, in which the narrow paths of ancient paving zigzag up and up through successive zones of production. here is a wide range of fruits--oranges, lemons, figs, dates, bananas and coffee; then apricots, apples, plums, grapes, quinces, peaches, together with grains of various zonal distribution, such as millet, maize, wheat and barley. the terrace walls are from five to eight feet high, but toward the top of the mountains they often increase to fifteen feet. though laid without mortar, they are kept in perfect repair. reservoirs filled with water from the two rainy seasons, supply the irrigation channels.[ ] in the narrow valleys of the nejd plateau in central arabia and on the mountain slopes of oman are found the same irrigated gardens and terraced plantations. this laborious tillage underlay the prosperity of the ancient sabaean monarchy of yemen, as it explains the population of , souls who occupy the modern capital of sanaa, located at an altitude of feet ( meters).[ ] [sidenote: in the himalayas.] turning eastward, we find terrace agriculture widely distributed in himalayan lands. the steep mountain sides of the vale of kashmir are cultivated thus to a considerable height. the terraces are irrigated by contour channels constructed along the hillsides, which bring the water for miles from distant snow-fed streams. their shelf-like fields are green with fruit orchards and almond groves, with vineyards and grain fields.[ ] the terraced slopes about the himalayan hill-station of simla (elevation to feet) feed the summer population of english, who there take refuge from the deadly heat of the plains. the mountain sections of the native states of nepal and bhutan present the view of slopes cut into gigantic stairs, each step a field of waving rice kept saturated by irrigating streams from abundant mountain springs. farther north, where himalayas and hindu kush meet, terrace agriculture is combined with irrigation in the high gilgit valleys, and farther still along that mere gash running down from the pamir dome, called the hunza valley. here live the once lawless robber tribes of the hunzas and nagaris, whose conquest cost the british a dangerous and expensive campaign in , but whose extensive terraces of irrigated fields and evidences of skillful tillage gave the whole country an appearance of civilization strangely at variance with the barbarous character of its inhabitants.[ ] [sidenote: in tibet and china.] north of the outer himalayan range, near the sources of the indus and sutlej rivers in ladak or western tibet, this same form of cultivation has been resorted to by the retarded and isolated mongolian inhabitants. here at an altitude of , feet or more ( meters), along mountain ranges of primitive rock yielding only a scant and sterile soil, terraces are laboriously constructed; their surfaces are manured with burnt remains of animal excrements, which must first serve as fuel in this timberless land before they are applied to the ground. in this stronghold of buddhism almost every lamasery has its terraced fields yielding good crops of grain and fruit.[ ] in the densely populated sze chuan province of western china, cultivation has climbed from the fertile basins of the min and upper yangtze rivers far up the surrounding mountains, where it is carried on terraces to the foot of vertical cliffs.[ ] farther north where the mountain province of shensi occupies the rise of land from the chinese lowlands to the central highlands of asia, terraces planted with wheat or other grains cover the mountain slopes.[ ] [sidenote: in ancient peru.] terrace tillage is rare in new countries of extensive plains, like the united states and canada, where the level lands still suffice for the agricultural needs of the people; but in the confined mountain basins and valleys which made up the inca's territory in ancient peru, every available natural field was utilized for cultivation, and terraces brought the obstinate mountain sides under the dominion of the andean peasant. they were constructed, a hundred or more in number, rising or feet above the floor of the highland valley, contracting in width as they rose, till the uppermost one was a narrow shelf only two feet broad. these were extended by communal labor year after year, with increase of population, just as to-day in java and the neighboring islands, and became the property of the inca. streams from the higher slopes were conducted in canals and distributed from terrace to terrace, to irrigate and fertilize. these terraces therefore yielded the best crops of potatoes, maize and pulse. the cultivable area was further extended by floating gardens, consisting of rafts covered with earth, which floated on the surface of lakes.[ ] they existed in ancient mexico also,[ ] and are used to-day in the lakes and streams of tibet and kashmir[ ] and the rivers of overcrowded china. [sidenote: terrace agriculture in mountainous islands.] mountainous islands, born of volcanic forces or the partial submergence of coastal ranges, have steep surfaces and scant lowlands. their inhabitants command limited area at best. driven to agriculture by their isolation, drawn to it by the favorable oceanic climate, such islands develop terrace tillage in its most pronounced form. on the precipitous pitch of teneriffe, every particle of alluvial soil is collected to make gardens. long lines of camels, laden with boxes of earth, may be seen coming almost daily into the town of santa cruz, bringing soil for the terraces.[ ] this is desperate agriculture. irrigated terraces scar the steep slopes of many polynesian islands.[ ] they are highly developed among the malay battaks of sumatra, especially for rice culture.[ ] in java, bali and lombok they reach a perfection hardly equalled elsewhere in the world. in java they begin at an altitude of feet, cutting main and branch valleys into amphitheaters, and covering hundreds of square miles.[ ] on the volcanic slopes of lombok the terrace plots vary from many acres to a few square yards, according to the grade, while a complete system of irrigation uses every brook to water the terraces. here as in java the work began at a very early period, when it was probably introduced among the native malays by brahmans from india.[ ] japan, two-thirds of whose area is mountainous, has terraced its steep valley walls often up to feet or more, and utilized every patch of ground susceptible of tillage.[ ] [sidenote: among mountain savages.] a mountain environment often occasions a forced development in the form of agriculture among peoples who otherwise still linger in a low stage of barbarism or savagery. the wild, head-hunting igorots, inhabiting the cordilleras of north central luzon, have levelled the face of their mountains into a series of platforms, held by retaining walls from twenty to thirty feet high. on these they cultivate upland rice at an altitude of feet. the igorot province of bontoc contains valleys in which every available foot of land is terraced for rice, and which present artificial landscapes vividly recalling japan. labor is the heritage of each inhabitant. every man, woman and child down to ten years of age shares in the work of providing food.[ ] africa shows parallel cases. the angoss people, a savage negro tribe who occupy part of the murchison range in northern nigeria, have mapped out all their sloping land into little terraces, sometimes only a foot or two wide. one of their peaks, feet high, has its plateau top covered with populous villages, owing to the protection of the site, and every inch of its slope cut into terraces planted with millet and guinea corn.[ ] a more primitive form of this tillage is found in the country of the marunga negroes, who occupy the steep western face of the rift valley filled by lake tanganyika. here cameron found the surface not regularly terraced, but retaining walls of loose stones disposed at intervals, which served to hold the soil in place, without greatly altering the natural slope. the scene recalled the terraced heights of switzerland, and the people working there looked like flies on a wall.[ ] in the semi-arid country of sudanese darfur, where only the mountain districts are well watered and thickly populated, small terraces for grain and melons cover all the slopes.[ ] [sidenote: fertilizing] mountain agriculture is necessarily laborious. the paucity of arable land precludes the possibility of letting fields lie fallow. these, to prevent exhaustion, must be constantly and abundantly fertilized, all the more as conditions of excessive subaërial denudation found in the steep slope and usual heavy rainfall of mountains, as well as possible glacial scouring of the land in the past, have greatly attenuated the layer of soil called upon to support plant life. the swiss or tyrolese farmer cherishes his manure pile as at once source and badge of his wealth. after harvest it is carted or carried in baskets not only to the terraces, but also to the wide alluvial fan that grows his oats and rye, to his meadows and hay fields. both in mexico and peru the soil received a dressing of poudrette. manuring was most extensive where population was densest, as in the isolated mountain valleys opening out upon the desert coast of peru. every kind of organic refuse was utilized, and fish was buried with the kernels of maize as a fertilizer. the deposits of guano found on the headlands and off-shore islands were used from the remotest times. different guano beds were assigned to the several provinces, and the breeding places of the birds were protected by law.[ ] ashes and decayed wood were employed for the same purpose, or plants were dug into the soil, while human manure was in mexico a marketable commodity as in china.[ ] [sidenote: economy of level land for houses and villages.] in all mountain regions where population has begun to press upon the meager limits of subsistence, level land and soil are at a premium. in ancient peru space was begrudged for the dead.[ ] cities covered considerable space on the roomy intermontane plateaus; but in the narrow lateral valleys, houses and temples were built on rocks, in order to reserve every fertile spot for agriculture.[ ] the traveler notices the same thing throughout the alps. compact villages cling to the mountain sides, leaving the alluvial hem of the stream or level glacial terrace free for the much needed fields. only in broad longitudinal valleys, like that of andermatt, do the settlements complacently spread out their skirts, or on wide alluvial fans where transverse valleys debouch upon the plains. the mountaineers of the crimea construct their houses against the precipices, excavating into their face and building up the front, with stones, and thus reserve the gentler slopes for vineyards and gardens.[ ] in the kangra, kumaon, and garhwal districts of the british himalayas, the large indian villages of the plains give place to small hamlets or detached homesteads, scattered here and there wherever occasional patches of soil on a hillside or in a narrow valley offer hope of sustenance. these hamlets or dwellings are located on the sides of the mountains, because level spots which can be irrigated must be reserved for rice fields.[ ] the high site is also freer from malaria. [sidenote: perpendicular villages] in the high himalayan province of ladak or western tibet, this principle of land economy reaches a climax. all settlement is on the perpendicular. the abrupt mountain sides are honey-combed with tombs, villages and buddhist lamaseries in the detached localities where population occurs. a pleasure walk through one of these tibetan towns means a climb by steep flights of steps hewn out of the rock, varied by a saunter up ladders, where the sheer face of a cliff must be surmounted to reach the houses on a ledge above.[ ] pictures of these recall forcibly the cliff-dwellings of the pueblo indians. even the important market city of leh covers the lower slope of the mountain at an altitude of , feet, and from its height overlooks the cultivated fields in the sandy valley bed below, made fertile by irrigating streams from debouching cañons.[ ] the ladak villages always shun the plains. the desire to economize level arable land does not alone dictate this choice of sites, however; the motive of protection against inundation, when the snows melt and the streams swell, and also, to some degree, against hostile attack, is an additional factor. in the mountainous parts of overcrowded china, again, the food problem is the dominant motive. in the rugged highland province of shensi, a village of several hundred people covers only a few acres, and rises in closely packed tiers of houses against the mountain side.[ ] in the wilder, half-conquered parts of sze chuan the villages crown the lower peaks, cling to the base of the mountains, or are perched on ledges of rock overlooking the gorges. among the steep cliffs bordering the upper yangtze, occupied chiefly by the timid, displaced mantze aborigines, at an altitude of , feet, small platforms resting on beams projecting from the sheer mountain face support minute houses, whose backs burrow into the cliff behind. the small children are tied to the door post, to keep them from falling into the millet field below. the house is accessible only by bolts driven into the cliff. above and below is the farm--small patches of tilled soil, often not larger than a bath towel, to which the cultivator lowers himself by a rope.[ ] here life hovers on the brink of death and despair. [sidenote: mountain pastures and stock-raising.] paucity of arable land in mountain regions leads to the utilization of the untillable slopes for stock grazing. this industry is always a valuable ally to mountain agriculture on account of the manure which it yields; but in high altitudes, where the steepness or rockiness of the soil, cold and the brevity of the growing season restrict or eliminate cereal crops, it becomes the dominant occupation of the inhabitants, while agriculture takes a subordinate place, limited to the production of hay and fodder for the winter feeding of the stock. above the line of tree growth flourish the natural summer pastures up to the border of perpetual snow; and just below lies a zone which, if cleared of its forests, supports a thick carpet of grass and herbage, though too cold to ripen grain. the high pastures are particularly nourishing. cows feeding here in the alps give better milk than the "home" or valley cows, though a smaller quantity. sheep and goats do equally well, but swine are profitable only as a by-product, to utilize the refuse of the cheese and butter industry. the area of these pastures far exceeds that of arable land in mountain regions. in switzerland they comprise about per cent. of the total productive area; hay meadows per cent., but fields and gardens only per cent.[ ] in the austrian province of salzburg, pastures make up . per cent., hay meadows . per cent., and tilled fields only . per cent. of the total productive area. in the tyrol the figures are much the same.[ ] since norway has over per cent. of its total area in bare mountains, snow fields, bogs and lakes, it is not surprising to find only . per cent. in pastures, . per cent. in meadows, and . per cent. in grain fields; but here the pastures are ten times the arable area.[ ] the season of the summer feeding on the grass lands is short. in the so-called high alps it frequently lasts only six or seven weeks, in the grisons at most thirteen weeks[ ] and in norway from two to three months.[ ] high mountain regions, practically restricted to this _graswirthschaft_, soon reach their maximum of prosperity and population. the amount of hay secured for the winter feeding limits the number of cattle, and the number of the cattle, through their manure, fixes the valley hay supply. alpine pastures cannot be enlarged, and they may be reduced by accidents of nature, such as landslides, devastating torrents, or advance of ice fields or glaciers. they cannot be improved by capital and labor, and they may deteriorate chemically by exhaustion. the constant export of butter and cheese from alpine pastures in recent times, without substitution by any fertilizer beyond the local manure, has caused the diminution of phosphoric acid in the soil and hence impoverishment. canton glarus has shown a steady decline since in the number of cows which its mountain pastures can support.[ ] many other alpine districts show the same deterioration. [sidenote: mountain herdsman and shepherds.] the remoteness of these highland pastures from the permanent villages necessitates _sennenwirthschaft_, or the maintenance of out-farms and shepherds on the mountains during the grazing season. this involves a semi-nomadic existence for such inhabitants as serve as herdmen. in june, as soon as the high pastures begin to grow green, cattle, sheep and goats ascend step by step in the wake of summer, as she climbs the slope, and they return in autumn to the valleys. there they feed on the stubble of hay and grain fields, till the increasing cold confines them to their low stables. the hut of the _senner_ or _saeter_, as the herdsman is variously called in switzerland and norway, consists of a living room and a smaller apartment for making butter and cheese, while against the steep slope is a rude stone shelter for the cattle and goats. the predominance of summer pastures has made cattle-raising a conspicuous part of agriculture in the alps and in norway. in many parts of switzerland, cattle are called "wares" and the word cheese is used as a synonym for food, as we use bread. a swiss peasant who has a reputation for cheese making is popular with the girls.[ ] here even cupid turns dairy expert. [sidenote: communal ownership of mountain pastures.] since it is scarcely practicable to divide these highland pastures, they have generally remained communal property, whether in norway,[ ] switzerland, the bavarian alps, the british himalayan districts,[ ] nepal and bhutan,[ ] or kashmir.[ ] in europe their use is generally regulated. as a rule, a swiss villager may keep on the _allmende_ during the summer as many head of cattle as he is able to stall-feed during the winter. any in excess of this number must be paid for at a fixed rate to the village or commune treasury.[ ] hay-sheds and herdsmen's huts mark these districts of temporary occupation near the altitude limits of human life throughout europe. in asia, likewise, are to be found small villages, inhabited only in summer by herdsmen tending their flocks. such is the hamlet of minemerg, located at an altitude of about feet at the southern entrance to the borzil pass over the western himalayas, and sonamerg (altitude feet or meters) just below the zogi la pass, both of them surrounded by rich meadows on the northern rim of the vale of kashmir.[ ] the utilization of mountain pastures for stock raising is almost universal. in the arid highlands of central asia, it is the essential supplement to the pastoral nomadism of the steppes and deserts, and to the limited sedentary agriculture found along the irrigated piedmont slopes. here and elsewhere the animal raised varies widely-the llama and vicuna in peru, which thrive best at , to , feet elevation, and multiply rapidly on the _ichu_ or coarse grass which clothes the slopes of the higher andes up to snow line; sheep, goats, yaks and herds of dzo, a useful hybrid between yak and cow, in the highland districts of sze chuan. here the mantze mountaineers lock their houses and leave their villages deserted, while they camp with their herds on the high pastures at , feet or more.[ ] only economical, ingenious japan has failed to develop stock raising, though mountains comprise two-thirds of its area. the explanation has often been sought in buddhism, which inhibits the use of animal food; but this religious rule probably found ready acceptance in japan, just because the paucity of animal food made its observance easy, for the fish industry of the empire never suffered from the inhibition. the reason is probably to be sought elsewhere. the native grass of japan, which relentlessly crowds out all imported grazing crops, is a bamboo grass with sharp, hard, serrated edges, and is said to cut the entrails of horses and sheep.[ ] [sidenote: haymaking in high mountains.] while the high pastures are ample for the summer feeding, the chief problem of mountain stock-farmers is to secure feed for the winter support of their animals. this taxes their industry and ingenuity to the utmost. while the herdsmen are away tending their charges on the heights, the rest of the population are kept busy at home, getting fodder for the six or seven months of stall-feeding. this includes the cultivation of hardy crops like oats, rye and barley, which will mature at a great altitude, hay-making and collecting twigs and even leaves for the less fastidious goats. in switzerland as in norway the art of mowing has reached its highest pitch. grass only three inches high is cut thrice yearly. the norwegian peasant gathers a small hay harvest from the roofs of his house and barns, and from the edges of the highways. in switzerland not a spear of grass escapes. in places inaccessible to cattle and goats, the peasant gathers hay by the handful with crampons on his feet, generally from the ledges of cliffs. he stacks it in one spot, and brings it down to the valley by sledge in winter. he is the _wildheuer_ or wild hay gatherer. his life is so dangerous, that the law permits only one _wildheuer_ to a family.[ ] in high alpine cantons this office is the privilege of the poor.[ ] the traveler in norway frequently sees huge bundles of hay sliding down to the valley on wires stretched from some high point on the precipitous fiord wall. this represents the harvest from isolated spots or from the field of the summer shepherd. in the vicinity of every _saeter_ hut, a plot of ground is fenced in, enriched with the manure gathered during the summer, and utilized to grow fine nourishing grass, which is mown and transported down to the valley farm.[ ] here economy of vegetative resources reaches its climax. [sidenote: methods of curing hay in mountains.] in mountain regions of heavy rainfall, thick dew and numerous cloudy days, it becomes a problem to get the hay dried and stored before a drenching shower comes. in many parts of switzerland, therefore, the peasant on a clear morning cuts a limited amount of grass. this, with the help of his wife and children, he diligently turns and tosses at short intervals all day long, thus subjecting it to a rapid curing process by the action of the wind and the sun, whose rays are doubly effective in the rarefied air of the heights. in the evening the hay is made up into bundles and carried on his back to the barn. in other parts of switzerland the green hay is hung on horizontal poles arranged against the sunny side of the chalet and under its projecting roof, thus exposed to the heat and protected from the rain till cured. in norway the same purpose is achieved by setting up in the fields racks supporting long horizontal bars, over which the newly cut grass is hung. there it is exposed to the gentle fanning of the wind and penetrated by the warmth of the sun, in the short intervals when the sky is not overcast; and during a shower it sheds the water immediately, so that a minimum of harm is done. in the mountains of germany, the hay is stacked on cone-shaped racks made of poles, with lateral projections which support the grass; thus the air can circulate freely inside the hollow cone, which is lifted well above the ground. elsewhere sharpened stakes provided with cross bars are simply driven into the ground, and on these the hay is draped till cured. mountain hay-making leaves nothing to chance; too much depends upon the crop. in fact, at high altitudes it becomes the only crop. cereal culture drops off with every increase of elevation. norway has few fields above feet;[ ] even barley fails to ripen above feet. in the mountains of würtenberg we find pure _graswirthschaft_ at feet elevation, with only a small garden patch near the dwelling.[ ] it is interesting to take a tramp up one of the longitudinal or lateral valleys of the alps, and observe the economic basis of life gradually change from agriculture to hay-making, till in some high-laid alpine cirque, like bad leuk or barmaz at the head of the val d'ilez, one sees only meadows and an occasional potato patch, which impresses the lowlander as a last despairing effort in the struggle for existence. [sidenote: winter industries of mountain peoples.] where climate and soil do so little for the support of life, man must do much. work must in some way be made to compensate for an ungenerous nature. the closely housed existence necessitated by the long severe winters of high altitudes stimulates industries in the home. the winter feeding of the stock involves little labor, so the abundant leisure would otherwise be wasted. hence it is no accident that we find almost everywhere native mountain industries in a high state of development, and often characterized by an artistic beauty which seems to be the one flower of this barren environment. they are naturally based upon the local raw materials of the mountains, such as wood, metals, clays, and especially the wool of sheep and goats. moreover, their products are articles of small bulk and large value, adapted to costly mountain transportation. those of kashmir are typical-carved wood, artistic metal work in silver and copper, puttoo cloth, carpets and the famous kashmir shawls.[ ] the stark life of tibet shows in its industries an unexpected richness and beauty. the men spin and weave wool into puttoo cloth of all grades; some of it is extraordinarily fine in texture and color, and is exported by caravan in considerable quantity to northern china and mongolia. pastil sticks, made of aromatic wood and impregnated with musk and gold-dust, are a conspicuous commodity in the trade with peking. tibet is rich in metals, especially silver and gold. even the nomad shepherds of the tablelands know how to purify gold-dust over a fire of argols; hence it is not surprising that the settlements in the irrigated mountain valleys should develop real artists in metallurgy.[ ] the province of dèrgè, which excels in metal work, produces swords, guns, teapots, bells and seals of extremely artistic design and perfect finish.[ ] the jewelry of tibet suggests byzantine work. it includes ear-rings and charm boxes of gold and carved turquoise, and is marked by the same delicate finish. but whether the tibetan is working in wood, gold, brass, or wool, he uses native designs of real merit, and shows the expert craftsman's hand.[ ] his activities recall the metal work of the caucasus and the famous rugs of daghestan. turning to europe we find watch and clock making in the black forest and the jura, wood-carving in the swiss and norwegian mountains, bobbin lace in the erz range and in alpine appenzell, and the far more beautiful italian product of the rugged abruzzi and the frioulian alps. the slovaks of highland hungary are expert in wire-drawing,[ ] and the peasant of the central apennines makes from the gut of his goats the finest violin strings in the world, the so-called roman strings.[ ] the low thuringian and franconian forests, which harbor denser populations, have by a minute subdivision of labor turned their local resources to the making of dolls, which they supply to the markets of the world. here too the manufacture of glass articles, porcelains, majolica and terra-cotta flourishes.[ ] most of these mountain industries merely supplement the scant agricultural resources; they represent the efforts of industrious but hard pressed people to eke out their meager subsistence. [sidenote: overpopulation and emigration.] the application of steam to industry has converted mountain regions of abundant mineral wealth into centers of production for the markets of the world. but this is the history of only the last century, and of only favored mountain regions. the utilization of waterpower for electricity in factories is transforming the piedmont belts of the alps and apennines; but life in the interior of these ranges remains unaltered by the denser population at their base, except for the increased demand for the butter, milk and cheese of the highland pastures. for the world at large, therefore, the obvious and persistent fact of mountain economy is a scanty food supply secured by even the most intelligent and untiring labor, and a fixed tendency to overpopulation. the simplest remedy for this evil is emigration, a fact which malthus observed.[ ] hence emigration is an almost universal phenomenon in highland regions. sometimes it is only seasonal. it takes place in the fall after the field work is over, and is due to the paucity of industries possible in the mountains during the winter. it seems to be a recurrence of that nomadic note in the _motif_ of mountain life--that migration in summer upward to the borders of the snow, in winter downward to the sun-warmed plains. in autumn the swiss descend from the jura and alps in great numbers to cities, seeking positions as servants or pastry-cooks. the auvergnats leave their home by the thousand in the fall, when snow covers the mountains, to work in the cities as hewers of stone and drawers of water, then return in summer to resume their tasks in field and pasture, bringing back sums of money which noticeably enrich the home districts.[ ] [sidenote: forms of temporary emigration.] this seasonal emigration often assumes the form of peddling, in order to dispose of small home-made wares. from the basilicata and modena apennines the young men follow the pedler's trade, but the basilicata village of viggiano furnishes italy with many wandering musicians.[ ] the kabyles of the atlas mountains go out in parties of two or three in the fall, and hawk every kind of goods, bringing back from their journey quantities of wool for home weaving.[ ] the emigration may last for several years, but finally the love of home generally calls the mountaineer back to his rugged hills. the galicians of the cantabrian mountains of northern spain leave their poor country for a time for the richer provinces of portugal and spain, where they become porters, water-carriers and scavengers, and are known as boorish, but industrious and honest. the women from the neighboring mountain province of asturias are the professional wet-nurses of spain. they are to be seen in every aristocratic household of madrid, but return to the mountains with their savings when their period of service ends.[ ] in mountainous basutoland, the kaffir switzerland of south africa, arable land and pastures are utilized as completely as local methods of husbandry permit; and yet the native kaffirs go in large numbers-- , out of a total population of , in --to work in the mines of kimberley and the witwatersrand. they also return in time with their savings.[ ] similarly the battaks of the rugged mountain-rimmed plateau of western sumatra emigrate in increasing numbers to the lowlands, and hire themselves out for a term of years on the dutch plantations.[ ] another interesting and once rather widespread phase of this temporary emigration appears in the mercenary troops formerly drawn from mountain regions. after the burgundian wars of the fifteenth century, the swiss became the mercenaries of europe, and in were first employed as papal life-guards. they served the kings of france from louis xl till the tragedy of the tuileries in ; and in that country and elsewhere they made the name "switzer" a synonym for guard or attendant,[ ] till in the mercenary system was abolished. the pressure of population at home and the military spirit of the scotch highlanders once led the young gaels to seek their fortunes in military service abroad, as in the army of gustavus adolphus of sweden.[ ] gurkhas from himalayan nepal, an independent state, are employed in considerable numbers in the indian army to-day, and constitute one of the most reliable divisions of the native troops. in january, , there were , gurkhas drawing pay from the indian government as soldiers, besides more employed as military police, porters, and in other capacities.[ ] similarly ancient arcadia, the mountain core of peloponnesus, was a constant hive of mercenaries. [sidenote: permanent emigration.] often, however, permanent emigration is the result, robbing the mountain population of its most enterprising element, piedmontese, bergamese, and frioulians from the italian alps leave their country in large numbers. many of them find work in marseilles and other towns of southern france, infusing an italian strain into the population there and making serious competition for the local french. a proverb says there is no country in the world without sparrows and bergamese.[ ] geneva, once the citadel of calvinism, is to-day a catholic town, owing to the influx of catholic laborers from alpine savoy. the overflow of the redundant population of this mountain province has given the swiss canton a character diametrically opposed to its traditions.[ ] the chinese provinces of chili and manchuria have been largely populated by immigrants from the barren mountain peninsula of shantung; manchuria has thereby been converted from an alien into a native district.[ ] emigration on so large a scale exercises far reaching economic and historical influences. norse colonization contributed interesting chapters to the history of europe in the ninth and tenth centuries. norwegians who have flocked to america have made a deep impress upon our northwestern states. switzerland in and gave as of its subjects, a valuable contribution. scotchmen of highland birth are scattered over the whole world, carrying with them everywhere their sturdy qualities of character. even the stay-at-home french lose emigrants from their mountain districts. the people of the basses-alps go to mexico, and the basques from the french pyrenees seek argentine.[ ] the honesty, industry, and frugality of these mountain emigrants make them desirable elements in any colonial population, and insure their success when they seek their fortunes in the uncrowded western world. the alternative to overpopulation and its remedy emigration is found in preventive checks to increase. these sometimes take the form of restricted or late marriages, as malthus found to be the case in norway and switzerland in ,[ ] before the introduction of steam or electric motive power had stimulated the industries of these countries or facilitated emigration thence. the same end is achieved by the widespread religious celibacy which sometimes characterizes mountain communities. in the barren auvergne plateau of france, the number of younger sons who become priests is extraordinary. many daughters become nuns. celibacy, seconded by extensive emigration, clears the field for the eldest son and the system of primogeniture which the poverty of this rugged highland has established as a fixed institution in the auvergne.[ ] a careful statistical investigation of the geographical origins of the catholic priesthood in europe might throw interesting light on the influences of environment. the harsh conditions of mountain life make the monastery a line of least resistance, while geographical isolation nourishes the religions nature and benumbs the intellectual activities. it is in the corrugated highland of tibet, chilled to barrenness by an elevation of , feet or more ( meters), sterile and treeless from aridity, carved by cañon-cutting streams into deep gorges offering a modicum of arable soil for irrigation, that monasticism has developed into an effective system to keep down population. buddhism, with its convents and lamaseries, naturally recommended itself to a country where asceticism was obviously expedient. the world shows nowhere else so large a celibate class. in tibet, monks are estimated at , to , in a total population of three millions. archibald little estimates their number at one-third of the total male population.[ ] derge, which is the most productive district both agriculturally and industrially of eastern tibet and is also most densely inhabited, counts at least , lamas in a total population of about , .[ ] not less than one-sixth of the inhabitants of ladak are in religious houses as monks and nuns.[ ] families in tibet are small, yet each devotes one or more children to convent or monastic life.[ ] in western tibet, especially about taklakot in the himalayan border, one boy in every family is invariably devoted to the priesthood, and one or more daughters must become nuns. but the nun generally resides with her family or lives in some monastery--with unspeakable results.[ ] [sidenote: polyandry.] the tibetans seem to be enthusiastic malthusians, with all the courage of their convictions. religious celibacy among them is only an adjunct to another equally effective social device for restricting population. this is the institution of polyandry, which crops out in widely distributed mountain regions of limited resources, just as it appears not infrequently in primitive island societies. its sporadic occurrence in extensive lowlands, as among the warraus of guiana and certain tribes of the orinoco, is extremely rare, as also its occasional appearance among pastoral steppe-dwellers, like the hottentots and damaras.[ ] it is often associated with polygamy where wealth exists, and is never the exclusive form of marriage, yet its frequency among mountain peoples is striking. strabo describes fraternal polyandry as it existed in mountainous yemen. there among a semitic people, as to-day in mongolian tibet and among the aboriginal todas of the nilgiri hills in peninsular india, the staff of one husband left at the door of the house excluded the others.[ ] in modern times the institution is found throughout tibet, and in the himalayan and sub-himalayan districts adjoining it, as in ladak, kunawar, kumaon, garhwal, spiti, sirmur, among the miris, daphlas, abors and bhutias occupying the southern slope of the himalayans eastward from sikkim, and the murmese tribes of the khasia hills just to the south. the same practice occurs among the coorgs of the western ghats, among the nairs at the coastal piedmont of this range, among the todas of the mountain stronghold known as the nilgiri hills (peaks feet or meters), and it crops out sporadically among certain mountain bantu tribes of south africa.[ ] [sidenote: female infanticide.] there seems little doubt that polyandry, as herbert spencer maintains, has been adopted as an obvious and easy check upon increase of population in rugged countries.[ ] it is generally coupled with other preventive checks. in the nilgiri hills, as we found also to be the case on many polynesian islands, it is closely associated with female infanticide.[ ] the todas in showed a proportion of two men to one woman, but later, with the decline of infanticide under british rule, a proportion of men to women, and a resulting modification of the institution of polyandry.[ ] it may well be that the paucity of women suggested this form of marriage, whose expediency as an ally to infanticide in checking population later became apparent. the todas are a very primitive folk of herdsmen, living on the produce of their buffaloes, averse to agriculture, though not inhibited from it by the nature of their country, therefore prone to seek any escape from that uncongenial employment,[ ] and relying on the protected isolation of their habitat to compensate for the weakness inherent in the small number of the tribe. throughout tibet and ladak polyandry works hand in hand with the lamaseries in limiting population. the conspicuous fact in tibetan polyandry is its restriction to the agricultural portion of the population. the pastoral nomads of the country, depending on their yaks, sheep and goats, wandering at will over a very wide, if desolate territory, practice monogamy and polygamy.[ ] the sedentary population, on the other hand, is restricted to tillable lands so small that each farm produces only enough for one family. subdivision under a divided inheritance would be disastrous to these dwarf estates, especially owing to possible complications growing out of irrigating rights.[ ] polyandry leaves the estate and the family undivided, and by permitting only one wife to several fraternal husbands restricts the number of children. it does this also in another way by diminishing the fertility of the mothers; for all travelers comment upon the paucity of children in polyandrous families. westermarck lays stress upon the fact that polyandry prevails chiefly in sterile countries. he regards it less as a conscious device to check increase of population than a result of the disproportion of males to females in polyandrous communities. the preponderance of male births he attributes to the excessive endogamy bordering on inbreeding which tends to prevail in all isolated mountain valleys; and also, as a possibility, to the undernourished condition of the parents caused by scanty food supplies, which düsing found to be productive of a high percentage of male births in proportion to female.[ ] the motive of restricting population seems entitled to more weight than westermarck concedes to it; for he slurs over the fact that in tibet polyandry gives rise to a large number of superfluous women who fill the nunneries,[ ] while in the nilgiri hills redundant females were eliminated by infanticide. the fact seems to be that in the institution of polyandry we have a social and psychological effect of environment, reinforced by a physiological effect. [sidenote: effects of polyandry and polygamy.] a comparison of social conditions in the adjoining provinces of baltistan and ladak, which together comprise the himalayan valley of the indus, reveals the character of polyandry as a response to geographic environment. both provinces are inhabited by a mongolian stock, but the ladaki living on the uppermost stretch of the basin near tibet are buddhists and polyandrists, while the baltis farther down the valley are mussulmen and polygamists. the baltis, with their plurality of wives and numerous children, are wretchedly poor and live in squalor on the verge of starvation; but as the elevation of their valley ranges only from to feet, they are inured to heat, and therefore emigrate in large numbers to the neighboring mohammedan province of the punjab, where they work as coolies and navvies. the ladakis, on the other hand, living to , feet above the sea, die of bilious fever when they reach the lowlands. cut off from emigration, they curtail population by means of polyandry and lamaseries. consequently they show signs of prosperity, are well fed, well clothed and comfortably housed.[ ] baltistan's social condition illustrates in a striking way the power of an idea like an alien creed, assimilated as the result of close vicinal location, to counteract for a time the influences of local geographic conditions. [sidenote: marauding tendencies in mountaineers] the less civilized mountain peoples, whose tastes or low economic status unfit them for emigration, solve the problem of a deficient food supply by raiding the fields and stores of their richer neighbors. predatory expeditions fill the history of primitive mountain peoples, and of the ancient occupants of highland regions which are now devoted to honest industry. the ancient alpine tribes were one and all, from the mediterranean to the danube, "poor and addicted to robbery," as strabo says. he analyzes their condition with nice discrimination. "the greater part [of the alps], especially the summits of the mountains inhabited by robbers, are barren and unfruitful, both on account of the frost and the ruggedness of the land. because of the want of food and other necessaries, the mountaineers have sometimes been obliged to spare the inhabitants of the plains, that they might have some people to supply them."[ ] the freebooters usually descended into the lowlands of italy, gaul and helvetia, but the pass peoples lay in wait for their prey on the mountain roads. strabo described the same marauding habits arising from the same cause among the mountaineers of northern spain,[ ] the balkan range,[ ] and the highlands encircling the mesopotamian plains.[ ] hunger is usually the spur. the tribesmen who inhabit the hunza gorge were notorious robbers till their recent conquest by the british. despite the most careful terrace tillage, their country was much overpopulated. the supply of grain was so inadequate, that during the summer the people subsisted wholly on fruit, reserving the grain for winter use. therefore, when early summer opened the passes of the karakorum and himalayan ranges, and caravans began to move over the trade route between kashmir and yarkand, when the kirghis nomads from the plains sought the pastures of the pamir, the hunza tribesmen found raiding caravans and herds, and pillaging the gilgit valley of baltistan the easiest means of supplementing their slender resources. hardy mountaineers as they were, and born fighters, they always conducted their forays successfully, and returned to the shelter of their fastnesses, laden with plunder and driving their captive flocks before them. the perpetual menace of these hunza raids caused large districts in the gilgit valley to be abandoned by their inhabitants, and cultivated land to lapse into wilderness,[ ] while the chilas to the south pillaged the astor valley of baltistan, carrying away crops and cattle, enslaving women and children.[ ] [sidenote: cattle-lifting.] marauding propensities are marked among all retarded mountain peoples of modern times. the cattle-lifting clans of the scotch highlands, who preyed upon the lowlands, have their counterpart in the pathans of the suleiman and baluch mountain border who, till curbed by the british power in india, systematically pillaged the plains of the sind.[ ] the forest bhils of the vindhyan and satpura ranges are scarcely yet married to agriculture; so when in time of drought their crops fail and the game abandons the hill forests to seek water in the lowland jungles, the bhils cheerfully revert to their ancestral habit of cattle-lifting.[ ] the caucasus was long a breeding place for robber tribes who made their forays into the pastures and fields of southern russia. robbery was part of the education of every circassian prince, while one group of the abassines conferred their chieftainship upon the most successful robber or the man of largest family.[ ] the kurdish hillmen of the armenian ranges descend with their herds of horses in winter to the warmer plains, where they exhaust the pastures and subject the armenian villages to a regular system of blackmail.[ ] the wide grassy plains about koukou nor lake, near the chinese border of tibet, attract numerous mongol nomads with their herds; but these rich pastures are exposed to the depredation of si fan brigand tribes, who have their haunts in the deep, impenetrable gorges of the neighboring mountains, and carefully guard all the approaches to the same. they are buddhists, but worship a special divinity of brigandage, to whom their lamas offer prayers for the success of every foray.[ ] hence, among mountain as among desert peoples, robbery tends to become a virtue; environment dictates their ethical code. [sidenote: historical results of mountain raiding.] these depredations reflect to a great degree the complementary relation of highlands and lowlands. the plains possess what the mountains lack. this is a fundamental fact of economic geography, and inevitably leads to historical results. the marauding expeditions of mountain peoples first acquire historical importance, either when the raids after long continuance end in the conquest of the lowlands, and thus augment the resources and population of the highland state; or, as is often the case, the raiders call down upon themselves the vengeance of the plainsmen, are subdued, and embodied in the lowland state. the conquest of ancient assyria and the destruction of nineveh by the mountain medes seems to have been a process of this kind. long before their descent upon mesopotamia, they were known as the "dangerous medes," were constantly threatening the assyrian frontiers and occupying isolated tracts.[ ] the predatory incursions of the samnites of the apennines into the fertile fields of campania eventuated in the conquest of ancient capua and other cities, and greatly strengthened the samnite confederacy. but this encroachment of the mountain tribes upon the plains aroused the cupidity and alarm of the romans, who in turn bent their energies toward the final subjugation of the samnites.[ ] himalayan nepal, after the unification of its petty rajah states by the gurkha conquest between and , began encroachments and ravages upon the indian terai or fertile alluvial lowland at the foot of the mountains; and finally by had acquired title to a considerable strip of it, which by its rice fields and forests greatly strengthened the geographic and economic base of the highland state.[ ] the malay hovas, inhabiting the central plateau of madagascar, braced to effort by its temperate climate and not over-generous soil, have almost everywhere subdued the better fed but sluggish lowlanders of the coast.[ ] there can be little doubt that the beneficent effects of an invigorating mountain climate, especially in tropical and subtropical latitudes, have helped the hardy, active hill people to make easy conquest of the enervated plainsmen. [sidenote: conquest of mountain regions] it is more often the case, however, that the scant resources, small number, and divided political condition of the mountain tribes make such conquest impossible. their depredations provoke reprisals from the stronger states of the plain, who bring the mountain region under subjection, merely to police their frontier. strabo makes it clear that the romans, having secured certain passes over the alps, neglected the conquest of the ranges, till the increase of roman colonies along the piedmont rim excited the cupidity of the mountaineers. muscovite dominion was extended over the caucasus, both in order to check the persistent raids of its tribes into the russian plains, and to secure control of its passes. the state of kashmir, guided by a purely local policy, for years tried to conquer the robber tribes on its northwestern frontier, merely to protect its own border provinces. then the british authorities of the indian empire began the same process, but from a radically different motive. they saw the gilgit and hunza valleys, like the chitral to the west, as highways through a mountain transit land, whose opposite approaches were held by the russians.[ ] such conquests, whatever be their motive, profit the vanquished in the end more than the victor. they result in the systematic and intelligent development of the mountain resources, and the maintenance of ampler social and economic relations between highland and lowland through the construction of roads, which must always represent the reach of the governing authority. the conquest of mountain peoples means always expensive and protracted campaigns. the invader has always two enemies to fight, nature and the armed foe. there is a saying in india that "in gilgit a small army is annihilated and a large army starves to death." hunger is king in high altitudes, and comes always to the defense of mountain independence. moreover, the inaccessibility of such districts, the difficulty of maintaining lines of communication, ignorance of by-paths and trails which forever offer strategic opportunities to the natives or escape at a crisis, all serve to protract the war. the independent spirit of the mountaineer, his endurance of hardships, his mastery of mountain tactics, and his obstinate resistance after repeated defeat, give always a touch of heroism to highland warfare. consequently, history abounds in examples of unconquered mountain peoples, or of long sustained resistance, like that which for sixty years under the heroic leadership of kadi mulah and shamyl used up the treasure and troops of russia in the impregnable defiles of the caucasus. in the end, however, the highland tribes succumb to numbers and the road-making engineer. [sidenote: political dismemberment of mountain peoples.] political dismemberment, lack of cohesion due to the presence of physical barriers impeding intercourse, is the inherent weakness of mountain peoples. political consolidation is never voluntary. it is always forced upon them from without, either by foreign conquest or by the constant menace of such conquest, which compels the mountain clans to combine for common defense of their freedom. the combination thus made is reluctant, loose, easily broken, generally short-lived. it becomes close and permanent only under a constant pressure from without, and then assumes a form allowing to the constituent parts the greatest possible measure of independence. the swiss canton and commune are the result of a segregating environment; the swiss republic is the result of threatened encroachments by the surrounding states. it owed its first genuine federal constitution to napoleon. a report on the situation in the caucasus, addressed to czar nicholas in , contains an epitome of the history of mountain peoples. it runs as follows: "the circassians bar out russia from the south, and may at their pleasure open or close the passage to the nations of asia. at present their intestine dissensions, fostered by russia, hinder them from uniting under one leader; but it must not be forgotten that, according to traditions religiously preserved among them, the sway of their ancestors extended as far as to the black sea. * * * the imagination is appalled at the consequence which their union under one leader might have for russia, which has no other bulwark against their ravages than a military line, too extensive to be very strong."[ ] here we have the whole story--a mountain people pillaging the lowlands, exercising a dangerous and embarrassing control over the passes, and thereby calling down upon themselves conquest from without; weakened by a contracting territory within the highlands and a shrinking area of plunder without, doomed to eventual defeat by the yet more ominous weakness of political dismemberment. [sidenote: individualism and independence] mountain tribes are always like a pack of hounds on the leash, each straining in a different direction. wall-like barriers, holding them apart for centuries, make them almost incapable of concerted action, and restive under any authority but their own. clan and tribal societies, feudal and republican rule, always on a small scale, characterize mountain sociology. all these are attended by an exaggerated individualism and its inevitable concomitant, the blood feud. mountain policy tends to diminish the power of the central authority to the vanishing point, giving individualism full scope. social and economic retardation, caused by extreme isolation and encouraged by protected location, tend to keep the social body small and loosely organized. every aspect of environment makes against social integration. the broken relief of ancient greece produced the small city state; but in the rugged mountains of arcadia the principle of physical and political subdivision went farther. here, for four centuries after the first olympiad, the population, poorest and rudest of all greece, was split up into petty hill villages, each independent of the other.[ ] the need of resisting spartan aggression led for the first time, in b.c., to the formation of a _commune arcadum_, a coalescence of all the fractional groups constituting the arcadian folk;[ ] but even this union, effected only by the masterly manipulation of the theban epaminondas, proved short-lived and incomplete. what was true of the arcadian villages was true of the city states of greece. the geography of the land instilled into them the principle of political aloofness, except when menaced by foreign conquest. cooperation is efficient only when it springs from a habit of mind. greek union against the persians was very imperfect; and against the roman, the feeble leagues were wholly ineffective. the influence of this dismembering environment still persists. as ancient greece was a complex of city states, modern greece is a complex of separate districts, each of which holds chief place in the minds of its citizens, and unconsciously but steadily operates against the growth of a national spirit in the modern sense.[ ] [sidenote: types of mountain states.] a mountain environment encourages political disunion in several forms. sometimes it favors the survival of a turbulent feudal nobility, based upon clan organization, as among the medieval scotch, who were not less rebellious toward their own kings than toward the english conquerors.[ ] feudal rule seems congenial to the mountaineer, whose conservative nature, born of isolation, clings to hereditary chiefs and a long established order. feudal communities and dwarf republics exist side by side in the northern caucasus,[ ] attended by that primitive assertion of individual right, the blood feud.[ ] often the two forms of government are combined, but the feudal element is generally only a dwindling survival from a remote past. the little republic of andorra, which for a thousand years has preserved its existence in the protection of a high pyrenean valley, is a self-governing community, organized strictly along the lines of a tyrolese or swiss commune; but the two _viguiers_ or agents, who in some matters outrank the president, are official appointments tracing back to feudal days, when andorra was a seigneurie of the comté of urgel.[ ] tyrol offers a striking parallel to this. in its local affairs it has in effect a republican form of government, enjoying as high degree of autonomy as any swiss canton; but the great brenner route, which could confer both power and wealth on its possessor, made the tyrol an object of conquest to the feudal nobles of the early middle ages. their hereditary dominion is now vested in the archdukes of austria, to whom the tyrolese have shown unfailing fidelity, but from whom they have exacted complete recognition of their rights.[ ] tyrol's neighbor switzerland illustrates the pure form of commune, canton and republic, which is the logical result of a rugged mountain relief. here commune and canton are the real units of government. in the federal power at bern the swiss peasant takes little interest, often not even knowing the name of the national president. in the highest ranges a canton coincides with a mountain-rimmed valley--valais with the basin of the upper rhone, glarus with the upper linth, uri with the reuss, graubünden with the upper rhine, to which is joined by many pass routes the sparsely peopled engadine, ticino with the drainage basin of upper lake maggiore, unterwalden with the southern drainage valleys of lake lucerne. where the mountains are lower, or where passes connect valleys of high levels, cantonal boundaries may overstep geographical barriers. a commune generally consists of the villages strung along a narrow lateral valley, isolated and sufficient unto itself politically. a close parallel to the alpine commune is found among the kabyles of the atlas mountains. their political structure is based upon the _jemaa_ or commune, a small sovereign republic whose independence is fiercely defended. it enjoys complete local autonomy, is governed by an assembly of all the adult male inhabitants, and grants this body the usual functions except the administration of justice, which, characteristically, is replaced by blood feuds as the inalienable right of the individual. romans, arabs, turks and french have in turn exercised over these mountain berbers only nominal control, except when their internal dissensions made them vulnerable.[ ] [sidenote: significance of their small size.] the mountains, by the segregating power of their ridges and ranges, first produce these little independent communities, and then, throwing around them strong protecting arms, enfold them in an embrace which long provides security to them in their weakness. these minute mountain states, therefore, tend to reflect in their size the isolation of their environment, and indirectly the weakness of the surrounding nations. the original swiss _eidgenossensschaft_ of the four forest cantons, embedded in the high alps, braced against a mountain wall, held its own against the feeble feudal states of austria and germany. the rugged relief of graubünden and the spirit of freedom cradled there enabled its peasants in the middle ages to overthrow the feudal lords, and to establish a federal republic. this typical mountain state was a league composed of three other leagues. each component league consisted of a group of districts, having the power of sovereign states, and consisting in turn of a group of communes, which were quite independent in local affairs. this triune league formed in time an alliance with the swiss confederation, but did not become a member of it till the vienna adjustment of . similar is the story of the mountain shepherds of appenzell, who formed a little peasant republic, despite their bishop overlord of st. gall; and who later during the reformation, on the ground of religious differences, divided into two yet smaller states.[ ] the relation between size and inaccessibility is most strikingly illustrated in the high himalayan ranges west of kashmir and north of the punjab. here is the shinaka district, which includes the chilas, darel, tanger and other valleys branching off from the indus, and which is inhabited by dards of indo-european stock. each shinaka valley is a small cantonal republic, and each village of each republic is a commune managing its own affairs by an assembly. one settlement of only twelve houses enjoys complete autonomy. besides the village assemblies there is a state parliament handling questions of general policy, to which each village sends representatives. one dissentient vote can defeat a measure. the majority cannot control the minority; for if one village of a state disagrees with the others, it is free to carry out its own policy, even in the matter of foreign alliances.[ ] here is home rule run to seed. [sidenote: slight power of mountain chiefs.] small size is sometimes coupled with monarchical rule, degenerating occasionally into despotism among aggressive robber tribes. the inaccessible hunza valley is occupied on opposite sides of its deep gorge by two rival states, the hunzas and the nagaris, whose combined population amounts to scarcely , souls. hostile to each other, they unite only to resist an invading force. while the hunza thum is a tyrant, the nagari ruler has little voice in the government. the tibeto-burman hill folk of the eastern himalayas are divided into clans, and concede a mild authority to a chief who rules a group of clan villages, but only rarely is able to secure power over a larger district. the khasia hills of assam are broken up into twenty-three petty states, each under its own rajah or chief, who has, however, little authority beyond the administration of justice.[ ] everywhere in mountain regions appears this repugnance to centralized authority. protection by environment obviates the necessity of protection through combination. the spirit of clan exclusiveness, the absence of a common national sentiment, characterize equally the tribesmen of mountainous albania, of persian luristan,[ ] and highland kurdistan. along the rugged upheaved area which forms the western boundary of india from the khaibar pass to the sea, british officials have had to negotiate with the native pathan and baluch "jirgahs," assemblies of the chief men of the countless clans into which the tribes are divided, as the only visible form of authority tolerated.[ ] combination must be voluntary and of a type to exact a modicum of submission. these requirements are best answered by the confederation, which may gradually assume a stable and elaborate form among an advanced people like the swiss; or it may constitute a loose yet effective union, as in the famous samnite confederacy of the central apennines; or a temporary league like that of the ancient arcadians, or the group of confederated sheiks of bellad el kobail, the "country of the highlanders" in mountainous yemen, who in established a republican form of union for defense against their more powerful neighbors.[ ] [sidenote: mountain isolation and differentiation.] the power of mountains to protect makes them asylums of refuge for displaced peoples. this fact explains the confused ethnology which often characterizes these isolated regions, especially when they lie near or across natural highways of human migration. as a tide of humanity sweeps around or across the mountains, a branch stream turns into a side valley, where it is caught and held. there it remains unaltered, crystallizing in its seclusion, subjected for ages to few modifying influences from without. its people keep their own language and customs, little affected by a totally different race stock similarly placed in a neighboring alcove of the mountains. lack of communication engenders an endless multiplication of dialects, as we find them in the alps, the caucasus, in kafirstan of the hindu kush and in nepal. diversity of speech, itself a product of isolation, reacts upon that political and social aloofness of mountain folk, to emphasize and fix it. [sidenote: survival of primitive races in mountains.] from this principle it follows that the same highland region shows strong differentiation and marked social individuality from one district to another, and from one valley to the next, despite a prevailing similarity of local geographic conditions. in fact, the very similarity of those conditions, strong in their power to isolate, present the conditions for inevitable variation. a mountain region gets its population from diverse sources, or, which is quite as important, at different times from the same source. for instance, nepal received contingents of rajput conquerors, dislodged from the punjab, in the seventh century, the eleventh, and finally the dominant gurkhas at the end of the eighteenth. to-day these represent different degrees of amalgamation with the local tibetan stock of nepal. they are distinguished from each other by a diversity of languages, and a multiplicity of dialects, while the whole piedmont of the country shows a yet different blend with the aryan hindus of the ganges valley, who have seeped into the terai and been drawn up, as if by capillary attraction, into the hill valleys of the outer range. the vindhyan range and its associated highlands, long before the dawn of indian history, caught and held in their careful embrace some of the fragile aboriginal tribes like the kolarian ho, santals and korkus. centuries later the dravidian bhils and gonds sought refuge here before the advancing indo-aryans, and found asylums in the secluded valleys.[ ] finally those same northern plains whence the dravidians had come, after the mohammedan conquest of central india in the sixteenth century, sent flying to the refuge of the hills a large contingent of hindus of mingled dravidian and aryan stocks, but stamped with the culture of the ganges basin. these occupied the richer valleys and the more accessible plateaus of the highlands, driving the primitive gonds and bhils back into the remoter recesses of the mountains.[ ] dravidians and aboriginal kolarians survive in their purity in the wilder and more inaccessible regions, but in the lower valleys their upper classes show signs of mixtures with the rajput invaders, while the lower classes betray little aryan blood.[ ] [sidenote: diversity of peoples and dialects.] afghanistan, of disordered relief, set as a transit region between the plains of mesopotamia, the oxus and the indus, has a confused ethnology in keeping with the tangle of dissected plateaus and mountain systems which constitute its surface. here we find three distinct branches of the indo-european race, divided up into various peoples of diverse tongues and subdivided further into countless tribes; and two branches of mongol-tartars scattered, as if out of a pepper box, from the helmund to the oxus, tossed in among diverse peoples of iranic and galcha origin in hopeless confusion. the various afghan tribes, separated from each other by natural barriers and intervening alien stocks, though similar in physical type, speech, religion and culture, have no sense of unity, no common political aims, while the appalling list of tribes constituting the population of the country[ ] offers little hope of afghanistan ever developing national cohesion. kafiristan alone, which lies in the hindu kush range for the most part at an altitude of , feet or more, harbors in its recesses many remnants of primitive peoples, speaking various languages and dialects, strangers alike to any native affinity or political union. it is a mere agglomeration of ethnic fragments, in which the people of one village are often unable to converse with those of the next.[ ] relief has fashioned the ethnology of the caucasus in the same way. no other equally small area in the world contains such a variety of peoples and tongues, differing from one another in race, language, and customs so fundamentally as the caucasus. from the heterogeneous survivals of extremely old ethnic stocks, lodged in the high valleys, to the intrusive russians of the lower piedmont, the caucasus might be called an ethnographical sample card.[ ] the rugged configuration of the alps, from the rhone to the danube, has preserved the broad-headed alpine race, which was perhaps the primitive stock of central europe. the great river valleys leading into this massive highland, like the rhine, aar, inn and adige, show the intrusion of a long-headed race from both north and south; but lofty and remote valleys off the main routes of travel, like the hither rhine about dissentis, the little stanzerthal of the upper inn, and the passierthal of the upper adige above meran, show the race preserved in its purity by the isolating environment.[ ] here each segregated lateral valley becomes an area of marked linguistic and social differentiation; only where it opens into the wider longitudinal valleys are its peculiarities of speech and custom diluted by the intrusive current of another race. switzerland has received three different streams of language, and broken them up into numerous rivulets of dialect. on its small area of , square miles ( , square kilometers) thirty-five dialects of german are spoken, sixteen of french, eight of italian and five of romansch, a primitive and degenerate latin tongue, surviving from the ancestral days of roman occupation.[ ] the yet smaller territory of the tyrol has all these languages except french, whose place is taken by various forms of slavonic speech, which have entered by the western tributaries of the danube.[ ] [sidenote: constriction of mountain areas of ethnic survivals.] rarely is a polyglot mountain population able to work out its own political salvation, as the swiss have done. more often political union must be forced upon them from without. oftener still, when the highlanders are primitive survivals, ill-matched against the superior invaders from the plain, they are doomed to a process of constriction of territory and deterioration of numbers, which proceeds slowly or rapidly according to the inaccessibility of their environment and the energy of the intruders. deliberate, unenterprising nations, like the chinese, turks and indo-aryans long tolerate the presence of alien mountain tribes, who remain like enemies brought to bay in their isolated fortresses. the conquerors throw around them at their leisure a cordon of settlement, which, slowly ascending the piedmont, draws closer and closer about the mountaineers. the situation of many mountain tribes reminds one of a besieged stronghold. russian wars against the caucasus have rightly been described as protracted sieges. the heroic history of switzerland in relation to its neighbors has been that of a skillfully conducted defense, both military and diplomatic. the territory of china is dotted over with detached groups of aborigines, who have survived wherever a friendly mountain has offered them an asylum. variously known as lolos, mantze or miaotse, they have preserved everywhere a semi-independence in pathless mountains, whither chinese troops do not dare to follow them;[ ] but the more numerous and patient chinese agriculturalists are in many sections slowly encroaching upon their territories, driving them farther and farther into the recesses of their highlands. the same process goes on in formosa, where the chinese have gradually forced the native malays into mountain fastnesses among the peaks which rise to , feet ( meters). there, split up by internecine feuds into numberless clans and tribes, ignorant of one another's languages, raiding each other's territories and the coastal plains tilled by chinese colonists, they await their doom, while the piedmont zone between has already given birth to a typical border race of halfbreeds, more chinese than malay.[ ] [sidenote: isolation and retardation of mountain regions.] "to have and to hold" is the motto of the mountains. like remote islands, they are often museums of social antiquities. antiquated races and languages abound. the mountaineers of the southern appalachians speak to-day an eighteenth century english. their literature is the ballad poetry of old england and scotland, handed down from parent to child. clan feuds settle questions of justice, as in the caucasus and the apennines. religion is orthodox to the last degree, sectarianism is rigid, and joshua's power over the sun remains in some lonely valleys undiscounted.[ ] these are all the marks of isolation and retardation which appear in similar environments elsewhere. especially religious dogmas tend to show in mountains a tenacity of life impossible in the plains. the kafirs, inhabiting the high hindu kush mountains of badakshan, and apparently of pelasgic, early greek, or persian origin, have a religion blended of paganism, zoroastrianism and brahmanism.[ ] one intruding faith has been unable to dislodge the previous incumbent, so the three have combined. the great historical destiny of the small, barren, isolated judean plateau was to hold aloof the chaste religion of the desert-bred jews from the sensuous agricultural gods of the canaanites; to conserve and fix it; if need be, to narrow it to a provincial tribal faith, to stamp it with exclusiveness, conservatism, and formalism, as its adherents with bigotry,[ ] for this is always the effect of geographical seclusion. but when all these limitations of judaism are acknowledged, the fact remains that that segregated mountain environment performed the inestimable service for the world of keeping pure and undefiled the first and last great gift of the desert, a monotheistic faith. buddhism, once the official religion of korea but disestablished three centuries ago, has taken refuge in the diamond mountains, far from the main roads; there a dull, moribund form of the faith dozes on in the monasteries and monastic shrines of these secluded highlands.[ ] driven out of india, buddhism survives only in the himalayan border of the country among the local tibeto-burman peoples, and in ceylon, whose mountain city of kandy is its stronghold. the persecuted waldenses, a heretic sect who fled in from the cities of france to the alps, took refuge in the remote valleys of the pellice, chisone, and augrogne some thirty miles southwest of turin. there, protected equally against attack and modification, the waldenses have maintained the old tenets and organization of their religion.[ ] [sidenote: conservatism of mountain peoples.] the mountain-dweller is essentially conservative. there is little in his environment to stimulate him to change, and little reaches him from the outside world. the "spirit of the times" is generally the spirit of a past time, when it has penetrated to his remote upland. he is strangely indifferent to what goes on in the great outstretched plains below him. what filters in to him from the outside has little suggestion for him, because it does not accord with the established order which he has always known. hence innovation is distasteful to him. this repugnance to change reaches its clearest expression, perhaps, in the development and preservation of national costumes. _tracht,_ which is crystallized style in dress, appears nowhere so widespread and so abundantly differentiated as in mountain districts. in switzerland, every canton has its distinctive costume which has come down from a remote past. the peasants of norway, of the german and austrian alps, of the basque settlements in the pyrenees, of mountain-bound alsace and bohemia, give local color to the landscape by the picturesqueness of their national dress. [sidenote: mental and moral qualities.] with this conservatism of the mountaineer is generally coupled suspicion toward strangers, extreme sensitiveness to criticism, superstition, strong religious feeling, and an intense love of home and family. the bitter struggle for existence makes him industrious, frugal, provident; and, when the marauding stage has been outgrown, he is peculiarly honest as a rule. statistics of crime in mountain regions show few crimes against property though many against person. when the mountain-bred man comes down into the plains, he brings with him therefore certain qualities which make him a formidable competitor in the struggle for existence,--the strong muscles, unjaded nerves, iron purpose, and indifference to luxury bred in him by the hard conditions of his native environment. notes to chapter xvi [ ] heinrich von treitschke, _politik,_ vol. i, p. . leipzig, . [ ] for full discussion, see h.r. mill, international geography, pp. - . new york, . [ ] j. thomson, through masai land, pp. - , - , , - , - , - . london, . [ ] j. russell smith, plateaus in tropical america, in report of eighth international geographical congress, pp. - . washington, . [ ] isaiah bowman, the distribution of population in bolivia, _bulletin american geographical society,_ pp. - , vol. vii. . [ ] d.g. hogarth, the nearer east, p. . london, . [ ] roosevelt, winning of the west, vol. i, pp. - . new york, . c.c. royce, the cherokee nation of indians, fifth annual report of bureau of ethnology, pp. - . washington, . [ ] w.z. ripley, the races of europe, pp. - . new york, . [ ] g.l. gomme, the village community, pp. , - . new york, . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, pp. , , . new york, . [ ] j. partsch, central europe, pp. , . london, . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] j. partsch, central europe, p. . london, . [ ] alfred stead, japan by the japanese, p. . london, . henry dyer, dai nippon, p. . new york, . [ ] boyd winchester, the swiss republic, pp. - . phila., . [ ] wilhelm deecke, italy, pp. , - . london, . [ ] elisée reclus, europe, vol. i, p. . new york, . [ ] s.p. scott, history of the moorish empire in spain, vol. iii, pp. - . philadelphia, . [ ] m. niebuhr, travels through arabia, vol. i, pp. - , . edinburgh, . s.m. zwemer, arabia the cradle of islam, pp. , , , . new york, . [ ] d.g. hogarth, the nearer east, pp. , , . london, . [ ] e.f. knight, where three empires meet, p. . london, . [ ] _ibid._, pp. , , , , . [ ] _ibid._, , , , . [ ] isabella bird bishop, the yangtze valley and beyond, vol. i, pp. , , ; vol. ii, p. . new york and london, . [ ] f.h., nichols, through hidden shensi, pp. , . new york, . [ ] e.j. payne, history of the new world, vol. i, pp. - . oxford, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. ii, p. . london, - . [ ] e.f. knight, where three empires meet, pp. - . london, . [ ] a.b. ellis, west african islands, p. . london, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. i, p. . london, - . [ ] _ibid._, vol. i, pp. - . [ ] a.e. wallace, the malay archipelago, p. . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, . [ ] w.e. griffis, the mikado's empire, vol. i, p. . new york, . [ ] census of the philippine islands, vol. i, pp. , , ; and vol. iv, pp. - . washington, . gazetteer of the philippine islands, photographs, pp. - . washington, . [ ] boyd alexander, from the niger to the nile, vol. i, pp. - . london, . [ ] v.l. cameron, across africa, p. . london, . [ ] count gleichen, the egyptian sudan, vol. i, p. . london, . [ ] prescott, conquest of peru, vol. i, pp. - . new york, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. ii, p. . london, - . [ ] _ibid._, vol. ii, p. . [ ] e.j. payne, history of the new world, vol. i, p. . oxford, . [ ] pallas, travels through the southern provinces of russia, vol. ii, p. . london, . [ ] b.h. baden-powell, the indian village community, pp. , , . london, . [ ] e.f. knight, where three empires meet, pp. , , , , , _et passim_. london, . [ ] _ibid._, - . [ ] f.h. nichols, through hidden shensi, p. . new york, . [ ] isabella bird bishop, the yangtze valley and beyond, vol. i, pp. , ; vol. ii, pp. , . new york and london, . [ ] boyd winchester, the swiss republic, p. . philadelphia, . [ ] wilhelm roscher, _national-oekonomik des ackerbaues_, p. , note . stuttgart, . [ ] norway, official publication, p. . christiania, . [ ] roscher, _national-oekonomik des ackerbaues_, p. , note . stuttgart, . [ ] norway, official publication, p. . christiania, . [ ] roscher, _national-oekonomik des ackerbaues,_ p. , note . stuttgart, . [ ] _ibid.,_ p. , note . [ ] norway, official publication, p. . christiania, . [ ] b.h. baden-powell, the indian village community, pp. - . london, . [ ] mccullough, geographical dictionary, article nepal. j.o. white, journeys in bhutan, _geographical journal,_ vol. , p. . london, . [ ] e.f. knight, where three empires meet, p. . london, . [ ] boyd winchester, the swiss republic, p. . philadelphia, . a. von miaskowski, _die schweizerische allmend,_ pp. - , , , , . _staats- und socialwissenschaftliche forschungen,_ vol. ii, no. , leipzig, . [ ] e.f. knight, where three empires meet, pp. , , . london, . [ ] isabella bird bishop, the yangtze valley and beyond, vol. ii, pp. , , . london and new york, . [ ] carter harrison, a race with the sun, p. . new york, . [ ] boyd winchester, the swiss republic, pp. - . phila. . [ ] a von miaskowski, _die schweizerische allmend,_ pp. - . _staats- und socialwissenschaftliche forschungen,_ vol. ii, no. . leipzig, . [ ] norway, official publication, p. . christiania, . [ ] _ibid.,_ p. . [ ] roscher, _national-oekonomik des ackerbaues,_ p. , note . stuttgart, . [ ] e.f. knight, where three empires meet, pp. , , . london, . [ ] m. hue, travels in tartary, thibet and china in , vol. ii, pp. - . chicago, . [ ] w.w. rockhill, the land of the lamas, p. . new york, . [ ] perceval landon, the opening of tibet, pp. , , - . new york, . [ ] j. partsch, central europe, pp. , . london, . [ ] wilhelm deecke, italy, p. . london, . [ ] j. partsch, central europe, pp. - . london, . [ ] malthus, essay on population, book ii, chap. v. [ ] cliffe leslie, auvergne, _fortnightly review,_ p. , vol. xvi. . [ ] wilhelm deecke, italy, pp. , . london, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, p. . london, - . [ ] l. higgin, spanish life in town and country, pp. , , - . new york, . [ ] james bryce, impressions of south africa, p. . new york, . [ ] von bremer, land of the battaks, _geographical journal,_ vol. vii, pp. - . london, . [ ] b. winchester, the swiss republic, pp. - . phila., . [ ] james logan, the scottish gael or celtic manners, p. . hartford, . [ ] indian census for , vol. i, part i, p. , by risley and gait. calcutta, . [ ] elisée reclus, europe, vol. i, p. . new york, . [ ] heinrich von treitschke, _politik_, vol. i, p, . leipzig, . [ ] archibald little, the far east, pp. , . oxford, . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] malthus, essay on population, book ii, chap. i. [ ] cliffe leslie, auvergne, _fortnightly review_, vol. xvi, pp. - . . [ ] oscar p. crosby, tibet and turkestan, pp. , . london and new york, . a. little, the far east, p. . oxford, . [ ] w.w. rockhill, the land of the lamas, p. . new york, . [ ] e.f. knight, where three empires meet, p. . london, . [ ] w.w. rockhill, the land of the lamas, p. . new york, . [ ] g.a. sherring, western tibet and the british borderland, p. . london, . [ ] westermarck, history of human marriage, pp. , . london, . [ ] strabo, book xvi, chap. iv, . [ ] for authorities, see westermarck, history of human marriage, pp. - . london, . mclennan, primitive marriage, pp. - , - . edinburgh, . g.a. sherring, western tibet and the british borderland, pp. , , - , , . london, . [ ] spencer, principles of sociology, vol. , pp. - . new york, . [ ] w.h.r. rivers, the todas, incorporated in w. i. thomas' source book for social origins, pp. - . chicago, . [ ] westermarck, history of human marriage, p. . london, . [ ] sir thomas holdich, india, pp. , . london, . [ ] w.w. rockhill, the land of the lamas, pp. - . new york, . [ ] oscar p. crosby, tibet and turkestan, pp. - . new york and london, . [ ] westermarck, history of human marriage, pp. - , - . london, . [ ] perceval landon, the opening of tibet, p. . new york, . [ ] e.f. knight, where three empires meet, pp. - . london, . [ ] strabo, book iv, chap. vi, , , , . [ ] _ibid._, book iii, chap. iii, , , . [ ] _ibid_, book vii, chap. vi, . [ ] _ibid_, book xi, chap. xii, ; chap. xiii, , . [ ] e.f. knight, where three empires meet, pp. - , - . london, . [ ] _ibid_, - . [ ] sir thomas holdich, india, p. . london, . [ ] _ibid_, - . [ ] pallas, travels through the southern provinces of russia, vol. i, pp. - , - . london, . [ ] d.g. hogarth, the nearer east, p. - . london, . [ ] m. hue, travels in tartary, thibet, and china in , vol. ii, pp. - , - , - . chicago, . [ ] hans helmolt, history of the world, vol. iii, pp. , - . new york and london, - . [ ] strabo, book v, chap. iv, ii. [ ] article nepal, encyclopædia britannica. [ ] c. keller, madagascar, pp. - , , . london, . [ ] e.f. knight, where three empires meet, pp. , - . london, . [ ] walter k. kelly, history of russia, vol. ii, p. . london, . [ ] grote, history of greece, vol. ii, p. . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, vol. x, pp. , , - . [ ] d.g. hogarth, the nearer east, p. . london, . [ ] henry buckle, history of civilization in england, vol. ii, pp. , - . new york, . [ ] w.k. kelly, history of russia, vol. ii, p. . london, . [ ] pallas, travels through the southern provinces of russia, vol. i, pp. , - . london, . [ ] h. spencer, a visit to andorra, _fortnightly review_, vol. , pp. - . . [ ] article tyrol, encyclopædia britannica. [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. iii, pp. - . london, - . [ ] h.j. mackinder, the rhine, pp. - , - , , . london, . [ ] e.p. knight, where three empires meet, pp. - . london, . [ ] b.h. baden-powell, the indian village community, pp. , - . london, . [ ] d.g. hogarth, the nearer east, pp. - , , - . london, . [ ] sir thomas holdich, india, pp. - . london, . [ ] niebuhr, travels through arabia, vol. ii, pp. - . edinburgh, . [ ] b.h. baden-powell, the indian village community, pp. , , , , - , . london, . [ ] captain j. forsythe, the highlands of central india, pp. - , - , - . london, . [ ] _ibid._, , , - , - . [ ] angus hamilton, afghanistan, pp. - . new york, . [ ] sir thomas holdich, india, pp. - . london, . [ ] merzbacher, _aus den hochregionen des kaukasus_, vol. i, pp. - , . leipzig, . [ ] w.z. ripley, the races of europe, pp. - , - , map p. . new york, . [ ] _ibid._, . [ ] article tyrol, encyclopædia britannica. [ ] archibald little, the far east, - . oxford, . isabella bird bishop, the yangtze valley and beyond, vol. ii, - , - , , , - . new york and london, . s. wells williams, the middle kingdom, vol. i, p. , new york, . j. naken, _die provinz kwangtung und ihre bevölkerung, petermanns geographische mittheilungen_, vol. , p. . . [ ] archibald little, the far east, pp. - . oxford, . [ ] e.c. semple, the anglo-saxons of the kentucky mountains, _geographical journal_, vol. xvii, pp. - . london, . [ ] sir thomas holdich, the origin of the kafir of the hindu kush, _geographical journal_, vol. vii, p. . london, . [ ] george adam smith, historical geography of the holy land, pp. - . new york, . [ ] isabella bird bishop, korea and her neighbors, pp. , - , , . new york, . [ ] article waldenses, encyclopædia britannica. chapter xvii the influence of climate [sidenote: importance of climatic influences.] climate enters fundamentally into all consideration of geographic influences, either by implication or explicitly. it is a factor in most physiological and psychological effects of environment. it underlies the whole significance of zonal location, continental and insular. large territorial areas are favorable to improved variation in men and animals partly because they comprise a diversity of natural conditions, of which a wide range of climates forms one. this is also one advantage of a varied relief, especially in the tropics, where all the zones may be compressed into a small area on the slopes of high mountains like the andes and kilimanjaro. climate fixes the boundaries of human habitation in arctic latitudes and high altitudes by drawing the dead-line to all organic life. it dominates life in steppes and torrid deserts as in sub-polar wastes. it encourages intimacy with the sea in tropical malays and polynesians, and like a slave-driver, scourges on the fur-clad eskimo to reap the harvest of the deep. it is always present in that intricate balance of geographic factors which produces a given historical result, throwing its weight now into one side of the scales, now into the other. it underlies the production, distribution and exchange of commodities derived from the vegetable and animal kingdoms, influences methods of agriculture, and the efficiency of human labor in various industries.[ ] hence it is a potent factor in the beginning and in the evolution of civilization, so far as this goes hand in hand with economic development. [sidenote: climate in the interplay of geographic factors.] the foregoing chapters have therefore been indirectly concerned with climate to no small degree, but they have endeavored to treat the subject analytically, showing climate as working with or against or in some combination with other geographic factors. this course was necessary, because climatic influences are so conspicuous and so important that by the older geographers like montesquieu[ ] and others, they have been erected into a blanket theory, and made to explain a wide range of social and historical phenomena which were properly the effect of other geographic factors. [sidenote: direct and indirect effects of climate.] for a clear understanding of climatic influences, it is necessary to adhere to the chief characteristics of the atmosphere, such as heat and cold, moisture and aridity, and to consider the effect of zonal location, winds and relief in the production and distribution of these; also to distinguish between direct and indirect results of climate, temporary and permanent, physiological and psychological ones, because the confusion of these various effects breeds far-fetched conclusions. the direct modification of man by climate is partly an _a priori_ assumption, because the incontestable evidences of such modification are not very numerous, however strong the probability may be. the effect of climate upon plant and animal life is obvious, and immediately raises the assumption that man has been similarly influenced. but there is this difference: in contrast to the helpless dependence upon environment of stationary plants and animals, whose range of movement is strictly determined by conditions of food and temperature, the great mobility of man, combined with his inventiveness, enables him to flee or seek almost any climatic condition, and to emancipate himself from the full tyranny of climatic control by substituting an indirect economic effect for a direct physical effect. the direct results of climate are various, though some are open to the charge of imperfect proof. even the relation of nigrescence to tropical heat, which seems to be established by the geographical distribution of negroid races in the old world, fails to find support from the facts of pigmentation among the american indians from alaska to tierra del fuego. nevertheless climate undoubtedly modifies many physiological processes in individuals and peoples,[ ] affects their immunity from certain classes of diseases and their susceptibility to others, influences their temperament, their energy, their capacity for sustained or for merely intermittent effort, and therefore helps determine their efficiency as economic and political agents. while producing these direct effects, climate also influences man indirectly by controlling the wide range of his life conditions dependent upon the plant and animal life about him. it dictates what crops he may raise, and has it in its power to affect radically the size of his harvest. it decides which flocks and herds are best suited to his environment, and therefore directs his pastoral activities, whether he keeps reindeer, camels, llamas, horses or horned cattle. by interdicting both agriculture and stock-raising, as in greenland whose ice cap leaves little surface free even for reindeer moss, it condemns the inhabitants forever to the uncertain subsistence of the hunter. where it encourages the growth of large forests which harbor abundant game and yield abundant fruits, as in the hot, moist equatorial belt and on rainy mountain slopes, it prolongs the hunter stage of development, retards the advance to agriculture. climate thus helps to influence the rate and the limit of cultural development. it determines in part the local supply of raw material with which man has to work, and hence the majority of his secondary activities, except where these are expended on mineral resources. it decides the character of his food, clothing, and dwelling, and ultimately of his civilization. [sidenote: effect of climate upon relief.] the very ground under man's feet, moreover, feels the molding hand of climate. in one region a former age of excessive cold has glaciated the surface and scoured off the fertile loam down to the underlying rock, or left the land coated with barren glacial drift or more productive clays. in another, the cold still persists and caps the land with ice and snow, or, as in the tundra, underlays it with a stratum of frozen earth, which keeps the surface wet and chilled even in the height of summer. in yet other regions, abundant moisture combined with heat covers the ground with a pad of fertile humus, while some hundred miles away drying trade winds parch and crack the steppe vegetation, convert most of its organic substance into gases, and leave only a small residue to enrich the soil. rain itself modifies the relief of the land, and therefore often decides in a slow, cosmic way what shall be the ultimate destination of its precious store of water. a heavy precipitation on the windward side of a mountain range, by increasing the mechanical force of its drainage streams, makes them bite their way back into the heart of the system and decapitate the rivers on the leeward side, thus diminishing the volume of water left to irrigate the rainless slope. thus the hydra-headed amazon has been spreading and multiplying its sources among the andean valleys, to the detriment of agriculture on the dry pacific slope; thus the torrents of the western ghats, gorged by the monsoon rains from the indian ocean, are slowly nipping off the streams of the ill-watered deccan, [see map page .] all these direct and indirect effects of climate may combine to produce ultimate politico-geographical results which manifest themselves in the expansion, power and permanence of states. [sidenote: climate limits the habitable area.] climatic conditions limit the habitable area of the earth. this is their most important anthropo-geographic effect. at either pole lurks an invincible foe, with whom expanding humanity must always reckon, and who brooks little encroachment upon his territory. his weapon is the restriction of organic life, without which man cannot exist. the geographical boundaries of organic life, however, are wider than those of human life. the consequence of this climatic control, therefore, is not only a narrowed distribution of the human race, but a concentration which intensifies the struggle for existence, forces the utilization of all the available area, and thereby in every locality stimulates adaptation to environment. [sidenote: adaptability of man to climatic extremes.] man ranks among the most adaptable organic beings on the earth. no climate is absolutely intolerable to him. only the absence of food supply or of all marketable commodities will exclude him from the most inhospitable region. his dwellings are found from sea level up to an altitude of meters or more, where the air pressure is little over one half that on the coast.[ ] seventeen per cent. of the towns and cities of bolivia are located at an elevation above , feet ( meters), while aullagas occupies a site , feet or nearly meters above the sea.[ ] mineral wealth explains these high bolivian settlements, just as it draws the mexican sulphur miners to temporary residence in the crater of popocatepetl at an altitude of , feet ( meters), from their permanent dwellings a thousand meters below.[ ] the laborers employed in the construction of the oroya railroad in peru became rapidly accustomed to work in the rarefied air at an elevation of to meters. the trade routes over the andes and himalayan ranges often cross passes at similar altitudes; the karakorum road mounts to , feet ( , meters). yet these great elevations do not prevent men going their way and doing the day's work, although the unacclimated tenderfoot is liable to attacks of mountain sickness in consequence of the rarefied air.[ ] man makes himself at home in any zone. the cold pole of the earth, so far as recorded temperatures show, is the town of verkhoyansk in northeastern siberia, whose mean january temperature is f. below zero (- centigrade). massawa, one of the hottest spots in the furnace of africa is the capital of the italian colony of eritrea. however, extremes both of heat and cold reduce the density of population, the scale and efficiency of economic enterprises. the greatest events of universal history and especially the greatest historical developments belong to the north temperate zone. the decisive voyages of discovery emanated thence, though the needs of trade and the steady winds of low latitudes combined to carry them to the tropics. the coldest lands of the earth are either uninhabited, like spitzenbergen, or sparsely populated, like northern siberia. the hottest regions, also, are far from being so densely populated as many temperate countries.[ ] [see maps pages , , and .] the fact that they are for the most part dependencies or former colonial possessions of european powers indicates their retarded economic and political development. the contrast between the mongol tunguse, who lead the life of hunters and herders in arctic siberia, and the related manchus, who conquered and rule the temperate lands of china, shows how climates help differentiate various branches of the same ethnic stock; and this contrast only parallels that between the eskimo and aztec offshoots of the american indians, the norwegian and italian divisions of the white race. [illustration: mean annual isotherms and heat belts [_centigrade_] °c = °f. °c = °f. °c = °f.] [sidenote: temperature as modified by oceans and winds.] the zonal location of a country indicates roughly the degree of heat which it receives from the sun. it would do this accurately if variations of relief, prevailing winds and proximity of the oceans did not enter as disturbing factors. since water heats and cools more slowly than the land, the ocean is a great reservoir of warmth in winter and of cold in summer, and exercises therefore an equalizing effect upon the temperature of the adjacent continents, far as these effects can be carried by the wind. the ocean is also the great source of moisture, and this, too, it distributes over the land through the agency of the wind. where warm ocean currents, like the gulf stream and kuro siwa, penetrate into temperate or sub-polar latitudes, or where cool ones, like the peruvian and benguela currents wash the coasts of tropical regions, they enhance the power of the ocean and wind to mitigate the extremes of temperature on land. the warm currents, moreover, loading the air above them with vapor, provide a store of rain to the nearest wind-swept land. hence both the rainfall and temperature of a given country depend largely upon its neighboring water and air currents, and its accessibility to the rain-bearing winds. if it occupies a marked central position in temperate latitudes, like eastern russia or the great plains of our semi-arid west, it receives limited moisture and suffers the extreme temperatures of a typical continental climate. the same result follows if it holds a distinctly peripheral location, and yet lies in the rain-shadow of a mountain barrier, like western peru, patagonia and sweden north of the sixtieth parallel. [see map page .] [sidenote: effect of the westerlies.] owing to the prevalence of westerly winds in the temperate zones and particularly in the north temperate zone, the mean annual temperature is high on the western face of the northern continents, but drops rapidly toward the east.[ ] this is especially true of winter temperatures, which even near the eastern coast show the severity of a continental climate. sitka and new york, trondhjem and peking have the same mean january temperatures, though peking lies in about the latitude of madrid, over twenty-three degrees farther south. europe's location in the path of the north atlantic westerlies, swept by winds from a small and narrow ocean which has been super-heated by the powerful gulf stream, secures for that continent a more equable climate and milder winters than corresponding latitudes on the western coasts of north america, whose winds from the wide pacific are not so warm.[ ] moreover, a coastal rampart of mountains from alaska to mexico restricts the beneficial influences of the pacific climate to a narrow seaboard, excludes them from the vast interior, which by reason of cold or aridity or both must forever renounce great economic or historical significance, unless its mineral resources developed unsuspected importance. in europe, the absence of mountain barriers across the course of these westerly winds from norway to central spain, and the unobstructed avenue offered to them by the mediterranean sea during fall and winter, enable all the atlantic's mitigating influences of warmth and moisture to penetrate inland, and temper the climate of europe as far east as st. petersburg and constantinople. thus several factors have combined to give the western half of europe an extraordinarily favorable climate. they have therefore greatly broadened its zone of historical intensity toward the north, pushed it up to the sixtieth parallel, while the corresponding zone in eastern asia finds its northern limit at the fortieth degree. [sidenote: rainfall.] moisture and warmth are essential to all that life upon which human existence depends. hence temperature and rainfall are together the most important natural assets of a country, because of their influence upon its productivity. the grazing capacity and wheat yield of southern australia increase almost regularly with every added inch of rainfall.[ ] the map of population for the empire of india clearly shows that a high degree of density accompanies a high and certain rainfall. exceptions occur only where hilly or mountainous tracts offer scant arable areas, or where plains and valleys are sparsely populated owing to political troubles or unhealthiness. nearly three-tenths of the population are found crowded together on the one-tenth of india's level territory which is blessed with a rainfall above the average for the country.[ ] deserts which yield nothing are purely climatic phenomena. steppes which facilitate the historical movement, and forests which block it, are products of scant or ample precipitation. the zonal distribution of rainfall, with its maxima in the tropics and the temperate zones, and its minima in the trade-wind belts and polar regions, reinforces and emphasizes the influence of temperature in determining certain great cultural and economic zones. in equatorial regions, which have an abundant rainfall throughout the year, agriculture is directed toward fruits and roots; only in certain districts can it include cereals, and then only rice and maize. the temperate grains demand some dry summer weeks for their maturity. excessive moisture in ireland has practically excluded wheat-growing, which in england and scotland also is restricted chiefly to the drier eastern counties.[ ] it thrives, on the other hand, in manitoba and the red river region even with a short season of scant rainfall, because this comes in the spring when moisture is most needed.[ ] most important to man, therefore, is the question how and when the rainfall is distributed, and with what regularity it comes. monsoon and trade-wind districts labor under the disadvantage of a wet and dry season, and a variability which brings tragic results, since it easily reduces a barely adequate rainfall to disastrous drought. these are the lands where wind and weather lord it over man. if the rains hold off too long, or stop too soon, or withhold even a small portion of their accustomed gift, famine stalks abroad. [sidenote: temperature and zonal location.] temperature, the other important element of climate, depends primarily upon zonal location, which has far different historical results from central and peripheral location, continental and insular. it determines the amount of heat received from the sun, though air and ocean currents may redistribute that heat within certain limits, and humidity or aridity modify its effects. still zonal distinctions remain. the great climatic regions of the earth, like the hot, wet equatorial belt or the warm, dry trade-wind belts or the cool, well-watered temperate zones, constitute, through the medium of their economic products and their climatically imposed methods of production, so many socio-political areas, regardless of ethnic and political boundaries. the berber nomads of the northern sahara live much as the semitic bedouins of the syrian desert or the turkoman stock of arid turkestan. they have the same tribal government, the same scattered distribution in small groups, the same economic basis of subsistence, though of different races and dominated respectively by france, turkey and russia. the history of the tropical antilles has in both its economic and political features paralleled that of the east indies since the early th century. temperate south america promises to follow in the historical footsteps of temperate north america, south africa in those of europe and temperate australia. [sidenote: reactions of contrasted zones.] while people of the same latitude live approximately under the same temperature conditions, those of contrasted zones are subjected to markedly different influences. they develop different degrees of civilization, wealth, economic efficiency, and density of population; hence they give rise to great historical movements in the form of migration, conquest, colonization, and commerce, which, like convection currents, seek to equalize the differences and reach an equilibrium. nature has fixed the mutual destiny of tropical and temperate zones, for instance, as complementary trade regions. the hot belt produces numerous things that can never grow in colder countries, while a much shorter list of products, coupled, however, with greater industrial efficiency, is restricted to the temperate zone. this explains the enormous importance of the east indian trade for europe in ancient and medieval times, the value of tropical possessions for commercial countries like england and holland. it throws light upon the persistence of the tropical plantation system in the dutch east indies and republican mexico, as formerly in the sugar and cotton fields of the southern states, with its relentless grip upon the throat of national life in hot lands. [sidenote: temperate products from tropical highlands.] tropical regions, however, may profit by the fact that their mountains and plateaus permit the cultivation of temperate crops. india during the last century has introduced tea culture extensively on the assam and nilgiri hills, and in the himalayan valleys up to an altitude of feet.[ ] besides this temperate product, it has put large areas into cotton, chiefly in the peninsular plateau of the deccan, and by means of these two crops has caused a considerable readjustment in world commerce.[ ] nevertheless, here the infringement of the principle of tropical production in the torrid zone is after all slight. in tropical america, on the other hand, the case is quite different; this region presents an interesting paradox in relation to its foreign commerce. here the highlands are the chief seats of population. they contain, moreover, the most industrious and intelligent native stock, due to geographical and historical causes running back into the ancient civilizations, as well as the largest proportions of immigrant europeans. this is true not only of the cordilleran states from northern mexico to the borders of chile, but also of brazil, whose center of population falls on the plateau behind rio de janeiro and santos. the isolation of these high plateaus excludes them to a serious extent from foreign trade, while their great altitude permits only temperate products, with the exception of sub-tropical coffee, which is their only crop meeting a great demand. the world wants, on the other hand, the long list of lowland tropical exports which torrid america furnishes as yet in inadequate amounts, owing to the lack of an industrious and abundant lowland population. commerce will eventually experience a readjustment in these localities to the natural basis of tropical production; but how soon or how effectively this change will take place depends upon the question of immigration of foreign tropical peoples, or the more difficult problem of white acclimatization.[ ] [sidenote: isothermal lines in anthropo-geography.] despite some purely climatological objections, anthropo-geography finds the division of climatic zones according to certain isothermal lines of mean annual temperature the most expedient one for its purpose. the hot zone may be taken as the belt north and south of the equator enclosed between the annual isotherms of ° c. ( ° f.) these hold a course generally far outside the two tropics, and in the northern continents frequently reach the thirty-fifth parallel. the temperate climatic zones extend from the annual isotherm of ° c. to that of ° c. ( ° f.), which bears little relation to the polar circles forming the limits of the solar temperate zone. the north temperate climatic zone has been further sub-divided along the annual isotherm of ° c. ( ° f.), distinguishing thus the warmer southern belt, which forms preëminently the zone of greatest historical intensity. the areas beyond the annual isotherms of °c. belong to the barren cold zones. [see map page .] [sidenote: historical effect of compressed isotherms.] this isothermal division of the climatic zones is abundantly justified, because the duration of a given degree of heat or cold in any region is a dominant factor in its human, animal, and plant life. a map of the mean annual isotherms of the earth is therefore eloquent of the relation between historical development and this one phase of climate. where the lines run far apart, they enclose extensive areas of similar temperature; and where they approach, they group together regions of contrasted temperatures. the compression of climatic differences into a small area enlivens and accentuates the process of historical development. it produces the same sort of effect as the proximity of contrasted reliefs. nowhere else in the world do the tropical and frigid climatic areas, as defined on the north and south by the annual isothermal lines of °c. and °c. respectively, lie so near together as in labrador and northern florida. separated here by only twenty degrees of latitude, on the opposite side of the atlantic they diverge so sharply as to include the whole western face of europe, from hammerfest and the north cape down to the canary islands and the crest of the atlas mountains in africa, a stretch of forty-two degrees of latitude. this approximation of contrasted climatic districts in north america was an immense force in stimulating the early economic development of the thirteen colonies, and in maturing them to the point of political autonomy. it gave new england commerce command of a nearby tropical trade in the west indies, of sub-tropical products in the southern colonies, in close proximity to all the contrasted products of a cold climate--dense northern forests for naval stores and lumber, and an inexhaustible supply of fish from polar currents, which met a strong demand in europe and the antilles. the sudden southward drop of the °c. annual isothermal line toward the st. lawrence and the great lakes brought the northwestern fur trade to the back gate of new york, where it opened on the mohawk and upper hudson, and brought prosperity to the young colony. even to-day the center of collection for the canadian fur fields is quebec, located at ° north latitude, while the corresponding point of concentration in europe for the furs of russia and siberia is nizhni-novgorod, which lies ten degrees farther north.[ ] [sidenote: effect of slight climatic differences.] this compression of the isotherms emphasizes the differences of national characters produced in part by dissimilar climatic conditions. contrasts in temperament, manner of life, and point of view, like that between the new englander and virginian, chilean and bolivian in the americas, breton and provençal in france, castilian and andalusian in spain, gurkha and bengali in india, seem to bleach out when they are located far apart, owing to many grades of transition between; but they become striking, stimulating, productive of important economic and political results, when close juxtaposition enables them to react sharply one upon the other. in effecting these nice differentiations of local types, climate is nearly always one of the factors at work, emphasizing perhaps an existing ethnic difference. even the slight variations of temperature to be found in the same zone or the same climatic region produce distinct results, especially where they are harnessed, as is usually the case, with some other geographic condition of relief, area or soil, pulling in the same direction. mexico, peru, italy, switzerland, greece and asia minor, with its high plateau interior and its contrasted euxine and aegean coasts, represent each a complex of climatic differences, which, reinforced by other geographic factors, have made in these regions a polychrome picture of national life. [sidenote: effect of climate upon distribution of immigration] climatic contrasts aid differentiation also by influencing both natural and artificial selection in the distribution of peoples. this effect is conspicuous in the distribution of immigrants in all colonial lands like africa, south america and in every part of the united states.[ ] the warm, moist air of the gulf and south atlantic states is attracting back to the congenial habitat of the "black belt" the negroes of the north, where, moreover, their numbers are being further depleted by a harsh climate, which finds in them a large proportion of the unfit. the presence of a big negro laboring class in the south, itself primarily a result of climate, has long served to exclude foreign immigration, which sought therefore the unoccupied lands and the congenial climate of the more bracing north. hence it is both a direct and indirect effect of climate that the north shows a large proportion of aliens, and the white population of the south an almost unadulterated english stock. [sidenote: climate and race temperament.] the influence of climate upon race temperament, both as a direct and indirect effect, can not be doubted, despite an occasional exception, like the cheery, genial eskimos, who seem to carry in their sunny natures an antidote to the cold and poverty of their environment. in general a close correspondence obtains between climate and temperament. the northern peoples of europe are energetic, provident, serious, thoughtful rather than emotional, cautious rather than impulsive. the southerners of the sub-tropical mediterranean basin are easy-going, improvident except under pressing necessity, gay, emotional, imaginative, all qualities which among the negroes of the equatorial belt degenerate into grave racial faults. if, as many ethnologists maintain, the blond teutons of the north are a bleached out branch of the brunette mediterranean race, this contrast in temperament is due to climate. a comparison of northern and southern peoples of the same race and within the same temperate zone reveals numerous small differences of nature and character, which can be traced back directly or indirectly to climatic differences, and which mount up to a considerable sum total. the man of the colder habitat is more domestic, stays more in his home. though he is not necessarily more moderate or continent than the southerner, he has to pay more for his indulgences, so he is economical in expenditures. with the southerner it is "easy come, easy go." he therefore suffers more frequently in a crisis. the low cost of living keeps down his wages, so that as a laborer he is poorly paid. this fact, together with his improvidence, tends to swell the proletariat in warm countries of the temperate zone; and though here it does not produce the distressing impression of a proletariat in dublin or liverpool or boston, it is always degrading. it levels society and economic status downward, while in the cooler countries of the temperate zone, the process is upward. the laborer of the north, owing to his providence and larger profits, which render small economies possible, is constantly recruited into the class of the capitalist. [sidenote: contrasted temperaments in the same nation.] everywhere a cold climate puts a steadying hand on the human heart and brain. it gives an autumn tinge to life. among the folk of warmer lands eternal spring holds sway. national life and temperament have the buoyancy and thoughtlessness of childhood, its charm and its weakness. these distinctions and contrasts meet us everywhere. the southern chinese, and especially the cantonese, is more irresponsible and hot-blooded than the celestial of the north, though the bitter struggle for existence in the over-crowded kwangtung province has made him quite as industrious; but on his holidays he takes his pleasure in singing, gambling, and various forms of dissipation. the southern russian is described as more light-hearted than his kinsman of the bleaker north, though both are touched with the melancholy of the slav. in this case, however, the question immediately arises, how far the dweller of the southern wheat lands owes his happy disposition to the easy conditions of life in the fertile ukraine, as opposed to the fiercer struggle for subsistence in the glaciated lake and forest belt of the north. similar distinctions of climate and national temperament exist in the two sections of germany. the contrast between the energetic, enterprising, self-contained saxon of the baltic lowland and the genial, spontaneous bavarian or swabian is conspicuous, though the only geographical advantage possessed by the latter is a warmer temperature attended by a sunnier sky. he contains in his blood a considerable infusion of the alpine stock and is therefore racially differentiated from the northern teuton,[ ] but this hardly accounts for the difference of temperament, because the same alpine stock is plodding, earnest and rather stolid on the northern slope of the alps, but in the warm air and sunshine of the southern slope, it abates these qualities and conforms more nearly to the italian type of character. the north italian, however, presents a striking contrast to the indolent, irresponsible, improvident citizens of naples, calabria and sicily, who belong to the contrasted mediterranean race, and have been longer subjected to the relaxing effects of sub-tropical heat. [sidenote: complexity of the geographic problem.] where the climatic difference is small, it is nevertheless often conspicuous enough to eclipse other concomitant factors which are at work, and hence to encourage the formation of some easy blanket theory of climatic influences. but just because the difference is slight, all attending geographic and ethnic circumstances ought to be scrutinized, to insure a correct statement of the geographical equation. the contrast between the light-hearted, gracious peasants of warm, sunny andalusia and the reserved, almost morose inhabitants of cool and cloudy asturias is the effect not only of climate but of the easy life in a fertile river plain, opposed to the bitter struggle for existence in the rough cantabrian mountains. moreover, a strong infusion of alpine blood has given this group of spanish mountaineers the patience and seriousness which characterizes the race in other parts of continental europe.[ ] the conditions which have differentiated scotch from english have been climate, relief, location, geologic composition of the soil, and ethnic composition of the two peoples. the divergent development of northerners and southerners in america arose from contrasts in climate, soil and area. it was not only the enervating heat and moisture of the southern states, but also the large extent of their fertile area which necessitated slave labor, introduced the plantation system, and resulted in the whole aristocratic organization of society in the south.[ ] [sidenote: monotonous climatic conditions.] when one type of climate extends monotonously over a vast area, as in russia. siberia, central asia or immense tracts of africa, the differences of temperature which prick and stimulate national endeavor in small climatic districts here lose much of their force. their effects flatten out into insignificance, overwhelmed by the encounter with too large a territory. all the southern continents are handicapped by the monotony of their zonal location. the map of annual isotherms shows africa quite enclosed between the two torrid lines of ° centigrade, except for a narrow sub-tropical belt along the barbary coast in the north, and in the south an equally narrow littoral extending east and north from the cape of good hope. at first glance, the large area of south africa lying on the temperate side of the tropic of capricorn raises hopes for a rich economic, social and cultural development here; but these are dashed by an examination of the isotherms. excessive heat lays its retarding touch upon everything, while a prevailing aridity (rainfall less than inches or centimeters), except on the narrow windward slope of the eastern mountains, gives the last touch of climatic monotony. the coastal belt of cape colony and natal raise tropical and sub-tropical products[ ] like all the rest of the continent, while the semi-arid interior is committed with little variations to pastoral life. [see maps pages and .] climatic monotony, operating alone, would have condemned south africa to poverty of development, and will unquestionably always avail to impoverish its national life. south african history has been made by its mines and by its location on the original water route to india; the first have dominated its economic development, and the latter has largely determined its ethnic elements--english, dutch, and french huguenots, while the magnet of the mines has drawn other nationalities and especially a large jewish contingent into the urban centers of the rand.[ ] in the background is the native kaffir and hottentot stocks, whose blood filters into the lower classes of the white population. the diversity of these ethnic elements may compensate in part for the monotony of climatic conditions, which promise to check differentiation. however, climatic control is here peculiarly despotic. we see how it has converted the urban merchants of holland and the skillful huguenot artisan of france into the crude pastoral boer of the transvaal. in contrast to south africa, temperate south america has an immense advantage in its large area lying outside the °c. isotherm, and in the wide range of mean temperatures (from °c. to °c.) found between the tropic of capricorn and tierra del fuego. climate and relief have combined to make the mouth of the la plata river the site of the largest city of the southern hemisphere. buenos ayres, with a population of over a million, reflects its large temperate hinterland. [sidenote: the effects of arctic cold.] frigid zones and the tropics alike suffer from monotony, of arctic the one of cold and the other of heat. the arctic climatic belt, extending from the isotherm of °c. ( °f.) to the pole, includes inhabited districts where the mean annual temperature is less than - °c. (or °f.), as at the greenland village of etah on smith's sound and the siberian town of verkhoyansk. here the ground is covered with, ice or snow most of the year, and permanently frozen below the surface. animal and plant life are reduced to a minimum on the land, so that man, with every poleward advance of his thin-strung settlements, is forced more and more to rely on the sea for his food. hence he places his villages on narrow strips of coast, as do the norse of finmarken, the eskimo and the tunguse inhabiting the arctic rim of asia. products of marine animals make the basis of his domestic economy. farther inland, which means farther south, all tribes live by hunting and fishing. the eurasian hyperboreans find additional subsistence in their reindeer herds, which they pasture on the starchy lichen (cladonia rangiferina) of the tundra. [see maps pages , .] [sidenote: similarity of cultural development.] though these arctic folk are sprung from diverse race stocks, close vicinal location around an enclosed sea has produced some degree of blood relationship. but whatever their origins, the harsh conditions of their life have imposed upon them all a similar civilization. all population is sparse and more or less nomadic, since agriculture alone roots settlement. they have the same food, the same clothing, the same types of summer and winter dwellings, whether it is the earth hut of the eskimo or of the coast lapp, the siberian yukagirs of the kolima river, or the samoyedes of northeastern russia.[ ] the spur of necessity has aroused their ingenuity to a degree found nowhere in the drowsy tropics of africa. dread of cold led the yakuts of the lena valley to glaze the windows of their huts with slabs of ice, which are better nonconductors of heat and cold, and can be made more perfectly air-tight than glass. hence these windows have been adopted by russian colonists. the eskimo devised the oil lamp, an invention found nowhere else in primitive america, and fishing tackle so perfect that white men coming to fish in arctic waters found it superior to their own. owing to the inexorable restriction of their natural resources, contact with european commerce has impoverished the hyperborean natives. it has caused the rapid and ruthless exploitation of their meager resources, which means eventual starvation. so long as the ostyaks, before the coming of the russians, were sole masters of the vast forests of the obi valley, they commanded a supply of fish and fur animals which sufficed for their sparse population. but the greed of the russian fish dealers and fur traders, and the devastating work of the lumbermen have made double war upon ostyak sources of subsistence.[ ] the appearance of the white man in alaskan waters was the signal for the indiscriminate killing of seal and other marine animals, till the eskimo's supply of food and furs has been seriously invaded, from greenland to the outermost aleutian islands. in all this wide territory, climatic conditions forbid any substitute for the original products, except the domesticated reindeer on the tundra of the mainland; but this would necessitate the transformation of the eskimo from a hunting to a pastoral people. this task the government at washington has undertaken, but with scant success. [sidenote: cold and health] in contrast to the numerous indirect effects of a frigid climate, no direct physiological effect can be positively ascribed to intense cold. it lays no bodily handicap on health and energy, as does the excessive heat of the tropics. the coldest regions where tillage is possible are tolerable places of residence, because their winters are intensely dry. that of central siberia, which is drier than the driest desert, makes tent life comfortable in the coldest season, provided the tenter be clad in furs. the low temperatures of the canadian northwest for the same reason have not repelled settlers even from the southern states. negroes, however, meet a climatic barrier in america at the isotherm of ° centigrade ( ° f.). they are found in new england and nova scotia, generally with a large admixture of white blood; but there and farther north where the climate is moist as well as cold, they show a fatal tendency to pulmonary diseases. [sidenote: the small amount of tropical emigration] the acclimatization of tropical people in temperate regions will never be a question of widespread importance. the negroes were involuntary immigrants to america, under conditions that can never recur. their concentration in the "black belt," where they find the heat and moisture in which they thrive, and their climatically conditioned exclusion from the more northern states are matters of local significance. economic and social retardation have kept the hot belt relatively underpopulated. the density map shows much the largest part of it with a population less than to the square mile. only the small portion contained in india, southernmost china, and java shows a density over to the square mile (or to the square kilometer). this density has to rise to or more to the square mile before emigration begins. the would-be exiles then have a wide choice of new homes in other tropical lands, where they find congenial climate and phases of economic development into which they will fit. east indian coolies are found in cape colony, natal, zanzibar, trinidad, and british guiana, where they constitute per cent. of the population. [sidenote: effects of tropical climate.] the redundant population of crowded western and southern europe also seek these sparsely inhabited tropics, but they come heavily handicapped by the necessity of acclimatization. they leave their homes from trondhjem and stockholm in the north to the mediterranean in the south, where the mean annual temperatures vary from ° to ° c, ( ° to ° f.), to seek the torrid zone which averages ° c. or ° f. over most of its territory. the effects of a tropical climate are due to intense heat, to its long duration without the respite conferred by a bracing winter season, and its combination with the high degree of humidity prevailing over most of the torrid zone. these are conditions advantageous to plant life, but hardly favorable to human development. they produce certain derangements in the physiological functions of heart, liver, kidneys and organs of reproduction. bodily temperature rises, while susceptibility to disease and rate of mortality show an increase ominous for white colonization. the general effect is intense enervation; this starts a craving for stimulants and induces habits of alcoholism which are accountable for many bodily ills usually attributed to direct climatic influences. transfer to the tropics tends to relax the mental and moral fiber, induces indolence, self-indulgences and various excesses which lower the physical tone.[ ] the social control of public opinion in the new environment is weak, while temptation, due to both climatic and social causes, is peculiarly strong. the presence of an inferior, more or less servile native population, relaxes both conscience and physical energy just when both need a tonic. the result is general enervation, deterioration both as economic and political agents. [sidenote: historical significance of deterioration] this is the effect of climate which has had the most far-reaching and persistent historical consequences. our study of the historical movements of peoples in the northern hemisphere revealed a steady influx from colder into tropical and sub-tropical lands, followed always by enervation and loss of national efficiency, due partly to the debilitating heat of the new habitat, partly to its easier conditions of living, whether the intruders came as conquerors and appropriated the fat of the land, or as immigrant colonists who dropped into slack methods of agriculture, because rain and sun and soil made their reluctant labor scarcely necessary. everywhere in the tropics the enervating effects of heat, moisture, and abundance make not only the natives averse to steady work, but start the energetic european immigrant down the same easy descent to avernus. passing over the deterioration of the aryans in india, the persians in mesopotamia, and the vandals in africa, we find that modern instances show the transformation to be very rapid. the french who since have occupied the islands of réunion and mauritius have lost much of their thrift and energy, though their new homes lie just within the southern tropic, and are blessed with an oceanic climate. yet the volunteer troops sent by réunion to aid in the recent subjugation of the hovas in madagascar proved to be utterly useless.[ ] the spaniards who come to-day to mexico have great energy, born of their former hard conditions of life in spain. but their children are reared in a country whose mean annual temperature, even on the plateau, exceeds that of spain by °c. (or °f.), a difference equal to that between mobile and new york, or madrid and christiania. hence they are less energetic and vigorous, while the third generation are typical mexicans in their easy-going way of life.[ ] the germans who recently have colonized southern brazil in great numbers show a similar deterioration under similar increase of mean annual temperature, combined with somewhat greater humidity, which intensifies the debilitating effects of the heat. an investigation made in by the international harvester company of america revealed the fact that the german farmer in the state of santa catharina rarely cultivated over one acre of grain.[ ] much of the iron in the blood and conscience of the new england missionary stock which went to hawaii two generations ago has been dissolved out by the warm rain and balmy air of the islands. [sidenote: the problem of acclimatization.] in all these instances the white race has been successfully transplanted. it has domiciled itself on the borders of the tropics and has propagated its kind, though it has abated some of the vigorous qualities which characterized it in its temperate fatherland. in the real tropics like india, cochin china, the malay archipelago, and central africa, the whole perplexing and urgent problem of european colonization turns on the difficulty or impossibility of acclimatization; and this in turn affects the whole economic, ethnic and political destiny of present colonial holdings. if acclimatization is impossible, the alternative is an imported ruling class, constantly invalided and as constantly renewed, aided by a similar commercial body acting as superintendents of labor; the whole machine of government and economic exploitation is supported by a permanent servile native population, doing the preeminently tropical work of agriculture, which is so fatal to the white man in a torrid climate. this means that the conquering white race of the temperate zone is to be excluded by adverse climatic conditions from the productive but undeveloped tropics, unless it consents to hybridization, like the spaniards and portuguese of tropical america. in that national struggle for existence which is a struggle for space, it means an added advantage for the mediterranean peoples, that they are more tolerant of a torrid climate than the blond teutons, whose disability in this regard is pronounced; it means that the aptitude of the chinese for a wide range of climatic accommodation, from the arctic circle to the equator, lends color to "the yellow peril." [sidenote: historical importance of the temperate zones.] in contrast to the monotonous extremes of climate in the hot and cold zones, temperate lands are characterized by the intermediate degrees of annual temperature and marked seasonal diversity which are so favorable to human development. in arctic lands labor is paralyzed by cold as it is by heat in the enervating and overproductive tropics. in one, the growing season is too short and ill-favored; in the other, too long to stimulate man to sustained industry. hence the temperate zones, whose climate avoids both these extremes and abounds in contrasts, whose summers are productive enough to supply food for the winter, and whose winters give both motive and energy for the summer's work, are richer in cultural possibilities and hence in historical importance. [sidenote: effects of contrasted seasons.] the advantage of the temperate zone is not only its moderate and adequate allowance of heat, but its contrast of seasons. beyond the range of a vertical sun, grades of temperature change rapidly from latitude to latitude and from summer to winter. the seasons bring variety of activities, which sharply react upon one another. manufactures were in their origin chiefly winter industries, as they still are in small isolated communities. the modern factory system flourishes best in cooler parts of the temperate zone, where the agricultural demands of the summer, spreading over a shorter period, leave a longer time for winter work, and where that once long winter of the glacial period, by the scouring action of the ice cap, has reduced the fertile area of the northern fields. the factory system is also favored, as heinrich von treitschke maintains, by the predominance of cool or cold weather, which facilitates the concentration of numerous workmen in large buildings, and renders possible long labor hours the year round,[ ]--conditions unthinkable in a warm climate. the iron and steel industries which have grown up about birmingham, alabama, find that the long hot summers and mild winters reduce the efficiency of their skilled labor imported from the north. [sidenote: effects of length of seasons.] [sidenote: effect of long winters.] the length of the seasons is of conspicuous importance. it determines, for instance, whether a given climate permits continuous field work with summer and winter crops, whether field work is possible at all, and how long it is interrupted by excessive cold. buckle maintains that climate not only enervates or invigorates man, but affects also the constancy of his work and his capacity for sustained labor throughout the year. he considers "that no people living in a very northern latitude have ever possessed that steady and unflinching industry for which the inhabitants of temperate regions are remarkable" and assigns as a reason "that the severity of the weather, and, at some seasons, the deficiency of light, render it impossible for the people to continue their usual out-of-door employments." the result of this he finds to be desultory habits of work, which help to make the national character fitful and capricious. he cites in illustration of his principle the people of the scandinavian and iberian peninsulas, whom he finds marked "by a certain instability and fickleness of character," owing to the fact that in norway and sweden agricultural labor experiences long interruptions, due to the severity of the winter and the shortness of the days; in spain and portugal owing to the heat and drought of summer.[ ] the extreme continental climate of northern of russia with its violent contrast of the seasons, its severe and protracted winters, enables leroy-beaulieu to make a safer application of this principle to the empire of the czars, which, unlike scandinavia, feels no ameliorating effect from the mild atlantic winds and commands no alternative industries like dairy farming, fisheries, and maritime trade.[ ] hence leroy-beaulieu attributes the unsystematic, desultory habits of work prevailing among the northern peasants to the long intermission of labor in winter, and to the alternation of a short period of intense activity with a long period of enforced idleness. he finds them resembling southern peoples in their capacity for sudden spurts of energy rather than sustained effort, thinks them benumbed by the sloth of the far north, which is not unlike the sloth of the south.[ ] the dominant continental and central location of russia enables its climatic extremes to operate with little check. the peripheral location of scandinavia in the path of the atlantic winds modifies its climate to a mild oceanic type, and its dominant maritime situation gives its people the manifold resources of a typical coast land. hence buckle's estimate of national character in the scandinavian peninsula has little basis as to fact or cause. irregularity of agricultural labor does not mean here cessation of all labor, and hence does not produce the far-reaching effect ascribed to it. only about one-third of the norwegian population is engaged in agriculture. the restriction of its arable and meadow land to per cent. of the whole territory, and the fact that a large proportion of the people are employed in shipping and the fisheries,[ ] are due to several geographic factors besides climate. the same thing is true of sweden in a modified degree. [sidenote: complexity of climatic effects.] caution should be exercised in drawing conclusions from climate alone or from only one phase of its influence. the duration and intensity of the seasons affects not only the manner of work, but the whole mode of life of a people. on the yukon, in iceland, and the high mountain valleys of the alps, winter puts a check not only upon out-of-door labor, but upon all public or community life. intercourse stops or is greatly restricted. the outside world drops away. in iceland, the law courts are in session only in summer when the roads by sea and land are open. in the kentucky mountains the district schools close before christmas, when the roads become impassable from rain and snow; the summer is the gala time for funeral services, for only then can the preacher or "circuit-rider" reach the graves made in the winter. therefore the funerals in one community accumulate, so to speak, and finally, when leisure comes after the august harvest, they make the occasion for important social gatherings. much of the influence of winter lies in its power to isolate. it is the economic effects of such periods of enforced idleness which are most obvious, both in their power to restrict national wealth and keep down density of population. when long, they limit subsistence to the products of a short growing season, except where local mining adds considerable sources of revenue. in the russian government of yaroslaf, located on the northernmost bend of the volga within the agricultural belt, and containing the chief inland wheat market of the empire, the field labor of four months must support the population for the remaining eight months of the year. the half of russia included in the cold forest zone of the north maintains meagerly a sparse population, and can hope for an increase of the same only by the encouragement of industrial pursuits. here the long winter leisure has created the handicrafts on which so many villages rely, and which in turn have given rise to peddling,[ ] as we have seen it do in high mountain regions where altitude intensifies and prolongs the winter season. agricultural and industrial life are still undivorced, just as in primitive communities. the resulting population has also the primitive mark of great sparsity, so that modern industry, which depends upon a concentrated labor force, is here inhibited. hence russian manufactures, which are so active in the governments of vladimir, moscow, and st. petersburg, cease beyond the sixtieth parallel, which defines the northern limit of the agricultural belt and the beginning of the forest and the fur zone.[ ] [see maps pages and .] [sidenote: social effects of long winters.] the rigorous climate of russia was undoubtedly one cause for the attachment of the peasants to the soil in . this measure was resorted to at a time when the muscovite dominion from its center in great russia had recently been extended at the expense of the tartars, and had thus embraced fertile southern lands, which tempted the northern peasant away from his unfruitful fields.[ ] this attraction, coupled with the free and hopeful life of the frontier, met the migrant instinct bred in the peasant by the wide plains and far horizon of russia, so that the north threatened to be left without cultivators. later, the harsh climatic conditions of the north were advanced as an argument against the abolition of serfdom, on the ground that this system alone secured to the landed proprietor a steady labor supply, and guaranteed to the peasant his maintenance during the long, idle winter. the duration and severity of the cold season has put a drag upon the wheel of enterprise in canada, as opposed to the warmer united states. the prairies of the canadian northwest, whose fertile soil should early have attracted settlement, were a closed land till railroads could pour into it every summer from the warmer south and east a seasonal tide of laborers. these follow the harvest as it advances from point to point, and then withdraw in autumn either to the lumber camps of eastern canada, minnesota and wisconsin, or to seek other forms of out-door labor in the more southern states, thus lifting from the canadian farmer the burden of their winter support. in the lower latitudes of the temperate zones, where the growing season is long and the dormant period correspondingly short and mild, we find agriculture based upon clearly distinguished winter and summer crops, as in the northern punjab ( ° to ° n. l.);[ ] or producing a quick succession of valuable crops, where the fertility of the soil can be maintained by manures or irrigating streams, as in many of the warmer southern states and in spain[ ] respectively. in argentine, where tillage is extensive, land abundant, and population sparse, where, in fact, "skimp farming" is the rule, the shrewd cultivator takes advantage of the long growing season to stretch out his period of sowing and reaping, and thus tills a larger area. the international harvester company of america, investigating the reason for the small number of reaping machines employed in argentine in proportion to the area under cultivation, found that the simple climatic condition of a long growing season enabled one reaper to serve about twice the acreage usual in the united states, because it could work twice as long.[ ] [sidenote: zones of culture.] over and beyond slight local variations of climate and season within the same zone, which contribute their quota to economic and historical results, it is the fundamental differences between the hot, cold and temperate climatic zones that produce the most conspicuous and abiding effects. these broad belts, each with its characteristic climatic conditions and appropriate civilization, form so many girdles of culture around the earth. they have their dominant features of heat and cold, variously combined with moisture and aridity, which give a certain zonal stamp to human temperature and development. the two cold belts have little claim to the name of cultural zones, since their inability to support more than an insignificant population has made them almost a negligible factor in history. [compare maps pages , , and .] the discoveries and settlements of the northmen in greenland remained a barren historical event, though the vikings' ships reached a new hemisphere. iceland is the only land in this sub-arctic region which ever figured upon the stage of history; and its rôle was essentially passive. such prominence as it acquired was due to its island nature and its situation in a swirl of the gulf stream, which ameliorates the worst climatic effects of its far northern location, and brings it just within the upper limit of the temperate belt. the wide sub-arctic lowlands of russia and siberia, which, from the ural mountains to the lower amur river, stretch the cold zone well below the sixtieth parallel, have at times in the last three centuries and especially in the past decade thrown their great mass into the scale of eastern asiatic history. this has been possible because the hot summer characteristic of continental climates forces the july isotherm of °c. northward over the vast heated surface of asia nearly to the sixtieth parallel, well within the borders of siberia. it gives that belt the short but warm growing season with protracted hours of sunshine which is so favorable to cereals, lending to omsk, tomsk, vitimsk and all the stretch of russian settlements in siberia, an admirable summer climate like that of the canadian northwest.[ ] [sidenote: the cradle of civilization.] the north temperate zone is preëminently the culture zone of the earth. it is the seat of the most important, most steadily progressive civilizations, and the source of all the cultural stimuli which have given an upward start to civilization in other zones during the past three centuries. it contains the mediterranean basin, which was the pulsing heart of ancient history, and all the modern historically important regions of europe, asia, africa, and america. the temperate belt of the southern hemisphere also is following its lead, since european civilization has been transplanted to other parts of the world. this is the zone which least suffers from the drawbacks of climatic monotony or extremes, and best combines, especially in the northern hemisphere, the wide range of annual and seasonal variety so favorable to economic and cultural development, with the incalculable advantage of large land area. man grew in the temperate zone, was born in the tropics. there, in his primitive, pre-civilized state, he lived in a moist, warm, uniform climate which supplied abundantly his simple wants, put no strain upon his feeble intellect and will. that first crude human product of nature's pliocene workshop turned out in the steaming lowland of java, and now known to us as the _pithecanthropus erectus_, found about him the climatic conditions generally conceded to have been necessary for man in his helpless, futile infancy. where man has remained in the tropics, with few exceptions he has suffered arrested development. his nursery has kept him a child. though his initial progress depended upon the gifts which nature put into his hands, his later evolution depended far more upon the powers which she developed within him. these have no limit, so far as our experience shows; but their growth is painful, reluctant. therefore they develop only where nature subjects man to compulsion, forces him to earn his daily bread, and thereby something more than bread. this compulsion is found in less luxurious but more salutary geographic conditions than the tropics afford, in an environment that exacts a tribute of labor and invention in return for the boon of life, but offers a reward certain and generous enough to insure the accumulation of wealth which marks the beginning of civilization.[ ] most of the ancient civilizations originated just within the mild but drier margin of the temperate zone, where the cooler air of a short winter acted like a tonic upon the energies relaxed by the lethargic atmosphere of the hot and humid tropics; where congenial warmth encouraged vegetation, but where the irrigation necessary to secure abundant and regular crops called forth inventiveness, coöperation, and social organization, and gave to the people their first baptism of redemption from savagery to barbarism. native civilizations of limited development have arisen in the tropics, but only where, as in yemen, mexico and peru, a high, cool, semi-arid plateau, a restricted area of fertile soil, and a protected location alternately coddled and spurred the nascent people. as the tropics have been the cradle of humanity, the temperate zone has been the cradle and school of civilization. here nature has given much by withholding much. here man found his birthright, the privilege of the struggle. notes to chapter xvii [ ] g.g. chisholm, commercial geography, p. . london, . [ ] montesquieu, the spirit of laws, vol. i, book xiv. london, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - . new york, . [ ] julius hann, handbook of climatology, part i, pp. - . new york, . [ ] isaiah bowman, distribution of population in bolivia, _bulletin of geographical society of philadelphia_, vol. vii, pp. , . [ ] ratzel, _aus mexico_, p. , note . breslau, . [ ] julius hann, handbook of climatology, part i, pp. - . new york, . [ ] g.g. chisholm, commercial geography, p. . london, . [ ] julius hann, handbook of climatology, part i, pp. - . new york, . [ ] _ibid_., pp. - . [ ] _ibid_., pp. - . [ ] risley and gait, census of india for , vol. i, part , pp. - , map p. . calcutta, . [ ] h.j. mackinder, britain and the british seas, pp. - . london, . [ ] g.g. chisholm, commercial geography, pp. - . london, . [ ] _ibid_., - . holdich, india, p. . london, . [ ] g.g. chisholm, commercial geography, pp. , . london, . [ ] j. russell smith, the economic importance of the tropical plateaus in america, house doc. , - -- , pp. - . washington, . [ ] g.g. chisholm, commercial geography, p. . london, . [ ] e.c. semple, american history and its geographic conditions, chap. xv. boston, . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, pp. - . new york, . [ ] _ibid_., p. , map p. . [ ] e.c. semple, american history and its geographic conditions, p. - . boston, . [ ] g.g. chisholm, commercial geography, pp. , . london, . [ ] h.r. mill, international geography, p. . new york, . [ ] ratzel, history of mankind, vol. ii, pp. - . london, - . [ ] _ibid_., vol. ii, p. . [ ] w.z. ripley, races of europe, chap. xxi. new york, . [ ] dr. c. keller, madagascar, mauritius, and other east african islands, pp. - . london, . [ ] matthias romero, mexico and the united states, vol. i, p. . new york, . [ ] from a personal interview with the supervising agent for south america. [ ] heinrich von treitschke, _politik_, vol. i, p. et seq. leipzig, . [ ] henry buckle, history of civilization in england, vol. i, p. . new york, . [ ] g.g. chisholm, commercial geography, pp. - . london, . [ ] anatole leroy-beaulieu, empire of the tsars, vol. i, pp. , - . new york, . [ ] norway, official publication, p. . christiania, . [ ] a. leroy-beaulieu, empire of the tsars, vol. i, pp. , , . new york, . [ ] g.g. chisholm, commercial geography, pp. , . london, . [ ] a. leroy-beaulieu, empire of the tsars, vol. i, pp. - . new york, . [ ] holdich, india, pp. - . london, . [ ] g.g. chisholm, commercial geography, p. . london, . [ ] from an interview with the supervising agent for south america. [ ] g.g. chisholm, commercial geography, p. . london, . [ ] henry buckle, history of civilization in england, vol. i, pp. - . new york, . evidence as to man's place in nature by thomas h. huxley [entire page is illustration with caption as follows] skeletons of the gibbon. orang. chimpanzee. gorilla. man. 'photographically reduced from diagrams of the natural size (except that of the gibbon, which was twice as large as nature), drawn by mr. waterhouse hawkins from specimens in the museum of the royal college of surgeons. on the natural history of the man-like apes ancient traditions, when tested by the severe processes of modern investigation, commonly enough fade away into mere dreams: but it is singular how often the dream turns out to have been a half-waking one, presaging a reality. ovid foreshadowed the discoveries of the geologist: the atlantis was an imagination, but columbus found a western world: and though the quaint forms of centaurs and satyrs have an existence only in the realms of art, creatures approaching man more nearly than they in essential structure, and yet as thoroughly brutal as the goat's or horse's half of the mythical compound, are now not only known, but notorious. i have not met with any notice of one of these man-like apes of earlier date than that contained in pigafetta's 'description of the kingdom of congo,' [ ] drawn up from the notes of a portuguese sailor, eduardo lopez, and published in . the tenth chapter of this work is entitled "de animalibus quae in hac provincia reperiuntur," and contains a brief passage to the effect that "in the songan country, on the banks of the zaire, there are multitudes of apes, which afford great delight to the nobles by imitating human gestures." as this might apply to almost any kind of apes, i should have thought little of it, had not the brothers de bry, whose engravings illustrate the work, thought fit, in their eleventh 'argumentum,' to figure two of these "simiae magnatum deliciae." so much of the plate as contains these apes is faithfully copied in the woodcut (fig. ), and it will be observed that they are tail-less, long-armed, and large-eared; and about the size of chimpanzees. it may be that these apes are as much figments of the imagination of the ingenious brothers as the winged, two-legged, crocodile-headed dragon which adorns the same plate; or, on the other hand, it may be that the artists have constructed their drawings from some essentially faithful description of a gorilla or a chimpanzee. and, in either case, though these figures are worth a passing notice, the oldest trustworthy and definite accounts of any animal of this kind date from the th century, and are due to an englishman. [illustration: fig. .--simiae magnatum deliciae.--de bry, .] the first edition of that most amusing old book, 'purchas his pilgrimage,' was published in , and therein are to be found many references to the statements of one whom purchas terms "andrew battell (my neere neighbour, dwelling at leigh in essex) who served under manuel silvera perera, governor under the king of spaine, at his city of saint paul, and with him went farre into the countrey of angola"; and again, "my friend, andrew battle, who lived in the kingdom of congo many yeares," and who, "upon some quarell betwixt the portugals (among whom he was a sergeant of a band) and him, lived eight or nine moneths in the woodes." from this weather-beaten old soldier, purchas was amazed to hear "of a kinde of great apes, if they might so bee termed, of the height of a man, but twice as bigge in feature of their limmes, with strength proportionable, hairie all over, otherwise altogether like men and women in their whole bodily shape. [ ] they lived on such wilde fruits as the trees and woods yielded, and in the night time lodged on the trees." this extract is, however, less detailed and clear in its statements than a passage in the third chapter of the second part of another work--'purchas his pilgrimes,' published in , by the same author--which has been often, though hardly ever quite rightly, cited. the chapter is entitled, "the strange adventures of andrew battell, of leigh in essex, sent by the portugals prisoner to angola, who lived there and in the adjoining regions neere eighteene yeeres." and the sixth section of this chapter is headed--"of the provinces of bongo, calongo, mayombe, manikesocke, motimbas: of the ape monster pongo, their hunting: idolatries; and divers other observations." "this province (calongo) toward the east bordereth upon bongo, and toward the north upon mayombe, which is nineteen leagues from longo along the coast. "this province of mayombe is all woods and groves, so over-growne that a man may travaile twentie days in the shadow without any sunne or heat. here is no kind of corne nor graine, so that the people liveth onely upon plantanes and roots of sundrie sorts, very good; and nuts; nor any kinde of tame cattell, nor hens. "but they have great store of elephant's flesh, which they greatly esteeme, and many kinds of wild beasts; and great store of fish. here is a great sandy bay, two leagues to the northward of cape negro, [ ] which is the port of mayombe. sometimes the portugals lade logwood in this bay. here is a great river, called banna: in the winter it hath no barre, because the generall winds cause a great sea. but when the sunne hath his south declination, then a boat may goe in; for then it is smooth because of the raine. this river is very great, and hath many ilands and people dwelling in them. the woods are so covered with baboones, monkies, apes and parrots, that it will feare any man to travaile in them alone. here are also two kinds of monsters, which are common in these woods, and very dangerous. "the greatest of these two monsters is called pongo in their language, and the lesser is called engeco. this pongo is in all proportion like a man; but that he is more like a giant in stature than a man; for he is very tall, and hath a man's face, hollow-eyed, with long haire upon his browes. his face and eares are without haire, and his hands also. his bodie is full of haire, but not very thicke; and it is of a dunnish colour. "he differeth not from a man but in his legs; for they have no calfe. hee goeth alwaies upon his legs, and carrieth his hands clasped in the nape of his necke when he goeth upon the ground. they sleepe in the trees, and build shelters for the raine. they feed upon fruit that they find in the woods, and upon nuts, for they eate no kind of flesh. they cannot speake, and have no understanding more than a beast. the people of the countrie, when they travaile in the woods make fires where they sleepe in the night; and in the morning when they are gone, the pongoes will come and sit about the fire till it goeth out; for they have no understanding to lay the wood together. they goe many together and kill many negroes that travaile in the woods. many times they fall upon the elephants which come to feed where they be, and so beate them with their clubbed fists, and pieces of wood, that they will runne roaring away from them. those pongoes are never taken alive because they are so strong, that ten men cannot hold one of them; but yet they take many of their young ones with poisoned arrowes. "the young pongo hangeth on his mother's belly with his hands fast clasped about her, so that when the countrie people kill any of the females they take the young one, which hangeth fast upon his mother. "when they die among themselves, they cover the dead with great heaps of boughs and wood, which is commonly found in the forest." [ ] it does not appear difficult to identify the exact region of which battell speaks. longo is doubtless the name of the place usually spelled loango on our maps. mayombe still lies some nineteen leagues northward from loango, along the coast; and cilongo or kilonga, manikesocke, and motimbas are yet registered by geographers. the cape negro of battell, however, cannot be the modern cape negro in degrees s., since loango itself is in degrees s. latitude. on the other hand, the "great river called banna" corresponds very well with the "camma" and "fernand vas," of modern geographers, which form a great delta on this part of the african coast. now this "camma" country is situated about a degree and a-half south of the equator, while a few miles to the north of the line lies the gaboon, and a degree or so north of that, the money river--both well known to modern naturalists as localities where the largest of man-like apes has been obtained. moreover, at the present day, the word engeco, or n'schego, is applied by the natives of these regions to the smaller of the two great apes which inhabit them; so that there can be no rational doubt that andrew battell spoke of that which he knew of his own knowledge, or, at any rate, by immediate report from the natives of western africa. the "engeco," however, is that "other monster" whose nature battell "forgot to relate," while the name "pongo"--applied to the animal whose characters and habits are so fully and carefully described--seems to have died out, at least in its primitive form and signification. indeed, there is evidence that not only in battell's time, but up to a very recent date, it was used in a totally different sense from that in which he employs it. for example, the second chapter of purchas' work, which i have just quoted, contains "a description and historicall declaration of the golden kingdom of guinea, etc. etc. translated from the dutch, and compared also with the latin," wherein it is stated (p. ) that-- "the river gaboon lyeth about fifteen miles northward from rio de angra, and eight miles northward from cape de lope gonsalves (cape lopez), and is right under the equinoctial line, about fifteene miles from st. thomas, and is a great land, well and easily to be knowne. at the mouth of the river there lieth a sand, three or foure fathoms deepe, whereon it beateth mightily with the streame which runneth out of the river into the sea. this river, in the mouth thereof, is at least four miles broad; but when you are about the iland called 'pongo', it is not above two miles broad.... on both sides the river there standeth many trees.... the iland called 'pongo', which hath a monstrous high hill." [illustration: fig .--the orang of tulpius, .] the french naval officers, whose letters are appended to the late m. isidore geoff. saint hilaire's excellent essay on the gorilla [ ], note in similar terms the width of the gaboon, the trees that line its banks down to the water's edge, and the strong current that sets out of it. they describe two islands in its estuary;--one low, called perroquet; the other high, presenting three conical hills, called coniquet; and one of them, m. franquet, expressly states that, formerly, the chief of coniquet was called 'meni-pongo', meaning thereby lord of 'pongo'; and that the 'n'pongues' (as, in agreement with dr. savage, he affirms the natives call themselves) term the estuary of the gaboon itself 'n'pongo'. it is so easy, in dealing with savages, to misunderstand their applications of words to things, that one is at first inclined to suspect battell of having confounded the name of this region, where his "greater monster" still abounds, with the name of the animal itself. but he is so right about other matters (including the name of the "lesser monster") that one is loth to suspect the old traveller of error; and, on the other hand, we shall find that a voyager of a hundred years' later date speaks of the name "boggoe," as applied to a great ape, by the inhabitants of quite another part of africa--sierra leone. but i must leave this question to be settled by philologers and travellers; and i should hardly have dwelt so long upon it except for the curious part played by this word 'pongo'in the later history of the man-like apes. the generation which succeeded battell saw the first of the man-like apes which was ever brought to europe, or, at any rate, whose visit found a historian. in the third book of tulpius' 'observationes medicae', published in , the th chapter or section is devoted to what he calls 'satyrus indicus', "called by the indians orang-autang or man-of-the-woods, and by the africans quoias morrou." he gives a very good figure, evidently from the life, of the specimen of this animal, "nostra memoria ex angola delatum," presented to frederick henry prince of orange. tulpius says it was as big as a child of three years old, and as stout as one of six years: and that its back was covered with black hair. it is plainly a young chimpanzee. in the meanwhile, the existence of other, asiatic, man-like apes became known, but at first in a very mythical fashion. thus bontius ( ) gives an altogether fabulous and ridiculous account and figure of an animal which he calls "orang-outang"; and though he says "vidi ego cujus effigiem hic exhibeo," the said effigies (see fig. for hoppius' copy of it) is nothing but a very hairy woman of rather comely aspect, and with proportions and feet wholly human. the judicious english anatomist, tyson, was justified in saying of this description by bontius, "i confess i do mistrust the whole representation." it is to the last mentioned writer, and his coadjutor cowper, that we owe the first account of a man-like ape which has any pretensions to scientific accuracy and completeness. the treatise entitled, "'orang-outang, sive homo sylvestris'; or the anatomy of a pygmie compared with that of a 'monkey', an 'ape', and a 'man'," published by the royal society in , is, indeed, a work of remarkable merit, and has, in some respects, served as a model to subsequent inquirers. this "pygmie," tyson tells us "was brought from angola, in africa; but was first taken a great deal higher up the country"; its hair "was of a coal-black colour and strait," and "when it went as a quadruped on all four, 'twas awkwardly; not placing the palm of the hand flat to the ground, but it walk'd upon its knuckles, as i observed it to do when weak and had not strength enough to support its body."--"from the top of the head to the heel of the foot, in a strait line, it measured twenty-six inches." [illustration: figs. and .--the 'pygmie' reduced from tyson's figures and , .] these characters, even without tyson's good figures (figs. and ), would have been sufficient to prove his "pygmie" to be a young chimpanzee. but the opportunity of examining the skeleton of the very animal tyson anatomised having most unexpectedly presented itself to me, i am able to bear independent testimony to its being a veritable 'troglodytes niger' [ ], though still very young. although fully appreciating the resemblances between his pygmie and man, tyson by no means overlooked the differences between the two, and he concludes his memoir by summing up first, the points in which "the ourang-outang or pygmie more resembled a man than apes and monkeys do," under forty-seven distinct heads; and then giving, in thirty-four similar brief paragraphs, the respects in which "the ourang-outang or pygmie differ'd from a man and resembled more the ape and monkey kind." after a careful survey of the literature of the subject extant in his time, our author arrives at the conclusion that his "pygmie" is identical neither with the orangs of tulpius and bontius, nor with the quoias morrou of dapper (or rather of tulpius), the barris of d'arcos, nor with the pongo of battell; but that it is a species of ape probably identical with the pygmies of the ancients, and, says tyson, though it "does so much resemble a 'man' in many of its parts, more than any of the ape kind, or any other 'animal' in the world, that i know of: yet by no means do i look upon it as the product of a 'mixt' generation--'tis a 'brute-animal sui generis', and a particular 'species of ape'." the name of "chimpanzee," by which one of the african apes is now so well known, appears to have come into use in the first half of the eighteenth century, but the only important addition made, in that period, to our acquaintance with the man-like apes of africa is contained in 'a new voyage to guinea', by william smith, which bears the date . in describing the animals of sierra leone, p. , this writer says:-- "i shall next describe a strange sort of animal, called by the white men in this country mandrill [ ], but why it is so called i know not, nor did i ever hear the name before, neither can those who call them so tell, except it be for their near resemblance of a human creature, though nothing at all like an ape. their bodies, when full grown, are as big in circumference as a middle-sized man's--their legs much shorter, and their feet larger; their arms and hands in proportion. the head is monstrously big, and the face broad and flat, without any other hair but the eyebrows; the nose very small, the mouth wide, and the lips thin. the face, which is covered by a white skin, is monstrously ugly, being all over wrinkled as with old age; the teeth broad and yellow; the hands have no more hair than the face, but the same white skin, though all the rest of the body is covered with long black hair, like a bear. they never go upon all fours, like apes; but cry, when vexed or teased, just like children...." [illustration: fig. .--facsimile of william smith's figure of the "mandrill," .] "when i was at sherbro, one mr. cummerbus, whom i shall have occasion hereafter to mention, made me a present of one of these strange animals, which are called by the natives boggoe: it was a she-cub, of six months' age, but even then larger than a baboon. i gave it in charge to one of the slaves, who knew how to feed and nurse it, being a very tender sort of animal; but whenever i went off the deck the sailors began to teaze it--some loved to see its tears and hear it cry; others hated its snotty nose; one who hurt it, being checked by the negro that took care of it, told the slave he was very fond of his country-woman, and asked him if he should not like her for a wife? to which the slave very readily replied, 'no, this no my wife; this a white woman--this fit wife for you.' this unlucky wit of the negro's, i fancy, hastened its death, for next morning it was found dead under the windlass." william smith's 'mandrill,' or 'boggoe,' as his description and figure testify, was, without doubt, a chimpanzee. [illustration: fig. .--the anthropomorpha of linnaeus.] linnaeus knew nothing, of his own observation, of the man-like apes of either africa or asia, but a dissertation by his pupil hoppius in the 'amoenitates academicae' (vi. 'anthropomorpha') may be regarded as embodying his views respecting these animals. the dissertation is illustrated by a plate, of which the accompanying woodcut, fig, , is a reduced copy, the figures are entitled (from left to right) . 'troglodyta bontii'; . 'lucifer aldrovandi'; . 'satyrus tulpii'; . 'pygmaeus edwardi'. the first is a bad copy of bontius' fictitious 'ourang-outang,' in whose existence, however, linnaeus appears to have fully believed; for in the standard edition of the 'systema naturae', it is enumerated as a second species of homo; "h. nocturnus." 'lucifer aldrovandi' is a copy of a figure in aldrovandus, 'de quadrupedibus digitatis viviparis', lib. , p. ( ), entitled "cercopithecus formae rarae 'barbilius' vocatus et originem a china ducebat." hoppius is of opinion that this may be one of that cat-tailed people, of whom nicolaus koping affirms that they eat a boat's crew, "gubernator navis" and all! in the 'systema naturae' linnaeus calls it in a note, 'homo caudatus', and seems inclined to regard it as a third species of man. according to temminck, 'satyrus tulpii' is a copy of the figure of a chimpanzee published by scotin in , which i have not seen. it is the 'satyrus indicus' of the 'systema naturae', and is regarded by linnaeus as possibly a distinct species from 'satyrus sylvestris'. the last, named 'pygmaeus edwardi', is copied from the figure of a young "man of the woods," or true orang-utan, given in edwards' 'gleanings of natural history' ( ). buffon was more fortunate than his great rival. not only had he the rare opportunity of examining a young chimpanzee in the living state, but he became possessed of an adult asiatic man-like ape--the first and the last adult specimen of any of these animals brought to europe for many years. with the valuable assistance of daubenton, buffon gave an excellent description of this creature, which, from its singular proportions, he termed the long-armed ape, or gibbon. it is the modern 'hylobates lar'. thus when, in , buffon wrote the fourteenth volume of his great work, he was personally familiar with the young of one kind of african man-like ape, and with the adult of an asiatic species--while the orang-utan and the mandrill of smith were known to him by report. furthermore, the abbe prevost had translated a good deal of purchas' pilgrims into french, in his 'histoire generale des voyages' ( ), and there buffon found a version of andrew battell's account of the pongo and the engeco. all these data buffon attempts to weld together into harmony in his chapter entitled "les orang-outangs ou le pongo et le jocko." to this title the following note is appended:-- "orang-outang nom de cet animal aux indes orientales: pongo nom de cet animal a lowando province de congo. "jocko, enjocko, nom de cet animal a congo que nous avons adopte. 'en' est l'article que nous avons retranche." thus it was that andrew battell's "engeco" became metamorphosed into "jocko," and, in the latter shape, was spread all over the world, in consequence of the extensive popularity of buffon's works. the abbe prevost and buffon between them, however, did a good deal more disfigurement to battell's sober account than 'cutting off an article.' thus battell's statement that the pongos "cannot speake, and have no understanding more than a beast," is rendered by buffon "qu'il ne peut parler 'quoiqu'il ait plus d'entendement que les autres animaux'"; and again, purchas' affirmation, "he told me in conference with him, that one of these pongos tooke a negro boy of his which lived a moneth with them," stands in the french version, "un pongo lui enleva un petit negre qui passa un 'an' entier dans la societe de ces animaux." after quoting the account of the great pongo, buffon justly remarks, that all the 'jockos' and 'orangs' hitherto brought to europe were young; and he suggests that, in their adult condition, they might be as big as the pongo or 'great orang'; so that, provisionally, he regarded the jockos, orangs, and pongos as all of one species. and perhaps this was as much as the state of knowledge at the time warranted. but how it came about that buffon failed to perceive the similarity of smith's 'mandrill' to his own 'jocko,' and confounded the former with so totally different a creature as the blue-faced baboon, is not so easily intelligible. twenty years later buffon changed his opinion, [ ] and expressed his belief that the orangs constituted a genus with two species,--a large one, the pongo of battell, and a small one, the jocko: that the small one (jocko) is the east indian orang; and that the young animals from africa, observed by himself and tulpius, are simply young pongos. in the meanwhile, the dutch naturalist, vosmaer, gave, in , a very good account and figure of a young orang, brought alive to holland, and his countryman, the famous anatomist, peter camper, published ( ) an essay on the orang-utan of similar value to that of tyson on the chimpanzee. he dissected several females and a male, all of which, from the state of their skeleton and their dentition, he justly supposes to have been young. however, judging by the analogy of man, he concludes that they could not have exceeded four feet in height in the adult condition. furthermore, he is very clear as to the specific distinctness of the true east indian orang. "the orang," says he, "differs not only from the pigmy of tyson and from the orang of tulpius by its peculiar colour and its long toes, but also by its whole external form. its arms, its hands, and its feet are longer, while the thumbs, on the contrary, are much shorter, and the great toes much smaller in proportion." [ ] and again, "the true orang, that is to say, that of asia, that of borneo, is consequently not the pithecus, or tailless ape, which the greeks, and especially galen, have described. it is neither the pongo nor the jocko, nor the orang of tulpius, nor the pigmy of tyson,--'it is an animal of a peculiar species', as i shall prove in the clearest manner by the organs of voice and the skeleton in the following chapters" (l. c. p. ). a few years later, m. radermacher, who held a high office in the government of the dutch dominions in india, and was an active member of the batavian society of arts and sciences, published, in the second part of the transactions of that society, [ ] a description of the island of borneo, which was written between the years and , and, among much other interesting matter, contains some notes upon the orang. the small sort of orang-utan, viz. that of vosmaer and of edwards, he says, is found only in borneo, and chiefly about banjermassing, mampauwa, and landak. of these he had seen some fifty during his residence in the indies; but none exceeded / feet in length. the larger sort, often regarded as a chimaera, continues radermacher, would perhaps long have remained so, had it not been for the exertions of the resident at rembang, m. palm, who, on returning from landak towards pontiana, shot one, and forwarded it to batavia in spirit, for transmission to europe. palm's letter describing the capture runs thus:--"herewith i send your excellency, contrary to all expectation (since long ago i offered more than a hundred ducats to the natives for an orang-utan of four or five feet high) an orang which i heard of this morning about eight o'clock. for a long time we did our best to take the frightful beast alive in the dense forest about half way to landak. we forgot even to eat, so anxious were we not to let him escape; but it was necessary to take care that he did not revenge himself, as he kept continually breaking off heavy pieces of wood and green branches, and dashing them at us. this game lasted till four o'clock in the afternoon, when we determined to shoot him; in which i succeeded very well, and indeed better than i ever shot from a boat before; for the bullet went just into the side of his chest, so that he was not much damaged. we got him into the prow still living, and bound him fast, and next morning he died of his wounds. all pontiana came on board to see him when we arrived." palm gives his height from the head to the heel as inches. [illustration: fig. .--the pongo skull, sent by radermacher to camper, after camper's original sketches, as reproduced by lucae.] a very intelligent german officer, baron von wurmb, who at this time held a post in the dutch east india service, and was secretary of the batavian society, studied this animal, and his careful description of it, entitled "beschrijving van der groote borneosche orang-outang of de oost-indische pongo," is contained in the same volume of the batavian society's transactions. after von wurmb had drawn up his description he states, in a letter dated batavia, feb. , , [ ] that the specimen was sent to europe in brandy to be placed in the collection of the prince of orange; "unfortunately," he continues, "we hear that the ship has been wrecked." von wurmb died in the course of the year , the letter in which this passage occurs being the last he wrote; but in his posthumous papers, published in the fourth part of the transactions of the batavian society, there is a brief description, with measurements, of a female pongo four feet high. did either of these original specimens, on which von wurmb's descriptions are based, ever reach europe? it is commonly supposed that they did; but i doubt the fact. for, appended to the memoir 'de l'ourang-outang,' in the collected edition of camper's works, tome i., pp. - , is a note by camper himself, referring to von wurmb's papers, and continuing thus:--"heretofore, this kind of ape had never been known in europe. radermacher has had the kindness to send me the skull of one of these animals, which measured fifty-three inches, or four feet five inches, in height. i have sent some sketches of it to m. soemmering at mayence, which are better calculated, however, to give an idea of the form than of the real size of the parts." these sketches have been reproduced by fischer and by lucae, and bear date , soemmering having received them in . had either of von wurmb's specimens reached holland, they would hardly have been unknown at this time to camper, who, however, goes on to say--"it appears that since this, some more of these monsters have been captured, for an entire skeleton, very badly set up, which had been sent to the museum of the prince of orange, and which i saw only on the th of june, , was more than four feet high. i examined this skeleton again on the th december, , after it had been excellently put to rights by the ingenious onymus." it appears evident, then, that this skeleton, which is doubtless that which has always gone by the name of wurmb's pongo, is not that of the animal described by him, though unquestionably similar in all essential points. camper proceeds to note some of the most important features of this skeleton; promises to describe it in detail by-and-bye; and is evidently in doubt as to the relation of this great 'pongo' to his "petit orang." the promised further investigations were never carried out; and so it happened that the pongo of von wurmb took its place by the side of the chimpanzee, gibbon, and orang as a fourth and colossal species of man-like ape. and indeed nothing could look much less like the chimpanzees or the orangs, then known, than the pongo; for all the specimens of chimpanzee and orang which had been observed were small of stature, singularly human in aspect, gentle and docile; while wurmb's pongo was a monster almost twice their size, of vast strength and fierceness, and very brutal in expression; its great projecting muzzle, armed with strong teeth, being further disfigured by the outgrowth of the cheeks into fleshy lobes. eventually, in accordance with the usual marauding habits of the revolutionary armies, the 'pongo' skeleton was carried away from holland into france, and notices of it, expressly intended to demonstrate its entire distinctness from the orang and its affinity with the baboons, were given, in , by geoffroy st. hilaire and cuvier. even in cuvier's 'tableau elementaire', and in the first edition of his great work, the 'regne animal', the 'pongo' is classed as a species of baboon. however, so early as , it appears that cuvier saw reason to alter this opinion, and to adopt the view suggested several years before by blumenbach, [ ] and after him by tilesius, that the bornean pongo is simply an adult orang. in , rudolphi demonstrated, by the condition of the dentition, more fully and completely than had been done by his predecessors, that the orangs described up to that time were all young animals, and that the skull and teeth of the adult would probably be such as those seen in the pongo of wurmb. in the second edition of the 'regne animal' ( ), cuvier infers, from the 'proportions of all the parts' and 'the arrangements of the foramina and sutures of the head,' that the pongo is the adult of the orang-utan, 'at least of a very closely allied species,' and this conclusion was eventually placed beyond all doubt by professor owen's memoir published in the 'zoological transactions' for , and by temminck in his 'monographies de mammalogie'. temminck's memoir is remarkable for the completeness of the evidence which it affords as to the modification which the form of the orang undergoes according to age and sex. tiedemann first published an account of the brain of the young orang, while sandifort, muller and schlegel, described the muscles and the viscera of the adult, and gave the earliest detailed and trustworthy history of the habits of the great indian ape in a state of nature; and as important additions have been made by later observers, we are at this moment better acquainted with the adult of the orang-utan, than with that of any of the other greater man-like apes. it is certainly the pongo of wurmb; [ ] and it is as certainly not the pongo of battell, seeing that the orang-utan is entirely confined to the great asiatic islands of borneo and sumatra. and while the progress of discovery thus cleared up the history of the orang, it also became established that the only other man-like apes in the eastern world were the various species of gibbon--apes of smaller stature, and therefore attracting less attention than the orangs, though they are spread over a much wider range of country, and are hence more accessible to observation. although the geographical area inhabited by the 'pongo' and engeco of battell is so much nearer to europe than that in which the orang and gibbon are found, our acquaintance with the african apes has been of slower growth; indeed, it is only within the last few years that the truthful story of the old english adventurer has been rendered fully intelligible. it was not until that the skeleton of the adult chimpanzee became known, by the publication of professor owen's above-mentioned very excellent memoir 'on the osteology of the chimpanzee and orang', in the 'zoological transactions'--a memoir which, by the accuracy of its descriptions, the carefulness of its comparisons, and the excellence of its figures, made an epoch in the history of our knowledge of the bony framework, not only of the chimpanzee, but of all the anthropoid apes. by the investigations herein detailed, it became evident that the old chimpanzee acquired a size and aspect as different from those of the young known to tyson, to buffon, and to traill, as those of the old orang from the young orang; and the subsequent very important researches of messrs. savage and wyman, the american missionary and anatomist, have not only confirmed this conclusion, but have added many new details. [ ] one of the most interesting among the many valuable discoveries made by dr. thomas savage is the fact, that the natives in the gaboon country at the present day, apply to the chimpanzee a name--"enche-eko"--which is obviously identical with the "engeko" of battell; a discovery which has been confirmed by all later inquirers. battell's "lesser monster" being thus proved to be a veritable existence, of course a strong presumption arose that his "greater monster," the 'pongo,' would sooner or later be discovered. and, indeed, a modern traveller, bowdich, had, in , found strong evidence, among the natives, of the existence of a second great ape, called the 'ingena,' "five feet high, and four across the shoulders," the builder of a rude house, on the outside of which it slept. in , dr. savage had the good fortune to make another and most important addition to our knowledge of the man-like apes; for, being unexpectedly detained at the gaboon river, he saw in the house of the rev. mr. wilson, a missionary resident there, "a skull represented by the natives to be a monkey-like animal, remarkable for its size, ferocity, and habits." from the contour of the skull, and the information derived from several intelligent natives, "i was induced," says dr. savage (using the term orang in its old general sense) "to believe that it belonged to a new species of orang. i expressed this opinion to mr. wilson, with a desire for further investigation; and, if possible, to decide the point by the inspection of a specimen alive or dead." the result of the combined exertions of messrs. savage and wilson was not only the obtaining of a very full account of the habits of this new creature, but a still more important service to science, the enabling the excellent american anatomist already mentioned, professor wyman, to describe, from ample materials, the distinctive osteological characters of the new form. this animal was called by the natives of the gaboon "enge-ena," a name obviously identical with the "ingena" of bowdich; and dr. savage arrived at the conviction that this last discovered of all the great apes was the long-sought "pongo" of battell. the justice of this conclusion, indeed, is beyond doubt--for not only does the 'enge-ena' agree with battell's "greater monster" in its hollow eyes, its great stature, and its dun or iron-grey colour, but the only other man-like ape which inhabits these latitudes--the chimpanzee--is at once identified, by its smaller size, as the "lesser monster," and is excluded from any possibility of being the 'pongo,' by the fact that it is black and not dun, to say nothing of the important circumstance already mentioned that it still retains the name of 'engeko,' or "enche-eko," by which battell knew it. in seeking for a specific name for the "enge-ena," however, dr. savage wisely avoided the much misused 'pongo'; but finding in the ancient periplus of hanno the word "gorilla" applied to certain hairy savage people, discovered by the carthaginian voyager in an island on the african coast, he attached the specific name "gorilla" to his new ape, whence arises its present well-known appellation. but dr. savage, more cautious than some of his successors, by no means identifies his ape with hanno's "wild men." he merely says that the latter were "probably one of the species of the orang;" and i quite agree with m. brulle, that there is no ground for identifying the modern 'gorilla' with that of the carthaginian admiral. since the memoir of savage and wyman was published, the skeleton of the gorilla has been investigated by professor owen and by the late professor duvernoy, of the jardin des plantes, the latter having further supplied a valuable account of the muscular system and of many of the other soft parts; while african missionaries and travellers have confirmed and expanded the account originally given of the habits of this great man-like ape, which has had the singular fortune of being the first to be made known to the general world and the last to be scientifically investigated. two centuries and a half have passed away since battell told his stories about the 'greater' and the 'lesser monsters' to purchas, and it has taken nearly that time to arrive at the clear result that there are four distinct kinds of anthropoids--in eastern asia, the gibbons and the orangs; in western africa, the chimpanzees and the gorilla. the man-like apes, the history of whose discovery has just been detailed, have certain characters of structure and of distribution in common. thus they all have the same number of teeth as man--possessing four incisors, two canines, four false molars, and six true molars in each jaw, or teeth in all, in the adult condition; while the milk dentition consists of teeth--or four incisors, two canines, and four molars in each jaw. they are what are called catarrhine apes--that is, their nostrils have a narrow partition and look downwards; and, furthermore, their arms are always longer than their legs, the difference being sometimes greater and sometimes less; so that if the four were arranged in the order of the length of their arms in proportion to that of their legs, we should have this series--orang ( / : ), gibbon ( / : ), gorilla ( / : ), chimpanzee ( / : ). in all, the fore limbs are terminated by hands, provided with longer or shorter thumbs; while the great toe of the foot, always smaller than in man, is far more movable than in him and can be opposed, like a thumb, to the rest of the foot. none of these apes have tails, and none of them possess the cheek pouches common among monkeys. finally, they are all inhabitants of the old world. the gibbons are the smallest, slenderest, and longest-limbed of the man-like apes: their arms are longer in proportion to their bodies than those of any of the other man-like apes, so that they can touch the ground when erect; their hands are longer than their feet, and they are the only anthropoids which possess callosities like the lower monkeys. they are variously coloured. the orangs have arms which reach to the ankles in the erect position of the animal; their thumbs and great toes are very short, and their feet are longer than their hands. they are covered with reddish brown hair, and the sides of the face, in adult males, are commonly produced into two crescentic, flexible excrescences, like fatty tumours. the chimpanzees have arms which reach below the knees; they have large thumbs and great toes, their hands are longer than their feet; and their hair is black, while the skin of the face is pale. the gorilla, lastly, has arms which reach to the middle of the leg, large thumbs and great toes, feet longer than the hands, a black face, and dark-grey or dun hair. for the purpose which i have at present in view, it is unnecessary that i should enter into any further minutiae respecting the distinctive characters of the genera and species into which these man-like apes are divided by naturalists. suffice it to say, that the orangs and the gibbons constitute the distinct genera, 'simia' and 'hylobates'; while the chimpanzees and gorillas are by some regarded simply as distinct species of one genus, 'troglodytes'; by others as distinct genera--'troglodytes' being reserved for the chimpanzees, and 'gorilla' for the enge-ena or pongo. sound knowledge respecting the habits and mode of life of the man-like apes has been even more difficult of attainment than correct information regarding their structure. once in a generation, a wallace may be found physically, mentally, and morally qualified to wander unscathed through the tropical wilds of america and of asia; to form magnificent collections as he wanders; and withal to think out sagaciously the conclusions suggested by his collections: but, to the ordinary explorer or collector, the dense forests of equatorial asia and africa, which constitute the favourite habitation of the orang, the chimpanzee, and the gorilla, present difficulties of no ordinary magnitude: and the man who risks his life by even a short visit to the malarious shores of those regions may well be excused if he shrinks from facing the dangers of the interior; if he contents himself with stimulating the industry of the better seasoned natives, and collecting and collating the more or less mythical reports and traditions with which they are too ready to supply him. in such a manner most of the earlier accounts of the habits of the man-like apes originated; and even now a good deal of what passes current must be admitted to have no very safe foundation. the best information we possess is that, based almost wholly on direct european testimony respecting the gibbons; the next best evidence relates to the orangs; while our knowledge of the habits of the chimpanzee and the gorilla stands much in need of support and enlargement by additional testimony from instructed european eye-witnesses. it will therefore be convenient in endeavouring to form a notion of what we are justified in believing about these animals, to commence with the best known man-like apes, the gibbons and orangs; and to make use of the perfectly reliable information respecting them as a sort of criterion of the probable truth or falsehood of assertions respecting the others. of the gibbons, half a dozen species are found scattered over the asiatic islands, java, sumatra, borneo, and through malacca, siam, arracan, and an uncertain extent of hindostan, on the main land of asia. the largest attain a few inches above three feet in height, from the crown to the heel, so that they are shorter than the other man-like apes; while the slenderness of their bodies renders their mass far smaller in proportion even to this diminished height. dr. salomon muller, an accomplished dutch naturalist, who lived for many years in the eastern archipelago, and to the results of whose personal experience i shall frequently have occasion to refer, states that the gibbons are true mountaineers, loving the slopes and edges of the hills, though they rarely ascend beyond the limit of the fig-trees. all day long they haunt the tops of the tall trees; and though, towards evening, they descend in small troops to the open ground, no sooner do they spy a man than they dart up the hill-sides, and disappear in the darker valleys. all observers testify to the prodigious volume of voice possessed by these animals. according to the writer whom i have just cited, in one of them, the siamang, "the voice is grave and penetrating, resembling the sounds goek, goek, goek, goek, goek ha ha ha ha haaaaa, and may easily be heard at a distance of half a league." while the cry is being uttered, the great membranous bag under the throat which communicates with the organ of voice, the so-called "laryngeal sac," becomes greatly distended, diminishing again when the creature relapses into silence. m. duvaucel, likewise, affirms that the cry of the siamang may be heard for miles--making the woods ring again. so mr. martin [ ] describes the cry of the agile gibbon as "overpowering and deafening" in a room, and "from its strength, well calculated for resounding through the vast forests." mr. waterhouse, an accomplished musician as well as zoologist, says, "the gibbon's voice is certainly much more powerful than that of any singer i have ever heard." and yet it is to be recollected that this animal is not half the height of, and far less bulky in proportion than, a man. there is good testimony that various species of gibbon readily take to the erect posture. mr. george bennett, [ ] a very excellent observer, in describing the habits of a male 'hylobates syndactylus' which remained for some time in his possession, says: "he invariably walks in the erect posture when on a level surface; and then the arms either hang down, enabling him to assist himself with his knuckles; or what is more usual, he keeps his arms uplifted in nearly an erect position, with the hands pendent ready to seize a rope, and climb up on the approach of danger or on the obtrusion of strangers. he walks rather quick in the erect posture, but with a waddling gait, and is soon run down if, whilst pursued, he has no opportunity of escaping by climbing.... when he walks in the erect posture he turns the leg and foot outwards, which occasions him to have a waddling gait and to seem bow-legged." dr. burrough states of another gibbon, the horlack or hooluk: "they walk erect; and when placed on the floor, or in an open field, balance themselves very prettily, by raising their hands over their head and slightly bending the arm at the wrist and elbow, and then run tolerably fast, rocking from side to side; and, if urged to greater speed, they let fall their hands to the ground, and assist themselves forward, rather jumping than running, still keeping the body, however, nearly erect." somewhat different evidence, however, is given by dr. winslow lewis: [ ] "their only manner of walking was on their posterior or inferior extremities, the others being raised upwards to preserve their equilibrium, as rope-dancers are assisted by long poles at fairs. their progression was not by placing one foot before the other, but by simultaneously using both, as in jumping." dr. salomon muller also states that the gibbons progress along the ground by a short series of tottering jumps, effected only by the hind limbs, the body being held altogether upright. but mr. martin (l. c. p. ), who also speaks from direct observation, says of the gibbons generally: "pre-eminently qualified for arboreal habits, and displaying among the branches amazing activity, the gibbons are not so awkward or embarrassed on a level surface as might be imagined. they walk erect, with a waddling or unsteady gait, but at a quick pace; the equilibrium of the body requiring to be kept up, either by touching the ground with the knuckles, first on one side then on the other, or by uplifting the arms so as to poise it. as with the chimpanzee, the whole of the narrow, long sole of the foot is placed upon the ground at once and raised at once, without any elasticity of step." [illustration: fig. .--gibbon ('h. pileatus'), after wolf.] after this mass of concurrent and independent testimony, it cannot reasonably be doubted that the gibbons commonly and habitually assume the erect attitude. but level ground is not the place where these animals can display their very remarkable and peculiar locomotive powers, and that prodigious activity which almost tempts one to rank them among flying, rather than among ordinary climbing mammals. mr. martin (l.c. p. ) has given so excellent and graphic an account of the movements of a 'hylobates agilis', living in the zoological gardens, in , that i will quote it in full: "it is almost impossible to convey in words an idea of the quickness and graceful address of her movements: they may indeed be termed aerial, as she seems merely to touch in her progress the branches among which she exhibits her evolutions. in these feats her hands and arms are the sole organs of locomotion; her body hanging as if suspended by a rope, sustained by one hand (the right for example) she launches herself, by an energetic movement, to a distant branch, which she catches with the left hand; but her hold is less than momentary: the impulse for the next launch is acquired: the branch then aimed at is attained by the right hand again, and quitted instantaneously, and so on, in alternate succession. in this manner spaces of twelve and eighteen feet are cleared, with the greatest ease and uninterruptedly, for hours together, without the slightest appearance of fatigue being manifested; and it is evident that, if more space could be allowed, distances very greatly exceeding eighteen feet would be as easily cleared; so that duvaucel's assertion that he has seen these animals launch themselves from one branch to another, forty feet asunder, startling as it is, may be well credited. sometimes, on seizing a branch in her progress, she will throw herself, by the power of one arm only, completely round it, making a revolution with such rapidity as almost to deceive the eye, and continue her progress with undiminished velocity. it is singular to observe how suddenly this gibbon can stop, when the impetus given by the rapidity and distance of her swinging leaps would seem to require a gradual abatement of her movements. in the very midst of her flight a branch is seized, the body raised, and she is seen, as if by magic, quietly seated on it, grasping it with her feet. as suddenly she again throws herself into action. "the following facts will convey some notion of her dexterity and quickness. a live bird was let loose in her apartment; she marked its flight, made a long swing to a distant branch, caught the bird with one hand in her passage, and attained the branch with her other hand; her aim, both at the bird and at the branch, being as successful as if one object only had engaged her attention. it may be added that she instantly bit off the head of the bird, picked its feathers, and then threw it down without attempting to eat it. "on another occasion this animal swung herself from a perch, across a passage at least twelve feet wide, against a window which it was thought would be immediately broken: but not so; to the surprise of all, she caught the narrow framework between the panes with her hand, in an instant attained the proper impetus, and sprang back again to the cage she had left--a feat requiring not only great strength, but the nicest precision." the gibbons appear to be naturally very gentle, but there is very good evidence that they will bite severely when irritated--a female 'hylobates agilis' having so severely lacerated one man with her long canines, that he died; while she had injured others so much that, by way of precaution, these formidable teeth had been filed down; but, if threatened, she would still turn on her keeper. the gibbons eat insects, but appear generally to avoid animal food. a siamang, however, was seen by mr. bennett to seize and devour greedily a live lizard. they commonly drink by dipping their fingers in the liquid and then licking them. it is asserted that they sleep in a sitting posture. duvaucel affirms that he has seen the females carry their young to the waterside and there wash their faces, in spite of resistance and cries. they are gentle and affectionate in captivity--full of tricks and pettishness, like spoiled children, and yet not devoid of a certain conscience, as an anecdote, told by mr. bennett (l. c. p. ), will show. it would appear that his gibbon had a peculiar inclination for disarranging things in the cabin. among these articles, a piece of soap would especially attract his notice, and for the removal of this he had been once or twice scolded. "one morning," says mr. bennett, "i was writing, the ape being present in the cabin, when casting my eyes towards him, i saw the little fellow taking the soap. i watched him without his perceiving that i did so: and he occasionally would cast a furtive glance towards the place where i sat. i pretended to write; he, seeing me busily occupied, took the soap, and moved away with it in his paw. when he had walked half the length of the cabin, i spoke quietly, without frightening him. the instant he found i saw him, he walked back again, and deposited the soap nearly in the same place from whence he had taken it. there was certainly something more than instinct in that action: he evidently betrayed a consciousness of having done wrong both by his first and last actions--and what is reason if that is not an exercise of it?" the most elaborate account of the natural history of the orang-utan extant, is that given in the "verhandelingen over de natuurlijke geschiedenis der nederlandsche overzeesche bezittingen ( - )," by dr. salomon muller and dr. schlegel, and i shall base what i have to say, upon this subject almost entirely on their statements, adding, here and there, particulars of interest from the writings of brooke, wallace, and others. the orang-utan would rarely seem to exceed four feet in height, but the body is very bulky, measuring two-thirds of the height in circumference. [ ] the orang-utan is found only in sumatra and borneo, and is common in neither of these islands--in both of which it occurs always in low, flat plains, never in the mountains. it loves the densest and most sombre of the forests, which extend from the sea-shore inland, and thus is found only in the eastern half of sumatra, where alone such forests occur, though, occasionally, it strays over to the western side. on the other hand, it is generally distributed through borneo, except in the mountains, or where the population is dense. in favourable places, the hunter may, by good fortune, see three or four in a day. [illustration: fig. . an adult male orang-utan, after muller and schlegel.] except in the pairing time, the old males usually live by themselves. the old females, and the immature males, on the other hand, are often met with in twos and threes; and the former occasionally have young with them, though the pregnant females usually separate themselves, and sometimes remain apart after they have given birth to their offspring. the young orangs seem to remain unusually long under their mother's protection, probably in consequence of their slow growth. while climbing, the mother always carries her young against her bosom, the young holding on by his mother's hair. [ ] at what time of life the orang-utan becomes capable of propagation, and how long the females go with young, is unknown, but it is probable that they are not adult until they arrive at ten or fifteen years of age. a female which lived for five years at batavia, had not attained one-third the height of the wild females. it is probable that, after reaching adult years, they go on growing, though slowly, and that they live to forty or fifty years. the dyaks tell of old orangs, which have not only lost all their teeth, but which find it so troublesome to climb, that they maintain themselves on windfalls and juicy herbage. the orang is sluggish, exhibiting none of that marvellous activity characteristic of the gibbons. hunger alone seems to stir him to exertion, and when it is stilled, he relapses into repose. when the animal sits, it curves its back and bows its head, so as to look straight down on the ground; sometimes it holds on with its hands by a higher branch, sometimes lets them hang phlegmatically down by its side--and in these positions the orang will remain, for hours together, in the same spot, almost without stirring, and only now and then giving utterance to its deep, growling voice. by day, he usually climbs from one tree-top to another, and only at night descends to the ground, and if then threatened with danger, he seeks refuge among the underwood. when not hunted, he remains a long time in the same locality, and sometimes stops for many days on the same tree--a firm place among its branches serving him for a bed. it is rare for the orang to pass the night in the summit of a large tree, probably because it is too windy and cold there for him; but, as soon as night draws on, he descends from the height and seeks out a fit bed in the lower and darker part, or in the leafy top of a small tree, among which he prefers nibong palms, pandani, or one of those parasitic orchids which give the primeval forests of borneo so characteristic and striking an appearance. but wherever he determines to sleep, there he prepares himself a sort of nest: little boughs and leaves are drawn together round the selected spot, and bent crosswise over one another; while to make the bed soft, great leaves of ferns, of orchids, of 'pandanus fascicularis', 'nipa fruticans', etc., are laid over them. those which muller saw, many of them being very fresh, were situated at a height of ten to twenty-five feet above the ground, and had a circumference, on the average, of two or three feet. some were packed many inches thick with 'pandanus' leaves; others were remarkable only for the cracked twigs, which, united in a common centre, formed a regular platform. "the rude 'hut'," says sir james brooke, "which they are stated to build in the trees, would be more properly called a seat or nest, for it has no roof or cover of any sort. the facility with which they form this nest is curious, and i had an opportunity of seeing a wounded female weave the branches together and seat herself, within a minute." according to the dyaks the orang rarely leaves his bed before the sun is well above the horizon and has dissipated the mists. he gets up about nine, and goes to bed again about five; but sometimes not till late in the twilight. he lies sometimes on his back; or, by way of change, turns on one side or the other, drawing his limbs up to his body, and resting his head on his hand. when the night is cold, windy, or rainy, he usually covers his body with a heap of 'pandanus', 'nipa', or fern leaves, like those of which his bed is made, and he is especially careful to wrap up his head in them. it is this habit of covering himself up which has probably led to the fable that the orang builds huts in the trees. although the orang resides mostly amid the boughs of great trees, during the daytime, he is very rarely seen squatting on a thick branch, as other apes, and particularly the gibbons, do. the orang, on the contrary, confines himself to the slender leafy branches, so that he is seen right at the top of the trees, a mode of life which is closely related to the constitution of his hinder limbs, and especially to that of his seat. for this is provided with no callosities, such as are possessed by many of the lower apes, and even by the gibbons; and those bones of the pelvis, which are termed the ischia, and which form the solid framework of the surface on which the body rests in the sitting posture, are not expanded like those of the apes which possess callosities, but are more like those of man. an orang climbs so slowly and cautiously, [ ] as, in this act, to resemble a man more than an ape, taking great care of his feet, so that injury of them seems to affect him far more than it does other apes. unlike the gibbons, whose forearms do the greater part of the work, as they swing from branch to branch, the orang never makes even the smallest jump. in climbing, he moves alternately one hand and one foot, or, after having laid fast hold with the hands, he draws up both feet together. in passing from one tree to another, he always seeks out a place where the twigs of both come close together, or interlace. even when closely pursued, his circumspection is amazing: he shakes the branches to see if they will bear him, and then bending an overhanging bough down by throwing his weight gradually along it, he makes a bridge from the tree he wishes to quit to the next. [ ] on the ground the orang always goes laboriously and shakily, on all fours. at starting he will run faster than a man, though he may soon be overtaken. the very long arms which, when he runs, are but little bent, raise the body of the orang remarkably, so that he assumes much the posture of a very old man bent down by age, and making his way along by the help of a stick. in walking, the body is usually directed straight forward, unlike the other apes, which run more or less obliquely; except the gibbons, who in these, as in so many other respects, depart remarkably from their fellows. the orang cannot put its feet flat on the ground, but is supported upon their outer edges, the heel resting more on the ground, while the curved toes partly rest upon the ground by the upper side of their first joint, the two outermost toes of each foot completely resting on this surface. the hands are held in the opposite manner, their inner edges serving as the chief support. the fingers are then bent out in such a manner that their foremost joints, especially those of the two innermost fingers, rest upon the ground by their upper sides, while the point of the free and straight thumb serves as an additional fulcrum. the orang never stands on its hind legs, and all the pictures, representing it as so doing, are as false as the assertion that it defends itself with sticks, and the like. the long arms are of especial use, not only in climbing, but in the gathering of food from boughs to which the animal could not trust his weight. figs, blossoms, and young leaves of various kinds, constitute the chief nutriment of the orang; but strips of bamboo two or three feet long were found in the stomach of a male. they are not known to eat living animals. although, when taken young, the orang-utan soon becomes domesticated, and indeed seems to court human society, it is naturally a very wild and shy animal, though apparently sluggish and melancholy. the dyaks affirm, that when the old males are wounded with arrows only, they will occasionally leave the trees and rush raging upon their enemies, whose sole safety lies in instant flight, as they are sure to be killed if caught. [ ] but, though possessed of immense strength, it is rare for the orang to attempt to defend itself, especially when attacked with fire-arms. on such occasions he endeavours to hide himself, or to escape along the topmost branches of the trees, breaking off and throwing down the boughs as he goes. when wounded he betakes himself to the highest attainable point of the tree, and emits a singular cry, consisting at first of high notes, which at length deepen into a low roar, not unlike that of a panther. while giving out the high notes the orang thrusts out his lips into a funnel shape; but in uttering the low notes he holds his mouth wide open, and at the same time the great throat bag, or laryngeal sac, becomes distended. according to the dyaks, the only animal the orang measures his strength with is the crocodile, who occasionally seizes him on his visits to the water side. but they say that the orang is more than a match for his enemy, and beats him to death, or rips up his throat by pulling the jaws asunder! much of what has been here stated was probably derived by dr. muller from the reports of his dyak hunters; but a large male, four feet high, lived in captivity, under his observation, for a month, and receives a very bad character. "he was a very wild beast," says muller, "of prodigious strength, and false and wicked to the last degree. if any one approached he rose up slowly with a low growl, fixed his eyes in the direction in which he meant to make his attack, slowly passed his hand between the bars of his cage, and then extending his long arm, gave a sudden grip--usually at the face." he never tried to bite (though orangs will bite one another), his great weapons of offence and defence being his hands. his intelligence was very great; and muller remarks, that though the faculties of the orang have been estimated too highly, yet cuvier, had he seen this specimen, would not have considered its intelligence to be only a little higher than that of the dog. his hearing was very acute, but the sense of vision seemed to be less perfect. the under lip was the great organ of touch, and played a very important part in drinking, being thrust out like a trough, so as either to catch the falling rain, or to receive the contents of the half cocoa-nut shell full of water with which the orang was supplied, and which, in drinking, he poured into the trough thus formed. in borneo the orang-utan of the malays goes by the name of "mias" among the dyaks, who distinguish several kinds as 'mias pappan', or 'zimo', 'mias kassu', and 'mias rambi'. whether these are distinct species, however, or whether they are mere races, and how far any of them are identical with the sumatran orang, as mr. wallace thinks the mias pappan to be, are problems which are at present undecided; and the variability of these great apes is so extensive, that the settlement of the question is a matter of great difficulty. of the form called "mias pappan," mr. wallace [ ] observes, "it is known by its large size, and by the lateral expansion of the face into fatty protuberances, or ridges, over the temporal muscles, which has been mis-termed 'callosities', as they are perfectly soft, smooth, and flexible. five of this form, measured by me, varied only from feet inch to feet inches in height, from the heel to the crown of the head, the girth of the body from feet to feet / inches, and the extent of the outstretched arms from feet inches to feet inches; the width of the face from to / inches. the colour and length of the hair varied in different individuals, and in different parts of the same individual; some possessed a rudimentary nail on the great toe, others none at all; but they otherwise present no external differences on which to establish even varieties of a species. "yet, when we examine the crania of these individuals, we find remarkable differences of form, proportion, and dimension, no two being exactly alike. the slope of the profile, and the projection of the muzzle, together with the size of the cranium, offer differences as decided as those existing between the most strongly marked forms of the caucasian and african crania in the human species. the orbits vary in width and height, the cranial ridge is either single or double, either much or little developed, and the zygomatic aperture varies considerably in size. this variation in the proportions of the crania enables us satisfactorily to explain the marked difference presented by the single-crested and double-crested skulls, which have been thought to prove the existence of two large species of orang. the external surface of the skull varies considerably in size, as do also the zygomatic aperture and the temporal muscle; but they bear no necessary relation to each other, a small muscle often existing with a large cranial surface, and 'vice versa'. now, those skulls which have the largest and strongest jaws and the widest zygomatic aperture, have the muscles so large that they meet on the crown of the skull, and deposit the bony ridge which supports them, and which is the highest in that which has the smallest cranial surface. in those which combine a large surface with comparatively weak jaws, and small zygomatic aperture, the muscles, on each side, do not extend to the crown, a space of from l to inches remaining between them, and along their margins small ridges are formed. intermediate forms are found, in which the ridges meet only in the hinder part of the skull. the form and size of the ridges are therefore independent of age, being sometimes more strongly developed in the less aged animal. professor temminck states that the series of skulls in the leyden museum shows the same result." mr. wallace observed two male adult orangs (mias kassu of the dyaks), however, so very different from any of these that he concludes them to be specifically distinct; they were respectively feet / inches and feet / inches high, and possessed no sign of the cheek excrescences, but otherwise resembled the larger kinds. the skull has no crest, but two bony ridges, / inches to inches apart, as in the 'simia morio' of professor owen. the teeth, however; are immense, equalling or surpassing those of the other species. the females of both these kinds, according to mr. wallace, are devoid of excrescences, and resemble the smaller males, but are shorter by / to inches, and their canine teeth are comparatively small, subtruncated and dilated at the base, as in the so-called 'simia morio', which is, in all probability, the skull of a female of the same species as the smaller males. both males and females of this smaller species are distinguishable, according to mr. wallace, by the comparatively large size of the middle incisors of the upper jaw. so far as i am aware, no one has attempted to dispute the accuracy of the statements which i have just quoted regarding the habits of the two asiatic man-like apes; and if true, they must be admitted as evidence, that such an ape-- firstly, may readily move along the ground in the erect, or semi-erect, position, and without direct support from its arms. secondly, that it may possess an extremely loud voice, so loud as to be readily heard one or two miles. thirdly, that it may be capable of great viciousness and violence when irritated: and this is especially true of adult males. fourthly, that it may build a nest to sleep in. such being well established facts respecting the asiatic anthropoids, analogy alone might justify us in expecting the african species to offer similar peculiarities, separately or combined; or, at any rate, would destroy the force of any attempted 'a priori' argument against such direct testimony as might be adduced in favour of their existence. and, if the organization of any of the african apes could be demonstrated to fit it better than either of its asiatic allies for the erect position and for efficient attack, there would be still less reason for doubting its occasional adoption of the upright attitude or of aggressive proceedings. from the time of tyson and tulpius downwards, the habits of the young chimpanzee in a state of captivity have been abundantly reported and commented upon. but trustworthy evidence as to the manners and customs of adult anthropoids of this species, in their native woods, was almost wanting up to the time of the publication of the paper by dr. savage, to which i have already referred; containing notes of the observations which he made, and of the information which he collected from sources which he considered trustworthy, while resident at cape palmas, at the north-western limit of the bight of benin. the adult chimpanzees measured by dr. savage, never exceeded, though the males may almost attain, five feet in height. "when at rest, the sitting posture is that generally assumed. they are sometimes seen standing and walking, but when thus detected, they immediately take to all fours, and flee from the presence of the observer. such is their organization that they cannot stand erect, but lean forward. hence they are seen, when standing, with the hands clasped over the occiput, or the lumbar region, which would seem necessary to balance or ease of posture. "the toes of the adult are strongly flexed and turned inwards, and cannot be perfectly straightened. in the attempt the skin gathers into thick folds on the back, shewing that the full expansion of the foot, as is necessary in walking, is unnatural. the natural position is on all fours, the body anteriorly resting upon the knuckles. these are greatly enlarged, with the skin protuberant and thickened like the sole of the foot. "they are expert climbers, as one would suppose from their organization. in their gambols they swing from limb to limb to a great distance, and leap with astonishing agility. it is not unusual to see the 'old folks' (in the language of an observer) sitting under a tree regaling themselves with fruit and friendly chat, while their 'children' are leaping around them, and swinging from tree to tree with boisterous merriment. "as seen here, they cannot be called 'gregarious', seldom more than five, or ten at most, being found together. it has been said, on good authority, that they occasionally assemble in large numbers, in gambols. my informant asserts that he saw once not less than fifty so engaged; hooting, screaming, and drumming with sticks upon old logs, which is done in the latter case with equal facility by the four extremities. they do not appear ever to act on the offensive, and seldom, if ever really, on the defensive. when about to be captured, they resist by throwing their arms about their opponent, and attempting to draw him into contact with their teeth." (savage, l. c. p. .) with respect to this last point dr. savage is very explicit in another place: "biting" is their principal art of defence. i have seen one man who had been thus severely wounded in the feet. "the strong development of the canine teeth in the adult would seem to indicate a carnivorous propensity; but in no state save that of domestication do they manifest it. at first they reject flesh, but easily acquire a fondness for it. the canines are early developed, and evidently designed to act the important part of weapons of defence. when in contact with man almost the first effort of the animal is--'to bite'. "they avoid the abodes of men, and build their habitations in trees. their construction is more that of 'nests' than 'huts', as they have been erroneously termed by some naturalists. they generally build not far above the ground. branches or twigs are bent, or partly broken, and crossed, and the whole supported by the body of a limb or a crotch. sometimes a nest will be found near the 'end' of a 'strong leafy branch' twenty or thirty feet from the ground. one i have lately seen that could not be less than forty feet, and more probably it was fifty. but this is an unusual height. "their dwelling-place is not permanent, but changed in pursuit of food and solitude, according to the force of circumstances. we more often see them in elevated places; but this arises from the fact that the low grounds, being more favourable for the natives' rice-farms, are the oftener cleared, and hence are almost always wanting in suitable trees for their nests.... it is seldom that more than one or two nests are seen upon the same tree, or in the same neighbourhood: five have been found, but it was an unusual circumstance."... "they are very filthy in their habits.... it is a tradition with the natives generally here, that they were once members of their own tribe; that for their depraved habits they were expelled from all human society, and, that through an obstinate indulgence of their vile propensities, they have degenerated into their present state and organization. they are, however, eaten by them, and when cooked with the oil and pulp of the palm-nut considered a highly palatable morsel. "they exhibit a remarkable degree of intelligence in their habits, and, on the part of the mother, much affection for their young. the second female described was upon a tree when first discovered, with her mate and two young ones (a male and a female). her first impulse was to descend with great rapidity, and make off into the thicket, with her mate and female offspring. the young male remaining behind, she soon returned to the rescue. she ascended and took him in her arms, at which moment she was shot, the ball passing through the forearm of the young one, on its way to the heart of the mother.... "in a recent case, the mother, when discovered, remained upon the tree with her offspring, watching intently the movements of the hunter. as he took aim, she motioned with her hand, precisely in the manner of a human being, to have him desist and go away. when the wound has not proved instantly fatal, they have been known to stop the flow of blood by pressing with the hand upon the part, and when this did not succeed, to apply leaves and grass.... when shot, they give a sudden screech, not unlike that of a human being in sudden and acute distress." the ordinary voice of the chimpanzee, however, is affirmed to be hoarse, guttural, and not very loud, somewhat like "whoo-whoo." (l. c. p. ). the analogy of the chimpanzee to the orang, in its nest-building habit and in the mode of forming its nest, is exceedingly interesting; while, on the other hand, the activity of this ape, and its tendency to bite, are particulars in which it rather resembles the gibbons. in extent of geographical range, again, the chimpanzees--which are found from sierra leone to congo--remind one of the gibbons, rather than of either of the other man-like apes; and it seems not unlikely that, as is the case with the gibbons, there may be several species spread over the geographical area of the genus. the same excellent observer, from whom i have borrowed the preceding account of the habits of the adult chimpanzee, published fifteen years ago, [ ] an account of the gorilla, which has, in its most essential points, been confirmed by subsequent observers, and to which so very little has really been added, that in justice to dr. savage i give it almost in full. "it should be borne in mind that my account is based upon the statements of the aborigines of that region (the gaboon). in this connection, it may also be proper for me to remark, that having been a missionary resident for several years, studying, from habitual intercourse, the african mind and character, i felt myself prepared to discriminate and decide upon the probability of their statements. besides, being familiar with the history and habits of its interesting congener ('trog. niger', geoff.), i was able to separate their accounts of the two animals, which, having the same locality and a similarity of habit, are confounded in the minds of the mass, especially as but few--such as traders to the interior and huntsmen--have ever seen the animal in question. [illustration: fig. .--the gorilla (after wolff).] "the tribe from which our knowledge of the animal is derived, and whose territory forms its habitat, is the 'mpongwe', occupying both banks of the river gaboon, from its mouth to some fifty or sixty miles upward.... "if the word 'pongo' be of african origin, it is probably a corruption of the word 'mpongwe', the name of the tribe on the banks of the gaboon, and hence applied to the region they inhabit. their local name for the chimpanzee is 'enche-eko', as near as it can be anglicized, from which the common term 'jocko' probably comes. the mpongwe appellation for its new congener is 'enge-ena', prolonging the sound of the first vowel, and slightly sounding the second. "the habitat of the 'enge-ena' is the interior of lower guinea, whilst that of the 'enche-eko' is nearer the sea-board. "its height is about five feet; it is disproportionately broad across the shoulders, thickly covered with coarse black hair, which is said to be similar in its arrangement to that of the 'enche-eko'; with age it becomes grey, which fact has given rise to the report that both animals are seen of different colours. "'head'.--the prominent features of the head are, the great width and elongation of the face, the depth of the molar region, the branches of the lower jaw being very deep and extending far backward, and the comparative smallness of the cranial portion; the eyes are very large, and said to be like those of the enche-eko, a bright hazel; nose broad and flat, slightly elevated towards the root; the muzzle broad, and prominent lips and chin, with scattered gray hairs; the under lip highly mobile, and capable of great elongation when the animal is enraged, then hanging over the chin; skin of the face and ears naked, and of a dark brown, approaching to black. "the most remarkable feature of the head is a high ridge, or crest of hair, in the course of the sagittal suture, which meets posteriorily with a transverse ridge of the same, but less prominent, running round from the back of one ear to the other. the animal has the power of moving the scalp freely forward and back, and when enraged is said to contract it strongly over the brow, thus bringing down the hairy ridge and pointing the hair forward, so as to present an indescribably ferocious aspect. "neck short, thick, and hairy; chest and shoulders very broad, said to be fully double the size of the enche-ekos; arms very long, reaching some way below the knee--the fore-arm much the shortest; hands very large, the thumbs much larger than the fingers.... [illustration: fig. .--gorilla walking (after wolff).] "the gait is shuffling; the motion of the body, which is never upright as in man, but bent forward, is somewhat rolling, or from side to side. the arms being longer than the chimpanzee, it does not stoop as much in walking; like that animal, it makes progression by thrusting its arms forward, resting the hands on the ground, and then giving the body a half jumping half swinging motion between them. in this act it is said not to flex the fingers, as does the chimpanzee, resting on its knuckles, but to extend them, making a fulcrum of the hand. when it assumes the walking posture, to which it is said to be much inclined, it balances its huge body by flexing its arms upward. "they live in bands, but are not so numerous as the chimpanzees: the females generally exceed the other sex in number. my informants all agree in the assertion that but one adult male is seen in a band; that when the young males grow up, a contest takes place for mastery, and the strongest, by killing and driving out the others, establishes himself as the head of the community." dr. savage repudiates the stories about the gorillas carrying off women and vanquishing elephants and then adds: "their dwellings, if they may be so called, are similar to those of the chimpanzee, consisting simply of a few sticks and leafy branches, supported by the crotches and limbs of trees: they afford no shelter, and are occupied only at night. "they are exceedingly ferocious, and always offensive in their habits, never running from man, as does the chimpanzee. they are objects of terror to the natives, and are never encountered by them except on the defensive. the few that have been captured were killed by elephant hunters and native traders, as they came suddenly upon them while passing through the forests. "it is said that when the male is first seen he gives a terrific yell, that resounds far and wide through the forest, something like kh-ah! kh-ah! prolonged and shrill. his enormous jaws are widely opened at each expiration, his under lip hangs over the chin, and the hairy ridge and scalp are contracted upon the brow, presenting an aspect of indescribable ferocity. "the females and young, at the first cry, quickly disappear. he then approaches the enemy in great fury, pouring out his horrid cries in quick succession. the hunter awaits his approach with his gun extended: if his aim is not sure, he permits the animal to grasp the barrel, and as he carries it to his mouth (which is his habit) he fires. should the gun fail to go off, the barrel (that of the ordinary musket, which is thin) is crushed between his teeth, and the encounter soon proves fatal to the hunter. "in the wild state, their habits are in general like those of the 'troglodytes niger', building their nests loosely in trees, living on similar fruits, and changing their place of resort from force of circumstances." dr. savage's observations were confirmed and supplemented by those of mr. ford, who communicated an interesting paper on the gorilla to the philadelphian academy of sciences, in . with respect to the geographical distribution of this greatest of all the man-like apes, mr. ford remarks: "this animal inhabits the range of mountains that traverse the interior of guinea, from the cameroon in the north, to angola in the south, and about miles inland, and called by the geographers crystal mountains. the limit to which this animal extends, either north or south, i am unable to define. but that limit is doubtless some distance north of this river [gaboon]. i was able to certify myself of this fact in a late excursion to the head-waters of the mooney (danger) river, which comes into the sea some sixty miles from this place. i was informed (credibly, i think) that they were numerous among the mountains in which that river rises, and far north of that. "in the south, this species extends to the congo river, as i am told by native traders who have visited the coast between the gaboon and that river. beyond that, i am not informed. this animal is only found at a distance from the coast in most cases, and, according to my best information, approaches it nowhere so nearly as on the south side of this river, where they have been found within ten miles of the sea. this, however, is only of late occurrence. i am informed by some of the oldest mpongwe men that formerly he was only found on the sources of the river, but that at present he may be found within half-a-day's walk of its mouth. formerly he inhabited the mountainous ridge where bushmen alone inhabited, but now he boldly approaches the mpongwe plantations. this is doubtless the reason of the scarcity of information in years past, as the opportunities for receiving a knowledge of the animal have not been wanting; traders having for one hundred years frequented this river, and specimens, such as have been brought here within a year, could not have been exhibited without having attracted the attention of the most stupid." one specimen mr. ford examined weighed lbs., without the thoracic, or pelvic, viscera, and measured four feet four inches round the chest. this writer describes so minutely and graphically the onslaught of the gorilla--though he does not for a moment pretend to have witnessed the scene--that i am tempted to give this part of his paper in full, for comparison with other narratives: "he always rises to his feet when making an attack, though he approaches his antagonist in a stooping posture. "though he never lies in wait, yet, when he hears, sees, or scents a man, he immediately utters his characteristic cry, prepares for an attack, and always acts on the offensive. the cry he utters resembles a grunt more than a growl, and is similar to the cry of the chimpanzee, when irritated, but vastly louder. it is said to be audible at a great distance. his preparation consists in attending the females and young ones, by whom he is usually accompanied, to a little distance. he, however, soon returns, with his crest erect and projecting forward, his nostrils dilated, and his under-lip thrown down; at the same time uttering his characteristic yell, designed, it would seem, to terrify his antagonist. instantly, unless he is disabled by a well directed shot, he makes an onset, and, striking his antagonist with the palm of his hands, or seizing him with a grasp from which there is no escape, he dashes him upon the ground, and lacerates him with his tusks. "he is said to seize a musket, and instantly crush the barrel between his teeth.... this animal's savage nature is very well shown by the implacable desperation of a young one that was brought here. it was taken very young, and kept four months, and many means were used to tame it; but it was incorrigible, so that it bit me an hour before it died." mr. ford discredits the house-building and elephant-driving stories, and says that no well-informed natives believe them. they are tales told to children. i might quote other testimony to a similar effect, but, as it appears to me, less carefully weighed and sifted, from the letters of mm. franquet and gautier laboullay, appended to the memoir of m. i. g. st. hilaire, which i have already cited. bearing in mind what is known regarding the orang and the gibbon, the statements of dr. savage and mr. ford do not appear to me to be justly open to criticism on 'a priori' grounds. the gibbons, as we have seen, readily assume the erect posture, but the gorilla is far better fitted by its organization for that attitude than are the gibbons: if the laryngeal pouches of the gibbons, as is very likely, are important in giving volume to a voice which can be heard for half a league, the gorilla, which has similar sacs, more largely developed, and whose bulk is fivefold that of a gibbon, may well be audible for twice that distance. if the orang fights with its hands, the gibbons and chimpanzees with their teeth, the gorilla may, probably enough, do either or both; nor is there anything to be said against either chimpanzee or gorilla building a nest, when it is proved that the orang-utan habitually performs that feat. with all this evidence, now ten to fifteen years old, before the world it is not a little surprising that the assertions of a recent traveller, who, so far as the gorilla is concerned, really does very little more than repeat, on his own authority, the statements of savage and of ford, should have met with so much and such bitter opposition. if subtraction be made of what was known before, the sum and substance of what m. du chaillu has affirmed as a matter of his own observation respecting the gorilla, is, that, in advancing to the attack, the great brute beats his chest with his fists. i confess i see nothing very improbable, or very much worth disputing about, in this statement. with respect to the other man-like apes of africa, m. du chaillu tells us absolutely nothing, of his own knowledge, regarding the common chimpanzee; but he informs us of a bald-headed species or variety, the 'nschiego mbouve', which builds itself a shelter, and of another rare kind with a comparatively small face, large facial angle, and peculiar note, resembling "kooloo." as the orang shelters itself with a rough coverlet of leaves, and the common chimpanzee, according to that eminently trustworthy observer dr. savage, makes a sound like "whoo-whoo,"--the grounds of the summary repudiation with which m. du chaillu's statements on these matters have been met are not obvious. if i have abstained from quoting m. du chaillu's work, then, it is not because i discern any inherent improbability in his assertions respecting the man-like apes; nor from any wish to throw suspicion on his veracity; but because, in my opinion, so long as his narrative remains in its present state of unexplained and apparently inexplicable confusion, it has no claim to original authority respecting any subject whatsoever. it may be truth, but it is not evidence. footnotes: [footnote : regnum congo: hoc est vera descriptio regni africani quod tam ab incolis quam lusitanis congus appellatur, per philippum pigafettam, olim ex edoardo lopez acroamatis lingua italica excerpta, num latio sermone donata ab august. cassiod. reinio. iconibus et imaginibus rerum memorabilium quasi vivis, opera et industria joan. theodori et joan. israelis de bry, fratrum exornata. francofurti, mdxcviii.] [footnote : "except this that their legges had no calves."--(ed. .) and in a marginal note, "these great apes are called pongo's."] [footnote : 'purchas' note'.--cape negro is in degrees south of the line.] [footnote : purchas' marginal note, p. :--"the pongo a giant ape. he told me in conference with him, that one of these pongoes tooke a negro boy of his which lived a moneth with them. for they hurt not those which they surprise at unawares, except they look on them; which he avoyded. he said their highth was like a man's, but their bignesse twice as great. i saw the negro boy. what the other monster should be he hath forgotten to relate; and these papers came to my hand since his death, which, otherwise, in my often conferences, i might have learned. perhaps he meaneth the pigmy pongo killers mentioned."] [footnote : 'archives du museum', tome x.] [footnote : i am indebted to dr. wright, of cheltenham, whose paleontological labours are so well known, for bringing this interesting relic to my knowledge. tyson's granddaughter, it appears, married dr. allardyce, a physician of repute in cheltenham, and brought, as part of her dowry, the skeleton of the 'pygmie.' dr. allardyce presented it to the cheltenham museum, and, through the good offices of my friend dr. wright, the authorities of the museum have permitted me to borrow, what is, perhaps its most remarkable ornament.] [footnote : "mandrill" seems to signify a "man-like ape," the word "drill" or "dril" having been anciently employed in england to denote an ape or baboon. thus in the fifth edition of blount's "glossographia, or a dictionary interpreting the hard words of whatsoever language now used in our refined english tongue...very useful for all such as desire to understand what they read," published in , i find, "dril--a stone-cutter's tool wherewith he bores little holes in marble, etc. also a large overgrown ape and baboon, so called." "drill" is used in the same sense in charleton's "onomasticon zoicon," . the singular etymology of the word given by buffon seems hardly a probable one.] [footnote : 'histoire naturelle', suppl. tome eme, .] [footnote : camper, 'oeuvres', i. p. .] [footnote : verhandelingen van het bataviaasch genootschap. tweede deel. derde druk. .] [footnote : "briefe des herrn v. wurmb und des h. baron von wollzogen. gotha, ."] [footnote : see blumenbach, 'abbildungen naturhistorichen gegenstande, no. , ; and tilesius, naturhistoriche fruchte der ersten kaiserlich-russischen erdumsegelung', p. , .] [footnote : speaking broadly and without prejudice to the question, whether there be more than one species of orang.] [footnote : see "observations on the external characters and habits of the troglodytes niger, by thomas n. savage, m.d., and on its organization by jeffries wyman, m.d.," 'boston journal of natural history', vol. iv., - ; and "external characters, habits, and osteology of troglodytes gorilla," by the same authors, 'ibid'., vol. v., .] [footnote : man and monkies', p. .] [footnote :'wanderings in new south wales', vol. ii. chap. viii., .] [footnote : 'boston journal of natural history', vol. i., .] [footnote : the largest orang-utan, cited by temminck, measured, when standing upright, ft.; but he mentions having just received news of the capture of an orang ft. in. high. schlegel and juller say that their largest old male measured, upright, . netherlands "el"; and from the crown to the end of the toes, . el; the circumference of the body being about el. the largest old female was . el high, when standing. the adult skeleton in the college of surgeons' museum, if set upright, would stand ft. - in. from crown to sole. dr. humphry gives ft. in. as the mean height of two orangs. of seventeen orangs examined by mr. wallace, the largest was ft. in. high, from the heel to the crown of the head. mr. spencer st. john, however, in his 'life in the forests of the far east', tells us of an orang of " ft. in., measuring fairly from the head to the heel," in. across the face, and in. round the wrist. it does not appear, however, that mr. st. john measured this orang himself.] [footnote : see mr. wallace's account of an infant "orang-utan," in the 'annals of natural history' for . mr. wallace provided his interesting charge with an artificial mother of buffalo-skin, but the cheat was too successful. the infant's entire experience led it to associate teats with hair, and feeling the latter, it spent its existence in vain endeavours to discover the former.] [footnote : "they are the slowest and least active of all the monkey tribe, and their motions are surprisingly awkward and uncouth."--sir james brooke, in the 'proceedings of the zoological society', .] [footnote : mr. wallace's account of the progression of the orang almost exactly corresponds with this.] [footnote : sir james brooke, in a letter to mr. waterhouse, published in the proceedings of the zoological society for , says:--"on the habits of the orangs, as far as i have been able to observe them, i may remark that they are as dull and slothful as can well be conceived, and on no occasion, when pursuing them, did they move so fast as to preclude my keeping pace with them easily through a moderately clear forest; and even when obstructions below (such as wading up to the neck) allowed them to get away some distance, they were sure to stop and allow me to come up. i never observed the slightest attempt at defence, and the wood which sometimes rattled about our ears was broken by their weight, and not thrown, as some persons represent. if pushed to extremity, however, the 'pappan' could not be otherwise than formidable, and one unfortunate man, who, with a party, was trying to catch a large one alive, lost two of his fingers, besides being severely bitten on the face, whilst the animal finally beat off his pursuers and escaped." mr. wallace, on the other hand, affirms that he has several times observed them throwing down branches when pursued. "it is true he does not throw them 'at' a person, but casts them down vertically; for it is evident that a bough cannot be thrown to any distance from the top of a lofty tree. in one case a female mias, on a durian tree, kept up for at least ten minutes a continuous shower of branches and of the heavy, spined fruits, as large as -pounders, which most effectually kept us clear of the tree she was on. she could be seen breaking them off and throwing them down with every appearance of rage, uttering at intervals a loud pumping grunt, and evidently meaning mischief."--"on the habits of the orang-utan," 'annals of nat. history, . this statement, it will be observed, is quite in accordance with that contained in the letter of the resident palm quoted above (p. ).] [footnote : on the orang-utan, or mias of borneo, 'annals of natural history', .] [footnote : notice of the external characters and habits of troglodytes gorilla. 'boston journal of natural history', .] thoughts on man his nature, productions and discoveries interspersed with some particulars respecting the author by william godwin oh, the blood more stirs to rouse a lion, than to start a hare! shakespeare london: effingham wilson, royal exchange. . preface in the ensuing volume i have attempted to give a defined and permanent form to a variety of thoughts, which have occurred to my mind in the course of thirty-four years, it being so long since i published a volume, entitled, the enquirer,--thoughts, which, if they have presented themselves to other men, have, at least so far as i am aware, never been given to the public through the medium of the press. during a part of this period i had remained to a considerable degree unoccupied in my character of an author, and had delivered little to the press that bore my name.--and i beg the reader to believe, that, since i entered in upon that which may be considered as my vocation in life, i have scarcely in any instance contributed a page to any periodical miscellany. my mind has been constitutionally meditative, and i should not have felt satisfied, if i had not set in order for publication these special fruits of my meditations. i had entered upon a certain career; and i held it for my duty not to abandon it. one thing further i feel prompted to say. i have always regarded it as my office to address myself to plain men, and in clear and unambiguous terms. it has been my lot to have occasional intercourse with some of those who consider themselves as profound, who deliver their oracles in obscure phraseology, and who make it their boast that few men can understand them, and those few only through a process of abstract reflection, and by means of unwearied application. to this class of the oracular i certainly did not belong. i felt that i had nothing to say, that it should be very difficult to understand. i resolved, if i could help it, not to "darken counsel by words without knowledge." this was my principle in the enquiry concerning political justice. and i had my reward. i had a numerous audience of all classes, of every age, and of either sex. the young and the fair did not feel deterred from consulting my pages. it may be that that book was published in a propitious season. i am told that nothing coming from the press will now be welcomed, unless it presents itself in the express form of amusement. he who shall propose to himself for his principal end, to draw aside in one particular or another the veil from the majesty of intellectual or moral truth, must lay his account in being received with little attention. i have not been willing to believe this: and i publish my speculations accordingly. i have aimed at a popular, and (if i could reach it) an interesting style; and, if i am thrust aside and disregarded, i shall console myself with believing that i have not neglected what it was in my power to achieve. one characteristic of the present publication will not fail to offer itself to the most superficial reader. i know many men who are misanthropes, and profess to look down with disdain on their species. my creed is of an opposite character. all that we observe that is best and most excellent in the intellectual world, is man: and it is easy to perceive in many cases, that the believer in mysteries does little more, than dress up his deity in the choicest of human attributes and qualifications. i have lived among, and i feel an ardent interest in and love for, my brethren of mankind. this sentiment, which i regard with complacency in my own breast, i would gladly cherish in others. in such a cause i am well pleased to enrol myself a missionary. february , . the particulars respecting the author, referred to in the title-page, will be found principally in essays vii, ix, xiv, and xviii. contents essay. i. of body and mind. the prologue ii. of the distribution of talents iii. of intellectual abortion iv. of the durability of human achievements and productions v. of the rebelliousness of man vi. of human innocence vii. of the duration of human life viii. of human vegetation ix. of leisure x. of imitation and invention xi. of self-love and benevolence xii. of the liberty of human actions xiii. of belief xiv. of youth and age xv. of love and friendship xvi. of frankness and reserve xvii. of ballot xviii. of diffidence xix. of self complacence xx. of phrenology xxi. of astronomy xxii. of the material universe xxiii. of human virtue. the epilogue thoughts, &c. essay i. of body and mind. the prologue. there is no subject that more frequently occupies the attention of the contemplative than man: yet there are many circumstances concerning him that we shall hardly admit to have been sufficiently considered. familiarity breeds contempt. that which we see every day and every hour, it is difficult for us to regard with admiration. to almost every one of our stronger emotions novelty is a necessary ingredient. the simple appetites of our nature may perhaps form an exception. the appetite for food is perpetually renewed in a healthy subject with scarcely any diminution and love, even the most refined, being combined with one of our original impulses, will sometimes for that reason withstand a thousand trials, and perpetuate itself for years. in all other cases it is required, that a fresh impulse should be given, that attention should anew be excited, or we cannot admire. things often seen pass feebly before our senses, and scarcely awake the languid soul. "man is the most excellent and noble creature of the world, the principal and mighty work of god, the wonder of nature, the marvel of marvels( )." ( ) anatomy of melancholy, p. . let us have regard to his corporeal structure. there is a simplicity in it, that at first perhaps we slightly consider. but how exactly is it fashioned for strength and agility! it is in no way incumbered. it is like the marble when it comes out of the hand of the consummate sculptor; every thing unnecessary is carefully chiseled away; and the joints, the muscles, the articulations, and the veins come out, clean and finished. it has long ago been observed, that beauty, as well as virtue, is the middle between all extremes: that nose which is neither specially long, nor short, nor thick, nor thin, is the perfect nose; and so of the rest. in like manner, when i speak of man generally, i do not regard any aberrations of form, obesity, a thick calf, a thin calf; i take the middle between all extremes; and this is emphatically man. man cannot keep pace with a starting horse: but he can persevere, and beats him in the end. what an infinite variety of works is man by his corporeal form enabled to accomplish! in this respect he casts the whole creation behind him. what a machine is the human hand! when we analyse its parts and its uses, it appears to be the most consummate of our members. and yet there are other parts, that may maintain no mean rivalship against it. what a sublimity is to be attributed to his upright form! he is not fashioned, veluti pecora, quae natura prona atque ventri obedientia finxit. he is made coeli convexa tueri. the looks that are given him in his original structure, are "looks commercing with the skies." how surpassingly beautiful are the features of his countenance; the eyes, the nose, the mouth! how noble do they appear in a state of repose! with what never-ending variety and emphasis do they express the emotions of his mind! in the visage of man, uncorrupted and undebased, we read the frankness and ingenuousness of his soul, the clearness of his reflections, the penetration of his spirit. what a volume of understanding is unrolled in his broad, expanded, lofty brow! in his countenance we see expressed at one time sedate confidence and awful intrepidity, and at another godlike condescension and the most melting tenderness. who can behold the human eye, suddenly suffused with moisture, or gushing with tears unbid, and the quivering lip, without unspeakable emotion? shakespear talks of an eye, "whose bend could awe the world." what a miraculous thing is the human complexion! we are sent into the world naked, that all the variations of the blood might be made visible. however trite, i cannot avoid quoting here the lines of the most deep-thinking and philosophical of our poets: we understood her by her sight: her pure and eloquent blood spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, that one might almost say her body thought. what a curious phenomenon is that of blushing! it is impossible to witness this phenomenon without interest and sympathy. it comes at once, unanticipated by the person in whom we behold it. it comes from the soul, and expresses with equal certainty shame, modesty, and vivid, uncontrollable affection. it spreads, as it were in so many stages, over the cheeks, the brow, and the neck, of him or her in whom the sentiment that gives birth to it is working. thus far i have not mentioned speech, not perhaps the most inestimable of human gifts, but, if it is not that, it is at least the endowment, which makes man social, by which principally we impart our sentiments to each other, and which changes us from solitary individuals, and bestows on us a duplicate and multipliable existence. beside which it incalculably increases the perfection of one. the man who does not speak, is an unfledged thinker; and the man that does not write, is but half an investigator. not to enter into all the mysteries of articulate speech and the irresistible power of eloquence, whether addressed to a single hearer, or instilled into the ears of many,--a topic that belongs perhaps less to the chapter of body than mind,--let us for a moment fix our thoughts steadily upon that little implement, the human voice. of what unnumbered modulations is it susceptible! what terror may it inspire! how may it electrify the soul, and suspend all its functions! how infinite is its melody! how instantly it subdues the hearer to pity or to love! how does the listener hang upon every note praying that it may last for ever, ----that even silence was took ere she was ware, and wished she might deny her nature, and be never more, still to be so displaced. it is here especially that we are presented with the triumphs of civilisation. how immeasurable is the distance between the voice of the clown, who never thought of the power that dwells in this faculty, who delivers himself in a rude, discordant and unmodulated accent, and is accustomed to confer with his fellow at the distance of two fields, and the man who understands his instrument as handel understood the organ, and who, whether he thinks of it or no, sways those that hear him as implicitly as orpheus is said to have subdued the brute creation! from the countenance of man let us proceed to his figure. every limb is capable of speaking, and telling its own tale. what can equal the magnificence of the neck, the column upon which the head reposes! the ample chest may denote an almost infinite strength and power. let us call to mind the apollo belvidere, and the venus de medicis, whose very "bends are adornings." what loftiness and awe have i seen expressed in the step of an actress, not yet deceased, when first she advanced, and came down towards the audience! i was ravished, and with difficulty kept my seat! pass we to the mazes of the dance, the inimitable charms and picturesque beauty that may be given to the figure while still unmoved, and the ravishing grace that dwells in it during its endless changes and evolutions. the upright figure of man produces, incidentally as it were, and by the bye, another memorable effect. hence we derive the power of meeting in halls, and congregations, and crowded assemblies. we are found "at large, though without number," at solemn commemorations and on festive occasions. we touch each other, as the members of a gay party are accustomed to do, when they wait the stroke of an electrical machine, and the spark spreads along from man to man. it is thus that we have our feelings in common at a theatrical representation and at a public dinner, that indignation is communicated, and patriotism become irrepressible. one man can convey his sentiments in articulate speech to a thousand; and this is the nursing mother of oratory, of public morality, of public religion, and the drama. the privilege we thus possess, we are indeed too apt to abuse; but man is scarcely ever so magnificent and so awful, as when hundreds of human heads are assembled together, hundreds of faces lifted up to contemplate one object, and hundreds of voices uttered in the expression of one common sentiment. but, notwithstanding the infinite beauty, the magazine of excellencies and perfections, that appertains to the human body, the mind claims, and justly claims, an undoubted superiority. i am not going into an enumeration of the various faculties and endowments of the mind of man, as i have done of his body. the latter was necessary for my purpose. before i proceeded to consider the ascendancy of mind, the dominion and loftiness it is accustomed to assert, it appeared but just to recollect what was the nature and value of its subject and its slave. by the mind we understand that within us which feels and thinks, the seat of sensation and reason. where it resides we cannot tell, nor can authoritatively pronounce, as the apostle says, relatively to a particular phenomenon, "whether it is in the body, or out of the body." be it however where or what it may, it is this which constitutes the great essence of, and gives value to, our existence; and all the wonders of our microcosm would without it be a form only, destined immediately to perish, and of no greater account than as a clod of the valley. it was an important remark, suggested to me many years ago by an eminent physiologer and anatomist, that, when i find my attention called to any particular part or member of my body, i may be morally sure that there is something amiss in the processes of that part or member. as long as the whole economy of the frame goes on well and without interruption, our attention is not called to it. the intellectual man is like a disembodied spirit. he is almost in the state of the dervise in the arabian nights, who had the power of darting his soul into the unanimated body of another, human or brute, while he left his own body in the condition of an insensible carcase, till it should be revivified by the same or some other spirit. when i am, as it is vulgarly understood, in a state of motion, i use my limbs as the implements of my will. when, in a quiescent state of the body, i continue to think, to reflect and to reason, i use, it may be, the substance of the brain as the implement of my thinking, reflecting and reasoning; though of this in fact we know nothing. we have every reason to believe that the mind cannot subsist without the body; at least we must be very different creatures from what we are at present, when that shall take place. for a man to think, agreeably and with serenity, he must be in some degree of health. the corpus sanum is no less indispensible than the mens sana. we must eat, and drink, and sleep. we must have a reasonably good appetite and digestion, and a fitting temperature, neither too hot nor cold. it is desirable that we should have air and exercise. but this is instrumental merely. all these things are negatives, conditions without which we cannot think to the best purpose, but which lend no active assistance to our thinking. man is a godlike being. we launch ourselves in conceit into illimitable space, and take up our rest beyond the fixed stars. we proceed without impediment from country to country, and from century to century, through all the ages of the past, and through the vast creation of the imaginable future. we spurn at the bounds of time and space; nor would the thought be less futile that imagines to imprison the mind within the limits of the body, than the attempt of the booby clown who is said within a thick hedge to have plotted to shut in the flight of an eagle. we never find our attention called to any particular part or member of the body, except when there is somewhat amiss in that part or member. and, in like manner as we do not think of any one part or member in particular, so neither do we consider our entire microcosm and frame. the body is apprehended as no more important and of intimate connection to a man engaged in a train of reflections, than the house or apartment in which he dwells. the mind may aptly be described under the denomination of the "stranger at home." on set occasions and at appropriate times we examine our stores, and ascertain the various commodities we have, laid up in our presses and our coffers. like the governor of a fort in time of peace, which was erected to keep out a foreign assailant, we occasionally visit our armoury, and take account of the muskets, the swords, and other implements of war it contains, but for the most part are engaged in the occupations of peace, and do not call the means of warfare in any sort to our recollection. the mind may aptly be described under the denomination of the "stranger at home." with their bodies most men are little acquainted. we are "like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass, who beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he is." in the ruminations of the inner man, and the dissecting our thoughts and desires, we employ our intellectual arithmetic, we add, and subtract, and multiply, and divide, without asking the aid, without adverting to the existence, of our joints and members. even as to the more corporeal part of our avocations, we behold the external world, and proceed straight to the object of our desires, without almost ever thinking of this medium, our own material frame, unaided by which none of these things could be accomplished. in this sense we may properly be said to be spiritual existences, however imperfect may be the idea we are enabled to affix to the term spirit. hence arises the notion, which has been entertained ever since the birth of reflection and logical discourse in the world, and which in some faint and confused degree exists probably even among savages, that the body is the prison of the mind. it is in this sense that waller, after completing fourscore years of age, expresses himself in these affecting and interesting couplets. when we for age could neither read nor write, the subject made us able to indite. the soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, lets in new light by chinks that time hath made: stronger by weakness, wiser, men become, as they draw near to their eternal home. thus it is common with persons of elevated soul to talk of neglecting, overlooking, and taking small account of the body. it is in this spirit that the story is recorded of anaxarchus, who, we are told, was ordered by nicocreon, tyrant of salamis, to be pounded in a mortar, and who, in contempt of his mortal sufferings, exclaimed, "beat on, tyrant! thou dost but strike upon the case of anaxarchus; thou canst not touch the man himself." and it is in something of the same light that we must regard what is related of the north american savages. beings, who scoff at their tortures, must have an idea of something that lies beyond the reach of their assailants. it is just however to observe, that some of the particulars here related, belong not less to the brute creation than to man. if men are imperfectly acquainted with their external figure and appearance, this may well be conceived to be still more predicable of the inferior animals. it is true that all of them seem to be aware of the part in their structure, where lie their main strength and means of hostility. thus the bull attacks with his horns, and the horse with his heels, the beast of prey with his claws, the bird with his beak, and insects and other venomous creatures with their sting. we know not by what impulse they are prompted to the use of the various means which are so intimately connected with their preservation and welfare; and we call it instinct. we may be certain it does not arise from a careful survey of their parts and members, and a methodised selection of the means which shall be found most effectual for the accomplishment of their ends. there is no premeditation; and, without anatomical knowledge, or any distinct acquaintance with their image and likeness, they proceed straight to their purpose. hence, even as men, they are more familiar with the figures and appearance of their fellows, their allies, or their enemies, than with their own. man is a creature of mingled substance. i am many times a day compelled to acknowledge what a low, mean and contemptible being i am. philip of macedon had no need to give it in charge to a page, to repair to him every morning, and repeat, "remember, sir, you are a man." a variety of circumstances occur to us, while we eat, and drink, and submit to the humiliating necessities of nature, that may well inculcate into us this salutary lesson. the wonder rather is, that man, who has so many things to put him in mind to be humble and despise himself, should ever have been susceptible of pride and disdain. nebuchadnezzar must indeed have been the most besotted of mortals, if it were necessary that he should be driven from among men, and made to eat grass like an ox, to convince him that he was not the equal of the power that made him. but fortunately, as i have said, man is a "stranger at home." were it not for this, how incomprehensible would be the ceremony that to great ones 'longs, the monarch's crown, and the deputed sword, the marshal's truncheon, and the judge's robe! how ludicrous would be the long procession and the caparisoned horse, the gilded chariot and the flowing train, the colours flying, the drums beating, and the sound of trumpets rending the air, which after all only introduce to us an ordinary man, no otherwise perhaps distinguished from the vilest of the ragged spectators, than by the accident of his birth! but what is of more importance in the temporary oblivion we are enabled to throw over the refuse of the body, it is thus we arrive at the majesty of man. that sublimity of conception which renders the poet, and the man of great literary and original endowments "in apprehension like a god," we could not have, if we were not privileged occasionally to cast away the slough and exuviae of the body from incumbering and dishonouring us, even as ulysses passed over his threshold, stripped of the rags that had obscured him, while minerva enlarged his frame, and gave loftiness to his stature, added a youthful beauty and grace to his motions, and caused his eyes to flash with more than mortal fire. with what disdain, when i have been rapt in the loftiest moods of mind, do i look down upon my limbs, the house of clay that contains me, the gross flesh and blood of which my frame is composed, and wonder at a lodging, poorly fitted to entertain so divine a guest! a still more important chapter in the history of the human mind has its origin in these considerations. hence it is that unenlightened man, in almost all ages and countries, has been induced, independently of divine revelation, to regard death, the most awful event to which we are subject, as not being the termination of his existence. we see the body of our friend become insensible, and remain without motion, or any external indication of what we call life. we can shut it up in an apartment, and visit it from day to day. if we had perseverance enough, and could so far conquer the repugnance and humiliating feeling with which the experiment would be attended, we might follow step by step the process of decomposition and putrefaction, and observe by what degrees the "dust returned unto earth as it was." but, in spite of this demonstration of the senses, man still believes that there is something in him that lives after death. the mind is so infinitely superior in character to this case of flesh that incloses it, that he cannot persuade himself that it and the body perish together. there are two considerations, the force of which made man a religious animal. the first is, his proneness to ascribe hostility or benevolent intention to every thing of a memorable sort that occurs to him in the order of nature. the second is that of which i have just treated, the superior dignity of mind over body. this, we persuade ourselves, shall subsist uninjured by the mutations of our corporeal frame, and undestroyed by the wreck of the material universe. essay ii. of the distribution of talents. {greek--omitted} thucydides, lib.i, cap. . section i. presumed dearth of intellectual power.--schools for the education of youth considered.--the boy and the man compared. one of the earliest judgments that is usually made by those whose attention is turned to the characters of men in the social state, is of the great inequality with which the gifts of the understanding are distributed among us. go into a miscellaneous society; sit down at table with ten or twelve men; repair to a club where as many are assembled in an evening to relax from the toils of the day--it is almost proverbial, that one or two of these persons will perhaps be brilliant, and the rest "weary, stale, flat and unprofitable." go into a numerous school--the case will be still more striking. i have been present where two men of superior endowments endeavoured to enter into a calculation on the subject; and they agreed that there was not above one boy in a hundred, who would be found to possess a penetrating understanding, and to be able to strike into a path of intellect that was truly his own. how common is it to hear the master of such a school say, "aye, i am proud of that lad; i have been a schoolmaster these thirty years, and have never had such another!" the society above referred to, the dinner-party, or the club, was to a considerable degree select, brought together by a certain supposed congeniality between the individuals thus assembled. were they taken indiscriminately, as boys are when consigned to the care of a schoolmaster, the proportion of the brilliant would not be a whit greater than in the latter case. a main criterion of the superiority of the schoolboy will be found in his mode of answering a casual question proposed by the master. the majority will be wholly at fault, will shew that they do not understand the question, and will return an answer altogether from the purpose. one in a hundred perhaps, perhaps in a still less proportion, will reply in a laudable manner, and convey his ideas in perspicuous and spirited language. it does not certainly go altogether so ill, with men grown up to years of maturity. they do not for the most part answer a plain question in a manner to make you wonder at their fatuity. a main cause of the disadvantageous appearance exhibited by the ordinary schoolboy, lies in what we denominate sheepishness. he is at a loss, and in the first place stares at you, instead of giving an answer. he does not make by many degrees so poor a figure among his equals, as when he is addressed by his seniors. one of the reasons of the latter phenomenon consists in the torpedo effect of what we may call, under the circumstances, the difference of ranks. the schoolmaster is a despot to his scholar; for every man is a despot, who delivers his judgment from the single impulse of his own will. the boy answers his questioner, as dolon answers ulysses in the iliad, at the point of the sword. it is to a certain degree the same thing, when the boy is questioned merely by his senior. he fears he knows not what,--a reprimand, a look of lofty contempt, a gesture of summary disdain. he does not think it worth his while under these circumstances, to "gird up the loins of his mind." he cannot return a free and intrepid answer but to the person whom he regards as his equal. there is nothing that has so disqualifying an effect upon him who is to answer, as the consideration that he who questions is universally acknowledged to be a being of a higher sphere, or, as between the boy and the man, that he is the superior in conventional and corporal strength. nor is it simple terror that restrains the boy from answering his senior with the same freedom and spirit, as he would answer his equal. he does not think it worth his while to enter the lists. he despairs of doing the thing in the way that shall gain approbation, and therefore will not try. he is like a boxer, who, though skilful, will not fight with one hand tied behind him. he would return you the answer, if it occurred without his giving himself trouble; but he will not rouse his soul, and task his strength to give it. he is careless; and prefers trusting to whatever construction you may put upon him, and whatever treatment you may think proper to bestow upon him. it is the most difficult thing in the world, for the schoolmaster to inspire into his pupil the desire to do his best. among full-grown men the case is different. the schoolboy, whether under his domestic roof, or in the gymnasium, is in a situation similar to that of the christian slaves in algiers, as described by cervantes in his history of the captive. "they were shut up together in a species of bagnio, from whence they were brought out from time to time to perform certain tasks in common: they might also engage in pranks, and get into scrapes, as they pleased; but the master would hang up one, impale another, and cut off the ears of a third, for little occasion, or even wholly without it." such indeed is the condition of the child almost from the hour of birth. the severities practised upon him are not so great as those resorted to by the proprietor of slaves in algiers; but they are equally arbitrary and without appeal. he is free to a certain extent, even as the captives described by cervantes; but his freedom is upon sufferance, and is brought to an end at any time at the pleasure of his seniors. the child therefore feels his way, and ascertains by repeated experiments how far he may proceed with impunity. he is like the slaves of the romans on the days of the saturnalia. he may do what he pleases, and command tasks to his masters, but with this difference--the roman slave knew when the days of his licence would be over, and comported himself accordingly; but the child cannot foresee at any moment when the bell will be struck, and the scene reversed. it is commonly enough incident to this situation, that the being who is at the mercy of another, will practise, what tacitus calls, a "vernacular urbanity," make his bold jests, and give utterance to his saucy innuendoes, with as much freedom as the best; but he will do it with a wary eye, not knowing how soon he may feel his chain plucked! and himself compulsorily reduced into the established order. his more usual refuge therefore is, to do nothing, and to wrap himself up in that neutrality towards his seniors, that may best protect him from their reprimand and their despotism. the condition of the full-grown man is different from that of the child, and he conducts himself accordingly. he is always to a certain degree under the control of the political society of which he is a member. he is also exposed to the chance of personal insult and injury from those who are stronger than he, or who may render their strength more considerable by combination and numbers. the political institutions which control him in certain respects, protect him also to a given degree from the robber and assassin, or from the man who, were it not for penalties and statutes, would perpetrate against him all the mischiefs which malignity might suggest. civil policy however subjects him to a variety of evils, which wealth or corruption are accustomed to inflict under the forms of justice; at the same time that it can never wholly defend him from those violences to which he would be every moment exposed in what is called the state of nature. the full-grown man in the mean time is well pleased when he escapes from the ergastulum where he had previously dwelt, and in which he had experienced corporal infliction and corporal restraint. at first, in the newness of his freedom, he breaks out into idle sallies and escapes, and is like the full-fed steed that manifests his wantonness in a thousand antics and ruades. but this is a temporary extravagance. he presently becomes as wise and calculating, as the schoolboy was before him. the human being then, that has attained a certain stature, watches and poises his situation, and considers what he may do with impunity. he ventures at first with no small diffidence, and pretends to be twice as assured as he really is. he accumulates experiment after experiment, till they amount to a considerable volume. it is not till he has passed successive lustres, that he attains that firm step, and temperate and settled accent, which characterise the man complete. he then no longer doubts, but is ranged on the full level of the ripened members of the community. there is therefore little room for wonder, if we find the same individual, whom we once knew a sheepish and irresolute schoolboy, that hung his head, that replied with inarticulated monotony, and stammered out his meaning, metamorphosed into a thoroughly manly character, who may take his place on the bench with senators, and deliver a grave and matured opinion as well as the best. it appears then that the trial and review of full-grown men is not altogether so disadvantageous to the reckoning of our common nature, as that of boys at school. it is not however, that the full-grown man is not liable to be checked, reprimanded and rebuked, even as the schoolboy is. he has his wife to read him lectures, and rap his knuckles; he has his master, his landlord, or the mayor of his village, to tell him of his duty in an imperious style, and in measured sentences; if he is a member of a legislature, even there he receives his lessons, and is told, either in phrases of well-conceived irony, or by the exhibition of facts and reasonings which take him by surprise, that he is not altogether the person he deemed himself to be. but he does not mind it. like iago in the play, he "knows his price, and, by the faith of man, that he is worth no worse a place" than that which he occupies. he finds out the value of the check he receives, and lets it "pass by him like the idle wind"--a mastery, which the schoolboy, however he may affect it, never thoroughly attains to. but it unfortunately happens, that, before he has arrived at that degree of independence, the fate of the individual is too often decided for ever. how are the majority of men trampled in the mire, made "hewers of wood, and drawers of water," long, very long, before there was an opportunity of ascertaining what it was of which they were capable! thus almost every one is put in the place which by nature he was least fit for: and, while perhaps a sufficient quantity of talent is extant in each successive generation, yet, for want of each man's being duly estimated, and assigned his appropriate duty, the very reverse may appear to be the case. by the time that they have attained to that sober self-confidence that might enable them to assert themselves, they are already chained to a fate, or thrust down to a condition, from which no internal energies they possess can ever empower them to escape. section ii. equality of man with man.--talents extensively distributed.--way in which this distribution is counteracted.--the aptitude of children for different pursuits should be early sought out.--hints for a better system of education.--ambition an universal principle. the reflections thus put down, may assist us in answering the question as to the way in which talents are distributed among men by the hand of nature. all things upon the earth and under the earth, and especially all organised bodies of the animal or vegetable kingdom, fall into classes. it is by this means, that the child no sooner learns the terms, man, horse, tree, flower, than, if an object of any of these kinds which he has never seen before, is exhibited to him, he pronounces without hesitation, this is a man, a horse, a tree, a flower. all organised bodies of the animal or vegetable kingdom are cast in a mould of given dimension and feature belonging to a certain number of individuals, though distinguished by inexhaustible varieties. it is by means of those features that the class of each individual is determined. to confine ourselves to man. all men, the monster and the lusus naturae excepted, have a certain form, a certain complement of limbs, a certain internal structure, and organs of sense--may we not add further, certain powers of intellect? hence it seems to follow, that man is more like and more equal to man, deformities of body and abortions of intellect excepted, than the disdainful and fastidious censors of our common nature are willing to admit. i am inclined to believe, that, putting idiots and extraordinary cases out of the question, every human creature is endowed with talents, which, if rightly directed, would shew him to be apt, adroit, intelligent and acute, in the walk for which his organisation especially fitted him. but the practices and modes of civilised life prompt us to take the inexhaustible varieties of man, as he is given into our guardianship by the bountiful hand of nature, and train him in one uniform exercise, as the raw recruit is treated when he is brought under the direction of his drill-serjeant. the son of the nobleman, of the country-gentleman, and of those parents who from vanity or whatever other motive are desirous that their offspring should be devoted to some liberal profession, is in nearly all instances sent to the grammar-school. it is in this scene principally, that the judgment is formed that not above one boy in a hundred possesses an acute understanding, or will be able to strike into a path of intellect that shall be truly his own. i do not object to this destination, if temperately pursued. it is fit that as many children as possible should have their chance of figuring in future life in what are called the higher departments of intellect. a certain familiar acquaintance with language and the shades of language as a lesson, will be beneficial to all. the youth who has expended only six months in acquiring the rudiments of the latin tongue, will probably be more or less the better for it in all his future life. but seven years are usually spent at the grammar-school by those who are sent to it. i do not in many cases object to this. the learned languages are assuredly of slow acquisition. in the education of those who are destined to what are called the higher departments of intellect, a long period may advantageously be spent in the study of words, while the progress they make in theory and dogmatical knowledge is too generally a store of learning laid up, to be unlearned again when they reach the period of real investigation and independent judgment. there is small danger of this in the acquisition of words. but this method, indiscriminately pursued as it is now, is productive of the worst consequences. very soon a judgment may be formed by the impartial observer, whether the pupil is at home in the study of the learned languages, and is likely to make an adequate progress. but parents are not impartial. there are also two reasons why the schoolmaster is not the proper person to pronounce: first, because, if he pronounces in the negative, he will have reason to fear that the parent will be offended; and secondly, because he does not like to lose his scholar. but the very moment that it can be ascertained, that the pupil is not at home in the study of the learned languages, and is unlikely to make an adequate progress, at that moment he should be taken from it. the most palpable deficiency that is to be found in relation to the education of children, is a sound judgment to be formed as to the vocation or employment in which each is most fitted to excel. as, according to the institutions of lycurgus, as soon as a boy was born, he was visited by the elders of the ward, who were to decide whether he was to be reared, and would be made an efficient member of the commonwealth, so it were to be desired that, as early as a clear discrimination on the subject might be practicable, a competent decision should be given as to the future occupation and destiny of a child. but this is a question attended with no common degree of difficulty. to the resolving such a question with sufficient evidence, a very considerable series of observations would become necessary. the child should be introduced into a variety of scenes, and a magazine, so to speak, of those things about which human industry and skill may be employed, should be successively set before him. the censor who is to decide on the result of the whole, should be a person of great sagacity, and capable of pronouncing upon a given amount of the most imperfect and incidental indications. he should be clear-sighted, and vigilant to observe the involuntary turns of an eye, expressions of a lip, and demonstrations of a limb. the declarations of the child himself are often of very small use in the case. he may be directed by an impulse, which occurs in the morning, and vanishes in the evening. his preferences change as rapidly as the shapes we sometimes observe in the evening clouds, and are governed by whim or fantasy, and not by any of those indications which are parcel of his individual constitution. he desires in many instances to be devoted to a particular occupation, because his playfellow has been assigned to it before him. the parent is not qualified to judge in this fundamental question, because he is under the dominion of partiality, and wishes that his child may become a lord chancellor, an archbishop, or any thing else, the possessor of which condition shall be enabled to make a splendid figure in the world. he is not qualified, because he is an interested party, and, either from an exaggerated estimate of his child's merits, or from a selfish shrinking from the cost it might require to mature them, is anxious to arrive at a conclusion not founded upon the intrinsic claims of the case to be considered. even supposing it to be sufficiently ascertained in what calling it is that the child will be most beneficially engaged, a thousand extrinsical circumstances will often prevent that from being the calling chosen. nature distributes her gifts without any reference to the distinctions of artificial society. the genius that demanded the most careful and assiduous cultivation, that it might hereafter form the boast and ornament of the world, will be reared amidst the chill blasts of poverty; while he who was best adapted to make an exemplary carpenter or artisan, by being the son of a nobleman is thrown a thousand fathoms wide of his true destination. human creatures are born into the world with various dispositions. according to the memorable saying of themistocles, one man can play upon a psaltery or harp, and another can by political skill and ingenuity convert a town of small account, weak and insignificant, into a city noble, magnificent and great. it is comparatively a very little way that we can penetrate into the mysteries of nature. music seems to be one of the faculties most clearly defined in early youth. the child who has received that destination from the hands of nature, will even in infancy manifest a singular delight in musical sounds, and will in no long time imitate snatches of a tune. the present professor of music in the university of oxford contrived for himself, i believe at three years old, a way for playing on an instrument, the piano forte, unprompted by any of the persons about him. this is called having an ear. instances nearly as precocious are related of persons, who afterwards distinguished themselves in the art of painting. these two kinds of original destination appear to be placed beyond the reach of controversy. horace says, the poet is born a poet, and cannot be made so by the ingenuity of art: and this seems to be true. he sees the objects about him with an eye peculiarly his own; the sounds that reach his ear, produce an effect upon him, and leave a memory behind, different from that which is experienced by his fellows. his perceptions have a singular vividness. the poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; and his imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, it is not probable that any trainings of art can give these endowments to him who has not received them from the gift of nature. the subtle network of the brain, or whatever else it is, that makes a man more fit for, and more qualified to succeed in, one occupation than another, can scarcely be followed up and detected either in the living subject or the dead one. but, as in the infinite variety of human beings no two faces are so alike that they cannot be distinguished, nor even two leaves plucked from the same tree( ), so it may reasonably be presumed, that there are varieties in the senses, the organs, and the internal structure of the human species, however delicate, and to the touch of the bystander evanescent, which may give to each individual a predisposition to rise to a supreme degree of excellence in some certain art or attainment, over a million of competitors. ( ) papers between clarke and leibnitz, p. . it has been said that all these distinctions and anticipations are idle, because man is born without innate ideas. whatever is the incomprehensible and inexplicable power, which we call nature, to which he is indebted for his formation, it is groundless to suppose, that that power is cognisant of, and guides itself in its operations by, the infinite divisibleness of human pursuits in civilised society. a child is not designed by his original formation to be a manufacturer of shoes, for he may be born among a people by whom shoes are not worn, and still less is he destined by his structure to be a metaphysician, an astronomer, or a lawyer, a rope-dancer, a fortune-teller, or a juggler. it is true that we cannot suppose nature to be guided in her operations by the infinite divisibleness of human pursuits in civilised society. but it is not the less true that one man is by his structure best fitted to excel in some one in particular of these multifarious pursuits, however fortuitously his individual structure and that pursuit may be brought into contact. thus a certain calmness and steadiness of purpose, much flexibility, and a very accurate proportion of the various limbs of the body, are of great advantage in rope-dancing; while lightness of the fingers, and a readiness to direct our thoughts to the rapid execution of a purpose, joined with a steadiness of countenance adapted to what is figuratively called throwing dust in the eyes of the bystander, are of the utmost importance to the juggler: and so of the rest. it is as much the temper of the individual, as any particular subtlety of organ or capacity, that prepares him to excel in one pursuit rather than a thousand others. and he must have been a very inattentive observer of the indications of temper in an infant in the first months of his existence, who does not confess that there are various peculiarities in that respect which the child brings into the world with him. there is excellent sense in the fable of achilles in the island of scyros. he was placed there by his mother in female attire among the daughters of lycomedes, that he might not be seduced to engage in the trojan war. ulysses was commissioned to discover him, and, while he exhibited jewels and various woman's ornaments to the princesses, contrived to mix with his stores a suit of armour, the sight of which immediately awakened the spirit of the hero. every one has probably within him a string more susceptible than the rest, that demands only a kindred impression to be made, to call forth its latent character. like the war-horse described in the book of job: "he paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength; he goeth on to meet the armed men; he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting." nothing can be more unlike than the same man to himself, when he is touched, and not touched, upon the master-string that makes most harmony or discord to him. it is like the case of manlius torquatus in livy, who by his father was banished among his hinds for his clownish demeanour and untractableness to every species of instruction that was offered him, but who, understanding that his parent was criminally arraigned for barbarous treatment of him, first resolutely resorted to the accuser, compelling him upon pain of death to withdraw his accusation, and subsequently, having surmounted this first step towards an energetic carriage and demeanour, proved one of the most illustrious characters that the roman republic had to boast. those children whose parents have no intention of training them to the highest departments of intellect, and have therefore no thought of bestowing on them a classical education, nevertheless for the most part send them to a school where they are to be taught arithmetic, and the principles of english grammar. i should say in this case, as i said before on the subject of classical education, that a certain initiation in these departments of knowledge, even if they are pursued a very little way, will probably be beneficial to all. but it will often be found, in these schools for more ordinary education, as in the school for classical instruction, that the majority of the pupils will be seen to be unpromising, and, what is usually called, dull. the mistake is, that the persons by whom this is perceived, are disposed to set aside these pupils as blockheads, and unsusceptible of any species of ingenuity. it is unreasonable that we should draw such a conclusion. in the first place, as has been already observed, it is the most difficult thing in the world for the schoolmaster to inspire into his pupil the desire to do his best. an overwhelming majority of lads at school are in their secret hearts rebels to the discipline under which they are placed. the instructor draws, one way, and the pupil another. the object of the latter is to find out how he may escape censure and punishment with the smallest expence of scholastic application. he looks at the task that is set him, without the most distant desire of improvement, but with alienated and averted eye. and, where this is the case, the wonder is not that he does not make a brilliant figure. it is rather an evidence of the slavish and subservient spirit incident to the majority of human beings, that he learns any thing. certainly the schoolmaster, who judges of the powers of his pupil's mind by the progress he makes in what he would most gladly be excused from learning, must be expected perpetually to fall into the most egregious mistakes. the true test of the capacity of the individual, is where the desire to succeed, and accomplish something effective, is already awakened in the youthful mind. whoever has found out what it is in which he is qualified to excel, from that moment becomes a new creature. the general torpor and sleep of the soul, which is incident to the vast multitude of the human species, is departed from him. we begin, from the hour in which our limbs are enabled to exert themselves freely, with a puerile love of sport. amusement is the order of the day. but no one was ever so fond of play, that he had not also his serious moments. every human creature perhaps is sensible to the stimulus of ambition. he is delighted with the thought that he also shall be somebody, and not a mere undistinguished pawn, destined to fill up a square in the chess-board of human society. he wishes to be thought something of, and to be gazed upon. nor is it merely the wish to be admired that excites him: he acts, that he may be satisfied with himself. self-respect is a sentiment dear to every heart. the emotion can with difficulty be done justice to, that a man feels, who is conscious that he is breathing his true element, that every stroke that he strikes will have the effect he designs, that he has an object before him, and every moment approaches nearer to that object. before, he was wrapped in an opake cloud, saw nothing distinctly, and struck this way and that at hazard like a blind man. but now the sun of understanding has risen upon him; and every step that he takes, he advances with an assured and undoubting confidence. it is an admirable remark, that the book which we read at the very time that we feel a desire to read it, affords us ten times the improvement, that we should have derived from it when it was taken up by us as a task. it is just so with the man who chooses his occupation, and feels assured that that about which he is occupied is his true and native field. compare this person with the boy that studies the classics, or arithmetic, or any thing else, with a secret disinclination, and, as shakespear expresses it, "creeps like snail, unwillingly, to school." they do not seem as if they belonged to the same species. the result of these observations certainly strongly tends to support the proposition laid down early in the present essay, that, putting idiots and extraordinary cases out of the question, every human creature is endowed with talents, which, if rightly directed, would shew him to be apt, adroit, intelligent and acute, in the walk for which his organisation especially fitted him. section iii. encouraging view of our common nature.--power of sound exposition afforded to all.--doctrine of this essay and the hypothesis of helvetius compared.--the willing and unwilling pupil contrasted.--mischievous tendency of the usual modes of education. what a beautiful and encouraging view is thus afforded us of our common nature! it is not true, as certain disdainful and fastidious censurers of their fellow-men would persuade us to believe, that a thousand seeds are sown in the wide field of humanity, for no other purpose than that half-a-dozen may grow up into something magnificent and splendid, and that the rest, though not absolutely extinguished in the outset, are merely suffered to live that they may furnish manure and nourishment to their betters. on the contrary, each man, according to this hypothesis, has a sphere in which he may shine, and may contemplate the exercise of his own powers with a well-grounded satisfaction. he produces something as perfect in its kind, as that which is effected under another form by the more brilliant and illustrious of his species. he stands forward with a serene confidence in the ranks of his fellow-creatures, and says, "i also have my place in society, that i fill in a manner with which i have a right to be satisfied." he vests a certain portion of ingenuity in the work he turns out. he incorporates his mind with the labour of his hands; and a competent observer will find character and individuality in it. he has therefore nothing of the sheepishness of the ordinary schoolboy, the tasks imposed upon whom by his instructor are foreign to the true bent of his mind, and who stands cowed before his seniors, shrinking under the judgment they may pass upon him, and the oppression they may exercise towards him. he is probably competent to talk in a manner that may afford instruction to men in other respects wise and accomplished, and is no less clear and well-digested in his discourse respecting the subjects to which his study and labour have been applied, than they are on the questions that have exercised the powers of analysis with which they are endowed. like elihu in the book of job, he says, "i am young, and you are old; i said therefore, days shall speak, and multitude of years shall teach wisdom. but there is a spirit in man; and the inspiration of the almighty giveth him understanding. great men are not always wise; neither do the aged understand judgment. hearken therefore to me; and i also will shew my opinion." what however in the last instance is affirmed, is not always realised in the experiment. the humblest mechanic, who works con amore, and feels that he discharges his office creditably, has a sober satisfaction in the retrospect, and is able to express himself perspicuously and well on the subject that has occupied his industry. he has a just confidence in himself. if the occasion arises, on which he should speak on the subject of what he does, and the methods he adopts for effecting it, he will undoubtedly acquit himself to the satisfaction of those who hear him. he knows that the explanations he can afford will be sound and masculine, and will stand the test of a rigid examination. but, in proportion as he feels the ground on which he stands, and his own power to make it good, he will not fail to retire from an audience that is not willing to be informed by him. he will often appear in the presence of those, whom the established arrangements of society call his superiors, who are more copiously endowed with the treasures of language, and who, confident perhaps in the advantage of opulence, and what is called, however they may have received it, a liberal education, regard with disdain his artless and unornamented explanations. he did not, it may be, expect this. and, having experienced several times such unmerited treatment, he is not willing again to encounter it. he knew the worth of what he had to offer. and, finding others indisposed to listen to his suggestions, he contentedly confines them within the circle of his own thoughts. to this it must be added that, though he is able to explain himself perspicuously, yet he is not master of the graces of speech, nor even perhaps of the niceties of grammar. his voice is not tuned to those winning inflections by which men, accustomed to the higher ranks of society, are enabled so to express themselves, that aged ears play truant at their tales, and younger hearings are quite ravished, so sweet and voluble is their discourse. on the contrary there is a ruggedness in his manner that jars upon the sense. it is easy for the light and supercilious to turn him into ridicule. and those who will not be satisfied with the soundness of his matter, expounded, as he is able to expound it, in clear and appropriate terms, will yield him small credit, and listen to him with little delight. these considerations therefore bring us back again to the reasons of the prevalent opinion, that the majority of mankind are dull, and of apprehension narrow and confused. the mass of boys in the process of their education appear so, because little of what is addressed to them by their instructors, awakens their curiosity, and inspires them with the desire to excel. the concealed spark of ambition is not yet cleared from the crust that enveloped it as it first came from the hand of nature. and in like manner the elder persons, who have not experienced the advantages of a liberal education, or by whom small profit was made by those advantages, being defective in exterior graces, are generally listened to with impatience, and therefore want the confidence and the inclination to tell what they know. but these latter, if they are not attended to upon the subjects to which their attention and ingenuity have been applied, do not the less possess a knowledge and skill which are intrinsically worthy of applause. they therefore contentedly shut up the sum of their acquisitions in their own bosoms, and are satisfied with the consciousness that they have not been deficient in performing an adequate part in the generation of men among whom they live. those persons who favour the opinion of the incessant improveableness of the human species, have felt strongly prompted to embrace the creed of helvetius, who affirms that the minds of men, as they are born into the world, are in a state of equality, alike prepared for any kind of discipline and instruction that may be afforded them, and that it depends upon education only, in the largest sense of that word, including every impression that may be made upon the mind, intentional or accidental, from the hour of our birth, whether we shall be poets or philosophers, dancers or singers, chemists or mathematicians, astronomers or dissectors of the faculties of our common nature. but this is not true. it has already appeared in the course of this essay, that the talent, or, more accurately speaking, the original suitableness of the individual for the cultivation, of music or painting, depends upon certain peculiarities that we bring into the world with us. the same thing may be affirmed of the poet. as, in the infinite variety of human beings, there are no two faces so alike that they cannot be distinguished, nor even two leaves plucked from the same tree, so there are varieties in the senses, the organs, and the internal structure of the human species, however delicate, and to the touch of the bystander evanescent, which give to each individual a predisposition to rise to excellence in one particular art or attainment, rather than in any other. and this view of things, if well considered, is as favourable, nay, more so, to the hypothesis of the successive improveableness of the human species, as the creed of helvetius. according to that philosopher, every human creature that is born into the world, is capable of becoming, or being made, the equal of homer, bacon or newton, and as easily and surely of the one as the other. this creed, if sincerely embraced, no doubt affords a strong stimulus to both preceptor and pupil, since, if true, it teaches us that any thing can be made of any thing, and that, wherever there is mind, it is within the compass of possibility, not only that that mind can be raised to a high pitch of excellence, but even to a high pitch of that excellence, whatever it is, that we shall prefer to all others, and most earnestly desire. still this creed will, after all, leave both preceptor and pupil in a state of feeling considerably unsatisfactory. what it sets before us, is too vast and indefinite. we shall be left long perhaps in a state of balance as to what species of excellence we shall choose; and, in the immense field of accessible improvement it offers to us, without land-mark or compass for the direction of our course, it is scarcely possible that we should feel that assured confidence and anticipation of success, which are perhaps indispensibly required to the completion of a truly arduous undertaking. but, upon the principles laid down in this essay, the case is widely different. we are here presented in every individual human creature with a subject better fitted for one sort of cultivation than another. we are excited to an earnest study of the individual, that we may the more unerringly discover what pursuit it is for which his nature and qualifications especially prepare him. we may be long in choosing. we may be even on the brink of committing a considerable mistake. our subsequent observations may enable us to correct the inference we were disposed to make from those which went before. our sagacity is flattered by the result of the laborious scrutiny which this view of our common nature imposes upon us. in addition to this we reap two important advantages. in the first place, we feel assured that every child that is born has his suitable sphere, to which if he is devoted, he will not fail to make an honourable figure, or, in other words, will be seen to be endowed with faculties, apt, adroit, intelligent and acute. this consideration may reasonably stimulate us to call up all our penetration for the purpose of ascertaining the proper destination of the child for whom we are interested. and, secondly, having arrived at this point, we shall find ourselves placed in a very different predicament from the guardian or instructor, who, having selected at random the pursuit which his fancy dictates, and in the choice of which he is encouraged by the presumptuous assertions of a wild metaphysical philosophy, must often, in spite of himself, feel a secret misgiving as to the final event. he may succeed, and present to a wondering world a consummate musician, painter, poet, or philosopher; for even blind chance may sometimes hit the mark, as truly as the most perfect skill. but he will probably fail. sudet multum, frustraque laboret. and, if he is disappointed, he will not only feel that disappointment in the ultimate result, but also in every step of his progress. when he has done his best, exerted his utmost industry, and consecrated every power of his soul to the energies he puts forth, he may close every day, sometimes with a faint shadow of success, and sometimes with entire and blank miscarriage. and the latter will happen ten thousand times, for once that the undertaking shall be blessed with a prosperous event. but, when the destination that is given to a child has been founded upon a careful investigation of the faculties, tokens, and accidental aspirations which characterise his early years, it is then that every step that is made with him, becomes a new and surer source of satisfaction. the moment the pursuit for which his powers are adapted is seriously proposed to him, his eyes sparkle, and a second existence, in addition to that which he received at his birth, descends upon him. he feels that he has now obtained something worth living for. he feels that he is at home, and in a sphere that is appropriately his own. every effort that he makes is successful. at every resting-place in his race of improvement he pauses, and looks back on what he has done with complacency. the master cannot teach him so fast, as he is prompted to acquire. what a contrast does this species of instruction exhibit, to the ordinary course of scholastic education! there, every lesson that is prescribed, is a source of indirect warfare between the instructor and the pupil, the one professing to aim at the advancement of him that is taught, in the career of knowledge, and the other contemplating the effect that is intended to be produced upon him with aversion, and longing to be engaged in any thing else, rather than in that which is pressed upon his foremost attention. in this sense a numerous school is, to a degree that can scarcely be adequately described, the slaughter-house of mind. it is like the undertaking, related by livy, of accius navius, the augur, to cut a whetstone with a razor--with this difference, that our modern schoolmasters are not endowed with the gift of working miracles, and, when the experiment falls into their hands, the result of their efforts is a pitiful miscarriage. knowledge is scarcely in any degree imparted. but, as they are inured to a dogged assiduity, and persist in their unavailing attempts, though the shell of science, so to speak, is scarcely in the smallest measure penetrated, yet that inestimable gift of the author of our being, the sharpness of human faculties, is so blunted and destroyed, that it can scarcely ever be usefully employed even for those purposes which it was originally best qualified to effect. a numerous school is that mint from which the worst and most flagrant libels on our nature are incessantly issued. hence it is that we are taught, by a judgment everlastingly repeated, that the majority of our kind are predestinated blockheads. not that it is by any means to be recommended, that a little writing and arithmetic, and even the first rudiments of classical knowledge, so far as they can be practicably imparted, should be withheld from any. the mischief is, that we persist, month after month, and year after year, in sowing our seed, when it has already been fully ascertained, that no suitable and wholsome crop will ever be produced. but what is perhaps worse is, that we are accustomed to pronounce, that that soil, which will not produce the crop of which we have attempted to make it fertile, is fit for nothing. the majority of boys, at the very period when the buds of intellect begin to unfold themselves, are so accustomed to be told that they are dull and fit for nothing, that the most pernicious effects are necessarily produced. they become half convinced by the ill-boding song of the raven, perpetually croaking in their ears; and, for the other half, though by no means assured that the sentence of impotence awarded against them is just, yet, folding up their powers in inactivity, they are contented partly to waste their energies in pure idleness and sport, and partly to wait, with minds scarcely half awake, for the moment when their true destination shall be opened before them. not that it is by any means to be desired that the child in his earlier years should meet with no ruggednesses in his way, and that he should perpetually tread "the primrose path of dalliance." clouds and tempests occasionally clear the atmosphere of intellect, not less than that of the visible world. the road to the hill of science, and to the promontory of heroic virtue, is harsh and steep, and from time to time puts to the proof the energies of him who would ascend their topmost round. there are many things which every human creature should learn, so far as, agreeably to the constitution of civilised society, they can be brought within his reach. he should be induced to learn them, willingly if possible, but, if that cannot be thoroughly effected, yet with half a will. such are reading, writing, arithmetic, and the first principles of grammar; to which shall be added, as far as may be, the rudiments of all the sciences that are in ordinary use. the latter however should not be brought forward too soon; and, if wisely delayed, the tyro himself will to a certain degree enter into the views of his instructor, and be disposed to essay quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent. but, above all, the beginnings of those studies should be encouraged, which unfold the imagination, familiarise us with the feelings, the joys and sufferings of our fellow-beings, and teach us to put ourselves in their place and eagerly fly to their assistance. section iv. how far our genuine propensities and vocation should be favoured.--self-reverence recommended.--conclusion. i knew a man of eminent intellectual faculties( ), one of whose favourite topics of moral prudence was, that it is the greatest mistake in the world to suppose, that, when we have discovered the special aspiration of the youthful mind, we are bound to do every thing in our power to assist its progress. he maintained on the contrary, that it is our true wisdom to place obstacles in its way, and to thwart it: as we may be well assured that, unless it is a mere caprice, it will shew its strength in conquering difficulties, and that all the obstacles that we can conjure up will but inspire it with the greater earnestness to attain final success. ( ) henry fuseli. the maxim here stated, taken to an unlimited extent, is doubtless a very dangerous one. there are obstacles that scarcely any strength of man would be sufficient to conquer. "chill penury" will sometimes "repress the noblest rage," that almost ever animated a human spirit: and our wisest course will probably be, secretly to favour, even when we seem most to oppose, the genuine bent of the youthful aspirer. but the thing of greatest importance is, that we should not teach him to estimate his powers at too low a rate. one of the wisest of all the precepts comprised in what are called the golden verses of pythagoras, is that, in which he enjoins his pupil to "reverence himself." ambition is the noblest root that can be planted in the garden of the human soul: not the ambition to be applauded and admired, to be famous and looked up to, to be the darling theme of "stupid starers and of loud huzzas;" but the ambition to fill a respectable place in the theatre of society, to be useful and to be esteemed, to feel that we have not lived in vain, and that we are entitled to the most honourable of all dismissions, an enlightened self-approbation. and nothing can more powerfully tend to place this beyond our acquisition, even our contemplation, than the perpetual and hourly rebuffs which ingenuous youth is so often doomed to sustain from the supercilious pedant, and the rigid decision of his unfeeling elders. self-respect to be nourished in the mind of the pupil, is one of the most valuable results of a well conducted education. to accomplish this, it is most necessary that it should never be inculcated into him, that he is dull. upon the principles of this essay, any unfavourable appearances that may present themselves, do not arise from the dulness of the pupil, but from the error of those upon whose superintendence he is cast, who require of him the things for which he is not adapted, and neglect those in which he is qualified to excel. it is further necessary, if self-respect is one of the most desirable results of a well-conducted education, that, as we should not humble the pupil in his own eyes by disgraceful and humiliating language, so we should abstain, as much as possible, from personal ill-treatment, and the employing towards him the measures of an owner towards his purchased or indentured slave. indignity is of all things the most hostile to the best purposes of a liberal education. it may be necessary occasionally to employ, towards a human creature in his years of nonage, the stimulants of exhortation and remonstrance even in the pursuits to which he is best adapted, for the purpose of overcoming the instability and fits of idleness to which all men, and most of all in their early years, are subject: though in such pursuits a necessity of this sort can scarcely be supposed. the bow must not always be bent; and it is good for us that we should occasionally relax and play the fool. it may more readily be imagined, that some incitement may be called for in those things which, as has been mentioned above, it may be fit he should learn though with but half a will. all freaks must not be indulged; admonition is salutary, and that the pupil should be awakened by his instructor to sober reflection and to masculine exertion. every telemachus should have his mentor.--but through the whole it is necessary that the spirit of the pupil should not be broken, and that he should not be treated with contumely. stripes should in all instances be regarded as the last resort, and as a sort of problem set up for the wisdom of the wise to solve, whether the urgent case can arise in which it shall be requisite to have recourse to them. the principles here laid down have the strongest tendency to prove to us how little progress has yet been made in the art of turning human creatures to the best account. every man has his place, in which if he can be fixed, the most fastidious judge cannot look upon him with disdain. but, to effect this arrangement, an exact attention is required to ascertain the pursuit in which he will best succeed. in india the whole mass of the members of the community is divided into castes; and, instead of a scrupulous attention being paid to the early intimations of individual character, it is already decided upon each, before he comes into the world, which child shall be a priest, and which a soldier, a physician, a lawyer, a merchant, and an artisan. in europe we do not carry this so far, and are not so elaborately wrong. but the rudiments of the same folly flourish among us; and the accident of birth for the most part decides the method of life to which each individual with whatever violence shall be dedicated. a very few only, by means of energies that no tyranny can subdue, escape from the operation of this murderous decree. nature never made a dunce. imbecility of mind is as rare, as deformity of the animal frame. if this position be true, we have only to bear it in mind, feelingly to convince ourselves, how wholesale the error is into which society has hitherto fallen in the destination of its members, and how much yet remains to be done, before our common nature can be vindicated from the basest of all libels, the most murderous of all proscriptions. there is a passage in voltaire, in which he expresses himself to this effect: "it is after all but a slight line of separation that divides the man of genius from the man of ordinary mould." i remember the place where, and the time when, i read this passage. but i have been unable to find the expression. it is however but reasonable that i should refer to it on this occasion, that i may hereby shew so eminent a modern concurring with the venerable ancient in an early era of letters, whose dictum i have prefixed to this essay, to vouch to a certain extent for the truth of the doctrine i have delivered. essay iii. of intellectual abortion. in the preceding essay i have endeavoured to establish the proposition, that every human creature, idiots and extraordinary cases excepted, is endowed with talents, which, if rightly directed, would shew him to be apt, adroit, intelligent and acute, in the walk for which his organisation especially fitted him. there is however a sort of phenomenon, by no means of rare occurrence, which tends to place the human species under a less favourable point of view. many men, as has already appeared, are forced into situations and pursuits ill assorted to their talents, and by that means are exhibited to their contemporaries in a light both despicable and ludicrous. but this is not all. men are not only placed, by the absurd choice of their parents, or an imperious concurrence of circumstances, in destinations and employments in which they can never appear to advantage: they frequently, without any external compulsion, select for themselves objects of their industry, glaringly unadapted to their powers, and in which all their efforts must necessarily terminate in miscarriage. i remember a young man, who had been bred a hair-dresser, but who experienced, as he believed, the secret visitations of the muse, and became inspired. "with sad civility, and aching head," i perused no fewer than six comedies from the pen of this aspiring genius, in no page of which i could discern any glimmering of poetry or wit, or in reality could form a guess what it was that the writer intended in his elaborate effusions. such are the persons enumerated by pope in the prologue to his satires, a parson, much bemused in beer, a maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer, a clerk, foredoomed his father's sou to cross, who pens a stanza, when he should engross. every manager of a theatre, and every publishing bookseller of eminence, can produce you in each revolving season whole reams, almost cartloads, of blurred paper, testifying the frequent recurrence of this phenomenon. the cause however of this painful mistake does not lie in the circumstance, that each man has not from the hand of nature an appropriate destination, a sphere assigned him, in which, if life should be prolonged to him, he might be secure of the respect of his neighbours, and might write upon his tomb, "i have filled an honourable career; i have finished my course." one of the most glaring infirmities of our nature is discontent. one of the most unquestionable characteristics of the human mind is the love of novelty. omne ignotum pro magnifico est. we are satiated with those objects which make a part of our business in every day, and are desirous of trying something that is a stranger to us. whatever we see through a mist, or in the twilight, is apt to be apprehended by us as something admirable, for the single reason that it is seen imperfectly. what we are sure that we can easily and adequately effect, we despise. he that goes into battle with an adversary of more powerful muscle or of greater practice than himself, feels a tingling sensation, not unallied to delight, very different from that which would occur to him, when his victory was easy and secure. each man is conscious what it is that he can certainly effect. this does not therefore present itself to him as an object of ambition. we have many of us internally something of the spirit expressed by the apostle: "forgetting the things that are behind, we press forward to those that remain." and, so long as this precept is soberly applied, no conduct can be more worthy of praise. improvement is the appropriate race of man. we cannot stand still. if we do not go forward, we shall inevitably recede. shakespear, when he wrote his hamlet, did not know that he could produce macbeth and othello. but the progress of a man of reflection will be, to a considerable degree, in the path he has already entered. if he strikes into a new career, it will not be without deep premeditation. he will attempt nothing wantonly. he will carefully examine his powers, and see for what they are adapted. sudet multum. he will be like the man, who first in a frail bark committed himself to the treachery of the waves. he will keep near to the shore; he will tremble for the audaciousness of his enterprise; he will feel that it calls for all his alertness and vigilance. the man of reflection will not begin, till he feels his mind swelling with his purposed theme, till his blood flows fitfully and with full pulses through his veins, till his eyes sparkle with the intenseness of his conceptions, and his "bosom labours with the god." but the fool dashes in at once. he does not calculate the dangers of his enterprise. he does not study the map of the country he has to traverse. he does not measure the bias of the ground, the rising knolls and the descending slopes that are before him. he obeys a blind and unreflecting impulse. his case bears a striking resemblance to what is related of oliver goldsmith. goldsmith was a man of the most felicitous endowments. his prose flows with such ease, copiousness and grace, that it resembles the song of the sirens. his verses are among the most spirited, natural and unaffected in the english language. yet he was not contented. if he saw a consummate dancer, he knew no reason why he should not do as well, and immediately felt disposed to essay his powers. if he heard an accomplished musician, he undertook to enter the lists with him. his conduct was of a piece with that of the countryman, who, cheapening spectacles, and making experiment of them for ever in vain upon the book before him, was at length asked, "could you ever read without spectacles?" to which he was obliged to answer, "i do not know; i never tried." the vanity of goldsmith was infinite; and his failure in such attempts must necessarily have been ludicrous. the splendour of the thing presented to our observation, awakens the spirit within us. the applause and admiration excited by certain achievements and accomplishments infects us with desire. we are like the youthful themistocles, who complained that the trophies of miltiades would not let him sleep. we are like the novice guido, who, while looking on the paintings of michael angelo, exclaimed, "i also am a painter." themistocles and guido were right, for they were of kindred spirit to the great men they admired. but the applause bestowed on others will often generate uneasiness and a sigh, in men least of all qualified by nature to acquire similar applause. we are not contented to proceed in the path of obscure usefulness and worth. we are eager to be admired, and thus often engage in pursuits for which perhaps we are of all men least adapted each one would be the man above him. and this is the cause why we see so many individuals, who might have passed their lives with honour, devote themselves to incredible efforts, only that they may be made supremely ridiculous. to this let it be added, that the wisest man that ever existed, never yet knew himself, especially in the morning of life. the person, who ultimately stamped his history with the most heroic achievements, was far perhaps even from suspecting, in the dawn of his existence, that he should realise the miracles that mark its maturity. he might be ready to exclaim, with hazael in the scriptures, "is thy servant more than man, that he should do this great thing?" the sublimest poet that ever sung, was peradventure, while a stripling, unconscious of the treasures which formed a part of the fabric of his mind, and unsuspicious of the high destiny that in the sequel awaited him. what wonder then, that, awaking from the insensibility and torpor which precede the activity of the soul, some men should believe in a fortune that shall never be theirs, and anticipate a glory they are fated never to sustain! and for the same reason, when unanticipated failure becomes their lot, they are unwilling at first to be discouraged, and find a certain gallantry in persevering, and "against hope believing in hope." this is the explanation of a countless multitude of failures that occur in the career of literature. nor is this phenomenon confined to literature. in all the various paths of human existence, that appear to have something in them splendid and alluring, there are perpetual instances of daring adventures, unattended with the smallest rational hope of success. optat ephippia bos piger. all quit their sphere, and rush into the skies. but, beside these instances of perfect and glaring miscarriage, there are examples worthy of a deeper regret, where the juvenile candidate sets out in the morning of life with the highest promise, with colours flying, and the spirit-stirring note of gallant preparation, when yet his voyage of life is destined to terminate in total discomfiture. i have seen such an one, whose early instructors regarded him with the most sanguine expectation, and his elders admired him, while his youthful competitors unreluctantly confessed his superiority, and gave way on either side to his triumphant career; and all this has terminated in nothing. in reality the splendid march of genius is beset with a thousand difficulties. "the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong." a multitude of unthought-of qualifications are required; and it depends at least as much upon the nicely maintained balance of these, as upon the copiousness and brilliancy of each, whether the result shall be auspicious. the progress of genius is like the flight of an arrow; a breath may turn it out of its course, and cause that course to terminate many a degree wide of its purposed mark. it is therefore scarcely possible that any sharpness of foresight can pronounce of the noblest beginnings whether they shall reach to an adequate conclusion. i have seen such a man, with the most fervent imagination, with the most diligent study, with the happiest powers of memory, and with an understanding that apparently took in every thing, and arranged every thing, at the same time that by its acuteness it seemed able to add to the accumulated stores of foregone wisdom and learning new treasures of its own; and yet this man shall pass through the successive stages of human life, in appearance for ever active, for ever at work, and leave nothing behind that shall embalm his name to posterity, certainly nothing in any degree adequately representing those excellencies, which a chosen few, admitted to his retired and his serenest hours, knew to reside in him. there are conceptions of the mind, that come forth like the coruscations of lightning. if you could fix that flash, it would seem as if it would give new brightness to the sons of men, and almost extinguish the luminary of day. but, ere you can say it is here, it is gone. it appears to reveal to us the secrets of the world unknown; but the clouds congregate again, and shut in upon us, before we had time to apprehend its full radiance and splendour. to give solidity and permanence to the inspirations of genius two things are especially necessary. first, that the idea to be communicated should be powerfully apprehended by the speaker or writer; and next, that he should employ words and phrases which might convey it in all its truth to the mind of another. the man who entertains such conceptions, will not unfrequently want the steadiness of nerve which is required for their adequate transmission. suitable words will not always wait upon his thoughts. language is in reality a vast labyrinth, a scene like the hercinian forest of old, which, we are told, could not be traversed in less than sixty days. if we do not possess the clue, we shall infallibly perish in the attempt, and our thoughts and our memory will expire with us. the sentences of this man, when he speaks, or when he writes, will be full of perplexity and confusion. they will be endless, and never arrive at their proper termination. they will include parenthesis on parenthesis. we perceive the person who delivers them, to be perpetually labouring after a meaning, but never reaching it. he is like one flung over into the sea, unprovided with the skill that should enable him to contend with the tumultuous element. he flounders about in pitiable helplessness, without the chance of extricating himself by all his efforts. he is lost in unintelligible embarrassment. it is a delightful and a ravishing sight, to observe another man come after him, and tell, without complexity, and in the simplicity of self-possession, unconscious that there was any difficulty, all that his predecessor had fruitlessly exerted himself to unfold. there are a multitude of causes that will produce a miscarriage of this sort, where the richest soil, impregnated with the choicest seeds of learning and observation, shall entirely fail to present us with such a crop as might rationally have been anticipated. many such men waste their lives in indolence and irresolution. they attempt many things, sketch out plans, which, if properly filled up, might illustrate the literature of a nation, and extend the empire of the human mind, but which yet they desert as soon as begun, affording us the promise of a beautiful day, that, ere it is noon, is enveloped in darkest tempests and the clouds of midnight. they skim away from one flower in the parterre of literature to another, like the bee, without, like the bee, gathering sweetness from each, to increase the public stock, and enrich the magazine of thought. the cause of this phenomenon is an unsteadiness, ever seduced by the newness of appearances, and never settling with firmness and determination upon what had been chosen. others there are that are turned aside from the career they might have accomplished, by a visionary and impracticable fastidiousness. they can find nothing that possesses all the requisites that should fix their choice, nothing so good that should authorise them to present it to public observation, and enable them to offer it to their contemporaries as something that we should "not willingly let die." they begin often; but nothing they produce appears to them such as that they should say of it, "let this stand." or they never begin, none of their thoughts being judged by them to be altogether such as to merit the being preserved. they have a microscopic eye, and discern faults unworthy to be tolerated, in that in which the critic himself might perceive nothing but beauty. these phenomena have introduced a maxim which is current with many, that the men who write nothing, and bequeath no record of themselves to posterity, are not unfrequently of larger calibre, and more gigantic standard of soul, than such as have inscribed their names upon the columns of the temple of fame. and certain it is, that there are extraordinary instances which appear in some degree to countenance this assertion. many men are remembered as authors, who seem to have owed the permanence of their reputation rather to fortune than merit. they were daring, and stepped into a niche that was left in the gallery of art or of science, where others of higher qualifications, but of unconquerable modesty, held back. at the same time persons, whose destiny caused them to live among the elite of an age, have seen reason to confess that they have heard such talk, such glorious and unpremeditated discourse, from men whose thoughts melted away with the breath that uttered them, as the wisest of their vaunted contemporary authors would in vain have sought to rival. the maxim however, notwithstanding these appearances, may safely be pronounced to be a fallacious one. it has been received in various quarters with the greater indulgence, inasmuch as the human mind is prone in many cases to give a more welcome reception to seeming truths, that present us at the first blush the appearance of falshood. it must however be recollected that the human mind consists in the first instance merely of faculties prepared to be applied to certain purposes, and susceptible of improvement. it cannot therefore happen, that the man, who has chosen a subject towards which to direct the energy of his faculties, who has sought on all sides for the materials that should enable him to do that subject justice, who has employed upon it his contemplations by day, and his meditations during the watches of the night, should not by such exercise greatly invigorate his powers. in this sense there was much truth in the observation of the author who said, "i did not write upon the subject you mention because i understood it; but i understood it afterward, because i had written upon it." the man who merely wanders through the fields of knowledge in search of its gayest flowers and of whatever will afford him the most enviable amusement, will necessarily return home at night with a very slender collection. he that shall apply himself with self-denial and an unshrinking resolution to the improvement of his mind, will unquestionably be found more fortunate in the end. he is not deterred by the gulphs that yawn beneath his feet, or the mountains that may oppose themselves to his progress. he knows that the adventurer of timid mind, and that is infirm of purpose, will never make himself master of those points which it would be most honourable to him to subdue. but he who undertakes to commit to writing the result of his researches, and to communicate his discoveries to mankind, is the genuine hero. till he enters on this task, every thing is laid up in his memory in a certain confusion. he thinks he possesses a thing whole; but, when he brings it to the test, he is surprised to find how much he was deceived. he that would digest his thoughts and his principles into a regular system, is compelled in the first place to regard them in all their clearness and perspicuity, and in the next place to select the fittest words by which they may be communicated to others. it is through the instrumentality of words that we are taught to think accurately and severely for ourselves; they are part and parcel of all our propositions and theories. it is therefore in this way that a preceptor, by undertaking to enlighten the mind of his pupil, enlightens his own. he becomes twice the man in the sequel, that he was when he entered on his task. we admire the amateur student in his public essays, as we admire a jackdaw or a parrot: he does considerably more than could have been expected from him. in attending to the subject of this essay we have been led to observe the different ways, in which the mind of man may be brought into a position tending to exhibit its powers in a less creditable and prepossessing point of view, than that in which all men, idiots and extraordinary cases excepted, are by nature qualified to appear. many, not contented with those occupations, modest and humble in certain cases, to which their endowments and original bent had designed them, shew themselves immoderately set upon more alluring and splendid pursuits in which they are least qualified to excel. other instances there are, still more entitled to our regret, where the individual is seen to be gifted with no ordinary qualities, where his morning of life has proved auspicious, and the highest expectations were formed of a triumphant career, while yet in the final experiment he has been found wanting, and the "voyage of his life" has passed "in shallows and in miseries." but our survey of the subject of which i treat will not be complete, unless we add to what has been said, another striking truth respecting the imperfection of man collectively taken. the examples of which the history of our species consists, not only abound in cases, where, from mistakes in the choice of life, or radical and irremediable imperfection in the adventurer, the most glaring miscarriages are found to result,--but it is also true, that all men, even the most illustrious, have some fatal weakness, obliging both them and their rational admirers to confess, that they partake of human frailty, and belong to a race of beings which has small occasion to be proud. each man has his assailable part. he is vulnerable, though it be only like the fabled achilles in his heel. we are like the image that nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream, of which though the head was of fine gold, and the breast and the arms were silver, yet the feet were partly only of iron, and partly of clay. no man is whole and entire, armed at all points, and qualified for every undertaking, or even for any one undertaking, so as to carry it through, and to make the achievement he would perform, or the work he would produce, in all its parts equal and complete. it is a gross misapprehension in such men as, smitten with admiration of a certain cluster of excellencies, or series of heroic acts, are willing to predicate of the individual to whom they belong, "this man is consummate, and without alloy." take the person in his retirement, in his hours of relaxation, when he has no longer a part to play, and one or more spectators before whom he is desirous to appear to advantage, and you shall find him a very ordinary man. he has "passions, dimensions, senses, affections, like the rest of his fellow-creatures, is fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter." he will therefore, when narrowly observed, be unquestionably found betraying human weaknesses, and falling into fits of ill humour, spleen, peevishness and folly. no man is always a sage; no bosom at all times beats with sentiments lofty, self-denying and heroic. it is enough if he does so, "when the matter fits his mighty mind." the literary genius, who undertakes to produce some consummate work, will find himself pitiably in error, if he expects to turn it out of his hands, entire in all its parts, and without a flaw. there are some of the essentials of which it is constituted, that he has mastered, and is sufficiently familiar with them; but there are others, especially if his work is miscellaneous and comprehensive, to which he is glaringly incompetent. he must deny his nature, and become another man, if he would execute these parts, in a manner equal to that which their intrinsic value demands, or to the perfection he is able to give to his work in those places which are best suited to his powers. there are points in which the wisest man that ever existed is no stronger than a child. in this sense the sublimest genius will be found infelix operas summa, nam ponere totum nescit. and, if he properly knows himself, and is aware where lies his strength, and where his weakness, he will look for nothing more in the particulars which fall under the last of these heads, than to escape as he can, and to pass speedily to things in which he finds himself at home and at his ease. shakespear we are accustomed to call the most universal genius that ever existed. he has a truly wonderful variety. it is almost impossible to pronounce in which he has done best, his hamlet, macbeth, lear, or othello. he is equally excellent in his comic vein as his tragic. falstaff is in his degree to the full as admirable and astonishing, as what he achieved that is noblest under the auspices of the graver muse. his poetry and the fruits of his imagination are unrivalled. his language, in all that comes from him when his genius is most alive, has a richness, an unction, and all those signs of a character which admits not of mortality and decay, for ever fresh as when it was first uttered, which we recognise, while we can hardly persuade ourselves that we are not in a delusion. as anthony wood says( ), "by the writings of shakespear and others of his time, the english tongue was exceedingly enriched, and made quite another thing than what it was before." his versification on these occasions has a melody, a ripeness and variety that no other pen has reached. ( ) athenae oxonienses, vol. i. p. . yet there were things that shakespear could not do. he could not make a hero. familiar as he was with the evanescent touches of mind en dishabille, and in its innermost feelings, he could not sustain the tone of a character, penetrated with a divine enthusiasm, or fervently devoted to a generous cause, though this is truly within the compass of our nature, and is more than any other worthy to be delineated. he could conceive such sentiments, for there are such in his personage of brutus; but he could not fill out and perfect what he has thus sketched. he seems even to have had a propensity to bring the mountain and the hill to a level with the plain. caesar is spiritless, and cicero is ridiculous, in his hands. he appears to have written his troilus and cressida partly with a view to degrade, and hold up to contempt, the heroes of homer; and he has even disfigured the pure, heroic affection which the greek poet has painted as existing between achilles and patroclus with the most odious imputations. and, as he could not sustain an heroic character throughout, so neither could he construct a perfect plot, in which the interest should be perpetually increasing, and the curiosity of the spectator kept alive and in suspense to the last moment. several of his plays have an unity of subject to which nothing is wanting; but he has not left us any production that should rival that boast of ancient greece in the conduct of a plot, the oedipus tyrannus, a piece in which each act rises upon the act before, like a tower that lifts its head story above story to the skies. he has scarcely ever given to any of his plays a fifth act, worthy of those that preceded; the interest generally decreases after the third. shakespear is also liable to the charge of obscurity. the most sagacious critics dispute to this very hour, whether hamlet is or is not mad, and whether falstaff is a brave man or a coward. this defect is perhaps partly to be imputed to the nature of dramatic writing. it is next to impossible to make words, put into the mouth of a character, develop all those things passing in his mind, which it may be desirable should be known. i spoke, a short time back, of the language of shakespear in his finest passages, as of unrivalled excellence and beauty; i might almost have called it miraculous. o, si sic omnia! it is to be lamented that this felicity often deserts him. he is not seldom cramp, rigid and pedantic. what is best in him is eternal, of all ages and times; but what is worst, is crusted with an integument, almost more cumbrous than that of any other writer, his contemporary, the merits of whose works continue to invite us to their perusal. after shakespear, it is scarcely worth while to bring forward any other example, of a writer who, notwithstanding his undoubted claims to excellencies of the highest order, yet in his productions fully displays the inequality and non-universality of his genius. one of the most remarkable instances may be alleged in richardson, the author of clarissa. in his delineation of female delicacy, of high-souled and generous sentiments, of the subtlest feelings and even mental aberrations of virtuous distress strained beyond the power of human endurance, nothing ever equalled this author. but he could not shape out the image of a perfect gentleman, or of that winning gaiety of soul, which may indeed be exemplified, but can never be defined, and never be resisted. his profligate is a man without taste; and his coquettes are insolent and profoundly revolting. he has no resemblance of the art, so conspicuous in fletcher and farquhar, of presenting to the reader or spectator an hilarity, bubbling and spreading forth from a perennial spring, which we love as surely as we feel, which communicates its own tone to the bystander, and makes our very hearts dance within us with a responsive sportiveness. we are astonished however that the formal pedant has acquitted himself of his uncongenial task with so great a display of intellectual wealth; and, though he has not presented to us the genuine picture of an intellectual profligate, or of that lovely gaiety of the female spirit which we have all of us seen, but which it is scarcely possible to fix and to copy, we almost admire the more the astonishing talent, that, having undertaken a task for which it was so eminently unfit, yet has been able to substitute for the substance so amazing a mockery, and has treated with so much copiousness and power what it was unfit ever to have attempted. essay iv. of the durability of human achievements and productions. there is a view of the character of man, calculated more perhaps than any other to impress us with reverence and awe. man is the only creature we know, that, when the term of his natural life is ended, leaves the memory of himself behind him. all other animals have but one object in view in their more considerable actions, the supply of the humbler accommodations of their nature. man has a power sufficient for the accomplishment of this object, and a residue of power beyond, which he is able, and which he not unfrequently feels himself prompted, to employ in consecutive efforts, and thus, first by the application and arrangement of material substances, and afterward by the faculty he is found to possess of giving a permanent record to his thoughts, to realise the archetypes and conceptions which previously existed only in his mind. one method, calculated to place this fact strongly before us, is, to suppose ourselves elevated, in a balloon or otherwise, so as to enable us to take an extensive prospect of the earth on which we dwell. we shall then see the plains and the everlasting hills, the forests and the rivers, and all the exuberance of production which nature brings forth for the supply of her living progeny. we shall see multitudes of animals, herds of cattle and of beasts of prey, and all the varieties of the winged tenants of the air. but we shall also behold, in a manner almost equally calculated to arrest our attention, the traces and the monuments of human industry. we shall see castles and churches, and hamlets and mighty cities. we shall see this strange creature, man, subjecting all nature to his will. he builds bridges, and he constructs aqueducts. he "goes down to the sea in ships," and variegates the ocean with his squadrons and his fleets. to the person thus mounted in the air to take a wide and magnificent prospect, there seems to be a sort of contest between the face of the earth, as it may be supposed to have been at first, and the ingenuity of man, which shall occupy and possess itself of the greatest number of acres. we cover immense regions of the globe with the tokens of human cultivation. thus the matter stands as to the exertions of the power of man in the application and arrangement of material substances. but there is something to a profound and contemplative mind much more extraordinary, in the effects produced by the faculty we possess of giving a permanent record to our thoughts. from the development of this faculty all human science and literature take their commencement. here it is that we most distinctly, and with the greatest astonishment, perceive that man is a miracle. declaimers are perpetually expatiating to us upon the shortness of human life. and yet all this is performed by us, when the wants of our nature have already by our industry been supplied. we manufacture these sublimities and everlasting monuments out of the bare remnants and shreds of our time. the labour of the intellect of man is endless. how copious is the volume, and how extraordinary the variety, of our sciences and our arts! the number of men is exceedingly great in every civilised state of society, that make these the sole object of their occupation. and this has been more or less the condition of our species in all ages, ever since we left the savage and the pastoral modes of existence. from this view of the history of man we are led by an easy transition to the consideration of the nature and influence of the love of fame in modifying the actions of the human mind. we have already stated it to be one of the characteristic distinctions of our species to erect monuments which outlast the existence of the persons that produced them. this at first was accidental, and did not enter the design of the operator. the man who built himself a shed to protect him from the inclemency of the seasons, and afterwards exchanged that shed for a somewhat more commodious dwelling, did not at first advert to the circumstance that the accommodation might last, when he was no longer capable to partake of it. in this way perhaps the wish to extend the memory of ourselves beyond the term of our mortal existence, and the idea of its being practicable to gratify that wish, descended upon us together. in contemplating the brief duration and the uncertainty of human life, the idea must necessarily have occurred, that we might survive those we loved, or that they might survive us. in the first case we inevitably wish more or less to cherish the memory of the being who once was an object of affection to us, but of whose society death has deprived us. in the second case it can scarcely happen but that we desire ourselves to be kindly recollected by those we leave behind us. so simple is the first germ of that longing after posthumous honour, which presents us with so memorable effects in the page of history. but, previously to the further consideration of posthumous fame, let us turn our attention for a moment to the fame, or, as in that sense it is more usually styled, popularity, which is the lot of a few favoured individuals while they live. the attending to the subject in this point of view, will be found to throw light upon the more extensive prospect of the question to which we will immediately afterwards proceed. popularity is an acquisition more level to the most ordinary capacities, and therefore is a subject of more general ambition, than posthumous fame. it addresses itself to the senses. applause is a species of good fortune to which perhaps no mortal ear is indifferent. the persons who constitute the circle in which we are applauded, receive us with smiles of approbation and sympathy. they pay their court to us, seem to be made happy by our bare presence among them, and welcome us to their houses with congratulation and joy. the vulgar portion of mankind scarcely understand the question of posthumous fame, they cannot comprehend how panegyric and honour can "soothe the dull, cold ear of death:" but they can all conceive the gratification to be derived from applauding multitudes and loud huzzas. one of the most obvious features however that attends upon popularity, is its fugitive nature. no man has once been popular, and has lived long, without experiencing neglect at least, if he were not also at some time subjected to the very intelligible disapprobation and censure of his fellows. the good will and kindness of the multitude has a devouring appetite, and is like a wild beast that you should stable under your roof, which, if you do not feed with a continual supply, will turn about and attack its protector. one touch of nature makes the whole world kin,-- that all, with one consent, praise new-born gauds, and give to dust, that is a little gilt, more laud than they will give to gold o'erdusted. cromwel well understood the nature of this topic, when he said, as we are told, to one of his military companions, who called his attention to the rapturous approbation with which they were received by the crowd on their return from a successful expedition, "ah, my friend, they would accompany us with equal demonstrations of delight, if, upon no distant occasion, they were to see us going to be hanged!" the same thing which happens to the popularity attendant on the real or imaginary hero of the multitude, happens also in the race after posthumous fame. as has already been said, the number of men is exceedingly great in every civilised state of society, who make the sciences and arts engendered by the human mind, the sole or the principal objects of their occupation. this will perhaps be most strikingly illustrated by a retrospect of the state of european society in the middle, or, as they are frequently styled, the dark ages. it has been a vulgar error to imagine, that the mind of man, so far as relates to its active and inventive powers, was sunk into a profound sleep, from which it gradually recovered itself at the period when constantinople was taken by the turks, and the books and the teachers of the ancient greek language were dispersed through europe. the epoch from which modern invention took its rise, commenced much earlier. the feudal system, one of the most interesting contrivances of man in society, was introduced in the ninth century; and chivalry, the offspring of that system, an institution to which we are mainly indebted for refinement of sentiment, and humane and generous demeanour, in the eleventh. out of these grew the originality and the poetry of romance. these were no mean advancements. but perhaps the greatest debt which after ages have contracted to this remote period, arose out of the system of monasteries and ecclesiastical celibacy. owing to these a numerous race of men succeeded to each other perpetually, who were separated from the world, cut off from the endearments of conjugal and parental affection, and who had a plenitude of leisure for solitary application. to these men we are indebted for the preservation of the literature of rome, and the multiplied copies of the works of the ancients. nor were they contented only with the praise of never-ending industry. they forged many works, that afterwards passed for classical, and which have demanded all the perspicacity of comparative criticism to refute. and in these pursuits the indefatigable men who were dedicated to them, were not even goaded by the love of fame. they were satisfied with the consciousness of their own perseverance and ingenuity. but the most memorable body of men that adorned these ages, were the schoolmen. they may be considered as the discoverers of the art of logic. the ancients possessed in an eminent degree the gift of genius; but they have little to boast on the score of arrangement, and discover little skill in the strictness of an accurate deduction. they rather arrive at truth by means of a felicity of impulse, than in consequence of having regularly gone through the process which leads to it. the schools of the middle ages gave birth to the irrefragable and the seraphic doctors, the subtlety of whose distinctions, and the perseverance of whose investigations, are among the most wonderful monuments of the intellectual power of man. the thirteenth century produced thomas aquinas, and johannes duns scotus, and william occam, and roger bacon. in the century before, thomas a becket drew around him a circle of literary men, whose correspondence has been handed down to us, and who deemed it their proudest distinction that they called each other philosophers. the schoolmen often bewildered themselves in their subtleties, and often delivered dogmas and systems that may astonish the common sense of unsophisticated understandings. but such is man. so great is his persevering labour, his invincible industry, and the resolution with which he sets himself, year after year, and lustre after lustre, to accomplish the task which his judgment and his zeal have commanded him to pursue. but i return to the question of literary fame. all these men, and men of a hundred other classes, who laboured most commendably and gallantly in their day, may be considered as swept away into the gulph of oblivion. as swift humorously says in his dedication to prince posterity, "i had prepared a copious list of titles to present to your highness, as an undisputed argument of the prolificness of human genius in my own time: the originals were posted upon all gates and corner's of streets: but, returning in a very few hours to take a review, they were all torn down, and fresh ones put in their places. i enquired after them among readers and booksellers, but in vain: the memorial of them was lost among men; their place was no more to be found." it is a just remark that had been made by hume( ): "theories of abstract philosophy, systems of profound theology, have prevailed during one age. in a successive period these have been universally exploded; their absurdity has been detected; other theories and systems have supplied their place, which again gave way to their successors; and nothing has been experienced more liable to the revolutions of chance and fashion than these pretended decisions of science. the case is not the same with the beauties of eloquence and poetry. just expressions of passion and nature are sure, after a little time, to gain public applause, which they maintain for ever. aristotle and plato and epicurus and descartes may successively yield to each other: but terence and virgil maintain an universal, undisputed empire over the minds of men. the abstract philosophy of cicero has lost its credit: the vehemence of his oratory is still the object of our admiration." ( ) essays, part , essay xxiii. a few examples of the instability of fame will place this question in the clearest light. nicholas peiresk was born in the year . his progress in knowledge was so various and unprecedented, that, from the time that he was twenty-one years of age, he was universally considered as holding the helm of learning in his hand, and guiding the commonwealth of letters. he died at the age of fifty-seven. the academy of the humoristi at rome paid the most extraordinary honours to his memory; many of the cardinals assisted at his funeral oration; and a collection of verses in his praise was published in more than forty languages. salmasius was regarded as a prodigy of learning; and various princes and powers entered into a competition who should be so fortunate as to secure his residence in their states. christina, queen of sweden, having obtained the preference, received him with singular reverence and attention; and, salmasius being taken ill at stockholm, and confined to his bed, the queen persisted with her own hand to prepare his caudles, and mend his fire. yet, but for the accident of his having had milton for his adversary, his name would now be as little remembered, even by the generality of the learned, as that of peiresk. du bartas, in the reign of henry the fourth of france, was one of the most successful poets that ever existed. his poem on the creation of the world went through upwards of thirty editions in the course of five or six years, was translated into most european languages, and its commentators promised to equal in copiousness and number the commentators on homer. one of the most admired of our english poets about the close of the sixteenth century, was donne. unlike many of those trivial writers of verse who succeeded him after an interval of forty or fifty years, and who won for themselves a brilliant reputation by the smoothness of their numbers, the elegance of their conceptions, and the politeness of their style, donne was full of originality, energy and vigour. no man can read him without feeling himself called upon for earnest exercise of his thinking powers, and, even with the most fixed attention and application, the student is often obliged to confess his inability to take in the whole of the meaning with which the poet's mind was perceptibly fraught. every sentence that donne writes, whether in verse or prose, is exclusively his own. in addition to this, his thoughts are often in the noblest sense of the word poetical; and passages may be quoted from him that no english poet may attempt to rival, unless it be milton and shakespear. ben jonson observed of him with great truth and a prophetic spirit: "donne for not being understood will perish." but this is not all. if waller and suckling and carew sacrificed every thing to the graces, donne went into the other extreme. with a few splendid and admirable exceptions, his phraseology and versification are crabbed and repulsive. and, as poetry is read in the first place for pleasure, donne is left undisturbed on the shelf, or rather in the sepulchre; and not one in an hundred even among persons of cultivation, can give any account of him, if in reality they ever heard of his productions. the name of shakespear is that before which every knee must bow. but it was not always so. when the first novelty of his pieces was gone, they were seldom called into requisition. only three or four of his plays were upon the acting list of the principal company of players during the reign of charles the second; and the productions of beaumont and fletcher, and of shirley, were acted three times for once of his. at length betterton revived, and by his admirable representation gave popularity to, macbeth, hamlet and lear, a popularity they have ever since retained. but macbeth was not revived (with music, and alterations by sir william davenant) till ; and lear a few years later, with love scenes and a happy catastrophe by nahum tate. in the latter part of the reign of charles the second, dryden and otway and lee held the undisputed supremacy in the serious drama. such was the insensibility of the english public to nature, and her high priest, shakespear. the only one of their productions that has survived upon the theatre, is venice preserved: and why it has done so it is difficult to say; or rather it would be impossible to assign a just and honourable reason for it. all the personages in this piece are of an abandoned and profligate character. pierre is a man resolved to destroy and root up the republic by which he was employed, because his mistress, a courtesan, is mercenary, and endures the amorous visits of an impotent old lecher. jaffier, without even the profession of any public principle, joins in the conspiracy, because he has been accustomed to luxury and prodigal expence and is poor. he has however no sooner entered into the plot, than he betrays it, and turns informer to the government against his associates. belvidera instigates him to this treachery, because she cannot bear the thought of having her father murdered, and is absurd enough to imagine that she and her husband shall be tender and happy lovers ever after. their love in the latter acts of the play is a continued tirade of bombast and sounding nonsense, without one real sentiment, one just reflection, or one strong emotion working from the heart, and analysing the nature of man. the folly of this love can only be exceeded, by the abject and despicable crouching and fawning of jaffier to the man he had so basely betrayed, and their subsequent reconciliation. there is not a production in the whole realms of fiction, that has less pretension to manly, or even endurable feeling, or to common propriety. the total defect of a moral sense in this piece is strongly characteristic of the reign in which it was written. it has in the mean while a richness of melody, and a picturesqueness of action, that enables it to delude, and that even draws tears from the eyes of, persons who can be won over by the eye and the ear, with almost no participation of the understanding. and this unmeaning rant and senseless declamation sufficed for the time to throw into shade those exquisite delineations of character, those transcendent bursts of passion, and that perfect anatomy of the human heart, which render the master-pieces of shakespear a property for all nations and all times. while shakespear was partly forgotten, it continued to be totally unknown that he had contemporaries as inexpressibly superior to the dramatic writers that have appeared since, as these contemporaries were themselves below the almighty master of scenic composition. it was the fashion to say, that shakespear existed alone in a barbarous age, and that all his imputed crudities, and intermixture of what was noblest with unparalleled absurdity and buffoonery, were to be allowed for to him on that consideration. cowley stands forward as a memorable instance of the inconstancy of fame. he was a most amiable man; and the loveliness of his mind shines out in his productions. he had a truly poetic frame of soul; and he pours out the beautiful feelings that possessed him unreservedly and at large. he was a great sufferer in the stuart cause, he had been a principal member of the court of the exiled queen; and, when the king was restored, it was a deep sentiment among his followers and friends to admire the verses of cowley. he was "the poet." the royalist rhymers were set lightly by in comparison with him. milton, the republican, who, by his collection published during the civil war, had shewn that he was entitled to the highest eminence, was unanimously consigned to oblivion. cowley died in ; and the duke of buckingham, the author of the rehearsal, eight years after, set up his tomb in the cemetery of the nation, with an inscription, declaring him to be at once "the pindar, the horace and virgil of his country, the delight and the glory of his age, which by his death was left a perpetual mourner."--yet--so capricious is fame--a century has nearly elapsed, since pope said, who now reads cowley? if he pleases yet, his moral pleases, not his pointed wit; forgot his epic, nay, pindaric art, but still i love the language of his heart. as cowley was the great royalist poet after the restoration, cleveland stood in the same rank during the civil war. in the publication of his works one edition succeeded to another, yearly or oftener, for more than twenty years. his satire is eminently poignant; he is of a strength and energy of thinking uncommonly masculine; and he compresses his meaning so as to give it every advantage. his imagination is full of coruscation and brilliancy. his petition to cromwel, lord protector of england, when the poet was under confinement for his loyal principles, is a singular example of manly firmness, great independence of mind, and a happy choice of topics to awaken feelings of forbearance and clemency. it is unnecessary to say that cleveland is now unknown, except to such as feel themselves impelled to search into things forgotten. it would be endless to adduce all the examples that might be found of the caprices of fame. it has been one of the arts of the envious to set up a contemptible rival to eclipse the splendour of sterling merit. thus crowne and settle for a time disturbed the serenity of dryden. voltaire says, the phaedra of pradon has not less passion than that of racine, but expressed in rugged verse and barbarous language. pradon is now forgotten: and the whole french poetry of the augustan age of louis the fourteenth is threatened with the same fate. hayley for a few years was applauded as the genuine successor of pope; and the poem of sympathy by pratt went through twelve editions. for a brief period almost each successive age appears fraught with resplendent genius; but they go out one after another; they set, "like stars that fall, to rise no more." few indeed are endowed with that strength of construction, that should enable them to ride triumphant on the tide of ages. it is the same with conquerors. what tremendous battles have been fought, what oceans of blood have been spilled, by men who were resolved that their achievements should be remembered for ever! and now even their names are scarcely preserved; and the very effects of the disasters they inflicted on mankind seem to be swept away, as of no more validity than things that never existed. warriors and poets, the authors of systems and the lights of philosophy, men that astonished the earth, and were looked up to as gods, even like an actor on the stage, have strutted their hour, and then been heard of no more. books have the advantage of all other productions of the human head or hand. copies of them may be multiplied for ever, the last as good as the first, except so far as some slight inadvertent errors may have insinuated themselves. the iliad flourishes as green now, as on the day that pisistratus is said first to have stamped upon it its present order. the songs of the rhapsodists, the scalds, and the minstrels, which once seemed as fugitive as the breath of him who chaunted them, repose in libraries, and are embalmed in collections. the sportive sallies of eminent wits, and the table talk of luther and selden, may live as long as there shall be men to read, and judges to appreciate them. but other human productions have their date. pictures, however admirable, will only last as long as the colours of which they are composed, and the substance on which they are painted. three or four hundred years ordinarily limit the existence of the most favoured. we have scarcely any paintings of the ancients, and but a small portion of their statues, while of these a great part are mutilated, and various members supplied by later and inferior artists. the library of bufo is by pope described, where busts of poets dead, and a true pindar stood without a head. monumental records, alike the slightest and the most solid, are subjected to the destructive operation of time, or to the being removed at the caprice or convenience of successive generations. the pyramids of egypt remain, but the names of him who founded them, and of him whose memory they seemed destined to perpetuate, have perished together. buildings for the use or habitation of man do not last for ever. mighty cities, as well as detached edifices, are destined to disappear. thebes, and troy, and persepolis, and palmyra have vanished from the face of the earth. "thorns and brambles have grown up in their palaces: they are habitations for serpents, and a court for the owl." there are productions of man however that seem more durable than any of the edifices he has raised. such are, in the first place, modes of government. the constitution of sparta lasted for seven hundred years. that of rome for about the same period. institutions, once deeply rooted in the habits of a people, will operate in their effects through successive revolutions. modes of faith will sometimes be still more permanent. not to mention the systems of moses and christ, which we consider as delivered to us by divine inspiration, that of mahomet has continued for twelve hundred years, and may last, for aught that appears, twelve hundred more. the practices of the empire of china are celebrated all over the earth for their immutability. this brings us naturally to reflect upon the durability of the sciences. according to bailly, the observation of the heavens, and a calculation of the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in other words, astronomy, subsisted in maturity in china and the east, for at least three thousand years before the birth of christ: and, such as it was then, it bids fair to last as long as civilisation shall continue. the additions it has acquired of late years may fall away and perish, but the substance shall remain. the circulation of the blood in man and other animals, is a discovery that shall never be antiquated. and the same may be averred of the fundamental elements of geometry and of some other sciences. knowledge, in its most considerable branches shall endure, as long as books shall exist to hand it down to successive generations. it is just therefore, that we should regard with admiration and awe the nature of man, by whom these mighty things have been accomplished, at the same time that the perishable quality of its individual monuments, and the temporary character and inconstancy of that fame which in many instances has filled the whole earth with its renown, may reasonably quell the fumes of an inordinate vanity, and keep alive in us the sentiment of a wholsome diffidence and humility. essay v. of the rebelliousness of man. there is a particular characteristic in the nature of the human mind, which is somewhat difficult to be explained. man is a being of a rational and an irrational nature. it has often been said that we have two souls. araspes, in the cyropedia, adopts this language to explain his inconsistency, and desertion of principle and honour. the two souls of man, according to this hypothesis, are, first, animal, and, secondly, intellectual. but i am not going into any thing of this slight and every-day character. man is a rational being. it is by this particular that he is eminently distinguished from the brute creation. he collects premises and deduces conclusions. he enters into systems of thinking, and combines systems of action, which he pursues from day to day, and from year to year. it is by this feature in his constitution that he becomes emphatically the subject of history, of poetry and fiction. it is by this that he is raised above the other inhabitants of the globe of earth, and that the individuals of our race are made the partners of "gods, and men like gods." but our nature, beside this, has another section. we start occasionally ten thousand miles awry. we resign the sceptre of reason, and the high dignity that belongs to us as beings of a superior species; and, without authority derived to us from any system of thinking, even without the scheme of gratifying any vehement and uncontrolable passion, we are impelled to do, or at least feel ourselves excited to do, something disordinate and strange. it seems as if we had a spring within us, that found the perpetual restraint of being wise and sober insupportable. we long to be something, or to do something, sudden and unexpected, to throw the furniture of our apartment out at window, or, when we are leaving a place of worship, in which perhaps the most solemn feelings of our nature have been excited, to push the grave person that is just before us, from the top of the stairs to the bottom. a thousand absurdities, wild and extravagant vagaries, come into our heads, and we are only restrained from perpetrating them by the fear, that we may be subjected to the treatment appropriated to the insane, or may perhaps be made amenable to the criminal laws of our country. a story occurs to me, which i learned from the late dr. parr at hatton, that may not unhappily illustrate the point i am endeavouring to explain. dr. samuel clarke, rector of st. james's, westminster, the especial friend of sir isaac newton, the distinguished editor of the poems of homer, and author of the demonstration of the being and attributes of god, was one day summoned from his study, to receive two visitors in the parlour. when he came downstairs, and entered the room, he saw a foreigner, who by his air seemed to be a person of distinction, a professor perhaps of some university on the continent; and an alderman of london, a relation of the doctor, who had come to introduce the foreigner. the alderman, a man of uncultivated mind and manners, and whom the doctor had been accustomed to see in sordid attire, surrounded with the incumbrances of his trade, was decked out for the occasion in a full-dress suit, with a wig of majestic and voluminous structure. clarke was, as it appears, so much struck with the whimsical nature of this unexpected metamorphosis, and the extraordinary solemnity of his kinsman's demeanour, as to have felt impelled, almost immediately upon entering the room, to snatch the wig from the alderman's head, and throw it against the ceiling: after which this eminent person immediately escaped, and retired to his own apartment. i was informed from the same authority, that clarke, after exhausting his intellectual faculties by long and intense study, would not unfrequently quit his seat, leap upon the table, and place himself cross-legged like a tailor, being prompted, by these antagonist sallies, to relieve himself from the effect of the too severe strain he had previously put upon his intellectual powers. but the deviousness and aberration of our human faculties frequently amount to something considerably more serious than this. i will put a case. i will suppose myself and another human being together, in some spot secure from the intrusion of spectators. a musket is conveniently at hand. it is already loaded. i say to my companion, "i will place myself before you; i will stand motionless: take up that musket, and shoot me through the heart." i want to know what passes in the mind of the man to whom these words are addressed. i say, that one of the thoughts that will occur to many of the persons who should be so invited, will be, "shall i take him at his word?" there are two things that restrain us from acts of violence and crime. the first is, the laws of morality. the second is, the construction that will be put upon our actions by our fellow-creatures, and the treatment we shall receive from them.--i put out of the question here any particular value i may entertain for my challenger, or any degree of friendship and attachment i may feel for him. the laws of morality (setting aside the consideration of any documents of religion or otherwise i may have imbibed from my parents and instructors) are matured within us by experience. in proportion as i am rendered familiar with my fellow-creatures, or with society at large, i come to feel the ties which bind men to each other, and the wisdom and necessity of governing my conduct by inexorable rules. we are thus further and further removed from unexpected sallies of the mind, and the danger of suddenly starting away into acts not previously reflected on and considered. with respect to the censure and retaliation of other men on my proceeding, these, by the terms of my supposition, are left out of the question. it may be taken for granted, that no man but a madman, would in the case i have stated take the challenger at his word. but what i want to ascertain is, why the bare thought of doing so takes a momentary hold of the mind of the person addressed? there are three principles in the nature of man which contribute to account for this. first, the love of novelty. secondly, the love of enterprise and adventure. i become insupportably wearied with the repetition of rotatory acts and every-day occurrences. i want to be alive, to be something more than i commonly am, to change the scene, to cut the cable that binds my bark to the shore, to launch into the wide sea of possibilities, and to nourish my thoughts with observing a train of unforeseen consequences as they arise. a third principle, which discovers itself in early childhood, and which never entirely quits us, is the love of power. we wish to be assured that we are something, and that we can produce notable effects upon other beings out of ourselves. it is this principle, which instigates a child to destroy his playthings, and to torment and kill the animals around him. but, even independently of the laws of morality, and the fear of censure and retaliation from our fellow-creatures, there are other things which would obviously restrain us from taking the challenger in the above supposition at his word. if man were an omnipotent being, and at the same time retained all his present mental infirmities, it would be difficult to say of what extravagances he would be guilty. it is proverbially affirmed that power has a tendency to corrupt the best dispositions. then what would not omnipotence effect? if, when i put an end to the life of a fellow-creature, all vestiges of what i had done were to disappear, this would take off a great part of the control upon my actions which at present subsists. but, as it is, there are many consequences that "give us pause." i do not like to see his blood streaming on the ground. i do not like to witness the spasms and convulsions of a dying man. though wounded to the heart, he may speak. then what may be chance to say? what looks of reproach may he cast upon me? the musket may miss fire. if i wound him, the wound may be less mortal than i contemplated. then what may i not have to fear? his dead body will be an incumbrance to me. it must be moved from the place where it lies. it must be buried. how is all this to be done by me? by one precipitate act, i have involved myself in a long train of loathsome and heart-sickening consequences. if it should be said, that no one but a person of an abandoned character would fail, when the scene was actually before him, to feel an instant repugnance to the proposition, yet it will perhaps be admitted, that almost every reader, when he regards it as a supposition merely, says to himself for a moment, "would i? could i?" but, to bring the irrationality of man more completely to the test, let us change the supposition. let us imagine him to be gifted with the powers of the fabled basilisk, "to monarchise, be feared, and kill with looks." his present impulses, his passions, his modes of reasoning and choosing shall continue; but his "will is neighboured to his act;" whatever he has formed a conception of with preference, is immediately realised; his thought is succeeded by the effect; and no traces are left behind, by means of which a shadow of censure or suspicion can be reflected on him. man is in truth a miracle. the human mind is a creature of celestial origin, shut up and confined in a wall of flesh. we feel a kind of proud impatience of the degradation to which we are condemned. we beat ourselves to pieces against the wires of our cage, and long to escape, to shoot through the elements, and be as free to change at any instant the place where we dwell, as to change the subject to which our thoughts are applied. this, or something like this, seems to be the source of our most portentous follies and absurdities. this is the original sin upon which st. austin and calvin descanted. certain arabic writers seem to have had this in their minds, when they tell us, that there is a black drop of blood in the heart of every man, in which is contained the fomes peccati, and add that, when mahomet was in the fourth year of his age, the angel gabriel caught him up from among his playfellows, and taking his heart from his bosom, squeezed out of it this first principle of frailty, in consequence of which he for ever after remained inaccessible to the weaknesses of other men( ). ( ) life of mahomet, by prideaux. it is the observation of sir thomas browne: "man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave." one of the most remarkable examples of this is to be found in the pyramids of egypt. they are generally considered as having been erected to be the tombs of the kings of that country. they have no opening by which for the light of heaven to enter, and afford no means for the accommodation of living man. an hundred thousand men are said to have been constantly employed in the building; ten years to have been consumed in hewing and conveying the stones, and twenty more in completing the edifice. of the largest the base is a square, and the sides are triangles, gradually diminishing as they mount in the air. the sides of the base are two hundred and twenty feet in length, and the perpendicular height is above one hundred and fifty-five feet. the figure of the pyramid is precisely that which is most calculated for duration: it cannot perish by accident; and it would require almost as much labour to demolish it, as it did to raise it at first. what a light does this fact convey into the inmost recesses of the human heart! man reflects deeply, and with feelings of a mortified nature, upon the perishableness of his frame, and the approaching close, so far as depends upon the evidence of our senses, of his existence. he has indeed an irrepressible "longing after immortality;" and this is one of the various and striking modes in which he has sought to give effect to his desire. various obvious causes might be selected, which should be calculated to give birth to the feeling of discontent. one is, the not being at home. i will here put together some of the particulars which make up the idea of home in the most emphatical sense of the word. home is the place where a man is principally at his ease. it is the place where he most breathes his native air: his lungs play without impediment; and every respiration brings a pure element, and a cheerful and gay frame of mind. home is the place where he most easily accomplishes all his designs; he has his furniture and materials and the elements of his occupations entirely within his reach. home is the place where he can be uninterrupted. he is in a castle which is his in full propriety. no unwelcome guests can intrude; no harsh sounds can disturb his contemplations; he is the master, and can command a silence equal to that of the tomb, whenever he pleases. in this sense every man feels, while cribbed in a cabin of flesh, and shut up by the capricious and arbitrary injunctions of human communities, that he is not at home. another cause of our discontent is to be traced to the disparity of the two parts of which we are composed, the thinking principle, and the body in which it acts. the machine which constitutes the visible man, bears no proportion to our thoughts, our wishes and desires. hence we are never satisfied; we always feel the want of something we have not; and this uneasiness is continually pushing us on to precipitate and abortive resolves. i find in a book, entitled, illustrations of phrenology, by sir george mackenzie, baronet, the following remark. 'if this portrait be correctly drawn, the right side does not quite agree with the left in the region of ideality. this dissimilarity may have produced something contradictory in the feelings of the person it represents, which he may have felt extremely annoying( ).' an observation of this sort may be urged with striking propriety as to the dissimilar attributes of the body and the thinking principle in man. ( ) the remark thus delivered is applied to the portrait of the author of the present volume. it is perhaps thus that we are to account for a phenomenon, in itself sufficiently obvious, that our nature has within it a principle of boundless ambition, a desire to be something that we are not, a feeling that we are out of our place, and ought to be where we are not. this feeling produces in us quick and earnest sallies and goings forth of the mind, a restlessness of soul, and an aspiration after some object that we do not find ourselves able to chalk out and define. hence comes the practice of castle-building, and of engaging the soul in endless reveries and imaginations of something mysterious and unlike to what we behold in the scenes of sublunary life. many writers, having remarked this, have endeavoured to explain it from the doctrine of a preexistent state, and have said that, though we have no clear and distinct recollection of what happened to us previously to our being launched in our present condition, yet we have certain broken and imperfect conceptions, as if, when the tablet of the memory was cleared for the most part of the traces of what we had passed through in some other mode of being, there were a few characters that had escaped the diligence of the hand by which the rest had been obliterated. it is this that, in less enlightened ages of the world, led men to engage so much of their thoughts upon supposed existences, which, though they might never become subject to our organs of vision, were yet conceived to be perpetually near us, fairies, ghosts, witches, demons and angels. our ancestors often derived suggestions from these, were informed of things beyond the ken of ordinary faculties, were tempted to the commission of forbidden acts, or encouraged to proceed in the paths of virtue. the most remarkable of these phenomena was that of necromancy, sorcery and magic. there were men who devoted themselves to "curious arts," and had books fraught with hidden knowledge. they could "bedim" the noon-tide sun, call forth the mutinous winds, and 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault set roaring war: to the dread, rattling thunder they could give fire, and rift even jove's stout oak with his own bolt--graves at their command have waked their sleepers, oped and let them forth. and of these things the actors in them were so certain, that many witches were led to the stake, their guilt being principally established on their own confessions. but the most memorable matters in the history of the black art, were the contracts which those who practised it not unfrequently entered into with the devil, that he should assist them by his supernatural power for ten or twenty years, and, in consideration of this aid, they consented to resign their souls into his possession, when the period of the contract was expired. in the animal creation there are some species that may be tamed, and others whose wildness is irreclaimable. horace says, that all men are mad: and no doubt mankind in general has one of the features of madness. in the ordinary current of our existence we are to a considerable degree rational and tractable. but we are not altogether safe. i may converse with a maniac for hours; he shall talk as soberly, and conduct himself with as much propriety, as any other of the species who has never been afflicted with his disease; but touch upon a particular string, and, before you are aware of it, he shall fly out into the wildest and most terrifying extravagances. such, though in a greatly inferior degree, are the majority of human beings. the original impulse of man is uncontrolableness. when the spirit of life first descends upon us, we desire and attempt to be as free as air. we are impatient of restraint. this is the period of the empire of will. there is a power within us that wars against the restraint of another. we are eager to follow our own impulses and caprices, and are with difficulty subjected to those who believe they best know how to control inexperienced youth in a way that shall tend to his ultimate advantage. the most moderate and auspicious method in which the old may endeavour to guide and control the pursuits of the young, undoubtedly is by the conviction of the understanding. but this is not always easy. it is not at all times practicable fully to explain to the apprehension of a very young person the advantage, which at a period a little more advanced he would be able clearly to recognise. there is a further evil appertaining to this view of the subject. a young man even, in the early season of life, is not always disposed to obey the convictions of his understanding. he has prescribed to himself a task which returns with the returning day; but he is often not disposed to apply. the very sense that it is what he conceives to be an incumbent duty, inspires him with reluctance. an obvious source of this reluctance is, that the convictions of our understanding are not always equally present to us. i have entered into a deduction of premises, and arrived at a conclusion; but some of the steps of the chain are scarcely obvious to me, at the time that i am called upon to act upon the conclusion i have drawn. beside which, there was a freshness in the first conception of the reasons on which my conduct was to be framed, which, by successive rehearsals, and by process of time, is no longer in any degree spirit-stirring and pregnant. this restiveness and impracticability are principally incident to us in the period of youth. by degrees the novelties of life wear out, and we become sober. we are like soldiers at drill, and in a review. at first we perform our exercise from necessity, and with an ill grace. we had rather be doing almost any thing else. by degrees we are reconciled to our occupation. we are like horses in a manege, or oxen or dogs taught to draw the plough, or be harnessed to a carriage. our stubbornness is subdued; we no longer exhaust our strength in vain efforts to free ourselves from the yoke. conviction at first is strong. having arrived at years of discretion, i revolve with a sobered mind the different occupations to which my efforts and my time may be devoted, and determine at length upon that which under all the circumstances displays the most cogent recommendations. having done so, i rouse my faculties and direct my energies to the performance of my task. by degrees however my resolution grows less vigorous, and my exertions relax. i accept any pretence to be let off, and fly into a thousand episodes and eccentricities. but, as the newness of life subsides, the power of temptation becomes less. that conviction, which was at first strong, and gradually became fainter and less impressive, is made by incessant repetitions a part of my nature. i no more think of doubting its truth, than of my own existence. practice has rendered the pursuits that engage me more easy, till at length i grow disturbed and uncomfortable if i am withheld from them. they are like my daily bread. if they are not afforded me, i grow sick and attenuated, and my life verges to a close. the sun is not surer to rise, than i am to feel the want of my stated employment. it is the business of education to tame the wild ass, the restive and rebellious principle, in our nature. the judicious parent or instructor essays a thousand methods to accomplish his end. the considerate elder tempts the child with inticements and caresses, that he may win his attention to the first rudiments of learning. he sets before him, as he grows older, all the considerations and reasons he can devise, to make him apprehend the advantage of improvement and literature. he does his utmost to make his progress easy, and to remove all impediments. he smooths the path by which he is to proceed, and endeavours to root out all its thorns. he exerts his eloquence to inspire his pupil with a love for the studies in which he is engaged. he opens to him the beauties and genius of the authors he reads, and endeavours to proceed with him hand in hand, and step by step. he persuades, he exhorts, and occasionally he reproves. he awakens in him the love of excellence, the fear of disgrace, and an ambition to accomplish that which "the excellent of the earth" accomplished before him. at a certain period the young man is delivered into his own hands, and becomes an instructor to himself. and, if he is blessed with an ingenuous disposition, he will enter on his task with an earnest desire and a devoted spirit. no person of a sober and enlarged mind can for a moment delude himself into the opinion that, when he is delivered into his own hands, his education is ended. in a sense to which no one is a stranger, the education of man and his life terminate together. we should at no period of our existence be backward to receive information, and should at all times preserve our minds open to conviction. we should through every day of our lives seek to add to the stores of our knowledge and refinement. but, independently of this more extended sense of the word, a great portion of the education of the young man is left to the direction of the man himself. the epoch of entire liberty is a dangerous period, and calls upon him for all his discretion, that he may not make an ill use of that, which is in itself perhaps the first of sublunary blessings. the season of puberty also, and all the excitements from this source, "that flesh is heir to," demand the utmost vigilance and the strictest restraint. in a word, if we would counteract the innate rebelliousness of man, that indocility of mind which is at all times at hand to plunge us into folly, we must never slumber at our post, but govern ourselves with steady severity, and by the dictates of an enlightened understanding. we must be like a skilful pilot in a perilous sea, and be thoroughly aware of all the rocks and quicksands, and the multiplied and hourly dangers that beset our navigation. in this essay i have treated of nothing more than the inherent restiveness and indocility of man, which accompany him at least through all the earlier sections and divisions of his life. i have not treated of those temptations calculated to lead him into a thousand excesses and miseries, which originate in our lower nature, and are connected with what we call the passion of love. nor have i entered upon the still more copious chapter, of the incentives and provocations which are administered to us by those wants which at all times beset us as living creatures, and by the unequal distribution of property generally in civil society. i have not considered those attributes of man which may serve indifferently for good or for ill, as he may happen to be or not to be the subject of those fiercer excitements, that will oft times corrupt the most ingenuous nature, and have a tendency to inspire into us subtle schemes and a deep contrivance. i have confined myself to the consideration of man, as yet untamed to the modes of civilised community, and unbroken to the steps which are not only prescribed by the interests of our social existence, but which are even in some degree indispensible to the improvement and welfare of the individual. i have considered him, not as he is often acted upon by causes and motives which seem almost to compel him to vice, but merely as he is restless, and impatient, and disdainful both of the control of others, and the shackles of system. for the same reason i have not taken notice of another species of irrationality, and which seems to answer more exactly to the arabic notion of the fomes peccati, the black drop of blood at the bottom of the heart. we act from motives apprehended by the judgment; but we do not stop at them. once set in motion, it will not seldom happen that we proceed beyond our original mark. we are like othello in the play: our blood begins our safer guides to rule; and passion, having our best judgment quelled, assays to lead the way. this is the explanation of the greatest enormities that have been perpetrated by man, and the inhuman deeds of nero and caligula. we proceed from bad to worse. the reins of our discretion drop from our hands. it fortunately happens however, that we do not in the majority of cases, like phaeton in the fable, set the world on fire; but that, with ordinary men, the fiercest excesses of passion extend to no greater distance than can be reached by the sound of their voice. essay vi. of human innocence. one of the most obvious views which are presented to us by man in society is the inoffensiveness and innocence that ordinarily characterise him. society for the greater part carries on its own organization. each man pursues his proper occupation, and there are few individuals that feel the propensity to interrupt the pursuits of their neighbours by personal violence. when we observe the quiet manner in which the inhabitants of a great city, and, in the country, the frequenters of the fields, the high roads, and the heaths, pass along, each engrossed by his private contemplations, feeling no disposition to molest the strangers he encounters, but on the contrary prepared to afford them every courteous assistance, we cannot in equity do less than admire the innocence of our species, and fancy that, like the patriarchs of old, we have fallen in with "angels unawares." there are a few men in every community, that are sons of riot and plunder, and for the sake of these the satirical and censorious throw a general slur and aspersion upon the whole species. when we look at human society with kind and complacent survey, we are more than half tempted to imagine that men might subsist very well in clusters and congregated bodies without the coercion of law; and in truth criminal laws were only made to prevent the ill-disposed few from interrupting the regular and inoffensive proceedings of the vast majority. from what disposition in human nature is it that all this accommodation and concurrence proceed? it is not primarily love. we feel in a very slight degree excited to good will towards the stranger whom we accidentally light upon in our path. neither is it fear. it is principally forecast and prudence. we have a sensitiveness, that forbids us for a slight cause to expose ourselves to we know not what. we are unwilling to be disturbed. we have a mental vis inertiae, analogous to that quality in material substances, by means of which, being at rest, they resist being put into a state of motion. we love our security; we love our respectability; and both of these may be put to hazard by our rashly and unadvisedly thrusting ourselves upon the course of another. we like to act for ourselves. we like to act with others, when we think we can foresee the way in which the proposed transaction will proceed, and that it will proceed to our wish. let us put the case, that i am passing along the highway, destitute and pennyless, and without foresight of any means by which i am to procure the next meal that my nature requires. the vagrant, who revolves in his mind the thought of extorting from another the supply of which he is urgently in need, surveys the person upon whom he meditates this violence with a scrutinising eye. he considers, will this man submit to my summons without resistance, or in what manner will he repel my trespass? he watches his eye, he measures his limbs, his strength, and his agility. though they have met in the deserts of africa, where there is no law to punish the violator, he knows that he exposes himself to a fearful hazard; and he enters upon his purpose with desperate resolve. all this and more must occur to the man of violence, within the pale of a civilised community. begging is the mildest form in which a man can obtain from the stranger he meets, the means of supplying his urgent necessities. but, even here, the beggar knows that he exposes himself not only to refusal, but to the harsh and opprobrious terms in which that refusal may be conveyed. in this city there are laws against begging; and the man that asks alms of me, is an offender against the state. in country-towns it is usual to remark a notice upon entering, to say, whoever shall be found begging in this place, shall be set in the stocks. there are modes however in which i may accost a stranger, with small apprehension that i shall be made to repent of it. i may enquire of him my way to the place towards which my business or my pleasure invites me. ennius of old has observed, that lumen de lumine, to light my candle at my neighbour's lamp, is one of the privileges that the practices of civil society concede. but it is not merely from forecast and prudence that we refrain from interrupting the stranger in his way. we have all of us a certain degree of kindness for a being of our own species. a multitude of men feel this kindness for every thing that has animal life. we would not willingly molest the stranger who has done us no injury. on the contrary we would all of us to a certain extent assist him, under any unforeseen casualty and tribulation. a part therefore of the innocence that characterises our species is to be attributed to philanthropy. childhood is diffident. children for the most part are averse to the addressing themselves to strangers, unless in cases where, from the mere want of anticipation and reflection, they proceed as if they were wholly without the faculty of making calculations and deducing conclusions. the child neither knows himself nor the stranger he meets in his path. he has not measured either the one or the other. he does not know what the stranger may be able, or may likely be prompted to do to him, nor what are his own means of defence or escape. he takes refuge therefore in a wary, sometimes an obstinate silence. it is for this reason that a boy at school often appears duller and more inept, than would be the amount of a fair proportion to what he is found to be when grown up to a man. as we improve in judgment and strength, we know better ourselves and others, and in a majority of instances take our due place in the ranks of society. we acquire a modest and cautious firmness, yield what belongs to another, and assert what is due to ourselves. to the last however, we for the most part retain the inoffensiveness described in the beginning of this essay. how comes it then that our nature labours under so bitter an aspersion? we have been described as cunning, malicious and treacherous. other animals herd together for mutual convenience; and their intercourse with their species is for the most part a reciprocation of social feeling and kindness. but community among men, we are told, is that condition of human existence, which brings out all our evil qualities to the face of day. we lie in wait for, and circumvent each other by multiplied artifices. we cannot depend upon each other for the truth of what is stated to us; and promises and the most solemn engagements often seem as if they were made only to mislead. we are violent and deadly in our animosities, easily worked up to ferocity, and satisfied with scarcely any thing short of mutilation and blood. we are revengeful: we lay up an injury, real or imaginary, in the store-house of an undecaying memory, waiting only till we can repay the evil we have sustained tenfold, at a time when our adversary shall be lulled in unsuspecting security. we are rapacious, with no symptom that the appetite for gain within us will ever be appeased; and we practise a thousand deceits, that it may be the sooner, and to the greater degree glutted. the ambition of man is unbounded; and he hesitates at no means in the course it prompts him to pursue. in short, man is to man ever the most fearful and dangerous foe: and it is in this view of his nature that the king of brobdingnag says to gulliver, "i cannot but conclude the bulk of your race to be the most pernicious generation of little, odious vermin, that were ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth." the comprehensive faculties of man therefore, and the refinements and subtlety of his intellect, serve only to render him the more formidable companion, and to hold us up as a species to merited condemnation. it is obvious however that the picture thus drawn is greatly overcharged, that it describes a very small part of our race, and that even as to them it sets before us a few features only, and a partial representation. history--the successive scenes of the drama in which individuals play their part--is a labyrinth, of which no man has as yet exactly seized the clue. it has long since been observed, that the history of the four great monarchies, of tyrannies and free states, of chivalry and clanship, of mahometanism and the christian church, of the balance of europe and the revolution of empires, is little else than a tissue of crimes, exhibiting nations as if they were so many herds of ferocious animals, whose genuine occupation was to tear each other to pieces, and to deform their mother-earth with mangled carcases and seas of blood. but it is not just that we should establish our opinion of human nature purely from the records of history. man is alternately devoted to tranquillity and to violence. but the latter only affords the proper materials of narration. when he is wrought upon by some powerful impulse, our curiosity is most roused to observe him. we remark his emotions, his energies, his tempest. it is then that he becomes the person of a drama. and, where this disquietude is not the affair of a single individual, but of several persons together, of nations, it is there that history finds her harvest. she goes into the field with all the implements of her industry, and fills her storehouses and magazines with the abundance of her crop. but times of tranquillity and peace furnish her with no materials. they are dismissed in a few slight sentences, and leave no memory behind. let us divide this spacious earth into equal compartments, and see in which violence, and in which tranquillity prevails. let us look through the various ranks and occupations of human society, and endeavour to arrive at a conclusion of a similar sort. the soldier by occupation, and the officer who commands him, would seem, when they are employed in their express functions, to be men of strife. kings and ministers of state have in a multitude of instances fallen under this description. conquerors, the firebrands of the earth, have sufficiently displayed their noxious propensities. but these are but a small part of the tenantry of the many-peopled globe. man lives by the sweat of his brow. the teeming earth is given him, that by his labour he may raise from it the means of his subsistence. agriculture is, at least among civilised nations, the first, and certainly the most indispensible of professions. the profession itself is the emblem of peace. all its occupations, from seed-time to harvest, are tranquil; and there is nothing which belongs to it, that can obviously be applied to rouse the angry passions, and place men in a frame of hostility to each other. next to the cultivator, come the manufacturer, the artificer, the carpenter, the mason, the joiner, the cabinet-maker, all those numerous classes of persons, who are employed in forming garments for us to wear, houses to live in, and moveables and instruments for the accommodation of the species. all these persons are, of necessity, of a peaceable demeanour. so are those who are not employed in producing the conveniencies of life, but in conducting the affairs of barter and exchange. add to these, such as are engaged in literature, either in the study of what has already been produced, or in adding to the stock, in science or the liberal arts, in the instructing mankind in religion and their duties, or in the education of youth. "civility," "civil," are indeed terms which express a state of peaceable occupation, in opposition to what is military, and imply a tranquil frame of mind, and the absence of contention, uproar and violence. it is therefore clear, that the majority of mankind are civil, devoted to the arts of peace, and so far as relates to acts of violence innocent, and that the sons of rapine constitute the exception to the general character. we come into the world under a hard and unpalatable law, "in the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread." it is a bitter decree that is promulgated against us, "he that will not work, neither shall he eat." we all of us love to do our own will, and to be free from the manacles of restraint. what our hearts "find us to do," that we are disposed to execute "with all our might." some men are lovers of strenuous occupation. they build and they plant; they raise splendid edifices, and lay out pleasure-grounds of mighty extent. or they devote their minds to the acquisition of knowledge; they ----outwatch the bear, with thrice great hermes, or unsphere the spirit of plato, to unfold what worlds, or what vast regions hold the immortal mind. others again would waste perhaps their whole lives in reverie and idleness. they are constituted of materials so kindly and serene, that their spirits never flag from want of occupation and external excitement. they could lie for ever on a sunny bank, in a condition divided between thinking and no thinking, refreshed by the fanning breeze, viewing the undulations of the soil, and the rippling of the brook, admiring the azure heavens, and the vast, the bold, and the sublime figure of the clouds, yielding themselves occasionally to "thick-coming fancies," and day-dreams, and the endless romances of an undisciplined mind; and find no end, in wandering mazes lost. but all men, alike the busy of constitution and the idle, would desire to follow the impulses of their own minds, unbroken in upon by harsh necessity, or the imperious commands of their fellows. we cannot however, by the resistless law of our existence, live, except the few who by the accident of their birth are privileged to draw their supplies from the labour of others, without exerting ourselves to procure by our efforts or ingenuity the necessaries of food, lodging and attire. he that would obtain them for himself in an uninhabited island, would find that this amounted to a severe tax upon that freedom of motion and thought which would otherwise be his inheritance. and he who has his lot cast in a populous community, exists in a condition somewhat analogous to that of a negro slave, except that he may to a limited extent select the occupation to which he shall addict himself, or may at least starve, in part or in whole, uncontroled, and at his choice. such is, as it were, the universal lot. 'tis destiny unshunnable like death: even then this dire necessity falls on us, when we do quicken. i go forth in the streets, and observe the occupations of other men. i remark the shops that on every side beset my path. it is curious and striking, how vast are the ingenuity and contrivance of human beings, to wring from their fellow-creatures, "from the hard hands of peasants" and artisans, a part of their earnings, that they also may live. we soon become feelingly convinced, that we also must enter into the vast procession of industry, upon pain that otherwise, like to an entered tide, they all rush by, and leave you hindmost: there you lie, for pavement to the abject rear, o'errun and trampled on. it is through the effect of this necessity, that civilised communities become what they are. we all fall into our ranks. each one is member of a certain company or squadron. we know our respective places, and are marshaled and disciplined with an exactness scarcely less than that of the individuals of a mighty army. we are therefore little disposed to interrupt the occupations of each other. we are intent upon the peculiar employment to which we have become devoted. we "rise up early, and lie down late," and have no leisure to trouble ourselves with the pursuits of others. hence of necessity it happens in a civilised community, that a vast majority of the species are innocent, and have no inclination to molest or interrupt each other's avocations. but, as this condition of human society preserves us in comparative innocence, and renders the social arrangement in the midst of which we exist, to a certain degree a soothing and agreeable spectacle, so on the other hand it is not less true that its immediate tendency is, to clip the wings of the thinking principle within us, and plunge the members of the community in which we live into a barren and ungratifying mediocrity. hence it should be the aim of those persons, who from their situation have more or less the means of looking through the vast assemblage of their countrymen, of penetrating "into the seeds" of character, and determining "which grain will grow, and which will not," to apply themselves to the redeeming such as are worthy of their care from the oblivious gulph into which the mass of the species is of necessity plunged. it is therefore an ill saying, when applied in the most rigorous extent, "let every man maintain himself, and be his own provider: why should we help him?" the help however that we should afford to our fellow-men requires of us great discernment in its administration. the deceitfulness of appearances is endless. and nothing can well be at the same time more lamentable and more ludicrous, than the spectacle of those persons, the weaver, the thresher, and the mechanic, who by injudicious patronage are drawn from their proper sphere, only to exhibit upon a larger stage their imbecility and inanity, to shew those moderate powers, which in their proper application would have carried their possessors through life with respect, distorted into absurdity, and used in the attempt to make us look upon a dwarf, as if he were one of the titans who in the commencement of recorded time astonished the earth. it is also true to a great degree, that those efforts of the human mind are most healthful and vigorous, in which the possessor of talents "administers to himself," and contends with the different obstacles that arise, --------throwing them aside, and stemming them with hearts of controversy. many illustrious examples however may be found in the annals of literature, of patronage judiciously and generously applied, where men have been raised by the kindness of others from the obscurest situations, and placed on high, like beacons, to illuminate the world. and, independently of all examples, a sound application of the common sense of the human mind would teach us, that the worthies of the earth, though miracles, are not omnipotent, and that a certain aid, from those who by counsel or opulence are enabled to afford it, have oft times produced the noblest effects, have carried on the generous impulse that works within us, and prompted us manfully to proceed, when the weakness of our nature was ready to give in from despair. but the thing that in this place it was most appropriate to say, is, that we ought not quietly to affirm, of the man whose mind nature or education has enriched with extraordinary powers, "let him maintain himself, and be his own provider: why should we help him?" it is a thing deeply to be regretted, that such a man will frequently be compelled to devote himself to pursuits comparatively vulgar and inglorious, because he must live. much of this is certainly inevitable. but what glorious things might a man with extraordinary powers effect, were he not hurried unnumbered miles awry by the unconquerable power of circumstances? the life of such a man is divided between the things which his internal monitor strongly prompts him to do, and those which the external power of nature and circumstances compels him to submit to. the struggle on the part of his better self is noble and admirable. the less he gives way, provided he can accomplish the purpose to which he has vowed himself, the more he is worthy of the admiration of the world. if, in consequence of listening too much to the loftier aspirations of his nature, he fails, it is deeply to be regretted--it is a man to a certain degree lost--but surely, if his miscarriage be not caused by undue presumption, or the clouds and unhealthful atmosphere of self-conceit, he is entitled to the affectionate sympathy and sorrow of every generous mind. essay vii. of the duration of human life. the active and industrious portion of the human species in civilised countries, is composed of those who are occupied in the labour of the hand, and in the labour of the head. the following remarks expressly apply only to the latter of these classes, principally to such as are occupied in productive literature. they may however have their use to all persons a considerable portion of whose time is employed in study and contemplation, as, if well founded, they will form no unimportant chapter in the science of the human mind. in relation to all the members of the second class then, i should say, that human life is made up of term and vacation, in other words, of hours that may be intellectually employed, and of hours that cannot be so employed. human life consists of years, months and days: each day contains twenty-four hours. of these hours how many belong to the province of intellect? "there is," as solomon says, "a time for all things." there must be a time for sleep, a time for recreation, a time for exercise, a time for supplying the machine with nourishment, and a time for digestion. when all these demands have been supplied, how many hours will be left for intellectual occupation? these remarks, as i have said, are intended principally to apply to the subject of productive literature. now, of the hours that remain when all the necessary demands of human life have been supplied, it is but a portion, perhaps a small portion, that can be beneficially, judiciously, employed in productive literature, or literary composition. it is true, that there are many men who will occupy eight, ten, or twelve hours in a day, in the labour of composition. but it may be doubted whether they are wisely so occupied. it is the duty of an author, inasmuch as he is an author, to consider, that he is to employ his pen in putting down that which shall be fit for other men to read. he is not writing a letter of business, a letter of amusement, or a letter of sentiment, to his private friend. he is writing that which shall be perused by as many men as can be prevailed on to become his readers. if he is an author of spirit and ambition, he wishes his productions to be read, not only by the idle, but by the busy, by those who cannot spare time to peruse them but at the expence of some occupations which ought not to be suspended without an adequate occasion. he wishes to be read not only by the frivolous and the lounger, but by the wise, the elegant, and the fair, by those who are qualified to appreciate the merit of a work, who are endowed with a quick sensibility and a discriminating taste, and are able to pass a sound judgment on its beauties and defects. he advances his claim to permanent honours, and desires that his lucubrations should be considered by generations yet unborn. a person, so occupied, and with such aims, must not attempt to pass his crudities upon the public. if i may parody a celebrated aphorism of quintilian, i would say, "magna debetur hominibus reverentia( ):" in other words, we should carefully examine what it is that we propose to deliver in a permanent form to the taste and understanding of our species. an author ought only to commit to the press the first fruits of his field, his best and choicest thoughts. he ought not to take up the pen, till he has brought his mind into a fitting tone, and ought to lay it down, the instant his intellect becomes in any degree clouded, and his vital spirits abate of their elasticity. ( ) mankind is to be considered with reverence. there are extraordinary cases. a man may have so thoroughly prepared himself by long meditation and study, he may have his mind so charged with an abundance of thought, that it may employ him for ten or twelve hours consecutively, merely to put down or to unravel the conceptions already matured in his soul. it was in some such way, that dryden, we are told, occupied a whole night, and to a late hour in the next morning, in penning his alexander's feast. but these are the exceptions. in most instances two or three hours are as much as an author can spend at a time in delivering the first fruits of his field, his choicest thoughts, before his intellect becomes in some degree clouded, and his vital spirits abate of their elasticity. nor is this all. he might go on perhaps for some time longer with a reasonable degree of clearness. but the fertility which ought to be his boast, is exhausted. he no longer sports in the meadows of thought, or revels in the exuberance of imagination, but becomes barren and unsatisfactory. repose is necessary, and that the soil should be refreshed with the dews of another evening, the sleep of a night, and the freshness and revivifying influence of another morning. these observations lead, by a natural transition, to the question of the true estimate and value of human life, considered as the means of the operations of intellect. a primary enquiry under this head is as to the duration of life: is it long, or short? the instant this question is proposed, i hear myself replied to from all quarters: what is there so well known as the brevity of human life? "life is but a span." it is "as a tale that is told." "man cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not." we are "as a sleep; or as grass: in the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth." the foundation of this sentiment is obvious. men do not live for ever. the longest duration of human existence has an end: and whatever it is of which that may be affirmed, may in some sense be pronounced to be short. the estimation of our existence depends upon the point of view from which we behold it. hope is one of our greatest enjoyments. possession is something. but the past is as nothing. remorse may give it a certain solidity; the recollection of a life spent in acts of virtue may be refreshing. but fruition, and honours, and fame, and even pain, and privations, and torment, when they ere departed, are but like a feather; we regard them as of no account. taken in this sense, dryden's celebrated verses are but a maniac's rant: to-morrow, do thy worst, for i have lived to-day: be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine, the joys i have possessed, in spite of fate are mine. not heaven itself upon the past has power, but what has been has been, and i have had my hour. but this way of removing the picture of human life to a certain distance from us, and considering those things which were once in a high degree interesting as frivolous and unworthy of regard, is not the way by which we shall arrive at a true and just estimation of life. whatever is now past, and is of little value, was once present: and he who would form a sound judgment, must look upon every part of our lives as present in its turn, and not suffer his opinion to be warped by the consideration of the nearness or remoteness of the object he contemplates. one sentence, which has grown into a maxim for ever repeated, is remarkable for the grossest fallacy: ars longa, vita brevis( ). i would fain know, what art, compared with the natural duration of human life from puberty to old age, is long. ( ) art is long; life is short. if it is intended to say, that no one man can be expected to master all possible arts, or all arts that have at one time or another been the subject of human industry, this indeed is true. but the cause of this does not lie in the limited duration of human life, but in the nature of the faculties of the mind. human understanding and human industry cannot embrace every thing. when we take hold of one thing, we must let go another. science and art, if we would pursue them to the furthest extent of which we are capable, must be pursued without interruption. it would therefore be more to the purpose to say, man cannot be for ever young. in the stream of human existence, different things have their appropriate period. the knowledge of languages can perhaps be most effectually acquired in the season of nonage. at riper years one man devotes himself to one science or art, and another man to another. this man is a mathematician; a second studies music; a third painting. this man is a logician; and that man an orator. the same person cannot be expected to excel in the abstruseness of metaphysical science, and in the ravishing effusions of poetical genius. when a man, who has arrived at great excellence in one department of art or science, would engage himself in another, he will be apt to find the freshness of his mind gone, and his faculties no longer distinguished by the same degree of tenacity and vigour that they formerly displayed. it is with the organs of the brain, as it is with the organs of speech, in the latter of which we find the tender fibres of the child easily accommodating themselves to the minuter inflections and variations of sound, which the more rigid muscles of the adult will for the most part attempt in vain. if again, by the maxim, ars longa, vita brevis, it is intended to signify, that we cannot in any art arrive at perfection; that in reality all the progress we can make is insignificant; and that, as st. paul says, we must "not count ourselves to have already attained; but that, forgetting the things that are behind, it becomes us to press forward to the prize of our calling,"--this also is true. but this is only ascribable to the limitation of our faculties, and that even the shadow of perfection which man is capable to reach, can only be attained by the labour of successive generations. the cause does not lie in the shortness of human life, unless we would include in its protracted duration the privilege of being for ever young; to which we ought perhaps to add, that our activity should never be exhausted, the freshness of our minds never abate, and our faculties for ever retain the same degree of tenacity and vigour, as they had in the morning of life, when every thing was new, when all that allured or delighted us was seen accompanied with charms inexpressible, and, as dryden expresses it( ), "the first sprightly running" of the wine of life afforded a zest never after to be hoped for. ( ) aurengzebe. i return then to the consideration of the alleged shortness of life. i mentioned in the beginning of this essay, that "human life consists of years, months and days; each day containing twenty-four hours." but, when i said this, i by no means carried on the division so far as it might be carried. it has been calculated that the human mind is capable of being impressed with three hundred and twenty sensations in a second of time.( ) ( ) see watson on time, chapter ii. "how infinitely rapid is the succession of thought! while i am speaking, perhaps no two ideas are in my mind at the same time, and yet with what facility do i slide from one to another! if my discourse be argumentative, how often do i pass in review the topics of which it consists, before i utter them; and, even while i am speaking, continue the review at intervals, without producing any pause in my discourse! how many other sensations are experienced by me during this period, without so much as interrupting, that is, without materially diverting, the train of my ideas! my eye successively remarks a thousand objects that present themselves. my mind wanders to the different parts of my body, and receives a sensation from the chair on which i sit, or the table on which i lean. it reverts to a variety of things that occurred in the course of the morning, in the course of yesterday, the most remote from, the most unconnected with, the subject that might seem wholly to engross me. i see the window, the opening of a door, the snuffing of a candle. when these most perceptibly occur, my mind passes from one to the other, without feeling the minutest obstacle, or being in any degree distracted by their multiplicity( )." ( ) political justice, book iv, chapter ix. if this statement should appear to some persons too subtle, it may however prepare us to form a due estimate of the following remarks. "art is long." no, certainly, no art is long, compared with the natural duration of human life from puberty to old age. there is perhaps no art that may not with reasonable diligence be acquired in three years, that is, as to its essential members and its skilful exercise. we may improve afterwards, but it will be only in minute particulars, and only by fits. our subsequent advancement less depends upon the continuance of our application, than upon the improvement of the mind generally, the refining of our taste, the strengthening our judgment, and the accumulation of our experience. the idea which prevails among the vulgar of mankind is, that we must make haste to be wise. the erroneousness of this notion however has from time to time been detected by moralists and philosophers; and it has been felt that he who proceeds in a hurry towards the goal, exposes himself to the imminent risk of never reaching it. the consciousness of this danger has led to the adoption of the modified maxim, festina lente, hasten, but with steps deliberate and cautious. it would however be a more correct advice to the aspirant, to say, be earnest in your application, but let your march be vigilant and slow. there is a doggrel couplet which i have met with in a book on elocution: learn to speak slow: all other graces will follow in their proper places. i could wish to recommend a similar process to the student in the course of his reading. toplady, a celebrated methodist preacher of the last age, somewhere relates a story of a coxcomb, who told him that he had read over euclid's elements of geometry one afternoon at his tea, only leaving out the a's and b's and crooked lines, which seemed to be intruded merely to retard his progress. nothing is more easy than to gabble through a work replete with the profoundest elements of thinking, and to carry away almost nothing, when we have finished. the book does not deserve even to be read, which does not impose on us the duty of frequent pauses, much reflecting and inward debate, or require that we should often go back, compare one observation and statement with another, and does not call upon us to combine and knit together the disjecta membra. it is an observation which has often been repeated, that, when we come to read an excellent author a second and a third time, we find in him a multitude of things, that we did not in the slightest degree perceive in a first reading. a careful first reading would have a tendency in a considerable degree to anticipate this following crop. nothing is more certain than that a schoolboy gathers much of his most valuable instruction when his lesson is not absolutely before him. in the same sense the more mature student will receive most important benefit, when he shuts his book, and goes forth in the field, and ruminates on what he has read. it is with the intellectual, as with the corporeal eye: we must retire to a certain distance from the object we would examine, before we can truly take in the whole. we must view it in every direction, "survey it," as sterne says, "transversely, then foreright, then this way, and then that, in all its possible directions and foreshortenings( );" and thus only can it be expected that we should adequately comprehend it. ( ) tristram shandy, vol. iv, chap. ii. but the thing it was principally in my purpose to say is, that it is one of the great desiderata of human life, not to accomplish our purposes in the briefest time, to consider "life as short, and art as long," and therefore to master our ends in the smallest number of days or of years, but rather to consider it as an ample field that is spread before us, and to examine how it is to be filled with pleasure, with advantage, and with usefulness. life is like a lordly garden, which it calls forth all the skill of the artist to adorn with exhaustless variety and beauty; or like a spacious park or pleasure-ground, all of whose inequalities are to be embellished, and whose various capacities of fertilisation, sublimity or grace, are to be turned to account, so that we may wander in it for ever, and never be wearied. we shall perhaps understand this best, if we take up the subject on a limited scale, and, before we consider life in its assigned period of seventy years, first confine our attention to the space of a single day. and we will consider that day, not as it relates to the man who earns his subsistence by the labour of his hands, or to him who is immersed in the endless details of commerce. but we will take the case of the man, the whole of whose day is to be disposed of at his own discretion. the attention of the curious observer has often been called to the tediousness of existence, how our time hangs upon our hands, and in how high estimation the art is held, of giving wings to our hours, and making them pass rapidly and cheerfully away. and moralists of a cynical disposition have poured forth many a sorrowful ditty upon the inconsistency of man, who complains of the shortness of life, at the same time that he is put to the greatest straits how to give an agreeable and pleasant occupation to its separate portions. "let us hear no more," say these moralists, "of the transitoriness of human existence, from men to whom life is a burthen, and who are willing to assign a reward to him that shall suggest to them an occupation or an amusement untried before." but this inconsistency, if it merits the name, is not an affair of artificial and supersubtle refinement, but is based in the fundamental principles of our nature. it is unavoidable that, when we have reached the close of any great epoch of our existence, and still more when we have arrived at its final term, we should regret its transitory nature, and lament that we have made no more effectual use of it. and yet the periods and portions of the stream of time, as they pass by us, will often be felt by us as insufferably slow in their progress, and we would give no inconsiderable sum to procure that the present section of our lives might come to an end, and that we might turn over a new leaf in the volume of existence. i have heard various men profess that they never knew the minutes that hung upon their hands, and were totally unacquainted with what, borrowing a term from the french language, we call ennui. i own i have listened to these persons with a certain degree of incredulity, always excepting such as earn their subsistence by constant labour, or as, being placed in a situation of active engagement, have not the leisure to feel apathy and disgust. but we are talking here of that numerous class of human beings, who are their own masters, and spend every hour of the day at the choice of their discretion. to these we may add the persons who are partially so, and who, having occupied three or four hours of every day in discharge of some function necessarily imposed on them, at the striking of a given hour go out of school, and employ themselves in a certain industry or sport purely of their own election. to go back then to the consideration of the single day of a man, all of whose hours are at his disposal to spend them well or ill, at the bidding of his own judgment, or the impulse of his own caprice. we will suppose that, when he rises from his bed, he has sixteen hours before him, to be employed in whatever mode his will shall decide. i bar the case of travelling, or any of those schemes for passing the day, which by their very nature take the election out of his hands, and fill up his time with a perpetual motion, the nature of which is ascertained from the beginning. with such a man then it is in the first place indispensibly necessary, that he should have various successive occupations. there is no one study or intellectual enquiry to which a man can apply sixteen hours consecutively, unless in some extraordinary instances which can occur but seldom in the course of a life. and even then the attention will from time to time relax, and the freshness of mental zeal and activity give way, though perhaps, after the lapse of a few minutes they may be revived and brought into action again. in the ordinary series of human existence it is desirable that, in the course of the same day, a man should have various successive occupations. i myself for the most part read in one language at one part of the day, and in another at another. i am then in the best health and tone of spirits, when i employ two or three hours, and no more, in the act of writing and composition. there must also in the sixteen hours be a time for meals. there should be a time for fresh air and bodily exercise. it is in the nature of man, that we should spend a part of every day in the society of our fellows, either at public spectacles and places of concourse, or in the familiar interchange of conversation with one, two, or more persons with whom we can give ourselves up to unrestrained communication. all human life, as i have said, every day of our existence, consists of term and vacation; and the perfection of practical wisdom is to interpose these one with another, so as to produce a perpetual change, a well-chosen relief, and a freshness and elastic tone which may bid defiance to weariness. taken then in this point of view, what an empire does the man of leisure possess in each single day of his life! he disposes of his hours much in the same manner, as the commander of a company of men whom it is his business to train in the discipline of war. this officer directs one party of his men to climb a mountain, and another to ford or swim a stream which rushes along the valley. he orders this set to rush forward with headlong course, and the other to wheel, and approach by circuitous progress perhaps to the very same point. he marches them to the right and the left. he then dismisses them from the scene of exercise, to furbish their arms, to attend to their accoutrements, or to partake of necessary refection. not inferior to this is the authority of the man of leisure in disposing of the hours of one single day of his existence. and human life consists of many such days, there being three hundred and sixty-five in each year that we live. how infinitely various may be the occupations of the life of man from puberty to old age! we may acquire languages; we may devote ourselves to arts; we may give ourselves up to the profoundness of science. nor is any one of these objects incompatible with the others, nor is there any reason why the same man should not embrace many. we may devote one portion of the year to travelling, and another to all the abstractions of study. i remember when i was a boy, looking forward with terror to the ample field of human life, and saying, when i have read through all the books that have been written, what shall i do afterwards? and there is infinitely more sense in this, than in the ludicrous exclamations of men who complain of the want of time, and say that life affords them no space in which to act their imaginings. on the contrary, when a man has got to the end of one art or course of study, he is compelled to consider what he shall do next. and, when we have gone through a cycle of as many acquisitions, as, from the limitation of human faculties, are not destructive of each other, we shall find ourselves frequently reduced to the beginning some of them over again. nor is this the least agreeable occupation of human leisure. the book that i read when i was a boy, presents quite a new face to me as i advance in the vale of years. the same words and phrases suggest to me a new train of ideas. and it is no mean pleasure that i derive from the singular sensation of finding the same author and the same book, old and yet not old, presenting to me cherished and inestimable recollections, and at the same time communicating mines of wealth, the shaft of which was till now unexplored. the result then of these various observations is to persuade the candid and ingenuous man, to consider life as an important and ample possession, to resolve that it shall be administered with as much judgment and deliberation as a person of true philanthropy and wisdom would administer a splendid income, and upon no occasion so much to think upon the point of in how short a time an interesting pursuit is to be accomplished, as by what means it shall be accomplished in a consummate and masterly style. let us hear no more, from those who have to a considerable degree the command of their hours, the querulous and pitiful complaint that they have no time to do what they ought to do and would wish to do; but let them feel that they have a gigantic store of minutes and hours and days and months, abundantly sufficient to enable them to effect what it is especially worthy of a noble mind to perform! essay viii. of human vegetation. there is another point of view from which we may look at the subject of time as it is concerned with the business of human life, that will lead us to conclusions of a very different sort from those which are set down in the preceding essay. man has two states of existence in a striking degree distinguished from each other: the state in which he is found during his waking hours; and the state in which he is during sleep. the question has been agitated by locke and other philosophers, "whether the soul always thinks," in other words, whether the mind, during those hours in which our limbs lie for the most part in a state of inactivity, is or is not engaged by a perpetual succession of images and impressions. this is a point that can perhaps never be settled. when the empire of sleep ceases, or when we are roused from sleep, we are often conscious that we have been to that moment busily employed with that sort of conceptions and scenes which we call dreams. and at times when, on waking, we have no such consciousness, we can never perhaps be sure that the shock that waked us, had not the effect of driving away these fugitive and unsubstantial images. there are men who are accustomed to say, they never dream. if in reality the mind of man, from the hour of his birth, must by the law of its nature be constantly occupied with sensations or images (and of the contrary we can never be sure), then these men are all their lives in the state of persons, upon whom the shock that wakes them, has the effect of driving away such fugitive and unsubstantial images.--add to which, there may be sensations in the human subject, of a species confused and unpronounced, which never arrive at that degree of distinctness as to take the shape of what we call dreaming. so much for man in the state of sleep. but during our waking hours, our minds are very differently occupied at different periods of the day. i would particularly distinguish the two dissimilar states of the waking man, when the mind is indolent, and when it is on the alert. while i am writing this essay, my mind may be said to be on the alert. it is on the alert, so long as i am attentively reading a book of philosophy, of argumentation, of eloquence, or of poetry. it is on the alert, so long as i am addressing a smaller or a greater audience, and endeavouring either to amuse or instruct them. it is on the alert, while in silence and solitude i endeavour to follow a train of reasoning, to marshal and arrange a connected set of ideas, or in any other way to improve my mind, to purify my conceptions, and to advance myself in any of the thousand kinds of intellectual process. it is on the alert, when i am engaged in animated conversation, whether my cue be to take a part in the reciprocation of alternate facts and remarks in society, or merely to sit an attentive listener to the facts and remarks of others. this state of the human mind may emphatically be called the state of activity and attention. so long as i am engaged in any of the ways here enumerated, or in any other equally stirring mental occupations which are not here set down, my mind is in a frame of activity. but there is another state in which men pass their minutes and hours, that is strongly contrasted with this. it depends in some men upon constitution, and in others upon accident, how their time shall be divided, how much shall be given to the state of activity, and how much to the state of indolence. in an essay i published many years ago there is this passage. "the chief point of difference between the man of talent and the man without, consists in the different ways in which their minds are employed during the same interval. they are obliged, let us suppose, to walk from temple-bar to hyde-park-corner. the dull man goes straight forward; he has so many furlongs to traverse. he observes if he meets any of his acquaintance; he enquires respecting their health and their family. he glances perhaps the shops as he passes; he admires the fashion of a buckle, and the metal of a tea-urn. if he experiences any flights of fancy, they are of a short extent; of the same nature as the flights of a forest-bird, clipped of his wings, and condemned to pass the rest of his life in a farm-yard. on the other hand the man of talent gives full scope to his imagination. he laughs and cries. unindebted to the suggestions of surrounding objects, his whole soul is employed. he enters into nice calculations; he digests sagacious reasonings. in imagination he declaims or describes, impressed with the deepest sympathy, or elevated to the loftiest rapture. he makes a thousand new and admirable combinations. he passes through a thousand imaginary scenes, tries his courage, tasks his ingenuity, and thus becomes gradually prepared to meet almost any of the many-coloured events of human life. he consults by the aid of memory the books he has read, and projects others for the future instruction and delight of mankind. if he observe the passengers, he reads their countenances, conjectures their past history, and forms a superficial notion of their wisdom or folly, their virtue or vice, their satisfaction or misery. if he observe the scenes that occur, it is with the eye of a connoisseur or an artist. every object is capable of suggesting to him a volume of reflections. the time of these two persons in one respect resembles; it has brought them both to hyde-park-corner. in almost every other respect it is dissimilar;( )." ( ) enquirer, part , essay v. this passage undoubtedly contains a true description of what may happen, and has happened. but there lurks in this statement a considerable error. it has appeared in the second essay of this volume, that there is not that broad and strong line of distinction between the wise man and the dull that has often been supposed. we are all of us by turns both the one and the other. or, at least, the wisest man that ever existed spends a portion of his time in vacancy and dulness; and the man, whose faculties are seemingly the most obtuse, might, under proper management from the hour of his birth, barring those rare exceptions from the ordinary standard of mind which do not deserve to be taken into the account, have proved apt, adroit, intelligent and acute, in the walk for which his organisation especially fitted him( ). ( ) see above, essay . many men without question, in a walk of the same duration as that above described between temple-bar and hyde-park-corner, have passed their time in as much activity, and amidst as strong and various excitements, as those enumerated in the passage above quoted. but the lives of all men, the wise, and those whom by way of contrast we are accustomed to call the dull, are divided between animation and comparative vacancy; and many a man, who by the bursts of his genius has astonished the world, and commanded the veneration of successive ages, has spent a period of time equal to that occupied by a walk from temple-bar to hyde-park-corner, in a state of mind as idle, and as little affording materials for recollection, as the dullest man that ever breathed the vital air. the two states of man which are here attempted to be distinguished, are, first, that in which reason is said to fill her throne, in which will prevails, and directs the powers of mind or of bodily action in one channel or another; and, secondly, that in which these faculties, tired of for ever exercising their prerogatives, or, being awakened as it were from sleep, and having not yet assumed them, abandon the helm, even as a mariner might be supposed to do, in a wide sea, and in a time when no disaster could be apprehended, and leave the vessel of the mind to drift, exactly as chance might direct. to describe this last state of mind i know not a better term that can be chosen, than that of reverie. it is of the nature of what i have seen denominated brown study( ) a species of dozing and drowsiness, in which all men spend a portion of the waking part of every day of their lives. every man must be conscious of passing minutes, perhaps hours of the day, particularly when engaged in exercise in the open air, in this species of neutrality and eviration. it is often not unpleasant at the time, and leaves no sinking of the spirits behind. it is probably of a salutary nature, and may be among the means, in a certain degree beneficial like sleep, by which the machine is restored, and the man comes forth from its discipline reinvigorated, and afresh capable of his active duties. ( ) norris, and johnson, dictionary of the english language. this condition of our nature has considerably less vitality in it, than we experience in a complete and perfect dream. in dreaming we are often conscious of lively impressions, of a busy scene, and of objects and feelings succeeding each other with rapidity. we sometimes imagine ourselves earnestly speaking: and the topics we treat, and the words we employ, are supplied to us with extraordinary fluency. but the sort of vacancy and inoccupation of which i here treat, has a greater resemblance to the state of mind, without distinct and clearly unfolded ideas, which we experience before we sink into sleep. the mind is in reality in a condition, more properly accessible to feeling and capable of thought, than actually in the exercise of either the one or the other. we are conscious of existence and of little more. we move our legs, and continue in a peripatetic state; for the man who has gone out of his house with a purpose to walk, exercises the power of volition when he sets out, but proceeds in his motion by a semi-voluntary act, by a sort of vis inertiae, which will not cease to operate without an express reason for doing so, and advances a thousand steps without distinctly willing any but the first. when it is necessary to turn to the right or the left, or to choose between any two directions on which he is called upon to decide, his mind is so far brought into action as the case may expressly require, and no further. i have here instanced in the case of the peripatetic: but of how many classes and occupations of human life may not the same thing be affirmed? it happens to the equestrian, as well as to him that walks on foot. it occurs to him who cultivates the fruits of the earth, and to him who is occupied in any of the thousand manufactures which are the result of human ingenuity. it happens to the soldier in his march, and to the mariner on board his vessel. it attends the individuals of the female sex through all their diversified modes of industry, the laundress, the housemaid, the sempstress, the netter of purses, the knotter of fringe, and the worker in tambour, tapestry and embroidery. in all, the limbs or the fingers are employed mechanically; the attention of the mind is only required at intervals; and the thoughts remain for the most part in a state of non-excitation and repose. it is a curious question, but extremely difficult of solution, what portion of the day of every human creature must necessarily be spent in this sort of intellectual indolence. in the lower classes of society its empire is certainly very great; its influence is extensive over a large portion of the opulent and luxurious; it is least among those who are intrusted in the more serious affairs of mankind, and among the literary and the learned, those who waste their lives, and consume the midnight-oil, in the search after knowledge. it appeared with sufficient clearness in the immediately preceding essay, that the intellect cannot be always on the stretch, nor the bow of the mind for ever bent. in the act of composition, unless where the province is of a very inferior kind, it is likely that not more than two or three hours at a time can be advantageously occupied. but in literary labour it will often occur, that, in addition to the hours expressly engaged in composition, much time may be required for the collecting materials, the collating of authorities, and the bringing together a variety of particulars, so as to sift from the mass those circumstances which may best conduce to the purpose of the writer. in all these preliminary and inferior enquiries it is less necessary that the mind should be perpetually awake and on the alert, than in the direct office of composition. the situation is considerably similar of the experimental philosopher, the man who by obstinate and unconquerable application resolves to wrest from nature her secrets, and apply them to the improvement of social life, or to the giving to the human mind a wider range or a more elevated sphere. a great portion of this employment consists more in the motion of the hands and the opportune glance of the eye, than in the labour of the head, and allows to the operator from time to time an interval of rest from the momentous efforts of invention and discovery, and the careful deduction of consequences in the points to be elucidated. there is a distinction, sufficiently familiar to all persons who occupy a portion of their time in reading, that is made between books of instruction, and books of amusement. from the student of mathematics or any of the higher departments of science, from the reader of books of investigation and argument, an active attention is demanded. even in the perusal of the history of kingdoms and nations, or of certain memorable periods of public affairs, we can scarcely proceed with any satisfaction, unless in so far as we collect our thoughts, compare one part of the narrative with another, and hold the mind in a state of activity. we are obliged to reason while we read, and in some degree to construct a discourse of our own, at the same time that we follow the statements of the author before us. unless we do this, the sense and spirit of what we read will be apt to slip from under our observation, and we shall by and by discover that we are putting together words and sounds only, when we purposed to store our minds with facts and reflections. we apprehended not the sense of the writer even when his pages were under our eye, and of consequence have nothing laid up in the memory after the hour of reading is completed. in works of amusement it is otherwise, and most especially in writings of fiction. these are sought after with avidity by the idle, because for the most part they are found to have the virtue of communicating impressions to the reader, even while his mind remains in a state of passiveness. he finds himself agreeably affected with fits of mirth or of sorrow, and carries away the facts of the tale, at the same time that he is not called upon for the act of attention. this is therefore one of the modes of luxury especially cultivated in a highly civilized state of society. the same considerations will also explain to us the principal part of the pleasure that is experienced by mankind in all states of society from public shews and exhibitions. the spectator is not called upon to exert himself; the amusement and pleasure come to him, while he remains voluptuously at his ease; and it is certain that the exertion we make when we are compelled to contribute to, and become in part the cause of our own entertainment, is more than the human mind is willing to sustain, except at seasons in which we are specially on the alert and awake. this is further one of the causes why men in general feel prompted to seek the society of their fellows. we are in part no doubt called upon in select society to bring our own information along with us, and a certain vein of wit, humour or narrative, that we may contribute our proportion to the general stock. we read the newspapers, the newest publications, and repair to places of fashionable amusement and resort; partly that we may at least be upon a par with the majority of the persons we are likely to meet. but many do not thus prepare themselves, nor does perhaps any one upon all occasions. there is another state of human existence in which we expressly dismiss from our hands the reins of the mind, and suffer our minutes and our hours to glide by us undisciplined and at random. this is, generally speaking, the case in a period of sickness. we have no longer the courage to be on the alert, and to superintend the march of our thoughts. it is the same with us for the most part when at any time we lie awake in our beds. to speak from my own experience, i am in a restless and uneasy state while i am alone in my sitting-room, unless i have some occupation of my own choice, writing or reading, or any of those employments the pursuit of which was chosen at first, and which is more or less under the direction of the will afterwards. but when awake in my bed, either in health or sickness, i am reasonably content to let my thoughts flow on agreeably to those laws of association by which i find them directed, without giving myself the trouble to direct them into one channel rather than another, or to marshal and actively to prescribe the various turns and mutations they may be impelled to pursue. it is thus that we are sick; and it is thus that we die. the man that guides the operations of his own mind, is either to a certain degree in bodily health, or in that health of mind which shall for a longer or shorter time stand forward as the substitute of the health of the body. when we die, we give up the game, and are not disposed to contend any further. it is a very usual thing to talk of the struggles of a man in articulo mortis. but this is probably, like so many other things that occur to us in this sublunary stage, a delusion. the bystander mistakes for a spontaneous contention and unwillingness to die, what is in reality nothing more than an involuntary contraction and convulsion of the nerves, to which the mind is no party, and is even very probably unconscious.--but enough of this, the final and most humiliating state through which mortal men may be called on to pass. i find then in the history of almost every human creature four different states or modes of existence. first, there is sleep. in the strongest degree of contrast to this there is the frame in which we find ourselves, when we write! or invent and steadily pursue a consecutive train of thinking unattended with the implements of writing, or read in some book of science or otherwise which calls upon us for a fixed attention, or address ourselves to a smaller or greater audience, or are engaged in animated conversation. in each of these occupations the mind may emphatically be said to be on the alert. but there are further two distinct states or kinds of mental indolence. the first is that which we frequently experience during a walk or any other species of bodily exercise, where, when the whole is at an end, we scarcely recollect any thing in which the mind has been employed, but have been in what i may call a healthful torpor, where our limbs have been sufficiently in action to continue our exercise, we have felt the fresh breeze playing on our cheeks, and have been in other respects in a frame of no unpleasing neutrality. this may be supposed greatly to contribute to our bodily health. it is the holiday of the faculties: and, as the bow, when it has been for a considerable time unbent, is said to recover its elasticity, so the mind, after a holiday of this sort, comes fresh, and with an increased alacrity, to those occupations which advance man most highly in the scale of being. but there is a second state of mental indolence, not so complete as this, but which is still indolence, inasmuch as in it the mind is passive, and does not assume the reins of empire. such is the state in which we are during our sleepless hours in bed; and in this state our ideas, and the topics that successively occur, appear to go forward without remission, while it seems that it is this busy condition of the mind, and the involuntary activity of our thoughts, that prevent us from sleeping. the distinction then between these two sorts of indolence is, that in the latter our ideas are perfectly distinct, are attended with consciousness, and can, as we please, be called up to recollection. this therefore is not what we understand by reverie. in these waking hours which are spent by us in bed, the mind is no less busy, than it is in sleep during a dream. the other and more perfect sort of mental indolence, is that which we often experience during our exercise in the open air. this is of the same nature as the condition of thought which seems to be the necessary precursor of sleep, and is attended with no precise consciousness. by the whole of the above statement we are led to a new and a modified estimate of the duration of human life. if by life we understand mere susceptibility, a state of existence in which we are accessible at any moment to the onset of sensation, for example, of pain--in this sense our life is commensurate, or nearly commensurate, to the entire period, from the quickening of the child in the womb, to the minute at which sense deserts the dying man, and his body becomes an inanimate mass. but life, in the emphatical sense, and par excellence, is reduced to much narrower limits. from this species of life it is unavoidable that we should strike off the whole of the interval that is spent in sleep; and thus, as a general rule, the natural day of twenty-four hours is immediately reduced to sixteen. of these sixteen hours again, there is a portion that falls under the direction of will and attention, and a portion that is passed by us in a state of mental indolence. by the ordinary and least cultivated class of mankind, the husbandman, the manufacturer, the soldier, the sailor, and the main body of the female sex, much the greater part of every day is resigned to a state of mental indolence. the will does not actively interfere, and the attention is not roused. even the most intellectual beings of our species pass no inconsiderable portion of every day in a similar condition. such is our state for the most part during the time that is given to bodily exercise, and during the time in which we read books of amusement merely, or are employed in witnessing public shews and exhibitions. that portion of every day of our existence which is occupied by us with a mind attentive and on the alert, i would call life in a transcendant sense. the rest is scarcely better than a state of vegetation. and yet not so either. the happiest and most valuable thoughts of the human mind will sometimes come when they are least sought for, and we least anticipated any such thing. in reading a romance, in witnessing a performance at a theatre, in our idlest and most sportive moods, a vein in the soil of intellect will sometimes unexpectedly be broken up, "richer than all the tribe" of contemporaneous thoughts, that shall raise him to whom it occurs, to a rank among his species altogether different from any thing he had looked for. newton was led to the doctrine of gravitation by the fall of an apple, as he indolently reclined under the tree on which it grew. "a verse may find him, who a sermon flies." polemon, when intoxicated, entered the school of xenocrates, and was so struck with the energy displayed by the master, and the thoughts he delivered, that from that moment he renounced the life of dissipation he had previously led, and applied himself entirely to the study of philosophy. --but these instances are comparatively of rare occurrence, and do not require to be taken into the account. it is still true therefore for the most part, that not more than eight hours in the day are passed by the wisest and most energetic, with a mind attentive and on the alert. the remainder is a period of vegetation only. in the mean time we have all of us undoubtedly to a certain degree the power of enlarging the extent of the period of transcendant life in each day of our healthful existence, and causing it to encroach upon the period either of mental indolence or of sleep.--with the greater part of the human species the whole of their lives while awake, with the exception of a few brief and insulated intervals, is spent in a passive state of the intellectual powers. thoughts come and go, as chance, or some undefined power in nature may direct, uninterfered with by the sovereign will, the steersman of the mind. and often the understanding appears to be a blank, upon which if any impressions are then made, they are like figures drawn in the sand which the next tide obliterates, or are even lighter and more evanescent than this. let me add, that the existence of the child for two or three years from the period of his birth, is almost entirely a state of vegetation. the impressions that are made upon his sensorium come and go, without either their advent or departure being anticipated, and without the interference of the will. it is only under some express excitement, that the faculty of will mounts its throne, and exercises its empire. when the child smiles, that act is involuntary; but, when he cries, will presently comes to mix itself with the phenomenon. wilfulness, impatience and rebellion are infallible symptoms of a mind on the alert. and, as the child in the first stages of its existence puts forth the faculty of will only at intervals, so for a similar reason this period is but rarely accompanied with memory, or leaves any traces of recollection for our after-life. there are other memorable states of the intellectual powers, which if i did not mention, the survey here taken would seem to be glaringly imperfect. the first of these is madness. in this humiliating condition of our nature the sovereignty of reason is deposed: chaos umpire sits, and by decision more embroils the fray. the mind is in a state of turbulence and tempest in one instant, and in another subsides into the deepest imbecility; and, even when the will is occasionally roused, the link which preserved its union with good sense and sobriety is dissolved, and the views by which it has the appearance of being regulated, are all based in misconstruction and delusion. next to madness occur the different stages of spleen, dejection and listlessness. the essence of these lies in the passiveness and neutrality of the intellectual powers. in as far as the unhappy sufferer could be roused to act, the disease would be essentially diminished, and might finally be expelled. but long days and months are spent by the patient in the midst of all harassing imaginations, and an everlasting nightmare seems to sit on the soul, and lock up its powers in interminable inactivity. almost the only interruption to this, is when the demands of nature require our attention, or we pay a slight and uncertain attention to the decencies of cleanliness and attire. in all these considerations then we find abundant occasion to humble the pride and vain-glory of man. but they do not overturn the principles delivered in the preceding essay respecting the duration of human life, though they certainly interpose additional boundaries to limit the prospects of individual improvement. essay ix. of leisure. the river of human life is divided into two streams; occupation and leisure--or, to express the thing more accurately, that occupation, which is prescribed, and may be called the business of life, and that occupation, which arises contingently, and not so much of absolute and set purpose, not being prescribed: such being the more exact description of these two divisions of human life, inasmuch as the latter is often not less earnest and intent in its pursuits than the former. it would be a curious question to ascertain which of these is of the highest value. to this enquiry i hear myself loudly and vehemently answered from all hands in favour of the first. "this," i am told by unanimous acclamation, "is the business of life." the decision in favour of what we primarily called occupation, above what we called leisure, may in a mitigated sense be entertained as true. man can live with little or no leisure, for millions of human beings do so live: but the species to which we belong, and of consequence the individuals of that species, cannot exist as they ought to exist, without occupation. granting however the paramount claims that occupation has to our regard, let us endeavour to arrive at a just estimate of the value of leisure. it has been said by some one, with great appearance of truth, that schoolboys learn as much, perhaps more, of beneficial knowledge in their hours of play, as in their hours of study. the wisdom of ages has been applied to ascertain what are the most desirable topics for the study of the schoolboy. they are selected for the most part by the parent. there are few parents that do not feel a sincere and disinterested desire for the welfare of their children. it is an unquestionable maxim, that we are the best judges of that of which we have ourselves had experience; and all parents have been children. it is therefore idle and ridiculous to suppose that those studies which have for centuries been chosen by the enlightened mature for the occupation of the young, have not for the most part been well chosen. of these studies the earliest consist in the arts of reading and writing. next follows arithmetic, with perhaps some rudiments of algebra and geometry. afterward comes in due order the acquisition of languages, particularly the dead languages; a most fortunate occupation for those years of man, in which the memory is most retentive, and the reasoning powers have yet acquired neither solidity nor enlargement. such are the occupations of the schoolboy in his prescribed hours of study. but the schoolboy is cooped up in an apartment, it may be with a number of his fellows. he is seated at a desk, diligently conning the portion of learning that is doled out to him, or, when he has mastered his lesson, reciting it with anxious brow and unassured lips to the senior, who is to correct his errors, and pronounce upon the sufficiency of his industry. all this may be well: but it is a new and more exhilarating spectacle that presents itself to our observation, when he is dismissed from his temporary labours, and rushes impetuously out to the open air, and gives free scope to his limbs and his voice, and is no longer under the eye of a censor that shall make him feel his subordination and dependence. meanwhile the question under consideration was, not in which state he experienced the most happiness, but which was productive of the greatest improvement. the review of the human subject is conveniently divided under the heads of body and mind. there can be no doubt that the health of the body is most promoted by those exercises in which the schoolboy is engaged during the hours of play. and it is further to be considered that health is required, not only that we may be serene, contented and happy, but that we may be enabled effectually to exert the faculties of the mind. but there is another way, in which we are called upon to consider the division of the human subject under the heads of body and mind. the body is the implement and instrument of the mind, the tool by which most of its purposes are to be effected. we live in the midst of a material world, or of what we call such. the greater part of the pursuits in which we engage, are achieved by the action of the limbs and members of the body upon external matter. our communications with our fellow-men are all of them carried on by means of the body. now the action of the limbs and members of the body is infinitely improved by those exercises in which the schoolboy becomes engaged during his hours of play. in the first place it is to be considered that we do those things most thoroughly and in the shortest time, which are spontaneous, the result of our own volition; and such are the exercises in which the schoolboy engages during this period. his heart and soul are in what he does. the man or the boy must be a poor creature indeed, who never does any thing but as he is bid by another. it is in his voluntary acts and his sports, that he learns the skilful and effective use of his eye and his limbs. he selects his mark, and he hits it. he tries again and again, effort after effort, and day after day, till he has surmounted the difficulty of the attempt, and the rebellion of his members. every articulation and muscle of his frame is called into action, till all are obedient to the master-will; and his limbs are lubricated and rendered pliant by exercise, as the limbs of the grecian athleta were lubricated with oil. thus he acquires, first dexterity of motion, and next, which is of no less importance, a confidence in his own powers, a consciousness that he is able to effect what he purposes, a calmness and serenity which resemble the sweeping of the area, and scattering of the saw-dust, upon which the dancer or the athlete is to exhibit with grace, strength and effect. so much for the advantages reaped by the schoolboy during his hours of play as to the maturing his bodily powers, and the improvement of those faculties of his mind which more immediately apply to the exercise of his bodily powers. but, beside this, it is indispensible to the well-being and advantage of the individual, that he should employ the faculties of his mind in spontaneous exertions. i do not object, especially during the period of nonage, to a considerable degree of dependence and control. but his greatest advancement, even then, seems to arise from the interior impulses of his mind. the schoolboy exercises his wit, and indulges in sallies of the thinking principle. this is wholsome; this is fresh; it has twice the quickness, clearness and decision in it, that are to be found in those acts of the mind which are employed about the lessons prescribed to him. in school our youth are employed about the thoughts, the acts and suggestions of other men. this is all mimicry, and a sort of second-hand business. it resembles the proceeding of the fresh-listed soldier at drill; he has ever his eye on his right-hand man, and does not raise his arm, nor advance his foot, nor move his finger, but as he sees another perform the same motion before him. it is when the schoolboy proceeds to the playground, that he engages in real action and real discussion. it is then that he is an absolute human being and a genuine individual. the debates of schoolboys, their discussions what they shall do, and how it shall be done, are anticipations of the scenes of maturer life. they are the dawnings of committees, and vestries, and hundred-courts, and ward-motes, and folk-motes, and parliaments. when boys consult when and where their next cricket-match shall be played, it may be regarded as the embryo representation of a consult respecting a grave enterprise to be formed, or a colony to be planted. and, when they enquire respecting poetry and prose, and figures and tropes, and the dictates of taste, this happily prepares them for the investigations of prudence, and morals, and religious principles, and what is science, and what is truth. it is thus that the wit of man, to use the word in the old saxon sense, begins to be cultivated. one boy gives utterance to an assertion; and another joins issue with him, and retorts. the wheels of the engine of the brain are set in motion, and, without force, perform their healthful revolutions. the stripling feels himself called upon to exert his presence of mind, and becomes conscious of the necessity of an immediate reply. like the unfledged bird, he spreads his wings, and essays their powers. he does not answer, like a boy in his class, who tasks his understanding or not, as the whim of the moment shall prompt him, where one boy honestly performs to the extent of his ability, and others disdain the empire assumed over them, and get off as cheaply as they can. he is no longer under review, but is engaged in real action. the debate of the schoolboy is the combat of the intellectual gladiator, where he fences and parries and thrusts with all the skill and judgment he possesses. there is another way in which the schoolboy exercises his powers during his periods of leisure. he is often in society; but he is ever and anon in solitude. at no period of human life are our reveries so free and untrammeled, as at the period here spoken of. he climbs the mountain-cliff; and penetrates into the depths of the woods. his joints are well strung; he is a stranger to fatigue. he rushes down the precipice, and mounts again with ease, as though he had the wings of a bird. he ruminates, and pursues his own trains of reflection and discovery, "exhausting worlds," as it appears to him, "and then imagining new." he hovers on the brink of the deepest philosophy, enquiring how came i here, and to what end. he becomes a castle-builder, constructing imaginary colleges and states, and searching out the businesses in which they are to be employed, and the schemes by which they are to be regulated. he thinks what he would do, if he possessed uncontrolable strength, if he could fly, if he could make himself invisible. in this train of mind he cons his first lessons of liberty and independence. he learns self-reverence, and says to himself, i also am an artist, and a maker. he ruffles himself under the yoke, and feels that he suffers foul tyranny when he is driven, and when brute force is exercised upon him, to compel him to a certain course, or to chastise his faults, imputed or real. such are the benefits of leisure to the schoolboy: and they are not less to man when arrived at years of discretion. it is good for us to have some regular and stated occupation. man may be practically too free; this is frequently the case with those who have been nurtured in the lap of opulence and luxury. we were sent into the world under the condition, "in the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread." and those who, by the artificial institutions of society, are discharged from this necessity, are placed in a critical and perilous situation. they are bound, if they would consult their own well-being, to contrive for themselves a factitious necessity, that may stand them in the place of that necessity which is imposed without appeal on the vast majority of their brethren. but, if it is desirable that every man should have some regular and stated occupation, so it is certainly not less desirable, that every man should have his seasons of relaxation and leisure. unhappy is the wretch, whose condition it is to be perpetually bound to the oar, and who is condemned to labour in one certain mode, during all the hours that are not claimed by sleep, or as long as the muscles of his frame, or the fibres of his fingers will enable him to persevere. "apollo himself," says the poet, "does not always bend the bow." there should be a season, when the mind is free as air, when not only we should follow without restraint any train of thinking or action, within the bounds of sobriety, and that is not attended with injury to others, that our own minds may suggest to us, but should sacrifice at the shrine of intellectual liberty, and spread our wings, and take our flight into untried regions. it is good for man that he should feel himself at some time unshackled and autocratical, that he should say, this i do, because it is prescribed to me by the conditions without which i cannot exist, or by the election which in past time i deliberately made; and this, because it is dictated by the present frame of my spirit, and is therefore that in which the powers my nature has entailed upon me may be most fully manifested. in addition to which we are to consider, that a certain variety and mutation of employments is best adapted to humanity. when my mind or my body seems to be overwrought by one species of occupation, the substitution of another will often impart to me new life, and make me feel as fresh as if no labour had before engaged me. for all these reasons it is to be desired, that we should possess the inestimable privilege of leisure, that in the revolving hours of every day a period should arrive, at which we should lay down the weapons of our labour, and engage in a sport that may be no less active and strenuous than the occupation which preceded it. a question, which deserves our attention in this place, is, how much of every day it behoves us to give to regular and stated occupation, and how much is the just and legitimate province of leisure. it has been remarked in a preceding essay( ), that, if my main and leading pursuit is literary composition, two or three hours in the twenty-four will often be as much as can advantageously and effectually be so employed. but this will unavoidably vary according to the nature of the occupation: the period above named may be taken as the minimum. ( ) see above, essay . such, let us say, is the portion of time which the man of letters is called on to devote to literary composition. it may next be fitting to enquire as to the humbler classes of society, and those persons who are engaged in the labour of the hands, how much time they ought to be expected to consume in their regular and stated occupations, and how much would remain to them for relaxation and leisure. it has been said( ), that half an hour in the day given by every member of the community to manual labour, might be sufficient for supplying the whole with the absolute necessaries of life. but there are various considerations that would inevitably lengthen this period. in a community which has made any considerable advance in the race of civilisation, many individuals must be expected to be excused from any portion of manual labour. it is not desirable that any community should be contented to supply itself with necessaries only. there are many refinements in life, and many advances in literature and the arts, which indispensibly conduce to the rendering man in society a nobler and more exalted creature than he could otherwise be; and these ought not to be consigned to neglect. ( ) political justice, book viii, chap. vi. on the other hand however it is certain, that much of the ostentation and a multitude of the luxuries which subsist in european and asiatic society are just topics of regret, and that, if ever those improvements in civilisation take place which philosophy has essayed to delineate, there would be a great abridgment of the manual labour that we now see around us, and the humbler classes of the community would enter into the inheritance of a more considerable portion of leisure than at present falls to their lot. but it has been much the habit, for persons not belonging to the humbler classes of the community, and who profess to speculate upon the genuine interests of human society, to suppose, however certain intervals of leisure may conduce to the benefit of men whose tastes have been cultivated and refined, and who from education have many resources of literature and reflection at all times at their beck, yet that leisure might prove rather pernicious than otherwise to the uneducated and the ignorant. let us enquire then how these persons would be likely to employ the remainder of their time, if they had a greater portion of leisure than they at present enjoy.--i would add, that the individuals of the humbler classes of the community need not for ever to merit the appellation of the uneducated and ignorant. in the first place, they would engage, like the schoolboy, in active sports, thereby giving to their limbs, which, in rural occupation and mechanical labour, are somewhat too monotonously employed, and contract the stiffness and experience the waste of a premature old age, the activity and freedom of an athlete, a cricketer, or a hunter. nor do these occupations only conduce to the health of the body, they also impart a spirit and a juvenile earnestness to the mind. in the next place, they may be expected to devote a part of the day, more than they do at present, to their wives and families, cultivating the domestic affections, watching the expanding bodies and minds of their children, leading them on in the road of improvement, warning them against the perils with which they are surrounded, and observing with somewhat of a more jealous and parental care, what it is for which by their individual qualities they are best adapted, and in what particular walk of life they may most advantageously be engaged. the father and the son would grow in a much greater degree friends, anticipating each other's wishes, and sympathising in each other's pleasures and pains. thirdly, one infallible consequence of a greater degree of leisure in the lower classes would be that reading would become a more common propensity and amusement. it is the aphorism of one of the most enlightened of my contemporaries, "the schoolmaster is abroad:" and many more than at present would desire to store up in their little hoard a certain portion of the general improvement. we should no longer have occasion to say, but knowledge to their eyes her ample page, rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unrol. nor should we be incited to fear that ever wakeful anticipation of the illiberal, that, by the too great diffusion of the wisdom of the wise, we might cease to have a race of men adapted to the ordinary pursuits of life. our ploughmen and artificers, who obtained the improvements of intellect through the medium of leisure, would have already received their destination, and formed their habits, and would be disposed to consider the new lights that were opened upon them, as the ornament of existence, not its substance. add to which, as leisure became more abundant, and the opportunities of intellectual improvement increased, they would have less motive to repine at their lot. it is principally while knowledge and information are new, that they are likely to intoxicate the brain of those to whose share they have fallen; and, when they are made a common stock upon which all men may draw, sound thinking and sobriety may be expected to be the general result. one of the scenes to which the leisure of the laborious classes is seen to induce them to resort, is the public-house; and it is inferred that, if their leisure were greater, a greater degree of drunkenness, dissipation and riot would inevitably prevail. in answer to this anticipation, i would in the first place assert, that the merits and demerits of the public-house are very unjustly rated by the fastidious among the more favoured orders of society. we ought to consider that the opportunities and amusements of the lower orders of society are few. they do not frequent coffee-houses; theatres and places of public exhibition are ordinarily too expensive for them; and they cannot engage in rounds of visiting, thus cultivating a private and familiar intercourse with the few whose conversation might be most congenial to them. we certainly bear hard upon persons in this rank of society, if we expect that they should take all the severer labour, and have no periods of unbending and amusement. but in reality what occurs in the public-house we are too much in the habit of calumniating. if we would visit this scene, we should find it pretty extensively a theatre of eager and earnest discussion. it is here that the ardent and "unwashed artificer," and the sturdy husbandman, compare notes and measure wits with each other. it is their arena of intellectual combat, the ludus literarius of their unrefined university. it is here they learn to think. their minds are awakened from the sleep of ignorance; and their attention is turned into a thousand channels of improvement. they study the art of speaking, of question, allegation and rejoinder. they fix their thought steadily on the statement that is made, acknowledge its force, or detect its insufficiency. they examine the most interesting topics, and form opinions the result of that examination. they learn maxims of life, and become politicians. they canvas the civil and criminal laws of their country, and learn the value of political liberty. they talk over measures of state, judge of the intentions, sagacity and sincerity of public men, and are likely in time to become in no contemptible degree capable of estimating what modes of conducting national affairs, whether for the preservation of the rights of all, or for the vindication and assertion of justice between man and man, may be expected to be crowned with the greatest success: in a word, they thus become, in the best sense of the word, citizens. as to excess in drinking, the same thing may be expected to occur here, as has been remarked of late years in better company in england. in proportion as the understanding is cultivated, men are found to be less the victims of drinking and the grosser provocatives of sense. the king of persia of old made it his boast that he could drink large quantities of liquor with greater impunity than any of his subjects. such was not the case with the more polished greeks. in the dark ages the most glaring enormities of that kind prevailed. under our charles the second coarse dissipation and riot characterised the highest circles. rochester, the most accomplished man and the greatest wit of our island, related of himself that, for five years together, he could not affirm that for any one day he had been thoroughly sober. in ireland, a country less refined than our own, the period is not long past, when on convivial occasions the master of the house took the key from his door, that no one of his guests might escape without having had his dose. no small number of the contemporaries of my youth fell premature victims to the intemperance which was then practised. now wine is merely used to excite a gayer and livelier tone of the spirits; and inebriety is scarcely known in the higher circles. in like manner, it may readily be believed that, as men in the lower classes of society become less ignorant and obtuse, as their thoughts are less gross, as they wear off the vestigia ruris, the remains of a barbarous state, they will find less need to set their spirits afloat by this animal excitement, and will devote themselves to those thoughts and that intercourse which shall inspire them with better and more honourable thoughts of our common nature. essay x. of imitation and invention. of the sayings of the wise men of former times none has been oftener repeated than that of solomon, "the thing that hath been, is that which is; and that which is done, is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun." the books of the old testament are apparently a collection of the whole literary remains of an ancient and memorable people, whose wisdom may furnish instruction to us, and whose poetry abounds in lofty flights and sublime imagery. how this collection came indiscriminately to be considered as written by divine inspiration, it is difficult to pronounce. the history of the jews, as contained in the books of kings and of chronicles, certainly did not require the interposition of the almighty for its production; and the pieces we receive as the compositions of solomon have conspicuously the air of having emanated from a conception entirely human. in the book of ecclesiastes, from which the above sentence is taken, are many sentiments not in accordance with the religion of christ. for example; "that which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath, so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: all go to one place; all are of the dust, and turn to dust again. wherefore i perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his works." and again, "the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not any thing; their love, and their hatred, and their envy are perished; neither have they any more a reward." add to this, "wherefore i praise the dead which are already dead, more than the living which are yet alive: yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been." there can therefore be no just exception taken against our allowing ourselves freely to canvas the maxim cited at the head of this essay. it certainly contains a sufficient quantity of unquestionable truth, to induce us to regard it as springing from profound observation, and comprehensive views of what is acted "under the sun." a wise man would look at the labours of his own species, in much the same spirit as he would view an ant-hill through a microscope. he would see them tugging a grain of corn up a declivity; he would see the tracks that are made by those who go, and who return; their incessant activity; and would find one day the copy of that which went before; and their labours ending in nothing: i mean, in nothing that shall carry forward the improvement of the head and the heart, either in the individual or society, or that shall add to the conveniences of life, or the better providing for the welfare of communities of men. he would smile at their earnestness and zeal, all spent in supplying the necessaries of the day, or, at most, providing for the revolution of the seasons, or for that ephemeral thing we call the life of man. few things can appear more singular, when duly analysed, than that articulated air, which we denominate speech. it is not to be wondered at that we are proud of the prerogative, which so eminently distinguishes us from the rest of the animal creation. the dog, the cat, the horse, the bear, the lion, all of them have voice. but we may almost consider this as their reproach. they can utter for the greater part but one monotonous, eternal sound. the lips, the teeth, the palate, the throat, which in man are instruments of modifying the voice in such endless variety, are in this respect given to them in vain: while all the thoughts that occur, at least to the bulk of mankind, we are able to express in words, to communicate facts, feelings, passions, sentiments, to discuss, to argue, to agree, to issue commands on the one part, and report the execution on the other, to inspire lofty conceptions, to excite the deepest feeling of commiseration, and to thrill the soul with extacy, almost too mighty to be endured. yet what is human speech for the most part but mere imitation? in the most obvious sense this stands out on the surface. we learn the same words, we speak the same language, as our elders. not only our words, but our phrases are the same. we are like players, who come out as if they were real persons, but only utter what is set down for them. we represent the same drama every day; and, however stale is the eternal repetition, pass it off upon others, and even upon ourselves, as if it were the suggestion of the moment. in reality, in rural or vulgar life, the invention of a new phrase ought to be marked down among the memorable things in the calendar. we afford too much honour to ordinary conversation, when we compare it to the exhibition of the recognised theatres, since men ought for the most part to be considered as no more than puppets. they perform the gesticulations; but the words come from some one else, who is hid from the sight of the general observer. and not only the words, but the cadence: they have not even so much honour as players have, to choose the manner they may deem fittest by which to convey the sense and the passion of what they speak. the pronunciation, the dialect, all, are supplied to them, and are but a servile repetition. our tempers are merely the work of the transcriber. we are angry, where we saw that others were angry; and we are pleased, because it is the tone to be pleased. we pretend to have each of us a judgment of our own: but in truth we wait with the most patient docility, till he whom we regard as the leader of the chorus gives us the signal, here you are to applaud, and here you are to condemn. what is it that constitutes the manners of nations, by which the people of one country are so eminently distinguished from the people of another, so that you cannot cross the channel from dover to calais, twenty-one miles, without finding yourself in a new world? nay, i need not go among the subjects of another government to find examples of this; if i pass into ireland, scotland or wales, i see myself surrounded with a new people, all of whose characters are in a manner cast in one mould, and all different from the citizens of the principal state and from one another. we may go further than this. not only nations, but classes of men, are contrasted with each other. what can be more different than the gentry of the west end of this metropolis, and the money-making dwellers in the east? from them i will pass to billingsgate and wapping. what more unlike than a soldier and a sailor? the children of fashion that stroll in st. james's and hyde park, and the care-worn hirelings, that recreate themselves, with their wives and their brats, with a little fresh air on a sunday near islington? the houses of lords and commons have each their characteristic manners. each profession has its own, the lawyer, the divine, and the man of medicine. we are all apes, fixing our eyes upon a model, and copying him, gesture by gesture. we are sheep, rushing headlong through the gap, when the bell-wether shews us the way. we are choristers, mechanically singing in a certain key, and giving breath to a certain tone. our religion, our civil practices, our political creed, are all imitation. how many men are there, that have examined the evidences of their religious belief, and can give a sound "reason of the faith that is in them?" when i was a child, i was taught that there were four religions in the world, the popish, the protestant, the mahometan, the pagan. it is a phenomenon to find the man, who has held the balance steadily, and rendered full and exact justice to the pretensions of each of these. no: tell me the longitude and latitude in which a man is born, and i will tell you his religion. by education most have been misled; so they believe, because they so were bred: the priest continues what the nurse began, and thus the child imposes on the man. and, if this happens, where we are told our everlasting salvation is at issue, we may easily judge of the rest. the author, with one of whose dicta i began this essay, has observed, "one generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth for ever." it is a maxim of the english constitution, that "the king never dies;" and the same may with nearly equal propriety be observed of every private man, especially if he have children. "death," say the writers of natural history, "is the generator of life:" and what is thus true of animal corruption, may with small variation be affirmed of human mortality. i turn off my footman, and hire another; and he puts on the livery of his predecessor: he thinks himself somebody; but he is only a tenant. the same thing is true, when a country-gentleman, a noble, a bishop, or a king dies. he puts off his garments, and another puts them on. every one knows the story of the tartarian dervise, who mistook the royal palace for a caravansera, and who proved to his majesty by genealogical deduction, that he was only a lodger. in this sense the mutability, which so eminently characterises every thing sublunary, is immutability under another name. the most calamitous, and the most stupendous scenes are nothing but an eternal and wearisome repetition: executions, murders, plagues, famine and battle. military execution, the demolition of cities, the conquest of nations, have been acted a hundred times before. the mighty conqueror, who "smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke," who "sat in the seat of god, shewing himself that he was god," and assuredly persuaded himself that he was doing something to be had in everlasting remembrance, only did that which a hundred other vulgar conquerors had done in successive ages of the world, whose very names have long since perished from the records of mankind. thus it is that the human species is for ever engaged in laborious idleness. we put our shoulder to the wheel, and raise the vehicle out of the mire in which it was swallowed, and we say, i have done something; but the same feat under the same circumstances has been performed a thousand times before. we make what strikes us as a profound observation; and, when fairly analysed, it turns out to be about as sagacious, as if we told what's o'clock, or whether it is rain or sunshine. nothing can be more delightfully ludicrous, than the important and emphatical air with which the herd of mankind enunciate the most trifling observations. with much labour we are delivered of what is to us a new thought; and, after a time, we find the same in a musty volume, thrown by in a corner, and covered with cobwebs and dust. this is pleasantly ridiculed in the well known exclamation, "deuce take the old fellows who gave utterance to our wit, before we ever thought of it!" the greater part of the life of the mightiest genius that ever existed is spent in doing nothing, and saying nothing. pope has observed of shakespear's plays, that, "had all the speeches been printed without the names of the persons, we might have applied them with certainty to every speaker." to which another critic has rejoined, that that was impossible, since the greater part of what every man says is unstamped with peculiarity. we have all more in us of what belongs to the common nature of man, than of what is peculiar to the individual. it is from this beaten, turnpike road, that the favoured few of mankind are for ever exerting themselves to escape. the multitude grow up, and are carried away, as grass is carried away by the mower. the parish-register tells when they were born, and when they died: "known by the ends of being to have been." we pass away, and leave nothing behind. kings, at whose very glance thousands have trembled, for the most part serve for nothing when their breath has ceased, but as a sort of distance-posts in the race of chronology. "the dull swain treads on" their relics "with his clouted shoon." our monuments are as perishable as ourselves; and it is the most hopeless of all problems for the most part, to tell where the mighty ones of the earth repose. all men are aware of the frailty of life, and how short is the span assigned us. hence every one, who feels, or thinks he feels the power to do so, is desirous to embalm his memory, and to be thought of by a late posterity, to whom his personal presence shall be unknown. mighty are the struggles; everlasting the efforts. the greater part of these we well know are in vain. it is aesop's mountain in labour: "dire was the tossing, deep the groans:" and the result is a mouse. but is it always so? this brings us back to the question: "is there indeed nothing new under the sun?" most certainly there is something that is new. if, as the beast dies, so died man, then indeed we should be without hope. but it is his distinguishing faculty, that he can leave something behind, to testify that he has lived. and this is not only true of the pyramids of egypt, and certain other works of human industry, that time seems to have no force to destroy. it is often true of a single sentence, a single word, which the multitudinous sea is incapable of washing away: quod non imber edax, non aquilo impotens possit diruere, aut innumerabilis annorum series, et fuga temporum. it is the characteristic of the mind and the heart of man, that they are progressive. one word, happily interposed, reaching to the inmost soul, may "take away the heart of stone, and introduce a heart of flesh." and, if an individual may be thus changed, then his children, and his connections, to the latest page of unborn history. this is the true glory of man, that "one generation doth not pass away, and another come, velut unda supervenit undam;" but that we leave our improvements behind us. what infinite ages of refinement on refinement, and ingenuity on ingenuity, seem each to have contributed its quota, to make up the accommodations of every day of civilised man; his table, his chair, the bed he lies on, the food he eats, the garments that cover him! it has often been said, that the four quarters of the world are put under contribution, to provide the most moderate table. to this what mills, what looms, what machinery of a thousand denominations, what ship-building, what navigation, what fleets are required! man seems to have been sent into the world a naked, forked, helpless animal, on purpose to call forth his ingenuity to supply the accommodations that may conduce to his well-being. the saying, that "there is nothing new under the sun," could never have been struck out, but in one of the two extreme states of man, by the naked savage, or by the highly civilised beings among whom the perfection of refinement has produced an artificial feeling of uniformity. the thing most obviously calculated to impress us with a sense of the power, and the comparative sublimity of man, is, if we could make a voyage of some duration in a balloon, over a considerable tract of the cultivated and the desert parts of the earth. a brute can scarcely move a stone out of his way, if it has fallen upon the couch where he would repose. but man cultivates fields, and plants gardens; he constructs parks and canals; he turns the course of rivers, and stretches vast artificial moles into the sea; he levels mountains, and builds a bridge, joining in giddy height one segment of the alps to another; lastly, he founds castles, and churches, and towers, and distributes mighty cities at his pleasure over the face of the globe. "the first earth has passed away, and another earth has come; and all things are made new." it is true, that the basest treacheries, the most atrocious cruelties, butcheries, massacres, violations of all the restraints of decency, and all the ties of nature, fields covered with dead bodies, and flooded with human gore, are all of them vulgar repetitions of what had been acted countless times already. if nero or caligula thought to perpetrate that which should stand unparalleled, they fell into the grossest error. the conqueror, who should lay waste vast portions of the globe, and destroy mighty cities, so that "thorns should come up in the palaces, and nettles in the fortresses thereof, and they should be a habitation of serpents, and a court for owls, and the wild beasts of the desert should meet there," would only do what tamerlane, and aurengzebe, and zingis, and a hundred other conquerors, in every age and quarter of the world, had done before. the splendour of triumphs, and the magnificence of courts, are so essentially vulgar, that history almost disdains to record them. and yet there is something that is new, and that by the reader of discernment is immediately felt to be so. we read of moses, that he was a child of ordinary birth, and, when he was born, was presently marked, as well as all the male children of his race, for destruction. he was unexpectedly preserved; and his first act, when he grew up, was to slay an egyptian, one of the race to whom all his countrymen were slaves, and to fly into exile. this man, thus friendless and alone, in due time returned, and by the mere energy of his character prevailed upon his whole race to make common cause with him, and to migrate to a region, in which they should become sovereign and independent. he had no soldiers, but what were made so by the ascendancy of his spirit no counsellors but such as he taught to be wise, no friends but those who were moved by the sentiment they caught from him. the jews he commanded were sordid and low of disposition, perpetually murmuring against his rule, and at every unfavourable accident calling to remembrance "the land of egypt, where they had sat by the fleshpots, and were full." yet over this race he retained a constant mastery, and finally made of them a nation whose customs and habits and ways of thinking no time has availed to destroy. this was a man then, that possessed the true secret to make other men his creatures, and lead them with an irresistible power wherever he pleased. this history, taken entire, has probably no parallel in the annals of the world. the invasion of greece by the persians, and its result, seem to constitute an event that stands alone among men. xerxes led against this little territory an army of , , men. they drank up rivers, and cut their way through giant-mountains. they were first stopped at thermopylae by leonidas and his three hundred spartans. they fought for a country too narrow to contain the army by which the question was to be tried. the contest was here to be decided between despotism and liberty, whether there is a principle in man, by which a handful of individuals, pervaded with lofty sentiments, and a conviction of what is of most worth in our nature, can defy the brute force, and put to flight the attack, of bones, joints and sinews, though congregated in multitudes, numberless as the waves of the sea, or the sands on its shore. the flood finally rolled back: and in process of time alexander, with these greeks whom the ignorance of the east affected to despise, founded another universal monarchy on the ruins of persia. this is certainly no vulgar history. christianity is another of those memorable chapters in the annals of mankind, to which there is probably no second. the son of a carpenter in a little, rocky country, among a nation despised and enslaved, undertook to reform the manners of the people of whom he was a citizen. the reformation he preached was unpalatable to the leaders of the state; he was persecuted; and finally suffered the death reserved for the lowest malefactors, being nailed to a cross. he was cut off in the very beginning of his career, before he had time to form a sect. his immediate representatives and successors were tax-gatherers and fishermen. what could be more incredible, till proved by the event, than that a religion thus begun, should have embraced in a manner the whole civilised world, and that of its kingdom there should be no visible end? this is a novelty in the history of the world, equally if we consider it as brought about by the immediate interposition of the author of all things, or regard it, as some pretend to do, as happening in the course of mere human events. rome, "the eternal city," is likewise a subject that stands out from the vulgar history of the human race. three times, in three successive forms, has she been the mistress of the world. first, by the purity, the simplicity, the single-heartedness, the fervour and perseverance of her original character she qualified herself to subdue all the nations of mankind. next, having conquered the earth by her virtue and by the spirit of liberty, she was able to maintain her ascendancy for centuries under the emperors, notwithstanding all her astonishing profligacy and anarchy. and, lastly, after her secular ascendancy had been destroyed by the inroads of the northern barbarians, she rose like the phoenix from her ashes, and, though powerless in material force, held mankind in subjection by the chains of the mind, and the consummateness of her policy. never was any thing so admirably contrived as the catholic religion, to subdue the souls of men by the power of its worship over the senses, and, by its contrivances in auricular confession, purgatory, masses for the dead, and its claim magisterially to determine controversies, to hold the subjects it had gained in everlasting submission. the great principle of originality is in the soul of man. and here again we may recur to greece, the parent of all that is excellent in art. painting, statuary, architecture, poetry, in their most exquisite and ravishing forms, originated in this little province. is not the iliad a thing new, and that will for ever remain new? whether it was written by one man, as i believe, or, as the levellers of human glory would have us think, by many, there it stands: all the ages of the world present us nothing that can come in competition with it. shakespear is another example of unrivalled originality. his fame is like the giant-rivers of the world: the further it flows, the wider it spreads out its stream, and the more marvellous is the power with which it sweeps along. but, in reality, all poetry and all art, that have a genuine claim to originality, are new, the smallest, as well as the greatest. it is the mistake of dull minds only, to suppose that every thing has been said, that human wit is exhausted, and that we, who have unfortunately fallen upon the dregs of time, have no alternative left, but either to be silent, or to say over and over again, what has been well said already. there remain yet immense tracts of invention, the mines of which have been untouched. we perceive nothing of the strata of earth, and the hidden fountains of water, that we travel over, unconscious of the treasures that are immediately within our reach, till some person, endowed with the gift of a superior sagacity, comes into the country, who appears to see through the opake and solid mass, as we see through the translucent air, and tells us of things yet undiscovered, and enriches us with treasures, of which we had been hitherto entirely ignorant. the nature of the human mind, and the capabilities of our species are in like manner a magazine of undiscovered things, till some mighty genius comes to break the surface, and shew us the wonderful treasures that lay beneath uncalled for and idle. human character is like the contents of an ample cabinet, brought together by the untired zeal of some curious collector, who tickets his rarities with numbers, and has a catalogue in many volumes, in which are recorded the description and qualities of the things presented to our view. among the most splendid examples of character which the genius of man has brought to light, are don quixote and his trusty squire, sir roger de coverley, parson adams, walter shandy and his brother toby. who shall set bounds to the everlasting variety of nature, as she has recorded her creations in the heart of man? most of these instances are recent, and sufficiently shew that the enterprising adventurer, who would aspire to emulate the illustrious men from whose writings these examples are drawn, has no cause to despair. vulgar observers pass carelessly by a thousand figures in the crowded masquerade of human society, which, when inscribed on the tablet by the pencil of a master, would prove not less wondrous in the power of affording pleasure, nor less rich as themes for inexhaustible reflection, than the most admirable of these. the things are there, and all that is wanting is an eye to perceive, and a pen to record them. as to a great degree we may subscribe to the saying of the wise man, that "there is nothing new under the sun," so in a certain sense it may also be affirmed that nothing is old. both of these maxims may be equally true. the prima materia, the atoms of which the universe is composed, is of a date beyond all record; and the figures which have yet been introduced into the most fantastic chronology, may perhaps be incompetent to represent the period of its birth. but the ways in which they may be compounded are exhaustless. it is like what the writers on the doctrine of chances tell us of the throwing of dice. how many men now exist on the face of the earth? yet, if all these were brought together, and if, in addition to this, we could call up all the men that ever lived, it may be doubted, whether any two would be found so much alike, that a clear-sighted and acute observer might not surely distinguish the one from the other. leibnitz informs us, that no two leaves of a tree exist in the most spacious garden, that, upon examination, could be pronounced perfectly similar( ). ( ) see above, essay . the true question is not, whether any thing can be found that is new, but whether the particulars in which any thing is new may not be so minute and trifling, as scarcely to enter for any thing, into that grand and comprehensive view of the whole, in which matters of obvious insignificance are of no account. but, if art and the invention of the human mind are exhaustless, science is even more notoriously so. we stand but on the threshold of the knowledge of nature, and of the various ways in which physical power may be brought to operate for the accommodation of man. this is a business that seems to be perpetually in progress; and, like the fall of bodies by the power of gravitation, appears to gain in momentum, in proportion as it advances to a greater distance from the point at which the impulse was given. the discoveries which at no remote period have been made, would, if prophesied of, have been laughed to scorn by the ignorant sluggishness of former generations; and we are equally ready to regard with incredulity the discoveries yet unmade, which will be familiar to our posterity. indeed every man of a capacious and liberal mind is willing to admit, that the progress of human understanding in science, which is now going on, is altogether without any limits that by the most penetrating genius can be assigned. it is like a mighty river, that flows on for ever and for ever, as far as the words, "for ever," can have a meaning to the comprehension of mortals. the question that remains is, our practicable improvement in literature and morals, and here those persons who entertain a mean opinion of human nature, are constantly ready to tell us that it will be found to amount to nothing. however we may be continually improving in mechanical knowledge and ingenuity, we are assured by this party, that we shall never surpass what has already been done in poetry and literature, and, which is still worse, that, however marvellous may be our future acquisitions in science and the application of science, we shall be, as much as ever, the creatures of that vanity, ostentation, opulence and the spirit of exclusive accumulation, which has hitherto, in most countries (not in all countries), generated the glaring inequality of property, and the oppression of the many for the sake of pampering the folly of the few. there is another circumstance that may be mentioned, which, particularly as regards the question of repetition and novelty that is now under consideration, may seem to operate in an eminent degree in favour of science, while it casts a most discouraging veil over poetry and the pure growth of human fancy and invention. poetry is, after all, nothing more than new combinations of old materials. nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuit prius in sensu. the poet has perhaps in all languages been called a maker, a creator: but this seems to be a vain-glorious and an empty boast. he is a collector of materials only, which he afterwards uses as best he may be able. he answers to the description i have heard given of a tailor, a man who cuts to pieces whatever is delivered to him from the loom, that he may afterwards sew it together again. the poet therefore, we may be told, adds nothing to the stock of ideas and conceptions already laid up in the storehouse of mind. but the man who is employed upon the secrets of nature, is eternally in progress; day after day he delivers in to the magazine of materials for thinking and acting, what was not there before; he increases the stock, upon which human ingenuity and the arts of life are destined to operate. he does not, as the poet may be affirmed by his censurers to do, travel for ever in a circle, but continues to hasten towards a goal, while at every interval we may mark how much further he has proceeded from the point at which his race began. much may be said in answer to this, and in vindication and honour of the poet and the artist. all that is here alleged to their disadvantage, is in reality little better than a sophism. the consideration of the articles he makes use of, does not in sound estimate detract from the glories of which he is the artificer. materiem superat opus. he changes the nature of what he handles; all that he touches is turned into gold. the manufacture he delivers to us is so new, that the thing it previously was, is no longer recognisable. the impression that he makes upon the imagination and the heart, the impulses that he communicates to the understanding and the moral feeling, are all his own; and, "if there is any thing lovely and of good report, if there is any virtue and any praise," he may well claim our applauses and our thankfulness for what he has effected. there is a still further advantage that belongs to the poet and the votarist of polite literature, which ought to be mentioned, as strongly calculated to repress the arrogance of the men of science, and the supercilious contempt they are apt to express for those who are engrossed by the pursuits of imagination and taste. they are for ever talking of the reality and progressiveness of their pursuits, and telling us that every step they take is a point gained, and gained for the latest posterity, while the poet merely suits himself to the taste of the men among whom he lives, writes up to the fashion of the day, and, as our manners turn, is sure to be swept away to the gulph of oblivion. but how does the matter really stand? it is to a great degree the very reverse of this. the natural and experimental philosopher has nothing sacred and indestructible in the language and form in which he delivers truths. new discoveries and experiments come, and his individual terms and phrases and theories perish. one race of natural philosophers does but prepare the way for another race, which is to succeed. they "blow the trumpet, and give out the play." and they must be contented to perish before the brighter knowledge, of which their efforts were but the harbingers. the ptolemaic system gave way to tycho brahe, and his to that of copernicus. the vortices of descartes perished before the discoveries of newton; and the philosophy of newton already begins to grow old, and is found to have weak and decaying parts mixed with those which are immortal and divine. in the science of mind aristotle and plato are set aside; the depth of malebranche, and the patient investigation of locke have had their day; more penetrating, and concise, and lynx-eyed reasoners of our own country have succeeded; the german metaphysicians seem to have thrust these aside; and it perhaps needs no great degree of sagacity to foresee, that kant and fichte will at last fare no better than those that went before them. but the poet is immortal. the verses of homer are of workmanship no less divine, than the armour of his own achilles. his poems are as fresh and consummate to us now, as they were to the greeks, when the old man of chios wandered in person through the different cities, rehearsing his rhapsodies to the accompaniment of his lute. the language and the thoughts of the poet are inextricably woven together; and the first is no more exposed to decay and to perish than the last. presumptuous innovators have attempted to modernise chaucer, and spenser, and other authors, whose style was supposed to have grown obsolete. but true taste cannot endure the impious mockery. the very words that occurred to these men, when the god descended, and a fire from heaven tingled in all their veins, are sacred, are part of themselves; and you may as well attempt to preserve the man when you have deprived him of all his members, as think to preserve the poet when you have taken away the words that he spoke. no part of his glorious effusions must perish; and "the hairs of his head are all numbered." essay xi. of self-love and benevolence. no question has more memorably exercised the ingenuity of men who have speculated upon the structure of the human mind, than that of the motives by which we are actuated in our intercourse with our fellow-creatures. the dictates of a plain and unsophisticated understanding on the subject are manifest; and they have been asserted in the broadest way by the authors of religion, the reformers of mankind, and all persons who have been penetrated with zeal and enthusiasm for the true interests of the race to which they belong. "the end of the commandment," say the authors of the new testament, "is love." "this is the great commandment of the law, thou shalt love thy maker with all thy heart; and the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." "though i bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing." "for none of us liveth to himself; and no man dieth to himself." the sentiments of the ancient greeks and romans, for so many centuries as their institutions retained their original purity, were cast in a mould of a similar nature. a spartan was seldom alone; they were always in society with each other. the love of their country and of the public good was their predominant passion, they did not imagine that they belonged to themselves, but to the state. after the battle of leuctra, in which the spartans were defeated by the thebans, the mothers of those who were slain congratulated one another, and went to the temples to thank the gods, that their children had done their duty; while the relations of those who survived the defeat were inconsolable. the romans were not less distinguished by their self-denying patriotism. it was in this spirit that brutus put his two sons to death for conspiring against their country. it was in this spirit that the fabii perished at their fort on the cremera, and the decii devoted themselves for the public. the rigour of self-denial in a true roman approached to a temper which moderns are inclined to denominate savage. in the times of the ancient republics the impulse of the citizens was to merge their own individuality in the interests of the state. they held it their duty to live but for their country. in this spirit they were educated; and the lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of their riper years. in a more recent period we have learned to model our characters by a different standard. we seldom recollect the society of which we are politically members, as a whole, but are broken into detached parties, thinking only for the most part of ourselves and our immediate connections and attachments. this change in the sentiments and manners of modern times has among its other consequences given birth to a new species of philosophy. we have been taught to affirm, that we can have no express and pure regard for our fellow-creatures, but that all our benevolence and affection come to us through the strainers of a gross or a refined self-love. the coarser adherents of this doctrine maintain, that mankind are in all cases guided by views of the narrowest self-interest, and that those who advance the highest claims to philanthropy, patriotism, generosity and self-sacrifice, are all the time deceiving others, or deceiving themselves, and use a plausible and high-sounding language merely, that serves no other purpose than to veil from observation "that hideous sight, a naked human heart." the more delicate and fastidious supporters of the doctrine of universal self-love, take a different ground. they affirm that "such persons as talk to us of disinterestedness and pure benevolence, have not considered with sufficient accuracy the nature of mind, feeling and will. to understand," they say, "is one thing, and to choose another." the clearest proposition that ever was stated, has, in itself, no tendency to produce voluntary action on the part of the percipient. it can be only something apprehended as agreeable or disagreeable to us, that can operate so as to determine the will. such is the law of universal nature. we act from the impulse of our own desires and aversions; and we seek to effect or avert a thing, merely because it is viewed by us as an object of gratification or the contrary. the virtuous man and the vicious are alike governed by the same principle; and it is therefore the proper business of a wise instructor of youth, and of a man who would bring his own sentiments and feelings into the most praise-worthy frame, to teach us to find our interest and gratification in that which shall be most beneficial to others." when we proceed to examine the truth of these statements, it certainly is not strictly an argument to say, that the advocate of self-love on either of these hypotheses cannot consistently be a believer in christianity, or even a theist, as theism is ordinarily understood. the commandments of the author of the christian religion are, as we have seen, purely disinterested: and, especially if we admit the latter of the two explanations of self-love, we shall be obliged to confess, on the hypothesis of this new philosophy, that the almighty author of the universe never acts in any of his designs either of creation or providence, but from a principle of self-love. in the mean time, if this is not strictly an argument, it is however but fair to warn the adherents of the doctrine i oppose, of the consequences to which their theory leads. it is my purpose to subvert that doctrine by means of the severest demonstration; but i am not unwilling, before i begin, to conciliate, as far as may be, the good-will of my readers to the propositions i proceed to establish. i will therefore further venture to add, that, upon the hypothesis of self-love, there can be no such thing as virtue. there are two circumstances required, to entitle an action to be denominated virtuous. it must have a tendency to produce good rather than evil to the race of man, and it must have been generated by an intention to produce such good. the most beneficent action that ever was performed, if it did not spring from the intention of good to others, is not of the nature of virtue. virtue, where it exists in any eminence, is a species of conduct, modelled upon a true estimate of the good intended to be produced. he that makes a false estimate, and prefers a trivial and partial good to an important and comprehensive one, is vicious( ). ( ) political justice, book , chap. iv. it is admitted on all hands, that it is possible for a man to sacrifice his own existence to that of twenty others. but the advocates of the doctrine of self-love must say, that he does this that he may escape from uneasiness, and because he could not bear to encounter the inward upbraiding with which he would be visited, if he acted otherwise. this in reality would change his action from an act of virtue to an act of vice. so far as belongs to the real merits of the case, his own advantage or pleasure is a very insignificant consideration, and the benefit to be produced, suppose to a world, is inestimable. yet he falsely and unjustly prefers the first, and views the latter as trivial; nay, separately taken, as not entitled to the smallest regard. if the dictates of impartial justice be taken into the account, then, according to the system of self-love, the best action that ever was performed, may, for any thing we know, have been the action, in the whole world, of the most exquisite and deliberate injustice. nay, it could not have been otherwise, since it produced the greatest good, and therefore was the individual instance, in which the greatest good was most directly postponed to personal gratification( ). such is the spirit of the doctrine i undertake to refute. ( ) political justice, book iv, chap. x. but man is not in truth so poor and pusillanimous a creature as this system would represent. it is time however to proceed to the real merits of the question, to examine what in fact is the motive which induces a good man to elect a generous mode of proceeding. locke is the philosopher, who, in writing on human understanding, has specially delivered the doctrine, that uneasiness is the cause which determines the will, and urges us to act. he says( ), "the motive we have for continuing in the same state, is only the present satisfaction we feel in it; the motive to change is always some uneasiness: nothing setting us upon the change of state, or upon any new action, but some uneasiness. this is the great motive that works on the mind." ( ) book ii, chap. xxi, sect. . it is not my concern to enquire, whether locke by this statement meant to assert that self-love is the only principle of human action. it has at any rate been taken to express the doctrine which i here propose to refute. and, in the first place, i say, that, if our business is to discover the consideration entertained by the mind which induces us to act, this tells us nothing. it is like the case of the indian philosopher( ), who, being asked what it was that kept the earth in its place, answered, that it was supported by an elephant, and that elephant again rested on a tortoise. he must be endowed with a slender portion of curiosity, who, being told that uneasiness is that which spurs on the mind to act, shall rest satisfied with this explanation, and does not proceed to enquire, what makes us uneasy? ( ) locke on understanding, book , chap. xiii, sect. . an explanation like this is no more instructive, than it would be, if, when we saw a man walking, or grasping a sword or a bludgeon, and we enquired into the cause of this phenomenon, any one should inform us that he walks, because he has feet, and he grasps, because he has hands. i could not commodiously give to my thoughts their present form, unless i had been previously furnished with pens and paper. but it would be absurd to say, that my being furnished with pens and paper, is the cause of my writing this essay on self-love and benevolence. the advocates of self-love have, very inartificially and unjustly, substituted the abstract definition of a voluntary agent, and made that stand for the motive by which he is prompted to act. it is true, that we cannot act without the impulse of desire or uneasiness; but we do not think of that desire and uneasiness; and it is the thing upon which the mind is fixed that constitutes our motive. in the boundless variety of the acts, passions and pursuits of human beings, it is absurd on the face of it to say that we are all governed by one motive, and that, however dissimilar are the ends we pursue, all this dissimilarity is the fruit of a single cause. one man chooses travelling, another ambition, a third study, a fourth voluptuousness and a mistress. why do these men take so different courses? because one is partial to new scenes, new buildings, new manners, and the study of character. because a second is attracted by the contemplation of wealth and power. because a third feels a decided preference for the works of homer, or shakespear, or bacon, or euclid. because a fourth finds nothing calculated to stir his mind in comparison with female beauty, female allurements, or expensive living. each of these finds the qualities he likes, intrinsically in the thing he chooses. one man feels himself strongly moved, and raised to extacy, by the beauties of nature, or the magnificence of architecture. another is ravished with the divine excellencies of homer, or of some other of the heroes of literature. a third finds nothing delights him so much as the happiness of others, the beholding that happiness increased, and seeing pain and oppression and sorrow put to flight. the cause of these differences is, that each man has an individual internal structure, directing his partialities, one man to one thing, and another to another. few things can exceed the characters of human beings in variety. there must be something abstractedly in the nature of mind, which renders it accessible to these varieties. for the present we will call it taste. one man feels his spirits regaled with the sight of those things which constitute wealth, another in meditating the triumphs of alexander or caesar, and a third in viewing the galleries of the louvre. not one of these thinks in the outset of appropriating these objects to himself; not one of them begins with aspiring to be the possessor of vast opulence, or emulating the triumphs of caesar, or obtaining in property the pictures and statues the sight of which affords him so exquisite delight. even the admirer of female beauty, does not at first think of converting this attractive object into a mistress, but on the contrary desires, like pygmalion, that the figure he beholds might become his solace and companion, because he had previously admired it for itself. just so the benevolent man is an individual who finds a peculiar delight in contemplating the contentment, the peace and heart's ease of other men, and sympathises in no ordinary degree with their sufferings. he rejoices in the existence and diffusion of human happiness, though he should not have had the smallest share in giving birth to the thing he loves. it is because such are his tastes, and what above all things he prefers, that he afterwards becomes distinguished by the benevolence of his conduct. the reflex act of the mind, which these new philosophers put forward as the solution of all human pursuits, rarely presents itself but to the speculative enquirer in his closet. the savage never dreams of it. the active man, engaged in the busy scenes of life, thinks little, and on rare occasions of himself, but much, and in a manner for ever, of the objects of his pursuit. some men are uniform in their character, and from the cradle to the grave prefer the same objects that first awakened their partialities. other men are inconsistent and given to change, are "every thing by starts, and nothing long." still it is probable that, in most cases, he who performs an act of benevolence, feels for the time that he has a peculiar delight in contemplating the good of his fellow-man. the doctrine of the modern philosophers on this point, is in many ways imbecil and unsound. it is inauspicious to their creed, that the reflex act of the mind is purely the affair of experience. why did the liberal-minded man perform his first act of benevolence? the answer of these persons ought to be, because the recollection of a generous deed is a source of the truest delight. but there is an absurdity on the face of this solution. we do not experimentally know the delight which attends the recollection of a generous deed, till a generous deed has been performed by us. we do not learn these things from books. and least of all is this solution to the purpose, when the business is to find a solution that suits the human mind universally, the unlearned as well as the learned, the savage as well as the sage. and surely it is inconsistent with all sound reasoning, to represent that as the sole spring of our benevolent actions, which by the very terms will not fit the first benevolent act in which any man engaged. the advocates of the doctrine of "self-love the source of all our actions," are still more puzzled, when the case set before them is that of the man, who flies, at an instant's warning, to save the life of the child who has fallen into the river, or the unfortunate whom he beholds in the upper story of a house in flames. this man, as might be illustrated in a thousand instances, treats his own existence as unworthy of notice, and exposes it to multiplied risks to effect the object to which he devotes himself. they are obliged to say, that this man anticipates the joy he will feel in the recollection of a noble act, and the cutting and intolerable pain he will experience in the consciousness that a human being has perished, whom it was in his power to save. it is in vain that we tell them that, without a moment's consideration, he tore off his clothes, or plunged into the stream with his clothes on, or rushed up a flaming stair-case. still they tell us, that he recollected what compunctious visitings would be his lot if he remained supine--he felt the sharpest uneasiness at sight of the accident before him, and it was to get rid of that uneasiness, and not for the smallest regard to the unhappy being he has been the means to save, that he entered on the hazardous undertaking. uneasiness, the knowledge of what inwardly passes in the mind, is a thing not in the slightest degree adverted to but in an interval of leisure. no; the man here spoken of thinks of nothing but the object immediately before his eyes; he adverts not at all to himself; he acts only with an undeveloped, confused and hurried consciousness that he may be of some use, and may avert the instantly impending calamity. he has scarcely even so much reflection as amounts to this. the history of man, whether national or individual, and consequently the acts of human creatures which it describes, are cast in another mould than that which the philosophy of self-love sets before us. a topic that from the earliest accounts perpetually presents itself in the records of mankind, is self-sacrifice, parents sacrificing themselves for their children, and children for their parents. cimon, the athenian, yet in the flower of his youth, voluntarily became the inmate of a prison, that the body of his father might receive the honours of sepulture. various and unquestionable are the examples of persons who have exposed themselves to destruction, and even petitioned to die, that so they might save the lives of those, whose lives they held dearer than their own. life is indeed a thing, that is notoriously set at nothing by generous souls, who have fervently devoted themselves to an overwhelming purpose. there have been instances of persons, exposed to all the horrors of famine, where one has determined to perish by that slowest and most humiliating of all the modes of animal destruction, that another, dearer to him than life itself, might, if possible, be preserved. what is the true explanation of these determinations of the human will? is it, that the person, thus consigning himself to death, loved nothing but himself, regarded only the pleasure he might reap, or the uneasiness he was eager to avoid? or, is it, that he had arrived at the exalted point of self-oblivion, and that his whole soul was penetrated and ingrossed with the love of those for whom he conceived so exalted a partiality? this sentiment so truly forms a part of our nature, that a multitude of absurd practices, and a multitude of heart-rending fables, have been founded upon the consciousness of man in different ages and nations, that these modes of thinking form a constituent part of our common existence. in india there was found a woman, whose love to the deceased partner of her soul was so overwhelming, that she resolved voluntarily to perish on his funeral pile. and this example became so fascinating and admirable, that, by insensible degrees, it grew into a national custom with the hindoos, that, by a sort of voluntary constraint, the widows of all men of a certain caste, should consign themselves to the flames with the dead bodies of their husbands. the story of zopyrus cutting off his nose and ears, and of curtius leaping into the gulph, may be fictitious: but it was the consciousness of those by whom these narratives were written that they drew their materials from the mighty store-house of the heart of man, that prompted them to record them. the institutions of clientship and clans, so extensively diffused in different ages of the world, rests upon this characteristic of our nature, that multitudes of men may be trained and educated so, as to hold their existence at no price, when the life of the individual they were taught unlimitedly to reverence might be preserved, or might be defended at the risk of their destruction. the principal circumstance that divides our feelings for others from our feelings for ourselves, and that gives, to satirical observers, and superficial thinkers, an air of exclusive selfishness to the human mind, lies in this, that we can fly from others, but cannot fly from ourselves. while i am sitting by the bed-side of the sufferer, while i am listening to the tale of his woes, there is comparatively but a slight line of demarcation, whether they are his sorrows or my own. my sympathy is vehemently excited towards him, and i feel his twinges and anguish in a most painful degree. but i can quit his apartment and the house in which he dwells, can go out in the fields, and feel the fresh air of heaven fanning my hair, and playing upon my cheeks. this is at first but a very imperfect relief. his image follows me; i cannot forget what i have heard and seen; i even reproach myself for the mitigation i involuntarily experience. but man is the creature of his senses. i am every moment further removed, both in time and place, from the object that distressed me. there he still lies upon the bed of agony: but the sound of his complaint, and the sight of all that expresses his suffering, are no longer before me. a short experience of human life convinces us that we have this remedy always at hand ("i am unhappy, only while i please")( ); and we soon come therefore to anticipate the cure, and so, even while we are in the presence of the sufferer, to feel that he and ourselves are not perfectly one. ( ) douglas. but with our own distempers and adversities it is altogether different. it is this that barbs the arrow. we may change the place of our local existence; but we cannot go away from ourselves. with chariots, and embarking ourselves on board of ships, we may seek to escape from the enemy. but grief and apprehension enter the vessel along with us; and, when we mount on horseback, the discontent that specially annoyed us, gets up behind, and clings to our sides with a hold never to be loosened( ). ( ) horace. is it then indeed a proof of selfishness, that we are in a greater or less degree relieved from the anguish we endured for our friend, when other objects occupy us, and we are no longer the witnesses of his sufferings? if this were true, the same argument would irresistibly prove, that we are the most generous of imaginable beings, the most disregardful of whatever relates to ourselves. is it not the first ejaculation of the miserable, "oh, that i could fly from myself? oh, for a thick, substantial sleep!" what the desperate man hates is his own identity. but he knows that, if for a few moments he loses himself in forgetfulness, he will presently awake to all that distracted him. he knows that he must act his part to the end, and drink the bitter cup to the dregs. he can do none of these things by proxy. it is the consciousness of the indubitable future, from which we can never be divorced, that gives to our present calamity its most fearful empire. were it not for this great line of distinction, there are many that would feel not less for their friend than for themselves. but they are aware, that his ruin will not make them beggars, his mortal disease will not bring them to the tomb, and that, when he is dead, they may yet be reserved for many years of health, of consciousness and vigour. the language of the hypothesis of self-love was well adapted to the courtiers of the reign of louis the fourteenth. the language of disinterestedness was adapted to the ancient republicans in the purest times of sparta and rome. but these ancients were not always disinterested; and the moderns are not always narrow, self-centred and cold. the ancients paid, though with comparative infrequency, the tax imposed upon mortals, and thought of their own gratification and ease; and the moderns are not utterly disqualified for acts of heroic affection. it is of great consequence that men should come to think correctly on this subject. the most snail-blooded man that exists, is not so selfish as he pretends to be. in spite of all the indifference he professes towards the good of others, he will sometimes be detected in a very heretical state of sensibility towards his wife, his child or his friend; he will shed tears at a tale of distress, and make considerable sacrifices of his own gratification for the relief of others. but his creed is a pernicious one. he who for ever thinks, that his "charity must begin at home," is in great danger of becoming an indifferent citizen, and of withering those feelings of philanthropy, which in all sound estimation constitute the crowning glory of man. he will perhaps have a reasonable affection towards what he calls his own flesh and blood, and may assist even a stranger in a case of urgent distress.--but it is dangerous to trifle with the first principles and sentiments of morality. and this man will scarcely in any case have his mind prepared to hail the first dawnings of human improvement, and to regard all that belongs to the welfare of his kind as parcel of his own particular estate. the creed of self-love will always have a tendency to make us frenchmen in the frivolous part of that character, and dutchmen in the plodding and shopkeeping spirit of barter and sale. there is no need that we should beat down the impulse of heroism in the human character, and be upon our guard against the effervescences and excess of a generous sentiment. one of the instructors of my youth was accustomed to say to his pupils, "do not be afraid to commit your thoughts to paper in all the fervour and glow of your first conception: when you come to look at them the next day, you will find this gone off to a surprising degree." as this was no ill precept for literary composition, even so in our actions and moral conduct we shall be in small danger of being too warm-hearted and too generous. modern improvements in education are earnest in recommending to us the study of facts, and that we should not waste the time of young persons upon the flights of imagination. but it is to imagination that we are indebted for our highest enjoyments; it tames the ruggedness of uncivilised nature, and is the never-failing associate of all the considerable advances of social man, whether in throwing down the strong fences of intellectual slavery, or in giving firmness and duration to the edifice of political freedom. and who does not feel that every thing depends upon the creed we embrace, and the discipline we exercise over our own souls? the disciple of the theory of self-love, if of a liberal disposition, will perpetually whip himself forward "with loose reins," upon a spiritless pegasus, and say, "i will do generous things; i will not bring into contempt the master i serve--though i am conscious all the while that this is but a delusion, and that, however i brag of generosity, i do not set a step forward, but singly for my own ends, and my own gratification." meanwhile, this is all a forced condition of thought; and the man who cherishes it, will be perpetually falling back into the cold, heartless convictions he inwardly retains. self-love is the unwholesome, infectious atmosphere in which he dwells; and, however he may seek to rise, the wings of his soul will eternally be drawn downwards, and he cannot be pervaded, as he might have been, with the free spirit of genuine philanthropy. to be consistent, he ought continually to grow colder and colder; and the romance, which fired his youth, and made him forget the venomous potion he had swallowed, will fade away in age, rendering him careless of all but himself, and indifferent to the adversity and sufferings of all of whom he hears, and all with whom he is connected. on the other hand, the man who has embraced the creed of disinterested benevolence, will know that it is not his fitting element to "live for himself, or to die for himself." whether he is under the dominion of family-affection, friendship, patriotism, or a zeal for his brethren of mankind, he will feel that he is at home. the generous man therefore looks forward to the time when the chilling and wretched philosophy of the reign of louis the fourteenth shall be forgotten, and a fervent desire for the happiness and improvement of the human species shall reign in all hearts. i am not especially desirous of sheltering my opinions under the authority of great names: but, in a question of such vital importance to the true welfare of men in society, no fair advantage should be neglected. the author of the system of "self-love the source of all our actions" was la rochefoucault; and the whole herd of the french philosophers have not been ashamed to follow in the train of their vaunted master. i am grieved to say, that, as i think, the majority of my refining and subtilising countrymen of the present day have enlisted under his banner. but the more noble and generous view of the subject has been powerfully supported by shaftesbury, butler, hutcheson and hume. on the last of these i particularly pique myself; inasmuch as, though he became naturalised as a frenchman in a vast variety of topics, the greatness of his intellectual powers exempted him from degradation in this. that however which i would chiefly urge in the way of authority, is the thing mentioned in the beginning of this essay, i mean, the sentiments that have animated the authors of religion, that characterise the best ages of greece and rome, and that in all cases display themselves when the loftiest and most generous sentiments of the heart are called into action. the opposite creed could only have been engendered in the dregs of a corrupt and emasculated court; and human nature will never shew itself what it is capable of being, till the last remains of a doctrine, invented in the latter part of the seventeenth century, shall have been consigned to the execration they deserve. essay xii. of the liberty of human actions. the question, which has been attended with so long and obstinate debates, concerning the metaphysical doctrines of liberty and necessity, and the freedom of human actions, is not even yet finally and satisfactorily settled. the negative is made out by an argument which seems to amount to demonstration, that every event requires a cause, a cause why it is as it is and not otherwise, that the human will is guided by motives, and is consequently always ruled by the strongest motive, and that we can never choose any thing, either without a motive of preference, or in the way of following the weaker, and deserting the stronger motive( ). ( ) political justice, book iv, chap. vii. why is it then that disbelief or doubt should still subsist in a question so fully decided? for the same reason that compels us to reject many other demonstrations. the human mind is so constituted as to oblige us, if not theoretically, at least practically, to reject demonstration, and adhere to our senses. the case is thus in the great question of the non-existence of an external world, or of matter. how ever much the understanding may be satisfied of the truth of the proposition by the arguments of berkeley and others, we no sooner go out into actual life, than we become convinced, in spite of our previous scepticism or unbelief, of the real existence of the table, the chair, and the objects around us, and of the permanence and reality of the persons, both body and mind, with whom we have intercourse. if we were not, we should soon become indifferent to their pleasure and pain, and in no long time reason ourselves into the opinion that the one was not more desirable than the other, and conduct ourselves accordingly. but there is a great difference between the question of a material world, and the question of liberty and necessity. the most strenuous berkleian can never say, that there is any contradiction or impossibility in the existence of matter. all that he can consistently and soberly maintain is, that, if the material world exists, we can never perceive it, and that our sensations, and trains of impressions and thinking go on wholly independent of that existence. but the question of the freedom of human actions is totally of another class. to say that in our choice we reject the stronger motive, and that we choose a thing merely because we choose it, is sheer nonsense and absurdity; and whoever with a sound understanding will fix his mind upon the state of the question will perceive its impossibility. in the mean time it is not less true, that every man, the necessarian as well as his opponent, acts on the assumption of human liberty, and can never for a moment, when he enters into the scenes of real life, divest himself of this persuasion. let us take separately into our consideration the laws of matter and of mind. we acknowledge generally in both an established order of antecedents and consequents, or of causes and effects. this is the sole foundation of human prudence and of all morality. it is because we foresee that certain effects will follow from a certain mode of conduct, that we act in one way rather than another. it is because we foresee that, if the soil is prepared in a certain way, and if seed is properly scattered and covered up in the soil thus prepared, a crop will follow, that we engage in the labours of agriculture. in the same manner, it is because we foresee that, if lessons are properly given, and a young person has them clearly explained to him, certain benefits will result, and because we are apprised of the operation of persuasion, admonition, remonstrance, menace, punishment and reward, that we engage in the labours of education. all the studies of the natural philosopher and the chemist, all our journeys by land and our voyages by sea, and all the systems and science of government, are built upon this principle, that from a certain method of proceeding, regulated by the precepts of wisdom and experience, certain effects may be expected to follow. yet, at the same time that we admit of a regular series of cause and effect in the operations both of matter and mind, we never fail, in our reflections upon each, to ascribe to them an essential difference. in the laws by which a falling body descends to the earth, and by which the planets are retained in their orbits, in a word, in all that relates to inanimate nature, we readily assent to the existence of absolute laws, so that, when we have once ascertained the fundamental principles of astronomy and physics, we rely with perfect assurance upon the invariable operation of these laws, yesterday, to-day, and for ever. as long as the system of things, of which we are spectators, and in which we act our several parts, shall remain, so long have the general phenomena of nature gone on unchanged for more years of past ages than we can define, and will in all probability continue to operate for as many ages to come. we admit of no variation, but firmly believe that, if we were perfectly acquainted with all the causes, we could, without danger of error, predict all the effects. we are satisfied that, since first the machine of the universe was set going, every thing in inanimate nature has taken place in a regular course, and nothing has happened and can happen, otherwise than as it actually has been and will be. but we believe, or, more accurately speaking, we feel, that it is otherwise in the universe of mind. whoever attentively observes the phenomena of thinking and sentient beings, will be convinced, that men and animals are under the influence of motives, that we are subject to the predominance of the passions, of love and hatred, of desire and aversion, of sorrow and joy, and that the elections we make are regulated by impressions supplied to us by these passions. but we are fully penetrated with the notion, that mind is an arbiter, that it sits on its throne, and decides, as an absolute prince, this may or that; in short, that, while inanimate nature proceeds passively in an eternal chain of cause and effect, mind is endowed with an initiating power, and forms its determinations by an inherent and indefeasible prerogative. hence arises the idea of contingency relative to the acts of living and sentient beings, and the opinion that, while, in the universe of matter, every thing proceeds in regular course, and nothing has happened or can happen, otherwise than as it actually has been or will be, in the determinations and acts of living beings each occurrence may be or not be, and waits the mastery of mind to decide whether the event shall be one way or the other, both issues being equally possible till that decision has been made. thus, as was said in the beginning, we have demonstration, all the powers of our reasoning faculty, on one side, and the feeling, of our minds, an inward persuasion of which with all our efforts we can never divest ourselves, on the other. this phenomenon in the history of every human creature, had aptly enough been denominated, the "delusive sense of liberty( )." ( ) the first writer, by whom this proposition was distinctly enunciated, seems to have been lord kaimes, in his essays on the principles of morality and natural religion, published in . but this ingenious author was afterwards frightened with the boldness of his own conclusions, and in the subsequent editions of his work endeavoured ineffectually to explain away what he had said. and, though the philosopher in his closet will for the most part fully assent to the doctrine of the necessity of human actions, yet this indestructible feeling of liberty, which accompanies us from the cradle to the grave, is entitled to our serious attention, and has never obtained that consideration from the speculative part of mankind, which must by no means be withheld, if we would properly enter into the mysteries of our nature. the necessarian has paid it very imperfect attention to the impulses which form the character of man, if he omits this chapter in the history of mind, while on the other hand the advocate of free will, if he would follow up his doctrine rigorously into all its consequences, would render all speculations on human character and conduct superfluous, put an end to the system of persuasion, admonition, remonstrance, menace, punishment and reward, annihilate the very essence of civil government, and bring to a close all distinction between the sane person and the maniac. with the disciples of the latter of these doctrines i am by no means specially concerned. i am fully persuaded, as far as the powers of my understanding can carry me, that the phenomena of mind are governed by laws altogether as inevitable as the phenomena of matter, and that the decisions of our will are always in obedience to the impulse of the strongest motive. the consequences of the principle implanted in our nature, by which men of every creed, when they descend into the scene of busy life, pronounce themselves and their fellow-mortals to be free agents, are sufficiently memorable. from hence there springs what we call conscience in man, and a sense of praise or blame due to ourselves and others for the actions we perform. how poor, listless and unenergetic would all our performances be, but for this sentiment! it is in vain that i should talk to myself or others, of the necessity of human actions, of the connection between cause and effect, that all industry, study and mental discipline will turn to account, and this with infinitely more security on the principle of necessity, than on the opposite doctrine, every thing i did would be without a soul. i should still say, whatever i may do, whether it be right or wrong, i cannot help it; wherefore then should i trouble the master-spirit within me? it is either the calm feeling of self-approbation, or the more animated swell of the soul, the quick beatings of the pulse, the enlargement of the heart, the glory sparkling in the eye, and the blood flushing into the cheek, that sustains me in all my labours. this turns the man into what we conceive of a god, arms him with prowess, gives him a more than human courage, and inspires him with a resolution and perseverance that nothing can subdue. in the same manner the love or hatred, affection or alienation, we entertain for our fellow-men, is mainly referable for its foundation to the "delusive sense of liberty." "we approve of a sharp knife rather than a blunt one, because its capacity is greater. we approve of its being employed in carving food, rather than in maiming men or other animals, because that application of its capacity is preferable. but all approbation or preference is relative to utility or general good. a knife is as capable as a man, of being employed in purposes of utility; and the one is no more free than the other as to its employment. the mode in which a knife is made subservient to these purposes, is by material impulse. the mode in which a man is made subservient, is by inducement and persuasion. but both are equally the affair of necessity( )." these are the sentiments dictated to us by the doctrine of the necessity of human actions. ( ) political justice, book iv, chap. viii. but how different are the feelings that arise within us, as soon as we enter into the society of our fellow-creatures! "the end of the commandment is love." it is the going forth of the heart towards those to whom we are bound by the ties of a common nature, affinity, sympathy or worth, that is the luminary of the moral world. without it there would have been "a huge eclipse of sun and moon;" or at best, as a well-known writer( ) expresses it in reference to another subject, we should have lived in "a silent and drab-coloured creation." we are prepared by the power that made us for feelings and emotions; and, unless these come to diversify and elevate our existence, we should waste our days in melancholy, and scarcely be able to sustain ourselves. the affection we entertain for those towards whom our partiality and kindness are excited, is the life of our life. it is to this we are indebted for all our refinement, and, in the noblest sense of the word, for all our humanity. without it we should have had no sentiment (a word, however abused, which, when properly defined, comprises every thing that is the crown of our nature), and no poetry.--love and hatred, as they regard our fellow-creatures, in contradistinction to the complacency, or the feeling of an opposite nature, which is excited in us towards inanimate objects, are entirely the offspring of the delusive sense of liberty. ( ) thomas paine. the terms, praise and blame, express to a great degree the same sentiments as those of love and hatred, with this difference, that praise and blame in their simplest sense apply to single actions, whereas love and hatred are produced in us by the sum of those actions or tendencies, which constitute what we call character. there is also another difference, that love and hatred are engendered in us by other causes as well as moral qualities; but praise and blame, in the sense in which they are peculiarly applied to our fellow-mortals, are founded on moral qualities only. in love and hatred however, when they are intense or are lasting, some reference to moral qualities is perhaps necessarily implied. the love between the sexes, unless in cases where it is of a peculiarly transient nature, always comprises in it a belief that the party who is the object of our love, is distinguished by tendencies of an amiable nature, which we expect to see manifesting themselves in affectionate attentions and acts of kindness. even the admiration we entertain for the features, the figure, and personal graces of the object of our regard, is mixed with and heightened by our expectation of actions and tones that generate approbation, and, if divested of this, would be of small signification or permanence. in like manner in the ties of affinity, or in cases where we are impelled by the consideration, "he also is a man as well as i," the excitement will carry us but a little way, unless we discover in the being towards whom we are moved some peculiarities which may beget a moral partiality and regard. and, as towards our fellow-creatures, so in relation to ourselves, our moral sentiments are all involved with, and take their rise in, the delusive sense of liberty. it is in this that is contained the peculiar force of the terms virtue, duty, guilt and desert. we never pronounce these words without thinking of the action to which they refer, as that which might or might not be done, and therefore unequivocally approve or disapprove in ourselves and others. a virtuous man, as the term is understood by all, as soon as we are led to observe upon those qualities, and the exhibition of those qualities in actual life, which constitute our nature, is a man who, being in full possession of the freedom of human action, is engaged in doing those things which a sound judgment of the tendencies of what we do pronounces to be good. duty is a term that can scarcely be said to have a meaning, except that which it derives from the delusive sense of liberty. according to the creed of the necessarian, it expresses that mode of action on the part of the individual, which constitutes the best possible application of his capacity to the general benefit( ). in the mean time, if we confine ourselves to this definition, it may as well be taken to describe the best application of a knife, or any other implement proceeding from the hands of the manufacturer, as of the powers of a human being. but we surely have a very different idea in our minds, when we employ the term duty. it is not agreeable to the use of language that we should use this term, except we speak of a being in the exercise of volition. ( ) political justice, book ii, chap. iv. duty then means that which may justly be required of a human creature in the possession of liberty of action. it includes in its proper sense the conception of the empire of will, the notion that mind is an arbiter, that it sits on its throne, and decides, as an absolute prince, this way or that. duty is the performance of what is due, the discharge of a debt (debitum). but a knife owes nothing, and can in no sense be said to be held to one sort of application rather than another; the debt can only belong to a human being in possession of his liberty, by whom the knife may be applied laudably or otherwise. a multitude of terms instantly occur to us, the application of which is limited in the same manner as the term duty is limited: such are, to owe, obligation, debt, bond, right, claim, sin, crime, guilt, merit and desert. even reward and punishment, however they may be intelligible when used merely in the sense of motives employed, have in general acceptation a sense peculiarly derived from the supposed freedom of the human will. the mode therefore in which the advocates of the doctrine of necessity have universally talked and written, is one of the most memorable examples of the hallucination of the human intellect. they have at all times recommended that we should translate the phrases in which we usually express ourselves on the hypothesis of liberty, into the phraseology of necessity, that we should talk no other language than that which is in correspondence with the severest philosophy, and that we should exert ourselves to expel all fallacious notions and delusions so much as from our recollection. they did not perceive what a wide devastation and destruction they were proposing of all the terms and phrases that are in use in the communications between man and man in actual life.--they might as well have recommended that we should rigorously bear in mind on the ordinary occasions of life, that there is no such thing as colour, that which we ordinary call by that name having no existence in external objects, but belonging only to our way of perceiving them. the language which is suggested to us by the conception of the freedom of human actions, moulds the very first articulations of a child, "i will," and "i will not;" and is even distinctly conveyed by his gestures, before he arrives at the power of articulation. this is the explanation and key to his vehement and ungovernable movements, and his rebellion. the petulance of the stripling, the fervent and energetic exertions of the warrior, and the calm and unalterable resolution of the sage, all imply the same thing. will, and a confidence in its efficiency, "travel through, nor quit us till we die." it is this which inspires us with invincible perseverance, and heroic energies, while without it we should be the most inert and soulless of blocks, the shadows of what history records and poetry immortalises, and not men. free will is an integral part of the science of man, and may be said to constitute its most important chapter. we might with as much propriety overlook the intelligence of the senses, that medium which acquaints us with an external world or what we call such, we might as well overlook the consideration of man's reason, his imagination or taste, as fail to dwell with earnest reflection and exposition upon that principle which lies at the foundation of our moral energies, fills us with a moral enthusiasm, prompts all our animated exertions on the theatre of the world, whether upon a wide or a narrow scale, and penetrates us with the most lively and fervent approbation or disapprobation of the acts of ourselves and others in which the forwarding or obstructing human happiness is involved. but, though the language of the necessarian is at war with the indestructible feelings of the human mind, and though his demonstrations will for ever crumble into dust, when brought to the test of the activity of real life, yet his doctrines, to the reflecting and enlightened, will by no means be without their use. in the sobriety of the closet, we inevitably assent to his conclusions; nor is it easy to conceive how a rational man and a philosopher abstractedly can entertain a doubt of the necessity of human actions. and the number of these persons is perpetually increasing; enlarged and dispassionate views of the nature of man and the laws of the universe are rapidly spreading in the world. we cannot indeed divest ourselves of love and hatred, of the sentiments of praise and blame, and the ideas of virtue, duty, obligation, debt, bond, right, claim, sin, crime, guilt, merit and desert. and, if we could do so, the effects would be most pernicious, and the world be rendered a blank. we shall however unquestionably, as our minds grow enlarged, be brought to the entire and unreserved conviction, that man is a machine, that he is governed by external impulses, and is to be regarded as the medium only through the intervention of which previously existing causes are enabled to produce certain effects. we shall see, according to an expressive phrase, that he "could not help it," and, of consequence, while we look down from the high tower of philosophy upon the scene of human affairs, our prevailing emotion will be pity, even towards the criminal, who, from the qualities he brought into the world, and the various circumstances which act upon him from infancy, and form his character, is impelled to be the means of the evils, which we view with so profound disapprobation, and the existence of which we so entirely regret. there is an old axiom of philosophy, which counsels us to "think with the learned, and talk with the vulgar;" and the practical application of this axiom runs through the whole scene of human affairs. thus the most learned astronomer talks of the rising and setting of the sun, and forgets in his ordinary discourse that the earth is not for ever at rest, and does not constitute the centre of the universe. thus, however we reason respecting the attributes of inanimate matter and the nature of sensation, it never occurs to us, when occupied with the affairs of actual life, that there is no heat in fire, and no colour in the rainbow. in like manner, when we contemplate the acts of ourselves and our neighbours, we can never divest ourselves of the delusive sense of the liberty of human actions, of the sentiment of conscience, of the feelings of love and hatred, the impulses of praise and blame, and the notions of virtue, duty, obligation, right, claim, guilt, merit and desert. and it has sufficiently appeared in the course of this essay, that it is not desirable that we should do so. they are these ideas to which the world we live in is indebted for its crowning glory and greatest lustre. they form the highest distinction between men and other animals, and are the genuine basis of self-reverence, and the conceptions of true nobility and greatness, and the reverse of these attributes, in the men with whom we live, and the men whose deeds are recorded in the never-dying page of history. but, though the doctrine of the necessity of human actions can never form the rule of our intercourse with others, it will still have its use. it will moderate our excesses, and point out to us that middle path of judgment which the soundest philosophy inculcates. we shall learn, according to the apostolic precept, to "be angry, and sin not, neither let the sun go down upon our wrath." we shall make of our fellow-men neither idols to worship, nor demons to be regarded with horror and execration. we shall think of them, as of players, "that strut and fret their hour upon the stage, and then are heard no more." we shall "weep, as though we wept not, and rejoice, as though we rejoiced not, seeing that the fashion of this world passeth away." and, most of all, we shall view with pity, even with sympathy, the men whose frailties we behold, or by whom crimes are perpetrated, satisfied that they are parts of one great machine, and, like ourselves, are driven forward by impulses over which they have no real control. essay xiii. of belief. one of the prerogatives by which man is eminently distinguished from all other living beings inhabiting this globe of earth, consists in the gift of reason. beasts reason. they are instructed by experience; and, guided by what they have already known of the series of events, they infer from the sense of what has gone before, an assured expectation of what is to follow. hence, "beast walks with man, joint tenant of the shade;" and their sagacity is in many instances more unerring than ours, because they have no affectation to mislead them; they follow no false lights, no glimmering intimation of something half-anticipating a result, but trust to the plain, blunt and obvious dictates of their simple apprehension. this however is but the first step in the scale of reason, and is in strictness scarcely entitled to the name. we set off from the same point from which they commence their career. but the faculty of articulate speech comes in, enabling us to form the crude elements of reason and inference into a code. we digest explanations of things, assigning the particulars in which they resemble other classes, and the particulars by which they are distinguished from whatever other classes have fallen under our notice. we frame propositions, and, detaching ourselves from the immediate impressions of sense, proceed to generalities, which exist only, in a way confused, and not distinctly adverted to, in the conceptions of the animal creation. it is thus that we arrive at science, and go forward to those subtleties, and that perspicuity of explanation, which place man in a distinct order of being, leaving all the other inhabitants of earth at an immeasurable distance below him. it is thus that we communicate our discoveries to each other, and hand down the knowledge we have acquired, unimpaired and entire, through successive ages, and to generations yet unborn. but in certain respects we pay a very high price for this distinction. it is to it that we must impute all the follies, extravagances and hallucinations of human intellect. there is nothing so absurd that some man has not affirmed, rendering himself the scorn and laughing-stock of persons of sounder understanding. and, which is worst, the more ridiculous and unintelligible is the proposition he has embraced, the more pertinaciously does he cling to it; so that creeds the most outrageous and contradictory have served as the occasion or pretext for the most impassioned debates, bloody wars, inhuman executions, and all that most deeply blots and dishonours the name of man--while often, the more evanescent and frivolous are the distinctions, the more furious and inexpiable have been the contentions they have produced. the result of the whole, in the vast combinations of men into tribes and nations, is, that thousands and millions believe, or imagine they believe, propositions and systems, the terms of which they do not fully understand, and the evidence of which they have not considered. they believe, because so their fathers believed before them. no phrase is more commonly heard than, "i was born a christian;" "i was born a catholic, or a protestant." the priest continues what the nurse began, and thus the child imposes on the man. but this sort of belief forms no part of the subject of the present essay. my purpose is to confine myself to the consideration of those persons, who in some degree, more or less, exercise the reasoning faculty in the pursuit of truth, and, having attempted to examine the evidence of an interesting and weighty proposition, satisfy themselves that they have arrived at a sound conclusion. it is however the rarest thing in the world, for any one to found his opinion, simply upon the evidence that presents itself to him of the truth of the proposition which comes before him to be examined. where is the man that breaks loose from all the shackles that in his youth had been imposed upon hills, and says to truth, "go on; whithersoever thou leadest, i am prepared to follow?" to weigh the evidence for and against a proposition, in scales so balanced, that the "division of the twentieth part of one poor scruple, the estimation of a hair," shall be recognised and submitted to, is the privilege of a mind of no ordinary fairness and firmness. the scriptures say "the heart of man is deceitful above all things." the thinking principle within us is so subtle, has passed through so many forms of instruction, and is under the influence and direction of such a variety of causes, that no man can accurately pronounce by what impulse he has been led to the conclusion in which he finally reposes. every ingenuous person, who is invited to embrace a certain profession, that of the church for example, will desire, preparatorily to his final determination, to examine the evidences and the merits of the religion he embraces, that he may enter upon his profession under the influence of a sincere conviction, and be inspired with that zeal, in singleness of heart, which can alone prevent his vocation from being disgraceful to him. yet how many motives are there, constraining him to abide in an affirmative conclusion? his friends expect this from him. perhaps his own inclination leads him to select this destination rather than any other. perhaps preferment and opulence wait upon his decision. if the final result of his enquiries lead him to an opposite judgment, to how much obloquy will he be exposed! where is the man who can say that no unconscious bias has influenced him in the progress of his investigation? who shall pronounce that, under very different circumstances, his conclusions would not have been essentially other than they are? but the enquiry of an active and a searching mind does not terminate on a certain day. he will be for ever revising and reconsidering his first determinations. it is one of the leading maxims of an honourable mind, that we must be, at all times, and to the last hour of our existence, accessible to conviction built upon new evidence, or upon evidence presented in a light in which it had not before been viewed. if then the probationer for the clerical profession was under some bias in his first investigation, how must it be expected to be with him, when he has already taken the vow, and received ordination? can he with a calm and unaltered spirit contemplate the possibility, that the ground shall be cut away from under him, and that, by dint of irrefragable argument, he shall be stripped of his occupation, and turned out naked and friendless into the world? but this is only one of the broadest and most glaring instances. in every question of paramount importance there is ever a secret influence urging me earnestly to desire to find one side of the question right and the other wrong. shall i be a whig or a tory, believe a republic or a mixed monarchy most conducive to the improvement and happiness of mankind, embrace the creed of free will or necessity? there is in all cases a "strong temptation that waketh in the heart." cowardice urges me to become the adherent of that creed, which is espoused by my nearest friends, or those who are most qualified to serve me. enterprise and a courageous spirit on the contrary bid me embrace the tenet, the embracing of which shall most conduce to my reputation for extraordinary perspicuity and acuteness, and gain me the character of an intrepid adventurer, a man who dares commit himself to an unknown voyage. in the question of religion, even when the consideration of the profession of an ecclesiastic does not occur, yet we are taught to believe that there is only one set of tenets that will lead us in the way of salvation. faith is represented as the first of all qualifications. "if i had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin." with what heart then does a man set himself to examine, and scrupulously weigh the evidence on one side and the other, when some undiscerned frailty, some secret bias that all his care cannot detect, may lurk within, and insure for him the "greater condemnation?" i well remember in early life, with what tingling sensation and unknown horror i looked into the books of the infidels and the repositories of unlawful tenets, lest i should be seduced. i held it my duty to "prove all things;" but i knew not how far it might be my fate; to sustain the penalty attendant even upon an honourable and virtuous curiousity. it is one of the most received arguments of the present day against religious persecution, that the judgments we form are not under the authority of our will, and that, for what it is not in our power to change, it is unjust we should be punished: and there is much truth in this. but it is not true to the fullest extent. the sentiments we shall entertain, are to a considerable degree at the disposal of inticements on the one side, and of menaces and apprehension on the other. that which we wish to believe, we are already greatly in progress to embrace; and that which will bring upon us disgrace and calamity, we are more than half prepared to reject. persecution however is of very equivocal power: we cannot embrace one faith and reject another at the word of command. it is a curious question to decide how far punishments and rewards may be made effectual to determine the religion of nations and generations of men. they are often unsuccessful. there is a feeling in the human heart, that prompts us to reject with indignation this species of tyranny. we become more obstinate in clinging to that which we are commanded to discard. we place our honour and our pride in the firmness of our resistance. "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." yet there is often great efficacy in persecution. it was the policy of the court of versailles that brought almost to nothing the huguenots of france. and there is a degree of persecution, if the persecuting party has the strength and the inexorableness to employ it, that it is perhaps beyond the prowess of human nature to stand up against. the mind of the enquiring man is engaged in a course of perpetual research; and ingenuousness prompts us never to be satisfied with the efforts that we have made, but to press forward. but mind, as well as body, has a certain vis inertiae, and moves only as it is acted upon by impulses from without. with respect to the adopting new opinions, and the discovery of new truths, we must be indebted in the last resort, either to books, or the oral communications of our fellow-men, or to ideas immediately suggested to us by the phenomena of man or nature. the two former are the ordinary causes of a change of judgment to men: they are for the most part minds of a superior class only, that are susceptible of hints derived straight from the external world, without the understandings of other men intervening, and serving as a conduit to the new conceptions introduced. the two former serve, so to express it, for the education of man, and enable us to master, in our own persons, the points already secured, and the wisdom laid up in the great magazine of human knowledge; the last imparts to us the power of adding to the stock, and carrying forward by one step and another the improvements of which our nature is susceptible. it is much that books, the unchanging records of the thoughts of men in former ages, are able to impart to us. for many of the happiest moments of our lives, for many of the purest and most exalted feelings of the human heart, we are indebted to them. education is their province; we derive from them civilization and refinement; and we may affirm of literature, what otway has said of woman, "we had been brutes without you." it is thus that the acquisitions of the wise are handed down from age to age, and that we are enabled to mount step after step on the ladder of paradise, till we reach the skies. but, inestimable as is the benefit we derive from books, there is something more searching and soul-stirring in the impulse of oral communication. we cannot shut our ears, as we shut our books; we cannot escape from the appeal of the man who addresses us with earnest speech and living conviction. it is thus, we are told, that, when cicero pleaded before caesar for the life of ligarius, the conqueror of the world was troubled, and changed colour again and again, till at length the scroll prepared for the condemnation of the patriot fell from his hand. sudden and irresistible conviction is chiefly the offspring of living speech. we may arm ourselves against the arguments of an author; but the strength of reasoning in him who addresses us, takes us at unawares. it is in the reciprocation of answer and rejoinder that the power of conversion specially lies. a book is an abstraction. it is but imperfectly that we feel, that a real man addresses us in it, and that what he delivers is the entire and deep-wrought sentiment of a being of flesh and blood like ourselves, a being who claims our attention, and is entitled to our deference. the living human voice, with a countenance and manner corresponding, constrains us to weigh what is said, shoots through us like a stroke of electricity, will not away from our memory, and haunts our very dreams. it is by means of this peculiarity in the nature of mind, that it has been often observed that there is from time to time an augustan age in the intellect of nations, that men of superior powers shock with each other, and that light is struck from the collision, which most probably no one of these men would have given birth to, if they had not been thrown into mutual society and communion. and even so, upon a narrower scale, he that would aspire to do the most of which his faculties are susceptible, should seek the intercourse of his fellows, that his powers may be strengthened, and he may be kept free from that torpor and indolence of soul, which, without external excitement, are ever apt to take possession of us. the man, who lives in solitude, and seldom communicates with minds of the same class as his own, works out his opinions with patient scrutiny, returns to the investigation again and again, imagines that he had examined the question on all sides, and at length arrives at what is to him a satisfactory conclusion. he resumes the view of this conclusion day after day; he finds in it an unalterable validity; he says in his heart, "thus much i have gained; this is a real advance in the search after truth; i have added in a defined and palpable degree to what i knew before." and yet it has sometimes happened, that this person, after having been shut up for weeks, or for a longer period, in his sanctuary, living, so far as related to an exchange of oral disquisitions with his fellow-men, like robinson crusoe in the desolate island, shall come into the presence of one, equally clear-sighted, curious and indefatigable with himself, and shall hear from him an obvious and palpable statement, which in a moment shivers his sightly and glittering fabric into atoms. the statement was palpable and near at hand; it was a thin, an almost imperceptible partition that hid it from him; he wonders in his heart that it never occurred to his meditations. and yet so it is: it was hid from him for weeks, or perhaps for a longer period: it might have been hid from him for twenty years, if it had not been for the accident that supplied it. and he no sooner sees it, than he instantly perceives that the discovery upon which he plumed himself, was an absurdity, of which even a schoolboy might be ashamed. a circumstance not less curious, among the phenomena which belong to this subject of belief, is the repugnance incident to the most ingenuous minds, which we harbour against the suddenly discarding an opinion we have previously entertained, and the adopting one which comes recommended to us with almost the force of demonstration. nothing can be better founded than this repugnance. the mind of man is of a peculiar nature. it has been disputed whether we can entertain more than one idea at a time. but certain it is, that the views of the mind at any one time are considerably narrowed. the mind is like the slate of a schoolboy, which can contain only a certain number of characters of a given size, or like a moveable panorama, which places a given scene or landscape before me, and the space assigned, and which comes within the limits marked out to my perception, is full. many things are therefore almost inevitably shut out, which, had it not been so, might have essentially changed the view of the case, and have taught me that it was a very different conclusion at which i ought to have arrived. at first sight nothing can appear more unreasonable, than that i should hesitate to admit the seemingly irresistible force of the argument presented to me. an ingenuous disposition would appear to require that, the moment the truth, or what seems to be the truth, is set before me, i should pay to it the allegiance to which truth is entitled. if i do otherwise, it would appear to argue a pusillanimous disposition, a mind not prompt and disengaged to receive the impression of evidence, a temper that loves something else better than the lustre which all men are bound to recognise, and that has a reserve in favour of ancient prejudice, and of an opinion no longer supported by reason. in fact however i shall act most wisely, and in the way most honourable to my character, if i resolve to adjourn the debate. no matter how complete the view may seem which is now presented to my consideration, or how irresistible the arguments: truth is too majestic a divinity, and it is of too much importance that i should not follow a delusive semblance that may shew like truth, not to make it in the highest degree proper that i should examine again and again, before i come to the conclusion to which i mean to affix my seal, and annex my sanction, "this is the truth." the ancient goths of germany, we are told, had a custom of debating every thing of importance to their state twice, once in the high animation of a convivial meeting, and once in the serene stillness of a morning consultation. philip of macedon having decided a cause precipitately, the party condemned by him immediately declared his resolution to appeal from the sentence. and to whom, said the king, wilt thou appeal? to philip, was the answer, in the entire possession of his understanding. such is the nature of the human mind--at least, such i find to be the nature of my own--that many trains of thinking, many chains of evidence, the result of accumulated facts, will often not present themselves, at the time when their presence would be of the highest importance. the view which now comes before me is of a substance so close and well-woven, and of colours so brilliant and dazzling, that other matters in a certain degree remote, though of no less intrinsic importance, and equally entitled to influence my judgment in the question in hand, shall be entirely shut out, shall be killed, and fail to offer themselves to my perceptions. it is a curious circumstance which pope, a man of eminent logical power and acuteness, relates, that, having at his command in his youth a collection of all the tracts that had been written on both sides in the reign of james the second, he applied himself with great assiduity to their perusal, and the consequence was, that he was a papist and protestant by turns, according to the last book he read( ). ( ) correspondence with atterbury, letter iv. this circumstance in the structure of the human understanding is well known, and is the foundation of many provisions that occur in the constitution of political society. how each man shall form his creed, and arrange those opinions by which his conduct shall be regulated, is of course a matter exclusively subjected to his own discretion. but, when he is called upon to act in the name of a community, and to decide upon a question in which the public is interested, he of necessity feels himself called upon to proceed with the utmost caution. a judge on the bench, a chancellor, is not contented with that sudden ray of mental illumination to which an ingenuous individual is often disposed to yield in an affair of abstract speculation. he feels that he is obliged to wait for evidence, the nature of which he does not yet anticipate, and to adjourn his decision. a deliberative council or assembly is aware of the necessity of examining a question again and again. it is upon this principle that the two houses of the english parliament are required to give a first, a second and a third reading, together with various other forms and technicalities, to the provision that is brought before them, previously to its passing into a law. and there is many a fundamental dogma and corner-stone of the sentiments that i shall emphatically call my own, that is of more genuine importance to the individual, than to a nation is a number of those regulations, which by courtesy we call acts of parliament. nothing can have a more glaring tendency to subvert the authority of my opinion among my fellow-men, than instability. "what went ye out into the wilderness to see" said jesus christ: "a reed shaken with the wind?" we ought at all times to be open to conviction. we ought to be ever ready to listen to evidence. but, conscious of our human frailty, it is seldom that we ought immediately to subscribe to the propositions, however specious, that are now for the first time presented to us. it is our duty to lay up in our memory the suggestions offered upon any momentous question, and not to suffer them to lose their inherent weight and impressiveness; but it is only through the medium of consideration and reconsideration, that they can become entitled to our full and unreserved assent. the nature of belief, or opinion, has been well illustrated by lord shaftesbury( ). there are many notions or judgments floating in the mind of every man, which are mutually destructive of each other. in this sense men's opinions are governed by high and low spirits, by the state of the solids and fluids of the human body, and by the state of the weather. but in a paramount sense that only can be said to be a man's opinion which he entertains in his clearest moments, and from which, when he is most himself, he is least subject to vary. in this emphatical sense, i should say, a man does not always know what is his real opinion. we cannot strictly be said to believe any thing, in cases where we afterwards change our opinion without the introduction of some evidence that was unknown to us before. but how many are the instances in which we can be affirmed to be in the adequate recollection of all the evidences and reasonings which have at some time occurred to us, and of the opinions, together with the grounds on which they rested, which we conceived we had justly and rationally entertained? the considerations here stated however should by no means be allowed to inspire us with indifference in matters of opinion. it is the glory and lustre of our nature, that we are capable of receiving evidence, and weighing the reasons for and against any important proposition in the balance of an impartial and enlightened understanding. the only effect that should be produced in us, by the reflection that we can at last by no means be secure that we have attained to a perfect result, should be to teach us a wholsome diffidence and humility, and induce us to confess that, when we have done all, we are ignorant, dim-sighted and fallible, that our best reasonings may betray, and our wisest conclusions deceive us. ( ) enquiry concerning virtue, book , part , section ii. essay xiv. of youth and age. magna debetur pueris reverentia. quintilian. i am more doubtful in writing the following essay than in any of those which precede, how far i am treating of human nature generally, or to a certain degree merely recording my own feelings as an individual. i am guided however in composing it, by the principle laid down in my preface, that the purpose of my book in each instance should be to expand some new and interesting truth, or some old truth viewed under a new aspect, which had never by any preceding writer been laid before the public. education, in the conception of those whose office it is to direct it, has various engines by means of which it is to be made effective, and among these are reprehension and chastisement. the philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection. we look into our own bosoms, observe attentively every thing that passes there, anatomise our motives, trace step by step the operations of thought, and diligently remark the effects of external impulses upon our feelings and conduct. philosophers, ever since the time in which socrates flourished, to carry back our recollections no further, have found that the minds of men in the most essential particulars are framed so far upon the same model, that the analysis of the individual may stand in general consideration for the analysis of the species. where this principle fails, it is not easy to suggest a proceeding that shall supply the deficiency. i look into my own breast; i observe steadily and with diligence what passes there; and with all the parade of the philosophy of the human mind i can do little more than this. in treating therefore of education in the point of view in which it has just been proposed, i turn my observation upon myself, and i proceed thus.--if i do not stand as a competent representative for the whole of my species, i suppose i may at least assume to be the representative of no inconsiderable number of them. i find then in myself, for as long a time as i can trace backward the records of memory, a prominent vein of docility. whatever it was proposed to teach me, that was in any degree accordant with my constitution and capacity, i was willing to learn. and this limit is sufficient for the topic i am proposing to treat. i do not intend to consider education of any other sort, than that which has something in it of a liberal and ingenuous nature. i am not here discussing the education of a peasant, an artisan, or a slave. in addition to this vein of docility, which easily prompted me to learn whatever was proposed for my instruction and improvement, i felt in myself a sentiment of ambition, a desire to possess the qualifications which i found to be productive of esteem, and that should enable me to excel among my contemporaries. i was ambitious to be a leader, and to be regarded by others with feelings of complacency. i had no wish to rule by brute force and compulsion; but i was desirous to govern by love, and honour, and "the cords of a man." i do not imagine that, when i aver thus much of myself, i am bringing forward any thing unprecedented, or that multitudes of my fellow-men do not largely participate with me. the question therefore i am considering is, through what agency, and with what engines, a youth thus disposed, and with these qualifications, is to be initiated in all liberal arts. i will go back no further than to the commencement of the learning of latin. all before was so easy to me, as never to have presented the idea of a task. i was immediately put into the accidence. no explanation was attempted to be given why latin was to be of use to me, or why it was necessary to commit to memory the cases of nouns and the tenses of verbs. i know not whether this was owing to the unwillingness of my instructor to give himself the trouble, or to my supposed incapacity to apprehend the explanation. the last of these i do not admit. my docility however came to my aid, and i did not for a moment harbour any repugnance to the doing what was required of me. at first, and unassisted in the enquiry, i felt a difficulty in supposing that the english language, all the books in my father's library, did not contain every thing that it would be necessary for me to know. in no long time however i came to experience a pleasure in turning the thoughts expressed in an unknown tongue into my own; and i speedily understood that i could never be on a level with those eminent scholars whom it was my ambition to rival, without the study of the classics. what then were the obstacles, that should in any degree counteract my smooth and rapid progress in the studies suggested to me? i can conceive only two. first, the versatility and fickleness which in a greater or less degree beset all human minds, particularly in the season of early youth. however docile we may be, and willing to learn, there will be periods, when either some other object powerfully solicits us, or satiety creeps in, and makes us wish to occupy our attention with any thing else rather than with the task prescribed us. but this is no powerful obstacle. the authority of the instructor, a grave look, and the exercise of a moderate degree of patience will easily remove it in such a probationer as we are here considering. another obstacle is presumption. the scholar is willing to conceive well of his own capacity. he has a vanity in accomplishing the task prescribed him in the shortest practicable time. he is impatient to go away from the business imposed upon him, to things of his own election, and occupations which his partialities and his temper prompt him to pursue. he has a pride in saying to himself, "this, which was a business given to occupy me for several hours, i can accomplish in less than one." but the presumption arising out of these views is easily subdued. if the pupil is wrong in his calculation, the actual experiment will speedily convince him of his error. he is humbled by and ashamed of his mistake. the merely being sent back to study his lesson afresh, is on the face of the thing punishment enough. it follows from this view of the matter, that an ingenuous youth, endowed with sufficient capacity for the business prescribed him, may be led on in the path of intellectual acquisition and improvement with a silken cord. it will demand a certain degree of patience on the part of the instructor. but heaven knows, that this patience is sufficiently called into requisition when the instructor shall be the greatest disciplinarian that ever existed. kind tones and encouragement will animate the learner amidst many a difficult pass. a grave remark may perhaps sometimes be called for. and, if the preceptor and the pupil have gone on like friends, a grave remark, a look expressive of rebuke, will be found a very powerful engine. the instructor should smooth the business of instruction to his pupil, by appealing to his understanding, developing his taste, and assisting him to remark the beauties of the composition on which he is occupied. i come now then to the consideration of the two engines mentioned in the commencement of this essay, reprehension and chastisement. and here, as in what went before, i am reduced to the referring to my own experience, and looking back into the history of my own mind. i say then, that reprehension and reprimand can scarcely ever be necessary. the pupil should undoubtedly be informed when he is wrong. he should be told what it is that he ought to have omitted, and that he ought to have done. there should be no reserve in this. it will be worthy of the highest censure, if on these points the instructor should be mealy-mouthed, or hesitate to tell the pupil in the plainest terms, of his faults, his bad habits, and the dangers that beset his onward and honourable path. but this may be best, and most beneficially done, and in a way most suitable to the exigence, and to the party to be corrected, in a few words. the rest is all an unwholsome tumour, the disease of speech, and not the sound and healthful substance through which its circulation and life are conveyed. there is always danger of this excrescence of speech, where the speaker is the umpire, and feels himself at liberty, unreproved, to say what he pleases. he is charmed with the sound of his own voice. the periods flow numerous from his tongue, and he gets on at his ease. there is in all this an image of empire; and the human mind is ever prone to be delighted in the exercise of unrestricted authority. the pupil in this case stands before his instructor in an attitude humble, submissive, and bowing to the admonition that is communicated to him. the speaker says more than it was in his purpose to say; and he knows not how to arrest himself in his triumphant career. he believes that he is in no danger of excess, and recollects the old proverb that "words break no bones." but a syllable more than is necessary and justly measured, is materially of evil operation to ingenuous youth. the mind of such a youth is tender and flexible, and easily swayed one way or the other. he believes almost every thing that he is bid to believe; and the admonition that is given him with all the symptoms of friendliness and sincerity he is prompt to subscribe to. if this is wantonly aggravated to him, he feels the oppression, and is galled with the injustice. he knows himself guiltless of premeditated wrong. he has not yet learned that his condition is that of a slave; and he feels a certain impatience at his being considered as such, though he probably does not venture to express it. he shuts up the sense of this despotism in his own bosom; and it is his first lesson of independence and rebellion and original sin. it is one of the grossest mistakes of which we can be guilty, if we confound different offences and offenders together. the great and the small alike appear before us in the many-coloured scene of human society, and, if we reprehend bitterly and rate a juvenile sinner for the fault, which he scarcely understood, and assuredly had not premeditated, we break down at once a thousand salutary boundaries, and reduce the ideas of right and wrong in his mind to a portentous and terrible chaos. the communicator of liberal knowledge assuredly ought not to confound his office with that of a magistrate at a quarter-sessions, who though he does not sit in judgment upon transgressions of the deepest and most atrocious character, yet has brought before him in many cases defaulters of a somewhat hardened disposition, whose lot has been cast among the loose and the profligate, and who have been carefully trained to a certain audacity of temper, taught to look upon the paraphernalia of justice with scorn, and to place a sort of honour in sustaining hard words and the lesser visitations of punishment with unflinching nerve. if this is the judgment we ought to pass upon the bitter and galling and humiliating terms of reprehension apt to be made use of by the instructor to his pupil, it is unnecessary to say a word on the subject of chastisement. if such an expedient is ever to be had recourse to, it can only be in cases of contumaciousness and rebellion; and then the instructor cannot too unreservedly say to himself, "this is matter of deep humiliation to me: i ought to have succeeded by an appeal to the understanding and ingenuous feelings of youth; but i am reduced to a confession of my impotence." but the topic which, most of all, i was desirous to bring forward in this essay, is that of the language so customarily employed by the impatient and irritated preceptor, "hereafter, in a state of mature and ripened judgment, you will thank me for the severity i now exercise towards you." no; it may safely be answered: that time will never arrive. as, in one of my earlier essays( ), i undertook to shew that there is not so much difference between the talents of one man and another as has often been apprehended, so we are guilty of a gross error in the way in which we divide the child from the man, and consider him as if he belonged to a distinct species of beings. ( ) essay ii. i go back to the recollections of my youth, and can scarcely find where to draw the line between ineptness and maturity. the thoughts that occurred to me, as far back as i can recollect them, were often shrewd; the suggestions ingenious; the judgments not seldom acute. i feel myself the same individual all through. sometimes i was unreasonably presumptuous, and sometimes unnecessarily distrustful. experience has taught me in various instances a sober confidence in my decisions; but that is all the difference. so to express it, i had then the same tools to work with as now; but the magazine of materials upon which i had to operate was scantily supplied. like the apothecary in romeo and juliet, the faculty, such as it was, was within me; but my shelves contained but a small amount of furniture: a beggarly account of empty boxes, remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses, which, thinly scattered, served to make a shew. in speaking thus of the intellectual powers of my youth, i am however conceding too much. it is true, "practice maketh perfect." but it is surprising, in apt and towardly youth, how much there is to commend in the first essays. the novice, who has his faculties lively and on the alert, will strike with his hammer almost exactly where the blow ought to be placed, and give nearly the precisely right force to the act. he will seize the thread it was fitting to seize; and, though he fail again and again, will shew an adroitness upon the whole that we scarcely know how to account for. the man whose career shall ultimately be crowned with success, will demonstrate in the beginning that he was destined to succeed. there is therefore no radical difference between the child and the man. his flesh becomes more firm and sinewy; his bones grow more solid and powerful; his joints are more completely strung. but he is still essentially the same being that he was. when a genuine philosopher holds a new-born child in his arms, and carefully examines it, he perceives in it various indications of temper and seeds of character. it was all there, though folded up and confused, and not obtruding itself upon the remark of every careless spectator. it continues with the child through life, grows with his growth, and never leaves him till he is at last consigned to the tomb. how absurd then by artful rules and positive institutions to undertake to separate what can never be divided! the child is occasionally grave and reflecting, and deduces well-founded inferences; he draws on the past, and plunges into the wide ocean of the future. in proportion as the child advances into the youth, his intervals of gravity increase, and he builds up theories and judgments, some of which no future time shall suffice to overturn. it is idle to suppose that the first activity of our faculties, when every thing is new and produces an unbated impression, when the mind is uncumbered, and every interest and every feeling bid us be observing and awake, should pass for nothing. we lay up stores then, which shall never be exhausted. our minds are the reverse of worn and obtuse. we bring faculties into the world with us fresh from the hands of the all-bounteous giver; they are not yet moulded to a senseless routine; they are not yet corrupted by the ill lessons of effrontery, impudence and vice. childhood is beautiful; youth is ingenuous; and it can be nothing but a principle which is hostile to all that most adorns this sublunary scene, that would with violence and despotic rule mar the fairest flower that creation has to boast. it happens therefore almost unavoidably that, when the man mature looks back upon the little incidents of his youth, he sees them to a surprising degree in the same light, and forms the same conclusions respecting them, as he did when they were actually passing. "the forgeries of opinion," says cicero, "speedily pass away; but the rules and decisions of nature are strengthened." bitter reproaches and acts of violence are the offspring of perturbation engendered upon imbecility, and therefore can never be approved upon a sober and impartial revision. and, if they are to be impeached in the judgment of an equal and indifferent observer, we may be sure they will be emphatically condemned by the grave and enlightened censor who looks back upon the years of his own nonage, and recollects that he was himself the victim of the intemperance to be pronounced upon. the interest that he must necessarily take in the scenes in which he once had an engrossing concern, will supply peculiar luminousness to his views. he taxes himself to be just. the transaction is over now, and is passed to the events that preceded the universal deluge. he holds the balance with a steadiness, which sets at defiance all attempts to give it a false direction one way or the other. but the judgment he made on the case at the time, and immediately after the humiliation he suffered, remains with him. it was the sentiment of his ripening youth; it was the opinion of his opening manhood; and it still attends him, when he is already fast yielding to the incroachments and irresistible assaults of declining years. essay xv. of love and friendship. who is it that says, "there is no love but among equals?" be it who it may, it is a saying universally known, and that is in every one's mouth. the contrary is precisely the truth, and is the great secret of every thing that is admirable in our moral nature. by love it is my intention here to understand, not a calm, tranquil, and, as it were, half-pronounced feeling, but a passion of the mind. we may doubtless entertain an approbation of other men, without adverting to the question how they stand in relation to ourselves, as equals or otherwise. but the sentiment i am here considering, is that where the person in whom it resides most strongly sympathises with the joys and sorrows of another, desires his gratification, hopes for his welfare, and shrinks from the anticipation of his being injured; in a word, is the sentiment which has most the spirit of sacrifice in it, and prepares the person in whom it dwells, to postpone his own advantage to the advantage of him who is the object of it. having placed love among the passions, which is no vehement assumption, i then say, there can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination. in cases where every thing is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question. whenever this sentiment prevails, i must have my attention fixed more on the absent than the present, more upon what i do not see than on what i do see. my thoughts will be taken up with the future or the past, with what is to come or what has been. of the present there is necessarily no image. sentiment is nothing, till you have arrived at a mystery and a veil, something that is seen obscurely, that is just hinted at in the distance, that has neither certain outline nor colour, but that is left for the mind to fill up according to its pleasure and in the best manner it is able. the great model of the affection of love in human beings, is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children. let not this appear a paradox. there is another relation in human society to which this epithet has more emphatically been given: but, if we analyse the matter strictly, we shall find that all that is most sacred and beautiful in the passion between the sexes, has relation to offspring. what milton calls, "the rites mysterious of connubial love," would have little charm in them in reflection, to a mind one degree above the brutes, were it not for the mystery they include, of their tendency to give existence to a new human creature like ourselves. were it not for this circumstance, a man and a woman would hardly ever have learned to live together; there scarcely could have been such a thing as domestic society; but every intercourse of this sort would have been "casual, joyless, unendeared;" and the propensity would have brought along with it nothing more of beauty, lustre and grace, than the pure animal appetites of hunger and thirst. bearing in mind these considerations, i do not therefore hesitate to say, that the great model of the affection of love in human beings, is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children. the original feature in this sentiment is the conscious feeling of the protector and the protected. our passions cannot subsist in lazy indolence; passion and action must operate on each other; passion must produce action, and action give strength to the tide of passion. we do not vehemently desire, where we can do nothing. it is in a very faint way that i entertain a wish to possess the faculty of flying; and an ordinary man can scarcely be said to desire to be a king or an emperor. none but a madman, of plebeian rank, falls in love with a princess. but shew me a good thing within my reach; convince me that it is in my power to attain it; demonstrate to me that it is fit for me, and i am fit for it; then begins the career of passion. in the same manner, i cannot love a person vehemently, and strongly interest myself in his miscarriages or success, till i feel that i can be something to him. love cannot dwell in a state of impotence. to affect and be affected, this is the common nature i require; this is the being that is like unto myself; all other likeness resides in the logic and the definition, but has nothing to do with feeling or with practice. what can be more clear and sound in explanation, than the love of a parent to his child? the affection he bears and its counterpart are the ornaments of the world, and the spring of every thing that makes life worth having. whatever besides has a tendency to illustrate and honour our nature, descends from these, or is copied from these, grows out of them as the branches of a tree from the trunk, or is formed upon them as a model, and derives from them its shape, its character, and its soul. yet there are men so industrious and expert to strip the world we live in of all that adorns it, that they can see nothing glorious in these affections, but find the one to be all selfishness, and the other all prejudice and superstition. the love of the parent to his child is nursed and fostered by two plain considerations; first, that the subject is capable of receiving much, and secondly, that my power concerning it is great and extensive. when an infant is presented to my observation, what a wide field of sentiment and reflection is opened to me! few minds are industrious and ductile enough completely to compass this field, if the infant is only accidentally brought under their view. but, if it is an infant with which i begin to be acquainted to-day, and my acquaintance with which shall not end perhaps till one of us ceases to exist, how is it possible that the view of its little figure should not lead me to the meditation of its future history, the successive stages of human life, and the various scenes and mutations and vicissitudes and fortunes through which it is destined to pass? the book of fate lies open before me. this infant, powerless and almost impassive now, is reserved for many sorrows and many joys, and will one day possess a power, formidable and fearful to afflict those within its reach, or calculated to diffuse blessings, wisdom, virtue, happiness, to all around. i conceive all the various destinations of which man is susceptible; my fancy at least is free to select that which pleases me best; i unfold and pursue it in all its directions, observe the thorns and difficulties with which it is beset, and conjure up to my thoughts all that it can boast of inviting, delightful and honourable. but if the infant that is near to me lays hold of my imagination and affections at the moment in which he falls under my observation, how much more do i become interested in him, as he advances from year to year! at first, i have the blessing of the gospel upon me, in that, "having not seen, yet i believe." but, as his powers expand, i understand him better. his little eye begins to sparkle with meaning; his tongue tells a tale that may be understood; his very tones, and gestures, and attitudes, all inform me concerning what he shall be. i am like a florist, who has received a strange plant from a distant country. at first he sees only the stalk, and the leaves, and the bud having yet no other colour than that of the leaves. but as he watches his plant from day to day, and from hour to hour, the case which contains the flower divides, and betrays first one colour and then another, till the shell gradually subsides more and more towards the stalk, and the figure of the flower begins now to be seen, and its radiance and its pride to expand itself to the ravished observer.--every lesson that the child leans, every comment that he makes upon it, every sport that he pursues, every choice that he exerts, the demeanour that he adopts to his playfellows, the modifications and character of his little fits of authority or submission, all make him more and more an individual to me, and open a wider field for my sagacity or my prophecy, as to what he promises to be, and what he may be made. but what gives, as has already been observed, the point and the finish to all the interest i take respecting him, lies in the vast power i possess to influence and direct his character and his fortune. at first it is abstract power, but, when it has already been exerted (as the writers on politics as a science have observed of property), the sweat of my brow becomes mingled with the apple i have gathered, and my interest is greater. no one understands my views and projects entirely but myself, and the scheme i have conceived will suffer, if i do not complete it as i began. and there are men that say, that all this mystery, the most beautiful attitude of human nature, and the crown of its glory, is pure selfishness! let us now turn from the view of the parental, to that of the filial affection. the great mistake that has been made on this subject, arises from the taking it nakedly and as a mere abstraction. it has been sagely remarked, that when my father did that which occasioned me to come into existence, he intended me no benefit, and therefore i owe him no thanks. and the inference which has been made from this wise position is, that the duty of children to parents is a mere imposture, a trick, employed by the old to defraud the young out of their services. i grant most readily, that the mere material ligament that binds together the father and the child, by itself is worthless, and that he who owes nothing more than this to his father, owes him nothing. the natural, unanimated relationship is like the grain of mustard-seed in the discourses of jesus christ, "which indeed is the least of all seeds; but, when it is unfolded and grows up, it becomes a mighty tree, so that the birds of the air may come and lodge in its branches." the hard and insensible man may know little of the debt he owes to his father; but he that is capable of calling up the past, and beholding the things that are not as if they now were, will see the matter in a very different light. incalculable are the privations (in a great majority of instances), the toils, the pains, the anxieties, that every child imposes on his father from the first hour of his existence. if he could know the ceaseless cares, the tender and ardent feelings, the almost incredible efforts and exertions, that have accompanied him in his father's breast through the whole period of his growth, instead of thinking that he owed his parent nothing, he would stand still and wonder that one human creature could do so much for another. i grant that all this may be done for a child by a stranger, and that then in one sense the obligation would be greater. it is however barely possible that all this should be done. the stranger wants the first exciting cause, the consideration, "this creature by the great scheme of nature belongs to me, and is cast upon my care." and, as the tie in the case of the stranger was not complete in the beginning, so neither can it be made so in the sequel. the little straggler is like the duckling hatched in the nest of a hen; there is danger every day, that as the nursling begins to be acquainted with its own qualities, it may plunge itself into another element, and swim away from its benefactor. even if we put all these considerations out of the question, still the affection of the child to its parent of adoption, wants the kernel, and, if i may so speak, the soul, of the connection which has been formed and modelled by the great hand of nature. if the mere circumstance of filiation and descent creates no debt, it however is the principle of a very close connection. one of the most memorable mysteries of nature, is how, out of the slightest of all connections (for such, literally speaking, is that between father and child), so many coincidences should arise. the child resembles his parent in feature, in temperament, in turn of mind, and in class of disposition, while at the same time in many particulars, in these same respects, he is a new and individual creature. in one view therefore the child is merely the father multiplied and repeated. now one of the indefeasible principles of affection is the partaking of a common nature; and as man is a species by himself, so to a certain degree is every nation and every family; and this consideration, when added to the moral and spiritual ties already treated of, undoubtedly has a tendency to give them their zest and perfection. but even this is not the most agreeable point of view in which we may consider the filial affection. i come back to my first position, that where there is no imagination, there can be no passion, and by consequence no love. no parent ever understood his child, and no child ever understood his parent. we have seen that the affectionate parent considers his child like a flower in the bud, as a mine of power that is to be unfolded, as a creature that is to act and to pass through he knows not what, as a canvas that "gives ample room and verge enough," for his prophetic soul to hang over in endless visions, and his intellectual pencil to fill up with various scenes and fortunes. and, if the parent does not understand his child, certainly as little does the child understand his parent. wherever this relation subsists in its fairest form, the parent is as a god, a being qualified with supernatural powers, to his offspring. the child consults his father as an oracle; to him he proposes all his little questions; from him he learns his natural philosophy, his morals, his rules of conduct, his religion, and his creed. the boy is uninformed on every point; and the father is a vast encyclopedia, not merely of sciences, but of feelings, of sagacity, of practical wisdom, and of justice, which the son consults on all occasions, and never consults in vain. senseless and inexpert is that parent, who endeavours to govern the mind by authority, and to lay down rugged and peremptory dogmas to his child; the child is fully and unavoidably prepared to receive every thing with unbounded deference, and to place total reliance in the oracle which nature has assigned him. habits, how beautiful! inestimable benefit of nature, that has given me a prop against which to sustain my unripened strength, and has not turned me loose to wander with tottering steps amidst the vast desert of society! but it is not merely for contemplative wisdom that the child honours his parent; he sees in him a vast fund of love, attachment and sympathy. that he cannot mistake; and it is all a mystery to him. he says, what am i, that i should be the object of this? and whence comes it? he sees neither the fountain from which it springs, nor the banks that confine it. to him it is an ocean, unfathomable, and without a shore. to the bounty of its operations he trusts implicitly. the stores of judgment and knowledge he finds in his father, prompt him to trust it. in many instances where it appeared at first obscure and enigmatical, the event has taught him to acknowledge its soundness. the mutinousness of passion will sometimes excite a child to question the decrees of his parent; it is very long before his understanding, as such, comes to set up a separate system, and teaches him to controvert the decisions of his father. perhaps i ought earlier to have stated, that the filial connection we have here to consider, does not include those melancholy instances where some woful defect or utter worthlessness in the parent counteracts the natural course of the affections, but refers only to cases, where the character of father is on the whole sustained with honour, and the principle of the connection is left to its true operation. in such cases the child not only observes for himself the manifestations of wisdom and goodness in his parent, but is also accustomed to hear well of him from all around. there is a generous conspiracy in human nature, not to counteract the honour borne by the offspring to him from whom he sprung, and the wholsome principle of superiority and dependence which is almost indispensible between persons of different ages dwelling under the same roof. and, exclusively of this consideration, the men who are chiefly seen by the son are his father's friends and associates; and it is the very bent, and, as it were, law of our nature, that we do not associate much, but with persons whom we favour, and who are prepared to mention us with kindness and honour. thus every way the child is deeply imbued with veneration for his parent, and forms the habit of regarding him as his book of wisdom, his philosopher and guide. he is accustomed to hear him spoken of as a true friend, an active ally, and a pattern of justice and honour; and he finds him so. now these are the true objects of affection,--wisdom and beneficence; and the human heart loves this beneficence better when it is exercised towards him who loves, first, because inevitably in almost all instances we are best pleased with the good that is done to ourselves, and secondly, because it can scarcely happen but that we in that case understand it best, both in its operation and its effects. the active principles of religion are all moulded upon this familiar and sensible relation of father and child: and to understand whet the human heart is capable to conceive on this subject, we have only to refer to the many eloquent and glowing treatises that have been written upon the love of god to his creatures, and the love that the creature in return owes to his god. i am not now considering religion in a speculative point of view, or enquiring among the different sects and systems of religion what it is that is true; but merely producing religion as an example of what have been the conceptions of the human mind in successive ages of the world on the subject of love. this all that we behold, the immensity of the universe, the admirable harmony and subtlety of its structure, as they appear in the vastest and the minutest bodies, is considered by religion, as the emanation of pure love, a mighty impulse and ardour in its great author to realise the idea existing in his mind, and to produce happiness. the providence that watches over us, so that not a sparrow dies unmarked, and that "the great sensorium of the world vibrates, if a hair of our head but falls to the ground in the remotest desert of his creation," is still unremitted, never-satiated love. and, to go from this to the peculiarities of the christian doctrine, "greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends: god so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten son to suffer, to be treated contumeliously, and to die with ignominy, that we might live." if on the other hand we consider the love which the creature must naturally pay to his creator, we shall find that the affection we can suppose the most ingenuous child to bear to the worthiest parent, is a very faint image of the passion which may be expected to grow out of this relation. in god, as he is represented to us in the books of the worthiest divines, is every thing that can command love; wisdom to conceive, power to execute, and beneficence actually to carry into effect, whatever is excellent and admirable. we are lost in contemplating the depth and immensity of his perfections. "every good and every perfect gift is from the universal father, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." the most soothing and gratifying of all sentiments, is that of entire confidence in the divine goodness, a reliance which no adversity can shake, and which supports him that entertains it under every calamity, that sees the finger of god in every thing that comes to pass, that says, "it is good for me to be afflicted," believes, that "all things work together for blessings" to the pious and the just, and is intimately persuaded that "our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is the means and the earnest of a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." if we descend from these great archetypes, the love between parent and child, and between the creator and his creature, we shall still find the same inequality the inseparable attendant upon the most perfect ties of affection. the ancients seem to have conceived the truest and most exalted ideas on the subject of friendship. among the most celebrated instances are the friendship of achilles and patroclus, orestes and pylades, aeneas and achates, cyrus and araspes, alexander and hephaestion, scipio and laelius. in each of these the parties are, the true hero, the man of lofty ambition, the magnificent personage in whom is concentred every thing that the historian or the poet was able to realise of excellence, and the modest and unpretending individual in whom his confidence was reposed. the grand secret of the connection is unfolded in the saying of the macedonian conqueror, "craterus loves the king, but hephaestion loves alexander." friendship is to the loftier mind the repose, the unbending of the soul. the great man (whatever may be the department in which his excellence consists) has enough of his greatness, when he stands before the world, and receives the homage that is paid to his merits. ever and anon he is anxious to throw aside this incumbrance, and be as a man merely to a man. he wishes to forget the "pride, pomp, and circumstance" of greatness, and to be that only which he is himself. he desires at length to be sure, that he receives no adulation, that he is accosted with no insincerity, and that the individual to whose society he has thought proper to withdraw, has no by-ends, no sinister purposes in all his thoughts. what he seeks for, is a true friend, a being who sincerely loves, one who is attached to him, not for the accidents that attend him, but for what most strictly belongs to him, and of which he cannot be divested. in this friend there is neither interested intention nor rivalry. such are the characteristic features of the superior party in these exemplars of friendship among the ancients. of the unpretending, unassuming party homer, the great master of the affections and emotions in remoter ages, has given us the fullest portrait in the character of patroclus. the distinguishing feature of his disposition is a melting and affectionate spirit, the concentred essence of tenderness and humanity. when patroclus comes from witnessing the disasters of the greeks, to collect a report of which he had been sent by achilles, he is "overwhelmed with floods of tears, like a spring which pours down its waters from the steep edge of a precipice." it is thus that jupiter characterises him when he lies dead in the field of battle: thou (addressing himself in his thoughts to hector) hast slain the friend of achilles, not less memorable for the blandness of his temper, than the bravery of his deeds. it is thus that menelaus undertakes to excite the grecian chiefs to rescue his body: let each man recollect the sweetness of his disposition for, as long as he lived, he was unremitted in kindness to all. when achilles proposes the games at the funeral, he says, "on any other occasion my horses should have started for the prize, but now it cannot be. they have lost their incomparable groom, who was accustomed to refresh their limbs with water, and anoint their flowing manes; and they are inconsolable." briseis also makes her appearance among the mourners, avowing that, "when her husband had been slain in battle, and her native city laid in ashes, this generous man prevented her tears, averring to her, that she should be the wife of her conqueror, and that he would himself spread the nuptial banquet for her in the hero's native kingdom of phthia." the reciprocity which belongs to a friendship between unequals may well be expected to give a higher zest to their union. each party is necessary to the other. the superior considers him towards whom he pours out his affection, as a part of himself. the head is not more native to the heart, the hand more instrumental to the mouth. he cannot separate himself from him, but at the cost of a fearful maim. when the world is shut out by him, when he retires into solitude, and falls back upon himself, then his unpretending friend is most of all necessary to him. he is his consolation and his pleasure, the safe coffer in which he reposits all his anxieties and sorrows. if the principal, instead of being a public man, is a man of science, this kind of unbending becomes certainly not the less welcome to him. he wishes occasionally to forget the severity of his investigations, neither to have his mind any longer wound up and stretched to the height of meditation, nor to feel that he needs to be any way on his guard, or not completely to give the rein to all his sallies and the sportiveness of his soul. having been for a considerable time shut up in sequestered reflection, he wishes, it may be, to have the world, the busy impassioned world, brought to his ears, without his being obliged to enter into its formalities and mummeries. if he desires to speak of the topics which had so deeply engaged him, he can keep as near the edge as he pleases, and drop or resume them as his fancy may prompt. and it seems useless to say, how much his modest and unassuming friend will be gratified in being instrumental to relieve the labours of his principal, in feeling that he is necessary to him, and in meditating on the delight he receives in being made the chosen companion and confident of him whom he so ardently admires. it was precisely in this spirit, that fulke greville, two hundred years ago, directed that it should be inscribed on his tomb, "here lies the friend of sir philip sidney." tenderness on the one part, and a deep feeling of honour and respect on the other, give a completeness to the union which it must otherwise for ever want. "there is no limit, none," to the fervour with which the stronger goes forward to protect the weak; while in return the less powerful would encounter a thousand deaths rather than injury should befall the being to whom in generosity and affection he owes so much. in the mean time, though inequality is necessary to give this completeness to friendship, the inequality must not be too great. the inferior party must be able to understand and appreciate the sense and the merits of him to whom he is thus bound. there must be no impediment to hinder the communications of the principal from being fully comprehended, and his sentiments entirely participated. there must be a boundless confidence, without apprehension that the power of the stronger party can by the remotest possibility be put forth ungenerously. "perfect love casteth out fear." the evangelist applies this aphorism even to the love of the creature to his creator. "the lord spake unto moses, face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend." in the union of which i am treating the demonstrative and ordinary appearance will be that of entire equality, which is heightened by the inner, and for the greater part unexplained and undeveloped, impression of a contrary nature. there is in either party a perfect reliance, an idea of inequality with the most entire assurance that it can never operate unworthily in the stronger party, or produce insincerity or servility in the weaker. there will in reality always be some reserve, some shadow of fear between equals, which in the friendship of unequals, if happily assorted, can find no place. there is a pouring out of the heart on the one side, and a cordial acceptance on the other, which words are inadequate to describe. to proceed. if from friendship we go forward to that which in all languages is emphatically called love, we shall still find ourselves dogged and attended by inequality. nothing can be more certain, however we may seek to modify and abate it, than the inequality of the sexes. let us attend to it as it stands in milton: for contemplation he and velour formed for softness she and sweet attractive grace; he for god only, she for god in him. thus it is painted to us as having been in paradise; and with similar inequality have the sexes subsisted in all ages and nations since. if it were possible to take from the fair sex its softness and attractive grace, and endow it instead with audacious, masculine and military qualities, there is scarcely any one that does not perceive, with whatever advantages it might be attended in other respects, that it would be far from tending to cherish and increase the passion of love. it is in reality obvious, that man and woman, as they come from the hands of nature, are so much upon a par with each other, as not to afford the best subjects between whom to graft a habit of entire, unalterable affection. in the scenes of vulgar and ordinary society, a permanent connection between persons of opposite sexes is too apt to degenerate into a scene of warfare, where each party is for ever engaged in a struggle for superiority, and neither will give way. a penetrating observer, with whom in former days i used intimately to converse, was accustomed to say, that there was generally more jarring and ill blood between the two parties in the first year of their marriage, than during all the remainder of their lives. it is at length found necessary, as between equally matched belligerents on the theatre of history, that they should come to terms, make a treaty of peace, or at least settle certain laws of warfare, that they may not waste their strength in idle hostilities. the nations of antiquity had a way of settling this question in a very summary mode. as certain oriental tribes have determined that women have no souls, and that nothing can be more proper than to shut them up, like singing birds in cages, so the greeks and romans for the most part excluded their females from the society of the more martial sex. marriage with them was a convenience merely; and the husband and wife were in reality nothing more than the master and the slave. this point once settled as a matter of national law, there was certainly in most cases little danger of any vexatious rivalship and struggle for power. but there is nothing in which the superiority of modern times over the ancient has been more conspicuous, than in our sentiments and practices on this subject. this superiority, as well as several other of our most valuable acquisitions, took its rise in what we call the dark ages. chivalry was for the most part the invention of the eleventh century. its principle was built upon a theory of the sexes, giving to each a relative importance, and assigning to both functions full of honour and grace. the knights (and every gentleman during that period in due time became a knight) were taught, as the main features of their vocation, the "love of god and the ladies." the ladies in return were regarded as the genuine censors of the deeds of knighthood. from these principles arose a thousand lessons of humanity. the ladies regarded it as their glory to assist their champions to arm and to disarm, to perform for them even menial services, to attend them in sickness, and to dress their wounds. they bestowed on them their colours, and sent them forth to the field hallowed with their benedictions. the knights on the other hand considered any slight towards the fair sex as an indelible stain to their order; they contemplated the graceful patronesses of their valour with a feeling that partook of religious homage and veneration, and esteemed it as perhaps the first duty of their profession, to relieve the wrongs, and avenge the injuries of the less powerful sex. this simple outline as to the relative position of the one sex and the other, gave a new face to the whole scheme and arrangements of civil society. it is like those admirable principles in the order of the material universe, or those grand discoveries brought to light from time to time by superior genius, so obvious and simple, that we wonder the most common understanding could have missed them, yet so pregnant with results, that they seem at once to put a new life and inspire a new character into every part of a mighty and all-comprehensive mass. the passion between the sexes, in its grosser sense, is a momentary impulse merely; and there was danger that, when the fit and violence of the passion was over, the whole would subside into inconstancy and a roving disposition, or at least into indifference and almost brutal neglect. but the institutions of chivalry immediately gave a new face to this. either sex conceived a deep and permanent interest in the other. in the unsettled state of society which characterised the period when these institutions arose, the defenceless were liable to assaults of multiplied kinds, and the fair perpetually stood in need of a protector and a champion. the knights on the other hand were taught to derive their fame and their honour from the suffrages of the ladies. each sex stood in need of the other; and the basis of their union was mutual esteem. the effect of this was to give a hue of imagination to all their intercourse. a man was no longer merely a man, nor a woman merely a woman. they were taught mutual deference. the woman regarded her protector as something illustrious and admirable; and the man considered the smiles and approbation of beauty as the adequate reward of his toils and his dangers. these modes of thinking introduced a nameless grace into all the commerce of society. it was the poetry of life. hence originated the delightful narratives and fictions of romance; and human existence was no longer the bare, naked train of vulgar incidents, which for so many ages of the world it had been accustomed to be. it was clothed in resplendent hues, and wore all the tints of the rainbow. equality fled and was no more; and love, almighty, perdurable love, came to supply its place. by means of this state of things the vulgar impulse of the sexes towards each other, which alone was known to the former ages of the world, was transformed into somewhat of a totally different nature. it became a kind of worship. the fair sex looked upon their protectors, their fathers, their husbands, and the whole train of their chivalry, as something more than human. there was a grace in their motions, a gallantry in their bearing, and a generosity in their spirit of enterprise, that the softness of the female heart found irresistible. nor less on the other hand did the knights regard the sex to whose service and defence they were sworn, as the objects of their perpetual deference. they approached them with a sort of gallant timidity, listened to their behests with submission, and thought the longest courtship and devotion nobly recompensed by the final acceptance of the fair. the romance and exaggeration characteristic of these modes of thinking have gradually worn away in modern times; but much of what was most valuable in them has remained. love has in later ages never been divested of the tenderness and consideration, which were thus rendered some of its most estimable features. a certain desire in each party to exalt the other, and regard it as worthy of admiration, became inextricably interwoven with the simple passion. a sense of the honour that was borne by the one to the other, had the happiest effect in qualifying the familiarity and unreserve in the communion of feelings and sentiments, without which the attachment of the sexes cannot subsist. it is something like what the mystic divines describe of the beatific vision, where entire wonder and adoration are not judged to be incompatible with the most ardent affection, and all meaner and selfish regards are annihilated. from what has been thus drawn together and recapitulated it seems clearly to follow, as was stated in the beginning, that love cannot exist in its purest form and with a genuine ardour, where the parties are, and are felt by each other to be, on an equality; but that in all cases it is requisite there should be a mutual deference and submission, agreeably to the apostolic precept, "likewise all of you be subject one to the other." there must be room for the imagination to exercise its powers; we must conceive and apprehend a thousand things which we do not actually witness; each party must feel that it stands in need of the other, and without the other cannot be complete; each party must be alike conscious of the power of receiving and conferring benefit; and there must be the anticipation of a distant future, that may every day enhance the good to be imparted and enjoyed, and cause the individuals thus united perpetually to become more sensible of the fortunate event which gave them to each other, and has thus entailed upon each a thousand advantages in which they could otherwise never have shared. essay xvi. of frankness and reserve. animals are divided into the solitary and the are gregarious: the former being only occasionally associated with its mate, and perhaps engaged in the care of its offspring; the latter spending their lives in herds and communities. man is of this last class or division. where the animals of any particular species live much in society, it seems requisite that in some degree they should be able to understand each other's purposes, and to act with a certain portion of concert. all other animals are exceedingly limited in their powers of communication. but speech renders that being whom we justly entitle the lord of the creation, capable of a boundless interchange of ideas and intentions. not only can we communicate to each other substantively our elections and preferences: we can also exhort and persuade, and employ reasons and arguments to convince our fellows, that the choice we have made is also worthy of their adoption. we can express our thoughts, and the various lights and shades, the bleedings, of our thoughts. language is an instrument capable of being perpetually advanced in copiousness, perspicuity and power. no principle of morality can be more just, than that which teaches us to regard every faculty we possess as a power intrusted to us for the benefit of others as well as of ourselves, and which therefore we are bound to employ in the way which shall best conduce to the general advantage. "speech was given us, that by it we might express our thoughts( );" in other words, our impressions, ideas and conceptions. we then therefore best fulfil the scope of our nature, when we sincerely and unreservedly communicate to each other our feelings and apprehensions. speech should be to man in the nature of a fair complexion, the transparent medium through which the workings of the mind should be made legible. ( ) moliere. i think i have somewhere read of socrates, that certain of his friends expostulated with him, that the windows of his house were so constructed that every one who went by could discover all that passed within. "and wherefore not?" said the sage. "i do nothing that i would wish to have concealed from any human eye. if i knew that all the world observed every thing i did, i should feel no inducement to change my conduct in the minutest particular." it is not however practicable that frankness should be carried to the extent above mentioned. it has been calculated that the human mind is capable of being impressed with three hundred and twenty sensations in a second of time. at all events we well know that, even "while i am speaking, a variety of sensations are experienced by me, without so much as interrupting, that is, without materially diverting, the train of my ideas. my eye successively remarks a thousand objects that present themselves, and my mind wanders to the different parts of my body, without occasioning the minutest obstacle to my discourse, or my being in any degree distracted by the multiplicity of these objects( )." it is therefore beyond the reach of the faculty of speech, for me to communicate all the sensations i experience; and i am of necessity reduced to a selection. ( ) see above, essay . nor is this the whole. we do not communicate all that we feel, and all that we think; for this would be impertinent. we owe a certain deference and consideration to our fellow-men; we owe it in reality to ourselves. we do not communicate indiscriminately all that passes within us. the time would fail us; and "the world would not contain the books that might be written." we do not speak merely for the sake of speaking; otherwise the communication of man with his fellow would be but one eternal babble. speech is to be employed for some useful purpose; nor ought we to give utterance to any thing that shall not promise to be in some way productive of benefit or amusement. frankness has its limits, beyond which it would cease to be either advantageous or virtuous. we are not to tell every thing: but we are not to conceal any thing, that it would be useful or becoming in us to utter. our first duty regarding the faculty of speech is, not to keep back what it would be beneficial to our neighbour to know. but this is a negative sincerity only. if we would acquire a character for frankness, we must be careful that our conversation is such, as to excite in him the idea that we are open, ingenuous and fearless. we must appear forward to speak all that will give him pleasure, and contribute to maintain in him an agreeable state of being. it must be obvious that we are not artificial and on our guard.--after all, it is difficult to lay down rules on this subject: the spring of whatever is desirable respecting it, must be in the temper of the man with whom others have intercourse. he must be benevolent, sympathetic and affectionate. his heart must overflow with good-will; and he must be anxious to relieve every little pain, and to contribute to the enjoyment and complacent feelings, of those with whom he is permanently or accidentally connected. "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." there are two considerations by which we ought to be directed in the exercise of the faculty of speech. the first is, that we should tell our neighbour all that it would be useful to him to know. we must have no sinister or bye ends. "no man liveth to himself." we are all of us members of the great congregation of mankind. the same blood should circulate through every limb and every muscle. our pulses should beat time to each other; and we should have one common sensorium, vibrating throughout, upon every material accident that occurs, and when any object is at stake essentially affecting the welfare of our fellow-beings. we should forget ourselves in the interest that we feel for the happiness of others; and, if this were universal, each man would be a gainer, inasmuch as he lost himself, and was cared and watched for by many. in all these respects we must have no reserve. we should only consider what it is that it would be beneficial to have declared. we must not look back to ourselves, and consult the dictates of a narrow and self-interested prudence. the whole essence of communication is adulterated, if, instead of attending to the direct effects of what suggests itself to our tongue, we are to consider how by a circuitous route it may react upon our own pleasures and advantage. nor only are we bound to communicate to our neighbour all that it will be useful to him to know. we have many neighbours, beside those to whom we immediately address ourselves. to these our absent fellow-beings, we owe a thousand duties. we are bound to defend those whom we hear aspersed, and who are spoken unworthily of by the persons whom we incidentally encounter. we should be the forward and spontaneous advocates of merit in every shape and in every individual in whom we know it to exist. what a character would that man make for himself, of whom it was notorious that he consecrated his faculty of speech to the refuting unjust imputations against whomsoever they were directed, to the contradicting all false and malicious reports, and to the bringing forth obscure and unrecognised worth from the shades in which it lay hid! what a world should we live in, if all men were thus prompt and fearless to do justice to all the worth they knew or apprehended to exist! justice, simple justice, if it extended no farther than barely to the faculty of speech, would in no long time put down all misrepresentation and calumny, bring all that is good and meritorious into honour, and, so to speak, set every man in his true and rightful position. but whoever would attempt this, must do it in all honour, without parade, and with no ever-and-anon looking back upon his achievement, and saying, see to how much credit i am entitled!--as if he laid more stress upon himself, the doer of this justice, than upon justice in its intrinsic nature and claims. but we not only owe something to the advantage and interest of our neighbours, but something also to the sacred divinity of truth. i am not only to tell my neighbour whatever i know that may be beneficial to him, respecting his position in society, his faults, what other men appear to contemplate that may conduce to his advantage or injury, and to advise him how the one may best be forwarded, or the other defeated and brought to nothing: i am bound also to consider in what way it may be in my power so to act on his mind, as shall most enlarge his views, confirm and animate his good resolutions, and meliorate his dispositions and temper. we are all members of one great community: and we shall never sufficiently discharge our duty in that respect, till, like the ancient spartans, the love of the whole becomes our predominant passion, and we cease to imagine that we belong to ourselves, so much as to the entire body of which we are a part. there are certain views in morality, in politics, and various other important subjects, the general prevalence of which will be of the highest benefit to the society of which we are members; and it becomes us in this respect, with proper temperance and moderation, to conform ourselves to the zealous and fervent precept of the apostle, to "promulgate the truth and be instant, in season and out of season," that we may by all means leave some monument of our good intentions behind us, and feel that we have not lived in vain. there is a maxim extremely in vogue in the ordinary intercourses of society, which deserves to be noticed here, for the purpose of exposing it to merited condemnation. it is very common between friends, or persons calling themselves such, to say, "do not ask my advice in a certain crisis of your life; i will not give it; hereafter, if the thing turns out wrong, you will reflect on me, and say that it was at my suggestion that you were involved in calamity." this is a dastardly excuse, and shews a pitiful selfishness in the man that urges it. it is true, that we ought ever to be on the alert, that we may not induce our friend into evil. we should be upon our guard, that we may not from overweening arrogance and self-conceit dictate to another, overpower his more sober judgment, and assume a rashness for him, in which perhaps we would not dare to indulge for ourselves. we should be modest in our suggestions, and rather supply him with materials for decision, than with a decision absolutely made. there may however be cases where an opposite proceeding is necessary. we must arrest our friend, nay, even him who is merely our fellow-creature, with a strong arm, when we see him hovering on the brink of a precipice, or the danger is so obvious, that nothing but absolute blindness could conceal it from an impartial bystander. but in all cases our best judgment should always be at the service of our brethren of mankind. "give to him that asketh thee; and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away." this may not always be practicable or just, when applied to the goods of fortune: but the case of advice, information, and laws of conduct, comes within that of ennius, to suffer our neighbour to light his candle at our lamp. to do so will enrich him, without making us a jot the poorer. we should indeed respect the right of private judgment, and scarcely in any case allow our will to supersede his will in his own proper province. but we should on no account suffer any cowardly fears for ourselves, to induce us to withhold from him any assistance that our wider information or our sounder judgment might supply to him. the next consideration by which we should be directed in the exercise of the faculty of speech, is that we should employ it so as should best conduce to the pleasure of our neighbour. man is a different creature in the savage and the civilised state. it has been affirmed, and it may be true, that the savage man is a stranger to that disagreeable frame of mind, known by the name of ennui. he can pore upon the babbling stream, or stretch himself upon a sunny bank, from the rising to the setting of the sun, and be satisfied. he is scarcely roused from this torpid state but by the cravings of nature. if they can be supplied without effort, he immediately relapses into his former supineness; and, if it requires search, industry and exertion to procure their gratification, he still more eagerly embraces the repose, which previous fatigue renders doubly welcome. but, when the mind has once been wakened up from its original lethargy, when we have overstepped the boundary which divides the man from the beast, and are made desirous of improvement, while at the same moment the tumultuous passions that draw us in infinitely diversified directions are called into act, the case becomes exceedingly different. it might be difficult at first to rouse man from his original lethargy: it is next to impossible that he should ever again be restored to it. the appetite of the mind being once thoroughly awakened in society, the human species are found to be perpetually craving after new intellectual food. we read, we write, we discourse, we ford rivers, and scale mountains, and engage in various pursuits, for the pure pleasure that the activity and earnestness of the pursuit afford us. the day of the savage and the civilised man are still called by the same name. they may be measured by a pendulum, and will be found to be of the same duration. but in all other points of view they are inexpressibly different. hence therefore arises another duty that is incumbent upon us as to the exercise of the faculty of speech. this duty will be more or less urgent according to the situation in which we are placed. if i sit down in a numerous assembly, if i become one of a convivial party of ten or twelve persons, i may unblamed be for the greater part, or entirely silent, if i please. i must appear to enter into their sentiments and pleasures, or, if i do not, i shall be an unwelcome guest; but it may scarcely be required for me to clothe my feelings with articulate speech. but, when my society shall be that of a few friends only, and still more if the question is of spending hours or days in the society of a single friend, my duty becomes altered, and a greater degree of activity will be required from me. there are cases, where the minor morals of the species will be of more importance than those which in their own nature are cardinal. duties of the highest magnitude will perhaps only be brought into requisition upon extraordinary occasions; but the opportunities we have of lessening the inconveniences of our neighbour, or of adding to his accommodations and the amount of his agreeable feelings, are innumerable. an acceptable and welcome member of society therefore will not talk, only when he has something important to communicate. he will also study how he may amuse his friend with agreeable narratives, lively remarks, sallies of wit, or any of those thousand nothings, which' set off with a wish to please and a benevolent temper, will often entertain more and win the entire good will of the person to whom they are addressed, than the wisest discourse, or the vein of conversation which may exhibit the powers and genius of the speaker to the greatest advantage. men of a dull and saturnine complexion will soon get to an end of all they felt it incumbent on them to say to their comrades. but the same thing will probably happen, though at a much later period, between friends of an active mind, of the largest stores of information, and whose powers have been exercised upon the greatest variety of sentiments, principles, and original veins of thinking. when two such men first fall into society, each will feel as if he had found a treasure. their communications are without end; their garrulity is excited, and converts into a perennial spring. the topics upon which they are prompted to converse are so numerous, that one seems to jostle out the other. it may proceed thus from day to day, from month to month, and perhaps from year to year. but, according to the old proverb, "it is a long lane that has no turning." the persons here described will have a vast variety of topics upon which they are incited to compare their opinions, and will lay down these topics and take them up again times without number. upon some, one of the parties will feel himself entirely at home while the other is comparatively a novice, and, in others, the advantage will be with the other; so that the gain of both, in this free and unrestrained opening of the soul, will be incalculable. but the time will come, like as in perusing an author of the most extraordinary genius and the most versatile powers, that the reading of each other's minds will be exhausted. they know so much of each other's tone of thinking, that all that can be said will be anticipated. the living voice, the sparkling eye, and the beaming countenance will do much to put off the evil day, when we shall say, i have had enough. but the time will come in which we shall feel that this after all is but little, and we shall become sluggish, ourselves to communicate, or to excite the dormant faculties of our friend, when the spring, the waters of which so long afforded us the most exquisite delight, is at length drawn dry. i remember in my childish years being greatly struck with that passage in the bible, where it is written, "but i say unto you, that, for every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an account in the day of judgment:" and, as i was very desirous of conforming myself to the directions of the sacred volume, i was upon the point of forming a sort of resolution, that i would on no account open my mouth to speak, without having a weighty reason for uttering the thing i felt myself prompted to say. but practical directions of this sort are almost in all cases of ambiguous interpretation. from the context of this passage it is clear, that by "idle words" we are to understand vicious words, words tending to instil into the mind unauthorised impulses, that shew in the man who speaks "a will most rank, foul disproportion, thoughts unnatural," and are calculated to render him by whom they are listened to, light and frivolous of temper, and unstrung for the graver duties of human life. but idle words, in the sense of innocent amusement, are not vicious. "there is a time for all things." amusement must not encroach upon or thrust aside the real business, the important engagements, and the animated pursuits of man. but it is entitled to take its turn unreproved. human life is so various, and the disposition and temper of the mind of so different tones and capacity, that a wise man will "frame his face to all occasions." playfulness, if not carried to too great an extreme, is an additional perfection in human nature. we become relieved from our more serious cares, and better fitted to enter on them again after an interval. to fill up the days of our lives with various engagements, to make one occupation succeed to another, so as to liberate us from the pains of ennui, and the dangers of what may in an emphatical sense be called idleness, is no small desideratum. that king may in this sense be admitted to have formed no superficial estimate of our common nature, who is said to have proclaimed a reward to the individual that should invent a new amusement. and, to consider the question as it stands in relation to the subject of the present essay, a perpetual gravity and a vigilant watch to be placed on the door of our lips, would be eminently hostile to that frankness which is to be regarded as one of the greatest ornaments of our nature. "it is meet, that we should make merry and be glad." a formal countenance, a demure, careful and unaltered cast of features, is one of the most disadvantageous aspects under which human nature can exhibit itself. the temper must be enterprising and fearless, the manner firm and assured, and the correspondence between the heart and the tongue prompt and instantaneous, if we desire to have that view of man that shall do him the most credit, and induce us to form the most honourable opinion respecting him. on our front should sit fearless confidence and unsubdued hilarity. our limbs should be free and unfettered, a state of the animal which imparts a grace infinitely more winning than that of the most skilful dancer. the very sound of our voice should be full, firm, mellow, and fraught with life and sensibility; of that nature, at the hearing of which every bosom rises, and every eye is lighted up. it is thus that men come to understand and confide in each other. this is the only frame that can perfectly conduce to our moral improvement, the awakening of our faculties, the diffusion of science, and the establishment of the purest notions and principles of civil and political liberty. essay xvii. of ballot. the subject of the preceding essay leads by an obvious transition to the examination of a topic, which at present occupies to a considerable extent the attention of those who are anxious for the progress of public improvement, and the placing the liberties of mankind on the securest basis: i mean, the topic of the vote by ballot. it is admitted that the most beneficial scheme for the government of nations, is a government by representation: that is, that there shall be in every nation, or large collection of men, a paramount legislative assembly, composed of deputies chosen by the people in their respective counties, cities, towns, or departments. in what manner then shall these deputies be elected? the argument in favour of the election by ballot is obvious. in nearly all civilised countries there exists more or less an inequality of rank and property: we will confine our attention principally to the latter. property necessarily involves influence. mankind are but too prone to pay a superior deference to those who wear better clothes, live in larger houses, and command superior accommodations to those which fall to the lot of the majority. one of the main sources of wealth in civilised nations is the possession of land. those who have a considerable allotment of land in property, for the most part let it out in farms on lease or otherwise to persons of an inferior rank, by whom it is cultivated. in this case a reciprocal relation is created between the landlord and the tenant: and, if the landlord conducts himself towards his tenant agreeably to the principles of honour and liberality, it is impossible that the tenant should not feel disposed to gratify his landlord, so far as shall be compatible with his own notions of moral rectitude, or the paramount interests of the society of which he is a member. if the proprietor of any extensive allotment of land does not let it out in farms, but retains it under his own direction, he must employ a great number of husbandmen and labourers; and over them he must be expected to exercise the same sort of influence, as under the former statement we supposed him to exercise over his tenants. the same principle will still operate wherever any one man in society is engaged in the expenditure of a considerable capital. the manufacturer will possess the same influence over his workmen, as the landed proprietor over his tenants or labourers. even the person who possesses considerable opulence, and has no intention to engage in the pursuits of profit or accumulation, will have an ample retinue, and will be enabled to use the same species of influence over his retainers and trades-people, as the landlord exercises over his tenants and labourers, and the manufacturer over his workmen. a certain degree of this species of influence in society, is perhaps not to be excepted against. the possessor of opulence in whatever form, may be expected to have received a superior education, and, being placed at a certain distance from the minuter details and the lesser wheels in the machine of society, to have larger and more expansive views as to the interests of the whole. it is good that men in different ranks of society should be brought into intercourse with each other; it will subtract something from the prejudices of both, and enable each to obtain some of the advantages of the other. the division of rank is too much calculated to split society into parties having a certain hostility to each other. in a free state we are all citizens: it is desirable that we should all be friends. but this species of influence may be carried too far. to a certain extent it is good. inasmuch as it implies the enlightening one human understanding by the sparks struck out from another, or even the communication of feelings between man and man, this is not to be deprecated. some degree of courteous compliance and deference of the ignorant to the better informed, is inseparable from the existence of political society as we behold it; such a deference as we may conceive the candid and conscientious layman to pay to the suggestions of his honest and disinterested pastor. every thing however that is more than this, is evil. there should be no peremptory mandates, and no threat or apprehension of retaliation and mischief to follow, if the man of inferior station or opulence should finally differ in opinion from his wealthier neighbour. we may admit of a moral influence; but there must be nothing, that should in the smallest degree border on compulsion. but it is unfortunately in the very nature of weak, erring and fallible mortals, to make an ill use of the powers that are confided to their discretion. the rich man in the wantonness of his authority will not stop at moral influence, but, if he is disappointed of his expectation by what he will call my wilfulness and obstinacy, will speedily find himself impelled to vindicate his prerogative, and to punish my resistance. in every such disappointment he will discern a dangerous precedent, and will apprehend that, if i escape with impunity, the whole of that ascendancy, which he has regarded as one of the valuable privileges contingent to his station, will be undermined. opulence has two ways of this grosser sort, by which it may enable its possessor to command the man below him,--punishment and reward. as the holder, for example, of a large landed estate, or the administrator of an ample income, may punish the man who shews himself refractory to his will, so he may also reward the individual who yields to his suggestions. this, in whatever form it presents itself, may be classed under the general head of bribery. the remedy for all this therefore, real or potential, mischief, is said to lie in the vote by ballot, a contrivance, by means of which every man shall be enabled to give his vote in favour of or against any candidate that shall be nominated, in absolute secrecy, without it being possible for any one to discover on which side the elector decided,--nay, a contrivance, by which the elector is invited to practise mystery and concealment, inasmuch as it would seem an impertinence in him to speak out, when the law is expressly constructed to bid him act and be silent. if he speaks, he is guilty of a sort of libel on his brother-electors, who are hereby implicitly reproached by him for their impenetrableness and cowardice. we are told that the institution of the ballot is indispensible to the existence of a free state, in a country where the goods of fortune are unequally distributed. in england, as the right of sending members to parliament is apportioned at the time i am writing, the power of electing is bestowed with such glaring inequality, and the number of electors in many cases is so insignificant, as inevitably to give to the noble and the rich the means of appointing almost any representatives they think fit, so that the house of commons may more justly be styled the nominees of the upper house, than the deputies of the nation. and it is further said, remedy this inequality as much as you please, and reform the state of the representation to whatever degree, still, so long as the votes at elections are required to be given openly, the reform will be unavailing, and the essential part of the mischief will remain. the right of giving our votes in secrecy, is the only remedy that can cut off the ascendancy of the more opulent members of the community over the rest, and give us the substance of liberty, instead of cheating us with the shadow. on the other side i would beg the reader to consider, that the vote by ballot, in its obvious construction, is not the symbol of liberty, but of slavery. what is it, that presents to every eye the image of liberty, and compels every heart to confess, this is the temple where she resides? an open front, a steady and assured look, an habitual and uninterrupted commerce between the heart and the tongue. the free man communicates with his neighbour, not in corners and concealed places, but in market-places and scenes of public resort; and it is thus that the sacred spark is caught from man to man, till all are inspired with a common flame. communication and publicity are of the essence of liberty; it is the air they breathe; and without it they die. if on the contrary i would characterise a despotism, i should say, it implied a certain circumference of soil, through whose divisions and districts every man suspected his neighbour, where every man was haunted with the terror that "walls have ears," and only whispered his discontent, his hopes and his fears, to the trees of the forest and the silent streams. if the dwellers on this soil consulted together, it would be in secret cabals and with closed doors; engaging in the sacred cause of public welfare and happiness, as if it were a thing of guilt, which the conspirator scarcely ventured to confess to his own heart. a shrewd person of my acquaintance the other day, to whom i unadvisedly proposed a question as to what he thought of some public transaction, instantly replied with symptoms of alarm, "i beg to say that i never disclose my opinions upon matters either of religion or politics to any one." what did this answer imply as to the political government of the country where it was given? is it characteristic of a free state or a tyranny? one of the first and highest duties that falls to the lot of a human creature, is that which he owes to the aggregate of reasonable beings inhabiting what he calls his country. our duties are then most solemn and elevating, when they are calculated to affect the well being of the greatest number of men; and of consequence what a patriot owes to his native soil is the noblest theatre for his moral faculties. and shall we teach men to discharge this debt in the dark? surely every man ought to be able to "render a reason of the hope that is in him," and give a modest, but an assured, account of his political conduct. when he approaches the hustings at the period of a public election, this is his altar, where he sacrifices in the face of men to that deity, which is most worth his adoration of all the powers whose single province is our sublunary state. but the principle of the institution of ballot is to teach men to perform their best actions under the cloke of concealment. when i return from giving my vote in the choice of a legislative representative, i ought, if my mode of proceeding were regulated by the undebauched feelings of our nature, to feel somewhat proud that i had discharged this duty, uninfluenced, uncorrupted, in the sincere frame of a conscientious spirit. but the institution of ballot instigates me carefully to conceal what i have done. if i am questioned respecting it, the proper reply which is as it were put into my mouth is, "you have no right to ask me; and i shall not tell." but, as every man does not recollect the proper reply at the moment it is wanted, and most men feel abashed, when a direct question is put to them to which they know they are not to return a direct answer, many will stammer and feel confused, will perhaps insinuate a falshood, while at the same time their manner to a discerning eye will, in spite of all their precautions, disclose the very truth. the institution of ballot not only teaches us that our best actions are those which we ought most steadily to disavow, but carries distrust and suspicion into all our most familiar relations. the man i want to deceive, and throw out in the keenness of his hunting, is my landlord. but how shall i most effectually conceal the truth from him? may i be allowed to tell it to my wife or my child? i had better not. it is a known maxim of worldly prudence, that the truth which may be a source of serious injury to me, is safest, when it is shut up in my own bosom. if i once let it out, there is no saying where the communication may stop. "day unto day uttereth speech; and night unto night sheweth forth knowledge." and is this the proud attitude of liberty, to which we are so eager to aspire? after all, there will be some ingenuous men in the community, who will not know how for ever to suppress what is dearest to their hearts. but at any rate this institution holds out a prize to him that shall be most secret and untraceable in his proceedings, that shall "shoe his horses with felt," and proceed in all his courses with silence and suspicion. the first principle of morality to social man is, that we act under the eye of our fellows. the truly virtuous man would do as he ought, though no eye observed him. persons, it is true, who deport themselves merely as "men-pleasers," for ever considering how the by-standers will pronounce of their conduct, are entitled to small commendation. the good man, it is certain, will see to do what virtue would, though sun and moon were in the flat sea sunk. but, imperfect creatures as we mortals usually are, these things act and react upon each other. a man of honourable intentions will demean himself justly, from the love of right. but he is confirmed in his just dealing by the approbation of his fellows; and, if he were tempted to step awry, he would be checked by the anticipation of their censure. such is the nature of our moral education. it is with virtue, as it is with literary fame. if i write well, i can scarcely feel secure that i do so, till i obtain the suffrage of some competent judges, confirming the verdict which i was before tempted to pronounce in my own favour. this acting as in a theatre, where men and gods are judges of my conduct, is the true destination of man; and we cannot violate the universal law under which we were born, without having reason to fear the most injurious effects. and is this mysterious and concealed way of proceeding one of the forms through which we are to pass in the school of liberty? the great end of all liberal institutions is, to make a man fearless, frank as the day, acting from a lively and earnest impulse, which will not be restrained, disdains all half-measures, and prompts us, as it were, to carry our hearts in our hands, for all men to challenge, and all men to comment on. it is true, that the devisers of liberal institutions will have foremost in their thoughts, how men shall be secure in their personal liberty, unrestrained in the execution of what their thoughts prompt them to do, and uncontrolled in the administration of the fruits of their industry. but the moral end of all is, that a man shall be worthy of the name, erect, independent of mind, spontaneous of decision, intrepid, overflowing with all good feelings, and open in the expression of the sentiments they inspire. if man is double in his weightiest purposes, full of ambiguity and concealment, and not daring to give words to the impulses of his soul, what matters it that he is free? we may pronounce of this man, that he is unworthy of the blessing that has fallen to his lot, and will never produce the fruits that should be engendered in the lap of liberty. there is however, it should seem, a short answer to all this. it is in vain to expatiate to us upon the mischiefs of lying, hypocrisy and concealment, since it is only through them, as the way by which we are to march, that nations can be made free. this certainly is a fearful judgment awarded upon our species: but is it true? we are to begin, it seems, with concealing from our landlord, or our opulent neighbour, our political determinations; and so his corrupt influence will be broken, and the humblest individual will be safe in doing that which his honest and unbiased feelings may prompt him to do. no: this is not the way in which the enemy of the souls of men is to be defeated. we must not begin with the confession of our faint-heartedness and our cowardice. a quiet, sober, unaltered frame of judgment, that insults no one, that has in it nothing violent, brutal and defying, is the frame that becomes us. if i would teach another man, my superior in rank, how he ought to construe and decide upon the conduct i hold, i must begin by making that conduct explicit. it is not in morals, as it is in war. there stratagem is allowable, and to take the enemy by surprise. "who enquires of an enemy, whether it is by fraud or heroic enterprise that he has gained the day?" but it is not so that the cause of liberty is to be vindicated in the civil career of life. the question is of reducing the higher ranks of society to admit the just immunities of their inferiors. i will not allow that they shall be cheated into it. no: no man was ever yet recovered to his senses in a question of morals, but by plain, honest, soul-commanding speech. truth is omnipotent, if we do not violate its majesty by surrendering its outworks, and giving up that vantage-ground, of which if we deprive it, it ceases to be truth. it finds a responsive chord in every human bosom. whoever hears its voice, at the same time recognises its power. however corrupt he may be, however steeped in the habits of vice, and hardened in the practices of tyranny, if it be mildly, distinctly, emphatically enunciated, the colour will forsake his cheek, his speech will alter and be broken, and he will feel himself unable to turn it off lightly, as a thing of no impression and validity. in this way the erroneous man, the man nursed in the house of luxury, a stranger to the genuine, unvarnished state of things, stands a fair chance of being corrected. but, if an opposite, and a truer way of thinking than that to which he is accustomed, is only brought to his observation by the reserve of him who entertains it, and who, while he entertains it, is reluctant to hold communion with his wealthier neighbour, who regards him as his adversary, and hardly admits him to be of the same common nature, there will be no general improvement. under this discipline the two ranks of society will be perpetually more estranged, view each other with eye askance, and will be as two separate and hostile states, though inhabiting the same territory. is this the picture we desire to see of genuine liberty, philanthropic, desirous of good to all, and overflowing with all generous emotions? i hate where vice can bolt her arguments, and virtue has no tongue to check her pride. the man who interests himself for his country and its cause, who acts bravely and independently, and knows that he runs some risk in doing so, must have a strange opinion of the sacredness of truth, if the very consciousness of having done nobly does not supply him with courage, and give him that simple, unostentatious firmness, which shall carry immediate conviction to the heart. it is a bitter lesson that the institution of ballot teaches, while it says, "you have done well; therefore be silent; whisper it not to the winds; disclose it not to those who are most nearly allied to you; adopt the same conduct which would suggest itself to you, if you had perpetrated an atrocious crime." in no long time after the commencement of the war of the allies against france, certain acts were introduced into the english parliament, declaring it penal by word or writing to utter any thing that should tend to bring the government into contempt; and these acts, by the mass of the adversaries of despotic power, were in way of contempt called the gagging acts. little did i and my contemporaries of imagine, when we protested against these acts in the triumphant reign of william pitt, that the soi-disant friends of liberty and radical reformers, when their turn of triumph came, would propose their gagging acts, recommending to the people to vote agreeably to their consciences, but forbidding them to give publicity to the honourable conduct they had been prevailed on to adopt! but all this reasoning is founded in an erroneous, and groundlessly degrading, opinion of human nature. the improvement of the general institutions of society, the correction of the gross inequalities of our representation, will operate towards the improvement of all the members of the community. while ninety-nine in an hundred of the inhabitants of england are carried forward in the scale of intellect and virtue, it would be absurd to suppose that the hundredth man will stand still, merely because he is rich. patriotism is a liberal and a social impulse; its influence is irresistible; it is contagious, and is propagated by the touch; it is infectious, and mixes itself with the air that we breathe. men are governed in their conduct in a surprising degree by the opinion of others. it was all very well, when noblemen were each of them satisfied of the equity and irresistible principle of their ascendancy, when the vulgar population felt convinced that passive obedience was entailed on them from their birth, when we were in a manner but just emancipated (illusorily emancipated!) from the state of serfs and villains. but a memorable melioration of the state of man will carry some degree of conviction to the hearts of all. the most corrupt will be made doubtful: many who had not gone so far in ill, will desert the banners of oppression. we see this already. what a shock was propagated through the island, when, the other day, a large proprietor, turning a considerable cluster of his tenants out of the houses and lands they occupied, because they refused to vote for a representative in parliament implicitly as he bade them, urged in his own justification, "shall i not do what i will with my own?" this was all sound morals and divinity perhaps at the period of his birth. nobody disputed it; or, if any one did, he was set down by the oracles of the vicinage as a crackbrained visionary. this man, so confident in his own prerogatives, had slept for the last twenty years, and awoke totally unconscious of what had been going on in almost every corner of europe in the interval. a few more such examples; and so broad and sweeping an assumption will no more be heard of, and it will remain in the records of history, as a thing for the reality of which we have sufficient evidence, but which common sense repudiates, and which seems to demand from us a certain degree of credulity to induce us to admit that it had ever been. the manners of society are by no means so unchanged and unalterable as many men suppose. it is here, as in the case of excessive drinking, which i had lately occasion to mention( ). in rude and barbarous times men of the highest circles piqued themselves upon their power of swallowing excessive potations, and found pleasure in it. it is in this as in so many other vices, we follow implicitly where our elders lead the way. but the rage of drinking is now gone by; and you will with difficulty find a company of persons of respectable appearance, who assemble round a table for the purpose of making beasts of themselves. formerly it was their glory; now, if any man unhappily retains the weakness, he hides it from his equals, as he would a loathsome disease. the same thing will happen as to parliamentary corruption, and the absolute authority that was exercised by landlords over the consciences of their tenants. he that shall attempt to put into act what is then universally condemned, will be a marked man, and will be generally shunned by his fellows. the eye of the world will be upon him, as the murderer fancies himself followed by the eye of omnipotence; and he will obey the general voice of the community, that he may be at peace with himself. ( ) see above, essay . let us not then disgrace a period of memorable improvement, by combining it with an institution that should mark that we, the great body of the people, regard the more opulent members of the community as our foes. let us hold out to them the right hand of fellowship; and they will meet us. they will be influenced, partly by ingenuous shame for the unworthy conduct which they and their fathers had so long pursued, and partly by sympathy for the genuine joy and expansion of heart that is spreading itself through the land. scarcely any one can restrain himself from participating in the happiness of the great body of his countrymen; and, if they see that we treat them with generous confidence, and are unwilling to recur to the memory of former grievances, and that a spirit of philanthropy and unlimited good-will is the sentiment of the day, it can scarcely happen but that their conversion will be complete, and the harmony be made entire( ). ( ) the subject of this essay is resumed in the close of the following. essay xviii. of diffidence. the following essay will be to a considerable degree in the nature of confession, like the confessions of st. augustine or of jean jacques rousseau. it may therefore at first sight appear of small intrinsic value, and scarcely worthy of a place in the present series. but, as i have had occasion more than once to remark, we are all of us framed in a great measure on the same model, and the analysis of the individual may often stand for the analysis of a species. while i describe myself therefore, i shall probably at the same time be describing no inconsiderable number of my fellow-beings. it is true, that the duty of man under the head of frankness, is of a very comprehensive nature. we ought all of us to tell to our neighbour whatever it may be of advantage to him to know, we ought to be the sincere and zealous advocates of absent merit and worth, and we are bound by every means in our power to contribute to the improvement of others, and to the diffusion of salutary truths through the world. from the universality of these precepts many readers might be apt to infer, that i am in my own person the bold and unsparing preacher of truth, resolutely giving to every man his due, and, agreeably to the apostle's direction, "instant in season, and out of season." the individual who answers to this description will often be deemed troublesome, often annoying; he will produce a considerable sensation in the circle of those who know him; and it will depend upon various collateral circumstances, whether he shall ultimately be judged a rash and intemperate disturber of the contemplations of his neighbours, or a disinterested and heroic suggester of new veins of thinking, by which his contemporaries and their posterity shall be essentially the gainers. i have no desire to pass myself upon those who may have any curiosity respecting me for better than i am; and i will therefore here put down a few particulars, which may tend to enable them to form an equitable judgment. one of the earliest passions of my mind was the love of truth and sound opinion. "why should i," such was the language of my solitary meditations, "because i was born in a certain degree of latitude, in a certain century, in a country where certain institutions prevail, and of parents professing a certain faith, take it for granted that all this is right?--this is matter of accident. 'time and chance happeneth to all:' and i, the thinking principle within me, might, if such had been the order of events, have been born under circumstances the very reverse of those under which i was born. i will not, if i can help it, be the creature of accident; i will not, like a shuttle-cock, be at the disposal of every impulse that is given me." i felt a certain disdain for the being thus directed; i could not endure the idea of being made a fool of, and of taking every ignis fatuus for a guide, and every stray notion, the meteor of the day, for everlasting truth. i am the person, spoken of in a preceding essay( ), who early said to truth, "go on: whithersoever thou leadest, i am prepared to follow." ( ) see above, essay xiii. during my college-life therefore, i read all sorts of books, on every side of any important question, that were thrown in my way, or that i could hear of. but the very passion that determined me to this mode of proceeding, made me wary and circumspect in coming to a conclusion. i knew that it would, if any thing, be a more censurable and contemptible act, to yield to every seducing novelty, than to adhere obstinately to a prejudice because it had been instilled into me in youth. i was therefore slow of conviction, and by no means "given to change." i never willingly parted with a suggestion that was unexpectedly furnished to me; but i examined it again and again, before i consented that it should enter into the set of my principles. in proportion however as i became acquainted with truth, or what appeared to me to be truth, i was like what i have read of melancthon, who, when he was first converted to the tenets of luther, became eager to go into all companies, that he might make them partakers of the same inestimable treasures, and set before them evidence that was to him irresistible. it is needless to say, that he often encountered the most mortifying disappointment. young and eager as i was in my mission, i received in this way many a bitter lesson. but the peculiarity of my temper rendered this doubly impressive to me. i could not pass over a hint, let it come from what quarter it would, without taking it into some consideration, and endeavouring to ascertain the precise weight that was to be attributed to it. it would however often happen, particularly in the question of the claims of a given individual to honour and respect, that i could see nothing but the most glaring injustice in the opposition i experienced. in canvassing the character of an individual, it is not for the most part general, abstract or moral, principles that are called into question: i am left in possession of the premises which taught me to admire the man whose character is contested; and conformably to those premises i see that his claim to the honour i have paid him is fully made out. in my communications with others, in the endeavour to impart what i deemed to be truth, i began with boldness: but i often found that the evidence that was to me irresistible, was made small account of by others; and it not seldom happened, as candour was my principle, and a determination to receive what could be strewn to be truth, let it come from what quarter it would, that suggestions were presented to me, materially calculated to stagger the confidence with which i had set out. if i had been divinely inspired, if i had been secured by an omniscient spirit against the danger of error, my case would have been different. but i was not inspired. i often encountered an opposition i had not anticipated, and was often presented with objections, or had pointed out to me flaws and deficiencies in my reasonings, which, till they were so pointed out, i had not apprehended. i had not lungs enabling me to drown all contradiction; and, which was still more material, i had not a frame of mind, which should determine me to regard whatever could be urged against me as of no value. i therefore became cautious. as a human creature, i did not relish the being held up to others' or to myself, as rash, inconsiderate and headlong, unaware of difficulties the most obvious, embracing propositions the most untenable, and "against hope believing in hope." and, as an apostle of truth, i distinctly perceived that a reputation for perspicacity and sound judgment was essential to my mission. i therefore often became less a speaker, than a listener, and by no means made it a law with myself to defend principles and characters i honoured, on every occasion on which i might hear them attacked. a new epoch occurred in my character, when i published, and at the time i was writing, my enquiry concerning political justice. my mind was wrought up to a certain elevation of tone; the speculations in which i was engaged, tending to embrace all that was most important to man in society, and the frame to which i had assiduously bent myself, of giving quarter to nothing because it was old, and shrinking from nothing because it was startling and astounding, gave a new bias to my character. the habit which i thus formed put me more on the alert even in the scenes of ordinary life, and gave me a boldness and an eloquence more than was natural to me. i then reverted to the principle which i stated in the beginning, of being ready to tell my neighbour whatever it might be of advantage to him to know, to shew myself the sincere and zealous advocate of absent merit and worth, and to contribute by every means in my power to the improvement of others and to the diffusion of salutary truth through the world. i desired that every hour that i lived should be turned to the best account, and was bent each day to examine whether i had conformed myself to this rule. i held on this course with tolerable constancy for five or six years: and, even when that constancy abated, it failed not to leave a beneficial effect on my subsequent conduct. but, in pursuing this scheme of practice, i was acting a part somewhat foreign to my constitution. i was by nature more of a speculative than an active character, more inclined to reason within myself upon what i heard and saw, than to declaim concerning it. i loved to sit by unobserved, and to meditate upon the panorama before me. at first i associated chiefly with those who were more or less admirers of my work; and, as i had risen (to speak in the slang phrase) like "a star" upon my contemporaries without being expected, i was treated generally with a certain degree of deference, or, where not with deference and submission, yet as a person whose opinions and view of things were to be taken into the account. the individuals who most strenuously opposed me, acted with a consciousness that, if they affected to despise me, they must not expect that all the bystanders would participate in that feeling. but this was to a considerable degree the effect of novelty. my lungs, as i have already said, were not of iron; my manner was not overbearing and despotic; there was nothing in it to deter him who differed from me from entering the field in turn, and telling the tale of his views and judgments in contradiction to mine. i descended into the arena, and stood on a level with the rest. beyond this, it occasionally happened that, if i had not the stentorian lungs, and the petty artifices of rhetoric and conciliation, that should carry a cause independently of its merits, my antagonists were not deficient in these respects. i had nothing in my favour to balance this, but a sort of constitutional equanimity and imperturbableness of temper, which, if i was at any time silenced, made me not look like a captive to be dragged at the chariot-wheels of my adversary. all this however had a tendency to subtract from my vocation as a missionary. i was no longer a knight-errant, prepared on all occasions by dint of arms to vindicate the cause of every principle that was unjustly handled, and every character that was wrongfully assailed. meanwhile i returned to the field, occasionally and uncertainly. it required some provocation and incitement to call me out: but there was the lion, or whatever combative animal may more justly prefigure me, sleeping, and that might be awakened. there is another feature necessary to be mentioned, in order to make this a faithful representation. there are persons, it should seem, of whom it may be predicated, that they are semper parati. this has by no means been my case. my genius often deserted me. i was far from having the thought, the argument, or the illustration at all times ready, when it was required. i resembled to a certain degree the persons we read of, who are said to be struck as if with a divine judgment. i was for a moment changed into one of the mere herd, de grege porcus. my powers therefore were precarious, and i could not always be the intrepid and qualified advocate of truth, if i vehemently desired it. i have often, a few minutes afterwards, or on my return to my chambers, recollected the train of thinking, which world have strewn me off to advantage, and memorably done me honour, if i could have had it at my command the moment it was wanted. and so much for confession. i am by no means vindicating myself. i honour much more the man who is at all times ready to tell his neighbour whatever it may be of advantage to him to know, to shew himself the sincere and untemporising advocate of absent merit and worth, and to contribute by every means in his power to the improvement of others, and to the diffusion of salutary truths through the world. this is what every man ought to be, and what the best devised scheme of republican institutions would have a tendency to make us all. but, though the man here described is to a certain degree a deserter of his true place in society, and cannot be admitted to have played his part in all things well, we are by no means to pronounce upon him a more unfavourable judgment than he merits. diffidence, though, where it disqualifies us in any way from doing justice to truth, either as it respects general principle or individual character, a defect, yet is on no account to be confounded in demerit with that suppression of truth, or misrepresentation, which grows out of actual craft and design. the diffident man, in some cases seldomer, and in some oftener and in a more glaring manner, deserts the cause of truth, and by that means is the cause of misrepresentation, and indirectly the propagator of falshood. but he is constant and sincere as far as he goes; he never lends his voice to falshood, or intentionally to sophistry; he never for an instant goes over to the enemy's standard, or disgraces his honest front by strewing it in the ranks of tyranny or imposture. he may undoubtedly be accused, to a certain degree, of dissimulation, or throwing into shade the thing that is, but never of simulation, or the pretending the thing to be that is not. he is plain and uniform in every thing that he professes, or to which he gives utterance; but, from timidity or irresolution, he keeps back in part the offering which he owes at the shrine where it is most honourable and glorious for man to worship. and this brings me back again to the subject of the immediately preceding essay, the propriety of voting by ballot. the very essence of this scheme is silence. and this silence is not merely like that which is prompted by a diffident temper, which by fits is practiced by the modest and irresolute man, and by fits disappears before the sun of truth and through the energies of a temporary fortitude. it is uniform. it is not brought into act only, when the individual unhappily does not find in himself the firmness to play the adventurer. it becomes matter of system, and is felt as being recommended to us for a duty. nor does the evil stop there. in the course of my ordinary communications with my fellow-men, i speak when i please, and i am silent when i please, and there is nothing specially to be remarked either way. if i speak, i am perhaps listened to; and, if i am silent, it is likely enough concluded that it is because i have nothing of importance to say. but in the question of ballot the case is far otherwise. there it is known that the voter has his secret. when i am silent upon a matter occurring in the usual intercourses of life where i might speak, nay, where we will suppose i ought to speak, i am at least guilty of dissimulation only. but the voter by ballot is strongly impelled to the practice of the more enormous sin of simulation. it is known, as i have said, that he has his secret. and he will often be driven to have recourse to various stratagems, that he may elude the enquirer, or that he may set at fault the sagacity of the silent observer. he has something that he might tell if he would, and he distorts himself in a thousand ways, that he may not betray the hoard which he is known to have in his custody. the institution of ballot is the fruitful parent of ambiguities, equivocations and lies without number. essay xix. of self-complacency. the subject of this essay is intimately connected with those of essays xi and xii, perhaps the most important of the series. it has been established in the latter, that human creatures are constantly accompanied in their voluntary actions with the delusive sense of liberty, and that our character, our energies, and our conscience of moral right and wrong, are mainly dependent upon this feature in our constitution. the subject of my present disquisition relates to the feeling of self-approbation or self-complacency, which will be found inseparable from the most honourable efforts and exertions in which mortal men can be engaged. one of the most striking of the precepts contained in what are called the golden verses of pythagoras, is couched in the words, "reverence thyself." the duties which are incumbent on man are of two sorts, negative and positive. we are bound to set right our mistakes, and to correct the evil habits to which we are prone; and we are bound also to be generously ambitious, to aspire after excellence, and to undertake such things as may reflect honour on ourselves, and be useful to others. to the practice of the former of these classes of duties we may be instigated by prohibitions, menaces and fear, the fear of mischiefs that may fall upon us conformably to the known series of antecedents and consequents in the course of nature, or of mischiefs that may be inflicted on us by the laws of the country in which we live, or as results of the ill will and disapprobation felt towards us by individuals. there is nothing that is necessarily generous or invigorating in the practice of our negative duties. they amount merely to a scheme for keeping us within bounds, and restraining us from those sallies and escapes, which human nature, undisciplined and left to itself, might betray us into. but positive enterprise, and great actual improvement cannot be expected by us in this way. all this is what the apostle refers to, when he speaks of "the law as a schoolmaster to bring us to liberty," after which he advises us "not to be again entangled with the yoke of bondage." on the other hand, if we would enter ourselves in the race of positive improvement, if we would become familiar with generous sentiments, and the train of conduct which such sentiments inspire, we must provide ourselves with the soil in which such things grow, and engage in the species of husbandry by which they are matured; in other words, we must be no strangers to self-esteem and self-complacency. the truth of this statement may perhaps be most strikingly illustrated, if we take for our example the progress of schoolboys under a preceptor. a considerable proportion of these are apt, diligent, and desirous to perform the tasks in which they are engaged, so as to satisfy the demands of their masters and parents, and to advance honourably in the path that is recommended to them. and a considerable proportion put themselves on the defensive, and propose to their own minds to perform exactly as much as shall exempt them from censure and punishment, and no more. now i say of the former, that they cannot accomplish the purpose they have conceived, unless so far as they are aided by a sentiment of self-reverence. the difference of the two parties is, that the latter proceed, so far as their studies are concerned, as feeling themselves under the law of necessity, and as if they were machines merely, and the former as if they were under what the apostle calls "the law of liberty." we cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we think well of our own capacity. but this is the smallest part of what is necessary. we must also be in good humour with ourselves. we must say, i can do that which i shall have just occasion to look back upon with satisfaction. it is the anticipation of this result, that stimulates our efforts, and carries us forward. perseverance is an active principle, and cannot continue to operate but under the influence of desire. it is incompatible with languor and neutrality. it implies the love of glory, perhaps of that glory which shall be attributed to us by others, or perhaps only of that glory which shall be reaped by us in the silent chambers of the mind. the diligent scholar is he that loves himself, and desires to have reason to applaud and love himself. he sits down to his task with resolution, he approves of what he does in each step of the process, and in each enquires, is this the thing i purposed to effect? and, as it is with the unfledged schoolboy, after the same manner it is with the man mature. he must have to a certain extent a good opinion of himself, he must feel a kind of internal harmony, giving to the circulations of his frame animation and cheerfulness, or he can never undertake and execute considerable things. the execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation. he that undertakes any great achievement will, according to the vulgar phrase, "think twice," before he buckles up his resolution, and plunges into the ocean, which he has already surveyed with anxious glance while he remained on shore. let our illustration be the case of columbus, who, from the figure of the earth, inferred that there must be a way of arriving at the indies by a voyage directly west, in distinction from the very complicated way hitherto practiced, by sailing up the mediterranean, crossing the isthmus of suez, and so falling down the red sea into the indian ocean. he weighed all the circumstances attendant on such an undertaking in his mind. he enquired into his own powers and resources, imaged to himself the various obstacles that might thwart his undertaking, and finally resolved to engage in it. if columbus had not entertained a very good opinion of himself, it is impossible that he should have announced such a project, or should have achieved it. again. let our illustration be, of homer undertaking to compose the iliad. if he had not believed himself to be a man of very superior powers to the majority of the persons around him, he would most assuredly never have attempted it. what an enterprise! to describe in twenty-four books, and sixteen thousand verses, the perpetual warfare and contention of two great nations, all greece being armed for the attack, and all the western division of asia minor for the defence: the war carried on by two vast confederacies, under numerous chiefs, all sovereign and essentially independent of each other. to conceive the various characters of the different leaders, and their mutual rivalship. to engage all heaven, such as it was then understood, as well as what was most respectable on earth, in the struggle. to form the idea, through twenty-four books, of varying the incidents perpetually, and keeping alive the attention of the reader or hearer without satiety or weariness. for this purpose, and to answer to his conception of a great poem, homer appears to have thought it necessary that the action should be one; and he therefore took the incidental quarrel of achilles and the commander in chief, the resentment of achilles, and his consequent defection from the cause, till, by the death of patroclus, and then of hector, all traces of the misunderstanding first, and then of its consequences, should be fully obliterated. there is further an essential difference between the undertaking of columbus and that of homer. once fairly engaged, there was for columbus no drawing back. being already at sea on the great atlantic ocean, he could not retrace his steps. even when he had presented his project to the sovereigns of spain, and they had accepted it, and still more when the ships were engaged, and the crews mustered, he must go forward, or submit to indelible disgrace. it is not so in writing a poem. the author of the latter may stop whenever he pleases. of consequence, during every day of its execution, he requires a fresh stimulus. he must look back on the past, and forward on what is to come, and feel that he has considerable reason to be satisfied. the great naval discoverer may have his intervals of misgiving and discouragement, and may, as pope expresses it, "wish that any one would hang him." he goes forward; for he has no longer the liberty to choose. but the author of a mighty poem is not in the same manner entangled, and therefore to a great degree returns to his work each day, "screwing his courage to the sticking-place." he must feel the same fortitude and elasticity, and be as entirely the same man of heroic energy, as when he first arrived at the resolution to engage. how much then of self-complacency and self-confidence do his undertaking and performance imply! i have taken two of the most memorable examples in the catalogue of human achievements: the discovery of a new world, and the production of the iliad. but all those voluntary actions, or rather series and chains of actions, which comprise energy in the first determination, and honour in the execution, each in its degree rests upon self-complacency as the pillar upon which its weight is sustained, and without which it must sink into nothing. self-complacency then being the indispensible condition of all that is honourable in human achievements, hence we may derive a multitude of duties, and those of the most delicate nature, incumbent on the preceptor, as well as a peculiar discipline to be observed by the candidate, both while he is "under a schoolmaster," and afterwards when he is emancipated, and his plan of conduct is to be regulated by his own discretion. the first duty of the preceptor is encouragement. not that his face is to be for ever dressed in smiles, and that his tone is to be at all times that of invitation and courtship. the great theatre of the world is of a mingled constitution, made up of advantages and sufferings; and it is perhaps best that so should be the different scenes of the drama as they pass. the young adventurer is not to expect to have every difficulty smoothed for him by the hand of another. this were to teach him a lesson of effeminacy and cowardice. on the contrary it is necessary that he should learn that human life is a state of hardship, that the adversary we have to encounter does not always present himself with his fangs sheathed in the woolly softness which occasionally renders them harmless, and that nothing great or eminently honourable was ever achieved but through the dint of resolution, energy and struggle. it is good that the winds of heaven should blow upon him, that he should encounter the tempest of the elements, and occasionally sustain the inclemency of the summer's heat and winter's cold, both literally and metaphorically. but the preceptor, however he conducts himself in other respects, ought never to allow his pupil to despise himself, or to hold himself as of no account. self-contempt can never be a discipline favourable to energy or to virtue. the pupil ought at all times to judge himself in some degree worthy, worthy and competent now to attempt, and hereafter to accomplish, things deserving of commendation. the preceptor must never degrade his pupil in his own eyes, but on the contrary must teach him that nothing but resolution and perseverance are necessary, to enable him to effect all that the judicious director can expect from him. he should be encouraged through every step of his progress, and specially encouraged when he has gained a certain point, and arrived at an important resting-place. it is thus we are taught the whole circle of what are called accomplishments, dancing, music, fencing, and the rest; and it is surely a strange anomaly, if those things which are most essential in raising the mind to its true standard, cannot be communicated with equal suavity and kindness, be surrounded with allurements, and regarded as sources of pleasure and genuine hilarity. in the mean time it is to be admitted that every human creature, especially in the season of youth, and not being the victim of some depressing disease either of body or mind, has in him a good obstinate sort of self-complacency, which cannot without much difficulty be eradicated. "though he falleth seven times, yet will he rise again." and, when we have encountered various mortifications, and have been many times rebuked and inveighed against, we nevertheless recover our own good opinion, and are ready to enter into a fresh contention for the prize, if not in one kind, then in another. it is in allusion to this feature in the human character, that we have an expressive phrase in the english language,--"to break the spirit." the preceptor may occasionally perhaps prescribe to the pupil a severe task; and the young adventurer may say, can i be expected to accomplish this? but all must be done in kindness. the generous attempter must be reminded of the powers he has within him, perhaps yet unexercised; with cheering sounds his progress must be encouraged; and, above all, the director of the course must take care not to tax him beyond his strength. and, be it observed, that the strength of a human creature is to be ascertained by two things; first, the abstract capacity, that the thing required is not beyond the power of a being so constituted to perform; and, secondly, we must take into the account his past achievements, the things he has already accomplished, and not expect that he is at once to overleap a thousand obstacles. for there is such a thing as a broken spirit. i remember a boy who was my schoolfellow, that, having been treated with uncalled for severity, never appeared afterwards in the scene of instruction, but with a neglected appearance, and the articles of his dress scarcely half put on. i was very young at the time, and viewed only the outside of things. i cannot tell whether he had any true ambition previously to his disgrace, but i am sure he never had afterwards. how melancholy an object is the man, who, "for the privilege to breathe, bears up and down the city a discontented and repining spirit burthensome to itself," incapable of enterprise, listless, with no courage to undertake, and no anticipation of the practicability of success and honour! and this spectacle is still more affecting, when the subject shall be a human creature in the dawn of youth, when nature opens to him a vista of beauty and fruition on every side, and all is encouraging, redolent of energy and enterprise! to break the spirit of a man, bears a considerable resemblance to the breaking the main spring, or principal movement, of a complicated and ingeniously constructed machine. we cannot tell when it is to happen; and it comes at last perhaps at the time that it is least expected. a judicious superintendent therefore will be far from trying consequences in his office, and will, like a man walking on a cliff whose extremes are ever and anon crumbling away and falling into the ocean, keep much within the edge, and at a safe distance from the line of danger. but this consideration has led me much beyond the true subject of this essay. the instructor of youth, as i have already said, is called upon to use all his skill, to animate the courage, and maintain the cheerfulness and self-complacency of his pupil. and, as such is the discipline to be observed to the candidate, while he is "under a schoolmaster," so, when he is emancipated, and his plan of conduct is to be regulated by his own discretion, it is necessary that he should carry forward the same scheme, and cultivate that tone of feeling, which should best reconcile him to himself, and, by teaching him to esteem himself and bear in mind his own value, enable him to achieve things honourable to his character, and memorably useful to others. melancholy, and a disposition anticipating evil are carefully to be guarded against, by him who is desirous to perform his part well on the theatre of society. he should habitually meditate all cheerful things, and sing the song of battle which has a thousand times spurred on his predecessors to victory. he should contemplate the crown that awaits him, and say to himself, i also will do my part, and endeavour to enrol myself in the select number of those champions, of whom it has been predicated that they were men, of whom, compared with the herd of ordinary mortals, "the world," the species among whom they were rated, "was not worthy." another consideration is to be recollected here. without self-complacency in the agent no generous enterprise is to be expected, and no train of voluntary actions, such as may purchase honour to the person engaged in them. but, beside this, there is no true and substantial happiness but for the self-complacent. "the good man," as solomon says, "is satisfied from himself." the reflex act is inseparable from the constitution of the human mind. how can any one have genuine happiness, unless in proportion as he looks round, and, "behold! every thing is very good?" this is the sunshine of the soul, the true joy, that gives cheerfulness to all our circulations, and makes us feel ourselves entire and complete. what indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? it does not merit the name. if i go into a school, and look round on a number of young faces, the scene is destitute of its true charm, unless so far as i see inward peace and contentment on all sides. and, if we require this eminently in the young, neither can it be less essential, when in growing manhood we have the real cares of the world to contend with, or when in declining age we need every auxiliary to enable us to sustain our infirmities. but, before i conclude my remarks on this subject, it is necessary that i should carefully distinguish between the thesis, that self-complacency is the indispensible condition of all that is honourable in human achievements, and the proposition contended against in essay xi, that "self-love is the source of all our actions." self-complacency is indeed the feeling without which we cannot proceed in an honourable course; but is far from being the motive that impels us to act. the motive is in the real nature and absolute properties of the good thing that is proposed to our choice: we seek the happiness of another, because his happiness is the object of our desire. self-complacency may be likened to the bottle-holder in one of those contentions for bodily prowess, so characteristic of our old english manners. the bottle-holder is necessary to supply the combatant with refreshment, and to encourage him to persist; but it would be most unnatural to regard him as the cause of the contest. no: the parties have found reason for competition, they apprehend a misunderstanding or a rivalry impossible to be settled but by open contention, and the putting forth of mental and corporeal energy; and the bottle-holder is an auxiliary called in afterwards, his interference implying that the parties have already a motive to act, and have thrown down the gauntlet in token of the earnest good-will which animates them to engage. essay xx. of phrenology. the following remarks can pretend to be nothing more than a few loose and undigested thoughts upon a subject, which has recently occupied the attention of many men, and obtained an extraordinary vogue in the world. it were to be wished, that the task had fallen into the hands of a writer whose studies were more familiar with all the sciences which bear more or less on the topic i propose to consider: but, if abler and more competent men pass it by, i feel disposed to plant myself in the breach, and to offer suggestions which may have the fortune to lead others, better fitted for the office than myself, to engage in the investigation. one advantage i may claim, growing out of my partial deficiency. it is known not to be uncommon for a man to stand too near to the subject of his survey, to allow him to obtain a large view of it in all its bearings. i am no anatomist: i simply take my stand upon the broad ground of the general philosophy of man. it is a very usual thing for fanciful theories to have their turn amidst the eccentricities of the human mind, and then to be heard of no more. but it is perhaps no ill occupation, now and then, for an impartial observer, to analyse these theories, and attempt to blow away the dust which will occasionally settle on the surface of science. if phrenology, as taught by gall and spurzheim, be a truth, i shall probably render a service to that truth, by endeavouring to shew where the edifice stands in need of more solid supports than have yet been assigned to it. if it be a falshood, the sooner it is swept away to the gulph of oblivion the better. let the inquisitive and the studious fix their minds on more substantial topics, instead of being led away by gaudy and deceitful appearances. the human head, that crowning capital of the column of man, is too interesting a subject, to be the proper theme of every dabbler. and it is obvious, that the professors of this so called discovery, if they be rash and groundless in their assertions, will be in danger of producing momentous errors, of exciting false hopes never destined to be realised, and of visiting with pernicious blasts the opening buds of excellence, at the time when they are most exposed to the chance of destruction. i shall set out with acknowledging, that there is, as i apprehend, a science in relation to the human head, something like what plato predicates of the statue hid in a block of marble. it is really contained in the block; but it is only the most consummate sculptor, that can bring it to the eyes of men, and free it from all the incumbrances, which, till he makes application of his art to it, surround the statue, and load it with obscurities and disfigurement. the man, who, without long study and premeditation, rushes in at once, and expects to withdraw the curtain, will only find himself disgraced by the attempt. there is a passage in an acute writer( ), whose talents singularly fitted him, even when he appeared totally immerged in mummery and trifles, to illustrate the most important truths, that is applicable to the point i am considering. ( ) sterne, tristram shandy, vol. . "pray, what was that man's name,--for i write in such a hurry, i have no time to recollect or look for it,--who first made the observation, 'that there was great inconstancy in our air and climate?' whoever he was, it was a just and good observation in him. but the corollary drawn from it, namely, 'that it is this which has furnished us with such a variety of odd and whimsical characters;'--that was not his;--it was found out by another man, at least a century and a half after him. then again, that this copious storehouse of original materials is the true and natural cause that our comedies are so much better than those of france, or any others that have or can be wrote upon the continent;--that discovery was not fully made till about the middle of king william's reign, when the great dryden, in writing one of his long prefaces (if i mistake not), most fortunately hit upon it. then, fourthly and lastly, that this strange irregularity in our climate, producing so strange an irregularity in our characters, cloth thereby in some sort make us amends, by giving us somewhat to make us merry with, when the weather will not suffer us to go out of doors,--that observation is my own; and was struck out by me this very rainy day, march , , and betwixt the hour of nine and ten in the morning. "thus--thus, my fellow-labourers and associates in this great harvest of our learning, now ripening before our eyes; thus it is, by slow steps of casual increase, that our knowledge physical, metaphysical, physiological, polemical, nautical, mathematical, aenigmatical, technical, biographical, romantical, chemical, and obstetrical, with fifty other branches of it, (most of them ending, as these do, in ical,) has, for these two last centuries and more, gradually been creeping upwards towards that acme of their perfections, from which, if we may form a conjecture from the advantages of these last seven years, we cannot possibly be far off." nothing can be more true, than the proposition ludicrously illustrated in this passage, that real science is in most instances of slow growth, and that the discoveries which are brought to perfection at once, are greatly exposed to the suspicion of quackery. like the ephemeron fly, they are born suddenly, and may be expected to die as soon. lavater, the well known author of essays on physiognomy, appears to have been born seventeen years before the birth of gall. he attempted to reduce into a system the indications of human character that are to be found in the countenance. physiognomy, as a subject of ingenious and probable conjecture, was well known to the ancients. but the test, how far any observations that have been made on the subject are worthy the name of a science, will lie in its application by the professor to a person respecting whom he has had no opportunity of previous information. nothing is more easy, when a great warrior, statesman, poet, philosopher or philanthropist is explicitly placed before us, than for the credulous inspector or fond visionary to examine the lines of his countenance, and to point at the marks which should plainly shew us that he ought to have been the very thing that he is. this is the very trick of gipsies and fortune-tellers. but who ever pointed to an utter stranger in the street, and said, i perceive by that man's countenance that he is one of the great luminaries of the world? newton, or bacon, or shakespear would probably have passed along unheeded. instances of a similar nature occur every day. hence it plainly appears that, whatever may hereafter be known on the subject, we can scarcely to the present time be said to have overstepped the threshold. and yet nothing can be more certain than that there is a science of physiognomy, though to make use of an illustration already cited, it has not to this day been extricated out of the block of marble in which it is hid. human passions, feelings and modes of thinking leave their traces on the countenance: but we have not, thus far, left the dame's school in this affair, and are not qualified to enter ourselves in the free-school for more liberal enquiries. the writings of lavater on the subject of physiognomy are couched in a sort of poetic prose, overflowing with incoherent and vague exclamations, and bearing small resemblance to a treatise in which the elements of science are to be developed. their success however was extraordinary; and it was probably that success, which prompted gall first to turn his attention from the indications of character that are to be found in the face of man, to the study of the head generally, as connected with the intellectual and moral qualities of the individual. it was about four years before the commencement of the present century, that gall appears to have begun to deliver lectures on the structure and external appearances of the human head. he tells us, that his attention was first called to the subject in the ninth year of his age (that is, in the year ), and that he spent thirty years in the private meditation of his system, before he began to promulgate it. be that as it will, its most striking characteristic is that of marking out the scull into compartments, in the same manner as a country delineated on a map is divided into districts, and assigning a different faculty or organ to each. in the earliest of these diagrams that has fallen under my observation, the human scull is divided into twenty-seven compartments. i would say of craniology, as i have already said of physiognomy, that there is such a science attainable probably by man, but that we have yet made scarcely any progress in the acquiring it. as certain lines in the countenance are indicative of the dispositions of the man, so it is reasonable to believe that a certain structure of the head is in correspondence with the faculties and propensities of the individual. thus far we may probably advance without violating a due degree of caution. but there is a wide distance between this general statement, and the conduct of the man who at once splits the human head into twenty-seven compartments. the exterior appearance of the scull is affirmed to correspond with the structure of the brain beneath. and nothing can be more analogous to what the deepest thinkers have already confessed of man, than to suppose that there is one structure of the brain better adapted for intellectual purposes than another. there is probably one structure better adapted than another, for calculation, for poetry, for courage, for cowardice, for presumption, for diffidence, for roughness, for tenderness, for self-control and the want of it. even as some have inherently a faculty adapted for music or the contrary( ). ( ) see above, essay ii. but it is not reasonable to believe that we think of calculation with one portion of the brain, and of poetry with another. it is very little that we know of the nature of matter; and we are equally ignorant as to the substance, whatever it is, in which the thinking principle in man resides. but, without adventuring in any way to dogmatise on the subject, we find so many analogies between the thinking principle, and the structure of what we call the brain, that we cannot but regard the latter as in some way the instrument of the former. now nothing can be more certain respecting the thinking principle, than its individuality. it has been said, that the mind can entertain but one thought at one time; and certain it is, from the nature of attention, and from the association of ideas, that unity is one of the principal characteristics of mind. it is this which constitutes personal identity; an attribute that, however unsatisfactory may be the explanations which have been given respecting it, we all of us feel, and that lies at the foundation of all our voluntary actions, and all our morality. analogous to this unity of thought and mind, is the arrangement of the nerves and the brain in the human body. the nerves all lead up to the brain; and there is a centrical point in the brain itself, in which the reports of the senses terminate, and at which the action of the will may be conceived to begin. this, in the language of our fathers, was called the "seat of the soul." we may therefore, without departing from the limits of a due caution and modesty, consider this as the throne before which the mind holds its court. hither the senses bring in their reports, and hence the sovereign will issues his commands. the whole system appears to be conducted through the instrumentality of the nerves, along whose subtle texture the feelings and impressions are propagated. between the reports of the senses and the commands of the will, intervenes that which is emphatically the office of the mind, comprising meditation, reflection, inference and judgment. how these functions are performed we know not; but it is reasonable to believe that the substance of the brain or of some part of the brain is implicated in them. still however we must not lose sight of what has been already said, that in the action of the mind unity is an indispensible condition. our thoughts can only hold their council and form their decrees in a very limited region. this is their retreat and strong hold; and the special use and functions of the remoter parts of the brain we are unable to determine; so utterly obscure and undefined is our present knowledge of the great ligament which binds together the body and the thinking principle. enough however results from this imperfect view of the ligament, to demonstrate the incongruity and untenableness of a doctrine which should assign the indications of different functions, exercises and propensities of the mind to the exterior surface of the scull or the brain. this is quackery, and is to be classed with chiromancy, augury, astrology, and the rest of those schemes for discovering the future and unknown, which the restlessness and anxiety of the human mind have invented, built upon arbitrary principles, blundered upon in the dark, and having no resemblance to the march of genuine science. i find in sir thomas browne the following axioms of chiromancy: "that spots in the tops of the nails do signifie things past; in the middle, things present; and at the bottom, events to come: that white specks presage our felicity; blue ones our misfortunes: that those in the nails of the thumb have significations of honour, in the forefinger, of riches, and so respectively in the rest." science, to be of a high and satisfactory character, ought to consist of a deduction of causes and effects, shewing us not merely that a thing is so, but why it is as it is, and cannot be otherwise. the rest is merely empirical; and, though the narrowness of human wit may often drive us to this; yet it is essentially of a lower order and description. as it depends for its authority upon an example, or a number of examples, so examples of a contrary nature may continually come in, to weaken its force, or utterly to subvert it. and the affair is made still worse, when we see, as in the case of craniology, that all the reasons that can be deduced (as here from the nature of mind) would persuade us to believe, that there can be no connection between the supposed indications, and the things pretended to be indicated. craniology, or phrenology, proceeds exactly in the same train, as chiromancy, or any of those pretended sciences which are built merely on assumption or conjecture. the first delineations presented to the public, marked out, as i have said, the scull into compartments, in the same manner as a country delineated on a map is divided into districts. geography is a real science, and accordingly, like other sciences, has been slow and gradual in its progress. at an early stage travellers knew little more than the shores and islands of the mediterranean. afterwards, they passed the straits of hercules, and entered into the atlantic. at length the habitable world was distributed into three parts, europe, asia, and africa. more recently, by many centuries, came the discovery of america. it is but the other day comparatively, that we found the extensive island of new holland in the southern ocean. the ancient geographers placed an elephant or some marine monster in the vacant parts of their maps, to signify that of these parts they knew nothing. not so dr. gall. every part of his globe of the human scull, at least with small exceptions, is fully tenanted; and he, with his single arm, has conquered a world. the majority of the judgments that have been divulged by the professors of this science, have had for their subjects the sculls of men, whose habits and history have been already known. and yet with this advantage the errors and contradictions into which their authors have fallen are considerably numerous. thus i find, in the account of the doctor's visit to the house of correction and the hospital of torgau in july , the following examples. "every person was desirous to know what dr. gall would say about t--, who was known in the house as a thief full of cunning, and who, having several times made his escape, wore an additional iron. it was surprising, that he saw in him far less of the organ of cunning, than in many of the other prisoners. however it was proved, that examples, and conversation with other thieves in the house, had suggested to him the plan for his escape, and that the stupidity which he possesses was the cause of his being retaken." "we were much surprised to be told, that m., in whom dr. gall had not discovered the organ of representation, possessed extraordinary abilities in imitating the voice of animals; but we were convinced after enquiries, that his talent was not a natural one, but acquired by study. he related to us that, when he was a prussian soldier garrisoned at berlin, he used to deceive the waiting women in the foundling hospital by imitating the voice of exposed infants, and sometimes counterfeited the cry of a wild drake, when the officers were shooting ducks." "of another dr. gall said, his head is a pattern of inconstancy and confinement, and there appears not the least mark of the organ of courage. this rogue had been able to gain a great authority among his fellow-convicts. how is this to be reconciled with the want of constancy which his organisation plainly indicates? dr. gall answered, he gained his ascendancy not by courage, but by cunning." it is well known, that in thurtel, who was executed for one of the most cold-blooded and remorseless murders ever heard of, the phrenologists found the organ of benevolence uncommonly large. in spurzheim's delineation of the human head i find six divisions of organs marked out in the little hemisphere over the eye, indicating six different dispositions. must there not be in this subtle distribution much of what is arbitrary and sciolistic? it is to be regretted, that no person skilful in metaphysics, or the history of the human mind, has taken a share in this investigation. many errors and much absurdity would have been removed from the statements of these theorists, if a proper division had been made between those attributes and propensities, which by possibility a human creature may bring into the world with him, and those which, being the pure growth of the arbitrary institutions of society, must be indebted to those institutions for their origin. i have endeavoured in a former essay( ) to explain this distinction, and to shew how, though a human being cannot be born with an express propensity towards any one of the infinite pursuits and occupations which may be found in civilised society, yet that he may be fitted by his external or internal structure to excel in some one of those pursuits rather than another. but all this is overlooked by the phrenologists. they remark the various habits and dispositions, the virtues and the vices, that display themselves in society as now constituted, and at once and without consideration trace them to the structure that we bring into the world with us. ( ) see above, essay ii. certainly many of gall's organs are a libel upon our common nature. and, though a scrupulous and exact philosopher will perhaps confess that he has little distinct knowledge as to the design with which "the earth and all that is therein" were made, yet he finds in it so much of beauty and beneficent tendency, as will make him extremely reluctant to believe that some men are born with a decided propensity to rob, and others to murder. nor can any thing be more ludicrous than this author's distinction of the different organs of memory--of things, of places, of names, of language, and of numbers: organs, which must be conceived to be given in the first instance long before names or language or numbers had an existence. the followers of gall have in a few instances corrected this: but what their denominations have gained in avoiding the grossest absurdities of their master, they have certainly lost in explicitness and perspicuity. there is a distinction, not unworthy to be attended to, that is here to be made between lavater's system of physiognomy, and gall's of craniology, which is much in favour of the former. the lines and characteristic expressions of the face which may so frequently be observed, are for the most part the creatures of the mind. this is in the first place a mode of observation more agreeable to the pride and conscious elevation of man, and is in the next place more suitable to morality, and the vindication of all that is most admirable in the system of the universe. it is just, that what is most frequently passing in the mind, and is entertained there with the greatest favour, should leave its traces upon the countenance. it is thus that the high and exalted philosopher, the poet, and the man of benevolence and humanity are sometimes seen to be such by the bystander and the stranger. while the malevolent, the trickish, and the grossly sensual, give notice of what they are by the cast of their features, and put their fellow-creatures upon their guard, that they may not be made the prey of these vices. but the march of craniology or phrenology, by whatever name it is called, is directly the reverse of this. it assigns to us organs, as far as the thing is explained by the professors either to the public or to their own minds, which are entailed upon us from our birth, and which are altogether independent, or nearly so, of any discipline or volition that can be exercised by or upon the individual who drags their intolerable chain. thus i am told of one individual that he wants the organ of colour; and all the culture in the world can never supply that defect, and enable him to see colour at all, or to see it as it is seen by the rest of mankind. another wants the organ of benevolence; and his case is equally hopeless. i shrink from considering the condition of the wretch, to whom nature has supplied the organs of theft and murder in full and ample proportions. the case is like that of astrology (their stars are more in fault than they), with this aggravation, that our stars, so far as the faculty of prediction had been supposed to be attained, swayed in few things; but craniology climbs at once to universal empire; and in her map, as i have said, there are no vacant places, no unexplored regions and happy wide-extended deserts. it is all a system of fatalism. independently of ourselves, and far beyond our control, we are reserved for good or for evil by the predestinating spirit that reigns over all things. unhappy is the individual who enters himself in this school. he has no consolation, except the gratified wish to know distressing truths, unless we add to this the pride of science, that he has by his own skill and application purchased for himself the discernment which places him in so painful a preeminence. the great triumph of man is in the power of education, to improve his intellect, to sharpen his perceptions, and to regulate and modify his moral qualities. but craniology reduces this to almost nothing, and exhibits us for the most part as the helpless victims of a blind and remorseless destiny. in the mean time it is happy for us, that, as this system is perhaps the most rigorous and degrading that was ever devised, so it is in almost all instances founded upon arbitrary assumptions and confident assertion, totally in opposition to the true spirit of patient and laborious investigation and sound philosophy. it is in reality very little that we know of the genuine characters of men. every human creature is a mystery to his fellow. every human character is made up of incongruities. of nearly all the great personages in history it is difficult to say what was decidedly the motive in which their actions and system of conduct originated. we study what they did, and what they said; but in vain. we never arrive at a full and demonstrative conclusion. in reality no man can be certainly said to know himself. "the heart of man is deceitful above all things." but these dogmatists overlook all those difficulties, which would persuade a wise man to suspend his judgment, and induce a jury of philosophers to hesitate for ever as to the verdict they would pronounce. they look only at the external character of the act by which a man honours or disgraces himself. they decide presumptuously and in a lump, this man is a murderer, a hero, a coward, the slave of avarice, or the votary of philanthropy; and then, surveying the outside of his head, undertake to find in him the configuration that should indicate these dispositions, and must be found in all persons of a similar character, or rather whose acts bear the same outward form, and seem analogous to his. till we have discovered the clue that should enable us to unravel the labyrinth of the human mind, it is with small hopes of success that we should expect to settle the external indications, and decide that this sort of form and appearance, and that class of character, will always be found together. but it is not to be wondered at, that these disorderly fragments of a shapeless science should become the special favourites of the idle and the arrogant. every man (and every woman), however destitute of real instruction, and unfitted for the investigation of the deep or the sublime mysteries of our nature, can use his eyes and his hands. the whole boundless congregation of mankind, with its everlasting varieties, is thus at once subjected to the sentence of every pretender: and fools rush in, where angels fear to tread. nothing is more delightful to the headlong and presumptuous, than thus to sit in judgment on their betters, and pronounce ex cathedra on those, "whose shoe-latchet they are not worthy to stoop down and unloose." i remember, after lord george gordon's riots, eleven persons accused were set down in one indictment for their lives, and given in charge to one jury. but this is a mere shadow, a nothing, compared with the wholesale and indiscriminating judgment of the vulgar phrenologist. essay xxi. of astronomy. section i. it can scarcely be imputed to me as profane, if i venture to put down a few sceptical doubts on the science of astronomy. all branches of knowledge are to be considered as fair subjects of enquiry: and he that has never doubted, may be said, in the highest and strictest sense of the word, never to have believed. the first volume that furnished to me the groundwork of the following doubts, was the book commonly known by the name of guthrie's geographical grammar, many parts and passages of which engaged my attention in my own study, in the house of a rural schoolmaster, in the year . i cannot therefore proceed more fairly than by giving here an extract of certain passages in that book, which have relation to the present subject. i know not how far they have been altered in the edition of guthrie which now lies before me, from the language of the book then in my possession; but i feel confident that in the main particulars they continue the same( ). ( ) the article astronomy, in this book, appears to have been written by the well known james ferguson. "in passing rapidly over the heavens with his new telescope, the universe increased under the eye of herschel; , stars, seen in the space of a few degrees, seemed to indicate that there were seventy-five millions in the heavens. but what are all these, when compared with those that fill the whole expanse, the boundless field of aether? "the immense distance of the fixed stars from our earth, and from each other, is of all considerations the most proper for raising our ideas of the works of god. modern discoveries make it probable that each of these stars is a sun, having planets and comets revolving round it, as our sun has the earth and other planets revolving round him.--a ray of light, though its motion is so quick as to be commonly thought instantaneous, takes up more time in travelling from the stars to us, than we do in making a west-india voyage. a sound, which, next to light, is considered as the quickest body we are acquainted with, would not arrive to us from thence in , years. and a cannon-ball, flying at the rate of miles an hour, would not reach us in , years. "from what we know of our own system, it may be reasonably concluded, that all the rest are with equal wisdom contrived, situated, and provided with accommodations for rational inhabitants. "what a sublime idea does this suggest to the human imagination, limited as are its powers, of the works of the creator! thousands and thousands of suns, multiplied without end, and ranged all around us, at immense distances from each other, attended by ten thousand times ten thousand worlds, all in rapid motion, yet calm, regular and harmonious, invariably keeping the paths prescribed them: and these worlds peopled with myriads of intelligent beings, formed for endless progression in perfection and felicity!" the thought that would immediately occur to a dispassionate man in listening to this statement, would be, what a vast deal am i here called on to believe! now the first rule of sound and sober judgment, in encountering any story, is that, in proportion to the magnitude and seemingly incredible nature of the propositions tendered to our belief, should be the strength and impregnable nature of the evidence by which those propositions are supported. it is not here, as in matters of religion, that we are called upon by authority from on high to believe in mysteries, in things above our reason, or, as it may be, contrary to our reason. no man pretends to a revelation from heaven of the truths of astronomy. they have been brought to light by the faculties of the human mind, exercised upon such facts and circumstances as our industry has set before us. to persons not initiated in the rudiments of astronomical science, they rest upon the great and high-sounding names of galileo, kepler, halley and newton. but, though these men are eminently entitled to honour and gratitude from their fellow-mortals, they do not stand altogether on the same footing as matthew, mark, luke and john, by whose pens has been recorded "every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of god." the modest enquirer therefore, without pretending to put himself on an equality with these illustrious men, may be forgiven, when he permits himself to suggest a few doubts, and presumes to examine the grounds upon which he is called upon to believe all that is contained in the above passages. now the foundations upon which astronomy, as here delivered, is built, are, first, the evidence of our senses, secondly, the calculations of the mathematician, and, in the third place, moral considerations. these have been denominated respectively, practical astronomy, scientific, and theoretical. as to the first of these, it is impossible for us on this occasion not to recollect what has so often occurred as to have grown into an every-day observation, of the fallibility of our senses. it may be doubted however whether this is a just statement. we are not deceived by our senses, but deceived in the inference we make from our sensations. our sensations respecting what we call the external world, are chiefly those of length, breadth and solidity, hardness and softness, heat and cold, colour, smell, sound and taste. the inference which the generality of mankind make in relation to these sensations is, that there is something out of ourselves corresponding to the impressions we receive; in other words, that the causes of our sensations are like to the sensations themselves. but this is, strictly speaking, an inference; and, if the cause of a sensation is not like the sensation, it cannot precisely be affirmed that our senses deceive us. we know what passes in the theatre of the mind; but we cannot be said absolutely to know any thing, more. modern philosophy has taught us, in certain cases, to controvert the position, that the causes of our sensations are like to the sensations themselves. locke in particular has called the attention of the reasoning part of mankind to the consideration, that heat and cold, sweet and bitter, and odour offensive or otherwise, are perceptions, which imply a percipient being, and cannot exist in inanimate substances. we might with equal propriety ascribe pain to the whip that beats us, or pleasure to the slight alternation of contact in the person or thing that tickles us, as suppose that heat and cold, or taste, or smell are any thing but sensations. the same philosophers who have called our attention to these remarks, have proceeded to shew that the causes of our sensations of sound and colour have no precise correspondence, do not tally with the sensations we receive. sound is the result of a percussion of the air. colour is produced by the reflection of the rays of light; so that the same object, placed in a position, different as to the spectator, but in itself remaining unaltered, will produce in him a sensation of different colours, or shades of colour, now blue, now green, now brown, now black, and so on. this is the doctrine of newton, as well as of locke. it follows that, if there were no percipient being to receive these sensations, there would be no heat or cold, no taste, no smell, no sound, and no colour. aware of this difference between our sensations in certain cases and the causes of these sensations, locke has divided the qualities of substances in the material universe into primary and secondary, the sensations we receive of the primary representing the actual qualities of material substances, but the sensations we receive of what he calls the secondary having no proper resemblance to the causes that produce them. now, if we proceed in the spirit of severe analysis to examine the primary qualities of matter, we shall not perhaps find so marked a distinction between those and the secondary, as the statement of locke would have led us to imagine. the optics of newton were published fourteen years later than locke's essay concerning human understanding. in endeavouring to account for the uninterrupted transmission of rays of light through transparent substances, however hard they may be found to be, newton has these observations. "bodies are much more rare and porous, than is commonly believed. water is nineteen times lighter, and by consequence nineteen times rarer, than gold; and gold is so rare, as very readily, and without the least opposition, to transmit the magnetic effluvia, and easily to admit quicksilver into its pores, and to let water pass through it. from all which we may conclude, that gold has more pores than solid parts, and by consequence that water has above forty times more pores than parts. and he that shall find out an hypothesis, by which water may be so rare, and yet not capable of compression by force, may doubtless, by the same hypothesis, make gold, and water, and all other bodies, as much rarer as he pleases, so that light may find a ready passage through transparent substances( )." ( ) newton, optics, book ii, part iii, prop. viii. again: "the colours of bodies arise from the magnitude of the particles that reflect them. now, if we conceive these particles of bodies to be so disposed among themselves, that the intervals, or empty spaces between them, may be equal in magnitude to them all; and that these particles may be composed of other particles much smaller, which have as much empty space between them as equals all the magnitudes of these smaller particles; and that in like manner these smaller particles are again composed of others much smaller, all which together are equal to all the pores, or empty spaces, between them; and so on perpetually till you come to solid particles, such as have no pores, or empty spaces within them: and if in any gross body there be, for instance, three such degrees of particles, the least of which are solid; this body will have seven times more pores than solid parts. but if there be four such degrees of particles, the least of which are solid, the body will have fifteen times more pores than solid parts. if there be five degrees, the body will have one and thirty times more pores than solid parts. if six degrees, the body will have sixty and three times more pores than solid parts. and so on perpetually( )." ( ) ibid. in the queries annexed to the optics, newton further suggests an opinion, that the rays of light are repelled by bodies without immediate contact. he observes that: "where attraction ceases, there a repulsive virtue ought to succeed. and that there is such a virtue, seems to follow from the reflexions and inflexions of the rays of light. for the rays are repelled by bodies, in both these cases, without the immediate contact of the reflecting or inflecting body. it seems also to follow from the emission of light; the ray, so soon as it is shaken off from a shining body by the vibrating motion of the parts of the body, and gets beyond the reach of attraction, being driven away with exceeding great velocity. for that force, which is sufficient to turn it back in reflexion, may be sufficient to emit it. it seems also to follow from the production of air and vapour: the particles, when they are shaken off from bodies by heat or fermentation, so soon as they are beyond the reach of the attraction of the body, receding from it and also from one another, with great strength; and keeping at a distance, so as sometimes to take up a million of times more space than they did before, in the form of a dense body." newton was of opinion that matter was made up, in the last resort, of exceedingly small solid particles, having no pores, or empty spaces within them. priestley, in his disquisitions relating to matter and spirit, carries the theory one step farther; and, as newton surrounds his exceedingly small particles with spheres of attraction and repulsion, precluding in all cases their actual contact, priestley is disposed to regard the centre of these spheres as mathematical points only. if there is no actual contact, then by the very terms no two particles of matter were ever so near to each other, but that they might be brought nearer, if a sufficient force could be applied for that purpose. you had only another sphere of repulsion to conquer; and, as there never is actual contact, the whole world is made up of one sphere of repulsion after another, without the possibility of ever arriving at an end. "the principles of the newtonian philosophy," says our author, "were no sooner known, than it was seen how few in comparison, of the phenomena of nature, were owing to solid matter, and how much to powers, which were only supposed to accompany and surround the solid parts of matter. it has been asserted, and the assertion has never been disproved, that for any thing we know to the contrary, all the solid matter in the solar system might be contained within a nutshell( )." ( ) priestley, disquisitions, section ii. i know not by whom this illustration was first employed. among other authors, i find, in fielding (joseph andrews, book ii, chap. ii), a sect of philosophers spoken of, who "can reduce all the matter of the world into a nutshell." it is then with senses, from the impressions upon which we are impelled to draw such false conclusions, and that present us with images altogether unlike any thing that exists out of ourselves, that we come to observe the phenomena of what we call the universe. the first observation that it is here incumbent on us to make, and which we ought to keep ever at hand, to be applied as occasion may offer, is the well known aphorism of socrates, that "we know only this, that we know nothing." we have no compass to guide us through the pathless waters of science; we have no revelation, at least on the subject of astronomy, and of the unnumbered inhabitable worlds that float in the ocean of ether; and we are bound therefore to sail, as the mariners of ancient times sailed, always within sight of land. one of the earliest maxims of ordinary prudence, is that we ought ever to correct the reports of one sense by the assistance of another sense. the things we here speak of are not matters of faith; and in them therefore it is but reason, that we should imitate the conduct of didymus the apostle, who said, "except i put my fingers into the prints of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, i will not believe." my eyes report to me an object, as having a certain magnitude, texture, and roughness or smoothness; but i require that my hands should confirm to me the evidence of my eyes. i see something that appears to be an island at an uncertain distance from the shore; but, if i am actuated by a laudable curiosity, and wish to possess a real knowledge, i take a boat, and proceed to ascertain by nearer inspection, whether that which i imagined to be an island is an island or no. there are indeed many objects with which we are conversant, that are in so various ways similar to each other, that, after having carefully examined a few, we are satisfied upon slighter investigation to admit the dimensions and character of others. thus, having measured with a quadrant the height of a tower, and found on the narrowest search and comparison that the report of my instrument was right, i yield credit to this process in another instance, without being at the trouble to verify its results in any more elaborate method. the reason why we admit the inference flowing from our examination in the second instance, and so onward, with less scrupulosity and scepticism than in the first, is that there is a strict resemblance and analogy in the two cases. experience is the basis of our conclusions and our conduct. i strike against a given object, a nail for example, with a certain degree of force, because i have remarked in myself and others the effect of such a stroke. i take food and masticate it, because i have found that this process contributes to the sound condition of my body and mind. i scatter certain seeds in my field, and discharge the other functions of an agriculturist, because i have observed that in due time the result of this industry is a crop. all the propriety of these proceedings depends upon the exact analogy between the old case and the new one. the state of the affair is still the same, when my business is merely that of an observer and a traveller. i know water from earth, land from sea, and mountains from vallies, because i have had experience of these objects, and confidently infer that, when certain appearances present themselves to my organs of sight, i shall find the same results to all my other senses, as i found when such appearances occurred to me before. but the interval that divides the objects which occur upon and under the earth, and are accessible in all ways to our examination, on the one hand, and the lights which are suspended over our heads in the heavens on the other, is of the broadest and most memorable nature. human beings, in the infancy of the world, were contented reverently to behold these in their calmness and beauty, perhaps to worship them, and to remark the effects that they produced, or seemed to produce, upon man and the subjects of his industry. but they did not aspire to measure their dimensions, to enquire into their internal frame, or to explain the uses, far removed from our sphere of existence, which they might be intended to serve. it is however one of the effects of the improvement of our intellect, to enlarge our curiosity. the daringness of human enterprise is one of the prime glories of our nature. it is our boast that we undertake to "measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides." and, when success crowns the boldness of our aspirations after what vulgar and timorous prudence had pronounced impossible, it is then chiefly that we are seen to participate of an essence divine. what has not man effected by the boldness of his conceptions and the adventurousness of his spirit? the achievements of human genius have appeared so incredible, till they were thoroughly examined, and slowly established their right to general acceptance, that the great heroes of intellect were universally regarded by their contemporaries as dealers in magic, and implements of the devil. the inventor of the art of printing, that glorious instrument for advancing the march of human improvement, and the discoverer of the more questionable art of making gunpowder, alike suffered under this imputation. we have rendered the seas and the winds instruments of our pleasure, "exhausted the old world, and then discovered a new one," have drawn down lightning from heaven, and exhibited equal rights and independence to mankind. still however it is incumbent on us to be no less wary and suspicious than we are bold, and not to imagine, because we have done much, that we are therefore able to effect every thing. as was stated in the commencement of this essay, we know our own sensations, and we know little more. matter, whether in its primary or secondary qualities, is certainly not the sort of thing the vulgar imagine it to be. the illustrious berkeley has taught many to doubt of its existence altogether; and later theorists have gone farther than this, and endeavoured to shew, that each man, himself while he speaks on the subject, and you and i while we hear, have no conclusive evidence to convince us, that we may not, each of us, for aught we know, be the only thing that exists, an entire universe to ourselves. we will not however follow these ingenious persons to the startling extreme to which their speculations would lead us. but, without doing so, it will not misbecome us to be cautious, and to reflect what we do, before we take a leap into illimitable space. section ii. "the sun," we are told, "is a solid body, ninety-five millions of miles distant from the earth we inhabit, one million times larger in cubic measurement, and to such a degree impregnated with heat, that a comet, approaching to it within a certain distance, was by that approximation raised to a heat two thousand times greater than that of red-hot iron." it will be acknowledged, that there is in this statement much to believe; and we shall not be exposed to reasonable blame, if we refuse to subscribe to it, till we have received irresistible evidence of its truth. it has already been observed, that, for the greater part of what we imagine we know on the surface or in the bowels of the earth, we have, or may have if we please, the evidence of more than one of our senses, combining to lead to the same conclusion. for the propositions of astronomy we have no sensible evidence, but that of sight, and an imperfect analogy, leading from those visible impressions which we can verify, to a reliance upon those which we cannot. the first cardinal particular we meet with in the above statement concerning the sun, is the term, distance. now, all that, strictly speaking, we can affirm respecting the sun and other heavenly bodies, is that we have the same series of impressions respecting them, that we have respecting terrestrial objects near or remote, and that there is an imperfect analogy between the one case and the other. before we affirm any thing, as of our own knowledge and competence, respecting heavenly bodies which are said to be millions of millions of miles removed from us, it would not perhaps be amiss that we should possess ourselves of a certain degree of incontestible information, as to the things which exist on the earth we inhabit. among these, one of the subjects attended with a great degree of doubt and obscurity, is the height of the mountains with which the surface of the globe we inhabit is diversified. it is affirmed in the received books of elementary geography, that the andes are the highest mountains in the world. morse, in his american gazetteer, third edition, printed at boston in ( ), says, "the height of chimborazzo, the most elevated point of the vast chain of the andes, is , feet above the level of the sea, which is feet higher than any other mountain in the known world:" thus making the elevation of the mountains of thibet, or whatever other rising ground the compiler had in his thought, precisely , feet above the level of the sea, and no more. this decision however has lately been contradicted. mr. hugh murray, in an account of discoveries and travels in asia, published in , has collated the reports of various recent travellers in central asia; and he states the height of chumularee, which he speaks of as the most elevated point of the mountains of thibet, as nearly , feet above the level of the sea. ( ) article, andes. the elevation of mountains, till lately, was in no way attempted to be ascertained but by the use of the quadrant, and their height was so generally exaggerated, that riccioli, one of the most eminent astronomers of the seventeenth century, gives it as his opinion that mountains, like the caucasus, may have a perpendicular elevation of fifty italian miles( ). later observers have undertaken to correct the inaccuracy of these results through the application of the barometer, and thus, by informing themselves of the weight of the air at a certain elevation, proceeding to infer the height of the situation. ( ) rees, encyclopedia; article, mountains. there are many circumstances, which are calculated to induce a circumspect enquirer to regard the affirmative positions of astronomy, as they are delivered by the most approved modern writers, with considerable diffidence. they are founded, as has already been said, next to the evidence of our senses, upon the deductions of mathematical knowledge. mathematics are either pure or mixed. pure mathematics are concerned only with abstract propositions, and have nothing to do with the realities of nature. there is no such thing in actual existence as a mathematical point, line or surface. there is no such thing as a circle or square. but that is of no consequence. we can define them in words, and reason about them. we can draw a diagram, and suppose that line to be straight which is not really straight, and that figure to be a circle which is not strictly a circle. it is conceived therefore by the generality of observers, that mathematics is the science of certainty. but this is not strictly the case. mathematics are like those abstract and imaginary existences about which they are conversant. they may constitute in themselves, and in the apprehension of an infallible being, a science of certainty. but they come to us mixed and incorporated with our imperfections. our faculties are limited; and we may be easily deceived, as to what it is that we see with transparent and unerring clearness, and what it is that comes to us through a crooked medium, refracting and distorting the rays of primitive truth. we often seem clear, when in reality the twilight of undistinguishing night has crept fast and far upon us. in a train of deductions, as in the steps of an arithmetical process, an error may have insinuated itself imperceptibly at a very early stage, rendering all the subsequent steps a wandering farther and farther from the unadulterated truth. human mathematics, so to speak, like the length of life, are subject to the doctrine of chances. mathematics may be the science of certainty to celestial natures, but not to man. but, if in the case of pure mathematics, we are exposed to the chances of error and delusion, it is much worse with mixed mathematics. the moment we step out of the high region of abstraction, and apply ourselves to what we call external nature, we have forfeited that sacred character and immunity, which we seemed entitled to boast, so long as we remained inclosed in the sanctuary of unmingled truth. as has already been said, we know what passes in the theatre of the mind; but we cannot be said absolutely to know any thing more. in our speculations upon actual existences we are not only subject to the disadvantages which arise from the limited nature of our faculties, and the errors which may insensibly creep upon us in the process. we are further exposed to the operation of the unevennesses and irregularities that perpetually occur in external nature, the imperfection of our senses, and of the instruments we construct to assist our observations, and the discrepancy which we frequently detect between the actual nature of the things about us and our impressions respecting them. this is obvious, whenever we undertake to apply the processes of arithmetic to the realities of life. arithmetic, unsubjected to the impulses of passion and the accidents of created nature, holds on its course; but, in the phenomena of the actual world, "time and chance happeneth to them all." thus it is, for example, in the arithmetical and geometrical ratios, set up in political economy by the celebrated mr. malthus. his numbers will go on smoothly enough, , , , , , , as representing the principle of population among mankind, and , , , , , , the means of subsistence; but restiff and uncomplying nature refuses to conform herself to his dicta. dr. price has calculated the produce of one penny, put out at the commencement of the christian era to five per cent. compound interest, and finds that in the year it would have increased to a greater sum than would be contained in three hundred millions of earths, all solid gold. but what has this to do with the world in which we live? did ever any one put out his penny to interest in this fashion for eighteen hundred years? and, if he did, where was the gold to be found, to satisfy his demand? morse, in his american gazetteer, proceeding on the principles of malthus, tells us that, if the city of new york goes on increasing for a century in a certain ratio, it will by that time contain , , inhabitants. but does any one, for himself or his posterity, expect to see this realised? blackstone, in his commentaries on the laws of england, has observed that, as every man has two ancestors in the first ascending degree, and four in the second, so in the twentieth degree he has more than a million, and in the fortieth the square of that number, or upwards of a million millions. this statement therefore would have a greater tendency to prove that mankind in remote ages were numerous, almost beyond the power of figures to represent, than the opposite doctrine of malthus, that they have a perpetual tendency to such increase as would infallibly bring down the most tremendous calamities on our posterity. berkeley, whom i have already referred to on another subject, and who is admitted to be one of our profoundest philosophers, has written a treatise( ) to prove, that the mathematicians, who object to the mysteries supposed to exist in revealed religion, "admit much greater mysteries, and even falshoods in science, of which he alleges the doctrine of fluxions as an eminent example( )." he observes, that their conclusions are established by virtue of a twofold error, and that these errors, being in contrary directions, are supposed to compensate each other, the expounders of the doctrine thus arriving at what they call truth, without being able to shew how, or by what means they have arrived at it. ( ) the analyst. ( ) life of berkeley, prefixed to his works. it is a memorable and a curious speculation to reflect, upon how slight grounds the doctrine of "thousands and thousands of suns, multiplied without end, and ranged all around us, at immense distances from each other, and attended by ten thousand times ten thousand worlds," mentioned in the beginning of this essay, is built. it may be all true. but, true or false, it cannot be without its use to us, carefully to survey the road upon which we are advancing, the pier which human enterprise has dared to throw out into the vast ocean of cimmerian darkness. we have constructed a pyramid, which throws into unspeakable contempt the vestiges of ancient egyptian industry: but it stands upon its apex; it trembles with every breeze; and momentarily threatens to overwhelm in its ruins the fearless undertakers that have set it up. it gives us a mighty and sublime idea of the nature of man, to think with what composure and confidence a succession of persons of the greatest genius have launched themselves in illimitable space, with what invincible industry they have proceeded, wasting the midnight oil, racking their faculties, and almost wearing their organs to dust, in measuring the distance of sirius and the other fixed stars, the velocity of light, and "the myriads of intelligent beings formed for endless progression in perfection and felicity," that people the numberless worlds of which they discourse. the illustrious names of copernicus, galileo, gassendi, kepler, halley and newton impress us with awe; and, if the astronomy they have opened before us is a romance, it is at least a romance more seriously and perseveringly handled than any other in the annals of literature. a vulgar and a plain man would unavoidably ask the astronomers, how came you so familiarly acquainted with the magnitude and qualities of the heavenly bodies, a great portion of which, by your own account, are millions of millions of miles removed from us? but, i believe, it is not the fashion of the present day to start so rude a question. i have just turned over an article on astronomy in the encyclopaedia londinensis, consisting of one hundred and thirty-three very closely printed quarto pages, and in no corner of this article is any evidence so much as hinted at. is it not enough? newton and his compeers have said it. the whole doctrine of astronomy rests upon trigonometry, a branch of the science of mathematics which teaches us, having two sides and one angle, or two angles and one side, of a triangle given us, to construct the whole. to apply this principle therefore to the heavenly bodies, it is necessary for us to take two stations, the more remote from each other the better, from which our observations should be made. for the sake of illustration we will suppose them to be taken at the extremes of the earth's diameter, in other words, nearly eight thousand miles apart from each other, the thing itself having never been realised to that extent. from each of these stations we will imagine a line to be drawn, terminating in the sun. now it seems easy, by means of a quadrant, to find the arch of a circle (in other words, the angle) included between these lines terminating in the sun, and the base formed by a right line drawn from one of these stations to the other, which in this case is the length of the earth's diameter. i have therefore now the three particulars required to enable me to construct my triangle. and, according to the most approved astronomical observations hitherto made, i have an isosceles triangle, eight thousand miles broad at its base, and ninety-five millions of miles in the length of each of the sides reaching from the base to the apex. it is however obvious to the most indifferent observer, that the more any triangle, or other mathematical diagram, falls within the limits which our senses can conveniently embrace, the more securely, when our business is practical, and our purpose to apply the result to external objects, can we rely on the accuracy of our results. in a case therefore like the present, where the base of our isosceles triangle is to the other two sides as eight units to twelve thousand, it is impossible not to perceive that it behoves us to be singularly diffident as to the conclusion at which we have arrived, or rather it behoves us to take for granted that we are not unlikely to fall into the most important error. we have satisfied ourselves that the sides of the triangle including the apex, do not form an angle, till they have arrived at the extent of ninety-five millions of miles. how are we sure that they do then? may not lines which have reached to so amazing a length without meeting, be in reality parallel lines? if an angle is never formed, there can be no result. the whole question seems to be incommensurate to our faculties. it being obvious that this was a very unsatisfactory scheme for arriving at the knowledge desired, the celebrated halley suggested another method, in the year , by an observation to be taken at the time of the transit of venus over the sun( ). ( ) philosophical transactions, vol. xxix, p. . it was supposed that we were already pretty accurately acquainted with the distance of the moon from the earth, it being so much nearer to us, by observing its parallax, or the difference of its place in the heavens as seen from the surface of the earth, from that in which it would appear if seen from its centre( ). but the parallax of the sun is so exceedingly small, as scarcely to afford the basis of a mathematical calculation( ). the parallax of venus is however almost four times as great as that of the sun; and there must therefore be a very sensible difference between the times in which venus may be seen passing over the sun from different parts of the earth. it was on this account apprehended, that the parallax of the sun, by means of observations taken from different places at the time of the transit of venus in and , might be ascertained with a great degree of precision( ). ( ) bonnycastle, astronomy, th edition, p. , et seq. ( ) ibid, p. . ( ) phil. transactions, vol. xxix, p. . but the imperfectness of our instruments and means of observation have no small tendency to baffle the ambition of man in these curious investigations. "the true quantity of the moon's parallax," says bonnycastle, "cannot be accurately determined by the methods ordinarily resorted to, on account of the varying declination of the moon, and the inconstancy of the horizontal refractions, which are perpetually changing according to the state the atmosphere is in at the time. for the moon continues but for a short time in the equinoctial, and the refraction at a mean rate elevates her apparent place near the horizon, half as much as her parallax depresses it( )." ( ) astronomy, p. . "it is well known that the parallax of the sun can never exceed nine seconds, or the four-hundredth part of a degree( )." "observations," says halley, "made upon the vibrations of a pendulum, to determine these exceedingly small angles, are not sufficiently accurate to be depended upon; for by this method of ascertaining the parallax, it will sometimes come out to be nothing, or even negative; that is, the distance will either be infinite, or greater than infinite, which is absurd. and, to confess the truth, it is hardly possible for a person to distinguish seconds with certainty by any instruments, however skilfully they may be made; and therefore it is not to be wondered at, that the excessive nicety of this matter should have eluded the many ingenious endeavours of the most able opetators."( ). ( ) ibid, p. . ( ) phil. transactions, vol. xxix, p. . such are the difficulties that beset the subject on every side. it is for the impartial and dispassionate observers who have mastered all the subtleties of the science, if such can be found, to determine whether the remedies that have been resorted to to obviate the above inaccuracies and their causes, have fulfilled their end, and are not exposed to similar errors. but it would be vain to expect the persons, who have "scorned delights, and lived laborious days" to possess themselves of the mysteries of astronomy, should be impartial and dispassionate, or be disposed to confess, even to their own minds, that their researches were useless, and their labours ended in nothing. it is further worthy of our attention, that the instruments with which we measure the distance of the earth from the sun and the planets, are the very instruments which have been pronounced upon as incompetent in measuring the heights of mountains( ). in the latter case therefore we have substituted a different mode for arriving at the truth, which is supposed to be attended with greater precision: but we have no substitute to which we can resort, to correct the mistakes into which we may fall respecting the heavenly bodies. ( ) see above, essay xxi. the result of the uncertainty which adheres to all astronomical observations is such as might have been expected. common readers are only informed of the latest adjustment of the question, and are therefore unavoidably led to believe that the distance of the sun from the earth, ever since astronomy became entitled to the name of a science, has by universal consent been recognised as ninety-five millions of miles, or, as near as may be, twenty-four thousand semi-diameters of the earth. but how does the case really stand? copernicus and tycho brahe held the distance to be twelve hundred semi-diameters; kepler, who is received to have been perhaps the greatest astronomer that any age has produced, puts it down as three thousand five hundred semi-diameters; since his time, riccioli as seven thousand; hevelius as five thousand two hundred and fifty( ); some later astronomers, mentioned by halley, as fourteen thousand; and halley himself as sixteen thousand five hundred( ). ( ) they were about thirty and forty years younger than kepler respectively. ( ) halley, apud philosophical transactions, vol. xxix, p. . the doctrine of fluxions is likewise called in by the astronomers in their attempts to ascertain the distance and magnitude of the different celestial bodies which compose the solar system; and in this way their conclusions become subject to all the difficulties which berkeley has alleged against that doctrine. kepler has also supplied us with another mode of arriving at the distance and size of the sun and the planets: he has hazarded a conjecture, that the squares of the times of the revolution of the earth and the other planets are in proportion to the cubes of their distances from the sun, their common centre; and, as by observation we can arrive with tolerable certainty at a knowledge of the times of their revolutions, we may from hence proceed to the other matters we are desirous to ascertain. and that which kepler seemed, as by a divine inspiration, to hazard in the way of conjecture, newton professes to have demonstratively established. but the demonstration of newton has not been considered as satisfactory by all men of science since his time. thus far however we proceed as we may, respecting our propositions on the subject of the solar system. but, beyond this, all science, real or pretended, deserts us. we have no method for measuring angles, which can be applied to the fixed stars; and we know nothing of any revolutions they perform. all here therefore seems gratuitous: we reason from certain alleged analogies; and we can do no more. huygens endeavoured to ascertain something on the subject, by making the aperture of a telescope so small, that the sun should appear through it no larger than sirius, which he found to be only in the proportion of to , times his diameter, as seen by the naked eye. hence, supposing sirius to be a globe of the same magnitude as the sun, it must be , times as distant from us as the sun, in other words, at a distance so considerable as to equal million diameters of the earth( ). every one must feel on how slender a thread this conclusion is suspended. ( ) encyclopaedia londinensis, vol. , p. . and yet, from this small postulate, the astronomers proceed to deduce the most astounding conclusions. they tell us, that the distance of the nearest fixed star from the earth is at least , , , , miles, and of another they name, not less than millions of millions of miles. a cannon-ball therefore, proceeding at the rate of about twenty miles in a minute would be , years in passing from us to the nearest fixed star, and , , in passing to the second star of which we speak. huygens accordingly concluded, that it was not impossible, that there might be stars at such inconceivable distances from us, that their light has not yet reached the earth since its creation( ). ( ) ibid, p. . the received system of the universe, founded upon these so called discoveries, is that each of the stars is a sun, having planets and comets revolving round it, as our sun has the earth and other planets revolving round him. it has been found also by the successive observations of astronomers, that a star now and then is totally lost, and that a new star makes its appearance which had never been remarked before: and this they explain into the creation of a new system from time to time by the almighty author of the universe, and the destruction of an old system worn out with age( ). we must also remember the power of attraction every where diffused through infinite space, by means of which, as herschel assures us, in great length of time a nebula, or cluster of stars, may be formed, while the projectile force they received in the beginning may prevent them from all coming together, at least for millions of ages. some of these nebulae, he adds, cannot well be supposed to be at a less distance from us than six or eight thousand times the distance of sirius( ). kepler however denies that each star, of those which distinctly present themselves to our sight, can have its system of planets as our sun has, and considers them as all fixed in the same surface or sphere; since, if one of them were twice or thrice as remote as another, it would, supposing their real magnitudes to be equal, appear to be twice or thrice as small, whereas there is not in their apparent magnitudes the slightest difference( ). ( ) encycl. lond. vol. ii, p. . ( ) ibid, p. . ( ) ibid, p. . certainly the astronomers are a very fortunate and privileged race of men, who talk to us in this oracular way of "the unseen things of god from the creation of the world," hanging up their conclusions upon invisible hooks, while the rest of mankind sit listening gravely to their responses, and unreservedly "acknowledging that their science is the most sublime, the most interesting, and the most useful of all the sciences cultivated by man( )." ( ) ferguson, astronomy, section . we have a sensation, which we call the sensation of distance. it comes to us from our sight and our other senses. it does not come immediately by the organ of sight. it has been proved, that the objects we see, previously to the comparison and correction of the reports of the organ of sight with those of the other senses, do not suggest to us the idea of distance, but that on the contrary whatever we see seems to touch the eye, even as the objects of the sense of feeling touch the skin. but, in proportion as we compare the impressions made upon our organs of sight with the impressions made on the other senses, we come gradually to connect with the objects we see the idea of distance. i put out my hand, and find at first that an object of my sense of sight is not within the reach of my hand. i put out my hand farther, or by walking advance my body in the direction of the object, and i am enabled to reach it. from smaller experiments i proceed to greater. i walk towards a tree or a building, the figure of which presents itself to my eye, but which i find upon trial to have been far from me. i travel towards a place that i cannot see, but which i am told lies in a certain direction. i arrive at the place. it is thus, that by repeated experiments i acquire the idea of remote distances. to confine ourselves however to the question of objects, which without change of place i can discover by the sense of sight. i can see a town, a tower, a mountain at a considerable distance. let us suppose that the limit of my sight, so far as relates to objects on the earth, is one hundred miles. i can travel towards such an object, and thus ascertain by means of my other senses what is its real distance. i can also employ certain instruments, invented by man, to measure heights, suppose of a tower, and, by experiments made in ways independent of these instruments, verify or otherwise the report of these instruments. the height of the monument of london is something more than two hundred feet. other elevations, the produce of human labour, are considerably higher. it is in the nature of the mind, that we conclude from the observation that we have verified, to the accuracy of another, bearing a striking analogy to the former, that we have not verified. but analogy has its limits. is it of irresistible certainty, or is it in fact to be considered as approaching to certainty, because we have verified an observation extending to several hundred feet, that an observation extending to ninety-five millions of miles, or to the incredible distances of which herschel so familiarly talks, is to be treated as a fact, or laid down as a principle in science? is it reasonable to consider two propositions as analogous, when the thing affirmed in the one is in dimension many million times as great as the thing affirmed in the other? the experience we have had as to the truth of the smaller, does it authorise us to consider the larger as unquestionable? that which i see with a bay of the sea or a wide river between, though it may appear very like something with which i am familiar at home, do i immediately affirm it to be of the same species and nature, or do i not regard it with a certain degree of scepticism, especially if, along with the resemblance in some points, it differs essentially, as for example in magnitude, in other points? we have a sensation, and we enquire into its cause. this is always a question of some uncertainty. is its cause something of absolute and substantive existence without me, or is it not? is its cause something of the very same nature, as the thing that gave me a similar sensation in a matter of comparatively a pigmy and diminutive extension? all these questions an untrained and inquisitive mind will ask itself in the propositions of astronomy. we must believe or not, as we think proper or reasonable. we have no way of verifying the propositions by the trial of our senses. there they lie, to be received by us in the construction that first suggests itself to us, or not. they are something like an agreeable imagination or fiction: and a sober observer, in cold blood, will be disposed deliberately to weigh both sides of the question, and to judge whether the probability lies in favour of the actual affirmation of the millions of millions of miles, and the other incredible propositions of the travelling of light, and the rest, which even the most cautious and sceptical of the retainers of modern astronomy, find themselves compelled to receive. but i shall be told, that the results of our observations of the distances of the heavenly bodies are unvaried. we have measured the distances and other phenomena of the sun, the moon, mercury, venus, mars, jupiter, saturn, and their satellites, and they all fall into a grand system, so as to convey to every unprejudiced mind the conviction that this system is the truth itself. if we look at them day after day, and year after year, we see them for ever the same, and performing the same divine harmony. successive astronomers in different ages and countries have observed the celestial orbs, and swept the heavens, and for ever bring us back the same story of the number, the dimensions, the distances, and the arrangement of the heavenly bodies which form the subject of astronomical science. this we have seen indeed not to be exactly the case. but, if it were, it would go a very little way towards proving the point it was brought to prove. it would shew that, the sensations and results being similar, the causes of those results must be similar to each other, but it would not shew that the causes were similar to the sensations produced. thus, in the sensations which belong to taste, smell, sound, colour, and to those of heat and cold, there is all the uniformity which would arise, when the real external causes bore the most exact similitude to the perceptions they generate; and yet it is now universally confessed that tastes, scents, sounds, colours, and heat and cold do not exist out of ourselves. all that we are entitled therefore to conclude as to the magnitudes and distances of the heavenly bodies, is, that the causes of our sensations and perceptions, whatever they are, are not less uniform than the sensations and perceptions themselves. it is further alleged, that we calculate eclipses, and register the various phenomena of the heavenly bodies. thales predicted an eclipse of the sun, which took place nearly six hundred years before the christian era. the babylonians, the persians, the hindoos, and the chinese early turned their attention to astronomy. many of their observations were accurately recorded; and their tables extend to a period of three thousand years before the birth of christ. does not all this strongly argue the solidity of the science to which they belong? who, after this, will have the presumption to question, that the men who profess astronomy proceed on real grounds, and have a profound knowledge of these things, which at first sight might appear to be set at a distance so far removed from our ken? the answer to this is easy. i believe in all the astronomy that was believed by thales. i do not question the statements relative to the heavenly bodies that were delivered by the wise men of the east. but the supposed discoveries that were made in the eighteenth, and even in the latter part of the seventeenth century, purporting to ascertain the precise distance of the sun, the planets, and even of the fixed stars, are matters entirely distinct from this. among the earliest astronomers of greece were thales, anaximander, anaximenes and anaxagoras. thales, we are told, held that the earth is a sphere or globe, anaximenes that it is like a round, flat table; anaximander that the sun is like a chariot-wheel, and is twenty-eight times larger than the earth. anaxagoras was put in prison for affirming that the sun was by many degrees larger than the whole peloponnesus( ). kepler is of opinion that all the stars are at an equal distance from us, and are fixed in the same surface or sphere. ( ) plutarch, de placitis philosophorum. diogenes laertius. in reality the observations and the facts of astronomy do not depend either upon the magnitudes or the distances of the heavenly bodies. they proceed in the first place upon what may lie seen with the naked eye. they require an accurate and persevering attention. they may be assisted by telescopes. but they relate only to the sun and the planets. we are bound to ascertain, as nearly as possible, the orbits described by the different bodies in the solar system: but this has still nothing to do, strictly speaking, with their magnitudes or distances. it is required that we should know them in their relations to each other; but it is no preliminary of just, of practical, it might almost be said, of liberal science, that we should know any thing of them absolutely. the unlimited ambition of the nature of man has discovered itself in nothing more than this, the amazing superstructure which the votaries of contemplation within the last two hundred years have built upon the simple astronomy of the ancients. having begun to compute the distances of miles by millions, it appears clearly that nothing can arrest the more than eagle-flight of the human mind. the distance of the nearest fixed star from the earth, we are informed, is at least , , , , miles, and of another which the astronomers name, not less than millions of millions of miles. the particles of light are said to travel , miles in every second, which is above a million times swifter than the progress of a cannon-ball( ). and herschel has concluded, that the light issuing from the faintest nebulae he has discovered, must have been at this rate two millions of years in reaching the barth( ). ( ) ferguson, section . "light moves," says brewster, optics, p. , "from one pole of the earth to the other in the th part of a second: a velocity which surpasses all comprehension." ( ) brinkley, astronomy, p. . section iii. the next process of the modern astronomer is to affirm the innumerable orbs around us, discovered with the naked eye, or with which we are made acquainted by the aid of telescopes, to be all stocked with rational inhabitants. the argument for this is, that an all-wise and omnipotent creator could never have produced such immense bodies, dispersed through infinite space, for any meaner purpose, than that of peopling them with "intelligent beings, formed for endless progression in perfection and felicity( )." ( ) see above, essay xxi. now it appears to me, that, in these assertions, the modern astronomers are taking upon themselves somewhat too boldly, to expound the counsels of that mysterious power, to which the universe is indebted for its arrangement and order. we know nothing of god but from his works. certain speculative men have adventured to reason upon the source of all the system and the wonders that we behold, a priori, and, having found that the creator is all powerful, all wise, and of infinite goodness, according to their ideas of power, wisdom and goodness, have from thence proceeded to draw their inferences, and to shew us in what manner the works of his hands are arranged and conducted by him. this no doubt they have done with the purest intentions in the world; but it is not certain, that their discretion has equalled the boldness of their undertaking. the world that we inhabit, this little globe of earth, is to us an infinite mystery. human imagination is unable to conceive any thing more consummate than the great outline of things below. the trees and the skies, the mountains and the seas, the rivers and the springs, appear as if the design had been to realise the idea of paradise. the freshness of the air, the silvery light of day, the magnificence of the clouds, the gorgeous and soothing colouring of the world, the profusion and exquisiteness of the fruits and flowers of the earth, are as if nothing but joy and delicious sensations had been intended for us. when we ascend to the animal creation, the scene is still more admirable and transporting. the birds and the beasts, the insects that skim the air, and the fishes that live in the great deep, are a magazine of wonders, that we may study for ever, without fear of arriving at the end of their excellence. last of all, comes the crown of the creation, man, formed with looks erect, to commerce with the skies. what a masterpiece of workmanship is his form, while the beauty and intelligence of gods seems to manifest itself in his countenance! look at that most consummate of all implements, the human hand; think of his understanding, how composed and penetrating; of the wealth of his imagination; of the resplendent virtues he is qualified to display! "how wonderful are thy works, oh god; in wisdom hast thou created them all!" but there are other parts of the system in which we live, which do not seem to correspond with those already enumerated. before we proceed to people infinite space, it would be as well, if we surveyed the surface of the earth we inhabit. what vast deserts do we find in it; what immense tracks of burning sands! one half of the globe is perhaps irreclaimable to the use of man. then let us think of earthquakes and tempests, of wasting hurricanes, and the number of vessels, freighted with human beings, that are yearly buried in the caverns of the ocean. let us call to mind in man, the prime ornament of the creation, all the diseases to which his frame is subject, convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs, intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs, demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy, and moon-struck madness, pining atrophy, marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence, dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums. the very idea of our killing, and subsisting upon the flesh of animals, surely somewhat jars with our conceptions of infinite benevolence. but, when we look at the political history of man, the case is infinitely worse. this too often seems one tissue of misery and vice. war, conquest, oppression, tyranny, slavery, insurrections, massacres, cruel punishments, degrading corporal infliction, and the extinction of life under the forms of law, are to be found in almost every page. it is as if an evil demon were let loose upon us, and whole nations, from one decad of years to another, were struck with the most pernicious madness. certain reasoners tell us that this is owing to the freedom of will, without which man could not exist. but here we are presented with an alternative, from which it is impossible for human understanding to escape. either god, according to our ideas of benevolence, would remove evil out of the world, and cannot; or he can, and will not. if he has the will and not the power, this argues weakness; if he has the power and not the will, this seems to be malevolence. let us descend from the great stage of the nations, and look into the obscurities of private misery. which of us is happy? what bitter springs of misery overflow the human heart, and are borne by us in silence! what cruel disappointments beset us! to what struggles are we doomed, while we struggle often in vain! the human heart seems framed, as if to be the capacious receptacle of all imaginable sorrows. the human frame seems constructed, as if all its fibres were prepared to sustain varieties of torment. "in the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the earth." but how often does that sweat prove ineffective! there are men of whom sorrow seems to be the destiny, from which they can never escape. there are hearts, into which by their constitution it appears as if serenity and content could never enter, but which are given up to all the furious passions, or are for ever the prey of repining and depression. ah, little think the gay, licentious proud, whom pleasure, power and affluence surround, how many pine in want! how many shrink into the sordid hut, how many drink the cup of grief, and eat the bitter bread of misery! and, which aggravates the evil, almost all the worst vices, the most unprincipled acts, and the darkest passions of the human mind, are bred out of poverty and distress. satan, in the book of job, says to the almighty, "thou hast blessed the work of thy servant, and his substance is increased in the land. but put forth thy hand now, and take away all that he hath; and he will curse thee to thy face." the prayer of agar runs, "feed me with food convenient for me; lest i be poor, and steal, and take the name of my god in vain." it is with a deep knowledge of the scenes of life, that the prophet pronounces, "my thoughts are not your thoughts; neither are your ways my ways, saith the lord." all reflecting persons, who have surveyed the state of the world in which we live, have been struck with the contrarieties of sublunary things; and many hypotheses have been invented to solve the enigma. some have maintained the doctrine of two principles, oromasdes and arimanius, the genius of good and of evil, who are perpetually contending with each other which shall have the greatest sway in the fortunes of the world, and each alternately acquiring the upper hand. others have inculcated the theory of the fall of man, that god at first made all things beautiful and good, but that man has incurred his displeasure, and been turned out of the paradise for which he was destined. hence, they say, has arisen the corruption of our nature. "there is none that cloth good, no, not one. that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become guilty before god." but the solution that has been most generally adopted, particularly in later days, is that of a future state of retribution, in which all the inequalities of our present condition shall be removed, the tears of the unfortunate and the sufferer shall be wiped from their eyes, and their agonies and miseries compensated. this, in other words, independently of the light of revelation, is to infer infinite wisdom and benevolence from what we see, and then, finding the actual phenomena not to correspond with our theories, to invent something of which we have no knowledge, to supply the deficiency. the astronomer however proceeds from what we see of the globe of earth, to fashion other worlds of which we have no direct knowledge. finding that there is no part of the soil of the earth into which our wanderings can penetrate, that is not turned to the account of rational and happy beings, creatures capable of knowing and adoring their creator, that nature does nothing in vain, and that the world is full of the evidences of his unmingled beneficence, according to our narrow and imperfect ideas of beneficence, (for such ought to be our premises) we proceed to construct millions of worlds upon the plan we have imagined. the earth is a globe, the planets are globes, and several of them larger than our earth: the earth has a moon; several of the planets have satellites: the globe we dwell in moves in an orbit round the sun; so do the planets: upon these premises, and no more, we hold ourselves authorised to affirm that they contain "myriads of intelligent beings, formed for endless progression in perfection and felicity." having gone thus far, we next find that the fixed stars bear a certain resemblance to the sun; and, as the sun has a number of planets attendant on him, so, we say, has each of the fixed stars, composing all together "ten thousand times ten thousand" habitable worlds. all this is well, so long as we view it as a bold and ingenious conjecture. on any other subject it would be so regarded; and we should consider it as reserved for the amusement and gratification of a fanciful visionary in the hour, when he gives up the reins to his imagination. but, backed as it is by a complexity of geometrical right lines and curves, and handed forth to us in large quartos, stuffed with calculations, it experiences a very different fortune. we are told that, "by the knowledge we derive from astronomy, our faculties are enlarged, our minds exalted, and our understandings clearly convinced, and affected with the conviction, of the existence, wisdom, power, goodness, immutability and superintendency of the supreme being; so that, without an hyperbole, 'an undevout astronomer is mad(e)( ).'" ( ) ferguson, astronomy, section i. it is singular, how deeply i was impressed with this representation, while i was a schoolboy, and was so led to propose a difficulty to the wife of the master. i said, "i find that we have millions of worlds round us peopled with rational creatures. i know not that we have any decisive reason for supposing these creatures more exalted, than the wonderful species of which we are individuals. we are imperfect; they are imperfect. we fell; it is reasonable to suppose that they have fallen also. it became necessary for the second person in the trinity to take upon him our nature, and by suffering for our sins to appease the wrath of his father. i am unwilling to believe that he has less commiseration for the inhabitants of other planets. but in that case it may be supposed that since the creation he has been making a circuit of the planets, and dying on the cross for the sins of rational creatures in uninterrupted succession." the lady was wiser than i, admonished me of the danger of being over-inquisitive, and said we should act more discreetly in leaving those questions to the judgment of the almighty. but thus far we have reasoned only on one side of the question. our pious sentiments have led us to magnify the lord in all his works, and, however imperfect the analogy, and however obscure the conception we can form of the myriads of rational creatures, all of them no doubt infinitely varied in their nature, their structure and faculties, yet to view the whole scheme with an undoubting persuasion of its truth. it is however somewhat in opposition to the ideas of piety formed by our less adventurous ancestors, that we should usurp the throne of god, snatch from his hand the balance and the rod, and, by means of our telescopes and our calculations, penetrate into mysteries not originally intended for us. according to the received mosaic chronology we are now in the five thousand eight hundred and thirty-fifth year from the creation: the samaritan version adds to this date. it is therefore scarcely in the spirit of a christian, that herschel talks to us of a light, which must have been two millions of years in reaching the earth. moses describes the operations of the almighty, in one of the six days devoted to the work of creation, as being to place "lights in the firmament of heaven, to divide the day from the night, to be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and to give light upon the earth; two great lights, the greater to rule the day, and the lesser the night; and the stars also." and christ, prophesying what is to happen in the latter days, says, "the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven." whatever therefore be the piety of the persons, who talk to us of "ten thousand times ten thousand worlds, all peopled with rational creatures," it certainly is not a piety in precise accordance with the christian scriptures. section iv. it is also no more than just, that we should bear in mind the apparent fitness or otherwise, of these bodies, so far as we are acquainted with them, for the dwelling-place of rational creatures. not to mention the probable extreme coldness of jupiter and saturn, the heat of the sunbeams in the planet mercury is understood to be such as that water would unavoidably boil and be carried away( ), and we can scarcely imagine any living substance that would not be dissolved and dispersed in such an atmosphere. the moon, of which, as being so much nearer to us, we may naturally be supposed to know most, we are told by the astronomers has no water and no atmosphere, or, if any, such an atmosphere as would not sustain clouds and ascending vapour. to our eye, as seen through the telescope, it appears like a metallic substance, which has been burned by fire, and so reduced into the ruined and ragged condition in which we seem to behold it. the sun appears to be still less an appropriate habitation for rational, or for living creatures, than any of the planets. the comets, which describe an orbit so exceedingly eccentric, and are subject to all the excessive vicissitudes of heat and cold, are, we are told, admirably adapted for a scene of eternal, or of lengthened punishment for those who have acquitted themselves ill in a previous state of probation. buffon is of opinion, that all the planets in the solar system were once so many portions of our great luminary, struck off from the sun by the blow of a comet, and so having received a projectile impulse calculated to carry them forward in a right line, at the same time that the power of attraction counteracts this impulse, and gives them that compound principle of motion which retains them in an orbicular course. in this sense it may be said that all the planets were suns; while on the contrary herschel pronounces, that the sun itself is a planet, an opake body, richly stored with inhabitants( ). ( ) encyclopaedia londinensis, vol. ii, p. . ( ) philosophical transactions for , p. . the modern astronomers go on to account to us for the total disappearance of a star in certain cases, which, they say, may be in reality the destruction of a system, such as that of our sun and its attendant planets, while the appearance of a new star may, in like manner, be the occasional creation of a new system of planets. "we ought perhaps," says herschel, "to look upon certain clusters of stars, and the destruction of a star now and then in some thousands of ages, as the very means by which the whole is preserved and renewed. these clusters may be the laboratories of the universe, wherein the most salutary remedies for the decay of the whole are prepared( )." ( ) philosophical transactions for , p. . all this must appear to a sober mind, unbitten by the rage which grows out of the heat of these new discoverers, to be nothing less than astronomy run mad. this occasional creation of new systems and worlds, is in little accordance with the christian scriptures, or, i believe, with any sober speculation upon the attributes of the creator. the astronomer seizes upon some hint so fine as scarcely by any ingenuity to be arrested, immediately launches forth into infinite space, and in an instant returns, and presents us with millions of worlds, each of them peopled with ten thousand times ten thousand inhabitants. we spoke a while since of the apparent unfitness of many of the heavenly bodies for the reception of living inhabitants. but for all this these discoverers have a remedy. they remind us how unlike these inhabitants may be to ourselves, having other organs than ours, and being able to live in a very different temperature. "the great heat in the planet mercury is no argument against its being inhabited; since the almighty could as easily suit the bodies and constitutions of its inhabitants to the heat of their dwelling, as he has done ours to the temperature of our earth. and it is very probable that the people there have such an opinion of us, as we have of the inhabitants of jupiter and saturn; namely, that we must be intolerably cold, and have very little light at so great a distance from the sun." these are the remarks of ferguson( ). one of our latest astronomers expresses himself to the same purpose. ( ) astronomy, section . "we have no argument against the planets being inhabited by rational beings, and consequently by witnesses of the creator's power, magnificence and benevolence, unless it be said that some are much nearer the sun than the earth is, and therefore must be uninhabitable from heat, and those more distant from cold. whatever objection this may be against their being inhabited by rational beings, of an organisation similar to those on the earth, it can have little force, when urged with respect to rational beings in general. "but we may examine without indulging too much in conjecture, whether it be not possible that the planets may be possessed by rational beings, and contain animals and vegetables, even little different from those with which we are familiar. "is the sun the principal cause of the temperature of the earth? we have reason to suppose that it is not. the mean temperature of the earth, at a small depth from the surface, seems constant in summer and in winter, and is probably coeval with its first formation. "at the planet mercury, the direct heat of the sun, or its power of causing heat, is six times greater than with us. if we suppose the mean temperature of mercury to be the same as of the earth, and the planet to be surrounded with an atmosphere, denser than that of the earth, less capable of transmitting heat, or rather the influence of the sun to extricate heat, and at the same time more readily conducting it to keep up an evenness of temperature, may we not suppose the planet mercury fit for the habitation of men, and the production of vegetables similar to our own? "at the georgium sidus, the direct influence of the sun is times less than at the earth, and the sun is there seen at an angle not much greater than that under which we behold venus, when nearest. yet may not the mean temperature of the georgium sidus be nearly the same as that of the earth? may not its atmosphere more easily transmit the influence of the sun, and may not the matter of heat be more copiously combined, and more readily extricated, than with us? whence changes of season similar to our own may take place. even in the comets we may suppose no great change of temperature takes place, as we know of no cause which will deprive them of their mean temperature, and particularly if we suppose, that on their approach towards the sun, there is a provision for their atmosphere becoming denser. the tails they exhibit, when in the neighbourhood of the sun, seem in some measure to countenance this idea. "we can hardly suppose the sun, a body three hundred times larger than all the planets together, was created only to preserve the periodic motions, and give light and heat to the planets. many astronomers have thought that its atmosphere only is luminous, and its body opake, and probably of the same constitution as the planets. allowing therefore that its luminous atmosphere only extricates heat, we see no reason why the sun itself should not be inhabited( )." ( ) brinkley, elements of astronomy, chap. ix. there is certainly no end to the suppositions that may be made by an ingenious astronomer. may we not suppose that we might do nearly as well altogether without the sun, which it appears is at present of little use to us as to warmth and heat? as to light, the great creator might, for aught we know, find a substitute; feelers, for example, endued with a certain acuteness of sense: or, at all events, the least imaginable degree of light might answer every purpose to organs adapted to this kind of twilight. in that way the inhabitants of the georgium sidus are already sufficiently provided for; they appear to have as little benefit of the light as of the heat of the sun. how the satellites of the distant planets are supplied with light is a mystery, since their principals have scarcely any. unless indeed, like the sun, they have a luminous atmosphere, competent to enlighten a whole system, themselves being opake. but in truth light in a greater or less degree seems scarcely worthy of a thought, since the inhabitants of the planet mercury have not their eyes put out by a light, scarcely inferior in radiance to that which is reflected by those plates of burning brass, with which tyrants in some ages were accustomed to extinguish the sense of vision in their unfortunate victims. the comets also must be a delectable residence; that of completing its orbit in years, and being at its greatest distance about eleven thousand two hundred millions of miles from the sun, and at its least within less than a third part of the sun's semi-diameter from its surface( ). they must therefore have delightful vicissitudes of light and the contrary; for, as to heat, that is already provided for. archdeacon brinkley's postulate is, that these bodies are "possessed by rational beings, and contain animals and vegetables, little different from those with which we are familiar." ( ) ferguson, section . now the only reason we have to believe in these extraordinary propositions, is the knowledge we possess of the divine attributes. from the force of this consideration it is argued that god will not leave any sensible area of matter unoccupied, and therefore that it is impossible that such vast orbs as we believe surround us even to the extent of infinite space, should not be "richly stored with rational beings, the capable witnesses of his power, magnificence and benevolence." all difficulties arising from the considerations of light, and heat, and a thousand other obstacles, are to give way to the perfect insight we have as to how the deity will conduct himself in every case that can be proposed. i am not persuaded that this is agreeable to religion; and i am still less convinced that it is compatible with the sobriety and sedateness of common sense. it is with some degree of satisfaction that i perceive lord brougham, the reputed author of the preliminary discourse to the library of useful knowledge, at the same time that he states the dimensions and distances of the heavenly bodies in the usual way, says not a word of their inhabitants. it is somewhat remarkable that, since the commencement of the present century, four new planets have been added to those formerly contained in the enumeration of the solar system. they lie between the planets mars and jupiter, and have been named vesta, juno, ceres and pallas. brinkley speaks of them in this manner. "the very small magnitudes of the new planets ceres and pallas, and their nearly equal distances from the sun, induced dr. olbers, who discovered pallas in , nearly in the same place where he had observed ceres a few months before, to conjecture that they were fragments of a larger planet, which had by some unknown cause been broken to pieces. it follows from the law of gravity, by which the planets are retained in their orbits, that each fragment would again, after every revolution about the sun, pass nearly through the place in which the planet was when the catastrophe happened, and besides the orbit of each fragment would intersect the continuation of the line joining this place and the sun. thence it was easy to ascertain the two particular regions of the heavens through which all these fragments would pass. also, by carefully noting the small stars thereabout, and examining them from time to time, it might be expected that more of the fragments would be discovered.--m. harding discovered the planet juno in one of these regions; and dr. olbers himself also, by carefully examining them (the small stars) from time to time, discovered vesta." these additions certainly afford us a new epoch in the annals of the solar system, and of astronomy itself. it is somewhat remarkable, that herschel, who in the course of his observations traced certain nebulae, the light from which must have been two millions of years in reaching the earth, should never have remarked these planets, which, so to speak, lay at his feet. it reminds one of esop's astrologer, who, to the amusement of his ignorant countrymen, while he was wholly occupied in surveying the heavens, suddenly found himself plunged in a pit. these new planets also we are told are fragments of a larger planet: how came this larger planet never to have been discovered? till herschel's time we were content with six planets and the sun, making up the cabalistical number seven. he added another. but these four new ones entirely derange the scheme. the astronomers have not yet had opportunity to digest them into their places, and form new worlds of them. this is all unpleasant. they are, it seems, "fragments of a larger planet, which had by some unknown cause been broken to pieces." they therefore are probably not inhabited. how does this correspond with the goodness of god, which will suffer no mass of matter in his creation to remain unoccupied? herschel talks at his ease of whole systems, suns with all their attendant planets, being consigned to destruction. but here we have a catastrophe happening before our eyes, and cannot avoid being shocked by it. "god does nothing in vain." for which of his lofty purposes has this planet been broken to pieces, and its fragments left to deform the system of which we are inhabitants; at least to humble the pride of man, and laugh to scorn his presumption? still they perform their revolutions, and obey the projectile and gravitating forces, which have induced us to people ten thousand times ten thousand worlds. it is time, that we should learn modesty, to revere in silence the great cause to which the universe is indebted for its magnificence, its beauty and harmony, and to acknowledge that we do not possess the key that should unlock the mysteries of creation. one of the most important lessons that can be impressed on the human mind, is that of self-knowledge and a just apprehension of what it is that we are competent to achieve. we can do much. we are capable of much knowledge and much virtue. we have patience, perseverance and subtlety. we can put forth considerable energies, and nerve ourselves to resist great obstacles and much suffering. our ingenuity is various and considerable. we can form machines, and erect mighty structures. the invention of man for the ease of human life, and for procuring it a multitude of pleasures and accommodations, is truly astonishing. we can dissect the human frame, and anatomise the mind. we can study the scene of our social existence, and make extraordinary improvements in the administration of justice, and in securing to ourselves that germ of all our noblest virtues, civil and political liberty. we can study the earth, its strata, its soil, its animals, and its productions, "from the cedar that is in lebanon, to the hyssop that springeth out of the wall." but man is not omnipotent. if he aspires to be worthy of honour, it is necessary that he should compute his powers, and what it is they are competent to achieve. the globe of earth, with "all that is therein," is our estate and our empire. let us be content with that which we have. it were a pitiful thing to see so noble a creature struggling in a field, where it is impossible for him to distinguish himself, or to effect any thing real. there is no situation in which any one can appear more little and ludicrous, than when he engages in vain essays, and seeks to accomplish that, which a moment's sober thought would teach him was utterly hopeless. even astronomy is to a certain degree our own. we can measure the course of the sun, and the orbits of the planets. we can calculate eclipses. we can number the stars, assign to them their places, and form them into what we call constellations. but, when we pretend to measure millions of miles in the heavens, and to make ourselves acquainted with the inhabitants of ten thousand times ten thousand worlds and the accommodations which the creator has provided for their comfort and felicity, we probably engage in something more fruitless and idle, than the pigmy who should undertake to bend the bow of ulysses, or strut and perform the office of a warrior clad in the armour of achilles. how beautiful is the "firmament; this majestical roof fretted with golden fire!" let us beware how we mar the magnificent scene with our interpolations and commentaries! simplicity is of the essence of the truly great. let us look at the operations of that mighty power from which we ourselves derive our existence, with humility and reverential awe! it may well become us. let us not "presume into the heaven of heavens," unbidden, unauthorised guests! let us adopt the counsel of the apostle, and allow no man to "spoil us through vain philosophy." the business of human life is serious; the useful investigations in which we may engage are multiplied. it is excellent to see a rational being conscious of his genuine province, and not idly wasting powers adapted for the noblest uses in unmeasured essays and ill-concocted attempts. essay xxii. of the material universe. in the preceding essay i have referred to the theory of berkeley, whose opinion is that there is no such thing as matter in the sense in which it is understood by the writers on natural philosophy, and that the whole of our experience in that respect is the result of a system of accidents without an intelligible subject, by means of which antecedents and consequents flow on for ever in a train, the past succession of which man is able to record, and the future in many cases he is qualified to predict and to act upon. an argument more palpable and popular than that of berkeley in favour of the same hypothesis, might be deduced from the points recapitulated in that essay as delivered by locke and newton. if what are vulgarly denominated the secondary qualities of matter are in reality nothing but sensations existing in the human mind, then at any rate matter is a very different thing from what it is ordinarily apprehended to be. to which i add, in the second place, that, if matter, as is stated by newton, consists in so much greater a degree of pores than solid parts, that the absolute particles contained in the solar system might, for aught we know, he contained in a nutshell( ), and that no two ever touched each other, or approached so near that they might not be brought nearer, provided a sufficient force could be applied for that purpose,--and if, as priestley teaches, all that we observe is the result of successive spheres of attraction and repulsion, the centre of which is a mathematical point only, we then certainly come very near to a conclusion, which should banish matter out of the theatre of real existences( ). ( ) see above, essay xxi. ( ) see above, essay xxi. but the extreme subtleties of human intellect are perhaps of little further use, than to afford an amusement to persons of curious speculation, and whose condition in human society procures them leisure for such enquiries. the same thing happens here, as in the subject of my twelfth essay, on the liberty of human actions. the speculator in his closet is one man: the same person, when he comes out of his retirement, and mixes in intercourse with his fellow-creatures, is another man. the necessarian, when he reasons on the everlasting concatenation of antecedents and consequents, proves to his own apprehension irrefragably, that he is a passive instrument, acted upon, and acting upon other things, in turn, and that he can never disengage himself from the operation of the omnipotent laws of physical nature, and the impulses of other men with whom he is united in the ties of society. but no sooner does this acute and ingenious reasoner come into active life and the intercourse of his fellowmen, than all these fine-drawn speculations vanish from his recollection. he regards himself and other men as beings endowed with a liberty of action, as possessed of a proper initiative power, and free to do a thing or not to do it, without being subject to the absolute and irresistible constraint of motives. it is from this internal and indefeasible sense of liberty, that we draw all our moral energies and enthusiasm, that we persevere heroically in defiance of obstacles and discouragements, that we praise or blame the actions of others, and admire the elevated virtues of the best of our contemporaries, and of those whose achievements adorn the page of history. it is in a manner of precisely the same sort as that which prevails in the philosophical doctrines of liberty and necessity, that we find ourselves impelled to feel on the question of the existence of the material universe. berkeley, and as many persons as are persuaded by his or similar reasonings, feel satisfied in speculation that there is no such thing as matter in the sense in which it is understood by the writers on natural philosophy, and that all our notions of the external and actual existence of the table, the chair, and the other material substances with which we conceive ourselves to be surrounded, of woods, and mountains, and rivers, and seas, are mere prejudice and misconception. all this is very well in the closet, and as long as we are involved in meditation, and remain abstracted from action, business, and the exertion of our limbs and corporal faculties. but it is too fine for the realities of life. berkeley, and the most strenuous and spiritualised of his followers, no sooner descend from the high tower of their speculations, submit to the necessities of their nature, and mix in the business of the world, than they become impelled, as strongly as the necessarian in the question of the liberty of human actions, not only to act like other men, but even to feel just in the same manner as if they had never been acquainted with these abstractions. a table then becomes absolutely a table, and a chair a chair: they are "fed with the same food, hurt by the same weapons, and warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter," as other men: and they make use of the refreshments which nature requires, with as true an orthodoxy, and as credulous a temper, as he who was never assailed with such refinements. nature is too strong, to be prevailed on to retire, and give way to the authority of definitions and syllogistical deduction. but, when we have granted all this, it is however a mistake to say, that these "subtleties of human intellect are of little further use, than to afford an amusement to persons of curious speculation( )." we have seen, in the case of the doctrine of philosophical necessity( ), that, though it can never form a rule for the intercourse between man and man, it may nevertheless be turned to no mean advantage. it is calculated to inspire us with temperance and toleration. it tends impressively to evince to us, that this scene of things is but like the shadows which pass before us in a magic lanthorn, and that, after all, men are but the tools, not the masters, of their fate. it corrects the illusions of life, much after the same manner as the spectator of a puppet-shew is enlightened, who should be taken within the curtain, and shewn how the wires are pulled by the master, which produce all the turmoil and strife that before riveted our attention. it is good for him who would arrive at all the improvement of which our nature is capable, at one time to take his place among the literal beholders of the drama, and at another to go behind the scenes, and remark the deceptions in their original elements, and the actors in their proper and natural costume. ( ) see above, essay xxii. ( ) see above, essay xii. and, as in the question of the liberty of human actions, so in that of the reality of the material universe, it is a privilege not to be despised, that we are so formed as to be able to dissect the subject that is submitted to our examination, and to strip the elements of which this sublunary scene is composed, of the disguise in which they present themselves to the vulgar spectator. it is little, after all, that we are capable to know; and the man of heroic mind and generous enterprise, will not refuse the discoveries that are placed within his reach. the subtleties of grammar are as the porch, which leads from the knowledge of words to the knowledge of things. the subtleties of mathematics defecate the grossness of our apprehension, and supply the elements of a sounder and severer logic. and in the same manner the faculty which removes the illusions of external appearance, and enables us to "look into the seeds of time," is one which we are bound to estimate at its genuine value. the more we refine our faculties, other things equal, the wiser we grow: we are the more raised above the thickness of the atmosphere that envelops our fellow-mortals, and are made partakers of a nature superhuman and divine. there is a curious question that has risen out of this proposition of berkeley, of the supposed illusion we suffer in our conceptions of the material universe. it has been said, "well then, i am satisfied that the chairs, the tables, and the other material substances with which i conceive myself to be surrounded, are not what they appear to be, but are merely an eternal chain of antecedents and consequents, going on according to what leibnitz calls a 'preestablished harmony,' and thus furnishing the ground of the speculations which mortals cherish, and the motives of their proceeding. but, if thus, in the ordinary process of human affairs, we believe in matter, when in reality there is no such thing as matter, how shall we pronounce of mind, and the things which happen to us in our seeming intercourse with our fellow-men, and in the complexities of love and hatred, of kindred and friendship, of benevolence and misanthropy, of robbery and murder, and of the wholesale massacre of thousands of human beings which are recorded in the page of history? we absolutely know nothing of the lives and actions of others but through the medium of material impulse. and, if you take away matter, the bodies of our fellow-men, does it not follow by irresistible consequence that all knowledge of their minds is taken away also? am not i therefore (the person engaged in reading the present essay) the only being in existence, an entire universe to myself?" certainly this is a very different conclusion from any that berkeley ever contemplated. in the very title of the treatise in which his notions on this subject are unfolded, he professes his purpose to be to remove "the grounds of scepticism, atheism and irreligion." berkeley was a sincere christian, and a man of the most ingenuous dispositions. pope, in the epilogue to his satires, does not hesitate to ascribe to him "every virtue under heaven." he was for twenty years a prelate of the protestant church. and, though his personal sentiments were in the highest degree philanthropical and amiable, yet, in his most diffusive production, entitled the minute philosopher, he treats "those who are called free thinkers" with a scorn and disdain, scarcely to be reconciled with the spirit of christian meekness. there are examples however, especially in the fields of controversy, where an adventurous speculatist has been known to lay down premises and principles, from which inferences might be fairly deduced, incompatible with the opinions entertained by him who delivered them. it may therefore be no unprofitable research to enquire how far the creed of the non-existence of matter is to be regarded as in truth and reality countenancing the inference which has just been recited. the persons then, who refine with berkeley upon the system of things so far, as to deny that there is any such thing as matter in the sense in which it is understood by the writers on natural philosophy, proceed on the ground of affirming that we have no reason to believe that the causes of our sensations have an express resemblance to the sensations themselves( ). that which gives us a sensation of colour is not itself coloured: and the same may be affirmed of the sensations of hot and cold, of sweet and bitter, and of odours offensive or otherwise. the immaterialist proceeds to say, that what we call matter has been strewn to be so exceedingly porous, that, for any thing we know, all the solid particles in the universe might be contained in a nutshell, that there is no such thing in the external world as actual contact, and that no two particles of matter were ever so near to each other, but that they might be brought nearer, if a sufficient force could be applied for that purpose. from these premises it seems to follow with sufficient evidence, that the causes of our sensations, so far as the material universe is concerned, bear no express resemblance to the sensations themselves. ( ) see above, essay xxi. how then does the question stand with relation to mind? are those persons who deny the existence of matter, reduced, if they would be consistent in their reasonings, to deny, each man for himself, that he has any proper evidence of the existence of other minds than his own? he denies, while he has the sensation of colour, that there exists colour out of himself, unless in thinking and percipient beings constituted in a manner similar to that in which he is constituted. and the same of the sensations of hot and cold, sweet and bitter, and odours offensive or otherwise. he affirms, while he has the sensation of length, breadth and thickness, that there is no continuous substance out of himself, possessing the attributes of length, breadth and thickness in any way similar to the sensation of which he is conscious. he professes therefore that he has no evidence, arising from his observation of what we call matter, of the actual existence of a material world. he looks into himself, and all he finds is sensation; but sensation cannot be a property of inert matter. there is therefore no assignable analogy between the causes of his sensations, whatever they may be, and the sensations themselves; and the material world, such as we apprehend it, is the mere creature of his own mind. let us next consider how this question stands as to the conceptions he entertains respecting the minds of other men. that which gives him the sensation of colour, is not any thing coloured out of himself; and that which gives him the sensation of length, breadth and thickness, is not any thing long, broad and thick in a manner corresponding with the impression he receives. there is nothing in the nature of a parallel, a type and its archetype, between that which is without him and that which is within, the impresser and the impression. this is the point supposed to be established by locke and newton, and by those who have followed the reasonings of these philosophers into their remotest consequences. but the case is far otherwise in the impressions we receive respecting the minds of other men. in colour it has been proved by these authors that there is no express correspondence and analogy between the cause of the sensation and the sensation. they are not part and counterpart. but in mind there is a precise resemblance and analogy between the conceptions we are led to entertain respecting other men, and what we know of ourselves. i and my associate, or fellow-man, are like two instruments of music constructed upon the same model. we have each of us, so to speak, the three great divisions of sound, base, tenor and treble. we have each the same number of keys, capable of being struck, consecutively or with alternations, at the will of the master. we can utter the same sound or series of sounds, or sounds of a different character, but which respond to each other. my neighbour therefore being of the same nature as myself, what passes within me may be regarded as amounting to a commanding evidence that he is a real being, having a proper and independent existence. there is further something still more impressive and irresistible in the notices i receive respecting the minds of other men. the sceptics whose reasonings i am here taking into consideration, admit, each man for himself, the reality of his own existence. there is such a thing therefore as human nature; for he is a specimen of it. now the idea of human nature, or of man, is a very complex thing. he is in the first place the subject of sensible impressions, however these impressions are communicated to him. he has the faculties of thinking and feeling. he is subject to the law of the association of ideas, or, in other words, any one idea existing in his mind has a tendency to call up the ideas of other things which have been connected with it in his first experience. he has, be it delusive or otherwise, the sense of liberty of action. but we will go still further into detail as to the nature of man. our lives are carried forward by the intervention of what we call meat, drink and sleep. we are liable to the accidents of health and sickness. we are alternately the recipients of joy and sorrow, of cheerfulness and melancholy. our passions are excited by similar means, whether of love or hatred, complacency or indignation, sympathy or resentment. i could fill many pages with a description of the properties or accidents, which belong to man as such, or to which he is liable. now with all these each man is acquainted in the sphere of his inward experience, whether he is a single being standing by himself, or is an individual belonging to a numerous species. observe then the difference between my acquaintance with the phenomena of the material universe, and with the individuals of my own species. the former say nothing to me; they are a series of events and no more; i cannot penetrate into their causes; that which gives rise to my sensations, may or may not be similar to the sensations themselves. the follower of berkeley or newton has satisfied himself in the negative. but the case is very different in my intercourse with my fellow-men. agreeably to the statement already made i know the reality of human nature; for i feel the particulars that constitute it within myself. the impressions i receive from that intercourse say something to me; for they talk to me of beings like myself. my own existence becomes multiplied in infinitum. of the possibility of matter i know nothing; but with the possibility of mind i am acquainted; for i am myself an example. i am amazed at the consistency and systematic succession of the phenomena of the material universe; though i cannot penetrate the veil which presents itself to my grosser sense, nor see effects in their causes. but i can see, in other words, i have the most cogent reasons to believe in, the causes of the phenomena that occur in my apparent intercourse with my fellow-men. what solution so natural, as that they are produced by beings like myself, the duplicates, with certain variations, of what i feel within me? the belief in the reality of matter explains nothing. supposing it to exist, if newton is right, no particle of extraneous matter ever touched the matter of my body; and therefore it is not just to regard it as the cause of my sensations. it would amount to no more than two systems going on at the same time by a preestablished harmony, but totally independent of and disjointed from each other. but the belief in the existence of our fellow-men explains much. it makes level before us the wonder of the method of their proceedings, and affords an obvious reason why they should be in so many respects like our own. if i dismiss from my creed the existence of inert matter, i lose nothing. the phenomena, the train of antecedents and consequents, remain as before; and this is all that i am truly concerned with. but take away the existence of my fellow-men; and you reduce all that is, and all that i experience, to a senseless mummery. "you take my life, taking the thing whereon i live." human nature, and the nature of mind, are to us a theme of endless investigation. "the proper study of mankind is man." all the subtlety of metaphysics, or (if there be men captious and prejudiced enough to dislike that term) the science of ourselves, depends upon it. the science of morals hangs upon the actions of men, and the effects they produce upon our brother-men, in a narrower or a wider circle. the endless, and inexpressibly interesting, roll of history relies for its meaning and its spirit upon the reality and substance of the subjects of which it treats. poetry, and all the wonders and endless varieties that imagination creates, have this for their solution and their soul. sympathy is the only reality of which we are susceptible; it is our heart of hearts: and, if the world had been "one entire and perfect chrysolite," without this it would have been no more than one heap of rubbish. observe the difference between what we know of the material world, and what of the intellectual. the material goes on for ever according to certain laws that admit of no discrimination. they proceed upon a first principle, an impulse given them from the beginning of things. their effects are regulated by something that we call their nature: fire burns; water suffocates; the substances around us that we call solid, depend for their effects, when put in motion, upon momentum and gravity. the principle that regulates the dead universe, "acts by general, not by partial laws." when the loose mountain trembles from on high, shall gravitation cease, if you go by? no: the chain of antecedents and consequents proceeds in this respect for ever the same. the laws of what we call the material world continue unvaried. and, when the vast system of things was first set in motion, every thing, so far as depends on inert matter, was determined to the minutest particle, even to the end of time. the material world, or that train of antecedents and consequents which we understand by that term, goes on for ever in a train agreeably to the impulse previously given. it is deaf and inexorable. it is unmoved by the consideration of any accidents and miseries that may result, and unalterable. but man is a source of events of a very different nature. he looks to results, and is governed by views growing out of the contemplation of them. he acts in a way diametrically opposite to the action of inert matter, and "turns, and turns, and turns again," at the impulse of the thought that strikes him, the appetite that prompts, the passions that move, and the effects that he anticipates. it is therefore in a high degree unreasonable, to make that train of inferences which may satisfy us on the subject of material phenomena, a standard of what we ought to think respecting the phenomena of mind. it is further worthy of our notice to recollect, that the same reasonings which apply to our brethren of mankind, apply also to the brute creation. they, like ourselves, act from motives; that is, the elections they form are adopted by them for the sake of certain consequences they expect to see result from them. whatever becomes therefore of the phenomena of what we call dead matter, we are here presented with tribes of being, susceptible of pleasure and pain, of hope and fear, of regard and resentment. how beautifully does this conviction vary the scene of things! what a source to us is the animal creation, of amusement, of curious observations upon the impulses of inferior intellect, of the exhaustless varieties of what we call instinct, of the care we can exercise for their accommodation and welfare, and of the attachment and affection we win from them in return! if i travel alone through pathless deserts, if i journey from the rising to the setting sun, with no object around me but nature's desolation, or the sublime, the magnificent and the exuberant scenery she occasionally presents, still i have that noble animal, the horse, and my faithful dog, the companions of my toil, and with whom, when my solitude would otherwise become insufferable, i can hold communion, and engage in dumb dialogues of sentiment and affection. i have heard of a man, who, talking to his friend on the subject of these speculations, said, "what then, are you so poor and pusillanimous a creature, that you could not preserve your serenity, be perfectly composed and content, and hold on your way unvaried, though you were convinced that you were the only real being in existence, and all the rest were mere phantasies and shadows?" if i had been the person to whom this speech was addressed, i should have frankly acknowledged, "i am the poor and pusillanimous creature you are disposed to regard with so much scorn." to adopt the sententious language of the bible, "it is not good for man to be alone." all our faculties and attributes bear relation to, and talk to us of, other beings like ourselves. we might indeed eat, drink and sleep, that is, submit to those necessities which we so denominate, without thinking of any thing beyond ourselves; for these are the demands of our nature, and we know that we cannot subsist without them. we might make use of the alternate conditions of exercise and repose. but the life of our lives would be gone. as far as we bore in mind the creed we had adopted, of our single existence, we could neither love nor hate. sympathy would be a solemn mockery. we could not communicate; for the being to whom our communication was addressed we were satisfied was a non-entity. we could not anticipate the pleasure or pain, the joy or sorrow, of another; for that other had no existence. we should be in a worse condition than robinson crusoe in the desolate island; for he believed in the existence of other men, and hoped and trusted that he should one day again enter into human society. we should be in a worse condition than robinson crusoe; for he at least was unannoyed in his solitude; while we are perpetually and per force intruded on, like a delirious man, by visions which we know to be unreal, but which we are denied the power to deliver ourselves from. we have no motive to any of the great and cardinal functions of human life; for there is no one in being, that we can benefit, or that we can affect. study is nothing to us; for we have no use for it. even science is unsatisfactory; unless we can communicate it by word or writing, can converse upon it, and compare notes with our neighbour. history is nothing; for there were no greeks and no romans; no freemen and no slaves; no kings and no subjects; no despots, nor victims of their tyranny; no republics, nor states immerged in brutal and ignominious servitude. life must be inevitably a burthen to us, a dreary, unvaried, motiveless existence; and death must be welcomed, as the most desirable blessing that can visit us. it is impossible indeed that we should always recollect this our, by supposition, real situation; but, as often as we did, it would come over us like a blight, withering all the prospects of our industry, or like a scirocco, unbracing the nerves of our frame, and consigning us to the most pitiable depression. thus far i have allowed myself to follow the refinements of those who profess to deny the existence of the material universe. but it is satisfactory to come back to that persuasion, which, from whatever cause it is derived, is incorporated with our very existence, and can never be shaken off by us. our senses are too powerful in their operation, for it to be possible for us to discard them, and to take as their substitute, in active life, and in the earnestness of pursuit, the deductions of our logical faculty, however well knit and irresistible we may apprehend them to be. speculation and common sense are at war on this point; and however we may "think with the learned," and follow the abstrusenesses of the philosopher, in the sequestered hour of our meditation, we must always act, and even feel, "with the vulgar," when we come abroad into the world. it is however no small gratification to the man of sober mind, that, from what has here been alleged, it seems to follow, that untutored mind, and the severest deductions of philosophy, agree in that most interesting of our concerns, our intercourse with our fellow-creatures. the inexorable reasoner, refining on the reports of sense, may dispose, as he pleases, of the chair, the table, and the so called material substances around him. he may include the whole solid matter of the universe in a nutshell, or less than a nutshell. but he cannot deprive me of that greatest of all consolations, the sustaining pillar of my existence, "the cordial drop heaven in our cup has thrown,"--the intercourse of my fellow-creatures. when we read history, the subjects of which we read are realities; they do not "come like shadows, so depart;" they loved and acted in sober earnest; they sometimes perpetrated crimes; but they sometimes also achieved illustrious deeds, which angels might look down from their exalted abodes and admire. we are not deluded with mockeries. the woman i love, and the man to whom i swear eternal friendship, are as much realities as myself. if i relieve the poor, and assist the progress of genius and virtuous designs struggling with fearful discouragements, i do something upon the success of which i may safely congratulate myself. if i devote my energies to enlighten my fellow-creatures, to detect the weak places in our social institutions, to plead the cause of liberty, and to invite others to engage in noble actions and unite in effecting the most solid and unquestionable improvements, i erect to my name an eternal monument; or i do something better than this,--secure inestimable advantage to the latest posterity, the benefit of which they shall enjoy, long after the very name of the author shall, with a thousand other things great and small, have been swallowed up in the gulph of insatiable oblivion. essay xxiii. of human virtue. the epilogue. the life of man is divided into many stages; and we shall not form a just estimate of our common nature, if we do not to a certain degree pass its successive periods in review, and observe it in its commencement, its progress, and its maturity. it has been attempted to be established in an early part of the present volume( ), that all men, idiots and extraordinary cases being put out of the question, are endowed with talents, which, if rightly directed, would shew them to be apt, adroit, intelligent and acute, in the walk for which their organisation especially fitted them. we are bound therefore, particularly in the morning of life, to consider every thing that presents itself to us in the human form, with deference and attention. ( ) see above, essay iii. "god," saith the preacher, "made man upright; but he hath sought out many inventions." there is something loose and difficult of exposition in this statement; but we shall find an important truth hid beneath its obscurity. junius brutus, in the play, says to his son, i like thy frame: the fingers of the gods i see have left their mastery upon thee; and the majestic prints distinct appear. such is the true description of every well-formed and healthful infant that is born into the world. he is placed on the threshold of existence; and an eventful journey is open before him. for the first four or five years of life indeed he has little apprehension of the scenes that await him. but a child of quick apprehension early begins to have day-dreams, and to form imaginations of the various chances that may occur to him, and the things he shall have to do, when, according to the language of the story-books, he "goes out to seek his fortune." "god made man upright." every child that is born, has within him a concealed magazine of excellence. his heart beats for every thing that is lovely and good; and whatever is set before him of that sort in honest colours, rouses his emulation. by how many tokens does he prove himself worthy of our approbation and love--the unaffected and ingenuous sobriety with which he listens to what addresses itself to his attention, the sweetness of his smile, his hearty laugh, the clear, bell tones of his voice, his sudden and assured impulses, and his bounding step! to his own heart he promises well of himself. like lear in the play, he says, "i will do such things!--what they are, yet i know not." but he is assured, frank and light-spirited. he thinks of no disguise. he "wears his heart upon his sleeve." he looks in the face of his seniors with the glistening eye of confidence, and expects to encounter sympathy and encouragement in return. such is man, as he comes from the hands of his maker. thus prepared, he is turned into the great field of society. here he meets with much that he had not anticipated, and with many rebuffs. he is taught that he must accommodate his temper and proceedings to the expectations and prejudices of those around him. he must be careful to give no offence. with how many lessons, not always the most salutary and ingenuous, is this maxim pregnant! it calls on the neophyte to bear a wary eye, and to watch the first indications of disapprobation and displeasure in those among whom his lot is cast. it teaches him to suppress the genuine emotions of his soul. it informs him that he is not always to yield to his own impulses, but that he must "stretch forth his hands to another, and be carried whither he would not." it recommends to him falseness, and to be the thing in outward appearance that he is not in his heart. still however he goes on. he shuts up his thoughts in his bosom; but they are not exterminated. on the contrary he broods over them with genial warmth; and the less they are exposed to the eye of day, the more perseveringly are they cherished. perhaps he chooses some youthful confident of his imaginings: and the effect of this is, that he pours out his soul with uncontrolable copiousness, and with the fervour of a new and unchecked conceiving. it is received with answering warmth; or, if there is any deficiency in the sympathy of his companion, his mind is so earnest and full, that he does not perceive it. by and by, it may be, he finds that the discovery he had made of a friend, a brother of his soul, is, like so many of the visions of this world, hollow and fallacious. he grasped, as he thought, a jewel of the first water; and it turns out to be a vulgar pebble. no matter: he has gained something by the communication. he has heard from his own lips the imaginings of his mind shaped into articulate air; they grew more definite and distinct as he uttered them; they came by the very act to have more of reality, to be more tangible. he shakes off the ill-assorted companion that only encumbered him, and springs away in his race, more light of heart, and with a step more assured, than ever. by and by he becomes a young man. and, whatever checks he may have received before, it usually happens that all his hopes and projects return to him now with recruited strength. he has no longer a master. he no longer crouches to the yoke of subjection, and is directed this way and that at the judgment of another. liberty is at all times dear to the free-soured and ingenuous; but never so much so, as when we wear it in its full gloss and newness. he never felt before, that he was sui juris, that he might go whithersoever he would, without asking leave, without consulting any other director than the law of his own mind. it is nearly at the same season that he arrives at the period of puberty, at the stature, and in a certain degree at the strength, which he is destined to attain. he is by general consent admitted to be at years of discretion. though i have put all these things together, they do not, in the course of nature, all come at the same time. it is a memorable period, when the ingenuous youth is transferred from the trammels of the schoolmaster to the residence of a college. it was at the age of seventeen that, according to the custom of rome, the youthful citizen put on the manly gown, and was introduced into the forum. even in college-life, there is a difference in the privileges of the mere freshman, and of the youth who has already completed the first half of his period in the university. the season of what may be denominated the independence of the individual, is certainly in no small degree critical. a human being, suddenly emancipated from a state of subjection, if we may not call it slavery, and transported into a state of freedom, must be expected to be guilty of some extravagancies and follies. but upon the whole, with a small number of exceptions, it is creditable to human nature, that we take this period of our new powers and immunities with so much sobriety as we do. the young man then, calls to mind all that he imagined at an earlier season, and that he promised himself. he adds to this the new lights that he has since obtained, and the nearer and more distinct view that he has reached, of the realities of life. he recollects the long noviciate that he served to reach this period, the twenty years that he passed in ardent and palpitating expectation; and he resolves to do something worthy of all he had vowed and had imagined. he takes a full survey of his stores and endowments; and to the latter, from his enthusiasm and his self-love, he is morally sure to do justice. he says to himself, "what i purpose to do will not be achieved to-day. no; it shall be copious, and worthy of men's suffrage and approbation. but i will meditate it; i will sketch a grand outline; i will essay my powers in secret, and ascertain what i may be able to effect." the youth, whose morning of life is not utterly abortive, palpitates with the desire to promote the happiness of others, and with the desire of glory. we have an apt specimen of this in the first period of the reign of nero. the historians, tacitus in particular, have treated this with too much incredulity. it was the passion of that eminent man to indulge in subtleties, and to find hidden meanings in cases where in reality every thing is plain. we must not regard the panegyric of seneca, and the devotion of lucan to the imperial stripling, as unworthy of our attention. he was declared emperor before he had completed the eighteenth year of his age. no occasion for the exhibition of liberality, clemency, courtesy or kindness escaped him. he called every one by his name, and saluted all orders of men. when the senate shewed a disposition to confer on him peculiar honours, he interposed, he said, "let them be bestowed when i have deserved them( )." seneca affirms, that in the first part of his reign, and to the time in which the philosopher dedicated to him his treatise of clemency, he had "shed no drop of blood( )." he adds, "if the gods were this day to call thee to a hearing, thou couldst account to them for every man that had been intrusted to thy rule. not an individual has been lost from the number, either by secret practices, or by open violence. this could scarcely have been, if thy good dispositions had not been natural, but assumed. no one can long personate a character. a pretended goodness will speedily give place to the real temper; while a sincere mind, and acts prompted by the heart, will not fail to go on from one stage of excellence to another( )." ( ) suetonius, nero, cap. . ( ) de clementia, lib. i, cap. ii. ( ) de clementia, cap. i. the philosopher expresses himself in raptures on that celebrated phrase of nero, would i had never learned to write! "an exclamation," he says, "not studied, not uttered for the purpose of courting popularity, but bursting insuppressibly from thy lips, and indicating the vehemence of the struggle between the kindness of thy disposition and the duties of thy office( )." ( ) ibid., lib. ii, cap. i. how many generous purposes, what bright and heart-thrilling visions of beneficence and honour, does the young man, just starting in the race of life, conceive! there is no one in that period of existence, who has received a reasonable education, and has not in his very nonage been trod down in the mire of poverty and oppression, that does not say to himself, "now is the time; and i will do something worthy to be remembered by myself and by others." youth is the season of generosity. he calls over the catalogue of his endowments, his attainments, and his powers, and exclaims, "to that which i am, my contemporaries are welcome; it shall all be expended for their service and advantage." with what disdain he looks at the temptations of selfishness, effeminate indulgence, and sordid gain! he feels within himself that he was born for better things. his elders, and those who have already been tamed down and emasculated by the corrupt commerce of the world, tell him, "all this is the rhapsody of youth, fostered by inexperience; you will soon learn to know better; in no long time you will see these things in the same light in which we see them." but he despises the sinister prognostic that is held out to him, and feels proudly conscious that the sentiments that now live in his bosom, will continue to animate him to his latest breath. youth is necessarily ingenuous in its thoughts, and sanguine in its anticipations of the future. but the predictions of the seniors i have quoted, are unfortunately in too many cases fulfilled. the outline of the scheme of civil society is in a high degree hostile to the growth and maturity of human virtue. its unavoidable operation, except in those rare cases where positive institutions have arrested its tendency, has been to divide a great portion of its members, especially in large and powerful states, into those who are plentifully supplied with the means of luxury and indulgence, and those who are condemned to suffer the rigours of indigence. the young man who is born to the prospect of hereditary wealth, will not unfrequently feel as generous emotions, and as much of the spirit of self-denial, as the bosom of man is capable of conceiving. he will say, what am i, that i should have a monopoly of those things, which, if "well dispensed, in unsuperfluous, even proportion," would supply the wants of all? he is ready, agreeably to the advice of christ to the young man in the gospel, to "sell all that he has, and give to the poor," if he could be shewn how so generous a resolution on his part could be encountered with an extensive conspiracy of the well-disposed, and rendered available to the real melioration of the state of man in society. who is there so ignorant, or that has lived in so barren and unconceiving a tract of the soil of earth, that has not his tale to tell of the sublime emotions and the generous purposes he has witnessed, which so often mark this beautiful era of our sublunary existence? but this is in the dawn of life, and the first innocence of the human heart. when once the young man of "great possessions" has entered the gardens of alcina, when he has drunk of the cup of her enchantments, and seen all the delusive honour and consideration that, in the corruptness of modern times, are the lot of him who is the owner of considerable wealth, the dreams of sublime virtue are too apt to fade away. he was willing before, to be nourished with the simplest diet, and clad with the plainest attire. he knew that he was but a man like the rest of his species, and was in equity entitled to no more than they. but he presently learns a very different lesson. he believes that he cannot live without splendour and luxury; he regards a noble mansion, elegant vesture, horses, equipage, and an ample establishment, as things without which he must be hopelessly miserable. that income, which he once thought, if divided, would have secured the happiness and independence of many, he now finds scarcely sufficient to supply his increased and artificial cravings. but, if the rich are seduced and led away from the inspirations of virtue, it may easily be conceived how much more injurious, and beyond the power of control, are the effects on the poor. the mysterious source from which the talents of men are derived, cannot be supposed in their distribution to be regulated by the artificial laws of society, and to have one measure for those which are bestowed upon the opulent, and another for the destitute. it will therefore not seldom happen that powers susceptible of the noblest uses may be cast, like "seed sown upon stony places," where they have scarcely any chance to be unfolded and matured. in a few instances they may attract the attention of persons both able and willing to contribute to their being brought to perfection. in a few instances the principle may be so vigorous, and the tendency to excel so decisive, as to bid defiance to and to conquer every obstacle. but in a vast majority the promise will be made vain, and the hopes that might have been entertained will prove frustrate. what can be expected from the buds of the most auspicious infancy, if encountered in their earliest stage with the rigorous blasts of a polar climate? and not only will the germs of excellence be likely to be extinguished in the members of the lower class of the community, but the temptations to irregular acts and incroachments upon the laws for the security of property will often be so great, as to be in a manner irresistible. the man who perceives that, with all his industry, he cannot provide for the bare subsistence of himself and those dependent upon him, while his neighbour revels in boundless profusion, cannot but sometimes feel himself goaded to an attempt to correct this crying evil. what must be expected to become of that general good-will which is the natural inheritance of a well-constituted mind, when urged by so bitter oppression and such unendurable sufferings? the whole temper of the human heart must be spoiled, and the wine of life acquire a quality acrimonious and malignant. but it is not only in the extreme classes of society that the glaring inequality with which property is shared produces its injurious effects. all those who are born in the intermediate ranks are urged with a distempered ambition, unfavourable to independence of temper, and to true philanthropy. each man aspires to the improvement of his circumstances, and the mounting, by one step and another, higher in the scale of the community. the contemplations of the mind are turned towards selfishness. in opulent communities we are presented with the genuine theatre for courts and kings. and, wherever there are courts, duplicity, lying, hypocrisy and cringing dwell as in their proper field. next come trades and professions, with all the ignoble contemplations, the resolved smoothness, servility and falshood, by which they are enabled to gain a prosperous and triumphant career. it is by such means, that man, whom "god made upright," is led away into a thousand devious paths, and, long before the closing scene of his life, is rendered something the very reverse of what in the dawning of existence he promised to be. he is like hazael in the jewish history, who, when the prophet set before him the crying enormities he should hereafter perpetrate, exclaimed, "is thy servant a dog," that he should degrade himself so vilely? he feels the purity of his purposes; but is goaded by one excitement and exasperation after another, till he becomes debased, worthless and criminal. this is strikingly illustrated in the story of dr. johnson and the celebrated windham, who, when he was setting out as secretary to the lord lieutenant of ireland, expressed to his aged monitor, some doubts whether he could ever reconcile himself to certain indirect proceedings which he was afraid would be expected of him: to which the veteran replied, "oh, sir, be under no alarm; in a short time, depend upon it, you will make a very pretty rascal( )." ( ) the phrase here used by johnson is marked with the licentiousness we sometimes indulge in familiar conversation. translate it into a general maxim; and it contains much melancholy truth. it is true also, that there are few individuals, who, in the urgent realities of life, have not occasionally descended from the heights of theoretical excellence. it is but just however to observe in the case of windham, that, though he was a man of many errors, he was not the less characterised by high honour and eminent virtue. such are the "inventions of man," or rather such is the operation of those institutions which ordinarily prevail in society. still, however, much honour ought to be rendered to our common nature, since all of us are not led away by the potent spells of the enchantress. if the vulgar crew of the vessel of ulysses were by circe changed into brutes, so was not their commander. the human species is divided into two classes, the successfully tempted, and the tempted in vain. and, though the latter must be admitted to be a small minority, yet they ought to be regarded as the "salt of the earth," which preserves the entire mass from putridity and dishonour. they are like the remnant, which, if they had been to be found in the cities of the asphaltic lake, the god of abraham pronounced as worthy to redeem the whole community. they are like the two witnesses amidst the general apostasy, spoken of in the book of revelations, who were the harbingers and forerunners of the millenium, the reign of universal virtue and peace. their excellence only appears with the greater lustre amidst the general defection. nothing can be more unjust than the spirit of general levelling and satire, which so customarily prevails. history records, if you will, the vices and follies of mankind. but does it record nothing else? are the virtues of the best men, the noblest philosophers, and the most disinterested patriots of antiquity, nothing? it is impossible for two things to be more unlike than the general profligacy of the reigns of charles the second and louis the fifteenth on the one hand, and the austere virtues and the extinction of all private considerations in the general happiness and honour, which constitute the spirit of the best pages of ancient history, and which exalt and transfix the spirit of every ingenuous and high-souled reader, on the other. let us then pay to human virtue the honour that is so justly its due! imagination is indeed a marvellous power; but imagination never equalled history, the achievements which man has actually performed. it is in vain that the man of contemplation sits down in his closet; it is in vain that the poet yields the reins to enthusiasm and fancy: there is something in the realities of life, that excites the mind infinitely more, than is in the power of the most exalted reverie. the true hero cannot, like the poet, or the delineator of fictitious adventures, put off what he has to do till to-morrow. the occasion calls, and he must obey. he sees the obstacles, and the adversary he has to encounter, before him. he sees the individuals, for whose dear sake he resolves to expose himself to every hazard and every evil. the very circumstance, that he is called on to act in the face of the public, animates him. it is thus that resolution is produced, that martyrdom is voluntarily encountered, and that the deeds of genuine, pure and undeniable heroism are performed. let then no man, in the supercilious spirit of a fancied disdain, allow himself to detract from our common nature. we are ourselves the models of all the excellence that the human mind can conceive. there have been men, whose virtues may well redeem all the contempt with which satire and detraction have sought to overwhelm our species. there have been memorable periods in the history of man, when the best, the most generous and exalted sentiments have swallowed up and obliterated all that was of an opposite character. and it is but just, that those by whom these things are fairly considered, should anticipate the progress of our nature, and believe that human understanding and human virtue will hereafter accomplish such things as the heart of man has never yet been daring enough to conceive. the descent of man and selection in relation to sex works by charles darwin, f.r.s. life and letters of charles darwin. with an autobiographical chapter. edited by francis darwin. portraits. volumes s. popular edition. condensed in volume s d. naturalist's journal of researches into the natural history and geology of countries visited during a voyage round the world. with illustrations by pritchett. s. popular edition. woodcuts. s d. cheaper edition, s. d. net. origin of species by means of natural selection; or, the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. large type edition, volumes s. popular edition, s. cheaper edition with portrait, s. d. various contrivances by which orchids are fertilized by insects. woodcuts. s. d. variation of animals and plants under domestication. illustrations. s. descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. illustrations. large type edition, volumes s. popular edition, s d. cheaper edition, s. d. net. expression of the emotions in man and animals. illustrations. s. insectivorous plants. illustrations. s. movements and habits of climbing plants. woodcuts. s. cross and self-fertilization in the vegetable kingdom. illustrations. s. different forms of flowers on plants of the same species. illustrations. s. d. formation of vegetable mould through the action of worms. woodcuts. s. the above works are published by john murray. structure and distribution of coral reefs. smith, elder, & co. geological observations on volcanic islands and parts of south america. smith, elder, & co. monograph of the cirripedia. illustrations. volumes. vo. ray society. monograph of the fossil lepadidae, or pedunculated cirripedes of great britain. palaeontographical society. monograph of the fossil balanidae and verrucidae of great britain. palaeontographical society. the descent of man and selection in relation to sex by charles darwin, m.a., f.r.s. uniform with this volume the origin of species, by means of natural selection; or, the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. popular edition, with a photogravure portrait. large crown vo. s. d. net. a naturalist's voyage. journal of researches into the natural history and geology of the countries visited during the voyage of h.m.s. "beagle" round the world, under the command of capt. fitz roy, r.n. popular edition, with many illustrations. large crown vo. s. d. net. preface to the second edition. during the successive reprints of the first edition of this work, published in , i was able to introduce several important corrections; and now that more time has elapsed, i have endeavoured to profit by the fiery ordeal through which the book has passed, and have taken advantage of all the criticisms which seem to me sound. i am also greatly indebted to a large number of correspondents for the communication of a surprising number of new facts and remarks. these have been so numerous, that i have been able to use only the more important ones; and of these, as well as of the more important corrections, i will append a list. some new illustrations have been introduced, and four of the old drawings have been replaced by better ones, done from life by mr. t.w. wood. i must especially call attention to some observations which i owe to the kindness of prof. huxley (given as a supplement at the end of part i.), on the nature of the differences between the brains of man and the higher apes. i have been particularly glad to give these observations, because during the last few years several memoirs on the subject have appeared on the continent, and their importance has been, in some cases, greatly exaggerated by popular writers. i may take this opportunity of remarking that my critics frequently assume that i attribute all changes of corporeal structure and mental power exclusively to the natural selection of such variations as are often called spontaneous; whereas, even in the first edition of the 'origin of species,' i distinctly stated that great weight must be attributed to the inherited effects of use and disuse, with respect both to the body and mind. i also attributed some amount of modification to the direct and prolonged action of changed conditions of life. some allowance, too, must be made for occasional reversions of structure; nor must we forget what i have called "correlated" growth, meaning, thereby, that various parts of the organisation are in some unknown manner so connected, that when one part varies, so do others; and if variations in the one are accumulated by selection, other parts will be modified. again, it has been said by several critics, that when i found that many details of structure in man could not be explained through natural selection, i invented sexual selection; i gave, however, a tolerably clear sketch of this principle in the first edition of the 'origin of species,' and i there stated that it was applicable to man. this subject of sexual selection has been treated at full length in the present work, simply because an opportunity was here first afforded me. i have been struck with the likeness of many of the half-favourable criticisms on sexual selection, with those which appeared at first on natural selection; such as, that it would explain some few details, but certainly was not applicable to the extent to which i have employed it. my conviction of the power of sexual selection remains unshaken; but it is probable, or almost certain, that several of my conclusions will hereafter be found erroneous; this can hardly fail to be the case in the first treatment of a subject. when naturalists have become familiar with the idea of sexual selection, it will, as i believe, be much more largely accepted; and it has already been fully and favourably received by several capable judges. down, beckenham, kent, september, . first edition february , . second edition september, . contents. introduction. part i. the descent or origin of man. chapter i. the evidence of the descent of man from some lower form. nature of the evidence bearing on the origin of man--homologous structures in man and the lower animals--miscellaneous points of correspondence--development--rudimentary structures, muscles, sense-organs, hair, bones, reproductive organs, etc.--the bearing of these three great classes of facts on the origin of man. chapter ii. on the manner of development of man from some lower form. variability of body and mind in man--inheritance--causes of variability--laws of variation the same in man as in the lower animals--direct action of the conditions of life--effects of the increased use and disuse of parts--arrested development--reversion--correlated variation--rate of increase--checks to increase--natural selection--man the most dominant animal in the world--importance of his corporeal structure--the causes which have led to his becoming erect--consequent changes of structure--decrease in size of the canine teeth--increased size and altered shape of the skull--nakedness --absence of a tail--defenceless condition of man. chapter iii. comparison of the mental powers of man and the lower animals. the difference in mental power between the highest ape and the lowest savage, immense--certain instincts in common--the emotions--curiosity--imitation--attention--memory--imagination--reason--progressive improvement --tools and weapons used by animals--abstraction, self-consciousness--language--sense of beauty--belief in god, spiritual agencies, superstitions. chapter iv. comparison of the mental powers of man and the lower animals--continued. the moral sense--fundamental proposition--the qualities of social animals--origin of sociability--struggle between opposed instincts--man a social animal--the more enduring social instincts conquer other less persistent instincts--the social virtues alone regarded by savages--the self-regarding virtues acquired at a later stage of development--the importance of the judgment of the members of the same community on conduct--transmission of moral tendencies--summary. chapter v. on the development of the intellectual and moral faculties during primeval and civilised times. advancement of the intellectual powers through natural selection--importance of imitation--social and moral faculties--their development within the limits of the same tribe--natural selection as affecting civilised nations--evidence that civilised nations were once barbarous. chapter vi. on the affinities and genealogy of man. position of man in the animal series--the natural system genealogical--adaptive characters of slight value--various small points of resemblance between man and the quadrumana--rank of man in the natural system--birthplace and antiquity of man--absence of fossil connecting-links--lower stages in the genealogy of man, as inferred firstly from his affinities and secondly from his structure--early androgynous condition of the vertebrata --conclusion. chapter vii. on the races of man. the nature and value of specific characters--application to the races of man--arguments in favour of, and opposed to, ranking the so-called races of man as distinct species--sub-species--monogenists and polygenists--convergence of character--numerous points of resemblance in body and mind between the most distinct races of man--the state of man when he first spread over the earth--each race not descended from a single pair--the extinction of races--the formation of races--the effects of crossing--slight influence of the direct action of the conditions of life--slight or no influence of natural selection--sexual selection. part ii. sexual selection. chapter viii. principles of sexual selection. secondary sexual characters--sexual selection--manner of action--excess of males--polygamy--the male alone generally modified through sexual selection--eagerness of the male--variability of the male--choice exerted by the female--sexual compared with natural selection--inheritance at corresponding periods of life, at corresponding seasons of the year, and as limited by sex--relations between the several forms of inheritance--causes why one sex and the young are not modified through sexual selection--supplement on the proportional numbers of the two sexes throughout the animal kingdom--the proportion of the sexes in relation to natural selection. chapter ix. secondary sexual characters in the lower classes of the animal kingdom. these characters are absent in the lowest classes--brilliant colours--mollusca--annelids--crustacea, secondary sexual characters strongly developed; dimorphism; colour; characters not acquired before maturity--spiders, sexual colours of; stridulation by the males--myriapoda. chapter x. secondary sexual characters of insects. diversified structures possessed by the males for seizing the females--differences between the sexes, of which the meaning is not understood--difference in size between the sexes--thysanura--diptera--hemiptera--homoptera, musical powers possessed by the males alone--orthoptera, musical instruments of the males, much diversified in structure; pugnacity; colours--neuroptera, sexual differences in colour--hymenoptera, pugnacity and odours--coleoptera, colours; furnished with great horns, apparently as an ornament; battles; stridulating organs generally common to both sexes. chapter xi. insects, continued.--order lepidoptera. (butterflies and moths.) courtship of butterflies--battles--ticking noise--colours common to both sexes, or more brilliant in the males--examples--not due to the direct action of the conditions of life--colours adapted for protection--colours of moths--display--perceptive powers of the lepidoptera--variability--causes of the difference in colour between the males and females--mimicry, female butterflies more brilliantly coloured than the males--bright colours of caterpillars--summary and concluding remarks on the secondary sexual character of insects--birds and insects compared. chapter xii. secondary sexual characters of fishes, amphibians, and reptiles. fishes: courtship and battles of the males--larger size of the females--males, bright colours and ornamental appendages; other strange characters--colours and appendages acquired by the males during the breeding-season alone--fishes with both sexes brilliantly coloured--protective colours--the less conspicuous colours of the female cannot be accounted for on the principle of protection--male fishes building nests, and taking charge of the ova and young. amphibians: differences in structure and colour between the sexes--vocal organs. reptiles: chelonians--crocodiles--snakes, colours in some cases protective--lizards, battles of--ornamental appendages--strange differences in structure between the sexes--colours--sexual differences almost as great as with birds. chapter xiii. secondary sexual characters of birds. sexual differences--law of battle--special weapons--vocal organs--instrumental music--love-antics and dances--decorations, permanent and seasonal--double and single annual moults--display of ornaments by the males. chapter xiv. birds--continued. choice exerted by the female--length of courtship--unpaired birds--mental qualities and taste for the beautiful--preference or antipathy shewn by the female for particular males--variability of birds--variations sometimes abrupt--laws of variation--formation of ocelli--gradations of character--case of peacock, argus pheasant, and urosticte. chapter xv. birds--continued. discussion as to why the males alone of some species, and both sexes of others are brightly coloured--on sexually-limited inheritance, as applied to various structures and to brightly-coloured plumage--nidification in relation to colour--loss of nuptial plumage during the winter. chapter xvi. birds--concluded. the immature plumage in relation to the character of the plumage in both sexes when adult--six classes of cases--sexual differences between the males of closely-allied or representative species--the female assuming the characters of the male--plumage of the young in relation to the summer and winter plumage of the adults--on the increase of beauty in the birds of the world--protective colouring--conspicuously coloured birds--novelty appreciated--summary of the four chapters on birds. chapter xvii. secondary sexual characters of mammals. the law of battle--special weapons, confined to the males--cause of absence of weapons in the female--weapons common to both sexes, yet primarily acquired by the male--other uses of such weapons--their high importance--greater size of the male--means of defence--on the preference shewn by either sex in the pairing of quadrupeds. chapter xviii. secondary sexual characters of mammals--continued. voice--remarkable sexual peculiarities in seals--odour--development of the hair--colour of the hair and skin--anomalous case of the female being more ornamented than the male--colour and ornaments due to sexual selection--colour acquired for the sake of protection--colour, though common to both sexes, often due to sexual selection--on the disappearance of spots and stripes in adult quadrupeds--on the colours and ornaments of the quadrumana--summary. part iii. sexual selection in relation to man, and conclusion. chapter xix. secondary sexual characters of man. differences between man and woman--causes of such differences, and of certain characters common to both sexes--law of battle--differences in mental powers, and voice--on the influence of beauty in determining the marriages of mankind--attention paid by savages to ornaments--their ideas of beauty in women--the tendency to exaggerate each natural peculiarity. chapter xx. secondary sexual characters of man--continued. on the effects of the continued selection of women according to a different standard of beauty in each race--on the causes which interfere with sexual selection in civilised and savage nations--conditions favourable to sexual selection during primeval times--on the manner of action of sexual selection with mankind--on the women in savage tribes having some power to choose their husbands--absence of hair on the body, and development of the beard--colour of the skin--summary. chapter xxi. general summary and conclusion. main conclusion that man is descended from some lower form--manner of development--genealogy of man--intellectual and moral faculties--sexual selection--concluding remarks. supplemental note. index. the descent of man; and selection in relation to sex. ... introduction. the nature of the following work will be best understood by a brief account of how it came to be written. during many years i collected notes on the origin or descent of man, without any intention of publishing on the subject, but rather with the determination not to publish, as i thought that i should thus only add to the prejudices against my views. it seemed to me sufficient to indicate, in the first edition of my 'origin of species,' that by this work "light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history;" and this implies that man must be included with other organic beings in any general conclusion respecting his manner of appearance on this earth. now the case wears a wholly different aspect. when a naturalist like carl vogt ventures to say in his address as president of the national institution of geneva ( ), "personne, en europe au moins, n'ose plus soutenir la creation indépendante et de toutes pièces, des espèces," it is manifest that at least a large number of naturalists must admit that species are the modified descendants of other species; and this especially holds good with the younger and rising naturalists. the greater number accept the agency of natural selection; though some urge, whether with justice the future must decide, that i have greatly overrated its importance. of the older and honoured chiefs in natural science, many unfortunately are still opposed to evolution in every form. in consequence of the views now adopted by most naturalists, and which will ultimately, as in every other case, be followed by others who are not scientific, i have been led to put together my notes, so as to see how far the general conclusions arrived at in my former works were applicable to man. this seemed all the more desirable, as i had never deliberately applied these views to a species taken singly. when we confine our attention to any one form, we are deprived of the weighty arguments derived from the nature of the affinities which connect together whole groups of organisms--their geographical distribution in past and present times, and their geological succession. the homological structure, embryological development, and rudimentary organs of a species remain to be considered, whether it be man or any other animal, to which our attention may be directed; but these great classes of facts afford, as it appears to me, ample and conclusive evidence in favour of the principle of gradual evolution. the strong support derived from the other arguments should, however, always be kept before the mind. the sole object of this work is to consider, firstly, whether man, like every other species, is descended from some pre-existing form; secondly, the manner of his development; and thirdly, the value of the differences between the so-called races of man. as i shall confine myself to these points, it will not be necessary to describe in detail the differences between the several races--an enormous subject which has been fully described in many valuable works. the high antiquity of man has recently been demonstrated by the labours of a host of eminent men, beginning with m. boucher de perthes; and this is the indispensable basis for understanding his origin. i shall, therefore, take this conclusion for granted, and may refer my readers to the admirable treatises of sir charles lyell, sir john lubbock, and others. nor shall i have occasion to do more than to allude to the amount of difference between man and the anthropomorphous apes; for prof. huxley, in the opinion of most competent judges, has conclusively shewn that in every visible character man differs less from the higher apes, than these do from the lower members of the same order of primates. this work contains hardly any original facts in regard to man; but as the conclusions at which i arrived, after drawing up a rough draft, appeared to me interesting, i thought that they might interest others. it has often and confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known: but ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. the conclusion that man is the co-descendant with other species of some ancient, lower, and extinct form, is not in any degree new. lamarck long ago came to this conclusion, which has lately been maintained by several eminent naturalists and philosophers; for instance, by wallace, huxley, lyell, vogt, lubbock, buchner, rolle, etc. ( . as the works of the first-named authors are so well known, i need not give the titles; but as those of the latter are less well known in england, i will give them:--'sechs vorlesungen über die darwin'sche theorie:' zweite auflage, , von dr l. buchner; translated into french under the title 'conférences sur la théorie darwinienne,' . 'der mensch im lichte der darwin'sche lehre,' , von dr. f. rolle. i will not attempt to give references to all the authors who have taken the same side of the question. thus g. canestrini has published ('annuario della soc. d. nat.,' modena, , page ) a very curious paper on rudimentary characters, as bearing on the origin of man. another work has ( ) been published by dr. francesco barrago, bearing in italian the title of "man, made in the image of god, was also made in the image of the ape."), and especially by haeckel. this last naturalist, besides his great work, 'generelle morphologie' ( ), has recently ( , with a second edition in ), published his 'natürliche schöpfungsgeschichte,' in which he fully discusses the genealogy of man. if this work had appeared before my essay had been written, i should probably never have completed it. almost all the conclusions at which i have arrived i find confirmed by this naturalist, whose knowledge on many points is much fuller than mine. wherever i have added any fact or view from prof. haeckel's writings, i give his authority in the text; other statements i leave as they originally stood in my manuscript, occasionally giving in the foot-notes references to his works, as a confirmation of the more doubtful or interesting points. during many years it has seemed to me highly probable that sexual selection has played an important part in differentiating the races of man; but in my 'origin of species' (first edition, page ) i contented myself by merely alluding to this belief. when i came to apply this view to man, i found it indispensable to treat the whole subject in full detail. ( . prof. haeckel was the only author who, at the time when this work first appeared, had discussed the subject of sexual selection, and had seen its full importance, since the publication of the 'origin'; and this he did in a very able manner in his various works.) consequently the second part of the present work, treating of sexual selection, has extended to an inordinate length, compared with the first part; but this could not be avoided. i had intended adding to the present volumes an essay on the expression of the various emotions by man and the lower animals. my attention was called to this subject many years ago by sir charles bell's admirable work. this illustrious anatomist maintains that man is endowed with certain muscles solely for the sake of expressing his emotions. as this view is obviously opposed to the belief that man is descended from some other and lower form, it was necessary for me to consider it. i likewise wished to ascertain how far the emotions are expressed in the same manner by the different races of man. but owing to the length of the present work, i have thought it better to reserve my essay for separate publication. part i. the descent or origin of man. chapter i. the evidence of the descent of man from some lower form. nature of the evidence bearing on the origin of man--homologous structures in man and the lower animals--miscellaneous points of correspondence--development--rudimentary structures, muscles, sense-organs, hair, bones, reproductive organs, etc.--the bearing of these three great classes of facts on the origin of man. he who wishes to decide whether man is the modified descendant of some pre-existing form, would probably first enquire whether man varies, however slightly, in bodily structure and in mental faculties; and if so, whether the variations are transmitted to his offspring in accordance with the laws which prevail with the lower animals. again, are the variations the result, as far as our ignorance permits us to judge, of the same general causes, and are they governed by the same general laws, as in the case of other organisms; for instance, by correlation, the inherited effects of use and disuse, etc.? is man subject to similar malconformations, the result of arrested development, of reduplication of parts, etc., and does he display in any of his anomalies reversion to some former and ancient type of structure? it might also naturally be enquired whether man, like so many other animals, has given rise to varieties and sub-races, differing but slightly from each other, or to races differing so much that they must be classed as doubtful species? how are such races distributed over the world; and how, when crossed, do they react on each other in the first and succeeding generations? and so with many other points. the enquirer would next come to the important point, whether man tends to increase at so rapid a rate, as to lead to occasional severe struggles for existence; and consequently to beneficial variations, whether in body or mind, being preserved, and injurious ones eliminated. do the races or species of men, whichever term may be applied, encroach on and replace one another, so that some finally become extinct? we shall see that all these questions, as indeed is obvious in respect to most of them, must be answered in the affirmative, in the same manner as with the lower animals. but the several considerations just referred to may be conveniently deferred for a time: and we will first see how far the bodily structure of man shews traces, more or less plain, of his descent from some lower form. in succeeding chapters the mental powers of man, in comparison with those of the lower animals, will be considered. the bodily structure of man. it is notorious that man is constructed on the same general type or model as other mammals. all the bones in his skeleton can be compared with corresponding bones in a monkey, bat, or seal. so it is with his muscles, nerves, blood-vessels and internal viscera. the brain, the most important of all the organs, follows the same law, as shewn by huxley and other anatomists. bischoff ( . 'grosshirnwindungen des menschen,' , s. . the conclusions of this author, as well as those of gratiolet and aeby, concerning the brain, will be discussed by prof. huxley in the appendix alluded to in the preface to this edition.), who is a hostile witness, admits that every chief fissure and fold in the brain of man has its analogy in that of the orang; but he adds that at no period of development do their brains perfectly agree; nor could perfect agreement be expected, for otherwise their mental powers would have been the same. vulpian ( . 'lec. sur la phys.' , page , as quoted by m. dally, 'l'ordre des primates et le transformisme,' , page .), remarks: "les différences réelles qui existent entre l'encephale de l'homme et celui des singes supérieurs, sont bien minimes. il ne faut pas se faire d'illusions a cet égard. l'homme est bien plus près des singes anthropomorphes par les caractères anatomiques de son cerveau que ceux-ci ne le sont non seulement des autres mammifères, mais même de certains quadrumanes, des guenons et des macaques." but it would be superfluous here to give further details on the correspondence between man and the higher mammals in the structure of the brain and all other parts of the body. it may, however, be worth while to specify a few points, not directly or obviously connected with structure, by which this correspondence or relationship is well shewn. man is liable to receive from the lower animals, and to communicate to them, certain diseases, as hydrophobia, variola, the glanders, syphilis, cholera, herpes, etc. ( . dr. w. lauder lindsay has treated this subject at some length in the 'journal of mental science,' july ; and in the 'edinburgh veterinary review,' july .); and this fact proves the close similarity ( . a reviewer has criticised ('british quarterly review,' oct. st, , page ) what i have here said with much severity and contempt; but as i do not use the term identity, i cannot see that i am greatly in error. there appears to me a strong analogy between the same infection or contagion producing the same result, or one closely similar, in two distinct animals, and the testing of two distinct fluids by the same chemical reagent.) of their tissues and blood, both in minute structure and composition, far more plainly than does their comparison under the best microscope, or by the aid of the best chemical analysis. monkeys are liable to many of the same non-contagious diseases as we are; thus rengger ( . 'naturgeschichte der säugethiere von paraguay,' , s. .), who carefully observed for a long time the cebus azarae in its native land, found it liable to catarrh, with the usual symptoms, and which, when often recurrent, led to consumption. these monkeys suffered also from apoplexy, inflammation of the bowels, and cataract in the eye. the younger ones when shedding their milk-teeth often died from fever. medicines produced the same effect on them as on us. many kinds of monkeys have a strong taste for tea, coffee, and spiritous liquors: they will also, as i have myself seen, smoke tobacco with pleasure. ( . the same tastes are common to some animals much lower in the scale. mr. a. nichols informs me that he kept in queensland, in australia, three individuals of the phaseolarctus cinereus; and that, without having been taught in any way, they acquired a strong taste for rum, and for smoking tobacco.) brehm asserts that the natives of north-eastern africa catch the wild baboons by exposing vessels with strong beer, by which they are made drunk. he has seen some of these animals, which he kept in confinement, in this state; and he gives a laughable account of their behaviour and strange grimaces. on the following morning they were very cross and dismal; they held their aching heads with both hands, and wore a most pitiable expression: when beer or wine was offered them, they turned away with disgust, but relished the juice of lemons. ( . brehm, 'thierleben,' b. i. , s. , . on the ateles, s. . for other analogous statements, see s. , .) an american monkey, an ateles, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus was wiser than many men. these trifling facts prove how similar the nerves of taste must be in monkeys and man, and how similarly their whole nervous system is affected. man is infested with internal parasites, sometimes causing fatal effects; and is plagued by external parasites, all of which belong to the same genera or families as those infesting other mammals, and in the case of scabies to the same species. ( . dr. w. lauder lindsay, 'edinburgh vet. review,' july , page .) man is subject, like other mammals, birds, and even insects ( . with respect to insects see dr. laycock, "on a general law of vital periodicity," 'british association,' . dr. macculloch, 'silliman's north american journal of science,' vol. xvii. page , has seen a dog suffering from tertian ague. hereafter i shall return to this subject.), to that mysterious law, which causes certain normal processes, such as gestation, as well as the maturation and duration of various diseases, to follow lunar periods. his wounds are repaired by the same process of healing; and the stumps left after the amputation of his limbs, especially during an early embryonic period, occasionally possess some power of regeneration, as in the lowest animals. ( . i have given the evidence on this head in my 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. page , and more could be added.) the whole process of that most important function, the reproduction of the species, is strikingly the same in all mammals, from the first act of courtship by the male ( . mares e diversis generibus quadrumanorum sine dubio dignoscunt feminas humanas a maribus. primum, credo, odoratu, postea aspectu. mr. youatt, qui diu in hortis zoologicis (bestiariis) medicus animalium erat, vir in rebus observandis cautus et sagax, hoc mihi certissime probavit, et curatores ejusdem loci et alii e ministris confirmaverunt. sir andrew smith et brehm notabant idem in cynocephalo. illustrissimus cuvier etiam narrat multa de hac re, qua ut opinor, nihil turpius potest indicari inter omnia hominibus et quadrumanis communia. narrat enim cynocephalum quendam in furorem incidere aspectu feminarum aliquarem, sed nequaquam accendi tanto furore ab omnibus. semper eligebat juniores, et dignoscebat in turba, et advocabat voce gestuque.), to the birth and nurturing of the young. monkeys are born in almost as helpless a condition as our own infants; and in certain genera the young differ fully as much in appearance from the adults, as do our children from their full-grown parents. ( . this remark is made with respect to cynocephalus and the anthropomorphous apes by geoffroy saint-hilaire and f. cuvier, 'histoire nat. des mammifères,' tom. i. .) it has been urged by some writers, as an important distinction, that with man the young arrive at maturity at a much later age than with any other animal: but if we look to the races of mankind which inhabit tropical countries the difference is not great, for the orang is believed not to be adult till the age of from ten to fifteen years. ( . huxley, 'man's place in nature,' , p. .) man differs from woman in size, bodily strength, hairiness, etc., as well as in mind, in the same manner as do the two sexes of many mammals. so that the correspondence in general structure, in the minute structure of the tissues, in chemical composition and in constitution, between man and the higher animals, especially the anthropomorphous apes, is extremely close. embryonic development. [fig. . shows a human embryo, from ecker, and a dog embryo, from bischoff. labelled in each are: a. fore-brain, cerebral hemispheres, etc. b. mid-brain, corpora quadrigemina. c. hind-brain, cerebellum, medulla oblongata. d. eye. e. ear. f. first visceral arch. g. second visceral arch. h. vertebral columns and muscles in process of development. i. anterior extremities. k. posterior extremities. l. tail or os coccyx.] man is developed from an ovule, about the th of an inch in diameter, which differs in no respect from the ovules of other animals. the embryo itself at a very early period can hardly be distinguished from that of other members of the vertebrate kingdom. at this period the arteries run in arch-like branches, as if to carry the blood to branchiae which are not present in the higher vertebrata, though the slits on the sides of the neck still remain (see f, g, fig. ), marking their former position. at a somewhat later period, when the extremities are developed, "the feet of lizards and mammals," as the illustrious von baer remarks, "the wings and feet of birds, no less than the hands and feet of man, all arise from the same fundamental form." it is, says prof. huxley ( . 'man's place in nature,' , p. .), "quite in the later stages of development that the young human being presents marked differences from the young ape, while the latter departs as much from the dog in its developments, as the man does. startling as this last assertion may appear to be, it is demonstrably true." as some of my readers may never have seen a drawing of an embryo, i have given one of man and another of a dog, at about the same early stage of development, carefully copied from two works of undoubted accuracy. ( . the human embryo (upper fig.) is from ecker, 'icones phys.,' - , tab. xxx. fig. . this embryo was ten lines in length, so that the drawing is much magnified. the embryo of the dog is from bischoff, 'entwicklungsgeschichte des hunde-eies,' , tab. xi. fig. b. this drawing is five times magnified, the embryo being twenty-five days old. the internal viscera have been omitted, and the uterine appendages in both drawings removed. i was directed to these figures by prof. huxley, from whose work, 'man's place in nature,' the idea of giving them was taken. haeckel has also given analogous drawings in his 'schopfungsgeschichte.') after the foregoing statements made by such high authorities, it would be superfluous on my part to give a number of borrowed details, shewing that the embryo of man closely resembles that of other mammals. it may, however, be added, that the human embryo likewise resembles certain low forms when adult in various points of structure. for instance, the heart at first exists as a simple pulsating vessel; the excreta are voided through a cloacal passage; and the os coccyx projects like a true tail, "extending considerably beyond the rudimentary legs." ( . prof. wyman in 'proceedings of the american academy of sciences,' vol. iv. , p. .) in the embryos of all air-breathing vertebrates, certain glands, called the corpora wolffiana, correspond with, and act like the kidneys of mature fishes. ( . owen, 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. i. p. .) even at a later embryonic period, some striking resemblances between man and the lower animals may be observed. bischoff says that "the convolutions of the brain in a human foetus at the end of the seventh month reach about the same stage of development as in a baboon when adult." ( . 'die grosshirnwindungen des menschen,' , s. .) the great toe, as professor owen remarks ( . 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. ii. p. .), "which forms the fulcrum when standing or walking, is perhaps the most characteristic peculiarity in the human structure;" but in an embryo, about an inch in length, prof. wyman ( . 'proc. soc. nat. hist.' boston, , vol. ix. p. .) found "that the great toe was shorter than the others; and, instead of being parallel to them, projected at an angle from the side of the foot, thus corresponding with the permanent condition of this part in the quadrumana." i will conclude with a quotation from huxley ( . 'man's place in nature,' p. .) who after asking, does man originate in a different way from a dog, bird, frog or fish? says, "the reply is not doubtful for a moment; without question, the mode of origin, and the early stages of the development of man, are identical with those of the animals immediately below him in the scale: without a doubt in these respects, he is far nearer to apes than the apes are to the dog." rudiments. this subject, though not intrinsically more important than the two last, will for several reasons be treated here more fully. ( . i had written a rough copy of this chapter before reading a valuable paper, "caratteri rudimentali in ordine all' origine dell' uomo" ('annuario della soc. d. naturalisti,' modena, , p. ), by g. canestrini, to which paper i am considerably indebted. haeckel has given admirable discussions on this whole subject, under the title of dysteleology, in his 'generelle morphologie' and 'schöpfungsgeschichte.') not one of the higher animals can be named which does not bear some part in a rudimentary condition; and man forms no exception to the rule. rudimentary organs must be distinguished from those that are nascent; though in some cases the distinction is not easy. the former are either absolutely useless, such as the mammae of male quadrupeds, or the incisor teeth of ruminants which never cut through the gums; or they are of such slight service to their present possessors, that we can hardly suppose that they were developed under the conditions which now exist. organs in this latter state are not strictly rudimentary, but they are tending in this direction. nascent organs, on the other hand, though not fully developed, are of high service to their possessors, and are capable of further development. rudimentary organs are eminently variable; and this is partly intelligible, as they are useless, or nearly useless, and consequently are no longer subjected to natural selection. they often become wholly suppressed. when this occurs, they are nevertheless liable to occasional reappearance through reversion--a circumstance well worthy of attention. the chief agents in causing organs to become rudimentary seem to have been disuse at that period of life when the organ is chiefly used (and this is generally during maturity), and also inheritance at a corresponding period of life. the term "disuse" does not relate merely to the lessened action of muscles, but includes a diminished flow of blood to a part or organ, from being subjected to fewer alternations of pressure, or from becoming in any way less habitually active. rudiments, however, may occur in one sex of those parts which are normally present in the other sex; and such rudiments, as we shall hereafter see, have often originated in a way distinct from those here referred to. in some cases, organs have been reduced by means of natural selection, from having become injurious to the species under changed habits of life. the process of reduction is probably often aided through the two principles of compensation and economy of growth; but the later stages of reduction, after disuse has done all that can fairly be attributed to it, and when the saving to be effected by the economy of growth would be very small ( . some good criticisms on this subject have been given by messrs. murie and mivart, in 'transact. zoological society,' , vol. vii. p. .), are difficult to understand. the final and complete suppression of a part, already useless and much reduced in size, in which case neither compensation nor economy can come into play, is perhaps intelligible by the aid of the hypothesis of pangenesis. but as the whole subject of rudimentary organs has been discussed and illustrated in my former works ( . 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii pp. and . see also 'origin of species,' th edition p. .), i need here say no more on this head. rudiments of various muscles have been observed in many parts of the human body ( . for instance, m. richard ('annales des sciences nat.,' rd series, zoolog. , tom. xviii. p. ) describes and figures rudiments of what he calls the "muscle pedieux de la main," which he says is sometimes "infiniment petit." another muscle, called "le tibial posterieur," is generally quite absent in the hand, but appears from time to time in a more or less rudimentary condition.); and not a few muscles, which are regularly present in some of the lower animals can occasionally be detected in man in a greatly reduced condition. every one must have noticed the power which many animals, especially horses, possess of moving or twitching their skin; and this is effected by the panniculus carnosus. remnants of this muscle in an efficient state are found in various parts of our bodies; for instance, the muscle on the forehead, by which the eyebrows are raised. the platysma myoides, which is well developed on the neck, belongs to this system. prof. turner, of edinburgh, has occasionally detected, as he informs me, muscular fasciculi in five different situations, namely in the axillae, near the scapulae, etc., all of which must be referred to the system of the panniculus. he has also shewn ( . prof. w. turner, 'proceedings of the royal society of edinburgh,' - , p. .) that the musculus sternalis or sternalis brutorum, which is not an extension of the rectus abdominalis, but is closely allied to the panniculus, occurred in the proportion of about three per cent. in upwards of bodies: he adds, that this muscle affords "an excellent illustration of the statement that occasional and rudimentary structures are especially liable to variation in arrangement." some few persons have the power of contracting the superficial muscles on their scalps; and these muscles are in a variable and partially rudimentary condition. m. a. de candolle has communicated to me a curious instance of the long-continued persistence or inheritance of this power, as well as of its unusual development. he knows a family, in which one member, the present head of the family, could, when a youth, pitch several heavy books from his head by the movement of the scalp alone; and he won wagers by performing this feat. his father, uncle, grandfather, and his three children possess the same power to the same unusual degree. this family became divided eight generations ago into two branches; so that the head of the above-mentioned branch is cousin in the seventh degree to the head of the other branch. this distant cousin resides in another part of france; and on being asked whether he possessed the same faculty, immediately exhibited his power. this case offers a good illustration how persistent may be the transmission of an absolutely useless faculty, probably derived from our remote semi-human progenitors; since many monkeys have, and frequently use the power, of largely moving their scalps up and down. ( . see my 'expression of the emotions in man and animals,' , p. .) the extrinsic muscles which serve to move the external ear, and the intrinsic muscles which move the different parts, are in a rudimentary condition in man, and they all belong to the system of the panniculus; they are also variable in development, or at least in function. i have seen one man who could draw the whole ear forwards; other men can draw it upwards; another who could draw it backwards ( . canestrini quotes hyrtl. ('annuario della soc. dei naturalisti,' modena, , p. ) to the same effect.); and from what one of these persons told me, it is probable that most of us, by often touching our ears, and thus directing our attention towards them, could recover some power of movement by repeated trials. the power of erecting and directing the shell of the ears to the various points of the compass, is no doubt of the highest service to many animals, as they thus perceive the direction of danger; but i have never heard, on sufficient evidence, of a man who possessed this power, the one which might be of use to him. the whole external shell may be considered a rudiment, together with the various folds and prominences (helix and anti-helix, tragus and anti-tragus, etc.) which in the lower animals strengthen and support the ear when erect, without adding much to its weight. some authors, however, suppose that the cartilage of the shell serves to transmit vibrations to the acoustic nerve; but mr. toynbee ( . 'the diseases of the ear,' by j. toynbee, f.r.s., , p. . a distinguished physiologist, prof. preyer, informs me that he had lately been experimenting on the function of the shell of the ear, and has come to nearly the same conclusion as that given here.), after collecting all the known evidence on this head, concludes that the external shell is of no distinct use. the ears of the chimpanzee and orang are curiously like those of man, and the proper muscles are likewise but very slightly developed. ( . prof. a. macalister, 'annals and magazine of natural history,' vol. vii. , p. .) i am also assured by the keepers in the zoological gardens that these animals never move or erect their ears; so that they are in an equally rudimentary condition with those of man, as far as function is concerned. why these animals, as well as the progenitors of man, should have lost the power of erecting their ears, we cannot say. it may be, though i am not satisfied with this view, that owing to their arboreal habits and great strength they were but little exposed to danger, and so during a lengthened period moved their ears but little, and thus gradually lost the power of moving them. this would be a parallel case with that of those large and heavy birds, which, from inhabiting oceanic islands, have not been exposed to the attacks of beasts of prey, and have consequently lost the power of using their wings for flight. the inability to move the ears in man and several apes is, however, partly compensated by the freedom with which they can move the head in a horizontal plane, so as to catch sounds from all directions. it has been asserted that the ear of man alone possesses a lobule; but "a rudiment of it is found in the gorilla" ( . mr. st. george mivart, 'elementary anatomy,' , p. .); and, as i hear from prof. preyer, it is not rarely absent in the negro. [fig. . human ear, modelled and drawn by mr. woolner. the projecting point is labelled a.] the celebrated sculptor, mr. woolner, informs me of one little peculiarity in the external ear, which he has often observed both in men and women, and of which he perceived the full significance. his attention was first called to the subject whilst at work on his figure of puck, to which he had given pointed ears. he was thus led to examine the ears of various monkeys, and subsequently more carefully those of man. the peculiarity consists in a little blunt point, projecting from the inwardly folded margin, or helix. when present, it is developed at birth, and, according to prof. ludwig meyer, more frequently in man than in woman. mr. woolner made an exact model of one such case, and sent me the accompanying drawing. (fig. ). these points not only project inwards towards the centre of the ear, but often a little outwards from its plane, so as to be visible when the head is viewed from directly in front or behind. they are variable in size, and somewhat in position, standing either a little higher or lower; and they sometimes occur on one ear and not on the other. they are not confined to mankind, for i observed a case in one of the spider-monkeys (ateles beelzebuth) in our zoological gardens; and mr. e. ray lankester informs me of another case in a chimpanzee in the gardens at hamburg. the helix obviously consists of the extreme margin of the ear folded inwards; and this folding appears to be in some manner connected with the whole external ear being permanently pressed backwards. in many monkeys, which do not stand high in the order, as baboons and some species of macacus ( . see also some remarks, and the drawings of the ears of the lemuroidea, in messrs. murie and mivart's excellent paper in 'transactions of the zoological society,' vol. vii. , pp. and .), the upper portion of the ear is slightly pointed, and the margin is not at all folded inwards; but if the margin were to be thus folded, a slight point would necessarily project inwards towards the centre, and probably a little outwards from the plane of the ear; and this i believe to be their origin in many cases. on the other hand, prof. l. meyer, in an able paper recently published ( . 'Ã�ber das darwin'sche spitzohr,' archiv fur path. anat. und phys., , p. .), maintains that the whole case is one of mere variability; and that the projections are not real ones, but are due to the internal cartilage on each side of the points not having been fully developed. i am quite ready to admit that this is the correct explanation in many instances, as in those figured by prof. meyer, in which there are several minute points, or the whole margin is sinuous. i have myself seen, through the kindness of dr. l. down, the ear of a microcephalous idiot, on which there is a projection on the outside of the helix, and not on the inward folded edge, so that this point can have no relation to a former apex of the ear. nevertheless in some cases, my original view, that the points are vestiges of the tips of formerly erect and pointed ears, still seems to me probable. i think so from the frequency of their occurrence, and from the general correspondence in position with that of the tip of a pointed ear. in one case, of which a photograph has been sent me, the projection is so large, that supposing, in accordance with prof. meyer's view, the ear to be made perfect by the equal development of the cartilage throughout the whole extent of the margin, it would have covered fully one-third of the whole ear. two cases have been communicated to me, one in north america, and the other in england, in which the upper margin is not at all folded inwards, but is pointed, so that it closely resembles the pointed ear of an ordinary quadruped in outline. in one of these cases, which was that of a young child, the father compared the ear with the drawing which i have given ( . 'the expression of the emotions,' p. .) of the ear of a monkey, the cynopithecus niger, and says that their outlines are closely similar. if, in these two cases, the margin had been folded inwards in the normal manner, an inward projection must have been formed. i may add that in two other cases the outline still remains somewhat pointed, although the margin of the upper part of the ear is normally folded inwards--in one of them, however, very narrowly. [fig. . foetus of an orang(?). exact copy of a photograph, shewing the form of the ear at this early age.] the following woodcut (no. ) is an accurate copy of a photograph of the foetus of an orang (kindly sent me by dr. nitsche), in which it may be seen how different the pointed outline of the ear is at this period from its adult condition, when it bears a close general resemblance to that of man. it is evident that the folding over of the tip of such an ear, unless it changed greatly during its further development, would give rise to a point projecting inwards. on the whole, it still seems to me probable that the points in question are in some cases, both in man and apes, vestiges of a former condition. the nictitating membrane, or third eyelid, with its accessory muscles and other structures, is especially well developed in birds, and is of much functional importance to them, as it can be rapidly drawn across the whole eye-ball. it is found in some reptiles and amphibians, and in certain fishes, as in sharks. it is fairly well developed in the two lower divisions of the mammalian series, namely, in the monotremata and marsupials, and in some few of the higher mammals, as in the walrus. but in man, the quadrumana, and most other mammals, it exists, as is admitted by all anatomists, as a mere rudiment, called the semilunar fold. ( . muller's 'elements of physiology,' eng. translat. , vol. ii. p. . owen, 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. iii. p. ; ibid. on the walrus, 'proceedings of the zoological society,' november , . see also r. knox, 'great artists and anatomists,' p. . this rudiment apparently is somewhat larger in negroes and australians than in europeans, see carl vogt, 'lectures on man,' eng. translat. p. .) the sense of smell is of the highest importance to the greater number of mammals--to some, as the ruminants, in warning them of danger; to others, as the carnivora, in finding their prey; to others, again, as the wild boar, for both purposes combined. but the sense of smell is of extremely slight service, if any, even to the dark coloured races of men, in whom it is much more highly developed than in the white and civilised races. ( . the account given by humboldt of the power of smell possessed by the natives of south america is well known, and has been confirmed by others. m. houzeau ('Ã�tudes sur les facultés mentales,' etc., tom. i. , p. ) asserts that he repeatedly made experiments, and proved that negroes and indians could recognise persons in the dark by their odour. dr. w. ogle has made some curious observations on the connection between the power of smell and the colouring matter of the mucous membrane of the olfactory region as well as of the skin of the body. i have, therefore, spoken in the text of the dark-coloured races having a finer sense of smell than the white races. see his paper, 'medico-chirurgical transactions,' london, vol. liii. , p. .) nevertheless it does not warn them of danger, nor guide them to their food; nor does it prevent the esquimaux from sleeping in the most fetid atmosphere, nor many savages from eating half-putrid meat. in europeans the power differs greatly in different individuals, as i am assured by an eminent naturalist who possesses this sense highly developed, and who has attended to the subject. those who believe in the principle of gradual evolution, will not readily admit that the sense of smell in its present state was originally acquired by man, as he now exists. he inherits the power in an enfeebled and so far rudimentary condition, from some early progenitor, to whom it was highly serviceable, and by whom it was continually used. in those animals which have this sense highly developed, such as dogs and horses, the recollection of persons and of places is strongly associated with their odour; and we can thus perhaps understand how it is, as dr. maudsley has truly remarked ( . 'the physiology and pathology of mind,' nd ed. , p. .), that the sense of smell in man "is singularly effective in recalling vividly the ideas and images of forgotten scenes and places." man differs conspicuously from all the other primates in being almost naked. but a few short straggling hairs are found over the greater part of the body in the man, and fine down on that of the woman. the different races differ much in hairiness; and in the individuals of the same race the hairs are highly variable, not only in abundance, but likewise in position: thus in some europeans the shoulders are quite naked, whilst in others they bear thick tufts of hair. ( . eschricht, Ã�ber die richtung der haare am menschlichen körper, muller's 'archiv fur anat. und phys.' , s. . i shall often have to refer to this very curious paper.) there can be little doubt that the hairs thus scattered over the body are the rudiments of the uniform hairy coat of the lower animals. this view is rendered all the more probable, as it is known that fine, short, and pale-coloured hairs on the limbs and other parts of the body, occasionally become developed into "thickset, long, and rather coarse dark hairs," when abnormally nourished near old-standing inflamed surfaces. ( . paget, 'lectures on surgical pathology,' , vol. i. p. .) i am informed by sir james paget that often several members of a family have a few hairs in their eyebrows much longer than the others; so that even this slight peculiarity seems to be inherited. these hairs, too, seem to have their representatives; for in the chimpanzee, and in certain species of macacus, there are scattered hairs of considerable length rising from the naked skin above the eyes, and corresponding to our eyebrows; similar long hairs project from the hairy covering of the superciliary ridges in some baboons. the fine wool-like hair, or so-called lanugo, with which the human foetus during the sixth month is thickly covered, offers a more curious case. it is first developed, during the fifth month, on the eyebrows and face, and especially round the mouth, where it is much longer than that on the head. a moustache of this kind was observed by eschricht ( . eschricht, ibid. s. , .) on a female foetus; but this is not so surprising a circumstance as it may at first appear, for the two sexes generally resemble each other in all external characters during an early period of growth. the direction and arrangement of the hairs on all parts of the foetal body are the same as in the adult, but are subject to much variability. the whole surface, including even the forehead and ears, is thus thickly clothed; but it is a significant fact that the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet are quite naked, like the inferior surfaces of all four extremities in most of the lower animals. as this can hardly be an accidental coincidence, the woolly covering of the foetus probably represents the first permanent coat of hair in those mammals which are born hairy. three or four cases have been recorded of persons born with their whole bodies and faces thickly covered with fine long hairs; and this strange condition is strongly inherited, and is correlated with an abnormal condition of the teeth. ( . see my 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. p. . prof. alex. brandt has recently sent me an additional case of a father and son, born in russia, with these peculiarities. i have received drawings of both from paris.) prof. alex. brandt informs me that he has compared the hair from the face of a man thus characterised, aged thirty-five, with the lanugo of a foetus, and finds it quite similar in texture; therefore, as he remarks, the case may be attributed to an arrest of development in the hair, together with its continued growth. many delicate children, as i have been assured by a surgeon to a hospital for children, have their backs covered by rather long silky hairs; and such cases probably come under the same head. it appears as if the posterior molar or wisdom-teeth were tending to become rudimentary in the more civilised races of man. these teeth are rather smaller than the other molars, as is likewise the case with the corresponding teeth in the chimpanzee and orang; and they have only two separate fangs. they do not cut through the gums till about the seventeenth year, and i have been assured that they are much more liable to decay, and are earlier lost than the other teeth; but this is denied by some eminent dentists. they are also much more liable to vary, both in structure and in the period of their development, than the other teeth. ( . dr. webb, 'teeth in man and the anthropoid apes,' as quoted by dr. c. carter blake in anthropological review, july , p. .) in the melanian races, on the other hand, the wisdom-teeth are usually furnished with three separate fangs, and are generally sound; they also differ from the other molars in size, less than in the caucasian races. ( . owen, 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. iii. pp. , , and .) prof. schaaffhausen accounts for this difference between the races by "the posterior dental portion of the jaw being always shortened" in those that are civilised ( . 'on the primitive form of the skull,' eng. translat., in 'anthropological review,' oct. , p. ), and this shortening may, i presume, be attributed to civilised men habitually feeding on soft, cooked food, and thus using their jaws less. i am informed by mr. brace that it is becoming quite a common practice in the united states to remove some of the molar teeth of children, as the jaw does not grow large enough for the perfect development of the normal number. ( . prof. montegazza writes to me from florence, that he has lately been studying the last molar teeth in the different races of man, and has come to the same conclusion as that given in my text, viz., that in the higher or civilised races they are on the road towards atrophy or elimination.) with respect to the alimentary canal, i have met with an account of only a single rudiment, namely the vermiform appendage of the caecum. the caecum is a branch or diverticulum of the intestine, ending in a cul-de-sac, and is extremely long in many of the lower vegetable-feeding mammals. in the marsupial koala it is actually more than thrice as long as the whole body. ( . owen, 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. iii. pp. , , .) it is sometimes produced into a long gradually-tapering point, and is sometimes constricted in parts. it appears as if, in consequence of changed diet or habits, the caecum had become much shortened in various animals, the vermiform appendage being left as a rudiment of the shortened part. that this appendage is a rudiment, we may infer from its small size, and from the evidence which prof. canestrini ( . 'annuario della soc. d. nat.' modena, , p. .) has collected of its variability in man. it is occasionally quite absent, or again is largely developed. the passage is sometimes completely closed for half or two-thirds of its length, with the terminal part consisting of a flattened solid expansion. in the orang this appendage is long and convoluted: in man it arises from the end of the short caecum, and is commonly from four to five inches in length, being only about the third of an inch in diameter. not only is it useless, but it is sometimes the cause of death, of which fact i have lately heard two instances: this is due to small hard bodies, such as seeds, entering the passage, and causing inflammation. ( . m. c. martins ("de l'unité organique," in 'revue des deux mondes,' june , , p. ) and haeckel ('generelle morphologie,' b. ii. s. ), have both remarked on the singular fact of this rudiment sometimes causing death.) in some of the lower quadrumana, in the lemuridae and carnivora, as well as in many marsupials, there is a passage near the lower end of the humerus, called the supra-condyloid foramen, through which the great nerve of the fore limb and often the great artery pass. now in the humerus of man, there is generally a trace of this passage, which is sometimes fairly well developed, being formed by a depending hook-like process of bone, completed by a band of ligament. dr. struthers ( . with respect to inheritance, see dr. struthers in the 'lancet,' feb. , , and another important paper, ibid. jan. , , p. . dr. knox, as i am informed, was the first anatomist who drew attention to this peculiar structure in man; see his 'great artists and anatomists,' p. . see also an important memoir on this process by dr. gruber, in the 'bulletin de l'acad. imp. de st. petersbourg,' tom. xii. , p. .), who has closely attended to the subject, has now shewn that this peculiarity is sometimes inherited, as it has occurred in a father, and in no less than four out of his seven children. when present, the great nerve invariably passes through it; and this clearly indicates that it is the homologue and rudiment of the supra-condyloid foramen of the lower animals. prof. turner estimates, as he informs me, that it occurs in about one per cent. of recent skeletons. but if the occasional development of this structure in man is, as seems probable, due to reversion, it is a return to a very ancient state of things, because in the higher quadrumana it is absent. there is another foramen or perforation in the humerus, occasionally present in man, which may be called the inter-condyloid. this occurs, but not constantly, in various anthropoid and other apes ( . mr. st. george mivart, 'transactions phil. soc.' , p. .), and likewise in many of the lower animals. it is remarkable that this perforation seems to have been present in man much more frequently during ancient times than recently. mr. busk ( . "on the caves of gibraltar," 'transactions of the international congress of prehistoric archaeology,' third session, , p. . prof. wyman has lately shewn (fourth annual report, peabody museum, , p. ), that this perforation is present in thirty-one per cent. of some human remains from ancient mounds in the western united states, and in florida. it frequently occurs in the negro.) has collected the following evidence on this head: prof. broca "noticed the perforation in four and a half per cent. of the arm-bones collected in the 'cimetière du sud,' at paris; and in the grotto of orrony, the contents of which are referred to the bronze period, as many as eight humeri out of thirty-two were perforated; but this extraordinary proportion, he thinks, might be due to the cavern having been a sort of 'family vault.' again, m. dupont found thirty per cent. of perforated bones in the caves of the valley of the lesse, belonging to the reindeer period; whilst m. leguay, in a sort of dolmen at argenteuil, observed twenty-five per cent. to be perforated; and m. pruner-bey found twenty-six per cent. in the same condition in bones from vaureal. nor should it be left unnoticed that m. pruner-bey states that this condition is common in guanche skeletons." it is an interesting fact that ancient races, in this and several other cases, more frequently present structures which resemble those of the lower animals than do the modern. one chief cause seems to be that the ancient races stand somewhat nearer in the long line of descent to their remote animal-like progenitors. in man, the os coccyx, together with certain other vertebrae hereafter to be described, though functionless as a tail, plainly represent this part in other vertebrate animals. at an early embryonic period it is free, and projects beyond the lower extremities; as may be seen in the drawing (fig. .) of a human embryo. even after birth it has been known, in certain rare and anomalous cases ( . quatrefages has lately collected the evidence on this subject. 'revue des cours scientifiques,' - , p. . in fleischmann exhibited a human foetus bearing a free tail, which, as is not always the case, included vertebral bodies; and this tail was critically examined by the many anatomists present at the meeting of naturalists at erlangen (see marshall in niederlandischen archiv für zoologie, december ).), to form a small external rudiment of a tail. the os coccyx is short, usually including only four vertebrae, all anchylosed together: and these are in a rudimentary condition, for they consist, with the exception of the basal one, of the centrum alone. ( . owen, 'on the nature of limbs,' , p. .) they are furnished with some small muscles; one of which, as i am informed by prof. turner, has been expressly described by theile as a rudimentary repetition of the extensor of the tail, a muscle which is so largely developed in many mammals. the spinal cord in man extends only as far downwards as the last dorsal or first lumbar vertebra; but a thread-like structure (the filum terminale) runs down the axis of the sacral part of the spinal canal, and even along the back of the coccygeal bones. the upper part of this filament, as prof. turner informs me, is undoubtedly homologous with the spinal cord; but the lower part apparently consists merely of the pia mater, or vascular investing membrane. even in this case the os coccyx may be said to possess a vestige of so important a structure as the spinal cord, though no longer enclosed within a bony canal. the following fact, for which i am also indebted to prof. turner, shews how closely the os coccyx corresponds with the true tail in the lower animals: luschka has recently discovered at the extremity of the coccygeal bones a very peculiar convoluted body, which is continuous with the middle sacral artery; and this discovery led krause and meyer to examine the tail of a monkey (macacus), and of a cat, in both of which they found a similarly convoluted body, though not at the extremity. the reproductive system offers various rudimentary structures; but these differ in one important respect from the foregoing cases. here we are not concerned with the vestige of a part which does not belong to the species in an efficient state, but with a part efficient in the one sex, and represented in the other by a mere rudiment. nevertheless, the occurrence of such rudiments is as difficult to explain, on the belief of the separate creation of each species, as in the foregoing cases. hereafter i shall have to recur to these rudiments, and shall shew that their presence generally depends merely on inheritance, that is, on parts acquired by one sex having been partially transmitted to the other. i will in this place only give some instances of such rudiments. it is well known that in the males of all mammals, including man, rudimentary mammae exist. these in several instances have become well developed, and have yielded a copious supply of milk. their essential identity in the two sexes is likewise shewn by their occasional sympathetic enlargement in both during an attack of the measles. the vesicula prostatica, which has been observed in many male mammals, is now universally acknowledged to be the homologue of the female uterus, together with the connected passage. it is impossible to read leuckart's able description of this organ, and his reasoning, without admitting the justness of his conclusion. this is especially clear in the case of those mammals in which the true female uterus bifurcates, for in the males of these the vesicula likewise bifurcates. ( . leuckart, in todd's 'cyclopaedia of anatomy' - , vol. iv. p. . in man this organ is only from three to six lines in length, but, like so many other rudimentary parts, it is variable in development as well as in other characters.) some other rudimentary structures belonging to the reproductive system might have been here adduced. ( . see, on this subject, owen, 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. iii. pp. , , .) the bearing of the three great classes of facts now given is unmistakeable. but it would be superfluous fully to recapitulate the line of argument given in detail in my 'origin of species.' the homological construction of the whole frame in the members of the same class is intelligible, if we admit their descent from a common progenitor, together with their subsequent adaptation to diversified conditions. on any other view, the similarity of pattern between the hand of a man or monkey, the foot of a horse, the flipper of a seal, the wing of a bat, etc., is utterly inexplicable. ( . prof. bianconi, in a recently published work, illustrated by admirable engravings ('la théorie darwinienne et la création dite indépendante,' ), endeavours to shew that homological structures, in the above and other cases, can be fully explained on mechanical principles, in accordance with their uses. no one has shewn so well, how admirably such structures are adapted for their final purpose; and this adaptation can, as i believe, be explained through natural selection. in considering the wing of a bat, he brings forward (p. ) what appears to me (to use auguste comte's words) a mere metaphysical principle, namely, the preservation "in its integrity of the mammalian nature of the animal." in only a few cases does he discuss rudiments, and then only those parts which are partially rudimentary, such as the little hoofs of the pig and ox, which do not touch the ground; these he shews clearly to be of service to the animal. it is unfortunate that he did not consider such cases as the minute teeth, which never cut through the jaw in the ox, or the mammae of male quadrupeds, or the wings of certain beetles, existing under the soldered wing-covers, or the vestiges of the pistil and stamens in various flowers, and many other such cases. although i greatly admire prof. bianconi's work, yet the belief now held by most naturalists seems to me left unshaken, that homological structures are inexplicable on the principle of mere adaptation.) it is no scientific explanation to assert that they have all been formed on the same ideal plan. with respect to development, we can clearly understand, on the principle of variations supervening at a rather late embryonic period, and being inherited at a corresponding period, how it is that the embryos of wonderfully different forms should still retain, more or less perfectly, the structure of their common progenitor. no other explanation has ever been given of the marvellous fact that the embryos of a man, dog, seal, bat, reptile, etc., can at first hardly be distinguished from each other. in order to understand the existence of rudimentary organs, we have only to suppose that a former progenitor possessed the parts in question in a perfect state, and that under changed habits of life they became greatly reduced, either from simple disuse, or through the natural selection of those individuals which were least encumbered with a superfluous part, aided by the other means previously indicated. thus we can understand how it has come to pass that man and all other vertebrate animals have been constructed on the same general model, why they pass through the same early stages of development, and why they retain certain rudiments in common. consequently we ought frankly to admit their community of descent: to take any other view, is to admit that our own structure, and that of all the animals around us, is a mere snare laid to entrap our judgment. this conclusion is greatly strengthened, if we look to the members of the whole animal series, and consider the evidence derived from their affinities or classification, their geographical distribution and geological succession. it is only our natural prejudice, and that arrogance which made our forefathers declare that they were descended from demi-gods, which leads us to demur to this conclusion. but the time will before long come, when it will be thought wonderful that naturalists, who were well acquainted with the comparative structure and development of man, and other mammals, should have believed that each was the work of a separate act of creation. chapter ii. on the manner of development of man from some lower form. variability of body and mind in man--inheritance--causes of variability--laws of variation the same in man as in the lower animals--direct action of the conditions of life--effects of the increased use and disuse of parts--arrested development--reversion--correlated variation--rate of increase--checks to increase--natural selection--man the most dominant animal in the world--importance of his corporeal structure--the causes which have led to his becoming erect--consequent changes of structure--decrease in size of the canine teeth--increased size and altered shape of the skull--nakedness --absence of a tail--defenceless condition of man. it is manifest that man is now subject to much variability. no two individuals of the same race are quite alike. we may compare millions of faces, and each will be distinct. there is an equally great amount of diversity in the proportions and dimensions of the various parts of the body; the length of the legs being one of the most variable points. ( . 'investigations in military and anthropological statistics of american soldiers,' by b.a. gould, , p. .) although in some quarters of the world an elongated skull, and in other quarters a short skull prevails, yet there is great diversity of shape even within the limits of the same race, as with the aborigines of america and south australia--the latter a race "probably as pure and homogeneous in blood, customs, and language as any in existence"--and even with the inhabitants of so confined an area as the sandwich islands. ( . with respect to the "cranial forms of the american aborigines," see dr. aitken meigs in 'proc. acad. nat. sci.' philadelphia, may . on the australians, see huxley, in lyell's 'antiquity of man,' , p. . on the sandwich islanders, prof. j. wyman, 'observations on crania,' boston, , p. .) an eminent dentist assures me that there is nearly as much diversity in the teeth as in the features. the chief arteries so frequently run in abnormal courses, that it has been found useful for surgical purposes to calculate from corpses how often each course prevails. ( . 'anatomy of the arteries,' by r. quain. preface, vol. i. .) the muscles are eminently variable: thus those of the foot were found by prof. turner ( . 'transactions of the royal society of edinburgh,' vol. xxiv. pp. , .) not to be strictly alike in any two out of fifty bodies; and in some the deviations were considerable. he adds, that the power of performing the appropriate movements must have been modified in accordance with the several deviations. mr. j. wood has recorded ( . 'proceedings royal society,' , p. ; also , pp. , . there is a previous paper, , p. .) the occurrence of muscular variations in thirty-six subjects, and in another set of the same number no less than variations, those occurring on both sides of the body being only reckoned as one. in the last set, not one body out of the thirty-six was "found totally wanting in departures from the standard descriptions of the muscular system given in anatomical text books." a single body presented the extraordinary number of twenty-five distinct abnormalities. the same muscle sometimes varies in many ways: thus prof. macalister describes ( . 'proc. r. irish academy,' vol. x. , p. .) no less than twenty distinct variations in the palmaris accessorius. the famous old anatomist, wolff ( . 'act. acad. st. petersburg,' , part ii. p. .), insists that the internal viscera are more variable than the external parts: nulla particula est quae non aliter et aliter in aliis se habeat hominibus. he has even written a treatise on the choice of typical examples of the viscera for representation. a discussion on the beau-ideal of the liver, lungs, kidneys, etc., as of the human face divine, sounds strange in our ears. the variability or diversity of the mental faculties in men of the same race, not to mention the greater differences between the men of distinct races, is so notorious that not a word need here be said. so it is with the lower animals. all who have had charge of menageries admit this fact, and we see it plainly in our dogs and other domestic animals. brehm especially insists that each individual monkey of those which he kept tame in africa had its own peculiar disposition and temper: he mentions one baboon remarkable for its high intelligence; and the keepers in the zoological gardens pointed out to me a monkey, belonging to the new world division, equally remarkable for intelligence. rengger, also, insists on the diversity in the various mental characters of the monkeys of the same species which he kept in paraguay; and this diversity, as he adds, is partly innate, and partly the result of the manner in which they have been treated or educated. ( . brehm, 'thierleben,' b. i. ss. , . rengger, 'säugethiere von paraguay,' s. .) i have elsewhere ( . 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. chap. xii.) so fully discussed the subject of inheritance, that i need here add hardly anything. a greater number of facts have been collected with respect to the transmission of the most trifling, as well as of the most important characters in man, than in any of the lower animals; though the facts are copious enough with respect to the latter. so in regard to mental qualities, their transmission is manifest in our dogs, horses, and other domestic animals. besides special tastes and habits, general intelligence, courage, bad and good temper, etc., are certainly transmitted. with man we see similar facts in almost every family; and we now know, through the admirable labours of mr. galton ( . 'hereditary genius: an inquiry into its laws and consequences,' .), that genius which implies a wonderfully complex combination of high faculties, tends to be inherited; and, on the other hand, it is too certain that insanity and deteriorated mental powers likewise run in families. with respect to the causes of variability, we are in all cases very ignorant; but we can see that in man as in the lower animals, they stand in some relation to the conditions to which each species has been exposed, during several generations. domesticated animals vary more than those in a state of nature; and this is apparently due to the diversified and changing nature of the conditions to which they have been subjected. in this respect the different races of man resemble domesticated animals, and so do the individuals of the same race, when inhabiting a very wide area, like that of america. we see the influence of diversified conditions in the more civilised nations; for the members belonging to different grades of rank, and following different occupations, present a greater range of character than do the members of barbarous nations. but the uniformity of savages has often been exaggerated, and in some cases can hardly be said to exist. ( . mr. bates remarks ('the naturalist on the amazons,' , vol. ii p. ), with respect to the indians of the same south american tribe, "no two of them were at all similar in the shape of the head; one man had an oval visage with fine features, and another was quite mongolian in breadth and prominence of cheek, spread of nostrils, and obliquity of eyes.") it is, nevertheless, an error to speak of man, even if we look only to the conditions to which he has been exposed, as "far more domesticated" ( . blumenbach, 'treatises on anthropology.' eng. translat., , p. .) than any other animal. some savage races, such as the australians, are not exposed to more diversified conditions than are many species which have a wide range. in another and much more important respect, man differs widely from any strictly domesticated animal; for his breeding has never long been controlled, either by methodical or unconscious selection. no race or body of men has been so completely subjugated by other men, as that certain individuals should be preserved, and thus unconsciously selected, from somehow excelling in utility to their masters. nor have certain male and female individuals been intentionally picked out and matched, except in the well-known case of the prussian grenadiers; and in this case man obeyed, as might have been expected, the law of methodical selection; for it is asserted that many tall men were reared in the villages inhabited by the grenadiers and their tall wives. in sparta, also, a form of selection was followed, for it was enacted that all children should be examined shortly after birth; the well-formed and vigorous being preserved, the others left to perish. ( . mitford's 'history of greece,' vol. i. p. . it appears also from a passage in xenophon's 'memorabilia,' b. ii. (to which my attention has been called by the rev. j.n. hoare), that it was a well recognised principle with the greeks, that men ought to select their wives with a view to the health and vigour of their children. the grecian poet, theognis, who lived b.c., clearly saw how important selection, if carefully applied, would be for the improvement of mankind. he saw, likewise, that wealth often checks the proper action of sexual selection. he thus writes: "with kine and horses, kurnus! we proceed by reasonable rules, and choose a breed for profit and increase, at any price: of a sound stock, without defect or vice. but, in the daily matches that we make, the price is everything: for money's sake, men marry: women are in marriage given the churl or ruffian, that in wealth has thriven, may match his offspring with the proudest race: thus everything is mix'd, noble and base! if then in outward manner, form, and mind, you find us a degraded, motley kind, wonder no more, my friend! the cause is plain, and to lament the consequence is vain." (the works of j. hookham frere, vol. ii. , p. .)) if we consider all the races of man as forming a single species, his range is enormous; but some separate races, as the americans and polynesians, have very wide ranges. it is a well-known law that widely-ranging species are much more variable than species with restricted ranges; and the variability of man may with more truth be compared with that of widely-ranging species, than with that of domesticated animals. not only does variability appear to be induced in man and the lower animals by the same general causes, but in both the same parts of the body are affected in a closely analogous manner. this has been proved in such full detail by godron and quatrefages, that i need here only refer to their works. ( . godron, 'de l'espèce,' , tom. ii. livre . quatrefages, 'unité de l'espèce humaine,' . also lectures on anthropology, given in the 'revue des cours scientifiques,' - .) monstrosities, which graduate into slight variations, are likewise so similar in man and the lower animals, that the same classification and the same terms can be used for both, as has been shewn by isidore geoffroy st.-hilaire. ( . 'hist. gen. et part. des anomalies de l'organisation,' in three volumes, tom. i. .) in my work on the variation of domestic animals, i have attempted to arrange in a rude fashion the laws of variation under the following heads:--the direct and definite action of changed conditions, as exhibited by all or nearly all the individuals of the same species, varying in the same manner under the same circumstances. the effects of the long-continued use or disuse of parts. the cohesion of homologous parts. the variability of multiple parts. compensation of growth; but of this law i have found no good instance in the case of man. the effects of the mechanical pressure of one part on another; as of the pelvis on the cranium of the infant in the womb. arrests of development, leading to the diminution or suppression of parts. the reappearance of long-lost characters through reversion. and lastly, correlated variation. all these so-called laws apply equally to man and the lower animals; and most of them even to plants. it would be superfluous here to discuss all of them ( . i have fully discussed these laws in my 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. chap. xxii. and xxiii. m. j.p. durand has lately ( ) published a valuable essay, 'de l'influence des milieux,' etc. he lays much stress, in the case of plants, on the nature of the soil.); but several are so important, that they must be treated at considerable length. the direct and definite action of changed conditions. this is a most perplexing subject. it cannot be denied that changed conditions produce some, and occasionally a considerable effect, on organisms of all kinds; and it seems at first probable that if sufficient time were allowed this would be the invariable result. but i have failed to obtain clear evidence in favour of this conclusion; and valid reasons may be urged on the other side, at least as far as the innumerable structures are concerned, which are adapted for special ends. there can, however, be no doubt that changed conditions induce an almost indefinite amount of fluctuating variability, by which the whole organisation is rendered in some degree plastic. in the united states, above , , soldiers, who served in the late war, were measured, and the states in which they were born and reared were recorded. ( . 'investigations in military and anthrop. statistics,' etc., , by b.a. gould, pp. , , , , .) from this astonishing number of observations it is proved that local influences of some kind act directly on stature; and we further learn that "the state where the physical growth has in great measure taken place, and the state of birth, which indicates the ancestry, seem to exert a marked influence on the stature." for instance, it is established, "that residence in the western states, during the years of growth, tends to produce increase of stature." on the other hand, it is certain that with sailors, their life delays growth, as shewn "by the great difference between the statures of soldiers and sailors at the ages of seventeen and eighteen years." mr. b.a. gould endeavoured to ascertain the nature of the influences which thus act on stature; but he arrived only at negative results, namely that they did not relate to climate, the elevation of the land, soil, nor even "in any controlling degree" to the abundance or the need of the comforts of life. this latter conclusion is directly opposed to that arrived at by villerme, from the statistics of the height of the conscripts in different parts of france. when we compare the differences in stature between the polynesian chiefs and the lower orders within the same islands, or between the inhabitants of the fertile volcanic and low barren coral islands of the same ocean ( . for the polynesians, see prichard's 'physical history of mankind,' vol. v. , pp. , . also godron, 'de l'espèce,' tom. ii. p. . there is also a remarkable difference in appearance between the closely-allied hindoos inhabiting the upper ganges and bengal; see elphinstone's 'history of india,' vol. i. p. .) or again between the fuegians on the eastern and western shores of their country, where the means of subsistence are very different, it is scarcely possible to avoid the conclusion that better food and greater comfort do influence stature. but the preceding statements shew how difficult it is to arrive at any precise result. dr. beddoe has lately proved that, with the inhabitants of britain, residence in towns and certain occupations have a deteriorating influence on height; and he infers that the result is to a certain extent inherited, as is likewise the case in the united states. dr. beddoe further believes that wherever a "race attains its maximum of physical development, it rises highest in energy and moral vigour." ( . 'memoirs, anthropological society,' vol. iii. - , pp. , , .) whether external conditions produce any other direct effect on man is not known. it might have been expected that differences of climate would have had a marked influence, inasmuch as the lungs and kidneys are brought into activity under a low temperature, and the liver and skin under a high one. ( . dr. brakenridge, 'theory of diathesis,' 'medical times,' june and july , .) it was formerly thought that the colour of the skin and the character of the hair were determined by light or heat; and although it can hardly be denied that some effect is thus produced, almost all observers now agree that the effect has been very small, even after exposure during many ages. but this subject will be more properly discussed when we treat of the different races of mankind. with our domestic animals there are grounds for believing that cold and damp directly affect the growth of the hair; but i have not met with any evidence on this head in the case of man. effects of the increased use and disuse of parts. it is well known that use strengthens the muscles in the individual, and complete disuse, or the destruction of the proper nerve, weakens them. when the eye is destroyed, the optic nerve often becomes atrophied. when an artery is tied, the lateral channels increase not only in diameter, but in the thickness and strength of their coats. when one kidney ceases to act from disease, the other increases in size, and does double work. bones increase not only in thickness, but in length, from carrying a greater weight. ( . i have given authorities for these several statements in my 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. pp. - . dr. jaeger, "Ã�ber das langenwachsthum der knochen," 'jenäischen zeitschrift,' b. v. heft. i.) different occupations, habitually followed, lead to changed proportions in various parts of the body. thus it was ascertained by the united states commission ( . 'investigations,' etc., by b.a. gould, , p. .) that the legs of the sailors employed in the late war were longer by . of an inch than those of the soldiers, though the sailors were on an average shorter men; whilst their arms were shorter by . of an inch, and therefore, out of proportion, shorter in relation to their lesser height. this shortness of the arms is apparently due to their greater use, and is an unexpected result: but sailors chiefly use their arms in pulling, and not in supporting weights. with sailors, the girth of the neck and the depth of the instep are greater, whilst the circumference of the chest, waist, and hips is less, than in soldiers. whether the several foregoing modifications would become hereditary, if the same habits of life were followed during many generations, is not known, but it is probable. rengger ( . 'säugethiere von paraguay,' , s. .) attributes the thin legs and thick arms of the payaguas indians to successive generations having passed nearly their whole lives in canoes, with their lower extremities motionless. other writers have come to a similar conclusion in analogous cases. according to cranz ( . 'history of greenland,' eng. translat., , vol. i. p. .), who lived for a long time with the esquimaux, "the natives believe that ingenuity and dexterity in seal-catching (their highest art and virtue) is hereditary; there is really something in it, for the son of a celebrated seal-catcher will distinguish himself, though he lost his father in childhood." but in this case it is mental aptitude, quite as much as bodily structure, which appears to be inherited. it is asserted that the hands of english labourers are at birth larger than those of the gentry. ( . 'intermarriage,' by alex. walker, , p. .) from the correlation which exists, at least in some cases ( . 'the variation of animals under domestication,' vol. i. p. .), between the development of the extremities and of the jaws, it is possible that in those classes which do not labour much with their hands and feet, the jaws would be reduced in size from this cause. that they are generally smaller in refined and civilised men than in hard-working men or savages, is certain. but with savages, as mr. herbert spencer ( . 'principles of biology,' vol. i. p. .) has remarked, the greater use of the jaws in chewing coarse, uncooked food, would act in a direct manner on the masticatory muscles, and on the bones to which they are attached. in infants, long before birth, the skin on the soles of the feet is thicker than on any other part of the body; ( . paget, 'lectures on surgical pathology,' vol. ii, , p. .) and it can hardly be doubted that this is due to the inherited effects of pressure during a long series of generations. it is familiar to every one that watchmakers and engravers are liable to be short-sighted, whilst men living much out of doors, and especially savages, are generally long-sighted. ( . it is a singular and unexpected fact that sailors are inferior to landsmen in their mean distance of distinct vision. dr. b.a. gould ('sanitary memoirs of the war of the rebellion,' , p. ), has proved this to be the case; and he accounts for it by the ordinary range of vision in sailors being "restricted to the length of the vessel and the height of the masts.") short-sight and long-sight certainly tend to be inherited. ( . 'the variation of animals under domestication,' vol. i. p. .) the inferiority of europeans, in comparison with savages, in eyesight and in the other senses, is no doubt the accumulated and transmitted effect of lessened use during many generations; for rengger ( . 'säugethiere von paraguay,' s. , . i have had good opportunities for observing the extraordinary power of eyesight in the fuegians. see also lawrence ('lectures on physiology,' etc., , p. ) on this same subject. m. giraud-teulon has recently collected ('revue des cours scientifiques,' , p. ) a large and valuable body of evidence proving that the cause of short-sight, "c'est le travail assidu, de près.") states that he has repeatedly observed europeans, who had been brought up and spent their whole lives with the wild indians, who nevertheless did not equal them in the sharpness of their senses. the same naturalist observes that the cavities in the skull for the reception of the several sense-organs are larger in the american aborigines than in europeans; and this probably indicates a corresponding difference in the dimensions of the organs themselves. blumenbach has also remarked on the large size of the nasal cavities in the skulls of the american aborigines, and connects this fact with their remarkably acute power of smell. the mongolians of the plains of northern asia, according to pallas, have wonderfully perfect senses; and prichard believes that the great breadth of their skulls across the zygomas follows from their highly-developed sense organs. ( . prichard, 'physical history of mankind,' on the authority of blumenbach, vol. i. , p. ; for the statement by pallas, vol. iv. , p. .) the quechua indians inhabit the lofty plateaux of peru; and alcide d'orbigny states ( . quoted by prichard, 'researches into the physical history of mankind,' vol. v. p. .) that, from continually breathing a highly rarefied atmosphere, they have acquired chests and lungs of extraordinary dimensions. the cells, also, of the lungs are larger and more numerous than in europeans. these observations have been doubted, but mr. d. forbes carefully measured many aymaras, an allied race, living at the height of between , and , feet; and he informs me ( . mr. forbes' valuable paper is now published in the 'journal of the ethnological society of london,' new series, vol. ii. , p. .) that they differ conspicuously from the men of all other races seen by him in the circumference and length of their bodies. in his table of measurements, the stature of each man is taken at , and the other measurements are reduced to this standard. it is here seen that the extended arms of the aymaras are shorter than those of europeans, and much shorter than those of negroes. the legs are likewise shorter; and they present this remarkable peculiarity, that in every aymara measured, the femur is actually shorter than the tibia. on an average, the length of the femur to that of the tibia is as to ; whilst in two europeans, measured at the same time, the femora to the tibiae were as to ; and in three negroes as to . the humerus is likewise shorter relatively to the forearm. this shortening of that part of the limb which is nearest to the body, appears to be, as suggested to me by mr. forbes, a case of compensation in relation with the greatly increased length of the trunk. the aymaras present some other singular points of structure, for instance, the very small projection of the heel. these men are so thoroughly acclimatised to their cold and lofty abode, that when formerly carried down by the spaniards to the low eastern plains, and when now tempted down by high wages to the gold-washings, they suffer a frightful rate of mortality. nevertheless mr. forbes found a few pure families which had survived during two generations: and he observed that they still inherited their characteristic peculiarities. but it was manifest, even without measurement, that these peculiarities had all decreased; and on measurement, their bodies were found not to be so much elongated as those of the men on the high plateau; whilst their femora had become somewhat lengthened, as had their tibiae, although in a less degree. the actual measurements may be seen by consulting mr. forbes's memoir. from these observations, there can, i think, be no doubt that residence during many generations at a great elevation tends, both directly and indirectly, to induce inherited modifications in the proportions of the body. ( . dr. wilckens ('landwirthschaft. wochenblatt,' no. , ) has lately published an interesting essay shewing how domestic animals, which live in mountainous regions, have their frames modified.) although man may not have been much modified during the latter stages of his existence through the increased or decreased use of parts, the facts now given shew that his liability in this respect has not been lost; and we positively know that the same law holds good with the lower animals. consequently we may infer that when at a remote epoch the progenitors of man were in a transitional state, and were changing from quadrupeds into bipeds, natural selection would probably have been greatly aided by the inherited effects of the increased or diminished use of the different parts of the body. arrests of development. there is a difference between arrested development and arrested growth, for parts in the former state continue to grow whilst still retaining their early condition. various monstrosities come under this head; and some, as a cleft palate, are known to be occasionally inherited. it will suffice for our purpose to refer to the arrested brain-development of microcephalous idiots, as described in vogt's memoir. ( . 'mémoire sur les microcephales,' , pp. , , , , - .) their skulls are smaller, and the convolutions of the brain are less complex than in normal men. the frontal sinus, or the projection over the eye-brows, is largely developed, and the jaws are prognathous to an "effrayant" degree; so that these idiots somewhat resemble the lower types of mankind. their intelligence, and most of their mental faculties, are extremely feeble. they cannot acquire the power of speech, and are wholly incapable of prolonged attention, but are much given to imitation. they are strong and remarkably active, continually gambolling and jumping about, and making grimaces. they often ascend stairs on all-fours; and are curiously fond of climbing up furniture or trees. we are thus reminded of the delight shewn by almost all boys in climbing trees; and this again reminds us how lambs and kids, originally alpine animals, delight to frisk on any hillock, however small. idiots also resemble the lower animals in some other respects; thus several cases are recorded of their carefully smelling every mouthful of food before eating it. one idiot is described as often using his mouth in aid of his hands, whilst hunting for lice. they are often filthy in their habits, and have no sense of decency; and several cases have been published of their bodies being remarkably hairy. ( . prof. laycock sums up the character of brute-like idiots by calling them "theroid;" 'journal of mental science,' july . dr. scott ('the deaf and dumb,' nd ed. , p. ) has often observed the imbecile smelling their food. see, on this same subject, and on the hairiness of idiots, dr. maudsley, 'body and mind,' , pp. - . pinel has also given a striking case of hairiness in an idiot.) reversion. many of the cases to be here given, might have been introduced under the last heading. when a structure is arrested in its development, but still continues growing, until it closely resembles a corresponding structure in some lower and adult member of the same group, it may in one sense be considered as a case of reversion. the lower members in a group give us some idea how the common progenitor was probably constructed; and it is hardly credible that a complex part, arrested at an early phase of embryonic development, should go on growing so as ultimately to perform its proper function, unless it had acquired such power during some earlier state of existence, when the present exceptional or arrested structure was normal. the simple brain of a microcephalous idiot, in as far as it resembles that of an ape, may in this sense be said to offer a case of reversion. ( . in my 'variation of animals under domestication' (vol. ii. p. ), i attributed the not very rare cases of supernumerary mammae in women to reversion. i was led to this as a probable conclusion, by the additional mammae being generally placed symmetrically on the breast; and more especially from one case, in which a single efficient mamma occurred in the inguinal region of a woman, the daughter of another woman with supernumerary mammae. but i now find (see, for instance, prof. preyer, 'der kampf um das dasein,' , s. ) that mammae erraticae, occur in other situations, as on the back, in the armpit, and on the thigh; the mammae in this latter instance having given so much milk that the child was thus nourished. the probability that the additional mammae are due to reversion is thus much weakened; nevertheless, it still seems to me probable, because two pairs are often found symmetrically on the breast; and of this i myself have received information in several cases. it is well known that some lemurs normally have two pairs of mammae on the breast. five cases have been recorded of the presence of more than a pair of mammae (of course rudimentary) in the male sex of mankind; see 'journal of anat. and physiology,' , p. , for a case given by dr. handyside, in which two brothers exhibited this peculiarity; see also a paper by dr. bartels, in 'reichert's and du bois-reymond's archiv.,' , p. . in one of the cases alluded to by dr. bartels, a man bore five mammae, one being medial and placed above the navel; meckel von hemsbach thinks that this latter case is illustrated by a medial mamma occurring in certain cheiroptera. on the whole, we may well doubt if additional mammae would ever have been developed in both sexes of mankind, had not his early progenitors been provided with more than a single pair. in the above work (vol. ii. p. ), i also attributed, though with much hesitation, the frequent cases of polydactylism in men and various animals to reversion. i was partly led to this through prof. owen's statement, that some of the ichthyopterygia possess more than five digits, and therefore, as i supposed, had retained a primordial condition; but prof. gegenbaur ('jenaischen zeitschrift,' b. v. heft , s. ), disputes owen's conclusion. on the other hand, according to the opinion lately advanced by dr. gunther, on the paddle of ceratodus, which is provided with articulated bony rays on both sides of a central chain of bones, there seems no great difficulty in admitting that six or more digits on one side, or on both sides, might reappear through reversion. i am informed by dr. zouteveen that there is a case on record of a man having twenty-four fingers and twenty-four toes! i was chiefly led to the conclusion that the presence of supernumerary digits might be due to reversion from the fact that such digits, not only are strongly inherited, but, as i then believed, had the power of regrowth after amputation, like the normal digits of the lower vertebrata. but i have explained in the second edition of my variation under domestication why i now place little reliance on the recorded cases of such regrowth. nevertheless it deserves notice, inasmuch as arrested development and reversion are intimately related processes; that various structures in an embryonic or arrested condition, such as a cleft palate, bifid uterus, etc., are frequently accompanied by polydactylism. this has been strongly insisted on by meckel and isidore geoffroy st.-hilaire. but at present it is the safest course to give up altogether the idea that there is any relation between the development of supernumerary digits and reversion to some lowly organised progenitor of man.) there are other cases which come more strictly under our present head of reversion. certain structures, regularly occurring in the lower members of the group to which man belongs, occasionally make their appearance in him, though not found in the normal human embryo; or, if normally present in the human embryo, they become abnormally developed, although in a manner which is normal in the lower members of the group. these remarks will be rendered clearer by the following illustrations. in various mammals the uterus graduates from a double organ with two distinct orifices and two passages, as in the marsupials, into a single organ, which is in no way double except from having a slight internal fold, as in the higher apes and man. the rodents exhibit a perfect series of gradations between these two extreme states. in all mammals the uterus is developed from two simple primitive tubes, the inferior portions of which form the cornua; and it is in the words of dr. farre, "by the coalescence of the two cornua at their lower extremities that the body of the uterus is formed in man; while in those animals in which no middle portion or body exists, the cornua remain ununited. as the development of the uterus proceeds, the two cornua become gradually shorter, until at length they are lost, or, as it were, absorbed into the body of the uterus." the angles of the uterus are still produced into cornua, even in animals as high up in the scale as the lower apes and lemurs. now in women, anomalous cases are not very infrequent, in which the mature uterus is furnished with cornua, or is partially divided into two organs; and such cases, according to owen, repeat "the grade of concentrative development," attained by certain rodents. here perhaps we have an instance of a simple arrest of embryonic development, with subsequent growth and perfect functional development; for either side of the partially double uterus is capable of performing the proper office of gestation. in other and rarer cases, two distinct uterine cavities are formed, each having its proper orifice and passage. ( . see dr. a. farre's well-known article in the 'cyclopaedia of anatomy and physiology,' vol. v. , p. . owen, 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. iii. , p. . professor turner, in 'edinburgh medical journal,' february, .) no such stage is passed through during the ordinary development of the embryo; and it is difficult to believe, though perhaps not impossible, that the two simple, minute, primitive tubes should know how (if such an expression may be used) to grow into two distinct uteri, each with a well-constructed orifice and passage, and each furnished with numerous muscles, nerves, glands and vessels, if they had not formerly passed through a similar course of development, as in the case of existing marsupials. no one will pretend that so perfect a structure as the abnormal double uterus in woman could be the result of mere chance. but the principle of reversion, by which a long-lost structure is called back into existence, might serve as the guide for its full development, even after the lapse of an enormous interval of time. professor canestrini, after discussing the foregoing and various analogous cases, arrives at the same conclusion as that just given. he adduces another instance, in the case of the malar bone ( . 'annuario della soc. dei naturalisti,' modena, , p. . prof. canestrini gives extracts on this subject from various authorities. laurillard remarks, that as he has found a complete similarity in the form, proportions, and connection of the two malar bones in several human subjects and in certain apes, he cannot consider this disposition of the parts as simply accidental. another paper on this same anomaly has been published by dr. saviotti in the 'gazzetta delle cliniche,' turin, , where he says that traces of the division may be detected in about two per cent. of adult skulls; he also remarks that it more frequently occurs in prognathous skulls, not of the aryan race, than in others. see also g. delorenzi on the same subject; 'tre nuovi casi d'anomalia dell' osso malare,' torino, . also, e. morselli, 'sopra una rara anomalia dell' osso malare,' modena, . still more recently gruber has written a pamphlet on the division of this bone. i give these references because a reviewer, without any grounds or scruples, has thrown doubts on my statements.), which, in some of the quadrumana and other mammals, normally consists of two portions. this is its condition in the human foetus when two months old; and through arrested development, it sometimes remains thus in man when adult, more especially in the lower prognathous races. hence canestrini concludes that some ancient progenitor of man must have had this bone normally divided into two portions, which afterwards became fused together. in man the frontal bone consists of a single piece, but in the embryo, and in children, and in almost all the lower mammals, it consists of two pieces separated by a distinct suture. this suture occasionally persists more or less distinctly in man after maturity; and more frequently in ancient than in recent crania, especially, as canestrini has observed, in those exhumed from the drift, and belonging to the brachycephalic type. here again he comes to the same conclusion as in the analogous case of the malar bones. in this, and other instances presently to be given, the cause of ancient races approaching the lower animals in certain characters more frequently than do the modern races, appears to be, that the latter stand at a somewhat greater distance in the long line of descent from their early semi-human progenitors. various other anomalies in man, more or less analogous to the foregoing, have been advanced by different authors, as cases of reversion; but these seem not a little doubtful, for we have to descend extremely low in the mammalian series, before we find such structures normally present. ( . a whole series of cases is given by isidore geoffroy st.-hilaire, 'hist. des anomalies,' tom, iii, p. . a reviewer ('journal of anatomy and physiology,' , p. ) blames me much for not having discussed the numerous cases, which have been recorded, of various parts arrested in their development. he says that, according to my theory, "every transient condition of an organ, during its development, is not only a means to an end, but once was an end in itself." this does not seem to me necessarily to hold good. why should not variations occur during an early period of development, having no relation to reversion; yet such variations might be preserved and accumulated, if in any way serviceable, for instance, in shortening and simplifying the course of development? and again, why should not injurious abnormalities, such as atrophied or hypertrophied parts, which have no relation to a former state of existence, occur at an early period, as well as during maturity?) in man, the canine teeth are perfectly efficient instruments for mastication. but their true canine character, as owen ( . 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. iii. , p. .) remarks, "is indicated by the conical form of the crown, which terminates in an obtuse point, is convex outward and flat or sub-concave within, at the base of which surface there is a feeble prominence. the conical form is best expressed in the melanian races, especially the australian. the canine is more deeply implanted, and by a stronger fang than the incisors." nevertheless, this tooth no longer serves man as a special weapon for tearing his enemies or prey; it may, therefore, as far as its proper function is concerned, be considered as rudimentary. in every large collection of human skulls some may be found, as haeckel ( . 'generelle morphologie,' , b. ii. s. clv.) observes, with the canine teeth projecting considerably beyond the others in the same manner as in the anthropomorphous apes, but in a less degree. in these cases, open spaces between the teeth in the one jaw are left for the reception of the canines of the opposite jaw. an inter-space of this kind in a kaffir skull, figured by wagner, is surprisingly wide. ( . carl vogt's 'lectures on man,' eng. translat., , p. .) considering how few are the ancient skulls which have been examined, compared to recent skulls, it is an interesting fact that in at least three cases the canines project largely; and in the naulette jaw they are spoken of as enormous. ( . c. carter blake, on a jaw from la naulette, 'anthropological review,' , p. . schaaffhausen, ibid. , p. .) of the anthropomorphous apes the males alone have their canines fully developed; but in the female gorilla, and in a less degree in the female orang, these teeth project considerably beyond the others; therefore the fact, of which i have been assured, that women sometimes have considerably projecting canines, is no serious objection to the belief that their occasional great development in man is a case of reversion to an ape-like progenitor. he who rejects with scorn the belief that the shape of his own canines, and their occasional great development in other men, are due to our early forefathers having been provided with these formidable weapons, will probably reveal, by sneering, the line of his descent. for though he no longer intends, nor has the power, to use these teeth as weapons, he will unconsciously retract his "snarling muscles" (thus named by sir c. bell) ( . the anatomy of expression, , pp. , .), so as to expose them ready for action, like a dog prepared to fight. many muscles are occasionally developed in man, which are proper to the quadrumana or other mammals. professor vlacovich ( . quoted by prof. canestrini in the 'annuario della soc. dei naturalisti,' , p. .) examined forty male subjects, and found a muscle, called by him the ischio-pubic, in nineteen of them; in three others there was a ligament which represented this muscle; and in the remaining eighteen no trace of it. in only two out of thirty female subjects was this muscle developed on both sides, but in three others the rudimentary ligament was present. this muscle, therefore, appears to be much more common in the male than in the female sex; and on the belief in the descent of man from some lower form, the fact is intelligible; for it has been detected in several of the lower animals, and in all of these it serves exclusively to aid the male in the act of reproduction. mr. j. wood, in his valuable series of papers ( . these papers deserve careful study by any one who desires to learn how frequently our muscles vary, and in varying come to resemble those of the quadrumana. the following references relate to the few points touched on in my text: 'proc. royal soc.' vol. xiv. , pp. - ; vol. xv. , pp. , ; vol. xv. , p. ; vol. xvi. , p. . i may here add that dr. murie and mr. st. george mivart have shewn in their memoir on the lemuroidea ('transactions, zoological society,' vol. vii. , p. ), how extraordinarily variable some of the muscles are in these animals, the lowest members of the primates. gradations, also, in the muscles leading to structures found in animals still lower in the scale, are numerous in the lemuroidea.), has minutely described a vast number of muscular variations in man, which resemble normal structures in the lower animals. the muscles which closely resemble those regularly present in our nearest allies, the quadrumana, are too numerous to be here even specified. in a single male subject, having a strong bodily frame, and well-formed skull, no less than seven muscular variations were observed, all of which plainly represented muscles proper to various kinds of apes. this man, for instance, had on both sides of his neck a true and powerful "levator claviculae," such as is found in all kinds of apes, and which is said to occur in about one out of sixty human subjects. ( . see also prof. macalister in 'proceedings, royal irish academy,' vol. x. , p. .) again, this man had "a special abductor of the metatarsal bone of the fifth digit, such as professor huxley and mr. flower have shewn to exist uniformly in the higher and lower apes." i will give only two additional cases; the acromio-basilar muscle is found in all mammals below man, and seems to be correlated with a quadrupedal gait, ( . mr. champneys in 'journal of anatomy and physiology,' nov. , p. .) and it occurs in about one out of sixty human subjects. in the lower extremities mr. bradley ( . ibid. may , p. .) found an abductor ossis metatarsi quinti in both feet of man; this muscle had not up to that time been recorded in mankind, but is always present in the anthropomorphous apes. the muscles of the hands and arms--parts which are so eminently characteristic of man--are extremely liable to vary, so as to resemble the corresponding muscles in the lower animals. ( . prof. macalister (ibid. p. ) has tabulated his observations, and finds that muscular abnormalities are most frequent in the fore-arms, secondly, in the face, thirdly, in the foot, etc.) such resemblances are either perfect or imperfect; yet in the latter case they are manifestly of a transitional nature. certain variations are more common in man, and others in woman, without our being able to assign any reason. mr. wood, after describing numerous variations, makes the following pregnant remark. "notable departures from the ordinary type of the muscular structures run in grooves or directions, which must be taken to indicate some unknown factor, of much importance to a comprehensive knowledge of general and scientific anatomy." ( . the rev. dr. haughton, after giving ('proc. r. irish academy,' june , , p. ) a remarkable case of variation in the human flexor pollicis longus, adds, "this remarkable example shews that man may sometimes possess the arrangement of tendons of thumb and fingers characteristic of the macaque; but whether such a case should be regarded as a macaque passing upwards into a man, or a man passing downwards into a macaque, or as a congenital freak of nature, i cannot undertake to say." it is satisfactory to hear so capable an anatomist, and so embittered an opponent of evolutionism, admitting even the possibility of either of his first propositions. prof. macalister has also described ('proceedings royal irish academy,' vol. x. , p. ) variations in the flexor pollicis longus, remarkable from their relations to the same muscle in the quadrumana.) that this unknown factor is reversion to a former state of existence may be admitted as in the highest degree probable. ( . since the first edition of this book appeared, mr. wood has published another memoir in the philosophical transactions, , p. , on the varieties of the muscles of the human neck, shoulder, and chest. he here shews how extremely variable these muscles are, and how often and how closely the variations resemble the normal muscles of the lower animals. he sums up by remarking, "it will be enough for my purpose if i have succeeded in shewing the more important forms which, when occurring as varieties in the human subject, tend to exhibit in a sufficiently marked manner what may be considered as proofs and examples of the darwinian principle of reversion, or law of inheritance, in this department of anatomical science.") it is quite incredible that a man should through mere accident abnormally resemble certain apes in no less than seven of his muscles, if there had been no genetic connection between them. on the other hand, if man is descended from some ape-like creature, no valid reason can be assigned why certain muscles should not suddenly reappear after an interval of many thousand generations, in the same manner as with horses, asses, and mules, dark-coloured stripes suddenly reappear on the legs, and shoulders, after an interval of hundreds, or more probably of thousands of generations. these various cases of reversion are so closely related to those of rudimentary organs given in the first chapter, that many of them might have been indifferently introduced either there or here. thus a human uterus furnished with cornua may be said to represent, in a rudimentary condition, the same organ in its normal state in certain mammals. some parts which are rudimentary in man, as the os coccyx in both sexes, and the mammae in the male sex, are always present; whilst others, such as the supracondyloid foramen, only occasionally appear, and therefore might have been introduced under the head of reversion. these several reversionary structures, as well as the strictly rudimentary ones, reveal the descent of man from some lower form in an unmistakable manner. correlated variation. in man, as in the lower animals, many structures are so intimately related, that when one part varies so does another, without our being able, in most cases, to assign any reason. we cannot say whether the one part governs the other, or whether both are governed by some earlier developed part. various monstrosities, as i. geoffroy repeatedly insists, are thus intimately connected. homologous structures are particularly liable to change together, as we see on the opposite sides of the body, and in the upper and lower extremities. meckel long ago remarked, that when the muscles of the arm depart from their proper type, they almost always imitate those of the leg; and so, conversely, with the muscles of the legs. the organs of sight and hearing, the teeth and hair, the colour of the skin and of the hair, colour and constitution, are more or less correlated. ( . the authorities for these several statements are given in my 'variation of animals under domestication,' vol. ii. pp. - .) professor schaaffhausen first drew attention to the relation apparently existing between a muscular frame and the strongly-pronounced supra-orbital ridges, which are so characteristic of the lower races of man. besides the variations which can be grouped with more or less probability under the foregoing heads, there is a large class of variations which may be provisionally called spontaneous, for to our ignorance they appear to arise without any exciting cause. it can, however, be shewn that such variations, whether consisting of slight individual differences, or of strongly-marked and abrupt deviations of structure, depend much more on the constitution of the organism than on the nature of the conditions to which it has been subjected. ( . this whole subject has been discussed in chap. xxiii. vol. ii. of my 'variation of animals and plants under domestication.') rate of increase. civilised populations have been known under favourable conditions, as in the united states, to double their numbers in twenty-five years; and, according to a calculation, by euler, this might occur in a little over twelve years. ( . see the ever memorable 'essay on the principle of population,' by the rev. t. malthus, vol. i. . pp. , .) at the former rate, the present population of the united states (thirty millions), would in years cover the whole terraqueous globe so thickly, that four men would have to stand on each square yard of surface. the primary or fundamental check to the continued increase of man is the difficulty of gaining subsistence, and of living in comfort. we may infer that this is the case from what we see, for instance, in the united states, where subsistence is easy, and there is plenty of room. if such means were suddenly doubled in great britain, our number would be quickly doubled. with civilised nations this primary check acts chiefly by restraining marriages. the greater death-rate of infants in the poorest classes is also very important; as well as the greater mortality, from various diseases, of the inhabitants of crowded and miserable houses, at all ages. the effects of severe epidemics and wars are soon counterbalanced, and more than counterbalanced, in nations placed under favourable conditions. emigration also comes in aid as a temporary check, but, with the extremely poor classes, not to any great extent. there is reason to suspect, as malthus has remarked, that the reproductive power is actually less in barbarous, than in civilised races. we know nothing positively on this head, for with savages no census has been taken; but from the concurrent testimony of missionaries, and of others who have long resided with such people, it appears that their families are usually small, and large ones rare. this may be partly accounted for, as it is believed, by the women suckling their infants during a long time; but it is highly probable that savages, who often suffer much hardship, and who do not obtain so much nutritious food as civilised men, would be actually less prolific. i have shewn in a former work ( . 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol ii. pp. - , .), that all our domesticated quadrupeds and birds, and all our cultivated plants, are more fertile than the corresponding species in a state of nature. it is no valid objection to this conclusion that animals suddenly supplied with an excess of food, or when grown very fat; and that most plants on sudden removal from very poor to very rich soil, are rendered more or less sterile. we might, therefore, expect that civilised men, who in one sense are highly domesticated, would be more prolific than wild men. it is also probable that the increased fertility of civilised nations would become, as with our domestic animals, an inherited character: it is at least known that with mankind a tendency to produce twins runs in families. ( . mr. sedgwick, 'british and foreign medico-chirurgical review,' july , p. .) notwithstanding that savages appear to be less prolific than civilised people, they would no doubt rapidly increase if their numbers were not by some means rigidly kept down. the santali, or hill-tribes of india, have recently afforded a good illustration of this fact; for, as shewn by mr. hunter ( . 'the annals of rural bengal,' by w.w. hunter, , p. .), they have increased at an extraordinary rate since vaccination has been introduced, other pestilences mitigated, and war sternly repressed. this increase, however, would not have been possible had not these rude people spread into the adjoining districts, and worked for hire. savages almost always marry; yet there is some prudential restraint, for they do not commonly marry at the earliest possible age. the young men are often required to shew that they can support a wife; and they generally have first to earn the price with which to purchase her from her parents. with savages the difficulty of obtaining subsistence occasionally limits their number in a much more direct manner than with civilised people, for all tribes periodically suffer from severe famines. at such times savages are forced to devour much bad food, and their health can hardly fail to be injured. many accounts have been published of their protruding stomachs and emaciated limbs after and during famines. they are then, also, compelled to wander much, and, as i was assured in australia, their infants perish in large numbers. as famines are periodical, depending chiefly on extreme seasons, all tribes must fluctuate in number. they cannot steadily and regularly increase, as there is no artificial increase in the supply of food. savages, when hard pressed, encroach on each other's territories, and war is the result; but they are indeed almost always at war with their neighbours. they are liable to many accidents on land and water in their search for food; and in some countries they suffer much from the larger beasts of prey. even in india, districts have been depopulated by the ravages of tigers. malthus has discussed these several checks, but he does not lay stress enough on what is probably the most important of all, namely infanticide, especially of female infants, and the habit of procuring abortion. these practices now prevail in many quarters of the world; and infanticide seems formerly to have prevailed, as mr. m'lennan ( . 'primitive marriage,' .) has shewn, on a still more extensive scale. these practices appear to have originated in savages recognising the difficulty, or rather the impossibility of supporting all the infants that are born. licentiousness may also be added to the foregoing checks; but this does not follow from failing means of subsistence; though there is reason to believe that in some cases (as in japan) it has been intentionally encouraged as a means of keeping down the population. if we look back to an extremely remote epoch, before man had arrived at the dignity of manhood, he would have been guided more by instinct and less by reason than are the lowest savages at the present time. our early semi-human progenitors would not have practised infanticide or polyandry; for the instincts of the lower animals are never so perverted ( . a writer in the 'spectator' (march , , p. ) comments as follows on this passage:--"mr. darwin finds himself compelled to reintroduce a new doctrine of the fall of man. he shews that the instincts of the higher animals are far nobler than the habits of savage races of men, and he finds himself, therefore, compelled to re-introduce,--in a form of the substantial orthodoxy of which he appears to be quite unconscious,--and to introduce as a scientific hypothesis the doctrine that man's gain of knowledge was the cause of a temporary but long-enduring moral deterioration as indicated by the many foul customs, especially as to marriage, of savage tribes. what does the jewish tradition of the moral degeneration of man through his snatching at a knowledge forbidden him by his highest instinct assert beyond this?") as to lead them regularly to destroy their own offspring, or to be quite devoid of jealousy. there would have been no prudential restraint from marriage, and the sexes would have freely united at an early age. hence the progenitors of man would have tended to increase rapidly; but checks of some kind, either periodical or constant, must have kept down their numbers, even more severely than with existing savages. what the precise nature of these checks were, we cannot say, any more than with most other animals. we know that horses and cattle, which are not extremely prolific animals, when first turned loose in south america, increased at an enormous rate. the elephant, the slowest breeder of all known animals, would in a few thousand years stock the whole world. the increase of every species of monkey must be checked by some means; but not, as brehm remarks, by the attacks of beasts of prey. no one will assume that the actual power of reproduction in the wild horses and cattle of america, was at first in any sensible degree increased; or that, as each district became fully stocked, this same power was diminished. no doubt, in this case, and in all others, many checks concur, and different checks under different circumstances; periodical dearths, depending on unfavourable seasons, being probably the most important of all. so it will have been with the early progenitors of man. natural selection. we have now seen that man is variable in body and mind; and that the variations are induced, either directly or indirectly, by the same general causes, and obey the same general laws, as with the lower animals. man has spread widely over the face of the earth, and must have been exposed, during his incessant migrations ( . see some good remarks to this effect by w. stanley jevons, "a deduction from darwin's theory," 'nature,' , p. .), to the most diversified conditions. the inhabitants of tierra del fuego, the cape of good hope, and tasmania in the one hemisphere, and of the arctic regions in the other, must have passed through many climates, and changed their habits many times, before they reached their present homes. ( . latham, 'man and his migrations,' , p. .) the early progenitors of man must also have tended, like all other animals, to have increased beyond their means of subsistence; they must, therefore, occasionally have been exposed to a struggle for existence, and consequently to the rigid law of natural selection. beneficial variations of all kinds will thus, either occasionally or habitually, have been preserved and injurious ones eliminated. i do not refer to strongly-marked deviations of structure, which occur only at long intervals of time, but to mere individual differences. we know, for instance, that the muscles of our hands and feet, which determine our powers of movement, are liable, like those of the lower animals, ( . messrs. murie and mivart in their 'anatomy of the lemuroidea' ('transact. zoolog. soc.' vol. vii. , pp. - ) say, "some muscles are so irregular in their distribution that they cannot be well classed in any of the above groups." these muscles differ even on the opposite sides of the same individual.) to incessant variability. if then the progenitors of man inhabiting any district, especially one undergoing some change in its conditions, were divided into two equal bodies, the one half which included all the individuals best adapted by their powers of movement for gaining subsistence, or for defending themselves, would on an average survive in greater numbers, and procreate more offspring than the other and less well endowed half. man in the rudest state in which he now exists is the most dominant animal that has ever appeared on this earth. he has spread more widely than any other highly organised form: and all others have yielded before him. he manifestly owes this immense superiority to his intellectual faculties, to his social habits, which lead him to aid and defend his fellows, and to his corporeal structure. the supreme importance of these characters has been proved by the final arbitrament of the battle for life. through his powers of intellect, articulate language has been evolved; and on this his wonderful advancement has mainly depended. as mr. chauncey wright remarks ( . limits of natural selection, 'north american review,' oct. , p. .): "a psychological analysis of the faculty of language shews, that even the smallest proficiency in it might require more brain power than the greatest proficiency in any other direction." he has invented and is able to use various weapons, tools, traps, etc., with which he defends himself, kills or catches prey, and otherwise obtains food. he has made rafts or canoes for fishing or crossing over to neighbouring fertile islands. he has discovered the art of making fire, by which hard and stringy roots can be rendered digestible, and poisonous roots or herbs innocuous. this discovery of fire, probably the greatest ever made by man, excepting language, dates from before the dawn of history. these several inventions, by which man in the rudest state has become so pre-eminent, are the direct results of the development of his powers of observation, memory, curiosity, imagination, and reason. i cannot, therefore, understand how it is that mr. wallace ( . 'quarterly review,' april , p. . this subject is more fully discussed in mr. wallace's 'contributions to the theory of natural selection,' , in which all the essays referred to in this work are re-published. the 'essay on man,' has been ably criticised by prof. claparede, one of the most distinguished zoologists in europe, in an article published in the 'bibliotheque universelle,' june . the remark quoted in my text will surprise every one who has read mr. wallace's celebrated paper on 'the origin of human races deduced from the theory of natural selection,' originally published in the 'anthropological review,' may , p. clviii. i cannot here resist quoting a most just remark by sir j. lubbock ('prehistoric times,' , p. ) in reference to this paper, namely, that mr. wallace, "with characteristic unselfishness, ascribes it (i.e. the idea of natural selection) unreservedly to mr. darwin, although, as is well known, he struck out the idea independently, and published it, though not with the same elaboration, at the same time.") maintains, that "natural selection could only have endowed the savage with a brain a little superior to that of an ape." although the intellectual powers and social habits of man are of paramount importance to him, we must not underrate the importance of his bodily structure, to which subject the remainder of this chapter will be devoted; the development of the intellectual and social or moral faculties being discussed in a later chapter. even to hammer with precision is no easy matter, as every one who has tried to learn carpentry will admit. to throw a stone with as true an aim as a fuegian in defending himself, or in killing birds, requires the most consummate perfection in the correlated action of the muscles of the hand, arm, and shoulder, and, further, a fine sense of touch. in throwing a stone or spear, and in many other actions, a man must stand firmly on his feet; and this again demands the perfect co-adaptation of numerous muscles. to chip a flint into the rudest tool, or to form a barbed spear or hook from a bone, demands the use of a perfect hand; for, as a most capable judge, mr. schoolcraft ( . quoted by mr. lawson tait in his 'law of natural selection,' 'dublin quarterly journal of medical science,' feb. . dr. keller is likewise quoted to the same effect.), remarks, the shaping fragments of stone into knives, lances, or arrow-heads, shews "extraordinary ability and long practice." this is to a great extent proved by the fact that primeval men practised a division of labour; each man did not manufacture his own flint tools or rude pottery, but certain individuals appear to have devoted themselves to such work, no doubt receiving in exchange the produce of the chase. archaeologists are convinced that an enormous interval of time elapsed before our ancestors thought of grinding chipped flints into smooth tools. one can hardly doubt, that a man-like animal who possessed a hand and arm sufficiently perfect to throw a stone with precision, or to form a flint into a rude tool, could, with sufficient practice, as far as mechanical skill alone is concerned, make almost anything which a civilised man can make. the structure of the hand in this respect may be compared with that of the vocal organs, which in the apes are used for uttering various signal-cries, or, as in one genus, musical cadences; but in man the closely similar vocal organs have become adapted through the inherited effects of use for the utterance of articulate language. turning now to the nearest allies of men, and therefore to the best representatives of our early progenitors, we find that the hands of the quadrumana are constructed on the same general pattern as our own, but are far less perfectly adapted for diversified uses. their hands do not serve for locomotion so well as the feet of a dog; as may be seen in such monkeys as the chimpanzee and orang, which walk on the outer margins of the palms, or on the knuckles. ( . owen, 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. iii. p. .) their hands, however, are admirably adapted for climbing trees. monkeys seize thin branches or ropes, with the thumb on one side and the fingers and palm on the other, in the same manner as we do. they can thus also lift rather large objects, such as the neck of a bottle, to their mouths. baboons turn over stones, and scratch up roots with their hands. they seize nuts, insects, or other small objects with the thumb in opposition to the fingers, and no doubt they thus extract eggs and young from the nests of birds. american monkeys beat the wild oranges on the branches until the rind is cracked, and then tear it off with the fingers of the two hands. in a wild state they break open hard fruits with stones. other monkeys open mussel-shells with the two thumbs. with their fingers they pull out thorns and burs, and hunt for each other's parasites. they roll down stones, or throw them at their enemies: nevertheless, they are clumsy in these various actions, and, as i have myself seen, are quite unable to throw a stone with precision. it seems to me far from true that because "objects are grasped clumsily" by monkeys, "a much less specialised organ of prehension" would have served them ( . 'quarterly review,' april , p. .) equally well with their present hands. on the contrary, i see no reason to doubt that more perfectly constructed hands would have been an advantage to them, provided that they were not thus rendered less fitted for climbing trees. we may suspect that a hand as perfect as that of man would have been disadvantageous for climbing; for the most arboreal monkeys in the world, namely, ateles in america, colobus in africa, and hylobates in asia, are either thumbless, or their toes partially cohere, so that their limbs are converted into mere grasping hooks. ( . in hylobates syndactylus, as the name expresses, two of the toes regularly cohere; and this, as mr. blyth informs me, is occasionally the case with the toes of h. agilis, lar, and leuciscus. colobus is strictly arboreal and extraordinarily active (brehm, 'thierleben,' b. i. s. ), but whether a better climber than the species of the allied genera, i do not know. it deserves notice that the feet of the sloths, the most arboreal animals in the world, are wonderfully hook-like. as soon as some ancient member in the great series of the primates came to be less arboreal, owing to a change in its manner of procuring subsistence, or to some change in the surrounding conditions, its habitual manner of progression would have been modified: and thus it would have been rendered more strictly quadrupedal or bipedal. baboons frequent hilly and rocky districts, and only from necessity climb high trees ( . brehm, 'thierleben,' b. i. s. .); and they have acquired almost the gait of a dog. man alone has become a biped; and we can, i think, partly see how he has come to assume his erect attitude, which forms one of his most conspicuous characters. man could not have attained his present dominant position in the world without the use of his hands, which are so admirably adapted to act in obedience to his will. sir c. bell ( . 'the hand,' etc., 'bridgewater treatise,' , p. .) insists that "the hand supplies all instruments, and by its correspondence with the intellect gives him universal dominion." but the hands and arms could hardly have become perfect enough to have manufactured weapons, or to have hurled stones and spears with a true aim, as long as they were habitually used for locomotion and for supporting the whole weight of the body, or, as before remarked, so long as they were especially fitted for climbing trees. such rough treatment would also have blunted the sense of touch, on which their delicate use largely depends. from these causes alone it would have been an advantage to man to become a biped; but for many actions it is indispensable that the arms and whole upper part of the body should be free; and he must for this end stand firmly on his feet. to gain this great advantage, the feet have been rendered flat; and the great toe has been peculiarly modified, though this has entailed the almost complete loss of its power of prehension. it accords with the principle of the division of physiological labour, prevailing throughout the animal kingdom, that as the hands became perfected for prehension, the feet should have become perfected for support and locomotion. with some savages, however, the foot has not altogether lost its prehensile power, as shewn by their manner of climbing trees, and of using them in other ways. ( . haeckel has an excellent discussion on the steps by which man became a biped: 'natürliche schöpfungsgeschichte,' , s. . dr. buchner ('conférences sur la théorie darwinienne,' , p. ) has given good cases of the use of the foot as a prehensile organ by man; and has also written on the manner of progression of the higher apes, to which i allude in the following paragraph: see also owen ('anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. iii. p. ) on this latter subject.) if it be an advantage to man to stand firmly on his feet and to have his hands and arms free, of which, from his pre-eminent success in the battle of life there can be no doubt, then i can see no reason why it should not have been advantageous to the progenitors of man to have become more and more erect or bipedal. they would thus have been better able to defend themselves with stones or clubs, to attack their prey, or otherwise to obtain food. the best built individuals would in the long run have succeeded best, and have survived in larger numbers. if the gorilla and a few allied forms had become extinct, it might have been argued, with great force and apparent truth, that an animal could not have been gradually converted from a quadruped into a biped, as all the individuals in an intermediate condition would have been miserably ill-fitted for progression. but we know (and this is well worthy of reflection) that the anthropomorphous apes are now actually in an intermediate condition; and no one doubts that they are on the whole well adapted for their conditions of life. thus the gorilla runs with a sidelong shambling gait, but more commonly progresses by resting on its bent hands. the long-armed apes occasionally use their arms like crutches, swinging their bodies forward between them, and some kinds of hylobates, without having been taught, can walk or run upright with tolerable quickness; yet they move awkwardly, and much less securely than man. we see, in short, in existing monkeys a manner of progression intermediate between that of a quadruped and a biped; but, as an unprejudiced judge ( . prof. broca, la constitution des vertèbres caudales; 'la revue d'anthropologie,' , p. , (separate copy).) insists, the anthropomorphous apes approach in structure more nearly to the bipedal than to the quadrupedal type. as the progenitors of man became more and more erect, with their hands and arms more and more modified for prehension and other purposes, with their feet and legs at the same time transformed for firm support and progression, endless other changes of structure would have become necessary. the pelvis would have to be broadened, the spine peculiarly curved, and the head fixed in an altered position, all which changes have been attained by man. prof. schaaffhausen ( . 'on the primitive form of the skull,' translated in 'anthropological review,' oct. , p. . owen ('anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. ii. , p. ) on the mastoid processes in the higher apes.) maintains that "the powerful mastoid processes of the human skull are the result of his erect position;" and these processes are absent in the orang, chimpanzee, etc., and are smaller in the gorilla than in man. various other structures, which appear connected with man's erect position, might here have been added. it is very difficult to decide how far these correlated modifications are the result of natural selection, and how far of the inherited effects of the increased use of certain parts, or of the action of one part on another. no doubt these means of change often co-operate: thus when certain muscles, and the crests of bone to which they are attached, become enlarged by habitual use, this shews that certain actions are habitually performed and must be serviceable. hence the individuals which performed them best, would tend to survive in greater numbers. the free use of the arms and hands, partly the cause and partly the result of man's erect position, appears to have led in an indirect manner to other modifications of structure. the early male forefathers of man were, as previously stated, probably furnished with great canine teeth; but as they gradually acquired the habit of using stones, clubs, or other weapons, for fighting with their enemies or rivals, they would use their jaws and teeth less and less. in this case, the jaws, together with the teeth, would become reduced in size, as we may feel almost sure from innumerable analogous cases. in a future chapter we shall meet with a closely parallel case, in the reduction or complete disappearance of the canine teeth in male ruminants, apparently in relation with the development of their horns; and in horses, in relation to their habit of fighting with their incisor teeth and hoofs. in the adult male anthropomorphous apes, as rutimeyer ( . 'die grenzen der thierwelt, eine betrachtung zu darwin's lehre,' , s. .), and others, have insisted, it is the effect on the skull of the great development of the jaw-muscles that causes it to differ so greatly in many respects from that of man, and has given to these animals "a truly frightful physiognomy." therefore, as the jaws and teeth in man's progenitors gradually become reduced in size, the adult skull would have come to resemble more and more that of existing man. as we shall hereafter see, a great reduction of the canine teeth in the males would almost certainly affect the teeth of the females through inheritance. as the various mental faculties gradually developed themselves the brain would almost certainly become larger. no one, i presume, doubts that the large proportion which the size of man's brain bears to his body, compared to the same proportion in the gorilla or orang, is closely connected with his higher mental powers. we meet with closely analogous facts with insects, for in ants the cerebral ganglia are of extraordinary dimensions, and in all the hymenoptera these ganglia are many times larger than in the less intelligent orders, such as beetles. ( . dujardin, 'annales des sciences nat.' rd series, zoolog., tom. xiv. , p. . see also mr. lowne, 'anatomy and phys. of the musca vomitoria,' , p. . my son, mr. f. darwin, dissected for me the cerebral ganglia of the formica rufa.) on the other hand, no one supposes that the intellect of any two animals or of any two men can be accurately gauged by the cubic contents of their skulls. it is certain that there may be extraordinary mental activity with an extremely small absolute mass of nervous matter: thus the wonderfully diversified instincts, mental powers, and affections of ants are notorious, yet their cerebral ganglia are not so large as the quarter of a small pin's head. under this point of view, the brain of an ant is one of the most marvellous atoms of matter in the world, perhaps more so than the brain of a man. the belief that there exists in man some close relation between the size of the brain and the development of the intellectual faculties is supported by the comparison of the skulls of savage and civilised races, of ancient and modern people, and by the analogy of the whole vertebrate series. dr. j. barnard davis has proved ( . 'philosophical transactions,' , p. .), by many careful measurements, that the mean internal capacity of the skull in europeans is . cubic inches; in americans . ; in asiatics . ; and in australians only . cubic inches. professor broca ( . 'les selections,' m. p. broca, 'revue d'anthropologies,' ; see also, as quoted in c. vogt's 'lectures on man,' engl. translat., , pp. , . prichard, 'physical history of mankind,' vol. i. , p. .) found that the nineteenth century skulls from graves in paris were larger than those from vaults of the twelfth century, in the proportion of to ; and that the increased size, as ascertained by measurements, was exclusively in the frontal part of the skull--the seat of the intellectual faculties. prichard is persuaded that the present inhabitants of britain have "much more capacious brain-cases" than the ancient inhabitants. nevertheless, it must be admitted that some skulls of very high antiquity, such as the famous one of neanderthal, are well developed and capacious. ( . in the interesting article just referred to, prof. broca has well remarked, that in civilised nations, the average capacity of the skull must be lowered by the preservation of a considerable number of individuals, weak in mind and body, who would have been promptly eliminated in the savage state. on the other hand, with savages, the average includes only the more capable individuals, who have been able to survive under extremely hard conditions of life. broca thus explains the otherwise inexplicable fact, that the mean capacity of the skull of the ancient troglodytes of lozere is greater than that of modern frenchmen.) with respect to the lower animals, m.e. lartet ( . 'comptes-rendus des sciences,' etc., june , .), by comparing the crania of tertiary and recent mammals belonging to the same groups, has come to the remarkable conclusion that the brain is generally larger and the convolutions are more complex in the more recent forms. on the other hand, i have shewn ( . the 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. i. pp. - .) that the brains of domestic rabbits are considerably reduced in bulk, in comparison with those of the wild rabbit or hare; and this may be attributed to their having been closely confined during many generations, so that they have exerted their intellect, instincts, senses and voluntary movements but little. the gradually increasing weight of the brain and skull in man must have influenced the development of the supporting spinal column, more especially whilst he was becoming erect. as this change of position was being brought about, the internal pressure of the brain will also have influenced the form of the skull; for many facts shew how easily the skull is thus affected. ethnologists believe that it is modified by the kind of cradle in which infants sleep. habitual spasms of the muscles, and a cicatrix from a severe burn, have permanently modified the facial bones. in young persons whose heads have become fixed either sideways or backwards, owing to disease, one of the two eyes has changed its position, and the shape of the skull has been altered apparently by the pressure of the brain in a new direction. ( . schaaffhausen gives from blumenbach and busch, the cases of the spasms and cicatrix, in 'anthropological review,' oct. , p. . dr. jarrold ('anthropologia,' , pp. , ) adduces from camper and from his own observations, cases of the modification of the skull from the head being fixed in an unnatural position. he believes that in certain trades, such as that of a shoemaker, where the head is habitually held forward, the forehead becomes more rounded and prominent.) i have shewn that with long-eared rabbits even so trifling a cause as the lopping forward of one ear drags forward almost every bone of the skull on that side; so that the bones on the opposite side no longer strictly correspond. lastly, if any animal were to increase or diminish much in general size, without any change in its mental powers, or if the mental powers were to be much increased or diminished, without any great change in the size of the body, the shape of the skull would almost certainly be altered. i infer this from my observations on domestic rabbits, some kinds of which have become very much larger than the wild animal, whilst others have retained nearly the same size, but in both cases the brain has been much reduced relatively to the size of the body. now i was at first much surprised on finding that in all these rabbits the skull had become elongated or dolichocephalic; for instance, of two skulls of nearly equal breadth, the one from a wild rabbit and the other from a large domestic kind, the former was . and the latter . inches in length. ( . 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. i. p. , on the elongation of the skull; p. , on the effect of the lopping of one ear.) one of the most marked distinctions in different races of men is that the skull in some is elongated, and in others rounded; and here the explanation suggested by the case of the rabbits may hold good; for welcker finds that short "men incline more to brachycephaly, and tall men to dolichocephaly" ( . quoted by schaaffhausen, in 'anthropological review,' oct. , p. .); and tall men may be compared with the larger and longer-bodied rabbits, all of which have elongated skulls or are dolichocephalic. from these several facts we can understand, to a certain extent, the means by which the great size and more or less rounded form of the skull have been acquired by man; and these are characters eminently distinctive of him in comparison with the lower animals. another most conspicuous difference between man and the lower animals is the nakedness of his skin. whales and porpoises (cetacea), dugongs (sirenia) and the hippopotamus are naked; and this may be advantageous to them for gliding through the water; nor would it be injurious to them from the loss of warmth, as the species, which inhabit the colder regions, are protected by a thick layer of blubber, serving the same purpose as the fur of seals and otters. elephants and rhinoceroses are almost hairless; and as certain extinct species, which formerly lived under an arctic climate, were covered with long wool or hair, it would almost appear as if the existing species of both genera had lost their hairy covering from exposure to heat. this appears the more probable, as the elephants in india which live on elevated and cool districts are more hairy ( . owen, 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. iii. p. .) than those on the lowlands. may we then infer that man became divested of hair from having aboriginally inhabited some tropical land? that the hair is chiefly retained in the male sex on the chest and face, and in both sexes at the junction of all four limbs with the trunk, favours this inference--on the assumption that the hair was lost before man became erect; for the parts which now retain most hair would then have been most protected from the heat of the sun. the crown of the head, however, offers a curious exception, for at all times it must have been one of the most exposed parts, yet it is thickly clothed with hair. the fact, however, that the other members of the order of primates, to which man belongs, although inhabiting various hot regions, are well clothed with hair, generally thickest on the upper surface ( . isidore geoffroy st.-hilaire remarks ('histoire nat. generale,' tom. ii. , pp. - ) on the head of man being covered with long hair; also on the upper surfaces of monkeys and of other mammals being more thickly clothed than the lower surfaces. this has likewise been observed by various authors. prof. p. gervais ('histoire nat. des mammifères,' tom. i. , p. ), however, states that in the gorilla the hair is thinner on the back, where it is partly rubbed off, than on the lower surface.), is opposed to the supposition that man became naked through the action of the sun. mr. belt believes ( . the 'naturalist in nicaragua,' , p. . as some confirmation of mr. belt's view, i may quote the following passage from sir w. denison ('varieties of vice-regal life,' vol. i. , p. ): "it is said to be a practice with the australians, when the vermin get troublesome, to singe themselves.") that within the tropics it is an advantage to man to be destitute of hair, as he is thus enabled to free himself of the multitude of ticks (acari) and other parasites, with which he is often infested, and which sometimes cause ulceration. but whether this evil is of sufficient magnitude to have led to the denudation of his body through natural selection, may be doubted, since none of the many quadrupeds inhabiting the tropics have, as far as i know, acquired any specialised means of relief. the view which seems to me the most probable is that man, or rather primarily woman, became divested of hair for ornamental purposes, as we shall see under sexual selection; and, according to this belief, it is not surprising that man should differ so greatly in hairiness from all other primates, for characters, gained through sexual selection, often differ to an extraordinary degree in closely related forms. according to a popular impression, the absence of a tail is eminently distinctive of man; but as those apes which come nearest to him are destitute of this organ, its disappearance does not relate exclusively to man. the tail often differs remarkably in length within the same genus: thus in some species of macacus it is longer than the whole body, and is formed of twenty-four vertebrae; in others it consists of a scarcely visible stump, containing only three or four vertebrae. in some kinds of baboons there are twenty-five, whilst in the mandrill there are ten very small stunted caudal vertebrae, or, according to cuvier ( . mr. st. george mivart, 'proc. zoolog. soc.' , pp. , . dr. j.e. gray, 'cat. brit. mus.: 'skeletons.' owen, 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. ii. p. . isidore geoffroy, 'hist. nat. gen.' tom. ii. p. .), sometimes only five. the tail, whether it be long or short, almost always tapers towards the end; and this, i presume, results from the atrophy of the terminal muscles, together with their arteries and nerves, through disuse, leading to the atrophy of the terminal bones. but no explanation can at present be given of the great diversity which often occurs in its length. here, however, we are more specially concerned with the complete external disappearance of the tail. professor broca has recently shewn ( . 'revue d'anthropologie,' ; 'la constitution des vertèbres caudales.') that the tail in all quadrupeds consists of two portions, generally separated abruptly from each other; the basal portion consists of vertebrae, more or less perfectly channelled and furnished with apophyses like ordinary vertebrae; whereas those of the terminal portion are not channelled, are almost smooth, and scarcely resemble true vertebrae. a tail, though not externally visible, is really present in man and the anthropomorphous apes, and is constructed on exactly the same pattern in both. in the terminal portion the vertebrae, constituting the os coccyx, are quite rudimentary, being much reduced in size and number. in the basal portion, the vertebrae are likewise few, are united firmly together, and are arrested in development; but they have been rendered much broader and flatter than the corresponding vertebrae in the tails of other animals: they constitute what broca calls the accessory sacral vertebrae. these are of functional importance by supporting certain internal parts and in other ways; and their modification is directly connected with the erect or semi-erect attitude of man and the anthropomorphous apes. this conclusion is the more trustworthy, as broca formerly held a different view, which he has now abandoned. the modification, therefore, of the basal caudal vertebrae in man and the higher apes may have been effected, directly or indirectly, through natural selection. but what are we to say about the rudimentary and variable vertebrae of the terminal portion of the tail, forming the os coccyx? a notion which has often been, and will no doubt again be ridiculed, namely, that friction has had something to do with the disappearance of the external portion of the tail, is not so ridiculous as it at first appears. dr. anderson ( . 'proceedings zoological society,' , p. .) states that the extremely short tail of macacus brunneus is formed of eleven vertebrae, including the imbedded basal ones. the extremity is tendinous and contains no vertebrae; this is succeeded by five rudimentary ones, so minute that together they are only one line and a half in length, and these are permanently bent to one side in the shape of a hook. the free part of the tail, only a little above an inch in length, includes only four more small vertebrae. this short tail is carried erect; but about a quarter of its total length is doubled on to itself to the left; and this terminal part, which includes the hook-like portion, serves "to fill up the interspace between the upper divergent portion of the callosities;" so that the animal sits on it, and thus renders it rough and callous. dr. anderson thus sums up his observations: "these facts seem to me to have only one explanation; this tail, from its short size, is in the monkey's way when it sits down, and frequently becomes placed under the animal while it is in this attitude; and from the circumstance that it does not extend beyond the extremity of the ischial tuberosities, it seems as if the tail originally had been bent round by the will of the animal, into the interspace between the callosities, to escape being pressed between them and the ground, and that in time the curvature became permanent, fitting in of itself when the organ happens to be sat upon." under these circumstances it is not surprising that the surface of the tail should have been roughened and rendered callous, and dr. murie ( . 'proceedings zoological society,' , p. .), who carefully observed this species in the zoological gardens, as well as three other closely allied forms with slightly longer tails, says that when the animal sits down, the tail "is necessarily thrust to one side of the buttocks; and whether long or short its root is consequently liable to be rubbed or chafed." as we now have evidence that mutilations occasionally produce an inherited effect ( . i allude to dr. brown-sequard's observations on the transmitted effect of an operation causing epilepsy in guinea-pigs, and likewise more recently on the analogous effects of cutting the sympathetic nerve in the neck. i shall hereafter have occasion to refer to mr. salvin's interesting case of the apparently inherited effects of mot-mots biting off the barbs of their own tail-feathers. see also on the general subject 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. pp. - .), it is not very improbable that in short-tailed monkeys, the projecting part of the tail, being functionally useless, should after many generations have become rudimentary and distorted, from being continually rubbed and chafed. we see the projecting part in this condition in the macacus brunneus, and absolutely aborted in the m. ecaudatus and in several of the higher apes. finally, then, as far as we can judge, the tail has disappeared in man and the anthropomorphous apes, owing to the terminal portion having been injured by friction during a long lapse of time; the basal and embedded portion having been reduced and modified, so as to become suitable to the erect or semi-erect position. i have now endeavoured to shew that some of the most distinctive characters of man have in all probability been acquired, either directly, or more commonly indirectly, through natural selection. we should bear in mind that modifications in structure or constitution which do not serve to adapt an organism to its habits of life, to the food which it consumes, or passively to the surrounding conditions, cannot have been thus acquired. we must not, however, be too confident in deciding what modifications are of service to each being: we should remember how little we know about the use of many parts, or what changes in the blood or tissues may serve to fit an organism for a new climate or new kinds of food. nor must we forget the principle of correlation, by which, as isidore geoffroy has shewn in the case of man, many strange deviations of structure are tied together. independently of correlation, a change in one part often leads, through the increased or decreased use of other parts, to other changes of a quite unexpected nature. it is also well to reflect on such facts, as the wonderful growth of galls on plants caused by the poison of an insect, and on the remarkable changes of colour in the plumage of parrots when fed on certain fishes, or inoculated with the poison of toads ( . the 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. pp. , .); for we can thus see that the fluids of the system, if altered for some special purpose, might induce other changes. we should especially bear in mind that modifications acquired and continually used during past ages for some useful purpose, would probably become firmly fixed, and might be long inherited. thus a large yet undefined extension may safely be given to the direct and indirect results of natural selection; but i now admit, after reading the essay by nageli on plants, and the remarks by various authors with respect to animals, more especially those recently made by professor broca, that in the earlier editions of my 'origin of species' i perhaps attributed too much to the action of natural selection or the survival of the fittest. i have altered the fifth edition of the 'origin' so as to confine my remarks to adaptive changes of structure; but i am convinced, from the light gained during even the last few years, that very many structures which now appear to us useless, will hereafter be proved to be useful, and will therefore come within the range of natural selection. nevertheless, i did not formerly consider sufficiently the existence of structures, which, as far as we can at present judge, are neither beneficial nor injurious; and this i believe to be one of the greatest oversights as yet detected in my work. i may be permitted to say, as some excuse, that i had two distinct objects in view; firstly, to shew that species had not been separately created, and secondly, that natural selection had been the chief agent of change, though largely aided by the inherited effects of habit, and slightly by the direct action of the surrounding conditions. i was not, however, able to annul the influence of my former belief, then almost universal, that each species had been purposely created; and this led to my tacit assumption that every detail of structure, excepting rudiments, was of some special, though unrecognised, service. any one with this assumption in his mind would naturally extend too far the action of natural selection, either during past or present times. some of those who admit the principle of evolution, but reject natural selection, seem to forget, when criticising my book, that i had the above two objects in view; hence if i have erred in giving to natural selection great power, which i am very far from admitting, or in having exaggerated its power, which is in itself probable, i have at least, as i hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate creations. it is, as i can now see, probable that all organic beings, including man, possess peculiarities of structure, which neither are now, nor were formerly of any service to them, and which, therefore, are of no physiological importance. we know not what produces the numberless slight differences between the individuals of each species, for reversion only carries the problem a few steps backwards, but each peculiarity must have had its efficient cause. if these causes, whatever they may be, were to act more uniformly and energetically during a lengthened period (and against this no reason can be assigned), the result would probably be not a mere slight individual difference, but a well-marked and constant modification, though one of no physiological importance. changed structures, which are in no way beneficial, cannot be kept uniform through natural selection, though the injurious will be thus eliminated. uniformity of character would, however, naturally follow from the assumed uniformity of the exciting causes, and likewise from the free intercrossing of many individuals. during successive periods, the same organism might in this manner acquire successive modifications, which would be transmitted in a nearly uniform state as long as the exciting causes remained the same and there was free intercrossing. with respect to the exciting causes we can only say, as when speaking of so-called spontaneous variations, that they relate much more closely to the constitution of the varying organism, than to the nature of the conditions to which it has been subjected. conclusion. in this chapter we have seen that as man at the present day is liable, like every other animal, to multiform individual differences or slight variations, so no doubt were the early progenitors of man; the variations being formerly induced by the same general causes, and governed by the same general and complex laws as at present. as all animals tend to multiply beyond their means of subsistence, so it must have been with the progenitors of man; and this would inevitably lead to a struggle for existence and to natural selection. the latter process would be greatly aided by the inherited effects of the increased use of parts, and these two processes would incessantly react on each other. it appears, also, as we shall hereafter see, that various unimportant characters have been acquired by man through sexual selection. an unexplained residuum of change must be left to the assumed uniform action of those unknown agencies, which occasionally induce strongly marked and abrupt deviations of structure in our domestic productions. judging from the habits of savages and of the greater number of the quadrumana, primeval men, and even their ape-like progenitors, probably lived in society. with strictly social animals, natural selection sometimes acts on the individual, through the preservation of variations which are beneficial to the community. a community which includes a large number of well-endowed individuals increases in number, and is victorious over other less favoured ones; even although each separate member gains no advantage over the others of the same community. associated insects have thus acquired many remarkable structures, which are of little or no service to the individual, such as the pollen-collecting apparatus, or the sting of the worker-bee, or the great jaws of soldier-ants. with the higher social animals, i am not aware that any structure has been modified solely for the good of the community, though some are of secondary service to it. for instance, the horns of ruminants and the great canine teeth of baboons appear to have been acquired by the males as weapons for sexual strife, but they are used in defence of the herd or troop. in regard to certain mental powers the case, as we shall see in the fifth chapter, is wholly different; for these faculties have been chiefly, or even exclusively, gained for the benefit of the community, and the individuals thereof have at the same time gained an advantage indirectly. it has often been objected to such views as the foregoing, that man is one of the most helpless and defenceless creatures in the world; and that during his early and less well-developed condition, he would have been still more helpless. the duke of argyll, for instance, insists ( . 'primeval man,' , p. .) that "the human frame has diverged from the structure of brutes, in the direction of greater physical helplessness and weakness. that is to say, it is a divergence which of all others it is most impossible to ascribe to mere natural selection." he adduces the naked and unprotected state of the body, the absence of great teeth or claws for defence, the small strength and speed of man, and his slight power of discovering food or of avoiding danger by smell. to these deficiencies there might be added one still more serious, namely, that he cannot climb quickly, and so escape from enemies. the loss of hair would not have been a great injury to the inhabitants of a warm country. for we know that the unclothed fuegians can exist under a wretched climate. when we compare the defenceless state of man with that of apes, we must remember that the great canine teeth with which the latter are provided, are possessed in their full development by the males alone, and are chiefly used by them for fighting with their rivals; yet the females, which are not thus provided, manage to survive. in regard to bodily size or strength, we do not know whether man is descended from some small species, like the chimpanzee, or from one as powerful as the gorilla; and, therefore, we cannot say whether man has become larger and stronger, or smaller and weaker, than his ancestors. we should, however, bear in mind that an animal possessing great size, strength, and ferocity, and which, like the gorilla, could defend itself from all enemies, would not perhaps have become social: and this would most effectually have checked the acquirement of the higher mental qualities, such as sympathy and the love of his fellows. hence it might have been an immense advantage to man to have sprung from some comparatively weak creature. the small strength and speed of man, his want of natural weapons, etc., are more than counterbalanced, firstly, by his intellectual powers, through which he has formed for himself weapons, tools, etc., though still remaining in a barbarous state, and, secondly, by his social qualities which lead him to give and receive aid from his fellow-men. no country in the world abounds in a greater degree with dangerous beasts than southern africa; no country presents more fearful physical hardships than the arctic regions; yet one of the puniest of races, that of the bushmen, maintains itself in southern africa, as do the dwarfed esquimaux in the arctic regions. the ancestors of man were, no doubt, inferior in intellect, and probably in social disposition, to the lowest existing savages; but it is quite conceivable that they might have existed, or even flourished, if they had advanced in intellect, whilst gradually losing their brute-like powers, such as that of climbing trees, etc. but these ancestors would not have been exposed to any special danger, even if far more helpless and defenceless than any existing savages, had they inhabited some warm continent or large island, such as australia, new guinea, or borneo, which is now the home of the orang. and natural selection arising from the competition of tribe with tribe, in some such large area as one of these, together with the inherited effects of habit, would, under favourable conditions, have sufficed to raise man to his present high position in the organic scale. chapter iii. comparison of the mental powers of man and the lower animals. the difference in mental power between the highest ape and the lowest savage, immense--certain instincts in common--the emotions--curiosity--imitation--attention--memory--imagination--reason--progressive improvement --tools and weapons used by animals--abstraction, self-consciousness--language--sense of beauty--belief in god, spiritual agencies, superstitions. we have seen in the last two chapters that man bears in his bodily structure clear traces of his descent from some lower form; but it may be urged that, as man differs so greatly in his mental power from all other animals, there must be some error in this conclusion. no doubt the difference in this respect is enormous, even if we compare the mind of one of the lowest savages, who has no words to express any number higher than four, and who uses hardly any abstract terms for common objects or for the affections ( . see the evidence on those points, as given by lubbock, 'prehistoric times,' p. , etc.), with that of the most highly organised ape. the difference would, no doubt, still remain immense, even if one of the higher apes had been improved or civilised as much as a dog has been in comparison with its parent-form, the wolf or jackal. the fuegians rank amongst the lowest barbarians; but i was continually struck with surprise how closely the three natives on board h.m.s. "beagle," who had lived some years in england, and could talk a little english, resembled us in disposition and in most of our mental faculties. if no organic being excepting man had possessed any mental power, or if his powers had been of a wholly different nature from those of the lower animals, then we should never have been able to convince ourselves that our high faculties had been gradually developed. but it can be shewn that there is no fundamental difference of this kind. we must also admit that there is a much wider interval in mental power between one of the lowest fishes, as a lamprey or lancelet, and one of the higher apes, than between an ape and man; yet this interval is filled up by numberless gradations. nor is the difference slight in moral disposition between a barbarian, such as the man described by the old navigator byron, who dashed his child on the rocks for dropping a basket of sea-urchins, and a howard or clarkson; and in intellect, between a savage who uses hardly any abstract terms, and a newton or shakspeare. differences of this kind between the highest men of the highest races and the lowest savages, are connected by the finest gradations. therefore it is possible that they might pass and be developed into each other. my object in this chapter is to shew that there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties. each division of the subject might have been extended into a separate essay, but must here be treated briefly. as no classification of the mental powers has been universally accepted, i shall arrange my remarks in the order most convenient for my purpose; and will select those facts which have struck me most, with the hope that they may produce some effect on the reader. with respect to animals very low in the scale, i shall give some additional facts under sexual selection, shewing that their mental powers are much higher than might have been expected. the variability of the faculties in the individuals of the same species is an important point for us, and some few illustrations will here be given. but it would be superfluous to enter into many details on this head, for i have found on frequent enquiry, that it is the unanimous opinion of all those who have long attended to animals of many kinds, including birds, that the individuals differ greatly in every mental characteristic. in what manner the mental powers were first developed in the lowest organisms, is as hopeless an enquiry as how life itself first originated. these are problems for the distant future, if they are ever to be solved by man. as man possesses the same senses as the lower animals, his fundamental intuitions must be the same. man has also some few instincts in common, as that of self-preservation, sexual love, the love of the mother for her new-born offspring, the desire possessed by the latter to suck, and so forth. but man, perhaps, has somewhat fewer instincts than those possessed by the animals which come next to him in the series. the orang in the eastern islands, and the chimpanzee in africa, build platforms on which they sleep; and, as both species follow the same habit, it might be argued that this was due to instinct, but we cannot feel sure that it is not the result of both animals having similar wants, and possessing similar powers of reasoning. these apes, as we may assume, avoid the many poisonous fruits of the tropics, and man has no such knowledge: but as our domestic animals, when taken to foreign lands, and when first turned out in the spring, often eat poisonous herbs, which they afterwards avoid, we cannot feel sure that the apes do not learn from their own experience or from that of their parents what fruits to select. it is, however, certain, as we shall presently see, that apes have an instinctive dread of serpents, and probably of other dangerous animals. the fewness and the comparative simplicity of the instincts in the higher animals are remarkable in contrast with those of the lower animals. cuvier maintained that instinct and intelligence stand in an inverse ratio to each other; and some have thought that the intellectual faculties of the higher animals have been gradually developed from their instincts. but pouchet, in an interesting essay ( . 'l'instinct chez les insectes,' 'revue des deux mondes,' feb. , p. .), has shewn that no such inverse ratio really exists. those insects which possess the most wonderful instincts are certainly the most intelligent. in the vertebrate series, the least intelligent members, namely fishes and amphibians, do not possess complex instincts; and amongst mammals the animal most remarkable for its instincts, namely the beaver, is highly intelligent, as will be admitted by every one who has read mr. morgan's excellent work. ( . 'the american beaver and his works,' .) although the first dawnings of intelligence, according to mr. herbert spencer ( . 'the principles of psychology,' nd edit., , pp. - .), have been developed through the multiplication and co-ordination of reflex actions, and although many of the simpler instincts graduate into reflex actions, and can hardly be distinguished from them, as in the case of young animals sucking, yet the more complex instincts seem to have originated independently of intelligence. i am, however, very far from wishing to deny that instinctive actions may lose their fixed and untaught character, and be replaced by others performed by the aid of the free will. on the other hand, some intelligent actions, after being performed during several generations, become converted into instincts and are inherited, as when birds on oceanic islands learn to avoid man. these actions may then be said to be degraded in character, for they are no longer performed through reason or from experience. but the greater number of the more complex instincts appear to have been gained in a wholly different manner, through the natural selection of variations of simpler instinctive actions. such variations appear to arise from the same unknown causes acting on the cerebral organisation, which induce slight variations or individual differences in other parts of the body; and these variations, owing to our ignorance, are often said to arise spontaneously. we can, i think, come to no other conclusion with respect to the origin of the more complex instincts, when we reflect on the marvellous instincts of sterile worker-ants and bees, which leave no offspring to inherit the effects of experience and of modified habits. although, as we learn from the above-mentioned insects and the beaver, a high degree of intelligence is certainly compatible with complex instincts, and although actions, at first learnt voluntarily can soon through habit be performed with the quickness and certainty of a reflex action, yet it is not improbable that there is a certain amount of interference between the development of free intelligence and of instinct,--which latter implies some inherited modification of the brain. little is known about the functions of the brain, but we can perceive that as the intellectual powers become highly developed, the various parts of the brain must be connected by very intricate channels of the freest intercommunication; and as a consequence each separate part would perhaps tend to be less well fitted to answer to particular sensations or associations in a definite and inherited--that is instinctive--manner. there seems even to exist some relation between a low degree of intelligence and a strong tendency to the formation of fixed, though not inherited habits; for as a sagacious physician remarked to me, persons who are slightly imbecile tend to act in everything by routine or habit; and they are rendered much happier if this is encouraged. i have thought this digression worth giving, because we may easily underrate the mental powers of the higher animals, and especially of man, when we compare their actions founded on the memory of past events, on foresight, reason, and imagination, with exactly similar actions instinctively performed by the lower animals; in this latter case the capacity of performing such actions has been gained, step by step, through the variability of the mental organs and natural selection, without any conscious intelligence on the part of the animal during each successive generation. no doubt, as mr. wallace has argued ( . 'contributions to the theory of natural selection,' , p. .), much of the intelligent work done by man is due to imitation and not to reason; but there is this great difference between his actions and many of those performed by the lower animals, namely, that man cannot, on his first trial, make, for instance, a stone hatchet or a canoe, through his power of imitation. he has to learn his work by practice; a beaver, on the other hand, can make its dam or canal, and a bird its nest, as well, or nearly as well, and a spider its wonderful web, quite as well ( . for the evidence on this head, see mr. j. traherne moggridge's most interesting work, 'harvesting ants and trap-door spiders,' , pp. , .), the first time it tries as when old and experienced. to return to our immediate subject: the lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. happiness is never better exhibited than by young animals, such as puppies, kittens, lambs, etc., when playing together, like our own children. even insects play together, as has been described by that excellent observer, p. huber ( . 'recherches sur les moeurs des fourmis,' , p. .), who saw ants chasing and pretending to bite each other, like so many puppies. the fact that the lower animals are excited by the same emotions as ourselves is so well established, that it will not be necessary to weary the reader by many details. terror acts in the same manner on them as on us, causing the muscles to tremble, the heart to palpitate, the sphincters to be relaxed, and the hair to stand on end. suspicion, the offspring of fear, is eminently characteristic of most wild animals. it is, i think, impossible to read the account given by sir e. tennent, of the behaviour of the female elephants, used as decoys, without admitting that they intentionally practise deceit, and well know what they are about. courage and timidity are extremely variable qualities in the individuals of the same species, as is plainly seen in our dogs. some dogs and horses are ill-tempered, and easily turn sulky; others are good-tempered; and these qualities are certainly inherited. every one knows how liable animals are to furious rage, and how plainly they shew it. many, and probably true, anecdotes have been published on the long-delayed and artful revenge of various animals. the accurate rengger, and brehm ( . all the following statements, given on the authority of these two naturalists, are taken from rengger's 'naturgesch. der säugethiere von paraguay,' , s. - , and from brehm's 'thierleben,' b. i. s. - .) state that the american and african monkeys which they kept tame, certainly revenged themselves. sir andrew smith, a zoologist whose scrupulous accuracy was known to many persons, told me the following story of which he was himself an eye-witness; at the cape of good hope an officer had often plagued a certain baboon, and the animal, seeing him approaching one sunday for parade, poured water into a hole and hastily made some thick mud, which he skilfully dashed over the officer as he passed by, to the amusement of many bystanders. for long afterwards the baboon rejoiced and triumphed whenever he saw his victim. the love of a dog for his master is notorious; as an old writer quaintly says ( . quoted by dr. lauder lindsay, in his 'physiology of mind in the lower animals,' 'journal of mental science,' april , p. .), "a dog is the only thing on this earth that luvs you more than he luvs himself." in the agony of death a dog has been known to caress his master, and every one has heard of the dog suffering under vivisection, who licked the hand of the operator; this man, unless the operation was fully justified by an increase of our knowledge, or unless he had a heart of stone, must have felt remorse to the last hour of his life. as whewell ( . 'bridgewater treatise,' p. .) has well asked, "who that reads the touching instances of maternal affection, related so often of the women of all nations, and of the females of all animals, can doubt that the principle of action is the same in the two cases?" we see maternal affection exhibited in the most trifling details; thus rengger observed an american monkey (a cebus) carefully driving away the flies which plagued her infant; and duvaucel saw a hylobates washing the faces of her young ones in a stream. so intense is the grief of female monkeys for the loss of their young, that it invariably caused the death of certain kinds kept under confinement by brehm in n. africa. orphan monkeys were always adopted and carefully guarded by the other monkeys, both males and females. one female baboon had so capacious a heart that she not only adopted young monkeys of other species, but stole young dogs and cats, which she continually carried about. her kindness, however, did not go so far as to share her food with her adopted offspring, at which brehm was surprised, as his monkeys always divided everything quite fairly with their own young ones. an adopted kitten scratched this affectionate baboon, who certainly had a fine intellect, for she was much astonished at being scratched, and immediately examined the kitten's feet, and without more ado bit off the claws. ( . a critic, without any grounds ('quarterly review,' july , p. ), disputes the possibility of this act as described by brehm, for the sake of discrediting my work. therefore i tried, and found that i could readily seize with my own teeth the sharp little claws of a kitten nearly five weeks old.) in the zoological gardens, i heard from the keeper that an old baboon (c. chacma) had adopted a rhesus monkey; but when a young drill and mandrill were placed in the cage, she seemed to perceive that these monkeys, though distinct species, were her nearer relatives, for she at once rejected the rhesus and adopted both of them. the young rhesus, as i saw, was greatly discontented at being thus rejected, and it would, like a naughty child, annoy and attack the young drill and mandrill whenever it could do so with safety; this conduct exciting great indignation in the old baboon. monkeys will also, according to brehm, defend their master when attacked by any one, as well as dogs to whom they are attached, from the attacks of other dogs. but we here trench on the subjects of sympathy and fidelity, to which i shall recur. some of brehm's monkeys took much delight in teasing a certain old dog whom they disliked, as well as other animals, in various ingenious ways. most of the more complex emotions are common to the higher animals and ourselves. every one has seen how jealous a dog is of his master's affection, if lavished on any other creature; and i have observed the same fact with monkeys. this shews that animals not only love, but have desire to be loved. animals manifestly feel emulation. they love approbation or praise; and a dog carrying a basket for his master exhibits in a high degree self-complacency or pride. there can, i think, be no doubt that a dog feels shame, as distinct from fear, and something very like modesty when begging too often for food. a great dog scorns the snarling of a little dog, and this may be called magnanimity. several observers have stated that monkeys certainly dislike being laughed at; and they sometimes invent imaginary offences. in the zoological gardens i saw a baboon who always got into a furious rage when his keeper took out a letter or book and read it aloud to him; and his rage was so violent that, as i witnessed on one occasion, he bit his own leg till the blood flowed. dogs shew what may be fairly called a sense of humour, as distinct from mere play; if a bit of stick or other such object be thrown to one, he will often carry it away for a short distance; and then squatting down with it on the ground close before him, will wait until his master comes quite close to take it away. the dog will then seize it and rush away in triumph, repeating the same manoeuvre, and evidently enjoying the practical joke. we will now turn to the more intellectual emotions and faculties, which are very important, as forming the basis for the development of the higher mental powers. animals manifestly enjoy excitement, and suffer from ennui, as may be seen with dogs, and, according to rengger, with monkeys. all animals feel wonder, and many exhibit curiosity. they sometimes suffer from this latter quality, as when the hunter plays antics and thus attracts them; i have witnessed this with deer, and so it is with the wary chamois, and with some kinds of wild-ducks. brehm gives a curious account of the instinctive dread, which his monkeys exhibited, for snakes; but their curiosity was so great that they could not desist from occasionally satiating their horror in a most human fashion, by lifting up the lid of the box in which the snakes were kept. i was so much surprised at his account, that i took a stuffed and coiled-up snake into the monkey-house at the zoological gardens, and the excitement thus caused was one of the most curious spectacles which i ever beheld. three species of cercopithecus were the most alarmed; they dashed about their cages, and uttered sharp signal cries of danger, which were understood by the other monkeys. a few young monkeys and one old anubis baboon alone took no notice of the snake. i then placed the stuffed specimen on the ground in one of the larger compartments. after a time all the monkeys collected round it in a large circle, and staring intently, presented a most ludicrous appearance. they became extremely nervous; so that when a wooden ball, with which they were familiar as a plaything, was accidentally moved in the straw, under which it was partly hidden, they all instantly started away. these monkeys behaved very differently when a dead fish, a mouse ( . i have given a short account of their behaviour on this occasion in my 'expression of the emotions in man and animals,' p. .), a living turtle, and other new objects were placed in their cages; for though at first frightened, they soon approached, handled and examined them. i then placed a live snake in a paper bag, with the mouth loosely closed, in one of the larger compartments. one of the monkeys immediately approached, cautiously opened the bag a little, peeped in, and instantly dashed away. then i witnessed what brehm has described, for monkey after monkey, with head raised high and turned on one side, could not resist taking a momentary peep into the upright bag, at the dreadful object lying quietly at the bottom. it would almost appear as if monkeys had some notion of zoological affinities, for those kept by brehm exhibited a strange, though mistaken, instinctive dread of innocent lizards and frogs. an orang, also, has been known to be much alarmed at the first sight of a turtle. ( . w.c.l. martin, 'natural history of mammalia,' , p. .) the principle of imitation is strong in man, and especially, as i have myself observed, with savages. in certain morbid states of the brain this tendency is exaggerated to an extraordinary degree: some hemiplegic patients and others, at the commencement of inflammatory softening of the brain, unconsciously imitate every word which is uttered, whether in their own or in a foreign language, and every gesture or action which is performed near them. ( . dr. bateman, 'on aphasia,' , p. .) desor ( . quoted by vogt, 'mémoire sur les microcephales,' , p. .) has remarked that no animal voluntarily imitates an action performed by man, until in the ascending scale we come to monkeys, which are well known to be ridiculous mockers. animals, however, sometimes imitate each other's actions: thus two species of wolves, which had been reared by dogs, learned to bark, as does sometimes the jackal ( . the 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. i. p. .), but whether this can be called voluntary imitation is another question. birds imitate the songs of their parents, and sometimes of other birds; and parrots are notorious imitators of any sound which they often hear. dureau de la malle gives an account ( . 'annales des sciences nat.' ( st series), tom. xxii. p. .) of a dog reared by a cat, who learnt to imitate the well-known action of a cat licking her paws, and thus washing her ears and face; this was also witnessed by the celebrated naturalist audouin. i have received several confirmatory accounts; in one of these, a dog had not been suckled by a cat, but had been brought up with one, together with kittens, and had thus acquired the above habit, which he ever afterwards practised during his life of thirteen years. dureau de la malle's dog likewise learnt from the kittens to play with a ball by rolling it about with his fore paws, and springing on it. a correspondent assures me that a cat in his house used to put her paws into jugs of milk having too narrow a mouth for her head. a kitten of this cat soon learned the same trick, and practised it ever afterwards, whenever there was an opportunity. the parents of many animals, trusting to the principle of imitation in their young, and more especially to their instinctive or inherited tendencies, may be said to educate them. we see this when a cat brings a live mouse to her kittens; and dureau de la malle has given a curious account (in the paper above quoted) of his observations on hawks which taught their young dexterity, as well as judgment of distances, by first dropping through the air dead mice and sparrows, which the young generally failed to catch, and then bringing them live birds and letting them loose. hardly any faculty is more important for the intellectual progress of man than attention. animals clearly manifest this power, as when a cat watches by a hole and prepares to spring on its prey. wild animals sometimes become so absorbed when thus engaged, that they may be easily approached. mr. bartlett has given me a curious proof how variable this faculty is in monkeys. a man who trains monkeys to act in plays, used to purchase common kinds from the zoological society at the price of five pounds for each; but he offered to give double the price, if he might keep three or four of them for a few days, in order to select one. when asked how he could possibly learn so soon, whether a particular monkey would turn out a good actor, he answered that it all depended on their power of attention. if when he was talking and explaining anything to a monkey, its attention was easily distracted, as by a fly on the wall or other trifling object, the case was hopeless. if he tried by punishment to make an inattentive monkey act, it turned sulky. on the other hand, a monkey which carefully attended to him could always be trained. it is almost superfluous to state that animals have excellent memories for persons and places. a baboon at the cape of good hope, as i have been informed by sir andrew smith, recognised him with joy after an absence of nine months. i had a dog who was savage and averse to all strangers, and i purposely tried his memory after an absence of five years and two days. i went near the stable where he lived, and shouted to him in my old manner; he shewed no joy, but instantly followed me out walking, and obeyed me, exactly as if i had parted with him only half an hour before. a train of old associations, dormant during five years, had thus been instantaneously awakened in his mind. even ants, as p. huber ( . 'les moeurs des fourmis,' , p. .) has clearly shewn, recognised their fellow-ants belonging to the same community after a separation of four months. animals can certainly by some means judge of the intervals of time between recurrent events. the imagination is one of the highest prerogatives of man. by this faculty he unites former images and ideas, independently of the will, and thus creates brilliant and novel results. a poet, as jean paul richter remarks ( . quoted in dr. maudsley's 'physiology and pathology of mind,' , pp. , .), "who must reflect whether he shall make a character say yes or no--to the devil with him; he is only a stupid corpse." dreaming gives us the best notion of this power; as jean paul again says, "the dream is an involuntary art of poetry." the value of the products of our imagination depends of course on the number, accuracy, and clearness of our impressions, on our judgment and taste in selecting or rejecting the involuntary combinations, and to a certain extent on our power of voluntarily combining them. as dogs, cats, horses, and probably all the higher animals, even birds ( . dr. jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. i. , p. xxi. houzeau says that his parokeets and canary-birds dreamt: 'etudes sur les facultes mentales des animaux,' tom. ii. p. .) have vivid dreams, and this is shewn by their movements and the sounds uttered, we must admit that they possess some power of imagination. there must be something special, which causes dogs to howl in the night, and especially during moonlight, in that remarkable and melancholy manner called baying. all dogs do not do so; and, according to houzeau ( . ibid. , tom. ii. p. .), they do not then look at the moon, but at some fixed point near the horizon. houzeau thinks that their imaginations are disturbed by the vague outlines of the surrounding objects, and conjure up before them fantastic images: if this be so, their feelings may almost be called superstitious. of all the faculties of the human mind, it will, i presume, be admitted that reason stands at the summit. only a few persons now dispute that animals possess some power of reasoning. animals may constantly be seen to pause, deliberate, and resolve. it is a significant fact, that the more the habits of any particular animal are studied by a naturalist, the more he attributes to reason and the less to unlearnt instincts. ( . mr. l.h. morgan's work on 'the american beaver,' , offers a good illustration of this remark. i cannot help thinking, however, that he goes too far in underrating the power of instinct.) in future chapters we shall see that some animals extremely low in the scale apparently display a certain amount of reason. no doubt it is often difficult to distinguish between the power of reason and that of instinct. for instance, dr. hayes, in his work on 'the open polar sea,' repeatedly remarks that his dogs, instead of continuing to draw the sledges in a compact body, diverged and separated when they came to thin ice, so that their weight might be more evenly distributed. this was often the first warning which the travellers received that the ice was becoming thin and dangerous. now, did the dogs act thus from the experience of each individual, or from the example of the older and wiser dogs, or from an inherited habit, that is from instinct? this instinct, may possibly have arisen since the time, long ago, when dogs were first employed by the natives in drawing their sledges; or the arctic wolves, the parent-stock of the esquimaux dog, may have acquired an instinct impelling them not to attack their prey in a close pack, when on thin ice. we can only judge by the circumstances under which actions are performed, whether they are due to instinct, or to reason, or to the mere association of ideas: this latter principle, however, is intimately connected with reason. a curious case has been given by prof. mobius ( . 'die bewegungen der thiere,' etc., , p. .), of a pike, separated by a plate of glass from an adjoining aquarium stocked with fish, and who often dashed himself with such violence against the glass in trying to catch the other fishes, that he was sometimes completely stunned. the pike went on thus for three months, but at last learnt caution, and ceased to do so. the plate of glass was then removed, but the pike would not attack these particular fishes, though he would devour others which were afterwards introduced; so strongly was the idea of a violent shock associated in his feeble mind with the attempt on his former neighbours. if a savage, who had never seen a large plate-glass window, were to dash himself even once against it, he would for a long time afterwards associate a shock with a window-frame; but very differently from the pike, he would probably reflect on the nature of the impediment, and be cautious under analogous circumstances. now with monkeys, as we shall presently see, a painful or merely a disagreeable impression, from an action once performed, is sometimes sufficient to prevent the animal from repeating it. if we attribute this difference between the monkey and the pike solely to the association of ideas being so much stronger and more persistent in the one than the other, though the pike often received much the more severe injury, can we maintain in the case of man that a similar difference implies the possession of a fundamentally different mind? houzeau relates ( . '�tudes sur les facultés mentales des animaux,' , tom. ii. p. .) that, whilst crossing a wide and arid plain in texas, his two dogs suffered greatly from thirst, and that between thirty and forty times they rushed down the hollows to search for water. these hollows were not valleys, and there were no trees in them, or any other difference in the vegetation, and as they were absolutely dry there could have been no smell of damp earth. the dogs behaved as if they knew that a dip in the ground offered them the best chance of finding water, and houzeau has often witnessed the same behaviour in other animals. i have seen, as i daresay have others, that when a small object is thrown on the ground beyond the reach of one of the elephants in the zoological gardens, he blows through his trunk on the ground beyond the object, so that the current reflected on all sides may drive the object within his reach. again a well-known ethnologist, mr. westropp, informs me that he observed in vienna a bear deliberately making with his paw a current in some water, which was close to the bars of his cage, so as to draw a piece of floating bread within his reach. these actions of the elephant and bear can hardly be attributed to instinct or inherited habit, as they would be of little use to an animal in a state of nature. now, what is the difference between such actions, when performed by an uncultivated man, and by one of the higher animals? the savage and the dog have often found water at a low level, and the coincidence under such circumstances has become associated in their minds. a cultivated man would perhaps make some general proposition on the subject; but from all that we know of savages it is extremely doubtful whether they would do so, and a dog certainly would not. but a savage, as well as a dog, would search in the same way, though frequently disappointed; and in both it seems to be equally an act of reason, whether or not any general proposition on the subject is consciously placed before the mind. ( . prof. huxley has analysed with admirable clearness the mental steps by which a man, as well as a dog, arrives at a conclusion in a case analogous to that given in my text. see his article, 'mr. darwin's critics,' in the 'contemporary review,' nov. , p. , and in his 'critiques and essays,' , p. .) the same would apply to the elephant and the bear making currents in the air or water. the savage would certainly neither know nor care by what law the desired movements were effected; yet his act would be guided by a rude process of reasoning, as surely as would a philosopher in his longest chain of deductions. there would no doubt be this difference between him and one of the higher animals, that he would take notice of much slighter circumstances and conditions, and would observe any connection between them after much less experience, and this would be of paramount importance. i kept a daily record of the actions of one of my infants, and when he was about eleven months old, and before he could speak a single word, i was continually struck with the greater quickness, with which all sorts of objects and sounds were associated together in his mind, compared with that of the most intelligent dogs i ever knew. but the higher animals differ in exactly the same way in this power of association from those low in the scale, such as the pike, as well as in that of drawing inferences and of observation. the promptings of reason, after very short experience, are well shewn by the following actions of american monkeys, which stand low in their order. rengger, a most careful observer, states that when he first gave eggs to his monkeys in paraguay, they smashed them, and thus lost much of their contents; afterwards they gently hit one end against some hard body, and picked off the bits of shell with their fingers. after cutting themselves only once with any sharp tool, they would not touch it again, or would handle it with the greatest caution. lumps of sugar were often given them wrapped up in paper; and rengger sometimes put a live wasp in the paper, so that in hastily unfolding it they got stung; after this had once happened, they always first held the packet to their ears to detect any movement within. ( . mr. belt, in his most interesting work, 'the naturalist in nicaragua,' , (p. ), likewise describes various actions of a tamed cebus, which, i think, clearly shew that this animal possessed some reasoning power.) the following cases relate to dogs. mr. colquhoun ( . 'the moor and the loch,' p. . col. hutchinson on 'dog breaking,' , p. .) winged two wild-ducks, which fell on the further side of a stream; his retriever tried to bring over both at once, but could not succeed; she then, though never before known to ruffle a feather, deliberately killed one, brought over the other, and returned for the dead bird. col. hutchinson relates that two partridges were shot at once, one being killed, the other wounded; the latter ran away, and was caught by the retriever, who on her return came across the dead bird; "she stopped, evidently greatly puzzled, and after one or two trials, finding she could not take it up without permitting the escape of the winged bird, she considered a moment, then deliberately murdered it by giving it a severe crunch, and afterwards brought away both together. this was the only known instance of her ever having wilfully injured any game." here we have reason though not quite perfect, for the retriever might have brought the wounded bird first and then returned for the dead one, as in the case of the two wild-ducks. i give the above cases, as resting on the evidence of two independent witnesses, and because in both instances the retrievers, after deliberation, broke through a habit which is inherited by them (that of not killing the game retrieved), and because they shew how strong their reasoning faculty must have been to overcome a fixed habit. i will conclude by quoting a remark by the illustrious humboldt. ( . 'personal narrative,' eng. translat., vol. iii. p. .) "the muleteers in s. america say, 'i will not give you the mule whose step is easiest, but la mas racional,--the one that reasons best'"; and; as, he adds, "this popular expression, dictated by long experience, combats the system of animated machines, better perhaps than all the arguments of speculative philosophy." nevertheless some writers even yet deny that the higher animals possess a trace of reason; and they endeavour to explain away, by what appears to be mere verbiage, ( . i am glad to find that so acute a reasoner as mr. leslie stephen ('darwinism and divinity, essays on free thinking,' , p. ), in speaking of the supposed impassable barrier between the minds of man and the lower animals, says, "the distinctions, indeed, which have been drawn, seem to us to rest upon no better foundation than a great many other metaphysical distinctions; that is, the assumption that because you can give two things different names, they must therefore have different natures. it is difficult to understand how anybody who has ever kept a dog, or seen an elephant, can have any doubt as to an animal's power of performing the essential processes of reasoning.") all such facts as those above given. it has, i think, now been shewn that man and the higher animals, especially the primates, have some few instincts in common. all have the same senses, intuitions, and sensations,--similar passions, affections, and emotions, even the more complex ones, such as jealousy, suspicion, emulation, gratitude, and magnanimity; they practise deceit and are revengeful; they are sometimes susceptible to ridicule, and even have a sense of humour; they feel wonder and curiosity; they possess the same faculties of imitation, attention, deliberation, choice, memory, imagination, the association of ideas, and reason, though in very different degrees. the individuals of the same species graduate in intellect from absolute imbecility to high excellence. they are also liable to insanity, though far less often than in the case of man. ( . see 'madness in animals,' by dr. w. lauder lindsay, in 'journal of mental science,' july .) nevertheless, many authors have insisted that man is divided by an insuperable barrier from all the lower animals in his mental faculties. i formerly made a collection of above a score of such aphorisms, but they are almost worthless, as their wide difference and number prove the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of the attempt. it has been asserted that man alone is capable of progressive improvement; that he alone makes use of tools or fire, domesticates other animals, or possesses property; that no animal has the power of abstraction, or of forming general concepts, is self-conscious and comprehends itself; that no animal employs language; that man alone has a sense of beauty, is liable to caprice, has the feeling of gratitude, mystery, etc.; believes in god, or is endowed with a conscience. i will hazard a few remarks on the more important and interesting of these points. archbishop sumner formerly maintained ( . quoted by sir c. lyell, 'antiquity of man,' p. .) that man alone is capable of progressive improvement. that he is capable of incomparably greater and more rapid improvement than is any other animal, admits of no dispute; and this is mainly due to his power of speaking and handing down his acquired knowledge. with animals, looking first to the individual, every one who has had any experience in setting traps, knows that young animals can be caught much more easily than old ones; and they can be much more easily approached by an enemy. even with respect to old animals, it is impossible to catch many in the same place and in the same kind of trap, or to destroy them by the same kind of poison; yet it is improbable that all should have partaken of the poison, and impossible that all should have been caught in a trap. they must learn caution by seeing their brethren caught or poisoned. in north america, where the fur-bearing animals have long been pursued, they exhibit, according to the unanimous testimony of all observers, an almost incredible amount of sagacity, caution and cunning; but trapping has been there so long carried on, that inheritance may possibly have come into play. i have received several accounts that when telegraphs are first set up in any district, many birds kill themselves by flying against the wires, but that in the course of a very few years they learn to avoid this danger, by seeing, as it would appear, their comrades killed. ( . for additional evidence, with details, see m. houzeau, '�tudes sur les facultés mentales des animaux,' tom. ii. , p. .) if we look to successive generations, or to the race, there is no doubt that birds and other animals gradually both acquire and lose caution in relation to man or other enemies ( . see, with respect to birds on oceanic islands, my 'journal of researches during the voyage of the "beagle,"' , p. . 'origin of species,' th ed. p. .); and this caution is certainly in chief part an inherited habit or instinct, but in part the result of individual experience. a good observer, leroy ( . 'lettres phil. sur l'intelligence des animaux,' nouvelle edit., , p. .), states, that in districts where foxes are much hunted, the young, on first leaving their burrows, are incontestably much more wary than the old ones in districts where they are not much disturbed. our domestic dogs are descended from wolves and jackals ( . see the evidence on this head in chap. i. vol. i., 'on the variation of animals and plants under domestication.'), and though they may not have gained in cunning, and may have lost in wariness and suspicion, yet they have progressed in certain moral qualities, such as in affection, trust-worthiness, temper, and probably in general intelligence. the common rat has conquered and beaten several other species throughout europe, in parts of north america, new zealand, and recently in formosa, as well as on the mainland of china. mr. swinhoe ( . 'proceedings zoological society,' , p. .), who describes these two latter cases, attributes the victory of the common rat over the large mus coninga to its superior cunning; and this latter quality may probably be attributed to the habitual exercise of all its faculties in avoiding extirpation by man, as well as to nearly all the less cunning or weak-minded rats having been continuously destroyed by him. it is, however, possible that the success of the common rat may be due to its having possessed greater cunning than its fellow-species, before it became associated with man. to maintain, independently of any direct evidence, that no animal during the course of ages has progressed in intellect or other mental faculties, is to beg the question of the evolution of species. we have seen that, according to lartet, existing mammals belonging to several orders have larger brains than their ancient tertiary prototypes. it has often been said that no animal uses any tool; but the chimpanzee in a state of nature cracks a native fruit, somewhat like a walnut, with a stone. ( . savage and wyman in 'boston journal of natural history,' vol. iv. - , p. .) rengger ( . 'säugethiere von paraguay,' , s. - .) easily taught an american monkey thus to break open hard palm-nuts; and afterwards of its own accord, it used stones to open other kinds of nuts, as well as boxes. it thus also removed the soft rind of fruit that had a disagreeable flavour. another monkey was taught to open the lid of a large box with a stick, and afterwards it used the stick as a lever to move heavy bodies; and i have myself seen a young orang put a stick into a crevice, slip his hand to the other end, and use it in the proper manner as a lever. the tamed elephants in india are well known to break off branches of trees and use them to drive away the flies; and this same act has been observed in an elephant in a state of nature. ( . the indian field, march , .) i have seen a young orang, when she thought she was going to be whipped, cover and protect herself with a blanket or straw. in these several cases stones and sticks were employed as implements; but they are likewise used as weapons. brehm ( . 'thierleben,' b. i. s. , .) states, on the authority of the well-known traveller schimper, that in abyssinia when the baboons belonging to one species (c. gelada) descend in troops from the mountains to plunder the fields, they sometimes encounter troops of another species (c. hamadryas), and then a fight ensues. the geladas roll down great stones, which the hamadryas try to avoid, and then both species, making a great uproar, rush furiously against each other. brehm, when accompanying the duke of coburg-gotha, aided in an attack with fire-arms on a troop of baboons in the pass of mensa in abyssinia. the baboons in return rolled so many stones down the mountain, some as large as a man's head, that the attackers had to beat a hasty retreat; and the pass was actually closed for a time against the caravan. it deserves notice that these baboons thus acted in concert. mr. wallace ( . 'the malay archipelago,' vol. i. , p. .) on three occasions saw female orangs, accompanied by their young, "breaking off branches and the great spiny fruit of the durian tree, with every appearance of rage; causing such a shower of missiles as effectually kept us from approaching too near the tree." as i have repeatedly seen, a chimpanzee will throw any object at hand at a person who offends him; and the before-mentioned baboon at the cape of good hope prepared mud for the purpose. in the zoological gardens, a monkey, which had weak teeth, used to break open nuts with a stone; and i was assured by the keepers that after using the stone, he hid it in the straw, and would not let any other monkey touch it. here, then, we have the idea of property; but this idea is common to every dog with a bone, and to most or all birds with their nests. the duke of argyll ( . 'primeval man,' , pp. , .) remarks, that the fashioning of an implement for a special purpose is absolutely peculiar to man; and he considers that this forms an immeasurable gulf between him and the brutes. this is no doubt a very important distinction; but there appears to me much truth in sir j. lubbock's suggestion ( . 'prehistoric times,' , p. , etc.), that when primeval man first used flint-stones for any purpose, he would have accidentally splintered them, and would then have used the sharp fragments. from this step it would be a small one to break the flints on purpose, and not a very wide step to fashion them rudely. this latter advance, however, may have taken long ages, if we may judge by the immense interval of time which elapsed before the men of the neolithic period took to grinding and polishing their stone tools. in breaking the flints, as sir j. lubbock likewise remarks, sparks would have been emitted, and in grinding them heat would have been evolved: thus the two usual methods of "obtaining fire may have originated." the nature of fire would have been known in the many volcanic regions where lava occasionally flows through forests. the anthropomorphous apes, guided probably by instinct, build for themselves temporary platforms; but as many instincts are largely controlled by reason, the simpler ones, such as this of building a platform, might readily pass into a voluntary and conscious act. the orang is known to cover itself at night with the leaves of the pandanus; and brehm states that one of his baboons used to protect itself from the heat of the sun by throwing a straw-mat over its head. in these several habits, we probably see the first steps towards some of the simpler arts, such as rude architecture and dress, as they arose amongst the early progenitors of man. abstraction, general conceptions, self-consciousness, mental individuality. it would be very difficult for any one with even much more knowledge than i possess, to determine how far animals exhibit any traces of these high mental powers. this difficulty arises from the impossibility of judging what passes through the mind of an animal; and again, the fact that writers differ to a great extent in the meaning which they attribute to the above terms, causes a further difficulty. if one may judge from various articles which have been published lately, the greatest stress seems to be laid on the supposed entire absence in animals of the power of abstraction, or of forming general concepts. but when a dog sees another dog at a distance, it is often clear that he perceives that it is a dog in the abstract; for when he gets nearer his whole manner suddenly changes, if the other dog be a friend. a recent writer remarks, that in all such cases it is a pure assumption to assert that the mental act is not essentially of the same nature in the animal as in man. if either refers what he perceives with his senses to a mental concept, then so do both. ( . mr. hookham, in a letter to prof. max muller, in the 'birmingham news,' may .) when i say to my terrier, in an eager voice (and i have made the trial many times), "hi, hi, where is it?" she at once takes it as a sign that something is to be hunted, and generally first looks quickly all around, and then rushes into the nearest thicket, to scent for any game, but finding nothing, she looks up into any neighbouring tree for a squirrel. now do not these actions clearly shew that she had in her mind a general idea or concept that some animal is to be discovered and hunted? it may be freely admitted that no animal is self-conscious, if by this term it is implied, that he reflects on such points, as whence he comes or whither he will go, or what is life and death, and so forth. but how can we feel sure that an old dog with an excellent memory and some power of imagination, as shewn by his dreams, never reflects on his past pleasures or pains in the chase? and this would be a form of self-consciousness. on the other hand, as buchner ( . 'conférences sur la théorie darwinienne,' french translat. , p. .) has remarked, how little can the hard-worked wife of a degraded australian savage, who uses very few abstract words, and cannot count above four, exert her self-consciousness, or reflect on the nature of her own existence. it is generally admitted, that the higher animals possess memory, attention, association, and even some imagination and reason. if these powers, which differ much in different animals, are capable of improvement, there seems no great improbability in more complex faculties, such as the higher forms of abstraction, and self-consciousness, etc., having been evolved through the development and combination of the simpler ones. it has been urged against the views here maintained that it is impossible to say at what point in the ascending scale animals become capable of abstraction, etc.; but who can say at what age this occurs in our young children? we see at least that such powers are developed in children by imperceptible degrees. that animals retain their mental individuality is unquestionable. when my voice awakened a train of old associations in the mind of the before-mentioned dog, he must have retained his mental individuality, although every atom of his brain had probably undergone change more than once during the interval of five years. this dog might have brought forward the argument lately advanced to crush all evolutionists, and said, "i abide amid all mental moods and all material changes...the teaching that atoms leave their impressions as legacies to other atoms falling into the places they have vacated is contradictory of the utterance of consciousness, and is therefore false; but it is the teaching necessitated by evolutionism, consequently the hypothesis is a false one." ( . the rev. dr. j. m'cann, 'anti-darwinism,' , p. .) language. this faculty has justly been considered as one of the chief distinctions between man and the lower animals. but man, as a highly competent judge, archbishop whately remarks, "is not the only animal that can make use of language to express what is passing in his mind, and can understand, more or less, what is so expressed by another." ( . quoted in 'anthropological review,' , p. .) in paraguay the cebus azarae when excited utters at least six distinct sounds, which excite in other monkeys similar emotions. ( . rengger, ibid. s. .) the movements of the features and gestures of monkeys are understood by us, and they partly understand ours, as rengger and others declare. it is a more remarkable fact that the dog, since being domesticated, has learnt to bark ( . see my 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. i. p. .) in at least four or five distinct tones. although barking is a new art, no doubt the wild parent-species of the dog expressed their feelings by cries of various kinds. with the domesticated dog we have the bark of eagerness, as in the chase; that of anger, as well as growling; the yelp or howl of despair, as when shut up; the baying at night; the bark of joy, as when starting on a walk with his master; and the very distinct one of demand or supplication, as when wishing for a door or window to be opened. according to houzeau, who paid particular attention to the subject, the domestic fowl utters at least a dozen significant sounds. ( . 'facultés mentales des animaux,' tom. ii. , p. - .) the habitual use of articulate language is, however, peculiar to man; but he uses, in common with the lower animals, inarticulate cries to express his meaning, aided by gestures and the movements of the muscles of the face. ( . see a discussion on this subject in mr. e.b. tylor's very interesting work, 'researches into the early history of mankind,' , chaps. ii. to iv.) this especially holds good with the more simple and vivid feelings, which are but little connected with our higher intelligence. our cries of pain, fear, surprise, anger, together with their appropriate actions, and the murmur of a mother to her beloved child are more expressive than any words. that which distinguishes man from the lower animals is not the understanding of articulate sounds, for, as every one knows, dogs understand many words and sentences. in this respect they are at the same stage of development as infants, between the ages of ten and twelve months, who understand many words and short sentences, but cannot yet utter a single word. it is not the mere articulation which is our distinguishing character, for parrots and other birds possess this power. nor is it the mere capacity of connecting definite sounds with definite ideas; for it is certain that some parrots, which have been taught to speak, connect unerringly words with things, and persons with events. ( . i have received several detailed accounts to this effect. admiral sir b.j. sulivan, whom i know to be a careful observer, assures me that an african parrot, long kept in his father's house, invariably called certain persons of the household, as well as visitors, by their names. he said "good morning" to every one at breakfast, and "good night" to each as they left the room at night, and never reversed these salutations. to sir b.j. sulivan's father, he used to add to the " good morning" a short sentence, which was never once repeated after his father's death. he scolded violently a strange dog which came into the room through the open window; and he scolded another parrot (saying "you naughty polly") which had got out of its cage, and was eating apples on the kitchen table. see also, to the same effect, houzeau on parrots, 'facultés mentales,' tom. ii. p. . dr. a. moschkau informs me that he knew a starling which never made a mistake in saying in german "good morning" to persons arriving, and "good bye, old fellow," to those departing. i could add several other such cases.) the lower animals differ from man solely in his almost infinitely larger power of associating together the most diversified sounds and ideas; and this obviously depends on the high development of his mental powers. as horne tooke, one of the founders of the noble science of philology, observes, language is an art, like brewing or baking; but writing would have been a better simile. it certainly is not a true instinct, for every language has to be learnt. it differs, however, widely from all ordinary arts, for man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children; whilst no child has an instinctive tendency to brew, bake, or write. moreover, no philologist now supposes that any language has been deliberately invented; it has been slowly and unconsciously developed by many steps. ( . see some good remarks on this head by prof. whitney, in his 'oriental and linguistic studies,' , p. . he observes that the desire of communication between man is the living force, which, in the development of language, "works both consciously and unconsciously; consciously as regards the immediate end to be attained; unconsciously as regards the further consequences of the act.") the sounds uttered by birds offer in several respects the nearest analogy to language, for all the members of the same species utter the same instinctive cries expressive of their emotions; and all the kinds which sing, exert their power instinctively; but the actual song, and even the call-notes, are learnt from their parents or foster-parents. these sounds, as daines barrington ( . hon. daines barrington in 'philosoph. transactions,' , p. . see also dureau de la malle, in 'ann. des. sc. nat.' rd series, zoolog., tom. x. p. .) has proved, "are no more innate than language is in man." the first attempts to sing "may be compared to the imperfect endeavour in a child to babble." the young males continue practising, or as the bird-catchers say, "recording," for ten or eleven months. their first essays shew hardly a rudiment of the future song; but as they grow older we can perceive what they are aiming at; and at last they are said "to sing their song round." nestlings which have learnt the song of a distinct species, as with the canary-birds educated in the tyrol, teach and transmit their new song to their offspring. the slight natural differences of song in the same species inhabiting different districts may be appositely compared, as barrington remarks, "to provincial dialects"; and the songs of allied, though distinct species may be compared with the languages of distinct races of man. i have given the foregoing details to shew that an instinctive tendency to acquire an art is not peculiar to man. with respect to the origin of articulate language, after having read on the one side the highly interesting works of mr. hensleigh wedgwood, the rev. f. farrar, and prof. schleicher ( . 'on the origin of language,' by h. wedgwood, . 'chapters on language,' by the rev. f.w. farrar, . these works are most interesting. see also 'de la phys. et de parole,' par albert lemoine, , p. . the work on this subject, by the late prof. aug. schleicher, has been translated by dr. bikkers into english, under the title of 'darwinism tested by the science of language,' .), and the celebrated lectures of prof. max muller on the other side, i cannot doubt that language owes its origin to the imitation and modification of various natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man's own instinctive cries, aided by signs and gestures. when we treat of sexual selection we shall see that primeval man, or rather some early progenitor of man, probably first used his voice in producing true musical cadences, that is in singing, as do some of the gibbon-apes at the present day; and we may conclude from a widely-spread analogy, that this power would have been especially exerted during the courtship of the sexes,--would have expressed various emotions, such as love, jealousy, triumph,--and would have served as a challenge to rivals. it is, therefore, probable that the imitation of musical cries by articulate sounds may have given rise to words expressive of various complex emotions. the strong tendency in our nearest allies, the monkeys, in microcephalous idiots ( . vogt, 'mémoire sur les microcephales,' , p. . with respect to savages, i have given some facts in my 'journal of researches,' etc., , p. .), and in the barbarous races of mankind, to imitate whatever they hear deserves notice, as bearing on the subject of imitation. since monkeys certainly understand much that is said to them by man, and when wild, utter signal-cries of danger to their fellows ( . see clear evidence on this head in the two works so often quoted, by brehm and rengger.); and since fowls give distinct warnings for danger on the ground, or in the sky from hawks (both, as well as a third cry, intelligible to dogs) ( . houzeau gives a very curious account of his observations on this subject in his 'facultés mentales des animaux,' tom. ii. p. .), may not some unusually wise ape-like animal have imitated the growl of a beast of prey, and thus told his fellow-monkeys the nature of the expected danger? this would have been a first step in the formation of a language. as the voice was used more and more, the vocal organs would have been strengthened and perfected through the principle of the inherited effects of use; and this would have reacted on the power of speech. but the relation between the continued use of language and the development of the brain, has no doubt been far more important. the mental powers in some early progenitor of man must have been more highly developed than in any existing ape, before even the most imperfect form of speech could have come into use; but we may confidently believe that the continued use and advancement of this power would have reacted on the mind itself, by enabling and encouraging it to carry on long trains of thought. a complex train of thought can no more be carried on without the aid of words, whether spoken or silent, than a long calculation without the use of figures or algebra. it appears, also, that even an ordinary train of thought almost requires, or is greatly facilitated by some form of language, for the dumb, deaf, and blind girl, laura bridgman, was observed to use her fingers whilst dreaming. ( . see remarks on this head by dr. maudsley, 'the physiology and pathology of mind,' nd ed., , p. .) nevertheless, a long succession of vivid and connected ideas may pass through the mind without the aid of any form of language, as we may infer from the movements of dogs during their dreams. we have, also, seen that animals are able to reason to a certain extent, manifestly without the aid of language. the intimate connection between the brain, as it is now developed in us, and the faculty of speech, is well shewn by those curious cases of brain-disease in which speech is specially affected, as when the power to remember substantives is lost, whilst other words can be correctly used, or where substantives of a certain class, or all except the initial letters of substantives and proper names are forgotten. ( . many curious cases have been recorded. see, for instance, dr. bateman 'on aphasia,' , pp. , , , , etc. also, 'inquiries concerning the intellectual powers,' by dr. abercrombie, , p. .) there is no more improbability in the continued use of the mental and vocal organs leading to inherited changes in their structure and functions, than in the case of hand-writing, which depends partly on the form of the hand and partly on the disposition of the mind; and handwriting is certainly inherited. ( . 'the variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. p. .') several writers, more especially prof. max muller ( . lectures on 'mr. darwin's philosophy of language,' .), have lately insisted that the use of language implies the power of forming general concepts; and that as no animals are supposed to possess this power, an impassable barrier is formed between them and man. ( . the judgment of a distinguished philologist, such as prof. whitney, will have far more weight on this point than anything that i can say. he remarks ('oriental and linguistic studies,' , p. ), in speaking of bleek's views: "because on the grand scale language is the necessary auxiliary of thought, indispensable to the development of the power of thinking, to the distinctness and variety and complexity of cognitions to the full mastery of consciousness; therefore he would fain make thought absolutely impossible without speech, identifying the faculty with its instrument. he might just as reasonably assert that the human hand cannot act without a tool. with such a doctrine to start from, he cannot stop short of max muller's worst paradoxes, that an infant (in fans, not speaking) is not a human being, and that deaf-mutes do not become possessed of reason until they learn to twist their fingers into imitation of spoken words." max muller gives in italics ('lectures on mr. darwin's philosophy of language,' , third lecture) this aphorism: "there is no thought without words, as little as there are words without thought." what a strange definition must here be given to the word thought!) with respect to animals, i have already endeavoured to shew that they have this power, at least in a rude and incipient degree. as far as concerns infants of from ten to eleven months old, and deaf-mutes, it seems to me incredible, that they should be able to connect certain sounds with certain general ideas as quickly as they do, unless such ideas were already formed in their minds. the same remark may be extended to the more intelligent animals; as mr. leslie stephen observes ( . 'essays on free thinking,' etc., , p. .), "a dog frames a general concept of cats or sheep, and knows the corresponding words as well as a philosopher. and the capacity to understand is as good a proof of vocal intelligence, though in an inferior degree, as the capacity to speak." why the organs now used for speech should have been originally perfected for this purpose, rather than any other organs, it is not difficult to see. ants have considerable powers of intercommunication by means of their antennae, as shewn by huber, who devotes a whole chapter to their language. we might have used our fingers as efficient instruments, for a person with practice can report to a deaf man every word of a speech rapidly delivered at a public meeting; but the loss of our hands, whilst thus employed, would have been a serious inconvenience. as all the higher mammals possess vocal organs, constructed on the same general plan as ours, and used as a means of communication, it was obviously probable that these same organs would be still further developed if the power of communication had to be improved; and this has been effected by the aid of adjoining and well adapted parts, namely the tongue and lips. ( . see some good remarks to this effect by dr. maudsley, 'the physiology and pathology of mind,' , p. .) the fact of the higher apes not using their vocal organs for speech, no doubt depends on their intelligence not having been sufficiently advanced. the possession by them of organs, which with long-continued practice might have been used for speech, although not thus used, is paralleled by the case of many birds which possess organs fitted for singing, though they never sing. thus, the nightingale and crow have vocal organs similarly constructed, these being used by the former for diversified song, and by the latter only for croaking. ( . macgillivray, 'hist. of british birds,' vol. ii. , p. . an excellent observer, mr. blackwall, remarks that the magpie learns to pronounce single words, and even short sentences, more readily than almost any other british bird; yet, as he adds, after long and closely investigating its habits, he has never known it, in a state of nature, display any unusual capacity for imitation. 'researches in zoology,' , p. .) if it be asked why apes have not had their intellects developed to the same degree as that of man, general causes only can be assigned in answer, and it is unreasonable to expect any thing more definite, considering our ignorance with respect to the successive stages of development through which each creature has passed. the formation of different languages and of distinct species, and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously parallel. ( . see the very interesting parallelism between the development of species and languages, given by sir c. lyell in 'the geological evidences of the antiquity of man,' , chap. xxiii.) but we can trace the formation of many words further back than that of species, for we can perceive how they actually arose from the imitation of various sounds. we find in distinct languages striking homologies due to community of descent, and analogies due to a similar process of formation. the manner in which certain letters or sounds change when others change is very like correlated growth. we have in both cases the reduplication of parts, the effects of long-continued use, and so forth. the frequent presence of rudiments, both in languages and in species, is still more remarkable. the letter m in the word am, means i; so that in the expression i am, a superfluous and useless rudiment has been retained. in the spelling also of words, letters often remain as the rudiments of ancient forms of pronunciation. languages, like organic beings, can be classed in groups under groups; and they can be classed either naturally according to descent, or artificially by other characters. dominant languages and dialects spread widely, and lead to the gradual extinction of other tongues. a language, like a species, when once extinct, never, as sir c. lyell remarks, reappears. the same language never has two birth-places. distinct languages may be crossed or blended together. ( . see remarks to this effect by the rev. f.w. farrar, in an interesting article, entitled 'philology and darwinism,' in 'nature,' march th, , p. .) we see variability in every tongue, and new words are continually cropping up; but as there is a limit to the powers of the memory, single words, like whole languages, gradually become extinct. as max muller ( . 'nature,' january th, , p. .) has well remarked:--"a struggle for life is constantly going on amongst the words and grammatical forms in each language. the better, the shorter, the easier forms are constantly gaining the upper hand, and they owe their success to their own inherent virtue." to these more important causes of the survival of certain words, mere novelty and fashion may be added; for there is in the mind of man a strong love for slight changes in all things. the survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection. the perfectly regular and wonderfully complex construction of the languages of many barbarous nations has often been advanced as a proof, either of the divine origin of these languages, or of the high art and former civilisation of their founders. thus f. von schlegel writes: "in those languages which appear to be at the lowest grade of intellectual culture, we frequently observe a very high and elaborate degree of art in their grammatical structure. this is especially the case with the basque and the lapponian, and many of the american languages." ( . quoted by c.s. wake, 'chapters on man,' , p. .) but it is assuredly an error to speak of any language as an art, in the sense of its having been elaborately and methodically formed. philologists now admit that conjugations, declensions, etc., originally existed as distinct words, since joined together; and as such words express the most obvious relations between objects and persons, it is not surprising that they should have been used by the men of most races during the earliest ages. with respect to perfection, the following illustration will best shew how easily we may err: a crinoid sometimes consists of no less than , pieces of shell ( . buckland, 'bridgewater treatise,' p. .), all arranged with perfect symmetry in radiating lines; but a naturalist does not consider an animal of this kind as more perfect than a bilateral one with comparatively few parts, and with none of these parts alike, excepting on the opposite sides of the body. he justly considers the differentiation and specialisation of organs as the test of perfection. so with languages: the most symmetrical and complex ought not to be ranked above irregular, abbreviated, and bastardised languages, which have borrowed expressive words and useful forms of construction from various conquering, conquered, or immigrant races. from these few and imperfect remarks i conclude that the extremely complex and regular construction of many barbarous languages, is no proof that they owe their origin to a special act of creation. ( . see some good remarks on the simplification of languages, by sir j. lubbock, 'origin of civilisation,' , p. .) nor, as we have seen, does the faculty of articulate speech in itself offer any insuperable objection to the belief that man has been developed from some lower form. sense of beauty. this sense has been declared to be peculiar to man. i refer here only to the pleasure given by certain colours, forms, and sounds, and which may fairly be called a sense of the beautiful; with cultivated men such sensations are, however, intimately associated with complex ideas and trains of thought. when we behold a male bird elaborately displaying his graceful plumes or splendid colours before the female, whilst other birds, not thus decorated, make no such display, it is impossible to doubt that she admires the beauty of her male partner. as women everywhere deck themselves with these plumes, the beauty of such ornaments cannot be disputed. as we shall see later, the nests of humming-birds, and the playing passages of bower-birds are tastefully ornamented with gaily-coloured objects; and this shews that they must receive some kind of pleasure from the sight of such things. with the great majority of animals, however, the taste for the beautiful is confined, as far as we can judge, to the attractions of the opposite sex. the sweet strains poured forth by many male birds during the season of love, are certainly admired by the females, of which fact evidence will hereafter be given. if female birds had been incapable of appreciating the beautiful colours, the ornaments, and voices of their male partners, all the labour and anxiety exhibited by the latter in displaying their charms before the females would have been thrown away; and this it is impossible to admit. why certain bright colours should excite pleasure cannot, i presume, be explained, any more than why certain flavours and scents are agreeable; but habit has something to do with the result, for that which is at first unpleasant to our senses, ultimately becomes pleasant, and habits are inherited. with respect to sounds, helmholtz has explained to a certain extent on physiological principles, why harmonies and certain cadences are agreeable. but besides this, sounds frequently recurring at irregular intervals are highly disagreeable, as every one will admit who has listened at night to the irregular flapping of a rope on board ship. the same principle seems to come into play with vision, as the eye prefers symmetry or figures with some regular recurrence. patterns of this kind are employed by even the lowest savages as ornaments; and they have been developed through sexual selection for the adornment of some male animals. whether we can or not give any reason for the pleasure thus derived from vision and hearing, yet man and many of the lower animals are alike pleased by the same colours, graceful shading and forms, and the same sounds. the taste for the beautiful, at least as far as female beauty is concerned, is not of a special nature in the human mind; for it differs widely in the different races of man, and is not quite the same even in the different nations of the same race. judging from the hideous ornaments, and the equally hideous music admired by most savages, it might be urged that their aesthetic faculty was not so highly developed as in certain animals, for instance, as in birds. obviously no animal would be capable of admiring such scenes as the heavens at night, a beautiful landscape, or refined music; but such high tastes are acquired through culture, and depend on complex associations; they are not enjoyed by barbarians or by uneducated persons. many of the faculties, which have been of inestimable service to man for his progressive advancement, such as the powers of the imagination, wonder, curiosity, an undefined sense of beauty, a tendency to imitation, and the love of excitement or novelty, could hardly fail to lead to capricious changes of customs and fashions. i have alluded to this point, because a recent writer ( . 'the spectator,' dec. th, , p. .) has oddly fixed on caprice "as one of the most remarkable and typical differences between savages and brutes." but not only can we partially understand how it is that man is from various conflicting influences rendered capricious, but that the lower animals are, as we shall hereafter see, likewise capricious in their affections, aversions, and sense of beauty. there is also reason to suspect that they love novelty, for its own sake. belief in god--religion. there is no evidence that man was aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in the existence of an omnipotent god. on the contrary there is ample evidence, derived not from hasty travellers, but from men who have long resided with savages, that numerous races have existed, and still exist, who have no idea of one or more gods, and who have no words in their languages to express such an idea. ( . see an excellent article on this subject by the rev. f.w. farrar, in the 'anthropological review,' aug. , p. ccxvii. for further facts see sir j. lubbock, 'prehistoric times,' nd edit., , p. ; and especially the chapters on religion in his 'origin of civilisation,' .) the question is of course wholly distinct from that higher one, whether there exists a creator and ruler of the universe; and this has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed. if, however, we include under the term "religion" the belief in unseen or spiritual agencies, the case is wholly different; for this belief seems to be universal with the less civilised races. nor is it difficult to comprehend how it arose. as soon as the important faculties of the imagination, wonder, and curiosity, together with some power of reasoning, had become partially developed, man would naturally crave to understand what was passing around him, and would have vaguely speculated on his own existence. as mr. m'lennan ( . 'the worship of animals and plants,' in the 'fortnightly review,' oct. , , p. .) has remarked, "some explanation of the phenomena of life, a man must feign for himself, and to judge from the universality of it, the simplest hypothesis, and the first to occur to men, seems to have been that natural phenomena are ascribable to the presence in animals, plants, and things, and in the forces of nature, of such spirits prompting to action as men are conscious they themselves possess." it is also probable, as mr. tylor has shewn, that dreams may have first given rise to the notion of spirits; for savages do not readily distinguish between subjective and objective impressions. when a savage dreams, the figures which appear before him are believed to have come from a distance, and to stand over him; or "the soul of the dreamer goes out on its travels, and comes home with a remembrance of what it has seen." ( . tylor, 'early history of mankind,' , p. . see also the three striking chapters on the 'development of religion,' in lubbock's 'origin of civilisation,' . in a like manner mr. herbert spencer, in his ingenious essay in the 'fortnightly review' (may st, , p. ), accounts for the earliest forms of religious belief throughout the world, by man being led through dreams, shadows, and other causes, to look at himself as a double essence, corporeal and spiritual. as the spiritual being is supposed to exist after death and to be powerful, it is propitiated by various gifts and ceremonies, and its aid invoked. he then further shews that names or nicknames given from some animal or other object, to the early progenitors or founders of a tribe, are supposed after a long interval to represent the real progenitor of the tribe; and such animal or object is then naturally believed still to exist as a spirit, is held sacred, and worshipped as a god. nevertheless i cannot but suspect that there is a still earlier and ruder stage, when anything which manifests power or movement is thought to be endowed with some form of life, and with mental faculties analogous to our own.) but until the faculties of imagination, curiosity, reason, etc., had been fairly well developed in the mind of man, his dreams would not have led him to believe in spirits, any more than in the case of a dog. the tendency in savages to imagine that natural objects and agencies are animated by spiritual or living essences, is perhaps illustrated by a little fact which i once noticed: my dog, a full-grown and very sensible animal, was lying on the lawn during a hot and still day; but at a little distance a slight breeze occasionally moved an open parasol, which would have been wholly disregarded by the dog, had any one stood near it. as it was, every time that the parasol slightly moved, the dog growled fiercely and barked. he must, i think, have reasoned to himself in a rapid and unconscious manner, that movement without any apparent cause indicated the presence of some strange living agent, and that no stranger had a right to be on his territory. the belief in spiritual agencies would easily pass into the belief in the existence of one or more gods. for savages would naturally attribute to spirits the same passions, the same love of vengeance or simplest form of justice, and the same affections which they themselves feel. the fuegians appear to be in this respect in an intermediate condition, for when the surgeon on board the "beagle" shot some young ducklings as specimens, york minster declared in the most solemn manner, "oh, mr. bynoe, much rain, much snow, blow much"; and this was evidently a retributive punishment for wasting human food. so again he related how, when his brother killed a "wild man," storms long raged, much rain and snow fell. yet we could never discover that the fuegians believed in what we should call a god, or practised any religious rites; and jemmy button, with justifiable pride, stoutly maintained that there was no devil in his land. this latter assertion is the more remarkable, as with savages the belief in bad spirits is far more common than that in good ones. the feeling of religious devotion is a highly complex one, consisting of love, complete submission to an exalted and mysterious superior, a strong sense of dependence ( . see an able article on the 'physical elements of religion,' by mr. l. owen pike, in 'anthropological review,' april , p. lxiii.), fear, reverence, gratitude, hope for the future, and perhaps other elements. no being could experience so complex an emotion until advanced in his intellectual and moral faculties to at least a moderately high level. nevertheless, we see some distant approach to this state of mind in the deep love of a dog for his master, associated with complete submission, some fear, and perhaps other feelings. the behaviour of a dog when returning to his master after an absence, and, as i may add, of a monkey to his beloved keeper, is widely different from that towards their fellows. in the latter case the transports of joy appear to be somewhat less, and the sense of equality is shewn in every action. professor braubach goes so far as to maintain that a dog looks on his master as on a god. ( . 'religion, moral, etc., der darwin'schen art-lehre,' , s. . it is said (dr. w. lauder lindsay, 'journal of mental science,' , p. ), that bacon long ago, and the poet burns, held the same notion.) the same high mental faculties which first led man to believe in unseen spiritual agencies, then in fetishism, polytheism, and ultimately in monotheism, would infallibly lead him, as long as his reasoning powers remained poorly developed, to various strange superstitions and customs. many of these are terrible to think of--such as the sacrifice of human beings to a blood-loving god; the trial of innocent persons by the ordeal of poison or fire; witchcraft, etc.--yet it is well occasionally to reflect on these superstitions, for they shew us what an infinite debt of gratitude we owe to the improvement of our reason, to science, and to our accumulated knowledge. as sir j. lubbock ( . 'prehistoric times,' nd edit., p. . in this work (p. ) there will be found an excellent account of the many strange and capricious customs of savages.) has well observed, "it is not too much to say that the horrible dread of unknown evil hangs like a thick cloud over savage life, and embitters every pleasure." these miserable and indirect consequences of our highest faculties may be compared with the incidental and occasional mistakes of the instincts of the lower animals. chapter iv. comparison of the mental powers of man and the lower animals--continued. the moral sense--fundamental proposition--the qualities of social animals--origin of sociability--struggle between opposed instincts--man a social animal--the more enduring social instincts conquer other less persistent instincts--the social virtues alone regarded by savages--the self-regarding virtues acquired at a later stage of development--the importance of the judgment of the members of the same community on conduct--transmission of moral tendencies--summary. i fully subscribe to the judgment of those writers ( . see, for instance, on this subject, quatrefages, 'unité de l'espèce humaine,' , p. , etc.) who maintain that of all the differences between man and the lower animals, the moral sense or conscience is by far the most important. this sense, as mackintosh ( . 'dissertation on ethical philosophy,' , p. , etc.) remarks, "has a rightful supremacy over every other principle of human action"; it is summed up in that short but imperious word "ought," so full of high significance. it is the most noble of all the attributes of man, leading him without a moment's hesitation to risk his life for that of a fellow-creature; or after due deliberation, impelled simply by the deep feeling of right or duty, to sacrifice it in some great cause. immanuel kant exclaims, "duty! wondrous thought, that workest neither by fond insinuation, flattery, nor by any threat, but merely by holding up thy naked law in the soul, and so extorting for thyself always reverence, if not always obedience; before whom all appetites are dumb, however secretly they rebel; whence thy original?" ( . 'metaphysics of ethics,' translated by j.w. semple, edinburgh, , p. .) this great question has been discussed by many writers ( . mr. bain gives a list ('mental and moral science,' , pp. - ) of twenty-six british authors who have written on this subject, and whose names are familiar to every reader; to these, mr. bain's own name, and those of mr. lecky, mr. shadworth hodgson, sir j. lubbock, and others, might be added.) of consummate ability; and my sole excuse for touching on it, is the impossibility of here passing it over; and because, as far as i know, no one has approached it exclusively from the side of natural history. the investigation possesses, also, some independent interest, as an attempt to see how far the study of the lower animals throws light on one of the highest psychical faculties of man. the following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable--namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts ( . sir b. brodie, after observing that man is a social animal ('psychological enquiries,' , p. ), asks the pregnant question, "ought not this to settle the disputed question as to the existence of a moral sense?" similar ideas have probably occurred to many persons, as they did long ago to marcus aurelius. mr. j.s. mill speaks, in his celebrated work, 'utilitarianism,' ( , pp. , ), of the social feelings as a "powerful natural sentiment," and as "the natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian morality." again he says, "like the other acquired capacities above referred to, the moral faculty, if not a part of our nature, is a natural out-growth from it; capable, like them, in a certain small degree of springing up spontaneously." but in opposition to all this, he also remarks, "if, as in my own belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are not for that reason less natural." it is with hesitation that i venture to differ at all from so profound a thinker, but it can hardly be disputed that the social feelings are instinctive or innate in the lower animals; and why should they not be so in man? mr. bain (see, for instance, 'the emotions and the will,' , p. ) and others believe that the moral sense is acquired by each individual during his lifetime. on the general theory of evolution this is at least extremely improbable. the ignoring of all transmitted mental qualities will, as it seems to me, be hereafter judged as a most serious blemish in the works of mr. mill.), the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man. for, firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them. the services may be of a definite and evidently instinctive nature; or there may be only a wish and readiness, as with most of the higher social animals, to aid their fellows in certain general ways. but these feelings and services are by no means extended to all the individuals of the same species, only to those of the same association. secondly, as soon as the mental faculties had become highly developed, images of all past actions and motives would be incessantly passing through the brain of each individual: and that feeling of dissatisfaction, or even misery, which invariably results, as we shall hereafter see, from any unsatisfied instinct, would arise, as often as it was perceived that the enduring and always present social instinct had yielded to some other instinct, at the time stronger, but neither enduring in its nature, nor leaving behind it a very vivid impression. it is clear that many instinctive desires, such as that of hunger, are in their nature of short duration; and after being satisfied, are not readily or vividly recalled. thirdly, after the power of language had been acquired, and the wishes of the community could be expressed, the common opinion how each member ought to act for the public good, would naturally become in a paramount degree the guide to action. but it should be borne in mind that however great weight we may attribute to public opinion, our regard for the approbation and disapprobation of our fellows depends on sympathy, which, as we shall see, forms an essential part of the social instinct, and is indeed its foundation-stone. lastly, habit in the individual would ultimately play a very important part in guiding the conduct of each member; for the social instinct, together with sympathy, is, like any other instinct, greatly strengthened by habit, and so consequently would be obedience to the wishes and judgment of the community. these several subordinate propositions must now be discussed, and some of them at considerable length. it may be well first to premise that i do not wish to maintain that any strictly social animal, if its intellectual faculties were to become as active and as highly developed as in man, would acquire exactly the same moral sense as ours. in the same manner as various animals have some sense of beauty, though they admire widely-different objects, so they might have a sense of right and wrong, though led by it to follow widely different lines of conduct. if, for instance, to take an extreme case, men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering. ( . mr. h. sidgwick remarks, in an able discussion on this subject (the 'academy,' june , , p. ), "a superior bee, we may feel sure, would aspire to a milder solution of the population question." judging, however, from the habits of many or most savages, man solves the problem by female infanticide, polyandry and promiscuous intercourse; therefore it may well be doubted whether it would be by a milder method. miss cobbe, in commenting ('darwinism in morals,' 'theological review,' april , pp. - ) on the same illustration, says, the principles of social duty would be thus reversed; and by this, i presume, she means that the fulfilment of a social duty would tend to the injury of individuals; but she overlooks the fact, which she would doubtless admit, that the instincts of the bee have been acquired for the good of the community. she goes so far as to say that if the theory of ethics advocated in this chapter were ever generally accepted, "i cannot but believe that in the hour of their triumph would be sounded the knell of the virtue of mankind!" it is to be hoped that the belief in the permanence of virtue on this earth is not held by many persons on so weak a tenure.) nevertheless, the bee, or any other social animal, would gain in our supposed case, as it appears to me, some feeling of right or wrong, or a conscience. for each individual would have an inward sense of possessing certain stronger or more enduring instincts, and others less strong or enduring; so that there would often be a struggle as to which impulse should be followed; and satisfaction, dissatisfaction, or even misery would be felt, as past impressions were compared during their incessant passage through the mind. in this case an inward monitor would tell the animal that it would have been better to have followed the one impulse rather than the other. the one course ought to have been followed, and the other ought not; the one would have been right and the other wrong; but to these terms i shall recur. sociability. animals of many kinds are social; we find even distinct species living together; for example, some american monkeys; and united flocks of rooks, jackdaws, and starlings. man shews the same feeling in his strong love for the dog, which the dog returns with interest. every one must have noticed how miserable horses, dogs, sheep, etc., are when separated from their companions, and what strong mutual affection the two former kinds, at least, shew on their reunion. it is curious to speculate on the feelings of a dog, who will rest peacefully for hours in a room with his master or any of the family, without the least notice being taken of him; but if left for a short time by himself, barks or howls dismally. we will confine our attention to the higher social animals; and pass over insects, although some of these are social, and aid one another in many important ways. the most common mutual service in the higher animals is to warn one another of danger by means of the united senses of all. every sportsman knows, as dr. jaeger remarks ( . 'die darwin'sche theorie,' s. .), how difficult it is to approach animals in a herd or troop. wild horses and cattle do not, i believe, make any danger-signal; but the attitude of any one of them who first discovers an enemy, warns the others. rabbits stamp loudly on the ground with their hind-feet as a signal: sheep and chamois do the same with their forefeet, uttering likewise a whistle. many birds, and some mammals, post sentinels, which in the case of seals are said ( . mr. r. brown in 'proc. zoolog. soc.' , p. .) generally to be the females. the leader of a troop of monkeys acts as the sentinel, and utters cries expressive both of danger and of safety. ( . brehm, 'thierleben,' b. i. , s. , . for the case of the monkeys extracting thorns from each other, see s. . with respect to the hamadryas turning over stones, the fact is given (s. ), on the evidence of alvarez, whose observations brehm thinks quite trustworthy. for the cases of the old male baboons attacking the dogs, see s. ; and with respect to the eagle, s. .) social animals perform many little services for each other: horses nibble, and cows lick each other, on any spot which itches: monkeys search each other for external parasites; and brehm states that after a troop of the cercopithecus griseo-viridis has rushed through a thorny brake, each monkey stretches itself on a branch, and another monkey sitting by, "conscientiously" examines its fur, and extracts every thorn or burr. animals also render more important services to one another: thus wolves and some other beasts of prey hunt in packs, and aid one another in attacking their victims. pelicans fish in concert. the hamadryas baboons turn over stones to find insects, etc.; and when they come to a large one, as many as can stand round, turn it over together and share the booty. social animals mutually defend each other. bull bisons in n. america, when there is danger, drive the cows and calves into the middle of the herd, whilst they defend the outside. i shall also in a future chapter give an account of two young wild bulls at chillingham attacking an old one in concert, and of two stallions together trying to drive away a third stallion from a troop of mares. in abyssinia, brehm encountered a great troop of baboons who were crossing a valley: some had already ascended the opposite mountain, and some were still in the valley; the latter were attacked by the dogs, but the old males immediately hurried down from the rocks, and with mouths widely opened, roared so fearfully, that the dogs quickly drew back. they were again encouraged to the attack; but by this time all the baboons had reascended the heights, excepting a young one, about six months old, who, loudly calling for aid, climbed on a block of rock, and was surrounded. now one of the largest males, a true hero, came down again from the mountain, slowly went to the young one, coaxed him, and triumphantly led him away--the dogs being too much astonished to make an attack. i cannot resist giving another scene which was witnessed by this same naturalist; an eagle seized a young cercopithecus, which, by clinging to a branch, was not at once carried off; it cried loudly for assistance, upon which the other members of the troop, with much uproar, rushed to the rescue, surrounded the eagle, and pulled out so many feathers, that he no longer thought of his prey, but only how to escape. this eagle, as brehm remarks, assuredly would never again attack a single monkey of a troop. ( . mr. belt gives the case of a spider-monkey (ateles) in nicaragua, which was heard screaming for nearly two hours in the forest, and was found with an eagle perched close by it. the bird apparently feared to attack as long as it remained face to face; and mr. belt believes, from what he has seen of the habits of these monkeys, that they protect themselves from eagles by keeping two or three together. 'the naturalist in nicaragua,' , p. .) it is certain that associated animals have a feeling of love for each other, which is not felt by non-social adult animals. how far in most cases they actually sympathise in the pains and pleasures of others, is more doubtful, especially with respect to pleasures. mr. buxton, however, who had excellent means of observation ( . 'annals and magazine of natural history,' november , p. .), states that his macaws, which lived free in norfolk, took "an extravagant interest" in a pair with a nest; and whenever the female left it, she was surrounded by a troop "screaming horrible acclamations in her honour." it is often difficult to judge whether animals have any feeling for the sufferings of others of their kind. who can say what cows feel, when they surround and stare intently on a dying or dead companion; apparently, however, as houzeau remarks, they feel no pity. that animals sometimes are far from feeling any sympathy is too certain; for they will expel a wounded animal from the herd, or gore or worry it to death. this is almost the blackest fact in natural history, unless, indeed, the explanation which has been suggested is true, that their instinct or reason leads them to expel an injured companion, lest beasts of prey, including man, should be tempted to follow the troop. in this case their conduct is not much worse than that of the north american indians, who leave their feeble comrades to perish on the plains; or the fijians, who, when their parents get old, or fall ill, bury them alive. ( . sir j. lubbock, 'prehistoric times,' nd ed., p. .) many animals, however, certainly sympathise with each other's distress or danger. this is the case even with birds. captain stansbury ( . as quoted by mr. l.h. morgan, 'the american beaver,' , p. . capt. stansbury also gives an interesting account of the manner in which a very young pelican, carried away by a strong stream, was guided and encouraged in its attempts to reach the shore by half a dozen old birds.) found on a salt lake in utah an old and completely blind pelican, which was very fat, and must have been well fed for a long time by his companions. mr. blyth, as he informs me, saw indian crows feeding two or three of their companions which were blind; and i have heard of an analogous case with the domestic cock. we may, if we choose, call these actions instinctive; but such cases are much too rare for the development of any special instinct. ( . as mr. bain states, "effective aid to a sufferer springs from sympathy proper:" 'mental and moral science,' , p. .) i have myself seen a dog, who never passed a cat who lay sick in a basket, and was a great friend of his, without giving her a few licks with his tongue, the surest sign of kind feeling in a dog. it must be called sympathy that leads a courageous dog to fly at any one who strikes his master, as he certainly will. i saw a person pretending to beat a lady, who had a very timid little dog on her lap, and the trial had never been made before; the little creature instantly jumped away, but after the pretended beating was over, it was really pathetic to see how perseveringly he tried to lick his mistress's face, and comfort her. brehm ( . 'thierleben,' b. i. s. .) states that when a baboon in confinement was pursued to be punished, the others tried to protect him. it must have been sympathy in the cases above given which led the baboons and cercopitheci to defend their young comrades from the dogs and the eagle. i will give only one other instance of sympathetic and heroic conduct, in the case of a little american monkey. several years ago a keeper at the zoological gardens shewed me some deep and scarcely healed wounds on the nape of his own neck, inflicted on him, whilst kneeling on the floor, by a fierce baboon. the little american monkey, who was a warm friend of this keeper, lived in the same large compartment, and was dreadfully afraid of the great baboon. nevertheless, as soon as he saw his friend in peril, he rushed to the rescue, and by screams and bites so distracted the baboon that the man was able to escape, after, as the surgeon thought, running great risk of his life. besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts, which in us would be called moral; and i agree with agassiz ( . 'de l'espèce et de la classe,' , p. .) that dogs possess something very like a conscience. dogs possess some power of self-command, and this does not appear to be wholly the result of fear. as braubach ( . 'die darwin'sche art-lehre,' , s. .) remarks, they will refrain from stealing food in the absence of their master. they have long been accepted as the very type of fidelity and obedience. but the elephant is likewise very faithful to his driver or keeper, and probably considers him as the leader of the herd. dr. hooker informs me that an elephant, which he was riding in india, became so deeply bogged that he remained stuck fast until the next day, when he was extricated by men with ropes. under such circumstances elephants will seize with their trunks any object, dead or alive, to place under their knees, to prevent their sinking deeper in the mud; and the driver was dreadfully afraid lest the animal should have seized dr. hooker and crushed him to death. but the driver himself, as dr. hooker was assured, ran no risk. this forbearance under an emergency so dreadful for a heavy animal, is a wonderful proof of noble fidelity. ( . see also hooker's 'himalayan journals,' vol. ii. , p. .) all animals living in a body, which defend themselves or attack their enemies in concert, must indeed be in some degree faithful to one another; and those that follow a leader must be in some degree obedient. when the baboons in abyssinia ( . brehm, 'thierleben,' b. i. s. .) plunder a garden, they silently follow their leader; and if an imprudent young animal makes a noise, he receives a slap from the others to teach him silence and obedience. mr. galton, who has had excellent opportunities for observing the half-wild cattle in s. africa, says ( . see his extremely interesting paper on 'gregariousness in cattle, and in man,' 'macmillan's magazine,' feb. , p. .), that they cannot endure even a momentary separation from the herd. they are essentially slavish, and accept the common determination, seeking no better lot than to be led by any one ox who has enough self-reliance to accept the position. the men who break in these animals for harness, watch assiduously for those who, by grazing apart, shew a self-reliant disposition, and these they train as fore-oxen. mr. galton adds that such animals are rare and valuable; and if many were born they would soon be eliminated, as lions are always on the look-out for the individuals which wander from the herd. with respect to the impulse which leads certain animals to associate together, and to aid one another in many ways, we may infer that in most cases they are impelled by the same sense of satisfaction or pleasure which they experience in performing other instinctive actions; or by the same sense of dissatisfaction as when other instinctive actions are checked. we see this in innumerable instances, and it is illustrated in a striking manner by the acquired instincts of our domesticated animals; thus a young shepherd-dog delights in driving and running round a flock of sheep, but not in worrying them; a young fox-hound delights in hunting a fox, whilst some other kinds of dogs, as i have witnessed, utterly disregard foxes. what a strong feeling of inward satisfaction must impel a bird, so full of activity, to brood day after day over her eggs. migratory birds are quite miserable if stopped from migrating; perhaps they enjoy starting on their long flight; but it is hard to believe that the poor pinioned goose, described by audubon, which started on foot at the proper time for its journey of probably more than a thousand miles, could have felt any joy in doing so. some instincts are determined solely by painful feelings, as by fear, which leads to self-preservation, and is in some cases directed towards special enemies. no one, i presume, can analyse the sensations of pleasure or pain. in many instances, however, it is probable that instincts are persistently followed from the mere force of inheritance, without the stimulus of either pleasure or pain. a young pointer, when it first scents game, apparently cannot help pointing. a squirrel in a cage who pats the nuts which it cannot eat, as if to bury them in the ground, can hardly be thought to act thus, either from pleasure or pain. hence the common assumption that men must be impelled to every action by experiencing some pleasure or pain may be erroneous. although a habit may be blindly and implicitly followed, independently of any pleasure or pain felt at the moment, yet if it be forcibly and abruptly checked, a vague sense of dissatisfaction is generally experienced. it has often been assumed that animals were in the first place rendered social, and that they feel as a consequence uncomfortable when separated from each other, and comfortable whilst together; but it is a more probable view that these sensations were first developed, in order that those animals which would profit by living in society, should be induced to live together, in the same manner as the sense of hunger and the pleasure of eating were, no doubt, first acquired in order to induce animals to eat. the feeling of pleasure from society is probably an extension of the parental or filial affections, since the social instinct seems to be developed by the young remaining for a long time with their parents; and this extension may be attributed in part to habit, but chiefly to natural selection. with those animals which were benefited by living in close association, the individuals which took the greatest pleasure in society would best escape various dangers, whilst those that cared least for their comrades, and lived solitary, would perish in greater numbers. with respect to the origin of the parental and filial affections, which apparently lie at the base of the social instincts, we know not the steps by which they have been gained; but we may infer that it has been to a large extent through natural selection. so it has almost certainly been with the unusual and opposite feeling of hatred between the nearest relations, as with the worker-bees which kill their brother drones, and with the queen-bees which kill their daughter-queens; the desire to destroy their nearest relations having been in this case of service to the community. parental affection, or some feeling which replaces it, has been developed in certain animals extremely low in the scale, for example, in star-fishes and spiders. it is also occasionally present in a few members alone in a whole group of animals, as in the genus forficula, or earwigs. the all-important emotion of sympathy is distinct from that of love. a mother may passionately love her sleeping and passive infant, but she can hardly at such times be said to feel sympathy for it. the love of a man for his dog is distinct from sympathy, and so is that of a dog for his master. adam smith formerly argued, as has mr. bain recently, that the basis of sympathy lies in our strong retentiveness of former states of pain or pleasure. hence, "the sight of another person enduring hunger, cold, fatigue, revives in us some recollection of these states, which are painful even in idea." we are thus impelled to relieve the sufferings of another, in order that our own painful feelings may be at the same time relieved. in like manner we are led to participate in the pleasures of others. ( . see the first and striking chapter in adam smith's 'theory of moral sentiments.' also 'mr. bain's mental and moral science,' , pp. , and - . mr. bain states, that, "sympathy is, indirectly, a source of pleasure to the sympathiser"; and he accounts for this through reciprocity. he remarks that "the person benefited, or others in his stead, may make up, by sympathy and good offices returned, for all the sacrifice." but if, as appears to be the case, sympathy is strictly an instinct, its exercise would give direct pleasure, in the same manner as the exercise, as before remarked, of almost every other instinct.) but i cannot see how this view explains the fact that sympathy is excited, in an immeasurably stronger degree, by a beloved, than by an indifferent person. the mere sight of suffering, independently of love, would suffice to call up in us vivid recollections and associations. the explanation may lie in the fact that, with all animals, sympathy is directed solely towards the members of the same community, and therefore towards known, and more or less beloved members, but not to all the individuals of the same species. this fact is not more surprising than that the fears of many animals should be directed against special enemies. species which are not social, such as lions and tigers, no doubt feel sympathy for the suffering of their own young, but not for that of any other animal. with mankind, selfishness, experience, and imitation, probably add, as mr. bain has shewn, to the power of sympathy; for we are led by the hope of receiving good in return to perform acts of sympathetic kindness to others; and sympathy is much strengthened by habit. in however complex a manner this feeling may have originated, as it is one of high importance to all those animals which aid and defend one another, it will have been increased through natural selection; for those communities, which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members, would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring. it is, however, impossible to decide in many cases whether certain social instincts have been acquired through natural selection, or are the indirect result of other instincts and faculties, such as sympathy, reason, experience, and a tendency to imitation; or again, whether they are simply the result of long-continued habit. so remarkable an instinct as the placing sentinels to warn the community of danger, can hardly have been the indirect result of any of these faculties; it must, therefore, have been directly acquired. on the other hand, the habit followed by the males of some social animals of defending the community, and of attacking their enemies or their prey in concert, may perhaps have originated from mutual sympathy; but courage, and in most cases strength, must have been previously acquired, probably through natural selection. of the various instincts and habits, some are much stronger than others; that is, some either give more pleasure in their performance, and more distress in their prevention, than others; or, which is probably quite as important, they are, through inheritance, more persistently followed, without exciting any special feeling of pleasure or pain. we are ourselves conscious that some habits are much more difficult to cure or change than others. hence a struggle may often be observed in animals between different instincts, or between an instinct and some habitual disposition; as when a dog rushes after a hare, is rebuked, pauses, hesitates, pursues again, or returns ashamed to his master; or as between the love of a female dog for her young puppies and for her master,--for she may be seen to slink away to them, as if half ashamed of not accompanying her master. but the most curious instance known to me of one instinct getting the better of another, is the migratory instinct conquering the maternal instinct. the former is wonderfully strong; a confined bird will at the proper season beat her breast against the wires of her cage, until it is bare and bloody. it causes young salmon to leap out of the fresh water, in which they could continue to exist, and thus unintentionally to commit suicide. every one knows how strong the maternal instinct is, leading even timid birds to face great danger, though with hesitation, and in opposition to the instinct of self-preservation. nevertheless, the migratory instinct is so powerful, that late in the autumn swallows, house-martins, and swifts frequently desert their tender young, leaving them to perish miserably in their nests. ( . this fact, the rev. l. jenyns states (see his edition of 'white's nat. hist. of selborne,' , p. ) was first recorded by the illustrious jenner, in 'phil. transact.' , and has since been confirmed by several observers, especially by mr. blackwall. this latter careful observer examined, late in the autumn, during two years, thirty-six nests; he found that twelve contained young dead birds, five contained eggs on the point of being hatched, and three, eggs not nearly hatched. many birds, not yet old enough for a prolonged flight, are likewise deserted and left behind. see blackwall, 'researches in zoology,' , pp. , . for some additional evidence, although this is not wanted, see leroy, 'lettres phil.' , p. . for swifts, gould's 'introduction to the birds of great britain,' , p. . similar cases have been observed in canada by mr. adams; 'pop. science review,' july , p. .) we can perceive that an instinctive impulse, if it be in any way more beneficial to a species than some other or opposed instinct, would be rendered the more potent of the two through natural selection; for the individuals which had it most strongly developed would survive in larger numbers. whether this is the case with the migratory in comparison with the maternal instinct, may be doubted. the great persistence, or steady action of the former at certain seasons of the year during the whole day, may give it for a time paramount force. man a social animal. every one will admit that man is a social being. we see this in his dislike of solitude, and in his wish for society beyond that of his own family. solitary confinement is one of the severest punishments which can be inflicted. some authors suppose that man primevally lived in single families; but at the present day, though single families, or only two or three together, roam the solitudes of some savage lands, they always, as far as i can discover, hold friendly relations with other families inhabiting the same district. such families occasionally meet in council, and unite for their common defence. it is no argument against savage man being a social animal, that the tribes inhabiting adjacent districts are almost always at war with each other; for the social instincts never extend to all the individuals of the same species. judging from the analogy of the majority of the quadrumana, it is probable that the early ape-like progenitors of man were likewise social; but this is not of much importance for us. although man, as he now exists, has few special instincts, having lost any which his early progenitors may have possessed, this is no reason why he should not have retained from an extremely remote period some degree of instinctive love and sympathy for his fellows. we are indeed all conscious that we do possess such sympathetic feelings ( . hume remarks ('an enquiry concerning the principles of morals,' edit. of , p. ), "there seems a necessity for confessing that the happiness and misery of others are not spectacles altogether indifferent to us, but that the view of the former...communicates a secret joy; the appearance of the latter... throws a melancholy damp over the imagination."); but our consciousness does not tell us whether they are instinctive, having originated long ago in the same manner as with the lower animals, or whether they have been acquired by each of us during our early years. as man is a social animal, it is almost certain that he would inherit a tendency to be faithful to his comrades, and obedient to the leader of his tribe; for these qualities are common to most social animals. he would consequently possess some capacity for self-command. he would from an inherited tendency be willing to defend, in concert with others, his fellow-men; and would be ready to aid them in any way, which did not too greatly interfere with his own welfare or his own strong desires. the social animals which stand at the bottom of the scale are guided almost exclusively, and those which stand higher in the scale are largely guided, by special instincts in the aid which they give to the members of the same community; but they are likewise in part impelled by mutual love and sympathy, assisted apparently by some amount of reason. although man, as just remarked, has no special instincts to tell him how to aid his fellow-men, he still has the impulse, and with his improved intellectual faculties would naturally be much guided in this respect by reason and experience. instinctive sympathy would also cause him to value highly the approbation of his fellows; for, as mr. bain has clearly shewn ( . 'mental and moral science,' , p. .), the love of praise and the strong feeling of glory, and the still stronger horror of scorn and infamy, "are due to the workings of sympathy." consequently man would be influenced in the highest degree by the wishes, approbation, and blame of his fellow-men, as expressed by their gestures and language. thus the social instincts, which must have been acquired by man in a very rude state, and probably even by his early ape-like progenitors, still give the impulse to some of his best actions; but his actions are in a higher degree determined by the expressed wishes and judgment of his fellow-men, and unfortunately very often by his own strong selfish desires. but as love, sympathy and self-command become strengthened by habit, and as the power of reasoning becomes clearer, so that man can value justly the judgments of his fellows, he will feel himself impelled, apart from any transitory pleasure or pain, to certain lines of conduct. he might then declare--not that any barbarian or uncultivated man could thus think--i am the supreme judge of my own conduct, and in the words of kant, i will not in my own person violate the dignity of humanity. the more enduring social instincts conquer the less persistent instincts. we have not, however, as yet considered the main point, on which, from our present point of view, the whole question of the moral sense turns. why should a man feel that he ought to obey one instinctive desire rather than another? why is he bitterly regretful, if he has yielded to a strong sense of self-preservation, and has not risked his life to save that of a fellow-creature? or why does he regret having stolen food from hunger? it is evident in the first place, that with mankind the instinctive impulses have different degrees of strength; a savage will risk his own life to save that of a member of the same community, but will be wholly indifferent about a stranger: a young and timid mother urged by the maternal instinct will, without a moment's hesitation, run the greatest danger for her own infant, but not for a mere fellow-creature. nevertheless many a civilised man, or even boy, who never before risked his life for another, but full of courage and sympathy, has disregarded the instinct of self-preservation, and plunged at once into a torrent to save a drowning man, though a stranger. in this case man is impelled by the same instinctive motive, which made the heroic little american monkey, formerly described, save his keeper, by attacking the great and dreaded baboon. such actions as the above appear to be the simple result of the greater strength of the social or maternal instincts rather than that of any other instinct or motive; for they are performed too instantaneously for reflection, or for pleasure or pain to be felt at the time; though, if prevented by any cause, distress or even misery might be felt. in a timid man, on the other hand, the instinct of self-preservation might be so strong, that he would be unable to force himself to run any such risk, perhaps not even for his own child. i am aware that some persons maintain that actions performed impulsively, as in the above cases, do not come under the dominion of the moral sense, and cannot be called moral. they confine this term to actions done deliberately, after a victory over opposing desires, or when prompted by some exalted motive. but it appears scarcely possible to draw any clear line of distinction of this kind. ( . i refer here to the distinction between what has been called material and formal morality. i am glad to find that professor huxley ('critiques and addresses,' , p. ) takes the same view on this subject as i do. mr. leslie stephen remarks ('essays on freethinking and plain speaking,' , p. ), "the metaphysical distinction, between material and formal morality is as irrelevant as other such distinctions.") as far as exalted motives are concerned, many instances have been recorded of savages, destitute of any feeling of general benevolence towards mankind, and not guided by any religious motive, who have deliberately sacrificed their lives as prisoners( . i have given one such case, namely of three patagonian indians who preferred being shot, one after the other, to betraying the plans of their companions in war ('journal of researches,' , p. ).), rather than betray their comrades; and surely their conduct ought to be considered as moral. as far as deliberation, and the victory over opposing motives are concerned, animals may be seen doubting between opposed instincts, in rescuing their offspring or comrades from danger; yet their actions, though done for the good of others, are not called moral. moreover, anything performed very often by us, will at last be done without deliberation or hesitation, and can then hardly be distinguished from an instinct; yet surely no one will pretend that such an action ceases to be moral. on the contrary, we all feel that an act cannot be considered as perfect, or as performed in the most noble manner, unless it be done impulsively, without deliberation or effort, in the same manner as by a man in whom the requisite qualities are innate. he who is forced to overcome his fear or want of sympathy before he acts, deserves, however, in one way higher credit than the man whose innate disposition leads him to a good act without effort. as we cannot distinguish between motives, we rank all actions of a certain class as moral, if performed by a moral being. a moral being is one who is capable of comparing his past and future actions or motives, and of approving or disapproving of them. we have no reason to suppose that any of the lower animals have this capacity; therefore, when a newfoundland dog drags a child out of the water, or a monkey faces danger to rescue its comrade, or takes charge of an orphan monkey, we do not call its conduct moral. but in the case of man, who alone can with certainty be ranked as a moral being, actions of a certain class are called moral, whether performed deliberately, after a struggle with opposing motives, or impulsively through instinct, or from the effects of slowly-gained habit. but to return to our more immediate subject. although some instincts are more powerful than others, and thus lead to corresponding actions, yet it is untenable, that in man the social instincts (including the love of praise and fear of blame) possess greater strength, or have, through long habit, acquired greater strength than the instincts of self-preservation, hunger, lust, vengeance, etc. why then does man regret, even though trying to banish such regret, that he has followed the one natural impulse rather than the other; and why does he further feel that he ought to regret his conduct? man in this respect differs profoundly from the lower animals. nevertheless we can, i think, see with some degree of clearness the reason of this difference. man, from the activity of his mental faculties, cannot avoid reflection: past impressions and images are incessantly and clearly passing through his mind. now with those animals which live permanently in a body, the social instincts are ever present and persistent. such animals are always ready to utter the danger-signal, to defend the community, and to give aid to their fellows in accordance with their habits; they feel at all times, without the stimulus of any special passion or desire, some degree of love and sympathy for them; they are unhappy if long separated from them, and always happy to be again in their company. so it is with ourselves. even when we are quite alone, how often do we think with pleasure or pain of what others think of us,--of their imagined approbation or disapprobation; and this all follows from sympathy, a fundamental element of the social instincts. a man who possessed no trace of such instincts would be an unnatural monster. on the other hand, the desire to satisfy hunger, or any passion such as vengeance, is in its nature temporary, and can for a time be fully satisfied. nor is it easy, perhaps hardly possible, to call up with complete vividness the feeling, for instance, of hunger; nor indeed, as has often been remarked, of any suffering. the instinct of self-preservation is not felt except in the presence of danger; and many a coward has thought himself brave until he has met his enemy face to face. the wish for another man's property is perhaps as persistent a desire as any that can be named; but even in this case the satisfaction of actual possession is generally a weaker feeling than the desire: many a thief, if not a habitual one, after success has wondered why he stole some article. ( . enmity or hatred seems also to be a highly persistent feeling, perhaps more so than any other that can be named. envy is defined as hatred of another for some excellence or success; and bacon insists (essay ix.), "of all other affections envy is the most importune and continual." dogs are very apt to hate both strange men and strange dogs, especially if they live near at hand, but do not belong to the same family, tribe, or clan; this feeling would thus seem to be innate, and is certainly a most persistent one. it seems to be the complement and converse of the true social instinct. from what we hear of savages, it would appear that something of the same kind holds good with them. if this be so, it would be a small step in any one to transfer such feelings to any member of the same tribe if he had done him an injury and had become his enemy. nor is it probable that the primitive conscience would reproach a man for injuring his enemy; rather it would reproach him, if he had not revenged himself. to do good in return for evil, to love your enemy, is a height of morality to which it may be doubted whether the social instincts would, by themselves, have ever led us. it is necessary that these instincts, together with sympathy, should have been highly cultivated and extended by the aid of reason, instruction, and the love or fear of god, before any such golden rule would ever be thought of and obeyed.) a man cannot prevent past impressions often repassing through his mind; he will thus be driven to make a comparison between the impressions of past hunger, vengeance satisfied, or danger shunned at other men's cost, with the almost ever-present instinct of sympathy, and with his early knowledge of what others consider as praiseworthy or blameable. this knowledge cannot be banished from his mind, and from instinctive sympathy is esteemed of great moment. he will then feel as if he had been baulked in following a present instinct or habit, and this with all animals causes dissatisfaction, or even misery. the above case of the swallow affords an illustration, though of a reversed nature, of a temporary though for the time strongly persistent instinct conquering another instinct, which is usually dominant over all others. at the proper season these birds seem all day long to be impressed with the desire to migrate; their habits change; they become restless, are noisy and congregate in flocks. whilst the mother-bird is feeding, or brooding over her nestlings, the maternal instinct is probably stronger than the migratory; but the instinct which is the more persistent gains the victory, and at last, at a moment when her young ones are not in sight, she takes flight and deserts them. when arrived at the end of her long journey, and the migratory instinct has ceased to act, what an agony of remorse the bird would feel, if, from being endowed with great mental activity, she could not prevent the image constantly passing through her mind, of her young ones perishing in the bleak north from cold and hunger. at the moment of action, man will no doubt be apt to follow the stronger impulse; and though this may occasionally prompt him to the noblest deeds, it will more commonly lead him to gratify his own desires at the expense of other men. but after their gratification when past and weaker impressions are judged by the ever-enduring social instinct, and by his deep regard for the good opinion of his fellows, retribution will surely come. he will then feel remorse, repentance, regret, or shame; this latter feeling, however, relates almost exclusively to the judgment of others. he will consequently resolve more or less firmly to act differently for the future; and this is conscience; for conscience looks backwards, and serves as a guide for the future. the nature and strength of the feelings which we call regret, shame, repentance or remorse, depend apparently not only on the strength of the violated instinct, but partly on the strength of the temptation, and often still more on the judgment of our fellows. how far each man values the appreciation of others, depends on the strength of his innate or acquired feeling of sympathy; and on his own capacity for reasoning out the remote consequences of his acts. another element is most important, although not necessary, the reverence or fear of the gods, or spirits believed in by each man: and this applies especially in cases of remorse. several critics have objected that though some slight regret or repentance may be explained by the view advocated in this chapter, it is impossible thus to account for the soul-shaking feeling of remorse. but i can see little force in this objection. my critics do not define what they mean by remorse, and i can find no definition implying more than an overwhelming sense of repentance. remorse seems to bear the same relation to repentance, as rage does to anger, or agony to pain. it is far from strange that an instinct so strong and so generally admired, as maternal love, should, if disobeyed, lead to the deepest misery, as soon as the impression of the past cause of disobedience is weakened. even when an action is opposed to no special instinct, merely to know that our friends and equals despise us for it is enough to cause great misery. who can doubt that the refusal to fight a duel through fear has caused many men an agony of shame? many a hindoo, it is said, has been stirred to the bottom of his soul by having partaken of unclean food. here is another case of what must, i think, be called remorse. dr. landor acted as a magistrate in west australia, and relates ( . 'insanity in relation to law,' ontario, united states, , p. .), that a native on his farm, after losing one of his wives from disease, came and said that, "he was going to a distant tribe to spear a woman, to satisfy his sense of duty to his wife. i told him that if he did so, i would send him to prison for life. he remained about the farm for some months, but got exceedingly thin, and complained that he could not rest or eat, that his wife's spirit was haunting him, because he had not taken a life for hers. i was inexorable, and assured him that nothing should save him if he did." nevertheless the man disappeared for more than a year, and then returned in high condition; and his other wife told dr. landor that her husband had taken the life of a woman belonging to a distant tribe; but it was impossible to obtain legal evidence of the act. the breach of a rule held sacred by the tribe, will thus, as it seems, give rise to the deepest feelings,--and this quite apart from the social instincts, excepting in so far as the rule is grounded on the judgment of the community. how so many strange superstitions have arisen throughout the world we know not; nor can we tell how some real and great crimes, such as incest, have come to be held in an abhorrence (which is not however quite universal) by the lowest savages. it is even doubtful whether in some tribes incest would be looked on with greater horror, than would the marriage of a man with a woman bearing the same name, though not a relation. "to violate this law is a crime which the australians hold in the greatest abhorrence, in this agreeing exactly with certain tribes of north america. when the question is put in either district, is it worse to kill a girl of a foreign tribe, or to marry a girl of one's own, an answer just opposite to ours would be given without hesitation." ( . e.b. tylor, in 'contemporary review,' april , p. .) we may, therefore, reject the belief, lately insisted on by some writers, that the abhorrence of incest is due to our possessing a special god-implanted conscience. on the whole it is intelligible, that a man urged by so powerful a sentiment as remorse, though arising as above explained, should be led to act in a manner, which he has been taught to believe serves as an expiation, such as delivering himself up to justice. man prompted by his conscience, will through long habit acquire such perfect self-command, that his desires and passions will at last yield instantly and without a struggle to his social sympathies and instincts, including his feeling for the judgment of his fellows. the still hungry, or the still revengeful man will not think of stealing food, or of wreaking his vengeance. it is possible, or as we shall hereafter see, even probable, that the habit of self-command may, like other habits, be inherited. thus at last man comes to feel, through acquired and perhaps inherited habit, that it is best for him to obey his more persistent impulses. the imperious word "ought" seems merely to imply the consciousness of the existence of a rule of conduct, however it may have originated. formerly it must have been often vehemently urged that an insulted gentleman ought to fight a duel. we even say that a pointer ought to point, and a retriever to retrieve game. if they fail to do so, they fail in their duty and act wrongly. if any desire or instinct leading to an action opposed to the good of others still appears, when recalled to mind, as strong as, or stronger than, the social instinct, a man will feel no keen regret at having followed it; but he will be conscious that if his conduct were known to his fellows, it would meet with their disapprobation; and few are so destitute of sympathy as not to feel discomfort when this is realised. if he has no such sympathy, and if his desires leading to bad actions are at the time strong, and when recalled are not over-mastered by the persistent social instincts, and the judgment of others, then he is essentially a bad man ( . dr. prosper despine, in his psychologie naturelle, (tom. i. p. ; tom. ii. p. ) gives many curious cases of the worst criminals, who apparently have been entirely destitute of conscience.); and the sole restraining motive left is the fear of punishment, and the conviction that in the long run it would be best for his own selfish interests to regard the good of others rather than his own. it is obvious that every one may with an easy conscience gratify his own desires, if they do not interfere with his social instincts, that is with the good of others; but in order to be quite free from self-reproach, or at least of anxiety, it is almost necessary for him to avoid the disapprobation, whether reasonable or not, of his fellow-men. nor must he break through the fixed habits of his life, especially if these are supported by reason; for if he does, he will assuredly feel dissatisfaction. he must likewise avoid the reprobation of the one god or gods in whom, according to his knowledge or superstition, he may believe; but in this case the additional fear of divine punishment often supervenes. the strictly social virtues at first alone regarded. the above view of the origin and nature of the moral sense, which tells us what we ought to do, and of the conscience which reproves us if we disobey it, accords well with what we see of the early and undeveloped condition of this faculty in mankind. the virtues which must be practised, at least generally, by rude men, so that they may associate in a body, are those which are still recognised as the most important. but they are practised almost exclusively in relation to the men of the same tribe; and their opposites are not regarded as crimes in relation to the men of other tribes. no tribe could hold together if murder, robbery, treachery, etc., were common; consequently such crimes within the limits of the same tribe "are branded with everlasting infamy" ( . see an able article in the 'north british review,' , p. . see also mr. w. bagehot's articles on the importance of obedience and coherence to primitive man, in the 'fortnightly review,' , p. , and , p. , etc.); but excite no such sentiment beyond these limits. a north-american indian is well pleased with himself, and is honoured by others, when he scalps a man of another tribe; and a dyak cuts off the head of an unoffending person, and dries it as a trophy. the murder of infants has prevailed on the largest scale throughout the world ( . the fullest account which i have met with is by dr. gerland, in his 'ueber den aussterben der naturvölker,' ; but i shall have to recur to the subject of infanticide in a future chapter.), and has met with no reproach; but infanticide, especially of females, has been thought to be good for the tribe, or at least not injurious. suicide during former times was not generally considered as a crime ( . see the very interesting discussion on suicide in lecky's 'history of european morals,' vol. i. , p. . with respect to savages, mr. winwood reade informs me that the negroes of west africa often commit suicide. it is well known how common it was amongst the miserable aborigines of south america after the spanish conquest. for new zealand, see the voyage of the novara, and for the aleutian islands, müller, as quoted by houzeau, 'les facultés mentales,' etc., tom. ii. p. .), but rather, from the courage displayed, as an honourable act; and it is still practised by some semi-civilised and savage nations without reproach, for it does not obviously concern others of the tribe. it has been recorded that an indian thug conscientiously regretted that he had not robbed and strangled as many travellers as did his father before him. in a rude state of civilisation the robbery of strangers is, indeed, generally considered as honourable. slavery, although in some ways beneficial during ancient times ( . see mr. bagehot, 'physics and politics,' , p. .), is a great crime; yet it was not so regarded until quite recently, even by the most civilised nations. and this was especially the case, because the slaves belonged in general to a race different from that of their masters. as barbarians do not regard the opinion of their women, wives are commonly treated like slaves. most savages are utterly indifferent to the sufferings of strangers, or even delight in witnessing them. it is well known that the women and children of the north-american indians aided in torturing their enemies. some savages take a horrid pleasure in cruelty to animals ( . see, for instance, mr. hamilton's account of the kaffirs, 'anthropological review,' , p. xv.), and humanity is an unknown virtue. nevertheless, besides the family affections, kindness is common, especially during sickness, between the members of the same tribe, and is sometimes extended beyond these limits. mungo park's touching account of the kindness of the negro women of the interior to him is well known. many instances could be given of the noble fidelity of savages towards each other, but not to strangers; common experience justifies the maxim of the spaniard, "never, never trust an indian." there cannot be fidelity without truth; and this fundamental virtue is not rare between the members of the same tribe: thus mungo park heard the negro women teaching their young children to love the truth. this, again, is one of the virtues which becomes so deeply rooted in the mind, that it is sometimes practised by savages, even at a high cost, towards strangers; but to lie to your enemy has rarely been thought a sin, as the history of modern diplomacy too plainly shews. as soon as a tribe has a recognised leader, disobedience becomes a crime, and even abject submission is looked at as a sacred virtue. as during rude times no man can be useful or faithful to his tribe without courage, this quality has universally been placed in the highest rank; and although in civilised countries a good yet timid man may be far more useful to the community than a brave one, we cannot help instinctively honouring the latter above a coward, however benevolent. prudence, on the other hand, which does not concern the welfare of others, though a very useful virtue, has never been highly esteemed. as no man can practise the virtues necessary for the welfare of his tribe without self-sacrifice, self-command, and the power of endurance, these qualities have been at all times highly and most justly valued. the american savage voluntarily submits to the most horrid tortures without a groan, to prove and strengthen his fortitude and courage; and we cannot help admiring him, or even an indian fakir, who, from a foolish religious motive, swings suspended by a hook buried in his flesh. the other so-called self-regarding virtues, which do not obviously, though they may really, affect the welfare of the tribe, have never been esteemed by savages, though now highly appreciated by civilised nations. the greatest intemperance is no reproach with savages. utter licentiousness, and unnatural crimes, prevail to an astounding extent. ( . mr. m'lennan has given ('primitive marriage,' , p. ) a good collection of facts on this head.) as soon, however, as marriage, whether polygamous, or monogamous, becomes common, jealousy will lead to the inculcation of female virtue; and this, being honoured, will tend to spread to the unmarried females. how slowly it spreads to the male sex, we see at the present day. chastity eminently requires self-command; therefore it has been honoured from a very early period in the moral history of civilised man. as a consequence of this, the senseless practice of celibacy has been ranked from a remote period as a virtue. ( . lecky, 'history of european morals,' vol. i. , p. .) the hatred of indecency, which appears to us so natural as to be thought innate, and which is so valuable an aid to chastity, is a modern virtue, appertaining exclusively, as sir g. staunton remarks ( . 'embassy to china,' vol. ii. p. .), to civilised life. this is shewn by the ancient religious rites of various nations, by the drawings on the walls of pompeii, and by the practices of many savages. we have now seen that actions are regarded by savages, and were probably so regarded by primeval man, as good or bad, solely as they obviously affect the welfare of the tribe,--not that of the species, nor that of an individual member of the tribe. this conclusion agrees well with the belief that the so-called moral sense is aboriginally derived from the social instincts, for both relate at first exclusively to the community. the chief causes of the low morality of savages, as judged by our standard, are, firstly, the confinement of sympathy to the same tribe. secondly, powers of reasoning insufficient to recognise the bearing of many virtues, especially of the self-regarding virtues, on the general welfare of the tribe. savages, for instance, fail to trace the multiplied evils consequent on a want of temperance, chastity, etc. and, thirdly, weak power of self-command; for this power has not been strengthened through long-continued, perhaps inherited, habit, instruction and religion. i have entered into the above details on the immorality of savages ( . see on this subject copious evidence in chap. vii. of sir j. lubbock, 'origin of civilisation,' .), because some authors have recently taken a high view of their moral nature, or have attributed most of their crimes to mistaken benevolence. ( . for instance lecky, 'history of european morals,' vol. i. p. .) these authors appear to rest their conclusion on savages possessing those virtues which are serviceable, or even necessary, for the existence of the family and of the tribe,--qualities which they undoubtedly do possess, and often in a high degree. concluding remarks. it was assumed formerly by philosophers of the derivative ( . this term is used in an able article in the 'westminster review,' oct. , p. . for the "greatest happiness principle," see j.s. mill, 'utilitarianism,' p. .) school of morals that the foundation of morality lay in a form of selfishness; but more recently the "greatest happiness principle" has been brought prominently forward. it is, however, more correct to speak of the latter principle as the standard, and not as the motive of conduct. nevertheless, all the authors whose works i have consulted, with a few exceptions ( . mill recognises ('system of logic,' vol. ii. p. ) in the clearest manner, that actions may be performed through habit without the anticipation of pleasure. mr. h. sidgwick also, in his essay on pleasure and desire ('the contemporary review,' april , p. ), remarks: "to sum up, in contravention of the doctrine that our conscious active impulses are always directed towards the production of agreeable sensations in ourselves, i would maintain that we find everywhere in consciousness extra-regarding impulse, directed towards something that is not pleasure; that in many cases the impulse is so far incompatible with the self-regarding that the two do not easily co-exist in the same moment of consciousness." a dim feeling that our impulses do not by any means always arise from any contemporaneous or anticipated pleasure, has, i cannot but think, been one chief cause of the acceptance of the intuitive theory of morality, and of the rejection of the utilitarian or "greatest happiness" theory. with respect to the latter theory the standard and the motive of conduct have no doubt often been confused, but they are really in some degree blended.), write as if there must be a distinct motive for every action, and that this must be associated with some pleasure or displeasure. but man seems often to act impulsively, that is from instinct or long habit, without any consciousness of pleasure, in the same manner as does probably a bee or ant, when it blindly follows its instincts. under circumstances of extreme peril, as during a fire, when a man endeavours to save a fellow-creature without a moment's hesitation, he can hardly feel pleasure; and still less has he time to reflect on the dissatisfaction which he might subsequently experience if he did not make the attempt. should he afterwards reflect over his own conduct, he would feel that there lies within him an impulsive power widely different from a search after pleasure or happiness; and this seems to be the deeply planted social instinct. in the case of the lower animals it seems much more appropriate to speak of their social instincts, as having been developed for the general good rather than for the general happiness of the species. the term, general good, may be defined as the rearing of the greatest number of individuals in full vigour and health, with all their faculties perfect, under the conditions to which they are subjected. as the social instincts both of man and the lower animals have no doubt been developed by nearly the same steps, it would be advisable, if found practicable, to use the same definition in both cases, and to take as the standard of morality, the general good or welfare of the community, rather than the general happiness; but this definition would perhaps require some limitation on account of political ethics. when a man risks his life to save that of a fellow-creature, it seems also more correct to say that he acts for the general good, rather than for the general happiness of mankind. no doubt the welfare and the happiness of the individual usually coincide; and a contented, happy tribe will flourish better than one that is discontented and unhappy. we have seen that even at an early period in the history of man, the expressed wishes of the community will have naturally influenced to a large extent the conduct of each member; and as all wish for happiness, the "greatest happiness principle" will have become a most important secondary guide and object; the social instinct, however, together with sympathy (which leads to our regarding the approbation and disapprobation of others), having served as the primary impulse and guide. thus the reproach is removed of laying the foundation of the noblest part of our nature in the base principle of selfishness; unless, indeed, the satisfaction which every animal feels, when it follows its proper instincts, and the dissatisfaction felt when prevented, be called selfish. the wishes and opinions of the members of the same community, expressed at first orally, but later by writing also, either form the sole guides of our conduct, or greatly reinforce the social instincts; such opinions, however, have sometimes a tendency directly opposed to these instincts. this latter fact is well exemplified by the law of honour, that is, the law of the opinion of our equals, and not of all our countrymen. the breach of this law, even when the breach is known to be strictly accordant with true morality, has caused many a man more agony than a real crime. we recognise the same influence in the burning sense of shame which most of us have felt, even after the interval of years, when calling to mind some accidental breach of a trifling, though fixed, rule of etiquette. the judgment of the community will generally be guided by some rude experience of what is best in the long run for all the members; but this judgment will not rarely err from ignorance and weak powers of reasoning. hence the strangest customs and superstitions, in complete opposition to the true welfare and happiness of mankind, have become all-powerful throughout the world. we see this in the horror felt by a hindoo who breaks his caste, and in many other such cases. it would be difficult to distinguish between the remorse felt by a hindoo who has yielded to the temptation of eating unclean food, from that felt after committing a theft; but the former would probably be the more severe. how so many absurd rules of conduct, as well as so many absurd religious beliefs, have originated, we do not know; nor how it is that they have become, in all quarters of the world, so deeply impressed on the mind of men; but it is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, whilst the brain is impressible, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason. neither can we say why certain admirable virtues, such as the love of truth, are much more highly appreciated by some savage tribes than by others ( . good instances are given by mr. wallace in 'scientific opinion,' sept. , ; and more fully in his 'contributions to the theory of natural selection,' , p. .); nor, again, why similar differences prevail even amongst highly civilised nations. knowing how firmly fixed many strange customs and superstitions have become, we need feel no surprise that the self-regarding virtues, supported as they are by reason, should now appear to us so natural as to be thought innate, although they were not valued by man in his early condition. not withstanding many sources of doubt, man can generally and readily distinguish between the higher and lower moral rules. the higher are founded on the social instincts, and relate to the welfare of others. they are supported by the approbation of our fellow-men and by reason. the lower rules, though some of them when implying self-sacrifice hardly deserve to be called lower, relate chiefly to self, and arise from public opinion, matured by experience and cultivation; for they are not practised by rude tribes. as man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. this point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. if, indeed, such men are separated from him by great differences in appearance or habits, experience unfortunately shews us how long it is, before we look at them as our fellow-creatures. sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is, humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions. it is apparently unfelt by savages, except towards their pets. how little the old romans knew of it is shewn by their abhorrent gladiatorial exhibitions. the very idea of humanity, as far as i could observe, was new to most of the gauchos of the pampas. this virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. as soon as this virtue is honoured and practised by some few men, it spreads through instruction and example to the young, and eventually becomes incorporated in public opinion. the highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognise that we ought to control our thoughts, and "not even in inmost thought to think again the sins that made the past so pleasant to us." ( . tennyson, idylls of the king, p. .) whatever makes any bad action familiar to the mind, renders its performance by so much the easier. as marcus aurelius long ago said, "such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts." ( . 'the thoughts of the emperor m. aurelius antoninus,' english translation, nd edit., . p. . marcus aurelius was born a.d. .) our great philosopher, herbert spencer, has recently explained his views on the moral sense. he says ( . letter to mr. mill in bain's 'mental and moral science,' , p. .), "i believe that the experiences of utility organised and consolidated through all past generations of the human race, have been producing corresponding modifications, which, by continued transmission and accumulation, have become in us certain faculties of moral intuition--certain emotions responding to right and wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility." there is not the least inherent improbability, as it seems to me, in virtuous tendencies being more or less strongly inherited; for, not to mention the various dispositions and habits transmitted by many of our domestic animals to their offspring, i have heard of authentic cases in which a desire to steal and a tendency to lie appeared to run in families of the upper ranks; and as stealing is a rare crime in the wealthy classes, we can hardly account by accidental coincidence for the tendency occurring in two or three members of the same family. if bad tendencies are transmitted, it is probable that good ones are likewise transmitted. that the state of the body by affecting the brain, has great influence on the moral tendencies is known to most of those who have suffered from chronic derangements of the digestion or liver. the same fact is likewise shewn by the "perversion or destruction of the moral sense being often one of the earliest symptoms of mental derangement" ( . maudsley, 'body and mind,' , p. .); and insanity is notoriously often inherited. except through the principle of the transmission of moral tendencies, we cannot understand the differences believed to exist in this respect between the various races of mankind. even the partial transmission of virtuous tendencies would be an immense assistance to the primary impulse derived directly and indirectly from the social instincts. admitting for a moment that virtuous tendencies are inherited, it appears probable, at least in such cases as chastity, temperance, humanity to animals, etc., that they become first impressed on the mental organization through habit, instruction and example, continued during several generations in the same family, and in a quite subordinate degree, or not at all, by the individuals possessing such virtues having succeeded best in the struggle for life. my chief source of doubt with respect to any such inheritance, is that senseless customs, superstitions, and tastes, such as the horror of a hindoo for unclean food, ought on the same principle to be transmitted. i have not met with any evidence in support of the transmission of superstitious customs or senseless habits, although in itself it is perhaps not less probable than that animals should acquire inherited tastes for certain kinds of food or fear of certain foes. finally the social instincts, which no doubt were acquired by man as by the lower animals for the good of the community, will from the first have given to him some wish to aid his fellows, some feeling of sympathy, and have compelled him to regard their approbation and disapprobation. such impulses will have served him at a very early period as a rude rule of right and wrong. but as man gradually advanced in intellectual power, and was enabled to trace the more remote consequences of his actions; as he acquired sufficient knowledge to reject baneful customs and superstitions; as he regarded more and more, not only the welfare, but the happiness of his fellow-men; as from habit, following on beneficial experience, instruction and example, his sympathies became more tender and widely diffused, extending to men of all races, to the imbecile, maimed, and other useless members of society, and finally to the lower animals,--so would the standard of his morality rise higher and higher. and it is admitted by moralists of the derivative school and by some intuitionists, that the standard of morality has risen since an early period in the history of man. ( . a writer in the 'north british review' (july , p. ), well capable of forming a sound judgment, expresses himself strongly in favour of this conclusion. mr. lecky ('history of morals,' vol. i. p. ) seems to a certain extent to coincide therein.) as a struggle may sometimes be seen going on between the various instincts of the lower animals, it is not surprising that there should be a struggle in man between his social instincts, with their derived virtues, and his lower, though momentarily stronger impulses or desires. this, as mr. galton ( . see his remarkable work on 'hereditary genius,' , p. . the duke of argyll ('primeval man,' , p. ) has some good remarks on the contest in man's nature between right and wrong.) has remarked, is all the less surprising, as man has emerged from a state of barbarism within a comparatively recent period. after having yielded to some temptation we feel a sense of dissatisfaction, shame, repentance, or remorse, analogous to the feelings caused by other powerful instincts or desires, when left unsatisfied or baulked. we compare the weakened impression of a past temptation with the ever present social instincts, or with habits, gained in early youth and strengthened during our whole lives, until they have become almost as strong as instincts. if with the temptation still before us we do not yield, it is because either the social instinct or some custom is at the moment predominant, or because we have learnt that it will appear to us hereafter the stronger, when compared with the weakened impression of the temptation, and we realise that its violation would cause us suffering. looking to future generations, there is no cause to fear that the social instincts will grow weaker, and we may expect that virtuous habits will grow stronger, becoming perhaps fixed by inheritance. in this case the struggle between our higher and lower impulses will be less severe, and virtue will be triumphant. summary of the last two chapters. there can be no doubt that the difference between the mind of the lowest man and that of the highest animal is immense. an anthropomorphous ape, if he could take a dispassionate view of his own case, would admit that though he could form an artful plan to plunder a garden--though he could use stones for fighting or for breaking open nuts, yet that the thought of fashioning a stone into a tool was quite beyond his scope. still less, as he would admit, could he follow out a train of metaphysical reasoning, or solve a mathematical problem, or reflect on god, or admire a grand natural scene. some apes, however, would probably declare that they could and did admire the beauty of the coloured skin and fur of their partners in marriage. they would admit, that though they could make other apes understand by cries some of their perceptions and simpler wants, the notion of expressing definite ideas by definite sounds had never crossed their minds. they might insist that they were ready to aid their fellow-apes of the same troop in many ways, to risk their lives for them, and to take charge of their orphans; but they would be forced to acknowledge that disinterested love for all living creatures, the most noble attribute of man, was quite beyond their comprehension. nevertheless the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind. we have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation, reason, etc., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals. they are also capable of some inherited improvement, as we see in the domestic dog compared with the wolf or jackal. if it could be proved that certain high mental powers, such as the formation of general concepts, self-consciousness, etc., were absolutely peculiar to man, which seems extremely doubtful, it is not improbable that these qualities are merely the incidental results of other highly-advanced intellectual faculties; and these again mainly the result of the continued use of a perfect language. at what age does the new-born infant possess the power of abstraction, or become self-conscious, and reflect on its own existence? we cannot answer; nor can we answer in regard to the ascending organic scale. the half-art, half-instinct of language still bears the stamp of its gradual evolution. the ennobling belief in god is not universal with man; and the belief in spiritual agencies naturally follows from other mental powers. the moral sense perhaps affords the best and highest distinction between man and the lower animals; but i need say nothing on this head, as i have so lately endeavoured to shew that the social instincts,--the prime principle of man's moral constitution ( . 'the thoughts of marcus aurelius,' etc., p. .)--with the aid of active intellectual powers and the effects of habit, naturally lead to the golden rule, "as ye would that men should do to you, do ye to them likewise;" and this lies at the foundation of morality. in the next chapter i shall make some few remarks on the probable steps and means by which the several mental and moral faculties of man have been gradually evolved. that such evolution is at least possible, ought not to be denied, for we daily see these faculties developing in every infant; and we may trace a perfect gradation from the mind of an utter idiot, lower than that of an animal low in the scale, to the mind of a newton. chapter v. on the development of the intellectual and moral faculties during primeval and civilised times. advancement of the intellectual powers through natural selection--importance of imitation--social and moral faculties--their development within the limits of the same tribe--natural selection as affecting civilised nations--evidence that civilised nations were once barbarous. the subjects to be discussed in this chapter are of the highest interest, but are treated by me in an imperfect and fragmentary manner. mr. wallace, in an admirable paper before referred to ( . anthropological review, may , p. clviii.), argues that man, after he had partially acquired those intellectual and moral faculties which distinguish him from the lower animals, would have been but little liable to bodily modifications through natural selection or any other means. for man is enabled through his mental faculties "to keep with an unchanged body in harmony with the changing universe." he has great power of adapting his habits to new conditions of life. he invents weapons, tools, and various stratagems to procure food and to defend himself. when he migrates into a colder climate he uses clothes, builds sheds, and makes fires; and by the aid of fire cooks food otherwise indigestible. he aids his fellow-men in many ways, and anticipates future events. even at a remote period he practised some division of labour. the lower animals, on the other hand, must have their bodily structure modified in order to survive under greatly changed conditions. they must be rendered stronger, or acquire more effective teeth or claws, for defence against new enemies; or they must be reduced in size, so as to escape detection and danger. when they migrate into a colder climate, they must become clothed with thicker fur, or have their constitutions altered. if they fail to be thus modified, they will cease to exist. the case, however, is widely different, as mr. wallace has with justice insisted, in relation to the intellectual and moral faculties of man. these faculties are variable; and we have every reason to believe that the variations tend to be inherited. therefore, if they were formerly of high importance to primeval man and to his ape-like progenitors, they would have been perfected or advanced through natural selection. of the high importance of the intellectual faculties there can be no doubt, for man mainly owes to them his predominant position in the world. we can see, that in the rudest state of society, the individuals who were the most sagacious, who invented and used the best weapons or traps, and who were best able to defend themselves, would rear the greatest number of offspring. the tribes, which included the largest number of men thus endowed, would increase in number and supplant other tribes. numbers depend primarily on the means of subsistence, and this depends partly on the physical nature of the country, but in a much higher degree on the arts which are there practised. as a tribe increases and is victorious, it is often still further increased by the absorption of other tribes. ( . after a time the members or tribes which are absorbed into another tribe assume, as sir henry maine remarks ('ancient law,' , p. ), that they are the co-descendants of the same ancestors.) the stature and strength of the men of a tribe are likewise of some importance for its success, and these depend in part on the nature and amount of the food which can be obtained. in europe the men of the bronze period were supplanted by a race more powerful, and, judging from their sword-handles, with larger hands ( . morlot, 'soc. vaud. sc. nat.' , p. .); but their success was probably still more due to their superiority in the arts. all that we know about savages, or may infer from their traditions and from old monuments, the history of which is quite forgotten by the present inhabitants, shew that from the remotest times successful tribes have supplanted other tribes. relics of extinct or forgotten tribes have been discovered throughout the civilised regions of the earth, on the wild plains of america, and on the isolated islands in the pacific ocean. at the present day civilised nations are everywhere supplanting barbarous nations, excepting where the climate opposes a deadly barrier; and they succeed mainly, though not exclusively, through their arts, which are the products of the intellect. it is, therefore, highly probable that with mankind the intellectual faculties have been mainly and gradually perfected through natural selection; and this conclusion is sufficient for our purpose. undoubtedly it would be interesting to trace the development of each separate faculty from the state in which it exists in the lower animals to that in which it exists in man; but neither my ability nor knowledge permits the attempt. it deserves notice that, as soon as the progenitors of man became social (and this probably occurred at a very early period), the principle of imitation, and reason, and experience would have increased, and much modified the intellectual powers in a way, of which we see only traces in the lower animals. apes are much given to imitation, as are the lowest savages; and the simple fact previously referred to, that after a time no animal can be caught in the same place by the same sort of trap, shews that animals learn by experience, and imitate the caution of others. now, if some one man in a tribe, more sagacious than the others, invented a new snare or weapon, or other means of attack or defence, the plainest self-interest, without the assistance of much reasoning power, would prompt the other members to imitate him; and all would thus profit. the habitual practice of each new art must likewise in some slight degree strengthen the intellect. if the new invention were an important one, the tribe would increase in number, spread, and supplant other tribes. in a tribe thus rendered more numerous there would always be a rather greater chance of the birth of other superior and inventive members. if such men left children to inherit their mental superiority, the chance of the birth of still more ingenious members would be somewhat better, and in a very small tribe decidedly better. even if they left no children, the tribe would still include their blood-relations; and it has been ascertained by agriculturists ( . i have given instances in my variation of animals under domestication, vol. ii. p. .) that by preserving and breeding from the family of an animal, which when slaughtered was found to be valuable, the desired character has been obtained. turning now to the social and moral faculties. in order that primeval men, or the ape-like progenitors of man, should become social, they must have acquired the same instinctive feelings, which impel other animals to live in a body; and they no doubt exhibited the same general disposition. they would have felt uneasy when separated from their comrades, for whom they would have felt some degree of love; they would have warned each other of danger, and have given mutual aid in attack or defence. all this implies some degree of sympathy, fidelity, and courage. such social qualities, the paramount importance of which to the lower animals is disputed by no one, were no doubt acquired by the progenitors of man in a similar manner, namely, through natural selection, aided by inherited habit. when two tribes of primeval man, living in the same country, came into competition, if (other circumstances being equal) the one tribe included a great number of courageous, sympathetic and faithful members, who were always ready to warn each other of danger, to aid and defend each other, this tribe would succeed better and conquer the other. let it be borne in mind how all-important in the never-ceasing wars of savages, fidelity and courage must be. the advantage which disciplined soldiers have over undisciplined hordes follows chiefly from the confidence which each man feels in his comrades. obedience, as mr. bagehot has well shewn ( . see a remarkable series of articles on 'physics and politics,' in the 'fortnightly review,' nov. ; april , ; july , , since separately published.), is of the highest value, for any form of government is better than none. selfish and contentious people will not cohere, and without coherence nothing can be effected. a tribe rich in the above qualities would spread and be victorious over other tribes: but in the course of time it would, judging from all past history, be in its turn overcome by some other tribe still more highly endowed. thus the social and moral qualities would tend slowly to advance and be diffused throughout the world. but it may be asked, how within the limits of the same tribe did a large number of members first become endowed with these social and moral qualities, and how was the standard of excellence raised? it is extremely doubtful whether the offspring of the more sympathetic and benevolent parents, or of those who were the most faithful to their comrades, would be reared in greater numbers than the children of selfish and treacherous parents belonging to the same tribe. he who was ready to sacrifice his life, as many a savage has been, rather than betray his comrades, would often leave no offspring to inherit his noble nature. the bravest men, who were always willing to come to the front in war, and who freely risked their lives for others, would on an average perish in larger numbers than other men. therefore, it hardly seems probable, that the number of men gifted with such virtues, or that the standard of their excellence, could be increased through natural selection, that is, by the survival of the fittest; for we are not here speaking of one tribe being victorious over another. although the circumstances, leading to an increase in the number of those thus endowed within the same tribe, are too complex to be clearly followed out, we can trace some of the probable steps. in the first place, as the reasoning powers and foresight of the members became improved, each man would soon learn that if he aided his fellow-men, he would commonly receive aid in return. from this low motive he might acquire the habit of aiding his fellows; and the habit of performing benevolent actions certainly strengthens the feeling of sympathy which gives the first impulse to benevolent actions. habits, moreover, followed during many generations probably tend to be inherited. but another and much more powerful stimulus to the development of the social virtues, is afforded by the praise and the blame of our fellow-men. to the instinct of sympathy, as we have already seen, it is primarily due, that we habitually bestow both praise and blame on others, whilst we love the former and dread the latter when applied to ourselves; and this instinct no doubt was originally acquired, like all the other social instincts, through natural selection. at how early a period the progenitors of man in the course of their development, became capable of feeling and being impelled by, the praise or blame of their fellow-creatures, we cannot of course say. but it appears that even dogs appreciate encouragement, praise, and blame. the rudest savages feel the sentiment of glory, as they clearly shew by preserving the trophies of their prowess, by their habit of excessive boasting, and even by the extreme care which they take of their personal appearance and decorations; for unless they regarded the opinion of their comrades, such habits would be senseless. they certainly feel shame at the breach of some of their lesser rules, and apparently remorse, as shewn by the case of the australian who grew thin and could not rest from having delayed to murder some other woman, so as to propitiate his dead wife's spirit. though i have not met with any other recorded case, it is scarcely credible that a savage, who will sacrifice his life rather than betray his tribe, or one who will deliver himself up as a prisoner rather than break his parole ( . mr. wallace gives cases in his 'contributions to the theory of natural selection,' , p. .), would not feel remorse in his inmost soul, if he had failed in a duty, which he held sacred. we may therefore conclude that primeval man, at a very remote period, was influenced by the praise and blame of his fellows. it is obvious, that the members of the same tribe would approve of conduct which appeared to them to be for the general good, and would reprobate that which appeared evil. to do good unto others--to do unto others as ye would they should do unto you--is the foundation-stone of morality. it is, therefore, hardly possible to exaggerate the importance during rude times of the love of praise and the dread of blame. a man who was not impelled by any deep, instinctive feeling, to sacrifice his life for the good of others, yet was roused to such actions by a sense of glory, would by his example excite the same wish for glory in other men, and would strengthen by exercise the noble feeling of admiration. he might thus do far more good to his tribe than by begetting offspring with a tendency to inherit his own high character. with increased experience and reason, man perceives the more remote consequences of his actions, and the self-regarding virtues, such as temperance, chastity, etc., which during early times are, as we have before seen, utterly disregarded, come to be highly esteemed or even held sacred. i need not, however, repeat what i have said on this head in the fourth chapter. ultimately our moral sense or conscience becomes a highly complex sentiment--originating in the social instincts, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in later times by deep religious feelings, and confirmed by instruction and habit. it must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men and an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another. a tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection. at all times throughout the world tribes have supplanted other tribes; and as morality is one important element in their success, the standard of morality and the number of well-endowed men will thus everywhere tend to rise and increase. it is, however, very difficult to form any judgment why one particular tribe and not another has been successful and has risen in the scale of civilisation. many savages are in the same condition as when first discovered several centuries ago. as mr. bagehot has remarked, we are apt to look at progress as normal in human society; but history refutes this. the ancients did not even entertain the idea, nor do the oriental nations at the present day. according to another high authority, sir henry maine ( . 'ancient law,' , p. . for mr. bagehot's remarks, 'fortnightly review,' april , , p. .), "the greatest part of mankind has never shewn a particle of desire that its civil institutions should be improved." progress seems to depend on many concurrent favourable conditions, far too complex to be followed out. but it has often been remarked, that a cool climate, from leading to industry and to the various arts, has been highly favourable thereto. the esquimaux, pressed by hard necessity, have succeeded in many ingenious inventions, but their climate has been too severe for continued progress. nomadic habits, whether over wide plains, or through the dense forests of the tropics, or along the shores of the sea, have in every case been highly detrimental. whilst observing the barbarous inhabitants of tierra del fuego, it struck me that the possession of some property, a fixed abode, and the union of many families under a chief, were the indispensable requisites for civilisation. such habits almost necessitate the cultivation of the ground; and the first steps in cultivation would probably result, as i have elsewhere shewn ( . 'the variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. i. p. .), from some such accident as the seeds of a fruit-tree falling on a heap of refuse, and producing an unusually fine variety. the problem, however, of the first advance of savages towards civilisation is at present much too difficult to be solved. natural selection as affecting civilised nations. i have hitherto only considered the advancement of man from a semi-human condition to that of the modern savage. but some remarks on the action of natural selection on civilised nations may be worth adding. this subject has been ably discussed by mr. w.r. greg ( . 'fraser's magazine,' sept. , p. . this article seems to have struck many persons, and has given rise to two remarkable essays and a rejoinder in the 'spectator,' oct. rd and th, . it has also been discussed in the 'quarterly journal of science,' , p. , and by mr. lawson tait in the 'dublin quarterly journal of medical science,' feb. , and by mr. e. ray lankester in his 'comparative longevity,' , p. . similar views appeared previously in the 'australasian,' july , . i have borrowed ideas from several of these writers.), and previously by mr. wallace and mr. galton. ( . for mr. wallace, see 'anthropological review,' as before cited. mr. galton in 'macmillan's magazine,' aug. , p. ; also his great work, 'hereditary genius,' .) most of my remarks are taken from these three authors. with savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. we civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. there is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. no one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. it is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. the aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. the surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. we must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected. in every country in which a large standing army is kept up, the finest young men are taken by the conscription or are enlisted. they are thus exposed to early death during war, are often tempted into vice, and are prevented from marrying during the prime of life. on the other hand the shorter and feebler men, with poor constitutions, are left at home, and consequently have a much better chance of marrying and propagating their kind. ( . prof. h. fick ('einfluss der naturwissenschaft auf das recht,' june ) has some good remarks on this head, and on other such points.) man accumulates property and bequeaths it to his children, so that the children of the rich have an advantage over the poor in the race for success, independently of bodily or mental superiority. on the other hand, the children of parents who are short-lived, and are therefore on an average deficient in health and vigour, come into their property sooner than other children, and will be likely to marry earlier, and leave a larger number of offspring to inherit their inferior constitutions. but the inheritance of property by itself is very far from an evil; for without the accumulation of capital the arts could not progress; and it is chiefly through their power that the civilised races have extended, and are now everywhere extending their range, so as to take the place of the lower races. nor does the moderate accumulation of wealth interfere with the process of selection. when a poor man becomes moderately rich, his children enter trades or professions in which there is struggle enough, so that the able in body and mind succeed best. the presence of a body of well-instructed men, who have not to labour for their daily bread, is important to a degree which cannot be over-estimated; as all high intellectual work is carried on by them, and on such work, material progress of all kinds mainly depends, not to mention other and higher advantages. no doubt wealth when very great tends to convert men into useless drones, but their number is never large; and some degree of elimination here occurs, for we daily see rich men, who happen to be fools or profligate, squandering away their wealth. primogeniture with entailed estates is a more direct evil, though it may formerly have been a great advantage by the creation of a dominant class, and any government is better than none. most eldest sons, though they may be weak in body or mind, marry, whilst the younger sons, however superior in these respects, do not so generally marry. nor can worthless eldest sons with entailed estates squander their wealth. but here, as elsewhere, the relations of civilised life are so complex that some compensatory checks intervene. the men who are rich through primogeniture are able to select generation after generation the more beautiful and charming women; and these must generally be healthy in body and active in mind. the evil consequences, such as they may be, of the continued preservation of the same line of descent, without any selection, are checked by men of rank always wishing to increase their wealth and power; and this they effect by marrying heiresses. but the daughters of parents who have produced single children, are themselves, as mr. galton ( . 'hereditary genius,' , pp. - .) has shewn, apt to be sterile; and thus noble families are continually cut off in the direct line, and their wealth flows into some side channel; but unfortunately this channel is not determined by superiority of any kind. although civilisation thus checks in many ways the action of natural selection, it apparently favours the better development of the body, by means of good food and the freedom from occasional hardships. this may be inferred from civilised men having been found, wherever compared, to be physically stronger than savages. ( . quatrefages, 'revue des cours scientifiques,' - , p. .) they appear also to have equal powers of endurance, as has been proved in many adventurous expeditions. even the great luxury of the rich can be but little detrimental; for the expectation of life of our aristocracy, at all ages and of both sexes, is very little inferior to that of healthy english lives in the lower classes. ( . see the fifth and sixth columns, compiled from good authorities, in the table given in mr. e.r. lankester's 'comparative longevity,' , p. .) we will now look to the intellectual faculties. if in each grade of society the members were divided into two equal bodies, the one including the intellectually superior and the other the inferior, there can be little doubt that the former would succeed best in all occupations, and rear a greater number of children. even in the lowest walks of life, skill and ability must be of some advantage; though in many occupations, owing to the great division of labour, a very small one. hence in civilised nations there will be some tendency to an increase both in the number and in the standard of the intellectually able. but i do not wish to assert that this tendency may not be more than counterbalanced in other ways, as by the multiplication of the reckless and improvident; but even to such as these, ability must be some advantage. it has often been objected to views like the foregoing, that the most eminent men who have ever lived have left no offspring to inherit their great intellect. mr. galton says, "i regret i am unable to solve the simple question whether, and how far, men and women who are prodigies of genius are infertile. i have, however, shewn that men of eminence are by no means so." ( . 'hereditary genius,' , p. .) great lawgivers, the founders of beneficent religions, great philosophers and discoverers in science, aid the progress of mankind in a far higher degree by their works than by leaving a numerous progeny. in the case of corporeal structures, it is the selection of the slightly better-endowed and the elimination of the slightly less well-endowed individuals, and not the preservation of strongly-marked and rare anomalies, that leads to the advancement of a species. ( . 'origin of species' (fifth edition, ), p. .) so it will be with the intellectual faculties, since the somewhat abler men in each grade of society succeed rather better than the less able, and consequently increase in number, if not otherwise prevented. when in any nation the standard of intellect and the number of intellectual men have increased, we may expect from the law of the deviation from an average, that prodigies of genius will, as shewn by mr. galton, appear somewhat more frequently than before. in regard to the moral qualities, some elimination of the worst dispositions is always in progress even in the most civilised nations. malefactors are executed, or imprisoned for long periods, so that they cannot freely transmit their bad qualities. melancholic and insane persons are confined, or commit suicide. violent and quarrelsome men often come to a bloody end. the restless who will not follow any steady occupation--and this relic of barbarism is a great check to civilisation ( . 'hereditary genius,' , p. .)--emigrate to newly-settled countries; where they prove useful pioneers. intemperance is so highly destructive, that the expectation of life of the intemperate, at the age of thirty for instance, is only . years; whilst for the rural labourers of england at the same age it is . years. ( . e. ray lankester, 'comparative longevity,' , p. . the table of the intemperate is from neison's 'vital statistics.' in regard to profligacy, see dr. farr, 'influence of marriage on mortality,' 'nat. assoc. for the promotion of social science,' .) profligate women bear few children, and profligate men rarely marry; both suffer from disease. in the breeding of domestic animals, the elimination of those individuals, though few in number, which are in any marked manner inferior, is by no means an unimportant element towards success. this especially holds good with injurious characters which tend to reappear through reversion, such as blackness in sheep; and with mankind some of the worst dispositions, which occasionally without any assignable cause make their appearance in families, may perhaps be reversions to a savage state, from which we are not removed by very many generations. this view seems indeed recognised in the common expression that such men are the black sheep of the family. with civilised nations, as far as an advanced standard of morality, and an increased number of fairly good men are concerned, natural selection apparently effects but little; though the fundamental social instincts were originally thus gained. but i have already said enough, whilst treating of the lower races, on the causes which lead to the advance of morality, namely, the approbation of our fellow-men--the strengthening of our sympathies by habit--example and imitation--reason--experience, and even self-interest--instruction during youth, and religious feelings. a most important obstacle in civilised countries to an increase in the number of men of a superior class has been strongly insisted on by mr. greg and mr. galton ( . 'fraser's magazine,' sept. , p. . 'macmillan's magazine,' aug. , p. . the rev. f.w. farrar ('fraser's magazine,' aug. , p. ) takes a different view.), namely, the fact that the very poor and reckless, who are often degraded by vice, almost invariably marry early, whilst the careful and frugal, who are generally otherwise virtuous, marry late in life, so that they may be able to support themselves and their children in comfort. those who marry early produce within a given period not only a greater number of generations, but, as shewn by dr. duncan ( . 'on the laws of the fertility of women,' in 'transactions of the royal society,' edinburgh, vol. xxiv. p. ; now published separately under the title of 'fecundity, fertility, and sterility,' . see, also, mr. galton, 'hereditary genius,' pp. - , for observations to the above effect.), they produce many more children. the children, moreover, that are borne by mothers during the prime of life are heavier and larger, and therefore probably more vigorous, than those born at other periods. thus the reckless, degraded, and often vicious members of society, tend to increase at a quicker rate than the provident and generally virtuous members. or as mr. greg puts the case: "the careless, squalid, unaspiring irishman multiplies like rabbits: the frugal, foreseeing, self-respecting, ambitious scot, stern in his morality, spiritual in his faith, sagacious and disciplined in his intelligence, passes his best years in struggle and in celibacy, marries late, and leaves few behind him. given a land originally peopled by a thousand saxons and a thousand celts--and in a dozen generations five-sixths of the population would be celts, but five-sixths of the property, of the power, of the intellect, would belong to the one-sixth of saxons that remained. in the eternal 'struggle for existence,' it would be the inferior and less favoured race that had prevailed--and prevailed by virtue not of its good qualities but of its faults." there are, however, some checks to this downward tendency. we have seen that the intemperate suffer from a high rate of mortality, and the extremely profligate leave few offspring. the poorest classes crowd into towns, and it has been proved by dr. stark from the statistics of ten years in scotland ( . 'tenth annual report of births, deaths, etc., in scotland,' , p. xxix.), that at all ages the death-rate is higher in towns than in rural districts, "and during the first five years of life the town death-rate is almost exactly double that of the rural districts." as these returns include both the rich and the poor, no doubt more than twice the number of births would be requisite to keep up the number of the very poor inhabitants in the towns, relatively to those in the country. with women, marriage at too early an age is highly injurious; for it has been found in france that, "twice as many wives under twenty die in the year, as died out of the same number of the unmarried." the mortality, also, of husbands under twenty is "excessively high" ( . these quotations are taken from our highest authority on such questions, namely, dr. farr, in his paper 'on the influence of marriage on the mortality of the french people,' read before the nat. assoc. for the promotion of social science, .), but what the cause of this may be, seems doubtful. lastly, if the men who prudently delay marrying until they can bring up their families in comfort, were to select, as they often do, women in the prime of life, the rate of increase in the better class would be only slightly lessened. it was established from an enormous body of statistics, taken during , that the unmarried men throughout france, between the ages of twenty and eighty, die in a much larger proportion than the married: for instance, out of every unmarried men, between the ages of twenty and thirty, . annually died, whilst of the married, only . died. ( . dr. farr, ibid. the quotations given below are extracted from the same striking paper.) a similar law was proved to hold good, during the years and , with the entire population above the age of twenty in scotland: for instance, out of every unmarried men, between the ages of twenty and thirty, . annually died, whilst of the married only . died, that is less than half. ( . i have taken the mean of the quinquennial means, given in 'the tenth annual report of births, deaths, etc., in scotland,' . the quotation from dr. stark is copied from an article in the 'daily news,' oct. , , which dr. farr considers very carefully written.) dr. stark remarks on this, "bachelorhood is more destructive to life than the most unwholesome trades, or than residence in an unwholesome house or district where there has never been the most distant attempt at sanitary improvement." he considers that the lessened mortality is the direct result of "marriage, and the more regular domestic habits which attend that state." he admits, however, that the intemperate, profligate, and criminal classes, whose duration of life is low, do not commonly marry; and it must likewise be admitted that men with a weak constitution, ill health, or any great infirmity in body or mind, will often not wish to marry, or will be rejected. dr. stark seems to have come to the conclusion that marriage in itself is a main cause of prolonged life, from finding that aged married men still have a considerable advantage in this respect over the unmarried of the same advanced age; but every one must have known instances of men, who with weak health during youth did not marry, and yet have survived to old age, though remaining weak, and therefore always with a lessened chance of life or of marrying. there is another remarkable circumstance which seems to support dr. stark's conclusion, namely, that widows and widowers in france suffer in comparison with the married a very heavy rate of mortality; but dr. farr attributes this to the poverty and evil habits consequent on the disruption of the family, and to grief. on the whole we may conclude with dr. farr that the lesser mortality of married than of unmarried men, which seems to be a general law, "is mainly due to the constant elimination of imperfect types, and to the skilful selection of the finest individuals out of each successive generation;" the selection relating only to the marriage state, and acting on all corporeal, intellectual, and moral qualities. ( . dr. duncan remarks ('fecundity, fertility, etc.' , p. ) on this subject: "at every age the healthy and beautiful go over from the unmarried side to the married, leaving the unmarried columns crowded with the sickly and unfortunate.") we may, therefore, infer that sound and good men who out of prudence remain for a time unmarried, do not suffer a high rate of mortality. if the various checks specified in the two last paragraphs, and perhaps others as yet unknown, do not prevent the reckless, the vicious and otherwise inferior members of society from increasing at a quicker rate than the better class of men, the nation will retrograde, as has too often occurred in the history of the world. we must remember that progress is no invariable rule. it is very difficult to say why one civilised nation rises, becomes more powerful, and spreads more widely, than another; or why the same nation progresses more quickly at one time than at another. we can only say that it depends on an increase in the actual number of the population, on the number of men endowed with high intellectual and moral faculties, as well as on their standard of excellence. corporeal structure appears to have little influence, except so far as vigour of body leads to vigour of mind. it has been urged by several writers that as high intellectual powers are advantageous to a nation, the old greeks, who stood some grades higher in intellect than any race that has ever existed ( . see the ingenious and original argument on this subject by mr. galton, 'hereditary genius,' pp. - .), ought, if the power of natural selection were real, to have risen still higher in the scale, increased in number, and stocked the whole of europe. here we have the tacit assumption, so often made with respect to corporeal structures, that there is some innate tendency towards continued development in mind and body. but development of all kinds depends on many concurrent favourable circumstances. natural selection acts only tentatively. individuals and races may have acquired certain indisputable advantages, and yet have perished from failing in other characters. the greeks may have retrograded from a want of coherence between the many small states, from the small size of their whole country, from the practice of slavery, or from extreme sensuality; for they did not succumb until "they were enervated and corrupt to the very core." ( . mr. greg, 'fraser's magazine,' sept. , p. .) the western nations of europe, who now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors, and stand at the summit of civilisation, owe little or none of their superiority to direct inheritance from the old greeks, though they owe much to the written works of that wonderful people. who can positively say why the spanish nation, so dominant at one time, has been distanced in the race. the awakening of the nations of europe from the dark ages is a still more perplexing problem. at that early period, as mr. galton has remarked, almost all the men of a gentle nature, those given to meditation or culture of the mind, had no refuge except in the bosom of a church which demanded celibacy ( . 'hereditary genius,' , pp. - . the rev. f.w. farrar ('fraser's magazine,' aug. , p. ) advances arguments on the other side. sir c. lyell had already ('principles of geology,' vol. ii. , p. ), in a striking passage called attention to the evil influence of the holy inquisition in having, through selection, lowered the general standard of intelligence in europe.); and this could hardly fail to have had a deteriorating influence on each successive generation. during this same period the holy inquisition selected with extreme care the freest and boldest men in order to burn or imprison them. in spain alone some of the best men--those who doubted and questioned, and without doubting there can be no progress--were eliminated during three centuries at the rate of a thousand a year. the evil which the catholic church has thus effected is incalculable, though no doubt counterbalanced to a certain, perhaps to a large, extent in other ways; nevertheless, europe has progressed at an unparalleled rate. the remarkable success of the english as colonists, compared to other european nations, has been ascribed to their "daring and persistent energy"; a result which is well illustrated by comparing the progress of the canadians of english and french extraction; but who can say how the english gained their energy? there is apparently much truth in the belief that the wonderful progress of the united states, as well as the character of the people, are the results of natural selection; for the more energetic, restless, and courageous men from all parts of europe have emigrated during the last ten or twelve generations to that great country, and have there succeeded best. ( . mr. galton, 'macmillan's magazine,' august , p. . see also, 'nature,' 'on darwinism and national life,' dec. , p. .) looking to the distant future, i do not think that the rev. mr. zincke takes an exaggerated view when he says ( . 'last winter in the united states,' , p. .): "all other series of events--as that which resulted in the culture of mind in greece, and that which resulted in the empire of rome--only appear to have purpose and value when viewed in connection with, or rather as subsidiary to...the great stream of anglo-saxon emigration to the west." obscure as is the problem of the advance of civilisation, we can at least see that a nation which produced during a lengthened period the greatest number of highly intellectual, energetic, brave, patriotic, and benevolent men, would generally prevail over less favoured nations. natural selection follows from the struggle for existence; and this from a rapid rate of increase. it is impossible not to regret bitterly, but whether wisely is another question, the rate at which man tends to increase; for this leads in barbarous tribes to infanticide and many other evils, and in civilised nations to abject poverty, celibacy, and to the late marriages of the prudent. but as man suffers from the same physical evils as the lower animals, he has no right to expect an immunity from the evils consequent on the struggle for existence. had he not been subjected during primeval times to natural selection, assuredly he would never have attained to his present rank. since we see in many parts of the world enormous areas of the most fertile land capable of supporting numerous happy homes, but peopled only by a few wandering savages, it might be argued that the struggle for existence had not been sufficiently severe to force man upwards to his highest standard. judging from all that we know of man and the lower animals, there has always been sufficient variability in their intellectual and moral faculties, for a steady advance through natural selection. no doubt such advance demands many favourable concurrent circumstances; but it may well be doubted whether the most favourable would have sufficed, had not the rate of increase been rapid, and the consequent struggle for existence extremely severe. it even appears from what we see, for instance, in parts of s. america, that a people which may be called civilised, such as the spanish settlers, is liable to become indolent and to retrograde, when the conditions of life are very easy. with highly civilised nations continued progress depends in a subordinate degree on natural selection; for such nations do not supplant and exterminate one another as do savage tribes. nevertheless the more intelligent members within the same community will succeed better in the long run than the inferior, and leave a more numerous progeny, and this is a form of natural selection. the more efficient causes of progress seem to consist of a good education during youth whilst the brain is impressible, and of a high standard of excellence, inculcated by the ablest and best men, embodied in the laws, customs and traditions of the nation, and enforced by public opinion. it should, however, be borne in mind, that the enforcement of public opinion depends on our appreciation of the approbation and disapprobation of others; and this appreciation is founded on our sympathy, which it can hardly be doubted was originally developed through natural selection as one of the most important elements of the social instincts. ( . i am much indebted to mr. john morley for some good criticisms on this subject: see, also broca, 'les selections,' 'revue d'anthropologie,' .) on the evidence that all civilised nations were once barbarous. the present subject has been treated in so full and admirable a manner by sir j. lubbock ( . 'on the origin of civilisation,' 'proceedings of the ethnological society,' nov. , .), mr. tylor, mr. m'lennan, and others, that i need here give only the briefest summary of their results. the arguments recently advanced by the duke of argyll ( . 'primeval man,' .) and formerly by archbishop whately, in favour of the belief that man came into the world as a civilised being, and that all savages have since undergone degradation, seem to me weak in comparison with those advanced on the other side. many nations, no doubt, have fallen away in civilisation, and some may have lapsed into utter barbarism, though on this latter head i have met with no evidence. the fuegians were probably compelled by other conquering hordes to settle in their inhospitable country, and they may have become in consequence somewhat more degraded; but it would be difficult to prove that they have fallen much below the botocudos, who inhabit the finest parts of brazil. the evidence that all civilised nations are the descendants of barbarians, consists, on the one side, of clear traces of their former low condition in still-existing customs, beliefs, language, etc.; and on the other side, of proofs that savages are independently able to raise themselves a few steps in the scale of civilisation, and have actually thus risen. the evidence on the first head is extremely curious, but cannot be here given: i refer to such cases as that of the art of enumeration, which, as mr. tylor clearly shews by reference to the words still used in some places, originated in counting the fingers, first of one hand and then of the other, and lastly of the toes. we have traces of this in our own decimal system, and in the roman numerals, where, after the v, which is supposed to be an abbreviated picture of a human hand, we pass on to vi, etc., when the other hand no doubt was used. so again, "when we speak of three-score and ten, we are counting by the vigesimal system, each score thus ideally made, standing for --for 'one man' as a mexican or carib would put it." ( . 'royal institution of great britain,' march , . also, 'researches into the early history of mankind,' .) according to a large and increasing school of philologists, every language bears the marks of its slow and gradual evolution. so it is with the art of writing, for letters are rudiments of pictorial representations. it is hardly possible to read mr. m'lennan's work ( . 'primitive marriage,' . see, likewise, an excellent article, evidently by the same author, in the 'north british review,' july . also, mr. l.h. morgan, 'a conjectural solution of the origin of the class. system of relationship,' in 'proc. american acad. of sciences,' vol. vii. feb. . prof. schaaffhausen ('anthropolog. review,' oct. , p. ) remarks on "the vestiges of human sacrifices found both in homer and the old testament.") and not admit that almost all civilised nations still retain traces of such rude habits as the forcible capture of wives. what ancient nation, as the same author asks, can be named that was originally monogamous? the primitive idea of justice, as shewn by the law of battle and other customs of which vestiges still remain, was likewise most rude. many existing superstitions are the remnants of former false religious beliefs. the highest form of religion--the grand idea of god hating sin and loving righteousness--was unknown during primeval times. turning to the other kind of evidence: sir j. lubbock has shewn that some savages have recently improved a little in some of their simpler arts. from the extremely curious account which he gives of the weapons, tools, and arts, in use amongst savages in various parts of the world, it cannot be doubted that these have nearly all been independent discoveries, excepting perhaps the art of making fire. ( . sir j. lubbock, 'prehistoric times,' nd edit. , chaps. xv. and xvi. et passim. see also the excellent th chapter in tylor's 'early history of mankind,' nd edit., .) the australian boomerang is a good instance of one such independent discovery. the tahitians when first visited had advanced in many respects beyond the inhabitants of most of the other polynesian islands. there are no just grounds for the belief that the high culture of the native peruvians and mexicans was derived from abroad ( . dr. f. müller has made some good remarks to this effect in the 'reise der novara: anthropolog. theil,' abtheil. iii. , s. .); many native plants were there cultivated, and a few native animals domesticated. we should bear in mind that, judging from the small influence of most missionaries, a wandering crew from some semi-civilised land, if washed to the shores of america, would not have produced any marked effect on the natives, unless they had already become somewhat advanced. looking to a very remote period in the history of the world, we find, to use sir j. lubbock's well-known terms, a paleolithic and neolithic period; and no one will pretend that the art of grinding rough flint tools was a borrowed one. in all parts of europe, as far east as greece, in palestine, india, japan, new zealand, and africa, including egypt, flint tools have been discovered in abundance; and of their use the existing inhabitants retain no tradition. there is also indirect evidence of their former use by the chinese and ancient jews. hence there can hardly be a doubt that the inhabitants of these countries, which include nearly the whole civilised world, were once in a barbarous condition. to believe that man was aboriginally civilised and then suffered utter degradation in so many regions, is to take a pitiably low view of human nature. it is apparently a truer and more cheerful view that progress has been much more general than retrogression; that man has risen, though by slow and interrupted steps, from a lowly condition to the highest standard as yet attained by him in knowledge, morals and religion. chapter vi. on the affinities and genealogy of man. position of man in the animal series--the natural system genealogical--adaptive characters of slight value--various small points of resemblance between man and the quadrumana--rank of man in the natural system--birthplace and antiquity of man--absence of fossil connecting links--lower stages in the genealogy of man, as inferred, firstly from his affinities and secondly from his structure--early androgynous condition of the vertebrata--conclusion. even if it be granted that the difference between man and his nearest allies is as great in corporeal structure as some naturalists maintain, and although we must grant that the difference between them is immense in mental power, yet the facts given in the earlier chapters appear to declare, in the plainest manner, that man is descended from some lower form, notwithstanding that connecting-links have not hitherto been discovered. man is liable to numerous, slight, and diversified variations, which are induced by the same general causes, are governed and transmitted in accordance with the same general laws, as in the lower animals. man has multiplied so rapidly, that he has necessarily been exposed to struggle for existence, and consequently to natural selection. he has given rise to many races, some of which differ so much from each other, that they have often been ranked by naturalists as distinct species. his body is constructed on the same homological plan as that of other mammals. he passes through the same phases of embryological development. he retains many rudimentary and useless structures, which no doubt were once serviceable. characters occasionally make their re-appearance in him, which we have reason to believe were possessed by his early progenitors. if the origin of man had been wholly different from that of all other animals, these various appearances would be mere empty deceptions; but such an admission is incredible. these appearances, on the other hand, are intelligible, at least to a large extent, if man is the co-descendant with other mammals of some unknown and lower form. some naturalists, from being deeply impressed with the mental and spiritual powers of man, have divided the whole organic world into three kingdoms, the human, the animal, and the vegetable, thus giving to man a separate kingdom. ( . isidore geoffroy st.-hilaire gives a detailed account of the position assigned to man by various naturalists in their classifications: 'hist. nat. gen.' tom. ii. , pp. - .) spiritual powers cannot be compared or classed by the naturalist: but he may endeavour to shew, as i have done, that the mental faculties of man and the lower animals do not differ in kind, although immensely in degree. a difference in degree, however great, does not justify us in placing man in a distinct kingdom, as will perhaps be best illustrated by comparing the mental powers of two insects, namely, a coccus or scale-insect and an ant, which undoubtedly belong to the same class. the difference is here greater than, though of a somewhat different kind from, that between man and the highest mammal. the female coccus, whilst young, attaches itself by its proboscis to a plant; sucks the sap, but never moves again; is fertilised and lays eggs; and this is its whole history. on the other hand, to describe the habits and mental powers of worker-ants, would require, as pierre huber has shewn, a large volume; i may, however, briefly specify a few points. ants certainly communicate information to each other, and several unite for the same work, or for games of play. they recognise their fellow-ants after months of absence, and feel sympathy for each other. they build great edifices, keep them clean, close the doors in the evening, and post sentries. they make roads as well as tunnels under rivers, and temporary bridges over them, by clinging together. they collect food for the community, and when an object, too large for entrance, is brought to the nest, they enlarge the door, and afterwards build it up again. they store up seeds, of which they prevent the germination, and which, if damp, are brought up to the surface to dry. they keep aphides and other insects as milch-cows. they go out to battle in regular bands, and freely sacrifice their lives for the common weal. they emigrate according to a preconcerted plan. they capture slaves. they move the eggs of their aphides, as well as their own eggs and cocoons, into warm parts of the nest, in order that they may be quickly hatched; and endless similar facts could be given. ( . some of the most interesting facts ever published on the habits of ants are given by mr. belt, in his 'naturalist in nicaragua,' . see also mr. moggridge's admirable work, 'harvesting ants,' etc., , also 'l'instinct chez les insectes,' by m. george pouchet, 'revue des deux mondes,' feb. , p. .) on the whole, the difference in mental power between an ant and a coccus is immense; yet no one has ever dreamed of placing these insects in distinct classes, much less in distinct kingdoms. no doubt the difference is bridged over by other insects; and this is not the case with man and the higher apes. but we have every reason to believe that the breaks in the series are simply the results of many forms having become extinct. professor owen, relying chiefly on the structure of the brain, has divided the mammalian series into four sub-classes. one of these he devotes to man; in another he places both the marsupials and the monotremata; so that he makes man as distinct from all other mammals as are these two latter groups conjoined. this view has not been accepted, as far as i am aware, by any naturalist capable of forming an independent judgment, and therefore need not here be further considered. we can understand why a classification founded on any single character or organ--even an organ so wonderfully complex and important as the brain--or on the high development of the mental faculties, is almost sure to prove unsatisfactory. this principle has indeed been tried with hymenopterous insects; but when thus classed by their habits or instincts, the arrangement proved thoroughly artificial. ( . westwood, 'modern classification of insects,' vol. ii. , p. .) classifications may, of course, be based on any character whatever, as on size, colour, or the element inhabited; but naturalists have long felt a profound conviction that there is a natural system. this system, it is now generally admitted, must be, as far as possible, genealogical in arrangement,--that is, the co-descendants of the same form must be kept together in one group, apart from the co-descendants of any other form; but if the parent-forms are related, so will be their descendants, and the two groups together will form a larger group. the amount of difference between the several groups--that is the amount of modification which each has undergone--is expressed by such terms as genera, families, orders, and classes. as we have no record of the lines of descent, the pedigree can be discovered only by observing the degrees of resemblance between the beings which are to be classed. for this object numerous points of resemblance are of much more importance than the amount of similarity or dissimilarity in a few points. if two languages were found to resemble each other in a multitude of words and points of construction, they would be universally recognised as having sprung from a common source, notwithstanding that they differed greatly in some few words or points of construction. but with organic beings the points of resemblance must not consist of adaptations to similar habits of life: two animals may, for instance, have had their whole frames modified for living in the water, and yet they will not be brought any nearer to each other in the natural system. hence we can see how it is that resemblances in several unimportant structures, in useless and rudimentary organs, or not now functionally active, or in an embryological condition, are by far the most serviceable for classification; for they can hardly be due to adaptations within a late period; and thus they reveal the old lines of descent or of true affinity. we can further see why a great amount of modification in some one character ought not to lead us to separate widely any two organisms. a part which already differs much from the same part in other allied forms has already, according to the theory of evolution, varied much; consequently it would (as long as the organism remained exposed to the same exciting conditions) be liable to further variations of the same kind; and these, if beneficial, would be preserved, and thus be continually augmented. in many cases the continued development of a part, for instance, of the beak of a bird, or of the teeth of a mammal, would not aid the species in gaining its food, or for any other object; but with man we can see no definite limit to the continued development of the brain and mental faculties, as far as advantage is concerned. therefore in determining the position of man in the natural or genealogical system, the extreme development of his brain ought not to outweigh a multitude of resemblances in other less important or quite unimportant points. the greater number of naturalists who have taken into consideration the whole structure of man, including his mental faculties, have followed blumenbach and cuvier, and have placed man in a separate order, under the title of the bimana, and therefore on an equality with the orders of the quadrumana, carnivora, etc. recently many of our best naturalists have recurred to the view first propounded by linnaeus, so remarkable for his sagacity, and have placed man in the same order with the quadrumana, under the title of the primates. the justice of this conclusion will be admitted: for in the first place, we must bear in mind the comparative insignificance for classification of the great development of the brain in man, and that the strongly-marked differences between the skulls of man and the quadrumana (lately insisted upon by bischoff, aeby, and others) apparently follow from their differently developed brains. in the second place, we must remember that nearly all the other and more important differences between man and the quadrumana are manifestly adaptive in their nature, and relate chiefly to the erect position of man; such as the structure of his hand, foot, and pelvis, the curvature of his spine, and the position of his head. the family of seals offers a good illustration of the small importance of adaptive characters for classification. these animals differ from all other carnivora in the form of their bodies and in the structure of their limbs, far more than does man from the higher apes; yet in most systems, from that of cuvier to the most recent one by mr. flower ( . 'proceedings zoological society,' , p. .), seals are ranked as a mere family in the order of the carnivora. if man had not been his own classifier, he would never have thought of founding a separate order for his own reception. it would be beyond my limits, and quite beyond my knowledge, even to name the innumerable points of structure in which man agrees with the other primates. our great anatomist and philosopher, prof. huxley, has fully discussed this subject ( . 'evidence as to man's place in nature,' , p. , et passim.), and concludes that man in all parts of his organization differs less from the higher apes, than these do from the lower members of the same group. consequently there "is no justification for placing man in a distinct order." in an early part of this work i brought forward various facts, shewing how closely man agrees in constitution with the higher mammals; and this agreement must depend on our close similarity in minute structure and chemical composition. i gave, as instances, our liability to the same diseases, and to the attacks of allied parasites; our tastes in common for the same stimulants, and the similar effects produced by them, as well as by various drugs, and other such facts. as small unimportant points of resemblance between man and the quadrumana are not commonly noticed in systematic works, and as, when numerous, they clearly reveal our relationship, i will specify a few such points. the relative position of our features is manifestly the same; and the various emotions are displayed by nearly similar movements of the muscles and skin, chiefly above the eyebrows and round the mouth. some few expressions are, indeed, almost the same, as in the weeping of certain kinds of monkeys and in the laughing noise made by others, during which the corners of the mouth are drawn backwards, and the lower eyelids wrinkled. the external ears are curiously alike. in man the nose is much more prominent than in most monkeys; but we may trace the commencement of an aquiline curvature in the nose of the hoolock gibbon; and this in the semnopithecus nasica is carried to a ridiculous extreme. the faces of many monkeys are ornamented with beards, whiskers, or moustaches. the hair on the head grows to a great length in some species of semnopithecus ( . isidore geoffroy st.-hilaire, 'hist. nat. gen.' tom. ii. , p. .); and in the bonnet monkey (macacus radiatus) it radiates from a point on the crown, with a parting down the middle. it is commonly said that the forehead gives to man his noble and intellectual appearance; but the thick hair on the head of the bonnet monkey terminates downwards abruptly, and is succeeded by hair so short and fine that at a little distance the forehead, with the exception of the eyebrows, appears quite naked. it has been erroneously asserted that eyebrows are not present in any monkey. in the species just named the degree of nakedness of the forehead differs in different individuals; and eschricht states ( . '�ber die richtung der haare,' etc., müller's 'archiv fur anat. und phys.' , s. .) that in our children the limit between the hairy scalp and the naked forehead is sometimes not well defined; so that here we seem to have a trifling case of reversion to a progenitor, in whom the forehead had not as yet become quite naked. it is well known that the hair on our arms tends to converge from above and below to a point at the elbow. this curious arrangement, so unlike that in most of the lower mammals, is common to the gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, some species of hylobates, and even to some few american monkeys. but in hylobates agilis the hair on the fore-arm is directed downwards or towards the wrist in the ordinary manner; and in h. lar it is nearly erect, with only a very slight forward inclination; so that in this latter species it is in a transitional state. it can hardly be doubted that with most mammals the thickness of the hair on the back and its direction, is adapted to throw off the rain; even the transverse hairs on the fore-legs of a dog may serve for this end when he is coiled up asleep. mr. wallace, who has carefully studied the habits of the orang, remarks that the convergence of the hair towards the elbow on the arms of the orang may be explained as serving to throw off the rain, for this animal during rainy weather sits with its arms bent, and with the hands clasped round a branch or over its head. according to livingstone, the gorilla also "sits in pelting rain with his hands over his head." ( . quoted by reade, 'the african sketch book,' vol i. , p. .) if the above explanation is correct, as seems probable, the direction of the hair on our own arms offers a curious record of our former state; for no one supposes that it is now of any use in throwing off the rain; nor, in our present erect condition, is it properly directed for this purpose. it would, however, be rash to trust too much to the principle of adaptation in regard to the direction of the hair in man or his early progenitors; for it is impossible to study the figures given by eschricht of the arrangement of the hair on the human foetus (this being the same as in the adult) and not agree with this excellent observer that other and more complex causes have intervened. the points of convergence seem to stand in some relation to those points in the embryo which are last closed in during development. there appears, also, to exist some relation between the arrangement of the hair on the limbs, and the course of the medullary arteries. ( . on the hair in hylobates, see 'natural history of mammals,' by c.l. martin, , p. . also, isidore geoffroy on the american monkeys and other kinds, 'hist. nat. gen.' vol. ii. , pp. , . eschricht, ibid. s. , , . owen, 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. iii. p. . wallace, 'contributions to the theory of natural selection,' , p. .) it must not be supposed that the resemblances between man and certain apes in the above and in many other points--such as in having a naked forehead, long tresses on the head, etc.,--are all necessarily the result of unbroken inheritance from a common progenitor, or of subsequent reversion. many of these resemblances are more probably due to analogous variation, which follows, as i have elsewhere attempted to shew ( . 'origin of species,' th edit. , p. . 'the variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. , p. .), from co-descended organisms having a similar constitution, and having been acted on by like causes inducing similar modifications. with respect to the similar direction of the hair on the fore-arms of man and certain monkeys, as this character is common to almost all the anthropomorphous apes, it may probably be attributed to inheritance; but this is not certain, as some very distinct american monkeys are thus characterised. although, as we have now seen, man has no just right to form a separate order for his own reception, he may perhaps claim a distinct sub-order or family. prof. huxley, in his last work ( . 'an introduction to the classification of animals,' , p. .), divides the primates into three sub-orders; namely, the anthropidae with man alone, the simiadae including monkeys of all kinds, and the lemuridae with the diversified genera of lemurs. as far as differences in certain important points of structure are concerned, man may no doubt rightly claim the rank of a sub-order; and this rank is too low, if we look chiefly to his mental faculties. nevertheless, from a genealogical point of view it appears that this rank is too high, and that man ought to form merely a family, or possibly even only a sub-family. if we imagine three lines of descent proceeding from a common stock, it is quite conceivable that two of them might after the lapse of ages be so slightly changed as still to remain as species of the same genus, whilst the third line might become so greatly modified as to deserve to rank as a distinct sub-family, family, or even order. but in this case it is almost certain that the third line would still retain through inheritance numerous small points of resemblance with the other two. here, then, would occur the difficulty, at present insoluble, how much weight we ought to assign in our classifications to strongly-marked differences in some few points,--that is, to the amount of modification undergone; and how much to close resemblance in numerous unimportant points, as indicating the lines of descent or genealogy. to attach much weight to the few but strong differences is the most obvious and perhaps the safest course, though it appears more correct to pay great attention to the many small resemblances, as giving a truly natural classification. in forming a judgment on this head with reference to man, we must glance at the classification of the simiadae. this family is divided by almost all naturalists into the catarrhine group, or old world monkeys, all of which are characterised (as their name expresses) by the peculiar structure of their nostrils, and by having four premolars in each jaw; and into the platyrrhine group or new world monkeys (including two very distinct sub-groups), all of which are characterised by differently constructed nostrils, and by having six premolars in each jaw. some other small differences might be mentioned. now man unquestionably belongs in his dentition, in the structure of his nostrils, and some other respects, to the catarrhine or old world division; nor does he resemble the platyrrhines more closely than the catarrhines in any characters, excepting in a few of not much importance and apparently of an adaptive nature. it is therefore against all probability that some new world species should have formerly varied and produced a man-like creature, with all the distinctive characters proper to the old world division; losing at the same time all its own distinctive characters. there can, consequently, hardly be a doubt that man is an off-shoot from the old world simian stem; and that under a genealogical point of view he must be classed with the catarrhine division. ( . this is nearly the same classification as that provisionally adopted by mr. st. george mivart, ('transactions, philosophical society," , p. ), who, after separating the lemuridae, divides the remainder of the primates into the hominidae, the simiadae which answer to the catarrhines, the cebidae, and the hapalidae,--these two latter groups answering to the platyrrhines. mr. mivart still abides by the same view; see 'nature,' , p. .) the anthropomorphous apes, namely the gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, and hylobates, are by most naturalists separated from the other old world monkeys, as a distinct sub-group. i am aware that gratiolet, relying on the structure of the brain, does not admit the existence of this sub-group, and no doubt it is a broken one. thus the orang, as mr. st. g. mivart remarks, "is one of the most peculiar and aberrant forms to be found in the order." ( . 'transactions, zoolog. soc.' vol. vi. , p. .) the remaining non-anthropomorphous old world monkeys, are again divided by some naturalists into two or three smaller sub-groups; the genus semnopithecus, with its peculiar sacculated stomach, being the type of one sub-group. but it appears from m. gaudry's wonderful discoveries in attica, that during the miocene period a form existed there, which connected semnopithecus and macacus; and this probably illustrates the manner in which the other and higher groups were once blended together. if the anthropomorphous apes be admitted to form a natural sub-group, then as man agrees with them, not only in all those characters which he possesses in common with the whole catarrhine group, but in other peculiar characters, such as the absence of a tail and of callosities, and in general appearance, we may infer that some ancient member of the anthropomorphous sub-group gave birth to man. it is not probable that, through the law of analogous variation, a member of one of the other lower sub-groups should have given rise to a man-like creature, resembling the higher anthropomorphous apes in so many respects. no doubt man, in comparison with most of his allies, has undergone an extraordinary amount of modification, chiefly in consequence of the great development of his brain and his erect position; nevertheless, we should bear in mind that he "is but one of several exceptional forms of primates." ( . mr. st. g. mivart, 'transactions of the philosophical society,' , p. .) every naturalist, who believes in the principle of evolution, will grant that the two main divisions of the simiadae, namely the catarrhine and platyrrhine monkeys, with their sub-groups, have all proceeded from some one extremely ancient progenitor. the early descendants of this progenitor, before they had diverged to any considerable extent from each other, would still have formed a single natural group; but some of the species or incipient genera would have already begun to indicate by their diverging characters the future distinctive marks of the catarrhine and platyrrhine divisions. hence the members of this supposed ancient group would not have been so uniform in their dentition, or in the structure of their nostrils, as are the existing catarrhine monkeys in one way and the platyrrhines in another way, but would have resembled in this respect the allied lemuridae, which differ greatly from each other in the form of their muzzles ( . messrs. murie and mivart on the lemuroidea, 'transactions, zoological society,' vol. vii, , p. .), and to an extraordinary degree in their dentition. the catarrhine and platyrrhine monkeys agree in a multitude of characters, as is shewn by their unquestionably belonging to one and the same order. the many characters which they possess in common can hardly have been independently acquired by so many distinct species; so that these characters must have been inherited. but a naturalist would undoubtedly have ranked as an ape or a monkey, an ancient form which possessed many characters common to the catarrhine and platyrrhine monkeys, other characters in an intermediate condition, and some few, perhaps, distinct from those now found in either group. and as man from a genealogical point of view belongs to the catarrhine or old world stock, we must conclude, however much the conclusion may revolt our pride, that our early progenitors would have been properly thus designated. ( . haeckel has come to this same conclusion. see '�ber die entstehung des menschengeschlechts,' in virchow's 'sammlung. gemein. wissen. vorträge,' , s. . also his 'natürliche schöpfungsgeschichte,' , in which he gives in detail his views on the genealogy of man.) but we must not fall into the error of supposing that the early progenitor of the whole simian stock, including man, was identical with, or even closely resembled, any existing ape or monkey. on the birthplace and antiquity of man. we are naturally led to enquire, where was the birthplace of man at that stage of descent when our progenitors diverged from the catarrhine stock? the fact that they belonged to this stock clearly shews that they inhabited the old world; but not australia nor any oceanic island, as we may infer from the laws of geographical distribution. in each great region of the world the living mammals are closely related to the extinct species of the same region. it is therefore probable that africa was formerly inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee; and as these two species are now man's nearest allies, it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the african continent than elsewhere. but it is useless to speculate on this subject; for two or three anthropomorphous apes, one the dryopithecus ( . dr. c. forsyth major, 'sur les singes fossiles trouvés en italie:' 'soc. ital. des sc. nat.' tom. xv. .) of lartet, nearly as large as a man, and closely allied to hylobates, existed in europe during the miocene age; and since so remote a period the earth has certainly undergone many great revolutions, and there has been ample time for migration on the largest scale. at the period and place, whenever and wherever it was, when man first lost his hairy covering, he probably inhabited a hot country; a circumstance favourable for the frugiferous diet on which, judging from analogy, he subsisted. we are far from knowing how long ago it was when man first diverged from the catarrhine stock; but it may have occurred at an epoch as remote as the eocene period; for that the higher apes had diverged from the lower apes as early as the upper miocene period is shewn by the existence of the dryopithecus. we are also quite ignorant at how rapid a rate organisms, whether high or low in the scale, may be modified under favourable circumstances; we know, however, that some have retained the same form during an enormous lapse of time. from what we see going on under domestication, we learn that some of the co-descendants of the same species may be not at all, some a little, and some greatly changed, all within the same period. thus it may have been with man, who has undergone a great amount of modification in certain characters in comparison with the higher apes. the great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies--between the tarsius and the other lemuridae--between the elephant, and in a more striking manner between the ornithorhynchus or echidna, and all other mammals. but these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. at some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. at the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as professor schaaffhausen has remarked ( . 'anthropological review,' april , p. .), will no doubt be exterminated. the break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or australian and the gorilla. with respect to the absence of fossil remains, serving to connect man with his ape-like progenitors, no one will lay much stress on this fact who reads sir c. lyell's discussion ( . 'elements of geology,' , pp. - . 'antiquity of man,' , p. .), where he shews that in all the vertebrate classes the discovery of fossil remains has been a very slow and fortuitous process. nor should it be forgotten that those regions which are the most likely to afford remains connecting man with some extinct ape-like creature, have not as yet been searched by geologists. lower stages in the genealogy of man. we have seen that man appears to have diverged from the catarrhine or old world division of the simiadae, after these had diverged from the new world division. we will now endeavour to follow the remote traces of his genealogy, trusting principally to the mutual affinities between the various classes and orders, with some slight reference to the periods, as far as ascertained, of their successive appearance on the earth. the lemuridae stand below and near to the simiadae, and constitute a very distinct family of the primates, or, according to haeckel and others, a distinct order. this group is diversified and broken to an extraordinary degree, and includes many aberrant forms. it has, therefore, probably suffered much extinction. most of the remnants survive on islands, such as madagascar and the malayan archipelago, where they have not been exposed to so severe a competition as they would have been on well-stocked continents. this group likewise presents many gradations, leading, as huxley remarks ( . 'man's place in nature,' p. .), "insensibly from the crown and summit of the animal creation down to creatures from which there is but a step, as it seems, to the lowest, smallest, and least intelligent of the placental mammalia." from these various considerations it is probable that the simiadae were originally developed from the progenitors of the existing lemuridae; and these in their turn from forms standing very low in the mammalian series. the marsupials stand in many important characters below the placental mammals. they appeared at an earlier geological period, and their range was formerly much more extensive than at present. hence the placentata are generally supposed to have been derived from the implacentata or marsupials; not, however, from forms closely resembling the existing marsupials, but from their early progenitors. the monotremata are plainly allied to the marsupials, forming a third and still lower division in the great mammalian series. they are represented at the present day solely by the ornithorhynchus and echidna; and these two forms may be safely considered as relics of a much larger group, representatives of which have been preserved in australia through some favourable concurrence of circumstances. the monotremata are eminently interesting, as leading in several important points of structure towards the class of reptiles. in attempting to trace the genealogy of the mammalia, and therefore of man, lower down in the series, we become involved in greater and greater obscurity; but as a most capable judge, mr. parker, has remarked, we have good reason to believe, that no true bird or reptile intervenes in the direct line of descent. he who wishes to see what ingenuity and knowledge can effect, may consult prof. haeckel's works. ( . elaborate tables are given in his 'generelle morphologie' (b. ii. s. cliii. and s. ); and with more especial reference to man in his 'natürliche schöpfungsgeschichte,' . prof. huxley, in reviewing this latter work ('the academy,' , p. ) says, that he considers the phylum or lines of descent of the vertebrata to be admirably discussed by haeckel, although he differs on some points. he expresses, also, his high estimate of the general tenor and spirit of the whole work.) i will content myself with a few general remarks. every evolutionist will admit that the five great vertebrate classes, namely, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes, are descended from some one prototype; for they have much in common, especially during their embryonic state. as the class of fishes is the most lowly organised, and appeared before the others, we may conclude that all the members of the vertebrate kingdom are derived from some fishlike animal. the belief that animals so distinct as a monkey, an elephant, a humming-bird, a snake, a frog, and a fish, etc., could all have sprung from the same parents, will appear monstrous to those who have not attended to the recent progress of natural history. for this belief implies the former existence of links binding closely together all these forms, now so utterly unlike. nevertheless, it is certain that groups of animals have existed, or do now exist, which serve to connect several of the great vertebrate classes more or less closely. we have seen that the ornithorhynchus graduates towards reptiles; and prof. huxley has discovered, and is confirmed by mr. cope and others, that the dinosaurians are in many important characters intermediate between certain reptiles and certain birds--the birds referred to being the ostrich-tribe (itself evidently a widely-diffused remnant of a larger group) and the archeopteryx, that strange secondary bird, with a long lizard-like tail. again, according to prof. owen ( . 'palaeontology' , p. .), the ichthyosaurians--great sea-lizards furnished with paddles--present many affinities with fishes, or rather, according to huxley, with amphibians; a class which, including in its highest division frogs and toads, is plainly allied to the ganoid fishes. these latter fishes swarmed during the earlier geological periods, and were constructed on what is called a generalised type, that is, they presented diversified affinities with other groups of organisms. the lepidosiren is also so closely allied to amphibians and fishes, that naturalists long disputed in which of these two classes to rank it; it, and also some few ganoid fishes, have been preserved from utter extinction by inhabiting rivers, which are harbours of refuge, and are related to the great waters of the ocean in the same way that islands are to continents. lastly, one single member of the immense and diversified class of fishes, namely, the lancelet or amphioxus, is so different from all other fishes, that haeckel maintains that it ought to form a distinct class in the vertebrate kingdom. this fish is remarkable for its negative characters; it can hardly be said to possess a brain, vertebral column, or heart, etc.; so that it was classed by the older naturalists amongst the worms. many years ago prof. goodsir perceived that the lancelet presented some affinities with the ascidians, which are invertebrate, hermaphrodite, marine creatures permanently attached to a support. they hardly appear like animals, and consist of a simple, tough, leathery sack, with two small projecting orifices. they belong to the mulluscoida of huxley--a lower division of the great kingdom of the mollusca; but they have recently been placed by some naturalists amongst the vermes or worms. their larvae somewhat resemble tadpoles in shape ( . at the falkland islands i had the satisfaction of seeing, in april, , and therefore some years before any other naturalist, the locomotive larvae of a compound ascidian, closely allied to synoicum, but apparently generically distinct from it. the tail was about five times as long as the oblong head, and terminated in a very fine filament. it was, as sketched by me under a simple microscope, plainly divided by transverse opaque partitions, which i presume represent the great cells figured by kovalevsky. at an early stage of development the tail was closely coiled round the head of the larva.), and have the power of swimming freely about. mr. kovalevsky ( . 'memoires de l'acad. des sciences de st. petersbourg,' tom. x. no. , .) has lately observed that the larvae of ascidians are related to the vertebrata, in their manner of development, in the relative position of the nervous system, and in possessing a structure closely like the chorda dorsalis of vertebrate animals; and in this he has been since confirmed by prof. kupffer. m. kovalevsky writes to me from naples, that he has now carried these observations yet further, and should his results be well established, the whole will form a discovery of the very greatest value. thus, if we may rely on embryology, ever the safest guide in classification, it seems that we have at last gained a clue to the source whence the vertebrata were derived. ( . but i am bound to add that some competent judges dispute this conclusion; for instance, m. giard, in a series of papers in the 'archives de zoologie experimentale,' for . nevertheless, this naturalist remarks, p. , "l'organisation de la larve ascidienne en dehors de toute hypothèse et de toute théorie, nous montre comment la nature peut produire la disposition fondamentale du type vertébré (l'existence d'une corde dorsale) chez un invertébré par la seule condition vitale de l'adaptation, et cette simple possibilité du passage supprime l'abîme entre les deux sous-règnes, encore bien qu'en ignore par où le passage s'est fait en realité.") we should then be justified in believing that at an extremely remote period a group of animals existed, resembling in many respects the larvae of our present ascidians, which diverged into two great branches--the one retrograding in development and producing the present class of ascidians, the other rising to the crown and summit of the animal kingdom by giving birth to the vertebrata. we have thus far endeavoured rudely to trace the genealogy of the vertebrata by the aid of their mutual affinities. we will now look to man as he exists; and we shall, i think, be able partially to restore the structure of our early progenitors, during successive periods, but not in due order of time. this can be effected by means of the rudiments which man still retains, by the characters which occasionally make their appearance in him through reversion, and by the aid of the principles of morphology and embryology. the various facts, to which i shall here allude, have been given in the previous chapters. the early progenitors of man must have been once covered with hair, both sexes having beards; their ears were probably pointed, and capable of movement; and their bodies were provided with a tail, having the proper muscles. their limbs and bodies were also acted on by many muscles which now only occasionally reappear, but are normally present in the quadrumana. at this or some earlier period, the great artery and nerve of the humerus ran through a supra-condyloid foramen. the intestine gave forth a much larger diverticulum or caecum than that now existing. the foot was then prehensile, judging from the condition of the great toe in the foetus; and our progenitors, no doubt, were arboreal in their habits, and frequented some warm, forest-clad land. the males had great canine teeth, which served them as formidable weapons. at a much earlier period the uterus was double; the excreta were voided through a cloaca; and the eye was protected by a third eyelid or nictitating membrane. at a still earlier period the progenitors of man must have been aquatic in their habits; for morphology plainly tells us that our lungs consist of a modified swim-bladder, which once served as a float. the clefts on the neck in the embryo of man shew where the branchiae once existed. in the lunar or weekly recurrent periods of some of our functions we apparently still retain traces of our primordial birthplace, a shore washed by the tides. at about this same early period the true kidneys were replaced by the corpora wolffiana. the heart existed as a simple pulsating vessel; and the chorda dorsalis took the place of a vertebral column. these early ancestors of man, thus seen in the dim recesses of time, must have been as simply, or even still more simply organised than the lancelet or amphioxus. there is one other point deserving a fuller notice. it has long been known that in the vertebrate kingdom one sex bears rudiments of various accessory parts, appertaining to the reproductive system, which properly belong to the opposite sex; and it has now been ascertained that at a very early embryonic period both sexes possess true male and female glands. hence some remote progenitor of the whole vertebrate kingdom appears to have been hermaphrodite or androgynous. ( . this is the conclusion of prof. gegenbaur, one of the highest authorities in comparative anatomy: see 'grundzüge der vergleich. anat.' , s. . the result has been arrived at chiefly from the study of the amphibia; but it appears from the researches of waldeyer (as quoted in 'journal of anat. and phys.' , p. ), that the sexual organs of even "the higher vertebrata are, in their early condition, hermaphrodite." similar views have long been held by some authors, though until recently without a firm basis.) but here we encounter a singular difficulty. in the mammalian class the males possess rudiments of a uterus with the adjacent passage, in their vesiculae prostaticae; they bear also rudiments of mammae, and some male marsupials have traces of a marsupial sack. ( . the male thylacinus offers the best instance. owen, 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. iii. p. .) other analogous facts could be added. are we, then, to suppose that some extremely ancient mammal continued androgynous, after it had acquired the chief distinctions of its class, and therefore after it had diverged from the lower classes of the vertebrate kingdom? this seems very improbable, for we have to look to fishes, the lowest of all the classes, to find any still existent androgynous forms. ( . hermaphroditism has been observed in several species of serranus, as well as in some other fishes, where it is either normal and symmetrical, or abnormal and unilateral. dr. zouteveen has given me references on this subject, more especially to a paper by prof. halbertsma, in the 'transact. of the dutch acad. of sciences,' vol. xvi. dr. gunther doubts the fact, but it has now been recorded by too many good observers to be any longer disputed. dr. m. lessona writes to me, that he has verified the observations made by cavolini on serranus. prof. ercolani has recently shewn ('accad. delle scienze,' bologna, dec. , ) that eels are androgynous.) that various accessory parts, proper to each sex, are found in a rudimentary condition in the opposite sex, may be explained by such organs having been gradually acquired by the one sex, and then transmitted in a more or less imperfect state to the other. when we treat of sexual selection, we shall meet with innumerable instances of this form of transmission,--as in the case of the spurs, plumes, and brilliant colours, acquired for battle or ornament by male birds, and inherited by the females in an imperfect or rudimentary condition. the possession by male mammals of functionally imperfect mammary organs is, in some respects, especially curious. the monotremata have the proper milk-secreting glands with orifices, but no nipples; and as these animals stand at the very base of the mammalian series, it is probable that the progenitors of the class also had milk-secreting glands, but no nipples. this conclusion is supported by what is known of their manner of development; for professor turner informs me, on the authority of kolliker and langer, that in the embryo the mammary glands can be distinctly traced before the nipples are in the least visible; and the development of successive parts in the individual generally represents and accords with the development of successive beings in the same line of descent. the marsupials differ from the monotremata by possessing nipples; so that probably these organs were first acquired by the marsupials, after they had diverged from, and risen above, the monotremata, and were then transmitted to the placental mammals. ( . prof. gegenbaur has shewn ('jenäische zeitschrift,' bd. vii. p. ) that two distinct types of nipples prevail throughout the several mammalian orders, but that it is quite intelligible how both could have been derived from the nipples of the marsupials, and the latter from those of the monotremata. see, also, a memoir by dr. max huss, on the mammary glands, ibid. b. viii. p. .) no one will suppose that the marsupials still remained androgynous, after they had approximately acquired their present structure. how then are we to account for male mammals possessing mammae? it is possible that they were first developed in the females and then transferred to the males, but from what follows this is hardly probable. it may be suggested, as another view, that long after the progenitors of the whole mammalian class had ceased to be androgynous, both sexes yielded milk, and thus nourished their young; and in the case of the marsupials, that both sexes carried their young in marsupial sacks. this will not appear altogether improbable, if we reflect that the males of existing syngnathous fishes receive the eggs of the females in their abdominal pouches, hatch them, and afterwards, as some believe, nourish the young ( . mr. lockwood believes (as quoted in 'quart. journal of science,' april , p. ), from what he has observed of the development of hippocampus, that the walls of the abdominal pouch of the male in some way afford nourishment. on male fishes hatching the ova in their mouths, see a very interesting paper by prof. wyman, in 'proc. boston soc. of nat. hist.' sept. , ; also prof. turner, in 'journal of anatomy and physiology,' nov. , , p. . dr. gunther has likewise described similar cases.);--that certain other male fishes hatch the eggs within their mouths or branchial cavities;--that certain male toads take the chaplets of eggs from the females, and wind them round their own thighs, keeping them there until the tadpoles are born;--that certain male birds undertake the whole duty of incubation, and that male pigeons, as well as the females, feed their nestlings with a secretion from their crops. but the above suggestion first occurred to me from mammary glands of male mammals being so much more perfectly developed than the rudiments of the other accessory reproductive parts, which are found in the one sex though proper to the other. the mammary glands and nipples, as they exist in male mammals, can indeed hardly be called rudimentary; they are merely not fully developed, and not functionally active. they are sympathetically affected under the influence of certain diseases, like the same organs in the female. they often secrete a few drops of milk at birth and at puberty: this latter fact occurred in the curious case, before referred to, where a young man possessed two pairs of mammae. in man and some other male mammals these organs have been known occasionally to become so well developed during maturity as to yield a fair supply of milk. now if we suppose that during a former prolonged period male mammals aided the females in nursing their offspring ( . mlle. c. royer has suggested a similar view in her 'origine de l'homme,' etc., .), and that afterwards from some cause (as from the production of a smaller number of young) the males ceased to give this aid, disuse of the organs during maturity would lead to their becoming inactive; and from two well-known principles of inheritance, this state of inactivity would probably be transmitted to the males at the corresponding age of maturity. but at an earlier age these organs would be left unaffected, so that they would be almost equally well developed in the young of both sexes. conclusion. von baer has defined advancement or progress in the organic scale better than any one else, as resting on the amount of differentiation and specialisation of the several parts of a being,--when arrived at maturity, as i should be inclined to add. now as organisms have become slowly adapted to diversified lines of life by means of natural selection, their parts will have become more and more differentiated and specialised for various functions from the advantage gained by the division of physiological labour. the same part appears often to have been modified first for one purpose, and then long afterwards for some other and quite distinct purpose; and thus all the parts are rendered more and more complex. but each organism still retains the general type of structure of the progenitor from which it was aboriginally derived. in accordance with this view it seems, if we turn to geological evidence, that organisation on the whole has advanced throughout the world by slow and interrupted steps. in the great kingdom of the vertebrata it has culminated in man. it must not, however, be supposed that groups of organic beings are always supplanted, and disappear as soon as they have given birth to other and more perfect groups. the latter, though victorious over their predecessors, may not have become better adapted for all places in the economy of nature. some old forms appear to have survived from inhabiting protected sites, where they have not been exposed to very severe competition; and these often aid us in constructing our genealogies, by giving us a fair idea of former and lost populations. but we must not fall into the error of looking at the existing members of any lowly-organised group as perfect representatives of their ancient predecessors. the most ancient progenitors in the kingdom of the vertebrata, at which we are able to obtain an obscure glance, apparently consisted of a group of marine animals ( . the inhabitants of the seashore must be greatly affected by the tides; animals living either about the mean high-water mark, or about the mean low-water mark, pass through a complete cycle of tidal changes in a fortnight. consequently, their food supply will undergo marked changes week by week. the vital functions of such animals, living under these conditions for many generations, can hardly fail to run their course in regular weekly periods. now it is a mysterious fact that in the higher and now terrestrial vertebrata, as well as in other classes, many normal and abnormal processes have one or more whole weeks as their periods; this would be rendered intelligible if the vertebrata are descended from an animal allied to the existing tidal ascidians. many instances of such periodic processes might be given, as the gestation of mammals, the duration of fevers, etc. the hatching of eggs affords also a good example, for, according to mr. bartlett ('land and water,' jan. , ), the eggs of the pigeon are hatched in two weeks; those of the fowl in three; those of the duck in four; those of the goose in five; and those of the ostrich in seven weeks. as far as we can judge, a recurrent period, if approximately of the right duration for any process or function, would not, when once gained, be liable to change; consequently it might be thus transmitted through almost any number of generations. but if the function changed, the period would have to change, and would be apt to change almost abruptly by a whole week. this conclusion, if sound, is highly remarkable; for the period of gestation in each mammal, and the hatching of each bird's eggs, and many other vital processes, thus betray to us the primordial birthplace of these animals.), resembling the larvae of existing ascidians. these animals probably gave rise to a group of fishes, as lowly organised as the lancelet; and from these the ganoids, and other fishes like the lepidosiren, must have been developed. from such fish a very small advance would carry us on to the amphibians. we have seen that birds and reptiles were once intimately connected together; and the monotremata now connect mammals with reptiles in a slight degree. but no one can at present say by what line of descent the three higher and related classes, namely, mammals, birds, and reptiles, were derived from the two lower vertebrate classes, namely, amphibians and fishes. in the class of mammals the steps are not difficult to conceive which led from the ancient monotremata to the ancient marsupials; and from these to the early progenitors of the placental mammals. we may thus ascend to the lemuridae; and the interval is not very wide from these to the simiadae. the simiadae then branched off into two great stems, the new world and old world monkeys; and from the latter, at a remote period, man, the wonder and glory of the universe, proceeded. thus we have given to man a pedigree of prodigious length, but not, it may be said, of noble quality. the world, it has often been remarked, appears as if it had long been preparing for the advent of man: and this, in one sense is strictly true, for he owes his birth to a long line of progenitors. if any single link in this chain had never existed, man would not have been exactly what he now is. unless we wilfully close our eyes, we may, with our present knowledge, approximately recognise our parentage; nor need we feel ashamed of it. the most humble organism is something much higher than the inorganic dust under our feet; and no one with an unbiassed mind can study any living creature, however humble, without being struck with enthusiasm at its marvellous structure and properties. chapter vii. on the races of man. the nature and value of specific characters--application to the races of man--arguments in favour of, and opposed to, ranking the so-called races of man as distinct species--sub-species--monogenists and polygenists--convergence of character--numerous points of resemblance in body and mind between the most distinct races of man--the state of man when he first spread over the earth--each race not descended from a single pair--the extinction of races--the formation of races--the effects of crossing--slight influence of the direct action of the conditions of life--slight or no influence of natural selection--sexual selection. it is not my intention here to describe the several so-called races of men; but i am about to enquire what is the value of the differences between them under a classificatory point of view, and how they have originated. in determining whether two or more allied forms ought to be ranked as species or varieties, naturalists are practically guided by the following considerations; namely, the amount of difference between them, and whether such differences relate to few or many points of structure, and whether they are of physiological importance; but more especially whether they are constant. constancy of character is what is chiefly valued and sought for by naturalists. whenever it can be shewn, or rendered probable, that the forms in question have remained distinct for a long period, this becomes an argument of much weight in favour of treating them as species. even a slight degree of sterility between any two forms when first crossed, or in their offspring, is generally considered as a decisive test of their specific distinctness; and their continued persistence without blending within the same area, is usually accepted as sufficient evidence, either of some degree of mutual sterility, or in the case of animals of some mutual repugnance to pairing. independently of fusion from intercrossing, the complete absence, in a well-investigated region, of varieties linking together any two closely-allied forms, is probably the most important of all the criterions of their specific distinctness; and this is a somewhat different consideration from mere constancy of character, for two forms may be highly variable and yet not yield intermediate varieties. geographical distribution is often brought into play unconsciously and sometimes consciously; so that forms living in two widely separated areas, in which most of the other inhabitants are specifically distinct, are themselves usually looked at as distinct; but in truth this affords no aid in distinguishing geographical races from so-called good or true species. now let us apply these generally-admitted principles to the races of man, viewing him in the same spirit as a naturalist would any other animal. in regard to the amount of difference between the races, we must make some allowance for our nice powers of discrimination gained by the long habit of observing ourselves. in india, as elphinstone remarks, although a newly-arrived european cannot at first distinguish the various native races, yet they soon appear to him extremely dissimilar ( . 'history of india,' , vol. i. p. . father ripa makes exactly the same remark with respect to the chinese.); and the hindoo cannot at first perceive any difference between the several european nations. even the most distinct races of man are much more like each other in form than would at first be supposed; certain negro tribes must be excepted, whilst others, as dr. rohlfs writes to me, and as i have myself seen, have caucasian features. this general similarity is well shewn by the french photographs in the collection anthropologique du museum de paris of the men belonging to various races, the greater number of which might pass for europeans, as many persons to whom i have shewn them have remarked. nevertheless, these men, if seen alive, would undoubtedly appear very distinct, so that we are clearly much influenced in our judgment by the mere colour of the skin and hair, by slight differences in the features, and by expression. there is, however, no doubt that the various races, when carefully compared and measured, differ much from each other,--as in the texture of the hair, the relative proportions of all parts of the body ( . a vast number of measurements of whites, blacks, and indians, are given in the 'investigations in the military and anthropolog. statistics of american soldiers,' by b.a. gould, , pp. - ; 'on the capacity of the lungs,' p. . see also the numerous and valuable tables, by dr. weisbach, from the observations of dr. scherzer and dr. schwarz, in the 'reise der novara: anthropolog. theil,' .), the capacity of the lungs, the form and capacity of the skull, and even in the convolutions of the brain. ( . see, for instance, mr. marshall's account of the brain of a bushwoman, in 'philosophical transactions,' , p. .) but it would be an endless task to specify the numerous points of difference. the races differ also in constitution, in acclimatisation and in liability to certain diseases. their mental characteristics are likewise very distinct; chiefly as it would appear in their emotional, but partly in their intellectual faculties. every one who has had the opportunity of comparison, must have been struck with the contrast between the taciturn, even morose, aborigines of s. america and the light-hearted, talkative negroes. there is a nearly similar contrast between the malays and the papuans ( . wallace, 'the malay archipelago,' vol. ii. , p. .), who live under the same physical conditions, and are separated from each other only by a narrow space of sea. we will first consider the arguments which may be advanced in favour of classing the races of man as distinct species, and then the arguments on the other side. if a naturalist, who had never before seen a negro, hottentot, australian, or mongolian, were to compare them, he would at once perceive that they differed in a multitude of characters, some of slight and some of considerable importance. on enquiry he would find that they were adapted to live under widely different climates, and that they differed somewhat in bodily constitution and mental disposition. if he were then told that hundreds of similar specimens could be brought from the same countries, he would assuredly declare that they were as good species as many to which he had been in the habit of affixing specific names. this conclusion would be greatly strengthened as soon as he had ascertained that these forms had all retained the same character for many centuries; and that negroes, apparently identical with existing negroes, had lived at least years ago. ( . with respect to the figures in the famous egyptian caves of abou-simbel, m. pouchet says ('the plurality of the human races,' eng. translat., , p. ), that he was far from finding recognisable representations of the dozen or more nations which some authors believe that they can recognise. even some of the most strongly-marked races cannot be identified with that degree of unanimity which might have been expected from what has been written on the subject. thus messrs. nott and gliddon ('types of mankind,' p. ), state that rameses ii., or the great, has features superbly european; whereas knox, another firm believer in the specific distinctness of the races of man ('races of man,' , p. ), speaking of young memnon (the same as rameses ii., as i am informed by mr. birch), insists in the strongest manner that he is identical in character with the jews of antwerp. again, when i looked at the statue of amunoph iii., i agreed with two officers of the establishment, both competent judges, that he had a strongly-marked negro type of features; but messrs. nott and gliddon (ibid. p. , fig. ), describe him as a hybrid, but not of "negro intermixture.") he would also hear, on the authority of an excellent observer, dr. lund ( . as quoted by nott and gliddon, 'types of mankind,' , p. . they give also corroborative evidence; but c. vogt thinks that the subject requires further investigation.), that the human skulls found in the caves of brazil, entombed with many extinct mammals, belonged to the same type as that now prevailing throughout the american continent. our naturalist would then perhaps turn to geographical distribution, and he would probably declare that those forms must be distinct species, which differ not only in appearance, but are fitted for hot, as well as damp or dry countries, and for the arctic regions. he might appeal to the fact that no species in the group next to man--namely, the quadrumana, can resist a low temperature, or any considerable change of climate; and that the species which come nearest to man have never been reared to maturity, even under the temperate climate of europe. he would be deeply impressed with the fact, first noticed by agassiz ( . 'diversity of origin of the human races,' in the 'christian examiner,' july .), that the different races of man are distributed over the world in the same zoological provinces, as those inhabited by undoubtedly distinct species and genera of mammals. this is manifestly the case with the australian, mongolian, and negro races of man; in a less well-marked manner with the hottentots; but plainly with the papuans and malays, who are separated, as mr. wallace has shewn, by nearly the same line which divides the great malayan and australian zoological provinces. the aborigines of america range throughout the continent; and this at first appears opposed to the above rule, for most of the productions of the southern and northern halves differ widely: yet some few living forms, as the opossum, range from the one into the other, as did formerly some of the gigantic edentata. the esquimaux, like other arctic animals, extend round the whole polar regions. it should be observed that the amount of difference between the mammals of the several zoological provinces does not correspond with the degree of separation between the latter; so that it can hardly be considered as an anomaly that the negro differs more, and the american much less from the other races of man, than do the mammals of the african and american continents from the mammals of the other provinces. man, it may be added, does not appear to have aboriginally inhabited any oceanic island; and in this respect, he resembles the other members of his class. in determining whether the supposed varieties of the same kind of domestic animal should be ranked as such, or as specifically distinct, that is, whether any of them are descended from distinct wild species, every naturalist would lay much stress on the fact of their external parasites being specifically distinct. all the more stress would be laid on this fact, as it would be an exceptional one; for i am informed by mr. denny that the most different kinds of dogs, fowls, and pigeons, in england, are infested by the same species of pediculi or lice. now mr. a. murray has carefully examined the pediculi collected in different countries from the different races of man ( . 'transactions of the royal society of edinburgh,' vol. xxii, , p. .); and he finds that they differ, not only in colour, but in the structure of their claws and limbs. in every case in which many specimens were obtained the differences were constant. the surgeon of a whaling ship in the pacific assured me that when the pediculi, with which some sandwich islanders on board swarmed, strayed on to the bodies of the english sailors, they died in the course of three or four days. these pediculi were darker coloured, and appeared different from those proper to the natives of chiloe in south america, of which he gave me specimens. these, again, appeared larger and much softer than european lice. mr. murray procured four kinds from africa, namely, from the negroes of the eastern and western coasts, from the hottentots and kaffirs; two kinds from the natives of australia; two from north and two from south america. in these latter cases it may be presumed that the pediculi came from natives inhabiting different districts. with insects slight structural differences, if constant, are generally esteemed of specific value: and the fact of the races of man being infested by parasites, which appear to be specifically distinct, might fairly be urged as an argument that the races themselves ought to be classed as distinct species. our supposed naturalist having proceeded thus far in his investigation, would next enquire whether the races of men, when crossed, were in any degree sterile. he might consult the work ( . 'on the phenomena of hybridity in the genus homo,' eng. translat., .) of professor broca, a cautious and philosophical observer, and in this he would find good evidence that some races were quite fertile together, but evidence of an opposite nature in regard to other races. thus it has been asserted that the native women of australia and tasmania rarely produce children to european men; the evidence, however, on this head has now been shewn to be almost valueless. the half-castes are killed by the pure blacks: and an account has lately been published of eleven half-caste youths murdered and burnt at the same time, whose remains were found by the police. ( . see the interesting letter by mr. t.a. murray, in the 'anthropological review,' april , p. liii. in this letter count strzelecki's statement that australian women who have borne children to a white man, are afterwards sterile with their own race, is disproved. m. a. de quatrefages has also collected (revue des cours scientifiques, march, , p. ), much evidence that australians and europeans are not sterile when crossed.) again, it has often been said that when mulattoes intermarry, they produce few children; on the other hand, dr. bachman, of charleston ( . 'an examination of prof. agassiz's sketch of the nat. provinces of the animal world,' charleston, , p. .), positively asserts that he has known mulatto families which have intermarried for several generations, and have continued on an average as fertile as either pure whites or pure blacks. enquiries formerly made by sir c. lyell on this subject led him, as he informs me, to the same conclusion. ( . dr. rohlfs writes to me that he found the mixed races in the great sahara, derived from arabs, berbers, and negroes of three tribes, extraordinarily fertile. on the other hand, mr. winwood reade informs me that the negroes on the gold coast, though admiring white men and mulattoes, have a maxim that mulattoes should not intermarry, as the children are few and sickly. this belief, as mr. reade remarks, deserves attention, as white men have visited and resided on the gold coast for four hundred years, so that the natives have had ample time to gain knowledge through experience.) in the united states the census for the year included, according to dr. bachman, , mulattoes; and this number, considering all the circumstances of the case, seems small; but it may partly be accounted for by the degraded and anomalous position of the class, and by the profligacy of the women. a certain amount of absorption of mulattoes into negroes must always be in progress; and this would lead to an apparent diminution of the former. the inferior vitality of mulattoes is spoken of in a trustworthy work ( . 'military and anthropological statistics of american soldiers,' by b.a. gould, , p. .) as a well-known phenomenon; and this, although a different consideration from their lessened fertility, may perhaps be advanced as a proof of the specific distinctness of the parent races. no doubt both animal and vegetable hybrids, when produced from extremely distinct species, are liable to premature death; but the parents of mulattoes cannot be put under the category of extremely distinct species. the common mule, so notorious for long life and vigour, and yet so sterile, shews how little necessary connection there is in hybrids between lessened fertility and vitality; other analogous cases could be cited. even if it should hereafter be proved that all the races of men were perfectly fertile together, he who was inclined from other reasons to rank them as distinct species, might with justice argue that fertility and sterility are not safe criterions of specific distinctness. we know that these qualities are easily affected by changed conditions of life, or by close inter-breeding, and that they are governed by highly complex laws, for instance, that of the unequal fertility of converse crosses between the same two species. with forms which must be ranked as undoubted species, a perfect series exists from those which are absolutely sterile when crossed, to those which are almost or completely fertile. the degrees of sterility do not coincide strictly with the degrees of difference between the parents in external structure or habits of life. man in many respects may be compared with those animals which have long been domesticated, and a large body of evidence can be advanced in favour of the pallasian doctrine ( . the 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. p. . i may here remind the reader that the sterility of species when crossed is not a specially-acquired quality, but, like the incapacity of certain trees to be grafted together, is incidental on other acquired differences. the nature of these differences is unknown, but they relate more especially to the reproductive system, and much less so to external structure or to ordinary differences in constitution. one important element in the sterility of crossed species apparently lies in one or both having been long habituated to fixed conditions; for we know that changed conditions have a special influence on the reproductive system, and we have good reason to believe (as before remarked) that the fluctuating conditions of domestication tend to eliminate that sterility which is so general with species, in a natural state, when crossed. it has elsewhere been shewn by me (ibid. vol. ii. p. , and 'origin of species,' th edit. p. ), that the sterility of crossed species has not been acquired through natural selection: we can see that when two forms have already been rendered very sterile, it is scarcely possible that their sterility should be augmented by the preservation or survival of the more and more sterile individuals; for, as the sterility increases, fewer and fewer offspring will be produced from which to breed, and at last only single individuals will be produced at the rarest intervals. but there is even a higher grade of sterility than this. both gartner and kolreuter have proved that in genera of plants, including many species, a series can be formed from species which, when crossed, yield fewer and fewer seeds, to species which never produce a single seed, but yet are affected by the pollen of the other species, as shewn by the swelling of the germen. it is here manifestly impossible to select the more sterile individuals, which have already ceased to yield seeds; so that the acme of sterility, when the germen alone is affected, cannot have been gained through selection. this acme, and no doubt the other grades of sterility, are the incidental results of certain unknown differences in the constitution of the reproductive system of the species which are crossed.), that domestication tends to eliminate the sterility which is so general a result of the crossing of species in a state of nature. from these several considerations, it may be justly urged that the perfect fertility of the intercrossed races of man, if established, would not absolutely preclude us from ranking them as distinct species. independently of fertility, the characters presented by the offspring from a cross have been thought to indicate whether or not the parent-forms ought to be ranked as species or varieties; but after carefully studying the evidence, i have come to the conclusion that no general rules of this kind can be trusted. the ordinary result of a cross is the production of a blended or intermediate form; but in certain cases some of the offspring take closely after one parent-form, and some after the other. this is especially apt to occur when the parents differ in characters which first appeared as sudden variations or monstrosities. ( . 'the variation of animals,' etc., vol. ii. p. .) i refer to this point, because dr. rohlfs informs me that he has frequently seen in africa the offspring of negroes crossed with members of other races, either completely black or completely white, or rarely piebald. on the other hand, it is notorious that in america mulattoes commonly present an intermediate appearance. we have now seen that a naturalist might feel himself fully justified in ranking the races of man as distinct species; for he has found that they are distinguished by many differences in structure and constitution, some being of importance. these differences have, also, remained nearly constant for very long periods of time. our naturalist will have been in some degree influenced by the enormous range of man, which is a great anomaly in the class of mammals, if mankind be viewed as a single species. he will have been struck with the distribution of the several so-called races, which accords with that of other undoubtedly distinct species of mammals. finally, he might urge that the mutual fertility of all the races has not as yet been fully proved, and even if proved would not be an absolute proof of their specific identity. on the other side of the question, if our supposed naturalist were to enquire whether the forms of man keep distinct like ordinary species, when mingled together in large numbers in the same country, he would immediately discover that this was by no means the case. in brazil he would behold an immense mongrel population of negroes and portuguese; in chiloe, and other parts of south america, he would behold the whole population consisting of indians and spaniards blended in various degrees. ( . m. de quatrefages has given ('anthropological review,' jan. , p. ), an interesting account of the success and energy of the paulistas in brazil, who are a much crossed race of portuguese and indians, with a mixture of the blood of other races.) in many parts of the same continent he would meet with the most complex crosses between negroes, indians, and europeans; and judging from the vegetable kingdom, such triple crosses afford the severest test of the mutual fertility of the parent forms. in one island of the pacific he would find a small population of mingled polynesian and english blood; and in the fiji archipelago a population of polynesian and negritos crossed in all degrees. many analogous cases could be added; for instance, in africa. hence the races of man are not sufficiently distinct to inhabit the same country without fusion; and the absence of fusion affords the usual and best test of specific distinctness. our naturalist would likewise be much disturbed as soon as he perceived that the distinctive characters of all the races were highly variable. this fact strikes every one on first beholding the negro slaves in brazil, who have been imported from all parts of africa. the same remark holds good with the polynesians, and with many other races. it may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant. savages, even within the limits of the same tribe, are not nearly so uniform in character, as has been often asserted. hottentot women offer certain peculiarities, more strongly marked than those occurring in any other race, but these are known not to be of constant occurrence. in the several american tribes, colour and hairiness differ considerably; as does colour to a certain degree, and the shape of the features greatly, in the negroes of africa. the shape of the skull varies much in some races ( . for instance, with the aborigines of america and australia, prof. huxley says ('transact. internat. congress of prehist. arch.' , p. ), that the skulls of many south germans and swiss are "as short and as broad as those of the tartars," etc.); and so it is with every other character. now all naturalists have learnt by dearly bought experience, how rash it is to attempt to define species by the aid of inconstant characters. but the most weighty of all the arguments against treating the races of man as distinct species, is that they graduate into each other, independently in many cases, as far as we can judge, of their having intercrossed. man has been studied more carefully than any other animal, and yet there is the greatest possible diversity amongst capable judges whether he should be classed as a single species or race, or as two (virey), as three (jacquinot), as four (kant), five (blumenbach), six (buffon), seven (hunter), eight (agassiz), eleven (pickering), fifteen (bory st. vincent), sixteen (desmoulins), twenty-two (morton), sixty (crawfurd), or as sixty-three, according to burke. ( . see a good discussion on this subject in waitz, 'introduction to anthropology,' eng. translat., , pp. - , . i have taken some of the above statements from h. tuttle's 'origin and antiquity of physical man,' boston, , p. .) this diversity of judgment does not prove that the races ought not to be ranked as species, but it shews that they graduate into each other, and that it is hardly possible to discover clear distinctive characters between them. every naturalist who has had the misfortune to undertake the description of a group of highly varying organisms, has encountered cases (i speak after experience) precisely like that of man; and if of a cautious disposition, he will end by uniting all the forms which graduate into each other, under a single species; for he will say to himself that he has no right to give names to objects which he cannot define. cases of this kind occur in the order which includes man, namely in certain genera of monkeys; whilst in other genera, as in cercopithecus, most of the species can be determined with certainty. in the american genus cebus, the various forms are ranked by some naturalists as species, by others as mere geographical races. now if numerous specimens of cebus were collected from all parts of south america, and those forms which at present appear to be specifically distinct, were found to graduate into each other by close steps, they would usually be ranked as mere varieties or races; and this course has been followed by most naturalists with respect to the races of man. nevertheless, it must be confessed that there are forms, at least in the vegetable kingdom ( . prof. nageli has carefully described several striking cases in his 'botanische mittheilungen,' b. ii. , ss. - . prof. asa gray has made analogous remarks on some intermediate forms in the compositae of n. america.), which we cannot avoid naming as species, but which are connected together by numberless gradations, independently of intercrossing. some naturalists have lately employed the term "sub-species" to designate forms which possess many of the characteristics of true species, but which hardly deserve so high a rank. now if we reflect on the weighty arguments above given, for raising the races of man to the dignity of species, and the insuperable difficulties on the other side in defining them, it seems that the term "sub-species" might here be used with propriety. but from long habit the term "race" will perhaps always be employed. the choice of terms is only so far important in that it is desirable to use, as far as possible, the same terms for the same degrees of difference. unfortunately this can rarely be done: for the larger genera generally include closely-allied forms, which can be distinguished only with much difficulty, whilst the smaller genera within the same family include forms that are perfectly distinct; yet all must be ranked equally as species. so again, species within the same large genus by no means resemble each other to the same degree: on the contrary, some of them can generally be arranged in little groups round other species, like satellites round planets. ( . 'origin of species,' th edit. p. .) the question whether mankind consists of one or several species has of late years been much discussed by anthropologists, who are divided into the two schools of monogenists and polygenists. those who do not admit the principle of evolution, must look at species as separate creations, or in some manner as distinct entities; and they must decide what forms of man they will consider as species by the analogy of the method commonly pursued in ranking other organic beings as species. but it is a hopeless endeavour to decide this point, until some definition of the term "species" is generally accepted; and the definition must not include an indeterminate element such as an act of creation. we might as well attempt without any definition to decide whether a certain number of houses should be called a village, town, or city. we have a practical illustration of the difficulty in the never-ending doubts whether many closely-allied mammals, birds, insects, and plants, which represent each other respectively in north america and europe, should be ranked as species or geographical races; and the like holds true of the productions of many islands situated at some little distance from the nearest continent. those naturalists, on the other hand, who admit the principle of evolution, and this is now admitted by the majority of rising men, will feel no doubt that all the races of man are descended from a single primitive stock; whether or not they may think fit to designate the races as distinct species, for the sake of expressing their amount of difference. ( . see prof. huxley to this effect in the 'fortnightly review,' , p. .) with our domestic animals the question whether the various races have arisen from one or more species is somewhat different. although it may be admitted that all the races, as well as all the natural species within the same genus, have sprung from the same primitive stock, yet it is a fit subject for discussion, whether all the domestic races of the dog, for instance, have acquired their present amount of difference since some one species was first domesticated by man; or whether they owe some of their characters to inheritance from distinct species, which had already been differentiated in a state of nature. with man no such question can arise, for he cannot be said to have been domesticated at any particular period. during an early stage in the divergence of the races of man from a common stock, the differences between the races and their number must have been small; consequently as far as their distinguishing characters are concerned, they then had less claim to rank as distinct species than the existing so-called races. nevertheless, so arbitrary is the term of species, that such early races would perhaps have been ranked by some naturalists as distinct species, if their differences, although extremely slight, had been more constant than they are at present, and had not graduated into each other. it is however possible, though far from probable, that the early progenitors of man might formerly have diverged much in character, until they became more unlike each other than any now existing races; but that subsequently, as suggested by vogt ( . 'lectures on man,' eng. translat., , p. .), they converged in character. when man selects the offspring of two distinct species for the same object, he sometimes induces a considerable amount of convergence, as far as general appearance is concerned. this is the case, as shewn by von nathusius ( . 'die rassen des schweines,' , s. . 'vorstudien für geschichte,' etc., schweinesschädel, , s. . with respect to cattle, see m. de quatrefages, 'unité de l'espèce humaine,' , p. .), with the improved breeds of the pig, which are descended from two distinct species; and in a less marked manner with the improved breeds of cattle. a great anatomist, gratiolet, maintains that the anthropomorphous apes do not form a natural sub-group; but that the orang is a highly developed gibbon or semnopithecus, the chimpanzee a highly developed macacus, and the gorilla a highly developed mandrill. if this conclusion, which rests almost exclusively on brain-characters, be admitted, we should have a case of convergence at least in external characters, for the anthropomorphous apes are certainly more like each other in many points, than they are to other apes. all analogical resemblances, as of a whale to a fish, may indeed be said to be cases of convergence; but this term has never been applied to superficial and adaptive resemblances. it would, however, be extremely rash to attribute to convergence close similarity of character in many points of structure amongst the modified descendants of widely distinct beings. the form of a crystal is determined solely by the molecular forces, and it is not surprising that dissimilar substances should sometimes assume the same form; but with organic beings we should bear in mind that the form of each depends on an infinity of complex relations, namely on variations, due to causes far too intricate to be followed,--on the nature of the variations preserved, these depending on the physical conditions, and still more on the surrounding organisms which compete with each,--and lastly, on inheritance (in itself a fluctuating element) from innumerable progenitors, all of which have had their forms determined through equally complex relations. it appears incredible that the modified descendants of two organisms, if these differed from each other in a marked manner, should ever afterwards converge so closely as to lead to a near approach to identity throughout their whole organisation. in the case of the convergent races of pigs above referred to, evidence of their descent from two primitive stocks is, according to von nathusius, still plainly retained, in certain bones of their skulls. if the races of man had descended, as is supposed by some naturalists, from two or more species, which differed from each other as much, or nearly as much, as does the orang from the gorilla, it can hardly be doubted that marked differences in the structure of certain bones would still be discoverable in man as he now exists. although the existing races of man differ in many respects, as in colour, hair, shape of skull, proportions of the body, etc., yet if their whole structure be taken into consideration they are found to resemble each other closely in a multitude of points. many of these are of so unimportant or of so singular a nature, that it is extremely improbable that they should have been independently acquired by aboriginally distinct species or races. the same remark holds good with equal or greater force with respect to the numerous points of mental similarity between the most distinct races of man. the american aborigines, negroes and europeans are as different from each other in mind as any three races that can be named; yet i was incessantly struck, whilst living with the fuegians on board the "beagle," with the many little traits of character, shewing how similar their minds were to ours; and so it was with a full-blooded negro with whom i happened once to be intimate. he who will read mr. tylor's and sir j. lubbock's interesting works ( . tylor's 'early history of mankind,' : with respect to gesture-language, see p. . lubbock's 'prehistoric times,' nd edit. .) can hardly fail to be deeply impressed with the close similarity between the men of all races in tastes, dispositions and habits. this is shewn by the pleasure which they all take in dancing, rude music, acting, painting, tattooing, and otherwise decorating themselves; in their mutual comprehension of gesture-language, by the same expression in their features, and by the same inarticulate cries, when excited by the same emotions. this similarity, or rather identity, is striking, when contrasted with the different expressions and cries made by distinct species of monkeys. there is good evidence that the art of shooting with bows and arrows has not been handed down from any common progenitor of mankind, yet as westropp and nilsson have remarked ( . 'on analogous forms of implements,' in 'memoirs of anthropological society' by h.m. westropp. 'the primitive inhabitants of scandinavia,' eng. translat., edited by sir j. lubbock, , p. .), the stone arrow-heads, brought from the most distant parts of the world, and manufactured at the most remote periods, are almost identical; and this fact can only be accounted for by the various races having similar inventive or mental powers. the same observation has been made by archaeologists ( . westropp 'on cromlechs,' etc., 'journal of ethnological soc.' as given in 'scientific opinion,' june nd, , p. .) with respect to certain widely-prevalent ornaments, such as zig-zags, etc.; and with respect to various simple beliefs and customs, such as the burying of the dead under megalithic structures. i remember observing in south america ( . 'journal of researches: voyage of the "beagle,"' p. .), that there, as in so many other parts of the world, men have generally chosen the summits of lofty hills, to throw up piles of stones, either as a record of some remarkable event, or for burying their dead. now when naturalists observe a close agreement in numerous small details of habits, tastes, and dispositions between two or more domestic races, or between nearly-allied natural forms, they use this fact as an argument that they are descended from a common progenitor who was thus endowed; and consequently that all should be classed under the same species. the same argument may be applied with much force to the races of man. as it is improbable that the numerous and unimportant points of resemblance between the several races of man in bodily structure and mental faculties (i do not here refer to similar customs) should all have been independently acquired, they must have been inherited from progenitors who had these same characters. we thus gain some insight into the early state of man, before he had spread step by step over the face of the earth. the spreading of man to regions widely separated by the sea, no doubt, preceded any great amount of divergence of character in the several races; for otherwise we should sometimes meet with the same race in distinct continents; and this is never the case. sir j. lubbock, after comparing the arts now practised by savages in all parts of the world, specifies those which man could not have known, when he first wandered from his original birthplace; for if once learnt they would never have been forgotten. ( . 'prehistoric times,' , p. .) he thus shews that "the spear, which is but a development of the knife-point, and the club, which is but a long hammer, are the only things left." he admits, however, that the art of making fire probably had been already discovered, for it is common to all the races now existing, and was known to the ancient cave-inhabitants of europe. perhaps the art of making rude canoes or rafts was likewise known; but as man existed at a remote epoch, when the land in many places stood at a very different level to what it does now, he would have been able, without the aid of canoes, to have spread widely. sir j. lubbock further remarks how improbable it is that our earliest ancestors could have "counted as high as ten, considering that so many races now in existence cannot get beyond four." nevertheless, at this early period, the intellectual and social faculties of man could hardly have been inferior in any extreme degree to those possessed at present by the lowest savages; otherwise primeval man could not have been so eminently successful in the struggle for life, as proved by his early and wide diffusion. from the fundamental differences between certain languages, some philologists have inferred that when man first became widely diffused, he was not a speaking animal; but it may be suspected that languages, far less perfect than any now spoken, aided by gestures, might have been used, and yet have left no traces on subsequent and more highly-developed tongues. without the use of some language, however imperfect, it appears doubtful whether man's intellect could have risen to the standard implied by his dominant position at an early period. whether primeval man, when he possessed but few arts, and those of the rudest kind, and when his power of language was extremely imperfect, would have deserved to be called man, must depend on the definition which we employ. in a series of forms graduating insensibly from some ape-like creature to man as he now exists, it would be impossible to fix on any definite point where the term "man" ought to be used. but this is a matter of very little importance. so again, it is almost a matter of indifference whether the so-called races of man are thus designated, or are ranked as species or sub-species; but the latter term appears the more appropriate. finally, we may conclude that when the principle of evolution is generally accepted, as it surely will be before long, the dispute between the monogenists and the polygenists will die a silent and unobserved death. one other question ought not to be passed over without notice, namely, whether, as is sometimes assumed, each sub-species or race of man has sprung from a single pair of progenitors. with our domestic animals a new race can readily be formed by carefully matching the varying offspring from a single pair, or even from a single individual possessing some new character; but most of our races have been formed, not intentionally from a selected pair, but unconsciously by the preservation of many individuals which have varied, however slightly, in some useful or desired manner. if in one country stronger and heavier horses, and in another country lighter and fleeter ones, were habitually preferred, we may feel sure that two distinct sub-breeds would be produced in the course of time, without any one pair having been separated and bred from, in either country. many races have been thus formed, and their manner of formation is closely analogous to that of natural species. we know, also, that the horses taken to the falkland islands have, during successive generations, become smaller and weaker, whilst those which have run wild on the pampas have acquired larger and coarser heads; and such changes are manifestly due, not to any one pair, but to all the individuals having been subjected to the same conditions, aided, perhaps, by the principle of reversion. the new sub-breeds in such cases are not descended from any single pair, but from many individuals which have varied in different degrees, but in the same general manner; and we may conclude that the races of man have been similarly produced, the modifications being either the direct result of exposure to different conditions, or the indirect result of some form of selection. but to this latter subject we shall presently return. on the extinction of the races of man. the partial or complete extinction of many races and sub-races of man is historically known. humboldt saw in south america a parrot which was the sole living creature that could speak a word of the language of a lost tribe. ancient monuments and stone implements found in all parts of the world, about which no tradition has been preserved by the present inhabitants, indicate much extinction. some small and broken tribes, remnants of former races, still survive in isolated and generally mountainous districts. in europe the ancient races were all, according to shaaffhausen ( . translation in 'anthropological review,' oct. , p. .), "lower in the scale than the rudest living savages"; they must therefore have differed, to a certain extent, from any existing race. the remains described by professor broca from les eyzies, though they unfortunately appear to have belonged to a single family, indicate a race with a most singular combination of low or simious, and of high characteristics. this race is "entirely different from any other, ancient or modern, that we have heard of." ( . 'transactions, international congress of prehistoric archaeology' , pp. - . see also broca (tr.) in 'anthropological review,' oct. , p. .) it differed, therefore, from the quaternary race of the caverns of belgium. man can long resist conditions which appear extremely unfavourable for his existence. ( . dr. gerland, 'ueber das aussterben der naturvölker,' , s. .) he has long lived in the extreme regions of the north, with no wood for his canoes or implements, and with only blubber as fuel, and melted snow as drink. in the southern extremity of america the fuegians survive without the protection of clothes, or of any building worthy to be called a hovel. in south africa the aborigines wander over arid plains, where dangerous beasts abound. man can withstand the deadly influence of the terai at the foot of the himalaya, and the pestilential shores of tropical africa. extinction follows chiefly from the competition of tribe with tribe, and race with race. various checks are always in action, serving to keep down the numbers of each savage tribe,--such as periodical famines, nomadic habits and the consequent deaths of infants, prolonged suckling, wars, accidents, sickness, licentiousness, the stealing of women, infanticide, and especially lessened fertility. if any one of these checks increases in power, even slightly, the tribe thus affected tends to decrease; and when of two adjoining tribes one becomes less numerous and less powerful than the other, the contest is soon settled by war, slaughter, cannibalism, slavery, and absorption. even when a weaker tribe is not thus abruptly swept away, if it once begins to decrease, it generally goes on decreasing until it becomes extinct. ( . gerland (ibid. s. ) gives facts in support of this statement.) when civilised nations come into contact with barbarians the struggle is short, except where a deadly climate gives its aid to the native race. of the causes which lead to the victory of civilised nations, some are plain and simple, others complex and obscure. we can see that the cultivation of the land will be fatal in many ways to savages, for they cannot, or will not, change their habits. new diseases and vices have in some cases proved highly destructive; and it appears that a new disease often causes much death, until those who are most susceptible to its destructive influence are gradually weeded out ( . see remarks to this effect in sir h. holland's 'medical notes and reflections,' , p. .); and so it may be with the evil effects from spirituous liquors, as well as with the unconquerably strong taste for them shewn by so many savages. it further appears, mysterious as is the fact, that the first meeting of distinct and separated people generates disease. ( . i have collected ('journal of researches: voyage of the "beagle,"' p. ) a good many cases bearing on this subject; see also gerland, ibid. s. . poeppig speaks of the "breath of civilisation as poisonous to savages.") mr. sproat, who in vancouver island closely attended to the subject of extinction, believed that changed habits of life, consequent on the advent of europeans, induces much ill health. he lays, also, great stress on the apparently trifling cause that the natives become "bewildered and dull by the new life around them; they lose the motives for exertion, and get no new ones in their place." ( . sproat, 'scenes and studies of savage life,' , p. .) the grade of their civilisation seems to be a most important element in the success of competing nations. a few centuries ago europe feared the inroads of eastern barbarians; now any such fear would be ridiculous. it is a more curious fact, as mr. bagehot has remarked, that savages did not formerly waste away before the classical nations, as they now do before modern civilised nations; had they done so, the old moralists would have mused over the event; but there is no lament in any writer of that period over the perishing barbarians. ( . bagehot, 'physics and politics,' 'fortnightly review,' april , , p. .) the most potent of all the causes of extinction, appears in many cases to be lessened fertility and ill-health, especially amongst the children, arising from changed conditions of life, notwithstanding that the new conditions may not be injurious in themselves. i am much indebted to mr. h.h. howorth for having called my attention to this subject, and for having given me information respecting it. i have collected the following cases. when tasmania was first colonised the natives were roughly estimated by some at and by others at , . their number was soon greatly reduced, chiefly by fighting with the english and with each other. after the famous hunt by all the colonists, when the remaining natives delivered themselves up to the government, they consisted only of individuals ( . all the statements here given are taken from 'the last of the tasmanians,' by j. bonwick, .), who were in transported to flinders island. this island, situated between tasmania and australia, is forty miles long, and from twelve to eighteen miles broad: it seems healthy, and the natives were well treated. nevertheless, they suffered greatly in health. in they consisted (bonwick, p. ) of forty-seven adult males, forty-eight adult females, and sixteen children, or in all of souls. in only one hundred were left. as they continued rapidly to decrease, and as they themselves thought that they should not perish so quickly elsewhere, they were removed in to oyster cove in the southern part of tasmania. they then consisted (dec. th, ) of fourteen men, twenty-two women and ten children. ( . this is the statement of the governor of tasmania, sir w. denison, 'varieties of vice-regal life,' , vol. i. p. .) but the change of site did no good. disease and death still pursued them, and in one man (who died in ), and three elderly women alone survived. the infertility of the women is even a more remarkable fact than the liability of all to ill-health and death. at the time when only nine women were left at oyster cove, they told mr. bonwick (p. ), that only two had ever borne children: and these two had together produced only three children! with respect to the cause of this extraordinary state of things, dr. story remarks that death followed the attempts to civilise the natives. "if left to themselves to roam as they were wont and undisturbed, they would have reared more children, and there would have been less mortality." another careful observer of the natives, mr. davis, remarks, "the births have been few and the deaths numerous. this may have been in a great measure owing to their change of living and food; but more so to their banishment from the mainland of van diemen's land, and consequent depression of spirits" (bonwick, pp. , ). similar facts have been observed in two widely different parts of australia. the celebrated explorer, mr. gregory, told mr. bonwick, that in queensland "the want of reproduction was being already felt with the blacks, even in the most recently settled parts, and that decay would set in." of thirteen aborigines from shark's bay who visited murchison river, twelve died of consumption within three months. ( . for these cases, see bonwick's 'daily life of the tasmanians,' , p. : and the 'last of the tasmanians,' , p. .) the decrease of the maories of new zealand has been carefully investigated by mr. fenton, in an admirable report, from which all the following statements, with one exception, are taken. ( . 'observations on the aboriginal inhabitants of new zealand,' published by the government, .) the decrease in number since is admitted by every one, including the natives themselves, and is still steadily progressing. although it has hitherto been found impossible to take an actual census of the natives, their numbers were carefully estimated by residents in many districts. the result seems trustworthy, and shows that during the fourteen years, previous to , the decrease was . per cent. some of the tribes, thus carefully examined, lived above a hundred miles apart, some on the coast, some inland; and their means of subsistence and habits differed to a certain extent (p. ). the total number in was believed to be , , and in , after a second interval of fourteen years, another census was taken, and the number is given as only , , shewing a decrease of . per cent! ( . 'new zealand,' by alex. kennedy, , p. .) mr. fenton, after shewing in detail the insufficiency of the various causes, usually assigned in explanation of this extraordinary decrease, such as new diseases, the profligacy of the women, drunkenness, wars, etc., concludes on weighty grounds that it depends chiefly on the unproductiveness of the women, and on the extraordinary mortality of the young children (pp. , ). in proof of this he shews (p. ) that in there was one non-adult for every . adults; whereas in there was only one non-adult for every . adults. the mortality of the adults is also great. he adduces as a further cause of the decrease the inequality of the sexes; for fewer females are born than males. to this latter point, depending perhaps on a widely distinct cause, i shall return in a future chapter. mr. fenton contrasts with astonishment the decrease in new zealand with the increase in ireland; countries not very dissimilar in climate, and where the inhabitants now follow nearly similar habits. the maories themselves (p. ) "attribute their decadence, in some measure, to the introduction of new food and clothing, and the attendant change of habits"; and it will be seen, when we consider the influence of changed conditions on fertility, that they are probably right. the diminution began between the years and ; and mr. fenton shews (p. ) that about , the art of manufacturing putrid corn (maize), by long steeping in water, was discovered and largely practised; and this proves that a change of habits was beginning amongst the natives, even when new zealand was only thinly inhabited by europeans. when i visited the bay of islands in , the dress and food of the inhabitants had already been much modified: they raised potatoes, maize, and other agricultural produce, and exchanged them for english manufactured goods and tobacco. it is evident from many statements in the life of bishop patteson ( . 'life of j.c. patteson,' by c.m. younge, ; see more especially vol. i. p. .), that the melanesians of the new hebrides and neighbouring archipelagoes, suffered to an extraordinary degree in health, and perished in large numbers, when they were removed to new zealand, norfolk island, and other salubrious places, in order to be educated as missionaries. the decrease of the native population of the sandwich islands is as notorious as that of new zealand. it has been roughly estimated by those best capable of judging, that when cook discovered the islands in , the population amounted to about , . according to a loose census in , the numbers then were , . in , and at several subsequent periods, an accurate census was officially taken, but i have been able to obtain only the following returns: native population annual rate of decrease per cent., assuming it to (except during and have been uniform between , when the few the successive censuses; foreigners in the islands these censuses being taken year were included.) at irregular intervals. , . , . , . , . , . , we here see that in the interval of forty years, between and , the population has decreased no less than sixty-eight per cent.! this has been attributed by most writers to the profligacy of the women, to former bloody wars, and to the severe labour imposed on conquered tribes and to newly introduced diseases, which have been on several occasions extremely destructive. no doubt these and other such causes have been highly efficient, and may account for the extraordinary rate of decrease between the years and ; but the most potent of all the causes seems to be lessened fertility. according to dr. ruschenberger of the u.s. navy, who visited these islands between and , in one district of hawaii, only twenty-five men out of , and in another district only ten out of , had a family with as many as three children. of eighty married women, only thirty-nine had ever borne children; and "the official report gives an average of half a child to each married couple in the whole island." this is almost exactly the same average as with the tasmanians at oyster cove. jarves, who published his history in , says that "families who have three children are freed from all taxes; those having more, are rewarded by gifts of land and other encouragements." this unparalleled enactment by the government well shews how infertile the race had become. the rev. a. bishop stated in the hawaiian 'spectator' in , that a large proportion of the children die at early ages, and bishop staley informs me that this is still the case, just as in new zealand. this has been attributed to the neglect of the children by the women, but it is probably in large part due to innate weakness of constitution in the children, in relation to the lessened fertility of their parents. there is, moreover, a further resemblance to the case of new zealand, in the fact that there is a large excess of male over female births: the census of gives , males to , females of all ages, that is . males for every females; whereas in all civilised countries the females exceed the males. no doubt the profligacy of the women may in part account for their small fertility; but their changed habits of life is a much more probable cause, and which will at the same time account for the increased mortality, especially of the children. the islands were visited by cook in , vancouver in , and often subsequently by whalers. in missionaries arrived, and found that idolatry had been already abolished, and other changes effected by the king. after this period there was a rapid change in almost all the habits of life of the natives, and they soon became "the most civilised of the pacific islanders." one of my informants, mr. coan, who was born on the islands, remarks that the natives have undergone a greater change in their habits of life in the course of fifty years than englishmen during a thousand years. from information received from bishop staley, it does not appear that the poorer classes have ever much changed their diet, although many new kinds of fruit have been introduced, and the sugar-cane is in universal use. owing, however, to their passion for imitating europeans, they altered their manner of dressing at an early period, and the use of alcoholic drinks became very general. although these changes appear inconsiderable, i can well believe, from what is known with respect to animals, that they might suffice to lessen the fertility of the natives. ( . the foregoing statements are taken chiefly from the following works: jarves' 'history of the hawaiian islands,' , pp. - . cheever, 'life in the sandwich islands,' , p. . ruschenberger is quoted by bonwick, 'last of the tasmanians,' , p. . bishop is quoted by sir e. belcher, 'voyage round the world,' , vol. i. p. . i owe the census of the several years to the kindness of mr. coan, at the request of dr. youmans of new york; and in most cases i have compared the youmans figures with those given in several of the above-named works. i have omitted the census for , as i have seen two widely different numbers given.) lastly, mr. macnamara states ( . 'the indian medical gazette,' nov. , , p. .) that the low and degraded inhabitants of the andaman islands, on the eastern side of the gulf of bengal, are "eminently susceptible to any change of climate: in fact, take them away from their island homes, and they are almost certain to die, and that independently of diet or extraneous influences." he further states that the inhabitants of the valley of nepal, which is extremely hot in summer, and also the various hill-tribes of india, suffer from dysentery and fever when on the plains; and they die if they attempt to pass the whole year there. we thus see that many of the wilder races of man are apt to suffer much in health when subjected to changed conditions or habits of life, and not exclusively from being transported to a new climate. mere alterations in habits, which do not appear injurious in themselves, seem to have this same effect; and in several cases the children are particularly liable to suffer. it has often been said, as mr. macnamara remarks, that man can resist with impunity the greatest diversities of climate and other changes; but this is true only of the civilised races. man in his wild condition seems to be in this respect almost as susceptible as his nearest allies, the anthropoid apes, which have never yet survived long, when removed from their native country. lessened fertility from changed conditions, as in the case of the tasmanians, maories, sandwich islanders, and apparently the australians, is still more interesting than their liability to ill-health and death; for even a slight degree of infertility, combined with those other causes which tend to check the increase of every population, would sooner or later lead to extinction. the diminution of fertility may be explained in some cases by the profligacy of the women (as until lately with the tahitians), but mr. fenton has shewn that this explanation by no means suffices with the new zealanders, nor does it with the tasmanians. in the paper above quoted, mr. macnamara gives reasons for believing that the inhabitants of districts subject to malaria are apt to be sterile; but this cannot apply in several of the above cases. some writers have suggested that the aborigines of islands have suffered in fertility and health from long continued inter-breeding; but in the above cases infertility has coincided too closely with the arrival of europeans for us to admit this explanation. nor have we at present any reason to believe that man is highly sensitive to the evil effects of inter-breeding, especially in areas so large as new zealand, and the sandwich archipelago with its diversified stations. on the contrary, it is known that the present inhabitants of norfolk island are nearly all cousins or near relations, as are the todas in india, and the inhabitants of some of the western islands of scotland; and yet they seem not to have suffered in fertility. ( . on the close relationship of the norfolk islanders, sir w. denison, 'varieties of vice-regal life,' vol. i. , p. . for the todas, see col. marshall's work , p. . for the western islands of scotland, dr. mitchell, 'edinburgh medical journal,' march to june, .) a much more probable view is suggested by the analogy of the lower animals. the reproductive system can be shewn to be susceptible to an extraordinary degree (though why we know not) to changed conditions of life; and this susceptibility leads both to beneficial and to evil results. a large collection of facts on this subject is given in chap. xviii. of vol. ii. of my 'variation of animals and plants under domestication.' i can here give only the briefest abstract; and every one interested in the subject may consult the above work. very slight changes increase the health, vigour, and fertility of most or all organic beings, whilst other changes are known to render a large number of animals sterile. one of the most familiar cases, is that of tamed elephants not breeding in india; though they often breed in ava, where the females are allowed to roam about the forests to some extent, and are thus placed under more natural conditions. the case of various american monkeys, both sexes of which have been kept for many years together in their own countries, and yet have very rarely or never bred, is a more apposite instance, because of their relationship to man. it is remarkable how slight a change in the conditions often induces sterility in a wild animal when captured; and this is the more strange as all our domesticated animals have become more fertile than they were in a state of nature; and some of them can resist the most unnatural conditions with undiminished fertility. ( . for the evidence on this head, see 'variation of animals,' etc., vol. ii. p. .) certain groups of animals are much more liable than others to be affected by captivity; and generally all the species of the same group are affected in the same manner. but sometimes a single species in a group is rendered sterile, whilst the others are not so; on the other hand, a single species may retain its fertility whilst most of the others fail to breed. the males and females of some species when confined, or when allowed to live almost, but not quite free, in their native country, never unite; others thus circumstanced frequently unite but never produce offspring; others again produce some offspring, but fewer than in a state of nature; and as bearing on the above cases of man, it is important to remark that the young are apt to be weak and sickly, or malformed, and to perish at an early age. seeing how general is this law of the susceptibility of the reproductive system to changed conditions of life, and that it holds good with our nearest allies, the quadrumana, i can hardly doubt that it applies to man in his primeval state. hence if savages of any race are induced suddenly to change their habits of life, they become more or less sterile, and their young offspring suffer in health, in the same manner and from the same cause, as do the elephant and hunting-leopard in india, many monkeys in america, and a host of animals of all kinds, on removal from their natural conditions. we can see why it is that aborigines, who have long inhabited islands, and who must have been long exposed to nearly uniform conditions, should be specially affected by any change in their habits, as seems to be the case. civilised races can certainly resist changes of all kinds far better than savages; and in this respect they resemble domesticated animals, for though the latter sometimes suffer in health (for instance european dogs in india), yet they are rarely rendered sterile, though a few such instances have been recorded. ( . 'variation of animals,' etc., vol. ii. p. .) the immunity of civilised races and domesticated animals is probably due to their having been subjected to a greater extent, and therefore having grown somewhat more accustomed, to diversified or varying conditions, than the majority of wild animals; and to their having formerly immigrated or been carried from country to country, and to different families or sub-races having inter-crossed. it appears that a cross with civilised races at once gives to an aboriginal race an immunity from the evil consequences of changed conditions. thus the crossed offspring from the tahitians and english, when settled in pitcairn island, increased so rapidly that the island was soon overstocked; and in june they were removed to norfolk island. they then consisted of married persons and children, making a total of . here they likewise increased so rapidly, that although sixteen of them returned to pitcairn island in , they numbered in january , souls; the males and females being in exactly equal numbers. what a contrast does this case present with that of the tasmanians; the norfolk islanders increased in only twelve and a half years from to ; whereas the tasmanians decreased during fifteen years from to , of which latter number only ten were children. ( . these details are taken from 'the mutineers of the "bounty,"' by lady belcher, ; and from 'pitcairn island,' ordered to be printed by the house of commons, may , . the following statements about the sandwich islanders are from the 'honolulu gazette,' and from mr. coan.) so again in the interval between the census of and the natives of full blood in the sandwich islands decreased by , whilst the half-castes, who are believed to be healthier, increased by ; but i do not know whether the latter number includes the offspring from the half-castes, or only the half-castes of the first generation. the cases which i have here given all relate to aborigines, who have been subjected to new conditions as the result of the immigration of civilised men. but sterility and ill-health would probably follow, if savages were compelled by any cause, such as the inroad of a conquering tribe, to desert their homes and to change their habits. it is an interesting circumstance that the chief check to wild animals becoming domesticated, which implies the power of their breeding freely when first captured, and one chief check to wild men, when brought into contact with civilisation, surviving to form a civilised race, is the same, namely, sterility from changed conditions of life. finally, although the gradual decrease and ultimate extinction of the races of man is a highly complex problem, depending on many causes which differ in different places and at different times; it is the same problem as that presented by the extinction of one of the higher animals--of the fossil horse, for instance, which disappeared from south america, soon afterwards to be replaced, within the same districts, by countless troups of the spanish horse. the new zealander seems conscious of this parallelism, for he compares his future fate with that of the native rat now almost exterminated by the european rat. though the difficulty is great to our imagination, and really great, if we wish to ascertain the precise causes and their manner of action, it ought not to be so to our reason, as long as we keep steadily in mind that the increase of each species and each race is constantly checked in various ways; so that if any new check, even a slight one, be superadded, the race will surely decrease in number; and decreasing numbers will sooner or later lead to extinction; the end, in most cases, being promptly determined by the inroads of conquering tribes. on the formation of the races of man. in some cases the crossing of distinct races has led to the formation of a new race. the singular fact that the europeans and hindoos, who belong to the same aryan stock, and speak a language fundamentally the same, differ widely in appearance, whilst europeans differ but little from jews, who belong to the semitic stock, and speak quite another language, has been accounted for by broca ( . 'on anthropology,' translation, 'anthropological review,' jan. , p. .), through certain aryan branches having been largely crossed by indigenous tribes during their wide diffusion. when two races in close contact cross, the first result is a heterogeneous mixture: thus mr. hunter, in describing the santali or hill-tribes of india, says that hundreds of imperceptible gradations may be traced "from the black, squat tribes of the mountains to the tall olive-coloured brahman, with his intellectual brow, calm eyes, and high but narrow head"; so that it is necessary in courts of justice to ask the witnesses whether they are santalis or hindoos. ( . 'the annals of rural bengal,' , p. .) whether a heterogeneous people, such as the inhabitants of some of the polynesian islands, formed by the crossing of two distinct races, with few or no pure members left, would ever become homogeneous, is not known from direct evidence. but as with our domesticated animals, a cross-breed can certainly be fixed and made uniform by careful selection ( . 'the variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. p. .) in the course of a few generations, we may infer that the free intercrossing of a heterogeneous mixture during a long descent would supply the place of selection, and overcome any tendency to reversion; so that the crossed race would ultimately become homogeneous, though it might not partake in an equal degree of the characters of the two parent-races. of all the differences between the races of man, the colour of the skin is the most conspicuous and one of the best marked. it was formerly thought that differences of this kind could be accounted for by long exposure to different climates; but pallas first shewed that this is not tenable, and he has since been followed by almost all anthropologists. ( . pallas, 'act. acad. st. petersburg,' , part ii. p. . he was followed by rudolphi, in his 'beytrage zur anthropologie,' . an excellent summary of the evidence is given by godron, 'de l'espèce,' , vol. ii. p. , etc.) this view has been rejected chiefly because the distribution of the variously coloured races, most of whom must have long inhabited their present homes, does not coincide with corresponding differences of climate. some little weight may be given to such cases as that of the dutch families, who, as we hear on excellent authority ( . sir andrew smith, as quoted by knox, 'races of man,' , p. .), have not undergone the least change of colour after residing for three centuries in south africa. an argument on the same side may likewise be drawn from the uniform appearance in various parts of the world of gipsies and jews, though the uniformity of the latter has been somewhat exaggerated. ( . see de quatrefages on this head, 'revue des cours scientifiques,' oct. , , p. .) a very damp or a very dry atmosphere has been supposed to be more influential in modifying the colour of the skin than mere heat; but as d'orbigny in south america, and livingstone in africa, arrived at diametrically opposite conclusions with respect to dampness and dryness, any conclusion on this head must be considered as very doubtful. ( . livingstone's 'travels and researches in s. africa,' , pp. , . d'orbigny, as quoted by godron, 'de l'espece,' vol. ii. p. .) various facts, which i have given elsewhere, prove that the colour of the skin and hair is sometimes correlated in a surprising manner with a complete immunity from the action of certain vegetable poisons, and from the attacks of certain parasites. hence it occurred to me, that negroes and other dark races might have acquired their dark tints by the darker individuals escaping from the deadly influence of the miasma of their native countries, during a long series of generations. i afterwards found that this same idea had long ago occurred to dr. wells. ( . see a paper read before the royal soc. in , and published in his essays in . i have given an account of dr. wells' views in the historical sketch (p. xvi.) to my 'origin of species.' various cases of colour correlated with constitutional peculiarities are given in my 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. pp. , .) it has long been known that negroes, and even mulattoes, are almost completely exempt from the yellow-fever, so destructive in tropical america. ( . see, for instance, nott and gliddon, 'types of mankind,' p. .) they likewise escape to a large extent the fatal intermittent fevers, that prevail along at least miles of the shores of africa, and which annually cause one-fifth of the white settlers to die, and another fifth to return home invalided. ( . major tulloch, in a paper read before the statistical society, april , , and given in the 'athenaeum,' , p. .) this immunity in the negro seems to be partly inherent, depending on some unknown peculiarity of constitution, and partly the result of acclimatisation. pouchet ( . 'the plurality of the human race' (translat.), , p. .) states that the negro regiments recruited near the soudan, and borrowed from the viceroy of egypt for the mexican war, escaped the yellow-fever almost equally with the negroes originally brought from various parts of africa and accustomed to the climate of the west indies. that acclimatisation plays a part, is shewn by the many cases in which negroes have become somewhat liable to tropical fevers, after having resided for some time in a colder climate. ( . quatrefages, 'unité de l'espèce humaine,' , p. . waitz, 'introduction to anthropology,' translat., vol. i. , p. . livingstone gives analogous cases in his 'travels.') the nature of the climate under which the white races have long resided, likewise has some influence on them; for during the fearful epidemic of yellow fever in demerara during , dr. blair found that the death-rate of the immigrants was proportional to the latitude of the country whence they had come. with the negro the immunity, as far as it is the result of acclimatisation, implies exposure during a prodigious length of time; for the aborigines of tropical america who have resided there from time immemorial, are not exempt from yellow fever; and the rev. h.b. tristram states, that there are districts in northern africa which the native inhabitants are compelled annually to leave, though the negroes can remain with safety. that the immunity of the negro is in any degree correlated with the colour of his skin is a mere conjecture: it may be correlated with some difference in his blood, nervous system, or other tissues. nevertheless, from the facts above alluded to, and from some connection apparently existing between complexion and a tendency to consumption, the conjecture seemed to me not improbable. consequently i endeavoured, with but little success ( . in the spring of i obtained permission from the director-general of the medical department of the army, to transmit to the surgeons of the various regiments on foreign service a blank table, with the following appended remarks, but i have received no returns. "as several well-marked cases have been recorded with our domestic animals of a relation between the colour of the dermal appendages and the constitution; and it being notorious that there is some limited degree of relation between the colour of the races of man and the climate inhabited by them; the following investigation seems worth consideration. namely, whether there is any relation in europeans between the colour of their hair, and their liability to the diseases of tropical countries. if the surgeons of the several regiments, when stationed in unhealthy tropical districts, would be so good as first to count, as a standard of comparison, how many men, in the force whence the sick are drawn, have dark and light-coloured hair, and hair of intermediate or doubtful tints; and if a similar account were kept by the same medical gentlemen, of all the men who suffered from malarious and yellow fevers, or from dysentery, it would soon be apparent, after some thousand cases had been tabulated, whether there exists any relation between the colour of the hair and constitutional liability to tropical diseases. perhaps no such relation would be discovered, but the investigation is well worth making. in case any positive result were obtained, it might be of some practical use in selecting men for any particular service. theoretically the result would be of high interest, as indicating one means by which a race of men inhabiting from a remote period an unhealthy tropical climate, might have become dark-coloured by the better preservation of dark-haired or dark-complexioned individuals during a long succession of generations."), to ascertain how far it holds good. the late dr. daniell, who had long lived on the west coast of africa, told me that he did not believe in any such relation. he was himself unusually fair, and had withstood the climate in a wonderful manner. when he first arrived as a boy on the coast, an old and experienced negro chief predicted from his appearance that this would prove the case. dr. nicholson, of antigua, after having attended to this subject, writes to me that dark-coloured europeans escape the yellow fever more than those that are light-coloured. mr. j.m. harris altogether denies that europeans with dark hair withstand a hot climate better than other men: on the contrary, experience has taught him in making a selection of men for service on the coast of africa, to choose those with red hair. ( . 'anthropological review,' jan. , p. xxi. dr. sharpe also says, with respect to india ('man a special creation,' , p. ), "that it has been noticed by some medical officers that europeans with light hair and florid complexions suffer less from diseases of tropical countries than persons with dark hair and sallow complexions; and, so far as i know, there appear to be good grounds for this remark." on the other hand, mr. heddle, of sierra leone, "who has had more clerks killed under him than any other man," by the climate of the west african coast (w. reade, 'african sketch book,' vol. ii. p. ), holds a directly opposite view, as does capt. burton.) as far, therefore, as these slight indications go, there seems no foundation for the hypothesis, that blackness has resulted from the darker and darker individuals having survived better during long exposure to fever-generating miasma. dr. sharpe remarks ( . 'man a special creation,' , p. .), that a tropical sun, which burns and blisters a white skin, does not injure a black one at all; and, as he adds, this is not due to habit in the individual, for children only six or eight months old are often carried about naked, and are not affected. i have been assured by a medical man, that some years ago during each summer, but not during the winter, his hands became marked with light brown patches, like, although larger than freckles, and that these patches were never affected by sun-burning, whilst the white parts of his skin have on several occasions been much inflamed and blistered. with the lower animals there is, also, a constitutional difference in liability to the action of the sun between those parts of the skin clothed with white hair and other parts. ( . 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. pp. , .) whether the saving of the skin from being thus burnt is of sufficient importance to account for a dark tint having been gradually acquired by man through natural selection, i am unable to judge. if it be so, we should have to assume that the natives of tropical america have lived there for a much shorter time than the negroes in africa, or the papuans in the southern parts of the malay archipelago, just as the lighter-coloured hindoos have resided in india for a shorter time than the darker aborigines of the central and southern parts of the peninsula. although with our present knowledge we cannot account for the differences of colour in the races of man, through any advantage thus gained, or from the direct action of climate; yet we must not quite ignore the latter agency, for there is good reason to believe that some inherited effect is thus produced. ( . see, for instance, quatrefages ('revue des cours scientifiques,' oct. , , p. ) on the effects of residence in abyssinia and arabia, and other analogous cases. dr. rolle ('der mensch, seine abstammung,' etc., , s. ) states, on the authority of khanikof, that the greater number of german families settled in georgia, have acquired in the course of two generations dark hair and eyes. mr. d. forbes informs me that the quichuas in the andes vary greatly in colour, according to the position of the valleys inhabited by them.) we have seen in the second chapter that the conditions of life affect the development of the bodily frame in a direct manner, and that the effects are transmitted. thus, as is generally admitted, the european settlers in the united states undergo a slight but extraordinary rapid change of appearance. their bodies and limbs become elongated; and i hear from col. bernys that during the late war in the united states, good evidence was afforded of this fact by the ridiculous appearance presented by the german regiments, when dressed in ready-made clothes manufactured for the american market, and which were much too long for the men in every way. there is, also, a considerable body of evidence shewing that in the southern states the house-slaves of the third generation present a markedly different appearance from the field-slaves. ( . harlan, 'medical researches,' p. . quatrefages ('unité de l'espèce humaine,' , p. ) has collected much evidence on this head.) if, however, we look to the races of man as distributed over the world, we must infer that their characteristic differences cannot be accounted for by the direct action of different conditions of life, even after exposure to them for an enormous period of time. the esquimaux live exclusively on animal food; they are clothed in thick fur, and are exposed to intense cold and to prolonged darkness; yet they do not differ in any extreme degree from the inhabitants of southern china, who live entirely on vegetable food, and are exposed almost naked to a hot, glaring climate. the unclothed fuegians live on the marine productions of their inhospitable shores; the botocudos of brazil wander about the hot forests of the interior and live chiefly on vegetable productions; yet these tribes resemble each other so closely that the fuegians on board the "beagle" were mistaken by some brazilians for botocudos. the botocudos again, as well as the other inhabitants of tropical america, are wholly different from the negroes who inhabit the opposite shores of the atlantic, are exposed to a nearly similar climate, and follow nearly the same habits of life. nor can the differences between the races of man be accounted for by the inherited effects of the increased or decreased use of parts, except to a quite insignificant degree. men who habitually live in canoes, may have their legs somewhat stunted; those who inhabit lofty regions may have their chests enlarged; and those who constantly use certain sense-organs may have the cavities in which they are lodged somewhat increased in size, and their features consequently a little modified. with civilised nations, the reduced size of the jaws from lessened use--the habitual play of different muscles serving to express different emotions--and the increased size of the brain from greater intellectual activity, have together produced a considerable effect on their general appearance when compared with savages. ( . see prof. schaaffhausen, translat., in 'anthropological review,' oct. , p. .) increased bodily stature, without any corresponding increase in the size of the brain, may (judging from the previously adduced case of rabbits), have given to some races an elongated skull of the dolichocephalic type. lastly, the little-understood principle of correlated development has sometimes come into action, as in the case of great muscular development and strongly projecting supra-orbital ridges. the colour of the skin and hair are plainly correlated, as is the texture of the hair with its colour in the mandans of north america. ( . mr. catlin states ('n. american indians,' rd ed., , vol. i. p. ) that in the whole tribe of the mandans, about one in ten or twelve of the members, of all ages and both sexes, have bright silvery grey hair, which is hereditary. now this hair is as coarse and harsh as that of a horse's mane, whilst the hair of other colours is fine and soft.) the colour also of the skin, and the odour emitted by it, are likewise in some manner connected. with the breeds of sheep the number of hairs within a given space and the number of excretory pores are related. ( . on the odour of the skin, godron, 'sur l'espèce,' tom. ii. p. . on the pores in the skin, dr. wilckens, 'die aufgaben der landwirth. zootechnik,' , s. .) if we may judge from the analogy of our domesticated animals, many modifications of structure in man probably come under this principle of correlated development. we have now seen that the external characteristic differences between the races of man cannot be accounted for in a satisfactory manner by the direct action of the conditions of life, nor by the effects of the continued use of parts, nor through the principle of correlation. we are therefore led to enquire whether slight individual differences, to which man is eminently liable, may not have been preserved and augmented during a long series of generations through natural selection. but here we are at once met by the objection that beneficial variations alone can be thus preserved; and as far as we are enabled to judge, although always liable to err on this head, none of the differences between the races of man are of any direct or special service to him. the intellectual and moral or social faculties must of course be excepted from this remark. the great variability of all the external differences between the races of man, likewise indicates that they cannot be of much importance; for if important, they would long ago have been either fixed and preserved, or eliminated. in this respect man resembles those forms, called by naturalists protean or polymorphic, which have remained extremely variable, owing, as it seems, to such variations being of an indifferent nature, and to their having thus escaped the action of natural selection. we have thus far been baffled in all our attempts to account for the differences between the races of man; but there remains one important agency, namely sexual selection, which appears to have acted powerfully on man, as on many other animals. i do not intend to assert that sexual selection will account for all the differences between the races. an unexplained residuum is left, about which we can only say, in our ignorance, that as individuals are continually born with, for instance, heads a little rounder or narrower, and with noses a little longer or shorter, such slight differences might become fixed and uniform, if the unknown agencies which induced them were to act in a more constant manner, aided by long-continued intercrossing. such variations come under the provisional class, alluded to in our second chapter, which for want of a better term are often called spontaneous. nor do i pretend that the effects of sexual selection can be indicated with scientific precision; but it can be shewn that it would be an inexplicable fact if man had not been modified by this agency, which appears to have acted powerfully on innumerable animals. it can further be shewn that the differences between the races of man, as in colour, hairiness, form of features, etc., are of a kind which might have been expected to come under the influence of sexual selection. but in order to treat this subject properly, i have found it necessary to pass the whole animal kingdom in review. i have therefore devoted to it the second part of this work. at the close i shall return to man, and, after attempting to shew how far he has been modified through sexual selection, will give a brief summary of the chapters in this first part. note on the resemblances and differences in the structure and the development of the brain in man and apes by professor huxley, f.r.s. the controversy respecting the nature and the extent of the differences in the structure of the brain in man and the apes, which arose some fifteen years ago, has not yet come to an end, though the subject matter of the dispute is, at present, totally different from what it was formerly. it was originally asserted and re-asserted, with singular pertinacity, that the brain of all the apes, even the highest, differs from that of man, in the absence of such conspicuous structures as the posterior lobes of the cerebral hemispheres, with the posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle and the hippocampus minor, contained in those lobes, which are so obvious in man. but the truth that the three structures in question are as well developed in apes' as in human brains, or even better; and that it is characteristic of all the primates (if we exclude the lemurs) to have these parts well developed, stands at present on as secure a basis as any proposition in comparative anatomy. moreover, it is admitted by every one of the long series of anatomists who, of late years, have paid special attention to the arrangement of the complicated sulci and gyri which appear upon the surface of the cerebral hemispheres in man and the higher apes, that they are disposed after the very same pattern in him, as in them. every principal gyrus and sulcus of a chimpanzee's brain is clearly represented in that of a man, so that the terminology which applies to the one answers for the other. on this point there is no difference of opinion. some years since, professor bischoff published a memoir ( . 'die grosshirn-windungen des menschen;' 'abhandlungen der k. bayerischen akademie,' b. x. .) on the cerebral convolutions of man and apes; and as the purpose of my learned colleague was certainly not to diminish the value of the differences between apes and men in this respect, i am glad to make a citation from him. "that the apes, and especially the orang, chimpanzee and gorilla, come very close to man in their organisation, much nearer than to any other animal, is a well known fact, disputed by nobody. looking at the matter from the point of view of organisation alone, no one probably would ever have disputed the view of linnaeus, that man should be placed, merely as a peculiar species, at the head of the mammalia and of those apes. both shew, in all their organs, so close an affinity, that the most exact anatomical investigation is needed in order to demonstrate those differences which really exist. so it is with the brains. the brains of man, the orang, the chimpanzee, the gorilla, in spite of all the important differences which they present, come very close to one another" (loc. cit. p. ). there remains, then, no dispute as to the resemblance in fundamental characters, between the ape's brain and man's: nor any as to the wonderfully close similarity between the chimpanzee, orang and man, in even the details of the arrangement of the gyri and sulci of the cerebral hemispheres. nor, turning to the differences between the brains of the highest apes and that of man, is there any serious question as to the nature and extent of these differences. it is admitted that the man's cerebral hemispheres are absolutely and relatively larger than those of the orang and chimpanzee; that his frontal lobes are less excavated by the upward protrusion of the roof of the orbits; that his gyri and sulci are, as a rule, less symmetrically disposed, and present a greater number of secondary plications. and it is admitted that, as a rule, in man, the temporo-occipital or "external perpendicular" fissure, which is usually so strongly marked a feature of the ape's brain is but faintly marked. but it is also clear, that none of these differences constitutes a sharp demarcation between the man's and the ape's brain. in respect to the external perpendicular fissure of gratiolet, in the human brain for instance, professor turner remarks: ( . 'convolutions of the human cerebrum topographically considered,' , p. .) "in some brains it appears simply as an indentation of the margin of the hemisphere, but, in others, it extends for some distance more or less transversely outwards. i saw it in the right hemisphere of a female brain pass more than two inches outwards; and on another specimen, also the right hemisphere, it proceeded for four-tenths of an inch outwards, and then extended downwards, as far as the lower margin of the outer surface of the hemisphere. the imperfect definition of this fissure in the majority of human brains, as compared with its remarkable distinctness in the brain of most quadrumana, is owing to the presence, in the former, of certain superficial, well marked, secondary convolutions which bridge it over and connect the parietal with the occipital lobe. the closer the first of these bridging gyri lies to the longitudinal fissure, the shorter is the external parieto-occipital fissure" (loc. cit. p. ). the obliteration of the external perpendicular fissure of gratiolet, therefore, is not a constant character of the human brain. on the other hand, its full development is not a constant character of the higher ape's brain. for, in the chimpanzee, the more or less extensive obliteration of the external perpendicular sulcus by "bridging convolutions," on one side or the other, has been noted over and over again by prof. rolleston, mr. marshall, m. broca and professor turner. at the conclusion of a special paper on this subject the latter writes: ( . notes more especially on the bridging convolutions in the brain of the chimpanzee, 'proceedings of the royal society of edinburgh,' - .) "the three specimens of the brain of a chimpanzee, just described, prove, that the generalisation which gratiolet has attempted to draw of the complete absence of the first connecting convolution and the concealment of the second, as essentially characteristic features in the brain of this animal, is by no means universally applicable. in only one specimen did the brain, in these particulars, follow the law which gratiolet has expressed. as regards the presence of the superior bridging convolution, i am inclined to think that it has existed in one hemisphere, at least, in a majority of the brains of this animal which have, up to this time, been figured or described. the superficial position of the second bridging convolution is evidently less frequent, and has as yet, i believe, only been seen in the brain (a) recorded in this communication. the asymmetrical arrangement in the convolutions of the two hemispheres, which previous observers have referred to in their descriptions, is also well illustrated in these specimens" (pp. , ). even were the presence of the temporo-occipital, or external perpendicular, sulcus, a mark of distinction between the higher apes and man, the value of such a distinctive character would be rendered very doubtful by the structure of the brain in the platyrrhine apes. in fact, while the temporo-occipital is one of the most constant of sulci in the catarrhine, or old world, apes, it is never very strongly developed in the new world apes; it is absent in the smaller platyrrhini; rudimentary in pithecia ( . flower, 'on the anatomy of pithecia monachus,' 'proceedings of the zoological society,' .); and more or less obliterated by bridging convolutions in ateles. a character which is thus variable within the limits of a single group can have no great taxonomic value. it is further established, that the degree of asymmetry of the convolution of the two sides in the human brain is subject to much individual variation; and that, in those individuals of the bushman race who have been examined, the gyri and sulci of the two hemispheres are considerably less complicated and more symmetrical than in the european brain, while, in some individuals of the chimpanzee, their complexity and asymmetry become notable. this is particularly the case in the brain of a young male chimpanzee figured by m. broca. ('l'ordre des primates,' p. , fig. .) again, as respects the question of absolute size, it is established that the difference between the largest and the smallest healthy human brain is greater than the difference between the smallest healthy human brain and the largest chimpanzee's or orang's brain. moreover, there is one circumstance in which the orang's and chimpanzee's brains resemble man's, but in which they differ from the lower apes, and that is the presence of two corpora candicantia--the cynomorpha having but one. in view of these facts i do not hesitate in this year , to repeat and insist upon the proposition which i enunciated in : ( . 'man's place in nature,' p. .) "so far as cerebral structure goes, therefore, it is clear that man differs less from the chimpanzee or the orang, than these do even from the monkeys, and that the difference between the brain of the chimpanzee and of man is almost insignificant when compared with that between the chimpanzee brain and that of a lemur." in the paper to which i have referred, professor bischoff does not deny the second part of this statement, but he first makes the irrelevant remark that it is not wonderful if the brains of an orang and a lemur are very different; and secondly, goes on to assert that, "if we successively compare the brain of a man with that of an orang; the brain of this with that of a chimpanzee; of this with that of a gorilla, and so on of a hylobates, semnopithecus, cynocephalus, cercopithecus, macacus, cebus, callithrix, lemur, stenops, hapale, we shall not meet with a greater, or even as great a, break in the degree of development of the convolutions, as we find between the brain of a man and that of an orang or chimpanzee." to which i reply, firstly, that whether this assertion be true or false, it has nothing whatever to do with the proposition enunciated in 'man's place in nature,' which refers not to the development of the convolutions alone, but to the structure of the whole brain. if professor bischoff had taken the trouble to refer to p. of the work he criticises, in fact, he would have found the following passage: "and it is a remarkable circumstance that though, so far as our present knowledge extends, there is one true structural break in the series of forms of simian brains, this hiatus does not lie between man and the manlike apes, but between the lower and the lowest simians, or in other words, between the old and new world apes and monkeys and the lemurs. every lemur which has yet been examined, in fact, has its cerebellum partially visible from above; and its posterior lobe, with the contained posterior cornu and hippocampus minor, more or less rudimentary. every marmoset, american monkey, old world monkey, baboon or manlike ape, on the contrary, has its cerebellum entirely hidden, posteriorly, by the cerebral lobes, and possesses a large posterior cornu with a well-developed hippocampus minor." this statement was a strictly accurate account of what was known when it was made; and it does not appear to me to be more than apparently weakened by the subsequent discovery of the relatively small development of the posterior lobes in the siamang and in the howling monkey. notwithstanding the exceptional brevity of the posterior lobes in these two species, no one will pretend that their brains, in the slightest degree, approach those of the lemurs. and if, instead of putting hapale out of its natural place, as professor bischoff most unaccountably does, we write the series of animals he has chosen to mention as follows: homo, pithecus, troglodytes, hylobates, semnopithecus, cynocephalus, cercopithecus, macacus, cebus, callithrix, hapale, lemur, stenops, i venture to reaffirm that the great break in this series lies between hapale and lemur, and that this break is considerably greater than that between any other two terms of that series. professor bischoff ignores the fact that long before he wrote, gratiolet had suggested the separation of the lemurs from the other primates on the very ground of the difference in their cerebral characters; and that professor flower had made the following observations in the course of his description of the brain of the javan loris: ( . 'transactions of the zoological society,' vol. v. .) "and it is especially remarkable that, in the development of the posterior lobes, there is no approximation to the lemurine, short hemisphered brain, in those monkeys which are commonly supposed to approach this family in other respects, viz. the lower members of the platyrrhine group." so far as the structure of the adult brain is concerned, then, the very considerable additions to our knowledge, which have been made by the researches of so many investigators, during the past ten years, fully justify the statement which i made in . but it has been said, that, admitting the similarity between the adult brains of man and apes, they are nevertheless, in reality, widely different, because they exhibit fundamental differences in the mode of their development. no one would be more ready than i to admit the force of this argument, if such fundamental differences of development really exist. but i deny that they do exist. on the contrary, there is a fundamental agreement in the development of the brain in men and apes. gratiolet originated the statement that there is a fundamental difference in the development of the brains of apes and that of man--consisting in this; that, in the apes, the sulci which first make their appearance are situated on the posterior region of the cerebral hemispheres, while, in the human foetus, the sulci first become visible on the frontal lobes. ( . chez tous les singes, les plis postérieurs se developpent les premiers; les plis antérieurs se developpent plus tard, aussi la vertèbre occipitale et la parietale sont-elles relativement tres-grandes chez le foetus. l'homme présente une exception remarquable quant a l'époque de l'apparition des plis frontaux, qui sont les premiers indiqués; mais le développement general du lobe frontal, envisagé seulement par rapport a son volume, suit les mêmes lois que dans les singes: gratiolet, 'mémoire sur les plis cérèbres de l'homme et des primateaux,' p. , tab. iv, fig. .) this general statement is based upon two observations, the one of a gibbon almost ready to be born, in which the posterior gyri were "well developed," while those of the frontal lobes were "hardly indicated" ( . gratiolet's words are (loc. cit. p. ): "dans le foetus dont il s'agit les plis cérébraux posterieurs sont bien developpés, tandis que les plis du lobe frontal sont a peine indiqués." the figure, however (pl. iv, fig. ), shews the fissure of rolando, and one of the frontal sulci plainly enough. nevertheless, m. alix, in his 'notice sur les travaux anthropologiques de gratiolet' ('mem. de la societé d'anthropologie de paris,' , page ), writes thus: "gratiolet a eu entre les mains le cerveau d'un foetus de gibbon, singe eminemment supérieur, et tellement rapproché de l'orang, que des naturalistes tres-compétents l'ont rangé parmi les anthropoides. m. huxley, par exemple, n'hesite pas sur ce point. eh bien, c'est sur le cerveau d'un foetus de gibbon que gratiolet a vu les circonvolutions du lobe temporo-sphenoidal d�j� developp�es lorsqu'il n'existent pas encore de plis sur le lobe frontal. il etait donc bien autorisé a dire que, chez l'homme les circonvolutions apparaissent d'a en w, tandis que chez les singes elles se developpent d'w en a."), and the other of a human foetus at the nd or rd week of uterogestation, in which gratiolet notes that the insula was uncovered, but that nevertheless "des incisures sement de lobe anterieur, une scissure peu profonde indique la separation du lobe occipital, tres-reduit, d'ailleurs dès cette époque. le reste de la surface cérébrale est encore absolument lisse." three views of this brain are given in plate ii, figs. , , , of the work cited, shewing the upper, lateral and inferior views of the hemispheres, but not the inner view. it is worthy of note that the figure by no means bears out gratiolet's description, inasmuch as the fissure (antero-temporal) on the posterior half of the face of the hemisphere is more marked than any of those vaguely indicated in the anterior half. if the figure is correct, it in no way justifies gratiolet's conclusion: "il y a donc entre ces cerveaux [those of a callithrix and of a gibbon] et celui du foetus humain une différence fondamental. chez celui-ci, longtemps avant que les plis temporaux apparaissent, les plis frontaux, essayent d'exister." since gratiolet's time, however, the development of the gyri and sulci of the brain has been made the subject of renewed investigation by schmidt, bischoff, pansch ( . 'ueber die typische anordnung der furchen und windungen auf den grosshirn-hemisphären des menschen und der affen,' 'archiv für anthropologie,' iii. .), and more particularly by ecker ( . 'zur entwicklungs geschichte der furchen und windungen der grosshirn-hemisphären im foetus des menschen,' 'archiv für anthropologie,' iii. .), whose work is not only the latest, but by far the most complete, memoir on the subject. the final results of their inquiries may be summed up as follows:-- . in the human foetus, the sylvian fissure is formed in the course of the third month of uterogestation. in this, and in the fourth month, the cerebral hemispheres are smooth and rounded (with the exception of the sylvian depression), and they project backwards far beyond the cerebellum. . the sulci, properly so called, begin to appear in the interval between the end of the fourth and the beginning of the sixth month of foetal life, but ecker is careful to point out that, not only the time, but the order, of their appearance is subject to considerable individual variation. in no case, however, are either the frontal or the temporal sulci the earliest. the first which appears, in fact, lies on the inner face of the hemisphere (whence doubtless gratiolet, who does not seem to have examined that face in his foetus, overlooked it), and is either the internal perpendicular (occipito-parietal), or the calcarine sulcus, these two being close together and eventually running into one another. as a rule the occipito-parietal is the earlier of the two. . at the latter part of this period, another sulcus, the "posterio-parietal," or "fissure of rolando" is developed, and it is followed, in the course of the sixth month, by the other principal sulci of the frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital lobes. there is, however, no clear evidence that one of these constantly appears before the other; and it is remarkable that, in the brain at the period described and figured by ecker (loc. cit. pp. - , taf. ii, figs. , , , ), the antero-temporal sulcus (scissure parallele) so characteristic of the ape's brain, is as well, if not better developed than the fissure of rolando, and is much more marked than the proper frontal sulci. taking the facts as they now stand, it appears to me that the order of the appearance of the sulci and gyri in the foetal human brain is in perfect harmony with the general doctrine of evolution, and with the view that man has been evolved from some ape-like form; though there can be no doubt that form was, in many respects, different from any member of the primates now living. von baer taught us, half a century ago, that, in the course of their development, allied animals put on at first, the characters of the greater groups to which they belong, and, by degrees, assume those which restrict them within the limits of their family, genus, and species; and he proved, at the same time, that no developmental stage of a higher animal is precisely similar to the adult condition of any lower animal. it is quite correct to say that a frog passes through the condition of a fish, inasmuch as at one period of its life the tadpole has all the characters of a fish, and if it went no further, would have to be grouped among fishes. but it is equally true that a tadpole is very different from any known fish. in like manner, the brain of a human foetus, at the fifth month, may correctly be said to be, not only the brain of an ape, but that of an arctopithecine or marmoset-like ape; for its hemispheres, with their great posterior lobster, and with no sulci but the sylvian and the calcarine, present the characteristics found only in the group of the arctopithecine primates. but it is equally true, as gratiolet remarks, that, in its widely open sylvian fissure, it differs from the brain of any actual marmoset. no doubt it would be much more similar to the brain of an advanced foetus of a marmoset. but we know nothing whatever of the development of the brain in the marmosets. in the platyrrhini proper, the only observation with which i am acquainted is due to pansch, who found in the brain of a foetal cebus apella, in addition to the sylvian fissure and the deep calcarine fissure, only a very shallow antero-temporal fissure (scissure parallele of gratiolet). now this fact, taken together with the circumstance that the antero-temporal sulcus is present in such platyrrhini as the saimiri, which present mere traces of sulci on the anterior half of the exterior of the cerebral hemispheres, or none at all, undoubtedly, so far as it goes, affords fair evidence in favour of gratiolet's hypothesis, that the posterior sulci appear before the anterior, in the brains of the platyrrhini. but, it by no means follows, that the rule which may hold good for the platyrrhini extends to the catarrhini. we have no information whatever respecting the development of the brain in the cynomorpha; and, as regards the anthropomorpha, nothing but the account of the brain of the gibbon, near birth, already referred to. at the present moment there is not a shadow of evidence to shew that the sulci of a chimpanzee's, or orang's, brain do not appear in the same order as a man's. gratiolet opens his preface with the aphorism: "il est dangereux dans les sciences de conclure trop vite." i fear he must have forgotten this sound maxim by the time he had reached the discussion of the differences between men and apes, in the body of his work. no doubt, the excellent author of one of the most remarkable contributions to the just understanding of the mammalian brain which has ever been made, would have been the first to admit the insufficiency of his data had he lived to profit by the advance of inquiry. the misfortune is that his conclusions have been employed by persons incompetent to appreciate their foundation, as arguments in favour of obscurantism. ( . for example, m. l'abbe lecomte in his terrible pamphlet, 'le darwinisme et l'origine de l'homme,' .) but it is important to remark that, whether gratiolet was right or wrong in his hypothesis respecting the relative order of appearance of the temporal and frontal sulci, the fact remains; that before either temporal or frontal sulci, appear, the foetal brain of man presents characters which are found only in the lowest group of the primates (leaving out the lemurs); and that this is exactly what we should expect to be the case, if man has resulted from the gradual modification of the same form as that from which the other primates have sprung. part ii. sexual selection. chapter viii. principles of sexual selection. secondary sexual characters--sexual selection--manner of action--excess of males--polygamy--the male alone generally modified through sexual selection--eagerness of the male--variability of the male--choice exerted by the female--sexual compared with natural selection--inheritance, at corresponding periods of life, at corresponding seasons of the year, and as limited by sex--relations between the several forms of inheritance--causes why one sex and the young are not modified through sexual selection--supplement on the proportional numbers of the two sexes throughout the animal kingdom--the proportion of the sexes in relation to natural selection. with animals which have their sexes separated, the males necessarily differ from the females in their organs of reproduction; and these are the primary sexual characters. but the sexes often differ in what hunter has called secondary sexual characters, which are not directly connected with the act of reproduction; for instance, the male possesses certain organs of sense or locomotion, of which the female is quite destitute, or has them more highly-developed, in order that he may readily find or reach her; or again the male has special organs of prehension for holding her securely. these latter organs, of infinitely diversified kinds, graduate into those which are commonly ranked as primary, and in some cases can hardly be distinguished from them; we see instances of this in the complex appendages at the apex of the abdomen in male insects. unless indeed we confine the term "primary" to the reproductive glands, it is scarcely possible to decide which ought to be called primary and which secondary. the female often differs from the male in having organs for the nourishment or protection of her young, such as the mammary glands of mammals, and the abdominal sacks of the marsupials. in some few cases also the male possesses similar organs, which are wanting in the female, such as the receptacles for the ova in certain male fishes, and those temporarily developed in certain male frogs. the females of most bees are provided with a special apparatus for collecting and carrying pollen, and their ovipositor is modified into a sting for the defence of the larvae and the community. many similar cases could be given, but they do not here concern us. there are, however, other sexual differences quite unconnected with the primary reproductive organs, and it is with these that we are more especially concerned--such as the greater size, strength, and pugnacity of the male, his weapons of offence or means of defence against rivals, his gaudy colouring and various ornaments, his power of song, and other such characters. besides the primary and secondary sexual differences, such as the foregoing, the males and females of some animals differ in structures related to different habits of life, and not at all, or only indirectly, to the reproductive functions. thus the females of certain flies (culicidae and tabanidae) are blood-suckers, whilst the males, living on flowers, have mouths destitute of mandibles. ( . westwood, 'modern classification of insects,' vol. ii. , p. . for the statement about tanais, mentioned below, i am indebted to fritz muller.) the males of certain moths and of some crustaceans (e.g. tanais) have imperfect, closed mouths, and cannot feed. the complemental males of certain cirripedes live like epiphytic plants either on the female or the hermaphrodite form, and are destitute of a mouth and of prehensile limbs. in these cases it is the male which has been modified, and has lost certain important organs, which the females possess. in other cases it is the female which has lost such parts; for instance, the female glow-worm is destitute of wings, as also are many female moths, some of which never leave their cocoons. many female parasitic crustaceans have lost their natatory legs. in some weevil-beetles (curculionidae) there is a great difference between the male and female in the length of the rostrum or snout ( . kirby and spence, 'introduction to entomology,' vol. iii. , p. .); but the meaning of this and of many analogous differences, is not at all understood. differences of structure between the two sexes in relation to different habits of life are generally confined to the lower animals; but with some few birds the beak of the male differs from that of the female. in the huia of new zealand the difference is wonderfully great, and we hear from dr. buller ( . 'birds of new zealand,' , p. .) that the male uses his strong beak in chiselling the larvae of insects out of decayed wood, whilst the female probes the softer parts with her far longer, much curved and pliant beak: and thus they mutually aid each other. in most cases, differences of structure between the sexes are more or less directly connected with the propagation of the species: thus a female, which has to nourish a multitude of ova, requires more food than the male, and consequently requires special means for procuring it. a male animal, which lives for a very short time, might lose its organs for procuring food through disuse, without detriment; but he would retain his locomotive organs in a perfect state, so that he might reach the female. the female, on the other hand, might safely lose her organs for flying, swimming, or walking, if she gradually acquired habits which rendered such powers useless. we are, however, here concerned only with sexual selection. this depends on the advantage which certain individuals have over others of the same sex and species solely in respect of reproduction. when, as in the cases above mentioned, the two sexes differ in structure in relation to different habits of life, they have no doubt been modified through natural selection, and by inheritance limited to one and the same sex. so again the primary sexual organs, and those for nourishing or protecting the young, come under the same influence; for those individuals which generated or nourished their offspring best, would leave, ceteris paribus, the greatest number to inherit their superiority; whilst those which generated or nourished their offspring badly, would leave but few to inherit their weaker powers. as the male has to find the female, he requires organs of sense and locomotion, but if these organs are necessary for the other purposes of life, as is generally the case, they will have been developed through natural selection. when the male has found the female, he sometimes absolutely requires prehensile organs to hold her; thus dr. wallace informs me that the males of certain moths cannot unite with the females if their tarsi or feet are broken. the males of many oceanic crustaceans, when adult, have their legs and antennae modified in an extraordinary manner for the prehension of the female; hence we may suspect that it is because these animals are washed about by the waves of the open sea, that they require these organs in order to propagate their kind, and if so, their development has been the result of ordinary or natural selection. some animals extremely low in the scale have been modified for this same purpose; thus the males of certain parasitic worms, when fully grown, have the lower surface of the terminal part of their bodies roughened like a rasp, and with this they coil round and permanently hold the females. ( . m. perrier advances this case ('revue scientifique,' feb. , , p. ) as one fatal to the belief in sexual election, inasmuch as he supposes that i attribute all the differences between the sexes to sexual selection. this distinguished naturalist, therefore, like so many other frenchmen, has not taken the trouble to understand even the first principles of sexual selection. an english naturalist insists that the claspers of certain male animals could not have been developed through the choice of the female! had i not met with this remark, i should not have thought it possible for any one to have read this chapter and to have imagined that i maintain that the choice of the female had anything to do with the development of the prehensile organs in the male.) when the two sexes follow exactly the same habits of life, and the male has the sensory or locomotive organs more highly developed than those of the female, it may be that the perfection of these is indispensable to the male for finding the female; but in the vast majority of cases, they serve only to give one male an advantage over another, for with sufficient time, the less well-endowed males would succeed in pairing with the females; and judging from the structure of the female, they would be in all other respects equally well adapted for their ordinary habits of life. since in such cases the males have acquired their present structure, not from being better fitted to survive in the struggle for existence, but from having gained an advantage over other males, and from having transmitted this advantage to their male offspring alone, sexual selection must here have come into action. it was the importance of this distinction which led me to designate this form of selection as sexual selection. so again, if the chief service rendered to the male by his prehensile organs is to prevent the escape of the female before the arrival of other males, or when assaulted by them, these organs will have been perfected through sexual selection, that is by the advantage acquired by certain individuals over their rivals. but in most cases of this kind it is impossible to distinguish between the effects of natural and sexual selection. whole chapters could be filled with details on the differences between the sexes in their sensory, locomotive, and prehensile organs. as, however, these structures are not more interesting than others adapted for the ordinary purposes of life i shall pass them over almost entirely, giving only a few instances under each class. there are many other structures and instincts which must have been developed through sexual selection--such as the weapons of offence and the means of defence of the males for fighting with and driving away their rivals--their courage and pugnacity--their various ornaments--their contrivances for producing vocal or instrumental music--and their glands for emitting odours, most of these latter structures serving only to allure or excite the female. it is clear that these characters are the result of sexual and not of ordinary selection, since unarmed, unornamented, or unattractive males would succeed equally well in the battle for life and in leaving a numerous progeny, but for the presence of better endowed males. we may infer that this would be the case, because the females, which are unarmed and unornamented, are able to survive and procreate their kind. secondary sexual characters of the kind just referred to, will be fully discussed in the following chapters, as being in many respects interesting, but especially as depending on the will, choice, and rivalry of the individuals of either sex. when we behold two males fighting for the possession of the female, or several male birds displaying their gorgeous plumage, and performing strange antics before an assembled body of females, we cannot doubt that, though led by instinct, they know what they are about, and consciously exert their mental and bodily powers. just as man can improve the breeds of his game-cocks by the selection of those birds which are victorious in the cockpit, so it appears that the strongest and most vigorous males, or those provided with the best weapons, have prevailed under nature, and have led to the improvement of the natural breed or species. a slight degree of variability leading to some advantage, however slight, in reiterated deadly contests would suffice for the work of sexual selection; and it is certain that secondary sexual characters are eminently variable. just as man can give beauty, according to his standard of taste, to his male poultry, or more strictly can modify the beauty originally acquired by the parent species, can give to the sebright bantam a new and elegant plumage, an erect and peculiar carriage--so it appears that female birds in a state of nature, have by a long selection of the more attractive males, added to their beauty or other attractive qualities. no doubt this implies powers of discrimination and taste on the part of the female which will at first appear extremely improbable; but by the facts to be adduced hereafter, i hope to be able to shew that the females actually have these powers. when, however, it is said that the lower animals have a sense of beauty, it must not be supposed that such sense is comparable with that of a cultivated man, with his multiform and complex associated ideas. a more just comparison would be between the taste for the beautiful in animals, and that in the lowest savages, who admire and deck themselves with any brilliant, glittering, or curious object. from our ignorance on several points, the precise manner in which sexual selection acts is somewhat uncertain. nevertheless if those naturalists who already believe in the mutability of species, will read the following chapters, they will, i think, agree with me, that sexual selection has played an important part in the history of the organic world. it is certain that amongst almost all animals there is a struggle between the males for the possession of the female. this fact is so notorious that it would be superfluous to give instances. hence the females have the opportunity of selecting one out of several males, on the supposition that their mental capacity suffices for the exertion of a choice. in many cases special circumstances tend to make the struggle between the males particularly severe. thus the males of our migratory birds generally arrive at their places of breeding before the females, so that many males are ready to contend for each female. i am informed by mr. jenner weir, that the bird-catchers assert that this is invariably the case with the nightingale and blackcap, and with respect to the latter he can himself confirm the statement. mr. swaysland of brighton has been in the habit, during the last forty years, of catching our migratory birds on their first arrival, and he has never known the females of any species to arrive before their males. during one spring he shot thirty-nine males of ray's wagtail (budytes raii) before he saw a single female. mr. gould has ascertained by the dissection of those snipes which arrive the first in this country, that the males come before the females. and the like holds good with most of the migratory birds of the united states. ( . j.a. allen, on the 'mammals and winter birds of florida,' bulletin of comparative zoology, harvard college, p. .) the majority of the male salmon in our rivers, on coming up from the sea, are ready to breed before the females. so it appears to be with frogs and toads. throughout the great class of insects the males almost always are the first to emerge from the pupal state, so that they generally abound for a time before any females can be seen. ( . even with those plants in which the sexes are separate, the male flowers are generally mature before the female. as first shewn by c.k. sprengel, many hermaphrodite plants are dichogamous; that is, their male and female organs are not ready at the same time, so that they cannot be self-fertilised. now in such flowers, the pollen is in general matured before the stigma, though there are exceptional cases in which the female organs are beforehand.) the cause of this difference between the males and females in their periods of arrival and maturity is sufficiently obvious. those males which annually first migrated into any country, or which in the spring were first ready to breed, or were the most eager, would leave the largest number of offspring; and these would tend to inherit similar instincts and constitutions. it must be borne in mind that it would have been impossible to change very materially the time of sexual maturity in the females, without at the same time interfering with the period of the production of the young--a period which must be determined by the seasons of the year. on the whole there can be no doubt that with almost all animals, in which the sexes are separate, there is a constantly recurrent struggle between the males for the possession of the females. our difficulty in regard to sexual selection lies in understanding how it is that the males which conquer other males, or those which prove the most attractive to the females, leave a greater number of offspring to inherit their superiority than their beaten and less attractive rivals. unless this result does follow, the characters which give to certain males an advantage over others, could not be perfected and augmented through sexual selection. when the sexes exist in exactly equal numbers, the worst-endowed males will (except where polygamy prevails), ultimately find females, and leave as many offspring, as well fitted for their general habits of life, as the best-endowed males. from various facts and considerations, i formerly inferred that with most animals, in which secondary sexual characters are well developed, the males considerably exceeded the females in number; but this is not by any means always true. if the males were to the females as two to one, or as three to two, or even in a somewhat lower ratio, the whole affair would be simple; for the better-armed or more attractive males would leave the largest number of offspring. but after investigating, as far as possible, the numerical proportion of the sexes, i do not believe that any great inequality in number commonly exists. in most cases sexual selection appears to have been effective in the following manner. let us take any species, a bird for instance, and divide the females inhabiting a district into two equal bodies, the one consisting of the more vigorous and better-nourished individuals, and the other of the less vigorous and healthy. the former, there can be little doubt, would be ready to breed in the spring before the others; and this is the opinion of mr. jenner weir, who has carefully attended to the habits of birds during many years. there can also be no doubt that the most vigorous, best-nourished and earliest breeders would on an average succeed in rearing the largest number of fine offspring. ( . here is excellent evidence on the character of the offspring from an experienced ornithologist. mr. j.a. allen, in speaking ('mammals and winter birds of e. florida,' p. ) of the later broods, after the accidental destruction of the first, says, that these "are found to be smaller and paler-coloured than those hatched earlier in the season. in cases where several broods are reared each year, as a general rule the birds of the earlier broods seem in all respects the most perfect and vigorous.") the males, as we have seen, are generally ready to breed before the females; the strongest, and with some species the best armed of the males, drive away the weaker; and the former would then unite with the more vigorous and better-nourished females, because they are the first to breed. ( . hermann müller has come to this same conclusion with respect to those female bees which are the first to emerge from the pupa each year. see his remarkable essay, 'anwendung der darwin'schen lehre auf bienen,' 'verh. d. v. jahrg.' xxix. p. .) such vigorous pairs would surely rear a larger number of offspring than the retarded females, which would be compelled to unite with the conquered and less powerful males, supposing the sexes to be numerically equal; and this is all that is wanted to add, in the course of successive generations, to the size, strength and courage of the males, or to improve their weapons. but in very many cases the males which conquer their rivals, do not obtain possession of the females, independently of the choice of the latter. the courtship of animals is by no means so simple and short an affair as might be thought. the females are most excited by, or prefer pairing with, the more ornamented males, or those which are the best songsters, or play the best antics; but it is obviously probable that they would at the same time prefer the more vigorous and lively males, and this has in some cases been confirmed by actual observation. ( . with respect to poultry, i have received information, hereafter to be given, to this effect. even with birds, such as pigeons, which pair for life, the female, as i hear from mr. jenner weir, will desert her mate if he is injured or grows weak.) thus the more vigorous females, which are the first to breed, will have the choice of many males; and though they may not always select the strongest or best armed, they will select those which are vigorous and well armed, and in other respects the most attractive. both sexes, therefore, of such early pairs would as above explained, have an advantage over others in rearing offspring; and this apparently has sufficed during a long course of generations to add not only to the strength and fighting powers of the males, but likewise to their various ornaments or other attractions. in the converse and much rarer case of the males selecting particular females, it is plain that those which were the most vigorous and had conquered others, would have the freest choice; and it is almost certain that they would select vigorous as well as attractive females. such pairs would have an advantage in rearing offspring, more especially if the male had the power to defend the female during the pairing-season as occurs with some of the higher animals, or aided her in providing for the young. the same principles would apply if each sex preferred and selected certain individuals of the opposite sex; supposing that they selected not only the more attractive, but likewise the more vigorous individuals. numerical proportion of the two sexes. i have remarked that sexual selection would be a simple affair if the males were considerably more numerous than the females. hence i was led to investigate, as far as i could, the proportions between the two sexes of as many animals as possible; but the materials are scanty. i will here give only a brief abstract of the results, retaining the details for a supplementary discussion, so as not to interfere with the course of my argument. domesticated animals alone afford the means of ascertaining the proportional numbers at birth; but no records have been specially kept for this purpose. by indirect means, however, i have collected a considerable body of statistics, from which it appears that with most of our domestic animals the sexes are nearly equal at birth. thus , births of race-horses have been recorded during twenty-one years, and the male births were to the female births as . to . in greyhounds the inequality is greater than with any other animal, for out of births during twelve years, the male births were to the female as . to . it is, however, in some degree doubtful whether it is safe to infer that the proportion would be the same under natural conditions as under domestication; for slight and unknown differences in the conditions affect the proportion of the sexes. thus with mankind, the male births in england are as . , in russia as . , and with the jews of livonia as , to female births. but i shall recur to this curious point of the excess of male births in the supplement to this chapter. at the cape of good hope, however, male children of european extraction have been born during several years in the proportion of between and to female children. for our present purpose we are concerned with the proportions of the sexes, not only at birth, but also at maturity, and this adds another element of doubt; for it is a well-ascertained fact that with man the number of males dying before or during birth, and during the first two years of infancy, is considerably larger than that of females. so it almost certainly is with male lambs, and probably with some other animals. the males of some species kill one another by fighting; or they drive one another about until they become greatly emaciated. they must also be often exposed to various dangers, whilst wandering about in eager search for the females. in many kinds of fish the males are much smaller than the females, and they are believed often to be devoured by the latter, or by other fishes. the females of some birds appear to die earlier than the males; they are also liable to be destroyed on their nests, or whilst in charge of their young. with insects the female larvae are often larger than those of the males, and would consequently be more likely to be devoured. in some cases the mature females are less active and less rapid in their movements than the males, and could not escape so well from danger. hence, with animals in a state of nature, we must rely on mere estimation, in order to judge of the proportions of the sexes at maturity; and this is but little trustworthy, except when the inequality is strongly marked. nevertheless, as far as a judgment can be formed, we may conclude from the facts given in the supplement, that the males of some few mammals, of many birds, of some fish and insects, are considerably more numerous than the females. the proportion between the sexes fluctuates slightly during successive years: thus with race-horses, for every mares born the stallions varied from . in one year to . in another year, and with greyhounds from . to . . but had larger numbers been tabulated throughout an area more extensive than england, these fluctuations would probably have disappeared; and such as they are, would hardly suffice to lead to effective sexual selection in a state of nature. nevertheless, in the cases of some few wild animals, as shewn in the supplement, the proportions seem to fluctuate either during different seasons or in different localities in a sufficient degree to lead to such selection. for it should be observed that any advantage, gained during certain years or in certain localities by those males which were able to conquer their rivals, or were the most attractive to the females, would probably be transmitted to the offspring, and would not subsequently be eliminated. during the succeeding seasons, when, from the equality of the sexes, every male was able to procure a female, the stronger or more attractive males previously produced would still have at least as good a chance of leaving offspring as the weaker or less attractive. polygamy. the practice of polygamy leads to the same results as would follow from an actual inequality in the number of the sexes; for if each male secures two or more females, many males cannot pair; and the latter assuredly will be the weaker or less attractive individuals. many mammals and some few birds are polygamous, but with animals belonging to the lower classes i have found no evidence of this habit. the intellectual powers of such animals are, perhaps, not sufficient to lead them to collect and guard a harem of females. that some relation exists between polygamy and the development of secondary sexual characters, appears nearly certain; and this supports the view that a numerical preponderance of males would be eminently favourable to the action of sexual selection. nevertheless many animals, which are strictly monogamous, especially birds, display strongly-marked secondary sexual characters; whilst some few animals, which are polygamous, do not have such characters. we will first briefly run through the mammals, and then turn to birds. the gorilla seems to be polygamous, and the male differs considerably from the female; so it is with some baboons, which live in herds containing twice as many adult females as males. in south america the mycetes caraya presents well-marked sexual differences, in colour, beard, and vocal organs; and the male generally lives with two or three wives: the male of the cebus capucinus differs somewhat from the female, and appears to be polygamous. ( . on the gorilla, savage and wyman, 'boston journal of natural history,' vol. v. - , p. . on cynocephalus, brehm, 'thierleben,' b. i. , s. . on mycetes, rengger, 'naturgeschichte der säugethiere von paraguay,' , ss. , . on cebus, brehm, ibid. s. .) little is known on this head with respect to most other monkeys, but some species are strictly monogamous. the ruminants are eminently polygamous, and they present sexual differences more frequently than almost any other group of mammals; this holds good, especially in their weapons, but also in other characters. most deer, cattle, and sheep are polygamous; as are most antelopes, though some are monogamous. sir andrew smith, in speaking of the antelopes of south africa, says that in herds of about a dozen there was rarely more than one mature male. the asiatic antilope saiga appears to be the most inordinate polygamist in the world; for pallas ( . pallas, 'spicilegia zoolog., fasc.' xii. , p. . sir andrew smith, 'illustrations of the zoology of s. africa,' , pl. , on the kobus. owen, in his 'anatomy of vertebrates' (vol. iii. , p. ) gives a table shewing incidentally which species of antelopes are gregarious.) states that the male drives away all rivals, and collects a herd of about a hundred females and kids together; the female is hornless and has softer hair, but does not otherwise differ much from the male. the wild horse of the falkland islands and of the western states of n. america is polygamous, but, except in his greater size and in the proportions of his body, differs but little from the mare. the wild boar presents well-marked sexual characters, in his great tusks and some other points. in europe and in india he leads a solitary life, except during the breeding-season; but as is believed by sir w. elliot, who has had many opportunities in india of observing this animal, he consorts at this season with several females. whether this holds good in europe is doubtful, but it is supported by some evidence. the adult male indian elephant, like the boar, passes much of his time in solitude; but as dr. campbell states, when with others, "it is rare to find more than one male with a whole herd of females"; the larger males expelling or killing the smaller and weaker ones. the male differs from the female in his immense tusks, greater size, strength, and endurance; so great is the difference in these respects that the males when caught are valued at one-fifth more than the females. ( . dr. campbell, in 'proc. zoolog. soc.' , p. . see also an interesting paper by lieut. johnstone, in 'proceedings, asiatic society of bengal,' may .) the sexes of other pachydermatous animals differ very little or not at all, and, as far as known, they are not polygamists. nor have i heard of any species in the orders of cheiroptera, edentata, insectivora and rodents being polygamous, excepting that amongst the rodents, the common rat, according to some rat-catchers, lives with several females. nevertheless the two sexes of some sloths (edentata) differ in the character and colour of certain patches of hair on their shoulders. ( . dr. gray, in 'annals and magazine of natural history,' , p. .) and many kinds of bats (cheiroptera) present well-marked sexual differences, chiefly in the males possessing odoriferous glands and pouches, and by their being of a lighter colour. ( . see dr. dobson's excellent paper in 'proceedings of the zoological society,' , p. .) in the great order of rodents, as far as i can learn, the sexes rarely differ, and when they do so, it is but slightly in the tint of the fur. as i hear from sir andrew smith, the lion in south africa sometimes lives with a single female, but generally with more, and, in one case, was found with as many as five females; so that he is polygamous. as far as i can discover, he is the only polygamist amongst all the terrestrial carnivora, and he alone presents well-marked sexual characters. if, however, we turn to the marine carnivora, as we shall hereafter see, the case is widely different; for many species of seals offer extraordinary sexual differences, and they are eminently polygamous. thus, according to peron, the male sea-elephant of the southern ocean always possesses several females, and the sea-lion of forster is said to be surrounded by from twenty to thirty females. in the north, the male sea-bear of steller is accompanied by even a greater number of females. it is an interesting fact, as dr. gill remarks ( . 'the eared seals,' american naturalist, vol. iv. jan. .), that in the monogamous species, "or those living in small communities, there is little difference in size between the males and females; in the social species, or rather those of which the males have harems, the males are vastly larger than the females." amongst birds, many species, the sexes of which differ greatly from each other, are certainly monogamous. in great britain we see well-marked sexual differences, for instance, in the wild-duck which pairs with a single female, the common blackbird, and the bullfinch which is said to pair for life. i am informed by mr. wallace that the like is true of the chatterers or cotingidae of south america, and of many other birds. in several groups i have not been able to discover whether the species are polygamous or monogamous. lesson says that birds of paradise, so remarkable for their sexual differences, are polygamous, but mr. wallace doubts whether he had sufficient evidence. mr. salvin tells me he has been led to believe that humming-birds are polygamous. the male widow-bird, remarkable for his caudal plumes, certainly seems to be a polygamist. ( . 'the ibis,' vol. iii. , p. , on the progne widow-bird. see also on the vidua axillaris, ibid. vol. ii. , p. . on the polygamy of the capercailzie and great bustard, see l. lloyd, 'game birds of sweden,' , pp. , and . montagu and selby speak of the black grouse as polygamous and of the red grouse as monogamous.) i have been assured by mr. jenner weir and by others, that it is somewhat common for three starlings to frequent the same nest; but whether this is a case of polygamy or polyandry has not been ascertained. the gallinaceae exhibit almost as strongly marked sexual differences as birds of paradise or humming-birds, and many of the species are, as is well known, polygamous; others being strictly monogamous. what a contrast is presented between the sexes of the polygamous peacock or pheasant, and the monogamous guinea-fowl or partridge! many similar cases could be given, as in the grouse tribe, in which the males of the polygamous capercailzie and black-cock differ greatly from the females; whilst the sexes of the monogamous red grouse and ptarmigan differ very little. in the cursores, except amongst the bustards, few species offer strongly-marked sexual differences, and the great bustard (otis tarda) is said to be polygamous. with the grallatores, extremely few species differ sexually, but the ruff (machetes pugnax) affords a marked exception, and this species is believed by montagu to be a polygamist. hence it appears that amongst birds there often exists a close relation between polygamy and the development of strongly-marked sexual differences. i asked mr. bartlett, of the zoological gardens, who has had very large experience with birds, whether the male tragopan (one of the gallinaceae) was polygamous, and i was struck by his answering, "i do not know, but should think so from his splendid colours." it deserves notice that the instinct of pairing with a single female is easily lost under domestication. the wild-duck is strictly monogamous, the domestic-duck highly polygamous. the rev. w.d. fox informs me that out of some half-tamed wild-ducks, on a large pond in his neighbourhood, so many mallards were shot by the gamekeeper that only one was left for every seven or eight females; yet unusually large broods were reared. the guinea-fowl is strictly monogamous; but mr. fox finds that his birds succeed best when he keeps one cock to two or three hens. canary-birds pair in a state of nature, but the breeders in england successfully put one male to four or five females. i have noticed these cases, as rendering it probable that wild monogamous species might readily become either temporarily or permanently polygamous. too little is known of the habits of reptiles and fishes to enable us to speak of their marriage arrangements. the stickle-back (gasterosteus), however, is said to be a polygamist ( . noel humphreys, 'river gardens,' .); and the male during the breeding-season differs conspicuously from the female. to sum up on the means through which, as far as we can judge, sexual selection has led to the development of secondary sexual characters. it has been shewn that the largest number of vigorous offspring will be reared from the pairing of the strongest and best-armed males, victorious in contests over other males, with the most vigorous and best-nourished females, which are the first to breed in the spring. if such females select the more attractive, and at the same time vigorous males, they will rear a larger number of offspring than the retarded females, which must pair with the less vigorous and less attractive males. so it will be if the more vigorous males select the more attractive and at the same time healthy and vigorous females; and this will especially hold good if the male defends the female, and aids in providing food for the young. the advantage thus gained by the more vigorous pairs in rearing a larger number of offspring has apparently sufficed to render sexual selection efficient. but a large numerical preponderance of males over females will be still more efficient; whether the preponderance is only occasional and local, or permanent; whether it occurs at birth, or afterwards from the greater destruction of the females; or whether it indirectly follows from the practice of polygamy. the male generally more modified than the female. throughout the animal kingdom, when the sexes differ in external appearance, it is, with rare exceptions, the male which has been the more modified; for, generally, the female retains a closer resemblance to the young of her own species, and to other adult members of the same group. the cause of this seems to lie in the males of almost all animals having stronger passions than the females. hence it is the males that fight together and sedulously display their charms before the females; and the victors transmit their superiority to their male offspring. why both sexes do not thus acquire the characters of their fathers, will be considered hereafter. that the males of all mammals eagerly pursue the females is notorious to every one. so it is with birds; but many cock birds do not so much pursue the hen, as display their plumage, perform strange antics, and pour forth their song in her presence. the male in the few fish observed seems much more eager than the female; and the same is true of alligators, and apparently of batrachians. throughout the enormous class of insects, as kirby remarks, "the law is that the male shall seek the female." ( . kirby and spence, 'introduction to entomology,' vol. iii. , p. .) two good authorities, mr. blackwall and mr. c. spence bate, tell me that the males of spiders and crustaceans are more active and more erratic in their habits than the females. when the organs of sense or locomotion are present in the one sex of insects and crustaceans and absent in the other, or when, as is frequently the case, they are more highly developed in the one than in the other, it is, as far as i can discover, almost invariably the male which retains such organs, or has them most developed; and this shews that the male is the more active member in the courtship of the sexes. ( . one parasitic hymenopterous insect (westwood, 'modern class. of insects,' vol. ii. p. ) forms an exception to the rule, as the male has rudimentary wings, and never quits the cell in which it is born, whilst the female has well-developed wings. audouin believes that the females of this species are impregnated by the males which are born in the same cells with them; but it is much more probable that the females visit other cells, so that close inter-breeding is thus avoided. we shall hereafter meet in various classes, with a few exceptional cases, in which the female, instead of the male, is the seeker and wooer.) the female, on the other hand, with the rarest exceptions, is less eager than the male. as the illustrious hunter ( . 'essays and observations,' edited by owen, vol. i. , p. .) long ago observed, she generally "requires to be courted;" she is coy, and may often be seen endeavouring for a long time to escape from the male. every observer of the habits of animals will be able to call to mind instances of this kind. it is shewn by various facts, given hereafter, and by the results fairly attributable to sexual selection, that the female, though comparatively passive, generally exerts some choice and accepts one male in preference to others. or she may accept, as appearances would sometimes lead us to believe, not the male which is the most attractive to her, but the one which is the least distasteful. the exertion of some choice on the part of the female seems a law almost as general as the eagerness of the male. we are naturally led to enquire why the male, in so many and such distinct classes, has become more eager than the female, so that he searches for her, and plays the more active part in courtship. it would be no advantage and some loss of power if each sex searched for the other; but why should the male almost always be the seeker? the ovules of plants after fertilisation have to be nourished for a time; hence the pollen is necessarily brought to the female organs--being placed on the stigma, by means of insects or the wind, or by the spontaneous movements of the stamens; and in the algae, etc., by the locomotive power of the antherozooids. with lowly-organised aquatic animals, permanently affixed to the same spot and having their sexes separate, the male element is invariably brought to the female; and of this we can see the reason, for even if the ova were detached before fertilisation, and did not require subsequent nourishment or protection, there would yet be greater difficulty in transporting them than the male element, because, being larger than the latter, they are produced in far smaller numbers. so that many of the lower animals are, in this respect, analogous with plants. ( . prof. sachs ('lehrbuch der botanik,' , s. ) in speaking of the male and female reproductive cells, remarks, "verhält sich die eine bei der vereinigung activ,...die andere erscheint bei der vereinigung passiv.") the males of affixed and aquatic animals having been led to emit their fertilising element in this way, it is natural that any of their descendants, which rose in the scale and became locomotive, should retain the same habit; and they would approach the female as closely as possible, in order not to risk the loss of the fertilising element in a long passage of it through the water. with some few of the lower animals, the females alone are fixed, and the males of these must be the seekers. but it is difficult to understand why the males of species, of which the progenitors were primordially free, should invariably have acquired the habit of approaching the females, instead of being approached by them. but in all cases, in order that the males should seek efficiently, it would be necessary that they should be endowed with strong passions; and the acquirement of such passions would naturally follow from the more eager leaving a larger number of offspring than the less eager. the great eagerness of the males has thus indirectly led to their much more frequently developing secondary sexual characters than the females. but the development of such characters would be much aided, if the males were more liable to vary than the females--as i concluded they were--after a long study of domesticated animals. von nathusius, who has had very wide experience, is strongly of the same opinion. ( . 'vorträge uber viehzucht,' , p. .) good evidence also in favour of this conclusion can be produced by a comparison of the two sexes in mankind. during the novara expedition ( . 'reise der novara: anthropolog. theil,' , ss. - . the results were calculated by dr. weisbach from measurements made by drs. k. scherzer and schwarz. on the greater variability of the males of domesticated animals, see my 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. , p. .) a vast number of measurements was made of various parts of the body in different races, and the men were found in almost every case to present a greater range of variation than the women; but i shall have to recur to this subject in a future chapter. mr. j. wood ( . 'proceedings of the royal society,' vol. xvi. july , pp. and .), who has carefully attended to the variation of the muscles in man, puts in italics the conclusion that "the greatest number of abnormalities in each subject is found in the males." he had previously remarked that "altogether in subjects, the varieties of redundancy were found to be half as many again as in females, contrasting widely with the greater frequency of deficiency in females before described." professor macalister likewise remarks ( . 'proc. royal irish academy,' vol. x. , p. .) that variations in the muscles "are probably more common in males than females." certain muscles which are not normally present in mankind are also more frequently developed in the male than in the female sex, although exceptions to this rule are said to occur. dr. burt wilder ( . 'massachusetts medical society,' vol. ii. no. , , p. .) has tabulated the cases of individuals with supernumerary digits, of which were males, and , or less than half, females, the remaining being of unknown sex. it should not, however, be overlooked that women would more frequently endeavour to conceal a deformity of this kind than men. again, dr. l. meyer asserts that the ears of man are more variable in form than those of a woman. ( . 'archiv fur path. anat. und phys.' , p. .) lastly the temperature is more variable in man than in woman. ( . the conclusions recently arrived at by dr. j. stockton hough, on the temperature of man, are given in the 'pop. sci. review,' jan. st, , p. .) the cause of the greater general variability in the male sex, than in the female is unknown, except in so far as secondary sexual characters are extraordinarily variable, and are usually confined to the males; and, as we shall presently see, this fact is, to a certain extent, intelligible. through the action of sexual and natural selection male animals have been rendered in very many instances widely different from their females; but independently of selection the two sexes, from differing constitutionally, tend to vary in a somewhat different manner. the female has to expend much organic matter in the formation of her ova, whereas the male expends much force in fierce contests with his rivals, in wandering about in search of the female, in exerting his voice, pouring out odoriferous secretions, etc.: and this expenditure is generally concentrated within a short period. the great vigour of the male during the season of love seems often to intensify his colours, independently of any marked difference from the female. ( . prof. mantegazza is inclined to believe ('lettera a carlo darwin,' 'archivio per l'anthropologia,' , p. ) that the bright colours, common in so many male animals, are due to the presence and retention by them of the spermatic fluid; but this can hardly be the case; for many male birds, for instance young pheasants, become brightly coloured in the autumn of their first year.) in mankind, and even as low down in the organic scale as in the lepidoptera, the temperature of the body is higher in the male than in the female, accompanied in the case of man by a slower pulse. ( . for mankind, see dr. j. stockton hough, whose conclusions are given in the 'popular science review,' , p. . see girard's observations on the lepidoptera, as given in the 'zoological record,' , p. .) on the whole the expenditure of matter and force by the two sexes is probably nearly equal, though effected in very different ways and at different rates. from the causes just specified the two sexes can hardly fail to differ somewhat in constitution, at least during the breeding-season; and, although they may be subjected to exactly the same conditions, they will tend to vary in a different manner. if such variations are of no service to either sex, they will not be accumulated and increased by sexual or natural selection. nevertheless, they may become permanent if the exciting cause acts permanently; and in accordance with a frequent form of inheritance they may be transmitted to that sex alone in which they first appeared. in this case the two sexes will come to present permanent, yet unimportant, differences of character. for instance, mr. allen shews that with a large number of birds inhabiting the northern and southern united states, the specimens from the south are darker-coloured than those from the north; and this seems to be the direct result of the difference in temperature, light, etc., between the two regions. now, in some few cases, the two sexes of the same species appear to have been differently affected; in the agelaeus phoeniceus the males have had their colours greatly intensified in the south; whereas with cardinalis virginianus it is the females which have been thus affected; with quiscalus major the females have been rendered extremely variable in tint, whilst the males remain nearly uniform. ( . 'mammals and birds of e. florida,' pp. , , .) a few exceptional cases occur in various classes of animals, in which the females instead of the males have acquired well pronounced secondary sexual characters, such as brighter colours, greater size, strength, or pugnacity. with birds there has sometimes been a complete transposition of the ordinary characters proper to each sex; the females having become the more eager in courtship, the males remaining comparatively passive, but apparently selecting the more attractive females, as we may infer from the results. certain hen birds have thus been rendered more highly coloured or otherwise ornamented, as well as more powerful and pugnacious than the cocks; these characters being transmitted to the female offspring alone. it may be suggested that in some cases a double process of selection has been carried on; that the males have selected the more attractive females, and the latter the more attractive males. this process, however, though it might lead to the modification of both sexes, would not make the one sex different from the other, unless indeed their tastes for the beautiful differed; but this is a supposition too improbable to be worth considering in the case of any animal, excepting man. there are, however, many animals in which the sexes resemble each other, both being furnished with the same ornaments, which analogy would lead us to attribute to the agency of sexual selection. in such cases it may be suggested with more plausibility, that there has been a double or mutual process of sexual selection; the more vigorous and precocious females selecting the more attractive and vigorous males, the latter rejecting all except the more attractive females. but from what we know of the habits of animals, this view is hardly probable, for the male is generally eager to pair with any female. it is more probable that the ornaments common to both sexes were acquired by one sex, generally the male, and then transmitted to the offspring of both sexes. if, indeed, during a lengthened period the males of any species were greatly to exceed the females in number, and then during another lengthened period, but under different conditions, the reverse were to occur, a double, but not simultaneous, process of sexual selection might easily be carried on, by which the two sexes might be rendered widely different. we shall hereafter see that many animals exist, of which neither sex is brilliantly coloured or provided with special ornaments, and yet the members of both sexes or of one alone have probably acquired simple colours, such as white or black, through sexual selection. the absence of bright tints or other ornaments may be the result of variations of the right kind never having occurred, or of the animals themselves having preferred plain black or white. obscure tints have often been developed through natural selection for the sake of protection, and the acquirement through sexual selection of conspicuous colours, appears to have been sometimes checked from the danger thus incurred. but in other cases the males during long ages may have struggled together for the possession of the females, and yet no effect will have been produced, unless a larger number of offspring were left by the more successful males to inherit their superiority, than by the less successful: and this, as previously shewn, depends on many complex contingencies. sexual selection acts in a less rigorous manner than natural selection. the latter produces its effects by the life or death at all ages of the more or less successful individuals. death, indeed, not rarely ensues from the conflicts of rival males. but generally the less successful male merely fails to obtain a female, or obtains a retarded and less vigorous female later in the season, or, if polygamous, obtains fewer females; so that they leave fewer, less vigorous, or no offspring. in regard to structures acquired through ordinary or natural selection, there is in most cases, as long as the conditions of life remain the same, a limit to the amount of advantageous modification in relation to certain special purposes; but in regard to structures adapted to make one male victorious over another, either in fighting or in charming the female, there is no definite limit to the amount of advantageous modification; so that as long as the proper variations arise the work of sexual selection will go on. this circumstance may partly account for the frequent and extraordinary amount of variability presented by secondary sexual characters. nevertheless, natural selection will determine that such characters shall not be acquired by the victorious males, if they would be highly injurious, either by expending too much of their vital powers, or by exposing them to any great danger. the development, however, of certain structures--of the horns, for instance, in certain stags--has been carried to a wonderful extreme; and in some cases to an extreme which, as far as the general conditions of life are concerned, must be slightly injurious to the male. from this fact we learn that the advantages which favoured males derive from conquering other males in battle or courtship, and thus leaving a numerous progeny, are in the long run greater than those derived from rather more perfect adaptation to their conditions of life. we shall further see, and it could never have been anticipated, that the power to charm the female has sometimes been more important than the power to conquer other males in battle. laws of inheritance. in order to understand how sexual selection has acted on many animals of many classes, and in the course of ages has produced a conspicuous result, it is necessary to bear in mind the laws of inheritance, as far as they are known. two distinct elements are included under the term "inheritance"--the transmission, and the development of characters; but as these generally go together, the distinction is often overlooked. we see this distinction in those characters which are transmitted through the early years of life, but are developed only at maturity or during old age. we see the same distinction more clearly with secondary sexual characters, for these are transmitted through both sexes, though developed in one alone. that they are present in both sexes, is manifest when two species, having strongly-marked sexual characters, are crossed, for each transmits the characters proper to its own male and female sex to the hybrid offspring of either sex. the same fact is likewise manifest, when characters proper to the male are occasionally developed in the female when she grows old or becomes diseased, as, for instance, when the common hen assumes the flowing tail-feathers, hackles, comb, spurs, voice, and even pugnacity of the cock. conversely, the same thing is evident, more or less plainly, with castrated males. again, independently of old age or disease, characters are occasionally transferred from the male to the female, as when, in certain breeds of the fowl, spurs regularly appear in the young and healthy females. but in truth they are simply developed in the female; for in every breed each detail in the structure of the spur is transmitted through the female to her male offspring. many cases will hereafter be given, where the female exhibits, more or less perfectly, characters proper to the male, in whom they must have been first developed, and then transferred to the female. the converse case of the first development of characters in the female and of transference to the male, is less frequent; it will therefore be well to give one striking instance. with bees the pollen-collecting apparatus is used by the female alone for gathering pollen for the larvae, yet in most of the species it is partially developed in the males to whom it is quite useless, and it is perfectly developed in the males of bombus or the humble-bee. ( . h. muller, 'anwendung der darwin'schen lehre,' etc., verh. d. n. v. jahrg., xxix. p. .) as not a single other hymenopterous insect, not even the wasp, which is closely allied to the bee, is provided with a pollen-collecting apparatus, we have no grounds for supposing that male bees primordially collected pollen as well as the females; although we have some reason to suspect that male mammals primordially suckled their young as well as the females. lastly, in all cases of reversion, characters are transmitted through two, three, or many more generations, and are then developed under certain unknown favourable conditions. this important distinction between transmission and development will be best kept in mind by the aid of the hypothesis of pangenesis. according to this hypothesis, every unit or cell of the body throws off gemmules or undeveloped atoms, which are transmitted to the offspring of both sexes, and are multiplied by self-division. they may remain undeveloped during the early years of life or during successive generations; and their development into units or cells, like those from which they were derived, depends on their affinity for, and union with other units or cells previously developed in the due order of growth. inheritance at corresponding periods of life. this tendency is well established. a new character, appearing in a young animal, whether it lasts throughout life or is only transient, will, in general, reappear in the offspring at the same age and last for the same time. if, on the other hand, a new character appears at maturity, or even during old age, it tends to reappear in the offspring at the same advanced age. when deviations from this rule occur, the transmitted characters much oftener appear before, than after the corresponding age. as i have dwelt on this subject sufficiently in another work ( . the 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. , p. . in the last chapter but one, the provisional hypothesis of pangenesis, above alluded to, is fully explained.), i will here merely give two or three instances, for the sake of recalling the subject to the reader's mind. in several breeds of the fowl, the down-covered chickens, the young birds in their first true plumage, and the adults differ greatly from one another, as well as from their common parent-form, the gallus bankiva; and these characters are faithfully transmitted by each breed to their offspring at the corresponding periods of life. for instance, the chickens of spangled hamburgs, whilst covered with down, have a few dark spots on the head and rump, but are not striped longitudinally, as in many other breeds; in their first true plumage, "they are beautifully pencilled," that is each feather is transversely marked by numerous dark bars; but in their second plumage the feathers all become spangled or tipped with a dark round spot. ( . these facts are given on the high authority of a great breeder, mr. teebay; see tegetmeier's 'poultry book,' , p. . on the characters of chickens of different breeds, and on the breeds of the pigeon, alluded to in the following paragraph, see 'variation of animals,' etc., vol. i. pp. , ; vol. ii. p. .) hence in this breed variations have occurred at, and been transmitted to, three distinct periods of life. the pigeon offers a more remarkable case, because the aboriginal parent species does not undergo any change of plumage with advancing age, excepting that at maturity the breast becomes more iridescent; yet there are breeds which do not acquire their characteristic colours until they have moulted two, three, or four times; and these modifications of plumage are regularly transmitted. inheritance at corresponding seasons of the year. with animals in a state of nature, innumerable instances occur of characters appearing periodically at different seasons. we see this in the horns of the stag, and in the fur of arctic animals which becomes thick and white during the winter. many birds acquire bright colours and other decorations during the breeding-season alone. pallas states ( . 'novae species quadrupedum e glirium ordine,' , p. . on the transmission of colour by the horse, see 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. i. p. . also vol. ii. p. , for a general discussion on 'inheritance as limited by sex.'), that in siberia domestic cattle and horses become lighter-coloured during the winter; and i have myself observed, and heard of similar strongly marked changes of colour, that is, from brownish cream-colour or reddish-brown to a perfect white, in several ponies in england. although i do not know that this tendency to change the colour of the coat during different seasons is transmitted, yet it probably is so, as all shades of colour are strongly inherited by the horse. nor is this form of inheritance, as limited by the seasons, more remarkable than its limitation by age or sex. inheritance as limited by sex. the equal transmission of characters to both sexes is the commonest form of inheritance, at least with those animals which do not present strongly-marked sexual differences, and indeed with many of these. but characters are somewhat commonly transferred exclusively to that sex, in which they first appear. ample evidence on this head has been advanced in my work on 'variation under domestication,' but a few instances may here be given. there are breeds of the sheep and goat, in which the horns of the male differ greatly in shape from those of the female; and these differences, acquired under domestication, are regularly transmitted to the same sex. as a rule, it is the females alone in cats which are tortoise-shell, the corresponding colour in the males being rusty-red. with most breeds of the fowl, the characters proper to each sex are transmitted to the same sex alone. so general is this form of transmission that it is an anomaly when variations in certain breeds are transmitted equally to both sexes. there are also certain sub-breeds of the fowl in which the males can hardly be distinguished from one another, whilst the females differ considerably in colour. the sexes of the pigeon in the parent-species do not differ in any external character; nevertheless, in certain domesticated breeds the male is coloured differently from the female. ( . dr. chapuis, 'le pigeon voyageur belge,' , p. . boitard et corbie, 'les pigeons de volière,' etc., , p. . see, also, on similar differences in certain breeds at modena, 'le variazioni dei colombi domestici,' del paolo bonizzi, .) the wattle in the english carrier pigeon, and the crop in the pouter, are more highly developed in the male than in the female; and although these characters have been gained through long-continued selection by man, the slight differences between the sexes are wholly due to the form of inheritance which has prevailed; for they have arisen, not from, but rather in opposition to, the wish of the breeder. most of our domestic races have been formed by the accumulation of many slight variations; and as some of the successive steps have been transmitted to one sex alone, and some to both sexes, we find in the different breeds of the same species all gradations between great sexual dissimilarity and complete similarity. instances have already been given with the breeds of the fowl and pigeon, and under nature analogous cases are common. with animals under domestication, but whether in nature i will not venture to say, one sex may lose characters proper to it, and may thus come somewhat to resemble the opposite sex; for instance, the males of some breeds of the fowl have lost their masculine tail-plumes and hackles. on the other hand, the differences between the sexes may be increased under domestication, as with merino sheep, in which the ewes have lost their horns. again, characters proper to one sex may suddenly appear in the other sex; as in those sub-breeds of the fowl in which the hens acquire spurs whilst young; or, as in certain polish sub-breeds, in which the females, as there is reason to believe, originally acquired a crest, and subsequently transferred it to the males. all these cases are intelligible on the hypothesis of pangenesis; for they depend on the gemmules of certain parts, although present in both sexes, becoming, through the influence of domestication, either dormant or developed in either sex. there is one difficult question which it will be convenient to defer to a future chapter; namely, whether a character at first developed in both sexes, could through selection be limited in its development to one sex alone. if, for instance, a breeder observed that some of his pigeons (of which the characters are usually transferred in an equal degree to both sexes) varied into pale blue, could he by long-continued selection make a breed, in which the males alone should be of this tint, whilst the females remained unchanged? i will here only say, that this, though perhaps not impossible, would be extremely difficult; for the natural result of breeding from the pale-blue males would be to change the whole stock of both sexes to this tint. if, however, variations of the desired tint appeared, which were from the first limited in their development to the male sex, there would not be the least difficulty in making a breed with the two sexes of a different colour, as indeed has been effected with a belgian breed, in which the males alone are streaked with black. in a similar manner, if any variation appeared in a female pigeon, which was from the first sexually limited in its development to the females, it would be easy to make a breed with the females alone thus characterised; but if the variation was not thus originally limited, the process would be extremely difficult, perhaps impossible. ( . since the publication of the first edition of this work, it has been highly satisfactory to me to find the following remarks (the 'field,' sept. ) from so experienced a breeder as mr. tegetmeier. after describing some curious cases in pigeons, of the transmission of colour by one sex alone, and the formation of a sub-breed with this character, he says: "it is a singular circumstance that mr. darwin should have suggested the possibility of modifying the sexual colours of birds by a course of artificial selection. when he did so, he was in ignorance of these facts that i have related; but it is remarkable how very closely he suggested the right method of procedure.") on the relation between the period of development of a character and its transmission to one sex or to both sexes. why certain characters should be inherited by both sexes, and other characters by one sex alone, namely by that sex in which the character first appeared, is in most cases quite unknown. we cannot even conjecture why with certain sub-breeds of the pigeon, black striae, though transmitted through the female, should be developed in the male alone, whilst every other character is equally transferred to both sexes. why, again, with cats, the tortoise-shell colour should, with rare exceptions, be developed in the female alone. the very same character, such as deficient or supernumerary digits, colour-blindness, etc., may with mankind be inherited by the males alone of one family, and in another family by the females alone, though in both cases transmitted through the opposite as well as through the same sex. ( . references are given in my 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. p. .) although we are thus ignorant, the two following rules seem often to hold good--that variations which first appear in either sex at a late period of life, tend to be developed in the same sex alone; whilst variations which first appear early in life in either sex tend to be developed in both sexes. i am, however, far from supposing that this is the sole determining cause. as i have not elsewhere discussed this subject, and it has an important bearing on sexual selection, i must here enter into lengthy and somewhat intricate details. it is in itself probable that any character appearing at an early age would tend to be inherited equally by both sexes, for the sexes do not differ much in constitution before the power of reproduction is gained. on the other hand, after this power has been gained and the sexes have come to differ in constitution, the gemmules (if i may again use the language of pangenesis) which are cast off from each varying part in the one sex would be much more likely to possess the proper affinities for uniting with the tissues of the same sex, and thus becoming developed, than with those of the opposite sex. i was first led to infer that a relation of this kind exists, from the fact that whenever and in whatever manner the adult male differs from the adult female, he differs in the same manner from the young of both sexes. the generality of this fact is quite remarkable: it holds good with almost all mammals, birds, amphibians, and fishes; also with many crustaceans, spiders, and some few insects, such as certain orthoptera and libellulae. in all these cases the variations, through the accumulation of which the male acquired his proper masculine characters, must have occurred at a somewhat late period of life; otherwise the young males would have been similarly characterised; and conformably with our rule, the variations are transmitted to and developed in the adult males alone. when, on the other hand, the adult male closely resembles the young of both sexes (these, with rare exceptions, being alike), he generally resembles the adult female; and in most of these cases the variations through which the young and old acquired their present characters, probably occurred, according to our rule, during youth. but there is here room for doubt, for characters are sometimes transferred to the offspring at an earlier age than that at which they first appeared in the parents, so that the parents may have varied when adult, and have transferred their characters to their offspring whilst young. there are, moreover, many animals, in which the two sexes closely resemble each other, and yet both differ from their young: and here the characters of the adults must have been acquired late in life; nevertheless, these characters, in apparent contradiction to our rule, are transferred to both sexes. we must not however, overlook the possibility or even probability of successive variations of the same nature occurring, under exposure to similar conditions, simultaneously in both sexes at a rather late period of life; and in this case the variations would be transferred to the offspring of both sexes at a corresponding late age; and there would then be no real contradiction to the rule that variations occurring late in life are transferred exclusively to the sex in which they first appeared. this latter rule seems to hold true more generally than the second one, namely, that variations which occur in either sex early in life tend to be transferred to both sexes. as it was obviously impossible even to estimate in how large a number of cases throughout the animal kingdom these two propositions held good, it occurred to me to investigate some striking or crucial instances, and to rely on the result. an excellent case for investigation is afforded by the deer family. in all the species, but one, the horns are developed only in the males, though certainly transmitted through the females, and capable of abnormal development in them. in the reindeer, on the other hand, the female is provided with horns; so that in this species, the horns ought, according to our rule, to appear early in life, long before the two sexes are mature and have come to differ much in constitution. in all the other species the horns ought to appear later in life, which would lead to their development in that sex alone, in which they first appeared in the progenitor of the whole family. now in seven species, belonging to distinct sections of the family and inhabiting different regions, in which the stags alone bear horns, i find that the horns first appear at periods, varying from nine months after birth in the roebuck, to ten, twelve or even more months in the stags of the six other and larger species. ( . i am much obliged to mr. cupples for having made enquiries for me in regard to the roebuck and red deer of scotland from mr. robertson, the experienced head-forester to the marquis of breadalbane. in regard to fallow-deer, i have to thank mr. eyton and others for information. for the cervus alces of n. america, see 'land and water,' , pp. and ; and for the c. virginianus and strongyloceros of the same continent, see j.d. caton, in 'ottawa acad. of nat. sc.' , p. . for cervus eldi of pegu, see lieut. beaven, 'proccedings of the zoological society,' , p. .) but with the reindeer the case is widely different; for, as i hear from prof. nilsson, who kindly made special enquiries for me in lapland, the horns appear in the young animals within four or five weeks after birth, and at the same time in both sexes. so that here we have a structure, developed at a most unusually early age in one species of the family, and likewise common to both sexes in this one species alone. in several kinds of antelopes, only the males are provided with horns, whilst in the greater number both sexes bear horns. with respect to the period of development, mr. blyth informs me that there was at one time in the zoological gardens a young koodoo (ant. strepsiceros), of which the males alone are horned, and also the young of a closely-allied species, the eland (ant. oreas), in which both sexes are horned. now it is in strict conformity with our rule, that in the young male koodoo, although ten months old, the horns were remarkably small, considering the size ultimately attained by them; whilst in the young male eland, although only three months old, the horns were already very much larger than in the koodoo. it is also a noticeable fact that in the prong-horned antelope ( . antilocapra americana. i have to thank dr. canfield for information with respect to the horns of the female: see also his paper in 'proceedings of the zoological society,' , p. . also owen, 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. iii. p. ), only a few of the females, about one in five, have horns, and these are in a rudimentary state, though sometimes above four inches long: so that as far as concerns the possession of horns by the males alone, this species is in an intermediate condition, and the horns do not appear until about five or six months after birth. therefore in comparison with what little we know of the development of the horns in other antelopes, and from what we do know with respect to the horns of deer, cattle, etc., those of the prong-horned antelope appear at an intermediate period of life,--that is, not very early, as in cattle and sheep, nor very late, as in the larger deer and antelopes. the horns of sheep, goats, and cattle, which are well developed in both sexes, though not quite equal in size, can be felt, or even seen, at birth or soon afterwards. ( . i have been assured that the horns of the sheep in north wales can always be felt, and are sometimes even an inch in length, at birth. youatt says ('cattle,' , p. ), that the prominence of the frontal bone in cattle penetrates the cutis at birth, and that the horny matter is soon formed over it.) our rule, however, seems to fail in some breeds of sheep, for instance merinos, in which the rams alone are horned; for i cannot find on enquiry ( . i am greatly indebted to prof. victor carus for having made enquiries for me, from the highest authorities, with respect to the merino sheep of saxony. on the guinea coast of africa there is, however, a breed of sheep in which, as with merinos, the rams alone bear horns; and mr. winwood reade informs me that in one case observed by him, a young ram, born on feb. th, first shewed horns on march th, so that in this instance, in conformity with rule, the development of the horns occurred at a later period of life than in welsh sheep, in which both sexes are horned.), that the horns are developed later in life in this breed than in ordinary sheep in which both sexes are horned. but with domesticated sheep the presence or absence of horns is not a firmly fixed character; for a certain proportion of the merino ewes bear small horns, and some of the rams are hornless; and in most breeds hornless ewes are occasionally produced. dr. w. marshall has lately made a special study of the protuberances so common on the heads of birds ( . '�ber die knochernen schädelhöcker der vögel,' in the 'niederland. archiv fur zoologie,' b.i. heft , .), and he comes to the following conclusion:--that with those species in which they are confined to the males, they are developed late in life; whereas with those species in which they are common to the two sexes, they are developed at a very early period. this is certainly a striking confirmation of my two laws of inheritance. in most of the species of the splendid family of the pheasants, the males differ conspicuously from the females, and they acquire their ornaments at a rather late period of life. the eared pheasant (crossoptilon auritum), however, offers a remarkable exception, for both sexes possess the fine caudal plumes, the large ear-tufts and the crimson velvet about the head; i find that all these characters appear very early in life in accordance with rule. the adult male can, however, be distinguished from the adult female by the presence of spurs; and conformably with our rule, these do not begin to be developed before the age of six months, as i am assured by mr. bartlett, and even at this age, the two sexes can hardly be distinguished. ( . in the common peacock (pavo cristatus) the male alone possesses spurs, whilst both sexes of the java peacock (p. muticus) offer the unusual case of being furnished with spurs. hence i fully expected that in the latter species they would have been developed earlier in life than in the common peacock; but m. hegt of amsterdam informs me, that with young birds of the previous year, of both species, compared on april rd, , there was no difference in the development of the spurs. the spurs, however, were as yet represented merely by slight knobs or elevations. i presume that i should have been informed if any difference in the rate of development had been observed subsequently.) the male and female peacock differ conspicuously from each other in almost every part of their plumage, except in the elegant head-crest, which is common to both sexes; and this is developed very early in life, long before the other ornaments, which are confined to the male. the wild-duck offers an analogous case, for the beautiful green speculum on the wings is common to both sexes, though duller and somewhat smaller in the female, and it is developed early in life, whilst the curled tail-feathers and other ornaments of the male are developed later. ( . in some other species of the duck family the speculum differs in a greater degree in the two sexes; but i have not been able to discover whether its full development occurs later in life in the males of such species, than in the male of the common duck, as ought to be the case according to our rule. with the allied mergus cucullatus we have, however, a case of this kind: the two sexes differ conspicuously in general plumage, and to a considerable degree in the speculum, which is pure white in the male and greyish-white in the female. now the young males at first entirely resemble the females, and have a greyish-white speculum, which becomes pure white at an earlier age than that at which the adult male acquires his other and more strongly-marked sexual differences: see audubon, 'ornithological biography,' vol. iii. , pp. - .) between such extreme cases of close sexual resemblance and wide dissimilarity, as those of the crossoptilon and peacock, many intermediate ones could be given, in which the characters follow our two rules in their order of development. as most insects emerge from the pupal state in a mature condition, it is doubtful whether the period of development can determine the transference of their characters to one or to both sexes. but we do not know that the coloured scales, for instance, in two species of butterflies, in one of which the sexes differ in colour, whilst in the other they are alike, are developed at the same relative age in the cocoon. nor do we know whether all the scales are simultaneously developed on the wings of the same species of butterfly, in which certain coloured marks are confined to one sex, whilst others are common to both sexes. a difference of this kind in the period of development is not so improbable as it may at first appear; for with the orthoptera, which assume their adult state, not by a single metamorphosis, but by a succession of moults, the young males of some species at first resemble the females, and acquire their distinctive masculine characters only at a later moult. strictly analogous cases occur at the successive moults of certain male crustaceans. we have as yet considered the transference of characters, relatively to their period of development, only in species in a natural state; we will now turn to domesticated animals, and first touch on monstrosities and diseases. the presence of supernumerary digits, and the absence of certain phalanges, must be determined at an early embryonic period--the tendency to profuse bleeding is at least congenital, as is probably colour-blindness--yet these peculiarities, and other similar ones, are often limited in their transmission to one sex; so that the rule that characters, developed at an early period, tend to be transmitted to both sexes, here wholly fails. but this rule, as before remarked, does not appear to be nearly so general as the converse one, namely, that characters which appear late in life in one sex are transmitted exclusively to the same sex. from the fact of the above abnormal peculiarities becoming attached to one sex, long before the sexual functions are active, we may infer that there must be some difference between the sexes at an extremely early age. with respect to sexually-limited diseases, we know too little of the period at which they originate, to draw any safe conclusion. gout, however, seems to fall under our rule, for it is generally caused by intemperance during manhood, and is transmitted from the father to his sons in a much more marked manner than to his daughters. in the various domestic breeds of sheep, goats, and cattle, the males differ from their respective females in the shape or development of their horns, forehead, mane, dewlap, tail, and hump on the shoulders; and these peculiarities, in accordance with our rule, are not fully developed until a rather late period of life. the sexes of dogs do not differ, except that in certain breeds, especially in the scotch deer-hound, the male is much larger and heavier than the female; and, as we shall see in a future chapter, the male goes on increasing in size to an unusually late period of life, which, according to rule, will account for his increased size being transmitted to his male offspring alone. on the other hand, the tortoise-shell colour, which is confined to female cats, is quite distinct at birth, and this case violates the rule. there is a breed of pigeons in which the males alone are streaked with black, and the streaks can be detected even in the nestlings; but they become more conspicuous at each successive moult, so that this case partly opposes and partly supports the rule. with the english carrier and pouter pigeons, the full development of the wattle and the crop occurs rather late in life, and conformably with the rule, these characters are transmitted in full perfection to the males alone. the following cases perhaps come within the class previously alluded to, in which both sexes have varied in the same manner at a rather late period of life, and have consequently transferred their new characters to both sexes at a corresponding late period; and if so, these cases are not opposed to our rule:--there exist sub-breeds of the pigeon, described by neumeister ( . 'das ganze der taubenzucht,' , ss. , . for the case of the streaked pigeons, see dr. chapuis, 'le pigeon voyageur belge,' , p. .), in which both sexes change their colour during two or three moults (as is likewise the case with the almond tumbler); nevertheless, these changes, though occurring rather late in life, are common to both sexes. one variety of the canary-bird, namely the london prize, offers a nearly analogous case. with the breeds of the fowl the inheritance of various characters by one or both sexes, seems generally determined by the period at which such characters are developed. thus in all the many breeds in which the adult male differs greatly in colour from the female, as well as from the wild parent-species, he differs also from the young male, so that the newly-acquired characters must have appeared at a rather late period of life. on the other hand, in most of the breeds in which the two sexes resemble each other, the young are coloured in nearly the same manner as their parents, and this renders it probable that their colours first appeared early in life. we have instances of this fact in all black and white breeds, in which the young and old of both sexes are alike; nor can it be maintained that there is something peculiar in a black or white plumage, which leads to its transference to both sexes; for the males alone of many natural species are either black or white, the females being differently coloured. with the so-called cuckoo sub-breeds of the fowl, in which the feathers are transversely pencilled with dark stripes, both sexes and the chickens are coloured in nearly the same manner. the laced plumage of the sebright bantam is the same in both sexes, and in the young chickens the wing-feathers are distinctly, though imperfectly laced. spangled hamburgs, however, offer a partial exception; for the two sexes, though not quite alike, resemble each other more closely than do the sexes of the aboriginal parent-species; yet they acquire their characteristic plumage late in life, for the chickens are distinctly pencilled. with respect to other characters besides colour, in the wild-parent species and in most of the domestic breeds, the males alone possess a well-developed comb; but in the young of the spanish fowl it is largely developed at a very early age, and, in accordance with this early development in the male, it is of unusual size in the adult female. in the game breeds pugnacity is developed at a wonderfully early age, of which curious proofs could be given; and this character is transmitted to both sexes, so that the hens, from their extreme pugnacity, are now generally exhibited in separate pens. with the polish breeds the bony protuberance of the skull which supports the crest is partially developed even before the chickens are hatched, and the crest itself soon begins to grow, though at first feebly ( . for full particulars and references on all these points respecting the several breeds of the fowl, see 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. i. pp. , . in regard to the higher animals, the sexual differences which have arisen under domestication are described in the same work under the head of each species.); and in this breed the adults of both sexes are characterised by a great bony protuberance and an immense crest. finally, from what we have now seen of the relation which exists in many natural species and domesticated races, between the period of the development of their characters and the manner of their transmission--for example, the striking fact of the early growth of the horns in the reindeer, in which both sexes bear horns, in comparison with their much later growth in the other species in which the male alone bears horns--we may conclude that one, though not the sole cause of characters being exclusively inherited by one sex, is their development at a late age. and secondly, that one, though apparently a less efficient cause of characters being inherited by both sexes, is their development at an early age, whilst the sexes differ but little in constitution. it appears, however, that some difference must exist between the sexes even during a very early embryonic period, for characters developed at this age not rarely become attached to one sex. summary and concluding remarks. from the foregoing discussion on the various laws of inheritance, we learn that the characters of the parents often, or even generally, tend to become developed in the offspring of the same sex, at the same age, and periodically at the same season of the year, in which they first appeared in the parents. but these rules, owing to unknown causes, are far from being fixed. hence during the modification of a species, the successive changes may readily be transmitted in different ways; some to one sex, and some to both; some to the offspring at one age, and some to the offspring at all ages. not only are the laws of inheritance extremely complex, but so are the causes which induce and govern variability. the variations thus induced are preserved and accumulated by sexual selection, which is in itself an extremely complex affair, depending, as it does, on the ardour in love, the courage, and the rivalry of the males, as well as on the powers of perception, the taste, and will of the female. sexual selection will also be largely dominated by natural selection tending towards the general welfare of the species. hence the manner in which the individuals of either or both sexes have been affected through sexual selection cannot fail to be complex in the highest degree. when variations occur late in life in one sex, and are transmitted to the same sex at the same age, the other sex and the young are left unmodified. when they occur late in life, but are transmitted to both sexes at the same age, the young alone are left unmodified. variations, however, may occur at any period of life in one sex or in both, and be transmitted to both sexes at all ages, and then all the individuals of the species are similarly modified. in the following chapters it will be seen that all these cases frequently occur in nature. sexual selection can never act on any animal before the age for reproduction arrives. from the great eagerness of the male it has generally acted on this sex and not on the females. the males have thus become provided with weapons for fighting with their rivals, with organs for discovering and securely holding the female, and for exciting or charming her. when the sexes differ in these respects, it is also, as we have seen, an extremely general law that the adult male differs more or less from the young male; and we may conclude from this fact that the successive variations, by which the adult male became modified, did not generally occur much before the age for reproduction. whenever some or many of the variations occurred early in life, the young males would partake more or less of the characters of the adult males; and differences of this kind between the old and young males may be observed in many species of animals. it is probable that young male animals have often tended to vary in a manner which would not only have been of no use to them at an early age, but would have been actually injurious--as by acquiring bright colours, which would render them conspicuous to their enemies, or by acquiring structures, such as great horns, which would expend much vital force in their development. variations of this kind occurring in the young males would almost certainly be eliminated through natural selection. with the adult and experienced males, on the other hand, the advantages derived from the acquisition of such characters, would more than counterbalance some exposure to danger, and some loss of vital force. as variations which give to the male a better chance of conquering other males, or of finding, securing, or charming the opposite sex, would, if they happened to arise in the female, be of no service to her, they would not be preserved in her through sexual selection. we have also good evidence with domesticated animals, that variations of all kinds are, if not carefully selected, soon lost through intercrossing and accidental deaths. consequently in a state of nature, if variations of the above kind chanced to arise in the female line, and to be transmitted exclusively in this line, they would be extremely liable to be lost. if, however, the females varied and transmitted their newly acquired characters to their offspring of both sexes, the characters which were advantageous to the males would be preserved by them through sexual selection, and the two sexes would in consequence be modified in the same manner, although such characters were of no use to the females: but i shall hereafter have to recur to these more intricate contingencies. lastly, the females may acquire, and apparently have often acquired by transference, characters from the male sex. as variations occurring later in life, and transmitted to one sex alone, have incessantly been taken advantage of and accumulated through sexual selection in relation to the reproduction of the species; therefore it appears, at first sight, an unaccountable fact that similar variations have not frequently been accumulated through natural selection, in relation to the ordinary habits of life. if this had occurred, the two sexes would often have been differently modified, for the sake, for instance, of capturing prey or of escaping from danger. differences of this kind between the two sexes do occasionally occur, especially in the lower classes. but this implies that the two sexes follow different habits in their struggles for existence, which is a rare circumstance with the higher animals. the case, however, is widely different with the reproductive functions, in which respect the sexes necessarily differ. for variations in structure which are related to these functions, have often proved of value to one sex, and from having arisen at a late period of life, have been transmitted to one sex alone; and such variations, thus preserved and transmitted, have given rise to secondary sexual characters. in the following chapters, i shall treat of the secondary sexual characters in animals of all classes, and shall endeavour in each case to apply the principles explained in the present chapter. the lowest classes will detain us for a very short time, but the higher animals, especially birds, must be treated at considerable length. it should be borne in mind that for reasons already assigned, i intend to give only a few illustrative instances of the innumerable structures by the aid of which the male finds the female, or, when found, holds her. on the other hand, all structures and instincts by the aid of which the male conquers other males, and by which he allures or excites the female, will be fully discussed, as these are in many ways the most interesting. supplement on the proportional numbers of the two sexes in animals belonging to various classes. as no one, as far as i can discover, has paid attention to the relative numbers of the two sexes throughout the animal kingdom, i will here give such materials as i have been able to collect, although they are extremely imperfect. they consist in only a few instances of actual enumeration, and the numbers are not very large. as the proportions are known with certainty only in mankind, i will first give them as a standard of comparison. man. in england during ten years (from to ) the average number of children born alive yearly was , , in the proportion of . males to females. but in the male births throughout england were as . , and in as . to . looking to separate districts, in buckinghamshire (where about children are annually born) the mean proportion of male to female births, during the whole period of the above ten years, was as . to ; whilst in n. wales (where the average annual births are , ) it was as high as . to . taking a still smaller district, viz., rutlandshire (where the annual births average only ), in the male births were as . , and in as only . to ; but even in this small district the average of the births during the whole ten years, was as . to : that is in the same ratio as throughout england. ( . 'twenty-ninth annual report of the registrar-general for .' in this report (p. xii.) a special decennial table is given.) the proportions are sometimes slightly disturbed by unknown causes; thus prof. faye states "that in some districts of norway there has been during a decennial period a steady deficiency of boys, whilst in others the opposite condition has existed." in france during forty-four years the male to the female births have been as . to ; but during this period it has occurred five times in one department, and six times in another, that the female births have exceeded the males. in russia the average proportion is as high as . , and in philadelphia in the united states as . to . ( . for norway and russia, see abstract of prof. faye's researches, in 'british and foreign medico-chirurg. review,' april , pp. , . for france, the 'annuaire pour l'an ,' p. . for philadelphia, dr. stockton hough, 'social science assoc.' . for the cape of good hope, quetelet as quoted by dr. h.h. zouteveen, in the dutch translation of this work (vol. i. p. ), where much information is given on the proportion of the sexes.) the average for europe, deduced by bickes from about seventy million births, is males to females. on the other hand, with white children born at the cape of good hope, the proportion of males is so low as to fluctuate during successive years between and males for every females. it is a singular fact that with jews the proportion of male births is decidedly larger than with christians: thus in prussia the proportion is as , in breslau as , and in livonia as to ; the christian births in these countries being the same as usual, for instance, in livonia as to . ( . in regard to the jews, see m. thury, 'la loi de production des sexes,' , p. .) prof. faye remarks that "a still greater preponderance of males would be met with, if death struck both sexes in equal proportion in the womb and during birth. but the fact is, that for every still-born females, we have in several countries from . to . still-born males. during the first four or five years of life, also, more male children die than females, for example in england, during the first year, boys die for every girls--a proportion which in france is still more unfavourable." ( . 'british and foreign medico-chirurg. review,' april , p. . dr. stark also remarks ('tenth annual report of births, deaths, etc., in scotland,' , p. xxviii.) that "these examples may suffice to show that, at almost every stage of life, the males in scotland have a greater liability to death and a higher death-rate than the females. the fact, however, of this peculiarity being most strongly developed at that infantile period of life when the dress, food, and general treatment of both sexes are alike, seems to prove that the higher male death-rate is an impressed, natural, and constitutional peculiarity due to sex alone.") dr. stockton hough accounts for these facts in part by the more frequent defective development of males than of females. we have before seen that the male sex is more variable in structure than the female; and variations in important organs would generally be injurious. but the size of the body, and especially of the head, being greater in male than female infants is another cause: for the males are thus more liable to be injured during parturition. consequently the still-born males are more numerous; and, as a highly competent judge, dr. crichton browne ( . 'west riding lunatic asylum reports,' vol. i. , p. . sir j. simpson has proved that the head of the male infant exceeds that of the female by / ths of an inch in circumference, and by / th in transverse diameter. quetelet has shewn that woman is born smaller than man; see dr. duncan, 'fecundity, fertility, and sterility,' , p. .), believes, male infants often suffer in health for some years after birth. owing to this excess in the death-rate of male children, both at birth and for some time subsequently, and owing to the exposure of grown men to various dangers, and to their tendency to emigrate, the females in all old-settled countries, where statistical records have been kept, are found to preponderate considerably over the males. ( . with the savage guaranys of paraguay, according to the accurate azara ('voyages dans l'amerique merid.' tom. ii. , pp. , ), the women are to the men in the proportion of to .) it seems at first sight a mysterious fact that in different nations, under different conditions and climates, in naples, prussia, westphalia, holland, france, england and the united states, the excess of male over female births is less when they are illegitimate than when legitimate. ( . babbage, 'edinburgh journal of science,' , vol. i. p. ; also p. , on still-born children. on illegitimate children in england, see 'report of registrar-general for ,' p. xv.) this has been explained by different writers in many different ways, as from the mothers being generally young, from the large proportion of first pregnancies, etc. but we have seen that male infants, from the large size of their heads, suffer more than female infants during parturition; and as the mothers of illegitimate children must be more liable than other women to undergo bad labours, from various causes, such as attempts at concealment by tight lacing, hard work, distress of mind, etc., their male infants would proportionably suffer. and this probably is the most efficient of all the causes of the proportion of males to females born alive being less amongst illegitimate children than amongst the legitimate. with most animals the greater size of the adult male than of the female, is due to the stronger males having conquered the weaker in their struggles for the possession of the females, and no doubt it is owing to this fact that the two sexes of at least some animals differ in size at birth. thus we have the curious fact that we may attribute the more frequent deaths of male than female infants, especially amongst the illegitimate, at least in part to sexual selection. it has often been supposed that the relative age of the two parents determine the sex of the offspring; and prof. leuckart ( . leuckart, in wagner 'handwörterbuch der phys.' b. iv. , s. .) has advanced what he considers sufficient evidence, with respect to man and certain domesticated animals, that this is one important though not the sole factor in the result. so again the period of impregnation relatively to the state of the female has been thought by some to be the efficient cause; but recent observations discountenance this belief. according to dr. stockton hough ( . 'social science association of philadelphia,' .), the season of the year, the poverty or wealth of the parents, residence in the country or in cities, the crossing of foreign immigrants, etc., all influence the proportion of the sexes. with mankind, polygamy has also been supposed to lead to the birth of a greater proportion of female infants; but dr. j. campbell ( . 'anthropological review,' april , p. cviii.) carefully attended to this subject in the harems of siam, and concludes that the proportion of male to female births is the same as from monogamous unions. hardly any animal has been rendered so highly polygamous as the english race-horse, and we shall immediately see that his male and female offspring are almost exactly equal in number. i will now give the facts which i have collected with respect to the proportional numbers of the sexes of various animals; and will then briefly discuss how far selection has come into play in determining the result. horses. mr. tegetmeier has been so kind as to tabulate for me from the 'racing calendar' the births of race-horses during a period of twenty-one years, viz., from to ; being omitted, as no returns were that year published. the total births were , ( . during eleven years a record was kept of the number of mares which proved barren or prematurely slipped their foals; and it deserves notice, as shewing how infertile these highly-nurtured and rather closely-interbred animals have become, that not far from one-third of the mares failed to produce living foals. thus during , male colts and female colts were born, and mares failed to produce offspring. during , males and females were born, and mares failed.), consisting of , males and , females, or in the proportion of . males to females. as these numbers are tolerably large, and as they are drawn from all parts of england, during several years, we may with much confidence conclude that with the domestic horse, or at least with the race-horse, the two sexes are produced in almost equal numbers. the fluctuations in the proportions during successive years are closely like those which occur with mankind, when a small and thinly-populated area is considered; thus in the male horses were as . , and in as only . to females. in the tabulated returns the proportions vary in cycles, for the males exceeded the females during six successive years; and the females exceeded the males during two periods each of four years; this, however, may be accidental; at least i can detect nothing of the kind with man in the decennial table in the registrar's report for . dogs. during a period of twelve years, from to , the births of a large number of greyhounds, throughout england, were sent to the 'field' newspaper; and i am again indebted to mr. tegetmeier for carefully tabulating the results. the recorded births were , consisting of males and females, that is, in the proportion of . males to females. the greatest fluctuations occurred in , when the proportion was as . males, and in , as . males to females. the above average proportion of . to is probably nearly correct in the case of the greyhound, but whether it would hold with other domesticated breeds is in some degree doubtful. mr. cupples has enquired from several great breeders of dogs, and finds that all without exception believe that females are produced in excess; but he suggests that this belief may have arisen from females being less valued, and from the consequent disappointment producing a stronger impression on the mind. sheep. the sexes of sheep are not ascertained by agriculturists until several months after birth, at the period when the males are castrated; so that the following returns do not give the proportions at birth. moreover, i find that several great breeders in scotland, who annually raise some thousand sheep, are firmly convinced that a larger proportion of males than of females die during the first year or two. therefore the proportion of males would be somewhat larger at birth than at the age of castration. this is a remarkable coincidence with what, as we have seen, occurs with mankind, and both cases probably depend on the same cause. i have received returns from four gentlemen in england who have bred lowland sheep, chiefly leicesters, during the last ten to sixteen years; they amount altogether to births, consisting of males and females; that is in the proportion of . males to females. with respect to cheviot and black-faced sheep bred in scotland, i have received returns from six breeders, two of them on a large scale, chiefly for the years - , but some of the returns extend back to . the total number recorded amounts to , , consisting of , males and , females or in the proportion of . males to females. if we take the english and scotch returns together, the total number amounts to , , consisting of , males and , females, or as . to . so that with sheep at the age of castration the females are certainly in excess of the males, but probably this would not hold good at birth. ( . i am much indebted to mr. cupples for having procured for me the above returns from scotland, as well as some of the following returns on cattle. mr. r. elliot, of laighwood, first called my attention to the premature deaths of the males, --a statement subsequently confirmed by mr. aitchison and others. to this latter gentleman, and to mr. payan, i owe my thanks for large returns as to sheep.) of cattle i have received returns from nine gentlemen of births, too few to be trusted; these consisted of bull-calves and cow-calves; i.e., in the proportion of . males to females. the rev. w.d. fox informs me that in out of calves born on a farm in derbyshire only one was a bull. mr. harrison weir has enquired from several breeders of pigs, and most of them estimate the male to the female births as about to . this same gentleman has bred rabbits for many years, and has noticed that a far greater number of bucks are produced than does. but estimations are of little value. of mammalia in a state of nature i have been able to learn very little. in regard to the common rat, i have received conflicting statements. mr. r. elliot, of laighwood, informs me that a rat-catcher assured him that he had always found the males in great excess, even with the young in the nest. in consequence of this, mr. elliot himself subsequently examined some hundred old ones, and found the statement true. mr. f. buckland has bred a large number of white rats, and he also believes that the males greatly exceed the females. in regard to moles, it is said that "the males are much more numerous than the females" ( . bell, 'history of british quadrupeds,' p. .): and as the catching of these animals is a special occupation, the statement may perhaps be trusted. sir a. smith, in describing an antelope of s. africa ( . 'illustrations of the zoology of s. africa,' , pl. .) (kobus ellipsiprymnus), remarks, that in the herds of this and other species, the males are few in number compared with the females: the natives believe that they are born in this proportion; others believe that the younger males are expelled from the herds, and sir a. smith says, that though he has himself never seen herds consisting of young males alone, others affirm that this does occur. it appears probable that the young when expelled from the herd, would often fall a prey to the many beasts of prey of the country. birds. with respect to the fowl, i have received only one account, namely, that out of chickens of a highly-bred stock of cochins, reared during eight years by mr. stretch, proved males and females; i.e., as . to . in regard to domestic pigeons there is good evidence either that the males are produced in excess, or that they live longer; for these birds invariably pair, and single males, as mr. tegetmeier informs me, can always be purchased cheaper than females. usually the two birds reared from the two eggs laid in the same nest are a male and a female; but mr. harrison weir, who has been so large a breeder, says that he has often bred two cocks from the same nest, and seldom two hens; moreover, the hen is generally the weaker of the two, and more liable to perish. with respect to birds in a state of nature, mr. gould and others ( . brehm ('thierleben,' b. iv. s. ) comes to the same conclusion.) are convinced that the males are generally the more numerous; and as the young males of many species resemble the females, the latter would naturally appear to be the more numerous. large numbers of pheasants are reared by mr. baker of leadenhall from eggs laid by wild birds, and he informs mr. jenner weir that four or five males to one female are generally produced. an experienced observer remarks ( . on the authority of l. lloyd, 'game birds of sweden,' , pp. , .), that in scandinavia the broods of the capercailzie and black-cock contain more males than females; and that with the dal-ripa (a kind of ptarmigan) more males than females attend the leks or places of courtship; but this latter circumstance is accounted for by some observers by a greater number of hen birds being killed by vermin. from various facts given by white of selborne ( . 'nat. hist. of selborne,' letter xxix. edit. of , vol. i. p. .), it seems clear that the males of the partridge must be in considerable excess in the south of england; and i have been assured that this is the case in scotland. mr. weir on enquiring from the dealers, who receive at certain seasons large numbers of ruffs (machetes pugnax), was told that the males are much the more numerous. this same naturalist has also enquired for me from the birdcatchers, who annually catch an astonishing number of various small species alive for the london market, and he was unhesitatingly answered by an old and trustworthy man, that with the chaffinch the males are in large excess: he thought as high as males to female, or at least as high as to . ( . mr. jenner weir received similar information, on making enquiries during the following year. to shew the number of living chaffinches caught, i may mention that in there was a match between two experts, and one man caught in a day , and another , male chaffinches. the greatest number ever caught by one man in a single day was .) the males of the blackbird, he likewise maintained, were by far the more numerous, whether caught by traps or by netting at night. these statements may apparently be trusted, because this same man said that the sexes are about equal with the lark, the twite (linaria montana), and goldfinch. on the other hand, he is certain that with the common linnet, the females preponderate greatly, but unequally during different years; during some years he has found the females to the males as four to one. it should, however, be borne in mind, that the chief season for catching birds does not begin till september, so that with some species partial migrations may have begun, and the flocks at this period often consist of hens alone. mr. salvin paid particular attention to the sexes of the humming-birds in central america, and is convinced that with most of the species the males are in excess; thus one year he procured specimens belonging to ten species, and these consisted of males and of only females. with two other species the females were in excess: but the proportions apparently vary either during different seasons or in different localities; for on one occasion the males of campylopterus hemileucurus were to the females as to , and on another occasion ( . 'ibis,' vol. ii. p. , as quoted in gould's 'trochilidae,' , p. . for the foregoing proportions, i am indebted to mr. salvin for a table of his results.) in exactly the reversed ratio. as bearing on this latter point, i may add, that mr. powys found in corfu and epirus the sexes of the chaffinch keeping apart, and "the females by far the most numerous"; whilst in palestine mr. tristram found "the male flocks appearing greatly to exceed the female in number." ( . 'ibis,' , p. ; and , p. .) so again with the quiscalus major, mr. g. taylor says, that in florida there were "very few females in proportion to the males," ( . 'ibis,' , p. .) whilst in honduras the proportion was the other way, the species there having the character of a polygamist. fish. with fish the proportional numbers of the sexes can be ascertained only by catching them in the adult or nearly adult state; and there are many difficulties in arriving at any just conclusion. ( . leuckart quotes bloch (wagner, 'handwörterbuch der phys.' b. iv. , s. ), that with fish there are twice as many males as females.) infertile females might readily be mistaken for males, as dr. gunther has remarked to me in regard to trout. with some species the males are believed to die soon after fertilising the ova. with many species the males are of much smaller size than the females, so that a large number of males would escape from the same net by which the females were caught. m. carbonnier ( . quoted in the 'farmer,' march , , p. .), who has especially attended to the natural history of the pike (esox lucius), states that many males, owing to their small size, are devoured by the larger females; and he believes that the males of almost all fish are exposed from this same cause to greater danger than the females. nevertheless, in the few cases in which the proportional numbers have been actually observed, the males appear to be largely in excess. thus mr. r. buist, the superintendent of the stormontfield experiments, says that in , out of salmon first landed for the purpose of obtaining the ova, upwards of were males. in he again "calls attention to the vast disproportion of the males to the females. we had at the outset at least ten males to one female." afterwards females sufficient for obtaining ova were procured. he adds, "from the great proportion of the males, they are constantly fighting and tearing each other on the spawning-beds." ( . 'the stormontfield piscicultural experiments,' , p. . the 'field' newspaper, june , .) this disproportion, no doubt, can be accounted for in part, but whether wholly is doubtful, by the males ascending the rivers before the females. mr. f. buckland remarks in regard to trout, that "it is a curious fact that the males preponderate very largely in number over the females. it invariably happens that when the first rush of fish is made to the net, there will be at least seven or eight males to one female found captive. i cannot quite account for this; either the males are more numerous than the females, or the latter seek safety by concealment rather than flight." he then adds, that by carefully searching the banks sufficient females for obtaining ova can be found. ( . 'land and water,' , p. .) mr. h. lee informs me that out of trout, taken for this purpose in lord portsmouth's park, were males and females. the males of the cyprinidae likewise seem to be in excess; but several members of this family, viz., the carp, tench, bream and minnow, appear regularly to follow the practice, rare in the animal kingdom, of polyandry; for the female whilst spawning is always attended by two males, one on each side, and in the case of the bream by three or four males. this fact is so well known, that it is always recommended to stock a pond with two male tenches to one female, or at least with three males to two females. with the minnow, an excellent observer states, that on the spawning-beds the males are ten times as numerous as the females; when a female comes amongst the males, "she is immediately pressed closely by a male on each side; and when they have been in that situation for a time, are superseded by other two males." ( . yarrell, 'hist. british fishes,' vol. i. , p. ; on the cyprinus carpio, p. ; on the tinca vulgaris, p. ; on the abramis brama, p. . see, for the minnow (leuciscus phoxinus), 'loudon's magazine of natural history,' vol. v. , p. .) insects. in this great class, the lepidoptera almost alone afford means for judging of the proportional numbers of the sexes; for they have been collected with special care by many good observers, and have been largely bred from the egg or caterpillar state. i had hoped that some breeders of silk-moths might have kept an exact record, but after writing to france and italy, and consulting various treatises, i cannot find that this has ever been done. the general opinion appears to be that the sexes are nearly equal, but in italy, as i hear from professor canestrini, many breeders are convinced that the females are produced in excess. this same naturalist, however, informs me, that in the two yearly broods of the ailanthus silk-moth (bombyx cynthia), the males greatly preponderate in the first, whilst in the second the two sexes are nearly equal, or the females rather in excess. in regard to butterflies in a state of nature, several observers have been much struck by the apparently enormous preponderance of the males. ( . leuckart quotes meinecke (wagner, 'handwörterbuch der phys.' b. iv. , s. ) that the males of butterflies are three or four times as numerous as the females.) thus mr. bates ( . 'the naturalist on the amazons,' vol. ii. , pp. , .), in speaking of several species, about a hundred in number, which inhabit the upper amazons, says that the males are much more numerous than the females, even in the proportion of a hundred to one. in north america, edwards, who had great experience, estimates in the genus papilio the males to the females as four to one; and mr. walsh, who informed me of this statement, says that with p. turnus this is certainly the case. in south africa, mr. r. trimen found the males in excess in species ( . four of these cases are given by mr. trimen in his 'rhopalocera africae australis.'); and in one of these, which swarms in open places, he estimated the number of males as fifty to one female. with another species, in which the males are numerous in certain localities, he collected only five females during seven years. in the island of bourbon, m. maillard states that the males of one species of papilio are twenty times as numerous as the females. ( . quoted by trimen, 'transactions of the ent. society,' vol. v. part iv. , p. .) mr. trimen informs me that as far as he has himself seen, or heard from others, it is rare for the females of any butterfly to exceed the males in number; but three south african species perhaps offer an exception. mr. wallace ( . 'transactions, linnean society,' vol. xxv. p. .) states that the females of ornithoptera croesus, in the malay archipelago, are more common and more easily caught than the males; but this is a rare butterfly. i may here add, that in hyperythra, a genus of moths, guenee says, that from four to five females are sent in collections from india for one male. when this subject of the proportional numbers of the sexes of insects was brought before the entomological society ( . 'proceedings, entomological society,' feb. , .), it was generally admitted that the males of most lepidoptera, in the adult or imago state, are caught in greater numbers than the females: but this fact was attributed by various observers to the more retiring habits of the females, and to the males emerging earlier from the cocoon. this latter circumstance is well known to occur with most lepidoptera, as well as with other insects. so that, as m. personnat remarks, the males of the domesticated bombyx yamamai, are useless at the beginning of the season, and the females at the end, from the want of mates. ( . quoted by dr. wallace in 'proceedings, entomological society,' rd series, vol. v. , p. .) i cannot, however, persuade myself that these causes suffice to explain the great excess of males, in the above cases of certain butterflies which are extremely common in their native countries. mr. stainton, who has paid very close attention during many years to the smaller moths, informs me that when he collected them in the imago state, he thought that the males were ten times as numerous as the females, but that since he has reared them on a large scale from the caterpillar state, he is convinced that the females are the more numerous. several entomologists concur in this view. mr. doubleday, however, and some others, take an opposite view, and are convinced that they have reared from the eggs and caterpillars a larger proportion of males than of females. besides the more active habits of the males, their earlier emergence from the cocoon, and in some cases their frequenting more open stations, other causes may be assigned for an apparent or real difference in the proportional numbers of the sexes of lepidoptera, when captured in the imago state, and when reared from the egg or caterpillar state. i hear from professor canestrini, that it is believed by many breeders in italy, that the female caterpillar of the silk-moth suffers more from the recent disease than the male; and dr. staudinger informs me that in rearing lepidoptera more females die in the cocoon than males. with many species the female caterpillar is larger than the male, and a collector would naturally choose the finest specimens, and thus unintentionally collect a larger number of females. three collectors have told me that this was their practice; but dr. wallace is sure that most collectors take all the specimens which they can find of the rarer kinds, which alone are worth the trouble of rearing. birds when surrounded by caterpillars would probably devour the largest; and professor canestrini informs me that in italy some breeders believe, though on insufficient evidence, that in the first broods of the ailanthus silk-moth, the wasps destroy a larger number of the female than of the male caterpillars. dr. wallace further remarks that female caterpillars, from being larger than the males, require more time for their development, and consume more food and moisture: and thus they would be exposed during a longer time to danger from ichneumons, birds, etc., and in times of scarcity would perish in greater numbers. hence it appears quite possible that in a state of nature, fewer female lepidoptera may reach maturity than males; and for our special object we are concerned with their relative numbers at maturity, when the sexes are ready to propagate their kind. the manner in which the males of certain moths congregate in extraordinary numbers round a single female, apparently indicates a great excess of males, though this fact may perhaps be accounted for by the earlier emergence of the males from their cocoons. mr. stainton informs me that from twelve to twenty males, may often be seen congregated round a female elachista rufocinerea. it is well known that if a virgin lasiocampa quercus or saturnia carpini be exposed in a cage, vast numbers of males collect round her, and if confined in a room will even come down the chimney to her. mr. doubleday believes that he has seen from fifty to a hundred males of both these species attracted in the course of a single day by a female in confinement. in the isle of wight mr. trimen exposed a box in which a female of the lasiocampa had been confined on the previous day, and five males soon endeavoured to gain admittance. in australia, mr. verreaux, having placed the female of a small bombyx in a box in his pocket, was followed by a crowd of males, so that about entered the house with him. ( . blanchard, 'metamorphoses, moeurs des insectes,' , pp. - .) mr. doubleday has called my attention to m. staudinger's ( . 'lepidopteren-doubletten liste,' berlin, no. x. .) list of lepidoptera, which gives the prices of the males and females of species or well-marked varieties of butterflies (rhopalocera). the prices for both sexes of the very common species are of course the same; but in of the rarer species they differ; the males being in all cases, excepting one, the cheaper. on an average of the prices of the species, the price of the male to that of the female is as to ; and this apparently indicates that inversely the males exceed the females in the same proportion. about species or varieties of moths (heterocera) are catalogued, those with wingless females being here excluded on account of the difference in habits between the two sexes: of these species, differ in price according to sex, the males of being cheaper, and those of only being dearer than the females. the average price of the males of the species, to that of the females, is as to . with respect to the butterflies in this priced list, mr. doubleday thinks (and no man in england has had more experience), that there is nothing in the habits of the species which can account for the difference in the prices of the two sexes, and that it can be accounted for only by an excess in the number of the males. but i am bound to add that dr. staudinger informs me, that he is himself of a different opinion. he thinks that the less active habits of the females and the earlier emergence of the males will account for his collectors securing a larger number of males than of females, and consequently for the lower prices of the former. with respect to specimens reared from the caterpillar-state, dr. staudinger believes, as previously stated, that a greater number of females than of males die whilst confined to the cocoons. he adds that with certain species one sex seems to preponderate over the other during certain years. of direct observations on the sexes of lepidoptera, reared either from eggs or caterpillars, i have received only the few following cases: (see following table.) so that in these eight lots of cocoons and eggs, males were produced in excess. taken together the proportion of males is as . to females. but the numbers are hardly large enough to be trustworthy. on the whole, from these various sources of evidence, all pointing in the same direction, i infer that with most species of lepidoptera, the mature males generally exceed the females in number, whatever the proportions may be at their first emergence from the egg. males females the rev. j. hellins* of exeter reared, during , imagos of species, which consisted of mr. albert jones of eltham reared, during , imagos of species, which consisted of during he reared imagos from species consisting of mr. buckler of emsworth, hants, during , reared imagos from species, consisting of dr. wallace of colchester reared from one brood of bombyx cynthia dr. wallace raised, from cocoons of bombyx pernyi sent from china, during dr. wallace raised, during and , from two lots of cocoons of bombyx yamamai total (* . this naturalist has been so kind as to send me some results from former years, in which the females seemed to preponderate; but so many of the figures were estimates, that i found it impossible to tabulate them.) with reference to the other orders of insects, i have been able to collect very little reliable information. with the stag-beetle (lucanus cervus) "the males appear to be much more numerous than the females"; but when, as cornelius remarked during , an unusual number of these beetles appeared in one part of germany, the females appeared to exceed the males as six to one. with one of the elateridae, the males are said to be much more numerous than the females, and "two or three are often found united with one female ( . gunther's 'record of zoological literature,' , p. . on the excess of female lucanus, ibid, p. . on the males of lucanus in england, westwood,' 'modern classification of insects,' vol. i. p. . on the siagonium, ibid. p. .); so that here polyandry seems to prevail." with siagonium (staphylinidae), in which the males are furnished with horns, "the females are far more numerous than the opposite sex." mr. janson stated at the entomological society that the females of the bark feeding tomicus villosus are so common as to be a plague, whilst the males are so rare as to be hardly known. it is hardly worth while saying anything about the proportion of the sexes in certain species and even groups of insects, for the males are unknown or very rare, and the females are parthenogenetic, that is, fertile without sexual union; examples of this are afforded by several of the cynipidae. ( . walsh in 'the american entomologist,' vol. i. , p. . f. smith, 'record of zoological lit.' , p. .) in all the gall-making cynipidae known to mr. walsh, the females are four or five times as numerous as the males; and so it is, as he informs me, with the gall-making cecidomyiidae (diptera). with some common species of saw-flies (tenthredinae) mr. f. smith has reared hundreds of specimens from larvae of all sizes, but has never reared a single male; on the other hand, curtis says ( . 'farm insects,' pp. - .), that with certain species (athalia), bred by him, the males were to the females as six to one; whilst exactly the reverse occurred with the mature insects of the same species caught in the fields. in the family of bees, hermann müller ( . 'anwendung der darwin'schen lehre,' verh. d. n. jahrg., xxiv.), collected a large number of specimens of many species, and reared others from the cocoons, and counted the sexes. he found that the males of some species greatly exceeded the females in number; in others the reverse occurred; and in others the two sexes were nearly equal. but as in most cases the males emerge from the cocoons before the females, they are at the commencement of the breeding-season practically in excess. müller also observed that the relative number of the two sexes in some species differed much in different localities. but as h. müller has himself remarked to me, these remarks must be received with some caution, as one sex might more easily escape observation than the other. thus his brother fritz müller has noticed in brazil that the two sexes of the same species of bee sometimes frequent different kinds of flowers. with respect to the orthoptera, i know hardly anything about the relative number of the sexes: korte ( . 'die strich, zug oder wanderheuschrecke,' , p. .), however, says that out of locusts which he examined, the males were to the females as five to six. with the neuroptera, mr. walsh states that in many, but by no means in all the species of the odonatous group, there is a great overplus of males: in the genus hetaerina, also, the males are generally at least four times as numerous as the females. in certain species in the genus gomphus the males are equally in excess, whilst in two other species, the females are twice or thrice as numerous as the males. in some european species of psocus thousands of females may be collected without a single male, whilst with other species of the same genus both sexes are common. ( . 'observations on n. american neuroptera,' by h. hagen and b.d. walsh, 'proceedings, ent. soc. philadelphia,' oct. , pp. , , .) in england, mr. maclachlan has captured hundreds of the female apatania muliebris, but has never seen the male; and of boreus hyemalis only four or five males have been seen here. ( . 'proceedings, ent. soc. london,' feb. , .) with most of these species (excepting the tenthredinae) there is at present no evidence that the females are subject to parthenogenesis; and thus we see how ignorant we are of the causes of the apparent discrepancy in the proportion of the two sexes. in the other classes of the articulata i have been able to collect still less information. with spiders, mr. blackwall, who has carefully attended to this class during many years, writes to me that the males from their more erratic habits are more commonly seen, and therefore appear more numerous. this is actually the case with a few species; but he mentions several species in six genera, in which the females appear to be much more numerous than the males. ( . another great authority with respect to this class, prof. thorell of upsala ('on european spiders,' - , part i. p. ), speaks as if female spiders were generally commoner than the males.) the small size of the males in comparison with the females (a peculiarity which is sometimes carried to an extreme degree), and their widely different appearance, may account in some instances for their rarity in collections. ( . see, on this subject, mr. o.p. cambridge, as quoted in 'quarterly journal of science,' , page .) some of the lower crustaceans are able to propagate their kind sexually, and this will account for the extreme rarity of the males; thus von siebold ( . 'beiträge zur parthenogenesis,' p. .) carefully examined no less than , specimens of apus from twenty-one localities, and amongst these he found only males. with some other forms (as tanais and cypris), as fritz müller informs me, there is reason to believe that the males are much shorter-lived than the females; and this would explain their scarcity, supposing the two sexes to be at first equal in number. on the other hand, müller has invariably taken far more males than females of the diastylidae and of cypridina on the shores of brazil: thus with a species in the latter genus, specimens caught the same day included males; but he suggests that this preponderance may be due to some unknown difference in the habits of the two sexes. with one of the higher brazilian crabs, namely a gelasimus, fritz müller found the males to be more numerous than the females. according to the large experience of mr. c. spence bate, the reverse seems to be the case with six common british crabs, the names of which he has given me. the proportion of the sexes in relation to natural selection. there is reason to suspect that in some cases man has by selection indirectly influenced his own sex-producing powers. certain women tend to produce during their whole lives more children of one sex than of the other: and the same holds good of many animals, for instance, cows and horses; thus mr. wright of yeldersley house informs me that one of his arab mares, though put seven times to different horses, produced seven fillies. though i have very little evidence on this head, analogy would lead to the belief, that the tendency to produce either sex would be inherited like almost every other peculiarity, for instance, that of producing twins; and concerning the above tendency a good authority, mr. j. downing, has communicated to me facts which seem to prove that this does occur in certain families of short-horn cattle. col. marshall ( . 'the todas,' , pp. , , , .) has recently found on careful examination that the todas, a hill-tribe of india, consist of males and females of all ages--that is in a ratio of . males to females. the todas, who are polyandrous in their marriages, during former times invariably practised female infanticide; but this practice has now been discontinued for a considerable period. of the children born within late years, the males are more numerous than the females, in the proportion of to . colonel marshall accounts for this fact in the following ingenious manner. "let us for the purpose of illustration take three families as representing an average of the entire tribe; say that one mother gives birth to six daughters and no sons; a second mother has six sons only, whilst the third mother has three sons and three daughters. the first mother, following the tribal custom, destroys four daughters and preserves two. the second retains her six sons. the third kills two daughters and keeps one, as also her three sons. we have then from the three families, nine sons and three daughters, with which to continue the breed. but whilst the males belong to families in which the tendency to produce sons is great, the females are of those of a converse inclination. thus the bias strengthens with each generation, until, as we find, families grow to have habitually more sons than daughters." that this result would follow from the above form of infanticide seems almost certain; that is if we assume that a sex-producing tendency is inherited. but as the above numbers are so extremely scanty, i have searched for additional evidence, but cannot decide whether what i have found is trustworthy; nevertheless the facts are, perhaps, worth giving. the maories of new zealand have long practised infanticide; and mr. fenton ( . 'aboriginal inhabitants of new zealand: government report,' , p. .) states that he "has met with instances of women who have destroyed four, six, and even seven children, mostly females. however, the universal testimony of those best qualified to judge, is conclusive that this custom has for many years been almost extinct. probably the year may be named as the period of its ceasing to exist." now amongst the new zealanders, as with the todas, male births are considerably in excess. mr. fenton remarks (p. ), "one fact is certain, although the exact period of the commencement of this singular condition of the disproportion of the sexes cannot be demonstratively fixed, it is quite clear that this course of decrease was in full operation during the years to , when the non-adult population of was being produced, and has continued with great energy up to the present time." the following statements are taken from mr. fenton (p. ), but as the numbers are not large, and as the census was not accurate, uniform results cannot be expected. it should be borne in mind in this and the following cases, that the normal state of every population is an excess of women, at least in all civilised countries, chiefly owing to the greater mortality of the male sex during youth, and partly to accidents of all kinds later in life. in , the native population of new zealand was estimated as consisting of , males and , females of all ages, that is in the ratio of . males to females. but during this same year, and in certain limited districts, the numbers were ascertained with much care, and the males of all ages were here and the females ; that is in the ratio of . males to females. it is more important for us that during this same year of , the non-adult males within the same district were found to be , and the non-adult females , that is in the ratio of . to . it may be added that in , at which period female infanticide had only lately ceased, the non-adult males in one district were , and the non-adult females only , that is in the ratio of . males to females. in the sandwich islands, the males exceed the females in number. infanticide was formerly practised there to a frightful extent, but was by no means confined to female infants, as is shewn by mr. ellis ( . 'narrative of a tour through hawaii,' , p. .), and as i have been informed by bishop staley and the rev. mr. coan. nevertheless, another apparently trustworthy writer, mr. jarves ( . 'history of the sandwich islands,' , p. .), whose observations apply to the whole archipelago, remarks:--"numbers of women are to be found, who confess to the murder of from three to six or eight children," and he adds, "females from being considered less useful than males were more often destroyed." from what is known to occur in other parts of the world, this statement is probable; but must be received with much caution. the practice of infanticide ceased about the year , when idolatry was abolished and missionaries settled in the islands. a careful census in of the adult and taxable men and women in the island of kauai and in one district of oahu (jarves, p. ), gives males and females; that is in the ratio of . to . at the same time the number of males under fourteen years in kauai and under eighteen in oahu was , and of females of the same ages ; and here we have the ratio of . males to females. in a census of all the islands in ( . this is given in the rev. h.t. cheever's 'life in the sandwich islands,' , p. .), the males of all ages amount to , , and the females to , , or as . to . the males under seventeen years amounted to , , and the females under the same age to , or as . to . from the census of , the proportion of males of all ages (including half-castes) to females, is as . to . it must be borne in mind that all these returns for the sandwich islands give the proportion of living males to living females, and not of the births; and judging from all civilised countries the proportion of males would have been considerably higher if the numbers had referred to births. ( . dr. coulter, in describing ('journal r. geograph. soc.' vol. v. , p. ) the state of california about the year , says that the natives, reclaimed by the spanish missionaries, have nearly all perished, or are perishing, although well treated, not driven from their native land, and kept from the use of spirits. he attributes this, in great part, to the undoubted fact that the men greatly exceed the women in number; but he does not know whether this is due to a failure of female offspring, or to more females dying during early youth. the latter alternative, according to all analogy, is very improbable. he adds that "infanticide, properly so called, is not common, though very frequent recourse is had to abortion." if dr. coulter is correct about infanticide, this case cannot be advanced in support of colonel marshall's view. from the rapid decrease of the reclaimed natives, we may suspect that, as in the cases lately given, their fertility has been diminished from changed habits of life. i had hoped to gain some light on this subject from the breeding of dogs; inasmuch as in most breeds, with the exception, perhaps, of greyhounds, many more female puppies are destroyed than males, just as with the toda infants. mr. cupples assures me that this is usual with scotch deer-hounds. unfortunately, i know nothing of the proportion of the sexes in any breed, excepting greyhounds, and there the male births are to the females as . to . now from enquiries made from many breeders, it seems that the females are in some respects more esteemed, though otherwise troublesome; and it does not appear that the female puppies of the best-bred dogs are systematically destroyed more than the males, though this does sometimes take place to a limited extent. therefore i am unable to decide whether we can, on the above principles, account for the preponderance of male births in greyhounds. on the other hand, we have seen that with horses, cattle, and sheep, which are too valuable for the young of either sex to be destroyed, if there is any difference, the females are slightly in excess.) from the several foregoing cases we have some reason to believe that infanticide practised in the manner above explained, tends to make a male-producing race; but i am far from supposing that this practice in the case of man, or some analogous process with other species, has been the sole determining cause of an excess of males. there may be some unknown law leading to this result in decreasing races, which have already become somewhat infertile. besides the several causes previously alluded to, the greater facility of parturition amongst savages, and the less consequent injury to their male infants, would tend to increase the proportion of live-born males to females. there does not, however, seem to be any necessary connection between savage life and a marked excess of males; that is if we may judge by the character of the scanty offspring of the lately existing tasmanians and of the crossed offspring of the tahitians now inhabiting norfolk island. as the males and females of many animals differ somewhat in habits and are exposed in different degrees to danger, it is probable that in many cases, more of one sex than of the other are habitually destroyed. but as far as i can trace out the complication of causes, an indiscriminate though large destruction of either sex would not tend to modify the sex-producing power of the species. with strictly social animals, such as bees or ants, which produce a vast number of sterile and fertile females in comparison with the males, and to whom this preponderance is of paramount importance, we can see that those communities would flourish best which contained females having a strong inherited tendency to produce more and more females; and in such cases an unequal sex-producing tendency would be ultimately gained through natural selection. with animals living in herds or troops, in which the males come to the front and defend the herd, as with the bisons of north america and certain baboons, it is conceivable that a male-producing tendency might be gained by natural selection; for the individuals of the better defended herds would leave more numerous descendants. in the case of mankind the advantage arising from having a preponderance of men in the tribe is supposed to be one chief cause of the practice of female infanticide. in no case, as far as we can see, would an inherited tendency to produce both sexes in equal numbers or to produce one sex in excess, be a direct advantage or disadvantage to certain individuals more than to others; for instance, an individual with a tendency to produce more males than females would not succeed better in the battle for life than an individual with an opposite tendency; and therefore a tendency of this kind could not be gained through natural selection. nevertheless, there are certain animals (for instance, fishes and cirripedes) in which two or more males appear to be necessary for the fertilisation of the female; and the males accordingly largely preponderate, but it is by no means obvious how this male-producing tendency could have been acquired. i formerly thought that when a tendency to produce the two sexes in equal numbers was advantageous to the species, it would follow from natural selection, but i now see that the whole problem is so intricate that it is safer to leave its solution for the future. chapter ix. secondary sexual characters in the lower classes of the animal kingdom. these characters absent in the lowest classes--brilliant colours--mollusca --annelids--crustacea, secondary sexual characters strongly developed; dimorphism; colour; characters not acquired before maturity--spiders, sexual colours of; stridulation by the males--myriapoda. with animals belonging to the lower classes, the two sexes are not rarely united in the same individual, and therefore secondary sexual characters cannot be developed. in many cases where the sexes are separate, both are permanently attached to some support, and the one cannot search or struggle for the other. moreover it is almost certain that these animals have too imperfect senses and much too low mental powers to appreciate each other's beauty or other attractions, or to feel rivalry. hence in these classes or sub-kingdoms, such as the protozoa, coelenterata, echinodermata, scolecida, secondary sexual characters, of the kind which we have to consider, do not occur: and this fact agrees with the belief that such characters in the higher classes have been acquired through sexual selection, which depends on the will, desire, and choice of either sex. nevertheless some few apparent exceptions occur; thus, as i hear from dr. baird, the males of certain entozoa, or internal parasitic worms, differ slightly in colour from the females; but we have no reason to suppose that such differences have been augmented through sexual selection. contrivances by which the male holds the female, and which are indispensable for the propagation of the species, are independent of sexual selection, and have been acquired through ordinary selection. many of the lower animals, whether hermaphrodites or with separate sexes, are ornamented with the most brilliant tints, or are shaded and striped in an elegant manner; for instance, many corals and sea-anemones (actiniae), some jelly-fish (medusae, porpita, etc.), some planariae, many star-fishes, echini, ascidians, etc.; but we may conclude from the reasons already indicated, namely, the union of the two sexes in some of these animals, the permanently affixed condition of others, and the low mental powers of all, that such colours do not serve as a sexual attraction, and have not been acquired through sexual selection. it should be borne in mind that in no case have we sufficient evidence that colours have been thus acquired, except where one sex is much more brilliantly or conspicuously coloured than the other, and where there is no difference in habits between the sexes sufficient to account for their different colours. but the evidence is rendered as complete as it can ever be, only when the more ornamented individuals, almost always the males, voluntarily display their attractions before the other sex; for we cannot believe that such display is useless, and if it be advantageous, sexual selection will almost inevitably follow. we may, however, extend this conclusion to both sexes, when coloured alike, if their colours are plainly analogous to those of one sex alone in certain other species of the same group. how, then, are we to account for the beautiful or even gorgeous colours of many animals in the lowest classes? it appears doubtful whether such colours often serve as a protection; but that we may easily err on this head, will be admitted by every one who reads mr. wallace's excellent essay on this subject. it would not, for instance, at first occur to any one that the transparency of the medusae, or jelly-fish, is of the highest service to them as a protection; but when we are reminded by haeckel that not only the medusae, but many floating mollusca, crustaceans, and even small oceanic fishes partake of this same glass-like appearance, often accompanied by prismatic colours, we can hardly doubt that they thus escape the notice of pelagic birds and other enemies. m. giard is also convinced ( . 'archives de zoolog. exper.' oct. , p. .) that the bright tints of certain sponges and ascidians serve as a protection. conspicuous colours are likewise beneficial to many animals as a warning to their would-be devourers that they are distasteful, or that they possess some special means of defence; but this subject will be discussed more conveniently hereafter. we can, in our ignorance of most of the lowest animals, only say that their bright tints result either from the chemical nature or the minute structure of their tissues, independently of any benefit thus derived. hardly any colour is finer than that of arterial blood; but there is no reason to suppose that the colour of the blood is in itself any advantage; and though it adds to the beauty of the maiden's cheek, no one will pretend that it has been acquired for this purpose. so again with many animals, especially the lower ones, the bile is richly coloured; thus, as i am informed by mr. hancock, the extreme beauty of the eolidae (naked sea-slugs) is chiefly due to the biliary glands being seen through the translucent integuments--this beauty being probably of no service to these animals. the tints of the decaying leaves in an american forest are described by every one as gorgeous; yet no one supposes that these tints are of the least advantage to the trees. bearing in mind how many substances closely analogous to natural organic compounds have been recently formed by chemists, and which exhibit the most splendid colours, it would have been a strange fact if substances similarly coloured had not often originated, independently of any useful end thus gained, in the complex laboratory of living organisms. the sub-kingdom of the mollusca. throughout this great division of the animal kingdom, as far as i can discover, secondary sexual characters, such as we are here considering, never occur. nor could they be expected in the three lowest classes, namely, in the ascidians, polyzoa, and brachiopods (constituting the molluscoida of some authors), for most of these animals are permanently affixed to a support or have their sexes united in the same individual. in the lamellibranchiata, or bivalve shells, hermaphroditism is not rare. in the next higher class of the gasteropoda, or univalve shells, the sexes are either united or separate. but in the latter case the males never possess special organs for finding, securing, or charming the females, or for fighting with other males. as i am informed by mr. gwyn jeffreys, the sole external difference between the sexes consists in the shell sometimes differing a little in form; for instance, the shell of the male periwinkle (littorina littorea) is narrower and has a more elongated spire than that of the female. but differences of this nature, it may be presumed, are directly connected with the act of reproduction, or with the development of the ova. the gasteropoda, though capable of locomotion and furnished with imperfect eyes, do not appear to be endowed with sufficient mental powers for the members of the same sex to struggle together in rivalry, and thus to acquire secondary sexual characters. nevertheless with the pulmoniferous gasteropods, or land-snails, the pairing is preceded by courtship; for these animals, though hermaphrodites, are compelled by their structure to pair together. agassiz remarks, "quiconque a eu l'occasion d'observer les amours des limaçons, ne saurait mettre en doute la séduction deployée dans les mouvements et les allures qui préparent et accomplissent le double embrassement de ces hermaphrodites." ( . 'de l'espèce et de la class.' etc., , p. .) these animals appear also susceptible of some degree of permanent attachment: an accurate observer, mr. lonsdale, informs me that he placed a pair of land-snails, (helix pomatia), one of which was weakly, into a small and ill-provided garden. after a short time the strong and healthy individual disappeared, and was traced by its track of slime over a wall into an adjoining well-stocked garden. mr. lonsdale concluded that it had deserted its sickly mate; but after an absence of twenty-four hours it returned, and apparently communicated the result of its successful exploration, for both then started along the same track and disappeared over the wall. even in the highest class of the mollusca, the cephalopoda or cuttle-fishes, in which the sexes are separate, secondary sexual characters of the present kind do not, as far as i can discover, occur. this is a surprising circumstance, as these animals possess highly-developed sense-organs and have considerable mental powers, as will be admitted by every one who has watched their artful endeavours to escape from an enemy. ( . see, for instance, the account which i have given in my 'journal of researches,' , p. .) certain cephalopoda, however, are characterised by one extraordinary sexual character, namely that the male element collects within one of the arms or tentacles, which is then cast off, and clinging by its sucking-discs to the female, lives for a time an independent life. so completely does the cast-off arm resemble a separate animal, that it was described by cuvier as a parasitic worm under the name of hectocotyle. but this marvellous structure may be classed as a primary rather than as a secondary sexual character. although with the mollusca sexual selection does not seem to have come into play; yet many univalve and bivalve shells, such as volutes, cones, scallops, etc., are beautifully coloured and shaped. the colours do not appear in most cases to be of any use as a protection; they are probably the direct result, as in the lowest classes, of the nature of the tissues; the patterns and the sculpture of the shell depending on its manner of growth. the amount of light seems to be influential to a certain extent; for although, as repeatedly stated by mr. gwyn jeffreys, the shells of some species living at a profound depth are brightly coloured, yet we generally see the lower surfaces, as well as the parts covered by the mantle, less highly-coloured than the upper and exposed surfaces. ( . i have given ('geological observations on volcanic islands,' , p. ) a curious instance of the influence of light on the colours of a frondescent incrustation, deposited by the surf on the coast-rocks of ascension and formed by the solution of triturated sea-shells.) in some cases, as with shells living amongst corals or brightly-tinted seaweeds, the bright colours may serve as a protection. ( . dr. morse has lately discussed this subject in his paper on the 'adaptive coloration of mollusca,' 'proc. boston soc. of nat. hist.' vol. xiv. april .) but that many of the nudibranch mollusca, or sea-slugs, are as beautifully coloured as any shells, may be seen in messrs. alder and hancock's magnificent work; and from information kindly given me by mr. hancock, it seems extremely doubtful whether these colours usually serve as a protection. with some species this may be the case, as with one kind which lives on the green leaves of algae, and is itself bright-green. but many brightly-coloured, white, or otherwise conspicuous species, do not seek concealment; whilst again some equally conspicuous species, as well as other dull-coloured kinds live under stones and in dark recesses. so that with these nudibranch molluscs, colour apparently does not stand in any close relation to the nature of the places which they inhabit. these naked sea-slugs are hermaphrodites, yet they pair together, as do land-snails, many of which have extremely pretty shells. it is conceivable that two hermaphrodites, attracted by each other's greater beauty, might unite and leave offspring which would inherit their parents' greater beauty. but with such lowly-organised creatures this is extremely improbable. nor is it at all obvious how the offspring from the more beautiful pairs of hermaphrodites would have any advantage over the offspring of the less beautiful, so as to increase in number, unless indeed vigour and beauty generally coincided. we have not here the case of a number of males becoming mature before the females, with the more beautiful males selected by the more vigorous females. if, indeed, brilliant colours were beneficial to a hermaphrodite animal in relation to its general habits of life, the more brightly-tinted individuals would succeed best and would increase in number; but this would be a case of natural and not of sexual selection. sub-kingdom of the vermes: class, annelida (or sea-worms). in this class, although the sexes, when separate, sometimes differ from each other in characters of such importance that they have been placed under distinct genera or even families, yet the differences do not seem of the kind which can be safely attributed to sexual selection. these animals are often beautifully coloured, but as the sexes do not differ in this respect, we are but little concerned with them. even the nemertians, though so lowly organised, "vie in beauty and variety of colouring with any other group in the invertebrate series"; yet dr. mcintosh ( . see his beautiful monograph on 'british annelids,' part i. , p. .) cannot discover that these colours are of any service. the sedentary annelids become duller-coloured, according to m. quatrefages ( . see m. perrier: 'l'origine de l'homme d'après darwin,' 'revue scientifique', feb. , p. .), after the period of reproduction; and this i presume may be attributed to their less vigorous condition at that time. all these worm-like animals apparently stand too low in the scale for the individuals of either sex to exert any choice in selecting a partner, or for the individuals of the same sex to struggle together in rivalry. sub-kingdom of the arthropoda: class, crustacea. in this great class we first meet with undoubted secondary sexual characters, often developed in a remarkable manner. unfortunately the habits of crustaceans are very imperfectly known, and we cannot explain the uses of many structures peculiar to one sex. with the lower parasitic species the males are of small size, and they alone are furnished with perfect swimming-legs, antennae and sense-organs; the females being destitute of these organs, with their bodies often consisting of a mere distorted mass. but these extraordinary differences between the two sexes are no doubt related to their widely different habits of life, and consequently do not concern us. in various crustaceans, belonging to distinct families, the anterior antennae are furnished with peculiar thread-like bodies, which are believed to act as smelling-organs, and these are much more numerous in the males than in the females. as the males, without any unusual development of their olfactory organs, would almost certainly be able sooner or later to find the females, the increased number of the smelling-threads has probably been acquired through sexual selection, by the better provided males having been the more successful in finding partners and in producing offspring. fritz müller has described a remarkable dimorphic species of tanais, in which the male is represented by two distinct forms, which never graduate into each other. in the one form the male is furnished with more numerous smelling-threads, and in the other form with more powerful and more elongated chelae or pincers, which serve to hold the female. fritz müller suggests that these differences between the two male forms of the same species may have originated in certain individuals having varied in the number of the smelling-threads, whilst other individuals varied in the shape and size of their chelae; so that of the former, those which were best able to find the female, and of the latter, those which were best able to hold her, have left the greatest number of progeny to inherit their respective advantages. ( . 'facts and arguments for darwin,' english translat., , p. . see the previous discussion on the olfactory threads. sars has described a somewhat analogous case (as quoted in 'nature,' , p. ) in a norwegian crustacean, the pontoporeia affinis.) [fig. . labidocera darwinii (from lubbock). labelled are: a. part of right anterior antenna of male, forming a prehensile organ. b. posterior pair of thoracic legs of male. c. ditto of female.] in some of the lower crustaceans, the right anterior antenna of the male differs greatly in structure from the left, the latter resembling in its simple tapering joints the antennae of the female. in the male the modified antenna is either swollen in the middle or angularly bent, or converted (fig. ) into an elegant, and sometimes wonderfully complex, prehensile organ. ( . see sir j. lubbock in 'annals and mag. of nat. hist.' vol. xi. , pl. i. and x.; and vol. xii. ( ), pl. vii. see also lubbock in 'transactions, entomological society,' vol. iv. new series, - , p. . with respect to the zigzagged antennae mentioned below, see fritz müller, 'facts and arguments for darwin,' , p. , foot-note.) it serves, as i hear from sir j. lubbock, to hold the female, and for this same purpose one of the two posterior legs (b) on the same side of the body is converted into a forceps. in another family the inferior or posterior antennae are "curiously zigzagged" in the males alone. [fig. . anterior part of body of callianassa (from milne-edwards), showing the unequal and differently-constructed right and left-hand chelae of the male. n.b.--the artist by mistake has reversed the drawing, and made the left-hand chela the largest. fig. . second leg of male orchestia tucuratinga (from fritz müller). fig. . ditto of female.] in the higher crustaceans the anterior legs are developed into chelae or pincers; and these are generally larger in the male than in the female,--so much so that the market value of the male edible crab (cancer pagurus), according to mr. c. spence bate, is five times as great as that of the female. in many species the chelae are of unequal size on the opposite side of the body, the right-hand one being, as i am informed by mr. bate, generally, though not invariably, the largest. this inequality is also often much greater in the male than in the female. the two chelae of the male often differ in structure (figs. , , and ), the smaller one resembling that of the female. what advantage is gained by their inequality in size on the opposite sides of the body, and by the inequality being much greater in the male than in the female; and why, when they are of equal size, both are often much larger in the male than in the female, is not known. as i hear from mr. bate, the chelae are sometimes of such length and size that they cannot possibly be used for carrying food to the mouth. in the males of certain fresh-water prawns (palaemon) the right leg is actually longer than the whole body. ( . see a paper by mr. c. spence bate, with figures, in 'proceedings, zoological society,' , p. ; and on the nomenclature of the genus, ibid. p. . i am greatly indebted to mr. spence bate for nearly all the above statements with respect to the chelae of the higher crustaceans.) the great size of the one leg with its chelae may aid the male in fighting with his rivals; but this will not account for their inequality in the female on the opposite sides of the body. in gelasimus, according to a statement quoted by milne edwards ( . 'hist. nat. des crust.' tom. ii. , p. .), the male and the female live in the same burrow, and this shews that they pair; the male closes the mouth of the burrow with one of its chelae, which is enormously developed; so that here it indirectly serves as a means of defence. their main use, however, is probably to seize and to secure the female, and this in some instances, as with gammarus, is known to be the case. the male of the hermit or soldier crab (pagurus) for weeks together, carries about the shell inhabited by the female. ( . mr. c. spence bate, 'british association, fourth report on the fauna of s. devon.') the sexes, however, of the common shore-crab (carcinus maenas), as mr. bate informs me, unite directly after the female has moulted her hard shell, when she is so soft that she would be injured if seized by the strong pincers of the male; but as she is caught and carried about by the male before moulting, she could then be seized with impunity. [fig. . orchestia darwinii (from fritz müller), showing the differently-constructed chelae of the two male forms.] fritz müller states that certain species of melita are distinguished from all other amphipods by the females having "the coxal lamellae of the penultimate pair of feet produced into hook-like processes, of which the males lay hold with the hands of the first pair." the development of these hook-like processes has probably followed from those females which were the most securely held during the act of reproduction, having left the largest number of offspring. another brazilian amphipod (see orchestia darwinii, fig. ) presents a case of dimorphism, like that of tanais; for there are two male forms, which differ in the structure of their chelae. ( . fritz müller, 'facts and arguments for darwin,' , pp. - .) as either chela would certainly suffice to hold the female,--for both are now used for this purpose,--the two male forms probably originated by some having varied in one manner and some in another; both forms having derived certain special, but nearly equal advantages, from their differently shaped organs. it is not known that male crustaceans fight together for the possession of the females, but it is probably the case; for with most animals when the male is larger than the female, he seems to owe his greater size to his ancestors having fought with other males during many generations. in most of the orders, especially in the highest or the brachyura, the male is larger than the female; the parasitic genera, however, in which the sexes follow different habits of life, and most of the entomostraca must be excepted. the chelae of many crustaceans are weapons well adapted for fighting. thus when a devil-crab (portunus puber) was seen by a son of mr. bate fighting with a carcinus maenas, the latter was soon thrown on its back, and had every limb torn from its body. when several males of a brazilian gelasimus, a species furnished with immense pincers, were placed together in a glass vessel by fritz müller, they mutilated and killed one another. mr. bate put a large male carcinus maenas into a pan of water, inhabited by a female which was paired with a smaller male; but the latter was soon dispossessed. mr. bate adds, "if they fought, the victory was a bloodless one, for i saw no wounds." this same naturalist separated a male sand-skipper (so common on our sea-shores), gammarus marinus, from its female, both of whom were imprisoned in the same vessel with many individuals of the same species. the female, when thus divorced, soon joined the others. after a time the male was put again into the same vessel; and he then, after swimming about for a time, dashed into the crowd, and without any fighting at once took away his wife. this fact shews that in the amphipoda, an order low in the scale, the males and females recognise each other, and are mutually attached. the mental powers of the crustacea are probably higher than at first sight appears probable. any one who tries to catch one of the shore-crabs, so common on tropical coasts, will perceive how wary and alert they are. there is a large crab (birgus latro), found on coral islands, which makes a thick bed of the picked fibres of the cocoa-nut, at the bottom of a deep burrow. it feeds on the fallen fruit of this tree by tearing off the husk, fibre by fibre; and it always begins at that end where the three eye-like depressions are situated. it then breaks through one of these eyes by hammering with its heavy front pincers, and turning round, extracts the albuminous core with its narrow posterior pincers. but these actions are probably instinctive, so that they would be performed as well by a young animal as by an old one. the following case, however, can hardly be so considered: a trustworthy naturalist, mr. gardner ( . 'travels in the interior of brazil,' , p. . i have given, in my 'journal of researches,' p. , an account of the habits of the birgus.), whilst watching a shore-crab (gelasimus) making its burrow, threw some shells towards the hole. one rolled in, and three other shells remained within a few inches of the mouth. in about five minutes the crab brought out the shell which had fallen in, and carried it away to a distance of a foot; it then saw the three other shells lying near, and evidently thinking that they might likewise roll in, carried them to the spot where it had laid the first. it would, i think, be difficult to distinguish this act from one performed by man by the aid of reason. mr. bate does not know of any well-marked case of difference of colour in the two sexes of our british crustaceans, in which respect the sexes of the higher animals so often differ. in some cases, however, the males and females differ slightly in tint, but mr. bate thinks not more than may be accounted for by their different habits of life, such as by the male wandering more about, and being thus more exposed to the light. dr. power tried to distinguish by colour the sexes of the several species which inhabit the mauritius, but failed, except with one species of squilla, probably s. stylifera, the male of which is described as being "of a beautiful bluish-green," with some of the appendages cherry-red, whilst the female is clouded with brown and grey, "with the red about her much less vivid than in the male." ( . mr. ch. fraser, in 'proc. zoolog. soc.' , p. . i am indebted to mr. bate for dr. power's statement.) in this case, we may suspect the agency of sexual selection. from m. bert's observations on daphnia, when placed in a vessel illuminated by a prism, we have reason to believe that even the lowest crustaceans can distinguish colours. with saphirina (an oceanic genus of entomostraca), the males are furnished with minute shields or cell-like bodies, which exhibit beautiful changing colours; these are absent in the females, and in both sexes of one species. ( . claus, 'die freilebenden copepoden,' , s. .) it would, however, be extremely rash to conclude that these curious organs serve to attract the females. i am informed by fritz müller, that in the female of a brazilian species of gelasimus, the whole body is of a nearly uniform greyish-brown. in the male the posterior part of the cephalo-thorax is pure white, with the anterior part of a rich green, shading into dark brown; and it is remarkable that these colours are liable to change in the course of a few minutes--the white becoming dirty grey or even black, the green "losing much of its brilliancy." it deserves especial notice that the males do not acquire their bright colours until they become mature. they appear to be much more numerous than the females; they differ also in the larger size of their chelae. in some species of the genus, probably in all, the sexes pair and inhabit the same burrow. they are also, as we have seen, highly intelligent animals. from these various considerations it seems probable that the male in this species has become gaily ornamented in order to attract or excite the female. it has just been stated that the male gelasimus does not acquire his conspicuous colours until mature and nearly ready to breed. this seems a general rule in the whole class in respect to the many remarkable structural differences between the sexes. we shall hereafter find the same law prevailing throughout the great sub-kingdom of the vertebrata; and in all cases it is eminently distinctive of characters which have been acquired through sexual selection. fritz müller ( . 'facts and arguments,' etc., p. .) gives some striking instances of this law; thus the male sand-hopper (orchestia) does not, until nearly full grown, acquire his large claspers, which are very differently constructed from those of the female; whilst young, his claspers resemble those of the female. class, arachnida (spiders). the sexes do not generally differ much in colour, but the males are often darker than the females, as may be seen in mr. blackwall's magnificent work. ( . 'a history of the spiders of great britain,' - . for the following facts, see pp. , , .) in some species, however, the difference is conspicuous: thus the female of sparassus smaragdulus is dullish green, whilst the adult male has the abdomen of a fine yellow, with three longitudinal stripes of rich red. in certain species of thomisus the sexes closely resemble each other, in others they differ much; and analogous cases occur in many other genera. it is often difficult to say which of the two sexes departs most from the ordinary coloration of the genus to which the species belong; but mr. blackwall thinks that, as a general rule, it is the male; and canestrini ( . this author has recently published a valuable essay on the 'caratteri sessuali secondarii degli arachnidi,' in the 'atti della soc. veneto-trentina di sc. nat. padova,' vol. i. fasc. , .) remarks that in certain genera the males can be specifically distinguished with ease, but the females with great difficulty. i am informed by mr. blackwall that the sexes whilst young usually resemble each other; and both often undergo great changes in colour during their successive moults, before arriving at maturity. in other cases the male alone appears to change colour. thus the male of the above bright-coloured sparassus at first resembles the female, and acquires his peculiar tints only when nearly adult. spiders are possessed of acute senses, and exhibit much intelligence; as is well known, the females often shew the strongest affection for their eggs, which they carry about enveloped in a silken web. the males search eagerly for the females, and have been seen by canestrini and others to fight for possession of them. this same author says that the union of the two sexes has been observed in about twenty species; and he asserts positively that the female rejects some of the males who court her, threatens them with open mandibles, and at last after long hesitation accepts the chosen one. from these several considerations, we may admit with some confidence that the well-marked differences in colour between the sexes of certain species are the results of sexual selection; though we have not here the best kind of evidence,--the display by the male of his ornaments. from the extreme variability of colour in the male of some species, for instance of theridion lineatum, it would appear that these sexual characters of the males have not as yet become well fixed. canestrini draws the same conclusion from the fact that the males of certain species present two forms, differing from each other in the size and length of their jaws; and this reminds us of the above cases of dimorphic crustaceans. the male is generally much smaller than the female, sometimes to an extraordinary degree ( . aug. vinson ('araneides des iles de la reunion,' pl. vi. figs. and ) gives a good instance of the small size of the male, in epeira nigra. in this species, as i may add, the male is testaceous and the female black with legs banded with red. other even more striking cases of inequality in size between the sexes have been recorded ('quarterly journal of science,' july , p. ); but i have not seen the original accounts.), and he is forced to be extremely cautious in making his advances, as the female often carries her coyness to a dangerous pitch. de geer saw a male that "in the midst of his preparatory caresses was seized by the object of his attentions, enveloped by her in a web and then devoured, a sight which, as he adds, filled him with horror and indignation." ( . kirby and spence, 'introduction to entomology,' vol. i. , p. .) the rev. o.p. cambridge ( . 'proceedings, zoological society,' , p. .) accounts in the following manner for the extreme smallness of the male in the genus nephila. "m. vinson gives a graphic account of the agile way in which the diminutive male escapes from the ferocity of the female, by gliding about and playing hide and seek over her body and along her gigantic limbs: in such a pursuit it is evident that the chances of escape would be in favour of the smallest males, while the larger ones would fall early victims; thus gradually a diminutive race of males would be selected, until at last they would dwindle to the smallest possible size compatible with the exercise of their generative functions,--in fact, probably to the size we now see them, i.e., so small as to be a sort of parasite upon the female, and either beneath her notice, or too agile and too small for her to catch without great difficulty." westring has made the interesting discovery that the males of several species of theridion ( . theridion (asagena, sund.) serratipes, -punctatum et guttatum; see westring, in kroyer, 'naturhist. tidskrift,' vol. iv. - , p. ; and vol. ii. - , p. . see, also, for other species, 'araneae suecicae,' p. .) have the power of making a stridulating sound, whilst the females are mute. the apparatus consists of a serrated ridge at the base of the abdomen, against which the hard hinder part of the thorax is rubbed; and of this structure not a trace can be detected in the females. it deserves notice that several writers, including the well-known arachnologist walckenaer, have declared that spiders are attracted by music. ( . dr. h.h. van zouteveen, in his dutch translation of this work (vol. i. p. ), has collected several cases.) from the analogy of the orthoptera and homoptera, to be described in the next chapter, we may feel almost sure that the stridulation serves, as westring also believes, to call or to excite the female; and this is the first case known to me in the ascending scale of the animal kingdom of sounds emitted for this purpose. ( . hilgendorf, however, has lately called attention to an analogous structure in some of the higher crustaceans, which seems adapted to produce sound; see 'zoological record,' , p. .) class, myriapoda. in neither of the two orders in this class, the millipedes and centipedes, can i find any well-marked instances of such sexual differences as more particularly concern us. in glomeris limbata, however, and perhaps in some few other species, the males differ slightly in colour from the females; but this glomeris is a highly variable species. in the males of the diplopoda, the legs belonging either to one of the anterior or of the posterior segments of the body are modified into prehensile hooks which serve to secure the female. in some species of iulus the tarsi of the male are furnished with membranous suckers for the same purpose. as we shall see when we treat of insects, it is a much more unusual circumstance, that it is the female in lithobius, which is furnished with prehensile appendages at the extremity of her body for holding the male. ( . walckenaer et p. gervais, 'hist. nat. des insectes: apteres,' tom. iv. , pp. , , .) chapter x. secondary sexual characters of insects. diversified structures possessed by the males for seizing the females--differences between the sexes, of which the meaning is not understood--difference in size between the sexes--thysanura--diptera--hemiptera--homoptera, musical powers possessed by the males alone--orthoptera, musical instruments of the males, much diversified in structure; pugnacity; colours--neuroptera, sexual differences in colour--hymenoptera, pugnacity and odours--coleoptera, colours; furnished with great horns, apparently as an ornament; battles, stridulating organs generally common to both sexes. in the immense class of insects the sexes sometimes differ in their locomotive-organs, and often in their sense-organs, as in the pectinated and beautifully plumose antennae of the males of many species. in chloeon, one of the ephemerae, the male has great pillared eyes, of which the female is entirely destitute. ( . sir j. lubbock, 'transact. linnean soc.' vol. xxv, , p. . with respect to the mutillidae see westwood, 'modern class. of insects,' vol. ii. p. .) the ocelli are absent in the females of certain insects, as in the mutillidae; and here the females are likewise wingless. but we are chiefly concerned with structures by which one male is enabled to conquer another, either in battle or courtship, through his strength, pugnacity, ornaments, or music. the innumerable contrivances, therefore, by which the male is able to seize the female, may be briefly passed over. besides the complex structures at the apex of the abdomen, which ought perhaps to be ranked as primary organs ( . these organs in the male often differ in closely-allied species, and afford excellent specific characters. but their importance, from a functional point of view, as mr. r. maclachlan has remarked to me, has probably been overrated. it has been suggested, that slight differences in these organs would suffice to prevent the intercrossing of well-marked varieties or incipient species, and would thus aid in their development. that this can hardly be the case, we may infer from the many recorded cases (see, for instance, bronn, 'geschichte der natur,' b. ii. , s. ; and westwood, 'transact. ent. soc.' vol. iii. , p. ) of distinct species having been observed in union. mr. maclachlan informs me (vide 'stett. ent. zeitung,' , s. ) that when several species of phryganidae, which present strongly-pronounced differences of this kind, were confined together by dr. aug. meyer, they coupled, and one pair produced fertile ova.), "it is astonishing," as mr. b.d. walsh ( . 'the practical entomologist,' philadelphia, vol. ii. may , p. .) has remarked, "how many different organs are worked in by nature for the seemingly insignificant object of enabling the male to grasp the female firmly." the mandibles or jaws are sometimes used for this purpose; thus the male corydalis cornutus (a neuropterous insect in some degree allied to the dragon flies, etc.) has immense curved jaws, many times longer than those of the female; and they are smooth instead of being toothed, so that he is thus enabled to seize her without injury. ( . mr. walsh, ibid. p. .) one of the stag-beetles of north america (lucanus elaphus) uses his jaws, which are much larger than those of the female, for the same purpose, but probably likewise for fighting. in one of the sand-wasps (ammophila) the jaws in the two sexes are closely alike, but are used for widely different purposes: the males, as professor westwood observes, "are exceedingly ardent, seizing their partners round the neck with their sickle-shaped jaws" ( . 'modern classification of insects,' vol. ii. , pp. , . mr. walsh, who called my attention to the double use of the jaws, says that he has repeatedly observed this fact.); whilst the females use these organs for burrowing in sand-banks and making their nests. [fig. . crabro cribrarius. upper figure, male; lower figure, female.] the tarsi of the front-legs are dilated in many male beetles, or are furnished with broad cushions of hairs; and in many genera of water-beetles they are armed with a round flat sucker, so that the male may adhere to the slippery body of the female. it is a much more unusual circumstance that the females of some water-beetles (dytiscus) have their elytra deeply grooved, and in acilius sulcatus thickly set with hairs, as an aid to the male. the females of some other water-beetles (hydroporus) have their elytra punctured for the same purpose. ( . we have here a curious and inexplicable case of dimorphism, for some of the females of four european species of dytiscus, and of certain species of hydroporus, have their elytra smooth; and no intermediate gradations between the sulcated or punctured, and the quite smooth elytra have been observed. see dr. h. schaum, as quoted in the 'zoologist,' vols. v.-vi. - , p. . also kirby and spence, 'introduction to entomology,' vol. iii. , p. .) in the male of crabro cribrarius (fig. ), it is the tibia which is dilated into a broad horny plate, with minute membraneous dots, giving to it a singular appearance like that of a riddle. ( . westwood, 'modern class.' vol. ii. p. . the following statement about penthe, and others in inverted commas, are taken from mr. walsh, 'practical entomologist,' philadelphia, vol. iii. p. .) in the male of penthe (a genus of beetles) a few of the middle joints of the antennae are dilated and furnished on the inferior surface with cushions of hair, exactly like those on the tarsi of the carabidae, "and obviously for the same end." in male dragon-flies, "the appendages at the tip of the tail are modified in an almost infinite variety of curious patterns to enable them to embrace the neck of the female." lastly, in the males of many insects, the legs are furnished with peculiar spines, knobs or spurs; or the whole leg is bowed or thickened, but this is by no means invariably a sexual character; or one pair, or all three pairs are elongated, sometimes to an extravagant length. ( . kirby and spence, 'introduct.' etc., vol. iii. pp. - .) [fig. . taphroderes distortus (much enlarged). upper figure, male; lower figure, female.] the sexes of many species in all the orders present differences, of which the meaning is not understood. one curious case is that of a beetle (fig. ), the male of which has left mandible much enlarged; so that the mouth is greatly distorted. in another carabidous beetle, eurygnathus ( . 'insecta maderensia,' , page .), we have the case, unique as far as known to mr. wollaston, of the head of the female being much broader and larger, though in a variable degree, than that of the male. any number of such cases could be given. they abound in the lepidoptera: one of the most extraordinary is that certain male butterflies have their fore-legs more or less atrophied, with the tibiae and tarsi reduced to mere rudimentary knobs. the wings, also, in the two sexes often differ in neuration ( . e. doubleday, 'annals and mag. of nat. hist.' vol. i. , p. . i may add that the wings in certain hymenoptera (see shuckard, 'fossorial hymenoptera,' , pp. - ) differ in neuration according to sex.), and sometimes considerably in outline, as in the aricoris epitus, which was shewn to me in the british museum by mr. a. butler. the males of certain south american butterflies have tufts of hair on the margins of the wings, and horny excrescences on the discs of the posterior pair. ( . h.w. bates, in 'journal of proc. linn. soc.' vol. vi. , p. . mr. wonfor's observations are quoted in 'popular science review,' , p. .) in several british butterflies, as shewn by mr. wonfor, the males alone are in parts clothed with peculiar scales. the use of the bright light of the female glow-worm has been subject to much discussion. the male is feebly luminous, as are the larvae and even the eggs. it has been supposed by some authors that the light serves to frighten away enemies, and by others to guide the male to the female. at last, mr. belt ( . 'the naturalist in nicaragua,' , pp. - . on the phosphorescence of the eggs, see 'annals and magazine of natural history,' nov. , p. .) appears to have solved the difficulty: he finds that all the lampyridae which he has tried are highly distasteful to insectivorous mammals and birds. hence it is in accordance with mr. bates' view, hereafter to be explained, that many insects mimic the lampyridae closely, in order to be mistaken for them, and thus to escape destruction. he further believes that the luminous species profit by being at once recognised as unpalatable. it is probable that the same explanation may be extended to the elaters, both sexes of which are highly luminous. it is not known why the wings of the female glow-worm have not been developed; but in her present state she closely resembles a larva, and as larvae are so largely preyed on by many animals, we can understand why she has been rendered so much more luminous and conspicuous than the male; and why the larvae themselves are likewise luminous. difference in size between the sexes. with insects of all kinds the males are commonly smaller than the females; and this difference can often be detected even in the larval state. so considerable is the difference between the male and female cocoons of the silk-moth (bombyx mori), that in france they are separated by a particular mode of weighing. ( . robinet, 'vers a soie,' , p. .) in the lower classes of the animal kingdom, the greater size of the females seems generally to depend on their developing an enormous number of ova; and this may to a certain extent hold good with insects. but dr. wallace has suggested a much more probable explanation. he finds, after carefully attending to the development of the caterpillars of bombyx cynthia and yamamai, and especially to that of some dwarfed caterpillars reared from a second brood on unnatural food, "that in proportion as the individual moth is finer, so is the time required for its metamorphosis longer; and for this reason the female, which is the larger and heavier insect, from having to carry her numerous eggs, will be preceded by the male, which is smaller and has less to mature." ( . 'transact. ent. soc.' rd series, vol. v. p. .) now as most insects are short-lived, and as they are exposed to many dangers, it would manifestly be advantageous to the female to be impregnated as soon as possible. this end would be gained by the males being first matured in large numbers ready for the advent of the females; and this again would naturally follow, as mr. a.r. wallace has remarked ( . 'journal of proc. ent. soc.' feb. , , p. lxxi.), through natural selection; for the smaller males would be first matured, and thus would procreate a large number of offspring which would inherit the reduced size of their male parents, whilst the larger males from being matured later would leave fewer offspring. there are, however, exceptions to the rule of male insects being smaller than the females: and some of these exceptions are intelligible. size and strength would be an advantage to the males, which fight for the possession of the females; and in these cases, as with the stag-beetle (lucanus), the males are larger than the females. there are, however, other beetles which are not known to fight together, of which the males exceed the females in size; and the meaning of this fact is not known; but in some of these cases, as with the huge dynastes and megasoma, we can at least see that there would be no necessity for the males to be smaller than the females, in order to be matured before them, for these beetles are not short-lived, and there would be ample time for the pairing of the sexes. so again, male dragon-flies (libellulidae) are sometimes sensibly larger, and never smaller, than the females ( . for this and other statements on the size of the sexes, see kirby and spence, ibid. vol. iii. p. ; on the duration of life in insects, see p. .); and as mr. maclachlan believes, they do not generally pair with the females until a week or fortnight has elapsed, and until they have assumed their proper masculine colours. but the most curious case, shewing on what complex and easily-overlooked relations, so trifling a character as difference in size between the sexes may depend, is that of the aculeate hymenoptera; for mr. f. smith informs me that throughout nearly the whole of this large group, the males, in accordance with the general rule, are smaller than the females, and emerge about a week before them; but amongst the bees, the males of apis mellifica, anthidium manicatum, and anthophora acervorum, and amongst the fossores, the males of the methoca ichneumonides, are larger than the females. the explanation of this anomaly is that a marriage flight is absolutely necessary with these species, and the male requires great strength and size in order to carry the female through the air. increased size has here been acquired in opposition to the usual relation between size and the period of development, for the males, though larger, emerge before the smaller females. we will now review the several orders, selecting such facts as more particularly concern us. the lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) will be retained for a separate chapter. order, thysanura. the members of this lowly organised order are wingless, dull-coloured, minute insects, with ugly, almost misshapen heads and bodies. their sexes do not differ, but they are interesting as shewing us that the males pay sedulous court to the females even low down in the animal scale. sir j. lubbock ( . 'transact. linnean soc.' vol. xxvi. , p. .) says: "it is very amusing to see these little creatures (smynthurus luteus) coquetting together. the male, which is much smaller than the female, runs round her, and they butt one another, standing face to face and moving backward and forward like two playful lambs. then the female pretends to run away and the male runs after her with a queer appearance of anger, gets in front and stands facing her again; then she turns coyly round, but he, quicker and more active, scuttles round too, and seems to whip her with his antennae; then for a bit they stand face to face, play with their antennae, and seem to be all in all to one another." order, diptera (flies). the sexes differ little in colour. the greatest difference, known to mr. f. walker, is in the genus bibio, in which the males are blackish or quite black, and the females obscure brownish-orange. the genus elaphomyia, discovered by mr. wallace ( . 'the malay archipelago,' vol. ii. , p. .) in new guinea, is highly remarkable, as the males are furnished with horns, of which the females are quite destitute. the horns spring from beneath the eyes, and curiously resemble those of a stag, being either branched or palmated. in one of the species, they equal the whole body in length. they might be thought to be adapted for fighting, but as in one species they are of a beautiful pink colour, edged with black, with a pale central stripe, and as these insects have altogether a very elegant appearance, it is perhaps more probable that they serve as ornaments. that the males of some diptera fight together is certain; prof. westwood ( . 'modern classification of insects,' vol. ii. , p. .) has several times seen this with the tipulae. the males of other diptera apparently try to win the females by their music: h. müller ( . 'anwendung,' etc., 'verh. d. n. v. jahrg.' xxix. p. . mayer, in 'american naturalist,' , p. .) watched for some time two males of an eristalis courting a female; they hovered above her, and flew from side to side, making a high humming noise at the same time. gnats and mosquitoes (culicidae) also seem to attract each other by humming; and prof. mayer has recently ascertained that the hairs on the antennae of the male vibrate in unison with the notes of a tuning-fork, within the range of the sounds emitted by the female. the longer hairs vibrate sympathetically with the graver notes, and the shorter hairs with the higher ones. landois also asserts that he has repeatedly drawn down a whole swarm of gnats by uttering a particular note. it may be added that the mental faculties of the diptera are probably higher than in most other insects, in accordance with their highly-developed nervous system. ( . see mr. b.t. lowne's interesting work, 'on the anatomy of the blow-fly, musca vomitoria,' , p. . he remarks (p. ) that, "the captured flies utter a peculiar plaintive note, and that this sound causes other flies to disappear.") order, hemiptera (field-bugs). mr. j.w. douglas, who has particularly attended to the british species, has kindly given me an account of their sexual differences. the males of some species are furnished with wings, whilst the females are wingless; the sexes differ in the form of their bodies, elytra, antennae and tarsi; but as the signification of these differences are unknown, they may be here passed over. the females are generally larger and more robust than the males. with british, and, as far as mr. douglas knows, with exotic species, the sexes do not commonly differ much in colour; but in about six british species the male is considerably darker than the female, and in about four other species the female is darker than the male. both sexes of some species are beautifully coloured; and as these insects emit an extremely nauseous odour, their conspicuous colours may serve as a signal that they are unpalatable to insectivorous animals. in some few cases their colours appear to be directly protective: thus prof. hoffmann informs me that he could hardly distinguish a small pink and green species from the buds on the trunks of lime-trees, which this insect frequents. some species of reduvidae make a stridulating noise; and, in the case of pirates stridulus, this is said ( . westwood, 'modern classification of insects,' vol. ii. p. .) to be effected by the movement of the neck within the pro-thoracic cavity. according to westring, reduvius personatus also stridulates. but i have no reason to suppose that this is a sexual character, excepting that with non-social insects there seems to be no use for sound-producing organs, unless it be as a sexual call. order: homoptera. every one who has wandered in a tropical forest must have been astonished at the din made by the male cicadae. the females are mute; as the grecian poet xenarchus says, "happy the cicadas live, since they all have voiceless wives." the noise thus made could be plainly heard on board the "beagle," when anchored at a quarter of a mile from the shore of brazil; and captain hancock says it can be heard at the distance of a mile. the greeks formerly kept, and the chinese now keep these insects in cages for the sake of their song, so that it must be pleasing to the ears of some men. ( . these particulars are taken from westwood's 'modern classification of insects,' vol. ii. , p. . see, also, on the fulgoridae, kirby and spence, 'introduct.' vol. ii. p. .) the cicadidae usually sing during the day, whilst the fulgoridae appear to be night-songsters. the sound, according to landois ( . 'zeitschrift für wissenschaft. zoolog.' b. xvii. , ss. - .), is produced by the vibration of the lips of the spiracles, which are set into motion by a current of air emitted from the tracheae; but this view has lately been disputed. dr. powell appears to have proved ( . 'transactions of the new zealand institute,' vol. v. , p. .) that it is produced by the vibration of a membrane, set into action by a special muscle. in the living insect, whilst stridulating, this membrane can be seen to vibrate; and in the dead insect the proper sound is heard, if the muscle, when a little dried and hardened, is pulled with the point of a pin. in the female the whole complex musical apparatus is present, but is much less developed than in the male, and is never used for producing sound. with respect to the object of the music, dr. hartman, in speaking of the cicada septemdecim of the united states, says ( . i am indebted to mr. walsh for having sent me this extract from 'a journal of the doings of cicada septemdecim,' by dr. hartman.), "the drums are now (june th and th, ) heard in all directions. this i believe to be the marital summons from the males. standing in thick chestnut sprouts about as high as my head, where hundreds were around me, i observed the females coming around the drumming males." he adds, "this season (aug. ) a dwarf pear-tree in my garden produced about fifty larvae of cic. pruinosa; and i several times noticed the females to alight near a male while he was uttering his clanging notes." fritz müller writes to me from s. brazil that he has often listened to a musical contest between two or three males of a species with a particularly loud voice, seated at a considerable distance from each other: as soon as one had finished his song, another immediately began, and then another. as there is so much rivalry between the males, it is probable that the females not only find them by their sounds, but that, like female birds, they are excited or allured by the male with the most attractive voice. i have not heard of any well-marked cases of ornamental differences between the sexes of the homoptera. mr. douglas informs me that there are three british species, in which the male is black or marked with black bands, whilst the females are pale-coloured or obscure. order, orthoptera (crickets and grasshoppers). the males in the three saltatorial families in this order are remarkable for their musical powers, namely the achetidae or crickets, the locustidae for which there is no equivalent english name, and the acridiidae or grasshoppers. the stridulation produced by some of the locustidae is so loud that it can be heard during the night at the distance of a mile ( . l. guilding, 'transactions of the linnean society,' vol. xv. p. .); and that made by certain species is not unmusical even to the human ear, so that the indians on the amazons keep them in wicker cages. all observers agree that the sounds serve either to call or excite the mute females. with respect to the migratory locusts of russia, korte has given ( . i state this on the authority of koppen, '�ber die heuschrecken in südrussland,' , p. , for i have in vain endeavoured to procure korte's work.) an interesting case of selection by the female of a male. the males of this species (pachytylus migratorius) whilst coupled with the female stridulate from anger or jealousy, if approached by other males. the house-cricket when surprised at night uses its voice to warn its fellows. ( . gilbert white, 'natural history of selborne,' vol. ii. , p. .) in north america the katy-did (platyphyllum concavum, one of the locustidae) is described ( . harris, 'insects of new england,' , p. .) as mounting on the upper branches of a tree, and in the evening beginning "his noisy babble, while rival notes issue from the neighbouring trees, and the groves resound with the call of katy-did-she-did the live-long night." mr. bates, in speaking of the european field-cricket (one of the achetidae), says "the male has been observed to place himself in the evening at the entrance of his burrow, and stridulate until a female approaches, when the louder notes are succeeded by a more subdued tone, whilst the successful musician caresses with his antennae the mate he has won." ( . 'the naturalist on the amazons,' vol. i. , p. . mr. bates gives a very interesting discussion on the gradations in the musical apparatus of the three families. see also westwood, 'modern classification of insects,' vol. ii. pp. and .) dr. scudder was able to excite one of these insects to answer him, by rubbing on a file with a quill. ( . 'proceedings of the boston society of natural history,' vol. xi. april .) in both sexes a remarkable auditory apparatus has been discovered by von siebold, situated in the front legs. ( . 'nouveau manuel d'anat. comp.' (french translat.), tom. , , p. .) [fig. . gryllus campestris (from landois). right-hand figure, under side of part of a wing-nervure, much magnified, showing the teeth, st. left-hand figure, upper surface of wing-cover, with the projecting, smooth nervure, r, across which the teeth (st) are scraped. fig. . teeth of nervure of gryllus domesticus (from landois).] in the three families the sounds are differently produced. in the males of the achetidae both wing-covers have the same apparatus; and this in the field-cricket (see gryllus campestris, fig. ) consists, as described by landois ( . 'zeitschrift für wissenschaft. zoolog.' b. xvii. , s. .), of from to sharp, transverse ridges or teeth (st) on the under side of one of the nervures of the wing-cover. this toothed nervure is rapidly scraped across a projecting, smooth, hard nervure (r) on the upper surface of the opposite wing. first one wing is rubbed over the other, and then the movement is reversed. both wings are raised a little at the same time, so as to increase the resonance. in some species the wing-covers of the males are furnished at the base with a talc-like plate. ( . westwood, 'modern classification of insects,' vol. i. p. .) i here give a drawing (fig. ) of the teeth on the under side of the nervure of another species of gryllus, viz., g. domesticus. with respect to the formation of these teeth, dr. gruber has shewn ( . 'ueber der tonapparat der locustiden, ein beitrag zum darwinismus,' 'zeitschrift für wissenschaft. zoolog.' b. xxii. , p. .) that they have been developed by the aid of selection, from the minute scales and hairs with which the wings and body are covered, and i came to the same conclusion with respect to those of the coleoptera. but dr. gruber further shews that their development is in part directly due to the stimulus from the friction of one wing over the other. [fig. . chlorocoelus tanana (from bates). a,b. lobes of opposite wing-covers.] in the locustidae the opposite wing-covers differ from each other in structure (fig. ), and the action cannot, as in the last family, be reversed. the left wing, which acts as the bow, lies over the right wing which serves as the fiddle. one of the nervures (a) on the under surface of the former is finely serrated, and is scraped across the prominent nervures on the upper surface of the opposite or right wing. in our british phasgonura viridissima it appeared to me that the serrated nervure is rubbed against the rounded hind-corner of the opposite wing, the edge of which is thickened, coloured brown, and very sharp. in the right wing, but not in the left, there is a little plate, as transparent as talc, surrounded by nervures, and called the speculum. in ephippiger vitium, a member of this same family, we have a curious subordinate modification; for the wing-covers are greatly reduced in size, but "the posterior part of the pro-thorax is elevated into a kind of dome over the wing-covers, and which has probably the effect of increasing the sound." ( . westwood 'modern classification of insects,' vol. i. p. .) we thus see that the musical apparatus is more differentiated or specialised in the locustidae (which include, i believe, the most powerful performers in the order), than in the achetidae, in which both wing-covers have the same structure and the same function. ( . landois, 'zeitschrift für wissenschaft. zoolog.' b. xvii. , ss. , .) landois, however, detected in one of the locustidae, namely in decticus, a short and narrow row of small teeth, mere rudiments, on the inferior surface of the right wing-cover, which underlies the other and is never used as the bow. i observed the same rudimentary structure on the under side of the right wing-cover in phasgonura viridissima. hence we may infer with confidence that the locustidae are descended from a form, in which, as in the existing achetidae, both wing-covers had serrated nervures on the under surface, and could be indifferently used as the bow; but that in the locustidae the two wing-covers gradually became differentiated and perfected, on the principle of the division of labour, the one to act exclusively as the bow, and the other as the fiddle. dr. gruber takes the same view, and has shewn that rudimentary teeth are commonly found on the inferior surface of the right wing. by what steps the more simple apparatus in the achetidae originated, we do not know, but it is probable that the basal portions of the wing-covers originally overlapped each other as they do at present; and that the friction of the nervures produced a grating sound, as is now the case with the wing-covers of the females. ( . mr. walsh also informs me that he has noticed that the female of the platyphyllum concavum, "when captured makes a feeble grating noise by shuffling her wing-covers together.") a grating sound thus occasionally and accidentally made by the males, if it served them ever so little as a love-call to the females, might readily have been intensified through sexual selection, by variations in the roughness of the nervures having been continually preserved. [fig. . hind-leg of stenobothrus pratorum: r, the stridulating ridge; lower figure, the teeth forming the ridge, much magnified (from landois). fig. . pneumora (from specimens in the british museum). upper figure, male; lower figure, female.] in the last and third family, namely the acridiidae or grasshoppers, the stridulation is produced in a very different manner, and according to dr. scudder, is not so shrill as in the preceding families. the inner surface of the femur (fig. , r) is furnished with a longitudinal row of minute, elegant, lancet-shaped, elastic teeth, from to in number ( . landois, ibid. s. .); and these are scraped across the sharp, projecting nervures on the wing-covers, which are thus made to vibrate and resound. harris ( . 'insects of new england,' , p. .) says that when one of the males begins to play, he first "bends the shank of the hind-leg beneath the thigh, where it is lodged in a furrow designed to receive it, and then draws the leg briskly up and down. he does not play both fiddles together, but alternately, first upon one and then on the other." in many species, the base of the abdomen is hollowed out into a great cavity which is believed to act as a resounding board. in pneumora (fig. ), a s. african genus belonging to the same family, we meet with a new and remarkable modification; in the males a small notched ridge projects obliquely from each side of the abdomen, against which the hind femora are rubbed. ( . westwood, 'modern classification,' vol i. p. .) as the male is furnished with wings (the female being wingless), it is remarkable that the thighs are not rubbed in the usual manner against the wing-covers; but this may perhaps be accounted for by the unusually small size of the hind-legs. i have not been able to examine the inner surface of the thighs, which, judging from analogy, would be finely serrated. the species of pneumora have been more profoundly modified for the sake of stridulation than any other orthopterous insect; for in the male the whole body has been converted into a musical instrument, being distended with air, like a great pellucid bladder, so as to increase the resonance. mr. trimen informs me that at the cape of good hope these insects make a wonderful noise during the night. in the three foregoing families, the females are almost always destitute of an efficient musical apparatus. but there are a few exceptions to this rule, for dr. gruber has shewn that both sexes of ephippiger vitium are thus provided; though the organs differ in the male and female to a certain extent. hence we cannot suppose that they have been transferred from the male to the female, as appears to have been the case with the secondary sexual characters of many other animals. they must have been independently developed in the two sexes, which no doubt mutually call to each other during the season of love. in most other locustidae (but not according to landois in decticus) the females have rudiments of the stridulatory organs proper to the male; from whom it is probable that these have been transferred. landois also found such rudiments on the under surface of the wing-covers of the female achetidae, and on the femora of the female acridiidae. in the homoptera, also, the females have the proper musical apparatus in a functionless state; and we shall hereafter meet in other divisions of the animal kingdom with many instances of structures proper to the male being present in a rudimentary condition in the female. landois has observed another important fact, namely, that in the females of the acridiidae, the stridulating teeth on the femora remain throughout life in the same condition in which they first appear during the larval state in both sexes. in the males, on the other hand, they become further developed, and acquire their perfect structure at the last moult, when the insect is mature and ready to breed. from the facts now given, we see that the means by which the males of the orthoptera produce their sounds are extremely diversified, and are altogether different from those employed by the homoptera. ( . landois has recently found in certain orthoptera rudimentary structures closely similar to the sound-producing organs in the homoptera; and this is a surprising fact. see 'zeitschrift für wissenschaft, zoolog.' b. xxii. heft , , p. .) but throughout the animal kingdom we often find the same object gained by the most diversified means; this seems due to the whole organisation having undergone multifarious changes in the course of ages, and as part after part varied different variations were taken advantage of for the same general purpose. the diversity of means for producing sound in the three families of the orthoptera and in the homoptera, impresses the mind with the high importance of these structures to the males, for the sake of calling or alluring the females. we need feel no surprise at the amount of modification which the orthoptera have undergone in this respect, as we now know, from dr. scudder's remarkable discovery ( . 'transactions, entomological society,' rd series, vol. ii. ('journal of proceedings,' p. ).), that there has been more than ample time. this naturalist has lately found a fossil insect in the devonian formation of new brunswick, which is furnished with "the well-known tympanum or stridulating apparatus of the male locustidae." the insect, though in most respects related to the neuroptera, appears, as is so often the case with very ancient forms, to connect the two related orders of the neuroptera and orthoptera. i have but little more to say on the orthoptera. some of the species are very pugnacious: when two male field-crickets (gryllus campestris) are confined together, they fight till one kills the other; and the species of mantis are described as manoeuvring with their sword-like front-limbs, like hussars with their sabres. the chinese keep these insects in little bamboo cages, and match them like game-cocks. ( . westwood, 'modern classification of insects,' vol. i. p. ; for crickets, p. .) with respect to colour, some exotic locusts are beautifully ornamented; the posterior wings being marked with red, blue, and black; but as throughout the order the sexes rarely differ much in colour, it is not probable that they owe their bright tints to sexual selection. conspicuous colours may be of use to these insects, by giving notice that they are unpalatable. thus it has been observed ( . mr. ch. horne, in 'proceedings of the entomological society,' may , , p. xii.) that a bright-coloured indian locust was invariably rejected when offered to birds and lizards. some cases, however, are known of sexual differences in colour in this order. the male of an american cricket ( . the oecanthus nivalis, harris, 'insects of new england,' , p. . the two sexes of oe. pellucidus of europe differ, as i hear from victor carus, in nearly the same manner.) is described as being as white as ivory, whilst the female varies from almost white to greenish-yellow or dusky. mr. walsh informs me that the adult male of spectrum femoratum (one of the phasmidae) "is of a shining brownish-yellow colour; the adult female being of a dull, opaque, cinereous brown; the young of both sexes being green." lastly, i may mention that the male of one curious kind of cricket ( . platyblemnus: westwood, 'modern classification,' vol. i. p. .) is furnished with "a long membranous appendage, which falls over the face like a veil;" but what its use may be, is not known. order, neuroptera. little need here be said, except as to colour. in the ephemeridae the sexes often differ slightly in their obscure tints ( . b.d. walsh, the 'pseudo-neuroptera of illinois,' in 'proceedings of the entomological society of philadelphia,' , p. .); but it is not probable that the males are thus rendered attractive to the females. the libellulidae, or dragon-flies, are ornamented with splendid green, blue, yellow, and vermilion metallic tints; and the sexes often differ. thus, as prof. westwood remarks ( . 'modern classification,' vol. ii. p. .), the males of some of the agrionidae, "are of a rich blue with black wings, whilst the females are fine green with colourless wings." but in agrion ramburii these colours are exactly reversed in the two sexes. ( . walsh, ibid. p. . i am indebted to this naturalist for the following facts on hetaerina, anax, and gomphus.) in the extensive n. american genus of hetaerina, the males alone have a beautiful carmine spot at the base of each wing. in anax junius the basal part of the abdomen in the male is a vivid ultramarine blue, and in the female grass-green. in the allied genus gomphus, on the other hand, and in some other genera, the sexes differ but little in colour. in closely-allied forms throughout the animal kingdom, similar cases of the sexes differing greatly, or very little, or not at all, are of frequent occurrence. although there is so wide a difference in colour between the sexes of many libellulidae, it is often difficult to say which is the more brilliant; and the ordinary coloration of the two sexes is reversed, as we have just seen, in one species of agrion. it is not probable that their colours in any case have been gained as a protection. mr. maclachlan, who has closely attended to this family, writes to me that dragon-flies--the tyrants of the insect-world--are the least liable of any insect to be attacked by birds or other enemies, and he believes that their bright colours serve as a sexual attraction. certain dragon-flies apparently are attracted by particular colours: mr. patterson observed ( . 'transactions, ent. soc.' vol. i. , p. lxxxi.) that the agrionidae, of which the males are blue, settled in numbers on the blue float of a fishing line; whilst two other species were attracted by shining white colours. it is an interesting fact, first noticed by schelver, that, in several genera belonging to two sub-families, the males on first emergence from the pupal state, are coloured exactly like the females; but that their bodies in a short time assume a conspicuous milky-blue tint, owing to the exudation of a kind of oil, soluble in ether and alcohol. mr. maclachlan believes that in the male of libellula depressa this change of colour does not occur until nearly a fortnight after the metamorphosis, when the sexes are ready to pair. certain species of neurothemis present, according to brauer ( . see abstract in the 'zoological record' for , p. .), a curious case of dimorphism, some of the females having ordinary wings, whilst others have them "very richly netted, as in the males of the same species." brauer "explains the phenomenon on darwinian principles by the supposition that the close netting of the veins is a secondary sexual character in the males, which has been abruptly transferred to some of the females, instead of, as generally occurs, to all of them." mr. maclachlan informs me of another instance of dimorphism in several species of agrion, in which some individuals are of an orange colour, and these are invariably females. this is probably a case of reversion; for in the true libellulae, when the sexes differ in colour, the females are orange or yellow; so that supposing agrion to be descended from some primordial form which resembled the typical libellulae in its sexual characters, it would not be surprising that a tendency to vary in this manner should occur in the females alone. although many dragon-flies are large, powerful, and fierce insects, the males have not been observed by mr. maclachlan to fight together, excepting, as he believes, in some of the smaller species of agrion. in another group in this order, namely, the termites or white ants, both sexes at the time of swarming may be seen running about, "the male after the female, sometimes two chasing one female, and contending with great eagerness who shall win the prize." ( . kirby and spence, 'introduction to entomology,' vol. ii. , p. .) the atropos pulsatorius is said to make a noise with its jaws, which is answered by other individuals. ( . houzeau, 'les facultés mentales,' etc. tom. i. p. .) order, hymenoptera. that inimitable observer, m. fabre ( . see an interesting article, 'the writings of fabre,' in 'nat. hist. review,' april , p. .), in describing the habits of cerceris, a wasp-like insect, remarks that "fights frequently ensue between the males for the possession of some particular female, who sits an apparently unconcerned beholder of the struggle for supremacy, and when the victory is decided, quietly flies away in company with the conqueror." westwood ( . 'journal of proceedings of entomological society,' sept. , , p. .) says that the males of one of the saw-flies (tenthredinae) "have been found fighting together, with their mandibles locked." as m. fabre speaks of the males of cerceris striving to obtain a particular female, it may be well to bear in mind that insects belonging to this order have the power of recognising each other after long intervals of time, and are deeply attached. for instance, pierre huber, whose accuracy no one doubts, separated some ants, and when, after an interval of four months, they met others which had formerly belonged to the same community, they recognised and caressed one another with their antennae. had they been strangers they would have fought together. again, when two communities engage in a battle, the ants on the same side sometimes attack each other in the general confusion, but they soon perceive their mistake, and the one ant soothes the other. ( . p. huber, 'recherches sur les moeurs des fourmis,' , pp. , .) in this order slight differences in colour, according to sex, are common, but conspicuous differences are rare except in the family of bees; yet both sexes of certain groups are so brilliantly coloured--for instance in chrysis, in which vermilion and metallic greens prevail--that we are tempted to attribute the result to sexual selection. in the ichneumonidae, according to mr. walsh ( . 'proceedings of the entomological society of philadelphia,' , pp. , .), the males are almost universally lighter-coloured than the females. on the other hand, in the tenthredinidae the males are generally darker than the females. in the siricidae the sexes frequently differ; thus the male of sirex juvencus is banded with orange, whilst the female is dark purple; but it is difficult to say which sex is the more ornamented. in tremex columbae the female is much brighter coloured than the male. i am informed by mr. f. smith, that the male ants of several species are black, the females being testaceous. in the family of bees, especially in the solitary species, as i hear from the same entomologist, the sexes often differ in colour. the males are generally the brighter, and in bombus as well as in apathus, much more variable in colour than the females. in anthophora retusa the male is of a rich fulvous-brown, whilst the female is quite black: so are the females of several species of xylocopa, the males being bright yellow. on the other hand the females of some species, as of andraena fulva, are much brighter coloured than the males. such differences in colour can hardly be accounted for by the males being defenceless and thus requiring protection, whilst the females are well defended by their stings. h. müller ( . 'anwendung der darwinschen lehre auf bienen,' verh. d. n. v. jahrg. xxix.), who has particularly attended to the habits of bees, attributes these differences in colour in chief part to sexual selection. that bees have a keen perception of colour is certain. he says that the males search eagerly and fight for the possession of the females; and he accounts through such contests for the mandibles of the males being in certain species larger than those of the females. in some cases the males are far more numerous than the females, either early in the season, or at all times and places, or locally; whereas the females in other cases are apparently in excess. in some species the more beautiful males appear to have been selected by the females; and in others the more beautiful females by the males. consequently in certain genera (müller, p. ), the males of the several species differ much in appearance, whilst the females are almost indistinguishable; in other genera the reverse occurs. h. müller believes (p. ) that the colours gained by one sex through sexual selection have often been transferred in a variable degree to the other sex, just as the pollen-collecting apparatus of the female has often been transferred to the male, to whom it is absolutely useless. ( . m. perrier in his article 'la selection sexuelle d'après darwin' ('revue scientifique,' feb. , p. ), without apparently having reflected much on the subject, objects that as the males of social bees are known to be produced from unfertilised ova, they could not transmit new characters to their male offspring. this is an extraordinary objection. a female bee fertilised by a male, which presented some character facilitating the union of the sexes, or rendering him more attractive to the female, would lay eggs which would produce only females; but these young females would next year produce males; and will it be pretended that such males would not inherit the characters of their male grandfathers? to take a case with ordinary animals as nearly parallel as possible: if a female of any white quadruped or bird were crossed by a male of a black breed, and the male and female offspring were paired together, will it be pretended that the grandchildren would not inherit a tendency to blackness from their male grandfather? the acquirement of new characters by the sterile worker-bees is a much more difficult case, but i have endeavoured to shew in my 'origin of species,' how these sterile beings are subjected to the power of natural selection.) mutilla europaea makes a stridulating noise; and according to goureau ( . quoted by westwood, 'modern classification of insects,' vol. ii. p. .) both sexes have this power. he attributes the sound to the friction of the third and preceding abdominal segments, and i find that these surfaces are marked with very fine concentric ridges; but so is the projecting thoracic collar into which the head articulates, and this collar, when scratched with the point of a needle, emits the proper sound. it is rather surprising that both sexes should have the power of stridulating, as the male is winged and the female wingless. it is notorious that bees express certain emotions, as of anger, by the tone of their humming; and according to h. müller (p. ), the males of some species make a peculiar singing noise whilst pursuing the females. order, coleoptera (beetles). many beetles are coloured so as to resemble the surfaces which they habitually frequent, and they thus escape detection by their enemies. other species, for instance diamond-beetles, are ornamented with splendid colours, which are often arranged in stripes, spots, crosses, and other elegant patterns. such colours can hardly serve directly as a protection, except in the case of certain flower-feeding species; but they may serve as a warning or means of recognition, on the same principle as the phosphorescence of the glow-worm. as with beetles the colours of the two sexes are generally alike, we have no evidence that they have been gained through sexual selection; but this is at least possible, for they have been developed in one sex and then transferred to the other; and this view is even in some degree probable in those groups which possess other well-marked secondary sexual characters. blind beetles, which cannot of course behold each other's beauty, never, as i hear from mr. waterhouse, jun., exhibit bright colours, though they often have polished coats; but the explanation of their obscurity may be that they generally inhabit caves and other obscure stations. some longicorns, especially certain prionidae, offer an exception to the rule that the sexes of beetles do not differ in colour. most of these insects are large and splendidly coloured. the males in the genus pyrodes ( . pyrodes pulcherrimus, in which the sexes differ conspicuously, has been described by mr. bates in 'transact. ent. soc.' , p. . i will specify the few other cases in which i have heard of a difference in colour between the sexes of beetles. kirby and spence ('introduct. to entomology,' vol. iii. p. ) mention a cantharis, meloe, rhagium, and the leptura testacea; the male of the latter being testaceous, with a black thorax, and the female of a dull red all over. these two latter beetles belong to the family of longicorns. messrs. r. trimen and waterhouse, jun., inform me of two lamellicorns, viz., a peritrichia and trichius, the male of the latter being more obscurely coloured than the female. in tillus elongatus the male is black, and the female always, as it is believed, of a dark blue colour, with a red thorax. the male, also, of orsodacna atra, as i hear from mr. walsh, is black, the female (the so-called o. ruficollis) having a rufous thorax.), which i saw in mr. bates's collection, are generally redder but rather duller than the females, the latter being coloured of a more or less splendid golden-green. on the other hand, in one species the male is golden-green, the female being richly tinted with red and purple. in the genus esmeralda the sexes differ so greatly in colour that they have been ranked as distinct species; in one species both are of a beautiful shining green, but the male has a red thorax. on the whole, as far as i could judge, the females of those prionidae, in which the sexes differ, are coloured more richly than the males, and this does not accord with the common rule in regard to colour, when acquired through sexual selection. [fig. . chalcosoma atlas. upper figure, male (reduced); lower figure, female (nat. size). fig. . copris isidis. fig. . phanaeus faunus. fig. . dipelicus cantori. fig. . onthophagus rangifer, enlarged. (in figs. to the left-hand figures are males.)] a most remarkable distinction between the sexes of many beetles is presented by the great horns which rise from the head, thorax, and clypeus of the males; and in some few cases from the under surface of the body. these horns, in the great family of the lamellicorns, resemble those of various quadrupeds, such as stags, rhinoceroses, etc., and are wonderful both from their size and diversified shapes. instead of describing them, i have given figures of the males and females of some of the more remarkable forms. (figs. to .) the females generally exhibit rudiments of the horns in the form of small knobs or ridges; but some are destitute of even the slightest rudiment. on the other hand, the horns are nearly as well developed in the female as in the male phanaeus lancifer; and only a little less well developed in the females of some other species of this genus and of copris. i am informed by mr. bates that the horns do not differ in any manner corresponding with the more important characteristic differences between the several subdivisions of the family: thus within the same section of the genus onthophagus, there are species which have a single horn, and others which have two. in almost all cases, the horns are remarkable from their excessive variability; so that a graduated series can be formed, from the most highly developed males to others so degenerate that they can barely be distinguished from the females. mr. walsh ( . 'proceedings of the entomological society of philadephia,' , p. .) found that in phanaeus carnifex the horns were thrice as long in some males as in others. mr. bates, after examining above a hundred males of onthophagus rangifer (fig. ), thought that he had at last discovered a species in which the horns did not vary; but further research proved the contrary. the extraordinary size of the horns, and their widely different structure in closely-allied forms, indicate that they have been formed for some purpose; but their excessive variability in the males of the same species leads to the inference that this purpose cannot be of a definite nature. the horns do not shew marks of friction, as if used for any ordinary work. some authors suppose ( . kirby and spence, 'introduction to entomology,' vol. iii. p. .) that as the males wander about much more than the females, they require horns as a defence against their enemies; but as the horns are often blunt, they do not seem well adapted for defence. the most obvious conjecture is that they are used by the males for fighting together; but the males have never been observed to fight; nor could mr. bates, after a careful examination of numerous species, find any sufficient evidence, in their mutilated or broken condition, of their having been thus used. if the males had been habitual fighters, the size of their bodies would probably have been increased through sexual selection, so as to have exceeded that of the females; but mr. bates, after comparing the two sexes in above a hundred species of the copridae, did not find any marked difference in this respect amongst well-developed individuals. in lethrus, moreover, a beetle belonging to the same great division of the lamellicorns, the males are known to fight, but are not provided with horns, though their mandibles are much larger than those of the female. the conclusion that the horns have been acquired as ornaments is that which best agrees with the fact of their having been so immensely, yet not fixedly, developed,--as shewn by their extreme variability in the same species, and by their extreme diversity in closely-allied species. this view will at first appear extremely improbable; but we shall hereafter find with many animals standing much higher in the scale, namely fishes, amphibians, reptiles and birds, that various kinds of crests, knobs, horns and combs have been developed apparently for this sole purpose. [fig. . onitis furcifer, male viewed from beneath. fig. . onitis furcifer. left-hand figure, male, viewed laterally. right-hand figure, female. a. rudiment of cephalic horn. b. trace of thoracic horn or crest.] the males of onitis furcifer (fig. ), and of some other species of the genus, are furnished with singular projections on their anterior femora, and with a great fork or pair of horns on the lower surface of the thorax. judging from other insects, these may aid the male in clinging to the female. although the males have not even a trace of a horn on the upper surface of the body, yet the females plainly exhibit a rudiment of a single horn on the head (fig. , a), and of a crest (b) on the thorax. that the slight thoracic crest in the female is a rudiment of a projection proper to the male, though entirely absent in the male of this particular species, is clear: for the female of bubas bison (a genus which comes next to onitis) has a similar slight crest on the thorax, and the male bears a great projection in the same situation. so, again, there can hardly be a doubt that the little point (a) on the head of the female onitis furcifer, as well as on the head of the females of two or three allied species, is a rudimentary representative of the cephalic horn, which is common to the males of so many lamellicorn beetles, as in phanaeus (fig. ). the old belief that rudiments have been created to complete the scheme of nature is here so far from holding good, that we have a complete inversion of the ordinary state of things in the family. we may reasonably suspect that the males originally bore horns and transferred them to the females in a rudimentary condition, as in so many other lamellicorns. why the males subsequently lost their horns, we know not; but this may have been caused through the principle of compensation, owing to the development of the large horns and projections on the lower surface; and as these are confined to the males, the rudiments of the upper horns on the females would not have been thus obliterated. [fig. . bledius taurus, magnified. left-hand figure, male; right-hand figure, female.] the cases hitherto given refer to the lamellicorns, but the males of some few other beetles, belonging to two widely distinct groups, namely, the curculionidae and staphylinidae, are furnished with horns--in the former on the lower surface of the body ( . kirby and spence, 'introduction to entomology,' vol. iii. p. .), in the latter on the upper surface of the head and thorax. in the staphylinidae, the horns of the males are extraordinarily variable in the same species, just as we have seen with the lamellicorns. in siagonium we have a case of dimorphism, for the males can be divided into two sets, differing greatly in the size of their bodies and in the development of their horns, without intermediate gradations. in a species of bledius (fig. ), also belonging to the staphylinidae, professor westwood states that, "male specimens can be found in the same locality in which the central horn of the thorax is very large, but the horns of the head quite rudimental; and others, in which the thoracic horn is much shorter, whilst the protuberances on the head are long." ( . 'modern classification of insects,' vol. i. p. : siagonium, p. . in the british museum i noticed one male specimen of siagonium in an intermediate condition, so that the dimorphism is not strict.) here we apparently have a case of compensation, which throws light on that just given, of the supposed loss of the upper horns by the males of onitis. law of battle. some male beetles, which seem ill-fitted for fighting, nevertheless engage in conflicts for the possession of the females. mr. wallace ( . 'the malay archipelago,' vol. ii. , p. . riley, sixth 'report on insects of missouri,' , p. .) saw two males of leptorhynchus angustatus, a linear beetle with a much elongated rostrum, "fighting for a female, who stood close by busy at her boring. they pushed at each other with their rostra, and clawed and thumped, apparently in the greatest rage." the smaller male, however, "soon ran away, acknowledging himself vanquished." in some few cases male beetles are well adapted for fighting, by possessing great toothed mandibles, much larger than those of the females. this is the case with the common stag-beetle (lucanus cervus), the males of which emerge from the pupal state about a week before the other sex, so that several may often be seen pursuing the same female. at this season they engage in fierce conflicts. when mr. a.h. davis ( . 'entomological magazine,' vol. i. , p. . see also on the conflicts of this species, kirby and spence, ibid. vol. iii. p. ; and westwood, ibid. vol. i. p. .) enclosed two males with one female in a box, the larger male severely pinched the smaller one, until he resigned his pretensions. a friend informs me that when a boy he often put the males together to see them fight, and he noticed that they were much bolder and fiercer than the females, as with the higher animals. the males would seize hold of his finger, if held in front of them, but not so the females, although they have stronger jaws. the males of many of the lucanidae, as well as of the above-mentioned leptorhynchus, are larger and more powerful insects than the females. the two sexes of lethrus cephalotes (one of the lamellicorns) inhabit the same burrow; and the male has larger mandibles than the female. if, during the breeding-season, a strange male attempts to enter the burrow, he is attacked; the female does not remain passive, but closes the mouth of the burrow, and encourages her mate by continually pushing him on from behind; and the battle lasts until the aggressor is killed or runs away. ( . quoted from fischer, in 'dict. class. d'hist. nat.' tom. x. p. .) the two sexes of another lamellicorn beetle, the ateuchus cicatricosus, live in pairs, and seem much attached to each other; the male excites the females to roll the balls of dung in which the ova are deposited; and if she is removed, he becomes much agitated. if the male is removed the female ceases all work, and as m. brulerie believes, would remain on the same spot until she died. ( . 'ann. soc. entomolog. france,' , as quoted in 'journal of travel,' by a. murray, , p. .) [fig. . chiasognathus grantii, reduced. upper figure, male; lower figure, female.] the great mandibles of the male lucanidae are extremely variable both in size and structure, and in this respect resemble the horns on the head and thorax of many male lamellicorns and staphylinidae. a perfect series can be formed from the best-provided to the worst-provided or degenerate males. although the mandibles of the common stag-beetle, and probably of many other species, are used as efficient weapons for fighting, it is doubtful whether their great size can thus be accounted for. we have seen that they are used by the lucanus elaphus of n. america for seizing the female. as they are so conspicuous and so elegantly branched, and as owing to their great length they are not well adapted for pinching, the suspicion has crossed my mind that they may in addition serve as an ornament, like the horns on the head and thorax of the various species above described. the male chiasognathus grantii of s. chile--a splendid beetle belonging to the same family--has enormously developed mandibles (fig. ); he is bold and pugnacious; when threatened he faces round, opens his great jaws, and at the same time stridulates loudly. but the mandibles were not strong enough to pinch my finger so as to cause actual pain. sexual selection, which implies the possession of considerable perceptive powers and of strong passions, seems to have been more effective with the lamellicorns than with any other family of beetles. with some species the males are provided with weapons for fighting; some live in pairs and shew mutual affection; many have the power of stridulating when excited; many are furnished with the most extraordinary horns, apparently for the sake of ornament; and some, which are diurnal in their habits, are gorgeously coloured. lastly, several of the largest beetles in the world belong to this family, which was placed by linnaeus and fabricius as the head of the order. ( . westwood, 'modern classification,' vol. i. p. .) stridulating organs. beetles belonging to many and widely distinct families possess these organs. the sound thus produced can sometimes be heard at the distance of several feet or even yards ( . wollaston, 'on certain musical curculionidae,' 'annals and mag. of nat. hist.' vol. vi. , p. .), but it is not comparable with that made by the orthoptera. the rasp generally consists of a narrow, slightly-raised surface, crossed by very fine, parallel ribs, sometimes so fine as to cause iridescent colours, and having a very elegant appearance under the microscope. in some cases, as with typhoeus, minute, bristly or scale-like prominences, with which the whole surrounding surface is covered in approximately parallel lines, could be traced passing into the ribs of the rasp. the transition takes place by their becoming confluent and straight, and at the same time more prominent and smooth. a hard ridge on an adjoining part of the body serves as the scraper for the rasp, but this scraper in some cases has been specially modified for the purpose. it is rapidly moved across the rasp, or conversely the rasp across the scraper. [fig. . necrophorus (from landois). r. the two rasps. left-hand figure, part of the rasp highly magnified.] these organs are situated in widely different positions. in the carrion-beetles (necrophorus) two parallel rasps (r, fig. ) stand on the dorsal surface of the fifth abdominal segment, each rasp ( . landois, 'zeitschrift fur wissenschaft zoolog.' b. xvii. , s. .) consisting of to fine ribs. these ribs are scraped against the posterior margins of the elytra, a small portion of which projects beyond the general outline. in many crioceridae, and in clythra -punctata (one of the chrysomelidae), and in some tenebrionidae, etc. ( . i am greatly indebted to mr. g.r. crotch for having sent me many prepared specimens of various beetles belonging to these three families and to others, as well as for valuable information. he believes that the power of stridulation in the clythra has not been previously observed. i am also much indebted to mr. e.w. janson, for information and specimens. i may add that my son, mr. f. darwin, finds that dermestes murinus stridulates, but he searched in vain for the apparatus. scolytus has lately been described by dr. chapman as a stridulator, in the 'entomologist's monthly magazine,' vol. vi. p. .), the rasp is seated on the dorsal apex of the abdomen, on the pygidium or pro-pygidium, and is scraped in the same manner by the elytra. in heterocerus, which belongs to another family, the rasps are placed on the sides of the first abdominal segment, and are scraped by ridges on the femora. ( . schiodte, translated, in 'annals and magazine of natural history,' vol. xx. , p. .) in certain curculionidae and carabidae ( . westring has described (kroyer, 'naturhist. tidskrift,' b. ii. - , p. ) the stridulating organs in these two, as well as in other families. in the carabidae i have examined elaphrus uliginosus and blethisa multipunctata, sent to me by mr. crotch. in blethisa the transverse ridges on the furrowed border of the abdominal segment do not, as far as i could judge, come into play in scraping the rasps on the elytra.), the parts are completely reversed in position, for the rasps are seated on the inferior surface of the elytra, near their apices, or along their outer margins, and the edges of the abdominal segments serve as the scrapers. in pelobius hermanni (one of dytiscidae or water-beetles) a strong ridge runs parallel and near to the sutural margin of the elytra, and is crossed by ribs, coarse in the middle part, but becoming gradually finer at both ends, especially at the upper end; when this insect is held under water or in the air, a stridulating noise is produced by the extreme horny margin of the abdomen being scraped against the rasps. in a great number of long-horned beetles (longicornia) the organs are situated quite otherwise, the rasp being on the meso-thorax, which is rubbed against the pro-thorax; landois counted very fine ribs on the rasp of cerambyx heros. [fig. . hind-leg of geotrupes stercorarius (from landois). r. rasp. c. coxa. f. femur. t. tibia. tr. tarsi.] many lamellicorns have the power of stridulating, and the organs differ greatly in position. some species stridulate very loudly, so that when mr. f. smith caught a trox sabulosus, a gamekeeper, who stood by, thought he had caught a mouse; but i failed to discover the proper organs in this beetle. in geotrupes and typhoeus, a narrow ridge runs obliquely across (r, fig. ) the coxa of each hind-leg (having in g. stercorarius ribs), which is scraped by a specially projecting part of one of the abdominal segments. in the nearly allied copris lunaris, an excessively narrow fine rasp runs along the sutural margin of the elytra, with another short rasp near the basal outer margin; but in some other coprini the rasp is seated, according to leconte ( . i am indebted to mr. walsh, of illinois, for having sent me extracts from leconte's 'introduction to entomology,' pp. , .), on the dorsal surface of the abdomen. in oryctes it is seated on the pro-pygidium; and, according to the same entomologist, in some other dynastini, on the under surface of the elytra. lastly, westring states that in omaloplia brunnea the rasp is placed on the pro-sternum, and the scraper on the meta-sternum, the parts thus occupying the under surface of the body, instead of the upper surface as in the longicorns. we thus see that in the different coleopterous families the stridulating organs are wonderfully diversified in position, but not much in structure. within the same family some species are provided with these organs, and others are destitute of them. this diversity is intelligible, if we suppose that originally various beetles made a shuffling or hissing noise by the rubbing together of any hard and rough parts of their bodies, which happened to be in contact; and that from the noise thus produced being in some way useful, the rough surfaces were gradually developed into regular stridulating organs. some beetles as they move, now produce, either intentionally or unintentionally, a shuffling noise, without possessing any proper organs for the purpose. mr. wallace informs me that the euchirus longimanus (a lamellicorn, with the anterior legs wonderfully elongated in the male) "makes, whilst moving, a low hissing sound by the protrusion and contraction of the abdomen; and when seized it produces a grating sound by rubbing its hind-legs against the edges of the elytra." the hissing sound is clearly due to a narrow rasp running along the sutural margin of each elytron; and i could likewise make the grating sound by rubbing the shagreened surface of the femur against the granulated margin of the corresponding elytron; but i could not here detect any proper rasp; nor is it likely that i could have overlooked it in so large an insect. after examining cychrus, and reading what westring has written about this beetle, it seems very doubtful whether it possesses any true rasp, though it has the power of emitting a sound. from the analogy of the orthoptera and homoptera, i expected to find the stridulating organs in the coleoptera differing according to sex; but landois, who has carefully examined several species, observed no such difference; nor did westring; nor did mr. g.r. crotch in preparing the many specimens which he had the kindness to send me. any difference in these organs, if slight, would, however, be difficult to detect, on account of their great variability. thus, in the first pair of specimens of necrophorus humator and of pelobius which i examined, the rasp was considerably larger in the male than in the female; but not so with succeeding specimens. in geotrupes stercorarius the rasp appeared to me thicker, opaquer, and more prominent in three males than in the same number of females; in order, therefore, to discover whether the sexes differed in their power of stridulating, my son, mr. f. darwin, collected fifty-seven living specimens, which he separated into two lots, according as they made a greater or lesser noise, when held in the same manner. he then examined all these specimens, and found that the males were very nearly in the same proportion to the females in both the lots. mr. f. smith has kept alive numerous specimens of monoynchus pseudacori (curculionidae), and is convinced that both sexes stridulate, and apparently in an equal degree. nevertheless, the power of stridulating is certainly a sexual character in some few coleoptera. mr. crotch discovered that the males alone of two species of heliopathes (tenebrionidae) possess stridulating organs. i examined five males of h. gibbus, and in all these there was a well-developed rasp, partially divided into two, on the dorsal surface of the terminal abdominal segment; whilst in the same number of females there was not even a rudiment of the rasp, the membrane of this segment being transparent, and much thinner than in the male. in h. cribratostriatus the male has a similar rasp, excepting that it is not partially divided into two portions, and the female is completely destitute of this organ; the male in addition has on the apical margins of the elytra, on each side of the suture, three or four short longitudinal ridges, which are crossed by extremely fine ribs, parallel to and resembling those on the abdominal rasp; whether these ridges serve as an independent rasp, or as a scraper for the abdominal rasp, i could not decide: the female exhibits no trace of this latter structure. again, in three species of the lamellicorn genus oryctes, we have a nearly parallel case. in the females of o. gryphus and nasicornis the ribs on the rasp of the pro-pygidium are less continuous and less distinct than in the males; but the chief difference is that the whole upper surface of this segment, when held in the proper light, is seen to be clothed with hairs, which are absent or are represented by excessively fine down in the males. it should be noticed that in all coleoptera the effective part of the rasp is destitute of hairs. in o. senegalensis the difference between the sexes is more strongly marked, and this is best seen when the proper abdominal segment is cleaned and viewed as a transparent object. in the female the whole surface is covered with little separate crests, bearing spines; whilst in the male these crests in proceeding towards the apex, become more and more confluent, regular, and naked; so that three-fourths of the segment is covered with extremely fine parallel ribs, which are quite absent in the female. in the females, however, of all three species of oryctes, a slight grating or stridulating sound is produced, when the abdomen of a softened specimen is pushed backwards and forwards. in the case of the heliopathes and oryctes there can hardly be a doubt that the males stridulate in order to call or to excite the females; but with most beetles the stridulation apparently serves both sexes as a mutual call. beetles stridulate under various emotions, in the same manner as birds use their voices for many purposes besides singing to their mates. the great chiasognathus stridulates in anger or defiance; many species do the same from distress or fear, if held so that they cannot escape; by striking the hollow stems of trees in the canary islands, messrs. wollaston and crotch were able to discover the presence of beetles belonging to the genus acalles by their stridulation. lastly, the male ateuchus stridulates to encourage the female in her work, and from distress when she is removed. ( . m. p. de la brulerie, as quoted in 'journal of travel,' a. murray, vol. i. , p. .) some naturalists believe that beetles make this noise to frighten away their enemies; but i cannot think that a quadruped or bird, able to devour a large beetle, would be frightened by so slight a sound. the belief that the stridulation serves as a sexual call is supported by the fact that death-ticks (anobium tessellatum) are well known to answer each other's ticking, and, as i have myself observed, a tapping noise artificially made. mr. doubleday also informs me that he has sometimes observed a female ticking ( . according to mr. doubleday, "the noise is produced by the insect raising itself on its legs as high as it can, and then striking its thorax five or six times, in rapid succession, against the substance upon which it is sitting." for references on this subject see landois, 'zeitschrift für wissen. zoolog.' b. xvii. s. . olivier says (as quoted by kirby and spence, 'introduction to entomology,' vol. ii. p. ) that the female of pimelia striata produces a rather loud sound by striking her abdomen against any hard substance, "and that the male, obedient to this call, soon attends her, and they pair."), and in an hour or two afterwards has found her united with a male, and on one occasion surrounded by several males. finally, it is probable that the two sexes of many kinds of beetles were at first enabled to find each other by the slight shuffling noise produced by the rubbing together of the adjoining hard parts of their bodies; and that as those males or females which made the greatest noise succeeded best in finding partners, rugosities on various parts of their bodies were gradually developed by means of sexual selection into true stridulating organs. chapter xi. insects, continued. order lepidoptera. (butterflies and moths.) courtship of butterflies--battles--ticking noise--colours common to both sexes, or more brilliant in the males--examples--not due to the direct action of the conditions of life--colours adapted for protection--colours of moths--display--perceptive powers of the lepidoptera--variability--causes of the difference in colour between the males and females--mimicry, female butterflies more brilliantly coloured than the males--bright colours of caterpillars--summary and concluding remarks on the secondary sexual characters of insects--birds and insects compared. in this great order the most interesting points for us are the differences in colour between the sexes of the same species, and between the distinct species of the same genus. nearly the whole of the following chapter will be devoted to this subject; but i will first make a few remarks on one or two other points. several males may often be seen pursuing and crowding round the same female. their courtship appears to be a prolonged affair, for i have frequently watched one or more males pirouetting round a female until i was tired, without seeing the end of the courtship. mr. a.g. butler also informs me that he has several times watched a male courting a female for a full quarter of an hour; but she pertinaciously refused him, and at last settled on the ground and closed her wings, so as to escape from his addresses. although butterflies are weak and fragile creatures, they are pugnacious, and an emperor butterfly ( . apatura iris: 'the entomologist's weekly intelligence,' , p. . for the bornean butterflies, see c. collingwood, 'rambles of a naturalist,' , p. .) has been captured with the tips of its wings broken from a conflict with another male. mr. collingwood, in speaking of the frequent battles between the butterflies of borneo, says, "they whirl round each other with the greatest rapidity, and appear to be incited by the greatest ferocity." the ageronia feronia makes a noise like that produced by a toothed wheel passing under a spring catch, and which can be heard at the distance of several yards: i noticed this sound at rio de janeiro, only when two of these butterflies were chasing each other in an irregular course, so that it is probably made during the courtship of the sexes. ( . see my 'journal of researches,' , p. . mr. doubleday has detected ('proc. ent. soc.' march , , p. ) a peculiar membranous sac at the base of the front wings, which is probably connected with the production of the sound. for the case of thecophora, see 'zoological record,' , p. . for mr. buchanan white's observations, the scottish naturalist, july , p. .) some moths also produce sounds; for instance, the males theocophora fovea. on two occasions mr. f. buchanan white ( . 'the scottish naturalist,' july , p. .) heard a sharp quick noise made by the male of hylophila prasinana, and which he believes to be produced, as in cicada, by an elastic membrane, furnished with a muscle. he quotes, also, guenee, that setina produces a sound like the ticking of a watch, apparently by the aid of "two large tympaniform vesicles, situated in the pectoral region"; and these "are much more developed in the male than in the female." hence the sound-producing organs in the lepidoptera appear to stand in some relation with the sexual functions. i have not alluded to the well-known noise made by the death's head sphinx, for it is generally heard soon after the moth has emerged from its cocoon. giard has always observed that the musky odour, which is emitted by two species of sphinx moths, is peculiar to the males ( . 'zoological record,' , p. .); and in the higher classes we shall meet with many instances of the males alone being odoriferous. every one must have admired the extreme beauty of many butterflies and of some moths; and it may be asked, are their colours and diversified patterns the result of the direct action of the physical conditions to which these insects have been exposed, without any benefit being thus derived? or have successive variations been accumulated and determined as a protection, or for some unknown purpose, or that one sex may be attractive to the other? and, again, what is the meaning of the colours being widely different in the males and females of certain species, and alike in the two sexes of other species of the same genus? before attempting to answer these questions a body of facts must be given. with our beautiful english butterflies, the admiral, peacock, and painted lady (vanessae), as well as many others, the sexes are alike. this is also the case with the magnificent heliconidae, and most of the danaidae in the tropics. but in certain other tropical groups, and in some of our english butterflies, as the purple emperor, orange-tip, etc. (apatura iris and anthocharis cardamines), the sexes differ either greatly or slightly in colour. no language suffices to describe the splendour of the males of some tropical species. even within the same genus we often find species presenting extraordinary differences between the sexes, whilst others have their sexes closely alike. thus in the south american genus epicalia, mr. bates, to whom i am indebted for most of the following facts, and for looking over this whole discussion, informs me that he knows twelve species, the two sexes of which haunt the same stations (and this is not always the case with butterflies), and which, therefore, cannot have been differently affected by external conditions. ( . see also mr. bates's paper in 'proc. ent. soc. of philadelphia,' , p. . also mr. wallace on the same subject, in regard to diadema, in 'transactions, entomological society of london,' , p. .) in nine of these twelve species the males rank amongst the most brilliant of all butterflies, and differ so greatly from the comparatively plain females that they were formerly placed in distinct genera. the females of these nine species resemble each other in their general type of coloration; and they likewise resemble both sexes of the species in several allied genera found in various parts of the world. hence we may infer that these nine species, and probably all the others of the genus, are descended from an ancestral form which was coloured in nearly the same manner. in the tenth species the female still retains the same general colouring, but the male resembles her, so that he is coloured in a much less gaudy and contrasted manner than the males of the previous species. in the eleventh and twelfth species, the females depart from the usual type, for they are gaily decorated almost like the males, but in a somewhat less degree. hence in these two latter species the bright colours of the males seem to have been transferred to the females; whilst in the tenth species the male has either retained or recovered the plain colours of the female, as well as of the parent-form of the genus. the sexes in these three cases have thus been rendered nearly alike, though in an opposite manner. in the allied genus eubagis, both sexes of some of the species are plain-coloured and nearly alike; whilst with the greater number the males are decorated with beautiful metallic tints in a diversified manner, and differ much from their females. the females throughout the genus retain the same general style of colouring, so that they resemble one another much more closely than they resemble their own males. in the genus papilio, all the species of the aeneas group are remarkable for their conspicuous and strongly contrasted colours, and they illustrate the frequent tendency to gradation in the amount of difference between the sexes. in a few species, for instance in p. ascanius, the males and females are alike; in others the males are either a little brighter, or very much more superb than the females. the genus junonia, allied to our vanessae, offers a nearly parallel case, for although the sexes of most of the species resemble each other, and are destitute of rich colours, yet in certain species, as in j. oenone, the male is rather more bright-coloured than the female, and in a few (for instance j. andremiaja) the male is so different from the female that he might be mistaken for an entirely distinct species. another striking case was pointed out to me in the british museum by mr. a. butler, namely, one of the tropical american theclae, in which both sexes are nearly alike and wonderfully splendid; in another species the male is coloured in a similarly gorgeous manner, whilst the whole upper surface of the female is of a dull uniform brown. our common little english blue butterflies of the genus lycaena, illustrate the various differences in colour between the sexes, almost as well, though not in so striking a manner, as the above exotic genera. in lycaena agestis both sexes have wings of a brown colour, bordered with small ocellated orange spots, and are thus alike. in l. oegon the wings of the males are of a fine blue, bordered with black, whilst those of the female are brown, with a similar border, closely resembling the wings of l. agestis. lastly, in l. arion both sexes are of a blue colour and are very like, though in the female the edges of the wings are rather duskier, with the black spots plainer; and in a bright blue indian species both sexes are still more alike. i have given the foregoing details in order to shew, in the first place, that when the sexes of butterflies differ, the male as a general rule is the more beautiful, and departs more from the usual type of colouring of the group to which the species belongs. hence in most groups the females of the several species resemble each other much more closely than do the males. in some cases, however, to which i shall hereafter allude, the females are coloured more splendidly than the males. in the second place, these details have been given to bring clearly before the mind that within the same genus, the two sexes frequently present every gradation from no difference in colour, to so great a difference that it was long before the two were placed by entomologists in the same genus. in the third place, we have seen that when the sexes nearly resemble each other, this appears due either to the male having transferred his colours to the female, or to the male having retained, or perhaps recovered, the primordial colours of the group. it also deserves notice that in those groups in which the sexes differ, the females usually somewhat resemble the males, so that when the males are beautiful to an extraordinary degree, the females almost invariably exhibit some degree of beauty. from the many cases of gradation in the amount of difference between the sexes, and from the prevalence of the same general type of coloration throughout the whole of the same group, we may conclude that the causes have generally been the same which have determined the brilliant colouring of the males alone of some species, and of both sexes of other species. as so many gorgeous butterflies inhabit the tropics, it has often been supposed that they owe their colours to the great heat and moisture of these zones; but mr. bates ( . 'the naturalist on the amazons,' vol. i. , p. .) has shown by the comparison of various closely-allied groups of insects from the temperate and tropical regions, that this view cannot be maintained; and the evidence becomes conclusive when brilliantly-coloured males and plain-coloured females of the same species inhabit the same district, feed on the same food, and follow exactly the same habits of life. even when the sexes resemble each other, we can hardly believe that their brilliant and beautifully-arranged colours are the purposeless result of the nature of the tissues and of the action of the surrounding conditions. with animals of all kinds, whenever colour has been modified for some special purpose, this has been, as far as we can judge, either for direct or indirect protection, or as an attraction between the sexes. with many species of butterflies the upper surfaces of the wings are obscure; and this in all probability leads to their escaping observation and danger. but butterflies would be particularly liable to be attacked by their enemies when at rest; and most kinds whilst resting raise their wings vertically over their backs, so that the lower surface alone is exposed to view. hence it is this side which is often coloured so as to imitate the objects on which these insects commonly rest. dr. rossler, i believe, first noticed the similarity of the closed wings of certain vanessae and other butterflies to the bark of trees. many analogous and striking facts could be given. the most interesting one is that recorded by mr. wallace ( . see the interesting article in the 'westminster review,' july , p. . a woodcut of the kallima is given by mr. wallace in 'hardwicke's science gossip,' september , p. .) of a common indian and sumatran butterfly (kallima) which disappears like magic when it settles on a bush; for it hides its head and antennae between its closed wings, which, in form, colour and veining, cannot be distinguished from a withered leaf with its footstalk. in some other cases the lower surfaces of the wings are brilliantly coloured, and yet are protective; thus in thecla rubi the wings when closed are of an emerald green, and resemble the young leaves of the bramble, on which in spring this butterfly may often be seen seated. it is also remarkable that in very many species in which the sexes differ greatly in colour on their upper surface, the lower surface is closely similar or identical in both sexes, and serves as a protection. ( . mr. g. fraser, in 'nature,' april , p. .) although the obscure tints both of the upper and under sides of many butterflies no doubt serve to conceal them, yet we cannot extend this view to the brilliant and conspicuous colours on the upper surface of such species as our admiral and peacock vanessae, our white cabbage-butterflies (pieris), or the great swallow-tail papilio which haunts the open fens--for these butterflies are thus rendered visible to every living creature. in these species both sexes are alike; but in the common brimstone butterfly (gonepteryx rhamni), the male is of an intense yellow, whilst the female is much paler; and in the orange-tip (anthocharis cardamines) the males alone have their wings tipped with bright orange. both the males and females in these cases are conspicuous, and it is not credible that their difference in colour should stand in any relation to ordinary protection. prof. weismann remarks ( . 'einfluss der isolirung auf die artbildung,' , p. .), that the female of one of the lycaenae expands her brown wings when she settles on the ground, and is then almost invisible; the male, on the other hand, as if aware of the danger incurred from the bright blue of the upper surface of his wings, rests with them closed; and this shows that the blue colour cannot be in any way protective. nevertheless, it is probable that conspicuous colours are indirectly beneficial to many species, as a warning that they are unpalatable. for in certain other cases, beauty has been gained through the imitation of other beautiful species, which inhabit the same district and enjoy an immunity from attack by being in some way offensive to their enemies; but then we have to account for the beauty of the imitated species. as mr. walsh has remarked to me, the females of our orange-tip butterfly, above referred to, and of an american species (anth. genutia) probably shew us the primordial colours of the parent-species of the genus; for both sexes of four or five widely-distributed species are coloured in nearly the same manner. as in several previous cases, we may here infer that it is the males of anth. cardamines and genutia which have departed from the usual type of the genus. in the anth. sara from california, the orange-tips to the wings have been partially developed in the female; but they are paler than in the male, and slightly different in some other respects. in an allied indian form, the iphias glaucippe, the orange-tips are fully developed in both sexes. in this iphias, as pointed out to me by mr. a. butler, the under surface of the wings marvellously resembles a pale-coloured leaf; and in our english orange-tip, the under surface resembles the flower-head of the wild parsley, on which the butterfly often rests at night. ( . see the interesting observations by t.w. wood, 'the student,' sept. , p. .) the same reason which compels us to believe that the lower surfaces have here been coloured for the sake of protection, leads us to deny that the wings have been tipped with bright orange for the same purpose, especially when this character is confined to the males. most moths rest motionless during the whole or greater part of the day with their wings depressed; and the whole upper surface is often shaded and coloured in an admirable manner, as mr. wallace has remarked, for escaping detection. the front-wings of the bombycidae and noctuidae ( . mr. wallace in 'hardwicke's science gossip,' september , p. .), when at rest, generally overlap and conceal the hind-wings; so that the latter might be brightly coloured without much risk; and they are in fact often thus coloured. during flight, moths would often be able to escape from their enemies; nevertheless, as the hind-wings are then fully exposed to view, their bright colours must generally have been acquired at some little risk. but the following fact shews how cautious we ought to be in drawing conclusions on this head. the common yellow under-wings (triphaena) often fly about during the day or early evening, and are then conspicuous from the colour of their hind-wings. it would naturally be thought that this would be a source of danger; but mr. j. jenner weir believes that it actually serves them as a means of escape, for birds strike at these brightly coloured and fragile surfaces, instead of at the body. for instance, mr. weir turned into his aviary a vigorous specimen of triphaena pronuba, which was instantly pursued by a robin; but the bird's attention being caught by the coloured wings, the moth was not captured until after about fifty attempts, and small portions of the wings were repeatedly broken off. he tried the same experiment, in the open air, with a swallow and t. fimbria; but the large size of this moth probably interfered with its capture. ( . see also, on this subject, mr. weir's paper in 'transactions, entomological society,' , p. .) we are thus reminded of a statement made by mr. wallace ( . 'westminster review,' july , p. .), namely, that in the brazilian forests and malayan islands, many common and highly-decorated butterflies are weak flyers, though furnished with a broad expanse of wing; and they "are often captured with pierced and broken wings, as if they had been seized by birds, from which they had escaped: if the wings had been much smaller in proportion to the body, it seems probable that the insect would more frequently have been struck or pierced in a vital part, and thus the increased expanse of the wings may have been indirectly beneficial." display. the bright colours of many butterflies and of some moths are specially arranged for display, so that they may be readily seen. during the night colours are not visible, and there can be no doubt that the nocturnal moths, taken as a body, are much less gaily decorated than butterflies, all of which are diurnal in their habits. but the moths of certain families, such as the zygaenidae, several sphingidae, uraniidae, some arctiidae and saturniidae, fly about during the day or early evening, and many of these are extremely beautiful, being far brighter coloured than the strictly nocturnal kinds. a few exceptional cases, however, of bright-coloured nocturnal species have been recorded. ( . for instance, lithosia; but prof. westwood ('modern class. of insects,' vol. ii. p. ) seems surprised at this case. on the relative colours of diurnal and nocturnal lepidoptera, see ibid. pp. and ; also harris, 'treatise on the insects of new england,' , p. .) there is evidence of another kind in regard to display. butterflies, as before remarked, elevate their wings when at rest, but whilst basking in the sunshine often alternately raise and depress them, thus exposing both surfaces to full view; and although the lower surface is often coloured in an obscure manner as a protection, yet in many species it is as highly decorated as the upper surface, and sometimes in a very different manner. in some tropical species the lower surface is even more brilliantly coloured than the upper. ( . such differences between the upper and lower surfaces of the wings of several species of papilio may be seen in the beautiful plates to mr. wallace's 'memoir on the papilionidae of the malayan region,' in 'transactions of the linnean society,' vol. xxv. part i. .) in the english fritillaries (argynnis) the lower surface alone is ornamented with shining silver. nevertheless, as a general rule, the upper surface, which is probably more fully exposed, is coloured more brightly and diversely than the lower. hence the lower surface generally affords to entomologists the more useful character for detecting the affinities of the various species. fritz müller informs me that three species of castnia are found near his house in s. brazil: of two of them the hind-wings are obscure, and are always covered by the front-wings when these butterflies are at rest; but the third species has black hind-wings, beautifully spotted with red and white, and these are fully expanded and displayed whenever the butterfly rests. other such cases could be added. if we now turn to the enormous group of moths, which, as i hear from mr. stainton, do not habitually expose the under surface of their wings to full view, we find this side very rarely coloured with a brightness greater than, or even equal to, that of the upper side. some exceptions to the rule, either real or apparent, must be noticed, as the case of hypopyra. ( . see mr. wormald on this moth: 'proceedings of the entomological society,' march , .) mr. trimen informs me that in guenee's great work, three moths are figured, in which the under surface is much the more brilliant. for instance, in the australian gastrophora the upper surface of the fore-wing is pale greyish-ochreous, while the lower surface is magnificently ornamented by an ocellus of cobalt-blue, placed in the midst of a black mark, surrounded by orange-yellow, and this by bluish-white. but the habits of these three moths are unknown; so that no explanation can be given of their unusual style of colouring. mr. trimen also informs me that the lower surface of the wings in certain other geometrae ( . see also an account of the s. american genus erateina (one of the geometrae) in 'transactions, ent. soc.' new series, vol. v. pl. xv. and xvi.) and quadrifid noctuae are either more variegated or more brightly-coloured than the upper surface; but some of these species have the habit of "holding their wings quite erect over their backs, retaining them in this position for a considerable time," and thus exposing the under surface to view. other species, when settled on the ground or herbage, now and then suddenly and slightly lift up their wings. hence the lower surface of the wings being brighter than the upper surface in certain moths is not so anomalous as it at first appears. the saturniidae include some of the most beautiful of all moths, their wings being decorated, as in our british emperor moth, with fine ocelli; and mr. t.w. wood ( . 'proc ent. soc. of london,' july , , p. xxvii.) observes that they resemble butterflies in some of their movements; "for instance, in the gentle waving up and down of the wings as if for display, which is more characteristic of diurnal than of nocturnal lepidoptera." it is a singular fact that no british moths which are brilliantly coloured, and, as far as i can discover, hardly any foreign species, differ much in colour according to sex; though this is the case with many brilliant butterflies. the male, however, of one american moth, the saturnia io, is described as having its fore-wings deep yellow, curiously marked with purplish-red spots; whilst the wings of the female are purple-brown, marked with grey lines. ( . harris, 'treatise,' etc., edited by flint, , p. .) the british moths which differ sexually in colour are all brown, or of various dull yellow tints, or nearly white. in several species the males are much darker than the females ( . for instance, i observe in my son's cabinet that the males are darker than the females in the lasiocampa quercus, odonestis potatoria, hypogymna dispar, dasychira pudibunda, and cycnia mendica. in this latter species the difference in colour between the two sexes is strongly marked; and mr. wallace informs me that we here have, as he believes, an instance of protective mimicry confined to one sex, as will hereafter be more fully explained. the white female of the cycnia resembles the very common spilosoma menthrasti, both sexes of which are white; and mr. stainton observed that this latter moth was rejected with utter disgust by a whole brood of young turkeys, which were fond of eating other moths; so that if the cycnia was commonly mistaken by british birds for the spilosoma, it would escape being devoured, and its white deceptive colour would thus be highly beneficial.), and these belong to groups which generally fly about during the afternoon. on the other hand, in many genera, as mr. stainton informs me, the males have the hind-wings whiter than those of the female--of which fact agrotis exclamationis offers a good instance. in the ghost moth (hepialus humuli) the difference is more strongly marked; the males being white, and the females yellow with darker markings. ( . it is remarkable, that in the shetland islands the male of this moth, instead of differing widely from the female, frequently resembles her closely in colour (see mr. maclachlan, 'transactions, entomological society,' vol. ii. , p. ). mr. g. fraser suggests ('nature,' april , p. ) that at the season of the year when the ghost-moth appears in these northern islands, the whiteness of the males would not be needed to render them visible to the females in the twilight night.) it is probable that in these cases the males are thus rendered more conspicuous, and more easily seen by the females whilst flying about in the dusk. from the several foregoing facts it is impossible to admit that the brilliant colours of butterflies, and of some few moths, have commonly been acquired for the sake of protection. we have seen that their colours and elegant patterns are arranged and exhibited as if for display. hence i am led to believe that the females prefer or are most excited by the more brilliant males; for on any other supposition the males would, as far as we can see, be ornamented to no purpose. we know that ants and certain lamellicorn beetles are capable of feeling an attachment for each other, and that ants recognise their fellows after an interval of several months. hence there is no abstract improbability in the lepidoptera, which probably stand nearly or quite as high in the scale as these insects, having sufficient mental capacity to admire bright colours. they certainly discover flowers by colour. the humming-bird sphinx may often be seen to swoop down from a distance on a bunch of flowers in the midst of green foliage; and i have been assured by two persons abroad, that these moths repeatedly visit flowers painted on the walls of a room, and vainly endeavour to insert their proboscis into them. fritz müller informs me that several kinds of butterflies in s. brazil shew an unmistakable preference for certain colours over others: he observed that they very often visited the brilliant red flowers of five or six genera of plants, but never the white or yellow flowering species of the same and other genera, growing in the same garden; and i have received other accounts to the same effect. as i hear from mr. doubleday, the common white butterfly often flies down to a bit of paper on the ground, no doubt mistaking it for one of its own species. mr. collingwood ( . 'rambles of a naturalist in the chinese seas,' , p. .) in speaking of the difficulty in collecting certain butterflies in the malay archipelago, states that "a dead specimen pinned upon a conspicuous twig will often arrest an insect of the same species in its headlong flight, and bring it down within easy reach of the net, especially if it be of the opposite sex." the courtship of butterflies is, as before remarked, a prolonged affair. the males sometimes fight together in rivalry; and many may be seen pursuing or crowding round the same female. unless, then, the females prefer one male to another, the pairing must be left to mere chance, and this does not appear probable. if, on the other band, the females habitually, or even occasionally, prefer the more beautiful males, the colours of the latter will have been rendered brighter by degrees, and will have been transmitted to both sexes or to one sex, according to the law of inheritance which has prevailed. the process of sexual selection will have been much facilitated, if the conclusion can be trusted, arrived at from various kinds of evidence in the supplement to the ninth chapter; namely, that the males of many lepidoptera, at least in the imago state, greatly exceed the females in number. some facts, however, are opposed to the belief that female butterflies prefer the more beautiful males; thus, as i have been assured by several collectors, fresh females may frequently be seen paired with battered, faded, or dingy males; but this is a circumstance which could hardly fail often to follow from the males emerging from their cocoons earlier than the females. with moths of the family of the bombycidae, the sexes pair immediately after assuming the imago state; for they cannot feed, owing to the rudimentary condition of their mouths. the females, as several entomologists have remarked to me, lie in an almost torpid state, and appear not to evince the least choice in regard to their partners. this is the case with the common silk-moth (b. mori), as i have been told by some continental and english breeders. dr. wallace, who has had great experience in breeding bombyx cynthia, is convinced that the females evince no choice or preference. he has kept above of these moths together, and has often found the most vigorous females mated with stunted males. the reverse appears to occur seldom; for, as he believes, the more vigorous males pass over the weakly females, and are attracted by those endowed with most vitality. nevertheless, the bombycidae, though obscurely-coloured, are often beautiful to our eyes from their elegant and mottled shades. i have as yet only referred to the species in which the males are brighter coloured than the females, and i have attributed their beauty to the females for many generations having chosen and paired with the more attractive males. but converse cases occur, though rarely, in which the females are more brilliant than the males; and here, as i believe, the males have selected the more beautiful females, and have thus slowly added to their beauty. we do not know why in various classes of animals the males of some few species have selected the more beautiful females instead of having gladly accepted any female, as seems to be the general rule in the animal kingdom: but if, contrary to what generally occurs with the lepidoptera, the females were much more numerous than the males, the latter would be likely to pick out the more beautiful females. mr. butler shewed me several species of callidryas in the british museum, in some of which the females equalled, and in others greatly surpassed the males in beauty; for the females alone have the borders of their wings suffused with crimson and orange, and spotted with black. the plainer males of these species closely resemble each other, shewing that here the females have been modified; whereas in those cases, where the males are the more ornate, it is these which have been modified, the females remaining closely alike. in england we have some analogous cases, though not so marked. the females alone of two species of thecla have a bright-purple or orange patch on their fore-wings. in hipparchia the sexes do not differ much; but it is the female of h. janira which has a conspicuous light-brown patch on her wings; and the females of some of the other species are brighter coloured than their males. again, the females of colias edusa and hyale have "orange or yellow spots on the black marginal border, represented in the males only by thin streaks"; and in pieris it is the females which "are ornamented with black spots on the fore-wings, and these are only partially present in the males." now the males of many butterflies are known to support the females during their marriage flight; but in the species just named it is the females which support the males; so that the part which the two sexes play is reversed, as is their relative beauty. throughout the animal kingdom the males commonly take the more active share in wooing, and their beauty seems to have been increased by the females having accepted the more attractive individuals; but with these butterflies, the females take the more active part in the final marriage ceremony, so that we may suppose that they likewise do so in the wooing; and in this case we can understand how it is that they have been rendered the more beautiful. mr. meldola, from whom the foregoing statements have been taken, says in conclusion: "though i am not convinced of the action of sexual selection in producing the colours of insects, it cannot be denied that these facts are strikingly corroborative of mr. darwin's views." ( . 'nature,' april , , p. . mr. meldola quotes donzel, in 'soc. ent. de france,' , p. , on the flight of butterflies whilst pairing. see also mr. g. fraser, in 'nature,' april , , p. , on the sexual differences of several british butterflies.) as sexual selection primarily depends on variability, a few words must be added on this subject. in respect to colour there is no difficulty, for any number of highly variable lepidoptera could be named. one good instance will suffice. mr. bates shewed me a whole series of specimens of papilio sesostris and p. childrenae; in the latter the males varied much in the extent of the beautifully enamelled green patch on the fore-wings, and in the size of the white mark, and of the splendid crimson stripe on the hind-wings; so that there was a great contrast amongst the males between the most and the least gaudy. the male of papilio sesostris is much less beautiful than of p. childrenae; and it likewise varies a little in the size of the green patch on the fore-wings, and in the occasional appearance of the small crimson stripe on the hind-wings, borrowed, as it would seem, from its own female; for the females of this and of many other species in the aeneas group possess this crimson stripe. hence between the brightest specimens of p. sesostris and the dullest of p. childrenae, there was but a small interval; and it was evident that as far as mere variability is concerned, there would be no difficulty in permanently increasing the beauty of either species by means of selection. the variability is here almost confined to the male sex; but mr. wallace and mr. bates have shewn ( . wallace on the papilionidae of the malayan region, in 'transact. linn. soc.' vol. xxv. , pp. , . a striking case of a rare variety, strictly intermediate between two other well-marked female varieties, is given by mr. wallace. see also mr. bates, in 'proc. entomolog. soc.' nov. , , p. xl.) that the females of some species are extremely variable, the males being nearly constant. in a future chapter i shall have occasion to shew that the beautiful eye-like spots, or ocelli, found on the wings of many lepidoptera, are eminently variable. i may here add that these ocelli offer a difficulty on the theory of sexual selection; for though appearing to us so ornamental, they are never present in one sex and absent in the other, nor do they ever differ much in the two sexes. ( . mr. bates was so kind as to lay this subject before the entomological society, and i have received answers to this effect from several entomologists.) this fact is at present inexplicable; but if it should hereafter be found that the formation of an ocellus is due to some change in the tissues of the wings, for instance, occurring at a very early period of development, we might expect, from what we know of the laws of inheritance, that it would be transmitted to both sexes, though arising and perfected in one sex alone. on the whole, although many serious objections may be urged, it seems probable that most of the brilliantly-coloured species of lepidoptera owe their colours to sexual selection, excepting in certain cases, presently to be mentioned, in which conspicuous colours have been gained through mimicry as a protection. from the ardour of the male throughout the animal kingdom, he is generally willing to accept any female; and it is the female which usually exerts a choice. hence, if sexual selection has been efficient with the lepidoptera, the male, when the sexes differ, ought to be the more brilliantly coloured, and this undoubtedly is the case. when both sexes are brilliantly coloured and resemble each other, the characters acquired by the males appear to have been transmitted to both. we are led to this conclusion by cases, even within the same genus, of gradation from an extraordinary amount of difference to identity in colour between the two sexes. but it may be asked whether the difference in colour between the sexes may not be accounted for by other means besides sexual selection. thus the males and females of the same species of butterfly are in several cases known ( . h.w. bates, 'the naturalist on the amazons,' vol. ii. , p. . a.r. wallace, in 'transactions, linnean society,' vol. xxv. , p. .) to inhabit different stations, the former commonly basking in the sunshine, the latter haunting gloomy forests. it is therefore possible that different conditions of life may have acted directly on the two sexes; but this is not probable ( . on this whole subject see 'the variation of animals and plants under domestication,' , vol. ii. chap. xxiii.) as in the adult state they are exposed to different conditions during a very short period; and the larvae of both are exposed to the same conditions. mr. wallace believes that the difference between the sexes is due not so much to the males having been modified, as to the females having in all or almost all cases acquired dull colours for the sake of protection. it seems to me, on the contrary, far more probable that it is the males which have been chiefly modified through sexual selection, the females having been comparatively little changed. we can thus understand how it is that the females of allied species generally resemble one another so much more closely than do the males. they thus shew us approximately the primordial colouring of the parent-species of the group to which they belong. they have, however, almost always been somewhat modified by the transfer to them of some of the successive variations, through the accumulation of which the males were rendered beautiful. but i do not wish to deny that the females alone of some species may have been specially modified for protection. in most cases the males and females of distinct species will have been exposed during their prolonged larval state to different conditions, and may have been thus affected; though with the males any slight change of colour thus caused will generally have been masked by the brilliant tints gained through sexual selection. when we treat of birds, i shall have to discuss the whole question, as to how far the differences in colour between the sexes are due to the males having been modified through sexual selection for ornamental purposes, or to the females having been modified through natural selection for the sake of protection, so that i will here say but little on the subject. in all the cases in which the more common form of equal inheritance by both sexes has prevailed, the selection of bright-coloured males would tend to make the females bright-coloured; and the selection of dull-coloured females would tend to make the males dull. if both processes were carried on simultaneously, they would tend to counteract each other; and the final result would depend on whether a greater number of females from being well protected by obscure colours, or a greater number of males by being brightly-coloured and thus finding partners, succeeded in leaving more numerous offspring. in order to account for the frequent transmission of characters to one sex alone, mr. wallace expresses his belief that the more common form of equal inheritance by both sexes can be changed through natural selection into inheritance by one sex alone, but in favour of this view i can discover no evidence. we know from what occurs under domestication that new characters often appear, which from the first are transmitted to one sex alone; and by the selection of such variations there would not be the slightest difficulty in giving bright colours to the males alone, and at the same time or subsequently, dull colours to the females alone. in this manner the females of some butterflies and moths have, it is probable, been rendered inconspicuous for the sake of protection, and widely different from their males. i am, however, unwilling without distinct evidence to admit that two complex processes of selection, each requiring the transference of new characters to one sex alone, have been carried on with a multitude of species,--that the males have been rendered more brilliant by beating their rivals, and the females more dull-coloured by having escaped from their enemies. the male, for instance, of the common brimstone butterfly (gonepteryx), is of a far more intense yellow than the female, though she is equally conspicuous; and it does not seem probable that she specially acquired her pale tints as a protection, though it is probable that the male acquired his bright colours as a sexual attraction. the female of anthocharis cardamines does not possess the beautiful orange wing-tips of the male; consequently she closely resembles the white butterflies (pieris) so common in our gardens; but we have no evidence that this resemblance is beneficial to her. as, on the other hand, she resembles both sexes of several other species of the genus inhabiting various quarters of the world, it is probable that she has simply retained to a large extent her primordial colours. finally, as we have seen, various considerations lead to the conclusion that with the greater number of brilliantly-coloured lepidoptera it is the male which has been chiefly modified through sexual selection; the amount of difference between the sexes mostly depending on the form of inheritance which has prevailed. inheritance is governed by so many unknown laws or conditions, that it seems to us to act in a capricious manner ( . the 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. chap. xii. p. .); and we can thus, to a certain extent, understand how it is that with closely allied species the sexes either differ to an astonishing degree, or are identical in colour. as all the successive steps in the process of variation are necessarily transmitted through the female, a greater or less number of such steps might readily become developed in her; and thus we can understand the frequent gradations from an extreme difference to none at all between the sexes of allied species. these cases of gradation, it may be added, are much too common to favour the supposition that we here see females actually undergoing the process of transition and losing their brightness for the sake of protection; for we have every reason to conclude that at any one time the greater number of species are in a fixed condition. mimicry. this principle was first made clear in an admirable paper by mr. bates ( . 'transact. linn. soc.' vol. xxiii. , p. .), who thus threw a flood of light on many obscure problems. it had previously been observed that certain butterflies in s. america belonging to quite distinct families, resembled the heliconidae so closely in every stripe and shade of colour, that they could not be distinguished save by an experienced entomologist. as the heliconidae are coloured in their usual manner, whilst the others depart from the usual colouring of the groups to which they belong, it is clear that the latter are the imitators, and the heliconidae the imitated. mr. bates further observed that the imitating species are comparatively rare, whilst the imitated abound, and that the two sets live mingled together. from the fact of the heliconidae being conspicuous and beautiful insects, yet so numerous in individuals and species, he concluded that they must be protected from the attacks of enemies by some secretion or odour; and this conclusion has now been amply confirmed ( . 'proc. entomological soc.' dec. , , p. xlv.), especially by mr. belt. hence mr. bates inferred that the butterflies which imitate the protected species have acquired their present marvellously deceptive appearance through variation and natural selection, in order to be mistaken for the protected kinds, and thus to escape being devoured. no explanation is here attempted of the brilliant colours of the imitated, but only of the imitating butterflies. we must account for the colours of the former in the same general manner, as in the cases previously discussed in this chapter. since the publication of mr. bates' paper, similar and equally striking facts have been observed by mr. wallace in the malayan region, by mr. trimen in south africa, and by mr. riley in the united states. ( . wallace, 'transact. linn. soc.' vol. xxv. p. i.; also, 'transact. ent. soc.' vol. iv. ( rd series), , p. . trimen, 'linn. transact.' vol. xxvi. , p. . riley, 'third annual report on the noxious insects of missouri,' , pp. - . this latter essay is valuable, as mr. riley here discusses all the objections which have been raised against mr. bates's theory.) as some writers have felt much difficulty in understanding how the first steps in the process of mimicry could have been effected through natural selection, it may be well to remark that the process probably commenced long ago between forms not widely dissimilar in colour. in this case even a slight variation would be beneficial, if it rendered the one species more like the other; and afterwards the imitated species might be modified to an extreme degree through sexual selection or other means, and if the changes were gradual, the imitators might easily be led along the same track, until they differed to an equally extreme degree from their original condition; and they would thus ultimately assume an appearance or colouring wholly unlike that of the other members of the group to which they belonged. it should also be remembered that many species of lepidoptera are liable to considerable and abrupt variations in colour. a few instances have been given in this chapter; and many more may be found in the papers of mr. bates and mr. wallace. with several species the sexes are alike, and imitate the two sexes of another species. but mr. trimen gives, in the paper already referred to, three cases in which the sexes of the imitated form differ from each other in colour, and the sexes of the imitating form differ in a like manner. several cases have also been recorded where the females alone imitate brilliantly-coloured and protected species, the males retaining "the normal aspect of their immediate congeners." it is here obvious that the successive variations by which the female has been modified have been transmitted to her alone. it is, however, probable that some of the many successive variations would have been transmitted to, and developed in, the males had not such males been eliminated by being thus rendered less attractive to the females; so that only those variations were preserved which were from the first strictly limited in their transmission to the female sex. we have a partial illustration of these remarks in a statement by mr. belt ( . 'the naturalist in nicaragua,' , p. .); that the males of some of the leptalides, which imitate protected species, still retain in a concealed manner some of their original characters. thus in the males "the upper half of the lower wing is of a pure white, whilst all the rest of the wings is barred and spotted with black, red and yellow, like the species they mimic. the females have not this white patch, and the males usually conceal it by covering it with the upper wing, so that i cannot imagine its being of any other use to them than as an attraction in courtship, when they exhibit it to the females, and thus gratify their deep-seated preference for the normal colour of the order to which the leptalides belong." bright colours of caterpillars. whilst reflecting on the beauty of many butterflies, it occurred to me that some caterpillars were splendidly coloured; and as sexual selection could not possibly have here acted, it appeared rash to attribute the beauty of the mature insect to this agency, unless the bright colours of their larvae could be somehow explained. in the first place, it may be observed that the colours of caterpillars do not stand in any close correlation with those of the mature insect. secondly, their bright colours do not serve in any ordinary manner as a protection. mr. bates informs me, as an instance of this, that the most conspicuous caterpillar which he ever beheld (that of a sphinx) lived on the large green leaves of a tree on the open llanos of south america; it was about four inches in length, transversely banded with black and yellow, and with its head, legs, and tail of a bright red. hence it caught the eye of any one who passed by, even at the distance of many yards, and no doubt that of every passing bird. i then applied to mr. wallace, who has an innate genius for solving difficulties. after some consideration he replied: "most caterpillars require protection, as may be inferred from some kinds being furnished with spines or irritating hairs, and from many being coloured green like the leaves on which they feed, or being curiously like the twigs of the trees on which they live." another instance of protection, furnished me by mr. j. mansel weale, may be added, namely, that there is a caterpillar of a moth which lives on the mimosas in south africa, and fabricates for itself a case quite indistinguishable from the surrounding thorns. from such considerations mr. wallace thought it probable that conspicuously coloured caterpillars were protected by having a nauseous taste; but as their skin is extremely tender, and as their intestines readily protrude from a wound, a slight peck from the beak of a bird would be as fatal to them as if they had been devoured. hence, as mr. wallace remarks, "distastefulness alone would be insufficient to protect a caterpillar unless some outward sign indicated to its would-be destroyer that its prey was a disgusting morsel." under these circumstances it would be highly advantageous to a caterpillar to be instantaneously and certainly recognised as unpalatable by all birds and other animals. thus the most gaudy colours would be serviceable, and might have been gained by variation and the survival of the most easily-recognised individuals. this hypothesis appears at first sight very bold, but when it was brought before the entomological society ( . 'proceedings, entomological society,' dec. , , p. xlv. and march , , p. lxxx.) it was supported by various statements; and mr. j. jenner weir, who keeps a large number of birds in an aviary, informs me that he has made many trials, and finds no exception to the rule, that all caterpillars of nocturnal and retiring habits with smooth skins, all of a green colour, and all which imitate twigs, are greedily devoured by his birds. the hairy and spinose kinds are invariably rejected, as were four conspicuously-coloured species. when the birds rejected a caterpillar, they plainly shewed, by shaking their heads, and cleansing their beaks, that they were disgusted by the taste. ( . see mr. j. jenner weir's paper on insects and insectivorous birds, in 'transact. ent. soc.' , p. ; also mr. butler's paper, ibid. p. . mr. riley has given analogous facts in the 'third annual report on the noxious insects of missouri,' , p. . some opposed cases are, however, given by dr. wallace and m. h. d'orville; see 'zoological record,' , p. .) three conspicuous kinds of caterpillars and moths were also given to some lizards and frogs, by mr. a. butler, and were rejected, though other kinds were eagerly eaten. thus the probability of mr. wallace's view is confirmed, namely, that certain caterpillars have been made conspicuous for their own good, so as to be easily recognised by their enemies, on nearly the same principle that poisons are sold in coloured bottles by druggists for the good of man. we cannot, however, at present thus explain the elegant diversity in the colours of many caterpillars; but any species which had at some former period acquired a dull, mottled, or striped appearance, either in imitation of surrounding objects, or from the direct action of climate, etc., almost certainly would not become uniform in colour, when its tints were rendered intense and bright; for in order to make a caterpillar merely conspicuous, there would be no selection in any definite direction. summary and concluding remarks on insects. looking back to the several orders, we see that the sexes often differ in various characters, the meaning of which is not in the least understood. the sexes, also, often differ in their organs of sense and means of locomotion, so that the males may quickly discover and reach the females. they differ still oftener in the males possessing diversified contrivances for retaining the females when found. we are, however, here concerned only in a secondary degree with sexual differences of these kinds. in almost all the orders, the males of some species, even of weak and delicate kinds, are known to be highly pugnacious; and some few are furnished with special weapons for fighting with their rivals. but the law of battle does not prevail nearly so widely with insects as with the higher animals. hence it probably arises, that it is in only a few cases that the males have been rendered larger and stronger than the females. on the contrary, they are usually smaller, so that they may be developed within a shorter time, to be ready in large numbers for the emergence of the females. in two families of the homoptera and in three of the orthoptera, the males alone possess sound-producing organs in an efficient state. these are used incessantly during the breeding-season, not only for calling the females, but apparently for charming or exciting them in rivalry with other males. no one who admits the agency of selection of any kind, will, after reading the above discussion, dispute that these musical instruments have been acquired through sexual selection. in four other orders the members of one sex, or more commonly of both sexes, are provided with organs for producing various sounds, which apparently serve merely as call-notes. when both sexes are thus provided, the individuals which were able to make the loudest or most continuous noise would gain partners before those which were less noisy, so that their organs have probably been gained through sexual selection. it is instructive to reflect on the wonderful diversity of the means for producing sound, possessed by the males alone, or by both sexes, in no less than six orders. we thus learn how effectual sexual selection has been in leading to modifications which sometimes, as with the homoptera, relate to important parts of the organisation. from the reasons assigned in the last chapter, it is probable that the great horns possessed by the males of many lamellicorn, and some other beetles, have been acquired as ornaments. from the small size of insects, we are apt to undervalue their appearance. if we could imagine a male chalcosoma (fig. ), with its polished bronzed coat of mail, and its vast complex horns, magnified to the size of a horse, or even of a dog, it would be one of the most imposing animals in the world. the colouring of insects is a complex and obscure subject. when the male differs slightly from the female, and neither are brilliantly-coloured, it is probable that the sexes have varied in a slightly different manner, and that the variations have been transmitted by each sex to the same without any benefit or evil thus accruing. when the male is brilliantly-coloured and differs conspicuously from the female, as with some dragon-flies and many butterflies, it is probable that he owes his colours to sexual selection; whilst the female has retained a primordial or very ancient type of colouring, slightly modified by the agencies before explained. but in some cases the female has apparently been made obscure by variations transmitted to her alone, as a means of direct protection; and it is almost certain that she has sometimes been made brilliant, so as to imitate other protected species inhabiting the same district. when the sexes resemble each other and both are obscurely coloured, there is no doubt that they have been in a multitude of cases so coloured for the sake of protection. so it is in some instances when both are brightly-coloured, for they thus imitate protected species, or resemble surrounding objects such as flowers; or they give notice to their enemies that they are unpalatable. in other cases in which the sexes resemble each other and are both brilliant, especially when the colours are arranged for display, we may conclude that they have been gained by the male sex as an attraction, and have been transferred to the female. we are more especially led to this conclusion whenever the same type of coloration prevails throughout a whole group, and we find that the males of some species differ widely in colour from the females, whilst others differ slightly or not at all with intermediate gradations connecting these extreme states. in the same manner as bright colours have often been partially transferred from the males to the females, so it has been with the extraordinary horns of many lamellicorn and some other beetles. so again, the sound-producing organs proper to the males of the homoptera and orthoptera have generally been transferred in a rudimentary, or even in a nearly perfect condition, to the females; yet not sufficiently perfect to be of any use. it is also an interesting fact, as bearing on sexual selection, that the stridulating organs of certain male orthoptera are not fully developed until the last moult; and that the colours of certain male dragon-flies are not fully developed until some little time after their emergence from the pupal state, and when they are ready to breed. sexual selection implies that the more attractive individuals are preferred by the opposite sex; and as with insects, when the sexes differ, it is the male which, with some rare exceptions, is the more ornamented, and departs more from the type to which the species belongs;--and as it is the male which searches eagerly for the female, we must suppose that the females habitually or occasionally prefer the more beautiful males, and that these have thus acquired their beauty. that the females in most or all the orders would have the power of rejecting any particular male, is probable from the many singular contrivances possessed by the males, such as great jaws, adhesive cushions, spines, elongated legs, etc., for seizing the female; for these contrivances show that there is some difficulty in the act, so that her concurrence would seem necessary. judging from what we know of the perceptive powers and affections of various insects, there is no antecedent improbability in sexual selection having come largely into play; but we have as yet no direct evidence on this head, and some facts are opposed to the belief. nevertheless, when we see many males pursuing the same female, we can hardly believe that the pairing is left to blind chance--that the female exerts no choice, and is not influenced by the gorgeous colours or other ornaments with which the male is decorated. if we admit that the females of the homoptera and orthoptera appreciate the musical tones of their male partners, and that the various instruments have been perfected through sexual selection, there is little improbability in the females of other insects appreciating beauty in form or colour, and consequently in such characters having been thus gained by the males. but from the circumstance of colour being so variable, and from its having been so often modified for the sake of protection, it is difficult to decide in how large a proportion of cases sexual selection has played a part. this is more especially difficult in those orders, such as orthoptera, hymenoptera, and coleoptera, in which the two sexes rarely differ much in colour; for we are then left to mere analogy. with the coleoptera, however, as before remarked, it is in the great lamellicorn group, placed by some authors at the head of the order, and in which we sometimes see a mutual attachment between the sexes, that we find the males of some species possessing weapons for sexual strife, others furnished with wonderful horns, many with stridulating organs, and others ornamented with splendid metallic tints. hence it seems probable that all these characters have been gained through the same means, namely sexual selection. with butterflies we have the best evidence, as the males sometimes take pains to display their beautiful colours; and we cannot believe that they would act thus, unless the display was of use to them in their courtship. when we treat of birds, we shall see that they present in their secondary sexual characters the closest analogy with insects. thus, many male birds are highly pugnacious, and some are furnished with special weapons for fighting with their rivals. they possess organs which are used during the breeding-season for producing vocal and instrumental music. they are frequently ornamented with combs, horns, wattles and plumes of the most diversified kinds, and are decorated with beautiful colours, all evidently for the sake of display. we shall find that, as with insects, both sexes in certain groups are equally beautiful, and are equally provided with ornaments which are usually confined to the male sex. in other groups both sexes are equally plain-coloured and unornamented. lastly, in some few anomalous cases, the females are more beautiful than the males. we shall often find, in the same group of birds, every gradation from no difference between the sexes, to an extreme difference. we shall see that female birds, like female insects, often possess more or less plain traces or rudiments of characters which properly belong to the males and are of use only to them. the analogy, indeed, in all these respects between birds and insects is curiously close. whatever explanation applies to the one class probably applies to the other; and this explanation, as we shall hereafter attempt to shew in further detail, is sexual selection. chapter xii. secondary sexual characters of fishes, amphibians, and reptiles. fishes: courtship and battles of the males--larger size of the females--males, bright colours and ornamental appendages; other strange characters--colours and appendages acquired by the males during the breeding-season alone--fishes with both sexes brilliantly coloured--protective colours--the less conspicuous colours of the female cannot be accounted for on the principle of protection--male fishes building nests, and taking charge of the ova and young. amphibians: differences in structure and colour between the sexes--vocal organs. reptiles: chelonians--crocodiles--snakes, colours in some cases protective--lizards, battles of--ornamental appendages--strange differences in structure between the sexes--colours--sexual differences almost as great as with birds. we have now arrived at the great sub-kingdom of the vertebrata, and will commence with the lowest class, that of fishes. the males of plagiostomous fishes (sharks, rays) and of chimaeroid fishes are provided with claspers which serve to retain the female, like the various structures possessed by many of the lower animals. besides the claspers, the males of many rays have clusters of strong sharp spines on their heads, and several rows along "the upper outer surface of their pectoral fins." these are present in the males of some species, which have other parts of their bodies smooth. they are only temporarily developed during the breeding-season; and dr. gunther suspects that they are brought into action as prehensile organs by the doubling inwards and downwards of the two sides of the body. it is a remarkable fact that the females and not the males of some species, as of raia clavata, have their backs studded with large hook-formed spines. ( . yarrell's 'hist. of british fishes,' vol. ii. , pp , , . dr. gunther informs me that the spines in r. clavata are peculiar to the female.) the males alone of the capelin (mallotus villosus, one of salmonidae), are provided with a ridge of closely-set, brush-like scales, by the aid of which two males, one on each side, hold the female, whilst she runs with great swiftness on the sandy beach, and there deposits her spawn. ( . the 'american naturalist,' april , p. .) the widely distinct monacanthus scopas presents a somewhat analogous structure. the male, as dr. gunther informs me, has a cluster of stiff, straight spines, like those of a comb, on the sides of the tail; and these in a specimen six inches long were nearly one and a half inches in length; the female has in the same place a cluster of bristles, which may be compared with those of a tooth-brush. in another species, m. peronii, the male has a brush like that possessed by the female of the last species, whilst the sides of the tail in the female are smooth. in some other species of the same genus the tail can be perceived to be a little roughened in the male and perfectly smooth in the female; and lastly in others, both sexes have smooth sides. the males of many fish fight for the possession of the females. thus the male stickleback (gasterosteus leiurus) has been described as "mad with delight," when the female comes out of her hiding-place and surveys the nest which he has made for her. "he darts round her in every direction, then to his accumulated materials for the nest, then back again in an instant; and as she does not advance he endeavours to push her with his snout, and then tries to pull her by the tail and side-spine to the nest." ( . see mr. r. warington's interesting articles in 'annals and magazine of natural history,' october , and november .) the males are said to be polygamists ( . noel humphreys, 'river gardens,' .); they are extraordinarily bold and pugnacious, whilst "the females are quite pacific." their battles are at times desperate; "for these puny combatants fasten tight on each other for several seconds, tumbling over and over again until their strength appears completely exhausted." with the rough-tailed stickleback (g. trachurus) the males whilst fighting swim round and round each other, biting and endeavouring to pierce each other with their raised lateral spines. the same writer adds ( . loudon's 'magazine of natural history,' vol. iii. , p. .), "the bite of these little furies is very severe. they also use their lateral spines with such fatal effect, that i have seen one during a battle absolutely rip his opponent quite open, so that he sank to the bottom and died." when a fish is conquered, "his gallant bearing forsakes him; his gay colours fade away; and he hides his disgrace among his peaceable companions, but is for some time the constant object of his conqueror's persecution." the male salmon is as pugnacious as the little stickleback; and so is the male trout, as i hear from dr. gunther. mr. shaw saw a violent contest between two male salmon which lasted the whole day; and mr. r. buist, superintendent of fisheries, informs me that he has often watched from the bridge at perth the males driving away their rivals, whilst the females were spawning. the males "are constantly fighting and tearing each other on the spawning-beds, and many so injure each other as to cause the death of numbers, many being seen swimming near the banks of the river in a state of exhaustion, and apparently in a dying state." ( . the 'field,' june , . for mr. shaw's statement, see 'edinburgh review,' . another experienced observer (scrope's 'days of salmon fishing,' p. ) remarks that like the stag, the male would, if he could, keep all other males away.) mr. buist informs me, that in june , the keeper of the stormontfield breeding-ponds visited the northern tyne and found about dead salmon, all of which with one exception were males; and he was convinced that they had lost their lives by fighting. [fig. . head of male common salmon (salmo salar) during the breeding-season. [this drawing, as well as all the others in the present chapter, have been executed by the well-known artist, mr. g. ford, from specimens in the british museum, under the kind superintendence of dr. gunther.] fig. . head of female salmon.] the most curious point about the male salmon is that during the breeding-season, besides a slight change in colour, "the lower jaw elongates, and a cartilaginous projection turns upwards from the point, which, when the jaws are closed, occupies a deep cavity between the intermaxillary bones of the upper jaw." ( . yarrell, 'history of british fishes,' vol. ii. , p. .) (figs. and .) in our salmon this change of structure lasts only during the breeding-season; but in the salmo lycaodon of n.w. america the change, as mr. j.k. lord ( . 'the naturalist in vancouver's island,' vol. i. , p. .) believes, is permanent, and best marked in the older males which have previously ascended the rivers. in these old males the jaw becomes developed into an immense hook-like projection, and the teeth grow into regular fangs, often more than half an inch in length. with the european salmon, according to mr. lloyd ( . 'scandinavian adventures,' vol. i. , pp. , .), the temporary hook-like structure serves to strengthen and protect the jaws, when one male charges another with wonderful violence; but the greatly developed teeth of the male american salmon may be compared with the tusks of many male mammals, and they indicate an offensive rather than a protective purpose. the salmon is not the only fish in which the teeth differ in the two sexes; as this is the case with many rays. in the thornback (raia clavata) the adult male has sharp, pointed teeth, directed backwards, whilst those of the female are broad and flat, and form a pavement; so that these teeth differ in the two sexes of the same species more than is usual in distinct genera of the same family. the teeth of the male become sharp only when he is adult: whilst young they are broad and flat like those of the female. as so frequently occurs with secondary sexual characters, both sexes of some species of rays (for instance r. batis), when adult, possess sharp pointed teeth; and here a character, proper to and primarily gained by the male, appears to have been transmitted to the offspring of both sexes. the teeth are likewise pointed in both sexes of r. maculata, but only when quite adult; the males acquiring them at an earlier age than the females. we shall hereafter meet with analogous cases in certain birds, in which the male acquires the plumage common to both sexes when adult, at a somewhat earlier age than does the female. with other species of rays the males even when old never possess sharp teeth, and consequently the adults of both sexes are provided with broad, flat teeth like those of the young, and like those of the mature females of the above-mentioned species. ( . see yarrell's account of the rays in his 'history of british fishes,' vol. ii. , p. , with an excellent figure, and pp. , .) as the rays are bold, strong and voracious fish, we may suspect that the males require their sharp teeth for fighting with their rivals; but as they possess many parts modified and adapted for the prehension of the female, it is possible that their teeth may be used for this purpose. in regard to size, m. carbonnier ( . as quoted in 'the farmer,' , p. .) maintains that the female of almost all fishes is larger than the male; and dr. gunther does not know of a single instance in which the male is actually larger than the female. with some cyprinodonts the male is not even half as large. as in many kinds of fishes the males habitually fight together, it is surprising that they have not generally become larger and stronger than the females through the effects of sexual selection. the males suffer from their small size, for according to m. carbonnier, they are liable to be devoured by the females of their own species when carnivorous, and no doubt by other species. increased size must be in some manner of more importance to the females, than strength and size are to the males for fighting with other males; and this perhaps is to allow of the production of a vast number of ova. [fig. . callionymus lyra. upper figure, male; lower figure, female. n.b. the lower figure is more reduced than the upper.] in many species the male alone is ornamented with bright colours; or these are much brighter in the male than the female. the male, also, is sometimes provided with appendages which appear to be of no more use to him for the ordinary purposes of life, than are the tail feathers to the peacock. i am indebted for most of the following facts to the kindness of dr. gunther. there is reason to suspect that many tropical fishes differ sexually in colour and structure; and there are some striking cases with our british fishes. the male callionymus lyra has been called the gemmeous dragonet "from its brilliant gem-like colours." when fresh caught from the sea the body is yellow of various shades, striped and spotted with vivid blue on the head; the dorsal fins are pale brown with dark longitudinal bands; the ventral, caudal, and anal fins being bluish-black. the female, or sordid dragonet, was considered by linnaeus, and by many subsequent naturalists, as a distinct species; it is of a dingy reddish-brown, with the dorsal fin brown and the other fins white. the sexes differ also in the proportional size of the head and mouth, and in the position of the eyes ( . i have drawn up this description from yarrell's 'british fishes,' vol. i. , pp. and .); but the most striking difference is the extraordinary elongation in the male (fig. ) of the dorsal fin. mr. w. saville kent remarks that this "singular appendage appears from my observations of the species in confinement, to be subservient to the same end as the wattles, crests, and other abnormal adjuncts of the male in gallinaceous birds, for the purpose of fascinating their mates." ( . 'nature,' july , p. .) the young males resemble the adult females in structure and colour. throughout the genus callionymus ( . 'catalogue of acanth. fishes in the british museum,' by dr. gunther, , pp. - .), the male is generally much more brightly spotted than the female, and in several species, not only the dorsal, but the anal fin is much elongated in the males. the male of the cottus scorpius, or sea-scorpion, is slenderer and smaller than the female. there is also a great difference in colour between them. it is difficult, as mr. lloyd ( . 'game birds of sweden,' etc., , p. .) remarks, "for any one, who has not seen this fish during the spawning-season, when its hues are brightest, to conceive the admixture of brilliant colours with which it, in other respects so ill-favoured, is at that time adorned." both sexes of the labrus mixtus, although very different in colour, are beautiful; the male being orange with bright blue stripes, and the female bright red with some black spots on the back. [fig. . xiphophorus hellerii. upper figure, male; lower figure, female.] in the very distinct family of the cyprinodontidae--inhabitants of the fresh waters of foreign lands--the sexes sometimes differ much in various characters. in the male of the mollienesia petenensis ( . with respect to this and the following species i am indebted to dr. gunther for information: see also his paper on the 'fishes of central america,' in 'transact. zoological soc.' vol. vi. , p. .), the dorsal fin is greatly developed and is marked with a row of large, round, ocellated, bright-coloured spots; whilst the same fin in the female is smaller, of a different shape, and marked only with irregularly curved brown spots. in the male the basal margin of the anal fin is also a little produced and dark coloured. in the male of an allied form, the xiphophorus hellerii (fig. ), the inferior margin of the caudal fin is developed into a long filament, which, as i hear from dr. gunther, is striped with bright colours. this filament does not contain any muscles, and apparently cannot be of any direct use to the fish. as in the case of the callionymus, the males whilst young resemble the adult females in colour and structure. sexual differences such as these may be strictly compared with those which are so frequent with gallinaceous birds. ( . dr. gunther makes this remark; 'catalogue of fishes in the british museum,' vol. iii. , p. .) [fig. . plecostomus barbatus. upper figure, head of male; lower figure, female.] in a siluroid fish, inhabiting the fresh waters of south america, the plecostomus barbatus ( . see dr. gunther on this genus, in 'proceedings of the zoological society,' , p. .) (fig. ), the male has its mouth and inter-operculum fringed with a beard of stiff hairs, of which the female shows hardly a trace. these hairs are of the nature of scales. in another species of the same genus, soft flexible tentacles project from the front part of the head of the male, which are absent in the female. these tentacles are prolongations of the true skin, and therefore are not homologous with the stiff hairs of the former species; but it can hardly be doubted that both serve the same purpose. what this purpose may be, it is difficult to conjecture; ornament does not here seem probable, but we can hardly suppose that stiff hairs and flexible filaments can be useful in any ordinary way to the males alone. in that strange monster, the chimaera monstrosa, the male has a hook-shaped bone on the top of the head, directed forwards, with its end rounded and covered with sharp spines; in the female "this crown is altogether absent," but what its use may be to the male is utterly unknown. ( . f. buckland, in 'land and water,' july , p. , with a figure. many other cases could be added of structures peculiar to the male, of which the uses are not known.) the structures as yet referred to are permanent in the male after he has arrived at maturity; but with some blennies, and in another allied genus ( . dr. gunther, 'catalogue of fishes,' vol. iii. pp. and .), a crest is developed on the head of the male only during the breeding-season, and the body at the same time becomes more brightly-coloured. there can be little doubt that this crest serves as a temporary sexual ornament, for the female does not exhibit a trace of it. in other species of the same genus both sexes possess a crest, and in at least one species neither sex is thus provided. in many of the chromidae, for instance in geophagus and especially in cichla, the males, as i hear from professor agassiz ( . see also 'a journey in brazil,' by prof. and mrs. agassiz, , p. .), have a conspicuous protuberance on the forehead, which is wholly wanting in the females and in the young males. professor agassiz adds, "i have often observed these fishes at the time of spawning when the protuberance is largest, and at other seasons when it is totally wanting, and the two sexes shew no difference whatever in the outline of the profile of the head. i never could ascertain that it subserves any special function, and the indians on the amazon know nothing about its use." these protuberances resemble, in their periodical appearance, the fleshy carbuncles on the heads of certain birds; but whether they serve as ornaments must remain at present doubtful. i hear from professor agassiz and dr. gunther, that the males of those fishes, which differ permanently in colour from the females, often become more brilliant during the breeding-season. this is likewise the case with a multitude of fishes, the sexes of which are identical in colour at all other seasons of the year. the tench, roach, and perch may be given as instances. the male salmon at this season is "marked on the cheeks with orange-coloured stripes, which give it the appearance of a labrus, and the body partakes of a golden orange tinge. the females are dark in colour, and are commonly called black-fish." ( . yarrell, 'history of british fishes,' vol. ii. , pp. , , .) an analogous and even greater change takes place with the salmo eriox or bull trout; the males of the char (s. umbla) are likewise at this season rather brighter in colour than the females. ( . w. thompson, in 'annals and magazine of natural history,' vol. vi. , p. .) the colours of the pike (esox reticulatus) of the united states, especially of the male, become, during the breeding-season, exceedingly intense, brilliant, and iridescent. ( . 'the american agriculturalist,' , p. .) another striking instance out of many is afforded by the male stickleback (gasterosteus leiurus), which is described by mr. warington ( . 'annals and mag. of nat. hist.' oct. .), as being then "beautiful beyond description." the back and eyes of the female are simply brown, and the belly white. the eyes of the male, on the other hand, are "of the most splendid green, having a metallic lustre like the green feathers of some humming-birds. the throat and belly are of a bright crimson, the back of an ashy-green, and the whole fish appears as though it were somewhat translucent and glowed with an internal incandescence." after the breeding season these colours all change, the throat and belly become of a paler red, the back more green, and the glowing tints subside. with respect to the courtship of fishes, other cases have been observed since the first edition of this book appeared, besides that already given of the stickleback. mr. w.s. kent says that the male of the labrus mixtus, which, as we have seen, differs in colour from the female, makes "a deep hollow in the sand of the tank, and then endeavours in the most persuasive manner to induce a female of the same species to share it with him, swimming backwards and forwards between her and the completed nest, and plainly exhibiting the greatest anxiety for her to follow." the males of cantharus lineatus become, during the breeding-season, of deep leaden-black; they then retire from the shoal, and excavate a hollow as a nest. "each male now mounts vigilant guard over his respective hollow, and vigorously attacks and drives away any other fish of the same sex. towards his companions of the opposite sex his conduct is far different; many of the latter are now distended with spawn, and these he endeavours by all the means in his power to lure singly to his prepared hollow, and there to deposit the myriad ova with which they are laden, which he then protects and guards with the greatest care." ( . 'nature,' may , p. .) a more striking case of courtship, as well as of display, by the males of a chinese macropus has been given by m. carbonnier, who carefully observed these fishes under confinement. ( . 'bulletin de la societé d'acclimat.' paris, july , and jan. .) the males are most beautifully coloured, more so than the females. during the breeding-season they contend for the possession of the females; and, in the act of courtship, expand their fins, which are spotted and ornamented with brightly coloured rays, in the same manner, according to m. carbonnier, as the peacock. they then also bound about the females with much vivacity, and appear by "l'étalage de leurs vives couleurs chercher a attirer l'attention des femelles, lesquelles ne paraissaient indifférentes a ce manège, elles nageaient avec une molle lenteur vers les males et semblaient se complaire dans leur voisinage." after the male has won his bride, he makes a little disc of froth by blowing air and mucus out of his mouth. he then collects the fertilised ova, dropped by the female, in his mouth; and this caused m. carbonnier much alarm, as he thought that they were going to be devoured. but the male soon deposits them in the disc of froth, afterwards guarding them, repairing the froth, and taking care of the young when hatched. i mention these particulars because, as we shall presently see, there are fishes, the males of which hatch their eggs in their mouths; and those who do not believe in the principle of gradual evolution might ask how could such a habit have originated; but the difficulty is much diminished when we know that there are fishes which thus collect and carry the eggs; for if delayed by any cause in depositing them, the habit of hatching them in their mouths might have been acquired. to return to our more immediate subject. the case stands thus: female fishes, as far as i can learn, never willingly spawn except in the presence of the males; and the males never fertilise the ova except in the presence of the females. the males fight for the possession of the females. in many species, the males whilst young resemble the females in colour; but when adult become much more brilliant, and retain their colours throughout life. in other species the males become brighter than the females and otherwise more highly ornamented, only during the season of love. the males sedulously court the females, and in one case, as we have seen, take pains in displaying their beauty before them. can it be believed that they would thus act to no purpose during their courtship? and this would be the case, unless the females exert some choice and select those males which please or excite them most. if the female exerts such choice, all the above facts on the ornamentation of the males become at once intelligible by the aid of sexual selection. we have next to inquire whether this view of the bright colours of certain male fishes having been acquired through sexual selection can, through the law of the equal transmission of characters to both sexes, be extended to those groups in which the males and females are brilliant in the same, or nearly the same degree and manner. in such a genus as labrus, which includes some of the most splendid fishes in the world--for instance, the peacock labrus (l. pavo), described ( . bory saint vincent, in 'dict. class. d'hist. nat.' tom. ix. , p. .), with pardonable exaggeration, as formed of polished scales of gold, encrusting lapis-lazuli, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and amethysts--we may, with much probability, accept this belief; for we have seen that the sexes in at least one species of the genus differ greatly in colour. with some fishes, as with many of the lowest animals, splendid colours may be the direct result of the nature of their tissues and of the surrounding conditions, without the aid of selection of any kind. the gold-fish (cyprinus auratus), judging from the analogy of the golden variety of the common carp, is perhaps a case in point, as it may owe its splendid colours to a single abrupt variation, due to the conditions to which this fish has been subjected under confinement. it is, however, more probable that these colours have been intensified through artificial selection, as this species has been carefully bred in china from a remote period. ( . owing to some remarks on this subject, made in my work 'on the variation of animals under domestication,' mr. w.f. mayers ('chinese notes and queries,' aug. , p. ) has searched the ancient chinese encyclopedias. he finds that gold-fish were first reared in confinement during the sung dynasty, which commenced a.d. . in the year these fishes abounded. in another place it is said that since the year there has been "produced at hangchow a variety called the fire-fish, from its intensely red colour. it is universally admired, and there is not a household where it is not cultivated, in rivalry as to its colour, and as a source of profit.") under natural conditions it does not seem probable that beings so highly organised as fishes, and which live under such complex relations, should become brilliantly coloured without suffering some evil or receiving some benefit from so great a change, and consequently without the intervention of natural selection. what, then, are we to conclude in regard to the many fishes, both sexes of which are splendidly coloured? mr. wallace ( . 'westminster review,' july , p. .) believes that the species which frequent reefs, where corals and other brightly-coloured organisms abound, are brightly coloured in order to escape detection by their enemies; but according to my recollection they were thus rendered highly conspicuous. in the fresh-waters of the tropics there are no brilliantly-coloured corals or other organisms for the fishes to resemble; yet many species in the amazons are beautifully coloured, and many of the carnivorous cyprinidae in india are ornamented with "bright longitudinal lines of various tints." ( . 'indian cyprinidae,' by mr. m'clelland, 'asiatic researches,' vol. xix. part ii. , p. .) mr. m'clelland, in describing these fishes, goes so far as to suppose that "the peculiar brilliancy of their colours" serves as "a better mark for king-fishers, terns, and other birds which are destined to keep the number of these fishes in check"; but at the present day few naturalists will admit that any animal has been made conspicuous as an aid to its own destruction. it is possible that certain fishes may have been rendered conspicuous in order to warn birds and beasts of prey that they were unpalatable, as explained when treating of caterpillars; but it is not, i believe, known that any fish, at least any fresh-water fish, is rejected from being distasteful to fish-devouring animals. on the whole, the most probable view in regard to the fishes, of which both sexes are brilliantly coloured, is that their colours were acquired by the males as a sexual ornament, and were transferred equally, or nearly so, to the other sex. we have now to consider whether, when the male differs in a marked manner from the female in colour or in other ornaments, he alone has been modified, the variations being inherited by his male offspring alone; or whether the female has been specially modified and rendered inconspicuous for the sake of protection, such modifications being inherited only by the females. it is impossible to doubt that colour has been gained by many fishes as a protection: no one can examine the speckled upper surface of a flounder, and overlook its resemblance to the sandy bed of the sea on which it lives. certain fishes, moreover, can through the action of the nervous system change their colours in adaptation to surrounding objects, and that within a short time. ( . g. pouchet, 'l'institut.' nov. , , p. .) one of the most striking instances ever recorded of an animal being protected by its colour (as far as it can be judged of in preserved specimens), as well as by its form, is that given by dr. gunther ( . 'proc. zoolog. soc.' , p. , pl. xiv. and xv.) of a pipe-fish, which, with its reddish streaming filaments, is hardly distinguishable from the sea-weed to which it clings with its prehensile tail. but the question now under consideration is whether the females alone have been modified for this object. we can see that one sex will not be modified through natural selection for the sake of protection more than the other, supposing both to vary, unless one sex is exposed for a longer period to danger, or has less power of escaping from such danger than the other; and it does not appear that with fishes the sexes differ in these respects. as far as there is any difference, the males, from being generally smaller and from wandering more about, are exposed to greater danger than the females; and yet, when the sexes differ, the males are almost always the more conspicuously coloured. the ova are fertilised immediately after being deposited; and when this process lasts for several days, as in the case of the salmon ( . yarrell, 'british fishes,' vol. ii. p. .), the female, during the whole time, is attended by the male. after the ova are fertilised they are, in most cases, left unprotected by both parents, so that the males and females, as far as oviposition is concerned, are equally exposed to danger, and both are equally important for the production of fertile ova; consequently the more or less brightly-coloured individuals of either sex would be equally liable to be destroyed or preserved, and both would have an equal influence on the colours of their offspring. certain fishes, belonging to several families, make nests, and some of them take care of their young when hatched. both sexes of the bright coloured crenilabrus massa and melops work together in building their nests with sea-weed, shells, etc. ( . according to the observations of m. gerbe; see gunther's 'record of zoolog. literature,' , p. .) but the males of certain fishes do all the work, and afterwards take exclusive charge of the young. this is the case with the dull-coloured gobies ( . cuvier, 'regne animal,' vol. ii. , p. .), in which the sexes are not known to differ in colour, and likewise with the sticklebacks (gasterosteus), in which the males become brilliantly coloured during the spawning season. the male of the smooth-tailed stickleback (g. leiurus) performs the duties of a nurse with exemplary care and vigilance during a long time, and is continually employed in gently leading back the young to the nest, when they stray too far. he courageously drives away all enemies including the females of his own species. it would indeed be no small relief to the male, if the female, after depositing her eggs, were immediately devoured by some enemy, for he is forced incessantly to drive her from the nest. ( . see mr. warington's most interesting description of the habits of the gasterosteus leiurus in 'annals and magazine of nat. history,' november .) the males of certain other fishes inhabiting south america and ceylon, belonging to two distinct orders, have the extraordinary habit of hatching within their mouths, or branchial cavities, the eggs laid by the females. ( . prof. wyman, in 'proc. boston soc. of nat. hist.' sept. , . also prof. turner, in 'journal of anatomy and physiology,' nov. , , p. . dr. gunther has likewise described other cases.) i am informed by professor agassiz that the males of the amazonian species which follow this habit, "not only are generally brighter than the females, but the difference is greater at the spawning-season than at any other time." the species of geophagus act in the same manner; and in this genus, a conspicuous protuberance becomes developed on the forehead of the males during the breeding-season. with the various species of chromids, as professor agassiz likewise informs me, sexual differences in colour may be observed, "whether they lay their eggs in the water among aquatic plants, or deposit them in holes, leaving them to come out without further care, or build shallow nests in the river mud, over which they sit, as our pomotis does. it ought also to be observed that these sitters are among the brightest species in their respective families; for instance, hygrogonus is bright green, with large black ocelli, encircled with the most brilliant red." whether with all the species of chromids it is the male alone which sits on the eggs is not known. it is, however, manifest that the fact of the eggs being protected or unprotected by the parents, has had little or no influence on the differences in colour between the sexes. it is further manifest, in all the cases in which the males take exclusive charge of the nests and young, that the destruction of the brighter-coloured males would be far more influential on the character of the race, than the destruction of the brighter-coloured females; for the death of the male during the period of incubation or nursing would entail the death of the young, so that they could not inherit his peculiarities; yet, in many of these very cases the males are more conspicuously coloured than the females. in most of the lophobranchii (pipe-fish, hippocampi, etc.) the males have either marsupial sacks or hemispherical depressions on the abdomen, in which the ova laid by the female are hatched. the males also shew great attachment to their young. ( . yarrell, 'history of british fishes,' vol. ii. , pp. , .) the sexes do not commonly differ much in colour; but dr. gunther believes that the male hippocampi are rather brighter than the females. the genus solenostoma, however, offers a curious exceptional case ( . dr. gunther, since publishing an account of this species in 'the fishes of zanzibar,' by col. playfair, , p. , has re-examined the specimens, and has given me the above information.), for the female is much more vividly-coloured and spotted than the male, and she alone has a marsupial sack and hatches the eggs; so that the female of solenostoma differs from all the other lophobranchii in this latter respect, and from almost all other fishes, in being more brightly-coloured than the male. it is improbable that this remarkable double inversion of character in the female should be an accidental coincidence. as the males of several fishes, which take exclusive charge of the eggs and young, are more brightly coloured than the females, and as here the female solenostoma takes the same charge and is brighter than the male, it might be argued that the conspicuous colours of that sex which is the more important of the two for the welfare of the offspring, must be in some manner protective. but from the large number of fishes, of which the males are either permanently or periodically brighter than the females, but whose life is not at all more important for the welfare of the species than that of the female, this view can hardly be maintained. when we treat of birds we shall meet with analogous cases, where there has been a complete inversion of the usual attributes of the two sexes, and we shall then give what appears to be the probable explanation, namely, that the males have selected the more attractive females, instead of the latter having selected, in accordance with the usual rule throughout the animal kingdom, the more attractive males. on the whole we may conclude, that with most fishes, in which the sexes differ in colour or in other ornamental characters, the males originally varied, with their variations transmitted to the same sex, and accumulated through sexual selection by attracting or exciting the females. in many cases, however, such characters have been transferred, either partially or completely, to the females. in other cases, again, both sexes have been coloured alike for the sake of protection; but in no instance does it appear that the female alone has had her colours or other characters specially modified for this latter purpose. the last point which need be noticed is that fishes are known to make various noises, some of which are described as being musical. dr. dufosse, who has especially attended to this subject, says that the sounds are voluntarily produced in several ways by different fishes: by the friction of the pharyngeal bones--by the vibration of certain muscles attached to the swim bladder, which serves as a resounding board--and by the vibration of the intrinsic muscles of the swim bladder. by this latter means the trigla produces pure and long-drawn sounds which range over nearly an octave. but the most interesting case for us is that of two species of ophidium, in which the males alone are provided with a sound-producing apparatus, consisting of small movable bones, with proper muscles, in connection with the swim bladder. ( . 'comptes-rendus,' tom. xlvi. , p. ; tom. xlvii. , p. ; tom. liv. , p. . the noise made by the umbrinas (sciaena aquila), is said by some authors to be more like that of a flute or organ, than drumming: dr. zouteveen, in the dutch translation of this work (vol. ii. p. ), gives some further particulars on the sounds made by fishes.) the drumming of the umbrinas in the european seas is said to be audible from a depth of twenty fathoms; and the fishermen of rochelle assert "that the males alone make the noise during the spawning-time; and that it is possible by imitating it, to take them without bait." ( . the rev. c. kingsley, in 'nature,' may , p. .) from this statement, and more especially from the case of ophidium, it is almost certain that in this, the lowest class of the vertebrata, as with so many insects and spiders, sound-producing instruments have, at least in some cases, been developed through sexual selection, as a means for bringing the sexes together. amphibians. urodela. [fig. . triton cristatus (half natural size, from bell's 'british reptiles'). upper figure, male during the breeding season; lower figure, female.] i will begin with the tailed amphibians. the sexes of salamanders or newts often differ much both in colour and structure. in some species prehensile claws are developed on the fore-legs of the males during the breeding-season: and at this season in the male triton palmipes the hind-feet are provided with a swimming-web, which is almost completely absorbed during the winter; so that their feet then resemble those of the female. ( . bell, 'history of british reptiles,' nd ed., , pp. - .) this structure no doubt aids the male in his eager search and pursuit of the female. whilst courting her he rapidly vibrates the end of his tail. with our common newts (triton punctatus and cristatus) a deep, much indented crest is developed along the back and tail of the male during the breeding-season, which disappears during the winter. mr. st. george mivart informs me that it is not furnished with muscles, and therefore cannot be used for locomotion. as during the season of courtship it becomes edged with bright colours, there can hardly be a doubt that it is a masculine ornament. in many species the body presents strongly contrasted, though lurid tints, and these become more vivid during the breeding-season. the male, for instance, of our common little newt (triton punctatus) is "brownish-grey above, passing into yellow beneath, which in the spring becomes a rich bright orange, marked everywhere with round dark spots." the edge of the crest also is then tipped with bright red or violet. the female is usually of a yellowish-brown colour with scattered brown dots, and the lower surface is often quite plain. ( . bell, 'history of british reptiles,' nd ed., , pp. , .) the young are obscurely tinted. the ova are fertilised during the act of deposition, and are not subsequently tended by either parent. we may therefore conclude that the males have acquired their strongly-marked colours and ornamental appendages through sexual selection; these being transmitted either to the male offspring alone, or to both sexes. anura or batrachia. with many frogs and toads the colours evidently serve as a protection, such as the bright green tints of tree frogs and the obscure mottled shades of many terrestrial species. the most conspicuously-coloured toad which i ever saw, the phryniscus nigricans ( . 'zoology of the voyage of the "beagle,"' . bell, ibid. p. .), had the whole upper surface of the body as black as ink, with the soles of the feet and parts of the abdomen spotted with the brightest vermilion. it crawled about the bare sandy or open grassy plains of la plata under a scorching sun, and could not fail to catch the eye of every passing creature. these colours are probably beneficial by making this animal known to all birds of prey as a nauseous mouthful. in nicaragua there is a little frog "dressed in a bright livery of red and blue" which does not conceal itself like most other species, but hops about during the daytime, and mr. belt says ( . 'the naturalist in nicaragua,' , p. .) that as soon as he saw its happy sense of security, he felt sure that it was uneatable. after several trials he succeeded in tempting a young duck to snatch up a young one, but it was instantly rejected; and the duck "went about jerking its head, as if trying to throw off some unpleasant taste." with respect to sexual differences of colour, dr. gunther does not know of any striking instance either with frogs or toads; yet he can often distinguish the male from the female by the tints of the former being a little more intense. nor does he know of any striking difference in external structure between the sexes, excepting the prominences which become developed during the breeding-season on the front legs of the male, by which he is enabled to hold the female. ( . the male alone of the bufo sikimmensis (dr. anderson, 'proc. zoolog. soc.' , p. ) has two plate-like callosities on the thorax and certain rugosities on the fingers, which perhaps subserve the same end as the above-mentioned prominences.) it is surprising that these animals have not acquired more strongly-marked sexual characters; for though cold-blooded their passions are strong. dr. gunther informs me that he has several times found an unfortunate female toad dead and smothered from having been so closely embraced by three or four males. frogs have been observed by professor hoffman in giessen fighting all day long during the breeding-season, and with so much violence that one had its body ripped open. frogs and toads offer one interesting sexual difference, namely, in the musical powers possessed by the males; but to speak of music, when applied to the discordant and overwhelming sounds emitted by male bull-frogs and some other species, seems, according to our taste, a singularly inappropriate expression. nevertheless, certain frogs sing in a decidedly pleasing manner. near rio janeiro i used often to sit in the evening to listen to a number of little hylae, perched on blades of grass close to the water, which sent forth sweet chirping notes in harmony. the various sounds are emitted chiefly by the males during the breeding-season, as in the case of the croaking of our common frog. ( . bell, 'history british reptiles,' , p. .) in accordance with this fact the vocal organs of the males are more highly-developed than those of the females. in some genera the males alone are provided with sacs which open into the larynx. ( . j. bishop, in 'todd's cyclopaedia of anatomy and physiology,' vol. iv. p. .) for instance, in the edible frog (rana esculenta) "the sacs are peculiar to the males, and become, when filled with air in the act of croaking, large globular bladders, standing out one on each side of the head, near the corners of the mouth." the croak of the male is thus rendered exceedingly powerful; whilst that of the female is only a slight groaning noise. ( . bell, ibid. pp. - .) in the several genera of the family the vocal organs differ considerably in structure, and their development in all cases may be attributed to sexual selection. reptiles. chelonia. tortoises and turtles do not offer well-marked sexual differences. in some species, the tail of the male is longer than that of the female. in some, the plastron or lower surface of the shell of the male is slightly concave in relation to the back of the female. the male of the mud-turtle of the united states (chrysemys picta) has claws on its front feet twice as long as those of the female; and these are used when the sexes unite. ( . mr. c.j. maynard, 'the american naturalist,' dec. , p. .) with the huge tortoise of the galapagos islands (testudo nigra) the males are said to grow to a larger size than the females: during the pairing-season, and at no other time, the male utters a hoarse bellowing noise, which can be heard at the distance of more than a hundred yards; the female, on the other hand, never uses her voice. ( . see my 'journal of researches during the voyage of the "beagle,"' , p. .) with the testudo elegans of india, it is said "that the combats of the males may be heard at some distance, from the noise they produce in butting against each other." ( . dr. gunther, 'reptiles of british india,' , p. .) crocodilia. the sexes apparently do not differ in colour; nor do i know that the males fight together, though this is probable, for some kinds make a prodigious display before the females. bartram ( . 'travels through carolina,' etc., , p. .) describes the male alligator as striving to win the female by splashing and roaring in the midst of a lagoon, "swollen to an extent ready to burst, with its head and tail lifted up, he springs or twirls round on the surface of the water, like an indian chief rehearsing his feats of war." during the season of love, a musky odour is emitted by the submaxillary glands of the crocodile, and pervades their haunts. ( . owen, 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. i. , p. .) ophidia. dr. gunther informs me that the males are always smaller than the females, and generally have longer and slenderer tails; but he knows of no other difference in external structure. in regard to colour, be can almost always distinguish the male from the female, by his more strongly-pronounced tints; thus the black zigzag band on the back of the male english viper is more distinctly defined than in the female. the difference is much plainer in the rattle-snakes of n. america, the male of which, as the keeper in the zoological gardens shewed me, can at once be distinguished from the female by having more lurid yellow about its whole body. in s. africa the bucephalus capensis presents an analogous difference, for the female "is never so fully variegated with yellow on the sides as the male." ( . sir andrew smith, 'zoology of s. africa: reptilia,' , pl. x.) the male of the indian dipsas cynodon, on the other hand, is blackish-brown, with the belly partly black, whilst the female is reddish or yellowish-olive, with the belly either uniform yellowish or marbled with black. in the tragops dispar of the same country the male is bright green, and the female bronze-coloured. ( . dr. a. gunther, 'reptiles of british india,' ray soc., , pp. , .) no doubt the colours of some snakes are protective, as shewn by the green tints of tree-snakes, and the various mottled shades of the species which live in sandy places; but it is doubtful whether the colours of many kinds, for instance of the common english snake and viper, serve to conceal them; and this is still more doubtful with the many foreign species which are coloured with extreme elegance. the colours of certain species are very different in the adult and young states. ( . dr. stoliczka, 'journal of asiatic society of bengal,' vol. xxxix, , pp. , .) during the breeding-season the anal scent-glands of snakes are in active function ( . owen, 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. i. , p. .); and so it is with the same glands in lizards, and as we have seen with the submaxillary glands of crocodiles. as the males of most animals search for the females, these odoriferous glands probably serve to excite or charm the female, rather than to guide her to the spot where the male may be found. male snakes, though appearing so sluggish, are amorous; for many have been observed crowding round the same female, and even round her dead body. they are not known to fight together from rivalry. their intellectual powers are higher than might have been anticipated. in the zoological gardens they soon learn not to strike at the iron bar with which their cages are cleaned; and dr. keen of philadelphia informs me that some snakes which he kept learned after four or five times to avoid a noose, with which they were at first easily caught. an excellent observer in ceylon, mr. e. layard, saw ( . 'rambles in ceylon,' in 'annals and magazine of natural history,' nd series, vol. ix. , p. .) a cobra thrust its head through a narrow hole and swallow a toad. "with this encumbrance he could not withdraw himself; finding this, he reluctantly disgorged the precious morsel, which began to move off; this was too much for snake philosophy to bear, and the toad was again seized, and again was the snake, after violent efforts to escape, compelled to part with its prey. this time, however, a lesson had been learnt, and the toad was seized by one leg, withdrawn, and then swallowed in triumph." the keeper in the zoological gardens is positive that certain snakes, for instance crotalus and python, distinguish him from all other persons. cobras kept together in the same cage apparently feel some attachment towards each other. ( . dr. gunther, 'reptiles of british india,' , p. .) it does not, however, follow because snakes have some reasoning power, strong passions and mutual affection, that they should likewise be endowed with sufficient taste to admire brilliant colours in their partners, so as to lead to the adornment of the species through sexual selection. nevertheless, it is difficult to account in any other manner for the extreme beauty of certain species; for instance, of the coral-snakes of s. america, which are of a rich red with black and yellow transverse bands. i well remember how much surprise i felt at the beauty of the first coral-snake which i saw gliding across a path in brazil. snakes coloured in this peculiar manner, as mr. wallace states on the authority of dr. gunther ( . 'westminster review,' july st, , p. .), are found nowhere else in the world except in s. america, and here no less than four genera occur. one of these, elaps, is venomous; a second and widely-distinct genus is doubtfully venomous, and the two others are quite harmless. the species belonging to these distinct genera inhabit the same districts, and are so like each other that no one "but a naturalist would distinguish the harmless from the poisonous kinds." hence, as mr. wallace believes, the innocuous kinds have probably acquired their colours as a protection, on the principle of imitation; for they would naturally be thought dangerous by their enemies. the cause, however, of the bright colours of the venomous elaps remains to be explained, and this may perhaps be sexual selection. snakes produce other sounds besides hissing. the deadly echis carinata has on its sides some oblique rows of scales of a peculiar structure with serrated edges; and when this snake is excited these scales are rubbed against each other, which produces "a curious prolonged, almost hissing sound." ( . dr. anderson, 'proc. zoolog. soc.' , p. .) with respect to the rattling of the rattle-snake, we have at last some definite information: for professor aughey states ( . the 'american naturalist,' , p. .), that on two occasions, being himself unseen, he watched from a little distance a rattle-snake coiled up with head erect, which continued to rattle at short intervals for half an hour: and at last he saw another snake approach, and when they met they paired. hence he is satisfied that one of the uses of the rattle is to bring the sexes together. unfortunately he did not ascertain whether it was the male or the female which remained stationary and called for the other. but it by no means follows from the above fact that the rattle may not be of use to these snakes in other ways, as a warning to animals which would otherwise attack them. nor can i quite disbelieve the several accounts which have appeared of their thus paralysing their prey with fear. some other snakes also make a distinct noise by rapidly vibrating their tails against the surrounding stalks of plants; and i have myself heard this in the case of a trigonocephalus in s. america. lacertilia. the males of some, probably of many kinds of lizards, fight together from rivalry. thus the arboreal anolis cristatellus of s. america is extremely pugnacious: "during the spring and early part of the summer, two adult males rarely meet without a contest. on first seeing one another, they nod their heads up and down three or four times, and at the same time expanding the frill or pouch beneath the throat; their eyes glisten with rage, and after waving their tails from side to side for a few seconds, as if to gather energy, they dart at each other furiously, rolling over and over, and holding firmly with their teeth. the conflict generally ends in one of the combatants losing his tail, which is often devoured by the victor." the male of this species is considerably larger than the female ( . mr. n.l. austen kept these animals alive for a considerable time; see 'land and water,' july , p. .); and this, as far as dr. gunther has been able to ascertain, is the general rule with lizards of all kinds. the male alone of the cyrtodactylus rubidus of the andaman islands possesses pre-anal pores; and these pores, judging from analogy, probably serve to emit an odour. ( . stoliczka, 'journal of the asiatic society of bengal,' vol. xxxiv. , p. .) [fig. . sitana minor. male with the gular pouch expanded (from gunther's 'reptiles of india')'] the sexes often differ greatly in various external characters. the male of the above-mentioned anolis is furnished with a crest which runs along the back and tail, and can be erected at pleasure; but of this crest the female does not exhibit a trace. in the indian cophotis ceylanica, the female has a dorsal crest, though much less developed than in the male; and so it is, as dr. gunther informs me, with the females of many iguanas, chameleons, and other lizards. in some species, however, the crest is equally developed in both sexes, as in the iguana tuberculata. in the genus sitana, the males alone are furnished with a large throat pouch (fig. ), which can be folded up like a fan, and is coloured blue, black, and red; but these splendid colours are exhibited only during the pairing-season. the female does not possess even a rudiment of this appendage. in the anolis cristatellus, according to mr. austen, the throat pouch, which is bright red marbled with yellow, is present in the female, though in a rudimental condition. again, in certain other lizards, both sexes are equally well provided with throat pouches. here we see with species belonging to the same group, as in so many previous cases, the same character either confined to the males, or more largely developed in them than in the females, or again equally developed in both sexes. the little lizards of the genus draco, which glide through the air on their rib-supported parachutes, and which in the beauty of their colours baffle description, are furnished with skinny appendages to the throat "like the wattles of gallinaceous birds." these become erected when the animal is excited. they occur in both sexes, but are best developed when the male arrives at maturity, at which age the middle appendage is sometimes twice as long as the head. most of the species likewise have a low crest running along the neck; and this is much more developed in the full-grown males than in the females or young males. ( . all the foregoing statements and quotations, in regard to cophotis, sitana and draco, as well as the following facts in regard to ceratophora and chamaeleon, are from dr. gunther himself, or from his magnificent work on the 'reptiles of british india,' ray soc., , pp. , , .) a chinese species is said to live in pairs during the spring; "and if one is caught, the other falls from the tree to the ground, and allows itself to be captured with impunity"--i presume from despair. ( . mr. swinhoe, 'proc. zoolog. soc.' , p. .) [fig. . ceratophora stoddartii. upper figure; lower figure, female.] there are other and much more remarkable differences between the sexes of certain lizards. the male of ceratophora aspera bears on the extremity of his snout an appendage half as long as the head. it is cylindrical, covered with scales, flexible, and apparently capable of erection: in the female it is quite rudimental. in a second species of the same genus a terminal scale forms a minute horn on the summit of the flexible appendage; and in a third species (c. stoddartii, fig. ) the whole appendage is converted into a horn, which is usually of a white colour, but assumes a purplish tint when the animal is excited. in the adult male of this latter species the horn is half an inch in length, but it is of quite minute size in the female and in the young. these appendages, as dr. gunther has remarked to me, may be compared with the combs of gallinaceous birds, and apparently serve as ornaments. [fig. . chamaeleo bifurcus. upper figure, male; lower figure, female. fig. . chamaeleo owenii. upper figure, male; lower figure, female.] in the genus chamaeleon we come to the acme of difference between the sexes. the upper part of the skull of the male c. bifurcus (fig. ), an inhabitant of madagascar, is produced into two great, solid, bony projections, covered with scales like the rest of the head; and of this wonderful modification of structure the female exhibits only a rudiment. again, in chamaeleo owenii (fig. ), from the west coast of africa, the male bears on his snout and forehead three curious horns, of which the female has not a trace. these horns consist of an excrescence of bone covered with a smooth sheath, forming part of the general integuments of the body, so that they are identical in structure with those of a bull, goat, or other sheath-horned ruminant. although the three horns differ so much in appearance from the two great prolongations of the skull in c. bifurcus, we can hardly doubt that they serve the same general purpose in the economy of these two animals. the first conjecture, which will occur to every one, is that they are used by the males for fighting together; and as these animals are very quarrelsome ( . dr. buchholz, 'monatsbericht k. preuss. akad.' jan. , p. .), this is probably a correct view. mr. t.w. wood also informs me that he once watched two individuals of c. pumilus fighting violently on the branch of a tree; they flung their heads about and tried to bite each other; they then rested for a time and afterwards continued their battle. with many lizards the sexes differ slightly in colour, the tints and stripes of the males being brighter and more distinctly defined than in the females. this, for instance, is the case with the above cophotis and with the acanthodactylus capensis of s. africa. in a cordylus of the latter country, the male is either much redder or greener than the female. in the indian calotes nigrilabris there is a still greater difference; the lips also of the male are black, whilst those of the female are green. in our common little viviparous lizard (zootoca vivipara) "the under side of the body and base of the tail in the male are bright orange, spotted with black; in the female these parts are pale-greyish-green without spots." ( . bell, 'history of british reptiles,' nd ed., , p. .) we have seen that the males alone of sitana possess a throat-pouch; and this is splendidly tinted with blue, black, and red. in the proctotretus tenuis of chile the male alone is marked with spots of blue, green, and coppery-red. ( . for proctotretus, see 'zoology of the voyage of the "beagle"; reptiles,' by mr. bell, p. . for the lizards of s. africa, see 'zoology of s. africa: reptiles,' by sir andrew smith, pl. and . for the indian calotes, see 'reptiles of british india,' by dr. gunther, p. .) in many cases the males retain the same colours throughout the year, but in others they become much brighter during the breeding-season; i may give as an additional instance the calotes maria, which at this season has a bright red head, the rest of the body being green. ( . gunther in 'proceedings, zoological society,' , p. , with a coloured figure.) both sexes of many species are beautifully coloured exactly alike; and there is no reason to suppose that such colours are protective. no doubt with the bright green kinds which live in the midst of vegetation, this colour serves to conceal them; and in n. patagonia i saw a lizard (proctotretus multimaculatus) which, when frightened, flattened its body, closed its eyes, and then from its mottled tints was hardly distinguishable from the surrounding sand. but the bright colours with which so many lizards are ornamented, as well as their various curious appendages, were probably acquired by the males as an attraction, and then transmitted either to their male offspring alone, or to both sexes. sexual selection, indeed, seems to have played almost as important a part with reptiles as with birds; and the less conspicuous colours of the females in comparison with the males cannot be accounted for, as mr. wallace believes to be the case with birds, by the greater exposure of the females to danger during incubation. chapter xiii. secondary sexual characters of birds. sexual differences--law of battle--special weapons--vocal organs--instrumental music--love-antics and dances--decorations, permanent and seasonal--double and single annual moults--display of ornaments by the males. secondary sexual characters are more diversified and conspicuous in birds, though not perhaps entailing more important changes of structure, than in any other class of animals. i shall, therefore, treat the subject at considerable length. male birds sometimes, though rarely, possess special weapons for fighting with each other. they charm the female by vocal or instrumental music of the most varied kinds. they are ornamented by all sorts of combs, wattles, protuberances, horns, air-distended sacks, top-knots, naked shafts, plumes and lengthened feathers gracefully springing from all parts of the body. the beak and naked skin about the head, and the feathers, are often gorgeously coloured. the males sometimes pay their court by dancing, or by fantastic antics performed either on the ground or in the air. in one instance, at least, the male emits a musky odour, which we may suppose serves to charm or excite the female; for that excellent observer, mr. ramsay ( . 'ibis,' vol. iii. (new series), , p. .), says of the australian musk-duck (biziura lobata) that "the smell which the male emits during the summer months is confined to that sex, and in some individuals is retained throughout the year; i have never, even in the breeding-season, shot a female which had any smell of musk." so powerful is this odour during the pairing-season, that it can be detected long before the bird can be seen. ( . gould, 'handbook of the birds of australia,' , vol. ii. p. .) on the whole, birds appear to be the most aesthetic of all animals, excepting of course man, and they have nearly the same taste for the beautiful as we have. this is shewn by our enjoyment of the singing of birds, and by our women, both civilised and savage, decking their heads with borrowed plumes, and using gems which are hardly more brilliantly coloured than the naked skin and wattles of certain birds. in man, however, when cultivated, the sense of beauty is manifestly a far more complex feeling, and is associated with various intellectual ideas. before treating of the sexual characters with which we are here more particularly concerned, i may just allude to certain differences between the sexes which apparently depend on differences in their habits of life; for such cases, though common in the lower, are rare in the higher classes. two humming-birds belonging to the genus eustephanus, which inhabit the island of juan fernandez, were long thought to be specifically distinct, but are now known, as mr. gould informs me, to be the male and female of the same species, and they differ slightly in the form of the beak. in another genus of humming-birds (grypus), the beak of the male is serrated along the margin and hooked at the extremity, thus differing much from that of the female. in the neomorpha of new zealand, there is, as we have seen, a still wider difference in the form of the beak in relation to the manner of feeding of the two sexes. something of the same kind has been observed with the goldfinch (carduelis elegans), for i am assured by mr. j. jenner weir that the bird-catchers can distinguish the males by their slightly longer beaks. the flocks of males are often found feeding on the seeds of the teazle (dipsacus), which they can reach with their elongated beaks, whilst the females more commonly feed on the seeds of the betony or scrophularia. with a slight difference of this kind as a foundation, we can see how the beaks of the two sexes might be made to differ greatly through natural selection. in some of the above cases, however, it is possible that the beaks of the males may have been first modified in relation to their contests with other males; and that this afterwards led to slightly changed habits of life. law of battle. almost all male birds are extremely pugnacious, using their beaks, wings, and legs for fighting together. we see this every spring with our robins and sparrows. the smallest of all birds, namely the humming-bird, is one of the most quarrelsome. mr. gosse ( . quoted by mr. gould, 'introduction to the trochilidae,' , page .) describes a battle in which a pair seized hold of each other's beaks, and whirled round and round, till they almost fell to the ground; and m. montes de oca, in speaking or another genus of humming-bird, says that two males rarely meet without a fierce aerial encounter: when kept in cages "their fighting has mostly ended in the splitting of the tongue of one of the two, which then surely dies from being unable to feed." ( . gould, ibid. p. .) with waders, the males of the common water-hen (gallinula chloropus) "when pairing, fight violently for the females: they stand nearly upright in the water and strike with their feet." two were seen to be thus engaged for half an hour, until one got hold of the head of the other, which would have been killed had not the observer interfered; the female all the time looking on as a quiet spectator. ( . w. thompson, 'natural history of ireland: birds,' vol. ii. , p. .) mr. blyth informs me that the males of an allied bird (gallicrex cristatus) are a third larger than the females, and are so pugnacious during the breeding-season that they are kept by the natives of eastern bengal for the sake of fighting. various other birds are kept in india for the same purpose, for instance, the bulbuls (pycnonotus hoemorrhous) which "fight with great spirit." ( . jerdon, 'birds of india,' , vol. ii. p. .) [fig. . the ruff or machetes pugnax (from brehm's 'thierleben').] the polygamous ruff (machetes pugnax, fig. ) is notorious for his extreme pugnacity; and in the spring, the males, which are considerably larger than the females, congregate day after day at a particular spot, where the females propose to lay their eggs. the fowlers discover these spots by the turf being trampled somewhat bare. here they fight very much like game-cocks, seizing each other with their beaks and striking with their wings. the great ruff of feathers round the neck is then erected, and according to col. montagu "sweeps the ground as a shield to defend the more tender parts"; and this is the only instance known to me in the case of birds of any structure serving as a shield. the ruff of feathers, however, from its varied and rich colours probably serves in chief part as an ornament. like most pugnacious birds, they seem always ready to fight, and when closely confined, often kill each other; but montagu observed that their pugnacity becomes greater during the spring, when the long feathers on their necks are fully developed; and at this period the least movement by any one bird provokes a general battle. ( . macgillivray, 'history of british birds,' vol. iv. , pp. - .) of the pugnacity of web-footed birds, two instances will suffice: in guiana "bloody fights occur during the breeding-season between the males of the wild musk-duck (cairina moschata); and where these fights have occurred the river is covered for some distance with feathers." ( . sir r. schomburgk, in 'journal of royal geographic society,' vol. xiii. , p. .) birds which seem ill-adapted for fighting engage in fierce conflicts; thus the stronger males of the pelican drive away the weaker ones, snapping with their huge beaks and giving heavy blows with their wings. male snipe fight together, "tugging and pushing each other with their bills in the most curious manner imaginable." some few birds are believed never to fight; this is the case, according to audubon, with one of the woodpeckers of the united states (picu sauratus), although "the hens are followed by even half a dozen of their gay suitors." ( . 'ornithological biography,' vol. i. p. . for pelicans and snipes, see vol. iii. pp. , .) the males of many birds are larger than the females, and this no doubt is the result of the advantage gained by the larger and stronger males over their rivals during many generations. the difference in size between the two sexes is carried to an extreme point in several australian species; thus the male musk-duck (biziura), and the male cincloramphus cruralis (allied to our pipits) are by measurement actually twice as large as their respective females. ( . gould, 'handbook of birds of australia,' vol. i. p. ; vol. ii. p. .) with many other birds the females are larger than the males; and, as formerly remarked, the explanation often given, namely, that the females have most of the work in feeding their young, will not suffice. in some few cases, as we shall hereafter see, the females apparently have acquired their greater size and strength for the sake of conquering other females and obtaining possession of the males. the males of many gallinaceous birds, especially of the polygamous kinds, are furnished with special weapons for fighting with their rivals, namely spurs, which can be used with fearful effect. it has been recorded by a trustworthy writer ( . mr. hewitt, in the 'poultry book' by tegetmeier, , p. .) that in derbyshire a kite struck at a game-hen accompanied by her chickens, when the cock rushed to the rescue, and drove his spur right through the eye and skull of the aggressor. the spur was with difficulty drawn from the skull, and as the kite, though dead, retained his grasp, the two birds were firmly locked together; but the cock when disentangled was very little injured. the invincible courage of the game-cock is notorious: a gentleman who long ago witnessed the brutal scene, told me that a bird had both its legs broken by some accident in the cockpit, and the owner laid a wager that if the legs could be spliced so that the bird could stand upright, he would continue fighting. this was effected on the spot, and the bird fought with undaunted courage until he received his death-stroke. in ceylon a closely allied, wild species, the gallus stanleyi, is known to fight desperately "in defence of his seraglio," so that one of the combatants is frequently found dead. ( . layard, 'annals and magazine of natural history,' vol. xiv. , p. .) an indian partridge (ortygornis gularis), the male of which is furnished with strong and sharp spurs, is so quarrelsome "that the scars of former fights disfigure the breast of almost every bird you kill." ( . jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. iii. p. .) the males of almost all gallinaceous birds, even those which are not furnished with spurs, engage during the breeding-season in fierce conflicts. the capercailzie and black-cock (tetrao urogallus and t. tetrix), which are both polygamists, have regular appointed places, where during many weeks they congregate in numbers to fight together and to display their charms before the females. dr. w. kovalevsky informs me that in russia he has seen the snow all bloody on the arenas where the capercailzie have fought; and the black-cocks "make the feathers fly in every direction," when several "engage in a battle royal." the elder brehm gives a curious account of the balz, as the love-dances and love-songs of the black-cock are called in germany. the bird utters almost continuously the strangest noises: "he holds his tail up and spreads it out like a fan, he lifts up his head and neck with all the feathers erect, and stretches his wings from the body. then he takes a few jumps in different directions, sometimes in a circle, and presses the under part of his beak so hard against the ground that the chin feathers are rubbed off. during these movements he beats his wings and turns round and round. the more ardent he grows the more lively he becomes, until at last the bird appears like a frantic creature." at such times the black-cocks are so absorbed that they become almost blind and deaf, but less so than the capercailzie: hence bird after bird may be shot on the same spot, or even caught by the hand. after performing these antics the males begin to fight: and the same black-cock, in order to prove his strength over several antagonists, will visit in the course of one morning several balz-places, which remain the same during successive years. ( . brehm, 'thierleben,' , b. iv. s. . some of the foregoing statements are taken from l. lloyd, 'the game birds of sweden,' etc., , p. .) the peacock with his long train appears more like a dandy than a warrior, but he sometimes engages in fierce contests: the rev. w. darwin fox informs me that at some little distance from chester two peacocks became so excited whilst fighting, that they flew over the whole city, still engaged, until they alighted on the top of st. john's tower. the spur, in those gallinaceous birds which are thus provided, is generally single; but polyplectron (fig. ) has two or more on each leg; and one of the blood-pheasants (ithaginis cruentus) has been seen with five spurs. the spurs are generally confined to the male, being represented by mere knobs or rudiments in the female; but the females of the java peacock (pavo muticus) and, as i am informed by mr. blyth, of the small fire-backed pheasant (euplocamus erythrophthalmus) possess spurs. in galloperdix it is usual for the males to have two spurs, and for the females to have only one on each leg. ( . jerdon, 'birds of india': on ithaginis, vol. iii. p. ; on galloperdix, p. .) hence spurs may be considered as a masculine structure, which has been occasionally more or less transferred to the females. like most other secondary sexual characters, the spurs are highly variable, both in number and development, in the same species. [fig. . palamedea cornuta (from brehm), shewing the double wing-spurs, and the filament on the head.] various birds have spurs on their wings. but the egyptian goose (chenalopex aegyptiacus) has only "bare obtuse knobs," and these probably shew us the first steps by which true spurs have been developed in other species. in the spur-winged goose, plectropterus gambensis, the males have much larger spurs than the females; and they use them, as i am informed by mr. bartlett, in fighting together, so that, in this case, the wing-spurs serve as sexual weapons; but according to livingstone, they are chiefly used in the defence of the young. the palamedea (fig. ) is armed with a pair of spurs on each wing; and these are such formidable weapons that a single blow has been known to drive a dog howling away. but it does not appear that the spurs in this case, or in that of some of the spur-winged rails, are larger in the male than in the female. ( . for the egyptian goose, see macgillivray, 'british birds,' vol. iv. p. . for plectropterus, livingstone's 'travels,' p. . for palamedea, brehm's 'thierleben,' b. iv. s. . see also on this bird azara, 'voyages dans l'amerique merid.' tom. iv. , pp. , .) in certain plovers, however, the wing-spurs must be considered as a sexual character. thus in the male of our common peewit (vanellus cristatus) the tubercle on the shoulder of the wing becomes more prominent during the breeding-season, and the males fight together. in some species of lobivanellus a similar tubercle becomes developed during the breeding-season "into a short horny spur." in the australian l. lobatus both sexes have spurs, but these are much larger in the males than in the females. in an allied bird, the hoplopterus armatus, the spurs do not increase in size during the breeding-season; but these birds have been seen in egypt to fight together, in the same manner as our peewits, by turning suddenly in the air and striking sideways at each other, sometimes with fatal results. thus also they drive away other enemies. ( . see, on our peewit, mr. r. carr in 'land and water,' aug. th, , p. . in regard to lobivanellus, see jerdon's 'birds of india,' vol. iii. p. , and gould's 'handbook of birds of australia,' vol. ii. p. . for the hoplopterus, see mr. allen in the 'ibis,' vol. v. , p. .) the season of love is that of battle; but the males of some birds, as of the game-fowl and ruff, and even the young males of the wild turkey and grouse ( . audubon, 'ornithological biography,' vol. ii. p. ; vol. i. pp. - .), are ready to fight whenever they meet. the presence of the female is the teterrima belli causa. the bengali baboos make the pretty little males of the amadavat (estrelda amandava) fight together by placing three small cages in a row, with a female in the middle; after a little time the two males are turned loose, and immediately a desperate battle ensues. ( . mr. blyth, 'land and water,' , p. .) when many males congregate at the same appointed spot and fight together, as in the case of grouse and various other birds, they are generally attended by the females ( . richardson on tetrao umbellus, 'fauna bor. amer.: birds,' , p. . l. lloyd, 'game birds of sweden,' , pp. , , on the capercailzie and black-cock. brehm, however, asserts ('thierleben,' b. iv. s. ) that in germany the grey-hens do not generally attend the balzen of the black-cocks, but this is an exception to the common rule; possibly the hens may lie hidden in the surrounding bushes, as is known to be the case with the gray-hens in scandinavia, and with other species in n. america.), which afterwards pair with the victorious combatants. but in some cases the pairing precedes instead of succeeding the combat: thus according to audubon ( . 'ornithological biography,' vol. ii. p. .), several males of the virginian goat-sucker (caprimulgus virgianus) "court, in a highly entertaining manner the female, and no sooner has she made her choice, than her approved gives chase to all intruders, and drives them beyond his dominions." generally the males try to drive away or kill their rivals before they pair. it does not, however, appear that the females invariably prefer the victorious males. i have indeed been assured by dr. w. kovalevsky that the female capercailzie sometimes steals away with a young male who has not dared to enter the arena with the older cocks, in the same manner as occasionally happens with the does of the red-deer in scotland. when two males contend in presence of a single female, the victor, no doubt, commonly gains his desire; but some of these battles are caused by wandering males trying to distract the peace of an already mated pair. ( . brehm, 'thierleben,' etc., b. iv. , p. . audubon, 'ornithological biography,' vol. ii. p. .) even with the most pugnacious species it is probable that the pairing does not depend exclusively on the mere strength and courage of the male; for such males are generally decorated with various ornaments, which often become more brilliant during the breeding-season, and which are sedulously displayed before the females. the males also endeavour to charm or excite their mates by love-notes, songs, and antics; and the courtship is, in many instances, a prolonged affair. hence it is not probable that the females are indifferent to the charms of the opposite sex, or that they are invariably compelled to yield to the victorious males. it is more probable that the females are excited, either before or after the conflict, by certain males, and thus unconsciously prefer them. in the case of tetrao umbellus, a good observer ( . 'land and water,' july , , p. .) goes so far as to believe that the battles of the male "are all a sham, performed to show themselves to the greatest advantage before the admiring females who assemble around; for i have never been able to find a maimed hero, and seldom more than a broken feather." i shall have to recur to this subject, but i may here add that with the tetrao cupido of the united states, about a score of males assemble at a particular spot, and, strutting about, make the whole air resound with their extraordinary noises. at the first answer from a female the males begin to fight furiously, and the weaker give way; but then, according to audubon, both the victors and vanquished search for the female, so that the females must either then exert a choice, or the battle must be renewed. so, again, with one of the field-starlings of the united states (sturnella ludoviciana) the males engage in fierce conflicts, "but at the sight of a female they all fly after her as if mad." ( . audubon's 'ornithological biography;' on tetrao cupido, vol. ii. p. ; on the sturnus, vol. ii. p. .) vocal and instrumental music. with birds the voice serves to express various emotions, such as distress, fear, anger, triumph, or mere happiness. it is apparently sometimes used to excite terror, as in the case of the hissing noise made by some nestling-birds. audubon ( . 'ornithological biography,' vol. v. p. .), relates that a night-heron (ardea nycticorax, linn.), which he kept tame, used to hide itself when a cat approached, and then "suddenly start up uttering one of the most frightful cries, apparently enjoying the cat's alarm and flight." the common domestic cock clucks to the hen, and the hen to her chickens, when a dainty morsel is found. the hen, when she has laid an egg, "repeats the same note very often, and concludes with the sixth above, which she holds for a longer time" ( . the hon. daines barrington, 'philosophical transactions,' , p. .); and thus she expresses her joy. some social birds apparently call to each other for aid; and as they flit from tree to tree, the flock is kept together by chirp answering chirp. during the nocturnal migrations of geese and other water-fowl, sonorous clangs from the van may be heard in the darkness overhead, answered by clangs in the rear. certain cries serve as danger signals, which, as the sportsman knows to his cost, are understood by the same species and by others. the domestic cock crows, and the humming-bird chirps, in triumph over a defeated rival. the true song, however, of most birds and various strange cries are chiefly uttered during the breeding-season, and serve as a charm, or merely as a call-note, to the other sex. naturalists are much divided with respect to the object of the singing of birds. few more careful observers ever lived than montagu, and he maintained that the "males of song-birds and of many others do not in general search for the female, but, on the contrary, their business in the spring is to perch on some conspicuous spot, breathing out their full and amorous notes, which, by instinct, the female knows, and repairs to the spot to choose her mate." ( . 'ornithological dictionary,' , p. .) mr. jenner weir informs me that this is certainly the case with the nightingale. bechstein, who kept birds during his whole life, asserts, "that the female canary always chooses the best singer, and that in a state of nature the female finch selects that male out of a hundred whose notes please her most. ( . 'naturgeschichte der stubenvögel,' , s. . mr. harrison weir likewise writes to me:--"i am informed that the best singing males generally get a mate first, when they are bred in the same room.") there can be no doubt that birds closely attend to each other's song. mr. weir has told me of the case of a bullfinch which had been taught to pipe a german waltz, and who was so good a performer that he cost ten guineas; when this bird was first introduced into a room where other birds were kept and he began to sing, all the others, consisting of about twenty linnets and canaries, ranged themselves on the nearest side of their cages, and listened with the greatest interest to the new performer. many naturalists believe that the singing of birds is almost exclusively "the effect of rivalry and emulation," and not for the sake of charming their mates. this was the opinion of daines barrington and white of selborne, who both especially attended to this subject. ( . 'philosophical transactions,' , p. . white's 'natural history of selborne,' , vol. i. p. .) barrington, however, admits that "superiority in song gives to birds an amazing ascendancy over others, as is well known to bird-catchers." it is certain that there is an intense degree of rivalry between the males in their singing. bird-fanciers match their birds to see which will sing longest; and i was told by mr. yarrell that a first-rate bird will sometimes sing till he drops down almost dead, or according to bechstein ( . 'naturgesch. der stubenvögel,' , s. .), quite dead from rupturing a vessel in the lungs. whatever the cause may be, male birds, as i hear from mr. weir, often die suddenly during the season of song. that the habit of singing is sometimes quite independent of love is clear, for a sterile, hybrid canary-bird has been described ( . mr. bold, 'zoologist,' - , p. .) as singing whilst viewing itself in a mirror, and then dashing at its own image; it likewise attacked with fury a female canary, when put into the same cage. the jealousy excited by the act of singing is constantly taken advantage of by bird-catchers; a male, in good song, is hidden and protected, whilst a stuffed bird, surrounded by limed twigs, is exposed to view. in this manner, as mr. weir informs me, a man has in the course of a single day caught fifty, and in one instance, seventy, male chaffinches. the power and inclination to sing differ so greatly with birds that although the price of an ordinary male chaffinch is only sixpence, mr. weir saw one bird for which the bird-catcher asked three pounds; the test of a really good singer being that it will continue to sing whilst the cage is swung round the owner's head. that male birds should sing from emulation as well as for charming the female, is not at all incompatible; and it might have been expected that these two habits would have concurred, like those of display and pugnacity. some authors, however, argue that the song of the male cannot serve to charm the female, because the females of some few species, such as of the canary, robin, lark, and bullfinch, especially when in a state of widowhood, as bechstein remarks, pour forth fairly melodious strains. in some of these cases the habit of singing may be in part attributed to the females having been highly fed and confined ( . d. barrington, 'philosophical transactions,' , p. . bechstein, 'stubenvögel,' , s. .), for this disturbs all the functions connected with the reproduction of the species. many instances have already been given of the partial transference of secondary masculine characters to the female, so that it is not at all surprising that the females of some species should possess the power of song. it has also been argued, that the song of the male cannot serve as a charm, because the males of certain species, for instance of the robin, sing during the autumn. ( . this is likewise the case with the water-ouzel; see mr. hepburn in the 'zoologist,' - , p. .) but nothing is more common than for animals to take pleasure in practising whatever instinct they follow at other times for some real good. how often do we see birds which fly easily, gliding and sailing through the air obviously for pleasure? the cat plays with the captured mouse, and the cormorant with the captured fish. the weaver-bird (ploceus), when confined in a cage, amuses itself by neatly weaving blades of grass between the wires of its cage. birds which habitually fight during the breeding-season are generally ready to fight at all times; and the males of the capercailzie sometimes hold their balzen or leks at the usual place of assemblage during the autumn. ( . l. lloyd, 'game birds of sweden,' , p. .) hence it is not at all surprising that male birds should continue singing for their own amusement after the season for courtship is over. as shewn in a previous chapter, singing is to a certain extent an art, and is much improved by practice. birds can be taught various tunes, and even the unmelodious sparrow has learnt to sing like a linnet. they acquire the song of their foster parents ( . barrington, ibid. p. , bechstein, ibid. s. .), and sometimes that of their neighbours. ( . dureau de la malle gives a curious instance ('annales des sc. nat.' rd series, zoolog., tom. x. p. ) of some wild blackbirds in his garden in paris, which naturally learnt a republican air from a caged bird.) all the common songsters belong to the order of insessores, and their vocal organs are much more complex than those of most other birds; yet it is a singular fact that some of the insessores, such as ravens, crows, and magpies, possess the proper apparatus ( . bishop, in 'todd's cyclopaedia of anatomy and physiology,' vol. iv. p. .), though they never sing, and do not naturally modulate their voices to any great extent. hunter asserts ( . as stated by barrington in 'philosophical transactions,' , p. .) that with the true songsters the muscles of the larynx are stronger in the males than in the females; but with this slight exception there is no difference in the vocal organs of the two sexes, although the males of most species sing so much better and more continuously than the females. it is remarkable that only small birds properly sing. the australian genus menura, however, must be excepted; for the menura alberti, which is about the size of a half-grown turkey, not only mocks other birds, but "its own whistle is exceedingly beautiful and varied." the males congregate and form "corroborying places," where they sing, raising and spreading their tails like peacocks, and drooping their wings. ( . gould, 'handbook to the birds of australia,' vol. i. , pp. - . see also mr. t.w. wood in the 'student,' april , p. .) it is also remarkable that birds which sing well are rarely decorated with brilliant colours or other ornaments. of our british birds, excepting the bullfinch and goldfinch, the best songsters are plain-coloured. the kingfisher, bee-eater, roller, hoopoe, woodpeckers, etc., utter harsh cries; and the brilliant birds of the tropics are hardly ever songsters. ( . see remarks to this effect in gould's 'introduction to the trochilidae,' , p. .) hence bright colours and the power of song seem to replace each other. we can perceive that if the plumage did not vary in brightness, or if bright colours were dangerous to the species, other means would be employed to charm the females; and melody of voice offers one such means. [fig. . tetrao cupido: male. (t.w. wood.)] in some birds the vocal organs differ greatly in the two sexes. in the tetrao cupido (fig. ) the male has two bare, orange-coloured sacks, one on each side of the neck; and these are largely inflated when the male, during the breeding-season, makes his curious hollow sound, audible at a great distance. audubon proved that the sound was intimately connected with this apparatus (which reminds us of the air-sacks on each side of the mouth of certain male frogs), for he found that the sound was much diminished when one of the sacks of a tame bird was pricked, and when both were pricked it was altogether stopped. the female has "a somewhat similar, though smaller naked space of skin on the neck; but this is not capable of inflation." ( . 'the sportsman and naturalist in canada,' by major w. ross king, , pp. - . mr. t.w. wood gives in the 'student' (april , p. ) an excellent account of the attitude and habits of this bird during its courtship. he states that the ear-tufts or neck-plumes are erected, so that they meet over the crown of the head. see his drawing, fig. .) the male of another kind of grouse (tetrao urophasianus), whilst courting the female, has his "bare yellow oesophagus inflated to a prodigious size, fully half as large as the body"; and he then utters various grating, deep, hollow tones. with his neck-feathers erect, his wings lowered, and buzzing on the ground, and his long pointed tail spread out like a fan, he displays a variety of grotesque attitudes. the oesophagus of the female is not in any way remarkable. ( . richardson, 'fauna bor. americana: birds,' , p. . audubon, ibid. vol. iv. p. .) [fig. . the umbrella-bird or cephalopterus ornatus, male (from brehm).] it seems now well made out that the great throat pouch of the european male bustard (otis tarda), and of at least four other species, does not, as was formerly supposed, serve to hold water, but is connected with the utterance during the breeding-season of a peculiar sound resembling "oak." ( . the following papers have been lately written on this subject: prof. a. newton, in the 'ibis,' , p. ; dr. cullen, ibid. , p. ; mr. flower, in 'proc. zool. soc.' , p. ; and dr. murie, in 'proc. zool. soc.' , p. . in this latter paper an excellent figure is given of the male australian bustard in full display with the sack distended. it is a singular fact that the sack is not developed in all the males of the same species.) a crow-like bird inhabiting south america (see cephalopterus ornatus, fig. ) is called the umbrella-bird, from its immense top knot, formed of bare white quills surmounted by dark-blue plumes, which it can elevate into a great dome no less than five inches in diameter, covering the whole head. this bird has on its neck a long, thin, cylindrical fleshy appendage, which is thickly clothed with scale-like blue feathers. it probably serves in part as an ornament, but likewise as a resounding apparatus; for mr. bates found that it is connected "with an unusual development of the trachea and vocal organs." it is dilated when the bird utters its singularly deep, loud and long sustained fluty note. the head-crest and neck-appendage are rudimentary in the female. ( . bates, 'the naturalist on the amazons,' , vol. ii. p. ; wallace, in 'proceedings, zoological society,' , p. . a new species, with a still larger neck-appendage (c. penduliger), has lately been discovered, see 'ibis,' vol. i. p. .) the vocal organs of various web-footed and wading birds are extraordinarily complex, and differ to a certain extent in the two sexes. in some cases the trachea is convoluted, like a french horn, and is deeply embedded in the sternum. in the wild swan (cygnus ferus) it is more deeply embedded in the adult male than in the adult female or young male. in the male merganser the enlarged portion of the trachea is furnished with an additional pair of muscles. ( . bishop, in todd's 'cyclopaedia of anatomy and physiology,' vol. iv. p. .) in one of the ducks, however, namely anas punctata, the bony enlargement is only a little more developed in the male than in the female. ( . prof. newton, 'proc. zoolog. soc.' , p. .) but the meaning of these differences in the trachea of the two sexes of the anatidae is not understood; for the male is not always the more vociferous; thus with the common duck, the male hisses, whilst the female utters a loud quack. ( . the spoonbill (platalea) has its trachea convoluted into a figure of eight, and yet this bird (jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. iii. p. ) is mute; but mr. blyth informs me that the convolutions are not constantly present, so that perhaps they are now tending towards abortion.) in both sexes of one of the cranes (grus virgo) the trachea penetrates the sternum, but presents "certain sexual modifications." in the male of the black stork there is also a well-marked sexual difference in the length and curvature of the bronchi. ( . 'elements of comparative anatomy,' by r. wagner, eng. translat. , p. . with respect to the swan, as given above, yarrell's 'history of british birds,' nd edition, , vol. iii. p. .) highly important structures have, therefore, in these cases been modified according to sex. it is often difficult to conjecture whether the many strange cries and notes uttered by male birds during the breeding-season serve as a charm or merely as a call to the female. the soft cooing of the turtle-dove and of many pigeons, it may be presumed, pleases the female. when the female of the wild turkey utters her call in the morning, the male answers by a note which differs from the gobbling noise made, when with erected feathers, rustling wings and distended wattles, he puffs and struts before her. ( . c.l. bonaparte, quoted in the 'naturalist library: birds,' vol. xiv. p. .) the spel of the black-cock certainly serves as a call to the female, for it has been known to bring four or five females from a distance to a male under confinement; but as the black-cock continues his spel for hours during successive days, and in the case of the capercailzie "with an agony of passion," we are led to suppose that the females which are present are thus charmed. ( . l. lloyd, 'the game birds of sweden,' etc., , pp. , .) the voice of the common rook is known to alter during the breeding-season, and is therefore in some way sexual. ( . jenner, 'philosophical transactions,' , p. .) but what shall we say about the harsh screams of, for instance, some kinds of macaws; have these birds as bad taste for musical sounds as they apparently have for colour, judging by the inharmonious contrast of their bright yellow and blue plumage? it is indeed possible that without any advantage being thus gained, the loud voices of many male birds may be the result of the inherited effects of the continued use of their vocal organs when excited by the strong passions of love, jealousy and rage; but to this point we shall recur when we treat of quadrupeds. we have as yet spoken only of the voice, but the males of various birds practise, during their courtship, what may be called instrumental music. peacocks and birds of paradise rattle their quills together. turkey-cocks scrape their wings against the ground, and some kinds of grouse thus produce a buzzing sound. another north american grouse, the tetrao umbellus, when with his tail erect, his ruffs displayed, "he shows off his finery to the females, who lie hid in the neighbourhood," drums by rapidly striking his wings together above his back, according to mr. r. haymond, and not, as audubon thought, by striking them against his sides. the sound thus produced is compared by some to distant thunder, and by others to the quick roll of a drum. the female never drums, "but flies directly to the place where the male is thus engaged." the male of the kalij-pheasant, in the himalayas, often makes a singular drumming noise with his wings, not unlike the sound produced by shaking a stiff piece of cloth." on the west coast of africa the little black-weavers (ploceus?) congregate in a small party on the bushes round a small open space, and sing and glide through the air with quivering wings, "which make a rapid whirring sound like a child's rattle." one bird after another thus performs for hours together, but only during the courting-season. at this season, and at no other time, the males of certain night-jars (caprimulgus) make a strange booming noise with their wings. the various species of woodpeckers strike a sonorous branch with their beaks, with so rapid a vibratory movement that "the head appears to be in two places at once." the sound thus produced is audible at a considerable distance but cannot be described; and i feel sure that its source would never be conjectured by any one hearing it for the first time. as this jarring sound is made chiefly during the breeding-season, it has been considered as a love-song; but it is perhaps more strictly a love-call. the female, when driven from her nest, has been observed thus to call her mate, who answered in the same manner and soon appeared. lastly, the male hoopoe (upupa epops) combines vocal and instrumental music; for during the breeding-season this bird, as mr. swinhoe observed, first draws in air, and then taps the end of its beak perpendicularly down against a stone or the trunk of a tree, "when the breath being forced down the tubular bill produces the correct sound." if the beak is not thus struck against some object, the sound is quite different. air is at the same time swallowed, and the oesophagus thus becomes much swollen; and this probably acts as a resonator, not only with the hoopoe, but with pigeons and other birds. ( . for the foregoing facts see, on birds of paradise, brehm, 'thierleben,' band iii. s. . on grouse, richardson, 'fauna bor. americ.: birds,' pp. and ; major w. ross king, 'the sportsman in canada,' , p. ; mr. haymond, in prof. cox's 'geol. survey of indiana,' p. ; audubon, 'american ornitholog. biograph.' vol. i. p. . on the kalij-pheasant, jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. iii. p. . on the weavers, livingstone's 'expedition to the zambesi,' , p. . on woodpeckers, macgillivray, 'hist. of british birds,' vol. iii. , pp. , , , and . on the hoopoe, mr. swinhoe, in 'proc. zoolog. soc.' june , and , p. . on the night-jar, audubon, ibid. vol. ii. p. , and 'american naturalist,' , p. . the english night-jar likewise makes in the spring a curious noise during its rapid flight.) [fig. . outer tail-feather of scolopax gallinago (from 'proc. zool. soc.' ). fig. . outer tail-feather of scolopax frenata. fig. . outer tail-feather of scolopax javensis.] in the foregoing cases sounds are made by the aid of structures already present and otherwise necessary; but in the following cases certain feathers have been specially modified for the express purpose of producing sounds. the drumming, bleating, neighing, or thundering noise (as expressed by different observers) made by the common snipe (scolopax gallinago) must have surprised every one who has ever heard it. this bird, during the pairing-season, flies to "perhaps a thousand feet in height," and after zig-zagging about for a time descends to the earth in a curved line, with outspread tail and quivering pinions, and surprising velocity. the sound is emitted only during this rapid descent. no one was able to explain the cause until m. meves observed that on each side of the tail the outer feathers are peculiarly formed (fig. ), having a stiff sabre-shaped shaft with the oblique barbs of unusual length, the outer webs being strongly bound together. he found that by blowing on these feathers, or by fastening them to a long thin stick and waving them rapidly through the air, he could reproduce the drumming noise made by the living bird. both sexes are furnished with these feathers, but they are generally larger in the male than in the female, and emit a deeper note. in some species, as in s. frenata (fig. ), four feathers, and in s. javensis (fig. ), no less than eight on each side of the tail are greatly modified. different tones are emitted by the feathers of the different species when waved through the air; and the scolopax wilsonii of the united states makes a switching noise whilst descending rapidly to the earth. ( . see m. meves' interesting paper in 'proc. zool. soc.' , p. . for the habits of the snipe, macgillivray, 'history of british birds,' vol. iv. p. . for the american snipe, capt. blakiston, 'ibis,' vol. v. , p. .) [fig. . primary wing-feather of a humming-bird, the selasphorus platycercus (from a sketch by mr. salvin). upper figure, that of male; lower figure, corresponding feather of female.] in the male of the chamaepetes unicolor (a large gallinaceous bird of america), the first primary wing-feather is arched towards the tip and is much more attenuated than in the female. in an allied bird, the penelope nigra, mr. salvin observed a male, which, whilst it flew downwards "with outstretched wings, gave forth a kind of crashing rushing noise," like the falling of a tree. ( . mr. salvin, in 'proceedings, zoological society,' , p. . i am much indebted to this distinguished ornithologist for sketches of the feathers of the chamaepetes, and for other information.) the male alone of one of the indian bustards (sypheotides auritus) has its primary wing-feathers greatly acuminated; and the male of an allied species is known to make a humming noise whilst courting the female. ( . jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. iii. pp. , .) in a widely different group of birds, namely humming-birds, the males alone of certain kinds have either the shafts of their primary wing-feathers broadly dilated, or the webs abruptly excised towards the extremity. the male, for instance, of selasphorus platycercus, when adult, has the first primary wing-feather (fig. ), thus excised. whilst flying from flower to flower he makes "a shrill, almost whistling noise" ( . gould, 'introduction to the trochilidae,' , p. . salvin, 'proceedings, zoological society,' , p. .); but it did not appear to mr. salvin that the noise was intentionally made. [fig. . secondary wing-feathers of pipra deliciosa (from mr. sclater, in 'proc. zool. soc.' ). the three upper feathers, a, b, c, from the male; the three lower corresponding feathers, d, e, f, from the female. a and d, fifth secondary wing-feather of male and female, upper surface. b and e, sixth secondary, upper surface. c and f, seventh secondary, lower surface.] lastly, in several species of a sub-genus of pipra or manakin, the males, as described by mr. sclater, have their secondary wing-feathers modified in a still more remarkable manner. in the brilliantly-coloured p. deliciosa the first three secondaries are thick-stemmed and curved towards the body; in the fourth and fifth (fig. , a) the change is greater; and in the sixth and seventh (b, c) the shaft "is thickened to an extraordinary degree, forming a solid horny lump." the barbs also are greatly changed in shape, in comparison with the corresponding feathers (d, e, f) in the female. even the bones of the wing, which support these singular feathers in the male, are said by mr. fraser to be much thickened. these little birds make an extraordinary noise, the first "sharp note being not unlike the crack of a whip." ( . sclater, in 'proceedings, zoological society,' , p. , and in 'ibis,' vol. iv. , p. . also salvin, in 'ibis,' , p. .) the diversity of the sounds, both vocal and instrumental, made by the males of many birds during the breeding-season, and the diversity of the means for producing such sounds, are highly remarkable. we thus gain a high idea of their importance for sexual purposes, and are reminded of the conclusion arrived at as to insects. it is not difficult to imagine the steps by which the notes of a bird, primarily used as a mere call or for some other purpose, might have been improved into a melodious love song. in the case of the modified feathers, by which the drumming, whistling, or roaring noises are produced, we know that some birds during their courtship flutter, shake, or rattle their unmodified feathers together; and if the females were led to select the best performers, the males which possessed the strongest or thickest, or most attenuated feathers, situated on any part of the body, would be the most successful; and thus by slow degrees the feathers might be modified to almost any extent. the females, of course, would not notice each slight successive alteration in shape, but only the sounds thus produced. it is a curious fact that in the same class of animals, sounds so different as the drumming of the snipe's tail, the tapping of the woodpecker's beak, the harsh trumpet-like cry of certain water-fowl, the cooing of the turtle-dove, and the song of the nightingale, should all be pleasing to the females of the several species. but we must not judge of the tastes of distinct species by a uniform standard; nor must we judge by the standard of man's taste. even with man, we should remember what discordant noises, the beating of tom-toms and the shrill notes of reeds, please the ears of savages. sir s. baker remarks ( . 'the nile tributaries of abyssinia,' , p. .), that "as the stomach of the arab prefers the raw meat and reeking liver taken hot from the animal, so does his ear prefer his equally coarse and discordant music to all other." love antics and dances. the curious love gestures of some birds have already been incidentally noticed; so that little need here be added. in northern america large numbers of a grouse, the tetrao phasianellus, meet every morning during the breeding-season on a selected level spot, and here they run round and round in a circle of about fifteen or twenty feet in diameter, so that the ground is worn quite bare, like a fairy-ring. in these partridge-dances, as they are called by the hunters, the birds assume the strangest attitudes, and run round, some to the left and some to the right. audubon describes the males of a heron (ardea herodias) as walking about on their long legs with great dignity before the females, bidding defiance to their rivals. with one of the disgusting carrion-vultures (cathartes jota) the same naturalist states that "the gesticulations and parade of the males at the beginning of the love-season are extremely ludicrous." certain birds perform their love-antics on the wing, as we have seen with the black african weaver, instead of on the ground. during the spring our little white-throat (sylvia cinerea) often rises a few feet or yards in the air above some bush, and "flutters with a fitful and fantastic motion, singing all the while, and then drops to its perch." the great english bustard throws himself into indescribably odd attitudes whilst courting the female, as has been figured by wolf. an allied indian bustard (otis bengalensis) at such times "rises perpendicularly into the air with a hurried flapping of his wings, raising his crest and puffing out the feathers of his neck and breast, and then drops to the ground;" he repeats this manoeuvre several times, at the same time humming in a peculiar tone. such females as happen to be near "obey this saltatory summons," and when they approach he trails his wings and spreads his tail like a turkey-cock. ( . for tetrao phasianellus, see richardson, 'fauna, bor. america,' p. , and for further particulars capt. blakiston, 'ibis,' , p. . for the cathartes and ardea, audubon, 'ornithological biography,' vol. ii. p. , and vol. iii. p. . on the white-throat, macgillivray, 'history of british birds,' vol. ii. p. . on the indian bustard, jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. iii. p. .) [fig. . bower-bird, chlamydera maculata, with bower (from brehm).] but the most curious case is afforded by three allied genera of australian birds, the famous bower-birds,--no doubt the co-descendants of some ancient species which first acquired the strange instinct of constructing bowers for performing their love-antics. the bowers (fig. ), which, as we shall hereafter see, are decorated with feathers, shells, bones, and leaves, are built on the ground for the sole purpose of courtship, for their nests are formed in trees. both sexes assist in the erection of the bowers, but the male is the principal workman. so strong is this instinct that it is practised under confinement, and mr. strange has described ( . gould, 'handbook to the birds of australia,' vol. i. pp. , , . the bower of the satin bower-bird may be seen in the zoological society's gardens, regent's park.) the habits of some satin bower-birds which he kept in an aviary in new south wales. "at times the male will chase the female all over the aviary, then go to the bower, pick up a gay feather or a large leaf, utter a curious kind of note, set all his feathers erect, run round the bower and become so excited that his eyes appear ready to start from his head; he continues opening first one wing then the other, uttering a low, whistling note, and, like the domestic cock, seems to be picking up something from the ground, until at last the female goes gently towards him." captain stokes has described the habits and "play-houses" of another species, the great bower-bird, which was seen "amusing itself by flying backwards and forwards, taking a shell alternately from each side, and carrying it through the archway in its mouth." these curious structures, formed solely as halls of assemblage, where both sexes amuse themselves and pay their court, must cost the birds much labour. the bower, for instance, of the fawn-breasted species, is nearly four feet in length, eighteen inches in height, and is raised on a thick platform of sticks. decoration. i will first discuss the cases in which the males are ornamented either exclusively or in a much higher degree than the females, and in a succeeding chapter those in which both sexes are equally ornamented, and finally the rare cases in which the female is somewhat more brightly-coloured than the male. as with the artificial ornaments used by savage and civilised men, so with the natural ornaments of birds, the head is the chief seat of decoration. ( . see remarks to this effect, on the 'feeling of beauty among animals,' by mr. j. shaw, in the 'athenaeum,' nov. th, , p. .) the ornaments, as mentioned at the commencement of this chapter, are wonderfully diversified. the plumes on the front or back of the head consist of variously-shaped feathers, sometimes capable of erection or expansion, by which their beautiful colours are fully displayed. elegant ear-tufts (fig. ) are occasionally present. the head is sometimes covered with velvety down, as with the pheasant; or is naked and vividly coloured. the throat, also, is sometimes ornamented with a beard, wattles, or caruncles. such appendages are generally brightly-coloured, and no doubt serve as ornaments, though not always ornamental in our eyes; for whilst the male is in the act of courting the female, they often swell and assume vivid tints, as in the male turkey. at such times the fleshy appendages about the head of the male tragopan pheasant (ceriornis temminckii) swell into a large lappet on the throat and into two horns, one on each side of the splendid top-knot; and these are then coloured of the most intense blue which i have ever beheld. ( . see dr. murie's account with coloured figures in 'proceedings, zoological society,' , p. .) the african hornbill (bucorax abyssinicus) inflates the scarlet bladder-like wattle on its neck, and with its wings drooping and tail expanded "makes quite a grand appearance." ( . mr. monteiro, 'ibis,' vol. iv. , p. .) even the iris of the eye is sometimes more brightly-coloured in the male than in the female; and this is frequently the case with the beak, for instance, in our common blackbird. in buceros corrugatus, the whole beak and immense casque are coloured more conspicuously in the male than in the female; and "the oblique grooves upon the sides of the lower mandible are peculiar to the male sex." ( . 'land and water,' , p. .) the head, again, often supports fleshy appendages, filaments, and solid protuberances. these, if not common to both sexes, are always confined to the males. the solid protuberances have been described in detail by dr. w. marshall ( . 'ueber die schädelhöcker,' etc., 'niederland. archiv. fur zoologie,' b. i. heft , .), who shews that they are formed either of cancellated bone coated with skin, or of dermal and other tissues. with mammals true horns are always supported on the frontal bones, but with birds various bones have been modified for this purpose; and in species of the same group the protuberances may have cores of bone, or be quite destitute of them, with intermediate gradations connecting these two extremes. hence, as dr. marshall justly remarks, variations of the most different kinds have served for the development through sexual selection of these ornamental appendages. elongated feathers or plumes spring from almost every part of the body. the feathers on the throat and breast are sometimes developed into beautiful ruffs and collars. the tail-feathers are frequently increased in length; as we see in the tail-coverts of the peacock, and in the tail itself of the argus pheasant. with the peacock even the bones of the tail have been modified to support the heavy tail-coverts. ( . dr. w. marshall, '�ber den vogelschwanz,' ibid. b. i. heft , .) the body of the argus is not larger than that of a fowl; yet the length from the end of the beak to the extremity of the tail is no less than five feet three inches ( . jardine's 'naturalist library: birds,' vol. xiv. p. .), and that of the beautifully ocellated secondary wing-feathers nearly three feet. in a small african night-jar (cosmetornis vexillarius) one of the primary wing-feathers, during the breeding-season, attains a length of twenty-six inches, whilst the bird itself is only ten inches in length. in another closely-allied genus of night-jars, the shafts of the elongated wing-feathers are naked, except at the extremity, where there is a disc. ( . sclater, in the 'ibis,' vol. vi. , p. ; livingstone, 'expedition to the zambesi,' , p. .) again, in another genus of night-jars, the tail-feathers are even still more prodigiously developed. in general the feathers of the tail are more often elongated than those of the wings, as any great elongation of the latter impedes flight. we thus see that in closely-allied birds ornaments of the same kind have been gained by the males through the development of widely different feathers. it is a curious fact that the feathers of species belonging to very distinct groups have been modified in almost exactly the same peculiar manner. thus the wing-feathers in one of the above-mentioned night-jars are bare along the shaft, and terminate in a disc; or are, as they are sometimes called, spoon or racket-shaped. feathers of this kind occur in the tail of a motmot (eumomota superciliaris), of a king-fisher, finch, humming-bird, parrot, several indian drongos (dicrurus and edolius, in one of which the disc stands vertically), and in the tail of certain birds of paradise. in these latter birds, similar feathers, beautifully ocellated, ornament the head, as is likewise the case with some gallinaceous birds. in an indian bustard (sypheotides auritus) the feathers forming the ear-tufts, which are about four inches in length, also terminate in discs. ( . jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. iii. p. .) it is a most singular fact that the motmots, as mr. salvin has clearly shewn ( . 'proceedings, zoological society,' , p. .), give to their tail feathers the racket-shape by biting off the barbs, and, further, that this continued mutilation has produced a certain amount of inherited effect. [fig. . paradisea papuana (t.w. wood).] again, the barbs of the feathers in various widely-distinct birds are filamentous or plumose, as with some herons, ibises, birds of paradise, and gallinaceae. in other cases the barbs disappear, leaving the shafts bare from end to end; and these in the tail of the paradisea apoda attain a length of thirty-four inches ( . wallace, in 'annals and magazine of natural history,' vol. xx. , p. , and in his 'malay archipelago,' vol. ii. , p. .): in p. papuana (fig. ) they are much shorter and thin. smaller feathers when thus denuded appear like bristles, as on the breast of the turkey-cock. as any fleeting fashion in dress comes to be admired by man, so with birds a change of almost any kind in the structure or colouring of the feathers in the male appears to have been admired by the female. the fact of the feathers in widely distinct groups having been modified in an analogous manner no doubt depends primarily on all the feathers having nearly the same structure and manner of development, and consequently tending to vary in the same manner. we often see a tendency to analogous variability in the plumage of our domestic breeds belonging to distinct species. thus top-knots have appeared in several species. in an extinct variety of the turkey, the top-knot consisted of bare quills surmounted with plumes of down, so that they somewhat resembled the racket-shaped feathers above described. in certain breeds of the pigeon and fowl the feathers are plumose, with some tendency in the shafts to be naked. in the sebastopol goose the scapular feathers are greatly elongated, curled, or even spirally twisted, with the margins plumose. ( . see my work on 'the variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. i. pp. , .) in regard to colour, hardly anything need here be said, for every one knows how splendid are the tints of many birds, and how harmoniously they are combined. the colours are often metallic and iridescent. circular spots are sometimes surrounded by one or more differently shaded zones, and are thus converted into ocelli. nor need much be said on the wonderful difference between the sexes of many birds. the common peacock offers a striking instance. female birds of paradise are obscurely coloured and destitute of all ornaments, whilst the males are probably the most highly decorated of all birds, and in so many different ways that they must be seen to be appreciated. the elongated and golden-orange plumes which spring from beneath the wings of the paradisea apoda, when vertically erected and made to vibrate, are described as forming a sort of halo, in the centre of which the head "looks like a little emerald sun with its rays formed by the two plumes." ( . quoted from m. de lafresnaye in 'annals and mag. of natural history,' vol. xiii. , p. : see also mr. wallace's much fuller account in vol. xx. , p. , and in his 'malay archipelago.') in another most beautiful species the head is bald, "and of a rich cobalt blue, crossed by several lines of black velvety feathers." ( . wallace, 'the malay archipelago,' vol. ii. , p. .) [fig. . lophornis ornatus, male and female (from brehm). fig. . spathura underwoodi, male and female (from brehm).] male humming-birds (figs. and ) almost vie with birds of paradise in their beauty, as every one will admit who has seen mr. gould's splendid volumes, or his rich collection. it is very remarkable in how many different ways these birds are ornamented. almost every part of their plumage has been taken advantage of, and modified; and the modifications have been carried, as mr. gould shewed me, to a wonderful extreme in some species belonging to nearly every sub-group. such cases are curiously like those which we see in our fancy breeds, reared by man for the sake of ornament; certain individuals originally varied in one character, and other individuals of the same species in other characters; and these have been seized on by man and much augmented--as shewn by the tail of the fantail-pigeon, the hood of the jacobin, the beak and wattle of the carrier, and so forth. the sole difference between these cases is that in the one, the result is due to man's selection, whilst in the other, as with humming-birds, birds of paradise, etc., it is due to the selection by the females of the more beautiful males. i will mention only one other bird, remarkable from the extreme contrast in colour between the sexes, namely the famous bell-bird (chasmorhynchus niveus) of s. america, the note of which can be distinguished at the distance of nearly three miles, and astonishes every one when first hearing it. the male is pure white, whilst the female is dusky-green; and white is a very rare colour in terrestrial species of moderate size and inoffensive habits. the male, also, as described by waterton, has a spiral tube, nearly three inches in length, which rises from the base of the beak. it is jet-black, dotted over with minute downy feathers. this tube can be inflated with air, through a communication with the palate; and when not inflated hangs down on one side. the genus consists of four species, the males of which are very distinct, whilst the females, as described by mr. sclater in a very interesting paper, closely resemble each other, thus offering an excellent instance of the common rule that within the same group the males differ much more from each other than do the females. in a second species (c. nudicollis) the male is likewise snow-white, with the exception of a large space of naked skin on the throat and round the eyes, which during the breeding-season is of a fine green colour. in a third species (c. tricarunculatus) the head and neck alone of the male are white, the rest of the body being chestnut-brown, and the male of this species is provided with three filamentous projections half as long as the body--one rising from the base of the beak, and the two others from the corners of the mouth. ( . mr. sclater, 'intellectual observer,' jan. . waterton's 'wanderings,' p. . see also mr. salvin's interesting paper, with a plate, in the 'ibis,' , p. .) the coloured plumage and certain other ornaments of the adult males are either retained for life, or are periodically renewed during the summer and breeding-season. at this same season the beak and naked skin about the head frequently change colour, as with some herons, ibises, gulls, one of the bell-birds just noticed, etc. in the white ibis, the cheeks, the inflatable skin of the throat, and the basal portion of the beak then become crimson. ( . 'land and water,' , p. .) in one of the rails, gallicrex cristatus, a large red caruncle is developed during this period on the head of the male. so it is with a thin horny crest on the beak of one of the pelicans, p. erythrorhynchus; for, after the breeding-season, these horny crests are shed, like horns from the heads of stags, and the shore of an island in a lake in nevada was found covered with these curious exuviae. ( . mr. d.g. elliot, in 'proc. zool. soc.' , p. .) changes of colour in the plumage according to the season depend, firstly on a double annual moult, secondly on an actual change of colour in the feathers themselves, and thirdly on their dull-coloured margins being periodically shed, or on these three processes more or less combined. the shedding of the deciduary margins may be compared with the shedding of their down by very young birds; for the down in most cases arises from the summits of the first true feathers. ( . nitzsch's 'pterylography,' edited by p.l. sclater, ray society, , p. .) with respect to the birds which annually undergo a double moult, there are, firstly, some kinds, for instance snipes, swallow-plovers (glareolae), and curlews, in which the two sexes resemble each other, and do not change colour at any season. i do not know whether the winter plumage is thicker and warmer than the summer plumage, but warmth seems the most probable end attained of a double moult, where there is no change of colour. secondly, there are birds, for instance, certain species of totanus and other grallatores, the sexes of which resemble each other, but in which the summer and winter plumage differ slightly in colour. the difference, however, in these cases is so small that it can hardly be an advantage to them; and it may, perhaps, be attributed to the direct action of the different conditions to which the birds are exposed during the two seasons. thirdly, there are many other birds the sexes of which are alike, but which are widely different in their summer and winter plumage. fourthly, there are birds the sexes of which differ from each other in colour; but the females, though moulting twice, retain the same colours throughout the year, whilst the males undergo a change of colour, sometimes a great one, as with certain bustards. fifthly and lastly, there are birds the sexes of which differ from each other in both their summer and winter plumage; but the male undergoes a greater amount of change at each recurrent season than the female--of which the ruff (machetes pugnax) offers a good instance. with respect to the cause or purpose of the differences in colour between the summer and winter plumage, this may in some instances, as with the ptarmigan ( . the brown mottled summer plumage of the ptarmigan is of as much importance to it, as a protection, as the white winter plumage; for in scandinavia during the spring, when the snow has disappeared, this bird is known to suffer greatly from birds of prey, before it has acquired its summer dress: see wilhelm von wright, in lloyd, 'game birds of sweden,' , p. .), serve during both seasons as a protection. when the difference between the two plumages is slight it may perhaps be attributed, as already remarked, to the direct action of the conditions of life. but with many birds there can hardly be a doubt that the summer plumage is ornamental, even when both sexes are alike. we may conclude that this is the case with many herons, egrets, etc., for they acquire their beautiful plumes only during the breeding-season. moreover, such plumes, top-knots, etc., though possessed by both sexes, are occasionally a little more developed in the male than in the female; and they resemble the plumes and ornaments possessed by the males alone of other birds. it is also known that confinement, by affecting the reproductive system of male birds, frequently checks the development of their secondary sexual characters, but has no immediate influence on any other characters; and i am informed by mr. bartlett that eight or nine specimens of the knot (tringa canutus) retained their unadorned winter plumage in the zoological gardens throughout the year, from which fact we may infer that the summer plumage, though common to both sexes, partakes of the nature of the exclusively masculine plumage of many other birds. ( . in regard to the previous statements on moulting, see, on snipes, etc., macgillivray, 'hist. brit. birds,' vol. iv. p. ; on glareolae, curlews, and bustards, jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. iii. pp. , , ; on totanus, ibid. p. ; on the plumes of herons, ibid. p. , and macgillivray, vol. iv. pp. and , and mr. stafford allen, in the 'ibis,' vol. v. , p. .) from the foregoing facts, more especially from neither sex of certain birds changing colour during either annual moult, or changing so slightly that the change can hardly be of any service to them, and from the females of other species moulting twice yet retaining the same colours throughout the year, we may conclude that the habit of annually moulting twice has not been acquired in order that the male should assume an ornamental character during the breeding-season; but that the double moult, having been originally acquired for some distinct purpose, has subsequently been taken advantage of in certain cases for gaining a nuptial plumage. it appears at first sight a surprising circumstance that some closely-allied species should regularly undergo a double annual moult, and others only a single one. the ptarmigan, for instance, moults twice or even thrice in the year, and the blackcock only once: some of the splendidly coloured honey-suckers (nectariniae) of india and some sub-genera of obscurely coloured pipits (anthus) have a double, whilst others have only a single annual moult. ( . on the moulting of the ptarmigan, see gould's 'birds of great britain.' on the honey-suckers, jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. i. pp. , , . on the moulting of anthus, see blyth, in 'ibis,' , p. .) but the gradations in the manner of moulting, which are known to occur with various birds, shew us how species, or whole groups, might have originally acquired their double annual moult, or having once gained the habit, have again lost it. with certain bustards and plovers the vernal moult is far from complete, some feathers being renewed, and some changed in colour. there is also reason to believe that with certain bustards and rail-like birds, which properly undergo a double moult, some of the older males retain their nuptial plumage throughout the year. a few highly modified feathers may merely be added during the spring to the plumage, as occurs with the disc-formed tail-feathers of certain drongos (bhringa) in india, and with the elongated feathers on the back, neck, and crest of certain herons. by such steps as these, the vernal moult might be rendered more and more complete, until a perfect double moult was acquired. some of the birds of paradise retain their nuptial feathers throughout the year, and thus have only a single moult; others cast them directly after the breeding-season, and thus have a double moult; and others again cast them at this season during the first year, but not afterwards; so that these latter species are intermediate in their manner of moulting. there is also a great difference with many birds in the length of time during which the two annual plumages are retained; so that the one might come to be retained for the whole year, and the other completely lost. thus in the spring machetes pugnax retains his ruff for barely two months. in natal the male widow-bird (chera progne) acquires his fine plumage and long tail-feathers in december or january, and loses them in march; so that they are retained only for about three months. most species, which undergo a double moult, keep their ornamental feathers for about six months. the male, however, of the wild gallus bankiva retains his neck-hackles for nine or ten months; and when these are cast off, the underlying black feathers on the neck are fully exposed to view. but with the domesticated descendant of this species, the neck-hackles of the male are immediately replaced by new ones; so that we here see, as to part of the plumage, a double moult changed under domestication into a single moult. ( . for the foregoing statements in regard to partial moults, and on old males retaining their nuptial plumage, see jerdon, on bustards and plovers, in 'birds of india,' vol. iii. pp. , , , . also blyth in 'land and water,' , p. . on the moulting of paradisea, see an interesting article by dr. w. marshall, 'archives neerlandaises,' tom. vi. . on the vidua, 'ibis,' vol. iii. , p. . on the drongo-shrikes, jerdon, ibid. vol. i. p. . on the vernal moult of the herodias bubulcus, mr. s.s. allen, in 'ibis,' , p. . on gallus bankiva, blyth, in 'annals and mag. of natural history,' vol. i. , p. ; see, also, on this subject, my 'variation of animals under domestication,' vol. i. p. .) the common drake (anas boschas), after the breeding-season, is well known to lose his male plumage for a period of three months, during which time he assumes that of the female. the male pin-tail duck (anas acuta) loses his plumage for the shorter period of six weeks or two months; and montagu remarks that "this double moult within so short a time is a most extraordinary circumstance, that seems to bid defiance to all human reasoning." but the believer in the gradual modification of species will be far from feeling surprise at finding gradations of all kinds. if the male pin-tail were to acquire his new plumage within a still shorter period, the new male feathers would almost necessarily be mingled with the old, and both with some proper to the female; and this apparently is the case with the male of a not distantly-allied bird, namely the merganser serrator, for the males are said to "undergo a change of plumage, which assimilates them in some measure to the female." by a little further acceleration in the process, the double moult would be completely lost. ( . see macgillivray, 'hist. british birds' (vol. v. pp. , , and ), on the moulting of the anatidae, with quotations from waterton and montagu. also yarrell, 'history of british birds,' vol. iii. p. .) some male birds, as before stated, become more brightly coloured in the spring, not by a vernal moult, but either by an actual change of colour in the feathers, or by their obscurely-coloured deciduary margins being shed. changes of colour thus caused may last for a longer or shorter time. in the pelecanus onocrotalus a beautiful rosy tint, with lemon-coloured marks on the breast, overspreads the whole plumage in the spring; but these tints, as mr. sclater states, "do not last long, disappearing generally in about six weeks or two months after they have been attained." certain finches shed the margins of their feathers in the spring, and then become brighter coloured, while other finches undergo no such change. thus the fringilla tristis of the united states (as well as many other american species) exhibits its bright colours only when the winter is past, whilst our goldfinch, which exactly represents this bird in habits, and our siskin, which represents it still more closely in structure, undergo no such annual change. but a difference of this kind in the plumage of allied species is not surprising, for with the common linnet, which belongs to the same family, the crimson forehead and breast are displayed only during the summer in england, whilst in madeira these colours are retained throughout the year. ( . on the pelican, see sclater, in 'proc. zool. soc.' , p. . on the american finches, see audubon, 'ornithological biography,' vol. i. pp. , , and jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. ii. p. . on the fringilla cannabina of madeira, mr. e. vernon harcourt, 'ibis,' vol. v. , p. .) display by male birds of their plumage. ornaments of all kinds, whether permanently or temporarily gained, are sedulously displayed by the males, and apparently serve to excite, attract, or fascinate the females. but the males will sometimes display their ornaments, when not in the presence of the females, as occasionally occurs with grouse at their balz-places, and as may be noticed with the peacock; this latter bird, however, evidently wishes for a spectator of some kind, and, as i have often seen, will shew off his finery before poultry, or even pigs. ( . see also 'ornamental poultry,' by rev. e.s. dixon, , p. .) all naturalists who have closely attended to the habits of birds, whether in a state of nature or under confinement, are unanimously of opinion that the males take delight in displaying their beauty. audubon frequently speaks of the male as endeavouring in various ways to charm the female. mr. gould, after describing some peculiarities in a male humming-bird, says he has no doubt that it has the power of displaying them to the greatest advantage before the female. dr. jerdon ( . 'birds of india,' introduct., vol. i. p. xxiv.; on the peacock, vol. iii. p. . see gould's 'introduction to trochilidae,' , pp. and .) insists that the beautiful plumage of the male serves "to fascinate and attract the female." mr. bartlett, at the zoological gardens, expressed himself to me in the strongest terms to the same effect. [fig. . rupicola crocea, male (t.w. wood).] it must be a grand sight in the forests of india "to come suddenly on twenty or thirty pea-fowl, the males displaying their gorgeous trains, and strutting about in all the pomp of pride before the gratified females." the wild turkey-cock erects his glittering plumage, expands his finely-zoned tail and barred wing-feathers, and altogether, with his crimson and blue wattles, makes a superb, though, to our eyes, grotesque appearance. similar facts have already been given with respect to grouse of various kinds. turning to another order: the male rupicola crocea (fig. ) is one of the most beautiful birds in the world, being of a splendid orange, with some of the feathers curiously truncated and plumose. the female is brownish-green, shaded with red, and has a much smaller crest. sir r. schomburgk has described their courtship; he found one of their meeting-places where ten males and two females were present. the space was from four to five feet in diameter, and appeared to have been cleared of every blade of grass and smoothed as if by human hands. a male "was capering, to the apparent delight of several others. now spreading its wings, throwing up its head, or opening its tail like a fan; now strutting about with a hopping gait until tired, when it gabbled some kind of note, and was relieved by another. thus three of them successively took the field, and then, with self-approbation, withdrew to rest." the indians, in order to obtain their skins, wait at one of the meeting-places till the birds are eagerly engaged in dancing, and then are able to kill with their poisoned arrows four or five males, one after the other. ( . 'journal of r. geograph. soc.' vol. x. , p. .) with birds of paradise a dozen or more full-plumaged males congregate in a tree to hold a dancing-party, as it is called by the natives: and here they fly about, raise their wings, elevate their exquisite plumes, and make them vibrate, and the whole tree seems, as mr. wallace remarks, to be filled with waving plumes. when thus engaged, they become so absorbed that a skilful archer may shoot nearly the whole party. these birds, when kept in confinement in the malay archipelago, are said to take much care in keeping their feathers clean; often spreading them out, examining them, and removing every speck of dirt. one observer, who kept several pairs alive, did not doubt that the display of the male was intended to please the female. ( . 'annals and mag. of nat. hist.' vol. xiii. , p. ; also wallace, ibid. vol. xx. , p. , and 'the malay archipelago,' vol. ii. , p. . also dr. bennett, as quoted by brehm, 'thierleben,' b. iii. s. .) [fig. . polyplectron chinquis, male (t.w. wood).] the gold and amherst pheasants during their courtship not only expand and raise their splendid frills, but twist them, as i have myself seen, obliquely towards the female on whichever side she may be standing, obviously in order that a large surface may be displayed before her. ( . mr. t.w. wood has given ('the student,' april , p. ) a full account of this manner of display, by the gold pheasant and by the japanese pheasant, ph. versicolor; and he calls it the lateral or one-sided display.) they likewise turn their beautiful tails and tail-coverts a little towards the same side. mr. bartlett has observed a male polyplectron (fig. ) in the act of courtship, and has shewn me a specimen stuffed in the attitude then assumed. the tail and wing-feathers of this bird are ornamented with beautiful ocelli, like those on the peacock's train. now when the peacock displays himself, he expands and erects his tail transversely to his body, for he stands in front of the female, and has to shew off, at the same time, his rich blue throat and breast. but the breast of the polyplectron is obscurely coloured, and the ocelli are not confined to the tail-feathers. consequently the polyplectron does not stand in front of the female; but he erects and expands his tail-feathers a little obliquely, lowering the expanded wing on the same side, and raising that on the opposite side. in this attitude the ocelli over the whole body are exposed at the same time before the eyes of the admiring female in one grand bespangled expanse. to whichever side she may turn, the expanded wings and the obliquely-held tail are turned towards her. the male tragopan pheasant acts in nearly the same manner, for he raises the feathers of the body, though not the wing itself, on the side which is opposite to the female, and which would otherwise be concealed, so that nearly all the beautifully spotted feathers are exhibited at the same time. [fig. . side view of male argus pheasant, whilst displaying before the female. observed and sketched from nature by t.w. wood.] the argus pheasant affords a much more remarkable case. the immensely developed secondary wing-feathers are confined to the male; and each is ornamented with a row of from twenty to twenty-three ocelli, above an inch in diameter. these feathers are also elegantly marked with oblique stripes and rows of spots of a dark colour, like those on the skin of a tiger and leopard combined. these beautiful ornaments are hidden until the male shows himself off before the female. he then erects his tail, and expands his wing-feathers into a great, almost upright, circular fan or shield, which is carried in front of the body. the neck and head are held on one side, so that they are concealed by the fan; but the bird in order to see the female, before whom he is displaying himself, sometimes pushes his head between two of the long wing-feathers (as mr. bartlett has seen), and then presents a grotesque appearance. this must be a frequent habit with the bird in a state of nature, for mr. bartlett and his son on examining some perfect skins sent from the east, found a place between two of the feathers which was much frayed, as if the head had here frequently been pushed through. mr. wood thinks that the male can also peep at the female on one side, beyond the margin of the fan. the ocelli on the wing-feathers are wonderful objects; for they are so shaded that, as the duke of argyll remarks ( . 'the reign of law,' , p. .), they stand out like balls lying loosely within sockets. when i looked at the specimen in the british museum, which is mounted with the wings expanded and trailing downwards, i was however greatly disappointed, for the ocelli appeared flat, or even concave. but mr. gould soon made the case clear to me, for he held the feathers erect, in the position in which they would naturally be displayed, and now, from the light shining on them from above, each ocellus at once resembled the ornament called a ball and socket. these feathers have been shown to several artists, and all have expressed their admiration at the perfect shading. it may well be asked, could such artistically shaded ornaments have been formed by means of sexual selection? but it will be convenient to defer giving an answer to this question until we treat in the next chapter of the principle of gradation. the foregoing remarks relate to the secondary wing-feathers, but the primary wing-feathers, which in most gallinaceous birds are uniformly coloured, are in the argus pheasant equally wonderful. they are of a soft brown tint with numerous dark spots, each of which consists of two or three black dots with a surrounding dark zone. but the chief ornament is a space parallel to the dark-blue shaft, which in outline forms a perfect second feather lying within the true feather. this inner part is coloured of a lighter chestnut, and is thickly dotted with minute white points. i have shewn this feather to several persons, and many have admired it even more than the ball and socket feathers, and have declared that it was more like a work of art than of nature. now these feathers are quite hidden on all ordinary occasions, but are fully displayed, together with the long secondary feathers, when they are all expanded together so as to form the great fan or shield. the case of the male argus pheasant is eminently interesting, because it affords good evidence that the most refined beauty may serve as a sexual charm, and for no other purpose. we must conclude that this is the case, as the secondary and primary wing-feathers are not at all displayed, and the ball and socket ornaments are not exhibited in full perfection until the male assumes the attitude of courtship. the argus pheasant does not possess brilliant colours, so that his success in love appears to depend on the great size of his plumes, and on the elaboration of the most elegant patterns. many will declare that it is utterly incredible that a female bird should be able to appreciate fine shading and exquisite patterns. it is undoubtedly a marvellous fact that she should possess this almost human degree of taste. he who thinks that he can safely gauge the discrimination and taste of the lower animals may deny that the female argus pheasant can appreciate such refined beauty; but he will then be compelled to admit that the extraordinary attitudes assumed by the male during the act of courtship, by which the wonderful beauty of his plumage is fully displayed, are purposeless; and this is a conclusion which i for one will never admit. although so many pheasants and allied gallinaceous birds carefully display their plumage before the females, it is remarkable, as mr. bartlett informs me, that this is not the case with the dull-coloured eared and cheer pheasants (crossoptilon auritum and phasianus wallichii); so that these birds seem conscious that they have little beauty to display. mr. bartlett has never seen the males of either of these species fighting together, though he has not had such good opportunities for observing the cheer as the eared pheasant. mr. jenner weir, also, finds that all male birds with rich or strongly-characterised plumage are more quarrelsome than the dull-coloured species belonging to the same groups. the goldfinch, for instance, is far more pugnacious than the linnet, and the blackbird than the thrush. those birds which undergo a seasonal change of plumage likewise become much more pugnacious at the period when they are most gaily ornamented. no doubt the males of some obscurely-coloured birds fight desperately together, but it appears that when sexual selection has been highly influential, and has given bright colours to the males of any species, it has also very often given a strong tendency to pugnacity. we shall meet with nearly analogous cases when we treat of mammals. on the other hand, with birds the power of song and brilliant colours have rarely been both acquired by the males of the same species; but in this case the advantage gained would have been the same, namely success in charming the female. nevertheless it must be owned that the males of several brilliantly coloured birds have had their feathers specially modified for the sake of producing instrumental music, though the beauty of this cannot be compared, at least according to our taste, with that of the vocal music of many songsters. we will now turn to male birds which are not ornamented in any high degree, but which nevertheless display during their courtship whatever attractions they may possess. these cases are in some respects more curious than the foregoing, and have been but little noticed. i owe the following facts to mr. weir, who has long kept confined birds of many kinds, including all the british fringillidae and emberizidae. the facts have been selected from a large body of valuable notes kindly sent me by him. the bullfinch makes his advances in front of the female, and then puffs out his breast, so that many more of the crimson feathers are seen at once than otherwise would be the case. at the same time he twists and bows his black tail from side to side in a ludicrous manner. the male chaffinch also stands in front of the female, thus shewing his red breast and "blue bell," as the fanciers call his head; the wings at the same time being slightly expanded, with the pure white bands on the shoulders thus rendered conspicuous. the common linnet distends his rosy breast, slightly expands his brown wings and tail, so as to make the best of them by exhibiting their white edgings. we must, however, be cautious in concluding that the wings are spread out solely for display, as some birds do so whose wings are not beautiful. this is the case with the domestic cock, but it is always the wing on the side opposite to the female which is expanded, and at the same time scraped on the ground. the male goldfinch behaves differently from all other finches: his wings are beautiful, the shoulders being black, with the dark-tipped wing-feathers spotted with white and edged with golden yellow. when he courts the female, he sways his body from side to side, and quickly turns his slightly expanded wings first to one side, then to the other, with a golden flashing effect. mr. weir informs me that no other british finch turns thus from side to side during his courtship, not even the closely-allied male siskin, for he would not thus add to his beauty. most of the british buntings are plain coloured birds; but in the spring the feathers on the head of the male reed-bunting (emberiza schoeniculus) acquire a fine black colour by the abrasion of the dusky tips; and these are erected during the act of courtship. mr. weir has kept two species of amadina from australia: the a. castanotis is a very small and chastely coloured finch, with a dark tail, white rump, and jet-black upper tail-coverts, each of the latter being marked with three large conspicuous oval spots of white. ( . for the description of these birds, see gould's 'handbook to the birds of australia,' vol. i. , p. .) this species, when courting the female, slightly spreads out and vibrates these parti-coloured tail-coverts in a very peculiar manner. the male amadina lathami behaves very differently, exhibiting before the female his brilliantly spotted breast, scarlet rump, and scarlet upper tail-coverts. i may here add from dr. jerdon that the indian bulbul (pycnonotus hoemorrhous) has its under tail-coverts of a crimson colour, and these, it might be thought, could never be well exhibited; but the bird "when excited often spreads them out laterally, so that they can be seen even from above." ( . 'birds of india,' vol. ii. p. .) the crimson under tail-coverts of some other birds, as with one of the woodpeckers, picus major, can be seen without any such display. the common pigeon has iridescent feathers on the breast, and every one must have seen how the male inflates his breast whilst courting the female, thus shewing them off to the best advantage. one of the beautiful bronze-winged pigeons of australia (ocyphaps lophotes) behaves, as described to me by mr. weir, very differently: the male, whilst standing before the female, lowers his head almost to the ground, spreads out and raises his tail, and half expands his wings. he then alternately and slowly raises and depresses his body, so that the iridescent metallic feathers are all seen at once, and glitter in the sun. sufficient facts have now been given to shew with what care male birds display their various charms, and this they do with the utmost skill. whilst preening their feathers, they have frequent opportunities for admiring themselves, and of studying how best to exhibit their beauty. but as all the males of the same species display themselves in exactly the same manner, it appears that actions, at first perhaps intentional, have become instinctive. if so, we ought not to accuse birds of conscious vanity; yet when we see a peacock strutting about, with expanded and quivering tail-feathers, he seems the very emblem of pride and vanity. the various ornaments possessed by the males are certainly of the highest importance to them, for in some cases they have been acquired at the expense of greatly impeded powers of flight or of running. the african night-jar (cosmetornis), which during the pairing-season has one of its primary wing-feathers developed into a streamer of very great length, is thereby much retarded in its flight, although at other times remarkable for its swiftness. the "unwieldy size" of the secondary wing-feathers of the male argus pheasant is said "almost entirely to deprive the bird of flight." the fine plumes of male birds of paradise trouble them during a high wind. the extremely long tail-feathers of the male widow-birds (vidua) of southern africa render "their flight heavy;" but as soon as these are cast off they fly as well as the females. as birds always breed when food is abundant, the males probably do not suffer much inconvenience in searching for food from their impeded powers of movement; but there can hardly be a doubt that they must be much more liable to be struck down by birds of prey. nor can we doubt that the long train of the peacock and the long tail and wing-feathers of the argus pheasant must render them an easier prey to any prowling tiger-cat than would otherwise be the case. even the bright colours of many male birds cannot fail to make them conspicuous to their enemies of all kinds. hence, as mr. gould has remarked, it probably is that such birds are generally of a shy disposition, as if conscious that their beauty was a source of danger, and are much more difficult to discover or approach, than the sombre coloured and comparatively tame females or than the young and as yet unadorned males. ( . on the cosmetornis, see livingstone's 'expedition to the zambesi,' , p. . on the argus pheasant, jardine's 'nat. hist. lib.: birds,' vol. xiv. p. . on birds of paradise, lesson, quoted by brehm, 'thierleben,' b. iii. s. . on the widow-bird, barrow's 'travels in africa,' vol. i. p. , and 'ibis,' vol. iii. p. . mr. gould, on the shyness of male birds, 'handbook to birds of australia,' vol. i. , pp. , .) it is a more curious fact that the males of some birds which are provided with special weapons for battle, and which in a state of nature are so pugnacious that they often kill each other, suffer from possessing certain ornaments. cock-fighters trim the hackles and cut off the combs and gills of their cocks; and the birds are then said to be dubbed. an undubbed bird, as mr. tegetmeier insists, "is at a fearful disadvantage; the comb and gills offer an easy hold to his adversary's beak, and as a cock always strikes where he holds, when once he has seized his foe, he has him entirely in his power. even supposing that the bird is not killed, the loss of blood suffered by an undubbed cock is much greater than that sustained by one that has been trimmed." ( . tegetmeier, 'the poultry book,' , p. .) young turkey-cocks in fighting always seize hold of each other's wattles; and i presume that the old birds fight in the same manner. it may perhaps be objected that the comb and wattles are not ornamental, and cannot be of service to the birds in this way; but even to our eyes, the beauty of the glossy black spanish cock is much enhanced by his white face and crimson comb; and no one who has ever seen the splendid blue wattles of the male tragopan pheasant distended in courtship can for a moment doubt that beauty is the object gained. from the foregoing facts we clearly see that the plumes and other ornaments of the males must be of the highest importance to them; and we further see that beauty is even sometimes more important than success in battle. chapter xiv. birds--continued. choice exerted by the female--length of courtship--unpaired birds--mental qualities and taste for the beautiful--preference or antipathy shewn by the female for particular males--variability of birds--variations sometimes abrupt--laws of variation--formation of ocelli--gradations of character--case of peacock, argus pheasant, and urosticte. when the sexes differ in beauty or in the power of singing, or in producing what i have called instrumental music, it is almost invariably the male who surpasses the female. these qualities, as we have just seen, are evidently of high importance to the male. when they are gained for only a part of the year it is always before the breeding-season. it is the male alone who elaborately displays his varied attractions, and often performs strange antics on the ground or in the air, in the presence of the female. each male drives away, or if he can, kills his rivals. hence we may conclude that it is the object of the male to induce the female to pair with him, and for this purpose he tries to excite or charm her in various ways; and this is the opinion of all those who have carefully studied the habits of living birds. but there remains a question which has an all important bearing on sexual selection, namely, does every male of the same species excite and attract the female equally? or does she exert a choice, and prefer certain males? this latter question can be answered in the affirmative by much direct and indirect evidence. it is far more difficult to decide what qualities determine the choice of the females; but here again we have some direct and indirect evidence that it is to a large extent the external attractions of the male; though no doubt his vigour, courage, and other mental qualities come into play. we will begin with the indirect evidence. length of courtship. the lengthened period during which both sexes of certain birds meet day after day at an appointed place probably depends partly on the courtship being a prolonged affair, and partly on reiteration in the act of pairing. thus in germany and scandinavia the balzen or leks of the black-cocks last from the middle of march, all through april into may. as many as forty or fifty, or even more birds congregate at the leks; and the same place is often frequented during successive years. the lek of the capercailzie lasts from the end of march to the middle or even end of may. in north america "the partridge dances" of the tetrao phasianellus "last for a month or more." other kinds of grouse, both in north america and eastern siberia ( . nordman describes ('bull. soc. imp. des nat. moscou,' , tom. xxxiv. p. ) the balzen of tetrao urogalloides in amur land. he estimated the number of birds assembled at above a hundred, not counting the females, which lie hid in the surrounding bushes. the noises uttered differ from those of t. urogallus.), follow nearly the same habits. the fowlers discover the hillocks where the ruffs congregate by the grass being trampled bare, and this shews that the same spot is long frequented. the indians of guiana are well acquainted with the cleared arenas, where they expect to find the beautiful cocks of the rock; and the natives of new guinea know the trees where from ten to twenty male birds of paradise in full plumage congregate. in this latter case it is not expressly stated that the females meet on the same trees, but the hunters, if not specially asked, would probably not mention their presence, as their skins are valueless. small parties of an african weaver (ploceus) congregate, during the breeding-season, and perform for hours their graceful evolutions. large numbers of the solitary snipe (scolopax major) assemble during dusk in a morass; and the same place is frequented for the same purpose during successive years; here they may be seen running about "like so many large rats," puffing out their feathers, flapping their wings, and uttering the strangest cries. ( . with respect to the assemblages of the above named grouse, see brehm, 'thierleben,' b. iv. s. ; also l. lloyd, 'game birds of sweden,' , pp. , . richardson, 'fauna bor. americana: birds,' p. . references in regard to the assemblages of other birds have already been given. on paradisea, see wallace, in 'annals and mag. of nat. hist.' vol. xx. , p. . on the snipe, lloyd, ibid. p. .) some of the above birds,--the black-cock, capercailzie, pheasant-grouse, ruff, solitary snipe, and perhaps others,--are, as is believed, polygamists. with such birds it might have been thought that the stronger males would simply have driven away the weaker, and then at once have taken possession of as many females as possible; but if it be indispensable for the male to excite or please the female, we can understand the length of the courtship and the congregation of so many individuals of both sexes at the same spot. certain strictly monogamous species likewise hold nuptial assemblages; this seems to be the case in scandinavia with one of the ptarmigans, and their leks last from the middle of march to the middle of may. in australia the lyre-bird (menura superba) forms "small round hillocks," and the m. alberti scratches for itself shallow holes, or, as they are called by the natives, "corroborying places," where it is believed both sexes assemble. the meetings of the m. superba are sometimes very large; and an account has lately been published ( . quoted by mr. t.w. wood, in the 'student,' april , p. .) by a traveller, who heard in a valley beneath him, thickly covered with scrub, "a din which completely astonished" him; on crawling onwards he beheld, to his amazement, about one hundred and fifty of the magnificent lyre-cocks, "ranged in order of battle, and fighting with indescribable fury." the bowers of the bower-birds are the resort of both sexes during the breeding-season; and "here the males meet and contend with each other for the favours of the female, and here the latter assemble and coquet with the males." with two of the genera, the same bower is resorted to during many years. ( . gould, 'handbook to the birds of australia,' vol. i. pp. , , , . on the ptarmigan, above alluded to, see lloyd, ibid. p. .) the common magpie (corvus pica, linn.), as i have been informed by the rev. w. darwin fox, used to assemble from all parts of delamere forest, in order to celebrate the "great magpie marriage." some years ago these birds abounded in extraordinary numbers, so that a gamekeeper killed in one morning nineteen males, and another killed by a single shot seven birds at roost together. they then had the habit of assembling very early in the spring at particular spots, where they could be seen in flocks, chattering, sometimes fighting, bustling and flying about the trees. the whole affair was evidently considered by the birds as one of the highest importance. shortly after the meeting they all separated, and were then observed by mr. fox and others to be paired for the season. in any district in which a species does not exist in large numbers, great assemblages cannot, of course, be held, and the same species may have different habits in different countries. for instance, i have heard of only one instance, from mr. wedderburn, of a regular assemblage of black game in scotland, yet these assemblages are so well known in germany and scandinavia that they have received special names. unpaired birds. from the facts now given, we may conclude that the courtship of birds belonging to widely different groups, is often a prolonged, delicate, and troublesome affair. there is even reason to suspect, improbable as this will at first appear, that some males and females of the same species, inhabiting the same district, do not always please each other, and consequently do not pair. many accounts have been published of either the male or female of a pair having been shot, and quickly replaced by another. this has been observed more frequently with the magpie than with any other bird, owing perhaps to its conspicuous appearance and nest. the illustrious jenner states that in wiltshire one of a pair was daily shot no less than seven times successively, "but all to no purpose, for the remaining magpie soon found another mate"; and the last pair reared their young. a new partner is generally found on the succeeding day; but mr. thompson gives the case of one being replaced on the evening of the same day. even after the eggs are hatched, if one of the old birds is destroyed a mate will often be found; this occurred after an interval of two days, in a case recently observed by one of sir j. lubbock's keepers. ( . on magpies, jenner, in 'philosophical transactions,' , p. . macgillivray, 'hist. british birds,' vol. i. p. . thompson, in 'annals and magazine of natural history,' vol. viii. , p. .) the first and most obvious conjecture is that male magpies must be much more numerous than females; and that in the above cases, as well as in many others which could be given, the males alone had been killed. this apparently holds good in some instances, for the gamekeepers in delamere forest assured mr. fox that the magpies and carrion-crows which they formerly killed in succession in large numbers near their nests, were all males; and they accounted for this fact by the males being easily killed whilst bringing food to the sitting females. macgillivray, however, gives, on the authority of an excellent observer, an instance of three magpies successively killed on the same nest, which were all females; and another case of six magpies successively killed whilst sitting on the same eggs, which renders it probable that most of them were females; though, as i hear from mr. fox, the male will sit on the eggs when the female is killed. sir j. lubbock's gamekeeper has repeatedly shot, but how often he could not say, one of a pair of jays (garrulus glandarius), and has never failed shortly afterwards to find the survivor re-matched. mr. fox, mr. f. bond, and others have shot one of a pair of carrion-crows (corvus corone), but the nest was soon again tenanted by a pair. these birds are rather common; but the peregrine-falcon (falco peregrinus) is rare, yet mr. thompson states that in ireland "if either an old male or female be killed in the breeding-season (not an uncommon circumstance), another mate is found within a very few days, so that the eyries, notwithstanding such casualties, are sure to turn out their complement of young." mr. jenner weir has known the same thing with the peregrine-falcons at beachy head. the same observer informs me that three kestrels (falco tinnunculus), all males, were killed one after the other whilst attending the same nest; two of these were in mature plumage, but the third was in the plumage of the previous year. even with the rare golden eagle (aquila chrysaetos), mr. birkbeck was assured by a trustworthy gamekeeper in scotland, that if one is killed, another is soon found. so with the white owl (strix flammea), "the survivor readily found a mate, and the mischief went on." white of selborne, who gives the case of the owl, adds that he knew a man, who from believing that partridges when paired were disturbed by the males fighting, used to shoot them; and though he had widowed the same female several times, she always soon found a fresh partner. this same naturalist ordered the sparrows, which deprived the house-martins of their nests, to be shot; but the one which was left, "be it cock or hen, presently procured a mate, and so for several times following." i could add analogous cases relating to the chaffinch, nightingale, and redstart. with respect to the latter bird (phoenicura ruticilla), a writer expresses much surprise how the sitting female could so soon have given effectual notice that she was a widow, for the species was not common in the neighbourhood. mr. jenner weir has mentioned to me a nearly similar case; at blackheath he never sees or hears the note of the wild bullfinch, yet when one of his caged males has died, a wild one in the course of a few days has generally come and perched near the widowed female, whose call-note is not loud. i will give only one other fact, on the authority of this same observer; one of a pair of starlings (sturnus vulgaris) was shot in the morning; by noon a new mate was found; this was again shot, but before night the pair was complete; so that the disconsolate widow or widower was thrice consoled during the same day. mr. engleheart also informs me that he used during several years to shoot one of a pair of starlings which built in a hole in a house at blackheath; but the loss was always immediately repaired. during one season he kept an account, and found that he had shot thirty-five birds from the same nest; these consisted of both males and females, but in what proportion he could not say: nevertheless, after all this destruction, a brood was reared. ( . on the peregrine falcon, see thompson, 'nat. hist. of ireland: birds,' vol. i. , p. . on owls, sparrows, and partridges, see white, 'nat. hist. of selborne,' edit. of , vol. i. p. . on the phoenicura, see loudon's 'mag. of nat. hist.' vol. vii. , p. . brehm ('thierleben,' b. iv. s. ) also alludes to cases of birds thrice mated during the same day.) these facts well deserve attention. how is it that there are birds enough ready to replace immediately a lost mate of either sex? magpies, jays, carrion-crows, partridges, and some other birds, are always seen during the spring in pairs, and never by themselves; and these offer at first sight the most perplexing cases. but birds of the same sex, although of course not truly paired, sometimes live in pairs or in small parties, as is known to be the case with pigeons and partridges. birds also sometimes live in triplets, as has been observed with starlings, carrion-crows, parrots, and partridges. with partridges two females have been known to live with one male, and two males with one female. in all such cases it is probable that the union would be easily broken; and one of the three would readily pair with a widow or widower. the males of certain birds may occasionally be heard pouring forth their love-song long after the proper time, shewing that they have either lost or never gained a mate. death from accident or disease of one of a pair would leave the other free and single; and there is reason to believe that female birds during the breeding-season are especially liable to premature death. again, birds which have had their nests destroyed, or barren pairs, or retarded individuals, would easily be induced to desert their mates, and would probably be glad to take what share they could of the pleasures and duties of rearing offspring although not their own. ( . see white ('nat. hist. of selborne,' , vol. i. p. ) on the existence, early in the season, of small coveys of male partridges, of which fact i have heard other instances. see jenner, on the retarded state of the generative organs in certain birds, in 'phil. transact.' . in regard to birds living in triplets, i owe to mr. jenner weir the cases of the starlings and parrots, and to mr. fox, of partridges; on carrion-crows, see the 'field,' , p. . on various male birds singing after the proper period, see rev. l. jenyns, 'observations in natural history,' , p. .) such contingencies as these probably explain most of the foregoing cases. ( . the following case has been given ('the times,' aug. , ) by the rev. f.o. morris, on the authority of the hon. and rev. o.w. forester. "the gamekeeper here found a hawk's nest this year, with five young ones on it. he took four and killed them, but left one with its wings clipped as a decoy to destroy the old ones by. they were both shot next day, in the act of feeding the young one, and the keeper thought it was done with. the next day he came again and found two other charitable hawks, who had come with an adopted feeling to succour the orphan. these two he killed, and then left the nest. on returning afterwards he found two more charitable individuals on the same errand of mercy. one of these he killed; the other he also shot, but could not find. no more came on the like fruitless errand.") nevertheless, it is a strange fact that within the same district, during the height of the breeding-season, there should be so many males and females always ready to repair the loss of a mated bird. why do not such spare birds immediately pair together? have we not some reason to suspect, and the suspicion has occurred to mr. jenner weir, that as the courtship of birds appears to be in many cases prolonged and tedious, so it occasionally happens that certain males and females do not succeed, during the proper season, in exciting each other's love, and consequently do not pair? this suspicion will appear somewhat less improbable after we have seen what strong antipathies and preferences female birds occasionally evince towards particular males. mental qualities of birds, and their taste for the beautiful. before we further discuss the question whether the females select the more attractive males or accept the first whom they may encounter, it will be advisable briefly to consider the mental powers of birds. their reason is generally, and perhaps justly, ranked as low; yet some facts could be given leading to an opposite conclusion. ( . i am indebted to prof. newton for the following passage from mr. adam's 'travels of a naturalist,' , p. . speaking of japanese nut-hatches in confinement, he says: "instead of the more yielding fruit of the yew, which is the usual food of the nut-hatch of japan, at one time i substituted hard hazel-nuts. as the bird was unable to crack them, he placed them one by one in his water-glass, evidently with the notion that they would in time become softer--an interesting proof of intelligence on the part of these birds.") low powers of reasoning, however, are compatible, as we see with mankind, with strong affections, acute perception, and a taste for the beautiful; and it is with these latter qualities that we are here concerned. it has often been said that parrots become so deeply attached to each other that when one dies the other pines for a long time; but mr. jenner weir thinks that with most birds the strength of their affection has been much exaggerated. nevertheless when one of a pair in a state of nature has been shot, the survivor has been heard for days afterwards uttering a plaintive call; and mr. st. john gives various facts proving the attachment of mated birds. ( . 'a tour in sutherlandshire,' vol. i. , p. . dr. buller says ('birds of new zealand,' , p. ) that a male king lory was killed; and the female "fretted and moped, refused her food, and died of a broken heart.") mr. bennett relates ( . 'wanderings in new south wales,' vol. ii. , p. .) that in china after a drake of the beautiful mandarin teal had been stolen, the duck remained disconsolate, though sedulously courted by another mandarin drake, who displayed before her all his charms. after an interval of three weeks the stolen drake was recovered, and instantly the pair recognised each other with extreme joy. on the other hand, starlings, as we have seen, may be consoled thrice in the same day for the loss of their mates. pigeons have such excellent local memories, that they have been known to return to their former homes after an interval of nine months, yet, as i hear from mr. harrison weir, if a pair which naturally would remain mated for life be separated for a few weeks during the winter, and afterwards matched with other birds, the two when brought together again, rarely, if ever, recognise each other. birds sometimes exhibit benevolent feelings; they will feed the deserted young ones even of distinct species, but this perhaps ought to be considered as a mistaken instinct. they will feed, as shewn in an earlier part of this work, adult birds of their own species which have become blind. mr. buxton gives a curious account of a parrot which took care of a frost-bitten and crippled bird of a distinct species, cleansed her feathers, and defended her from the attacks of the other parrots which roamed freely about his garden. it is a still more curious fact that these birds apparently evince some sympathy for the pleasures of their fellows. when a pair of cockatoos made a nest in an acacia tree, "it was ridiculous to see the extravagant interest taken in the matter by the others of the same species." these parrots, also, evinced unbounded curiosity, and clearly had "the idea of property and possession." ( . 'acclimatization of parrots,' by c. buxton, m.p., 'annals and mag. of nat. hist.' nov. , p. .) they have good memories, for in the zoological gardens they have plainly recognised their former masters after an interval of some months. birds possess acute powers of observation. every mated bird, of course, recognises its fellow. audubon states that a certain number of mocking-thrushes (mimus polyglottus) remain all the year round in louisiana, whilst others migrate to the eastern states; these latter, on their return, are instantly recognised, and always attacked, by their southern brethren. birds under confinement distinguish different persons, as is proved by the strong and permanent antipathy or affection which they shew, without any apparent cause, towards certain individuals. i have heard of numerous instances with jays, partridges, canaries, and especially bullfinches. mr. hussey has described in how extraordinary a manner a tamed partridge recognised everybody: and its likes and dislikes were very strong. this bird seemed "fond of gay colours, and no new gown or cap could be put on without catching his attention." ( . the 'zoologist,' - , p. .) mr. hewitt has described the habits of some ducks (recently descended from wild birds), which, at the approach of a strange dog or cat, would rush headlong into the water, and exhaust themselves in their attempts to escape; but they knew mr. hewitt's own dogs and cats so well that they would lie down and bask in the sun close to them. they always moved away from a strange man, and so they would from the lady who attended them if she made any great change in her dress. audubon relates that he reared and tamed a wild turkey which always ran away from any strange dog; this bird escaped into the woods, and some days afterwards audubon saw, as he thought, a wild turkey, and made his dog chase it; but, to his astonishment, the bird did not run away, and the dog, when he came up, did not attack the bird, for they mutually recognised each other as old friends. ( . hewitt on wild ducks, 'journal of horticulture,' jan. , , p. . audubon on the wild turkey, 'ornithological biography,' vol. i. p. . on the mocking-thrush, ibid. vol. i. p. .) mr. jenner weir is convinced that birds pay particular attention to the colours of other birds, sometimes out of jealousy, and sometimes as a sign of kinship. thus he turned a reed-bunting (emberiza schoeniculus), which had acquired its black head-dress, into his aviary, and the new-comer was not noticed by any bird, except by a bullfinch, which is likewise black-headed. this bullfinch was a very quiet bird, and had never before quarrelled with any of its comrades, including another reed-bunting, which had not as yet become black-headed: but the reed-bunting with a black head was so unmercifully treated that it had to be removed. spiza cyanea, during the breeding-season, is of a bright blue colour; and though generally peaceable, it attacked s. ciris, which has only the head blue, and completely scalped the unfortunate bird. mr. weir was also obliged to turn out a robin, as it fiercely attacked all the birds in his aviary with any red in their plumage, but no other kinds; it actually killed a red-breasted crossbill, and nearly killed a goldfinch. on the other hand, he has observed that some birds, when first introduced, fly towards the species which resemble them most in colour, and settle by their sides. as male birds display their fine plumage and other ornaments with so much care before the females, it is obviously probable that these appreciate the beauty of their suitors. it is, however, difficult to obtain direct evidence of their capacity to appreciate beauty. when birds gaze at themselves in a looking-glass (of which many instances have been recorded) we cannot feel sure that it is not from jealousy of a supposed rival, though this is not the conclusion of some observers. in other cases it is difficult to distinguish between mere curiosity and admiration. it is perhaps the former feeling which, as stated by lord lilford ( . the 'ibis,' vol. ii. , p. .), attracts the ruff towards any bright object, so that, in the ionian islands, "it will dart down to a bright-coloured handkerchief, regardless of repeated shots." the common lark is drawn down from the sky, and is caught in large numbers, by a small mirror made to move and glitter in the sun. is it admiration or curiosity which leads the magpie, raven, and some other birds to steal and secrete bright objects, such as silver articles or jewels? mr. gould states that certain humming-birds decorate the outsides of their nests "with the utmost taste; they instinctively fasten thereon beautiful pieces of flat lichen, the larger pieces in the middle, and the smaller on the part attached to the branch. now and then a pretty feather is intertwined or fastened to the outer sides, the stem being always so placed that the feather stands out beyond the surface." the best evidence, however, of a taste for the beautiful is afforded by the three genera of australian bower-birds already mentioned. their bowers (fig. ), where the sexes congregate and play strange antics, are variously constructed, but what most concerns us is, that they are decorated by the several species in a different manner. the satin bower-bird collects gaily-coloured articles, such as the blue tail-feathers of parrakeets, bleached bones and shells, which it sticks between the twigs or arranges at the entrance. mr. gould found in one bower a neatly-worked stone tomahawk and a slip of blue cotton, evidently procured from a native encampment. these objects are continually re-arranged, and carried about by the birds whilst at play. the bower of the spotted bower-bird "is beautifully lined with tall grasses, so disposed that the heads nearly meet, and the decorations are very profuse." round stones are used to keep the grass-stems in their proper places, and to make divergent paths leading to the bower. the stones and shells are often brought from a great distance. the regent bird, as described by mr. ramsay, ornaments its short bower with bleached land-shells belonging to five or six species, and with "berries of various colours, blue, red, and black, which give it when fresh a very pretty appearance. besides these there were several newly-picked leaves and young shoots of a pinkish colour, the whole showing a decided taste for the beautiful." well may mr. gould say that "these highly decorated halls of assembly must be regarded as the most wonderful instances of bird-architecture yet discovered;" and the taste, as we see, of the several species certainly differs. ( . on the ornamented nests of humming-birds, gould, 'introduction to the trochilidae,' , p. . on the bower-birds, gould, 'handbook to the birds of australia,' , vol. i. pp. - . ramsay, in the 'ibis,' , p. .) preference for particular males by the females. having made these preliminary remarks on the discrimination and taste of birds, i will give all the facts known to me which bear on the preference shewn by the female for particular males. it is certain that distinct species of birds occasionally pair in a state of nature and produce hybrids. many instances could be given: thus macgillivray relates how a male blackbird and female thrush "fell in love with each other," and produced offspring. ( . 'history of brit. birds,' vol. ii. p. .) several years ago eighteen cases had been recorded of the occurrence in great britain of hybrids between the black grouse and pheasant ( . 'zoologist,' - , p. .); but most of these cases may perhaps be accounted for by solitary birds not finding one of their own species to pair with. with other birds, as mr. jenner weir has reason to believe, hybrids are sometimes the result of the casual intercourse of birds building in close proximity. but these remarks do not apply to the many recorded instances of tamed or domestic birds, belonging to distinct species, which have become absolutely fascinated with each other, although living with their own species. thus waterton ( . waterton, 'essays on nat. hist.' nd series, pp. and . for the following statements see on the wigeon, 'loudon's mag. of nat. hist.' vol. ix. p. ; l. lloyd, 'scandinavian adventures,' vol. i. , p. . dixon, 'ornamental and domestic poultry,' p. ; hewitt, in 'journal of horticulture,' jan. , , p. ; bechstein, 'stubenvögel,' , s. . mr. j. jenner weir has lately given me an analogous case with ducks of two species.) states that out of a flock of twenty-three canada geese, a female paired with a solitary bernicle gander, although so different in appearance and size; and they produced hybrid offspring. a male wigeon (mareca penelope), living with females of the same species, has been known to pair with a pintail duck, querquedula acuta. lloyd describes the remarkable attachment between a shield-drake (tadorna vulpanser) and a common duck. many additional instances could be given; and the rev. e.s. dixon remarks that "those who have kept many different species of geese together well know what unaccountable attachments they are frequently forming, and that they are quite as likely to pair and rear young with individuals of a race (species) apparently the most alien to themselves as with their own stock." the rev. w.d. fox informs me that he possessed at the same time a pair of chinese geese (anser cygnoides), and a common gander with three geese. the two lots kept quite separate, until the chinese gander seduced one of the common geese to live with him. moreover, of the young birds hatched from the eggs of the common geese, only four were pure, the other eighteen proving hybrids; so that the chinese gander seems to have had prepotent charms over the common gander. i will give only one other case; mr. hewitt states that a wild duck, reared in captivity, "after breeding a couple of seasons with her own mallard, at once shook him off on my placing a male pintail on the water. it was evidently a case of love at first sight, for she swam about the new-comer caressingly, though he appeared evidently alarmed and averse to her overtures of affection. from that hour she forgot her old partner. winter passed by, and the next spring the pintail seemed to have become a convert to her blandishments, for they nested and produced seven or eight young ones." what the charm may have been in these several cases, beyond mere novelty, we cannot even conjecture. colour, however, sometimes comes into play; for in order to raise hybrids from the siskin (fringilla spinus) and the canary, it is much the best plan, according to bechstein, to place birds of the same tint together. mr. jenner weir turned a female canary into his aviary, where there were male linnets, goldfinches, siskins, greenfinches, chaffinches, and other birds, in order to see which she would choose; but there never was any doubt, and the greenfinch carried the day. they paired and produced hybrid offspring. the fact of the female preferring to pair with one male rather than with another of the same species is not so likely to excite attention, as when this occurs, as we have just seen, between distinct species. the former cases can best be observed with domesticated or confined birds; but these are often pampered by high feeding, and sometimes have their instincts vitiated to an extreme degree. of this latter fact i could give sufficient proofs with pigeons, and especially with fowls, but they cannot be here related. vitiated instincts may also account for some of the hybrid unions above mentioned; but in many of these cases the birds were allowed to range freely over large ponds, and there is no reason to suppose that they were unnaturally stimulated by high feeding. with respect to birds in a state of nature, the first and most obvious supposition which will occur to every one is that the female at the proper season accepts the first male whom she may encounter; but she has at least the opportunity for exerting a choice, as she is almost invariably pursued by many males. audubon--and we must remember that he spent a long life in prowling about the forests of the united states and observing the birds--does not doubt that the female deliberately chooses her mate; thus, speaking of a woodpecker, he says the hen is followed by half-a-dozen gay suitors, who continue performing strange antics, "until a marked preference is shewn for one." the female of the red-winged starling (agelaeus phoeniceus) is likewise pursued by several males, "until, becoming fatigued, she alights, receives their addresses, and soon makes a choice." he describes also how several male night-jars repeatedly plunge through the air with astonishing rapidity, suddenly turning, and thus making a singular noise; "but no sooner has the female made her choice than the other males are driven away." with one of the vultures (cathartes aura) of the united states, parties of eight, ten, or more males and females assemble on fallen logs, "exhibiting the strongest desire to please mutually," and after many caresses, each male leads off his partner on the wing. audubon likewise carefully observed the wild flocks of canada geese (anser canadensis), and gives a graphic description of their love-antics; he says that the birds which had been previously mated "renewed their courtship as early as the month of january, while the others would be contending or coquetting for hours every day, until all seemed satisfied with the choice they had made, after which, although they remained together, any person could easily perceive that they were careful to keep in pairs. i have observed also that the older the birds the shorter were the preliminaries of their courtship. the bachelors and old maids whether in regret, or not caring to be disturbed by the bustle, quietly moved aside and lay down at some distance from the rest." ( . audubon, 'ornithological biography,' vol. i. pp. , ; vol. ii. pp. , ; vol. iii. p. .) many similar statements with respect to other birds could be cited from this same observer. turning now to domesticated and confined birds, i will commence by giving what little i have learnt respecting the courtship of fowls. i have received long letters on this subject from messrs. hewitt and tegetmeier, and almost an essay from the late mr. brent. it will be admitted by every one that these gentlemen, so well known from their published works, are careful and experienced observers. they do not believe that the females prefer certain males on account of the beauty of their plumage; but some allowance must be made for the artificial state under which these birds have long been kept. mr. tegetmeier is convinced that a gamecock, though disfigured by being dubbed and with his hackles trimmed, would be accepted as readily as a male retaining all his natural ornaments. mr. brent, however, admits that the beauty of the male probably aids in exciting the female; and her acquiescence is necessary. mr. hewitt is convinced that the union is by no means left to mere chance, for the female almost invariably prefers the most vigorous, defiant, and mettlesome male; hence it is almost useless, as he remarks, "to attempt true breeding if a game-cock in good health and condition runs the locality, for almost every hen on leaving the roosting-place will resort to the game-cock, even though that bird may not actually drive away the male of her own variety." under ordinary circumstances the males and females of the fowl seem to come to a mutual understanding by means of certain gestures, described to me by mr. brent. but hens will often avoid the officious attentions of young males. old hens, and hens of a pugnacious disposition, as the same writer informs me, dislike strange males, and will not yield until well beaten into compliance. ferguson, however, describes how a quarrelsome hen was subdued by the gentle courtship of a shanghai cock. ( . 'rare and prize poultry,' , p. .) there is reason to believe that pigeons of both sexes prefer pairing with birds of the same breed; and dovecot-pigeons dislike all the highly improved breeds. ( . 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. p. .) mr. harrison weir has lately heard from a trustworthy observer, who keeps blue pigeons, that these drive away all other coloured varieties, such as white, red, and yellow; and from another observer, that a female dun carrier could not, after repeated trials, be matched with a black male, but immediately paired with a dun. again, mr. tegetmeier had a female blue turbit that obstinately refused to pair with two males of the same breed, which were successively shut up with her for weeks; but on being let out she would have immediately accepted the first blue dragon that offered. as she was a valuable bird, she was then shut up for many weeks with a silver (i.e., very pale blue) male, and at last mated with him. nevertheless, as a general rule, colour appears to have little influence on the pairing of pigeons. mr. tegetmeier, at my request, stained some of his birds with magenta, but they were not much noticed by the others. female pigeons occasionally feel a strong antipathy towards certain males, without any assignable cause. thus mm. boitard and corbie, whose experience extended over forty-five years, state: "quand une femelle éprouve de l'antipathie pour un mâle avec lequel on veut l'accoupler, malgré tous les feux de l'amour, malgré l'alpiste et le chenevis dont on la nourrit pour augmenter son ardeur, malgré un emprisonnement de six mois et même d'un an, elle refuse constamment ses caresses; les avances empressées, les agaceries, les tournoiemens, les tendres roucoulemens, rien ne peut lui plaire ni l'émouvoir; gonflée, boudeuse, blottie dans un coin de sa prison, elle n'en sort que pour boire et manger, ou pour repousser avec une espèce de rage des caresses devenues trop pressantes." ( . boitard and corbie, 'les pigeons,' etc., , p. . prosper lucas ('traité de l'héréd. nat.' tom. ii. , p. ) has himself observed nearly similar facts with pigeons.) on the other hand, mr. harrison weir has himself observed, and has heard from several breeders, that a female pigeon will occasionally take a strong fancy for a particular male, and will desert her own mate for him. some females, according to another experienced observer, riedel ( . die taubenzucht, , s. .), are of a profligate disposition, and prefer almost any stranger to their own mate. some amorous males, called by our english fanciers "gay birds," are so successful in their gallantries, that, as mr. h. weir informs me, they must be shut up on account of the mischief which they cause. wild turkeys in the united states, according to audubon, "sometimes pay their addresses to the domesticated females, and are generally received by them with great pleasure." so that these females apparently prefer the wild to their own males. ( . 'ornithological biography,' vol. i. p. . see to the same effect, dr. bryant, in allen's 'mammals and birds of florida,' p. .) here is a more curious case. sir r. heron during many years kept an account of the habits of the peafowl, which he bred in large numbers. he states that "the hens have frequently great preference to a particular peafowl. they were all so fond of an old pied cock, that one year, when he was confined, though still in view, they were constantly assembled close to the trellice-walls of his prison, and would not suffer a japanned peacock to touch them. on his being let out in the autumn, the oldest of the hens instantly courted him and was successful in her courtship. the next year he was shut up in a stable, and then the hens all courted his rival." ( . 'proceedings, zoological society,' , p. . the japanned peacock is considered by mr. sclater as a distinct species, and has been named pavo nigripennis; but the evidence seems to me to show that it is only a variety.) this rival was a japanned or black-winged peacock, to our eyes a more beautiful bird than the common kind. lichtenstein, who was a good observer and had excellent opportunities of observation at the cape of good hope, assured rudolphi that the female widow-bird (chera progne) disowns the male when robbed of the long tail-feathers with which he is ornamented during the breeding-season. i presume that this observation must have been made on birds under confinement. ( . rudolphi, 'beiträge zur anthropologie,' , s. .) here is an analogous case; dr. jaeger ( . 'die darwin'sche theorie, und ihre stellung zu moral und religion,' , s. .), director of the zoological gardens of vienna, states that a male silver-pheasant, who had been triumphant over all other males and was the accepted lover of the females, had his ornamental plumage spoiled. he was then immediately superseded by a rival, who got the upper hand and afterwards led the flock. it is a remarkable fact, as shewing how important colour is in the courtship of birds, that mr. boardman, a well-known collector and observer of birds for many years in the northern united states, has never in his large experience seen an albino paired with another bird; yet he has had opportunities of observing many albinos belonging to several species. ( . this statement is given by mr. a. leith adams, in his 'field and forest rambles,' , p. , and accords with his own experience.) it can hardly be maintained that albinos in a state of nature are incapable of breeding, as they can be raised with the greatest facility under confinement. it appears, therefore, that we must attribute the fact that they do not pair to their rejection by their normally coloured comrades. female birds not only exert a choice, but in some few cases they court the male, or even fight together for his possession. sir r. heron states that with peafowl, the first advances are always made by the female; something of the same kind takes place, according to audubon, with the older females of the wild turkey. with the capercailzie, the females flit round the male whilst he is parading at one of the places of assemblage, and solicit his attention. ( . in regard to peafowl, see sir r. heron, 'proc. zoolog. soc.' , p. , and the rev. e.s. dixon, 'ornamental poultry,' , p. . for the turkey, audubon, ibid. p. . for the capercailzie, lloyd, 'game birds of sweden,' , p. .) we have seen that a tame wild-duck seduced an unwilling pintail drake after a long courtship. mr. bartlett believes that the lophophorus, like many other gallinaceous birds, is naturally polygamous, but two females cannot be placed in the same cage with a male, as they fight so much together. the following instance of rivalry is more surprising as it relates to bullfinches, which usually pair for life. mr. jenner weir introduced a dull-coloured and ugly female into his aviary, and she immediately attacked another mated female so unmercifully that the latter had to be separated. the new female did all the courtship, and was at last successful, for she paired with the male; but after a time she met with a just retribution, for, ceasing to be pugnacious, she was replaced by the old female, and the male then deserted his new and returned to his old love. in all ordinary cases the male is so eager that he will accept any female, and does not, as far as we can judge, prefer one to the other; but, as we shall hereafter see, exceptions to this rule apparently occur in some few groups. with domesticated birds, i have heard of only one case of males shewing any preference for certain females, namely, that of the domestic cock, who, according to the high authority of mr. hewitt, prefers the younger to the older hens. on the other hand, in effecting hybrid unions between the male pheasant and common hens, mr. hewitt is convinced that the pheasant invariably prefers the older birds. he does not appear to be in the least influenced by their colour; but "is most capricious in his attachments" ( . mr. hewitt, quoted in tegetmeier's 'poultry book,' , p. .): from some inexplicable cause he shews the most determined aversion to certain hens, which no care on the part of the breeder can overcome. mr. hewitt informs me that some hens are quite unattractive even to the males of their own species, so that they may be kept with several cocks during a whole season, and not one egg out of forty or fifty will prove fertile. on the other hand, with the long-tailed duck (harelda glacialis), "it has been remarked," says m. ekstrom, "that certain females are much more courted than the rest. frequently, indeed, one sees an individual surrounded by six or eight amorous males." whether this statement is credible, i know not; but the native sportsmen shoot these females in order to stuff them as decoys. ( . quoted in lloyd's 'game birds of sweden,' p. .) with respect to female birds feeling a preference for particular males, we must bear in mind that we can judge of choice being exerted only by analogy. if an inhabitant of another planet were to behold a number of young rustics at a fair courting a pretty girl, and quarrelling about her like birds at one of their places of assemblage, he would, by the eagerness of the wooers to please her and to display their finery, infer that she had the power of choice. now with birds the evidence stands thus: they have acute powers of observation, and they seem to have some taste for the beautiful both in colour and sound. it is certain that the females occasionally exhibit, from unknown causes, the strongest antipathies and preferences for particular males. when the sexes differ in colour or in other ornaments the males with rare exceptions are the more decorated, either permanently or temporarily during the breeding-season. they sedulously display their various ornaments, exert their voices, and perform strange antics in the presence of the females. even well-armed males, who, it might be thought, would altogether depend for success on the law of battle, are in most cases highly ornamented; and their ornaments have been acquired at the expense of some loss of power. in other cases ornaments have been acquired, at the cost of increased risk from birds and beasts of prey. with various species many individuals of both sexes congregate at the same spot, and their courtship is a prolonged affair. there is even reason to suspect that the males and females within the same district do not always succeed in pleasing each other and pairing. what then are we to conclude from these facts and considerations? does the male parade his charms with so much pomp and rivalry for no purpose? are we not justified in believing that the female exerts a choice, and that she receives the addresses of the male who pleases her most? it is not probable that she consciously deliberates; but she is most excited or attracted by the most beautiful, or melodious, or gallant males. nor need it be supposed that the female studies each stripe or spot of colour; that the peahen, for instance, admires each detail in the gorgeous train of the peacock--she is probably struck only by the general effect. nevertheless, after hearing how carefully the male argus pheasant displays his elegant primary wing-feathers, and erects his ocellated plumes in the right position for their full effect; or again, how the male goldfinch alternately displays his gold-bespangled wings, we ought not to feel too sure that the female does not attend to each detail of beauty. we can judge, as already remarked, of choice being exerted, only from analogy; and the mental powers of birds do not differ fundamentally from ours. from these various considerations we may conclude that the pairing of birds is not left to chance; but that those males, which are best able by their various charms to please or excite the female, are under ordinary circumstances accepted. if this be admitted, there is not much difficulty in understanding how male birds have gradually acquired their ornamental characters. all animals present individual differences, and as man can modify his domesticated birds by selecting the individuals which appear to him the most beautiful, so the habitual or even occasional preference by the female of the more attractive males would almost certainly lead to their modification; and such modifications might in the course of time be augmented to almost any extent, compatible with the existence of the species. variability of birds, and especially of their secondary sexual characters. variability and inheritance are the foundations for the work of selection. that domesticated birds have varied greatly, their variations being inherited, is certain. that birds in a state of nature have been modified into distinct races is now universally admitted. ( . according to dr. blasius ('ibis,' vol. ii. , p. ), there are indubitable species of birds which breed in europe, besides sixty forms, which are frequently regarded as distinct species. of the latter, blasius thinks that only ten are really doubtful, and that the other fifty ought to be united with their nearest allies; but this shews that there must be a considerable amount of variation with some of our european birds. it is also an unsettled point with naturalists, whether several north american birds ought to be ranked as specifically distinct from the corresponding european species. so again many north american forms which until lately were named as distinct species, are now considered to be local races.) variations may be divided into two classes; those which appear to our ignorance to arise spontaneously, and those which are directly related to the surrounding conditions, so that all or nearly all the individuals of the same species are similarly modified. cases of the latter kind have recently been observed with care by mr. j.a. allen ( . 'mammals and birds of east florida,' also an 'ornithological reconnaissance of kansas,' etc. notwithstanding the influence of climate on the colours of birds, it is difficult to account for the dull or dark tints of almost all the species inhabiting certain countries, for instance, the galapagos islands under the equator, the wide temperate plains of patagonia, and, as it appears, egypt (see mr. hartshorne in the 'american naturalist,' , p. ). these countries are open, and afford little shelter to birds; but it seems doubtful whether the absence of brightly coloured species can be explained on the principle of protection, for on the pampas, which are equally open, though covered by green grass, and where the birds would be equally exposed to danger, many brilliant and conspicuously coloured species are common. i have sometimes speculated whether the prevailing dull tints of the scenery in the above named countries may not have affected the appreciation of bright colours by the birds inhabiting them.), who shews that in the united states many species of birds gradually become more strongly coloured in proceeding southward, and more lightly coloured in proceeding westward to the arid plains of the interior. both sexes seem generally to be affected in a like manner, but sometimes one sex more than the other. this result is not incompatible with the belief that the colours of birds are mainly due to the accumulation of successive variations through sexual selection; for even after the sexes have been greatly differentiated, climate might produce an equal effect on both sexes, or a greater effect on one sex than on the other, owing to some constitutional difference. individual differences between the members of the same species are admitted by every one to occur under a state of nature. sudden and strongly marked variations are rare; it is also doubtful whether if beneficial they would often be preserved through selection and transmitted to succeeding generations. ( . 'origin of species' fifth edit. , p. . i had always perceived, that rare and strongly-marked deviations of structure, deserving to be called monstrosities, could seldom be preserved through natural selection, and that the preservation of even highly-beneficial variations would depend to a certain extent on chance. i had also fully appreciated the importance of mere individual differences, and this led me to insist so strongly on the importance of that unconscious form of selection by man, which follows from the preservation of the most valued individuals of each breed, without any intention on his part to modify the characters of the breed. but until i read an able article in the 'north british review' (march , p. , et seq.), which has been of more use to me than any other review, i did not see how great the chances were against the preservation of variations, whether slight or strongly pronounced, occurring only in single individuals.) nevertheless, it may be worth while to give the few cases which i have been able to collect, relating chiefly to colour,--simple albinism and melanism being excluded. mr. gould is well known to admit the existence of few varieties, for he esteems very slight differences as specific; yet he states ( . 'introduction to the trochlidae,' p. .) that near bogota certain humming-birds belonging to the genus cynanthus are divided into two or three races or varieties, which differ from each other in the colouring of the tail--"some having the whole of the feathers blue, while others have the eight central ones tipped with beautiful green." it does not appear that intermediate gradations have been observed in this or the following cases. in the males alone of one of the australian parrakeets "the thighs in some are scarlet, in others grass-green." in another parrakeet of the same country "some individuals have the band across the wing-coverts bright-yellow, while in others the same part is tinged with red." ( . gould, 'handbook to birds of australia,' vol. ii. pp. and .) in the united states some few of the males of the scarlet tanager (tanagra rubra) have "a beautiful transverse band of glowing red on the smaller wing-coverts" ( . audubon, 'ornithological biography,' , vol. iv. p. .); but this variation seems to be somewhat rare, so that its preservation through sexual selection would follow only under usually favourable circumstances. in bengal the honey buzzard (pernis cristata) has either a small rudimental crest on its head, or none at all: so slight a difference, however, would not have been worth notice, had not this same species possessed in southern india a well-marked occipital crest formed of several graduated feathers." ( . jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. i. p. ; and mr. blyth, in 'land and water,' , p. .) the following case is in some respects more interesting. a pied variety of the raven, with the head, breast, abdomen, and parts of the wings and tail-feathers white, is confined to the feroe islands. it is not very rare there, for graba saw during his visit from eight to ten living specimens. although the characters of this variety are not quite constant, yet it has been named by several distinguished ornithologists as a distinct species. the fact of the pied birds being pursued and persecuted with much clamour by the other ravens of the island was the chief cause which led brunnich to conclude that they were specifically distinct; but this is now known to be an error. ( . graba, 'tagebuch reise nach faro,' , ss. - . macgillivray, 'history of british birds,' vol. iii. p. , 'ibis,' vol. v. , p. .) this case seems analogous to that lately given of albino birds not pairing from being rejected by their comrades. in various parts of the northern seas a remarkable variety of the common guillemot (uria troile) is found; and in feroe, one out of every five birds, according to graba's estimation, presents this variation. it is characterised ( . graba, ibid. s. . macgillivray, ibid. vol. v. p. .) by a pure white ring round the eye, with a curved narrow white line, an inch and a half in length, extending back from the ring. this conspicuous character has caused the bird to be ranked by several ornithologists as a distinct species under the name of u. lacrymans, but it is now known to be merely a variety. it often pairs with the common kind, yet intermediate gradations have never been seen; nor is this surprising, for variations which appear suddenly, are often, as i have elsewhere shewn ( . 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. p. .), transmitted either unaltered or not at all. we thus see that two distinct forms of the same species may co-exist in the same district, and we cannot doubt that if the one had possessed any advantage over the other, it would soon have been multiplied to the exclusion of the latter. if, for instance, the male pied ravens, instead of being persecuted by their comrades, had been highly attractive (like the above pied peacock) to the black female ravens their numbers would have rapidly increased. and this would have been a case of sexual selection. with respect to the slight individual differences which are common, in a greater or less degree, to all the members of the same species, we have every reason to believe that they are by far the most important for the work of selection. secondary sexual characters are eminently liable to vary, both with animals in a state of nature and under domestication. ( . on these points see also 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. i. p. ; vol ii. pp. , .) there is also reason to believe, as we have seen in our eighth chapter, that variations are more apt to occur in the male than in the female sex. all these contingencies are highly favourable for sexual selection. whether characters thus acquired are transmitted to one sex or to both sexes, depends, as we shall see in the following chapter, on the form of inheritance which prevails. it is sometimes difficult to form an opinion whether certain slight differences between the sexes of birds are simply the result of variability with sexually-limited inheritance, without the aid of sexual selection, or whether they have been augmented through this latter process. i do not here refer to the many instances where the male displays splendid colours or other ornaments, of which the female partakes to a slight degree; for these are almost certainly due to characters primarily acquired by the male having been more or less transferred to the female. but what are we to conclude with respect to certain birds in which, for instance, the eyes differ slightly in colour in the two sexes? ( . see, for instance, on the irides of a podica and gallicrex in 'ibis,' vol. ii. , p. ; and vol. v. , p. .) in some cases the eyes differ conspicuously; thus with the storks of the genus xenorhynchus, those of the male are blackish-hazel, whilst those of the females are gamboge-yellow; with many hornbills (buceros), as i hear from mr. blyth ( . see also jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. i. pp. - .), the males have intense crimson eyes, and those of the females are white. in the buceros bicornis, the hind margin of the casque and a stripe on the crest of the beak are black in the male, but not so in the female. are we to suppose that these black marks and the crimson colour of the eyes have been preserved or augmented through sexual selection in the males? this is very doubtful; for mr. bartlett shewed me in the zoological gardens that the inside of the mouth of this buceros is black in the male and flesh-coloured in the female; and their external appearance or beauty would not be thus affected. i observed in chile ( . 'zoology of the voyage of h.m.s. "beagle,"' , p. .) that the iris in the condor, when about a year old, is dark-brown, but changes at maturity into yellowish-brown in the male, and into bright red in the female. the male has also a small, longitudinal, leaden-coloured, fleshy crest or comb. the comb of many gallinaceous birds is highly ornamental, and assumes vivid colours during the act of courtship; but what are we to think of the dull-coloured comb of the condor, which does not appear to us in the least ornamental? the same question may be asked in regard to various other characters, such as the knob on the base of the beak of the chinese goose (anser cygnoides), which is much larger in the male than in the female. no certain answer can be given to these questions; but we ought to be cautious in assuming that knobs and various fleshy appendages cannot be attractive to the female, when we remember that with savage races of man various hideous deformities--deep scars on the face with the flesh raised into protuberances, the septum of the nose pierced by sticks or bones, holes in the ears and lips stretched widely open--are all admired as ornamental. whether or not unimportant differences between the sexes, such as those just specified, have been preserved through sexual selection, these differences, as well as all others, must primarily depend on the laws of variation. on the principle of correlated development, the plumage often varies on different parts of the body, or over the whole body, in the same manner. we see this well illustrated in certain breeds of the fowl. in all the breeds the feathers on the neck and loins of the males are elongated, and are called hackles; now when both sexes acquire a top-knot, which is a new character in the genus, the feathers on the head of the male become hackle-shaped, evidently on the principle of correlation; whilst those on the head of the female are of the ordinary shape. the colour also of the hackles forming the top-knot of the male, is often correlated with that of the hackles on the neck and loins, as may be seen by comparing these feathers in the golden and silver-spangled polish, the houdans, and creve-coeur breeds. in some natural species we may observe exactly the same correlation in the colours of these same feathers, as in the males of the splendid gold and amherst pheasants. the structure of each individual feather generally causes any change in its colouring to be symmetrical; we see this in the various laced, spangled, and pencilled breeds of the fowl; and on the principle of correlation the feathers over the whole body are often coloured in the same manner. we are thus enabled without much trouble to rear breeds with their plumage marked almost as symmetrically as in natural species. in laced and spangled fowls the coloured margins of the feathers are abruptly defined; but in a mongrel raised by me from a black spanish cock glossed with green, and a white game-hen, all the feathers were greenish-black, excepting towards their extremities, which were yellowish-white; but between the white extremities and the black bases, there was on each feather a symmetrical, curved zone of dark-brown. in some instances the shaft of the feather determines the distribution of the tints; thus with the body-feathers of a mongrel from the same black spanish cock and a silver-spangled polish hen, the shaft, together with a narrow space on each side, was greenish-black, and this was surrounded by a regular zone of dark-brown, edged with brownish-white. in these cases we have feathers symmetrically shaded, like those which give so much elegance to the plumage of many natural species. i have also noticed a variety of the common pigeon with the wing-bars symmetrically zoned with three bright shades, instead of being simply black on a slaty-blue ground, as in the parent-species. in many groups of birds the plumage is differently coloured in the several species, yet certain spots, marks, or stripes are retained by all. analogous cases occur with the breeds of the pigeon, which usually retain the two wing-bars, though they may be coloured red, yellow, white, black, or blue, the rest of the plumage being of some wholly different tint. here is a more curious case, in which certain marks are retained, though coloured in a manner almost exactly the opposite of what is natural; the aboriginal pigeon has a blue tail, with the terminal halves of the outer webs of the two outer tail feathers white; now there is a sub-variety having a white instead of a blue tail, with precisely that part black which is white in the parent-species. ( . bechstein, 'naturgeschichte deutschlands,' b. iv. , s. , on a sub-variety of the monck pigeon.) formation and variability of the ocelli or eye-like spots on the plumage of birds. [fig. . cyllo leda, linn., from a drawing by mr. trimen, shewing the extreme range of variation in the ocelli. a. specimen, from mauritius, upper surface of fore-wing. a . specimen, from natal, ditto. b. specimen, from java, upper surface of hind-wing. b . specimen, from mauritius, ditto.] as no ornaments are more beautiful than the ocelli on the feathers of various birds, on the hairy coats of some mammals, on the scales of reptiles and fishes, on the skin of amphibians, on the wings of many lepidoptera and other insects, they deserve to be especially noticed. an ocellus consists of a spot within a ring of another colour, like the pupil within the iris, but the central spot is often surrounded by additional concentric zones. the ocelli on the tail-coverts of the peacock offer a familiar example, as well as those on the wings of the peacock-butterfly (vanessa). mr. trimen has given me a description of a s. african moth (gynanisa isis), allied to our emperor moth, in which a magnificent ocellus occupies nearly the whole surface of each hinder wing; it consists of a black centre, including a semi-transparent crescent-shaped mark, surrounded by successive, ochre-yellow, black, ochre-yellow, pink, white, pink, brown, and whitish zones. although we do not know the steps by which these wonderfully beautiful and complex ornaments have been developed, the process has probably been a simple one, at least with insects; for, as mr. trimen writes to me, "no characters of mere marking or coloration are so unstable in the lepidoptera as the ocelli, both in number and size." mr. wallace, who first called my attention to this subject, shewed me a series of specimens of our common meadow-brown butterfly (hipparchia janira) exhibiting numerous gradations from a simple minute black spot to an elegantly-shaded ocellus. in a s. african butterfly (cyllo leda, linn.), belonging to the same family, the ocelli are even still more variable. in some specimens (a, fig. ) large spaces on the upper surface of the wings are coloured black, and include irregular white marks; and from this state a complete gradation can be traced into a tolerably perfect ocellus (a ), and this results from the contraction of the irregular blotches of colour. in another series of specimens a gradation can be followed from excessively minute white dots, surrounded by a scarcely visible black line (b), into perfectly symmetrical and large ocelli (b ). ( . this woodcut has been engraved from a beautiful drawing, most kindly made for me by mr. trimen; see also his description of the wonderful amount of variation in the coloration and shape of the wings of this butterfly, in his 'rhopalocera africae australis,' p. .) in cases like these, the development of a perfect ocellus does not require a long course of variation and selection. with birds and many other animals, it seems to follow from the comparison of allied species that circular spots are often generated by the breaking up and contraction of stripes. in the tragopan pheasant faint white lines in the female represent the beautiful white spots in the male ( . jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. iii. p. .); and something of the same kind may be observed in the two sexes of the argus pheasant. however this may be, appearances strongly favour the belief that on the one hand, a dark spot is often formed by the colouring matter being drawn towards a central point from a surrounding zone, which latter is thus rendered lighter; and, on the other hand, that a white spot is often formed by the colour being driven away from a central point, so that it accumulates in a surrounding darker zone. in either case an ocellus is the result. the colouring matter seems to be a nearly constant quantity, but is redistributed, either centripetally or centrifugally. the feathers of the common guinea-fowl offer a good instance of white spots surrounded by darker zones; and wherever the white spots are large and stand near each other, the surrounding dark zones become confluent. in the same wing-feather of the argus pheasant dark spots may be seen surrounded by a pale zone, and white spots by a dark zone. thus the formation of an ocellus in its most elementary state appears to be a simple affair. by what further steps the more complex ocelli, which are surrounded by many successive zones of colour, have been generated, i will not pretend to say. but the zoned feathers of the mongrels from differently coloured fowls, and the extraordinary variability of the ocelli on many lepidoptera, lead us to conclude that their formation is not a complex process, but depends on some slight and graduated change in the nature of the adjoining tissues. gradation of secondary sexual characters. [fig. . feather of peacock, about two-thirds of natural size, drawn by mr. ford. the transparent zone is represented by the outermost white zone, confined to the upper end of the disc.] cases of gradation are important, as shewing us that highly complex ornaments may be acquired by small successive steps. in order to discover the actual steps by which the male of any existing bird has acquired his magnificent colours or other ornaments, we ought to behold the long line of his extinct progenitors; but this is obviously impossible. we may, however, generally gain a clue by comparing all the species of the same group, if it be a large one; for some of them will probably retain, at least partially, traces of their former characters. instead of entering on tedious details respecting various groups, in which striking instances of gradation could be given, it seems the best plan to take one or two strongly marked cases, for instance that of the peacock, in order to see if light can be thrown on the steps by which this bird has become so splendidly decorated. the peacock is chiefly remarkable from the extraordinary length of his tail-coverts; the tail itself not being much elongated. the barbs along nearly the whole length of these feathers stand separate or are decomposed; but this is the case with the feathers of many species, and with some varieties of the domestic fowl and pigeon. the barbs coalesce towards the extremity of the shaft forming the oval disc or ocellus, which is certainly one of the most beautiful objects in the world. it consists of an iridescent, intensely blue, indented centre, surrounded by a rich green zone, this by a broad coppery-brown zone, and this by five other narrow zones of slightly different iridescent shades. a trifling character in the disc deserves notice; the barbs, for a space along one of the concentric zones are more or less destitute of their barbules, so that a part of the disc is surrounded by an almost transparent zone, which gives it a highly finished aspect. but i have elsewhere described ( . 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. i. p. .) an exactly analogous variation in the hackles of a sub-variety of the game-cock, in which the tips, having a metallic lustre, "are separated from the lower part of the feather by a symmetrically shaped transparent zone, composed of the naked portions of the barbs." the lower margin or base of the dark-blue centre of the ocellus is deeply indented on the line of the shaft. the surrounding zones likewise shew traces, as may be seen in the drawing (fig. ), of indentations, or rather breaks. these indentations are common to the indian and javan peacocks (pavo cristatus and p. muticus); and they seem to deserve particular attention, as probably connected with the development of the ocellus; but for a long time i could not conjecture their meaning. if we admit the principle of gradual evolution, there must formerly have existed many species which presented every successive step between the wonderfully elongated tail-coverts of the peacock and the short tail-coverts of all ordinary birds; and again between the magnificent ocelli of the former, and the simpler ocelli or mere coloured spots on other birds; and so with all the other characters of the peacock. let us look to the allied gallinaceae for any still-existing gradations. the species and sub-species of polyplectron inhabit countries adjacent to the native land of the peacock; and they so far resemble this bird that they are sometimes called peacock-pheasants. i am also informed by mr. bartlett that they resemble the peacock in their voice and in some of their habits. during the spring the males, as previously described, strut about before the comparatively plain-coloured females, expanding and erecting their tail and wing-feathers, which are ornamented with numerous ocelli. i request the reader to turn back to the drawing (fig. ) of a polyplectron; in p. napoleonis the ocelli are confined to the tail, and the back is of a rich metallic blue; in which respects this species approaches the java peacock. p. hardwickii possesses a peculiar top-knot, which is also somewhat like that of the java peacock. in all the species the ocelli on the wings and tail are either circular or oval, and consist of a beautiful, iridescent, greenish-blue or greenish-purple disc, with a black border. this border in p. chinquis shades into brown, edged with cream colour, so that the ocellus is here surrounded with variously shaded, though not bright, concentric zones. the unusual length of the tail-coverts is another remarkable character in polyplectron; for in some of the species they are half, and in others two-thirds as long as the true tail-feathers. the tail-coverts are ocellated as in the peacock. thus the several species of polyplectron manifestly make a graduated approach to the peacock in the length of their tail-coverts, in the zoning of the ocelli, and in some other characters. [fig. . part of a tail-covert of polyplectron chinquis, with the two ocelli of natural size. fig. . part of a tail-covert of polyplectron malaccense, with the two ocelli, partially confluent, of natural size.] notwithstanding this approach, the first species of polyplectron which i examined almost made me give up the search; for i found not only that the true tail-feathers, which in the peacock are quite plain, were ornamented with ocelli, but that the ocelli on all the feathers differed fundamentally from those of the peacock, in there being two on the same feather (fig. ), one on each side of the shaft. hence i concluded that the early progenitors of the peacock could not have resembled a polyplectron. but on continuing my search, i observed that in some of the species the two ocelli stood very near each other; that in the tail-feathers of p. hardwickii they touched each other; and, finally, that on the tail-coverts of this same species as well as of p. malaccense (fig. ) they were actually confluent. as the central part alone is confluent, an indentation is left at both the upper and lower ends; and the surrounding coloured zones are likewise indented. a single ocellus is thus formed on each tail-covert, though still plainly betraying its double origin. these confluent ocelli differ from the single ocelli of the peacock in having an indentation at both ends, instead of only at the lower or basal end. the explanation, however, of this difference is not difficult; in some species of polyplectron the two oval ocelli on the same feather stand parallel to each other; in other species (as in p. chinquis) they converge towards one end; now the partial confluence of two convergent ocelli would manifestly leave a much deeper indentation at the divergent than at the convergent end. it is also manifest that if the convergence were strongly pronounced and the confluence complete, the indentation at the convergent end would tend to disappear. the tail-feathers in both species of the peacock are entirely destitute of ocelli, and this apparently is related to their being covered up and concealed by the long tail-coverts. in this respect they differ remarkably from the tail-feathers of polyplectron, which in most of the species are ornamented with larger ocelli than those on the tail-coverts. hence i was led carefully to examine the tail-feathers of the several species, in order to discover whether their ocelli shewed any tendency to disappear; and to my great satisfaction, this appeared to be so. the central tail-feathers of p. napoleonis have the two ocelli on each side of the shaft perfectly developed; but the inner ocellus becomes less and less conspicuous on the more exterior tail-feathers, until a mere shadow or rudiment is left on the inner side of the outermost feather. again, in p. malaccense, the ocelli on the tail-coverts are, as we have seen, confluent; and these feathers are of unusual length, being two-thirds of the length of the tail-feathers, so that in both these respects they approach the tail-coverts of the peacock. now in p. malaccense, the two central tail-feathers alone are ornamented, each with two brightly-coloured ocelli, the inner ocellus having completely disappeared from all the other tail-feathers. consequently the tail-coverts and tail-feathers of this species of polyplectron make a near approach in structure and ornamentation to the corresponding feathers of the peacock. as far, then, as gradation throws light on the steps by which the magnificent train of the peacock has been acquired, hardly anything more is needed. if we picture to ourselves a progenitor of the peacock in an almost exactly intermediate condition between the existing peacock, with his enormously elongated tail-coverts, ornamented with single ocelli, and an ordinary gallinaceous bird with short tail-coverts, merely spotted with some colour, we shall see a bird allied to polyplectron--that is, with tail-coverts, capable of erection and expansion, ornamented with two partially confluent ocelli, and long enough almost to conceal the tail-feathers, the latter having already partially lost their ocelli. the indentation of the central disc and of the surrounding zones of the ocellus, in both species of peacock, speaks plainly in favour of this view, and is otherwise inexplicable. the males of polyplectron are no doubt beautiful birds, but their beauty, when viewed from a little distance, cannot be compared with that of the peacock. many female progenitors of the peacock must, during a long line of descent, have appreciated this superiority; for they have unconsciously, by the continued preference for the most beautiful males, rendered the peacock the most splendid of living birds. argus pheasant. another excellent case for investigation is offered by the ocelli on the wing-feathers of the argus pheasant, which are shaded in so wonderful a manner as to resemble balls lying loose within sockets, and consequently differ from ordinary ocelli. no one, i presume, will attribute the shading, which has excited the admiration of many experienced artists, to chance--to the fortuitous concourse of atoms of colouring matter. that these ornaments should have been formed through the selection of many successive variations, not one of which was originally intended to produce the ball-and-socket effect, seems as incredible as that one of raphael's madonnas should have been formed by the selection of chance daubs of paint made by a long succession of young artists, not one of whom intended at first to draw the human figure. in order to discover how the ocelli have been developed, we cannot look to a long line of progenitors, nor to many closely-allied forms, for such do not now exist. but fortunately the several feathers on the wing suffice to give us a clue to the problem, and they prove to demonstration that a gradation is at least possible from a mere spot to a finished ball-and-socket ocellus. [fig. . part of secondary wing-feather of argus pheasant, shewing two perfect ocelli, a and b. a, b, c, d, etc., are dark stripes running obliquely down, each to an ocellus. [much of the web on both sides, especially to the left of the shaft, has been cut off.] fig. . portion of one of the secondary wing-feathers near to the body, shewing the so-called elliptic ornaments. the right-hand figure is given merely as a diagram for the sake of the letters of reference. a, b, c, d, etc. rows of spots running down to and forming the elliptic ornaments. b. lowest spot or mark in row b. c. the next succeeding spot or mark in the same row. d. apparently a broken prolongation of the spot c. in the same row b.] the wing-feathers, bearing the ocelli, are covered with dark stripes (fig. ) or with rows of dark spots (fig. ), each stripe or row of spots running obliquely down the outer side of the shaft to one of the ocelli. the spots are generally elongated in a line transverse to the row in which they stand. they often become confluent either in the line of the row--and then they form a longitudinal stripe--or transversely, that is, with the spots in the adjoining rows, and then they form transverse stripes. a spot sometimes breaks up into smaller spots, which still stand in their proper places. it will be convenient first to describe a perfect ball-and-socket ocellus. this consists of an intensely black circular ring, surrounding a space shaded so as exactly to resemble a ball. the figure here given has been admirably drawn by mr. ford and well engraved, but a woodcut cannot exhibit the exquisite shading of the original. the ring is almost always slightly broken or interrupted (fig. ) at a point in the upper half, a little to the right of and above the white shade on the enclosed ball; it is also sometimes broken towards the base on the right hand. these little breaks have an important meaning. the ring is always much thickened, with the edges ill-defined towards the left-hand upper corner, the feather being held erect, in the position in which it is here drawn. beneath this thickened part there is on the surface of the ball an oblique almost pure-white mark, which shades off downwards into a pale-leaden hue, and this into yellowish and brown tints, which insensibly become darker and darker towards the lower part of the ball. it is this shading which gives so admirably the effect of light shining on a convex surface. if one of the balls be examined, it will be seen that the lower part is of a brown tint and is indistinctly separated by a curved oblique line from the upper part, which is yellower and more leaden; this curved oblique line runs at right angles to the longer axis of the white patch of light, and indeed of all the shading; but this difference in colour, which cannot of course be shewn in the woodcut, does not in the least interfere with the perfect shading of the ball. it should be particularly observed that each ocellus stands in obvious connection either with a dark stripe, or with a longitudinal row of dark spots, for both occur indifferently on the same feather. thus in fig. stripe a runs to ocellus a; b runs to ocellus b; stripe c is broken in the upper part, and runs down to the next succeeding ocellus, not represented in the woodcut; d to the next lower one, and so with the stripes e and f. lastly, the several ocelli are separated from each other by a pale surface bearing irregular black marks. [fig. . basal part of the secondary wing feather, nearest to the body.] i will next describe the other extreme of the series, namely, the first trace of an ocellus. the short secondary wing-feather (fig. ), nearest to the body, is marked like the other feathers, with oblique, longitudinal, rather irregular, rows of very dark spots. the basal spot, or that nearest the shaft, in the five lower rows (excluding the lowest one) is a little larger than the other spots of the same row, and a little more elongated in a transverse direction. it differs also from the other spots by being bordered on its upper side with some dull fulvous shading. but this spot is not in any way more remarkable than those on the plumage of many birds, and might easily be overlooked. the next higher spot does not differ at all from the upper ones in the same row. the larger basal spots occupy exactly the same relative position on these feathers as do the perfect ocelli on the longer wing-feathers. by looking to the next two or three succeeding wing-feathers, an absolutely insensible gradation can be traced from one of the last-described basal spots, together with the next higher one in the same row, to a curious ornament, which cannot be called an ocellus, and which i will name, from the want of a better term, an "elliptic ornament." these are shewn in the accompanying figure (fig. ). we here see several oblique rows, a, b, c, d, etc. (see the lettered diagram on the right hand), of dark spots of the usual character. each row of spots runs down to and is connected with one of the elliptic ornaments, in exactly the same manner as each stripe in fig. runs down to and is connected with one of the ball-and-socket ocelli. looking to any one row, for instance, b, in fig. , the lowest mark (b) is thicker and considerably longer than the upper spots, and has its left extremity pointed and curved upwards. this black mark is abruptly bordered on its upper side by a rather broad space of richly shaded tints, beginning with a narrow brown zone, which passes into orange, and this into a pale leaden tint, with the end towards the shaft much paler. these shaded tints together fill up the whole inner space of the elliptic ornament. the mark (b) corresponds in every respect with the basal shaded spot of the simple feather described in the last paragraph (fig. ), but is more highly developed and more brightly coloured. above and to the right of this spot (b, fig. ), with its bright shading, there is a long narrow, black mark (c), belonging to the same row, and which is arched a little downwards so as to face (b). this mark is sometimes broken into two portions. it is also narrowly edged on the lower side with a fulvous tint. to the left of and above c, in the same oblique direction, but always more or less distinct from it, there is another black mark (d). this mark is generally sub-triangular and irregular in shape, but in the one lettered in the diagram it is unusually narrow, elongated, and regular. it apparently consists of a lateral and broken prolongation of the mark (c), together with its confluence with a broken and prolonged part of the next spot above; but i do not feel sure of this. these three marks, b, c, and d, with the intervening bright shades, form together the so-called elliptic ornament. these ornaments placed parallel to the shaft, manifestly correspond in position with the ball-and-socket ocelli. their extremely elegant appearance cannot be appreciated in the drawing, as the orange and leaden tints, contrasting so well with the black marks, cannot be shewn. [fig. . an ocellus in an intermediate condition between the elliptic ornament and the perfect ball-and-socket ocellus.] between one of the elliptic ornaments and a perfect ball-and-socket ocellus, the gradation is so perfect that it is scarcely possible to decide when the latter term ought to be used. the passage from the one into the other is effected by the elongation and greater curvature in opposite directions of the lower black mark (b, fig. ), and more especially of the upper one (c), together with the contraction of the elongated sub-triangular or narrow mark (d), so that at last these three marks become confluent, forming an irregular elliptic ring. this ring is gradually rendered more and more circular and regular, increasing at the same time in diameter. i have here given a drawing (fig. ) of the natural size of an ocellus not as yet quite perfect. the lower part of the black ring is much more curved than is the lower mark in the elliptic ornament (b, fig. ). the upper part of the ring consists of two or three separate portions; and there is only a trace of the thickening of the portion which forms the black mark above the white shade. this white shade itself is not as yet much concentrated; and beneath it the surface is brighter coloured than in a perfect ball-and-socket ocellus. even in the most perfect ocelli traces of the junction of three or four elongated black marks, by which the ring has been formed, may often be detected. the irregular sub-triangular or narrow mark (d, fig. ), manifestly forms, by its contraction and equalisation, the thickened portion of the ring above the white shade on a perfect ball-and-socket ocellus. the lower part of the ring is invariably a little thicker than the other parts (fig. ), and this follows from the lower black mark of the elliptic ornament (b, fig. ) having originally been thicker than the upper mark (c). every step can be followed in the process of confluence and modification; and the black ring which surrounds the ball of the ocellus is unquestionably formed by the union and modification of the three black marks, b, c, d, of the elliptic ornament. the irregular zigzag black marks between the successive ocelli (fig. ) are plainly due to the breaking up of the somewhat more regular but similar marks between the elliptic ornaments. the successive steps in the shading of the ball-and-socket ocelli can be followed out with equal clearness. the brown, orange, and pale-leadened narrow zones, which border the lower black mark of the elliptic ornament, can be seen gradually to become more and more softened and shaded into each other, with the upper lighter part towards the left-hand corner rendered still lighter, so as to become almost white, and at the same time more contracted. but even in the most perfect ball-and-socket ocelli a slight difference in the tints, though not in the shading, between the upper and lower parts of the ball can be perceived, as before noticed; and the line of separation is oblique, in the same direction as the bright coloured shades of the elliptic ornaments. thus almost every minute detail in the shape and colouring of the ball-and-socket ocelli can be shewn to follow from gradual changes in the elliptic ornaments; and the development of the latter can be traced by equally small steps from the union of two almost simple spots, the lower one (fig. ) having some dull fulvous shading on its upper side. [fig. . portion near summit of one of the secondary wing-feathers, bearing perfect ball-and-socket ocelli. a. ornamented upper part. b. uppermost, imperfect ball-and-socket ocellus. (the shading above the white mark on the summit of the ocellus is here a little too dark.) c. perfect ocellus.] the extremities of the longer secondary feathers which bear the perfect ball-and-socket ocelli, are peculiarly ornamented (fig. ). the oblique longitudinal stripes suddenly cease upwards and become confused; and above this limit the whole upper end of the feather (a) is covered with white dots, surrounded by little black rings, standing on a dark ground. the oblique stripe belonging to the uppermost ocellus (b) is barely represented by a very short irregular black mark with the usual, curved, transverse base. as this stripe is thus abruptly cut off, we can perhaps understand from what has gone before, how it is that the upper thickened part of the ring is here absent; for, as before stated, this thickened part apparently stands in some relation with a broken prolongation from the next higher spot. from the absence of the upper and thickened part of the ring, the uppermost ocellus, though perfect in all other respects, appears as if its top had been obliquely sliced off. it would, i think, perplex any one, who believes that the plumage of the argus pheasant was created as we now see it, to account for the imperfect condition of the uppermost ocellus. i should add that on the secondary wing-feather farthest from the body all the ocelli are smaller and less perfect than on the other feathers, and have the upper part of the ring deficient, as in the case just mentioned. the imperfection here seems to be connected with the fact that the spots on this feather shew less tendency than usual to become confluent into stripes; they are, on the contrary, often broken up into smaller spots, so that two or three rows run down to the same ocellus. there still remains another very curious point, first observed by mr. t.w. wood ( . the 'field,' may , .), which deserves attention. in a photograph, given me by mr. ward, of a specimen mounted as in the act of display, it may be seen that on the feathers which are held perpendicularly, the white marks on the ocelli, representing light reflected from a convex surface, are at the upper or further end, that is, are directed upwards; and the bird whilst displaying himself on the ground would naturally be illuminated from above. but here comes the curious point; the outer feathers are held almost horizontally, and their ocelli ought likewise to appear as if illuminated from above, and consequently the white marks ought to be placed on the upper sides of the ocelli; and, wonderful as is the fact, they are thus placed! hence the ocelli on the several feathers, though occupying very different positions with respect to the light, all appear as if illuminated from above, just as an artist would have shaded them. nevertheless they are not illuminated from strictly the same point as they ought to be; for the white marks on the ocelli of the feathers which are held almost horizontally, are placed rather too much towards the further end; that is, they are not sufficiently lateral. we have, however, no right to expect absolute perfection in a part rendered ornamental through sexual selection, any more than we have in a part modified through natural selection for real use; for instance, in that wondrous organ the human eye. and we know what helmholtz, the highest authority in europe on the subject, has said about the human eye; that if an optician had sold him an instrument so carelessly made, he would have thought himself fully justified in returning it. ( . 'popular lectures on scientific subjects,' eng. trans. , pp. , , , .) we have now seen that a perfect series can be followed, from simple spots to the wonderful ball-and-socket ornaments. mr. gould, who kindly gave me some of these feathers, fully agrees with me in the completeness of the gradation. it is obvious that the stages in development exhibited by the feathers on the same bird do not at all necessarily shew us the steps passed through by the extinct progenitors of the species; but they probably give us the clue to the actual steps, and they at least prove to demonstration that a gradation is possible. bearing in mind how carefully the male argus pheasant displays his plumes before the female, as well as the many facts rendering it probable that female birds prefer the more attractive males, no one who admits the agency of sexual selection in any case will deny that a simple dark spot with some fulvous shading might be converted, through the approximation and modification of two adjoining spots, together with some slight increase of colour, into one of the so-called elliptic ornaments. these latter ornaments have been shewn to many persons, and all have admitted that they are beautiful, some thinking them even more so than the ball-and-socket ocelli. as the secondary plumes became lengthened through sexual selection, and as the elliptic ornaments increased in diameter, their colours apparently became less bright; and then the ornamentation of the plumes had to be gained by an improvement in the pattern and shading; and this process was carried on until the wonderful ball-and-socket ocelli were finally developed. thus we can understand--and in no other way as it seems to me--the present condition and origin of the ornaments on the wing-feathers of the argus pheasant. from the light afforded by the principle of gradation--from what we know of the laws of variation--from the changes which have taken place in many of our domesticated birds--and, lastly, from the character (as we shall hereafter see more clearly) of the immature plumage of young birds--we can sometimes indicate, with a certain amount of confidence, the probable steps by which the males have acquired their brilliant plumage and various ornaments; yet in many cases we are involved in complete darkness. mr. gould several years ago pointed out to me a humming-bird, the urosticte benjamini, remarkable for the curious differences between the sexes. the male, besides a splendid gorget, has greenish-black tail-feathers, with the four central ones tipped with white; in the female, as with most of the allied species, the three outer tail-feathers on each side are tipped with white, so that the male has the four central, whilst the female has the six exterior feathers ornamented with white tips. what makes the case more curious is that, although the colouring of the tail differs remarkably in both sexes of many kinds of humming-birds, mr. gould does not know a single species, besides the urosticte, in which the male has the four central feathers tipped with white. the duke of argyll, in commenting on this case ( . 'the reign of law,' , p. .), passes over sexual selection, and asks, "what explanation does the law of natural selection give of such specific varieties as these?" he answers "none whatever"; and i quite agree with him. but can this be so confidently said of sexual selection? seeing in how many ways the tail-feathers of humming-birds differ, why should not the four central feathers have varied in this one species alone, so as to have acquired white tips? the variations may have been gradual, or somewhat abrupt as in the case recently given of the humming-birds near bogota, in which certain individuals alone have the "central tail-feathers tipped with beautiful green." in the female of the urosticte i noticed extremely minute or rudimental white tips to the two outer of the four central black tail-feathers; so that here we have an indication of change of some kind in the plumage of this species. if we grant the possibility of the central tail-feathers of the male varying in whiteness, there is nothing strange in such variations having been sexually selected. the white tips, together with the small white ear-tufts, certainly add, as the duke of argyll admits, to the beauty of the male; and whiteness is apparently appreciated by other birds, as may be inferred from such cases as the snow-white male of the bell-bird. the statement made by sir r. heron should not be forgotten, namely, that his peahens, when debarred from access to the pied peacock, would not unite with any other male, and during that season produced no offspring. nor is it strange that variations in the tail-feathers of the urosticte should have been specially selected for the sake of ornament, for the next succeeding genus in the family takes its name of metallura from the splendour of these feathers. we have, moreover, good evidence that humming-birds take especial pains in displaying their tail-feathers; mr. belt ( . 'the naturalist in nicaragua,' , p. .), after describing the beauty of the florisuga mellivora, says, "i have seen the female sitting on a branch, and two males displaying their charms in front of her. one would shoot up like a rocket, then suddenly expanding the snow-white tail, like an inverted parachute, slowly descend in front of her, turning round gradually to shew off back and front...the expanded white tail covered more space than all the rest of the bird, and was evidently the grand feature in the performance. whilst one male was descending, the other would shoot up and come slowly down expanded. the entertainment would end in a fight between the two performers; but whether the most beautiful or the most pugnacious was the accepted suitor, i know not." mr. gould, after describing the peculiar plumage of the urosticte, adds, "that ornament and variety is the sole object, i have myself but little doubt." ( . 'introduction to the trochilidae,' , p. .) if this be admitted, we can perceive that the males which during former times were decked in the most elegant and novel manner would have gained an advantage, not in the ordinary struggle for life, but in rivalry with other males, and would have left a larger number of offspring to inherit their newly-acquired beauty. chapter xv. birds--continued. discussion as to why the males alone of some species, and both sexes of others, are brightly coloured--on sexually-limited inheritance, as applied to various structures and to brightly-coloured plumage--nidification in relation to colour--loss of nuptial plumage during the winter. we have in this chapter to consider why the females of many birds have not acquired the same ornaments as the male; and why, on the other hand, both sexes of many other birds are equally, or almost equally, ornamented? in the following chapter we shall consider the few cases in which the female is more conspicuously coloured than the male. in my 'origin of species' ( . fourth edition, , p. .) i briefly suggested that the long tail of the peacock would be inconvenient and the conspicuous black colour of the male capercailzie dangerous, to the female during the period of incubation: and consequently that the transmission of these characters from the male to the female offspring had been checked through natural selection. i still think that this may have occurred in some few instances: but after mature reflection on all the facts which i have been able to collect, i am now inclined to believe that when the sexes differ, the successive variations have generally been from the first limited in their transmission to the same sex in which they first arose. since my remarks appeared, the subject of sexual coloration has been discussed in some very interesting papers by mr. wallace ( . 'westminster review,' july . 'journal of travel,' vol. i. , p. .), who believes that in almost all cases the successive variations tended at first to be transmitted equally to both sexes; but that the female was saved, through natural selection, from acquiring the conspicuous colours of the male, owing to the danger which she would thus have incurred during incubation. this view necessitates a tedious discussion on a difficult point, namely, whether the transmission of a character, which is at first inherited by both sexes can be subsequently limited in its transmission to one sex alone by means of natural selection. we must bear in mind, as shewn in the preliminary chapter on sexual selection, that characters which are limited in their development to one sex are always latent in the other. an imaginary illustration will best aid us in seeing the difficulty of the case; we may suppose that a fancier wished to make a breed of pigeons, in which the males alone should be coloured of a pale blue, whilst the females retained their former slaty tint. as with pigeons characters of all kinds are usually transmitted to both sexes equally, the fancier would have to try to convert this latter form of inheritance into sexually-limited transmission. all that he could do would be to persevere in selecting every male pigeon which was in the least degree of a paler blue; and the natural result of this process, if steadily carried on for a long time, and if the pale variations were strongly inherited or often recurred, would be to make his whole stock of a lighter blue. but our fancier would be compelled to match, generation after generation, his pale blue males with slaty females, for he wishes to keep the latter of this colour. the result would generally be the production either of a mongrel piebald lot, or more probably the speedy and complete loss of the pale-blue tint; for the primordial slaty colour would be transmitted with prepotent force. supposing, however, that some pale-blue males and slaty females were produced during each successive generation, and were always crossed together, then the slaty females would have, if i may use the expression, much blue blood in their veins, for their fathers, grandfathers, etc., will all have been blue birds. under these circumstances it is conceivable (though i know of no distinct facts rendering it probable) that the slaty females might acquire so strong a latent tendency to pale-blueness, that they would not destroy this colour in their male offspring, their female offspring still inheriting the slaty tint. if so, the desired end of making a breed with the two sexes permanently different in colour might be gained. the extreme importance, or rather necessity in the above case of the desired character, namely, pale-blueness, being present though in a latent state in the female, so that the male offspring should not be deteriorated, will be best appreciated as follows: the male of soemmerring's pheasant has a tail thirty-seven inches in length, whilst that of the female is only eight inches; the tail of the male common pheasant is about twenty inches, and that of the female twelve inches long. now if the female soemmerring pheasant with her short tail were crossed with the male common pheasant, there can be no doubt that the male hybrid offspring would have a much longer tail than that of the pure offspring of the common pheasant. on the other hand, if the female common pheasant, with a tail much longer than that of the female soemmerring pheasant, were crossed with the male of the latter, the male hybrid offspring would have a much shorter tail than that of the pure offspring of soemmerring's pheasant. ( . temminck says that the tail of the female phasianus soemmerringii is only six inches long, 'planches coloriees,' vol. v. , pp. and : the measurements above given were made for me by mr. sclater. for the common pheasant, see macgillivray, 'history of british birds,' vol. i. pp. - .) our fancier, in order to make his new breed with the males of a pale-blue tint, and the females unchanged, would have to continue selecting the males during many generations; and each stage of paleness would have to be fixed in the males, and rendered latent in the females. the task would be an extremely difficult one, and has never been tried, but might possibly be successfully carried out. the chief obstacle would be the early and complete loss of the pale-blue tint, from the necessity of reiterated crosses with the slaty female, the latter not having at first any latent tendency to produce pale-blue offspring. on the other hand, if one or two males were to vary ever so slightly in paleness, and the variations were from the first limited in their transmission to the male sex, the task of making a new breed of the desired kind would be easy, for such males would simply have to be selected and matched with ordinary females. an analogous case has actually occurred, for there are breeds of the pigeon in belgium ( . dr. chapuis, 'le pigeon voyageur belge,' , p. .) in which the males alone are marked with black striae. so again mr. tegetmeier has recently shewn ( . the 'field,' sept. .) that dragons not rarely produce silver-coloured birds, which are almost always hens; and he himself has bred ten such females. it is on the other hand a very unusual event when a silver male is produced; so that nothing would be easier, if desired, than to make a breed of dragons with blue males and silver females. this tendency is indeed so strong that when mr. tegetmeier at last got a silver male and matched him with one of the silver females, he expected to get a breed with both sexes thus coloured; he was however disappointed, for the young male reverted to the blue colour of his grandfather, the young female alone being silver. no doubt with patience this tendency to reversion in the males, reared from an occasional silver male matched with a silver hen, might be eliminated, and then both sexes would be coloured alike; and this very process has been followed with success by mr. esquilant in the case of silver turbits. with fowls, variations of colour, limited in their transmission to the male sex, habitually occur. when this form of inheritance prevails, it might well happen that some of the successive variations would be transferred to the female, who would then slightly resemble the male, as actually occurs in some breeds. or again, the greater number, but not all, of the successive steps might be transferred to both sexes, and the female would then closely resemble the male. there can hardly be a doubt that this is the cause of the male pouter pigeon having a somewhat larger crop, and of the male carrier pigeon having somewhat larger wattles, than their respective females; for fanciers have not selected one sex more than the other, and have had no wish that these characters should be more strongly displayed in the male than in the female, yet this is the case with both breeds. the same process would have to be followed, and the same difficulties encountered, if it were desired to make a breed with the females alone of some new colour. lastly, our fancier might wish to make a breed with the two sexes differing from each other, and both from the parent species. here the difficulty would be extreme, unless the successive variations were from the first sexually limited on both sides, and then there would be no difficulty. we see this with the fowl; thus the two sexes of the pencilled hamburghs differ greatly from each other, and from the two sexes of the aboriginal gallus bankiva; and both are now kept constant to their standard of excellence by continued selection, which would be impossible unless the distinctive characters of both were limited in their transmission. the spanish fowl offers a more curious case; the male has an immense comb, but some of the successive variations, by the accumulation of which it was acquired, appear to have been transferred to the female; for she has a comb many times larger than that of the females of the parent species. but the comb of the female differs in one respect from that of the male, for it is apt to lop over; and within a recent period it has been ordered by the fancy that this should always be the case, and success has quickly followed the order. now the lopping of the comb must be sexually limited in its transmission, otherwise it would prevent the comb of the male from being perfectly upright, which would be abhorrent to every fancier. on the other hand, the uprightness of the comb in the male must likewise be a sexually-limited character, otherwise it would prevent the comb of the female from lopping over. from the foregoing illustrations, we see that even with almost unlimited time at command, it would be an extremely difficult and complex, perhaps an impossible process, to change one form of transmission into the other through selection. therefore, without distinct evidence in each case, i am unwilling to admit that this has been effected in natural species. on the other hand, by means of successive variations, which were from the first sexually limited in their transmission, there would not be the least difficulty in rendering a male bird widely different in colour or in any other character from the female; the latter being left unaltered, or slightly altered, or specially modified for the sake of protection. as bright colours are of service to the males in their rivalry with other males, such colours would be selected whether or not they were transmitted exclusively to the same sex. consequently the females might be expected often to partake of the brightness of the males to a greater or less degree; and this occurs with a host of species. if all the successive variations were transmitted equally to both sexes, the females would be indistinguishable from the males; and this likewise occurs with many birds. if, however, dull colours were of high importance for the safety of the female during incubation, as with many ground birds, the females which varied in brightness, or which received through inheritance from the males any marked accession of brightness, would sooner or later be destroyed. but the tendency in the males to continue for an indefinite period transmitting to their female offspring their own brightness, would have to be eliminated by a change in the form of inheritance; and this, as shewn by our previous illustration, would be extremely difficult. the more probable result of the long-continued destruction of the more brightly-coloured females, supposing the equal form of transmission to prevail, would be the lessening or annihilation of the bright colours of the males, owing to their continual crossing with the duller females. it would be tedious to follow out all the other possible results; but i may remind the reader that if sexually-limited variations in brightness occurred in the females, even if they were not in the least injurious to them and consequently were not eliminated, yet they would not be favoured or selected, for the male usually accepts any female, and does not select the more attractive individuals; consequently these variations would be liable to be lost, and would have little influence on the character of the race; and this will aid in accounting for the females being commonly duller-coloured than the males. in the eighth chapter instances were given, to which many might here be added, of variations occurring at various ages, and inherited at the corresponding age. it was also shewn that variations which occur late in life are commonly transmitted to the same sex in which they first appear; whilst variations occurring early in life are apt to be transmitted to both sexes; not that all the cases of sexually-limited transmission can thus be accounted for. it was further shewn that if a male bird varied by becoming brighter whilst young, such variations would be of no service until the age for reproduction had arrived, and there was competition between rival males. but in the case of birds living on the ground and commonly in need of the protection of dull colours, bright tints would be far more dangerous to the young and inexperienced than to the adult males. consequently the males which varied in brightness whilst young would suffer much destruction and be eliminated through natural selection; on the other hand, the males which varied in this manner when nearly mature, notwithstanding that they were exposed to some additional danger, might survive, and from being favoured through sexual selection, would procreate their kind. as a relation often exists between the period of variation and the form of transmission, if the bright-coloured young males were destroyed and the mature ones were successful in their courtship, the males alone would acquire brilliant colours and would transmit them exclusively to their male offspring. but i by no means wish to maintain that the influence of age on the form of transmission, is the sole cause of the great difference in brilliancy between the sexes of many birds. when the sexes of birds differ in colour, it is interesting to determine whether the males alone have been modified by sexual selection, the females having been left unchanged, or only partially and indirectly thus changed; or whether the females have been specially modified through natural selection for the sake of protection. i will therefore discuss this question at some length, even more fully than its intrinsic importance deserves; for various curious collateral points may thus be conveniently considered. before we enter on the subject of colour, more especially in reference to mr. wallace's conclusions, it may be useful to discuss some other sexual differences under a similar point of view. a breed of fowls formerly existed in germany ( . bechstein, 'naturgeschichte deutschlands,' , b. iii. .) in which the hens were furnished with spurs; they were good layers, but they so greatly disturbed their nests with their spurs that they could not be allowed to sit on their own eggs. hence at one time it appeared to me probable that with the females of the wild gallinaceae the development of spurs had been checked through natural selection, from the injury thus caused to their nests. this seemed all the more probable, as wing-spurs, which would not be injurious during incubation, are often as well-developed in the female as in the male; though in not a few cases they are rather larger in the male. when the male is furnished with leg-spurs the female almost always exhibits rudiments of them,--the rudiment sometimes consisting of a mere scale, as in gallus. hence it might be argued that the females had aboriginally been furnished with well-developed spurs, but that these had subsequently been lost through disuse or natural selection. but if this view be admitted, it would have to be extended to innumerable other cases; and it implies that the female progenitors of the existing spur-bearing species were once encumbered with an injurious appendage. in some few genera and species, as in galloperdix, acomus, and the javan peacock (pavo muticus), the females, as well as the males, possess well-developed leg-spurs. are we to infer from this fact that they construct a different sort of nest from that made by their nearest allies, and not liable to be injured by their spurs; so that the spurs have not been removed? or are we to suppose that the females of these several species especially require spurs for their defence? it is a more probable conclusion that both the presence and absence of spurs in the females result from different laws of inheritance having prevailed, independently of natural selection. with the many females in which spurs appear as rudiments, we may conclude that some few of the successive variations, through which they were developed in the males, occurred very early in life, and were consequently transferred to the females. in the other and much rarer cases, in which the females possess fully developed spurs, we may conclude that all the successive variations were transferred to them; and that they gradually acquired and inherited the habit of not disturbing their nests. the vocal organs and the feathers variously modified for producing sound, as well as the proper instincts for using them, often differ in the two sexes, but are sometimes the same in both. can such differences be accounted for by the males having acquired these organs and instincts, whilst the females have been saved from inheriting them, on account of the danger to which they would have been exposed by attracting the attention of birds or beasts of prey? this does not seem to me probable, when we think of the multitude of birds which with impunity gladden the country with their voices during the spring. ( . daines barrington, however, thought it probable ('philosophical transactions,' , p. ) that few female birds sing, because the talent would have been dangerous to them during incubation. he adds, that a similar view may possibly account for the inferiority of the female to the male in plumage.) it is a safer conclusion that, as vocal and instrumental organs are of special service only to the males during their courtship, these organs were developed through sexual selection and their constant use in that sex alone--the successive variations and the effects of use having been from the first more or less limited in transmission to the male offspring. many analogous cases could be adduced; those for instance of the plumes on the head being generally longer in the male than in the female, sometimes of equal length in both sexes, and occasionally absent in the female,--these several cases occurring in the same group of birds. it would be difficult to account for such a difference between the sexes by the female having been benefited by possessing a slightly shorter crest than the male, and its consequent diminution or complete suppression through natural selection. but i will take a more favourable case, namely the length of the tail. the long train of the peacock would have been not only inconvenient but dangerous to the peahen during the period of incubation and whilst accompanying her young. hence there is not the least a priori improbability in the development of her tail having been checked through natural selection. but the females of various pheasants, which apparently are exposed on their open nests to as much danger as the peahen, have tails of considerable length. the females as well as the males of the menura superba have long tails, and they build a domed nest, which is a great anomaly in so large a bird. naturalists have wondered how the female menura could manage her tail during incubation; but it is now known ( . mr. ramsay, in 'proc. zoolog. soc.' , p. .) that she "enters the nest head first, and then turns round with her tail sometimes over her back, but more often bent round by her side. thus in time the tail becomes quite askew, and is a tolerable guide to the length of time the bird has been sitting." both sexes of an australian kingfisher (tanysiptera sylvia) have the middle tail-feathers greatly lengthened, and the female makes her nest in a hole; and as i am informed by mr. r.b. sharpe these feathers become much crumpled during incubation. in these two latter cases the great length of the tail-feathers must be in some degree inconvenient to the female; and as in both species the tail-feathers of the female are somewhat shorter than those of the male, it might be argued that their full development had been prevented through natural selection. but if the development of the tail of the peahen had been checked only when it became inconveniently or dangerously great, she would have retained a much longer tail than she actually possesses; for her tail is not nearly so long, relatively to the size of her body, as that of many female pheasants, nor longer than that of the female turkey. it must also be borne in mind that, in accordance with this view, as soon as the tail of the peahen became dangerously long, and its development was consequently checked, she would have continually reacted on her male progeny, and thus have prevented the peacock from acquiring his present magnificent train. we may therefore infer that the length of the tail in the peacock and its shortness in the peahen are the result of the requisite variations in the male having been from the first transmitted to the male offspring alone. we are led to a nearly similar conclusion with respect to the length of the tail in the various species of pheasants. in the eared pheasant (crossoptilon auritum) the tail is of equal length in both sexes, namely sixteen or seventeen inches; in the common pheasant it is about twenty inches long in the male and twelve in the female; in soemmerring's pheasant, thirty-seven inches in the male and only eight in the female; and lastly in reeve's pheasant it is sometimes actually seventy-two inches long in the male and sixteen in the female. thus in the several species, the tail of the female differs much in length, irrespectively of that of the male; and this can be accounted for, as it seems to me, with much more probability, by the laws of inheritance,--that is by the successive variations having been from the first more or less closely limited in their transmission to the male sex than by the agency of natural selection, resulting from the length of tail being more or less injurious to the females of these several allied species. we may now consider mr. wallace's arguments in regard to the sexual coloration of birds. he believes that the bright tints originally acquired through sexual selection by the males would in all, or almost all cases, have been transmitted to the females, unless the transference had been checked through natural selection. i may here remind the reader that various facts opposed to this view have already been given under reptiles, amphibians, fishes and lepidoptera. mr. wallace rests his belief chiefly, but not exclusively, as we shall see in the next chapter, on the following statement ( . 'journal of travel,' edited by a. murray, vol. i. , p. .), that when both sexes are coloured in a very conspicuous manner, the nest is of such a nature as to conceal the sitting bird; but when there is a marked contrast of colour between the sexes, the male being gay and the female dull-coloured, the nest is open and exposes the sitting bird to view. this coincidence, as far as it goes, certainly seems to favour the belief that the females which sit on open nests have been specially modified for the sake of protection; but we shall presently see that there is another and more probable explanation, namely, that conspicuous females have acquired the instinct of building domed nests oftener than dull-coloured birds. mr. wallace admits that there are, as might have been expected, some exceptions to his two rules, but it is a question whether the exceptions are not so numerous as seriously to invalidate them. there is in the first place much truth in the duke of argyll's remark ( . 'journal of travel,' edited by a. murray, vol. i. , p. .) that a large domed nest is more conspicuous to an enemy, especially to all tree-haunting carnivorous animals, than a smaller open nest. nor must we forget that with many birds which build open nests, the male sits on the eggs and aids the female in feeding the young: this is the case, for instance, with pyranga aestiva ( . audubon, 'ornithological biography,' vol. i. p. .), one of the most splendid birds in the united states, the male being vermilion, and the female light brownish-green. now if brilliant colours had been extremely dangerous to birds whilst sitting on their open nests, the males in these cases would have suffered greatly. it might, however, be of such paramount importance to the male to be brilliantly coloured, in order to beat his rivals, that this may have more than compensated some additional danger. mr. wallace admits that with the king-crows (dicrurus), orioles, and pittidae, the females are conspicuously coloured, yet build open nests; but he urges that the birds of the first group are highly pugnacious and could defend themselves; that those of the second group take extreme care in concealing their open nests, but this does not invariably hold good ( . jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. ii. p. . gould's 'handbook of the birds of australia,' vol. i. p. .); and that with the birds of the third group the females are brightly coloured chiefly on the under surface. besides these cases, pigeons which are sometimes brightly, and almost always conspicuously coloured, and which are notoriously liable to the attacks of birds of prey, offer a serious exception to the rule, for they almost always build open and exposed nests. in another large family, that of the humming-birds, all the species build open nests, yet with some of the most gorgeous species the sexes are alike; and in the majority, the females, though less brilliant than the males, are brightly coloured. nor can it be maintained that all female humming-birds, which are brightly coloured, escape detection by their tints being green, for some display on their upper surfaces red, blue, and other colours. ( . for instance, the female eupetomena macroura has the head and tail dark blue with reddish loins; the female lampornis porphyrurus is blackish-green on the upper surface, with the lores and sides of the throat crimson; the female eulampis jugularis has the top of the head and back green, but the loins and the tail are crimson. many other instances of highly conspicuous females could be given. see mr. gould's magnificent work on this family.) in regard to birds which build in holes or construct domed nests, other advantages, as mr. wallace remarks, besides concealment are gained, such as shelter from the rain, greater warmth, and in hot countries protection from the sun ( . mr. salvin noticed in guatemala ('ibis,' , p. ) that humming-birds were much more unwilling to leave their nests during very hot weather, when the sun was shining brightly, as if their eggs would be thus injured, than during cool, cloudy, or rainy weather.); so that it is no valid objection to his view that many birds having both sexes obscurely coloured build concealed nests. ( . i may specify, as instances of dull-coloured birds building concealed nests, the species belonging to eight australian genera described in gould's 'handbook of the birds of australia,' vol. i. pp. , , , , , , , .) the female horn-bill (buceros), for instance, of india and africa is protected during incubation with extraordinary care, for she plasters up with her own excrement the orifice of the hole in which she sits on her eggs, leaving only a small orifice through which the male feeds her; she is thus kept a close prisoner during the whole period of incubation ( . mr. c. horne, 'proc. zoolog. soc.' . p. .); yet female horn-bills are not more conspicuously coloured than many other birds of equal size which build open nests. it is a more serious objection to mr. wallace's view, as is admitted by him, that in some few groups the males are brilliantly coloured and the females obscure, and yet the latter hatch their eggs in domed nests. this is the case with the grallinae of australia, the superb warblers (maluridae) of the same country, the sun-birds (nectariniae), and with several of the australian honey-suckers or meliphagidae. ( . on the nidification and colours of these latter species, see gould's 'handbook to the birds of australia,' vol. i. pp. , .) if we look to the birds of england we shall see that there is no close and general relation between the colours of the female and the nature of the nest which is constructed. about forty of our british birds (excluding those of large size which could defend themselves) build in holes in banks, rocks, or trees, or construct domed nests. if we take the colours of the female goldfinch, bullfinch, or blackbird, as a standard of the degree of conspicuousness, which is not highly dangerous to the sitting female, then out of the above forty birds the females of only twelve can be considered as conspicuous to a dangerous degree, the remaining twenty-eight being inconspicuous. ( . i have consulted, on this subject, macgillivray's 'british birds,' and though doubts may be entertained in some cases in regard to the degree of concealment of the nest, and to the degree of conspicuousness of the female, yet the following birds, which all lay their eggs in holes or in domed nests, can hardly be considered, by the above standard, as conspicuous: passer, species; sturnus, of which the female is considerably less brilliant than the male; cinclus; motallica boarula (?); erithacus (?); fruticola, sp.; saxicola; ruticilla, sp.; sylvia, sp.; parus, sp.; mecistura; anorthura; certhia; sitta; yunx; muscicapa, sp.; hirundo, sp.; and cypselus. the females of the following birds may be considered as conspicuous according to the same standard, viz., pastor, motacilla alba, parus major and p. caeruleus, upupa, picus, sp., coracias, alcedo, and merops.) nor is there any close relation within the same genus between a well-pronounced difference in colour between the sexes, and the nature of the nest constructed. thus the male house sparrow (passer domesticus) differs much from the female, the male tree-sparrow (p. montanus) hardly at all, and yet both build well-concealed nests. the two sexes of the common fly-catcher (muscicapa grisola) can hardly be distinguished, whilst the sexes of the pied fly-catcher (m. luctuosa) differ considerably, and both species build in holes or conceal their nests. the female blackbird (turdus merula) differs much, the female ring-ouzel (t. torquatus) differs less, and the female common thrush (t. musicus) hardly at all from their respective males; yet all build open nests. on the other hand, the not very distantly-allied water-ouzel (cinclus aquaticus) builds a domed nest, and the sexes differ about as much as in the ring-ouzel. the black and red grouse (tetrao tetrix and t. scoticus) build open nests in equally well-concealed spots, but in the one species the sexes differ greatly, and in the other very little. notwithstanding the foregoing objections, i cannot doubt, after reading mr. wallace's excellent essay, that looking to the birds of the world, a large majority of the species in which the females are conspicuously coloured (and in this case the males with rare exceptions are equally conspicuous), build concealed nests for the sake of protection. mr. wallace enumerates ( . 'journal of travel,' edited by a. murray, vol. i. p. .) a long series of groups in which this rule holds good; but it will suffice here to give, as instances, the more familiar groups of kingfishers, toucans, trogons, puff-birds (capitonidae), plantain-eaters (musophagae, woodpeckers, and parrots. mr. wallace believes that in these groups, as the males gradually acquired through sexual selection their brilliant colours, these were transferred to the females and were not eliminated by natural selection, owing to the protection which they already enjoyed from their manner of nidification. according to this view, their present manner of nesting was acquired before their present colours. but it seems to me much more probable that in most cases, as the females were gradually rendered more and more brilliant from partaking of the colours of the male, they were gradually led to change their instincts (supposing that they originally built open nests), and to seek protection by building domed or concealed nests. no one who studies, for instance, audubon's account of the differences in the nests of the same species in the northern and southern united states ( . see many statements in the 'ornithological biography.' see also some curious observations on the nests of italian birds by eugenio bettoni, in the 'atti della società italiana,' vol. xi. , p. .), will feel any great difficulty in admitting that birds, either by a change (in the strict sense of the word) of their habits, or through the natural selection of so-called spontaneous variations of instinct, might readily be led to modify their manner of nesting. this way of viewing the relation, as far as it holds good, between the bright colours of female birds and their manner of nesting, receives some support from certain cases occurring in the sahara desert. here, as in most other deserts, various birds, and many other animals, have had their colours adapted in a wonderful manner to the tints of the surrounding surface. nevertheless there are, as i am informed by the rev. mr. tristram, some curious exceptions to the rule; thus the male of the monticola cyanea is conspicuous from his bright blue colour, and the female almost equally conspicuous from her mottled brown and white plumage; both sexes of two species of dromolaea are of a lustrous black; so that these three species are far from receiving protection from their colours, yet they are able to survive, for they have acquired the habit of taking refuge from danger in holes or crevices in the rocks. with respect to the above groups in which the females are conspicuously coloured and build concealed nests, it is not necessary to suppose that each separate species had its nidifying instinct specially modified; but only that the early progenitors of each group were gradually led to build domed or concealed nests, and afterwards transmitted this instinct, together with their bright colours, to their modified descendants. as far as it can be trusted, the conclusion is interesting, that sexual selection together with equal or nearly equal inheritance by both sexes, have indirectly determined the manner of nidification of whole groups of birds. according to mr. wallace, even in the groups in which the females, from being protected in domed nests during incubation, have not had their bright colours eliminated through natural selection, the males often differ in a slight, and occasionally in a considerable degree from the females. this is a significant fact, for such differences in colour must be accounted for by some of the variations in the males having been from the first limited in transmission to the same sex; as it can hardly be maintained that these differences, especially when very slight, serve as a protection to the female. thus all the species in the splendid group of the trogons build in holes; and mr. gould gives figures ( . see his monograph of the trogonidae, st edition.) of both sexes of twenty-five species, in all of which, with one partial exception, the sexes differ sometimes slightly, sometimes conspicuously, in colour,--the males being always finer than the females, though the latter are likewise beautiful. all the species of kingfishers build in holes, and with most of the species the sexes are equally brilliant, and thus far mr. wallace's rule holds good; but in some of the australian species the colours of the females are rather less vivid than those of the male; and in one splendidly-coloured species, the sexes differ so much that they were at first thought to be specifically distinct. ( . namely, cyanalcyon, gould's 'handbook to the birds of australia,' vol. i. p. ; see, also, pp. , .) mr. r.b. sharpe, who has especially studied this group, has shewn me some american species (ceryle) in which the breast of the male is belted with black. again, in carcineutes, the difference between the sexes is conspicuous: in the male the upper surface is dull-blue banded with black, the lower surface being partly fawn-coloured, and there is much red about the head; in the female the upper surface is reddish-brown banded with black, and the lower surface white with black markings. it is an interesting fact, as shewing how the same peculiar style of sexual colouring often characterises allied forms, that in three species of dacelo the male differs from the female only in the tail being dull-blue banded with black, whilst that of the female is brown with blackish bars; so that here the tail differs in colour in the two sexes in exactly the same manner as the whole upper surface in the two sexes of carcineutes. with parrots, which likewise build in holes, we find analogous cases: in most of the species, both sexes are brilliantly coloured and indistinguishable, but in not a few species the males are coloured rather more vividly than the females, or even very differently from them. thus, besides other strongly-marked differences, the whole under surface of the male king lory (aprosmictus scapulatus) is scarlet, whilst the throat and chest of the female is green tinged with red: in the euphema splendida there is a similar difference, the face and wing coverts moreover of the female being of a paler blue than in the male. ( . every gradation of difference between the sexes may be followed in the parrots of australia. see gould's 'handbook,' etc., vol. ii. pp. - .) in the family of the tits (parinae), which build concealed nests, the female of our common blue tomtit (parus caeruleus), is "much less brightly coloured" than the male: and in the magnificent sultan yellow tit of india the difference is greater. ( . macgillivray's 'british birds,' vol. ii. p. . jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. ii. p. .) again, in the great group of the woodpeckers ( . all the following facts are taken from m. malherbe's magnificent 'monographie des picidees,' .), the sexes are generally nearly alike, but in the megapicus validus all those parts of the head, neck, and breast, which are crimson in the male are pale brown in the female. as in several woodpeckers the head of the male is bright crimson, whilst that of the female is plain, it occurred to me that this colour might possibly make the female dangerously conspicuous, whenever she put her head out of the hole containing her nest, and consequently that this colour, in accordance with mr. wallace's belief, had been eliminated. this view is strengthened by what malherbe states with respect to indopicus carlotta; namely, that the young females, like the young males, have some crimson about their heads, but that this colour disappears in the adult female, whilst it is intensified in the adult male. nevertheless the following considerations render this view extremely doubtful: the male takes a fair share in incubation ( . audubon's 'ornithological biography,' vol. ii. p. ; see also the 'ibis,' vol. i. p. .), and would be thus almost equally exposed to danger; both sexes of many species have their heads of an equally bright crimson; in other species the difference between the sexes in the amount of scarlet is so slight that it can hardly make any appreciable difference in the danger incurred; and lastly, the colouring of the head in the two sexes often differs slightly in other ways. the cases, as yet given, of slight and graduated differences in colour between the males and females in the groups, in which as a general rule the sexes resemble each other, all relate to species which build domed or concealed nests. but similar gradations may likewise be observed in groups in which the sexes as a general rule resemble each other, but which build open nests. as i have before instanced the australian parrots, so i may here instance, without giving any details, the australian pigeons. ( . gould's 'handbook to the birds of australia,' vol. ii. pp. - .) it deserves especial notice that in all these cases the slight differences in plumage between the sexes are of the same general nature as the occasionally greater differences. a good illustration of this fact has already been afforded by those kingfishers in which either the tail alone or the whole upper surface of the plumage differs in the same manner in the two sexes. similar cases may be observed with parrots and pigeons. the differences in colour between the sexes of the same species are, also, of the same general nature as the differences in colour between the distinct species of the same group. for when in a group in which the sexes are usually alike, the male differs considerably from the female, he is not coloured in a quite new style. hence we may infer that within the same group the special colours of both sexes when they are alike, and the colours of the male, when he differs slightly or even considerably from the female, have been in most cases determined by the same general cause; this being sexual selection. it is not probable, as has already been remarked, that differences in colour between the sexes, when very slight, can be of service to the female as a protection. assuming, however, that they are of service, they might be thought to be cases of transition; but we have no reason to believe that many species at any one time are undergoing change. therefore we can hardly admit that the numerous females which differ very slightly in colour from their males are now all commencing to become obscure for the sake of protection. even if we consider somewhat more marked sexual differences, is it probable, for instance, that the head of the female chaffinch,--the crimson on the breast of the female bullfinch,--the green of the female greenfinch,--the crest of the female golden-crested wren, have all been rendered less bright by the slow process of selection for the sake of protection? i cannot think so; and still less with the slight differences between the sexes of those birds which build concealed nests. on the other hand, the differences in colour between the sexes, whether great or small, may to a large extent be explained on the principle of the successive variations, acquired by the males through sexual selection, having been from the first more or less limited in their transmission to the females. that the degree of limitation should differ in different species of the same group will not surprise any one who has studied the laws of inheritance, for they are so complex that they appear to us in our ignorance to be capricious in their action. ( . see remarks to this effect in 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. chap. xii.) as far as i can discover there are few large groups of birds in which all the species have both sexes alike and brilliantly coloured, but i hear from mr. sclater, that this appears to be the case with the musophagae or plantain-eaters. nor do i believe that any large group exists in which the sexes of all the species are widely dissimilar in colour: mr. wallace informs me that the chatterers of s. america (cotingidae) offer one of the best instances; but with some of the species, in which the male has a splendid red breast, the female exhibits some red on her breast; and the females of other species shew traces of the green and other colours of the males. nevertheless we have a near approach to close sexual similarity or dissimilarity throughout several groups: and this, from what has just been said of the fluctuating nature of inheritance, is a somewhat surprising circumstance. but that the same laws should largely prevail with allied animals is not surprising. the domestic fowl has produced a great number of breeds and sub-breeds, and in these the sexes generally differ in plumage; so that it has been noticed as an unusual circumstance when in certain sub-breeds they resemble each other. on the other hand, the domestic pigeon has likewise produced a vast number of distinct breeds and sub-breeds, and in these, with rare exceptions, the two sexes are identically alike. therefore if other species of gallus and columba were domesticated and varied, it would not be rash to predict that similar rules of sexual similarity and dissimilarity, depending on the form of transmission, would hold good in both cases. in like manner the same form of transmission has generally prevailed under nature throughout the same groups, although marked exceptions to this rule occur. thus within the same family or even genus, the sexes may be identically alike, or very different in colour. instances have already been given in the same genus, as with sparrows, fly-catchers, thrushes and grouse. in the family of pheasants the sexes of almost all the species are wonderfully dissimilar, but are quite alike in the eared pheasant or crossoptilon auritum. in two species of chloephaga, a genus of geese, the male cannot be distinguished from the females, except by size; whilst in two others, the sexes are so unlike that they might easily be mistaken for distinct species. ( . the 'ibis,' vol. vi. , p. .) the laws of inheritance can alone account for the following cases, in which the female acquires, late in life, certain characters proper to the male, and ultimately comes to resemble him more or less completely. here protection can hardly have come into play. mr. blyth informs me that the females of oriolus melanocephalus and of some allied species, when sufficiently mature to breed, differ considerably in plumage from the adult males; but after the second or third moults they differ only in their beaks having a slight greenish tinge. in the dwarf bitterns (ardetta), according to the same authority, "the male acquires his final livery at the first moult, the female not before the third or fourth moult; in the meanwhile she presents an intermediate garb, which is ultimately exchanged for the same livery as that of the male." so again the female falco peregrinus acquires her blue plumage more slowly than the male. mr. swinhoe states that with one of the drongo shrikes (dicrurus macrocercus) the male, whilst almost a nestling, moults his soft brown plumage and becomes of a uniform glossy greenish-black; but the female retains for a long time the white striae and spots on the axillary feathers; and does not completely assume the uniform black colour of the male for three years. the same excellent observer remarks that in the spring of the second year the female spoon-bill (platalea) of china resembles the male of the first year, and that apparently it is not until the third spring that she acquires the same adult plumage as that possessed by the male at a much earlier age. the female bombycilla carolinensis differs very little from the male, but the appendages, which like beads of red sealing-wax ornament the wing-feathers ( . when the male courts the female, these ornaments are vibrated, and "are shewn off to great advantage," on the outstretched wings: a. leith adams, 'field and forest rambles,' , p. .), are not developed in her so early in life as in the male. in the male of an indian parrakeet (palaeornis javanicus) the upper mandible is coral-red from his earliest youth, but in the female, as mr. blyth has observed with caged and wild birds, it is at first black and does not become red until the bird is at least a year old, at which age the sexes resemble each other in all respects. both sexes of the wild turkey are ultimately furnished with a tuft of bristles on the breast, but in two-year-old birds the tuft is about four inches long in the male and hardly apparent in the female; when, however, the latter has reached her fourth year, it is from four to five inches in length. ( . on ardetta, translation of cuvier's 'regne animal,' by mr. blyth, footnote, p. . on the peregrine falcon, mr. blyth, in charlesworth's 'mag. of nat. hist.' vol. i. , p. . on dicrurus, 'ibis,' , p. . on the platalea, 'ibis,' vol. vi. , p. . on the bombycilla, audubon's 'ornitholog. biography,' vol. i. p. . on the palaeornis, see, also, jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. i. p. . on the wild turkey, audubon, ibid. vol. i. p. ; but i hear from judge caton that in illinois the female very rarely acquires a tuft. analogous cases with the females of petrocossyphus are given by mr. r. sharpe, 'proceedings of the zoological society,' , p. .) these cases must not be confounded with those where diseased or old females abnormally assume masculine characters, nor with those where fertile females, whilst young, acquire the characters of the male, through variation or some unknown cause. ( . of these latter cases mr. blyth has recorded (translation of cuvier's 'regne animal,' p. ) various instances with lanius, ruticilla, linaria, and anas. audubon has also recorded a similar case ('ornitholog. biography,' vol. v. p. ) with pyranga aestiva.) but all these cases have so much in common that they depend, according to the hypothesis of pangenesis, on gemmules derived from each part of the male being present, though latent, in the female; their development following on some slight change in the elective affinities of her constituent tissues. a few words must be added on changes of plumage in relation to the season of the year. from reasons formerly assigned there can be little doubt that the elegant plumes, long pendant feathers, crests, etc., of egrets, herons, and many other birds, which are developed and retained only during the summer, serve for ornamental and nuptial purposes, though common to both sexes. the female is thus rendered more conspicuous during the period of incubation than during the winter; but such birds as herons and egrets would be able to defend themselves. as, however, plumes would probably be inconvenient and certainly of no use during the winter, it is possible that the habit of moulting twice in the year may have been gradually acquired through natural selection for the sake of casting off inconvenient ornaments during the winter. but this view cannot be extended to the many waders, whose summer and winter plumages differ very little in colour. with defenceless species, in which both sexes, or the males alone, become extremely conspicuous during the breeding-season,--or when the males acquire at this season such long wing or tail-feathers as to impede their flight, as with cosmetornis and vidua,--it certainly at first appears highly probable that the second moult has been gained for the special purpose of throwing off these ornaments. we must, however, remember that many birds, such as some of the birds of paradise, the argus pheasant and peacock, do not cast their plumes during the winter; and it can hardly be maintained that the constitution of these birds, at least of the gallinaceae, renders a double moult impossible, for the ptarmigan moults thrice in the year. ( . see gould's 'birds of great britain.') hence it must be considered as doubtful whether the many species which moult their ornamental plumes or lose their bright colours during the winter, have acquired this habit on account of the inconvenience or danger which they would otherwise have suffered. i conclude, therefore, that the habit of moulting twice in the year was in most or all cases first acquired for some distinct purpose, perhaps for gaining a warmer winter covering; and that variations in the plumage occurring during the summer were accumulated through sexual selection, and transmitted to the offspring at the same season of the year; that such variations were inherited either by both sexes or by the males alone, according to the form of inheritance which prevailed. this appears more probable than that the species in all cases originally tended to retain their ornamental plumage during the winter, but were saved from this through natural selection, resulting from the inconvenience or danger thus caused. i have endeavoured in this chapter to shew that the arguments are not trustworthy in favour of the view that weapons, bright colours, and various ornaments, are now confined to the males owing to the conversion, by natural selection, of the equal transmission of characters to both sexes, into transmission to the male sex alone. it is also doubtful whether the colours of many female birds are due to the preservation, for the sake of protection, of variations which were from the first limited in their transmission to the female sex. but it will be convenient to defer any further discussion on this subject until i treat, in the following chapter, of the differences in plumage between the young and old. chapter xvi. birds--concluded. the immature plumage in relation to the character of the plumage in both sexes when adult--six classes of cases--sexual differences between the males of closely-allied or representative species--the female assuming the characters of the male--plumage of the young in relation to the summer and winter plumage of the adults--on the increase of beauty in the birds of the world--protective colouring--conspicuously coloured birds--novelty appreciated--summary of the four chapters on birds. we must now consider the transmission of characters, as limited by age, in reference to sexual selection. the truth and importance of the principle of inheritance at corresponding ages need not here be discussed, as enough has already been said on the subject. before giving the several rather complex rules or classes of cases, under which the differences in plumage between the young and the old, as far as known to me, may be included, it will be well to make a few preliminary remarks. with animals of all kinds when the adults differ in colour from the young, and the colours of the latter are not, as far as we can see, of any special service, they may generally be attributed, like various embryological structures, to the retention of a former character. but this view can be maintained with confidence, only when the young of several species resemble each other closely, and likewise resemble other adult species belonging to the same group; for the latter are the living proofs that such a state of things was formerly possible. young lions and pumas are marked with feeble stripes or rows of spots, and as many allied species both young and old are similarly marked, no believer in evolution will doubt that the progenitor of the lion and puma was a striped animal, and that the young have retained vestiges of the stripes, like the kittens of black cats, which are not in the least striped when grown up. many species of deer, which when mature are not spotted, are whilst young covered with white spots, as are likewise some few species in the adult state. so again the young in the whole family of pigs (suidae), and in certain rather distantly allied animals, such as the tapir, are marked with dark longitudinal stripes; but here we have a character apparently derived from an extinct progenitor, and now preserved by the young alone. in all such cases the old have had their colours changed in the course of time, whilst the young have remained but little altered, and this has been effected through the principle of inheritance at corresponding ages. this same principle applies to many birds belonging to various groups, in which the young closely resemble each other, and differ much from their respective adult parents. the young of almost all the gallinaceae, and of some distantly allied birds such as ostriches, are covered with longitudinally striped down; but this character points back to a state of things so remote that it hardly concerns us. young cross-bills (loxia) have at first straight beaks like those of other finches, and in their immature striated plumage they resemble the mature red-pole and female siskin, as well as the young of the goldfinch, greenfinch, and some other allied species. the young of many kinds of buntings (emberiza) resemble one another, and likewise the adult state of the common bunting, e. miliaria. in almost the whole large group of thrushes the young have their breasts spotted--a character which is retained throughout life by many species, but is quite lost by others, as by the turdus migratorius. so again with many thrushes, the feathers on the back are mottled before they are moulted for the first time, and this character is retained for life by certain eastern species. the young of many species of shrikes (lanius), of some woodpeckers, and of an indian pigeon (chalcophaps indicus), are transversely striped on the under surface; and certain allied species or whole genera are similarly marked when adult. in some closely-allied and resplendent indian cuckoos (chrysococcyx), the mature species differ considerably from one another in colour, but the young cannot be distinguished. the young of an indian goose (sarkidiornis melanonotus) closely resemble in plumage an allied genus, dendrocygna, when mature. ( . in regard to thrushes, shrikes, and woodpeckers, see mr. blyth, in charlesworth's 'mag. of nat. hist.' vol. i. , p. ; also footnote to his translation of cuvier's 'regne animal,' p. . i give the case of loxia on mr. blyth's information. on thrushes, see also audubon, 'ornith. biog.' vol. ii. p. . on chrysococcyx and chalcophaps, blyth, as quoted in jerdon's 'birds of india,' vol. iii. p. . on sarkidiornis, blyth, in 'ibis,' , p. .) similar facts will hereafter be given in regard to certain herons. young black-grouse (tetrao tetrix) resemble the young as well as the old of certain other species, for instance the red-grouse or t. scoticus. finally, as mr. blyth, who has attended closely to this subject, has well remarked, the natural affinities of many species are best exhibited in their immature plumage; and as the true affinities of all organic beings depend on their descent from a common progenitor, this remark strongly confirms the belief that the immature plumage approximately shews us the former or ancestral condition of the species. although many young birds, belonging to various families, thus give us a glimpse of the plumage of their remote progenitors, yet there are many other birds, both dull-coloured and bright-coloured, in which the young closely resemble their parents. in such cases the young of the different species cannot resemble each other more closely than do the parents; nor can they strikingly resemble allied forms when adult. they give us but little insight into the plumage of their progenitors, excepting in so far that, when the young and the old are coloured in the same general manner throughout a whole group of species, it is probable that their progenitors were similarly coloured. we may now consider the classes of cases, under which the differences and resemblances between the plumage of the young and the old, in both sexes or in one sex alone, may be grouped. rules of this kind were first enounced by cuvier; but with the progress of knowledge they require some modification and amplification. this i have attempted to do, as far as the extreme complexity of the subject permits, from information derived from various sources; but a full essay on this subject by some competent ornithologist is much needed. in order to ascertain to what extent each rule prevails, i have tabulated the facts given in four great works, namely, by macgillivray on the birds of britain, audubon on those of north america, jerdon on those of india, and gould on those of australia. i may here premise, first, that the several cases or rules graduate into each other; and secondly, that when the young are said to resemble their parents, it is not meant that they are identically alike, for their colours are almost always less vivid, and the feathers are softer and often of a different shape. rules or classes of cases. i. when the adult male is more beautiful or conspicuous than the adult female, the young of both sexes in their first plumage closely resemble the adult female, as with the common fowl and peacock; or, as occasionally occurs, they resemble her much more closely than they do the adult male. ii. when the adult female is more conspicuous than the adult male, as sometimes though rarely occurs, the young of both sexes in their first plumage resemble the adult male. iii. when the adult male resembles the adult female, the young of both sexes have a peculiar first plumage of their own, as with the robin. iv. when the adult male resembles the adult female, the young of both sexes in their first plumage resemble the adults, as with the kingfisher, many parrots, crows, hedge-warblers. v. when the adults of both sexes have a distinct winter and summer plumage, whether or not the male differs from the female, the young resemble the adults of both sexes in their winter dress, or much more rarely in their summer dress, or they resemble the females alone. or the young may have an intermediate character; or again they may differ greatly from the adults in both their seasonal plumages. vi. in some few cases the young in their first plumage differ from each other according to sex; the young males resembling more or less closely the adult males, and the young females more or less closely the adult females. class i. in this class, the young of both sexes more or less closely resemble the adult female, whilst the adult male differs from the adult female, often in the most conspicuous manner. innumerable instances in all orders could be given; it will suffice to call to mind the common pheasant, duck, and house-sparrow. the cases under this class graduate into others. thus the two sexes when adult may differ so slightly, and the young so slightly from the adults, that it is doubtful whether such cases ought to come under the present, or under the third or fourth classes. so again the young of the two sexes, instead of being quite alike, may differ in a slight degree from each other, as in our sixth class. these transitional cases, however, are few, or at least are not strongly pronounced, in comparison with those which come strictly under the present class. the force of the present law is well shewn in those groups, in which, as a general rule, the two sexes and the young are all alike; for when in these groups the male does differ from the female, as with certain parrots, kingfishers, pigeons, etc., the young of both sexes resemble the adult female. ( . see, for instance, mr. gould's account ('handbook to the birds of australia,' vol. i. p. ) of cyanalcyon (one of the kingfishers), in which, however, the young male, though resembling the adult female, is less brilliantly coloured. in some species of dacelo the males have blue tails, and the females brown ones; and mr. r.b. sharpe informs me that the tail of the young male of d. gaudichaudi is at first brown. mr. gould has described (ibid. vol. ii. pp. , , ) the sexes and the young of certain black cockatoos and of the king lory, with which the same rule prevails. also jerdon ('birds of india,' vol. i. p. ) on the palaeornis rosa, in which the young are more like the female than the male. see audubon ('ornithological biography,' vol. ii. p. ) on the two sexes and the young of columba passerina.) we see the same fact exhibited still more clearly in certain anomalous cases; thus the male of heliothrix auriculata (one of the humming-birds) differs conspicuously from the female in having a splendid gorget and fine ear-tufts, but the female is remarkable from having a much longer tail than that of the male; now the young of both sexes resemble (with the exception of the breast being spotted with bronze) the adult female in all other respects, including the length of her tail, so that the tail of the male actually becomes shorter as he reaches maturity, which is a most unusual circumstance. ( . i owe this information to mr. gould, who shewed me the specimens; see also his 'introduction to the trochilidae,' , p. .) again, the plumage of the male goosander (mergus merganser) is more conspicuously coloured than that of the female, with the scapular and secondary wing-feathers much longer; but differently from what occurs, as far as i know, in any other bird, the crest of the adult male, though broader than that of the female, is considerably shorter, being only a little above an inch in length; the crest of the female being two and a half inches long. now the young of both sexes entirely resemble the adult female, so that their crests are actually of greater length, though narrower, than in the adult male. ( . macgillivray, 'hist. brit. birds,' vol. v. pp. - .) when the young and the females closely resemble each other and both differ from the males, the most obvious conclusion is that the males alone have been modified. even in the anomalous cases of the heliothrix and mergus, it is probable that originally both adult sexes were furnished--the one species with a much elongated tail, and the other with a much elongated crest--these characters having since been partially lost by the adult males from some unexplained cause, and transmitted in their diminished state to their male offspring alone, when arrived at the corresponding age of maturity. the belief that in the present class the male alone has been modified, as far as the differences between the male and the female together with her young are concerned, is strongly supported by some remarkable facts recorded by mr. blyth ( . see his admirable paper in the 'journal of the asiatic soc. of bengal,' vol. xix. , p. ; see also jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. i. introduction, p. xxix. in regard to tanysiptera, prof. schlegel told mr. blyth that he could distinguish several distinct races, solely by comparing the adult males.), with respect to closely-allied species which represent each other in distinct countries. for with several of these representative species the adult males have undergone a certain amount of change and can be distinguished; the females and the young from the distinct countries being indistinguishable, and therefore absolutely unchanged. this is the case with certain indian chats (thamnobia), with certain honey-suckers (nectarinia), shrikes (tephrodornis), certain kingfishers (tanysiptera), kalij pheasants (gallophasis), and tree-partridges (arboricola). in some analogous cases, namely with birds having a different summer and winter plumage, but with the two sexes nearly alike, certain closely-allied species can easily be distinguished in their summer or nuptial plumage, yet are indistinguishable in their winter as well as in their immature plumage. this is the case with some of the closely-allied indian wagtails or motacillae. mr. swinhoe ( . see also mr. swinhoe, in 'ibis,' july , p. ; and a previous paper, with an extract from a note by mr. blyth, in 'ibis,' january, , p. .) informs me that three species of ardeola, a genus of herons, which represent one another on separate continents, are "most strikingly different" when ornamented with their summer plumes, but are hardly, if at all, distinguishable during the winter. the young also of these three species in their immature plumage closely resemble the adults in their winter dress. this case is all the more interesting, because with two other species of ardeola both sexes retain, during the winter and summer, nearly the same plumage as that possessed by the three first species during the winter and in their immature state; and this plumage, which is common to several distinct species at different ages and seasons, probably shews us how the progenitors of the genus were coloured. in all these cases, the nuptial plumage which we may assume was originally acquired by the adult males during the breeding-season, and transmitted to the adults of both sexes at the corresponding season, has been modified, whilst the winter and immature plumages have been left unchanged. the question naturally arises, how is it that in these latter cases the winter plumage of both sexes, and in the former cases the plumage of the adult females, as well as the immature plumage of the young, have not been at all affected? the species which represent each other in distinct countries will almost always have been exposed to somewhat different conditions, but we can hardly attribute to this action the modification of the plumage in the males alone, seeing that the females and the young, though similarly exposed, have not been affected. hardly any fact shews us more clearly how subordinate in importance is the direct action of the conditions of life, in comparison with the accumulation through selection of indefinite variations, than the surprising difference between the sexes of many birds; for both will have consumed the same food, and have been exposed to the same climate. nevertheless we are not precluded from believing that in the course of time new conditions may produce some direct effect either on both sexes, or from their constitutional differences chiefly on one sex. we see only that this is subordinate in importance to the accumulated results of selection. judging, however, from a wide-spread analogy, when a species migrates into a new country (and this must precede the formation of representative species), the changed conditions to which they will almost always have been exposed will cause them to undergo a certain amount of fluctuating variability. in this case sexual selection, which depends on an element liable to change--the taste or admiration of the female--will have had new shades of colour or other differences to act on and accumulate; and as sexual selection is always at work, it would (from what we know of the results on domestic animals of man's unintentional selection), be surprising if animals inhabiting separate districts, which can never cross and thus blend their newly-acquired characters, were not, after a sufficient lapse of time, differently modified. these remarks likewise apply to the nuptial or summer plumage, whether confined to the males, or common to both sexes. although the females of the above closely-allied or representative species, together with their young, differ hardly at all from one another, so that the males alone can be distinguished, yet the females of most species within the same genus obviously differ from each other. the differences, however, are rarely as great as between the males. we see this clearly in the whole family of the gallinaceae: the females, for instance, of the common and japan pheasant, and especially of the gold and amherst pheasant --of the silver pheasant and the wild fowl--resemble one another very closely in colour, whilst the males differ to an extraordinary degree. so it is with the females of most of the cotingidae, fringillidae, and many other families. there can indeed be no doubt that, as a general rule, the females have been less modified than the males. some few birds, however, offer a singular and inexplicable exception; thus the females of paradisea apoda and p. papuana differ from each other more than do their respective males ( . wallace, 'the malay archipelago,' vol. ii. , p. .); the female of the latter species having the under surface pure white, whilst the female p. apoda is deep brown beneath. so, again, as i hear from professor newton, the males of two species of oxynotus (shrikes), which represent each other in the islands of mauritius and bourbon ( . these species are described with coloured figures, by m. f. pollen, in 'ibis,' , p. .), differ but little in colour, whilst the females differ much. in the bourbon species the female appears to have partially retained an immature condition of plumage, for at first sight she "might be taken for the young of the mauritian species." these differences may be compared with those inexplicable ones, which occur independently of man's selection in certain sub-breeds of the game-fowl, in which the females are very different, whilst the males can hardly be distinguished. ( . 'variation of animals,' etc., vol. i. p. .) as i account so largely by sexual selection for the differences between the males of allied species, how can the differences between the females be accounted for in all ordinary cases? we need not here consider the species which belong to distinct genera; for with these, adaptation to different habits of life, and other agencies, will have come into play. in regard to the differences between the females within the same genus, it appears to me almost certain, after looking through various large groups, that the chief agent has been the greater or less transference to the female of the characters acquired by the males through sexual selection. in the several british finches, the two sexes differ either very slightly or considerably; and if we compare the females of the greenfinch, chaffinch, goldfinch, bullfinch, crossbill, sparrow, etc., we shall see that they differ from one another chiefly in the points in which they partially resemble their respective males; and the colours of the males may safely be attributed to sexual selection. with many gallinaceous species the sexes differ to an extreme degree, as with the peacock, pheasant, and fowl, whilst with other species there has been a partial or even complete transference of character from the male to the female. the females of the several species of polyplectron exhibit in a dim condition, and chiefly on the tail, the splendid ocelli of their males. the female partridge differs from the male only in the red mark on her breast being smaller; and the female wild turkey only in her colours being much duller. in the guinea-fowl the two sexes are indistinguishable. there is no improbability in the plain, though peculiarly spotted plumage of this latter bird having been acquired through sexual selection by the males, and then transmitted to both sexes; for it is not essentially different from the much more beautifully spotted plumage, characteristic of the males alone of the tragopan pheasants. it should be observed that, in some instances, the transference of characters from the male to the female has been effected apparently at a remote period, the male having subsequently undergone great changes, without transferring to the female any of his later-gained characters. for instance, the female and the young of the black-grouse (tetrao tetrix) resemble pretty closely both sexes and the young of the red-grouse (t. scoticus); and we may consequently infer that the black-grouse is descended from some ancient species, of which both sexes were coloured in nearly the same manner as the red-grouse. as both sexes of this latter species are more distinctly barred during the breeding-season than at any other time, and as the male differs slightly from the female in his more strongly-pronounced red and brown tints ( . macgillivray, 'history of british birds,' vol. i. pp. - .), we may conclude that his plumage has been influenced by sexual selection, at least to a certain extent. if so, we may further infer that nearly similar plumage of the female black-grouse was similarly produced at some former period. but since this period the male black-grouse has acquired his fine black plumage, with his forked and outwardly-curled tail-feathers; but of these characters there has hardly been any transference to the female, excepting that she shews in her tail a trace of the curved fork. we may therefore conclude that the females of distinct though allied species have often had their plumage rendered more or less different by the transference in various degrees of characters acquired by the males through sexual selection, both during former and recent times. but it deserves especial attention that brilliant colours have been transferred much more rarely than other tints. for instance, the male of the red-throated blue-breast (cyanecula suecica) has a rich blue breast, including a sub-triangular red mark; now marks of nearly the same shape have been transferred to the female, but the central space is fulvous instead of red, and is surrounded by mottled instead of blue feathers. the gallinaceae offer many analogous cases; for none of the species, such as partridges, quails, guinea-fowls, etc., in which the colours of the plumage have been largely transferred from the male to the female, are brilliantly coloured. this is well exemplified with the pheasants, in which the male is generally so much more brilliant than the female; but with the eared and cheer pheasants (crossoptilon auritum and phasianus wallichii) the sexes closely resemble each other and their colours are dull. we may go so far as to believe that if any part of the plumage in the males of these two pheasants had been brilliantly coloured, it would not have been transferred to the females. these facts strongly support mr. wallace's view that with birds which are exposed to much danger during incubation, the transference of bright colours from the male to the female has been checked through natural selection. we must not, however, forget that another explanation, before given, is possible; namely, that the males which varied and became bright, whilst they were young and inexperienced, would have been exposed to much danger, and would generally have been destroyed; the older and more cautious males, on the other hand, if they varied in a like manner, would not only have been able to survive, but would have been favoured in their rivalry with other males. now variations occurring late in life tend to be transmitted exclusively to the same sex, so that in this case extremely bright tints would not have been transmitted to the females. on the other hand, ornaments of a less conspicuous kind, such as those possessed by the eared and cheer pheasants, would not have been dangerous, and if they appeared during early youth, would generally have been transmitted to both sexes. in addition to the effects of the partial transference of characters from the males to the females, some of the differences between the females of closely allied species may be attributed to the direct or definite action of the conditions of life. ( . see, on this subject, chap. xxiii. in the 'variation of animals and plants under domestication.') with the males, any such action would generally have been masked by the brilliant colours gained through sexual selection; but not so with the females. each of the endless diversities in plumage which we see in our domesticated birds is, of course, the result of some definite cause; and under natural and more uniform conditions, some one tint, assuming that it was in no way injurious, would almost certainly sooner or later prevail. the free intercrossing of the many individuals belonging to the same species would ultimately tend to make any change of colour, thus induced, uniform in character. no one doubts that both sexes of many birds have had their colours adapted for the sake of protection; and it is possible that the females alone of some species may have been modified for this end. although it would be a difficult, perhaps an impossible process, as shewn in the last chapter, to convert one form of transmission into another through selection, there would not be the least difficulty in adapting the colours of the female, independently of those of the male, to surrounding objects, through the accumulation of variations which were from the first limited in their transmission to the female sex. if the variations were not thus limited, the bright tints of the male would be deteriorated or destroyed. whether the females alone of many species have been thus specially modified, is at present very doubtful. i wish i could follow mr. wallace to the full extent; for the admission would remove some difficulties. any variations which were of no service to the female as a protection would be at once obliterated, instead of being lost simply by not being selected, or from free intercrossing, or from being eliminated when transferred to the male and in any way injurious to him. thus the plumage of the female would be kept constant in character. it would also be a relief if we could admit that the obscure tints of both sexes of many birds had been acquired and preserved for the sake of protection,--for example, of the hedge-warbler or kitty-wren (accentor modularis and troglodytes vulgaris), with respect to which we have no sufficient evidence of the action of sexual selection. we ought, however, to be cautious in concluding that colours which appear to us dull, are not attractive to the females of certain species; we should bear in mind such cases as that of the common house-sparrow, in which the male differs much from the female, but does not exhibit any bright tints. no one probably will dispute that many gallinaceous birds which live on the open ground, have acquired their present colours, at least in part, for the sake of protection. we know how well they are thus concealed; we know that ptarmigans, whilst changing from their winter to their summer plumage, both of which are protective, suffer greatly from birds of prey. but can we believe that the very slight differences in tints and markings between, for instance, the female black-grouse and red-grouse serve as a protection? are partridges, as they are now coloured, better protected than if they had resembled quails? do the slight differences between the females of the common pheasant, the japan and gold pheasants, serve as a protection, or might not their plumages have been interchanged with impunity? from what mr. wallace has observed of the habits of certain gallinaceous birds in the east, he thinks that such slight differences are beneficial. for myself, i will only say that i am not convinced. formerly when i was inclined to lay much stress on protection as accounting for the duller colours of female birds, it occurred to me that possibly both sexes and the young might aboriginally have been equally bright coloured; but that subsequently, the females from the danger incurred during incubation, and the young from being inexperienced, had been rendered dull as a protection. but this view is not supported by any evidence, and is not probable; for we thus in imagination expose during past times the females and the young to danger, from which it has subsequently been necessary to shield their modified descendants. we have, also, to reduce, through a gradual process of selection, the females and the young to almost exactly the same tints and markings, and to transmit them to the corresponding sex and period of life. on the supposition that the females and the young have partaken during each stage of the process of modification of a tendency to be as brightly coloured as the males, it is also a somewhat strange fact that the females have never been rendered dull-coloured without the young participating in the same change; for there are no instances, as far as i can discover, of species with the females dull and the young bright coloured. a partial exception, however, is offered by the young of certain woodpeckers, for they have "the whole upper part of the head tinged with red," which afterwards either decreases into a mere circular red line in the adults of both sexes, or quite disappears in the adult females. ( . audubon, 'ornith. biography,' vol. i. p. . macgillivray, 'history of british birds,' vol. iii. p. . see also the case before given of indopicus carlotta.) finally, with respect to our present class of cases, the most probable view appears to be that successive variations in brightness or in other ornamental characters, occurring in the males at a rather late period of life have alone been preserved; and that most or all of these variations, owing to the late period of life at which they appeared, have been from the first transmitted only to the adult male offspring. any variations in brightness occurring in the females or in the young, would have been of no service to them, and would not have been selected; and moreover, if dangerous, would have been eliminated. thus the females and the young will either have been left unmodified, or (as is much more common) will have been partially modified by receiving through transference from the males some of his successive variations. both sexes have perhaps been directly acted on by the conditions of life to which they have long been exposed: but the females from not being otherwise much modified, will best exhibit any such effects. these changes and all others will have been kept uniform by the free intercrossing of many individuals. in some cases, especially with ground birds, the females and the young may possibly have been modified, independently of the males, for the sake of protection, so as to have acquired the same dull-coloured plumage. class ii. when the adult female is more conspicuous than the adult male, the young of both sexes in their first plumage resemble the adult male. this class is exactly the reverse of the last, for the females are here brighter coloured or more conspicuous than the males; and the young, as far as they are known, resemble the adult males instead of the adult females. but the difference between the sexes is never nearly so great as with many birds in the first class, and the cases are comparatively rare. mr. wallace, who first called attention to the singular relation which exists between the less bright colours of the males and their performing the duties of incubation, lays great stress on this point ( . 'westminster review,' july , and a. murray, 'journal of travel,' , p. .), as a crucial test that obscure colours have been acquired for the sake of protection during the period of nesting. a different view seems to me more probable. as the cases are curious and not numerous, i will briefly give all that i have been able to find. in one section of the genus turnix, quail-like birds, the female is invariably larger than the male (being nearly twice as large in one of the australian species), and this is an unusual circumstance with the gallinaceae. in most of the species the female is more distinctly coloured and brighter than the male ( . for the australian species, see gould's 'handbook,' etc., vol. ii. pp. , , , and . in the british museum specimens of the australian plain-wanderer (pedionomus torquatus) may be seen, shewing similar sexual differences.), but in some few species the sexes are alike. in turnix taigoor of india the male "wants the black on the throat and neck, and the whole tone of the plumage is lighter and less pronounced than that of the female." the female appears to be noisier, and is certainly much more pugnacious than the male; so that the females and not the males are often kept by the natives for fighting, like game-cocks. as male birds are exposed by the english bird-catchers for a decoy near a trap, in order to catch other males by exciting their rivalry, so the females of this turnix are employed in india. when thus exposed the females soon begin their "loud purring call, which can be heard a long way off, and any females within ear-shot run rapidly to the spot, and commence fighting with the caged bird." in this way from twelve to twenty birds, all breeding females, may be caught in the course of a single day. the natives assert that the females after laying their eggs associate in flocks, and leave the males to sit on them. there is no reason to doubt the truth of this assertion, which is supported by some observations made in china by mr. swinhoe. ( . jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. iii. p. . mr. swinhoe, in 'ibis,' , p. ; , pp. , .) mr. blyth believes, that the young of both sexes resemble the adult male. [fig. . rhynchaea capensis (from brehm).] the females of the three species of painted snipes (rhynchaea, fig. ) "are not only larger but much more richly coloured than the males." ( . jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. iii. p. .) with all other birds in which the trachea differs in structure in the two sexes it is more developed and complex in the male than in the female; but in the rhynchaea australis it is simple in the male, whilst in the female it makes four distinct convolutions before entering the lungs. ( . gould's 'handbook to the birds of australia,' vol. ii. p. .) the female therefore of this species has acquired an eminently masculine character. mr. blyth ascertained, by examining many specimens, that the trachea is not convoluted in either sex of r. bengalensis, which species resembles r. australis so closely, that it can hardly be distinguished except by its shorter toes. this fact is another striking instance of the law that secondary sexual characters are often widely different in closely-allied forms, though it is a very rare circumstance when such differences relate to the female sex. the young of both sexes of r. bengalensis in their first plumage are said to resemble the mature male. ( . 'the indian field,' sept. , p. .) there is also reason to believe that the male undertakes the duty of incubation, for mr. swinhoe ( . 'ibis,' , p. .) found the females before the close of the summer associated in flocks, as occurs with the females of the turnix. the females of phalaropus fulicarius and p. hyperboreus are larger, and in their summer plumage "more gaily attired than the males." but the difference in colour between the sexes is far from conspicuous. according to professor steenstrup, the male alone of p. fulicarius undertakes the duty of incubation; this is likewise shewn by the state of his breast-feathers during the breeding-season. the female of the dotterel plover (eudromias morinellus) is larger than the male, and has the red and black tints on the lower surface, the white crescent on the breast, and the stripes over the eyes, more strongly pronounced. the male also takes at least a share in hatching the eggs; but the female likewise attends to the young. ( . for these several statements, see mr. gould's 'birds of great britain.' prof. newton informs me that he has long been convinced, from his own observations and from those of others, that the males of the above-named species take either the whole or a large share of the duties of incubation, and that they "shew much greater devotion towards their young, when in danger, than do the females." so it is, as he informs me, with limosa lapponica and some few other waders, in which the females are larger and have more strongly contrasted colours than the males.) i have not been able to discover whether with these species the young resemble the adult males more closely than the adult females; for the comparison is somewhat difficult to make on account of the double moult. turning now to the ostrich order: the male of the common cassowary (casuarius galeatus) would be thought by any one to be the female, from his smaller size and from the appendages and naked skin about his head being much less brightly coloured; and i am informed by mr. bartlett that in the zoological gardens, it is certainly the male alone who sits on the eggs and takes care of the young. ( . the natives of ceram (wallace, 'malay archipelago,' vol. ii. p. ) assert that the male and female sit alternately on the eggs; but this assertion, as mr. bartlett thinks, may be accounted for by the female visiting the nest to lay her eggs.) the female is said by mr. t.w. wood ( . the 'student,' april , p. .) to exhibit during the breeding-season a most pugnacious disposition; and her wattles then become enlarged and more brilliantly coloured. so again the female of one of the emus (dromoeus irroratus) is considerably larger than the male, and she possesses a slight top-knot, but is otherwise indistinguishable in plumage. she appears, however, "to have greater power, when angry or otherwise excited, of erecting, like a turkey-cock, the feathers of her neck and breast. she is usually the more courageous and pugilistic. she makes a deep hollow guttural boom especially at night, sounding like a small gong. the male has a slenderer frame and is more docile, with no voice beyond a suppressed hiss when angry, or a croak." he not only performs the whole duty of incubation, but has to defend the young from their mother; "for as soon as she catches sight of her progeny she becomes violently agitated, and notwithstanding the resistance of the father appears to use her utmost endeavours to destroy them. for months afterwards it is unsafe to put the parents together, violent quarrels being the inevitable result, in which the female generally comes off conqueror." ( . see the excellent account of the habits of this bird under confinement, by mr. a.w. bennett, in 'land and water,' may , p. .) so that with this emu we have a complete reversal not only of the parental and incubating instincts, but of the usual moral qualities of the two sexes; the females being savage, quarrelsome, and noisy, the males gentle and good. the case is very different with the african ostrich, for the male is somewhat larger than the female and has finer plumes with more strongly contrasted colours; nevertheless he undertakes the whole duty of incubation. ( . mr. sclater, on the incubation of the struthiones, 'proc. zool. soc.' june , . so it is with the rhea darwinii: captain musters says ('at home with the patagonians,' , p. ), that the male is larger, stronger and swifter than the female, and of slightly darker colours; yet he takes sole charge of the eggs and of the young, just as does the male of the common species of rhea.) i will specify the few other cases known to me, in which the female is more conspicuously coloured than the male, although nothing is known about the manner of incubation. with the carrion-hawk of the falkland islands (milvago leucurus) i was much surprised to find by dissection that the individuals, which had all their tints strongly pronounced, with the cere and legs orange-coloured, were the adult females; whilst those with duller plumage and grey legs were the males or the young. in an australian tree-creeper (climacteris erythrops) the female differs from the male in "being adorned with beautiful, radiated, rufous markings on the throat, the male having this part quite plain." lastly, in an australian night-jar "the female always exceeds the male in size and in the brilliance of her tints; the males, on the other hand, have two white spots on the primaries more conspicuous than in the female." ( . for the milvago, see 'zoology of the voyage of the "beagle," birds,' , p. . for the climacteris and night-jar (eurostopodus), see gould's 'handbook to the birds of australia,' vol. i. pp. and . the new zealand shieldrake (tadorna variegata) offers a quite anomalous case; the head of the female is pure white, and her back is redder than that of the male; the head of the male is of a rich dark bronzed colour, and his back is clothed with finely pencilled slate-coloured feathers, so that altogether he may be considered as the more beautiful of the two. he is larger and more pugnacious than the female, and does not sit on the eggs. so that in all these respects this species comes under our first class of cases; but mr. sclater ('proceedings of the zoological society,' , p. ) was much surprised to observe that the young of both sexes, when about three months old, resembled in their dark heads and necks the adult males, instead of the adult females; so that it would appear in this case that the females have been modified, whilst the males and the young have retained a former state of plumage.) we thus see that the cases in which female birds are more conspicuously coloured than the males, with the young in their immature plumage resembling the adult males instead of the adult females, as in the previous class, are not numerous, though they are distributed in various orders. the amount of difference, also, between the sexes is incomparably less than that which frequently occurs in the last class; so that the cause of the difference, whatever it may have been, has here acted on the females either less energetically or less persistently than on the males in the last class. mr. wallace believes that the males have had their colours rendered less conspicuous for the sake of protection during the period of incubation; but the difference between the sexes in hardly any of the foregoing cases appears sufficiently great for this view to be safely accepted. in some of the cases, the brighter tints of the female are almost confined to the lower surface, and the males, if thus coloured, would not have been exposed to danger whilst sitting on the eggs. it should also be borne in mind that the males are not only in a slight degree less conspicuously coloured than the females, but are smaller and weaker. they have, moreover, not only acquired the maternal instinct of incubation, but are less pugnacious and vociferous than the females, and in one instance have simpler vocal organs. thus an almost complete transposition of the instincts, habits, disposition, colour, size, and of some points of structure, has been effected between the two sexes. now if we might assume that the males in the present class have lost some of that ardour which is usual to their sex, so that they no longer search eagerly for the females; or, if we might assume that the females have become much more numerous than the males--and in the case of one indian turnix the females are said to be "much more commonly met with than the males" ( . jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. iii. p. .)--then it is not improbable that the females would have been led to court the males, instead of being courted by them. this indeed is the case to a certain extent with some birds, as we have seen with the peahen, wild turkey, and certain kinds of grouse. taking as our guide the habits of most male birds, the greater size and strength as well as the extraordinary pugnacity of the females of the turnix and emu, must mean that they endeavour to drive away rival females, in order to gain possession of the male; and on this view all the facts become clear; for the males would probably be most charmed or excited by the females which were the most attractive to them by their bright colours, other ornaments, or vocal powers. sexual selection would then do its work, steadily adding to the attractions of the females; the males and the young being left not at all, or but little modified. class iii. when the adult male resembles the adult female, the young of both sexes have a peculiar first plumage of their own. in this class the sexes when adult resemble each other, and differ from the young. this occurs with many birds of many kinds. the male robin can hardly be distinguished from the female, but the young are widely different, with their mottled dusky-olive and brown plumage. the male and female of the splendid scarlet ibis are alike, whilst the young are brown; and the scarlet colour, though common to both sexes, is apparently a sexual character, for it is not well developed in either sex under confinement; and a loss of colour often occurs with brilliant males when they are confined. with many species of herons the young differ greatly from the adults; and the summer plumage of the latter, though common to both sexes, clearly has a nuptial character. young swans are slate-coloured, whilst the mature birds are pure white; but it would be superfluous to give additional instances. these differences between the young and the old apparently depend, as in the last two classes, on the young having retained a former or ancient state of plumage, whilst the old of both sexes have acquired a new one. when the adults are bright coloured, we may conclude from the remarks just made in relation to the scarlet ibis and to many herons, and from the analogy of the species in the first class, that such colours have been acquired through sexual selection by the nearly mature males; but that, differently from what occurs in the first two classes, the transmission, though limited to the same age, has not been limited to the same sex. consequently, the sexes when mature resemble each other and differ from the young. class iv. when the adult male resembles the adult female, the young of both sexes in their first plumage resemble the adults. in this class the young and the adults of both sexes, whether brilliantly or obscurely coloured, resemble each other. such cases are, i think, more common than those in the last class. we have in england instances in the kingfisher, some woodpeckers, the jay, magpie, crow, and many small dull-coloured birds, such as the hedge-warbler or kitty-wren. but the similarity in plumage between the young and the old is never complete, and graduates away into dissimilarity. thus the young of some members of the kingfisher family are not only less vividly coloured than the adults, but many of the feathers on the lower surface are edged with brown ( . jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. i. pp. , . gould's 'handbook to the birds of australia,' vol. i. pp. , .),--a vestige probably of a former state of the plumage. frequently in the same group of birds, even within the same genus, for instance in an australian genus of parrakeets (platycercus), the young of some species closely resemble, whilst the young of other species differ considerably, from their parents of both sexes, which are alike. ( . gould, ibid. vol. ii. pp. , , .) both sexes and the young of the common jay are closely similar; but in the canada jay (perisoreus canadensis) the young differ so much from their parents that they were formerly described as distinct species. ( . audubon, 'ornith. biography,' vol. ii. p. .) i may remark before proceeding that, under the present and next two classes of cases, the facts are so complex and the conclusions so doubtful, that any one who feels no especial interest in the subject had better pass them over. the brilliant or conspicuous colours which characterise many birds in the present class, can rarely or never be of service to them as a protection; so that they have probably been gained by the males through sexual selection, and then transferred to the females and the young. it is, however, possible that the males may have selected the more attractive females; and if these transmitted their characters to their offspring of both sexes, the same results would follow as from the selection of the more attractive males by the females. but there is evidence that this contingency has rarely, if ever, occurred in any of those groups of birds in which the sexes are generally alike; for, if even a few of the successive variations had failed to be transmitted to both sexes, the females would have slightly exceeded the males in beauty. exactly the reverse occurs under nature; for, in almost every large group in which the sexes generally resemble each other, the males of some few species are in a slight degree more brightly coloured than the females. it is again possible that the females may have selected the more beautiful males, these males having reciprocally selected the more beautiful females; but it is doubtful whether this double process of selection would be likely to occur, owing to the greater eagerness of one sex than the other, and whether it would be more efficient than selection on one side alone. it is, therefore, the most probable view that sexual selection has acted, in the present class, as far as ornamental characters are concerned, in accordance with the general rule throughout the animal kingdom, that is, on the males; and that these have transmitted their gradually-acquired colours, either equally or almost equally, to their offspring of both sexes. another point is more doubtful, namely, whether the successive variations first appeared in the males after they had become nearly mature, or whilst quite young. in either case sexual selection must have acted on the male when he had to compete with rivals for the possession of the female; and in both cases the characters thus acquired have been transmitted to both sexes and all ages. but these characters if acquired by the males when adult, may have been transmitted at first to the adults alone, and at some subsequent period transferred to the young. for it is known that, when the law of inheritance at corresponding ages fails, the offspring often inherit characters at an earlier age than that at which they first appeared in their parents. ( . 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. p. .) cases apparently of this kind have been observed with birds in a state of nature. for instance mr. blyth has seen specimens of lanius rufus and of colymbus glacialis which had assumed whilst young, in a quite anomalous manner, the adult plumage of their parents. ( . 'charlesworth's magazine of natural history,' vol. i. , pp. , .) again, the young of the common swan (cygnus olor) do not cast off their dark feathers and become white until eighteen months or two years old; but dr. f. forel has described the case of three vigorous young birds, out of a brood of four, which were born pure white. these young birds were not albinos, as shewn by the colour of their beaks and legs, which nearly resembled the same parts in the adults. ( . 'bulletin de la soc. vaudoise des sc. nat.' vol. x. , p. . the young of the polish swan, cygnus immutabilis of yarrell, are always white; but this species, as mr. sclater informs me, is believed to be nothing more than a variety of the domestic swan (cygnus olor).) it may be worth while to illustrate the above three modes by which, in the present class, the two sexes and the young may have come to resemble each other, by the curious case of the genus passer. ( . i am indebted to mr. blyth for information in regard to this genus. the sparrow of palestine belongs to the sub-genus petronia.) in the house-sparrow (p. domesticus) the male differs much from the female and from the young. the young and the females are alike, and resemble to a large extent both sexes and the young of the sparrow of palestine (p. brachydactylus), as well as of some allied species. we may therefore assume that the female and young of the house-sparrow approximately shew us the plumage of the progenitor of the genus. now with the tree-sparrow (p. montanus) both sexes and the young closely resemble the male of the house-sparrow; so that they have all been modified in the same manner, and all depart from the typical colouring of their early progenitor. this may have been effected by a male ancestor of the tree-sparrow having varied, firstly, when nearly mature; or, secondly, whilst quite young, and by having in either case transmitted his modified plumage to the females and the young; or, thirdly, he may have varied when adult and transmitted his plumage to both adult sexes, and, owing to the failure of the law of inheritance at corresponding ages, at some subsequent period to his young. it is impossible to decide which of these three modes has generally prevailed throughout the present class of cases. that the males varied whilst young, and transmitted their variations to their offspring of both sexes, is the most probable. i may here add that i have, with little success, endeavoured, by consulting various works, to decide how far the period of variation in birds has generally determined the transmission of characters to one sex or to both. the two rules, often referred to (namely, that variations occurring late in life are transmitted to one and the same sex, whilst those which occur early in life are transmitted to both sexes), apparently hold good in the first ( . for instance, the males of tanagra aestiva and fringilla cyanea require three years, the male of fringilla ciris four years, to complete their beautiful plumage. (see audubon, 'ornith. biography,' vol. i. pp. , , ). the harlequin duck takes three years (ibid. vol. iii. p. ). the male of the gold pheasant, as i hear from mr. jenner weir, can be distinguished from the female when about three months old, but he does not acquire his full splendour until the end of the september in the following year.), second, and fourth classes of cases; but they fail in the third, often in the fifth ( . thus the ibis tantalus and grus americanus take four years, the flamingo several years, and the ardea ludovicana two years, before they acquire their perfect plumage. see audubon, ibid. vol. i. p. ; vol. iii. pp. , , .), and in the sixth small class. they apply, however, as far as i can judge, to a considerable majority of the species; and we must not forget the striking generalisation by dr. w. marshall with respect to the protuberances on the heads of birds. whether or not the two rules generally hold good, we may conclude from the facts given in the eighth chapter, that the period of variation is one important element in determining the form of transmission. with birds it is difficult to decide by what standard we ought to judge of the earliness or lateness of the period of variation, whether by the age in reference to the duration of life, or to the power of reproduction, or to the number of moults through which the species passes. the moulting of birds, even within the same family, sometimes differs much without any assignable cause. some birds moult so early, that nearly all the body feathers are cast off before the first wing-feathers are fully grown; and we cannot believe that this was the primordial state of things. when the period of moulting has been accelerated, the age at which the colours of the adult plumage are first developed will falsely appear to us to be earlier than it really is. this may be illustrated by the practice followed by some bird-fanciers, who pull out a few feathers from the breast of nestling bullfinches, and from the head or neck of young gold-pheasants, in order to ascertain their sex; for in the males, these feathers are immediately replaced by coloured ones. ( . mr. blyth, in charlesworth's 'magazine of natural history,' vol. i. , p. . mr. bartlett has informed me in regard to gold pheasants.) the actual duration of life is known in but few birds, so that we can hardly judge by this standard. and, with reference to the period at which the power of reproduction is gained, it is a remarkable fact that various birds occasionally breed whilst retaining their immature plumage. ( . i have noticed the following cases in audubon's 'ornith. biography.' the redstart of america (muscapica ruticilla, vol. i. p. ). the ibis tantalus takes four years to come to full maturity, but sometimes breeds in the second year (vol. iii. p. ). the grus americanus takes the same time, but breeds before acquiring its full plumage (vol. iii. p. ). the adults of ardea caerulea are blue, and the young white; and white, mottled, and mature blue birds may all be seen breeding together (vol. iv. p. ): but mr. blyth informs me that certain herons apparently are dimorphic, for white and coloured individuals of the same age may be observed. the harlequin duck (anas histrionica, linn.) takes three years to acquire its full plumage, though many birds breed in the second year (vol. iii. p. ). the white-headed eagle (falco leucocephalus, vol. iii. p. ) is likewise known to breed in its immature state. some species of oriolus (according to mr. blyth and mr. swinhoe, in 'ibis,' july , p. ) likewise breed before they attain their full plumage.) the fact of birds breeding in their immature plumage seems opposed to the belief that sexual selection has played as important a part, as i believe it has, in giving ornamental colours, plumes, etc., to the males, and, by means of equal transmission, to the females of many species. the objection would be a valid one, if the younger and less ornamented males were as successful in winning females and propagating their kind, as the older and more beautiful males. but we have no reason to suppose that this is the case. audubon speaks of the breeding of the immature males of ibis tantalus as a rare event, as does mr. swinhoe, in regard to the immature males of oriolus. ( . see footnote above.) if the young of any species in their immature plumage were more successful in winning partners than the adults, the adult plumage would probably soon be lost, as the males would prevail, which retained their immature dress for the longest period, and thus the character of the species would ultimately be modified. ( . other animals, belonging to quite distinct classes, are either habitually or occasionally capable of breeding before they have fully acquired their adult characters. this is the case with the young males of the salmon. several amphibians have been known to breed whilst retaining their larval structure. fritz müller has shewn ('facts and arguments for darwin,' eng. trans. , p. ) that the males of several amphipod crustaceans become sexually mature whilst young; and i infer that this is a case of premature breeding, because they have not as yet acquired their fully-developed claspers. all such facts are highly interesting, as bearing on one means by which species may undergo great modifications of character.) if, on the other hand, the young never succeeded in obtaining a female, the habit of early reproduction would perhaps be sooner or later eliminated, from being superfluous and entailing waste of power. the plumage of certain birds goes on increasing in beauty during many years after they are fully mature; this is the case with the train of the peacock, with some of the birds of paradise, and with the crest and plumes of certain herons, for instance, the ardea ludovicana. ( . jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. iii. p. , on the peacock. dr. marshall thinks that the older and more brilliant males of birds of paradise, have an advantage over the younger males; see 'archives neerlandaises,' tom. vi. .--on ardea, audubon, ibid. vol. iii. p. .) but it is doubtful whether the continued development of such feathers is the result of the selection of successive beneficial variations (though this is the most probable view with birds of paradise) or merely of continuous growth. most fishes continue increasing in size, as long as they are in good health and have plenty of food; and a somewhat similar law may prevail with the plumes of birds. class v. when the adults of both sexes have a distinct winter and summer plumage, whether or not the male differs from the female, the young resemble the adults of both sexes in their winter dress, or much more rarely in their summer dress, or they resemble the females alone. or the young may have an intermediate character; or, again, they may differ greatly from the adults in both their seasonal plumages. the cases in this class are singularly complex; nor is this surprising, as they depend on inheritance, limited in a greater or less degree in three different ways, namely, by sex, age, and the season of the year. in some cases the individuals of the same species pass through at least five distinct states of plumage. with the species, in which the male differs from the female during the summer season alone, or, which is rarer, during both seasons ( . for illustrative cases, see vol. iv. of macgillivray's 'history of british birds;' on tringa, etc., pp. , ; on the machetes, p. ; on the charadrius hiaticula, p. ; on the charadrius pluvialis, p. .), the young generally resemble the females,--as with the so-called goldfinch of north america, and apparently with the splendid maluri of australia. ( . for the goldfinch of n. america, fringilla tristis, linn., see audubon, 'ornithological biography,' vol. i. p. . for the maluri, gould's 'handbook of the birds of australia,' vol. i. p. .) with those species, the sexes of which are alike during both the summer and winter, the young may resemble the adults, firstly, in their winter dress; secondly, and this is of much rarer occurrence, in their summer dress; thirdly, they may be intermediate between these two states; and, fourthly, they may differ greatly from the adults at all seasons. we have an instance of the first of these four cases in one of the egrets of india (buphus coromandus), in which the young and the adults of both sexes are white during the winter, the adults becoming golden-buff during the summer. with the gaper (anastomus oscitans) of india we have a similar case, but the colours are reversed: for the young and the adults of both sexes are grey and black during the winter, the adults becoming white during the summer. ( . i am indebted to mr. blyth for information as to the buphus; see also jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. iii. p. . on the anastomus, see blyth, in 'ibis,' , p. .) as an instance of the second case, the young of the razor-bill (alca torda, linn.), in an early state of plumage, are coloured like the adults during the summer; and the young of the white-crowned sparrow of north america (fringilla leucophrys), as soon as fledged, have elegant white stripes on their heads, which are lost by the young and the old during the winter. ( . on the alca, see macgillivray, 'hist. brit. birds,' vol. v. p. . on the fringilla leucophrys, audubon, ibid. vol. ii. p. . i shall have hereafter to refer to the young of certain herons and egrets being white.) with respect to the third case, namely, that of the young having an intermediate character between the summer and winter adult plumages, yarrell ( . 'history of british birds,' vol. i. , p. .) insists that this occurs with many waders. lastly, in regard to the young differing greatly from both sexes in their adult summer and winter plumages, this occurs with some herons and egrets of north america and india,--the young alone being white. i will make only a few remarks on these complicated cases. when the young resemble the females in their summer dress, or the adults of both sexes in their winter dress, the cases differ from those given under classes i. and iii. only in the characters originally acquired by the males during the breeding-season, having been limited in their transmission to the corresponding season. when the adults have a distinct summer and winter plumage, and the young differ from both, the case is more difficult to understand. we may admit as probable that the young have retained an ancient state of plumage; we can account by sexual selection for the summer or nuptial plumage of the adults, but how are we to account for their distinct winter plumage? if we could admit that this plumage serves in all cases as a protection, its acquirement would be a simple affair; but there seems no good reason for this admission. it may be suggested that the widely different conditions of life during the winter and summer have acted in a direct manner on the plumage; this may have had some effect, but i have not much confidence in so great a difference as we sometimes see between the two plumages, having been thus caused. a more probable explanation is, that an ancient style of plumage, partially modified through the transference of some characters from the summer plumage, has been retained by the adults during the winter. finally, all the cases in our present class apparently depend on characters acquired by the adult males, having been variously limited in their transmission according to age, season, and sex; but it would not be worth while to attempt to follow out these complex relations. class vi. the young in their first plumage differ from each other according to sex; the young males resembling more or less closely the adult males, and the young females more or less closely the adult females. the cases in the present class, though occurring in various groups, are not numerous; yet it seems the most natural thing that the young should at first somewhat resemble the adults of the same sex, and gradually become more and more like them. the adult male blackcap (sylvia atricapilla) has a black head, that of the female being reddish-brown; and i am informed by mr. blyth, that the young of both sexes can be distinguished by this character even as nestlings. in the family of thrushes an unusual number of similar cases have been noticed; thus, the male blackbird (turdus merula) can be distinguished in the nest from the female. the two sexes of the mocking bird (turdus polyglottus, linn.) differ very little from each other, yet the males can easily be distinguished at a very early age from the females by showing more pure white. ( . audubon, 'ornith. biography,' vol. i. p. .) the males of a forest-thrush and of a rock-thrush (orocetes erythrogastra and petrocincla cyanea) have much of their plumage of a fine blue, whilst the females are brown; and the nestling males of both species have their main wing and tail-feathers edged with blue whilst those of the female are edged with brown. ( . mr. c.a. wright, in 'ibis,' vol. vi. , p. . jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. i. p. . see also on the blackbird, blyth in charlesworth's 'magazine of natural history,' vol. i. , p. .) in the young blackbird the wing-feathers assume their mature character and become black after the others; on the other hand, in the two species just named the wing-feathers become blue before the others. the most probable view with reference to the cases in the present class is that the males, differently from what occurs in class i., have transmitted their colours to their male offspring at an earlier age than that at which they were first acquired; for, if the males had varied whilst quite young, their characters would probably have been transmitted to both sexes. ( . the following additional cases may be mentioned; the young males of tanagra rubra can be distinguished from the young females (audubon, 'ornith. biography,' vol. iv. p. ), and so it is within the nestlings of a blue nuthatch, dendrophila frontalis of india (jerdon, 'birds of india,' vol. i. p. ). mr. blyth also informs me that the sexes of the stonechat, saxicola rubicola, are distinguishable at a very early age. mr. salvin gives ('proc. zoolog. soc.' , p. ) the case of a humming-bird, like the following one of eustephanus.) in aithurus polytmus, a humming-bird, the male is splendidly coloured black and green, and two of the tail-feathers are immensely lengthened; the female has an ordinary tail and inconspicuous colours; now the young males, instead of resembling the adult female, in accordance with the common rule, begin from the first to assume the colours proper to their sex, and their tail-feathers soon become elongated. i owe this information to mr. gould, who has given me the following more striking and as yet unpublished case. two humming-birds belonging to the genus eustephanus, both beautifully coloured, inhabit the small island of juan fernandez, and have always been ranked as specifically distinct. but it has lately been ascertained that the one which is of a rich chestnut-brown colour with a golden-red head, is the male, whilst the other which is elegantly variegated with green and white with a metallic green head is the female. now the young from the first somewhat resemble the adults of the corresponding sex, the resemblance gradually becoming more and more complete. in considering this last case, if as before we take the plumage of the young as our guide, it would appear that both sexes have been rendered beautiful independently; and not that one sex has partially transferred its beauty to the other. the male apparently has acquired his bright colours through sexual selection in the same manner as, for instance, the peacock or pheasant in our first class of cases; and the female in the same manner as the female rhynchaea or turnix in our second class of cases. but there is much difficulty in understanding how this could have been effected at the same time with the two sexes of the same species. mr. salvin states, as we have seen in the eighth chapter, that with certain humming-birds the males greatly exceed the females in number, whilst with other species inhabiting the same country the females greatly exceed the males. if, then, we might assume that during some former lengthened period the males of the juan fernandez species had greatly exceeded the females in number, but that during another lengthened period the females had far exceeded the males, we could understand how the males at one time, and the females at another, might have been rendered beautiful by the selection of the brighter coloured individuals of either sex; both sexes transmitting their characters to their young at a rather earlier age than usual. whether this is the true explanation i will not pretend to say; but the case is too remarkable to be passed over without notice. we have now seen in all six classes, that an intimate relation exists between the plumage of the young and the adults, either of one sex or both. these relations are fairly well explained on the principle that one sex--this being in the great majority of cases the male--first acquired through variation and sexual selection bright colours or other ornaments, and transmitted them in various ways, in accordance with the recognised laws of inheritance. why variations have occurred at different periods of life, even sometimes with species of the same group, we do not know, but with respect to the form of transmission, one important determining cause seems to be the age at which the variations first appear. from the principle of inheritance at corresponding ages, and from any variations in colour which occurred in the males at an early age not being then selected--on the contrary being often eliminated as dangerous--whilst similar variations occurring at or near the period of reproduction have been preserved, it follows that the plumage of the young will often have been left unmodified, or but little modified. we thus get some insight into the colouring of the progenitors of our existing species. in a vast number of species in five out of our six classes of cases, the adults of one sex or of both are bright coloured, at least during the breeding-season, whilst the young are invariably less brightly coloured than the adults, or are quite dull coloured; for no instance is known, as far as i can discover, of the young of dull-coloured species displaying bright colours, or of the young of bright-coloured species being more brilliant than their parents. in the fourth class, however, in which the young and the old resemble each other, there are many species (though by no means all), of which the young are bright-coloured, and as these form old groups, we may infer that their early progenitors were likewise bright. with this exception, if we look to the birds of the world, it appears that their beauty has been much increased since that period, of which their immature plumage gives us a partial record. on the colour of the plumage in relation to protection. it will have been seen that i cannot follow mr. wallace in the belief that dull colours, when confined to the females, have been in most cases specially gained for the sake of protection. there can, however, be no doubt, as formerly remarked, that both sexes of many birds have had their colours modified, so as to escape the notice of their enemies; or in some instances, so as to approach their prey unobserved, just as owls have had their plumage rendered soft, that their flight may not be overheard. mr. wallace remarks ( . 'westminster review,' july , p. .) that "it is only in the tropics, among forests which never lose their foliage, that we find whole groups of birds, whose chief colour is green." it will be admitted by every one, who has ever tried, how difficult it is to distinguish parrots in a leaf-covered tree. nevertheless, we must remember that many parrots are ornamented with crimson, blue, and orange tints, which can hardly be protective. woodpeckers are eminently arboreal, but besides green species, there are many black, and black-and-white kinds--all the species being apparently exposed to nearly the same dangers. it is therefore probable that with tree-haunting birds, strongly-pronounced colours have been acquired through sexual selection, but that a green tint has been acquired oftener than any other, from the additional advantage of protection. in regard to birds which live on the ground, every one admits that they are coloured so as to imitate the surrounding surface. how difficult it is to see a partridge, snipe, woodcock, certain plovers, larks, and night-jars when crouched on ground. animals inhabiting deserts offer the most striking cases, for the bare surface affords no concealment, and nearly all the smaller quadrupeds, reptiles, and birds depend for safety on their colours. mr. tristram has remarked in regard to the inhabitants of the sahara, that all are protected by their "isabelline or sand-colour." ( . 'ibis,' , vol. i. p. , et seq. dr. rohlfs, however, remarks to me in a letter that according to his experience of the sahara, this statement is too strong.) calling to my recollection the desert-birds of south america, as well as most of the ground-birds of great britain, it appeared to me that both sexes in such cases are generally coloured nearly alike. accordingly, i applied to mr. tristram with respect to the birds of the sahara, and he has kindly given me the following information. there are twenty-six species belonging to fifteen genera, which manifestly have their plumage coloured in a protective manner; and this colouring is all the more striking, as with most of these birds it differs from that of their congeners. both sexes of thirteen out of the twenty-six species are coloured in the same manner; but these belong to genera in which this rule commonly prevails, so that they tell us nothing about the protective colours being the same in both sexes of desert-birds. of the other thirteen species, three belong to genera in which the sexes usually differ from each other, yet here they have the sexes alike. in the remaining ten species, the male differs from the female; but the difference is confined chiefly to the under surface of the plumage, which is concealed when the bird crouches on the ground; the head and back being of the same sand-coloured hue in the two sexes. so that in these ten species the upper surfaces of both sexes have been acted on and rendered alike, through natural selection, for the sake of protection; whilst the lower surfaces of the males alone have been diversified, through sexual selection, for the sake of ornament. here, as both sexes are equally well protected, we clearly see that the females have not been prevented by natural selection from inheriting the colours of their male parents; so that we must look to the law of sexually-limited transmission. in all parts of the world both sexes of many soft-billed birds, especially those which frequent reeds or sedges, are obscurely coloured. no doubt if their colours had been brilliant, they would have been much more conspicuous to their enemies; but whether their dull tints have been specially gained for the sake of protection seems, as far as i can judge, rather doubtful. it is still more doubtful whether such dull tints can have been gained for the sake of ornament. we must, however, bear in mind that male birds, though dull-coloured, often differ much from their females (as with the common sparrow), and this leads to the belief that such colours have been gained through sexual selection, from being attractive. many of the soft-billed birds are songsters; and a discussion in a former chapter should not be forgotten, in which it was shewn that the best songsters are rarely ornamented with bright tints. it would appear that female birds, as a general rule, have selected their mates either for their sweet voices or gay colours, but not for both charms combined. some species, which are manifestly coloured for the sake of protection, such as the jack-snipe, woodcock, and night-jar, are likewise marked and shaded, according to our standard of taste, with extreme elegance. in such cases we may conclude that both natural and sexual selection have acted conjointly for protection and ornament. whether any bird exists which does not possess some special attraction, by which to charm the opposite sex, may be doubted. when both sexes are so obscurely coloured that it would be rash to assume the agency of sexual selection, and when no direct evidence can be advanced shewing that such colours serve as a protection, it is best to own complete ignorance of the cause, or, which comes to nearly the same thing, to attribute the result to the direct action of the conditions of life. both sexes of many birds are conspicuously, though not brilliantly coloured, such as the numerous black, white, or piebald species; and these colours are probably the result of sexual selection. with the common blackbird, capercailzie, blackcock, black scoter-duck (oidemia), and even with one of the birds of paradise (lophorina atra), the males alone are black, whilst the females are brown or mottled; and there can hardly be a doubt that blackness in these cases has been a sexually selected character. therefore it is in some degree probable that the complete or partial blackness of both sexes in such birds as crows, certain cockatoos, storks, and swans, and many marine birds, is likewise the result of sexual selection, accompanied by equal transmission to both sexes; for blackness can hardly serve in any case as a protection. with several birds, in which the male alone is black, and in others in which both sexes are black, the beak or skin about the head is brightly coloured, and the contrast thus afforded adds much to their beauty; we see this in the bright yellow beak of the male blackbird, in the crimson skin over the eyes of the blackcock and capercailzie, in the brightly and variously coloured beak of the scoter-drake (oidemia), in the red beak of the chough (corvus graculus, linn.), of the black swan, and the black stork. this leads me to remark that it is not incredible that toucans may owe the enormous size of their beaks to sexual selection, for the sake of displaying the diversified and vivid stripes of colour, with which these organs are ornamented. ( . no satisfactory explanation has ever been offered of the immense size, and still less of the bright colours, of the toucan's beak. mr. bates ('the naturalist on the amazons,' vol. ii. , p. ) states that they use their beaks for reaching fruit at the extreme tips of the branches; and likewise, as stated by other authors, for extracting eggs and young birds from the nests of other birds. but, as mr. bates admits, the beak "can scarcely be considered a very perfectly-formed instrument for the end to which it is applied." the great bulk of the beak, as shewn by its breadth, depth, as well as length, is not intelligible on the view, that it serves merely as an organ of prehension. mr. belt believes ('the naturalist in nicaragua,' p. ) that the principal use of the beak is as a defence against enemies, especially to the female whilst nesting in a hole in a tree.) the naked skin, also, at the base of the beak and round the eyes is likewise often brilliantly coloured; and mr. gould, in speaking of one species ( . rhamphastos carinatus, gould's 'monograph of ramphastidae.'), says that the colours of the beak "are doubtless in the finest and most brilliant state during the time of pairing." there is no greater improbability that toucans should be encumbered with immense beaks, though rendered as light as possible by their cancellated structure, for the display of fine colours (an object falsely appearing to us unimportant), than that the male argus pheasant and some other birds should be encumbered with plumes so long as to impede their flight. in the same manner, as the males alone of various species are black, the females being dull-coloured; so in a few cases the males alone are either wholly or partially white, as with the several bell-birds of south america (chasmorhynchus), the antarctic goose (bernicla antarctica), the silver pheasant, etc., whilst the females are brown or obscurely mottled. therefore, on the same principle as before, it is probable that both sexes of many birds, such as white cockatoos, several egrets with their beautiful plumes, certain ibises, gulls, terns, etc., have acquired their more or less completely white plumage through sexual selection. in some of these cases the plumage becomes white only at maturity. this is the case with certain gannets, tropic-birds, etc., and with the snow-goose (anser hyperboreus). as the latter breeds on the "barren grounds," when not covered with snow, and as it migrates southward during the winter, there is no reason to suppose that its snow-white adult plumage serves as a protection. in the anastomus oscitans, we have still better evidence that the white plumage is a nuptial character, for it is developed only during the summer; the young in their immature state, and the adults in their winter dress, being grey and black. with many kinds of gulls (larus), the head and neck become pure white during the summer, being grey or mottled during the winter and in the young state. on the other hand, with the smaller gulls, or sea-mews (gavia), and with some terns (sterna), exactly the reverse occurs; for the heads of the young birds during the first year, and of the adults during the winter, are either pure white, or much paler coloured than during the breeding-season. these latter cases offer another instance of the capricious manner in which sexual selection appears often to have acted. ( . on larus, gavia, and sterna, see macgillivray, 'history of british birds,' vol. v. pp. , , . on the anser hyperboreus, audubon, 'ornithological biography,' vol. iv. p. . on the anastomus, mr. blyth, in 'ibis,' , p. .) that aquatic birds have acquired a white plumage so much oftener than terrestrial birds, probably depends on their large size and strong powers of flight, so that they can easily defend themselves or escape from birds of prey, to which moreover they are not much exposed. consequently, sexual selection has not here been interfered with or guided for the sake of protection. no doubt with birds which roam over the open ocean, the males and females could find each other much more easily, when made conspicuous either by being perfectly white or intensely black; so that these colours may possibly serve the same end as the call-notes of many land-birds. ( . it may be noticed that with vultures, which roam far and wide high in the air, like marine birds over the ocean, three or four species are almost wholly or largely white, and that many others are black. so that here again conspicuous colours may possibly aid the sexes in finding each other during the breeding-season.) a white or black bird when it discovers and flies down to a carcase floating on the sea or cast up on the beach, will be seen from a great distance, and will guide other birds of the same and other species, to the prey; but as this would be a disadvantage to the first finders, the individuals which were the whitest or blackest would not thus procure more food than the less strongly coloured individuals. hence conspicuous colours cannot have been gradually acquired for this purpose through natural selection. as sexual selection depends on so fluctuating an element as taste, we can understand how it is that, within the same group of birds having nearly the same habits, there should exist white or nearly white, as well as black, or nearly black species,--for instance, both white and black cockatoos, storks, ibises, swans, terns, and petrels. piebald birds likewise sometimes occur in the same groups together with black and white species; for instance, the black-necked swan, certain terns, and the common magpie. that a strong contrast in colour is agreeable to birds, we may conclude by looking through any large collection, for the sexes often differ from each other in the male having the pale parts of a purer white, and the variously coloured dark parts of still darker tints than the female. it would even appear that mere novelty, or slight changes for the sake of change, have sometimes acted on female birds as a charm, like changes of fashion with us. thus the males of some parrots can hardly be said to be more beautiful than the females, at least according to our taste, but they differ in such points, as in having a rose-coloured collar instead of "a bright emeraldine narrow green collar"; or in the male having a black collar instead of "a yellow demi-collar in front," with a pale roseate instead of a plum-blue head. ( . see jerdon on the genus palaeornis, 'birds of india,' vol. i. pp. - .) as so many male birds have elongated tail-feathers or elongated crests for their chief ornament, the shortened tail, formerly described in the male of a humming-bird, and the shortened crest of the male goosander, seem like one of the many changes of fashion which we admire in our own dresses. some members of the heron family offer a still more curious case of novelty in colouring having, as it appears, been appreciated for the sake of novelty. the young of the ardea asha are white, the adults being dark slate-coloured; and not only the young, but the adults in their winter plumage, of the allied buphus coromandus are white, this colour changing into a rich golden-buff during the breeding-season. it is incredible that the young of these two species, as well as of some other members of the same family ( . the young of ardea rufescens and a. caerulea of the united states are likewise white, the adults being coloured in accordance with their specific names. audubon ('ornithological biography,' vol. iii. p. ; vol. iv. p. ) seems rather pleased at the thought that this remarkable change of plumage will greatly "disconcert the systematists."), should for any special purpose have been rendered pure white and thus made conspicuous to their enemies; or that the adults of one of these two species should have been specially rendered white during the winter in a country which is never covered with snow. on the other hand we have good reason to believe that whiteness has been gained by many birds as a sexual ornament. we may therefore conclude that some early progenitor of the ardea asha and the buphus acquired a white plumage for nuptial purposes, and transmitted this colour to their young; so that the young and the old became white like certain existing egrets; and that the whiteness was afterwards retained by the young, whilst it was exchanged by the adults for more strongly-pronounced tints. but if we could look still further back to the still earlier progenitors of these two species, we should probably see the adults dark-coloured. i infer that this would be the case, from the analogy of many other birds, which are dark whilst young, and when adult are white; and more especially from the case of the ardea gularis, the colours of which are the reverse of those of a. asha, for the young are dark-coloured and the adults white, the young having retained a former state of plumage. it appears therefore that, during a long line of descent, the adult progenitors of the ardea asha, the buphus, and of some allies, have undergone the following changes of colour: first, a dark shade; secondly, pure white; and thirdly, owing to another change of fashion (if i may so express myself), their present slaty, reddish, or golden-buff tints. these successive changes are intelligible only on the principle of novelty having been admired by birds for its own sake. several writers have objected to the whole theory of sexual selection, by assuming that with animals and savages the taste of the female for certain colours or other ornaments would not remain constant for many generations; that first one colour and then another would be admired, and consequently that no permanent effect could be produced. we may admit that taste is fluctuating, but it is not quite arbitrary. it depends much on habit, as we see in mankind; and we may infer that this would hold good with birds and other animals. even in our own dress, the general character lasts long, and the changes are to a certain extent graduated. abundant evidence will be given in two places in a future chapter, that savages of many races have admired for many generations the same cicatrices on the skin, the same hideously perforated lips, nostrils, or ears, distorted heads, etc.; and these deformities present some analogy to the natural ornaments of various animals. nevertheless, with savages such fashions do not endure for ever, as we may infer from the differences in this respect between allied tribes on the same continent. so again the raisers of fancy animals certainly have admired for many generations and still admire the same breeds; they earnestly desire slight changes, which are considered as improvements, but any great or sudden change is looked at as the greatest blemish. with birds in a state of nature we have no reason to suppose that they would admire an entirely new style of coloration, even if great and sudden variations often occurred, which is far from being the case. we know that dovecot pigeons do not willingly associate with the variously coloured fancy breeds; that albino birds do not commonly get partners in marriage; and that the black ravens of the feroe islands chase away their piebald brethren. but this dislike of a sudden change would not preclude their appreciating slight changes, any more than it does in the case of man. hence with respect to taste, which depends on many elements, but partly on habit and partly on a love of novelty, there seems no improbability in animals admiring for a very long period the same general style of ornamentation or other attractions, and yet appreciating slight changes in colours, form, or sound. summary of the four chapters on birds. most male birds are highly pugnacious during the breeding-season, and some possess weapons adapted for fighting with their rivals. but the most pugnacious and the best armed males rarely or never depend for success solely on their power to drive away or kill their rivals, but have special means for charming the female. with some it is the power of song, or of giving forth strange cries, or instrumental music, and the males in consequence differ from the females in their vocal organs, or in the structure of certain feathers. from the curiously diversified means for producing various sounds, we gain a high idea of the importance of this means of courtship. many birds endeavour to charm the females by love-dances or antics, performed on the ground or in the air, and sometimes at prepared places. but ornaments of many kinds, the most brilliant tints, combs and wattles, beautiful plumes, elongated feathers, top-knots, and so forth, are by far the commonest means. in some cases mere novelty appears to have acted as a charm. the ornaments of the males must be highly important to them, for they have been acquired in not a few cases at the cost of increased danger from enemies, and even at some loss of power in fighting with their rivals. the males of very many species do not assume their ornamental dress until they arrive at maturity, or they assume it only during the breeding-season, or the tints then become more vivid. certain ornamental appendages become enlarged, turgid, and brightly coloured during the act of courtship. the males display their charms with elaborate care and to the best effect; and this is done in the presence of the females. the courtship is sometimes a prolonged affair, and many males and females congregate at an appointed place. to suppose that the females do not appreciate the beauty of the males, is to admit that their splendid decorations, all their pomp and display, are useless; and this is incredible. birds have fine powers of discrimination, and in some few instances it can be shewn that they have a taste for the beautiful. the females, moreover, are known occasionally to exhibit a marked preference or antipathy for certain individual males. if it be admitted that the females prefer, or are unconsciously excited by the more beautiful males, then the males would slowly but surely be rendered more and more attractive through sexual selection. that it is this sex which has been chiefly modified, we may infer from the fact that, in almost every genus where the sexes differ, the males differ much more from one another than do the females; this is well shewn in certain closely-allied representative species, in which the females can hardly be distinguished, whilst the males are quite distinct. birds in a state of nature offer individual differences which would amply suffice for the work of sexual selection; but we have seen that they occasionally present more strongly marked variations which recur so frequently that they would immediately be fixed, if they served to allure the female. the laws of variation must determine the nature of the initial changes, and will have largely influenced the final result. the gradations, which may be observed between the males of allied species, indicate the nature of the steps through which they have passed. they explain also in the most interesting manner how certain characters have originated, such as the indented ocelli on the tail-feathers of the peacock, and the ball-and-socket ocelli on the wing-feathers of the argus pheasant. it is evident that the brilliant colours, top-knots, fine plumes, etc., of many male birds cannot have been acquired as a protection; indeed, they sometimes lead to danger. that they are not due to the direct and definite action of the conditions of life, we may feel assured, because the females have been exposed to the same conditions, and yet often differ from the males to an extreme degree. although it is probable that changed conditions acting during a lengthened period have in some cases produced a definite effect on both sexes, or sometimes on one sex alone, the more important result will have been an increased tendency to vary or to present more strongly-marked individual differences; and such differences will have afforded an excellent ground-work for the action of sexual selection. the laws of inheritance, irrespectively of selection, appear to have determined whether the characters acquired by the males for the sake of ornament, for producing various sounds, and for fighting together, have been transmitted to the males alone or to both sexes, either permanently, or periodically during certain seasons of the year. why various characters should have been transmitted sometimes in one way and sometimes in another, is not in most cases known; but the period of variability seems often to have been the determining cause. when the two sexes have inherited all characters in common they necessarily resemble each other; but as the successive variations may be differently transmitted, every possible gradation may be found, even within the same genus, from the closest similarity to the widest dissimilarity between the sexes. with many closely-allied species, following nearly the same habits of life, the males have come to differ from each other chiefly through the action of sexual selection; whilst the females have come to differ chiefly from partaking more or less of the characters thus acquired by the males. the effects, moreover, of the definite action of the conditions of life, will not have been masked in the females, as in the males, by the accumulation through sexual selection of strongly-pronounced colours and other ornaments. the individuals of both sexes, however affected, will have been kept at each successive period nearly uniform by the free intercrossing of many individuals. with species, in which the sexes differ in colour, it is possible or probable that some of the successive variations often tended to be transmitted equally to both sexes; but that when this occurred the females were prevented from acquiring the bright colours of the males, by the destruction which they suffered during incubation. there is no evidence that it is possible by natural selection to convert one form of transmission into another. but there would not be the least difficulty in rendering a female dull-coloured, the male being still kept bright-coloured, by the selection of successive variations, which were from the first limited in their transmission to the same sex. whether the females of many species have actually been thus modified, must at present remain doubtful. when, through the law of the equal transmission of characters to both sexes, the females were rendered as conspicuously coloured as the males, their instincts appear often to have been modified so that they were led to build domed or concealed nests. in one small and curious class of cases the characters and habits of the two sexes have been completely transposed, for the females are larger, stronger, more vociferous and brighter coloured than the males. they have, also, become so quarrelsome that they often fight together for the possession of the males, like the males of other pugnacious species for the possession of the females. if, as seems probable, such females habitually drive away their rivals, and by the display of their bright colours or other charms endeavour to attract the males, we can understand how it is that they have gradually been rendered, by sexual selection and sexually-limited transmission, more beautiful than the males--the latter being left unmodified or only slightly modified. whenever the law of inheritance at corresponding ages prevails but not that of sexually-limited transmission, then if the parents vary late in life--and we know that this constantly occurs with our poultry, and occasionally with other birds--the young will be left unaffected, whilst the adults of both sexes will be modified. if both these laws of inheritance prevail and either sex varies late in life, that sex alone will be modified, the other sex and the young being unaffected. when variations in brightness or in other conspicuous characters occur early in life, as no doubt often happens, they will not be acted on through sexual selection until the period of reproduction arrives; consequently if dangerous to the young, they will be eliminated through natural selection. thus we can understand how it is that variations arising late in life have so often been preserved for the ornamentation of the males; the females and the young being left almost unaffected, and therefore like each other. with species having a distinct summer and winter plumage, the males of which either resemble or differ from the females during both seasons or during the summer alone, the degrees and kinds of resemblance between the young and the old are exceedingly complex; and this complexity apparently depends on characters, first acquired by the males, being transmitted in various ways and degrees, as limited by age, sex, and season. as the young of so many species have been but little modified in colour and in other ornaments, we are enabled to form some judgment with respect to the plumage of their early progenitors; and we may infer that the beauty of our existing species, if we look to the whole class, has been largely increased since that period, of which the immature plumage gives us an indirect record. many birds, especially those which live much on the ground, have undoubtedly been obscurely coloured for the sake of protection. in some instances the upper exposed surface of the plumage has been thus coloured in both sexes, whilst the lower surface in the males alone has been variously ornamented through sexual selection. finally, from the facts given in these four chapters, we may conclude that weapons for battle, organs for producing sound, ornaments of many kinds, bright and conspicuous colours, have generally been acquired by the males through variation and sexual selection, and have been transmitted in various ways according to the several laws of inheritance--the females and the young being left comparatively but little modified. ( . i am greatly indebted to the kindness of mr. sclater for having looked over these four chapters on birds, and the two following ones on mammals. in this way i have been saved from making mistakes about the names of the species, and from stating anything as a fact which is known to this distinguished naturalist to be erroneous. but, of course, he is not at all answerable for the accuracy of the statements quoted by me from various authorities.) chapter xvii. secondary sexual characters of mammals. the law of battle--special weapons, confined to the males--cause of absence of weapons in the female--weapons common to both sexes, yet primarily acquired by the male--other uses of such weapons--their high importance--greater size of the male--means of defence--on the preference shown by either sex in the pairing of quadrupeds. with mammals the male appears to win the female much more through the law of battle than through the display of his charms. the most timid animals, not provided with any special weapons for fighting, engage in desperate conflicts during the season of love. two male hares have been seen to fight together until one was killed; male moles often fight, and sometimes with fatal results; male squirrels engage in frequent contests, "and often wound each other severely"; as do male beavers, so that "hardly a skin is without scars." ( . see waterton's account of two hares fighting, 'zoologist,' vol. i. , p. . on moles, bell, 'hist. of british quadrupeds,' st ed., p. . on squirrels, audubon and bachman, viviparous quadrupeds of n. america, , p. . on beavers, mr. a.h. green, in 'journal of linnean society, zoology,' vol. x. , p. .) i observed the same fact with the hides of the guanacoes in patagonia; and on one occasion several were so absorbed in fighting that they fearlessly rushed close by me. livingstone speaks of the males of the many animals in southern africa as almost invariably shewing the scars received in former contests. the law of battle prevails with aquatic as with terrestrial mammals. it is notorious how desperately male seals fight, both with their teeth and claws, during the breeding-season; and their hides are likewise often covered with scars. male sperm-whales are very jealous at this season; and in their battles "they often lock their jaws together, and turn on their sides and twist about"; so that their lower jaws often become distorted. ( . on the battles of seals, see capt. c. abbott in 'proc. zool. soc.' , p. ; mr. r. brown, ibid. , p. ; also l. lloyd, 'game birds of sweden,' , p. ; also pennant. on the sperm-whale see mr. j.h. thompson, in 'proc. zool. soc.' , p. .) all male animals which are furnished with special weapons for fighting, are well known to engage in fierce battles. the courage and the desperate conflicts of stags have often been described; their skeletons have been found in various parts of the world, with the horns inextricably locked together, shewing how miserably the victor and vanquished had perished. ( . see scrope ('art of deer-stalking,' p. ) on the locking of the horns with the cervus elaphus. richardson, in 'fauna bor. americana,' , p. , says that the wapiti, moose, and reindeer have been found thus locked together. sir a. smith found at the cape of good hope the skeletons of two gnus in the same condition.) no animal in the world is so dangerous as an elephant in must. lord tankerville has given me a graphic description of the battles between the wild bulls in chillingham park, the descendants, degenerated in size but not in courage, of the gigantic bos primigenius. in several contended for mastery; and it was observed that two of the younger bulls attacked in concert the old leader of the herd, overthrew and disabled him, so that he was believed by the keepers to be lying mortally wounded in a neighbouring wood. but a few days afterwards one of the young bulls approached the wood alone; and then the "monarch of the chase," who had been lashing himself up for vengeance, came out and, in a short time, killed his antagonist. he then quietly joined the herd, and long held undisputed sway. admiral sir b.j. sulivan informs me that, when he lived in the falkland islands, he imported a young english stallion, which frequented the hills near port william with eight mares. on these hills there were two wild stallions, each with a small troop of mares; "and it is certain that these stallions would never have approached each other without fighting. both had tried singly to fight the english horse and drive away his mares, but had failed. one day they came in together and attacked him. this was seen by the capitan who had charge of the horses, and who, on riding to the spot, found one of the two stallions engaged with the english horse, whilst the other was driving away the mares, and had already separated four from the rest. the capitan settled the matter by driving the whole party into the corral, for the wild stallions would not leave the mares." male animals which are provided with efficient cutting or tearing teeth for the ordinary purposes of life, such as the carnivora, insectivora, and rodents, are seldom furnished with weapons especially adapted for fighting with their rivals. the case is very different with the males of many other animals. we see this in the horns of stags and of certain kinds of antelopes in which the females are hornless. with many animals the canine teeth in the upper or lower jaw, or in both, are much larger in the males than in the females, or are absent in the latter, with the exception sometimes of a hidden rudiment. certain antelopes, the musk-deer, camel, horse, boar, various apes, seals, and the walrus, offer instances. in the females of the walrus the tusks are sometimes quite absent. ( . mr. lamont ('seasons with the sea-horses,' , p. ) says that a good tusk of the male walrus weighs pounds, and is longer than that of the female, which weighs about pounds. the males are described as fighting ferociously. on the occasional absence of the tusks in the female, see mr. r. brown, 'proceedings, zoological society,' , p. .) in the male elephant of india and in the male dugong ( . owen, 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. iii. p. .) the upper incisors form offensive weapons. in the male narwhal the left canine alone is developed into the well-known, spirally-twisted, so-called horn, which is sometimes from nine to ten feet in length. it is believed that the males use these horns for fighting together; for "an unbroken one can rarely be got, and occasionally one may be found with the point of another jammed into the broken place." ( . mr. r. brown, in 'proc. zool. soc.' , p. . see prof. turner, in 'journal of anat. and phys.' , p. , on the homological nature of these tusks. also mr. j.w. clarke on two tusks being developed in the males, in 'proceedings of the zoological society,' , p. .) the tooth on the opposite side of the head in the male consists of a rudiment about ten inches in length, which is embedded in the jaw; but sometimes, though rarely, both are equally developed on the two sides. in the female both are always rudimentary. the male cachalot has a larger head than that of the female, and it no doubt aids him in his aquatic battles. lastly, the adult male ornithorhynchus is provided with a remarkable apparatus, namely a spur on the foreleg, closely resembling the poison-fang of a venomous snake; but according to harting, the secretion from the gland is not poisonous; and on the leg of the female there is a hollow, apparently for the reception of the spur. ( . owen on the cachalot and ornithorhynchus, ibid. vol. iii. pp. , . harting is quoted by dr. zouteveen in the dutch translation of this work, vol. ii. p. .) when the males are provided with weapons which in the females are absent, there can be hardly a doubt that these serve for fighting with other males; and that they were acquired through sexual selection, and were transmitted to the male sex alone. it is not probable, at least in most cases, that the females have been prevented from acquiring such weapons, on account of their being useless, superfluous, or in some way injurious. on the contrary, as they are often used by the males for various purposes, more especially as a defence against their enemies, it is a surprising fact that they are so poorly developed, or quite absent, in the females of so many animals. with female deer the development during each recurrent season of great branching horns, and with female elephants the development of immense tusks, would be a great waste of vital power, supposing that they were of no use to the females. consequently, they would have tended to be eliminated in the female through natural selection; that is, if the successive variations were limited in their transmission to the female sex, for otherwise the weapons of the males would have been injuriously affected, and this would have been a greater evil. on the whole, and from the consideration of the following facts, it seems probable that when the various weapons differ in the two sexes, this has generally depended on the kind of transmission which has prevailed. as the reindeer is the one species in the whole family of deer, in which the female is furnished with horns, though they are somewhat smaller, thinner, and less branched than in the male, it might naturally be thought that, at least in this case, they must be of some special service to her. the female retains her horns from the time when they are fully developed, namely, in september, throughout the winter until april or may, when she brings forth her young. mr. crotch made particular enquiries for me in norway, and it appears that the females at this season conceal themselves for about a fortnight in order to bring forth their young, and then reappear, generally hornless. in nova scotia, however, as i hear from mr. h. reeks, the female sometimes retains her horns longer. the male on the other hand casts his horns much earlier, towards the end of november. as both sexes have the same requirements and follow the same habits of life, and as the male is destitute of horns during the winter, it is improbable that they can be of any special service to the female during this season, which includes the larger part of the time during which she is horned. nor is it probable that she can have inherited horns from some ancient progenitor of the family of deer, for, from the fact of the females of so many species in all quarters of the globe not having horns, we may conclude that this was the primordial character of the group. ( . on the structure and shedding of the horns of the reindeer, hoffberg, 'amoenitates acad.' vol. iv. , p. . see richardson, 'fauna bor. americana,' p. , in regard to the american variety or species: also major w. ross king, 'the sportsman in canada,' , p. . the horns of the reindeer are developed at a most unusually early age; but what the cause of this may be is not known. the effect has apparently been the transference of the horns to both sexes. we should bear in mind that horns are always transmitted through the female, and that she has a latent capacity for their development, as we see in old or diseased females. ( . isidore geoffroy st.-hilaire, 'essais de zoolog. générale,' , p. . other masculine characters, besides the horns, are sometimes similarly transferred to the female; thus mr. boner, in speaking of an old female chamois ('chamois hunting in the mountains of bavaria,' , nd ed., p. ), says, "not only was the head very male-looking, but along the back there was a ridge of long hair, usually to be found only in bucks.") moreover the females of some other species of deer exhibit, either normally or occasionally, rudiments of horns; thus the female of cervulus moschatus has "bristly tufts, ending in a knob, instead of a horn"; and "in most specimens of the female wapiti (cervus canadensis) there is a sharp bony protuberance in the place of the horn." ( . on the cervulus, dr. gray, 'catalogue of mammalia in the british museum,' part iii. p. . on the cervus canadensis or wapiti, see hon. j.d. caton, 'ottawa academy of nat. sciences,' may , p. .) from these several considerations we may conclude that the possession of fairly well-developed horns by the female reindeer, is due to the males having first acquired them as weapons for fighting with other males; and secondarily to their development from some unknown cause at an unusually early age in the males, and their consequent transference to both sexes. turning to the sheath-horned ruminants: with antelopes a graduated series can be formed, beginning with species, the females of which are completely destitute of horns--passing on to those which have horns so small as to be almost rudimentary (as with the antilocapra americana, in which species they are present in only one out of four or five females ( . i am indebted to dr. canfield for this information; see also his paper in the 'proceedings of the zoological society,' , p. .))--to those which have fairly developed horns, but manifestly smaller and thinner than in the male and sometimes of a different shape ( . for instance the horns of the female ant. euchore resemble those of a distinct species, viz. the ant. dorcas var. corine, see desmarest, 'mammalogie,' p. .),--and ending with those in which both sexes have horns of equal size. as with the reindeer, so with antelopes, there exists, as previously shewn, a relation between the period of the development of the horns and their transmission to one or both sexes; it is therefore probable that their presence or absence in the females of some species, and their more or less perfect condition in the females of other species, depends, not on their being of any special use, but simply on inheritance. it accords with this view that even in the same restricted genus both sexes of some species, and the males alone of others, are thus provided. it is also a remarkable fact that, although the females of antilope bezoartica are normally destitute of horns, mr. blyth has seen no less than three females thus furnished; and there was no reason to suppose that they were old or diseased. in all the wild species of goats and sheep the horns are larger in the male than in the female, and are sometimes quite absent in the latter. ( . gray, 'catalogue of mammalia, the british museum,' part iii. , p. .) in several domestic breeds of these two animals, the males alone are furnished with horns; and in some breeds, for instance, in the sheep of north wales, though both sexes are properly horned, the ewes are very liable to be hornless. i have been informed by a trustworthy witness, who purposely inspected a flock of these same sheep during the lambing season, that the horns at birth are generally more fully developed in the male than in the female. mr. j. peel crossed his lonk sheep, both sexes of which always bear horns, with hornless leicesters and hornless shropshire downs; and the result was that the male offspring had their horns considerably reduced, whilst the females were wholly destitute of them. these several facts indicate that, with sheep, the horns are a much less firmly fixed character in the females than in the males; and this leads us to look at the horns as properly of masculine origin. with the adult musk-ox (ovibos moschatus) the horns of the male are larger than those of the female, and in the latter the bases do not touch. ( . richardson, 'fauna bor. americana,' p. .) in regard to ordinary cattle mr. blyth remarks: "in most of the wild bovine animals the horns are both longer and thicker in the bull than in the cow, and in the cow-banteng (bos sondaicus) the horns are remarkably small, and inclined much backwards. in the domestic races of cattle, both of the humped and humpless types, the horns are short and thick in the bull, longer and more slender in the cow and ox; and in the indian buffalo, they are shorter and thicker in the bull, longer and more slender in the cow. in the wild gaour (b. gaurus) the horns are mostly both longer and thicker in the bull than in the cow." ( . 'land and water,' , p. .) dr. forsyth major also informs me that a fossil skull, believed to be that of the female bos etruscus, has been found in val d'arno, which is wholly without horns. in the rhinoceros simus, as i may add, the horns of the female are generally longer but less powerful than in the male; and in some other species of rhinoceros they are said to be shorter in the female. ( . sir andrew smith, 'zoology of s. africa,' pl. xix. owen, 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. iii. p. .) from these various facts we may infer as probable that horns of all kinds, even when they are equally developed in the two sexes, were primarily acquired by the male in order to conquer other males, and have been transferred more or less completely to the female. the effects of castration deserve notice, as throwing light on this same point. stags after the operation never renew their horns. the male reindeer, however, must be excepted, as after castration he does renew them. this fact, as well as the possession of horns by both sexes, seems at first to prove that the horns in this species do not constitute a sexual character ( . this is the conclusion of seidlitz, 'die darwinsche theorie,' , p. .); but as they are developed at a very early age, before the sexes differ in constitution, it is not surprising that they should be unaffected by castration, even if they were aboriginally acquired by the male. with sheep both sexes properly bear horns; and i am informed that with welch sheep the horns of the males are considerably reduced by castration; but the degree depends much on the age at which the operation is performed, as is likewise the case with other animals. merino rams have large horns, whilst the ewes "generally speaking are without horns"; and in this breed castration seems to produce a somewhat greater effect, so that if performed at an early age the horns "remain almost undeveloped." ( . i am much obliged to prof. victor carus, for having made enquiries for me in saxony on this subject. h. von nathusius ('viehzucht,' , p. ) says that the horns of sheep castrated at an early period, either altogether disappear or remain as mere rudiments; but i do not know whether he refers to merinos or to ordinary breeds.) on the guinea coast there is a breed in which the females never bear horns, and, as mr. winwood reade informs me, the rams after castration are quite destitute of them. with cattle, the horns of the males are much altered by castration; for instead of being short and thick, they become longer than those of the cow, but otherwise resemble them. the antilope bezoartica offers a somewhat analogous case: the males have long straight spiral horns, nearly parallel to each other, and directed backwards; the females occasionally bear horns, but these when present are of a very different shape, for they are not spiral, and spreading widely, bend round with the points forwards. now it is a remarkable fact that, in the castrated male, as mr. blyth informs me, the horns are of the same peculiar shape as in the female, but longer and thicker. if we may judge from analogy, the female probably shews us, in these two cases of cattle and the antelope, the former condition of the horns in some early progenitor of each species. but why castration should lead to the reappearance of an early condition of the horns cannot be explained with any certainty. nevertheless, it seems probable, that in nearly the same manner as the constitutional disturbance in the offspring, caused by a cross between two distinct species or races, often leads to the reappearance of long-lost characters ( . i have given various experiments and other evidence proving that this is the case, in my 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. , pp. - .); so here, the disturbance in the constitution of the individual, resulting from castration, produces the same effect. the tusks of the elephant, in the different species or races, differ according to sex, nearly as do the horns of ruminants. in india and malacca the males alone are provided with well-developed tusks. the elephant of ceylon is considered by most naturalists as a distinct race, but by some as a distinct species, and here "not one in a hundred is found with tusks, the few that possess them being exclusively males." ( . sir j. emerson tennent, 'ceylon,' , vol. ii. p. . for malacca, 'journal of indian archipelago,' vol. iv. p. .) the african elephant is undoubtedly distinct, and the female has large well-developed tusks, though not so large as those of the male. these differences in the tusks of the several races and species of elephants--the great variability of the horns of deer, as notably in the wild reindeer--the occasional presence of horns in the female antilope bezoartica, and their frequent absence in the female of antilocapra americana--the presence of two tusks in some few male narwhals--the complete absence of tusks in some female walruses--are all instances of the extreme variability of secondary sexual characters, and of their liability to differ in closely-allied forms. although tusks and horns appear in all cases to have been primarily developed as sexual weapons, they often serve other purposes. the elephant uses his tusks in attacking the tiger; according to bruce, he scores the trunks of trees until they can be thrown down easily, and he likewise thus extracts the farinaceous cores of palms; in africa he often uses one tusk, always the same, to probe the ground and thus ascertain whether it will bear his weight. the common bull defends the herd with his horns; and the elk in sweden has been known, according to lloyd, to strike a wolf dead with a single blow of his great horns. many similar facts could be given. one of the most curious secondary uses to which the horns of an animal may be occasionally put is that observed by captain hutton ( . 'calcutta journal of natural history,' vol. ii, , p. .) with the wild goat (capra aegagrus) of the himalayas and, as it is also said with the ibex, namely that when the male accidentally falls from a height he bends inwards his head, and by alighting on his massive horns, breaks the shock. the female cannot thus use her horns, which are smaller, but from her more quiet disposition she does not need this strange kind of shield so much. each male animal uses his weapons in his own peculiar fashion. the common ram makes a charge and butts with such force with the bases of his horns, that i have seen a powerful man knocked over like a child. goats and certain species of sheep, for instance the ovis cycloceros of afghanistan ( . mr. blyth, in 'land and water,' march, , p. , on the authority of capt. hutton and others. for the wild pembrokeshire goats, see the 'field,' , p. .), rear on their hind legs, and then not only butt, but "make a cut down and a jerk up, with the ribbed front of their scimitar-shaped horn, as with a sabre. when the o. cycloceros attacked a large domestic ram, who was a noted bruiser, he conquered him by the sheer novelty of his mode of fighting, always closing at once with his adversary, and catching him across the face and nose with a sharp drawing jerk of the head, and then bounding out of the way before the blow could be returned." in pembrokeshire a male goat, the master of a flock which during several generations had run wild, was known to have killed several males in single combat; this goat possessed enormous horns, measuring thirty-nine inches in a straight line from tip to tip. the common bull, as every one knows, gores and tosses his opponent; but the italian buffalo is said never to use his horns: he gives a tremendous blow with his convex forehead, and then tramples on his fallen enemy with his knees--an instinct which the common bull does not possess. ( . m. e.m. bailly, "sur l'usage des cornes," etc., .annal des sciences nat.' tom. ii. , p. .) hence a dog who pins a buffalo by the nose is immediately crushed. we must, however, remember that the italian buffalo has been long domesticated, and it is by no means certain that the wild parent-form had similar horns. mr. bartlett informs me that when a female cape buffalo (bubalus caffer) was turned into an enclosure with a bull of the same species, she attacked him, and he in return pushed her about with great violence. but it was manifest to mr. bartlett that, had not the bull shewn dignified forbearance, he could easily have killed her by a single lateral thrust with his immense horns. the giraffe uses his short, hair-covered horns, which are rather longer in the male than in the female, in a curious manner; for, with his long neck, he swings his head to either side, almost upside down, with such force that i have seen a hard plank deeply indented by a single blow. [fig. . oryx leucoryx, male (from the knowsley menagerie).] with antelopes it is sometimes difficult to imagine how they can possibly use their curiously-shaped horns; thus the springboc (ant. euchore) has rather short upright horns, with the sharp points bent inwards almost at right angles, so as to face each other; mr. bartlett does not know how they are used, but suggests that they would inflict a fearful wound down each side of the face of an antagonist. the slightly-curved horns of the oryx leucoryx (fig. ) are directed backwards, and are of such length that their points reach beyond the middle of the back, over which they extend in almost parallel lines. thus they seem singularly ill-fitted for fighting; but mr. bartlett informs me that when two of these animals prepare for battle, they kneel down, with their heads between their fore legs, and in this attitude the horns stand nearly parallel and close to the ground, with the points directed forwards and a little upwards. the combatants then gradually approach each other, and each endeavours to get the upturned points under the body of the other; if one succeeds in doing this, he suddenly springs up, throwing up his head at the same time, and can thus wound or perhaps even transfix his antagonist. both animals always kneel down, so as to guard as far as possible against this manoeuvre. it has been recorded that one of these antelopes has used his horn with effect even against a lion; yet from being forced to place his head between the forelegs in order to bring the points of the horns forward, he would generally be under a great disadvantage when attacked by any other animal. it is, therefore, not probable that the horns have been modified into their present great length and peculiar position, as a protection against beasts of prey. we can however see that, as soon as some ancient male progenitor of the oryx acquired moderately long horns, directed a little backwards, he would be compelled, in his battles with rival males, to bend his head somewhat inwards or downwards, as is now done by certain stags; and it is not improbable that he might have acquired the habit of at first occasionally and afterwards of regularly kneeling down. in this case it is almost certain that the males which possessed the longest horns would have had a great advantage over others with shorter horns; and then the horns would gradually have been rendered longer and longer, through sexual selection, until they acquired their present extraordinary length and position. with stags of many kinds the branches of the horns offer a curious case of difficulty; for certainly a single straight point would inflict a much more serious wound than several diverging ones. in sir philip egerton's museum there is a horn of the red-deer (cervus elaphus), thirty inches in length, with "not fewer than fifteen snags or branches"; and at moritzburg there is still preserved a pair of antlers of a red-deer, shot in by frederick i., one of which bears the astonishing number of thirty-three branches and the other twenty-seven, making altogether sixty branches. richardson figures a pair of antlers of the wild reindeer with twenty-nine points. ( . on the horns of red-deer, owen, 'british fossil mammals,' , p. ; richardson on the horns of the reindeer, 'fauna bor. americana,' , p. . i am indebted to prof. victor carus, for the moritzburg case.) from the manner in which the horns are branched, and more especially from deer being known occasionally to fight together by kicking with their fore-feet ( . hon. j.d. caton ('ottawa acad. of nat. science,' may , p. ) says that the american deer fight with their fore-feet, after "the question of superiority has been once settled and acknowledged in the herd." bailly, 'sur l'usage des cornes,' 'annales des sciences nat.' tom. ii. , p. .), m. bailly actually comes to the conclusion that their horns are more injurious than useful to them. but this author overlooks the pitched battles between rival males. as i felt much perplexed about the use or advantage of the branches, i applied to mr. mcneill of colonsay, who has long and carefully observed the habits of red-deer, and he informs me that he has never seen some of the branches brought into use, but that the brow antlers, from inclining downwards, are a great protection to the forehead, and their points are likewise used in attack. sir philip egerton also informs me both as to red-deer and fallow-deer that, in fighting, they suddenly dash together, and getting their horns fixed against each other's bodies, a desperate struggle ensues. when one is at last forced to yield and turn round, the victor endeavours to plunge his brow antlers into his defeated foe. it thus appears that the upper branches are used chiefly or exclusively for pushing and fencing. nevertheless in some species the upper branches are used as weapons of offence; when a man was attacked by a wapiti deer (cervus canadensis) in judge caton's park in ottawa, and several men tried to rescue him, the stag "never raised his head from the ground; in fact he kept his face almost flat on the ground, with his nose nearly between his fore feet, except when he rolled his head to one side to take a new observation preparatory to a plunge." in this position the ends of the horns were directed against his adversaries. "in rolling his head he necessarily raised it somewhat, because his antlers were so long that he could not roll his head without raising them on one side, while, on the other side they touched the ground." the stag by this procedure gradually drove the party of rescuers backwards to a distance of or feet; and the attacked man was killed. ( . see a most interesting account in the appendix to hon. j.d. caton's paper, as above quoted.) [fig. . strepsiceros kudu (from sir andrew smith's 'zoology of south africa.'] although the horns of stags are efficient weapons, there can, i think, be no doubt that a single point would have been much more dangerous than a branched antler; and judge caton, who has had large experience with deer, fully concurs in this conclusion. nor do the branching horns, though highly important as a means of defence against rival stags, appear perfectly well adapted for this purpose, as they are liable to become interlocked. the suspicion has therefore crossed my mind that they may serve in part as ornaments. that the branched antlers of stags as well as the elegant lyrated horns of certain antelopes, with their graceful double curvature (fig. ), are ornamental in our eyes, no one will dispute. if, then, the horns, like the splendid accoutrements of the knights of old, add to the noble appearance of stags and antelopes, they may have been modified partly for this purpose, though mainly for actual service in battle; but i have no evidence in favour of this belief. an interesting case has lately been published, from which it appears that the horns of a deer in one district in the united states are now being modified through sexual and natural selection. a writer in an excellent american journal ( . the 'american naturalist,' dec. , p. .) says, that he has hunted for the last twenty-one years in the adirondacks, where the cervus virginianus abounds. about fourteen years ago he first heard of spike-horn bucks. these became from year to year more common; about five years ago he shot one, and afterwards another, and now they are frequently killed. "the spike-horn differs greatly from the common antler of the c. virginianus. it consists of a single spike, more slender than the antler, and scarcely half so long, projecting forward from the brow, and terminating in a very sharp point. it gives a considerable advantage to its possessor over the common buck. besides enabling him to run more swiftly through the thick woods and underbrush (every hunter knows that does and yearling bucks run much more rapidly than the large bucks when armed with their cumbrous antlers), the spike-horn is a more effective weapon than the common antler. with this advantage the spike-horn bucks are gaining upon the common bucks, and may, in time, entirely supersede them in the adirondacks. undoubtedly, the first spike-horn buck was merely an accidental freak of nature. but his spike-horns gave him an advantage, and enabled him to propagate his peculiarity. his descendants having a like advantage, have propagated the peculiarity in a constantly increasing ratio, till they are slowly crowding the antlered deer from the region they inhabit." a critic has well objected to this account by asking, why, if the simple horns are now so advantageous, were the branched antlers of the parent-form ever developed? to this i can only answer by remarking, that a new mode of attack with new weapons might be a great advantage, as shewn by the case of the ovis cycloceros, who thus conquered a domestic ram famous for his fighting power. though the branched antlers of a stag are well adapted for fighting with his rivals, and though it might be an advantage to the prong-horned variety slowly to acquire long and branched horns, if he had to fight only with others of the same kind, yet it by no means follows that branched horns would be the best fitted for conquering a foe differently armed. in the foregoing case of the oryx leucoryx, it is almost certain that the victory would rest with an antelope having short horns, and who therefore did not need to kneel down, though an oryx might profit by having still longer horns, if he fought only with his proper rivals. male quadrupeds, which are furnished with tusks, use them in various ways, as in the case of horns. the boar strikes laterally and upwards; the musk-deer downwards with serious effect. ( . pallas, 'spicilegia zoologica,' fasc. xiii. , p. .) the walrus, though having so short a neck and so unwieldy a body, "can strike either upwards, or downwards, or sideways, with equal dexterity." ( . lamont, 'seasons with the sea-horses,' , p. .) i was informed by the late dr. falconer, that the indian elephant fights in a different manner according to the position and curvature of his tusks. when they are directed forwards and upwards he is able to fling a tiger to a great distance--it is said to even thirty feet; when they are short and turned downwards he endeavours suddenly to pin the tiger to the ground and, in consequence, is dangerous to the rider, who is liable to be jerked off the howdah. ( . see also corse ('philosophical transactions,' , p. ) on the manner in which the short-tusked mooknah variety attacks other elephants.) very few male quadrupeds possess weapons of two distinct kinds specially adapted for fighting with rival males. the male muntjac-deer (cervulus), however, offers an exception, as he is provided with horns and exserted canine teeth. but we may infer from what follows that one form of weapon has often been replaced in the course of ages by another. with ruminants the development of horns generally stands in an inverse relation with that of even moderately developed canine teeth. thus camels, guanacoes, chevrotains, and musk-deer, are hornless, and they have efficient canines; these teeth being "always of smaller size in the females than in the males." the camelidae have, in addition to their true canines, a pair of canine-shaped incisors in their upper jaws. ( . owen, 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. iii. p. .) male deer and antelopes, on the other hand, possess horns, and they rarely have canine teeth; and these, when present, are always of small size, so that it is doubtful whether they are of any service in their battles. in antilope montana they exist only as rudiments in the young male, disappearing as he grows old; and they are absent in the female at all ages; but the females of certain other antelopes and of certain deer have been known occasionally to exhibit rudiments of these teeth. ( . see ruppell (in 'proc. zoolog. soc.' jan. , , p. ) on the canines in deer and antelopes, with a note by mr. martin on a female american deer. see also falconer ('palaeont. memoirs and notes,' vol. i. , p. ) on canines in an adult female deer. in old males of the musk-deer the canines (pallas, 'spic. zoolog.' fasc. xiii. , p. ) sometimes grow to the length of three inches, whilst in old females a rudiment projects scarcely half an inch above the gums.) stallions have small canine teeth, which are either quite absent or rudimentary in the mare; but they do not appear to be used in fighting, for stallions bite with their incisors, and do not open their mouths wide like camels and guanacoes. whenever the adult male possesses canines, now inefficient, whilst the female has either none or mere rudiments, we may conclude that the early male progenitor of the species was provided with efficient canines, which have been partially transferred to the females. the reduction of these teeth in the males seems to have followed from some change in their manner of fighting, often (but not in the horse) caused by the development of new weapons. tusks and horns are manifestly of high importance to their possessors, for their development consumes much organised matter. a single tusk of the asiatic elephant--one of the extinct woolly species--and of the african elephant, have been known to weigh respectively , , and pounds; and even greater weights have been given by some authors. ( . emerson tennent, 'ceylon,' , vol. ii. p. ; owen, 'british fossil mammals,' , p. .) with deer, in which the horns are periodically renewed, the drain on the constitution must be greater; the horns, for instance, of the moose weigh from fifty to sixty pounds, and those of the extinct irish elk from sixty to seventy pounds--the skull of the latter weighing on an average only five pounds and a quarter. although the horns are not periodically renewed in sheep, yet their development, in the opinion of many agriculturists, entails a sensible loss to the breeder. stags, moreover, in escaping from beasts of prey are loaded with an additional weight for the race, and are greatly retarded in passing through a woody country. the moose, for instance, with horns extending five and a half feet from tip to tip, although so skilful in their use that he will not touch or break a twig when walking quietly, cannot act so dexterously whilst rushing away from a pack of wolves. "during his progress he holds his nose up, so as to lay the horns horizontally back; and in this attitude cannot see the ground distinctly." ( . richardson, 'fauna bor. americana,' on the moose, alces palmata, pp. , ; on the expanse of the horns, 'land and water,' , p. . see also owen, 'british fossil mammals,' on the irish elk, pp. , .) the tips of the horns of the great irish elk were actually eight feet apart! whilst the horns are covered with velvet, which lasts with red-deer for about twelve weeks, they are extremely sensitive to a blow; so that in germany the stags at this time somewhat change their habits, and avoiding dense forests, frequent young woods and low thickets. ( . 'forest creatures,' by c. boner, , p. .) these facts remind us that male birds have acquired ornamental plumes at the cost of retarded flight, and other ornaments at the cost of some loss of power in their battles with rival males. with mammals, when, as is often the case, the sexes differ in size, the males are almost always larger and stronger. i am informed by mr. gould that this holds good in a marked manner with the marsupials of australia, the males of which appear to continue growing until an unusually late age. but the most extraordinary case is that of one of the seals (callorhinus ursinus), a full-grown female weighing less than one-sixth of a full-grown male. ( . see the very interesting paper by mr. j.a. allen in 'bull. mus. comp. zoology of cambridge, united states,' vol. ii. no. , p. . the weights were ascertained by a careful observer, capt. bryant. dr. gill in 'the american naturalist,' january, , prof. shaler on the relative size of the sexes of whales, 'american naturalist,' january, .) dr. gill remarks that it is with the polygamous seals, the males of which are well known to fight savagely together, that the sexes differ much in size; the monogamous species differing but little. whales also afford evidence of the relation existing between the pugnacity of the males and their large size compared with that of the female; the males of the right-whales do not fight together, and they are not larger, but rather smaller, than their females; on the other hand, male sperm-whales fight much together, and their bodies are "often found scarred with the imprint of their rival's teeth," and they are double the size of the females. the greater strength of the male, as hunter long ago remarked ( . 'animal economy,' p. .), is invariably displayed in those parts of the body which are brought into action in fighting with rival males--for instance, in the massive neck of the bull. male quadrupeds are also more courageous and pugnacious than the females. there can be little doubt that these characters have been gained, partly through sexual selection, owing to a long series of victories, by the stronger and more courageous males over the weaker, and partly through the inherited effects of use. it is probable that the successive variations in strength, size, and courage, whether due to mere variability or to the effects of use, by the accumulation of which male quadrupeds have acquired these characteristic qualities, occurred rather late in life, and were consequently to a large extent limited in their transmission to the same sex. from these considerations i was anxious to obtain information as to the scotch deer-hound, the sexes of which differ more in size than those of any other breed (though blood-hounds differ considerably), or than in any wild canine species known to me. accordingly, i applied to mr. cupples, well known for his success with this breed, who has weighed and measured many of his own dogs, and who has with great kindness collected for me the following facts from various sources. fine male dogs, measured at the shoulder, range from inches, which is low, to or even inches in height; and in weight from pounds, which is light, to pounds, or even more. the females range in height from to , or even to inches; and in weight from to , or even pounds. ( . see also richardson's 'manual on the dog,' p. . much valuable information on the scottish deer-hound is given by mr. mcneill, who first called attention to the inequality in size between the sexes, in scrope's 'art of deer-stalking.' i hope that mr. cupples will keep to his intention of publishing a full account and history of this famous breed.) mr. cupples concludes that from to pounds for the male, and for the female, would be a safe average; but there is reason to believe that formerly both sexes attained a greater weight. mr. cupples has weighed puppies when a fortnight old; in one litter the average weight of four males exceeded that of two females by six and a half ounces; in another litter the average weight of four males exceeded that of one female by less than one ounce; the same males when three weeks old, exceeded the female by seven and a half ounces, and at the age of six weeks by nearly fourteen ounces. mr. wright of yeldersley house, in a letter to mr. cupples, says: "i have taken notes on the sizes and weights of puppies of many litters, and as far as my experience goes, dog-puppies as a rule differ very little from bitches till they arrive at about five or six months old; and then the dogs begin to increase, gaining upon the bitches both in weight and size. at birth, and for several weeks afterwards, a bitch-puppy will occasionally be larger than any of the dogs, but they are invariably beaten by them later." mr. mcneill, of colonsay, concludes that "the males do not attain their full growth till over two years old, though the females attain it sooner." according to mr. cupples' experience, male dogs go on growing in stature till they are from twelve to eighteen months old, and in weight till from eighteen to twenty-four months old; whilst the females cease increasing in stature at the age of from nine to fourteen or fifteen months, and in weight at the age of from twelve to fifteen months. from these various statements it is clear that the full difference in size between the male and female scotch deer-hound is not acquired until rather late in life. the males almost exclusively are used for coursing, for, as mr. mcneill informs me, the females have not sufficient strength and weight to pull down a full-grown deer. from the names used in old legends, it appears, as i hear from mr. cupples, that, at a very ancient period, the males were the most celebrated, the females being mentioned only as the mothers of famous dogs. hence, during many generations, it is the male which has been chiefly tested for strength, size, speed, and courage, and the best will have been bred from. as, however, the males do not attain their full dimensions until rather late in life, they will have tended, in accordance with the law often indicated, to transmit their characters to their male offspring alone; and thus the great inequality in size between the sexes of the scotch deer-hound may probably be accounted for. [fig. . head of common wild boar, in prime of life (from brehm).] the males of some few quadrupeds possess organs or parts developed solely as a means of defence against the attacks of other males. some kinds of deer use, as we have seen, the upper branches of their horns chiefly or exclusively for defending themselves; and the oryx antelope, as i am informed by mr. bartlett, fences most skilfully with his long, gently curved horns; but these are likewise used as organs of offence. the same observer remarks that rhinoceroses in fighting, parry each other's sidelong blows with their horns, which clatter loudly together, as do the tusks of boars. although wild boars fight desperately, they seldom, according to brehm, receive fatal wounds, as the blows fall on each other's tusks, or on the layer of gristly skin covering the shoulder, called by the german hunters, the shield; and here we have a part specially modified for defence. with boars in the prime of life (fig. ) the tusks in the lower jaw are used for fighting, but they become in old age, as brehm states, so much curved inwards and upwards over the snout that they can no longer be used in this way. they may, however, still serve, and even more effectively, as a means of defence. in compensation for the loss of the lower tusks as weapons of offence, those in the upper jaw, which always project a little laterally, increase in old age so much in length and curve so much upwards that they can be used for attack. nevertheless, an old boar is not so dangerous to man as one at the age of six or seven years. ( . brehm, 'thierleben,' b. ii. ss. - .) [fig. . skull of the babirusa pig (from wallace's 'malay archipelago').] in the full-grown male babirusa pig of celebes (fig. ), the lower tusks are formidable weapons, like those of the european boar in the prime of life, whilst the upper tusks are so long and have their points so much curled inwards, sometimes even touching the forehead, that they are utterly useless as weapons of attack. they more nearly resemble horns than teeth, and are so manifestly useless as teeth that the animal was formerly supposed to rest his head by hooking them on to a branch! their convex surfaces, however, if the head were held a little laterally, would serve as an excellent guard; and hence, perhaps, it is that in old animals they "are generally broken off, as if by fighting." ( . see mr. wallace's interesting account of this animal, 'the malay archipelago,' , vol. i. p. .) here, then, we have the curious case of the upper tusks of the babirusa regularly assuming during the prime of life a structure which apparently renders them fitted only for defence; whilst in the european boar the lower tusks assume in a less degree and only during old age nearly the same form, and then serve in like manner solely for defence. [fig. . head of female aethiopian wart-hog, from 'proc. zool. soc.' , shewing the same characters as the male, though on a reduced scale. n.b. when the engraving was first made, i was under the impression that it represented the male.] in the wart-hog (see phacochoerus aethiopicus, fig. ) the tusks in the upper jaw of the male curve upwards during the prime of life, and from being pointed serve as formidable weapons. the tusks in the lower jaw are sharper than those in the upper, but from their shortness it seems hardly possible that they can be used as weapons of attack. they must, however, greatly strengthen those in the upper jaw, from being ground so as to fit closely against their bases. neither the upper nor the lower tusks appear to have been specially modified to act as guards, though no doubt they are to a certain extent used for this purpose. but the wart-hog is not destitute of other special means of protection, for it has, on each side of the face, beneath the eyes, a rather stiff, yet flexible, cartilaginous, oblong pad (fig. ), which projects two or three inches outwards; and it appeared to mr. bartlett and myself, when viewing the living animal, that these pads, when struck from beneath by the tusks of an opponent, would be turned upwards, and would thus admirably protect the somewhat prominent eyes. i may add, on the authority of mr. bartlett, that these boars when fighting stand directly face to face. lastly, the african river-hog (potomochoerus penicillatus) has a hard cartilaginous knob on each side of the face beneath the eyes, which answers to the flexible pad of the wart-hog; it has also two bony prominences on the upper jaw above the nostrils. a boar of this species in the zoological gardens recently broke into the cage of the wart-hog. they fought all night long, and were found in the morning much exhausted, but not seriously wounded. it is a significant fact, as shewing the purposes of the above-described projections and excrescences, that these were covered with blood, and were scored and abraded in an extraordinary manner. although the males of so many members of the pig family are provided with weapons, and as we have just seen with means of defence, these weapons seem to have been acquired within a rather late geological period. dr. forsyth major specifies ( . 'atti della soc. italiana di sc. nat.' , vol. xv. fasc. iv.) several miocene species, in none of which do the tusks appear to have been largely developed in the males; and professor rutimeyer was formerly struck with this same fact. the mane of the lion forms a good defence against the attacks of rival lions, the one danger to which he is liable; for the males, as sir a. smith informs me, engage in terrible battles, and a young lion dares not approach an old one. in a tiger at bromwich broke into the cage of a lion and a fearful scene ensued: "the lion's mane saved his neck and head from being much injured, but the tiger at last succeeded in ripping up his belly, and in a few minutes he was dead." ( . 'the times,' nov. , . in regard to the canada lynx, see audubon and bachman, 'quadrupeds of north america,' , p. .) the broad ruff round the throat and chin of the canadian lynx (felis canadensis) is much longer in the male than in the female; but whether it serves as a defence i do not know. male seals are well known to fight desperately together, and the males of certain kinds (otaria jubata) ( . dr. murie, on otaria, 'proc. zoolog. soc.' , p. . mr. j.a. allen, in the paper above quoted (p. ), doubts whether the hair, which is longer on the neck in the male than in the female, deserves to be called a mane.) have great manes, whilst the females have small ones or none. the male baboon of the cape of good hope (cynocephalus porcarius) has a much longer mane and larger canine teeth than the female; and the mane probably serves as a protection, for, on asking the keepers in the zoological gardens, without giving them any clue to my object, whether any of the monkeys especially attacked each other by the nape of the neck, i was answered that this was not the case, except with the above baboon. in the hamadryas baboon, ehrenberg compares the mane of the adult male to that of a young lion, whilst in the young of both sexes and in the female the mane is almost absent. it appeared to me probable that the immense woolly mane of the male american bison, which reaches almost to the ground, and is much more developed in the males than in the females, served as a protection to them in their terrible battles; but an experienced hunter told judge caton that he had never observed anything which favoured this belief. the stallion has a thicker and fuller mane than the mare; and i have made particular inquiries of two great trainers and breeders, who have had charge of many entire horses, and am assured that they "invariably endeavour to seize one another by the neck." it does not, however, follow from the foregoing statements, that when the hair on the neck serves as a defence, that it was originally developed for this purpose, though this is probable in some cases, as in that of the lion. i am informed by mr. mcneill that the long hairs on the throat of the stag (cervus elaphus) serve as a great protection to him when hunted, for the dogs generally endeavour to seize him by the throat; but it is not probable that these hairs were specially developed for this purpose; otherwise the young and the females would have been equally protected. choice in pairing by either sex of quadrupeds. before describing in the next chapter, the differences between the sexes in voice, odours emitted, and ornaments, it will be convenient here to consider whether the sexes exert any choice in their unions. does the female prefer any particular male, either before or after the males may have fought together for supremacy; or does the male, when not a polygamist, select any particular female? the general impression amongst breeders seems to be that the male accepts any female; and this owing to his eagerness, is, in most cases, probably the truth. whether the female as a general rule indifferently accepts any male is much more doubtful. in the fourteenth chapter, on birds, a considerable body of direct and indirect evidence was advanced, shewing that the female selects her partner; and it would be a strange anomaly if female quadrupeds, which stand higher in the scale and have higher mental powers, did not generally, or at least often, exert some choice. the female could in most cases escape, if wooed by a male that did not please or excite her; and when pursued by several males, as commonly occurs, she would often have the opportunity, whilst they were fighting together, of escaping with some one male, or at least of temporarily pairing with him. this latter contingency has often been observed in scotland with female red-deer, as i am informed by sir philip egerton and others. ( . mr. boner, in his excellent description of the habits of the red-deer in germany ('forest creatures,' , p. ) says, "while the stag is defending his rights against one intruder, another invades the sanctuary of his harem, and carries off trophy after trophy." exactly the same thing occurs with seals; see mr. j.a. allen, ibid. p. .) it is scarcely possible that much should be known about female quadrupeds in a state of nature making any choice in their marriage unions. the following curious details on the courtship of one of the eared seals (callorhinus ursinus) are given ( . mr. j.a. allen in 'bull. mus. comp. zoolog. of cambridge, united states,' vol. ii. no. , p. .) on the authority of capt. bryant, who had ample opportunities for observation. he says, "many of the females on their arrival at the island where they breed appear desirous of returning to some particular male, and frequently climb the outlying rocks to overlook the rookeries, calling out and listening as if for a familiar voice. then changing to another place they do the same again...as soon as a female reaches the shore, the nearest male goes down to meet her, making meanwhile a noise like the clucking of a hen to her chickens. he bows to her and coaxes her until he gets between her and the water so that she cannot escape him. then his manner changes, and with a harsh growl he drives her to a place in his harem. this continues until the lower row of harems is nearly full. then the males higher up select the time when their more fortunate neighbours are off their guard to steal their wives. this they do by taking them in their mouths and lifting them over the heads of the other females, and carefully placing them in their own harem, carrying them as cats do their kittens. those still higher up pursue the same method until the whole space is occupied. frequently a struggle ensues between two males for the possession of the same female, and both seizing her at once pull her in two or terribly lacerate her with their teeth. when the space is all filled, the old male walks around complacently reviewing his family, scolding those who crowd or disturb the others, and fiercely driving off all intruders. this surveillance always keeps him actively occupied." as so little is known about the courtship of animals in a state of nature, i have endeavoured to discover how far our domesticated quadrupeds evince any choice in their unions. dogs offer the best opportunity for observation, as they are carefully attended to and well understood. many breeders have expressed a strong opinion on this head. thus, mr. mayhew remarks, "the females are able to bestow their affections; and tender recollections are as potent over them as they are known to be in other cases, where higher animals are concerned. bitches are not always prudent in their loves, but are apt to fling themselves away on curs of low degree. if reared with a companion of vulgar appearance, there often springs up between the pair a devotion which no time can afterwards subdue. the passion, for such it really is, becomes of a more than romantic endurance." mr. mayhew, who attended chiefly to the smaller breeds, is convinced that the females are strongly attracted by males of a large size. ( . 'dogs: their management,' by e. mayhew, m.r.c.v.s., nd ed., , pp. - .) the well-known veterinary blaine states ( . quoted by alex. walker, 'on intermarriage,' , p. ; see also p. .) that his own female pug dog became so attached to a spaniel, and a female setter to a cur, that in neither case would they pair with a dog of their own breed until several weeks had elapsed. two similar and trustworthy accounts have been given me in regard to a female retriever and a spaniel, both of which became enamoured with terrier-dogs. mr. cupples informs me that he can personally vouch for the accuracy of the following more remarkable case, in which a valuable and wonderfully-intelligent female terrier loved a retriever belonging to a neighbour to such a degree, that she had often to be dragged away from him. after their permanent separation, although repeatedly shewing milk in her teats, she would never acknowledge the courtship of any other dog, and to the regret of her owner never bore puppies. mr. cupples also states, that in , a female deerhound in his kennel thrice produced puppies, and on each occasion shewed a marked preference for one of the largest and handsomest, but not the most eager, of four deerhounds living with her, all in the prime of life. mr. cupples has observed that the female generally favours a dog whom she has associated with and knows; her shyness and timidity at first incline her against a strange dog. the male, on the contrary, seems rather inclined towards strange females. it appears to be rare when the male refuses any particular female, but mr. wright, of yeldersley house, a great breeder of dogs, informs me that he has known some instances; he cites the case of one of his own deerhounds, who would not take any notice of a particular female mastiff, so that another deerhound had to be employed. it would be superfluous to give, as i could, other instances, and i will only add that mr. barr, who has carefully bred many bloodhounds, states that in almost every instance particular individuals of opposite sexes shew a decided preference for each other. finally, mr. cupples, after attending to this subject for another year, has written to me, "i have had full confirmation of my former statement, that dogs in breeding form decided preferences for each other, being often influenced by size, bright colour, and individual characters, as well as by the degree of their previous familiarity." in regard to horses, mr. blenkiron, the greatest breeder of race-horses in the world, informs me that stallions are so frequently capricious in their choice, rejecting one mare and without any apparent cause taking to another, that various artifices have to be habitually used. the famous monarque, for instance, would never consciously look at the dam of gladiateur, and a trick had to be practised. we can partly see the reason why valuable race-horse stallions, which are in such demand as to be exhausted, should be so particular in their choice. mr. blenkiron has never known a mare reject a horse; but this has occurred in mr. wright's stable, so that the mare had to be cheated. prosper lucas ( . 'traité de l'héréd. nat.' tom. ii. , p. .) quotes various statements from french authorities, and remarks, "on voit des étalons qui s'eprennent d'une jument, et negligent toutes les autres." he gives, on the authority of baelen, similar facts in regard to bulls; and mr. h. reeks assures me that a famous short-horn bull belonging to his father "invariably refused to be matched with a black cow." hoffberg, in describing the domesticated reindeer of lapland says, "foeminae majores et fortiores mares prae caeteris admittunt, ad eos confugiunt, a junioribus agitatae, qui hos in fugam conjiciunt." ( . 'amoenitates acad.' vol. iv. , p. .) a clergyman, who has bred many pigs, asserts that sows often reject one boar and immediately accept another. from these facts there can be no doubt that, with most of our domesticated quadrupeds, strong individual antipathies and preferences are frequently exhibited, and much more commonly by the female than by the male. this being the case, it is improbable that the unions of quadrupeds in a state of nature should be left to mere chance. it is much more probable that the females are allured or excited by particular males, who possess certain characters in a higher degree than other males; but what these characters are, we can seldom or never discover with certainty. chapter xviii. secondary sexual characters of mammals--continued. voice--remarkable sexual peculiarities in seals--odour--development of the hair--colour of the hair and skin--anomalous case of the female being more ornamented than the male--colour and ornaments due to sexual selection--colour acquired for the sake of protection--colour, though common to both sexes, often due to sexual selection--on the disappearance of spots and stripes in adult quadrupeds--on the colours and ornaments of the quadrumana--summary. quadrupeds use their voices for various purposes, as a signal of danger, as a call from one member of a troop to another, or from the mother to her lost offspring, or from the latter for protection to their mother; but such uses need not here be considered. we are concerned only with the difference between the voices of the sexes, for instance between that of the lion and lioness, or of the bull and cow. almost all male animals use their voices much more during the rutting-season than at any other time; and some, as the giraffe and porcupine ( . owen, 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. iii. p. .), are said to be completely mute excepting at this season. as the throats (i.e. the larynx and thyroid bodies ( . ibid. p. .)) of stags periodically become enlarged at the beginning of the breeding-season, it might be thought that their powerful voices must be somehow of high importance to them; but this is very doubtful. from information given to me by two experienced observers, mr. mcneill and sir p. egerton, it seems that young stags under three years old do not roar or bellow; and that the old ones begin bellowing at the commencement of the breeding-season, at first only occasionally and moderately, whilst they restlessly wander about in search of the females. their battles are prefaced by loud and prolonged bellowing, but during the actual conflict they are silent. animals of all kinds which habitually use their voices utter various noises under any strong emotion, as when enraged and preparing to fight; but this may merely be the result of nervous excitement, which leads to the spasmodic contraction of almost all the muscles of the body, as when a man grinds his teeth and clenches his fists in rage or agony. no doubt stags challenge each other to mortal combat by bellowing; but those with the more powerful voices, unless at the same time the stronger, better-armed, and more courageous, would not gain any advantage over their rivals. it is possible that the roaring of the lion may be of some service to him by striking terror into his adversary; for when enraged he likewise erects his mane and thus instinctively tries to make himself appear as terrible as possible. but it can hardly be supposed that the bellowing of the stag, even if it be of service to him in this way, can have been important enough to have led to the periodical enlargement of the throat. some writers suggest that the bellowing serves as a call to the female; but the experienced observers above quoted inform me that female deer do not search for the male, though the males search eagerly for the females, as indeed might be expected from what we know of the habits of other male quadrupeds. the voice of the female, on the other hand, quickly brings to her one or more stags ( . see, for instance, major w. ross king ('the sportsman in canada,' , pp. , ) on the habits of the moose and wild reindeer.), as is well known to the hunters who in wild countries imitate her cry. if we could believe that the male had the power to excite or allure the female by his voice, the periodical enlargement of his vocal organs would be intelligible on the principle of sexual selection, together with inheritance limited to the same sex and season; but we have no evidence in favour of this view. as the case stands, the loud voice of the stag during the breeding-season does not seem to be of any special service to him, either during his courtship or battles, or in any other way. but may we not believe that the frequent use of the voice, under the strong excitement of love, jealousy, and rage, continued during many generations, may at last have produced an inherited effect on the vocal organs of the stag, as well as of other male animals? this appears to me, in our present state of knowledge, the most probable view. the voice of the adult male gorilla is tremendous, and he is furnished with a laryngeal sack, as is the adult male orang. ( . owen 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. iii. p. .) the gibbons rank among the noisiest of monkeys, and the sumatra species (hylobates syndactylus) is also furnished with an air sack; but mr. blyth, who has had opportunities for observation, does not believe that the male is noisier than the female. hence, these latter monkeys probably use their voices as a mutual call; and this is certainly the case with some quadrupeds, for instance the beaver. ( . mr. green, in 'journal of linnean society,' vol. x. 'zoology,' , note .) another gibbon, the h. agilis, is remarkable, from having the power of giving a complete and correct octave of musical notes ( . c.l. martin, 'general introduction to the natural history of mamm. animals,' , p. .), which we may reasonably suspect serves as a sexual charm; but i shall have to recur to this subject in the next chapter. the vocal organs of the american mycetes caraya are one-third larger in the male than in the female, and are wonderfully powerful. these monkeys in warm weather make the forests resound at morning and evening with their overwhelming voices. the males begin the dreadful concert, and often continue it during many hours, the females sometimes joining in with their less powerful voices. an excellent observer, rengger ( . 'naturgeschichte der säugethiere von paraguay,' , ss. , .), could not perceive that they were excited to begin by any special cause; he thinks that, like many birds, they delight in their own music, and try to excel each other. whether most of the foregoing monkeys have acquired their powerful voices in order to beat their rivals and charm the females--or whether the vocal organs have been strengthened and enlarged through the inherited effects of long-continued use without any particular good being thus gained--i will not pretend to say; but the former view, at least in the case of the hylobates agilis, seems the most probable. i may here mention two very curious sexual peculiarities occurring in seals, because they have been supposed by some writers to affect the voice. the nose of the male sea-elephant (macrorhinus proboscideus) becomes greatly elongated during the breeding-season, and can then be erected. in this state it is sometimes a foot in length. the female is not thus provided at any period of life. the male makes a wild, hoarse, gurgling noise, which is audible at a great distance and is believed to be strengthened by the proboscis; the voice of the female being different. lesson compares the erection of the proboscis, with the swelling of the wattles of male gallinaceous birds whilst courting the females. in another allied kind of seal, the bladder-nose (cystophora cristata), the head is covered by a great hood or bladder. this is supported by the septum of the nose, which is produced far backwards and rises into an internal crest seven inches in height. the hood is clothed with short hair, and is muscular; can be inflated until it more than equals the whole head in size! the males when rutting, fight furiously on the ice, and their roaring "is said to be sometimes so loud as to be heard four miles off." when attacked they likewise roar or bellow; and whenever irritated the bladder is inflated and quivers. some naturalists believe that the voice is thus strengthened, but various other uses have been assigned to this extraordinary structure. mr. r. brown thinks that it serves as a protection against accidents of all kinds; but this is not probable, for, as i am assured by mr. lamont who killed of these animals, the hood is rudimentary in the females, and it is not developed in the males during youth. ( . on the sea-elephant, see an article by lesson, in 'dict. class. hist. nat.' tom. xiii. p. . for the cystophora, or stemmatopus, see dr. dekay, 'annals of lyceum of nat. hist.' new york, vol. i. , p. . pennant has also collected information from the sealers on this animal. the fullest account is given by mr. brown, in 'proc. zoolog. soc.' , p. .) odour. with some animals, as with the notorious skunk of america, the overwhelming odour which they emit appears to serve exclusively as a defence. with shrew-mice (sorex) both sexes possess abdominal scent-glands, and there can be little doubt, from the rejection of their bodies by birds and beasts of prey, that the odour is protective; nevertheless, the glands become enlarged in the males during the breeding-season. in many other quadrupeds the glands are of the same size in both sexes ( . as with the castoreum of the beaver, see mr. l.h. morgan's most interesting work, 'the american beaver,' , p. . pallas ('spic. zoolog.' fasc. viii. , p. ) has well discussed the odoriferous glands of mammals. owen ('anat. of vertebrates,' vol. iii. p. ) also gives an account of these glands, including those of the elephant, and (p. ) those of shrew-mice. on bats, mr. dobson in 'proceedings of the zoological society' , p. .), but their uses are not known. in other species the glands are confined to the males, or are more developed than in the females; and they almost always become more active during the rutting-season. at this period the glands on the sides of the face of the male elephant enlarge, and emit a secretion having a strong musky odour. the males, and rarely the females, of many kinds of bats have glands and protrudable sacks situated in various parts; and it is believed that these are odoriferous. the rank effluvium of the male goat is well known, and that of certain male deer is wonderfully strong and persistent. on the banks of the plata i perceived the air tainted with the odour of the male cervus campestris, at half a mile to leeward of a herd; and a silk handkerchief, in which i carried home a skin, though often used and washed, retained, when first unfolded, traces of the odour for one year and seven months. this animal does not emit its strong odour until more than a year old, and if castrated whilst young never emits it. ( . rengger, 'naturgeschichte der säugethiere von paraguay,' , s. . this observer also gives some curious particulars in regard to the odour.) besides the general odour, permeating the whole body of certain ruminants (for instance, bos moschatus) in the breeding-season, many deer, antelopes, sheep, and goats possess odoriferous glands in various situations, more especially on their faces. the so-called tear-sacks, or suborbital pits, come under this head. these glands secrete a semi-fluid fetid matter which is sometimes so copious as to stain the whole face, as i have myself seen in an antelope. they are "usually larger in the male than in the female, and their development is checked by castration." ( . owen, 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. iii. p. . see also dr. murie's observations on those glands in the 'proc. zoolog. soc.' , p. . desmarest, 'on the antilope subgutturosa, 'mammalogie,' , p. .) according to desmarest they are altogether absent in the female of antilope subgutturosa. hence, there can be no doubt that they stand in close relation with the reproductive functions. they are also sometimes present, and sometimes absent, in nearly allied forms. in the adult male musk-deer (moschus moschiferus), a naked space round the tail is bedewed with an odoriferous fluid, whilst in the adult female, and in the male until two years old, this space is covered with hair and is not odoriferous. the proper musk-sack of this deer is from its position necessarily confined to the male, and forms an additional scent-organ. it is a singular fact that the matter secreted by this latter gland, does not, according to pallas, change in consistence, or increase in quantity, during the rutting-season; nevertheless this naturalist admits that its presence is in some way connected with the act of reproduction. he gives, however, only a conjectural and unsatisfactory explanation of its use. ( . pallas, 'spicilegia zoolog.' fasc. xiii. , p. ; desmoulins, 'dict. class. d'hist. nat.' tom. iii. p. .) in most cases, when only the male emits a strong odour during the breeding-season, it probably serves to excite or allure the female. we must not judge on this head by our own taste, for it is well known that rats are enticed by certain essential oils, and cats by valerian, substances far from agreeable to us; and that dogs, though they will not eat carrion, sniff and roll on it. from the reasons given when discussing the voice of the stag, we may reject the idea that the odour serves to bring the females from a distance to the males. active and long-continued use cannot here have come into play, as in the case of the vocal organs. the odour emitted must be of considerable importance to the male, inasmuch as large and complex glands, furnished with muscles for everting the sack, and for closing or opening the orifice, have in some cases been developed. the development of these organs is intelligible through sexual selection, if the most odoriferous males are the most successful in winning the females, and in leaving offspring to inherit their gradually perfected glands and odours. development of the hair. we have seen that male quadrupeds often have the hair on their necks and shoulders much more developed than the females; and many additional instances could be given. this sometimes serves as a defence to the male during his battles; but whether the hair in most cases has been specially developed for this purpose, is very doubtful. we may feel almost certain that this is not the case, when only a thin and narrow crest runs along the back; for a crest of this kind would afford scarcely any protection, and the ridge of the back is not a place likely to be injured; nevertheless such crests are sometimes confined to the males, or are much more developed in them than in the females. two antelopes, the tragelaphus scriptus ( . dr. gray, 'gleanings from the menagerie at knowsley,' pl. .) (fig. ) and portax picta may be given as instances. when stags, and the males of the wild goat, are enraged or terrified, these crests stand erect ( . judge caton on the wapiti, 'transact. ottawa acad. nat. sciences,' , pp. , ; blyth, 'land and water,' on capra aegagrus , p. .); but it cannot be supposed that they have been developed merely for the sake of exciting fear in their enemies. one of the above-named antelopes, the portax picta, has a large well-defined brush of black hair on the throat, and this is much larger in the male than in the female. in the ammotragus tragelaphus of north africa, a member of the sheep-family, the fore-legs are almost concealed by an extraordinary growth of hair, which depends from the neck and upper halves of the legs; but mr. bartlett does not believe that this mantle is of the least use to the male, in whom it is much more developed than in the female. [fig. . pithecia satanas, male (from brehm).] male quadrupeds of many kinds differ from the females in having more hair, or hair of a different character, on certain parts of their faces. thus the bull alone has curled hair on the forehead. ( . hunter's 'essays and observations,' edited by owen, . vol. i. p. .) in three closely-allied sub-genera of the goat family, only the males possess beards, sometimes of large size; in two other sub-genera both sexes have a beard, but it disappears in some of the domestic breeds of the common goat; and neither sex of the hemitragus has a beard. in the ibex the beard is not developed during the summer, and is so small at other times that it may be called rudimentary. ( . see dr. gray's 'catalogue of mammalia in the british museum,' part iii. , p. .) with some monkeys the beard is confined to the male, as in the orang; or is much larger in the male than in the female, as in the mycetes caraya and pithecia satanas (fig. ). so it is with the whiskers of some species of macacus ( . rengger, 'säugethiere,' etc., s. ; desmarest, 'mammalogie,' p. .), and, as we have seen, with the manes of some species of baboons. but with most kinds of monkeys the various tufts of hair about the face and head are alike in both sexes. the males of various members of the ox family (bovidae), and of certain antelopes, are furnished with a dewlap, or great fold of skin on the neck, which is much less developed in the female. now, what must we conclude with respect to such sexual differences as these? no one will pretend that the beards of certain male goats, or the dewlaps of the bull, or the crests of hair along the backs of certain male antelopes, are of any use to them in their ordinary habits. it is possible that the immense beard of the male pithecia, and the large beard of the male orang, may protect their throats when fighting; for the keepers in the zoological gardens inform me that many monkeys attack each other by the throat; but it is not probable that the beard has been developed for a distinct purpose from that served by the whiskers, moustache, and other tufts of hair on the face; and no one will suppose that these are useful as a protection. must we attribute all these appendages of hair or skin to mere purposeless variability in the male? it cannot be denied that this is possible; for in many domesticated quadrupeds, certain characters, apparently not derived through reversion from any wild parent form, are confined to the males, or are more developed in them than in the females--for instance, the hump on the male zebu-cattle of india, the tail of fat-tailed rams, the arched outline of the forehead in the males of several breeds of sheep, and lastly, the mane, the long hairs on the hind legs, and the dewlap of the male of the berbura goat. ( . see the chapters on these several animals in vol. i. of my 'variation of animals under domestication;' also vol. ii. p. ; also chap. xx. on the practice of selection by semi-civilised people. for the berbura goat, see dr. gray, 'catalogue,' ibid. p. .) the mane, which occurs only in the rams of an african breed of sheep, is a true secondary sexual character, for, as i hear from mr. winwood reade, it is not developed if the animal be castrated. although we ought to be extremely cautious, as shewn in my work on 'variation under domestication,' in concluding that any character, even with animals kept by semi-civilised people, has not been subjected to selection by man, and thus augmented, yet in the cases just specified this is improbable; more especially as the characters are confined to the males, or are more strongly developed in them than in the females. if it were positively known that the above african ram is a descendant of the same primitive stock as the other breeds of sheep, and if the berbura male-goat with his mane, dewlap, etc., is descended from the same stock as other goats, then, assuming that selection has not been applied to these characters, they must be due to simple variability, together with sexually-limited inheritance. hence it appears reasonable to extend this same view to all analogous cases with animals in a state of nature. nevertheless i cannot persuade myself that it generally holds good, as in the case of the extraordinary development of hair on the throat and fore-legs of the male ammotragus, or in that of the immense beard of the male pithecia. such study as i have been able to give to nature makes me believe that parts or organs which are highly developed, were acquired at some period for a special purpose. with those antelopes in which the adult male is more strongly-coloured than the female, and with those monkeys in which the hair on the face is elegantly arranged and coloured in a diversified manner, it seems probable that the crests and tufts of hair were gained as ornaments; and this i know is the opinion of some naturalists. if this be correct, there can be little doubt that they were gained or at least modified through sexual selection; but how far the same view may be extended to other mammals is doubtful. colour of the hair and of the naked skin. i will first give briefly all the cases known to me of male quadrupeds differing in colour from the females. with marsupials, as i am informed by mr. gould, the sexes rarely differ in this respect; but the great red kangaroo offers a striking exception, "delicate blue being the prevailing tint in those parts of the female which in the male are red." ( . osphranter rufus, gould, 'mammals of australia,' , vol. ii. on the didelphis, desmarest, 'mammalogie,' p. .) in the didelphis opossum of cayenne the female is said to be a little more red than the male. of the rodents, dr. gray remarks: "african squirrels, especially those found in the tropical regions, have the fur much brighter and more vivid at some seasons of the year than at others, and the fur of the male is generally brighter than that of the female." ( . 'annals and magazine of natural history,' nov. , p. . on the mus minutus, desmarest, 'mammalogie,' p. .) dr. gray informs me that he specified the african squirrels, because, from their unusually bright colours, they best exhibit this difference. the female of the mus minutus of russia is of a paler and dirtier tint than the male. in a large number of bats the fur of the male is lighter than in the female. ( . j.a. allen, in 'bulletin of mus. comp. zoolog. of cambridge, united states,' , p. . mr. dobson on sexual characters in the chiroptera, 'proceedings of the zoological society,' , p. . dr. gray on sloths, ibid. , p. .) mr. dobson also remarks, with respect to these animals: "differences, depending partly or entirely on the possession by the male of fur of a much more brilliant hue, or distinguished by different markings or by the greater length of certain portions, are met only, to any appreciable extent, in the frugivorous bats in which the sense of sight is well developed." this last remark deserves attention, as bearing on the question whether bright colours are serviceable to male animals from being ornamental. in one genus of sloths, it is now established, as dr. gray states, "that the males are ornamented differently from the females--that is to say, that they have a patch of soft short hair between the shoulders, which is generally of a more or less orange colour, and in one species pure white. the females, on the contrary, are destitute of this mark." the terrestrial carnivora and insectivora rarely exhibit sexual differences of any kind, including colour. the ocelot (felis pardalis), however, is exceptional, for the colours of the female, compared with those of the male, are "moins apparentes, le fauve, étant plus terne, le blanc moins pur, les raies ayant moins de largeur et les taches moins de diamètre." ( . desmarest, 'mammalogie,' , p. . on felis mitis, rengger, ibid. s. .) the sexes of the allied felis mitis also differ, but in a less degree; the general hues of the female being rather paler than in the male, with the spots less black. the marine carnivora or seals, on the other hand, sometimes differ considerably in colour, and they present, as we have already seen, other remarkable sexual differences. thus the male of the otaria nigrescens of the southern hemisphere is of a rich brown shade above; whilst the female, who acquires her adult tints earlier in life than the male, is dark-grey above, the young of both sexes being of a deep chocolate colour. the male of the northern phoca groenlandica is tawny grey, with a curious saddle-shaped dark mark on the back; the female is much smaller, and has a very different appearance, being "dull white or yellowish straw-colour, with a tawny hue on the back"; the young at first are pure white, and can "hardly be distinguished among the icy hummocks and snow, their colour thus acting as a protection." ( . dr. murie on the otaria, 'proceedings zoological society,' , p. . mr. r. brown on the p. groenlandica, ibid. , p. . see also on the colours of seals, desmarest, ibid. pp. , .) with ruminants sexual differences of colour occur more commonly than in any other order. a difference of this kind is general in the strepsicerene antelopes; thus the male nilghau (portax picta) is bluish-grey and much darker than the female, with the square white patch on the throat, the white marks on the fetlocks, and the black spots on the ears all much more distinct. we have seen that in this species the crests and tufts of hair are likewise more developed in the male than in the hornless female. i am informed by mr. blyth that the male, without shedding his hair, periodically becomes darker during the breeding-season. young males cannot be distinguished from young females until about twelve months old; and if the male is emasculated before this period, he never, according to the same authority, changes colour. the importance of this latter fact, as evidence that the colouring of the portax is of sexual origin, becomes obvious, when we hear ( . judge caton, in 'transactions of the ottawa academy of natural sciences,' , p. .) that neither the red summer-coat nor the blue winter-coat of the virginian deer is at all affected by emasculation. with most or all of the highly-ornamented species of tragelaphus the males are darker than the hornless females, and their crests of hair are more fully developed. in the male of that magnificent antelope, the derbyan eland, the body is redder, the whole neck much blacker, and the white band which separates these colours broader than in the female. in the cape eland, also, the male is slightly darker than the female. ( . dr. gray, 'cat. of mamm. in brit. mus.' part iii. , pp. - ; also dr. gray, 'gleanings from the menagerie of knowsley,' in which there is a splendid drawing of the oreas derbianus: see the text on tragelaphus. for the cape eland (oreas canna), see andrew smith, 'zoology of s. africa,' pl. and . there are also many of these antelopes in the zoological gardens.) in the indian black-buck (a. bezoartica), which belongs to another tribe of antelopes, the male is very dark, almost black; whilst the hornless female is fawn-coloured. we meet in this species, as mr. blyth informs me, with an exactly similar series of facts, as in the portax picta, namely, in the male periodically changing colour during the breeding-season, in the effects of emasculation on this change, and in the young of both sexes being indistinguishable from each other. in the antilope niger the male is black, the female, as well as the young of both sexes, being brown; in a. sing-sing the male is much brighter coloured than the hornless female, and his chest and belly are blacker; in the male a. caama, the marks and lines which occur on various parts of the body are black, instead of brown as in the female; in the brindled gnu (a. gorgon) "the colours of the male are nearly the same as those of the female, only deeper and of a brighter hue." ( . on the ant. niger, see 'proc. zool. soc.' , p. . with respect to an allied species, in which there is an equal sexual difference in colour, see sir s. baker, 'the albert nyanza,' , vol. ii. p. . for the a. sing-sing, gray, 'cat. b. mus.' p. . desmarest, 'mammalogie,' p. , on the a. caama. andrew smith, 'zoology of s. africa,' on the gnu.) other analogous cases could be added. the banteng bull (bos sondaicus) of the malayan archipelago is almost black, with white legs and buttocks; the cow is of a bright dun, as are the young males until about the age of three years, when they rapidly change colour. the emasculated bull reverts to the colour of the female. the female kemas goat is paler, and both it and the female capra aegagrus are said to be more uniformly tinted than their males. deer rarely present any sexual differences in colour. judge caton, however, informs me that in the males of the wapiti deer (cervus canadensis) the neck, belly, and legs are much darker than in the female; but during the winter the darker tints gradually fade away and disappear. i may here mention that judge caton has in his park three races of the virginian deer, which differ slightly in colour, but the differences are almost exclusively confined to the blue winter or breeding-coat; so that this case may be compared with those given in a previous chapter of closely-allied or representative species of birds, which differ from each other only in their breeding plumage. ( . 'ottawa academy of sciences,' may , , pp. , .) the females of cervus paludosus of s. america, as well as the young of both sexes, do not possess the black stripes on the nose and the blackish-brown line on the breast, which are characteristic of the adult males. ( . s. muller, on the banteng, 'zoog. indischen archipel.' - , tab. ; see also raffles, as quoted by mr. blyth, in 'land and water,' , p. . on goats, dr. gray, 'catalogue of the british museum,' p. ; desmarest, 'mammalogie,' p. . on the cervus paludosus, rengger, ibid. s. .) lastly, as i am informed by mr. blyth, the mature male of the beautifully coloured and spotted axis deer is considerably darker than the female: and this hue the castrated male never acquires. the last order which we need consider is that of the primates. the male of the lemur macaco is generally coal-black, whilst the female is brown. ( . sclater, 'proc. zool. soc.' , p. i. the same fact has also been fully ascertained by mm. pollen and van dam. see, also, dr. gray in 'annals and magazine of natural history,' may , p. .) of the quadrumana of the new world, the females and young of mycetes caraya are greyish-yellow and like each other; in the second year the young male becomes reddish-brown; in the third, black, excepting the stomach, which, however, becomes quite black in the fourth or fifth year. there is also a strongly-marked difference in colour between the sexes of mycetes seniculus and cebus capucinus; the young of the former, and i believe of the latter species, resembling the females. with pithecia leucocephala the young likewise resemble the females, which are brownish-black above and light rusty-red beneath, the adult males being black. the ruff of hair round the face of ateles marginatus is tinted yellow in the male and white in the female. turning to the old world, the males of hylobates hoolock are always black, with the exception of a white band over the brows; the females vary from whity-brown to a dark tint mixed with black, but are never wholly black. ( . on mycetes, rengger, ibid. s. ; and brehm, 'thierleben,' b. i. s. , . on ateles desmarest, 'mammalogie,' p. . on hylobates, blyth, 'land and water,' , p. . on the semnopithecus, s. muller, 'zoog. indischen archipel.' tab. x.) in the beautiful cercopithecus diana, the head of the adult male is of an intense black, whilst that of the female is dark grey; in the former the fur between the thighs is of an elegant fawn-colour, in the latter it is paler. in the beautiful and curious moustache monkey (cercopithecus cephus) the only difference between the sexes is that the tail of the male is chestnut and that of the female grey; but mr. bartlett informs me that all the hues become more pronounced in the male when adult, whilst in the female they remain as they were during youth. according to the coloured figures given by solomon muller, the male of semnopithecus chrysomelas is nearly black, the female being pale brown. in the cercopithecus cynosurus and griseo-viridis one part of the body, which is confined to the male sex, is of the most brilliant blue or green, and contrasts strikingly with the naked skin on the hinder part of the body, which is vivid red. [fig. . head of male mandrill (from gervais, 'hist. nat. des mammifères').] lastly, in the baboon family, the adult male of cynocephalus hamadryas differs from the female not only by his immense mane, but slightly in the colour of the hair and of the naked callosities. in the drill (c. leucophaeus) the females and young are much paler-coloured, with less green, than the adult males. no other member in the whole class of mammals is coloured in so extraordinary a manner as the adult male mandrill (c. mormon). the face at this age becomes of a fine blue, with the ridge and tip of the nose of the most brilliant red. according to some authors, the face is also marked with whitish stripes, and is shaded in parts with black, but the colours appear to be variable. on the forehead there is a crest of hair, and on the chin a yellow beard. "toutes les parties supérieures de leurs cuisses et le grand espace nu de leurs fesses sont également colorés du rouge le plus vif, avec un mélange de bleu qui ne manque reellement pas d'élégance." ( . gervais, 'hist. nat. des mammifères,' , p. . figures are given of the skull of the male. also desmarest, 'mammalogie,' p. . geoffroy st.-hilaire and f. cuvier, 'hist. nat. des mammifères,' , tom. i.) when the animal is excited all the naked parts become much more vividly tinted. several authors have used the strongest expressions in describing these resplendent colours, which they compare with those of the most brilliant birds. another remarkable peculiarity is that when the great canine teeth are fully developed, immense protuberances of bone are formed on each cheek, which are deeply furrowed longitudinally, and the naked skin over them is brilliantly-coloured, as just-described. (fig. .) in the adult females and in the young of both sexes these protuberances are scarcely perceptible; and the naked parts are much less bright coloured, the face being almost black, tinged with blue. in the adult female, however, the nose at certain regular intervals of time becomes tinted with red. in all the cases hitherto given the male is more strongly or brighter coloured than the female, and differs from the young of both sexes. but as with some few birds it is the female which is brighter coloured than the male, so with the rhesus monkey (macacus rhesus), the female has a large surface of naked skin round the tail, of a brilliant carmine red, which, as i was assured by the keepers in the zoological gardens, periodically becomes even yet more vivid, and her face also is pale red. on the other hand, in the adult male and in the young of both sexes (as i saw in the gardens), neither the naked skin at the posterior end of the body, nor the face, shew a trace of red. it appears, however, from some published accounts, that the male does occasionally, or during certain seasons, exhibit some traces of the red. although he is thus less ornamented than the female, yet in the larger size of his body, larger canine teeth, more developed whiskers, more prominent superciliary ridges, he follows the common rule of the male excelling the female. i have now given all the cases known to me of a difference in colour between the sexes of mammals. some of these may be the result of variations confined to one sex and transmitted to the same sex, without any good being gained, and therefore without the aid of selection. we have instances of this with our domesticated animals, as in the males of certain cats being rusty-red, whilst the females are tortoise-shell coloured. analogous cases occur in nature: mr. bartlett has seen many black varieties of the jaguar, leopard, vulpine phalanger, and wombat; and he is certain that all, or nearly all these animals, were males. on the other hand, with wolves, foxes, and apparently american squirrels, both sexes are occasionally born black. hence it is quite possible that with some mammals a difference in colour between the sexes, especially when this is congenital, may simply be the result, without the aid of selection, of the occurrence of one or more variations, which from the first were sexually limited in their transmission. nevertheless it is improbable that the diversified, vivid, and contrasted colours of certain quadrupeds, for instance, of the above monkeys and antelopes, can thus be accounted for. we should bear in mind that these colours do not appear in the male at birth, but only at or near maturity; and that unlike ordinary variations, they are lost if the male be emasculated. it is on the whole probable that the strongly-marked colours and other ornamental characters of male quadrupeds are beneficial to them in their rivalry with other males, and have consequently been acquired through sexual selection. this view is strengthened by the differences in colour between the sexes occurring almost exclusively, as may be collected from the previous details, in those groups and sub-groups of mammals which present other and strongly-marked secondary sexual characters; these being likewise due to sexual selection. quadrupeds manifestly take notice of colour. sir s. baker repeatedly observed that the african elephant and rhinoceros attacked white or grey horses with special fury. i have elsewhere shewn ( . the 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' , vol. ii. pp. , .) that half-wild horses apparently prefer to pair with those of the same colour, and that herds of fallow-deer of different colours, though living together, have long kept distinct. it is a more significant fact that a female zebra would not admit the addresses of a male ass until he was painted so as to resemble a zebra, and then, as john hunter remarks, "she received him very readily. in this curious fact, we have instinct excited by mere colour, which had so strong an effect as to get the better of everything else. but the male did not require this, the female being an animal somewhat similar to himself, was sufficient to rouse him." ( . 'essays and observations,' by j. hunter, edited by owen, , vol. i. p. .) in an earlier chapter we have seen that the mental powers of the higher animals do not differ in kind, though greatly in degree, from the corresponding powers of man, especially of the lower and barbarous races; and it would appear that even their taste for the beautiful is not widely different from that of the quadrumana. as the negro of africa raises the flesh on his face into parallel ridges "or cicatrices, high above the natural surface, which unsightly deformities are considered great personal attractions" ( . sir s. baker, 'the nile tributaries of abyssinia,' .);--as negroes and savages in many parts of the world paint their faces with red, blue, white, or black bars,--so the male mandrill of africa appears to have acquired his deeply-furrowed and gaudily-coloured face from having been thus rendered attractive to the female. no doubt it is to us a most grotesque notion that the posterior end of the body should be coloured for the sake of ornament even more brilliantly than the face; but this is not more strange than that the tails of many birds should be especially decorated. with mammals we do not at present possess any evidence that the males take pains to display their charms before the female; and the elaborate manner in which this is performed by male birds and other animals is the strongest argument in favour of the belief that the females admire, or are excited by, the ornaments and colours displayed before them. there is, however, a striking parallelism between mammals and birds in all their secondary sexual characters, namely in their weapons for fighting with rival males, in their ornamental appendages, and in their colours. in both classes, when the male differs from the female, the young of both sexes almost always resemble each other, and in a large majority of cases resemble the adult female. in both classes the male assumes the characters proper to his sex shortly before the age of reproduction; and if emasculated at an early period, loses them. in both classes the change of colour is sometimes seasonal, and the tints of the naked parts sometimes become more vivid during the act of courtship. in both classes the male is almost always more vividly or strongly coloured than the female, and is ornamented with larger crests of hair or feathers, or other such appendages. in a few exceptional cases the female in both classes is more highly ornamented than the male. with many mammals, and at least in the case of one bird, the male is more odoriferous than the female. in both classes the voice of the male is more powerful than that of the female. considering this parallelism, there can be little doubt that the same cause, whatever it may be, has acted on mammals and birds; and the result, as far as ornamental characters are concerned, may be attributed, as it appears to me, to the long-continued preference of the individuals of one sex for certain individuals of the opposite sex, combined with their success in leaving a larger number of offspring to inherit their superior attractions. equal transmission of ornamental characters to both sexes. with many birds, ornaments, which analogy leads us to believe were primarily acquired by the males, have been transmitted equally, or almost equally, to both sexes; and we may now enquire how far this view applies to mammals. with a considerable number of species, especially of the smaller kinds, both sexes have been coloured, independently of sexual selection, for the sake of protection; but not, as far as i can judge, in so many cases, nor in so striking a manner, as in most of the lower classes. audubon remarks that he often mistook the musk-rat ( . fiber zibethicus, audubon and bachman, 'the quadrupeds of north america,' , p. .), whilst sitting on the banks of a muddy stream, for a clod of earth, so complete was the resemblance. the hare on her form is a familiar instance of concealment through colour; yet this principle partly fails in a closely-allied species, the rabbit, for when running to its burrow, it is made conspicuous to the sportsman, and no doubt to all beasts of prey, by its upturned white tail. no one doubts that the quadrupeds inhabiting snow-clad regions have been rendered white to protect them from their enemies, or to favour their stealing on their prey. in regions where snow never lies for long, a white coat would be injurious; consequently, species of this colour are extremely rare in the hotter parts of the world. it deserves notice that many quadrupeds inhabiting moderately cold regions, although they do not assume a white winter dress, become paler during this season; and this apparently is the direct result of the conditions to which they have long been exposed. pallas ( . 'novae species quadrupedum e glirium ordine,' , p. . what i have called the roe is the capreolus sibiricus subecaudatus of pallas.) states that in siberia a change of this nature occurs with the wolf, two species of mustela, the domestic horse, the equus hemionus, the domestic cow, two species of antelopes, the musk-deer, the roe, elk, and reindeer. the roe, for instance, has a red summer and a greyish-white winter coat; and the latter may perhaps serve as a protection to the animal whilst wandering through the leafless thickets, sprinkled with snow and hoar-frost. if the above-named animals were gradually to extend their range into regions perpetually covered with snow, their pale winter-coats would probably be rendered through natural selection, whiter and whiter, until they became as white as snow. mr. reeks has given me a curious instance of an animal profiting by being peculiarly coloured. he raised from fifty to sixty white and brown piebald rabbits in a large walled orchard; and he had at the same time some similarly coloured cats in his house. such cats, as i have often noticed, are very conspicuous during day; but as they used to lie in watch during the dusk at the mouths of the burrows, the rabbits apparently did not distinguish them from their parti-coloured brethren. the result was that, within eighteen months, every one of these parti-coloured rabbits was destroyed; and there was evidence that this was effected by the cats. colour seems to be advantageous to another animal, the skunk, in a manner of which we have had many instances in other classes. no animal will voluntarily attack one of these creatures on account of the dreadful odour which it emits when irritated; but during the dusk it would not easily be recognised and might be attacked by a beast of prey. hence it is, as mr. belt believes ( . 'the naturalist in nicaragua,' p. .), that the skunk is provided with a great white bushy tail, which serves as a conspicuous warning. [fig. . tragelaphus scriptus, male (from the knowsley menagerie). fig. . damalis pygarga, male (from the knowsley menagerie).] although we must admit that many quadrupeds have received their present tints either as a protection, or as an aid in procuring prey, yet with a host of species, the colours are far too conspicuous and too singularly arranged to allow us to suppose that they serve for these purposes. we may take as an illustration certain antelopes; when we see the square white patch on the throat, the white marks on the fetlocks, and the round black spots on the ears, all more distinct in the male of the portax picta, than in the female;--when we see that the colours are more vivid, that the narrow white lines on the flank and the broad white bar on the shoulder are more distinct in the male oreas derbyanus than in the female;--when we see a similar difference between the sexes of the curiously-ornamented tragelaphus scriptus (fig. ),--we cannot believe that differences of this kind are of any service to either sex in their daily habits of life. it seems a much more probable conclusion that the various marks were first acquired by the males and their colours intensified through sexual selection, and then partially transferred to the females. if this view be admitted, there can be little doubt that the equally singular colours and marks of many other antelopes, though common to both sexes, have been gained and transmitted in a like manner. both sexes, for instance, of the koodoo (strepsiceros kudu) (fig. ) have narrow white vertical lines on their hind flanks, and an elegant angular white mark on their foreheads. both sexes in the genus damalis are very oddly coloured; in d. pygarga the back and neck are purplish-red, shading on the flanks into black; and these colours are abruptly separated from the white belly and from a large white space on the buttocks; the head is still more oddly coloured, a large oblong white mask, narrowly-edged with black, covers the face up to the eyes (fig. ); there are three white stripes on the forehead, and the ears are marked with white. the fawns of this species are of a uniform pale yellowish-brown. in damalis albifrons the colouring of the head differs from that in the last species in a single white stripe replacing the three stripes, and in the ears being almost wholly white. ( . see the fine plates in a. smith's 'zoology of south africa,' and dr. gray's 'gleanings from the menagerie of knowsley.') after having studied to the best of my ability the sexual differences of animals belonging to all classes, i cannot avoid the conclusion that the curiously-arranged colours of many antelopes, though common to both sexes, are the result of sexual selection primarily applied to the male. the same conclusion may perhaps be extended to the tiger, one of the most beautiful animals in the world, the sexes of which cannot be distinguished by colour, even by the dealers in wild beasts. mr. wallace believes ( . 'westminster review,' july , , p. .) that the striped coat of the tiger "so assimilates with the vertical stems of the bamboo, as to assist greatly in concealing him from his approaching prey." but this view does not appear to me satisfactory. we have some slight evidence that his beauty may be due to sexual selection, for in two species of felis the analogous marks and colours are rather brighter in the male than in the female. the zebra is conspicuously striped, and stripes cannot afford any protection in the open plains of south africa. burchell ( . 'travels in south africa,' , vol. ii. p. .) in describing a herd says, "their sleek ribs glistened in the sun, and the brightness and regularity of their striped coats presented a picture of extraordinary beauty, in which probably they are not surpassed by any other quadruped." but as throughout the whole group of the equidae the sexes are identical in colour, we have here no evidence of sexual selection. nevertheless he who attributes the white and dark vertical stripes on the flanks of various antelopes to this process, will probably extend the same view to the royal tiger and beautiful zebra. we have seen in a former chapter that when young animals belonging to any class follow nearly the same habits of life as their parents, and yet are coloured in a different manner, it may be inferred that they have retained the colouring of some ancient and extinct progenitor. in the family of pigs, and in the tapirs, the young are marked with longitudinal stripes, and thus differ from all the existing adult species in these two groups. with many kinds of deer the young are marked with elegant white spots, of which their parents exhibit not a trace. a graduated series can be followed from the axis deer, both sexes of which at all ages and during all seasons are beautifully spotted (the male being rather more strongly coloured than the female), to species in which neither the old nor the young are spotted. i will specify some of the steps in this series. the mantchurian deer (cervus mantchuricus) is spotted during the whole year, but, as i have seen in the zoological gardens, the spots are much plainer during the summer, when the general colour of the coat is lighter, than during the winter, when the general colour is darker and the horns are fully developed. in the hog-deer (hyelaphus porcinus) the spots are extremely conspicuous during the summer when the coat is reddish-brown, but quite disappear during the winter when the coat is brown. ( . dr. gray, 'gleanings from the menagerie of knowsley,' p. . mr. blyth, in speaking ('land and water,' , p. ) of the hog-deer of ceylon, says it is more brightly spotted with white than the common hog-deer, at the season when it renews its horns.) in both these species the young are spotted. in the virginian deer the young are likewise spotted, and about five per cent. of the adult animals living in judge caton's park, as i am informed by him, temporarily exhibit at the period when the red summer coat is being replaced by the bluish winter coat, a row of spots on each flank, which are always the same in number, though very variable in distinctness. from this condition there is but a very small step to the complete absence of spots in the adults at all seasons; and, lastly, to their absence at all ages and seasons, as occurs with certain species. from the existence of this perfect series, and more especially from the fawns of so many species being spotted, we may conclude that the now living members of the deer family are the descendants of some ancient species which, like the axis deer, was spotted at all ages and seasons. a still more ancient progenitor probably somewhat resembled the hyomoschus aquaticus--for this animal is spotted, and the hornless males have large exserted canine teeth, of which some few true deer still retain rudiments. hyomoschus, also, offers one of those interesting cases of a form linking together two groups, for it is intermediate in certain osteological characters between the pachyderms and ruminants, which were formerly thought to be quite distinct. ( . falconer and cautley, 'proc. geolog. soc.' ; and falconer's 'pal. memoirs,' vol. i. p. .) a curious difficulty here arises. if we admit that coloured spots and stripes were first acquired as ornaments, how comes it that so many existing deer, the descendants of an aboriginally spotted animal, and all the species of pigs and tapirs, the descendants of an aboriginally striped animal, have lost in their adult state their former ornaments? i cannot satisfactorily answer this question. we may feel almost sure that the spots and stripes disappeared at or near maturity in the progenitors of our existing species, so that they were still retained by the young; and, owing to the law of inheritance at corresponding ages, were transmitted to the young of all succeeding generations. it may have been a great advantage to the lion and puma, from the open nature of their usual haunts, to have lost their stripes, and to have been thus rendered less conspicuous to their prey; and if the successive variations, by which this end was gained, occurred rather late in life, the young would have retained their stripes, as is now the case. as to deer, pigs, and tapirs, fritz müller has suggested to me that these animals, by the removal of their spots or stripes through natural selection, would have been less easily seen by their enemies; and that they would have especially required this protection, as soon as the carnivora increased in size and number during the tertiary periods. this may be the true explanation, but it is rather strange that the young should not have been thus protected, and still more so that the adults of some species should have retained their spots, either partially or completely, during part of the year. we know that, when the domestic ass varies and becomes reddish-brown, grey, or black, the stripes on the shoulders and even on the spine frequently disappear, though we cannot explain the cause. very few horses, except dun-coloured kinds, have stripes on any part of their bodies, yet we have good reason to believe that the aboriginal horse was striped on the legs and spine, and probably on the shoulders. ( . the 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' , vol. i. pp. - .) hence the disappearance of the spots and stripes in our adult existing deer, pigs, and tapirs, may be due to a change in the general colour of their coats; but whether this change was effected through sexual or natural selection, or was due to the direct action of the conditions of life, or to some other unknown cause, it is impossible to decide. an observation made by mr. sclater well illustrates our ignorance of the laws which regulate the appearance and disappearance of stripes; the species of asinus which inhabit the asiatic continent are destitute of stripes, not having even the cross shoulder-stripe, whilst those which inhabit africa are conspicuously striped, with the partial exception of a. taeniopus, which has only the cross shoulder-stripe and generally some faint bars on the legs; and this species inhabits the almost intermediate region of upper egypt and abyssinia. ( . 'proc. zool. soc.' , p. . see, also, dr. hartmann, 'ann. d. landw.' bd. xliii. s. .) quadrumana. [fig. . head of semnopithecus rubicundus. this and the following figures (from prof. gervais) are given to shew the odd arrangement and development of the hair on the head. fig. . head of semnopithecus comatus. fig. . head of cebus capucinus. fig. . head of ateles marginatus. fig. . head of cebus vellerosus.] before we conclude, it will be well to add a few remarks on the ornaments of monkeys. in most of the species the sexes resemble each other in colour, but in some, as we have seen, the males differ from the females, especially in the colour of the naked parts of the skin, in the development of the beard, whiskers, and mane. many species are coloured either in so extraordinary or so beautiful a manner, and are furnished with such curious and elegant crests of hair, that we can hardly avoid looking at these characters as having been gained for the sake of ornament. the accompanying figures (figs. to ) serve to shew the arrangement of the hair on the face and head in several species. it is scarcely conceivable that these crests of hair, and the strongly contrasted colours of the fur and skin, can be the result of mere variability without the aid of selection; and it is inconceivable that they can be of use in any ordinary way to these animals. if so, they have probably been gained through sexual selection, though transmitted equally, or almost equally, to both sexes. with many of the quadrumana, we have additional evidence of the action of sexual selection in the greater size and strength of the males, and in the greater development of their canine teeth, in comparison with the females. [fig. . cercopithecus petaurista (from brehm).] a few instances will suffice of the strange manner in which both sexes of some species are coloured, and of the beauty of others. the face of the cercopithecus petaurista (fig. ) is black, the whiskers and beard being white, with a defined, round, white spot on the nose, covered with short white hair, which gives to the animal an almost ludicrous aspect. the semnopithecus frontatus likewise has a blackish face with a long black beard, and a large naked spot on the forehead of a bluish-white colour. the face of macacus lasiotus is dirty flesh-coloured, with a defined red spot on each cheek. the appearance of cercocebus aethiops is grotesque, with its black face, white whiskers and collar, chestnut head, and a large naked white spot over each eyelid. in very many species, the beard, whiskers, and crests of hair round the face are of a different colour from the rest of the head, and when different, are always of a lighter tint ( . i observed this fact in the zoological gardens; and many cases may be seen in the coloured plates in geoffroy st.-hilaire and f. cuvier, 'histoire nat. des mammifères,' tom. i. .), being often pure white, sometimes bright yellow, or reddish. the whole face of the south american brachyurus calvus is of a "glowing scarlet hue"; but this colour does not appear until the animal is nearly mature. ( . bates, 'the naturalist on the amazons,' , vol. ii. p. .) the naked skin of the face differs wonderfully in colour in the various species. it is often brown or flesh-colour, with parts perfectly white, and often as black as that of the most sooty negro. in the brachyurus the scarlet tint is brighter than that of the most blushing caucasian damsel. it is sometimes more distinctly orange than in any mongolian, and in several species it is blue, passing into violet or grey. in all the species known to mr. bartlett, in which the adults of both sexes have strongly-coloured faces, the colours are dull or absent during early youth. this likewise holds good with the mandrill and rhesus, in which the face and the posterior parts of the body are brilliantly coloured in one sex alone. in these latter cases we have reason to believe that the colours were acquired through sexual selection; and we are naturally led to extend the same view to the foregoing species, though both sexes when adult have their faces coloured in the same manner. [fig. . cercopithecus diana (from brehm).] although many kinds of monkeys are far from beautiful according to our taste, other species are universally admired for their elegant appearance and bright colours. the semnopithecus nemaeus, though peculiarly coloured, is described as extremely pretty; the orange-tinted face is surrounded by long whiskers of glossy whiteness, with a line of chestnut-red over the eyebrows; the fur on the back is of a delicate grey, with a square patch on the loins, the tail and the fore-arms being of a pure white; a gorget of chestnut surmounts the chest; the thighs are black, with the legs chestnut-red. i will mention only two other monkeys for their beauty; and i have selected these as presenting slight sexual differences in colour, which renders it in some degree probable that both sexes owe their elegant appearance to sexual selection. in the moustache-monkey (cercopithecus cephus) the general colour of the fur is mottled-greenish with the throat white; in the male the end of the tail is chestnut, but the face is the most ornamented part, the skin being chiefly bluish-grey, shading into a blackish tint beneath the eyes, with the upper lip of a delicate blue, clothed on the lower edge with a thin black moustache; the whiskers are orange-coloured, with the upper part black, forming a band which extends backwards to the ears, the latter being clothed with whitish hairs. in the zoological society's gardens i have often overheard visitors admiring the beauty of another monkey, deservedly called cercopithecus diana (fig. ); the general colour of the fur is grey; the chest and inner surface of the forelegs are white; a large triangular defined space on the hinder part of the back is rich chestnut; in the male the inner sides of the thighs and the abdomen are delicate fawn-coloured, and the top of the head is black; the face and ears are intensely black, contrasting finely with a white transverse crest over the eyebrows and a long white peaked beard, of which the basal portion is black. ( . i have seen most of the above monkeys in the zoological society's gardens. the description of the semnopithecus nemaeus is taken from mr. w.c. martin's 'natural history of mammalia,' , p. ; see also pp. , .) in these and many other monkeys, the beauty and singular arrangement of their colours, and still more the diversified and elegant arrangement of the crests and tufts of hair on their heads, force the conviction on my mind that these characters have been acquired through sexual selection exclusively as ornaments. summary. the law of battle for the possession of the female appears to prevail throughout the whole great class of mammals. most naturalists will admit that the greater size, strength, courage, and pugnacity of the male, his special weapons of offence, as well as his special means of defence, have been acquired or modified through that form of selection which i have called sexual. this does not depend on any superiority in the general struggle for life, but on certain individuals of one sex, generally the male, being successful in conquering other males, and leaving a larger number of offspring to inherit their superiority than do the less successful males. there is another and more peaceful kind of contest, in which the males endeavour to excite or allure the females by various charms. this is probably carried on in some cases by the powerful odours emitted by the males during the breeding-season; the odoriferous glands having been acquired through sexual selection. whether the same view can be extended to the voice is doubtful, for the vocal organs of the males must have been strengthened by use during maturity, under the powerful excitements of love, jealousy or rage, and will consequently have been transmitted to the same sex. various crests, tufts, and mantles of hair, which are either confined to the male, or are more developed in this sex than in the female, seem in most cases to be merely ornamental, though they sometimes serve as a defence against rival males. there is even reason to suspect that the branching horns of stags, and the elegant horns of certain antelopes, though properly serving as weapons of offence or defence, have been partly modified for ornament. when the male differs in colour from the female, he generally exhibits darker and more strongly-contrasted tints. we do not in this class meet with the splendid red, blue, yellow, and green tints, so common with male birds and many other animals. the naked parts, however, of certain quadrumana must be excepted; for such parts, often oddly situated, are brilliantly coloured in some species. the colours of the male in other cases may be due to simple variation, without the aid of selection. but when the colours are diversified and strongly pronounced, when they are not developed until near maturity, and when they are lost after emasculation, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that they have been acquired through sexual selection for the sake of ornament, and have been transmitted exclusively, or almost exclusively, to the same sex. when both sexes are coloured in the same manner, and the colours are conspicuous or curiously arranged, without being of the least apparent use as a protection, and especially when they are associated with various other ornamental appendages, we are led by analogy to the same conclusion, namely, that they have been acquired through sexual selection, although transmitted to both sexes. that conspicuous and diversified colours, whether confined to the males or common to both sexes, are as a general rule associated in the same groups and sub-groups with other secondary sexual characters serving for war or for ornament, will be found to hold good, if we look back to the various cases given in this and the last chapter. the law of the equal transmission of characters to both sexes, as far as colour and other ornaments are concerned, has prevailed far more extensively with mammals than with birds; but weapons, such as horns and tusks, have often been transmitted either exclusively or much more perfectly to the males than to the females. this is surprising, for, as the males generally use their weapons for defence against enemies of all kinds, their weapons would have been of service to the females. as far as we can see, their absence in this sex can be accounted for only by the form of inheritance which has prevailed. finally, with quadrupeds the contest between the individuals of the same sex, whether peaceful or bloody, has, with the rarest exceptions, been confined to the males; so that the latter have been modified through sexual selection, far more commonly than the females, either for fighting with each other or for alluring the opposite sex. part iii. sexual selection in relation to man, and conclusion. chapter xix. secondary sexual characters of man. differences between man and woman--causes of such differences and of certain characters common to both sexes--law of battle--differences in mental powers, and voice--on the influence of beauty in determining the marriages of mankind--attention paid by savages to ornaments--their ideas of beauty in woman--the tendency to exaggerate each natural peculiarity. with mankind the differences between the sexes are greater than in most of the quadrumana, but not so great as in some, for instance, the mandrill. man on an average is considerably taller, heavier, and stronger than woman, with squarer shoulders and more plainly-pronounced muscles. owing to the relation which exists between muscular development and the projection of the brows ( . schaaffhausen, translation in 'anthropological review,' oct. , pp. , , .), the superciliary ridge is generally more marked in man than in woman. his body, and especially his face, is more hairy, and his voice has a different and more powerful tone. in certain races the women are said to differ slightly in tint from the men. for instance, schweinfurth, in speaking of a negress belonging to the monbuttoos, who inhabit the interior of africa a few degrees north of the equator, says, "like all her race, she had a skin several shades lighter than her husband's, being something of the colour of half-roasted coffee." ( . 'the heart of africa,' english transl. , vol i. p. .) as the women labour in the fields and are quite unclothed, it is not likely that they differ in colour from the men owing to less exposure to the weather. european women are perhaps the brighter coloured of the two sexes, as may be seen when both have been equally exposed. man is more courageous, pugnacious and energetic than woman, and has a more inventive genius. his brain is absolutely larger, but whether or not proportionately to his larger body, has not, i believe, been fully ascertained. in woman the face is rounder; the jaws and the base of the skull smaller; the outlines of the body rounder, in parts more prominent; and her pelvis is broader than in man ( . ecker, translation, in 'anthropological review,' oct. , pp. - . the comparison of the form of the skull in men and women has been followed out with much care by welcker.); but this latter character may perhaps be considered rather as a primary than a secondary sexual character. she comes to maturity at an earlier age than man. as with animals of all classes, so with man, the distinctive characters of the male sex are not fully developed until he is nearly mature; and if emasculated they never appear. the beard, for instance, is a secondary sexual character, and male children are beardless, though at an early age they have abundant hair on the head. it is probably due to the rather late appearance in life of the successive variations whereby man has acquired his masculine characters, that they are transmitted to the male sex alone. male and female children resemble each other closely, like the young of so many other animals in which the adult sexes differ widely; they likewise resemble the mature female much more closely than the mature male. the female, however, ultimately assumes certain distinctive characters, and in the formation of her skull, is said to be intermediate between the child and the man. ( . ecker and welcker, ibid. pp. , ; vogt, 'lectures on man,' eng. translat. p. .) again, as the young of closely allied though distinct species do not differ nearly so much from each other as do the adults, so it is with the children of the different races of man. some have even maintained that race-differences cannot be detected in the infantile skull. ( . schaaffhausen, 'anthropolog. review,' ibid. p. .) in regard to colour, the new-born negro child is reddish nut-brown, which soon becomes slaty-grey; the black colour being fully developed within a year in the soudan, but not until three years in egypt. the eyes of the negro are at first blue, and the hair chestnut-brown rather than black, being curled only at the ends. the children of the australians immediately after birth are yellowish-brown, and become dark at a later age. those of the guaranys of paraguay are whitish-yellow, but they acquire in the course of a few weeks the yellowish-brown tint of their parents. similar observations have been made in other parts of america. ( . pruner-bey, on negro infants as quoted by vogt, 'lectures on man,' eng. translat. , p. : for further facts on negro infants, as quoted from winterbottom and camper, see lawrence, 'lectures on physiology,' etc. , p. . for the infants of the guaranys, see rengger, 'säugethiere,' etc. s. . see also godron, 'de l'espèce,' tom. ii. , p. . for the australians, waitz, 'introduction to anthropology,' eng. translat. , p. .) i have specified the foregoing differences between the male and female sex in mankind, because they are curiously like those of the quadrumana. with these animals the female is mature at an earlier age than the male; at least this is certainly the case in cebus azarae. ( . rengger, 'säugethiere,' etc., , s. .) the males of most species are larger and stronger than the females, of which fact the gorilla affords a well-known instance. even in so trifling a character as the greater prominence of the superciliary ridge, the males of certain monkeys differ from the females ( . as in macacus cynomolgus (desmarest, 'mammalogie,' p. ), and in hylobates agilis (geoffroy st.-hilaire and f. cuvier, 'histoire nat. des mammifères,' , tom. i. p. )., and agree in this respect with mankind. in the gorilla and certain other monkeys, the cranium of the adult male presents a strongly-marked sagittal crest, which is absent in the female; and ecker found a trace of a similar difference between the two sexes in the australians. ( . 'anthropological review,' oct. , p. .) with monkeys when there is any difference in the voice, that of the male is the more powerful. we have seen that certain male monkeys have a well-developed beard, which is quite deficient, or much less developed in the female. no instance is known of the beard, whiskers, or moustache being larger in the female than in the male monkey. even in the colour of the beard there is a curious parallelism between man and the quadrumana, for with man when the beard differs in colour from the hair of the head, as is commonly the case, it is, i believe, almost always of a lighter tint, being often reddish. i have repeatedly observed this fact in england; but two gentlemen have lately written to me, saying that they form an exception to the rule. one of these gentlemen accounts for the fact by the wide difference in colour of the hair on the paternal and maternal sides of his family. both had been long aware of this peculiarity (one of them having often been accused of dyeing his beard), and had been thus led to observe other men, and were convinced that the exceptions were very rare. dr. hooker attended to this little point for me in russia, and found no exception to the rule. in calcutta, mr. j. scott, of the botanic gardens, was so kind as to observe the many races of men to be seen there, as well as in some other parts of india, namely, two races of sikhim, the bhoteas, hindoos, burmese, and chinese, most of which races have very little hair on the face; and he always found that when there was any difference in colour between the hair of the head and the beard, the latter was invariably lighter. now with monkeys, as has already been stated, the beard frequently differs strikingly in colour from the hair of the head, and in such cases it is always of a lighter hue, being often pure white, sometimes yellow or reddish. ( . mr. blyth informs me that he has only seen one instance of the beard, whiskers, etc., in a monkey becoming white with old age, as is so commonly the case with us. this, however, occurred in an aged macacus cynomolgus, kept in confinement whose moustaches were "remarkably long and human-like." altogether this old monkey presented a ludicrous resemblance to one of the reigning monarchs of europe, after whom he was universally nick-named. in certain races of man the hair on the head hardly ever becomes grey; thus mr. d. forbes has never, as he informs me, seen an instance with the aymaras and quichuas of south america.) in regard to the general hairiness of the body, the women in all races are less hairy than the men; and in some few quadrumana the under side of the body of the female is less hairy than that of the male. ( . this is the case with the females of several species of hylobates; see geoffroy st.-hilaire and f. cuvier, 'hist. nat. des mamm.' tom. i. see also, on h. lar, 'penny cyclopedia,' vol. ii. pp. , .) lastly, male monkeys, like men, are bolder and fiercer than the females. they lead the troop, and when there is danger, come to the front. we thus see how close is the parallelism between the sexual differences of man and the quadrumana. with some few species, however, as with certain baboons, the orang and the gorilla, there is a considerably greater difference between the sexes, as in the size of the canine teeth, in the development and colour of the hair, and especially in the colour of the naked parts of the skin, than in mankind. all the secondary sexual characters of man are highly variable, even within the limits of the same race; and they differ much in the several races. these two rules hold good generally throughout the animal kingdom. in the excellent observations made on board the novara ( . the results were deduced by dr. weisbach from the measurements made by drs. k. scherzer and schwarz, see 'reise der novara: anthropolog. theil,' , ss. , , , , , .), the male australians were found to exceed the females by only millim. in height, whilst with the javans the average excess was millim.; so that in this latter race the difference in height between the sexes is more than thrice as great as with the australians. numerous measurements were carefully made of the stature, the circumference of the neck and chest, the length of the back-bone and of the arms, in various races; and nearly all these measurements shew that the males differ much more from one another than do the females. this fact indicates that, as far as these characters are concerned, it is the male which has been chiefly modified, since the several races diverged from their common stock. the development of the beard and the hairiness of the body differ remarkably in the men of distinct races, and even in different tribes or families of the same race. we europeans see this amongst ourselves. in the island of st. kilda, according to martin ( . 'voyage to st. kilda' ( rd ed. ), p. .), the men do not acquire beards until the age of thirty or upwards, and even then the beards are very thin. on the europaeo-asiatic continent, beards prevail until we pass beyond india; though with the natives of ceylon they are often absent, as was noticed in ancient times by diodorus. ( . sir j.e. tennent, 'ceylon,' vol. ii. , p. .) eastward of india beards disappear, as with the siamese, malays, kalmucks, chinese, and japanese; nevertheless, the ainos ( . quatrefages, 'revue des cours scientifiques,' aug. , , p. ; vogt, 'lectures on man,' eng. trans. p. .), who inhabit the northernmost islands of the japan archipelago, are the hairiest men in the world. with negroes the beard is scanty or wanting, and they rarely have whiskers; in both sexes the body is frequently almost destitute of fine down. ( . on the beards of negroes, vogt, 'lectures,' etc. p. ; waitz, 'introduct. to anthropology,' engl. translat. , vol. i. p. . it is remarkable that in the united states ('investigations in military and anthropological statistics of american soldiers,' , p. ) the pure negroes and their crossed offspring seem to have bodies almost as hairy as europeans.) on the other hand, the papuans of the malay archipelago, who are nearly as black as negroes, possess well-developed beards. ( . wallace, 'the malay arch.' vol. ii. , p. .) in the pacific ocean the inhabitants of the fiji archipelago have large bushy beards, whilst those of the not distant archipelagoes of tonga and samoa are beardless; but these men belong to distinct races. in the ellice group all the inhabitants belong to the same race; yet on one island alone, namely nunemaya, "the men have splendid beards"; whilst on the other islands "they have, as a rule, a dozen straggling hairs for a beard." ( . dr. j. barnard davis on oceanic races, in 'anthropological review,' april , pp. , .) throughout the great american continent the men may be said to be beardless; but in almost all the tribes a few short hairs are apt to appear on the face, especially in old age. with the tribes of north america, catlin estimates that eighteen out of twenty men are completely destitute by nature of a beard; but occasionally there may be seen a man, who has neglected to pluck out the hairs at puberty, with a soft beard an inch or two in length. the guaranys of paraguay differ from all the surrounding tribes in having a small beard, and even some hair on the body, but no whiskers. ( . catlin, 'north american indians,' rd. ed. , vol. ii. p. . on the guaranys, see azara, 'voyages dans l'amérique merid.' tom. ii. , p. ; also rengger, 'säugethiere von paraguay,' s. .) i am informed by mr. d. forbes, who particularly attended to this point, that the aymaras and quichuas of the cordillera are remarkably hairless, yet in old age a few straggling hairs occasionally appear on the chin. the men of these two tribes have very little hair on the various parts of the body where hair grows abundantly in europeans, and the women have none on the corresponding parts. the hair on the head, however, attains an extraordinary length in both sexes, often reaching almost to the ground; and this is likewise the case with some of the n. american tribes. in the amount of hair, and in the general shape of the body, the sexes of the american aborigines do not differ so much from each other, as in most other races. ( . prof. and mrs. agassiz ('journey in brazil,' p. ) remark that the sexes of the american indians differ less than those of the negroes and of the higher races. see also rengger, ibid. p. , on the guaranys.) this fact is analogous with what occurs with some closely allied monkeys; thus the sexes of the chimpanzee are not as different as those of the orang or gorilla. ( . rutimeyer, 'die grenzen der thierwelt; eine betrachtung zu darwin's lehre,' , s. .) in the previous chapters we have seen that with mammals, birds, fishes, insects, etc., many characters, which there is every reason to believe were primarily gained through sexual selection by one sex, have been transferred to the other. as this same form of transmission has apparently prevailed much with mankind, it will save useless repetition if we discuss the origin of characters peculiar to the male sex together with certain other characters common to both sexes. law of battle. with savages, for instance, the australians, the women are the constant cause of war both between members of the same tribe and between distinct tribes. so no doubt it was in ancient times; "nam fuit ante helenam mulier teterrima belli causa." with some of the north american indians, the contest is reduced to a system. that excellent observer, hearne ( . 'a journey from prince of wales fort,' vo. ed. dublin, , p. . sir j. lubbock ('origin of civilisation,' , p. ) gives other and similar cases in north america. for the guanas of south america see azara, 'voyages,' etc. tom. ii. p. .), says:--"it has ever been the custom among these people for the men to wrestle for any woman to whom they are attached; and, of course, the strongest party always carries off the prize. a weak man, unless he be a good hunter, and well-beloved, is seldom permitted to keep a wife that a stronger man thinks worth his notice. this custom prevails throughout all the tribes, and causes a great spirit of emulation among their youth, who are upon all occasions, from their childhood, trying their strength and skill in wrestling." with the guanas of south america, azara states that the men rarely marry till twenty years old or more, as before that age they cannot conquer their rivals. other similar facts could be given; but even if we had no evidence on this head, we might feel almost sure, from the analogy of the higher quadrumana ( . on the fighting of the male gorillas, see dr. savage, in 'boston journal of natural history,' vol. v. , p. . on presbytis entellus, see the 'indian field,' , p. .), that the law of battle had prevailed with man during the early stages of his development. the occasional appearance at the present day of canine teeth which project above the others, with traces of a diastema or open space for the reception of the opposite canines, is in all probability a case of reversion to a former state, when the progenitors of man were provided with these weapons, like so many existing male quadrumana. it was remarked in a former chapter that as man gradually became erect, and continually used his hands and arms for fighting with sticks and stones, as well as for the other purposes of life, he would have used his jaws and teeth less and less. the jaws, together with their muscles, would then have been reduced through disuse, as would the teeth through the not well understood principles of correlation and economy of growth; for we everywhere see that parts, which are no longer of service, are reduced in size. by such steps the original inequality between the jaws and teeth in the two sexes of mankind would ultimately have been obliterated. the case is almost parallel with that of many male ruminants, in which the canine teeth have been reduced to mere rudiments, or have disappeared, apparently in consequence of the development of horns. as the prodigious difference between the skulls of the two sexes in the orang and gorilla stands in close relation with the development of the immense canine teeth in the males, we may infer that the reduction of the jaws and teeth in the early male progenitors of man must have led to a most striking and favourable change in his appearance. there can be little doubt that the greater size and strength of man, in comparison with woman, together with his broader shoulders, more developed muscles, rugged outline of body, his greater courage and pugnacity, are all due in chief part to inheritance from his half-human male ancestors. these characters would, however, have been preserved or even augmented during the long ages of man's savagery, by the success of the strongest and boldest men, both in the general struggle for life and in their contests for wives; a success which would have ensured their leaving a more numerous progeny than their less favoured brethren. it is not probable that the greater strength of man was primarily acquired through the inherited effects of his having worked harder than woman for his own subsistence and that of his family; for the women in all barbarous nations are compelled to work at least as hard as the men. with civilised people the arbitrament of battle for the possession of the women has long ceased; on the other hand, the men, as a general rule, have to work harder than the women for their joint subsistence, and thus their greater strength will have been kept up. difference in the mental powers of the two sexes. with respect to differences of this nature between man and woman, it is probable that sexual selection has played a highly important part. i am aware that some writers doubt whether there is any such inherent difference; but this is at least probable from the analogy of the lower animals which present other secondary sexual characters. no one disputes that the bull differs in disposition from the cow, the wild-boar from the sow, the stallion from the mare, and, as is well known to the keepers of menageries, the males of the larger apes from the females. woman seems to differ from man in mental disposition, chiefly in her greater tenderness and less selfishness; and this holds good even with savages, as shewn by a well-known passage in mungo park's travels, and by statements made by many other travellers. woman, owing to her maternal instincts, displays these qualities towards her infants in an eminent degree; therefore it is likely that she would often extend them towards her fellow-creatures. man is the rival of other men; he delights in competition, and this leads to ambition which passes too easily into selfishness. these latter qualities seem to be his natural and unfortunate birthright. it is generally admitted that with woman the powers of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked than in man; but some, at least, of these faculties are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilisation. the chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn by man's attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can woman--whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands. if two lists were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music (inclusive both of composition and performance), history, science, and philosophy, with half-a-dozen names under each subject, the two lists would not bear comparison. we may also infer, from the law of the deviation from averages, so well illustrated by mr. galton, in his work on 'hereditary genius,' that if men are capable of a decided pre-eminence over women in many subjects, the average of mental power in man must be above that of woman. amongst the half-human progenitors of man, and amongst savages, there have been struggles between the males during many generations for the possession of the females. but mere bodily strength and size would do little for victory, unless associated with courage, perseverance, and determined energy. with social animals, the young males have to pass through many a contest before they win a female, and the older males have to retain their females by renewed battles. they have, also, in the case of mankind, to defend their females, as well as their young, from enemies of all kinds, and to hunt for their joint subsistence. but to avoid enemies or to attack them with success, to capture wild animals, and to fashion weapons, requires the aid of the higher mental faculties, namely, observation, reason, invention, or imagination. these various faculties will thus have been continually put to the test and selected during manhood; they will, moreover, have been strengthened by use during this same period of life. consequently in accordance with the principle often alluded to, we might expect that they would at least tend to be transmitted chiefly to the male offspring at the corresponding period of manhood. now, when two men are put into competition, or a man with a woman, both possessed of every mental quality in equal perfection, save that one has higher energy, perseverance, and courage, the latter will generally become more eminent in every pursuit, and will gain the ascendancy. ( . j. stuart mill remarks ('the subjection of women,' , p. ), "the things in which man most excels woman are those which require most plodding, and long hammering at single thoughts." what is this but energy and perseverance?) he may be said to possess genius--for genius has been declared by a great authority to be patience; and patience, in this sense, means unflinching, undaunted perseverance. but this view of genius is perhaps deficient; for without the higher powers of the imagination and reason, no eminent success can be gained in many subjects. these latter faculties, as well as the former, will have been developed in man, partly through sexual selection,--that is, through the contest of rival males, and partly through natural selection, that is, from success in the general struggle for life; and as in both cases the struggle will have been during maturity, the characters gained will have been transmitted more fully to the male than to the female offspring. it accords in a striking manner with this view of the modification and re-inforcement of many of our mental faculties by sexual selection, that, firstly, they notoriously undergo a considerable change at puberty ( . maudsley, 'mind and body,' p. .), and, secondly, that eunuchs remain throughout life inferior in these same qualities. thus, man has ultimately become superior to woman. it is, indeed, fortunate that the law of the equal transmission of characters to both sexes prevails with mammals; otherwise, it is probable that man would have become as superior in mental endowment to woman, as the peacock is in ornamental plumage to the peahen. it must be borne in mind that the tendency in characters acquired by either sex late in life, to be transmitted to the same sex at the same age, and of early acquired characters to be transmitted to both sexes, are rules which, though general, do not always hold. if they always held good, we might conclude (but i here exceed my proper bounds) that the inherited effects of the early education of boys and girls would be transmitted equally to both sexes; so that the present inequality in mental power between the sexes would not be effaced by a similar course of early training; nor can it have been caused by their dissimilar early training. in order that woman should reach the same standard as man, she ought, when nearly adult, to be trained to energy and perseverance, and to have her reason and imagination exercised to the highest point; and then she would probably transmit these qualities chiefly to her adult daughters. all women, however, could not be thus raised, unless during many generations those who excelled in the above robust virtues were married, and produced offspring in larger numbers than other women. as before remarked of bodily strength, although men do not now fight for their wives, and this form of selection has passed away, yet during manhood, they generally undergo a severe struggle in order to maintain themselves and their families; and this will tend to keep up or even increase their mental powers, and, as a consequence, the present inequality between the sexes. ( . an observation by vogt bears on this subject: he says, "it is a remarkable circumstance, that the difference between the sexes, as regards the cranial cavity, increases with the development of the race, so that the male european excels much more the female, than the negro the negress. welcker confirms this statement of huschke from his measurements of negro and german skulls." but vogt admits ('lectures on man,' eng. translat. , p. ) that more observations are requisite on this point. voice and musical powers. in some species of quadrumana there is a great difference between the adult sexes, in the power of their voices and in the development of the vocal organs; and man appears to have inherited this difference from his early progenitors. his vocal cords are about one-third longer than in woman, or than in boys; and emasculation produces the same effect on him as on the lower animals, for it "arrests that prominent growth of the thyroid, etc., which accompanies the elongation of the cords." ( . owen, 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. iii. p. .) with respect to the cause of this difference between the sexes, i have nothing to add to the remarks in the last chapter on the probable effects of the long-continued use of the vocal organs by the male under the excitement of love, rage and jealousy. according to sir duncan gibb ( . 'journal of the anthropological society,' april , p. lvii. and lxvi.), the voice and the form of the larynx differ in the different races of mankind; but with the tartars, chinese, etc., the voice of the male is said not to differ so much from that of the female, as in most other races. the capacity and love for singing or music, though not a sexual character in man, must not here be passed over. although the sounds emitted by animals of all kinds serve many purposes, a strong case can be made out, that the vocal organs were primarily used and perfected in relation to the propagation of the species. insects and some few spiders are the lowest animals which voluntarily produce any sound; and this is generally effected by the aid of beautifully constructed stridulating organs, which are often confined to the males. the sounds thus produced consist, i believe in all cases, of the same note, repeated rhythmically ( . dr. scudder, 'notes on stridulation,' in 'proc. boston soc. of nat. hist.' vol. xi. april .); and this is sometimes pleasing even to the ears of man. the chief and, in some cases, exclusive purpose appears to be either to call or charm the opposite sex. the sounds produced by fishes are said in some cases to be made only by the males during the breeding-season. all the air-breathing vertebrata necessarily possess an apparatus for inhaling and expelling air, with a pipe capable of being closed at one end. hence when the primeval members of this class were strongly excited and their muscles violently contracted, purposeless sounds would almost certainly have been produced; and these, if they proved in any way serviceable, might readily have been modified or intensified by the preservation of properly adapted variations. the lowest vertebrates which breathe air are amphibians; and of these, frogs and toads possess vocal organs, which are incessantly used during the breeding-season, and which are often more highly developed in the male than in the female. the male alone of the tortoise utters a noise, and this only during the season of love. male alligators roar or bellow during the same season. every one knows how much birds use their vocal organs as a means of courtship; and some species likewise perform what may be called instrumental music. in the class of mammals, with which we are here more particularly concerned, the males of almost all the species use their voices during the breeding-season much more than at any other time; and some are absolutely mute excepting at this season. with other species both sexes, or only the females, use their voices as a love-call. considering these facts, and that the vocal organs of some quadrupeds are much more largely developed in the male than in the female, either permanently or temporarily during the breeding-season; and considering that in most of the lower classes the sounds produced by the males, serve not only to call but to excite or allure the female, it is a surprising fact that we have not as yet any good evidence that these organs are used by male mammals to charm the females. the american mycetes caraya perhaps forms an exception, as does the hylobates agilis, an ape allied to man. this gibbon has an extremely loud but musical voice. mr. waterhouse states ( . given in w.c.l. martin's 'general introduction to natural history of mamm. animals,' , p. ; owen, 'anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. iii, p. .), "it appeared to me that in ascending and descending the scale, the intervals were always exactly half-tones; and i am sure that the highest note was the exact octave to the lowest. the quality of the notes is very musical; and i do not doubt that a good violinist would be able to give a correct idea of the gibbon's composition, excepting as regards its loudness." mr. waterhouse then gives the notes. professor owen, who is a musician, confirms the foregoing statement, and remarks, though erroneously, that this gibbon "alone of brute mammals may be said to sing." it appears to be much excited after its performance. unfortunately, its habits have never been closely observed in a state of nature; but from the analogy of other animals, it is probable that it uses its musical powers more especially during the season of courtship. this gibbon is not the only species in the genus which sings, for my son, francis darwin, attentively listened in the zoological gardens to h. leuciscus whilst singing a cadence of three notes, in true musical intervals and with a clear musical tone. it is a more surprising fact that certain rodents utter musical sounds. singing mice have often been mentioned and exhibited, but imposture has commonly been suspected. we have, however, at last a clear account by a well-known observer, the rev. s. lockwood ( . the 'american naturalist,' , p. .), of the musical powers of an american species, the hesperomys cognatus, belonging to a genus distinct from that of the english mouse. this little animal was kept in confinement, and the performance was repeatedly heard. in one of the two chief songs, "the last bar would frequently be prolonged to two or three; and she would sometimes change from c sharp and d, to c natural and d, then warble on these two notes awhile, and wind up with a quick chirp on c sharp and d. the distinctness between the semitones was very marked, and easily appreciable to a good ear." mr. lockwood gives both songs in musical notation; and adds that though this little mouse "had no ear for time, yet she would keep to the key of b (two flats) and strictly in a major key."..."her soft clear voice falls an octave with all the precision possible; then at the wind up, it rises again into a very quick trill on c sharp and d." a critic has asked how the ears of man, and he ought to have added of other animals, could have been adapted by selection so as to distinguish musical notes. but this question shews some confusion on the subject; a noise is the sensation resulting from the co-existence of several aerial "simple vibrations" of various periods, each of which intermits so frequently that its separate existence cannot be perceived. it is only in the want of continuity of such vibrations, and in their want of harmony inter se, that a noise differs from a musical note. thus an ear to be capable of discriminating noises--and the high importance of this power to all animals is admitted by every one--must be sensitive to musical notes. we have evidence of this capacity even low down in the animal scale: thus crustaceans are provided with auditory hairs of different lengths, which have been seen to vibrate when the proper musical notes are struck. ( . helmholtz, 'theorie phys. de la musique,' , p. .) as stated in a previous chapter, similar observations have been made on the hairs of the antennae of gnats. it has been positively asserted by good observers that spiders are attracted by music. it is also well known that some dogs howl when hearing particular tones. ( . several accounts have been published to this effect. mr. peach writes to me that an old dog of his howls when b flat is sounded on the flute, and to no other note. i may add another instance of a dog always whining, when one note on a concertina, which was out of tune, was played.) seals apparently appreciate music, and their fondness for it "was well known to the ancients, and is often taken advantage of by the hunters at the present day." ( . mr. r. brown, in 'proc. zool. soc.' , p. .) therefore, as far as the mere perception of musical notes is concerned, there seems no special difficulty in the case of man or of any other animal. helmholtz has explained on physiological principles why concords are agreeable, and discords disagreeable to the human ear; but we are little concerned with these, as music in harmony is a late invention. we are more concerned with melody, and here again, according to helmholtz, it is intelligible why the notes of our musical scale are used. the ear analyses all sounds into their component "simple vibrations," although we are not conscious of this analysis. in a musical note the lowest in pitch of these is generally predominant, and the others which are less marked are the octave, the twelfth, the second octave, etc., all harmonies of the fundamental predominant note; any two notes of our scale have many of these harmonic over-tones in common. it seems pretty clear then, that if an animal always wished to sing precisely the same song, he would guide himself by sounding those notes in succession, which possess many over-tones in common--that is, he would choose for his song, notes which belong to our musical scale. but if it be further asked why musical tones in a certain order and rhythm give man and other animals pleasure, we can no more give the reason than for the pleasantness of certain tastes and smells. that they do give pleasure of some kind to animals, we may infer from their being produced during the season of courtship by many insects, spiders, fishes, amphibians, and birds; for unless the females were able to appreciate such sounds and were excited or charmed by them, the persevering efforts of the males, and the complex structures often possessed by them alone, would be useless; and this it is impossible to believe. human song is generally admitted to be the basis or origin of instrumental music. as neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least use to man in reference to his daily habits of life, they must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed. they are present, though in a very rude condition, in men of all races, even the most savage; but so different is the taste of the several races, that our music gives no pleasure to savages, and their music is to us in most cases hideous and unmeaning. dr. seemann, in some interesting remarks on this subject ( . 'journal of anthropological society,' oct. , p. clv. see also the several later chapters in sir john lubbock's 'prehistoric times,' nd ed. , which contain an admirable account of the habits of savages.), "doubts whether even amongst the nations of western europe, intimately connected as they are by close and frequent intercourse, the music of the one is interpreted in the same sense by the others. by travelling eastwards we find that there is certainly a different language of music. songs of joy and dance-accompaniments are no longer, as with us, in the major keys, but always in the minor." whether or not the half-human progenitors of man possessed, like the singing gibbons, the capacity of producing, and therefore no doubt of appreciating, musical notes, we know that man possessed these faculties at a very remote period. m. lartet has described two flutes made out of the bones and horns of the reindeer, found in caves together with flint tools and the remains of extinct animals. the arts of singing and of dancing are also very ancient, and are now practised by all or nearly all the lowest races of man. poetry, which may be considered as the offspring of song, is likewise so ancient, that many persons have felt astonished that it should have arisen during the earliest ages of which we have any record. we see that the musical faculties, which are not wholly deficient in any race, are capable of prompt and high development, for hottentots and negroes have become excellent musicians, although in their native countries they rarely practise anything that we should consider music. schweinfurth, however, was pleased with some of the simple melodies which he heard in the interior of africa. but there is nothing anomalous in the musical faculties lying dormant in man: some species of birds which never naturally sing, can without much difficulty be taught to do so; thus a house-sparrow has learnt the song of a linnet. as these two species are closely allied, and belong to the order of insessores, which includes nearly all the singing-birds in the world, it is possible that a progenitor of the sparrow may have been a songster. it is more remarkable that parrots, belonging to a group distinct from the insessores, and having differently constructed vocal organs, can be taught not only to speak, but to pipe or whistle tunes invented by man, so that they must have some musical capacity. nevertheless it would be very rash to assume that parrots are descended from some ancient form which was a songster. many cases could be advanced of organs and instincts originally adapted for one purpose, having been utilised for some distinct purpose. ( . since this chapter was printed, i have seen a valuable article by mr. chauncey wright ('north american review,' oct. , page ), who, in discussing the above subject, remarks, "there are many consequences of the ultimate laws or uniformities of nature, through which the acquisition of one useful power will bring with it many resulting advantages as well as limiting disadvantages, actual or possible, which the principle of utility may not have comprehended in its action." as i have attempted to shew in an early chapter of this work, this principle has an important bearing on the acquisition by man of some of his mental characteristics.) hence the capacity for high musical development which the savage races of man possess, may be due either to the practice by our semi-human progenitors of some rude form of music, or simply to their having acquired the proper vocal organs for a different purpose. but in this latter case we must assume, as in the above instance of parrots, and as seems to occur with many animals, that they already possessed some sense of melody. music arouses in us various emotions, but not the more terrible ones of horror, fear, rage, etc. it awakens the gentler feelings of tenderness and love, which readily pass into devotion. in the chinese annals it is said, "music hath the power of making heaven descend upon earth." it likewise stirs up in us the sense of triumph and the glorious ardour for war. these powerful and mingled feelings may well give rise to the sense of sublimity. we can concentrate, as dr. seemann observes, greater intensity of feeling in a single musical note than in pages of writing. it is probable that nearly the same emotions, but much weaker and far less complex, are felt by birds when the male pours forth his full volume of song, in rivalry with other males, to captivate the female. love is still the commonest theme of our songs. as herbert spencer remarks, "music arouses dormant sentiments of which we had not conceived the possibility, and do not know the meaning; or, as richter says, tells us of things we have not seen and shall not see." conversely, when vivid emotions are felt and expressed by the orator, or even in common speech, musical cadences and rhythm are instinctively used. the negro in africa when excited often bursts forth in song; "another will reply in song, whilst the company, as if touched by a musical wave, murmur a chorus in perfect unison." ( . winwood reade, 'the martyrdom of man,' , p. , and 'african sketch book,' , vol. ii. p. .) even monkeys express strong feelings in different tones--anger and impatience by low,--fear and pain by high notes. ( . rengger, 'säugethiere von paraguay,' s. .) the sensations and ideas thus excited in us by music, or expressed by the cadences of oratory, appear from their vagueness, yet depth, like mental reversions to the emotions and thoughts of a long-past age. all these facts with respect to music and impassioned speech become intelligible to a certain extent, if we may assume that musical tones and rhythm were used by our half-human ancestors, during the season of courtship, when animals of all kinds are excited not only by love, but by the strong passions of jealousy, rivalry, and triumph. from the deeply-laid principle of inherited associations, musical tones in this case would be likely to call up vaguely and indefinitely the strong emotions of a long-past age. as we have every reason to suppose that articulate speech is one of the latest, as it certainly is the highest, of the arts acquired by man, and as the instinctive power of producing musical notes and rhythms is developed low down in the animal series, it would be altogether opposed to the principle of evolution, if we were to admit that man's musical capacity has been developed from the tones used in impassioned speech. we must suppose that the rhythms and cadences of oratory are derived from previously developed musical powers. ( . see the very interesting discussion on the 'origin and function of music,' by mr. herbert spencer, in his collected 'essays,' , p. . mr. spencer comes to an exactly opposite conclusion to that at which i have arrived. he concludes, as did diderot formerly, that the cadences used in emotional speech afford the foundation from which music has been developed; whilst i conclude that musical notes and rhythm were first acquired by the male or female progenitors of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite sex. thus musical tones became firmly associated with some of the strongest passions an animal is capable of feeling, and are consequently used instinctively, or through association when strong emotions are expressed in speech. mr. spencer does not offer any satisfactory explanation, nor can i, why high or deep notes should be expressive, both with man and the lower animals, of certain emotions. mr. spencer gives also an interesting discussion on the relations between poetry, recitative and song.) we can thus understand how it is that music, dancing, song, and poetry are such very ancient arts. we may go even further than this, and, as remarked in a former chapter, believe that musical sounds afforded one of the bases for the development of language. ( . i find in lord monboddo's 'origin of language,' vol. i. , p. , that dr. blacklock likewise thought "that the first language among men was music, and that before our ideas were expressed by articulate sounds, they were communicated by tones varied according to different degrees of gravity and acuteness.") as the males of several quadrumanous animals have their vocal organs much more developed than in the females, and as a gibbon, one of the anthropomorphous apes, pours forth a whole octave of musical notes and may be said to sing, it appears probable that the progenitors of man, either the males or females or both sexes, before acquiring the power of expressing their mutual love in articulate language, endeavoured to charm each other with musical notes and rhythm. so little is known about the use of the voice by the quadrumana during the season of love, that we have no means of judging whether the habit of singing was first acquired by our male or female ancestors. women are generally thought to possess sweeter voices than men, and as far as this serves as any guide, we may infer that they first acquired musical powers in order to attract the other sex. ( . see an interesting discussion on this subject by haeckel, 'generelle morphologie,' b. ii. , s. .) but if so, this must have occurred long ago, before our ancestors had become sufficiently human to treat and value their women merely as useful slaves. the impassioned orator, bard, or musician, when with his varied tones and cadences he excites the strongest emotions in his hearers, little suspects that he uses the same means by which his half-human ancestors long ago aroused each other's ardent passions, during their courtship and rivalry. the influence of beauty in determining the marriages of mankind. in civilised life man is largely, but by no means exclusively, influenced in the choice of his wife by external appearance; but we are chiefly concerned with primeval times, and our only means of forming a judgment on this subject is to study the habits of existing semi-civilised and savage nations. if it can be shewn that the men of different races prefer women having various characteristics, or conversely with the women, we have then to enquire whether such choice, continued during many generations, would produce any sensible effect on the race, either on one sex or both according to the form of inheritance which has prevailed. it will be well first to shew in some detail that savages pay the greatest attention to their personal appearance. ( . a full and excellent account of the manner in which savages in all parts of the world ornament themselves, is given by the italian traveller, professor mantegazza, 'rio de la plata, viaggi e studi,' , pp. - ; all the following statements, when other references are not given, are taken from this work. see, also, waitz, 'introduction to anthropology,' eng. translat. vol. i. , p. , et passim. lawrence also gives very full details in his 'lectures on physiology,' . since this chapter was written sir j. lubbock has published his 'origin of civilisation,' , in which there is an interesting chapter on the present subject, and from which (pp. , ) i have taken some facts about savages dyeing their teeth and hair, and piercing their teeth.) that they have a passion for ornament is notorious; and an english philosopher goes so far as to maintain, that clothes were first made for ornament and not for warmth. as professor waitz remarks, "however poor and miserable man is, he finds a pleasure in adorning himself." the extravagance of the naked indians of south america in decorating themselves is shewn "by a man of large stature gaining with difficulty enough by the labour of a fortnight to procure in exchange the chica necessary to paint himself red." ( . humboldt, 'personal narrative,' eng. translat. vol. iv. p. ; on the imagination shewn in painting the body, p. ; on modifying the form of the calf of the leg, p. .) the ancient barbarians of europe during the reindeer period brought to their caves any brilliant or singular objects which they happened to find. savages at the present day everywhere deck themselves with plumes, necklaces, armlets, ear-rings, etc. they paint themselves in the most diversified manner. "if painted nations," as humboldt observes, "had been examined with the same attention as clothed nations, it would have been perceived that the most fertile imagination and the most mutable caprice have created the fashions of painting, as well as those of garments." in one part of africa the eyelids are coloured black; in another the nails are coloured yellow or purple. in many places the hair is dyed of various tints. in different countries the teeth are stained black, red, blue, etc., and in the malay archipelago it is thought shameful to have white teeth "like those of a dog." not one great country can be named, from the polar regions in the north to new zealand in the south, in which the aborigines do not tattoo themselves. this practice was followed by the jews of old, and by the ancient britons. in africa some of the natives tattoo themselves, but it is a much more common practice to raise protuberances by rubbing salt into incisions made in various parts of the body; and these are considered by the inhabitants of kordofan and darfur "to be great personal attractions." in the arab countries no beauty can be perfect until the cheeks "or temples have been gashed." ( . 'the nile tributaries,' ; 'the albert n'yanza,' , vol. i. p. .) in south america, as humboldt remarks, "a mother would be accused of culpable indifference towards her children, if she did not employ artificial means to shape the calf of the leg after the fashion of the country." in the old and new worlds the shape of the skull was formerly modified during infancy in the most extraordinary manner, as is still the case in many places, and such deformities are considered ornamental. for instance, the savages of colombia ( . quoted by prichard, 'physical history of mankind,' th ed. vol. i. , p. .) deem a much flattened head "an essential point of beauty." the hair is treated with especial care in various countries; it is allowed to grow to full length, so as to reach to the ground, or is combed into "a compact frizzled mop, which is the papuan's pride and glory." ( . on the papuans, wallace, 'the malay archipelago,' vol. ii. p. . on the coiffure of the africans, sir s. baker, 'the albert n'yanza,' vol. i. p. .) in northern africa "a man requires a period of from eight to ten years to perfect his coiffure." with other nations the head is shaved, and in parts of south america and africa even the eyebrows and eyelashes are eradicated. the natives of the upper nile knock out the four front teeth, saying that they do not wish to resemble brutes. further south, the batokas knock out only the two upper incisors, which, as livingstone ( . 'travels,' p. .) remarks, gives the face a hideous appearance, owing to the prominence of the lower jaw; but these people think the presence of the incisors most unsightly, and on beholding some europeans, cried out, "look at the great teeth!" the chief sebituani tried in vain to alter this fashion. in various parts of africa and in the malay archipelago the natives file the incisors into points like those of a saw, or pierce them with holes, into which they insert studs. as the face with us is chiefly admired for its beauty, so with savages it is the chief seat of mutilation. in all quarters of the world the septum, and more rarely the wings of the nose are pierced; rings, sticks, feathers, and other ornaments being inserted into the holes. the ears are everywhere pierced and similarly ornamented, and with the botocudos and lenguas of south america the hole is gradually so much enlarged that the lower edge touches the shoulder. in north and south america and in africa either the upper or lower lip is pierced; and with the botocudos the hole in the lower lip is so large that a disc of wood, four inches in diameter, is placed in it. mantegazza gives a curious account of the shame felt by a south american native, and of the ridicule which he excited, when he sold his tembeta,--the large coloured piece of wood which is passed through the hole. in central africa the women perforate the lower lip and wear a crystal, which, from the movement of the tongue, has "a wriggling motion, indescribably ludicrous during conversation." the wife of the chief of latooka told sir s. baker ( . 'the albert n'yanza,' , vol. i. p. .) that lady baker "would be much improved if she would extract her four front teeth from the lower jaw, and wear the long pointed polished crystal in her under lip." further south with the makalolo, the upper lip is perforated, and a large metal and bamboo ring, called a pelele, is worn in the hole. "this caused the lip in one case to project two inches beyond the tip of the nose; and when the lady smiled, the contraction of the muscles elevated it over the eyes. 'why do the women wear these things?' the venerable chief, chinsurdi, was asked. evidently surprised at such a stupid question, he replied, 'for beauty! they are the only beautiful things women have; men have beards, women have none. what kind of a person would she be without the pelele? she would not be a woman at all with a mouth like a man, but no beard.'" ( . livingstone, 'british association,' ; report given in the 'athenaeum,' july , , p. .) hardly any part of the body, which can be unnaturally modified, has escaped. the amount of suffering thus caused must have been extreme, for many of the operations require several years for their completion, so that the idea of their necessity must be imperative. the motives are various; the men paint their bodies to make themselves appear terrible in battle; certain mutilations are connected with religious rites, or they mark the age of puberty, or the rank of the man, or they serve to distinguish the tribes. amongst savages the same fashions prevail for long periods ( . sir s. baker (ibid. vol. i. p. ) speaking of the natives of central africa says, "every tribe has a distinct and unchanging fashion for dressing the hair." see agassiz ('journey in brazil,' , p. ) on invariability of the tattooing of amazonian indians.), and thus mutilations, from whatever cause first made, soon come to be valued as distinctive marks. but self-adornment, vanity, and the admiration of others, seem to be the commonest motives. in regard to tattooing, i was told by the missionaries in new zealand that when they tried to persuade some girls to give up the practice, they answered, "we must just have a few lines on our lips; else when we grow old we shall be so very ugly." with the men of new zealand, a most capable judge ( . rev. r. taylor, 'new zealand and its inhabitants,' , p. .) says, "to have fine tattooed faces was the great ambition of the young, both to render themselves attractive to the ladies, and conspicuous in war." a star tattooed on the forehead and a spot on the chin are thought by the women in one part of africa to be irresistible attractions. ( . mantegazza, 'viaggi e studi,' p. .) in most, but not all parts of the world, the men are more ornamented than the women, and often in a different manner; sometimes, though rarely, the women are hardly at all ornamented. as the women are made by savages to perform the greatest share of the work, and as they are not allowed to eat the best kinds of food, so it accords with the characteristic selfishness of man that they should not be allowed to obtain, or use the finest ornaments. lastly, it is a remarkable fact, as proved by the foregoing quotations, that the same fashions in modifying the shape of the head, in ornamenting the hair, in painting, tattooing, in perforating the nose, lips, or ears, in removing or filing the teeth, etc., now prevail, and have long prevailed, in the most distant quarters of the world. it is extremely improbable that these practices, followed by so many distinct nations, should be due to tradition from any common source. they indicate the close similarity of the mind of man, to whatever race he may belong, just as do the almost universal habits of dancing, masquerading, and making rude pictures. having made these preliminary remarks on the admiration felt by savages for various ornaments, and for deformities most unsightly in our eyes, let us see how far the men are attracted by the appearance of their women, and what are their ideas of beauty. i have heard it maintained that savages are quite indifferent about the beauty of their women, valuing them solely as slaves; it may therefore be well to observe that this conclusion does not at all agree with the care which the women take in ornamenting themselves, or with their vanity. burchell ( . 'travels in south africa,' , vol. i. p. .) gives an amusing account of a bush-woman who used as much grease, red ochre, and shining powder "as would have ruined any but a very rich husband." she displayed also "much vanity and too evident a consciousness of her superiority." mr. winwood reade informs me that the negroes of the west coast often discuss the beauty of their women. some competent observers have attributed the fearfully common practice of infanticide partly to the desire felt by the women to retain their good looks. ( . see, for references, gerland, 'ueber das aussterben der naturvölker,' , ss. , , ; also azara, 'voyages,' etc., tom. ii. p. .) in several regions the women wear charms and use love-philters to gain the affections of the men; and mr. brown enumerates four plants used for this purpose by the women of north-western america. ( . on the vegetable productions used by the north-western american indians, see 'pharmaceutical journal,' vol. x.) hearne ( . 'a journey from prince of wales fort,' vo. ed. , p. .), an excellent observer, who lived many years with the american indians, says, in speaking of the women, "ask a northern indian what is beauty, and he will answer, a broad flat face, small eyes, high cheek-bones, three or four broad black lines across each cheek, a low forehead, a large broad chin, a clumsy hook nose, a tawny hide, and breasts hanging down to the belt." pallas, who visited the northern parts of the chinese empire, says, "those women are preferred who have the mandschu form; that is to say, a broad face, high cheek-bones, very broad noses, and enormous ears"( . quoted by prichard, 'physical history of mankind,' rd ed. vol. iv. , p. ; vogt, 'lectures on man,' eng. translat. p. . on the opinion of the chinese on the cingalese, e. tennent, 'ceylon,' , vol. ii. p. .); and vogt remarks that the obliquity of the eye, which is proper to the chinese and japanese, is exaggerated in their pictures for the purpose, as it "seems, of exhibiting its beauty, as contrasted with the eye of the red-haired barbarians." it is well known, as huc repeatedly remarks, that the chinese of the interior think europeans hideous, with their white skins and prominent noses. the nose is far from being too prominent, according to our ideas, in the natives of ceylon; yet "the chinese in the seventh century, accustomed to the flat features of the mongol races, were surprised at the prominent noses of the cingalese; and thsang described them as having 'the beak of a bird, with the body of a man.'" finlayson, after minutely describing the people of cochin china, says that their rounded heads and faces are their chief characteristics; and, he adds, "the roundness of the whole countenance is more striking in the women, who are reckoned beautiful in proportion as they display this form of face." the siamese have small noses with divergent nostrils, a wide mouth, rather thick lips, a remarkably large face, with very high and broad cheek-bones. it is, therefore, not wonderful that "beauty, according to our notion, is a stranger to them. yet they consider their own females to be much more beautiful than those of europe." ( . prichard, as taken from crawfurd and finlayson, 'phys. hist. of mankind,' vol. iv. pp. , .) it is well known that with many hottentot women the posterior part of the body projects in a wonderful manner; they are steatopygous; and sir andrew smith is certain that this peculiarity is greatly admired by the men. ( . idem illustrissimus viator dixit mihi praecinctorium vel tabulam foeminae, quod nobis teterrimum est, quondam permagno aestimari ab hominibus in hac gente. nunc res mutata est, et censent talem conformationem minime optandam esse.) he once saw a woman who was considered a beauty, and she was so immensely developed behind, that when seated on level ground she could not rise, and had to push herself along until she came to a slope. some of the women in various negro tribes have the same peculiarity; and, according to burton, the somal men are said to choose their wives by ranging them in a line, and by picking her out who projects farthest a tergo. nothing can be more hateful to a negro than the opposite form." ( . the 'anthropological review,' november , p. . for additional references, see waitz, 'introduction to anthropology,' eng. translat., , vol. i. p. .) with respect to colour, the negroes rallied mungo park on the whiteness of his skin and the prominence of his nose, both of which they considered as "unsightly and unnatural conformations." he in return praised the glossy jet of their skins and the lovely depression of their noses; this they said was "honeymouth," nevertheless they gave him food. the african moors, also, "knitted their brows and seemed to shudder" at the whiteness of his skin. on the eastern coast, the negro boys when they saw burton, cried out, "look at the white man; does he not look like a white ape?" on the western coast, as mr. winwood reade informs me, the negroes admire a very black skin more than one of a lighter tint. but their horror of whiteness may be attributed, according to this same traveller, partly to the belief held by most negroes that demons and spirits are white, and partly to their thinking it a sign of ill-health. the banyai of the more southern part of the continent are negroes, but "a great many of them are of a light coffee-and-milk colour, and, indeed, this colour is considered handsome throughout the whole country"; so that here we have a different standard of taste. with the kaffirs, who differ much from negroes, "the skin, except among the tribes near delagoa bay, is not usually black, the prevailing colour being a mixture of black and red, the most common shade being chocolate. dark complexions, as being most common, are naturally held in the highest esteem. to be told that he is light-coloured, or like a white man, would be deemed a very poor compliment by a kaffir. i have heard of one unfortunate man who was so very fair that no girl would marry him." one of the titles of the zulu king is, "you who are black." ( . mungo park's 'travels in africa,' to. , pp. , . burton's statement is quoted by schaaffhausen, 'archiv. fur anthropologie,' , s. . on the banyai, livingstone, 'travels,' p. . on the kaffirs, the rev. j. shooter, 'the kafirs of natal and the zulu country,' , p. .) mr. galton, in speaking to me about the natives of s. africa, remarked that their ideas of beauty seem very different from ours; for in one tribe two slim, slight, and pretty girls were not admired by the natives. turning to other quarters of the world; in java, a yellow, not a white girl, is considered, according to madame pfeiffer, a beauty. a man of cochin china "spoke with contempt of the wife of the english ambassador, that she had white teeth like a dog, and a rosy colour like that of potato-flowers." we have seen that the chinese dislike our white skin, and that the n. americans admire "a tawny hide." in s. america, the yuracaras, who inhabit the wooded, damp slopes of the eastern cordillera, are remarkably pale-coloured, as their name in their own language expresses; nevertheless they consider european women as very inferior to their own. ( . for the javans and cochin-chinese, see waitz, 'introduct. to anthropology,' eng. translat. vol. i. p. . on the yuracaras, a. d'orbigny, as quoted in prichard, 'physical history of mankind,' vol. v. rd ed. p. .) in several of the tribes of north america the hair on the head grows to a wonderful length; and catlin gives a curious proof how much this is esteemed, for the chief of the crows was elected to this office from having the longest hair of any man in the tribe, namely ten feet and seven inches. the aymaras and quichuas of s. america, likewise have very long hair; and this, as mr. d. forbes informs me, is so much valued as a beauty, that cutting it off was the severest punishment which he could inflict on them. in both the northern and southern halves of the continent the natives sometimes increase the apparent length of their hair by weaving into it fibrous substances. although the hair on the head is thus cherished, that on the face is considered by the north american indians "as very vulgar," and every hair is carefully eradicated. this practice prevails throughout the american continent from vancouver's island in the north to tierra del fuego in the south. when york minster, a fuegian on board the "beagle," was taken back to his country, the natives told him he ought to pull out the few short hairs on his face. they also threatened a young missionary, who was left for a time with them, to strip him naked, and pluck the hair from his face and body, yet he was far from being a hairy man. this fashion is carried so far that the indians of paraguay eradicate their eyebrows and eyelashes, saying that they do not wish to be like horses. ( . 'north american indians,' by g. catlin, rd ed., , vol. i. p. ; vol. ii, p. . on the natives of vancouver's island, see sproat, 'scenes and studies of savage life,' , p. . on the indians of paraguay, azara, 'voyages,' tom. ii. p. .) it is remarkable that throughout the world the races which are almost completely destitute of a beard dislike hairs on the face and body, and take pains to eradicate them. the kalmucks are beardless, and they are well known, like the americans, to pluck out all straggling hairs; and so it is with the polynesians, some of the malays, and the siamese. mr. veitch states that the japanese ladies "all objected to our whiskers, considering them very ugly, and told us to cut them off, and be like japanese men." the new zealanders have short, curled beards; yet they formerly plucked out the hairs on the face. they had a saying that "there is no woman for a hairy man;" but it would appear that the fashion has changed in new zealand, perhaps owing to the presence of europeans, and i am assured that beards are now admired by the maories. ( . on the siamese, prichard, ibid. vol. iv. p. . on the japanese, veitch in 'gardeners' chronicle,' , p. . on the new zealanders, mantegazza, 'viaggi e studi,' , p. . for the other nations mentioned, see references in lawrence, 'lectures on physiology,' etc., , p. .) on the other hand, bearded races admire and greatly value their beards; among the anglo-saxons every part of the body had a recognised value; "the loss of the beard being estimated at twenty shillings, while the breaking of a thigh was fixed at only twelve." ( . lubbock, 'origin of civilisation,' , p. .) in the east men swear solemnly by their beards. we have seen that chinsurdi, the chief of the makalolo in africa, thought that beards were a great ornament. in the pacific the fijian's beard is "profuse and bushy, and is his greatest pride"; whilst the inhabitants of the adjacent archipelagoes of tonga and samoa are "beardless, and abhor a rough chin." in one island alone of the ellice group "the men are heavily bearded, and not a little proud thereof." ( . dr. barnard davis quotes mr. prichard and others for these facts in regard to the polynesians, in 'anthropolog. review,' april , pp. , .) we thus see how widely the different races of man differ in their taste for the beautiful. in every nation sufficiently advanced to have made effigies of their gods or of their deified rulers, the sculptors no doubt have endeavoured to express their highest ideal of beauty and grandeur. ( . ch. comte has remarks to this effect in his 'traité de législation,' rd ed. , p. .) under this point of view it is well to compare in our mind the jupiter or apollo of the greeks with the egyptian or assyrian statues; and these with the hideous bas-reliefs on the ruined buildings of central america. i have met with very few statements opposed to this conclusion. mr. winwood reade, however, who has had ample opportunities for observation, not only with the negroes of the west coast of africa, but with those of the interior who have never associated with europeans, is convinced that their ideas of beauty are on the whole the same as ours; and dr. rohlfs writes to me to the same effect with respect to bornu and the countries inhabited by the pullo tribes. mr. reade found that he agreed with the negroes in their estimation of the beauty of the native girls; and that their appreciation of the beauty of european women corresponded with ours. they admire long hair, and use artificial means to make it appear abundant; they admire also a beard, though themselves very scantily provided. mr. reade feels doubtful what kind of nose is most appreciated; a girl has been heard to say, "i do not want to marry him, he has got no nose"; and this shews that a very flat nose is not admired. we should, however, bear in mind that the depressed, broad noses and projecting jaws of the negroes of the west coast are exceptional types with the inhabitants of africa. notwithstanding the foregoing statements, mr. reade admits that negroes "do not like the colour of our skin; they look on blue eyes with aversion, and they think our noses too long and our lips too thin." he does not think it probable that negroes would ever prefer the most beautiful european woman, on the mere grounds of physical admiration, to a good-looking negress. ( . the 'african sketch book,' vol. ii. , pp. , , . the fuegians, as i have been informed by a missionary who long resided with them, consider european women as extremely beautiful; but from what we have seen of the judgment of the other aborigines of america, i cannot but think that this must be a mistake, unless indeed the statement refers to the few fuegians who have lived for some time with europeans, and who must consider us as superior beings. i should add that a most experienced observer, capt. burton, believes that a woman whom we consider beautiful is admired throughout the world. 'anthropological review,' march, , p. .) the general truth of the principle, long ago insisted on by humboldt ( . 'personal narrative,' eng. translat. vol. iv. p. , and elsewhere. mantegazza, in his 'viaggi e studi,' strongly insists on this same principle.), that man admires and often tries to exaggerate whatever characters nature may have given him, is shewn in many ways. the practice of beardless races extirpating every trace of a beard, and often all the hairs on the body affords one illustration. the skull has been greatly modified during ancient and modern times by many nations; and there can be little doubt that this has been practised, especially in n. and s. america, in order to exaggerate some natural and admired peculiarity. many american indians are known to admire a head so extremely flattened as to appear to us idiotic. the natives on the north-western coast compress the head into a pointed cone; and it is their constant practice to gather the hair into a knot on the top of the head, for the sake, as dr. wilson remarks, "of increasing the apparent elevation of the favourite conoid form." the inhabitants of arakhan admire a broad, smooth forehead, and in order to produce it, they fasten a plate of lead on the heads of the new-born children. on the other hand, "a broad, well-rounded occiput is considered a great beauty" by the natives of the fiji islands. ( . on the skulls of the american tribes, see nott and gliddon, 'types of mankind,' , p. ; prichard, 'physical history of mankind,' vol. i. rd ed. p. ; on the natives of arakhan, ibid. vol. iv. p. . wilson, 'physical ethnology,' smithsonian institution, , p. ; on the fijians, p. . sir j. lubbock ('prehistoric times,' nd ed. , p. ) gives an excellent resume on this subject.) as with the skull, so with the nose; the ancient huns during the age of attila were accustomed to flatten the noses of their infants with bandages, "for the sake of exaggerating a natural conformation." with the tahitians, to be called long-nose is considered as an insult, and they compress the noses and foreheads of their children for the sake of beauty. the same holds with the malays of sumatra, the hottentots, certain negroes, and the natives of brazil. ( . on the huns, godron, 'de l'espèce,' tom. ii. , p. . on the tahitians, waitz, 'anthropology,' eng. translat. vol. i. p. . marsden, quoted by prichard, 'phys. hist. of mankind,' rd edit. vol. v. p. . lawrence, 'lectures on physiology,' p. .) the chinese have by nature unusually small feet ( . this fact was ascertained in the 'reise der novara: anthropolog. theil.' dr. weisbach, , s. .); and it is well known that the women of the upper classes distort their feet to make them still smaller. lastly, humboldt thinks that the american indians prefer colouring their bodies with red paint in order to exaggerate their natural tint; and until recently european women added to their naturally bright colours by rouge and white cosmetics; but it may be doubted whether barbarous nations have generally had any such intention in painting themselves. in the fashions of our own dress we see exactly the same principle and the same desire to carry every point to an extreme; we exhibit, also, the same spirit of emulation. but the fashions of savages are far more permanent than ours; and whenever their bodies are artificially modified, this is necessarily the case. the arab women of the upper nile occupy about three days in dressing their hair; they never imitate other tribes, "but simply vie with each other in the superlativeness of their own style." dr. wilson, in speaking of the compressed skulls of various american races, adds, "such usages are among the least eradicable, and long survive the shock of revolutions that change dynasties and efface more important national peculiarities." ( . 'smithsonian institution,' , p. . on the fashions of arab women, sir s. baker, 'the nile tributaries,' , p. .) the same principle comes into play in the art of breeding; and we can thus understand, as i have elsewhere explained ( . the 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. i. p. ; vol. ii. p. .), the wonderful development of the many races of animals and plants, which have been kept merely for ornament. fanciers always wish each character to be somewhat increased; they do not admire a medium standard; they certainly do not desire any great and abrupt change in the character of their breeds; they admire solely what they are accustomed to, but they ardently desire to see each characteristic feature a little more developed. the senses of man and of the lower animals seem to be so constituted that brilliant colours and certain forms, as well as harmonious and rhythmical sounds, give pleasure and are called beautiful; but why this should be so we know not. it is certainly not true that there is in the mind of man any universal standard of beauty with respect to the human body. it is, however, possible that certain tastes may in the course of time become inherited, though there is no evidence in favour of this belief: and if so, each race would possess its own innate ideal standard of beauty. it has been argued ( . schaaffhausen, 'archiv. für anthropologie,' , s. .) that ugliness consists in an approach to the structure of the lower animals, and no doubt this is partly true with the more civilised nations, in which intellect is highly appreciated; but this explanation will hardly apply to all forms of ugliness. the men of each race prefer what they are accustomed to; they cannot endure any great change; but they like variety, and admire each characteristic carried to a moderate extreme. ( . mr. bain has collected ('mental and moral science,' , pp. - ) about a dozen more or less different theories of the idea of beauty; but none is quite the same as that here given.) men accustomed to a nearly oval face, to straight and regular features, and to bright colours, admire, as we europeans know, these points when strongly developed. on the other hand, men accustomed to a broad face, with high cheek-bones, a depressed nose, and a black skin, admire these peculiarities when strongly marked. no doubt characters of all kinds may be too much developed for beauty. hence a perfect beauty, which implies many characters modified in a particular manner, will be in every race a prodigy. as the great anatomist bichat long ago said, if every one were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty. if all our women were to become as beautiful as the venus de' medici, we should for a time be charmed; but we should soon wish for variety; and as soon as we had obtained variety, we should wish to see certain characters a little exaggerated beyond the then existing common standard. chapter xx. secondary sexual characters of man--continued. on the effects of the continued selection of women according to a different standard of beauty in each race--on the causes which interfere with sexual selection in civilised and savage nations--conditions favourable to sexual selection during primeval times--on the manner of action of sexual selection with mankind--on the women in savage tribes having some power to choose their husbands--absence of hair on the body, and development of the beard--colour of the skin--summary. we have seen in the last chapter that with all barbarous races ornaments, dress, and external appearance are highly valued; and that the men judge of the beauty of their women by widely different standards. we must next inquire whether this preference and the consequent selection during many generations of those women, which appear to the men of each race the most attractive, has altered the character either of the females alone, or of both sexes. with mammals the general rule appears to be that characters of all kinds are inherited equally by the males and females; we might therefore expect that with mankind any characters gained by the females or by the males through sexual selection would commonly be transferred to the offspring of both sexes. if any change has thus been effected, it is almost certain that the different races would be differently modified, as each has its own standard of beauty. with mankind, especially with savages, many causes interfere with the action of sexual selection as far as the bodily frame is concerned. civilised men are largely attracted by the mental charms of women, by their wealth, and especially by their social position; for men rarely marry into a much lower rank. the men who succeed in obtaining the more beautiful women will not have a better chance of leaving a long line of descendants than other men with plainer wives, save the few who bequeath their fortunes according to primogeniture. with respect to the opposite form of selection, namely, of the more attractive men by the women, although in civilised nations women have free or almost free choice, which is not the case with barbarous races, yet their choice is largely influenced by the social position and wealth of the men; and the success of the latter in life depends much on their intellectual powers and energy, or on the fruits of these same powers in their forefathers. no excuse is needed for treating this subject in some detail; for, as the german philosopher schopenhauer remarks, "the final aim of all love intrigues, be they comic or tragic, is really of more importance than all other ends in human life. what it all turns upon is nothing less than the composition of the next generation...it is not the weal or woe of any one individual, but that of the human race to come, which is here at stake." ( . 'schopenhauer and darwinism,' in 'journal of anthropology,' jan. , p. . there is, however, reason to believe that in certain civilised and semi-civilised nations sexual selection has effected something in modifying the bodily frame of some of the members. many persons are convinced, as it appears to me with justice, that our aristocracy, including under this term all wealthy families in which primogeniture has long prevailed, from having chosen during many generations from all classes the more beautiful women as their wives, have become handsomer, according to the european standard, than the middle classes; yet the middle classes are placed under equally favourable conditions of life for the perfect development of the body. cook remarks that the superiority in personal appearance "which is observable in the erees or nobles in all the other islands (of the pacific) is found in the sandwich islands"; but this may be chiefly due to their better food and manner of life. the old traveller chardin, in describing the persians, says their "blood is now highly refined by frequent intermixtures with the georgians and circassians, two nations which surpass all the world in personal beauty. there is hardly a man of rank in persia who is not born of a georgian or circassian mother." he adds that they inherit their beauty, "not from their ancestors, for without the above mixture, the men of rank in persia, who are descendants of the tartars, would be extremely ugly." ( . these quotations are taken from lawrence ('lectures on physiology,' etc., , p. ), who attributes the beauty of the upper classes in england to the men having long selected the more beautiful women.) here is a more curious case; the priestesses who attended the temple of venus erycina at san-giuliano in sicily, were selected for their beauty out of the whole of greece; they were not vestal virgins, and quatrefages ( . 'anthropologie,' 'revue des cours scientifiques,' oct. , p. .), who states the foregoing fact, says that the women of san-giuliano are now famous as the most beautiful in the island, and are sought by artists as models. but it is obvious that the evidence in all the above cases is doubtful. the following case, though relating to savages, is well worth giving for its curiosity. mr. winwood reade informs me that the jollofs, a tribe of negroes on the west coast of africa, "are remarkable for their uniformly fine appearance." a friend of his asked one of these men, "how is it that every one whom i meet is so fine looking, not only your men but your women?" the jollof answered, "it is very easily explained: it has always been our custom to pick out our worst-looking slaves and to sell them." it need hardly be added that with all savages, female slaves serve as concubines. that this negro should have attributed, whether rightly or wrongly, the fine appearance of his tribe to the long-continued elimination of the ugly women is not so surprising as it may at first appear; for i have elsewhere shewn ( . 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. i. p. .) that negroes fully appreciate the importance of selection in the breeding of their domestic animals, and i could give from mr. reade additional evidence on this head. the causes which prevent or check the action of sexual selection with savages. the chief causes are, first, so-called communal marriages or promiscuous intercourse; secondly, the consequences of female infanticide; thirdly, early betrothals; and lastly, the low estimation in which women are held, as mere slaves. these four points must be considered in some detail. it is obvious that as long as the pairing of man, or of any other animal, is left to mere chance, with no choice exerted by either sex, there can be no sexual selection; and no effect will be produced on the offspring by certain individuals having had an advantage over others in their courtship. now it is asserted that there exist at the present day tribes which practise what sir j. lubbock by courtesy calls communal marriages; that is, all the men and women in the tribe are husbands and wives to one another. the licentiousness of many savages is no doubt astonishing, but it seems to me that more evidence is requisite, before we fully admit that their intercourse is in any case promiscuous. nevertheless all those who have most closely studied the subject ( . sir j. lubbock, 'the origin of civilisation,' , chap. iii. especially pp. - . mr. m'lennan, in his extremely valuable work on 'primitive marriage,' , p. , speaks of the union of the sexes "in the earliest times as loose, transitory, and in some degree promiscuous." mr. m'lennan and sir j. lubbock have collected much evidence on the extreme licentiousness of savages at the present time. mr. l.h. morgan, in his interesting memoir of the classificatory system of relationship. ('proceedings of the american academy of sciences,' vol. vii. feb. , p. ), concludes that polygamy and all forms of marriage during primeval times were essentially unknown. it appears also, from sir j. lubbock's work, that bachofen likewise believes that communal intercourse originally prevailed.), and whose judgment is worth much more than mine, believe that communal marriage (this expression being variously guarded) was the original and universal form throughout the world, including therein the intermarriage of brothers and sisters. the late sir a. smith, who had travelled widely in s. africa, and knew much about the habits of savages there and elsewhere, expressed to me the strongest opinion that no race exists in which woman is considered as the property of the community. i believe that his judgment was largely determined by what is implied by the term marriage. throughout the following discussion i use the term in the same sense as when naturalists speak of animals as monogamous, meaning thereby that the male is accepted by or chooses a single female, and lives with her either during the breeding-season or for the whole year, keeping possession of her by the law of might; or, as when they speak of a polygamous species, meaning that the male lives with several females. this kind of marriage is all that concerns us here, as it suffices for the work of sexual selection. but i know that some of the writers above referred to imply by the term marriage a recognised right protected by the tribe. the indirect evidence in favour of the belief of the former prevalence of communal marriages is strong, and rests chiefly on the terms of relationship which are employed between the members of the same tribe, implying a connection with the tribe, and not with either parent. but the subject is too large and complex for even an abstract to be here given, and i will confine myself to a few remarks. it is evident in the case of such marriages, or where the marriage tie is very loose, that the relationship of the child to its father cannot be known. but it seems almost incredible that the relationship of the child to its mother should ever be completely ignored, especially as the women in most savage tribes nurse their infants for a long time. accordingly, in many cases the lines of descent are traced through the mother alone, to the exclusion of the father. but in other cases the terms employed express a connection with the tribe alone, to the exclusion even of the mother. it seems possible that the connection between the related members of the same barbarous tribe, exposed to all sorts of danger, might be so much more important, owing to the need of mutual protection and aid, than that between the mother and her child, as to lead to the sole use of terms expressive of the former relationships; but mr. morgan is convinced that this view is by no means sufficient. the terms of relationship used in different parts of the world may be divided, according to the author just quoted, into two great classes, the classificatory and descriptive, the latter being employed by us. it is the classificatory system which so strongly leads to the belief that communal and other extremely loose forms of marriage were originally universal. but as far as i can see, there is no necessity on this ground for believing in absolutely promiscuous intercourse; and i am glad to find that this is sir j. lubbock's view. men and women, like many of the lower animals, might formerly have entered into strict though temporary unions for each birth, and in this case nearly as much confusion would have arisen in the terms of relationship as in the case of promiscuous intercourse. as far as sexual selection is concerned, all that is required is that choice should be exerted before the parents unite, and it signifies little whether the unions last for life or only for a season. besides the evidence derived from the terms of relationship, other lines of reasoning indicate the former wide prevalence of communal marriage. sir j. lubbock accounts for the strange and widely-extended habit of exogamy--that is, the men of one tribe taking wives from a distinct tribe,--by communism having been the original form of intercourse; so that a man never obtained a wife for himself unless he captured her from a neighbouring and hostile tribe, and then she would naturally have become his sole and valuable property. thus the practice of capturing wives might have arisen; and from the honour so gained it might ultimately have become the universal habit. according to sir j. lubbock ( . 'address to british association on the social and religious condition of the lower races of man,' , p. .), we can also thus understand "the necessity of expiation for marriage as an infringement of tribal rites, since according to old ideas, a man had no right to appropriate to himself that which belonged to the whole tribe." sir j. lubbock further gives a curious body of facts shewing that in old times high honour was bestowed on women who were utterly licentious; and this, as he explains, is intelligible, if we admit that promiscuous intercourse was the aboriginal, and therefore long revered custom of the tribe. ( . 'origin of civilisation,' , p. . in the several works above quoted, there will be found copious evidence on relationship through the females alone, or with the tribe alone.) although the manner of development of the marriage tie is an obscure subject, as we may infer from the divergent opinions on several points between the three authors who have studied it most closely, namely, mr. morgan, mr. m'lennan, and sir j. lubbock, yet from the foregoing and several other lines of evidence it seems probable ( . mr. c. staniland wake argues strongly ('anthropologia,' march, , p. ) against the views held by these three writers on the former prevalence of almost promiscuous intercourse; and he thinks that the classificatory system of relationship can be otherwise explained.) that the habit of marriage, in any strict sense of the word, has been gradually developed; and that almost promiscuous or very loose intercourse was once extremely common throughout the world. nevertheless, from the strength of the feeling of jealousy all through the animal kingdom, as well as from the analogy of the lower animals, more particularly of those which come nearest to man, i cannot believe that absolutely promiscuous intercourse prevailed in times past, shortly before man attained to his present rank in the zoological scale. man, as i have attempted to shew, is certainly descended from some ape-like creature. with the existing quadrumana, as far as their habits are known, the males of some species are monogamous, but live during only a part of the year with the females: of this the orang seems to afford an instance. several kinds, for example some of the indian and american monkeys, are strictly monogamous, and associate all the year round with their wives. others are polygamous, for example the gorilla and several american species, and each family lives separate. even when this occurs, the families inhabiting the same district are probably somewhat social; the chimpanzee, for instance, is occasionally met with in large bands. again, other species are polygamous, but several males, each with his own females, live associated in a body, as with several species of baboons. ( . brehm ('thierleben,' b. i. p. ) says cynocephalus hamadryas lives in great troops containing twice as many adult females as adult males. see rengger on american polygamous species, and owen ('anatomy of vertebrates,' vol. iii. p. ) on american monogamous species. other references might be added.) we may indeed conclude from what we know of the jealousy of all male quadrupeds, armed, as many of them are, with special weapons for battling with their rivals, that promiscuous intercourse in a state of nature is extremely improbable. the pairing may not last for life, but only for each birth; yet if the males which are the strongest and best able to defend or otherwise assist their females and young, were to select the more attractive females, this would suffice for sexual selection. therefore, looking far enough back in the stream of time, and judging from the social habits of man as he now exists, the most probable view is that he aboriginally lived in small communities, each with a single wife, or if powerful with several, whom he jealously guarded against all other men. or he may not have been a social animal, and yet have lived with several wives, like the gorilla; for all the natives "agree that but one adult male is seen in a band; when the young male grows up, a contest takes place for mastery, and the strongest, by killing and driving out the others, establishes himself as the head of the community." ( . dr. savage, in 'boston journal of natural history,' vol. v. - , p. .) the younger males, being thus expelled and wandering about, would, when at last successful in finding a partner, prevent too close interbreeding within the limits of the same family. although savages are now extremely licentious, and although communal marriages may formerly have largely prevailed, yet many tribes practise some form of marriage, but of a far more lax nature than that of civilised nations. polygamy, as just stated, is almost universally followed by the leading men in every tribe. nevertheless there are tribes, standing almost at the bottom of the scale, which are strictly monogamous. this is the case with the veddahs of ceylon: they have a saying, according to sir j. lubbock ( . 'prehistoric times,' , p. .), "that death alone can separate husband and wife." an intelligent kandyan chief, of course a polygamist, "was perfectly scandalised at the utter barbarism of living with only one wife, and never parting until separated by death." it was, he said, "just like the wanderoo monkeys." whether savages who now enter into some form of marriage, either polygamous or monogamous, have retained this habit from primeval times, or whether they have returned to some form of marriage, after passing through a stage of promiscuous intercourse, i will not pretend to conjecture. infanticide. this practice is now very common throughout the world, and there is reason to believe that it prevailed much more extensively during former times. ( . mr. m'lennan, 'primitive marriage,' . see especially on exogamy and infanticide, pp. , , .) barbarians find it difficult to support themselves and their children, and it is a simple plan to kill their infants. in south america some tribes, according to azara, formerly destroyed so many infants of both sexes that they were on the point of extinction. in the polynesian islands women have been known to kill from four or five, to even ten of their children; and ellis could not find a single woman who had not killed at least one. in a village on the eastern frontier of india colonel macculloch found not a single female child. wherever infanticide ( . dr. gerland ('ueber das aussterben der naturvölker,' ) has collected much information on infanticide, see especially ss. , , . azara ('voyages,' etc., tom. ii. pp. , ) enters in detail on the motives. see also m'lennan (ibid. p. ) for cases in india. in the former reprints of the nd edition of this book an incorrect quotation from sir g. grey was unfortunately given in the above passage and has now been removed from the text.) prevails the struggle for existence will be in so far less severe, and all the members of the tribe will have an almost equally good chance of rearing their few surviving children. in most cases a larger number of female than of male infants are destroyed, for it is obvious that the latter are of more value to the tribe, as they will, when grown up, aid in defending it, and can support themselves. but the trouble experienced by the women in rearing children, their consequent loss of beauty, the higher estimation set on them when few, and their happier fate, are assigned by the women themselves, and by various observers, as additional motives for infanticide. when, owing to female infanticide, the women of a tribe were few, the habit of capturing wives from neighbouring tribes would naturally arise. sir j. lubbock, however, as we have seen, attributes the practice in chief part to the former existence of communal marriage, and to the men having consequently captured women from other tribes to hold as their sole property. additional causes might be assigned, such as the communities being very small, in which case, marriageable women would often be deficient. that the habit was most extensively practised during former times, even by the ancestors of civilised nations, is clearly shewn by the preservation of many curious customs and ceremonies, of which mr. m'lennan has given an interesting account. in our own marriages the "best man" seems originally to have been the chief abettor of the bridegroom in the act of capture. now as long as men habitually procured their wives through violence and craft, they would have been glad to seize on any woman, and would not have selected the more attractive ones. but as soon as the practice of procuring wives from a distinct tribe was effected through barter, as now occurs in many places, the more attractive women would generally have been purchased. the incessant crossing, however, between tribe and tribe, which necessarily follows from any form of this habit, would tend to keep all the people inhabiting the same country nearly uniform in character; and this would interfere with the power of sexual selection in differentiating the tribes. the scarcity of women, consequent on female infanticide, leads, also, to another practice, that of polyandry, still common in several parts of the world, and which formerly, as mr. m'lennan believes, prevailed almost universally: but this latter conclusion is doubted by mr. morgan and sir j. lubbock. ( . 'primitive marriage,' p. ; sir j. lubbock, 'origin of civilisation,' p. . see also mr. morgan, loc. cit., on the former prevalence of polyandry.) whenever two or more men are compelled to marry one woman, it is certain that all the women of the tribe will get married, and there will be no selection by the men of the more attractive women. but under these circumstances the women no doubt will have the power of choice, and will prefer the more attractive men. azara, for instance, describes how carefully a guana woman bargains for all sorts of privileges, before accepting some one or more husbands; and the men in consequence take unusual care of their personal appearance. so amongst the todas of india, who practise polyandry, the girls can accept or refuse any man. ( . azara, 'voyages,' etc., tom. ii. pp. - ; colonel marshall, 'amongst the todas,' p. .) a very ugly man in these cases would perhaps altogether fail in getting a wife, or get one later in life; but the handsomer men, although more successful in obtaining wives, would not, as far as we can see, leave more offspring to inherit their beauty than the less handsome husbands of the same women. early betrothals and slavery of women. with many savages it is the custom to betroth the females whilst mere infants; and this would effectually prevent preference being exerted on either side according to personal appearance. but it would not prevent the more attractive women from being afterwards stolen or taken by force from their husbands by the more powerful men; and this often happens in australia, america, and elsewhere. the same consequences with reference to sexual selection would to a certain extent follow, when women are valued almost solely as slaves or beasts of burden, as is the case with many savages. the men, however, at all times would prefer the handsomest slaves according to their standard of beauty. we thus see that several customs prevail with savages which must greatly interfere with, or completely stop, the action of sexual selection. on the other hand, the conditions of life to which savages are exposed, and some of their habits, are favourable to natural selection; and this comes into play at the same time with sexual selection. savages are known to suffer severely from recurrent famines; they do not increase their food by artificial means; they rarely refrain from marriage ( . burchell says ('travels in s. africa,' vol. ii. , p. ), that among the wild nations of southern africa, neither men nor women ever pass their lives in a state of celibacy. azara ('voyages dans l'amérique merid.' tom. ii. , p. ) makes precisely the same remark in regard to the wild indians of south america.), and generally marry whilst young. consequently they must be subjected to occasional hard struggles for existence, and the favoured individuals will alone survive. at a very early period, before man attained to his present rank in the scale, many of his conditions would be different from what now obtains amongst savages. judging from the analogy of the lower animals, he would then either live with a single female, or be a polygamist. the most powerful and able males would succeed best in obtaining attractive females. they would also succeed best in the general struggle for life, and in defending their females, as well as their offspring, from enemies of all kinds. at this early period the ancestors of man would not be sufficiently advanced in intellect to look forward to distant contingencies; they would not foresee that the rearing of all their children, especially their female children, would make the struggle for life severer for the tribe. they would be governed more by their instincts and less by their reason than are savages at the present day. they would not at that period have partially lost one of the strongest of all instincts, common to all the lower animals, namely the love of their young offspring; and consequently they would not have practised female infanticide. women would not have been thus rendered scarce, and polyandry would not have been practised; for hardly any other cause, except the scarcity of women seems sufficient to break down the natural and widely prevalent feeling of jealousy, and the desire of each male to possess a female for himself. polyandry would be a natural stepping-stone to communal marriages or almost promiscuous intercourse; though the best authorities believe that this latter habit preceded polyandry. during primordial times there would be no early betrothals, for this implies foresight. nor would women be valued merely as useful slaves or beasts of burthen. both sexes, if the females as well as the males were permitted to exert any choice, would choose their partners not for mental charms, or property, or social position, but almost solely from external appearance. all the adults would marry or pair, and all the offspring, as far as that was possible, would be reared; so that the struggle for existence would be periodically excessively severe. thus during these times all the conditions for sexual selection would have been more favourable than at a later period, when man had advanced in his intellectual powers but had retrograded in his instincts. therefore, whatever influence sexual selection may have had in producing the differences between the races of man, and between man and the higher quadrumana, this influence would have been more powerful at a remote period than at the present day, though probably not yet wholly lost. the manner of action of sexual selection with mankind. with primeval man under the favourable conditions just stated, and with those savages who at the present time enter into any marriage tie, sexual selection has probably acted in the following manner, subject to greater or less interference from female infanticide, early betrothals, etc. the strongest and most vigorous men--those who could best defend and hunt for their families, who were provided with the best weapons and possessed the most property, such as a large number of dogs or other animals,--would succeed in rearing a greater average number of offspring than the weaker and poorer members of the same tribes. there can, also, be no doubt that such men would generally be able to select the more attractive women. at present the chiefs of nearly every tribe throughout the world succeed in obtaining more than one wife. i hear from mr. mantell that, until recently, almost every girl in new zealand who was pretty, or promised to be pretty, was tapu to some chief. with the kafirs, as mr. c. hamilton states ( . 'anthropological review,' jan. , p. xvi.), "the chiefs generally have the pick of the women for many miles round, and are most persevering in establishing or confirming their privilege." we have seen that each race has its own style of beauty, and we know that it is natural to man to admire each characteristic point in his domestic animals, dress, ornaments, and personal appearance, when carried a little beyond the average. if then the several foregoing propositions be admitted, and i cannot see that they are doubtful, it would be an inexplicable circumstance if the selection of the more attractive women by the more powerful men of each tribe, who would rear on an average a greater number of children, did not after the lapse of many generations somewhat modify the character of the tribe. when a foreign breed of our domestic animals is introduced into a new country, or when a native breed is long and carefully attended to, either for use or ornament, it is found after several generations to have undergone a greater or less amount of change whenever the means of comparison exist. this follows from unconscious selection during a long series of generations--that is, the preservation of the most approved individuals--without any wish or expectation of such a result on the part of the breeder. so again, if during many years two careful breeders rear animals of the same family, and do not compare them together or with a common standard, the animals are found to have become, to the surprise of their owners, slightly different. ( . the 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. pp. - .) each breeder has impressed, as von nathusius well expresses it, the character of his own mind--his own taste and judgment--on his animals. what reason, then, can be assigned why similar results should not follow from the long-continued selection of the most admired women by those men of each tribe who were able to rear the greatest number of children? this would be unconscious selection, for an effect would be produced, independently of any wish or expectation on the part of the men who preferred certain women to others. let us suppose the members of a tribe, practising some form of marriage, to spread over an unoccupied continent, they would soon split up into distinct hordes, separated from each other by various barriers, and still more effectually by the incessant wars between all barbarous nations. the hordes would thus be exposed to slightly different conditions and habits of life, and would sooner or later come to differ in some small degree. as soon as this occurred, each isolated tribe would form for itself a slightly different standard of beauty ( . an ingenious writer argues, from a comparison of the pictures of raphael, rubens, and modern french artists, that the idea of beauty is not absolutely the same even throughout europe: see the 'lives of haydn and mozart,' by bombet (otherwise m. beyle), english translation, p. .); and then unconscious selection would come into action through the more powerful and leading men preferring certain women to others. thus the differences between the tribes, at first very slight, would gradually and inevitably be more or less increased. with animals in a state of nature, many characters proper to the males, such as size, strength, special weapons, courage and pugnacity, have been acquired through the law of battle. the semi-human progenitors of man, like their allies the quadrumana, will almost certainly have been thus modified; and, as savages still fight for the possession of their women, a similar process of selection has probably gone on in a greater or less degree to the present day. other characters proper to the males of the lower animals, such as bright colours and various ornaments, have been acquired by the more attractive males having been preferred by the females. there are, however, exceptional cases in which the males are the selectors, instead of having been the selected. we recognise such cases by the females being more highly ornamented than the males,--their ornamental characters having been transmitted exclusively or chiefly to their female offspring. one such case has been described in the order to which man belongs, that of the rhesus monkey. man is more powerful in body and mind than woman, and in the savage state he keeps her in a far more abject state of bondage than does the male of any other animal; therefore it is not surprising that he should have gained the power of selection. women are everywhere conscious of the value of their own beauty; and when they have the means, they take more delight in decorating themselves with all sorts of ornaments than do men. they borrow the plumes of male birds, with which nature has decked this sex, in order to charm the females. as women have long been selected for beauty, it is not surprising that some of their successive variations should have been transmitted exclusively to the same sex; consequently that they should have transmitted beauty in a somewhat higher degree to their female than to their male offspring, and thus have become more beautiful, according to general opinion, than men. women, however, certainly transmit most of their characters, including some beauty, to their offspring of both sexes; so that the continued preference by the men of each race for the more attractive women, according to their standard of taste, will have tended to modify in the same manner all the individuals of both sexes belonging to the race. with respect to the other form of sexual selection (which with the lower animals is much the more common), namely, when the females are the selectors, and accept only those males which excite or charm them most, we have reason to believe that it formerly acted on our progenitors. man in all probability owes his beard, and perhaps some other characters, to inheritance from an ancient progenitor who thus gained his ornaments. but this form of selection may have occasionally acted during later times; for in utterly barbarous tribes the women have more power in choosing, rejecting, and tempting their lovers, or of afterwards changing their husbands, than might have been expected. as this is a point of some importance, i will give in detail such evidence as i have been able to collect. hearne describes how a woman in one of the tribes of arctic america repeatedly ran away from her husband and joined her lover; and with the charruas of s. america, according to azara, divorce is quite optional. amongst the abipones, a man on choosing a wife bargains with the parents about the price. but "it frequently happens that the girl rescinds what has been agreed upon between the parents and the bridegroom, obstinately rejecting the very mention of marriage." she often runs away, hides herself, and thus eludes the bridegroom. captain musters who lived with the patagonians, says that their marriages are always settled by inclination; "if the parents make a match contrary to the daughter's will, she refuses and is never compelled to comply." in tierra del fuego a young man first obtains the consent of the parents by doing them some service, and then he attempts to carry off the girl; "but if she is unwilling, she hides herself in the woods until her admirer is heartily tired of looking for her, and gives up the pursuit; but this seldom happens." in the fiji islands the man seizes on the woman whom he wishes for his wife by actual or pretended force; but "on reaching the home of her abductor, should she not approve of the match, she runs to some one who can protect her; if, however, she is satisfied, the matter is settled forthwith." with the kalmucks there is a regular race between the bride and bridegroom, the former having a fair start; and clarke "was assured that no instance occurs of a girl being caught, unless she has a partiality to the pursuer." amongst the wild tribes of the malay archipelago there is also a racing match; and it appears from m. bourien's account, as sir j. lubbock remarks, that "the race, 'is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' but to the young man who has the good fortune to please his intended bride." a similar custom, with the same result, prevails with the koraks of north-eastern asia. turning to africa: the kafirs buy their wives, and girls are severely beaten by their fathers if they will not accept a chosen husband; but it is manifest from many facts given by the rev. mr. shooter, that they have considerable power of choice. thus very ugly, though rich men, have been known to fail in getting wives. the girls, before consenting to be betrothed, compel the men to shew themselves off first in front and then behind, and "exhibit their paces." they have been known to propose to a man, and they not rarely run away with a favoured lover. so again, mr. leslie, who was intimately acquainted with the kafirs, says, "it is a mistake to imagine that a girl is sold by her father in the same manner, and with the same authority, with which he would dispose of a cow." amongst the degraded bushmen of s. africa, "when a girl has grown up to womanhood without having been betrothed, which, however, does not often happen, her lover must gain her approbation, as well as that of the parents." ( . azara, 'voyages,' etc., tom. ii. p. . dobrizhoffer, 'an account of the abipones,' vol. ii. , p. . capt. musters, in 'proc. r. geograph. soc.' vol. xv. p. . williams on the fiji islanders, as quoted by lubbock, 'origin of civilisation,' , p. . on the fuegians, king and fitzroy, 'voyages of the "adventure" and "beagle,"' vol. ii. , p. . on the kalmucks, quoted by m'lennan, 'primitive marriage,' , p. . on the malays, lubbock, ibid. p. . the rev. j. shooter, 'on the kafirs of natal,' , pp. - . mr. d. leslie, 'kafir character and customs,' , p. . on the bush-men, burchell, 'travels in s. africa,' ii. , p. . on the koraks by mckennan, as quoted by mr. wake, in 'anthropologia,' oct. , p. .) mr. winwood reade made inquiries for me with respect to the negroes of western africa, and he informs me that "the women, at least among the more intelligent pagan tribes, have no difficulty in getting the husbands whom they may desire, although it is considered unwomanly to ask a man to marry them. they are quite capable of falling in love, and of forming tender, passionate, and faithful attachments." additional cases could be given. we thus see that with savages the women are not in quite so abject a state in relation to marriage as has often been supposed. they can tempt the men whom they prefer, and can sometimes reject those whom they dislike, either before or after marriage. preference on the part of the women, steadily acting in any one direction, would ultimately affect the character of the tribe; for the women would generally choose not merely the handsomest men, according to their standard of taste, but those who were at the same time best able to defend and support them. such well-endowed pairs would commonly rear a larger number of offspring than the less favoured. the same result would obviously follow in a still more marked manner if there was selection on both sides; that is, if the more attractive, and at the same time more powerful men were to prefer, and were preferred by, the more attractive women. and this double form of selection seems actually to have occurred, especially during the earlier periods of our long history. we will now examine a little more closely some of the characters which distinguish the several races of man from one another and from the lower animals, namely, the greater or less deficiency of hair on the body, and the colour of the skin. we need say nothing about the great diversity in the shape of the features and of the skull between the different races, as we have seen in the last chapter how different is the standard of beauty in these respects. these characters will therefore probably have been acted on through sexual selection; but we have no means of judging whether they have been acted on chiefly from the male or female side. the musical faculties of man have likewise been already discussed. absence of hair on the body, and its development on the face and head. from the presence of the woolly hair or lanugo on the human foetus, and of rudimentary hairs scattered over the body during maturity, we may infer that man is descended from some animal which was born hairy and remained so during life. the loss of hair is an inconvenience and probably an injury to man, even in a hot climate, for he is thus exposed to the scorching of the sun, and to sudden chills, especially during wet weather. as mr. wallace remarks, the natives in all countries are glad to protect their naked backs and shoulders with some slight covering. no one supposes that the nakedness of the skin is any direct advantage to man; his body therefore cannot have been divested of hair through natural selection. ( . 'contributions to the theory of natural selection,' , p. . mr. wallace believes (p. ) "that some intelligent power has guided or determined the development of man"; and he considers the hairless condition of the skin as coming under this head. the rev. t.r. stebbing, in commenting on this view ('transactions of devonshire association for science,' ) remarks, that had mr. wallace "employed his usual ingenuity on the question of man's hairless skin, he might have seen the possibility of its selection through its superior beauty or the health attaching to superior cleanliness.") nor, as shewn in a former chapter, have we any evidence that this can be due to the direct action of climate, or that it is the result of correlated development. the absence of hair on the body is to a certain extent a secondary sexual character; for in all parts of the world women are less hairy than men. therefore we may reasonably suspect that this character has been gained through sexual selection. we know that the faces of several species of monkeys, and large surfaces at the posterior end of the body of other species, have been denuded of hair; and this we may safely attribute to sexual selection, for these surfaces are not only vividly coloured, but sometimes, as with the male mandrill and female rhesus, much more vividly in the one sex than in the other, especially during the breeding-season. i am informed by mr. bartlett that, as these animals gradually reach maturity, the naked surfaces grow larger compared with the size of their bodies. the hair, however, appears to have been removed, not for the sake of nudity, but that the colour of the skin may be more fully displayed. so again with many birds, it appears as if the head and neck had been divested of feathers through sexual selection, to exhibit the brightly-coloured skin. as the body in woman is less hairy than in man, and as this character is common to all races, we may conclude that it was our female semi-human ancestors who were first divested of hair, and that this occurred at an extremely remote period before the several races had diverged from a common stock. whilst our female ancestors were gradually acquiring this new character of nudity, they must have transmitted it almost equally to their offspring of both sexes whilst young; so that its transmission, as with the ornaments of many mammals and birds, has not been limited either by sex or age. there is nothing surprising in a partial loss of hair having been esteemed as an ornament by our ape-like progenitors, for we have seen that innumerable strange characters have been thus esteemed by animals of all kinds, and have consequently been gained through sexual selection. nor is it surprising that a slightly injurious character should have been thus acquired; for we know that this is the case with the plumes of certain birds, and with the horns of certain stags. the females of some of the anthropoid apes, as stated in a former chapter, are somewhat less hairy on the under surface than the males; and here we have what might have afforded a commencement for the process of denudation. with respect to the completion of the process through sexual selection, it is well to bear in mind the new zealand proverb, "there is no woman for a hairy man." all who have seen photographs of the siamese hairy family will admit how ludicrously hideous is the opposite extreme of excessive hairiness. and the king of siam had to bribe a man to marry the first hairy woman in the family; and she transmitted this character to her young offspring of both sexes. ( . the 'variation of animals and plants under domestication,' vol. ii. , p. .) some races are much more hairy than others, especially the males; but it must not be assumed that the more hairy races, such as the european, have retained their primordial condition more completely than the naked races, such as the kalmucks or americans. it is more probable that the hairiness of the former is due to partial reversion; for characters which have been at some former period long inherited are always apt to return. we have seen that idiots are often very hairy, and they are apt to revert in other characters to a lower animal type. it does not appear that a cold climate has been influential in leading to this kind of reversion; excepting perhaps with the negroes, who have been reared during several generations in the united states ( . 'investigations into military and anthropological statistics of american soldiers,' by b.a. gould, , p. :--observations were carefully made on the hairiness of black and coloured soldiers, whilst they were bathing; and by looking to the published table, "it is manifest at a glance that there is but little, if any, difference between the white and the black races in this respect." it is, however, certain that negroes in their native and much hotter land of africa, have remarkably smooth bodies. it should be particularly observed, that both pure blacks and mulattoes were included in the above enumeration; and this is an unfortunate circumstance, as in accordance with a principle, the truth of which i have elsewhere proved, crossed races of man would be eminently liable to revert to the primordial hairy character of their early ape-like progenitors.), and possibly with the ainos, who inhabit the northern islands of the japan archipelago. but the laws of inheritance are so complex that we can seldom understand their action. if the greater hairiness of certain races be the result of reversion, unchecked by any form of selection, its extreme variability, even within the limits of the same race, ceases to be remarkable. ( . hardly any view advanced in this work has met with so much disfavour (see for instance, sprengel, 'die fortschritte des darwinismus,' , p. ) as the above explanation of the loss of hair in mankind through sexual selection; but none of the opposed arguments seem to me of much weight, in comparison with the facts shewing that the nudity of the skin is to a certain extent a secondary sexual character in man and in some of the quadrumana.) with respect to the beard in man, if we turn to our best guide, the quadrumana, we find beards equally developed in both sexes of many species, but in some, either confined to the males, or more developed in them than in the females. from this fact and from the curious arrangement, as well as the bright colours of the hair about the heads of many monkeys, it is highly probable, as before explained, that the males first acquired their beards through sexual selection as an ornament, transmitting them in most cases, equally or nearly so, to their offspring of both sexes. we know from eschricht ( . 'ueber die richtung der haare am menschlichen körper,' in müller's 'archiv. für anat. und phys.' , s. .) that with mankind the female as well as the male foetus is furnished with much hair on the face, especially round the mouth; and this indicates that we are descended from progenitors of whom both sexes were bearded. it appears therefore at first sight probable that man has retained his beard from a very early period, whilst woman lost her beard at the same time that her body became almost completely divested of hair. even the colour of our beards seems to have been inherited from an ape-like progenitor; for when there is any difference in tint between the hair of the head and the beard, the latter is lighter coloured in all monkeys and in man. in those quadrumana in which the male has a larger beard than that of the female, it is fully developed only at maturity, just as with mankind; and it is possible that only the later stages of development have been retained by man. in opposition to this view of the retention of the beard from an early period is the fact of its great variability in different races, and even within the same race; for this indicates reversion,--long lost characters being very apt to vary on re-appearance. nor must we overlook the part which sexual selection may have played in later times; for we know that with savages the men of the beardless races take infinite pains in eradicating every hair from their faces as something odious, whilst the men of the bearded races feel the greatest pride in their beards. the women, no doubt, participate in these feelings, and if so sexual selection can hardly have failed to have effected something in the course of later times. it is also possible that the long-continued habit of eradicating the hair may have produced an inherited effect. dr. brown-sequard has shewn that if certain animals are operated on in a particular manner, their offspring are affected. further evidence could be given of the inheritance of the effects of mutilations; but a fact lately ascertained by mr. salvin ( . on the tail-feathers of motmots, 'proceedings of the zoological society,' , p. .) has a more direct bearing on the present question; for he has shewn that the motmots, which are known habitually to bite off the barbs of the two central tail-feathers, have the barbs of these feathers naturally somewhat reduced. ( . mr. sproat has suggested ('scenes and studies of savage life,' , p. ) this same view. some distinguished ethnologists, amongst others m. gosse of geneva, believe that artificial modifications of the skull tend to be inherited.) nevertheless, with mankind the habit of eradicating the beard and the hairs on the body would probably not have arisen until these had already become by some means reduced. it is difficult to form any judgment as to how the hair on the head became developed to its present great length in many races. eschricht ( . 'ueber die richtung,' ibid. s. .) states that in the human foetus the hair on the face during the fifth month is longer than that on the head; and this indicates that our semi-human progenitors were not furnished with long tresses, which must therefore have been a late acquisition. this is likewise indicated by the extraordinary difference in the length of the hair in the different races; in the negro the hair forms a mere curly mat; with us it is of great length, and with the american natives it not rarely reaches to the ground. some species of semnopithecus have their heads covered with moderately long hair, and this probably serves as an ornament and was acquired through sexual selection. the same view may perhaps be extended to mankind, for we know that long tresses are now and were formerly much admired, as may be observed in the works of almost every poet; st. paul says, "if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her;" and we have seen that in north america a chief was elected solely from the length of his hair. colour of the skin. the best kind of evidence that in man the colour of the skin has been modified through sexual selection is scanty; for in most races the sexes do not differ in this respect, and only slightly, as we have seen, in others. we know, however, from the many facts already given that the colour of the skin is regarded by the men of all races as a highly important element in their beauty; so that it is a character which would be likely to have been modified through selection, as has occurred in innumerable instances with the lower animals. it seems at first sight a monstrous supposition that the jet-blackness of the negro should have been gained through sexual selection; but this view is supported by various analogies, and we know that negroes admire their own colour. with mammals, when the sexes differ in colour, the male is often black or much darker than the female; and it depends merely on the form of inheritance whether this or any other tint is transmitted to both sexes or to one alone. the resemblance to a negro in miniature of pithecia satanas with his jet black skin, white rolling eyeballs, and hair parted on the top of the head, is almost ludicrous. the colour of the face differs much more widely in the various kinds of monkeys than it does in the races of man; and we have some reason to believe that the red, blue, orange, almost white and black tints of their skin, even when common to both sexes, as well as the bright colours of their fur, and the ornamental tufts about the head, have all been acquired through sexual selection. as the order of development during growth, generally indicates the order in which the characters of a species have been developed and modified during previous generations; and as the newly-born infants of the various races of man do not differ nearly as much in colour as do the adults, although their bodies are as completely destitute of hair, we have some slight evidence that the tints of the different races were acquired at a period subsequent to the removal of the hair, which must have occurred at a very early period in the history of man. summary. we may conclude that the greater size, strength, courage, pugnacity, and energy of man, in comparison with woman, were acquired during primeval times, and have subsequently been augmented, chiefly through the contests of rival males for the possession of the females. the greater intellectual vigour and power of invention in man is probably due to natural selection, combined with the inherited effects of habit, for the most able men will have succeeded best in defending and providing for themselves and for their wives and offspring. as far as the extreme intricacy of the subject permits us to judge, it appears that our male ape-like progenitors acquired their beards as an ornament to charm or excite the opposite sex, and transmitted them only to their male offspring. the females apparently first had their bodies denuded of hair, also as a sexual ornament; but they transmitted this character almost equally to both sexes. it is not improbable that the females were modified in other respects for the same purpose and by the same means; so that women have acquired sweeter voices and become more beautiful than men. it deserves attention that with mankind the conditions were in many respects much more favourable for sexual selection, during a very early period, when man had only just attained to the rank of manhood, than during later times. for he would then, as we may safely conclude, have been guided more by his instinctive passions, and less by foresight or reason. he would have jealously guarded his wife or wives. he would not have practised infanticide; nor valued his wives merely as useful slaves; nor have been betrothed to them during infancy. hence we may infer that the races of men were differentiated, as far as sexual selection is concerned, in chief part at a very remote epoch; and this conclusion throws light on the remarkable fact that at the most ancient period, of which we have not as yet any record, the races of man had already come to differ nearly or quite as much as they do at the present day. the views here advanced, on the part which sexual selection has played in the history of man, want scientific precision. he who does not admit this agency in the case of the lower animals, will disregard all that i have written in the later chapters on man. we cannot positively say that this character, but not that, has been thus modified; it has, however, been shewn that the races of man differ from each other and from their nearest allies, in certain characters which are of no service to them in their daily habits of life, and which it is extremely probable would have been modified through sexual selection. we have seen that with the lowest savages the people of each tribe admire their own characteristic qualities,--the shape of the head and face, the squareness of the cheek-bones, the prominence or depression of the nose, the colour of the skin, the length of the hair on the head, the absence of hair on the face and body, or the presence of a great beard, and so forth. hence these and other such points could hardly fail to be slowly and gradually exaggerated, from the more powerful and able men in each tribe, who would succeed in rearing the largest number of offspring, having selected during many generations for their wives the most strongly characterised and therefore most attractive women. for my own part i conclude that of all the causes which have led to the differences in external appearance between the races of man, and to a certain extent between man and the lower animals, sexual selection has been the most efficient. chapter xxi. general summary and conclusion. main conclusion that man is descended from some lower form--manner of development--genealogy of man--intellectual and moral faculties--sexual selection--concluding remarks. a brief summary will be sufficient to recall to the reader's mind the more salient points in this work. many of the views which have been advanced are highly speculative, and some no doubt will prove erroneous; but i have in every case given the reasons which have led me to one view rather than to another. it seemed worth while to try how far the principle of evolution would throw light on some of the more complex problems in the natural history of man. false facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness: and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened. the main conclusion here arrived at, and now held by many naturalists who are well competent to form a sound judgment, is that man is descended from some less highly organised form. the grounds upon which this conclusion rests will never be shaken, for the close similarity between man and the lower animals in embryonic development, as well as in innumerable points of structure and constitution, both of high and of the most trifling importance,--the rudiments which he retains, and the abnormal reversions to which he is occasionally liable,--are facts which cannot be disputed. they have long been known, but until recently they told us nothing with respect to the origin of man. now when viewed by the light of our knowledge of the whole organic world, their meaning is unmistakable. the great principle of evolution stands up clear and firm, when these groups or facts are considered in connection with others, such as the mutual affinities of the members of the same group, their geographical distribution in past and present times, and their geological succession. it is incredible that all these facts should speak falsely. he who is not content to look, like a savage, at the phenomena of nature as disconnected, cannot any longer believe that man is the work of a separate act of creation. he will be forced to admit that the close resemblance of the embryo of man to that, for instance, of a dog--the construction of his skull, limbs and whole frame on the same plan with that of other mammals, independently of the uses to which the parts may be put--the occasional re-appearance of various structures, for instance of several muscles, which man does not normally possess, but which are common to the quadrumana--and a crowd of analogous facts--all point in the plainest manner to the conclusion that man is the co-descendant with other mammals of a common progenitor. we have seen that man incessantly presents individual differences in all parts of his body and in his mental faculties. these differences or variations seem to be induced by the same general causes, and to obey the same laws as with the lower animals. in both cases similar laws of inheritance prevail. man tends to increase at a greater rate than his means of subsistence; consequently he is occasionally subjected to a severe struggle for existence, and natural selection will have effected whatever lies within its scope. a succession of strongly-marked variations of a similar nature is by no means requisite; slight fluctuating differences in the individual suffice for the work of natural selection; not that we have any reason to suppose that in the same species, all parts of the organisation tend to vary to the same degree. we may feel assured that the inherited effects of the long-continued use or disuse of parts will have done much in the same direction with natural selection. modifications formerly of importance, though no longer of any special use, are long-inherited. when one part is modified, other parts change through the principle of correlation, of which we have instances in many curious cases of correlated monstrosities. something may be attributed to the direct and definite action of the surrounding conditions of life, such as abundant food, heat or moisture; and lastly, many characters of slight physiological importance, some indeed of considerable importance, have been gained through sexual selection. no doubt man, as well as every other animal, presents structures, which seem to our limited knowledge, not to be now of any service to him, nor to have been so formerly, either for the general conditions of life, or in the relations of one sex to the other. such structures cannot be accounted for by any form of selection, or by the inherited effects of the use and disuse of parts. we know, however, that many strange and strongly-marked peculiarities of structure occasionally appear in our domesticated productions, and if their unknown causes were to act more uniformly, they would probably become common to all the individuals of the species. we may hope hereafter to understand something about the causes of such occasional modifications, especially through the study of monstrosities: hence the labours of experimentalists, such as those of m. camille dareste, are full of promise for the future. in general we can only say that the cause of each slight variation and of each monstrosity lies much more in the constitution of the organism, than in the nature of the surrounding conditions; though new and changed conditions certainly play an important part in exciting organic changes of many kinds. through the means just specified, aided perhaps by others as yet undiscovered, man has been raised to his present state. but since he attained to the rank of manhood, he has diverged into distinct races, or as they may be more fitly called, sub-species. some of these, such as the negro and european, are so distinct that, if specimens had been brought to a naturalist without any further information, they would undoubtedly have been considered by him as good and true species. nevertheless all the races agree in so many unimportant details of structure and in so many mental peculiarities that these can be accounted for only by inheritance from a common progenitor; and a progenitor thus characterised would probably deserve to rank as man. it must not be supposed that the divergence of each race from the other races, and of all from a common stock, can be traced back to any one pair of progenitors. on the contrary, at every stage in the process of modification, all the individuals which were in any way better fitted for their conditions of life, though in different degrees, would have survived in greater numbers than the less well-fitted. the process would have been like that followed by man, when he does not intentionally select particular individuals, but breeds from all the superior individuals, and neglects the inferior. he thus slowly but surely modifies his stock, and unconsciously forms a new strain. so with respect to modifications acquired independently of selection, and due to variations arising from the nature of the organism and the action of the surrounding conditions, or from changed habits of life, no single pair will have been modified much more than the other pairs inhabiting the same country, for all will have been continually blended through free intercrossing. by considering the embryological structure of man,--the homologies which he presents with the lower animals,--the rudiments which he retains,--and the reversions to which he is liable, we can partly recall in imagination the former condition of our early progenitors; and can approximately place them in their proper place in the zoological series. we thus learn that man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the old world. this creature, if its whole structure had been examined by a naturalist, would have been classed amongst the quadrumana, as surely as the still more ancient progenitor of the old and new world monkeys. the quadrumana and all the higher mammals are probably derived from an ancient marsupial animal, and this through a long line of diversified forms, from some amphibian-like creature, and this again from some fish-like animal. in the dim obscurity of the past we can see that the early progenitor of all the vertebrata must have been an aquatic animal, provided with branchiae, with the two sexes united in the same individual, and with the most important organs of the body (such as the brain and heart) imperfectly or not at all developed. this animal seems to have been more like the larvae of the existing marine ascidians than any other known form. the high standard of our intellectual powers and moral disposition is the greatest difficulty which presents itself, after we have been driven to this conclusion on the origin of man. but every one who admits the principle of evolution, must see that the mental powers of the higher animals, which are the same in kind with those of man, though so different in degree, are capable of advancement. thus the interval between the mental powers of one of the higher apes and of a fish, or between those of an ant and scale-insect, is immense; yet their development does not offer any special difficulty; for with our domesticated animals, the mental faculties are certainly variable, and the variations are inherited. no one doubts that they are of the utmost importance to animals in a state of nature. therefore the conditions are favourable for their development through natural selection. the same conclusion may be extended to man; the intellect must have been all-important to him, even at a very remote period, as enabling him to invent and use language, to make weapons, tools, traps, etc., whereby with the aid of his social habits, he long ago became the most dominant of all living creatures. a great stride in the development of the intellect will have followed, as soon as the half-art and half-instinct of language came into use; for the continued use of language will have reacted on the brain and produced an inherited effect; and this again will have reacted on the improvement of language. as mr. chauncey wright ( . 'on the limits of natural selection,' in the 'north american review,' oct. , p. .) has well remarked, the largeness of the brain in man relatively to his body, compared with the lower animals, may be attributed in chief part to the early use of some simple form of language,--that wonderful engine which affixes signs to all sorts of objects and qualities, and excites trains of thought which would never arise from the mere impression of the senses, or if they did arise could not be followed out. the higher intellectual powers of man, such as those of ratiocination, abstraction, self-consciousness, etc., probably follow from the continued improvement and exercise of the other mental faculties. the development of the moral qualities is a more interesting problem. the foundation lies in the social instincts, including under this term the family ties. these instincts are highly complex, and in the case of the lower animals give special tendencies towards certain definite actions; but the more important elements are love, and the distinct emotion of sympathy. animals endowed with the social instincts take pleasure in one another's company, warn one another of danger, defend and aid one another in many ways. these instincts do not extend to all the individuals of the species, but only to those of the same community. as they are highly beneficial to the species, they have in all probability been acquired through natural selection. a moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives--of approving of some and disapproving of others; and the fact that man is the one being who certainly deserves this designation, is the greatest of all distinctions between him and the lower animals. but in the fourth chapter i have endeavoured to shew that the moral sense follows, firstly, from the enduring and ever-present nature of the social instincts; secondly, from man's appreciation of the approbation and disapprobation of his fellows; and thirdly, from the high activity of his mental faculties, with past impressions extremely vivid; and in these latter respects he differs from the lower animals. owing to this condition of mind, man cannot avoid looking both backwards and forwards, and comparing past impressions. hence after some temporary desire or passion has mastered his social instincts, he reflects and compares the now weakened impression of such past impulses with the ever-present social instincts; and he then feels that sense of dissatisfaction which all unsatisfied instincts leave behind them, he therefore resolves to act differently for the future,--and this is conscience. any instinct, permanently stronger or more enduring than another, gives rise to a feeling which we express by saying that it ought to be obeyed. a pointer dog, if able to reflect on his past conduct, would say to himself, i ought (as indeed we say of him) to have pointed at that hare and not have yielded to the passing temptation of hunting it. social animals are impelled partly by a wish to aid the members of their community in a general manner, but more commonly to perform certain definite actions. man is impelled by the same general wish to aid his fellows; but has few or no special instincts. he differs also from the lower animals in the power of expressing his desires by words, which thus become a guide to the aid required and bestowed. the motive to give aid is likewise much modified in man: it no longer consists solely of a blind instinctive impulse, but is much influenced by the praise or blame of his fellows. the appreciation and the bestowal of praise and blame both rest on sympathy; and this emotion, as we have seen, is one of the most important elements of the social instincts. sympathy, though gained as an instinct, is also much strengthened by exercise or habit. as all men desire their own happiness, praise or blame is bestowed on actions and motives, according as they lead to this end; and as happiness is an essential part of the general good, the greatest-happiness principle indirectly serves as a nearly safe standard of right and wrong. as the reasoning powers advance and experience is gained, the remoter effects of certain lines of conduct on the character of the individual, and on the general good, are perceived; and then the self-regarding virtues come within the scope of public opinion, and receive praise, and their opposites blame. but with the less civilised nations reason often errs, and many bad customs and base superstitions come within the same scope, and are then esteemed as high virtues, and their breach as heavy crimes. the moral faculties are generally and justly esteemed as of higher value than the intellectual powers. but we should bear in mind that the activity of the mind in vividly recalling past impressions is one of the fundamental though secondary bases of conscience. this affords the strongest argument for educating and stimulating in all possible ways the intellectual faculties of every human being. no doubt a man with a torpid mind, if his social affections and sympathies are well developed, will be led to good actions, and may have a fairly sensitive conscience. but whatever renders the imagination more vivid and strengthens the habit of recalling and comparing past impressions, will make the conscience more sensitive, and may even somewhat compensate for weak social affections and sympathies. the moral nature of man has reached its present standard, partly through the advancement of his reasoning powers and consequently of a just public opinion, but especially from his sympathies having been rendered more tender and widely diffused through the effects of habit, example, instruction, and reflection. it is not improbable that after long practice virtuous tendencies may be inherited. with the more civilised races, the conviction of the existence of an all-seeing deity has had a potent influence on the advance of morality. ultimately man does not accept the praise or blame of his fellows as his sole guide, though few escape this influence, but his habitual convictions, controlled by reason, afford him the safest rule. his conscience then becomes the supreme judge and monitor. nevertheless the first foundation or origin of the moral sense lies in the social instincts, including sympathy; and these instincts no doubt were primarily gained, as in the case of the lower animals, through natural selection. the belief in god has often been advanced as not only the greatest, but the most complete of all the distinctions between man and the lower animals. it is however impossible, as we have seen, to maintain that this belief is innate or instinctive in man. on the other hand a belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal; and apparently follows from a considerable advance in man's reason, and from a still greater advance in his faculties of imagination, curiosity and wonder. i am aware that the assumed instinctive belief in god has been used by many persons as an argument for his existence. but this is a rash argument, as we should thus be compelled to believe in the existence of many cruel and malignant spirits, only a little more powerful than man; for the belief in them is far more general than in a beneficent deity. the idea of a universal and beneficent creator does not seem to arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated by long-continued culture. he who believes in the advancement of man from some low organised form, will naturally ask how does this bear on the belief in the immortality of the soul. the barbarous races of man, as sir j. lubbock has shewn, possess no clear belief of this kind; but arguments derived from the primeval beliefs of savages are, as we have just seen, of little or no avail. few persons feel any anxiety from the impossibility of determining at what precise period in the development of the individual, from the first trace of a minute germinal vesicle, man becomes an immortal being; and there is no greater cause for anxiety because the period cannot possibly be determined in the gradually ascending organic scale. ( . the rev. j.a. picton gives a discussion to this effect in his 'new theories and the old faith,' .) i am aware that the conclusions arrived at in this work will be denounced by some as highly irreligious; but he who denounces them is bound to shew why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct species by descent from some lower form, through the laws of variation and natural selection, than to explain the birth of the individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction. the birth both of the species and of the individual are equally parts of that grand sequence of events, which our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind chance. the understanding revolts at such a conclusion, whether or not we are able to believe that every slight variation of structure,--the union of each pair in marriage, the dissemination of each seed,--and other such events, have all been ordained for some special purpose. sexual selection has been treated at great length in this work; for, as i have attempted to shew, it has played an important part in the history of the organic world. i am aware that much remains doubtful, but i have endeavoured to give a fair view of the whole case. in the lower divisions of the animal kingdom, sexual selection seems to have done nothing: such animals are often affixed for life to the same spot, or have the sexes combined in the same individual, or what is still more important, their perceptive and intellectual faculties are not sufficiently advanced to allow of the feelings of love and jealousy, or of the exertion of choice. when, however, we come to the arthropoda and vertebrata, even to the lowest classes in these two great sub-kingdoms, sexual selection has effected much. in the several great classes of the animal kingdom,--in mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, and even crustaceans,--the differences between the sexes follow nearly the same rules. the males are almost always the wooers; and they alone are armed with special weapons for fighting with their rivals. they are generally stronger and larger than the females, and are endowed with the requisite qualities of courage and pugnacity. they are provided, either exclusively or in a much higher degree than the females, with organs for vocal or instrumental music, and with odoriferous glands. they are ornamented with infinitely diversified appendages, and with the most brilliant or conspicuous colours, often arranged in elegant patterns, whilst the females are unadorned. when the sexes differ in more important structures, it is the male which is provided with special sense-organs for discovering the female, with locomotive organs for reaching her, and often with prehensile organs for holding her. these various structures for charming or securing the female are often developed in the male during only part of the year, namely the breeding-season. they have in many cases been more or less transferred to the females; and in the latter case they often appear in her as mere rudiments. they are lost or never gained by the males after emasculation. generally they are not developed in the male during early youth, but appear a short time before the age for reproduction. hence in most cases the young of both sexes resemble each other; and the female somewhat resembles her young offspring throughout life. in almost every great class a few anomalous cases occur, where there has been an almost complete transposition of the characters proper to the two sexes; the females assuming characters which properly belong to the males. this surprising uniformity in the laws regulating the differences between the sexes in so many and such widely separated classes, is intelligible if we admit the action of one common cause, namely sexual selection. sexual selection depends on the success of certain individuals over others of the same sex, in relation to the propagation of the species; whilst natural selection depends on the success of both sexes, at all ages, in relation to the general conditions of life. the sexual struggle is of two kinds; in the one it is between individuals of the same sex, generally the males, in order to drive away or kill their rivals, the females remaining passive; whilst in the other, the struggle is likewise between the individuals of the same sex, in order to excite or charm those of the opposite sex, generally the females, which no longer remain passive, but select the more agreeable partners. this latter kind of selection is closely analogous to that which man unintentionally, yet effectually, brings to bear on his domesticated productions, when he preserves during a long period the most pleasing or useful individuals, without any wish to modify the breed. the laws of inheritance determine whether characters gained through sexual selection by either sex shall be transmitted to the same sex, or to both; as well as the age at which they shall be developed. it appears that variations arising late in life are commonly transmitted to one and the same sex. variability is the necessary basis for the action of selection, and is wholly independent of it. it follows from this, that variations of the same general nature have often been taken advantage of and accumulated through sexual selection in relation to the propagation of the species, as well as through natural selection in relation to the general purposes of life. hence secondary sexual characters, when equally transmitted to both sexes can be distinguished from ordinary specific characters only by the light of analogy. the modifications acquired through sexual selection are often so strongly pronounced that the two sexes have frequently been ranked as distinct species, or even as distinct genera. such strongly-marked differences must be in some manner highly important; and we know that they have been acquired in some instances at the cost not only of inconvenience, but of exposure to actual danger. the belief in the power of sexual selection rests chiefly on the following considerations. certain characters are confined to one sex; and this alone renders it probable that in most cases they are connected with the act of reproduction. in innumerable instances these characters are fully developed only at maturity, and often during only a part of the year, which is always the breeding-season. the males (passing over a few exceptional cases) are the more active in courtship; they are the better armed, and are rendered the more attractive in various ways. it is to be especially observed that the males display their attractions with elaborate care in the presence of the females; and that they rarely or never display them excepting during the season of love. it is incredible that all this should be purposeless. lastly we have distinct evidence with some quadrupeds and birds, that the individuals of one sex are capable of feeling a strong antipathy or preference for certain individuals of the other sex. bearing in mind these facts, and the marked results of man's unconscious selection, when applied to domesticated animals and cultivated plants, it seems to me almost certain that if the individuals of one sex were during a long series of generations to prefer pairing with certain individuals of the other sex, characterised in some peculiar manner, the offspring would slowly but surely become modified in this same manner. i have not attempted to conceal that, excepting when the males are more numerous than the females, or when polygamy prevails, it is doubtful how the more attractive males succeed in leaving a large number of offspring to inherit their superiority in ornaments or other charms than the less attractive males; but i have shewn that this would probably follow from the females,--especially the more vigorous ones, which would be the first to breed,--preferring not only the more attractive but at the same time the more vigorous and victorious males. although we have some positive evidence that birds appreciate bright and beautiful objects, as with the bower-birds of australia, and although they certainly appreciate the power of song, yet i fully admit that it is astonishing that the females of many birds and some mammals should be endowed with sufficient taste to appreciate ornaments, which we have reason to attribute to sexual selection; and this is even more astonishing in the case of reptiles, fish, and insects. but we really know little about the minds of the lower animals. it cannot be supposed, for instance, that male birds of paradise or peacocks should take such pains in erecting, spreading, and vibrating their beautiful plumes before the females for no purpose. we should remember the fact given on excellent authority in a former chapter, that several peahens, when debarred from an admired male, remained widows during a whole season rather than pair with another bird. nevertheless i know of no fact in natural history more wonderful than that the female argus pheasant should appreciate the exquisite shading of the ball-and-socket ornaments and the elegant patterns on the wing-feather of the male. he who thinks that the male was created as he now exists must admit that the great plumes, which prevent the wings from being used for flight, and which are displayed during courtship and at no other time in a manner quite peculiar to this one species, were given to him as an ornament. if so, he must likewise admit that the female was created and endowed with the capacity of appreciating such ornaments. i differ only in the conviction that the male argus pheasant acquired his beauty gradually, through the preference of the females during many generations for the more highly ornamented males; the aesthetic capacity of the females having been advanced through exercise or habit, just as our own taste is gradually improved. in the male through the fortunate chance of a few feathers being left unchanged, we can distinctly trace how simple spots with a little fulvous shading on one side may have been developed by small steps into the wonderful ball-and-socket ornaments; and it is probable that they were actually thus developed. everyone who admits the principle of evolution, and yet feels great difficulty in admitting that female mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish, could have acquired the high taste implied by the beauty of the males, and which generally coincides with our own standard, should reflect that the nerve-cells of the brain in the highest as well as in the lowest members of the vertebrate series, are derived from those of the common progenitor of this great kingdom. for we can thus see how it has come to pass that certain mental faculties, in various and widely distinct groups of animals, have been developed in nearly the same manner and to nearly the same degree. the reader who has taken the trouble to go through the several chapters devoted to sexual selection, will be able to judge how far the conclusions at which i have arrived are supported by sufficient evidence. if he accepts these conclusions he may, i think, safely extend them to mankind; but it would be superfluous here to repeat what i have so lately said on the manner in which sexual selection apparently has acted on man, both on the male and female side, causing the two sexes to differ in body and mind, and the several races to differ from each other in various characters, as well as from their ancient and lowly-organised progenitors. he who admits the principle of sexual selection will be led to the remarkable conclusion that the nervous system not only regulates most of the existing functions of the body, but has indirectly influenced the progressive development of various bodily structures and of certain mental qualities. courage, pugnacity, perseverance, strength and size of body, weapons of all kinds, musical organs, both vocal and instrumental, bright colours and ornamental appendages, have all been indirectly gained by the one sex or the other, through the exertion of choice, the influence of love and jealousy, and the appreciation of the beautiful in sound, colour or form; and these powers of the mind manifestly depend on the development of the brain. man scans with scrupulous care the character and pedigree of his horses, cattle, and dogs before he matches them; but when he comes to his own marriage he rarely, or never, takes any such care. he is impelled by nearly the same motives as the lower animals, when they are left to their own free choice, though he is in so far superior to them that he highly values mental charms and virtues. on the other hand he is strongly attracted by mere wealth or rank. yet he might by selection do something not only for the bodily constitution and frame of his offspring, but for their intellectual and moral qualities. both sexes ought to refrain from marriage if they are in any marked degree inferior in body or mind; but such hopes are utopian and will never be even partially realised until the laws of inheritance are thoroughly known. everyone does good service, who aids towards this end. when the principles of breeding and inheritance are better understood, we shall not hear ignorant members of our legislature rejecting with scorn a plan for ascertaining whether or not consanguineous marriages are injurious to man. the advancement of the welfare of mankind is a most intricate problem: all ought to refrain from marriage who cannot avoid abject poverty for their children; for poverty is not only a great evil, but tends to its own increase by leading to recklessness in marriage. on the other hand, as mr. galton has remarked, if the prudent avoid marriage, whilst the reckless marry, the inferior members tend to supplant the better members of society. man, like every other animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a struggle for existence consequent on his rapid multiplication; and if he is to advance still higher, it is to be feared that he must remain subject to a severe struggle. otherwise he would sink into indolence, and the more gifted men would not be more successful in the battle of life than the less gifted. hence our natural rate of increase, though leading to many and obvious evils, must not be greatly diminished by any means. there should be open competition for all men; and the most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring. important as the struggle for existence has been and even still is, yet as far as the highest part of man's nature is concerned there are other agencies more important. for the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, etc., than through natural selection; though to this latter agency may be safely attributed the social instincts, which afforded the basis for the development of the moral sense. the main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely, that man is descended from some lowly organised form, will, i regret to think, be highly distasteful to many. but there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barbarians. the astonishment which i felt on first seeing a party of fuegians on a wild and broken shore will never be forgotten by me, for the reflection at once rushed into my mind--such were our ancestors. these men were absolutely naked and bedaubed with paint, their long hair was tangled, their mouths frothed with excitement, and their expression was wild, startled, and distrustful. they possessed hardly any arts, and like wild animals lived on what they could catch; they had no government, and were merciless to every one not of their own small tribe. he who has seen a savage in his native land will not feel much shame, if forced to acknowledge that the blood of some more humble creature flows in his veins. for my own part i would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper, or from that old baboon, who descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs--as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions. man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future. but we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it; and i have given the evidence to the best of my ability. we must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system--with all these exalted powers--man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. supplemental note. on sexual selection in relation to monkeys. reprinted from nature, november , , p. . in the discussion on sexual selection in my 'descent of man,' no case interested and perplexed me so much as the brightly-coloured hinder ends and adjoining parts of certain monkeys. as these parts are more brightly coloured in one sex than the other, and as they become more brilliant during the season of love, i concluded that the colours had been gained as a sexual attraction. i was well aware that i thus laid myself open to ridicule; though in fact it is not more surprising that a monkey should display his bright-red hinder end than that a peacock should display his magnificent tail. i had, however, at that time no evidence of monkeys exhibiting this part of their bodies during their courtship; and such display in the case of birds affords the best evidence that the ornaments of the males are of service to them by attracting or exciting the females. i have lately read an article by joh. von fischer, of gotha, published in 'der zoologische garten,' april , on the expression of monkeys under various emotions, which is well worthy of study by any one interested in the subject, and which shews that the author is a careful and acute observer. in this article there is an account of the behaviour of a young male mandrill when he first beheld himself in a looking-glass, and it is added, that after a time he turned round and presented his red hinder end to the glass. accordingly i wrote to herr j. von fischer to ask what he supposed was the meaning of this strange action, and he has sent me two long letters full of new and curious details, which will, i hope, be hereafter published. he says that he was himself at first perplexed by the above action, and was thus led carefully to observe several individuals of various other species of monkeys, which he has long kept in his house. he finds that not only the mandrill (cynocephalus mormon) but the drill (c. leucophaeus) and three other kinds of baboons (c. hamadryas, sphinx, and babouin), also cynopithecus niger, and macacus rhesus and nemestrinus, turn this part of their bodies, which in all these species is more or less brightly coloured, to him when they are pleased, and to other persons as a sort of greeting. he took pains to cure a macacus rhesus, which he had kept for five years, of this indecorous habit, and at last succeeded. these monkeys are particularly apt to act in this manner, grinning at the same time, when first introduced to a new monkey, but often also to their old monkey friends; and after this mutual display they begin to play together. the young mandrill ceased spontaneously after a time to act in this manner towards his master, von fischer, but continued to do so towards persons who were strangers and to new monkeys. a young cynopithecus niger never acted, excepting on one occasion, in this way towards his master, but frequently towards strangers, and continues to do so up to the present time. from these facts von fischer concludes that the monkeys which behaved in this manner before a looking-glass (viz., the mandrill, drill, cynopithecus niger, macacus rhesus and nemestrinus) acted as if their reflection were a new acquaintance. the mandrill and drill, which have their hinder ends especially ornamented, display it even whilst quite young, more frequently and more ostentatiously than do the other kinds. next in order comes cynocephalus hamadryas, whilst the other species act in this manner seldomer. the individuals, however, of the same species vary in this respect, and some which were very shy never displayed their hinder ends. it deserves especial attention that von fischer has never seen any species purposely exhibit the hinder part of its body, if not at all coloured. this remark applies to many individuals of macacus cynomolgus and cercocebus radiatus (which is closely allied to m. rhesus), to three species of cercopithecus and several american monkeys. the habit of turning the hinder ends as a greeting to an old friend or new acquaintance, which seems to us so odd, is not really more so than the habits of many savages, for instance that of rubbing their bellies with their hands, or rubbing noses together. the habit with the mandrill and drill seems to be instinctive or inherited, as it was followed by very young animals; but it is modified or guided, like so many other instincts, by observation, for von fischer says that they take pains to make their display fully; and if made before two observers, they turn to him who seems to pay the most attention. with respect to the origin of the habit, von fischer remarks that his monkeys like to have their naked hinder ends patted or stroked, and that they then grunt with pleasure. they often also turn this part of their bodies to other monkeys to have bits of dirt picked off, and so no doubt it would be with respect to thorns. but the habit with adult animals is connected to a certain extent with sexual feelings, for von fischer watched through a glass door a female cynopithecus niger, and she during several days, "umdrehte und dem männchen mit gurgelnden tönen die stark geröthete sitzflache zeigte, was ich früher nie an diesem thier bemerkt hatte. beim anblick dieses gegenstandes erregte sich das männchen sichtlich, denn es polterte heftig an den stäben, ebenfalls gurgelnde laute ausstossend." as all the monkeys which have the hinder parts of their bodies more or less brightly coloured live, according to von fischer, in open rocky places, he thinks that these colours serve to render one sex conspicuous at a distance to the other; but, as monkeys are such gregarious animals, i should have thought that there was no need for the sexes to recognise each other at a distance. it seems to me more probable that the bright colours, whether on the face or hinder end, or, as in the mandrill, on both, serve as a sexual ornament and attraction. anyhow, as we now know that monkeys have the habit of turning their hinder ends towards other monkeys, it ceases to be at all surprising that it should have been this part of their bodies which has been more or less decorated. the fact that it is only the monkeys thus characterised which, as far as at present known, act in this manner as a greeting towards other monkeys renders it doubtful whether the habit was first acquired from some independent cause, and that afterwards the parts in question were coloured as a sexual ornament; or whether the colouring and the habit of turning round were first acquired through variation and sexual selection, and that afterwards the habit was retained as a sign of pleasure or as a greeting, through the principle of inherited association. this principle apparently comes into play on many occasions: thus it is generally admitted that the songs of birds serve mainly as an attraction during the season of love, and that the leks, or great congregations of the black-grouse, are connected with their courtship; but the habit of singing has been retained by some birds when they feel happy, for instance by the common robin, and the habit of congregating has been retained by the black-grouse during other seasons of the year. i beg leave to refer to one other point in relation to sexual selection. it has been objected that this form of selection, as far as the ornaments of the males are concerned, implies that all females within the same district must possess and exercise exactly the same taste. it should, however, be observed, in the first place, that although the range of variation of a species may be very large, it is by no means indefinite. i have elsewhere given a good instance of this fact in the pigeon, of which there are at least a hundred varieties differing widely in their colours, and at least a score of varieties of the fowl differing in the same kind of way; but the range of colour in these two species is extremely distinct. therefore the females of natural species cannot have an unlimited scope for their taste. in the second place, i presume that no supporter of the principle of sexual selection believes that the females select particular points of beauty in the males; they are merely excited or attracted in a greater degree by one male than by another, and this seems often to depend, especially with birds, on brilliant colouring. even man, excepting perhaps an artist, does not analyse the slight differences in the features of the woman whom he may admire, on which her beauty depends. the male mandrill has not only the hinder end of his body, but his face gorgeously coloured and marked with oblique ridges, a yellow beard, and other ornaments. we may infer from what we see of the variation of animals under domestication, that the above several ornaments of the mandrill were gradually acquired by one individual varying a little in one way, and another individual in another way. the males which were the handsomest or the most attractive in any manner to the females would pair oftenest, and would leave rather more offspring than other males. the offspring of the former, although variously intercrossed, would either inherit the peculiarities of their fathers or transmit an increased tendency to vary in the same manner. consequently the whole body of males inhabiting the same country would tend from the effects of constant intercrossing to become modified almost uniformly, but sometimes a little more in one character and sometimes in another, though at an extremely slow rate; all ultimately being thus rendered more attractive to the females. the process is like that which i have called unconscious selection by man, and of which i have given several instances. in one country the inhabitants value a fleet or light dog or horse, and in another country a heavier and more powerful one; in neither country is there any selection of individual animals with lighter or stronger bodies and limbs; nevertheless after a considerable lapse of time the individuals are found to have been modified in the desired manner almost uniformly, though differently in each country. in two absolutely distinct countries inhabited by the same species, the individuals of which can never during long ages have intermigrated and intercrossed, and where, moreover, the variations will probably not have been identically the same, sexual selection might cause the males to differ. nor does the belief appear to me altogether fanciful that two sets of females, surrounded by a very different environment, would be apt to acquire somewhat different tastes with respect to form, sound, or colour. however this may be, i have given in my 'descent of man' instances of closely-allied birds inhabiting distinct countries, of which the young and the females cannot be distinguished, whilst the adult males differ considerably, and this may be attributed with much probability to the action of sexual selection. index. abbot, c., on the battles of seals. abductor of the fifth metatarsal, presence of, in man. abercrombie, dr., on disease of the brain affecting speech. abipones, marriage customs of the. abortion, prevalence of the practice of. abou-simbel, caves of. abramis brama. abstraction, power of, in animals. acalles, stridulation of. acanthodactylus capensis, sexual differences of colour in. accentor modularis. acclimatisation, difference of, in different races of men. achetidae, stridulation of the; rudimentary stridulating organs in female. acilius sulcatus, elytra of the female. acomus, development of spurs in the female of. acridiidae, stridulation of the; rudimentary stridulating organs in female. acromio-basilar muscle, and quadrupedal gait. acting. actiniae, bright colours of. adams, mr., migration of birds; intelligence of nut-hatch; on the bombycilla carolinensis. admiral butterfly. adoption of the young of other animals by female monkeys. advancement in the organic scale, von baer's definition of. aeby, on the difference between the skulls of man and the quadrumana. aesthetic faculty, not highly developed in savages. affection, maternal; manifestation of, by animals; parental and filial, partly the result of natural selection; mutual, of birds; shewn by birds in confinement, for certain persons. africa, probably the birthplace of man; south, crossed population of; south, retention of colour by the dutch in; south, proportion of the sexes in the butterflies of; tattooing practised in; northern, coiffure of natives of. agassiz, l., on conscience in dogs; on the coincidence of the races of man with zoological provinces; on the number of species of man; on the courtship of the land-snails; on the brightness of the colours of male fishes during the breeding season; on the frontal protuberance of the males of geophagus and cichla; male fishes hatching ova in their mouths; sexual differences in colour of chromids; on the slight sexual differences of the south americans; on the tattooing of the amazonian indians. age, in relation to the transmission of characters in birds; variation in accordance with, in birds. agelaeus phoeniceus. ageronia feronia, noise produced by. agrion, dimorphism in. agrion ramburii, sexes of. agrionidae, difference in the sexes of. agrotis exclamationis. ague, tertian, dog suffering from. ainos, hairiness of the. aitchison, mr., on sheep. aithurus polytmus, young of. albino birds. alca torda, young of. alces palmata. alder and hancock, mm., on the nudi-branch mollusca. allen, j.a., vigour of birds earliest hatched; effect of difference of temperature, light, etc., on birds; colours of birds; on the relative size of the sexes of callorhinus ursinus; on the name of otaria jubata; on the pairing of seals; on sexual differences in the colour of bats. allen, s., on the habits of hoplopterus; on the plumes of herons; on the vernal moult of herodius bubulcus. alligator, courtship of the male; roaring of the male. amadavat, pugnacity of male. amadina lathami, display of plumage by the male. amadina castanotis, display of plumage by the male. amazons, butterflies of the; fishes of the. america, variation in the skulls of aborigines of; wide range of aborigines of; lice of the natives of; general beardlessness of the natives of. america, north, butterflies of; indians of, women a cause of strife among the; indians of, their notions of female beauty. america, south, character of the natives of; population of parts of; piles of stones in; extinction of the fossil horse of; desert-birds of; slight sexual difference of the aborigines of; prevalence of infanticide in. american languages, often highly artificial. americans, wide geographical range of; native, variability of; and negroes, difference of; aversion of, to hair on the face. ammophila, on the jaws of. ammotragus tragelaphus, hairy forelegs of. amphibia, affinity of, to the ganoid fishes; vocal organs of the. amphibians, breeding whilst immature. amphioxus. amphipoda, males sexually mature while young. amunoph iii., negro character of, features of. anal appendages of insects. analogous variation in the plumage of birds. anas. anas acuta, male plumage of. anas boschas, male plumage of. anas histrionica. anas punctata. anastomus oscitans, sexes and young of; white nuptial plumage of. anatidae, voices of. anax junius, differences in the sexes of. andaman islanders, susceptible to change of climate. anderson, dr., on the tail of macacus brunneus; the bufo sikimmensis; sounds of echis carinata. andreana fulva. anglo-saxons, estimation of the beard among the. animals, domesticated, more fertile than wild; cruelty of savages to; characters common to man and; domestic, change of breeds of. annelida, colours of. anobium tessellatum, sounds produced by. anolis cristatellus, male, crest of; pugnacity of the male; throat-pouch of. anser canadensis. anset cygnoides; knob at the base of the beak of. anser hyperboreus, whiteness of. antelope, prong-horned, horns of. antelopes, generally polygamous; horns of; canine teeth of some male; use of horns of; dorsal crests in; dewlaps of; winter change of two species of; peculiar markings of. antennae, furnished with cushions in the male of penthe. anthidium manicatum, large male of. anthocharis cardamines; sexual difference of colour in. anthocharis genutia. anthocharis sara. anthophora acervorum, large male of. anthophora retusa, difference of the sexes in. anthropidae. anthus, moulting of. antics of birds. antigua, dr. nicholson's observations on yellow fever in. antilocapra americana, horns of. antilope bezoartica, horned females of; sexual difference in the colour of. antilope dorcas and euchore. antilope euchore, horns of. antilope montana, rudimentary canines in the young male of. antilope niger, sing-sing, caama, and gorgon, sexual differences in the colours of. antilope oreas, horns of. antilope saiga, polygamous habits of. antilope strepsiceros, horns of. antilope subgutturosa, absence of suborbital pits in. antipathy, shewn by birds in confinement, to certain persons. ants, large size of the cerebral ganglia in; soldier, large jaws of; playing together; memory in; intercommunication of, by means of the antennae; habits of; difference of the sexes in; recognition of each other by, after separation. ants white, habits of. anura. apatania muliebris, male unknown. apathus, difference of the sexes in. apatura iris. apes, difference of the young, from the adult; semi-erect attitude of some; mastoid processes of; influences of the jaw-muscles on the physiognomy of; female, destitute of large canines; building platforms; imitative faculties of; anthropomorphous; probable speedy extermination of the; gratiolet on the evolution of; canine teeth of male; females of some, less hairy beneath than the males. apes, long-armed, their mode of progression. aphasia, dr. bateman on. apis mellifica, large male of. apollo, greek statues of. apoplexy in cebus azarae. appendages, anal, of insects. approbation, influence of the love of. aprosmictus scapulatus. apus, proportion of sexes. aquatic birds, frequency of white plumage in. aquila chrysaetos. arab women, elaborate and peculiar coiffure of. arabs, fertility of crosses with other races; gashing of cheeks and temples among the. arachnida. arakhan, artificial widening of the forehead by the natives of. arboricola, young of. archeopteryx. arctiidae, coloration of the. ardea asha, rufescens, and coerulea, change of colour in. ardea coerulea, breeding in immature plumage. ardea gularis, change of plumage in. ardea herodias, love-gestures of the male. ardea ludoviciana, age of mature plumage in; continued growth of crest and plumes in the male of. ardea nycticorax, cries of. ardeola, young of. ardetta, changes of plumage in. argenteuil. argus pheasant, display of plumage by the male; ocellated spots of the; gradation of characters in the. argyll, duke of, on the physical weakness of man; the fashioning of implements peculiar to man; on the contest in man between right and wrong; on the primitive civilisation of man; on the plumage of the male argus pheasant; on urosticte benjamini; on the nests of birds. argynnis, colouring of the lower surface of. aricoris epitus, sexual differences in the wings of. aristocracy, increased beauty of the. arms, proportions of, in soldiers and sailors; direction of the hair on the. arms and hands, free use of, indirectly correlated with diminution of canines. arrest of development. arrow-heads, stone, general resemblance of. arrows, use of. arteries, variations in the course of the. artery, effect of tying, upon the lateral channels. arthropoda. arts practised by savages. ascension, coloured incrustation on the rocks of. ascidia, affinity of the lancelet to; tad-pole like larvae of. ascidians, bright colours of some. asinus, asiatic and african species of. asinus taeniopus. ass, colour-variations of the. ateles, effects of brandy on an; absence of the thumb in. ateles beelzebuth, ears of. ateles marginatus, colour of the ruff of; hair on the head of. ateuchus cicatricosus, habits of. ateuchus, stridulation of. athalia, proportions of the sexes in. atropus pulsatorius. attention, manifestations of, in animals. audouin, v., on a hymenopterous parasite with a sedentary male. audubon, j.j., on the pinioned goose; on the speculum of mergus cucullatus; on the pugnacity of male birds; on courtship of caprimulgus; on tetrao cupido; on ardea nycticorax; on sturnella ludoviciana; on the vocal organs of tetra cupido; on the drumming of the male tetrao umbellus; on sounds produced by the nightjar; on ardea herodias and cathartes jota; on mimus polyglottus; on display in male birds; on the spring change of colour in some finches; on migration of mocking thrushes; recognition of a dog by a turkey; selection of mate by female birds; on the turkey; on variation in the male scarlet tanager; on the musk-rat; on the habits of pyranga aestiva; on local differences in the nests of the same species of birds; on the habits of woodpeckers; on bombycilla carolinensis; on young females of pyranga aestiva acquiring male characters; on the immature plumage of thrushes; on the immature plumage of birds; on birds breeding in immature plumage; on the growth of the crest and plume in the male ardea ludoviciana; on the change of colour in some species of ardea. audobon and bachman, mm., on squirrels fighting; on the canadian lynx. aughey, prof., on rattlesnakes. austen, n.l., on anolis cristatellus. australia, not the birthplace of man; half-castes killed by the natives of; lice of the natives of. australia, south, variation in the skulls of aborigines of. australians, colour of new-born children of; relative height of the sexes of; women a cause of war among the. axis deer, sexual difference in the colour of the. aymaras, measurements of the; no grey hair among the; hairlessness of the face in the; long hair of the. azara, on the proportion of men and women among the guaranys; on palamedea cornuta; on the beards of the guaranys; on strife for women among the guanas; on infanticide; on the eradication of the eyebrows and eyelashes by the indians of paraguay; on polyandry among the guanas; celibacy unknown among the savages of south america; on the freedom of divorce among the charruas. babbage c., on the greater proportion of illegitimate female births. babirusa, tusks of the. baboon, revenge in a; rage excited in, by reading; manifestation of memory by a; employing a mat for shelter against the sun; protected from punishment by its companions. baboon, cape, mane of the male; hamadryas, mane of the male. baboon, effects of intoxicating liquors on; ears of; diversity of the mental faculties in; hands of; habits of; variability of the tail in; manifestation of maternal affection by; using stones and sticks as weapons; co-operation of; silence of, on plundering expeditions; apparent polygamy of; polygamous and social habits of. baboons, courtship of. bachman, dr., on the fertility of mulattoes. baer, k.e. von, on embryonic development; definition of advancement in the organic scale. bagehot, w., on the social virtues among primitive men; slavery formerly beneficial; on the value of obedience; on human progress; on the persistence of savage tribes in classical times. bailly, e.m., on the mode of fighting of the italian buffalo; on the fighting of stags. bain, a., on the sense of duty; aid springing from sympathy; on the basis of sympathy; on the love of approbation etc.; on the idea of beauty. baird, w., on a difference in colour between the males and females of some entozoa. baker, mr., observation on the proportion of the sexes in pheasant-chicks. baker, sir s., on the fondness of the arabs for discordant music; on sexual difference in the colours of an antelope; on the elephant and rhinoceros attacking white or grey horses; on the disfigurements practised by the negroes; on the gashing of the cheeks and temples practised in arab countries; on the coiffure of the north africans; on the perforation of the lower lip by the women of latooka; on the distinctive characters of the coiffure of central african tribes; on the coiffure of arab women. "balz" of the black-cock. bantam, sebright. banteng, horns of; sexual differences in the colours of the. banyai, colour of the. barbarism, primitive, of civilised nations. barbs, filamentous, of the feathers, in certain birds. barr, mr., on sexual preference in dogs. barrago, f., on the simian resemblances of man. barrington, daines, on the language of birds; on the clucking of the hen; on the object of the song of birds; on the singing of female birds; on birds acquiring the songs of other birds; on the muscles of the larynx in song-birds; on the want of the power of song by female birds. barrow, on the widow-bird. bartels, dr., supernumerary mammae in men. bartlett, a.d., period of hatching of bird's eggs; on the tragopan; on the development of the spurs in crossoptilon auritum; on the fighting of the males of plectopterus gambensis; on the knot; on display in male birds; on the display of plumage by the male polyplectron; on crossoptilon auritum and phasianus wallichii; on the habits of lophophorus; on the colour of the mouth in buceros bicornis; on the incubation of the cassowary; on the cape buffalo; on the use of the horns of antelopes; on the fighting of male wart-hogs; on ammotragus tragelaphus; on the colours of cercopithecus cephus; on the colours of the faces of monkeys; on the naked surfaces of monkeys. bartlett, on courting of argus pheasant. bartram, on the courtship of the male alligator. basque language, highly artificial. bate, c.s., on the superior activity of male crustacea; on the proportions of the sexes in crabs; on the chelae of crustacea; on the relative size of the sexes in crustacea; on the colours of crustacea. bateman, dr., tendency to imitation in certain diseased states; on aphasia. bates, h.w., on variation in the form of the head of amazonian indians; on the proportion of the sexes among amazonian butterflies; on sexual differences in the wings of butterflies; on the field-cricket; on pyrodes pulcherrimus; on the horns of lamellicorn beetles; on the colours of epicaliae, etc.; on the coloration of tropical butterflies; on the variability of papilio sesostris and childrenae; on male and female butterflies inhabiting different stations; on mimicry; on the caterpillar of a sphinx; on the vocal organs of the umbrella-bird; on the toucans; on brackyurus calvus. batokas, knocking out two upper incisors. batrachia, eagerness of male. bats, scent-glands; sexual differences in the colour of; fur of male frugivorous. battle, law of; among beetles; among birds; among mammals; in man. beak, sexual difference in the forms of the; in the colour of the. beaks, of birds, bright colours of. beard, development of, in man; analogy of the, in man and the quadrumana; variation of the development of the, in different races of men; estimation of, among bearded nations; probable origin of the. beard, in monkeys; of mammals. beautiful, taste for the, in birds; in the quadrumana. beauty, sense of, in animals; appreciation of, by birds; influence of; variability of the standard of. beauty, sense of, sufficiently permanent for action of sexual selection. beaven, lieut., on the development of the horns in cervus eldi. beaver, instinct and intelligence of the; voice of the; castoreum of the. beavers, battles of male. bechstein, on female birds choosing the best singers among the males; on rivalry in song-birds; on the singing of female birds; on birds acquiring the songs of other birds; on pairing the canary and siskin; on a sub-variety of the monk pigeon; on spurred hens. beddoe, dr., on causes of difference in stature. bee-eater. bees, pollen-baskets and stings of; destruction of drones and queens by; female, secondary sexual characters of; proportion of sexes; difference of the sexes in colour and sexual selection. beetle, luminous larva of a. beetles, size of the cerebral ganglia in; dilatation of the foretarsi in male; blind; stridulation of. belgium, ancient inhabitants of. bell, sir c., on emotional muscles in man; "snarling muscles;" on the hand. bell, t., on the numerical proportion of the sexes in moles; on the newts; on the croaking of the frog; on the difference in the coloration of the sexes in zootoca vivipara; on moles fighting. bell-bird, sexual difference in the colour of the. bell-birds, colours of. belt, mr., on the nakedness of tropical mankind; on a spider-monkey and eagle; habits of ants; lampridae distasteful to mammals; mimicry of leptalides; colours of nicaraguan frogs; display of humming-birds; on the toucans; protective colouring of skunk. benevolence, manifested by birds. bennett, a.w., attachment of mated birds; on the habits of dromaeus irroratus. bennett, dr., on birds of paradise. berbers, fertility of crosses with other races. bernicla antarctica, colours of. bernicle gander pairing with a canada goose. bert, m., crustaceans distinguish colours. bettoni, e., on local differences in the nests of italian birds. beyle, m., see bombet. bhoteas, colour of the beard in. bhringa, disc-formed tail-feathers of. bianconi, prof., on structures as explained through mechanical principles. bibio, sexual differences in the genus. bichat, on beauty. bickes, proportion of sexes in man. bile, coloured, in many animals. bimana. birds, imitations of the songs of other birds by; dreaming; killed by telegraph wires; language of; sense of beauty in; pleasure of, in incubation; male, incubation by; and reptiles, alliance of; sexual differences in the beak of some; migratory, arrival of the male before the female; apparent relation between polygamy and marked sexual differences in; monogamous, becoming polygamous under domestication; eagerness of male in pursuit of the female; wild, numerical proportion of the sexes in; secondary sexual characters of; difference of size in the sexes of; fights of male, witnessed by females; display of male, to captivate the females; close attention of, to the songs of others; acquiring the song of their foster-parents; brilliant, rarely good songsters; love-antics and dances of; coloration of; moulting of; unpaired; male, singing out of season; mutual affection of; in confinement, distinguish persons; hybrid, production of; albino; european, number of species of; variability of; geographical distribution of colouring; gradation of secondary sexual characters in; obscurely coloured, building concealed nests; young female, acquiring male characters; breeding in immature plumage; moulting of; aquatic, frequency of white plumage in; vocal courtship of; naked skin of the head and neck in. birgus latro, habits of. birkbeck, mr., on the finding of new mates by golden eagles. birthplace of man. births, numerical proportions of the sexes in, in animals and man; male and female, numerical proportion of, in england. bischoff, prof., on the agreement between the brains of man and of the orang; figure of the embryo of the dog; on the convolutions of the brain in the human foetus; on the difference between the skulls of man and the quadrumana; resemblance between the ape's and man's. bishop, j., on the vocal organs of frogs; on the vocal organs of cervine birds; on the trachea of the merganser. bison, american, co-operation of; mane of the male. bitterns, dwarf, coloration of the sexes of. biziura lobata, musky odour of the male; large size of male. blackbird, sexual differences in the; proportion of the sexes in the; acquisition of a song by; colour of the beak in the sexes of the; pairing with a thrush; colours and nidification of the; young of the; sexual difference in coloration of the. black-buck, indian, sexual difference in the colour of the. blackcap, arrival of the male, before the female; young of the. black-cock, polygamous; proportion of the sexes in the; pugnacity and love-dance of the; call of the; moulting of the; duration of the courtship of the; and pheasant, hybrids of; sexual difference in coloration of the; crimson eye-cere of the. black-grouse, characters of young. blacklock, dr., on music. blackwall, j., on the speaking of the magpie; on the desertion of their young by swallows; on the superior activity of male spiders; on the proportion of the sexes in spiders; on sexual variation of colour in spiders; on male spiders. bladder-nose seal, hood of the. blaine, on the affections of dogs. blair, dr., on the relative liability of europeans to yellow fever. blake, c.c., on the jaw from la naulette. blakiston, captain, on the american snipe; on the dances of tetrao phasianellus. blasius, dr., on the species of european birds. bledius taurus, hornlike processes of male. bleeding, tendency to profuse. blenkiron, mr., on sexual preference in horses. blennies, crest developed on the head of male, during the breeding season. blethisa multipunctata, stridulation of. bloch, on the proportions of the sexes in fishes. blood, arterial, red colour of. blood pheasant, number of spurs in. blow-fly, sounds made by. bluebreast, red-throated, sexual differences of the. blumenbach, on man; on the large size of the nasal cavities in american aborigines; on the position of man; on the number of species of man. blyth, e., on the structure of the hand in the species of hylobates; observations on indian crows; on the development of the horns in the koodoo and eland antelopes; on the pugnacity of the males of gallicrex cristatus; on the presence of spurs in the female euplocamus erythrophthalmus; on the pugnacity of the amadavat; on the spoonbill; on the moulting of anthus; on the moulting of bustards, plovers, and gallus bankiva; on the indian honey-buzzard; on sexual differences in the colour of the eyes of hornbills; on oriolus melanocephalus; on palaeornis javanicus; on the genus ardetta; on the peregrine falcon; on young female birds acquiring male characters; on the immature plumage of birds; on representative species of birds; on the young of turnix; on anomalous young of lanius rufus and colymbus glacialis; on the sexes and young of the sparrows; on dimorphism in some herons; on the ascertainment of the sex of nestling bullfinches by pulling out breast-feathers; on orioles breeding in immature plumage; on the sexes and young of buphus and anastomus; on the young of the blackcap and blackbird; on the young of the stonechat; on the white plumage of anastomus; on the horns of bovine animals; on the horns of antilope bezoartica; on the mode of fighting of ovis cycloceros; on the voice of the gibbons; on the crest of the male wild goat; on the colours of portax picta; on the colours of antilope bezoartica; on the colour of the axis deer; on sexual difference of colour in hylobates hoolock; on the hog-deer; on the beard and whiskers in a monkey, becoming white with age. boar, wild, polygamous in india; use of the tusks by the; fighting of. boardman, mr., albino birds in u.s. boitard and corbie, mm., on the transmission of sexual peculiarities in pigeons; on the antipathy shewn by some female pigeons to certain males. bold, mr., on the singing of a sterile hybrid canary. bombet, on the variability of the standard of beauty in europe. bombus, difference of the sexes in. bombycidae, coloration of; pairing of the; colours of. bombycilla carolinensis, red appendages of. bombyx cynthia, proportion of the sexes in; pairing of. bombyx mori, difference of size of the male and female cocoons of; pairing of. bombyx pernyi, proportion of sexes of. bombyx yamamai, m. personnat on; proportion of sexes of. bonaparte, c.l., on the call-notes of the wild turkey. bond, f., on the finding of new mates by crows. bone, implements of, skill displayed in making. boner, c., on the transfer of male characters to an old female chamois; on the habits of stags; on the pairing of red deer. bones, increase of, in length and thickness, when carrying a greater weight. bonizzi, p., difference of colour in sexes of pigeons. bonnet monkey. bonwick, j., extinction of tasmanians. boomerang. boreus hyemalis, scarcity of the male. bory st. vincent, on the number of species of man; on the colours of labrus pavo. bos etruscus. bos gaurus, horns of. bos moschatus. bos primigenius. bos sondaicus, horns of, colours of. botocudos, mode of life of; disfigurement of the ears and lower lip of the. boucher de perthes, j.c. de, on the antiquity of man. bourbon, proportion of the sexes in a species of papilio from. bourien on the marriage-customs of the savages of the malay archipelago. bovidae, dewlaps of. bower-birds, habits of the; ornamented playing-places of. bows, use of. brachycephalic structure, possible explanation of. brachyura. brachyurus calvus, scarlet face of. bradley, mr., abductor ossis metatarsi quinti in man. brain, of man, agreement of the, with that of lower animals; convolutions of, in the human foetus; influence of development of mental faculties upon the size of the; influence of the development of on the spinal column and skull; larger in some existing mammals than in their tertiary prototypes; relation of the development of the, to the progress of language; disease of the, affecting speech; difference in the convolutions of, in different races of men; supplement on, by prof. huxley; development of the gyri and sulci. brakenridge, dr., on the influence of climate. brandt, a., on hairy men. braubach, prof., on the quasi-religious feeling of a dog towards his master; on the self-restraint of dogs. brauer, f., on dimorphism in neurothemis. brazil, skulls found in caves of; population of; compression of the nose by the natives of. break between man and the apes. bream, proportion of the sexes in the. breeding, age of, in birds. breeding season, sexual characters making their appearance in the, in birds. brehm, on the effects of intoxicating liquors on monkeys; on the recognition of women by male cynocephali; on the diversity of the mental faculties of monkeys; on the habits of baboons; on revenge taken by monkeys; on manifestations of maternal affection by monkeys and baboons; on the instinctive dread of monkeys for serpents; on the use of stones as missiles by baboons; on a baboon using a mat for shelter from the sun; on the signal-cries of monkeys; on sentinels posted by monkeys; on co-operation of animals; on an eagle attacking a young cercopithecus; on baboons in confinement protecting one of their number from punishment; on the habits of baboons when plundering; on polygamy in cynocephalus and cebus; on the numerical proportion of the sexes in birds; on the love-dance of the blackcock; palamedea cornuta; on the habits of the black-grouse; on sounds produced by birds of paradise; on assemblages of grouse; on the finding of new mates by birds; on the fighting of wild boars; on sexual differences in mycetes; on the habits of cynocephalus hamadryas. brent, mr., on the courtship of fowls. breslau, numerical proportion of male and female births in. bridgeman, laura. brimstone butterfly, sexual difference of colour in the. british, ancient, tattooing practised by. broca, prof., on the occurrence of the supra-condyloid foramen in the human humerus; anthropomorphous apes more bipedal than quadrupedal; on the capacity of parisian skulls at different periods; comparison of modern and mediaeval skulls; on tails of quadrupeds; on the influence of natural selection; on hybridity in man; on human remains from les eyzies; on the cause of the difference between europeans and hindoos. brodie, sir b., on the origin of the moral sense in man. bronn, h.g., on the copulation of insects of distinct species. bronze period, men of, in europe. brown, r., sentinels of seals generally females; on the battles of seals; on the narwhal; on the occasional absence of the tusks in the female walrus; on the bladder-nose seal; on the colours of the sexes in phoca groenlandica; on the appreciation of music by seals; on plants used as love-philters, by north american women. browne, dr. crichton, injury to infants during parturition. brown-sequard, dr., on the inheritance of the effects of operations by guinea-pig. bruce, on the use of the elephant's tusks. brulerie, p. de la, on the habits of ateuchus cicatricosus; on the stridulation of ateuchus. brunnich, on the pied ravens of the feroe islands. bryant, dr., preference of tame pigeon for wild mate. bryant, captain, on the courtship of callorhinus ursinus. bubas bison, thoracic projection of. bubalus caffer, use of horns. bucephalus capensis, difference of the sexes of, in colour. buceros, nidification and incubation of. buceros bicornis, sexual differences in the colouring of the casque, beak, and mouth in. buceros corrugatus, sexual differences in the beak of. buchner, l., on the origin of man; on the use of the human foot as a prehensile organ; on the mode of progression of the apes; on want of self-consciousness, etc., in savages. bucholz, dr., quarrels of chamaeleons. buckinghamshire, numerical proportion of male and female births in. buckland, f., on the numerical proportion of the sexes in rats; on the proportion of the sexes in the trout; on chimaera monstrosa. buckland, w., on the complexity of crinoids. buckler, w., proportion of sexes of lepidoptera reared by. bucorax abyssinicus, inflation of the neck-wattle of the male during courtship. budytes raii. buffalo, cape. buffalo, indian, horns of the. buffalo, italian, mode of fighting of the. buffon, on the number of species of man. bufo sikimmensis. bugs. buist, r., on the proportion of the sexes in salmon; on the pugnacity of the male salmon. bulbul, pugnacity of the male; display of under tail-coverts by the male. bull, mode of fighting of the; curled frontal hair of the. buller, dr., on the huia; the attachment of birds. bullfinch, sexual differences in the; piping; female, singing of the; courtship of the; widowed, finding a new mate; attacking a reed-bunting; nestling, sex ascertained by pulling out breast feathers. bullfinches, distinguishing persons; rivalry of female. bulls, two young, attacking an old one; wild, battles of. bull-trout, male, colouring of, during the breeding season. bunting, reed, head feathers of the male; attacked by a bullfinch. buntings, characters of young. buphus coromandus, sexes and young of; change of colour in. burchell, dr., on the zebra; on the extravagance of a bushwoman in adorning herself; celibacy unknown among the savages of south africa; on the marriage-customs of the bushwomen. burke, on the number of species of man. burmese, colour of the beard in. burton, captain, on negro ideas of female beauty; on a universal ideal of beauty. bushmen, marriage among. bushwoman, extravagant ornamentation of a. bushwomen, hair of; marriage-customs of. bustard, throat-pouch of the male; humming noise produced by a male; indian, ear-tufts of. bustards, occurrence of sexual differences and of polygamy among the; love-gestures of the male; double moult in. butler, a.g., on sexual differences in the wings of aricoris epitus; courtship of butterflies; on the colouring of the sexes in species of thecla; on the resemblance of iphias glaucippe to a leaf; on the rejection of certain moths and caterpillars by lizards and frogs. butterfly, noise produced by a; emperor; meadow brown, instability of the ocellated spots of. butterflies, proportion of the sexes in; forelegs atrophied in some males; sexual difference in the neuration of the wings of; pugnacity of male; protective resemblances of the lower surface of; display of the wings by; white, alighting upon bits of paper; attracted by a dead specimen of the same species; courtship of; male and female, inhabiting different stations. buxton, c., observations on macaws; on an instance of benevolence in a parrot. buzzard, indian honey-; variation in the crest of. cabbage butterflies. cachalot, large head of the male. cadences, musical, perception of, by animals. caecum, large, in the early progenitors of man. cairina moschata, pugnacity of the male. californian indians, decrease of. callianassa, chelae of, figured. callidryas, colours of sexes. callionymus lyra, characters of the male. callorhinus ursinus, relative size of the sexes of; courtship of. calotes maria. calotes nigrilabris, sexual difference in the colour of. cambridge, o. pickard, on the sexes of spiders; on the size of male nephila. camel, canine teeth of male. campbell, j., on the indian elephant; on the proportion of male and female births in the harems of siam. campylopterus hemileucurus. canaries distinguishing persons. canary, polygamy of the; change of plumage in, after moulting; female, selecting the best singing male; sterile hybrid, singing of a; female, singing of the; selecting a greenfinch; and siskin, pairing of. cancer pagurus. canestrini, g., on rudimentary characters and the origin of man; on rudimentary characters; on the movement of the ear in man; of the variability of the vermiform appendage in man; on the abnormal division of the malar bone in man; on abnormal conditions of the human uterus; on the persistence of the frontal suture in man; on the proportion of the sexes in silk-moths; secondary sexual characters of spiders. canfield, dr., on the horns of the antilocapra. canine teeth in man, diminution of, in man; diminution of, in horses; disappearance of, in male ruminants; large in the early progenitors of man. canines, and horns, inverse development of. canoes, use of. cantharis, difference of colour in the sexes of a species of. cantharus lineatus. capercailzie, polygamous; proportion of the sexes in the; pugnacity of the male; pairing of the; autumn meetings of the; call of the; duration of the courtship of; behaviour of the female; inconvenience of black colour to the female; sexual difference in the coloration of the; crimson eye-cere of the male. capitonidae, colours and nidification of the. capra aegagrus, crest of the male; sexual difference in the colour of. capreolus sibiricus subecaudatus. caprice, common to man and animals. caprimulgus, noise made by the males of some species of, with their wings. caprimulgus virginianus, pairing of. carabidae. carbonnier, on the natural history of the pike; on the relative size of the sexes in fishes; courtship of chinese macropus. carcineutes, sexual difference of colour in. carcinus moenas. cardinalis virginianus. carduelis elegans, sexual differences of the beak in. carnivora, marine, polygamous habits of; sexual differences in the colours of. carp, numerical proportion of the sexes in the. carr, r., on the peewit. carrier pigeon, late development of the wattle in the. carrion beetles, stridulation of. carrion-hawk, bright coloured female of. carus, prof. v., on the development of the horns in merino sheep; on antlers of red deer. cassowary, sexes and incubation of the. castnia, mode of holding wings. castoreum. castration, effects of. casuarius galeatus. cat, convoluted body in the extremity of the tail of a; sick, sympathy of a dog with a. cataract in cebus azarae. catarrh, liability of cebus azarae to. catarrhine monkeys. caterpillars, bright colours of. cathartes aura. cathartes jota, love-gestures of the male. catlin, g., correlation of colour and texture of hair in the mandans; on the development of the beard among the north american indians; on the great length of the hair in some north american tribes. caton, j.d., on the development of the horns in cervus virginianus and strongyloceros; on the wild turkey; on the presence of traces of horns in the female wapiti; on the fighting of deer; on the crest of the male wapiti; on the colours of the virginian deer; on sexual differences of colour in the wapiti; on the spots of the virginian deer. cats, dreaming; tortoise-shell; enticed by valerian; colours of. cattle, rapid increase of, in south america; domestic, lighter in winter in siberia; horns of; domestic, sexual differences of, late developed; numerical proportion of the sexes in. caudal vertebrae, number of, in macaques and baboons; basal, of monkeys, imbedded in the body. cavolini, observations on serranus. cebus, maternal affection in a; gradation of species of. cebus apella. cebus azarae, liability of, to the same diseases as man; distinct sounds produced by; early maturity of the female. cebus capucinus, polygamous; sexual differences of colour in; hair on the head of. cebus vellerosus, hair on the head of. cecidomyiidae, proportions of the sexes in. celibacy, unknown among the savages of south africa and south america. centipedes. cephalopoda, absence of secondary sexual characters in. cephalopterus ornatus. cephalopterus penduliger. cerambyx heros, stridulant organ of. ceratodus, paddle of. ceratophora aspera, nasal appendages of. ceratophora stoddartii, nasal horn of. cerceris, habits of. cercocebus aethiops, whiskers, etc., of. cercopithecus, young, seized by an eagle and rescued by the troop; definition of species of. cercopithecus cephus, sexual difference of colour in. cercopithecus cynosurus and griseo-viridis, colour of the scrotum in. cercopithecus diana, sexual differences of colour in. cercopithecus griseo-viridis. cercopithecus petaurista, whiskers, etc., of. ceres, of birds, bright colours of. ceriornis temminckii, swelling of the wattles of the male during courtship. cervulus, weapons of. cervulus moschatus, rudimentary horns of the female. cervus alces. cervus campestris, odour of. cervus canadensis, traces of horns in the female; attacking a man; sexual difference in the colour of. cervus elaphus, battles of male; horns of, with numerous points; long hairs on the throat of. cervus eldi. cervus mantchuricus. cervus paludosus, colours of. cervus strongyloceros. cervus virginianus, horns of, in course of modification. ceryle, male black-belted in some species of. cetacea, nakedness of. ceylon, frequent absence of beard in the natives of. chaffinch, proportion of the sexes in the; courtship of the. chaffinches, new mates found by. chalcophaps indicus, characters of young. chalcosoma atlas, sexual differences of. chamaeleo, sexual differences in the genus; combats of. chamaeleo bifurcus. chamaeleo owenii. chamaeleo pumilus. chamaepetes unicolor, modified wing-feather in the male. chameleons. chamois, danger-signals of; transfer of male characters to an old female. champneys, mr., acromio-basilar muscle and quadrupedal gait. chapman, dr., on stridulation in scolytus. chapuis, dr., on the transmission of sexual peculiarities in pigeons; on streaked belgian pigeons. char, male, colouring of, during the breeding season. characters, male, developed in females; secondary sexual, transmitted through both sexes; natural, artificial, exaggeration of, by man. charadrus hiaticula and pluvialis, sexes and young of. chardin on the persians. charms, worn by women. charruas, freedom of divorce among the. chasmorhynchus, difference of colour in the sexes of; colours of. chasmorhynchus niveus. chasmorhynchus nudicollis. chasmorhynchus tricarunculatus. chastity, early estimation of. chatterers, sexual differences in. cheever, rev. h.t., census of the sandwich islands. cheiroptera, absence of secondary sexual characters in. chelae of crustacea. chelonia, sexual differences in. chenalopex aegyptiacus, wing-knobs of. chera progne. chest, proportions of, in soldiers and sailors; large, of the quechua and aymara indians. chevrotains, canine teeth of. chiasognathus, stridulation of. chiasognathus grantii, mandibles of. children, legitimate and illegitimate, proportion of the sexes in. chiloe, lice of the natives of; population of. chimaera monstrosa, bony process on the head of the male. chimaeroid fishes, prehensile organs of male. chimpanzee, ears of the; representatives of the eyebrows in the; hands of the; absence of mastoid processes in the; platforms built by the; cracking nuts with a stone; direction of the hair on the arms of the; supposed evolution of the; polygamous and social habits of the. china, north, idea of female beauty in. china, southern, inhabitants of. chinese, use of flint tools by the; difficulty of distinguishing the races of the; colour of the beard in; general beardlessness of the; opinions of the, on the appearance of europeans and cingalese; compression of the feet of. chinsurdi, his opinion of beards. chlamydera maculata. chloeon, pedunculated eyes of the male of. chloephaga, coloration of the sexes in. chlorocoelus tanana. chorda dorsalis. chough, red beak of the. chromidae, frontal protuberance in male; sexual differences in colour of. chrysemys picta, long claws of the male. chrysococcyx, characters of young of. chrysomelidae, stridulation of. cicada pruinosa. cicada septendecim. cicadae, songs of the; rudimentary sound-organs in females of. cicatrix of a burn, causing modification of the facial bones. cichla, frontal protuberance of male. cimetiere du sud, paris. cincloramphus cruralis, large size of male. cinclus aquaticus. cingalese, chinese opinion of the appearance of the. cirripedes, complemental males of. civilisation, effects of, upon natural selection; influence of, in the competition of nations. clanging of geese, etc. claparede, e., on natural selection applied to man. clarke, on the marriage-customs of kalmucks. classification. claus, c., on the sexes of saphirina. cleft-palate, inherited. climacteris erythrops, sexes of. climate, cool, favourable to human progress; power of supporting extremes of, by man; want of connexion of, with colour; direct action of, on colours of birds. cloaca, existence of a, in the early progenitors of man. cloacal passage existing in the human embryo. clubs, used as weapons before dispersion of mankind. clucking of fowls. clythra -punctata, stridulation of. coan, mr., sandwich-islanders. cobbe, miss, on morality in hypothetical bee-community. cobra, ingenuity of a. coccus. coccyx, in the human embryo; convoluted body at the extremity of the; imbedded in the body. cochin-china, notions of beauty of the inhabitants of. cock, blind, fed by its companion; game, killing a kite; comb and wattles of the; preference shewn by the, for young hens; game, transparent zone in the hackles of a. cock of the rock. cockatoos, nestling; black, immature plumage of. coelenterata, absence of secondary sexual characters in. coffee, fondness of monkeys for. cold, supposed effects of; power of supporting, by man. coleoptera, stridulation of; stridulant organs of, discussed. colias edusa and hyale. collingwood, c., on the pugnacity of the butterflies of borneo; on butterflies being attracted by a dead specimen of the same species. colobus, absence of the thumb. colombia, flattened heads of savages of. colonists, success of the english as. coloration, protective, in birds. colour, supposed to be dependent on light and heat; correlation of, with immunity from certain poisons and parasites; purpose of, in lepidoptera; relation of, to sexual functions, in fishes; difference of, in the sexes of snakes; sexual differences of, in lizards; influence of, in the pairing of birds of different species; relation of, to nidification; sexual differences of, in mammals; recognition of, by quadrupeds; of children, in different races of man; of the skin in man. colours, admired alike by man and animals; bright, due to sexual selection; bright, among the lower animals; bright, protective to butterflies and moths; bright, in male fishes; transmission of, in birds. colquhoun, example of reasoning in a retriever. columba passerina, young of. colymbus glacialis, anomalous young of. comb, development of, in fowls. combs and wattles in male birds. community, preservation of variations useful to the, by natural selection. complexion, different in men and women, in an african tribe. compositae, gradation of species among the. comte, c., on the expression of the ideal of beauty by sculpture. conditions of life, action of changed, upon man; influence of, on plumage of birds. condor, eyes and comb of the. conjugations, origin of. conscience, absence of, in some criminals. constitution, difference of, in different races of men. consumption, liability of cebus azarae to; connection between complexion and. convergence of characters. cooing of pigeons and doves. cook, captain, on the nobles of the sandwich islands. cope, e.d., on the dinosauria. cophotis ceylanica, sexual differences of. copris. copris isidis, sexual differences of. copris lunaris, stridulation of. corals, bright colours of. coral-snakes. cordylus, sexual difference of colour in a species of. corfu, habits of the chaffinch in. cornelius, on the proportions of the sexes in lucanus cervus. corpora wolffiana, agreement of, with the kidneys of fishes. correlated variation. correlation, influence of, in the production of races. corse, on the mode of fighting of the elephant. corvus corone. corvus graculus, red beak of. corvus pica, nuptial assembly of. corydalis cornutus, large jaws of the male. cosmetornis. cosmetornis vexillarius, elongation of wing-feathers in. cotingidae, sexual differences in; coloration of the sexes of; resemblance of the females of distinct species of. cottus scorpius, sexual differences in. coulter, dr., on the californian indians. counting, origin of; limited power of, in primeval man. courage, variability of, in the same species; universal high appreciation of; importance of; characteristic of men. courtship, greater eagerness of males in; of fishes; of birds. cow, winter change of colour. crab, devil. crab, shore, habits of. crabro cribrarius, dilated tibiae of the male. crabs, proportions of the sexes in. cranz, on the inheritance of dexterity in seal-catching. crawfurd, on the number of species of man. crenilabrus massa and c. melops, nests, built by. crest, origin of, in polish fowls. crests, of birds, difference of, in the sexes; dorsal hairy, of mammals. cricket, field-, stridulation of the; pugnacity of male. cricket, house-, stridulation of the. crickets, sexual differences in. crinoids, complexity of. crioceridae, stridulation of the. croaking of frogs. crocodiles, musky odour of, during the breeding season. crocodilia. crossbills, characters of young. crosses in man. crossing of races, effects of the. crossoptilon auritum, adornment of both sexes of; sexes alike in. crotch, g.r., on the stridulation of beetles; on the stridulation of heliopathes; on the stridulation of acalles; habit of female deer at breeding time. crow, indians, long hair of the. crow, young of the. crows, vocal organs of the; living in triplets. crows, carrion, new mates found by. crows, indian, feeding their blind companions. cruelty of savages to animals. crustacea, parasitic, loss of limbs by female; prehensile feet and antennae of; male, more active than female; parthenogenesis in; secondary sexual characters of; amphipod, males sexually mature while young; auditory hairs of. crystal worn in the lower lip by some central african women. cuckoo fowls. culicidae, attracted by each other's humming. cullen, dr., on the throat-pouch of the male bustard. cultivation of plants, probable origin of. cupples, mr., on the numerical proportion of the sexes in dogs, sheep, and cattle; on the scotch deerhound; on sexual preference in dogs. curculionidae, sexual difference in length of snout in some; hornlike processes in male; musical. curiosity, manifestations of, by animals. curlews, double moult in. cursores, comparative absence of sexual differences among the. curtis, j., on the proportion of the sexes in athalia. cuvier, f., on the recognition of women by male quadrumana. cuvier, g., on the number of caudal vertebrae in the mandrill; on instinct and intelligence; views of, as to the position of man; on the position of the seals; on hectocotyle. cyanalcyon, sexual difference in colours of; immature plumage of. cyanecula suecica, sexual differences of. cychrus, sounds produced by. cycnia mendica, sexual difference of, in colour. cygnus ferus, trachea of. cygnus immutabilis. cygnus olor, white young of. cyllo leda, instability of the ocellated spots of. cynanthus, variation in the genus. cynipidae, proportion of the sexes in. cynocephalus, difference of the young from the adult; male, recognition of women by; polygamous habits of species of. cynocephalus babouin. cynocephalus chacma. cynocephalus gelada. cynocephalus hamadryas, sexual difference of colour in. cynocephalus leucophaeus, colours of the sexes of. cynocephalus mormon, colours of the male. cynocephalus porcarius, mane of the male. cynocephalus sphinx. cynopithecus niger, ear of. cypridina, proportions of the sexes in. cyprinidae, proportion of the sexes in the. cyprinidae, indian. cyprinodontidae, sexual differences in the. cyprinus auratus. cypris, relation of the sexes in. cyrtodactylus rubidus. cystophora cristata, hood of. dacelo, sexual difference of colour in. dacelo gaudichaudi, young male of. dal-ripa, a kind of ptarmigan. damalis albifrons, peculiar markings of. damalis pygarga, peculiar markings of. dampness of climate, supposed influence of, on the colour of the skin. danaidae. dances of birds. dancing, universality of. danger-signals of animals. daniell, dr., his experience of residence in west africa. darfur, protuberances artificially produced by natives of. darwin, f., on the stridulation of dermestes murinus. dasychira pudibunda, sexual difference of colour in. davis, a.h., on the pugnacity of the male stag-beetle. davis, j.b., on the capacity of the skull in various races of men; on the beards of the polynesians. death's head sphinx. death-rate higher in towns than in rural districts. death-tick. de candolle, alph., on a case of inherited power of moving the scalp. declensions, origin of. decoration in birds. decticus. deer, development of the horns in; spots of young; horns of; use of horns of; horns of a, in course of modification; size of the horns of; female, pairing with one male whilst others are fighting for her; male, attracted by the voice of the female; male, odour emitted by. deer, axis, sexual difference in the colour of the. deer, fallow, different coloured herds of. deer, mantchurian. deer, virginian, colour of the, not affected by castration; colours of. deerhound, scotch, greater size of the male. defensive orders of mammals. de geer, c., on a female spider destroying a male. dekay, dr., on the bladder-nose seal. delorenzi, g., division of malar bone. demerara, yellow fever in. dendrocygna. dendrophila frontalis, young of. denison, sir w., manner of ridding themselves of vermin among the australians; extinction of tasmanians. denny, h., on the lice of domestic animals. dermestes murinus, stridulation of. descent traced through the mother alone. deserts, protective colouring of animals inhabiting. desmarest, on the absence of suborbital pits in antilope subgutturosa; on the whiskers of macacus; on the colour of the opossum; on the colours of the sexes of mus minutus; on the colouring of the ocelot; on the colours of seals; on antilope caama; on the colours of goats; on sexual difference of colour in ateles marginatus; on the mandrill; on macacus cynomolgus. desmoulins, on the number of species of man; on the muskdeer. desor, on the imitation of man by monkeys. despine, p., on criminals destitute of conscience. development, embryonic of man; correlated. devil, not believed in by the fuegians. devil-crab. devonian, fossil-insect from the. dewlaps, of cattle and antelopes. diadema, sexual differences of colouring in the species of. diamond-beetles, bright colours of. diastema, occurrence of, in man. diastylidae, proportion of the sexes in. dicrurus, racket-shaped feathers in; nidification of. dicrurus macrocercus, change of plumage in. didelphis opossum, sexual difference in the colour of. differences, comparative, between different species of birds of the same sex. digits, supernumerary, more frequent in men than in women; supernumerary, inheritance of; supernumerary, early development of. dimorphism, in females of water-beetles; in neurothemis and agrion. diodorus, on the absence of beard in the natives of ceylon. dipelicus cantori, sexual differences of. diplopoda, prehensile limbs of the male. dipsas cynodon, sexual difference in the colour of. diptera. disease, generated by the contact of distinct peoples. diseases, common to man and the lower animals; difference of liability to, in different races of men; new, effects of, upon savages; sexually limited. display, coloration of lepidoptera for; of plumage by male birds. distribution, wide, of man; geographical, as evidence of specific distinctness in man. disuse, effects of, in producing rudimentary organs; and use of parts, effects of; of parts, influence of, on the races of men. divorce, freedom of, among the charruas. dixon, e.s., on the pairing of different species of geese; on the courtship of peafowl. dobrizhoffer, on the marriage-customs of the abipones. dobson, dr., on the cheiroptera; scent-glands of bats; frugivorous bats. dogs, suffering from tertian ague; memory of; dreaming; diverging when drawing sledges over thin ice; exercise of reasoning faculties by; domestic, progress of, in moral qualities; distinct tones uttered by; parallelism between his affection for his master and religious feeling; sociability of the; sympathy of, with a sick cat; sympathy of, with his master; their possession of conscience; possible use of the hair on the fore-legs of the; races of the; numerical proportion of male and female births in; sexual affection between individuals of; howling at certain notes; rolling in carrion. dolichocephalic structure, possible cause of. dolphins, nakedness of. domestic animals, races of; change of breeds of. domestication, influence of, in removing the sterility of hybrids. d'orbigny, a., on the influence of dampness and dryness on the colour of the skin; on the yuracaras. dotterel. doubleday, e., on sexual differences in the wings of butterflies. doubleday, h., on the proportion of the sexes in the smaller moths; males of lasiocampa quercus and on the attraction of the saturnia carpini by the female; on the proportion of the sexes in the lepidoptera; on the ticking of anobium tesselatum; on the structure of ageronia feronia; on white butterflies alighting upon paper. douglas, j.w., on the sexual differences of the hemiptera; colours of british homoptera. down, of birds. draco, gular appendages of. dragonet, gemmeous. dragon-flies, caudal appendages of male; relative size of the sexes of; difference in the sexes of; want of pugnacity by the male. drake, breeding plumage of the. dreams, possible source of the belief in spiritual agencies. drill, sexual difference of colour in the. dromaeus irroratus. dromolaea, saharan species of. drongo shrike. drongos, racket-shaped feathers in the tails of. dryness of climate, supposed influence of, on the colour of the skin. dryopithecus. duck, harlequin, age of mature plumage in the; breeding in immature plumage. duck, long-tailed, preference of male, for certain females. duck, pintail, pairing with a widgeon. duck, voice of the; pairing with a shield-drake; immature plumage of the. duck, wild, sexual differences in the; speculum and male characters of; pairing with a pin-tail drake. ducks, wild, becoming polygamous under partial domestication; dogs and cats recognised by. dufosse, dr., sounds produced by fish. dugong, nakedness of; tusks of. dujardin, on the relative size of the cerebral ganglia, in insects. duncan, dr., on the fertility of early marriages; comparative health of married and single. dupont, m., on the occurrence of the supra-condyloid foramen in the humerus of man. durand, j.p., on causes of variation. dureau de la malle, on the songs of birds; on the acquisition of an air by blackbirds. dutch, retention of their colour by the, in south africa. duty, sense of. duvaucel, female hylobates washing her young. dyaks, pride of, in mere homicide. dynastes, large size of males of. dynastini, stridulation of. dytiscus, dimorphism of females of; grooved elytra of the female. eagle, young cercopithecus rescued from, by the troop. eagle, white-headed, breeding in immature plumage. eagles, golden, new mates found by. ear, motion of the; external shell of the, useless in man; rudimentary point of the, in man. ears, more variable in men than women; piercing and ornamentation of the. earwigs, parental feeling in. echidna. echini, bright colours of some. echinodermata, absence of secondary sexual characters in. echis carinata. ecker, figure of the human embryo; on the development of the gyri and sulci of the brain; on the sexual differences in the pelvis in man; on the presence of a sagittal crest in australians. edentata, former wide range of, in america; absence of secondary sexual characters in. edolius, racket-shaped feathers in. edwards, mr., on the proportion of the sexes in north american species of papilio. eels, hermaphroditism of. egerton, sir p., on the use of the antlers of deer; on the pairing of red deer; on the bellowing of stags. eggs, hatched by male fishes. egret, indian, sexes and young of. egrets, breeding plumage of; white. ehrenberg, on the mane of the male hamadryas baboon. ekstrom, m., on harelda glacialis. elachista rufocinerea, habits of male. eland, development of the horns of the. elands, sexual differences of colour in. elaphomyia, sexual differences in. elaphrus uliginosus, stridulation of. elaps. elateridae, proportion of the sexes in. elaters, luminous. elephant, rate of increase of the; nakedness of the; using a fan; indian, forbearance to his keeper; polygamous habits of the; pugnacity of the male; tusks of; indian, mode of fighting of the; male, odour emitted by the; attacking white or grey horses. elevation of abode, modifying influence of. elimination of inferior individuals. elk, winter change of the. elk, irish, horns of the. ellice islands, beards of the natives. elliot, d.g., on pelecanus erythrorhynchus. elliot, r., on the numerical proportion of the sexes in young rats; on the proportion of the sexes in sheep. elliot, sir w., on the polygamous habits of the indian wild boar. ellis, on the prevalence of infanticide in polynesia. elphinstone, mr., on local difference of stature among the hindoos; on the difficulty of distinguishing the native races of india. elytra, of the females of dytiscus acilius, hydroporus. emberiza, characters of young. emberiza miliaria. emberiza schoeniclus, head-feathers of the male. embryo of man; of the dog. embryos of mammals, resemblance of the. emigration. emotions experienced by the lower animals in common with man; manifested by animals. emperor butterfly. emperor moth. emu, sexes and incubation of. emulation of singing birds. endurance, estimation of. energy, a characteristic of men. england, numerical proportion of male and female births in. engleheart, mr., on the finding of new mates by starlings. english, success of, as colonists. engravers, short-sighted. entomostraca. entozoa, difference of colour between the males and females of some. environment, direct action of the, in causing differences between the sexes. envy, persistence of. eocene period, possible divergence of men during the. eolidae, colours of, produced by the biliary glands. epeira nigra, small size of the male of. ephemerae. ephemeridae. ephippiger vitium, stridulating organs of. epicalia, sexual differences of colouring in the species of. equus hemionus, winter change of. erateina, coloration of. ercolani, prof., hermaphroditism in eels. erect attitude of man. eristalis, courting of. eschricht, on the development of hair in man; on a languinous moustache in a female foetus; on the want of definition between the scalp and the forehead in some children; on the arrangement of the hair in the human foetus; on the hairiness of the face in the human foetus of both sexes. esmeralda, difference of colour in the sexes of. esox lucius. esox reticulatus. esquimaux, their belief in the inheritance of dexterity in seal-catching; mode of life of. estrelda amandava, pugnacity of the male. eubagis, sexual differences of colouring in the species of. euchirus longimanus, sound produced by. eudromias morinellus. eulampis jugularis, colours of the female. euler, on the rate of increase in the united states. eunomota superciliaris, racket-shaped feathers in the tail of. eupetomena macroura, colours of the female. euphema splendida. euplocamus erythrophthalmus, possession of spurs by the female. europe, ancient inhabitants of. europeans, difference of, from hindoos; hairiness of, probably due to reversion. eurostopodus, sexes of. eurygnathus, different proportions of the head in the sexes of. eustephanus, sexual differences of species of; young of. exaggeration of natural characters by man. exogamy. experience, acquisition of, by animals. expression, resemblances in, between man and the apes. extinction of races, causes of. eye, destruction of the; change of position in; obliquity of, regarded as a beauty by the chinese and japanese. eyebrows, elevation of; development of long hairs in; in monkeys; eradicated in parts of south america and africa; eradication of, by the indians of paraguay. eyelashes, eradication of, by the indians of paraguay. eyelids, coloured black, in part of africa. eyes, pillared, of the male of chloeon; difference in the colour of, in the sexes of birds. eyton, t.c., observations on the development of the horns in the fallow deer. eyzies, les, human remains from. fabre, m., on the habits of cerceris. facial bones, causes of modification of the. faculties, diversity of, in the same race of men; inheritance of; diversity of, in animals of the same species; mental variation of, in the same species; of birds. fakirs, indian, tortures undergone by. falco leucocephalus. falco peregrinus. falco tinnunclus. falcon, peregrine, new mate found by. falconer, h., on the mode of fighting of the indian elephant; on canines in a female deer; on hyomoschus aquaticus. falkland islands, horses of. fallow-deer, different coloured herds of. famines, frequency of, among savages. farr, dr., on the effects of profligacy; on the influence of marriage on mortality. farrar, f.w., on the origin of language; on the crossing or blending of languages; on the absence of the idea of god in certain races of men; on early marriages of the poor; on the middle ages. farre, dr., on the structure of the uterus. fashions, long prevalence of, among savages. faye, prof., on the numerical proportion of male and female births in norway and russia; on the greater mortality of male children at and before birth. feathers, modified, producing sounds; elongated, in male birds; racket-shaped; barbless and with filamentous barbs in certain birds; shedding of margins of. feeding, high, probable influence of, in the pairing of birds of different species. feet, thickening of the skin on the soles of the; modification of, in man. felis canadensis, throat-ruff of. felis pardalis and f. mitis, sexual difference in the colouring of. female, behaviour of the, during courtship. female birds, differences of. females, presence of rudimentary male organs in; preference of, for certain males; pursuit of, by males; occurrence of secondary sexual characters in; development of male character by. females and males, comparative numbers of; comparative mortality of, while young. femur and tibia, proportions of, in the aymara indians. fenton, mr., decrease of maories; infanticide amongst the maories. ferguson, mr., on the courtship of fowls. fertilisation, phenomena of, in plants; in the lower animals. fertility lessened under changed conditions. fevers, immunity of negroes and mulattoes from. fiber zibethicus, protective colouring of it. fick, h., effect of conscription for military service. fidelity, in the elephant; of savages to one another; importance of. field-slaves, difference of, from house-slaves. fiji archipelago, population of the. fiji islands, beards of the natives; marriage-customs of the. fijians, burying their old and sick parents alive; estimation of the beard among the; admiration of, for a broad occiput. filial affection, partly the result of natural selection. filum terminale. finch, racket-shaped feathers in the tail of a. finches, spring change of colour in; british, females of the. fingers, partially coherent, in species of hylobates. finlayson, on the cochin chinese. fire, use of. fischer, on the pugnacity of the male of lethrus cephalotes. fischer, f. von, on display of brightly coloured parts by monkeys in courtship. fish, eagerness of male; proportion of the sexes in; sounds produced by. fishes, kidneys of, represented by corpora wolffiana in the human embryo; male, hatching ova in their mouths; receptacles for ova possessed by; relative size of the sexes in; fresh-water, of the tropics; protective resemblances in; change of colour in; nest-building; spawning of; sounds produced by; continued growth of. flamingo, age of mature plumage. flexor pollicis longus, similar variation of, in man. flies, humming of. flint tools. flints, difficulty of chipping into form. florida, quiscalus major in. florisuga mellivora. flounder, coloration of the. flower, w.h., on the abductor of the fifth metatarsal in apes; on the position of the seals; on the pithecia monachu; on the throat-pouch of the male bustard. fly-catchers, colours and nidification of. foetus, human, woolly covering of the; arrangement of the hair on. food, influence of, upon stature. foot, prehensile power of the, retained in some savages; prehensile, in the early progenitors of man. foramen, supra-condyloid, exceptional occurrence of in the humerus of man; in the early progenitors of man. forbes, d., on the aymara indians; on local variation of colour in the quichuas; on the hairlessness of the aymaras and quichuas; on the long hair of the aymaras and quichaus. forel, f., on white young swans. forester, hon. o.w., on an orphan hawk. formica rufa, size of the cerebral ganglia in. fossils, absence of, connecting man with the apes. fowl, occurrence of spurs in the female; game, early pugnacity of; polish, early development of cranial peculiarities of; variations in plumage of; examples of correlated development in the; domestic, breeds and sub-breeds of. fowls, spangled hamburg; inheritance of changes of plumage by; sexual peculiarities in, transmitted only to the same sex; loss of secondary sexual characters by male; polish, origin of the crest in; period of inheritance of characters by; cuckoo-; development of the comb in; numerical proportion of the sexes in; courtship of; mongrel, between a black spanish cock and different hens; pencilled hamburg, difference of the sexes in; spanish, sexual differences of the comb in; spurred, in both sexes. fox, w.d., on some half-tamed wild ducks becoming polygamous, and on polygamy in the guinea-fowl and canary-bird; on the proportion of the sexes in cattle; on the pugnacity of the peacock; on a nuptial assembly of magpies; on the finding of new mates by crows; on partridges living in triplets; on the pairing of a goose with a chinese gander. foxes, wariness of young, in hunting districts; black. fraser, c., on the different colours of the sexes in a species of squilla. fraser, g., colours of thecla. frere, hookham, quoting theognis on selection in mankind. fringilla cannabina. fringilla ciris, age of mature plumage in. fringilla cyanea, age of mature plumage in. fringilla leucophrys, young of. fringilla spinus. fringilla tristis, change of colour in, in spring; young of. fringillidae, resemblance of the females of distinct species of. frog, bright coloured and distasteful to birds. frogs, male; temporary receptacles for ova possessed by; ready to breed before the females; fighting of; vocal organs of. frontal bone, persistence of the suture in. fruits, poisonous, avoided by animals. fuegians, difference of stature among the; power of sight in the; skill of, in stone-throwing; resistance of the, to their severe climate; mental capacity of the; quasi-religious sentiments of the; resemblance of, in mental characters, to europeans; mode of life of the; aversion of, to hair on the face; said to admire european women. fulgoridae, songs of the. fur, whiteness of, in arctic animals in winter. fur-bearing animals, acquired sagacity of. gallicrex, sexual difference in the colour of the irides in. gallicrex cristatus, pugnacity of male; red carbuncle occurring in the male during the breeding-season. gallinaceae, frequency of polygamous habits and of sexual differences in the; love-gestures of; decomposed feathers in; stripes of young; comparative sexual differences between the species of; plumage of. gallinaceous birds, weapons of the male; racket-shaped feathers on the heads of. gallinula chloropus, pugnacity of the male. galloperdix, spurs of; development of spurs in the female. gallophasis, young of. galls. gallus bankiva, neck-hackles of. gallus stanleyi, pugnacity of the male. galton, mr., on hereditary genius; gregariousness and independence in animals; on the struggle between the social and personal impulses; on the effects of natural selection on civilised nations; on the sterility of sole daughters; on the degree of fertility of people of genius; on the early marriages of the poor; on the ancient greeks; on the middle ages; on the progress of the united states; on south african notions of beauty. gammarus, use of the chelae of. gammarus marinus. gannets, white only when mature. ganoid fishes. gaour, horns of the. gap between man and the apes. gaper, sexes and young of. gardner, on an example of rationality in a gelasimus. garrulus glandarius. gartner, on sterility of hybrid plants. gasteropoda, pulmoniferous, courtship of. gasterosteus, nidification of. gasterosteus leiurus. gasterosteus trachurus. gastrophora, wings of, brightly coloured beneath. gauchos, want of humanity among the. gaudry, m., on a fossil monkey. gavia, seasonal change of plumage in. geese, clanging noise made by; pairing of different species of; canada, selection of mates by. gegenbaur, c., on the number of digits in the ichthyopterygia; on the hermaphroditism of the remote progenitors of the vertebrata; two types of nipple in mammals. gelasimus, proportions of the sexes in a species of; use of the enlarged chelae of the male; pugnacity of males of; rational actions of a; difference of colour in the sexes of a species of. gemmules, dormant in one sex. genius, hereditary. genius, fertility of men and women of. geoffroy st.-hilaire, isid., on the recognition of women by male quadrumana; on monstrosities; coincidences of arrested development with polydactylism; on animal-like anomalies in the human structure; on the correlation of monstrosities; on the distribution of hair in man and monkeys; on the caudal vertebrae of monkeys; on correlated variability; on the classification of man; on the long hair on the heads of species of semnopithecus; on the hair in monkeys; on the development of horns in female deer; and f. cuvier, on the mandrill; on hylobates. geographical distribution, as evidence of specific distinctions in man. geometrae, brightly coloured beneath. geophagus, frontal protuberance of, male; eggs hatched by the male, in the mouth or branchial cavity. georgia, change of colour in germans settled in. geotrupes, stridulation of. gerbe, m., on the nest-building of crenilabus massa and c. melops. gerland, dr., on the prevalence of infanticide; on the extinction of races. gervais, p., on the hairiness of the gorilla; on the mandrill. gesture-language. ghost-moth, sexual difference of colour in the. giard, m., disputes descent of vertebrates from ascidians; colour of sponges and ascidians; musky odour of sphinx. gibbon, voice of. gibbon, hoolock, nose of. gibbs, sir d., on differences of the voice in different races of men. gill, dr., male seals larger than females; sexual differences in seals. giraffe, its mode of using the horns; mute, except in the rutting season. giraud-teulon, on the cause of short sight. glanders, communicable to man from the lower animals. glands, odoriferous, in mammals. glareola, double moult in. glomeris limbata, difference of colour in the sexes of. glow-worm, female, apterous; luminosity of the. gnats, dances of; auditory powers of. gnu, skeletons of, found locked together; sexual differences in colour of the. goat, male, wild, falling on his horns; male, odour emitted by; male, wild, crest of the; berbura, mane, dewlap, etc., of the male; kemas, sexual difference in the colour of the. goats, sexual differences in the horns of; horns of; mode of fighting of; domestic, sexual differences of, late developed; beards of. goatsucker, virginian, pairing of the. gobies, nidification of. god, want of the idea of, in some races of men. godron, m., on variability; on difference of stature; on the want of connexion between climate and the colour of the skin; on the colour of the skin; on the colour of infants. goldfinch, proportion of the sexes in the; sexual differences of the beak in the; courtship of the. goldfinch, north american, young of. goldfish. gomphus, proportions of the sexes in; difference in the sexes of. gonepteryx rhamni, sexual difference of colour in. goodsir, prof., on the affinity of the lancelet to the ascidians. goosander, young of. goose, antarctic, colours of the. goose, canada, pairing with a bernicle gander. goose, chinese, knob on the beak of the. goose, egyptian. goose, sebastopol, plumage of. goose, snow-, whiteness of the. goose, spur-winged. gorilla, semi-erect attitude of the; mastoid processes of the; protecting himself from rain with his hands; manner of sitting; supposed to be a kind of mandrill; polygamy of the; voice of the; cranium of; fighting of male. gosse, p.h., on the pugnacity of the male humming-bird. gosse, m., on the inheritance of artificial modifications of the skull. gould, b.a., on variation in the length of the legs in man; measurements of american soldiers; on the proportions of the body and capacity of the lungs in different races of men; on the inferior vitality of mulattoes. gould, j., on migration of swifts; on the arrival of male snipes before the females; on the numerical proportion of the sexes in birds; on neomorpha grypus; on the species of eustephanus; on the australian musk-duck; on the relative size of the sexes in briziura lobata and cincloramphus cruralis; on lobivanellus lobatus; on habits of menura alberti; on the rarity of song in brilliant birds; on selasphorus platycerus; on the bower-birds; on the ornamental plumage of the humming-birds; on the moulting of the ptarmigan; on the display of plumage by the male humming-birds; on the shyness of adorned male birds; on the decoration of the bowers of bower-birds; on the decoration of their nest by humming-birds; on variation in the genus cynanthus; on the colour of the thighs in a male parrakeet; on urosticte benjamini; on the nidification of the orioles; on obscurely-coloured birds building concealed nests; on trogons and king-fishers; on australian parrots; on australian pigeons; on the moulting of the ptarmigan; on the immature plumage of birds; on the australian species of turnix; on the young of aithurus polytmus; on the colours of the bills of toucans; on the relative size of the sexes in the marsupials of australia; on the colours of the marsupials. goureaux, on the stridulation of mutilla europaea. gout, sexually transmitted. graba, on the pied ravens of the feroe islands; variety of the guillemot. gradation of secondary sexual characters in birds. grallatores, absence of secondary sexual characters in; double moult in some. grallina, nidification of. grasshoppers, stridulation of the. gratiolet, prof., on the anthropomorphous apes; on the evolution of the anthropomorphous apes; on the difference in the development of the brains of apes and of man. gray, asa, on the gradation of species among the compositae. gray, j.e., on the caudal vertebrae of monkeys; on the presence of rudiments of horns in the female of cervulus moschatus; on the horns of goats and sheep; on crests of male antelopes; on the beard of the ibex; on the berbura goat; on sexual differences in the coloration of rodents; ornaments of male sloth; on the colours of the elands; on the sing-sing antelope; on the colours of goats; on lemur macaco; on the hog-deer. "greatest happiness principle." greeks, ancient. green, a.h., on beavers fighting; on the voice of the beaver. greenfinch, selected by a female canary. greg, w.r., on the effects of natural selection on civilised nations; on the early marriages of the poor; on the ancient greeks. grenadiers, prussian. greyhounds, numerical proportion of the sexes in; numerical proportion of male and female births in. grouse, red, monogamous; pugnacity of young male; producing a sound by beating their wings together; duration of courtship of; colours and nidification of. gruber, dr., on the occurrence of the supra-condyloid foramen in the humerus of man; on division of malar bone; stridulation of locust; on ephippiger. grus americanus, age of mature plumage in; breeding in immature plumage. grus virgo, trachea of. gryllus campestris, pugnacity of male. gryllus domesticus. grypus, sexual differences in the beak in. guanacoes, battles of; canine teeth of. guanas, strife for women among the; polyandry among the. guanche skeletons, occurrence of the supra-condyloid foramen in the humerus of. guaranys, proportion of men and women among; colour of new-born children of the; beards of the. guenee, a., on the sexes of hyperythra. guilding, l., on the stridulation of the locustidae. guillemot, variety of the. guinea, sheep of, with males only horned. guinea-fowl, monogamous; occasional polygamy of the; markings of the. guinea-pigs, inheritance of the effects of operations by. gulls, seasonal change of plumage in; white. gunther, dr., on paddle of ceradotus; on hermaphroditism in serranus; on male fishes hatching ova in their mouths; on mistaking infertile female fishes for males; on the prehensile organs of male plagiostomous fishes; spines and brushes on fishes; on the pugnacity of the male salmon and trout; on the relative size of the sexes in fishes; on sexual differences in fishes; on the genus callionymus; on a protective resemblance of a pipe-fish; on the genus solenostoma; on the coloration of frogs and toads; combat of testudo elegans; on the sexual differences in the ophidia; on differences of the sexes of lizards. gynanisa isis, ocellated spots of. gypsies, uniformity of, in various parts of the world. habits, bad, facilitated by familiarity; variability of the force of. haeckel, e., on the origin of man; on rudimentary characters; on death caused by inflammation of the vermiform appendage; on the canine teeth in man; on the steps by which man became a biped; on man as a member of the catarrhine group; on the position of the lemuridae; on the genealogy of the mammalia; on the lancelet; on the transparency of pelagic animals; on the musical powers of women. hagen, h., and walsh, b.d., on american neuroptera. hair, development of, in man; character of, supposed to be determined by light and heat; distribution of, in man; possibly removed for ornamental purposes; arrangement and direction of; of the early progenitors of man; different texture of, in distinct races; and skin, correlation of colour of; development of, in mammals; management of, among different peoples; great length of, in some north american tribes; elongation of the, on the human head; possible inherited effect of plucking out. hairiness, difference of, in the sexes in man; variation of, in races of men. hairs and excretory pores, numerical relation of, in sheep. hairy family, siamese. halbertsma, prof., hermaphroditism in serranus. hamadryas baboon, turning over stones; mane of the male. hamilton, c., on the cruelty of the kaffirs to animals; on the engrossment of the women by the kaffir chiefs. hammering, difficulty of. hancock, a., on the colours of the nudibranch mollusca. hands, larger at birth, in the children of labourers; structure of, in the quadrumana; and arms, freedom of, indirectly correlated with diminution of canines. handwriting, inherited. handyside, dr., supernumerary mammae in men. harcourt, e. vernon, on fringilla cannabina. hare, protective colouring of the. harelda glacialis. hares, battles of male. harlan, dr., on the difference between field-and house-slaves. harris, j.m., on the relation of complexion to climate. harris, t.w., on the katy-did locust; on the stridulation of the grasshoppers; on oecanthus nivalis; on the colouring of lepidoptera; on the colouring of saturnia io. harting, spur of the ornithorhynchus. hartman, dr., on the singing of cicada septendecim. hatred, persistence of. haughton, s., on a variation of the flexor pollicis longus in man. hawks, feeding orphan nestling. hayes, dr., on the diverging of sledge-dogs on thin ice. haymond, r., on the drumming of the male tetrao umbellus; on the drumming of birds. head, altered position of, to suit the erect attitude of man; hairiness of, in man; processes of, in male beetles; artificial alterations of the form of the. hearne, on strife for women among the north american indians; on the north american indians' notion of female beauty; repeated elopements of a north american woman. heart, in the human embryo. heat, supposed effects of. hectocotyle. hedge-warbler, young of the. heel, small projection of, in the aymara indians. hegt, m., on the development of the spurs in peacocks. heliconidae, mimicry of, by other butterflies. heliopathes, stridulation peculiar to the male. heliothrix auriculata, young of. helix pomatia, example of individual attachment in. hellins, j., proportions of sexes of lepidoptera reared by. helmholtz, on pleasure derived from harmonies; on the human eye; on the vibration of the auditory hairs of crustacea; the physiology of harmony. hemiptera. hemitragus, beardless in both sexes. hemsbach, m. von, on medial mamma in man. hen, clucking of. hepburn, mr., on the autumn song of the water-ouzel. hepialus humuli, sexual difference of colour in the. herbs, poisonous, avoided by animals. hermaphroditism, of embryos; in fishes. herodias bubulcus, vernal moult of. heron, sir r., on the habits of peafowl. herons, love-gestures of; decomposed feathers in; breeding plumage of; young of the; sometimes dimorphic; continued growth of crest and plumes in the males of some; change of colour in some. hesperomys cognatus. hetaerina, proportion of the sexes in; difference in the sexes of. heterocerus, stridulation of. hewitt, mr., on a game-cock killing a kite; on the recognition of dogs and cats by ducks; on the pairing of a wild duck with a pintail drake; on the courtship of fowls; on the coupling of pheasants with common hens. hilgendorf, sounds produced by crustaceans. hindoo, his horror of breaking his caste. hindoos, local difference of stature among; difference of, from europeans; colour of the beard in. hipparchia janira, instability of the ocellated spots of. hippocampus, development of; marsupial receptacles of the male. hippocampus minor. hippopotamus, nakedness of. hips, proportions of, in soldiers and sailors. hodgson, s., on the sense of duty. hoffberg, on the horns of the reindeer; on sexual preferences shewn by reindeer. hoffman, prof., protective colours; fighting of frogs. hog, wart-; river-. hog-deer. holland, sir h., on the effects of new diseases. homologous structures, correlated variation of. homoptera, stridulation of the, and orthoptera, discussed. honduras, quiscalus major in. honey-buzzard of india, variation in the crest of. honey-sucker, females and young of. honey-suckers, moulting of the; australian, nidification of. honour, law of. hooker, dr., forbearance of elephant to his keeper; on the colour of the beard in man. hookham, mr., on mental concepts in animals. hoolock gibbon, nose of. hoopoe, sounds produced by male. hoplopterus armatus, wing-spurs of. hornbill, african, inflation of the neck-wattle of the male during courtship. hornbills, sexual difference in the colour of the eyes in; nidification and incubation of. horne, c., on the rejection of a brightly-coloured locust by lizards and birds. horns, sexual differences of, in sheep and goats; loss of, in female merino sheep; development of, in deer; development in antelopes; from the head and thorax, in male beetles; of deer; originally a masculine character in sheep; and canine teeth, inverse development of. horse, fossil, extinction of the, in south america; polygamous; canine teeth of male; winter change of colour. horses, rapid increase of, in south america; diminution of canine teeth in; dreaming; of the falkland islands and pampas; numerical proportion of the sexes, in; lighter in winter in siberia; sexual preferences in; pairing preferently with those of the same colour; numerical proportion of male and female births in; formerly striped. hottentot women, peculiarities of. hottentots, lice of; readily become musicians; notions of female beauty of the; compression of nose by. hough, dr. s., men's temperature more variable than women's; proportion of sexes in man. house-slaves, difference of, from field-slaves. houzeau, on the baying of the dog; on reason in dogs; birds killed by telegraph wires; on the cries of domestic fowls and parrots; animals feel no pity; suicide in the aleutian islands. howorth, h.h., extinction of savages. huber, p., on ants playing together; on memory in ants; on the intercommunication of ants; on the recognition of each other by ants after separation. huc, on chinese opinions of the appearance of europeans. huia, the, of new zealand. human, man, classed alone in a kingdom. human sacrifices. humanity, unknown among some savages; deficiency of, among savages. humboldt, a. von, on the rationality of mules; on a parrot preserving the language of a lost tribe; on the cosmetic arts of savages; on the exaggeration of natural characters by man; on the red painting of american indians. hume, d., on sympathetic feelings. humming-bird, racket-shaped feathers in the tail of a; display of plumage by the male. humming-birds, ornament their nests; polygamous; proportion of the sexes in; sexual differences in; pugnacity of male; modified primaries of male; coloration of the sexes of; display by; nidification of the; colours of female; young of. humour, sense of, in dogs. humphreys, h.n., on the habits of the stickleback. hunger, instinct of. huns, ancient, flattening of the nose by the. hunter, j., on the number of species of man; on secondary sexual characters; on the general behaviour of female animals during courtship; on the muscles of the larynx in song-birds; on strength of males; on the curled frontal hair of the bull; on the rejection of an ass by a female zebra. hunter, w.w., on the recent rapid increase of the santali; on the santali. huss, dr. max, on mammary glands. hussey, mr., on a partridge distinguishing persons. hutchinson, col., example of reasoning in a retriever. hutton, captain, on the male wild goat falling on his horns. huxley, t.h., on the structural agreement of man with the apes; on the agreement of the brain in man with that of lower animals; on the adult age of the orang; on the embryonic development of man; on the origin of man; on variation in the skulls of the natives of australia; on the abductor of the fifth metatarsal in apes; on the nature of the reasoning power; on the position of man; on the suborders of primates; on the lemuridae; on the dinosauria; on the amphibian affinities of the ichthyosaurians; on variability of the skull in certain races of man; on the races of man; supplement on the brain. hybrid birds, production of. hydrophobia, communicable between man and the lower animals. hydroporus, dimorphism of females of. hyelaphus porcinus. hygrogonus. hyla, singing species of. hylobates, absence of the thumb in; upright progression of some species of; maternal affection in a; direction of the hair on the arms of species of; females of, less hairy below than males. hylobates agilis, hair on the arms of; musical voice of the; superciliary ridge of; voice of. hylobates hoolock, sexual difference of colour in. hylobates lar, hair on the arms of; female less hairy. hylobates leuciscus, song of. hylobates syndactylus, laryngeal sac of. hylophila prasinana. hymenoptera, large size of the cerebral ganglia in; classification of; sexual differences in the wings of; aculeate, relative size of the sexes of. hymenopteron, parasitic, with a sedentary male. hyomoschus aquaticus. hyperythra, proportion of the sexes in. hypogymna dispar, sexual difference of colour in. hypopyra, coloration of. ibex, male, falling on his horns; beard of the. ibis, white, change of colour of naked skin in, during the breeding season; scarlet, young of the. ibis tantalus, age of mature plumage in; breeding in immature plumage. ibises, decomposed feathers in; white; and black. ichneumonidae, difference of the sexes in. ichthyopterygia. ichthyosaurians. idiots, microcephalous, their characters and habits; hairiness and animal nature of their actions; microcephalous, imitative faculties of. iguana tuberculata. iguanas. illegitimate and legitimate children, proportion of the sexes in. imagination, existence of, in animals. imitation, of man by monkeys; tendency to, in monkeys, microcephalous idiots and savages; influence of. immature plumage of birds. implacentata. implements, employed by monkeys; fashioning of, peculiar to man. impregnation, period of, influence of, upon sex. improvement, progressive, man alone supposed to be capable of. incisor teeth, knocked out or filed by some savages. increase, rate of; necessity of checks in. indecency, hatred of, a modern virtue. india, difficulty of distinguishing the native races of; cyprinidae of; colour of the beard in races of men of. indian, north american, honoured for scalping a man of another tribe. individuality, in animals. indolence of man, when free from a struggle for existence. indopicus carlotta, colours of the sexes of. infanticide, prevalence of; supposed cause of; prevalence and causes of. inferiority, supposed physical, of man. inflammation of the bowels, occurrence of, in cebus azarae. inheritance, of long and short sight; of effects of use of vocal and mental organs; of moral tendencies; laws of; sexual; sexually limited. inquisition, influence of the. insanity, hereditary. insect, fossil, from the devonian. insectivora, absence of secondary sexual characters in. insects, relative size of the cerebral ganglia in; male, appearance of, before the females; pursuit of female, by the males; period of development of sexual characters in; secondary sexual characters of; kept in cages; stridulation. insessores, vocal organs of. instep, depth of, in soldiers and sailors. instinct and intelligence. instinct, migratory, vanquishing the maternal. instinctive actions, the result of inheritance. instinctive impulses, difference of the force; and moral impulses, alliance of. instincts, complex origin of, through natural selection; possible origin of some; acquired, of domestic animals; variability of the force of; difference of force between the social and other; utilised for new purposes. instrumental music of birds. intellect, influence of, in natural selection in civilised society. intellectual faculties, their influence on natural selection in man; probably perfected through natural selection. intelligence, mr. h. spencer on the dawn of. intemperance, no reproach among savages; its destructiveness. intoxication in monkeys. iphias glaucippe. iris, sexual difference in the colour of the, in birds. ischio-pubic muscle. ithaginis cruentus, number of spurs in. iulus, tarsal suckers of the males of. jackals learning from dogs to bark. jack-snipe, coloration of the. jacquinot, on the number of species of man. jaeger, dr., length of bones increased from carrying weights; on the difficulty of approaching herds of wild animals; male silver-pheasant, rejected when his plumage was spoilt. jaguars, black. janson, e.w., on the proportions of the sexes in tomicus villosus; on stridulant beetles. japan, encouragement of licentiousness in. japanese, general beardlessness of the; aversion of the, to whiskers. jardine, sir w., on the argus pheasant. jarrold, dr., on modifications of the skull induced by unnatural position. jarves, mr., on infanticide in the sandwich islands. javans, relative height of the sexes of; notions of female beauty. jaw, influence of the muscles of the, upon the physiognomy of the apes. jaws, smaller proportionately to the extremities; influence of food upon the size of; diminution of, in man; in man, reduced by correlation. jay, young of the; canada, young of the. jays, new mates found by; distinguishing persons. jeffreys, j. gwyn, on the form of the shell in the sexes of the gasteropoda; on the influence of light upon the colours of shells. jelly-fish, bright colours of some. jenner, dr., on the voice of the rook; on the finding of new mates by magpies; on retardation of the generative functions in birds. jenyns, l., on the desertion of their young by swallows; on male birds singing after the proper season. jerdon, dr., on birds dreaming; on the pugnacity of the male bulbul; on the pugnacity of the male ortygornis gularis; on the spurs of galloperdix; on the habits of lobivanellus; on the spoonbill; on the drumming of the kalij-pheasant; on indian bustards; on otis bengalensis; on the ear-tufts of sypheotides auritus; on the double moults of certain birds; on the moulting of the honeysuckers; on the moulting of bustards, plovers, and drongos; on the spring change of colour in some finches; on display in male birds; on the display of the under-tail coverts by the male bulbul; on the indian honey-buzzard; on sexual differences in the colour of the eyes of hornbills; on the markings of the tragopan pheasant; on the nidification of the orioles; on the nidification of the hornbills; on the sultan yellow-tit; on palaeornis javanicus; on the immature plumage of birds; on representative species of birds; on the habits of turnix; on the continued increase of beauty of the peacock; on coloration in the genus palaeornis. jevons, w.s., on the migrations of man. jews, ancient use of flint tools by the; uniformity of, in various parts of the world; numerical proportion of male and female births among the; ancient, tattooing practised by. johnstone, lieut., on the indian elephant. jollofs, fine appearance of the. jones, albert, proportion of sexes of lepidoptera, reared by. juan fernandez, humming-birds of. junonia, sexual differences of colouring in species of. jupiter, comparison with assyrian effigies. kaffir skull, occurrence of the diastema in a. kaffirs, their cruelty to animals; lice of the; colour of the; engrossment of the handsomest women by the chiefs of the; marriage-customs of the. kalij-pheasant, drumming of the male; young of. kallima, resemblance of, to a withered leaf. kulmucks, general beardlessness of; aversion of, to hairs on the face; marriage-customs of the. kangaroo, great red, sexual difference in the colour of. kant, imm., on duty; on self-restraint; on the number of species of man. katy-did, stridulation of the. keen, dr., on the mental powers of snakes. keller, dr., on the difficulty of fashioning stone implements. kent, w.s., elongation of dorsal fin of callionymus lyra; courtship of labrus mixtus; colours and courtship of cantharus lineatus. kestrels, new mates found by. kidney, one, doing double work in disease. king, w.r., on the vocal organs of tetrao cupido; on the drumming of grouse; on the reindeer; on the attraction of male deer by the voice of the female. king and fitzroy, on the marriage-customs of the fuegians. king-crows, nidification of. kingfisher, racket-shaped feathers in the tail of a. kingfishers, colours and nidification of the; immature plumage of the; young of the. king lory, immature plumage of the. kingsley, c., on the sounds produced by the umbrina. kirby and spence, on sexual differences in the length of the snout in curculionidae; on the courtship of insects; on the elytra of dytiscus; on peculiarities in the legs of male insects; on the relative size of the sexes in insects; on the fulgoridae; on the habits of the termites; on difference of colour in the sexes of beetles; on the horns of the male lamellicorn beetles; on hornlike processes in male curculionidae; on the pugnacity of the male stag-beetle. kite, killed by a game-cock. knot, retention of winter plumage by the. knox, r., on the semilunar fold; on the occurrence of the supra-condyloid foramen in the humerus of man; on the features of the young memmon. koala, length of the caecum in. kobus ellipsiprymnus, proportion of the sexes in. kolreuter, on the sterility of hybrid plants. koodoo, development of the horns of the; markings of the. koppen, f.t., on the migratory locust. koraks, marriage customs of. kordofan, protuberances artificially produced by natives of. korte, on the proportion of sexes in locusts; russian locusts. kovalevsky, a., on the affinity of the ascidia to the vertebrata. kovalevsky, w., on the pugnacity of the male capercailzie; on the pairing of the capercailzie. krause, on a convoluted body at the extremity of the tail in a macacus and a cat. kupffer, prof., on the affinity of the ascidia to the vertebrata. labidocera darwinii, prehensile organs of the male. labrus, splendid colours of the species of. labrus mixtus, sexual differences in. labrus pavo. lacertilia, sexual differences of. lafresnaye, m. de, on birds of paradise. lamarck, on the origin of man. lamellibranchiata. lamellicorn beetles, horn-like processes from the head and thorax of; influence of sexual selection on. lamellicornia, stridulation of. lamont, mr., on the tusks of the walrus; on the use of its tusks by the walrus; on the bladder-nose seal. lampornis porphyrurus, colours of the female. lampyridae, distasteful to mammals. lancelet. landois, h., gnats attracted by sound; on the production of sound by the cicadae; on the stridulating organ of the crickets; on decticus; on the stridulating organs of the acridiidae; stridulating apparatus, in orthoptera; on the stridulation of necrophorus; on the stridulant organ of cerambyx heros; on the stridulant organ of geotrupes; on the stridulating organs in the coleoptera; on the ticking of anobium. landor, dr., on remorse for not obeying tribal custom. language, an art; articulate, origin of; relation of the progress of, to the development of the brain; effects of inheritance in production of; complex structure of, among barbarous nations; natural selection in; gesture; primeval; of a lost tribe preserved by a parrot. languages, presence of rudiments in; classification of; variability of; crossing or blending of; complexity of, no test of perfection or proof of special creation; resemblance of, evidence of community of origin. languages and species, identity of evidence of their gradual development. lanius, characters of young. lanius rufus, anomalous young of. lankester, e.r., on comparative longevity; on the destructive effects of intemperance. lanugo of the human foetus. lapponian language, highly artificial. lark, proportion of the sexes in the; female, singing of the. larks, attracted by a mirror. lartet, e., comparison of cranial capacities of skulls of recent and tertiary mammals; on the size of the brain in mammals; on dryopithecus; on pre-historic flutes. larus, seasonal change of plumage in. larva, luminous, of a brazilian beetle. larynx, muscles of the, in songbirds. lasiocampa quercus, attraction of males by the female; sexual difference of colour in. latham, r.g., on the migrations of man. latooka, perforation of the lower lip by the women of. laurillard, on the abnormal division of the malar bone in man. lawrence, w., on the superiority of savages to europeans in power of sight; on the colour of negro infants; on the fondness of savages for ornaments; on beardless races; on the beauty of the english aristocracy. layard, e.l., on the instance of rationality in a cobra; on the pugnacity of gallus stanleyi. laycock, dr., on vital periodicity; theroid nature of idiots. leaves, autumn, tints useless. lecky, mr., on the sense of duty; on suicide; on the practice of celibacy; his view of the crimes of savages; on the gradual rise of morality. leconte, j.l., on the stridulant organ in the coprini and dynastini. lee, h., on the numerical proportion of the sexes in the trout. leg, calf of the, artificially modified. legitimate and illegitimate children, proportion of the sexes in. legs, variation of the length of the, in man; proportions of, in soldiers and sailors; front, atrophied in some male butterflies; peculiarities of, in male insects. leguay, on the occurrence of the supra-condyloid foramen in the humerus of man. lek of the black-cock and capercailzie. lemoine, albert, on the origin of language. lemur macaco, sexual difference of colour in. lemuridae, ears of the; variability of the muscles in the; position and derivation of the; their origin. lemurs, uterus in the. lenguas, disfigurement of the ears of the. leopards, black. lepidoptera, numerical proportions of the sexes in the; colouring of; ocellated spots of. lepidosiren. leptalides, mimicry of. leptorhynchus angustatus, pugnacity of male. leptura testacea, difference of colour in the sexes. leroy, on the wariness of young foxes in hunting-districts; on the desertion of their young by swallows. leslie, d., marriage customs of kaffirs. lesse, valley of the. lesson, on the birds of paradise; on the sea-elephant. lessona, m., observations on serranus. lethrus cephalotes, pugnacity of the males of. leuciscus phoxinus. leuckart, r., on the vesicula prostatica; on the influence of the age of parents on the sex of offspring. levator claviculae muscle. libellula depressa, colour of the male. libellulidae, relative size of the sexes of; difference in the sexes of. lice of domestic animals and man. licentiousness a check upon population; prevalence of, among savages. lichtenstein, on chera progne. life, inheritance at corresponding periods of. light, effects on complexion; influence of, upon the colours of shells. lilford, lord, the ruff attracted by bright objects. limosa lapponica. linaria. linaria montana. lindsay, dr. w.l., diseases communicated from animals to man; madness in animals; the dog considers his master his god. linnaeus, views of, as to the position of man. linnet, numerical proportion of the sexes in the; crimson forehead and breast of the; courtship of the. lion, polygamous; mane of the, defensive; roaring of the. lions, stripes of young. lips, piercing of the, by savages. lithobius, prehensile appendages of the female. lithosia, coloration in. littorina littorea. livingstone, dr., manner of sitting of gorilla; on the influence of dampness and dryness on the colour of the skin; on the liability of negroes to tropical fevers after residence in a cold climate; on the spur-winged goose; on weaverbirds; on an african night-jar; on the battle-scars of south african male mammals; on the removal of the upper incisors by the batokas; on the perforation of the upper lip by the makalolo; on the banyai. livonia, numerical proportion of male and female births in. lizards, relative size of the sexes of; gular pouches of. lloyd, l., on the polygamy of the capercailzie and bustard; on the numerical proportion of the sexes in the capercailzie and blackcock; on the salmon; on the colours of the sea-scorpion; on the pugnacity of male grouse; on the capercailzie and blackcock; on the call of the capercailzie; on assemblages of grouse and snipes; on the pairing of a shield-drake with a common duck; on the battles of seals; on the elk. lobivanellus, wing-spurs in. local influences, effect of, upon stature. lockwood, mr., on the development of hippocampus. lockwood, rev. s., musical mouse. locust, bright-coloured, rejected by lizards and birds. locust, migratory; selection by female. locustidae, stridulation of the; descent of the. locusts, proportion of sexes in; stridulation of. longicorn beetles, difference of the sexes of, in colour; stridulation of. lonsdale, mr., on an example of personal attachment in helix pomatia. lophobranchii, marsupial receptacles of the male. lophophorus, habits of. lophorina atra, sexual difference in coloration of. lophornis ornatus. lord, j.k., on salmo lycaodon. lory, king; immature plumage of the. lory, king, constancy of. love-antics and dances of birds. lowne, b.t., on musca vomitoria. loxia, characters of young of. lubbock, sir j., on the antiquity of man; on the origin of man; on the mental capacity of savages; on the origin of implements; on the simplification of languages; on the absence of the idea of god among certain races of men; on the origin of the belief in spiritual agencies; on superstitions; on the sense of duty; on the practice of burying the old and sick among the fijians; on the immorality of savages; on mr. wallace's claim to the origination of the idea of natural selection; on the former barbarism of civilised nations; on improvements in the arts among savages; on resemblances of the mental characters in different races of men; on the arts practised by savages; on the power of counting in primeval man; on the prehensile organs of the male labidocera darwinii; on chloeon; on smynthurus luteus; finding of new mates by jays; on strife for women among the north american indians; on music; on the ornamental practices of savages; on the estimation of the beard among the anglo-saxons; on artificial deformation of the skull; on "communal marriages;" on exogamy; on the veddahs; on polyandry. lucanidae, variability of the mandibles in the male. lucanus, large size of males of. lucanus cervus, numerical proportion of sexes of; weapons of the male. lucanus elaphus, use of mandibles of; large jaws of male. lucas, prosper, on pigeons; on sexual preference in horses and bulls. luminosity in insects. lunar periods. lund, dr., on skulls found in brazilian caves. lungs, enlargement of, in the quichua and aymara indians; a modified swim-bladder; different capacity of, in races of man. luschka, prof., on the termination of the coccyx. luxury, expectation of life uninfluenced by. lycaena, sexual differences of colour in species of. lycaenae, colours of. lyell, sir c., on the antiquity of man; on the origin of man; on the parallelism of the development of species and languages; on the extinction of languages; on the inquisition; on the fossil remains of vertebrata; on the fertility of mulattoes. lynx, canadian throat-ruff of the. lyre-bird, assemblies of. macacus, ears of; convoluted body in the extremity of the tail of; variability of the tail in species of; whiskers of species of. macacus brunneus. macacus cynomolgus, superciliary ridge of; beard and whiskers of; becoming white with age. macacus ecaudatus. macacus lasiotus, facial spots of. macacus nemestrinus. macacus radiatus. macacus rhesus, sexual difference in the colour of. macalister, prof., on variations of the palmaris accessorius muscle; on muscular abnormalities in man; on the greater variability of the muscles in men than in women. macaws, mr. buxton's observations on. mccann, j., on mental individuality. mcclelland, j., on the indian cyprinidae. macculloch, col., on an indian village without any female children. macculloch, dr., on tertian ague in a dog. macgillivray, w., on the vocal organs of birds; on the egyptian goose; on the habits of woodpeckers; on the habits of the snipe; on the whitethroat; on the moulting of the snipes; on the moulting of the anatidae; on the finding of new mates by magpies; on the pairing of a blackbird and thrush; on pied ravens; on the guillemots; on the colours of the tits; on the immature plumage of birds. machetes, sexes and young of. machetes pugnax, supposed to be polygamous; numerical proportion of the sexes in; pugnacity of the male; double moult in. mcintosh, dr., colours of the nemertians. mckennan, marriage customs of koraks. mackintosh, on the moral sense. maclachlan, r., on apatania muliebris and boreus hyemalis; on the anal appendages of male insects; on the pairing of dragon-flies; on dragon-flies; on dimorphism in agrion; on the want of pugnacity in male dragon-flies; colour of ghost-moth in the shetland islands. m'lennan, mr., on infanticide; on the origin of the belief in spiritual agencies; on the prevalence of licentiousness among savages; on the primitive barbarism of civilised nations; on traces of the custom of the forcible capture of wives; on polyandry. macnamara, mr., susceptibility of andaman islanders and nepalese to change. m'neill, mr., on the use of the antlers of deer; on the scotch deerhound; on the long hairs on the throat of the stag; on the bellowing of stags. macropus, courtship of. macrorhinus proboscideus, structure of the nose of. magpie, power of speech of; vocal organs of the; nuptial assemblies of; new mates found by; stealing bright objects; young of the; coloration of the. maillard, m., on the proportion of the sexes in a species of papilio from bourbon. maine, sir henry, on the absorption of one tribe by another; a desire for improvement not general. major, dr. c. forsyth, on fossil italian apes; skull of bos etruscus; tusks of miocene pigs. makalolo, perforation of the upper lip by the. malar bone, abnormal division of, in man. malay archipelago, marriage-customs of the savages of the. malays, line of separation between the papuans and the; general beardlessness of the; staining of the teeth among; aversion of some, to hairs on the face. malays and papuans, contrasted characters of. male animals, struggles of, for the possession of the females; eagerness of, in courtship; generally more modified than female; differ in the same way from females and young. male characters, developed in females; transfer of, to female birds. male, sedentary, of a hymenopterous parasite. malefactors. males, presence of rudimentary female organs in. males and females, comparative numbers of; comparative mortality of, while young. malherbe, on the woodpeckers. mallotus peronii. mallotus villosus. malthus, t., on the rate of increase of population. maluridae, nidification of the. malurus, young of. mammae, rudimentary, in male mammals; supernumerary, in women; of male human subject. mammalia, prof. owen's classification of; genealogy of the. mammals, recent and tertiary, comparison of cranial capacity of; nipples of; pursuit of female, by the males; secondary sexual characters of; weapons of; relative size of the sexes of; parallelism of, with birds in secondary sexual characters; voices of, used especially during the breeding season. man, variability of; erroneously regarded as more domesticated than other animals; migrations of; wide distribution of; causes of the nakedness of; supposed physical inferiority of; a member of the catarrhine group; early progenitors of; transition from ape indefinite; numerical proportions of the sexes in; difference between the sexes; proportion of sexes amongst the illegitimate; different complexion of male and female negroes; secondary sexual characters of; primeval condition of. mandans, correlation of colour and texture of hair in the. mandible, left, enlarged in the male of taphroderes distortus. mandibles, use of the, in ammophila; large, of corydalis cornutus; large, of male lucanus elaphus. mandrill, number of caudal vertebrae in the; colours of the male. mantegazza, prof., on last molar teeth of man; bright colours in male animals; on the ornaments of savages; on the beardlessness of the new zealanders; on the exaggeration of natural characters by man. mantell, w., on the engrossment of pretty girls by the new zealand chiefs. mantis, pugnacity of species of. maories, mortality of; infanticide and proportion of sexes; distaste for hairiness amongst men. marcus aurelius, on the origin of the moral sense; on the influence of habitual thoughts. mareca penelope. marks, retained throughout groups of birds. marriage, restraints upon, among savages; influence of, upon morals; influence of, on mortality; development of. marriages, early; communal. marshall, dr. w., protuberances on birds' heads; on the moulting of birds; advantage to older birds of paradise. marshall, col., interbreeding amongst todas; infanticide and proportion of sexes with todas; choice of husband amongst todas. marshall, mr., on the brain of a bushwoman. marsupials, development of the nictitating membrane in; uterus of; possession of nipples by; their origin from monotremata; abdominal sacs of; relative size of the sexes of; colours of. marsupium, rudimentary in male marsupials. martin, w.c.l., on alarm manifested by an orang at the sight of a turtle; on the hair in hylobates; on a female american deer; on the voice of hylobates agilis; on semnopithecus nemaeus. martin, on the beards of the inhabitants of st. kilda. martins deserting their young. martins, c., on death caused by inflammation of the vermiform appendage. mastoid processes in man and apes. maudsley, dr., on the influence of the sense of smell in man; on idiots smelling their food; on laura bridgman; on the development of the vocal organs; moral sense failing in incipient madness; change of mental faculties at puberty in man. mayers, w.f., on the domestication of the goldfish in china. mayhew, e., on the affection between individuals of different sexes in the dog. maynard, c.j., on the sexes of chrysemys picta. meckel, on correlated variation of the muscles of the arm and leg. medicines, effect produced by, the same in man and in monkeys. medusae, bright colours of some. megalithic structures, prevalence of. megapicus validus, sexual difference of colour in. megasoma, large size of males of. meigs, dr. a., on variation in the skulls of the natives of america. meinecke, on the numerical proportion of the sexes in butterflies. melanesians, decrease of. meldola, mr., colours and marriage flight of colias and pieris. meliphagidae, australian, nidification of. melita, secondary sexual characters of. meloe, difference of colour in the sexes of a species of. memnon, young. memory, manifestations of, in animals. mental characters, difference of, in different races of men. mental faculties, diversity of, in the same race of men; inheritance of; variation of, in the same species; similarity of the, in different races of man; of birds. mental powers, difference of, in the two sexes in man. menura alberti, song of. menura superba, long tails of both sexes of. merganser, trachea of the male. merganser serrator, male plumage of. mergus cucullatus, speculum of. mergus merganser, young of. metallura, splendid tail-feathers of. methoca ichneumonides, large male of. meves, m., on the drumming of the snipe. mexicans, civilisation of the, not foreign. meyer, on a convoluted body at the extremity of the tail in a macacus and a cat. meyer, dr. a., on the copulation of phryganidae of distinct species. meyer, prof. l., on development of helix of ear; men's ears more variable than women's; antennae serving as ears. migrations of man, effects of. migratory instinct of birds; vanquishing the maternal. mill, j.s., on the origin of the moral sense; on the "greatest happiness principle;" on the difference of the mental powers in the sexes of man. millipedes. milne-edwards, h., on the use of enlarged chelae of the male gelasimus. milvago leucurus, sexes and young of. mimicry. mimus polyglottus. mind, difference of, in man and the highest animals; similarity of the, in different races. minnow, proportion of the sexes in the. mirror, behaviour of monkeys before. mirrors, larks attracted by. mitchell, dr., interbreeding in the hebrides. mitford, selection of children in sparta. mivart, st. george, on the reduction of organs; on the ears of the lemuroidea; on variability of the muscles in lemuroidea; on the caudal vertebrae of monkeys; on the classification of the primates; on the orang and on man; on differences in the lemuroidea; on the crest of the male newt. mobius, prof., on reasoning powers in a pike. mocking-thrush, partial migration of; young of the. modifications, unserviceable. moggridge, j.t., on habits of spiders; on habits of ants. moles, numerical proportion of the sexes in; battles of male. mollienesia petenensis, sexual difference in. mollusca, beautiful colours and shapes of; absence of secondary sexual characters in the. molluscoida. monacanthus scopas and m. peronii. monboddo, lord, on music. mongolians, perfection of the senses in. monkey, protecting his keeper from a baboon; bonnet-; rhesus-, sexual difference in colour of the; moustache-, colours of the. monkeys, liability of, to the same diseases as man; male, recognition of women by; diversity of the mental faculties in; breaking hard fruits with stones; hands of the; basal caudal vertebrae of, imbedded in the body; revenge taken by; maternal affection in; variability of the faculty of attention in; american, manifestation of reason in; using stones and sticks; imitative faculties of; signal-cries of; mutual kindnesses of; sentinels posted by; human characters of; american, direction of the hair on the arms of some; gradation of species of; beards of; ornamental characters of; analogy of sexual differences of, with those of man; different degrees of difference in the sexes of; expression of emotions by; generally monogamous habits of; polygamous habits of some; naked surfaces of; courtship of. monogamy, not primitive. monogenists. mononychus pseudacori, stridulation of. monotremata, development of the nictitating membrane in; lactiferous glands of; connecting mammals with reptiles. monstrosities, analogous, in man and lower animals; caused by arrest of development; correlation of; transmission of. montagu, g., on the habits of the black and red grouse; on the pugnacity of the ruff; on the singing of birds; on the double moult of the male pintail. monteiro, mr., on bucorax abyssinicus. montes de oca, m., on the pugnacity of male humming-birds. monticola cyanea. monuments, as traces of extinct tribes. moose, battles of; horns of the, an incumbrance. moral and instinctive impulses, alliance of. moral faculties, their influence on natural selection in man. moral rules, distinction between the higher and lower. moral sense, so-called, derived from the social instincts; origin of the. moral tendencies, inheritance of. morality, supposed to be founded in selfishness; test of, the general welfare of the community; gradual rise of; influence of a high standard of. morgan, l.h., on the beaver; on the reasoning powers of the beaver; on the forcible capture of wives; on the castoreum of the beaver; marriage unknown in primeval times; on polyandry. morley, j., on the appreciation of praise and fear of blame. morris, f.o., on hawks feeding an orphan nestling. morse, dr., colours of mollusca. morselli, e., division of the malar bone. mortality, comparative, of female and male. morton on the number of species of man. moschkau, dr. a., on a speaking starling. moschus moschiferus, odoriferous organs of. motacillae, indian, young of. moth, odoriferous. moths, absence of mouth in some males; apterous female; male, prehensile use of the tarsi by; male, attracted by females; sound produced by; coloration of; sexual differences of colour in. motmot, inheritance of mutilation of tail feathers; racket-shaped feathers in the tail of a. moult, double; double annual, in birds. moulting of birds. moults, partial. mouse, song of. moustache-monkey, colours of the. moustaches, in monkeys. mud-turtle, long claws of the male. mulattoes, persistent fertility of; immunity of, from yellow fever. mule, sterility and strong vitality of the. mules, rational. muller, ferd., on the mexicans and peruvians. muller, fritz, on astomatous males of tanais; on the disappearance of spots and stripes in adult mammals; on the proportions of the sexes in some crustacea; on secondary sexual characters in various crustaceans; musical contest between male cicadae; mode of holding wings in castina; on birds shewing a preference for certain colours; on the sexual maturity of young amphipod crustacea. muller, hermann, emergence of bees, from pupa; pollen-gathering of bees; proportion of sexes in bees; courting of eristalis; colour and sexual selection with bees. muller, j., on the nictitating membrane and semilunar fold. muller, max, on the origin of language; language implies power of general conception; struggle for life among the words, etc., of languages. muller, s., on the banteng; on the colours of semnopithecus chrysomelas. muntjac-deer, weapons of the. murie, j., on the reduction of organs; on the ears of the lemuroidea; on variability of the muscles in the lemuroidea; basal caudal vertebrae of macacus brunneus imbedded in the body; on the manner of sitting in short-tailed apes; on differences in the lemuroidea; on the throat-pouch of the male bustard; on the mane of otaria jubata; on the sub-orbital pits of ruminants; on the colours of the sexes in otaria nigrescens. murray, a., on the pediculi of different races of men. murray, t.a., on the fertility of australian women with white men. mus coninga. mus minutus, sexual difference in the colour of. musca vomitoria. muscicapa grisola. muscicapa luctuosa. muscicapa ruticilla, breeding in immature plumage. muscle, ischio-pubic. muscles, rudimentary, occurrence of, in man; variability of the; effects of use and disuse upon; animal-like abnormalities of, in man; correlated variation of, in the arm and leg; variability of, in the hands and feet; of the jaws, influence of, on the physiognomy of the apes; habitual spasms of, causing modifications of the facial bones, of the early progenitors of man; greater variability of the, in men than in women. musculus sternalis, prof. turner on the. music, of birds; discordant, love of savages for; reason of power of perception of notes in animals; power of distinguishing notes; its connection with primeval speech; different appreciation of, by different peoples; origin of; effects of. musical cadences, perception of, by animals; powers of man. musk-deer, canine teeth of male; male, odoriferous organs of the; winter change of the. musk-duck, australian; large size of male; of guiana, pugnacity of the male. musk-ox, horns of. musk-rat, protective resemblance of the, to a clod of earth. musophagae, colours and nidification of the; both sexes of, equally brilliant. mussels opened by monkeys. mustela, winter change of two species of. musters, captain, on rhea darwinii; marriages amongst patagonians. mutilations, healing of; inheritance of. mutilla europaea, stridulation of. mutillidae, absence of ocelli in female. mycetes caraya, polygamous; vocal organs of; beard of; sexual differences of colour in; voice of. mycetes seniculus, sexual differences of colour in. myriapoda. nageli, on the influence of natural selection on plants; on the gradation of species of plants. nails, coloured yellow or purple in part of africa. narwhal, tusks of the. nasal cavities, large size of, in american aborigines. nascent organs. nathusius, h. von, on the improved breeds of pigs; male domesticated animals more variable than females; horns of castrated sheep; on the breeding of domestic animals. natural selection, its effects on the early progenitors of man; influence of, on man; limitation of the principle; influence of, on social animals; mr. wallace on the limitation of, by the influence of the mental faculties in man; influence of, in the progress of the united states; in relation to sex. natural and sexual selection contrasted. naulette, jaw from, large size of the canines in. neanderthal skull, capacity of the. neck, proportion of, in soldiers and sailors. necrophorus, stridulation of. nectarinia, young of. nectariniae, moulting of the; nidification of. negro, resemblance of a, to europeans in mental characters. negro-women, their kindness to mungo park. negroes, caucasian features in; character of; lice of; fertility of, when crossed with other races; blackness of; variability of; immunity of, from yellow fever; difference of, from americans; disfigurements of the; colour of new-born children of; comparative beardlessness of; readily become musicians; appreciation of beauty of their women by; idea of beauty among; compression of the nose by some. nemertians, colours of. neolithic period. neomorpha, sexual difference of the beak in. nephila, size of male. nests, made by fishes; decoration of, by humming-birds. neumeister, on a change of colour in pigeons after several moultings. neuration, difference of, in the two sexes of some butterflies and hymenoptera. neuroptera. neurothemis, dimorphism in. new zealand, expectation by the natives of, of their extinction; practice of tattooing in; aversion of natives of, to hairs on the face; pretty girls engrossed by the chiefs in. newton, a., on the throat-pouch of the male bustard; on the differences between the females of two species of oxynotus; on the habits of the phalarope, dotterel, and godwit. newts. nicholson, dr., on the non-immunity of dark europeans from yellow fever. nictitating membrane. nidification of fishes; relation of, to colour; of british birds. night-heron, cries of the. nightingale, arrival of the male before the female; object of the song of the. nightingales, new mates found by. nightjar, selection of a mate by the female; australian, sexes of; coloration of the. nightjars, noise made by some male, with their wings; elongated feathers in. nilghau, sexual differences of colour in the. nilsson, prof., on the resemblance of stone arrow-heads from various places; on the development of the horns of the reindeer. nipples, absence of, in monotremata. nitsche, dr., ear of foetal orang. nitzsch, c.l., on the down of birds. noctuae, brightly-coloured beneath. noctuidae, coloration of. nomadic habits, unfavourable to human progress. nordmann, a., on tetrao urogalloides. norfolk island, half-breeds on. norway, numerical proportion of male and female births in. nose, resemblance of, in man and the apes; piercing and ornamentation of the; very flat, not admired in negroes; flattening of the. nott and gliddon, on the features of rameses ii.; on the features of amunoph iii.; on skulls from brazilian caves; on the immunity of negroes and mulattoes from yellow fever; on the deformation of the skull among american tribes. novara, voyage of the, suicide in new zealand. nudibranch mollusca, bright colours of. numerals, roman. nunemaya, natives of, bearded. nuthatch, of japan, intelligence of; indian. obedience, value of. observation, powers of, possessed by birds. occupations, sometimes a cause of diminished stature; effect of, upon the proportions of the body. ocelli, absence of, in female mutilidae. ocelli of birds, formation and variability of the. ocelot, sexual differences in the colouring of the. ocyhaps lophotes. odonata. odonestis potatoria, sexual difference of colour in. odour, correlation of, with colour of skin; of moths; emitted by snakes in the breeding season; of mammals. oecanthus nivalis, difference of colour in the sexes of. oecanthus pellucidus. ogle, dr. w., relation between colour and power of smell. oidemia. oliver, on sounds produced by pimelia striata. omaloplia brunnea, stridulation of. onitis furcifer, processes of anterior femora of the male, and on the head and thorax of the female. onthophagus. onthophagus rangifer, sexual differences of; variations in the horns of the male. ophidia, sexual differences of. ophidium. opossum, wide range of, in america. optic nerve, atrophy of the, caused by destruction of the eye. orang-outan, bischoff on the agreement of the brain of the, with that of man; adult age of the; ears of the; vermiform appendage of; hands of the; absence of mastoid processes in the; platforms built by the; alarmed at the sight of a turtle; using a stick as a lever; using missiles; using the leaves of the pandanus as a night covering; direction of the hair on the arms of the; its aberrant characters; supposed evolution of the; voice of the; monogamous habits of the; male, beard of the. oranges, treatment of, by monkeys. orange-tip butterfly. orchestia darwinii, dimorphism of males of. orchestia tucuratinga, limbs of. ordeal, trial by. oreas canna, colours of. oreas derbianus, colours of. organs, prehensile; utilised for new purposes. organic scale, von baer's definition of progress in. orioles, nidification of. oriolus, species of, breeding in immature plumage. oriolus melanocephalus, coloration of the sexes in. ornaments, prevalence of similar; of male birds; fondness of savages for. ornamental characters, equal transmission of, to both sexes, in mammals; of monkeys. ornithoptera croesus. ornithorhynchus, reptilian tendency of; spur of the male. orocetes erythrogastra, young of. orrony, grotto of. orsodacna atra, difference of colour in the sexes of. orsodacna ruficollis. orthoptera, metamorphosis of; stridulating apparatus of; colours of; rudimentary stridulating organs in female; stridulation of the, and homoptera, discussed. ortygornis gularis, pugnacity of the male. oryctes, stridulation of; sexual differences in the stridulant organs of. oryx leucoryx, use of the horns of. osphranter rufus, sexual difference in the colour of. ostrich, african, sexes and incubation of the. ostriches, stripes of young. otaria jubata, mane of the male. otaria nigrescens, difference in the coloration of the sexes of. otis bengalensis, love-antics of the male. otis tarda, throat-pouch of the male; polygamous. ouzel, ring-, colours and nidification of the. ouzel, water-, singing in the autumn; colours and nidification of the. ovibos moschatus, horns of. ovipositor of insects. ovis cycloceros, mode of fighting of. ovule of man. owen, prof., on the corpora wolffiana; on the great toe in man; on the nictitating membrane and semilunar fold; on the development of the posterior molars in different races of man; on the length of the caecum in the koala; on the coccygeal vertebrae; on rudimentary structures belonging to the reproductive system; on abnormal conditions of the human uterus; on the number of digits in the ichthyopterygia; on the canine teeth in man; on the walking of the chimpanzee and orang; on the mastoid processes in the higher apes; on the hairiness of elephants in elevated districts; on the caudal vertebrae of monkeys; classification of mammalia; on the hair in monkeys; on the piscine affinities of the ichthyosaurians; on polygamy and monogamy among the antelopes; on the horns of antilocapra americana; on the musky odour of crocodiles during the breeding season; on the scent-glands of snakes; on the dugong, cachalot, and ornithorhynchus; on the antlers of the red deer; on the dentition of the camelidae; on the horns of the irish elk; on the voice of the giraffe, porcupine, and stag; on the laryngeal sac of the gorilla and orang; on the odoriferous glands of mammals; on the effects of emasculation on the vocal organs of men; on the voice of hylobates agilis; on american monogamous monkeys. owls, white, new mates found by. oxynotus, difference of the females of two species of. pachydermata. pachytylus migratorius. paget, on the abnormal development of hairs in man; on the thickness of the skin on the soles of the feet of infants. pagurus, carrying the female. painting, pleasure of savages in. palaemon, chelae of a species of. palaeornis, sexual differences of colour in. palaeornis javanicus, colour of beak of. palaeornis rosa, young of. palamedea cornuta, spurs on the wings. paleolithic period. palestine, habits of the chaffinch in. pallas, on the perfection of the senses in the mongolians; on the want of connexion between climate and the colour of the skin; on the polygamous habits of antilope saiga; on the lighter colour of horses and cattle in winter in siberia; on the tusks of the musk-deer; on the odoriferous glands of mammals; on the odoriferous glands of the musk-deer; on winter changes of colour in mammals; on the ideal of female beauty in north china. palmaris accessorius, muscle variations of the. pampas, horses of the. pangenesis, hypothesis of. panniculus carnosus. pansch, on the brain of a foetal cebus apella. papilio, proportion of the sexes in north american species of; sexual differences of colouring in species of; coloration of the wings in species of. papilio ascanius. papilio sesostris and childrenae, variability of. papilio turnus. papilionidae, variability in the. papuans, line of separation between the, and the malays; beards of the; teeth of. papuans and malays, contrast in characters of. paradise, birds of; supposed by lesson to be polygamous; rattling of their quills by; racket-shaped feathers in; sexual differences in colour of; decomposed feathers in; display of plumage by the male; sexual differences in colour of. paradisea apoda, barbless feathers in the tail of; plumage of; and p. papuana; divergence of the females of; increase of beauty with age. paradisea papuana, plumage of. paraguay, indians of, eradication of eyebrows and eyelashes by. parallelism of development of species and languages. parasites, on man and animals; as evidence of specific identity or distinctness; immunity from, correlated with colour. parental feeling in earwigs, starfishes, and spiders; affection, partly a result of natural selection. parents, age of, influence upon sex of offspring. parinae, sexual difference of colour in. park, mungo, negro-women teaching their children to love the truth; his treatment by the negro-women; on negro opinions of the appearance of white men. parker, mr., no bird or reptile in line of mammalian descent. parrakeet, young of; australian, variation in the colour of the thighs of a male. parrot, racket-shaped feathers in the tail of a; instance of benevolence in a. parrots, change of colour in; imitative faculties of; living in triplets; affection of; colours and nidification of the; immature plumage of the; colours of; sexual differences of colour in; musical powers of. parthenogenesis in the tenthredinae; in cynipidae; in crustacea. partridge, monogamous; proportion of the sexes in the; indian; female. partridge-"dances." partridges, living in triplets; spring coveys of male; distinguishing persons. parus coeruleus. passer, sexes and young of. passer brachydactylus. passer domesticus. passer montanus. patagonians, self-sacrifice by; marriages of. patterson, mr., on the agrionidae. patteson, bishop, decrease of melanesians. paulistas of brazil. pavo cristatus. pavo muticus, possession of spurs by the female. pavo nigripennis. payaguas indians, thin legs and thick arms of the. payan, mr., on the proportion of the sexes in sheep. peacock, polygamous; sexual characters of; pugnacity of the; javan, possessing spurs; rattling of the quills by; elongated tail-coverts of the; love of display of the; ocellated spots of the; inconvenience of long tail of the, to the female; continued increase of beauty of the. peacock-butterfly. peafowl, preference of females for a particular male; first advances made by the female. pediculi of domestic animals and man. pedigree of man. pedionomus torquatus, sexes of. peel, j., on horned sheep. peewit, wing-tubercles of the male. pelagic animals, transparency of. pelecanus erythrorhynchus, horny crest on the beak of the male, during the breeding season. pelecanus onocrotalus, spring plumage of. pelele, an african ornament. pelican, blind, fed by his companions; young, guided by old birds; pugnacity of the male. pelicans, fishing in concert. pelobius hermanni, stridulation of. pelvis, alteration of, to suit the erect attitude of man; differences of the, in the sexes of man. penelope nigra, sound produced by the male. pennant, on the battles of seals; on the bladder-nose seal. penthe, antennal cushions of the male. perch, brightness of male, during breeding season. peregrine falcon, new mate found by. period of variability, relation of, to sexual selection. periodicity, vital, dr. laycock on. periods, lunar, followed by functions in man and animals. periods of life, inheritance at corresponding. perisoreus canadensis, young of. peritrichia, difference of colour in the sexes of a species of. periwinkle. pernis cristata. perrier, m., on sexual selection; on bees. perseverance, a characteristic of man. persians, said to be improved by intermixture with georgians and circassians. personnat, m., on bombyx yamamai. peruvians, civilisation of the, not foreign. petrels, colours of. petrocincla cyanea, young of. petrocossyphus. petronia. pfeiffer, ida, on javan ideas of beauty. phacochoerus aethiopicus, tusks and pads of. phalanger, vulpine, black varieties of the. phalaropus fulicarius. phalaropus hyperboreus. phanaeus. phanaeus carnifex, variation of the horns of the male. phanaeus faunus, sexual differences of. phanaeus lancifer. phaseolarctus cinereus, taste for rum and tobacco. phasgonura viridissima, stridulation of. phasianus soemmerringii. phasianus versicolor. phasianus wallichii. pheasant, polygamous; and black grouse, hybrids of; production of hybrids with the common fowl; immature plumage of the. pheasant, amherst, display of. pheasant, argus, display of plumage by the male; ocellated spots of the; gradation of characters in the. pheasant, blood- pheasant, cheer. pheasant, eared, length of the tail in the; sexes alike in the. pheasant, fire-backed, possessing spurs. pheasant, golden, display of plumage by the male; age of mature plumage in the; sex of young, ascertained by pulling out head-feathers. pheasant, kalij, drumming of the male. pheasant, reeve's, length of the tail in. pheasant, silver, triumphant male, deposed on account of spoiled plumage; sexual coloration of the. pheasant, soemmerring's. pheasant, tragopan, display of plumage by the male; marking of the sexes of the. pheasants, period of acquisition of male characters in the family of the; proportion of sexes in chicks of; length of the tail in. philters, worn by women. phoca groenlandica, sexual difference in the coloration of. phoenicura ruticilla. phosphorescence of insects. phryganidae, copulation of distinct species of. phryniscus nigricans. physical inferiority, supposed, of man. pickering, on the number of species of man. picton, j.a., on the soul of man. picus auratus. picus major. pieris. pigeon, female, deserting a weakened mate; carrier, late development of the wattle in; pouter, late development of crop in; domestic, breeds and sub-breeds of. pigeons, nestling, fed by the secretion of the crop of both parents; changes of plumage in; transmission of sexual peculiarities in; belgian, with black-streaked males; changing colour after several moultings; numerical proportion of the sexes in; cooing of; variations in plumage of; display of plumage by male; local memory of; antipathy of female, to certain males; pairing of; profligate male and female; wing-bars and tail-feathers of; supposititious breed of; pouter and carrier, peculiarities of, predominant in males; nidification of; australian; immature plumage of the. pigs, origin of the improved breeds of; numerical proportion of the sexes in; stripes of young; tusks of miocene; sexual preference shewn by. pike, american, brilliant colours of the male, during the breeding season. pike, reasoning powers of; male, devoured by females. pike, l.o., on the psychical elements of religion. pimelia striata, sounds produced by the female. pinel, hairiness in idiots. pintail, drake, plumage of; pairing with a wild duck. pintail duck, pairing with a widgeon. pipe-fish, filamentous; marsupial receptacles of the male. pipits, moulting of the. pipra, modified secondary wing-feathers of male. pipra deliciosa. pirates stridulus, stridulation of. pitcairn island, half-breeds on. pithecia leucocephala, sexual differences of colour in. pithecia satanas, beard of; resemblance of, to a negro. pits, suborbital, of ruminants. pittidae, nidification of. placentata. plagiostomous fishes. plain-wanderer, australian. planariae, bright colours of some. plantain-eaters, colours and nidification of the; both sexes of, equally brilliant. plants, cultivated, more fertile than wild; nageli, on natural selection in; male flowers of, mature before the female; phenomena of fertilisation in. platalea, change of plumage in. platyblemus. platycercus, young of. platyphyllum concavum. platyrrhine monkeys. platysma myoides. plecostomus, head-tentacles of the males of a species of. plecostomus barbatus, peculiar beard of the male. plectropterus gambensis, spurred wings of. ploceus. plovers, wing-spurs of; double moult in. plumage, changes of, inheritance of, by fowls; tendency to analogous variation in; display of, by male birds; changes of, in relation to season; immature, of birds; colour of, in relation to protection. plumes on the head in birds, difference of, in the sexes. pneumora, structure of. podica, sexual difference in the colour of the irides. poeppig, on the contact of civilised and savage races. poison, avoidance of, by animals. poisonous fruits and herbs avoided by animals. poisons, immunity from, correlated with colour. polish fowls, origin of the crest in. pollen and van dam, on the colours of lemur macaco. polyandry, in certain cyprinidae; among the elateridae. polydactylism in man. polygamy, influence of, upon sexual selection; superinduced by domestication; supposed increase of female births by. in the stickleback. polygenists. polynesia, prevalence of infanticide in. polynesians, wide geographical range of; difference of stature among the; crosses of; variability of; heterogeneity of the; aversion of, to hairs on the face. polyplectron, number of spurs in; display of plumage by the male; gradation of characters in; female of. polyplectron chinquis. polyplectron hardwickii. polyplectron malaccense. polyplectron napoleonis. polyzoa. pomotis. pontoporeia affinis. porcupine, mute, except in the rutting season. pores, excretory, numerical relation of, to the hairs in sheep. porpitae, bright colours of some. portax picta, dorsal crest and throat-tuft of; sexual differences of colour in. portunus puber, pugnacity of. potamochoerus pencillatus, tusks and facial knobs of the. pouchet, g., the relation of instinct to intelligence; on the instincts of ants; on the caves of abou-simbel; on the immunity of negroes from yellow fever; change of colour in fishes. pouter pigeon, late development of the large crop in. powell, dr., on stridulation. power, dr., on the different colours of the sexes in a species of squilla. powys, mr., on the habits of the chaffinch in corfu. pre-eminence of man. preference for males by female birds; shewn by mammals, in pairing. prehensile organs. presbytis entellus, fighting of the male. preyer, dr., on function of shell of ear; on supernumerary mammae in women. prichard, on the difference of stature among the polynesians; on the connection between the breadth of the skull in the mongolians and the perfection of their senses; on the capacity of british skulls of different ages; on the flattened heads of the colombian savages; on siamese notions of beauty; on the beardlessness of the siamese; on the deformation of the head among american tribes and the natives of arakhan. primary sexual organs. primates, sexual differences of colour in. primogeniture, evils of. prionidae, difference of the sexes in colour. proctotretus multimaculatus. proctotretus tenuis, sexual difference in the colour of. profligacy. progenitors, early, of man. progress, not the normal rule in human society; elements of. prong-horn antelope, horns of. proportions, difference of, in distinct races. protective colouring in butterflies; in lizards; in birds; in mammals. protective nature of the dull colouring of female lepidoptera. protective resemblances in fishes. protozoa, absence of secondary sexual characters in. pruner-bey, on the occurrence of the supra-condyloid foramen in the humerus of man; on the colour of negro infants. prussia, numerical proportion of male and female births in. psocus, proportions of the sexes in. ptarmigan, monogamous; summer and winter plumage of the; nuptial assemblages of; triple moult of the; protective coloration of. puff-birds, colours and nidification of the. pugnacity of fine-plumaged male birds. pumas, stripes of young. puppies learning from cats to clean their faces. pycnonotus haemorrhous, pugnacity of the male; display of under-tail coverts by the male. pyranga aestiva, male aiding in incubation; male characters in female of. pyrodes, difference of the sexes in colour. quadrumana, hands of; differences between man and the; sexual differences of colour in; ornamental characters of; analogy of sexual differences of, with those of man; fighting of males for the females; monogamous habits of; beards of the. quain, r., on the variation of the muscles in man. quatrefages, a. de, on the occurrence of a rudimentary tail in man; on variability; on the moral sense as a distinction between man and animals; civilised men stronger than savages; on the fertility of australian women with white men; on the paulistas of brazil; on the evolution of the breeds of cattle; on the jews; on the liability of negroes to tropical fevers after residence in a cold climate; on the difference between field-and house-slaves; on the influence of climate on colour; colours of annelids; on the ainos; on the women of san giuliano. quechua, see quichua. querquedula acuta. quetelet, proportion of sexes in man; relative size in man and woman. quichua indians; local variation of colour in the; no grey hair among the; hairlessness of the; long hair of the. quiscalus major, proportions of the sexes of, in florida and honduras. rabbit, white tail of the. rabbits, domestic, elongation of the skull in; modification of the skull in, by the lopping of the ear; danger-signals of; numerical proportion of the sexes in. races, distinctive characters of; or species of man; crossed, fertility or sterility of; of man, variability of the; of man, resemblance of, in mental characters; formation of; of man, extinction of; effects of the crossing of; of man, formation of the; of man, children of the; beardless, aversion of, to hairs on the face. raffles, sir s., on the banteng. rafts, use of. rage, manifested by animals. raia batis, teeth of. raia clavata, female spined on the back; sexual difference in the teeth of. raia maculata, teeth of. rails, spur-winged. ram, mode of fighting of the; african, mane of an; fat-tailed. rameses ii., features of. ramsay, mr., on the australian musk-duck; on the regent-bird; on the incubation of menura superba. rana esculenta, vocal sacs of. rat, common, general dispersion of, a consequence of superior cunning; supplantation of the native in new zealand, by the european rat; common, said to be polygamous; numerical proportion of the sexes in. rats, enticed by essential oils. rationality of birds. rattlesnakes, difference of the sexes in the; rattles as a call. raven, vocal organs of the; stealing bright objects; pied, of the feroe islands. rays, prehensile organs of male. razor-bill, young of the. reade, winwood, suicide among savages in africa; mulattoes not prolific; effect of castration of horned sheep; on the guinea sheep; on the occurrence of a mane in an african ram; on singing of negroes; on the negroes' appreciation of the beauty of their women; on the admiration of negroes for a black skin; on the idea of beauty among negroes; on the jollofs; on the marriage-customs of the negroes. reason in animals. redstart, american, breeding in immature plumage. redstarts, new mates found by. reduvidae, stridulation of. reed-bunting, head-feathers of the male; attacked by a bullfinch. reefs, fishes frequenting. reeks, h., retention of horns by breeding deer; cow rejected by a bull; destruction of piebald rabbits by cats. regeneration, partial, of lost parts in man. regent bird. reindeer, horns of the; battles of; horns of the female; antlers of, with numerous points; winter change of the; sexual preferences shown by. relationship, terms of. religion, deficiency of among certain races; psychical elements of. remorse, deficiency of, among savages. rengger, on the diseases of cebus azarae; on the diversity of the mental faculties of monkeys; on the payaguas indians; on the inferiority of europeans to savages in their senses; revenge taken by monkeys; on maternal affection in a cebus; on the reasoning powers of american monkeys; on the use of stones by monkeys for cracking hard nuts; on the sounds uttered by cebus azarae; on the signal-cries of monkeys; on the polygamous habits of mycetes caraya; on the voice of the howling monkeys; on the odour of cervus campestris; on the beards of mycetes caraya and pithecia satanas; on the colours of felis mitis; on the colours of cervus paludosus; on sexual differences of colour in mycetes; on the colour of the infant guaranys; on the early maturity of the female of cebus azarae; on the beards of the guaranys; on the emotional notes employed by monkeys; on american polygamous monkeys. representative species, of birds. reproduction, unity of phenomena of, throughout the mammalia; period of, in birds. reproductive system, rudimentary structures in the; accessory parts of. reptiles. reptiles and birds, alliance of. resemblances, small, between man and the apes. retrievers, exercise of reasoning faculties by. revenge, manifested by animals. reversion, perhaps the cause of some bad dispositions. rhagium, difference of colour in the sexes of a species of. rhamphastos carinatus. rhea darwinii. rhinoceros, nakedness of; horns of; horns of, used defensively; attacking white or grey horses. rhynchaea, sexes and young of. rhynchaea australis. rhynchaea bengalensis. rhynchaea capensis. rhythm, perception of, by animals. richard, m., on rudimentary muscles in man. richardson, sir j., on the pairing of tetrao umbellus; on tetrao urophasianus; on the drumming of grouse; on the dances of tetrao phasianellus; on assemblages of grouse; on the battles of male deer; on the reindeer; on the horns of the musk-ox; on antlers of the reindeer with numerous points; on the moose; on the scotch deerhound. richter, jean paul, on imagination. riedel, on profligate female pigeons. riley, mr., on mimicry in butterflies; bird's disgust at taste of certain caterpillars. ring-ouzel, colours and nidification of the. ripa, father, on the difficulty of distinguishing the races of the chinese. rivalry, in singing, between male birds. river-hog, african, tusks and knobs of the. rivers, analogy of, to islands. roach, brightness of the male during breeding-season. robbery, of strangers, considered honourable. robertson, mr., remarks on the development of the horns in the roebuck and red deer. robin, pugnacity of the male; autumn song of the; female singing of the; attacking other birds with red in their plumage; young of the. robinet, on the difference of size of the male and female cocoons of the silk-moth. rodents, uterus in the; absence of secondary sexual characters in; sexual differences in the colours of. roe, winter changes of the. rohfs, dr., caucasian features in negro; fertility of mixed races in sahara; colours of birds in sahara; ideas of beauty amongst the bornuans. rolle, f., on the origin of man; on a change in german families settled in georgia. roller, harsh cry of. romans, ancient, gladiatorial exhibitions of the. rook, voice of the. rossler, dr., on the resemblance of the lower surface of butterflies to the bark of trees. rostrum, sexual difference in the length of in some weevils. royer, madlle., mammals giving suck. rudimentary organs, origin of. rudiments, presence of, in languages. rudolphi, on the want of connexion between climate and the colour of the skin. ruff, supposed to be polygamous; proportion of the sexes in the; pugnacity of the; double moult in; duration of dances of; attraction of the, to bright objects. ruminants, male, disappearance of canine teeth in; generally polygamous; suborbital pits of; sexual differences of colour in. rupicola crocea, display of plumage by the male. ruppell, on canine teeth in deer and antelopes. russia, numerical proportion of male and female births in. ruticilla. rutimeyer, prof., on the physiognomy of the apes; on tusks of miocene boar; on the sexual differences of monkeys. rutlandshire, numerical proportion of male and female births in. sachs, prof., on the behaviour of the male and female elements in fertilisation. sacrifices, human. sagittal crest, in male apes and australians. sahara, fertility of mixed races in; birds of the; animal inhabitants of the. sailors, growth of, delayed by conditions of life; long-sighted. sailors and soldiers, difference in the proportions of. st. john, mr., on the attachment of mated birds. st. kilda, beards of the inhabitants of. salmo eriox, and salmo umbla, colouring of the male, during the breeding season. salmo lycaodon. salmo salar. salmon, leaping out of fresh water; male, ready to breed before the female; proportion of the sexes in; male, pugnacity of the; male, characters of, during the breeding season; spawning of the; breeding of immature male. salvin, o., inheritance of mutilated feathers; on the humming-birds; on the numerical proportion of the sexes in humming-birds; on chamaepetes and penelope; on selasphorus platycercus; pipra deliciosa; on chasmorhynchus. samoa islands, beardlessness of the natives of. sandhoppers, claspers of male. sand-skipper. sandwich islands, variation in the skulls of the natives of the; decrease of native population; population of; superiority of the nobles in the. sandwich islanders, lice of. san-giuliano, women of. santali, recent rapid increase of the; mr. hunter on the. saphirina, characters of the males of. sarkidiornis melanonotus, characters of the young. sars, o., on pontoporeia affinis. saturnia carpini, attraction of males by the female. saturnia io, difference of coloration in the sexes of. saturniidae, coloration of the. savage, dr., on the fighting of the male gorillas; on the habits of the gorilla. savage and wyman on the polygamous habits of the gorilla. savages, uniformity of, exaggerated; long-sighted; rate of increase among, usually small; retention of the prehensile power of the feet by; imitative faculties of; causes of low morality of; tribes of, supplanting one another; improvements in the arts among; arts of; fondness of, for rough music; on long-enduring fashions among; attention paid by, to personal appearance; relation of the sexes among. saviotti, dr., division of malar bone. saw-fly, pugnacity of a male. saw-flies, proportions of the sexes in. saxicola rubicola, young of. scalp, motion of the. scent-glands in snakes. schaaffhausen, prof., on the development of the posterior molars in different races of man; on the jaw from la naulette; on the correlation between muscularity and prominent supra-orbital ridges; on the mastoid processes of man; on modifications of the cranial bones; on human sacrifices; on the probable speedy extermination of the anthropomorphous apes; on the ancient inhabitants of europe; on the effects of use and disuse of parts; on the superciliary ridge in man; on the absence of race-differences in the infant skull in man; on ugliness. schaum, h., on the elytra of dytiscus and hydroporus. scherzer and schwarz, measurements of savages. schelver, on dragon-flies. schiodte, on the stridulation of heterocerus. schlegel, f. von, on the complexity of the languages of uncivilised peoples. schlegel, prof., on tanysiptera. schleicher, prof, on the origin of language. schomburgk, sir r., on the pugnacity of the male musk-duck of guiana; on the courtship of rupicola crocea. schoolcraft, mr., on the difficulty of fashioning stone implements. schopenhauer, on importance of courtship to mankind. schweinfurth, complexion of negroes. sciaena aquila. sclater, p.l., on modified secondary wing-feathers in the males of pipra; on elongated feathers in nightjars; on the species of chasmorhynchus; on the plumage of pelecanus onocrotalus; on the plantain-eaters; on the sexes and young of tadorna variegata; on the colours of lemur macaco; on the stripes in asses. scolecida, absence of secondary sexual characters in. scolopax frenata, tail feathers of; scolopax gallinago, drumming of. scolopax javensis, tail-feathers of. scolopax major, assemblies of. scolopax wilsonii, sound produced by. scolytus, stridulation of. scoter-duck, black, sexual difference in coloration of the; bright beak of male. scott, dr., on idiots smelling their food. scott, j., on the colour of the beard in man. scrope, on the pugnacity of the male salmon; on the battles of stags. scudder, s.h., imitation of the stridulation of the orthoptera; on the stridulation of the acridiidae; on a devonian insect; on stridulation. sculpture, expression of the ideal of beauty by. sea-anemones, bright colours of. sea-bear, polygamous. sea-elephant, male, structure of the nose of the; polygamous. sea-lion, polygamous. seal, bladder-nose. seals, their sentinels generally females; evidence furnished by, on classification; polygamous habits of; battles of male; canine teeth of male; sexual differences; pairing of; sexual peculiarities of; in the coloration of; appreciation of music by. sea-scorpion, sexual differences in. season, changes of colour in birds, in accordance with the; changes of plumage of birds in relation to. seasons, inheritance at corresponding. sebituani, african chief, trying to alter a fashion. sebright bantam. secondary sexual characters; relations of polygamy to; transmitted through both sexes; gradation of, in birds. sedgwick, w., on hereditary tendency to produce twins. seemann, dr., on the different appreciation of music by different peoples; on the effects of music. seidlitz, on horns of reindeer. selasphorus platycercus, acuminate first primary of the male. selby, p.j., on the habits of the black and red grouse. selection as applied to primeval man. selection, double. selection, injurious forms of, in civilised nations. selection of male by female birds. selection, methodical, of prussian grenadiers. selection, sexual, explanation of; influence of, on the colouring of lepidoptera. selection, sexual and natural, contrasted. self-command, habit of, inherited; estimation of. self-consciousness, in animals. self-preservation, instinct of. self-sacrifice, by savages; estimation of. semilunar fold. semnopithecus, long hair on the heads of species of. semnopithecus chrysomelas, sexual differences of colour in. semnopithecus comatus, ornamental hair on the head of. semnopithecus frontatus, beard etc., of. semnopithecus nasica, nose of. semnopithecus nemaeus, colouring of. semnopithecus rubicundus, ornamental hair on the head of. senses, inferiority of europeans to savages in the. sentinels, among animals. serpents, instinctively dreaded by apes and monkeys. serranus, hermaphroditism in. setina, noise produced by. sex, inheritance limited by. sexes, relative proportions of, in man; proportions of, sometimes influenced by selection; probable relation of the, in primeval man. sexual and natural selection, contrasted. sexual characters, effects of the loss of; limitation of. sexual characters, secondary; relations of polygamy to; transmitted through both sexes; gradation of, in birds. sexual differences in man. sexual selection, explanation of; influence of, on the colouring of lepidoptera; objections to; action of, in mankind. sexual selection in spiders. sexual selection, supplemental note on. sexual similarity. shaler, prof., sizes of sexes in whales. shame. sharks, prehensile organs of male. sharpe, dr., europeans in the tropics. sharpe, r.b., on tanysiptera sylvia; on ceryle; on the young male of dacelo gaudi-chaudi. shaw, mr., on the pugnacity of the male salmon. shaw, j., on the decorations of birds. sheep, danger-signals of; sexual differences in the horns of; horns of; domestic, sexual differences of, late developed; numerical proportion of the sexes in; inheritance of horns by one sex; effect of castration; mode of fighting of; arched foreheads of some. sheep, merino, loss of horns in females of; horns of. shells, difference in form of, in male and female gasteropoda; beautiful colours and shapes of. shield-drake, pairing with a common duck; new zealand, sexes and young of. shooter, j., on the kaffirs; on the marriage-customs of the kaffirs. shrew-mice, odour of. shrike, drongo. shrikes, characters of young. shuckard, w.e., on sexual differences in the wings of hymenoptera. shyness of adorned male birds; siagonium, proportions of the sexes in; dimorphism in males of. siam, proportion of male and female births in. siamese, general beardlessness of the; notions of beauty of the; hairy family of. sidgwick, h., on morality in hypothetical bee community; our actions not entirely directed by pain and pleasure. siebold, c.t., von, on the proportion of sexes in the apus; on the auditory apparatus of the stridulent orthoptera. sight, inheritance of long and short. signal-cries of monkeys. silk-moth, proportion of the sexes in; ailanthus, prof. canestrini, on the destruction of its larvae by wasps; difference of size of the male and female cocoons of the; pairing of the. simiadae, their origin and divisions. similarity, sexual. singing of the cicadae and fulgoridae; of tree-frogs; of birds, object of the. sirenia, nakedness of. sirex juvencus. siricidae, difference of the sexes in. siskin, pairing with a canary. sitana, throat-pouch of the males of. size, relative, of the sexes of insects. skin, dark colour of, a protection against heat. skin, movement of the; nakedness of, in man; colour of the. skin and hair, correlation of colour of. skull, variation of, in man; cubic contents of, no absolute test of intellect; neanderthal, capacity of the; causes of modification of the; difference of, in form and capacity, in different races of men; variability of the shape of the; differences of, in the sexes in man; artificial modification of the shape of. skunk, odour emitted by the; white tail of, protective. slavery, prevalence of; of women. slaves, difference between field-and house-slaves. sloth, ornaments of male. smell, sense of, in man and animals. smith, adam, on the basis of sympathy. smith, sir a., on the recognition of women by male cynocephali; on revenge by a baboon; on an instance of memory in a baboon; on the retention of their colour by the dutch in south africa; on the polygamy of the south african antelopes; on the polygamy of the lion; on the proportion of the sexes in kobus ellipsiprymnus; on bucephalus capensis; on south african lizards; on fighting gnus; on the horns of rhinoceroses; on the fighting of lions; on the colours of the cape eland; on the colours of the gnu; on hottentot notions of beauty; disbelief in communistic marriages. smith, f., on the cynipidae and tenthredinidae; on the relative size of the sexes of aculeate hymenoptera; on the difference between the sexes of ants and bees; on the stridulation of trox sabulosus; on the stridulation of mononychus pseudacori. smynthurus luteus, courtship of. snakes, sexual differences of; mental powers of; male, ardency of. "snarling muscles." snipe, drumming of the; coloration of the. snipe, painted, sexes and young of. snipe, solitary, assemblies of. snipes, arrival of male before the female; pugnacity of male; double moult in. snow-goose, whiteness of the. sociability, the sense of duty connected with; impulse to, in animals; manifestations of, in man; instinct of, in animals. social animals, affection of, for each other; defence of, by the males. sociality, probable, of primeval men; influence of, on the development of the intellectual faculties; origin of, in man. soldiers, american, measurements of. soldiers and sailors, difference in the proportions of. solenostoma, bright colours and marsupial sac of the females of. song, of male birds appreciated by their females; want of, in brilliant plumaged birds; of birds. sorex, odour of. sounds, admired alike by man and animals; produced by fishes; produced by male frogs and toads; instrumentally produced by birds. spain, decadence of. sparassus smaragdulus, difference of colour in the sexes of. sparrow, pugnacity of the male; acquisition of the linnet's song by a; coloration of the; immature plumage of the. sparrow, white-crowned, young of the. sparrows, house-and tree-. sparrows, new mates found by. sparrows, sexes and young of; learning to sing. spathura underwoodi. spawning of fishes. spear, used before dispersion of man. species, causes of the advancement of; distinctive characters of; or races of man; sterility and fertility of, when crossed; supposed, of man; gradation of; difficulty of defining; representative, of birds; of birds, comparative differences between the sexes of distinct. spectrum femoratum, difference of colour in the sexes of. speech, connection between the brain and the faculty of; connection of intonation with music. spel, of the black-cock. spencer, herbert, on the influence of food on the size of the jaws; on the dawn of intelligence; on the origin of the belief in spiritual agencies; on the origin of the moral sense; on music. spengel, disagrees with explanation of man's hairlessness. sperm-whales, battles of male. sphingidae, coloration of the. sphinx, humming-bird. sphinx, mr. bates on the caterpillar of a. sphinx moth, musky odour of. spiders, parental feeling in; male, more active than female; proportion of the sexes in; secondary sexual characters of; courtship of male; attracted by music; male, small size of. spilosoma menthastri, rejected by turkeys. spine, alteration of, to suit the erect attitude of man. spirits, fondness of monkeys for. spiritual agencies, belief in, almost universal. spiza cyanea and ciris. spoonbill, chinese, change of plumage in. spots, retained throughout groups of birds; disappearance of, in adult mammals. sprengel, c.k., on the sexuality of plants. springboc, horns of the. sproat, mr., on the extinction of savages in vancouver island; on the eradication of facial hair by the natives of vancouver island; on the eradication of the beard by the indians of vancouver island. spurs, occurrence of, in female fowls; development of, in various species of phasianidae; of gallinaceous birds; development of, in female gallinaceae. squilla, different colours of the sexes of a species of. squirrels, battles of male; african, sexual differences in the colouring of; black. stag, long hairs of the throat of; horns of the; battles of; horns of the, with numerous branches; bellowing of the; crest of the. stag-beetle, numerical proportion of sexes of; use of jaws; large size of male; weapons of the male. stainton, h.t., on the numerical proportion of the sexes in the smaller moths; habits of elachista rufocinerea; on the coloration of moths; on the rejection of spilosoma menthastri by turkeys; on the sexes of agrotis exclamationis. staley, bishop, mortality of infant maories. stallion, mane of the. stallions, two, attacking a third; fighting; small canine teeth of. stansbury, captain, observations on pelicans. staphylinidae, hornlike processes in male. starfishes, parental feeling in; bright colours of some. stark, dr., on the death-rate in towns and rural districts; on the influence of marriage on mortality; on the higher mortality of males in scotland. starling, american field-, pugnacity of male. starling, red-winged, selection of a mate by the female. starlings, three, frequenting the same nest; new mates found by. statues, greek, egyptian, assyrian, etc., contrasted. stature, dependence of, upon local influences. staudinger, dr., on breeding lepidoptera; his list of lepidoptera. staunton, sir g., hatred of indecency a modern virtue. stealing of bright objects by birds. stebbing, t.r., on the nakedness of the human body. stemmatopus. stendhal, see bombet. stenobothrus pratorum, stridulation. stephen, mr. l., on the difference in the minds of men and animals; on general concepts in animals; distinction between material and formal morality. sterility, general, of sole daughters; when crossed, a distinctive character of species; under changed conditions. sterna, seasonal change of plumage in. stickleback, polygamous; male, courtship of the; male, brilliant colouring of, during the breeding season; nidification of the. sticks used as implements and weapons by monkeys. sting in bees. stokes, captain, on the habits of the great bower-bird. stoliczka, dr., on colours in snakes. stoliczka, on the pre-anal pores of lizards. stonechat, young of the. stone implements, difficulty of making; as traces of extinct tribes. stones, used by monkeys for breaking hard fruits and as missiles; piles of. stork, black, sexual differences in the bronchi of the; red beak of the. storks, sexual difference in the colour of the eyes of. strange, mr., on the satin bowerbird. strepsiceros kudu, horns of; markings of. stretch, mr., on the numerical proportion in the sexes of chickens. stridulation, by males of theridion; of hemiptera; of the orthoptera and homoptera discussed; of beetles. stripes, retained throughout groups of birds; disappearance of, in adult mammals. strix flammea. structure, existence of unserviceable modifications of. struggle for existence, in man. struthers, dr., on the occurrence of the supra-condyloid foramen in the humerus of man. sturnella ludoviciana, pugnacity of the male. sturnus vulgaris. sub-species. suffering, in strangers, indifference of savages to. suicide, formerly not regarded as a crime; rarely practised among the lowest savages. suidae, stripes of the young. sulivan, sir b.j., on speaking of parrots; on two stallions attacking a third. sumatra, compression of the nose by the malays of. sumner, archb., man alone capable of progressive improvement. sun-birds, nidification of. superciliary ridge in man. supernumerary digits, more frequent in men than in women; inheritance of; early development of. superstitions, prevalence of. superstitious customs. supra-condyloid foramen in the early progenitors of man. suspicion, prevalence of, among animals. swallow-tail butterfly. swallows deserting their young. swan, black, wild, trachea of the; white, young of; red beak of the; black-necked. swans, young. swaysland, mr., on the arrival of migratory birds. swifts, migration of. swinhoe, r., on the common rat in formosa and china; behaviour of lizards when caught; on the sounds produced by the male hoopoe; on dicrurus macrocercus and the spoonbill; on the young of ardeola; on the habits of turnix; on the habits of rhynchaea bengalensis; on orioles breeding in immature plumage. sylvia atricapilla, young of. sylvia cinerea, aerial love-dance of the male. sympathy, among animals; its supposed basis. sympathies, gradual widening of. syngnathous fishes, abdominal pouch in male. sypheotides auritus, acuminated primaries of the male; ear-tufts of. tabanidae, habits of. tadorna variegata, sexes and young of. tadorna vulpanser. tahitians, compression of the nose by the. tail, rudimentary, occurrence of, in man; convoluted body in the extremity of the; absence of, in man and the higher apes; variability of, in species of macacus and in baboons; presence of, in the early progenitors of man; length of, in pheasants; difference of length of the, in the two sexes of birds. tait, lawson, on the effects of natural selection on civilised nations. tanager, scarlet, variation in the male. tanagra aestiva, age of mature plumage in. tanagra rubra, young of. tanais, absence of mouth in the males of some species of; relations of the sexes in; dimorphic males of a species of. tankerville, earl, on the battles of wild bulls. tanysiptera, races of, determined from adult males. tanysiptera sylvia, long tail-feathers of. taphroderes distortus, enlarged left mandible of the male. tapirs, longitudinal stripes of young. tarsi, dilatation of front, in male beetles. tarsius. tasmania, half-castes killed by the natives of. tasmanians, extinction of. taste, in the quadrumana. tattooing, universality of. taylor, g., on quiscalus major. taylor, rev. r., on tattooing in new zealand. tea, fondness of monkeys for. teal, constancy of. tear-sacs, of ruminants. teebay, mr., on changes of plumage in spangled hamburg fowls. teeth, rudimentary incisor, in ruminants; posterior molar, in man; wisdom; diversity of; canine, in the early progenitors of man; canine, of male mammals; in man, reduced by correlation; staining of the; front, knocked out or filed by some savages. tegetmeier, mr., on the transmission of colours in pigeons by one sex alone; numerical proportion of male and female births in dogs; on the abundance of male pigeons; on the wattles of game-cocks; on the courtship of fowls; on the loves of pigeons; on dyed pigeons; blue dragon pigeons. tembeta, s. american ornament. temper, in dogs and horses, inherited. tench, proportions of the sexes in the; brightness of male, during breeding season. tenebrionidae, stridulation of. tennent, sir j.e., on the tusks of the ceylon elephant; on the frequent absence of beard in the natives of ceylon; on the chinese opinion of the aspect of the cingalese. tennyson, a., on the control of thought. tenthredinidae, proportions of the sexes in; fighting habits of male; difference of the sexes in. tephrodornis, young of. terai, in india. termites, habits of. terns, white; and black. terns, seasonal change of plumage in. terror, common action of, upon the lower animals and man. testudo elegans. testudo nigra. tetrao cupido, battles of; sexual difference in the vocal organs of. tetrao phasianellus, dances of; duration of dances of. tetrao scoticus. tetrao tetrix, pugnacity of the male. tetrao umbellus, pairing of; battles of; drumming of the male. tetrao urogalloides, dances of. tetrao urogallus, pugnacity of the male. tetrao urophasianus, inflation of the oesophagus in the male. thamnobia, young of. thecla, sexual differences of colouring in species of. thecla rubi, protective colouring of. thecophora fovea. theognis, selection in mankind. theridion, stridulation of males of. theridion lineatum. thomisus citreus, and thomisus floricolens, difference of colour in the sexes of. thompson, j.h., on the battles of sperm-whales. thompson, w., on the colouring of the male char during the breeding season; on the pugnacity of the males of gallinula chloropus; on the finding of new mates by magpies; on the finding of new mates by peregrine falcons. thorax, processes of, in male beetles. thorell, t., on the proportion of sexes in spiders. thornback, difference in the teeth of the two sexes of the. thoughts, control of. thrush, pairing with a blackbird; colours and nidification of the. thrushes, characters of young. thug, remorse of a. thumb, absence of, in ateles and hylobates. thury, m., on the numerical proportion of male and female births among the jews. thylacinus, possession of the marsupial sac by the male. thysanura. tibia, dilated, of the male crabro cribrarius. tibia and femur, proportions of, in the aymara indians. tierra del fuego, marriage-customs of. tiger, colours and markings of the. tigers, depopulation of districts by, in india. tillus elongatus, difference of colour in the sexes of. timidity, variability of, in the same species. tinca vulgaris. tipula, pugnacity of male. tits, sexual difference of colour in. toads, male, treatment of ova by some; male, ready to breed before the female. todas, infanticide and proportion of sexes; practice polyandry; choice of husbands amongst. toe, great, condition of, in the human embryo. tomicus villosus, proportion of the sexes in. tomtit, blue, sexual difference of colour in the. tonga islands, beardlessness of the natives of. tooke, horne, on language. tools, flint; used by monkeys; use of. topknots in birds. tortoise, voice of the male. tortures, submitted to by american savages. totanus, double moult in. toucans, colours and nidification of the; beaks and ceres of the. towns, residence in, a cause of diminished stature. toynbee, j., on the external shell of the ear in man. trachea, convoluted and imbedded in the sternum, in some birds; structure of the, in rhynchaea. trades, affecting the form of the skull. tragelaphus, sexual differences of colour in. tragelaphus scriptus, dorsal crest of; markings of. tragopan, swelling of the wattles of the male, during courtship; display of plumage by the male; marking of the sexes of the. tragops dispar, sexual difference in the colour of. training, effect of, on the mental difference between the sexes of man. transfer of male characters to female birds. transmission, equal, of ornamental characters, to both sexes in mammals. traps, avoidance of, by animals; use of. treachery, to comrades, avoidance of, by savages. tremex columbae. tribes, extinct; extinction of. trichius, difference of colour in the sexes of a species of. trigla. trigonocephalus, noise made by tail of. trimen, r., on the proportion of the sexes in south african butterflies; on the attraction of males by the female lasiocampa quercus; on pneumora; on difference of colour in the sexes of beetles; on moths brilliantly coloured beneath; on mimicry in butterflies; on gynanisa isis, and on the ocellated spots of lepidoptera; on cyllo leda. tringa, sexes and young of. tringa cornuta. triphaena, coloration of the species of. tristram, h.b., on unhealthy districts in north africa; on the habits of the chaffinch in palestine; on the birds of the sahara; on the animals inhabiting the sahara. triton cristatus. triton palmipes. triton punctatus. troglodyte skulls, greater than those of modern frenchmen. troglodytes vulgaris. trogons, colours and nidification of the. tropic-birds, white only when mature. tropics, freshwater fishes of the. trout, proportion of the sexes in; male, pugnacity of the. trox sabulosus, stridulation of. truth, not rare between members of the same tribe; more highly appreciated by certain tribes. tulloch, major, on the immunity of the negro from certain fevers. tumbler, almond, change of plumage in the. turdus merula, young of. turdus migratorius. turdus musicus. turdus polyglottus, young of. turdus torquatus. turkey, wild, pugnacity of young male; wild, notes of the; swelling of the wattles of the male; variety of, with a top-knot; recognition of a dog by a; male, wild, acceptable to domesticated females; wild, first advances made by older females; wild, breast-tuft of bristles of the. turkey-cock, scraping of the wings of, upon the ground; wild, display of plumage by; fighting habits of. turner, prof. w., on muscular fasciculi in man referable to the panniculus carnosus; on the occurrence of the supra-condyloid foramen in the human humerus; on muscles attached to the coccyx in man; on the filum terminale in man; on the variability of the muscles; on abnormal conditions of the human uterus; on the development of the mammary glands; on male fishes hatching ova in their mouths; on the external perpendicular fissure of the brain; on the bridging convolutions in the brain of a chimpanzee. turnix, sexes of some species of. turtle-dove, cooing of the. tuttle, h., on the number of species of man. tylor, e.b., on emotional cries, gestures, etc., of man; on the origin of the belief in spiritual agencies; remorse for violation of tribal usage in marrying; on the primitive barbarism of civilised nations; on the origin of counting; inventions of savages; on resemblances, of the mental characters in different races of man. type of structure, prevalence of. typhaeus, stridulating organs of; stridulation of. twins, tendency to produce, hereditary. twite, proportion of the sexes in. ugliness, said to consist in an approach to the lower animals. umbrella-bird. umbrina, sounds produced by. united states, rate of increase in; influence of natural selection on the progress of; change undergone by europeans in the. upupa epops, sounds produced by the male. uraniidae, coloration of the. uria troile, variety of (=u. lacrymans). urodela. urosticte benjamini, sexual differences in. use and disuse of parts, effects of; influence of, on the races of man. uterus, reversion in the; more or less divided, in the human subject; double, in the early progenitors of man. vaccination, influence of. vancouver island, mr. sproat on the savages of; natives of, eradication of facial hair by the. vanellus cristatus, wing tubercles of the male. vanessae, resemblance of lower surface of, to bark of trees. variability, causes of; in man, analogous to that in the lower animals; of the races of man; greater in men than in women; period of, relation of the, to sexual selection; of birds; of secondary sexual characters in man. variation, laws of; correlated; in man; analogous; analogous, in plumage of birds. variations, spontaneous. varieties, absence of, between two species, evidence of their distinctness. variety, an object in nature. variola, communicable between man and the lower animals. vaureal, human bones from. veddahs, monogamous habits of. veitch, mr., on the aversion of japanese ladies to whiskers. vengeance, instinct of. venus erycina, priestesses of. vermes. vermiform appendage. verreaux, m., on the attraction of numerous males by the female of an australian bombyx. vertebrae, caudal, number of in macaques and baboons; of monkeys, partly imbedded in the body. vertebrata, common origin of the; most ancient progenitors of; origin of the voice in air-breathing. vesicula prostatica, the homologue of the uterus. vibrissae, represented by long hairs in the eyebrows. vidua. vidua axillaris. villerme, m., on the influence of plenty upon stature. vinson, aug., courtship of male spider; on the male of epeira nigra. viper, difference of the sexes in the. virey, on the number of species of man. virtues, originally social only; gradual appreciation of. viscera, variability of, in man. vlacovich, prof., on the ischio-pubic muscle. vocal music of birds. vocal organs of man; of birds; of frogs; of the insessores; difference of, in the sexes of birds; primarily used in relation to the propagation of the species. vogt, karl, on the origin of species; on the origin of man; on the semilunar fold in man; on microcephalous idiots; on the imitative faculties of microcephalous idiots; on skulls from brazilian caves; on the evolution of the races of man; on the formation of the skull in women; on the ainos and negroes; on the increased cranial difference of the sexes in man with race development; on the obliquity of the eye in the chinese and japanese. voice in mammals; in monkeys and man; in man; origin of, in air-breathing vertebrates. von baer, see baer. vulpian, prof., on the resemblance between the brains of man and the higher apes. vultures, selection of a mate by the female; colours of. waders, young of. wagner, r., on the occurrence of the diastema in a kaffir skull; on the bronchi of the black stork. wagtail, ray's, arrival of the male before the female. wagtails, indian, young of. waist, proportions of, in soldiers and sailors. waitz, prof., on the number of species of man; on the liability of negroes to tropical fevers after residence in a cold climate; on the colour of australian infants; on the beardlessness of negroes; on the fondness of mankind for ornaments; on negro ideas of female beauty; on javan and cochin chinese ideas of beauty. waldeyer, m., on the hermaphroditism of the vertebrate embryo. wales, north, numerical proportion of male and female births in. walkenaer and gervais, spider attracted by music; on the myriapoda. walker, alex., on the large size of the hands of labourers' children. walker, f., on sexual differences in the diptera. wallace, dr. a., on the prehensile use of the tarsi in male moths; on the rearing of the ailanthus silkmoth; on breeding lepidoptera; proportion of sexes of bombyx cynthia, b. yamamai, and b. pernyi reared by; on the development of bombyx cynthia and b. yamamai; on the pairing of bombyx cynthia. wallace, a.r., on the origin of man; on the power of imitation in man; on the use of missiles by the orang; on the varying appreciation of truth among different tribes; on the limits of natural selection in man; on the occurrence of remorse among savages; on the effects of natural selection on civilised nations; on the use of the convergence of the hair at the elbow in the orang; on the contrast in the characters of the malays and papuans; on the line of separation between the papuans and malays; on the birds of paradise; on the sexes of ornithoptera croesus; on protective resemblances; on the relative sizes of the sexes of insects; on elaphomyia; on the pugnacity of the males of leptorhynchus angustatus; on sounds produced by euchirus longimanus; on the colours of diadema; on kallima; on the protective colouring of moths; on bright coloration as protective in butterflies; on variability in the papilionidae; on male and female butterflies, inhabiting different stations; on the protective nature of the dull colouring of female butterflies; on mimicry in butterflies; on the bright colours of caterpillars; on brightly-coloured fishes frequenting reefs; on the coral snakes; on paradisea apoda; on the display of plumage by male birds of paradise; on assemblies of birds of paradise; on the instability of the ocellated spots in hipparchia janira; on sexually limited inheritance; on the sexual coloration of birds; on the relation between the colours and nidification of birds; on the coloration of the cotingidae; on the females of paradisea apoda and papuana; on the incubation of the cassowary; on protective coloration in birds; on the babirusa; on the markings of the tiger; on the beards of the papuans; on the hair of the papuans; on the distribution of hair on the human body. walrus, development of the nictitating membrane in the; tusks of the; use of the tusks by the. walsh, b.d., on the proportion of the sexes in papilio turnus; on the cynipidae and cecidomyidae; on the jaws of ammophila; on corydalis cornutus; on the prehensile organs of male insects; on the antennae of penthe; on the caudal appendages of dragonflies; on platyphyllum concavum; on the sexes of the ephemeridae; on the difference of colour in the sexes of spectrum femoratum; on sexes of dragon-flies; on the difference of the sexes in the ichneumonidae; on the sexes of orsodacna atra; on the variation of the horns of the male phanaeas carnifex; on the coloration of the species of anthocharis. wapiti, battles of; traces of horns in the female; attacking a man; crest of the male; sexual difference in the colour of the. warbler, hedge-; young of the. warblers, superb, nidification of. wariness, acquired by animals. warington, r., on the habits of the stickleback; on the brilliant colours of the male stickleback during the breeding season. wart-hog, tusks and pads of the. watchmakers, short-sighted. waterhen. waterhouse, c.o., on blind beetles; on difference of colour in the sexes of beetles. waterhouse, g.r., on the voice of hylobates agilis. water-ouzel, autumn song of the. waterton, c., on the bell-bird; on the pairing of a canada goose with a bernicle gander; on hares fighting. wattles, disadvantageous to male birds in fighting. weale, j., mansel, on a south african caterpillar. wealth, influence of. weapons, used by man; employed by monkeys; offensive, of males; of mammals. weaver-bird. weaver-birds, rattling of the wings of; assemblies of. webb, dr., on the wisdom teeth. wedderburn, mr., assembly of black game. wedgwood, hensleigh, on the origin of language. weevils, sexual difference in length of snout in some. weir, harrison, on the numerical proportion of the sexes in pigs and rabbits; on the sexes of young pigeons; on the songs of birds; on pigeons; on the dislike of blue pigeons to other coloured varieties; on the desertion of their mates by female pigeons. weir, j. jenner, on the nightingale and blackcap; on the relative sexual maturity of male birds; on female pigeons deserting a feeble mate; on three starlings frequenting the same nest; on the proportion of the sexes in machetes pugnax and other birds; on the coloration of the triphaenae; on the rejection of certain caterpillars by birds; on sexual differences of the beak in the goldfinch; on a piping bullfinch; on the object of the nightingale's song; on song-birds; on the pugnacity of male fine-plumaged birds; on the courtship of birds; on the finding of new mates by peregrine falcons and kestrels; on the bullfinch and starling; on the cause of birds remaining unpaired; on starlings and parrots living in triplets; on recognition of colour by birds; on hybrid birds; on the selection of a greenfinch by a female canary; on a case of rivalry of female bullfinches; on the maturity of the golden pheasant. weisbach, dr., measurement of men of different races; on the greater variability of men than of women; on the relative proportions of the body in the sexes of different races of man. weismann, prof., colours of lycaenae. welcker, m., on brachycephaly and dolichocephaly; on sexual differences in the skull in man. wells, dr., on the immunity of coloured races from certain poisons. westring, on the stridulation of males of theridion; on the stridulation of reduvius personatus; on the stridulation of beetles; on the stridulation of omaloplia brunnea; on the stridulating organs of the coleoptera; on sounds produced by cychrus. westropp, h.m., on reason in a bear; on the prevalence of certain forms of ornamentation. westwood, j.o., on the classification of the hymenoptera; on the culicidae and tabanidae; on a hymenopterous parasite with a sedentary male; on the proportions of the sexes in lucanus cervus and siagonium; on the absence of ocelli in female mutillidae; on the jaws of ammophila; on the copulation of insects of distinct species; on the male of crabro cribrarius; on the pugnacity of the male tipulae; on the stridulation of pirates stridulus; on the cicadae; on the stridulating organs of the cricket; on ephippiger vitium; on pneumora; on the pugnacity of the mantides; on platyblemnus; on difference in the sexes of the agrionidae; on the pugnacity of the males of a species of tenthredinae; on the pugnacity of the male stag-beetle; on bledius taurus and siagonium; on lamellicorn beetles; on the coloration of lithosia. whale, sperm-, battles of male. whales, nakedness of. whately, arch., language not peculiar to man; on the primitive civilisation of man. whewell, prof., on maternal affection. whiskers, in monkeys. white, f.b., noise produced by hylophila. white, gilbert, on the proportion of the sexes in the partridge; on the house-cricket; on the object of the song of birds; on the finding of new mates by white owls; on spring coveys of male partridges. whiteness, a sexual ornament in some birds; of mammals inhabiting snowy countries. white-throat, aerial love-dance of the male. whitney, prof., on the development of language; language not indispensable for thought. widgeon, pairing with a pintail duck. widow-bird, polygamous; breeding plumage of the male; female, rejecting the unadorned male. widows and widowers, mortality of. wilckens, dr., on the modification of domestic animals in mountainous regions; on a numerical relation between the hairs and excretory pores in sheep. wilder, dr. burt, on the greater frequency of supernumerary digits in men than in women. williams, on the marriage-customs of the fijians. wilson, dr., on the conical heads of the natives of north-western africa; on the fijians; on the persistence of the fashion of compressing the skull. wing-spurs. wings, differences of, in the two sexes of butterflies and hymenoptera; play of, in the courtship of birds. winter, change of colour of mammals in. witchcraft. wives, traces of the forcible capture of. wolf, winter change of the. wolff, on the variability of the viscera in man. wollaston, t.v., on eurygnathus; on musical curculionidae; on the stridulation of acalles. wolves, learning to bark from dogs; hunting in packs. wolves, black. wombat, black varieties of the. women, distinguished from men by male monkeys; preponderance of, in numbers; selection of, for beauty; effects of selection of, in accordance with different standards of beauty; practice of capturing; early betrothals and slavery of; freedom of selection by, in savage tribes. wonder, manifestations of, by animals. wonfor, mr., on sexual peculiarities, in the wings of butterflies. wood, j., on muscular variations in man; on the greater variability of the muscles in men than in women. wood, t.w., on the colouring of the orange-tip butterfly; on the habits of the saturniidae; quarrels of chamaeleons; on the habits of menura alberti; on tetrao cupido; on the display of plumage by male pheasants; on the ocellated spots of the argus pheasant; on fighting of menura superba; on the habits of the female cassowary. woodcock, coloration of the. woodpecker, selection of a mate by the female. woodpeckers, tapping of; colours and nidification of the; characters of young. woolner, mr., observations on the ear in man. wormald, mr., on the coloration of hypopyra. wounds, healing of. wren, young of the. wright, c.a., on the young of orocetes and petrocincla. wright, chauncey, great brain-power requisite for language; on correlative acquisition; on the enlargement of the brain in man. wright, mr., on the scotch deer-hound; on sexual preference in dogs; on the rejection of a horse by a mare. wright, w. von, on the protective plumage of the ptarmigan. writing. wyman, prof., on the prolongation of the coccyx in the human embryo; on the condition of the great toe in the human embryo; on the occurrence of the supra-condyloid foramen in the humerus of man; on variation in the skulls of the natives of the sandwich islands; on the hatching of the eggs in the mouths and branchial cavities of male fishes. xenarchus, on the cicadae. xenophon, selection in mankind advocated by. xenorhynchus, sexual difference in the colour of the eyes in. xiphophorus hellerii, peculiar anal fin of the male. xylocopa, difference of the sexes in. yarrel, w., on the habits of the cyprinidae; on raia clavata; on the characters of the male salmon during the breeding season; on the characters of the rays; on the gemmeous dragonet; on colours of salmon; on the spawning of the salmon; on the incubation of the lophobranchii; on rivalry in song-birds; on the trachea of the swan; on the moulting of the anatidae; on the young of the waders. yellow fever, immunity of negroes and mulattoes from. youatt, mr., on the development of the horns in cattle. yura-caras, their notions of beauty. zebra, rejection of an ass by a female; stripes of the. zebus, humps of. zigzags, prevalence of, as ornaments. zincke, mr., on european emigration to america. zootoca vivipara, sexual difference in the colour of. zouteveen, dr., polydactylism; proportion of sexes at cape of good hope; spiders attracted by music; on sounds produced by fish. zygaenidae, coloration of the. the end. [illustration] the works of aristotle the famous philosopher containing his complete masterpiece and family physician; his experienced midwife, his book of problems and his remarks on physiognomy complete edition, with engravings * * * * * the midwife's vade-mecum containing particular directions for midwives, nurses, etc. * * * * * some genuine recipes for causing speedy delivery. * * * * * approved directions for nurses. * * * * * [illustration: medical knowledge] [illustration] * * * * * part i.--book i the masterpiece _on marriage and at what age young men and virgins are capable of it: and why so much desire it. also, how long men and women are capable of it._ there are very few, except some professional debauchees, who will not readily agree that "marriage is honourable to all," being ordained by heaven in paradise; and without which no man or woman can be in a capacity, honestly, to yield obedience to the first law of the creation, "increase and multiply." and since it is natural in young people to desire the embraces, proper to the marriage bed, it behoves parents to look after their children, and when they find them inclinable to marriage, not violently to restrain their inclinations (which, instead of allaying them, makes them but the more impetuous) but rather provide such suitable matches for them, as may make their lives comfortable; lest the crossing of those inclinations should precipitate them to commit those follies that may bring an indelible stain upon their families. the inclination of maids to marriage may be known by many symptoms; for when they arrive at puberty, which is about the fourteenth or fifteenth year of their age, then their natural purgations begin to flow; and the blood, which is no longer to augment their bodies, abounding, stirs up their minds to venery. external causes may also incline them to it; for their spirits being brisk and inflamed, when they arrive at that age, if they eat hard salt things and spices, the body becomes more and more heated, whereby the desire to veneral embraces is very great, and sometimes almost insuperable. and the use of this so much desired enjoyment being denied to virgins, many times is followed by dismal consequences; such as the green weesel colonet, short-breathing, trembling of the heart, etc. but when they are married and their veneral desires satisfied by the enjoyment of their husbands, these distempers vanish, and they become more gay and lively than before. also, their eager staring at men, and affecting their company, shows that nature pushes them upon coition; and their parents neglecting to provide them with husbands, they break through modesty and satisfy themselves in unlawful embraces. it is the same with brisk widows, who cannot be satisfied without that benevolence to which they were accustomed when they had their husbands. at the age of , the menses, in virgins, begin to flow; then they are capable of conceiving, and continue generally until , when they cease bearing, unless their bodies are strong and healthful, which sometimes enables them to bear at . but many times the menses proceed from some violence done to nature, or some morbific matter, which often proves fatal. and, hence, men who are desirous of issue ought to marry a woman within the age aforesaid, or blame themselves if they meet with disappointment; though, if an old man, if not worn out with diseases and incontinency, marry a brisk, lively maiden, there is hope of him having children to or years. hippocrates says, that a youth of , or between that and , having much vital strength, is capable of begetting children; and also that the force of the procreating matter increases till , , and , and then begins to flag; the seed, by degrees, becoming unfruitful, the natural spirits being extinguished, and the humours dried up. thus, in general, but as to individuals, it often falls out otherwise. nay, it is reported by a credible author, that in swedland, a man was married at years of age to a girl of years, and had many children by her; but his countenance was so fresh, that those who knew him not, imagined him not to exceed . and in campania, where the air is clear and temperate, men of marry young virgins, and have children by them; which shows that age in them does not hinder procreation, unless they be exhausted in their youths and their yards be shrivelled up. if any would know why a woman is sooner barren than a man, they may be assured that the natural heat, which is the cause of generation, is more predominant in the man than in the woman; for since a woman is more moist than a man, as her monthly purgations demonstrate, as also the softness of her body; it is also apparent that he does not much exceed her in natural heat, which is the chief thing that concocts the humours in proper aliment, which the woman wanting grows fat; whereas a man, through his native heat, melts his fat by degrees and his humours are dissolved; and by the benefit thereof are converted into seed. and this may also be added, that women, generally, are not so strong as men, nor so wise or prudent; nor have so much reason and ingenuity in ordering affairs; which shows that thereby the faculties are hindered in operations. * * * * * chapter ii _how to beget a male or female child; and of the embryo and perfect birth; and the fittest time for the copula._ when a young couple are married, they naturally desire children; and therefore adopt the means that nature has appointed to that end. but notwithstanding their endeavours they must know that the success of all depends on the blessing of the gods: not only so, but the sex, whether male or female, is from their disposal also, though it cannot be denied, that secondary causes have influence therein, especially two. first, the general humour, which is brought by the arteria praeparantes to the testes, in form of blood, and there elaborated into seed, by the seminifical faculty residing in them. secondly, the desire of coition, which fires the imagination with unusual fancies, and by the sight of brisk, charming beauty, may soon inflame the appetite. but if nature be enfeebled, some meats must be eaten as will conduce to afford such aliment as makes the seed abound, and restores the exhaustion of nature that the faculties may freely operate, and remove impediments obstructing the procreating of children. then, since diet alters the evil state of the body to a better, those subject to barrenness must eat such meats as are juicy and nourish well, making the body lively and full of sap; of which faculty are all hot moist meats. for, according to galen, seed is made of pure concocted and windy superfluity of blood, whence we may conclude, that there is a power in many things, to accumulate seed, and also to augment it; and other things of force to cause desire, as hen eggs, pheasants, woodcocks, gnat-snappers, blackbirds, thrushes, young pigeons, sparrows, partridges, capons, almonds, pine nuts, raisins, currants, strong wines taken sparingly, especially those made of the grapes of italy. but erection is chiefly caused by scuraum, eringoes, cresses, crysmon, parsnips, artichokes, turnips, asparagus, candied ginger, acorns bruised to powder and drank in muscadel, scallion, sea shell fish, etc. but these must have time to perform their operation, and must be used for a considerable time, or you will reap but little benefit from them. the act of coition being over, let the woman repose herself on her right side, with her head lying low, and her body declining, that by sleeping in that posture, the cani, on the right side of the matrix, may prove the place of conception; for therein is the greatest generative heat, which is the chief procuring cause of male children, and rarely fails the expectations of those that experience it, especially if they do but keep warm, without much motion, leaning to the right, and drinking a little spirit of saffron and juice of hissop in a glass of malaga or alicant, when they lie down and arise, for a week. for a female child, let the woman lie on her left side, strongly fancying a female in the time of procreation, drinking the decoction of female mercury four days from the first day of purgation; the male mercury having the like operation in case of a male; for this concoction purges the right and left side of the womb, opens the receptacles, and makes way for the seminary of generation. the best time to beget a female is, when the moon is in the wane, in libra or aquaries. advicenne says, that when the menses are spent and the womb cleansed, which is commonly in five or seven days at most, if a man lie with his wife from the first day she is purged to the fifth, she will conceive a male; but from the fifth to the eighth a female; and from the eighth to the twelfth a male again: but after that perhaps neither distinctly, but both in an hermaphrodite. in a word, they that would be happy in the fruits of their labour, must observe to use copulation in due distance of time, not too often nor too seldom, for both are alike hurtful; and to use it immoderately weakens and wastes the spirits and spoils the seed. and this much for the first particular. the second is to let the reader know how the child is formed in the womb, what accidents it is liable to there, and how nourished and brought forth. there are various opinions concerning this matter; therefore, i shall show what the learned say about it. man consists of an egg, which is impregnated in the testicles of the woman, by the more subtle parts of the man's seed; but the forming faculty and virtue in the seed is a divine gift, it being abundantly imbued with vital spirit, which gives sap and form to the embryo, so that all parts and bulk of the body, which is made up in a few months and gradually formed into the likely figure of a man, do consist in, and are adumbrated thereby (most sublimely expressed, psalm cxxxix.: "i will praise thee, o lord, for i am fearfully and wonderfully made.") physicians have remarked four different times at which a man is framed and perfected in the womb; the first after coition, being perfectly formed in the week if no flux happens, which sometimes falls out through the slipperiness of the head of the matrix, that slips over like a rosebud that opens suddenly. the second time of forming is assigned when nature makes manifest mutation in the conception, so that all the substance seems congealed, flesh and blood, and happens twelve or fourteen days after copulation. and though this fleshy mass abounds with inflamed blood, yet it remains undistinguishable, without form, and may be called an embryo, and compared to seed sown in the ground, which, through heat and moisture, grows by degrees to a perfect form in plant or grain. the third time assigned to make up this fabric is when the principal parts show themselves plain; as the heart, whence proceed the arteries, the brain, from which the nerves, like small threads, run through the whole body; and the liver, which divides the chyle from the blood, brought to it by the vena porta. the two first are fountains of life, that nourish every part of the body, in framing which the faculty of the womb is bruised, from the conception of the eighth day of the first month. the fourth, and last, about the thirtieth day, the outward parts are seen nicely wrought, distinguished by joints, from which time it is no longer an embryo, but a perfect child. most males are perfect by the thirtieth day, but females seldom before the forty-second or forty-fifth day, because the heat of the womb is greater in producing the male than the female. and, for the same reason, a woman going with a male child quickens in three months, but going with a female, rarely under four, at which time its hair and nails come forth, and the child begins to stir, kick and move in the womb, and then the woman is troubled with a loathing for meat and a greedy longing for things contrary to nutriment, as coals, rubbish, chalk, etc., which desire often occasions abortion and miscarriage. some women have been so extravagant as to long for hob nails, leather, horse-flesh, man's flesh, and other unnatural as well as unwholesome food, for want of which thing they have either miscarried or the child has continued dead in the womb for many days, to the imminent hazard of their lives. but i shall now proceed to show by what means the child is maintained in the womb, and what posture it there remains in. the learned hippocrates affirms that the child, as he is placed in the womb, has his hands on his knees, and his head bent to his feet, so that he lies round together, his hands upon his knees and his face between them, so that each eye touches each thumb, and his nose betwixt his knees. and of the same opinion in this matter was bartholinus. columbus is of opinion that the figure of the child in the womb is round, the right arm bowed, the fingers under the ear, and about the neck, the head bowed so that the chin touches the breast, the left arm bowed above both breast and face and propped up by the bending of the right elbow; the legs are lifted upwards, the right so much that the thigh touches the belly, the knee the navel, the heel touches the left buttock, and the foot is turned back and covers the secrets; the left thigh touches the belly, and the leg lifted up to the breast. * * * * * chapter iii _the reason why children are like their parents; and that the mother's imagination contributes thereto; and whether the man or the woman is the cause of the male or female child._ in the case of similitude, nothing is more powerful than the imagination of the mother; for if she fix her eyes upon any object it will so impress her mind, that it oftentimes so happens that the child has a representation thereof on some part of the body. and, if in act of copulation, the woman earnestly look on the man, and fix her mind on him, the child will resemble its father. nay, if a woman, even in unlawful copulation, fix her mind upon her husband, the child will resemble him though he did not beget it. the same effect has imagination in occasioning warts, stains, mole-spots, and dartes; though indeed they sometimes happen through frights, or extravagant longing. many women, in being with child, on seeing a hare cross the road in front of them, will, through the force of imagination, bring forth a child with a hairy lip. some children are born with flat noses and wry mouths, great blubber lips and ill-shaped bodies; which must be ascribed to the imagination of the mother, who has cast her eyes and mind upon some ill-shaped creature. therefore it behoves all women with child, if possible, to avoid such sights, or at least, not to regard them. but though the mother's imagination may contribute much to the features of the child, yet, in manners, wit, and propension of the mind, experience tells us, that children are commonly of the condition with their parents, and possessed of similar tempers. but the vigour or disability of persons in the act of copulation many times cause it to be otherwise; for children begotten through the heat and strength of desire, must needs partake more of the nature and inclination of their parents, than those begotten at a time when desires are weaker; and, therefore, the children begotten by men in their old age are generally weaker than, those begotten by them in their youth. as to the share which each of the parents has in begetting the child, we will give the opinions of the ancients about it. though it is apparent that the man's seed is the chief efficient being of the action, motion, and generation: yet that the woman affords seed and effectually contributes in that point to the procreation of the child, is evinced by strong reasons. in the first place, seminary vessels had been given her in vain, and genital testicles inverted, if the woman wanted seminal excrescence, for nature does nothing in vain; and therefore we must grant, they were made for the use of seed and procreation, and placed in their proper parts; both the testicles and the receptacles of seed, whose nature is to operate and afford virtue to the seed. and to prove this, there needs no stronger argument, say they, than that if a woman do not use copulation to eject her seed, she often falls into strange diseases, as appears by young men and virgins. a second reason they urge is, that although the society of a lawful bed consists not altogether in these things, yet it is apparent the female sex are never better pleased, nor appear more blythe and jocund, than when they are satisfied this way; which is an inducement to believe they have more pleasure and titulation therein than men. for since nature causes much delight to accompany ejection, by the breaking forth of the swelling spirits and the swiftness of the nerves; in which case the operation on the woman's part is double, she having an enjoyment both by reception and ejection, by which she is more delighted in. hence it is, they say, that the child more frequently resembles the mother than the father, because the mother contributes more towards it. and they think it may be further instanced, from the endeared affection they bear them; for that, besides their contributing seminal matters, they feed and nourish the child with the purest fountain of blood, until its birth. which opinion galen affirms, by allowing children to participate most of the mother; and ascribes the difference of sex to the different operations of the menstrual blood; but this reason of the likeness he refers to the power of the seed; for, as the plants receive more nourishment from fruitful ground, than from the industry of the husbandman, so the infant receives more abundance from the mother than the father. for the seed of both is cherished in the womb, and then grows to perfection, being nourished with blood. and for this reason it is, they say, that children, for the most part, love their mothers best, because they receive the most of their substance from their mother; for about nine months she nourishes her child in the womb with the purest blood; then her love towards it newly born, and its likeness, do clearly show that the woman affords seed, and contributes more towards making the child than the man. but in this all the ancients were very erroneous; for the testicles, so called in women, afford not only seed, but are two eggs, like those of fowls and other creatures; neither have they any office like those of men, but are indeed the ovaria, wherein the eggs are nourished by the sanguinary vessels disposed throughout them; and from thence one or more as they are fecundated by the man's seed is separated and conveyed into the womb by the ovaducts. the truth of this is plain, for if you boil them the liquor will be of the same colour, taste and consistency, with the taste of birds' eggs. if any object that they have no shells, that signifies nothing: for the eggs of fowls while they are on the ovary, nay, after they are fastened into the uterus, have no shell. and though when they are laid, they have one, yet that is no more than a defence with which nature has provided them against any outward injury, while they are hatched without the body; whereas those of women being hatched within the body, need no other fence than the womb, by which they are sufficiently secured. and this is enough, i hope, for the clearing of this point. as for the third thing proposed, as whence grow the kind, and whether the man or the woman is the cause of the male or female infant--the primary cause we must ascribe to god as is most justly his due, who is the ruler and disposer of all things; yet he suffers many things to proceed according to the rules of nature by their inbred motion, according to usual and natural courses, without variation; though indeed by favour from on high, sarah conceived isaac; hannah, samuel; and elizabeth, john the baptist; but these were all extraordinary things, brought to pass by a divine power, above the course of nature. nor have such instances been wanting in later days; therefore, i shall wave them, and proceed to speak of things natural. the ancient physicians and philosophers say that since these two principles out of which the body of man is made, and which renders the child like the parents, and by one or other of the sex, viz., seed common to both sexes and menstrual blood, proper to the woman only; the similitude, say they, must needs consist in the force of virtue of the male or female, so that it proves like the one or the other, according to the quantity afforded by either, but that the difference of sex is not referred to the seed, but to the menstrual blood, which is proper to the woman, is apparent; for, were that force altogether retained in the seed, the male seed being of the hottest quality, male children would abound and few of the female be propagated; wherefore, the sex is attributed to the temperament or to the active qualities, which consists in heat and cold and the nature of the matter under them--that is, the flowing of the menstruous blood. but now, the seed, say they, affords both force to procreate and to form the child, as well as matter for its generation; and in the menstruous blood there is both matter and force, for as the seed most helps the maternal principle, so also does the menstrual blood the potential seed, which is, says galen, blood well concocted by the vessels which contain it. so that the blood is not only the matter of generating the child, but also seed, it being impossible that menstrual blood has both principles. the ancients also say that the seed is the stronger efficient, the matter of it being very little in quantity, but the potential quality of it is very strong; wherefore, if these principles of generation, according to which the sex is made were only, say they, in the menstrual blood, then would the children be all mostly females; as were the efficient force in the seed they would be all males; but since both have operation in menstrual blood, matter predominates in quantity and in the seed force and virtue. and, therefore, galen thinks that the child receives its sex rather from the mother than the father, for though his seed contributes a little to the natural principle, yet it is more weakly. but for likeliness it is referred rather to the father than to the mother. yet the woman's seed receiving strength from the menstrual blood for the space of nine months, overpowers the man's in that particular, for the menstrual blood rather cherishes the one than the other; from which it is plain the woman affords both matter to make and force and virtue to perfect the conception; though the female's be fit nutriment for the male's by reason of the thinness of it, being more adapted to make up conception thereby. for as of soft wax or moist clay, the artificer can frame what he intends, so, say they, the man's seed mixing with the woman's and also with the menstrual blood, helps to make the form and perfect part of man. but, with all imaginary deference to the wisdom of our fathers, give me leave to say that their ignorance of the anatomy of man's body have led them into the paths of error and ran them into great mistakes. for their hypothesis of the formation of the embryo from commixture of blood being wholly false, their opinion in this case must of necessity be likewise. i shall therefore conclude this chapter by observing that although a strong imagination of the mother may often determine the sex, yet the main agent in this case is the plastic or formative principle, according to those rules and laws given us by the great creator, who makes and fashions it, and therein determines the sex, according to the council of his will. * * * * * chapter iv _that man's soul is not propagated by their parents, but is infused by its creator, and can neither die nor corrupt. at what time it is infused. of its immortality and certainty of its resurrection._ man's soul is of so divine a nature and excellency that man himself cannot comprehend it, being the infused breath of the almighty, of an immortal nature, and not to be comprehended but by him that gave it. for moses, relating the history of man, tells us that "god breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul." now, as for all other creatures, at his word they were made and had life, but the creature that god had set over his works was his peculiar workmanship, formed by him out of the dust of the earth, and he condescended to breathe into his nostrils the breath of life, which seems to denote both care and, if we may so term it, labour, used about man more than about all other living creatures, he only partaking and participating of the blessed divine nature, bearing god's image in innocence and purity, whilst he stood firm; and when, by his fall, that lively image was defaced, yet such was the love of the creator towards him that he found out a way to restore him, the only begotten son of the eternal father coming into the world to destroy the works of the devil, and to raise up man from that low condition to which sin and his fall had reduced him, to a state above that of the angels. if, therefore, man would understand the excellency of his soul, let him turn his eyes inwardly and look unto himself and search diligently his own mind, and there he shall see many admirable gifts and excellent ornaments, that must needs fill him with wonder and amazement; as reason, understanding, freedom of will, memory, etc., that clearly show the soul to be descended from a heavenly original, and that therefore it is of infinite duration and not subject to annihilation. yet for its many operations and offices while in the body it goes under several denominations: for when it enlivens the body it is called the soul; when it gives knowledge, the judgment of the mind; and when it recalls things past, the memory; when it discourses and discerns, reason; when it contemplates, the spirit; when it is the sensitive part, the senses. and these are the principal offices whereby the soul declares its powers and performs its actions. for being seated in the highest parts of the body it diffuses its force into every member. it is not propagated from the parents, nor mixed with gross matter, but the infused breath of god, immediately proceeding from him; not passing from one to another as was the opinion of pythagoras, who held a belief in transmigration of the soul; but that the soul is given to every infant by infusion, is the most received and orthodox opinion. and the learned do likewise agree that this is done when the infant is perfected in the womb, which happens about the twenty-fourth day after conception; especially for males, who are generally born at the end of nine months; but in females, who are not so soon formed and perfected, through defect of heat, until the fiftieth day. and though this day in either case cannot be truly set down, yet hippocrates has given his opinion, that it is so when the child is formed and begins to move, when born in due season. in his book of the nature of infants, he says, if it be a male and be perfect on the thirtieth day, and move on the seventieth, he will be born in the seventh month; but if he be perfectly formed on the thirty-fifth day, he will move on the seventieth and will be born in the eighth month. again, if he be perfectly formed on the forty-fifth day, he will move on the ninetieth and be born in the ninth month. now from these paring of days and months, it plainly appears that the day of forming being doubled, makes up the day of moving, and the day, three times reckoned, makes up the day of birth. as thus, when thirty-five perfects the form, if you double it, makes seventy the day of motion; and three times seventy amounts to two hundred and ten days; while allowing thirty days to a month makes seven months, and so you must consider the rest. but as to a female the case is different; for it is longer perfecting in the womb, the mother ever going longer with a girl than with a boy, which makes the account differ; for a female formed in thirty days does not move until the seventieth day, and is born in the seventh month; when she is formed on the fortieth day, she does not move till the eightieth and is born in the eighth month; but, if she be perfectly formed on the forty-fifth day she moves on the ninetieth, and the child is born in the ninth month; but if she that is formed on the sixtieth day, moves on the one hundred and tenth day, she will be born in the tenth month. i treat the more largely of love that the reader may know that the reasonable soul is not propagated by the parents, but is infused by the almighty, when the child has its perfect form, and is exactly distinguished in its lineaments. now, as the life of every other creature, as moses shows, is in the blood, so the life of man consists in the soul, which although subject to passion, by reason of the gross composures of the body, in which it has a temporary confinement, yet it is immortal and cannot in itself corrupt or suffer change, it being a spark of the divine mind. and that every man has a peculiar soul plainly appears by the vast difference between the will, judgment, opinions, manners, and affections in men. this david observes when he says: "god hath fashioned the hearts and minds of men, and has given to every one his own being and a soul of its own nature." hence solomon rejoiced that god had given him a soul, and a body agreeable to it. it has been disputed among the learned in what part of the body the soul resides; some are of opinion its residence is in the middle of the heart, and from thence communicates itself to every part, which solomon (prov. iv. ) seems to confirm when he says: "keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." but many curious physicians, searching the works of nature in man's anatomy, do affirm that its chief seat is in the brain, from whence proceed the senses, the faculties, and actions, diffusing the operations of the soul through all parts of the body, whereby it is enlivened with heat and force to the heart, by the arteries, corodities, or sleepy arteries, which part upon the throat; which, if they happen to be broken or cut, they cause barrenness, and if stopped an apoplexy; for there must necessarily be ways through which the spirits, animal and vital, may have intercourse and convey native heat from the soul. for though the soul has its chief seat in one place, it operates in every part, exercising every member which are the soul's instruments, by which she discovers her power. but if it happen that any of the original parts are out of tune, its whole work is confused, as appears in idiots and mad men; though, in some of them, the soul, by a vigorous exertion of its power, recovers its innate strength and they become right after a long despondency in mind, but in others it is not recovered again in this life. for, as fire under ashes, or the sun obscured from our sight by thick clouds, afford not their native lustre, so the soul, overwhelmed in moist or morbid matter, is darkened and reason thereby overclouded; and though reason shines less in children than it does in such as are arrived at maturity, yet no man must imagine that the soul of an infant grows up with the child, for then would it again decay; but it suits itself to nature's weakness, and the imbecility of the body wherein it is placed, that it may operate the better. and as the body is more capable of recovering its influence, so the soul does more and more exert its faculties, having force and endowment at the time it enters the form of a child in the womb; for its substance can receive nothing less. and thus much to prove that the soul does not come from the parents, but is infused by god. i shall next prove its immortality and demonstrate the certainty of our resurrection. of the immortality of the soul that the soul of man is a divine ray, infused by the sovereign creator, i have already proved, and now come to show that whatever immediately proceeds from him, and participates of his nature, must be as immortal as its original; for, though all other creatures are endowed with life and motion, they yet lack a reasonable soul, and from thence it is concluded that their life is in their blood, and that being corruptible they perish and are no more; but man being endowed with a reasonable soul and stamped with a divine image, is of a different nature, and though his body is corruptible, yet his soul being of an immortal nature cannot perish; but at the dissolution of the body returns to god who gave it, either to receive reward or punishment. now, that the body can sin of itself is impossible, because wanting the soul, which is the principle of life, it cannot act nor proceed to anything either good or evil; for could it do so, it might even sin in the grave. but it is plain that after death there is a cessation; for as death leaves us so judgment will find us. now, reason having evidently demonstrated the soul's immortality, the holy scriptures do abundantly give testimony of the truth of the resurrection, as the reader may see by perusing the th and th chapters of job and th of john. i shall, therefore, leave the further discussion of this matter to divines, whose province it is, and return to treat of the works of nature. * * * * * chapter v _of monsters and monstrous births; and the several reasons thereof, according to the opinions of the ancients. also, whether the monsters are endowed with reasonable souls; and whether the devils can engender; is here briefly discussed._ by the ancients, monsters are ascribed to depraved conceptions, and are designated as being excursions of nature, which are vicious in one of these four ways: either in figure, magnitude, situation, or number. in figure, when a man bears the character of a beast, as did the beast in saxony. in magnitude, when one part does not equalise with another; as when one part is too big or too little for the other parts of the body. but this is so common among us that i need not produce a testimony. [illustration: there was a monster at ravenna in italy of this kind, in the year .] i now proceed to explain the cause of their generation, which is either divine or natural. the divine cause proceeds from god's permissive will, suffering parents to bring forth abominations for their filthy and corrupt affections, which are let loose unto wickedness like brute beasts which have no understanding. wherefore it was enacted among the ancient romans that those who were in any way deformed, should not be admitted into religious houses. and st. jerome was grieved in his time to see the lame and the deformed offering up spiritual sacrifices to god in religious houses. and keckerman, by way of inference, excludes all that are ill-shapen from this presbyterian function in the church. and that which is of more force than all, god himself commanded moses not to receive such to offer sacrifice among his people; and he also renders the reason leviticus, xxii. , "lest he pollute my sanctuaries." because of the outward deformity, the body is often a sign of the pollution of the heart, as a curse laid on the child for the incontinency of its parents. yet it is not always so. let us therefore duly examine and search out the natural cause of their generation, which (according to the ancients who have dived into the secrets of nature) is either in the mother or in the agent, in the seed, or in the womb. the matter may be in default two ways--by defect or by excess: by defect, when the child has only one arm; by excess, when it has four hands or two heads. some monsters are begotten by a woman's unnatural lying with beasts; as in the year , there was a monster begotten by a woman's generating with a dog; which from the navel upwards had the perfect resemblance of its mother: but from its navel downwards it resembled a dog. [illustration] the agent or womb may be in fault three ways; firstly, the formative faculty, which may be too strong or too weak, by which is procured a depraved figure; secondly, to the instrument or place of conception, the evil confirmation or the disposition whereof will cause a monstrous birth; thirdly, in the imaginative power at the time of conception; which is of such a force that it stamps the character of the thing imagined on the child. thus the children of an adulteress may be like her husband, though begotten by another man, which is caused through the force of imagination that the woman has of her own husband at the act of coition. and i have heard of a woman, who, at the time of conception, beholding the picture of a blackamoor, conceived and brought forth an ethiopian. i will not trouble you with more human testimonies, but conclude with a stronger warrant. we read (gen. xxx. ) how jacob having agreed with laban to have all the spotted sheep for keeping his flock to augment his wages, took hazel rods and peeled white streaks on them, and laid them before the sheep when they came to drink, which coupling together there, whilst they beheld the rods, conceived and brought forth young. [illustration: "where children thus are born with hairy coats heaven's wrath unto the kingdom it denotes"] another monster representing a hairy child. it was all covered with hair like a beast. that which made it more frightful was, that its navel was in the place where its nose should stand, and its eyes placed where the mouth should have been, and its mouth placed in the chin. it was of the male kind, and was born in france, in the year , at a town called arles in provence, and lived a few days, frightening all that beheld it. it was looked upon as a forerunner of desolations which soon after happened to that kingdom, in which men to each other were more like brutes than human creatures. there was a monster born at nazara in the year . it had four arms and four legs. the imagination also works on the child, after conception, of which we have a pregnant instance. a worthy gentlewoman in suffolk, who being with child and passing by a butcher who was killing his meat, a drop of blood sprung on her face, whereupon she said her child would have a blemish on its face, and at the birth it was found marked with a red spot. [illustration] likewise in the reign of henry iii, there was a woman delivered of a child having two heads and four arms, and the bodies were joined at the back; the heads were so placed that they looked contrary ways; each had two distinct arms and hands. they would both laugh, both speak, and both cry, and be hungry together; sometimes the one would speak and the other keep silence, and sometimes both speak together. they lived several years, but one outlived the other three years, carrying the dead one (for there was no parting them) till the survivor fainted with the burden, and more with the stench of the dead carcase. [illustration] it is certain that monstrous births often happen by means of undue copulation; for some there are, who, having been long absent from one another, and having an eager desire for enjoyment, consider not as they ought, to do as their circumstances demand. and if it happen that they come together when the woman's menses are flowing, and notwithstanding, proceed to the act of copulation, which is both unclean and unnatural, the issue of such copulation does often prove monstrous, as a just punishment for doing what nature forbids. and, therefore, though men should be ever so eager for it, yet women, knowing their own condition, should at such times positively refuse their company. and though such copulations do not always produce monstrous birth, yet the children, thus begotten, are generally heavy, dull, and sluggish, besides defective in their understandings, lacking the vivacity and loveliness with which children begotten in proper season are endowed. [illustration] [illustration] in flanders, between antwerp and mechlin, in a village called uthaton, a child was born which had two heads, four arms, seeming like two girls joined together, having two of their arms lifted up between and above their heads, the thighs being placed as it were across one another, according to the figure on p. . how long they lived i had no account of. by the figure on p. you may see that though some of the members are wanting, yet they are supplied by other members. it remains now that i make some inquiry whether those that are born monsters have reasonable souls, and are capable of resurrection. and here both divines and physicians are of opinion that those who, according to the order of generations deduced from our first parents, proceed by mutual means from either sex, though their outward shape be deformed and monstrous, have notwithstanding a reasonable soul, and consequently their bodies are capable of resurrection, as other men's and women's are; but those monsters that are not begotten by men, but are the product of women's unnatural lusts in copulating with other creatures shall perish as the brute beasts by whom they were begotten, not having a reasonable soul nor any breath of the almighty infused into them; and such can never be capable of resurrection. and the same is also true of imperfect and abortive births. some are of opinion that monsters may be engendered by some infernal spirit. of this mind was adigus fariur, speaking of a deformed monster born at craconia; and hieronimus cardamnus wrote of a maid that was got with child by the devil, she thinking it had been a fair young man. the like also is recorded by vicentius, of the prophet merlin, that he was begotten by an evil spirit. but what a repugnance it would be both to religion and nature, if the devils could beget men; when we are taught to believe that not any was ever begotten without human seed, except the son of god. the devil then being a spirit and having no corporeal substance, has therefore no seed of generation; to say that he can use the act of generation effectually is to affirm that he can make something out of nothing, and consequently to affirm the devil to be god, for creation belongs to god only. again, if the devil could assume to himself a human body and enliven the faculties of it, and cause it to generate, as some affirm he can, yet this body must bear the image of the devil. and it borders on blasphemy to think that god should so far give leave to the devil as out of god's image to raise his own diabolical offspring. in the school of nature we are taught the contrary, viz., that like begets like; therefore, of a devil cannot man be born. yet, it is not denied, but the devils, transforming themselves into human shapes, may abuse both men and women, and, with wicked people, use carnal copulation; but that any unnatural conjunction can bring forth a human creature is contrary to nature and all religion. * * * * * chapter vi _of the happy state of matrimony, as it is appointed by god, the true felicity that rebounds thereby to either sex; and to what end it is ordained._ without doubt the uniting of hearts in holy wedlock is of all conditions the happiest; for then a man has a second self to whom he can reveal his thoughts, as well as a sweet companion in his labours, toils, trials, and difficulties. he has one in whose breast, as in a safe cabinet, he can confide his inmost secrets, especially where reciprocal love and inviolable faith is centred; for there no care, fear, jealousy, mistrust or hatred can ever interpose. for base is the man that hateth his own flesh! and truly a wife, if rightly considered, as adam well observed, is or ought to be esteemed of every honest man as "bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh," etc. nor was it the least care of the almighty to ordain so near a union, and that for two causes; the first, for the increase of posterity; the second, to restrain man's wandering desires and affections; nay, that they might be yet happier, when god has joined them together, he "blessed them," as in gen. ii. an ancient writer, contemplating this happy state, says, in the economy of xenophon, "that the marriage bed is not only the most pleasant, but also profitable course of life, that may be entered on for the preservation and increase of posterity. wherefore, since marriage is the most safe, and delightful situation of man he does in no ways provide amiss for his own tranquillity who enters into it, especially when he comes to maturity of years." there are many abuses in marriage contrary to what is ordained, the which in the ensuing chapter i shall expose to view. but to proceed: seeing our blessed saviour and his holy apostles detested unlawful lusts, and pronounced those to be excluded the kingdom of heaven that polluted themselves with adultery and whoring, i cannot conceive what face people have to colour their impieties, who hating matrimony, make it their study how they may live licentiously: for, in so doing, they take in themselves torment, enmity, disquietude, rather than certain pleasure, not to mention the hazard of their immortal soul; and certain it is that mercenary love (or as the wise man called it harlot-smiles) cannot be true and sincere and therefore not pleasant, but rather a net laid to betray such as trust in them with all mischief, as solomon observes of the young man void of understanding, who turned aside to the harlot's house, "as a bird to the snare of the fowler, or as an ox to the slaughter, till a dart was struck through his liver." nor in this case can they have children, those endearing pledges of conjugal affection; or if they have, they will rather redound to their shame than comfort, bearing the odious brand of bastards. harlots, likewise are like swallows, flying in the summer season of prosperity; but the black stormy weather of adversity coming, they take wing and fly into other regions--that is, seek other lovers; but a virtuous, chaste wife, fixing her entire love upon her husband, and submitting to him as her head and king, by whose directions she ought to steer in all lawful courses, will, like a faithful companion, share patiently with him in all adversities, run with cheerfulness through all difficulties and dangers, though ever so hazardous, to preserve and assist him, in poverty, sickness, or whatsoever misfortunes befall him, acting according to her duty in all things; but a proud, imperious harlot will do no more than she lists, in the sunshine of prosperity; and like a horse-leech, ever craving, and never satisfied; still seeming displeased, if all her extravagant cravings be not answered; not regarding the ruin and misery she brings on him by those means, though she seems to doat upon him, used to confirming her hypocrisy with crocodile tears, vows and swoonings, when her cully has to depart awhile, or seems but to deny immediate desires; yet this lasts no longer than she can gratify her appetite, and prey upon his fortune. now, on the contrary, a loving, chaste and even-tempered wife, seeks what she may to prevent such dangers, and in every condition does all she can to make him easy. and, in a word, as there is no content in the embraces of a harlot, so there is no greater joy in the reciprocal affection and endearing embraces of a loving, obedient, and chaste wife. nor is that the principal end for which matrimony was ordained, but that the man might follow the law of his creation by increasing his kind and replenishing the earth; for this was the injunction laid upon him in paradise, before his fall. to conclude, a virtuous wife is a crown and ornament to her husband, and her price is above all rubies: but the ways of a harlot are deceitful. * * * * * chapter vii _of errors in marriages; why they are, and the injuries caused by them._ by errors in marriage, i mean the unfitness of the persons marrying to enter into this state, and that both with respect to age and the constitution of their bodies; and, therefore, those who design to enter into that condition ought to observe their ability and not run themselves into inconveniences; for those that marry too young may be said to marry unseasonably, not considering their inability, nor examining the forces of nature; for some, before they are ripe for the consummation of so weighty a matter, who either rashly, of their own accord, or by the instigation of procurers or marriage-brokers, or else forced thereto by their parents who covet a large dower take upon them this yoke to their prejudice; by which some, before the expiration of a year, have been so enfeebled, that all their vital moisture has been exhausted; which had not been restored again without great trouble and the use of medicines. therefore, my advice is: that it is not convenient to suffer children, or such as are not of age, to marry, or get children. he that proposes to marry, and wishes to enjoy happiness in that state, should choose a wife descended from honest and temperate parents, she being chaste, well bred, and of good manners. for if a woman has good qualities, she has portion enough. that of alcmena, in plautus, is much to the purpose, where he brings in a young woman speaking thus:-- "i take not that to be my dowry, which the vulgar sort do wealth and honour call; that all my wishes terminate in this:---- i'll obey my husband and be chaste withall; to have god's fear, and beauty in my mind, to do those good who are virtuously inclined." and i think she was in the right, for such a wife is more precious than rubies. it is certainly the duty of parents to bring up their children in the ways of virtue, and to have regard to their honour and reputation; and especially to virgins, when grown to be marriageable. for, as has been noted, if through the too great severity of parents, they may be crossed in their love, many of them throw themselves into the unchaste arms of the first alluring tempter that comes in the way, being, through the softness and flexibility of their nature, and the strong desire they have after what nature strongly incites them to, easily induced to believe men's false vows of promised marriage, to cover their shame: and then too late, their parents repent of their severity which has brought an indelible stain upon their families. [illustration: conception first month second month third month fourth month] [illustration: fifth month sixth month seventh month eighth month ninth month] another error in marriage is, the inequality of years in the parties married; such as for a young man, who, to advance his fortune, marries a woman old enough to be his grandmother: between whom, for the most part, strife, jealousies, and dissatisfaction are all the blessings which crown the genial bed, is being impossible for such to have any children. the like may be said, though with a little excuse, when an old doting widower marries a virgin in the prime of her youth and her vigour, who, while he vainly tries to please her, is thereby wedded to his grave. for, as in green youth, it is unfit and unseasonable to think of marriage, so to marry in old age is just the same; for they that enter upon it too soon are soon exhausted, and fall into consumptions and divers other diseases; and those who procrastinate and marry unseemingly, fall into the like troubles; on the other side having only this honour, if old men, they become young cuckolds, especially if their wives have not been trained up in the paths of virtue, and lie too much open to the importunity and temptation of lewd and debauched men. and thus much for the errors of rash and inconsiderate marriages. * * * * * chapter viii _the opinion of the learned concerning children conceived and born within seven months; with arguments upon the subject to prevent suspicion of incontinency, and bitter contest on that account. to which are added rules to know the disposition of man's body by the genital parts._ many bitter quarrels happen between men and their wives upon the man's supposition that the child comes too soon, and by consequence, that he could not be the father; whereas, it is the want of understanding the secrets of nature which brings the man into that error; and which, had he known, might have cured him of his suspicion and jealousy. to remove which, i shall endeavour to prove, that it is possible, and has been frequently known, that children have been born at seven months. paul, the counsel, has this passage in the th book of pleadings, viz.: "it is now a received truth, that a perfect child may be born in the seventh month, by the authority of the learned hippocrates; and therefore, we must believe that a child born at the end of the seventh month in lawful matrimony may be lawfully begotten." galen is of opinion that there is no certain time set for the bearing of children; and that from pliny's authority, who makes mention of a woman that went thirteen months with child; but as to what concerns the seventh month, a learned author says, "i know several married people in holland that had twins born in the seventh month, who lived to old age, having lusty bodies and lively minds. wherefore their opinion is absurd, who assert that a child at seven months cannot be perfect and long lived; and that it cannot in all parts be perfect until the ninth month." thereupon the author proceeds to tell a passage from his own knowledge, viz.: "of late there happened a great disturbance among us, which ended not without bloodshed; and was occasioned by a virgin, whose chastity had been violated, descending from a noble family of unspotted fame. several charged the fact upon the judge, who was president of a city in flanders, who firmly denied it, saying he was ready to take his oath that he never had any carnal copulation with her, and that he would not father that, which was none of his; and farther argued, that he verily believed it was a child born in seven months, himself being many miles distant from the mother of it when it was conceived. upon which the judges decreed that the child should be viewed by able physicians and experienced women, and that they should make their report. they having made diligent inquiry, all of them with one mind, concluded the child, without discussing who was the father, was born within the space of seven months, and that it was carried in the mother's womb but twenty-seven weeks and some odd days; but if she should have gone full nine months, the child's parts and limbs would have been more firm and strong, and the structure of the body more compact; for the skin was very loose, and the breast bone that defends the heart, and the gristles that lay over the stomach, lay higher than naturally they should be, not plain, but crooked and sharp, rigid or pointed, like those of a young chicken hatched in the beginning of spring. and being a female, it wanted nails upon the joints of the fingers; upon which, from the masculous cartilaginous matter of the skin, nails that are very smooth do come, and by degrees harden; she had, instead of nails, a thin skin or film. as for her toes, there were no signs of nails upon them, wanting the heat which was expanded to the fingers from the nearness of the heart. all this was considered, and above all, one gentlewoman of quality that assisted, affirming that she had been the mother of nineteen children, and that divers of them had been born and lived at seven months, though within the seventh month. for in such cases, the revolution of the month ought to be observed, which perfects itself in four bare weeks, or somewhat less than twenty-eight days; in which space of the revolution, the blood being agitated by the force of the moon, the courses of women flow from them; which being spent, and the matrix cleansed from the menstruous blood which happens on the fourth day, then, if a man on the seventh day lie with his wife, the copulation is most natural, and then the conception is best: and the child thus begotten may be born in the seventh month and prove very healthful. so that on this report, the supposed father was pronounced innocent; the proof that he was miles distant all that month in which the child was begotten; as for the mother she strongly denied that she knew the father, being forced in the dark; and so, through fear and surprise, was left in ignorance." as for coition, it ought not to be used unless the parties be in health, lest it turn to the disadvantage of the children so begotten, creating in them, through the abundance of ill humours, divers languishing diseases. wherefore, health is no better discerned than by the genitals of the man; for which reasons midwives, and other skilful women, were formerly wont to see the testicles of children, thereby to conjecture their temperature and state of body; and young men may know thereby the signs and symptoms of death; for if the cases of the testicles be loose and feeble, which are the proofs of life, are fallen, but if the secret parts are wrinkled and raised up, it is a sign that all is well, but that the event may exactly answer the prediction, it is necessary to consider what part of the body the disease possesseth; for if it chance to be the upper part that is afflicted, as the head or stomach, then it will not so then appear by the members, which are unconnected with such grievances; but the lower part of the body exactly sympathising with them, their liveliness, on the contrary, makes it apparent; for nature's force, and the spirits that have their intercourse, first manifest themselves therein; which occasions midwives to feel the genitals of children, to know in what part the gulf is residing, and whether life or death be portended thereby, the symptoms being strongly communicated to the vessels, that have their intercourse with the principal seat of life. * * * * * chapter ix _of the green-sickness in virgins, with its causes, signs and cures; together with the chief occasions of barrenness in women, and the means to remove the cause, and render them fruitful._ the green-sickness is so common a complaint amongst virgins, especially those of a phlegmatic complexion, that it is easily discerned, showing itself by discolouring the face, making it look green, pale, and of a dusty colour, proceeding from raw and indigested humours; nor doth it only appear to the eye, but sensibly affects the person with difficulty of breathing, pains in the head, palpitation of the heart, with unusual beatings and small throbbings of the arteries in the temples, back and neck, which often cast them into fevers when the humour is over vicious; also loathing of meat and the distention of the hypochondriac part, by reason of the inordinate effluxion of the menstruous blood of the greater vessels; and from the abundance of humours, the whole body is often troubled with swellings, or at least the thighs, legs and ankles, all above the heels; there is also a weariness of the body without any reason for it. the galenical physicians affirm, that this distemper proceeds from the womb; occasioned by the gross, vicious and rude humours arising from several inward causes; but there are also outward causes which have a share in the production of it; as taking cold in the feet, drinking of water, intemperance of diet, eating things contrary to nature, viz., raw or burnt flesh, ashes, coals, old shoes, chalk, wax, nutshells, mortar, lime, oatmeal, tobacco pipes, etc., which occasion both a suppression of the menses and obstructions through the whole body; therefore, the first thing necessary to vindicate the cause, is matrimonial conjunction, and such copulation as may prove satisfactory to her that is afflicted, for then the menses will begin to flow according to their natural and due course, and the humours being dispersed, will soon waste themselves; and then no more matter being admitted to increase them, they will vanish and a good temperament of body will return; but in case this best remedy cannot be had soon enough, then let blood in the ankles, and if she be about sixteen, you may likewise do it in the arm, but let her be bled sparingly, especially if the blood be good. if the disease be of any continuance, then it is to be eradicated by purging, preparation of the humour being first considered, which may be done by the virgin's drinking the decoction of guaiacum, with dittany of erete; but the best purge in this case ought to be made of aloes, agaric, senna, rhubarb; and for strengthening the bowels and removing obstructions, chaly-beate medicines are chiefly to be used. the diet must be moderate, and sharp things by all means avoided. and now, since barrenness daily creates discontent, and that discontent breeds indifference between man and wife, or, by immediate grief, frequently casts the woman into one or another distemper, i shall in the next place treat thereof. of barrenness. formerly, before women came to the marriage-bed, they were first searched by the mid-wife, and those only which she allowed of as fruitful were admitted. i hope, therefore, it will not be amiss to show you how they may prove themselves and turn barren ground into fruitful soil. barrenness is a deprivation of the life and power which ought to be in the seed to procreate and propagate; for which end men and women were made. causes of barrenness may be over much cold or heat, drying up the seed and corrupting it, which extinguishes the life of the seed, making it waterish and unfit for generation. it may be caused also, by the not flowing or over-flowing of the courses by swellings, ulcers, and inflammation of the womb, by an excrescence of flesh growing about the mouth of the matrix, by the mouth of the matrix being turned up to the back or side by the fatness of the body, whereby the mouth of the matrix is closed up, being pressed with the omentum or caul, and the matter of the seed is turned to fat; if she be a lean and dry body, and though she do conceive, yet the fruit of her body will wither before it come to perfection, for want of nourishment. one main cause of barrenness is attributed to want of a convenient moderating quality, which the woman ought to have with the man; as, if he be hot, she must be cold; if he be dry, she must be moist; as, if they be both dry or both moist of constitution, they cannot propagate; and yet, simply considering of themselves, they are not barren, for she who was before as the barren fig-tree being joined to an apt constitution becomes as the fruitful vine. and that a man and woman, being every way of like constitution, cannot create, i will bring nature itself for a testimony, who hath made man of a better constitution than woman, that the quality of the one, may moderate the quality of the other. signs of barrenness. if barrenness proceeds from overmuch heat, if she is a dry body, subject to anger, has black hair, quick pulse, and her purgations flow but little, and that with pain, she loves to play in the courts of venus. but if it comes by cold, then the signs are contrary to the above mentioned. if through the evil quality of the womb, make a suffumigation of red styrax, myrrh, cassia-wood, nutmeg, and cinnamon; and let her receive the fumes into her womb, covering her very close; and if the odour so received passes through the body to the mouth and nostrils, she is fruitful. but if she feels not the fumes in her mouth and nostrils, it argues barrenness one of these ways--that the spirit of the seed is either extinguished through cold, or dissipated through heat. if any woman be suspected to be unfruitful, cast natural brimstone, such as is digged out of mines, into her urine, and if worms breed therein, she is not barren. prognostics. barrenness makes women look young, because they are free from those pains and sorrows which other women are accustomed to. yet they have not the full perfection of health which other women enjoy, because they are not rightly purged of the menstruous blood and superfluous seed, which are the principal cause of most uterine diseases. first, the cause must be removed, the womb strengthened, and the spirits of the seed enlivened. if the womb be over hot, take syrup of succory, with rhubarb, syrup of violets, roses, cassia, purslain. take of endive, water-lilies, borage flowers, of each a handful; rhubarb, mirobalans, of each three drachms; make a decoction with water, and to the straining of the syrup add electuary violets one ounce, syrup of cassia half an ounce, manna three drachms; make a potion. take of syrup of mugwort one ounce, syrup of maiden-hair two ounces, pulv-elect triasand one drachm; make a julep. take prus. salt, elect. ros. mesua, of each three drachms, rhubarb one scruple, and make a bolus; apply to the loins and privy parts fomentations of the juice of lettuce, violets, roses, malloes, vine leaves and nightshade; anoint the secret parts with the cooling unguent of galen. if the power of the seed be extinguished by cold, take every morning two spoonfuls of cinnamon water, with one scruple of mithridate. take syrup of calamint, mugwort and betony, of each one ounce; waters of pennyroyal, feverfew, hyssop and sage, of each two ounces; make a julep. take oil of aniseed two scruples and a half; diacimini, diacliathidiamosei and diagla-ongoe, of each one drachm, sugar four ounces, with water of cinnamon, and make lozenges; take of them a drachm and a half twice a day, two hours before meals; fasten cupping glasses to the hips and belly. take of styrax and calamint one ounce, mastick, cinnamon, nutmeg, lign, aloes, and frankincense, of each half ounce; musk, ten grains, ambergris, half a scruple; make a confection with rosewater, divide it into four equal parts; one part make a pomatum oderation to smell at if she be not hysterical; of the second, make a mass of pills, and let her take three every other night: of the third make a pessary, dip it in oil of spikenard, and put it up; of the fourth, make a suffumigation for the womb. if the faculties of the womb be weakened, and the life of the seed suffocated by over much humidity flowing to those parts: take of betony, marjoram, mugwort, pennyroyal and balm, of each a handful; roots of alum and fennel, of each two drachms; aniseed and cummin, of each one drachm, with sugar and water a sufficient quantity; make a syrup, and take three ounces every morning. purge with the following things; take of the diagnidium, two grains, spicierum of castor, a scruple, pill foedit two scruples, with syrup of mugwort, make six pills. take apeo, diagem. diamoser, diamb. of each one drachm; cinnamon, one drachm and a half; cloves, mace and nutmeg, of each half a drachm; sugar six ounces, with water of feverfew; make lozenges, to be taken every morning. take of decoction of sarsaparilla and virga aurea, not forgetting sage, which agrippa, wondering at its operation, has honoured with the name of _sacra herba_, a holy herb. it is recorded by dodonoeus in the _history of plants_, lib. ii. cap. , that after a great mortality among the egyptians, the surviving women, that they might multiply quickly, were commanded to drink the juice of sage, and to anoint the genitals with oil of aniseed and spikenard. take mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, styrax and amber, of each one drachm; cloves, laudanum, of each half a drachm; turpentine, a sufficient quantity; trochisks, to smooth the womb. take roots of valerian and elecampane, of each one pound; galanga, two ounces; origan lavender, marjoram, betony, mugwort, bay leaves, calamint, of each a handful; make an infusion with water, in which let her sit, after she hath her courses. if barrenness proceed from dryness, consuming the matter of the seed; take every day almond milk, and goat's milk extracted with honey, but often of the root satyrion, candied, and electuary of diasyren. take three wethers' heads, boil them until all the flesh comes from the bones, then take melilot, violets, camomiles, mercury, orchia with their roots, of each a handful; fenugreek, linseed, valerian roots, of each one pound; let all these be decocted in the aforesaid broth, and let the woman sit in the decoction up to the navel. if barrenness be caused by any proper effect of the womb, the cure is set down in the second book. sometimes the womb proves barren where there is no impediment on either side, except only in the manner of the act; as when in the emission of the seed, the man is quick and the woman is slow, whereby there is not an emission of both seeds at the same instant as the rules of conception require. before the acts of coition, foment the privy parts with the decoction of betony, sage, hyssop and calamint and anoint the mouth and neck of the womb with musk and civet. the cause of barrenness being removed, let the womb be strengthened as follows; take of bay berries, mastic, nutmeg, frankincense, nuts, laudanum, giapanum, of each one drachm, styracis liquid, two scruples, cloves half a scruple, ambergris two grains, then make a pessary with oil of spikenard. take of red roses, lapididis hoematis, white frankincense, of each half an ounce. dragon's blood, fine bole, mastic, of each two drachms; nutmeg, cloves, of each one drachm; spikenard, half a scruple, with oil of wormwood; make a plaster for the lower part of the belly, then let her eat candied eringo root, and make an injection only of the roots of satyrion. the aptest time for conception is instantly after the menses have ceased, because then the womb is thirsty and dry, apt both to draw the seed and return it, by the roughness of the inward surface, and besides, in some, the mouth of the womb is turned into the back or side, and is not placed right until the last day of the courses. excess in all things is to be avoided. lay aside all passions of the mind, shun study and care, as things that are enemies to conception, for if a woman conceive under such circumstances, however wise the parents may be, the children, at best, will be but foolish; because the mental faculties of the parents, viz., the understanding and the rest (from whence the child derives its reason) are, as it were, confused through the multiplicity of cares and thought; of which we have examples in learned men, who, after great study and care, having connection with their wives, often beget very foolish children. a hot and moist air is most suitable, as appears by the women in egypt, who often bring forth three or four children at one time. * * * * * chapter x _virginity, what it is, in what it consists, and how vitiated; together with the opinions of the learned about the change of sex in the womb, during the operation of nature in forming the body._ there are many ignorant people that boast of their skill in the knowledge of virginity, and some virgins have undergone harsh censures through their ignorant conclusions; i therefore thought it highly necessary to clear up this point, that the towering imaginations of conceited ignorance might be brought down, and the fair sex (whose virtues are so illustriously bright that they excite our wonder and command our imitation), may be freed from the calumnies and detractions of ignorance and envy; and so their honour may continue as unspotted, as they have kept their persons uncontaminated and free from defilement. virginity, in a strict sense, signifies the prime, the chief, the best of anything; and this makes men so desirous of marrying virgins, imagining some secret pleasure is to be enjoyed in their embraces, more than in those of widows, or of such as have been lain with before, though not many years ago, a very great personage thought differently, and to use his own expression:--"the getting a maidenhead was such a piece of drudgery, that it was fitter for a coal heaver than a prince."[ ] but this was only his opinion, for i am sure that other men think differently. the curious inquirers into the secrets of nature, have observed, that in young maidens in the _sinus pudoris_, or in what is called the neck of the womb, is that wonderful production usually called the _hymen_, but in french _bouton de rose_, or rosebud, because it resembles the expanded bud of a rose or a gilly flower. from this the word _defloro_, or, deflower, is derived, and hence taking away virginity is called deflowering a virgin, most being of the opinion that the virginity is altogether lost when this membrane is fractured and destroyed by violence; when it is found perfect and entire, however, no penetration has been effected; and in the opinion of some learned physicians there is neither hymen nor expanded skin which contains blood in it, which some people think, flows from the ruptured membrane at the first time of sexual intercourse. now this _claustrum virginale_, or flower, is composed of four little buds like myrtle berries, which are full and plump in virgins, but hang loose and flag in women; and these are placed in the four angles of the _sinus pudoris_, joined together by little membranes and ligatures, like fibres, each of them situated in the testicles, or spaces between each bud, with which, in a manner, they are proportionately distended, and when once this membrane is lacerated, it denotes _devirgination_. thus many ignorant people, finding their wives defective in this respect on the first night, have immediately suspected their chastity, concluding that another man had been there before them, when indeed, such a rupture may happen in several ways accidentally, as well as by sexual intercourse, viz. by violent straining, coughing, or sneezing, the stoppage of the urine, etc., so that the entireness or the fracture of that which is commonly taken for a woman's virginity or maidenhead, is no absolute sign of immorality, though it is more frequently broken by copulation than by any other means.[ ] and now to say something of the change of the sexes in the womb. the genital parts of the sexes are so unlike each other in substance, composition, situation, figure, action and use that nothing is more unlike to each other than they are, and the more, all parts of the body (the breasts excepted, which in women swell, because nature ordained them for suckling the infant) have an exact resemblance to each other, so much the more do the genital parts of one sex differ, when compared with the other, and if they be thus different in form, how much more are they so in their use. the venereal feeling also proceeds from different causes; in men from the desire of emission, and in women from the desire of reception. all these things, then, considered i cannot but wonder, he adds, how any one can imagine that the female genital organs can be changed into the male organ, since the sexes can be distinguished only by those parts, nor can i well impute the reason for this vulgar error to anything but the mistake of inexpert midwives, who have been deceived by the faulty conformation of those parts, which in some males may have happened to have such small protrusions that they could not be seen, as appears by the example of a child who was christened in paris under the name of _ivan_, as a girl, and who afterwards turned out to be a boy, and on the other hand, the excessive tension of the clytoris in newly-born female infants may have occasioned similar mistakes. thus far pliny in the negative, and notwithstanding what he has said, there are others, such as galen, who assert the affirmative. "a man," he says, "is different from a woman, only by having his genitals outside his body, whereas a woman has them inside her." and this is certain, that if nature having formed a male should convert him into a female, she has nothing else to do but to turn his genitals inward, and again to turn a woman into a man by a contrary operation. this, however, is to be understood of the child whilst it is in the womb and not yet perfectly formed, for nature has often made a female child, and it has remained so for a month or two, in its mother's womb; but afterwards the heat greatly increasing in the genital organs, they have protruded and the child has become a male, but nevertheless retained some things which do not befit the masculine sex, such as female gestures and movements, a high voice, and a more effeminate temper than is usual with men; whilst, on the other hand, the genitals have become inverted through cold humours, but yet the person retained a masculine air, both in voice and gesture. now, though both these opinions are supported by several reasons, yet i think the latter are nearer the truth, for there is not that vast difference between the genitals of the two sexes as pliny asserts; for a woman has, in a way, the same _pudenda_ as a man, though they do not appear outwardly, but are inverted for the convenience of generation; one being solid and the other porous, and that the principal reason for changing sexes is, and must be attributed to heat or cold, which operates according to its greater or lesser force. footnotes: [ ] attributed to george iv (translator). [ ] a young man was once tried at rutland assizes for violating a virgin, and after close questioning, the girl swearing positively in the matter, and naming the time, place and manner of the action, it was resolved that she should be examined by a skilful surgeon and two midwives, who were to report on oath, which they did, and declared that the membranes were intact and unlacerated, and that, in their opinion, her body had not been penetrated. this had its due effect upon the jury, and they acquitted the prisoner, and the girl afterwards confessed that she swore it against him out of revenge, as he had promised to marry her, and had afterwards declined. * * * * * chapter xi _directions and cautions for midwives; and, first, what ought to be the qualifications of a midwife._ a midwife who wishes to acquit herself well in her employment, ought certainly not to enter upon it rashly or unadvisedly, but with all imaginable caution, remembering that she is responsible for any mischief which may happen through her ignorance or neglect. none, therefore, should undertake that duty merely because of their age or because they themselves have had many children, for, in such, generally, many things will be found wanting, which she should possess. she ought to be neither too old nor too young, neither very fat, nor so thin, as to be weak, but in a good habit of body; not subject to illness, fears, nor sudden frights; well-made and neat in her attire, her hands small and smooth, her nails kept well-trimmed and without any rings on her fingers whilst she is engaged in her work, nor anything upon her wrists that may obstruct her. and to these ought to be added activity, and a due amount of strength, with much caution and diligence, nor should she be given to drowsiness or impatience. she should be polite and affable in her manners, sober and chaste, not given to passion, liberal and compassionate towards the poor, and not greedy of gain when she attends the rich. she should have a cheerful and pleasant temper, so that she may be the more easily able to comfort her patients during labour. she must never be in a hurry, though her business may call her to some other case, lest she should thereby endanger the mother or the child. she ought to be wary, prudent, and intelligent, but above all, she ought to be possessed by the fear of god, which will give her both "knowledge and discretion," as the wise man says. * * * * * chapter xii _further directions to midwives, teaching them what they ought to do, and what to avoid._ since the duties of a midwife have such a great influence on the well-doing or the contrary of both women and children, in the first place, she must be diligent in gaining all such knowledge as may be useful to her in her practice, and never to think herself so perfect, but that it may be possible for her to add to her knowledge by study and experience. she should, however, never try any experiments unless she has tried them, or knows that they can do no harm; practising them neither upon rich nor poor, but freely saying what she knows, and never prescribing any medicines which will procure abortion, even though requested; for this is wicked in the highest degree, and may be termed murder. if she be sent for to people whom she does not know, let her be very cautious before she goes, lest by attending an infectious woman, she runs the danger of injuring others, as sometimes happens. neither must she make her dwelling a receiving-house for big-bellied women to discharge their load, lest it get her a bad name and she by such means loses her practice. in attending on women, if the birth happens to be difficult, she must not seem to be anxious, but must cheer the woman up and do all she can to make her labour easy. she will find full directions for this, in the second part of this book. she must never think of anything but doing well, seeing that everything that is required is in readiness, both for the woman and for receiving the child, and above all, let her keep the woman from becoming unruly when her pains come on, lest she endanger her own life, and the child's as well. she must also take care not to be hurried over her business but wait god's time for the birth, and she must by no means allow herself to be upset by fear, even if things should not go well, lest that should make her incapable of rendering that assistance which the woman in labour stands in need of, for where there is the most apparent danger, there the most care and prudence are required to set things right. and now, because she can never be a skilful midwife who knows nothing but what is to be seen outwardly, i do not think it will be amiss but rather very necessary, modestly to describe the generative parts of women as they have been anatomised by learned men, and to show the use of such vessels as contribute to generation. * * * * * chapter xiii _the external, and internal organs of generation in women._ if it were not for the public benefit, especially for that of the professors and practitioners of the art of midwifery, i would refrain from treating the secrets of nature, because they may be turned to ridicule by lascivious and lewd people. but as it is absolutely necessary that they should be known for the public good, i will not omit them because some may make a wrong use of them. those parts which can be seen at the lowest part of the stomach are the _fissure magna_, or the _great cleft_, with its _labia_ or lips, the _mons veneris_, or mountain of venus, and the hair. these together are called the _pudenda_, or things to be ashamed of because when they are exposed they cause a woman _pudor_, or shame. the _fissure magna_ reaches from the lower part of the _os pubis_, to within an inch of the _anus_, but it is less and closer in virgins than in those who have borne children, and has two lips, which grow thicker and fuller towards the pubis, and meeting on the middle of the _os pubis_, form that rising hill which is called the _mons veneris_, or the hill of venus. next come the _nymphae_ and the _clitoris_, the former of which is a membrany and moist substance, spongy, soft and partly fleshy, of a red colour and in the shape of two wings, which are joined at an acute angle at their base, producing a fleshy substance there which covers the clitoris, and sometimes they extend so far, that an incision is required to make room for a man's instrument of generation. the _clitoris_ is a substance in the upper part of the division where the two wings meet, and the seat of venereal pleasure, being like a man's _penis_ in situation, substance, composition and power of erection, growing sometimes to the length of two inches out of the body, but that never happens except through extreme lustfulness or some extraordinary accident. this _clitoris_ consists of two spongy and skinny bodies, containing a distinct original from the _os pubis_, its tip being covered with a tender skin, having a hole or passage like a man's yard or _penis_, although not quite through, in which alone, and in its size it differs from it. the next things are the fleshy knobs of the great neck of the womb, and these knobs are behind the wings and are four in number, resembling myrtle berries, and being placed quadrangularly one against the other, and here the orifice of the bladder is inserted, which opens into the fissures, to evacuate the urine, and one of these knobs is placed before it, and closes up the passage in order to secure it from cold, or any suchlike inconvenience. the lips of the womb, which appear next, disclose its neck, if they are separated, and two things may be observed in them, which are the neck itself and the _hymen_, or more properly, the _claustrum virginale_, of which i have spoken before. by the neck of the womb we must understand the channel that lies between the above-mentioned knobs and the inner bone of the womb, which receives the penis like a sheath, and so that it may be more easily dilated by the pleasure of procreation, the substance is sinewy and a little spongy. there are several folds or pleats in this cavity, made by tunicles, which are wrinkled like a full blown rose. in virgins they appear plainly, but in women who are used to copulation they disappear, so that the inner side of the neck of the womb appears smooth, but in old women it is more hard and gristly. but though this channel is sometimes crooked and sinks down yet at the times of copulation, labour, or of the monthly flow, it is erected or distended, which overtension occasions the pain in childbirth. the hymen, or _claustrum virginale_, is that which closes the neck of the womb, and is broken by the first act of copulation; its use being rather to check the undue menstrual flow in virgins, rather than to serve any other purpose, and usually when it is broken, either by copulation, or by any other means, a small quantity of blood flows from it, attended with some little pain. from this some observe that between the folds of the two tunicles, which constitute the neck of the womb there are many veins and arteries running along, and arising from, the vessels on both sides of the thighs, and so passing into the neck of the womb, being very large; and the reason for this is, that the neck of the bladder requires to be filled with great vigour, so as to be dilated, in order that it may lay hold of the penis better; for great heat is required in such motions, and that becomes more intense by the act of friction, and consumes a considerable amount of moisture, for supplying which large vessels are absolutely necessary. another cause of the largeness of the vessels is, that menses make their way through them, which often occasions pregnant women to continue menstruating: for though the womb be shut up, yet the passages in the neck of the womb through which these vessels pass, are open. in this case, we may further observe, that as soon as the _pudenda_ are penetrated, there appear two little pits or holes which contain a secretion, which is expelled during copulation, and gives the woman great pleasure. * * * * * chapter xiv _a description of the fabric of the womb, the preparing vessels and testicles in women. also of the different and ejaculatory vessels._ the womb is joined to its neck in the lower part of the _hypogastrium_ where the hips are the widest and broadest, as they are greater and broader there than those of men, and it is placed between the bladder and the straight gut, which keeps it from swaying, and yet gives it freedom to stretch and dilate, and again to contract, as nature requires. its shape is somewhat round and not unlike a gourd, growing smaller and more acute towards one end, being knit together by its own ligaments; its neck likewise is joined by its own substance and by certain membranes that fasten into the _os sacrum_ and the share-bone. its size varies much in different women, and the difference is especially great between those who have borne children and those who have had none. its substance exceeds a thumb's breadth in thickness, and so far from decreasing conception, it rather increases; and in order to strengthen it it is interwoven with fibres which cross it from side to side, some of which are straight and some winding, and its proper vessels are veins, arteries and nerves. amongst these there are two small veins which pass into the womb from the spermatic vessels, and two larger ones from the neck: the mouth of these veins pierces as far as the inward cavity. [illustration: position of a child in the womb just before delivery.] [illustration: the action of quickening] the womb has two arteries on both sides of the spermatic vessels and the hypogastric, which accompany the veins; and besides these, there are several little nerves in the form of a net, which extend throughout it, from the bottom of the _pudenda_; their chief function is sensibility and pleasure, as they move in sympathy between the head and the womb. it may be further noted that the womb is occasionally moveable by means of the two ligaments that hang on either side of it, and often rises and falls. the neck of the womb is extremely sensitive, so that if it be at any time out of order through over fatness, moisture or relaxation, it thereby becomes subject to barrenness. with pregnant women, a glutinous matter is often found at the entrance to the womb so as to facilitate the birth; for at the time of delivery, the mouth of the womb is opened as wide as the size of the child requires, and dilates equally from top to bottom. the spermatic vessels in women, consist of two veins and two arteries, which differ from those of men only in size and the manner of their insertion; for the number of veins and arteries is the same as in men, the right vein issuing from the trunk of the hollow vein descending and besides them there are two arteries, which flow from the aorta. these vessels are narrower and shorter in women than in men; but it must be noticed that they are more intertwined and contorted than in men, and shrink together by reason of their shortness that they may, by their looseness, be better stretched out when necessary: and these vessels in women are carried in an oblique direction through the lesser bowels and testicles but are divided into two branches half way. the larger goes to the stones and forms a winding body, and wonderfully inoculates the lesser branches where it disperses itself, and especially at the higher part of the bottom of the womb, for its nourishment, and that part of the courses may pass through the vessels; and seeing that women's testicles are situated near the womb, for that cause those vessels do not fall from the peritoneum, nor do they make so much passage as in men, as they do not extend to the share-bone. the stones of woman, commonly called _testicles_, do not perform the same function as in men, for they are altogether different in position, size, temperature, substance, form and covering. they are situated in the hollow of the muscles of the loins, so that, by contracting greater heat, they may be more fruitful, their office being to contain the ova or eggs, one of which, being impregnated by the man's seed engenders the child. they are, however, different from those of the male in shape, because they are smaller and flatter at each end, and not so round or oval; the external superficies is also more unequal, and has the appearance of a number of knobs or kernels mixed together. there is a difference, also, in the substance, as they are much softer and more pliable, and not nearly so compact. their size and temperature are also different for they are much colder and smaller than in men, and their covering or enclosure is likewise quite different; for as men's are wrapped in several covers, because they are very pendulous and would be easily injured unless they were so protected by nature, so women's stones, being internal and thus less subject to being hurt, are covered by only one membrane, and are likewise half covered by the peritoneum. the ejaculatory vessels are two small passages, one on either side, which do not differ in any respect from the spermatic veins in substance. they rise in one place from the bottom of the womb, and do not reach from their other extremity either to the stones or to any other part, but are shut up and impassable, and adhere to the womb as the colon does to the blind gut, and winding half way about; and though the testicles are not close to them and do not touch them, yet they are fastened to them by certain membranes which resemble the wing of a bat, through which certain veins and arteries passing from the end of the testicles may be said to have their passages going from the corners of the womb to the testicles, and these ligaments in women are the _cremasters_[ ] in men, of which i shall speak more fully when i come to describe the male parts of generation. footnotes: [ ] muscles by which the testicles are drawn up. * * * * * chapter xv _a description of the use and action of the several generative parts in women._ the external parts, commonly called the _pudenda_, are designed to cover the great orifice and to receive the man's penis or yard in the act of sexual intercourse, and to give passage to the child and to the urine. the use of the wings and knobs, like myrtle berries, is for the security of the internal parts, closing the orifice and neck of the bladder and by their swelling up, to cause titillation and pleasure in those parts, and also to obstruct the involuntary passage of the urine. the action of the clitoris in women is similar to that of the penis in men, viz., _erection_; and its lower end is the glans of the penis, and has the same name. and as the _glans_ of man are the seat of the greatest pleasure in copulation, so is this in the woman. the action and use of the neck on the womb is the same as that of the penis, viz., erection, brought about in different ways: first, in copulation it becomes erect and made straight for the passage of the penis into the womb; secondly, whilst the passage is filled with the vital blood, it becomes narrower for embracing the penis; and the uses of this erection are twofold:--first, because if the neck of the womb were not erected, the man's yard could find no proper passage to the womb, and, secondly, it hinders any damage or injury that might ensue through the violent striking of the _penis_ during the act of copulation. the use of the veins that pass through the neck of the womb, is to replenish it with blood and vigour, that so, as the moisture is consumed by the heat engendered by sexual intercourse, it may be renewed by those vessels; but their chief business is to convey nutriment to the womb. the womb has many properties belonging to it: first, the retention of the impregnated egg, and this is conception, properly so called; secondly, to cherish and nourish it, until nature has fully formed the child, and brought it to perfection, and then it operates strongly in expelling the child, when the time of its remaining has expired, becoming dilated in an extraordinary manner and so perfectly removed from the senses that they cannot injuriously affect it, retaining within itself a power and strength to eject the foetus, unless it be rendered deficient by any accident; and in such a case remedies must be applied by skilful hands to strengthen it, and enable it to perform its functions; directions for which will be given in the second book. the use of the preparing vessels is this; the arteries convey the blood to the testicles; some part of it is absorbed in nourishing them, and in the production of these little bladders (which resemble eggs in every particular), through which the _vasa preparantia_ run, and which are absorbed in them; and the function of the veins is to bring back whatever blood remains from the above mentioned use. the vessels of this kind are much shorter in women than in men, because they are nearer to the testicles; this defect is, however, made good by the many intricate windings to which those vessels are subject; for they divide themselves into two branches of different size in the middle and the larger one passes to the testicles. the stones in women are very useful, for where they are defective, the work of generation is at an end. for though those bladders which are on the outer surface contain no seed, as the followers of galen and hippocrates wrongly believed, yet they contain several eggs, generally twenty in each testicle; one of which being impregnated by the animated part of the man's seed in the act of copulation, descends through the oviducts into the womb, and thus in due course of time becomes a living child. * * * * * chapter xvi _of the organs of generation in man._ having given a description of the organs of generation in women, with the anatomy of the fabric of the womb, i shall now, in order to finish the first part of this treatise, describe the organs of generation in men, and how they are fitted for the use for which nature intended them. the instrument of generation in men (commonly called the yard, in latin, _penis_, from _pendo_, to hang, because it hangs outside the belly), is an organic part which consists of skin, tendons, veins, arteries, sinews and great ligaments; and is long and round, and on the upper side flattish, seated under the _os pubis_, and ordained by nature partly for the evacuation of urine, and partly for conveying the seed into the womb; for which purpose it is full of small pores, through which the seed passes into it, through the _vesicula seminalis_,[ ] and discharges the urine when they make water; besides the common parts, viz., the two nervous bodies, the septum, the urethra, the glans, four muscles and the vessels. the nervous bodies (so called) are surrounded with a thick white, penetrable membrane, but their inner substance is spongy, and consists chiefly of veins, arteries, and nervous fibres, interwoven like a net. and when the nerves are filled with animal vigour and the arteries with hot, eager blood, the penis becomes distended and erect; also the neck of the _vesicula urinalis_,[ ] but when the influx of blood ceases, and when it is absorbed by the veins, the penis becomes limp and flabby. below those nervous bodies is the urethra, and whenever they swell, it swells also. the penis has four muscles; two shorter ones springing from the _cox endix_ and which serve for erection, and on that account they are called _erectores_; two larger, coming from _sphincters ani_, which serve to dilate the urethra so as to discharge the semen, and these are called dilatantes, or wideners. at the end of the penis is the _glans_, covered with a very thin membrane, by means of which, and of its nervous substance, it becomes most extremely sensitive, and is the principal seat of pleasure in copulation. the outer covering of the _glans_ is called the _preputium_ (foreskin), which the jews cut off in circumcision, and it is fastened by the lower part of it to the _glans_. the penis is also provided with veins, arteries and nerves. the _testiculi_, stones or testicles (so called because they testify one to be a man), turn the blood, which is brought to them by the spermatic arteries into seed. they have two sorts of covering, common and proper; there are two of the common, which enfold both the testes. the outer common coat, consists of the _cuticula_, or true skin, and is called the scrotum, and hangs from the abdomen like a purse; the inner is the _membrana carnosa_. there are also two proper coats--the outer called _cliotrodes_, or virginales; the inner _albugidia_; in the outer the cremaster is inserted. the _epididemes_, or _prostatae_ are fixed to the upper part of the testes, and from them spring the _vasa deferentia_, or _ejaculatoria_, which deposit the seed into the _vesicule seminales_ when they come near the neck of the bladder. there are two of these _vesiculae_, each like a bunch of grapes, which emit the seed into the urethra in the act of copulation. near them are the _prostatae_, about the size of a walnut, and joined to the neck of the bladder. medical writers do not agree about the use of them, but most are of the opinion that they produce an oily and sloppy discharge to besmear the urethra so as to defend it against the pungency of the seed and urine. but the vessels which convey the blood to the testes, from which the seed is made, are the _arteriae spermaticae_ and there are two of them also. there are likewise two veins, which carry off the remaining blood, and which are called _venae spermaticae_. footnotes: [ ] seminal vesicle. [ ] urinary vesicle. * * * * * chapter xvii _a word of advice to both sexes, consisting of several directions with regard to copulation._ as nature has a mutual desire for copulation in every creature, for the increase and propagation of its kind, and more especially in man, the lord of creation and the masterpiece of nature, in order that such a noble piece of divine workmanship should not perish, something ought to be said concerning it, it being the foundation of everything that we have hitherto been treating of, since without copulation there can be no generation. seeing, therefore, so much depends upon it, i have thought it necessary, before concluding the first book, to give such directions to both sexes, for the performance of that act, as may appear efficacious to the end for which nature designed it, but it will be done with such caution as not to offend the chastest ear, nor to put the fair sex to the blush when they read it. in the first place, then, when a married couple from the desire of having children are about to make use of those means that nature has provided for that purpose, it is well to stimulate the body with generous restoratives, that it may be active and vigorous. and the imagination should be charmed with sweet music, and if all care and thoughts of business be drowned in a glass of rosy wine, so that their spirit may be raised to the highest pitch of ardour, it would be as well, for troubles, cares or sadness are enemies to the pleasures of venus. and if the woman should conceive when sexual intercourse takes place at such times of disturbance, it would have a bad effect upon the child. but though generous restoratives may be employed for invigorating nature, yet all excess should be carefully avoided, for it will check the briskness of the spirits and make them dull and languid, and as it also interferes with digestion, it must necessarily be an enemy _to_ copulation; for it is food taken moderately and that is well digested, which enables a man to perform the dictates of nature with vigour and activity, and it is also necessary, that in their mutual embraces they meet each other with equal ardour, for, if not, the woman either will not conceive, or else the child may be weak bodily, or mentally defective. i, therefore, advise them to excite their desires mutually before they begin their conjugal intercourse, and when they have done what nature requires, a man must be careful not to withdraw himself from his wife's arms too soon, lest some sudden cold should strike into the womb and occasion miscarriage, and so deprive them of the fruits of their labour. and when the man has withdrawn himself after a suitable time, the woman should quietly go to rest, with all calmness and composure of mind, free from all anxious and disturbing thoughts, or any other mental worry. and she must, as far as possible, avoid turning over from the side on which she was first lying, and also keep from coughing and sneezing, because as it violently shakes the body, it is a great enemy to conception. * * * * * a private looking-glass for the female sex * * * * * part ii * * * * * chapter i _treating of the several maladies incident to the womb, with proper remedies for the cure of each._ the womb is placed in the _hypogastrium_, or lower part of the body, in the cavity called the _pelvis_, having the straight gut on one side to protect it against the hardness of the backbone, and the bladder on the other side to protect it against blows. its form or shape is like a virile member, with this exception, that the man's is outside, and the woman's inside. it is divided into the neck and body. the neck consists of a hard fleshy substance, much like cartilage, and at the end of it there is a membrane placed transversely, which is called the hymen. near the neck there is a prominent pinnacle, which is called the door of the womb, because it preserves the _matrix_ from cold and dust. the greeks called it _clitoris_, and the latins _praeputium muliebre_, because the roman women abused these parts to satisfy their mutual unlawful lusts, as st. paul says, romans . . the body of the womb is where the child is conceived, and this is not altogether round, but dilates itself into two angles; the outward part is full of sinews, which are the cause of its movements, but inside it is fleshy. it is wrongly said, that in the cavity of the womb there are seven divided cells or receptacles for the male seed, but anatomists know that there are only two, and also that those two are not divided by a partition, but only by a line or suture running through the middle of it. at the bottom of the cavity there are little holes called _cotyledones_, which are the ends of certain veins or arteries, and serve breeding women to convey nourishment to the child, which is received by the umbilical and other veins, to carry the courses to the _matrix_. as to menstruation, it is defined as a monthly flow of bad and useless blood, and of the super-abundance of it, for it is an excrement in quality, though it is pure and incorrupt, like the blood in the veins. and that the menstruous blood is pure in itself, and of the same quality as that in the veins, is proved in two ways.--first, from the final object of the blood, which is the propagation and preservation of mankind, that man might be conceived; and that, being begotten, he might be comforted and preserved both in and out of the womb, and all allow that it is true that a child in the matrix is nourished by the blood. and it is true that when it is out of it, it is nourished by the same; for the milk is nothing but the menstruous blood made white in the breast. secondly, it is proved to be true by the way it is produced, as it is the superfluity of the last aliment of the fleshy parts. the natural end of man and woman's being is to propagate. now, in the act of conception one must be an active agent and the other passive, for if both were similarly constituted, they could not propagate. man, therefore, is hot and dry, whilst woman is cold and moist: he is the agent, and she the passive or weaker vessel, that she may be subject to the office of the man. it is necessary that woman should be of a cold constitution, because a redundancy of nature for the infant that depends on her is required of her; for otherwise there would be no surplus of nourishment for the child, but no more than the mother requires, and the infant would weaken the mother, and like as in the viper, the birth of the infant would be the death of the parent. the monthly purgations continue from the fifteenth to the forty-sixth or fiftieth year; but a suppression often occurs, which is either natural or morbid: the courses are suppressed naturally during pregnancy, and whilst the woman is suckling. the morbid suppression remains to be spoken of. * * * * * chapter ii _of the retention of the courses._ the suppression of the menstrual periods, is an interruption of that accustomed evacuation of blood, which comes from the matrix every month, and the part affected is the womb. cause. the cause of this suppression is either external or internal. the external cause may be heat or dryness of air, want of sleep, too much work, violent exercise, etc., whereby the substance is so consumed, and the body so exhausted that nothing is left over to be got rid of, as is recorded of the amazons who, being active and constantly in motion, had their courses very little, if at all. or it may be brought about by cold which is very frequent, as it vitiates and thickens the blood, and binds up the passages, so that it cannot flow out. the internal cause is either instrumental or material; in the womb or in the blood. in the womb, it may be in various ways; by humours, and abscesses and ulcers, by the narrowness of the veins and passages, or by the adipose membrane in fat bodies, pressing on the neck of the matrix, but then they must have hernia, zirthilis, for in men the membrane does not reach so low; by too much cold or heat, the one vitiating the action, and the other consuming the matter through the wrong formation of the uterine parts; by the neck of the womb being turned aside, and sometimes, though rarely, by a membrane or excrescence of the flesh growing at the mouth or neck of the womb. the blood may be in fault in two ways, in quantity and in quality; in quantity, when it is so consumed that no surplus is left over, as in viragoes or virile women, who, through their heat and natural strength, consume it all in their last nourishment; as hippocrates writes of prethusa, for when her husband praised her overmuch, her courses were suppressed, her voice changed and she got a beard with a manly face. but i think, rather that these must be _gynophagi_, or woman-eaters, rather than women-breeders, because they consume one of the principles of generation, which gives a being to the world, viz., the menstruous blood. the blood may likewise be lost, and the courses checked by nosebleeding, by bleeding piles, by dysentery, commonly called the bloody flux, by many other discharges, and by chronic diseases. secondly, the matter may be vitiated in quality, and if it be sanguineous, sluggish, bilious or melancholy, and any of these will cause an obstruction in the veins. signs. signs which manifest the disease are pains in the head, neck, back and loins; weariness of the whole body (but especially of the hips and legs, because the womb is near those parts); palpitation of the heart. the following are particular signs:--if the suppression arises from a cold, the woman becomes heavy, sluggish, pale and has a slow pulse; venus' combats are neglected, the urine is thick, the blood becomes watery and great in quantity, and the bowels become constipated. if it arises from heat, the signs are just the opposite. if the retention be natural and arises from conception, this may be known by drinking hydromel, i.e., water and honey, after supper, before going to bed, by the effect which it has; for if after taking it, she feels a heating pain about the navel and the lower parts of the abdomen, it is a sign that she has conceived, and that the suppression is natural. prognostics. the whole body is affected by any disorder of the womb, and especially the heart, the liver and the brain, and there is a singular sympathy between the womb and those three organs. firstly, the womb communicates with the heart by the mediation of those arteries which come from the aorta. hence, when menstruation is suppressed, fainting, swooning, a very low pulse, and shortness of breath will ensue. secondly, it communicates with the liver by the veins derived from the hollow vein. obstructions, jaundice, dropsy, induration of the spleen will follow. thirdly, it communicates with the brain by the nerves and membranes of the back; hence arise epilepsy, madness, fits of melancholy, pains in the back of the head, unaccountable fears and inability to speak. i may, therefore, well agree with hippocrates that if menstruation be suppressed, many dangerous diseases will follow. cure. in the cure of this, and of all the other following cases, i shall observe the following order:--the cures will be taken from surgical, pharmaceutical and diuretical means. the suppression has a plethoric effect, and must be removed by the evacuation; therefore we begin with bleeding. in the middle of the menstrual period, open the liver vein, and two days before, open the saphena in both feet; if the repletion is not very great apply cupping glasses to the legs and thighs, although there may be no hope of removing the suppression. as in some women, the cotyledones are so closed up that nothing but copulation will open them, yet it will be well to relieve the woman as much as possible by opening the hemoroid veins by applying a leech. after bleeding let the place be prepared and made flexible with syrup of stychas, calamint, betony, hyssop, mugwort, horehound, fumitary, maidenhair. bathe the parts with camomiles, pennyroyal, savias, bay-leaves, juniper-berries, rue, marjoram, feverfew. take a handful each of nep, maidenhair, succory and betony leaves and make a decoction, and take three ounces of it, syrup of maidenhair, mugwort and succory, half an ounce of each. after she comes out of her bath, let her drink it off. purge with _pill agaric, fleybany, corb, feriae_. in this case, galen recommends _pilulae of caberica coloquintida_; for, as they are good for purging the bad humours, so also they open the passages of the womb, and strengthen it by their aromatic qualities. if the stomach be over-loaded, let her take an emetic, yet such a one as may work both ways, lest if it only works upwards, it should check the humours too much. take two drachms of trochisks of agaric, infuse this in two ounces of oxymel in which dissolve one scruple and a half of _electuary dissarum_, and half an ounce of _benedic laxit_. take this as a purge. after the humour has been got rid of, proceed to more suitable and stronger remedies. take a drachm and a half of trochisk of myrrh; ten grains of musk with the juice of smallage; make twelve pills and take six every morning, or after supper, on going to bed. take half an ounce of cinnamon, two drachms each of smirutium, or rogos, valerin aristolochia; two scruples each of astrumone root and saffron; two drachms of spec. diambia; four scruples of trochisk of myrrh; two scruples tartari vitriolari; make half into a powder; make lozenges with mugwort water and sugar, and take one drachm of them every morning; or mix a drachm of the powder with one drachm of sugar, and take it in white wine. take two drachms each of prepared steel and spec. hair; one scruple each of borax and spec. of myrrh, with savine juice; make it up into eighty-eight lozenges and take three every other day before dinner. take one scruple of castor, half a drachm of wild carrot seed with syrup of mugwort, and make four pills, take them in the morning fasting, for three days following, before the usual time of purging. take five drachms each of agaric, aristolochia, and juice of horehound; six drachma each of rhubarb, spikenard, aniseed, guidanum, asafoetida, mallow-root, gentian, of the three peppers and of liquorice: make an electuary with honey, and take three drachms for a dose. for phlegmatic constitutions nothing can be better than the decoction of guaiacum wood with a little disclaim, taken fasting in the morning, for twelve days consecutively, without producing sweating. treat the lower parts of the body to suffumigating, pessaries, ointments and injections; for fumigating use cinnamon, nutmeg, the berries of the bay tree, mugwort, galbanum, molanthium, amber, etc. make pessaries of figs and the bruised leaves of dog's mercury, rolled up in lint, and if a stronger one is required, make one of myrrh, opopanax, ammoniac, galbanum, sagepanum, mithridate, agaric, coloquintida, tec. make injections of a decoction of origane mugwort, dog's mercury, betony, and eggs; inject into the womb with a female syringe. take half an ounce each of oil of almonds, lilies, capers, camomiles; two drachms each of laudanum and oil of myrrh; make a salve with wax, with which anoint the place; make injections of fenugreek, camomiles, melilot, dill, marjoram, pennyroyal, feverfew, juniper berries and calamint; but if the suppression arises from a lack of matter, then the courses ought not to be brought on until the spirits be raised and the amount of blood increased; or if it arises from affections of the womb itself, as dropsy or inflammation, then particular care must be used; but i will not lay stress on this here, but will mention the remedies in their order. if the retention comes from repletion or fullness, if the air be hot and dry, take moderate exercise before meals, and very light diet and drinks, and with your food take garden savory--thyme and origane, if it arises from emptiness and defect of matter: if the weather be moist and moderately hot, avoid exercise and late hours; let your food be nourishing and easy of digestion, such as raw eggs, lamb, chickens, almonds, milk and the like. * * * * * chapter iii _of excessive menstruation._ the learned say, that truth is manifested by comparing contraries, and so, as i have above spoken of the suppression of menstruation, it is now necessary that i should treat of excessive menstruation, which is no less dangerous than the former. this immoderate monthly flow is defined as a sanguineous discharge, as it consists merely of blood, wherein it differs from the false courses or whites, of which i shall speak further on. secondly, it is said to proceed from the womb; for there are two ways in which the blood issues forth; one by the internal veins of the body of the womb (and this is properly called the monthly flow), the other is by those veins which terminate in the neck of the matrix, which aetius calls haemorrhoids of the womb. in quantity, hippocrates said, it should be about eighteen ounces, and they should last about three days: and when the faculties of the body are weakened by their flow, we may take it that the discharge is inordinate. in bodies which abound in gross humours, this immoderate flow sometimes unburdens nature of her load and ought not to be checked without a physician's advice. cause. the cause is either internal or external. the internal cause is threefold; in the substance, the instrument or the power. the matter, which is the blood, may be vitiated in two ways; first, by the heat of the constitution, climate or season, heating the blood, whereby the passages are dilated, and the power weakened so that it cannot retain the blood. secondly, by falls, blows, violent motions, rupture of the veins, etc. the external cause may be the heat of the air, heavy burdens, unnatural childbirth, etc. signs. in this excessive flow the appetite is lessened, conception is checked and all the functions weakened; the feet swell, the colour of the face changes, and the whole body is weakened. if the flow comes from the rupture of a vein, the body is sometimes cold, the blood flows out in streams, suddenly, and causes great pain. if it arises from heat, and the orifice of the vein is dilated, there is little or no pain, but yet the blood flows faster than it does when caused by erosion, but not so fast as it does in a rupture. if caused by erosion, the woman feels a scalding of the passage, and it differs from the other two, in so much as it does not flow so quickly or so freely as they do. if it is caused by weakness of the womb, the woman feels a dislike for sexual intercourse. lastly, if it proceeds from the defective quality of the blood let some of it drop into a cloth, and when it is dry, you may judge, of the quality by the colour. if it be passionate it will be yellow; if melancholy, it will be black, and if phlegmatic, it will be waterish and whitish. prognostics. if convulsions are joined to the flow, it is dangerous, because that intimates that the noble parts are affected, convulsions caused by emptiness are deadly. if they continue long, they will be very difficult to cure, and it was one of the miracles which our saviour christ wrought, to cure a woman of this disease of twelve years standing. to conclude, if the flow be excessive, many diseases will follow, which will be almost impossible to cure; the blood, being consumed together with the innate heat, either morbid, dropsical, or paralytical diseases will follow. cure. the cure consists in three particulars. first, in expelling and carrying away the blood. secondly, in connecting and removing the fluxibility of the matter. thirdly, in incorporating the veins and faculties. for the first, to get rid of the superfluous blood, open a vein in the arm, and draw off as much blood as the strength of the patient will allow; not all at one time, but at intervals, for by those means the spirits are less weakened, and the reaction so much the greater. apply cupping glasses to the breasts and also over the liver, and to correct the flexibility of the matter, purgative means, moderated by astringents, may be employed. if it is caused by erosion, and salt phlegm, prepare with syrup of violets, wormwood, roses, citron peel, succory, etc. then make the following purge:--mirabolans, half an ounce; trochisks of agaric, one drachm; make a decoction with the plantain-water, and add syrup of roses lax. three ounces, and make a draught. if caused by any mental excitement, prepare the body by syrup of roses, myrtles, sorrel and parsley, mixed with plantain-water, knot-grass and endive. then purge with the following draught:--take one drachm each of the void of mirabolans, and rhubarb, cinnamon fifteen grains; infuse for a night in endive water; add to the strained water half an ounce of pulp of tamarinds and of cassia, and make a draught. if the blood be waterish as it is in dropsical subjects and flows out easily on account of its thinness, it will be a good plan to draw off the water by purging with agaric, elaterium and coloquintida. sweating is also useful in this case, as by it the noxious matter is carried off, and the motion of the blood to other parts. to produce sweating, employ cardus water, and mithridate, or a decoction of guaiacum and sarsaparilla. gum guaiacum is also a great producer of perspiration, and sarsaparilla pills, taken every night before going to bed are also highly to be recommended. if the blood pours out, without any evil quality in itself, then strengthening means only should be employed, which is a thing to be done in cases of inordinate discharge. take one scruple of ol. ammoniac, one drachm of treacle, half an ounce of conserve of roses and make an electuary with syrup of myrtle, or if the discharge be of long standing take two drachms of matrix, one drachm of olilanum troch. de carbara, a scruple of balustium; make into a powder and form into pills with syrup of quinces, and take one before every meal. take two scruples each of troch. dechambede, scoriaferri, coral and frankincense; pound these to a fine powder, and make into lozenges with sugar and plantain water. asses' dung is also approved of, whether taken inwardly with syrup of quinces or applied outwardly with steeled water. galen by sending the juice of it into the womb by means of a syringe for four days consecutively, cured this immediate flow, which could not be checked in any other way. let the patient take one scruple and a half of pilon in water before going to bed; make a fumigation for the womb of mastic, frankincense and burnt frogs, adding the hoof of a mule. take an ounce each of the juice of knot-grass, comfoly and quinces; a drachm of camphor; dip a piece of silk or cotton into it and apply it to the place. take half an ounce each of oil of mastic, myrtle, and quinces; a drachm each of fine bole and troch. decardas, and a sufficient quantity of dragon's blood, make an ointment and apply it before and behind. take an ounce and a half each of plantain, shepherd's purse and red rose leaves; an ounce of dried mint, and three ounces of bean flour; boil all these in plantain water and make two plasters:--apply one before and one behind. if the blood flows from those veins which are terminated at the neck of the matrix, then it is not called an undue discharge of the _menses_, but haemorrhoids of the womb. the same remedy, however, will serve for both, only the instrumental cure will be a little different; for in uterine haemorrhoids, the ends of the veins hang over like teats, which must be removed by cutting, and then the veins closed with aloes, fine bole, burnt alum, myrrh, mastic, with comfoly-juice and knot grass, laid upon it like a plaster. [illustration: _position of the embryos in a plural conception_] [illustration: process of delivery.] the air should be cold and dry, and all motion of the body should be prohibited. her diet should consist of pheasants, partridges, grouse, rabbits, calves' feet, etc., and her drink should be mixed with the juice of pomegranates and quinces. * * * * * chapter iv _of the weeping of the womb._ the weeping of the womb is an unnatural flow of blood, coming from it in drops, like tears, and causing violent pains in it, and occurring at no fixed period or time. by some it is supposed to be produced by the excessive flow of the courses, as they flow copiously and freely; this is continued, though only little at a time, and accompanied by great pain and difficulty of passing it, and on this account it is compared to the strangury. the cause is in the power, instrument or matter; in the power, on account of its being enfeebled so that it cannot expel the blood, and which, remaining there, makes that part of the womb grow hard, and distends the vessels, and from that, pains in the womb arise. in the instrument, from the narrowness of the passage. lastly, it may be the matter of the blood which is at fault, and which may be in too great quantities; or the quality may be bad, so that it is thick and gross and cannot flow out as it ought to do, but only in drops. the signs will best be ascertained by the patient's own account, but there will be pains in the head, stomach and back, with inflammation, difficulty of breathing and excoriation of the matrix. if the patient's strength will permit it, first open a vein in the arm, rub the upper parts and let a cord be fastened tightly round the arm, so that the force of the blood may be carried backward; then apply such things as may relax the womb, and assuage the heat of the blood, as poultices made of bran, linseed, mallows, dog's mercury and artiplex. if the blood be viscous and thick, add mugwort, calamint, dictain and betony to it, and let the patient take about the size of a nutmeg of venic treacle, and syrup of mugwort every morning; make an injection of aloes, dog's mercury, linseed, groundsel, mugwort, fenugreek, with sweet almond oil. sometimes it is caused by wind, and then bleeding must not be had recourse to, but instead take one ounce of syrup of feverfew; half an ounce each of honey, syrup of roses, syrup of stachus; an ounce each of calamint water, mugwort, betony and hyssop, and make a julep. if the pain continues, use this purge:--take a drachm of spec. hitrae, half an ounce of diacatholicon, one ounce of syrup of roses and laxative, and make a draught with a decoction of mugwort and the four cordial flowers. if it proceeds from weakness, she must be strengthened, but if from grossness of blood, let the quality of it be altered, as i have shown in the preceding chapter. lastly, if her bowels are confined, move them by an injection of a decoction of camomiles, betony, feverfew, mallows, linseed, juniper-berries, cumminseed, aniseed, melilot, and add to it half an ounce of diacatholicon; two drachms of hiera piera, an ounce each of honey and oil and a drachm and a half of sol. nitre. the patient must abstain from salt, acid and windy food. * * * * * chapter v _the false courses, or whites._ from the womb, not only the menstruous blood proceeds, but many evacuations, which were summed up by the ancients under the title of _rhoos gunaikeios_,[ ] which is the distillation of a variety of corrupt humours through the womb, which flow from the whole body or a part of it, varying both in courses and colour. cause. the cause is either promiscuously in the whole body, by a cacochymia; or weakness of it, or in some of its parts, as in the liver, which by a weakness of the blood producing powers, cause a production of corrupt blood, which then is reddish. sometimes, when the fall is sluggish in its action, and does not get rid of those superfluities engendered in the liver, the matter is yellowish. sometimes it is in the spleen when it does not cleanse the blood of the dregs and rejected particles, and then the matter which flows forth is blackish. it may also come from a cold in the head, or from any other decayed or corrupted member, but if the discharge be white, the cause lies either in the stomach or loins. in the stomach, by some crude substance there, and vitiated by grief, melancholy or some other mental disturbance; for otherwise, if the matter were only crude phlegm and noways corrupt, being taken into the liver it might be converted into the blood; for phlegm in the ventricle is called nourishment half digested; but being corrupt, though sent into the liver it cannot be turned into nutriment, for the second decoction in the stomach cannot correct that which the first corrupted; and therefore the liver sends it to the womb, which can neither digest nor reject it, and so it is voided out with the same colour which it had in the ventricle. the cause may also be in the veins being overheated whereby the spermatical matter flows out because of its thinness. the external causes may be moistness of the air, eating bad food, anger, grief, sloth, too much sleep, costiveness. the signs are bodily disturbances, shortness of breathing, and foul breath, a distaste for food, swollen eyes and feet, and low spirits; discharges of different colours, as red, black, green, yellow and white from the womb. it differs from the flowing of the courses and from too abundant menstruation, in so far as it keeps no certain period, and is of many colours, all of which spring from blood. if the flux be phlegmatic, it will last long and be hard to cure, but if sickness or diarrhoea supervene, it carries off the humour and cures the disease. if it is abundant it does not last so long, but it is more dangerous, for it will cause a cleft in the neck of the womb, and sometimes also an excoriation of the matrix; if melancholy, it must be dangerous and obstinate. the flux of the haemorrhoids, however, assists the cure. if the matter which flows out be reddish, open a vein in the arm; if not, apply ligatures to the arms and shoulders. galen boasts that he cured the wife of brutus, who was suffering from this disease, by rubbing the upper part with honey. if it is caused by the brain, take syrup of betony and marjoram. give as a purgative _pill. coch._ or _agaric_; make nasalia of sage, or hyssop juice, betony, flagella, with one drop of oil of _elect. dianth. rosat. diambrae, diamosci dulus_, one drachm of each, and make lozenges to be taken every morning and evening. _auri alexandrina_, half a drachm at night on going to bed. if these things have no effect, try suffumigation and plasters, as they are prescribed above. if it arises from crudities of the stomach or from a cold, disordered liver, take a decoction of _lignum sanctum_ every morning, purge with _pill de agaric, de hermadact, de hiera, diacolinthis, foetid-agrigatio_; take two drachms of elect. aromet-roses, one scruple each of dried citron peel, nutmeg, long pepper; one drachm of draglanga; half a scruple each of _fantalum album_, ling, aloes; six ounces of sugar, with mint water: make lozenges of it, and take them before meals. if there be repletion besides the rigidity of the liver, purging by means of an emetic is to be recommended, for which take three drachms of the electuary diasatu. galen allows diuretical remedies, such as _aqua petrofolma_. if the discharge be angry, treat it with syrup of roses, violets, endive and succory; give a purge of mirabolans, manna, rhubarb, and cassia. take two drachms of rhubarb, one of aniseed, and one scruple and a half of cinnamon; infuse them into six ounces of syrup of prunes, and add one ounce of strained manna, and take it in the morning as required. take one drachm each of the following drugs: _diatonlanton, diacorant, diarthod, abbaris, dyacydomei_, four ounces of sugar, and make into lozenges with plantain water. if the gall be sluggish, and does not stir the bowels, give warm injections of a decoction of the four mollifying herbs, with honey of roses and aloes. if the flow be bilious, treat the patient with syrup of maiden-hair; epithynium, polypody, borage, buglos, fumitary, hart's tongue and syrups, bisantius, which must be made without vinegar, else it will assist the disease instead of nature, for melancholy is increased by the use of vinegar, and both hippocrates, silvius and avenzoar reject it as injurious for the womb, and therefore not to be used internally in uterine diseases. _pilulae sumariae, pilulae lud. delupina, lazuli diosena_ and _confetio hamec_ are purges of bile. take two ounces of pounded prunes, one drachm of senna, a drachm and a half each of epithimium, polypody and fumitary, and an ounce of sour dates, and make a decoction with endive water; take four ounces of it and add three drachms of hamesech and three of manna. or take a scruple each of _pil. indic. foetid, agarici, trochis ati_; one scruple of rhubarb pills, six grains of lapis lazuli, make into pills with epithimium, and take them once a week. take three drachms of elect. loetificans. galen three drachms, a drachm each of _diamargaritum, calimi, diamosci dulus_; a drachm of conserve of borage, violets and burglos; one drachm of candied citron peel, seven ounces of sugar, and make into lozenges with rose water. lastly let the womb be cleansed of all corrupt matter, and then be strengthened. in order to purify it, make injections of the decoction of betony, feverfew, spikenard, bismust, mercury and sage, and add two ounces each of sugar and sweet almond oil; pessaries may also be made of silk or cotton, softened in the juice of the above mentioned herbs. you must prepare trochisks, thus, to strengthen the womb. take one ounce each of mugwort, feverfew, myrrh, amber, mace, storax, ling aloes and red roses, and make lozenges or troches with mucilage of tragacanth; throw one of them on to hot coals and fumigate the womb with red wine, in which mastic, fine bole, malustia and red roots have been decocted; anoint the matrix with oil of quinces and myrtles, and apply a plaster to it, for the womb; and let the woman take _diamosdum dulco_, _aract_, and _slemoticum_ every morning. a drying diet is recommended as best, because in these cases the body abounds with phlegmatic and crude humours. on this account, hippocrates advises the patient to go to bed supperless. her food should consist of partridges, pheasant and grouse, roasted rather than boiled, too much sleep must be prohibited whilst moderate exercise is very advisable. footnotes: [ ] the female flowing. * * * * * chapter vi _the suffocation of the mother._ this, which if simply considered, will be found to be merely the cause of an effect, is called in english, "the suffocation of the mother," not because the womb is strangled, but because by its retraction towards the midriff and stomach, which presses it up, so that the instrumental cause of respiration, the midriff, is suffocated, and acting with the brain, cause the animating faculty, the efficient cause of respiration, also to be interrupted, when the body growing cold, and the action weakened, the woman falls to the ground as if she were dead. some women remain longer in those hysterical attacks than others, and rabbi moses mentions some who lay in the fit for two days. rufus writes of one who continued in it for three days and three nights, and revived at the end of the three days. and i will give you an example so that we may take warning by the example of other men. paroetus mentions a spanish woman who was suddenly seized with suffocation of the womb, and was thought to be dead. her friends, for their own satisfaction, sent for a surgeon in order to have her opened, and as soon as he began to make an incision, she began to move, and come to herself again with great cries, to the horror and surprise of all those present. in order that the living may be distinguished from the dead, old writers prescribe three experiments. the first is, to lay a feather on the mouth, and by its movements you may judge whether the patient be alive or dead; the second is, to place a glass of water on the breast, and if it moves, it betokens life; the third is, to hold a bright, clean, looking-glass to the mouth and nose, and if the glass be dimmed with a little moisture on it, it betokens life. these three experiments are good, but you must not depend upon them too much, for though the feather and the glass do not move, and the looking-glass continues bright and clear, yet it is not a necessary consequence that she is dead. for the movement of the lungs, by which breathing is produced, may be checked, so that she cannot breathe, and yet internal heat may remain, which is not evident by the motion of the breast or lungs, but lies hidden in the heart and arteries. examples of this we find in flies and swallows, who seem dead to all outward appearances, breathless and inanimate, and yet they live by that heat which is stored up in the heart and inward arteries. at the approach of summer, however, the internal heat, being restored to the outer parts, they are then brought to life again, out of their sleeping trance. those women, therefore, who apparently die suddenly, and from no visible cause, should not be buried until the end of three days, lest the living be buried instead of the dead. cure. the part affected is the womb, of which there are two motions--natural and symptomatic. the natural motion is, when the womb attracts the male seed, or expels the infant, and the symptomatical motion, of which we are speaking, is a convulsive drawing up of the womb. the cause is usually in the retention of the seed, or in the suppression of the menses, which causes a repletion of the corrupt humours of the womb, from which a windy refrigeration arises, which produces a convulsion of the ligaments of the womb. and just as it may arise from humidity or repletion, so also, as it is a convulsion, it may be caused by dryness or emptiness. lastly also, it may arise from abortion or from difficult childbirth. signs. on the approach of suffocation of the womb the face becomes pale, there is a weakness of the legs, shortness of breathing, frigidity of the whole body, with a spasm in the throat, and then the woman falls down, bereft of sense and motion; the mouth of the womb is closed up, and feels hard when touched with the finger. when the paroxysm or the fit is over, she opens her eyes, and as she feels an oppression of the stomach, she tries to vomit. and lest any one should be deceived into taking one disease for another, i will show how it may be distinguished from those diseases which most resemble it. it differs from apoplexy, as it comes without the patient crying out; in hysterical fits also the sense of feeling is not altogether destroyed and lost, as it is in apoplexy; and it differs from epilepsy, as the eyes are not distorted, and there is spongy froth from the mouth. that convulsive motion also, which is frequently accompanied by symptoms of suffocation, is not universal, as it is in epilepsy, but there is some convulsion, but that without any violent agitation. in syncope both breathing and the pulse fail, the face grows pale, and the woman faints suddenly; but in hysterical attacks there are usually both breathing and pulse, though these are indistinct; the face is red and she has a forewarning of the approaching fit. it cannot, however, be denied that syncope may accompany this feeling of suffocation. lastly, it can be distinguished from lethargy by the pulse, which is rapid in the former, but weak in the latter. cure. in the cure of this affection, two things must be taken care of:--_in the first place_, nature must be stimulated to expel these hurtful humours which obscure the senses, so that the woman may be brought back from that sleepy fit. _secondly_, during the intervals of the attack, proper remedies must be employed, in order to remove the cause. to stimulate nature, apply cupping-glasses to the hips and navel: apply ligatures to the thighs, rub the extremities with salt, mustard and vinegar, and shout and make a great noise in her ears. hold asafoetida to the nose, or sacopenium steeped in vinegar; make her sneeze by blowing castor-powder, white pepper and hellebore up her nose; hold burnt feathers, hair, leather, or anything else with a strong, stinking smell under her nose, for bad odours are unpleasant to nature, and the animal spirits so strive against them, that the natural heat is restored by their means. the brain is sometimes so oppressed, that it becomes necessary to burn the outer skin of the head with hot oil, or with a hot iron, and strong injections and suppositories are useful. take a handful each of sage, calamint, horehound, feverfew, marjoram, betony and hyssop; half an ounce of aniseed; two drachma each of coloquintida, white hellebore and salgem; boil these in two quarts of water till reduced to half; add two ounces of castor oil and two drachms of hiera piera and make an injection of it. or take two ounces of boiled honey, half a scruple of spurge, four grains of coloquint, two grains of hellebore and drachm of salt; make a suppository. hippocrates mentions a hysterical woman who could only be relieved of the paroxysms by pouring cold water on her: yet this is a strange cure, and should only be administered in the heat of summer, when the sun is in the tropic of cancer. if it be caused by the retention and corruption of the seed, let the mid-wife take oil of lilies, marjoram and bay leaves, and dissolve two grains of civet in them, and the same quantity of musk, and at the moment of the paroxysm let her dip her finger into the mixture and put it into the neck of the womb, and tickle and rub it with it. when the fit is over, proceed to remove the cause. if it arises from suppression of the menses, look in chapter xi, p. , for the cure. if it arises from the retention of the seed, a good husband will administer the cure, but those who cannot honourably obtain that remedy, must use such means as will dry up and diminish the seed, as diaciminum, diacalaminthes, etc. the seed of the agnus castus is highly valued as a draught, whether taken inwardly, applied outwardly or used as a suffumigation. it was held in high esteem by the athenian women, for by its means they remained as pure vessels and preserved their chastity, by only strewing it on the bed on which they lay, and hence the name of _agnus castus_, which was given to it, as denoting its effects. make an issue on the inside of each leg, four inches below the knee, and then make lozenges of two scruples of agric, half a scruple each of wild carrot seed and ligne aloes; three drachms of washed turpentine, and make a bolus with a conserve of flowers. eight drachms of castor taken in white wine are very useful in this case, or you may make pills of it with dog's tooth, and take them on going to bed. take an ounce of white briony root dried and cut up like carrots, put it into a little wine and place it on the fire, and drink when warm. take one scruple each of myrrh, castor and asafoetida; four grains each of saffron and rue-seed, and make eight pills and take two every night on going to bed. galen, from his own experience, recommends powdered agaric, of which he frequently gave one scruple in white wine. put a head of bruised garlic on the navel at bed time, and fasten it with a swathing band. make a girdle for the waist of galbanum, and also a plaster for the stomach, and put civet and musk on one part of it, which must be applied to the navel. take two drachms each of pulvis benedict, and of troches of agaric, a sufficient quantity of mithridate, and make two pessaries, and that will purge the matrix of wind and phlegm; foment the private parts with salad oil in which some feverfew and camomiles have been boiled. take a handful of roseleaves and two scruples of cloves, sew them in a little cloth and boil them for ten minutes in malmsey; then apply them, as hot as they can be borne, to the mouth of the womb, but do not let the smell go up her nose. a dry diet must still be adhered to and the moderate use of venus is advisable. let her eat aniseed biscuits instead of bread, and roast meat instead of boiled. * * * * * chapter vii _of the descending or falling of the womb._ the descent of the womb is caused by a relaxation of the ligatures, whereby the matrix is carried backward, and in some women it protrudes to the size of an egg, and there are two kinds of this, distinguished by a descending and a precipitation. the descending of the womb is, when it sinks down to the entrance of the private parts, and appears either very little or not at all, to the eye. its precipitation is when it is turned inside out like a purse, and hangs out between the thighs, like a cupping glass. cause. this is either external or internal. the external cause is difficult childbirth, violent pulling away, or inexperience in drawing away the child, violent coughing, sneezing, falls, blows, and carrying heavy burdens. the internal cause, is generally the flow of too much moisture into these parts, which hinders the operation of the womb, whereby the ligaments by which the womb is supported are relaxed. the particular cause, however, lies in the retention of the _semen_, or in the suppression of the monthly courses. signs. the principal gut and the bladder are often so crushed, that the passage of both evacuations is hindered. if the urine flows out white and thick, and the midriff is interfered with, the loins suffer, the private parts are in pain, and the womb descends to them, or else comes clean out. prognostics. if an old woman is thus affected, the cure is very difficult, because it weakens the womb, and therefore, though it may be put back into its proper place, yet it is apt to get displaced again, by a very slight amount of illness. and also with younger women, if this disease is inveterate, and if it is caused by putrefaction of the nerves, it is incurable. cure. the womb, being placed by nature between the straight gut and the bladder, ought not to be put back again until the powers of both are excited. now that nature is relieved of her burden, let the woman be laid on her back so that her legs may be higher than her head; let her feet be drawn up towards her private parts, and her knees spread open. then apply oil of sweet almonds and lilies, or a decoction of mallows, beet, fenugreek and linseed, to the swelling; when the inflammation is reduced, let the midwife rub her hand with oil of mastic, and restore the womb to its proper place. when the matrix is up, the patient's position must be changed. her legs must be put out quite straight and laid together, and apply six cupping glasses to her breast and navel. boil feverfew, mugwort, red rose leaves and comfrey in red wine; make a suffumigation for the matrix, and apply sweet scents to her nose. when she comes out of her bath, give her an ounce of syrup of feverfew with a drachm of dog's tooth (_mithridate_). take three drachms each of laudanum and mastic, and make a plaster for the navel of it, and then make pessaries of asafoetida, saffron, comfrey, and mastic, adding a little castor oil.--parius in such cases makes his pessaries only of cork, shaped like a small egg; he covered them with wax and mastic dissolved together, and fastening them to a thread, he put them into the womb. the immediate danger being now removed and the matrix returned to its natural place the remote cause must be got rid of. if she be of full habit of body open a vein, after preparing her with syrup of betony, calamint, hyssop and feverfew. give a purge, and if the stomach be oppressed with any crude matter relieve it by emetics and by sudorifics of lignum sanctum and sassafras taken twenty days consecutively, which dry up the superfluous moisture, and consequently suppress the cause of the disease. the air should be hot and dry, and her diet hot and attenuating. let her abstain from dancing, jumping, sneezing, as well as from all mental and bodily emotions, eat sparingly, not drink much, and be moderate in her sleep. * * * * * chapter viii _of the inflammation of the womb._ the phlegmon, or inflammation of the matrix, is a humour which affects the whole womb, and is accompanied by unnatural heat, by obstruction and by an accumulation of corrupt blood. cause. the cause of this affection is suppression of the courses, fullness of body, the immoderate use of sexual intercourse, frequent handling the genitals, difficult child-birth, violent motions of the body, falls, blows, to which may be added, the use of strong pessaries, whereby the womb is frequently inflamed, cupping glasses, also, fastened to the _pubis_ and _hypogastrium_, draw the humours of the womb. signs. the signs are pains in the lower parts of the body and head, humours, sickness, coldness in the knees, throbbing in the neck, palpitation of the heart. often, also, there is shortness of breath because of the heart which is close to the midriff, and the breasts sympathising with the swollen and painful womb. besides this, if the front of the matrix be inflamed, the privates suffer, and the urine is suppressed, or only flows with difficulty. if the hinder part be inflamed, the loins and back suffer, and the bowels are very costive; if the right side be inflamed, the right hip suffers, and the right leg is heavy and moves slowly, so that at times she seems almost lame. if, however, the left side of the womb be inflamed, then the left hip suffers and the left leg is weaker than the right. if the neck of the womb is affected, by putting her finger in, the midwife feels that its mouth is contracted and closed up, and that it is hard round it. cure. in the cure, first of all, let the humours which flow to the womb be expelled. to effect this, after the bowels have been loosened by cooling clysters bleeding will be necessary. therefore, open a vein in the arm, if she is not with child; the day after strike the saphena in both feet, fasten ligatures and cupping glasses to the arm, and rub the upper part. purge gently with cassia, rhubarb, senna and myrobalan. take one drachm of senna, a scruple of aniseed, myrobalan, half an ounce, with a sufficient quantity of barley water. make a decoction and dissolve syrup of succory in it, and two ounces of rhubarb; pound half an ounce of cassia with a few drops of oil of aniseed and make a draught. at the commencement of the disease, anoint the private parts and loins with oil of roses and quinces: make plasters of plantain, linseed, barley meal, melilot, fenugreek, white of eggs, and if the pain be intense, a little laudanum; foment the genitals with a decoction of poppy-heads, purslace, knot-grass and water-lilies. make injections of goat's milk, rose water, clarified whey and honey of roses. when the disease is on a decline, use injections of sage, linseed, mugwort, pennyroyal, horehound, fenugreek, and anoint the lower parts of the stomach with oil of camomiles and violets. take four ounces each of lily and mallow roots, a handful of dog's mercury, a handful and a half each of mugwort, feverfew, camomile flowers and melilot, bruise the herbs and roots, and boil them in a sufficient quantity of milk; then add two ounces each of fresh butter, oil of camomiles and lilies, with a sufficient quantity of bran, make two plasters, and apply one before and the other behind. if the tumour cannot be removed, but seems inclined to suppurate, take three drachms each of fenugreek, mallow roots, boiled figs, linseed, barley meal, dove's dung and turpentine; half a drachm of deer's suet, half a scruple of opium and make a plaster of wax. take bay leaves, sage, hyssop, camomiles, and mugwort, and make an infusion in water. take half a handful of wormwood and betony and half a pint each of white wine and milk, boil them until reduced to half; then take four ounces of this decoction and make an injection, but you must be careful that the humours are not brought down into the womb. take three drachms each of roast figs, and bruised dog's mercury; three drachms each of turpentine and duck's grease, and two grains of opium; make a pessary with wax. the room must be kept cool, and all motions of the body, especially of the lower parts, must be prohibited. wakefulness is to be recommended, for humours are carried inward by sleep, and thus inflammation is increased. eat sparingly, and drink only barley water or clarified whey, and eat chickens and chicken broth, boiled with endive, succory, sorrel, bugloss and mallows. * * * * * chapter ix _of scirrhous tumours, or hardness of the womb._ a _scirrhus_, or a hard unnatural swelling of the matrix is generally produced by neglected, or imperfectly cured phlegm, which, insensibly, hinders the functions of the womb, and predisposes the whole body to listlessness. cause. one cause of this disease may be ascribed to want of judgment on the part of the physician, as many empirics when attending to inflammation of the womb, chill the humour so much that it can neither pass backward nor forward, and hence, the matter being condensed, turns into a hard, stony substance. other causes may be suppression of the menses, retention of the _lochein_, commonly called the after purging; eating decayed meat, as in the disordered longing after the _pleia_ to which pregnant women are often subject. it may, however, also proceed from obstructions and ulcers in the matrix or from some evil affections of the stomach or spleen. if the bottom of the womb be affected, she feels, as it were, a heavy burden representing a mole,[ ] yet differing from it, in that the breasts are attenuated, and the whole body grows less. if the neck of the womb be affected, no outward humours will appear; its mouth is retracted and feels hard to the touch, nor can the woman have sexual intercourse without great pain. prognostics. confirmed scirrhus is incurable, and will turn to cancer or incurable dropsy, and when it ends in cancer it proves fatal, because as the innate heat of these parts is almost smothered, it can hardly be restored again. cure. where there is repletion, bleeding is advisable, therefore open a vein in one arm and in both feet, more especially if the menses are suppressed. treat the humours with syrup of borage, succory made with a poultice, and then take the following pills, according to the patient's strength. hiera piera six drachms, two and a half drachms each of black hellebore and polypody; a drachm and a half each of agaric, lapis lazuli, sal indiae, coloquintida, mix them and make two pills. after purging, mollify the hardness as follows:--the privy parts and the neck of the womb with an ointment of decalthea and agrippa; or take two drachms each of opopanax, bdellium, ammoniac and myrrh, and half a drachm of saffron; dissolve the gum in oil of lilies and sweet almond and make an ointment with wax and turpentine. apply diacatholicon ferellia below the navel, and make infusions of figs, mugwort, mallows, pennyroyal, althea, fennel roots, melilot, fenugreek and the four mollifying herbs, with oil of dill, camomiles and lilies dissolved in it. take three drachms of gum bdellium, put the stone pyrites on the coals, and let her take the fumes into her womb. foment the privy parts with a decoction of the roots and leaves of dane wort. take a drachm each of gum galbanum and opopanax, half an ounce each of juice of dane wort and mucilage of fenugreek, an ounce of calve's marrow, and a sufficient quantity of wax, and make a pessary. or make a pessary of lead only, dip it in the above mentioned things, and put it up. the atmosphere must be kept temperate, and gross and salt meats such as pork, bull beef, fish and old cheese, must be prohibited. footnotes: [ ] _mole_: "a somewhat shapeless, compact fleshy mass occurring in the uterus, due to the retention and continued life of the whole or a part of the foetal envelopes, after the death of the foetus (a _maternal or true mole_); or being some other body liable to be mistaken for this, or perhaps a polypus or false mole." (_whitney's century dictionary_.) * * * * * chapter x _of dropsy of the womb._ uterine dropsy is an unnatural swelling, caused by the collection of wind or phlegm in the cavity, membranes or substance of the womb, on account of the want of innate heat and of sufficient alimentation, and so it turns into an excrescence. the causes are, too much cold and moisture of the milt and liver, immoderate drinking, eating insufficiently cooked meat, all of which by causing repletion, overpower the natural heat. it may likewise be caused by undue menstruation, or by any other immoderate evacuation. to these may be added abortions, subcutaneous inflammations and a hardened swelling of the womb. signs. the signs of this affection are as follows:--the lower parts of the stomach, with the genitals, are swollen and painful; the feet swell, the natural colour of the face is lost, the appetite becomes depraved, and there is a consequent heaviness of the whole body. if the woman turns over in bed a noise like flowing water is heard, and sometimes water is discharged from the womb. if the swelling is caused by wind and the stomach feels hot, it sounds like a drum; the bowels rumble, and the wind escapes through the neck of the womb with a murmuring noise. this affection may be distinguished from true conception in many ways, as will be shown in the chapter on _conception_. it is distinguished from common dropsy, by the lower parts of the stomach being most swollen. again, it does not appear so injurious in this blood-producing capability, nor is the urine so pale, nor the face so altered. the upper parts are also not so reduced, as in usual dropsy. prognostics. this affection foretells the ruin of the natural functions, by that peculiar sympathy it has with the liver, and that, therefore, _kathydria_, or general dropsy will follow. cure. in the cure of this disease, imitate the practice of hippocrates, and first mitigate the pain with fomentations of melilot, dog's mercury, mallows, linseed, camomiles and althoea. then let the womb be prepared with syrup of stoebis, hyssop, calamint, mugwort, with distilled water, a decoction of elder, marjoram, sage, origan, spearage, pennyroyal, and betony. purge with senna, agaric, rhubarb, and claterium. take spicierum hier, a scruple each of rhubarb, agaric lozenges, and make into pills with iris juice. when diseases arise from moistness, purge with pills, and in those affections which are caused by emptiness or dryness, purge by means of a draught. apply cupping glasses to the stomach and also to the navel, especially if the swelling be flatulent. put a seton on to the inside of each leg, the width of a hand below the knee. take two drachms each of sparganium, diambrae, diamolet, diacaliminti, diacinamoni, myrrh lozenges, and a pound of sugar; make these into lozenges with betony water, and take them two hours before meals. apply a little bag of camomiles, cummin and melilot boiled in oil of rue, to the bottom of the stomach as hot as it can be borne; anoint the stomach and the privates with unguent agripp, and unguent aragon. mix iris oil with it, and cover the lower part of the stomach with a plaster of bay berries, or a cataplasm made of cummin, camomiles, briony root, adding cows' and goats' dung. our modern medical writers ascribe great virtues to tobacco-water, injected into the womb by means of a clyster. take a handful each of balm of southernwood, origanum, wormwood, calamint, bay berries and marjoram, and four drachms of juniper berries; make a decoction of these in water, and use this for fomentations and infusions. make pessaries of storax, aloes, with the roots of dictam, aristolochia and gentian, but instead of this you may use the pessary prescribed at the end of chapter xvii. let her take aromatic electuary, disatyrion and candied eringo roots, every morning. the air must be hot and dry, moderate exercise is to be taken and too much sleep prohibited. she may eat the flesh of partridges, larks, grouse, hares, rabbits, etc., and let her drink diluted urine. * * * * * chapter xi _of moles[ ] and false conceptions._ this disease may be defined as an inarticulate shapeless piece of flesh, begotten in the womb as if it were true conception. in this definition we must note two things: ( ) because a mole is said to be inarticulate or jointless, and without shape, it differs from monstrosities which are both _formata_ and _articulata_; ( ) it is said to be, as it were a true conception, which makes a difference between a true conception, and a mole, and this difference holds good in three ways. first, in its genus, because a mole cannot be said to be an animal: secondly, in the species, because it has not a human figure and has not the character of a man; thirdly, in the individual, for it has no affinity to the parent, either in the whole body, or in any particular part of it. cause. there is a great difference of opinion amongst learned writers as to the cause of this affection. some think, that if the woman's seed goes into the womb, and not the man's, that the mole is produced thereby. others declare that it springs from the menstruous blood, but if these two things were granted, then virgins, by having their courses or through nocturnal pollutions, might be liable to the same things, which none have ever been yet. the true cause of this fleshy mole is due both to the man and from the menstruous blood in the woman both mixing together in the cavity of the womb. nature finding herself weak there (and yet wishing to propagate her species), labours to bring forth a defective conception rather than nothing and instead of a living creature produces a lump of flesh. signs. the signs of a mole are these. the _menses_ are suppressed, the appetite becomes depraved, the breasts swell and the stomach becomes inflated and hard. so far the symptoms in a pregnant woman and in one that has a mole are the same, but now this is how they differ. the first sign of difference is in the movements of a mole. it may be felt moving in the womb before the third month, whereas an infant cannot be so felt; yet this motion cannot proceed from any intelligent power in the mole, but from the capabilities of the womb, and of the seminal vigour, distributed through the substance of the mole, for it does not live an animal, but a vegetable life, like a plant. _secondly_, in a mole the stomach swells suddenly, but in true conception it is first contracted, and then rises by degrees. _thirdly_, if the stomach is pressed with the hand, the mole gives way, and returns to its former position as soon as the hand is removed. but a child in the womb does not move immediately though pressed with the hand, and when the hand is removed it returns slowly or not at all. _lastly_, no child continues in the womb more than eleven months, but a mole continues for four or five years, more or less, sometimes according as it is fastened to the matrix; and i have known a mole pass away in four or five months. if, however, it remains until the eleventh month, the woman's legs grow weak and the whole body wastes away, but the stomach still increases, which makes some women think that they are dropsical, though there is no reason for it, for in dropsy the legs swell and grow big, but in a mole they wither and fall away. cure. in the school of hippocrates we are taught that bleeding causes abortion, by taking all the nourishment which should preserve the life of the embryo. in order, therefore, that this faulty conception may be deprived of that nourishing sap by which it lives, open the liver vein and saphena in both feet, apply cupping glasses to the loins and sides of the stomach, and when that has been done, let the uterine parts be first softened, and then the expulsive powers be stimulated to get rid of the burden. in order to relax the ligatures of the mole, take three handfuls of mallows with their roots, two handfuls each of camomiles, melilot, pellitory of the wall, violet leaves, dog's mercury, fennel roots, parsley, and one pound each of linseed and fenugreek; boil them in oil and let the patient sit in it up to her navel. when she comes out of her bath, she should anoint her private parts and loins with the following ointment:--"take one ounce each of oil of camomiles, lilies and sweet almonds: half an ounce each of fresh butter, laudanum and ammoniac, and make an ointment with oil of lilies. or, instead of this, you may use unguentum agrippae or dialthea. take a handful of dog's mercury and althea roots; half a handful of flos brochae ursini; six ounces of linseed and barley meal. boil all these together in honey and water and make a plaster, and make pessaries of gum galbanum, bdellium, ammoniac, figs, pig's fat and honey. after the ligaments of the mole are loosened, let the expulsive powers be stimulated to expel the mole, and for doing this, all those drugs may be used which are adapted to bring on the courses. take one ounce of myrrh lozenges, half an ounce each of castor, astrolachia, gentian and dittany and make them into a powder, and take one drachm in four ounces of mugwort water. take calamint, pennyroyal, betony, hyssop, sage, horehound, valerian, madder and savine; make a decoction in water and take three ounces of it, with one and a half ounces of feverfew. take three scruples each of mugwort, myrrh, gentian and pill. coch.; a drachm each of rue, pennyroyal and opopanax, and the same of asafoetida, cinnamon, juniper-berries and borage, and make into pills with savine juice, to be taken every morning. make an infusion of hyssop, bay leaves, bay berries, calamint, camomiles, mugwort and savine. take two scruples each of sacopenium, mugwort, savine, cloves, nutmeg, bay berries; one drachm of galbanum; one scruple each of hiera piera and black hellebore, and make a pessary with turpentine. but if these medicaments are not procurable, then the mole must be pulled out by means of an instrument called the _pes gryphis_,[ ] which may be done without much danger if it be performed by a skilful surgeon. after she has been delivered of the mole (because the woman will have lost much blood already), let the flow of blood be stopped as soon as possible. apply cupping glasses to the shoulders and ligatures to the arms, and if this be not effective, open the liver vein in the arm. the atmosphere of the room must be kept tolerably dry and warm, and she must be put on a dry diet, to soothe the system; she must, however, drink white wine. footnotes: [ ] _mole_: "a somewhat shapeless, compact fleshy mass occurring in the uterus, due to the retention and continued life of the whole or a part of the foetal envelopes, after the death of the foetus (_a maternal or true mole_); or being some other body liable to be mistaken for this, or perhaps a polypus or false mole." (_whitney's century dictionary_.) [ ] _griffin's claw_, a peculiar hooked instrument. * * * * * chapter xii _of conception and its signs, and how a woman may know whether it be male or female._ ignorance often makes women the murderesses of the fruit of their own body, for many, having conceived and finding themselves out of order, and not rightly knowing the cause, go to the shop of their own conceit and take whatever they think fit, or else (as the custom is) they send to the doctor for a remedy, and he, not perceiving the cause of their trouble, for nothing can be diagnosed accurately by the urine, prescribes what he thinks best; perhaps some diuretic or cathartic, which destroy the embryo. therefore hippocrates says, it is necessary that women should be instructed in the signs of conception, so that the parent as well as the child may be saved from danger. i shall, therefore, lay down some rules, by which every woman may know whether she is pregnant or not, and the signs will be taken from the woman, from her urine, from the child and from experiments. signs. the first day after conception, she feels a slight quivering and chilliness throughout her body; there is a tickling of the womb and a little pain in the lower parts of her stomach. ten or twelve days after she feels giddy and her eyes dim and with circles round them; the breasts swell and grow hard, with some pain and pricking in them, whilst the stomach rises and sinks again by degrees, and there is a hardness about the navel. the nipples grow red, the heart beats unusually strongly, the natural appetite abates, and the woman has a craving after strange food. the neck of the womb is contracted, so that it can scarcely be felt when the finger is put in. and the following is an infallible sign; she is alternately in high spirits and melancholy; the monthly courses cease without any apparent cause, the evacuations from the bowels are retained unusually long, by the womb pressing on the large gut, and her desire for sexual intercourse is diminished. the surest sign is taken from the infant, which begins to move in the womb in the third or fourth month, and not in the manner of a mole, mentioned above, from side to side like a stone, but gently, as may be perceived by applying the hand cold upon the stomach. signs taken from the urine. the best writers affirm that the water of a pregnant woman is white and has little specks in it, like those in a sunbeam, ascending and descending in it, of an opal colour, and when the sediment is disturbed by shaking the urine, it looks like carded wool. in the middle of gestation it turns yellow, then red and lastly black, with a red film. at night on going to bed, let her drink water and honey, and if afterwards she feels a beating pain in her stomach and about the navel, she has conceived. or let her take the juice of cardius, and if she brings it up again, that is a sign of conception. throw a clean needle into the woman's urine, put it into a basin and let it stand all night. if it is covered with red spots in the morning, she has conceived, but if it has turned black and rusty, she has not. signs taken from the sex, to show whether it be a male or female. if it is a male, the right breast swells first, the right eye is brighter than the left, the face is high-coloured, because the colour is such as the blood is, and as the male is conceived of purer blood and of more perfect seed than the female, red specks in the urine, and making a sediment, show that a male has been conceived, but if they are white, a female. put the urine of the woman into a glass bottle, let it stand tightly stoppered for two days, then strain it through a fine cloth, and you will find little animals in it. if they are red, it is a male, but if white, it is a female. the belly is rounder and lies higher with a boy than with a girl, and the right breast is harder and plumper than the left, and the right nipple redder, and the woman's colour is clearer than when she has conceived a girl. to conclude, the most certain sign to give credit to, is the motion of the child, for the male moves in the third month, and the female not until the fourth. * * * * * chapter xiii _of untimely births._ when the fruit of the womb comes forth before the seventh month (that is, before it comes to maturity), it is said to be abortive; and, in effect, the children prove abortive, that is, do not live, that are born in the eighth month. why children born in the seventh or ninth month should live, and not those born in the eighth, may seem strange, and yet it is true. the cause of it is ascribed by some to the planet under which the child is born; for every month, from conception to birth, is governed by its own planet, and in the eighth month saturn predominates, which is dry and cold; and coldness, being an utter enemy to life, destroys the natural constitution of the child. hippocrates gives a better reason, viz.:--the infant, being every way perfect and complete in the seventh month, wants more air and nourishment than it had before, and because it cannot obtain this, it tries for a passage out. but if it have not sufficient strength to break the membranes and to come out as ordained by nature, it will continue in the womb until the ninth month, so that by that time it may be again strengthened. but if it returns to the attempt in the eighth month and be born, it cannot live, because the day of its birth is either past or is to come. for in the eighth month avicunus says, it is weak and infirm, and therefore on being brought into the cold air, its vitality must be destroyed. cure. untimely births may be caused by cold, for as it causes the fruit of the tree to wither and fall before it is ripe, so it nips the fruit of the womb before it comes to perfection, or makes it abortive;--sometimes by humidity, which weakens its power, so that the fruit cannot be retained until the proper time. it may be caused by dryness or emptiness, which rob the child of its nourishment, or by an alvine discharge, by bleeding or some other evacuation, by inflammation of the womb, and other severe disease. sometimes it is caused by joy, anger, laughter and especially by fear, for then the heat forsakes the womb, and goes to the heart, and so the cold sinks into the womb, whereby the ligaments are relaxed, and so abortion follows. on this account, plato recommended that the woman should avoid all temptations to excessive joy and pleasure, as well as all occasions for fear and grief. abortion may also be caused by the pollution of the air by filthy odours, and especially by the smell of the smouldering wick of a candle, and also by falls, blows, violent exercise, jumping, dancing, etc. signs. signs of coming abortion are a falling away of the breast, with a flow of watery milk, pains in the womb, heaviness in the head, unusual weariness in the hips and thighs, and a flowing of the courses. signs denoting that the fruit is dead in the womb are sunken eyes, pains in the head, frights, paleness of the face and lips, gnawing at the stomach, no movements of the infant; coldness and looseness of the mouth of the womb. the stomach falls down, whilst watery and bloody discharges come from the womb. * * * * * chapter xiv _directions for pregnant women._ the prevention of untimely births consists in removing the aforementioned causes, which must be effected both before and after conception. before conception, if the body be too hot, dry or moist, employ such treatment as to counteract the symptoms; if the blood be vitiated purify it, if plethoric, open the liver vein; if gross, reduce it; if too thin strengthen and nourish it. all the diseases of the womb must be removed as i have shown. after conception, let the atmosphere be kept temperate, do not sleep too much, avoid late hours, too much bodily exercise, mental excitement, loud noises and bad smells, and sweet smells must also be avoided by those who are hysterical. refrain from all things that may provoke either urine or menstruation, also salt, sour, and windy food, and keep to a moderate diet. if the bowels are confined, relieve the stomach with injections made of a decoction of mallows and violets, with sugar and salad oil; or make a broth with borage, buglos, beetroot, and mallows, and add a little manna to it. if, on the other hand, she be troubled with looseness of the bowels, do not check it with medical advice, for all the uterine fluxes have some bad qualities in them, which must be evacuated before the discharge is stopped. a cough is another thing to which pregnant women are frequently liable, and which causes them to run great danger of miscarrying, by the shock and continual drain upon the vein. to prevent this shave off the hair from the coronal commissures, and apply the following plaster to the place. take half an ounce of resin, a drachm of laudanum, a drachm each of citron peel, lignaloes and galbanum, with a sufficient quantity of liquid and dry styrax. dissolve the gum in vinegar and make a plaster, and at night let her inhale the fumes of these lozenges, thrown upon bright coals. take also a drachm and a half each of frankincense, styrax powder and red roses: eight drachms of sandrich, a drachm each of mastic, benjamin and amber; make into lozenges with turpentine, and apply a cautery to the nape of the neck. and every night let her take the following pills:--half an ounce each of hypocistides, terrae sigilatae and fine bole; two drachms each of bistort, alcatia, styrax and calamint, and one drachm of cloves, and make into pills with syrup of myrtles. in pregnant women, a corrupt matter is generated which, flowing to the ventricle, spoils the appetite and causes sickness. as the stomach is weak, and cannot digest this matter, it sometimes sends it to the bowels which causes a flux of the stomach, which greatly adds to the weakness of the womb. to prevent all these dangers the stomach must be strengthened by the following means:--take one drachm each of lignaloes and nutmeg; a scruple each of mace, cloves, mastic, laudanum; an ounce of oil of spikenard; two grains of musk, half an ounce each of oil of mastic, quinces and wormwood, and make into an ointment for the stomach, to be applied before meals. instead of this, however, you may use cerocum stomachile galeni. take half an ounce each of conserve of borage, buglos and atthos; two drachms each of confection of hyacinths, candied lemon peel, specierum, diamarg, pulo. de genunis: two scruples each of nutmeg and diambra; two drachma each of peony roots and diacoratum, and make into an electuary with syrup of roses, which she must take twice a day before meals. another affection which troubles a pregnant woman is swelling of the legs, which happens during the first three months, by the superfluous humours descending from the stomach and liver. to cure this, take two drachms of oil of roses, and one drachm each of salt and vinegar; shake them together until the salt is dissolved, and anoint the legs with it hot, rubbing it well in with the hand. it may be done without danger during the fourth, fifth and sixth months of pregnancy; for a child in the womb is compared to an apple on the tree. for the first three months it is a weak and tender subject, like the apple, to fall away; but afterwards, when the membranes become strengthened, the fruit remains firmly fastened to the womb, and not subject to mischances, and so it remains, until the seventh month, until when it is near the time, the ligaments are again relaxed (like the apple that is almost ripe). they grow looser every day, until the appointed time for delivery; if, therefore, the body is in real need of purging, the woman may do it without danger in the fourth, fifth or sixth month, but neither before nor after that unless in the case of some violent illness, in which it is possible that both mother and child may perish. apply plasters and ointments to the loins in order to strengthen the fruit in the womb. take one drachm each of gum arabic, galangale, bistort, hypocistid and storax, a drachm and a half each of fine bole, nutmeg, mastic, balaust, dragon's blood and myrtle berries, and a sufficient quantity of wax and turpentine and make into a plaster. apply it to the loins in the winter, and remove it every twenty-four hours, lest the loins should become overheated by it. in the interim, anoint the private parts and loins with _countess' balsam_ but if it be summer time and the loins hot, the following plaster will be more suitable. take a pound of red roses, two drachms each of mastic and red sanders, one drachm each of bole ammoniac and red coral, two drachms and a half each of pomegranate seed and prepared coriander seed, two scruples of barberries, one ounce each of oil of mastic and of quinces, and plantain-juice. anoint the loins also with sandalwood ointment, and once a week wash them with two parts of rose-water and one of white wine mixed together and warmed at the fire. this will assuage the heat of the loins, get rid of the oil of the plaster from the pores of the skin, and cause the fresh ointment or plaster to penetrate more easily, and to strengthen the womb. some think that a load-stone laid upon the navel, keeps a woman from abortion. the same thing is also stated of the stone called _aetites_ or eagle-stone, if it is hung round the neck. samian stone has the same virtue. * * * * * chapter xv _directions for women when they are taken in labour, to ensure their safe delivery, and directions for midwives._ having thus given the necessary directions to pregnant women, how to manage their health during their pregnancy, i will now add what is necessary for them to do, in order that they may be safely delivered. when the time of birth draws near, the woman must be sure to send for a skilful midwife, and that rather too soon than too late. she must have a pallet bed ready to place it near the fire, so that the midwife and those who are to help her, may be able to pass round it, and give assistance on either side, as may be required. a change of linen must be in readiness, and a small stool to rest her feet against, as she will have more power when her legs are bent, than when they are straight. when everything is thus ready, and when the woman feels the pains coming on, if the weather be not cold, she should walk about the room, rest on the bed occasionally, waiting for the breaking of the waters, which is a fluid contained in one of the outward membranes, and which flows out thence, when the membrane is broken by the struggles of the child. there is no special time for this discharge, though it generally takes place about two hours before the birth. movements will also cause the womb to open and dilate, and when lying long in bed will be uncomfortable. if she be very weak she may take some mild cordial to give her strength, if her pain will permit her; and if the labour be tedious, she may be revived with chicken or mutton broth, or she may take a poached egg; but she must be very careful not to eat to excess. there are many postures in which women are delivered; some sitting in a chair, supported by others, or resting on the bed; some again upon their knees and resting on their arms; but the safest and most commodious way, is in the bed, and then the midwife ought to observe the following rules:--let her lay the woman upon her back, with her head a little raised by means of a pillow, with similar supports for her loins and buttocks, which latter should also be raised, for if she lies low, she cannot be delivered so easily. then let her keep her knees and thighs as far apart as she can, her legs bent inward towards each other, and her buttocks, the soles of her feet and her heels being placed upon a small rest, placed for the purpose, so that she may be able to strain the stronger. in case her back should be very weak, a swathing band should be placed under it, the band being doubled four times and about four inches broad. this must be held by two persons who must raise her up a little every time her pains come on, with steady hands and in even time, but if they be not exact in their movements, they had better leave her alone. at the same time two women must hold her shoulders so that she may strain out the foetus more easily; and to facilitate this let one stroke or press the upper part of her stomach gently and by degrees. the woman herself must not be nervous or downhearted, but courageous, and forcing herself by straining and holding her breath. when delivery is near, the midwife must wait patiently until the child's head, or some limb, bursts the membranes, for if the midwife through ignorance, or through haste to go to some other woman, as some have done, tears the membrane with her nails, she endangers both the woman and the child; for by lying dry and lacking that slipperiness which should make it easy, it comes forth with severe pains. when the head appears, the midwife must hold it gently between her hands, and draw the child, whenever the woman's pains are upon her, but at no other times; slipping her forefingers under its armpits by degrees, and not using a rough hand in drawing it out, lest the tender infant might become deformed by such means. as soon as the child is taken out, which is usually with its face downwards,--it should be laid upon its back, that it may receive external respiration more freely; then cut the navel string about three inches from the body, tying the end which adheres to it with a silk string, as closely as you can; then cover the child's head and stomach well, allowing nothing to touch its face. when the child has been thus brought forth, if it be healthy lay it aside, and let the midwife attend to the patient by drawing out the afterbirth; and this she may do by wagging and stirring it up and down, and afterwards drawing it out gently. and if the work be difficult, let the woman hold salt in her hands, close them tightly and breathe hard into them, and by that she will know whether the membranes are broken or not. it may also be known by making her strain or vomit; by putting her fingers down her throat, or by straining or moving her lower parts, but let all be done immediately. if this should fail, let her take a draught of elder water, or the yolk of a new laid egg, and smell a piece of asafoetida, especially if she is troubled with a windy colic. if she happen to take cold, it is a great obstruction to the afterbirth; in such cases the midwife ought to chafe the woman's stomach gently, so as to break, not only the wind, but also to force the secundine to come down. but if these should prove ineffectual, the midwife must insert her hand into the orifice of the womb and draw it out gently. having thus discussed common births, or such as are generally easy, i shall now give directions in cases of extremity. * * * * * chapter xvi _what ought to be done in cases of extremity, especially in women who, in labour, are attacked by a flux of blood, convulsions and fits of wind._ if the woman's labour be hard and difficult, greater care must be taken than at other times. and, first of all, the situation of the womb and her position in lying must be across the bed, and she must be held by strong persons to prevent her from slipping down or moving during the surgeon's operations. her thighs must be put as far apart as possible, and held so, whilst her head must rest upon a bolster, and her loins be supported in the same manner. after her rump and buttocks have been raised, be careful to cover her stomach, belly and thighs with warm clothes, to keep them from the cold. when the woman is in this position, let the operator put up his or her hand, if the neck of the womb be dilated, and remove the coagulated blood that obstructs the passage of the birth; and by degrees make way gently, let him remove the infant tenderly, having first anointed his hand with butter or some harmless salve. and if the waters have not come down, they may then be let out without difficulty. then, if the infant should attempt to come out head foremost, or crosswise, he should turn it gently, to find the feet. having done this, let him draw out one and fasten it with ribbon and then put it up again, and by degrees find the other, bringing them as close together and as even as possible, and between whiles let the woman breathe, and she should be urged to strain so as to help nature in the birth, that it may be brought forth. and to do this more easily, and that the hold may be surer, wrap a linen cloth round the child's thighs, taking care to bring it into the hand face downwards. in case of flux of blood, if the neck of the womb be open, it must be considered whether the infant or the _secundine_, generally called the afterbirth, comes first, and as the latter happens to do so occasionally, it stops the mouth of the womb and hinders the birth, and endangers both the woman's and the child's life. in this case the afterbirth must be removed by a quick turn. they have deceived many people, who, feeling their softness, have supposed that the womb was not dilated, and by that means the woman and child, or at least the latter, have been lost. when the afterbirth has been removed, the child must be sought for and drawn out, as directed above; and if the woman or the child die in such a case, the midwife or the surgeon are blameless because they have used their best endeavours. if it appears upon examination that the afterbirth comes first, let the woman be delivered as quickly as possible, because a great flow of blood will follow, for the veins are opened, and on this account two things have to be considered. _first_:--the manner in which the afterbirth advances, whether it be much or little. if the former, and the head of the child appears first, it may be guided and directed towards the neck of the womb, as in the case of natural birth, but if there appears any difficulty in the delivery, the best way is to look for the feet, and draw it out by them; but if the latter, the afterbirth may be put back with a gentle hand, and the child taken out first. but if the afterbirth has come so far forward that it cannot be put back, and the child follows it closely, then the afterbirth must be removed very carefully, and as quickly as may be, and laid aside without cutting the entrail that is fastened to it; for you may be guided to the infant by it, which must be drawn out by the feet, whether it be alive or dead, as quickly as possible; though this is not to be done except in cases of great necessity, for in other cases the afterbirth ought to come last. in drawing out a dead child, these directions should be carefully followed by the surgeon, viz.--if the child be found to be dead, its head appearing first, the delivery will be more difficult; for it is an evident sign that the woman's strength is beginning to fail her, that, as the child is dead and has no natural power, it cannot be assisting in its own delivery in any way. therefore the most certain and the safest way for the surgeon is, to put up his left hand, sliding it into the neck of the womb, and into the lower part of it towards the feet, as hollow in the palm as he can, and then between the head of the infant and the neck of the womb. then, having a forceps in the right hand, slip it up above the left hand, between the head of the child and the flat of the hand, fixing it in the bars of the temple near the eye. as these cannot be got at easily in the occipital bone, be careful still to keep the hand in its place, and gently move the head with it, and so with the right hand and the forceps draw the child forward, and urge the woman to exert all her strength, and continue drawing whenever her pains come on. when the head is drawn out, he must immediately slip his hand under the child's armpits, and take it quite out, and give the woman a piece of toasted white bread, in a quarter of a pint of hippocras wine. if the former application fails let the woman take the following potion hot when she is in bed, and remain quiet until she begins to feel it operating. take seven blue figs, cut them into pieces and add five grains each of fenugreek, motherwort and rue seed, with six ounces each of water of pennyroyal and motherwort; reduce it to half the quantity by boiling and after straining add one drachm of troches of myrrh and three grains of saffron; sweeten the liquor with loaf sugar, and spice it with cinnamon.--after having rested on this, let her strain again as much as possible, and if she be not successful, make a fumigation of half a drachm each of castor, opopanax, sulphur and asafoetida, pounding them into a powder and wetting the juice of rue, so that the smoke or fumes may go only into the matrix and no further. if this have not the desired effect, then the following plaster should be applied:--take an ounce and a half of balganum, two drachms of colocynth, half an ounce each of the juice of motherwort and of rue, and seven ounces of virgin bees' wax: pound and melt them together, spreading them on a cere-cloth so that they may spread from the navel to the os pubis and extending to the flanks, at the same time making a pessary of wood, enclosing it in a silk bag, and dipping it in a decoction of one drachm each of sound birthwort, savin colocinthis, stavescare and black hellebore, with a small sprig or two of rue. but if these things have not the desired effect, and the woman's danger increases, let the surgeon use his instruments to dilate and widen the womb, for which purpose the woman must be placed on a chair, so that she may turn her buttocks as far from its back as possible, at the same time drawing up her legs as close as she can and spreading her thighs open as wide as possible; or if she is very weak it may be better to lay her on the bed with her head downwards, her buttocks raised and both legs drawn up. then the surgeon may dilate the womb with his speculum matrices and draw out the child and the afterbirth together, if it be possible, and when this is done, the womb must be well washed and anointed, and the woman put back to bed and comforted with spices and cordials. this course must be adopted in the case of dead children and moles, afterbirths and false births, which will not come out of themselves, at the proper time. if the aforementioned instrument will not widen the womb sufficiently, then other instruments, such as the drake's bill, or long pincers, ought to be used. if any inflammation, swelling or congealed blood happens to be contracted in the womb under the film of these tumours, either before or after the birth, let the midwife lance it with a penknife or any suitable instrument, and squeeze out the matter, healing it with a pessary dipped in oil of red roses. if the child happens at any time to be swollen through cold or violence, or has contracted a watery humour, if it is alive, such means must be used as are least injurious to the child or mother; but if it be dead, the humours must be let out by incisions, to facilitate the birth. if, as often happens, the child is presented feet foremost, with the hands spreading out from the hips, the midwife must in such a case be provided with the necessary ointments to rub and anoint the child with, to help it coming forth, lest it should turn into the womb again, holding both the infant's arms close to the hips at the same time, that it may come out in this manner; but if it proves too big, the womb must be well anointed. the woman should also take a sneezing powder, to make her strain; the attendant may also stroke her stomach gently to make the birth descend, and to keep it from returning. it happens occasionally, that the child presenting itself with the feet first, has its arms extended above its head; but the midwife must not receive it so, but put it back into the womb, unless the passage be extraordinarily wide, and then she must anoint both the child and the womb, and it is not safe to draw it out, which must, therefore, be done in this manner.--the woman must lie on her back with her head low and her buttocks raised; and then the midwife must compress the stomach and the womb with a gentle hand, and by that means put the child back, taking care to turn the child's face towards the mother's back, raising up its thighs and buttocks towards the navel, so that the birth may be more natural. if the child happens to come out with one foot, with the arm extended along the side and the other foot turned backwards; then the woman must be immediately put to bed and laid in the above-described position; when the midwife must immediately put back the foot which appears so, and the woman must rock herself from side to side, until she finds that the child has turned, but she must not alter her position nor turn upon her face. after this she may expect her pains and must have great assistance and cordials so as to revive and support her spirits. at other times it happens that the child lies across in the womb, and falls upon its side; in this case the woman must not be urged in her labour; therefore, the midwife when she finds it so, must use great diligence to reduce it to its right form, or at least to such a form in the womb as may make the delivery possible and most easy by moving the buttocks and guiding the head to the passage; and if she be successful in this, let the woman rock herself to and fro, and wait with patience till it alters its way of lying. sometimes the child hastens simply by expanding its legs and arms; in which, as in the former case, the woman must rock herself, but not with violence, until she finds those parts fall to their proper station; or it may be done by a gentle compression of the womb; but if neither of them avail, the midwife must close the legs of the infant with her hand, and if she can get there, do the like by the arms, and so draw it forth; but if it can be reduced of itself to the posture of a proper birth it is better. if the infant comes forward, both knees forward, and the hands hanging down upon the thighs, then the midwife must put both knees upward, till the feet appear; taking hold of which with her left hand let her keep her right hand on the side of the child, and in that posture endeavour to bring it forth. but if she cannot do this, then also the woman must rock herself until the child is in a more convenient posture for delivery. sometimes it happens that the child presses forward with one arm extended on its thighs, and the other raised over its head, and the feet stretched out at length in the womb. in such case, the midwife must not attempt to receive the child in that posture, but must lay the woman on the bed in the manner aforesaid, making a soft and gentle compression on her belly, oblige the child to retire; which if it does not, then must the midwife thrust it back by the shoulder, and bring the arm that was stretched above the head to its right station; for there is most danger in these extremities; and, therefore, the midwife must anoint her hands and the womb of the woman with sweet butter, or a proper pomatum, and thrust her hand as near as she can to the arm of the infant, and bring it to the side. but if this cannot be done, let the woman be laid on the bed to rest a while; in which time, perhaps, the child may be reduced to a better posture; which the midwife finding, she must draw tenderly the arms close to the hips and so receive it. if an infant come with its buttocks foremost, and almost double, then the midwife must anoint her hand and thrust it up, and gently heaving up the buttocks and back, strive to turn the head to the passage, but not too hastily, lest the infant's retiring should shape it worse: and therefore, if it cannot be turned with the hand, the woman must rock herself on the bed, taking such comfortable things as may support her spirits, till she perceives the child to turn. if the child's neck be bowed, and it comes forward with its shoulders, as it sometimes doth, with the hands and feet stretched upwards, the midwife must gently move the shoulders, that she may direct the head to the passage; and the better to effect it, the woman must rock herself as aforesaid. these and other like methods are to be observed in case a woman hath twins, or three children at a birth, which sometimes happens: for as the single birth hath but one natural and many unnatural forms, even so it may be in a double and treble birth. wherefore, in all such cases the midwife must take care to receive the first which is nearest the passage; but not letting the other go, lest by retiring it should change the form; and when one is born, she must be speedy in bringing forth the other. and this birth, if it be in the natural way, is more easy, because the children are commonly less than those of single birth, and so require a less passage. but if this birth come unnaturally, it is far more dangerous than the other. in the birth of twins, let the midwife be very careful that the secundine be naturally brought forth, lest the womb, being delivered of its burden, fall, and so the secundine continue longer there than is consistent with the woman's safety. but if one of the twins happens to come with the head, and the other with the feet foremost, then let the midwife deliver the natural birth first; and if she cannot turn the other, draw it out in the posture in which it presses forward; but if that with its feet downward be foremost, she may deliver that first, turning the other aside. but in this case the midwife must carefully see that it be not a monstrous birth, instead of twins, a body with two heads, or two bodies joined together, which she may soon know if both the heads come foremost, by putting up her hand between them as high as she can; and then, if she finds they are twins she may gently put one of them aside to make way for the other, taking the first which is most advanced, leaving the other so that it do not change its position. and for the safety of the other child, as soon as it comes forth out of the womb, the midwife must tie the navel-string, as has before been directed, and also bind, with a large, long fillet, that part of the navel which is fastened to the secundine, the more readily to find it. the second infant being born, let the midwife carefully examine whether there be not two secundines, for sometimes it falls out, that by the shortness of the ligaments it retires back to the prejudice of the woman. wherefore, lest the womb should close, it is most expedient to hasten them forth with all convenient speed. if two infants are joined together by the body, as sometimes it monstrously falls out, then, though the head should come foremost, yet it is proper, if possible, to turn them and draw them forth by the feet, observing, when they come to the hips, to draw them out as soon as may be. and here great care ought to be used in anointing and widening the passage. but these sort of births rarely happening, i need to say the less of them, and, therefore, shall show how women should be ordered after delivery. * * * * * chapter xvii _how child-bearing women ought to be ordered after delivery._ if a woman has had very hard labour, it is necessary that she should be wrapped up in a sheep's skin, taken off before it is cold, applying the fleshy side to her veins and belly, or, for want of this, the skin of a hare or coney, flayed off as soon as killed, may be applied to the same parts, and in so doing, a dilation being made in the birth, and the melancholy blood being expelled in these parts, continue these for an hour or two. let the woman afterwards be swathed with fine linen cloth, about a quarter of a yard in breadth, chafing the belly before it is swathed, with oil of st. john's wort; after that raise up the matrix with a linen cloth, many times folded: then with a linen pillar or quilt, cover the flanks, and place the swathe somewhat above the haunches, winding it pretty stiff, applying at the same time a linen cloth to her nipples; do not immediately use the remedies to keep back the milk, by reason the body, at such a time, is out of frame; for there is neither vein nor artery which does not strongly beat; and remedies to drive back the milk, being of a dissolving nature, it is improper to apply them to the breasts during such disorder, lest by doing so, evil humours be contracted in the breast. wherefore, twelve hours at least ought to be allowed for the circulation and settlement of the blood, and what was cast on the lungs by the vehement agitation during labour, to retire to its proper receptacles. some time after delivery, you may take a restrictive of the yolks of two eggs, and a quarter of a pint of white wine, oil of st. john's wort, oil of roses, plantain and roses water, of each an ounce, mix them together, fold a linen cloth and apply it to the breast, and the pains of those parts will be greatly eased. she must by no means sleep directly after delivery; but about four hours after, she may take broth, caudle or such liquid victuals as are nourishing; and if she be disposed to sleep it may be very safely permitted. and this is as much, in the case of a natural birth, as ought immediately to be done. but in case of an extremity or an unnatural birth, the following rules ought to be observed:-- in the first place, let the-woman keep a temperate diet, by no means overcharging herself after such an extraordinary evacuation, not being ruled by giving credit to unskilful nurses, who admonish them to feed heartily, the better to repair the loss of blood. for that blood is not for the most part pure, but such as has been retained in the vessels or membrane better voided, for the health of the woman, than kept, unless there happen an extraordinary flux of the blood. for if her nourishment be too much, which curding, very often turns to imposthumes. therefore, it is requisite, for the first five days especially, that she take moderately panado broth, poached eggs, jelly of chickens or calves' feet or fresh barley broth; every day increasing the quantity a little. and if she intend to be a nurse to the child, she may take something more than ordinary, to increase the milk by degrees, which must be of no continuance, but drawn off by the child or otherwise. in this case likewise, observe to let her have coriander or fennel seeds boiled in barley broth; but by all means, for the time specified, let her abstain from meat. if no fever trouble her, she may drink now and then a small quantity of pure white wine or of claret, as also syrup of maidenhead or any other syrup that is of an astringent quality, taken in a little water well boiled. after the fear of fever or contraction of humour in the breast is over, she may be nourished more plentifully with the broth of capons, pullets, pigeons, mutton, veal, etc., which must not be until after eight days from the time of delivery; at which time the womb, unless some accident binds, has purged itself. it will then likewise be expedient to give cold meats, but let it be sparingly, so that she may the better gather strength. and let her, during the time, rest quietly and free from disturbance, not sleeping in the day time, if she can avoid it. take of both mallows and pellitory of the wall a handful; camomile and melilot flowers, of each a handful; aniseed and fennel of each two ounces; boil them in a decoction of sheep's head and take of this three quarts, dissolving in it common honey, coarse sugar and fresh butter and administer it clysterwise; but if it does not penetrate well take an ounce of catholicon. * * * * * chapter xviii _acute pains after delivery._ these pains frequently afflict the woman no less than the pain of her labour, and are, by the more ignorant, many times taken the one for the other; and sometimes they happen both at the same instant; which is occasioned by a raw, crude and watery matter in the stomach, contracted through ill digestion; and while such pains continue, the woman's travail is retarded. therefore, to expel fits of the cholic, take two ounces of oil of sweet almonds, and an ounce of cinnamon water, with three or four drops of syrup of ginger; then let the woman drink it off. if this does not abate the pain, make a clyster of camomile, balm-leaves, oil of olives and new milk, boiling the former in the latter. administer it as is usual in such cases. and then, fomentation proper for dispelling the wind will not be amiss. if the pain produces a griping in the guts after delivery, then take of the root of great comfrey, one drachm, nutmeg and peach kernels, of each two scruples, yellow amber, eight drachms, ambergris, one scruple; bruise them together, and give them to the woman as she is laid down, in two or three spoonfuls of white wine; but if she be feverish, then let it be in as much warm broth. * * * * * the family physician * * * * * being choice and approved remedies for several diseases incidental to human bodies * * * * * _for the apoplexy._ take man's skull prepared, and powder of male peony, of each an ounce and a half, contrayerva, bastard dittany, angelica, zedvary, of each two drachms, mix and make a powder, add thereto two ounces of candied orange and lemon peel, beat all together to a powder, whereof you may take half a drachm or a drachm. _a powder for the epilepsy or falling sickness._ take of opopanax, crude antimony, castor, dragon's blood, peony seeds, of each an equal quantity; make a subtle powder; the dose, half a drachm of black cherry water. before you take it, the stomach must be prepared with some proper vomit, as that of mynficht's emetic tartar, from four grains to six; if for children, salts of vitrol, from a scruple to half a drachm. _for a headache of long standing._ take the juice or powder in distilled water of hog lice and continue it. _for spitting of blood._ take conserve of comfrey and of hips, of each an ounce and a half; conserve of red roses, three ounces; dragon's blood, a drachm; spices of hyacinths, two scruples; red coral, a drachm; mix and with syrup of poppies make a soft electuary. take the quantity of a walnut, night and morning. _for a looseness._ take venice treacle and diascordium, of each half a drachm, in warm ale or water gruel, or what you like best, at night, going to bed. _for the bloody flux._ first take a drachm of powder of rhubarb in a sufficient quantity of conserve of red roses, in the morning early; then at night, take of tornified or roasted rhubarb, half a drachm; diascordium, a drachm and a half; liquid laudanum cyclomated, a scruple: mix and make into a bolus. _for an inflammation of the lungs._ take of cherious water, ten ounces; water of red poppies, three ounces; syrup of poppies, an ounce; pearl prepared, a drachm; make julep, and take six spoonfuls every fourth hour. _an ointment for the pleurisy._ take oil of violets or sweet almonds, an ounce of each, with wax and a little saffron, make an ointment, warm it and bathe it upon the parts affected. _an ointment for the itch._ take sulphur vive in powder, half an ounce, oil of tartar per deliquim, a sufficient quantity, ointment of roses, four ounces; make a liniment, to which add a scruple of rhodium to aromatize, and rub the parts affected with it. _for running scab._ take two pounds of tar, incorporate it into a thick mass with well-sifted ashes; boil the mass in fountain-water, adding leaves of ground-ivy, white horehound, fumitory roots, sharp-pointed dock and of flocan pan, of each four handfuls; make a bath to be used with care of taking cold. _for worms in children._ take wormseed, half a drachm, flour of sulphur, a drachm; mix and make a powder. give as much as will lie on a silver threepence, night and morning, in grocer's treacle or honey, or to grown up people, you may add a sufficient quantity of aloe rosatum and so make them up into pills; three or four may be taken every morning. _for fevers in children._ take crab-eyes, a drachm, cream of tartar, half a drachm; white sugar-candy finely powdered, weight of both; mix all well together and give as much as will lie on a silver threepence, in a spoonful of barley-water or sack whey. _a quieting night-draught, when the cough is violent._ take water of green wheat, six ounces, syrup diascordium, three ounces, take two or three spoonfuls going to bed every night or every other night. _an electuary for the dropsy._ take best rhubarb, one drachm, gum lac, prepared, two drachms, zyloaloes, cinnamon, long birthwort, half an ounce each, best english saffron, half a scruple; with syrup of chicory and rhubarb make an electuary. take the quantity of a nutmeg or small walnut every morning fasting. _for a tympany dropsy._ take roots of chervil and candied eringo roots, half an ounce of each, roots of butcher-broom, two ounces, grass-roots, three ounces, shavings of ivory and hartshorn, two drachms and a half each; boil them in two or three pounds of spring water. whilst the strained liquor is hot, pour it upon the leaves of watercresses and goose-grass bruised, of each a handful, adding a pint of rhenish wine. make a close infusion for two hours, then strain out the liquor again, and add to it three ounces of magirtral water and earth worms and an ounce and a half of the syrup of the five opening roots. make an apozen, whereof take four ounces twice a day. _for an inward bleeding._ take leaves of plantain and stinging nettles, of each three handfuls, bruise them well and pour on them six ounces of plantain water, afterwards make a strong expression and drink the whole off. _probatum est._ * * * * * general observations _worthy of notice._ when you find a red man to be faithful, a tall man to be wise, a fat man to be swift of foot, a lean man to be a fool, a handsome man not to be proud, a poor man not to be envious, a knave to be no liar, an upright man not too bold and hearty to his own loss, one that drawls when he speaks not to be crafty and circumventing, one that winks on another with his eyes not to be false and deceitful, a sailor and hangman to be pitiful, a poor man to build churches, a quack doctor to have a good conscience, a bailiff not to be a merciless villain, an hostess not to over-reckon you, and an usurer to be charitable---- then say, _ye have found a prodigy._ men acting contrary to the common course of nature. * * * * * part ii * * * * * the experienced midwife * * * * * introduction. i have given this part the title of the experienced midwife, because it is chiefly designed for those who profess midwifery, and contains whatever is necessary for them to know in the practice thereof; and also, because it is the result of many years' experience, and that in the most difficult cases, and is, therefore, the more to be depended upon. a midwife is the most necessary and honourable office, being indeed a helper of nature; which therefore makes it necessary for her to be well acquainted with all the operations of nature in the work of generation, and instruments with which she works. for she that knows not the operations of nature, nor with what tool she works, must needs be at a loss how to assist therein. and seeing the instruments of operation, both in men and women, are those things by which mankind is produced, it is very necessary that all midwives should be well acquainted with them, that they may better understand their business, and assist nature, as there shall be occasion. the first thing then necessary as introductory to this treatise, is an anatomical description of the several parts of generation both in men and women; but as in the former part of this work i have treated at large upon these subjects, being desirous to avoid tautology, i shall not here repeat anything of what was then said, but refer the reader thereto, as a necessary introduction to what follows. and though i shall be necessitated to speak plainly so that i may be understood, yet i shall do it with that modesty that none shall have need to blush unless it be from something in themselves, rather than from what they shall find here; having the motto of the royal garter for my defence, which is:--"honi soit qui mal y pense,"--"evil be to him that evil thinks." * * * * * a guide to childbearing women * * * * * book i chapter i section i.--_of the womb._ in this chapter i am to treat of the womb, which the latins call _matrix_. its parts are two; the mouth of the womb and the bottom of it. the mouth is an orifice at the entrance into it, which may be dilated and shut together like a purse; for though in the act of copulation it is big enough to receive the glans of the yard, yet after conception, it is so close and shut, that it will not admit the point of a bodkin to enter; and yet again, at the time of a woman's delivery, it is opened to such an extraordinary degree, that the child passeth through it into the world; at which time this orifice wholly disappears, and the womb seems to have but one great cavity from the bottom to the entrance of the neck. when a woman is not with child, it is a little oblong, and of substance very thick and close; but when she is with child it is shortened, and its thickness diminished proportionably to its distension; and therefore it is a mistake of anatomists who affirm, that its substance waxeth thicker a little before a woman's labour; for any one's reason will inform him, that the more distended it is, the thinner it must be; and the nearer a woman is to the time of her delivery the shorter her womb must be extended. as to the action by which this inward orifice of the womb is opened and shut, it is purely natural; for were it otherwise, there could not be so many bastards begotten as there are, nor would any married women have so many children. were it in their own power they would hinder conception, though they would be willing enough to use copulation; for nature has attended that action with so pleasing and delightful sensations, that they are willing to indulge themselves in the use thereof notwithstanding the pains they afterwards endure, and the hazard of their lives that often follows it. and this comes to pass, not so much from an inordinate lust in woman, as that the great director of nature, for the increase and multiplication of mankind, and even all other species in the elementary world, hath placed such a magnetic virtue in the womb, that it draws the seed to it, as the loadstone draws iron. the author of nature has placed the womb in the belly, that the heat might always be maintained by the warmth of the parts surrounding it; it is, therefore, seated in the middle of the hypogastrium (or lower parts of the belly between the bladder and the belly, or right gut) by which also it is defended from any hurt through the hardness of the bones, and it is placed in the lower part of the belly for the convenience of copulation, and of a birth being thrust out at full time. it is of a figure almost round, inclining somewhat to an oblong, in part resembling a pear; for being broad at the bottom, it gradually terminates in the point of the orifice which is narrow. the length, breadth and thickness of the womb differ according to the age and disposition of the body. for in virgins not ripe it is very small in all its dimensions, but in women whose terms flow in great quantities, and such as frequently use copulation, it is much larger, and if they have had children, it is larger in them than in such as have had none; but in women of a good stature and well shaped, it is (as i have said before), from the entry of the privy parts to the bottom of the womb usually about eight inches; but the length of the body of the womb alone, does not exceed three; the breadth thereof is near about the same, and of the thickness of the little finger, when the womb is not pregnant, but when the woman is with child, it becomes of a prodigious greatness, and the nearer she is to delivery, the more the womb is extended. it is not without reason then, that nature (or the god of nature) has made the womb of a membranous substance; for thereby it does the easier open to conceive, is gradually dilated by the growth of the foetus or young one, and is afterwards contracted or closed again, to thrust forth both it and the after-burden, and then to retire to its primitive seat. hence also it is enabled to expel any noxious humours, which may sometimes happen to be contained within it. before i have done with the womb, which is the field of generation, and ought, therefore, to be the more particularly taken care of (for as the seeds of plants can produce no plants, nor sprig unless grown in ground proper to excite and awaken their vegetative virtue so likewise the seed of man, though potentially containing all the parts of the child, would never produce so admissible an effect, if it were not cast into that fruitful field of nature, the womb) i shall proceed to a more particular description of its parts, and the uses for which nature has designed them. the womb, then, is composed of various similar parts, that is of membranes, veins, arteries and nerves. its membranes are two and they compose the principal parts of the body, the outermost of which ariseth from the peritoneum or caul, and is very thin, without it is smooth, but within equal, that it may the better cleave to the womb, as it is fleshier and thicker than anything else we meet with within the body, when the woman is not pregnant, and is interwoven with all sorts of fibres or small strings that it may the better suffer the extension of the child, and the water caused during pregnancy, and also that it may the easier close again after delivery. the veins and arteries proceed both from the hypogastric and the spermatic vessels, of which i shall speak by and by; all these are inserted and terminated in the proper membranes of the womb. the arteries supply it with food and nourishment, which being brought together in too great a quantity, sweats through the substance of it, and distils as it were a dew at the bottom of the cavity; from thence proceed the terms in ripe virgins, and the blood which nourisheth the embryo in breeding women. the branches which issue from the spermatic vessels, are inserted on each side of the bottom of the womb, and are much less than those which proceed from the hypogastrics, those being greater and bedewing the whole substance of it. there are some other small vessels, which arising the one from the other are conducted to the internal orifice, and by these, those that are pregnant purge away the superfluity of the terms when they happen to have more than is used in the nourishment of the infant: by which means nature has taken so much care of the womb, that during pregnancy it shall not be obliged to open itself for passing away those excrementitious humours, which, should it be forced to do, might often endanger abortion. as touching the nerves, they proceed from the brain, which furnishes all the inner parts of the lower belly in them, which is the true reason it hath so great a sympathy with the stomach, which is likewise very considerably furnished from the same part; so that the womb cannot be afflicted with any pain, but that the stomach is immediately sensible thereof, which is the cause of those loathings or frequent vomitings which happen to it. but beside all these parts which compose the womb, it has yet four ligaments, whose office it is, to keep it firm in its place, and prevent its constant agitation, by the continual motion of the intestines which surround it, two of which are above and two below. those above are called the broad ligaments, because of their broad and membranous figure, and are nothing else but the production of the peritoneum which growing out of the sides of the loins towards the veins come to be inserted in the sides of the bottom of the womb, to hinder the body from bearing too much on the neck, and so from suffering a precipitation as will sometimes happen when the ligaments are too much relaxed; and do also contain the testicles, and as well, safely conduct the different vessels, as the ejaculatories, to the womb. the lowermost are called round ligaments, taking their origin from the side of the womb near the horn, from whence they pass the groin, together with the production of the peritoneum, which accompanies them through the rings of the oblique and transverse muscles of the belly, by which they divide themselves into many little branches resembling the foot of a goose, of which some are inserted into the os pubis, the rest are lost and confounded with the membranes which women and children feel in their thighs. these two ligaments are long, round and nervous, and pretty big in their beginning near the matrix, hollow in their rise, and all along the os pubis, where they are a little smaller and become flat, the better to be inserted in the manner aforesaid. it is by their means the womb is hindered from rising too high. now, although the womb is held in its natural situation by means of these four ligaments, it has liberty enough to extend itself when pregnant, because they are very loose, and so easily yield to its distension. but besides these ligaments, which keep the womb, as it were, in a poise, yet it is fastened for greater security by its neck, both to the bladder and rectum, between which it is situated. whence it comes to pass, that if at any time the womb be inflamed, it communicates the inflammation to the neighbouring part. its use or proper action in the work of generation, is to receive and retain the seed, and deduce from it power and action by its heat, for the generation of the infant; and it is, therefore, absolutely necessary for the conservation of the species. it also seems by accident to receive and expel the impurities of the whole body, as when women have abundance of whites, and to purge away, from time to time, the superfluity of the blood, as when a woman is not with child. sect. ii.--_of the difference between the ancient and modern physicians, touching the woman's contributing seed for the formation of the child._ our modern anatomists and physicians are of different sentiments from the ancients touching the woman's contributing seed for the formation of the child, as well as the man; the ancients strongly affirming it, but our modern authors being generally of another judgment. i will not make myself a party to this controversy, but set down impartially, yet briefly, the arguments on each side, and leave the judicious reader to judge for himself. though it is apparent, say the ancients, that the seed of man is the principal efficient and beginning of action, motion and generation, yet the woman affords seed, and contributes to the procreation of the child, it is evident from hence, that the woman had seminal vessels, which had been given her in vain if she wanted seminal excretions; but since nature forms nothing in vain, it must be granted that they were formed for the use of the seed and procreation, and fixed in their proper places, to operate and contribute virtue and efficiency to the seed; and this, say they, is further proved from hence, that if women at years of maturity use not copulation to eject their seed, they often fall into strange diseases, as appears by young women and virgins, and also it appears that, women are never better pleased than when they are often satisfied this way, which argues, that the pleasure and delight, say they, is double in women to what it is in men, for as the delight of men in copulation consists chiefly in the emission of the seed, so women are delighted, both in the emission of their own and the reception of the man's. but against this, all our modern authors affirm that the ancients are very erroneous, inasmuch as the testicles in women do not afford seed, but are two eggs, like those of a fowl or other creatures; neither have they any such offices as in men, but are indeed an ovarium, or receptacle for eggs, wherein these eggs are nourished, by the sanguinary vessels dispersed through them; and from hence one or more, as they are fecundated by the man's seed, are conveyed into the womb by the oviducts. and the truth of this, say they, is so plain, that if you boil them, the liquor shall have the same taste, colour and consistency with the taste of bird's eggs. and if it be objected that they have no shells, the answer is easy; for the eggs of fowls while they are in the ovary, nay, after they have fallen into the uterus, have no shell: and though they have one when they are laid, yet it is no more than a fence which nature has provided for them against outward injuries, they being hatched without the body, but those of women being hatched within the body have no need of any other fence than the womb to secure them. they also further say, that there are in the generation of the foetus, or young ones, two principles, _active_ and _passive_; the _active_ is the man's seed elaborated in the testicles out of the arterial blood and animal spirits; the _passive_ principle is the ovum or egg, impregnated by the man's seed; for to say that women have true seed, say they, is erroneous. but the manner of conception is this; the most spirituous part of the man's seed, in the act of copulation, reaching up to the ovarium or testicles of the woman (which contains divers eggs, sometimes fewer) impregnates one of them; which, being conveyed by the oviducts to the bottom of the womb, presently begins to swell bigger and bigger, and drinks in the moisture that is so plentifully sent hither, after the same manner that the seed in the ground suck the fertile moisture thereof, to make them sprout. but, notwithstanding what is here urged by modern anatomists, there are some late writers of the opinion of the ancients, viz., that women both have, and emit seed in the act of copulation; and even women themselves take it ill to be thought merely passive in the act wherein they make such vigorous exertions; and positively affirm, that they are sensible of the emission of their seed in that action, and that in it a great part of the delight which they take in that act, consists. i shall not, therefore, go about to take away any of their happiness from them, but leave them in possession of their imaginary felicity. having thus laid the foundation of this work, i will now proceed to speak of conception, and of those things which are necessary to be observed by women from the time of their conception, to the time of their delivery. * * * * * chapter ii _of conception; what it is; how women are to order themselves after conception._ section i.--_what conception is, and the qualifications requisite thereto._ conception is nothing but an action of the womb, by which the prolific seed is received and retained, that an infant may be engendered and formed out of it. there are two sorts of conception: the one according to nature, which is followed by the generation of the infant in the womb; the other false and wholly against nature, in which the seed changes into water, and produces only false conceptions, moles, or other strange matter. now, there are three things principally necessary in order to a true conception, so that generation may follow, viz., without diversity of sex there can be no conception; for, though some will have a woman to be an animal that can engender of herself, it is a great mistake; there can be no conception without a man discharge his seed into the womb. what they allege of pullets laying eggs without a cock's treading them is nothing to the purpose, for those eggs should they be set under a hen, will never become chickens because they never received any prolific virtue from the male, which is absolutely necessary to this purpose, and is sufficient to convince us, that diversity of the sex is necessary even to those animals, as well as to the generation of man. but diversity of sex, though it be necessary to conception, yet it will not do alone; there must also be a congression of the different sexes; for diversity of sex would profit little if copulation did not follow. i confess i have heard of subtle women, who, to cover their sin and shame, have endeavoured to persuade some peasants that they were never touched by man to get them with child; and that one in particular pretended to conceive by going into a bath where a man had washed himself a little before and spent his seed in it, which was drawn and sucked into her womb, as she pretended. but such stories as these are only for such who know no better. now that these different sexes should be obliged to come to the touch, which we call copulation or coition, besides the natural desire of begetting their like, which stirs up men and women to it, the parts appointed for generation are endowed by nature with a delightful and mutual itch, which begets in them a desire to the action; without which, it would not be very easy for a man, born for the contemplation of divine mysteries, to join himself, by the way of coition, to a woman, in regard to the uncleanness of the part and the action. and, on the other side, if the woman did but think of those pains and inconveniences to which they are subject by their great bellies, and those hazards of life itself, besides the unavoidable pains that attend their delivery, it is reasonable to believe they would be affrighted from it. but neither sex makes these reflections till after the action is over, considering nothing beforehand but the pleasure of the enjoyment, so that it is from this voluptuous itch that nature obliges both sexes to this congression. upon which the third thing followeth of course, viz., the emission of seed into the womb in the act of copulation. for the woman having received this prolific seed into her womb, and retained it there, the womb thereupon becomes depressed, and embraces the seed so closely, that being closed the point of a needle cannot enter into it without violence. and now the woman may be said to have conceived, having reduced by her heat from power into action, the several faculties which are contained in the seed, making use of the spirits with which the seed abounds, and which are the instruments which begin to trace out the first lineaments of the parts, and which afterwards, by making use of the menstruous blood flowing to it, give it, in time, growth and final perfection. and thus much shall suffice to explain what conception is. i shall next proceed to show sect. ii.--_how a woman ought to order herself after conception._ my design in this treatise being brevity, i shall bring forward a little of what the learned have said of the causes of twins, and whether there be any such things as superfoetations, or a second conception in a woman (which is yet common enough), and as to twins, i shall have occasion to speak of them when i come to show you how the midwife ought to proceed in the delivery of the women that are pregnant with them. but having already spoken of conception, i think it now necessary to show how such as have conceived ought to order themselves during their pregnancy, that they may avoid those inconveniences, which often endanger the life of the child and many times their own. a woman, after conception, during the time of her being with child, ought to be looked upon as indisposed or sick, though in good health; for child bearing is a kind of nine months' sickness, being all that time in expectation of many inconveniences which such a condition usually causes to those that are not well governed during that time; and therefore, ought to resemble a good pilot, who, when sailing on a rough sea and full of rocks, avoids and shuns the danger, if he steers with prudence, but if not, it is a thousand to one but he suffers shipwreck. in like manner, a woman with child is often in danger of miscarrying and losing her life, if she is not very careful to prevent those accidents to which she is subject all the time of her pregnancy. all which time her care must be double, first of herself, and secondly of the child she goes with for otherwise, a single error may produce a double mischief; for if she receives a prejudice, the child also suffers with her. let a woman, therefore, after conception, observe a good diet, suitable to her temperament, custom, condition and quality; and if she can, let the air where she ordinarily dwells be clear and well tempered, and free from extremes, either of heat or cold; for being too hot, it dissipateth the spirits too much and causes many weaknesses; and by being too cold and foggy, it may bring down rheums and distillations on the lungs, and so cause her to cough, which, by its impetuous motion, forcing downwards, may make her miscarry. she ought alway to avoid all nauseous and ill smells; for sometimes the stench of a candle, not well put out, may cause her to come before time; and i have known the smell of charcoal to have the same effect. let her also avoid smelling of rue, mint, pennyroyal, castor, brimstone, etc. but, with respect to their diet, women with child have generally so great loathings and so many different longings, that it is very difficult to prescribe an exact diet for them. only this i think advisable, that they may use those meats and drinks which are to them most desirable, though, perhaps, not in themselves so wholesome as some others, and, it may be not so pleasant; but this liberty must be made use of with this caution, that what they desire be not in itself unwholesome; and also that in everything they take care of excess. but, if a child-bearing woman finds herself not troubled with such longings as we have spoken of, let her take simple food, and in such quantity as may be sufficient for herself and the child, which her appetite may in a great measure regulate; for it is alike hurtful to her to fast too long as to eat too much; and therefore, rather let her eat a little and often; especially let her avoid eating too much at night, because the stomach being too much filled, compresseth the diaphragm, and thereby causeth difficulty of breathing. let her meat be easy of digestion, such as the tenderest parts of beef, mutton, veal, fowls, pullets, capons, pigeons and partridges, either boiled or roasted, as she likes best, new laid eggs are also very good for her; and let her put into her broth those herbs that purify it, as sorrel, lettuce, succory and borage; for they will purge and purify the blood. let her avoid whatever is hot seasoned, especially pies and baked meats, which being of hot digestion, overcharge the stomach. if she desire fish let it be fresh, and such as is taken out of rivers and running streams. let her eat quinces and marmalade, to strengthen her child: for which purpose sweet almonds, honey, sweet apples, and full ripe grapes, are also good. let her abstain from all salt, sour, bitter and salt things, and all things that tend to provoke the terms--such as garlic, onions, mustard, fennel, pepper and all spices except cinnamon, which in the last three months is good for her. if at first her diet be sparing, as she increases in bigness, let her diet be increased, for she ought to consider that she has a child as well as herself to nourish. let her be moderate in her drinking; and if she drinks wine, let it be rather claret than white (for it will breed good blood, help the digestion, and comfort the stomach, which is weakly during pregnancy); but white wine being diuretic, or that which provokes urine, ought to be avoided. let her be careful not to take too much exercise, and let her avoid dancing, riding in a coach, or whatever else puts the body into violent motion, especially in the first month. but to be more particular, i shall here set down rules proper for every month for the child-bearing woman to order herself, from the time she first conceived, to the time of her delivery. _rules for the first two months._ as soon as a woman knows, or has reason to believe, that she has conceived, she ought to abstain from all violent motions and exercise; whether she walks afoot, or rides on horseback or in a coach, it ought to be very gently. let her also abstain from venery (for which, after conception, she has usually no great inclination), lest there be a mole or superfoetation, which is the adding of one embryo to another. let her beware not to lift her arms too high, nor carry great burdens, nor repose herself on hard and uneasy seats. let her use moderately good, juicy meat and easy of digestion, and let her wines be neither too strong nor too sharp, but a little mingled with water; or if she be very abstemious, she may use water wherein cinnamon has been boiled. let her avoid fastings, thirst, watchings, mourning, sadness, anger, and all other perturbations of the mind. let no one present any strange or unwholesome thing to her, nor so much as name it, lest she should desire it and not be able to get it, and so either cause her to miscarry, or the child to have some deformity on that account. let her belly be kept loose with prunes, raisins or manna in her broth, and let her use the following electuary, to strengthen the womb and the child-- "take conserve of borage, buglos and roses, each two ounces; an ounce of balm; an ounce each of citron peel and shreds, candied mirobalans, an ounce each; extract of wood aloes a scruple; prepared pearl, half a drachm; red coral and ivory, of each a drachm; precious stones each a scruple; candied nutmegs, two drachms, and with syrup of apples and quinces make an electuary." _let her observe the following rules._ "take pearls prepared, a drachm; red coral and ivory prepared, each half a drachm, precious stones, each a scruple; yellow citron peel, mace, cinnamon, cloves, each half a drachm; saffron, a scruple; wood aloes, half a scruple; ambergris, six drachms; and with six ounces of sugar dissolved in rosewater make rolls." let her also apply strengtheners of nutmeg, mace and mastich made up in bags, to the navel, or a toast dipped in malmsey, or sprinkled with powdered mint. if she happens to desire clay, chalk, or coals (as many women with child do), give her beans boiled with sugar, and if she happens to long for anything that she cannot obtain, let her presently drink a large draught of pure cold water. _rules for the third month._ in this month and the next, be sure to keep from bleeding; for though it may be safe and proper at other times, yet it will not be so at the end of the fourth month; and yet if blood abound, or some incidental disease happens which requires evacuation, you may use a cupping glass, with scarification, and a little blood may be drawn from the shoulders and arms, especially if she has been accustomed to bleed. let her also take care of lacing herself too straitly, but give herself more liberty than she used to do; for inclosing her belly in too strait a mould, she hinders the infant from taking its free growth, and often makes it come before its time. _rules for the fourth month._ in this month also you ought to keep the child-bearing woman from bleeding, unless in extraordinary cases, but when the month is passed, blood-letting and physic may be permitted, if it be gentle and mild, and perhaps it may be necessary to prevent abortion. in this month she may purge, in an acute disease, but purging may only be used from the beginning of this month to the end of the sixth; but let her take care that in purging she use no vehement medicine, nor any bitter, as aloes, which is disagreeable and hurtful to the child, and opens the mouth of the vessels; neither let her use coloquintida, scammony nor turbith; she may use cassia, manna, rhubarb, agaric and senna but dyacidodium purgans is best, with a little of the electuary of the juice of roses. _rules for the fifth, sixth and seventh months._ in these months, child-bearing women are troubled with coughs, colds, heart-beating, fainting, watching, pains in the loins and hips, and bleeding. the cough is from a sharp vapour that comes to the jaws and rough artery from the terms, or the thin part of that blood got less into the reins of the breast; this endangers abortion, and strength fails from watching: therefore, purge the humours that come to the breast, with rhubarb and agaric, and strengthen the head as in a catarrh, and give sweet lenitives as in a cough. palpitation and faintness arises from vapours that go to it by the arteries, or from blood that abounds and cannot get out of the womb, but ascends and oppresses the heart; and in this case cordials should be used both inwardly and outwardly. watching, is from sharp dry vapours that trouble the animal spirits, and in this case use frictions, and let the woman wash her feet at bed-time, and let her take syrup of poppies, dried roses, emulsions of sweet almonds, and white poppy seed. if she be troubled with pains in her loins and hips, as in those months she is subject to be, from the weight of her child as it grows big and heavy, and so stretches the ligaments of the womb and part adjacent, let her hold it up with swathing bands about her neck. about this time also the woman often happens to have a flux of blood, either at the nose, womb or haemorrhoids, from plenty of blood, or from the weakness of the child that takes it not in, or else from evil humour in the blood, that stirs up nature and sends it forth. and sometimes it happens that the vessels of the womb may be broken, either by some violent motion, fall, cough or trouble of the mind (for any of these will work that effect), and this is so dangerous, that in such a case the child cannot be well, but if it be from blood only, the danger is less, provided it flows by the veins of the neck of the womb, for then it prevents plethora and takes not away the nourishment of the child; but if it proceeds from the weakness of the child, that draws it not in, abortion of the child often follows, or hard travail, or else she goes beyond her time. but if it flows from the inward veins of the womb, there is more danger by the openness of the womb, if it come from evil blood; the danger is alike from cacochymy, which is like to fall upon both. if it arises from plethora, open a vein, but with great caution, and use astringents, of which the following will do well:--take prepared pearls, a scruple; red coral, two scruples; mace, nutmeg, each a drachm; cinnamon, half a drachm; make a powder, or with white sugar make rolls. or give this powder in broth:--"take red coral, a drachm; half a drachm precious stones; red sander, half a drachm; bole, a drachm; scaled earth and tormental roots, each two scruples, with sugar of roses and manus christi; with pearl, five drachms; make a powder." you may also strengthen the child at the navel, and if there be a cacochymy, alter the humours, and if you can do it safely, evacuate; you may likewise use amulets on her hands and about her neck. in a flux of haemorrhoids, wear off the pain, and let her drink hot wine with a toasted nutmeg. in these months the belly is also subject to be bound, but if it be without any apparent disease, the broth of a chicken or veal, sodden with oil, or with the decoction of mallows or marsh-mallows, mercury or linseed, put up in a clyster, will not be amiss, but in less quantity than is given in other cases:--viz. of the decoction, five ounces, of common oil, three ounces, of sugar, two ounces, and of cassia fistula, one ounce. but if she will not take a clyster, one or two yolks of new laid eggs, or a little peas-pottage warm, a little salt and sugar, and supped a little before meat, will be very convenient. but if her belly be distended and stretched with wind a little fennel seed and aniseed reduced to a powder and mixed with honey and sugar made after the manner of an electuary, will be very well also, if thighs and feet swell let them be anointed with erphodrinum (which is a liquid medicine) made with vinegar and rose-water, mingled with salt. _rules for the eighth month._ the eighth month is commonly called the most dangerous; therefore the greatest care and caution ought to be used, the diet better in quality, but no more, nor indeed, so much in quantity as before, but as she must abate her diet, she must increase her exercise; and because then women with child, by reason that sharp humours alter the belly, are accustomed to weaken their spirits and strength, they may well take before meat, an electuary of diarrhoden, or aromaticum rosatum or diamagarton; and sometimes they may lick a little honey. as they will loathe, nauseate their meat, they may take green ginger, candied with sugar, and the rinds of citron and oranges candied; and let them often use honey for strengthening the infant. when she is not very far from her labour, let her eat every day seven roasted figs before her meat, and sometimes let her lick a little honey. but let her beware of salt and powdered meat, for it is neither good for her nor the child. _rules for the ninth month._ in the ninth month let her have a care of lifting any great weight, but let her move a little more, to dilate the parts, and stir up natural heat. let her take heed of stooping, and neither sit too much nor lie on her sides, neither ought she to bend herself much enfolded in the umbilical ligaments, by which means it often perisheth. let her walk and stir often, and let her exercise be, rather to go upwards than downwards. let her diet, now especially, be light and easy of digestion and damask prunes with sugar, or figs with raisins, before meat, as also the yolks of eggs, flesh and broth of chickens, birds, partridges and pheasants; astringent and roasted meats, with rice, hard eggs, millet and such like other things are proper. baths of sweet water, with emollient herbs, ought to be used by her this month with some intermission, and after the baths let her belly be anointed with oil of sweet roses and of violets; but for her privy parts, it is better to anoint them with the fat of hens, geese or ducks, or with oil of lilies, and the decoction of linseed and fenugreek, boiled with oil of linseed and marshmallows, or with the following liniment:-- take mallows and marshmallows, cut and shred, of each one ounce; of linseed, one ounce; let them be boiled from twenty ounces of water to ten; then let her take three ounces of the boiled broth, of oil of almonds and oil of flower-de-luce, of each one ounce; of deer's suet, three ounces. let her bathe with this, and anoint herself with it, warm. if for fourteen days before the birth, she do every morning and evening bathe and moisten her belly with muscadine and lavender water, the child will be much strengthened thereby. and if every day she eat toasted bread, it will hinder anything from growing to the child. her privy parts must be gently stroked down with this fomentation. "take three ounces of linseed, and one handful each of mallows and marshmallows sliced, then let them be put into a bag and immediately boiled." let the woman with child, every morning and evening, take the vapour of this decoction in a hollow stool, taking great heed that no wind or air come to her in-parts, and then let her wipe the part so anointed with a linen cloth, and she may anoint the belly and groins as at first. when she has come so near to her time, as to be ten or fourteen days thereof, if she begins to feel any more than ordinary pain let her use every day the following:--"take mallows and marshmallows, of each a handful; camomiles, hard mercury, maidenhair, of each a handful; of linseed, four ounces; let them be boiled in a sufficient quantity of water as to make a bath therewith." but let her not sit too hot upon the seat, nor higher than a little above her navel; nor let her sit upon it longer than about half an hour, lest her strength languish and decay, for it is better to use it often than to stay too long in it. and thus have i shown how a child-bearing woman ought to govern herself each month during her pregnancy. how she must order herself at her delivery, shall be shown in another chapter, after i have first shown the intended midwife how the child is first formed in the womb, and the manner of its decumbiture there. * * * * * chapter iii _of the parts proper to a child in the womb; how it is formed there, and the manner of its situation therein._ in the last chapter i treated of conception, showed what it was, how accomplished and its signs, and how she who has conceived ought to order herself during the time of her pregnancy. now, before i come to speak of her delivery, it is necessary that the midwife be first made acquainted with the parts proper to a child in the womb, and also that she be shown how it is formed, and the manner of its situation and decumbiture there; which are so necessary to her, that without the knowledge thereof, no one can tell how to deliver a woman as she ought. this, therefore, shall be the work of this chapter. i shall begin with the first of these. section i.--_of the parts proper to a child in the womb._ in this section, i must first tell you what i mean by the parts proper to a child in the womb; and they are only those that either help or nourish it; and whilst it is lodged in that dark repository of nature, and that help to clothe and defend it there and are cast away, as of no more use, after it is born, and these are two, viz., the umbilicars, or navel vessels, and the secundinum. by the first it is nourished, and by the second clothed and defended from wrong. of each of these i shall speak distinctly; and first, _of the umbilicars, or navel vessels._ these are four in number, viz.:--one vein, two arteries, and the vessel which is called the urachos. ( ) the vein is that on which the infant is nourished, from the time of its conception till the time of its delivery; till being brought into the light of the world, it has the same way of concocting the food we have. this vein ariseth from the liver of the child, and is divided into two parts when it has passed the navel; and these two are divided and subdivided, the branches being upheld by the skin called _chorion_ (of which i speak by and by), and are joined to the veins of the mother's womb, from whence they have their blood for the nourishment of the child. ( ) the arteries are two on each side which proceed from the back branches of the great artery of the mother, and the vital blood is carried by those to the child being ready concocted by the mother. ( ) a nervous or sinewy production is led from the bottom of the bladder of the infant to the navel, and this is called _urachos_, and its use is, to convey the urine of the infant from the bladder to the alantois. anatomists do very much vary in their opinion concerning this, some denying any such thing to be in the delivery of the woman, and others on the contrary affirming it; but experience has testified there is such a thing, for bartholomew carbrolius, the ordinary doctor of anatomy to the college of physicians at montpellier in france, records the history of a maid, whose water being a long time stopped, at last issued out through the navel. and johannes fernelius speaks of the same thing that happened to a man of thirty years of age, who having a stoppage at the neck of the bladder, his urine issued out of his navel for many months together, and that without any prejudice at all to his health, which he ascribes to the ill lying of his navel, whereby the urachos was not well dried. and volchier coitas quotes such another instance in a maid of thirty-four at nuremburg in germany. these instances, though they happen but seldom, are sufficient to prove that there is such a thing as anurachos in men. these four vessels before mentioned, viz., one vein, two arteries and the urachos, join near the navel, and are united by a skin which they have from the chorion and so become like a gut or rope, and are altogether void of sensibility, and this is that which women call the navel-string. the vessels are thus joined together, that so they may neither be broken, severed nor entangled; and when the infant is born are of no use save only to make up the ligament which stops the hole of the navel and for some other physical use, etc. _of the secundine or after-birth._ setting aside the name given to this by the greeks and latins, it is called in english by the name of secundine, after-birth or after-burden; which are held to be four in number. ( ) the _first_ is called placenta, because it resembles the form of a cake, and is knit both to the navel and chorion, and makes up the greatest part of the secundine or after-birth. the flesh of it is like that of the melt or spleen, soft, red and tending something to blackness, and hath many small veins and arteries in it: and certainly the chief use of it is, for containing the child in the womb. ( ) the _second_ is the chorion. this skin and that called the amnios, involve the child round, both above and underneath, and on both sides, which the alantois does not. this skin is that which is most commonly called the secundine, as it is thick and white garnished with many small veins and arteries, ending in the placenta before named, being very light and slippery. its use is, not only to cover the child round about, but also to receive, and safely bind up the roots of the veins and arteries or navel vessels before described. ( ) the _third_ thing which makes up the secundine in the alantois, of which there is a great dispute amongst anatomists. some say there is such a thing, and others that there is not. those who will have it to be a membrane, say it is white, soft and exceedingly thin, and just under the placenta, where it is knit to the urachos, from which it receives the urine; and its office is to keep it separate from the sweat, that the saltness of it may not offend the tender skin of the child. ( ) the _fourth_, and last covering of the child is called amnios; and it is white, soft and transparent, being nourished by some very small veins and arteries. its use is, not only to enwrap the child, but also to retain the sweat of the child. having thus described the parts proper to a child in the womb, i will next proceed to speak of the formation of the child therein, as soon as i have explained the hard terms of the section, that those for whose help it is designed, may understand what they read. a _vein_ is that which receives blood from the liver, and distributes in several branches to all parts of the body. _nerve_ is the same with _sinew_, and is that by which the brain adds sense and motion to the body. _placenta_, properly signifies _sugar_ cake; but in this section it is used to signify a spongy piece of flesh resembling a cake, full of veins and arteries, and is made to receive a mother's blood appointed for the infant's nourishment in the womb. the _chorion_ is an outward skin which compasseth the child in the womb. the _amnios_ is the inner skin which compasseth the child in the womb. the _alantois_ is the skin that holds the urine of the child during the time that it abides in the womb. the _urachos_ is the vessel that conveys the urine from the child in the womb to the _alantois_. i now proceed to sect. ii.--_of the formation of the child in the womb._ to speak of the formation of the child in the womb, we must begin where nature begins, and, that is at the act of coition, in which the womb having received the generative seed (without which there can be no conception), the womb immediately shuts up itself so close that the point of a needle cannot enter the inward orifice; and this it does, partly to hinder the issuing out of the seed again, and partly to cherish it by an inward heat, the better to provoke it to action; which is one reason why women's bellies are so lank at their first conception. the woman having thus conceived, the first thing which is operative in conception is the spirit whereof the seed is full, which, nature quickening by the heat of the womb, stirs up the action. the internal spirits, therefore, separate the parts that are less pure, which are thick, cold and clammy, from those that are more pure and noble. the less pure are cast to the outside, and with these seed is circled round and the membrane made, in which that seed that is most pure is wrapped round and kept close together, that it may be defended from cold and other accidents, and operate the better. the first thing that is formed is the amnios; the next the chorion; and they enwrap the seed round like a curtain. soon after this (for the seed thus shut up in the woman lies not idle), the navel vein is bred, which pierceth those skins, being yet very tender, and carries a drop of blood from the veins of the mother's womb to the seed; from which drop the vena cava, or chief vein, proceeds, from which all the rest of the veins which nourish the body spring; and now the seed hath something to nourish it, whilst it performs the rest of nature's work, and also blood administered to every part of it, to form flesh. this vein being formed, the navel arteries are soon after formed; then the great artery, of which all the others are but branches; and then the heart, for the liver furnisheth the arteries with blood to form the heart, the arteries being made of seed, but the heart and the flesh, of blood. after this the brain is formed, and then the nerves to give sense and motion to the infant. afterwards the bones and flesh are formed; and of the bones, first of all, the vertebrae or chine bones, and then the skull, etc. as to the time in which this curious part of nature's workmanship is formed, having already in chapter ii of the former part of this work spoken at large upon this point, and also of the nourishment of the child in the womb, i shall here only refer the reader thereto, and proceed to show the manner in which the child lies in the womb. sect. iii.--_of the manner of the child's lying in the womb._ this is a thing so essential for a midwife to know, that she can be no midwife who is ignorant of it; and yet even about this authors extremely differ; for there are not two in ten that agree what is the form that the child lies in the womb, or in what fashion it lies there; and yet this may arise in a great measure from the different times of the women's pregnancy; for near the time of its deliverance out of those winding chambers of nature it oftentimes changes the form in which it lay before, for another. i will now show the several situations of the child in the mother's womb, according to the different times of pregnancy, by which those that are contrary to nature, and are the chief cause of ill labours, will be more easily conceived by the understanding midwife. it ought, therefore, in the first place to be observed, that the infant, as well male as female, is generally situated in the midst of the womb; for though sometimes, to appearance a woman's belly seems higher on one side than the other, yet it is so with respect to the belly only, and not to her womb, in the midst of which it is always placed. but, in the second place, a woman's great belly makes different figures, according to the different times of pregnancy; for when she is young with child, the embryo is always found of a round figure, a little long, a little oblong, having the spine moderately turned inwards, and the thighs folded, and a little raised, to which the legs are so raised, that the heels touch the buttocks; the arms are bending, and the hands placed upon the knees, towards which part of the body, the head is turned downwards towards the inward orifice of the womb, tumbling as it were over its head so that then the feet are uppermost, and the face towards the mother's great gut; and this turning of the infant in this manner, with its head downwards, towards the latter end of a woman's reckoning, is so ordered by nature, that it may be thereby the better disposed of its passage into the world at the time of its mother's labour, which is not then far off (and indeed some children turn not at all until the very time of birth); for in this posture all its joints are most easily extended in coming forth; for by this means its arms and legs cannot hinder its birth, because they cannot be bent against the inner orifice of the womb and the rest of the body, being very supple, passeth without any difficulty after the head, which is hard and big; being passed the head is inclined forward, so that the chin toucheth the breast, in which posture, it resembles one sitting to ease nature, and stooping down with the head to see what comes from him. the spine of the back is at that time placed towards the mother's, the head uppermost, the face downwards; and proportionately to its growth, it extends its members by little and little, which were exactly folded in the first month. in this posture it usually keeps until the seventh or eighth month, and then by a natural propensity and disposition of the upper first. it is true there are divers children, that lie in the womb in another posture, and come to birth with their feet downwards, especially if there be twins; for then, by their different motions they do so disturb one another, that they seldom come both in the same posture at the time of labour, but one will come with the head, and another with the feet, or perhaps lie across; but sometimes neither of them will come right. but, however the child may be situated in the womb, or in whatever posture it presents itself at the time of birth, if it be not with its head forwards, as i have before described, it is always against nature, and the delivery will occasion the more pain and danger, and require greater care and skill from the midwife, than when the labour is more natural. * * * * * chapter iv _a guide for women in travail, showing what is to be done when they fall in labour, in order to their delivery._ the end of all that we have been treating of is, the bringing forth of a child into the world with safety both to the mother and the infant, as the whole time of a woman's pregnancy may be termed a kind of labour; for, from the time of the conception to the time of her delivery, she labours under many difficulties, is subject to many distempers, and in continual danger, from one affection or other, till the time of birth comes; and when that comes, the greatest labour and travail come along with it, insomuch that then all the other labours are forgotten, and that only is called the time of her labours, and to deliver her safely is the principal business of the midwife; and to assist therein, shall be the chief design of this chapter. the time of the child's being ready for its birth, when nature endeavours to cast it forth, is that which is properly the time of a woman's labour; nature then labouring to be eased of its burden. and since many child-bearing women, (especially the first child) are often mistaken in their reckoning and so, when they draw near their time take every pain they meet with for their labour, which often proves prejudicial and troublesome to them, when it is not so, i will in the first section of this chapter, set down some signs, by which a woman may know when the true time of her labour is come. section i.--_the signs of the true time of a woman's labour._ when women with child, especially of their first, perceive any extraordinary pains in the belly, they immediately send for their midwife, as taking it for their labour; and then if the midwife be not a skilful and experienced woman, to know the time of labour, but takes it for granted without further inquiry (for some such there are), and so goes about to put her into labour before nature is prepared for it, she may endanger the life of both mother and child, by breaking the amnios and chorion. these pains, which are often mistaken for labour, are removed by warm clothes laid to the belly, and the application of a clyster or two, by which those pains which precede a true labour, are rather furthered than hindered. there are also other pains incident to a woman in that condition from the flux of the belly, which are easily known by the frequent stools that follow them. the signs, therefore, of labour, some few days before, are that the woman's belly, which before lay high, sinks down, and hinders her from walking so easily as she used to do; also there flow from the womb slimy humours, which nature has appointed to moisten and smooth the passage that its inward orifice may be the more easily dilated when there is occasion; which beginning to open at this time, suffers that slime to flow away, which proceeds from the glandules called _prostata_. these are signs preceding the labour; but when she is presently falling into labour, the signs are, great pains about the region of the reins and loins, which coming and retreating by intervals, are answered in the bottom of the belly by congruous throes, and sometimes the face is red and inflamed, the blood being much heated by the endeavours a woman makes to bring forth her child; and likewise, because during these strong throes her respiration is intercepted, which causes the blood to have recourse to her face; also her privy parts are swelled by the infant's head lying in the birth, which, by often thrusting, causes those parts to descend outwards. she is much subject to vomiting, which is a good sign of good labour and speedy delivery, though by ignorant people thought otherwise; for good pains are thereby excited and redoubled; which vomiting is excited by the sympathy there is between the womb and the stomach. also, when the birth is near, women are troubled with a trembling in the thighs and legs, not with cold, like the beginning of an ague fit, but with the heat of the whole body, though it must be granted, this does not happen always. also, if the humours which then flow from the womb are discoloured with the blood, which the midwives call _shows_, it is an infallible mark of the birth being near. and if then the midwife puts up her fingers into the neck of the womb, she will find the inner orifice dilated; at the opening of which the membranes of the infant, containing the waters, present themselves and are strongly forced down with each pain she hath; at which time one may perceive them sometimes to resist, and then again press forward the finger, being more or less hard and extended, according as the pains are stronger or weaker. these membranes, with the waters in them, when they are before the head of the child, midwives call _the gathering of the waters_, resemble to the touch of the fingers those eggs which have no shell, but are covered only with a simple membrane. after this, the pains still redoubling the membranes are broken by a strong impulsation of these waters, which flow away, and then the head of the infant is presently felt naked, and presents itself at the inward orifice of the womb. when these waters come thus away, then the midwife may be assured the birth is very near, this being the most certain sign that can be; for the _amnios alantois_, which contained these waters, being broken by the pressing forward of the birth, the child is no better able to subsist long in the womb afterwards than a naked man in a heap of snow. now, these waters, if the child comes presently after them, facilitate the labour by making the passage slippery; and therefore, let no midwife (as some have foolishly done) endeavour to force away the water, for nature knows best when the true time of birth is, and therefore retains the waters till that time. but if by accident the water breaks away too long before the birth, then such things as will hasten it, may be safely administered, and what these are, i will show in another section. sect. ii.--_how a woman ought to be ordered when the time of her labour is come._ when it is known that the true time of her labour is come by the signs laid down in the foregoing, of which those most to be relied upon are pains and strong throes in the belly, forcing downwards towards the womb, and a dilation of the inward orifice, which may be perceived by touching it with the finger, and the gathering of the waters before the head of the child, and thrusting down the membranes which contain them; through which, between the pains, one may in some manner with the finger discover the part which presents itself (as we have said before), especially if it be the head of the child, by its roundness and hardness; i say, if these things concur and are evident, the midwife may be sure it is the time of the woman's labour, and care must be taken to get all those things that are necessary to comfort her at that time. and the better to help her, be sure to see that she is not tightly laced; you must also give her one strong clyster or more, if there be occasion, provided it be done at the beginning, and before the child be too forward, for it will be difficult for her to receive them afterwards. the benefit accruing therefrom will be, that they excite the gut to discharge itself of its excrements, so that the rectum being emptied there may be the more space for the dilation of the passage; likewise to cause the pains to bear the more downward, through the endeavours she makes when she is at stool, and in the meantime, all other necessary things for her labour should be put in order, both for the mother and the child. to this end, some get a midwife's; but a pallet bed, girded, is much the best way, placed near the fire, if the season so require, which pallet ought to be so placed, that there may be easy access to it on every side, that the woman may be the more easily assisted, as there is occasion. if the woman abounds with blood, to bleed her a little more may not be improper, for thereby she will both breathe the better, and have her breasts more at liberty, and likewise more strength to bear down her pains; and this may be done without danger because the child being about ready to be born, has no more need of the mother's blood for its nourishment; besides, this evacuation does many times prevent her having a fever after delivery. also, before her delivery, if her strength will permit, let her walk up and down her chamber; and that she may have strength so to do, it will be necessary to give her good strengthening things, such as jelly, broth, new laid eggs, or some spoonfuls of burnt wine; and let her by all means hold out her pains, bearing them down as much as she can, at the time when they take her; and let the midwife from time to time touch the inward orifice with her finger, to know whether the waters are ready to break and whether the birth will follow soon after. let her also anoint the woman's privities with emollient oil, hog's grease, and fresh butter, if she find they are hard to be dilated. let the midwife, likewise, all the time be near the labouring woman, and diligently observe her gestures, complaints, and pains, for by this she may guess pretty well how far her labour advanceth, because when she changeth her ordinary groans into loud cries, it is a sign that the child is near the birth; for at the time her pains are greater and more frequent. let the woman likewise, by intervals, rest herself upon the bed to regain her strength, but not too long, especially if she be little, short and thick, for such women have always worse labour if they lie long on their beds in their travail. it is better, therefore, that she walk about her chamber as long as she can, the woman supporting her under the arms, if it be necessary; for by this means, the weight of the child causes the inward orifices of the womb to dilate the sooner than in bed, and if her pains be stronger and more frequent, her labour will not be near so long. let not the labouring woman be concerned at those qualms and vomitings which, perhaps, she may find come upon her, for they will be much for her advantage in the issue, however uneasy she may be for a time, as they further her pains and throes by provoking downward. when the waters of the child are ready and gathered (which may be perceived through the membranes presenting themselves to the orifice) to the bigness of the whole dilatation, the midwife ought to let them break of themselves, and not, like some hasty midwives, who being impatient of the woman's long labour, break them, intending thereby to hasten their business, when instead thereof, they retard it; for by the too hasty breaking of these waters (which nature designed to make the child slip more easy), the passage remains dry by which means the pains and throes of the labouring woman are less efficacious to bring forth the infant than they would otherwise have been. it is, therefore, much the better way to let the waters break of themselves; after which the midwife may with ease feel the child by that part which first presents, and thereby discern whether it comes right, that is, with the head foremost, for that is the proper and most natural way of the birth. if the head comes right, she will find it big, round, hard and equal; but if it be any other part, she will find it rugged, unequal, soft and hard, according to the nature of the part it is. and this being the true time when a woman ought to be delivered, if nature be not wanting to perform its office, therefore, when the midwife finds the birth thus coming forward let her hasten to assist and deliver it, for it ordinarily happens soon after, if it be natural. but if it happens, as it sometimes may, that the waters break away too long before the birth, in such a case, those things which hasten nature may safely be administered. for which purpose make use of pennyroyal, dittany, juniper berries, red coral, betony and feverfew, boiled in white wine, and give a drachm of it, or it would be much better to take the juice of it when it is in its prime, which is in may, and having clarified it, make it into a syrup with double its weight of sugar, and keep it all the year, to use when occasion calls for it; mugwort used in the same manner is also good in this case; also a drachm of cinnamon powder given inwardly profits much in this case; and so does tansey broiled and applied to the privities; or an oil of it, so, made and used, as you were taught before. the stone _aetites_ held to the privities, is of extraordinary virtue, and instantly draws away, both child and after-burden; but great care must be taken to remove it presently, or it will draw forth womb and all; for such is the magnetic virtue of this stone that both child and womb follow it as readily as iron doth the load-stone or the load-stone the north star. there are many things that physicians affirm are good in this case; among which are an ass's or horse's hoof, hung near the privities; a piece of red coral hung near the said place. a load-stone helps very much, held in the woman's left hand; or the skin cut off a snake, girt about the middle, next to the skin. these things are mentioned by mizaldus, but setting those things aside, as not so certain, notwithstanding mizaldus quotes them, the following prescriptions are very good to speedy deliverance to women in travail. ( ) a decoction of white wine made in savory, and drank. ( ) take wild tansey, or silver weed, bruise it, and apply to the woman's nostrils. ( ) take date stones, and beat them to powder, and let her take half a drachm of them in white wine at a time. ( ) take parsley and bruise it and press out the juice, and dip a linen cloth in it, and put it so dipped into the mouth of the womb; it will presently cause the child to come away, though it be dead, and it will bring away the after-burden. also the juice of the parsley is a thing of so great virtue (especially stone parsley) that being drank by a woman with child, it cleanseth not only the womb, but also the child in the womb, of all gross humours. ( ) a scruple of castorum in powder, in any convenient liquor, is very good to be taken in such a case, and so also is two or three drops of castorum in any convenient liquor; or eight or nine drops of spirits of myrrh given in any convenient liquor, gives speedy deliverance. ( ) give a woman in such a case another woman's milk to drink; it will cause speedy delivery, and almost without pain. ( ) the juice of leeks, being drunk with warm water, highly operates to cause speedy delivery. ( ) take peony seeds and beat them into a powder, and mix the powder with oil, with which oil anoint the privities of the woman and child; it will give her deliverance speedily, and with less pain than can be imagined. ( ) take a swallow's nest and dissolve it in water, strain it, and drink it warm, it gives delivery with great speed and much ease. note this also in general, that all that move the terms are good for making the delivery easy, such as myrrh, white amber in white wine, or lily water, two scruples or a drachm; or cassia lignea, dittany, each a drachm; cinnamon, half a drachm, saffron, a scruple; give a drachm, or take borax mineral, a drachm, and give it in sack; or take cassia lignea, a drachm; dittany, amber, of each a drachm; cinnamon, borax, of each a drachm and a half; saffron, a scruple, and give her half a drachm; or give her some drops of oil of hazel in convenient liquor; or two or three drops of oil of cinnamon in vervain water. some prepare the secundine thus:--take the navel-string and dry it in an oven, take two drachms of the powder, cinnamon a drachm, saffron half a scruple, with the juice of savin make trochisks; give two drachms; or wash the secundine in wine and bake it in a pot; then wash it in endive water and wine, take half a drachm of it; long pepper, galangal, of each half a drachm; plantain and endive seed, of each half a drachm; lavender seed, four scruples; make a powder, or take laudanum, two drachms; storax, calamite, benzoin, of each half a drachm; musk, ambergris each six grains, make a powder or trochisks for a fume. or use pessaries to provoke the birth; take galbanum dissolved in vinegar, an ounce; myrrh, two drachms, with oil of oat make a pessary. _an ointment for the navel._ take oil of keir, two ounces, juice of savine an ounce, of leeks and mercury, each half an ounce; boil them to the consumption of the juice; add galbanum dissolved in vinegar, half an ounce, myrrh, two drachms, storax liquid a drachm, round bitwort, sowbread, cinnamon, saffron, a drachm, with wax make an ointment and apply it. if the birth be retarded through the weakness of the mother, refresh her by applying wine and soap to the nose, confect. alkermas. diamarg. these things may be applied to help nature in her delivery when the child comes to the birth the right way, and yet the birth be retarded; but if she finds the child comes the wrong way, and that she is not able to deliver the woman as she ought to be, by helping nature, and saving both mother and child (for it is not enough to lay a woman if it might be done any other way with more safety and ease, and less hazard to woman and child), then let her send speedily for the better and more able to help; and not as i once knew a midwife do, who, when a woman she was to deliver had hard labour, rather than a man-midwife should be sent for, undertook to deliver the woman herself (though told it was a man's business), and in her attempting it, brought away the child, but left the head in the mother's womb; and had not a man midwife been presently sent for, the mother had lost her life as well as the child; such persons may rather be termed butchers than midwives. but supposing the woman's labour to be natural, i will next show what the midwife ought to do, in order of her delivery. * * * * * chapter v _of natural labour; what it is and what the midwife is to do in such labour._ section i.--_what natural labour is._ there are four things which denominate a woman's natural labour; the first is, that it be at the full time, for if a woman comes before her time, it cannot be termed natural labour, neither will it be so easy as though she had completed her nine months. the second thing is, that it be speedy, and without any ill accident; for when the time of her birth come, nature is not dilatory in the bringing it forth, without some ill accident intervene, which renders it unnatural. the third is, that the child be alive; for all will grant, that the being delivered of a dead child is very unnatural. the fourth is, that the child come right, for if the position of the child in the womb be contrary to that which is natural, the event will prove it so, by making that which should be a time of life, the death both of the mother and the child. having thus told you what i mean by natural labour, i shall next show how the midwife is to proceed therein, in order to the woman's delivery. when all the foregoing requisites concur, and after the waters be broken of themselves, let there rather a quilt be laid upon the pallet bedstead than a feather bed, having there-on linen and cloths in many folds, with such other things as are necessary, and that may be changed according to the exigency requiring it, so that the woman may not be incommoded with the blood, waters and other filth which are voided in labour. the bed ought to be ordered, that the woman being ready to be delivered, should lie on her back upon it, having her body in a convenient posture; this is, her head and breast a little raised, so that she may be between lying and sitting, for being so placed, she is best capable of breathing, and, likewise, will have more strength to bear her pains than if she lay otherwise, or sunk down in her bed. being so placed, she must spread her thighs abroad, folding her legs a little towards her buttocks, somewhat raised by a little pillow underneath, to the end that her rumps should have more liberty to retire back; and let her feet be stayed against some firm thing; besides this, let her take firm hold of some of the good women attending her, with her hands, that she may the better stay herself during her pains. she being thus placed at her bed, having her midwife at hand, the better to assist as nature may require, let her take courage, and help her pains as best she can, bearing them down when they take her, which she must do by holding her breath, and forcing them as much as possible, in like manner as when she goes to stool, for by such straining, the diaphragm, or midriff, being strongly thrust downward, necessarily forces down the womb and the child in it. in the meantime, let the midwife endeavour to comfort her all she can, exhorting her to bear her labour courageously, telling her it will be quickly over, and that there is no fear but that she will have a speedy delivery. let the midwife also, having no rings on her fingers, anoint them with oil of fresh butter, and therewith dilate gently the inward orifice of the womb putting her finger ends into the entry thereof, and then stretch them one from the other, when her pains take her; by this means endeavouring to help forward the child, and thrusting by little and little, the sides of the orifice towards the hinder part of the child's head, anointing it with fresh butter if it be necessary. when the head of the infant is a little advanced into the inward orifice, the midwife's phrase is:--"it is crowned"; because it girds and surrounds it just as a crown; but when it is so far that the extremities begin to appear without the privy parts, then they say, "the infant is in the passage"; and at this time the woman feels herself as if it were scratched, or pricked with pins, and is ready to imagine that the midwife hurts her, when it is occasioned by the violent distension of those parts and the laceration which sometimes the bigness of the child's head causeth there. when things are in this posture, let the midwife seat herself conveniently to receive the child, which will come quickly, and with her finger ends (which she must be sure to keep close pared) let her endeavour to thrust the crowning of the womb (of which i have spoken before), back over the head of the child, and as soon as it is advanced as far as the ears, or thereabouts, let her take hold of the two sides with her two hands, that when a good pain comes she may quickly draw forth the child, taking care that the navel-string be not entangled about the neck or any part, as sometimes it is, lest thereby the after-burden be pulled with violence, and perhaps the womb also, to which it is fastened, and so either cause her to flood or else break the strings, both which are of bad consequence to the woman, whose delivery may thereby be rendered the more difficult. it must also be carefully observed that the head be not drawn forth straight, but shaking it a little from one side to the other, that the shoulders may sooner and easier take their places immediately after it is past, without losing time, lest the head being past, the child be stopped there by the largeness of the shoulders, and so come in danger of being suffocated and strangled in the passage, as it sometimes happens, for the want of care therein. but as soon as the head is born, if there be need, she may slide her fingers under the armpits, and the rest of the body will follow without any difficulty. as soon as the midwife hath in this manner drawn forth the child, let her put it on one side, lest the blood and water which follows immediately, should do it any injury by running into its mouth and nose, as they would do, if it lay on its back; and so endanger the choking of it. the child being thus born, the next thing requisite is, to bring away the after-burden, but before that let the midwife be very careful to examine whether there be more children in the womb; for sometimes a woman may have twins that expected it not; which the midwife may easily know by the continuance of the pains after the child is born, and the bigness of the mother's belly. but the midwife may be sure of it, if she puts her hand up to the entry of the womb, and finds there another watery gathering, and the child in it presenting to the passage, and if she find it so, she must have a care of going to fetch the after-birth, till the woman be delivered of all the children she is pregnant with. wherefore the first string must be cut, being first tied with a thread three or four times double, and fasten the other end with string to the woman's thighs, to prevent the inconvenience it may cause by hanging between the thighs; and then removing the child already born, she must take care to deliver her of the rest, observing all the circumstances as with the first; after which, it will be necessary to fetch away the after-birth, or births. but of that i shall treat in another section, and first show what is to be done to the new-born infant. sect. ii.--_of the cutting of the child's navel string._ though this is accounted by many but as a trifle, yet great care is to be taken about it, and it shows none of the least art and skill of a midwife to do it as it should be; and that it may be so done, the midwife should observe: ( ) the time. ( ) the place. ( ) the manner. ( ) the event. ( ) the time is, as soon as ever the infant comes out of the womb, whether it brings part of the after-burden with it or not; for sometimes the child brings into the world a piece of the amnios upon its head, and is what mid wives call the _caul_, and ignorantly attribute some extraordinary virtue to the child so born; but this opinion is only the effect of their ignorance; for when a child is born with such a crown (as some call it) upon its brows, it generally betokens weakness and denotes a short life. but to proceed to the matter in hand. as soon as the child comes into the world, it should be considered whether it is weak or strong; and if it be weak, let the midwife gently put back part of the natural and vital blood into the body of the child by its navel; for that recruits a weak child (the vital and natural spirits being communicated by the mother to the child by its navel-string), but if the child be strong, the operation is needless. only let me advise you, that many children that are born seemingly dead, may soon be brought to life again, if you squeeze six or seven drops of blood out of that part of the navel-string which is cut off, and give it to the child inwardly. ( ) as to the place in which it should be cut, that is, whether it should be cut long or short, it is that which authors can scarcely agree in, and which many midwives quarrel about; some prescribing it to be cut at four fingers' breadth, which is, at best, but an uncertain rule, unless all fingers were of one size. it is a received opinion, that the parts adapted to the generation are contracted and dilated according to the cutting of the navel-string, and this is the reason why midwives are generally so kind to their own sex, that they leave a longer part of the navel-string of a male than female, because they would have the males well provided for the encounters of venus; and the reason they give, why they cut that of the female shorter is, because they believe it makes them more acceptable to their husbands. mizaldus was not altogether of the opinion of these midwives, and he, therefore, ordered the navel string to be cut long both in male and female children; for which he gives the following reason, that the instrument of generation follows the proportion of it; and therefore, if it be cut too short in a female, it will be a hindrance to her having children. i will not go about to contradict the opinions of mizaldus; these, experience has made good:--that one is, that if the navel-string of a child, after it be cut, be suffered to touch the ground, the child will never hold its water, either sleeping or waking, but will be subjected to an involuntary making of water all its lifetime. the other is, that a piece of a child's navel-string carried about one, so that it touch his skin, defends him that wears it from the falling sickness and convulsions. ( ) as to the manner it must be cut, let the midwife take a brown thread, four or five times double, of an ell long, or thereabouts, tied with a single knot at each of the ends, to prevent their entangling; and with this thread so accommodated (which the woman must have in readiness before the woman's labour, as also a good pair of scissors, that no time may be lost) let her tie the string within an inch of the belly with a double knot, and turning about the end of the thread, let her tie two more on the other side of the string, reiterating it again, if it be necessary; then let her cut off the navel-string another inch below the ligatures, towards the after-birth, so that there only remains but two inches of the string, in the midst of which will be the knot we speak of, which must be so close knit, as not to suffer a drop of blood to squeeze out of the vessels, but care must be taken, not to knit it so strait, as to out it in two, and therefore the thread must be pretty thick and pretty strait cut, it being better too strait than too loose; for some children have miserably lost their lives, with all their blood, before it was discovered, because the navel-string was not well tied, therefore great care must be taken that no blood squeeze through; for if there do, a new knot must be made with the rest of the string. you need not fear to bind the navel-string very hard because it is void of sense, and that part which you leave, falls off in a very few days, sometimes in six or seven, or sooner, but never tarries longer than eight or nine. when you have thus cut the navel-string, then take care the piece that falls off touch not the ground, for the reason i told you mizaldus gave, which experience has justified. ( ) the last thing i mentioned, was the event or consequence, or what follows cutting the navel-string. as soon as it is cut, apply a little cotton or lint to the place to keep it warm, lest the cold enter into the body of the child, which it most certainly will do, if you have not bound it hard enough. if the lint or cotton you apply to it, be dipped in oil of roses, it will be the better, and then put another small rag three or four times double upon the belly; upon the top of all, put another small bolster, and then swathe it with a linen swathe, four fingers broad, to keep it steady, lest by moving too much, or from being continually stirred from side to side, it comes to fall off before the navel-string, which you left remaining, is fallen off. it is the usual custom of midwives to put a piece of burnt rag to it, which we commonly call tinder; but i would rather advise them to put a little ammoniac to it, because of its drying qualities. sect. iii.--_how to bring away the after-burden._ a woman cannot be said to be fairly delivered, though the child be born, till the after-burden be also taken from her; herein differing from most animals, who, when they have brought forth their young, cast forth nothing else but some water, and the membranes which contained them. but women have an after-labour, which sometimes proves more dangerous than the first; and how to bring it safely away without prejudice to her, shall be my business to show in this section. as soon as the child is born, before the midwife either ties or cuts the navel-string, lest the womb should close, let her take the string and wind it once or twice about one or two fingers on her left hand joined together, the better to hold it, with which she may draw it moderately, and with the right hand, she may only take a single hold of it, above the left, near the privities, drawing likewise with that very gently, resting the while the forefinger of the same hand, extended and stretched forth along the string towards the entrance of the vagina, always observing, for the greater facility, to draw it from the side where the burden cleaves least; for in so doing, the rest will separate the better; and special care must be taken that it be not drawn forth with too much violence, lest by breaking the string near the burden, the midwife be obliged to put the whole hand into the womb to deliver the woman; and she need to be a very skilful person that undertakes it, lest the womb, to which the burden is sometimes very strongly fastened, be drawn away with it, as has sometimes happened. it is, therefore, best to use such remedies as may assist nature. and here take notice, that what brings away the birth, will also bring away the after-birth. and therefore, for effecting this work, i will lay down the following rules. ( ) use the same means of bringing away the after-birth, that you made use of to bring away the birth; for the same care and circumspection are needful now that there were then. ( ) considering that the labouring woman cannot but be much spent by what she has already undergone in bringing forth the infant, be therefore sure to give her something to comfort her. and in this case good jelly broths, also a little wine and toast in it, and other comforting things, will be necessary. ( ) a little hellebore in powder, to make her sneeze, is in this case very proper. ( ) tansey, and the stone aetites, applied as before directed, are also of good use in this case. ( ) if you take the herb vervain, and either boil it in wine, or a syrup with the juice of it, which you may do by adding to it double its weight of sugar (having clarified the juice before you boil it), a spoonful of that given to the woman is very efficacious to bring away the secundine; and feverfew and mugwort have the same operation taken as the former. ( ) alexanders[ ] boiled in wine, and the wine drank, also sweet servile, sweet cicily, angelica roots, and musterwort, are excellent remedies in this case. ( ) or, if this fail, the smoke of marigolds, received up a woman's privities by a funnel, have been known to bring away the after-birth, even when the midwife let go her hold. ( ) boil mugwort in water till it be very soft, then take it out, and apply it in the manner of a poultice to the navel of the labouring woman, and it instantly brings away the birth. but special care must be taken to remove it as soon as they come away, lest by its long tarrying it should draw away the womb also. sect. iv.--_of laborious and difficult labours and how the midwife is to proceed therein._ there are three sorts of bad labours, all painful and difficult, but not all properly unnatural. it will be necessary, therefore, to distinguish these. the _first_ of these labours is that when the mother and child suffer very much extreme pain and difficulty, even though the child come right; and this is distinguishably called the laborious labour. the _second_ is that which is difficult and differs not much from the former, except that, besides those extraordinary pains, it is generally attended with some unhappy accident, which, by retarding the birth, causes the difficulty; but these difficulties being removed, it accelerates the birth, and hastens the delivery. some have asked, what is the reason that women bring forth their children with so much pain? i answer, the sense of feeling is distributed to the whole body by the nerves, and the mouth of the womb being so narrow, that it must of necessity be dilated at the time of the woman's delivery, the dilating thereof stretches the nerves, and from thence comes the pain. and therefore the reason why some women have more pain in their labour than others, proceeds from their having the mouth of the matrix more full of nerves than others. the best way to remove those difficulties that occasion hard pains and labour, is to show first from whence they proceed. now the difficulty of labour proceeds either from the mother, or child, or both. from the mother, by reason of the indisposition of the body, or from some particular part only, and chiefly the womb, as when the woman is weak, and the mother is not active to expel the burden, or from weakness, or disease, or want of spirits; or it may be from strong passion of the mind with which she was once possessed; she may also be too young, and so may have the passage too narrow; or too old, and then, if it be her first child, because her pains are too dry and hard, and cannot be easily dilated, as happens also to them which are too lean; likewise those who are small, short or deformed, as crooked women who have not breath enough to help their pains, and to bear them down, persons that are crooked having sometimes the bones of the passage not well shaped. the colic also hinders labour, by preventing the true pains; and all great and active pains, as when the woman is taken with a great and violent fever, a great flooding, frequent convulsions, bloody flux, or any other great distemper. also, excrements retained cause great difficulty, and so does a stone in the bladder: or when the bladder is full of urine, without being able to void it, or when the woman is troubled with great and painful piles. it may also be from the passages, when the membranes are thick, the orifice too narrow, and the neck of the womb not sufficiently open, the passages strained and pressed by tumours in the adjacent parts, or when the bones are too firm, and will not open, which very much endangers the mother and the child; or when the passages are not slippery, by reason of the waters having broken too soon, or membranes being too thin. the womb may also be out of order with regard to its bad situation or conformation, having its neck too narrow, hard and callous, which may easily be so naturally, or may come by accident, being many times caused by a tumour, an imposthume, ulcer or superfluous flesh. as to hard labour occasioned by the child, it is when the child happens to stick to a mole, or when it is so weak it cannot break the membranes; or if it be too big all over, or in the head only; or if the natural vessels are twisted about its neck; when the belly is hydropsical; or when it is monstrous, having two heads, or joined to another child, also, when the child is dead or so weak that it can contribute nothing to its birth; likewise when it comes wrong, or there are two or more. and to all these various difficulties there is oftentimes one more, and that is, the ignorance of the midwife, who for want of understanding in her business, hinders nature in her work instead of helping her. having thus looked into the cause of hard labour, i will now show the industrious midwife how she may minister some relief to the labouring woman under these difficult circumstances. but it will require judgment and understanding in the midwife, when she finds a woman in difficult labour, to know the particular obstruction, or cause thereof, that so a suitable remedy may be applied; as for instance, when it happens by the mother's being too young and too narrow, she must be gently treated, and the passages anointed with oil, hog's lard, or fresh butter, to relax and dilate them the easier, lest there should happen a rupture of any part when the child is born; for sometimes the peritoneum breaks, with the skin from the privities to the fundament. but if the woman be in years with her first child, let her lower parts be anointed to mollify the inward orifice, which in such a case being more hard and callous, does not easily yield to the distention of labour, which is the true cause why such women are longer in labour, and also why their children, being forced against the inward orifice of the womb (which, as i have said, is a little callous) are born with great bumps and bruises on their heads. those women who are very small and mis-shaped, should not be put to bed, at least until the waters are broken, but rather kept upright and assisted to walk about the chamber, by being supported under the arms; for by that means, they will breathe more freely, and mend their pains better than on the bed, because there they lie all of a heap. as for those that are very lean, and have hard labour from that cause, let them moisten the parts with oil and ointments, to make them more smooth and slippery, that the head of the infant, and the womb be not so compressed and bruised by the hardness of the mother's bones which form the passage. if the cause be weakness, she ought to be strengthened, the better to support her pains, to which end give her good jelly broths, and a little wine with a toast in it. if she fears her pains, let her be comforted, assuring her that she will not endure any more, but be delivered in a little time. but if her pains be slow and small, or none at all, they must be provoked by frequent and pretty strong clysters; let her walk about her chamber, so that the weight of the child may help them forward. if she flood or have strong convulsions she must then be helped by a speedy delivery; the operation i shall relate in this section of unnatural labours. if she be costive, let her use clysters, which may also help to dispel colic, at those times very injurious because attended with useless pains, and because such bear not downward, and so help not to forward the birth. if she find an obstruction or stoppage of the urine, by reason of the womb's bearing too much on the bladder, let her lift up her belly a little with her hands, and try if by that she receives any benefit; if she finds she does not, it will be necessary to introduce a catheter into her bladder, and thereby draw forth her urine. if the difficulty be from the ill posture of the woman, let her be placed otherwise, in a posture more suitable and convenient for her; also if it proceeds from indispositions of the womb, as from its oblique situation, etc., it must be remedied, as well as it can be, by the placing her body accordingly; or, if it be a vicious conformation, having the neck too hard, too callous, too straight, it must be anointed with oil and ointments, as before directed. if the membranes be so strong that the waters do not break in due time, they may be broken with the fingers, if the midwife be first well assured that the child is come forward into the passage, and ready to follow presently after; or else, by the breaking of the waters too soon, the child may be in danger of remaining dry a long time; to supply which defect, you may moisten the parts with fomentations, decoctions, and emollient oils; which yet is not half so well as when nature does her work in her own time, with the ordinary slime and waters. the membranes sometimes do press forth with the waters, three or four fingers' breadth out of the body before the child resembling a bladder full of water; but there is no great danger in breaking them, if they be not already broken; for when the case is so, the child is always in readiness to follow, being in the passage, but let the midwife be very careful not to pull it with her hand, lest the after-burden be thereby loosened before its time, for it adheres thereto very strongly. if the navel-string happen to come first, it must presently be put up again, and kept so, if possible, or otherwise, the woman must be immediately delivered. but if the after-burden should come first, it must not be put up again by any means; for the infant having no further occasion for it, it would be but an obstacle if it were put up; in this case, it must be cut off, having tied the navel-string, and afterwards draw forth the child with all speed that may be, lest it be suffocated. sect. v.--_of women labouring of a dead child._ when the difficulty of labour arises from a dead child, it is a great danger to a mother and great care ought to be taken therein; but before anything be done, the midwife ought to be well assured that the child is dead indeed, which may be known by these signs. ( ) the breast suddenly slacks, or falls flat, or bags down. ( ) a great coldness possesses the belly of the mother, especially about the navel. ( ) her urine is thick, with a filthy stinking settling at the bottom. ( ) no motion of the child can be perceived; for the trial whereof, let the midwife put her hand into warm water, and lay it upon the belly, for that, if it is alive, will make it stir. ( ) she is very subject to dreams of dead men, and affrighted therewith. ( ) she has extraordinary longings to eat such things as are contrary to nature. ( ) her breath stinks, though not used so to do. ( ) when she turns herself in her bed, the child sways that way like a lump of lead. these things being carefully observed, the midwife may make a judgment whether the child be alive or dead, especially if the woman take the following prescription:--"take half a pint of white wine and burn it, and add thereto half an ounce of cinnamon, but no other spices whatever, and when she has drunk it, if her travailing pains come upon her, the child is certainly dead; but if not, the child may possibly be either weak or sick, but not dead. this will bring her pains upon her if it be dead, and will refresh the child and give her ease if it be living; for cinnamon refresheth and strengtheneth the child. now, if upon trial it be found the child is dead, let the mother do all she can to forward the delivery, because a dead child can in no wise be helpful therein. it will be necessary, therefore, that she take some comfortable things to prevent her fainting, by reason of the putrid vapours arising from the dead child. and in order to her delivery let her take the following herbs boiled in white wine (or at least as many of them as you can get), viz., dittany, betony, pennyroyal, sage, feverfew, centaury, ivy leaves and berries. let her also take sweet basil in powder, and half a drachm at a time in white wine; let her privities also be anointed with the juice of the garden tansey. or take the tansey in the summer when it can most plentifully be had, and before it runs up to flower, and having bruised it well, boil it in oil until the juice of it be consumed. if you set it in the sun, after you have mixed it with oil, it will be more effectual. this, an industrious midwife, who would be prepared against all events, ought to have always by her. as to the manner of her delivery, the same methods must be used as are mentioned in the section of natural labour. and here again, i cannot but commend the stone aetites, held near the privities, whose magnetic virtue renders it exceedingly necessary on this occasion, for it draws the child any way with the same facility that the load-stone draws iron. let the midwife also make a strong decoction of hyssop with water, and let the woman drink it very hot, and it will in a little time bring away the dead child. if, as soon as she is delivered of the dead child, you are in doubt that part of the afterbirth is left behind in the body (for in such cases as these many times it rots, and comes away piece-meal), let her continue drinking the same decoction until her body be cleansed. a decoction made of herbs, muster-wort, used as you did the decoction of hyssop, works the effect. let the midwife also take the roots of pollodum and stamp them well; warm them a little and bind them on the sides of her feet, and it will soon bring away the child either dead or alive. the following medicines also are such as stir up the expulsive faculty, but in this case they must be stronger, because the motion of the child ceases. take savine, round birthwort, trochisks of myrrh, castor, cinnamon and saffron, each half a drachm; make a powder, give a drachm. or she may purge first, and then apply an emollient, anointing her about the womb with oil of lilies, sweet almonds, camomiles, hen and goose-grease. also foment to get out the child, with a decoction of mercury, orris, wild cucumbers, saecus, broom flowers. then anoint the privities and loins with ointment of sow-bread. or, take coloquintida, agaric, birthwort, of each a drachm; make a powder, add ammoniacum dissolved in wine, ox-gall, each two drachms. or make a fume with an ass's hoof burnt, or gallianum, or castor, and let it be taken in with a funnel. to take away pains and strengthen the parts, foment with the decoction of mugwort, mallows, rosemary, with wood myrtle, st. john's wort, each half an ounce, spermaceti two drachms, deer's suet, an ounce; with wax make an ointment. or take wax six ounces, spermaceti an ounce; melt them, dip flux therein, and lay it all over her belly. if none of these things will do, the last remedy is to try surgery, and then the midwife ought without delay to send for an expert and able man-midwife, to deliver her by manual operation, of which i shall treat more at large in the next chapter. footnotes: [ ] horse-parsley. * * * * * chapter vi _of unnatural labour._ in showing the duty of a midwife, when the child-bearing woman's labour is unnatural, it will be requisite to show, in the first place, what i mean by unnatural labour, for that women do bring forth in pain and sorrow is natural and common to all. therefore, that which i call unnatural is, when the child comes to the birth in a contrary posture to that which nature ordained, and in which the generality of the children come into the world. the right and natural birth is when the child comes with its head first; and yet this is too short a definition of a natural birth; for if any part of the head but the crown comes first, so that the body follows not in a straight line, it is a wrong and difficult birth, even though the head comes first. therefore, if the child comes with its feet first, or with the side across, it is quite contrary to nature, or to speak more plainly, that which i call unnatural. now, there are four general ways a child may come wrong. ( ) when any of the foreparts of the body first present themselves. ( ) when by an unhappy transposition, any of the hinder parts of the body first present themselves. ( ) when either of the sides, or, ( ) the feet present themselves first. to these, the different wrong postures that a child can present itself in, may be reduced. section i.--_how to deliver a woman of a dead child by manual operation._ when manual operation is necessary, let the operator acquaint the woman of the absolute necessity there is for such an operation; and that, as the child has already lost its life, there is no other way left for the saving hers. let him also inform her, for her encouragement, that he doubts not, with the divine blessing, to deliver her safely, and that the pains arising therefrom will not be so great as she fears. then let him stir up the woman's pains by giving her some sharp clyster, to excite her throes to bear down, and bring forth the child. and if this prevails not, let him proceed with the manual operation. first, therefore, let her be placed across the bed that he may operate the easier; and let her lie on her back, with her hips a little higher than her head, or at least the body equally placed, when it is necessary to put back or turn the infant to give it a better posture. being thus situated, she must fold her legs so as her heels be towards her buttocks, and her thighs spread, and so held by a couple of strong persons, there must be others also to support her under her arms, that the body may not slide down when the child is drawn forth; for which sometimes great strength is required. let the sheets and blankets cover her thighs for decency's sake, and with respect to the assistants, and also to prevent her catching cold; the operator herein governing himself as well with respect to his convenience, and the facility and surety of the operation, as to other things. then let him anoint the entrance to the womb with oil or fresh butter, if necessary, that with so more ease he may introduce his hand, which must also be anointed, and having by the signs above mentioned, received satisfaction that the child is dead, he must do his endeavours to fetch it away as soon as he possibly can. if the child offer the head first, he must gently put it back until he hath liberty to introduce his hand quite into the womb; then sliding it along, under the belly, to find the feet, let him draw it forth by them, being very careful to keep the head from being locked into the passage; and that it be not separated from the body; which may be effected the more easily, because the child being very rotten and putrefied, the operator need not be so mindful to keep the breast and face downwards as he is in living births. but if notwithstanding all these precautions, by reason of the child's putrefaction, the head should be separated and left behind in the womb, it must be drawn forth according to the directions which have been given in the third section of this chapter. but when the head, coming first, is so far advanced that it cannot well be put back, it is better to draw it forth so, than to torment the woman too much by putting it back to turn it, and bring it by the feet; but the head being a part round and slippery, it may also happen that the operator cannot take hold of it with his fingers by reason of its moisture, nor put them up to the side of it, because the passage is filled with its bigness; he must, therefore, take a proper instrument, and put it up as far as he can without violence, between the womb and the child's head (for the child being dead before, there can be no danger in the operation), and let him fasten it there, giving it hold upon one of the bones of the skull, that it may not slide, and after it is well fixed in the head, he may therewith draw it forth, keeping the ends of the fingers of his left hand flat upon the opposite side, the better to help to disengage it, and by wagging it a little, to conduct it directly out of the passage, until the head be quite born; and then, taking hold of it with his hands only, the shoulders being drawn into the passage, and so sliding the fingers of both hands under the armpits, the child may be quite delivered, and then the after-burden fetched, to finish the operation, being careful not to pluck the navel-string too hard lest it break, as often happens when it is corrupt. if the dead child comes with the arm up to the shoulders so extremely swelled that the woman must suffer too great violence to have it put back, it is then (being first well assured the child is dead) best to take it off by the shoulder joints, by twisting three or four times about, which is very easily done by reason of the softness and tenderness of the body. after the arm is so separated, and no longer possesses the passage, the operator will have more room to put up his hand into the womb, to fetch the child by the feet and bring it away. but although the operator is sure the child is dead in the womb, yet he must not therefore presently use instruments because they are never to be used but when hands are not sufficient, and there is no other remedy to prevent the woman's danger, or to bring forth the child any other way; and the judicious operator will choose that way which is the least hazardous, and most safe. sect. ii.--_how a woman must be delivered when the child's feet come first._ there is nothing more obvious to those whose business it is to assist labouring women, than that the several unnatural postures in which children present themselves at the birth are the occasions of most of the bad labours and ill accidents that happen to them in that condition. and since midwives are often obliged, because of their unnatural situations, to draw the children forth by the feet, i conceive it to be most proper first to show how a child must be brought forth that presents itself in that posture, because it will be a guide to several of the rest. i know indeed in this case it is the advice of several authors to change the figure, and place the head so that it may present to the birth, and this counsel i should be very much inclined to follow, could they but also show how it may be done. but it will appear very difficult, if not impossible to be performed, if we would avoid the danger that by such violent agitations both the mother and the child must be put into, and therefore my opinion is, that it is better to draw forth by the feet, when it presents itself in that posture, than to venture a worse accident by turning it. as soon, therefore, as the waters are broken, and it is known that the child come thus and that the womb is open enough to admit the midwife's or operator's hand into it, or else by anointing the passage with oil or hog's grease, to endeavour to dilate it by degrees, using her fingers to this purpose, spreading them one from the other, after they are together entered, and continue to do so until they be sufficiently dilated, then taking care that her nails be well pared, no rings on her fingers and her hands well anointed with oil or fresh butter, and the woman placed in the manner directed in the former section, let her gently introduce her hand into the entrance of the womb, where finding the child's feet, let her draw it forth in the manner i shall presently direct; only let her first see whether it presents one foot or both, and if but one foot, she ought to consider whether it be the right foot or the left, and also in what fashion it comes; for by that means she will soon come to know where to find the other, which as soon as she knows and finds, let her draw it forth with the other; but of this she must be specially careful, viz., that the second be not the foot of another child; for if so, it may be of the utmost consequence, for she may sooner split both mother and child, than draw them forth. but this may be easily prevented if she but slide the hand up by the first leg and thigh to the waist, and there finding both thighs joined together, and descending from one and the same body. and this is also the best means to find the other foot, when it comes but with one. as soon as the midwife has found both the child's feet, she may draw them forth, and holding them together, may bring them little by little in this manner, taking afterwards hold of the arms and thighs, as soon as she can come at them, drawing them so till the hips come forth. while this is doing, let her observe to wrap the parts in a single cloth, so that her hands being always greasy slide not in the infant's body, which is very slippery, because of the vicious humours which are all over it; which being done, she may take hold under the hips, so as to draw it forth to the beginning of the breast; and let her on both sides with her hand bring down the child's hand along its body, which she may easily find; and then let her take care that the belly and face of the child be downwards; for if they should be upwards, there would be the same danger of its being stopped by the chin, over the share-bone, and therefore, if it be not so she must turn it to that posture; which may easily be done if she takes a proper hold of the body when the breasts and arms are forth, in the manner we have said, and draw it, turning it in proportion on that side it most inclines to, till it be turned with the face downwards, and so, having brought it to the shoulders, let her lose no time, desiring the woman at the same time to bear down, that so drawing the head at that instant may take its place, and not be stopped in the passage, though the midwife takes all possible care to prevent it. and when this happens, she must endeavour to draw forth the child by the shoulders (taking care that she separate not the body from the head, as i have known it done by the midwife), discharging it by little and little from the bones in the passage with the fingers of each hand, sliding them on each side opposite the other, sometimes above and sometimes under, till the work be ended; endeavouring to dispatch it as soon as possible, lest the child be suffocated, as it will unavoidably be, if it remain long in that posture; and this being well and carefully effected, she may soon after fetch away the after-birth, as i have before directed. sect. iii.--_how to bring away the head of the child, when separated from the body, and left behind in the womb._ though the utmost care be taken in bringing away the child by the feet, yet if it happen to be dead, it is sometimes so putrid and corrupt, that with the least pull the head separates from the body and remains alone in the womb, and cannot be brought away but with a manual operation and great difficulty, it being extremely slippery, by reason of the place where it is, and from the roundness of its figure, on which no hold can well be taken; and so very great is the difficulty in this case that sometimes two or three very able practitioners in midwifery have, one after the other, left the operation unfinished, as not able to effect it, after the utmost industry, skill and strength; so that the woman, not being able to be delivered, perished. to prevent which fatal accident, let the following operation be observed. when the infant's head separates from the body, and is left alone behind, whether owing to putrefaction or otherwise, let the operator immediately, without any delay, while the womb is yet open, direct up his right hand to the mouth of the head (for no other hole can there be had), and having found it let him put one or two of his fingers into it, and the thumb under its chin; then let him draw it little by little, holding it by the jaws; but if that fails, as sometimes it will when putrefied, then let him pull off the right hand and slide up his left, with which he must support the head, and with the right hand let him take a narrow instrument called a _crochet_, but let it be strong and with a single branch, which he must guide along the inside of his hand, with the point of it towards it, for fear of hurting the womb; and having thus introduced it, let him turn it towards the head to strike either in an eyehole, or the hole of the ear, or behind the head, or else between the sutures, as he finds it most convenient and easy; and then draw forth the head so fastened with the said instrument, still helping to conduct it with his left hand; but when he hath brought it near the passage, being strongly fastened to the instrument, let him remember to draw forth his hand, that the passage not being filled with it, may be larger and easier, keeping still a finger or two on the side of the head, the better to disengage it. there is also another method, with more ease and less hardship than the former; let the operator take a soft fillet or linen slip, of about four fingers' breadth, and the length of three quarters of an ell or thereabouts, taking the two ends with the left hand, and the middle with the right, and let him so put it up with his right, as that it may be beyond the head, to embrace it as a sling does a stone, and afterwards draw forth the fillet by the two ends together; it will thus be easily drawn forth, the fillet not hindering the least passage, because it takes up little or no space. when the head is fetched out of the womb care must be taken that not the least part of it be left behind, and likewise to cleanse the womb of the after-burden, if yet remaining. if the burden be wholly separated from the side of the womb, that ought to be first brought away, because it may also hinder the taking hold of the head. but if it still adheres to the womb, it must not be meddled with till the head be brought away; for if one should endeavour to separate it from the womb, it might then cause a flooding, which would be augmented by the violence of the operation, the vessels to which it is joined remaining for the most part open as long as the womb is distended, which the head causeth while it is retained in it, and cannot be closed until this strange body be voided, and this it doth by contracting and compressing itself together, as has been more fully before explained. besides, the after-birth remaining thus cleaving to the womb during the operation, prevents it from receiving easily either bruise or hurt. sect. iv.--_how to deliver a woman when the child's head is presented to the birth._ though some may think it a natural labour when the child's head come first, yet, if the child's head present not the right way, even that is an unnatural labour; and therefore, though the head comes first, yet if it be the side of the head instead of the crown, it is very dangerous both to the mother and the child, for the child's neck would be broken, if born in that manner, and by how much the mother's pains continue to bear the child, which is impossible unless the head be rightly placed, the more the passages are stopped. therefore, as soon as the position of the child is known, the woman must be laid with all speed, lest the child should advance further than this vicious posture, and thereby render it more difficult to thrust it back, which must be done, in order to place the head right in the passage, as it ought to be. to this purpose, therefore, place the woman so that her buttocks may be a little higher than her head and shoulders, causing her to lean a little to the opposite side to the child's ill posture; then let the operator slide up his hand, well anointed with oil, by the side of the child's head; to bring it right gently, with his fingers between the head and the womb; but if the head be so engaged that it cannot be done that way, he must then put up his hand to the shoulders, that by so thrusting them back a little into the womb, sometimes on the one side, and sometimes on the other, he may, little by little, give a natural position. i confess it would be better if the operator could put back the child by its shoulders with both hands, but the head takes up so much room, that he will find much ado to put up one, with which he must perform this operation, and, with the help of the finger-ends of the other hand put forward the child's birth as in natural labour. some children present their face first, having their hands turned back, in which posture it is extremely difficult for a child to be born; and if it continues so long, the face will be swelled and become black and blue, so that it will at first appear monstrous, which is occasioned as well by the compression of it in that place, as by the midwife's fingers in handling it, in order to place it in a better posture. but this blackness will wear away in three or four days' time, by anointing it often with oil of sweet almonds. to deliver the birth, the same operation must be used as in the former, when the child comes first with the side of the head; only let the midwife or operator work very gently to avoid as much as possible the bruising the face. sect. v.--_how to deliver a woman when the child presents one or both hands together with the head._ sometimes the infant will present some other part together with its head; which if it does, it is usually with one or both of its hands; and this hinders the birth, because the hands take up part of that passage which is little enough for the head alone; besides that, when this happens, they generally cause the head to lean on one side; and therefore this position may be well styled unnatural. when the child presents thus, the first thing to be done after it is perceived, must be, to prevent it from coming down more, or engaging further in the passage; and therefore, the operator having placed the woman on the bed, with her head lower than her buttocks, must guide and put back the infant's hand with his own as much as may be, or both of them, if they both come down, to give way to the child's head; and this being done, if the head be on one side, it must be brought into its natural posture in the middle of the passage, that it may come in a straight line, and then proceed as directed in the foregoing section. sect. vi.--_how a woman ought to be delivered, when the hands and feet of the infant come together._ there are none but will readily grant, that when the hands and feet of an infant present together, the labour must be unnatural, because it is impossible a child should be born in that manner. in this case, therefore, when the midwife guides her hand towards the orifice of the womb she will perceive only many fingers close together, and if it be not sufficiently dilated, it will be a good while before the hands and feet will be exactly distinguished; for they are sometimes so shut and pressed together, that they seem to be all of one and the same shape, but where the womb is open enough to introduce the hand into it, she will easily know which are the hands and which are the feet; and having taken particular notice thereof, let her slide up her hand and presently direct it towards the infant's breast, which she will find very near, and then let her gently thrust back the body towards the bottom of the womb, leaving the feet in the same place where she found them. and then, having placed the woman in a convenient posture, that is to say, her buttocks a little raised above her breast (and which situation ought also to be observed when the child is to be put back into the womb), let the midwife afterwards take hold of the child by the feet, and draw it forth, as is directed in the second section. this labour, though somewhat troublesome, yet is much better than when the child presents only its hands; for then the child must be quite turned about before it can be drawn forth; but in this they are ready, presenting themselves, and there is little to do, but to lift and thrust back the upper part of the body, which is almost done of itself, by drawing it by the feet alone. i confess there are many authors that have written of labours, who would have all wrong births reduced to a natural figure, which is, to turn it that it may come with the head first. but those that have written thus, are such as never understood the practical part, for if they had the least experience therein, they would know that it is impossible; at least, if it were to be done, that violence must necessarily be used in doing it, that would probably be the death both of mother and child in the operation. i would, therefore, lay down as a general rule, that whenever a child presents itself wrong to the birth, in what posture so ever, from the shoulders to the feet, it is the way, and soonest done, to draw it out by the feet; and that it is better to search for them, if they do not present themselves, than to try and put them in their natural posture, and place the head foremost; for the great endeavours necessary to be used in turning the child in the womb, do so much weaken both the mother and the child, that there remains not afterwards strength enough to commit the operation to the work of nature; for, usually, the woman has no more throes or pains fit for labour after she has been so wrought upon; for which reason it would be difficult and tedious at best; and the child, by such an operation made very weak, would be in extreme danger of perishing before it could be born. it is, therefore, much better in these cases to bring it away immediately by the feet, searching for them as i have already directed, when they do not present themselves; by which the mother will be prevented a tedious labour, and the child be often brought alive into the world, who otherwise could hardly escape death. sect. vii.--_how a woman should be delivered that has twins, which present themselves in different postures._ we have already spoken something of the birth of twins in the chapter of natural labour, for it is not an unnatural labour barely to have twins, provided they come in the right position to the birth. but when they present themselves in different postures, they come properly under the denomination of unnatural labours; and if when one child presents itself in a wrong figure, it makes the labour dangerous and unnatural, it must needs make it much more so when there are several, and render it not only more painful to the mother and children, but to the operator also; for they often trouble each other and hinder both their births. besides which the womb is so filled with them, that the operator can hardly introduce his hand without much violence, which he must do, if they are to be turned or thrust back, to give them a better position. when a woman is pregnant with two children, they rarely present to the birth together, the one being generally more forward than the other; and that is the reason that but one is felt, and that many times the midwife knows not that there are twins until the first is born, and that she is going to fetch away the afterbirth. in the first chapter, wherein i treated of natural labour, i have showed how a woman should be delivered of twins, presenting themselves both right; and before i close the chapter of unnatural labour, it only remains that i show what ought to be done when they either both come wrong or one of them only, as for the most part it happens; the first generally coming right, and the second with the feet forward, or in some worse posture. in such a case, the birth of the first must be hastened as much as possible and to make way for the second, which is best brought away by the feet, without endeavouring to place it right, because it has been, as well as the mother, already tired and weakened by the birth of the first, and there would be greater danger to its death, than likelihood of its coming out of the womb that way. but if, when the first is born naturally, the second should likewise offer its head to the birth, it would then be best to leave nature to finish what she has so well begun, and if nature should be too slow in her work, some of those things mentioned in the fourth chapter to accelerate the birth, may be properly enough applied, and if, after that, the second birth should be delayed, let a manual operation be delayed no longer, but the woman being properly placed, as has been before directed, let the operator direct his hand gently into the womb to find the feet, and so draw forth the second child, which will be the more easily effected, because there is a way made sufficiently by the birth of the first; and if the waters of the second child be not broke, as it often happens, yet, intending to bring it by its feet, he need not scruple to break the membranes with his fingers; for though, when the birth of a child is left to the operation of nature, it is necessary that the waters should break of themselves, yet when the child is brought out of the womb by art, there is no danger in breaking them, nay, on the contrary it becomes necessary; for without the waters are broken, it will be almost impossible to turn the child. but herein principally lies the care of the operator, that he be not deceived, when either the hands or feet of both children offer themselves together to the birth; in this case he ought well to consider the operation, of whether they be not joined together, or any way monstrous, and which part belongs to one child and which to the other; so that they may be fetched one after the other, and not both together, as may be, if it were not duly considered, taking the right foot of one and the left of the other, and so drawing them together, as if they both belonged to one body, because there is a left and a right, by which means it would be impossible to deliver them. but a skilful operator will easily prevent this, if, after having found two or three of several children presenting together in the passage, and taking aside two of the forwardest, a right and a left, and sliding his arm along the legs and thighs up to the wrist, if forward, or to the buttocks, if backwards, he finds they both belong to one body; of which being thus assured, he may begin to draw forth the nearest, without regarding which is the strongest or weakest, bigger or less, living or dead, having first put aside that part of the other child which offers to have the more way, and so dispatch the first as soon as may be, observing the same rules as if there were but one, that is keeping the breast and face downwards, with every circumstance directed in that section where the child comes with its feet first, and not fetch the burden till the second child is born. and therefore, when the operator hath drawn forth one child, he must separate it from the burden, having tied and cut the navel-string, and then fetch the other by the feet in the same manner, and afterwards bring away the after-burden with the two strings as hath been before showed. if the children present any other part but the feet, the operator may follow the same method as directed in the foregoing section, where the several unnatural positions are fully treated of. * * * * * chapter vii _directions for child-bearing women in their lying-in._ section i.--_how a woman newly delivered ought to be ordered._ as soon as she is laid in her bed, let her be placed in it conveniently for ease and rest, which she stands in great need of to recover herself of the great fatigue she underwent during her travail, and that she may lie the more easily let her hands and body be a little raised, that she may breathe more freely, and cleanse the better, especially of that blood which then comes away, that so it may not clot, which being retained causeth great pain. having thus placed her in bed, let her take a draught of burnt white wine, having a drachm of spermaceti melted therein. the best vervain is also singularly good for a woman in this condition, boiling it in what she either eats or drinks, fortifying the womb so exceedingly that it will do it more good in two days, than any other thing does in double that time, having no offensive taste. and this is no more than what she stands in need of; for her lower parts being greatly distended until the birth of the infant, it is good to endeavour the prevention of an inflammation there. let there also be outwardly applied, all over the bottom of her belly and privities, the following anodyne and cataplasm:--take two ounces of oil of sweet almonds, and two or three new laid eggs, yolks and whites, stirring them together in an earthen pipkin over hot embers till they come to the consistence of a poultice; which being spread upon a cloth, must be applied to those parts indifferently warm, having first taken away the closures (which were put to her presently after her delivery), and likewise such clots of blood as were then left. let this lie on for five or six hours, and then renew it again when you see cause. great care ought to be taken at first, that if her body be very weak, she be not kept too hot, for extremity of heat weakens nature and dissolves the strength; and whether she be weak or strong, be sure that no cold air comes near her at first; for cold is an enemy to the spermatic parts; if it get into the womb it increases the after pains, causes swelling in the womb and hurts the nerves. as to her diet, let it be hot, and let her eat but little at a time. let her avoid the light for the first three days, and longer if she be weak, for her labour weakens her eyes exceedingly, by a harmony between the womb and them. let her also avoid great noise, sadness and trouble of mind. if the womb be foul, which may easily be perceived by the impurity of the blood (which will then easily come away in clots or stinking, or if you suspect any of the after-burden to be left behind, which may sometimes happen), make her drink a feverfew, mugwort, pennyroyal and mother of thyme, boiled in white wine and sweetened with sugar. panado and new laid eggs are the best meat for her at first, of which she may eat often, but not too much at a time. and let her nurse use cinnamon in all her meats and drinks, for it generally strengthens the womb. let her stir as little as may be until after the fifth, sixth, or seventh day after her delivery, if she be weak; and let her talk as little as possible, for that weakens her very much. if she goes not well to stool, give a clyster made only of the decoction of mallows and a little brown sugar. when she hath lain in a week or more, let her use such things as close the womb, of which knot-grass and comfrey are very good, and to them you may add a little polypodium, for it will do her good, both leaves and root being bruised. sect. ii.--_how to remedy those accidents which a lying-in woman is subject to._ i. the first common and usual accident that troubles women in their lying-in is after-pains. they proceed from cold and wind contained in the bowels, with which they are easily filled after labour, because then they have more room to dilate than when the child was in the womb, by which they were compressed; and also, because nourishment and matter, contained as well in them as in the stomach, have been so confusedly agitated from side to side during the pains of labour, by the throes which always must compress the belly, that they could not be well digested, whence the wind is afterwards generated and, by consequence, the gripes which the woman feels running into her belly from side to side, according as the wind moves more or less, and sometimes likewise from the womb, because of the compression and commotion which the bowels make. this being generally the case, let us now apply a suitable remedy. . boil an egg soft, and pour out the yolk of it, with which mix a spoonful of cinnamon water, and let her drink it; and if you mix in it two grains of ambergris, it will be better; and yet vervain taken in anything she drinks, will be as effectual as the other. . give a lying-in woman, immediately after delivery, oil of sweet almonds and syrup of maiden-hair mixed together. some prefer oil of walnuts, provided it be made of nuts that are very good; but it tastes worse than the other at best. this will lenify the inside of the intestines by its unctuousness, and by that means bring away that which is contained in them more easily. . take and boil onions well in water, then stamp them with oil of cinnamon, spread them on a cloth, and apply them to the region of the womb. . let her be careful to keep her belly warm, and not to drink what is too cold; and if the pain prove violent, hot cloths from time to time must be laid on her belly, or a pancake fried in walnut oil may be applied to it, without swathing her belly too strait. and for the better evacuating the wind out of the intestines, give her a clyster, which may be repeated as often as necessity requires. . take bay-berries, beat them to a powder, put the powder upon a chafing-dish of coals, and let her receive the smoke of them up her privities. . take tar and bear's grease, of each an equal quantity, boil them together, and whilst it is boiling, add a little pigeon's dung to it. spread some of this upon a linen cloth, and apply it to the veins of the back of her that is troubled with afterpains, and it will give her speedy ease. lastly, let her take half a drachm of bay-berries beaten into a powder, in a drachm of muscadel or teat. ii. another accident to which women in child-bed are subject is haemorrhoids or piles, occasioned through the great straining in bringing the child into the world. to cure this, . let her be let blood in the saphoena vein. . let her use polypodium in her meat, and drink, bruised and boiled. . take an onion, and having made a hole in the middle, of it, fill it full of oil, roast it and having bruised it all together, apply it to the fundament. . take a dozen of snails without shells, if you can get them, or else so many shell snails, and pull them out, and having bruised them with a little oil, apply them warm as before. . if she go not well to stool, let her take an ounce of cassia fistula drawn at night, going to bed; she needs no change of diet after. iii. retention of the menses is another accident happening to women in child-bed, and which is of so dangerous a consequence, that, if not timely remedied, it proves mortal. when this happens, . let the woman take such medicines as strongly provoke the terms, such as dittany, betony, pennyroyal, feverfew, centaury, juniper-berries, peony roots. . let her take two or three spoonfuls of briony water each morning. . gentian roots beaten into a powder, and a drachm of it taken every morning in wine, are an extraordinary remedy. . the roots of birthwort, either long or round, so used and taken as the former, are very good. . take twelve peony seeds, and beat them into a very fine powder, and let her drink them in a draught of hot cardus posset, and let her sweat after. and if the last medicine do not bring them down the first time she takes it, let her take as much more three hours after, and it seldom fails. iv. overflowing of the menses is another accident incidental to child-bed women. for which, . take shepherd's purse, either boiled in any convenient liquor, or dried and beaten into a powder, and it will be an admirable remedy to stop them, this being especially appropriated to the privities. . the flower and leaves of brambles or either of them, being dried and beaten into a powder, and a drachm of them taken every morning in a spoonful of red wine, or in a decoction of leaves of the same (which, perhaps, is much better), is an admirable remedy for the immoderate flowing of the term in women. v. excoriations, bruises, and rents in the lower part of the womb are often occasioned by the violent distention and separation of the caruncles in a woman's labour. for the healing whereof, as soon as the woman is laid, if there be only simple contusions and excoriations, then let the anodyne cataplasm, formerly directed, be applied to the lower parts to ease the pain, made of the yolks and whites of new laid eggs, and oil of roses, boiled a little over warm embers, continually stirring it until it be mixed, and then spread on a fine cloth; it must be applied very warm to the bearing place for five or six hours, and when it is taken away, lay some fine rags, dipped in oil of st. john's wort twice or thrice a day; also foment the parts with barley water and honey of roses, to cleanse them from the excrements which pass. when the woman makes water, let them be defended with fine rags, and thereby hinder the urine from causing smart or pain. vi. the curding and clotting of the milk is another accident that happens to women in child-bed, for in the beginning of child-bed, the woman's milk is not purified because of the great commotions her body suffered during her labour, which affected all the parts, and it is then affected with many humours. now this clotting of the milk does, for the most part, proceed from the breasts not being fully drawn, and that, either because she has too much milk, and that the infant is too small and weak to suck it all, or because she doth not desire to be a nurse, for the milk in those cases remaining in the breasts after concoction, without being drawn, loses its sweetness and the balsamic qualities it had, and by reason of the heat it requires, and the too long stay it makes there, is sours, curds and clots, in like manner as we see rennet put into ordinary milk to turn it into curds. the curding of the milk may also be caused by having taken a great cold, and not keeping the breasts well covered. but from what cause so ever this curding of the milk proceeds, the most certain remedy is, to draw the breasts until it is emitted and dried. but in regard that the infant by reason of weakness, cannot draw strength enough, the woman being hard marked when her milk is curded, it will be most proper to get another woman to draw her breasts until the milk comes freely, and then she may give her child suck. and that she may not afterwards be troubled with a surplus of milk, she must eat such diet as give but little nourishment, and keep her body open. but if the case be such that the woman neither can nor will be a nurse, it is necessary to apply other remedies for the curing of this distemper; for then it will be best not to draw the breasts, for that will be the way to bring more milk into them. for which purpose it will be necessary to empty the body by bleeding the arms, besides which, let the humours be drawn down by strong clysters and bleeding at the foot; nor will it be amiss to purge gently, and to digest, dissolve and dissipate the curded milk, four brans dissolved in a decoction of sage, milk, smallage and fennel, mixing with it oil of camomile, with which oil let the breasts be well anointed. the following liniment is also good to scatter and dissipate the milk. _a liniment to scatter and dissipate the milk._ that the milk flowing back to the breast may without offence be dissipated, you must use this ointment:--"take pure wax, two ounces, linseed, half a pound; when the wax is melted, let the liniment be made, wherein linen cloths must be clipped, and, according to their largeness, be laid upon the breasts; and when it shall be dispersed, and pains no more, let other linen cloths be laid in the distilled water of acorns, and put upon them. _note._--that the cloths dipped into distilled water of acorns must be used only by those who cannot nurse their own children; but if a swelling in the breast of her who gives such do arise, from abundance of milk, threatens an inflammation, let her use the former ointment, but abstain from using the distilled water of acorns. * * * * * chapter viii _directions for the nurses, in ordering newly-born children._ when the child's navel-string hath been cut according to the rules prescribed, let the midwife presently cleanse it from the excrements and filth it brings into the world with it; of which some are within the body, as the urine in the bladder, and the excrements found in the guts; and the others without, which are thick, whitish and clammy, proceeding from the sliminess of the waters. there are sometimes children covered all over with this, that one would think they were rubbed over with soft cheese, and some women are of so easy a belief, that they really think it so, because they have eaten some while they were with child. from these excrements let the child be cleansed with wine and water a little warmed, washing every part therewith, but chiefly the head because of the hair, also the folds of the groin, and the cods or privities; which parts must be gently cleansed with a linen rag, or a soft sponge dipped in lukewarm wine. if this clammy or viscous excrement stick so close that it will not easily be washed off from those places, it may be fetched off with oil of sweet almond, or a little fresh butter melted with wine, and afterwards well dried off; also make tents of fine rags, and wetting them in this liquor, clear the ears and nostrils; but for the eyes, wipe them only with a dry, soft rag, not dipping it in the wine, lest it should make them smart. the child being washed, and cleansed from the native blood and impurities which attend it into the world, it must in the next place be searched to see whether all things be right about it, and that there is no fault nor dislocation; whether its nose be straight, or its tongue tied, or whether there be any bruise or tumour of the head; or whether the mold be not over shot; also whether the scrotum (if it be a male) be not blown up and swelled, and, in short, whether it has suffered any violence by its birth, in any part of its body, and whether all the parts be well and duly shaped; that suitable remedies may be applied if anything be found not right. nor is it enough to see that all be right without, and that the outside of the body be cleansed, but she must also observe whether it dischargeth the excrements contained within, and whether the passage be open; for some have been born without having been perforated. therefore, let her examine whether the conduits of the urine and stool be clear, for want of which some have died, not being able to void their excrements, because timely care was not taken at first. as to the urine all children, as well males as females, do make water as soon as they are born, if they can, especially if they feel the heat of the fire, and also sometimes void the excrements, but not so soon as the urine. if the infant does not ordure the first day, then put into its fundament a small suppository, to stir it up to be discharged, that it may not cause painful gripes, by remaining so long in the belly. a sugar almond may be proper for this purpose, anointed all over with a little boiled honey; or else a small piece of castile-soap rubbed over with fresh butter; also give the child for this purpose a little syrup of roses or violets at the mouth, mixed with some oil of sweet almonds, drawn without a fire, anointing the belly also, with the same oil or fresh butter. the midwife having thus washed and cleansed the child, according to the before mentioned directions, let her begin to swaddle it in swathing clothes, and when she dresses the head, let her put small rags behind the ears, to dry up the filth which usually engenders there, and so let her do also in the folds of the armpits and groins, and so swathe it; then wrap it up warm in a bed with blankets, which there is scarcely any woman so ignorant but knows well enough how to do; only let me give them this caution, that they swathe not the child too tightly in its blankets, especially about the breast and stomach, that it may breathe the more freely, and not be forced to vomit up the milk it sucks, because the stomach cannot be sufficiently distended to contain it; therefore let its arms and legs be wrapped in its bed, stretched and straight and swathed to keep them so, viz., the arms along its sides, and its legs equally both together with a little of the bed between them, that they may not be galled by rubbing each other; then let the head be kept steady and straight, with a stay fastened each side of the blanket, and then wrap the child up in a mantle and blankets to keep it warm. let none think this swathing of the infant is needless to set down, for it is necessary it should be thus swaddled, to give its little body a straight figure, which is most proper and decent for a man, and to accustom him to keep upon his feet, who otherwise would go upon all fours, as most animals do. * * * * * chapter ix section i.--_of gripes and pains in the, bellies of young children._ this i mention first, as it is often the first and most common distemper which happens to little infants, after their birth; many children being so troubled therewith, that it causes them to cry day and night and at last die of it. the cause of it for the most part comes from the sudden change of nourishment, for having always received it from the umbilical vessel whilst in the mother's womb, they come on a sudden not only to change the manner of receiving it, but the nature and quality of what they received, as soon as they are born; for instead of purified blood only, which was conveyed to them by means of the umbilical vein, they are now obliged to be nourished by their mother's milk, which they suck with their mouths, and from which are engendered many excrements, causing gripes and pains; and not only because it is not so pure as the blood with which it was nourished in the womb, but because the stomach and the intestines cannot make a good digestion, being unaccustomed to it. it is sometimes caused also by a rough phlegm, and sometimes by worms; for physicians affirm that worms have been bred in children even in their mother's belly. _cure_. the remedy must be suited to the cause. if it proceed from the too sudden change of nourishment, the remedy must be to forbear giving the child suck for some days, lest the milk be mixed with phlegm, which is then in the stomach corrupt; and at first it must suck but little, until it is accustomed to digest it. if it be the excrements in the intestines, which by their long stay increase their pains, give them at the month a little oil of sweet almonds and syrup of roses; if it be worms, lay a cloth dipped in oil of wormwood mixed with ox-gall, upon the belly, or a small cataplasm, mixed with the powder of rue, wormwood, coloquintida, aloes, and the seeds of citron incorporated with ox-gall and the powder of lupines. or give it oil of sweet almonds and syrup of roses; if it be worms, lay a cloth, dipped in oil of wormwood mixed with ox-gall, upon the belly, or a small cataplasm mixed with the powder of rue, wormwood, coloquintida, aloes, and the seeds of citron incorporated with ox-gall and the powder of lupines. or give it oil of sweet almonds with sugar-candy, and a scruple of aniseed; it purgeth new-born babes from green cholera and stinking phlegm, and, if it be given with sugar-pap, it allays the griping pains of the belly. also anoint the belly with oil of dill, or lay pelitory stamped with oil of camomile to the belly. sect. ii.--_of weakness in newly-born infants._ weakness is an accident that many children bring into the world along with them, and is often occasioned by the labour of the mother; by the violence and length whereof they suffer so much, that they are born with great weakness, and many times it is difficult to know whether they are alive or dead, their body appearing so senseless, and their face so blue and livid, that they seem to be quite choked; and even after some hours, then-showing any signs of life is attended with weakness, that it looks like a return from death, and that they are still in a dying condition. _cure_. lay the infant speedily in a warm blanket, and carry it to the fire, and then let the midwife take a little wine in her mouth and spout it into its mouth, repeating it often, if there be occasion. let her apply linen dipped in urine to the breast and belly, and let the face be uncovered, that it may breathe the more freely; also, let the midwife keep its mouth a little open, cleanse the nostrils with small linen tents[ ] dipt in white wine, that so it may receive the smell of it; and let her chafe every part of its body well with warm cloths, to bring back its blood and spirits, which being retired inwards through weakness, often puts him in danger of being choked. by the application of these means, the infant will gradually recover strength, and begin to stir its limbs by degrees, and at length to cry; and though it be but weakly at first, yet afterwards, as it breathes more freely, its cry will become more strong. sect. iii.--_of the fundament being closed up in a newly-born infant._ another defect that new-born infants are liable to is, to have their fundaments closed up, by which they can neither evacuate the new excrements engendered by the milk they suck, nor that which was amassed in their intestines before birth, which is certainly mortal without a speedy remedy. there have been some female children who have their fundaments quite closed, and yet have voided the excrements of the guts by an orifice which nature, to supply the defect, had made within the neck of the womb. _cure_. here we must take notice, that the fundament is closed two ways; either by a single skin, through which one may discover some black and blue marks, proceeding from the excrements retained, which, if one touch with the finger, there is a softness felt within, and thereabout it ought to be pierced; or else it is quite stopped by a thick, fleshy substance, in such sort that there appears nothing without, by which its true situation may be known. when there is nothing but the single skin which makes the closure, the operation is very easy, and the children may do very well; for then an aperture or opening may be made with a small incision-knife, cross-ways, that it may the better receive a round form, and that the place may not afterwards grow together, taking care not to prejudice the sphincter or muscle of the rectum. the incision being thus made, the excrements will certainly have issue. but if, by reason of their long stay in the belly, they become so dry that the infant cannot void them, then let a clyster be given to moisten and bring them away; afterwards put a linen tent into the new-made fundament, which at first had best be anointed with honey of roses, and towards the end, with a drying, cicatrizing ointment, such as unguentum album or ponphilex, observing to cleanse the infant of its excrement, and dry it again as soon and as often as it evacuates them, that so the aperture may be prevented from turning into a malignant ulcer. but if the fundament be stopped up in such a manner, that neither mark nor appearance of it can be seen or felt, then the operation is much more difficult, and, even when it is done, the danger is much greater that the infant will not survive it. then, if it be a female, and it sends forth its excrements by the way i mentioned before, it is better not to meddle than, by endeavouring to remedy an inconvenience, run an extreme hazard of the infant's death. but when there is no vent for the excrements, without which death is unavoidable, then the operation is justifiable. _operation_. let the operator, with a small incision-knife that hath but one edge, enter into the void place, and turning the back of it upwards, within half a finger's breadth of the child's rump, which is the place where he will certainly find the intestines, let him thrust it forward, that it may be open enough to give free vent to matter there contained, being especially careful of the sphincter; after which, let the wound be dressed according to the method directed. sect. iv.--_of the thrush, or ulcers in the mouth of the infant._ the thrush is a distemper that children are very subject to, and it arises from bad milk, or from foul humour in the stomach; for sometimes, though there be no ill humour in the milk itself, yet it may corrupt the child's stomach because of its weakness or some other indisposition; in which, acquiring an acrimony, instead of being well digested, there arise from it thrice biting vapours, which forming a thick viscosity, do thereby produce this distemper. _cure_. it is often difficult, as physicians tell us, because it is seated in hot and moist places, where the putrefaction is easily augmented; and because the remedies applied cannot lodge there, being soon washed with spittle. but if it arises from too hot quality in the nurse's milk, care must be taken to temper and cool, prescribing her cool diet, bleeding and purging her also, if there be occasion. take lentils, husked, powder them, and lay a little of them upon the child's gums. or take bdellium flowers, half an ounce, and with oil of roses make a liniment. also wash the child's mouth with barley and plantain-water, and honey of roses, mixing with them a little verjuice of lemons, as well to loosen and cleanse the vicious humours which cleave to the inside of the infant's mouth, as to cool those parts which are already over-heated. it may be done by means of a small fine rag, fastened to the end of a little stick, and dipped therein, wherewith the ulcers may be gently rubbed, being careful not to put the child in too much pain, lest an inflammation make the distemper worse. the child's body must also be kept open, that the humours being carried to the lower parts, the vapours may not ascend, as is usual for them to do when the body is costive, and the excrements too long retained. if the ulcers appear malignant, let such remedies be used as do their work speedily, that the evil qualities that cause them, being thereby instantly corrected, their malignity may be prevented; and in this case, touch the ulcers with plantain water, sharpened with spirits of vitriol; for the remedy must be made sharp, according to the malignity of the distemper. it will be necessary to purge these ill humours out of the whole habit of the child, by giving half an ounce of succory and rhubarb. sect. v.--_of pains in the ears, inflammation, moisture, etc._ the brain in infants is very moist, and hath many excrements which nature cannot send out at the proper passages; they get often to the ears, and there cause pains, flux of blood, with inflammation and matter with pain; this in children is hard to be known as they have no other way to make it known but by constant crying; you will perceive them ready to feel their ears themselves, but will not let others touch them, if they can prevent; and sometimes you may discern the parts about the ears to be very red. these pains, if let alone, are of dangerous consequences, because they may bring forth watchings and epilepsy; for the moisture breeds worms there, and fouls the spongy bones, and by degrees causes incurable deafness. _cure_. allay the pain with all convenient speed, but have a care of using strong remedies. therefore, only use warm milk about the ears, with the decoction of poppy tops, or oil of violets; to take away the moisture, use honey of roses, and let aqua mollis be dropped into the ears; or take virgin honey, half an ounce; red wines two ounces; alum, saffron, saltpetre, each a drachm, mix them at the fire; or drop in hemp seed oil with a little wine. sect. vi.--_of redness and inflammation of the buttocks, groin and the thighs of a young child._ if there be no great care taken to change and wash the child's bed as soon as it is fouled with the excrements, and to keep the child very clean, the acrimony will be sure to cause redness, and beget a smarting in the buttocks, groin and thighs of the child, which, by reason of the pain, will afterwards be subject to inflammations, which follow the sooner, through the delicacy and tenderness of their skin, from which the outward skin of the body is in a short time separated and worn away. _cure_. first, keep the child cleanly, and secondly, take off the sharpness of its urine. as to keeping it cleanly, she must be a sorry nurse who needs to be taught how to do it; for if she lets it but have dry, warm and clean beds and cloths, as often and as soon as it has fouled and wet them, either by its urine or its excrements, it will be sufficient. and as to taking off the sharpness of the child's urine, that must be done by the nurse's taking a cool diet, that her milk may have the same quality; and, therefore, she ought to abstain from all things that may tend to heat it. but besides these, cooling and drying remedies are requisite to be applied to the inflamed parts; therefore let the parts be bathed in plantain-water, with a fourth of lime water added to it, each time the child's excrements are wiped off; and if the pain be very great, let it only be fomented with lukewarm milk. the powder of a post to dry it, or a little mill-dust strewed upon the parts affected, may be proper enough, and is used by many women. also, unguentum album, or diapompholigos, spread upon a small piece of leather in form of a plaster, will not be amiss. but the chief thing must be, the nurse's taking great care to wrap the inflamed parts with fine rags when she opens the child, that these parts may not gather and be pained by rubbing together. sect. vii.--_of vomiting in young children._ vomiting in young children proceeds sometimes from too much milk, and sometimes from bad milk, and as often from a moist, loose stomach; for as dryness retains so looseness lets go. this is, for the most part, without danger in children; for they that vomit from their birth are the lustiest; for the stomach not being used to meat, and milk being taken too much, crudities are easily bred, or the milk is corrupted; and it is better to vomit these up than to keep them in; but if vomiting last long, it will cause an atrophy or consumption, for want of nourishment. _cure_. if this be from too much milk, that which is emitted is yellow and green, or otherwise ill-coloured and stinking; in this case, mend the milk, as has been shown before; cleanse the child with honey of roses, and strengthen its stomach with syrup of milk and quinces, made into an electuary. if the humours be hot and sharp, give the syrup of pomegranates, currants and coral, and apply to the belly the plaster of bread, the stomach cerate, or bread dipped in hot wine; or take oil of mastich, quinces, mint, wormwood, each half an ounce; of nutmegs by expression, half a drachm; chemical oil of mint, three drops. coral hath an occult property to prevent vomiting, and is therefore hung about the neck. sect. viii--_of breeding teeth in young children._ this is a very great and yet necessary evil in all children, having variety of symptoms joined with it. they begin to come forth, not all at once, but one after the other, about the sixth or seventh month; the fore-teeth coming first, then the eye-teeth, and last of all the grinders. the eye-teeth cause more pain to the child than any of the rest, because they have a deep root, and a small nerve which has communication with that which makes the eye move. [illustration] in the breeding of the teeth, first they feel an itching in their gums, then they are pierced as with a needle, and pricked by the sharp bones, whence proceed great pains, watching, inflammation of the gums, fever, looseness and convulsions, especially when they breed their eye-teeth. the signs when children breed their eye-teeth are these: . it is known by the time, which is usually about the seventh month. . their gums are swelled, and they feel a great heat there with an itching, which makes them put their fingers into their mouths to rub them; a moisture also distils from the gums into the mouth, because of the pain they feel there. . they hold the nipple faster than before. . the gums are white when the teeth begin to come, and the nurse, in giving them suck, finds the mouth hotter, and that they are much changed, crying every moment, and cannot sleep, or but very little at a time. the fever that follows breeding of teeth comes from choleric humours, inflamed by watching, pain and heat. and the longer teeth are breeding, the more dangerous it is; so that many in the breeding of them, die of fevers and convulsions. _cure_. two things are to be regarded:--one is, to preserve the child from the evil accidents that may happen to it by reason of the great pain; the other, to assist as much as may be, the cutting of the teeth, when they can hardly cut the gums themselves. for the first of these, viz., the preventing of those accidents to the child, the nurse ought to take great care to keep a good diet, and to use all things that may cool and temper her milk, that so a fever may not follow the pain of the teeth. and to prevent the humour falling too much upon the inflamed gums, let the child's belly be always kept loose by gentle clysters, if he be bound; though oftentimes there is no need of them, because they are at those times usually troubled with a looseness; and yet, for all that, clysters may not be improper. as to the other, which is to assist it cutting the teeth, that the nurse must do from time to time by mollifying and loosening them, and by rubbing them with her finger dipped in butter or honey; or let the child have a virgin-wax candle to chew upon; or anoint the gums with the mucilage of quince made with mallow-water, or with the brains of a hare; also foment the cheeks with the decoction of althoea, and camomile flowers and dill, or with the juice of mallows and fresh butter. if the gums are inflamed, add juice of nightshade and lettuce. i have already said, the nurse ought to take a temperate diet; i shall now only add, that barley-broth, water-gruel, raw eggs, prunes, lettuce and endive, are good for her; but let her avoid salt, sharp, biting and peppered meats, and wine. sect. ix.--_of the flux of the belly, or looseness in infants._ it is very common for infants to have the flux of the belly, or looseness, especially upon the least indisposition; nor is it to be wondered at, seeing their natural moistness contributes so much thereto; and even if it be extraordinarily violent, such are in a better state of health than those that are bound. the flux, if violent, proceeds from divers causes, as . from breeding of the teeth, and is then commonly attended with a fever in which the concoction is hindered, and the nourishment corrupted. . from watching. . from pain. . from stirring up of the humours by a fever. . when they suck or drink too much in a fever. sometimes they have a flux without breeding of teeth, from inward cold in the guts or stomach that obstructs concoction. if it be from the teeth, it is easily known; for the signs of breeding in teeth will discover it. if it be from external cold, there are signs of other causes. if from a humour flowing from the head there are signs of a catarrh, and the excrements are frothy. if crude and raw humours are voided, and there be wind, belching, and phlegmatic excrements, or if they be yellow, green and stink, the flux is from a hot and sharp humour. it is best in breeding of teeth when the belly is loose, as i have said before; but if it be too violent, and you are afraid it may end in a consumption, it must be stopped; and if the excrements that are voided be black, and attended with a fever, it is very bad. _cure_. the remedy in this case, is principally in respect to the nurse, and the condition of the milk must be chiefly observed; the nurse must be cautioned that she eat no green fruit, nor things of hard concoction. if the child suck not, remove the flux with such purges as leave a cooling quality behind them, as syrup of honey or roses, or a clyster. take the decoction of millium, myrobolans, of each two or three ounces, with an ounce or two of syrup of roses, and make a clyster. after cleansing, if it proceed from a hot cause, give syrup of dried roses, quinces, myrtles and a little sanguis draconis. also anoint with oil of roses, myrtles, mastich, each two drachms; with oil of myrtles and wax make an ointment. or take red roses and moulin, of each a handful; cypress roots two drachms; make a bag, boil it in red wine and apply it to the belly. or use the plaster bread or stomach ointment. if the cause be cold, and the excrements white give syrup of mastich and quinces, with mint-water. use outwardly, mint, mastich, cummin; or take rose seeds, an ounce, cummin, aniseed, each two drachms; with oil of mastich, wormwood and wax, make an ointment. sect. x.--_of the epilepsy and convulsions in children._ this is a distemper that is often fatal to young children, and frequently proceeds from the brain, originating either from the parents, or from vapours, or bad humours that twitch the membranes of the brain; it is also sometimes caused by other distempers and by bad diet; likewise, the toothache, when the brain consents, causes it, and so does a sudden fright. as to the distemper itself, it is manifest and well enough known where it is; and as to the cause whence it comes, you may know by the signs of the disease, whether it comes from bad milk, or worms, or teeth; if these are all absent, it is certain that the brain is first affected; if it come with the small-pox or measles, it ceaseth when they come forth, if nature be strong enough. _cure_. for the remedy of this grievous, and often mortal distemper, give the following powder to prevent it, to a child as soon as it is born:--take male peony roots, gathered in the decrease of the moon, a scruple; with leaf gold make a powder; or take peony roots, a drachm; peony seeds, mistletoe of the oak, elk's hoof, man's skull, amber, each a scruple; musk, two grains; make a powder. the best part of the cure is taking care of the nurse's diet, which must be regular, by all means. if it be from corrupt milk, provoke a vomit; to do which, hold down the tongue, and put a quill dipped in sweet almonds, down the throat. if it come from the worms, give such things as will kill the worms. if there be a fever, with respect to that also, give coral smaragad and elk's hoof. in the fit, give epileptic water, as lavender water, and rub with oil of amber, or hang a peony root, and elk's hoof smaragad, about the child's neck. as to a convulsion, it is when the brain labours to cast out that which troubles it; the mariner is in the marrow of the back, and fountain of the nerves; it is a stubborn disease, and often kills. wash the body, when in the fit, with decoction of althoea, lily roots, peony and camomile flowerets, and anoint it with man's and goose's grease, oils of worms, orris, lilies, foxes, turpentine, mastich, storax and calamint. the sun flower is also very good, boiled in water, to wash the child. footnotes: [ ] tent (_surgical_). a bunch of some fibre such as sponge or horsehair introduced into an opening, natural or artificial, to keep it open, or increase its calibre. * * * * * proper and safe remedies for curing all those distempers that are peculiar to the female sex and especially those observations to bearing of children * * * * * book ii * * * * * having finished the first part of this book, and wherein, i hope, amply made good my promise to the reader, i am now come to treat only of those distempers to which they are more subject when in a breeding condition, and those that keep them from being so; together with such proper and safe remedies as may be sufficient to repel them. and since amongst all the diseases to which human nature is subject, there is none that more diametrically opposes the very end of our creation, and the design of nature in the formation of different sexes, and the power thereby given us for the work of generation, than that of sterility or barrenness which, where it prevails, renders the most accomplished midwife but a useless person, and destroys the design of our book; i think, therefore, that barrenness is an effect that deserves our first and principal consideration. * * * * * chapter i _of barrenness; its several kinds; with the proper remedies for it; and the signs of insufficiency both in men and women._ section i.--_of barrenness in general._ barrenness is either natural or artificial. natural barrenness is when a woman is barren, though the instruments of generation are perfect both in herself and in her husband, and no preposterous or diabolical course used to it, and neither age, nor disease, nor any defect hindering, and yet the woman remains naturally barren. now this may proceed from a natural cause, for if the man and woman be of one complexion, they seldom have children, and the reason is clear, for the universal course of nature being formed of a composition of contraries, cannot be increased by a composition of likes; and, therefore, if the constitution of the woman be hot and dry, as well as the man's there can be no conception; and if, on the contrary, the man should be of a cold and moist constitution, as well as the woman, the effect would be the same; and this barrenness is purely natural. the only way to help this is, for people, before they marry, to observe each others constitution and complexion, if they design to have children. if their complexions and constitutions be alike, they are not fit to come together, for discordant natures only, make harmony in the work of generation. another natural cause of barrenness, is want of love between man and wife. love is that vivid principle that ought to inspire each organ in the act of generation, or else it will be spiritless and dull; for if their hearts be not united in love, how should their seed unite to cause conception? and this is sufficiently evinced, in that there never follows conception on a rape. therefore, if men and women design to have children, let them live so, that their hearts as well as their bodies may be united, or else they may miss their expectations. a third cause of natural barrenness, is the letting virgins blood in the arm before their natural courses are come down, which is usually in the fourteenth and fifteenth year of their age; sometimes, perhaps before the thirteenth, but never before the twelfth. and because usually, they are out of order, and indisposed before their purgations come down, their parents run to the doctor to know what is the matter; and he, if not skilled, will naturally prescribe opening a vein in the arm, thinking fullness of blood the cause; and thus she seems recovered for the present: and when the young virgin happens to be in the same disorder, the mother applies again to the surgeon, who uses the same remedy; and by these means the blood is so diverted from its proper channel, that it comes not down the womb as usual, and so the womb dries up, and she is for ever barren. to prevent this, let no virgin blood in the arm before her courses come down well; for that will bring the blood downwards, and by that means provoke the _menstrua_ to come down. another cause of natural barrenness, is debility in copulation. if persons perform not that act with all the bent and ardour that nature requires, they may as well let it alone; for frigidity and coldness never produces conception. of the cure of this we will speak by and by, after i have spoken of accidental barrenness, which is occasioned by some morbific matter or infirmity in the body, either of the man or of the woman, which being removed they become fruitful. and since, as i have before noted, the first and great law of creation, was to increase and multiply, and barrenness is in direct opposition to that law, and frustrates the end of our creation, and often causes man and wife to have hard thoughts one of another, i shall here, for the satisfaction of well meaning people, set down the signs and causes of insufficiency both in men and women; premising first that when people have no children, they must not presently blame either party, for neither may be in fault. sect. ii.--_signs and causes of insufficiency in men._ one cause may be in some viciousness of the yard, as if the same be crooked, or any ligaments thereof distorted and broken, whereby the ways and passages, through which the seed should flow, come to be stopped or vitiated. another cause may be, too much weakness of the yard, and tenderness thereof, so that it is not strong enough erected to inject seed into the womb; for the strength and stiffness of the yard very much conduces to conception, by reason of the forcible injection of the seed. also, if the stones have received any hurt, so that they cannot exercise the proper gift in producing seed, or if they be oppressed with an inflammation, tumour, wound or ulcer, or drawn up within the belly, and not appearing outwardly. also, a man may be barren by reason of the defect of seed, as first, if he cast forth no seed at all, or less in substance than is needful. or, secondly, if the seed be vicious, or unfit for generation; as on the one side, it happens in bodies that are gross and fat, the matter of it being defective; and on the other side, too much leanness, or continual wasting or consumption of the body, destroys seed; nature turning all the matter and substance thereof into the nutriment of the body. too frequent copulation is also one great cause of barrenness in men; for it attracteth the seminal moisture from the stones, before it is sufficiently prepared and concocted. so if any one, by daily copulation, do exhaust and draw out all their moisture of the seed, then do the stones draw the moist humours from the superior veins unto themselves; and so, having but a little blood in them, they are forced of necessity to cast it out raw and unconcocted, and thus the stones are violently deprived of the moisture of their veins, and the superior veins, and all the other parts of the body, of their vital spirits; therefore it is no wonder that those who use immoderate copulation are very weak in their bodies, seeing their whole body is deprived of the best and purest blood, and of the spirit, insomuch that many who have been too much addicted to that pleasure, have killed themselves in the very act. gluttony, drunkenness, and other excesses, do so much hinder men from fruitfulness, that it makes them unfit for generation. but among other causes of barrenness of men, this also is one, and makes them almost of the nature of eunuchs, and that is the incision or the cutting of the veins behind their ears, which in case of distempers is oftentimes done; for, according to the opinions of most physicians and anatomists, the seed flows from the brain by those veins behind the ears, more than any part of the body. from whence it is very probable, that the transmission of the seed is hindered by the cutting of the veins behind the ears, so that it cannot descend to the testicles, or may come thither very crude and raw. sect. iii.--_signs and causes of insufficiency or barrenness in women._ although there are many causes of the barrenness of women, yet the chief and principal are internal, respecting either the privy parts, the womb or menstruous blood. therefore, hippocrates saith (speaking as well of easy as difficult conception in women) the first consideration is to be had of their species; for little women are more apt to conceive than great, slender than gross, white and fair than ruddy and high coloured, black than wan, those that have their veins conspicuous, than others; but to be very fleshy is evil, and to have great swelled breasts is good. the next thing to be considered is, the monthly purgations, whether they have been duly every month, whether they flow plentifully, are of a good colour, and whether they have been equal every month. then the womb, or place of conception, is to be considered. it ought to be clean and sound, dry and soft, not retracted or drawn up; not prone or descending downward; nor the mouth thereof turned away, nor too close shut up. but to speak more particularly:-- the first parts to be spoken of are the _pudenda_, or privities, and the womb; which parts are shut and enclosed either by nature or against nature; and from hence, such women are called _imperforate_; as in some women the mouth of their womb continues compressed, or closed up, from the time of their birth until the coming down of their courses, and then, on a sudden, when their terms press forward to purgation, they are molested with great and unusual pains. sometimes these break of their own accord, others are dissected and opened by physicians; others never break at all, which bring on disorders that end in death. all these _aetius_ particularly handles, showing that the womb is shut three manner of ways, which hinders conception. and the first is when the _pudenda_ grow and cleave together. the second is, when these certain membranes grow in the middle part of the matrix within. the third is, when (though the lips and bosom of the _pudenda_ may appear fair and open), the mouth of the womb may be quite shut up. all which are occasions of barrenness, as they hinder the intercourse with man, the monthly courses, and conception. but amongst all causes of barrenness in women, the greatest is in the womb, which is the field of generation; and if this field is corrupt, it is in vain to expect any fruit, be it ever so well sown. it may be unfit for generation by reason of many distempers to which it is subject; as for instance, overmuch heat and overmuch cold; for women whose wombs are too thick and cold, cannot conceive, because coldness extinguishes the heat of the human seed. immoderate moisture of the womb also destroys the seed of man, and makes it ineffectual, as corn sown in ponds and marshes; and so does overmuch dryness of the womb, so that the seed perisheth for want of nutriment. immoderate heat of the womb is also a cause of barrenness for it scorcheth up the seed as corn sown in the drought of summer; for immoderate heat burns all parts of the body, so that no conception can live in the womb. when unnatural humours are engendered, as too much phlegm, tympanies, wind, water, worms, or any other evil humour abounding contrary to nature, it causes barrenness as do all terms not coming down in due order. a woman may also have accidental causes of barrenness (at least such as may hinder her conception), as sudden frights, anger, grief and perturbation of mind; too violent exercises, as leaping, dancing, running, after copulation, and the like. but i will now add some signs, by which these things may be known. if the cause of barrenness be in the man, through overmuch heat in the seed, the woman may easily feel that in receiving it. if the nature of the woman be too hot, and so unfit for conception, it will appear by her having her terms very little, and the colour inclining to yellowness; she is also very hasty, choleric and crafty; her pulse beats very swift, and she is very desirous of copulation. to know whether the fault is in the man or in the woman, sprinkle the man's urine upon a lettuce leaf, and the woman's urine upon another, and that which dries away first is unfruitful. also take five wheaten corns and seven beans, put them into an earthen pot, and let the party make water therein; let this stand seven days, and if in that time they begin to sprout, then the party is fruitful; but if they sprout not, then the party is barren, whether it be the man or the woman; this is a certain sign. there are some that make this experiment of a woman's fruitfulness; take myrrh, red storax and some odoriferous things, and make a perfume of which let the woman receive into the neck of the womb through a funnel; if the woman feels the smoke ascend through her body to the nose, then she is fruitful; otherwise she is barren. some also take garlic and beer, and cause the woman to lie upon her back upon it, and if she feel the scent thereof in her nose, it is a sign of her being fruitful. culpepper and others also give a great deal of credit to the following experiment. take a handful of barley, and steep half of it in the urine of a man, and the other half in the urine of the woman, for the space of twenty-four hours; then take it out, and put the man's by itself, and the woman's by itself; set it in a flower-pot, or some other thing, where let it dry; water the man's every morning with his own urine, and the woman's with hers, and that which grows first is the most fruitful; but if they grow not at all, they are both naturally barren. _cure_. if the barrenness proceeds from stoppage of the menstrua, let the woman sweat, for that opens the parts; and the best way to sweat is in a hot-house. then let the womb be strengthened by drinking a draught of white wine, wherein a handful of stinking arrach, first bruised, has been boiled, for by a secret magnetic virtue, it strengthens the womb, and by a sympathetic quality, removes any disease thereof. to which add also a handful of vervain, which is very good to strengthen both the womb and the head, which are commonly afflicted together by sympathy. having used these two or three days, if they come not down, take of calamint, pennyroyal, thyme, betony, dittany, burnet, feverfew, mugwort, sage, peony roots, juniper berries, half a handful of each, or as many as can be got; let these be boiled in beer, and taken for her drink. take one part of gentian-root, two parts of centaury, distil them with ale in an alembic after you have bruised the gentian-roots and infused them well. this water is an admirable remedy to provoke the terms. but if you have not this water in readiness, take a drachm of centaury, and half a drachm of gentian-roots bruised, boiled in posset drink, and drink half a drachm of it at night going to bed. seed of wild navew beaten to powder, and a drachm of it taken in the morning in white wine, also is very good; but if it answers not, she must be let blood in the legs. and be sure you administer your medicines a little before the full of the moon, by no means in the wane of the moon; if you do, you will find them ineffectual. if barrenness proceed from the overflowing of the menstrua, then strengthen the womb as you were taught before; afterwards anoint the veins of the back with oil of roses, oil of myrtle and oil of quinces every night, and then wrap a piece of white baise about your veins, the cotton side next to the skin and keep the same always to it. but above all, i recommend this medicine to you. take comfrey-leaves or roots, and clown woundwort, of each a handful; bruise them well, and boil them in ale, and drink a good draught of it now and then. or take cinnamon, cassia lignea, opium, of each two drachms; myrrh, white pepper, galbanum, of each one drachm; dissolve the gum and opium in white wine; beat the rest into powder and make pills, mixing them together exactly, and let the patient take two each night going to bed; but let the pills not exceed fifteen grains. if barrenness proceed from a flux in the womb, the cure must be according to the cause producing it, or which the flux proceeds from, which may be known by signs; for a flux of the womb, being a continual distillation from it for a long time together, the colour of what is voided shows what humour it is that offends; in some it is red, and that proceeds from blood putrified, in some it is yellow, and that denotes choler; in others white and pale, and denotes phlegm. if pure blood comes out, as if a vein were opened, some corrosion or gnawing of the womb is to be feared. all these are known by the following signs: the place of conception is continually moist with the humours, the face ill-coloured, the party loathes meat and breathes with difficulty, the eyes are much swollen, which is sometimes without pain. if the offending humour be pure blood, then you must let blood in the arm, and the cephalic vein is fittest to draw back the blood; then let the juice of plantain and comfrey be injected into the womb. if phlegm be a cause, let cinnamon be a spice used in all her meats and drinks, and let her take a little venice treacle or mithridate every morning. let her boil burnet, mugwort, feverfew and vervain in all her broths. also, half a drachm of myrrh, taken every morning, is an excellent remedy against this malady. if choler be the cause, let her take burrage, buglos, red roses, endive and succory roots, lettuce and white poppy-seed, of each a handful; boil these in white wine until one half be wasted; let her drink half a pint every morning to which half pint add syrup of chicory and syrup of peach-flowers, of each an ounce, with a little rhubarb, and this will gently purge her. if it proceed from putrified blood, let her be bled in the foot, and then strengthen the womb, as i have directed in stopping the menstrua. if barrenness be occasioned by the falling out of the womb, as sometimes it happens, let her apply sweet scents to the nose, such as civet, galbanum, storax, calamitis, wood of aloes; and such other things as are of that nature; and let her lay stinking things to the womb, such as asafoetida, oil of amber, or the smoke of her own hair, being burnt; for this is a certain truth, that the womb flies from all stinking, and to all sweet things. but the most infallible cure in this case is; take a common burdock leaf (which you may keep dry, if you please, all the year), apply this to her head and it will draw the womb upwards. in fits of the mother, apply it to the soles of the feet, and it will draw the womb downwards. but seed beaten into a powder, draws the womb which way you please, accordingly as it is applied. if barrenness in the woman proceed from a hot cause, let her take whey and clarify it; then boil plantain leaves and roots in it, and drink it for her ordinary drink. let her inject plantain juice into her womb with a syringe. if it be in the winter, when you cannot get the juice, make a strong decoction of the leaves and roots in water, and inject that up with a syringe, but let it be blood warm, and you will find this medicine of great efficacy. and further, to take away barrenness proceeding from hot causes, take of conserve of roses, cold lozenges, make a tragacanth, the confections of trincatelia; and use, to smell to, camphor, rosewater and saunders. it is also good to bleed the basilica or liver vein, and take four or five ounces of blood, and then take this purge; take electuarium de epithymo de succo rosarum, of each two drachms and a half; clarified whey, four ounces; mix them well together, and take it in the morning fasting; sleep after it about an hour and a half, and fast for four hours after; and about an hour before you eat anything, drink a good draught of whey. also take lilywater, four ounces; mandragore water, one ounce; saffron, half a scruple; beat the saffron to a powder, and mix it with waters, drink them warm in the morning; use these eight days together. _some apparent remedy against barrenness and to cause fruitfulness._ take broom flowers, smallage, parsley seed, cummin, mugwort, feverfew, of each half a scruple; aloes, half an ounce; indian salt, saffron, of each half a drachm; beat and mix them together, and put it to five ounces of feverfew water warm; stop it up, and let it stand and dry in a warm place, and this do, two or three times, one after the other; then make each drachm into six pills, and take one of them every night before supper. for a purging medicine against barrenness, take conserve of benedicta lax, a quarter of an ounce; depsillo three drachms, electuary de rosarum, one drachm; mix them together with feverfew water, and drink it in the morning betimes. about three days after the patient hath taken this purge, let her be bled, taking four or five ounces from the median, or common black vein in the foot; and then give for five successive days, filed ivory, a drachm and a half, in feverfew water; and during the time let her sit in the following bath an hour together, morning and night. take mild yellow sapes, daucas, balsam wood and fruit, ash-keys, of each two handfuls, red and white behen, broom flowers, of each a handful; musk, three grains; amber, saffron, of each a scruple; boiled in water sufficiently; but the musk, saffron, amber and broom flowers must be put into the decoction, after it is boiled and strained. _a confection very good against barrenness._ take pistachia, eringoes, of each half an ounce; saffron, one drachm; lignum aloes, galengal, mace, coriophilla, balm flowers, red and white behen, of each four scruples; syrup of confected ginger, twelve ounces; white sugar, six ounces, decoct all these in twelve ounces of balm water, and stir them well together; then put in it musk and amber, of each a scruple; take thereof the quantity of a nutmeg three times a day; in the morning, an hour before noon and an hour after supper. but if the cause of barrenness, either in man or woman, be through scarcity or diminution of the natural seed, then such things are to be taken as do increase the seed, and incite to stir up to venery, and further conception; which i shall here set down, and then conclude the chapter concerning barrenness. for this, yellow rape seed baked in bread is very good; also young, fat flesh, not too much salted; also saffron, the tails of stincus, and long pepper prepared in wine. but let such persons eschew all sour, sharp, doughy and slimy meats, long sleep after meat, surfeiting and drunkenness, and so much as they can, keep themselves from sorrow, grief, vexation and anxious care. these things following increase the natural seed, stir up the venery and recover the seed again when it is lost, viz., eggs, milk, rice, boiled in milk, sparrows' brains, flesh, bones and all; the stones and pizzles of bulls, bucks, rams and bears, also cocks' stones, lambs' stones, partridges', quails' and pheasants' eggs. and this is an undeniable aphorism, that whatever any creature is addicted unto, they move or incite the man or the woman that eats them, to the like, and therefore partridges, quails, sparrows, etc., being extremely addicted to venery, they work the same effect on those men and women that eat them. also, take notice, that in what part of the body the faculty that you would strengthen, lies, take that same part of the body of another creature, in whom the faculty is strong, as a medicine. as for instance, the procreative faculty lies in the testicles; therefore, cocks' stones, lambs' stones, etc., are proper to stir up venery. i will also give you another general rule; all creatures that are fruitful being eaten, make them fruitful that eat them, as crabs, lobsters, prawns, pigeons, etc. the stones of a fox, dried and beaten to a powder, and a drachm taken in the morning in sheep's milk, and the stones of a boar taken in like manner, are very good. the heart of a male quail carried about a man, and the heart of a female quail carried about a woman, causes natural love and fruitfulness. let them, also, that would increase their seed, eat and drink of the best, as much as they can; for _sine cerere el libero, friget venus_, is an old proverb, which is, "without good meat and drink, venus will be frozen to death." pottages are good to increase the seed; such as are made of beans, peas, and lupins, mixed with sugar. french beans, wheat sodden in broth, aniseed, also onions, stewed garlic, leeks, yellow rapes, fresh mugwort roots, eringo roots confected, ginger connected, etc. of fruits, hazel nuts, cyprus nuts, pistachio, almonds and marchpanes thereof. spices good to increase seed are cinnamon, galengal, long pepper, cloves, ginger, saffron and asafoetida, a drachm and a half taken in good wine, is very good for this purpose. the weakness and debility of a man's yard, being a great hindrance to procreation let him use the following ointment to strengthen it: take wax, oil of beaver-cod, marjoram, gentle and oil of costus, of each a like quantity, mix them into an ointment, and put it to a little musk, and with it anoint the yard, cods, etc. take of house emmets, three drachms, oil of white safannum, oil of lilies, of each an ounce; pound and bruise the ants, and put them to the oil and let them stand in the sun six days; then strain out the oil and add to it euphorbium one scruple, pepper and rue, of each one drachm, mustard seed half a drachm, set this altogether in the sun two or three days, then anoint the instrument of generation therewith. * * * * * chapter ii _the diseases of the womb._ i have already said, that the womb is the field of generation; and if this field be corrupted, it is vain to expect any fruit, although it be ever so well sown. it is, therefore, not without reason that i intend in this chapter to set down the several distempers to which the womb is obnoxious, with proper and safe remedies against them. section i.--_of the hot distemper of the womb._ the distemper consists in excess of heat; for as heat of the womb is necessary for conception, so if it be too much, it nourisheth not the seed, but it disperseth its heat, and hinders the conception. this preternatural heat is sometimes from the birth, and causeth barrenness, but if it be accidental, it is from hot causes, that bring the heat and the blood to the womb; it arises also from internal and external medicines, and from too much hot meat, drink and exercise. those that are troubled with this distemper have but few courses, and those are yellow, black, burnt or sharp, have hair betimes on their privities, are very prone to lust, subject to headache, and abound with choler, and when the distemper is strong upon them, they have but few terms, which are out of order, being bad and hard to flow, and in time they become hypochondriacal, and for the most part barren, having sometimes a phrenzy of the womb. _cure_. the remedy is to use coolers, so that they offend not the vessels that most open for the flux of the terms. therefore, take the following inwardly; succory, endive, violets, water lilies, sorrel, lettuce, saunders and syrups and conserve made thereof. also take a conserve of succory, violets, water-lilies, burrage, each an ounce; conserve of roses, half an ounce, diamargation frigid, diatriascantal, each half a drachm; and with syrup of violets, or juice of citrons, make an electuary. for outward applications, make use of ointment of roses, violets, water-lilies, gourd, venus navel, applied to the back and loins. let the air be cool, her garments thin, and her food endive, lettuce, succory and barley. give her no hot meats, nor strong wine, unless mixed with water. rest is good for her, but she must abstain from copulation, though she may sleep as long as she pleases. sect. ii.--_of the cold distempers of the womb._ this distemper is the reverse of the foregoing, and equally an enemy to generation, being caused by a cold quality abounding to excess, and proceeds from a too cold air, rest, idleness and cooling medicines. it may be known by an aversion to venery, and taking no pleasure in the act of copulation when the seed is spent; the terms are phlegmatic, thick and slimy, and do not flow as they should; the womb is windy and the seed crude and waterish. it is the cause of obstructions and barrenness, and is hard to be cured. _cure_. take galengal, cinnamon, nutmeg mace, cloves, ginger, cububs, cardamom, grains of paradise, each an ounce and a half, galengal, six drachms, long pepper, half an ounce, zedoary five drachms; bruise them and add six quarts of wine, put them into a cellar nine days, daily stirring them; then add of mint two handfuls, and let them stand fourteen days, pour off the wine and bruise them, and then pour on the wine again, and distil them. also anoint with oil of lilies, rue, angelica, cinnamon, cloves, mace and nutmeg. let her diet and air be warm, her meat of easy concoction, seasoned with ant-seed, fennel and thyme; and let her avoid raw fruits and milk diets. sect. iii.--_of the inflation of the womb._ the inflation of the womb is a stretching of it by wind, called by some a windy mole; the wind proceeds from a cold matter, whether thick or thin, contained in the veins of the womb, by which the heat thereof is overcome, and which either flows thither from other parts, or is gathered there by cold meats and drinks. cold air may be a producing cause of it also, as women that lie in are exposed to it. the wind is contained either in the cavity of the vessels of the womb, or between the tumicle, and may be known by a swelling in the region of the womb, which sometimes reaches to the navel, loins and diaphragm, and rises and abates as the wind increaseth or decreaseth. it differs from the dropsy, in that it never swells so high. that neither physician nor midwife may take it for dropsy, let them observe the signs of the woman with the child laid down in a former part of this work; and if any sign be wanting, they may suspect it to be an inflation; of which it is a further sign, that in conception the swelling is invariable; also if you strike upon the belly, in an inflation, there will be noise, but not so in case there be a conception. it also differs from a mole, because in that there is a weight and hardness of the belly, and when the patient moves from one side to the other she feels a great weight which moveth, but not so in this. if the inflation continue without the cavity of the womb, the pain is greater and more extensive, nor is there any noise, because the wind is more pent up. _cure_. this distemper is neither of a long continuance nor dangerous, if looked after in time; and if it be in the cavity of the womb it is more easily expelled. to which purpose give her diaphnicon, with a little castor and sharp clysters that expel the wind. if this distemper happen to a woman in travail let her not purge after delivery, nor bleed, because it is from a cold matter; but if it come after child-bearing, and her terms come down sufficiently, and she has fullness of blood, let the saphoena vein be opened, after which, let her take the following electuary: take conserve of betony and rosemary, of each an ounce and a half; candied eringoes, citron peel candied, each half an ounce; diacimium, diagenel, each a drachm; oil of aniseed, six drops, and with syrup of citrons make an electuary. for outward application make a cataplasm of rue, mugwort, camomile, dill, calamint, new pennyroyal, thyme, with oil of rue, keir and camomile. and let the following clyster to expel the wind be put into the womb: take agnus castus, cinnamon, each two drachms, boil them in wine to half a pint. she may likewise use sulphur, bath and spa waters, both inward and outward, because they expel the wind. sect. iv.--_of the straitness of the womb and its vessels._ this is another effect of the womb, which is a very great obstruction to the bearing of children, hindering both the flow of the menses and conception, and is seated in the vessel of the womb, and the neck thereof. the causes of this straitness are thick and rough humours, that stop the mouths of the veins and arteries. these humours are bred either by gross or too much nourishment, when the heat of the womb is so weak that it cannot attenuate the humours, which by reason thereof, either flow from the whole body, or are gathered into the womb. now the vessels are made straiter or closer several ways; sometimes by inflammation, scirrhous or other tumours; sometimes by compressions, scars, or by flesh or membranes that grow after a wound. the signs by which this is known are, the stoppage of the terms, not conceiving, and condities abounding in the body which are all shown by particular signs, for if there is a wound, or the secundine be pulled out by force phlegm comes from the wound; if stoppage of the terms be from an old obstruction of humours, it is hard to be cured; if it be only from the disorderly use of astringents, it is more curable; if it be from a scirrhous, or other tumours that compress or close the vessel, the disease is incurable. _cure_. for the cure of that which is curable, obstructions must be taken away, phlegm must be purged, and she must be let blood, as will be hereafter directed in the stoppage of the terms. then use the following medicines: take of aniseed and fennel seed, each a drachm; rosemary, pennyroyal, calamint, betony flowers, each an ounce; castus, cinnamon, galengal, each half an ounce; saffron half a drachm, with wine. or take asparagus roots, parsley roots, each an ounce; pennyroyal, calamint, each a handful; wallflowers, gilly-flowers, each two handfuls; boil, strain and add syrup of mugwort, an ounce and a half. for a fomentation, take pennyroyal, mercury, calamint, marjoram, mugwort, each two handfuls, sage, rosemary bays, camomile-flowers, each a handful, boil them in water and foment the groin and the bottom of the belly; or let her sit up to the navel in a bath, and then anoint about the groin with oil of rue, lilies, dill, etc. sect. v.--_of the falling of the womb._ this is another evil effect of the womb which is both very troublesome, and also a hindrance to conception. sometimes the womb falleth to the middle of the thighs, nay, almost to the knees, and may be known then by its hanging out. now, that which causeth the womb to change its place is, that the ligaments by which it is bound to the other parts, are not in order; for there are four ligaments, two above, broad and membranous, round and hollow; it is also bound to the great vessels by veins and arteries, and to the back by nerves; but the place is changed when it is drawn another way, or when the ligaments are loose, and it falls down by its own weight. it is drawn on one side when the menses are hindered from flowing, and the veins and arteries are full, namely, those that go to the womb. if it be a mole on one side, the liver and spleen cause it; by the liver vein on the right side, and the spleen on the left, as they are more or less filled. others are of opinion, it comes from the solution of the connexion of the fibrous neck and the parts adjacent; and that it is from the weight of the womb descending; this we deny not, but the ligaments must be loose or broken. but women with a dropsy could not be said to have the womb fallen down, if it came only from looseness; but in them it is caused by the saltness of the water, which dries more than it moistens. now, if there be a little tumour, within or without the privities, it is nothing else but a descent of the womb, but if there be a tumour like a goose's egg and a hole at the bottom and there is at first a great pain in the parts to which the womb is fastened, as the loins, the bottom of the belly, and the os sacrum, it proceeds from the breaking or stretching of the ligaments; and a little after the pain is abated, and there is an impediment in walking, and sometimes blood comes from the breach of the vessels, and the excrements and urine are stopped, and then a fever and convulsion ensueth, oftentimes proving mortal, especially if it happen to women with child. _cure_. for the cure of this distemper, first put up the womb before the air alter it, or it be swollen or inflamed; and for this purpose give a clyster to remove the excrements, and lay her upon her back, with her legs abroad, and her thighs lifted up and her head down; then take the tumour in your hand and thrust it in without violence; if it be swelled by alteration and cold, foment it with the decoction of mallows, althoea, lime, fenugreek, camomile flowers, bay-berries, and anoint it with oil of lilies, and hen's grease. if there be an inflammation, do not put it up, but fright it in, by putting a red-hot iron before it and making a show as if you intended to burn it; but first sprinkle upon it the powder of mastich, frankincense and the like; thus, take frankincense, mastich, each two drachms; sarcocol steeped in milk, drachm; mummy, pomegranate flowers, sanguisdraconis, each half a drachm. when it is put up, let her lie with her legs stretched, and one upon the other, for eight or ten days, and make a pessary in the form of a pear, with cork or sponge, and put it into the womb, dipped in sharp wine, or juice of acacia, with powder of sanguis, with galbanum and bdellium. apply also a cupping-glass, with a great flame, under the navel or paps, or both kidneys, and lay this plaster to the back; take opopanax, two ounces, storax liquid, half an ounce; mastich, frankincense, pitch, bole, each two drachms; then with wax make a plaster; or take laudanum, a drachm and a half; mastich, and frankincense, each half a drachm, wood aloes, cloves, spike, each a drachm; ash-coloured ambergris, four grains: musk, half a scruple; make two round plasters to be laid on each side of the navel; make a fume of snails' skins salted, or of garlic, and let it be taken in by the funnel. use also astringent fomentations of bramble leaves, plantain, horse-tails, myrtles, each two handfuls; wormseed, two handfuls; pomegranate flowers, half an ounce; boil them in wine and water. for an injection take comfrey root, an ounce; rupturewort, two drachms; yarrow, mugwort, each half an ounce; boil them in red wine, and inject with a syringe. to strengthen the womb, take hartshorn, bays, of each half a drachm; myrrh half a drachm; make a powder of two doses, and give it with sharp wine. or you may take zedoary, parsnip seed, crabs' eyes prepared, each a drachm, nutmeg, half a drachm; and give a drachm, in powder; but astringents must be used with great caution, lest by stopping the courses a worse mischief follow. to keep in its place, make rollers and ligatures as for a rupture; and put pessaries into the bottom of the womb, that may force it to remain. let the diet be such as has drying, astringent and glueing qualities, as rice, starch, quinces, pears and green cheese; but let the summer fruits be avoided; and let her wine be astringent and red. * * * * * chapter iii _of diseases relating to women's monthly courses._ section i.--_of women's monthly courses in general._ that divine providence, which, with a wisdom peculiar to itself, has appointed woman to conceive by coition with man, and to bear and bring forth children, has provided for nourishment of children during their recess in the womb of their mother, by that redundancy of the blood which is natural to all women; and which, flowing out at certain periods of time (when they are not pregnant) are from thence called _terms_ and _menses_, from their monthly flux of excrementitious and unprofitable blood. now, that the matter flowing forth is excrementitious, is to be understood only with respect to the redundancy and overplus thereof, being an excrement only with respect to its quantity; for as to its quality, it is as pure and incorrupt as any blood in the veins; and this appears from the final cause of it, which is the propagation and conservation of mankind, and also from the generation of it, being superfluity of the last aliment of the fleshy parts. if any ask, if the menses be not of hurtful quality, how can they cause such venomous effects; if they fall upon trees and herbs, they make the one barren and mortify the other: i answer, this malignity is contracted in the womb, for the woman, wanting native heat to digest the superfluity, sends it to the matrix, where seating itself till the mouth of the womb be dilated, it becomes corrupt and mortified; which may easily be, considering the heat and moistness of the place; and so this blood being out of its proper vessels, offends in quality. sect. ii.--_of the terms coming out of order, either before or after the usual time._ having, in the former part of this work, treated, of the suppression and overflowing of the monthly terms, i shall content myself with referring the reader thereto, and proceed to speak of their coming out of order, either before or after the usual time. both these proceed from an ill constitution of body. everything is beautiful in its order, in nature as well as in morality; and if the order of nature be broken, it shows the body to be out of order. of each of these effects briefly. when the monthly courses come before their time, showing a depraved excretion, and flowing sometimes twice a month, the cause is in the blood, which stirs up the expulsive faculty of the womb, or else in the whole body, and is frequently occasioned by the person's diet, which increases the blood too much, making it too sharp or too hot. if the retentive faculty of the womb be weak, and the expulsive faculty strong, and of a quick sense, it brings them forth the sooner. sometimes they flow sooner by reason of a fall, stroke or some violent passion, which the parties themselves can best relate. if it be from heat, thin and sharp humours, it is known by the distemper of the whole body. the looseness of the vessels and the weakness of the retentive faculty, is known from a moist and loose habit of the body. it is more troublesome than dangerous, but hinders conception, and therefore the cure is necessary for all, but especially such as desire children. if it proceeds from a sharp blood, let her temper it by a good diet and medicines. to which purpose, let her use baths of iron water, that correct the distemper of the bowels, and then evacuate. if it proceeds from the retentive faculty, and looseness of the vessels, it is to be corrected with gentle astringents. as to the courses flowing after the usual time, the causes are, thickness of the blood, and the smallness of its quantity, with the stoutness of the passage, and weakness of the expulsive faculties. either of these singly may stop the courses, but if they all concur, they render the distemper worse. if the blood abounds not in such a quantity as may stir up nature to expel it, its purging must necessarily be deferred, till there be enough. and if the blood be thick, the passage stopped, and the expulsive faculty weak, the menses must needs be out of order and the purging of them retarded. for the cure of this, if the quantity of blood be small, let her use a larger diet, and a very little exercise. if the blood be thick and foul, let it be made thin, and the humours mixed therewith, evacuated. it is good to purge, after the courses have done flowing, and to use calamint, and, indeed, the oftener she purges, the better. she may also use fumes and pessaries, apply cupping glasses without scarification to the inside of the thighs, and rub the legs and scarify the ankles, and hold the feet in warm water four or five days before the courses come down. let her also anoint the bottom of her belly with things proper to provoke the terms. _remedies for diseases in women's paps._ make a cataplasm of bean meal and salad oil, and lay it to the place afflicted. or anoint with the juice of papilaris. this must be done when the papa are very sore. if the paps be hard and swollen, take a handful of rue, colewort roots, horehound and mint; if you cannot get all these conveniently, any two will do; pound the handful in honey, and apply it once every day till healed. if the nipples be stiff and sore, anoint twice a day with florence oil, till healed. if the paps be flabby and hanging, bruise a little hemlock, and apply it to the breast for three days; but let it not stand above seven hours. or, which is safer, rusae juice, well boiled, with a little sinapios added thereto, and anoint. if the paps be hard and dead, make a plate of lead pretty thin, to answer the breasts; let this stand nine hours each day, for three days. or sassafras bruised, and used in like manner. _receipt for procuring milk._ drink arpleui, drawn as tea, for twenty-one days. or eat of aniseeds. also the juice of arbor vitae, a glassful once a day for eleven days, is very good, for it quickens the memory, strengthens the body, and causeth milk to flow in abundance. _directions for drawing of blood._ drawing of blood was first invented for good and salutary purposes, although often abused and misapplied. to bleed in the left arm removes long continued pains and headaches. it is also good for those who have got falls and bruises. bleeding is good for many disorders, and generally proves a cure, except in some extraordinary cases, and in those cases bleeding is hurtful. if a woman be pregnant, to draw a little blood will give her ease, good health, and a lusty child. bleeding is a most certain cure for no less than twenty-one disorders, without any outward or inward applications; and for many more with application of drugs, herbs and flowers. when the moon is on the increase, you may let blood at any time day or night; but when she is on the decline, you must bleed only in the morning. bleeding may be performed from the month of march to november. no bleeding in december, january or february, unless an occasion require it. the months of march, april and november, are the three chief months of the year for bleeding in; but it may be performed with safety from the ninth of march to the nineteenth of november. to prevent the dangers that may arise from she unskilful drawing of blood, let none open a but a person of experience and practice. there are three sorts of people you must not let draw blood; first ignorant and inexperienced persons. secondly, those who have bad sight and trembling hands, whether skilful or unskilled. for when the hand trembles, the lance is apt to start from the vein, and the flesh be thereby damaged, which may hurt, canker, and very much torment the patient. thirdly, let no woman bleed, but such as have gone through a course of midwifery at college, for those who are unskilful may cut an artery, to the great damage of the patient. besides, what is still worse, those pretended bleeders, who take it up at their own hand, generally keep unedged and rusty lancets, which prove hurtful, even in a skilful hand. accordingly you ought to be cautious in choosing your physician; a man of learning knows what vein to open for each disorder; he knows how much blood to take as soon as he sees the patient, and he can give you suitable advice concerning your disorder. * * * * * part iii aristotle's book of problems with other astromer, astrologers and physicians, concerning the state of man's body. q. among all living creatures, why hath man only his countenance lifted up towards heaven. a. . from the will of the creator. but although this answer be true, yet it seemeth not to be of force, because that so all questions might be easily resolved. therefore, . i answer that, for the most part, every workman doth make his first work worse, and then his second better! so god creating all other animals before man gave them their face looking down to the earth; and then secondly he created man, unto whom he gave an upright shape, lifted unto heaven, because it is drawn from divinity, and it is derived from the goodness of god, who maketh all his works both perfect and good. . man only, among all living creatures, is ordained to the kingdom of heaven, and therefore hath his face elevated and lifted up to heaven, because that despising earthly and worldly things, he ought often to contemplate on heavenly things. . that the reasonable man is like unto angels, and finally ordained towards god; and therefore he hath a figure looking upward. . man is a microcosm, that is, a little world, and therefore he doth command all other living creatures and they obey him. . naturally there is unto everything and every work, that form and figure given which is fit and proper for its motion; as unto the heavens, roundness, to the fire a pyramidical form, that is, broad beneath and sharp towards the top, which form is most apt to ascend; and so man has his face towards heaven to behold the wonders of god's works. q. why are the heads of men hairy? a. the hair is the ornament of the head, and the brain is purged of gross humours by the growing of the hair, from the highest to the lowest, which pass through the pores of the exterior flesh, become dry, and are converted into hair. this appears to be the case, from the circumstance that in all man's body there is nothing drier than the hair, for it is drier than the bones; and it is well known that some beasts are nourished with bones, as dogs, but they cannot digest feathers or hair, but void them undigested, being too hot for nourishment. . it is answered, that the brain is purged in three different ways; of superfluous watery humours by the eyes, of choler by the nose, and of phlegm by the hair, which is the opinion of the best physicians. q. why have men longer hair on their heads than any other living creature? a. arist. de generat. anim. says, that men have the moistest brain of all living creatures from which the seed proceedeth which is converted into the long hair of the head. . the humours of men are fat, and do not become dry easily; and therefore the hair groweth long on them. in beasts, the humours easily dry, and therefore the hair groweth not so long. q. why doth the hair take deeper root in man's skin than in that of any other living creatures? a. because it has greater store of nourishment in man, and therefore grows more in the inward parts of man. and this is the reason why in other creatures the hair doth alter and change with the skin, and not in man, unless by a scar or wound. q. why have women longer hair than men? a. because women are moister and more phlegmatic than men, and therefore there is more matter for hair to them, and, by consequence, the length also of their hair. and, furthermore, this matter is more increased in women than men from their interior parts, and especially in the time of their monthly terms, because the matter doth then ascend, whereby the humour that breedeth the hair, doth increase. . because women want beards; so the matter of the beard doth go into that of the hair. q. why have some women soft hair and some hard? a. . the hair hath proportion with the skin; of which some is hard, some thick, some subtle and soft, some gross; therefore, the hair which grows out of thick, gross skin, is thick and gross; that which groweth out of a subtle and fine skin, is fine and soft; when the pores are open, then cometh forth much humour, and therefore hard hair is engendered; and when the pores are strait, then there doth grow soft and fine hair. this doth evidently appear in men, because women have softer hair than they; for in women the pores are shut and strait, by reason of their coldness. . because for the most part, choleric men have harder and thicker hair than others, by reason of their heat, and because their pores are always open, and therefore they have beards sooner than others. for this reason also, beasts that have hard hair are boldest, because such have proceeded from heat and choler, examples of which we have in the bear and the boar; and contrariwise, those beasts that have soft hair are fearful, because they are cold, as the hare and the hart. . from the climate where a man is born; because in hot regions hard and gross hair is engendered, as appears in the ethiopians, and the contrary is the case is cold countries toward the north. q. why have some men curled hair, and some smooth? a. from the superior degree of heat in some men, which makes the hair curl and grow upward; this is proved by a man's having smooth hair when he goes into a hot bath, and it afterwards becomes curled. therefore keepers of baths have often curled hair, as also ethiopians and choleric men. but the cause of this smoothness, is the abundance of moist humours. q. why do women show ripeness by hair in their privy parts, and not elsewhere, but men in their breasts? a. because in men and women there is abundance of humidity in that place, but most in women, as men have the mouth of the bladder in that place, where the urine is contained, of which the hair in the breast is engendered, and especially that about the navel. but of women in general, it is said, that the humidity of the bladder of the matrix, or womb, is joined and meeteth in that lower secret place, and therefore is dissolved and separated in that place into vapours and fumes, which are the cause of hair. and the like doth happen in other places, as in the hair under the arms. q. why have not women beards? a. because they want heat; which is the case with some effeminate men, who are beardless from the same cause, to have complexions like women. q. why doth the hair grow on those that are hanged? a. because their bodies are exposed to the sun, which, by its heat doth dissolve all moisture into the fume or vapour of which the hair doth grow. q. why is the hair of the beard thicker and grosser than elsewhere; and the more men are shaven, the harder and thicker it groweth? a. because by so much as the humours or vapours of a liquid are dissolved and taken away, so much the more doth the humour remaining draw to the same; and therefore the more the hair is shaven, the thicker the humours gather which engender the hair, and cause it to wax hard. q. why are women smooth and fairer than men? a. because in women much of the humidity and superfluity, which are the matter and cause of the hair of the body, is expelled with their monthly terms; which superfluity, remaining in men, through vapours passes into hair. q. why doth man, above all other creatures, wax hoary and gray? a. because man hath the hottest heart of all living creatures; and therefore, nature being most wise, lest a man should be suffocated through the heat of his heart, hath placed the heart, which is most hot, under the brain, which is most cold; to the end that the heat of the heart may be tempered by the coldness of the brain; and contrariwise, that the coldness of the brain may be qualified by the heat of the heart; and thereby there might be a temperature in both. a proof of this is, that of all living creatures man hath the worst breath when he comes to full age. furthermore, man doth consume nearly half his time in sleep, which doth proceed from the great excess of coldness and moisture in the brain, and from his wanting natural heat to digest and consume that moisture, which heat he hath in his youth, and therefore, in that age is not gray, but in old age, when heat faileth; because then the vapours ascending from the stomach remain undigested and unconsumed for want of natural heat, and thus putrefy, on which putrefaction of humours that the whiteness doth follow, which is called grayness or hoariness. whereby it doth appear, that hoariness is nothing but a whiteness of hair, caused by a putrefaction of the humours about the roots of the hair, through the want of natural heat in old age. sometimes all grayness is caused by the naughtiness of the complexion, which may happen in youth: sometimes through over great fear and care as appeareth in merchants, sailors and thieves. q. why doth red hair grow white sooner than hair of any other colour? a. because redness is an infirmity of the hair; for it is engendered of a weak and infirm matter, that is, of matter corrupted with the flowers of the woman; and therefore it waxes white sooner than any other colour. q. why do wolves grow grisly? a. to understand this question, note the difference between grayness and grisliness; grayness is caused through defect of natural heat, but grisliness through devouring and heat. the wolf being a devouring beast, he eateth gluttonously without chewing, and enough at once for three days; in consequence of which, gross vapours engendered in the wolf's body, which cause grisliness. grayness and grisliness have this difference; grayness is only in the head, but grisliness all over the body. q. why do horses grow grisly and gray? a. because they are for the most part in the sun, and heat naturally causes putrefaction; therefore the matter of hair doth putrefy, and in consequence they are quickly peeled. q. why do men get bald, and trees let fall their leaves in winter? a. the want of moisture is the cause in both, which is proved by a man's becoming bald through venery, because by that he lets forth his natural humidity and heat; and by that excess in carnal pleasure the moisture is consumed which is the nutriment of the hair. thus, eunuchs and women do not grow bald, because they do not part from this moisture; and therefore eunuchs are of the complexion of women. q. why are not women bald? a. because they are cold and moist, which are the causes that the hair remaineth; for moistness doth give nutriment to the hair, and coldness doth bind the pores. q. why are not blind men naturally bald? a. because the eye hath moisture in it, and that moisture which should pass through by the substance of the eyes, doth become a sufficient nutriment for the hair and therefore they are seldom bald. q. why doth the hair stand on end when men are afraid? a. because in time of fear the heat doth go from the outward parts of the body into the inward to help the heart, and so the pores in which the hair is fastened are shut up, after which stopping and shutting up of the pores, the standing up of the hair doth follow. _of the head._ q. why is a man's head round? a. because it contains in it the moistest parts of the living creature: and also that the brain may be defended thereby, as with a shield. q. why is the head not absolutely long but somewhat round? a. to the end that the three creeks and cells of the brain might the better be distinguished; that is, the fancy in the forehead, the discoursing or reasonable part in the middle, and memory in the hinder-most part. q. why doth a man lift up his head towards the heavens when he doth imagine? a. because the imagination is in the fore part of the head or brain, and therefore it lifteth up itself, that the creeks or cells of the imagination may be opened, and that the spirits which help the imagination, and are fit for that purpose, having their concourse thither, may help the imagination. q. why doth a man, when he museth or thinketh of things past, look towards the earth? a. because the cell or creek which is behind, is the creek or chamber of the memory; and therefore, that looketh towards heaven when the head is bowed down, and so the cell is open, to the end that the spirits which perfect the memory should enter it. q. why is not the head fleshy, like other parts of the body? a. because the head would be too heavy, and would not stand steadily. also, a head loaded with flesh, betokens an evil complexion. q. why is the head subject to aches and griefs? a. by reason that evil humours, which proceed from the stomach, ascend up to the head and disturb the brain, and so cause pain in the head; sometimes it proceeds from overmuch filling the stomach, because two great sinews pass from the brain to the mouth of the stomach, and therefore these two parts do always suffer grief together. q. why have women the headache oftener than men? a. by reason of their monthly terms, which men are not troubled with, and by which a moist, unclean and venomous fume is produced, that seeks passage upwards, and so causes the headache. q. why is the brain white? a. . because it is cold, and coldness is the mother of white. . because it may receive the similitude and likeness of all colours, which the white colour can best do, because it is most simple. q. why are all the senses in the head? a. because the brain is there, on which all the senses depend, and are directed by it; and, consequently, it maketh all the spirits to feel, and governeth all the membranes. q. why cannot a person escape death if the brain or heart be hurt? a. because the brain and heart are the two principal parts which concern life; and, therefore, if they be hurt, there is no remedy left for cure. q. why is the brain moist? a. because it may easily receive an impression, which moisture can best do, as it appeareth in wax, which doth easily receive the print of the seal when soft. q. why is the brain cold? a. . because that by this coldness it may clear the understanding of man and make it subtle. . that by the coldness of the brain, the heat of the heart may be tempered. _of the eyes._ q. why have you one nose and two eyes? a. because light is more necessary to us than smelling; and therefore it doth proceed from the goodness of nature, that if we receive any hurt or loss of one eye, the other should remain. q. why have children great eyes in their youth, which become small as they grow up? a. it proceeds from the want of fire, and from the assemblage and meeting together of the light and humour; the eyes, being lightened by the sun, which doth lighten the easy humour thereof and purge them: and, in the absence of the sun, those humours become dark and black, and the sight not so good. q. why does the blueish grey eye see badly in the day-time and well in the night? a. because greyness is light and shining in itself, and the spirits with which we see are weakened in the day-time and strengthened in the night. q. why are men's eyes of diverse colours? a. by reason of diversity of humours. the eye hath four coverings and three humours. the first covering is called consolidative, which is the outermost, strong and fat. the second is called a horny skin or covering, of the likeness of a horn; which is a clear covering. the third, uvea, of the likeness of a black grape. the fourth is called a cobweb. the first humour is called _albuginous_, from its likeness unto the white of an egg. the second glarial; that is, clear, like unto crystalline. the third vitreous, that is, clear as glass. and the diversity of humours causeth the diversity of the eyes. q. why are men that have but one eye, good archers? and why do good archers commonly shut one? and why do such as behold the stars look through a trunk with one eye? a. this matter is handled in the perspective arts; and the reason is, as it doth appear in _the book of causes_, because that every virtue and strength united and knit together, is stronger than when dispersed and scattered. therefore, all the force of seeing dispersed in two eyes, the one being shut, is gathered into the other, and so the light is fortified in him; and by consequence he doth see better and more certainly with one eye being shut, than when both are open. q. why do those that drink and laugh much, shed most tears? a. because that while they drink and laugh without measure the air which is drawn in doth not pass out through the windpipe, and so with force is directed and sent to the eyes, and by their pores passing out, doth expel the humours of the eyes; which humour being expelled, brings tears. q. why do such as weep much, urine but little? a. because the radical humidity of a tear and of urine are of one and the same nature, and, therefore, where weeping doth increase, urine diminishes. and that they are of one nature is plain to the taste, because they are both salt. q. why do some that have clear eyes see nothing? a. by reason of the oppilation and naughtiness of the sinews with which we see; for the temples being destroyed, the strength of the light cannot be carried from the brain to the eye. q. why is the eye clear and smooth like glass? a. . because the things which may be seen are better beaten back from a smooth thing than otherwise, that thereby the sight should strengthen. . because the eye is moist above all parts of the body, and of a waterish nature; and as the water is clear and smooth, so likewise is the eye. q. why do men and beasts who have their eyes deep in their head best see far off? a. because the force and power by which we see is dispersed in them, and both go directly to the thing which is seen. thus, when a man doth stand in a deep ditch or well, he doth see in the daytime the stars of the firmament; because then the power of the night and of the beams are not scattered. q. wherefore do those men who have eyes far out in their head not see far distant? a. because the beams of the sight which pass from the eye, are scattered on every side, and go not directly unto the thing that is seen, and therefore the sight is weakened. q. why are so many beasts born blind, as lions' whelps and dogs' whelps. a. because such beasts are not yet of perfect ripeness and maturity, and the course of nutriment doth not work in them. thus the swallow, whose eyes, if they were taken out when they are young in their nest, would grow in again. and this is the case in many beasts who are brought forth before their time as it were dead, as bear's whelps. q. why do the eyes of a woman that hath her flowers, stain new glass? and why doth a basilisk kill a man with his sight? a. when the flowers do run from a woman, then a most venomous air is distilled from them, which doth ascend into a woman's head; and she, having pain in her head, doth wrap it up with a cloth or handkerchief; and because the eyes are full of insensible holes, which are called pores, there the air seeketh a passage, and infects the eyes, which are full of blood. the eyes also appear dropping and full of tears, by reason of the evil vapour that is in them; and these vapours are incorporated and multiplied till they come to the glass before them; and by reason that such a glass is round, clear and smooth, it doth easily receive that which is unclean. . the basilisk is a very venomous and infectious animal, and there pass from his eyes vapours which are multiplied upon the thing which is seen by him, and even unto the eye of man; the which venomous vapours or humours entering into the body, do infect him, and so in the end the man dieth. and this is also the reason why the basilisk, looking upon a shield perfectly well made with fast clammy pitch, or any hard smooth thing, doth kill itself, because the humours are beaten back from the hard smooth thing unto the basilisk, by which beating back he is killed. q. why is the sparkling in cats' eyes and wolves' eyes seen in the dark and not in the light? a. because that the greater light doth darken the lesser; and therefore, in a greater light the sparkling cannot be seen; but the greater the darkness, the easier it is seen, and is more strong and shining. q. why is the sight recreated and refreshed by a green colour? a. because green doth merely move the sight, and therefore doth comfort it; but this doth not, in black or white colours, because these colours do vehemently stir and alter the organ and instrument of the sight, and therefore make the greater violence; and by how much the more violent the thing is which is felt or seen the more it doth destroy and weaken the sense. _of the nose._ q. why doth the nose stand out further than any other part of the body. a. . because the nose is, as it were, the sink of the brain, by which the phlegm of the brain is purged; and therefore it doth stand forth, lest the other parts should be defiled. . because the nose is the beauty of the face, and doth smell. q. why hath a man the worst smell of all creatures? a. because man hath most brains of all creatures; and, therefore, by exceeding coldness and moisture, the brain wanteth a good disposition, and by consequence, the smelling instrument is not good, yea, some men have no smell. q. why have vultures and cormorants a keen smell? a. because they have a very dry brain; and, therefore, the air carrying the smell, is not hindered by the humidity of the brain, but doth presently touch its instrument; and, therefore, vultures, tigers and other ravenous beasts, have been known to come five hundred miles after dead bodies. q. why did nature make the nostrils? a. . because the mouth being shut we draw breath in by the nostrils, to refresh the heart. . because the air which proceedeth from the mouth doth savour badly, because of the vapours which rise from the stomach, but that which we breathe from the nose is not noisome. . because the phlegm which doth proceed from the brain is purged by them. q. why do men sneeze? a. that the expulsive virtue and power of the sight should thereby be purged, and the brain also from superfluities; because, as the lungs are purged by coughing, so is the sight and brain by sneezing; and therefore physicians give sneezing medicaments to purge the brain; and thus it is, such sick persons as cannot sneeze, die quickly, because it is a sign their brain is wholly stuffed with evil humours, which cannot be purged. q. why do such as are apoplectic sneeze, that is, such as are subject easily to bleed? a. because the passages, or ventricles of the brain are stopped, and if they could sneeze, their apoplexy would be loosed. q. why does the heat of the sun provoke sneezing, and not the heat of the fire? a. because the heat of the sun doth dissolve, but not consume, and therefore the vapour dissolved is expelled by sneezing; but the heat of the fire doth dissolve and consume, and therefore doth rather hinder sneezing than provoke it. _of the ears._ q. why do beasts move their ears, and not men? a. because there is a certain muscle near the under jaw which doth cause motion in the ear; and therefore, that muscle being extended and stretched, men do not move their ears, as it hath been seen in divers men; but all beasts do use that muscle or fleshy sinew, and therefore do move their ears. q. why is rain prognosticated by the pricking up of asses' ears? a. because the ass is of a melancholic constitution, and the approach of rain produceth that effect on such a constitution. in the time of rain all beasts prick up their ears, but the ass before it comes. q. why have some animals no ears? a. nature giveth unto everything that which is fit for it, but if she had given birds ears, their flying would have been hindered by them. likewise fish want ears, because they would hinder their swimming, and have only certain little holes through which they hear. q. why have bats ears, although of the bird kind? a. because they are partly birds in nature, in that they fly, by reason whereof they have wings; and partly they are hairy and seem to be of the nature of mice, therefore nature hath given them ears. q. why have men only round ears? a. because the shape of the whole and of the parts should be proportionable, and especially in all things of one nature; for as a drop of water is round, so the whole water: and so, because a man's head is round, the ears incline towards the same figure; but the heads of beasts are somewhat long, and so the ears are drawn into length likewise. q. why hath nature given all living creatures ears? a. . because with them they should hear. . because by the ear choleric superfluity is purged; for as the head is purged of phlegmatic superfluity by the nose, so from choleric, by the ears. _of the mouth._ q. why hath the mouth lips to compass it? a. because the lips cover and defend the teeth; for it would be unseemly if the teeth were always seen. also, the teeth being of a cold nature, would be soon hurt if they were not covered with lips. q. why has a man two eyes and but one mouth? a. because a man should speak but little, and hear and see much. and by hearing and the light we see difference of things. q. why hath a man a mouth? a. . because the mouth is the gate and door of the stomach. . because the meat is chewed in the mouth, and prepared and made ready for the first digestion. . because the air drawn into the hollow of the mouth for the refreshing of the heart, is made pure and subtle. q. why are the lips moveable? a. for the purpose of forming the voice and words which cannot be perfectly done without them. for as without _a, b, c_, there is no writing, so without the lips no voice can well be formed. q. what causes men to yawn or gape? a. it proceeds from the thick fume and vapours that fill the jaws; by the expulsion of which is caused the stretching out and expansion of the jaws, and opening of the mouth. q. why doth a man gape when he seeth another do the same? a. it proceeds from the imagination. and this is proved by the similitude of the ass, who by reason of his melancholy, doth retain his superfluity for a long time, and would neither eat nor piss unless he should hear another doing the like. _of the teeth._ q. why do the teeth only, amongst all ether bones, experience the sense of feeling? a. that they may discern heat and cold, that hurt them, which other bones need not. q. why have men more teeth than women? a. by reason of the abundance of heat and cold which is more in men than in women. q. why do the teeth grow to the end of our life, and not the other bones? a. because otherwise they would be consumed with chewing and grinding. q. why do the teeth only come again when they fall, or be taken out, and other bones being taken away, grow no more? a. because other bones are engendered of the humidity which is called radical, and so they breed in the womb of the mother, but the teeth are engendered of nutritive humidity, which is renewed and increased from day to day. q. why do the fore-teeth fall in youth, and grow again, and not the cheek teeth? a. from the defect of matter, and from the figure; because the fore-teeth are sharp, and the others broad. also, it is the office of the fore-teeth to cut the meat, and therefore they are sharp; and the office of the others to chew the meat, and therefore they are broad in fashion, which is fittest for that purpose. q. why do the fore-teeth grow soonest? a. because we want them sooner in cutting than the others in chewing. q. why do the teeth grow black in human creatures in their old age? a. it is occasioned by the corruption of the meat, and the corruption of phlegm with a choleric humour. q. why are colts' teeth yellow, and of the colour of saffron, when they are young, and become white when they grow up? a. because horses have abundance of watery humours in them, which in their youth are digested and converted into grossness; but in old age heat diminishes, and the watery humours remain, whose proper colour is white. q. why did nature give living creatures teeth? a. to some to fight with, and for defence of their lives, as unto wolves and bears, unto some to eat with, as unto horses, unto some for the forming of the voices, as unto men. q. why do horned beasts want their upper teeth? a. horns and teeth are caused by the same matter, that is, nutrimental humidity, and therefore the matter which passeth into the horns turneth not into teeth, consequently they want the upper teeth. and such beasts cannot chew well; therefore, to supply the want of teeth, they have two stomachs, from whence it returns and they chew it again, then it goes into the other to be digested. q. why are some creatures brought forth with teeth, as kids and lambs; and some without, as men? a. nature doth not want in necessary things, nor abound in things superfluous; and therefore, because these beasts, not long after they are fallen, do need teeth, they are fallen with teeth; but men, being nourished by their mother, for a long time do not stand in need of teeth. _of the tongue._ q. why is the tongue full of pores? a. because the tongue is the means whereby which we taste; and through the mouth, in the pores of the tongue, doth proceed the sense of tasting. again, it is observed, that frothy spittle is sent into the mouth by the tongue from the lungs, moistening the meat and making it ready for digestion. q. why do the tongues of such as are sick of agues judge all things bitter? a. because the stomachs of such persons are filled with choleric humours; and choler is very bitter, as appeareth by the gall; therefore this bitter fume doth infect their tongues; and so the tongue, being full of these tastes, doth judge everything bitter. q. why doth the tongue water when we hear sour and sharp things spoken of? a. because the imaginative virtue or power is of greater force than the power or faculty of tasting; and when we imagine a taste, we conceive the power of tasting as a swan; there is nothing felt by the taste, but by means of the spittle the tongue doth water. q. why do some persons stammer and lisp? a. sometimes through the moistness of the tongue and brain, as in children, who cannot speak plainly nor pronounce many letters. sometimes it happeneth by reason of the shrinking of certain sinews which go to the tongue, which are corrupted with phlegm. q. why are the tongues of serpents and mad dogs venomous? a. because of the malignity and tumosity of the venomous humour which predominates in them. q. why is a dog's tongue good for medicine, and a horse's tongue pestiferous? a. by reason of some secret property, or that the tongue of a dog is full of pores, and so doth draw and take away the viscosity of the wound. it is observed that a dog hath some humour in his tongue, with which, by licking he doth heal; but the contrary effect is the lick of a horse's tongue. q. why is spittle white? a. by reason of the continual moving of the tongue, whereof heat is engendered, which doth make this superfluity white; as seen in the froth of water. q. why is spittle unsavoury and without taste? a. if it had a certain determinate taste, then the tongue would not taste at all, but only have the taste of spittle, and could not distinguish others. q. why doth the spittle of one that is fasting heal an imposthume? a. because it is well digested and made subtle. q. why do some abound in spittle more than others? a. this doth proceed of a phlegmatic complexion, which doth predominate in them; and such are liable to a quotidian ague, which ariseth from the predominance of phlegm; the contrary in those that spit little, because heat abounds in them, which consumes the humidity of the spittle; and so the defect of spittle is a sign of fever. q. why is the spittle of a man that is fasting more subtle than of one that is full? a. because the spittle is without the viscosity of meat, which is wont to make the spittle of one who is full, gross and thick. q. from whence proceeds the spittle of a man? a. from the froth of the lungs, which according to the physicians, is the seat of the phlegm. q. why are beasts when going together for generation very full of froth and foam? a. because then the lights and heart are in greater motion of lust; therefore there is engendered in them much frothy matter. q. why have not birds spittle? a. because they have very dry lungs. q. why doth the tongue sometimes lose the use of speaking? a. it is occasioned by a palsy or apoplexy, which is a sudden effusion of blood, and by gross humours; and sometimes also by infection of _spiritus animates_ in the middle cell of the brain which hinders the spirits from being carried to the tongue. _of the roof of the mouth._ q. why are fruits, before they are ripe, of a bitter and sour relish, and afterward sweet? a. a sour relish or taste proceeds from coldness and want of heat in gross and thick humidity; but a sweet taste is produced by sufficient heat; therefore in the ripe fruit humidity is subtle through the heat of the sun, and such fruit is commonly sweet; but before it is ripe, as humidity is gross or subtle for want of heat, the fruit is bitter or sour. q. why are we better delighted with sweet tastes than with bitter or any other? a. because a sweet thing is hot and moist, and through its heat dissolves and consumes superfluous humidities, and by this humidity immundicity is washed away; but a sharp, eager taste, by reason of the cold which predominates in it, doth bind overmuch, and prick and offend the parts of the body in purging, and therefore we do not delight in that taste. q. why doth a sharp taste, as that of vinegar, provoke appetite rather than any other? a. because it is cold, and doth cool. for it is the nature of cold to desire to draw, and therefore it is the cause of appetite. q. why do we draw in more air than we breathe out? a. because much air is drawn in that is converted into nutriment, and with the vital spirits is contained in the lungs. therefore a beast is not suffocated as long as it receives air with its lungs, in which some part of the air remaineth also. q. why doth the air seem to be expelled and put forth, seeing the air is invisible, by reason of its variety and thinness? a. because the air which is received in us, is mingled with vapours and fumes from the heart, by reason whereof it is made thick, and so is seen. and this is proved by experience, because that in winter, we see our breath, for the coldness of the air doth bind the air mixed with fume, and so it is thickened and made gross, and by consequence is seen. q. why have some persons stinking breath? a. because of the evil fumes that arise from the stomach. and sometimes it doth proceed from the corruption of the airy parts of the body, as the lungs. the breath of lepers is so infected that it would poison birds if near them, because the inward parts are very corrupt. q. why are lepers hoarse? a. because the vocal instruments are corrupted, that is, the lights. q. why do persons become hoarse? a. because of the rheum descending from the brain, filling the conduit of the lights; and sometimes through imposthumes of the throat, or rheum gathering in the neck. q. why have the females of all living creatures the shrillest voices, the crow only excepted, and a woman a shriller and smaller voice than a man? a. by reason of the composition of the veins and vocal arteries the voice is formed, as appears by this similitude, that a small pipe sounds shriller than a great. also in women, because the passage where the voice is formed is made narrow and strait, by reason of cold, it being the nature of cold to bind; but in men, the passage is open and wider through heat, because it is the property of heat to open and dissolve. it proceedeth in women through the moistness of the lungs, and weakness of the heat. young and diseased men have sharp and shrill voices from the same cause. q. why doth the voice change in men at fourteen, and in women at twelve; in men they begin to yield seed, in women when their breasts begin to grow? a. because then the beginning of the voice is slackened and loosened; and this is proved by the similitude of the string of an instrument let down or loosened, which gives a great sound, and also because creatures that are gelded, as eunuchs, capons., etc., have softer and slenderer voices than others, by the want of their stones. q. why do small birds sing more and louder than great ones, as appears in the lark and nightingale? a. because the spirits of small birds are subtle and soft, and the organ conduit strait, as appeareth in a pipe; therefore their notes following easily at desire, they sing very soft. q. why do bees, wasps, locusts and many other such like insects, make a noise, seeing they have no lungs, nor instruments of music? a. because in them there is a certain small skin, which, when struck by the air, causeth a sound. q. why do not fish make a sound? a. because they have no lungs, but only gills, nor yet a heart, and therefore they need not the drawing in of the air, and by consequence they make no noise, because a voice is a percussion of the air which is drawing. _of the neck._ q. why hath a living creature a neck? a. because the neck is the supporter of the head, and therefore the neck is in the middle between the head and the body, to the intent that by it, and by its sinews, motion and sense of the body might be conveyed through all the body; and that by means of the neck, the heart, which is very hot, might be separated from the brain. q. why do some creatures want necks, as serpents and fishes? a. because they want hearts, and therefore want that assistance which we have spoken of; or else they have a neck in some inward part of them, which is not distinguished outwardly. q. why is the neck full of bones and joints? a. that it may bear and sustain the head the better. also, because the back bone is joined to the brain in the neck, and from thence it receives marrow, which is of the substance of the brain. q. why have some creatures long necks, as cranes, storks and such like? a. because such birds seek their food at the bottom of waters. and some creatures have short necks, as sparrows, hawks, etc., because such are ravenous, and therefore for strength have short necks, as appeareth in the ox, who has a short neck and strong. q. why is the neck hollow, and especially before, about the tongue? a. because there are two passages, whereof the one doth carry the meat to the nutritive instrument, or stomach and liver, which is called by the greeks _aesophagus_; and the other is the windpipe. q. why is the artery made with rings and circle? a. the better to bow and give a good sounding. _of the shoulders and arms._ q. why hath a man shoulders and arms? a. to lift and carry burdens. q. why are the arms round? a. for the swifter and speedier work. q. why are the arms thick? a. that they may be strong to lift and bear burdens, and thrust and give a strong blow; so their bones are thick, because they contain much marrow, or they would be easily corrupted and injured. q. why do the arms become small and slender in some diseases, as in mad men, and such as are sick of the dropsy? a. because all the parts of the body do suffer the one with the other; and therefore one member being in grief, all the humours do concur and run thicker to give succour and help to the aforesaid grief. q. why have brute beasts no arms? a. their fore feet are instead of arms, and in their place. _of the hands._ q. for what use hath a man hands, and an ape also, like unto a man? a. the hand is an instrument a man doth especially make use of, because many things are done by the hands, and not by any other part. q. why are some men ambo-dexter, that is, they use the left hand as the right? a. by reason of the great heat of the heart, and for the hot bowing of the same, for it is that which makes a man as nimble of the left hand as of the right. q. why are the fingers full of joints? a. to be more fit and apt to receive and keep what is put in them. q. why hath every finger three joints, and the thumb but two? a. the thumb hath three, but the third is joined to the arm, therefore is stronger than the other fingers; and is called pollex or polico, that is, to excel in strength. q. why are the fingers of the right hand nimbler than the fingers of the left? a. it proceedeth from the heat that predominates in those parts, and causeth great agility. _of the nails._ q. from whence do nails proceed? a. of the tumosity and humours, which are resolved and go into the extremities of the fingers; and they are dried through the power of the external air, and brought to the hardness of horn. q. why do the nails of old men grow black and pale? a. because the heat of the heart decaying causeth their beauty to decay also. q. why are men judged to be good or evil complexioned by the colour of the nails? a. because they give witness of the goodness or badness of their heart, and therefore of the complexion, for if they be somewhat red, they betoken choler well tempered; but if they be yellowish or black, they signify melancholy. q. why do white spots appear in the nails? a. through mixture of phlegm with nutriment. _of the paps and dugs._ q. why are the paps placed upon the breasts? a. because the breast is the seat of the heart, which is most hot; and therefore the paps grow there, to the end that the menses being conveyed thither as being near the heat of the heart, should the sooner be digested, perfected and converted with the matter and substance of the milk. q. why are the paps below the breasts in beasts, and above the breast in women? a. because woman goes upright, and has two legs only; and therefore if her paps were below her breasts, they would hinder her going; but beasts having four feet prevents that inconveniency. q. whether are great, small or middle-sized paps best for children to suck? a. in great ones the heat is dispersed, there is no good digestion of the milk; but in small ones the power and force is strong, because a virtue united is strongest; and by consequence there is a good digestion for the milk. q. why have not men as great paps and breasts as women? a. because men have not monthly terms, and therefore have no vessel deputed for them. q. why do the paps of young women begin to grow about thirteen or fifteen years of age? a. because then the flowers have no course to the teats, by which the young one is nourished, but follow their ordinary course and therefore wax soft. q. why hath a woman who is with child of a boy, the right pap harder than the left? a. because the male child is conceived in the right side of the mother; and therefore the flowers do run to the right pap, and make it hard. q. why doth it show weakness of the child, when the milk doth drop out of the paps before the woman is delivered? a. because the milk is the proper nutriment of the child in the womb of its mother, therefore if the milk run out, it is a token that the child is not nourished, and consequently is weak. q. why do the hardness of the paps betoken the health of the child in the womb? a. because the flowers are converted into milk, and thereby strength is signified. q. why are women's paps hard when they be with child, and soft at other times? a. because they swell then, and are puffed, and the great moisture which proceeds from the flowers doth run into the paps, which at other seasons remaineth in the matrix and womb, and is expelled by the place deputed for that end. q. by what means doth the milk of the paps come to the matrix or womb? a. there is a certain knitting and coupling of the paps with the womb, and there are certain veins which the midwives do cut in the time of the birth of the child, and by those veins the milk flows in at the navel of the child, and so it receives nourishment by the navel. q. why is it a sign of a male child in the womb when the milk that runneth out of a woman's breast is thick, and not much, and of a female when it is thin? a. because a woman that goeth with a boy hath a great heat in her, which doth perfect the milk and make it thick; but she who goes with a girl hath not so much heat, and therefore the milk is undigested, imperfect, watery and thin, and will swim above the water if it be put into it. q. why is the milk white, seeing the flowers are red, of which it is engendered? a. because blood which is well purged and concocted becomes white, as appeareth in flesh whose proper colour is white, and being boiled, is white. also, because every humour which is engendered of the body, is made like unto that part in colour where it is engendered as near as it can be; but because the flesh of the paps is white, therefore the colour of the milk is white. q. why doth a cow give milk more abundantly than other beasts? a. because she is a great eating beast, where there is much monthly superfluity engendered, there is much milk; because it is nothing else but the blood purged and tried. q. why is not milk wholesome? a. . because it curdeth in the stomach, whereof an evil breath is bred. . because the milk doth grow sour in the stomach, where evil humours are bred, and infect the breath. q. why is milk bad for such as have the headache? a. because it is easily turned into great fumosities, and hath much terrestrial substance in it, the which ascending, doth cause the headache. q. why is milk fit nutriment for infants? a. because it is a natural and usual food, and they were nourished by the same in the womb. q. why are the white-meats made of a newly milked cow good? a. because milk at that time is very springy, expels fumosities, and, as it were, purges at that time. q. why is the milk naught for the child, if the woman giving suck uses carnal copulation? a. because in time of carnal copulation, the best part of the milk goes to the seed vessels, and to the womb, and the worst remain in the paps, which hurts the child. q. why do physicians forbid the eating of fish and milk at the same time? a. because they produce a leprosy, and because they are phlegmatic. q. why have not birds and fish milk and paps? a. because paps would hinder the flight of birds. and although fish have neither paps nor milk, the females cast much spawn, which the male touches with a small gut, and causes their kind to continue in succession. _of the back._ q. why have beasts a back? a. . because the back is the way and mien of the body from which are extended and spread throughout, all the sinews of the backbone. . because it should be a guard and defence for the soft parts of the body, as for the stomach, liver, lights and such like. . because it is the foundation of all the bones, as the ribs, fastened to the back bone. q. why hath the back bone so many joints or knots, called _spondyli_? a. because the moving and bending it, without such joints, could not be done; and therefore they are wrong who say that elephants have no such joints, for without them they could not move. q. why do fish die after their back bones are broken? a. because in fish the back bone is instead of the heart; now the heart is the first thing that lives and the last that dies; and when that bone is broken, fish can live no longer. q. why doth a man die soon after the marrow is hurt or perished? a. because the marrow proceeds from the brain, which is the principal part of a man. q. why have some men the piles? a. those men are cold and melancholy, which melancholy first passes to the spleen, its proper seat, but there cannot be retained, for the abundancy of blood; for which reason it is conveyed to the back bone, where there are certain veins which terminate in the back, and receive the blood. when those veins are full of the melancholy blood, then the conduits of nature are opened, and the blood issues out once a month, like women's terms. those men who have this course of blood, are kept from many infirmities, such as dropsy, plague, etc. q. why are the jews much subject to this disease? a. because they eat much phlegmatic and cold meats, which breed melancholy blood, which is purged with the flux. another reason is, motion causes heat and heat digestion; but strict jews neither move, labour nor converse much, which breeds a coldness in them, and hinders digestion, causing melancholic blood, which is by this means purged out. _of the heart._ q. why are the lungs light, spongy and full of holes? a. that the air may be received into them for cooling the heart, and expelling humours, because the lungs are the fan of the heart; and as a pair of bellows is raised up by taking in the air, and shrunk by blowing it out, so likewise the lungs draw the air to cool the heart, and cast it out, lest through too much air drawn in, the heart should be suffocated. q. why is the flesh of the lungs white? a. because they are in continual motion. q. why have those beasts only lungs that have hearts? a. because the lungs be no part for themselves, but for the heart, and therefore, it were superfluous for those creatures to have lungs that have no hearts. q. why do such creatures as have no lungs want a bladder? a. because such drink no water to make their meat digest and need no bladder for urine; as appears in such birds as do not drink at all, viz., the falcon and sparrow hawk. q. why is the heart in the midst of the body? a. that it may import life to all, parts of the body, and therefore it is compared to the sun, which is placed in the midst of the planets, to give light to them all. q. why only in men is the heart on the left side? a. to the end that the heat of the heart may mitigate the coldness of the spleen; for the spleen is the seat of melancholy, which is on the left side also. q. why is the heart first engendered; for the heart doth live first and die last? a. because the heart is the beginning and original of life, and without it no part can live. for of the seed retained in the matrix, there is first engendered a little small skin, which compasses the seed; whereof first the heart is made of the purest blood; then of blood not so pure, the liver; and of thick and cold blood the marrow and brain. q. why are beasts bold that have little hearts? a. because in a little heart the heat is well united and vehement, and the blood touching it, doth quickly heat it and is speedily carried to the other parts of the body, which give courage and boldness. q. why are creatures with a large heart timorous, as the hare? a. the heart is dispersed in such a one, and not able to heat the blood which cometh to it; by which means fear is bred. q. how is it that the heart is continually moving? a. because in it there is a certain spirit which is more subtle than air, and by reason of its thickness and rarefaction, seeks a larger space, filling the hollow room of the heart; hence the dilating and opening of the heart, and because the heart is earthly the thrusting and moving ceasing, its parts are at rest, tending downwards. as a proof of this, take an acorn, which, if put into the fire, the heat doth dissolve its humidity, therefore occupies a greater space, so that the rind cannot contain it, but puffs up, and throws it into the fire. the like of the heart. therefore the heart of a living creature is triangular, having its least part towards its left side, and the greater towards the right; and doth also open and shut in the least part, by which means it is in continual motion; the first motion is called _diastole_, that is extending the heart or breast; the other _systole_, that is, shutting of the heart; and from these all the motions of the body proceed, and that of the pulse which the physicians feel. q. how comes it that the flesh of the heart is so compact and knit together? a. because in thick compacted substances heat is commonly received and united. and because the heart with its heat should moderate the coldness of the brain, it is made of that fat flesh apt to keep a strong heat. q. how comes the heart to be the hottest part of all living creatures? a. it is so compacted as to receive the heat best, and because it should mitigate the coldness of the brain. q. why is the heart the beginning of life? a. it is plain that in it the vital spirit is bred, which is the heat of life; and therefore the heart having two receptacles, viz., the right and the left the right hath more blood than spirits; which spirit is engendered to give life and vivify the body. q. why is the heart long and sharp like a pyramid? a. the round figure hath an angle, therefore the heart is round, for fear any poison or hurtful matter should be retained in it; and because that figure is fittest for motion. q. how comes the blood chiefly to be in the heart? a. the blood in the heart has its proper or efficient place, which some attribute to the liver; and therefore the heart doth not receive blood from any other parts but all other parts of it. q. how happens it that some creatures want a heart? a. although they have no heart, yet they have somewhat that answers for it, as appears in eels and fish that have the back bone instead of the heart. q. why does the heart beat in some creatures after the head is cut off, as in birds and hens? a. because the heart lives first and dies last, and therefore beats longer than other parts. q. why doth the heat of the heart sometimes fail of a sudden, and in those who have the falling sickness? a. this proceeds from the defect of the heart itself, and of certain small skins with which it is covered, which, being infected and corrupted, the heart faileth on a sudden; sometimes only by reason of the parts adjoining; and therefore, when any venomous humour goes out of the stomach that turns the heart and parts adjoining, that causeth this fainting. _of the stomach._ q. for what reason is the stomach large and wide? a. because in it the food is first concocted or digested as it were in a pot, to the end that which is pure should be separated from that which is not; and therefore, according to the quantity of food, the stomach is enlarged. q. how comes it that the stomach is round? a. because if it had angles and corners, food would remain in them and breed ill-humours, so that a man would never want agues, which humours are evacuated and consumed, and not hid in any such corners, by the roundness of the stomach. q. how comes the stomach to be full of sinews? a. because the sinews can be extended and enlarged, and so is the stomach when it is full; but when empty it is drawn together, and therefore nature provides the sinews. q. how comes the stomach to digest? a. because of the heat which is in it, and comes from the parts adjoining, that is, the liver and the heart. for as we see in metals the heat of the fire takes away the rust and dross from iron, the silver from tin, and gold from copper; so also by digestion the pure is separated from the impure. q. for what reason doth the stomach join the liver? a. because the liver is very hot, and with its heat helps digestion, and provokes appetite. q. why are we commonly cold after dinner? a. because then the heat goes to the stomach to further digestion, and so the other parts grow cold. q. why is it hurtful to study soon after dinner? a. because when the heat labours to help the imagination in study, it ceases from digesting the food, which remains undigested; therefore people should walk sometimes after meals. q. how cometh the stomach slowly to digest meat? a. because it swims in the stomach. now, the best digestion is in the bottom of the stomach, because the fat descends not there; such as eat fat meat are very sleepy by reason that digestion is hindered. q. why is all the body wrong when the stomach is uneasy? a. because the stomach is knit with the brain, heart and liver, which are the principal parts in man; and when it is not well, the others are indisposed. again, if the first digestion be hindered, the others are also hindered; for in the first digestion is the beginning of the infirmity in the stomach. q. why are young men sooner hungry than old men? a. young men do digest for three causes; . for growing; . for restoring life; and . for conservation of life. also, young men are hot and dry, and therefore the heat doth digest more, and by consequence they desire more. q. why do physicians prescribe that men should eat when they have an appetite? a. because much hunger and emptiness will fill the stomach with naughty rotten humours, which are drawn in instead of meat; for, if we fast over night we have an appetite to meat, but none in the morning; as then the stomach is filled with naughty humours, and especially its mouth, which is no true filling, but a deceitful one. and, therefore, after we have eaten a little, our stomach comes to us again; for the first morsel, having made clean the mouth of the stomach, doth provoke the appetite. q. why do physicians prescribe that we should not eat too much at a time, but little by little? a. because when the stomach is full, the meat doth swim in it, which is a dangerous thing. another reason is, that as very green wood doth put out the fire, so much meat chokes the natural heat and puts it out; and therefore the best physic is to use temperance in eating and drinking. q. why do we desire change of meals according to the change of times; as in winter, beef, mutton; in summer light meats, as veal, lamb, etc.? a. because the complexion of the body is altered and changed according to the time of year. another reason is, that this proceeds from the quality of the season: because the cold in winter doth cause a better digestion. q. why should not the meat we eat be as hot as pepper and ginger? a. because as hot meat doth inflame the blood, and dispose it to a leprosy, so, on the contrary, meat too cold doth mortify and chill the blood. our meat should not be over sharp, because it wastes the constitution; too much sauce doth burn the entrails, and inclineth to too often drinking; raw meat doth the same; and over sweet meats to constipate and cling the veins together. q. why is it a good custom to eat cheese after dinner, and pears after all meat? a. because, by reason of its earthliness and thickness it tendeth down towards the bottom of the stomach, and so put down the meat; and the like of pears. note, that new cheese is better than old, and that old soft cheese is very bad, and causeth the headache and stopping of the liver; and the older the worse. whereof it is said that cheese digesteth all things but itself. q. why are nuts good after cheese, as the proverb is, "after fish nuts, and after flesh cheese?" a. because fish is of hard digestion, and doth easily putrefy and corrupt; and nuts are a remedy against poison. q. why is it unwholesome to wait long for one dish after another, and to eat of divers kinds of meat? a. because the first begins to digest when the last is eaten, and so digestion is not equally made. but yet this rule is to be noted; dishes light of digestion, as chickens, kids, veal, soft eggs and such like, should be first eaten; because, if they should be first served and eaten and were digested, they would hinder the digestion of the others; and the light meats not digested would be corrupted in the stomach and kept in the stomach violently, whereof would follow belching, loathing, headache, bellyache and great thirst. it is very hurtful too, at the same meal to drink wine and milk, because they are productive of leprosy. q. whether is meat or drink best for the stomach? a. drink is sooner digested than meat, because meat is of greater substance, and more material than drink, and therefore meat is harder to digest. q. why is it good to drink after dinner? a. because the drink will make the meat readier to digest. the stomach is like unto a pot which doth boil meat, and therefore physicians do counsel to drink at meals. q. why is it good to forbear a late supper? a. because there is little moving or stirring after supper, and so the meat is not sent down to the bottom of the stomach, but remaineth undigested, and so breeds hurts; therefore a light supper is best. _of the blood._ q. why is it necessary that every living creature that hath blood have also a liver? a. because the blood is first made in the liver, its seat, being drawn from the stomach by certain principal veins, and so engendered. q. why is the blood red? a. . it is like the part in which it is made, viz., the liver, which is red. . it is likewise sweet, because it is well digested and concocted; but if it hath a little earthly matter mixed with it, that makes it somewhat salt. q. how is women's blood thicker than men's? their coldness thickens, binds, congeals, and joins together. q. how comes the blood to all parts of the body through the liver, and by what means? a. through the principal veins, as the veins of the head, liver, etc., to nourish the body. _of the urine._ q. how doth the urine come into the bladder, seeing the bladder is shut? a. some say sweatings; others, by a small skin in the bladder, which opens and lets in the urine. urine is a certain and not deceitful messenger of the health or infirmity of man. men make white urine in the morning, and before dinner red, but after dinner pale, and also after supper. q. why is it hurtful to drink much cold water? a. because one contrary doth hinder and expel another; water is very cold, and lying so in the stomach, doth hinder digestion. q. why is it unwholesome to drink new wine? a. . it cannot be digested; therefore it causeth the belly to swell, and a kind of bloody flux. . it hinders making water. q. why do physicians forbid us to labour presently after dinner? a. . because the motion hinders the virtue and power of digestion. . because stirring immediately after dinner causes the different parts of the body to draw the meat to them, which often breeds sickness. . because motion makes the food descend before it is digested. and after supper it is good to walk a little, that the food may go to the bottom of the stomach. q. why is it good to walk after dinner? a. because it makes a man well disposed, and fortifies and strengthens the natural heat, causing the superfluity of the stomach to descend. q. why is it wholesome to vomit? a. it purges the stomach of all naughty humours, expelling them, which would breed again if they should remain in it; and purges the eyes and head, clearing the brain. q. how comes sleep to strengthen the stomach and the digestive faculty? a. because in sleep the heat draws inwards, and helps digestion; but when we awake, the heat returns, and is dispersed through the body. _of the gall and spleen._ q. how come living creatures to have a gall? a. because choleric humours are received into it, which through their acidity helps the guts to expel superfluities; also it helps digestion. q. how comes the jaundice to proceed from the gall? a. the humour of the gall is bluish and yellow; therefore when its pores are stopped the humour cannot go into the sack thereof, but are mingled with the blood, wandering throughout all the body and infecting the skin. q. why hath a horse, mule, ass or cow a gall? a. though these creatures have no gall in one place, as in a purse or vessel, yet they have one dispersed in small veins. q. how comes the spleen to be black? a. it is occasioned by terrestrial and earthy matter of a black colour. according to physicians, the spleen is the receptacle of melancholy, and that is black. q. why is he lean who hath a large spleen? a. because the spleen draws much water to itself, which would turn to fat; therefore, men that have a small spleen are fat. q. why does the spleen cause men to laugh, as says isidorus; "we laugh with the spleen, we are angry with the gall, we are wise with the heart, we love with the liver, we feel with the brain, and speak with the lungs"? a. the reason is, the spleen draws much melancholy to it, being its proper seat, the which melancholy proceeds from sadness, and is there consumed; and the cause failing, the effect doth so likewise. and by the same reason the gall causes anger, for choleric men are often angry, because they have much gall. _of carnal copulation._ q. why do living creatures use carnal copulation? a. because it is most natural in them to get their like. q. what is carnal copulation? a. it is a mutual action of male and female, with instruments ordained for that purpose to propagate their kind. q. why is this action good in those that use it lawfully and moderately? a. because it eases and lightens the body, clears the mind, comforts the head and senses, and expels melancholy. q. why is immoderate carnal copulation hurtful? a. because it destroys the sight, dries the body, and impairs the brain, often causes fevers and shortens life also. q. why doth carnal copulation injure melancholic or choleric men, especially thin men? a. because it dries the bones much which are naturally so. on the contrary, it is good for the phlegmatic and sanguine, because they abound with that substance which by nature, is necessarily expelled. q. why should not the act be used when the body is full? a. because it hinders digestion; and it is not good for a hungry belly, because it weakens. q. why is it not good soon after a bath? a. because then the pores are open, and the heat dispersed through the body: for after bathing, it cools the body too much. q. why is it not proper after vomiting or looseness? a. because it is dangerous to purge twice a day; for in this act the veins are purged, and the guts by the vomit. q. why is there such delight in the act of venery? a. because this act is such a contemptible thing in itself, that all creatures would naturally abhor it were there no pleasure in it; and therefore nature readily uses it, that all kinds of living things should be maintained and kept up. q. why do such as use it often take less delight in it than those who come to it seldom? a. . the passages of the seed are over large and wide; and therefore it makes no stay there, which would cause the delight. . through often evacuation there is little seed left, and therefore no delight. . because such, instead of seed there is cast out blood, undigested and raw, or some other watery substance, which is not hot, and therefore affords no delight. _of the seed of man and beasts._ q. how, and of what cometh the seed of man? a. some philosophers and physicians say, it is superfluous humours; others say, that the seed is pure blood, flowing from the brain, concocted and whitened in the testicles; but sweat, urine, spittle, phlegm, choler, and the like, and blood dispersed throughout the whole body, come chiefly from the heart, liver and brain, because those parts are greatly weakened by casting seed; and therefore it appears that frequent carnal copulation is not good. q. why is a man's seed white, and a woman's red? a. it is white in men by reason of great heat and quick digestion, because it is rarefied in the testicles; but a woman's is red, because her terms corrupt the undigested blood, and it hath its colour. q. how come females to have monthly courses? a. because they are cold in respect of men, and because all their nourishment cannot be converted into blood, a great part of which turns to menses, which are monthly expelled. q. for what reason do the menses not come down in females before the age of thirteen? a. because young women are hot, and digest all their nourishment. q. for what reason do they leave off at about fifty? a. because nature is then so exhausted, they cannot expel them by reason of weakness. q. why have not breeding women the menses? a. because that then they turn into milk, and into the nourishment of the child: for if a woman with child have them, it is a sign that she will miscarry. q. why are they termed _menstrua_, from the word _mensis_, a month? a. because it is a space of time that measures the moon, as she ends her course in twenty-nine days, and fourteen hours. q. why do they continue longer with some than others, as with some six or seven, but commonly with all three days? a. the first are cold, therefore they increase most in them, and consequently are longer expelling; other women are hot, and therefore have fewer and are sooner expelled. q. are the menses which are expelled, and those by which the child is engendered, all one? a. no, because the one are unclean, and unfit for that purpose; but the other very pure and clear, therefore the fittest for generation. q. why have not women their menses all one and the same time, but some in the new moon, some in the full, and others at the wane? a. from their several complexions, and though all women (in respect of men) are phlegmatic, yet some are more sanguine than others, some more choleric; and as the moon hath her quarters, so have women their complexions; the first sanguine, the second choleric. q. why do women easily conceive after their menses? a. because the womb being cleansed, they are better prepared for conception. q. why do women look pale when they first have their menses upon them? a. because the heat goes from the outward parts of the body to the inward, to help nature to expel their terms, which deprivation of heat doth cause a paleness in the face. or, because that flux is caused of raw humours, which, when they run, make the face colourless. q. why do they at that time abhor their meat? a. because nature labours more to expel their terms than digest; and, therefore, if they should eat, their food would remain raw in the stomach. q. why are some women barren and do not conceive? a. . it proceeds sometimes from the man who may be of a cold nature, so that his seed is unfit for generation. . because it is waterish, and so doth not stay in the womb. . by reason that the seed of them both hath not a like proportion, as if the man be melancholy and the woman sanguine, or the man choleric and the woman phlegmatic. q. why do fat women seldom conceive? a. because they have a slippery womb, and the seed will not stay in it. or, because the mouth of the matrix is very strait, and the seed cannot enter it, or, if it does, it is so very slowly that it grows cold and unfit for generation. q. why do those of a hot constitution seldom conceive? a. because the seed in them is extinguished or put out, as water cast into fire; whereof we find that women who vehemently desire the flesh seldom conceive. q. why are whores never with child? a. by reason of divers seeds, which corrupt and spoil the instruments of conception, for it makes them so slippery, that they cannot retain seed. or, else, it is because one man's seed destroys another's, so neither is good for generation. q. why do women conceive twins? a. because there are seven cells or receptacles in the womb; wherefore they may naturally have so many children at once as there falls seed into these cells. q. why are twins but half men, and not so strong as others? a. the seed that should have been for one, is divided into two and therefore they are weakly and seldom live long. _of hermaphrodites._ q. how are hermaphrodites begotten? a. nature doth always tend to that which is best, and always intendeth to beget the male and not the female, because the female is only for the male's mate. therefore the male is sometimes begotten in all its principal parts; and, yet, through the indisposition of the womb and object, and inequality of the seeds, when nature cannot perfect the male, she brings forth the female too. and therefore natural philosophers say, that an hermaphrodite is impotent in the privy parts of a man, as appears by experience. q. is an hermaphrodite accounted a man or a woman? a. it is to be considered in which member he is fittest for copulation; if he be fittest in the woman's, then he is a woman; if in a man's, then he is a man. q. should he be baptized in the name of a man or a woman? a. in the name of a man, because names are given _ad placitum_, and therefore he should be baptized, according to the worthiest name, because every agent is worthier than its patient. _of monsters._ q. doth nature make any monsters? a. she doth; if she did not, then would she be deprived of her end. for of things possible, she doth always propose to bring forth that which is most perfect and best; but in the end, through the evil disposition of the matter, not being able to bring forth that which she intended, she brings forth that which she can. as it happened in albertus's time, when in a certain village, a cow brought forth a calf, half a man; then the countrymen suspecting a shepherd, would have burnt him with the cow; but albertus, being skilled in astronomy, said that this did proceed from a certain constellation, and so delivered the shepherd from their hands. q. are they one or two? a. to find out, you must look into the heart, if there be two hearts, there be two men. q. why are some children like their father, some like their mother, some to both and some to neither? a. if the seed of the father wholly overcome that of the mother the child doth resemble the father; but if the mother's predominate, then it is like the mother; but if he be like neither, that doth sometimes happen through the four qualities, sometimes through the influence of some heavenly constellation. q. why are children oftener like the father than the mother? a. it proceeds from the imagination of the mother in the act of copulation, as appeared in a queen who had her imagination on a blackamoor; and in the ethiopian queen who brought forth a white child, because her imagination was upon a white colour; as is seen in jacob's skill in casting rods of divers colours into the water, when his sheep went to ram. q. why do children born in the eighth month for the most part die quickly, and why are they called the children of the moon? a. because the moon is a cold planet, which has dominion over the child, and therefore doth bind it with coldness, which is the cause of its death. q. why doth a child cry as soon as it is born? a. because of the sudden change from heat to cold: which cold doth affect its tenderness. another reason is, because the child's soft and tender body is wringed and put together coming out of the narrow and strait passage of the matrix, and especially, the brain being moist, and the head being pressed and wrinkled together, is the cause that some humours distil by the eyes, which are the cause of tears and weeping. q. why doth the child put its fingers into its mouth as soon as it cometh into the world? a. because that coming out of the womb it cometh out of a hot bath, and entering into the cold, puts them into its mouth for want of heat. _of the child in the womb._ q. how is the child engendered in the womb? a. the first six days the seed hath this colour of milk, but in the six following a red colour, which is near unto the disposition of the flesh; and then it is changed into a thick substance of blood. but in the twelve days following, this substance becomes so thick and round that it is capable of receiving shape and form. q. doth the child in the womb void excrements or make water? no. because it hath not the first digestion which is in the stomach. it receives no food by the mouth, but by the navel; therefore, makes no urine but sweats, which is but little, and is received in a skin in the matrix, which at the birth is cast out. _of abortion and untimely birth._ q. why do women that eat unwholesome meats, easily miscarry? a. because they breed putrefied seed, which the mind abhorring doth cast it out of the womb as unfit for the shape which is adapted to receive the soul. q. why doth wrestling and leaping cause the casting of the child, as some subtle women do on purpose? a. the vapour is burning, and doth easily hurt the tender substance of the child, entering in at the pores of the matrix. q. why doth much joy cause a woman to miscarry? a. because in the time of joy, a woman is destitute of heat, and so a miscarriage doth follow. q. why do women easily miscarry when they are first with child, viz., the first, second or third month? a. as apples and pears easily fall at first, because the knots and ligaments are weak, so it is with a child in the womb. q. why is it hard to miscarry in the third, fourth, fifth and sixth month? a. because the ligaments are stronger and well fortified. _of divers matters._ q. why has not a man a tail like a beast? a. because man is a noble creature, whose property is to sit; which a beast, having a tail, cannot. q. why does hot water freeze sooner than cold? a. hot water is thinner, and gives better entrance to the frost. q. why is every living creature dull after copulation? a. by reason that the act is filthy and unclean; and so every living creature abhors it. when men do think upon it, they are ashamed and sad. q. why cannot drunken men judge of taste as well as sober men? a. because the tongue, being full of pores and spongy, receives more moisture into it, and more in drunken men than in sober; therefore, the tongue, through often drinking, is full of bad humours, and so the faculty of tasting is rendered out of order; also, through the thickening of the taste itself, drink taken by drunkards is not presently felt. and by this may also be understood why drunkards have not a perfect speech. q. why have melancholy beasts long ears? a. the ears proceed from a dry and cold substance, called gristle, which is apt to become bone; and because melancholy beasts do abound with this kind of substance, they have long ears. q. why do hares sleep with their eyes open? a. . they have their eyes standing out, and their eyelids short, therefore, never quite shut. . they are timorous, and as a safe-guard to themselves, sleep with their eyes open. q. why do not crows feed their young till they be nine days old? a. because seeing them of another colour, they think they are of another kind. q. why are sheep and pigeons mild? a. they want galls, the cause of anger. q. why have birds their stones inward? a. because if outward, they would hinder their flying and lightness. q. how comes it that birds do not piss? a. because that superfluity which would be converted into urine, is turned into feathers. q. why do we hear better in the night than by day? a. because there is a greater quietness in the night than in the day, for the sun doth not exhale the vapours by night, but it doth in the day, therefore the moon is more fit than in the day; and the moon being fit, the motion is better received, which is said to be caused by a sound. q. for what reason doth a man laugh sooner when touched in the armpits than in any other part of the body? a. because there is in that place a meeting of many sinews, and the mean we touch, which is the flesh, is more subtle than in other parts, and therefore of finer feeling. when a man is moderately and gently touched there the spirits that are dispersed run into the face and causes laughter. q. why do some women love white men and some black men? a. . some have weak sight, and such delight in black, because white doth hurt the sight more than black. . because like delight in like; but some women are of a hot nature, and such are delighted with black, because blackness followeth heat; and others are of a cold nature, and those are delighted with white, because cold produces white. q. why do men incline to sleep after labour? a. because, through continual moving, the heat is dispersed to the external parts of the body, which, after labour, is gathered together in the internal parts, there to digest; and from digestion, vapours arise from the heart to the brain, which stop the passage by which the natural heat should be dispersed to the external part; and then, the external parts being cold and thick, by reason of the coldness of the brain sleep is easily procured. by this it appeareth that such as eat and drink too much, do sleep much and long, because there are great store of humours and vapours bred in such persons which cannot be consumed and digested by the natural heat. q. why are such as sleep much, evil disposed and ill-coloured? a. because in too much sleep moisture is gathered together, which cannot be consumed, and so it doth covet to go out through the superficial parts of the body, and especially it resorts to the face, and therefore is the cause of bad colours, as appeareth in such as are phlegmatic and who desire more sleep than others. q. why do some imagine in their sleep that they eat and drink sweet things? a. because the phlegm drawn up by the jaws doth distil and drop to the throat; and this phlegm is sweet after a sore sweat, and that seemeth so to them. q. why do some dream in their sleep that they are in the water and drowned, and some that they were in the water and not drowned; especially such as are phlegmatic? a. because when the phlegmatic substance doth turn to the high parts of the body, then many think they are in the water and drowned; but when that substance draweth into the internal parts, then they think they escape. another reason may be, overmuch repletion and drunkenness: and therefore, when men are overmuch filled with meat, the fumes and vapours ascend and gather together, and they think they are drowned and strangled; but if they cannot ascend so high then they seem to escape. q. may a man procure a dream by an external cause? a. it may be done. if a man speak softly in another man's ear and awake him not, then of his stirring of the spirits there are thunderings and buzzings in the head, which cause dreamings. q. how many humours are there in a man's body? a. four, whereof every one hath its proper place. the first is choler, called by physicians _flava bilis_, which is placed in the liver. the second is melancholy, called _atra bilis_, whose seat is in the spleen. the third is phlegm, whose place is in the head. the fourth is blood, whose place is in the heart. q. what condition and quality hath a man of a sanguine complexion? a. it is fair and beautiful; hath his hair for the most part smooth; is bold; retaineth that which he hath conceived; is shame-faced, given to music, a lover of sciences, liberal, courteous, and not desirous of revenge. q. what properties do follow those of a phlegmatic complexion? a. they are dull of wit, their hair never curls, they are seldom very thirsty, much given to sleep, dream of things belonging to water, are fearful, covetous, given to heap up riches, and are weak in the act of venery. q. what are the properties of a choleric man? a. he is brown in complexion, unquiet, his veins hidden, eateth little and digesteth less, dreameth of dark and confused things, is sad, fearful, exceedingly covetous, and incontinent. q. what dreams do follow these complexions? a. pleasant, merry dreams do follow the sanguine; fearful dreams, the melancholic; the choleric dream of children fighting and fire; the phlegmatic dream of water. this is the reason why a man's complexion is said to be known by his dreams. q. what is the reason that if you cover an egg over with salt, and let it lie in it a few days, all the meat within is consumed? a. a great dryness of the salt consumes the substance of the egg. q. why is the melancholic complexion the worst? a. because it proceeds from the dregs of the blood, is an enemy to mirth and bringeth on aged appearance and death, being cold and dry. q. what is the cause that some men die joyful, and some in extreme grief? a. over-great joy doth overmuch heat the internal parts of the body; and overmuch grief doth drown and suffocate the heart, which failing, a man dieth. q. why hath a man so much hair on his head? a. the hair on his head proceeds from the vapours which arise from the stomach, and ascend to the head, and also of the superfluities which are in the brain; and those two passing through the pores of the head are converted into hair, by reason of the heat and dryness of the head. and because man's body is full of humours, and he hath more brains than any other living creatures. q. how many ways is the brain purged and other hidden places of the body? a. four; the watery and gross humours are purged by the eyes, melancholy by the ears, choler by the nose, and phlegm by the hair. q. what is the reason that such as are very fat in their youth, are in danger of dying on a sudden? a. such have very small and close veins, by reason of their fatness, so that the air and the breath can hardly have free course in them; and thereupon the natural heat wanting the refreshment of air, is put out, and as it were, quenched. q. why do garlic and onions grow after they are gathered? a. it proceedeth from the humidity that is in them. q. why do men feel cold sooner than women? a. because men, being more hot than women, have their pores more open, and therefore it doth sooner enter into them than women. q. why are not old men so subject to the plague as young men and children? a. they are cold, and their pores are not so open as in youth; and therefore the infecting air doth not penetrate so soon by reason of their coldness. q. why do we cast water in a man's face when he swooneth? a. because through the coldness of water the heat may run to the heart, and so give strength. q. why are those waters best and most delicate which run towards the rising sun? a. because they are soonest stricken with the sunbeams, and made pure and subtle, the sun having them under it, and by that means taking off the coldness and gross vapours which they gather from the ground they run through. q. why have women such weak and small voices? a. because their instruments and organs of speaking, by reason of their coldness, are small and narrow; and therefore, receiving but little air, cause the voice to be effeminate. q. whereof doth it proceed that want of sleep doth weaken the brain and body? a. much watching doth engender choler, the which being hot both dry up and lessen the humours which serve the brain, the head, and other parts of the body. q. wherefore doth vinegar so readily staunch blood? a. from its cold virtue, for all cold is naturally binding, and vinegar being cold, hath the like property. q. why is sea-water salter in summer than in winter? a. from the heat of the sun, seeing by experiment that a salt thing being heated becometh more salt. q. why do men live longer in hot regions than in cold? a. because they may be more dry, and by that means the natural heat is better preserved in them than in cold countries. q. why is well-water seldom or ever good? a. all water which standeth still in the spring and is never heated by the sunbeams, is very heavy, and hath much matter in it, and therefore wanting the heat of the sun, is naught. q. why do men sleep better and more at ease on the right side than on the left? a. because when they be on the left side, the lungs do lie upon and cover the heart, which is on that side under the pap; now the heart, the fountain of life, being thus occupied and hindered with the lungs, cannot exercise its own proper operation, as being overmuch heated with the lungs lying upon it, and therefore wanting the refreshment of the air which the lungs do give it, like the blowing of a pair of bellows, is choked and suffocated, but by lying on the right side, those inconveniences are avoided. q. what is the reason that old men sneeze with great difficulty? a. because that through their coldness their arteries are very narrow and close, and therefore the heat is not of force to expel the cold. q. why doth a drunken man think that all things about him do turn round? a. because the spirits which serve the sight are mingled with vapours and fumes, arising from the liquors he has drunk; the overmuch heat causeth the eye to be in continual motion, and the eye being round, causeth all things about it to seem to go round. q. wherefore doth it proceed, that bread which is made with salt is lighter than that which is made without it, considering that salt is very heavy of itself? a. although bread is very heavy of itself, yet the salt dries it and makes it light, by reason of the heat which it hath; and the more heat there is in it, the better the bread is, and the lighter and more wholesome for the body. q. why is not new bread good for the stomach? a. because it is full of moistness, and thick, hot vapours, which do corrupt the blood, and hot bread is blacker than cold, because heat is the mother of blackness, and because the vapours are not gone out of it. q. why do lettuces make a man sleep? a. because they engender gross vapours. q. why do the dregs of wine and oil go to the bottom, and those of honey swim uppermost? a. because the dregs of wine and oil are earthly, and therefore go to the bottom; but honey is a liquid that cometh from the stomach and belly of the bee; and is there in some sort putrefied and made subtle; on which account the dregs are most light and hot, and therefore go uppermost. q. why do cats' and wolves' eyes shine in the night, and not in the day? a. the eyes of these beasts are by nature more crystalline than the eyes of other beasts, and therefore do so shine in darkness; but the brightness of the sun doth hinder them from being seen in the day-time. q. what is the reason that some men, if they see others dance, do the like with their hands and feet, or by other gestures of the body? a. because the sight having carried and represented unto the mind that action, and judging the same to be pleasant and delightful, and therefore the imagination draweth the like of it in conceit and stirs up the body by the gestures. q. why does much sleep cause some to grow fat and some lean? a. those who are of ill complexion, when they sleep, do consume and digest the superfluities of what they have eaten, and therefore become fat. but such as are of good complexion, when they sleep are more cold, and digest less. q. how much, and from what cause do we suffer hunger better than thirst? a. when the stomach hath nothing else to consume, it consumeth the phlegm and humours which it findeth most ready and most at hand; and therefore we suffer hunger better than thirst, because the heat hath nothing to refresh itself with. q. why doth the hair fall after a great sickness? a. where the sickness is long, as in the ague, the humours of the head are dried up through overmuch heat, and, therefore, wanting nourishment, the hair falls. q. why doth the hair of the eyebrows grow long in old men? a. because through their age the bones are thin through want of heat, and therefore the hair doth grow there, by reason of the rheum of the eye. q. whereof proceedeth gaping? a. of gross vapours, which occupy the vital spirits of the head, and of the coldness of the senses causing sleepiness. q. what is the reason that some flowers do open with the sun rising, and shut with the sun setting? a. cold doth close and shut, as hath been said, but the heat of the sun doth open and enlarge. some compare the sun to the soul of the body; for as the soul giveth life, so the sun doth give life, and vivificate all things; but cold bringeth death, withering and decaying all things. q. why doth grief cause men to grow old and grey? a. age is nothing else but dryness and want of humours in the body; grief then causeth alteration, and heat dryness; age and greyness follow immediately. q. why are gelded beasts weaker than such as are not gelded? a. because they have less heat, and by that means less force and strength. * * * * * the problems of marcus antoninus sanctipertias q. why is it esteemed, in the judgment of the most wise, the hardest thing to know a man's self? a. because nothing can be known that is of so great importance to man for the regulation of his conduct in life. without this knowledge, man is like the ship without either compass or rudder to conduct her to port, and is tossed by every passion and prejudice to which his natural constitution is subjected. to know the form and perfection of man's self, according to the philosophers, is a task too hard; and a man, says plato, is nothing, or if he be anything, he is nothing, but his soul. q. why is a man, though endowed with reason, the most unjust of all living creatures? a. because only man is desirous of honour; and so it happens that every one covets to seem good, and yet naturally shuns labour, though he attain no virtue by it. q. why doth immoderate copulation do more hurt than immoderate letting of blood? a. the seed is full of nutriment, and better prepared for the nurture of the body, than the blood; for the blood is nourished by the seed. q. what is the reason that those that have long yards cannot beget children? a. the seed, in going a long distance, doth lose the spirit, and therefore becomes cold and unfit. q. why do such as are corpulent cast forth but little seed in the act of copulation, and are often barren? a. because the seed of such goeth to nourish the body. for the same reason corpulent women have but few menses. q. how come women to be prone to venery in the summer time and men in the winter? a. in summer the man's testicles hang down and are feebler than in winter, or because hot natures become more lively in the cold season; for a man is hot and dry, and a woman cold and moist; and therefore in summer the strength of men decays, and that of women increases, and they grow livelier by the benefit of the contrary quality. q. why is man the proudest of all living creatures? a. by reason of his great knowledge; or, as philosophers say, all intelligent beings having understanding, nothing remains that escapes man's knowledge in particular; or it is because he hath rule over all earthly creatures, and all things seem to be brought under his dominion. q. why have beasts their hearts in the middle of their breasts, and man his inclining to the left? a. to moderate the cold on that side. q. why doth the woman love the man best who has got her maidenhead? a. by reason of shame-facedness; plato saith, shame-facedness doth follow love, or, because it is the beginning of great pleasure, which doth bring a great alteration in the whole body, whereby the powers of the mind are much delighted, and stick and rest immoveable in the same. q. how come hairy people to be more lustful than any other? a. because they are said to have greater store of excrements and seed as philosophers assert. q. what is the cause that the suffocation of the matrix, which happens to women through strife and contention, is more dangerous than the detaining of the flowers? a. because the more perfect an excrement is in its natural disposition, the worse it is when it is altered from that disposition, and drawn to the contrary quality; as is seen in vinegar, which is sharpest when it is made of the best wine. and so it happens that the more men love one another the more they fall into variance and discord. q. how come women's bodies to be looser, softer and less than man's; and why do they want hair? a. by reason of their menses; for with them their superfluities go away, which would produce hair; and thereby the flesh is filled, consequently the veins are more hid in women than in men. q. what is the reason that when we think upon a horrible thing, we are stricken with fear? a. because the conceit or imagination of things has force and virtue. for plato saith, the fancy of things has some affinity with things themselves; for the image and representation of cold and heat is such as the nature of things are. or it is this, because when we comprehend any dreadful matter, the blood runneth to the internal parts; and therefore the external parts are cold and shake with fear. q. why doth a radish root help digestion and yet itself remaineth undigested? a. because the substance consisteth of divers parts; for there are some thin parts in it, which are fit to digest meat, the which being dissolved, there doth remain some thick and close substance in it, which the heat cannot digest. q. why do such as cleave wood, cleave it easier in the length than athwart? a. because in the wood there is a grain, whereby, if it be cut in length, in the very cutting, one part naturally separateth from another. q. what is the reason, that if a spear be stricken on the end, the sound cometh sooner to one who standeth near, than to him who striketh? a. because, as hath been said, there is a certain long grain in wood, directly forward, filled with air, but on the other side there is none, and therefore a beam or spear being stricken on the end, the air which is hidden receiveth a sound in the aforesaid grain which serveth for its passage; and, seeing the sound cannot go easily out of it is carried into the ear of him who is opposite; as those passages do not go from side to side, a sound cannot be distinctly heard there. q. why are the thighs and calves of the legs of men flesh, seeing the legs of beasts are not so? a. because men only go upright; and therefore nature hath given the lower parts corpulency, and taken it away from the upper; and thus she hath made the buttocks, the thighs, and calves of the legs fleshy. q. why are the sensible powers in the heart; yet if the hinder part of the brain be hurt, the memory suffereth by it; if the forepart, the imagination; if the middle, the cogitative part? a. it is because the brain is appointed by nature to cool the blood of the heart; whereof it is, that in divers of its parts it serveth the powers and instruments with their heart, for every action of the soul doth not proceed from one measure of heat. * * * * * the problems of alexander aphrodiseus q. why doth the sun make a man black and dirt white, wax soft and dirt hard? a. by reason of the disposition of the substance that doth suffer. all humours, phlegm excepted, when heated above measure, do seem black about the skin; and dirt, being full either of saltpetre, or salt liquor, when the sun hath consumed its dregs and filth, doth become white again. when the sun hath stirred up and drawn the humidity of the wax, it is softened; but in the dirt, the sun doth consume the humidity, which is very much and makes it hard. q. why are round ulcers hard to be cured? a. because they are bred of a sharp choler, which eats and gnaws; and because it doth run, dropping and gnawing, it makes a round ulcer; for which reason it requires dry medicines, as physicians assert. q. why is honey sweet to all men, but to such as have jaundice? a. because they have much bitter choler all over their bodies, which abounds in the tongue; whence it happens when they eat honey the humours are stirred, and the taste itself, by the bitterness of choler, causes an imagination that the honey is bitter. q. why doth water cast on serpents, cause them to fly? a. because they are dry and cold by nature, having but little blood, and therefore fly from excessive coldness. q. why doth an egg break if roasted, and not if boiled? a. when moisture comes near the fire, it is heated very much, and so breeds wind, which being put up in little room, forces its way out, and breaks the shell: the like happens in tubs or earthen vessels when new wine is put into them; too much phlegm breaks the shell of an egg in roasting; it is the same with earthen pots too much heated; wherefore some people wet an egg when they intend to roast it. hot water, by its softness, doth dissipate its humidity by little and little, and dissolves it through the thinness and passages of the shell. q. why do men wink in the act of copulation, and find a little alteration in all other senses? a. because, being overcome by the effect of that pleasure, they do comprehend it the better. q. why have children gravel breeding in their bladders, and old men in their kidneys and veins? a. because children have straight passages in their kidneys, and an earthly thick humour is thrust with violence by the urine to the bladder, which hath wide conduits or passages, that give room for the urine and humour whereof gravel is engendered, which waxes thick, and seats itself, as the manner of it is. in old men it is the reverse, for they have wide passages of the veins, back and kidneys, that the urine may pass away, and the earthly humour congeal and sink down; the colour of the gravel shows the humour whereof the stone comes. q. why is it, if the stone do congeal and wax hard through heat, we use not contrary things to dissolve it by coldness, but light things, as parsley, fennel and the like? a. it is thought, to fall out by an excessive scorching heat, by which the stones do crumble into sand, as in the manner of earthen vessels, which, when they are overheated or roasted, turn to sand. and by this means it happens that small stones are avoided, together with sand, in making water. sometimes cold drink thrusts out the stone, the kidneys being stretched and casting it out by a great effort; thus easing the belly of its burden. besides, it often happens that immoderate heat of the kidneys, or of the veins of the back (through which the stone doth grow) is quenched with coldness. q. why is the curing of an ulcer or bile in the kidneys or bladder very hard? a. because the urine being sharp, doth ulcerate the sore. ulcers are worse to cure in the bladder than in the kidneys, because urine stays in the former, but runs away from the latter. q. why do chaff and straw keep water hot, but make snow cold? a. because the nature of chaff wants a manifest quantity; seeing, therefore that of its own nature, it can easily be mingled, and consumed by that which it is annexed onto, it easily assumes the same nature, and being put into hot things, it is easily hot, heats again, and keeps hot; and on the contrary, being made cold by the snow, and making the snow cold it keeps in its coldness. q. why have we oftentimes a pain in making water? a. because sharp choler issuing out, and pricking the bladder of the urine, doth provoke and stir up the whole body to ease the part offended, and to expel the humour moderately. this doth happen most of all unto children, because they have moist excrements by reason of their often drinking. q. why have some medicines of one kind contrary effects, as experience proves; for mastich doth expel, dissolve and also knit; and vinegar cools and heats? a. because there are some small invisible bodies in them, not in confusion, but by interposition; as sand moistened doth clog together and seem to be but one body, though indeed there are many small bodies in sand. and since this is so, it is not absurd that the contrary qualities and virtues should be hidden in mastich, and that nature hath given that virtue to these bodies. q. why do nurses rock and move their children when they would rock them to sleep? a. to the end that the humours being scattered by moving, may move the brains; but those of more years cannot endure this. q. why doth oil, being drunk, cause one to vomit, and especially yellow choler? a. because being light, and ascending upwards it provoketh the nutriment in the stomach, and lifteth it up; and so, the stomach being grieved, summoneth the ejective virtue to vomit, and especially choler, because that is light and consisteth of subtle parts, and therefore the sooner carried upward; for when it is mingled with any moist thing, it runneth into the highest room. q. why doth not oil mingle with moist things? a. because, being pliant, soft and thick in itself, it cannot be divided into parts, and so cannot be mingled; neither if it be put on the earth can it enter into it. q. why are water and oil frozen in cold weather, and wine and vinegar not? a. because that oil being without quality, and fit to be compounded with anything, is cold quickly and so extremely that it is most cold. water being cold of nature, doth easily freeze when it is made colder than its own nature. wine being hot, and of subtle parts, suffereth no freezing. q. why do contrary things in quality bring forth the same effect? a. that which is moist is hardened and bound alike by heat and cold. snow and liquid do freeze with cold; a plaster and gravel in the bladder are made dry with heat. the effect indeed is the same, but by two divers actions; the heat doth consume and eat the abundance of moisture; but the cold stopping and shutting with its over much thickness, doth wring out the filthy humidity, like as a sponge wrung with the hand doth cast out the water which it hath in the pores and small passages. q. why doth a shaking or quivering seize us oftentimes when any fearful matter doth happen, as a great noise or a crack made, the sudden downfall of water, or the fall of a large tree? a. because that oftentimes the humours being digested and consumed by time and made thin and weak, all the heat vehemently, suddenly and sharply flying into the inward part of the body, consumeth the humours which cause the disease. so treacle hath this effect, and many such like, which are hot and dry when taken after connexion. q. why do steel glasses shine so clearly? a. because they are lined in the inside with white lead, whose nature is shining, and being put to glass, which is lucid and transparent, doth shine much more; and casts its beams through its passages, and without the body of the glass; and by that means the glass is very shining and clear. q. why do we see ourselves in glasses and clear water? a. because the quality of the sight, passing into the bright bodies by reflection, doth return again on the beam of the eyes, as the image of him who looketh on it. q. what is the reason that if you cast a stone in standing water which is near the surface of the earth, it causes many circles, and not if the water be deep in the earth? a. because the stone, with the vehemence of the cast, doth agitate the water in every part of it, until it come to the bottom; and if there be a very great vehemence in the throw, the circle is still greater, the stone going down to the bottom causing many circles. for, first of all, it doth divide the outermost and superficial parts of the water in many parts, and so, always going down to the bottom, again dividing the water, it maketh another circle, and this is done successively until the stone resteth; and because the vehemence of the stone is slackened, still as it goes down, of necessity the last circle is less than the first, because by that and also by its force the water is divided. q. why are such as are deaf by nature, dumb? a. because they cannot speak and express that which they never hear. some physicians do say, that there is one knitting and uniting of sinews belonging to the like disposition. but such as are dumb by accident are not deaf at all, for then there ariseth a local passion. q. why doth itching arise when an ulcer doth wax whole and phlegm ceases? a. because the part which is healed and made sound doth pursue the relic of the humours which remained there against nature, and which was the cause of the bile, and so going out through the skin, and dissolving itself, doth originally cause the itch. q. how comes a man to sneeze oftener and more vehemently than a beast? a. because he uses more meats and drinks, and of more different sorts, and that more than is requisite; the which, when he cannot digest as he would, he doth gather together much air and spirit, by reason of much humidity; the spirits then very subtle, ascending into the head, often force a man to void them, and so provoke sneezing. the noise caused thereby proceeds from a vehement spirit or breath passing through the conduit of the nostrils, as belching doth from the stomach or farting by the fundament, the voice by the throat, and a sound by the ear. q. how come the hair and nails of dead people to grow? a. because the flesh rotting, withering and falling away, that which was hidden about the root of the hair doth now appear as growing. some say that it grows indeed, because carcasses are dissolved in the beginning to many excrements and superfluities by putrefaction. these going out at the uppermost parts of the body by some passages, do increase the growth of the hair. q. why does not the hair of the feet soon grow grey? a. for this reason, because that through great motion they disperse and dissolve the superfluous phlegm that breeds greyness. the hair of the secrets grows very late, because of the place, and because that in carnal copulation it dissolves the phlegm also. q. why, if you put hot burnt barley upon a horse's sore, is the hair which grows upon the sore not white, but like the other hair? a. because it hath the force of expelling; and doth drive away and dissolve the phlegm, as well as all other unprofitable matter that is gathered together through the weakness of the parts, or condity of the sore. q. why doth the hair never grow on an ulcer or bile? a. because man hath a thick skin, as is seen by the thickness of his hair; and if the scar be thicker than the skin itself, it stops the passages from whence the hair should grow. horses have thinner skins, as is plain by their hair; therefore all passages are not stopped in their wounds and sores; and after the excrements which were gathered together have broken a passage through those small pores the hair doth grow. q. why is fortune painted with a double forehead, the one side bald and the other hairy? a. the baldness signifies adversity, and hairiness prosperity, which we enjoy when it pleaseth her. q. why have some commended flattery? a. because flattery setteth forth before our eyes what we ought to be, though not what we are. q. wherefore should virtue be painted girded? a. to show that virtuous men should not be slothful, but diligent and always in action. q. why did the ancients say it was better to fall into the hands of a raven than a flatterer? a. because ravens do not eat us till we be dead, but flatterers devour us alive. q. why have choleric men beards before others? a. because they are hot, and their pores large. q. how comes it that such as have the hiccups do ease themselves by holding their breath? a. the breath retained doth heat the interior parts of the body, and the hiccups proceeds from cold. q. how comes it that old men remember well what they have seen and done in their youth, and forget such things as they see and do in their old age? a. things learned in youth take deep root and habitude in a person, but those learned in age are forgotten because the senses are then weakened. q. what kind of covetousness is best? a. that of time when employed as it ought to be. q. why is our life compared to a play? a. because the dishonest do occupy the place of the honest, and the worst sort the room of the good. q. why do dolphins, when they appear above the water, denote a storm or tempest approaching? a. because at the beginning of a tempest there do arise from the bottom of the sea, certain hot exhalations and vapours which heat the dolphins, causing them to rise up for cold air. q. why did the romans call fabius maximus the target of the people, and marcellus the sword? a. because the one adapted himself to the service of the commonwealth, and the other was very eager to revenge the injuries of his country; and yet they were in the senate joined together, because the gravity of the one would moderate the courage and boldness of the other. q. why doth the shining of the moon hurt the head? a. because it moves the humours of the brain, and cannot afterwards dissolve them. q. if water do not nourish, why do men drink it? a. because water causeth the nutriment to spread through the body. q. why is sneezing good? a. because it purgeth the brain as milk is purged by the cough. q. why is hot water lighter than cold? a. because boiling water has less ventosity and is more light and subtle, the earthly and heavy substance being separated from it. q. how comes marsh and pond water to be bad? a. by reason they are phlegmatic, and do corrupt in summer; the fineness of water is turned into vapours, and the earthiness doth remain. q. why are studious and learned men soonest bald? a. it proceeds from a weakness of the spirits, or because warmth of digestion cause phlegm to abound in them. q. why doth much watching make the brain feeble? a. because it increases choler, which dries and extenuates the body. q. why are boys apt to change their voices about fourteen years of age? a. because that then nature doth cause a great and sudden change of voice; experience proves this to be true; for at that time we may see that women's paps do grow great, do hold and gather milk, and also those places that are above their hips, in which the young fruit would remain. likewise men's breasts and shoulders, which then can bear great and heavy burdens; also their stones in which their seed may increase and abide, and in their privy members, to let out the seed with ease. further all the body is made bigger and dilated, as the alteration and change of every part doth testify, and the harshness of the voice and hoarseness; for the rough artery, the wind pipe, being made wide in the beginning, and the exterior and outward part being unequal to the throat, the air going out the rough, unequal and uneven pipe doth then become unequal and sharp, and after, hoarse, something like unto the voice of a goat, wherefore it has its name called bronchus. the same doth also happen to them unto whose rough artery distillation doth follow; it happens by reason of the drooping humidity that a slight small skin filled unequally causes the uneven going forth of the spirit and air. understand, that the windpipe of goats is such by reason of the abundance of humidity. the like doth happen unto all such as nature hath given a rough artery, as unto cranes. after the age of fourteen they leave off that voice, because the artery is made wider and reacheth its natural evenness and quality. q. why do hard dens, hollow and high places, send back the likeness and sound of the voice? a. because that in such places also by reflection do return back the image of a sound, for the voice doth beat the air, and the air the place, which the more it is beaten the more it doth bear, and therefore doth cause the more vehement sound of the voice; moist places, and as it were, soft, yielding to the stroke, and dissolving it, give no sound again; for according to the quantity of the stroke, the quality and quantity of the voice is given, which is called an echo. some do idly fable that she is a goddess; some say that pan was in love with her, which without doubt is false. he was some wise man, who did first desire to search out the cause of the voice, and as they who love, and cannot enjoy that love, are grieved, so in like manner was he very sorry until he found out the solution of that cause; as endymion also, who first found out the course of the moon, watching all night, and observing her course, and searching her motion, did sleep in the daytime, and that she came to him when he was asleep, because she did give the philosopher the solution of the course herself. they say also that he was a shepherd, because that in the desert and high places, he did mark the course of the moon. and they gave him also the pipe because that the high places are blown with wind, or else because he sought out the consonancy of figures. prometheus also, being a wise man, sought the course of the star, which is called the eagle in the firmament, his nature and place; and when he was, as it were, wasted with the desire of learning, then at last he rested, when hercules did resolve unto him all doubts with his wisdom. q. why do not swine cry when they are carried with their snouts upwards? a. because that of all other beasts they bend more to the earth. they delight in filth, and that they seek, and therefore in the sudden change of their face, they be as it were strangers, and being amazed with so much light do keep that silence; some say the windpipe doth close together by reason of the straitness of it. q. why do swine delight in dirt? a. as physicians do say, they are naturally delighted with it, because they have a great liver, in which desire it, as aristotle saith, the wideness of their snout is the case, for he that hath smelling which doth dissolve itself, and as it were strive with stench. q. why do many beasts when they see their friends, and a lion and a bull beat their sides when they are angry? a. because they have the marrow of their backs reaching to the tail, which hath the force of motion in it, the imagination acknowledging that which is known to them, as it were with the hand, as happens to men, doth force them to move their tails. this doth manifestly show some secret force to be within them, which doth acknowledge what they ought. in the anger of lions and bulls, nature doth consent to the mind, and causeth it to be greatly moved, as men do sometimes when they are angry, beating their hands on other parts; when the mind cannot be revenged on that which doth hurt, it presently seeks out some other source, and cures the malady with a stroke or blow. q. how come steel glasses to be better for the sight than any other kind? a. because steel is hard, and doth present unto us more substantially the air that receiveth the light. q. how doth love show its greater force by making the fool to become wise, or the wise to become a fool? a. in attributing wisdom to him that has it not; for it is harder to build than to pull down; and ordinarily love and folly are but an alteration of the mind. q. how comes much labour and fatigue to be bad for the sight? a. because it dries the blood too much. q. why is goat's milk reckoned best for the stomach? a. because it is thick, not slimy, and they feed on wood and boughs rather than on grass. q. why do grief and vexation bring grey hairs? a. because they dry, which bringeth on greyness. q. how come those to have most mercy who have the thickest blood? a. because the blood which is fat and thick makes the spirits firm and constant, wherein consists the force of all creatures. q. whether it is hardest, to obtain a person's love, or to keep it when obtained? a. it is hardest to keep it, by reason of the inconstancy of man, who is quickly angry, and soon weary of a thing; hard to be gained and slippery to keep. q. why do serpents shun the herb rue? a. because they are cold, dry and full of sinews, and that herb is of a contrary nature. q. why is a capon better to eat than a cock? a. because a capon loses not his moisture by treading of the hens. q. why is our smell less in winter than in summer? a. because the air is thick, and less moveable. q. why does hair burn so quickly? a. because it is dry and cold. q. why is love compared to a labyrinth? a. because the entry and coming in is easy, and the going out almost impossible or hard. * * * * * part iv displaying the secrets of nature relating to physiognomy * * * * * chapter i section .--_of physiognomy, showing what it is, and whence it is derived._ physiognomy is an ingenious science, or knowledge of nature, by which the inclinations and dispositions of every creature are understood, and because some of the members are uncompounded, and entire of themselves, as the tongue, the heart, etc., and some are of a mixed nature, as the eyes, the nose and others, we therefore say that there are signs which agree and live together, which inform a wise man how to make his judgment before he be too rash to deliver it to the world. nor is it to be esteemed a foolish or idle art, seeing it is derived from the superior bodies; for there is no part of the face of man but what is under the peculiar influence or government, not only of the seven planets but also of the twelve signs of zodiac; and the dispositions, vices, virtues and fatality, either of a man or woman are plainly foretold, if the person pretending to the knowledge thereof be an artist, which, that my readers may hereby attain it i shall set these things in a clearer light. the reader should remember that the forehead is governed by mars; the right eye is under the domination of sol; the left is ruled by the moon; the right ear is under jupiter; the left, saturn, the rule of the nose is claimed by venus, which, by the way, is one reason that in all unlawful venereal encounters, the nose is too subject to bear the scars that are gotten in those wars; and nimble mercury, the significator of eloquence claims the dominion of the mouth, and that very justly. thus have the seven planets divided the face among them, but not with so absolute a way but that the twelve signs of the zodiac do also come in with a part (see the engraving) and therefore the sign cancer presides in the upper part of the forehead, and leo attends upon the right eyebrow, as saggittarius does upon the right eye, and libra upon the right ear, upon the left eyebrow you will find aquarius; and gemini and aries taking care of the left ear; taurus rules in the middle of the forehead, and capricorn the chin; scorpio takes upon him the protection of the nose; virgo claims the precedence of the right cheek, pisces the left. and thus the face of man is cantoned out amongst the signs and planets; which being carefully attended to, will sufficiently inform the artist how to pass a judgment. for according to the sign or planet ruling so also is the judgment to be of the part ruled, which all those that have understanding know easily how to apply. [illustration] in the judgment that is to be made from physiognomy, there is a great difference betwixt a man and a woman; the reason is, because in respect of the whole composition men more fully comprehend it than women do, as may evidently appear by the manner and method we shall give. wherefore the judgments which we shall pass in every chapter do properly concern a man, as comprehending the whole species, and but improperly the woman, as being but a part thereof, and derived from the man, and therefore, whoever is called to give judgment on such a face, ought to be wary about all the lines and marks that belong to it, respect being also had to the sex, for when we behold a man whose face is like unto a woman's and we pass a judgment upon it, having diligently observed it, and not on the face only, but on other parts of the body, as hands, etc., in like manner we also behold the face of a woman, who in respect to her flesh and blood is like unto a man, and in the disposure also of the greatest part of the body. but does physiognomy give the same judgment on her, as it does of a man that is like unto her? by no means, but far otherwise, in regard that the conception of the woman is much different from that of a man, even in those respects which are said to be common. now in those common respects two parts are attributed to a man, and a third part to a woman. wherefore it being our intention to give you an exact account, according to the rule of physiognomy of all and every part of the members of the body, we will begin with the head, as it hath relation only to man and woman, and not to any other creature, that the work may be more obvious to every reader. * * * * * chapter ii _of the judgment of physiognomy._ hair that hangs down without curling, if it be of a fair complexion, thin and soft withal, signifies a man to be naturally faint-hearted, and of a weak body, but of a quiet and harmless disposition. hair that is big, and thick and short withal, denotes a man to be of a strong constitution, secure, bold, deceitful and for the most part, unquiet and vain, lusting after beauty, and more foolish than wise, though fortune may favour him. he whose hair is partly curled and partly hanging down, is commonly wise or a very great fool, or else as very a knave as he is a fool. he whose hair grows thick on his temples and his brow, one may certainly at first sight conclude that such a man is by nature simple, vain, luxurious, lustful, credulous, clownish in his speech and conversation and dull in his apprehension. he whose hair not only curls very much, but bushes out, and stands on end, if the hair be white or of a yellowish colour, he is by nature proud and bold, dull of apprehension, soon angry, and a lover of venery, and given to lying, malicious and ready to do any mischief. he whose hair arises in the corners of the temples, and is gross and rough withal, is a man highly conceited of himself, inclined to malice, but cunningly conceals it, is very courtly and a lover of new fashions. he who hath much hair, that is to say, whose hair is thick all over his head, is naturally vain and very luxurious, of a good digestion, easy of belief, and slow of performance, of a weak memory and for the most part unfortunate. he whose hair is of a reddish complexion, is for the most part, if not always, proud, deceitful, detracting and full of envy. he whose hair is extraordinarily fair, is for the most part a man fit for the most praiseworthy enterprises, a lover of honour, and much more inclined to do good than evil; laborious and careful to perform whatsoever is committed to his care, secret in carrying on any business, and fortunate. hair of a yellowish colour shows a man to be good conditioned, and willing to do anything, fearful, shamefaced and weak of body, but strong in the abilities of the mind, and more apt to remember, than to avenge an injury. he whose hair is of a brownish colour, and curled not too much nor too little, is a well-disposed man, inclined to that which is good, a lover of peace, cleanliness and good manners. he whose hair turns grey or hoary in the time of his youth, is generally given to women, vain, false, unstable, and talkative. [note. that whatever signification the hair has in men, it has the same in women also.] the forehead that riseth in a round, signifies a man liberally merry, of a good understanding, and generally inclined to virtue. he whose forehead is fleshy, and the bone of the brow jutting out, and without wrinkles, is a man much inclined to suits of law, contentious, vain, deceitful, and addicted to follow ill courses. he whose forehead is very low and little, is of a good understanding, magnanimous, but extremely bold and confident, and a great pretender to love and honour. he whose forehead seems sharp, and pointed up in the corners of his temples, so that the bone seems to jut forth a little, is a man naturally weak and fickle, and weak in the intellectuals. he whose brow upon the temples is full of flesh, is a man of a great spirit, proud, watchful and of a gross understanding. he whose brow is full of wrinkles, and has as it were a seam coming down the middle of the forehead, so that a man may think he has two foreheads, is one that is of a great spirit, a great wit, void of deceit, and yet of a hard fortune. he who has a full, large forehead, and a little round withal, destitute of hair, or at least that has little on it is bold, malicious, full of choler and apt to transgress beyond all bounds, and yet of a good wit and very apprehensive. he whose forehead is long and high and jutting forth, and whose face is figured, almost sharp and peaked towards the chin, is one reasonably honest, but weak and simple, and of a hard fortune. those eyebrows that are much arched, whether in man or woman, and which by frequent motion elevate themselves, show the person to be proud, high-spirited, vain-glorious, bold and threatening, a lover of beauty, and indifferently inclined to either good or evil. he whose eyelids bend down when he speaks to another or when he looks upon him, and who has a kind of skulking look, is by nature a penurious wretch, close in all his actions, of a very few words, but full of malice in his heart. he whose eyebrows are thick, and have but little hair upon them, is but weak in his intellectuals, and too credulous, very sincere, sociable, and desirous of good company. he whose eyebrows are folded, and the hair thick and bending downwards, is one that is clownish and unlearned, heavy, suspicious, miserable, envious, and one that will cheat and cozen you if he can. he whose eyebrows have but short hair and of a whitish colour is fearful and very easy of belief, and apt to undertake anything. those, on the other side, whose eyebrows are black, and the hair of them thin, will do nothing without great consideration, and are bold and confident of the performance of what they undertake; neither are they apt to believe anything without reason for so doing. if the space between the eyebrows be of more than the ordinary distance, it shows the person to be hard-hearted, envious, close, cunning, apprehensive, greedy of novelties, of a vain fortune, addicted to cruelty more than love. but those men whose eyebrows are at a lesser distance from each other, are for the most part of a dull understanding; yet subtle enough in their dealings, and of an uncommon boldness, which is often attended with great felicity; but that which is most commendable in them is, that they are most sure and constant in their friendship. great and full eyes in either man or woman, show the person to be for the most part slothful, bold, envious, a bad concealer of secrets, miserable, vain, given to lying, and yet a bad memory, slow in invention, weak in his intellectuals, and yet very much conceited of that little knack of wisdom he thinks himself master of. he whose eyes are hollow in his head, and therefore discerns well at a great distance, is one that is suspicious, malicious, furious, perverse in his conversation, of an extraordinary memory, bold, cruel, and false, both in words and deeds, threatening, vicious, luxurious, proud, envious and treacherous; but he whose eyes are, as it were, starting out of his head, is a simple, foolish person, shameless, very fertile and easy to be persuaded either to vice or virtue. he who looks studiously and acutely, with his eyes and eyelids downwards, denotes thereby to be of a malicious nature, very treacherous, false, unfaithful, envious, miserable, impious towards god, and dishonest towards men. he whose eyes are small and conveniently round, is bashful and weak, very credulous, liberal to others, and even in his conversation. he whose eyes look asquint, is thereby denoted to be a deceitful person, unjust, envious, furious, a great liar, and as the effect of all that is miserable. he who hath a wandering eye and which is rolling up and down, is for the most part a vain, simple, deceitful, lustful, treacherous, or high-minded man, an admirer of the fair sex, and one easy to be persuaded to virtue or vice. he or she whose eyes are twinkling, and which move forward or backward, show the person to be luxurious, unfaithful and treacherous, presumptuous, and hard to believe anything that is spoken. if a person has any greenness mingled with the white of his eye, such is commonly silly, and often very false, vain and deceitful, unkind to his friends, a great concealer of his own secrets, and very choleric. those whose eyes are every way rolling up and down, or they who seldom move their eyes, and when they do, as it were, draw their eyes inwardly and accurately fasten them upon some object, such are by their inclinations very malicious, vain-glorious, slothful, unfaithful, envious, false and contentious. they whose eyes are addicted to blood-shot, are naturally proud, disdainful, cruel, without shame, perfidious and much inclined to superstition. but he whose eyes are neither too little nor too big, and inclined to black, do signify a man mild, peaceable, honest, witty, and of a good understanding; and one that, when need requires, will be serviceable to his friends. a long and thin nose, denotes a man bold, furious, angry, vain, easy to be persuaded either to good or evil, weak and credulous. a long nose extended, the tip of it bending downwards, shows the person to be wise, discreet, secret and officious, honest, faithful and one that will not be over-reached in bargaining. a bottle-nose is what denotes a man to be impetuous in the obtaining of his desires, also a vain, false, luxurious, weak and uncertain man; apt to believe and easy to be persuaded. a broad nose in the middle, and less towards the end, denotes a vain, talkative person, a liar, and one of hard fortune. he who hath a long and great nose is an admirer of the fair sex, and well accomplished for the wars of venus, but ignorant of the knowledge of anything that is good, extremely addicted to vice; assiduous in the obtaining what he desires, and very secret in the prosecution of it; and though very ignorant, would fain be thought very knowing. a nose very sharp on the tip of it, and neither too long nor too short, too thick nor too thin, denotes the person, if a man, to be of a fretful disposition, always pining and peevish; and if a woman, a scold, or contentious, wedded to her own humours, of a morose and dogged carriage, and if married, a plague to her husband. a nose very round at the end of it, and having but little nostrils, shows the person to be munificent and liberal, true to his trust, but withal, very proud, credulous and vain. a nose very long and thin at the end of it, and something round, withal, signifies one bold in his discourse, honest in his dealings, patient in receiving, and slow in offering injuries, but yet privately malicious. he whose nose is naturally more red than any other part of his face, is thereby denoted to be covetous, impious, luxurious, and an enemy to goodness. a nose that turns up again, and is long and full at the tip of it, shows the person that has it to be bold, proud, covetous, envious, luxurious, a liar and deceiver, vain, glorious, unfortunate and contentious. he whose nose riseth high in the middle, is prudent and polite, and of great courage, honourable in his actions, and true to his word. a nose big at the end shows a person to be of a peaceable disposition, industrious and faithful, and of a good understanding. a very wide nose, with wide nostrils, denotes a man dull of apprehension, and inclined more to simplicity than wisdom, and withal vain, contentious and a liar. when the nostrils are close and thin, they denote a man to have but little testicles, and to be very desirous of the enjoyment of women, but modest in his conversation. but he whose nostrils are great and wide, is usually well hung and lustful; but withal of an envious, bold and treacherous disposition and though dull of understanding, yet confident enough. a great and wide mouth shows a man to be bold, warlike, shameless and stout, a great liar and as great a talker, also a great eater, but as to his intellectuals, he is very dull, being for the most part very simple. a little mouth shows the person to be of a quiet and pacific temper, somewhat reticent, but faithful, secret, modest, bountiful, and but a little eater. he whose mouth smells of a bad breath, is one of a corrupted liver and lungs, is oftentimes vain, wanton, deceitful, of indifferent intellect, envious, covetous, and a promise-breaker. he that has a sweet breath, is the contrary. the lips, when they are very big and blubbering, show a person to be credulous, foolish, dull and stupid, and apt to be enticed to anything. lips of a different size denote a person to be discreet, secret in all things, judicious and of a good wit, but somewhat hasty. to have lips, well coloured and more thin than thick, shows a person to be good-humoured in all things and more easily persuaded to good than evil. to have one lip bigger than the other, shows a variety of fortunes, and denotes the party to be of a dull, sluggish temper, but of a very indifferent understanding, as being much addicted to folly. when the teeth are small, and but weak in performing their office, and especially if they are short and few, though they show the person to be of a weak constitution, yet they denote him to be of a meek disposition, honest, faithful and secret in whatsoever he is intrusted with. to have some teeth longer and shorter than others, denotes a person to be of a good apprehension, but bold, disdainful, envious and proud. to have the teeth very long, and growing sharp towards the end, if they are long in chewing, and thin, denotes the person to be envious, gluttonous, bold, shameless, unfaithful and suspicious. when the teeth look very brown or yellowish, whether they be long or short, it shows the person to be of a suspicious temper, envious, deceitful and turbulent. to have teeth strong and close together, shows the person to be of a long life, a desirer of novelties, and things that are fair and beautiful, but of a high spirit, and one that will have his humour in all things; he loves to hear news, and to repeat it afterwards, and is apt to entertain anything on his behalf. to have teeth thin and weak, shows a weak, feeble man, and one of a short life, and of a weak apprehension; but chaste, shame-faced, tractable and honest. a tongue to be too swift of speech shows a man to be downright foolish, or at best but a very vain wit. a stammering tongue, or one that stumbles in the mouth, signifies a man of a weak understanding, and of a wavering mind, quickly in a rage, and soon pacified. a very thick and rough tongue denotes a man to be apprehensive, subtle and full of compliments, yet vain and deceitful, treacherous, and prone to impiety. a thin tongue shows a man of wisdom and sound judgment, very ingenious and of an affable disposition, yet somewhat timorous and too credulous. a great and full voice in either sex shows them to be of a great spirit, confident, proud and wilful. a faint and weak voice, attended with but little breath, shows a person to be of good understanding, a nimble fancy, a little eater, but weak of body, and of a timorous disposition. a loud and shrill voice, which sounds clearly denotes a person provident, sagacious, true and ingenious, but withal capricious, vain, glorious and too credulous. a strong voice when a man sings denotes him to be of a strong constitution, and of a good understanding, a nimble fancy, a little eater, but weak of body, and of a timorous disposition. a strong voice when a man sings, denotes him to be of a strong constitution, and of a good understanding, neither too penurious nor too prodigal, also ingenious and an admirer of the fair sex. a weak and trembling voice shows the owner of it to be envious, suspicious, slow in business, feeble and fearful. a loud, shrill and unpleasant voice, signifies one bold and valiant, but quarrelsome and injurious and altogether wedded to his own humours, and governed by his own counsels. a rough and hoarse voice, whether in speaking or singing, declares one to be a dull and heavy person, of much guts and little brains. a full and yet mild voice, and pleasing to the hearer, shows the person to be of a quiet and peaceable disposition (which is a great virtue and rare to be found in a woman), and also very thrifty and secret, not prone to anger, but of a yielding temper. a voice beginning low or in the bass, and ending high in the treble, denotes a person to be violent, angry, bold and secure. a thick and full chin abounding with too much flesh, shows a man inclined to peace, honest and true to his trust, but slow in invention, and easy to be drawn either to good or evil. a peaked chin and reasonably full of flesh, shows a person to be of a good understanding, a high spirit and laudable conversation. a double chin shows a peaceable disposition, but dull of apprehension, vain, credulous, a great supplanter, and secret in all his actions. a crooked chin, bending upwards, and peaked for want of flesh, is by the rules of physiognomy, according to nature, a very bad man, being proud, imprudent, envious, threatening, deceitful, prone to anger and treachery, and a great thief. the hair of young men usually begins to grow down upon their chins at fifteen years of age, and sometimes sooner. these hairs proceed from the superfluity of heat, the fumes whereof ascend to their chin, like smoke to the funnel of a chimney; and because it cannot find an open passage by which it may ascend higher, it vents itself forth in the hairs which are called the beard. there are very few, or almost no women at all, that have hairs on their cheeks; and the reason is, that those humours which cause hair to grow on the cheeks of a man are by a woman evacuated in the monthly courses, which they have more or less, according to the heat or coldness of their constitution, and the age and motion of the moon, of which we have spoken at large in the first part of this book. yet sometimes women of a hot constitution have hair to be seen on their cheeks, but more commonly on their lips, or near their mouths, where the heat most aboundeth. and where this happens, such women are much addicted to the company of men, and of a strong and manly constitution. a woman who hath little hair on her cheeks, or about her mouth and lips, is of a good complexion, weak constitution, shamefaced, mild and obedient, whereas a woman of a more hot constitution is quite otherwise. but in a man, a beard well composed and thick of hair, signifies a man of good nature, honest, loving, sociable and full of humanity; on the contrary, he that hath but a little beard, is for the most part proud, pining, peevish and unsociable. they who have no beards, have always shrill and a strange kind of squeaking voices, and are of a weak constitution, which is apparent in the case of eunuchs, who, after they are deprived of their virility are transformed from the nature of men into the condition of women. great and thick ears are a certain sign of a foolish person, or a bad memory and worse understanding. but small and thin ears show a person to be of a good wit, grave, sweet, thrifty, modest, resolute, of a good memory, and one willing to serve his friend. he whose ears are longer than ordinary, is thereby signified to be a bold man, uncivil, vain, foolish, serviceable to another more than to himself, and a man of small industry, but of a great stomach. a face apt to sweat on every motion, shows a person to be of a very hot constitution, vain and luxurious, of a good stomach, but of a bad understanding, and a worse conversation. a very fleshy face shows the person to be of a fearful disposition, but a merry heart, and withal bountiful and discreet, easy to be entreated, and apt to believe everything. a lean face, by the rules of physiognomy, denotes the person to be of a good understanding, but somewhat capricious and disdainful in his conversation. a little and round face, shows a person to be simple, very fearful, of a bad memory, and a clownish disposition. a plump face, full of carbuncles, shows a man to be a great drinker of wine, vain, daring, and soon intoxicated. a face red or high coloured, shows a man much inclined to choler, and one that will be soon angry and not easily pacified. a long and lean face, shows a man to be both bold, injurious and deceitful. a face every way of a due proportion, denotes an ingenious person, one fit for anything and very much inclined to what is good. one of a broad, full, fat face is, by the rules of physiognomy, of a dull, lumpish, heavy constitution, and that for one virtue has three vices. a plain, flat face, without any rising shows a person to be very wise, loving and courtly in his carriage, faithful to his friend and patient in adversity. a face sinking down a little, with crosses in it, inclining to leanness, denotes a person to be very laborious, but envious, deceitful, false, quarrelsome, vain and silly, and of a dull and clownish behaviour. a face of a handsome proportion, and more inclining to fat than lean, shows a person just in his actions, true to his word, civil, and respectful in his behaviour, of an indifferent understanding, and of an extraordinary memory. a crooked face, long and lean, denotes a man endued with as bad qualities as the face is with ill features. a face broad about the brows, and sharper and less as it grows towards the chin, shows a man simple and foolish in managing his affairs, vain in his discourse, envious in his nature, deceitful, quarrelsome and rude in his conversation. a face well-coloured, full of good features, and of an exact symmetry, and a just proportion in all its parts, and which is delightful to look upon, is commonly the index of a fairer mind and shows a person to be well disposed; but withal declares that virtue is not so impregnably seated there, but that by strong temptations (especially by the fair sex) it may be supplanted and overcome by vice. a pale complexion, shows the person not only to be fickle, but very malicious, treacherous, false, proud, presumptuous, and extremely unfaithful. a face well-coloured, shows the person to be of a praiseworthy disposition and a sound complexion, easy of belief, and respectful to his friend, ready to do a courtesy, and very easy to be drawn to anything. a great head, and round, withal, denotes the person to be secret, and of great application in carrying on business, and also ingenious and of a large imaginative faculty and invention; and likewise laborious, constant and honest. the head whose gullet stands forth and inclines towards the earth, signifies a person thrifty, wise, peaceable, secret, of a retired temper, and constant in the management of his affairs. a long head and face, and great, withal, denotes a vain, foolish, idle and weak person, credulous and very envious. to have one's head always shaking and moving from side to side, denotes a shallow, weak person, unstable in all his actions, given to lying, a great deceiver, a great talker, and prodigal in all his fortunes. a big head and broad face, shows a man to be very courageous, a great hunter after women, very suspicious, bold and shameless. he who hath a very big head, but not so proportionate as it ought to be to the body, if he hath a short neck and crooked gullet is generally a man of apprehension, wise, secret, ingenious, of sound judgment, faithful, true and courteous to all. he who hath a little head, and long, slender throat, is for the most part a man very weak, yet apt to learn, but unfortunate in his actions. and so much shall suffice with respect to judgment from the head and face. * * * * * chapter iii _of judgments drawn from several other parts of man's body._ in the body of man the head and feet are the principal parts, being the index which heaven has laid open to every one's view to make a judgment therefrom, therefore i have been the larger in my judgment from the several parts thereof. but as to the other parts, i shall be much more brief as not being so obvious to the eyes of men; yet i would proceed in order. the throat, if it be white, whether it be fat or lean, shows a man to be vain-glorious, timorous, wanton, and very much subject to choler. if the throat be so thin and lean that the veins appear, it shows a man to be weak, slow, and a dull and heavy constitution. a long neck shows one to have a long and slender foot, and that the person is stiff and inflexible either to good or evil. a short neck shows one to be witty and ingenious, but deceitful and inconstant, well skilled in the use of arms, and yet cares not to use them, but is a great lover of peace and quietness. a lean shoulder bone, signifies a man to be weak, timorous, peaceful, not laborious, and yet fit for any employment. he whose shoulder bones are of a great bigness is commonly, by the rule of physiognomy, a strong man, faithful but unfortunate; somewhat dull of understanding, very laborious, a great eater and drinker, and one equally contented in all conditions. he whose shoulder bone seems to be smooth, is by the rule of nature, modest in his look, and temperate in all his actions, both at bed and board. he whose shoulder bone bends, and is crooked inwardly, is commonly a dull person and deceitful. long arms, hanging down and touching the knees, though such arms are rarely seen, denotes a man liberal, but withal vain-glorious, proud and inconstant. he whose arms are very short in respect to the stature of his body, is thereby signified to be a man of high and gallant spirit, of a graceful temper, bold and warlike. he whose arms are full of bones, sinews and flesh, is a great desirer of novelties and beauties, and one that is very credulous and apt to believe anything. he whose arms are very hairy, whether they be lean or fat, is for the most part a luxurious person, weak in body and mind, very suspicious and malicious withal. he whose arms have no hair on them at all, is of a weak judgment, very angry, vain, wanton, credulous, easily deceived himself, yet a great deceiver of others, no fighter, and very apt to betray his dearest friends. * * * * * chapter iv _of palmistry, showing the various judgments drawn from the hand._ being engaged in this fourth part to show what judgment may be drawn, according to physiognomy, from the several parts of the body, and coming in order to speak of the hands, it has put me under the necessity of saying something about palmistry, which is a judgment made of the conditions, inclinations, and fortunes of men and women, from the various lines and characters nature has imprinted in their hands, which are almost as serious as the hands that have them. the reader should remember that one of the lines of the hand, and which indeed is reckoned the principal, is called the line of life; this line encloses the thumb, separating it from the hollow of the hand. the next to it, which is called the natural line, takes its beginning from the rising of the forefinger, near the line of life, and reaches to the table line, and generally makes a triangle. the table line, commonly called the line of fortune, begins under the little finger, and ends near the middle finger. the girdle of venus, which is another line so called begins near the first joint of the little finger, and ends between the fore-finger and the middle finger. the line of death is that which plainly appears in a counter line to that of life, and is called the sister line, ending usually as the other ends; for when the line of life is ended, death comes, and it can go no farther. there are lines in the fleshy parts, as in the ball of the thumb, which is called the mount of venus; under each of the fingers are also mounts, which are governed by several planets; and the hollow of the hand is called the plain of mars. i proceed to give judgment from these several lines:--in palmistry, the left hand is chiefly to be regarded, because therein the lines are most visible, and have the strictest communication with the heart and brain. in the next place, observe the line of life, and if it be fair, extended to its full length, and not broken with an intermixture of cross lines, it shows long life and health, and it is the same if a double line appears, as there sometimes does. when the stars appear in this line, it is a signification of great losses and calamities; if on it there be the figures of two o's or a q, it threatens the person with blindness; if it wraps itself about the table line, then does it promise wealth and honour to be attended by prudence and industry. if the line be cut and jagged at the upper end, it denotes much sickness; if this line be cut by any lines coming from the mount of venus, it declares the person to be unfortunate in love and business also, and threatens him with sudden death. a cross below the line of life and the table line, shows the person to be very liberal and charitable, one of a noble spirit. let us now see the signification of the table line. the table line, when broad and of a lively colour, shows a healthful constitution, and a quiet contented mind, and a courageous spirit, but if it has crosses towards the little finger, it threatens the party with much affliction by sickness. if the line be double, or divided into three parts at any of the extremities, it shows the person to be of a generous temper, and of a good fortune to support it; but if this line be forked at the end, it threatens the person shall suffer by jealousies and doubts, and loss of riches gotten by deceit. if three points such as these * * * are found in it, they denote the person prudent and liberal, a lover of learning, and of a good temper, if it spreads towards the fore and middle finger and ends blunt, it denotes preferment. let us now see what is signified by the middle line. this line has in it oftentimes (for there is scarce a hand in which it varies not) divers very significant characters. many small lines between this and the table line threaten the party with sickness, and also gives him hopes of recovery. a half cross branching into this line, declares the person shall have honour, riches, and good success in all his undertakings. a half moon denotes cold and watery distempers; but a sun or star upon this line, denotes prosperity and riches; this line, double in a woman, shows she will have several husbands, but no children. [illustration] the line of venus, if it happens to be cut or divided near the forefinger, threatens ruin to the party, and that it shall befall him by means of lascivious women and bad company. two crosses upon the line, one being on the forefinger and the other bending towards the little finger, show the party to be weak, and inclined to modesty and virtue, indeed it generally denotes modesty in women; and therefore those who desire such, usually choose them by this standard. the liver line, if it be straight and crossed by other lines, shows the person to be of a sound judgment, and a piercing understanding, but if it be winding, crooked and bending outward, it draws deceit and flattery, and the party is not to be trusted. if it makes a triangle or quadrangle, it shows the person to be of a noble descent, and ambitious of honour and promotion. if it happens that this line and the middle line begin near each other, it denotes a person to be weak in his judgment, if a man; but if a woman, in danger by hard labour. the plain of mars being in the hollow of the hand, most of the lines pass through it, which renders it very significant. this plain being crooked and distorted, threatens the party to fall by his enemies. when the lines beginning at the wrist are long within the plain, reaching to the brawn of the hand, that shows the person to be much given to quarrelling, often in broils and of a hot and fiery spirit, by which he suffers much damage. if deep and long crosses be in the middle of the plain, it shows the party shall obtain honour by martial exploits; but if it be a woman, she shall have several husbands and easy labour with her children. the line of death is fatal, when crosses or broken lines appear in it; for they threaten the person with sickness and a short life. a clouded moon appearing therein, threatens a child-bed woman with death. a bloody spot in the line, denotes a violent death. a star like a comet, threatens ruin by war, and death by pestilence. but if a bright sun appears therein, it promises long life and prosperity. as for the lines of the wrist being fair, they denote good fortune; but if crossed and broken, the contrary. * * * * * chapter v _judgments according to physiognomy, drawn from the several parts of the body, from the hands to the feet._ a large and full breast, shows a man valiant and courageous, but withal proud and hard to deal with, quickly angry, and very apprehensive of an injury; he whose breast is narrow, and which riseth a little in the middle of it, is, by the best rule of physiognomy, of a clear spirit, of a great understanding, good in counsel, very faithful, clean both in mind and body, yet as an enemy to this, he is soon angry, and inclined long to keep it. he whose breast is somewhat hairy, is very luxurious, and serviceable to another. he who hath no hair upon his breast, is a man weak by nature, of a slender capacity and very timorous, but of a laudable life and conversation, inclined to peace, and much retired to himself. the back of the chin bone, if the flesh be anything hairy and lean, and higher than any other part that is behind, signifies a man shameless, beastly and withal malicious. he whose back is large, big and fat, is thereby denoted to be a strong and stout man, but of a heavy disposition, vain, slow and full of deceit. he or she whose belly is soft over all the body, is weak, lustful, and fearful upon little or no occasion, of a good understanding, and an excellent invention, but little eaters, faithful, but of various fortune, and meet with more adversity than prosperity. he whose flesh is rough and hard, is a man of strong constitution and very bold, but vain, proud and of a cruel temper. a person whose skin is smooth, fat and white, is a person, curious, vain-glorious, timorous, shame-faced, malicious, false, and too wise to believe all he hears. a thigh, full of strong, bristly hair, and the hair inclined to curl, signifies one lustful, licentious, and fit for copulation. thighs with but little hair, and those soft and slender, show the person to be reasonably chaste, and one that has no great desire to coition, and who will have but few children. the legs of both men and women have a fleshy substance behind, which are called calves, which nature hath given them (as in our book of living creatures we have observed), in lieu of those long tails which other creatures have pendant behind. now a great calf, and he whose legs are of great bone, and hair withal, denotes the person to be strong, bold, secure, dull in understanding and slow in business, inclined to procreation, and for the most part fortunate in his undertakings. little legs, and but little hair on them, show the person to be weak, fearful, of a quick understanding, and neither luxurious at bed nor board. he whose legs do much abound with hair, shows he has great store in another place, and that he is lustful and luxurious, strong, but unstable in his resolution, and abounding with ill humours. the feet of either men or women, if broad and thick with flesh, and long in figure, especially if the skin feels hard, they are by nature of a strong constitution, and gross nutriment, but of weak intellect, which renders the understanding vain. but feet that are thin and lean, and of a soft skin, show the person to be but weak of body, but of a strong understanding and an excellent wit. the soles of the feet do administer plain and evident signs, whereby the disposition and constitution of men and women may be known, as do the palms of their hands, as being full of lines, by which lines all the fortunes and misfortunes of men and women may be known, and their manners and inclinations made plainly to appear. but this in general we may take notice, as that many long lines and strokes do presage great affliction, and a very troublesome life, attended with much grief and toil, care, poverty, and misery; but short lines, if they are thick and full of cross lines, are yet worse in every degree. those, the skin of whose soles is very thick and gross, are, for the most part, able, strong and venturous. whereas, on the contrary, those the skin of whose soles of their feet is thin, are generally weak and timorous. i shall now, before i conclude (having given an account of what judgments may be made by observing the several parts of the body, from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet), give an account of what judgments may be drawn by the rule of physiognomy from things extraneous which are found upon many, and which indeed to them are parts of the body, but are so far from being necessary parts that they are the deformity and burden of it, and speak of the habits of the body, as they distinguish persons. _of crooked and deformed persons._ a crooked breast and shoulder, or the exuberance of flesh in the body either of man or woman, signifies the person to be extremely parsimonious and ingenious, and of a great understanding, but very covetous and scraping after the things of the world, attended also with a very bad memory, being also very deceitful and malicious; they are seldom in a medium, but either virtuous or extremely vicious. but if the person deformed hath an excrescence on his breast instead of on the back, he is for the most part of a double heart, and very mischievous. _of the divers manners of going, and particular posture both of men and women._ he or she that goes slowly, making great steps as they go, are generally persons of bad memory, and dull of apprehension, given to loitering, and not apt to believe what is told them. he who goes apace, and makes short steps, is most successful in all his undertakings, swift in his imagination, and humble in the disposition of his affairs. he who makes wide and uneven steps, and sidelong withal, is one of a greedy, sordid nature, subtle, malicious, and willing to do evil. _of the gait or motion in men and women._ every man hath a certain gait or motion, and so in like manner hath every woman; for a man to be shaking his head, or using any light motion with his hands or feet, whether he stands or sits, or speaks, is always accompanied with an extravagant motion, unnecessary, superfluous and unhandsome. such a man, by the rule of physiognomy is vain, unwise, unchaste, a detractor, unstable and unfaithful. he or she whose motion is not much when discoursing with any one, is for the most part wise and well bred, and fit for any employment, ingenious and apprehensive, frugal, faithful and industrious in business. he whose posture is forwards and backwards, or, as it were, whisking up and down, mimical, is thereby denoted to be a vain, silly person, of a heavy and dull wit, and very malicious. he whose motion is lame and limping, or otherwise imperfect, or that counterfeits an imperfection is denoted to be envious, malicious, false and detracting. _judgment drawn from the stature of man._ physiognomy draws several judgments also from the stature of man, which take as followeth; if a man be upright and straight, inclined rather to leanness than fat, it shows him to be bold, cruel, proud, clamorous, hard to please, and harder to be reconciled when displeased, very frugal, deceitful, and in many things malicious. to be of tall stature and corpulent with it, denotes him to be not only handsome but valiant also, but of no extraordinary understanding, and which is worst of all, ungrateful and trepanning. he who is extremely tall and very lean and thin is a projecting man, that designs no good to himself, and suspects every one to be as bad as himself, importunate to obtain what he desires, and extremely wedded to his own humour. he who is thick and short, is vain, envious, suspicious, and very shallow of apprehension, easy of belief, but very long before he will forget an injury. he who is lean and short but upright withal, is, by the rules of physiognomy, wise and ingenious, bold and confident, and of a good understanding, but of a deceitful heart. he who stoops as he goes, not so much by age as custom, is very laborious, a retainer of secrets, but very incredulous and not easy to believe every vain report he hears. he that goes with his belly stretching forth, is sociable, merry, and easy to be persuaded. * * * * * chapter vi _of the power of the celestial bodies over men and women._ having spoken thus largely of physiognomy, and the judgment given thereby concerning the dispositions and inclinations of men and women, it will be convenient here to show how all these things come to pass; and how it is that the secret inclinations and future fate of men and women may be known from the consideration of the several parts of the bodies. they arise from the power and dominion of superior powers to understand the twelve signs of the zodiac, whose signs, characters and significations are as follows:-- [illustration] _aries_, the ram, which governs the head and face. _taurus_, the bull, which governs the neck. _gemini_, the twins, which governs the hands and arms. _cancer_, the crab, governs the breast and stomach. _leo_, the lion, governs the back and heart _virgo_, the virgin, governs the belly and bowels. _libra_, the balance, governs the veins and loins. _scorpio_, the scorpion, governs the secret parts. _sagittary_, the centaur, governs the thighs. _capricorn_, the goat, governs the knees. _aquarius_, the water-bearer, governs the legs and ankles. _pisces_, the fish, governs the feet. it is here furthermore necessary to let the reader know, that the ancients have divided the celestial sphere into twelve parts, according to the number of these signs, which are termed houses; as in the first house, aries, in the second taurus, in the third gemini, etc. and besides their assigning the twelve signs of the twelve houses, they allot to each house its proper business. to the first house they give the signification of life. the second house has the signification of wealth, substances, or riches. the third is the mansion of brethren. the fourth, the house of parentage. the fifth is the house of children. the sixth is the house of sickness or disease. the seventh is the house of wedlock, and also of enemies, because oftentimes a wife or husband proves the worst enemy. the eighth is the house of death. the ninth is the house of religion. the tenth is the signification of honours. the eleventh of friendship. the twelfth is the house of affliction and woe. now, astrologically speaking, a house is a certain place in the heaven or firmament, divided by certain degrees, through which the planets have their motion, and in which they have their residence and are situated. and these houses are divided by thirty degrees, for every sign has so many degrees. and these signs or houses are called the houses of such and such planets as make their residence therein, and are such as delight in them, and as they are deposited in such and such houses are said to be either dignified or debilitated. for though the planets in their several revolutions go through all the houses, yet there are some houses which they are more properly said to delight in. as for instance, aries and scorpio are the houses of mars; taurus and libra of venus; gemini and virgo of mercury; sagittarius and pisces are the houses of jupiter; capricorn and aquarius are the houses of saturn; leo is the house of the sun; and cancer is the house of the moon. now to sum up the whole, and show how this concerns physiognomy, is this:--as the body of man, as we have shown, is not only governed by the signs and planets, but every part is appropriated to one or another of them, so according to the particular influence of each sign and planet, so governing is the disposition, inclination, and nature of the person governed. for such and such tokens and marks do show a person to be born under such and such a planet; so according to the nature, power and influences of the planets, is the judgment to be made of that person. by which the reader may see that the judgments drawn from physiognomy are grounded upon a certain verity. on some fossil remains of man by thomas h. huxley i have endeavoured to show, in the preceding essay, that the anthropini, or man family, form a very well defined group of the primates, between which and the immediately following family, the catarhini, there is, in the existing world, the same entire absence of any transitional form or connecting link, as between the catarhini and platyrhini. it is a commonly received doctrine, however, that the structural intervals between the various existing modifications of organic beings may be diminished, or even obliterated, if we take into account the long and varied succession of animals and plants which have preceded those now living and which are known to us only by their fossilized remains. how far this doctrine is well based, how far, on the other hand, as our knowledge at present stands, it is an overstatement of the real facts of the case, and an exaggeration of the conclusions fairly deducible from them, are points of grave importance, but into the discussion of which i do not, at present, propose to enter. it is enough that such a view of the relations of extinct to living beings has been propounded, to lead us to inquire, with anxiety, how far the recent discoveries of human remains in a fossil state bear out, or oppose, that view. i shall confine myself, in discussing this question, to those fragmentary human skulls from the caves of engis in the valley of the meuse, in belgium, and of the neanderthal near dusseldorf, the geological relations of which have been examined with so much care by sir charles lyell; upon whose high authority i shall take it for granted, that the engis skull belonged to a contemporary of the mammoth ('elephas primigenius') and of the woolly rhinoceros ('rhinoceros tichorhinus'), with the bones of which it was found associated; and that the neanderthal skull is of great, though uncertain, antiquity. whatever be the geological age of the latter skull, i conceive it is quite safe (on the ordinary principles of paleontological reasoning) to assume that the former takes us to, at least, the further side of the vague biological limit, which separates the present geological epoch from that which immediately preceded it. and there can be no doubt that the physical geography of europe has changed wonderfully, since the bones of men and mammoths, hyaenas and rhinoceroses were washed pell-mell into the cave of engis. the skull from the cave of engis was originally discovered by professor schmerling, and was described by him, together with other human remains disinterred at the same time, in his valuable work, 'recherches sur les ossemens fossiles decouverts dans les cavernes de la province de liege', published in (p. , 'et seq.'), from which the following paragraphs are extracted, the precise expressions of the author being, as far as possible, preserved. "in the first place, i must remark that these human remains, which are in my possession, are characterized like thousands of bones which i have lately been disinterring, by the extent of the decomposition which they have undergone, which is precisely the same as that of the extinct species: all, with a few exceptions, are broken; some few are rounded, as is frequently found to be the case in fossil remains of other species. the fractures are vertical or oblique; none of them are eroded; their colour does not differ from that of other fossil bones, and varies from whitish yellow to blackish. all are lighter than recent bones, with the exception of those which have a calcareous incrustation, and the cavities of which are filled with such matter. "the cranium which i have caused to be figured, plate i., figs. , , is that of an old person. the sutures are beginning to be effaced: all the facial bones are wanting, and of the temporal bones only a fragment of that of the right side is preserved. "the face and the base of the cranium had been detached before the skull was deposited in the cave, for we were unable to find those parts, though the whole cavern was regularly searched. the cranium was met with at a depth of a metre and a half [five feet nearly], hidden under an osseous breccia, composed of the remains of small animals, and containing one rhinoceros tusk, with several teeth of horses and of ruminants. this breccia, which has been spoken of above (p. ), was a metre [ / feet about] wide, and rose to the height of a metre and a half above the floor of the cavern, to the walls of which it adhered strongly. "the earth which contained this human skull exhibited no trace of disturbance: teeth of rhinoceros, horse, hyaena, and bear, surrounded it on all sides. [illustration: fig. .--the skull from the cave of engis--viewed from the right side. 'a' glabella, 'b' occipital protuberance, ('a' to 'b' glabello-occipital line), 'c' auditory foramen.] "the famous blumenbach [ ] has directed attention to the differences presented by the form and the dimensions of human crania of different races. this important work would have assisted us greatly, if the face, a part essential for the determination of race, with more or less accuracy, had not been wanting in our fossil cranium. "we are convinced that even if the skull had been complete, it would not have been possible to pronounce, with certainty, upon a single specimen; for individual variations are so numerous in the crania of one and the same race, that one cannot, without laying oneself open to large chances of error, draw any inference from a single fragment of a cranium to the general form of the head to which it belonged. "nevertheless, in order to neglect no point respecting the form of this fossil skull, we may observe that, from the first, the elongated and narrow form of the forehead attracted our attention. "in fact, the slight elevation of the frontal, its narrowness, and the form of the orbit, approximate it more nearly to the cranium of an ethiopian than to that of an european: the elongated form and the produced occiput are also characters which we believe to be observable in our fossil cranium; but to remove all doubt upon that subject i have caused the contours of the cranium of an european and of an ethiopian to be drawn and the foreheads represented. plate ii., figs. and , and, in the same plate, figs. and , will render the differences easily distinguishable; and a single glance at the figures will be more instructive than a long and wearisome description. "at whatever conclusion we may arrive as to the origin of the man from whence this fossil skull proceeded, we may express an opinion without exposing ourselves to a fruitless controversy. each may adopt the hypothesis which seems to him most probable: for my own part, i hold it to be demonstrated that this cranium has belonged to a person of limited intellectual faculties, and we conclude thence that it belonged to a man of a low degree of civilization: a deduction which is borne out by contrasting the capacity of the frontal with that of the occipital region. "another cranium of a young individual was discovered in the floor of the cavern beside the tooth of an elephant; the skull was entire when found, but the moment it was lifted it fell into pieces, which i have not, as yet, been able to put together again. but i have represented the bones of the upper jaw, plate i., fig. . the state of the alveoli and the teeth, shows that the molars had not yet pierced the gum. detached milk molars and some fragments of a human skull proceed from this same place. the figure represents a human superior incisor tooth, the size of which is truly remarkable. [ ] "figure is a fragment of a superior maxillary bone, the molar teeth of which are worn down to the roots. "i possess two vertebrae, a first and last dorsal. "a clavicle of the left side (see plate iii., fig. ); although it belonged to a young individual, this bone shows that he must have been of great stature. [ ] "two fragments of the radius, badly preserved, do not indicate that the height of the man, to whom they belonged, exceeded five feet and a half. "as to the remains of the upper extremities, those which are in my possession consist merely of a fragment of an ulna and of a radius (plate iii., figs. and ). "figure , plate iv., represents a metacarpal bone, contained in the breccia, of which we have spoken; it was found in the lower part above the cranium: add to this some metacarpal bones, found at very different distances, half-a-dozen metatarsals, three phalanges of the hand, and one of the foot. "this is a brief enumeration of the remains of human bones collected in the cavern of engis, which has preserved for us the remains of three individuals, surrounded by those of the elephant, of the rhinoceros, and of carnivora of species unknown in the present creation." from the cave of engihoul, opposite that of engis, on the right bank of the meuse, schmerling obtained the remains of three other individuals of man, among which were only two fragments of parietal bones, but many bones of the extremities. in one case a broken fragment of an ulna was soldered to a like fragment of a radius by stalagmite, a condition frequently observed among the bones of the cave bear ('ursus spelaeus'), found in the belgian caverns. it was in the cavern of engis that professor schmerling found, incrusted with stalagmite and joined to a stone, the pointed bone implement, which he has figured in fig. of his plate xxxvi., and worked flints were found by him in all those belgian caves, which contained an abundance of fossil bones. a short letter from m. geoffroy st. hilaire, published in the 'comptes rendus' of the academy of sciences of paris, for july nd, , speaks of a visit (and apparently a very hasty one) paid to the collection of professor 'schermidt' (which is presumably a misprint for schmerling) at liege. the writer briefly criticises the drawings which illustrate schmerling's work, and affirms that the "human cranium is a little longer than it is represented" in schmerling's figure. the only other remark worth quoting is this:--"the aspect of the human bones differs little from that of the cave bones, with which we are familiar, and of which there is a considerable collection in the same place. with respect to their special forms, compared with those of the varieties of recent human crania, few 'certain' conclusions can be put forward; for much greater differences exist between the different specimens of well-characterized varieties, than between the fossil cranium of liege and that of one of those varieties selected as a term of comparison." geoffroy st. hilaire's remarks are, it will be observed, little but an echo of the philosophic doubts of the describer and discoverer of the remains. as to the critique upon schmerling's figures, i find that the side view given by the latter is really about / ths of an inch shorter than the original, and that the front view is diminished to about the same extent. otherwise the representation is not, in any way, inaccurate, but corresponds very well with the cast which is in my possession. a piece of the occipital bone, which schmerling seems to have missed, has since been fitted on to the rest of the cranium by an accomplished anatomist, dr. spring, of liege, under whose direction an excellent plaster cast was made for sir charles lyell. it is upon and from a duplicate of that cast that my own observations and the accompanying figures, the outlines of which are copied from very accurate camera lucida drawings, by my friend mr. busk, reduced to one-half of the natural size, are made. as professor schmerling observes, the base of the skull is destroyed, and the facial bones are entirely absent; but the roof of the cranium, consisting of the frontal, parietal, and the greater part of the occipital bones, as far as the middle of the occipital foramen, is entire or nearly so. the left temporal bone is wanting. of the right temporal, the parts in the immediate neighbourhood of the auditory foramen, the mastoid process, and a considerable portion of the squamous element of the temporal are well preserved (fig. ). the lines of fracture which remain between the coadjusted pieces of the skull, and are faithfully displayed in schmerling's figure, are readily traceable in the cast. the sutures are also discernible, but the complex disposition of their serrations, shown in the figure, is not obvious in the cast. though the ridges which give attachment to muscles are not excessively prominent, they are well marked, and taken together with the apparently well developed frontal sinuses, and the condition of the sutures, leave no doubt on my mind that the skull is that of an adult, if not middle-aged man. the extreme length of the skull is . inches. its extreme breadth, which corresponds very nearly with the interval between the parietal protuberances, is not more than . inches. the proportion of the length to the breadth is therefore very nearly as to . if a line be drawn from the point at which the brow curves in towards the root of the nose, and which is called the 'glabella' ('a') (fig. ), to the occipital protuberance ('b'), and the distance to the highest point of the arch of the skull be measured perpendicularly from this line, it will be found to be . inches. viewed from above, fig. , a, the forehead presents an evenly rounded curve, and passes into the contour of the sides and back of the skull, which describes a tolerably regular elliptical curve. the front view (fig. , b) shows that the roof of the skull was very regularly and elegantly arched in the transverse direction, and that the transverse diameter was a little less below the parietal protuberances, than above them. the forehead cannot be called narrow in relation to the rest of the skull, nor can it be called a retreating forehead; on the contrary, the antero-posterior contour of the skull is well arched, so that the distance along that contour, from the nasal depression to the occipital protuberance, measures about . inches. the transverse arc of the skull, measured from one auditory foramen to the other, across the middle of the sagittal suture, is about inches. the sagittal suture itself is . inches long. the supraciliary prominences or brow-ridges (on each side of 'a', fig. ) are well, but not excessively, developed, and are separated by a median depression. their principal elevation is disposed so obliquely that i judge them to be due to large frontal sinuses. if a line joining the glabella and the occipital protuberance ('a', 'b', fig. ) be made horizontal, no part of the occipital region projects more than / th of an inch behind the posterior extremity of that line, and the upper edge of the auditory foramen ('c') is almost in contact with a line drawn parallel with this upon the outer surface of the skull. a transverse line drawn from one auditory foramen to the other traverses, as usual, the forepart of the occipital foramen. the capacity of the interior of this fragmentary skull has not been ascertained. the history of the human remains from the cavern in the neanderthal may best be given in the words of their original describer, dr schaaffhausen [ ], as translated by mr. busk. "in the early part of the year , a human skeleton was discovered in a limestone cave in the neanderthal, near hochdal, between dusseldorf and elberfeld. of this, however, i was unable to procure more than a plaster cast of the cranium, taken at elberfeld, from which i drew up an account of its remarkable conformation, which was, in the first instance, read on the th of february, , at the meeting of the lower rhine medical and natural history society, at bonn. [ ] subsequently dr. fuhlrott, to whom science is indebted for the preservation of these bones, which were not at first regarded as human, and into whose possession they afterwards came, brought the cranium from elberfeld to bonn, and entrusted it to me for more accurate anatomical examination. at the general meeting of the natural history society of prussian rhineland and westphalia, at bonn, on the nd of june, , [ ] dr fuhlrott himself gave a full account of the locality, and of the circumstances under which the discovery was made. he was of opinion that the bones might be regarded as fossil; and in coming to this conclusion, he laid especial stress upon the existence of dendritic deposits, with which their surface was covered, and which were first noticed upon them by professor meyer. to this communication i appended a brief report on the results of my anatomical examination of the bones. the conclusions at which i arrived were:-- st. that the extraordinary form of the skull was due to a natural conformation hitherto not known to exist, even in the most barbarous races. nd. that these remarkable human remains belonged to a period antecedent to the time of the celts and germans, and were in all probability derived from one of the wild races of north-western europe, spoken of by latin writers; and which were encountered as autochthones by the german immigrants. and rdly. that it was beyond doubt that these human relics were traceable to a period at which the latest animals of the diluvium still existed; but that no proof of this assumption, nor consequently of their so-termed 'fossil' condition, was afforded by the circumstances under which the bones were discovered. [illustration: fig. .--the engis skull viewed from above (a) and in front (b).] "as dr. fuhlrott has not yet published his description of these circumstances, i borrow the following account of them from one of his letters. 'a small cave or grotto, high enough to admit a man, and about feet deep from the entrance, which is or feet wide, exists in the southern wall of the gorge of the neanderthal, as it is termed, at a distance of about feet from the dussel, and about feet above the bottom of the valley. in its earlier and uninjured condition, this cavern opened upon a narrow plateau lying in front of it, and from which the rocky wall descended almost perpendicularly into the river. it could be reached, though with difficulty, from above. the uneven floor was covered to a thickness of or feet with a deposit of mud, sparingly intermixed with rounded fragments of chert. in the removing of this deposit, the bones were discovered. the skull was first noticed, placed nearest to the entrance of the cavern; and further in, the other bones, lying in the same horizontal plane. of this i was assured, in the most positive terms, by two labourers who were employed to clear out the grotto, and who were questioned by me on the spot. at first no idea was entertained of the bones being human; and it was not till several weeks after their discovery that they were recognised as such by me, and placed in security. but, as the importance of the discovery was not at the time perceived, the labourers were very careless in the collecting, and secured chiefly only the larger bones; and to this circumstance it may be attributed that fragments merely of the probably perfect skeleton came into my possession.' "my anatomical examination of these bones afforded the following results:-- "the cranium is of unusual size, and of a long elliptical form. a most remarkable peculiarity is at once obvious in the extraordinary development of the frontal sinuses, owing to which the superciliary ridges, which coalesce completely in the middle, are rendered so prominent, that the frontal bone exhibits a considerable hollow or depression above, or rather behind them, whilst a deep depression is also formed in the situation of the root of the nose. the forehead is narrow and low, though the middle and hinder portions of the cranial arch are well developed. unfortunately, the fragment of the skull that has been preserved consists only of the portion situated above the roof of the orbits and the superior occipital ridges, which are greatly developed, and almost conjoined so as to form a horizontal eminence. it includes almost the whole of the frontal bone, both parietals, a small part of the squamous and the upper-third of the occipital. the recently fractured surfaces show that the skull was broken at the time of its disinterment. the cavity holds , grains of water, whence its cubical contents may be estimated at . inches, or . cubic centimetres. in making this estimation, the water is supposed to stand on a level with the orbital plate of the frontal, with the deepest notch in the squamous margin of the parietal, and with the superior semicircular ridges of the occipital. estimated in dried millet-seed, the contents equalled ounces, prussian apothecaries' weight. the semicircular line indicating the upper boundary of the attachment of the temporal muscle, though not very strongly marked, ascends nevertheless to more than half the height of the parietal bone. on the right superciliary ridge is observable an oblique furrow or depression, indicative of an injury received during life. [ ] mm. [ ] the length of the skull from the nasal process of the frontal over the vertex to the superior semicircular lines of the occipital measures............................. ( ) = . ". circumference over the orbital ridges and the superior semicircular lines of the occipital...................................... ( ) = . " or ". width of the frontal from the middle of the temporal line on one side to the same point on the opposite..................... ( ) = . "-- . ". length of the frontal from the nasal. process to the coronal suture.................. ( ) = . "-- ". extreme width of the frontal sinuses........... ( ) = . "-- . ". vertical height above a line joining the deepest notches in the squamous border of the parietals............................... = . ". width of hinder part of skull from one parietal protuberance to the other............. ( ) = . "-- . " distance from the upper angle of the occipital to the superior semicircular lines.......................................... ( ) = . "-- . ". thickness of the bone at the parietal protuberance................................... . --at the angle of the occipital................ . --at the superior semicircular line of the occipital.................................. = . " "besides the cranium, the following bones have been secured:-- " . both thigh-bones, perfect. these, like the skull, and all the other bones, are characterized by their unusual thickness, and the great development of all the elevations and depressions for the attachment of muscles. in the anatomical museum at bonn, under the designation of 'giant's-bones,' are some recent thigh-bones, with which in thickness the foregoing pretty nearly correspond, although they are shorter. giant's bones. fossil bones. mm. mm. length..................................... = . "...... = . " diameter of head of femur.................. = . "..... = . " " of lower articular end, from one condyle to the other................ = . "....... = . " diameter of femur in the middle............ = . "....... = . " " . a perfect right humerus, whose size shows that it belongs to the thigh-bones. mm. length..................................... = . " thickness in the middle.................... = . " diameter of head........................... = . " "also a perfect right radius of corresponding dimensions, and the upper-third of a right ulna corresponding to the humerus and radius. " . a left humerus of which the upper-third is wanting, and which is so much slenderer than the right as apparently to belong to a distinct individual; a left 'ulna', which, though complete, is pathologically deformed, the coronoid process being so much enlarged by bony growth, that flexure of the elbow beyond a right angle must have been impossible; the anterior fossa of the humerus for the reception of the coronoid process being also filled up with a similar bony growth. at the same time, the olecranon is curved strongly downwards. as the bone presents no sign of rachitic degeneration, it may be supposed that an injury sustained during life was the cause of the anchylosis. when the left ulna is compared with the right radius, it might at first sight be concluded that the bones respectively belonged to different individuals, the ulna being more than half an inch too short for articulation with a corresponding radius. but it is clear that this shortening, as well as the attenuation of the left humerus, are both consequent upon the pathological condition above described. " . a left 'ilium', almost perfect, and belonging to the femur: a fragment of the right 'scapula'; the anterior extremity of a rib of the right side; and the same part of a rib of the left side; the hinder part of a rib of the right side; and lastly, two hinder portions and one middle portion of ribs, which from their unusually rounded shape, and abrupt curvature, more resemble the ribs of a carnivorous animal than those of a man. dr. h. v. meyer, however, to whose judgment i defer, will not venture to declare them to be ribs of any animal; and it only remains to suppose that this abnormal condition has arisen from an unusually powerful development of the thoracic muscles. "the bones adhere strongly to the tongue, although, as proved by the use of hydrochloric acid, the greater part of the cartilage is still retained in them, which appears, however, to have undergone that transformation into gelatine which has been observed by v. bibra in fossil bones. the surface of all the bones is in many spots covered with minute black specks, which, more especially under a lens, are seen to be formed of very delicate 'dendrites'. these deposits, which were first observed on the bones by dr. meyer, are most distinct on the inner surface of the cranial bones. they consist of a ferruginous compound, and, from their black colour, may be supposed to contain manganese. similar dendritic formations also occur, not unfrequently, on laminated rocks, and are usually found in minute fissures and cracks. at the meeting of the lower rhine society at bonn, on the st april, , prof. meyer stated that he had noticed in the museum of poppelsdorf similar dendritic crystallizations on several fossil bones of animals, and particularly on those of 'ursus spelaeus', but still more abundantly and beautifully displayed on the fossil bones and teeth of 'equus adamiticus', 'elephas primigenius', etc., from the caves of bolve and sundwig. faint indications of similar 'dendrites' were visible in a roman skull from siegburg; whilst other ancient skulls, which had lain for centuries in the earth, presented no trace of them. [ ] "the incipient formation of dendritic deposits, which were formerly regarded as a sign of a truly fossil condition, is interesting. it has even been supposed that in diluvial deposits the presence of 'dendrites' might be regarded as affording a certain mark of distinction between bones mixed with the diluvium at a somewhat later period and the true diluvial relics, to which alone it was supposed that these deposits were confined. but i have long been convinced that neither can the absence of 'dendrites' be regarded as indicative of recent age, nor their presence as sufficient to establish the great antiquity of the objects upon which they occur. i have myself noticed upon paper, which could scarcely be more than a year old, dendritic deposits, which could not be distinguished from those on fossil bones. thus i possess a dog's skull from the roman colony of the neighbouring heddersheim, 'castrum hadrianum', which is in no way distinguishable from the fossil bones from the frankish caves; it presents the same colour, and adheres to the tongue just as they do; so that this character also, which, at a former meeting of german naturalists at bonn, gave rise to amusing scenes between buckland and schmerling, is no longer of any value. in disputed cases, therefore, the condition of the bone can scarcely afford the means for determining with certainty whether it be fossil, that is to say, whether it belong to geological antiquity or to the historical period.' "as we cannot now look upon the primitive world as representing a wholly different condition of things, from which no transition exists to the organic life of the present time, the designation of 'fossil', as applied to 'a bone', has no longer the sense it conveyed in the time of cuvier. sufficient grounds exist for the assumption that man coexisted with the animals found in the 'diluvium'; and many a barbarous race may, before all historical time, have disappeared, together with the animals of the ancient world, whilst the races whose organization is improved have continued the genus. the bones which form the subject of this paper present characters which, although not decisive as regards a geological epoch, are, nevertheless, such as indicate a very high antiquity. it may also be remarked that, common as is the occurrence of diluvial animal bones in the muddy deposits of caverns, such remains have not hitherto been met with in the caves of the neanderthal; and that the bones, which were covered by a deposit of mud not more than four or five feet thick, and without any protective covering of stalagmite, have retained the greatest part of their organic substance. "these circumstances might be adduced against the probability of a geological antiquity. nor should we be justified in regarding the cranial conformation as perhaps representing the most savage primitive type of the human race, since crania exist among living savages, which, though not exhibiting, such a remarkable conformation of the forehead, which gives the skull somewhat the aspect of that of the large apes, still in other respects, as for instance in the greater depth of the temporal fossae, the crest-like, prominent temporal ridges, and a generally less capacious cranial cavity, exhibit an equally low stage of development. there is no reason for supposing that the deep frontal hollow is due to any artificial flattening, such as is practised in various modes by barbarous nations in the old and new world. the skull is quite symmetrical, and shows no indication of counter-pressure at the occiput, whilst, according to morton, in the flat-heads of the columbia, the frontal and parietal bones are always unsymmetrical. its conformation exhibits the sparing development of the anterior part of the head which has been so often observed in very ancient crania, and affords one of the most striking proofs of the influence of culture and civilization on the form of the human skull." in a subsequent passage, dr. schaaffhausen remarks: "there is no reason whatever for regarding the unusual development of the frontal sinuses in the remarkable skull from the neanderthal as an individual or pathological deformity; it is unquestionably a typical race-character, and is physiologically connected with the uncommon thickness of the other bones of the skeleton, which exceeds by about one-half the usual proportions. this expansion of the frontal sinuses, which are appendages of the air-passages, also indicates an unusual force and power of endurance in the movements of the body, as may be concluded from the size of all the ridges and processes for the attachment of the muscles or bones. that this conclusion may be drawn from the existence of large frontal sinuses, and a prominence of the lower frontal region, is confirmed in many ways by other observations. by the same characters, according to pallas, the wild horse is distinguished from the domesticated, and, according to cuvier, the fossil cave-bear from every recent species of bear, whilst, according to roulin, the pig, which has become wild in america, and regained a resemblance to the wild boar, is thus distinguished from the same animal in the domesticated state, as is the chamois from the goat; and, lastly, the bull-dog, which is characterised by its large bones and strongly-developed muscles from every other kind of dog. the estimation of the facial angle, the determination of which, according to professor owen, is also difficult in the great apes, owing to the very prominent supra-orbital ridges, in the present case is rendered still more difficult from the absence both of the auditory opening and of the nasal spine. but if the proper horizontal position of the skull be taken from the remaining portions of the orbital plates, and the ascending line made to touch the surface of the frontal bone behind the prominent supra-orbital ridges, the facial angle is not found to exceed degrees. unfortunately, no portions of the facial bones, whose conformation is so decisive as regards the form and expression of the head, have been preserved. the cranial capacity, compared with the uncommon strength of the corporeal frame, would seem to indicate a small cerebral development. the skull, as it is, holds about ounces of millet-seed; and as, from the proportionate size of the wanting bones, the whole cranial cavity should have about ounces more added, the contents, were it perfect, may be taken at ounces. tiedemann assigns, as the cranial contents in the negro, , , and ounces. the cranium holds rather more than ounces of water, which corresponds to a capacity of . cubic centimetres. huschke estimates the cranial contents of a negress at cubic centimetres; of an old negro at cubic centimetres. the capacity of the malay skulls, estimated by water, equalled , ounces, whilst in the diminutive hindoos it falls to as little as ounces." after comparing the neanderthal cranium with many others, ancient and modern, professor schaaffhausen concludes thus:-- "but the human bones and cranium from the neanderthal exceed all the rest in those peculiarities of conformation which lead to the conclusion of their belonging to a barbarous and savage race. whether the cavern in which they were found, unaccompanied with any trace of human art, were the place of their interment, or whether, like the bones of extinct animals elsewhere, they had been washed into it, they may still be regarded as the most ancient memorial of the early inhabitants of europe." mr. busk, the translator of dr. schaaffhausen's paper, has enabled us to form a very vivid conception of the degraded character of the neanderthal skull, by placing side by side with its outline, that of the skull of a chimpanzee, drawn to the same absolute size. [ ] some time after the publication of the translation of professor schaaffhausen's memoir, i was led to study the cast of the neanderthal cranium with more attention than i had previously bestowed upon it, in consequence of wishing to supply sir charles lyell with a diagram, exhibiting the special peculiarities of this skull, as compared with other human skulls. in order to do this it was necessary to identify, with precision, those points in the skulls compared which corresponded anatomically. of these points, the glabella was obvious enough; but when i had distinguished another, defined by the occipital protuberance and superior semicircular line, and had placed the outline of the neanderthal skull against that of the engis skull, in such a position that the glabella and occipital protuberance of both were intersected by the same straight line, the difference was so vast and the flattening of the neanderthal skull so prodigious (compare figs. and , a.), that i at first imagined i must have fallen into some error. and i was the more inclined to suspect this, as, in ordinary human skulls, the occipital protuberance and superior semicircular curved line on the exterior of the occiput correspond pretty closely with the 'lateral sinuses' and the line of attachment of the tentorium internally. but on the tentorium rests, as i have said in the preceding essay, the posterior lobe of the brain; and hence, the occipital protuberance, and the curved line in question, indicate, approximately, the lower limits of that lobe. was it possible for a human being to have the brain thus flattened and depressed; or, on the other hand, had the muscular ridges shifted their position? in order to solve these doubts, and to decide the question whether the great supraciliary projections did, or did not, arise from the development of the frontal sinuses, i requested sir charles lyell to be so good as to obtain for me from dr. fuhlrott, the possessor of the skull, answers to certain queries, and if possible a cast, or at any rate drawings, or photographs, of the interior of the skull. [illustration: fig. .--the skull from the neanderthal cavern. a. side, b. front, and c. top view. one-third the natural size, by mr. busk: the details from the cast and from dr. fuhlrott's photographs. 'a' glabella; 'b' occipital protuberance; 'd' lambdoidal suture.] dr. fuhlrott replied with a courtesy and readiness for which i am infinitely indebted to him, to my inquiries, and furthermore sent three excellent photographs. one of these gives a side view of the skull, and from it fig. , a. has been shaded. the second (fig. , a.) exhibits the wide openings of the frontal sinuses upon the inferior surface of the frontal part of the skull, into which, dr. fuhlrott writes, "a probe may be introduced to the depth of an inch," and demonstrates the great extension of the thickened supraciliary ridges beyond the cerebral cavity. the third, lastly (fig. , b.) exhibits the edge and the interior of the posterior, or occipital, part of the skull, and shows very clearly the two depressions for the lateral sinuses, sweeping inwards towards the middle line of the roof of the skull, to form the longitudinal sinus. it was clear, therefore, that i had not erred in my interpretation, and that the posterior lobe of the brain of the neanderthal man must have been as much flattened as i suspected it to be. in truth, the neanderthal cranium has most extraordinary characters. it has an extreme length of inches, while its breadth is only . inches, or, in other words, its length is to its breadth as : . it is exceedingly depressed, measuring only about . inches from the glabello-occipital line to the vertex. the longitudinal arc, measured in the same way as in the engis skull, is inches; the transverse arc cannot be exactly ascertained, in consequence of the absence of the temporal bones, but was probably about the same, and certainly exceeded / inches. the horizontal circumference is inches. but this great circumference arises largely from the vast development of the supraciliary ridges, though the perimeter of the brain case itself is not small. the large supraciliary ridges give the forehead a far more retreating appearance than its internal contour would bear out. to an anatomical eye the posterior part of the skull is even more striking than the anterior. the occipital protuberance occupies the extreme posterior end of the skull, when the glabello-occipital line is made horizontal, and so far from any part of the occipital region extending beyond it, this region of the skull slopes obliquely upward and forward, so that the lambdoidal suture is situated well upon the upper surface of the cranium. at the same time, notwithstanding the great length of the skull, the sagittal suture is remarkably short ( / inches), and the squamosal suture is very straight. [illustration: fig. .--drawings from dr. fuhlrott's photographs of parts of the interior of the neanderthal cranium. a. view of the under and inner surface of the frontal region, showing the inferior apertures of the frontal sinuses ('a'). b. corresponding view of the occipital region of the skull, showing the impressions of the lateral sinuses ('a a').] in reply to my questions dr. fuhlrott writes that the occipital bone "is in a state of perfect preservation as far as the upper semicircular line, which is a very strong ridge, linear at its extremities, but enlarging towards the middle, where it forms two ridges (bourrelets), united by a linear continuation, which is slightly depressed in the middle." "below the left ridge the bone exhibits an obliquely inclined surface, six lines (french) long, and twelve lines wide." this last must be the surface, the contour of which is shown in fig. , a., below 'b'. it is particularly interesting, as it suggests that, notwithstanding the flattened condition of the occiput, the posterior cerebral lobes must have projected considerably beyond the cerebellum, and as it constitutes one among several points of similarity between the neanderthal cranium and certain australian skulls. such are the two best known forms of human cranium, which have been found in what may be fairly termed a fossil state. can either be shown to fill up or diminish, to any appreciable extent, the structural interval which exists between man and the man-like apes? or, on the other hand, does neither depart more widely from the average structure of the human cranium, than normally formed skulls of men are known to do at the present day? it is impossible to form any opinion on these questions, without some preliminary acquaintance with the range of variation exhibited by human structure in general--a subject which has been but imperfectly studied, while even of what is known, my limits will necessarily allow me to give only a very imperfect sketch. the student of anatomy is perfectly well aware that there is not a single organ of the human body the structure of which does not vary, to a greater or less extent, in different individuals. the skeleton varies in the proportions, and even to a certain extent in the connexions, of its constituent bones. the muscles which move the bones vary largely in their attachments. the varieties in the mode of distribution of the arteries are carefully classified, on account of the practical importance of a knowledge of their shiftings to the surgeon. the characters of the brain vary immensely, nothing being less constant than the form and size of the cerebral hemispheres, and the richness of the convolutions upon their surface, while the most changeable structures of all in the human brain, are exactly those on which the unwise attempt has been made to base the distinctive characters of humanity, viz. the posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle, the hippocampus minor, and the degree of projection of the posterior lobe beyond the cerebellum. finally, as all the world knows, the hair and skin of human beings may present the most extraordinary diversities in colour and in texture. so far as our present knowledge goes, the majority of the structural varieties to which allusion is here made, are individual. the ape-like arrangement of certain muscles which is occasionally met with [ ] in the white races of mankind, is not known to be more common among negroes or australians: nor because the brain of the hottentot venus was found to be smoother, to have its convolutions more symmetrically disposed, and to be, so far, more ape-like than that of ordinary europeans, are we justified in concluding a like condition of the brain to prevail universally among the lower races of mankind, however probable that conclusion may be. we are, in fact, sadly wanting in information respecting the disposition of the soft and destructible organs of every race of mankind but our own; and even of the skeleton, our museums are lamentably deficient in every part but the cranium. skulls enough there are, and since the time when blumenbach and camper first called attention to the marked and singular differences which they exhibit, skull collecting and skull measuring has been a zealously pursued branch of natural history, and the results obtained have been arranged and classified by various writers, among whom the late active and able retzius must always be the first named. human skulls have been found to differ from one another, not merely in their absolute size and in the absolute capacity of the brain case, but in the proportions which the diameters of the latter bear to one another; in the relative size of the bones of the face (and more particularly of the jaws and teeth) as compared with those of the skull; in the degree to which the upper jaw (which is of course followed by the lower) is thrown backwards and downwards under the fore-part of the brain case, or forwards and upward in front of and beyond it. they differ further in the relations of the transverse diameter of the face, taken through the cheek bones, to the transverse diameter of the skull; in the more rounded or more gable-like form of the roof of the skull, and in the degree to which the hinder part of the skull is flattened or projects beyond the ridge, into and below which, the muscles of the neck are inserted. in some skulls the brain case may be said to be 'round,' the extreme length not exceeding the extreme breadth by a greater proportion than to , while the difference may be much less. [ ] men possessing such skulls were termed by retzius 'brachycephalic,' and the skull of a calmuck, of which a front and side view (reduced outline copies of which are given in figure ) are depicted by von baer in his excellent, "crania selecta," affords a very admirable example of that kind of skull. other skulls, such as that of a negro copied in fig. from mr. busk's 'crania typica,' have a very different, greatly elongated form, and may be termed 'oblong.' in this skull the extreme length is to the extreme breadth as to not more than , and the transverse diameter of the human skull may fall below even this proportion. people having such skulls were called by retzius 'dolichocephalic.' the most cursory glance at the side views of these two skulls will suffice to prove that they differ, in another respect, to a very striking extent. the profile of the face of the calmuck is almost vertical, the facial bones being thrown downwards and under the forepart of the skull. the profile of the face of the negro, on the other hand, is singularly inclined, the front part of the jaws projecting far forward beyond the level of the fore part of the skull. in the former case the skull is said to be 'orthognathous' or straight-jawed; in the latter, it is called 'prognathous,' a term which has been rendered, with more force than elegance, by the saxon equivalent,--'snouty.' various methods have been devised in order to express with some accuracy the degree of prognathism or orthognathism of any given skull; most of these methods being essentially modifications of that devised by peter camper, in order to attain what he called the 'facial angle.' but a little consideration will show that any 'facial angle' that has been devised, can be competent to express the structural modifications involved in prognathism and orthognathism, only in a rough and general sort of way. for the lines, the intersection of which forms the facial angle, are drawn through points of the skull, the position of each of which is modified by a number of circumstances, so that the angle obtained is a complex resultant of all these circumstances, and is not the expression of any one definite organic relation of the parts of the skull. [illustration: fig. .--side and front views of the round and orthognathous skull of a calmuck, after von baer. one-third the natural size.] i have arrived at the conviction that no comparison of crania is worth very much, that is not founded upon the establishment of a relatively fixed base line, to which the measurements, in all cases, must be referred. nor do i think it is a very difficult matter to decide what that base line should be. the parts of the skull, like those of the rest of the animal framework, are developed in succession the base of the skull is formed before its sides and roof; it is converted into cartilage earlier and more completely than the sides and roof: and the cartilaginous base ossifies, and becomes soldered into one piece long before the roof. i conceive then that the base of the skull may be demonstrated developmentally to be its relatively fixed part, the roof and sides being relatively moveable. [illustration: fig. .--oblong and prognathous skull of a negro; side and front views. one-third of the natural size.] the same truth is exemplified by the study of the modifications which the skull undergoes in ascending from the lower animals up to man. [illustration: fig. .--longitudinal and vertical sections of the skulls of a beaver ('castor canadensis'), a lemur ('l. catia'), and a baboon ('cynocephalus papio'), 'a b', the basicranial axis; 'b c', the occipital plane; 'i t', the tentorial plane; 'a d', the olfactory plane; 'f e', the basifacial axis; 'c b a', occipital angle; 't i a', tentorial angle; 'd a b', olfactory angle; 'e f b', cranio-facial angle; 'g h', extreme length of the cavity which lodges the cerebral hemispheres or 'cerebral length.' the length of the basicranial axis as to this length, or, in other words, the proportional length of the line 'g h' to that of 'a b' taken as , in the three skulls, is as follows:--beaver to ; lemur to ; baboon to . in an adult male gorilla the cerebral length is as to the basicranial axis taken as , in the negro (fig. ) as to . in the constantinople skull (fig. ) as to . the cranial difference between the highest ape's skull and the lowest man's is therefore very strikingly brought out by these measurements. in the diagram of the baboon's skull the dotted lines 'd d ', etc., give the angles of the lemur's and beaver's skull, as laid down upon the basicranial axis of the baboon. the line 'a b' has the same length in each diagram.] in such a mammal as a beaver (fig. ), a line ('a b'.) drawn through the bones, termed basioccipital, basisphenoid, and presphenoid, is very long in proportion to the extreme length of the cavity which contains the cerebral hemispheres ('g h'.). the plane of the occipital foramen ('b c'.) forms a slightly acute angle with this 'basicranial axis,' while the plane of the tentorium ('i t'.) is inclined at rather more than degrees to the 'basicranial axis'; and so is the plane of the perforated plate ('a d'.), by which the filaments of the olfactory nerve leave the skull. again, a line drawn through the axis of the face, between the bones called ethmoid and vomer--the "basifacial axis" ('f e'.) forms an exceedingly obtuse angle, where, when produced, it cuts the 'basicranial axis.' if the angle made by the line 'b c'. with 'a b'., be called the 'occipital angle,' and the angle made by the line 'a d'. with 'a b'. be termed the 'olfactory angle,' and that made by 'i t'. with 'a b'. the 'tentorial angle,' then all these, in the mammal in question, are nearly right angles, varying between degrees and degrees. the angle 'e f b'., or that made by the cranial with the facial axis, and which may be termed the 'cranio-facial angle,' is extremely obtuse, amounting, in the case of the beaver, to at least degrees. but if a series of sections of mammalian skulls, intermediate between a rodent and a man (fig. ), be examined, it will be found that in the higher crania the basicranial axis becomes shorter relatively to the cerebral length; that the 'olfactory angle' and 'occipital angle' become more obtuse; and that the 'cranio-facial angle' becomes more acute by the bending down, as it were, of the facial axis upon the cranial axis. at the same time, the roof of the cranium becomes more and more arched, to allow of the increasing height of the cerebral hemispheres, which is eminently characteristic of man, as well as of that backward extension, beyond the cerebellum, which reaches its maximum in the south america monkeys. so that, at last, in the human skull (fig. ), the cerebral length is between twice and thrice as great as the length of the basicranial axis; the olfactory plane is degrees or degrees on the 'under' side of that axis; the occipital angle, instead of being less than degrees, is as much as degrees or degrees; the cranio-facial angle may be degrees or less, and the vertical height of the skull may have a large proportion to its length. it will be obvious, from an inspection of the diagrams, that the basicranial axis is, in the ascending series of mammalia, a relatively fixed line, on which the bones of the sides and roof of the cranial cavity, and of the face, may be said to revolve downwards and forwards or backwards, according to their position. the arc described by any one bone or plane, however, is not by any means always in proportion to the arc described by another. now comes the important question, can we discern, between the lowest and the highest forms of the human cranium anything answering, in however slight a degree, to this revolution of the side and roof bones of the skull upon the basicranial axis observed upon so great a scale in the mammalian series? numerous observations lead me to believe that we must answer this question in the affirmative. the diagrams in figure are reduced from very carefully made diagrams of sections of four skulls, two round and orthognathous, two long and prognathous, taken longitudinally and vertically, through the middle. the sectional diagrams have then been superimposed, in such a manner, that the basal axes of the skulls coincide by their anterior ends, and in their direction. the deviations of the rest of the contours (which represent the interior of the skulls only) show the differences of the skulls from one another, when these axes are regarded as relatively fixed lines. the dark contours are those of an australian and of a negro skull: the light contours are those of a tartar skull, in the museum of the royal college of surgeons; and of a well developed round skull from a cemetery in constantinople, of uncertain race, in my own possession. it appears, at once, from these views, that the prognathous skulls, so far as their jaws are concerned, do really differ from the orthognathous in much the same way as, though to a far less degree than, the skulls of the lower mammals differ from those of man. furthermore, the plane of the occipital foramen ('b c') forms a somewhat smaller angle with the axis in these particular prognathous skulls than in the orthognathous; and the like may be slightly true of the perforated plate of the ethmoid--though this point is not so clear. but it is singular to remark that, in another respect, the prognathous skulls are less ape-like than the orthognathous, the cerebral cavity projecting decidedly more beyond the anterior end of the axis in the prognathous, than in the orthognathous, skulls. it will be observed that these diagrams reveal an immense range of variation in the capacity and relative proportion to the cranial axis, of the different regions of the cavity which contains the brain, in the different skulls. nor is the difference in the extent to which the cerebral overlaps the cerebellar cavity less singular. a round skull (fig. , 'const'.) may have a greater posterior cerebral projection than a long one (fig. , 'negro'). until human crania have been largely worked out in a manner similar to that here suggested--until it shall be an opprobrium to an ethnological collection to possess a single skull which is not bisected longitudinally--until the angles and measurements here mentioned, together with a number of others of which i cannot speak in this place, are determined, and tabulated with reference to the basicranial axis as unity, for large numbers of skulls of the different races of mankind, i do not think we shall have any very safe basis for that ethnological craniology which aspires to give the anatomical characters of the crania of the different races of mankind. at present, i believe that the general outlines of what may be safely said upon that subject may be summed up in a very few words. draw a line on a globe from the gold coast in western africa to the steppes of tartary. at the southern and western end of that line there live the most dolichocephalic, prognathous, curly-haired, dark-skinned of men--the true negroes. at the northern and eastern end of the same line there live the most brachycephalic, orthognathous, straight-haired, yellow-skinned of men--the tartars and calmucks. the two ends of this imaginary line are indeed, so to speak, ethnological antipodes. a line drawn at right angles, or nearly so, to this polar line through europe and southern asia to hindostan, would give us a sort of equator, around which round-headed, oval-headed, and oblong-headed, prognathous and orthognathous, fair and dark races--but none possessing the excessively marked characters of calmuck or negro--group themselves. [illustration: fig. .--sections of orthognathous (light contour) and prognathous (dark contour) skulls, one-third of the natural size. 'a b', basicranial axis; 'b c, b c ', plane of the occipital foramen; 'd d ', hinder end of the palatine bone; 'e e ', front end of the upper jaw; 't t ', insertion of the tentorium.] it is worthy of notice that the regions of the antipodal races are antipodal in climate, the greatest contrast the world affords, perhaps, being that between the damp, hot, steaming, alluvial coast plains of the west coast of africa and the arid, elevated steppes and plateaux of central asia, bitterly cold in winter, and as far from the sea as any part of the world can be. from central asia eastward to the pacific islands and subcontinents on the one hand, and to america on the other, brachycephaly and orthognathism gradually diminish, and are replaced by dolichocephaly and prognathism, less, however, on the american continent (throughout the whole length of which a rounded type of skull prevails largely, but not exclusively) [ ] than in the pacific region, where, at length, on the australian continent and in the adjacent islands, the oblong skull, the projecting jaws, and the dark skin reappear; with so much departure, in other respects, from the negro type, that ethnologists assign to these people the special title of 'negritoes.' the australian skull is remarkable for its narrowness and for the thickness of its walls, especially in the region of the supraciliary ridge, which is frequently, though not by any means invariably, solid throughout, the frontal sinuses remaining undeveloped. the nasal depression, again, is extremely sudden, so that the brows overhang and give the countenance a particularly lowering, threatening expression. the occipital region of the skull, also, not unfrequently becomes less prominent; so that it not only fails to project beyond a line drawn perpendicular to the hinder extremity of the glabello-occipital line, but even, in some cases, begins to shelve away from it, forwards, almost immediately. in consequence of this circumstance, the parts of the occipital bone which lie above and below the tuberosity make a much more acute angle with one another than is usual, whereby the hinder part of the base of the skull appears obliquely truncated. many australian skulls have a considerable height, quite equal to that of the average of any other race, but there are others in which the cranial roof becomes remarkably depressed, the skull, at the same time, elongating so much that, probably, its capacity is not diminished. the majority of skulls possessing these characters, which i have seen, are from the neighbourhood of port adelaide in south australia, and have been used by the natives as water vessels; to which end the face has been knocked away, and a string passed through the vacuity and the occipital foramen, so that the skull was suspended by the greater part of its basis. [illustration: fig. .--an australian skull from western port, in the museum of the royal college of surgeons, with the contour of the neanderthal skull. both reduced to one-third the natural size.] figure represents the contour of a skull of this kind from western port, with the jaw attached, and of the neanderthal skull, both reduced to one-third of the size of nature. a small additional amount of flattening and lengthening, with a corresponding increase of the supraciliary ridge, would convert the australian brain case into a form identical with that of the aberrant fossil. and now, to return to the fossil skulls, and to the rank which they occupy among, or beyond, these existing varieties of cranial conformation. in the first place, i must remark, that, as professor schmerling well observed ('supra', p. ) in commenting upon the engis skull, the formation of a safe judgment upon the question is greatly hindered by the absence of the jaws from both the crania, so that there is no means of deciding with certainty, whether they were more or less prognathous than the lower existing races of mankind. and yet, as we have seen, it is more in this respect than any other, that human skulls vary, towards and from, the brutal type--the brain case of an average dolichocephalic european differing far less from that of a negro, for example, than his jaws do. in the absence of the jaws, then, any judgment on the relations of the fossil skulls to recent races must be accepted with a certain reservation. but taking the evidence as it stands, and turning first to the engis skull, i confess i can find no character in the remains of that cranium which, if it were a recent skull, would give any trustworthy clue as to the race to which it might appertain. its contours and measurements agree very well with those of some australian skulls which i have examined--and especially has it a tendency towards that occipital flattening, to the great extent of which, in some australian skulls, i have alluded. but all australian skulls do not present this flattening, and the supraciliary ridge of the engis skull is quite unlike that of the typical australians. on the other hand, its measurements agree equally well with those of some european skulls. and assuredly, there is no mark of degradation about any part of its structure. it is, in fact, a fair average human skull, which might have belonged to a philosopher, or might have contained the thoughtless brains of a savage. the case of the neanderthal skull is very different. under whatever aspect we view this cranium, whether we regard its vertical depression, the enormous thickness of its supraciliary ridges, its sloped occiput, or its long and straight squamosal suture, we meet with ape-like characters, stamping it as the most pithecoid of human crania yet discovered. but professor schaaffhausen states ('supra', p. ), that the cranium, in its present condition, holds . cubic centimetres of water, or about cubic inches, and as the entire skull could hardly have held less than an additional cubic inches, its capacity may be estimated at about cubic inches, which is the average capacity given by morton for polynesian and hottentot skulls. so large a mass of brain as this, would alone suggest that the pithecoid tendencies, indicated by this skull, did not extend deep into the organization; and this conclusion is borne out by the dimensions of the other bones of the skeleton given by professor schaaffhausen, which show that the absolute height and relative proportions of the limbs were quite those of an european of middle stature. the bones are indeed stouter, but this and the great development of the muscular ridges noted by dr. schaaffhausen, are characters to be expected in savages. the patagonians, exposed without shelter or protection to a climate possibly not very dissimilar from that of europe at the time during which the neanderthal man lived, are remarkable for the stoutness of their limb bones. [illustration: fig. .--ancient danish skull from a tumulus at borreby: one-third of the natural size. from a camera lucida drawing by mr. busk.] in no sense, then, can the neanderthal bones be regarded as the remains of a human being intermediate between men and apes. at most, they demonstrate the existence of a man whose skull may be said to revert somewhat towards the pithecoid type--just as a carrier, or a pouter, or a tumbler, may sometimes put on the plumage of its primitive stock, the 'columba livia'. and indeed, though truly the most pithecoid of known human skulls, the neanderthal cranium is by no means so isolated as it appears to be at first, but forms, in reality, the extreme term of a series leading gradually from it to the highest and best developed of human crania. on the one hand, it is closely approached by the flattened australian skulls, of which i have spoken, from which other australian forms lead us gradually up to skulls having very much the type of the engis cranium. and, on the other hand, it is even more closely affined to the skulls of certain ancient people who inhabited denmark during the 'stone period,' and were probably either contemporaneous with, or later than, the makers of the 'refuse heaps,' or 'kjokkenmoddings' of that country. the correspondence between the longitudinal contour of the neanderthal skull and that of some of those skulls from the tumuli at borreby, very accurate drawings of which have been made by mr. busk, is very close. the occiput is quite as retreating, the supraciliary ridges are nearly as prominent, and the skull is as low. furthermore, the borreby skull resembles the neanderthal form more closely than any of the australian skulls do, by the much more rapid retrocession of the forehead. on the other hand, the borreby skulls are all somewhat broader, in proportion to their length, than the neanderthal skull, while some attain that proportion of breadth to length ( : ) which constitutes brachycephaly. in conclusion, i may say, that the fossil remains of man hitherto discovered do not seem to me to take us appreciably nearer to that lower pithecoid form, by the modification of which he has, probably, become what he is. and considering what is now known of the most ancient races of men; seeing that they fashioned flint axes and flint knives and bone-skewers, of much the same pattern as those fabricated by the lowest savages at the present day, and that we have every reason to believe the habits and modes of living of such people to have remained the same from the time of the mammoth and the tichorhine rhinoceros till now, i do not know that this result is other than might be expected. where, then, must we look for primaeval man? was the oldest 'homo sapiens' pliocene or miocene, or yet more ancient? in still older strata do the fossilized bones of an ape more anthropoid, or a man more pithecoid, than any yet known await the researches of some unborn paleontologist? time will show. but, in the meanwhile, if any form of the doctrine of progressive development is correct, we must extend by long epochs the most liberal estimate that has yet been made of the antiquity of man. footnotes: [footnote : decas collectionis suae craniorum diversarum gentium illustrata. gottingae, - .] [footnote : in a subsequent passage, schmerling remarks upon the occurrence of an incisor tooth 'of enormous size' from the caverns of engihoul. the tooth figured is somewhat long, but its dimensions do not appear to me to be otherwise remarkable.] [footnote : the figure of this clavicle measures inches from end to end in a straight line--so that the bone is rather a small than a large one.] [footnote : on the crania of the most ancient races of man. by professor d. schaaffhausen, of bonn. (from muller's 'archiv'., , pp. .) with remarks, and original figures, taken from a cast of the neanderthal cranium. by george busk, f.r.s., etc. 'natural history review'. april, .] [footnote : 'verhandl. d. naturhist.' vereins der preuss. rheinlande und westphalens., xiv. bonn, .] [footnote : 'ib. correspondenzblatt. no. .] [footnote : this, mr. busk has pointed out, is probably the notch for the frontal nerve. the coronal and sagittal sutures are on the exterior nearly closed, and on the inside so completely ossified as to have left no traces whatever, whilst the lambdoidal remains quite open. the depressions for the pacchionian glands are deep and numerous; and there is an unusually deep vascular groove immediately behind the coronal suture, which, as it terminates in the foramen, no doubt transmitted a 'vena emissaria'. the course of the frontal suture is indicated externally by a slight ridge; and where it joins the coronal, this ridge rises into a small protuberance. the course of the sagittal suture is grooved, and above the angle of the occipital bone the parietals are depressed.] [footnote : the numbers in brackets are those which i should assign to the different measures, as taken from the plaster cast.--g. b.] [footnote : 'verh. des naturhist'. vereins in bonn, xiv. . i am indebted to h. v. meyer for the following remarks on this subject:--] [footnote : estimating the facial angle in the way suggested, on the cast i should place it at degrees to degrees.--g. b.] [footnote : see an excellent essay by mr. church on the myology of the orang, in the 'natural history review', for .] [footnote : in no normal human skull does the breadth of the brain-case exceed its length.] [footnote : see dr. d. wilson's valuable paper "on the supposed prevalence of one cranial type throughout the american aborigines."-- 'canadian journal', vol. ii., .] the evolution of man a popular scientific study by ernst haeckel volume . human embryology or ontogeny. translated from the fifth (enlarged) edition by joseph mccabe. [issued for the rationalist press association, limited.] watts & co., , johnsons court, fleet street, london, e.c. . contents of volume . list of illustrations. glossary. translator's preface. table: classification of the animal world. chapter . . the fundamental law of organic evolution. chapter . . the older embryology. chapter . . modern embryology. chapter . . the older phylogeny. chapter . . the modern science of evolution. chapter . . the ovum and the amoeba. chapter . . conception. chapter . . the gastraea theory. chapter . . the gastrulation of the vertebrate. chapter . . the coelom theory. chapter . . the vertebrate character of man. chapter . . the embryonic shield and germinative area. chapter . . dorsal body and ventral body. chapter . . the articulation of the body. chapter . . foetal membranes and circulation. list of illustrations. portrait of ernst haeckel from the painting by franz von leubach, (reproduced by "jugend"). figure . . the human ovum. figure . . stem-cell of an echinoderm. figure . . three epithelial cells. figure . . five spiny or grooved cells. figure . . ten liver-cells. figure . . nine star-shaped bone-cells. figure . . eleven star-shaped cells. figure . . unfertilised ovum of an echinoderm. figure . . a large branching nerve-cell. figure . . blood-cells. figure . . indirect or mitotic cell-division. figure . . mobile cells. figure . . ova of various animals. figure . . the human ovum. figure . . fertilised ovum of hen. figure . . a creeping amoeba. figure . . division of an amoeba. figure . . ovum of a sponge. figure . . blood-cells, or phagocytes. figure . . spermia or spermatozoa. figure . . spermatozoa of various animals. figure . . a single human spermatozoon. figure . . fertilisation of the ovum. figure . . impregnated echinoderm ovum. figure . . impregnation of the star-fish ovum. figures . and . . impregnation of sea-urchin ovum. figure . . stem-cell of a rabbit. figure . . gastrulation of a coral. figure . . gastrula of a gastraead. figure . . gastrula of a worm. figure . . gastrula of an echinoderm. figure . . gastrula of an arthropod. figure . . gastrula of a mollusc. figure . . gastrula of a vertebrate. figure . . gastrula of a lower sponge. figure . . cells from the primary germinal layers. figure . . gastrulation of the amphioxus. figure . . gastrula of the amphioxus. figure . . cleavage of the frog's ovum. figures . to . . sections of fertilised toad ovum. figures . to . . gastrulation of the salamander. figure . . segmentation of the lamprey. figure . . gastrulation of the lamprey. figure . . gastrulation of ceratodus. figure . . ovum of a deep-sea bony fish. figure . . segmentation of a bony fish. figure . . discoid gastrula of a bony fish. figures . and . . sections of blastula of shark. figure . . discoid segmentation of bird's ovum. figures . to . . gastrulation of the bird. figure . . germinal disk of the lizard. figures . and . . gastrulation of the opossum. figures . to . . gastrulation of the opossum. figures . to . . gastrulation of the rabbit. figure . . gastrula of the placental mammal. figure . . gastrula of the rabbit. figures . and . . diagram of the four secondary germinal layers. figures . and . . coelomula of sagitta. figure . . section of young sagitta. figures . and . . section of amphioxus-larvae. figures . and . . section of amphioxus-larvae. figures . and . . chordula of the amphioxus. figures . and . . chordula of the amphibia. figures . and . . section of coelomula-embryos of vertebrates. figures . and . . section of coelomula-embryo of triton. figure . . dorsal part of three triton-embryos. figure . . chordula-embryo of a bird. figure . . vertebrate-embryo of a bird. figures . and . . section of the primitive streak of a chick. figure . . section of the primitive groove of a rabbit. figure . . section of primitive mouth of a human embryo. figures . to . . the ideal primitive vertebrate. figure . . redundant mammary glands. figure . . a greek gynecomast. figure . . severance of the discoid mammal embryo. figures . and . . the visceral embryonic vesicle. figure . . four entodermic cells. figure . . two entodermic cells. figures . to . . ovum of a rabbit. figures . to . . embryonic vesicle of a rabbit. figure . . section of the gastrula of four vertebrates. figures . to . . embryonic shield of a rabbit. figure . . coelomula of the amphioxus. figure . . chordula of a frog. figure . . section of frog-embryo. figures . and . . dorsal shield of a chick. figure . . section of hind end of a chick. figure . . germinal area of the rabbit. figure . . embryo of the opossum. figure . . embryonic shield of the rabbit. figure . . human embryo at the sandal-stage. figure . . embryonic shield of rabbit. figure . . embryonic shield of opossum. figure . . embryonic disk of a chick. figure . . embryonic disk of a higher vertebrate. figures . to . . sections of maturing mammal embryo. figures . to . . sections of embryonic chicks. figure . . section of embryonic chick. figure . . section of fore-half of chick-embryo. figures . and . . sections of human embryos. figure . . section of a shark-embryo. figure . . section of a duck-embryo. figures . to . . sole-shaped embryonic disk of chick. figures . and . . embryo of the amphioxus. figures . to . . embryo of the amphioxus. figures . and . . sections of shark-embryos. figure . . section of a triton-embryo. figures . to . . vertebrae. figure . . head of a shark-embryo. figures . and . . head of a chick-embryo. figure . . head of a dog-embryo. figure . . human embryo of the fourth week. figure . . section of shoulder of chick-embryo. figure . . section of pelvic region of chick-embryo. figure . . development of the lizard's legs. figure . . human-embryo five weeks old. figures . to . . embryos of the bat. figure . . human embryos. figure . . human embryo of the fourth week. figure . . human embryo of the fifth week. figure . . section of tail of human embryo. figures . and . . human embryo dissected. figure . . miss julia pastrana. figures . to . . human embryos. figure . . human embryos of sixteen to eighteen days. figures . and . . human embryo of fourth week. figure . . human embryo with its membranes. figure . . diagram of the embryonic organs. figure . . section of the pregnant womb. figure . . embryo of siamang-gibbon. figure . . section of pregnant womb. figures . and . . human foetus and placenta. figure . . vitelline vessels in germinative area. figure . . boat-shaped embryo of the dog. figure . . lar or white-handed gibbon. figure . . young orang. figure . . wild orang. figure . . bald-headed chimpanzee. figure . . foetal membranes and circulation. figure . . female gorilla. figure . . male giant-gorilla. glossary. acrania: animals without skull (cranium). anthropogeny: the evolution (genesis) of man (anthropos). anthropology: the science of man. archi-: (in compounds) the first or typical--as, archi-cytula, archi-gastrula, etc. biogeny: the science of the genesis of life (bios). blast-: (in compounds) pertaining to the early embryo (blastos = a bud); hence:-- blastoderm: skin (derma) or enclosing layer of the embryo. blastosphere: the embryo in the hollow sphere stage. blastula: same as preceding. epiblast: the outer layer of the embryo (ectoderm). hypoblast: the inner layer of the embryo (endoderm). branchial: pertaining to the gills (branchia). caryo-: (in compounds) pertaining to the nucleus (caryon); hence:-- caryokineses: the movement of the nucleus. caryolysis: dissolution of the nucleus. caryoplasm: the matter of the nucleus. centrolecithal: see under lecith-. chordaria and chordonia: animals with a dorsal chord or back-bone. coelom or coeloma: the body-cavity in the embryo; hence:-- coelenterata: animals without a body-cavity. coelomaria: animals with a body-cavity. coelomation: formation of the body-cavity. cyto-: (in compounds) pertaining to the cell (cytos); hence:-- cytoblast: the nucleus of the cell. cytodes: cell-like bodies, imperfect cells. cytoplasm: the matter of the body of the cell. cytosoma: the body (soma) of the cell. cryptorchism: abnormal retention of the testicles in the body. deutoplasm: see plasm. dualism: the belief in the existence of two entirely distinct principles (such as matter and spirit). dysteleology: the science of those features in organisms which refute the "design-argument." ectoderm: the outer (ekto) layer of the embryo. entoderm: the inner (ento) layer of the embryo. epiderm: the outer layer of the skin. epigenesis: the theory of gradual development of organs in the embryo. epiphysis: the third or central eye in the early vertebrates. episoma: see soma. epithelia: tissues covering the surface of parts of the body (such as the mouth, etc.) gonads: the sexual glands. gonochorism: separation of the male and female sexes. gonotomes: sections of the sexual glands. gynecomast: a male with the breasts (masta) of a woman (gyne). hepatic: pertaining to the liver (hepar). holoblastic: embryos in which the animal and vegetal cells divide equally (holon = whole). hypermastism: the possession of more than the normal breasts (masta). hypobranchial: underneath (hypo) the gills. hypophysis: sensitive-offshoot from the brain in the vertebrate. hyposoma: see soma. lecith-: pertaining to the yelk (lecithus); hence:-- centrolecithal: eggs with the yelk in the centre. lecithoma: the yelk-sac. telolecithal: eggs with the yelk at one end. meroblastic: cleaving in part (meron) only. meta-: (in compounds) the "after" or secondary stage; hence:-- metagaster: the secondary or permanent gut (gaster). metaplasm: secondary or differentiated plasm. metastoma: the secondary or permanent mouth (stoma). metazoa: the higher or later animals, made up of many cells. metovum: the mature or advanced ovum. metamera: the segments into which the embryo breaks up. metamerism: the segmentation of the embryo. monera: the most primitive of the unicellular organisms. monism: belief in the fundamental unity of all things. morphology: the science of organic forms (generally equivalent to anatomy). myotomes: segments into which the muscles break up. nephra: the kidneys; hence:-- nephridia: the rudimentary kidney-organs. nephrotomes: the segments of the developing kidneys. ontogeny: the science of the development of the individual (generally equivalent to embryology). perigenesis: the genesis of the movements in the vital particles. phagocytes: cells that absorb food (phagein = to eat). phylogeny: the science of the evolution of species (phyla). planocytes: cells that move about (planein). plasm: the colloid or jelly-like matter of which organisms are composed; hence:-- caryoplasm: the matter of the nucleus (caryon). cytoplasm: the matter of the body of the cell. deutoplasm: secondary or differentiated plasm. metaplasm: secondary or differentiated plasm. protoplasm: primitive or undifferentiated plasm. plasson: the simplest form of plasm. plastidules: small particles of plasm. polyspermism: the penetration of more than one sperm-cell into the ovum. pro- or prot: (in compounds) the earlier form (opposed to meta); hence:-- prochorion: the first form of the chorion. progaster: the first or primitive stomach. pronephridia: the earlier form of the kidneys. prorenal: the earlier form of the kidneys. prostoma: the first or primitive mouth. protists: the earliest or unicellular organisms. provertebrae: the earliest phase of the vertebrae. protophyta: the primitive or unicellular plants. protoplasm: undifferentiated plasm. protozoa: the primitive or unicellular animals. renal: pertaining to the kidneys (renes). scatulation: packing or boxing-up (scatula = a box). sclerotomes: segments into which the primitive skeleton falls. soma: the body; hence:-- cytosoma: the body of the cell (cytos). episoma: the upper or back-half of the embryonic body. somites: segments of the embryonic body. hyposoma: the under or belly-half of the embryonic body. teleology: the belief in design and purpose (telos) in nature. telolecithal: see lecith-. umbilical: pertaining to the navel (umbilicus). vitelline: pertaining to the yelk (vitellus). *** preface. [by joseph mccabe.] the work which we now place within the reach of every reader of the english tongue is one of the finest productions of its distinguished author. the first edition appeared in . at that time the conviction of man's natural evolution was even less advanced in germany than in england, and the work raised a storm of controversy. theologians--forgetting the commonest facts of our individual development--spoke with the most profound disdain of the theory that a luther or a goethe could be the outcome of development from a tiny speck of protoplasm. the work, one of the most distinguished of them said, was "a fleck of shame on the escutcheon of germany." to-day its conclusion is accepted by influential clerics, such as the dean of westminster, and by almost every biologist and anthropologist of distinction in europe. evolution is not a laboriously reached conclusion, but a guiding truth, in biological literature to-day. there was ample evidence to substantiate the conclusion even in the first edition of the book. but fresh facts have come to light in each decade, always enforcing the general truth of man's evolution, and at times making clearer the line of development. professor haeckel embodied these in successive editions of his work. in the fifth edition, of which this is a translation, reference will be found to the very latest facts bearing on the evolution of man, such as the discovery of the remarkable effect of mixing human blood with that of the anthropoid ape. moreover, the ample series of illustrations has been considerably improved and enlarged; there is no scientific work published, at a price remotely approaching that of the present edition, with so abundant and excellent a supply of illustrations. when it was issued in germany, a few years ago, a distinguished biologist wrote in the frankfurter zeitung that it would secure immortality for its author, the most notable critic of the idea of immortality. and the daily telegraph reviewer described the english version as a "handsome edition of haeckel's monumental work," and "an issue worthy of the subject and the author." the influence of such a work, one of the most constructive that haeckel has ever written, should extend to more than the few hundred readers who are able to purchase the expensive volumes of the original issue. few pages in the story of science are more arresting and generally instructive than this great picture of "mankind in the making." the horizon of the mind is healthily expanded as we follow the search-light of science down the vast avenues of past time, and gaze on the uncouth forms that enter into, or illustrate, the line of our ancestry. and if the imagination recoils from the strange and remote figures that are lit up by our search-light, and hesitates to accept them as ancestral forms, science draws aside another veil and reveals another picture to us. it shows us that each of us passes, in our embryonic development, through a series of forms hardly less uncouth and unfamiliar. nay, it traces a parallel between the two series of forms. it shows us man beginning his existence, in the ovary of the female infant, as a minute and simple speck of jelly-like plasm. it shows us (from analogy) the fertilised ovum breaking into a cluster of cohering cells, and folding and curving, until the limb-less, head-less, long-tailed foetus looks like a worm-shaped body. it then points out how gill-slits and corresponding blood-vessels appear, as in a lowly fish, and the fin-like extremities bud out and grow into limbs, and so on; until, after a very clear ape-stage, the definite human form emerges from the series of transformations. it is with this embryological evidence for our evolution that the present volume is concerned. there are illustrations in the work that will make the point clear at a glance. possibly too clear; for the simplicity of the idea and the eagerness to apply it at every point have carried many, who borrow hastily from haeckel, out of their scientific depth. haeckel has never shared their errors, nor encouraged their superficiality. he insists from the outset that a complete parallel could not possibly be expected. embryonic life itself is subject to evolution. though there is a general and substantial law--as most of our english and american authorities admit--that the embryonic series of forms recalls the ancestral series of forms, the parallel is blurred throughout and often distorted. it is not the obvious resemblance of the embryos of different animals, and their general similarity to our extinct ancestors in this or that organ, on which we must rest our case. a careful study must be made of the various stages through which all embryos pass, and an effort made to prove their real identity and therefore genealogical relation. this is a task of great subtlety and delicacy. many scientists have worked at it together with professor haeckel--i need only name our own professor balfour and professor ray lankester--and the scheme is fairly complete. but the general reader must not expect that even so clear a writer as haeckel can describe these intricate processes without demanding his very careful attention. most of the chapters in the present volume (and the second volume will be less difficult) are easily intelligible to all; but there are points at which the line of argument is necessarily subtle and complex. in the hope that most readers will be induced to master even these more difficult chapters, i will give an outline of the characteristic argument of the work. haeckel's distinctive services in regard to man's evolution have been: . the construction of a complete ancestral tree, though, of course, some of the stages in it are purely conjectural, and not final. . the tracing of the remarkable reproduction of ancestral forms in the embryonic development of the individual. naturally, he has not worked alone in either department. the second volume of this work will embody the first of these two achievements; the present one is mainly concerned with the latter. it will be useful for the reader to have a synopsis of the argument and an explanation of some of the chief terms invented or employed by the author. the main theme of the work is that, in the course of their embryonic development, all animals, including man, pass roughly and rapidly through a series of forms which represents the succession of their ancestors in the past. after a severe and extensive study of embryonic phenomena, haeckel has drawn up a "law" (in the ordinary scientific sense) to this effect, and has called it "the biogenetic law," or the chief law relating to the evolution (genesis) of life (bios). this law is widely and increasingly accepted by embryologists and zoologists. it is enough to quote a recent declaration of the great american zoologist, president d. starr jordan: "it is, of course, true that the life-history of the individual is an epitome of the life-history of the race"; while a distinguished german zoologist (sarasin) has described it as being of the same use to the biologist as spectrum analysis is to the astronomer. but the reproduction of ancestral forms in the course of the embryonic development is by no means always clear, or even always present. many of the embryonic phases do not recall ancestral stages at all. they may have done so originally, but we must remember that the embryonic life itself has been subject to adaptive changes for millions of years. all this is clearly explained by professor haeckel. for the moment, i would impress on the reader the vital importance of fixing the distinction from the start. he must thoroughly familiarise himself with the meaning of five terms. biogeny is the development of life in general (both in the individual and the species), or the sciences describing it. ontogeny is the development (embryonic and post-embryonic) of the individual (on), or the science describing it. phylogeny is the development of the race or stem (phulon), or the science describing it. roughly, ontogeny may be taken to mean embryology, and phylogeny what we generally call evolution. further, the embryonic phenomena sometimes reproduce ancestral forms, and they are then called palingenetic (from palin = again): sometimes they do not recall ancestral forms, but are later modifications due to adaptation, and they are then called cenogenetic (from kenos = new or foreign). these terms are now widely used, but the reader of haeckel must understand them thoroughly. the first five chapters are an easy account of the history of embryology and evolution. the sixth and seventh give an equally clear account of the sexual elements and the process of conception. but some of the succeeding chapters must deal with embryonic processes so unfamiliar, and pursue them through so wide a range of animals in a brief space, that, in spite of the illustrations, they will offer difficulty to many a reader. as our aim is to secure, not a superficial acquiescence in conclusions, but a fair comprehension of the truths of science, we have retained these chapters. however, i will give a brief and clear outline of the argument, so that the reader with little leisure may realise their value. when the animal ovum (egg-cell) has been fertilised, it divides and subdivides until we have a cluster of cohering cells, externally not unlike a raspberry or mulberry. this is the morula (= mulberry) stage. the cluster becomes hollow, or filled with fluid in the centre, all the cells rising to the surface. this is the blastula (hollow ball) stage. one half of the cluster then bends or folds in upon the other, as one might do with a thin indiarubber ball, and we get a vase-shaped body with hollow interior (the first stomach, or "primitive gut"), an open mouth (the first or "primitive mouth"), and a wall composed of two layers of cells (two "germinal layers"). this is the gastrula (stomach) stage, and the process of its formation is called gastrulation. a glance at the illustration (figure . ) will make this perfectly clear. so much for the embryonic process in itself. the application to evolution has been a long and laborious task. briefly, it was necessary to show that all the multicellular animals passed through these three stages, so that our biogenetic law would enable us to recognise them as reminiscences of ancestral forms. this is the work of chapters . and . . the difficulty can be realised in this way: as we reach the higher animals the ovum has to take up a large quantity of yelk, on which it may feed in developing. think of the bird's "egg." the effect of this was to flatten the germ (the morula and blastula) from the first, and so give, at first sight, a totally different complexion to what it has in the lowest animals. when we pass the reptile and bird stage, the large yelk almost disappears (the germ now being supplied with blood by the mother), but the germ has been permanently altered in shape, and there are now a number of new embryonic processes (membranes, blood-vessel connections, etc.). thus it was no light task to trace the identity of this process of gastrulation in all the animals. it has been done, however; and with this introduction the reader will be able to follow the proof. the conclusion is important. if all animals pass through the curious gastrula stage, it must be because they all had a common ancestor of that nature. to this conjectural ancestor (it lived before the period of fossilisation begins) haeckel gives the name of the gastraea, and in the second volume we shall see a number of living animals of this type ("gastraeads"). the line of argument is the same in the next chapter. after laborious and careful research (though this stage is not generally admitted in the same sense as the previous one), a fourth common stage was discovered, and given the name of the coelomula. the blastula had one layer of cells, the blastoderm (derma = skin): the gastrula two layers, the ectoderm ("outer skin") and entoderm ("inner skin"). now a third layer (mesoderm = middle skin) is formed, by the growth inwards of two pouches or folds of the skin. the pouches blend together, and form a single cavity (the body cavity, or coelom), and its two walls are two fresh "germinal layers." again, the identity of the process has to be proved in all the higher classes of animals, and when this is done we have another ancestral stage, the coelomaea. the remaining task is to build up the complex frame of the higher animals--always showing the identity of the process (on which the evolutionary argument depends) in enormously different conditions of embryonic life--out of the four "germinal layers." chapter . prepares us for the work by giving us a very clear account of the essential structure of the back-boned (vertebrate) animal, and the probable common ancestor of all the vertebrates (a small fish of the lancelet type). chapters . to . then carry out the construction step by step. the work is now simpler, in the sense that we leave all the invertebrate animals out of account; but there are so many organs to be fashioned out of the four simple layers that the reader must proceed carefully. in the second volume each of these organs will be dealt with separately, and the parallel will be worked out between its embryonic and its phylogenetic (evolutionary) development. the general reader may wait for this for a full understanding. but in the meantime the wonderful story of the construction of all our organs in the course of a few weeks (the human frame is perfectly formed, though less than two inches in length, by the twelfth week) from so simple a material is full of interest. it would be useless to attempt to summarise the process. the four chapters are themselves but a summary of it, and the eighty fine illustrations of the process will make it sufficiently clear. the last chapter carries the story on to the point where man at last parts company with the anthropoid ape, and gives a full account of the membranes or wrappers that enfold him in the womb, and the connection with the mother. in conclusion, i would urge the reader to consult, at his free library perhaps, the complete edition of this work, when he has read the present abbreviated edition. much of the text has had to be condensed in order to bring out the work at our popular price, and the beautiful plates of the complete edition have had to be omitted. the reader will find it an immense assistance if he can consult the library edition. joseph mccabe. cricklewood, march, . *** haeckel's classification of the animal world. unicellular animals (protozoa). . unnucleated. bacteria. protamoebae. monera. . nucleated. a. rhizopoda. amoebina. radiolaria. b. infusoria. flagellata. ciliata. . cell-colonies. catallacta. blastaeada. multicellular animals (metazoa). . coelenteria, coelenterata, or zoophytes. animals without body-cavity, blood or anus. a. gastraeads. gastremaria. cyemaria. b. sponges. protospongiae. metaspongiae. c. cnidaria (stinging animals). hydrozoa. polyps. medusae. d. platodes (flat-worms). platodaria. turbellaria. trematoda. cestoda. . coelomaria or bilaterals. animals with body-cavity and anus, and generally blood. a. vermalia (worm-like). rotatoria. strongylaria. prosopygia. frontonia. b. molluscs. cochlides. conchades. teuthodes. c. articulates. annelida. crustacea. tracheata. d. echinoderms. monorchonia. pentorchonia. e. tunicates. copelata. ascidiae. thalidiae. f. vertebrates. f. . acrania-lancelet (without skull). f. . craniota (with skull). f. a. cyclostomes. ("round-mouthed"). f. b. fishes. selachii. ganoids. teleosts. dipneusts. f. c. amphibia. f. d. reptiles. f. e. birds. f. f. mammal. monotremes. marsupials. placentals:-- rodents. edentates. ungulates. cetacea. sirenia. insectivora. cheiroptera. carnassia. primates. (this classification is given for the purpose of explaining haeckel's use of terms in this volume. the general reader should bear in mind that it differs very considerably from more recent schemes of classification. he should compare the scheme framed by professor e. ray lankester.) *** the evolution of man. chapter . . the fundamental law of organic evolution. the field of natural phenomena into which i would introduce my readers in the following chapters has a quite peculiar place in the broad realm of scientific inquiry. there is no object of investigation that touches man more closely, and the knowledge of which should be more acceptable to him, than his own frame. but among all the various branches of the natural history of mankind, or anthropology, the story of his development by natural means must excite the most lively interest. it gives us the key of the great world-riddles at which the human mind has been working for thousands of years. the problem of the nature of man, or the question of man's place in nature, and the cognate inquiries as to the past, the earliest history, the present situation, and the future of humanity--all these most important questions are directly and intimately connected with that branch of study which we call the science of the evolution of man, or, in one word, "anthropogeny" (the genesis of man). yet it is an astonishing fact that the science of the evolution of man does not even yet form part of the scheme of general education. in fact, educated people even in our day are for the most part quite ignorant of the important truths and remarkable phenomena which anthropogeny teaches us. as an illustration of this curious state of things, it may be pointed out that most of what are considered to be "educated" people do not know that every human being is developed from an egg, or ovum, and that this egg is one simple cell, like any other plant or animal egg. they are equally ignorant that in the course of the development of this tiny, round egg-cell there is first formed a body that is totally different from the human frame, and has not the remotest resemblance to it. most of them have never seen such a human embryo in the earlier period of its development, and do not know that it is quite indistinguishable from other animal embryos. at first the embryo is no more than a round cluster of cells, then it becomes a simple hollow sphere, the wall of which is composed of a layer of cells. later it approaches very closely, at one period, to the anatomic structure of the lancelet, afterwards to that of a fish, and again to the typical build of the amphibia and mammals. as it continues to develop, a form appears which is like those we find at the lowest stage of mammal-life (such as the duck-bills), then a form that resembles the marsupials, and only at a late stage a form that has a resemblance to the ape; until at last the definite human form emerges and closes the series of transformations. these suggestive facts are, as i said, still almost unknown to the general public--so completely unknown that, if one casually mentions them, they are called in question or denied outright as fairy-tales. everybody knows that the butterfly emerges from the pupa, and the pupa from a quite different thing called a larva, and the larva from the butterfly's egg. but few besides medical men are aware that man, in the course of his individual formation, passes through a series of transformations which are not less surprising and wonderful than the familiar metamorphoses of the butterfly. the mere description of these remarkable changes through which man passes during his embryonic life should arouse considerable interest. but the mind will experience a far keener satisfaction when we trace these curious facts to their causes, and when we learn to behold in them natural phenomena which are of the highest importance throughout the whole field of human knowledge. they throw light first of all on the "natural history of creation," then on psychology, or "the science of the soul," and through this on the whole of philosophy. and as the general results of every branch of inquiry are summed up in philosophy, all the sciences come in turn to be touched and influenced more or less by the study of the evolution of man. but when i say that i propose to present here the most important features of these phenomena and trace them to their causes, i take the term, and i interpret my task, in a very much wider sense than is usual. the lectures which have been delivered on this subject in the universities during the last half-century are almost exclusively adapted to medical men. certainly, the medical man has the greatest interest in studying the origin of the human body, with which he is daily occupied. but i must not give here this special description of the embryonic processes such as it has hitherto been given, as most of my readers have not studied anatomy, and are not likely to be entrusted with the care of the adult organism. i must content myself with giving some parts of the subject only in general outline, and must not enter upon all the marvellous, but very intricate and not easily described, details that are found in the story of the development of the human frame. to understand these fully a knowledge of anatomy is needed. i will endeavour to be as plain as possible in dealing with this branch of science. indeed, a sufficient general idea of the course of the embryonic development of man can be obtained without going too closely into the anatomic details. i trust we may be able to arouse the same interest in this delicate field of inquiry as has been excited already in other branches of science; though we shall meet more obstacles here than elsewhere. the story of the evolution of man, as it has hitherto been expounded to medical students, has usually been confined to embryology--more correctly, ontogeny--or the science of the development of the individual human organism. but this is really only the first part of our task, the first half of the story of the evolution of man in that wider sense in which we understand it here. we must add as the second half--as another and not less important and interesting branch of the science of the evolution of the human stem--phylogeny: this may be described as the science of the evolution of the various animal forms from which the human organism has been developed in the course of countless ages. everybody now knows of the great scientific activity that was occasioned by the publication of darwin's origin of species in . the chief direct consequence of this publication was to provoke a fresh inquiry into the origin of the human race, and this has proved beyond question our gradual evolution from the lower species. we give the name of "phylogeny" to the science which describes this ascent of man from the lower ranks of the animal world. the chief source that it draws upon for facts is "ontogeny," or embryology, the science of the development of the individual organism. moreover, it derives a good deal of support from paleontology, or the science of fossil remains, and even more from comparative anatomy, or morphology. these two branches of our science--on the one side ontogeny or embryology, and on the other phylogeny, or the science of race-evolution--are most vitally connected. the one cannot be understood without the other. it is only when the two branches fully co-operate and supplement each other that "biogeny" (or the science of the genesis of life in the widest sense) attains to the rank of a philosophic science. the connection between them is not external and superficial, but profound, intrinsic, and causal. this is a discovery made by recent research, and it is most clearly and correctly expressed in the comprehensive law which i have called "the fundamental law of organic evolution," or "the fundamental law of biogeny." this general law, to which we shall find ourselves constantly recurring, and on the recognition of which depends one's whole insight into the story of evolution, may be briefly expressed in the phrase: "the history of the foetus is a recapitulation of the history of the race"; or, in other words, "ontogeny is a recapitulation of phylogeny." it may be more fully stated as follows: the series of forms through which the individual organism passes during its development from the ovum to the complete bodily structure is a brief, condensed repetition of the long series of forms which the animal ancestors of the said organism, or the ancestral forms of the species, have passed through from the earliest period of organic life down to the present day. the causal character of the relation which connects embryology with stem-history is due to the action of heredity and adaptation. when we have rightly understood these, and recognised their great importance in the formation of organisms, we can go a step further and say: phylogenesis is the mechanical cause of ontogenesis.* (* the term "genesis," which occurs throughout, means, of course, "birth" or origin. from this we get: biogeny = the origin of life (bios); anthropogeny = the origin of man (anthropos); ontogeny = the origin of the individual (on); phylogeny = the origin of the species (phulon); and so on. in each case the term may refer to the process itself, or to the science describing the process.--translator.) in other words, the development of the stem, or race, is, in accordance with the laws of heredity and adaptation, the cause of all the changes which appear in a condensed form in the evolution of the foetus. the chain of manifold animal forms which represent the ancestry of each higher organism, or even of man, according to the theory of descent, always form a connected whole. we may designate this uninterrupted series of forms with the letters of the alphabet: a, b, c, d, e, etc., to z. in apparent contradiction to what i have said, the story of the development of the individual, or the ontogeny of most organisms, only offers to the observer a part of these forms; so that the defective series of embryonic forms would run: a, b, d, f, h, k, m, etc.; or, in other cases, b, d, h, l, m, n, etc. here, then, as a rule, several of the evolutionary forms of the original series have fallen out. moreover, we often find--to continue with our illustration from the alphabet--one or other of the original letters of the ancestral series represented by corresponding letters from a different alphabet. thus, instead of the roman b and d, we often have the greek beta and delta. in this case the text of the biogenetic law has been corrupted, just as it had been abbreviated in the preceding case. but, in spite of all this, the series of ancestral forms remains the same, and we are in a position to discover its original complexion. in reality, there is always a certain parallel between the two evolutionary series. but it is obscured from the fact that in the embryonic succession much is wanting that certainly existed in the earlier ancestral succession. if the parallel of the two series were complete, and if this great fundamental law affirming the causal connection between ontogeny and phylogeny in the proper sense of the word were directly demonstrable, we should only have to determine, by means of the microscope and the dissecting knife, the series of forms through which the fertilised ovum passes in its development; we should then have before us a complete picture of the remarkable series of forms which our animal ancestors have successively assumed from the dawn of organic life down to the appearance of man. but such a repetition of the ancestral history by the individual in its embryonic life is very rarely complete. we do not often find our full alphabet. in most cases the correspondence is very imperfect, being greatly distorted and falsified by causes which we will consider later. we are thus, for the most part, unable to determine in detail, from the study of its embryology, all the different shapes which an organism's ancestors have assumed; we usually--and especially in the case of the human foetus--encounter many gaps. it is true that we can fill up most of these gaps satisfactorily with the help of comparative anatomy, but we cannot do so from direct embryological observation. hence it is important that we find a large number of lower animal forms to be still represented in the course of man's embryonic development. in these cases we may draw our conclusions with the utmost security as to the nature of the ancestral form from the features of the form which the embryo momentarily assumes. to give a few examples, we can infer from the fact that the human ovum is a simple cell that the first ancestor of our species was a tiny unicellular being, something like the amoeba. in the same way, we know, from the fact that the human foetus consists, at the first, of two simple cell-layers (the gastrula), that the gastraea, a form with two such layers, was certainly in the line of our ancestry. a later human embryonic form (the chordula) points just as clearly to a worm-like ancestor (the prochordonia), the nearest living relation of which is found among the actual ascidiae. to this succeeds a most important embryonic stage (acrania), in which our headless foetus presents, in the main, the structure of the lancelet. but we can only indirectly and approximately, with the aid of comparative anatomy and ontogeny, conjecture what lower forms enter into the chain of our ancestry between the gastraea and the chordula, and between this and the lancelet. in the course of the historical development many intermediate structures have gradually fallen out, which must certainly have been represented in our ancestry. but, in spite of these many, and sometimes very appreciable, gaps, there is no contradiction between the two successions. in fact, it is the chief purpose of this work to prove the real harmony and the original parallelism of the two. i hope to show, on a substantial basis of facts, that we can draw most important conclusions as to our genealogical tree from the actual and easily-demonstrable series of embryonic changes. we shall then be in a position to form a general idea of the wealth of animal forms which have figured in the direct line of our ancestry in the lengthy history of organic life. in this evolutionary appreciation of the facts of embryology we must, of course, take particular care to distinguish sharply and clearly between the primitive, palingenetic (or ancestral) evolutionary processes and those due to cenogenesis.* (* palingenesis = new birth, or re-incarnation (palin = again, genesis or genea = development); hence its application to the phenomena which are recapitulated by heredity from earlier ancestral forms. cenogenesis = foreign or negligible development (kenos and genea); hence, those phenomena which come later in the story of life to disturb the inherited structure, by a fresh adaptation to environment.--translator.) by palingenetic processes, or embryonic recapitulations, we understand all those phenomena in the development of the individual which are transmitted from one generation to another by heredity, and which, on that account, allow us to draw direct inferences as to corresponding structures in the development of the species. on the other hand, we give the name of cenogenetic processes, or embryonic variations, to all those phenomena in the foetal development that cannot be traced to inheritance from earlier species, but are due to the adaptation of the foetus, or the infant-form, to certain conditions of its embryonic development. these cenogenetic phenomena are foreign or later additions; they allow us to draw no direct inference whatever as to corresponding processes in our ancestral history, but rather hinder us from doing so. this careful discrimination between the primary or palingenetic processes and the secondary or cenogenetic is of great importance for the purposes of the scientific history of a species, which has to draw conclusions from the available facts of embryology, comparative anatomy, and paleontology, as to the processes in the formation of the species in the remote past. it is of the same importance to the student of evolution as the careful distinction between genuine and spurious texts in the works of an ancient writer, or the purging of the real text from interpolations and alterations, is for the student of philology. it is true that this distinction has not yet been fully appreciated by many scientists. for my part, i regard it as the first condition for forming any just idea of the evolutionary process, and i believe that we must, in accordance with it, divide embryology into two sections--palingenesis, or the science of recapitulated forms; and cenogenesis, or the science of supervening structures. to give at once a few examples from the science of man's origin in illustration of this important distinction, i may instance the following processes in the embryology of man, and of all the higher vertebrates, as palingenetic: the formation of the two primary germinal layers and of the primitive gut, the undivided structure of the dorsal nerve-tube, the appearance of a simple axial rod between the medullary tube and the gut, the temporary formation of the gill-clefts and arches, the primitive kidneys, and so on.* (* all these, and the following structures, will be fully described in later chapters.--translator.) all these, and many other important structures, have clearly been transmitted by a steady heredity from the early ancestors of the mammal, and are, therefore, direct indications of the presence of similar structures in the history of the stem. on the other hand, this is certainly not the case with the following embryonic forms, which we must describe as cenogenetic processes: the formation of the yelk-sac, the allantois, the placenta, the amnion, the serolemma, and the chorion--or, generally speaking, the various foetal membranes and the corresponding changes in the blood vessels. further instances are: the dual structure of the heart cavity, the temporary division of the plates of the primitive vertebrae and lateral plates, the secondary closing of the ventral and intestinal walls, the formation of the navel, and so on. all these and many other phenomena are certainly not traceable to similar structures in any earlier and completely-developed ancestral form, but have arisen simply by adaptation to the peculiar conditions of embryonic life (within the foetal membranes). in view of these facts, we may now give the following more precise expression to our chief law of biogeny: the evolution of the foetus (or ontogenesis) is a condensed and abbreviated recapitulation of the evolution of the stem (or phylogenesis); and this recapitulation is the more complete in proportion as the original development (or palingenesis) is preserved by a constant heredity; on the other hand, it becomes less complete in proportion as a varying adaptation to new conditions increases the disturbing factors in the development (or cenogenesis). the cenogenetic alterations or distortions of the original palingenetic course of development take the form, as a rule, of a gradual displacement of the phenomena, which is slowly effected by adaptation to the changed conditions of embryonic existence during the course of thousands of years. this displacement may take place as regards either the position or the time of a phenomenon. the great importance and strict regularity of the time-variations in embryology have been carefully studied recently by ernest mehnert, in his biomechanik (jena, ). he contends that our biogenetic law has not been impaired by the attacks of its opponents, and goes on to say: "scarcely any piece of knowledge has contributed so much to the advance of embryology as this; its formulation is one of the most signal services to general biology. it was not until this law passed into the flesh and blood of investigators, and they had accustomed themselves to see a reminiscence of ancestral history in embryonic structures, that we witnessed the great progress which embryological research has made in the last two decades." the best proof of the correctness of this opinion is that now the most fruitful work is done in all branches of embryology with the aid of this biogenetic law, and that it enables students to attain every year thousands of brilliant results that they would never have reached without it. it is only when one appreciates the cenogenetic processes in relation to the palingenetic, and when one takes careful account of the changes which the latter may suffer from the former, that the radical importance of the biogenetic law is recognised, and it is felt to be the most illuminating principle in the science of evolution. in this task of discrimination it is the silver thread in relation to which we can arrange all the phenomena of this realm of marvels--the "ariadne thread," which alone enables us to find our way through this labyrinth of forms. hence the brothers sarasin, the zoologists, could say with perfect justice, in their study of the evolution of the ichthyophis, that "the great biogenetic law is just as important for the zoologist in tracing long-extinct processes as spectrum analyses is for the astronomer." even at an earlier period, when a correct acquaintance with the evolution of the human and animal frame was only just being obtained--and that is scarcely eighty years ago!--the greatest astonishment was felt at the remarkable similarity observed between the embryonic forms, or stages of foetal development, in very different animals; attention was called even then to their close resemblance to certain fully-developed animal forms belonging to some of the lower groups. the older scientists (oken, treviranus, and others) knew perfectly well that these lower forms in a sense illustrated and fixed, in the hierarchy of the animal world, a temporary stage in the evolution of higher forms. the famous anatomist meckel spoke in of a "similarity between the development of the embryo and the series of animals." baer raised the question in how far, within the vertebrate type, the embryonic forms of the higher animals assume the permanent shapes of members of lower groups. but it was impossible fully to understand and appreciate this remarkable resemblance at that time. we owe our capacity to do this to the theory of descent; it is this that puts in their true light the action of heredity on the one hand and adaptation on the other. it explains to us the vital importance of their constant reciprocal action in the production of organic forms. darwin was the first to teach us the great part that was played in this by the ceaseless struggle for existence between living things, and to show how, under the influence of this (by natural selection), new species were produced and maintained solely by the interaction of heredity and adaptation. it was thus darwinism that first opened our eyes to a true comprehension of the supremely important relations between the two parts of the science of organic evolution--ontogeny and phylogeny. heredity and adaptation are, in fact, the two constructive physiological functions of living things; unless we understand these properly we can make no headway in the study of evolution. hence, until the time of darwin no one had a clear idea of the real nature and causes of embryonic development. it was impossible to explain the curious series of forms through which the human embryo passed; it was quite unintelligible why this strange succession of animal-like forms appeared in the series at all. it had previously been generally assumed that the man was found complete in all his parts in the ovum, and that the development consisted only in an unfolding of the various parts, a simple process of growth. this is by no means the case. on the contrary, the whole process of the development of the individual presents to the observer a connected succession of different animal-forms; and these forms display a great variety of external and internal structure. but why each individual human being should pass through this series of forms in the course of his embryonic development it was quite impossible to say until lamarck and darwin established the theory of descent. through this theory we have at last detected the real causes, the efficient causes, of the individual development; we have learned that these mechanical causes suffice of themselves to effect the formation of the organism, and that there is no need of the final causes which were formerly assumed. it is true that in the academic philosophies of our time these final causes still figure very prominently; in the new philosophy of nature we can entirely replace them by efficient causes. we shall see, in the course of our inquiry, how the most wonderful and hitherto insoluble enigmas in the human and animal frame have proved amenable to a mechanical explanation, by causes acting without prevision, through darwin's reform of the science of evolution. we have everywhere been able to substitute unconscious causes, acting from necessity, for conscious, purposive causes.* (* the monistic or mechanical philosophy of nature holds that only unconscious, necessary, efficient causes are at work in the whole field of nature, in organic life as well as in inorganic changes. on the other hand, the dualist or vitalist philosophy of nature affirms that unconscious forces are only at work in the inorganic world, and that we find conscious, purposive, or final causes in organic nature.) if the new science of evolution had done no more than this, every thoughtful man would have to admit that it had accomplished an immense advance in knowledge. it means that in the whole of philosophy that tendency which we call monistic, in opposition to the dualistic, which has hitherto prevailed, must be accepted.* (* monism is neither purely materialistic nor purely spiritualistic, but a reconciliation of these two principles, since it regards the whole of nature as one, and sees only efficient causes at work in it. dualism, on the contrary, holds that nature and spirit, matter and force, the world and god, inorganic and organic nature, are separate and independent existences. cf. the riddle of the universe chapter .) at this point the science of human evolution has a direct and profound bearing on the foundations of philosophy. modern anthropology has, by its astounding discoveries during the second half of the nineteenth century, compelled us to take a completely monistic view of life. our bodily structure and its life, our embryonic development and our evolution as a species, teach us that the same laws of nature rule in the life of man as in the rest of the universe. for this reason, if for no others, it is desirable, nay, indispensable, that every man who wishes to form a serious and philosophic view of life, and, above all, the expert philosopher, should acquaint himself with the chief facts of this branch of science. the facts of embryology have so great and obvious a significance in this connection that even in recent years dualist and teleological philosophers have tried to rid themselves of them by simply denying them. this was done, for instance, as regards the fact that man is developed from an egg, and that this egg or ovum is a simple cell, as in the case of other animals. when i had explained this pregnant fact and its significance in my history of creation, it was described in many of the theological journals as a dishonest invention of my own. the fact that the embryos of man and the dog are, at a certain stage of their development, almost indistinguishable was also denied. when we examine the human embryo in the third or fourth week of its development, we find it to be quite different in shape and structure from the full-grown human being, but almost identical with that of the ape, the dog, the rabbit, and other mammals, at the same stage of ontogeny. we find a bean-shaped body of very simple construction, with a tail below and a pair of fins at the sides, something like those of a fish, but very different from the limbs of man and the mammals. nearly the whole front half of the body is taken up by a shapeless head without face, at the sides of which we find gill-clefts and arches as in the fish. at this stage of its development the human embryo does not differ in any essential detail from that of the ape, dog, horse, ox, etc., at a corresponding period. this important fact can easily be verified at any moment by a comparison of the embryos of man, the dog, rabbit, etc. nevertheless, the theologians and dualist philosophers pronounced it to be a materialistic invention; even scientists, to whom the facts should be known, have sought to deny them. there could not be a clearer proof of the profound importance of these embryological facts in favour of the monistic philosophy than is afforded by these efforts of its opponents to get rid of them by silence or denial. the truth is that these facts are most inconvenient for them, and are quite irreconcilable with their views. we must be all the more pressing on our side to put them in their proper light. i fully agree with huxley when he says, in his "man's place in nature": "though these facts are ignored by several well-known popular leaders, they are easy to prove, and are accepted by all scientific men; on the other hand, their importance is so great that those who have once mastered them will, in my opinion, find few other biological discoveries to astonish them." we shall make it our chief task to study the evolution of man's bodily frame and its various organs in their external form and internal structures. but i may observe at once that this is accompanied step by step with a study of the evolution of their functions. these two branches of inquiry are inseparably united in the whole of anthropology, just as in zoology (of which the former is only a section) or general biology. everywhere the peculiar form of the organism and its structures, internal and external, is directly related to the special physiological functions which the organism or organ has to execute. this intimate connection of structure and function, or of the instrument and the work done by it, is seen in the science of evolution and all its parts. hence the story of the evolution of structures, which is our immediate concern, is also the history of the development of functions; and this holds good of the human organism as of any other. at the same time, i must admit that our knowledge of the evolution of functions is very far from being as complete as our acquaintance with the evolution of structures. one might say, in fact, that the whole science of evolution has almost confined itself to the study of structures; the evolution of functions hardly exists even in name. that is the fault of the physiologists, who have as yet concerned themselves very little about evolution. it is only in recent times that physiologists like w. engelmann, w. preyer, m. verworn, and a few others, have attacked the evolution of functions. it will be the task of some future physiologist to engage in the study of the evolution of functions with the same zeal and success as has been done for the evolution of structures in morphogeny (the science of the genesis of forms). let me illustrate the close connection of the two by a couple of examples. the heart in the human embryo has at first a very simple construction, such as we find in permanent form among the ascidiae and other low organisms; with this is associated a very simple system of circulation of the blood. now, when we find that with the full-grown heart there comes a totally different and much more intricate circulation, our inquiry into the development of the heart becomes at once, not only an anatomical, but also a physiological, study. thus it is clear that the ontogeny of the heart can only be understood in the light of its phylogeny (or development in the past), both as regards function and structure. the same holds true of all the other organs and their functions. for instance, the science of the evolution of the alimentary canal, the lungs, or the sexual organs, gives us at the same time, through the exact comparative investigation of structure-development, most important information with regard to the evolution of the functions of these organs. this significant connection is very clearly seen in the evolution of the nervous system. this system is in the economy of the human body the medium of sensation, will, and even thought, the highest of the psychic functions; in a word, of all the various functions which constitute the proper object of psychology. modern anatomy and physiology have proved that these psychic functions are immediately dependent on the fine structure and the composition of the central nervous system, or the internal texture of the brain and spinal cord. in these we find the elaborate cell-machinery, of which the psychic or soul-life is the physiological function. it is so intricate that most men still look upon the mind as something supernatural that cannot be explained on mechanical principles. but embryological research into the gradual appearance and the formation of this important system of organs yields the most astounding and significant results. the first sketch of a central nervous system in the human embryo presents the same very simple type as in the other vertebrates. a spinal tube is formed in the external skin of the back, and from this first comes a simple spinal cord without brain, such as we find to be the permanent psychic organ in the lowest type of vertebrate, the amphioxus. not until a later stage is a brain formed at the anterior end of this cord, and then it is a brain of the most rudimentary kind, such as we find permanently among the lower fishes. this simple brain develops step by step, successively assuming forms which correspond to those of the amphibia, the reptiles, the duck-bills, and the lemurs. only in the last stage does it reach the highly organised form which distinguishes the apes from the other vertebrates, and which attains its full development in man. comparative physiology discovers a precisely similar growth. the function of the brain, the psychic activity, rises step by step with the advancing development of its structure. thus we are enabled, by this story of the evolution of the nervous system, to understand at length the natural development of the human mind and its gradual unfolding. it is only with the aid of embryology that we can grasp how these highest and most striking faculties of the animal organism have been historically evolved. in other words, a knowledge of the evolution of the spinal cord and brain in the human embryo leads us directly to a comprehension of the historic development (or phylogeny) of the human mind, that highest of all faculties, which we regard as something so marvellous and supernatural in the adult man. this is certainly one of the greatest and most pregnant results of evolutionary science. happily our embryological knowledge of man's central nervous system is now so adequate, and agrees so thoroughly with the complementary results of comparative anatomy and physiology, that we are thus enabled to obtain a clear insight into one of the highest problems of philosophy, the phylogeny of the soul, or the ancestral history of the mind of man. our chief support in this comes from the embryological study of it, or the ontogeny of the soul. this important section of psychology owes its origin especially to w. preyer, in his interesting works, such as the mind of the child. the biography of a baby ( ), of milicent washburn shinn, also deserves mention. [see also preyer's mental development in the child (translation), and sully's studies of childhood and children's ways.] in this way we follow the only path along which we may hope to reach the solution of this difficult problem. thirty-six years have now elapsed since, in my general morphology, i established phylogeny as an independent science and showed its intimate causal connection with ontogeny; thirty years have passed since i gave in my gastraea-theory the proof of the justice of this, and completed it with the theory of germinal layers. when we look back on this period we may ask, what has been accomplished during it by the fundamental law of biogeny? if we are impartial, we must reply that it has proved its fertility in hundreds of sound results, and that by its aid we have acquired a vast fund of knowledge which we should never have obtained without it. there has been no dearth of attacks--often violent attacks--on my conception of an intimate causal connection between ontogenesis and phylogenesis; but no other satisfactory explanation of these important phenomena has yet been offered to us. i say this especially with regard to wilhelm his's theory of a "mechanical evolution," which questions the truth of phylogeny generally, and would explain the complicated embryonic processes without going beyond by simple physical changes--such as the bending and folding of leaves by electricity, the origin of cavities through unequal strain of the tissues, the formation of processes by uneven growth, and so on. but the fact is that these embryological phenomena themselves demand explanation in turn, and this can only be found, as a rule, in the corresponding changes in the long ancestral series, or in the physiological functions of heredity and adaptation. chapter . . the older embryology. it is in many ways useful, on entering upon the study of any science, to cast a glance at its historical development. the saying that "everything is best understood in its growth" has a distinct application to science. while we follow its gradual development we get a clearer insight into its aims and objects. moreover, we shall see that the present condition of the science of human evolution, with all its characteristics, can only be rightly understood when we examine its historical growth. this task will, however, not detain us long. the study of man's evolution is one of the latest branches of natural science, whether you consider the embryological or the phylogenetic section of it. apart from the few germs of our science which we find in classical antiquity, and which we shall notice presently, we may say that it takes its definite rise, as a science, in the year , when one of the greatest german scientists, caspar friedrich wolff, published his theoria generationis. that was the foundation-stone of the science of animal embryology. it was not until fifty years later, in , that jean lamarck published his philosophie zoologique--the first effort to provide a base for the theory of evolution; and it was another half-century before darwin's work appeared (in ), which we may regard as the first scientific attainment of this aim. but before we go further into this solid establishment of evolution, we must cast a brief glance at that famous philosopher and scientist of antiquity, who stood alone in this, as in many other branches of science, for more than years: the "father of natural history," aristotle. the extant scientific works of aristotle deal with many different sides of biological research; the most comprehensive of them is his famous history of animals. but not less interesting is the smaller work, on the generation of animals (peri zoon geneseos). this work treats especially of embryonic development, and it is of great interest as being the earliest of its kind and the only one that has come down to us in any completeness from classical antiquity. aristotle studied embryological questions in various classes of animals, and among the lower groups he learned many most remarkable facts which we only rediscovered between and . it is certain, for instance, that he was acquainted with the very peculiar mode of propagation of the cuttlefishes, or cephalopods, in which a yelk-sac hangs out of the mouth of the foetus. he knew, also, that embryos come from the eggs of the bee even when they have not been fertilised. this "parthenogenesis" (or virgin-birth) of the bees has only been established in our time by the distinguished zoologist of munich, siebold. he discovered that male bees come from the unfertilised, and female bees only from the fertilised, eggs. aristotle further states that some kinds of fishes (of the genus serranus) are hermaphrodites, each individual having both male and female organs and being able to fertilise itself; this, also, has been recently confirmed. he knew that the embryo of many fishes of the shark family is attached to the mother's body by a sort of placenta, or nutritive organ very rich in blood; apart from these, such an arrangement is only found among the higher mammals and man. this placenta of the shark was looked upon as legendary for a long time, until johannes muller proved it to be a fact in . thus a number of remarkable discoveries were found in aristotle's embryological work, proving a very good acquaintance of the great scientist--possibly helped by his predecessors--with the facts of ontogeny, and a great advance upon succeeding generations in this respect. in the case of most of these discoveries he did not merely describe the fact, but added a number of observations on its significance. some of these theoretical remarks are of particular interest, because they show a correct appreciation of the nature of the embryonic processes. he conceives the development of the individual as a new formation, in the course of which the various parts of the body take shape successively. when the human or animal frame is developed in the mother's body, or separately in an egg, the heart--which he regards as the starting-point and centre of the organism--must appear first. once the heart is formed the other organs arise, the internal ones before the external, the upper (those above the diaphragm) before the lower (or those beneath the diaphragm). the brain is formed at an early stage, and the eyes grow out of it. these observations are quite correct. and, if we try to form some idea from these data of aristotle's general conception of the embryonic process, we find a dim prevision of the theory which wolff showed years afterwards to be the correct view. it is significant, for instance, that aristotle denied the eternity of the individual in any respect. he said that the species or genus, the group of similar individuals, might be eternal, but the individual itself is temporary. it comes into being in the act of procreation, and passes away at death. during the years after aristotle no progress whatever was made in general zoology, or in embryology in particular. people were content to read, copy, translate, and comment on aristotle. scarcely a single independent effort at research was made in the whole of the period. during the middle ages the spread of strong religious beliefs put formidable obstacles in the way of independent scientific investigation. there was no question of resuming the advance of biology. even when human anatomy began to stir itself once more in the sixteenth century, and independent research was resumed into the structure of the developed body, anatomists did not dare to extend their inquiries to the unformed body, the embryo, and its development. there were many reasons for the prevailing horror of such studies. it is natural enough, when we remember that a bull of boniface viii excommunicated every man who ventured to dissect a human corpse. if the dissection of a developed body were a crime to be thus punished, how much more dreadful must it have seemed to deal with the embryonic body still enclosed in the womb, which the creator himself had decently veiled from the curiosity of the scientist! the christian church, then putting many thousands to death for unbelief, had a shrewd presentiment of the menace that science contained against its authority. it was powerful enough to see that its rival did not grow too quickly. it was not until the reformation broke the power of the church, and a refreshing breath of the spirit dissolved the icy chains that bound science, that anatomy and embryology, and all the other branches of research, could begin to advance once more. however, embryology lagged far behind anatomy. the first works on embryology appear at the beginning of the sixteenth century. the italian anatomist, fabricius ab aquapendente, a professor at padua, opened the advance. in his two books (de formato foetu, , and de formatione foetus, ) he published the older illustrations and descriptions of the embryos of man and other mammals, and of the hen. similar imperfect illustrations were given by spigelius (de formato foetu, ), and by needham ( ) and his more famous compatriot, harvey ( ), who discovered the circulation of the blood in the animal body and formulated the important principle, omne vivum ex vivo (all life comes from pre-existing life). the dutch scientist, swammerdam, published in his bible of nature the earliest observations on the embryology of the frog and the division of its egg-yelk. but the most important embryological studies in the sixteenth century were those of the famous italian, marcello malpighi, of bologna, who led the way both in zoology and botany. his treatises, de formatione pulli and de ovo incubato ( ), contain the first consistent description of the development of the chick in the fertilised egg. here i ought to say a word about the important part played by the chick in the growth of our science. the development of the chick, like that of the young of all other birds, agrees in all its main features with that of the other chief vertebrates, and even of man. the three highest classes of vertebrates--mammals, birds, and reptiles (lizards, serpents, tortoises, etc.)--have from the beginning of their embryonic development so striking a resemblance in all the chief points of structure, and especially in their first forms, that for a long time it is impossible to distinguish between them. we have known now for some time that we need only examine the embryo of a bird, which is the easiest to get at, in order to learn the typical mode of development of a mammal (and therefore of man). as soon as scientists began to study the human embryo, or the mammal-embryo generally, in its earlier stages about the middle and end of the seventeenth century, this important fact was very quickly discovered. it is both theoretically and practically of great value. as regards the theory of evolution, we can draw the most weighty inferences from this similarity between the embryos of widely different classes of animals. but for the practical purposes of embryological research the discovery is invaluable, because we can fill up the gaps in our imperfect knowledge of the embryology of the mammals from the more thoroughly studied embryology of the bird. hens' eggs are easily to be had in any quantity, and the development of the chick may be followed step by step in artificial incubation. the development of the mammal is much more difficult to follow, because here the embryo is not detached and enclosed in a large egg, but the tiny ovum remains in the womb until the growth is completed. hence, it is very difficult to keep up sustained observation of the various stages in any great extent, quite apart from such extrinsic considerations as the cost, the technical difficulties, and many other obstacles which we encounter when we would make an extensive study of the fertilised mammal. the chicken has, therefore, always been the chief object of study in this connection. the excellent incubators we now have enable us to observe it in any quantity and at any stage of development, and so follow the whole course of its formation step by step. by the end of the seventeenth century malpighi had advanced as far as it was possible to do with the imperfect microscope of his time in the embryological study of the chick. further progress was arrested until the instrument and the technical methods should be improved. the vertebrate embryos are so small and delicate in their earlier stages that you cannot go very far into the study of them without a good microscope and other technical aid. but this substantial improvement of the microscope and the other apparatus did not take place until the beginning of the nineteenth century. embryology made scarcely any advance in the first half of the eighteenth century, when the systematic natural history of plants and animals received so great an impulse through the publication of linne's famous systema naturae. not until did the genius arise who was to give it an entirely new character, caspar friedrich wolff. until then embryology had been occupied almost exclusively in unfortunate and misleading efforts to build up theories on the imperfect empirical material then available. the theory which then prevailed, and remained in favour throughout nearly the whole of the eighteenth century, was commonly called at that time "the evolution theory"; it is better to describe it as "the preformation theory."* (* this theory is usually known as the "evolution theory" in germany, in contradistinction to the "epigenesis theory." but as it is the latter that is called the "evolution theory" in england, france, and italy, and "evolution" and "epigenesis" are taken to be synonymous, it seems better to call the first the "pre-formation theory.") its chief point is this: there is no new formation of structures in the embryonic development of any organism, animal or plant, or even of man; there is only a growth, or unfolding, of parts which have been constructed or pre-formed from all eternity, though on a very small scale and closely packed together. hence, every living germ contains all the organs and parts of the body, in the form and arrangement they will present later, already within it, and thus the whole embryological process is merely an evolution in the literal sense of the word, or an unfolding, of parts that were pre-formed and folded up in it. so, for instance, we find in the hen's egg not merely a simple cell, that divides and subdivides and forms germinal layers, and at last, after all kinds of variation and cleavage and reconstruction, brings forth the body of the chick; but there is in every egg from the first a complete chicken, with all its parts made and neatly packed. these parts are so small or so transparent that the microscope cannot detect them. in the hatching, these parts merely grow larger, and spread out in the normal way. when this theory is consistently developed it becomes a "scatulation theory."* (* "packing theory" would be the literal translation. scatula is the latin for a case or box.--translator.) according to its teaching, there was made in the beginning one couple or one individual of each species of animal or plant; but this one individual contained the germs of all the other individuals of the same species who should ever come to life. as the age of the earth was generally believed at that time to be fixed by the bible at or years, it seemed possible to calculate how many individuals of each species had lived in the period, and so had been packed inside the first being that was created. the theory was consistently extended to man, and it was affirmed that our common parent eve had had stored in her ovary the germs of all the children of men. the theory at first took the form of a belief that it was the females who were thus encased in the first being. one couple of each species was created, but the female contained in her ovary all the future individuals of the species, of either sex. however, this had to be altered when the dutch microscopist, leeuwenhoek, discovered the male spermatozoa in , and showed that an immense number of these extremely fine and mobile thread-like beings exist in the male sperm (this will be explained in chapter . ). this astonishing discovery was further advanced when it was proved that these living bodies, swimming about in the seminal fluid, were real animalcules, and, in fact, were the pre-formed germs of the future generation. when the male and female procreative elements came together at conception, these thread-like spermatozoa ("seed-animals") were supposed to penetrate into the fertile body of the ovum and begin to develop there, as the plant seed does in the fruitful earth. hence, every spermatozoon was regarded as a homunculus, a tiny complete man; all the parts were believed to be pre-formed in it, and merely grew larger when it reached its proper medium in the female ovum. this theory, also, was consistently developed in the sense that in each of these thread-like bodies the whole of its posterity was supposed to be present in the minutest form. adam's sexual glands were thought to have contained the germs of the whole of humanity. this "theory of male scatulation" found itself at once in keen opposition to the prevailing "female" theory. the two rival theories at once opened a very lively campaign, and the physiologists of the eighteenth century were divided into two great camps--the animalculists and the ovulists--which fought vigorously. the animalculists held that the spermatozoa were the true germs, and appealed to the lively movements and the structure of these bodies. the opposing party of the ovulists, who clung to the older "evolution theory," affirmed that the ovum is the real germ, and that the spermatozoa merely stimulate it at conception to begin its growth; all the future generations are stored in the ovum. this view was held by the great majority of the biologists of the eighteenth century, in spite of the fact that wolff proved it in to be without foundation. it owed its prestige chiefly to the circumstance that the most weighty authorities in the biology and philosophy of the day decided in favour of it, especially haller, bonnet, and leibnitz. albrecht haller, professor at gottingen, who is often called the father of physiology, was a man of wide and varied learning, but he does not occupy a very high position in regard to insight into natural phenomena. he made a vigorous defence of the "evolutionary theory" in his famous work, elementa physiologiae, affirming: "there is no such thing as formation (nulla est epigenesis). no part of the animal frame is made before another; all were made together." he thus denied that there was any evolution in the proper sense of the word, and even went so far as to say that the beard existed in the new-born child and the antlers in the hornless fawn; all the parts were there in advance, and were merely hidden from the eye of man for the time being. haller even calculated the number of human beings that god must have created on the sixth day and stored away in eve's ovary. he put the number at , millions, assuming the age of the world to be years, the average age of a human being to be thirty years, and the population of the world at that time to be millions. and the famous haller maintained all this nonsense, in spite of its ridiculous consequences, even after wolff had discovered the real course of embryonic development and established it by direct observation! among the philosophers of the time the distinguished leibnitz was the chief defender of the "preformation theory," and by his authority and literary prestige won many adherents to it. supported by his system of monads, according to which body and soul are united in inseparable association and by their union form the individual, or the "monad," leibnitz consistently extended the "scatulation theory" to the soul, and held that this was no more evolved than the body. he says, for instance, in his theodicee: "i mean that these souls, which one day are to be the souls of men, are present in the seed, like those of other species; in such wise that they existed in our ancestors as far back as adam, or from the beginning of the world, in the forms of organised bodies." the theory seemed to receive considerable support from the observations of one of its most zealous supporters, bonnet. in he discovered, in the plant-louse, a case of parthenogenesis, or virgin-birth, an interesting form of reproduction that has lately been found by siebold and others among various classes of the articulata, especially crustacea and insects. among these and other animals of certain lower species the female may reproduce for several generations without having been fertilised by the male. these ova that do not need fertilisation are called "false ova," pseudova or spores. bonnet saw that a female plant-louse, which he had kept in cloistral isolation, and rigidly removed from contact with males, had on the eleventh day (after forming a new skin for the fourth time) a living daughter, and during the next twenty days ninety-four other daughters; and that all of them went on to reproduce in the same way without any contact with males. it seemed as if this furnished an irrefutable proof of the truth of the scatulation theory, as it was held by the ovulists; it is not surprising to find that the theory then secured general acceptance. this was the condition of things when suddenly, in , caspar friedrich wolff appeared, and dealt a fatal blow at the whole preformation theory with his new theory of epigenesis. wolff, the son of a berlin tailor, was born in , and went through his scientific and medical studies, first at berlin under the famous anatomist meckel, and afterwards at halle. here he secured his doctorate in his twenty-sixth year, and in his academic dissertation (november th, ), the theoria generationis, expounded the new theory of a real development on a basis of epigenesis. this treatise is, in spite of its smallness and its obscure phraseology, one of the most valuable in the whole range of biological literature. it is equally distinguished for the mass of new and careful observations it contains, and the far-reaching and pregnant ideas which the author everywhere extracts from his observations and builds into a luminous and accurate theory of generation. nevertheless, it met with no success at the time. although scientific studies were then assiduously cultivated owing to the impulse given by linne--although botanists and zoologists were no longer counted by dozens, but by hundreds, hardly any notice was taken of wolff's theory. even when he established the truth of epigenesis by the most rigorous observations, and demolished the airy structure of the preformation theory, the "exact" scientist haller proved one of the most strenuous supporters of the old theory, and rejected wolff's correct view with a dictatorial "there is no such thing as evolution." he even went on to say that religion was menaced by the new theory! it is not surprising that the whole of the physiologists of the second half of the eighteenth century submitted to the ruling of this physiological pontiff, and attacked the theory of epigenesis as a dangerous innovation. it was not until more than fifty years afterwards that wolff's work was appreciated. only when meckel translated into german in another valuable work of wolff's on the formation of the alimentary canal (written in ), and called attention to its great importance, did people begin to think of him once more; yet this obscure writer had evinced a profounder insight into the nature of the living organism than any other scientist of the eighteenth century. wolff's idea led to an appreciable advance over the whole field of biology. there is such a vast number of new and important observations and pregnant thoughts in his writings that we have only gradually learned to appreciate them rightly in the course of the nineteenth century. he opened up the true path for research in many directions. in the first place, his theory of epigenesis gave us our first real insight into the nature of embryonic development. he showed convincingly that the development of every organism consists of a series of new formations, and that there is no trace whatever of the complete form either in the ovum or the spermatozoon. on the contrary, these are quite simple bodies, with a very different purport. the embryo which is developed from them is also quite different, in its internal arrangement and outer configuration, from the complete organism. there is no trace whatever of preformation or in-folding of organs. to-day we can scarcely call epigenesis a theory, because we are convinced it is a fact, and can demonstrate it at any moment with the aid of the microscope. wolff furnished the conclusive empirical proof of his theory in his classic dissertation on the formation of the alimentary canal ( ). in its complete state the alimentary canal of the hen is a long and complex tube, with which the lungs, liver, salivary glands, and many other small glands, are connected. wolff showed that in the early stages of the embryonic chick there is no trace whatever of this complicated tube with all its dependencies, but instead of it only a flat, leaf-shaped body; that, in fact, the whole embryo has at first the appearance of a flat, oval-shaped leaf. when we remember how difficult the exact observation of so fine and delicate a structure as the early leaf-shaped body of the chick must have been with the poor microscopes then in use, we must admire the rare faculty for observation which enabled wolff to make the most important discoveries in this most difficult part of embryology. by this laborious research he reached the correct opinion that the embryonic body of all the higher animals, such as the birds, is for some time merely a flat, thin, leaf-shaped disk--consisting at first of one layer, but afterwards of several. the lowest of these layers is the alimentary canal, and wolff followed its development from its commencement to its completion. he showed how this leaf-shaped structure first turns into a groove, then the margins of this groove fold together and form a closed canal, and at length the two external openings of the tube (the mouth and anus) appear. moreover, the important fact that the other systems of organs are developed in the same way, from tubes formed out of simple layers, did not escape wolff. the nerveless system, muscular system, and vascular (blood-vessel) system, with all the organs appertaining thereto, are, like the alimentary system, developed out of simple leaf-shaped structures. hence, wolff came to the view by which pander developed in the theory of germinal layers fifty years afterwards. his principles are not literally correct; but he comes as near to the truth in them as was possible at that time, and could be expected of him. our admiration of this gifted genius increases when we find that he was also the precursor of goethe in regard to the metamorphosis of plants and of the famous cellular theory. wolff had, as huxley showed, a clear presentiment of this cardinal theory, since he recognised small microscopic globules as the elementary parts out of which the germinal layers arose. finally, i must invite special attention to the mechanical character of the profound philosophic reflections which wolff always added to his remarkable observations. he was a great monistic philosopher, in the best meaning of the word. it is unfortunate that his philosophic discoveries were ignored as completely as his observations for more than half a century. we must be all the more careful to emphasise the fact of their clear monistic tendency. chapter . . modern embryology. we may distinguish three chief periods in the growth of our science of human embryology. the first has been considered in the preceding chapter; it embraces the whole of the preparatory period of research, and extends from aristotle to caspar friedrich wolff, or to the year , in which the epoch-making theoria generationis was published. the second period, with which we have now to deal, lasts about a century--that is to say, until the appearance of darwin's origin of species, which brought about a change in the very foundations of biology, and, in particular, of embryology. the third period begins with darwin. when we say that the second period lasted a full century, we must remember that wolff's work had remained almost unnoticed during half the time--namely, until the year . during the whole of these fifty-three years not a single book that appeared followed up the path that wolff had opened, or extended his theory of embryonic development. we merely find his views--perfectly correct views, based on extensive observations of fact--mentioned here and there as erroneous; their opponents, who adhered to the dominant theory of preformation, did not even deign to reply to them. this unjust treatment was chiefly due to the extraordinary authority of albrecht von haller; it is one of the most astonishing instances of a great authority, as such, preventing for a long time the recognition of established facts. the general ignorance of wolff's work was so great that at the beginning of the nineteenth century two scientists of jena, oken ( ) and kieser ( ), began independent research into the development of the alimentary canal of the chick, and hit upon the right clue to the embryonic puzzle, without knowing a word about wolff's important treatise on the same subject. they were treading in his very footsteps without suspecting it. this can be easily proved from the fact that they did not travel as far as wolff. it was not until meckel translated into german wolff's book on the alimentary system, and pointed out its great importance, that the eyes of anatomists and physiologists were suddenly opened. at once a number of biologists instituted fresh embryological inquiries, and began to confirm wolff's theory of epigenesis. this resuscitation of embryology and development of the epigenesis-theory was chiefly connected with the university of wurtzburg. one of the professors there at that time was dollinger, an eminent biologist, and father of the famous catholic historian who later distinguished himself by his opposition to the new dogma of papal infallibility. dollinger was both a profound thinker and an accurate observer. he took the keenest interest in embryology, and worked at it a good deal. however, he is not himself responsible for any important result in this field. in a young medical doctor, whom we may at once designate as wolff's chief successor, karl ernst von baer, came to wurtzburg. baer's conversations with dollinger on embryology led to a fresh series of most extensive investigations. dollinger had expressed a wish that some young scientist should begin again under his guidance an independent inquiry into the development of the chick during the hatching of the egg. as neither he nor baer had money enough to pay for an incubator and the proper control of the experiments, and for a competent artist to illustrate the various stages observed, the lead of the enterprise was given to christian pander, a wealthy friend of baer's who had been induced by baer to come to wurtzburg. an able engraver, dalton, was engaged to do the copper-plates. in a short time the embryology of the chick, in which baer was taking the greatest indirect interest, was so far advanced that pander was able to sketch the main features of it on the ground of wolff's theory in the dissertation he published in . he clearly enunciated the theory of germinal layers which wolff had anticipated, and established the truth of wolff's idea of a development of the complicated systems of organs out of simple leaf-shaped primitive structures. according to pander, the leaf-shaped object in the hen's egg divides, before the incubation has proceeded twelve hours, into two different layers, an external serous layer and an internal mucous layer; between the two there develops later a third layer, the vascular (blood-vessel) layer.* (* the technical terms which are bound to creep into this chapter will be fully understood later on.--translator.) karl ernst von baer, who had set afoot pander's investigation, and had shown the liveliest interest in it after pander's departure from wurtzburg, began his own much more comprehensive research in . he published the mature result nine years afterwards in his famous work, animal embryology: observation and reflection (not translated). this classic work still remains a model of careful observation united to profound philosophic speculation. the first part appeared in , the second in . the book proved to be the foundation on which the whole science of embryology has built down to our own day. it so far surpassed its predecessors, and pander in particular, that it has become, after wolff's work, the chief base of modern embryology. baer was one of the greatest scientists of the nineteenth century, and exercised considerable influence on other branches of biology as well. he built up the theory of germinal layers, as a whole and in detail, so clearly and solidly that it has been the starting-point of embryological research ever since. he taught that in all the vertebrates first two and then four of these germinal layers are formed; and that the earliest rudimentary organs of the body arise by the conversion of these layers into tubes. he described the first appearance of the vertebrate embryo, as it may be seen in the globular yelk of the fertilised egg, as an oval disk which first divides into two layers. from the upper or animal layer are developed all the organs which accomplish the phenomena of animal life--the functions of sensation and motion, and the covering of the body. from the lower or vegetative layer come the organs which effect the vegetative life of the organism--nutrition, digestion, blood-formation, respiration, secretion, reproduction, etc. each of these original layers divides, according to baer, into two thinner and superimposed layers or plates. he calls the two plates of the animal layer, the skin-stratum and muscle-stratum. from the upper of these plates, the skin-stratum, the external skin, or outer covering of the body, the central nervous system, and the sense-organs, are formed. from the lower, or muscle-stratum, the muscles, or fleshy parts and the bony skeleton--in a word, the motor organs--are evolved. in the same way, baer said, the lower or vegetative layer splits into two plates, which he calls the vascular-stratum and the mucous-stratum. from the outer of the two (the vascular) the heart, blood-vessels, spleen, and the other vascular glands, the kidneys, and sexual glands, are formed. from the fourth or mucous layer, in fine, we get the internal and digestive lining of the alimentary canal and all its dependencies, the liver, lungs, salivary glands, etc. baer had, in the main, correctly judged the significance of these four secondary embryonic layers, and he followed the conversion of them into the tube-shaped primitive organs with great perspicacity. he first solved the difficult problem of the transformation of this four-fold, flat, leaf-shaped, embryonic disk into the complete vertebrate body, through the conversion of the layers or plates into tubes. the flat leaves bend themselves in obedience to certain laws of growth; the borders of the curling plates approach nearer and nearer; until at last they come into actual contact. thus out of the flat gut-plate is formed a hollow gut-tube, out of the flat spinal plate a hollow nerve-tube, from the skin-plate a skin-tube, and so on. among the many great services which baer rendered to embryology, especially vertebrate embryology, we must not forget his discovery of the human ovum. earlier scientists had, as a rule, of course, assumed that man developed out of an egg, like the other animals. in fact, the preformation theory held that the germs of the whole of humanity were stored already in eve's ova. but the real ovum escaped detection until the year . this ovum is extremely small, being a tiny round vesicle about the / of an inch in diameter; it can be seen under very favourable circumstances with the naked eye as a tiny particle, but is otherwise quite invisible. this particle is formed in the ovary inside a much larger globule, which takes the name of the graafian follicle, from its discoverer, graaf, and had previously been regarded as the true ovum. however, in baer proved that it was not the real ovum, which is much smaller, and is contained within the follicle. (compare the end of chapter . .) baer was also the first to observe what is known as the segmentation sphere of the vertebrate; that is to say, the round vesicle which first develops out of the impregnated ovum, and the thin wall of which is made up of a single layer of regular, polygonal (many-cornered) cells (see the illustration in chapter . ). another discovery of his that was of great importance in constructing the vertebrate stem and the characteristic organisation of this extensive group (to which man belongs) was the detection of the axial rod, or the chorda dorsalis. there is a long, round, cylindrical rod of cartilage which runs down the longer axis of the vertebrate embryo; it appears at an early stage, and is the first sketch of the spinal column, the solid skeletal axis of the vertebrate. in the lowest of the vertebrates, the amphioxus, the internal skeleton consists only of this cord throughout life. but even in the case of man and all the higher vertebrates it is round this cord that the spinal column and the brain are afterwards formed. however, important as these and many other discoveries of baer's were in vertebrate embryology, his researches were even more influential, from the circumstance that he was the first to employ the comparative method in studying the development of the animal frame. baer occupied himself chiefly with the embryology of vertebrates (especially the birds and fishes). but he by no means confined his attention to these, gradually taking the various groups of the invertebrates into his sphere of study. as the general result of his comparative embryological research, baer distinguished four different modes of development and four corresponding groups in the animal world. these chief groups or types are: , the vertebrata; , the articulata; , the mollusca; and , all the lower groups which were then wrongly comprehended under the general name of the radiata. georges cuvier had been the first to formulate this distinction, in . he showed that these groups present specific differences in their whole internal structure, and the connection and disposal of their systems of organs; and that, on the other hand, all the animals of the same type--say, the vertebrates--essentially agreed in their inner structure, in spite of the greatest superficial differences. but baer proved that these four groups are also quite differently developed from the ovum; and that the series of embryonic forms is the same throughout for animals of the same type, but different in the case of other animals. up to that time the chief aim in the classification of the animal kingdom was to arrange all the animals from lowest to highest, from the infusorium to man, in one long and continuous series. the erroneous idea prevailed nearly everywhere that there was one uninterrupted chain of evolution from the lowest animal to the highest. cuvier and baer proved that this view was false, and that we must distinguish four totally different types of animals, on the ground of anatomic structure and embryonic development. baer's epoch-making works aroused an extraordinary and widespread interest in embryological research. immediately afterwards we find a great number of observers at work in the newly opened field, enlarging it in a very short time with great energy by their various discoveries in detail. next to baer's comes the admirable work of heinrich rathke, of konigsberg (died ); he made an extensive study of the embryology, not only of the invertebrates (crustaceans, insects, molluscs), but also, and particularly, of the vertebrates (fishes, tortoises, serpents, crocodiles, etc.). we owe the first comprehensive studies of mammal embryology to the careful research of wilhelm bischoff, of munich; his embryology of the rabbit ( ), the dog ( ), the guinea-pig ( ), and the doe ( ), still form classical studies. about the same time a great impetus was given to the embryology of the invertebrates. the way was opened through this obscure province by the studies of the famous berlin zoologist, johannes muller, on the echinoderms. he was followed by albert kolliker, of wurtzburg, writing on the cuttlefish (or the cephalopods), siebold and huxley on worms and zoophytes, fritz muller (desterro) on the crustacea, weismann on insects, and so on. the number of workers in this field has greatly increased of late, and a quantity of new and astonishing discoveries have been made. one notices, in several of these recent works on embryology, that their authors are too little acquainted with comparative anatomy and classification. palaeontology is, unfortunately, altogether neglected by many of these new workers, although this interesting science furnishes most important facts for phylogeny, and thus often proves of very great service in ontogeny. a very important advance was made in our science in , when the cellular theory was established, and a new field of inquiry bearing on embryology was suddenly opened. when the famous botanist, m. schleiden, of jena, showed in , with the aid of the microscope, that every plant was made up of innumerable elementary parts, which we call cells, a pupil of johannes muller at berlin, theodor schwann, applied the discovery at once to the animal organism. he showed that in the animal body as well, when we examine its tissues in the microscope, we find these cells everywhere to be the elementary units. all the different tissues of the organism, especially the very dissimilar tissues of the nerves, muscles, bones, external skin, mucous lining, etc., are originally formed out of cells; and this is also true of all the tissues of the plant. these cells are separate living beings; they are the citizens of the state which the entire multicellular organism seems to be. this important discovery was bound to be of service to embryology, as it raised a number of new questions. what is the relation of the cells to the germinal layers? are the germinal layers composed of cells, and what is their relation to the cells of the tissues that form later? how does the ovum stand in the cellular theory? is the ovum itself a cell, or is it composed of cells? these important questions were now imposed on the embryologist by the cellular theory. the most notable effort to answer these questions--which were attacked on all sides by different students--is contained in the famous work, inquiries into the development of the vertebrates (not translated) of robert remak, of berlin ( ). this gifted scientist succeeded in mastering, by a complete reform of the science, the great difficulties which the cellular theory had at first put in the way of embryology. a berlin anatomist, carl boguslaus reichert, had already attempted to explain the origin of the tissues. but this attempt was bound to miscarry, since its not very clear-headed author lacked a sound acquaintance with embryology and the cell theory, and even with the structure and development of the tissue in particular. remak at length brought order into the dreadful confusion that reichert had caused; he gave a perfectly simple explanation of the origin of the tissues. in his opinion the animal ovum is always a simple cell: the germinal layers which develop out of it are always composed of cells; and these cells that constitute the germinal layers arise simply from the continuous and repeated cleaving (segmentation) of the original solitary cell. it first divides into two and then into four cells; out of these four cells are born eight, then sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. thus, in the embryonic development of every animal and plant there is formed first of all out of the simple egg cell, by a repeated subdivision, a cluster of cells, as kolliker had already stated in connection with the cephalopods in . the cells of this group spread themselves out flat and form leaves or plates; each of these leaves is formed exclusively out of cells. the cells of different layers assume different shapes, increase, and differentiate; and in the end there is a further cleavage (differentiation) and division of work of the cells within the layers, and from these all the different tissues of the body proceed. these are the simple foundations of histogeny, or the science that treats of the development of the tissues (hista), as it was established by remak and kolliker. remak, in determining more closely the part which the different germinal layers play in the formation of the various tissues and organs, and in applying the theory of evolution to the cells and the tissues they compose, raised the theory of germinal layers, at least as far as it regards the vertebrates, to a high degree of perfection. remak showed that three layers are formed out of the two germinal layers which compose the first simple leaf-shaped structure of the vertebrate body (or the "germinal disk"), as the lower layer splits into two plates. these three layers have a very definite relation to the various tissues. first of all, the cells which form the outer skin of the body (the epidermis), with its various dependencies (hairs, nails, etc.)--that is to say, the entire outer envelope of the body--are developed out of the outer or upper layer; but there are also developed in a curious way out of the same layer the cells which form the central nervous system, the brain and the spinal cord. in the second place, the inner or lower germinal layer gives rise only to the cells which form the epithelium (the whole inner lining) of the alimentary canal and all that depends on it (the lungs, liver, pancreas, etc.), or the tissues that receive and prepare the nourishment of the body. finally, the middle layer gives rise to all the other tissues of the body, the muscles, blood, bones, cartilage, etc. remak further proved that this middle layer, which he calls "the motor-germinative layer," proceeds to subdivide into two secondary layers. thus we find once more the four layers which baer had indicated. remak calls the outer secondary leaf of the middle layer (baer's "muscular layer") the "skin layer" (it would be better to say, skin-fibre layer); it forms the outer wall of the body (the true skin, the muscles, etc.). to the inner secondary leaf (baer's "vascular layer") he gave the name of the "alimentary-fibre layer"; this forms the outer envelope of the alimentary canal, with the mesentery, the heart, the blood-vessels, etc. on this firm foundation provided by remak for histogeny, or the science of the formation of the tissues, our knowledge has been gradually built up and enlarged in detail. there have been several attempts to restrict and even destroy remak's principles. the two anatomists, reichert (of berlin) and wilhelm his (of leipzic), especially, have endeavoured in their works to introduce a new conception of the embryonic development of the vertebrate, according to which the two primary germinal layers would not be the sole sources of formation. but these efforts were so seriously marred by ignorance of comparative anatomy, an imperfect acquaintance with ontogenesis, and a complete neglect of phylogenesis, that they could not have more than a passing success. we can only explain how these curious attacks of reichert and his came to be regarded for a time as advances by the general lack of discrimination and of grasp of the true object of embryology. wilhelm his published, in , his extensive researches into the earliest form of the vertebrate body,* (* none of his's works have been translated into english.) one of the curiosities of embryological literature. the author imagines that he can build a "mechanical theory of embryonic development" by merely giving an exact description of the embryology of the chick, without any regard to comparative anatomy and phylogeny, and thus falls into an error that is almost without parallel in the history of biological literature. as the final result of his laborious investigations, his tells us "that a comparatively simple law of growth is the one essential thing in the first development. every formation, whether it consist in cleavage of layers, or folding, or complete division, is a consequence of this fundamental law." unfortunately, he does not explain what this "law of growth" is; just as other opponents of the theory of selection, who would put in its place a great "law of evolution," omit to tell us anything about the nature of this. nevertheless, it is quite clear from his's works that he imagines constructive nature to be a sort of skilful tailor. the ingenious operator succeeds in bringing into existence, by "evolution," all the various forms of living things by cutting up in different ways the germinal layers, bending and folding, tugging and splitting, and so on. his's embryological theories excited a good deal of interest at the time of publication, and have evoked a fair amount of literature in the last few decades. he professed to explain the most complicated parts of organic construction (such as the development of the brain) in the simplest way on mechanical principles, and to derive them immediately from simple physical processes (such as unequal distribution of strain in an elastic plate). it is quite true that a mechanical or monistic explanation (or a reduction of natural processes) is the ideal of modern science, and this ideal would be realised if we could succeed in expressing these formative processes in mathematical formulae. his has, therefore, inserted plenty of numbers and measurements in his embryological works, and given them an air of "exact" scholarship by putting in a quantity of mathematical tables. unfortunately, they are of no value, and do not help us in the least in forming an "exact" acquaintance with the embryonic phenomena. indeed, they wander from the true path altogether by neglecting the phylogenetic method; this, he thinks, is "a mere by-path," and is "not necessary at all for the explanation of the facts of embryology," which are the direct consequence of physiological principles. what his takes to be a simple physical process--for instance, the folding of the germinal layers (in the formation of the medullary tube, alimentary tube, etc.)--is, as a matter of fact, the direct result of the growth of the various cells which form those organic structures; but these growth-motions have themselves been transmitted by heredity from parents and ancestors, and are only the hereditary repetition of countless phylogenetic changes which have taken place for thousands of years in the race-history of the said ancestors. each of these historical changes was, of course, originally due to adaptation; it was, in other words, physiological, and reducible to mechanical causes. but we have, naturally, no means of observing them now. it is only by the hypotheses of the science of evolution that we can form an approximate idea of the organic links in this historic chain. all the best recent research in animal embryology has led to the confirmation and development of baer and remak's theory of the germinal layers. one of the most important advances in this direction of late was the discovery that the two primary layers out of which is built the body of all vertebrates (including man) are also present in all the invertebrates, with the sole exception of the lowest group, the unicellular protozoa. huxley had detected them in the medusa in . he showed that the two layers of cells from which the body of this zoophyte is developed correspond, both morphologically and physiologically, to the two original germinal layers of the vertebrate. the outer layer, from which come the external skin and the muscles, was then called by allman ( ) the "ectoderm" (outer layer, or skin); the inner layer, which forms the alimentary and reproductory organs, was called the "entoderm" (= inner layer). in and the following years the discovery of the germinal layers was extended to other groups of the invertebrates. in particular, the indefatigable russian zoologist, kowalevsky, found them in all the most diverse sections of the invertebrates--the worms, tunicates, echinoderms, molluscs, articulates, etc. in my monograph on the sponges ( ) i proved that these two primary germinal layers are also found in that group, and that they may be traced from it right up to man, through all the various classes, in identical form. this "homology of the two primary germinal layers" extends through the whole of the metazoa, or tissue-forming animals; that is to say, through the whole animal kingdom, with the one exception of its lowest section, the unicellular beings, or protozoa. these lowly organised animals do not form germinal layers, and therefore do not succeed in forming true tissue. their whole body consists of a single cell (as is the case with the amoebae and infusoria), or of a loose aggregation of only slightly differentiated cells, though it may not even reach the full structure of a single cell (as with the monera). but in all other animals the ovum first grows into two primary layers, the outer or animal layer (the ectoderm, epiblast, or ectoblast), and the inner or vegetal layer (the entoderm, hypoblast, or endoblast); and from these the tissues and organs are formed. the first and oldest organ of all these metazoa is the primitive gut (or progaster) and its opening, the primitive mouth (prostoma). the typical embryonic form of the metazoa, as it is presented for a time by this simple structure of the two-layered body, is called the gastrula; it is to be conceived as the hereditary reproduction of some primitive common ancestor of the metazoa, which we call the gastraea. this applies to the sponges and other zoophyta, and to the worms, the mollusca, echinoderma, articulata, and vertebrata. all these animals may be comprised under the general heading of "gut animals," or metazoa, in contradistinction to the gutless protozoa. i have pointed out in my study of the gastraea theory [not translated] ( ) the important consequences of this conception in the morphology and classification of the animal world. i also divided the realm of metazoa into two great groups, the lower and higher metazoa. in the first are comprised the coelenterata (also called zoophytes, or plant-animals). in the lower forms of this group the body consists throughout life merely of the primary germinal layers, with the cells sometimes more and sometimes less differentiated. but with the higher forms of the coelentarata (the corals, higher medusae, ctenophorae, and platodes) a middle layer, or mesoderm, often of considerable size, is developed between the other two layers; but blood and an internal cavity are still lacking. to the second great group of the metazoa i gave the name of the coelomaria, or bilaterata (or the bilateral higher forms). they all have a cavity within the body (coeloma), and most of them have blood and blood-vessels. in this are comprised the six higher stems of the animal kingdom, the annulata and their descendants, the mollusca, echinoderma, articulata, tunicata, and vertebrata. in all these bilateral organisms the two-sided body is formed out of four secondary germinal layers, of which the inner two construct the wall of the alimentary canal, and the outer two the wall of the body. between the two pairs of layers lies the cavity (coeloma). although i laid special stress on the great morphological importance of this cavity in my study of the gastraea theory, and endeavoured to prove the significance of the four secondary germinal layers in the organisation of the coelomaria, i was unable to deal satisfactorily with the difficult question of the mode of their origin. this was done eight years afterwards by the brothers oscar and richard hertwig in their careful and extensive comparative studies. in their masterly coelum theory: an attempt to explain the middle germinal layer [not translated] ( ) they showed that in most of the metazoa, especially in all the vertebrates, the body-cavity arises in the same way, by the outgrowth of two sacs from the inner layer. these two coelom-pouches proceed from the rudimentary mouth of the gastrula, between the two primary layers. the inner plate of the two-layered coelom-pouch (the visceral layer) joins itself to the entoderm; the outer plate (parietal layer) unites with the ectoderm. thus are formed the double-layered gut-wall within and the double-layered body-wall without; and between the two is formed the cavity of the coelom, by the blending of the right and left coelom-sacs. we shall see this more fully in chapter . . the many new points of view and fresh ideas suggested by my gastraea theory and hertwig's coelom theory led to the publication of a number of writings on the theory of germinal layers. most of them set out to oppose it at first, but in the end the majority supported it. of late years both theories are accepted in their essential features by nearly every competent man of science, and light and order have been introduced into this once dark and contradictory field of research. a further cause of congratulation for this solution of the great embryological controversy is that it brought with it a recognition of the need for phylogenetic study and explanation. interest and practice in embryological research have been remarkably stimulated during the past thirty years by this appreciation of phylogenetic methods. hundreds of assiduous and able observers are now engaged in the development of comparative embryology and its establishment on a basis of evolution, whereas they numbered only a few dozen not many decades ago. it would take too long to enumerate even the most important of the countless valuable works which have enriched embryological literature since that time. references to them will be found in the latest manuals of embryology of kolliker, balfour, hertwig, kollman, korschelt, and heider. kolliker's entwickelungsgeschichte des menschen und der hoherer thiere, the first edition of which appeared forty-two years ago, had the rare merit at that time of gathering into presentable form the scattered attainments of the science, and expounding them in some sort of unity on the basis of the cellular theory and the theory of germinal layers. unfortunately, the distinguished wurtzburg anatomist, to whom comparative anatomy, histology, and ontogeny owe so much, is opposed to the theory of descent generally and to darwinism in particular. all the other manuals i have mentioned take a decided stand on evolution. francis balfour has carefully collected and presented with discrimination, in his manual of comparative embryology ( ), the very scattered and extensive literature of the subject; he has also widened the basis of the gastraea theory by a comparative description of the rise of the organs from the germinal layers in all the chief groups of the animal kingdom, and has given a most thorough empirical support to the principles i have formulated. a comparison of his work with the excellent text-book of the embryology of the vertebrates ( ) [translation ] of korschelt and heider shows what astonishing progress has been made in the science in the course of ten years. i would especially recommend the manuals of julius kollmann and oscar hertwig to those readers who are stimulated to further study by these chapters on human embryology. kollmann's work is commendable for its clear treatment of the subject and very fine original illustrations; its author adheres firmly to the biogenetic law, and uses it throughout with considerable profit. that is not the case in oscar hertwig's recent text-book of the embryology of man and the mammals [translations and ] (seventh edition ). this able anatomist has of late often been quoted as an opponent of the biogenetic law, although he himself had demonstrated its great value thirty years ago. his recent vacillation is partly due to the timidity which our "exact" scientists have with regard to hypotheses; though it is impossible to make any headway in the explanation of facts without them. however, the purely descriptive part of embryology in hertwig's text-book is very thorough and reliable. a new branch of embryological research has been studied very assiduously in the last decade of the nineteenth century--namely, "experimental embryology." the great importance which has been attached to the application of physical experiments to the living organism for the last hundred years, and the valuable results that it has given to physiology in the study of the vital phenomena, have led to its extension to embryology. i was the first to make experiments of this kind during a stay of four months on the canary island, lanzerote, in . i there made a thorough investigation of the almost unknown embryology of the siphonophorae. i cut a number of the embryos of these animals (which develop freely in the water, and pass through a very curious transformation), at an early stage, into several pieces, and found that a fresh organism (more or less complete, according to the size of the piece) was developed from each particle. more recently some of my pupils have made similar experiments with the embryos of vertebrates (especially the frog) and some of the invertebrates. wilhelm roux, in particular, has made extensive experiments, and based on them a special "mechanical embryology," which has given rise to a good deal of discussion and controversy. roux has published a special journal for these subjects since , the archiv fur entwickelungsmechanik. the contributions to it are very varied in value. many of them are valuable papers on the physiology and pathology of the embryo. pathological experiments--the placing of the embryo in abnormal conditions--have yielded many interesting results; just as the physiology of the normal body has for a long time derived assistance from the pathology of the diseased organism. other of these mechanical-embryological articles return to the erroneous methods of his, and are only misleading. this must be said of the many contributions of mechanical embryology which take up a position of hostility to the theory of descent and its chief embryological foundation--the biogenetic law. this law, however, when rightly understood, is not opposed to, but is the best and most solid support of, a sound mechanical embryology. impartial reflection and a due attention to paleontology and comparative anatomy should convince these one-sided mechanicists that the facts they have discovered--and, indeed, the whole embryological process--cannot be fully understood without the theory of descent and the biogenetic law. chapter . . the older phylogeny. the embryology of man and the animals, the history of which we have reviewed in the last two chapters, was mainly a descriptive science forty years ago. the earlier investigations in this province were chiefly directed to the discovery, by careful observation, of the wonderful facts of the embryonic development of the animal body from the ovum. forty years ago no one dared attack the question of the causes of these phenomena. for fully a century, from the year , when wolff's solid theoria generationis appeared, until , when darwin published his famous origin of species, the real causes of the embryonic processes were quite unknown. no one thought of seeking the agencies that effected this marvellous succession of structures. the task was thought to be so difficult as almost to pass beyond the limits of human thought. it was reserved for charles darwin to initiate us into the knowledge of these causes. this compels us to recognise in this great genius, who wrought a complete revolution in the whole field of biology, a founder at the same time of a new period in embryology. it is true that darwin occupied himself very little with direct embryological research, and even in his chief work he only touches incidentally on the embryonic phenomena; but by his reform of the theory of descent and the founding of the theory of selection he has given us the means of attaining to a real knowledge of the causes of embryonic formation. that is, in my opinion, the chief feature in darwin's incalculable influence on the whole science of evolution. when we turn our attention to this latest period of embryological research, we pass into the second division of organic evolution--stem-evolution, or phylogeny. i have already indicated in chapter . the important and intimate causal connection between these two sections of the science of evolution--between the evolution of the individual and that of his ancestors. we have formulated this connection in the biogenetic law; the shorter evolution, that of the individual, or ontogenesis, is a rapid and summary repetition, a condensed recapitulation, of the larger evolution, or that of the species. in this principle we express all the essential points relating to the causes of evolution; and we shall seek throughout this work to confirm this principle and lend it the support of facts. when we look to its causal significance, perhaps it would be better to formulate the biogenetic law thus: "the evolution of the species and the stem (phylon) shows us, in the physiological functions of heredity and adaptation, the conditioning causes on which the evolution of the individual depends"; or, more briefly: "phylogenesis is the mechanical cause of ontogenesis." but before we examine the great achievement by which darwin revealed the causes of evolution to us, we must glance at the efforts of earlier scientists to attain this object. our historical inquiry into these will be even shorter than that into the work done in the field of ontogeny. we have very few names to consider here. at the head of them we find the great french naturalist, jean lamarck, who first established evolution as a scientific theory in . even before his time, however, the chief philosopher, kant, and the chief poet, goethe, of germany had occupied themselves with the subject. but their efforts passed almost without recognition in the eighteenth century. a "philosophy of nature" did not arise until the beginning of the nineteenth century. in the whole of the time before this no one had ventured to raise seriously the question of the origin of species, which is the culminating point of phylogeny. on all sides it was regarded as an insoluble enigma. the whole science of the evolution of man and the other animals is intimately connected with the question of the nature of species, or with the problem of the origin of the various animals which we group together under the name of species. thus the definition of the species becomes important. it is well known that this definition was given by linne, who, in his famous systema naturae ( ), was the first to classify and name the various groups of animals and plants, and drew up an orderly scheme of the species then known. since that time "species" has been the most important and indispensable idea in descriptive natural history, in zoological and botanical classification; although there have been endless controversies as to its real meaning. what, then, is this "organic species"? linne himself appealed directly to the mosaic narrative; he believed that, as it is stated in genesis, one pair of each species of animals and plants was created in the beginning, and that all the individuals of each species are the descendants of these created couples. as for the hermaphrodites (organisms that have male and female organs in one being), he thought it sufficed to assume the creation of one sole individual, since this would be fully competent to propagate its species. further developing these mystic ideas, linne went on to borrow from genesis the account of the deluge and of noah's ark as a ground for a science of the geographical and topographical distribution of organisms. he accepted the story that all the plants, animals, and men on the earth were swept away in a universal deluge, except the couples preserved with noah in the ark, and ultimately landed on mount ararat. this mountain seemed to linne particularly suitable for the landing, as it reaches a height of more than , feet, and thus provides in its higher zones the several climates demanded by the various species of animals and plants: the animals that were accustomed to a cold climate could remain at the summit; those used to a warm climate could descend to the foot; and those requiring a temperate climate could remain half-way down. from this point the re-population of the earth with animals and plants could proceed. it was impossible to have any scientific notion of the method of evolution in linne's time, as one of the chief sources of information, paleontology, was still wholly unknown. this science of the fossil remains of extinct animals and plants is very closely bound up with the whole question of evolution. it is impossible to explain the origin of living organisms without appealing to it. but this science did not rise until a much later date. the real founder of scientific paleontology was georges cuvier, the most distinguished zoologist who, after linne, worked at the classification of the animal world, and effected a complete revolution in systematic zoology at the beginning of the nineteenth century. in regard to the nature of the species he associated himself with linne and the mosaic story of creation, though this was more difficult for him with his acquaintance with fossil remains. he clearly showed that a number of quite different animal populations have lived on the earth; and he claimed that we must distinguish a number of stages in the history of our planet, each of which was characterised by a special population of animals and plants. these successive populations were, he said, quite independent of each other, and therefore the supernatural creative act, which was demanded as the origin of the animals and plants by the dominant creed, must have been repeated several times. in this way a whole series of different creative periods must have succeeded each other; and in connection with these he had to assume that stupendous revolutions or cataclysms--something like the legendary deluge--must have taken place repeatedly. cuvier was all the more interested in these catastrophes or cataclysms as geology was just beginning to assert itself, and great progress was being made in our knowledge of the structure and formation of the earth's crust. the various strata of the crust were being carefully examined, especially by the famous geologist werner and his school, and the fossils found in them were being classified; and these researches also seemed to point to a variety of creative periods. in each period the earth's crust, composed of the various strata, seemed to be differently constituted, just like the population of animals and plants that then lived on it. cuvier combined this notion with the results of his own paleontological and zoological research; and in his effort to get a consistent view of the whole process of the earth's history he came to form the theory which is known as "the catastrophic theory," or the theory of terrestrial revolutions. according to this theory, there have been a series of mighty cataclysms on the earth, and these have suddenly destroyed the whole animal and plant population then living on it; after each cataclysm there was a fresh creation of living things throughout the earth. as this creation could not be explained by natural laws, it was necessary to appeal to an intervention on the part of the creator. this catastrophic theory, which cuvier described in a special work, was soon generally accepted, and retained its position in biology for half a century. however, cuvier's theory was completely overthrown sixty years ago by the geologists, led by charles lyell, the most distinguished worker in this field of science. lyell proved in his famous principles of geology ( ) that the theory was false, in so far as it concerned the crust of the earth; that it was totally unnecessary to bring in supernatural agencies or general catastrophes in order to explain the structure and formation of the mountains; and that we can explain them by the familiar agencies which are at work to-day in altering and reconstructing the surface of the earth. these causes are--the action of the atmosphere and water in its various forms (snow, ice, fog, rain, the wear of the river, and the stormy ocean), and the volcanic action which is exerted by the molten central mass. lyell convincingly proved that these natural causes are quite adequate to explain every feature in the build and formation of the crust. hence cuvier's theory of cataclysms was very soon driven out of the province of geology, though it remained for another thirty years in undisputed authority in biology. all the zoologists and botanists who gave any thought to the question of the origin of organisms adhered to cuvier's erroneous idea of revolutions and new creations. in order to illustrate the complete stagnancy of biology from to on the question of the origin of the various species of animals and plants, i may say, from my own experience, that during the whole of my university studies i never heard a single word said about this most important problem of the science. i was fortunate enough at that time ( to ) to have the most distinguished masters for every branch of biological science. not one of them ever mentioned this question of the origin of species. not a word was ever said about the earlier efforts to understand the formation of living things, nor about lamarck's philosophie zoologique which had made a fresh attack on the problem in . hence it is easy to understand the enormous opposition that darwin encountered when he took up the question for the first time. his views seemed to float in the air, without a single previous effort to support them. the whole question of the formation of living things was considered by biologists, until , as pertaining to the province of religion and transcendentalism; even in speculative philosophy, in which the question had been approached from various sides, no one had ventured to give it serious treatment. this was due to the dualistic system of immanuel kant, who taught a natural system of evolution as far as the inorganic world was concerned; but, on the whole, adopted a supernaturalist system as regards the origin of living things. he even went so far as to say: "it is quite certain that we cannot even satisfactorily understand, much less explain, the nature of an organism and its internal forces on purely mechanical principles; it is so certain, indeed, that we may confidently say: 'it is absurd for a man to imagine even that some day a newton will arise who will explain the origin of a single blade of grass by natural laws not controlled by design'--such a hope is entirely forbidden us." in these words kant definitely adopts the dualistic and teleological point of view for biological science. nevertheless, kant deserted this point of view at times, particularly in several remarkable passages which i have dealt with at length in my natural history of creation (chapter ), where he expresses himself in the opposite, or monistic, sense. in fact, these passages would justify one, as i showed, in claiming his support for the theory of evolution. however, these monistic passages are only stray gleams of light; as a rule, kant adheres in biology to the obscure dualistic ideas, according to which the forces at work in inorganic nature are quite different from those of the organic world. this dualistic system prevails in academic philosophy to-day--most of our philosophers still regarding these two provinces as totally distinct. they put, on the one side, the inorganic or "lifeless" world, in which there are at work only mechanical laws, acting necessarily and without design; and, on the other, the province of organic nature, in which none of the phenomena can be properly understood, either as regards their inner nature or their origin, except in the light of preconceived design, carried out by final or purposive causes. the prevalence of this unfortunate dualistic prejudice prevented the problem of the origin of species, and the connected question of the origin of man, from being regarded by the bulk of people as a scientific question at all until . nevertheless, a few distinguished students, free from the current prejudice, began, at the commencement of the nineteenth century, to make a serious attack on the problem. the merit of this attaches particularly to what is known as "the older school of natural philosophy," which has been so much misrepresented, and which included jean lamarck, buffon, geoffroy st. hilaire, and blainville in france; wolfgang goethe, reinhold treviranus, schelling, and lorentz oken in germany [and erasmus darwin in england]. the gifted natural philosopher who treated this difficult question with the greatest sagacity and comprehensiveness was jean lamarck. he was born at bazentin, in picardy, on august st, ; he was the son of a clergyman, and was destined for the church. but he turned to seek glory in the army, and eventually devoted himself to science. his philosophie zoologique was the first scientific attempt to sketch the real course of the origin of species, the first "natural history of creation" of plants, animals, and men. but, as in the case of wolff's book, this remarkably able work had no influence whatever; neither one nor the other could obtain any recognition from their prejudiced contemporaries. no man of science was stimulated to take an interest in the work, and to develop the germs it contained of the most important biological truths. the most distinguished botanists and zoologists entirely rejected it, and did not even deign to reply to it. cuvier, who lived and worked in the same city, has not thought fit to devote a single syllable to this great achievement in his memoir on progress in the sciences, in which the pettiest observations found a place. in short, lamarck's philosophie zoologique shared the fate of wolff's theory of development, and was for half a century ignored and neglected. the german scientists, especially oken and goethe, who were occupied with similar speculations at the same time, seem to have known nothing about lamarck's work. if they had known it, they would have been greatly helped by it, and might have carried the theory of evolution much farther than they found it possible to do. to give an idea of the great importance of the philosophie zoologique, i will briefly explain lamarck's leading thought. he held that there was no essential difference between living and lifeless beings. nature is one united and connected system of phenomena; and the forces which fashion the lifeless bodies are the only ones at work in the kingdom of living things. we have, therefore, to use the same method of investigation and explanation in both provinces. life is only a physical phenomenon. all the plants and animals, with man at their head, are to be explained, in structure and life, by mechanical or efficient causes, without any appeal to final causes, just as in the case of minerals and other inorganic bodies. this applies equally to the origin of the various species. we must not assume any original creation, or repeated creations (as in cuvier's theory), to explain this, but a natural, continuous, and necessary evolution. the whole evolutionary process has been uninterrupted. all the different kinds of animals and plants which we see to-day, or that have ever lived, have descended in a natural way from earlier and different species; all come from one common stock, or from a few common ancestors. these remote ancestors must have been quite simple organisms of the lowest type, arising by spontaneous generation from inorganic matter. the succeeding species have been constantly modified by adaptation to their varying environment (especially by use and habit), and have transmitted their modifications to their successors by heredity. lamarck was the first to formulate as a scientific theory the natural origin of living things, including man, and to push the theory to its extreme conclusions--the rise of the earliest organisms by spontaneous generation (or abiogenesis) and the descent of man from the nearest related mammal, the ape. he sought to explain this last point, which is of especial interest to us here, by the same agencies which he found at work in the natural origin of the plant and animal species. he considered use and habit (adaptation) on the one hand, and heredity on the other, to be the chief of these agencies. the most important modifications of the organs of plants and animals are due, in his opinion, to the function of these very organs, or to the use or disuse of them. to give a few examples, the woodpecker and the humming-bird have got their peculiarly long tongues from the habit of extracting their food with their tongues from deep and narrow folds or canals; the frog has developed the web between his toes by his own swimming; the giraffe has lengthened his neck by stretching up to the higher branches of trees, and so on. it is quite certain that this use or disuse of organs is a most important factor in organic development, but it is not sufficient to explain the origin of species. to adaptation we must add heredity as the second and not less important agency, as lamarck perfectly recognised. he said that the modification of the organs in any one individual by use or disuse was slight, but that it was increased by accumulation in passing by heredity from generation to generation. but he missed altogether the principle which darwin afterwards found to be the chief factor in the theory of transformation--namely, the principle of natural selection in the struggle for existence. it was partly owing to his failure to detect this supremely important element, and partly to the poor condition of all biological science at the time, that lamarck did not succeed in establishing more firmly his theory of the common descent of man and the other animals. independently of lamarck, the older german school of natural philosophy, especially reinhold treviranus, in his biologie ( ), and lorentz oken, in his naturphilosophie ( ), turned its attention to the problem of evolution about the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. i have described its work in my history of creation (chapter ). here i can only deal with the brilliant genius whose evolutionary ideas are of special interest--the greatest of german poets, wolfgang goethe. with his keen eye for the beauties of nature, and his profound insight into its life, goethe was early attracted to the study of various natural sciences. it was the favourite occupation of his leisure hours throughout life. he gave particular and protracted attention to the theory of colours. but the most valuable of his scientific studies are those which relate to that "living, glorious, precious thing," the organism. he made profound research into the science of structures or morphology (morphae = forms). here, with the aid of comparative anatomy, he obtained the most brilliant results, and went far in advance of his time. i may mention, in particular, his vertebral theory of the skull, his discovery of the pineal gland in man, his system of the metamorphosis of plants, etc. these morphological studies led goethe on to research into the formation and modification of organic structures which we must count as the first germ of the science of evolution. he approaches so near to the theory of descent that we must regard him, after lamarck, as one of its earliest founders. it is true that he never formulated a complete scientific theory of evolution, but we find a number of remarkable suggestions of it in his splendid miscellaneous essays on morphology. some of them are really among the very basic ideas of the science of evolution. he says, for instance ( ): "when we compare plants and animals in their most rudimentary forms, it is almost impossible to distinguish between them. but we may say that the plants and animals, beginning with an almost inseparable closeness, gradually advance along two divergent lines, until the plant at last grows in the solid, enduring tree and the animal attains in man to the highest degree of mobility and freedom." that goethe was not merely speaking in a poetical, but in a literal genealogical, sense of this close affinity of organic forms is clear from other remarkable passages in which he treats of their variety in outward form and unity in internal structure. he believes that every living thing has arisen by the interaction of two opposing formative forces or impulses. the internal or "centripetal" force, the type or "impulse to specification," seeks to maintain the constancy of the specific forms in the succession of generations: this is heredity. the external or "centrifugal" force, the element of variation or "impulse to metamorphosis," is continually modifying the species by changing their environment: this is adaptation. in these significant conceptions goethe approaches very close to a recognition of the two great mechanical factors which we now assign as the chief causes of the formation of species. however, in order to appreciate goethe's views on morphology, one must associate his decidedly monistic conception of nature with his pantheistic philosophy. the warm and keen interest with which he followed, in his last years, the controversies of contemporary french scientists, and especially the struggle between cuvier and geoffroy st. hilaire (see chapter of the history of creation), is very characteristic. it is also necessary to be familiar with his style and general tenour of thought in order to appreciate rightly the many allusions to evolution found in his writings. otherwise, one is apt to make serious errors. he approached so close, at the end of the eighteenth century, to the principles of the science of evolution that he may well be described as the first forerunner of darwin, although he did not go so far as to formulate evolution as a scientific system, as lamarck did. chapter . . the modern science of evolution. we owe so much of the progress of scientific knowledge to darwin's origin of species that its influence is almost without parallel in the history of science. the literature of darwinism grows from day to day, not only on the side of academic zoology and botany, the sciences which were chiefly affected by darwin's theory, but in a far wider circle, so that we find darwinism discussed in popular literature with a vigour and zest that are given to no other scientific conception. this remarkable success is due chiefly to two circumstances. in the first place, all the sciences, and especially biology, have made astounding progress in the last half-century, and have furnished a very vast quantity of proofs of the theory of evolution. in striking contrast to the failure of lamarck and the older scientists to attract attention to their effort to explain the origin of living things and of man, we have this second and successful effort of darwin, which was able to gather to its support a large number of established facts. availing himself of the progress already made, he had very different scientific proofs to allege than lamarck, or st. hilaire, or goethe, or treviranus had had. but, in the second place, we must acknowledge that darwin had the special distinction of approaching the subject from an entirely new side, and of basing the theory of descent on a consistent system, which now goes by the name of darwinism. lamarck had unsuccessfully attempted to explain the modification of organisms that descend from a common form chiefly by the action of habit and the use of organs, though with the aid of heredity. but darwin's success was complete when he independently sought to give a mechanical explanation, on a quite new ground, of this modification of plant and animal structures by adaptation and heredity. he was impelled to his theory of selection on the following grounds. he compared the origin of the various kinds of animals and plants which we modify artificially--by the action of artificial selection in horticulture and among domestic animals--with the origin of the species of animals and plants in their natural state. he then found that the agencies which we employ in the modification of forms by artificial selection are also at work in nature. the chief of these agencies he held to be "the struggle for life." the gist of this peculiarly darwinian idea is given in this formula: the struggle for existence produces new species without premeditated design in the life of nature, in the same way that the will of man consciously selects new races in artificial conditions. the gardener or the farmer selects new forms as he wills for his own profit, by ingeniously using the agency of heredity and adaptation for the modification of structures; so, in the natural state, the struggle for life is always unconsciously modifying the various species of living things. this struggle for life, or competition of organisms in securing the means of subsistence, acts without any conscious design, but it is none the less effective in modifying structures. as heredity and adaptation enter into the closest reciprocal action under its influence, new structures, or alterations of structure, are produced; and these are purposive in the sense that they serve the organism when formed, but they were produced without any pre-conceived aim. this simple idea is the central thought of darwinism, or the theory of selection. darwin conceived this idea at an early date, and then, for more than twenty years, worked at the collection of empirical evidence in support of it before he published his theory. his grandfather, erasmus darwin, was an able scientist of the older school of natural philosophy, who published a number of natural-philosophic works about the end of the eighteenth century. the most important of them is his zoonomia, published in , in which he expounds views similar to those of goethe and lamarck, without really knowing anything of the work of these contemporaries. however, in the writings of the grandfather the plastic imagination rather outran the judgment, while in charles darwin the two were better balanced. darwin did not publish any account of his theory until , when alfred russel wallace, who had independently reached the same theory of selection, published his own work. in the following year appeared the origin of species, in which he develops it at length and supports it with a mass of proof. wallace had reached the same conclusion, but he had not so clear a perception as darwin of the effectiveness of natural selection in forming species, and did not develop the theory so fully. nevertheless, wallace's writings, especially those on mimicry, etc., and an admirable work on the geographical distribution of animals, contain many fine original contributions to the theory of selection. unfortunately, this gifted scientist has since devoted himself to spiritism.* (* darwin and wallace arrived at the theory quite independently. vide wallace's contributions to the theory of natural selection ( ) and darwinism ( ).) darwin's origin of species had an extraordinary influence, though not at first on the experts of the science. it took zoologists and botanists several years to recover from the astonishment into which they had been thrown through the revolutionary idea of the work. but its influence on the special sciences with which we zoologists and botanists are concerned has increased from year to year; it has introduced a most healthy fermentation in every branch of biology, especially in comparative anatomy and ontogeny, and in zoological and botanical classification. in this way it has brought about almost a revolution in the prevailing views. however, the point which chiefly concerns us here--the extension of the theory to man--was not touched at all in darwin's first work in . it was believed for several years that he had no thought of applying his principles to man, but that he shared the current idea of man holding a special position in the universe. not only ignorant laymen (especially several theologians), but also a number of men of science, said very naively that darwinism in itself was not to be opposed; that it was quite right to use it to explain the origin of the various species of plants and animals, but that it was totally inapplicable to man. in the meantime, however, it seemed to a good many thoughtful people, laymen as well as scientists, that this was wrong; that the descent of man from some other animal species, and immediately from some ape-like mammal, followed logically and necessarily from darwin's reformed theory of evolution. many of the acuter opponents of the theory saw at once the justice of this position, and, as this consequence was intolerable, they wanted to get rid of the whole theory. the first scientific application of the darwinian theory to man was made by huxley, the greatest zoologist in england. this able and learned scientist, to whom zoology owes much of its progress, published in a small work entitled evidence as to man's place in nature. in the extremely important and interesting lectures which made up this work he proved clearly that the descent of man from the ape followed necessarily from the theory of descent. if that theory is true, we are bound to conceive the animals which most closely resemble man as those from which humanity has been gradually evolved. about the same time carl vogt published a larger work on the same subject. we must also mention gustav jaeger and friedrich rolle among the zoologists who accepted and taught the theory of evolution immediately after the publication of darwin's book, and maintained that the descent of man from the lower animals logically followed from it. the latter published, in , a work on the origin and position of man. about the same time i attempted, in the second volume of my general morphology ( ), to apply the theory of evolution to the whole organic kingdom, including man.* (* huxley spoke of this "as one of the greatest scientific works ever published."--translator.) i endeavoured to sketch the probable ancestral trees of the various classes of the animal world, the protists, and the plants, as it seemed necessary to do on darwinian principles, and as we can actually do now with a high degree of confidence. if the theory of descent, which lamarck first clearly formulated and darwin thoroughly established, is true, we should be able to draw up a natural classification of plants and animals in the light of their genealogy, and to conceive the large and small divisions of the system as the branches and twigs of an ancestral tree. the eight genealogical tables which i inserted in the second volume of the general morphology are the first sketches of their kind. in chapter . , particularly, i trace the chief stages in man's ancestry, as far as it is possible to follow it through the vertebrate stem. i tried especially to determine, as well as one could at that time, the position of man in the classification of the mammals and its genealogical significance. i have greatly improved this attempt, and treated it in a more popular form, in chapters to of my history of creation ( ).* (* of which darwin said that the descent of man would probably never have been written if he had seen it earlier.--translator.) it was not until , twelve years after the appearance of the origin of species, that darwin published the famous work which made the much-contested application of his theory to man, and crowned the splendid structure of his system. this important work was the descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. in this darwin expressly drew the conclusion, with rigorous logic, that man also must have been developed out of lower species, and described the important part played by sexual selection in the elevation of man and the other higher animals. he showed that the careful selection which the sexes exercise on each other in regard to sexual relations and procreation, and the aesthetic feeling which the higher animals develop through this, are of the utmost importance in the progressive development of forms and the differentiation of the sexes. the males choosing the handsomest females in one class of animals, and the females choosing only the finest-looking males in another, the special features and the sexual characteristics are increasingly accentuated. in fact, some of the higher animals develop in this connection a finer taste and judgment than man himself. but, even as regards man, it is to this sexual selection that we owe the family-life, which is the chief foundation of civilisation. the rise of the human race is due for the most part to the advanced sexual selection which our ancestors exercised in choosing their mates. darwin accepted in the main the general outlines of man's ancestral tree, as i gave it in the general morphology and the history of creation, and admitted that his studies led him to the same conclusion. that he did not at once apply the theory to man in his first work was a commendable piece of discretion; such a sequel was bound to excite the strongest opposition to the whole theory. the first thing to do was to establish it as regards the animal and plant worlds. the subsequent extension to man was bound to be made sooner or later. it is important to understand this very clearly. if all living things come from a common root, man must be included in the general scheme of evolution. on the other hand, if the various species were separately created, man, too, must have been created, and not evolved. we have to choose between these two alternatives. this cannot be too frequently or too strongly emphasised. either all the species of animals and plants are of supernatural origin--created, not evolved--and in that case man also is the outcome of a creative act, as religion teaches, or the different species have been evolved from a few common, simple ancestral forms, and in that case man is the highest fruit of the tree of evolution. we may state this briefly in the following principle--the descent of man from the lower animals is a special deduction which inevitably follows from the general inductive law of the whole theory of evolution. in this principle we have a clear and plain statement of the matter. evolution is in reality nothing but a great induction, which we are compelled to make by the comparative study of the most important facts of morphology and physiology. but we must draw our conclusion according to the laws of induction, and not attempt to determine scientific truths by direct measurement and mathematical calculation. in the study of living things we can scarcely ever directly and fully, and with mathematical accuracy, determine the nature of phenomena, as is done in the simpler study of the inorganic world--in chemistry, physics, mineralogy, and astronomy. in the latter, especially, we can always use the simplest and absolutely safest method--that of mathematical determination. but in biology this is quite impossible for various reasons; one very obvious reason being that most of the facts of the science are very complicated and much too intricate to allow a direct mathematical analysis. the greater part of the phenomena that biology deals with are complicated historical processes, which are related to a far-reaching past, and as a rule can only be approximately estimated. hence we have to proceed by induction--that is to say, to draw general conclusions, stage by stage, and with proportionate confidence, from the accumulation of detailed observations. these inductive conclusions cannot command absolute confidence, like mathematical axioms; but they approach the truth, and gain increasing probability, in proportion as we extend the basis of observed facts on which we build. the importance of these inductive laws is not diminished from the circumstance that they are looked upon merely as temporary acquisitions of science, and may be improved to any extent in the progress of scientific knowledge. the same may be said of the attainments of many other sciences, such as geology or archeology. however much they may be altered and improved in detail in the course of time, these inductive truths may retain their substance unchanged. now, when we say that the theory of evolution in the sense of lamarck and darwin is an inductive law--in fact, the greatest of all biological inductions--we rely, in the first place, on the facts of paleontology. this science gives us some direct acquaintance with the historical phenomena of the changes of species. from the situations in which we find the fossils in the various strata of the earth we gather confidently, in the first place, that the living population of the earth has been gradually developed, as clearly as the earth's crust itself; and that, in the second place, several different populations have succeeded each other in the various geological periods. modern geology teaches that the formation of the earth has been gradual, and unbroken by any violent revolutions. and when we compare together the various kinds of animals and plants which succeed each other in the history of our planet, we find, in the first place, a constant and gradual increase in the number of species from the earliest times until the present day; and, in the second place, we notice that the forms in each great group of animals and plants also constantly improve as the ages advance. thus, of the vertebrates there are at first only the lower fishes; then come the higher fishes, and later the amphibia. still later appear the three higher classes of vertebrates--the reptiles, birds, and mammals, for the first time; only the lowest and least perfect forms of the mammals are found at first; and it is only at a very late period that placental mammals appear, and man belongs to the latest and youngest branch of these. thus perfection of form increases as well as variety from the earliest to the latest stage. that is a fact of the greatest importance. it can only be explained by the theory of evolution, with which it is in perfect harmony. if the different groups of plants and animals do really descend from each other, we must expect to find this increase in their number and perfection under the influence of natural selection, just as the succession of fossils actually discloses it to us. comparative anatomy furnishes a second series of facts which are of great importance for the forming of our inductive law. this branch of morphology compares the adult structures of living things, and seeks in the great variety of organic forms the stable and simple law of organisation, or the common type or structure. since cuvier founded this science at the beginning of the nineteenth century it has been a favourite study of the most distinguished scientists. even before cuvier's time goethe had been greatly stimulated by it, and induced to take up the study of morphology. comparative osteology, or the philosophic study and comparison of the bony skeleton of the vertebrates--one of its most interesting sections--especially fascinated him, and led him to form the theory of the skull which i mentioned before. comparative anatomy shows that the internal structure of the animals of each stem and the plants of each class is the same in its essential features, however much they differ in external appearance. thus man has so great a resemblance in the chief features of his internal organisation to the other mammals that no comparative anatomist has ever doubted that he belongs to this class. the whole internal structure of the human body, the arrangement of its various systems of organs, the distribution of the bones, muscles, blood-vessels, etc., and the whole structure of these organs in the larger and the finer scale, agree so closely with those of the other mammals (such as the apes, rodents, ungulates, cetacea, marsupials, etc.) that their external differences are of no account whatever. we learn further from comparative anatomy that the chief features of animal structure are so similar in the various classes (fifty to sixty in number altogether) that they may all be comprised in from eight to twelve great groups. but even in these groups, the stem-forms or animal types, certain organs (especially the alimentary canal) can be proved to have been originally the same for all. we can only explain by the theory of evolution this essential unity in internal structure of all these animal forms that differ so much in outward appearance. this wonderful fact can only be really understood and explained when we regard the internal resemblance as an inheritance from common-stem forms, and the external differences as the effect of adaptation to different environments. in recognising this, comparative anatomy has itself advanced to a higher stage. gegenbaur, the most distinguished of recent students of this science, says that with the theory of evolution a new period began in comparative anatomy, and that the theory in turn found a touch stone in the science. "up to now there is no fact in comparative anatomy that is inconsistent with the theory of evolution; indeed, they all lead to it. in this way the theory receives back from the science all the service it rendered to its method." until then students had marvelled at the wonderful resemblance of living things in their inner structure without being able to explain it. we are now in a position to explain the causes of this, by showing that this remarkable agreement is the necessary consequence of the inheriting of common stem-forms; while the striking difference in outward appearance is a result of adaptation to changes of environment. heredity and adaptation alone furnish the true explanation. but one special part of comparative anatomy is of supreme interest and of the utmost philosophic importance in this connection. this is the science of rudimentary or useless organs; i have given it the name of "dysteleology" in view of its philosophic consequences. nearly every organism (apart from the very lowest), and especially every highly-developed animal or plant, including man, has one or more organs which are of no use to the body itself, and have no share in its functions or vital aims. thus we all have, in various parts of our frame, muscles which we never use, as, for instance, in the shell of the ear and adjoining parts. in most of the mammals, especially those with pointed ears, these internal and external ear-muscles are of great service in altering the shell of the ear, so as to catch the waves of sound as much as possible. but in the case of man and other short-eared mammals these muscles are useless, though they are still present. our ancestors having long abandoned the use of them, we cannot work them at all to-day. in the inner corner of the eye we have a small crescent-shaped fold of skin; this is the last relic of a third inner eye-lid, called the nictitating (winking) membrane. this membrane is highly developed and of great service in some of our distant relations, such as fishes of the shark type and several other vertebrates; in us it is shrunken and useless. in the intestines we have a process that is not only quite useless, but may be very harmful--the vermiform appendage. this small intestinal appendage is often the cause of a fatal illness. if a cherry-stone or other hard body is unfortunately squeezed through its narrow aperture during digestion, a violent inflammation is set up, and often proves fatal. this appendix has no use whatever now in our frame; it is a dangerous relic of an organ that was much larger and was of great service in our vegetarian ancestors. it is still large and important in many vegetarian animals, such as apes and rodents. there are similar rudimentary organs in all parts of our body, and in all the higher animals. they are among the most interesting phenomena to which comparative anatomy introduces us; partly because they furnish one of the clearest proofs of evolution, and partly because they most strikingly refute the teleology of certain philosophers. the theory of evolution enables us to give a very simple explanation of these phenomena. we have to look on them as organs which have fallen into disuse in the course of many generations. with the decrease in the use of its function, the organ itself shrivels up gradually, and finally disappears. there is no other way of explaining rudimentary organs. hence they are also of great interest in philosophy; they show clearly that the monistic or mechanical view of the organism is the only correct one, and that the dualistic or teleological conception is wrong. the ancient legend of the direct creation of man according to a pre-conceived plan and the empty phrases about "design" in the organism are completely shattered by them. it would be difficult to conceive a more thorough refutation of teleology than is furnished by the fact that all the higher animals have these rudimentary organs. the theory of evolution finds its broadest inductive foundation in the natural classification of living things, which arranges all the various forms in larger and smaller groups, according to their degree of affinity. these groupings or categories of classification--the varieties, species, genera, families, orders, classes, etc.--show such constant features of coordination and subordination that we are bound to look on them as genealogical, and represent the whole system in the form of a branching tree. this is the genealogical tree of the variously related groups; their likeness in form is the expression of a real affinity. as it is impossible to explain in any other way the natural tree-like form of the system of organisms, we must regard it at once as a weighty proof of the truth of evolution. the careful construction of these genealogical trees is, therefore, not an amusement, but the chief task of modern classification. among the chief phenomena that bear witness to the inductive law of evolution we have the geographical distribution of the various species of animals and plants over the surface of the earth, and their topographical distribution on the summits of mountains and in the depths of the ocean. the scientific study of these features--the "science of distribution," or chorology (chora = a place)--has been pursued with lively interest since the discoveries made by alexander von humboldt. until darwin's time the work was confined to the determination of the facts of the science, and chiefly aimed at settling the spheres of distribution of the existing large and small groups of living things. it was impossible at that time to explain the causes of this remarkable distribution, or the reasons why one group is found only in one locality and another in a different place, and why there is this manifold distribution at all. here, again, the theory of evolution has given us the solution of the problem. it furnishes the only possible explanation when it teaches that the various species and groups of species descend from common stem-forms, whose ever-branching offspring have gradually spread themselves by migration over the earth. for each group of species we must admit a "centre of production," or common home; this is the original habitat in which the ancestral form was developed, and from which its descendants spread out in every direction. several of these descendants became in their turn the stem-forms for new groups of species, and these also scattered themselves by active and passive migration, and so on. as each migrating organism found a different environment in its new home, and adapted itself to it, it was modified, and gave rise to new forms. this very important branch of science that deals with active and passive migration was founded by darwin, with the aid of the theory of evolution; and at the same time he advanced the true explanation of the remarkable relation or similarity of the living population in any locality to the fossil forms found in it. moritz wagner very ably developed his idea under the title of "the theory of migration." in my opinion, this famous traveller has rather over-estimated the value of his theory of migration when he takes it to be an indispensable condition of the formation of new species and opposes the theory of selection. the two theories are not opposed in their main features. migration (by which the stem-form of a new species is isolated) is really only a special case of selection. the striking and interesting facts of chorology can be explained only by the theory of evolution, and therefore we must count them among the most important of its inductive bases. the same must be said of all the remarkable phenomena which we perceive in the economy of the living organism. the many and various relations of plants and animals to each other and to their environment, which are treated in bionomy (from nomos, law or norm, and bios, life), the interesting facts of parasitism, domesticity, care of the young, social habits, etc., can only be explained by the action of heredity and adaptation. formerly people saw only the guidance of a beneficent providence in these phenomena; to-day we discover in them admirable proofs of the theory of evolution. it is impossible to understand them except in the light of this theory and the struggle for life. finally, we must, in my opinion, count among the chief inductive bases of the theory of evolution the foetal development of the individual organism, the whole science of embryology or ontogeny. but as the later chapters will deal with this in detail, i need say nothing further here. i shall endeavour in the following pages to show, step by step, how the whole of the embryonic phenomena form a massive chain of proof for the theory of evolution; for they can be explained in no other way. in thus appealing to the close causal connection between ontogenesis and phylogenesis, and taking our stand throughout on the biogenetic law, we shall be able to prove, stage by stage, from the facts of embryology, the evolution of man from the lower animals. the general adoption of the theory of evolution has definitely closed the controversy as to the nature or definition of the species. the word has no absolute meaning whatever, but is only a group-name, or category of classification, with a purely relative value. in , it is true, a famous and gifted, but inaccurate and dogmatic, scientist, louis agassiz, attempted to give an absolute value to these "categories of classification." he did this in his essay on classification, in which he turns upside down the phenomena of organic nature, and, instead of tracing them to their natural causes, examines them through a theological prism. the true species (bona species) was, he said, an "incarnate idea of the creator." unfortunately, this pretty phrase has no more scientific value than all the other attempts to save the absolute or intrinsic value of the species. the dogma of the fixity and creation of species lost its last great champion when agassiz died in . the opposite theory, that all the different species descend from common stem-forms, encounters no serious difficulty to-day. all the endless research into the nature of the species, and the possibility of several species descending from a common ancestor, has been closed to-day by the removal of the sharp limits that had been set up between species and varieties on the one hand, and species and genera on the other. i gave an analytic proof of this in my monograph on the sponges ( ), having made a very close study of variability in this small but highly instructive group, and shown the impossibility of making any dogmatic distinction of species. according as the classifier takes his ideas of genus, species, and variety in a broader or in a narrower sense, he will find in the small group of the sponges either one genus with three species, or three genera with species, or genera with species. moreover, all these forms are so connected by intermediate forms that we can convincingly prove the descent of all the sponges from a common stem-form, the olynthus. here, i think, i have given an analytic solution of the problem of the origin of species, and so met the demand of certain opponents of evolution for an actual instance of descent from a stem-form. those who are not satisfied with the synthetic proofs of the theory of evolution which are provided by comparative anatomy, embryology, paleontology, dysteleology, chorology, and classification, may try to refute the analytic proof given in my treatise on the sponge, the outcome of five years of assiduous study. i repeat: it is now impossible to oppose evolution on the ground that we have no convincing example of the descent of all the species of a group from a common ancestor. the monograph on the sponges furnishes such a proof, and, in my opinion, an indisputable proof. any man of science who will follow the protracted steps of my inquiry and test my assertions will find that in the case of the sponges we can follow the actual evolution of species in a concrete case. and if this is so, if we can show the origin of all the species from a common form in one single class, we have the solution of the problem of man's origin, because we are in a position to prove clearly his descent from the lower animals. at the same time, we can now reply to the often-repeated assertion, even heard from scientists of our own day, that the descent of man from the lower animals, and proximately from the apes, still needs to be "proved with certainty." these "certain proofs" have been available for a long time; one has only to open one's eyes to see them. it is a mistake to seek them in the discovery of intermediate forms between man and the ape, or the conversion of an ape into a human being by skilful education. the proofs lie in the great mass of empirical material we have already collected. they are furnished in the strongest form by the data of comparative anatomy and embryology, completed by paleontology. it is not a question now of detecting new proofs of the evolution of man, but of examining and understanding the proofs we already have. i was almost alone thirty-six years ago when i made the first attempt, in my general morphology, to put organic science on a mechanical foundation through darwin's theory of descent. the association of ontogeny and phylogeny and the proof of the intimate causal connection between these two sections of the science of evolution, which i expounded in my work, met with the most spirited opposition on nearly all sides. the next ten years were a terrible "struggle for life" for the new theory. but for the last twenty-five years the tables have been turned. the phylogenetic method has met with so general a reception, and found so prolific a use in every branch of biology, that it seems superfluous to treat any further here of its validity and results. the proof of it lies in the whole morphological literature of the last three decades. but no other science has been so profoundly modified in its leading thoughts by this adoption, and been forced to yield such far-reaching consequences, as that science which i am now seeking to establish--monistic anthropogeny. this statement may seem to be rather audacious, since the very next branch of biology, anthropology in the stricter sense, makes very little use of these results of anthropogeny, and sometimes expressly opposes them.* (*this does not apply to english anthropologists, who are almost all evolutionists.) this applies especially to the attitude which has characterised the german anthropological society (the deutsche gesellschaft fur anthropologie) for some thirty years. its powerful president, the famous pathologist, rudolph virchow, is chiefly responsible for this. until his death (september th, ) he never ceased to reject the theory of descent as unproven, and to ridicule its chief consequence--the descent of man from a series of mammal ancestors--as a fantastic dream. i need only recall his well-known expression at the anthropological congress at vienna in , that "it would be just as well to say man came from the sheep or the elephant as from the ape." virchow's assistant, the secretary of the german anthropological society, professor johannes ranke of munich, has also indefatigably opposed transformism: he has succeeded in writing a work in two volumes (der mensch), in which all the facts relating to his organisation are explained in a sense hostile to evolution. this work has had a wide circulation, owing to its admirable illustrations and its able treatment of the most interesting facts of anatomy and physiology--exclusive of the sexual organs! but, as it has done a great deal to spread erroneous views among the general public, i have included a criticism of it in my history of creation, as well as met virchow's attacks on anthropogeny. neither virchow, nor ranke, nor any other "exact" anthropologist, has attempted to give any other natural explanation of the origin of man. they have either set completely aside this "question of questions" as a transcendental problem, or they have appealed to religion for its solution. we have to show that this rejection of the rational explanation is totally without justification. the fund of knowledge which has accumulated in the progress of biology in the nineteenth century is quite adequate to furnish a rational explanation, and to establish the theory of the evolution of man on the solid facts of his embryology. chapter . . the ovum and the amoeba. in order to understand clearly the course of human embryology, we must select the more important of its wonderful and manifold processes for fuller explanation, and then proceed from these to the innumerable features of less importance. the most important feature in this sense, and the best starting-point for ontogenetic study, is the fact that man is developed from an ovum, and that this ovum is a simple cell. the human ovum does not materially differ in form and composition from that of the other mammals, whereas there is a distinct difference between the fertilised ovum of the mammal and that of any other animal. (figure . . the human ovum, magnified times. the globular mass of yelk (b) is enclosed by a transparent membrane (the ovolemma or zona pellucida [a]), and contains a noncentral nucleus (the germinal vesicle, c). cf. figure . .) this fact is so important that few should be unaware of its extreme significance; yet it was quite unknown in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. as we have seen, the human and mammal ovum was not discovered until , when carl ernst von baer detected it. up to that time the larger vesicles, in which the real and much smaller ovum is contained, had been wrongly regarded as ova. the important circumstance that this mammal ovum is a simple cell, like the ovum of other animals, could not, of course, be recognised until the cell theory was established. this was not done, by schleiden for the plant and schwann for the animal, until . as we have seen, this cell theory is of the greatest service in explaining the human frame and its embryonic development. hence we must say a few words about the actual condition of the theory and the significance of the views it has suggested. in order properly to appreciate the cellular theory, the most important element in our science, it is necessary to understand in the first place that the cell is a unified organism, a self-contained living being. when we anatomically dissect the fully-formed animal or plant into its various organs, and then examine the finer structure of these organs with the microscope, we are surprised to find that all these different parts are ultimately made up of the same structural element or unit. this common unit of structure is the cell. it does not matter whether we thus dissect a leaf, flower, or fruit, or a bone, muscle, gland, or bit of skin, etc.; we find in every case the same ultimate constituent, which has been called the cell since schleiden's discovery. there are many opinions as to its real nature, but the essential point in our view of the cell is to look upon it as a self-contained or independent living unit. it is, in the words of brucke, "an elementary organism." we may define it most precisely as the ultimate organic unit, and, as the cells are the sole active principles in every vital function, we may call them the "plastids," or "formative elements." this unity is found in both the anatomic structure and the physiological function. in the case of the protists, the entire organism usually consists of a single independent cell throughout life. but in the tissue-forming animals and plants, which are the great majority, the organism begins its career as a simple cell, and then grows into a cell-community, or, more correctly, an organised cell-state. our own body is not really the simple unity that it is generally supposed to be. on the contrary, it is a very elaborate social system of countless microscopic organisms, a colony or commonwealth, made up of innumerable independent units, or very different tissue-cells. in reality, the term "cell," which existed long before the cell theory was formulated, is not happily chosen. schleiden, who first brought it into scientific use in the sense of the cell theory, gave this name to the elementary organisms because, when you find them in the dissected plant, they generally have the appearance of chambers, like the cells in a bee-hive, with firm walls and a fluid or pulpy content. but some cells, especially young ones, are entirely without the enveloping membrane, or stiff wall. hence we now generally describe the cell as a living, viscous particle of protoplasm, enclosing a firmer nucleus in its albuminoid body. there may be an enclosing membrane, as there actually is in the case of most of the plants; but it may be wholly lacking, as is the case with most of the animals. there is no membrane at all in the first stage. the young cells are usually round, but they vary much in shape later on. illustrations of this will be found in the cells of the various parts of the body shown in figures . to . . hence the essential point in the modern idea of the cell is that it is made up of two different active constituents--an inner and an outer part. the smaller and inner part is the nucleus (or caryon or cytoblastus, figure . c and figure . k). the outer and larger part, which encloses the other, is the body of the cell (celleus, cytos, or cytosoma). the soft living substance of which the two are composed has a peculiar chemical composition, and belongs to the group of the albuminoid plasma-substances ("formative matter"), or protoplasm. the essential and indispensable element of the nucleus is called nuclein (or caryoplasm); that of the cell body is called plastin (or cytoplasm). in the most rudimentary cases both substances seem to be quite simple and homogeneous, without any visible structure. but, as a rule, when we examine them under a high power of the microscope, we find a certain structure in the protoplasm. the chief and most common form of this is the fibrous or net-like "thready structure" (frommann) and the frothy "honeycomb structure" (butschli). (figure . . stem-cell of one of the echinoderms (cytula, or "first segmentation-cell" = fertilised ovum), after hertwig. k is the nucleus or caryon.) the shape or outer form of the cell is infinitely varied, in accordance with its endless power of adapting itself to the most diverse activities or environments. in its simplest form the cell is globular (figure . ). this normal round form is especially found in cells of the simplest construction, and those that are developed in a free fluid without any external pressure. in such cases the nucleus also is not infrequently round, and located in the centre of the cell-body (figure . k). in other cases, the cells have no definite shape; they are constantly changing their form owing to their automatic movements. this is the case with the amoebae (figures . and . ) and the amoeboid travelling cells (figure . ), and also with very young ova (figure . ). however, as a rule, the cell assumes a definite form in the course of its career. in the tissues of the multicellular organism, in which a number of similar cells are bound together in virtue of certain laws of heredity, the shape is determined partly by the form of their connection and partly by their special functions. thus, for instance, we find in the mucous lining of our tongue very thin and delicate flat cells of roundish shape (figure . ). in the outer skin we find similar, but harder, covering cells, joined together by saw-like edges (figure . ). in the liver and other glands there are thicker and softer cells, linked together in rows (figure . ). the last-named tissues (figures . to . ) belong to the simplest and most primitive type, the group of the "covering-tissues," or epithelia. in these "primary tissues" (to which the germinal layers belong) simple cells of the same kind are arranged in layers. the arrangement and shape are more complicated in the "secondary tissues," which are gradually developed out of the primary, as in the tissues of the muscles, nerves, bones, etc. in the bones, for instance, which belong to the group of supporting or connecting organs, the cells (figure . ) are star-shaped, and are joined together by numbers of net-like interlacing processes; so, also, in the tissues of the teeth (figure . ), and in other forms of supporting-tissue, in which a soft or hard substance (intercellular matter, or base) is inserted between the cells. (figure . . three epithelial cells from the mucous lining of the tongue. figure . . five spiny or grooved cells, with edges joined, from the outer skin (epidermis): one of them (b) is isolated. figure . . ten liver-cells: one of them (b) has two nuclei.) the cells also differ very much in size. the great majority of them are invisible to the naked eye, and can be seen only through the microscope (being as a rule between / and / inch in diameter). there are many of the smaller plastids--such as the famous bacteria--which only come into view with a very high magnifying power. on the other hand, many cells attain a considerable size, and run occasionally to several inches in diameter, as do certain kinds of rhizopods among the unicellular protists (such as the radiolaria and thalamophora). among the tissue-cells of the animal body many of the muscular fibres and nerve fibres are more than four inches, and sometimes more than a yard, in length. among the largest cells are the yelk-filled ova; as, for instance, the yellow "yolk" in the hen's egg, which we shall describe later (figure . ). cells also vary considerably in structure. in this connection we must first distinguish between the active and passive components of the cell. it is only the former, or active parts of the cell, that really live, and effect that marvellous world of phenomena to which we give the name of "organic life." the first of these is the inner nucleus (caryoplasm), and the second the body of the cell (cytoplasm). the passive portions come third; these are subsequently formed from the others, and i have given them the name of "plasma-products." they are partly external (cell-membranes and intercellular matter) and partly internal (cell-sap and cell-contents). the nucleus (or caryon), which is usually of a simple roundish form, is quite structureless at first (especially in very young cells), and composed of homogeneous nuclear matter or caryoplasm (figure . k). but, as a rule, it forms a sort of vesicle later on, in which we can distinguish a more solid nuclear base (caryobasis) and a softer or fluid nuclear sap (caryolymph). in a mesh of the nuclear network (or it may be on the inner side of the nuclear envelope) there is, as a rule, a dark, very opaque, solid body, called the nucleolus. many of the nuclei contain several of these nucleoli (as, for instance, the germinal vesicle of the ova of fishes and amphibia). recently a very small, but particularly important, part of the nucleus has been distinguished as the central body (centrosoma)--a tiny particle that is originally found in the nucleus itself, but is usually outside it, in the cytoplasm; as a rule, fine threads stream out from it in the cytoplasm. from the position of the central body with regard to the other parts it seems probable that it has a high physiological importance as a centre of movement; but it is lacking in many cells. the cell-body also consists originally, and in its simplest form, of a homogeneous viscid plasmic matter. but, as a rule, only the smaller part of it is formed of the living active cell-substance (protoplasm); the greater part consists of dead, passive plasma-products (metaplasm). it is useful to distinguish between the inner and outer of these. external plasma-products (which are thrust out from the protoplasm as solid "structural matter") are the cell-membranes and the intercellular matter. the internal plasma-products are either the fluid cell-sap or hard structures. as a rule, in mature and differentiated cells these various parts are so arranged that the protoplasm (like the caryoplasm in the round nucleus) forms a sort of skeleton or framework. the spaces of this network are filled partly with the fluid cell-sap and partly by hard structural products. (figure . . nine star-shaped bone-cells, with interlaced branches. figure . . eleven star-shaped cells from the enamel of a tooth, joined together by their branchlets.) the simple round ovum, which we take as the starting-point of our study (figures . and . ), has in many cases the vague, indifferent features of the typical primitive cell. as a contrast to it, and as an instance of a very highly differentiated plastid, we may consider for a moment a large nerve-cell, or ganglionic cell, from the brain. the ovum stands potentially for the entire organism--in other words, it has the faculty of building up out of itself the whole multicellular body. it is the common parent of all the countless generations of cells which form the different tissues of the body; it unites all their powers in itself, though only potentially or in germ. in complete contrast to this, the neural cell in the brain (figure . ) develops along one rigid line. it cannot, like the ovum, beget endless generations of cells, of which some will become skin-cells, others muscle-cells, and others again bone-cells. but, on the other hand, the nerve-cell has become fitted to discharge the highest functions of life; it has the powers of sensation, will, and thought. it is a real soul-cell, or an elementary organ of the psychic activity. it has, therefore, a most elaborate and delicate structure. numbers of extremely fine threads, like the electric wires at a large telegraphic centre, cross and recross in the delicate protoplasm of the nerve cell, and pass out in the branching processes which proceed from it and put it in communication with other nerve-cells or nerve-fibres (a, b). we can only partly follow their intricate paths in the fine matter of the body of the cell. here we have a most elaborate apparatus, the delicate structure of which we are just beginning to appreciate through our most powerful microscopes, but whose significance is rather a matter of conjecture than knowledge. its intricate structure corresponds to the very complicated functions of the mind. nevertheless, this elementary organ of psychic activity--of which there are thousands in our brain--is nothing but a single cell. our whole mental life is only the joint result of the combined activity of all these nerve-cells, or soul-cells. in the centre of each cell there is a large transparent nucleus, containing a small and dark nuclear body. here, as elsewhere, it is the nucleus that determines the individuality of the cell; it proves that the whole structure, in spite of its intricate composition, amounts to only a single cell. (figure . . unfertilised ovum of an echinoderm (from hertwig). the vesicular nucleus (or "germinal vesicle") is globular, half the size of the round ovum, and encloses a nuclear framework, in the central knot of which there is a dark nucleolus (the "germinal spot"). figure . . a large branching nerve-cell, or "soul-cell," from the brain of an electric fish (torpedo), magnified times. in the middle of the cell is the large transparent round nucleus, one nucleolus, and, within the latter again, a nucleolinus. the protoplasm of the cell is split into innumerable fine threads (or fibrils), which are embedded in intercellular matter, and are prolonged into the branching processes of the cell (b). one branch (a) passes into a nerve-fibre. (from max schultze.)) in contrast with this very elaborate and very strictly differentiated psychic cell (figure . ), we have our ovum (figures . and . ), which has hardly any structure at all. but even in the case of the ovum we must infer from its properties that its protoplasmic body has a very complicated chemical composition and a fine molecular structure which escapes our observation. this presumed molecular structure of the plasm is now generally admitted; but it has never been seen, and, indeed, lies far beyond the range of microscopic vision. it must not be confused--as is often done--with the structure of the plasm (the fibrous network, groups of granules, honey-comb, etc.) which does come within the range of the microscope. but when we speak of the cells as the elementary organisms, or structural units, or "ultimate individualities," we must bear in mind a certain restriction of the phrases. i mean, that the cells are not, as is often supposed, the very lowest stage of organic individuality. there are yet more elementary organisms to which i must refer occasionally. these are what we call the "cytodes" (cytos = cell), certain living, independent beings, consisting only of a particle of plasson--an albuminoid substance, which is not yet differentiated into caryoplasm and cytoplasm, but combines the properties of both. those remarkable beings called the monera--especially the chromacea and bacteria--are specimens of these simple cytodes. (compare chapter . .) to be quite accurate, then, we must say: the elementary organism, or the ultimate individual, is found in two different stages. the first and lower stage is the cytode, which consists merely of a particle of plasson, or quite simple plasm. the second and higher stage is the cell, which is already divided or differentiated into nuclear matter and cellular matter. we comprise both kinds--the cytodes and the cells--under the name of plastids ("formative particles"), because they are the real builders of the organism. however, these cytodes are not found, as a rule, in the higher animals and plants; here we have only real cells with a nucleus. hence, in these tissue-forming organisms (both plant and animal) the organic unit always consists of two chemically and anatomically different parts--the outer cell-body and the inner nucleus. in order to convince oneself that this cell is really an independent organism, we have only to observe the development and vital phenomena of one of them. we see then that it performs all the essential functions of life--both vegetal and animal--which we find in the entire organism. each of these tiny beings grows and nourishes itself independently. it takes its food from the surrounding fluid; sometimes, even, the naked cells take in solid particles at certain points of their surface--in other words, "eat" them--without needing any special mouth and stomach for the purpose (cf. figure . ). further, each cell is able to reproduce itself. this multiplication, in most cases, takes the form of a simple cleavage, sometimes direct, sometimes indirect; the simple direct (or "amitotic") division is less common, and is found, for instance, in the blood cells (figure . ). in these the nucleus first divides into two equal parts by constriction. the indirect (or "mitotic") cleavage is much more frequent; in this the caryoplasm of the nucleus and the cytoplasm of the cell-body act upon each other in a peculiar way, with a partial dissolution (caryolysis), the formation of knots and loops (mitosis), and a movement of the halved plasma-particles towards two mutually repulsive poles of attraction (caryokinesis, figure . .) (figure . . blood-cells, multiplying by direct division, from the blood of the embryo of a stag. originally, each blood-cell has a nucleus and is round (a). when it is going to multiply, the nucleus divides into two (b, c, d). then the protoplasmic body is constricted between the two nuclei, and these move away from each other (e). finally, the constriction is complete, and the cell splits into two daughter-cells (f). (from frey.)) figure . . indirect or mitotic cell-division (with caryolysis and caryokinesis) from the skin of the larva of a salamander. (from rabl.). a. mother-cell (knot, spirema), with nuclear threads (chromosomata) (coloured nuclear matter, chromatin), cytosoma, nuclear membrane, protoplasm of the cell-body and nuclear sap. b. mother-star, the loops beginning to split lengthways (nuclear membrane gone), with star-like appearance in cytoplasm, centrosoma (sphere of attraction), nuclear spindle (achromin, colourless matter) and nuclear loops (chromatin, coloured matter). c. the two daughter-stars, produced by the breaking of the loops of the mother-star (moving away), with upper daughter-crown, connecting threads of the two crowns (achromin), lower daughter-crown and double-star (amphiaster). d. the two daughter-cells, produced by the complete division of the two nuclear halves (cytosomata still connected at the equator) (double-knot, dispirema), with upper daughter-nucleus, equatorial constriction of the cell-body and lower daughter-nucleus.) the intricate physiological processes which accompany this "mitosis" have been very closely studied of late years. the inquiry has led to the detection of certain laws of evolution which are of extreme importance in connection with heredity. as a rule, two very different parts of the nucleus play an important part in these changes. they are: the chromatin, or coloured nuclear substance, which has a peculiar property of tingeing itself deeply with certain colouring matters (carmine, haematoxylin, etc.), and the achromin (or linin, or achromatin), a colourless nuclear substance that lacks this property. the latter generally forms in the dividing cell a sort of spindle, at the poles of which there is a very small particle, also colourless, called the "central body" (centrosoma). this acts as the centre or focus in a "sphere of attraction" for the granules of protoplasm in the surrounding cell-body, and assumes a star-like appearance (the cell-star, or monaster). the two central bodies, standing opposed to each other at the poles of the nuclear spindle, form "the double-star" (or amphiaster, figure . , bc). the chromatin often forms a long, irregularly-wound thread--"the coil" (spirema, figure a). at the commencement of the cleavage it gathers at the equator of the cell, between the stellar poles, and forms a crown of u-shaped loops (generally four or eight, or some other definite number). the loops split lengthwise into two halves (b), and these back away from each other towards the poles of the spindle (c). here each group forms a crown once more, and this, with the corresponding half of the divided spindle, forms a fresh nucleus (d). then the protoplasm of the cell-body begins to contract in the middle, and gather about the new daughter-nuclei, and at last the two daughter-cells become independent beings. between this common mitosis, or indirect cell-division--which is the normal cleavage-process in most cells of the higher animals and plants--and the simple direct division (figure . ) we find every grade of segmentation; in some circumstances even one kind of division may be converted into another. the plastid is also endowed with the functions of movement and sensation. the single cell can move and creep about, when it has space for free movement and is not prevented by a hard envelope; it then thrusts out at its surface processes like fingers, and quickly withdraws them again, and thus changes its shape (figure . ). finally, the young cell is sensitive, or more or less responsive to stimuli; it makes certain movements on the application of chemical and mechanical irritation. hence we can ascribe to the individual cell all the chief functions which we comprehend under the general heading of "life"--sensation, movement, nutrition, and reproduction. all these properties of the multicellular and highly developed animal are also found in the single animal-cell, at least in its younger stages. there is no longer any doubt about this, and so we may regard it as a solid and important base of our physiological conception of the elementary organism. without going any further here into these very interesting phenomena of the life of the cell, we will pass on to consider the application of the cell theory to the ovum. here comparative research yields the important result that every ovum is at first a simple cell. i say this is very important, because our whole science of embryology now resolves itself into the problem: "how does the multicellular organism arise from the unicellular?" every organic individual is at first a simple cell, and as such an elementary organism, or a unit of individuality. this cell produces a cluster of cells by segmentation, and from these develops the multicellular organism, or individual of higher rank. when we examine a little closer the original features of the ovum, we notice the extremely significant fact that in its first stage the ovum is just the same simple and indefinite structure in the case of man and all the animals (figure . ). we are unable to detect any material difference between them, either in outer shape or internal constitution. later, though the ova remain unicellular, they differ in size and shape, enclose various kinds of yelk-particles, have different envelopes, and so on. but when we examine them at their birth, in the ovary of the female animal, we find them to be always of the same form in the first stages of their life. in the beginning each ovum is a very simple, roundish, naked, mobile cell, without a membrane; it consists merely of a particle of cytoplasm enclosing a nucleus (figure . ). special names have been given to these parts of the ovum; the cell-body is called the yelk (vitellus), and the cell-nucleus the germinal vesicle. as a rule, the nucleus of the ovum is soft, and looks like a small pimple or vesicle. inside it, as in many other cells, there is a nuclear skeleton or frame and a third, hard nuclear body (the nucleolus). in the ovum this is called the germinal spot. finally, we find in many ova (but not in all) a still further point within the germinal spot, a "nucleolin," which goes by the name of the germinal point. the latter parts (germinal spot and germinal point) have, apparently, a minor importance, in comparison with the other two (the yelk and germinal vesicle). in the yelk we must distinguish the active formative yelk (or protoplasm = first plasm) from the passive nutritive yelk (or deutoplasm = second plasm). (figure . . mobile cells from the inflamed eye of a frog (from the watery fluid of the eye, the humor aqueus). the naked cells creep freely about, by (like the amoeba or rhizopods) protruding fine processes from the uncovered protoplasmic body. these bodies vary continually in number, shape, and size. the nucleus of these amoeboid lymph-cells ("travelling cells," or planocytes) is invisible, because concealed by the numbers of fine granules which are scattered in the protoplasm. (from frey.)) in many of the lower animals (such as sponges, polyps, and medusae) the naked ova retain their original simple appearance until impregnation. but in most animals they at once begin to change; the change consists partly in the formation of connections with the yelk, which serve to nourish the ovum, and partly of external membranes for their protection (the ovolemma, or prochorion). a membrane of this sort is formed in all the mammals in the course of the embryonic process. the little globule is surrounded by a thick capsule of glass-like transparency, the zona pellucida, or ovolemma pellucidum (figure . ). when we examine it closely under the microscope, we see very fine radial streaks in it, piercing the zona, which are really very narrow canals. the human ovum, whether fertilised or not, cannot be distinguished from that of most of the other mammals. it is nearly the same everywhere in form, size, and composition. when it is fully formed, it has a diameter of (on an average) about / of an inch. when the mammal ovum has been carefully isolated, and held against the light on a glass-plate, it may be seen as a fine point even with the naked eye. the ova of most of the higher mammals are about the same size. the diameter of the ovum is almost always between / to / inch. it has always the same globular shape; the same characteristic membrane; the same transparent germinal vesicle with its dark germinal spot. even when we use the most powerful microscope with its highest power, we can detect no material difference between the ova of man, the ape, the dog, and so on. i do not mean to say that there are no differences between the ova of these different mammals. on the contrary, we are bound to assume that there are such, at least as regards chemical composition. even the ova of different men must differ from each other; otherwise we should not have a different individual from each ovum. it is true that our crude and imperfect apparatus cannot detect these subtle individual differences, which are probably in the molecular structure. however, such a striking resemblance of their ova in form, so great as to seem to be a complete similarity, is a strong proof of the common parentage of man and the other mammals. from the common germ-form we infer a common stem-form. on the other hand, there are striking peculiarities by which we can easily distinguish the fertilised ovum of the mammal from the fertilised ovum of the birds, amphibia, fishes, and other vertebrates (see the close of chapter . ). (figure . . ova of various animals, executing amoeboid movements, highly magnified. all the ova are naked cells of varying shape. in the dark fine-grained protoplasm (yelk) is a large vesicular nucleus (the germinal vesicle), and in this is seen a nuclear body (the germinal spot), in which again we often see a germinal point. figures a to a represent the ovum of a sponge (leuculmis echinus) in four successive movements. b to b are the ovum of a parasitic crab (chondracanthus cornutus), in eight successive movements. (from edward von beneden.) c to c show the ovum of the cat in various stages of movement (from pfluger); figure p the ovum of a trout; e the ovum of a chicken; f a human ovum.) the fertilised bird-ovum (figure . ) is notably different. it is true that in its earliest stage (figure . e) this ovum also is very like that of the mammal (figure . f). but afterwards, while still within the oviduct, it takes up a quantity of nourishment and works this into the familiar large yellow yelk. when we examine a very young ovum in the hen's oviduct, we find it to be a simple, small, naked, amoeboid cell, just like the young ova of other animals (figure . ). but it then grows to the size we are familiar with in the round yelk of the egg. the nucleus of the ovum, or the germinal vesicle, is thus pressed right to the surface of the globular ovum, and is embedded there in a small quantity of transparent matter, the so-called white yelk. this forms a round white spot, which is known as the "tread" (cicatricula) (figure . b). from the tread a thin column of the white yelk penetrates through the yellow yelk to the centre of the globular cell, where it swells into a small, central globule (wrongly called the yelk-cavity, or latebra, figure . d apostrophe). the yellow yelk-matter which surrounds this white yelk has the appearance in the egg (when boiled hard) of concentric layers (c). the yellow yelk is also enclosed in a delicate structureless membrane (the membrana vitellina, a). as the large yellow ovum of the bird attains a diameter of several inches in the bigger birds, and encloses round yelk-particles, there was formerly a reluctance to consider it as a simple cell. this was a mistake. every animal that has only one cell-nucleus, every amoeba, every gregarina, every infusorium, is unicellular, and remains unicellular whatever variety of matter it feeds on. so the ovum remains a simple cell, however much yellow yelk it afterwards accumulates within its protoplasm. it is, of course, different, with the bird's egg when it has been fertilised. the ovum then consists of as many cells as there are nuclei in the tread. hence, in the fertilised egg which we eat daily, the yellow yelk is already a multicellular body. its tread is composed of several cells, and is now commonly called the germinal disc. we shall return to this discogastrula in chapter . . (figure . . the human ovum, taken from the female ovary, magnified times. the whole ovum is a simple round cell. the chief part of the globular mass is formed by the nuclear yelk (deutoplasm), which is evenly distributed in the active protoplasm, and consists of numbers of fine yelk-granules. in the upper part of the yelk is the transparent round germinal vesicle, which corresponds to the nucleus. this encloses a darker granule, the germinal spot, which shows a nucleolus. the globular yelk is surrounded by the thick transparent germinal membrane (ovolemma, or zona pellucida). this is traversed by numbers of lines as fine as hairs, which are directed radially towards the centre of the ovum. these are called the pore-canals; it is through these that the moving spermatozoa penetrate into the yelk at impregnation. figure . . a fertilised ovum from the oviduct of a hen. the yellow yelk (c) consists of several concentric layers (d), and is enclosed in a thin yelk-membrane (a). the nucleus or germinal vesicle is seen above in the cicatrix or "tread" (b). from that point the white yelk penetrates to the central yelk-cavity (d apostrophe). the two kinds of yelk do not differ very much. figure . . a creeping amoeba (highly magnified). the whole organism is a simple naked cell, and moves about by means of the changing arms which it thrusts out of and withdraws into its protoplasmic body. inside it is the roundish nucleus with its nucleolus.) when the mature bird-ovum has left the ovary and been fertilised in the oviduct, it covers itself with various membranes which are secreted from the wall of the oviduct. first, the large clear albuminous layer is deposited around the yellow yelk; afterwards, the hard external shell, with a fine inner skin. all these gradually forming envelopes and processes are of no importance in the formation of the embryo; they serve merely for the protection of the original simple ovum. we sometimes find extraordinarily large eggs with strong envelopes in the case of other animals, such as fishes of the shark type. here, also, the ovum is originally of the same character as it is in the mammal; it is a perfectly simple and naked cell. but, as in the case of the bird, a considerable quantity of nutritive yelk is accumulated inside the original yelk as food for the developing embryo; and various coverings are formed round the egg. the ovum of many other animals has the same internal and external features. they have, however, only a physiological, not a morphological, importance; they have no direct influence on the formation of the foetus. they are partly consumed as food by the embryo, and partly serve as protective envelopes. hence we may leave them out of consideration altogether here, and restrict ourselves to material points--to the substantial identity of the original ovum in man and the rest of the animals (figure . ). now, let us for the first time make use of our biogenetic law; and directly apply this fundamental law of evolution to the human ovum. we reach a very simple, but very important, conclusion. from the fact that the human ovum and that of all other animals consists of a single cell, it follows immediately, according to the biogenetic law, that all the animals, including man, descend from a unicellular organism. if our biogenetic law is true, if the embryonic development is a summary or condensed recapitulation of the stem-history--and there can be no doubt about it--we are bound to conclude, from the fact that all the ova are at first simple cells, that all the multicellular organisms originally sprang from a unicellular being. and as the original ovum in man and all the other animals has the same simple and indefinite appearance, we may assume with some probability that this unicellular stem-form was the common ancestor of the whole animal world, including man. however, this last hypothesis does not seem to me as inevitable and as absolutely certain as our first conclusion. this inference from the unicellular embryonic form to the unicellular ancestor is so simple, but so important, that we cannot sufficiently emphasise it. we must, therefore, turn next to the question whether there are to-day any unicellular organisms, from the features of which we may draw some approximate conclusion as to the unicellular ancestors of the multicellular organisms. the answer is: most certainly there are. there are assuredly still unicellular organisms which are, in their whole nature, really nothing more than permanent ova. there are independent unicellular organisms of the simplest character which develop no further, but reproduce themselves as such, without any further growth. we know to-day of a great number of these little beings, such as the gregarinae, flagellata, acineta, infusoria, etc. however, there is one of them that has an especial interest for us, because it at once suggests itself when we raise our question, and it must be regarded as the unicellular being that approaches nearest to the real ancestral form. this organism is the amoeba. for a long time now we have comprised under the general name of amoebae a number of microscopic unicellular organisms, which are very widely distributed, especially in fresh-water, but also in the ocean; in fact, they have lately been discovered in damp soil. there are also parasitic amoebae which live inside other animals. when we place one of these amoebae in a drop of water under the microscope and examine it with a high power, it generally appears as a roundish particle of a very irregular and varying shape (figures . and . ). in its soft, slimy, semi-fluid substance, which consists of protoplasm, we see only the solid globular particle it contains, the nucleus. this unicellular body moves about continually, creeping in every direction on the glass on which we are examining it. the movement is effected by the shapeless body thrusting out finger-like processes at various parts of its surface; and these are slowly but continually changing, and drawing the rest of the body after them. after a time, perhaps, the action changes. the amoeba suddenly stands still, withdraws its projections, and assumes a globular shape. in a little while, however, the round body begins to expand again, thrusts out arms in another direction, and moves on once more. these changeable processes are called "false feet," or pseudopodia, because they act physiologically as feet, yet are not special organs in the anatomic sense. they disappear as quickly as they come, and are nothing more than temporary projections of the semi-fluid and structureless body. (figure . . division of a unicellular amoeba (amoeba polypodia) in six stages. (from f.e. schultze.) the dark spot is the nucleus, the lighter spot a contractile vacuole in the protoplasm. the latter reforms in one of the daughter-cells.) figure . . ovum of a sponge (olynthus). the ovum creeps about in a body of the sponge by thrusting out ever-changing processes. it is indistinguishable from the common amoeba.) if you touch one of these creeping amoebae with a needle, or put a drop of acid in the water, the whole body at once contracts in consequence of this mechanical or physical stimulus. as a rule, the body then resumes its globular shape. in certain circumstances--for instance, if the impurity of the water lasts some time--the amoeba begins to develop a covering. it exudes a membrane or capsule, which immediately hardens, and assumes the appearance of a round cell with a protective membrane. the amoeba either takes its food directly by imbibition of matter floating in the water, or by pressing into its protoplasmic body solid particles with which it comes in contact. the latter process may be observed at any moment by forcing it to eat. if finely ground colouring matter, such as carmine or indigo, is put into the water, you can see the body of the amoeba pressing these coloured particles into itself, the substance of the cell closing round them. the amoeba can take in food in this way at any point on its surface, without having any special organs for intussusception and digestion, or a real mouth or gut. the amoeba grows by thus taking in food and dissolving the particles eaten in its protoplasm. when it reaches a certain size by this continual feeding, it begins to reproduce. this is done by the simple process of cleavage (figure . ). first, the nucleus divides into two parts. then the protoplasm is separated between the two new nuclei, and the whole cell splits into two daughter-cells, the protoplasm gathering about each of the nuclei. the thin bridge of protoplasm which at first connects the daughter-cells soon breaks. here we have the simple form of direct cleavage of the nuclei. without mitosis, or formation of threads, the homogeneous nucleus divides into two halves. these move away from each other, and become centres of attraction for the enveloping matter, the protoplasm. the same direct cleavage of the nuclei is also witnessed in the reproduction of many other protists, while other unicellular organisms show the indirect division of the cell. hence, although the amoeba is nothing but a simple cell, it is evidently able to accomplish all the functions of the multicellular organism. it moves, feels, nourishes itself, and reproduces. some kinds of these amoebae can be seen with the naked eye, but most of them are microscopically small. it is for the following reasons that we regard the amoebae as the unicellular organisms which have special phylogenetic (or evolutionary) relations to the ovum. in many of the lower animals the ovum retains its original naked form until fertilisation, develops no membranes, and is then often indistinguishable from the ordinary amoeba. like the amoebae, these naked ova may thrust out processes, and move about as travelling cells. in the sponges these mobile ova move about freely in the maternal body like independent amoebae (figure . ). they had been observed by earlier scientists, but described as foreign bodies--namely, parasitic amoebae, living parasitically on the body of the sponge. later, however, it was discovered that they were not parasites, but the ova of the sponge. we also find this remarkable phenomenon among other animals, such as the graceful, bell-shaped zoophytes, which we call polyps and medusae. their ova remain naked cells, which thrust out amoeboid projections, nourish themselves, and move about. when they have been fertilised, the multicellular organism is formed from them by repeated segmentation. it is, therefore, no audacious hypothesis, but a perfectly sound conclusion, to regard the amoeba as the particular unicellular organism which offers us an approximate illustration of the ancient common unicellular ancestor of all the metazoa, or multicellular animals. the simple naked amoeba has a less definite and more original character than any other cell. moreover, there is the fact that recent research has discovered such amoeba-like cells everywhere in the mature body of the multicellular animals. they are found, for instance, in the human blood, side by side with the red corpuscles, as colourless blood-cells; and it is the same with all the vertebrates. they are also found in many of the invertebrates--for instance, in the blood of the snail. i showed, in , that these colourless blood-cells can, like the independent amoebae, take up solid particles, or "eat" (whence they are called phagocytes = "eating-cells," figure . ). lately, it has been discovered that many different cells may, if they have room enough, execute the same movements, creeping about and eating. they behave just like amoebae (figure . ). it has also been shown that these "travelling-cells," or planocytes, play an important part in man's physiology and pathology (as means of transport for food, infectious matter, bacteria, etc.). the power of the naked cell to execute these characteristic amoeba-like movements comes from the contractility (or automatic mobility) of its protoplasm. this seems to be a universal property of young cells. when they are not enclosed by a firm membrane, or confined in a "cellular prison," they can always accomplish these amoeboid movements. this is true of the naked ova as well as of any other naked cells, of the "travelling-cells," of various kinds in connective tissue, lymph-cells, mucus-cells, etc. we have now, by our study of the ovum and the comparison of it with the amoeba, provided a perfectly sound and most valuable foundation for both the embryology and the evolution of man. we have learned that the human ovum is a simple cell, that this ovum is not materially different from that of other mammals, and that we may infer from it the existence of a primitive unicellular ancestral form, with a substantial resemblance to the amoeba. the statement that the earliest progenitors of the human race were simple cells of this kind, and led an independent unicellular life like the amoeba, has not only been ridiculed as the dream of a natural philosopher, but also been violently censured in theological journals as "shameful and immoral." but, as i observed in my essay on the origin and ancestral tree of the human race in , this offended piety must equally protest against the "shameful and immoral" fact that each human individual is developed from a simple ovum, and that this human ovum is indistinguishable from those of the other mammals, and in its earliest stage is like a naked amoeba. we can show this to be a fact any day with the microscope, and it is little use to close one's eyes to "immoral" facts of this kind. it is as indisputable as the momentous conclusions we draw from it and as the vertebrate character of man (see chapter . ). (figure . . blood-cells that eat, or phagocytes, from a naked sea-snail (thetis), greatly magnified. i was the first to observe in the blood-cells of this snail the important fact that "the blood-cells of the invertebrates are unprotected pieces of plasm, and take in food, by means of their peculiar movements, like the amoebae." i had (in naples, on may th, ) injected into the blood-vessels of one of these snails an infusion of water and ground indigo, and was greatly astonished to find the blood-cells themselves more or less filled with the particles of indigo after a few hours. after repeated injections i succeeded in "observing the very entrance of the coloured particles in the blood-cells, which took place just in the same way as with the amoeba." i have given further particulars about this in my monograph on the radiolaria.) we now see very clearly how extremely important the cell theory has been for our whole conception of organic nature. "man's place in nature" is settled beyond question by it. apart from the cell theory, man is an insoluble enigma to us. hence philosophers, and especially physiologists, should be thoroughly conversant with it. the soul of man can only be really understood in the light of the cell-soul, and we have the simplest form of this in the amoeba. only those who are acquainted with the simple psychic functions of the unicellular organisms and their gradual evolution in the series of lower animals can understand how the elaborate mind of the higher vertebrates, and especially of man, was gradually evolved from them. the academic psychologists who lack this zoological equipment are unable to do so. this naturalistic and realistic conception is a stumbling-block to our modern idealistic metaphysicians and their theological colleagues. fenced about with their transcendental and dualistic prejudices, they attack not only the monistic system we establish on our scientific knowledge, but even the plainest facts which go to form its foundation. an instructive instance of this was seen a few years ago, in the academic discourse delivered by a distinguished theologian, willibald beyschlag, at halle, january th, , on the occasion of the centenary festival. the theologian protested violently against the "materialistic dustmen of the scientific world who offer our people the diploma of a descent from the ape, and would prove to them that the genius of a shakespeare or a goethe is merely a distillation from a drop of primitive mucus." another well-known theologian protested against "the horrible idea that the greatest of men, luther and christ, were descended from a mere globule of protoplasm." nevertheless, not a single informed and impartial scientist doubts the fact that these greatest men were, like all other men--and all other vertebrates--developed from an impregnated ovum, and that this simple nucleated globule of protoplasm has the same chemical constitution in all the mammals. chapter . . conception. the recognition of the fact that every man begins his individual existence as a simple cell is the solid foundation of all research into the genesis of man. from this fact we are forced, in virtue of our biogenetic law, to draw the weighty phylogenetic conclusion that the earliest ancestors of the human race were also unicellular organisms; and among these protozoa we may single out the vague form of the amoeba as particularly important (cf. chapter . ). that these unicellular ancestral forms did once exist follows directly from the phenomena which we perceive every day in the fertilised ovum. the development of the multicellular organism from the ovum, and the formation of the germinal layers and the tissues, follow the same laws in man and all the higher animals. it will, therefore, be our next task to consider more closely the impregnated ovum and the process of conception which produces it. the process of impregnation or sexual conception is one of those phenomena that people love to conceal behind the mystic veil of supernatural power. we shall soon see, however, that it is a purely mechanical process, and can be reduced to familiar physiological functions. moreover, this process of conception is of the same type, and is effected by the same organs, in man as in all the other mammals. the pairing of the male and female has in both cases for its main purpose the introduction of the ripe matter of the male seed or sperm into the female body, in the sexual canals of which it encounters the ovum. conception then ensues by the blending of the two. we must observe, first, that this important process is by no means so widely distributed in the animal and plant world as is commonly supposed. there is a very large number of lower organisms which propagate unsexually, or by monogamy; these are especially the sexless monera (chromacea, bacteria, etc.) but also many other protists, such as the amoebae, foraminifera, radiolaria, myxomycetae, etc. in these the multiplication of individuals takes place by unsexual reproduction, which takes the form of cleavage, budding, or spore-formation. the copulation of two coalescing cells, which in these cases often precedes the reproduction, cannot be regarded as a sexual act unless the two copulating plastids differ in size or structure. on the other hand, sexual reproduction is the general rule with all the higher organisms, both animal and plant; very rarely do we find asexual reproduction among them. there are, in particular, no cases of parthenogenesis (virginal conception) among the vertebrates. sexual reproduction offers an infinite variety of interesting forms in the different classes of animals and plants, especially as regards the mode of conception, and the conveyance of the spermatozoon to the ovum. these features are of great importance not only as regards conception itself, but for the development of the organic form, and especially for the differentiation of the sexes. there is a particularly curious correlation of plants and animals in this respect. the splendid studies of charles darwin and hermann muller on the fertilisation of flowers by insects have given us very interesting particulars of this.* (* see darwin's work, on the various contrivances by which orchids are fertilised ( ).) this reciprocal service has given rise to a most intricate sexual apparatus. equally elaborate structures have been developed in man and the higher animals, serving partly for the isolation of the sexual products on each side, partly for bringing them together in conception. but, however interesting these phenomena are in themselves, we cannot go into them here, as they have only a minor importance--if any at all--in the real process of conception. we must, however, try to get a very clear idea of this process and the meaning of sexual reproduction. in every act of conception we have, as i said, to consider two different kinds of cells--a female and a male cell. the female cell of the animal organism is always called the ovum (or ovulum, egg, or egg-cell); the male cells are known as the sperm or seed-cells, or the spermatozoa (also spermium and zoospermium). the ripe ovum is, on the whole, one of the largest cells we know. it attains colossal dimensions when it absorbs great quantities of nutritive yelk, as is the case with birds and reptiles and many of the fishes. in the great majority of the animals the ripe ovum is rich in yelk and much larger than the other cells. on the other hand, the next cell which we have to consider in the process of conception, the male sperm-cell or spermatozoon, is one of the smallest cells in the animal body. conception usually consists in the bringing into contact with the ovum of a slimy fluid secreted by the male, and this may take place either inside or out of the female body. this fluid is called sperm, or the male seed. sperm, like saliva or blood, is not a simple fluid, but a thick agglomeration of innumerable cells, swimming about in a comparatively small quantity of fluid. it is not the fluid, but the independent male cells that swim in it, that cause conception. (figure . . spermia or spermatozoa of various mammals. the pear-shaped flattened nucleus is seen from the front in i and sideways in ii. k is the nucleus, m its middle part (protoplasm), s the mobile, serpent-like tail (or whip); m four human spermatozoa, a spermatozoa from the ape; k from the rabbit; h from the mouse; c from the dog; s from the pig. figure . . spermatozoa or spermidia of various animals. (from lang). a of a fish, b of a turbellaria worm (with two side-lashes), c to e of a nematode worm (amoeboid spermatozoa), f from a craw fish (star-shaped), g from the salamander (with undulating membrane), h of an annelid (a and h are the usual shape). figure . . a single human spermatozoon magnified times; a shows it from the broader and b from the narrower side. k head (with nucleus), m middle-stem, h long-stem, and e tail. (from retzius.)) the spermatozoa of the great majority of animals have two characteristic features. firstly, they are extraordinarily small, being usually the smallest cells in the body; and, secondly, they have, as a rule, a peculiarly lively motion, which is known as spermatozoic motion. the shape of the cell has a good deal to do with this motion. in most of the animals, and also in many of the lower plants (but not the higher) each of these spermatozoa has a very small, naked cell-body, enclosing an elongated nucleus, and a long thread hanging from it (figure . ). it was long before we could recognise that these structures are simple cells. they were formerly held to be special organisms, and were called "seed animals" (spermato-zoa, or spermato-zoidia); they are now scientifically known as spermia or spermidia, or as spermatosomata (seed-bodies) or spermatofila (seed threads). it took a good deal of comparative research to convince us that each of these spermatozoa is really a simple cell. they have the same shape as in many other vertebrates and most of the invertebrates. however, in many of the lower animals they have quite a different shape. thus, for instance, in the craw fish they are large round cells, without any movement, equipped with stiff outgrowths like bristles (figure . f). they have also a peculiar form in some of the worms, such as the thread-worms (filaria); in this case they are sometimes amoeboid and like very small ova (figure . c to e). but in most of the lower animals (such as the sponges and polyps) they have the same pine-cone shape as in man and the other animals (figure . a, h). when the dutch naturalist leeuwenhoek discovered these thread-like lively particles in in the male sperm, it was generally believed that they were special, independent, tiny animalcules, like the infusoria, and that the whole mature organism existed already, with all its parts, but very small and packed together, in each spermatozoon (see chapter . ). we now know that the mobile spermatozoa are nothing but simple and real cells, of the kind that we call "ciliated" (equipped with lashes, or cilia). in the previous illustrations we have distinguished in the spermatozoon a head, trunk, and tail. the "head" (figure . k) is merely the oval nucleus of the cell; the body or middle-part (m) is an accumulation of cell-matter; and the tail (s) is a thread-like prolongation of the same. moreover, we now know that these spermatozoa are not at all a peculiar form of cell; precisely similar cells are found in various other parts of the body. if they have many short threads projecting, they are called ciliated; if only one long, whip-shaped process (or, more rarely, two or four), caudate (tailed) cells. very careful recent examination of the spermia, under a very high microscopic power (figure . a, b), has detected some further details in the finer structure of the ciliated cell, and these are common to man and the anthropoid ape. the head (k) encloses the elliptic nucleus in a thin envelope of cytoplasm; it is a little flattened on one side, and thus looks rather pear-shaped from the front (b). in the central piece (m) we can distinguish a short neck and a longer connective piece (with central body). the tail consists of a long main section (h) and a short, very fine tail (e). the process of fertilisation by sexual conception consists, therefore, essentially in the coalescence and fusing together of two different cells. the lively spermatozoon travels towards the ovum by its serpentine movements, and bores its way into the female cell (figure . ). the nuclei of both sexual cells, attracted by a certain "affinity," approach each other and melt into one. the fertilised cell is quite another thing from the unfertilised cell. for if we must regard the spermia as real cells no less than the ova, and the process of conception as a coalescence of the two, we must consider the resultant cell as a quite new and independent organism. it bears in the cell and nuclear matter of the penetrating spermatozoon a part of the father's body, and in the protoplasm and caryoplasm of the ovum a part of the mother's body. this is clear from the fact that the child inherits many features from both parents. it inherits from the father by means of the spermatozoon, and from the mother by means of the ovum. the actual blending of the two cells produces a third cell, which is the germ of the child, or the new organism conceived. one may also say of this sexual coalescence that the stem-cell is a simple hermaphrodite; it unites both sexual substances in itself. (figure . . the fertilisation of the ovum by the spermatozoon (of a mammal). one of the many thread-like, lively spermidia pierces through a fine pore-canal into the nuclear yelk. the nucleus of the ovum is invisible. figure . . an impregnated echinoderm ovum, with small homogeneous nucleus (e k). (from hertwig.)) i think it necessary to emphasise the fundamental importance of this simple, but often unappreciated, feature in order to have a correct and clear idea of conception. with that end, i have given a special name to the new cell from which the child develops, and which is generally loosely called "the fertilised ovum," or "the first segmentation sphere." i call it "the stem-cell" (cytula). the name "stem-cell" seems to me the simplest and most suitable, because all the other cells of the body are derived from it, and because it is, in the strictest sense, the stem-father and stem-mother of all the countless generations of cells of which the multicellular organism is to be composed. that complicated molecular movement of the protoplasm which we call "life" is, naturally, something quite different in this stem-cell from what we find in the two parent-cells, from the coalescence of which it has issued. the life of the stem-cell or cytula is the product or resultant of the paternal life-movement that is conveyed in the spermatozoon and the maternal life-movement that is contributed by the ovum. the admirable work done by recent observers has shown that the individual development, in man and the other animals, commences with the formation of a simple "stem-cell" of this character, and that this then passes, by repeated segmentation (or cleavage), into a cluster of cells, known as "the segmentation sphere" or "segmentation cells." the process is most clearly observed in the ova of the echinoderms (star-fishes, sea-urchins, etc.). the investigations of oscar and richard hertwig were chiefly directed to these. the main results may be summed up as follows:-- conception is preceded by certain preliminary changes, which are very necessary--in fact, usually indispensable--for its occurrence. they are comprised under the general heading of "changes prior to impregnation." in these the original nucleus of the ovum, the germinal vesicle, is lost. part of it is extruded, and part dissolved in the cell contents; only a very small part of it is left to form the basis of a fresh nucleus, the pronucleus femininus. it is the latter alone that combines in conception with the invading nucleus of the fertilising spermatozoon (the pronucleus masculinus). the impregnation of the ovum commences with a decay of the germinal vesicle, or the original nucleus of the ovum (figure . ). we have seen that this is in most unripe ova a large, transparent, round vesicle. this germinal vesicle contains a viscous fluid (the caryolymph). the firm nuclear frame (caryobasis) is formed of the enveloping membrane and a mesh-work of nuclear threads running across the interior, which is filled with the nuclear sap. in a knot of the network is contained the dark, stiff, opaque nuclear corpuscle or nucleolus. when the impregnation of the ovum sets in, the greater part of the germinal vesicle is dissolved in the cell; the nuclear membrane and mesh-work disappear; the nuclear sap is distributed in the protoplasm; a small portion of the nuclear base is extruded; another small portion is left, and is converted into the secondary nucleus, or the female pro-nucleus (figure . e k). the small portion of the nuclear base which is extruded from the impregnated ovum is known as the "directive bodies" or "polar cells"; there are many disputes as to their origin and significance, but we are as yet imperfectly acquainted with them. as a rule, they are two small round granules, of the same size and appearance as the remaining pro-nucleus. they are detached cell-buds; their separation from the large mother-cell takes place in the same way as in ordinary "indirect cell-division." hence, the polar cells are probably to be conceived as "abortive ova," or "rudimentary ova," which proceed from a simple original ovum by cleavage in the same way that several sperm-cells arise from one "sperm-mother-cell," in reproduction from sperm. the male sperm-cells in the testicles must undergo similar changes in view of the coming impregnation as the ova in the female ovary. in this maturing of the sperm each of the original seed-cells divides by double segmentation into four daughter-cells, each furnished with a fourth of the original nuclear matter (the hereditary chromatin); and each of these four descendant cells becomes a spermatozoon, ready for impregnation. thus is prevented the doubling of the chromatin in the coalescence of the two nuclei at conception. as the two polar cells are extruded and lost, and have no further part in the fertilisation of the ovum, we need not discuss them any further. but we must give more attention to the female pro-nucleus which alone remains after the extrusion of the polar cells and the dissolving of the germinal vesicle (figure . e k). this tiny round corpuscle of chromatin now acts as a centre of attraction for the invading spermatozoon in the large ripe ovum, and coalesces with its "head," the male pro-nucleus. the product of this blending, which is the most important part of the act of impregnation, is the stem-nucleus, or the first segmentation nucleus (archicaryon)--that is to say, the nucleus of the new-born embryonic stem-cell or "first segmentation cell." this stem-cell is the starting point of the subsequent embryonic processes. hertwig has shown that the tiny transparent ova of the echinoderms are the most convenient for following the details of this important process of impregnation. we can, in this case, easily and successfully accomplish artificial impregnation, and follow the formation of the stem-cell step by step within the space of ten minutes. if we put ripe ova of the star-fish or sea-urchin in a watch glass with sea-water and add a drop of ripe sperm-fluid, we find each ovum impregnated within five minutes. thousands of the fine, mobile ciliated cells, which we have described as "sperm-threads" (figure . ), make their way to the ova, owing to a sort of chemical sensitive action which may be called "smell." but only one of these innumerable spermatozoa is chosen--namely, the one that first reaches the ovum by the serpentine motions of its tail, and touches the ovum with its head. at the spot where the point of its head touches the surface of the ovum the protoplasm of the latter is raised in the form of a small wart, the "impregnation rise" (figure . a). the spermatozoon then bores its way into this with its head, the tail outside wriggling about all the time (figure . b, c). presently the tail also disappears within the ovum. at the same time the ovum secretes a thin external yelk-membrane (figure . c), starting from the point of impregnation; and this prevents any more spermatozoa from entering. inside the impregnated ovum we now see a rapid series of most important changes. the pear-shaped head of the sperm-cell, or the "head of the spermatozoon," grows larger and rounder, and is converted into the male pro-nucleus (figure . s k). this has an attractive influence on the fine granules or particles which are distributed in the protoplasm of the ovum; they arrange themselves in lines in the figure of a star. but the attraction or the "affinity" between the two nuclei is even stronger. they move towards each other inside the yelk with increasing speed, the male (figure . s k) going more quickly than the female nucleus (e k). the tiny male nucleus takes with it the radiating mantle which spreads like a star about it. at last the two sexual nuclei touch (usually in the centre of the globular ovum), lie close together, are flattened at the points of contact, and coalesce into a common mass. the small central particle of nuclein which is formed from this combination of the nuclei is the stem-nucleus, or the first segmentation nucleus; the new-formed cell, the product of the impregnation, is our stem-cell, or "first segmentation sphere" (figure . ). (figure . . impregnation of the ovum of a star-fish. (from hertwig.) only a small part of the surface of the ovum is shown. one of the numerous spermatozoa approaches the "impregnation rise" (a), touches it (b), and then penetrates into the protoplasm of the ovum (c). figures . and . . impregnation of the ovum of the sea-urchin. (from hertwig.) in figure . the little sperm-nucleus (sk) moves towards the larger nucleus of the ovum (ek). in figure . they nearly touch, and are surrounded by the radiating mantle of protoplasm.) hence the one essential point in the process of sexual reproduction or impregnation is the formation of a new cell, the stem-cell, by the combination of two originally different cells, the female ovum and the male spermatozoon. this process is of the highest importance, and merits our closest attention; all that happens in the later development of this first cell and in the life of the organism that comes of it is determined from the first by the chemical and morphological composition of the stem-cell, its nucleus and its body. we must, therefore, make a very careful study of the rise and structure of the stem-cell. the first question that arises is as to the two different active elements, the nucleus and the protoplasm, in the actual coalescence. it is obvious that the nucleus plays the more important part in this. hence hertwig puts his theory of conception in the principle: "conception consists in the copulation of two cell-nuclei, which come from a male and a female cell." and as the phenomenon of heredity is inseparably connected with the reproductive process, we may further conclude that these two copulating nuclei "convey the characteristics which are transmitted from parents to offspring." in this sense i had in (in the ninth chapter of the general morphology) ascribed to the reproductive nucleus the function of generation and heredity, and to the nutritive protoplasm the duties of nutrition and adaptation. as, moreover, there is a complete coalescence of the mutually attracted nuclear substances in conception, and the new nucleus formed (the stem-nucleus) is the real starting-point for the development of the fresh organism, the further conclusion may be drawn that the male nucleus conveys to the child the qualities of the father, and the female nucleus the features of the mother. we must not forget, however, that the protoplasmic bodies of the copulating cells also fuse together in the act of impregnation; the cell-body of the invading spermatozoon (the trunk and tail of the male ciliated cell) is dissolved in the yelk of the female ovum. this coalescence is not so important as that of the nuclei, but it must not be overlooked; and, though this process is not so well known to us, we see clearly at least the formation of the star-like figure (the radial arrangement of the particles in the plasma) in it (figures . to . ). the older theories of impregnation generally went astray in regarding the large ovum as the sole base of the new organism, and only ascribed to the spermatozoon the work of stimulating and originating its development. the stimulus which it gave to the ovum was sometimes thought to be purely chemical, at other times rather physical (on the principle of transferred movement), or again a mystic and transcendental process. this error was partly due to the imperfect knowledge at that time of the facts of impregnation, and partly to the striking difference in the sizes of the two sexual cells. most of the earlier observers thought that the spermatozoon did not penetrate into the ovum. and even when this had been demonstrated, the spermatozoon was believed to disappear in the ovum without leaving a trace. however, the splendid research made in the last three decades with the finer technical methods of our time has completely exposed the error of this. it has been shown that the tiny sperm-cell is not subordinated to, but coordinated with, the large ovum. the nuclei of the two cells, as the vehicles of the hereditary features of the parents, are of equal physiological importance. in some cases we have succeeded in proving that the mass of the active nuclear substance which combines in the copulation of the two sexual nuclei is originally the same for both. these morphological facts are in perfect harmony with the familiar physiological truth that the child inherits from both parents, and that on the average they are equally distributed. i say "on the average," because it is well known that a child may have a greater likeness to the father or to the mother; that goes without saying, as far as the primary sexual characters (the sexual glands) are concerned. but it is also possible that the determination of the latter--the weighty determination whether the child is to be a boy or a girl--depends on a slight qualitative or quantitative difference in the nuclein or the coloured nuclear matter which comes from both parents in the act of conception. the striking differences of the respective sexual cells in size and shape, which occasioned the erroneous views of earlier scientists, are easily explained on the principle of division of labour. the inert, motionless ovum grows in size according to the quantity of provision it stores up in the form of nutritive yelk for the development of the germ. the active swimming sperm-cell is reduced in size in proportion to its need to seek the ovum and bore its way into its yelk. these differences are very conspicuous in the higher animals, but they are much less in the lower animals. in those protists (unicellular plants and animals) which have the first rudiments of sexual reproduction the two copulating cells are at first quite equal. in these cases the act of impregnation is nothing more than a sudden growth, in which the originally simple cell doubles its volume, and is thus prepared for reproduction (cell-division). afterwards slight differences are seen in the size of the copulating cells; though the smaller ones still have the same shape as the larger ones. it is only when the difference in size is very pronounced that a notable difference in shape is found: the sprightly sperm-cell changes more in shape and the ovum in size. quite in harmony with this new conception of the equivalence of the two gonads, or the equal physiological importance of the male and female sex-cells and their equal share in the process of heredity, is the important fact established by hertwig ( ), that in normal impregnation only one single spermatozoon copulates with one ovum; the membrane which is raised on the surface of the yelk immediately after one sperm-cell has penetrated (figure . c) prevents any others from entering. all the rivals of the fortunate penetrator are excluded, and die without. but if the ovum passes into a morbid state, if it is made stiff by a lowering of its temperature or stupefied with narcotics (chloroform, morphia, nicotine, etc.), two or more spermatozoa may penetrate into its yelk-body. we then witness polyspermism. the more hertwig chloroformed the ovum, the more spermatozoa were able to bore their way into its unconscious body. (figure . . stem-cell of a rabbit, magnified times. in the centre of the granular protoplasm of the fertilised ovum (d) is seen the little, bright stem-nucleus, z is the ovolemma, with a mucous membrane (h). s are dead spermatozoa.) these remarkable facts of impregnation are also of the greatest interest in psychology, especially as regards the theory of the cell-soul, which i consider to be its chief foundation. the phenomena we have described can only be understood and explained by ascribing a certain lower degree of psychic activity to the sexual principles. they feel each other's proximity, and are drawn together by a sensitive impulse (probably related to smell); they move towards each other, and do not rest until they fuse together. physiologists may say that it is only a question of a peculiar physico-chemical phenomenon, and not a psychic action; but the two cannot be separated. even the psychic functions, in the strict sense of the word, are only complex physical processes, or "psycho-physical" phenomena, which are determined in all cases exclusively by the chemical composition of their material substratum. the monistic view of the matter becomes clear enough when we remember the radical importance of impregnation as regards heredity. it is well known that not only the most delicate bodily structures, but also the subtlest traits of mind, are transmitted from the parents to the children. in this the chromatic matter of the male nucleus is just as important a vehicle as the large caryoplasmic substance of the female nucleus; the one transmits the mental features of the father, and the other those of the mother. the blending of the two parental nuclei determines the individual psychic character of the child. but there is another important psychological question--the most important of all--that has been definitely answered by the recent discoveries in connection with conception. this is the question of the immortality of the soul. no fact throws more light on it and refutes it more convincingly than the elementary process of conception that we have described. for this copulation of the two sexual nuclei (figures . and . ) indicates the precise moment at which the individual begins to exist. all the bodily and mental features of the new-born child are the sum-total of the hereditary qualities which it has received in reproduction from parents and ancestors. all that man acquires afterwards in life by the exercise of his organs, the influence of his environment, and education--in a word, by adaptation--cannot obliterate that general outline of his being which he inherited from his parents. but this hereditary disposition, the essence of every human soul, is not "eternal," but "temporal"; it comes into being only at the moment when the sperm-nucleus of the father and the nucleus of the maternal ovum meet and fuse together. it is clearly irrational to assume an "eternal life without end" for an individual phenomenon, the commencement of which we can indicate to a moment by direct visual observation. the great importance of the process of impregnation in answering such questions is quite clear. it is true that conception has never been studied microscopically in all its details in the human case--notwithstanding its occurrence at every moment--for reasons that are obvious enough. however, the two cells which need consideration, the female ovum and the male spermatozoon, proceed in the case of man in just the same way as in all the other mammals; the human foetus or embryo which results from copulation has the same form as with the other animals. hence, no scientist who is acquainted with the facts doubts that the processes of impregnation are just the same in man as in the other animals. the stem-cell which is produced, and with which every man begins his career, cannot be distinguished in appearance from those of other mammals, such as the rabbit (figure . ). in the case of man, also, this stem-cell differs materially from the original ovum, both in regard to form (morphologically), in regard to material composition (chemically), and in regard to vital properties (physiologically). it comes partly from the father and partly from the mother. hence it is not surprising that the child who is developed from it inherits from both parents. the vital movements of each of these cells form a sum of mechanical processes which in the last analysis are due to movements of the smallest vital parts, or the molecules, of the living substance. if we agree to call this active substance plasson, and its molecules plastidules, we may say that the individual physiological character of each of these cells is due to its molecular plastidule-movement. hence, the plastidule-movement of the cytula is the resultant of the combined plastidule-movements of the female ovum and the male sperm-cell.* (* the plasson of the stem-cell or cytula may, from the anatomical point of view, be regarded as homogeneous and structureless, like that of the monera. this is not inconsistent with our hypothetical ascription to the plastidules (or molecules of the plasson) of a complex molecular structure. the complexity of this is the greater in proportion to the complexity of the organism that is developed from it and the length of the chain of its ancestry, or to the multitude of antecedent processes of heredity and adaptation.) chapter . . the gastraea theory. there is a substantial agreement throughout the animal world in the first changes which follow the impregnation of the ovum and the formation of the stem-cell; they begin in all cases with the segmentation of the ovum and the formation of the germinal layers. the only exception is found in the protozoa, the very lowest and simplest forms of animal life; these remain unicellular throughout life. to this group belong the amoebae, gregarinae, rhizopods, infusoria, etc. as their whole organism consists of a single cell, they can never form germinal layers, or definite strata of cells. but all the other animals--all the tissue-forming animals, or metazoa, as we call them, in contradistinction to the protozoa--construct real germinal layers by the repeated cleavage of the impregnated ovum. this we find in the lower cnidaria and worms, as well as in the more highly-developed molluscs, echinoderms, articulates, and vertebrates. in all these metazoa, or multicellular animals, the chief embryonic processes are substantially alike, although they often seem to a superficial observer to differ considerably. the stem-cell that proceeds from the impregnated ovum always passes by repeated cleavage into a number of simple cells. these cells are all direct descendants of the stem-cell, and are, for reasons we shall see presently, called segmentation-cells. the repeated cleavage of the stem-cell, which gives rise to these segmentation-spheres, has long been known as "segmentation." sooner or later the segmentation-cells join together to form a round (at first, globular) embryonic sphere (blastula); they then form into two very different groups, and arrange themselves in two separate strata--the two primary germinal layers. these enclose a digestive cavity, the primitive gut, with an opening, the primitive mouth. we give the name of the gastrula to the important embryonic form that has these primitive organs, and the name of gastrulation to the formation of it. this ontogenetic process has a very great significance, and is the real starting-point of the construction of the multicellular animal body. the fundamental embryonic processes of the cleavage of the ovum and the formation of the germinal layers have been very thoroughly studied in the last thirty years, and their real significance has been appreciated. they present a striking variety in the different groups, and it was no light task to prove their essential identity in the whole animal world. but since i formulated the gastraea theory in , and afterwards ( ) reduced all the various forms of segmentation and gastrulation to one fundamental type, their identity may be said to have been established. we have thus mastered the law of unity which governs the first embryonic processes in all the animals. man is like all the other higher animals, especially the apes, in regard to these earliest and most important processes. as the human embryo does not essentially differ, even at a much later stage of development--when we already perceive the cerebral vesicles, the eyes, ears, gill-arches, etc.--from the similar forms of the other higher mammals, we may confidently assume that they agree in the earliest embryonic processes, segmentation and the formation of germinal layers. this has not yet, it is true, been established by observation. we have never yet had occasion to dissect a woman immediately after impregnation and examine the stem-cell or the segmentation-cells in her oviduct. however, as the earliest human embryos we have examined, and the later and more developed forms, agree with those of the rabbit, dog, and other higher mammals, no reasonable man will doubt but that the segmentation and formation of layers are the same in both cases. but the special form of segmentation and layer formation which we find in the mammal is by no means the original, simple, palingenetic form. it has been much modified and cenogenetically altered by a very complex adaptation to embryonic conditions. we cannot, therefore, understand it altogether in itself. in order to do this, we have to make a comparative study of segmentation and layer-formation in the animal world; and we have especially to seek the original, palingenetic form from which the modified cenogenetic (see chapter . ) form has gradually been developed. this original unaltered form of segmentation and layer-formation is found to-day in only one case in the vertebrate-stem to which man belongs--the lowest and oldest member of the stem, the wonderful lancelet or amphioxus (cf. chapters . and . ). but we find a precisely similar palingenetic form of embryonic development in the case of many of the invertebrate animals, as, for instance, the remarkable ascidia, the pond-snail (limnaeus), and arrow-worm (sagitta), and many of the echinoderms and cnidaria, such as the common star-fish and sea-urchin, many of the medusae and corals, and the simpler sponges (olynthus). we may take as an illustration the palingenetic segmentation and germinal layer-formation in an eight-fold insular coral, which i discovered in the red sea, and described as monoxenia darwinii. (figure . . gastrulation of a coral (monoxenia darwinii). a, b, stem-cell (cytula) or impregnated ovum. in figure a (immediately after impregnation) the nucleus is invisible. in figure b (a little later) it is quite clear. c two segmentation-cells. d four segmentation-cells. e mulberry-formation (morula). f blastosphere (blastula). g blastula (transverse section). h depula, or hollowed blastula (transverse section). i gastrula (longitudinal section). k gastrula, or cup-sphere, external appearance.) the impregnated ovum of this coral (figure . a, b) first splits into two equal cells (c). first, the nucleus of the stem-cell and its central body divide into two halves. these recede from and repel each other, and act as centres of attraction on the surrounding protoplasm; in consequence of this, the protoplasm is constricted by a circular furrow, and, in turn, divides into two halves. each of the two segmentation-cells thus produced splits in the same way into two equal cells. the four segmentation-cells (grand-daughters of the stem-cell) lie in one plane. now, however, each of them subdivides into two equal halves, the cleavage of the nucleus again preceding that of the surrounding protoplasm. the eight cells which thus arise break into sixteen, these into thirty-two, and then (each being constantly halved) into sixty-four, , and so on.* (* the number of segmentation-cells thus produced increases geometrically in the original gastrulation, or the purest palingenetic form of cleavage. however, in different animals the number reaches a different height, so that the morula, and also the blastula, may consist sometimes of thirty-two, sometimes of sixty-four, and sometimes of , or more, cells.) the final result of this repeated cleavage is the formation of a globular cluster of similar segmentation-cells, which we call the mulberry-formation or morula. the cells are thickly pressed together like the parts of a mulberry or blackberry, and this gives a lumpy appearance to the surface of the sphere (figure e).* (* the segmentation-cells which make up the morula after the close of the palingenetic cleavage seem usually to be quite similar, and to present no differences as to size, form, and composition. that, however, does not prevent them from differentiating into animal and vegetative cells, even during the cleavage.) when the cleavage is thus ended, the mulberry-like mass changes into a hollow globular sphere. watery fluid or jelly gathers inside the globule; the segmentation-cells are loosened, and all rise to the surface. there they are flattened by mutual pressure, and assume the shape of truncated pyramids, and arrange themselves side by side in one regular layer (figures f, g). this layer of cells is called the germinal membrane (or blastoderm); the homogeneous cells which compose its simple structure are called blastodermic cells; and the whole hollow sphere, the walls of which are made of the preceding, is called the blastula or blastosphere.* (* the blastula of the lower animals must not be confused with the very different blastula of the mammal, which is properly called the gastrocystis or blastocystis. this cenogenetic gastrocystis and the palingenetic blastula are sometimes very wrongly comprised under the common name of blastula or vesicula blastodermica.) in the case of our coral, and of many other lower forms of animal life, the young embryo begins at once to move independently and swim about in the water. a fine, long, thread-like process, a sort of whip or lash, grows out of each blastodermic cell, and this independently executes vibratory movements, slow at first, but quicker after a time (figure f). in this way each blastodermic cell becomes a ciliated cell. the combined force of all these vibrating lashes causes the whole blastula to move about in a rotatory fashion. in many other animals, especially those in which the embryo develops within enclosed membranes, the ciliated cells are only formed at a later stage, or even not formed at all. the blastosphere may grow and expand by the blastodermic cells (at the surface of the sphere) dividing and increasing, and more fluid is secreted in the internal cavity. there are still to-day some organisms that remain throughout life at the structural stage of the blastula--hollow vesicles that swim about by a ciliary movement in the water, the wall of which is composed of a single layer of cells, such as the volvox, the magosphaera, synura, etc. we shall speak further of the great phylogenetic significance of this fact in chapter . . a very important and remarkable process now follows--namely, the curving or invagination of the blastula (figure h). the vesicle with a single layer of cells for wall is converted into a cup with a wall of two layers of cells (cf. figures g, h, i). a certain spot at the surface of the sphere is flattened, and then bent inward. this depression sinks deeper and deeper, growing at the cost of the internal cavity. the latter decreases as the hollow deepens. at last the internal cavity disappears altogether, the inner side of the blastoderm (that which lines the depression) coming to lie close on the outer side. at the same time, the cells of the two sections assume different sizes and shapes; the inner cells are more round and the outer more oval (figure i). in this way the embryo takes the form of a cup or jar-shaped body, with a wall made up of two layers of cells, the inner cavity of which opens to the outside at one end (the spot where the depression was originally formed). we call this very important and interesting embryonic form the "cup-embryo" or "cup-larva" (gastrula, figure . , i longitudinal section, k external view). i have in my natural history of creation given the name of depula to the remarkable intermediate form which appears at the passage of the blastula into the gastrula. in this intermediate stage there are two cavities in the embryo--the original cavity (blastocoel) which is disappearing, and the primitive gut-cavity (progaster) which is forming. i regard the gastrula as the most important and significant embryonic form in the animal world. in all real animals (that is, excluding the unicellular protists) the segmentation of the ovum produces either a pure, primitive, palingenetic gastrula (figure . i, k) or an equally instructive cenogenetic form, which has been developed in time from the first, and can be directly reduced to it. it is certainly a fact of the greatest interest and instructiveness that animals of the most different stems--vertebrates and tunicates, molluscs and articulates, echinoderms and annelids, cnidaria and sponges--proceed from one and the same embryonic form. in illustration i give a few pure gastrula forms from various groups of animals (figures . to . , explanation given below each). (figures . to . . in each figure d is the primitive-gut cavity, o primitive mouth, s segmentation-cavity, i entoderm (gut-layer), e ectoderm (skin layer). figure . . (a) gastrula of a very simple primitive-gut animal or gastraead (gastrophysema). (haeckel.) figure . . (b) gastrula of a worm (sagitta). (from kowalevsky.) figure . . (c) gastrula of an echinoderm (star-fish, uraster), not completely folded in (depula). (from alexander agassiz.) figure . . (d) gastrula of an arthropod (primitive crab, nauplius) (as ). figure . . (e) gastrula of a mollusc (pond-snail, linnaeus). (from karl rabl.) figure . . (f) gastrula of a vertebrate (lancelet, amphioxus). (from kowalevsky.) (front view.)) in view of this extraordinary significance of the gastrula, we must make a very careful study of its original structure. as a rule, the typical gastrula is very small, being invisible to the naked eye, or at the most only visible as a fine point under very favourable conditions, and measuring generally / to / of an inch (less frequently / inch, or even more) in diameter. in shape it is usually like a roundish drinking-cup. sometimes it is rather oval, at other times more ellipsoid or spindle-shaped; in some cases it is half round, or even almost round, and in others lengthened out, or almost cylindrical. i give the name of primitive gut (progaster) and primitive mouth (prostoma) to the internal cavity of the gastrula-body and its opening; because this cavity is the first rudiment of the digestive cavity of the organism, and the opening originally served to take food into it. naturally, the primitive gut and mouth change very considerably afterwards in the various classes of animals. in most of the cnidaria and many of the annelids (worm-like animals) they remain unchanged throughout life. but in most of the higher animals, and so in the vertebrates, only the larger central part of the later alimentary canal develops from the primitive gut; the later mouth is a fresh development, the primitive mouth disappearing or changing into the anus. we must therefore distinguish carefully between the primitive gut and mouth of the gastrula and the later alimentary canal and mouth of the fully developed vertebrate.* (* my distinction ( ) between the primitive gut and mouth and the later permanent stomach (metagaster) and mouth (metastoma) has been much criticised; but it is as much justified as the distinction between the primitive kidneys and the permanent kidneys. professor e. ray-lankester suggested three years afterwards ( ) the name archenteron for the primitive gut, and blastoporus for the primitive mouth.) (figure . . gastrula of a lower sponge (olynthus). a external view, b longitudinal section through the axis, g primitive-gut cavity, a primitive mouth-aperture, i inner cell-layer (entoderm, endoblast, gut-layer), e external cell-layer (outer germinal layer, ectoderm, ectoblast, or skin-layer). the two layers of cells which line the gut-cavity and compose its wall are of extreme importance. these two layers, which are the sole builders of the whole organism, are no other than the two primary germinal layers, or the primitive germ-layers. i have spoken in the introductory section (chapter . .) of their radical importance. the outer stratum is the skin-layer, or ectoderm (figures . to . e); the inner stratum is the gut-layer, or entoderm (i). the former is often also called the ectoblast, or epiblast, and the latter the endoblast, or hypoblast. from these two primary germinal layers alone is developed the entire organism of all the metazoa or multicellular animals. the skin-layer forms the external skin, the gut-layer forms the internal skin or lining of the body. between these two germinal layers are afterwards developed the middle germinal layer (mesoderma) and the body-cavity (coeloma) filled with blood or lymph. the two primary germinal layers were first distinguished by pander in in the incubated chick. twenty years later ( ) huxley pointed out that in many of the lower zoophytes, especially the medusae, the whole body consists throughout life of these two primary germinal layers. soon afterwards ( ) allman introduced the names which have come into general use; he called the outer layer the ectoderm ("outer-skin"), and the inner the entoderm ("inner-skin"). but in it was shown, particularly by kowalevsky, from comparative observation, that even in invertebrates, also, of the most different classes--annelids, molluscs, echinoderms, and articulates--the body is developed out of the same two primary layers. finally, i discovered them ( ) in the lowest tissue-forming animals, the sponges, and proved in my gastraea theory that these two layers must be regarded as identical throughout the animal world, from the sponges and corals to the insects and vertebrates, including man. this fundamental "homology [identity] of the primary germinal layers and the primitive gut" has been confirmed during the last thirty years by the careful research of many able observers, and is now pretty generally admitted for the whole of the metazoa. as a rule, the cells which compose the two primary germinal layers show appreciable differences even in the gastrula stage. generally (if not always) the cells of the skin-layer or ectoderm (figures . c and . e) are the smaller, more numerous, and clearer; while the cells of the gut-layer, or entoderm (i), are larger, less numerous, and darker. the protoplasm of the ectodermic (outer) cells is clearer and firmer than the thicker and softer cell-matter of the entodermic (inner) cells; the latter are, as a rule, much richer in yelk-granules (albumen and fatty particles) than the former. also the cells of the gut-layer have, as a rule, a stronger affinity for colouring matter, and take on a tinge in a solution of carmine, aniline, etc., more quickly and appreciably than the cells of the skin-layer. the nuclei of the entoderm-cells are usually roundish, while those of the ectoderm-cells are oval. when the doubling-process is complete, very striking histological differences between the cells of the two layers are found (figure . ). the tiny, light ectoderm-cells (e) are sharply distinguished from the larger and darker entoderm-cells (i). frequently this differentiation of the cell-forms sets in at a very early stage, during the segmentation-process, and is already very appreciable in the blastula. we have, up to the present, only considered that form of segmentation and gastrulation which, for many and weighty reasons, we may regard as the original, primordial, or palingenetic form. we might call it "equal" or homogeneous segmentation, because the divided cells retain a resemblance to each other at first (and often until the formation of the blastoderm). we give the name of the "bell-gastrula," or archigastrula, to the gastrula that succeeds it. in just the same form as in the coral we considered (monoxenia, figure . ), we find it in the lowest zoophyta (the gastrophysema, figure . ), and the simplest sponges (olynthus, figure . ); also in many of the medusae and hydrapolyps, lower types of worms of various classes (brachiopod, arrow-worm, figure . ), tunicates (ascidia), many of the echinoderms (figure . ), lower articulates (figure . ), and molluscs (figure . ), and, finally, in a slightly modified form, in the lowest vertebrate (the amphioxus, figure . ). (figure . . cells from the two primary germinal layers of the mammal (from both layers of the blastoderm). i larger and darker cells of the inner stratum, the vegetal layer or entoderm. e smaller and clearer cells from the outer stratum, the animal layer or ectoderm. figure . . gastrulation of the amphioxus, from hatschek (vertical section through the axis of the ovum). a, b, c three stages in the formation of the blastula; d, e curving of the blastula; f complete gastrula. h segmentation-cavity. g primitive gut-cavity.)) the gastrulation of the amphioxus is especially interesting because this lowest and oldest of all the vertebrates is of the highest significance in connection with the evolution of the vertebrate stem, and therefore with that of man (compare chapters . and . ). just as the comparative anatomist traces the most elaborate features in the structures of the various classes of vertebrates to divergent development from this simple primitive vertebrate, so comparative embryology traces the various secondary forms of vertebrate gastrulation to the simple, primary formation of the germinal layers in the amphioxus. although this formation, as distinguished from the cenogenetic modifications of the vertebrate, may on the whole be regarded as palingenetic, it is nevertheless different in some features from the quite primitive gastrulation such as we have, for instance, in the monoxenia (figure . ) and the sagitta. hatschek rightly observes that the segmentation of the ovum in the amphioxus is not strictly equal, but almost equal, and approaches the unequal. the difference in size between the two groups of cells continues to be very noticeable in the further course of the segmentation; the smaller animal cells of the upper hemisphere divide more quickly than the larger vegetal cells of the lower (figure . a, b). hence the blastoderm, which forms the single-layer wall of the globular blastula at the end of the cleavage-process, does not consist of homogeneous cells of equal size, as in the sagitta and the monoxenia; the cells of the upper half of the blastoderm (the mother-cells of the ectoderm) are more numerous and smaller, and the cells of the lower half (the mother-cells of the entoderm) less numerous and larger. moreover, the segmentation-cavity of the blastula (figure . c, h) is not quite globular, but forms a flattened spheroid with unequal poles of its vertical axis. while the blastula is being folded into a cup at the vegetal pole of its axis, the difference in the size of the blastodermic cells increases (figure . d, e); it is most conspicuous when the invagination is complete and the segmentation-cavity has disappeared (figure . f). the larger vegetal cells of the entoderm are richer in granules, and so darker than the smaller and lighter animal cells of the ectoderm. but the unequal gastrulation of the amphioxus diverges from the typical equal cleavage of the sagitta, the monoxenia (figure . ), and the olynthus (figure . ), in another important particular. the pure archigastrula of the latter forms is uni-axial, and it is round in its whole length in transverse section. the vegetal pole of the vertical axis is just in the centre of the primitive mouth. this is not the case in the gastrula of the amphioxus. during the folding of the blastula the ideal axis is already bent on one side, the growth of the blastoderm (or the increase of its cells) being brisker on one side than on the other; the side that grows more quickly, and so is more curved (figure . v), will be the anterior or belly-side, the opposite, flatter side will form the back (d). the primitive mouth, which at first, in the typical archigastrula, lay at the vegetal pole of the main axis, is forced away to the dorsal side; and whereas its two lips lay at first in a plane at right angles to the chief axis, they are now so far thrust aside that their plane cuts the axis at a sharp angle. the dorsal lip is therefore the upper and more forward, the ventral lip the lower and hinder. in the latter, at the ventral passage of the entoderm into the ectoderm, there lie side by side a pair of very large cells, one to the right and one to the left (figure . p): these are the important polar cells of the primitive mouth, or "the primitive cells of the mesoderm." in consequence of these considerable variations arising in the course of the gastrulation, the primitive uni-axial form of the archigastrula in the amphioxus has already become tri-axial, and thus the two-sidedness, or bilateral symmetry, of the vertebrate body has already been determined. this has been transmitted from the amphioxus to all the other modified gastrula-forms of the vertebrate stem. apart from this bilateral structure, the gastrula of the amphioxus resembles the typical archigastrula of the lower animals (figures . to . ) in developing the two primary germinal layers from a single layer of cells. this is clearly the oldest and original form of the metazoic embryo. although the animals i have mentioned belong to the most diverse classes, they nevertheless agree with each other, and many more animal forms, in having retained to the present day, by a conservative heredity, this palingenetic form of gastrulation which they have from their earliest common ancestors. but this is not the case with the great majority of the animals. with these the original embryonic process has been gradually more or less altered in the course of millions of years by adaptation to new conditions of development. both the segmentation of the ovum and the subsequent gastrulation have in this way been considerably changed. in fact, these variations have become so great in the course of time that the segmentation was not rightly understood in most animals, and the gastrula was unrecognised. it was not until i had made an extensive comparative study, lasting a considerable time (in the years to ), in animals of the most diverse classes, that i succeeded in showing the same common typical process in these apparently very different forms of gastrulation, and tracing them all to one original form. i regard all those that diverge from the primary palingenetic gastrulation as secondary, modified, and cenogenetic. the more or less divergent form of gastrula that is produced may be called a secondary, modified gastrula, or a metagastrula. the reader will find a scheme of these different kinds of segmentation and gastrulation at the close of this chapter. by far the most important process that determines the various cenogenetic forms of gastrulation is the change in the nutrition of the ovum and the accumulation in it of nutritive yelk. by this we understand various chemical substances (chiefly granules of albumin and fat-particles) which serve exclusively as reserve-matter or food for the embryo. as the metazoic embryo in its earlier stages of development is not yet able to obtain its food and so build up the frame, the necessary material has to be stored up in the ovum. hence we distinguish in the ova two chief elements--the active formative yelk (protoplasm) and the passive food-yelk (deutoplasm, wrongly spoken of as "the yelk"). in the little palingenetic ova, the segmentation of which we have already considered, the yelk-granules are so small and so regularly distributed in the protoplasm of the ovum that the even and repeated cleavage is not affected by them. but in the great majority of the animal ova the food-yelk is more or less considerable, and is stored in a certain part of the ovum, so that even in the unfertilised ovum the "granary" can clearly be distinguished from the formative plasm. as a rule, the formative-yelk (with the germinal vesicle) then usually gathers at one pole and the food-yelk at the other. the first is the animal, and the second the vegetal, pole of the vertical axis of the ovum. (figure . . gastrula of the amphioxus, seen from left side (diagrammatic median section). (from hatschek.) g primitive gut, u primitive mouth, p peristomal pole-cells, i entoderm, e ectoderm, d dorsal side, v ventral side.) in these "telolecithal" ova, or ova with the yelk at one end (for instance, in the cyclostoma and amphibia), the gastrulation then usually takes place in such a way that in the cleavage of the impregnated ovum the animal (usually the upper) half splits up more quickly than the vegetal (lower). the contractions of the active protoplasm, which effect this continual cleavage of the cells, meet a greater resistance in the lower vegetal half from the passive deutoplasm than in the upper animal half. hence we find in the latter more but smaller, and in the former fewer but larger, cells. the animal cells produce the external, and the vegetal cells the internal, germinal layer. although this unequal segmentation of the cyclostoma, ganoids, and amphibia seems at first sight to differ from the original equal segmentation (for instance, in the monoxenia, figure . ), they both have this in common, that the cleavage process throughout affects the whole cell; hence remak called it total segmentation, and the ova in question holoblastic, or "whole-cleaving." it is otherwise with the second chief group of ova, which he distinguished from these as meroblastic, or "partially-cleaving ": to this class belong the familiar large eggs of birds and reptiles, and of most fishes. the inert mass of the passive food-yelk is so large in these cases that the protoplasmic contractions of the active yelk cannot effect any further cleavage. in consequence, there is only a partial segmentation. while the protoplasm in the animal section of the ovum continues briskly to divide, multiplying the nuclei, the deutoplasm in the vegetal section remains more or less undivided; it is merely consumed as food by the forming cells. the larger the accumulation of food, the more restricted is the process of segmentation. it may, however, continue for some time (even after the gastrulation is more or less complete) in the sense that the vegetal cell-nuclei distributed in the deutoplasm slowly increase by cleavage; as each of them is surrounded by a small quantity of protoplasm, it may afterwards appropriate a portion of the food-yelk, and thus form a real "yelk-cell" (merocyte). when this vegetal cell-formation continues for a long time, after the two primary germinal layers have been formed, it takes the name of the "after-segmentation." the meroblastic ova are only found in the larger and more highly developed animals, and only in those whose embryo needs a longer time and richer nourishment within the foetal membranes. according as the yelk-food accumulates at the centre or at the side of the ovum, we distinguish two groups of dividing ova, periblastic and discoblastic. in the periblastic the food-yelk is in the centre, enclosed inside the ovum (hence they are also called "centrolecithal" ova): the formative yelk surrounds the food-yelk, and so suffers itself a superficial cleavage. this is found among the articulates (crabs, spiders, insects, etc.). in the discoblastic ova the food-yelk gathers at one side, at the vegetal or lower pole of the vertical axis, while the nucleus of the ovum and the great bulk of the formative yelk lie at the upper or animal pole (hence these ova are also called "telolecithal"). in these cases the cleavage of the ovum begins at the upper pole, and leads to the formation of a dorsal discoid embryo. this is the case with all meroblastic vertebrates, most fishes, the reptiles and birds, and the oviparous mammals (the monotremes). the gastrulation of the discoblastic ova, which chiefly concerns us, offers serious difficulties to microscopic investigation and philosophic consideration. these, however, have been mastered by the comparative embryological research which has been conducted by a number of distinguished observers during the last few decades--especially the brothers hertwig, rabl, kupffer, selenka, ruckert, goette, rauber, etc. these thorough and careful studies, aided by the most perfect modern improvements in technical method (in tinting and dissection), have given a very welcome support to the views which i put forward in my work, on the gastrula and the segmentation of the animal ovum [not translated], in . as it is very important to understand these views and their phylogenetic foundation clearly, not only as regards evolution in general, but particularly in connection with the genesis of man, i will give here a brief statement of them as far as they concern the vertebrate-stem:-- . all the vertebrates, including man, are phylogenetically (or genealogically) related--that is, are members of one single natural stem. . consequently, the embryonic features in their individual development must also have a genetic connection. . as the gastrulation of the amphioxus shows the original palingenetic form in its simplest features, that of the other vertebrates must have been derived from it. . the cenogenetic modifications of the latter are more appreciable the more food-yelk is stored up in the ovum. . although the mass of the food-yelk may be very large in the ova of the discoblastic vertebrates, nevertheless in every case a blastula is developed from the morula, as in the holoblastic ova. . also, in every case, the gastrula develops from the blastula by curving or invagination. . the cavity which is produced in the foetus by this curving is, in each case, the primitive gut (progaster), and its opening the primitive mouth (prostoma). . the food-yelk, whether large or small, is always stored in the ventral wall of the primitive gut; the cells (called "merocytes") which may be formed in it subsequently (by "after-segmentation") also belong to the inner germinal layer, like the cells which immediately enclose the primitive gut-cavity. . the primitive mouth, which at first lies below at the lower pole of the vertical axis, is forced, by the growth of the yelk, backwards and then upwards, towards the dorsal side of the embryo; the vertical axis of the primitive gut is thus gradually converted into horizontal. . the primitive mouth is closed sooner or later in all the vertebrates, and does not evolve into the permanent mouth-aperture; it rather corresponds to the "properistoma," or region of the anus. from this important point the formation of the middle germinal layer proceeds, between the two primary layers. the wide comparative studies of the scientists i have named have further shown that in the case of the discoblastic higher vertebrates (the three classes of amniotes) the primitive mouth of the embryonic disc, which was long looked for in vain, is found always, and is nothing else than the familiar "primitive groove." of this we shall see more as we proceed. meantime we realise that gastrulation may be reduced to one and the same process in all the vertebrates. moreover, the various forms it takes in the invertebrates can always be reduced to one of the four types of segmentation described above. in relation to the distinction between total and partial segmentation, the grouping of the various forms is as follows:-- . palingenetic (primitive segmentation) . . equal segmentation (bell-gastrula). . .a. total segmentation (without independent food-yelk). . cenogenetic segmentation (modified by adaptation). . . unequal segmentation (hooded gastrula). . .a. total segmentation (without independent food-yelk). . . discoid segmentation (discoid gastrula). . .b. partial segmentation (with independent food-yelk). . . superficial segmentation (spherical gastrula). . .b. partial segmentation (with independent food-yelk). the lowest metazoa we know--namely, the lower zoophyta (sponges, simple polyps, etc.)--remain throughout life at a stage of development which differs little from the gastrula; their whole body consists of two layers of cells. this is a fact of extreme importance. we see that man, and also other vertebrates, pass quickly through a stage of development in which they consist of two layers, just as these lower zoophyta do throughout life. if we apply our biogenetic law to the matter, we at once reach this important conclusion. "man and all the other animals which pass through the two-layer stage, or gastrula-form, in the course of their embryonic development, must descend from a primitive simple stem-form, the whole body of which consisted throughout life (as is the case with the lower zoophyta to-day) merely of two cell-strata or germinal layers." we will call this primitive stem-form, with which we shall deal more fully later on, the gastraea--that is to say, "primitive-gut animal." according to this gastraea-theory there was originally in all the multicellular animals one organ with the same structure and function. this was the primitive gut; and the two primary germinal layers which form its wall must also be regarded as identical in all. this important homology or identity of the primary germinal layers is proved, on the one hand, from the fact that the gastrula was originally formed in the same way in all cases--namely, by the curving of the blastula; and, on the other hand, by the fact that in every case the same fundamental organs arise from the germinal layers. the outer or animal layer, or ectoderm, always forms the chief organs of animal life--the skin, nervous system, sense-organs, etc.; the inner or vegetal layer, or entoderm, gives rise to the chief organs of vegetative life--the organs of nourishment, digestion, blood-formation, etc. in the lower zoophyta, whose body remains at the two-layer stage throughout life, the gastraeads, the simplest sponges (olynthus), and polyps (hydra), these two groups of functions, animal and vegetative, are strictly divided between the two simple primary layers. throughout life the outer or animal layer acts simply as a covering for the body, and accomplishes its movement and sensation. the inner or vegetative layer of cells acts throughout life as a gut-lining, or nutritive layer of enteric cells, and often also yields the reproductive cells. the best known of these "gastraeads," or "gastrula-like animals," is the common fresh-water polyp (hydra). this simplest of all the cnidaria has, it is true, a crown of tentacles round its mouth. also its outer germinal layer has certain special modifications. but these are secondary additions, and the inner germinal layer is a simple stratum of cells. on the whole, the hydra has preserved to our day by heredity the simple structure of our primitive ancestor, the gastraea (cf. chapter . .) in all other animals, particularly the vertebrates, the gastrula is merely a brief transitional stage. here the two-layer stage of the embryonic development is quickly succeeded by a three-layer, and then a four-layer, stage. with the appearance of the four superimposed germinal layers we reach again a firm and steady standing-ground, from which we may follow the further, and much more difficult and complicated, course of embryonic development. summary of the chief differences in the ovum-segmentation and gastrulation of animals. the animal stems are indicated by the letters a-g: a zoophyta. b annelida. c mollusca. d echinoderma. e articulata. f tunicata. g vertebrata. . total segmentation. holoblastic ova. gastrula without separate food-yelk. hologastrula. . . primitive segmentation. archiblastic ova. bell-gastrula (archigastrula.) a. many lower zoophyta (sponges, hydrapolyps, medusae, simpler corals). b. many lower annelids (sagitta, phoronis, many nematoda, etc., terebratula, argiope, pisidium). c. some lower molluscs. d. many echinoderms. e. a few lower articulata (some brachiopods, copepods: tardigrades, pteromalina). f. many tunicata. g. the acrania (amphioxus). . . unequal segmentation. amphiblastic ova. hooded-gastrula (amphigastrula). a. many zoophyta (sponges, medusae, corals, siphonophorae, ctenophora). b. most worms. c. most molluscs. d. many echinoderms (viviparous species and some others). e. some of the lower articulata (both crustacea and tracheata). f. many tunicata. g. cyclostoma, the oldest fishes, amphibia, mammals (not including man). . partial segmentation. meroblastic ova. gastrula with separate food-yelk. merogastrula. . . discoid segmentation. discoblastic ova. discoid gastrula. c. cephalopods or cuttlefish. e. many articulata, wood-lice, scorpions, etc. g. primitive fishes, bony fishes, reptiles, birds, monotremes. . . superficial segmentation. periblastic ova. spherical-gastrula. e. the great majority of the articulata (crustaceans, myriapods, arachnids, insects). chapter . . the gastrulation of the vertebrate.* (* cf. balfour's manual of comparative embryology volume ; theodore morgan's the development of the frog's egg.) the remarkable processes of gastrulation, ovum-segmentation, and formation of germinal layers present a most conspicuous variety. there is to-day only the lowest of the vertebrates, the amphioxus, that exhibits the original form of those processes, or the palingenetic gastrulation which we have considered in the preceding chapter, and which culminates in the formation of the archigastrula (figure . ). in all other extant vertebrates these fundamental processes have been more or less modified by adaptation to the conditions of embryonic development (especially by changes in the food-yelk); they exhibit various cenogenetic types of the formation of germinal layers. however, the different classes vary considerably from each other. in order to grasp the unity that underlies the manifold differences in these phenomena and their historical connection, it is necessary to bear in mind always the unity of the vertebrate-stem. this "phylogenetic unity," which i developed in my general morphology in , is now generally admitted. all impartial zoologists agree to-day that all the vertebrates, from the amphioxus and the fishes to the ape and man, descend from a common ancestor, "the primitive vertebrate." hence the embryonic processes, by which each individual vertebrate is developed, must also be capable of being reduced to one common type of embryonic development; and this primitive type is most certainly exhibited to-day by the amphioxus. it must, therefore, be our next task to make a comparative study of the various forms of vertebrate gastrulation, and trace them backwards to that of the lancelet. broadly speaking, they fall first into two groups: the older cyclostoma, the earliest fishes, most of the amphibia, and the viviparous mammals, have holoblastic ova--that is to say, ova with total, unequal segmentation; while the younger cyclostoma, most of the fishes, the cephalopods, reptiles, birds, and monotremes, have meroblastic ova, or ova with partial discoid segmentation. a closer study of them shows, however, that these two groups do not present a natural unity, and that the historical relations between their several divisions are very complicated. in order to understand them properly, we must first consider the various modifications of gastrulation in these classes. we may begin with that of the amphibia. the most suitable and most available objects of study in this class are the eggs of our indigenous amphibia, the tailless frogs and toads, and the tailed salamander. in spring they are to be found in clusters in every pond, and careful examination of the ova with a lens is sufficient to show at least the external features of the segmentation. in order to understand the whole process rightly and follow the formation of the germinal layers and the gastrula, the ova of the frog and salamander must be carefully hardened; then the thinnest possible sections must be made of the hardened ova with the microtome, and the tinted sections must be very closely compared under a powerful microscope. the ova of the frog or toad are globular in shape, about the twelfth of an inch in diameter, and are clustered in jelly-like masses, which are lumped together in the case of the frog, but form long strings in the case of the toad. when we examine the opaque, grey, brown, or blackish ova closely, we find that the upper half is darker than the lower. the middle of the upper half is in many species black, while the middle of the lower half is white.* (* the colouring of the eggs of the amphibia is caused by the accumulation of dark-colouring matter at the animal pole of the ovum. in consequence of this, the animal cells of the ectoderm are darker than the vegetal cells of the entoderm. we find the reverse of this in the case of most animals, the protoplasm of the entoderm cells being usually darker and coarser-grained.) in this way we get a definite axis of the ovum with two poles. to give a clear idea of the segmentation of this ovum, it is best to compare it with a globe, on the surface of which are marked the various parallels of longitude and latitude. the superficial dividing lines between the different cells, which come from the repeated segmentation of the ovum, look like deep furrows on the surface, and hence the whole process has been given the name of furcation. in reality, however, this "furcation," which was formerly regarded as a very mysterious process, is nothing but the familiar, repeated cell-segmentation. hence also the segmentation-cells which result from it are real cells. (figure . . the cleavage of the frog's ovum (magnified ten times). a stem-cell. b the first two segmentation-cells. c four cells. d eight cells ( animal and vegetative). e twelve cells ( animal and vegetative). f sixteen cells ( animal and vegetative). g twenty-four cells ( animal and vegetative). h thirty-two cells. i forty-eight cells. k sixty-four cells. l ninety-six cells. m cells ( animal and vegetative). (figures . to . . four vertical sections of the fertilised ovum of the toad, in four successive stages of development. the letters have the same meaning throughout: f segmentation-cavity. d covering of same (d dorsal half of the embryo, p ventral half). p yelk-stopper (white round field at the lower pole). z yelk-cells of the entoderm (remak's "glandular embryo"). n primitive gut cavity (progaster or rusconian alimentary cavity). the primitive mouth (prostoma) is closed by the yelk-stopper, p. s partition between the primitive gut cavity (n) and the segmentation cavity (f). k k apostrophe, section of the large circular lip-border of the primitive mouth (the rusconian anus). the line of dots between k and k apostrophe indicates the earlier connection of the yelk-stopper (p) with the central mass of the yelk-cells (z). in figure . the ovum has turned degrees, so that the back of the embryo is uppermost and the ventral side down. (from stricker.)). the unequal segmentation which we observe in the ovum of the amphibia has the special feature of beginning at the upper and darker pole (the north pole of the terrestrial globe in our illustration), and slowly advancing towards the lower and brighter pole (the south pole). also the upper and darker hemisphere remains in this position throughout the course of the segmentation, and its cells multiply much more briskly. hence the cells of the lower hemisphere are found to be larger and less numerous. the cleavage of the stem-cell (figure . a) begins with the formation of a complete furrow, which starts from the north pole and reaches to the south (b). an hour later a second furrow arises in the same way, and this cuts the first at a right angle (figure . c). the ovum is thus divided into four equal parts. each of these four "segmentation cells" has an upper and darker and a lower, brighter half. a few hours later a third furrow appears, vertically to the first two (figure . d). the globular germ now consists of eight cells, four smaller ones above (northern) and four larger ones below (southern). next, each of the four upper ones divides into two halves by a cleavage beginning from the north pole, so that we now have eight above and four below (figure . e). later, the four new longitudinal divisions extend gradually to the lower cells, and the number rises from twelve to sixteen (f). then a second circular furrow appears, parallel to the first, and nearer to the north pole, so that we may compare it to the north polar circle. in this way we get twenty-four segmentation-cells--sixteen upper, smaller, and darker ones, and eight smaller and brighter ones below (g). soon, however, the latter also sub-divide into sixteen, a third or "meridian of latitude" appearing, this time in the southern hemisphere: this makes thirty-two cells altogether (h). then eight new longitudinal lines are formed at the north pole, and these proceed to divide, first the darker cells above and afterwards the lighter southern cells, and finally reach the south pole. in this way we get in succession forty, forty-eight, fifty-six, and at last sixty-four cells (i, k). in the meantime, the two hemispheres differ more and more from each other. whereas the sluggish lower hemisphere long remains at thirty-two cells, the lively northern hemisphere briskly sub-divides twice, producing first sixty-four and then cells (l, m). thus we reach a stage in which we count on the surface of the ovum small cells in the upper half and thirty-two large ones in the lower half, or altogether. the dissimilarity of the two halves increases: while the northern breaks up into a great number of small cells, the southern consists of a much smaller number of larger cells. finally, the dark cells of the upper half grow almost over the surface of the ovum, leaving only a small circular spot at the south pole, where the large and clear cells of the lower half are visible. this white region at the south pole corresponds, as we shall see afterwards, to the primitive mouth of the gastrula. the whole mass of the inner and larger and clearer cells (including the white polar region) belongs to the entoderm or ventral layer. the outer envelope of dark smaller cells forms the ectoderm or skin-layer. in the meantime, a large cavity, full of fluid, has been formed within the globular body--the segmentation-cavity or embryonic cavity (blastocoel, figures . to . f). it extends considerably as the cleavage proceeds, and afterwards assumes an almost semi-circular form (figure . f). the frog-embryo now represents a modified embryonic vesicle or blastula, with hollow animal half and solid vegetal half. now a second, narrower but longer, cavity arises by a process of folding at the lower pole, and by the falling away from each other of the white entoderm-cells (figures . to . n). this is the primitive gut-cavity or the gastric cavity of the gastrula, progaster or archenteron. it was first observed in the ovum of the amphibia by rusconi, and so called the rusconian cavity. the reason of its peculiar narrowness here is that it is, for the most part, full of yelk-cells of the entoderm. these also stop up the whole of the wide opening of the primitive mouth, and form what is known as the "yelk-stopper," which is seen freely at the white round spot at the south pole (p). around it the ectoderm is much thicker, and forms the border of the primitive mouth, the most important part of the embryo (figure . k, k apostrophe). soon the primitive gut-cavity stretches further and further at the expense of the segmentation-cavity (f), until at last the latter disappears altogether. the two cavities are only separated by a thin partition (figure . s). with the formation of the primitive gut our frog-embryo has reached the gastrula stage, though it is clear that this cenogenetic amphibian gastrula is very different from the real palingenetic gastrula we have considered (figures . to . ). in the growth of this hooded gastrula we cannot sharply mark off the various stages which we distinguish successively in the bell-gastrula as morula and gastrula. nevertheless, it is not difficult to reduce the whole cenogenetic or disturbed development of this amphigastrula to the true palingenetic formation of the archigastrula of the amphioxus. (figure . . blastula of the water-salamander (triton). fh segmentation-cavity, dz yelk-cells, rz border-zone. (from hertwig.) figure . . embryonic vesicle of triton (blastula), outer view, with the transverse fold of the primitive mouth (u). (from hertwig.) figure . . sagittal section of a hooded-embryo (depula) of triton (blastula at the commencement of gastrulation). ak outer germinal layer, ik inner germinal layer, fh segmentation-cavity, ud primitive gut, u primitive mouth, dl and vl dorsal and ventral lips of the mouth, dz yelk-cells. (from hertwig.)) this reduction becomes easier if, after considering the gastrulation of the tailless amphibia (frogs and toads), we glance for a moment at that of the tailed amphibia, the salamanders. in some of the latter, that have only recently been carefully studied, and that are phylogenetically older, the process is much simpler and clearer than is the case with the former and longer known. our common water-salamander (triton taeniatus) is a particularly good subject for observation. its nutritive yelk is much smaller and its formative yelk less obscured with black pigment-cells than in the case of the frog; and its gastrulation has better retained the original palingenetic character. it was first described by scott and osborn ( ), and oscar hertwig especially made a careful study of it ( ), and rightly pointed out its great importance in helping us to understand the vertebrate development. its globular blastula (figure . ) consists of loosely-aggregated, yelk-filled entodermic cells or yelk-cells (dz) in the lower vegetal half; the upper, animal half encloses the hemispherical segmentation-cavity (fh), the curved roof of which is formed of two or three strata of small ectodermic cells. at the point where the latter pass into the former (at the equator of the globular vesicle) we have the border zone (rz). the folding which leads to the formation of the gastrula takes place at a spot in this border zone, the primitive mouth (figure . u). unequal segmentation takes place in some of the cyclostoma and in the oldest fishes in just the same way as in most of the amphibia. among the cyclostoma ("round-mouthed") the familiar lampreys are particularly interesting. in respect of organisation and development they are half-way between the acrania (lancelet) and the lowest real fishes (selachii); hence i divided the group of the cyclostoma in from the real fishes with which they were formerly associated, and formed of them a special class of vertebrates. the ovum-segmentation in our common river-lamprey (petromyzon fluviatilis) was described by max schultze in , and afterwards by scott ( ) and goette ( ). unequal total segmentation follows the same lines in the oldest fishes, the selachii and ganoids, which are directly descended from the cyclostoma. the primitive fishes (selachii), which we must regard as the ancestral group of the true fishes, were generally considered, until a short time ago, to be discoblastic. it was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that bashford dean made the important discovery in japan that one of the oldest living fishes of the shark type (cestracion japonicus) has the same total unequal segmentation as the amphiblastic plated fishes (ganoides).* (* bashford dean, holoblastic cleavage in the egg of a shark, cestracion japonicus macleay. annotationes zoologicae japonenses, volume tokio .) this is particularly interesting in connection with our subject, because the few remaining survivors of this division, which was so numerous in paleozoic times, exhibit three different types of gastrulation. the oldest and most conservative forms of the modern ganoids are the scaly sturgeons (sturiones), plated fishes of great evolutionary importance, the eggs of which are eaten as caviar; their cleavage is not essentially different from that of the lampreys and the amphibia. on the other hand, the most modern of the plated fishes, the beautifully scaled bony pike of the north american rivers (lepidosteus), approaches the osseous fishes, and is discoblastic like them. a third genus (amia) is midway between the sturgeons and the latter. (figure . . sagittal section of the gastrula of the water-salamander (triton). (from hertwig.) letters as in figure . ; except--p yelk-stopper, mk beginning of the middle germinal layer.) the group of the lung-fishes (dipneusta or dipnoi) is closely connected with the older ganoids. in respect of their whole organisation they are midway between the gill-breathing fishes and the lung-breathing amphibia; they share with the former the shape of the body and limbs, and with the latter the form of the heart and lungs. of the older dipnoi (paladipneusta) we have now only one specimen, the remarkable ceratodus of east australia; its amphiblastic gastrulation has been recently explained by richard semon (cf. chapter . ). that of the two modern dipneusta, of which protopterus is found in africa and lepidosiren in america, is not materially different. (cf. figure . .) (figure . . ovum-segmentation of the lamprey (petromyzon fluviatalis), in four successive stages. the small cells of the upper (animal) hemisphere divide much more quickly than the cells of the lower (vegetal) hemisphere. figure . . gastrulation of the lamprey (petromyzon fluviatilis). a blastula, with wide embryonic cavity (blastocoel, bl), g incipient invagination. b depula, with advanced invagination, from the primitive mouth (g). c gastrula, with complete primitive gut: the embryonic cavity has almost disappeared in consequence of invagination.) all these amphiblastic vertebrates, petromyzon and cestracion, accipenser and ceratodus, and also the salamanders and batrachia, belong to the old, conservative groups of our stem. their unequal ovum-segmentation and gastrulation have many peculiarities in detail, but can always be reduced with comparative ease to the original cleavage and gastrulation of the lowest vertebrate, the amphioxus; and this is little removed, as we have seen, from the very simple archigastrula of the sagitta and monoxenia (see figures . to . ). all these and many other classes of animals generally agree in the circumstance that in segmentation their ovum divides into a large number of cells by repeated cleavage. all such ova have been called, after remak, "whole-cleaving" (holoblasta), because their division into cells is complete or total. (figure . . gastrulation of ceratodus (from semon). a and c stage with four cells, b and d with sixteen cells. a and b are seen from above, c and d sideways. e stage with thirty-two cells; f blastula; g gastrula in longitudinal section. fh segmentation-cavity. gh primitive gut or gastric cavity.) in a great many other classes of animals this is not the case, as we find (in the vertebrate stem) among the birds, reptiles, and most of the fishes; among the insects and most of the spiders and crabs (of the articulates); and the cephalopods (of the molluscs). in all these animals the mature ovum, and the stem-cell that arises from it in fertilisation, consist of two different and separate parts, which we have called formative yelk and nutritive yelk. the formative yelk alone consists of living protoplasm, and is the active, evolutionary, and nucleated part of the ovum; this alone divides in segmentation, and produces the numerous cells which make up the embryo. on the other hand, the nutritive yelk is merely a passive part of the contents of the ovum, a subordinate element which contains nutritive material (albumin, fat, etc.), and so represents in a sense the provision-store of the developing embryo. the latter takes a quantity of food out of this store, and finally consumes it all. hence the nutritive yelk is of great indirect importance in embryonic development, though it has no direct share in it. it either does not divide at all, or only later on, and does not generally consist of cells. it is sometimes large and sometimes small, but generally many times larger than the formative yelk; and hence it is that it was formerly thought the more important of the two. as the respective significance of these two parts of the ovum is often wrongly described, it must be borne in mind that the nutritive yelk is only a secondary addition to the primary cell, it is an inner enclosure, not an external appendage. all ova that have this independent nutritive yelk are called, after remak, "partially-cleaving" (meroblasta). their segmentation is incomplete or partial. (figure . . ovum of a deep-sea bony fish. b protoplasm of the stem-cell, k nucleus of same, d clear globule of albumin, the nutritive yelk, f fat-globule of same, c outer membrane of the ovum, or ovolemma.) there are many difficulties in the way of understanding this partial segmentation and the gastrula that arises from it. we have only recently succeeded, by means of comparative research, in overcoming these difficulties, and reducing this cenogenetic form of gastrulation to the original palingenetic type. this is comparatively easy in the small meroblastic ova which contain little nutritive yelk--for instance, in the marine ova of a bony fish, the development of which i observed in at ajaccio in corsica. i found them joined together in lumps of jelly, floating on the surface of the sea; and, as the little ovula were completely transparent, i could easily follow the development of the germ step by step. these ovula are glossy and colourless globules of little more than the th of an inch. inside a structureless, thin, but firm membrane (ovolemma, figure . c) we find a large, quite clear, and transparent globule of albumin (d). at both poles of its axis this globule has a pit-like depression. in the pit at the upper, animal pole (which is turned downwards in the floating ovum) there is a bi-convex lens composed of protoplasm, and this encloses the nucleus (k); this is the formative yelk of the stem-cell, or the germinal disk (b). the small fat-globule (f) and the large albumin-globule (d) together form the nutritive yelk. only the formative yelk undergoes cleavage, the nutritive yelk not dividing at all at first. the segmentation of the lens-shaped formative yelk (b) proceeds quite independently of the nutritive yelk, and in perfect geometrical order. when the mulberry-like cluster of cells has been formed, the border-cells of the lens separate from the rest and travel into the yelk and the border-layer. from this the blastula is developed; the regular bi-convex lens being converted into a disk, like a watch-glass, with thick borders. this lies on the upper and less curved polar surface of the nutritive yelk like the watch glass on the yelk. fluid gathers between the outer layer and the border, and the segmentation-cavity is formed. the gastrula is then formed by invagination, or a kind of turning-up of the edge of the blastoderm. in this process the segmentation-cavity disappears. the space underneath the entoderm corresponds to the primitive gut-cavity, and is filled with the decreasing food-yelk (n). thus the formation of the gastrula of our fish is complete. in contrast to the two chief forms of gastrula we considered previously, we give the name of discoid gastrula (discogastrula, figure . ) to this third principal type. very similar to the discoid gastrulation of the bony fishes is that of the hags or myxinoida, the remarkable cyclostomes that live parasitically in the body-cavity of fishes, and are distinguished by several notable peculiarities from their nearest relatives, the lampreys. while the amphiblastic ova of the latter are small and develop like those of the amphibia, the cucumber-shaped ova of the hag are about an inch long, and form a discoid gastrula. up to the present it has only been observed in one species (bdellostoma stouti), by dean and doflein ( ). it is clear that the important features which distinguish the discoid gastrula from the other chief forms we have considered are determined by the large food-yelk. this takes no direct part in the building of the germinal layers, and completely fills the primitive gut-cavity of the gastrula, even protruding at the mouth-opening. if we imagine the original bell-gastrula (figures . to . ) trying to swallow a ball of food which is much bigger than itself, it would spread out round it in discoid shape in the attempt, just as we find to be the case here (figure . ). hence we may derive the discoid gastrula from the original bell-gastrula, through the intermediate stage of the hooded gastrula. it has arisen through the accumulation of a store of food-stuff at the vegetal pole, a "nutritive yelk" being thus formed in contrast to the "formative yelk." nevertheless, the gastrula is formed here, as in the previous cases, by the folding or invagination of the blastula. we can, therefore, reduce this cenogenetic form of the discoid segmentation to the palingenetic form of the primitive cleavage. (figure . . ovum-segmentation of a bony fish. a first cleavage of the stem-cell (cytula), b division of same into four segmentation-cells (only two visible), c the germinal disk divides into the blastoderm (b) and the periblast (p). d nutritive yelk, f fat-globule, c ovolemma, z space between the ovolemma and the ovum, filled with a clear fluid.) this reduction is tolerably easy and confident in the case of the small ovum of our deep-sea bony fish, but it becomes difficult and uncertain in the case of the large ova that we find in the majority of the other fishes and in all the reptiles and birds. in these cases the food-yelk is, in the first place, comparatively colossal, the formative yelk being almost invisible beside it; and, in the second place, the food-yelk contains a quantity of different elements, which are known as "yelk-granules, yelk-globules, yelk-plates, yelk-flakes, yelk-vesicles," and so on. frequently these definite elements in the yelk have been described as real cells, and it has been wrongly stated that a portion of the embryonic body is built up from these cells. this is by no means the case. in every case, however large it is--and even when cell-nuclei travel into it during the cleavage of the border--the nutritive yelk remains a dead accumulation of food, which is taken into the gut during embryonic development and consumed by the embryo. the latter develops solely from the living formative yelk of the stem-cell. this is equally true of the ova of our small bony fishes and of the colossal ova of the primitive fishes, reptiles, and birds. (figure . . discoid gastrula (discogastrula) of a bony fish. e ectoderm, i entoderm, w border-swelling or primitive mouth, n albuminous globule of the nutritive yelk, f fat-globule of same, c external membrane (ovolemma), d partition between entoderm and ectoderm (earlier the segmentation-cavity).) the gastrulation of the primitive fishes or selachii (sharks and rays) has been carefully studied of late years by ruckert, rabl, and h.e. ziegler in particular, and is very important in the sense that this group is the oldest among living fishes, and their gastrulation can be derived directly from that of the cyclostoma by the accumulation of a large quantity of food-yelk. the oldest sharks (cestracion) still have the unequal segmentation inherited from the cyclostoma. but while in this case, as in the case of the amphibia, the small ovum completely divides into cells in segmentation, this is no longer so in the great majority of the selachii (or elasmobranchii). in these the contractility of the active protoplasm no longer suffices to break up the huge mass of the passive deutoplasm completely into cells; this is only possible in the upper or dorsal part, but not in the lower or ventral section. hence we find in the primitive fishes a blastula with a small eccentric segmentation-cavity (figure . b), the wall of which varies greatly in composition. the circular border of the germinal disk which connects the roof and floor of the segmentation-cavity corresponds to the border-zone at the equator of the amphibian ovum. in the middle of its hinder border we have the beginning of the invagination of the primitive gut (figure . ud); it extends gradually from this spot (which corresponds to the rusconian anus of the amphibia) forward and around, so that the primitive mouth becomes first crescent-shaped and then circular, and, as it opens wider, surrounds the ball of the larger food-yelk. essentially different from the wide-mouthed discoid gastrula of most of the selachii is the narrow-mouthed discoid gastrula (or epigastrula) of the amniotes, the reptiles, birds, and monotremes; between the two--as an intermediate stage--we have the amphigastrula of the amphibia. the latter has developed from the amphigastrula of the ganoids and dipneusts, whereas the discoid amniote gastrula has been evolved from the amphibian gastrula by the addition of food-yelk. this change of gastrulation is still found in the remarkable ophidia (gymnophiona, coecilia, or peromela), serpent-like amphibia that live in moist soil in the tropics, and in many respects represent the transition from the gill-breathing amphibia to the lung-breathing reptiles. their embryonic development has been explained by the fine studies of the brothers sarasin of ichthyophis glutinosa at ceylon ( ), and those of august brauer of the hypogeophis rostrata in the seychelles ( ). it is only by the historical and comparative study of these that we can understand the difficult and obscure gastrulation of the amniotes. the bird's egg is particularly important for our purpose, because most of the chief studies of the development of the vertebrates are based on observations of the hen's egg during hatching. the mammal ovum is much more difficult to obtain and study, and for this practical and obvious reason very rarely thoroughly investigated. but we can get hens' eggs in any quantity at any time, and, by means of artificial incubation, follow the development of the embryo step by step. the bird's egg differs considerably from the tiny mammal ovum in size, a large quantity of food-yelk accumulating within the original yelk or the protoplasm of the ovum. this is the yellow ball which we commonly call the yolk of the egg. in order to understand the bird's egg aright--for it is very often quite wrongly explained--we must examine it in its original condition, and follow it from the very beginning of its development in the bird's ovary. we then see that the original ovum is a quite small, naked, and simple cell with a nucleus, not differing in either size or shape from the original ovum of the mammals and other animals (cf. figure . e). as in the case of all the craniota (animals with a skull), the original or primitive ovum (protovum) is covered with a continuous layer of small cells. this membrane is the follicle, from which the ovum afterwards issues. immediately underneath it the structureless yelk-membrane is secreted from the yelk. (figure . . longitudinal section through the blastula of a shark (pristiuris). (from ruckert.) (looked at from the left; to the right is the hinder end, h, to the left the fore end, v.) b segmentation-cavity, kz cells of the germinal membrane, dk yelk-nuclei. figure . . longitudinal section of the blastula of a shark (pristiurus) at the beginning of gastrulation. (from ruckert.) (seen from the left.) v fore end, h hind end, b segmentation-cavity, ud first trace of the primitive gut, dk yelk-nuclei, fd fine-grained yelk, gd coarse-grained yelk.) the small primitive ovum of the bird begins very early to take up into itself a quantity of food-stuff through the yelk-membrane, and work it up into the "yellow yelk." in this way the ovum enters on its second stage (the metovum), which is many times larger than the first, but still only a single enlarged cell. through the accumulation of the store of yellow yelk within the ball of protoplasm the nucleus it contains (the germinal vesicle) is forced to the surface of the ball. here it is surrounded by a small quantity of protoplasm, and with this forms the lens-shaped formative yelk (figure . b). this is seen on the yellow yelk-ball, at a certain point of the surface, as a small round white spot--the "tread" (cicatricula). from this point a thread-like column of white nutritive yelk (d), which contains no yellow yelk-granules, and is softer than the yellow food-yelk, proceeds to the middle of the yellow yelk-ball, and forms there a small central globule of white yelk (figure . d). the whole of this white yelk is not sharply separated from the yellow yelk, which shows a slight trace of concentric layers in the hard-boiled egg (figure . c). we also find in the hen's egg, when we break the shell and take out the yelk, a round small white disk at its surface which corresponds to the tread. but this small white "germinal disk" is now further developed, and is really the gastrula of the chick. the body of the chick is formed from it alone. the whole white and yellow yelk-mass is without any significance for the formation of the embryo, it being merely used as food by the developing chick. the clear, glarous mass of albumin that surrounds the yellow yelk of the bird's egg, and also the hard chalky shell, are only formed within the oviduct round the impregnated ovum. when the fertilisation of the bird's ovum has taken place within the mother's body, we find in the lens-shaped stem-cell the progress of flat, discoid segmentation (figure . ). first two equal segmentation-cells (a) are formed from the ovum. these divide into four (b), then into eight, sixteen (c), thirty-two, sixty-four, and so on. the cleavage of the cells is always preceded by a division of their nuclei. the cleavage surfaces between the segmentation-cells appear at the free surface of the tread as clefts. the first two divisions are vertical to each other, in the form of a cross (b). then there are two more divisions, which cut the former at an angle of forty-five degrees. the tread, which thus becomes the germinal disk, now has the appearance of an eight-rayed star. a circular cleavage next taking place round the middle, the eight triangular cells divide into sixteen, of which eight are in the middle and eight distributed around (c). afterwards circular clefts and radial clefts, directed towards the centre, alternate more or less irregularly (d, e). in most of the amniotes the formation of concentric and radial clefts is irregular from the very first; and so also in the hen's egg. but the final outcome of the cleavage-process is once more the formation of a large number of small cells of a similar nature. as in the case of the fish-ovum, these segmentation-cells form a round, lens-shaped disk, which corresponds to the morula, and is embedded in a small depression of the white yelk. between the lens-shaped disk of the morula-cells and the underlying white yelk a small cavity is now formed by the accumulation of fluid, as in the fishes. thus we get the peculiar and not easily recognisable blastula of the bird (figure . ). the small segmentation-cavity (fh) is very flat and much compressed. the upper or dorsal wall (dw) is formed of a single layer of clear, distinctly separated cells; this corresponds to the upper or animal hemisphere of the triton-blastula (figure . ). the lower or ventral wall of the flat dividing space (vw) is made up of larger and darker segmentation-cells; it corresponds to the lower or vegetal hemisphere of the blastula of the water-salamander (figure . dz). the nuclei of the yelk-cells, which are in this case especially numerous at the edge of the lens-shaped blastula, travel into the white yelk, increase by cleavage, and contribute even to the further growth of the germinal disk by furnishing it with food-stuff. (figure . . diagram of discoid segmentation in the bird's ovum (magnified about ten times). only the formative yelk (the tread) is shown in these six figures (a to f), because cleavage only takes place in this. the much larger food-yelk, which does not share in the cleavage, is left out and merely indicated by the dark ring without.) the invagination or the folding inwards of the bird-blastula takes place in this case also at the hinder pole of the subsequent chief axis, in the middle of the hind border of the round germinal disk (figure . s). at this spot we have the most brisk cleavage of the cells; hence the cells are more numerous and smaller here than in the fore-half of the germinal disk. the border-swelling or thick edge of the disk is less clear but whiter behind, and is more sharply separated from contiguous parts. in the middle of its hind border there is a white, crescent-shaped groove--koller's sickle-groove (fig . s); a small projecting process in the centre of it is called the sickle-knob (sk). this important cleft is the primitive mouth, which was described for a long time as the "primitive groove." if we make a vertical section through this part, we see that a flat and broad cleft stretches under the germinal disk forwards from the primitive mouth; this is the primitive gut (figure . ud). its roof or dorsal wall is formed by the folded upper part of the blastula, and its floor or ventral wall by the white yelk (wd), in which a number of yelk-nuclei (dk) are distributed. there is a brisk multiplication of these at the edge of the germinal disk, especially in the neighbourhood of the sickle-shaped primitive mouth. we learn from sections through later stages of this discoid bird-gastrula that the primitive gut-cavity, extending forward from the primitive mouth as a flat pouch, undermines the whole region of the round flat lens-shaped blastula (figure . ud). at the same time, the segmentation-cavity gradually disappears altogether, the folded inner germinal layer (ik) placing itself from underneath on the overlying outer germinal layer (ak). the typical process of invagination, though greatly disguised, can thus be clearly seen in this case, as goette and rauber, and more recently duval (figure . ), have shown. (figure . . vertical section of the blastula of a hen (discoblastula). fh segmentation-cavity, dw dorsal wall of same, vw ventral wall, passing directly into the white yelk (wd) (from duval.) figure . . the germinal disk of the hen's ovum at the beginning of gastrulation; a before incubation, b in the first hour of incubation. (from koller.) ks germinal-disk, v its fore and h its hind border; es embryonic shield, s sickle-groove, sk sickle knob, d yelk. figure . . longitudinal section of the germinal disk of a siskin (discogastrula). (from duval.) ud primitive gut, vl, hl fore and hind lips of the primitive mouth (or sickle-edge); ak outer germinal layer, ik inner germinal layer, dk yelk-nuclei, wd white yelk. figure . . longitudinal section of the discoid gastrula of the nightingale. (from duval.) ud primitive gut, vl, hl fore and hind lips of the primitive mouth; ak, ik outer and inner germinal layers; vr fore-border of the discogastrula.) the older embryologists (pander, baer, remak), and, in recent times especially, his, kolliker, and others, said that the two primary germinal layers of the hen's ovum--the oldest and most frequent subject of observation!--arose by horizontal cleavage of a simple germinal disk. in opposition to this accepted view, i affirmed in my gastraea theory ( ) that the discoid bird-gastrula, like that of all other vertebrates, is formed by folding (or invagination), and that this typical process is merely altered in a peculiar way and disguised by the immense accumulation of food-yelk and the flat spreading of the discoid blastula at one part of its surface. i endeavoured to establish this view by the derivation of the vertebrates from one source, and especially by proving that the birds descend from the reptiles, and these from the amphibia. if this is correct, the discoid gastrula of the amniotes must have been formed by the folding-in of a hollow blastula, as has been shown by remak and rusconi of the discoid gastrula of the amphibia, their direct ancestors. the accurate and extremely careful observations of the authors i have mentioned (goette, rauber, and duval) have decisively proved this recently for the birds; and the same has been done for the reptiles by the fine studies of kupffer, beneke, wenkebach, and others. in the shield-shaped germinal disk of the lizard (figure . ), the crocodile, the tortoise, and other reptiles, we find in the middle of the hind border (at the same spot as the sickle groove in the bird) a transverse furrow (u), which leads into a flat, pouch-like, blind sac, the primitive gut. the fore (dorsal) and hind (ventral) lips of the transverse furrow correspond exactly to the lips of the primitive mouth (or sickle-groove) in the birds. (figure . . germinal disk of the lizard (lacerta agilis). (from kupffer.) u primitive mouth, s sickle, es embryonic shield, hf and df light and dark germinative area.) the gastrulation of the mammals must be derived from this special embryonic development of the reptiles and birds. this latest and most advanced class of the vertebrates has, as we shall see afterwards, evolved at a comparatively recent date from an older group of reptiles; and all these amniotes must have come originally from a common stem-form. hence the distinctive embryonic process of the mammal must have arisen by cenogenetic modifications from the older form of gastrulation of the reptiles and birds. until we admit this thesis we cannot understand the formation of the germinal layers in the mammal, and therefore in man. i first advanced this fundamental principle in my essay on the gastrulation of mammals ( ), and sought to show in this way that i assumed a gradual degeneration of the food-yelk and the yelk-sac on the way from the proreptiles to the mammals. "the cenogenetic process of adaptation," i said, "which has occasioned the atrophy of the rudimentary yelk-sac of the mammal, is perfectly clear. it is due to the fact that the young of the mammal, whose ancestors were certainly oviparous, now remain a long time in the womb. as the great store of food-yelk, which the oviparous ancestors gave to the egg, became superfluous in their descendants owing to the long carrying in the womb, and the maternal blood in the wall of the uterus made itself the chief source of nourishment, the now useless yelk-sac was bound to atrophy by embryonic adaptation." my opinion met with little approval at the time; it was vehemently attacked by kolliker, hensen, and his in particular. however, it has been gradually accepted, and has recently been firmly established by a large number of excellent studies of mammal gastrulation, especially by edward van beneden's studies of the rabbit and bat, selenka's on the marsupials and rodents, heape's and lieberkuhn's on the mole, kupffer and keibel's on the rodents, bonnet's on the ruminants, etc. from the general comparative point of view, carl rabl in his theory of the mesoderm, oscar hertwig in the latest edition of his manual ( ), and hubrecht in his studies in mammalian embryology ( ), have supported the opinion, and sought to derive the peculiarly modified gastrulation of the mammal from that of the reptile. (figure . . ovum of the opossum (didelphys) divided into four. (from selenka.) b the four segmentation-cells, r directive body, c unnucleated coagulated matter, p, albumin-membrane.) in the meantime ( ) the studies of wilhelm haacke and caldwell provided a proof of the long-suspected and very interesting fact, that the lowest mammals, the monotremes, lay eggs, like the birds and reptiles, and are not viviparous like the other mammals. although the gastrulation of the monotremes was not really known until studied by richard semon in , there could be little doubt, in view of the great size of their food-yelk, that their ovum-segmentation was discoid, and led to the formation of a sickle-mouthed discogastrula, as in the case of the reptiles and birds. hence i had, in (in my essay on the gastrula and ovum-segmentation of animals), counted the monotremes among the discoblastic vertebrates. this hypothesis was established as a fact nineteen years afterwards by the careful observations of semon; he gave in the second volume of his great work, zoological journeys in australia ( ), the first description and correct explanation of the discoid gastrulation of the monotremes. the fertilised ova of the two living monotremes (echidna and ornithorhynchus) are balls of one-fifth of an inch in diameter, enclosed in a stiff shell; but they grow considerably during development, so that when laid the egg is three times as large. the structure of the plentiful yelk, and especially the relation of the yellow and the white yelk, are just the same as in the reptiles and birds. as with these, partial cleavage takes place at a spot on the surface at which the small formative yelk and the nucleus it encloses are found. first is formed a lens-shaped circular germinal disk. this is made up of several strata of cells, but it spreads over the yelk-ball, and thus becomes a one-layered blastula. if we then imagine the yelk it contains to be dissolved and replaced by a clear liquid, we have the characteristic blastula of the higher mammals. in these the gastrulation proceeds in two phases, as semon rightly observes: firstly, formation of the entoderm by cleavage at the centre and further growth at the edge; secondly, invagination. in the monotremes more primitive conditions have been retained better than in the reptiles and birds. in the latter, before the commencement of the gastrula-folding, we have, at least at the periphery, a two-layered embryo forming from the cleavage. but in the monotremes the formation of the cenogenetic entoderm does not precede the invagination; hence in this case the construction of the germinal layers is less modified than in the other amniota. the marsupials, a second sub-class, come next to the oviparous monotremes, the oldest of the mammals. but as in their case the food-yelk is already atrophied, and the little ovum develops within the mother's body, the partial cleavage has been reconverted into total. one section of the marsupials still show points of agreement with the monotremes, while another section of them, according to the splendid investigations of selenka, form a connecting-link between these and the placentals. (figure . . blastula of the opossum (didelphys). (from selenka.) a animal pole of the blastula, v vegetal pole, en mother-cell of the entoderm, ex ectodermic cells, s spermia, ib unnucleated yelk-balls (remainder of the food-yelk), p albumin membrane.) the fertilised ovum of the opossum (didelphys) divides, according to selenka, first into two, then four, then eight equal cells; hence the segmentation is at first equal or homogeneous. but in the course of the cleavage a larger cell, distinguished by its less clear plasm and its containing more yelk-granules (the mother cell of the entoderm, figure . en), separates from the others; the latter multiply more rapidly than the former. as, further, a quantity of fluid gathers in the morula, we get a round blastula, the wall of which is of varying thickness, like that of the amphioxus (figure . e) and the amphibia (figure . ). the upper or animal hemisphere is formed of a large number of small cells; the lower or vegetal hemisphere of a small number of large cells. one of the latter, distinguished by its size (figure . en), lies at the vegetal pole of the blastula-axis, at the point where the primitive mouth afterwards appears. this is the mother-cell of the entoderm; it now begins to multiply by cleavage, and the daughter-cells (figure . i) spread out from this spot over the inner surface of the blastula, though at first only over the vegetal hemisphere. the less clear entodermic cells (i) are distinguished at first by their rounder shape and darker nuclei from the higher, clearer, and longer entodermic cells (e), afterwards both are greatly flattened, the inner blastodermic cells more than the outer. (figure . . blastula of the opossum (didelphys) at the beginning of gastrulation. (from selenka.) e ectoderm, i entoderm; a animal pole, u primitive mouth at the vegetal pole, f segmentation-cavity, d unnucleated yelk-balls (relics of the reduced food-yelk), c nucleated curd (without yelk-granules). figure . . oval gastrula of the opossum (didelphys), about eight hours old. (from selenka) (external view).) the unnucleated yelk-balls and curd (figure . d) that we find in the fluid of the blastula in these marsupials are very remarkable; they are the relics of the atrophied food-yelk, which was developed in their ancestors, the monotremes, and in the reptiles. in the further course of the gastrulation of the opossum the oval shape of the gastrula (figure . ) gradually changes into globular, a larger quantity of fluid accumulating in the vesicle. at the same time, the entoderm spreads further and further over the inner surface of the ectoderm (e). a globular vesicle is formed, the wall of which consists of two thin simple strata of cells; the cells of the outer germinal layer are rounder, and those of the inner layer flatter. in the region of the primitive mouth (p) the cells are less flattened, and multiply briskly. from this point--from the hind (ventral) lip of the primitive mouth, which extends in a central cleft, the primitive groove--the construction of the mesoderm proceeds. gastrulation is still more modified and curtailed cenogenetically in the placentals than in the marsupials. it was first accurately known to us by the distinguished investigations of edward van beneden in , the first object of study being the ovum of the rabbit. but as man also belongs to this sub-class, and as his as yet unstudied gastrulation cannot be materially different from that of the other placentals, it merits the closest attention. we have, in the first place, the peculiar feature that the two first segmentation-cells that proceed from the cleavage of the fertilised ovum (figure . ) are of different sizes and natures; the difference is sometimes greater, sometimes less (figure . ). one of these first daughter-cells of the ovum is a little larger, clearer, and more transparent than the other. further, the smaller cell takes a colour in carmine, osmium, etc., more strongly than the larger. by repeated cleavage of it a morula is formed, and from this a blastula, which changes in a very characteristic way into the greatly modified gastrula. when the number of the segmentation-cells in the mammal embryo has reached ninety-six (in the rabbit, about seventy hours after impregnation) the foetus assumes a form very like the archigastrula (figure . ). the spherical embryo consists of a central mass of thirty-two soft, round cells with dark nuclei, which are flattened into polygonal shape by mutual pressure, and colour dark-brown with osmic acid (figure . i). this dark central group of cells is surrounded by a lighter spherical membrane, consisting of sixty-four cube-shaped, small, and fine-grained cells which lie close together in a single stratum, and only colour slightly in osmic acid (figure . e). the authors who regard this embryonic form as the primary gastrula of the placental conceive the outer layer as the ectoderm and the inner as the entoderm. the entodermic membrane is only interrupted at one spot, one, two, or three of the ectodermic cells being loose there. these form the yelk-stopper, and fill up the mouth of the gastrula (a). the central primitive gut-cavity (d) is full of entodermic cells. the uni-axial type of the mammal gastrula is accentuated in this way. however, opinions still differ considerably as to the real nature of this "provisional gastrula" of the placental and its relation to the blastula into which it is converted. as the gastrulation proceeds a large spherical blastula is formed from this peculiar solid amphigastrula of the placental, as we saw in the case of the marsupial. the accumulation of fluid in the solid gastrula (figure . a) leads to the formation of an eccentric cavity, the group of the darker entodermic cells (hy) remaining directly attached at one spot with the round enveloping stratum of the lighter ectodermic cells (ep). this spot corresponds to the original primitive mouth (prostoma or blastoporus). from this important spot the inner germinal layer spreads all round on the inner surface of the outer layer, the cell-stratum of which forms the wall of the hollow sphere; the extension proceeds from the vegetal towards the animal pole. (figure . . longitudinal section through the oval gastrula of the opossum (figure . ). (from selenka.) p primitive mouth, e ectoderm, i entoderm, d yelk remains in the primitive gut-cavity (u).) the cenogenetic gastrulation of the placental has been greatly modified by secondary adaptation in the various groups of this most advanced and youngest sub-class of the mammals. thus, for instance, we find in many of the rodents (guinea-pigs, mice, etc.) apparently a temporary inversion of the two germinal layers. this is due to a folding of the blastodermic wall by what is called the "girder," a plug-shaped growth of rauber's "roof-layer." it is a thin layer of flat epithelial cells, that is freed from the surface of the blastoderm in some of the rodents; it has no more significance in connection with the general course of placental gastrulation than the conspicuous departure from the usual globular shape in the blastula of some of the ungulates. in some pigs and ruminants it grows into a thread-like, long and thin tube. (figure . . stem-cell of the mammal ovum (from the rabbit). k stem-nucleus, n nuclear corpuscle, p protoplasm of the stem-cell, z modified zona pellucida, h outer albuminous membrane, s dead sperm-cells. figure . . incipient cleavage of the mammal ovum (from the rabbit). the stem-cell has divided into two unequal cells, one lighter (e) and one darker (i). z zona pellucida, h outer albuminous membrane, s dead sperm-cell. figure . . the first four segmentation-cells of the mammal ovum (from the rabbit). e the two larger (and lighter) cells, i the two smaller (and darker) cells, z zona pellucida, h outer albuminous membrane. figure . . mammal ovum with eight segmentation-cells (from the rabbit). e four larger and lighter cells, i four smaller and darker cells, z zona pellucida, h outer albuminous membrane.) thus the gastrulation of the placentals, which diverges most from that of the amphioxus, the primitive form, is reduced to the original type, the invagination of a modified blastula. its chief peculiarity is that the folded part of the blastoderm does not form a completely closed (only open at the primitive mouth) blind sac, as is usual; but this blind sac has a wide opening at the ventral curve (opposite to the dorsal mouth); and through this opening the primitive gut communicates from the first with the embryonic cavity of the blastula. the folded crest-shaped entoderm grows with a free circular border on the inner surface of the entoderm towards the vegetal pole; when it has reached this, and the inner surface of the blastula is completely grown over, the primitive gut is closed. this remarkable direct transition of the primitive gut-cavity into the segmentation-cavity is explained simply by the assumption that in most of the mammals the yelk-mass, which is still possessed by the oldest forms of the class (the monotremes) and their ancestors (the reptiles), is atrophied. this proves the essential unity of gastrulation in all the vertebrates, in spite of the striking differences in the various classes. in order to complete our consideration of the important processes of segmentation and gastrulation, we will, in conclusion, cast a brief glance at the fourth chief type--superficial segmentation. in the vertebrates this form is not found at all. but it plays the chief part in the large stem of the articulates--the insects, spiders, myriapods, and crabs. the distinctive form of gastrula that comes of it is the "vesicular gastrula" (perigastrula). in the ova which undergo this superficial cleavage the formative yelk is sharply divided from the nutritive yelk, as in the preceding cases of the ova of birds, reptiles, fishes, etc.; the formative yelk alone undergoes cleavage. but while in the ova with discoid gastrulation the formative yelk is not in the centre, but at one pole of the uni-axial ovum, and the food-yelk gathered at the other pole, in the ova with superficial cleavage we find the formative yelk spread over the whole surface of the ovum; it encloses spherically the food-yelk, which is accumulated in the middle of the ova. as the segmentation only affects the former and not the latter, it is bound to be entirely "superficial"; the store of food in the middle is quite untouched by it. as a rule, it proceeds in regular geometrical progression. in the end the whole of the formative yelk divides into a number of small and homogeneous cells, which lie close together in a single stratum on the entire surface of the ovum, and form a superficial blastoderm. this blastoderm is a simple, completely closed vesicle, the internal cavity of which is entirely full of food-yelk. this real blastula only differs from that of the primitive ova in its chemical composition. in the latter the content is water or a watery jelly; in the former it is a thick mixture, rich in food-yelk, of albuminous and fatty substances. as this quantity of food-yelk fills the centre of the ovum before cleavage begins, there is no difference in this respect between the morula and the blastula. the two stages rather agree in this. when the blastula is fully formed, we have again in this case the important folding or invagination that determines gastrulation. the space between the skin-layer and the gut-layer (the remainder of the segmentation-cavity) remains full of food-yelk, which is gradually used up. this is the only material difference between our vesicular gastrula (perigastrula) and the original form of the bell-gastrula (archigastrula). clearly the one has been developed from the other in the course of time, owing to the accumulation of food-yelk in the centre of the ovum.* (* on the reduction of all forms of gastrulation to the original palingenetic form see especially the lucid treatment of the subject in arnold lang's manual of comparative anatomy ( ), part .) we must count it an important advance that we are thus in a position to reduce all the various embryonic phenomena in the different groups of animals to these four principal forms of segmentation and gastrulation. of these four forms we must regard one only as the original palingenetic, and the other three as cenogenetic and derivative. the unequal, the discoid, and the superficial segmentation have all clearly arisen by secondary adaptation from the primary segmentation; and the chief cause of their development has been the gradual formation of the food-yelk, and the increasing antithesis between animal and vegetal halves of the ovum, or between ectoderm (skin-layer) and entoderm (gut-layer). (figure . . gastrula of the placental mammal (epigastrula from the rabbit), longitudinal section through the axis. e ectodermic cells (sixty-four, lighter and smaller), i entodermic cells (thirty-two, darker and larger), d central entodermic cell, filling the primitive gut-cavity, o peripheral entodermic cell, stopping up the opening of the primitive mouth (yelk-stopper in the rusconian anus).) (figure . . gastrula of the rabbit. a as a solid, spherical cluster of cells, b changing into the embryonic vesicle, bp primitive mouth, ep ectoderm, hy entoderm.) the numbers of careful studies of animal gastrulation that have been made in the last few decades have completely established the views i have expounded, and which i first advanced in the years to . for a time they were greatly disputed by many embryologists. some said that the original embryonic form of the metazoa was not the gastrula, but the "planula"--a double-walled vesicle with closed cavity and without mouth-aperture; the latter was supposed to pierce through gradually. it was afterwards shown that this planula (found in several sponges, etc.) was a later evolution from the gastrula. it was also shown that what is called delamination--the rise of the two primary germinal layers by the folding of the surface of the blastoderm (for instance, in the geryonidae and other medusae)--was a secondary formation, due to cenogenetic variations from the original invagination of the blastula. the same may be said of what is called "immigration," in which certain cells or groups of cells are detached from the simple layer of the blastoderm, and travel into the interior of the blastula; they attach themselves to the inner wall of the blastula, and form a second internal epithelial layer--that is to say, the entoderm. in these and many other controversies of modern embryology the first requisite for clear and natural explanation is a careful and discriminative distinction between palingenetic (hereditary) and cenogenetic (adaptive) processes. if this is properly attended to, we find evidence everywhere of the biogenetic law. chapter . . the coelom theory. the two "primary germinal layers" which the gastraea theory has shown to be the first foundation in the construction of the body are found in this simplest form throughout life only in animals of the lowest grade--in the gastraeads, olynthus (the stem-form of the sponges), hydra, and similar very simple animals. in all the other animals new strata of cells are formed subsequently between these two primary body-layers, and these are generally comprehended under the title of the middle layer, or mesoderm. as a rule, the various products of this middle layer afterwards constitute the great bulk of the animal frame, while the original entoderm, or internal germinal layer, is restricted to the clothing of the alimentary canal and its glandular appendages; and, on the other hand, the ectoderm, or external germinal layer, furnishes the outer clothing of the body, the skin and nervous system. in some large groups of the lower animals, such as the sponges, corals, and flat-worms, the middle germinal layer remains a single connected mass, and most of the body is developed from it; these have been called the three-layered metazoa, in opposition to the two-layered animals described. like the two-layered animals, they have no body-cavity--that is to say, no cavity distinct from the alimentary system. on the other hand, all the higher animals have this real body-cavity (coeloma), and so are called coelomaria. in all these we can distinguish four secondary germinal layers, which develop from the two primary layers. to the same class belong all true vermalia (excepting the platodes), and also the higher typical animal stems that have been evolved from them--molluscs, echinoderms, articulates, tunicates, and vertebrates. (figures . and . . diagram of the four secondary germinal layers, transverse section through the metazoic embryo: figure . of an annelid, figure . of a vermalian. a primitive gut, dd ventral glandular layer, df ventral fibre-layer, hm skin-fibre-layer, hs skin-sense-layer, u beginning of the rudimentary kidneys, n beginning of the nerve-plates.) the body-cavity (coeloma) is therefore a new acquisition of the animal body, much younger than the alimentary system, and of great importance. i first pointed out this fundamental significance of the coelom in my monograph on the sponges ( ), in the section which draws a distinction between the body-cavity and the gut-cavity, and which follows immediately on the germ-layer theory and the ancestral tree of the animal kingdom (the first sketch of the gastraea theory). up to that time these two principal cavities of the animal body had been confused, or very imperfectly distinguished; chiefly because leuckart, the founder of the coelenterata group ( ), has attributed a body-cavity, but not a gut-cavity, to these lowest metazoa. in reality, the truth is just the other way about. the ventral cavity, the original organ of nutrition in the multicellular animal-body, is the oldest and most important organ of all the metazoa, and, together with the primitive mouth, is formed in every case in the gastrula as the primitive gut; it is only at a much later stage that the body-cavity, which is entirely wanting in the coelenterata, is developed in some of the metazoa between the ventral and the body wall. the two cavities are entirely different in content and purport. the alimentary cavity (enteron) serves the purpose of digestion; it contains water and food taken from without, as well as the pulp (chymus) formed from this by digestion. on the other hand, the body-cavity, quite distinct from the gut and closed externally, has nothing to do with digestion; it encloses the gut itself and its glandular appendages, and also contains the sexual products and a certain amount of blood or lymph, a fluid that is transuded through the ventral wall. as soon as the body-cavity appears, the ventral wall is found to be separated from the enclosing body-wall, but the two continue to be directly connected at various points. we can also then always distinguish a number of different layers of tissue in both walls--at least two in each. these tissue-layers are formed originally from four different simple cell-layers, which are the much-discussed four secondary germinal layers. the outermost of these, the skin-sense-layer (figures . and . hs), and the innermost, the gut-gland-layer (dd), remain at first simple epithelia or covering-layers. the one covers the outer surface of the body, the other the inner surface of the ventral wall; hence they are called confining or limiting layers. between them are the two middle-layers, or mesoblasts, which enclose the body-cavity. (figure . . coelomula of sagitta (gastrula with a couple of coelom-pouches. (from kowalevsky.) bl.p primitive mouth, al primitive gut, pv coelom-folds, m permanent mouth.) the four secondary germinal layers are so distributed in the structure of the body in all the coelomaria (or all metazoa that have a body-cavity) that the outer two, joined fast together, constitute the body-wall, and the inner two the ventral wall; the two walls are separated by the cavity of the coelom. each of the walls is made up of a limiting layer and a middle layer. the two limiting layers chiefly give rise to epithelia, or covering-tissues, and glands and nerves, while the middle layers form the great bulk of the fibrous tissue, muscles, and connective matter. hence the latter have also been called fibrous or muscular layers. the outer middle layer, which lies on the inner side of the skin-sense-layer, is the skin fibre-layer; the inner middle layer, which attaches from without to the ventral glandular layer, is the ventral fibre layer. the former is usually called briefly the parietal, and the latter the visceral layer or mesoderm. of the many different names that have been given to the four secondary germinal layers, the following are those most in use to-day:-- . skin-sense-layer (outer limiting layer) and . skin-fibre-layer (outer middle layer). i. neural layer (neuroblast) and ii. parietal layer (myoblast). the two secondary germinal layers of the body-wall: . epithelial. . fibrous. . gut-fibre-layer (inner middle layer) and . gut-gland-layer (inner limiting layer). iii. visceral layer (gonoblast) and iv. enteral layer (enteroblast). the two secondary germinal layers of the gut-wall: . fibrous. . epithelial. the first scientist to recognise and clearly distinguish the four secondary germinal layers was baer. it is true that he was not quite clear as to their origin and further significance, and made several mistakes in detail in explaining them. but, on the whole, their great importance did not escape him. however, in later years his view had to be given up in consequence of more accurate observations. remak then propounded a three-layer theory, which was generally accepted. these theories of cleavage, however, began to give way thirty years ago, when kowalevsky ( ) showed that in the case of sagitta (a very clear and typical subject of gastrulation) the two middle germinal layers and the two limiting layers arise not by cleavage, but by folding--by a secondary invagination of the primary inner germ-layer. this invagination or folding proceeds from the primitive mouth, at the two sides of which (right and left) a couple of pouches are formed. as these coelom-pouches or coelom-sacs detach themselves from the primitive gut, a double body-cavity is formed (figures . to . ). (figure . . coelomula of sagitta, in section. (from hertwig.) d dorsal side, v ventral side, ik inner germinal layer, mv visceral mesoblast, lh body-cavity, mp parietal mesoblast, ak outer germinal layer.) the same kind of coelom-formation as in sagitta was afterwards found by kowalevsky in brachiopods and other invertebrates, and in the lowest vertebrate--the amphioxus. further instances were discovered by two english embryologists, to whom we owe very considerable advance in ontogeny--e. ray-lankester and f. balfour. on the strength of these and other studies, as well as most extensive research of their own, the brothers oscar and richard hertwig constructed in the coelom theory. in order to appreciate fully the great merit of this illuminating and helpful theory, one must remember what a chaos of contradictory views was then represented by the "problem of the mesoderm," or the much-disputed "question of the origin of the middle germinal layer." the coelom theory brought some light and order into this infinite confusion by establishing the following points: . the body-cavity originates in the great majority of animals (especially in all the vertebrates) in the same way as in sagitta: a couple of pouches or sacs are formed by folding inwards at the primitive mouth, between the two primary germinal layers; as these pouches detach from the primitive gut, a pair of coelom-sacs (right and left) are formed; the coalescence of these produces a simple body-cavity. . when these coelom-embryos develop, not as a pair of hollow pouches, but as solid layers of cells (in the shape of a pair of mesodermal streaks)--as happens in the higher vertebrates--we have a secondary (cenogenetic) modification of the primary (palingenetic) structure; the two walls of the pouches, inner and outer, have been pressed together by the expansion of the large food-yelk. . hence the mesoderm consists from the first of two genetically distinct layers, which do not originate by the cleavage of a primary simple middle layer (as remak supposed). . these two middle layers have, in all vertebrates, and the great majority of the invertebrates, the same radical significance for the construction of the animal body; the inner middle layer, or the visceral mesoderm, (gut-fibre layer), attaches itself to the original entoderm, and forms the fibrous, muscular, and connective part of the visceral wall; the outer middle layer, or the parietal mesoderm (skin-fibre-layer), attaches itself to the original ectoderm and forms the fibrous, muscular, and connective part of the body-wall. . it is only at the point of origination, the primitive mouth and its vicinity, that the four secondary germinal layers are directly connected; from this point the two middle layers advance forward separately between the two primary germinal layers, to which they severally attach themselves. . the further separation or differentiation of the four secondary germinal layers and their division into the various tissues and organs take place especially in the later fore-part or head of the embryo, and extend backwards from there towards the primitive mouth. (figure . . section of a young sagitta. (from hertwig.) dh visceral cavity, ik and ak inner and outer limiting layers, mv and mp inner and outer middle layers, lk body-cavity, dm and vm dorsal and visceral mesentery.) all animals in which the body-cavity demonstrably arises in this way from the primitive gut (vertebrates, tunicates, echinoderms, articulates, and a part of the vermalia) were comprised by the hertwigs under the title of enterocoela, and were contrasted with the other groups of the pseudocoela (with false body-cavity) and the coelenterata (with no body-cavity). however, this radical distinction and the views as to classification which it occasioned have been shown to be untenable. further, the absolute differences in tissue-formation which the hertwigs set up between the enterocoela and pseudocoela cannot be sustained in this connection. for these and other reasons their coelom-theory has been much criticised and partly abandoned. nevertheless, it has rendered a great and lasting service in the solution of the difficult problem of the mesoderm, and a material part of it will certainly be retained. i consider it an especial merit of the theory that it has established the identity of the development of the two middle layers in all the vertebrates, and has traced them as cenogenetic modifications back to the original palingenetic form of development that we still find in the amphioxus. carl rabl comes to the same conclusion in his able theory of the mesoderm, and so do ray-lankester, rauber, kupffer, ruckert, selenka, hatschek, and others. there is a general agreement in these and many other recent writers that all the different forms of coelom-construction, like those of gastrulation, follow one and the same strict hereditary law in the vast vertebrate stem; in spite of their apparent differences, they are all only cenogenetic modifications of one palingenetic type, and this original type has been preserved for us down to the present day by the invaluable amphioxus. (figures . and . . transverse section of amphioxus-larvae. (from hatschek.) figure . at the commencement of coelom formation (still without segments), figure . at the stage with four primitive segments. ak, ik, mk outer, inner, and middle germinal layer, hp horn plate, mp medullary plate, ch chorda, asterisk and asterisk, disposition of the coelom-pouches, lh body-cavity.) but before we go into the regular coelomation of the amphioxus, we will glance at that of the arrow-worm (sagitta), a remarkable deep-sea worm that is interesting in many ways for comparative anatomy and ontogeny. on the one hand, the transparency of the body and the embryo, and, on the other hand, the typical simplicity of its embryonic development, make the sagitta a most instructive object in connection with various problems. the class of the chaetogatha, which is only represented by the cognate genera of sagitta and spadella, is in another respect also a most remarkable branch of the extensive vermalia stem. it was therefore very gratifying that oscar hertwig ( ) fully explained the anatomy, classification, and evolution of the chaetognatha in his careful monograph. the spherical blastula that arises from the impregnated ovum of the sagitta is converted by a folding at one pole into a typical archigastrula, entirely similar to that of the monoxenia which i described (chapter . , figure . ). this oval, uni-axial cup-larva (circular in section) becomes bilateral (or tri-axial) by the growth of a couple of coelom-pouches from the primitive gut (figures . and . ). to the right and left a sac-shaped fold appears towards the top pole (where the permanent mouth, m, afterwards arises). the two sacs are at first separated by a couple of folds of the entoderm (figure . pv), and are still connected with the primitive gut by wide apertures; they also communicate for a short time with the dorsal side (figure . d). soon, however, the coelom-pouches completely separate from each other and from the primitive gut; at the same time they enlarge so much that they close round the primitive gut (figure . ). but in the middle line of the dorsal and ventral sides the pouches remain separated, their approaching walls joining here to form a thin vertical partition, the mesentery (dm and vm). thus sagitta has throughout life a double body-cavity (figure . lk), and the gut is fastened to the body-wall both above and below by a mesentery--below by the ventral mesentery (vm), and above by the dorsal mesentery (dm). the inner layer of the two coelom-pouches (mv) attaches itself to the entoderm (ik), and forms with it the visceral wall. the outer layer (mp) attaches itself to the ectoderm (ak), and forms with it the outer body-wall. thus we have in sagitta a perfectly clear and simple illustration of the original coelomation of the enterocoela. this palingenetic fact is the more important, as the greater part of the two body-cavities in sagitta changes afterwards into sexual glands--the fore or female part into a pair of ovaries, and the hind or male part into a pair of testicles. coelomation takes place with equal clearness and transparency in the case of the amphioxus, the lowest vertebrate, and its nearest relatives, the invertebrate tunicates, the sea-squirts. however, in these two stems, which we class together as chordonia, this important process is more complex, as two other processes are associated with it--the development of the chorda from the entoderm and the separation of the medullary plate or nervous centre from the ectoderm. here again the skulless amphioxus has preserved to our own time by tenacious heredity the chief phenomena in their original form, while it has been more or less modified by embryonic adaptation in all the other vertebrates (with skulls). hence we must once more thoroughly understand the palingenetic embryonic features of the lancelet before we go on to consider the cenogenetic forms of the craniota. (figures . and . . transverse section of amphioxus embryo. figure . at the stage with five somites, figure . at the stage with eleven somites. (from hatschek.) ak outer germinal layer, mp medullary plate, n nerve-tube, ik inner germinal layer, dh visceral cavity, lh body-cavity, mk middle germinal layer (mk parietal, mk visceral), us primitive segment, ch chorda.) the coelomation of the amphioxus, which was first observed by kowalevsky in , has been very carefully studied since by hatschek ( ). according to him, there are first formed on the bilateral gastrula we have already considered (figures . and . ) three parallel longitudinal folds--one single ectodermal fold in the central line of the dorsal surface, and a pair of entodermic folds at the two sides of the former. the broad ectodermal fold that first appears in the middle line of the flattened dorsal surface, and forms a shallow longitudinal groove, is the beginning of the central nervous system, the medullary tube. thus the primary outer germinal layer divides into two parts, the middle medullary plate (figure . mp) and the horny-plate (ak), the beginning of the outer skin or epidermis. as the parallel borders of the concave medullary plate fold towards each other and grow underneath the horny-plate, a cylindrical tube is formed, the medullary tube (figure . n); this quickly detaches itself altogether from the horny-plate. at each side of the medullary tube, between it and the alimentary tube (figures . to . dh), the two parallel longitudinal folds grow out of the dorsal wall of the alimentary tube, and these form the two coelom-pouches (figures . and . lh). this part of the entoderm, which thus represents the first structure of the middle germinal layer, is shown darker than the rest of the inner germinal layer in figures . to . . the edges of the folds meet, and thus form closed tubes (figure . in section). during this interesting process the outline of a third very important organ, the chorda or axial rod, is being formed between the two coelom-pouches. this first foundation of the skeleton, a solid cylindrical cartilaginous rod, is formed in the middle line of the dorsal primitive gut-wall, from the entodermal cell-streak that remains here between the two coelom-pouches (figures . to . ch). the chorda appears at first in the shape of a flat longitudinal fold or a shallow groove (figures . and . ); it does not become a solid cylindrical cord until after separation from the primitive gut (figure . ). hence we might say that the dorsal wall of the primitive gut forms three parallel longitudinal folds at this important period--one single fold and a pair of folds. the single middle fold becomes the chorda, and lies immediately below the groove of the ectoderm, which becomes the medullary tube; the pair of folds to the right and left lie at the sides between the former and the latter, and form the coelom-pouches. the part of the primitive gut that remains after the cutting off of these three dorsal primitive organs is the permanent gut; its entoderm is the gut-gland-layer or enteric layer. (figures . and . . chordula of the amphioxus. figure . median longitudinal section (seen from the left). figure . transverse section. (from hatschek.) in figure . the coelom-pouches are omitted, in order to show the chordula more clearly. figure . is rather diagrammatic. h horny-plate, m medullary tube, n wall of same (n apostrophe, dorsal, n double apostrophe, ventral), ch chorda, np neuroporus, ne canalis neurentericus, d gut-cavity, r gut dorsal wall, b gut ventral wall, z yelk-cells in the latter, u primitive mouth, o mouth-pit, p promesoblasts (primitive or polar cells of the mesoderm), w parietal layer, v visceral layer of the mesoderm, c coelom, f rest of the segmentation-cavity. figures . and . . chordula of the amphibia (the ringed adder). (from goette.) figure median longitudinal section (seen from the left), figure . transverse section (slightly diagrammatic). lettering as in figures . and . . figures . and . . diagrammatic vertical section of coelomula-embryos of vertebrates. (from hertwig.) figure . , vertical section through the primitive mouth, figure . , vertical section before the primitive mouth. u primitive mouth, ud primitive gut. d yelk, dk yelk-nuclei, dh gut-cavity, lh body-cavity, mp medullary plate, ch chorda plate, ak and ik outer and inner germinal layers, pb parietal and vb visceral mesoblast. figures . and . . transverse section of coelomula embryos of triton. (from hertwig.) figure . , section through the primitive mouth. figure . , section in front of the primitive mouth, u primitive mouth. dh gut-cavity, dz yelk-cells, dp yelk-stopper, ak outer and ik inner germinal layer, pb parietal and vb visceral middle layer, m medullary plate, ch chorda.) i give the name of chordula or chorda-larva to the embryonic stage of the vertebrate organism which is represented by the amphioxus larva at this period (figures . and . , in the third period of development according to hatschek). (strabo and plinius give the name of cordula or cordyla to young fish larvae.) i ascribe the utmost phylogenetic significance to it, as it is found in all the chorda-animals (tunicates as well as vertebrates) in essentially the same form. although the accumulation of food-yelk greatly modifies the form of the chordula in the higher vertebrates, it remains the same in its main features throughout. in all cases the nerve-tube (m) lies on the dorsal side of the bilateral, worm-like body, the gut-tube (d) on the ventral side, the chorda (ch) between the two, on the long axis, and the coelom pouches (c) at each side. in every case these primitive organs develop in the same way from the germinal layers, and the same organs always arise from them in the mature chorda-animal. hence we may conclude, according to the laws of the theory of descent, that all these chordonia or chordata (tunicates and vertebrates) descend from an ancient common ancestral form, which we may call chordaea. we should regard this long-extinct chordaea, if it were still in existence, as a special class of unarticulated worm (chordaria). it is especially noteworthy that neither the dorsal nerve-tube nor the ventral gut-tube, nor even the chorda that lies between them, shows any trace of articulation or segmentation; even the two coelom-sacs are not segmented at first (though in the amphioxus they quickly divide into a series of parts by transverse folding). these ontogenetic facts are of the greatest importance for the purpose of learning those ancestral forms of the vertebrates which we have to seek in the group of the unarticulated vermalia. the coelom-pouches were originally sexual glands in these ancient chordonia. (figure . . a, b, c. vertical section of the dorsal part of three triton-embryos. (from hertwig.) in figure a the medullary swellings (the parallel borders of the medullary plate) begin to rise; in figure b they grow towards each other; in figure c they join and form the medullary tube. mp medullary plate, mf medullary folds, n nerve-tube, ch chorda, lh body-cavity, mk and mk parietal and visceral mesoblasts, uv primitive-segment cavities, ak ectoderm, ik entoderm, dz yelk-cells, dh gut-cavity.) from the evolutionary point of view the coelom-pouches are, in any case, older than the chorda; since they also develop in the same way as in the chordonia in a number of invertebrates which have no chorda (for instance, sagitta, figures . to . ). moreover, in the amphioxus the first outline of the chorda appears later than that of the coelom-sacs. hence we must, according to the biogenetic law, postulate a special intermediate form between the gastrula and the chordula, which we will call coelomula, an unarticulated, worm-like body with primitive gut, primitive mouth, and a double body-cavity, but no chorda. this embryonic form, the bilateral coelomula (figure . ), may in turn be regarded as the ontogenetic reproduction (maintained by heredity) of an ancient ancestral form of the coelomaria, the coelomaea (cf. chapter . ). in sagitta and other worm-like animals the two coelom-pouches (presumably gonads or sex-glands) are separated by a complete median partition, the dorsal and ventral mesentery (figure . dm and vm); but in the vertebrates only the upper part of this vertical partition is maintained, and forms the dorsal mesentery. this mesentery afterwards takes the form of a thin membrane, which fastens the visceral tube to the chorda (or the vertebral column). at the under side of the visceral tube the coelom-sacs blend together, their inner or median walls breaking down and disappearing. the body-cavity then forms a single simple hollow, in which the gut is quite free, or only attached to the dorsal wall by means of the mesentery. the development of the body-cavity and the formation of the chordula in the higher vertebrates is, like that of the gastrula, chiefly modified by the pressure of the food-yelk on the embryonic structures, which forces its hinder part into a discoid expansion. these cenogenetic modifications seem to be so great that until twenty years ago these important processes were totally misunderstood. it was generally believed that the body-cavity in man and the higher vertebrates was due to the division of a simple middle layer, and that the latter arose by cleavage from one or both of the primary germinal layers. the truth was brought to light at last by the comparative embryological research of the hertwigs. they showed in their coelom theory ( ) that all vertebrates are true enterocoela, and that in every case a pair of coelom-pouches are developed from the primitive gut by folding. the cenogenetic chordula-forms of the craniotes must therefore be derived from the palingenetic embryology of the amphioxus in the same way as i had previously proved for their gastrula-forms. the chief difference between the coelomation of the acrania (amphioxus) and the other vertebrates (with skulls--craniotes) is that the two coelom-folds of the primitive gut in the former are from the first hollow vesicles, filled with fluid, but in the latter are empty pouches, the layers of which (inner and outer) close with each other. in common parlance we still call a pouch or pocket by that name, whether it is full or empty. it is different in ontogeny; in some of our embryological literature ordinary logic does not count for very much. in many of the manuals and large treatises on this science it is proved that vesicles, pouches, or sacs deserve that name only when they are inflated and filled with a clear fluid. when they are not so filled (for instance, when the primitive gut of the gastrula is filled with yelk, or when the walls of the empty coelom-pouches are pressed together), these vesicles must not be cavities any longer, but "solid structures." the accumulation of food-yelk in the ventral wall of the primitive gut (figures . and . ) is the simple cause that converts the sac-shaped coelom-pouches of the acrania into the leaf-shaped coelom-streaks of the craniotes. to convince ourselves of this we need only compare, with hertwig, the palingenetic coelomula of the amphioxus (figures . and . ) with the corresponding cenogenetic form of the amphibia (figures . to . ), and construct the simple diagram that connects the two (figures . and . ). if we imagine the ventral half of the primitive gut-wall in the amphioxus embryo (figures . to . ) distended with food-yelk, the vesicular coelom-pouches (lh) must be pressed together by this, and forced to extend in the shape of a thin double plate between the gut-wall and body-wall (figures . and . ). this expansion follows a downward and forward direction. they are not directly connected with these two walls. the real unbroken connection between the two middle layers and the primary germ-layers is found right at the back, in the region of the primitive mouth (figure . u). at this important spot we have the source of embryonic development (blastocrene), or "zone of growth," from which the coelomation (and also the gastrulation) originally proceeds. (figure . . transverse section of the chordula-embryo of a bird (from a hen's egg at the close of the first day of incubation). (from kolliker,) h horn-plate (ectoderm), m medullary plate, rf dorsal folds of same, pv medullary furrow, ch chorda, uwp median (inner) part of the middle layer (median wall of the coelom-pouches), sp lateral (outer) part of same, or lateral plates, uwh structure of the body-cavity, dd gut-gland-layer.) hertwig even succeeded in showing, in the coelomula-embryo of the water salamander (triton), between the first structures of the two middle layers, the relic of the body-cavity, which is represented in the diagrammatic transitional form (figures . and . ). in sections both through the primitive mouth itself (figure . ) and in front of it (figure . ) the two middle layers (pb and vb) diverge from each other, and disclose the two body-cavities as narrow clefts. at the primitive-mouth itself (figure . u) we can penetrate into them from without. it is only here at the border of the primitive mouth that we can show the direct transition of the two middle layers into the two limiting layers or primary germinal layers. the structure of the chorda also shows the same features in these coelomula-embryos of the amphibia (figure . ) as in the amphioxus (figures . to . ). it arises from the entodermic cell-streak, which forms the middle dorsal-line of the primitive gut, and occupies the space between the flat coelom-pouches (figure . a). while the nervous centre is formed here in the middle line of the back and separated from the ectoderm as "medullary tube," there takes place at the same time, directly underneath, the severance of the chorda from the entoderm (figure . a, b, c). under the chorda is formed (out of the ventral entodermic half of the gastrula) the permanent gut or visceral cavity (enteron) (figure . b, dh). this is done by the coalescence, under the chorda in the median line, of the two dorsal side-borders of the gut-gland-layer (ik), which were previously separated by the chorda-plate (figure . a, ch); these now alone form the clothing of the visceral cavity (dh) (enteroderm, figure . c). all these important modifications take place at first in the fore or head-part of the embryo, and spread backwards from there; here at the hinder end, the region of the primitive mouth, the important border of the mouth (or properistoma) remains for a long time the source of development or the zone of fresh construction, in the further building-up of the organism. one has only to compare carefully the illustrations given (figures . to . ) to see that, as a fact, the cenogenetic coelomation of the amphibia can be deduced directly from the palingenetic form of the acrania (figures . to . ). (figure . . transverse section of the vertebrate-embryo of a bird (from a hen's egg on the second day of incubation). (from kolliker.) h horn-plate, mr medullary tube, ch chorda, uw primitive segments, uwh primitive-segment cavity (median relic of the coelom), sp lateral coelom-cleft, hpl skin-fibre-layer, df gut-fibre-layer, ung primitive-kidney passage, ao primitive aorta, dd gut-gland-layer.) the same principle holds good for the amniotes, the reptiles, birds, and mammals, although in this case the processes of coelomation are more modified and more difficult to identify on account of the colossal accumulation of food-yelk and the corresponding notable flattening of the germinal disk. however, as the whole group of the amniotes has been developed at a comparatively late date from the class of the amphibia, their coelomation must also be directly traceable to that of the latter. this is really possible as a matter of fact; even the older illustrations showed an essential identity of features. thus forty years ago kolliker gave, in the first edition of his human embryology ( ), some sections of the chicken-embryo, the features of which could at once be reduced to those already described and explained in the sense of hertwig's coelom-theory. a section through the embryo in the hatched hen's egg towards the close of the first day of incubation shows in the middle of the dorsal surface a broad ectodermic medullary groove (figure . rf), and underneath the middle of the chorda (ch) and at each side of it a couple of broad mesodermic layers (sp). these enclose a narrow space or cleft (uwh), which is nothing else than the structure of the body-cavity. the two layers that enclose it--the upper parietal layer (hpl) and the lower visceral layer (df)--are pressed together from without, but clearly distinguishable. this is even clearer a little later, when the medullary furrow is closed into the nerve-tube (figure . mr). special importance attaches to the fact that here again the four secondary germinal layers are already sharply distinct, and easily separated from each other. there is only one very restricted area in which they are connected, and actually pass into each other; this is the region of the primitive mouth, which is contracted in the amniotes into a dorsal longitudinal cleft, the primitive groove. its two lateral lip-borders form the primitive streak, which has long been recognised as the most important embryonic source and starting-point of further processes. sections through this primitive streak (figures . and . ) show that the two primary germinal layers grow at an early stage (in the discoid gastrula of the chick, a few hours after incubation) into the primitive streak (x), and that the two middle layers extend outward from this thickened axial plate (y) to the right and left between the former. the plates of the coelom-layers, the parietal skin-fibre-layer (m) and the visceral gut-fibre-layer (f), are seen to be still pressed close together, and only diverge later to form the body-cavity. between the inner borders of the two flat coelom-pouches lies the chorda (figure . x), which here again develops from the middle line of the dorsal wall of the primitive gut. (figures . and . . transverse section of the primitive-streak (primitive mouth) of the chick. figure . a few hours after the commencement of incubation, figure . a little later. (from waldeyer.) h horn-plate, n nerve-plate, m skin-fibre-layer, f gut-fibre-layer, d gut-gland-layer, y primitive streak or axial plate, in which all four germinal layers meet, x structure of the chorda, u region of the later primitive kidneys.) coelomation takes place in the vertebrates in just the same way as in the birds and reptiles. this was to be expected, as the characteristic gastrulation of the mammal has descended from that of the reptiles. in both cases a discoid gastrula with primitive streak arises from the segmented ovum, a two-layered germinal disk with long and small hinder primitive mouth. here again the two primary germinal layers are only directly connected (figure . pr) along the primitive streak (at the folding-point of the blastula), and from this spot (the border of the primitive mouth) the middle germinal layers (mk) grow out to right and left between the preceding. in the fine illustration of the coelomula of the rabbit which van beneden has given us (figure . ) one can clearly see that each of the four secondary germinal layers consists of a single stratum of cells. finally, we must point out, as a fact of the utmost importance for our anthropogeny and of great general interest, that the four-layered coelomula of man has just the same construction as that of the rabbit (figure . ). a vertical section that count spee made through the primitive mouth or streak of a very young human germinal disk (figure . ) clearly shows that here again the four secondary germ-layers are inseparably connected only at the primitive streak, and that here also the two flattened coelom-pouches (mk) extend outwards to right and left from the primitive mouth between the outer and inner germinal layers. in this case, too, the middle germinal layer consists from the first of two separate strata of cells, the parietal (mp) and visceral (mv) mesoblasts. (figure . . transverse section of the primitive groove (or primitive mouth) of a rabbit. (from van beneden.) pr primitive mouth, ul lips of same (primitive lips), ak and ik outer and inner germinal layers, mk middle germinal layer, mp parietal layer, mv visceral layer of the mesoderm. figure . . transverse section of the primitive mouth (or groove) of a human embryo (at the coelomula stage). (from count spee.) pr primitive mouth, ul lips of same (primitive folds), ak and ik outer and inner germinal layers, mk middle layer, mp parietal layer, mv visceral layer of the mesoblasts.) these concordant results of the best recent investigations (which have been confirmed by the observations of a number of scientists i have not enumerated) prove the unity of the vertebrate-stem in point of coelomation, no less than of gastrulation. in both respects the invaluable amphioxus--the sole survivor of the acrania--is found to be the original model that has preserved for us in palingenetic form by a tenacious heredity these most important embryonic processes. from this primary model of construction we can cenogenetically deduce all the embryonic forms of the other vertebrates, the craniota, by secondary modifications. my thesis of the universal formation of the gastrula by folding of the blastula has now been clearly proved for all the vertebrates; so also has been hertwig's thesis of the origin of the middle germinal layers by the folding of a couple of coelom-pouches which appear at the border of the primitive mouth. just as the gastraea-theory explains the origin and identity of the two primary layers, so the coelom-theory explains those of the four secondary layers. the point of origin is always the properistoma, the border of the original primitive mouth of the gastrula, at which the two primary layers pass directly into each other. moreover, the coelomula is important as the immediate source of the chordula, the embryonic reproduction of the ancient, typical, unarticulated, worm-like form, which has an axial chorda between the dorsal nerve-tube and the ventral gut-tube. this instructive chordula (figures . to . ) provides a valuable support of our phylogeny; it indicates the important moment in our stem-history at which the stem of the chordonia (tunicates and vertebrates) parted for ever from the divergent stems of the other metazoa (articulates, echinoderms, and molluscs). i may express here my opinion, in the form of a chordaea-theory, that the characteristic chordula-larva of the chordonia has in reality this great significance--it is the typical reproduction (preserved by heredity) of the ancient common stem-form of all the vertebrates and tunicates, the long-extinct chordaea. we will return in chapter . to these worm-like ancestors, which stand out as luminous points in the obscure stem-history of the invertebrate ancestors of our race. chapter . . the vertebrate character of man. we have now secured a number of firm standing-places in the labyrinthian course of our individual development by our study of the important embryonic forms which we have called the cytula, morula, blastula, gastrula, coelomula, and chordula. but we have still in front of us the difficult task of deriving the complicated frame of the human body, with all its different parts, organs, members, etc., from the simple form of the chordula. we have previously considered the origin of this four-layered embryonic form from the two-layered gastrula. the two primary germinal layers, which form the entire body of the gastrula, and the two middle layers of the coelomula that develop between them, are the four simple cell-strata, or epithelia, which alone go to the formation of the complex body of man and the higher animals. it is so difficult to understand this construction that we will first seek a companion who may help us out of many difficulties. this helpful associate is the science of comparative anatomy. its task is, by comparing the fully-developed bodily forms in the various groups of animals, to learn the general laws of organisation according to which the body is constructed; at the same time, it has to determine the affinities of the various groups by critical appreciation of the degrees of difference between them. formerly, this work was conceived in a teleological sense, and it was sought to find traces of the plan of the creator in the actual purposive organisation of animals. but comparative anatomy has gone much deeper since the establishment of the theory of descent; its philosophic aim now is to explain the variety of organic forms by adaptation, and their similarity by heredity. at the same time, it has to recognise in the shades of difference in form the degree of blood-relationship, and make an effort to construct the ancestral tree of the animal world. in this way, comparative anatomy enters into the closest relations with comparative embryology on the one hand, and with the science of classification on the other. now, when we ask what position man occupies among the other organisms according to the latest teaching of comparative anatomy and classification, and how man's place in the zoological system is determined by comparison of the mature bodily forms, we get a very definite and significant reply; and this reply gives us extremely important conclusions that enable us to understand the embryonic development and its evolutionary purport. since cuvier and baer, since the immense progress that was effected in the early decades of the nineteenth century by these two great zoologists, the opinion has generally prevailed that the whole animal kingdom may be distributed in a small number of great divisions or types. they are called types because a certain typical or characteristic structure is constantly preserved within each of these large sections. since we applied the theory of descent to this doctrine of types, we have learned that this common type is an outcome of heredity; all the animals of one type are blood-relatives, or members of one stem, and can be traced to a common ancestral form. cuvier and baer set up four of these types: the vertebrates, articulates, molluscs, and radiates. the first three of these are still retained, and may be conceived as natural phylogenetic unities, as stems or phyla in the sense of the theory of descent. it is quite otherwise with the fourth type--the radiata. these animals, little known as yet at the beginning of the nineteenth century, were made to form a sort of lumber-room, into which were cast all the lower animals that did not belong to the other three types. as we obtained a closer acquaintance with them in the course of the last sixty years, it was found that we must distinguish among them from four to eight different types. in this way the total number of animal stems or phyla has been raised to eight or twelve (cf. chapter . ). these twelve stems of the animal kingdom are, however, by no means co-ordinate and independent types, but have definite relations, partly of subordination, to each other, and a very different phylogenetic meaning. hence they must not be arranged simply in a row one after the other, as was generally done until thirty years ago, and is still done in some manuals. we must distribute them in three subordinate principal groups of very different value, and arrange the various stems phylogenetically on the principles which i laid down in my monograph on the sponges, and developed in the study of the gastraea theory. we have first to distinguish the unicellular animals (protozoa) from the multicellular tissue-forming (metazoa). only the latter exhibit the important processes of segmentation and gastrulation; and they alone have a primitive gut, and form germinal layers and tissues. the metazoa, the tissue-animals or gut-animals, then sub-divide into two main sections, according as a body-cavity is or is not developed between the primary germinal layers. we may call these the coelenteria and coelomaria, the former are often also called zoophytes or coelenterata, and the latter bilaterals. this division is the more important as the coelenteria (without coelom) have no blood and blood-vessels, nor an anus. the coelomaria (with body-cavity) have generally an anus, and blood and blood-vessels. there are four stems belonging to the coelenteria: the gastraeads ("primitive-gut animals"), sponges, cnidaria, and platodes. of the coelomaria we can distinguish six stems: the vermalia at the bottom represent the common stem-group (derived from the platodes) of these, the other five typical stems of the coelomaria--the molluscs, echinoderms, articulates, tunicates, and vertebrates--being evolved from them. man is, in his whole structure, a true vertebrate, and develops from an impregnated ovum in just the same characteristic way as the other vertebrates. there can no longer be the slightest doubt about this fundamental fact, nor of the fact that all the vertebrates form a natural phylogenetic unity, a single stem. the whole of the members of this stem, from the amphioxus and the cyclostoma to the apes and man, have the same characteristic disposition, connection, and development of the central organs, and arise in the same way from the common embryonic form of the chordula. without going into the difficult question of the origin of this stem, we must emphasise the fact that the vertebrate stem has no direct affinity whatever to five of the other ten stems; these five isolated phyla are the sponges, cnidaria, molluscs, articulates, and echinoderms. on the other hand, there are important and, to an extent, close phylogenetic relations to the other five stems--the protozoa (through the amoebae), the gastraeads (through the blastula and gastrula), the platodes and vermalia (through the coelomula), and the tunicates (through the chordula). how we are to explain these phylogenetic relations in the present state of our knowledge, and what place is assigned to the vertebrates in the animal ancestral tree, will be considered later (chapter . ). for the present our task is to make plainer the vertebrate character of man, and especially to point out the chief peculiarities of organisation by which the vertebrate stem is profoundly separated from the other eleven stems of the animal kingdom. only after these comparative-anatomical considerations shall we be in a position to attack the difficult question of our embryology. the development of even the simplest and lowest vertebrate from the simple chordula (figures . to . ) is so complicated and difficult to follow that it is necessary to understand the organic features of the fully-formed vertebrate in order to grasp the course of its embryonic evolution. but it is equally necessary to confine our attention, in this general anatomic description of the vertebrate-body, to the essential facts, and pass by all the unessential. hence, in giving now an ideal anatomic description of the chief features of the vertebrate and its internal organisation, i omit all the subordinate points, and restrict myself to the most important characteristics. much, of course, will seem to the reader to be essential that is only of subordinate and secondary interest, or even not essential at all, in the light of comparative anatomy and embryology. for instance, the skull and vertebral column and the extremities are non-essential in this sense. it is true that these parts are very important physiologically; but for the morphological conception of the vertebrate they are not essential, because they are only found in the higher, not the lower, vertebrates. the lowest vertebrates have neither skull nor vertebrae, and no extremities or limbs. even the human embryo passes through a stage in which it has no skull or vertebrae; the trunk is quite simple, and there is yet no trace of arms and legs. at this stage of development man, like every other higher vertebrate, is essentially similar to the simplest vertebrate form, which we now find in only one living specimen. this one lowest vertebrate that merits the closest study--undoubtedly the most interesting of all the vertebrates after man--is the famous lancelet or amphioxus, to which we have already often referred. as we are going to study it more closely later on (chapters . and . ), i will only make one or two passing observations on it here. the amphioxus lives buried in the sand of the sea, is about one or two inches in length, and has, when fully developed, the shape of a very simple, longish, lancet-like leaf; hence its name of the lancelet. the narrow body is compressed on both sides, almost equally pointed at the fore and hind ends, without any trace of external appendages or articulation of the body into head, neck, breast, abdomen, etc. its whole shape is so simple that its first discoverer thought it was a naked snail. it was not until much later--half a century ago--that the tiny creature was studied more carefully, and was found to be a true vertebrate. more recent investigations have shown that it is of the greatest importance in connection with the comparative anatomy and ontogeny of the vertebrates, and therefore with human phylogeny. the amphioxus reveals the great secret of the origin of the vertebrates from the invertebrate vermalia, and in its development and structure connects directly with certain lower tunicates, the ascidia. when we make a number of sections of the body of the amphioxus, firstly vertical longitudinal sections through the whole body from end to end, and secondly transverse sections from right to left, we get anatomic pictures of the utmost instructiveness (cf. figures . to . ). in the main they correspond to the ideal which we form, with the aid of comparative anatomy and ontogeny, of the primitive type or build of the vertebrate--the long-extinct form to which the whole stem owes its origin. as we take the phylogenetic unity of the vertebrate stem to be beyond dispute, and assume a common origin from a primitive stem-form for all the vertebrates, from amphioxus to man, we are justified in forming a definite morphological idea of this primitive vertebrate (prospondylus or vertebraea). we need only imagine a few slight and unessential changes in the real sections of the amphioxus in order to have this ideal anatomic figure or diagram of the primitive vertebrate form, as we see in figures . to . . the amphioxus departs so little from this primitive form that we may, in a certain sense, describe it as a modified "primitive vertebrate."* (* the ideal figure of the vertebrate as given in figures . to . is a hypothetical scheme or diagram, that has been chiefly constructed on the lines of the amphioxus, but with a certain attention to the comparative anatomy and ontogeny of the ascidia and appendicularia on the one hand, and of the cyclostoma and selachii on the other. this diagram has no pretension whatever to be an "exact picture," but merely an attempt to reconstruct hypothetically the unknown and long extinct vertebrate stem-form, an ideal "archetype.") the outer form of our hypothetical primitive vertebrate was at all events very simple, and probably more or less similar to that of the lancelet. the bilateral or bilateral-symmetrical body is stretched out lengthways and compressed at the sides (figures . to . ), oval in section (figures . and . ). there are no external articulation and no external appendages, in the shape of limbs, legs, or fins. on the other hand, the division of the body into two sections, head and trunk, was probably clearer in prospondylus than it is in its little-changed ancestor, the amphioxus. in both animals the fore or head-half of the body contains different organs from the trunk, and different on the dorsal from on the ventral side. as this important division is found even in the sea-squirt, the remarkable invertebrate stem-relative of the vertebrates, we may assume that it was also found in the prochordonia, the common ancestors of both stems. it is also very pronounced in the young larvae of the cyclostoma; this fact is particularly interesting, as this palingenetic larva-form is in other respects also an important connecting-link between the higher vertebrates and the acrania. (figures . to . . the ideal primitive vertebrate (prospondylus). diagram. figure . side-view (from the left). figure . back-view. figure . front view. figure . transverse section through the head (to the left through the gill-pouches, to the right through the gill-clefts). figure . transverse section of the trunk (to the right a pro-renal canal is affected). a aorta, af anus, au eye, b lateral furrow (primitive renal process), c coeloma (body-cavity), d small intestine, e parietal eye (epiphysis), f fin border of the skin, g auditory vesicle, gh brain, h heart, i muscular cavity (dorsal coelom-pouch), k gill-grut, ka gill-artery, kg gill-arch, ks gill-folds, l liver, ma stomach, md mouth, ms muscles, na nose (smell pit), n renal canals, u apertures of same, o outer skin, p gullet, r spinal marrow, a sexual glands (gonads), t corium, u kidney-openings (pores of the lateral furrow), v visceral vein (chief vein). x chorda, y hypophysis (urinary appendage), z gullet-groove or gill-groove (hypobranchial groove).) the head of the acrania, or the anterior half of the body (both of the real amphioxus and the ideal prospondylus), contains the branchial (gill) gut and heart in the ventral section and the brain and sense-organs in the dorsal section. the trunk, or posterior half of the body, contains the hepatic (liver) gut and sexual-glands in the ventral part, and the spinal marrow and most of the muscles in the dorsal part. in the longitudinal section of the ideal vertebrate (figure . ) we have in the middle of the body a thin and flexible, but stiff, cylindrical rod, pointed at both ends (ch). it goes the whole length through the middle of the body, and forms, as the central skeletal axis, the original structure of the later vertebral column. this is the axial rod, or chorda dorsalis, also called chorda vertebralis, vertebral cord, axial cord, dorsal cord, notochorda, or, briefly, chorda. this solid, but flexible and elastic, axial rod consists of a cartilaginous mass of cells, and forms the inner axial skeleton or central frame of the body; it is only found in vertebrates and tunicates, not in any other animals. as the first structure of the spinal column it has the same radical significance in all vertebrates, from the amphioxus to man. but it is only in the amphioxus and the cyclostoma that the axial rod retains its simplest form throughout life. in man and all the higher vertebrates it is found only in the earlier embryonic period, and is afterwards replaced by the articulated vertebral column. the axial rod or chorda is the real solid chief axis of the vertebrate body, and at the same time corresponds to the ideal long-axis, and serves to direct us with some confidence in the orientation of the principal organs. we therefore take the vertebrate-body in its original, natural disposition, in which the long-axis lies horizontally, the dorsal side upward and the ventral side downward (figure . ). when we make a vertical section through the whole length of this long axis, the body divides into two equal and symmetrical halves, right and left. in each half we have originally the same organs in the same disposition and connection; only their disposal in relation to the vertical plane of section, or median plane, is exactly reversed: the left half is the reflection of the right. we call the two halves antimera (opposed-parts). in the vertical plane of section that divides the two halves the sagittal ("arrow") axis, or "dorsoventral axis," goes from the back to the belly, corresponding to the sagittal seam of the skull. but when we make a horizontal longitudinal section through the chorda, the whole body divides into a dorsal and a ventral half. the line of section that passes through the body from right to left is the transverse, frontal, or lateral axis. the two halves of the vertebrate body that are separated by this horizontal transverse axis and by the chorda have quite different characters. the dorsal half is mainly the animal part of the body, and contains the greater part of what are called the animal organs, the nervous system, muscular system, osseous system, etc.--the instruments of movement and sensation. the ventral half is essentially the vegetative half of the body, and contains the greater part of the vertebrate's vegetal organs, the visceral and vascular systems, sexual system, etc.--the instruments of nutrition and reproduction. hence in the construction of the dorsal half it is chiefly the outer, and in the construction of the ventral half chiefly the inner, germinal layer that is engaged. each of the two halves develops in the shape of a tube, and encloses a cavity in which another tube is found. the dorsal half contains the narrow spinal-column cavity or vertebral canal above the chorda, in which lies the tube-shaped central nervous system, the medullary tube. the ventral half contains the much more spacious visceral cavity or body-cavity underneath the chorda, in which we find the alimentary canal and all its appendages. the medullary tube, as the central nervous system or psychic organ of the vertebrate is called in its first stage, consists, in man and all the higher vertebrates, of two different parts: the large brain, contained in the skull, and the long spinal cord which stretches from there over the whole dorsal part of the trunk. even in the primitive vertebrate this composition is plainly indicated. the fore half of the body, which corresponds to the head, encloses a knob-shaped vesicle, the brain (gh); this is prolonged backwards into the thin cylindrical tube of the spinal marrow (r). hence we find here this very important psychic organ, which accomplishes sensation, will, and thought, in the vertebrates, in its simplest form. the thick wall of the nerve-tube, which runs through the long axis of the body immediately over the axial rod, encloses a narrow central canal filled with fluid (figures . to . r). we still find the medullary tube in this very simple form for a time in the embryo of all the vertebrates, and it retains this form in the amphioxus throughout life; only in the latter case the cylindrical medullary tube barely indicates the separation of brain and spinal cord. the lancelet's medullary tube runs nearly the whole length of the body, above the chorda, in the shape of a long thin tube of almost equal diameter throughout, and there is only a slight swelling of it right at the front to represent the rudiment of a cerebral lobe. it is probable that this peculiarity of the amphioxus is connected with the partial atrophy of its head, as the ascidian larvae on the one hand and the young cyclostoma on the other clearly show a division of the vesicular brain, or head marrow, from the thinner, tubular spinal marrow. probably we must trace to the same phylogenetic cause the defective nature of the sense organs of the amphioxus, which we will describe later (chapter . ). prospondylus, on the other hand, probably had three pairs of sense-organs, though of a simple character, a pair of, or a single olfactory depression, right in front (figures . and . , na), a pair of eyes (au) in the lateral walls of the brain, and a pair of simple auscultory vesicles (g) behind. there was also, perhaps, a single parietal or "pineal" eye at the top of the skull (epiphysis, e). in the vertical median plane (or middle plane, dividing the bilateral body into right and left halves) we have in the acrania, underneath the chorda, the mesentery and visceral tube, and above it the medullary tube; and above the latter a membranous partition of the two halves of the body. with this partition is connected the mass of connective tissue which acts as a sheath both for the medullary tube and the underlying chorda, and is, therefore, called the chord-sheath (perichorda); it originates from the dorsal and median part of the coelom-pouches, which we shall call the skeleton plate or "sclerotom" in the craniote embryo. in the latter the chief part of the skeleton--the vertebral column and skull--develops from this chord-sheath; in the acrania it retains its simple form as a soft connective matter, from which are formed the membranous partitions between the various muscular plates or myotomes (figures . and . ms). to the right and left of the cord-sheath, at each side of the medullary tube and the underlying axial rod, we find in all the vertebrates the large masses of muscle that constitute the musculature of the trunk and effect its movements. although these are very elaborately differentiated and connected in the developed vertebrate (corresponding to the various parts of the bony skeleton), in our ideal primitive vertebrate we can distinguish only two pairs of these principal muscles, which run the whole length of the body parallel to the chorda. these are the upper (dorsal) and lower (ventral) lateral muscles of the trunk. the upper (dorsal) muscles, or the original dorsal muscles (figure . ms), form the thick mass of flesh on the back. the lower (ventral) muscles, or the original muscles of the belly, form the fleshy wall of the abdomen. both sets are segmented, and consist of a double row of muscular plates (figures . and . ms); the number of these myotomes determines the number of joints in the trunk, or metamera. the myotomes are also developed from the thick wall of the coelom-pouches (figure . i). outside this muscular tube we have the external envelope of the vertebrate body, which is known as the corium or cutis. this strong and thick envelope consists, in its deeper strata, chiefly of fat and loose connective tissue, and in its upper layers of cutaneous muscles and firmer connective tissue. it covers the whole surface of the fleshy body, and is of considerable thickness in all the craniota. but in the acrania the corium is merely a thin plate of connective tissue, an insignificant "corium-plate" (lamella corii, figures . to . t). immediately above the corium is the outer skin (epidermis, o), the general covering of the whole outer surface. in the higher vertebrates the hairs, nails, feathers, claws, scales, etc., grow out of this epidermis. it consists, with all its appendages and products, of simple cells, and has no blood-vessels. its cells are connected with the terminations of the sensory nerves. originally, the outer skin is a perfectly simple covering of the outer surface of the body, composed only of homogeneous cells--a permanent horn-plate. in this simplest form, as a one-layered epithelium, we find it, at first, in all the vertebrates, and throughout life in the acrania. it afterwards grows thicker in the higher vertebrates, and divides into two strata--an outer, firmer corneous (horn) layer and an inner, softer mucus-layer; also a number of external and internal appendages grow out of it: outwardly, the hairs, nails, claws, etc., and inwardly, the sweat-glands, fat-glands, etc. it is probable that in our primitive vertebrate the skin was raised in the middle line of the body in the shape of a vertical fin border (f). a similar fringe, going round the greater part of the body, is found to-day in the amphioxus and the cyclostoma; we also find one in the tail of fish-larvae and tadpoles. now that we have considered the external parts of the vertebrate and the animal organs, which mainly lie in the dorsal half, above the chorda, we turn to the vegetal organs, which lie for the most part in the ventral half, below the axial rod. here we find a large body-cavity or visceral cavity in all the craniota. the spacious cavity that encloses the greater part of the viscera corresponds to only a part of the original coeloma, which we considered in chapter . ; hence it nay be called the metacoeloma. as a rule, it is still briefly called the coeloma; formerly it was known in anatomy as the pleuroperitoneal cavity. in man and the other mammals (but only in these) this coeloma divides, when fully developed, into two different cavities, which are separated by a transverse partition--the muscular diaphragm. the fore or pectoral cavity (pleura-cavity) contains the oesophagus (gullet), heart, and lungs; the hind or peritoneal or abdominal cavity contains the stomach, small and large intestines, liver, pancreas, kidneys, etc. but in the vertebrate embryo, before the diaphragm is developed, the two cavities form a single continuous body-cavity, and we find it thus in all the lower vertebrates throughout life. this body-cavity is clothed with a delicate layer of cells, the coelom-epithelium. in the acrania the coelom is segmented both dorsally and ventrally, as their muscular pouches and primitive genital organs plainly show (figure . ). the chief of the viscera in the body-cavity is the alimentary canal, the organ that represents the whole body in the gastrula. in all the vertebrates it is a long tube, enclosed in the body-cavity and more or less differentiated in length, and has two apertures--a mouth for taking in food (figures . and . md) and an anus for the ejection of unusable matter or excrements (af). with the alimentary canal a number of glands are connected which are of great importance for the vertebrate body, and which all grow out of the canal. glands of this kind are the salivary glands, the lungs, the liver, and many smaller glands. nearly all these glands are wanting in the acrania; probably there were merely a couple of simple hepatic tubes (figures . and . l) in the vertebrate stem-form. the wall of the alimentary canal and all its appendages consists of two different layers; the inner, cellular clothing is the gut-gland-layer, and the outer, fibrous envelope consists of the gut-fibre-layer; it is mainly composed of muscular fibres which accomplish the digestive movements of the canal, and of connective-tissue fibres that form a firm envelope. we have a continuation of it in the mesentery, a thin, bandage-like layer, by means of which the alimentary canal is fastened to the ventral side of the chorda, originally the dorsal partition of the two coelom-pouches. the alimentary canal is variously modified in the vertebrates both as a whole and in its several sections, though the original structure is always the same, and is very simple. as a rule, it is longer (often several times longer) than the body, and therefore folded and winding within the body-cavity, especially at the lower end. in man and the higher vertebrates it is divided into several sections, often separated by valves--the mouth, pharynx, oesophagus, stomach, small and large intestine, and rectum. all these parts develop from a very simple structure, which originally (throughout life in the amphioxus) runs from end to end under the chorda in the shape of a straight cylindrical canal. as the alimentary canal may be regarded morphologically as the oldest and most important organ in the body, it is interesting to understand its essential features in the vertebrate more fully, and distinguish them from unessential features. in this connection we must particularly note that the alimentary canal of every vertebrate shows a very characteristic division into two sections--a fore and a hind chamber. the fore chamber is the head-gut or branchial gut (figures . to . p, k), and is chiefly occupied with respiration. the hind section is the trunk-gut or hepatic gut, which accomplishes digestion (ma, d). in all vertebrates there are formed, at an early stage, to the right and left in the fore-part of the head-gut, certain special clefts that have an intimate connection with the original respiratory apparatus of the vertebrate--the branchial (gill) clefts (ks). all the lower vertebrates, the lancelets, lampreys, and fishes, are constantly taking in water at the mouth, and letting it out again by the lateral clefts of the gullet. this water serves for breathing. the oxygen contained in it is inspired by the blood-canals, which spread out on the parts between the gill-clefts, the gill-arches (kg). these very characteristic branchial clefts and arches are found in the embryo of man and all the higher vertebrates at an early stage of development, just as we find them throughout life in the lower vertebrates. however, these clefts and arches never act as respiratory organs in the mammals, birds, and reptiles, but gradually develop into quite different parts. still, the fact that they are found at first in the same form as in the fishes is one of the most interesting proofs of the descent of these three higher classes from the fishes. not less interesting and important is an organ that develops from the ventral wall in all vertebrates--the gill-groove or hypobranchial groove. in the acrania and the ascidiae it consists throughout life of a glandular ciliated groove, which runs down from the mouth in the ventral middle line of the gill-gut, and takes small particles of food to the stomach (figure . z). but in the craniota the thyroid gland (thyreoidea) is developed from it, the gland that lies in front of the larynx, and which, when pathologically enlarged, forms goitre (struma). from the head-gut we get not only the gills, the organs of water-breathing in the lower vertebrates, but also the lungs, the organs of atmospheric breathing in the five higher classes. in these cases a vesicular fold appears in the gullet of the embryo at an early stage, and gradually takes the shape of two spacious sacs, which are afterwards filled with air. these sacs are the two air-breathing lungs, which take the place of the water-breathing gills. but the vesicular invagination, from which the lungs arise, is merely the familiar air-filled vesicle, which we call the floating-bladder of the fish, and which alters its specific weight, acting as hydrostatic organ or floating apparatus. this structure is not found in the lowest vertebrate classes--the acrania and cyclostoma. we shall see more of it in volume . the second chief section of the vertebrate-gut, the trunk or liver-gut, which accomplishes digestion, is of very simple construction in the acrania. it consists of two different chambers. the first chamber, immediately behind the gill-gut, is the expanded stomach (ma); the second, narrower and longer chamber, is the straight small intestine (d): it issues behind on the ventral side by the anus (af). near the limit of the two chambers in the visceral cavity we find the liver, in the shape of a simple tube or blind sac (l); in the amphioxus it is single; in the prospondylus it was probably double (figures . and . l). closely related morphologically and physiologically to the alimentary canal is the vascular system of the vertebrate, the chief sections of which develop from the fibrous gut-layer. it consists of two different but directly connected parts, the system of blood-vessels and that of lymph-vessels. in the passages of the one we find red blood, and in the other colourless lymph. to the lymphatic system belong, first of all, the lymphatic canals proper or absorbent veins, which are distributed among all the organs, and absorb the used-up juices from the tissues, and conduct them into the venous blood; but besides these there are the chyle-vessels, which absorb the white chyle, the milky fluid prepared by the alimentary canal from the food, and conduct this also to the blood. the blood-vessel system of the vertebrate has a very elaborate construction, but seems to have had a very simple form in the primitive vertebrate, as we find it to-day permanently in the annelids (for instance, earth-worms) and the amphioxus. we accordingly distinguish first of all as essential, original parts of it two large single blood-canals, which lie in the fibrous wall of the gut, and run along the alimentary canal in the median plane of the body, one above and the other underneath the canal. these principal canals give out numerous branches to all parts of the body, and pass into each other by arches before and behind; we will call them the primitive artery and the primitive vein. the first corresponds to the dorsal vessel, the second to the ventral vessel, of the worms. the primitive or principal artery, usually called the aorta (figure . a), lies above the gut in the middle line of its dorsal side, and conducts oxidised or arterial blood from the gills to the body. the primitive or principal vein (figure . v) lies below the gut, in the middle line of its ventral side, and is therefore also called the vena subintestinalis; it conducts carbonised or venous blood back from the body to the gills. at the branchial section of the gut in front the two canals are connected by a number of branches, which rise in arches between the gill-clefts. these "branchial vascular arches" (kg) run along the gill-arches, and have a direct share in the work of respiration. the anterior continuation of the principal vein which runs on the ventral wall of the gill-gut, and gives off these vascular arches upwards, is the branchial artery (ka). at the border of the two sections of the ventral vessel it enlarges into a contractile spindle-shaped tube (figures . and . h). this is the first outline of the heart, which afterwards becomes a four-chambered pump in the higher vertebrates and man. there is no heart in the amphioxus, probably owing to degeneration. in prospondylus the ventral gill-heart probably had the simple form in which we still find it in the ascidia and the embryos of the craniota (figures . and . h). the kidneys, which act as organs of excretion or urinary organs in all vertebrates, have a very different and elaborate construction in the various sections of this stem; we will consider them further in chapter . . here i need only mention that in our hypothetical primitive vertebrate they probably had the same form as in the actual amphioxus--the primitive kidneys (protonephra). these are originally made up of a double row of little canals, which directly convey the used-up juices or the urine out of the body-cavity (figure . n). the inner aperture of these pronephridial canals opens with a ciliated funnel into the body-cavity; the external aperture opens in lateral grooves of the epidermis, a couple of longitudinal grooves in the lateral surface of the outer skin (figure . b). the pronephridial duct is formed by the closing of this groove to the right and left at the sides. in all the craniota it develops at an early stage in the horny plate; in the amphioxus it seems to be converted into a wide cavity, the atrium, or peribranchial space. next to the kidneys we have the sexual organs of the vertebrate. in most of the members of this stem the two are united in a single urogenital system; it is only in a few groups that the urinary and sexual organs are separated (in the amphioxus, the cyclostoma, and some sections of the fish-class). in man and all the higher vertebrates the sexual apparatus is made up of various parts, which we will consider in chapter . . but in the two lowest classes of our stem, the acrania and cyclostoma, they consist merely of simple sexual glands or gonads, the ovaries of the female sex and the testicles (spermaria) of the male; the former provide the ova, the latter the sperm. in the craniota we always find only one pair of gonads; in the amphioxus several pairs, arranged in succession. they must have had the same form in our hypothetical prospondylus (figures . and . s). these segmental pairs of gonads are the original ventral halves of the coelom-pouches. the organs which we have now enumerated in this general survey, and of which we have noted the characteristic disposition, are those parts of the organism that are found in all vertebrates without exception in the same relation to each other, however much they may be modified. we have chiefly had in view the transverse section of the body (figures . and . ), because in this we see most clearly the distinctive arrangement of them. but to complete our picture we must also consider the segmentation or metamera-formation of them, which has yet been hardly noticed, and which is seen best in the longitudinal section. in man and all the more advanced vertebrates the body is made up of a series or chain of similar members, which succeed each other in the long axis of the body--the segments or metamera of the organism. in man these homogeneous parts number thirty-three in the trunk, but they run to several hundred in many of the vertebrates (such as serpents or eels). as this internal articulation or metamerism is mainly found in the vertebral column and the surrounding muscles, the sections or metamera were formerly called pro-vertebrae. as a fact, the articulation is by no means chiefly determined and caused by the skeleton, but by the muscular system and the segmental arrangement of the kidneys and gonads. however, the composition from these pro-vertebrae or internal metamera is usually, and rightly, put forward as a prominent character of the vertebrate, and the manifold division or differentiation of them is of great importance in the various groups of the vertebrates. but as far as our present task--the derivation of the simple body of the primitive vertebrate from the chordula--is concerned, the articulate parts or metamera are of secondary interest, and we need not go into them just now. (figure . a, b, c, d. instances of redundant mammary glands and nipples (hypermastism). a a pair of small redundant breasts (with two nipples on the left) above the large normal ones; from a -year-old berlin woman, who had had children times (twins twice). (from hansemann.) b the highest number: ten nipples (all giving milk), three pairs above, one pair below, the large normal breasts; from a -year-old servant at warschau. (from neugebaur.) c three pairs of nipples: two pairs on the normal glands and one pair above; from a -year-old japanese girl. d four pairs of nipples: one pair above the normal and two pairs of small accessory nipples underneath; from a -year-old bavarian soldier. (from wiedersheim.)) the characteristic composition of the vertebrate body develops from the embryonic structure in the same way in man as in all the other vertebrates. as all competent experts now admit the monophyletic origin of the vertebrates on the strength of this significant agreement, and this "common descent of all the vertebrates from one original stem-form" is admitted as an historical fact, we have found the answer to "the question of questions." we may, moreover, point out that this answer is just as certain and precise in the case of the origin of man from the mammals. this advanced vertebrate class is also monophyletic, or has evolved from one common stem-group of lower vertebrates (reptiles, and, earlier still, amphibia). this follows from the fact that the mammals are clearly distinguished from the other classes of the stem, not merely in one striking particular, but in a whole group of distinctive characters. it is only in the mammals that we find the skin covered with hair, the breast-cavity separated from the abdominal cavity by a complete diaphragm, and the larynx provided with an epiglottis. the mammals alone have three small auscultory bones in the tympanic cavity--a feature that is connected with the characteristic modification of their maxillary joint. their red blood-cells have no nucleus, whereas this is retained in all other vertebrates. finally, it is only in the mammals that we find the remarkable function of the breast structure which has given its name to the whole class--the feeding of the young by the mother's milk. the mammary glands which serve this purpose are interesting in so many ways that we may devote a few lines to them here. as is well known, the lower mammals, especially those which beget a number of young at a time, have several mammary glands at the breast. hedgehogs and sows have five pairs, mice four or five pairs, dogs and squirrels four pairs, cats and bears three pairs, most of the ruminants and many of the rodents two pairs, each provided with a teat or nipple (mastos). in the various genera of the half-apes (lemurs) the number varies a good deal. on the other hand, the bats and apes, which only beget one young at a time as a rule, have only one pair of mammary glands, and these are found at the breast, as in man. these variations in the number or structure of the mammary apparatus (mammarium) have become doubly interesting in the light of recent research in comparative anatomy. it has been shown that in man and the apes we often find redundant mammary glands (hyper-mastism) and corresponding teats (hyper-thelism) in both sexes. figure . shows four cases of this kind--a, b, and c of three women, and d of a man. they prove that all the above-mentioned numbers may be found occasionally in man. figure . a shows the breast of a berlin woman who had had children seventeen times, and who has a pair of small accessory breasts (with two nipples on the left one) above the two normal breasts; this is a common occurrence, and the small soft pad above the breast is not infrequently represented in ancient statues of venus. in figure . c we have the same phenomenon in a japanese girl of nineteen, who has two nipples on each breast besides (three pairs altogether). figure . d is a man of twenty-two with four pairs of nipples (as in the dog), a small pair above and two small pairs beneath the large normal teats. the maximum number of five pairs (as in the sow and hedgehog) was found in a polish servant of twenty-two who had had several children; milk was given by each nipple; there were three pairs of redundant nipples above and one pair underneath the normal and very large breasts (figure . b). a number of recent investigations (especially among recruits) have shown that these things are not uncommon in the male as well as the female sex. they can only be explained by evolution, which attributes them to atavism and latent heredity. the earlier ancestors of all the primates (including man) were lower placentals, which had, like the hedgehog (one of the oldest forms of the living placentals), several mammary glands (five or more pairs) in the abdominal skin. in the apes and man only a couple of them are normally developed, but from time to time we get a development of the atrophied structures. special notice should be taken of the arrangement of these accessory mammae; they form, as is clearly seen in figure . b and d, two long rows, which diverge forward (towards the arm-pit), and converge behind in the middle line (towards the loins). the milk-glands of the polymastic lower placentals are arranged in similar lines. the phylogenetic explanation of polymastism, as given in comparative anatomy, has lately found considerable support in ontogeny. hans strahl, e. schmitt, and others, have found that there are always in the human embryo at the sixth week (when it is three-fifths of an inch long) the microscopic traces of five pairs of mammary glands, and that they are arranged at regular distances in two lateral and divergent lines, which correspond to the mammary lines. only one pair of them--the central pair--are normally developed, the others atrophying. hence there is for a time in the human embryo a normal hyperthelism, and this can only be explained by the descent of man from lower primates (lemurs) with several pairs. but the milk-gland of the mammal has a great morphological interest from another point of view. this organ for feeding the young in man and the higher mammals is, as is known, found in both sexes. however, it is usually active only in the female sex, and yields the valuable "mother's milk"; in the male sex it is small and inactive, a real rudimentary organ of no physiological interest. nevertheless, in certain cases we find the breast as fully developed in man as in woman, and it may give milk for feeding the young. (figure . . a greek gynecomast.) we have a striking instance of this gynecomastism (large milk-giving breasts in a male) in figure . . i owe the photograph (taken from life) to the kindness of dr. ornstein, of athens, a german physician, who has rendered service by a number of anthropological observations, (for instance, in several cases of tailed men). the gynecomast in question is a greek recruit in his twentieth year, who has both normally developed male organs and very pronounced female breasts. it is noteworthy that the other features of his structure are in accord with the softer forms of the female sex. it reminds us of the marble statues of hermaphrodites which the ancient greek and roman sculptors often produced. but the man would only be a real hermaphrodite if he had ovaries internally besides the (externally visible) testicles. i observed a very similar case during my stay in ceylon (at belligemma) in . a young cinghalese in his twenty-fifth year was brought to me as a curious hermaphrodite, half-man and half-woman. his large breasts gave plenty of milk; he was employed as "male nurse" to suckle a new-born infant whose mother had died at birth. the outline of his body was softer and more feminine than in the greek shown in figure . . as the cinghalese are small of stature and of graceful build, and as the men often resemble the women in clothing (upper part of the body naked, female dress on the lower part) and the dressing of the hair (with a comb), i first took the beardless youth to be a woman. the illusion was greater, as in this remarkable case gynecomastism was associated with cryptorchism--that is to say, the testicles had kept to their original place in the visceral cavity, and had not travelled in the normal way down into the scrotum. (cf. chapter . .) hence the latter was very small, soft, and empty. moreover, one could feel nothing of the testicles in the inguinal canal. on the other hand, the male organ was very small, but normally developed. it was clear that this apparent hermaphrodite also was a real male. another case of practical gynecomastism has been described by alexander von humboldt. in a south american forest he found a solitary settler whose wife had died in child-birth. the man had laid the new-born child on his own breast in despair; and the continuous stimulus of the child's sucking movements had revived the activity of the mammary glands. it is possible that nervous suggestion had some share in it. similar cases have been often observed in recent years, even among other male mammals (such as sheep and goats). the great scientific interest of these facts is in their bearing on the question of heredity. the stem-history of the mammarium rests partly on its embryology (chapter . .) and partly on the facts of comparative anatomy and physiology. as in the lower and higher mammals (the monotremes, and most of the marsupials) the whole lactiferous apparatus is only found in the female; and as there are traces of it in the male only in a few younger marsupials, there can be no doubt that these important organs were originally found only in the female mammal, and that they were acquired by these through a special adaptation to habits of life. later, these female organs were communicated to both sexes by heredity; and they have been maintained in all persons of either sex, although they are not physiologically active in the males. this normal permanence of the female lactiferous organs in both sexes of the higher mammals and man is independent of any selection, and is a fine instance of the much-disputed "inheritance of acquired characters." chapter . . embryonic shield and germinative area. the three higher classes of vertebrates which we call the amniotes--the mammals, birds, and reptiles--are notably distinguished by a number of peculiarities of their development from the five lower classes of the stem--the animals without an amnion (the anamnia). all the amniotes have a distinctive embryonic membrane known as the amnion (or "water-membrane"), and a special embryonic appendage--the allantois. they have, further, a large yelk-sac, which is filled with food-yelk in the reptiles and birds, and with a corresponding clear fluid in the mammals. in consequence of these later-acquired structures, the original features of the development of the amniotes are so much altered that it is very difficult to reduce them to the palingenetic embryonic processes of the lower amnion-less vertebrates. the gastraea theory shows us how to do this, by representing the embryology of the lowest vertebrate, the skull-less amphioxus, as the original form, and deducing from it, through a series of gradual modifications, the gastrulation and coelomation of the craniota. it was somewhat fatal to the true conception of the chief embryonic processes of the vertebrate that all the older embryologists, from malpighi ( ) and wolff ( ) to baer ( ) and remak ( ), always started from the investigation of the hen's egg, and transferred to man and the other vertebrates the impressions they gathered from this. this classical object of embryological research is, as we have seen, a source of dangerous errors. the large round food-yelk of the bird's egg causes, in the first place, a flat discoid expansion of the small gastrula, and then so distinctive a development of this thin round embryonic disk that the controversy as to its significance occupies a large part of embryological literature. (figure . . severance of the discoid mammal embryo from the yelk-sac, in transverse section (diagrammatic). a the germinal disk (h, hf) lies flat on one side of the branchial-gut vesicle (kb). b in the middle of the germinal disk we find the medullary groove (mr), and underneath it the chorda (ch). c the gut-fibre-layer (df) has been enclosed by the gut-gland-layer (dd). d the skin-fibre-layer (hf) and gut-fibre-layer (df) divide at the periphery; the gut (d) begins to separate from the yelk-sac or umbilical vesicle (nb). e the medullary tube (mr) is closed; the body-cavity (c) begins to form. f the provertebrae (w) begin to grow round the medullary tube (mr) and the chorda (ch): the gut (d) is cut off from the umbilical vesicle (nb). h the vertebrae (w) have grown round the medullary tube (mr) and chorda; the body-cavity is closed, and the umbilical vesicle has disappeared. the amnion and serous membrane are omitted. the letters have the same meaning throughout: h horn-plate, mr medullary tube, hf skin-fibre-layer, w provertebrae, ch chorda, c body-cavity or coeloma, df gut-fibre-layer, dd gut-gland-layer, d gut-cavity, nb umbilical vesicle.) one of the most unfortunate errors that this led to was the idea of an original antithesis of germ and yelk. the latter was regarded as a foreign body, extrinsic to the real germ, whereas it is properly a part of it, an embryonic organ of nutrition. many authors said there was no trace of the embryo until a later stage, and outside the yelk; sometimes the two-layered embryonic disk itself, at other times only the central portion of it (as distinguished from the germinative area, which we will describe presently), was taken to be the first outline of the embryo. in the light of the gastraea theory it is hardly necessary to dwell on the defects of this earlier view and the erroneous conclusions drawn from it. in reality, the first segmentation-cell, and even the stem-cell itself and all that issues therefrom, belong to the embryo. as the large original yelk-mass in the undivided egg of the bird only represents an inclosure in the greatly enlarged ovum, so the later contents of its embryonic yelk-sac (whether yet segmented or not) are only a part of the entoderm which forms the primitive gut. this is clearly shown by the ova of the amphibia and cyclostoma, which explain the transition from the yelk-less ova of the amphioxus to the large yelk-filled ova of the reptiles and birds. it is precisely in the study of these difficult features that we see the incalculable value of phylogenetic considerations in explaining complex ontogenetic facts, and the need of separating cenogenetic phenomena from palingenetic. this is particularly clear as regards the comparative embryology of the vertebrates, because here the phylogenetic unity of the stem has been already established by the well-known facts of paleontology and comparative anatomy. if this unity of the stem, on the basis of the amphioxus, were always borne in mind, we should not have these errors constantly recurring. in many cases the cenogenetic relation of the embryo to the food-yelk has until now given rise to a quite wrong idea of the first and most important embryonic processes in the higher vertebrates, and has occasioned a number of false theories in connection with them. until thirty years ago the embryology of the higher vertebrates always started from the position that the first structure of the embryo is a flat, leaf-shaped disk; it was for this reason that the cell-layers that compose this germinal disk (also called germinative area) are called "germinal layers." this flat germinal disk, which is round at first and then oval, and which is often described as the tread or cicatricula in the laid hen's egg, is found at a certain part of the surface of the large globular food-yelk. i am convinced that it is nothing else than the discoid, flattened gastrula of the birds. at the beginning of germination the flat embryonic disk curves outwards, and separates on the inner side from the underlying large yelk-ball. in this way the flat layers are converted into tubes, their edges folding and joining together (figure . ). as the embryo grows at the expense of the food-yelk, the latter becomes smaller and smaller; it is completely surrounded by the germinal layers. later still, the remainder of the food-yelk only forms a small round sac, the yelk-sac or umbilical vesicle (figure . nb). this is enclosed by the visceral layer, is connected by a thin stalk, the yelk-duct, with the central part of the gut-tube, and is finally, in most of the vertebrates, entirely absorbed by this (h). the point at which this takes place, and where the gut finally closes, is the visceral navel. in the mammals, in which the remainder of the yelk-sac remains without and atrophies, the yelk-duct at length penetrates the outer ventral wall. at birth the umbilical cord proceeds from here, and the point of closure remains throughout life in the skin as the navel. as the older embryology of the higher vertebrates was mainly based on the chick, and regarded the antithesis of embryo (or formative-yelk) and food-yelk (or yelk-sac) as original, it had also to look upon the flat leaf-shaped structure of the germinal disk as the primitive embryonic form, and emphasise the fact that hollow grooves were formed of these flat layers by folding, and closed tubes by the joining together of their edges. this idea, which dominated the whole treatment of the embryology of the higher vertebrates until thirty years ago, was totally false. the gastraea theory, which has its chief application here, teaches us that it is the very reverse of the truth. the cup-shaped gastrula, in the body-wall of which the two primary germinal layers appear from the first as closed tubes, is the original embryonic form of all the vertebrates, and all the multicellular invertebrates; and the flat germinal disk with its superficially expanded germinal layers is a later, secondary form, due to the cenogenetic formation of the large food-yelk and the gradual spread of the germ-layers over its surface. hence the actual folding of the germinal layers and their conversion into tubes is not an original and primary, but a much later and tertiary, evolutionary process. in the phylogeny of the vertebrate embryonic process we may distinguish the following three stages:-- a. first stage: primary (palingenetic) embryonic process. the germinal layers form from the first closed tubes, the one-layered blastula being converted into the two-layered gastrula by invagination. no food-yelk. (amphioxus.) b. second stage: secondary (cenogenetic) embryonic process. the germinal layers spread out leaf-wise, food-yelk gathering in the ventral entoderm, and a large yelk-sac being formed from the middle of the gut-tube. (amphibia.) c. third stage: tertiary (cenogenetic) embryonic process. the germinal layers form a flat germinal disk, the borders of which join together and form closed tubes, separating from the central yelk-sac. (amniotes.) as this theory, a logical conclusion from the gastraea theory, has been fully substantiated by the comparative study of gastrulation in the last few decades, we must exactly reverse the hitherto prevalent mode of treatment. the yelk-sac is not to be treated, as was done formerly, as if it were originally antithetic to the embryo, but as an essential part of it, a part of its visceral tube. the primitive gut of the gastrula has, on this view, been divided into two parts in the higher animals as a result of the cenogenetic formation of the food-yelk--the permanent gut (metagaster), or permanent alimentary canal, and the yelk-sac (lecithoma), or umbilical vesicle. this is very clearly shown by the comparative ontogeny of the fishes and amphibia. in these cases the whole yelk undergoes cleavage at first, and forms a yelk-gland, composed of yelk-cells, in the ventral wall of the primitive gut. but it afterwards becomes so large that a part of the yelk does not divide, and is used up in the yelk-sac that is cut off outside. (figure . . the visceral embryonic vesicle (blastocystis or gastrocystis) of a rabbit (the "blastula" or vesicula blastodermica of other writers), a outer envelope (ovolemma), b skin-layer or ectoderm, forming the entire wall of the yelk-vesicle, c groups of dark cells, representing the visceral layer or entoderm. figure . . the same in section. letters as above. d cavity of the vesicle. (from bischoff.)) when we make a comparative study of the embryology of the amphioxus, the frog, the chick, and the rabbit, there cannot, in my opinion, be any further doubt as to the truth of this position, which i have held for thirty years. hence in the light of the gastraea theory we must regard the features of the amphioxus as the only and real primitive structure among all the vertebrates, departing very little from the palingenetic embryonic form. in the cyclostoma and the frog these features are, on the whole, not much altered cenogenetically, but they are very much so in the chick, and most of all in the rabbit. in the bell-gastrula of the amphioxus and in the hooded gastrula of the lamprey and the frog the germinal layers are found to be closed tubes or vesicles from the first. on the other hand, the chick-embryo (in the new laid, but not yet hatched, egg) is a flat circular disk, and it was not easy to recognise this as a real gastrula. rauber and goette have, however, achieved this. as the discoid gastrula grows round the large globular yelk, and the permanent gut then separates from the outlying yelk-sac, we find all the processes which we have shown (diagrammatically) in figure . --processes that were hitherto regarded as principal acts, whereas they are merely secondary. the oldest, oviparous mammals, the monotremes, behave in the same way as the reptiles and birds. but the corresponding embryonic processes in the viviparous mammals, the marsupials and placentals, are very elaborate and distinctive. they were formerly quite misinterpreted; it was not until the publication of the studies of edward van beneden ( ) and the later research of selenka, kuppfer, rabl, and others, that light was thrown on them, and we were in a position to bring them into line with the principles of the gastraea theory and trace them to the embryonic forms of the lower vertebrates. although there is no independent food-yelk, apart from the formative yelk, in the mammal ovum, and although its segmentation is total on that account, nevertheless a large yelk-sac is formed in their embryos, and the "embryo proper" spreads leaf-wise over its surface, as in the reptiles and birds, which have a large food-yelk and partial segmentation. in the mammals, as well as in the latter, the flat, leaf-shaped germinal disk separates from the yelk-sac, and its edges join together and form tubes. how can we explain this curious anomaly? only as a result of very characteristic and peculiar cenogenetic modifications of the embryonic process, the real causes of which must be sought in the change in the rearing of the young on the part of the viviparous mammals. these are clearly connected with the fact that the ancestors of the viviparous mammals were oviparous amniotes like the present monotremes, and only gradually became viviparous. this can no longer be questioned now that it has been shown ( ) that the monotremes, the lowest and oldest of the mammals, still lay eggs, and that these develop like the ova of the reptiles and birds. their nearest descendants, the marsupials, formed the habit of retaining the eggs, and developing them in the oviduct; the latter was thus converted into a womb (uterus). a nutritive fluid that was secreted from its wall, and passed through the wall of the blastula, now served to feed the embryo, and took the place of the food-yelk. in this way the original food-yelk of the monotremes gradually atrophied, and at last disappeared so completely that the partial ovum-segmentation of their descendants, the rest of the mammals, once more became total. from the discogastrula of the former was evolved the distinctive epigastrula of the latter. it is only by this phylogenetic explanation that we can understand the formation and development of the peculiar, and hitherto totally misunderstood, blastula of the mammal. the vesicular condition of the mammal embryo was discovered years ago ( ) by regner de graaf. he found in the uterus of a rabbit four days after impregnation small, round, loose, transparent vesicles, with a double envelope. however, graaf's discovery passed without recognition. it was not until that these vesicles were rediscovered by baer, and then more closely studied in by bischoff in the rabbit (figures . and . ). they are found in the womb of the rabbit, the dog, and other small mammals, a few days after copulation. the mature ova of the mammal, when they have left the ovary, are fertilised either here or in the oviduct immediately afterwards by the invading sperm-cells.* (* in man and the other mammals the fertilisation of the ova probably takes place, as a rule, in the oviduct; here the ova, which issue from the female ovary in the shape of the graafian follicle, and enter the inner aperture of the oviduct, encounter the mobile sperm-cells of the male seed, which pass into the uterus at copulation, and from this into the external aperture of the oviduct. impregnation rarely takes place in the ovary or in the womb.) (as to the womb and oviduct see chapter . .) the cleavage and formation of the gastrula take place in the oviduct. either here in the oviduct or after the mammal gastrula has passed into the uterus it is converted into the globular vesicle which is shown externally in figure . , and in section in figure . . the thick, outer, structureless envelope that encloses it is the original ovolemma or zona pellucida, modified, and clothed with a layer of albumin that has been deposited on the outside. from this stage the envelope is called the external membrane, the primary chorion or prochorion (a). the real wall of the vesicle enclosed by it consists of a simple layer of ectodermic cells (b), which are flattened by mutual pressure, and generally hexagonal; a light nucleus shines through their fine-grained protoplasm (figure . ). at one part (c) inside this hollow ball we find a circular disc, formed of darker, softer, and rounder cells, the dark-grained entodermic cells (figure . ). (figure . . four entodermic cells from the embryonic vesicle of the rabbit. figure . . two entodermic cells from the embryonic vesicle of the rabbit.) the characteristic embryonic form that the developing mammal now exhibits has up to the present usually been called the "blastula" (bischoff), "sac-shaped embryo" (baer), "vesicular embryo" (vesicula blastodermica, or, briefly, blastosphaera). the wall of the hollow vesicle, which consists of a single layer of cells, was called the "blastoderm," and was supposed to be equivalent to the cell-layer of the same name that forms the wall of the real blastula of the amphioxus and many of the invertebrates (such as monoxenia, figure . f, g). formerly this real blastula was generally believed to be equivalent to the embryonic vesicle of the mammal. however, this is by no means the case. what is called the "blastula" of the mammal and the real blastula of the amphioxus and many of the invertebrates are totally different embryonic structures. the latter (blastula) is palingenetic, and precedes the formation of the gastrula. the former (blastodermic vesicle) is cenogenetic, and follows gastrulation. the globular wall of the blastula is a real blastoderm, and consists of homogeneous (blastodermic) cells; it is not yet differentiated into the two primary germinal layers. but the globular wall of the mammal vesicle is the differentiated ectoderm, and at one point in it we find a circular disk of quite different cells--the entoderm. the round cavity, filled with fluid, inside the real blastula is the segmentation-cavity. but the similar cavity within the mammal vesicle is the yelk-sac cavity, which is connected with the incipient gut-cavity. this primitive gut-cavity passes directly into the segmentation-cavity in the mammals, in consequence of the peculiar cenogenetic changes in their gastrulation, which we have considered previously (chapter . ). for these reasons it is very necessary to recognise the secondary embryonic vesicle in the mammal (gastrocystis or blastocystis) as a characteristic structure peculiar to this class, and distinguish it carefully from the primary blastula of the amphioxus and the invertebrates. (figure . . ovum of a rabbit from the uterus, one sixth of an inch in diameter. the embryonic vesicle (b) has withdrawn a little from the smooth ovolemma (a). in the middle of the ovolemma we see the round germinal disk (blastodiscus, c), at the edge of which (at d) the inner layer of the embryonic vesicle is already beginning to expand. (figures . to . from bischoff.) figure . . the same ovum, seen in profile. letters as in figure . . figure . . ovum of a rabbit from the uterus, one-fourth of an inch in diameter. the blastoderm is already for the most part two-layered (b). the ovolemma, or outer envelope, is tufted (a). figure . . the same ovum, seen in profile. letters as in figure . . figure . . ovum of a rabbit from the uterus, one-third of an inch in diameter. the embryonic vesicle is now nearly everywhere two-layered (k) only remaining one-layered below (at d). figure . . round germinative area of the rabbit, divided into the central light area (area pellucida) and the peripheral dark area (area opaca). the light area seems darker on account of the dark ground appearing through it.) the small, circular, whitish, and opaque spot which the gastric disk (figure . ) forms at a certain part of the surface of the clear and transparent embryonic vesicle has long been known to science, and compared to the germinal disk of the birds and reptiles. sometimes it has been called the germinal disk, sometimes the germinal spot, and usually the germinative area. from the area the further development of the embryo proceeds. however, the larger part of the embryonic vesicle of the mammal is not directly used for building up the later body, but for the construction of the temporary umbilical vesicle. the embryo separates from this in proportion as it grows at its expense; the two are only connected by the yelk-duct (the stalk of the yelk-sac), and this maintains the direct communication between the cavity of the umbilical vesicle and the forming visceral cavity (figure . ). the germinative area or gastric disk of the animal consists at first (like the germinal disk of birds and reptiles) merely of the two primary germinal layers, the ectoderm and entoderm. but soon there appears in the middle of the circular disk between the two a third stratum of cells, the rudiment of the middle layer or fibrous layer (mesoderm). this middle germinal layer consists from the first, as we have seen in chapter . , of two separate epithelial plates, the two layers of the coelom-pouches (parietal and visceral). however, in all the amniotes (on account of the large formation of yelk) these thin middle plates are so firmly pressed together that they seem to represent a single layer. it is thus peculiar to the amniotes that the middle of the germinative area is composed of four germinal layers, the two limiting (or primary) layers and the middle layers between them (figures . and . ). these four secondary germinal layers can be clearly distinguished as soon as what is called the sickle-groove (or "embryonic sickle") is seen at the hind border of the germinative area. at the borders, however, the germinative area of the mammal only consists of two layers. the rest of the wall of the embryonic vesicle consists at first (but only for a short time in most of the mammals) of a single layer, the outer germinal layer. (figure . . oval area, with the opaque whitish border of the dark area without.) from this stage, however, the whole wall of the embryonic vesicle becomes two-layered. the middle of the germinative area is much thickened by the growth of the cells of the middle layers, and the inner layer expands at the same time, and increases at the border of the disk all round. lying close on the outer layer throughout, it grows over its inner surface at all points, covers first the upper and then the lower hemisphere, and at last closes in the middle of the inner layer (figures . to . ). the wall of the embryonic vesicle now consists throughout of two layers of cells, the ectoderm without and the entoderm within. it is only in the centre of the circular area, which becomes thicker and thicker through the growth of the middle layers, that it is made up of all four layers. at the same time, small structureless tufts or warts are deposited on the surface of the outer ovolemma or prochorion, which has been raised above the embryonic vesicle (figures . to . a). (figure . . oval germinal disk of the rabbit, magnified about ten times. as the delicate, half-transparent disk lies on a black ground, the pellucid area looks like a dark ring, and the opaque area (lying outside it) like a white ring. the oval shield in the centre also looks whitish, and in its axis we see the dark medullary groove. (from bischoff.)) we may now disregard both the outer ovolemma and the greater part of the vesicle, and concentrate our attention on the germinative area and the four-layered embryonic disk. it is here alone that we find the important changes which lead to the differentiation of the first organs. it is immaterial whether we examine the germinative area of the mammal (the rabbit, for instance) or the germinal disk of a bird or a reptile (such as a lizard or tortoise). the embryonic processes we are now going to consider are essentially the same in all members of the three higher classes of vertebrates which we call the amniotes. man is found to agree in this respect with the rabbit, dog, ox, etc.; and in all these animals the germinative area undergoes essentially the same changes as in the birds and reptiles. they are most frequently and accurately studied in the chick, because we can have incubated hens' eggs in any quantity at any stage of development. moreover, the round germinal disk of the chick passes immediately after the beginning of incubation (within a few hours) from the two-layered to the four-layered stage, the two-layered mesoderm developing from the median primitive groove between the ectoderm and entoderm (figures . to . ). the first change in the round germinal disk of the chick is that the cells at its edges multiply more briskly, and form darker nuclei in their protoplasm. this gives rise to a dark ring, more or less sharply set off from the lighter centre of the germinal disk (figure . ). from this point the latter takes the name of the "light area" (area pellucida), and the darker ring is called the "dark area" (area opaca). (in a strong light, as in figures . to . , the light area seems dark, because the dark ground is seen through it; and the dark area seems whiter). the circular shape of the area now changes into elliptic, and then immediately into oval (figures . and . ). one end seems to be broader and blunter, the other narrower and more pointed; the former corresponds to the anterior and the latter to the posterior section of the subsequent body. at the same time, we can already trace the characteristic bilateral form of the body, the antithesis of right and left, before and behind. this will be made clearer by the "primitive streak," which appears at the posterior end. (figure . . pear-shaped germinal shield of the rabbit (eight days old), magnified twenty times. rf medullary groove. pr primitive groove (primitive mouth). (from kolliker.) figure . . median longitudinal section of the gastrula of four vertebrates. (from rabl.) a discogastrula of a shark (pristiurus). b amphigastrula of a sturgeon (accipenser). c amphigastrula of an amphibium (triton). d epigastrula of an amniote (diagram). a ventral, b dorsal lip of the primitive mouth.) at an early stage an opaque spot is seen in the middle of the clear germinative area, and this also passes from a circular to an oval shape. at first this shield-shaped marking is very delicate and barely perceptible; but it soon becomes clearer, and now stands out as an oval shield, surrounded by two rings or areas (figure . ). the inner and brighter ring is the remainder of the pellucid area, and the dark outer ring the remainder of the opaque area; the opaque shield-like spot itself is the first rudiment of the dorsal part of the embryo. we give it briefly the name of embryonic shield or dorsal shield. in most works this embryonic shield is described as "the first rudiment or trace of the embryo," or "primitive embryo." but this is wrong, though it rests on the authority of baer and bischoff. as a matter of fact, we already have the embryo in the stem-cell, the gastrula, and all the subsequent stages. the embryonic shield is simply the first rudiment of the dorsal part, which is the earliest to develop. as the older names of "embryonic rudiment" and "germinative area" are used in many different senses--and this has led to a fatal confusion in embryonic literature--we must explain very clearly the real significance of these important embryonic parts of the amniote. it will be useful to do so in a series of formal principles:-- . the so-called "first trace of the embryo" in the amniotes, or the embryonic shield, in the centre of the pellucid area, consists merely of an early differentiation and formation of the middle dorsal parts. . hence the best name for it is "the dorsal shield," as i proposed long ago. . the germinative area, in which the first embryonic blood-vessels appear at an early stage, is not opposed as an external area to the "embryo proper," but is a part of it. . in the same way, the yelk-sac or the umbilical vesicle is not a foreign external appendage of the embryo, but an outlying part of its primitive gut. . the dorsal shield gradually separates from the germinative area and the yelk-sac, its edges growing downwards and folding together to form ventral plates. . the yelk-sac and vessels of the germinative area, which soon spread over its whole surface, are, therefore, real embryonic organs, or temporary parts of the embryo, and have a transitory importance in connection with the nutrition of the growing later body; the latter may be called the "permanent body" in contrast to them. the relation of these cenogenetic features of the amniotes to the palingenetic structures of the older non-amniotic vertebrates may be expressed in the following theses: the original gastrula, which completely passes into the embryonic body in the acrania, cyclostoma, and amphibia, is early divided into two parts in the amniotes--the embryonic shield, which represents the dorsal outline of the permanent body; and the temporary embryonic organs of the germinative area and its blood-vessels, which soon grow over the whole of the yelk-sac. the differences which we find in the various classes of the vertebrate stem in these important particulars can only be fully understood when we bear in mind their phylogenetic relations on the one hand, and, on the other, the cenogenetic modifications of structure that have been brought about by changes in the rearing of the young and the variation in the mass of the food-yelk. we have already described in chapter . the changes which this increase and decrease of the nutritive yelk causes in the form of the gastrula, and especially in the situation and shape of the primitive mouth. the primitive mouth or prostoma is originally a simple round aperture at the lower pole of the long axis; its dorsal lip is above and ventral lip below. in the amphioxus this primitive mouth is a little eccentric, or shifted to the dorsal side (figure . ). the aperture increases with the growth of the food-yelk in the cyclostoma and ganoids; in the sturgeon it lies almost on the equator of the round ovum, the ventral lip (a) in front and the dorsal lip (b) behind (figure . b). in the wide-mouthed, circular discoid gastrula of the selachii or primitive fishes, which spreads quite flat on the large food-yelk, the anterior semi-circle of the border of the disk is the ventral, and the posterior semicircle the dorsal lip (figure . a). the amphiblastic amphibia are directly connected with their earlier fish-ancestors, the dipneusts and ganoids, and further the oldest selachii (cestracion); they have retained their total unequal segmentation, and their small primitive mouth (figure . c, ab), blocked up by the yelk-stopper, lies at the limit of the dorsal and ventral surface of the embryo (at the lower pole of its equatorial axis), and there again has an upper dorsal and a lower ventral lip (a, b). the formation of a large food-yelk followed again in the stem-forms of the amniotes, the protamniotes or proreptilia, descended from the amphibia (figure . d). but here the accumulation of the food-yelk took place only in the ventral wall of the primitive-gut, so that the narrow primitive mouth lying behind was forced upwards, and came to lie on the back of the discoid "epigastrula" in the shape of the "primitive groove"; thus (in contrast to the case of the selachii, figure . a) the dorsal lip (b) had to be in front, and the ventral lip (a) behind (figure . d). this feature was transmitted to all the amniotes, whether they retained the large food-yelk (reptiles, birds, and monotremes), or lost it by atrophy (the viviparous mammals). this phylogenetic explanation of gastrulation and coelomation, and the comparative study of them in the various vertebrates, throw a clear and full light on many ontogenetic phenomena, as to which the most obscure and confused opinions were prevalent thirty years ago. in this we see especially the high scientific value of the biogenetic law and the careful separation of palingenetic from cenogenetic processes. to the opponents of this law the real explanation of these remarkable phenomena is impossible. here, and in every other part of embryology, the true key to the solution lies in phylogeny. chapter . . dorsal body and ventral body. the earliest stages of the human embryo are, for the reasons already given, either quite unknown or only imperfectly known to us. but as the subsequent embryonic forms in man behave and develop just as they do in all the other mammals, there cannot be the slightest doubt that the preceding stages also are similar. we have been able to see in the coelomula of the human embryo (figure . ), by transverse sections through its primitive mouth, that its two coelom-pouches are developed in just the same way as in the rabbit (figure . ); moreover, the peculiar course of the gastrulation is just the same. (figure . . embryonic vesicle of a seven-days-old rabbit with oval embryonic shield (ag). a seen from above, b from the side. (from kolliker.) ag dorsal shield or embryonic spot. in b the upper half of the vesicle is made up of the two primary germinal layers, the lower (up to ge) only from the outer layer.) the germinative area forms in the human embryo in the same way as in the other mammals, and in the middle part of this we have the embryonic shield, the purport of which we considered in chapter . . the next changes in the embryonic disk, or the "embryonic spot," take place in corresponding fashion. these are the changes we are now going to consider more closely. the chief part of the oval embryonic shield is at first the narrow hinder end; it is in the middle line of this that the primitive streak appears (figure . ps). the narrow longitudinal groove in it--the so-called "primitive groove"--is, as we have seen, the primitive mouth of the gastrula. in the gastrula-embryos of the mammals, which are much modified cenogenetically, this cleft-shaped prostoma is lengthened so much that it soon traverses the whole of the hinder half of the dorsal shield; as we find in a rabbit embryo of six to eight days (figure . pr). the two swollen parallel borders that limit this median furrow are the side lips of the primitive mouth, right and left. in this way the bilateral-symmetrical type of the vertebrate becomes pronounced. the subsequent head of the amniote is developed from the broader and rounder fore-half of the dorsal shield. in this fore-half of the dorsal shield a median furrow quickly makes its appearance (figure . rf). this is the broader dorsal furrow or medullary groove, the first beginning of the central nervous system. the two parallel dorsal or medullary swellings that enclose it grow together over it afterwards, and form the medullary tube. as is seen in transverse sections, it is formed only of the outer germinal layer (figures . and . ). the lips of the primitive mouth, however, lie, as we know, at the important point where the outer layer bends over the inner, and from which the two coelom pouches grow between the primary germinal layers. (figure . . oval embryonic shield of the rabbit (a of six days eighteen hours, b of eight days). (from kolliker.) ps primitive streak, pr primitive groove, arg area germinalis, sw sickle-shaped germinal growth. figure . . dorsal shield (ag) and germinative area of a rabbit-embryo of eight days. (from kolliker.) pr primitive groove, rf dorsal furrow. figure . . embryonic shield of a rabbit of eight days. (from van beneden.) pr primitive groove, cn canalis neurentericus, nk nodus neurentericus (or "hensen's ganglion"), kf head-process (chorda). figure . . longitudinal section of the coelomula of amphioxus (from the left). i entoderm, d primitive gut, cn medullary duct, n nerve tube, m mesoderm, s first primitive segment, c coelom-pouches. (from hatschek.)) thus the median primitive furrow (pr) in the hind-half and the median medullary furrow (rf) in the fore-half of the oval shield are totally different structures, although the latter seems to a superficial observer to be merely the forward continuation of the former. hence they were formerly always confused. this error was the more pardonable as immediately afterwards the two grooves do actually pass into each other in a very remarkable way. the point of transition is the remarkable neurenteric canal (figure . cn). but the direct connection which is thus established does not last long; the two are soon definitely separated by a partition. the enigmatic neurenteric canal is a very old embryonic organ, and of great phylogenetic interest, because it arises in the same way in all the chordonia (both tunicates and vertebrates). in every case it touches or embraces like an arch the posterior end of the chorda, which has been developed here in front out of the middle line of the primitive gut (between the two coelom-folds of the sickle groove) ("head-process," figure . kf). these very ancient and strictly hereditary structures, which have no physiological significance to-day, deserve (as "rudimentary organs") our closest attention. the tenacity with which the useless neurenteric canal has been transmitted down to man through the whole series of vertebrates is of equal interest for the theory of descent in general, and the phylogeny of the chordonia in particular. the connection which the neurenteric canal (figure . cn) establishes between the dorsal nerve-tube (n) and the ventral gut-tube (d) is seen very plainly in the amphioxus in a longitudinal section of the coelomula, as soon as the primitive mouth is completely closed at its hinder end. the medullary tube has still at this stage an opening at the forward end, the neuroporus (figure . np). this opening also is afterwards closed. there are then two completely closed canals over each other--the medullary tube above and the gastric tube below, the two being separated by the chorda. the same features as in the acrania are exhibited by the related tunicates, the ascidiae. again, we find the neurenteric canal in just the same form and situation in the amphibia. a longitudinal section of a young tadpole (figure . ) shows how we may penetrate from the still open primitive mouth (x) either into the wide primitive gut-cavity (al) or the narrow overlying nerve-tube. a little later, when the primitive mouth is closed, the narrow neurenteric canal (figure . ne) represents the arched connection between the dorsal medullary canal (mc) and the ventral gastric canal. (figure . . longitudinal section of the chordula of a frog. (from balfour.) nc nerve-tube, x canalis neurentericus, al alimentary canal, yk yelk-cells, m mesoderm. figure . . longitudinal section of a frog-embryo. (from goette.) m mouth, l liver, an anus, ne canalis neurentericus, mc medullary-tube, pn pineal body (epiphysis), ch chorda. figures . and . . dorsal shield of the chick. (from balfour.) the medullary furrow (me), which is not yet visible in figure . , encloses with its hinder end the fore end of the primitive groove (pr) in figure . .) in the amniotes this original curved form of the neurenteric canal cannot be found at first, because here the primitive mouth travels completely over to the dorsal surface of the gastrula, and is converted into the longitudinal furrow we call the primitive groove. hence the primitive groove (figure . pr), examined from above, appears to be the straight continuation of the fore-lying and younger medullary furrow (me). the divergent hind legs of the latter embrace the anterior end of the former. afterwards we have the complete closing of the primitive mouth, the dorsal swellings joining to form the medullary tube and growing over it. the neurenteric canal then leads directly, in the shape of a narrow arch-shaped tube (figure . ne), from the medullary tube (sp) to the gastric tube (pag). directly in front of it is the latter end of the chorda (cli). while these important processes are taking place in the axial part of the dorsal shield, its external form also is changing. the oval form (figure . ) becomes like the sole of a shoe or sandal, lyre-shaped or finger-biscuit shaped (figure . ). the middle third does not grow in width as quickly as the posterior, and still less than the anterior third; thus the shape of the permanent body becomes somewhat narrow at the waist. at the same time, the oval form of the germinative area returns to a circular shape, and the inner pellucid area separates more clearly from the opaque outer area (figure . a). the completion of the circle in the area marks the limit of the formation of blood-vessels in the mesoderm. (figure . . longitudinal section of the hinder end of a chick. (from balfour.) sp medullary tube, connected with the terminal gut (pag) by the neurenteric canal (ne), ch chorda, pr neurenteric (or hensen's) ganglion, al allantois, ep ectoderm, hy entoderm, so parietal layer, sp visceral layer, an anus-pit, am amnion.) the characteristic sandal-shape of the dorsal shield, which is determined by the narrowness of the middle part, and which is compared to a violin, lyre, or shoe-sole, persists for a long time in all the amniotes. all mammals, birds, and reptiles have substantially the same construction at this stage, and even for a longer or shorter period after the division of the primitive segments into the coelom-folds has begun (figure . ). the human embryonic shield assumes the sandal-form in the second week of development; towards the end of the week our sole-shaped embryo has a length of about one-twelfth of an inch (figure . ). the complete bilateral symmetry of the vertebrate body is very early indicated in the oval form of the embryonic shield (figure . ) by the median primitive streak; in the sandal-form it is even more pronounced (figures . to . ). in the lateral parts of the embryonic shield a darker central and a lighter peripheral zone become more obvious; the former is called the stem-zone (figure . stz), and the latter the parietal zone (pz); from the first we get the dorsal and from the second the ventral half of the body-wall. the stem-zone of the amniote embryo would be called more appropriately the dorsal zone or dorsal shield; from it develops the whole of the dorsal half of the later body (or permanent body)--that is to say, the dorsal body (episoma). again, it would be better to call the "parietal zone" the ventral zone or ventral shield; from it develop the ventral "lateral plates," which afterwards separate from the embryonic vesicle and form the ventral body (hyposoma)--that is to say, the ventral half of the permanent body, together with the body-cavity and the gastric canal that it encloses. (figure . . germinal area or germinal disk of the rabbit, with sole-shaped embryonic shield, magnified about ten times. the clear circular field (d) is the opaque area. the pellucid area (c) is lyre-shaped, like the embryonic shield itself (b). in its axis is seen the dorsal furrow or medullary furrow (a). (from bischoff.)) the sole-shaped germinal shields of all the amniotes are still, at the stage of construction which figure . illustrates in the rabbit and figure . in the opossum, so like each other that we can either not distinguish them at all or only by means of quite subordinate peculiarities in the size of the various parts. moreover, the human sandal-shaped embryo cannot at this stage be distinguished from those of other mammals, and it particularly resembles that of the rabbit. on the other hand, the outer form of these flat sandal-shaped embryos is very different from the corresponding form of the lower animals, especially the acrania (amphioxus). nevertheless, the body is just the same in the essential features of its structure as that we find in the chordula of the latter (figures . to . ), and in the embryonic forms which immediately develop from it. the striking external difference is here again due to the fact that in the palingenetic embryos of the amphioxus (figures . and . ) and the amphibia (figures . and . ) the gut-wall and body-wall form closed tubes from the first, whereas in the cenogenetic embryos of the amniotes they are forced to expand leaf-wise on the surface owing to the great extension of the food-yelk. (figure . . embryo of the opossum, sixty hours old, one-sixth of an inch in diameter. (from selenka) b the globular embryonic vesicle, a the round germinative area, b limit of the ventral plates, r dorsal shield, v its fore part, u the first primitive segment, ch chorda, chr its fore-end, pr primitive groove (or mouth). figure . . sandal-shaped embryonic shield of a rabbit of eight days, with the fore part of the germinative area (ao opaque, ap pellucid area). (from kolliker.) rf dorsal furrow, in the middle of the medullary plate, h, pr primitive groove (mouth), stz dorsal (stem) zone, pz ventral (parietal) zone. in the narrow middle part the first three primitive segments may be seen.) it is all the more notable that the early separation of dorsal and ventral halves takes place in the same rigidly hereditary fashion in all the vertebrates. in both the acrania and the craniota the dorsal body is about this period separated from the ventral body. in the middle part of the body this division has already taken place by the construction of the chorda between the dorsal nerve-tube and the ventral canal. but in the outer or lateral part of the body it is only brought about by the division of the coelom-pouches into two sections--a dorsal episomite (dorsal segment or provertebra) and a ventral hyposomite (or ventral segment) by a frontal constriction. in the amphioxus each of the former makes a muscular pouch, and each of the latter a sex-pouch or gonad. these important processes of differentiation in the mesoderm, which we will consider more closely in the next chapter, proceed step by step with interesting changes in the ectoderm, while the entoderm changes little at first. we can study these processes best in transverse sections, made vertically to the surface through the sole-shaped embryonic shield. such a transverse section of a chick embryo, at the end of the first day of incubation, shows the gut-gland layer as a very simple epithelium, which is spread like a leaf over the outer surface of the food-yelk (figure . ). the chorda (ch) has separated from the dorsal middle line of the entoderm; to the right and left of it are the two halves of the mesoderm, or the two coelom-folds. a narrow cleft in the latter indicates the body-cavity (uwh); this separates the two plates of the coelom-pouches, the lower (visceral) and upper (parietal). the broad dorsal furrow (rf) formed by the medullary plate (m) is still wide open, but is divided from the lateral horn-plate (h) by the parallel medullary swellings, which eventually close. (figure . . human embryo at the sandal-stage, one-twelfth of an inch long, from the end of the second week, magnified twenty-five times. (from count spee.) figure . . sandal-shaped embryonic shield of a rabbit of nine days. (from kolliker.) (back view from above.) stz stem-zone or dorsal shield (with eight pairs of primitive segments), pz parietal or ventral zone, ap pellucid area, af amnion-fold, h heart, ph pericardial cavity, vo omphalo-mesenteric vein, ab eye-vesicles, vh fore brain, mh middle brain, hh hind brain, uw primitive segments (or vertebrae).) during these processes important changes are taking place in the outer germinal layer (the "skin-sense layer"). the continued rise and growth of the dorsal swellings causes their higher parts to bend together at their free borders, approach nearer and nearer (figure . w), and finally unite. thus in the end we get from the open dorsal furrow, the upper cleft of which becomes narrower and narrower, a closed cylindrical tube (figure . mr). this tube is of the utmost importance; it is the beginning of the central nervous system, the brain and spinal marrow, the medullary tube. this embryonic fact was formerly looked upon as very mysterious. we shall see presently that in the light of the theory of descent it is a thoroughly natural process. the phylogenetic explanation of it is that the central nervous system is the organ by means of which all intercourse with the outer world, all psychic action and sense-perception, are accomplished; hence it was bound to develop originally from the outer and upper surface of the body, or from the outer skin. the medullary tube afterwards separates completely from the outer germinal layer, and is surrounded by the middle parts of the provertebrae and forced inwards (figure . ). the remaining portion of the skin-sense layer (figure . h) is now called the horn-plate or horn-layer, because from it is developed the whole of the outer skin or epidermis, with all its horny appendages (nails, hair, etc.). (figure . . sandal-shaped embryonic shield of an opossum (didelphys), three days old. (from selenka.) (back view from above.) stz stem-zone or dorsal shield (with eight pairs of primitive segments), pz parietal or ventral zone, ap pellucid area, ao opaque area, hh halves of the heart, v fore-end, h hind-end. in the median line we see the chorda (ch) through the transparent medullary tube (m). u primitive segment, pr primitive streak (or primitive mouth).) a totally different organ, the prorenal (primitive kidney) duct (ung), is found to be developed at an early stage from the ectoderm. this is originally a quite simple, tube-shaped, lengthy duct, or straight canal, which runs from front to rear at each side of the provertebrae (on the outer side, figure . ung). it originates, it seems, out of the horn-plate at the side of the medullary tube, in the gap that we find between the provertebral and the lateral plates. the prorenal duct is visible in this gap even at the time of the severance of the medullary tube from the horn-plate. other observers think that the first trace of it does not come from the skin-sense layer, but the skin-fibre layer. the inner germinal layer, or the gut-fibre layer (figure . dd), remains unchanged during these processes. a little later, however, it shows a quite flat, groove-like depression in the middle line of the embryonic shield, directly under the chorda. this depression is called the gastric groove or furrow. this at once indicates the future lot of this germinal layer. as this ventral groove gradually deepens, and its lower edges bend towards each other, it is formed into a closed tube, the alimentary canal, in the same way as the medullary groove grows into the medullary tube. the gut-fibre layer (figure . f), which lies on the gut-gland layer (d), naturally follows it in its folding. moreover, the incipient gut-wall consists from the first of two layers, internally the gut-gland layer and externally the gut-fibre layer. the formation of the alimentary canal resembles that of the medullary tube to this extent--in both cases a straight groove or furrow arises first of all in the middle line of a flat layer. the edges of this furrow then bend towards each other, and join to form a tube (figure . ). but the two processes are really very different. the medullary tube closes in its whole length, and forms a cylindrical tube, whereas the alimentary canal remains open in the middle, and its cavity continues for a long time in connection with the cavity of the embryonic vesicle. the open connection between the two cavities is only closed at a very late stage, by the construction of the navel. the closing of the medullary tube is effected from both sides, the edges of the groove joining together from right and left. but the closing of the alimentary canal is not only effected from right and left, but also from front and rear, the edges of the ventral groove growing together from every side towards the navel. throughout the three higher classes of vertebrates the whole of this process of the construction of the gut is closely connected with the formation of the navel, or with the separation of the embryo from the yelk-sac or umbilical vesicle. in order to get a clear idea of this, we must understand carefully the relation of the embryonic shield to the germinative area and the embryonic vesicle. this is done best by a comparison of the five stages which are shown in longitudinal section in figures . to . . the embryonic shield (c), which at first projects very slightly over the surface of the germinative area, soon begins to rise higher above it, and to separate from the embryonic vesicle. at this point the embryonic shield, looked at from the dorsal surface, shows still the original simple sandal-shape (figures . to . ). we do not yet see any trace of articulation into head, neck, trunk, etc., or limbs. but the embryonic shield has increased greatly in thickness, especially in the anterior part. it now has the appearance of a thick, oval swelling, strongly curved over the surface of the germinative area. it begins to sever completely from the embryonic vesicle, with which it is connected at the ventral surface. as this severance proceeds, the back bends more and more; in proportion as the embryo grows the embryonic vesicle decreases, and at last it merely hangs as a small vesicle from the belly of the embryo (figure . ds). in consequence of the growth-movements which cause this severance, a groove-shaped depression is formed at the surface of the vesicle, the limiting furrow, which surrounds the vesicle in the shape of a pit, and a circular mound or dam (figure . ks) is formed at the outside of this pit by the elevation of the contiguous parts of the germinal vesicle. (figure . . transverse section of the embryonic disk of a chick at the end of the first day of incubation, magnified about twenty times. the edges of the medullary plate (m), the medullary swellings (w), which separate the medullary from the horn-plate (h), are bending towards each other. at each side of the chorda (ch) the primitive segment plates (u) have separated from the lateral plates (sp). a gut-gland layer. (from remak.)) in order to understand clearly this important process, we may compare the embryo to a fortress with its surrounding rampart and trench. the ditch consists of the outer part of the germinative area, and comes to an end at the point where the area passes into the vesicle. the important fold of the middle germinal layer that brings about the formation of the body-cavity spreads beyond the borders of the embryo over the whole germinative area. at first this middle layer reaches as far as the germinative area; the whole of the rest of the embryonic vesicle consists in the beginning only of the two original limiting layers, the outer and inner germinal layers. hence, as far as the germinative area extends the germinal layer splits into the two plates we have already recognised in it, the outer skin-fibre layer and the inner gut-fibre layer. these two plates diverge considerably, a clear fluid gathering between them (figure . am). the inner plate, the gut-fibre layer, remains on the inner layer of the embryonic vesicle (on the gut-gland layer). the outer plate, the skin-fibre layer, lies close on the outer layer of the germinative area, or the skin-sense layer, and separates together with this from the embryonic vesicle. from these two united outer plates is formed a continuous membrane. this is the circular mound that rises higher and higher round the whole embryo, and at last joins above it (figures . to . am). to return to our illustration of the fortress, we must imagine the circular rampart to be extraordinarily high and towering far above the fortress. its edges bend over like the combs of an overhanging wall of rock that would enclose the fortress; they form a deep hollow, and at last join together above. in the end the fortress lies entirely within the hollow that has been formed by the growth of the edges of this large rampart. (figure . . three diagrammatic transverse sections of the embryonic disk of the higher vertebrate, to show the origin of the tubular organs from the bending germinal layers. in figure a the medullary tube (n) and the alimentary canal (a) are still open grooves. in figure b the medullary tube (n) and the dorsal wall are closed, but the alimentary canal (a) and the ventral wall are open; the prorenal ducts (u) are cut off from the horn-plate (h) and internally connected with segmental prorenal canals. in figure c both the medullary tube and the dorsal wall above and the alimentary canal and ventral wall below are closed. all the open grooves have become closed tubes; the primitive kidneys are directed inwards. the letters have the same meaning in all three figures: h skin-sense layer, n medullary tube, u prorenal ducts, x axial rod, s primitive-vertebra, r dorsal wall, b ventral wall, c body-cavity or coeloma, f gut-fibre layer, t primitive artery (aorta), v primitive vein (subintestinal vein), d gut-fibre layer, a alimentary canal.) as the two outer layers of the germinative area thus rise in a fold about the embryo, and join above it, they come at last to form a spacious sac-like membrane about it. this envelope takes the name of the germinative membrane, or water-membrane, or amnion (figure . am). the embryo floats in a watery fluid, which fills the space between the embryo and the amnion, and is called the amniotic fluid (figures . and . ah). we will deal with this remarkable formation and with the allantois later on (chapter . ). in front of the allantois the yelk-sac or umbilical vesicle (ds), the remainder of the original embryonic vesicle, starts from the open belly of the embryo (figure . kh). in more advanced embryos, in which the gastric wall and the ventral wall are nearly closed, it hangs out of the navel-opening in the shape of a small vesicle with a stalk (figures . and . ds). the more the embryo grows, the smaller becomes the vitelline (yelk) sac. at first the embryo looks like a small appendage of the large embryonic vesicle. afterwards it is the yelk-sac, or the remainder of the embryonic vesicle, that seems a small pouch-like appendage of the embryo (figure . ds). it ceases to have any significance in the end. the very wide opening, through which the gastric cavity at first communicates with the umbilical vesicle, becomes narrower and narrower, and at last disappears altogether. the navel, the small pit-like depression that we find in the developed man in the middle of the abdominal wall, is the spot at which the remainder of the embryonic vesicle (the umbilical vesicle) originally entered into the ventral cavity, and joined on to the growing gut. (figures . to . . five diagrammatic longitudinal sections of the maturing mammal embryo and its envelopes. in figures . to . the longitudinal section passes through the sagittal or middle plane of the body, dividing the right and left halves; in figure . the embryo is seen from the left side. in figure . the tufted it prochorion (dd apostrophe) encloses the germinal vesicle, the wall of which consists of the two primary layers. between the outer (a) and inner (i) layer the middle layer (m) has been developed in the region of the germinative area. in figure . the embryo (e) begins to separate from the embryonic vesicle (ds), while the wall of the amnion-fold rises about it (in front as head-sheath, ks, behind as tail-sheath, ss). in figure . the edges of the amniotic fold (am) rise together over the back of the embryo, and form the amniotic cavity (ah); as the embryo separates more completely from the embryonic vesicle (ds) the alimentary canal (dd) is formed, from the hinder end of which the allantois grows (al). in figure . the allantois is larger; the yelk-sac (ds) smaller. in figure . the embryo shows the gill-clefts and the outline of the two legs; the chorion has formed branching villi (tufts.) in all four figures e = embryo, a outer germinal layer, m middle germinal layer, i inner germinal layer, am amnion (ks head-sheath, ss tail-sheath), ah amniotic cavity, as amniotic sheath of the umbilical cord, kh embryonic vesicle, ds yelk-sac (umbilical vesicle), dg vitelline duct, df gut-fibre layer, dd gut-gland layer, al allantois, vl = hh place of heart, d vitelline membrane (ovolemma or prochorion), d apostrophe tufts or villi of same, sh serous membrane (serolemma), sz tufts of same, ch chorion, chz tufts or villi, st terminal vein, r pericoelom or serocoelom (the space, filled with fluid, between the amnion and chorion). (from kolliker.)) the origin of the navel coincides with the complete closing of the external ventral wall. in the amniotes the ventral wall originates in the same way as the dorsal wall. both are formed substantially from the skin-fibre layer, and externally covered with the horn-plate, the border section of the skin-sense layer. both come into existence by the conversion of the four flat germinal layers of the embryonic shield into a double tube by folding from opposite directions; above, at the back, we have the vertebral canal which encloses the medullary tube, and below, at the belly, the wall of the body-cavity which contains the alimentary canal (figure . ). we will consider the formation of the dorsal wall first, and that of the ventral wall afterwards (figures . to . ). in the middle of the dorsal surface of the embryo there is originally, as we already know, the medullary (mr) tube directly underneath the horn-plate (h), from the middle part of which it has been developed. later, however, the provertebral plates (uw) grow over from the right and left between these originally connected parts (figures . and . ). the upper and inner edges of the two provertebral plates push between the horn-plate and medullary tube, force them away from each other, and finally join between them in a seam that corresponds to the middle line of the back. the coalescence of these two dorsal plates and the closing in the middle of the dorsal wall take place in the same way as the medullary tube, which is henceforth enclosed by the vertebral tube. thus is formed the dorsal wall, and the medullary tube takes up a position inside the body. in the same way the provertebral mass grows afterwards round the chorda, and forms the vertebral column. below this the inner and outer edge of the provertebral plate splits on each side into two horizontal plates, of which the upper pushes between the chorda and medullary tube, and the lower between the chorda and gastric tube. as the plates meet from both sides above and below the chorda, they completely enclose it, and so form the tubular, outer chord-sheath, the sheath from which the vertebral column is formed (perichorda, figure . c, s; figures . uwh, . ). (figures . to . . transverse sections of embryos (of chicks). figure . of the second, figure . of the third, figure . of the fourth, and figure . of the fifth day of incubation. figures . to . from kolliker, magnified about times; figure . from remak, magnified about twenty times. h horn-plate, mr medullary tube, ung prorenal duct, un prorenal vesicles, hp skin-fibre layer, m = mu = mp muscle-plate, uw provertebral plate (wh cutaneous rudiment of the body of the vertebra, wb of the arch of the vertebra, wq the rib or transverse continuation), uwh provertebral cavity, ch axial rod or chorda, sh chorda-sheath, bh ventral wall, g hind and v fore root of the spinal nerves, a = af = am amniotic fold, p body-cavity or coeloma, df gut-fibre layer, ao primitive aortas, sa secondary aorta, vc cardinal veins, d = dd gut-gland layer, dr gastric groove. in figure . the larger part of the right half, in figure . the larger part of the left half, of the section is omitted. of the yelk-sac or remainder of the embryonic vesicle only a small piece of the wall is indicated below.) we find in the construction of the ventral wall precisely the same processes as in the formation of the dorsal wall (figure . b, figure . hp, figure . bh). it is formed on the flat embryonic shield of the amniotes from the upper plates of the parietal zone. the right and left parietal plates bend downwards towards each other, and grow round the gut in the same way as the gut itself closes. the outer part of the lateral plates forms the ventral wall or the lower wall of the body, the two lateral plates bending considerably on the inner side of the amniotic fold, and growing towards each other from right and left. while the alimentary canal is closing, the body-wall also closes on all sides. hence the ventral wall, which encloses the whole ventral cavity below, consists of two parts, two lateral plates that bend towards each other. these approach each other all along, and at last meet at the navel. we ought, therefore, really to distinguish two navels, an inner and an outer one. the internal or intestinal navel is the definitive point of the closing of the gut wall, which puts an end to the open communication between the ventral cavity and the cavity of the yelk-sac (figure . ). the external navel in the skin is the definitive point of the closing of the ventral wall; this is visible in the developed body as a small depression. (figure . . median longitudinal section of the embryo of a chick (fifth day of incubation), seen from the right side (head to the right, tail to the left). dorsal body dark, with convex outline. d gut, o mouth, a anus, l lungs, h liver, g mesentery, v auricle of the heart, k ventricle of the heart, b arch of the arteries, t aorta, c yelk-sac, m vitelline (yelk) duct, u allantois, r pedicle (stalk) of the allantois, n amnion, w amniotic cavity, s serous membrane. (from baer.)) with the formation of the internal navel and the closing of the alimentary canal is connected the formation of two cavities, which we call the capital and the pelvic sections of the visceral cavity. as the embryonic shield lies flat on the wall of the embryonic vesicle at first, and only gradually separates from it, its fore and hind ends are independent in the beginning; on the other hand, the middle part of the ventral surface is connected with the yelk-sac by means of the vitelline or umbilical duct (figure . m). this leads to a notable curving of the dorsal surface; the head-end bends downwards towards the breast and the tail-end towards the belly. we see this very clearly in the excellent old diagrammatic illustration given by baer (figure . ), a median longitudinal section of the embryo of the chick, in which the dorsal body or episoma is deeply shaded. the embryo seems to be trying to roll up, like a hedgehog protecting itself from its pursuers. this pronounced curve of the back is due to the more rapid growth of the convex dorsal surface, and is directly connected with the severance of the embryo from the yelk-sac. the further bending of the embryo leads to the formation of the "head-cavity" of the gut (figure . above d) and a similar one at the tail, known as its "pelvic cavity." as a result of these processes the embryo attains a shape that may be compared to a wooden shoe, or, better still, to an overturned canoe. imagine a canoe or boat with both ends rounded and a small covering before and behind; if this canoe is turned upside down, so that the curved keel is uppermost, we have a fair picture of the canoe-shaped embryo (figure . ). the upturned convex keel corresponds to the middle line of the back; the small chamber underneath the fore-deck represents the capital cavity, and the small chamber under the rear-deck the pelvic chamber of the gut (cf. figure . ). the embryo now, as it were, presses into the outer surface of the embryonic vesicle with its free ends, while it moves away from it with its middle part. as a result of this change the yelk-sac becomes henceforth only a pouch-like outer appendage at the middle of the ventral wall. the ventral appendage, growing smaller and smaller, is afterwards called the umbilical (navel) vesicle. the cavity of the yelk-sac or umbilical vesicle communicates with the corresponding visceral cavity by a wide opening, which gradually contracts into a narrow and long canal, the vitelline (yelk) duct (ductus vitellinus, figure . m). hence, if we were to imagine ourselves in the cavity of the yelk-sac, we could get from it through the yelk-duct into the middle and still wide open part of the alimentary canal. if we were to go forward from there into the head-part of the embryo, we should reach the capital cavity of the gut, the fore-end of which is closed up. the reader will ask: "where are the mouth and the anus?" these are not at first present in the embryo. the whole of the primitive gut-cavity is completely closed, and is merely connected in the middle by the vitelline duct with the equally closed cavity of the embryonic vesicle (figure . ). the two later apertures of the alimentary canal--the anus and the mouth--are secondary constructions, formed from the outer skin. in the horn-plate, at the spot where the mouth is found subsequently, a pit-like depression is formed, and this grows deeper and deeper, pushing towards the blind fore-end of the capital cavity; this is the mouth-pit. in the same way, at the spot in the outer skin where the anus is afterwards situated a pit-shaped depression appears, grows deeper and deeper, and approaches the blind hind-end of the pelvic cavity; this is the anus-pit. in the end these pits touch with their deepest and innermost points the two blind ends of the primitive alimentary canal, so that they are now only separated from them by thin membranous partitions. this membrane finally disappears, and henceforth the alimentary canal opens in front at the mouth and in the rear by the anus (figures . and . ). hence at first, if we penetrate into these pits from without, we find a partition cutting them off from the cavity of the alimentary canal, which gradually disappears. the formation of mouth and anus is secondary in all the vertebrates. (figure . . longitudinal section of the fore half of a chick-embryo at the end of the first day of incubation (seen from the left side). k head-plates, ch chorda. above it is the blind fore-end of the ventral tube (m); below it the capital cavity of the gut. d gut-gland layer, df gut-fibre layer, h horn plate, hh cavity of the heart, hk heart-capsule, ks head-sheath, kk head-capsule. (from remak.)) during the important processes which lead to the formation of the navel, and of the intestinal wall and ventral wall, we find a number of other interesting changes taking place in the embryonic shield of the amniotes. these relate chiefly to the prorenal ducts and the first blood-vessels. the prorenal (primitive kidney) ducts, which at first lie quite flat under the horn-plate or epiderm (figure . ung), soon back towards each other in consequence of special growth movements (figures . to . ung). they depart more and more from their point of origin, and approach the gut-gland layer. in the end they lie deep in the interior, on either side of the mesentery, underneath the chorda, (figure . ung). at the same time, the two primitive aortas change their position (cf. figures . to . ao); they travel inwards underneath the chorda, and there coalesce at last to form a single secondary aorta, which is found under the rudimentary vertebral column (figure . ao). the cardinal veins, the first venous blood-vessels, also back towards each other, and eventually unite immediately above the rudimentary kidneys (figures . vc, cav). in the same spot, at the inner side of the fore-kidneys, we soon see the first trace of the sexual organs. the most important part of this apparatus (apart from all its appendages) is the ovary in the female and the testicle in the male. both develop from a small part of the cell-lining of the body-cavity, at the spot where the skin-fibre layer and gut-fibre layer touch. the connection of this embryonic gland with the prorenal ducts, which lie close to it and assume most important relations to it, is only secondary. (figure . . longitudinal section of a human embryo of the fourth week, one-fifth of an inch long, magnified fifteen times. showing: bend of skull, yelk-sac, umbilical cord, terminal gut, rudimentary kidneys, mesoderm, head-gut (with gill-clefts), primitive lungs, liver, stomach, pancreas, mesentery, primitive kidneys, allantoic duct, rectum. (from kollmann.) figure . . transverse section of a human embryo of fourteen days. mr medullary tube, ch chorda. vu umbilical vein, mt myotome, mp middle plate, ug prorenal duct, lh body-cavity, e ectoderm, bh ventral skin, hf skin-fibre layer, df gut-fibre layer. (from kollmann.) figure . . transverse section of a shark-embryo (or young selachius). mr medullary tube, ch chorda, a aorta, d gut, vp principal (or subintestinal) vein, mt myotome, mm muscular mass of the provertebra, mp middle plate, ug prorenal duct, lh body-cavity, e ectoderm of the rudimentary extremities, mz mesenchymic cells, z point where the myotome and nephrotome separate. (from h.e. ziegler.) figure . . transverse section of a duck-embryo with twenty-four primitive segments. (from balfour.) from a dorsal lateral joint of the medullary tube (spc) the spinal ganglia (spg) grow out between it and the horn-plate. ch chorda, ao double aorta, hy gut-gland layer, sp gut-fibre layer, with blood-vessels in section, ms muscle plate, in the dorsal wall of the myocoel (episomite). below the cardinal vein (cav) is the prorenal duct (wd) and a segmental prorenal canal (st). the skin-fibre layer of the body-wall (so) is continued in the amniotic fold (am). between the four secondary germinal layers and the structures formed from them there is formed embryonic connective matter with stellate cells and vascular structures (hertwig's "mesenchym").) chapter . . the articulation of the body.* (* the term articulation is used in this chapter to denote both "segmentation" and "articulation" in the ordinary sense.--translator.) the vertebrate stem, to which our race belongs as one of the latest and most advanced outcomes of the natural development of life, is rightly placed at the head of the animal kingdom. this privilege must be accorded to it, not only because man does in point of fact soar far above all other animals, and has been lifted to the position of "lord of creation"; but also because the vertebrate organism far surpasses all the other animal-stems in size, in complexity of structure, and in the advanced character of its functions. from the point of view of both anatomy and physiology, the vertebrate stem outstrips all the other, or invertebrate, animals. there is only one among the twelve stems of the animal kingdom that can in many respects be compared with the vertebrates, and reaches an equal, if not a greater, importance in many points. this is the stem of the articulates, composed of three classes: , the annelids (earth-worms, leeches, and cognate forms); , the crustacea (crabs, etc.); , the tracheata (spiders, insects, etc.). the stem of the articulates is superior not only to the vertebrates, but to all other animal-stems, in variety of forms, number of species, elaborateness of individuals, and general importance in the economy of nature. when we have thus declared the vertebrates and the articulates to be the most important and most advanced of the twelve stems of the animal kingdom, the question arises whether this special position is accorded to them on the ground of a peculiarity of organisation that is common to the two. the answer is that this is really the case; it is their segmental or transverse articulation, which we may briefly call metamerism. in all the vertebrates and articulates the developed individual consists of a series of successive members (segments or metamera = "parts"); in the embryo these are called primitive segments or somites. in each of these segments we have a certain group of organs reproduced in the same arrangement, so that we may regard each segment as an individual unity, or a special "individual" subordinated to the entire personality. the similarity of their segmentation, and the consequent physiological advance in the two stems of the vertebrates and articulates, has led to the assumption of a direct affinity between them, and an attempt to derive the former directly from the latter. the annelids were supposed to be the direct ancestors, not only of the crustacea and tracheata, but also of the vertebrates. we shall see later (chapter . ) that this annelid theory of the vertebrates is entirely wrong, and ignores the most important differences in the organisation of the two stems. the internal articulation of the vertebrates is just as profoundly different from the external metamerism of the articulates as are their skeletal structure, nervous system, vascular system, and so on. the articulation has been developed in a totally different way in the two stems. the unarticulated chordula (figures . to . ), which we have recognised as one of the chief palingenetic embryonic forms of the vertebrate group, and from which we have inferred the existence of a corresponding ancestral form for all the vertebrates and tunicates, is quite unthinkable as the stem-form of the articulates. all articulated animals came originally from unarticulated ones. this phylogenetic principle is as firmly established as the ontogenetic fact that every articulated animal-form develops from an unarticulated embryo. but the organisation of the embryo is totally different in the two stems. the chordula-embryo of all the vertebrates is characterised by the dorsal medullary tube, the neurenteric canal, which passes at the primitive mouth into the alimentary canal, and the axial chorda between the two. none of the articulates, either annelids or arthropods (crustacea and tracheata), show any trace of this type of organisation. moreover, the development of the chief systems of organs proceeds in the opposite way in the two stems. hence the segmentation must have arisen independently in each. this is not at all surprising; we find analogous cases in the stalk-articulation of the higher plants and in several groups of other animal stems. the characteristic internal articulation of the vertebrates and its importance in the organisation of the stem are best seen in the study of the skeleton. its chief and central part, the cartilaginous or bony vertebral column, affords an obvious instance of vertebrate metamerism; it consists of a series of cartilaginous or bony pieces, which have long been known as vertebrae (or spondyli). each vertebra is directly connected with a special section of the muscular system, the nervous system, the vascular system, etc. thus most of the "animal organs" take part in this vertebration. but we saw, when we were considering our own vertebrate character (in chapter . ), that the same internal articulation is also found in the lowest primitive vertebrates, the acrania, although here the whole skeleton consists merely of the simple chorda, and is not at all articulated. hence the articulation does not proceed primarily from the skeleton, but from the muscular system, and is clearly determined by the more advanced swimming-movements of the primitive chordonia-ancestors. (figures . to . . sole-shaped embryonic disk of the chick, in three successive stages of development, looked at from the dorsal surface, magnified about twenty times, somewhat diagrammatic. figure . with six pairs of somites. brain a simple vesicle (hb). medullary furrow still wide open from x; greatly widened at z. mp medullary plates, sp lateral plates, y limit of gullet-cavity (sh) and fore-gut (vd). figure . with ten pairs of somites. brain divided into three vesicles: v fore-brain, m middle-brain, h hind-brain, c heart, dv vitelline-veins. medullary furrow still wide open behind (z). mp medullary plates. figure . with sixteen pairs of somites. brain divided into five vesicles: v fore-brain, z intermediate-brain, m middle-brain, h hind-brain, n after-brain, a optic vesicles, g auditory vesicles, c heart, dv vitelline veins, mp medullary plate, uw primitive vertebra.) it is, therefore, wrong to describe the first rudimentary segments in the vertebrate embryo as primitive vertebrae or provertebrae; the fact that they have been so called for some time has led to much error and misunderstanding. hence we shall give the name of "somites" or primitive segments to these so-called "primitive vertebrae." if the latter name is retained at all, it should only be used of the sclerotom--i.e., the small part of the somites from which the later vertebra does actually develop. articulation begins in all vertebrates at a very early embryonic stage, and this indicates the considerable phylogenetic age of the process. when the chordula (figures . to . ) has completed its characteristic composition, often even a little earlier, we find in the amniotes, in the middle of the sole-shaped embryonic shield, several pairs of dark square spots, symmetrically distributed on both sides of the chorda (figures . to . ). transverse sections (figure . uw) show that they belong to the stem-zone (episoma) of the mesoderm, and are separated from the parietal zone (hyposoma) by the lateral folds; in section they are still quadrangular, almost square, so that they look something like dice. these pairs of "cubes" of the mesoderm are the first traces of the primitive segments or somites, the so-called "protovertebrae." (figures . to . uw). (figure . . embryo of the amphioxus, sixteen hours old, seen from the back. (from hatschek.) d primitive gut, u primitive mouth, p polar cells of the mesoderm, c coelom-pouches, m their first segment, n medullary tube, i entoderm, e ectoderm, s first segment-fold. figure . . embryo of the amphioxus, twenty hours old, with five somites. (right view; for left view see figure . .) (from hatschek.) v fore end, h hind end. ak, mk, ik outer, middle, and inner germinal layers; dh alimentary canal, n neural tube, cn canalis neurentericus, ush coelom-pouches (or primitive-segment cavities), us first (and foremost) primitive segment.) among the mammals the embryos of the marsupials have three pairs of somites (figure . ) after sixty hours, and eight pairs after seventy-two hours (figure . ). they develop more slowly in the embryo of the rabbit; this has three somites on the eighth day (figure . ), and eight somites a day later (figure . ). in the incubated hen's egg the first somites make their appearance thirty hours after incubation begins (figure . ). at the end of the second day the number has risen to sixteen or eighteen (figure . ). the articulation of the stem-zone, to which the somites owe their origin, thus proceeds briskly from front to rear, new transverse constrictions of the "protovertebral plates" forming continuously and successively. the first segment, which is almost half-way down in the embryonic shield of the amniote, is the foremost of all; from this first somite is formed the first cervical vertebra with its muscles and skeletal parts. it follows from this, firstly, that the multiplication of the primitive segments proceeds backwards from the front, with a constant lengthening of the hinder end of the body; and, secondly, that at the beginning of segmentation nearly the whole of the anterior half of the sole-shaped embryonic shield of the amniote belongs to the later head, while the whole of the rest of the body is formed from its hinder half. we are reminded that in the amphioxus (and in our hypothetic primitive vertebrate, figures . to . ) nearly the whole of the fore half corresponds to the head, and the hind half to the trunk. the number of the metamera, and of the embryonic somites or primitive segments from which they develop, varies considerably in the vertebrates, according as the hind part of the body is short or is lengthened by a tail. in the developed man the trunk (including the rudimentary tail) consists of thirty-three metamera, the solid centre of which is formed by that number of vertebrae in the vertebral column (seven cervical, twelve dorsal, five lumbar, five sacral, and four caudal). to these we must add at least nine head-vertebrae, which originally (in all the craniota) constitute the skull. thus the total number of the primitive segments of the human body is raised to at least forty-two; it would reach forty-five to forty-eight if (according to recent investigations) the number of the original segments of the skull is put at twelve to fifteen. in the tailless or anthropoid apes the number of metamera is much the same as in man, only differing by one or two; but it is much larger in the long-tailed apes and most of the other mammals. in long serpents and fishes it reaches several hundred (sometimes ). (figures . to . . embryo of the amphioxus, twenty four hours old, with eight somites. (from hatschek.) figures . and . lateral view (from left). figure . seen from back. in figure . only the outlines of the eight primitive segments are indicated, in figure . their cavities and muscular walls. v fore end, h hind end, d gut, du under and dd upper wall of the gut, ne canalis neurentericus, nv ventral, nd dorsal wall of the neural tube, np neuroporus, dv fore pouch of the gut, ch chorda, mf mesodermic fold, pm polar cells of the mesoderm (ms), e ectoderm.) in order to understand properly the real nature and origin of articulation in the human body and that of the higher vertebrates, it is necessary to compare it with that of the lower vertebrates, and bear in mind always the genetic connection of all the members of the stem. in this the simple development of the invaluable amphioxus once more furnishes the key to the complex and cenogenetically modified embryonic processes of the craniota. the articulation of the amphioxus begins at an early stage--earlier than in the craniotes. the two coelom-pouches have hardly grown out of the primitive gut (figure . c) when the blind fore part of it (farthest away from the primitive mouth, u) begins to separate by a transverse fold (s): this is the first primitive segment. immediately afterwards the hind part of the coelom-pouches begins to divide into a series of pieces by new transverse folds (figure . ). the foremost of these primitive segments (us ) is the first and oldest; in figures . and . there are already five formed. they separate so rapidly, one behind the other, that eight pairs are formed within twenty-four hours of the beginning of development, and seventeen pairs twenty-four hours later. the number increases as the embryo grows and extends backwards, and new cells are formed constantly (at the primitive mouth) from the two primitive mesodermic cells (figures . to . ). (figures . and . . transverse section of shark-embryos (through the region of the kidneys). (from wijhe and hertwig.) in figure . the dorsal segment-cavities (h) are already separated from the body-cavity (lh), but they are connected a little earlier (figure . ), nr neural tube, ch chorda, sch subchordal string, ao aorta, sk skeletal-plate, mp muscle-plate, cp cutis-plate, w connection of latter (growth-zone), vn primitive kidneys, ug prorenal duct, uk prorenal canals, us point where they are cut off, tr prorenal funnel, mk middle germ-layer (mk parietal, mk visceral), ik inner germ-layer (gut-gland layer).) this typical articulation of the two coelom-sacs begins very early in the lancelet, before they are yet severed from the primitive gut, so that at first each segment-cavity (us) still communicates by a narrow opening with the gut, like an intestinal gland. but this opening soon closes by complete severance, proceeding regularly backwards. the closed segments then extend more, so that their upper half grows upwards like a fold between the ectoderm (ak) and neural tube (n), and the lower half between the ectoderm and alimentary canal (ch; figure . d, left half of the figure). afterwards the two halves completely separate, a lateral longitudinal fold cutting between them (mk, right half of figure . ). the dorsal segments (sd) provide the muscles of the trunk the whole length of the body ( . ): this cavity afterwards disappears. on the other hand, the ventral parts give rise, from their uppermost section, to the pronephridia or primitive-kidney canals, and from the lower to the segmental rudiments of the sexual glands or gonads. the partitions of the muscular dorsal pieces (myotomes) remain, and determine the permanent articulation of the vertebrate organism. but the partitions of the large ventral pieces (gonotomes) become thinner, and afterwards disappear in part, so that their cavities run together to form the metacoel, or the simple permanent body-cavity. the articulation proceeds in substantially the same way in the other vertebrates, the craniota, starting from the coelom-pouches. but whereas in the former case there is first a transverse division of the coelom-sacs (by vertical folds) and then the dorso-ventral division, the procedure is reversed in the craniota; in their case each of the long coelom-pouches first divides into a dorsal (primitive segment plates) and a ventral (lateral plates) section by a lateral longitudinal fold. only the former are then broken up into primitive segments by the subsequent vertical folds; while the latter (segmented for a time in the amphioxus) remain undivided, and, by the divergence of their parietal and visceral plates, form a body-cavity that is unified from the first. in this case, again, it is clear that we must regard the features of the younger craniota as cenogenetically modified processes that can be traced palingenetically to the older acrania. we have an interesting intermediate stage between the acrania and the fishes in these and many other respects in the cyclostoma (the hag and the lamprey, cf. chapter . ). (figure . . frontal (or horizontal-longitudinal) section of a triton-embryo with three pairs of primitive segments. ch chorda, us primitive segments, ush their cavity, ak horn plate.) among the fishes the selachii, or primitive fishes, yield the most important information on these and many other phylogenetic questions (figures . and . ). the careful studies of ruckert, van wijhe, h.e. ziegler, and others, have given us most valuable results. the products of the middle germinal layer are partly clear in these cases at the period when the dorsal primitive segment cavities (or myocoels, h) are still connected with the ventral body-cavity (lh; figure . ). in figure . , a somewhat older embryo, these cavities are separated. the outer or lateral wall of the dorsal segment yields the cutis-plate (cp), the foundation of the connective corium. from its inner or median wall are developed the muscle-plate (mp, the rudiment of the trunk-muscles) and the skeletal plate, the formative matter of the vertebral column (sk). in the amphibia, also, especially the water-salamander (triton), we can observe very clearly the articulation of the coelom-pouches and the rise of the primitive segments from their dorsal half (cf. figure . , a, b, c). a horizontal longitudinal section of the salamander-embryo (figure . ) shows very clearly the series of pairs of these vesicular dorsal segments, which have been cut off on each side from the ventral side-plates, and lie to the right and left of the chorda. (figure . . the third cervical vertebra (human). figure . . the sixth dorsal vertebra (human). figure . . the second lumbar vertebra (human).) the metamerism of the amniotes agrees in all essential points with that of the three lower classes of vertebrates we have considered; but it varies considerably in detail, in consequence of cenogenetic disturbances that are due in the first place (like the degeneration of the coelom-pouches) to the large development of the food-yelk. as the pressure of this seems to force the two middle layers together from the start, and as the solid structure of the mesoderm apparently belies the original hollow character of the sacs, the two sections of the mesoderm, which are at that time divided by the lateral fold--the dorsal segment-plates and ventral side-plates--have the appearance at first of solid layers of cells (figures . to . ). and when the articulation of the somites begins in the sole-shaped embryonic shield, and a couple of protovertebrae are developed in succession, constantly increasing in number towards the rear, these cube-shaped somites (formerly called protovertebrae, or primitive vertebrae) have the appearance of solid dice, made up of mesodermic cells (figure . ). nevertheless, there is for a time a ventral cavity, or provertebral cavity, even in these solid "protovertebrae" (figure . uwh). this vesicular condition of the provertebra is of the greatest phylogenetic interest; we must, according to the coelom theory, regard it as an hereditary reproduction of the hollow dorsal somites of the amphioxus (figures . to . ) and the lower vertebrates (figures . to . ). this rudimentary "provertebral cavity" has no physiological significance whatever in the amniote-embryo; it soon disappears, being filled up with cells of the muscular plate. (figure . . head of a shark embryo (pristiurus), one-third of an inch long, magnified twenty times. (from parker.) seen from the ventral side.) the innermost median part of the primitive segment plates, which lies immediately on the chorda (figure . ch) and the medullary tube (m), forms the vertebral column in all the higher vertebrates (it is wanting in the lowest); hence it may be called the skeleton plate. in each of the provertebrae it is called the "sclerotome" (in opposition to the outlying muscular plate, the "myotome"). from the phylogenetic point of view the myotomes are much older than the sclerotomes. the lower or ventral part of each sclerotome (the inner and lower edge of the cube-shaped provertebra) divides into two plates, which grow round the chorda, and thus form the foundation of the body of the vertebra (wh). the upper plate presses between the chorda and the medullary tube, the lower between the chorda and the alimentary canal (figure . c). as the plates of two opposite provertebral pieces unite from the right and left, a circular sheath is formed round this part of the chorda. from this develops the body of a vertebra--that is to say, the massive lower or ventral half of the bony ring, which is called the "vertebra" proper and surrounds the medullary tube (figures . to . ). the upper or dorsal half of this bony ring, the vertebral arch (figure . wb), arises in just the same way from the upper part of the skeletal plate, and therefore from the inner and upper edge of the cube-shaped primitive vertebra. as the upper edges of two opposing somites grow together over the medullary tube from right and left, the vertebra-arch becomes closed. the whole of the secondary vertebra, which is thus formed from the union of the skeletal plates of two provertebral pieces and encloses a part of the chorda in its body, consists at first of a rather soft mass of cells; this afterwards passes into a firmer, cartilaginous stage, and finally into a third, permanent, bony stage. these three stages can generally be distinguished in the greater part of the skeleton of the higher vertebrates; at first most parts of the skeleton are soft, tender, and membranous; they then become cartilaginous in the course of their development, and finally bony. (figures . and . . head of a chick embryo, of the third day. figure . from the front, figure . from the right. n rudimentary nose (olfactory pit), l rudimentary eye (optic pit, lens-cavity), g rudimentary ear (auditory pit), v fore-brain, gl eye-cleft. of the three pairs of gill-arches the first has passed into a process of the upper jaw (o) and of the lower jaw (u). (from kolliker.)) at the head part of the embryo in the amniotes there is not generally a cleavage of the middle germinal layer into provertebral and lateral plates, but the dorsal and ventral somites are blended from the first, and form what are called the "head-plates" (figure . k). from these are formed the skull, the bony case of the brain, and the muscles and corium of the body. the skull develops in the same way as the membranous vertebral column. the right and left halves of the head curve over the cerebral vesicle, enclose the foremost part of the chorda below, and thus finally form a simple, soft, membranous capsule about the brain. this is afterwards converted into a cartilaginous primitive skull, such as we find permanently in many of the fishes. much later this cartilaginous skull becomes the permanent bony skull with its various parts. the bony skull in man and all the other amniotes is more highly differentiated and modified than that of the lower vertebrates, the amphibia and fishes. but as the one has arisen phylogenetically from the other, we must assume that in the former no less than the latter the skull was originally formed from the sclerotomes of a number of (at least nine) head-somites. while the articulation of the vertebrate body is always obvious in the episoma or dorsal body, and is clearly expressed in the segmentation of the muscular plates and vertebrae, it is more latent in the hyposoma or ventral body. nevertheless, the hyposomites of the vegetal half of the body are not less important than the episomites of the animal half. the segmentation in the ventral cavity affects the following principal systems of organs: , the gonads or sex-glands (gonotomes); , the nephridia or kidneys (nephrotomes); and , the head-gut with its gill-clefts (branchiotomes). (figure . . head of a dog embryo, seen from the front. a the two lateral halves of the foremost cerebral vesicle, b rudimentary eye, c middle cerebral vesicle, de first pair of gill-arches (e upper-jaw process, d lower-jaw process), f, f apostrophe, f double apostrophe, second, third, and fourth pairs of gill-arches, g h i k heart (g right, h left auricle; i left, k right ventricle), l origin of the aorta with three pairs of arches, which go to the gill-arches. (from bischoff.)) the metamerism of the hyposoma is less conspicuous because in all the craniotes the cavities of the ventral segments, in the walls of which the sexual products are developed, have long since coalesced, and formed a single large body-cavity, owing to the disappearance of the partition. this cenogenetic process is so old that the cavity seems to be unsegmented from the first in all the craniotes, and the rudiment of the gonads also is almost always unsegmented. it is the more interesting to learn that, according to the important discovery of ruckert, this sexual structure is at first segmental even in the actual selachii, and the several gonotomes only blend into a simple sexual gland on either side secondarily. (figure . . human embryo of the fourth week (twenty-six days old), one-fourth of an inch in length magnified twenty times, showing: point of development of the hind-leg, umbilical cord (underneath it the tail, bent upwards), trigeminal nerve v trigeminus, optic-muscle nerve iii oculo-motorius, rolling muscle nerve iv trochlearis, rudiment of ear (labyrinthic vesicles), pneumogastric nerve x vagus, terminal nerve xi accessorius, hypoglossal nerve xii hypoglossus, first spinal nerve, point of development of arm (or fore-leg), true spinal nerve. (from moll.) the rudiments of the cerebral nerves and the roots of the spinal nerves are especially marked. underneath the four gill-arches (left side) is the heart (with auricle, v and ventricle, k), under this again the liver (l).) amphioxus, the sole surviving representative of the acrania, once more yields us most interesting information; in this case the sexual glands remain segmented throughout life. the sexually mature lancelet has, on the right and left of the gut, a series of metamerous sacs, which are filled with ova in the female and sperm in the male. these segmental gonads are originally nothing else than the real gonotomes, separate body-cavities, formed from the hyposomites of the trunk. the gonads are the most important segmental organs of the hyposoma, in the sense that they are phylogenetically the oldest. we find sexual glands (as pouch-like appendages of the gastro-canal system) in most of the lower animals, even in the medusae, etc., which have no kidneys. the latter appear first (as a pair of excretory tubes) in the platodes (turbellaria), and have probably been inherited from these by the articulates (annelids) on the one hand and the unarticulated prochordonia on the other, and from these passed to the articulated vertebrates. the oldest form of the kidney system in this stem are the segmental pronephridia or prorenal canals, in the same arrangement as boveri found them in the amphioxus. they are small canals that lie in the frontal plane, on each side of the chorda, between the episoma and hyposoma (figure . n); their internal funnel-shaped opening leads into the various body-cavities, their outer opening is the lateral furrow of the epidermis. originally they must have had a double function, the carrying away of the urine from the episomites and the release of the sexual cells from the hyposomites. the recent investigations of ruckert and van wijhe on the mesodermic segments of the trunk and the excretory system of the selachii show that these "primitive fishes" are closely related to the amphioxus in this further respect. the transverse section of the shark-embryo in figure . shows this very clearly. in other higher vertebrates, also, the kidneys develop (though very differently formed later on) from similar structures, which have been secondarily derived from the segmental pronephridia of the acrania. the parts of the mesoderm at which the first traces of them are found are usually called the middle or mesenteric plates. as the first traces of the gonads make their appearance in the lining of these middle plates nearer inward (or the middle) from the inner funnels of the nephro-canals, it is better to count this part of the mesoderm with the hyposoma. the chief and oldest organ of the vertebrate hyposoma, the alimentary canal, is generally described as an unsegmented organ. but we could just as well say that it is the oldest of all the segmented organs of the vertebrate; the double row of the coelom-pouches grows out of the dorsal wall of the gut, on either side of the chorda. in the brief period during which these segmental coelom-pouches are still openly connected with the gut, they look just like a double chain of segmented visceral glands. but apart from this, we have originally in all vertebrates an important articulation of the fore-gut, that is wanting in the lower gut, the segmentation of the branchial (gill) gut. (figure . . transverse section of the shoulder and fore-limb (wing) of a chick-embryo of the fourth day, magnified about twenty times. beside the medullary tube we can see on each side three clear streaks in the dark dorsal wall, which advance into the rudimentary fore-limb or wing (e). the uppermost of them is the muscular plate; the middle is the hind and the lowest the fore root of a spinal nerve. under the chorda in the middle is the single aorta, at each side of it a cardinal vein, and below these the primitive kidneys. the gut is almost closed. the ventral wall advances into the amnion, which encloses the embryo. (from remak.) figure . . transverse section of the pelvic region and hind legs of a chick-embryo of the fourth day, magnified about forty times. h horn-plate, w medullary tube, n canal of the tube, u primitive kidneys, x chorda, e hind legs, b allantoic canal in the ventral wall, t aorta, v cardinal veins, a gut, d gut-gland layer, f gut-fibre layer, g embryonic epithelium, r dorsal muscles, c body-cavity or coeloma. (from waldeyer.)) the gill-clefts, which originally in the older acrania pierced the wall of the fore-gut, and the gill-arches that separated them, were presumably also segmental, and distributed among the various metamera of the chain, like the gonads in the after-gut and the nephridia. in the amphioxus, too, they are still segmentally formed. probably there was a division of labour of the hyposomites in the older (and long extinct) acrania, in such wise that those of the fore-gut took over the function of breathing and those of the after-gut that of reproduction. the former developed into gill-pouches, the latter into sex-pouches. there may have been primitive kidneys in both. though the gills have lost their function in the higher animals, certain parts of them have been generally maintained in the embryo by a tenacious heredity. at a very early stage we notice in the embryo of man and the other amniotes, at each side of the head, the remarkable and important structures which we call the gill-arches and gill-clefts (figures . to . f). they belong to the characteristic and inalienable organs of the amniote-embryo, and are found always in the same spot and with the same arrangement and structure. there are formed to the right and left in the lateral wall of the fore-gut cavity, in its foremost part, first a pair and then several pairs of sac-shaped inlets, that pierce the whole thickness of the lateral wall of the head. they are thus converted into clefts, through which one can penetrate freely from without into the gullet. the wall thickens between these branchial folds, and changes into an arch-like or sickle-shaped piece--the gill, or gullet-arch. in this the muscles and skeletal parts of the branchial gut separate; a blood-vessel arch rises afterwards on their inner side (figure . ka). the number of the branchial arches and the clefts that alternate with them is four or five on each side in the higher vertebrates (figure . d, f, f apostrophe, f double apostrophe). in some of the fishes (selachii) and in the cyclostoma we find six or seven of them permanently. these remarkable structures had originally the function of respiratory organs--gills. in the fishes the water that serves for breathing, and is taken in at the mouth, still always passes out by the branchial clefts at the sides of the gullet. in the higher vertebrates they afterwards disappear. the branchial arches are converted partly into the jaws, partly into the bones of the tongue and the ear. from the first gill-cleft is formed the tympanic cavity of the ear. there are few parts of the vertebrate organism that, like the outer covering or integument of the body, are not subject to metamerism. the outer skin (epidermis) is unsegmented from the first, and proceeds from the continuous horny plate. moreover, the underlying cutis is also not metamerous, although it develops from the segmental structure of the cutis-plates (figures . and . cp). the vertebrates are strikingly and profoundly different from the articulates in these respects also. further, most of the vertebrates still have a number of unarticulated organs, which have arisen locally, by adaptation of particular parts of the body to certain special functions. of this character are the sense-organs in the episoma, and the limbs, the heart, the spleen, and the large visceral glands--lungs, liver, pancreas, etc.--in the hyposoma. the heart is originally only a local spindle-shaped enlargement of the large ventral blood-vessel or principal vein, at the point where the subintestinal passes into the branchial artery, at the limit of the head and trunk (figures . and . ). the three higher sense-organs--nose, eye, and ear--were originally developed in the same form in all the craniotes, as three pairs of small depressions in the skin at the side of the head. the organ of smell, the nose, has the appearance of a pair of small pits above the mouth-aperture, in front of the head (figure . n). the organ of sight, the eye, is found at the side of the head, also in the shape of a depression (figures . l and . b), to which corresponds a large outgrowth of the foremost cerebral vesicle on each side. farther behind, at each side of the head, there is a third depression, the first trace of the organ of hearing (figure . g). as yet we can see nothing of the later elaborate structure of these organs, nor of the characteristic build of the face. (figure . . development of the lizard's legs (lacerta agilis), with special relation to their blood-vessels. , , , , , right fore-leg; , left fore-leg; , , , , , right hind-leg; , left hind-leg; srv lateral veins of the trunk, vu umbilical vein. (from f. hochstetter.)) when the human embryo has reached this stage of development, it can still scarcely be distinguished from that of any other higher vertebrate. all the chief parts of the body are now laid down: the head with the primitive skull, the rudiments of the three higher sense-organs and the five cerebral vesicles, and the gill-arches and clefts; the trunk with the spinal cord, the rudiment of the vertebral column, the chain of metamera, the heart and chief blood-vessels, and the kidneys. at this stage man is a higher vertebrate, but shows no essential morphological difference from the embryos of the mammals, the birds, the reptiles, etc. this is an ontogenetic fact of the utmost significance. from it we can gather the most important phylogenetic conclusions. there is still no trace of the limbs. although head and trunk are separated and all the principal internal organs are laid down, there is no indication whatever of the "extremities" at this stage; they are formed later on. here again we have a fact of the utmost interest. it proves that the older vertebrates had no feet, as we find to be the case in the lowest living vertebrates (amphioxus and the cyclostoma). the descendants of these ancient footless vertebrates only acquired extremities--two fore-legs and two hind-legs--at a much later stage of development. these were at first all alike, though they afterwards vary considerably in structure--becoming fins (of breast and belly) in the fishes, wings and legs in the birds, fore and hind legs in the creeping animals, arms and legs in the apes and man. all these parts develop from the same simple original structure, which forms secondarily from the trunk-wall (figures . and . ). they have always the appearance of two pairs of small buds, which represent at first simple roundish knobs or plates. gradually each of these plates becomes a large projection, in which we can distinguish a small inner part and a broader outer part. the latter is the rudiment of the foot or hand, the former that of the leg or arm. the similarity of the original rudiment of the limbs in different groups of vertebrates is very striking. (figure . . human embryo, five weeks old, half an inch long, seen from the right, magnified ten times. (from russel bardeen and harmon lewis.) in the undissected head we see the eye, mouth, and ear. in the trunk the skin and part of the muscles have been removed, so that the cartilaginous vertebral column is free; the dorsal root of a spinal nerve goes out from each vertebra (towards the skin of the back). in the middle of the lower half of the figure part of the ribs and intercostal muscles are visible. the skin and muscles have also been removed from the right limbs; the internal rudiments of the five fingers of the hand, and five toes of the foot, are clearly seen within the fin-shaped plate, and also the strong network of nerves that goes from the spinal cord to the extremities. the tail projects under the foot, and to the right of it is the first part of the umbilical cord.) how the five fingers or toes with their blood-vessels gradually differentiate within the simple fin-like structure of the limbs can be seen in the instance of the lizard in figure . . they are formed in just the same way in man: in the human embryo of five weeks the five fingers can clearly be distinguished within the fin-plate (figure . ). the careful study and comparison of human embryos with those of other vertebrates at this stage of development is very instructive, and reveals more mysteries to the impartial student than all the religions in the world put together. for instance, if we compare attentively the three successive stages of development that are represented, in twenty different amniotes we find a remarkable likeness. when we see that as a fact twenty different amniotes of such divergent characters develop from the same embryonic form, we can easily understand that they may all descend from a common ancestor. (figures . to . . embryos of the bat (vespertilio murinus) at three different stages. (from oscar schultze.) figure . : rudimentary limbs (v fore-leg, h hind-leg). l lenticular depression, r olfactory pit, ok upper jaw, uk lower jaw, k , k , k first, second and third gill-arches, a amnion, n umbilical vessel, d yelk-sac. figure . : rudiment of flying membrane, membranous fold between fore and hind leg. n umbilical vessel, o ear-opening, f flying membrane. figure . : the flying membrane developed and stretched across the fingers of the hands, which cover the face.) in the first stage of development, in which the head with the five cerebral vesicles is already clearly indicated, but there are no limbs, the embryos of all the vertebrates, from the fish to man, are only incidentally or not at all different from each other. in the second stage, which shows the limbs, we begin to see differences between the embryos of the lower and higher vertebrates; but the human embryo is still hardly distinguishable from that of the higher mammals. in the third stage, in which the gill-arches have disappeared and the face is formed, the differences become more pronounced. these are facts of a significance that cannot be exaggerated.* (* because they show how the most diverse structures may be developed from a common form. as we actually see this in the case of the embryos, we have a right to assume it in that of the stem-forms. nevertheless, this resemblance, however great, is never a real identity. even the embryos of the different individuals of one species are usually not really identical. if the reader can consult the complete edition of this work at a library, he will find six plates illustrating these twenty embryos.) if there is an intimate causal connection between the processes of embryology and stem-history, as we must assume in virtue of the laws of heredity, several important phylogenetic conclusions follow at once from these ontogenetic facts. the profound and remarkable similarity in the embryonic development of man and the other vertebrates can only be explained when we admit their descent from a common ancestor. as a fact, this common descent is now accepted by all competent scientists; they have substituted the natural evolution for the supernatural creation of organisms. chapter . . foetal membranes and circulation. among the many interesting phenomena that we have encountered in the course of human embryology, there is an especial importance in the fact that the development of the human body follows from the beginning just the same lines as that of the other viviparous mammals. as a fact, all the embryonic peculiarities that distinguish the mammals from other animals are found also in man; even the ovum with its distinctive membrane (zona pellucida, figure . ) shows the same typical structure in all mammals (apart from the older oviparous monotremes). it has long since been deduced from the structure of the developed man that his natural place in the animal kingdom is among the mammals. linne ( ) placed him in this class with the apes, in one and the same order (primates), in his systema naturae. this position is fully confirmed by comparative embryology. we see that man entirely resembles the higher mammals, and most of all the apes, in embryonic development as well as in anatomic structure. and if we seek to understand this ontogenetic agreement in the light of the biogenetic law, we find that it proves clearly and necessarily the descent of man from a series of other mammals, and proximately from the primates. the common origin of man and the other mammals from a single ancient stem-form can no longer be questioned; nor can the immediate blood-relationship of man and the ape. (figure . . human embryos from the second to the fifteenth week, natural size, seen from the left, the curved back turned towards the right. (mostly from ecker.) ii of fourteen days. iii of three weeks. iv of four weeks. v of five weeks. vi of six weeks. vii of seven weeks. viii of eight weeks. xii of twelve weeks. xv of fifteen weeks.) the essential agreement in the whole bodily form and inner structure is still visible in the embryo of man and the other mammals at the late stage of development at which the mammal-body can be recognised as such. but at a somewhat earlier stage, in which the limbs, gill-arches, sense-organs, etc., are already outlined, we cannot yet recognise the mammal embryos as such, or distinguish them from those of birds and reptiles. when we consider still earlier stages of development, we are unable to discover any essential difference in bodily structure between the embryos of these higher vertebrates and those of the lower, the amphibia and fishes. if, in fine, we go back to the construction of the body out of the four germinal layers, we are astonished to perceive that these four layers are the same in all vertebrates, and everywhere take a similar part in the building-up of the fundamental organs of the body. if we inquire as to the origin of these four secondary layers, we learn that they always arise in the same way from the two primary layers; and the latter have the same significance in all the metazoa (i.e., all animals except the unicellulars). finally, we see that the cells which make up the primary germinal layers owe their origin in every case to the repeated cleavage of a single simple cell, the stem-cell or fertilised ovum. (figure . . very young human embryo of the fourth week, one-fourth of an inch long (taken from the womb of a suicide eight hours after death). (from rabl.) n nasal pits, a eye, u lower jaw, z arch of hyoid bone, k and k third and fourth gill-arch, h heart; s primitive segments, vg fore-limb (arm), hg hind-limb (leg), between the two the ventral pedicle.) it is impossible to lay too much stress on this remarkable agreement in the chief embryonic features in man and the other animals. we shall make use of it later on for our monophyletic theory of descent--the hypothesis of a common descent of man and all the metazoa from the gastraea. the first rudiments of the principal parts of the body, especially the oldest organ, the alimentary canal, are the same everywhere; they have always the same extremely simple form. all the peculiarities that distinguish the various groups of animals from each other only appear gradually in the course of embryonic development; and the closer the relation of the various groups, the later they are found. we may formulate this phenomenon in a definite law, which may in a sense be regarded as an appendix to our biogenetic law. this is the law of the ontogenetic connection of related animal forms. it runs: the closer the relation of two fully-developed animals in respect of their whole bodily structure, and the nearer they are connected in the classification of the animal kingdom, the longer do their embryonic forms retain their identity, and the longer is it impossible (or only possible on the ground of subordinate features) to distinguish between their embryos. this law applies to all animals whose embryonic development is, in the main, an hereditary summary of their ancestral history, or in which the original form of development has been faithfully preserved by heredity. when, on the other hand, it has been altered by cenogenesis, or disturbance of development, we find a limitation of the law, which increases in proportion to the introduction of new features by adaptation (cf. chapter . ). thus the apparent exceptions to the law can always be traced to cenogenesis. (figure . . human embryo of the middle of the fifth week, one-third of an inch long. (from rabl.) letters as in figure . , except sk curve of skull, ok upper jaw, hb neck-indentation.) when we apply to man this law of the ontogenetic connection of related forms, and run rapidly over the earliest stages of human development with an eye to it, we notice first of all the structural identity of the ovum in man and the other mammals at the very beginning (figures . and . ). the human ovum possesses all the distinctive features of the ovum of the viviparous mammals, especially the characteristic formation of its membrane (zona pellucida), which clearly distinguishes it from the ovum of all other animals. when the human foetus has attained the age of fourteen days, it forms a round vesicle (or "embryonic vesicle") about a quarter of an inch in diameter. a thicker part of its border forms a simple sole-shaped embryonic shield one-twelfth of an inch long (figure . ). on its dorsal side we find in the middle line the straight medullary furrow, bordered by the two parallel dorsal or medullary swellings. behind, it passes by the neurenteric canal into the primitive gut or primitive groove. from this the folding of the two coelom-pouches proceeds in the same way as in the other mammals (cf. figures . and . ). in the middle of the sole-shaped embryonic shield the first primitive segments immediately begin to make their appearance. at this age the human embryo cannot be distinguished from that of other mammals, such as the hare or dog. a week later (or after the twenty-first day) the human embryo has doubled its length; it is now about one-fifth of an inch long, and, when seen from the side, shows the characteristic bend of the back, the swelling of the head-end, the first outline of the three higher sense-organs, and the rudiments of the gill-clefts, which pierce the sides of the neck (figure . , iii). the allantois has grown out of the gut behind. the embryo is already entirely enclosed in the amnion, and is only connected in the middle of the belly by the vitelline duct with the embryonic vesicle, which changes into the yelk-sac. there are no extremities or limbs at this stage, no trace of arms or legs. the head-end has been strongly differentiated from the tail-end; and the first outlines of the cerebral vesicles in front, and the heart below, under the fore-arm, are already more or less clearly seen. there is as yet no real face. moreover, we seek in vain at this stage a special character that may distinguish the human embryo from that of other mammals. (figure . . median longitudinal section of the tail of a human embryo, two-thirds of an inch long. (from ross granville harrison.) med medullary tube, ca.fil caudal filament, ch chorda, ao caudal artery, v.c.i caudal vein, an anus, s.ug sinus urogenitalis.) a week later (after the fourth week, on the twenty-eighth to thirtieth day of development) the human embryo has reached a length of about one-third of an inch (figure . iv). we can now clearly distinguish the head with its various parts; inside it the five primitive cerebral vesicles (fore-brain, middle-brain, intermediate-brain, hind-brain, and after-brain); under the head the gill-arches, which divide the gill-clefts; at the sides of the head the rudiments of the eyes, a couple of pits in the outer skin, with a pair of corresponding simple vesicles growing out of the lateral wall of the fore-brain (figures . , . a). far behind the eyes, over the last gill-arches, we see a vesicular rudiment of the auscultory organ. the rudimentary limbs are now clearly outlined--four simple buds of the shape of round plates, a pair of fore (vg) and a pair of hind legs (hg), the former a little larger than the latter. the large head bends over the trunk, almost at a right angle. the latter is still connected in the middle of its ventral side with the embryonic vesicle; but the embryo has still further severed itself from it, so that it already hangs out as the yelk-sac. the hind part of the body is also very much curved, so that the pointed tail-end is directed towards the head. the head and face-part are sunk entirely on the still open breast. the bend soon increases so much that the tail almost touches the forehead (figure . v.; figure . ). we may then distinguish three or four special curves on the round dorsal surface--namely, a skull-curve in the region of the second cerebral vesicle, a neck-curve at the beginning of the spinal cord, and a tail-curve at the fore-end. this pronounced curve is only shared by man and the higher classes of vertebrates (the amniotes); it is much slighter, or not found at all, in the lower vertebrates. at this age (four weeks) man has a considerable tail, twice as long as his legs. a vertical longitudinal section through the middle plane of this tail (figure . ) shows that the hinder end of the spinal marrow extends to the point of the tail, as also does the underlying chorda (ch), the terminal continuation of the vertebral column. of the latter, the rudiments of the seven coccygeal (or lowest) vertebrae are visible--thirty-two indicates the third and thirty-six the seventh of these. under the vertebral column we see the hindmost ends of the two large blood-vessels of the tail, the principal artery (aorta caudalis or arteria sacralis media, ao), and the principal vein (vena caudalis or sacralis media). underneath is the opening of the anus (an) and the urogenital sinus (s.ug). from this anatomic structure of the human tail it is perfectly clear that it is the rudiment of an ape-tail, the last hereditary relic of a long hairy tail, which has been handed down from our tertiary primate ancestors to the present day. (figure . . human embryo, four weeks old, opened on the ventral side. ventral and dorsal walls are cut away, so as to show the contents of the pectoral and abdominal cavities. all the appendages are also removed (amnion, allantois, yelk-sac), and the middle part of the gut. n eye, nose, upper jaw, lower jaw, second, double apostrophe, third gill-arch, ov heart (o right, o apostrophe, left auricle; v right, v apostrophe, left ventricle), b origin of the aorta, f liver (u umbilical vein), e gut (with vitelline artery, cut off at a apostrophe), j apostrophe, vitelline vein, m primitive kidneys, t rudimentary sexual glands, r terminal gut (cut off at the mesentery z), n umbilical artery, u umbilical vein, fore-leg, apostrophe, hind-leg. (from coste.) figure . . human embryo, five weeks old, opened from the ventral side (as in figure . ). breast and belly-wall and liver are removed. outer nasal process, upper jaw, lower jaw, z tongue, v right, v apostrophe, left ventricle of heart, o apostrophe, left auricle, b origin of aorta, b apostrophe, b double apostrophe, b triple apostrophe, first, second, and third aorta-arches, c, c apostrophe, c double apostrophe, vena cava, ae lungs (y pulmonary artery), e stomach, m primitive kidneys (j left vitelline vein, s cystic vein, a right vitelline artery, n umbilical artery, u umbilical vein), x vitelline duct, i rectum, tail, fore-leg, apostrophe, hind-leg. (from coste.)) it sometimes happens that we find even external relics of this tail growing. according to the illustrated works of surgeon-general bernhard ornstein, of greece, these tailed men are not uncommon; it is not impossible that they gave rise to the ancient fables of the satyrs. a great number of such cases are given by max bartels in his essay on "tailed men" ( , in the archiv fur anthropologie, band ), and critically examined. these atavistic human tails are often mobile; sometimes they contain only muscles and fat, sometimes also rudiments of caudal vertebrae. they have a length of eight to ten inches and more. granville harrison has very carefully studied one of these cases of "pigtail," which he removed by operation from a six months old child in . the tail moved briskly when the child cried or was excited, and was drawn up when at rest. (figure . . the head of miss julia pastrana. (from a photograph by hintze.) figure . . human ovum of twelve to thirteen days (?). (from allen thomson.) . not opened, natural size. . opened and magnified. within the outer chorion the tiny curved foetus lies on the large embryonic vesicle, to the left above. figure . . human ovum of ten days. (from allen thomson.) natural size, opened; the small foetus in the right half, above. figure . . human foetus of ten days, taken from the preceding ovum, magnified ten times, a yelk-sac, b neck (the medullary groove already closed), c head (with open medullary groove), d hind part (with open medullary groove), e a shred of the amnion. figure . . human ovum of twenty to twenty-two days. (from allen thomson.) natural size, opened. the chorion forms a spacious vesicle, to the inner wall of which the small foetus (to the right above) is attached by a short umbilical cord. figure . . human foetus of twenty to twenty-two days, taken from the preceding ovum, magnified. a amnion, b yelk-sac, c lower-jaw process of the first gill-arch, d upper-jaw process of same, e second gill-arch (two smaller ones behind). three gill-clefts are clearly seen. f rudimentary fore-leg, g auditory vesicle, h eye, i heart.) in the opinion of some travellers and anthropologists, the atavistic tail-formation is hereditary in certain isolated tribes (especially in south-eastern asia and the archipelago), so that we might speak of a special race or "species" of tailed men (homo caudatus). bartels has "no doubt that these tailed men will be discovered in the advance of our geographical and ethnographical knowledge of the lands in question" (archiv fur anthropologie, band page ). when we open a human embryo of one month (figure . ), we find the alimentary canal formed in the body-cavity, and for the most part cut off from the embryonic vesicle. there are both mouth and anus apertures. but the mouth-cavity is not yet separated from the nasal cavity, and the face not yet shaped. the heart shows all its four sections; it is very large, and almost fills the whole of the pectoral cavity (figure . ov). behind it are the very small rudimentary lungs. the primitive kidneys (m) are very large; they fill the greater part of the abdominal cavity, and extend from the liver (f) to the pelvic gut. thus at the end of the first month all the chief organs are already outlined. but there are at this stage no features by which the human embryo materially differs from that of the dog, the hare, the ox, or the horse--in a word, of any other higher mammal. all these embryos have the same, or at least a very similar, form; they can at the most be distinguished from the human embryo by the total size of the body or some other insignificant difference in size. thus, for instance, in man the head is larger in proportion to the trunk than in the ox. the tail is rather longer in the dog than in man. these are all negligible differences. on the other hand, the whole internal organisation and the form and arrangement of the various organs are essentially the same in the human embryo of four weeks as in the embryos of the other mammals at corresponding stages. (figure . . human embryo of sixteen to eighteen days. (from coste.) magnified. the embryo is surrounded by the amnion, (a), and lies free with this in the opened embryonic vesicle. the belly is drawn up by the large yelk-sac (d), and fastened to the inner wall of the embryonic membrane by the short and thick pedicle (b). hence the normal convex curve of the back (figure . ) is here changed into an abnormal concave surface. h heart, m parietal mesoderm. the spots on the outer wall of the serolemma are the roots of the branching chorion-villi, which are free at the border. figure . . human embryo of the fourth week, one-third of an inch long, lying in the dissected chorion. figure . . human embryo of the fourth week, with its membranes, like figure . , but a little older. the yelk-sac is rather smaller, the amnion and chorion larger.) it is otherwise in the second month of human development. figure . represents a human embryo of six weeks (vi), one of seven weeks (vii), and one of eight weeks (viii), at natural size. the differences which mark off the human embryo from that of the dog and the lower mammals now begin to be more pronounced. we can see important differences at the sixth, and still more at the eighth week, especially in the formation of the head. the size of the various sections of the brain is greater in man, and the tail is shorter. other differences between man and the lower mammals are found in the relative size of the internal organs. but even at this stage the human embryo differs very little from that of the nearest related mammals--the apes, especially the anthropomorphic apes. the features by means of which we distinguish between them are not clear until later on. even at a much more advanced stage of development, when we can distinguish the human foetus from that of the ungulates at a glance, it still closely resembles that of the higher apes. at last we get the distinctive features, and we can distinguish the human embryo confidently at the first glance from that of all other mammals during the last four months of foetal life--from the sixth to the ninth month of pregnancy. then we begin to find also the differences between the various races of men, especially in regard to the formation of the skull and the face. (cf. chapter . .) (figure . . human embryo with its membranes, six weeks old. the outer envelope of the whole ovum is the chorion, thickly covered with its branching villi, a product of the serous membrane. the embryo is enclosed in the delicate amnion-sac. the yelk-sac is reduced to a small pear-shaped umbilical vesicle; its thin pedicle, the long vitelline duct, is enclosed in the umbilical cord. in the latter, behind the vitelline duct, is the much shorter pedicle of the allantois, the inner lamina of which (the gut-gland layer) forms a large vesicle in most of the mammals, while the outer lamina is attached to the inner wall of the outer embryonic coat, and forms the placenta there. (half diagrammatic.)) the striking resemblance that persists so long between the embryo of man and of the higher apes disappears much earlier in the lower apes. it naturally remains longest in the large anthropomorphic apes (gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, and gibbon). the physiognomic similarity of these animals, which we find so great in their earlier years, lessens with the increase of age. on the other hand, it remains throughout life in the remarkable long-nosed ape of borneo (nasalis larvatus). its finely-shaped nose would be regarded with envy by many a man who has too little of that organ. if we compare the face of the long-nosed ape with that of abnormally ape-like human beings (such as the famous miss julia pastrana, figure . ), it will be admitted to represent a higher stage of development. there are still people among us who look especially to the face for the "image of god in man." the long-nosed ape would have more claim to this than some of the stumpy-nosed human individuals one meets. this progressive divergence of the human from the animal form, which is based on the law of the ontogenetic connection between related forms, is found in the structure of the internal organs as well as in external form. it is also expressed in the construction of the envelopes and appendages that we find surrounding the foetus externally, and that we will now consider more closely. two of these appendages--the amnion and the allantois--are only found in the three higher classes of vertebrates, while the third, the yelk-sac, is found in most of the vertebrates. this is a circumstance of great importance, and it gives us valuable data for constructing man's genealogical tree. (figure . . diagram of the embryonic organs of the mammal (foetal membranes and appendages). (from turner.) e, m, h outer, middle, and inner germ layer of the embryonic shield, which is figured in median longitudinal section, seen from the left. am amnion. ac amniotic cavity, uv yelk-sac or umbilical vesicle, alc allantois, al pericoelom or serocoelom (inter-amniotic cavity), sz serolemma (or serous membrane), pc prochorion (with villi).) as regards the external membrane that encloses the ovum in the mammal womb, we find it just the same in man as in the higher mammals. the ovum is, the reader will remember, first surrounded by the transparent structureless ovolemma or zona pellucida (figures . and . ). but very soon, even in the first week of development, this is replaced by the permanent chorion. this is formed from the external layer of the amnion, the serolemma, or "serous membrane," the formation of which we shall consider presently; it surrounds the foetus and its appendages as a broad, completely closed sac; the space between the two, filled with clear watery fluid, is the serocoelom, or interamniotic cavity ("extra-embryonic body-cavity"). but the smooth surface of the sac is quickly covered with numbers of tiny tufts, which are really hollow outgrowths like the fingers of a glove (figures . , . and . chz). they ramify and push into the corresponding depressions that are formed by the tubular glands of the mucous membrane of the maternal womb. thus, the ovum secures its permanent seat (figures . to . ). in human ova of eight to twelve days this external membrane, the chorion, is already covered with small tufts or villi, and forms a ball or spheroid of one-fourth to one-third of an inch in diameter (figures . to . ). as a large quantity of fluid gathers inside it, the chorion expands more and more, so that the embryo only occupies a small part of the space within the vesicle. the villi of the chorion grow larger and more numerous. they branch out more and more. at first the villi cover the whole surface, but they afterwards disappear from the greater part of it; they then develop with proportionately greater vigour at a spot where the placenta is formed from the allantois. when we open the chorion of a human embryo of three weeks, we find on the ventral side of the foetus a large round sac, filled with fluid. this is the yelk-sac, or "umbilical vesicle," the origin of which we have considered previously. the larger the embryo becomes the smaller we find the yelk-sac. in the end we find the remainder of it in the shape of a small pear-shaped vesicle, fastened to a long thin stalk (or pedicle), and hanging from the open belly of the foetus (figure . ). this pedicle is the vitelline duct, and is separated from the body at the closing of the navel. behind the yelk-sac a second appendage, of much greater importance, is formed at an early stage at the belly of the mammal embryo. this is the allantois or "primitive urinary sac," an important embryonic organ, only found in the three higher classes of vertebrates. in all the amniotes the allantois quickly appears at the hinder end of the alimentary canal, growing out of the cavity of the pelvic gut (figure . r, u, figure . alc}. (figure . . diagrammatic frontal section of the pregnant human womb. (from longet.) the embryo hangs by the umbilical cord, which encloses the pedicle of the allantois (al). nb umbilical vessel, am amnion, ch chorion, ds decidua serotina, dv decidua vera, dr decidua reflexa, z villi of the placenta, c cervix uteri, u uterus.) the further development of the allantois varies considerably in the three sub-classes of the mammals. the two lower sub-classes, monotremes and marsupials, retain the simpler structure of their ancestors, the reptiles. the wall of the allantois and the enveloping serolemma remains smooth and without villi, as in the birds. but in the third sub-class of the mammals the serolemma forms, by invagination at its outer surface, a number of hollow tufts or villi, from which it takes the name of the chorion or mallochorion. the gut-fibre layer of the allantois, richly supplied with branches of the umbilical vessel, presses into these tufts of the primary chorion, and forms the "secondary chorion." its embryonic blood-vessels are closely correlated to the contiguous maternal blood-vessels of the environing womb, and thus is formed the important nutritive apparatus of the embryo which we call the placenta. the pedicle of the allantois, which connects the embryo with the placenta and conducts the strong umbilical vessels from the former to the latter, is covered by the amnion, and, with this amniotic sheath and the pedicle of the yelk-sac, forms what is called the umbilical cord (figure . al). as the large and blood-filled vascular network of the foetal allantois attaches itself closely to the mucous lining of the maternal womb, and the partition between the blood-vessels of mother and child becomes much thinner, we get that remarkable nutritive apparatus of the foetal body which is characteristic of the placentalia (or choriata). we shall return afterwards to the closer consideration of this (cf. chapter . ). in the various orders of mammals the placenta undergoes many modifications, and these are in part of great evolutionary importance and useful in classification. there is only one of these that need be specially mentioned--the important fact, established by selenka in , that the distinctive human placentation is confined to the anthropoids. in this most advanced group of the mammals the allantois is very small, soon loses its cavity, and then, in common with the amnion, undergoes certain peculiar changes. the umbilical cord develops in this case from what is called the "ventral pedicle." until very recently this was regarded as a structure peculiar to man. we now know from selenka that the much-discussed ventral pedicle is merely the pedicle of the allantois, combined with the pedicle of the amnion and the rudimentary pedicle of the yelk-sac. it has just the same structure in the orang and gibbon (figure . ) and very probably in the chimpanzee and gorilla, as in man; it is, therefore, not a disproof, but a striking fresh proof, of the blood-relationship of man and the anthropoid apes. (figure . . male embryo of the siamang-gibbon (hylobates siamanga) of sumatra, two-thirds natural size; to the left the dissected uterus, of which only the dorsal half is given. the embryo has been taken out, and the limbs folded together; it is still connected by the umbilical cord with the centre of the circular placenta which is attached to the inside of the womb. this embryo takes the head-position in the womb, and this is normal in man also.) we find only in the anthropoid apes--the gibbon and orang of asia and the chimpanzee and gorilla of africa--the peculiar and elaborate formation of the placenta that characterises man (figure . ). in this case there is at an early stage an intimate blending of the chorion of the embryo and the part of the mucous lining of the womb to which it attaches. the villi of the chorion with the blood-vessels they contain grow so completely into the tissue of the uterus, which is rich in blood, that it becomes impossible to separate them, and they form together a sort of cake. this comes away as the "afterbirth" at parturition; at the same time, the part of the mucous lining of the womb that has united inseparably with the chorion is torn away; hence it is called the decidua ("falling-away membrane"), and also the "sieve-membrane," because it is perforated like a sieve. we find a decidua of this kind in most of the higher placentals; but it is only in man and the anthropoid apes that it divides into three parts--the outer, inner, and placental decidua. the external or true decidua (figure . du, figure . g) is the part of the mucous lining of the womb that clothes the inner surface of the uterine cavity wherever it is not connected with the placenta. the placental or spongy decidua (placentalis or serotina, figure . ds, figure . d) is really the placenta itself, or the maternal part of it (placenta uterina)--namely, that part of the mucous lining of the womb which unites intimately with the chorion-villi of the foetal placenta. the internal or false decidua (interna or reflexa, figure . dr, figure . f) is that part of the mucous lining of the womb which encloses the remaining surface of the ovum, the smooth chorion (chorion laeve), in the shape of a special thin membrane. the origin of these three different deciduous membranes, in regard to which quite erroneous views (still retained in their names) formerly prevailed, is now quite clear, the external decidua vera is the specially modified and subsequently detachable superficial stratum of the original mucous lining of the womb. the placental decidua serotina is that part of the preceding which is completely transformed by the ingrowth of the chorion-villi, and is used for constructing the placenta. the inner decidua reflexa is formed by the rise of a circular fold of the mucous lining (at the border of the decidua vera and serotina), which grows over the foetus (like the anmnion) to the end. the peculiar anatomic features that characterise the human foetal membranes are found in just the same way in the higher apes. until recently it was thought that the human embryo was distinguished by its peculiar construction of a solid allantois and a special ventral pedicle, and that the umbilical cord developed from this in a different way than in the other mammals. the opponents of the unwelcome "ape-theory" laid great stress on this, and thought they had at last discovered an important indication that separated man from all the other placentals. but the remarkable discoveries published by the distinguished zoologist selenka in proved that man shares these peculiarities of placentation with the anthropoid apes, though they are not found in the other apes. thus the very feature which was advanced by our critics as a disproof became a most important piece of evidence in favour of our pithecoid origin.) (figure . . frontal section of the pregnant human womb, showing: end of the decidua, uterine cavity, chorion (laeve), amniotic cavity, foetal placenta, oviduct, spongy decidua serotina, umbilical vesicle, amnion, decidua reflexa, decidua vera, muscular wall of the uterus, mouth of the uterus. (from turner.) the embryo (a month old) hangs in the middle of the amniotic cavity by the ventral pedicle or umbilical cord, which connects it with the placenta (above). figure . . human foetus, twelve weeks old, with its membranes. natural size. the umbilical cord goes from its navel to the placenta. b amnion, c chorion, d placenta, d apostrophe, relics of villi on smooth chorion, f internal or reflex decidua, g external or true decidua. (from b. schultze.) figure . . mature human foetus (at the end of pregnancy, in its natural position, taken out of the uterine cavity). on the inner surface of the latter (to the left) is the placenta, which is connected by the umbilical cord with the child's navel. (from bernhard schultze.)) of the three vesicular appendages of the amniote embryo which we have now described the amnion has no blood-vessels at any moment of its existence. but the other two vesicles, the yelk-sac and the allantois, are equipped with large blood-vessels, and these effect the nourishment of the embryonic body. we may take the opportunity to make a few general observations on the first circulation in the embryo and its central organ, the heart. the first blood-vessels, the heart, and the first blood itself, are formed from the gut-fibre layer. hence it was called by earlier embryologists the "vascular layer." in a sense the term is quite correct. but it must not be understood as if all the blood-vessels in the body came from this layer, or as if the whole of this layer were taken up only with the formation of blood-vessels. neither of these suppositions is true. blood-vessels may be formed independently in other parts, especially in the various products of the skin-fibre layer. the first blood-vessels of the mammal embryo have been considered by us previously, and we shall study the development of the heart in the second volume. (figure . . vitelline vessels in the germinative area of a chick-embryo, at the close of the third day of incubation. (from balfour.) the detached germinative area is seen from the ventral side: the arteries are dark, the veins light. h heart, aa aorta-arches, ao aorta, r.of.a right omphalo-mesenteric artery, s.t sinus terminalis, l.of and r.of right and left omphalo-mesenteric veins, s.v sinus venosus, d.c ductus cuvieri, s.ca.v and v.ca fore and hind cardinal veins.) in every vertebrate it lies at first in the ventral wall of the fore-gut, or in the ventral (or cardiac) mesentery, by which it is connected for a time with the wall of the body. but it soon severs itself from the place of its origin, and lies freely in a cavity--the cardiac cavity. for a short time it is still connected with the former by the thin plate of the mesocardium. afterwards it lies quite free in the cardiac cavity, and is only directly connected with the gut-wall by the vessels which issue from it. the fore-end of the spindle-shaped tube, which soon bends into an s-shape (figure . ), divides into a right and left branch. these tubes are bent upwards arch-wise, and represent the first arches of the aorta. they rise in the wall of the fore-gut, which they enclose in a sense, and then unite above, in the upper wall of the fore gut-cavity, to form a large single artery, that runs backward immediately under the chorda, and is called the aorta (figure . ao). the first pair of aorta-arches rise on the inner wall of the first pair of gill-arches, and so lie between the first gill-arch (k) and the fore-gut (d), just as we find them throughout life in the fishes. the single aorta, which results from the conjunction of these two first vascular arches, divides again immediately into two parallel branches, which run backwards on either side of the chorda. these are the primitive aortas which we have already mentioned; they are also called the posterior vertebral arteries. these two arteries now give off at each side, behind, at right angles, four or five branches, and these pass from the embryonic body to the germinative area, they are called omphalo-mesenteric or vitelline arteries. they represent the first beginning of a foetal circulation. thus, the first blood-vessels pass over the embryonic body and reach as far as the edge of the germinative area. at first they are confined to the dark or "vascular" area. but they afterwards extend over the whole surface of the embryonic vesicle. in the end, the whole of the yelk-sac is covered with a vascular net-work. these vessels have to gather food from the contents of the yelk-sac and convey it to the embryonic body. this is done by the veins, which pass first from the germinative area, and afterwards from the yelk-sac, to the farther end of the heart. they are called vitelline, or, frequently, omphalo-mesenteric, veins. these vessels naturally atrophy with the degeneration of the umbilical vesicle, and the vitelline circulation is replaced by a second, that of the allantois. large blood-vessels are developed in the wall of the urinary sac or the allantois, as before, from the gut-fibre layer. these vessels grow larger and larger, and are very closely connected with the vessels that develop in the body of the embryo itself. thus, the secondary, allantoic circulation gradually takes the place of the original vitelline circulation. when the allantois has attached itself to the inner wall of the chorion and been converted into the placenta, its blood-vessels alone effect the nourishment of the embryo. they are called umbilical vessels, and are originally double--a pair of umbilical arteries and a pair of umbilical veins. the two umbilical veins (figure . u), which convey blood from the placenta to the heart, open it first into the united vitelline veins. the latter then disappear, and the right umbilical vein goes with them, so that henceforth a single large vein, the left umbilical vein, conducts all the blood from the placenta to the heart of the embryo. the two arteries of the allantois, or the umbilical arteries (figures . n and . n), are merely the ultimate terminations of the primitive aortas, which are strongly developed afterwards. this umbilical circulation is retained until the nine months of embryonic life are over, and the human embryo enters into the world as the independent individual. the umbilical cord (figure . al), in which these large blood-vessels pass from the embryo to the placenta, comes away, together with the latter, in the after-birth, and with the use of the lungs begins an entirely new form of circulation, which is confined to the body of the infant. (figure . . boat-shaped embryo of the dog, from the ventral side, magnified about ten times. in front under the forehead we can see the first pair of gill-arches; underneath is the s-shaped heart, at the sides of which are the auditory vesicles. the heart divides behind into the two vitelline veins, which expand in the germinative area (which is torn off all round). on the floor of the open belly lie, between the protovertebrae, the primitive aortas, from which five pairs of vitelline arteries are given off. (from bischoff.)) there is a great phylogenetic significance in the perfect agreement which we find between man and the anthropoid apes in these important features of embryonic circulation, and the special construction of the placenta and the umbilical cord. we must infer from it a close blood-relationship of man and the anthropomorphic apes--a common descent of them from one and the same extinct group of lower apes. huxley's "pithecometra-principle" applies to these ontogenetic features as much as to any other morphological relations: "the differences in construction of any part of the body are less between man and the anthropoid apes than between the latter and the lower apes." this important huxleian law, the chief consequence of which is "the descent of man from the ape," has lately been confirmed in an interesting and unexpected way from the side of the experimental physiology of the blood. the experiments of hans friedenthal at berlin have shown that human blood, mixed with the blood of lower apes, has a poisonous effect on the latter; the serum of the one destroys the blood-cells of the other. but this does not happen when human blood is mixed with that of the anthropoid ape. as we know from many other experiments that the mixture of two different kinds of blood is only possible without injury in the case of two closely related animals of the same family, we have another proof of the close blood-relationship, in the literal sense of the word, of man and the anthropoid ape. (figure . . lar or white-handed gibbon (hylobates lar or albimanus), from the indian mainland (from brehm.) figure . . young orang (satyrus orang), asleep.) the existing anthropoid apes are only a small remnant of a large family of eastern apes (or catarrhinae), from which man was evolved about the end of the tertiary period. they fall into two geographical groups--the asiatic and the african anthropoids. in each group we can distinguish two genera. the oldest of these four genera is the gibbon hylobates, figure . ); there are from eight to twelve species of it in the east indies. i made observations of four of them during my voyage in the east indies ( ), and had a specimen of the ash-grey gibbon (hylobates leuciscus) living for several months in the garden of my house in java. i have described the interesting habits of this ape (regarded by the malays as the wild descendant of men who had lost their way) in my malayischen reisebriefen (chapter ). psychologically, he showed a good deal of resemblance to the children of my malay hosts, with whom he played and formed a very close friendship. (figure . . wild orang (dyssatyrus auritius). (from r. fick and leutemann.)) the second, larger and stronger, genus of asiatic anthropoid ape is the orang (satyrus); he is now found only in the islands of borneo and sumatra. selenka, who has published a very thorough study of the development and cranial structure of the anthropoid apes ( ), distinguishes ten races of the orang, which may, however, also be regarded as "local varieties or species." they fall into two sub-genera or genera: one group, dissatyrus (orang-bentang, figure . ), is distinguished for the strength of its limbs, and the formation of very peculiar and salient cheek-pads in the elderly male; these are wanting in the other group, the ordinary orang-outang (eusatyrus). (figure . . the bald-headed chimpanzee (anthropithecus calvus). female. this fresh species, described by frank beddard in as troglodytes calvus, differs considerably from the ordinary a. niger figure . ) in the structure of the head, the colouring, and the absence of hair in parts.) several species have lately been distinguished in the two genera of the black african anthropoid apes (chimpanzee and gorilla). in the genus anthropithecus (or anthropopithecus, formerly troglodytes), the bald-headed chimpanzee, a. calvus (figure . ), and the gorilla-like a. mafuca differ very strikingly from the ordinary anthropithecus niger (figure . ), not only in the size and proportion of many parts of the body, but also in the peculiar shape of the head, especially the ears and lips, and in the hair and colour. the controversy that still continues as to whether these different forms of chimpanzee and orang are "merely local varieties" or "true species" is an idle one; as in all such disputes of classifiers there is an utter absence of clear ideas as to what a species really is. of the largest and most famous of all the anthropoid apes, the gorilla, paschen has lately discovered a giant-form in the interior of the cameroons, which seems to differ from the ordinary species (gorilla gina figure . ), not only by its unusual size and strength, but also by a special formation of the skull. this giant gorilla (gorilla gigas, figure . ) is six feet eight inches long; the span of its great arms is about nine feet; its powerful chest is twice as broad as that of a strong man. (figure . . female chimpanzee (anthropithecus niger). (from brehm.) figure . . female gorilla. (from brehm.) figure . . male giant-gorilla (gorilla gigas), from yaunde, in the interior of the cameroons. killed by h. paschen, stuffed by umlauff.) the whole structure of this huge anthropoid ape is not merely very similar to that of man, but it is substantially the same. "the same bones, arranged in the same way, form our internal skeleton; the same muscles effect our movements; the same hair covers our skin; the same groups of ganglionic cells compose the ingenious mechanism of our brain; the same four-chambered heart is the central pump of our circulation." the really existing differences in the shape and size of the various parts are explained by differences in their growth, due to adaptation to different habits of life and unequal use of the various organs. this of itself proves morphologically the descent of man from the ape. we will return to the point in chapter . . but i wanted to point already to this important solution of "the question of questions," because that agreement in the formation of the embryonic membranes and in foetal circulation which i have described affords a particularly weighty proof of it. it is the more instructive as even cenogenetic structures may in certain circumstances have a high phylogenetic value. in conjunction with the other facts, it affords a striking confirmation of our biogenetic law. on the relations of man to the lower animals by thomas h. huxley multis videri poterit, majorem esso differentiam simiae et hominis, quam diei et noctis; verum tamen hi, comparatione instituta inter summos europae heroes et hottentottos ad caput bonae spei degentes, difficillime sibi persuadebunt, has eosdem habere natales; vel si virginem nobilem aulicam, maxime comtam et humanissimam, conferre vellent cum homine sylvestri et sibi relicto, vix augurari possent, hunc et illam ejusdem esse speciei.--'linnaei amoenitates acad. "anthropomorpha."' the question of questions for mankind--the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other--is the ascertainment of the place which man occupies in nature and of his relations to the universe of things. whence our race has come; what are the limits of our power over nature, and of nature's power over us; to what goal we are tending; are the problems which present themselves anew and with undiminished interest to every man born into the world. most of us, shrinking from the difficulties and dangers which beset the seeker after original answers to these riddles, are contented to ignore them altogether, or to smother the investigating spirit under the featherbed of respected and respectable tradition. but, in every age, one or two restless spirits, blessed with that constructive genius, which can only build on a secure foundation, or cursed with the spirit of mere scepticism, are unable to follow in the well-worn and comfortable track of their forefathers and contemporaries, and unmindful of thorns and stumbling-blocks, strike out into paths of their own. the sceptics end in the infidelity which asserts the problem to be insoluble, or in the atheism which denies the existence of any orderly progress and governance of things: the men of genius propound solutions which grow into systems of theology or of philosophy, or veiled in musical language which suggests more than it asserts, take the shape of the poetry of an epoch. each such answer to the great question, invariably asserted by the followers of its propounder, if not by himself, to be complete and final, remains in high authority and esteem, it may be for one century, or it may be for twenty: but, as invariably, time proves each reply to have been a mere approximation to the truth--tolerable chiefly on account of the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their successors. in a well-worn metaphor, a parallel is drawn between the life of man and the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into the butterfly; but the comparison may be more just as well as more novel, if for its former term we take the mental progress of the race. history shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge, periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another, itself but temporary. truly the imago state of man seems to be terribly distant, but every moult is a step gained, and of such there have been many. since the revival of learning, whereby the western races of europe were enabled to enter upon that progress towards true knowledge, which was commenced by the philosophers of greece, but was almost arrested in subsequent long ages of intellectual stagnation, or, at most, gyration, the human larva has been feeding vigorously, and moulting in proportion. a skin of some dimension was cast in the th century, and another towards the end of the th, while, within the last fifty years, the extraordinary growth of every department of physical science has spread among us mental food of so nutritious and stimulating a character that a new ecdysis seems imminent. but this is a process not unusually accompanied by many throes and some sickness and debility, or, it may be, by graver disturbances; so that every good citizen must feel bound to facilitate the process, and even if he have nothing but a scalpel to work withal, to ease the cracking integument to the best of his ability. in this duty lies my excuse for the publication of these essays. for it will be admitted that some knowledge of man's position in the animate world is an indispensable preliminary to the proper understanding of his relations to the universe--and this again resolves itself, in the long run, into an inquiry into the nature and the closeness of the ties which connect him with those singular creatures whose history [ ] has been sketched in the preceding pages. the importance of such an inquiry is indeed intuitively manifest brought face to face with these blurred copies of himself, the least thoughtful of men is conscious of a certain shock, due perhaps, not so much to disgust at the aspect of what looks like an insulting caricature, as to the awakening of a sudden and profound mistrust of time-honoured theories and strongly-rooted prejudices regarding his own position in nature, and his relations to the under-world of life; while that which remains a dim suspicion for the unthinking, becomes a vast argument, fraught with the deepest consequences, for all who are acquainted with the recent progress of the anatomical and physiological sciences. i now propose briefly to unfold that argument, and to set forth, in a form intelligible to those who possess no special acquaintance with anatomical science, the chief facts upon which all conclusions respecting the nature and the extent of the bonds which connect man with the brute world must be based: i shall then indicate the one immediate conclusion which, in my judgment, is justified by those facts, and i shall finally discuss the bearing of that conclusion upon the hypotheses which have been entertained respecting the origin of man. the facts to which i would first direct the reader's attention, though ignored by many of the professed instructors of the public mind, are easy of demonstration and are universally agreed to by men of science; while their significance is so great, that whoso has duly pondered over them will, i think, find little to startle him in the other revelations of biology. i refer to those facts which have been made known by the study of development. it is a truth of very wide, if not of universal, application, that every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains. [illustration: fig. .--a. egg of the dog, with the vitelline membrane burst, so as to give exit to the yelk, the germinal vesicle (a), and its included spot (b). b. c. d. e f. successive changes of the yelk indicated in the text. after bischoff.] the oak is a more complex thing than the little rudimentary plant contained in the acorn; the caterpillar is more complex than the egg; the butterfly than the caterpillar; and each of these beings, in passing from its rudimentary to its perfect condition, runs through a series of changes, the sum of which is called its development. in the higher animals these changes are extremely complicated; but, within the last half century, the labours of such men as von baer, rathke, reichert, bischof, and remak, have almost completely unravelled them, so that the successive stages of development which are exhibited by a dog, for example, are now as well known to the embryologist as are the steps of the metamorphosis of the silkworm moth to the school-boy. it will be useful to consider with attention the nature and the order of the stages of canine development, as an example of the process in the higher animals generally. the dog, like all animals, save the very lowest (and further inquiries may not improbably remove the apparent exception), commences its existence as an egg: as a body which is, in every sense, as much an egg as that of a hen, but is devoid of that accumulation of nutritive matter which confers upon the bird's egg its exceptional size and domestic utility; and wants the shell, which would not only be useless to an animal incubated within the body of its parent, but would cut it off from access to the source of that nutriment which the young creature requires, but which the minute egg of the mammal does not contain within itself. the dog's egg is, in fact, a little spheroidal bag (fig. ), formed of a delicate transparent membrane called the 'vitelline membrane', and about / to / th of an inch in diameter. it contains a mass of viscid nutritive matter--the 'yelk'--within which is inclosed a second much more delicate spheroidal bag, called the 'germinal vesicle' (a). in this, lastly, lies a more solid rounded body, termed the 'germinal spot' (b). the egg, or 'ovum,' is originally formed within a gland, from which, in due season, it becomes detached, and passes into the living chamber fitted for its protection and maintenance during the protracted process of gestation. here, when subjected to the required conditions, this minute and apparently insignificant particle of living matter becomes animated by a new and mysterious activity. the germinal vesicle and spot cease to be discernible (their precise fate being one of the yet unsolved problems of embryology), but the yelk becomes circumferentially indented, as if an invisible knife had been drawn round it, and thus appears divided into two hemispheres (fig. , c). by the repetition of this process in various planes, these hemispheres become subdivided, so that four segments are produced (d); and these, in like manner, divide and subdivide again, until the whole yelk is converted into a mass of granules, each of which consists of a minute spheroid of yelk-substance, inclosing a central particle, the so-called 'nucleus' (f). nature, by this process, has attained much the same result as that at which a human artificer arrives by his operations in a brickfield. she takes the rough plastic material of the yelk and breaks it up into well-shaped tolerably even-sized masses, handy for building up into any part of the living edifice. [illustration: fig. .--earliest rudiment of the dog. b. rudiment further advanced, showing the foundations of the head, tail, and vertebral column. c. the very young puppy, with attached ends of the yelk-sac and allantois, and invested in the amnion.] next, the mass of organic bricks, or 'cells' as they are technically called, thus formed, acquires an orderly arrangement, becoming converted into a hollow spheroid with double walls. then, upon one side of this spheroid, appears a thickening, and, by and bye, in the centre of the area of thickening, a straight shallow groove (fig. , a) marks the central line of the edifice which is to be raised, or, in other words, indicates the position of the middle line of the body of the future dog. the substance bounding the groove on each side next rises up into a fold, the rudiment of the side wall of that long cavity, which will eventually lodge the spinal marrow and the brain; and in the floor of this chamber appears a solid cellular cord, the so-called 'notochord.' one end of the inclosed cavity dilates to form the head (fig. , b), the other remains narrow, and eventually becomes the tail; the side walls of the body are fashioned out of the downward continuation of the walls of the groove; and from them, by and bye, grow out little buds which, by degrees, assume the shape of limbs. watching the fashioning process stage by stage, one is forcibly reminded of the modeller in clay. every part, every organ, is at first, as it were, pinched up rudely, and sketched out in the rough; then shaped more accurately; and only, at last, receives the touches which stamp its final character. thus, at length, the young puppy assumes such a form as is shown in fig. , c. in this condition it has a disproportionately large head, as dissimilar to that of a dog as the bud-like limbs are unlike his legs. the remains of the yelk, which have not yet been applied to the nutrition and growth of the young animal, are contained in a sac attached to the rudimentary intestine, and termed the yelk sac, or 'umbilical vesicle.' two membranous bags, intended to subserve respectively the protection and nutrition of the young creature, have been developed from the skin and from the under and hinder surface of the body; the former, the so-called 'amnion,' is a sac filled with fluid, which invests the whole body of the embryo, and plays the part of a sort of water-bed for it; the other, termed the 'allantois,' grows out, loaded with blood-vessels, from the ventral region, and eventually applying itself to the walls of the cavity, in which the developing organism is contained, enables these vessels to become the channel by which the stream of nutriment, required to supply the wants of the offspring, is furnished to it by the parent. the structure which is developed by the interlacement of the vessels of the offspring with those of the parent, and by means of which the former is enabled to receive nourishment and to get rid of effete matters, is termed the 'placenta.' it would be tedious, and it is unnecessary for my present purpose, to trace the process of development further; suffice it to say, that, by a long and gradual series of changes, the rudiment here depicted and described becomes a puppy, is born, and then, by still slower and less perceptible steps, passes into the adult dog. there is not much apparent resemblance between a barndoor fowl and the dog who protects the farm-yard. nevertheless the student of development finds, not only that the chick commences its existence as an egg, primarily identical, in all essential respects, with that of the dog, but that the yelk of this egg undergoes division--that the primitive groove arises, and that the contiguous parts of the germ are fashioned, by precisely similar methods, into a young chick, which, at one stage of its existence, is so like the nascent dog, that ordinary inspection would hardly distinguish the two. the history of the development of any other vertebrate animal, lizard, snake, frog, or fish, tells the same story. there is always, to begin with, an egg having the same essential structure as that of the dog:--the yelk of that egg always undergoes division, or 'segmentation' as it is often called: the ultimate products of that segmentation constitute the building materials for the body of the young animal; and this is built up round a primitive groove, in the floor of which a notochord is developed. furthermore, there is a period in which the young of all these animals resemble one another, not merely in outward form, but in all essentials of structure, so closely, that the differences between them are inconsiderable, while, in their subsequent course, they diverge more and more widely from one another. and it is a general law, that, the more closely any animals resemble one another in adult structure, the longer and the more intimately do their embryos resemble one another: so that, for example, the embryos of a snake and of a lizard remain like one another longer than do those of a snake and of a bird; and the embryo of a dog and of a cat remain like one another for a far longer period than do those of a dog and a bird; or of a dog and an opossum; or even than those of a dog and a monkey. thus the study of development affords a clear test of closeness of structural affinity, and one turns with impatience to inquire what results are yielded by the study of the development of man. is he something apart? does he originate in a totally different way from dog, bird, frog, and fish, thus justifying those who assert him to have no place in nature and no real affinity with the lower world of animal life? or does he originate in a similar germ, pass through the same slow and gradually progressive modifications,--depend on the same contrivances for protection and nutrition, and finally enter the world by the help of the same mechanism? the reply is not doubtful for a moment, and has not been doubtful any time these thirty years. without question, the mode of origin and the early stages of the development of man are identical with those of the animals immediately below him in the scale:--without a doubt, in these respects, he is far nearer the apes, than the apes are to the dog. the human ovum is about / of an inch in diameter, and might be described in the same terms as that of the dog, so that i need only refer to the figure illustrative ( a) of its structure. it leaves the organ in which it is formed in a similar fashion and enters the organic chamber prepared for its reception in the same way, the conditions of its development being in all respects the same. it has not yet been possible (and only by some rare chance can it ever be possible) to study the human ovum in so early a developmental stage as that of yelk division, but there is every reason to conclude that the changes it undergoes are identical with those exhibited by the ova of other vertebrated animals; for the formative materials of which the rudimentary human body is composed, in the earliest conditions in which it has been observed, are the same as those of other animals. some of these earliest stages are figured below, and, as will be seen, they are strictly comparable to the very early states of the dog; the marvellous correspondence between the two which is kept up, even for some time, as development advances, becoming apparent by the simple comparison of the figures with those on page . [illustration: fig. .--a. human ovum (after kolliker). a. germinal vesicle. b. germinal spot. b. a very early condition of man, with yelk-sac, allantois, and amnion (original). c. a more advanced stage (after kolliker), compare fig. , c.] indeed, it is very long before the body of the young human being can be readily discriminated from that of the young puppy; but, at a tolerably early period, the two become distinguishable by the different form of their adjuncts, the yelk-sac and the allantois. the former, in the dog, becomes long and spindle-shaped, while in man it remains spherical; the latter, in the dog, attains an extremely large size, and the vascular processes which are developed from it and eventually give rise to the formation of the placenta (taking root, as it were, in the parental organism, so as to draw nourishment therefrom, as the root of a tree extracts it from the soil) are arranged in an encircling zone, while in man, the allantois remains comparatively small, and its vascular rootlets are eventually restricted to one disk-like spot. hence, while the placenta of the dog is like a girdle, that of man has the cake-like form, indicated by the name of the organ. but, exactly in those respects in which the developing man differs from the dog, he resembles the ape, which, like man, has a spheroidal yelk-sac and a discoidal--sometimes partially lobed--placenta. so that it is only quite in the later stages of development that the young human being presents marked differences from the young ape, while the latter departs as much from the dog in its development, as the man does. startling as the last assertion may appear to be, it is demonstrably true, and it alone appears to me sufficient to place beyond all doubt the structural unity of man with the rest of the animal world, and more particularly and closely with the apes. thus, identical in the physical processes by which he originates--identical in the early stages of his formation--identical in the mode of his nutrition before and after birth, with the animals which lie immediately below him in the scale--man, if his adult and perfect structure be compared with theirs, exhibits, as might be expected, a marvellous likeness of organization. he resembles them as they resemble one another--he differs from them as they differ from one another.--and, though these differences and resemblances cannot be weighed and measured, their value may be readily estimated; the scale or standard of judgment, touching that value, being afforded and expressed by the system of classification of animals now current among zoologists. a careful study of the resemblances and differences presented by animals has, in fact, led naturalists to arrange them into groups, or assemblages, all the members of each group presenting a certain amount of definable resemblance, and the number of points of similarity being smaller as the group is larger and 'vice versa'. thus, all creatures which agree only in presenting the few distinctive marks of animality form the 'kingdom' animalia. the numerous animals which agree only in possessing the special characters of vertebrates form one 'sub-kingdom' of this kingdom. then the sub-kingdom vertebrata is subdivided into the five 'classes,' fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, and these into smaller groups called 'orders'; these into 'families' and 'genera'; while the last are finally broken up into the smallest assemblages, which are distinguished by the possession of constant, not-sexual, characters. these ultimate groups are species. every year tends to bring about a greater uniformity of opinion throughout the zoological world as to the limits and characters of these groups, great and small. at present, for example, no one has the least doubt regarding the characters of the classes mammalia, aves, or reptilia; nor does the question arise whether any thoroughly well-known animal should be placed in one class or the other. again, there is a very general agreement respecting the characters and limits of the orders of mammals, and as to the animals which are structurally necessitated to take a place in one or another order. no one doubts, for example, that the sloth and the ant-eater, the kangaroo and the opossum, the tiger and the badger, the tapir and the rhinoceros, are respectively members of the same orders. these successive pairs of animals may, and some do, differ from one another immensely, in such matters as the proportions and structure of their limbs; the number of their dorsal and lumbar vertebrae; the adaptation of their frames to climbing, leaping, or running; the number and form of their teeth; and the characters of their skulls and of the contained brain. but, with all these differences, they are so closely connected in all the more important and fundamental characters of their organization, and so distinctly separated by these same characters from other animals, that zoologists find it necessary to group them together as members of one order. and if any new animal were discovered, and were found to present no greater difference from the kangaroo and the opossum, for example, than these animals do from one another, the zoologist would not only be logically compelled to rank it in the same order with these, but he would not think of doing otherwise. bearing this obvious course of zoological reasoning in mind, let us endeavour for a moment to disconnect our thinking selves from the mask of humanity; let us imagine ourselves scientific saturnians, if you will, fairly acquainted with such animals as now inhabit the earth, and employed in discussing the relations they bear to a new and singular 'erect and featherless biped,' which some enterprising traveller, overcoming the difficulties of space and gravitation, has brought from that distant planet for our inspection, well preserved, may be, in a cask of rum. we should all, at once, agree upon placing him among the mammalian vertebrates; and his lower jaw, his molars, and his brain, would leave no room for doubting the systematic position of the new genus among those mammals, whose young are nourished during gestation by means of a placenta, or what are called the 'placental mammals.' further, the most superficial study would at once convince us that, among the orders of placental mammals, neither the whales, nor the hoofed creatures, nor the sloths and ant-eaters, nor the carnivorous cats, dogs, and bears, still less the rodent rats and rabbits, or the insectivorous moles and hedgehogs, or the bats, could claim our 'homo', as one of themselves. there would remain then, but one order for comparison, that of the apes (using that word in its broadest sense), and the question for discussion would narrow itself to this--is man so different from any of these apes that he must form an order by himself? or does he differ less from them than they differ from one another, and hence must take his place in the same order with them? being happily free from all real, or imaginary, personal interest in the results of the inquiry thus set afoot, we should proceed to weigh the arguments on one side and on the other, with as much judicial calmness as if the question related to a new opossum. we should endeavour to ascertain, without seeking either to magnify or diminish them, all the characters by which our new mammal differed from the apes; and if we found that these were of less structural value, than those which distinguish certain members of the ape order from others universally admitted to be of the same order, we should undoubtedly place the newly discovered tellurian genus with them. i now proceed to detail the facts which seem to me to leave us no choice but to adopt the last mentioned course. it is quite certain that the ape which most nearly approaches man, in the totality of its organization, is either the chimpanzee or the gorilla; and as it makes no practical difference, for the purposes of my present argument, which is selected for comparison, on the one hand, with man, and on the other hand, with the rest of the primates, [ ] i shall select the latter (so far as its organization is known)--as a brute now so celebrated in prose and verse, that all must have heard of him, and have formed some conception of his appearance. i shall take up as many of the most important points of difference between man and this remarkable creature, as the space at my disposal will allow me to discuss, and the necessities of the argument demand; and i shall inquire into the value and magnitude of these differences, when placed side by side with those which separate the gorilla from other animals of the same order. in the general proportions of the body and limbs there is a remarkable difference between the gorilla and man, which at once strikes the eye. the gorilla's brain-case is smaller, its trunk larger, its lower limbs shorter, its upper limbs longer in proportion than those of man. i find that the vertebral column of a full-grown gorilla, in the museum of the royal college of surgeons, measures inches along its anterior curvature, from the upper edge of the atlas, or first vertebra of the neck, to the lower extremity of the sacrum; that the arm, without the hand, is - / inches long; that the leg, without the foot, is - / inches long; that the hand is - / inches long; the foot - / inches long. in other words, taking the length of the spinal column as , the arm equals , the leg , the hand , and the foot . in the skeleton of a male bosjesman, in the same collection, the proportions, by the same measurement, to the spinal column, taken as , are--the arm , the leg , the hand , and the foot . in a woman of the same race the arm is , and the leg , the hand and foot remaining the same. in a european skeleton i find the arm to be , the leg , the hand , the foot . thus the leg is not so different as it looks at first sight, in its proportion to the spine in the gorilla and in the man--being very slightly shorter than the spine in the former, and between / and / longer than the spine in the latter. the foot is longer and the hand much longer in the gorilla; but the great difference is caused by the arms, which are very much longer than the spine in the gorilla, very much shorter than the spine in the man. the question now arises how are the other apes related to the gorilla in these respects--taking the length of the spine, measured in the same way, at . in an adult chimpanzee, the arm is only , the leg , the hand , the foot --so that the hand and the leg depart more from the human proportion and the arm less, while the foot is about the same as in the gorilla. in the orang, the arms are very much longer than in the gorilla ( ), while the legs are shorter ( ); the foot is longer than the hand ( and ), and both are much longer in proportion to the spine. in the other man-like apes again, the gibbons, these proportions are still further altered; the length of the arms being to that of the spinal column as to ; while the legs are also a third longer than the spinal column, so as to be longer than in man, instead of shorter. the hand is half as long as the spinal column, and the foot, shorter than the hand, is about / ths of the length of the spinal column. thus 'hylobates' is as much longer in the arms than the gorilla, as the gorilla is longer in the arms than man; while, on the other hand, it is as much longer in the legs than the man, as the man is longer in the legs than the gorilla, so that it contains within itself the extremest deviations from the average length of both pairs of limbs (see the illustration on page ). the mandrill presents a middle condition, the arms and legs being nearly equal in length, and both being shorter than the spinal column; while hand and foot have nearly the same proportions to one another and to the spine, as in man. in the spider monkey ('ateles') the leg is longer than the spine, and the arm than the leg; and, finally, in that remarkable lemurine form, the indri ('lichanotus'), the leg is about as long as the spinal column, while the arm is not more than / of its length; the hand having rather less and the foot rather more, than one-third the length of the spinal column. these examples might be greatly multiplied, but they suffice to show that, in whatever proportion of its limbs the gorilla differs from man, the other apes depart still more widely from the gorilla and that, consequently, such differences of proportion can have no ordinal value. we may next consider the differences presented by the trunk, consisting of the vertebral column, or backbone, and the ribs and pelvis, or bony hip-basin, which are connected with it, in man and in the gorilla respectively. in man, in consequence partly of the disposition of the articular surfaces of the vertebrae, and largely of the elastic tension of some of the fibrous bands, or ligaments, which connect these vertebrae together, the spinal column, as a whole, has an elegant s-like curvature, being convex forwards in the neck, concave in the back, convex in the loins, or lumbar region, and concave again in the sacral region; an arrangement which gives much elasticity to the whole backbone, and diminishes the jar communicated to the spine, and through it to the head, by locomotion in the erect position. furthermore, under ordinary circumstances, man has seven vertebrae in his neck, which are called 'cervical'; twelve succeed these, bearing ribs and forming the upper part of the back, whence they are termed 'dorsal'; five lie in the loins, bearing no distinct, or free, ribs, and are called 'lumbar'; five, united together into a great bone, excavated in front, solidly wedged in between the hip bones, to form the back of the pelvis, and known by the name of the 'sacrum', succeed these; and finally, three or four little more or less movable bones, so small as to be insignificant, constitute the 'coccyx' or rudimentary tail. in the gorilla, the vertebral column is similarly divided into cervical, dorsal, lumbar, sacral, and coccygeal vertebrae, and the total number of cervical and dorsal vertebrae, taken together, is the same as in man; but the development of a pair of ribs to the first lumbar vertebra, which is an exceptional occurrence in man, is the rule in the gorilla; and hence, as lumbar are distinguished from dorsal vertebrae only by the presence or absence of free ribs, the seventeen "dorso-lumbar" vertebrae of the gorilla are divided into thirteen dorsal and four lumbar, while in man they are twelve dorsal and five lumbar. [illustration: fig. .--front and side views of the bony pelvis of man, the gorilla and gibbon: reduced from drawings made from nature, of the same absolute length, by mr. waterhouse hawkins.] not only, however, does man occasionally possess thirteen pair of ribs, but the gorilla sometimes has fourteen pairs, while an orang-utan skeleton in the museum of the royal college of surgeons has twelve dorsal and five lumbar vertebrae, as in man. cuvier notes the same number in a 'hylobates'. on the other hand, among the lower apes, many possess twelve dorsal and six or seven lumbar vertebrae; the douroucouli has fourteen dorsal and eight lumbar, and a lemur ('stenops tardigradus') has fifteen dorsal and nine lumbar vertebrae. the vertebral column of the gorilla, as a whole, differs from that of man in the less marked character of its curves, especially in the slighter convexity of the lumbar region. nevertheless, the curves are present, and are quite obvious in young skeletons of the gorilla and chimpanzee which have been prepared without removal of the ligaments. in young orangs similarly preserved, on the other hand, the spinal column is either straight, or even concave forwards, throughout the lumbar region. whether we take these characters then, or such minor ones as those which are derivable from the proportional length of the spines of the cervical vertebrae, and the like, there is no doubt whatsoever as to the marked difference between man and the gorilla; but there is as little, that equally marked differences, of the very same order, obtain between the gorilla and the lower apes. the pelvis, or bony girdle of the hips, of man is a strikingly human part of his organization; the expanded haunch bones affording support for his viscera during his habitually erect posture, and giving space for the attachment of the great muscles which enable him to assume and to preserve that attitude. in these respects the pelvis of the gorilla differs very considerably from his (fig. ). but go no lower than the gibbon, and see how vastly more he differs from the gorilla than the latter does from man, even in this structure. look at the flat, narrow haunch bones--the long and narrow passage--the coarse, outwardly curved, ischiatic prominences on which the gibbon habitually rests, and which are coated by the so-called "callosities," dense patches of skin, wholly absent in the gorilla, in the chimpanzee, and in the orang, as in man! in the lower monkeys and in the lemurs the difference becomes more striking still, the pelvis acquiring an altogether quadrupedal character. but now let us turn to a nobler and more characteristic organ--that by which the human frame seems to be, and indeed is, so strongly distinguished from all others,--i mean the skull. the differences between a gorilla's skull and a man's are truly immense (fig. ). in the former, the face, formed largely by the massive jaw-bones, predominates over the brain case, or cranium proper: in the latter, the proportions of the two are reversed. in the man, the occipital foramen, through which passes the great nervous cord connecting the brain with the nerves of the body, is placed just behind the centre of the base of the skull, which thus becomes evenly balanced in the erect posture; in the gorilla, it lies in the posterior third of that base. in the man, the surface of the skull is comparatively smooth, and the supraciliary ridges or brow prominences usually project but little--while, in the gorilla, vast crests are developed upon the skull, and the brow ridges overhang, the cavernous orbits, like great penthouses. sections of the skulls, however, show that some of the apparent defects of the gorilla's cranium arise, in fact, not so much from deficiency of brain case as from excessive development of the parts of the face. the cranial cavity is not ill-shaped, and the forehead is not truly flattened or very retreating, its really well-formed curve being simply disguised by the mass of bone which is built up against it (fig. ). but the roofs of the orbits rise more obliquely into the cranial cavity, thus diminishing the space for the lower part of the anterior lobes of the brain, and the absolute capacity of the cranium is far less than that of man. so far as i am aware, no human cranium belonging to an adult man has yet been observed with a less cubical capacity than cubic inches, the smallest cranium observed in any race of men by morton, measuring cubic inches; while, on the other hand, the most capacious gorilla skull yet measured has a content of not more than - / cubic inches. let us assume, for simplicity's sake, that the lowest man's skull has twice the capacity of that of the highest gorilla. [ ] no doubt, this is a very striking difference, but it loses much of its apparent systematic value, when viewed by the light of certain other equally indubitable facts respecting cranial capacities. the first of these is, that the difference in the volume of the cranial cavity of different races of mankind is far greater, absolutely, than that between the lowest man and the highest ape, while, relatively, it is about the same. for the largest human skull measured by morton contained cubic inches, that is to say, had very nearly double the capacity of the smallest; while its absolute preponderance, of cubic inches--is far greater than that by which the lowest adult male human cranium surpasses the largest of the gorillas ( - - / = - / ). secondly, the adult crania of gorillas which have as yet been measured differ among themselves by nearly one-third, the maximum capacity being . cubic inches, the minimum cubic inches; and, thirdly, after making all due allowance for difference of size, the cranial capacities of some of the lower apes fall nearly as much, relatively, below those of the higher apes as the latter fall below man. thus, even in the important matter of cranial capacity, men differ more widely from one another than they do from the apes; while the lowest apes differ as much, in proportion, from the highest, as the latter does from man. the last proposition is still better illustrated by the study of the modifications which other parts of the cranium undergo in the simian series. it is the large proportional size of the facial bones and the great projection of the jaws which confers upon the gorilla's skull its small facial angle and brutal character. [illustration: fig. .--sections of the skulls of man and various apes, drawn so as to give the cerebral cavity the same length in each case, thereby displaying the varying proportions of the facial bones. the line 'b' indicates the plane of the tentorium, which separates the cerebrum from the cerebellum; 'd', the axis of the occipital outlet of the skull. the extent of cerebral cavity behind 'c', which is a perpendicular erected on 'b' at the point where the tentorium is attached posteriorly, indicates the degree to which the cerebrum overlaps the cerebellum--the space occupied by which is roughly indicated by the dark shading. in comparing these diagrams, it must be recollected, that figures on so small a scale as these simply exemplify the statements in the text, the proof of which is to be found in the objects themselves.] but if we consider the proportional size of the facial bones to the skull proper only, the little 'chrysothrix' (fig. ) differs very widely from the gorilla, and, in the same way, as man does; while the baboons ('cynocephalus', fig. ) exaggerate the gross proportions of the muzzle of the great anthropoid, so that its visage looks mild and human by comparison with theirs. the difference between the gorilla and the baboon is even greater than it appears at first sight; for the great facial mass of the former is largely due to a downward development of the jaws; an essentially human character, superadded upon that almost purely forward, essentially brutal, development of the same parts which characterizes the baboon, and yet more remarkably distinguishes the lemur. similarly, the occipital foramen of 'mycetes' (fig. ), and still more of the lemurs, is situated completely in the posterior face of the skull, or as much further back than that of the gorilla, as that of the gorilla is further back than that of man; while, as if to render patent the futility of the attempt to base any broad classificatory distinction on such a character, the same group of platyrhine, or american monkeys, to which the mycetes belongs, contains the chrysothrix, whose occipital foramen is situated far more forward than in any other ape, and nearly approaches the position it holds in man. again, the orang's skull is as devoid of excessively developed supraciliary prominences as a man's, though some varieties exhibit great crests elsewhere (see pp. , ); and in some of the cebine apes and in the 'chrysothrix', the cranium is as smooth and rounded as that of man himself. what is true of these leading characteristics of the skull, holds good, as may be imagined, of all minor features; so that for every constant difference between the gorilla's skull and the man's, a similar constant difference of the same order (that is to say, consisting in excess or defect of the same quality) may be found between the gorilla's skull and that of some other ape. so that, for the skull, no less than for the skeleton in general, the proposition holds good, that the differences between man and the gorilla are of smaller value than those between the gorilla and some other apes. in connection with the skull, i may speak of the teeth--organs which have a peculiar classificatory value, and whose resemblances and differences of number, form, and succession, taken as a whole, are usually regarded as more trustworthy indicators of affinity than any others. [illustration: fig. .--lateral views, of the same length, of the upper jaws of various primates. 'i', incisors; 'c', canines' 'pm', premolars; 'm', molars. a line is drawn through the first molar of man, 'gorilla', 'cynocephalus', and 'cebus', and the grinding surface of the second molar is shown in each, its anterior and internal angle being just above the 'm' of 'm '.] man is provided with two sets of teeth--milk teeth and permanent teeth. the former consist of four incisors, or cutting teeth; two canines, or eyeteeth; and four molars, or grinders, in each jaw--making twenty in all. the latter (fig. ) comprise four incisors, two canines, four small grinders, called premolars or false molars, and six large grinders, or true molars, in each jaw--making thirty-two in all. the internal incisors are larger than the external pair, in the upper jaw, smaller than the external pair, in the lower jaw. the crowns of the upper molars exhibit four cusps, or blunt-pointed elevations, and a ridge crosses the crown obliquely, from the inner, anterior cusp to the outer, posterior cusp (fig. m ). the anterior lower molars have five cusps, three external and two internal. the premolars have two cusps, one internal and one external, of which the outer is the higher. in all these respects the dentition of the gorilla may be described in the same terms as that of man; but in other matters it exhibits many and important differences (fig. ). thus the teeth of man constitute a regular and even series--without any break and without any marked projection of one tooth above the level of the rest; a peculiarity which, as cuvier long ago showed, is shared by no other mammal save one--as different a creature from man as can well be imagined--namely, the long extinct 'anoplotherium'. the teeth of the gorilla, on the contrary, exhibit a break, or interval, termed the 'diastema', in both jaws: in front of the eye-tooth, or between it and the outer incisor, in the upper jaw; behind the eyetooth, or between it and the front false molar, in the lower jaw. into this break in the series, in each jaw, fits the canine of the opposite jaw; the size of the eye-tooth in the gorilla being so great that it projects, like a tusk, far beyond the general level of the other teeth. the roots of the false molar teeth of the gorilla, again, are more complex than in man, and the proportional size of the molars is different. the gorilla has the crown of the hindmost grinder of the lower jaw more complex, and the order of eruption of the permanent teeth is different; the permanent canines making their appearance before the second and third molars in man, and after them in the gorilla. thus, while the teeth of the gorilla closely resemble those of man in number, kind, and in the general pattern of their crowns, they exhibit marked differences from those of man in secondary respects, such as relative size, number of fangs, and order of appearance. but, if the teeth of the gorilla be compared with those of an ape, no further removed from it than a 'cynocephalus', or baboon, it will be found that differences and resemblances of the same order are easily observable; but that many of the points in which the gorilla resembles man are those in which it differs from the baboon; while various respects in which it differs from man are exaggerated in the 'cynocephalus'. the number and the nature of the teeth remain the same in the baboon as in the gorilla and in man. but the pattern of the baboon's upper molars is quite different from that described above (fig. ), the canines are proportionally longer and more knife-like; the anterior premolar in the lower jaw is specially modified; the posterior molar of the lower jaw is still larger and more complex than in the gorilla. passing from the old-world apes to those of the new world, we meet with a change of much greater importance than any of these. in such a genus as 'cebus', for example (fig. ), it will be found that while in some secondary points, such as the projection of the canines and the diastema, the resemblance to the great ape is preserved; in other and most important respects, the dentition is extremely different. instead of teeth in the milk set, there are : instead of teeth in the permanent set, there are , the false molars being increased from eight to twelve. and in form, the crowns of the molars are very unlike those of the gorilla, and differ far more widely from the human pattern. the marmosets, on the other hand, exhibit the same number of teeth as man and the gorilla; but, notwithstanding this, their dentition is very different, for they have four more false molars, like the other american monkeys--but as they have four fewer true molars, the total remains the same. and passing from the american apes to the lemurs, the dentition becomes still more completely and essentially different from that of the gorilla. the incisors begin to vary both in number and in form. the molars acquire, more and more, a many-pointed, insectivorous character, and in one genus, the aye-aye ('cheiromys'), the canines disappear, and the teeth completely simulate those of a rodent (fig. ). hence it is obvious that, greatly as the dentition of the highest ape differs from that of man, it differs far more widely from that of the lower and lowest apes. whatever part of the animal fabric--whatever series of muscles, whatever viscera might be selected for comparison--the result would be the same--the lower apes and the gorilla would differ more than the gorilla and the man. i cannot attempt in this place to follow out all these comparisons in detail, and indeed it is unnecessary i should do so. but certain real, or supposed, structural distinctions between man and the apes remain, upon which so much stress has been laid, that they require careful consideration, in order that the true value may be assigned to those which are real, and the emptiness of those which are fictitious may be exposed. i refer to the characters of the hand, the foot, and the brain. man has been defined as the only animal possessed of two hands terminating his fore limbs, and of two feet ending his hind limbs, while it has been said that all the apes possess four hands; and he has been affirmed to differ fundamentally from all the apes in the characters of his brain, which alone, it has been strangely asserted and re-asserted, exhibits the structures known to anatomists as the posterior lobe, the posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle, and the hippocampus minor. that the former proposition should have gained general acceptance is not surprising--indeed, at first sight, appearances are much in its favour: but, as for the second, one can only admire the surpassing courage of its enunciator, seeing that it is an innovation which is not only opposed to generally and justly accepted doctrines, but which is directly negatived by the testimony of all original inquirers, who have specially investigated the matter: and that it neither has been, nor can be, supported by a single anatomical preparation. it would, in fact, be unworthy of serious refutation, except for the general and natural belief that deliberate and reiterated assertions must have some foundation. before we can discuss the first point with advantage we must consider with some attention, and compare together, the structure of the human hand and that of the human foot, so that we may have distinct and clear ideas of what constitutes a hand and what a foot. the external form of the human hand is familiar enough to every one. it consists of a stout wrist followed by a broad palm, formed of flesh, and tendons, and skin, binding together four bones, and dividing into four long and flexible digits, or fingers, each of which bears on the back of its last joint a broad and flattened nail. the longest cleft between any two digits is rather less than half as long as the hand. from the outer side of the base of the palm a stout digit goes off, having only two joints instead of three; so short, that it only reaches to a little beyond the middle of the first joint of the finger next it; and further remarkable by its great mobility, in consequence of which it can be directed outwards, almost at a right angle to the rest. this digit is called the 'pollex,' or thumb; and, like the others, it bears a flat nail upon the back of its terminal joint. in consequence of the proportions and mobility of the thumb, it is what is termed "opposable"; in other words, its extremity can, with the greatest ease, be brought into contact with the extremities of any of the fingers; a property upon which the possibility of our carrying into effect the conceptions of the mind so largely depends. the external form of the foot differs widely from that of the hand; and yet, when closely compared, the two present some singular resemblances. thus the ankle corresponds in a manner with the wrist; the sole with the palm; the toes with the fingers; the great toe with the thumb. but the toes, or digits of the foot, are far shorter in proportion than the digits of the hand, and are less moveable, the want of mobility being most striking in the great toe--which, again, is very much larger in proportion to the other toes than the thumb to the fingers. in considering this point, however, it must not be forgotten that the civilized great toe, confined and cramped from childhood upwards, is seen to a great disadvantage, and that in uncivilized and barefooted people it retains a great amount of mobility, and even some sort of opposability. the chinese boatmen are said to be able to pull an oar; the artisans of bengal to weave, and the carajas to steal fishhooks, by its help; though, after all, it must be recollected that the structure of its joints and the arrangement of its bones, necessarily render its prehensile action far less perfect than that of the thumb. but to gain a precise conception of the resemblances and differences of the hand and foot, and of the distinctive characters of each, we must look below the skin, and compare the bony framework and its motor apparatus in each (fig. ). [illustration: fig. --the skeleton of the hand and foot of man reduced from dr. carter's drawings in gray's 'anatomy.' the hand is drawn to a larger scale than the foot. the line 'a a' in the hand indicates the boundary between the carpus and the metacarpus; 'b b' that between the latter and the proximal phalanges; 'c c' marks the ends of the distal phalanges. the line "a' a'" in the foot indicates the boundary between the tarsus and metatarsus; "b' b'" marks that between the metatarsus and the proximal phalanges; and "c' c'" bounds the ends of the distal phalanges; 'ca', the calcaneum; 'as', the astragalus; 'sc', the scaphoid bone in the tarsus.] the skeleton of the hand exhibits, in the region which we term the wrist, and which is technically called the 'carpus'--two rows of closely fitted polygonal bones, four in each row, which are tolerably equal in size. the bones of the first row with the bones of the forearm, form the wrist joint, and are arranged side by side, no one greatly exceeding or overlapping the rest. the four bones of the second row of the carpus bear the four long bones which support the palm of the hand. the fifth bone of the same character is articulated in a much more free and moveable manner than the others, with its carpal bone, and forms the base of the thumb. these are called 'metacarpal' bones, and they carry the 'phalanges', or bones of the digits, of which there are two in the thumb, and three in each of the fingers. the skeleton of the foot is very like that of the hand in some respects. thus there are three phalanges in each of the lesser toes, and only two in the great toe, which answers to the thumb. there is a long bone, termed 'metatarsal', answering to the metacarpal, for each digit; and the 'tarsus', which corresponds with the carpus, presents four short polygonal bones in a row, which correspond very closely with the four carpal bones of the second row of the hand. in other respects the foot differs very widely from the hand. thus the great toe is the longest digit but one; and its metatarsal is far less moveably articulated with the tarsus, than the metacarpal of the thumb with the carpus. but a far more important distinction lies in the fact that, instead of four more tarsal bones there are only three; and, that these three are not arranged side by side, or in one row. one of them, the 'os calcis' or heel bone ('ca'), lies externally, and sends back the large projecting heel; another, the 'astragalus' ('as'), rests on this by one face, and by another, forms, with the bones of the leg, the ankle joint; while a third face, directed forwards, is separated from the three inner tarsal bones of the row next the metatarsus by a bone called the 'scaphoid' ('sc'). thus there is a fundamental difference in the structure of the foot and the hand, observable when the carpus and the tarsus are contrasted; and there are differences of degree noticeable when the proportions and the mobility of the metacarpals and metatarsals, with their respective digits, are compared together. the same two classes of differences become obvious when the muscles of the hand are compared with those of the foot. three principal sets of muscles, called "flexors," bend the fingers and thumb, as in clenching the fist, and three sets--the extensors--extend them, as in straightening the fingers. these muscles are all "long muscles"; that is to say, the fleshy part of each, lying in and being fixed to the bones of the arm, is, at the other end, continued into tendons, or rounded cords, which pass into the hand, and are ultimately fixed to the bones which are to be moved. thus, when the fingers are bent, the fleshy parts of the flexors of the fingers, placed in the arm, contract, in virtue of their peculiar endowment as muscles; and pulling the tendinous cords, connected with their ends, cause them to pull down the bones of the fingers towards the palm. not only are the principal flexors of the fingers and of the thumb long muscles, but they remain quite distinct from one another through their whole length. in the foot, there are also three principal flexor muscles of the digits or toes, and three principal extensors; but one extensor and one flexor are short muscles; that is to say, their fleshy parts are not situated in the leg (which corresponds with the arm), but in the back and in the sole of the foot--regions which correspond with the back and the palm of the hand. again, the tendons of the long flexor of the toes, and of the long flexor of the great toe, when they reach the sole of the foot, do not remain distinct from one another, as the flexors in the palm of the hand do, but they become united and commingled in a very curious manner--while their united tendons receive an accessory muscle connected with the heel-bone. but perhaps the most absolutely distinctive character about the muscles of the foot is the existence of what is termed the 'peronaeus longus', a long muscle fixed to the outer bone of the leg, and sending its tendon to the outer ankle, behind and below which it passes, and then crosses the foot obliquely to be attached to the base of the great toe. no muscle in the hand exactly corresponds with this, which is eminently a foot muscle. to resume--the foot of man is distinguished from his hand by the following absolute anatomical differences:-- . by the arrangement of the tarsal bones. . by having a short flexor and a short extensor muscle of the digits. . by possessing the muscle termed 'peronaeus longus'. and if we desire to ascertain whether the terminal division of a limb, in other primates, is to be called a foot or a hand, it is by the presence or absence of these characters that we must be guided, and not by the mere proportions and greater or lesser mobility of the great toe, which may vary indefinitely without any fundamental alteration in the structure of the foot. keeping these considerations in mind, let us now turn to the limbs of the gorilla. the terminal division of the fore limb presents no difficulty--bone for bone and muscle for muscle, are found to be arranged essentially as in man, or with such minor differences as are found as varieties in man. the gorilla's hand is clumsier, heavier, and has a thumb somewhat shorter in proportion than that of man; but no one has ever doubted its being a true hand. [illustration: fig .--foot of man, gorilla, and orang-utan of the same absolute length, to show the differences in proportion of each. letters as in fig. . reduced from original drawings by mr. waterhouse hawkins.] at first sight, the termination of the hind limb of the gorilla looks very hand-like, and as it is still more so in many of the lower apes, it is not wonderful that the appellation "quadrumana," or four-handed creatures, adopted from the older anatomists [ ] by blumenbach, and unfortunately rendered current by cuvier, should have gained such wide acceptance as a name for the simian group. but the most cursory anatomical investigation at once proves that the resemblance of the so-called "hind hand" to a true hand, is only skin deep, and that, in all essential respects, the hind limb of the gorilla is as truly terminated by a foot as that of man. the tarsal bones, in all important circumstances of number, disposition, and form, resemble those of man (fig. ). the metatarsals and digits, on the other hand, are proportionally longer and more slender, while the great toe is not only proportionally shorter and weaker, but its metatarsal bone is united by a more moveable joint with the tarsus. at the same time, the foot is set more obliquely upon the leg than in man. as this passage was published in , m. i. g. st. hilaire is clearly in error in ascribing the invention of the term "quadrumanous" to buffon, though "himanous" may belong to him. tyson uses "quadrumanus" in several places, as at p. .... "our 'pygmie' is no man, nor yet the 'common ape', but a sort of 'animal' between both; and though a 'biped', yet of the 'quadrumanus'-kind: though some 'men' too have been observed to use their 'feet' like 'hands', as i have seen several." as to the muscles, there is a short flexor, a short extensor, and a 'peronaeus longus', while the tendons of the long flexors of the great toe and of the other toes are united together and with an accessory fleshy bundle. the hind limb of the gorilla, therefore, ends in a true foot, with a very moveable great toe. it is a prehensile foot, indeed, but is in no sense a hand: it is a foot which differs from that of man not in any fundamental character, but in mere proportions, in the degree of mobility, and in the secondary arrangement of its parts. it must not be supposed, however, because i speak of these differences as not fundamental, that i wish to underrate their value. they are important enough in their way, the structure of the foot being in strict correlation with that of the rest of the organism in each case. nor can it be doubted that the greater division of physiological labour in man, so that the function of support is thrown wholly on the leg and foot, is an advance in organization of very great moment to him; but, after all, regarded anatomically, the resemblances between the foot of man and the foot of the gorilla are far more striking and important than the differences. i have dwelt upon this point at length, because it is one regarding which much delusion prevails; but i might have passed it over without detriment to my argument, which only requires me to show that, be the differences between the hand and foot of man and those of the gorilla what they may--the differences between those of the gorilla, and those of the lower apes are much greater. it is not necessary to descend lower in the scale than the orang for conclusive evidence on this head. the thumb of the orang differs more from that of the gorilla than the thumb of the gorilla differs from that of man, not only by its shortness, but by the absence of any special long flexor muscle. the carpus of the orang, like that of most lower apes, contains nine bones, while in the gorilla, as in man and the chimpanzee, there are only eight. the orang's foot (fig. ) is still more aberrant; its very long toes and short tarsus, short great toe, short and raised heel, great obliquity of articulation in the leg, and absence of a long flexor tendon to the great toe, separating it far more widely from the foot of the gorilla than the latter is separated from that of man. but, in some of the lower apes, the hand and foot diverge still more from those of the gorilla, than they do in the orang. the thumb ceases to be opposable in the american monkeys; is reduced to a mere rudiment covered by the skin in the spider monkey; and is directed forwards and armed with a curved claw like the other digits, in the marmosets--so that, in all these cases, there can be no doubt but that the hand is more different from that of the gorilla than the gorilla's hand is from man's. and as to the foot, the great toe of the marmoset is still more insignificant in proportion than that of the orang--while in the lemurs it is very large, and as completely thumb-like and opposable as in the gorilla--but in these animals the second toe is often irregularly modified, and in some species the two principal bones of the tarsus, the 'astragalus' and the 'os calcis', are so immensely elongated as to render the foot, so far, totally unlike that of any other mammal. so with regard to the muscles. the short flexor of the toes of the gorilla differs from that of man by the circumstance that one slip of the muscle is attached, not to the heel bone, but to the tendons of the long flexors. the lower apes depart from the gorilla by an exaggeration of the same character, two, three, or more, slips becoming fixed to the long flexor tendons--or by a multiplication of the slips.--again, the gorilla differs slightly from man in the mode of interlacing of the long flexor tendons: and the lower apes differ from the gorilla in exhibiting yet other, sometimes very complex, arrangements of the same parts, and occasionally in the absence of the accessory fleshy bundle. throughout all these modifications it must be recollected that the foot loses no one of its essential characters. every monkey and lemur exhibits the characteristic arrangement of tarsal bones, possesses a short flexor and short extensor muscle, and a 'peronaeus longus'. varied as the proportions and appearance of the organ may be, the terminal division of the hind limb remains, in plan and principle of construction, a foot, and never, in those respects, can be confounded with a hand. hardly any part of the bodily frame, then, could be found better calculated to illustrate the truth that the structural differences between man and the highest ape are of less value than those between the highest and the lower apes, than the hand or the foot, and yet, perhaps, there is one organ the study of which enforces the same conclusion in a still more striking manner--and that is the brain. but before entering upon the precise question of the amount of difference between the ape's brain and that of man, it is necessary that we should clearly understand what constitutes a great, and what a small difference in cerebral structure; and we shall be best enabled to do this by a brief study of the chief modifications which the brain exhibits in the series of vertebrate animals. the brain of a fish is very small, compared with the spinal cord into which it is continued, and with the nerves which come off from it: of the segments of which it is composed--the olfactory lobes, the cerebral hemisphere, and the succeeding divisions--no one predominates so much over the rest as to obscure or cover them; and the so-called optic lobes are, frequently, the largest masses of all. in reptiles, the mass of the brain, relatively to the spinal cord, increases and the cerebral hemispheres begin to predominate over the other parts; while in birds this predominance is still more marked. the brain of the lowest mammals, such as the duck-billed platypus and the opossums and kangaroos, exhibits a still more definite advance in the same direction. the cerebral hemispheres have now so much increased in size as, more or less, to hide the representatives of the optic lobes, which remain comparatively small, so that the brain of a marsupial is extremely different from that of a bird, reptile, or fish. a step higher in the scale, among the placental mammals, the structure of the brain acquires a vast modification--not that it appears much altered externally, in a rat or in a rabbit, from what it is in a marsupial--nor that the proportions of its parts are much changed, but an apparently new structure is found between the cerebral hemispheres, connecting them together, as what is called the 'great commissure' or 'corpus callosum.' the subject requires careful re-investigation, but if the currently received statements are correct, the appearance of the 'corpus callosum' in the placental mammals is the greatest and most sudden modification exhibited by the brain in the whole series of vertebrated animals--it is the greatest leap anywhere made by nature in her brain work. for the two halves of the brain being once thus knit together, the progress of cerebral complexity is traceable through a complete series of steps from the lowest rodent, or insectivore, to man; and that complexity consists, chiefly, in the disproportionate development of the cerebral hemispheres and of the cerebellum, but especially of the former, in respect to the other parts of the brain. in the lower placental mammals, the cerebral hemispheres leave the proper upper and posterior face of the cerebellum completely visible, when the brain is viewed from above; but, in the higher forms, the hinder part of each hemisphere, separated only by the tentorium (p. ) from the anterior face of the cerebellum, inclines backwards and downwards, and grows out, as the so-called "posterior lobe," so as at length to overlap and hide the cerebellum. in all mammals, each cerebral hemisphere contains a cavity which is termed the 'ventricle,' and as this ventricle is prolonged, on the one hand, forwards, and on the other downwards, into the substance of the hemisphere, it is said to have two horns or 'cornua, an 'anterior cornu,' and a 'descending cornu.' when the posterior lobe is well developed, a third prolongation of the ventricular cavity extends into it, and is called the "posterior cornu." in the lower and smaller forms of placental mammals the surface of the cerebral hemispheres is either smooth or evenly rounded, or exhibits a very few grooves, which are technically termed 'sulci,'separating ridges or 'convolutions' of the substance of the brain; and the smaller species of all orders tend to a similar smoothness of brain. but, in the higher orders, and especially the larger members of these orders, the grooves, or sulci, become extremely numerous, and the intermediate convolutions proportionately more complicated in their meanderings, until, in the elephant, the porpoise, the higher apes, and man, the cerebral surface appears a perfect labyrinth of tortuous foldings. where a posterior lobe exists and presents its customary cavity--the posterior cornu--it commonly happens that a particular sulcus appears upon the inner and under surface of the lobe, parallel with and beneath the floor of the cornu--which is, as it were, arched over the roof of the sulcus. it is as if the groove had been formed by indenting the floor of the posterior horn from without with a blunt instrument, so that the floor should rise as a convex eminence. now this eminence is what has been termed the 'hippocampus minor;' the 'hippocampus major' being a larger eminence in the floor of the descending cornu. what may be the functional importance of either of these structures we know not. as if to demonstrate, by a striking example, the impossibility of erecting any cerebral barrier between man and the apes, nature has provided us, in the latter animals, with an almost complete series of gradations from brains little higher than that of a rodent, to brains little lower than that of man. and it is a remarkable circumstance that though, so far as our present knowledge extends, there 'is' one true structural break in the series of forms of simian brains, this hiatus does not lie between man and the man-like apes, but between the lower and the lowest simians; or, in other words, between the old and new world apes and monkeys, and the lemurs. every lemur which has yet been examined, in fact, has its cerebellum partially visible from above, and its posterior lobe, with the contained posterior cornu and hippocampus minor, more or less rudimentary. every marmoset, american monkey, old-world monkey, baboon, or man-like ape, on the contrary, has its cerebellum entirely hidden, posteriorly, by the cerebral lobes, and possesses a large posterior cornu, with a well-developed hippocampus minor. [illustration: fig. .--drawings of the internal casts of a man's and of a chimpanzee's skull, of the same absolute length, and placed in corresponding positions. 'a'. cerebrum; 'b'. cerebellum. the former drawing is taken from a cast in the museum of the royal college of surgeons, the latter from the photograph of the cast of a chimpanzee's skull, which illustrates the paper by mr. marshall 'on the brain of the chimpanzee' in the 'natural history review' for july, . the sharper definition of the lower edge of the cast of the cerebral chamber in the chimpanzee arises from the circumstance that the tentorium remained in that skull and not in the man's. the cast more accurately represents the brain in chimpanzee than in the man; and the great backward projection of the posterior lobes of the cerebrum of the former, beyond the cerebellum, is conspicuous.] in many of these creatures, such as the saimiri ('chrysothrix'), the cerebral lobes overlap and extend much further behind the cerebellum, in proportion, than they do in man (fig. )--and it is quite certain that, in all, the cerebellum is completely covered behind, by well-developed posterior lobes. the fact can be verified by every one who possesses the skull of any old or new world monkey. for, inasmuch as the brain in all mammals completely fills the cranial cavity, it is obvious that a cast of the interior of the skull will reproduce the general form of the brain, at any rate with such minute and, for the present purpose, utterly unimportant differences as may result from the absence of the enveloping membranes of the brain in the dry skull. but if such a cast be made in plaster, and compared with a similar cast of the interior of a human skull, it will be obvious that the cast of the cerebral chamber, representing the cerebrum of the ape, as completely covers over and overlaps the cast of the cerebellar chamber, representing the cerebellum, as it does in the man (fig. ). a careless observer, forgetting that a soft structure like the brain loses its proper shape the moment it is taken out of the skull, may indeed mistake the uncovered condition of the cerebellum of an extracted and distorted brain for the natural relations of the parts; but his error must become patent even to himself if he try to replace the brain within the cranial chamber. to suppose that the cerebellum of an ape is naturally uncovered behind is a miscomprehension comparable only to that of one who should imagine that a man's lungs always occupy but a small portion of the thoracic cavity--because they do so when the chest is opened, and their elasticity is no longer neutralized by the pressure of the air. and the error is the less excusable, as it must become apparent to every one who examines a section of the skull of any ape above a lemur, without taking the trouble to make a cast of it. for there is a very marked groove in every such skull, as in the human skull--which indicates the line of attachment of what is termed the 'tentorium'--a sort of parchment-like shelf, or partition, which, in the recent state, is interposed between the cerebrum and cerebellum, and prevents the former from pressing upon the latter. (see fig. .) this groove, therefore, indicates the line of separation between that part of the cranial cavity which contains the cerebrum, and that which contains the cerebellum; and as the brain exactly fills the cavity of the skull, it is obvious that the relations of these two parts of the cranial cavity at once informs us of the relations of their contents. now in man, in all the old-world, and in all the new-world simiae, with one exception, when the face is directed forwards, this line of attachment of the tentorium, or impression for the lateral sinus, as it is technically called, is nearly horizontal, and the cerebral chamber invariably overlaps or projects behind the cerebellar chamber. in the howler monkey or 'mycetes' (see fig. ), the line passes obliquely upwards and backwards, and the cerebral overlap is almost nil; while in the lemurs, as in the lower mammals, the line is much more inclined in the same direction, and the cerebellar chamber projects considerably beyond the cerebral. when the gravest errors respecting points so easily settled as this question respecting the posterior lobes can be authoritatively propounded, it is no wonder that matters of observation, of no very complex character, but still requiring a certain amount of care, should have fared worse. any one who cannot see the posterior lobe in an ape's brain is not likely to give a very valuable opinion respecting the posterior cornu or the hippocampus minor. if a man cannot see a church, it is preposterous to take his opinion about its altar-piece or painted window--so that i do not feel bound to enter upon any discussion of these points, but content myself with assuring the reader that the posterior cornu and the hippocampus minor, have now been seen--usually, at least as well developed as in man, and often better--not only in the chimpanzee, the orang, and the gibbon, but in all the genera of the old world baboons and monkeys, and in most of the new world forms, including the marmosets. [illustration: fig. .--drawings of the cerebral hemispheres of a man and of a chimpanzee of the same length, in order to show the relative proportions of the parts: the former taken from a specimen, which mr. flower, conservator of the museum of the royal college of surgeons, was good enough to dissect for me; the latter, from the photograph of a similarly dissected chimpanzee's brain, given in mr. marshall's paper above referred to. 'a', posterior lobe; 'b', lateral ventricle; 'c', posterior cornu; 'x', the hippocampus minor.] in fact, all the abundant and trustworthy evidence (consisting of the results of careful investigations directed to the determination of these very questions, by skilled anatomists) which we now possess, leads to the conviction that, so far from the posterior lobe, the posterior cornu, and the hippocampus minor, being structures peculiar to and characteristic of man, as they have been over and over again asserted to be, even after the publication of the clearest demonstration of the reverse, it is precisely these structures which are the most marked cerebral characters common to man with the apes. they are among the most distinctly simian peculiarities which the human organism exhibits. as to the convolutions, the brains of the apes exhibit every stage of progress, from the almost smooth brain of the marmoset, to the orang and the chimpanzee, which fall but little below man. and it is most remarkable that, as soon as all the principal sulci appear, the pattern according to which they are arranged is identical with that of the corresponding sulci of man. the surface of the brain of a monkey exhibits a sort of skeleton map of man's, and in the man-like apes the details become more and more filled in, until it is only in minor characters, such as the greater excavation of the anterior lobes, the constant presence of fissures usually absent in man, and the different disposition and proportions of some convolutions, that the chimpanzee's or the orang's brain can be structurally distinguished from man's. so far as cerebral structure goes, therefore, it is clear that man differs less from the chimpanzee or the orang, than these do even from the monkeys, and that the difference between the brains of the chimpanzee and of man is almost insignificant, when compared with that between the chimpanzee brain and that of a lemur. it must not be overlooked, however, that there is a very striking difference in absolute mass and weight between the lowest human brain and that of the highest ape--a difference which is all the more remarkable when we recollect that a full grown gorilla is probably pretty nearly twice as heavy as a bosjes man, or as many an european woman. it may be doubted whether a healthy human adult brain ever weighed less than thirty-one or two ounces, or that the heaviest gorilla brain has exceeded twenty ounces. this is a very noteworthy circumstance, and doubtless will one day help to furnish an explanation of the great gulf which intervenes between the lowest man and the highest ape in intellectual power; [ ] but it has little systematic value, for the simple reason that, as may be concluded from what has been already said respecting cranial capacity, the difference in weight of brain between the highest and the lowest men is far greater, both relatively and absolutely, than that between the lowest man and the highest ape. the latter, as has been seen, is represented by, say twelve ounces of cerebral substance absolutely, or by : relatively; but as the largest recorded human brain weighed between and ounces, the former difference is represented by more than ounces absolutely, or by : relatively. regarded systematically, the cerebral differences of man and apes are not of more than generic value; his family distinction resting chiefly on his dentition, his pelvis, and his lower limbs. a man born dumb, notwithstanding his great cerebral mass and his inheritance of strong intellectual instincts, would be capable of few higher intellectual manifestations than an orang or a chimpanzee, if he were confined to the society of dumb associates. and yet there might not be the slightest discernible difference between his brain and that of a highly intelligent and cultivated person. the dumbness might be the result of a defective structure of the mouth, or of the tongue, or a mere defective innervation of these parts; or it might result from congenital deafness, caused by some minute defect of the internal ear, which only a careful anatomist could discover. the argument, that because there is an immense difference between a man's intelligence and an ape's, therefore, there must be an equally immense difference between their brains, appears to me to be about as well based as the reasoning by which one should endeavour to prove that, because there is a "great gulf" between a watch that keeps accurate time and another that will not go at all, there is therefore a great structural hiatus between the two watches. a hair in the balance-wheel, a little rust on a pinion, a bend in a tooth of the escapement, a something so slight that only the practised eye of the watchmaker can discover it, may be the source of all the difference. and believing, as i do, with cuvier, that the possession of articulate speech is the grand distinctive character of man (whether it be absolutely peculiar to him or not), i find it very easy to comprehend, that some equally inconspicuous structural difference may have been the primary cause of the immeasurable and practically infinite divergence of the human from the simian stirps. thus, whatever system of organs be studied, the comparison of their modifications in the ape series leads to one and the same result--that the structural differences which separate man from the gorilla and the chimpanzee are not so great as those which separate the gorilla from the lower apes. but in enunciating this important truth i must guard myself against a form of misunderstanding, which is very prevalent. i find, in fact, that those who endeavour to teach what nature so clearly shows us in this matter, are liable to have their opinions misrepresented and their phraseology garbled, until they seem to say that the structural differences between man and even the highest apes are small and insignificant. let me take this opportunity then of distinctly asserting, on the contrary, that they are great and significant; that every bone of a gorilla bears marks by which it might be distinguished from the corresponding bone of a man; and that, in the present creation, at any rate, no intermediate link bridges over the gap between 'homo' and 'troglodytes'. it would be no less wrong than absurd to deny the existence of this chasm; but it is at least equally wrong and absurd to exaggerate its magnitude, and, resting on the admitted fact of its existence, to refuse to inquire whether it is wide or narrow. remember, if you will, that there is no existing link between man and the gorilla, but do not forget that there is a no less sharp line of demarcation, a no less complete absence of any transitional form, between the gorilla and the orang, or the orang and the gibbon. i say, not less sharp, though it is somewhat narrower. the structural differences between man and the man-like apes certainly justify our regarding him as constituting a family apart from them; though, inasmuch as he differs less from them than they do from other families of the same order, there can be no justification for placing him in a distinct order. and thus the sagacious foresight of the great lawgiver of systematic zoology, linnaeus, becomes justified, and a century of anatomical research brings us back to his conclusion, that man is a member of the same order (for which the linnaean term primates ought to be retained) as the apes and lemurs. this order is now divisible into seven families, of about equal systematic value: the first, the anthropini, contains man alone; the second, the catarhini, embraces the old-world apes; the third, the platyrhini, all new-world apes, except the marmosets; the fourth, the arctopithecini, contains the marmosets; the fifth, the lemurini, the lemurs--from which 'cheiromys' should probably be excluded to form a sixth distinct family, the cheiromyini; while the seventh, the galeopithecini, contains only the flying lemur 'galeopithecus',--a strange form which almost touches on the bats, as the 'cheiromys' puts on a rodent clothing, and the lemurs simulate insectivora. perhaps no order of mammals presents us with so extraordinary a series of gradations as this--leading us insensibly from the crown and summit of the animal creation down to creatures, from which there is but a step, as it seems, to the lowest, smallest, and least intelligent of the placental mammalia. it is as if nature herself had foreseen the arrogance of man, and with roman severity had provided that his intellect, by its very triumphs, should call into prominence the slaves, admonishing the conqueror that he is but dust. these are the chief facts, this the immediate conclusion from them to which i adverted in the commencement of this essay. the facts, i believe, cannot be disputed; and if so, the conclusion appears to me to be inevitable. but if man be separated by no greater structural barrier from the brutes than they are from one another--then it seems to follow that if any process of physical causation can be discovered by which the genera and families of ordinary animals have been produced, that process of causation is amply sufficient to account for the origin of man. in other words, if it could be shown that the marmosets, for example, have arisen by gradual modification of the ordinary platyrhini, or that both marmosets and platyrhini are modified ramifications of a primitive stock--then, there would be no rational ground for doubting that man might have originated, in the one case, by the gradual modification of a man-like ape; or, in the other case, as a ramification of the same primitive stock as those apes. at the present moment, but one such process of physical causation has any evidence in its favour; or, in other words, there is but one hypothesis regarding the origin of species of animals in general which has any scientific existence--that propounded by mr. darwin. for lamarck, sagacious as many of his views were, mingled them with so much that was crude and even absurd, as to neutralize the benefit which his originality might have effected, had he been a more sober and cautious thinker; and though i have heard of the announcement of a formula touching "the ordained continuous becoming of organic forms," it is obvious that it is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible, and that a qua-qua-versal proposition of this kind, which may be read backwards, or forwards, or sideways, with exactly the same amount of signification, does not really exist, though it may seem to do so. at the present moment, therefore, the question of the relation of man to the lower animals resolves itself, in the end, into the larger question of the tenability, or untenability of mr. darwin's views. but here we enter upon difficult ground, and it behoves us to define our exact position with the greatest care. it cannot be doubted, i think, that mr. darwin has satisfactorily proved that what he terms selection, or selective modification, must occur, and does occur, in nature; and he has also proved to superfluity that such selection is competent to produce forms as distinct, structurally, as some genera even are. if the animated world presented us with none but structural differences, i should have no hesitation in saying that mr. darwin had demonstrated the existence of a true physical cause, amply competent to account for the origin of living species, and of man among the rest. but, in addition to their structural distinctions, the species of animals and plants, or at least a great number of them, exhibit physiological characters--what are known as distinct species, structurally, being for the most part either altogether incompetent to breed one with another; or if they breed, the resulting mule, or hybrid, is unable to perpetuate its race with another hybrid of the same kind. a true physical cause is, however, admitted to be such only on one condition--that it shall account for all the phenomena which come within the range of its operation. if it is inconsistent with any one phenomenon, it must be rejected; if it fails to explain any one phenomenon, it is so far weak, so far to be suspected; though it may have a perfect right to claim provisional acceptance. now, mr. darwin's hypothesis is not, so far as i am aware, inconsistent with any known biological fact; on the contrary, if admitted, the facts of development, of comparative anatomy, of geographical distribution, and of palaeontology, become connected together, and exhibit a meaning such as they never possessed before; and i, for one, am fully convinced, that if not precisely true, that hypothesis is as near an approximation to the truth as, for example, the copernican hypothesis was to the true theory of the planetary motions. but, for all this, our acceptance of the darwinian hypothesis must be provisional so long as one link in the chain of evidence is wanting; and so long as all the animals and plants certainly produced by selective breeding from a common stock are fertile, and their progeny are fertile with one another, that link will be wanting. for, so long, selective breeding will not be proved to be competent to do all that is required of it to produce natural species. i have put this conclusion as strongly as possible before the reader, because the last position in which i wish to find myself is that of an advocate for mr. darwin's, or any other views--if by an advocate is meant one whose business it is to smooth over real difficulties, and to persuade where he cannot convince. in justice to mr. darwin, however, it must be admitted that the conditions of fertility and sterility are very ill understood, and that every day's advance in knowledge leads us to regard the hiatus in his evidence as of less and less importance, when set against the multitude of facts which harmonize with, or receive an explanation from, his doctrines. i adopt mr. darwin's hypothesis, therefore, subject to the production of proof that physiological species may be produced by selective breeding; just as a physical philosopher may accept the undulatory theory of light, subject to the proof of the existence of the hypothetical ether; or as the chemist adopts the atomic theory, subject to the proof of the existence of atoms; and for exactly the same reasons, namely, that it has an immense amount of prima facie probability: that it is the only means at present within reach of reducing the chaos of observed facts to order; and lastly, that it is the most powerful instrument of investigation which has been presented to naturalists since the invention of the natural system of classification, and the commencement of the systematic study of embryology. but even leaving mr. darwin's views aside, the whole analogy of natural operations furnishes so complete and crushing an argument against the intervention of any but what are termed secondary causes, in the production of all the phenomena of the universe; that, in view of the intimate relations between man and the rest of the living world, and between the forces exerted by the latter and all other forces, i can see no excuse for doubting that all are co-ordinated terms of nature's great progression, from the formless to the formed--from the inorganic to the organic--from blind force to conscious intellect and will. science has fulfilled her function when she has ascertained and enunciated truth; and were these pages addressed to men of science only, i should now close this essay, knowing that my colleagues have learned to respect nothing but evidence, and to believe that their highest duty lies in submitting to it, however it may jar against their inclinations. but desiring, as i do, to reach the wider circle of the intelligent public, it would be unworthy cowardice were i to ignore the repugnance with which the majority of my readers are likely to meet the conclusions to which the most careful and conscientious study i have been able to give to this matter, has led me. on all sides i shall hear the cry--"we are men and women, not a mere better sort of apes, a little longer in the leg, more compact in the foot, and bigger in brain than your brutal chimpanzees and gorillas. the power of knowledge--the conscience of good and evil--the pitiful tenderness of human affections, raise us out of all real fellowship with the brutes, however closely they may seem to approximate us." to this i can only reply that the exclamation would be most just and would have my own entire sympathy, if it were only relevant. but, it is not i who seek to base man's dignity upon his great toe, or insinuate that we are lost if an ape has a hippocampus minor. on the contrary, i have done my best to sweep away this vanity. i have endeavoured to show that no absolute structural line of demarcation, wider than that between the animals which immediately succeed us in the scale, can be drawn between the animal world and ourselves; and i may add the expression of my belief that the attempt to draw a psychical distinction is equally futile, and that even the highest faculties of feeling and of intellect begin to germinate in lower forms of life. [ ] at the same time, no one is more strongly convinced than i am of the vastness of the gulf between civilized man and the brutes; or is more certain that whether 'from' them or not, he is assuredly not 'of' them. no one is less disposed to think lightly of the present dignity, or desparingly of the future hopes, of the only consciously intelligent denizen of this world. we are indeed told by those who assume authority in these matters, that the two sets of opinions are incompatible, and that the belief in the unity of origin of man and brutes involves the brutalization and degradation of the former. but is this really so? could not a sensible child confute by obvious arguments, the shallow rhetoricians who would force this conclusion upon us? is it, indeed, true, that the poet, or the philosopher, or the artist whose genius is the glory of his age, is degraded from his high estate by the undoubted historical probability, not to say certainty, that he is the direct descendant of some naked and bestial savage, whose intelligence was just sufficient to make him a little more cunning than the fox, and by so much more dangerous than the tiger? or is he bound to howl and grovel on all fours because of the wholly unquestionable fact, that he was once an egg, which no ordinary power of discrimination could distinguish from that of a dog? or is the philanthropist or the saint to give up his endeavours to lead a noble life, because the simplest study of man's nature reveals, at its foundations, all the selfish passions and fierce appetites of the merest quadruped? is mother-love vile because a hen shows it, or fidelity base because dogs possess it? the common sense of the mass of mankind will answer these questions without a moment's hesitation. healthy humanity, finding itself hard pressed to escape from real sin and degradation, will leave the brooding over speculative pollution to the cynics and the 'righteous overmuch' who, disagreeing in everything else, unite in blind insensibility to the nobleness of the visible world, and in inability to appreciate the grandeur of the place man occupies therein. nay more, thoughtful men, once escaped from the blinding influences of traditional prejudice, will find in the lowly stock whence man has sprung, the best evidence of the splendour of his capacities; and will discern in his long progress through the past, a reasonable ground of faith in his attainment of a nobler future. they will remember that in comparing civilised man with the animal world, one is as the alpine traveller, who sees the mountains soaring into the sky and can hardly discern where the deep shadowed crags and roseate peaks end, and where the clouds of heaven begin. surely the awe-struck voyager may be excused if, at first, he refuses to believe the geologist, who tells him that these glorious masses are, after all, the hardened mud of primeval seas, or the cooled slag of subterranean furnaces--of one substance with the dullest clay, but raised by inward forces to that place of proud and seemingly inaccessible glory. but the geologist is right; and due reflection on his teachings, instead of diminishing our reverence and our wonder, adds all the force of intellectual sublimity to the mere aesthetic intuition of the uninstructed beholder. and after passion and prejudice have died away, the same result will attend the teachings of the naturalist respecting that great alps and andes of the living world--man. our reverence for the nobility of manhood will not be lessened by the knowledge that man is, in substance and in structure, one with the brutes; for, he alone possesses the marvellous endowment of intelligible and rational speech, whereby, in the secular period of his existence, he has slowly accumulated and organized the experience which is almost wholly lost with the cessation of every individual life in other animals; so that now he stands raised upon it as on a mountain top, far above the level of his humble fellows, and transfigured from his grosser nature by reflecting, here and there, a ray from the infinite source of truth. 'a succinct history of the controversy respecting the cerebral structure of man and the apes.' up to the year all anatomists of authority, who had occupied themselves with the cerebral structure of the apes--cuvier, tiedemann, sandifort, vrolik, isidore g. st. hilaire, schroeder van der kolk, gratiolet--were agreed that the brain of the apes possesses a posterior lobe. tiedemann, in , figured and acknowledged in the text of his 'icones' the existence of the posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle in the apes, not only under the title of 'scrobiculus parvus loco cornu posterioris'--a fact which has been paraded--but as 'cornu posterius' ('icones', p. ), a circumstance which has been, as sedulously, kept in the background. cuvier ('lecons', t. iii. p. ) says, "the anterior or lateral ventricles possess a digital cavity [posterior cornu] only in man and the apes...its presence depends on that of the posterior lobes." schroeder van der kolk and vrolik, and gratiolet, had also figured and described the posterior cornu in various apes. as to the hippocampus minor tiedemann had erroneously asserted its absence in the apes; but schroeder van der kolk and vrolik had pointed out the existence of what they considered a rudimentary one in the chimpanzee, and gratiolet had expressly affirmed its existence in these animals. such was the state of our information on these subjects in the year . in the year , however, professor owen, either in ignorance of these well-known facts or else unjustifiably suppressing them, submitted to the linnaean society a paper "on the characters, principles of division, and primary groups of the class mammalia," which was printed in the society's journal, and contains the following passage:--"in man, the brain presents an ascensive step in development, higher and more strongly marked than that by which the preceding sub-class was distinguished from the one below it. not only do the cerebral hemispheres overlap and the olfactory lobes and cerebellum, but they extend in advance of the one and further back than the other. the posterior development is so marked, that anatomists have assigned to that part the character of a third lobe; 'it is peculiar to the genus homo, and equally peculiar is the posterior horn of the lateral ventricle and the 'hippocampus minor,' which characterise the hind lobe of each hemisphere'."--'journal of the proceedings of the linnaean society, vol. ii. p. . as the essay in which this passage stands had no less ambitious an aim than the remodelling of the classification of the mammalia, its author might be supposed to have written under a sense of peculiar responsibility, and to have tested, with especial care, the statements he ventured to promulgate. and even if this be expecting too much, hastiness, or want of opportunity for due deliberation, cannot now be pleaded in extenuation of any shortcomings; for the propositions cited were repeated two years afterwards in the reade lecture, delivered before so grave a body as the university of cambridge, in . when the assertions, which i have italicised in the above extract, first came under my notice, i was not a little astonished at so flat a contradiction of the doctrines current among well-informed anatomists; but, not unnaturally imagining that the deliberate statements of a responsible person must have some foundation in fact, i deemed it my duty to investigate the subject anew before the time at which it would be my business to lecture thereupon came round. the result of my inquiries was to prove that mr. owen's three assertions, that "the third lobe, the posterior horn of the lateral ventricle, and the hippocampus minor," are "pecular to the genus 'homo'," are contrary to the plainest facts. i communicated this conclusion to the students of my class; and then, having no desire to embark in a controversy which could not redound to the honour of british science, whatever its issue, i turned to more congenial occupations. the time speedily arrived, however, when a persistence in this reticence would have involved me in an unworthy paltering with truth. at the meeting of the british association at oxford, in , professor owen repeated these assertions in my presence, and, of course, i immediately gave them a direct and unqualified contradiction, pledging myself to justify that unusual procedure elsewhere. i redeemed that pledge by publishing, in the january number of the 'natural history review' for , an article wherein the truth of the three following propositions was fully demonstrated (l. c. p. ):-- " . that the third lobe is neither peculiar to, nor characteristic of, man, seeing that it exists in all the higher quadrumana." " . that the posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle is neither peculiar to, nor characteristic of, man, inasmuch as it also exists in the higher quadrumana." " . that the 'hippocampus minor' is neither pecular to, nor characteristic of, man, as it is found in certain of the higher quadrumana." furthermore, this paper contains the following paragraph (p. ): "and lastly, schroeder van der kolk and vrolik (op. cit. p. ), though they particularly note that 'the lateral ventricle is distinguished from that of man by the very defective proportions of the posterior cornu, wherein only a stripe is visible as an indication of the hippocampus minor;' yet the figure , in their second plate, shows that this posterior cornu is a perfectly distinct and unmistakeable structure, quite as large as it often is in man. it is the more remarkable that professor owen should have overlooked the explicit statement and figure of these authors, as it is quite obvious, on comparison of the figures, that his woodcut of the brain of a chimpanzee (l. c. p. ) is a reduced copy of the second figure of messrs. schroeder van der kolk and vrolik's first plate. "as m. gratiolet (l. c. p. ), however is careful to remark, 'unfortunately the brain which they have taken as a model was greatly altered (profondement affaisse), whence the general form of the brain is given in these plates in a manner which is altogether incorrect.' indeed, it is perfectly obvious, from a comparison of a section of the skull of the chimpanzee with these figures, that such is the case; and it is greatly to be regretted that so inadequate a figure should have been taken as a typical representation of the chimpanzee's brain." from this time forth, the untenability of his position might have been as apparent to professor owen as it was to every one else; but, so far from retracting the grave errors into which he had fallen, professor owen has persisted in and reiterated them; first, in a lecture delivered before the royal institution on the th of march, , which is admitted to have been accurately reproduced in the 'athenaeum' for the rd of the same month, in a letter addressed by professor owen to that journal on the th of march. the 'athenaeum report was accompanied by a diagram purporting to represent a gorilla's brain, but in reality so extraordinary a misrepresentation, that professor owen substantially, though not explicitly, withdraws it in the letter in question. in amending this error, however, professor owen fell into another of much graver import, as his communication concludes with the following paragraph: "for the true proportion in which the cerebrum covers the cerebellum in the highest apes, reference should be made to the figure of the undissected brain of the chimpanzee in my 'reade's lecture on the classification, etc., of the mammalia', p. , fig. , vo. ." it would not be credible, if it were not unfortunately true, that this figure, to which the trusting public is referred, without a word of qualification, "for the true proportion in which the cerebrum covers the cerebellum in the highest apes," is exactly that unacknowledged copy of schroeder van der kolk and vrolik's figure whose utter inaccuracy had been pointed out years before by gratiolet, and had been brought to professor owen's knowledge by myself in the passage of my article in the 'natural history review' above quoted. i drew public attention to this circumstance again in my reply to professor owen, published in the 'athenaeum' for april th, ; but the exploded figure was reproduced once more by professor owen, without the slightest allusion to its inaccuracy, in the 'annals of natural history' for june ! this proved too much for the patience of the original authors of the figure, messrs. schroeder van der kolk and vrolik, who, in a note addressed to the academy of amsterdam, of which they were members, declared themselves to be, though decided opponents of all forms of the doctrine of progressive development, above all things, lovers of truth: and that, therefore, at whatever risk of seeming to lend support to views which they disliked, they felt it their duty to take the first opportunity of publicly repudiating professor owen's misuse of their authority. in this note they frankly admitted the justice of the criticisms of m. gratiolet, quoted above, and they illustrated, by new and careful figures, the posterior lobe, the posterior cornu, and the hippocampus minor of the orang. furthermore, having demonstrated the parts, at one of the sittings of the academy, they add, "la presence des parties contestees y a ete universellement reconnue par les anatomistes presents a la seance. le seul doute qui soit reste se rapporte au pes hippocampi minor.... a l'etat frais l'indice du petit pied d'hippocampe etait plus prononce que maintenant." professor owen repeated his erroneous assertions at the meeting of the british association in , and again, without any obvious necessity, and without adducing a single new fact or new argument, or being able in any way to meet the crushing evidence from original dissections of numerous apes' brains, which had in the meanwhile been brought forward by prof. rolleston, [ ] f.r.s., mr. marshall, [ ] f.r.s., mr. flower, [ ] mr. turner, [ ] and myself, [ ] revived the subject at the cambridge meeting of the same body in . not content with the tolerably vigorous repudiation which these unprecedented proceedings met with in section d, professor owen sanctioned the publication of a version of his own statements, accompanied by a strange misrepresentation of mine (as may be seen by comparison of the 'times' report of the discussion), in the 'medical times' for october th, . i subjoin the conclusion of my reply in the same journal for october th. "if this were a question of opinion, or a question of interpretation of parts or of terms,--were it even a question of observation in which the testimony of my own senses alone was pitted against that of another person, i should adopt a very different tone in discussing this matter. i should, in all humility, admit the likelihood of having myself erred in judgment, failed in knowledge, or been blinded by prejudice. "but no one pretends now, that the controversy is one of the terms or of opinions. novel and devoid of authority as some of professor owen's proposed definitions may have been, they might be accepted without changing the great features of the case. hence though special investigations into these matters have been undertaken during the last two years by dr. allen thomson, by dr. rolleston, by mr. marshall, and by mr. flower, all, as you are aware, anatomists of repute in this country, and by professors schroeder van der kolk, and vrolik (whom professor owen incautiously tried to press into his own service) on the continent, all these able and conscientious observers have with one accord testified to the accuracy of my statements, and to the utter baselessness of the assertions of professor owen. even the venerable rudolph wagner, whom no man will accuse of progressionist proclivities, has raised his voice on the same side; while not a single anatomist, great or small, has supported professor owen. "now, i do not mean to suggest that scientific differences should be settled by universal suffrage, but i do conceive that solid proofs must be met by something more than empty and unsupported assertions. yet during the two years through which this preposterous controversy has dragged its weary length, professor owen has not ventured to bring forward a single preparation in support of his often-repeated assertions. "the case stands thus, therefore:--not only are the statements made by me in consonance with the doctrines of the best older authorities, and with those of all recent investigators, but i am quite ready to demonstrate them on the first monkey that comes to hand; while professor owen's assertions are not only in diametrical opposition to both old and new authorities, but he has not produced, and, i will add, cannot produce, a single preparation which justifies them" i now leave this subject, for the present.--for the credit of my calling i should be glad to be, hereafter, for ever silent upon it. but, unfortunately, this is a matter upon which, after all that has occurred, no mistake or confusion of terms is possible--and in affirming that the posterior lobe, the posterior cornu, and the hippocampus minor exist in certain apes, i am stating either that which is true, or that which i must know to be false. the question has thus become one of personal veracity. for myself, i will accept no other issue than this, grave as it is, to the present controversy. footnotes: [footnote : it will be understood that, in the preceding essay, i have selected for notice from the vast mass of papers which have been written upon the man-like apes, only those which seem to me to be of special moment. [footnote : we are not at present thoroughly acquainted with the brain of the gorilla, and therefore, in discussing cerebral characters, i shall take that of the chimpanzee as my highest term among the apes.] [footnote : "more than once," says peter camper, "have i met with more than six lumbar vertebrae in man.... once i found thirteen ribs and four lumbar vertebrae." fallopius noted thirteen pair of ribs and only four lumbar vertebrae; and eustachius once found eleven dorsal vertebrae and six lumbar vertebrae.--'oeuvres de pierre camper', t. , p. . as tyson states, his 'pygmie' had thirteen pair of ribs and five lumbar vertebrae. the question of the curves of the spinal column in the apes requires further investigation.] [footnote : it has been affirmed that hindoo crania sometimes contain as little as ounces of water, which would give a capacity of about cubic inches. the minimum capacity which i have assumed above, however, is based upon the valuable tables published by professor r. wagner in his "vorstudien zu einer wissenschaftlichen morphologie und physiologie des menschlichen gehirns." as the result of the careful weighing of more than human brains, professor wagner states that one-half weighed between and grammes, and that about two-ninths, consisting for the most part of male brains, exceed grammes. the lightest brain of an adult male, with sound mental faculties, recorded by wagner, weighed grammes. as a gramme equals . grains, and a cubic inch of water contains . grains, this is equivalent to cubic inches of water; so that as brain is heavier than water, we are perfectly safe against erring on the side of diminution in taking this as the smallest capacity of any adult male human brain. the only adult male brain, weighing as little as grammes, is that of an idiot; but the brain of an adult woman, against the soundness of whose faculties nothing appears, weighed as little as grammes ( . cubic inches of water); and reid gives an adult female brain of still smaller capacity. the heaviest brain ( grammes, or about cubic inches) was, however, that of a woman; next to it comes the brain of cuvier ( grammes), then byron ( grammes), and then an insane person ( grammes). the lightest adult brain recorded ( grammes) was that of an idiotic female. the brains of five children, four years old, weighed between and grammes. so that it may be safely said, that an average european child of four years old has a brain twice as large as that of an adult gorilla.] [footnote : in speaking of the foot of his "pygmie," tyson remarks, p. :-- "but this part in the formation and in its function too, being liker a hand than a foot: for the distinguishing this sort of animals from others, i have thought whether it might not be reckoned and called rather quadru-manus than quadrupes, 'i.e.' a four-handed rather than a four-footed animal."] [footnote : i say 'help' to furnish: for i by no means believe that it was any original difference of cerebral quality, or quantity which caused that divergence between the human and the pithecoid stirpes, which has ended in the present enormous gulf between them. it is no doubt perfectly true, in a certain sense, that all difference of function is a result of difference of structure; or, in other words, of difference in the combination of the primary molecular forces of living substance; and, starting from this undeniable axiom, objectors occasionally, and with much seeming plausibility, argue that the vast intellectual chasm between the ape and man implies a corresponding structural chasm in the organs of the intellectual functions; so that, it is said, the non-discovery of such vast differences proves, not that they are absent, but that science is incompetent to detect them. a very little consideration, however, will, i think, show the fallacy of this reasoning. its validity hangs upon the assumption, that intellectual power depends altogether on the brain--whereas the brain is only one condition out of many on which intellectual manifestations depend; the others being, chiefly, the organs of the senses and the motor apparatuses, especially those which are concerned in prehension and in the production of articulate speech.] [footnote : it is so rare a pleasure for me to find professor owen's opinions in entire accordance with my own, that i cannot forbear from quoting a paragraph which appeared in his essay "on the characters, etc., of the class mammalia," in the 'journal of the proceedings of the linnean society of london' for , but is unaccountably omitted in the "reade lecture" delivered before the university of cambridge two years later, which is otherwise nearly a reprint of the paper in question. prof. owen writes: "not being able to appreciate or conceive of the distinction between the psychical phenomena of a chimpanzee, and of a boschisman or of an aztec, with arrested brain growth, as being of a nature so essential as to preclude a comparison between them, or as being other than a difference of degree, i cannot shut my eyes to the significance of that all-pervading similitude of structure--every tooth, every bone, strictly homologous--which makes the determination of the difference between 'homo' and 'pithecus' the anatomist's difficulty." surely it is a little singular, that the 'anatomist,' who finds it 'difficult' to 'determine the difference' between 'homo' and 'pithecus', should yet range them on anatomical grounds, in distinct sub-classes!] [footnotes : on the affinities of the brain of the orang. 'nat. hist. review', april, .] [footnotes : on the brain of a young chimpanzee. 'ibid.', july, .] [footnotes : on the posterior lobes of the cerebrum of the quadrumana. 'philosophical transactions', .] [footnotes : on the anatomical relations of the surfaces of the tentorium to the cerebrum and cerebellum in man and the lower mammals. 'proceedings of the royal society of edinburgh', march, .] [footnotes : on the brain of ateles. 'proceedings of zoological society', .] transcriber notes: words or letters contained within underscores, i.e. _everyman's library_, are words which were in italics in the original. letters or numbers preceded by a carat symbol, ^, indicate letters or numbers which were in superscript in the original. letters with a macron are indicated in the following manner: [=a]. additional transcriber notes can be found at the end of this project. everyman's library edited by ernest rhys science huxley's essays with an introduction by sir oliver lodge the publishers of _everyman's library_ will be pleased to send freely to all applicants a list of the published and projected volumes to be comprised under the following twelve headings: travel science fiction theology & philosophy history classical children's books essays oratory poetry & drama biography romance [illustration] in two styles of binding, cloth, flat back, coloured top, and leather, round corners, gilt top. london: j. m. dent & co. [illustration: hoc solum scio quod nihil scio] man's place in nature and other essays by thomas henry huxley [illustration] london: published by j. m. dent. & co. and in new york by e. p. dutton & co. _first edition, february _ _reprinted july _ contents page i. on the natural history of the man-like apes ii. on the relations of man to the lower animals iii. on some fossil remains of man iv. the present condition of organic nature v. the past condition of organic nature vi. the method by which the causes of the present and past conditions of organic nature are to be discovered.--the origination of living beings vii. the perpetuation of living beings, hereditary transmission and variation viii. the conditions of existence as affecting the perpetuation of living beings ix. a critical examination of the position of mr. darwin's work, "on the origin of species," in relation to the complete theory of the causes of the phenomena of organic nature x. on the educational value of the natural history sciences (lecture delivered at st. martin's hall, july , ). xi. on the persistent types of animal life (lecture delivered at the royal institution, june , .) xii. time and life (_macmillan's magazine_, december .) xiii. darwin on the origin of species (_westminster review_, april .) xiv. the darwinian hypothesis (_times_, december , .) xv. a lobster; or, the study of zoology (lecture delivered at south kensington museum, may , ). introduction forty years ago the position of scientific studies was not so firmly established as it is to-day, and a conflict was necessary to secure their general recognition. the forces of obscurantism and of free and easy dogmatism were arrayed against them; and, just as in former centuries astronomy, and in more recent times geology, so in our own lifetime biology, has had to offer a harsh and fighting front, lest its progress be impeded by the hostility born of preconceived opinions, and by the bigotry of self-appointed guardians of conservative views. the man who probably did as much as any to fight the battle of science in the nineteenth century, and secure the victory for free enquiry and progressive knowledge, is thomas henry huxley; and it is an interesting fact that already the lapse of time is making it possible to bring his writings in cheap form to the notice of a multitude of interested readers. the pugnacious attitude, however, which, forty years ago, was appropriate, has become a little antique now; the conflict is not indeed over, but it has either totally shifted its ground, or is continued on the old battlefield chiefly by survivors, and by a few of a younger generation who have been brought up in the old spirit. the truths of materialism now run but little risk of being denied or ignored, they run perhaps some danger of being exaggerated. brilliantly true and successful in their own territory, they are occasionally pushed by enthusiastic disciples over the frontier line into regions where they can do nothing but break down. as if enthusiastic worshippers of motor-cars, proud of their performance on the good roads of france, should take them over into the sahara or essay them on a polar expedition. that represents the mistake which, in modern times, by careless thinkers, is being made. they tend to press the materialistic statements and scientific doctrines of a great man like huxley, as if they were co-extensive with all existence. this is not really a widening of the materialistic aspect of things, it is a cramping of everything else; it is an attempt to limit the universe to one of its aspects. but the mistake is not made solely, nor even chiefly, by those eager disciples who are pursuing the delusive gleam of a materialistic philosophy--for these there is hope,--to attempt is a healthy exercise, and they will find out their mistake in time; but the mistake is also made by those who are specially impressed with the spiritual side of things, who so delight to see guidance and management everywhere, that they wish to blind their eyes to the very mechanism whereby it is accomplished. they think that those who point out and earnestly study the mechanism are undermining the foundations of faith. nothing of the kind. a traveller in the deck-cabin of an atlantic liner may prefer to ignore the engines and the firemen, and all the machinery and toil which is urging him luxuriously forward over the waves in the sunshine; he may try to imagine that he is on a sailing vessel propelled by the free air of heaven alone; but there is just as much utilization of natural forces to a desired end in one case of navigation as in the other, and every detail of the steamship, down to the last drop of sweat from a fireman's grimy body, is an undeniable reality. there are people who still resent the conclusions of biology as to man's place in nature, and try to counteract them; but, as the late professor ritchie said ("philosophical studies," page )-- "it is a mistake, which has constantly been made in the past by those who are anxious for the spiritual interests of man, to interfere with the changes which are going on in scientific conceptions. such interference has always ended in the defeat of the supporters of the quasi-scientific doctrines which the growing science of the time has discarded. theology interfered with galileo, and gained nothing in the end by its interference. astronomy, geology, biology, anthropology, historical criticism, have at different periods raised alarm in the minds of those who dread a materialistic view of man's nature; and with the very best intentions they have tried to fight the supposed enemy on his own ground, eagerly welcoming, for instance, every sign of disagreement between darwinians and lamarckians, or every dispute between different schools of historical critics, as if the spiritual well-being of mankind were bound up with the scientific beliefs of the seventeenth, or even earlier, century, as if _e.g._ it made all the difference in man's spiritual nature whether he was made directly out of inorganic dust or slowly ascended from lower organic forms. these are questions that must be settled by specialists. on the other hand, philosophic criticism is in place when the scientific specialist begins to dogmatize about the universe as a whole, when he speaks for example as if an accurate narrative of the various steps by which the lower forms of life have passed into the higher was a sufficient explanation to us of the mystery of existence." let it be understood, therefore, that science is one thing, and philosophy another: that science most properly concerns itself with matter and motion, and reduces phenomena, as far as it can, to mechanism. the more successfully it does that, the more it fulfils its end and aim; but when, on the strength of that achievement, it seeks to blossom into a philosophy, when it endeavours to conclude that its scope is complete and all-inclusive, that nothing exists in the universe but mechanism, and that the aspect of things from a scientific point of view is their only aspect,--then it is becoming narrow and bigoted and deserving of rebuke. such rebuke it received from huxley, such rebuke it will always receive from scientific men who realize properly the magnitude of existence and the vast potentialities of the universe. our opportunities of exploration are good as far as they go, but they are not extensive; we live as it were in the mortar of one of the stones of st. paul's cathedral; and yet so assiduously have we cultivated our faculties that we can trace something of the outline of the whole design and have begun to realize the plan of the building--a surprising feat for insects of limited faculty. and--continuing the parable--two schools of thought have arisen: one saying that it was conceived in the mind of an architect and designed and built wholly by him, the other saying that it was put together stone by stone in accordance with the laws of mechanics and physics. both statements are true, and those that emphasize the latter are not thereby denying the existence of christopher wren, though to the unwise enthusiasts on the side of design they may appear to be doing so. each side is stating a truth, and neither side is stating the whole truth. nor should we find it easy with all our efforts to state the whole truth exhaustively, even about such a thing as that. those who deny any side of truth are to that extent unbelievers, and huxley was righteously indignant with those shortsighted bigots who blasphemed against that aspect of divine truth which had been specially revealed to him. this is what he lived to preach, and to this he was faithful to the uttermost. let him be thought of as a devotee of truth, and a student of the more materialistic side of things, but never let him be thought of as a philosophical materialist or as one who abounded in cheap negations. the objection which it is necessary to express concerning materialism as a complete system is based not on its assertions but on its negations. in so far as it makes positive assertions, embodying the result of scientific discovery and even of scientific speculation based thereupon, there is no fault to find with it; but when, on the strength of that, it sets up to be a philosophy of the universe--all inclusive, therefore, and shutting out a number of truths otherwise perceived, or which appeal to other faculties, or which are equally true and are not really contradictory of legitimately materialistic statements--then it is that its insufficiency and narrowness have to be displayed. as professor ritchie said:--"the 'legitimate materialism of the sciences' simply means temporary and convenient abstraction from the cognitive conditions under which there are 'facts' or 'objects' for us at all; it is 'dogmatic materialism' which is metaphysics of the bad sort." it will be probably instructive, and it may be sufficient, if i show that two great leaders in scientific thought (one the greatest of all men of science who have yet lived), though well aware of much that could be said positively on the materialistic side, and very willing to admit or even to extend the province of science or exact knowledge to the uttermost, yet were very far from being philosophic materialists or from imagining that other modes of regarding the universe were thereby excluded. great leaders of thought, in fact, are not accustomed to take a narrow view of existence, or to suppose that one mode of regarding it, or one set of formulæ expressing it, can possibly be sufficient and complete. even a sheet of paper has two sides: a terrestrial globe presents different aspects from different points of view; a crystal has a variety of facets; and the totality of existence is not likely to be more simple than any of these--is not likely to be readily expressible in any form of words, or to be thoroughly conceivable by any human mind. it may be well to remember that sir isaac newton was a theist of the most pronounced and thorough conviction, although he had a great deal to do with the reduction of the major cosmos to mechanics, _i.e._, with its explanation by the elaborated machinery of simple forces; and he conceived it possible that, in the progress of science, this process of reduction to mechanics would continue till it embraced nearly all the phenomena of nature. (see extract below.) that, indeed, has been the effort of science ever since, and therein lies the legitimate basis for materialistic statements, though not for a materialistic philosophy. the following sound remarks concerning newton are taken from huxley's "hume," p. :-- "newton demonstrated all the host of heaven to be but the elements of a vast mechanism, regulated by the same laws as those which express the falling of a stone to the ground. there is a passage in the preface to the first edition of the 'principia' which shows that newton was penetrated, as completely as descartes, with the belief that all the phenomena of nature are expressible in terms of matter and motion:-- "'would that the rest of the phenomena of nature could be deduced by a like kind of reasoning from mechanical principles. for many circumstances lead me to suspect that all these phenomena may depend upon certain forces, in virtue of which the particles of bodies, by causes not yet known, are either mutually impelled against one another, and cohere into regular figures, or repel and recede from one another; which forces being unknown, philosophers have as yet explored nature in vain. but i hope that, either by this method of philosophizing, or by some other and better, the principles here laid down may throw some light upon the matter.'" here is a full-blown anticipation of an intelligible exposition of the universe in terms of matter and force--the substantial basis of what smaller men call materialism and develop into what they consider to be a materialistic philosophy. but there is no necessity for any such scheme; and professor huxley himself, who is commonly spoken of by half-informed people as if he were a philosophic materialist, was really nothing of the kind; for although, like newton, fully imbued with the mechanical doctrine, and of course far better informed concerning the biological departments of nature, and the discoveries which have in the last century been made,--and though he rightly regarded it as his mission to make the scientific point of view clear to his benighted contemporaries, and was full of enthusiasm for the facts on which materialists take their stand,--he saw clearly that these alone were insufficient for a philosophy. the following extracts from the hume volume will show that he entirely repudiated materialism as a satisfactory or complete philosophical system, and that he was especially severe on gratuitous denials applied to provinces beyond our scope:-- "while it is the summit of human wisdom to learn the limit of our faculties, it may be wise to recollect that we have no more right to make denials, than to put forth affirmatives, about what lies beyond that limit. whether either mind or matter has a 'substance' or not, is a problem which we are incompetent to discuss: and it is just as likely that the common notions upon the subject should be correct as any others.... 'the same principles which, at first view, lead to scepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense'" (p. ). "moreover, the ultimate forms of existence which we distinguish in our little speck of the universe are, possibly, only two out of infinite varieties of existence, not only analogous to matter and analogous to mind, but of kinds which we are not competent so much as to conceive,--in the midst of which, indeed, we might be set down, with no more notion of what was about us, than the worm in a flower-pot, on a london balcony, has of the life of the great city" (p. ). and again on pp. and :-- "it is worth any amount of trouble to ... know by one's own knowledge the great truth ... that the honest and rigorous following up of the argument which leads us to 'materialism' inevitably carries us beyond it." "to sum up. if the materialist affirms that the universe and all its phenomena are resolvable into matter and motion, berkeley replies, true; but what you call matter and motion are known to us only as forms of consciousness; their being is to be conceived or known; and the existence of a state of consciousness apart from a thinking mind is a contradiction in terms. "i conceive that this reasoning is irrefragable. and, therefore, if i were obliged to choose between absolute materialism and absolute idealism, i should feel compelled to accept the latter alternative." let the jubilant but uninstructed and comparatively ignorant amateur materialist therefore beware, and bethink himself twice or even thrice before he conceives that he understands the universe and is competent to pour scorn upon the intuitions and perceptions of great men in what may be to him alien regions of thought and experience. let him explain, if he can, what he means by his own identity, or the identity of any thinking or living being, which at different times consists of a totally different set of material particles. something there clearly is which confers personal identity and constitutes an individual: it is a property characteristic of every form of life, even the humblest; but it is not yet explained or understood, and it is no answer to assert gratuitously that there is some fundamental substance or material basis on which that identity depends, any more than it is an explanation to say that it depends upon a soul. these are all forms of words. as hume says, quoted by huxley with approval, in the work already cited, p. :-- "it is impossible to attach any definite meaning to the word 'substance,' when employed for the hypothetical substratum of soul and matter.... if it be said that our personal identity requires the assumption of a substance which remains the same while the accidents of perception shift and change, the question arises what is meant by personal identity?... a plant or an animal, in the course of its existence, from the condition of an egg or seed to the end of life, remains the same neither in form, nor in structure, nor in the matter of which it is composed: every attribute it possesses is constantly changing, and yet we say that it is always one and the same individual" (p. ). and in his own preface to the hume volume huxley expresses himself forcibly thus--equally antagonistic as was his wont to both ostensible friend and ostensible foe, as soon as they got off what he considered the straight path:-- "that which it may be well for us not to forget is, that the first-recorded judicial murder of a scientific thinker [socrates] was compassed and effected, not by a despot, nor by priests, but was brought about by eloquent demagogues.... clear knowledge of what one does not know is just as important as knowing what one does know.... "the development of exact natural knowledge in all its vast range, from physics to history and criticism, is the consequence of the working out, in this province, of the resolution to 'take nothing for truth without clear knowledge that it is such'; to consider all beliefs open to criticism; to regard the value of authority as neither greater nor less, than as much as it can prove itself to be worth. the modern spirit is not the spirit 'which always denies,' delighting only in destruction; still less is it that which builds castles in the air rather than not construct; it is that spirit which works and will work 'without haste and without rest,' gathering harvest after harvest of truth into its barns, and devouring error with unquenchable fire" (p. viii). the harvesting of truth is a fairly safe operation, for if some falsehood be inadvertently harvested along with the grain we may hope that, having a less robust and hardy nature, it will before long be detected by its decaying odour; but the rooting up and devouring of error with unquenchable fire is a more dangerous enterprise, inasmuch as flames are apt to spread beyond our control; and the lack of infallibility in the selection of error may to future generations become painfully apparent. the phrase represents a good healthy energetic mood however, and in a world liable to become overgrown with weeds and choked with refuse, the cleansing work of a firebrand may from time to time be a necessity, in order that the free wind of heaven and the sunlight may once more reach the fertile soil. but it is unfair to think of huxley even when young as a firebrand, though it is true that he was to some extent a man of war, and though the fierce and consuming mood is rather more prominent in his early writings than in his later work. a fighting attitude was inevitable forty years ago, because then the truths of biology were being received with hostility, and the free science and philosophy of a later time seemed likely to have a poor chance of life. but the world has changed or is changing now, the wholesome influences of fire have done their work, and it would be a rather barbarous anachronism to apply the same agency among the young green shoots of healthy learning which are springing up in the cleared ground. oliver lodge. . * * * * * among the earlier published works of t. h. huxley ( - ), and of the essays contained in this volume: "the darwinian hypothesis" first appeared in the _times_, dec. , ; "on the educational value of the natural history sciences" (address given at st. martin's hall), was published in ; "time and life" (_macmillan's magazine_), dec. ; "the origin of species" (_westminster review_), april ; "a lobster: or, the study of zoology," . "geological contemporaneity and persistent types of life" (address to geological society), , was re-published in "lay sermons," vol. viii.; "six lectures to working men on the phenomena of organic nature," , in "collected essays," vol. vii. "evidence as to man's place in nature," . of his other works, the translation by huxley and busk of "kölliker's manual of human histology," appeared in . "lectures on the elements of comparative anatomy," "elementary atlas of comparative osteology"; two science lectures, "the circulation of the blood" and "corals and coral reefs," and "lessons in elementary physiology," in . "introduction to the classification of animals," . "lay sermons, essays, and reviews," . "critiques and addresses," . "on yeast: a lecture," . "a manual of the anatomy of vertebrated animals," . "manual of the anatomy of invertebrated animals," . "american addresses," . "physiography," . "hume" in "english men of letters," . "the crayfish: an introduction to the study of zoology," . "science and culture, and other essays," . "essays upon some controverted questions," . "evolution and ethics" (the romanes lecture), . huxley also assisted in editing the series of science primers published by messrs. macmillan, and contributed the introductory volume himself. the "collected essays," in nine vols., containing all that he cared to preserve, . "the scientific memoirs of t. h. huxley," edited by professor michael foster and professor e. ray lankester, in five vols., - . his "life and letters," edited by his son, leonard huxley, was published in . [illustration: _skeletons of the_ gibbon. orang. chimpanzee. gorilla. man. _photographically reduced from diagrams of the natural size_ (_except that of the gibbon, which was twice as large as nature_), _drawn by mr. waterhouse hawkins from specimens in the museum of the royal college of surgeons_.] huxley's essays i on the natural history of the man-like apes. ancient traditions, when tested by the severe processes of modern investigation, commonly enough fade away into mere dreams: but it is singular how often the dream turns out to have been a half-waking one, presaging a reality. ovid foreshadowed the discoveries of the geologist: the atlantis was an imagination, but columbus found a western world: and though the quaint forms of centaurs and satyrs have an existence only in the realms of art, creatures approaching man more nearly than they in essential structure, and yet as thoroughly brutal as the goat's or horse's half of the mythical compound, are now not only known, but notorious. i have not met with any notice of one of these man-like apes of earlier date than that contained in pigafetta's "description of the kingdom of congo,"[ ] drawn up from the notes of a portuguese sailor, eduardo lopez, and published in . the tenth chapter of this work is entitled "de animalibus quæ in hac provincia reperiuntur," and contains a brief passage to the effect that "in the songan country, on the banks of the zaire, there are multitudes of apes, which afford great delight to the nobles by imitating human gestures." as this might apply to almost any kind of apes, i should have thought little of it, had not the brothers de bry, whose engravings illustrate the work, thought fit, in their eleventh "argumentum," to figure two of these "simiæ magnatum deliciæ." so much of the plate as contains these apes is faithfully copied in the woodcut (fig. ), and it will be observed that they are tail-less, long-armed, and large-eared; and about the size of chimpanzees. it may be that these apes are as much figments of the imagination of the ingenious brothers as the winged, two-legged, crocodile-headed dragon which adorns the same plate; or, on the other hand, it may be that the artists have constructed their drawings from some essentially faithful description of a gorilla or a chimpanzee. and, in either case, though these figures are worth a passing notice, the oldest trustworthy and definite accounts of any animal of this kind date from the th century, and are due to an englishman. [illustration: fig. .--simiæ magnatum deliciæ.--de bry, .] the first edition of that most amusing old book, "purchas his pilgrimage," was published in , and therein are to be found many references to the statements of one whom purchas terms "andrew battell (my neere neighbour, dwelling at leigh in essex) who served under manuel silvera perera, governor under the king of spaine, at his city of saint paul, and with him went farre into the countrey of angola"; and again, "my friend, andrew battle, who lived in the kingdom of congo many yeares," and who, "upon some quarell betwixt the portugals (among whom he was a sergeant of a band) and him, lived eight or nine moneths in the woodes." from this weather-beaten old soldier, purchas was amazed to hear "of a kinde of great apes, if they might so bee termed, of the height of a man, but twice as bigge in feature of their limmes, with strength proportionable, hairie all over, otherwise altogether like men and women in their whole bodily shape.[ ] they lived on such wilde fruits as the trees and woods yielded, and in the night time lodged on the trees." this extract is, however, less detailed and clear in its statements than a passage in the third chapter of the second part of another work--"purchas his pilgrimes," published in , by the same author--which has been often, though hardly ever quite rightly, cited. the chapter is entitled, "the strange adventures of andrew battell, of leigh in essex, sent by the portugals prisoner to angola, who lived there and in the adjioining regions neere eighteene yeeres." and the sixth section of this chapter is headed--"of the provinces of bongo, calongo, mayombe, manikesocke, motimbas: of the ape monster pongo, their hunting: idolatries; and divers other observations." "this province (calongo) toward the east bordereth upon bongo, and toward the north upon mayombe, which is nineteen leagues from longo along the coast. "this province of mayombe is all woods and groves, so overgrowne that a man may travaile twentie days in the shadow without any sunne or heat. here is no kind of corne nor graine, so that the people liveth onely upon plantanes and roots of sundrie sorts, very good; and nuts; nor any kinde of tame cattell, nor hens. "but they have great store of elephant's flesh, which they greatly esteeme, and many kinds of wild beasts; and great store of fish. here is a great sandy bay, two leagues to the northward of cape negro,[ ] which is the port of mayombe. sometimes the portugals lade log-wood in this bay. here is a great river, called banna: in the winter it hath no barre, because the generall winds cause a great sea. but when the sunne hath his south declination, then a boat may goe in; for then it is smooth because of the raine. this river is very great, and hath many ilands and people dwelling in them. the woods are so covered with baboones, monkies, apes and parrots, that it will feare any man to travaile in them alone. here are also two kinds of monsters, which are common in these woods, and very dangerous. "the greatest of these two monsters is called pongo in their language, and the lesser is called engeco. this pongo is in all proportion like a man; but that he is more like a giant in stature than a man; for he is very tall, and hath a man's face, hollow-eyed, with long haire upon his browes. his face and eares are without haire, and his hands also. his bodie is full of haire, but not very thicke; and it is of a dunnish colour. "he differeth not from a man but in his legs; for they have no calfe. hee goeth alwaies upon his legs, and carrieth his hands clasped in the nape of his necke when he goeth upon the ground. they sleepe in the trees, and build shelters for the raine. they feed upon fruit that they find in the woods, and upon nuts, for they eate no kind of flesh. they cannot speake, and have no understanding more than a beast. the people of the countrie, when they travaile in the woods make fires where they sleepe in the night; and in the morning when they are gone, the pongoes will come and sit about the fire till it goeth out; for they have no understanding to lay the wood together. they goe many together and kill many negroes that travaile in the woods. many times they fall upon the elephants which come to feed where they be, and so beate them with their clubbed fists, and pieces of wood, that they will runne roaring away from them. those pongoes are never taken alive because they are so strong, that ten men cannot hold one of them; but yet they take many of their young ones with poisoned arrowes. "the young pongo hangeth on his mother's belly with his hands fast clasped about her, so that when the countrie people kill any of the females they take the young one, which hangeth fast upon his mother. "when they die among themselves, they cover the dead with great heaps of boughs and wood, which is commonly found in the forest."[ ] it does not appear difficult to identify the exact region of which battell speaks. longo is doubtless the name of the place usually spelled loango on our maps. mayombe still lies some nineteen leagues northward from loango, along the coast; and cilongo or kilonga, manikesocke, and motimbas are yet registered by geographers. the cape negro of battell, however, cannot be the modern cape negro in ° s., since loango itself is in ° s. latitude. on the other hand, the "great river called banna" corresponds very well with the "camma" and "fernand vas," of modern geographers, which form a great delta on this part of the african coast. now this "camma" country is situated about a degree and a-half south of the equator, while a few miles to the north of the line lies the gaboon, and a degree or so north of that, the money river--both well known to modern naturalists as localities where the largest of man-like apes has been obtained. moreover, at the present day, the word engeco, or n'schego, is applied by the natives of these regions to the smaller of the two great apes which inhabit them; so that there can be no rational doubt that andrew battell spoke of that which he knew of his own knowledge, or, at any rate, by immediate report from the natives of western africa. the "engeco," however, is that "other monster" whose nature battell "forgot to relate," while the name "pongo"--applied to the animal whose characters and habits are so fully and carefully described--seems to have died out, at least in its primitive form and signification. indeed, there is evidence that not only in battell's time, but up to a very recent date, it was used in a totally different sense from that in which he employs it. for example, the second chapter of purchas' work, which i have just quoted, contains "a description and historicall declaration of the golden kingdom of guinea, &c. &c. translated from the dutch, and compared also with the latin," wherein it is stated (p. ) that-- "the river gaboon lyeth about fifteen miles northward from rio de angra, and eight miles northward from cape de lope gonsalvez (cape lopez), and is right under the equinoctial line, about fifteene miles from st. thomas, and is a great land, well and easily to be knowne. at the mouth of the river there lieth a sand, three or foure fathoms deepe, whereon it beateth mightily with the streame which runneth out of the river into the sea. this river, in the mouth thereof, is at least four miles broad; but when you are about the iland called _pongo_, it is not above two miles broad.... on both sides the river there standeth many trees.... the iland called _pongo_, which hath a monstrous high hill." the french naval officers, whose letters are appended to the late m. isidore geoff. saint hilaire's excellent essay on the gorilla,[ ] note in similar terms the width of the gaboon, the trees that line its banks down to the water's edge, and the strong current that sets out of it. they describe two islands in its estuary;--one low, called perroquet; the other high, presenting three conical hills, called coniquet; and one of them, m. franquet, expressly states that, formerly, the chief of coniquet was called _meni-pongo_, meaning thereby lord of _pongo_; and that the _n'pongues_ (as, in agreement with dr. savage, he affirms the natives call themselves) term the estuary of the gaboon itself _n'pongo_. it is so easy, in dealing with savages, to misunderstand their applications of words to things, that one is at first inclined to suspect battell of having confounded the name of this region, where his "greater monster" still abounds, with the name of the animal itself. but he is so right about other matters (including the name of the "lesser monster") that one is loth to suspect the old traveller of error; and, on the other hand, we shall find that a voyager of a hundred years' later date speaks of the name "boggoe," as applied to a great ape, by the inhabitants of quite another part of africa--sierra leone. [illustration: _homo sylvestris. orang outang._ fig. .--the orang of tulpius, .] but i must leave this question to be settled by philologers and travellers; and i should hardly have dwelt so long upon it except for the curious part played by this word "_pongo_" in the later history of the man-like apes. the generation which succeeded battell saw the first of the man-like apes which was ever brought to europe, or, at any rate, whose visit found a historian. in the third book of tulpius' "observationes medicæ," published in , the th chapter or section is devoted to what he calls _satyrus indicus_, "called by the indians orang-autang, or man-of-the-woods, and by the africans quoias morrou." he gives a very good figure, evidently from the life, of the specimen of this animal, "nostra memoria ex angolâ delatum," presented to frederick henry prince of orange. tulpius says it was as big as a child of three years old, and as stout as one of six years: and that its back was covered with black hair. it is plainly a young chimpanzee. in the meanwhile, the existence of other, asiatic, man-like apes became known, but at first in a very mythical fashion. thus bontius ( ) gives an altogether fabulous and ridiculous account and figure of an animal which he calls "orang-outang"; and though he says, "vidi ego cujus effigiem hic exhibeo," the said effigies (see fig. for hoppius' copy of it) is nothing but a very hairy woman of rather comely aspect, and with proportions and feet wholly human. the judicious english anatomist, tyson, was justified in saying of this description by bontius, "i confess i do mistrust the whole representation." it is to the last mentioned writer, and his coadjutor cowper, that we owe the first account of a man-like ape which has any pretensions to scientific accuracy and completeness. the treatise entitled, "_orang-outang, sive homo sylvestris_; or the anatomy of a pygmie compared with that of a _monkey_, an _ape_, and a _man_," published by the royal society in , is, indeed, a work of remarkable merit, and has, in some respects, served as a model to subsequent inquirers. this "pygmie," tyson tells us, "was brought from angola, in africa; but was first taken a great deal higher up the country"; its hair "was of a coal-black colour, and strait," and "when it went as a quadruped on all four, 'twas awkwardly; not placing the palm of the hand flat to the ground, but it walk'd upon its knuckles, as i observed it to do when weak and had not strength enough to support its body."--"from the top of the head to the heel of the foot, in a strait line, it measured twenty-six inches." [illustration: figs. and .--the "pygmie" reduced from tyson's figures and , .] these characters, even without tyson's good figures (figs. and ), would have been sufficient to prove his "pygmie" to be a young chimpanzee. but the opportunity of examining the skeleton of the very animal tyson anatomised having most unexpectedly presented itself to me, i am able to bear independent testimony to its being a veritable _troglodytes niger_,[ ] though still very young. although fully appreciating the resemblances between his pygmie and man, tyson by no means overlooked the differences between the two, and he concludes his memoir by summing up first, the points in which "the ourang-outang or pygmie more resembled a man than apes and monkeys do," under forty-seven distinct heads; and then giving, in thirty-four similar brief paragraphs, the respects in which "the ourang-outang or pygmie differ'd from a man and resembled more the ape and monkey kind." after a careful survey of the literature of the subject extant in his time, our author arrives at the conclusion that his "pygmie" is identical neither with the orangs of tulpius and bontius, nor with the quoias morrou of dapper (or rather of tulpius), the barris of d'arcos, nor with the pongo of battell; but that it is a species of ape probably identical with the pygmies of the ancients, and, says tyson, though it "does so much resemble _a man_ in many of its parts, more than any of the ape kind, or any other animal in the world, that i know of: yet by no means do i look upon it as the product of a _mixt_ generation--'tis a _brute-animal sui generis_, and a particular _species of ape_." the name of "chimpanzee," by which one of the african apes is now so well known, appears to have come into use in the first half of the eighteenth century, but the only important addition made, in that period, to our acquaintance with the man-like apes of africa is contained in "a new voyage to guinea," by william smith, which bears the date . in describing the animals of sierra leone, p. , this writer says:-- "i shall next describe a strange sort of animal, called by the white men in this country mandrill,[ ] but why it is so called i know not, nor did i ever hear the name before, neither can those who call them so tell, except it be for their near resemblance of a human creature, though nothing at all like an ape. their bodies, when full grown, are as big in circumference as a middle-sized man's--their legs much shorter, and their feet larger; their arms and hands in proportion. the head is monstrously big, and the face broad and flat, without any other hair but the eyebrows; the nose very small, the mouth wide, and the lips thin. the face, which is covered by a white skin, is monstrously ugly, being all over wrinkled as with old age; the teeth broad and yellow; the hands have no more hair than the face, but the same white skin, though all the rest of the body is covered with long black hair, like a bear. they never go upon all fours, like apes; but cry, when vexed or teased, just like children.... [illustration: fig. .--facsimile of william smith's figure of the "mandrill," .] "when i was at sherbro, one mr. cummerbus, whom i shall have occasion hereafter to mention, made me a present of one of these strange animals, which are called by the natives boggoe: it was a she-cub, of six months' age, but even then larger than a baboon. i gave it in charge to one of the slaves, who knew how to feed and nurse it, being a very tender sort of animal; but whenever i went off the deck the sailors began to teaze it--some loved to see its tears and hear it cry; others hated its snotty-nose; one who hurt it, being checked by the negro that took care of it, told the slave he was very fond of his country-woman, and asked him if he should not like her for a wife? to which the slave very readily replied, 'no, this no my wife; this a white woman--this fit wife for you.' this unlucky wit of the negro's, i fancy, hastened its death, for next morning it was found dead under the windlass." william smith's "mandrill," or "boggoe," as his description and figure testify, was, without doubt, a chimpanzee. [illustration: fig. .--the anthropomorpha of linnæus.] linnæus knew nothing, of his own observation, of the man-like apes of either africa or asia, but a dissertation by his pupil hoppius in the "amoenitates academicæ" (vi. "anthropomorpha") may be regarded as embodying his views respecting these animals. the dissertation is illustrated by a plate, of which the accompanying woodcut, fig. , is a reduced copy. the figures are entitled (from left to right) . _troglodyta bontii_; . _lucifer aldrovandi_; . _satyrus tulpii_; . _pygmæus edwardi_. the first is a bad copy of bontius' fictitious "ourang-outang," in whose existence, however, linnæus appears to have fully believed; for in the standard edition of the "systema naturæ," it is enumerated as a second species of homo; "h. nocturnus." _lucifer aldrovandi_ is a copy of a figure in aldrovandus, "de quadrupedibus digitatis viviparis," lib. , p. ( ), entitled "cercopithecus formæ raræ _barbilius_ vocatus et originem a china ducebat." hoppius is of opinion that this may be one of that cat-tailed people, of whom nicolaus köping affirms that they eat a boat's crew, "gubernator navis" and all! in the "systema naturæ" linnæus calls it in a note, _homo caudatus_, and seems inclined to regard it as a third species of man. according to temminck, _satyrus tulpii_ is a copy of the figure of a chimpanzee published by scotin in , which i have not seen. it is the _satyrus indicus_ of the "systema naturæ," and is regarded by linnæus as possibly a distinct species from _satyrus sylvestris_. the last, named _pygmæus edwardi_, is copied from the figure of a young "man of the woods," or true orang-utan, given in edwards "gleanings of natural history" ( ). buffon was more fortunate than his great rival. not only had he the rare opportunity of examining a young chimpanzee in the living state, but he became possessed of an adult asiatic man-like ape--the first and the last adult specimen of any of these animals brought to europe for many years. with the valuable assistance of daubenton, buffon gave an excellent description of this creature, which, from its singular proportions, he termed the long-armed ape, or gibbon. it is the modern _hylobates lar_. thus when, in , buffon wrote the fourteenth volume of his great work, he was personally familiar with the young of one kind of african man-like ape, and with the adult of an asiatic species--while the orang-utan and the mandrill of smith were known to him by report. furthermore, the abbé prevost had translated a good deal of purchas' pilgrims into french, in his "histoire générale des voyages" ( ), and there buffon found a version of andrew battell's account of the pongo and the engeco. all these data buffon attempts to weld together into harmony in his chapter entitled "les orang-outangs ou le pongo et le jocko." to this title the following note is appended:-- "orang-outang nom de cet animal aux indes orientales: pongo nom de cet animal à lowando province de congo. "jocko, enjocko, nom de cet animal à congo que nous avons adopté. _en_ est l'article que nous avons retranché." thus it was that andrew battell's "engeco" became metamorphosed into "jocko," and, in the latter shape, was spread all over the world, in consequence of the extensive popularity of buffon's works. the abbé prevost and buffon between them, however, did a good deal more disfigurement to battell's sober account than "cutting off an article." thus battell's statement that the pongos "cannot speake, and have no understanding more than a beast," is rendered by buffon "qu'il ne peut parler _quoiqu'il ait plus d'entendement que les autres animaux_"; and again, purchas' affirmation, "he told me in conference with him, that one of these pongos tooke a negro boy of his which lived a moneth with them," stands in the french version, "un pongo lui enleva un petit negre qui passa un _an_ entier dans la societé de ces animaux." after quoting the account of the great pongo, buffon justly remarks, that all the "jockos" and "orangs" hitherto brought to europe were young; and he suggests that, in their adult condition, they might be as big as the pongo or "great orang"; so that, provisionally, he regarded the jockos, orangs, and pongos as all of one species. and perhaps this was as much as the state of knowledge at the time warranted. but how it came about that buffon failed to perceive the similarity of smith's "mandrill" to his own "jocko," and confounded the former with so totally different a creature as the blue-faced baboon, is not so easily intelligible. twenty years later buffon changed his opinion,[ ] and expressed his belief that the orangs constituted a genus with two species,--a large one, the pongo of battell, and a small one, the jocko: that the small one (jocko) is the east indian orang; and that the young animals from africa, observed by himself and tulpius, are simply young pongos. in the meanwhile, the dutch naturalist, vosmaer, gave, in , a very good account and figure of a young orang, brought alive to holland, and his countryman, the famous anatomist, peter camper, published ( ) an essay on the orang-utan of similar value to that of tyson on the chimpanzee. he dissected several females and a male, all of which, from the state of their skeleton and their dentition, he justly supposes to have been young. however, judging by the analogy of man, he concludes that they could not have exceeded four feet in height in the adult condition. furthermore, he is very clear as to the specific distinctness of the true east indian orang. "the orang," says he, "differs not only from the pigmy of tyson and from the orang of tulpius by its peculiar colour and its long toes, but also by its whole external form. its arms, its hands, and its feet are longer, while the thumbs, on the contrary, are much shorter, and the great toes much smaller in proportion."[ ] and again, "the true orang, that is to say, that of asia, that of borneo, is consequently not the pithecus, or tail-less ape, which the greeks, and especially galen, have described. it is neither the pongo nor the jocko, nor the orang of tulpius, nor the pigmy of tyson,--_it is an animal of a peculiar species_, as i shall prove in the clearest manner by the organs of voice and the skeleton in the following chapters" (l. c. p. ). a few years later, m. radermacher, who held a high office in the government of the dutch dominions in india, and was an active member of the batavian society of arts and sciences, published, in the second part of the transactions of that society,[ ] a description of the island of borneo, which was written between the years and , and, among much other interesting matter, contains some notes upon the orang. the small sort of orang-utan, viz. that of vosmaer and of edwards, he says, is found only in borneo, and chiefly about banjermassing, mampauwa, and landak. of these he had seen some fifty during his residence in the indies; but none exceeded - / feet in length. the larger sort, often regarded as chimæra, continues radermacher, would, perhaps long have remained so, had it not been for the exertions of the resident at rembang, m. palm, who, on returning from landak towards pontiana, shot one, and forwarded it to batavia in spirit, for transmission to europe. palm's letter describing the capture runs thus:--"herewith i send your excellency, contrary to all expectation (since long ago i offered more than a hundred ducats to the natives for an orang-utan of four or five feet high) an orang which i heard of this morning about eight o'clock. for a long time we did our best to take the frightful beast alive in the dense forest about half way to landak. we forgot even to eat, so anxious were we not to let him escape; but it was necessary to take care he did not revenge himself, as he kept continually breaking off heavy pieces of wood and green branches, and dashing them at us. this game lasted till four o'clock in the afternoon, when we determined to shoot him; in which i succeeded very well, and indeed better than i ever shot from a boat before; for the bullet went just into the side of his chest, so that he was not much damaged. we got him into the prow still living, and bound him fast, and next morning he died of his wounds. all pontiana came on board to see him when we arrived." palm gives his height from the head to the heel as inches. a very intelligent german officer, baron von wurmb, who at this time held a post in the dutch east india service, and was secretary of the batavian society, studied this animal, and his careful description of it, entitled "beschrijving van der groote borneosche orang-outang of de oost-indische pongo," is contained in the same volume of the batavian society's transactions. after von wurmb had drawn up his description he states, in a letter dated batavia, feb. , ,[ ] that the specimen was sent to europe in brandy to be placed in the collection of the prince of orange; "unfortunately," he continues, "we hear that the ship has been wrecked." von wurmb died in the course of the year , the letter in which this passage occurs being the last he wrote; but in his posthumous papers, published in the fourth part of the transactions of the batavian society, there is a brief description, with measurements, of a female pongo four feet high. [illustration: fig. .--the pongo skull, sent by radermacher to camper, after camper's original sketches, as reproduced by lucæ.] did either of these original specimens, on which von wurmb's descriptions are based, ever reach europe? it is commonly supposed that they did; but i doubt the fact. for, appended to the memoir "de l'ourang-outang," in the collected edition of camper's works, tome i., pp. - , is a note by camper himself, referring to von wurmb's papers, and continuing thus:--"heretofore, this kind of ape had never been known in europe. radermacher has had the kindness to send me the skull of one of these animals, which measured fifty-three inches, or four feet five inches, in height. i have sent some sketches of it to m. soemmering at mayence, which are better calculated, however, to give an idea of the form than of the real size of the parts." these sketches have been reproduced by fischer and by lucæ, and bear date , soemmering having received them in . had either of von wurmb's specimens reached holland, they would hardly have been unknown at this time to camper, who, however, goes on to say:--"it appears that since this, some more of these monsters have been captured, for an entire skeleton, very badly set up, which had been sent to the museum of the prince of orange, and which i saw only on the th of june, , was more than four feet high. i examined this skeleton again on the th december, , after it had been excellently put to rights by the ingenious onymus." it appears evident, then, that this skeleton, which is doubtless that which has always gone by the name of wurmb's pongo, is not that of the animal described by him, though unquestionably similar in all essential points. camper proceeds to note some of the most important features of this skeleton; promises to describe it in detail by-and-bye; and is evidently in doubt as to the relation of this great "pongo" to his "petit orang." the promised further investigations were never carried out; and so it happened that the pongo of von wurmb took its place by the side of the chimpanzee, gibbon, and orang as a fourth and colossal species of man-like ape. and indeed nothing could look much less like the chimpanzees or the orangs, then known, than the pongo; for all the specimens of chimpanzee and orang which had been observed were small of stature, singularly human in aspect, gentle and docile; while wurmb's pongo was a monster almost twice their size, of vast strength and fierceness, and very brutal in expression; its great projecting muzzle, armed with strong teeth, being further disfigured by the outgrowth of the cheeks into fleshy lobes. eventually, in accordance with the usual marauding habits of the revolutionary armies, the "pongo" skeleton was carried away from holland into france, and notices of it, expressly intended to demonstrate its entire distinctness from the orang and its affinity with the baboons, were given, in , by geoffroy st. hilaire and cuvier. even in cuvier's "tableau elementaire," and in the first edition of his great work, the "regne animal," the "pongo" is classed as a species of baboon. however, so early as , it appears that cuvier saw reason to alter this opinion, and to adopt the view suggested several years before by blumenbach,[ ] and after him by tilesius, that the bornean pongo is simply an adult orang. in , rudolphi demonstrated, by the condition of the dentition, more fully and completely than had been done by his predecessors, that the orangs described up to that time were all young animals, and that the skull and teeth of the adult would probably be such as those seen in the pongo of wurmb. in the second edition of the "regne animal" ( ), cuvier infers, from the "proportions of all the parts" and "the arrangements of the foramina and sutures of the head," that the pongo is the adult of the orang-utan, "at least of a very closely allied species," and this conclusion was eventually placed beyond all doubt by professor owen's memoir published in the "zoological transactions" for , and by temminck in his "monographies de mammalogie." temminck's memoir is remarkable for the completeness of the evidence which it affords as to the modification which the form of the orang undergoes according to age and sex. tiedemann first published an account of the brain of the young orang, while sandifort, müller and schlegel, described the muscles and the viscera of the adult, and gave the earliest detailed and trustworthy history of the habits of the great indian ape in a state of nature; and as important additions have been made by later observers, we are at this moment better acquainted with the adult of the orang-utan, than with that of any of the other greater man-like apes. it is certainly the pongo of wurmb;[ ] and it is as certainly not the pongo of battell, seeing that the orang-utan is entirely confined to the great asiatic islands of borneo and sumatra. and while the progress of discovery thus cleared up the history of the orang, it also became established that the only other man-like apes in the eastern world were the various species of gibbon--apes of smaller stature, and therefore attracting less attention than the orangs, though they are spread over a much wider range of country, and are hence more accessible to observation. * * * * * although the geographical area inhabited by the "pongo" and "engeco" of battell is so much nearer to europe than that in which the orang and gibbon are found, our acquaintance with the african apes has been of slower growth; indeed, it is only within the last few years that the truthful story of the old english adventurer has been rendered fully intelligible. it was not until that the skeleton of the adult chimpanzee became known, by the publication of professor owen's above-mentioned very excellent memoir "on the osteology of the chimpanzee and orang," in the zoological transactions--a memoir which, by the accuracy of its descriptions, the carefulness of its comparisons, and the excellence of its figures, made an epoch in the history of our knowledge of the bony framework, not only of the chimpanzee, but of all the anthropoid apes. by the investigations herein detailed, it became evident that the old chimpanzee acquired a size and aspect as different from those of the young known to tyson, to buffon, and to traill, as those of the old orang from the young orang; and the subsequent very important researches of messrs. savage and wyman, the american missionary and anatomist, have not only confirmed this conclusion, but have added many new details.[ ] one of the most interesting among the many valuable discoveries made by dr. thomas savage is the fact, that the natives in the gaboon country at the present day, apply to the chimpanzee a name--"enché-eko"--which is obviously identical with the "engeko" of battell; a discovery which has been confirmed by all later inquirers. battell's "lesser monster," being thus proved to be a veritable existence, of course a strong presumption arose that his "greater monster," the "pongo," would sooner or later be discovered. and, indeed, a modern traveller, bowdich, had, in , found strong evidence, among the natives, of the existence of a second great ape, called the "ingena," "five feet high, and four across the shoulders," the builder of a rude house, on the outside of which it slept. in , dr. savage had the good fortune to make another and most important addition to our knowledge of the man-like apes; for, being unexpectedly detained at the gaboon river, he saw in the house of the rev. mr. wilson, a missionary resident there, "a skull represented by the natives to be a monkey-like animal, remarkable for its size, ferocity, and habits." from the contour of the skull, and the information derived from several intelligent natives, "i was induced," says dr. savage (using the term orang in its old general sense), "to believe that it belonged to a new species of orang. i expressed this opinion to mr. wilson, with a desire for further investigation; and, if possible, to decide the point by the inspection of a specimen alive or dead." the result of the combined exertions of messrs. savage and wilson was not only the obtaining of a very full account of the habits of this new creature, but a still more important service to science, the enabling the excellent american anatomist already mentioned, professor wyman, to describe, from ample materials, the distinctive osteological characters of the new form. this animal was called by the natives of the gaboon "engé-ena," a name obviously identical with the "ingena" of bowdich; and dr. savage arrived at the conviction that this last discovered of all the great apes was the long-sought "pongo" of battell. the justice of this conclusion, indeed, is beyond doubt--for not only does the "engé-ena" agree with battell's "greater monster" in its hollow eyes, its great stature and its dun or iron-grey colour, but the only other man-like ape which inhabits these latitudes--the chimpanzee--is at once identified, by its smaller size, as the "lesser monster," and is excluded from any possibility of being the "pongo," by the fact that it is black and not dun, to say nothing of the important circumstance already mentioned that it still retains the name of "engeko," or "enché-eko," by which battell knew it. in seeking for a specific name for the "engé-ena," however, dr. savage wisely avoided the much misused "pongo"; but finding in the ancient periplus of hanno the word "gorilla" applied to certain hairy savage people, discovered by the carthaginian voyager in an island on the african coast, he attached the specific name "_gorilla_" to his new ape, whence arises its present well-known appellation. but dr. savage, more cautious than some of his successors, by no means identifies his ape with hanno's "wild men." he merely says that the latter were "probably one of the species of the orang;" and i quite agree with m. brullé that there is no ground for identifying the modern "gorilla" with that of the carthaginian admiral. since the memoir of savage and wyman was published, the skeleton of the gorilla has been investigated by professor owen and by the late professor duvernoy, of the jardin des plantes, the latter having further supplied a valuable account of the muscular system and of many of the other soft parts; while african missionaries and travellers have confirmed and expanded the account originally given of the habits of this great man-like ape, which has had the singular fortune of being the first to be made known to the general world and the last to be scientifically investigated. two centuries and a half have passed away since battell told his stories about the "greater" and the "lesser monsters" to purchas, and it has taken nearly that time to arrive at the clear result that there are four distinct kinds of anthropoids--in eastern asia, the gibbons and the orangs; in western africa, the chimpanzees and the gorilla. * * * * * the man-like apes, the history of whose discovery has just been detailed, have certain characters of structure and of distribution in common. thus they all have the same number of teeth as man--possessing four incisors, two canines, four false molars, and six true molars in each jaw, or teeth in all, in the adult condition; while the milk dentition consists of teeth--or four incisors, two canines, and four molars in each jaw. they are what are called catarrhine apes--that is, their nostrils have a narrow partition and look downwards; and, furthermore, their arms are always longer than their legs, the difference being sometimes greater and sometimes less; so that if the four were arranged in the order of the length of their arms in proportion to that of their legs, we should have this series--orang ( - / -- ), gibbon ( - / -- ), gorilla ( - / -- ), chimpanzee ( - / -- ). in all, the fore-limbs are terminated by hands, provided with longer or shorter thumbs; while the great toe of the foot, always smaller than in man, is far more moveable than in him and can be opposed, like a thumb, to the rest of the foot. none of these apes have tails, and none of them possess the cheek-pouches common among monkeys. finally, they are all inhabitants of the old world. the gibbons are the smallest, slenderest, and longest-limbed of the man-like apes: their arms are longer in proportion to their bodies than those of any of the other man-like apes, so that they can touch the ground when erect; their hands are longer than their feet, and they are the only anthropoids which possess callosities like the lower monkeys. they are variously coloured. the orangs have arms which reach to the ankles in the erect position of the animal; their thumbs and great toes are very short, and their feet are longer than their hands. they are covered with reddish-brown hair, and the sides of the face, in adult males, are commonly produced into two crescentic, flexible excrescences, like fatty tumours. the chimpanzees have arms which reach below the knees; they have large thumbs and great toes, their hands are longer than their feet, and their hair is black, while the skin of the face is pale. the gorilla, lastly, has arms which reach to the middle of the leg, large thumbs and great toes, feet longer than the hands, a black face, and dark-grey or dun hair. for the purpose which i have at present in view, it is unnecessary that i should enter into any further minutiæ respecting the distinctive characters of the genera and species into which these man-like apes are divided by naturalists. suffice it to say, that the orangs and the gibbons constitute the distinct genera, _simia_ and _hylobates_; while the chimpanzees and gorillas are by some regarded simply as distinct species of one genus, _troglodytes_; by others as distinct genera--_troglodytes_ being reserved for the chimpanzees, and _gorilla_ for the engé-ena or pongo. * * * * * sound knowledge respecting the habits and mode of life of the man-like apes has been even more difficult of attainment than correct information regarding their structure. once in a generation, a wallace may be found physically, mentally, and morally qualified to wander unscathed through the tropical wilds of america and of asia; to form magnificent collections as he wanders; and withal to think out sagaciously the conclusions suggested by his collections: but, to the ordinary explorer or collector, the dense forests of equatorial asia and africa, which constitute the favourite habitation of the orang, the chimpanzee, and the gorilla, present difficulties of no ordinary magnitude: and the man who risks his life by even a short visit to the malarious shores of those regions may well be excused if he shrinks from facing the dangers of the interior; if he contents himself with stimulating the industry of the better seasoned natives, and collecting and collating the more or less mythical reports and traditions with which they are too ready to supply him. in such a manner most of the earlier accounts of the habits of the man-like apes originated; and even now a good deal of what passes current must be admitted to have no very safe foundation. the best information we possess is that, based almost wholly on direct european testimony, respecting the gibbons; the next best evidence relates to the orangs; while our knowledge of the habits of the chimpanzee and the gorilla stands much in need of support and enlargement by additional testimony from instructed european eye-witnesses. it will therefore be convenient in endeavouring to form a notion of what we are justified in believing about these animals, to commence with the best known man-like apes, the gibbons and orangs; and to make use of the perfectly reliable information respecting them as a sort of criterion of the probable truth or falsehood of assertions respecting the others. of the gibbons, half a dozen species are found scattered over the asiatic islands, java, sumatra, borneo, and through malacca, siam, arracan, and an uncertain extent of hindostan, on the main land of asia. the largest attain a few inches above three feet in height, from the crown to the heel, so that they are shorter than the other man-like apes; while the slenderness of their bodies renders their mass far smaller in proportion even to this diminished height. dr. salomon müller, an accomplished dutch naturalist, who lived for many years in the eastern archipelago, and to the results of whose personal experience i shall frequently have occasion to refer, states that the gibbons are true mountaineers, loving the slopes and edges of the hills, though they rarely ascend beyond the limit of the fig-trees. all day long they haunt the tops of the tall trees; and though, towards evening, they descend in small troops to the open ground, no sooner do they spy a man than they dart up the hill-sides, and disappear in the darker valleys. all observers testify to the prodigious volume of voice possessed by these animals. according to the writer whom i have just cited, in one of them, the siamang, "the voice is grave and penetrating, resembling the sounds g[=o]ek, g[=o]ek, g[=o]ek, g[=o]ek, goek ha ha ha ha haa[=a][=a][=a], and may easily be heard at a distance of half a league." while the cry is being uttered, the great membranous bag under the throat which communicates with the organ of voice, the so-called "laryngeal sac," becomes greatly distended, diminishing again when the creature relapses into silence. m. duvaucel, likewise, affirms that the cry of the siamang may be heard for miles--making the woods ring again. so mr. martin[ ] describes the cry of the agile gibbon as "overpowering and deafening" in a room, and "from its strength, well calculated for resounding through the vast forests." mr. waterhouse, an accomplished musician as well as zoologist, says, "the gibbon's voice is certainly much more powerful than that of any singer i ever heard." and yet it is to be recollected that this animal is not half the height of, and far less bulky in proportion than, a man. there is good testimony that various species of gibbon readily take to the erect posture. mr. george bennett,[ ] a very excellent observer, in describing the habits of a male _hylobates syndactylus_ which remained for some time in his possession, says: "he invariably walks in the erect posture when on a level surface; and then the arms either hang down, enabling him to assist himself with his knuckles; or what is more usual, he keeps his arms uplifted in nearly an erect position, with the hands pendent ready to seize a rope, and climb up on the approach of danger or on the obtrusion of strangers. he walks rather quick in the erect posture, but with a waddling gait, and is soon run down if, whilst pursued, he has no opportunity of escaping by climbing.... when he walks in the erect posture he turns the leg and foot outwards, which occasions him to have a waddling gait and to seem bow-legged." dr. burrough states of another gibbon, the horlack or hooluk: "they walk erect; and when placed on the floor, or in an open field, balance themselves very prettily, by raising their hands over their head and slightly bending the arm at the wrist and elbow, and then run tolerably fast, rocking from side to side; and, if urged to greater speed, they let fall their hands to the ground, and assist themselves forward, rather jumping than running, still keeping the body, however, nearly erect." somewhat different evidence, however, is given by dr. winslow lewis:[ ] "their only manner of walking was on their posterior or inferior extremities, the others being raised upwards to preserve their equilibrium, as rope-dancers are assisted by long poles at fairs. their progression was not by placing one foot before the other, but by simultaneously using both, as in jumping." dr. salomon müller also states that the gibbons progress upon the ground by a short series of tottering jumps, effected only by the hind limbs, the body being held altogether upright. [illustration: fig. .--a gibbon (_h. pileatus_), after wolf.] but mr. martin (l. c. p. ), who also speaks from direct observation, says of the gibbons generally: "pre-eminently qualified for arboreal habits, and displaying among the branches amazing activity, the gibbons are not so awkward or embarrassed on a level surface as might be imagined. they walk erect, with a waddling or unsteady gait, but at a quick pace; the equilibrium of the body requiring to be kept up, either by touching the ground with the knuckles, first on one side then on the other, or by uplifting the arms so as to poise it. as with the chimpanzee, the whole of the narrow, long sole of the foot is placed upon the ground at once and raised at once, without any elasticity of step." after this mass of concurrent and independent testimony, it cannot reasonably be doubted that the gibbons commonly and habitually assume the erect attitude. but level ground is not the place where these animals can display their very remarkable and peculiar locomotive powers, and that prodigious activity which almost tempts one to rank them among flying rather than among ordinary climbing mammals. mr. martin (l. c. p. ) has given so excellent and graphic an account of the movements of a _hylobates agilis_, living in the zoological gardens, in , that i will quote it in full: "it is almost impossible to convey in words an idea of the quickness and graceful address of her movements: they may indeed be termed aerial, as she seems merely to touch in her progress the branches among which she exhibits her evolutions. in these feats her hands and arms are the sole organs of locomotion; her body hanging as if suspended by a rope, sustained by one hand (the right, for example), she launches herself, by an energetic movement, to a distant branch, which she catches with the left hand; but her hold is less than momentary: the impulse for the next launch is acquired: the branch then aimed at is attained by the right hand again, and quitted instantaneously, and so on, in alternate succession. in this manner spaces of twelve and eighteen feet are cleared, with the greatest ease and uninterruptedly, for hours together, without the slightest appearance of fatigue being manifested; and it is evident that, if more space could be allowed, distances very greatly exceeding eighteen feet would be as easily cleared; so that duvaucel's assertion that he has seen these animals launch themselves from one branch to another, forty feet asunder, startling as it is, may be well credited. sometimes, on seizing a branch in her progress, she will throw herself, by the power of one arm only, completely round it, making a revolution with such rapidity as almost to deceive the eye, and continue her progress with undiminished velocity. it is singular to observe how suddenly this gibbon can stop, when the impetus given by the rapidity and distance of her swinging leaps would seem to require a gradual abatement of her movements. in the very midst of her flight a branch is seized, the body raised, and she is seen, as if by magic, quietly seated on it, grasping it with her feet. as suddenly she again throws herself into action. "the following facts will convey some notion of her dexterity and quickness. a live bird was let loose in her apartment; she marked its flight, made a long swing to a distant branch, caught the bird with one hand in her passage, and attained the branch with her other hand; her aim, both at the bird and at the branch, being as successful as if one object only had engaged her attention. it may be added that she instantly bit off the head of the bird, picked its feathers, and then threw it down without attempting to eat it. "on another occasion this animal swung herself from a perch, across a passage at least twelve feet wide, against a window which it was thought would be immediately broken: but not so; to the surprise of all, she caught the narrow framework between the panes with her hand, in an instant attained the proper impetus, and sprang back again to the cage she had left--a feat requiring not only great strength, but the nicest precision." the gibbons appear to be naturally very gentle, but there is very good evidence that they will bite severely when irritated--a female _hylobates agilis_ having so severely lacerated one man with her long canines, that he died; while she had injured others so much that, by way of precaution, these formidable teeth had been filed down; but, if threatened, she would still turn on her keeper. the gibbons eat insects, but appear generally to avoid animal food. a siamang, however, was seen by mr. bennett to seize and devour greedily a live lizard. they commonly drink by dipping their fingers in the liquid and then licking them. it is asserted that they sleep in a sitting posture. duvaucel affirms that he has seen the females carry their young to the waterside and there wash their faces, in spite of resistance and cries. they are gentle and affectionate in captivity--full of tricks and pettishness, like spoiled children, and yet not devoid of a certain conscience, as an anecdote, told by mr. bennett (l. c. p. ), will show. it would appear that his gibbon had a peculiar inclination for disarranging things in the cabin. among these articles, a piece of soap would especially attract his notice, and for the removal of this he had been once or twice scolded. "one morning," says mr. bennett, "i was writing, the ape being present in the cabin, when casting my eyes towards him, i saw the little fellow taking the soap. i watched him without his perceiving that i did so: and he occasionally would cast a furtive glance towards the place where i sat. i pretended to write; he, seeing me busily occupied, took the soap, and moved away with it in his paw. when he had walked half the length of the cabin, i spoke quietly, without frightening him. the instant he found i saw him, he walked back again, and deposited the soap nearly in the same place from whence he had taken it. there was certainly something more than instinct in that action: he evidently betrayed a consciousness of having done wrong both by his first and last actions--and what is reason if that is not an exercise of it?" * * * * * the most elaborate account of the natural history of the orang-utan extant, is that given in the "verhandelingen over de natuurlijke geschiedenis der nederlandsche overzeesche bezittingen ( - )," by dr. salomon müller and dr. schlegel, and i shall base what i have to say upon this subject almost entirely on their statements, adding, here and there, particulars of interest from the writings of brooke, wallace, and others. [illustration: fig. .--an adult male orang-utan, after müller and schlegel.] the orang-utan would rarely seem to exceed four feet in height, but the body is very bulky, measuring two-thirds of the height in circumference.[ ] the orang-utan is found only in sumatra and borneo, and is common in neither of these islands--in both of which it occurs always in low, flat plains, never in the mountains. it loves the densest and most sombre of the forests, which extend from the sea-shore inland, and thus is found only in the eastern half of sumatra, where alone such forests occur, though, occasionally, it strays over to the western side. on the other hand, it is generally distributed through borneo, except in the mountains, or where the population is dense. in favourable places, the hunter may, by good fortune, see three or four in a day. except in the pairing time, the old males usually live by themselves. the old females, and the immature males, on the other hand, are often met with in twos and threes; and the former occasionally have young with them, though the pregnant females usually separate themselves, and sometimes remain apart after they have given birth to their offspring. the young orangs seem to remain unusually long under their mother's protection, probably in consequence of their slow growth. while climbing, the mother always carries her young against her bosom, the young holding on by his mother's hair.[ ] at what time of life the orang-utan becomes capable of propagation, and how long the females go with young, is unknown, but it is probable that they are not adult until they arrive at ten or fifteen years of age. a female which lived for five years at batavia, had not attained one-third the height of the wild females. it is probable that, after reaching adult years, they go on growing, though slowly, and that they live to forty or fifty years. the dyaks tell of old orangs, which have not only lost all their teeth, but which find it so troublesome to climb, that they maintain themselves on windfalls and juicy herbage. the orang is sluggish, exhibiting none of that marvellous activity characteristic of the gibbons. hunger alone seems to stir him to exertion, and when it is stilled he relapses into repose. when the animal sits, it curves its back and bows its head, so as to look straight down on the ground; sometimes it holds on with its hands by a higher branch, sometimes lets them hang phlegmatically down by its side--and in these positions the orang will remain, for hours together, in the same spot, almost without stirring, and only now and then giving utterance to its deep, growling voice. by day, he usually climbs from one tree-top to another, and only at night descends to the ground, and if then threatened with danger, he seeks refuge among the underwood. when not hunted, he remains a long time in the same locality, and sometimes stops for many days on the same tree--a firm place among its branches serving him for a bed. it is rare for the orang to pass the night in the summit of a large tree, probably because it is too windy and cold there for him; but, as soon as night draws on, he descends from the height and seeks out a fit bed in the lower and darker part, or in the leafy top of a small tree, among which he prefers nibong palms, pandani, or one of those parasitic orchids which give the primæval forests of borneo so characteristic and striking an appearance. but wherever he determines to sleep, there he prepares himself a sort of nest: little boughs and leaves are drawn together round the selected spot, and bent crosswise over one another; while to make the bed soft, great leaves of ferns, of orchids, of _pandanus fascicularis_, _nipa fruticans_, &c., are laid over them. those which müller saw, many of them being very fresh, were situated at a height of ten to twenty-five feet above the ground, and had a circumference, on the average, of two or three feet. some were packed many inches thick with _pandanus_ leaves; others were remarkable only for the cracked twigs, which, united in a common centre, formed a regular platform. "the rude _hut_," says sir james brooke, "which they are stated to build in the trees, would be more properly called a seat or nest, for it has no roof or cover of any sort. the facility with which they form this nest is curious, and i had an opportunity of seeing a wounded female weave the branches together and seat herself, within a minute." according to the dyaks, the orang rarely leaves his bed before the sun is well above the horizon and has dissipated the mists. he gets up about nine, and goes to bed again about five; but sometimes not till late in the twilight. he lies sometimes on his back; or, by way of change, turns on one side or the other, drawing his limbs up to his body, and resting his head on his hand. when the night is cold, windy, or rainy, he usually covers his body with a heap of _pandanus_, _nipa_, or fern leaves, like those of which his bed is made, and he is especially careful to wrap up his head in them. it is this habit of covering himself up which has probably led to the fable that the orang builds huts in the trees. although the orang resides mostly amid the boughs of great trees, during the daytime, he is very rarely seen squatting on a thick branch, as other apes, and particularly the gibbons, do. the orang, on the contrary, confines himself to the slender leafy branches, so that he is seen right at the top of the trees, a mode of life which is closely related to the constitution of his hinder limbs, and especially to that of his seat. for this is provided with no callosities, such as are possessed by many of the lower apes, and even by the gibbons; and those bones of the pelvis, which are termed the ischia, and which form the solid framework of the surface on which the body rests in the sitting posture, are not expanded like those of the apes which possess callosities, but are more like those of man. an orang climbs so slowly and cautiously,[ ] as, in this act, to resemble a man more than an ape, taking great care of his feet, so that injury of them seems to affect him far more than it does other apes. unlike the gibbons, whose forearms do the greater part of the work, as they swing from branch to branch, the orang never makes even the smallest jump. in climbing, he moves alternately one hand and one foot, or, after having laid fast hold with the hands, he draws up both feet together. in passing from one tree to another, he always seeks out a place where the twigs of both come close together, or interlace. even when closely pursued, his circumspection is amazing: he shakes the branches to see if they will bear him, and then bending an overhanging bough down by throwing his weight gradually along it, he makes a bridge from the tree he wishes to quit to the next.[ ] on the ground the orang always goes laboriously and shakily, on all fours. at starting he will run faster than a man, though he may soon be overtaken. the very long arms which, when he runs, are but little bent, raise the body of the orang remarkably, so that he assumes much the posture of a very old man bent down by age, and making his way along by the help of a stick. in walking, the body is usually directed straight forward, unlike the other apes, which run more or less obliquely; except the gibbons, who in these, as in so many other respects, depart remarkably from their fellows. the orang cannot put its feet flat on the ground, but is supported upon their outer edges, the heel resting more on the ground, while the curved toes partly rest upon the ground by the upper side of their first joint, the two outermost toes of each foot completely resting on this surface. the hands are held in the opposite manner, their inner edges serving as the chief support. the fingers are then bent out in such a manner that their foremost joints, especially those of the two innermost fingers, rest upon the ground by their upper sides, while the point of the free and straight thumb serves as an additional fulcrum. the orang never stands on its hind legs, and all the pictures, representing it as so doing, are as false as the assertion that it defends itself with sticks, and the like. the long arms are of especial use, not only in climbing, but in the gathering of food from boughs to which the animal could not trust his weight. figs, blossoms, and young leaves of various kinds, constitute the chief nutriment of the orang; but strips of bamboo two or three feet long were found in the stomach of a male. they are not known to eat living animals. although, when taken young, the orang-utan soon becomes domesticated, and indeed seems to court human society, it is naturally a very wild and shy animal, though apparently sluggish and melancholy. the dyaks affirm, that when the old males are wounded with arrows only, they will occasionally leave the trees and rush raging upon their enemies, whose sole safety lies in instant flight, as they are sure to be killed if caught.[ ] but, though possessed of immense strength, it is rare for the orang to attempt to defend itself, especially when attacked with fire-arms. on such occasions he endeavours to hide himself, or to escape along the topmost branches of the trees, breaking off and throwing down the boughs as he goes. when wounded he betakes himself to the highest attainable point of the tree, and emits a singular cry, consisting at first of high notes, which at length deepen into a low roar, not unlike that of a panther. while giving out the high notes the orang thrusts out his lips into a funnel shape; but in uttering the low notes he holds his mouth wide open, and at the same time the great throat bag, or laryngeal sac, becomes distended. according to the dyaks, the only animal the orang measures his strength with is the crocodile, who occasionally seizes him on his visits to the water side. but they say that the orang is more than a match for his enemy, and beats him to death, or rips up his throat by pulling the jaws asunder! much of what has been here stated was probably derived by dr. müller from the reports of his dyak hunters; but a large male, four feet high, lived in captivity, under his observation, for a month, and receives a very bad character. "he was a very wild beast," says müller, "of prodigious strength, and false and wicked to the last degree. if any one approached he rose up slowly with a low growl, fixed his eyes in the direction in which he meant to make his attack, slowly passed his hand between the bars of his cage, and then extending his long arm, gave a sudden grip--usually at the face." he never tried to bite (though orangs will bite one another), his great weapons of offence and defence being his hands. his intelligence was very great; and müller remarks, that though the faculties of the orang have been estimated too highly, yet cuvier, had he seen this specimen, would not have considered its intelligence to be only a little higher than that of the dog. his hearing was very acute, but the sense of vision seemed to be less perfect. the under lip was the great organ of touch, and played a very important part in drinking, being thrust out like a trough, so as either to catch the falling rain, or to receive the contents of the half cocoa-nut shell full of water with which the orang was supplied, and which, in drinking, he poured into the trough thus formed. in borneo the orang-utan of the malays goes by the name of "_mias_" among the dyaks, who distinguish several kinds as _mias pappan_, or _zimo_, _mias kassu_, and _mias rambi_. whether these are distinct species, however, or whether they are mere races, and how far any of them are identical with the sumatran orang, as mr. wallace thinks the mias pappan to be, are problems which are at present undecided; and the variability of these great apes is so extensive, that the settlement of the question is a matter of great difficulty. of the form called "mias pappan," mr. wallace[ ] observes, "it is known by its large size, and by the lateral expansion of the face into fatty protuberances, or ridges, over the temporal muscles, which have been mis-termed _callosities_, as they are perfectly soft, smooth, and flexible. five of this form, measured by me, varied only from feet inch to feet inches in height, from the heel to the crown of the head, the girth of the body from feet to feet - / inches, and the extent of the outstretched arms from feet inches to feet inches; the width of the face from to - / inches. the colour and length of the hair varied in different individuals, and in different parts of the same individual; some possessed a rudimentary nail on the great toe, others none at all; but they otherwise present no external differences on which to establish even varieties of a species. "yet, when we examine the crania of these individuals, we find remarkable differences of form, proportion, and dimension, no two being exactly alike. the slope of the profile, and the projection of the muzzle, together with the size of the cranium, offer differences as decided as those existing between the most strongly marked forms of the caucasian and african crania in the human species. the orbits vary in width and height, the cranial ridge is either single or double, either much or little developed, and the zygomatic aperture varies considerably in size. this variation in the proportions of the crania enables us satisfactorily to explain the marked difference presented by the single-crested and double-crested skulls, which have been thought to prove the existence of two large species of orang. the external surface of the skull varies considerably in size, as do also the zygomatic aperture and the temporal muscle; but they bear no necessary relation to each other, a small muscle often existing with a large cranial surface, and _vice versâ_. now, those skulls which have the largest and strongest jaws and the widest zygomatic aperture, have the muscles so large that they meet on the crown of the skull, and deposit the bony ridge which separates them, and which is the highest in that which has the smallest cranial surface. in those which combine a large surface with comparatively weak jaws, and small zygomatic aperture, the muscles, on each side, do not extend to the crown, a space of from to inches remaining between them, and along their margins small ridges are formed. intermediate forms are found, in which the ridges meet only in the hinder part of the skull. the form and size of the ridges are therefore independent of age, being sometimes more strongly developed in the less aged animal. professor temminck states that the series of skulls in the leyden museum shows the same result." mr. wallace observed two male adult orangs (mias kassu of the dyaks), however, so very different from any of these that he concludes them to be specifically distinct; they were respectively feet - / inches and feet - / inches high, and possessed no sign of the cheek excrescences, but otherwise resembled the larger kinds. the skull has no crest, but two bony ridges, - / inches to inches apart, as in the _simia morio_ of professor owen. the teeth, however, are immense, equalling or surpassing those of the other species. the females of both these kinds, according to mr. wallace, are devoid of excrescences, and resemble the smaller males, but are shorter by - / to inches, and their canine teeth are comparatively small, subtruncated and dilated at the base, as in the so-called _simia morio_, which is, in all probability, the skull of a female of the same species as the smaller males. both males and females of this smaller species are distinguishable, according to mr. wallace, by the comparatively large size of the middle incisors of the upper jaw. * * * * * so far as i am aware, no one has attempted to dispute the accuracy of the statements which i have just quoted regarding the habits of the two asiatic man-like apes; and if true, they must be admitted as evidence, that such an ape-- stly, may readily move along the ground in the erect, or semi-erect, position, and without direct support from its arms. ndly, that it may possess an extremely loud voice, so loud as to be readily heard one or two miles. rdly, that it may be capable of great viciousness and violence when irritated: and this is especially true of adult males. thly, that it may build a nest to sleep in. such being well-established facts respecting the asiatic anthropoids, analogy alone might justify us in expecting the african species to offer similar peculiarities, separately or combined; or, at any rate, would destroy the force of any attempted _à priori_ argument against such direct testimony as might be adduced in favour of their existence. and, if the organization of any of the african apes could be demonstrated to fit it better than either of its asiatic allies for the erect position and for efficient attack, there would be still less reason for doubting its occasional adoption of the upright attitude or of aggressive proceedings. from the time of tyson and tulpius downwards, the habits of the young chimpanzee in a state of captivity have been abundantly reported and commented upon. but trustworthy evidence as to the manners and customs of adult anthropoids of this species, in their native woods, was almost wanting up to the time of the publication of the paper by dr. savage, to which i have already referred; containing notes of the observations which he made, and of the information which he collected from sources which he considered trustworthy, while resident at cape palmas, at the north-western limit of the bight of benin. the adult chimpanzees, measured by dr. savage, never exceeded, though the males may almost attain, five feet in height. "when at rest, the sitting posture is that generally assumed. they are sometimes seen standing and walking, but when thus detected, they immediately take to all fours, and flee from the presence of the observer. such is their organization that they cannot stand erect, but lean forward. hence they are seen, when standing, with the hands clasped over the occiput, or the lumbar region, which would seem necessary to balance or ease of posture. "the toes of the adult are strongly flexed and turned inwards, and cannot be perfectly straightened. in the attempt the skin gathers into thick folds on the back, shewing that the full expansion of the foot, as is necessary in walking, is unnatural. the natural position is on all fours, the body anteriorly resting upon the knuckles. these are greatly enlarged, with the skin protuberant and thickened like the sole of the foot. "they are expert climbers, as one would suppose from their organization. in their gambols they swing from limb to limb to a great distance, and leap with astonishing agility. it is not unusual to see the 'old folks' (in the language of an observer) sitting under a tree regaling themselves with fruit and friendly chat, while their 'children' are leaping around them, and swinging from tree to tree with boisterous merriment. "as seen here, they cannot be called _gregarious_, seldom more than five, or ten at most, being found together. it has been said, on good authority, that they occasionally assemble in large numbers, in gambols. my informant asserts that he saw once not less than fifty so engaged; hooting, screaming, and drumming with sticks upon old logs, which is done in the latter case with equal facility by the four extremities. they do not appear ever to act on the offensive, and seldom, if ever really, on the defensive. when about to be captured, they resist by throwing their arms about their opponent, and attempting to draw him into contact with their teeth." (savage, l. c. p. .) with respect to this last point dr. savage is very explicit in another place: "_biting_ is their principal art of defence. i have seen one man who had been thus severely wounded in the feet. "the strong development of the canine teeth in the adult would seem to indicate a carnivorous propensity; but in no state save that of domestication do they manifest it. at first they reject flesh, but easily acquire a fondness for it. the canines are early developed, and evidently designed to act the important part of weapons of defence. when in contact with man almost the first effort of the animal is--_to bite_. "they avoid the abodes of men, and build their habitations in trees. their construction is more that of _nests_ than _hut_, as they have been erroneously termed by some naturalists. they generally build not far above the ground. branches or twigs are bent, or partly broken, and crossed, and the whole supported by the body of a limb or a crotch. sometimes a nest will be found near the _end_ of a _strong leafy branch_ twenty or thirty feet from the ground. one i have lately seen that could not be less than forty feet, and more probably it was fifty. but this is an unusual height. "their dwelling-place is not permanent, but changed in pursuit of food and solitude, according to the force of circumstances. we more often see them in elevated places; but this arises from the fact that the low grounds, being more favourable for the natives' rice-farms, are the oftener cleared, and hence are almost always wanting in suitable trees for their nests.... it is seldom that more than one or two nests are seen upon the same tree, or in the same neighbourhood: five have been found, but it was an unusual circumstance.... "they are very filthy in their habits.... it is a tradition with the natives generally here, that they were once members of their own tribe: that for their depraved habits they were expelled from all human society, and, that through an obstinate indulgence of their vile propensities, they have degenerated into their present state and organization. they are, however, eaten by them, and when cooked with the oil and pulp of the palm-nut considered a highly palatable morsel. "they exhibit a remarkable degree of intelligence in their habits, and, on the part of the mother, much affection for their young. the second female described was upon a tree when first discovered, with her mate and two young ones (a male and a female). her first impulse was to descend with great rapidity, and make off into the thicket, with her mate and female offspring. the young male remaining behind, she soon returned to the rescue. she ascended and took him in her arms, at which moment she was shot, the ball passing through the forearm of the young one, on its way to the heart of the mother.... "in a recent case, the mother, when discovered, remained upon the tree with her offspring, watching intently the movements of the hunter. as he took aim, she motioned with her hand, precisely in the manner of a human being, to have him desist and go away. when the wound has not proved instantly fatal, they have been known to stop the flow of blood by pressing with the hand upon the part, and when this did not succeed, to apply leaves and grass.... when shot, they give a sudden screech, not unlike that of a human being in sudden and acute distress." the ordinary voice of the chimpanzee, however, is affirmed to be hoarse, guttural, and not very loud, somewhat like "whoo-whoo" (l. c. p. ). the analogy of the chimpanzee to the orang, in its nest-building habit and in the mode of forming its nest, is exceedingly interesting; while, on the other hand, the activity of this ape, and its tendency to bite, are particulars in which it rather resembles the gibbons. in extent of geographical range, again, the chimpanzees--which are found from sierra leone to congo--remind one of the gibbons, rather than of either of the other man-like apes; and it seems not unlikely that, as is the case with the gibbons, there may be several species spread over the geographical area of the genus. the same excellent observer, from whom i have borrowed the preceding account of the habits of the adult chimpanzee, published, fifteen years ago,[ ] an account of the gorilla, which has, in its most essential points, been confirmed by subsequent observers, and to which so very little has really been added, that in justice to dr. savage i give it almost in full. "it should be borne in mind that my account is based upon the statements of the aborigines of that region (the gaboon). in this connection, it may also be proper for me to remark, that having been a missionary resident for several years, studying, from habitual intercourse, the african mind and character, i felt myself prepared to discriminate and decide upon the probability of their statements. besides, being familiar with the history and habits of its interesting congener (_trog. niger_, geoff.), i was able to separate their accounts of the two animals, which, having the same locality and a similarity of habit, are confounded in the minds of the mass, especially as but few--such as traders to the interior and huntsmen--have ever seen the animal in question. "the tribe from which our knowledge of the animal is derived, and whose territory forms its habitat, is the _mpongwe_, occupying both banks of the river gaboon, from its mouth to some fifty or sixty miles upward.... "if the word 'pongo' be of african origin, it is probably a corruption of the word _mpongwe_, the name of the tribe on the banks of the gaboon, and hence applied to the region they inhabit. their local name for the chimpanzee is _enché-eko_, as near as it can be anglicized, from which the common term 'jocko' probably comes. the mpongwe appellation for its new congener is _engé-ena_, prolonging the sound of the first vowel, and slightly sounding the second. [illustration: fig. .--the gorilla (after wolff).] "the habitat of the _engé-ena_ is the interior of lower guinea, whilst that of the _enché-eko_ is nearer the sea-board. "its height is about five feet; it is disproportionately broad across the shoulders, thickly covered with coarse black hair, which is said to be similar in its arrangement to that of the _enché-eko_; with age it becomes grey, which fact has given rise to the report that both animals are seen of different colours. "_head._--the prominent features of the head are, the great width and elongation of the face, the depth of the molar region, the branches of the lower jaw being very deep and extending far backward, and the comparative smallness of the cranial portion; the eyes are very large, and said to be like those of the enché-eko, a bright hazel; nose broad and flat, slightly elevated towards the root; the muzzle broad, and prominent lips and chin, with scattered grey hairs; the under lip highly mobile, and capable of great elongation when the animal is enraged, then hanging over the chin; skin of the face and ears naked, and of a dark brown, approaching to black. "the most remarkable feature of the head is a high ridge, or crest of hair, in the course of the sagittal suture, which meets posteriorly with a transverse ridge of the same, but less prominent, running round from the back of one ear to the other. the animal has the power of moving the scalp freely forward and back, and when enraged is said to contract it strongly over the brow, thus bringing down the hairy ridge and pointing the hair forward, so as to present an indescribably ferocious aspect. "neck short, thick, and hairy; chest and shoulders very broad, said to be fully double the size of the enché-ekos; arms very long, reaching some way below the knee--the forearm much the shortest; hands very large, the thumbs much larger than the fingers.... "the gait is shuffling; the motion of the body, which is never upright as in man, but bent forward, is somewhat rolling, or from side to side. the arms being longer than the chimpanzee, it does not stoop as much in walking; like that animal, it makes progression by thrusting its arms forward, resting the hands on the ground, and then giving the body a half jumping half swinging motion between them. in this act it is said not to flex the fingers, as does the chimpanzee, resting on its knuckles, but to extend them, making a fulcrum of the hand. when it assumes the walking posture, to which it is said to be much inclined, it balances its huge body by flexing its arms upward. "they live in bands, but are not so numerous as the chimpanzees: the females generally exceed the other sex in number. my informants all agree in the assertion that but one adult male is seen in a band; that when the young males grow up, a contest takes place for mastery, and the strongest, by killing and driving out the others, establishes himself as the head of the community." dr. savage repudiates the stories about the gorillas carrying off women and vanquishing elephants, and then adds: "their dwellings, if they may be so called, are similar to those of the chimpanzee, consisting simply of a few sticks and leafy branches, supported by the crotches and limbs of trees: they afford no shelter, and are occupied only at night. [illustration: fig. .--gorilla walking (after wolff).] "they are exceedingly ferocious, and always offensive in their habits, never running from man, as does the chimpanzee. they are objects of terror to the natives, and are never encountered by them except on the defensive. the few that have been captured were killed by elephant-hunters and native traders, as they came suddenly upon them while passing through the forests. "it is said that when the male is first seen he gives a terrific yell, that resounds far and wide through the forest, something like kh--ah! kh--ah! prolonged and shrill. his enormous jaws are widely opened at each expiration, his under lip hangs over the chin, and the hairy ridge and scalp are contracted upon the brow, presenting an aspect of indescribable ferocity. "the females and young, at the first cry, quickly disappear. he then approaches the enemy in great fury, pouring out his horrid cries in quick succession. the hunter awaits his approach with his gun extended: if his aim is not sure, he permits the animal to grasp the barrel, and as he carries it to his mouth (which is his habit) he fires. should the gun fail to go off, the barrel (that of the ordinary musket, which is thin) is crushed between his teeth, and the encounter soon proves fatal to the hunter. "in the wild state, their habits are in general like those of the _troglodytes niger_, building their nests loosely in trees, living on similar fruits, and changing their place of resort from force of circumstances." dr. savage's observations were confirmed and supplemented by those of mr. ford, who communicated an interesting paper on the gorilla to the philadelphian academy of sciences, in . with respect to the geographical distribution of this greatest of all the man-like apes, mr. ford remarks: "this animal inhabits the range of mountains that traverse the interior of guinea, from the cameroon in the north, to angola in the south, and about miles inland, and called by the geographers crystal mountains. the limit to which this animal extends, either north or south, i am unable to define. but that limit is doubtless some distance north of this river [gaboon]. i was able to certify myself of this fact in a late excursion to the head-waters of the mooney (danger) river, which comes into the sea some sixty miles from this place. i was informed (credibly, i think) that they were numerous among the mountains in which that river rises, and far north of that. "in the south, this species extends to the congo river, as i am told by native traders who have visited the coast between the gaboon and that river. beyond that, i am not informed. this animal is only found at a distance from the coast in most cases, and, according to my best information, approaches it nowhere so nearly as on the south side of this river, where they have been found within ten miles of the sea. this, however, is only of late occurrence. i am informed by some of the oldest mpongwe men that formerly he was only found on the sources of the river, but that at present he may be found within half-a-day's walk of its mouth. formerly he inhabited the mountainous ridge where bushmen alone inhabited, but now he boldly approaches the mpongwe plantations. this is doubtless the reason of the scarcity of information in years past, as the opportunities for receiving a knowledge of the animal have not been wanting; traders having for one hundred years frequented this river, and specimens, such as have been brought here within a year, could not have been exhibited without having attracted the attention of the most stupid." one specimen mr. ford examined weighed lbs., without the thoracic, or pelvic, viscera, and measured four feet four inches round the chest. this writer describes so minutely and graphically the onslaught of the gorilla--though he does not for a moment pretend to have witnessed the scene--that i am tempted to give this part of his paper in full, for comparison with other narratives: "he always rises to his feet when making an attack, though he approaches his antagonist in a stooping posture. "though he never lies in wait, yet, when he hears, sees, or scents a man, he immediately utters his characteristic cry, prepares for an attack, and always acts on the offensive. the cry he utters resembles a grunt more than a growl, and is similar to the cry of the chimpanzee, when irritated, but vastly louder. it is said to be audible at a great distance. his preparation consists in attending the females and young ones, by whom he is usually accompanied, to a little distance. he, however, soon returns, with his crest erect and projecting forward, his nostrils dilated, and his under-lip thrown down; at the same time uttering his characteristic yell, designed, it would seem, to terrify his antagonist. instantly, unless he is disabled by a well-directed shot, he makes an onset, and, striking his antagonist with the palm of his hands, or seizing him with a grasp from which there is no escape, he dashes him upon the ground, and lacerates him with his tusks. "he is said to seize a musket, and instantly crush the barrel between his teeth.... this animal's savage nature is very well shewn by the implacable desperation of a young one that was brought here. it was taken very young, and kept four months, and many means were used to tame it; but it was incorrigible, so that it bit me an hour before it died." mr. ford discredits the house-building and elephant-driving stories, and says that no well-informed natives believe them. they are tales told to children. i might quote other testimony to a similar effect, but, as it appears to me, less carefully weighed and sifted, from the letters of mm. franquet and gautier laboullay, appended to the memoir of m. i. g. st. hilaire, which i have already cited. bearing in mind what is known regarding the orang and the gibbon, the statements of dr. savage and mr. ford do not appear to me to be justly open to criticism on _à priori_ grounds. the gibbons, as we have seen, readily assume the erect posture, but the gorilla is far better fitted by its organization for that attitude than are the gibbons: if the laryngeal pouches of the gibbons, as is very likely, are important in giving volume to a voice which can be heard for half a league, the gorilla, which has similar sacs, more largely developed, and whose bulk is fivefold that of a gibbon, may well be audible for twice that distance. if the orang fights with its hands, the gibbons and chimpanzees with their teeth, the gorilla may, probably enough, do either or both; nor is there anything to be said against either chimpanzee or gorilla building a nest, when it is proved that the orang-utan habitually performs that feat. with all this evidence, now ten to fifteen years old, before the world, it is not a little surprising that the assertions of a recent traveller, who, so far as the gorilla is concerned, really does very little more than repeat, on his own authority, the statements of savage and of ford, should have met with so much and such bitter opposition. if subtraction be made of what was known before, the sum and substance of what m. du chaillu has affirmed as a matter of his own observation respecting the gorilla, is, that, in advancing to the attack, the great brute beats his chest with his fists. i confess i see nothing very improbable, or very much worth disputing about, in this statement. with respect to the other man-like apes of africa, m. du chaillu tells us absolutely nothing, of his own knowledge, regarding the common chimpanzee; but he informs us of a bald-headed species or variety, the _nschiego mbouve_, which builds itself a shelter, and of another rare kind with a comparatively small face, large facial angle, and peculiar note, resembling "kooloo." as the orang shelters itself with a rough coverlet of leaves, and the common chimpanzee, according to that eminently trustworthy observer dr. savage, makes a sound like "whoo-whoo,"--the grounds of the summary repudiation with which m. du chaillu's statements on these matters have been met is not obvious. if i have abstained from quoting m. du chaillu's work, then, it is not because i discern any inherent improbability in his assertions respecting the man-like apes; nor from any wish to throw suspicion on his veracity; but because, in my opinion, so long as his narrative remains in its present state of unexplained and apparently inexplicable confusion, it has no claim to original authority respecting any subject whatsoever. it may be truth, but it is not evidence. footnotes: [ ] regnum congo: hoc est vera descriptio regni africani quod tam ab incolis quam lusitanis congus appellatur, per philippum pigafettam, olim ex edoardo lopez acroamatis lingua italica excerpta, num latio sermone donata ab august. cassiod. reinio. iconibus et imaginibus rerum memorabilium quasi vivis, opera et industria joan. theodori et joan. israelis de bry, fratrum exornata. francofurti, mdxcviii. [ ] "except this that their legges had no calves."--[ed. .] and in a marginal note, "these great apes are called pongo's." [ ] _purchas' note._--cape negro is in degrees south of the line. [ ] purchas' marginal note, p. :--"the pongo a giant ape. he told me in conference with him, that one of these pongoes tooke a negro boy of his which lived a moneth with them. for they hurt not those which they surprise at unawares, except they look on them; which he avoyded. he said their highth was like a man's, but their bignesse twice as great. i saw the negro boy. what the other monster should be he hath forgotten to relate; and these papers came to my hand since his death, which, otherwise, in my often conferences, i might have learned. perhaps he meaneth the pigmy pongo killers mentioned." [ ] archives du museum, tome x. [ ] i am indebted to dr. wright, of cheltenham, whose paleontological labours are so well known, for bringing this interesting relic to my knowledge. tyson's granddaughter, it appears, married dr. allardyce, a physician of repute in cheltenham, and brought, as part of her dowry, the skeleton of the "pygmie." dr. allardyce presented it to the cheltenham museum, and, through the good offices of my friend dr. wright, the authorities of the museum have permitted me to borrow, what is, perhaps, its most remarkable ornament. [ ] "mandrill" seems to signify a "man-like ape," the word "drill" or "dril" having been anciently employed in england to denote an ape or baboon. thus in the fifth edition of blount's "glossographia, or a dictionary interpreting the hard words of whatsoever language now used in our refined english tongue ... very useful for all such as desire to understand what they read," published in , i find, "dril--a stone-cutter's tool wherewith he bores little holes in marble, &c. also a large overgrown ape and baboon, so called." "drill" is used in the same sense in charleton's "onomasticon zoicon," . the singular etymology of the word given by buffon seems hardly a probable one. [ ] histoire naturelle, suppl. tome ème, . [ ] camper, oeuvres, i. p. . [ ] verhandelingen van het bataviaasch genootschap. tweede deel. derde druk. . [ ] "briefe des herrn v. wurmb und des h. baron von wollzogen. gotha, ." [ ] see blumenbach, "abbildungen naturhistorichen gegenstände," no. , ; and tilesius, "naturhistoriche früchte der ersten kaiserlich-russischen erdumsegelung," p. , . [ ] speaking broadly and without prejudice to the question, whether there be more than one species of orang. [ ] see "observations on the external characters and habits of the troglodytes niger, by thomas n. savage, m.d., and on its organization, by jeffries wyman, m.d.," boston journal of natural history, vol. iv., - ; and "external characters, habits, and osteology of troglodytes gorilla," by the same authors, ibid., vol. v., . [ ] "man and monkies," p. . [ ] "wanderings in new south wales," vol. ii. chap. viii., . [ ] boston journal of natural history, vol. i., . [ ] the largest orang-utan, cited by temminck, measured, when standing upright, ft.; but he mentions having just received news of the capture of an orang ft. in. high. schlegel and müller say that their largest old male measured, upright, . netherlands "el"; and from the crown to the end of the toes, . el; the circumference of the body being about el. the largest old female was . el high, when standing. the adult skeleton in the college of surgeons' museum, if set upright, would stand ft. - in. from crown to sole. dr. humphry gives ft. in. as the mean height of two orangs. of seventeen orangs examined by mr. wallace, the largest was ft. in. high, from the heel to the crown of the head. mr. spencer st. john, however, in his "life in the forests of the far east," tells us of an orang of " ft. in., measuring fairly from the head to the heel," in. across the face, and in. round the wrist. it does not appear, however, that mr. st. john measured this orang himself. [ ] see mr. wallace's account of an infant "orang-utan," in the "annals of natural history" for . mr. wallace provided his interesting charge with an artificial mother of buffalo-skin, but the cheat was too successful. the infant's entire experience led it to associate teats with hair, and feeling the latter, it spent its existence in vain endeavours to discover the former. [ ] "they are the slowest and least active of all the monkey tribe, and their motions are surprisingly awkward and uncouth."--sir james brooke, in the "proceedings of the zoological society," . [ ] mr. wallace's account of the progression of the orang almost exactly corresponds with this. [ ] sir james brooke, in a letter to mr. waterhouse, published in the proceedings of the zoological society for , says:--"on the habits of the orangs, as far as i have been able to observe them, i may remark that they are as dull and slothful as can well be conceived, and on no occasion, when pursuing them, did they move so fast as to preclude my keeping pace with them easily through a moderately clear forest; and even when obstructions below (such as wading up to the neck) allowed them to get away some distance, they were sure to stop and allow me to come up. i never observed the slightest attempt at defence, and the wood which sometimes rattled about our ears was broken by their weight, and not thrown, as some persons represent. if pushed to extremity, however, the _pappan_ could not be otherwise than formidable, and one unfortunate man, who, with a party, was trying to catch a large one alive, lost two of his fingers, besides being severely bitten on the face, whilst the animal finally beat off his pursuers and escaped." mr. wallace, on the other hand, affirms that he has several times observed them throwing down branches when pursued. "it is true he does not throw them at a person, but casts them down vertically; for it is evident that a bough cannot be thrown to any distance from the top of a lofty tree. in one case a female mias, on a durian tree, kept up for at least ten minutes a continuous shower of branches and of the heavy, spined fruits, as large as -pounders, which most effectually kept us clear of the tree she was on. she could be seen breaking them off and throwing them down with every appearance of rage, uttering at intervals a loud pumping grunt, and evidently meaning mischief."--"on the habits of the orang-utan," annals of nat. history, . this statement, it will be observed, is quite in accordance with that contained in the letter of the resident palm quoted above (p. ). [ ] on the orang-utan, or mias of borneo, annals of natural history, . [ ] notice of the external characters and habits of troglodytes gorilla. boston journal of natural history, . ii on the relations of man to the lower animals. multis videri poterit, majorem esse differentiam simiæ et hominis, quam diei et noctis; verum tamen hi, comparatione instituta inter summos europæ heroës et hottentottos ad caput bonæ spei degentes, difficillime sibi persuadebunt, has eosdem habere natales; vel si virginem nobilem aulicam, maxime comtam et humanissimam, conferre vellent cum homine sylvestri et sibi relicto, vix augurari possent, hunc et illam ejusdem esse speciei.--_linnæi amoenitates acad. "anthropomorpha."_ the question of questions for mankind--the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other--is the ascertainment of the place which man occupies in nature and of his relations to the universe of things. whence our race has come; what are the limits of our power over nature, and of nature's power over us; to what goal we are tending; are the problems which present themselves anew and with undiminished interest to every man born into the world. most of us, shrinking from the difficulties and dangers which beset the seeker after original answers to these riddles, are contented to ignore them altogether, or to smother the investigating spirit under the featherbed of respected and respectable tradition. but, in every age, one or two restless spirits, blessed with that constructive genius, which can only build on a secure foundation, or cursed with the mere spirit of scepticism, are unable to follow in the well-worn and comfortable track of their forefathers and contemporaries, and unmindful of thorns and stumbling-blocks, strike out into paths of their own. the sceptics end in the infidelity which asserts the problem to be insoluble, or in the atheism which denies the existence of any orderly progress and governance of things: the men of genius propound solutions which grow into systems of theology or of philosophy, or veiled in musical language which suggests more than it asserts, take the shape of the poetry of an epoch. each such answer to the great question, invariably asserted by the followers of its propounder, if not by himself, to be complete and final, remains in high authority and esteem, it may be for one century, or it may be for twenty: but, as invariably, time proves each reply to have been a mere approximation to the truth--tolerable chiefly on account of the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their successors. in a well-worn metaphor, a parallel is drawn between the life of man and the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into the butterfly; but the comparison may be more just as well as more novel, if for its former term we take the mental progress of the race. history shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge, periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another, itself but temporary. truly the imago state of man seems to be terribly distant, but every moult is a step gained, and of such there have been many. since the revival of learning, whereby the western races of europe were enabled to enter upon that progress towards true knowledge, which was commenced by the philosophers of greece, but was almost arrested in subsequent long ages of intellectual stagnation, or, at most, gyration, the human larva has been feeding vigorously, and moulting in proportion. a skin of some dimension was cast in the th century, and another towards the end of the th, while, within the last fifty years, the extraordinary growth of every department of physical science has spread among us mental food of so nutritious and stimulating a character that a new ecdysis seems imminent. but this is a process not unusually accompanied by many throes and some sickness and debility, or, it may be, by graver disturbances; so that every good citizen must feel bound to facilitate the process, and even if he have nothing but a scalpel to work withal, to ease the cracking integument to the best of his ability. in this duty lies my excuse for the publication of these essays. for it will be admitted that some knowledge of man's position in the animate world is an indispensable preliminary to the proper understanding of his relations to the universe--and this again resolves itself, in the long run, into an inquiry into the nature and the closeness of the ties which connect him with those singular creatures whose history[ ] has been sketched in the preceding pages. the importance of such an inquiry is indeed intuitively manifest. brought face to face with these blurred copies of himself, the least thoughtful of men is conscious of a certain shock, due perhaps, not so much to disgust at the aspect of what looks like an insulting caricature, as to the awakening of a sudden and profound mistrust of time-honoured theories and strongly-rooted prejudices regarding his own position in nature, and his relations to the under-world of life; while that which remains a dim suspicion for the unthinking, becomes a vast argument, fraught with the deepest consequences, for all who are acquainted with the recent progress of the anatomical and physiological sciences. i now propose briefly to unfold that argument, and to set forth, in a form intelligible to those who possess no special acquaintance with anatomical science, the chief facts upon which all conclusions respecting the nature and the extent of the bonds which connect man with the brute world must be based: i shall then indicate the one immediate conclusion which, in my judgment, is justified by those facts, and i shall finally discuss the bearing of that conclusion upon the hypotheses which have been entertained respecting the origin of man. the facts to which i would first direct the reader's attention, though ignored by many of the professed instructors of the public mind, are easy of demonstration and are universally agreed to by men of science; while their significance is so great, that whoso has duly pondered over them will, i think, find little to startle him in the other revelations of biology. i refer to those facts which have been made known by the study of development. it is a truth of very wide, if not of universal, application, that every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains. the oak is a more complex thing than the little rudimentary plant contained in the acorn; the caterpillar is more complex than the egg; the butterfly than the caterpillar; and each of these beings, in passing from its rudimentary to its perfect condition, runs through a series of changes, the sum of which is called its development. in the higher animals these changes are extremely complicated; but, within the last half-century, the labours of such men as von baer, rathke, reichert, bischof, and remak have almost completely unravelled them, so that the successive stages of development which are exhibited by a dog, for example, are now as well known to the embryologist as are the steps of the metamorphosis of the silkworm moth to the school-boy. it will be useful to consider with attention the nature and the order of the stages of canine development, as an example of the process in the higher animals generally. the dog, like all animals, save the very lowest (and further inquiries may not improbably remove the apparent exception), commences its existence as an egg: as a body which is, in every sense, as much an egg as that of a hen, but is devoid of that accumulation of nutritive matter which confers upon the bird's egg its exceptional size and domestic utility; and wants the shell, which would not only be useless to an animal incubated within the body of its parent, but would cut it off from access to the source of that nutriment which the young creature requires, but which the minute egg of the mammal does not contain within itself. the dog's egg is, in fact, a little spheroidal bag (fig. ), formed of a delicate transparent membrane called the _vitelline membrane_, and about / to / th an inch in diameter. it contains a mass of viscid nutritive matter--the "_yelk_"--within which is inclosed a second much more delicate spheroidal bag, called the "_germinal vesicle_" (_a_). in this, lastly, lies a more solid rounded body, termed the "_germinal spot_" (_b_). [illustration: fig. .--a. egg of the dog, with the vitelline membrane burst, so as to give exit to the yelk, the germinal vesicle (_a_), and its included spot (_b_). b. c. d. e. f. successive changes of the yelk indicated in the text. after bischoff.] the egg, or "ovum," is originally formed within a gland, from which, in due season, it becomes detached, and passes into the living chamber fitted for its protection and maintenance during the protracted process of gestation. here, when subjected to the required conditions, this minute and apparently insignificant particle of living matter becomes animated by a new and mysterious activity. the germinal vesicle and spot cease to be discernible (their precise fate being one of the yet unsolved problems of embryology), but the yelk becomes circumferentially indented, as if an invisible knife had been drawn round it, and thus appears divided into two hemispheres (fig. , c). by the repetition of this process in various planes, these hemispheres become subdivided, so that four segments are produced (d); and these, in like manner, divide and subdivide again, until the whole yelk is converted into a mass of granules, each of which consists of a minute spheroid of yelk-substance, inclosing a central particle, the so-called "_nucleus_" (f). nature, by this process, has attained much the same result as that at which a human artificer arrives by his operations in a brickfield. she takes the rough plastic material of the yelk and breaks it up into well-shaped, tolerably even-sized masses, handy for building up into any part of the living edifice. next, the mass of organic bricks, or "_cells_" as they are technically called, thus formed, acquires an orderly arrangement, becoming converted into a hollow spheroid with double walls. then, upon one side of this spheroid, appears a thickening, and, by and bye, in the centre of the area of thickening, a straight shallow groove (fig. , a) marks the central line of the edifice which is to be raised, or, in other words, indicates the position of the middle line of the body of the future dog. the substance bounding the groove on each side next rises up into a fold, the rudiment of the side wall of that long cavity, which will eventually lodge the spinal marrow and the brain; and in the floor of this chamber appears a solid cellular cord, the so-called "_notochord_." one end of the inclosed cavity dilates to form the head (fig. , b), the other remains narrow, and eventually becomes the tail; the side walls of the body are fashioned out of the downward continuation of the walls of the groove; and from them, by and bye, grow out little buds which, by degrees, assume the shape of limbs. watching the fashioning process stage by stage, one is forcibly reminded of the modeller in clay. every part, every organ, is at first, as it were, pinched up rudely, and sketched out in the rough; then shaped more accurately; and only, at last, receives the touches which stamp its final character. thus, at length, the young puppy assumes such a form as is shown in fig. , c. in this condition it has a disproportionately large head, as dissimilar to that of a dog as the bud-like limbs are unlike his legs. the remains of the yelk, which have not yet been applied to the nutrition and growth of the young animal, are contained in a sac attached to the rudimentary intestine, and termed the yelk-sac, or "_umbilical vesicle_." two membranous bags, intended to subserve respectively the protection and nutrition of the young creature, have been developed from the skin and from the under and hinder surface of the body; the former, the so-called "_amnion_," is a sac filled with fluid, which invests the whole body of the embryo, and plays the part of a sort of water-bed for it; the other, termed the "_allantois_," grows out, loaded with blood-vessels, from the ventral region, and eventually applying itself to the walls of the cavity, in which the developing organism is contained, enables these vessels to become the channel by which the stream of nutriment, required to supply the wants of the offspring, is furnished to it by the parent. [illustration: fig. .--a. earliest rudiment of the dog. b. rudiment further advanced, showing the foundations of the head, tail, and vertebral column. c. the very young puppy, with attached ends of the yelk-sac and allantois, and invested in the amnion.] the structure which is developed by the interlacement of the vessels of the offspring with those of the parent, and by means of which the former is enabled to receive nourishment and to get rid of effete matters, is termed the "_placenta_." it would be tedious, and it is unnecessary for my present purpose, to trace the process of development further; suffice it to say, that, by a long and gradual series of changes, the rudiment here depicted and described becomes a puppy, is born, and then, by still slower and less perceptible steps, passes into the adult dog. there is not much apparent resemblance between a barndoor fowl and the dog who protects the farm-yard. nevertheless the student of development finds, not only that the chick commences its existence as an egg, primarily identical, in all essential respects, with that of the dog, but that the yelk of this egg undergoes division--that the primitive groove arises, and that the contiguous parts of the germ are fashioned, by precisely similar methods, into a young chick, which, at one stage of its existence, is so like the nascent dog, that ordinary inspection would hardly distinguish the two. * * * * * the history of the development of any other vertebrate animal, lizard, snake, frog, or fish, tells the same story. there is always, to begin with, an egg having the same essential structure as that of the dog:--the yelk of that egg always undergoes division, or "_segmentation_" as it is often called: the ultimate products of that segmentation constitute the building materials for the body of the young animal; and this is built up round a primitive groove, in the floor of which a notochord is developed. furthermore, there is a period in which the young of all these animals resemble one another, not merely in outward form, but in all essentials of structure, so closely, that the differences between them are inconsiderable, while, in their subsequent course, they diverge more and more widely from one another. and it is a general law, that, the more closely any animals resemble one another in adult structure, the longer and the more intimately do their embryos resemble one another: so that, for example, the embryos of a snake and of a lizard remain like one another longer than do those of a snake and of a bird; and the embryo of a dog and of a cat remain like one another for a far longer period than do those of a dog and a bird; or of a dog and an opossum; or even than those of a dog and a monkey. thus the study of development affords a clear test of closeness of structural affinity, and one turns with impatience to inquire what results are yielded by the study of the development of man. is he something apart? does he originate in a totally different way from dog, bird, frog, and fish, thus justifying those who assert him to have no place in nature and no real affinity with the lower world of animal life? or does he originate in a similar germ, pass through the same slow and gradually progressive modifications,--depend on the same contrivances for protection and nutrition, and finally enter the world by the help of the same mechanism? the reply is not doubtful for a moment, and has not been doubtful any time these thirty years. without question, the mode of origin and the early stages of the development of man are identical with those of the animals immediately below him in the scale:--without a doubt, in these respects, he is far nearer the apes, than the apes are to the dog. the human ovum is about / of an inch in diameter, and might be described in the same terms as that of the dog, so that i need only refer to the figure illustrative ( a.) of its structure. it leaves the organ in which it is formed in a similar fashion and enters the organic chamber prepared for its reception in the same way, the conditions of its development being in all respects the same. it has not yet been possible (and only by some rare chance can it ever be possible) to study the human ovum in so early a developmental stage as that of yelk division, but there is every reason to conclude that the changes it undergoes are identical with those exhibited by the ova of other vertebrated animals; for the formative materials of which the rudimentary human body is composed, in the earliest conditions in which it has been observed, are the same as those of other animals. some of these earliest stages are figured below and, as will be seen, they are strictly comparable to the very early states of the dog; the marvellous correspondence between the two which is kept up, even for some time, as development advances, becoming apparent by the simple comparison of the figures with those on page . indeed, it is very long before the body of the young human being can be readily discriminated from that of the young puppy; but, at a tolerably early period, the two become distinguishable by the different form of their adjuncts, the yelk-sac and the allantois. the former, in the dog, becomes long and spindle-shaped, while in man it remains spherical; the latter, in the dog, attains an extremely large size, and the vascular processes which are developed from it and eventually give rise to the formation of the placenta (taking root, as it were, in the parental organism, so as to draw nourishment therefrom, as the root of a tree extracts it from the soil) are arranged in an encircling zone, while in man, the allantois remains comparatively small, and its vascular rootlets are eventually restricted to one disk-like spot. hence, while the placenta of the dog is like a girdle, that of man has the cake-like form, indicated by the name of the organ. [illustration: fig. .--a. human ovum (after kölliker). a. germinal vesicle. b. germinal spot. b. a very early condition of man, with yelk-sac, allantois, and amnion (original). c. a more advanced stage (after kölliker), compare fig. , c.] but, exactly in those respects in which the developing man differs from the dog, he resembles the ape, which, like man, has a spheroidal yelk-sac and a discoidal--sometimes partially lobed--placenta. so that it is only quite in the later stages of development that the young human being presents marked differences from the young ape, while the latter departs as much from the dog in its development, as the man does. startling as the last assertion may appear to be, it is demonstrably true, and it alone appears to me sufficient to place beyond all doubt the structural unity of man with the rest of the animal world, and more particularly and closely with the apes. * * * * * thus, identical in the physical processes by which he originates--identical in the early stages of his formation--identical in the mode of his nutrition before and after birth, with the animals which lie immediately below him in the scale--man, if his adult and perfect structure be compared with theirs, exhibits, as might be expected, a marvellous likeness of organization. he resembles them as they resemble one another--he differs from them as they differ from one another.--and, though these differences and resemblances cannot be weighed and measured, their value may be readily estimated; the scale or standard of judgment, touching that value, being afforded and expressed by the system of classification of animals now current among zoologists. a careful study of the resemblances and differences presented by animals has, in fact, led naturalists to arrange them into groups, or assemblages, all the members of each group presenting a certain amount of definable resemblance, and the number of points of similarity being smaller as the group is larger and _vice versâ_. thus, all creatures which agree only in presenting the few distinctive marks of animality form the "kingdom" animalia. the numerous animals which agree only in possessing the special characters of vertebrates form one "sub-kingdom" of this kingdom. then the sub-kingdom vertebrata is subdivided into the five "classes," fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, and these into smaller groups called "orders"; these into "families" and "genera"; while the last are finally broken up into the smallest assemblages, which are distinguished by the possession of constant, not-sexual, characters. these ultimate groups are species. every year tends to bring about a greater uniformity of opinion throughout the zoological world as to the limits and characters of these groups, great and small. at present, for example, no one has the least doubt regarding the characters of the classes mammalia, aves, or reptilia; nor does the question arise whether any thoroughly well-known animal should be placed in one class or the other. again, there is a very general agreement respecting the characters and limits of the orders of mammals, and as to the animals which are structurally necessitated to take a place in one or another order. no one doubts, for example, that the sloth and the ant-eater, the kangaroo and the opossum, the tiger and the badger, the tapir and the rhinoceros, are respectively members of the same orders. these successive pairs of animals may, and some do, differ from one another immensely, in such matters as the proportions and structure of their limbs; the number of their dorsal and lumbar vertebræ; the adaptation of their frames to climbing, leaping, or running; the number and form of their teeth; and the characters of their skulls and of the contained brain. but, with all these differences, they are so closely connected in all the more important and fundamental characters of their organization, and so distinctly separated by these same characters from other animals, that zoologists find it necessary to group them together as members of one order. and if any new animal were discovered, and were found to present no greater difference from the kangaroo and the opossum, for example, than these animals do from one another, the zoologist would not only be logically compelled to rank it in the same order with these, but he would not think of doing otherwise. bearing this obvious course of zoological reasoning in mind, let us endeavour for a moment to disconnect our thinking selves from the mask of humanity; let us imagine ourselves scientific saturnians, if you will, fairly acquainted with such animals as now inhabit the earth, and employed in discussing the relations they bear to a new and singular "erect and featherless biped," which some enterprising traveller, overcoming the difficulties of space and gravitation, has brought from that distant planet for our inspection, well preserved, may be, in a cask of rum. we should all, at once, agree upon placing him among the mammalian vertebrates; and his lower jaw, his molars, and his brain, would leave no room for doubting the systematic position of the new genus among those mammals, whose young are nourished during gestation by means of a placenta, or what are called the "placental mammals." further, the most superficial study would at once convince us that, among the orders of placental mammals, neither the whales nor the hoofed creatures, nor the sloths and ant-eaters, nor the carnivorous cats, dogs, and bears, still less the rodent rats and rabbits, or the insectivorous moles and hedgehogs, or the bats, could claim our "_homo_" as one of themselves. there would remain then, but one order for comparison, that of the apes (using that word in its broadest sense), and the question for discussion would narrow itself to this--is man so different from any of these apes that he must form an order by himself? or does he differ less from them than they differ from one another, and hence must take his place in the same order with them? being happily free from all real, or imaginary, personal interest in the results of the inquiry thus set afoot, we should proceed to weigh the arguments on one side and on the other, with as much judicial calmness as if the question related to a new opossum. we should endeavour to ascertain, without seeking either to magnify or diminish them, all the characters by which our new mammal differed from the apes; and if we found that these were of less structural value, than those which distinguish certain members of the ape order from others universally admitted to be of the same order, we should undoubtedly place the newly discovered tellurian genus with them. i now proceed to detail the facts which seem to me to leave us no choice but to adopt the last mentioned course. * * * * * it is quite certain that the ape which most nearly approaches man, in the totality of its organization, is either the chimpanzee or the gorilla; and as it makes no practical difference, for the purposes of my present argument, which is selected for comparison, on the one hand, with man, and on the other hand, with the rest of the primates,[ ] i shall select the latter (so far as its organization is known)--as a brute now so celebrated in prose and verse, that all must have heard of him, and have formed some conception of his appearance. i shall take up as many of the most important points of difference between man and this remarkable creature, as the space at my disposal will allow me to discuss, and the necessities of the argument demand; and i shall inquire into the value and magnitude of these differences, when placed side by side with those which separate the gorilla from other animals of the same order. in the general proportions of the body and limbs there is a remarkable difference between the gorilla and man, which at once strikes the eye. the gorilla's brain-case is smaller, its trunk larger, its lower limbs shorter, its upper limbs longer in proportion than those of man. i find that the vertebral column of a full-grown gorilla, in the museum of the royal college of surgeons, measures inches along its anterior curvature, from the upper edge of the atlas, or first vertebra of the neck, to the lower extremity of the sacrum; that the arm, without the hand, is - / inches long; that the leg, without the foot, is - / inches long; that the hand is - / inches long; the foot - / inches long. in other words, taking the length of the spinal column as , the arm equals , the leg , the hand , and the foot . in the skeleton of a male bosjesman, in the same collection, the proportions, by the same measurement, to the spinal column, taken as , are--the arm , the leg , the hand , and the foot . in a woman of the same race the arm is , and the leg , the hand and foot remaining the same. in a european skeleton i find the arm to be , the leg , the hand , the foot . thus the leg is not so different as it looks at first sight, in its proportions to the spine in the gorilla and in the man--being very slightly shorter than the spine in the former, and between / and / longer than the spine in the latter. the foot is longer and the hand much longer in the gorilla; but the great difference is caused by the arms, which are very much longer than the spine in the gorilla, very much shorter than the spine in the man. the question now arises how are the other apes related to the gorilla in these respects--taking the length of the spine, measured in the same way, at . in an adult chimpanzee, the arm is only , the leg , the hand , the foot --so that the hand and the leg depart more from the human proportion and the arm less, while the foot is about the same as in the gorilla. in the orang, the arms are very much longer than in the gorilla ( ), while the legs are shorter ( ); the foot is longer than the hand ( and ), and both are much longer in proportion to the spine. in the other man-like apes again, the gibbons, these proportions are still further altered; the length of the arms being to that of the spinal column as to ; while the legs are also a third longer than the spinal column, so as to be longer than in man, instead of shorter. the hand is half as long as the spinal column, and the foot, shorter than the hand, is about / ths of the length of the spinal column. thus _hylobates_ is as much longer in the arms than the gorilla, as the gorilla is longer in the arms than man; while, on the other hand, it is as much longer in the legs than the man, as the man is longer in the legs than the gorilla, so that it contains within itself the extremest deviations from the average length of both pairs of limbs (see the frontispiece). the mandrill presents a middle condition, the arms and legs being nearly equal in length, and both being shorter than the spinal column; while hand and foot have nearly the same proportions to one another and to the spine, as in man. in the spider monkey (_ateles_) the leg is longer than the spine, and the arm than the leg; and, finally, in that remarkable lemurine form, the indri (_lichanotus_), the leg is about as long as the spinal column, while the arm is not more than / ths of its length; the hand having rather less and the foot rather more, than one-third the length of the spinal column. these examples might be greatly multiplied, but they suffice to show that, in whatever proportion of its limbs the gorilla differs from man, the other apes depart still more widely from the gorilla, and that, consequently, such differences of proportion can have no ordinal value. * * * * * we may next consider the differences presented by the trunk, consisting of the vertebral column, or backbone, and the ribs and pelvis, or bony hip-basin, which are connected with it, in man and in the gorilla respectively. in man, in consequence partly of the disposition of the articular surfaces of the vertebræ, and largely of the elastic tension of some of the fibrous bands, or ligaments, which connect these vertebræ together, the spinal column, as a whole, has an elegant s-like curvature, being convex forwards in the neck, concave in the back, convex in the loins, or lumbar region, and concave again in the sacral region; an arrangement which gives much elasticity to the whole backbone, and diminishes the jar communicated to the spine, and through it to the head, by locomotion in the erect position. furthermore, under ordinary circumstances, man has seven vertebræ in his neck, which are called _cervical_; twelve succeed these, bearing ribs and forming the upper part of the back, whence they are termed _dorsal_; five lie in the loins, bearing no distinct, or free, ribs, and are called _lumbar_; five, united together into a great bone, excavated in front, solidly wedged in between the hip bones, to form the back of the pelvis, and known by the name of the _sacrum_, succeed these; and finally, three or four little more or less moveable bones, so small as to be insignificant, constitute the _coccyx_ or rudimentary tail. in the gorilla, the vertebral column is similarly divided into cervical, dorsal, lumbar, sacral and coccygeal vertebræ, and the total number of cervical and dorsal vertebræ, taken together, is the same as in man; but the development of a pair of ribs to the first lumbar vertebra, which is an exceptional occurrence in man, is the rule in the gorilla; and hence, as lumbar are distinguished from dorsal vertebræ only by the presence or absence of free ribs, the seventeen "dorso-lumbar" vertebræ of the gorilla are divided into thirteen dorsal and four lumbar, while in man they are twelve dorsal and five lumbar. not only, however, does man occasionally possess thirteen pair of ribs,[ ] but the gorilla sometimes has fourteen pairs, while an orang-utan skeleton in the museum of the royal college of surgeons has twelve dorsal and five lumbar vertebræ, as in man. cuvier notes the same number in a _hylobates_. on the other hand, among the lower apes, many possess twelve dorsal and six or seven lumbar vertebræ; the douroucouli has fourteen dorsal and eight lumbar, and a lemur (_stenops tardigradus_) has fifteen dorsal and nine lumbar vertebræ. the vertebral column of the gorilla, as a whole, differs from that of man in the less marked character of its curves, especially in the slighter convexity of the lumbar region. nevertheless, the curves are present, and are quite obvious in young skeletons of the gorilla and chimpanzee which have been prepared without removal of the ligaments. in young orangs similarly preserved, on the other hand, the spinal column is either straight, or even concave forwards, throughout the lumbar region. whether we take these characters then, or such minor ones as those which are derivable from the proportional length of the spines of the cervical vertebræ, and the like, there is no doubt whatsoever as to the marked difference between man and the gorilla; but there is as little, that equally marked differences, of the very same order, obtain between the gorilla and the lower apes. [illustration: fig. .--front and side views of the bony pelvis of man, the gorilla and gibbon: reduced from drawings made from nature, of the same absolute length, by mr. waterhouse hawkins.] the pelvis, or bony girdle of the hips, of man is a strikingly human part of his organization; the expanded haunch bones affording support for his viscera during his habitually erect posture, and giving space for the attachment of the great muscles which enable him to assume and to preserve that attitude. in these respects the pelvis of the gorilla differs very considerably from his (fig. ). but go no lower than the gibbon, and see how vastly more he differs from the gorilla than the latter does from man, even in this structure. look at the flat, narrow haunch bones--the long and narrow passage--the coarse, outwardly curved, ischiatic prominences on which the gibbon habitually rests, and which are coated by the so-called "callosities," dense patches of skin, wholly absent in the gorilla, in the chimpanzee, and in the orang, as in man! in the lower monkeys and in the lemurs the difference becomes more striking still, the pelvis acquiring an altogether quadrupedal character. but now let us turn to a nobler and more characteristic organ--that by which the human frame seems to be, and indeed is, so strongly distinguished from all others,--i mean the skull. the differences between a gorilla's skull and a man's are truly immense (fig. ). in the former, the face, formed largely by the massive jaw-bones, predominates over the brain case, or cranium proper: in the latter, the proportions of the two are reversed. in the man, the occipital foramen, through which passes the great nervous cord connecting the brain with the nerves of the body, is placed just behind the centre of the base of the skull, which thus becomes evenly balanced in the erect posture; in the gorilla, it lies in the posterior third of that base. in the man, the surface of the skull is comparatively smooth, and the supraciliary ridges or brow prominences usually project but little--while, in the gorilla, vast crests are developed upon the skull, and the brow ridges overhang the cavernous orbits, like great penthouses. sections of the skulls, however, show that some of the apparent defects of the gorilla's cranium arise, in fact, not so much from deficiency of brain case as from excessive development of the parts of the face. the cranial cavity is not ill-shaped, and the forehead is not truly flattened or very retreating, its really well-formed curve being simply disguised by the mass of bone which is built up against it (fig. ). but the roofs of the orbits rise more obliquely into the cranial cavity, thus diminishing the space for the lower part of the anterior lobes of the brain, and the absolute capacity of the cranium is far less than that of man. so far as i am aware, no human cranium belonging to an adult man has yet been observed with a less cubical capacity than cubic inches, the smallest cranium observed in any race of men by morton, measuring cubic inches; while, on the other hand, the most capacious gorilla skull yet measured has a content of not more than - / cubic inches. let us assume, for simplicity's sake, that the lowest man's skull has twice the capacity of that of the highest gorilla.[ ] no doubt, this is a very striking difference, but it loses much of its apparent systematic value, when viewed by the light of certain other equally indubitable facts respecting cranial capacities. the first of these is, that the difference in the volume of the cranial cavity of different races of mankind is far greater, absolutely, than that between the lowest man and the highest ape, while, relatively, it is about the same. for the largest human skull measured by morton contained cubic inches, that is to say, had very nearly double the capacity of the smallest; while its absolute preponderance, of cubic inches--is far greater than that by which the lowest adult male human cranium surpasses the largest of the gorillas ( - - / = - / ). secondly, the adult crania of gorillas which have as yet been measured differ among themselves by nearly one-third, the maximum capacity being . cubic inches, the minimum cubic inches; and, thirdly, after making all due allowance for difference of size, the cranial capacities of some of the lower apes fall nearly as much, relatively, below those of the higher apes as the latter fall below man. thus, even in the important matter of cranial capacity, men differ more widely from one another than they do from the apes; while the lowest apes differ as much, in proportion, from the highest, as the latter does from man. the last proposition is still better illustrated by the study of the modifications which other parts of the cranium undergo in the simian series. it is the large proportional size of the facial bones and the great projection of the jaws which confers upon the gorilla's skull its small facial angle and brutal character. but if we consider the proportional size of the facial bones to the skull proper only, the little _chrysothrix_ (fig. ) differs very widely from the gorilla, and in the same way as man does; while the baboons (_cynocephalus_, fig. ) exaggerate the gross proportions of the muzzle of the great anthropoid, so that its visage looks mild and human by comparison with theirs. the difference between the gorilla and the baboon is even greater than it appears at first sight; for the great facial mass of the former is largely due to a downward development of the jaws; an essentially human character, superadded upon that almost purely forward, essentially brutal, development of the same parts which characterizes the baboon, and yet more remarkably distinguishes the lemur. [illustration: fig. .--sections of the skulls of man and various apes, drawn so as to give the cerebral cavity the same length in each case, thereby displaying the varying proportions of the facial bones. the line _b_ indicates the plane of the tentorium, which separates the cerebrum from the cerebellum; _d_, the axis of the occipital outlet of the skull. the extent of cerebral cavity behind _c_, which is a perpendicular erected on _b_ at the point where the tentorium is attached posteriorly, indicates the degree to which the cerebrum overlaps the cerebellum--the space occupied by which is roughly indicated by the dark shading. in comparing these diagrams, it must be recollected, that figures on so small a scale as these simply exemplify the statements in the text, the proof of which is to be found in the objects themselves.] similarly, the occipital foramen of _mycetes_ (fig. ), and still more of the lemurs, is situated completely in the posterior face of the skull, or as much further back than that of the gorilla, as that of the gorilla is further back than that of man; while, as if to render patent the futility of the attempt to base any broad classificatory distinction on such a character, the same group of platyrhine, or american monkeys, to which the _mycetes_ belongs, contains the _chrysothrix_, whose occipital foramen is situated far more forward than in any other ape, and nearly approaches the position it holds in man. again, the orang's skull is as devoid of excessively developed supraciliary prominences as a man's, though some varieties exhibit great crests elsewhere (see p. ); and in some of the cebine apes and in the _chrysothrix_, the cranium is as smooth and rounded as that of man himself. what is true of these leading characteristics of the skull, holds good, as may be imagined, of all minor features; so that for every constant difference between the gorilla's skull and the man's, a similar constant difference of the same order (that is to say, consisting in excess or defect of the same quality) may be found between the gorilla's skull and that of some other ape. so that, for the skull, no less than for the skeleton in general, the proposition holds good, that the differences between man and the gorilla are of smaller value than those between the gorilla and some other apes. in connection with the skull, i may speak of the teeth--organs which have a peculiar classificatory value, and whose resemblances and differences of number, form, and succession, taken as a whole, are usually regarded as more trustworthy indicators of affinity than any others. man is provided with two sets of teeth--milk teeth and permanent teeth. the former consist of four incisors, or cutting teeth; two canines, or eye-teeth; and four molars, or grinders, in each jaw--making twenty in all. the latter (fig. ) comprise four incisors, two canines, four small grinders, called premolars or false molars, and six large grinders, or true molars, in each jaw--making thirty-two in all. the internal incisors are larger than the external pair, in the upper jaw, smaller than the external pair, in the lower jaw. the crowns of the upper molars exhibit four cusps, or blunt-pointed elevations, and a ridge crosses the crown obliquely, from the inner, anterior, cusp to the outer, posterior cusp (fig. _m^ _). the anterior lower molars have five cusps, three external and two internal. the premolars have two cusps, one internal and one external, of which the outer is the higher. in all these respects the dentition of the gorilla may be described in the same terms as that of man; but in other matters it exhibits many and important differences (fig. ). thus the teeth of man constitute a regular and even series--without any break and without any marked projection of one tooth above the level of the rest; a peculiarity which, as cuvier long ago showed, is shared by no other mammal save one--as different a creature from man as can well be imagined--namely, the long extinct _anoplotherium_. the teeth of the gorilla, on the contrary, exhibit a break, or interval, termed the _diastema_, in both jaws: in front of the eye-tooth, or between it and the outer incisor, in the upper jaw; behind the eye-tooth, or between it and the front false molar, in the lower jaw. into this break in the series, in each jaw, fits the canine of the opposite jaw; the size of the eye-tooth in the gorilla being so great that it projects, like a tusk, far beyond the general level of the other teeth. the roots of the false molar teeth of the gorilla, again, are more complex than in man, and the proportional size of the molars is different. the gorilla has the crown of the hindmost grinder of the lower jaw more complex, and the order of eruption of the permanent teeth is different; the permanent canines making their appearance before the second and third molars in man, and after them in the gorilla. thus, while the teeth of the gorilla closely resemble those of man in number, kind, and in the general pattern of their crowns, they exhibit marked differences from those of man in secondary respects, such as relative size, number of fangs, and order of appearance. but, if the teeth of the gorilla be compared with those of an ape, no further removed from it than a _cynocephalus_, or baboon, it will be found that differences and resemblances of the same order are easily observable; but that many of the points in which the gorilla resembles man are those in which it differs from the baboon; while various respects in which it differs from man are exaggerated in the _cynocephalus_. the number and the nature of the teeth remain the same in the baboon as in the gorilla and in man. but the pattern of the baboon's upper molars is quite different from that described above (fig. ), the canines are proportionally longer and more knife-like; the anterior premolar in the lower jaw is specially modified; the posterior molar of the lower jaw is still larger and more complex than in the gorilla. passing from the old-world apes to those of the new world, we meet with a change of much greater importance than any of these. in such a genus as _cebus_, for example (fig. ), it will be found that while in some secondary points, such as the projection of the canines and the diastema, the resemblance to the great ape is preserved; in other and most important respects, the dentition is extremely different. instead of teeth in the milk set, there are : instead of teeth in the permanent set, there are , the false molars being increased from eight to twelve. and in form, the crowns of the molars are very unlike those of the gorilla, and differ far more widely from the human pattern. [illustration: fig. .--lateral views, of the same length, of the upper jaws of various primates. _i_, incisors; _c_, canines; _pm_, premolars; _m_, molars. a line is drawn through the first molar of man, gorilla, _cynocephalus_, and _cebus_, and the grinding surface of the second molar is shown in each, its anterior and internal angle being just above the _m_ of _m^ _.] the marmosets, on the other hand, exhibit the same number of teeth as man and the gorilla; but, notwithstanding this, their dentition is very different, for they have four more false molars, like the other american monkeys--but as they have four fewer true molars, the total remains the same. and passing from the american apes to the lemurs, the dentition becomes still more completely and essentially different from that of the gorilla. the incisors begin to vary both in number and in form. the molars acquire, more and more, a many-pointed, insectivorous character, and in one genus, the aye-aye (_cheiromys_), the canines disappear, and the teeth completely simulate those of a rodent (fig. ). hence it is obvious that, greatly as the dentition of the highest ape differs from that of man, it differs far more widely from that of the lower and lowest apes. * * * * * whatever part of the animal fabric--whatever series of muscles, whatever viscera might be selected for comparison--the result would be the same--the lower apes and the gorilla would differ more than the gorilla and the man. i cannot attempt in this place to follow out all these comparisons in detail, and indeed it is unnecessary i should do so. but certain real, or supposed, structural distinctions between man and the apes remain, upon which so much stress has been laid, that they require careful consideration, in order that the true value may be assigned to those which are real, and the emptiness of those which are fictitious may be exposed. i refer to the characters of the hand, the foot, and the brain. man has been defined as the only animal possessed of two hands terminating his fore-limbs, and of two feet ending his hind limbs, while it has been said that all the apes possess four hands; and he has been affirmed to differ fundamentally from all the apes in the characters of his brain, which alone, it has been strangely asserted and re-asserted, exhibits the structures known to anatomists as the posterior lobe, the posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle, and the hippocampus minor. that the former proposition should have gained general acceptance is not surprising--indeed, at first sight, appearances are much in its favour: but, as for the second, one can only admire the surpassing courage of its enunciator, seeing that it is an innovation which is not only opposed to generally and justly accepted doctrines, but which is directly negatived by the testimony of all original inquirers, who have specially investigated the matter: and that it neither has been, nor can be, supported by a single anatomical preparation. it would, in fact, be unworthy of serious refutation, except for the general and natural belief that deliberate and reiterated assertions must have some foundation. * * * * * before we can discuss the first point with advantage we must consider with some attention, and compare together, the structure of the human hand and that of the human foot, so that we may have distinct and clear ideas of what constitutes a hand and what a foot. the external form of the human hand is familiar enough to every one. it consists of a stout wrist followed by a broad palm, formed of flesh, and tendons, and skin, binding together four bones, and dividing into four long and flexible digits, or fingers, each of which bears on the back of its last joint a broad and flattened nail. the longest cleft between any two digits is rather less than half as long as the hand. from the outer side of the base of the palm a stout digit goes off, having only two joints instead of three; so short, that it only reaches to a little beyond the middle of the first joint of the finger next it; and further remarkable by its great mobility, in consequence of which it can be directed outwards, almost at a right angle to the rest. this digit is called the "_pollex_," or thumb; and, like the others, it bears a flat nail upon the back of its terminal joint. in consequence of the proportions and mobility of the thumb, it is what is termed "opposable"; in other words, its extremity can, with the greatest ease, be brought into contact with the extremities of any of the fingers; a property upon which the possibility of our carrying into effect the conceptions of the mind so largely depends. the external form of the foot differs widely from that of the hand; and yet, when closely compared, the two present some singular resemblances. thus the ankle corresponds in a manner with the wrist; the sole with the palm; the toes with the fingers; the great toe with the thumb. but the toes, or digits of the foot, are far shorter in proportion than the digits of the hand, and are less moveable, the want of mobility being most striking in the great toe--which, again, is very much larger in proportion to the other toes than the thumb to the fingers. in considering this point, however, it must not be forgotten that the civilized great toe, confined and cramped from childhood upwards, is seen to a great disadvantage, and that in uncivilized and barefooted people it retains a great amount of mobility, and even some sort of opposability. the chinese boatmen are said to be able to pull an oar, the artisans of bengal to weave, and the carajas to steal fishhooks, by its help; though, after all, it must be recollected that the structure of its joints and the arrangement of its bones, necessarily render its prehensile action far less perfect than that of the thumb. but to gain a precise conception of the resemblances and differences of the hand and foot, and of the distinctive characters of each, we must look below the skin, and compare the bony framework and its motor apparatus in each (fig. ). the skeleton of the hand exhibits, in the region which we term the wrist, and which is technically called the _carpus_--two rows of closely fitted polygonal bones, four in each row, which are tolerably equal in size. the bones of the first row with the bones of the forearm form the wrist joint, and are arranged side by side, no one greatly exceeding or over-lapping the rest. the four bones of the second row of the carpus bear the four long bones which support the palm of the hand. the fifth bone of the same character is articulated in a much more free and moveable manner than the others, with its carpal bone, and forms the base of the thumb. these are called _metacarpal_ bones, and they carry the _phalanges_, or bones of the digits, of which there are two in the thumb, and three in each of the fingers. [illustration: fig. .--the skeleton of the hand and foot of man reduced from dr. carter's drawings in gray's "anatomy." the hand is drawn to a larger scale than the foot. the line _a a_ in the hand indicates the boundary between the carpus and the metacarpus; _b b_ that between the latter and the proximal phalanges; _c c_ marks the ends of the distal phalanges. the line _a´ a´_ in the foot indicates the boundary between the tarsus and metatarsus; _b´ b´_ marks that between the metatarsus and the proximal phalanges; and _c´ c´_ bounds the ends of the distal phalanges; _ca_, the calcaneum; _as_, the astragalus; _sc_, the scaphoid bone in the tarsus.] the skeleton of the foot is very like that of the hand in some respects. thus there are three phalanges in each of the lesser toes, and only two in the great toe, which answers to the thumb. there is a long bone, termed _metatarsal_, answering to the metacarpal, for each digit; and the _tarsus_, which corresponds with the carpus, presents four short polygonal bones in a row, which correspond very closely with the four carpal bones of the second row of the hand. in other respects the foot differs very widely from the hand. thus the great toe is the longest digit but one; and its metatarsal is far less moveably articulated with the tarsus, than the metacarpal of the thumb with the carpus. but a far more important distinction lies in the fact that, instead of four more tarsal bones there are only three; and that these three are not arranged side by side, or in one row. one of them, the _os calcis_ or heel bone (_ca_), lies externally, and sends back the large projecting heel; another, the _astragalus_ (_as_), rests on this by one face, and by another, forms, with the bones of the leg, the ankle joint; while a third face, directed forwards, is separated from the three inner tarsal bones of the row next the metatarsus by a bone called the _scaphoid_ (_sc_). thus there is a fundamental difference in the structure of the foot and the hand, observable when the carpus and the tarsus are contrasted; and there are differences of degree noticeable when the proportions and the mobility of the metacarpals and metatarsals, with their respective digits, are compared together. the same two classes of differences become obvious when the muscles of the hand are compared with those of the foot. three principal sets of muscles, called "flexors," bend the fingers and thumb, as in clenching the fist, and three sets--the extensors--extend them, as in straightening the fingers. these muscles are all "long muscles"; that is to say, the fleshy part of each, lying in and being fixed to the bones of the arm, is, at the other end, continued into tendons, or rounded cords, which pass into the hand, and are ultimately fixed to the bones which are to be moved. thus, when the fingers are bent, the fleshy parts of the flexors of the fingers, placed in the arm, contract, in virtue of their peculiar endowment as muscles; and pulling the tendinous cords, connected with their ends, cause them to pull down the bones of the fingers towards the palm. not only are the principal flexors of the fingers and of the thumb long muscles, but they remain quite distinct from one another throughout their whole length. in the foot, there are also three principal flexor muscles of the digits or toes, and three principal extensors; but one extensor and one flexor are short muscles; that is to say, their fleshy parts are not situated in the leg (which corresponds with the arm), but in the back and in the sole of the foot--regions which correspond with the back and the palm of the hand. again, the tendons of the long flexor of the toes, and of the long flexor of the great toe, when they reach the sole of the foot, do not remain distinct from one another, as the flexors in the palm of the hand do, but they become united and commingled in a very curious manner--while their united tendons receive an accessory muscle connected with the heel-bone. but perhaps the most absolutely distinctive character about the muscles of the foot is the existence of what is termed the _peronæus longus_, a long muscle fixed to the outer bone of the leg, and sending its tendon to the outer ankle, behind and below which it passes, and then crosses the foot obliquely to be attached to the base of the great toe. no muscle in the hand exactly corresponds with this, which is eminently a foot muscle. to resume--the foot of man is distinguished from his hand by the following absolute anatomical differences:-- . by the arrangement of the tarsal bones. . by having a short flexor and a short extensor muscle of the digits. . by possessing the muscle termed _peronæus longus_. and if we desire to ascertain whether the terminal division of a limb, in other primates, is to be called a foot or a hand, it is by the presence or absence of these characters that we must be guided, and not by the mere proportions and greater or lesser mobility of the great toe, which may vary indefinitely without any fundamental alteration in the structure of the foot. * * * * * keeping these considerations in mind, let us now turn to the limbs of the gorilla. the terminal division of the fore-limb presents no difficulty--bone for bone and muscle for muscle, are found to be arranged essentially as in man, or with such minor differences as are found as varieties in man. the gorilla's hand is clumsier, heavier, and has a thumb somewhat shorter in proportion than that of man; but no one has ever doubted its being a true hand. at first sight, the termination of the hind limb of the gorilla looks very hand-like, and as it is still more so in many of the lower apes, it is not wonderful that the appellation "quadrumana," or four-handed creatures, adopted from the older anatomists[ ] by blumenbach, and unfortunately rendered current by cuvier, should have gained such wide acceptance as a name for the simian group. but the most cursory anatomical investigation at once proves that the resemblance of the so-called "hind hand" to a true hand, is only skin deep, and that, in all essential respects, the hind limb of the gorilla is as truly terminated by a foot as that of man. the tarsal bones, in all important circumstances of number, disposition, and form, resemble those of man (fig. ). the metatarsals and digits, on the other hand, are proportionally longer and more slender, while the great toe is not only proportionally shorter and weaker, but its metatarsal bone is united by a more moveable joint with the tarsus. at the same time, the foot is set more obliquely upon the leg than in man. as to the muscles, there is a short flexor, a short extensor, and a _peronæus longus_, while the tendons of the long flexors of the great toe and of the other toes are united together and with an accessory fleshy bundle. the hind limb of the gorilla, therefore, ends in a true foot, with a very moveable great toe. it is a prehensile foot, indeed, but is in no sense a hand: it is a foot which differs from that of man not in any fundamental character, but in mere proportions, in the degree of mobility, and in the secondary arrangement of its parts. it must not be supposed, however, because i speak of these differences as not fundamental, that i wish to underrate their value. they are important enough in their way, the structure of the foot being in strict correlation with that of the rest of the organism in each case. nor can it be doubted that the greater division of physiological labour in man, so that the function of support is thrown wholly on the leg and foot, is an advance in organization of very great moment to him; but, after all, regarded anatomically, the resemblances between the foot of man and the foot of the gorilla are far more striking and important than the differences. [illustration: fig. .--foot of man, gorilla, and orang-utan of the same absolute length, to show the differences in proportion of each. letters as in fig. . reduced from original drawings by mr. waterhouse hawkins.] i have dwelt upon this point at length, because it is one regarding which much delusion prevails; but i might have passed it over without detriment to my argument, which only requires me to show that, be the differences between the hand and foot of man and those of the gorilla what they may--the differences between those of the gorilla and those of the lower apes are much greater. it is not necessary to descend lower in the scale than the orang for conclusive evidence on this head. the thumb of the orang differs more from that of the gorilla than the thumb of the gorilla differs from that of man, not only by its shortness, but by the absence of any special long flexor muscle. the carpus of the orang, like that of most lower apes, contains nine bones, while in the gorilla, as in man and the chimpanzee, there are only eight. the orang's foot (fig. ) is still more aberrant; its very long toes and short tarsus, short great toe, short and raised heel, great obliquity of articulation in the leg, and absence of a long flexor tendon to the great toe, separating it far more widely from the foot of the gorilla than the latter is separated from that of man. but, in some of the lower apes, the hand and foot diverge still more from those of the gorilla, than they do in the orang. the thumb ceases to be opposable in the american monkeys; is reduced to a mere rudiment covered by the skin in the spider monkey; and is directed forwards and armed with a curved claw like the other digits, in the marmosets--so that, in all these cases, there can be no doubt but that the hand is more different from that of the gorilla than the gorilla's hand is from man's. and as to the foot, the great toe of the marmoset is still more insignificant in proportion than that of the orang--while in the lemurs it is very large, and as completely thumb-like and opposable as in the gorilla--but in these animals the second toe is often irregularly modified, and in some species the two principal bones of the tarsus, the _astragalus_ and the _os calcis_, are so immensely elongated as to render the foot, so far, totally unlike that of any other mammal. so with regard to the muscles. the short flexor of the toes of the gorilla differs from that of man by the circumstance that one slip of the muscle is attached, not to the heel bone, but to the tendons of the long flexors. the lower apes depart from the gorilla by an exaggeration of the same character, two, three, or more, slips becoming fixed to the long flexor tendons--or by a multiplication of the slips.--again, the gorilla differs slightly from man in the mode of interlacing of the long flexor tendons: and the lower apes differ from the gorilla in exhibiting yet other, sometimes very complex, arrangements of the same parts, and occasionally in the absence of the accessory fleshy bundle. throughout all these modifications it must be recollected that the foot loses no one of its essential characters. every monkey and lemur exhibits the characteristic arrangement of tarsal bones, possesses a short flexor and short extensor muscle, and a _peronæus longus_. varied as the proportions and appearance of the organ may be, the terminal division of the hind limb remains, in plan and principle of construction, a foot, and never, in those respects, can be confounded with a hand. hardly any part of the bodily frame, then, could be found better calculated to illustrate the truth that the structural differences between man and the highest ape are of less value than those between the highest and the lower apes, than the hand or the foot, and yet, perhaps, there is one organ the study of which enforces the same conclusion in a still more striking manner--and that is the brain. but before entering upon the precise question of the amount of difference between the ape's brain and that of man, it is necessary that we should clearly understand what constitutes a great, and what a small difference in cerebral structure; and we shall be best enabled to do this by a brief study of the chief modifications which the brain exhibits in the series of vertebrate animals. the brain of a fish is very small, compared with the spinal cord into which it is continued, and with the nerves which come off from it: of the segments of which it is composed--the olfactory lobes, the cerebral hemisphere, and the succeeding divisions--no one predominates so much over the rest as to obscure or cover them; and the so-called optic lobes are, frequently, the largest masses of all. in reptiles, the mass of the brain, relatively to the spinal cord, increases and the cerebral hemispheres begin to predominate over the other parts; while in birds this predominance is still more marked. the brain of the lowest mammals, such as the duck-billed platypus and the opossums and kangaroos, exhibits a still more definite advance in the same direction. the cerebral hemispheres have now so much increased in size as, more or less, to hide the representatives of the optic lobes, which remain comparatively small, so that the brain of a marsupial is extremely different from that of a bird, reptile, or fish. a step higher in the scale, among the placental mammals, the structure of the brain acquires a vast modification--not that it appears much altered externally, in a rat or in a rabbit, from what it is in a marsupial--nor that the proportions of its parts are much changed, but an apparently new structure is found between the cerebral hemispheres, connecting them together, as what is called the "great commissure" or "corpus callosum." the subject requires careful re-investigation, but if the currently received statements are correct, the appearance of the "corpus callosum" in the placental mammals is the greatest and most sudden modification exhibited by the brain in the whole series of vertebrated animals--it is the greatest leap anywhere made by nature in her brain work. for the two halves of the brain being once thus knit together, the progress of cerebral complexity is traceable through a complete series of steps from the lowest rodent, or insectivore, to man; and that complexity consists, chiefly, in the disproportionate development of the cerebral hemispheres and of the cerebellum, but especially of the former, in respect to the other parts of the brain. in the lower placental mammals, the cerebral hemispheres leave the proper upper and posterior face of the cerebellum completely visible, when the brain is viewed from above, but, in the higher forms, the hinder part of each hemisphere, separated only by the tentorium (p. ) from the anterior face of the cerebellum, inclines backwards and downwards, and grows out, as the so-called "posterior lobe," so as at length to overlap and hide the cerebellum. in all mammals, each cerebral hemisphere contains a cavity which is termed the "ventricle," and as this ventricle is prolonged, on the one hand, forwards, and on the other downwards, into the substance of the hemisphere, it is said to have two horns or "cornua," an "anterior cornu," and a "descending cornu." when the posterior lobe is well developed, a third prolongation of the ventricular cavity extends into it, and is called the "posterior cornu." in the lower and smaller forms of placental mammals the surface of the cerebral hemispheres is either smooth or evenly rounded, or exhibits a very few grooves, which are technically termed "sulci," separating ridges or "convolutions" of the substance of the brain; and the smaller species of all orders tend to a similar smoothness of brain. but, in the higher orders, and especially the larger members of these orders, the grooves, or sulci, become extremely numerous, and the intermediate convolutions proportionately more complicated in their meanderings, until, in the elephant, the porpoise, the higher apes, and man, the cerebral surface appears a perfect labyrinth of tortuous foldings. where a posterior lobe exists and presents its customary cavity--the posterior cornu--it commonly happens that a particular sulcus appears upon the inner and under surface of the lobe, parallel with and beneath the floor of the cornu--which is, as it were, arched over the roof of the sulcus. it is as if the groove had been formed by indenting the floor of the posterior horn from without with a blunt instrument, so that the floor should rise as a convex eminence. now this eminence is what has been termed the "hippocampus minor"; the "hippocampus major" being a larger eminence in the floor of the descending cornu. what may be the functional importance of either of these structures we know not. * * * * * as if to demonstrate, by a striking example, the impossibility of erecting any cerebral barrier between man and the apes, nature has provided us, in the latter animals, with an almost complete series of gradations from brains little higher than that of a rodent, to brains little lower than that of man. and it is a remarkable circumstance that though, so far as our present knowledge extends, there _is_ one true structural break in the series of forms of simian brains, this hiatus does not lie between man and the man-like apes, but between the lower and the lowest simians; or, in other words, between the old and new world apes and monkeys, and the lemurs. every lemur which has yet been examined, in fact, has its cerebellum partially visible from above, and its posterior lobe, with the contained posterior cornu and hippocampus minor, more or less rudimentary. every marmoset, american monkey, old world monkey, baboon, or man-like ape, on the contrary, has its cerebellum entirely hidden, posteriorly, by the cerebral lobes, and possesses a large posterior cornu, with a well-developed hippocampus minor. * * * * * in many of these creatures, such as the saimiri (_chrysothrix_), the cerebral lobes overlap and extend much further behind the cerebellum, in proportion, than they do in man (fig. )--and it is quite certain that, in all, the cerebellum is completely covered behind, by well-developed posterior lobes. the fact can be verified by every one who possesses the skull of any old or new world monkey. for, inasmuch as the brain in all mammals completely fills the cranial cavity, it is obvious that a cast of the interior of the skull will reproduce the general form of the brain, at any rate with such minute and, for the present purpose, utterly unimportant differences as may result from the absence of the enveloping membranes of the brain in the dry skull. but if such a cast be made in plaster, and compared with a similar cast of the interior of a human skull, it will be obvious that the cast of the cerebral chamber, representing the cerebrum of the ape, as completely covers over and overlaps the cast of the cerebellar chamber, representing the cerebellum, as it does in the man (fig. ). a careless observer, forgetting that a soft structure like the brain loses its proper shape the moment it is taken out of the skull, may indeed mistake the uncovered condition of the cerebellum of an extracted and distorted brain for the natural relations of the parts; but his error must become patent even to himself if he try to replace the brain within the cranial chamber. to suppose that the cerebellum of an ape is naturally uncovered behind is a miscomprehension comparable only to that of one who should imagine that a man's lungs always occupy but a small portion of the thoracic cavity--because they do so when the chest is opened, and their elasticity is no longer neutralized by the pressure of the air. [illustration: fig. .--drawings of the internal casts of a man's and of a chimpanzee's skull, of the same absolute length, and placed in corresponding positions, _a._ cerebrum; _b._ cerebellum. the former drawing is taken from a cast in the museum of the royal college of surgeons, the latter from the photograph of the cast of a chimpanzee's skull, which illustrates the paper by mr. marshall "on the brain of the chimpanzee" in the natural history review for july, . the sharper definition of the lower edge of the cast of the cerebral chamber in the chimpanzee arises from the circumstance that the tentorium remained in that skull and not in the man's. the cast more accurately represents the brain in chimpanzee than in the man; and the great backward projection of the posterior lobes of the cerebrum of the former, beyond the cerebellum, is conspicuous.] and the error is the less excusable, as it must become apparent to every one who examines a section of the skull of any ape above a lemur, without taking the trouble to make a cast of it. for there is a very marked groove in every such skull, as in the human skull--which indicates the line of attachment of what is termed the _tentorium_--a sort of parchment-like shelf, or partition, which, in the recent state, is interposed between the cerebrum and cerebellum, and prevents the former from pressing upon the latter (see fig. ). this groove, therefore, indicates the line of separation between that part of the cranial cavity which contains the cerebrum, and that which contains the cerebellum; and as the brain exactly fills the cavity of the skull, it is obvious that the relations of these two parts of the cranial cavity at once informs us of the relations of their contents. now in man, in all the old world, and in all the new world simiæ, with one exception, when the face is directed forwards, this line of attachment of the tentorium, or impression for the lateral sinus, as it is technically called, is nearly horizontal, and the cerebral chamber invariably overlaps or projects behind the cerebellar chamber. in the howler monkey or _mycetes_ (see fig. ), the line passes obliquely upwards and backwards, and the cerebral overlap is almost nil; while in the lemurs, as in the lower mammals, the line is much more inclined in the same direction, and the cerebellar chamber projects considerably beyond the cerebral. when the gravest errors respecting points so easily settled as this question respecting the posterior lobes can be authoritatively propounded, it is no wonder that matters of observation, of no very complex character, but still requiring a certain amount of care, should have fared worse. any one who cannot see the posterior lobe in an ape's brain is not likely to give a very valuable opinion respecting the posterior cornu or the hippocampus minor. if a man cannot see a church, it is preposterous to take his opinion about its altar-piece or painted window--so that i do not feel bound to enter upon any discussion of these points, but content myself with assuring the reader that the posterior cornu and the hippocampus minor, have now been seen--usually, at least as well developed as in man, and often better--not only in the chimpanzee, the orang, and the gibbon, but in all the genera of the old world baboons and monkeys, and in most of the new world forms, including the marmosets.[ ] in fact, all the abundant and trustworthy evidence (consisting of the results of careful investigations directed to the determination of these very questions, by skilled anatomists) which we now possess, leads to the conviction that, so far from the posterior lobe, the posterior cornu, and the hippocampus minor, being structures peculiar to and characteristic of man, as they have been over and over again asserted to be, even after the publication of the clearest demonstration of the reverse, it is precisely these structures which are the most marked cerebral characters common to man with the apes. they are among the most distinctly simian peculiarities which the human organism exhibits. as to the convolutions, the brains of the apes exhibit every stage of progress, from the almost smooth brain of the marmoset, to the orang and the chimpanzee, which fall but little below man. and it is most remarkable that, as soon as all the principal sulci appear, the pattern according to which they are arranged is identical with that of the corresponding sulci of man. the surface of the brain of a monkey exhibits a sort of skeleton map of man's, and in the man-like apes the details become more and more filled in, until it is only in minor characters, such as the greater excavation of the anterior lobes, the constant presence of fissures usually absent in man, and the different disposition and proportions of some convolutions, that the chimpanzee's or the orang's brain can be structurally distinguished from man's. [illustration: fig. .--drawings of the cerebral hemispheres of a man and of a chimpanzee of the same length, in order to show the relative proportions of the parts: the former taken from a specimen, which mr. flower, conservator of the museum of the royal college of surgeons, was good enough to dissect for me; the latter, from the photograph of a similarly dissected chimpanzee's brain, given in mr. marshall's paper above referred to. _a_, posterior lobe; _b_, lateral ventricle; _c_, posterior cornu; _x_, the hippocampus minor.] so far as cerebral structure goes, therefore, it is clear that man differs less from the chimpanzee or the orang, than these do even from the monkeys, and that the difference between the brains of the chimpanzee and of man is almost insignificant, when compared with that between the chimpanzee brain and that of a lemur. it must not be overlooked, however, that there is a very striking difference in the absolute mass and weight between the lowest human brain and that of the highest ape--a difference which is all the more remarkable when we recollect that a full grown gorilla is probably pretty nearly twice as heavy as a bosjes man, or as many an european woman. it may be doubted whether a healthy human adult brain ever weighed less than thirty-one or two ounces, or that the heaviest gorilla brain has exceeded twenty ounces. this is a very noteworthy circumstance, and doubtless will one day help to furnish an explanation of the great gulf which intervenes between the lowest man and the highest ape in intellectual power;[ ] but it has little systematic value, for the simple reason that, as may be concluded from what has been already said respecting cranial capacity, the difference in weight of brain between the highest and the lowest men is far greater, both relatively and absolutely, than that between the lowest man and the highest ape. the latter, as has been seen, is represented by, say twelve, ounces of cerebral substance absolutely, or by : relatively; but as the largest recorded human brain weighed between and ounces, the former difference is represented by more than ounces absolutely, or by : relatively. regarded systematically the cerebral differences, of man and apes, are not of more than generic value--his family distinction resting chiefly on his dentition, his pelvis, and his lower limbs. * * * * * thus, whatever system of organs be studied, the comparison of their modifications in the ape series leads to one and the same result--that the structural differences which separate man from the gorilla and the chimpanzee are not so great as those which separate the gorilla from the lower apes. but in enunciating this important truth i must guard myself against a form of misunderstanding, which is very prevalent. i find, in fact, that those who endeavour to teach what nature so clearly shows us in this matter, are liable to have their opinions misrepresented and their phraseology garbled, until they seem to say that the structural differences between man and even the highest apes are small and insignificant. let me take this opportunity then of distinctly asserting, on the contrary, that they are great and significant; that every bone of a gorilla bears marks by which it might be distinguished from the corresponding bone of a man; and that, in the present creation, at any rate, no intermediate link bridges over the gap between _homo_ and _troglodytes_. it would be no less wrong than absurd to deny the existence of this chasm; but it is at least equally wrong and absurd to exaggerate its magnitude, and, resting on the admitted fact of its existence, to refuse to inquire whether it is wide or narrow. remember, if you will, that there is no existing link between man and the gorilla, but do not forget that there is a no less sharp line of demarcation, a no less complete absence of any transitional form, between the gorilla and the orang, or the orang and the gibbon. i say, not less sharp, though it is somewhat narrower. the structural differences between man and the man-like apes certainly justify our regarding him as constituting a family apart from them; though, inasmuch as he differs less from them than they do from other families of the same order, there can be no justification for placing him in a distinct order. and thus the sagacious foresight of the great lawgiver of systematic zoology, linnæus, becomes justified, and a century of anatomical research brings us back to his conclusion, that man is a member of the same order (for which the linnæan term primates ought to be retained) as the apes and lemurs. this order is now divisible into seven families, of about equal systematic value: the first, the anthropini, contains man alone; the second, the catarhini, embraces the old world apes; the third, the platyrhini, all new world apes, except the marmosets; the fourth, the arctopithecini, contains the marmosets; the fifth, the lemurini, the lemurs--from which _cheiromys_ should probably be excluded to form a sixth distinct family, the cheiromyini; while the seventh, the galeopithecini, contains only the flying lemur _galeopithecus_,--a strange form which almost touches on the bats, as the _cheiromys_ puts on a rodent clothing, and the lemurs simulate insectivora. perhaps no order of mammals presents us with so extraordinary a series of gradations as this--leading us insensibly from the crown and summit of the animal creation down to creatures, from which there is but a step, as it seems, to the lowest, smallest, and least intelligent of the placental mammalia. it is as if nature herself had foreseen the arrogance of man, and with roman severity had provided that his intellect, by its very triumphs, should call into prominence the slaves, admonishing the conqueror that he is but dust. * * * * * these are the chief facts, this the immediate conclusion from them to which i adverted in the commencement of this essay. the facts, i believe, cannot be disputed; and if so, the conclusion appears to me to be inevitable. but if man be separated by no greater structural barrier from the brutes than they are from one another--then it seems to follow that if any process of physical causation can be discovered by which the genera and families of ordinary animals have been produced, that process of causation is amply sufficient to account for the origin of man. in other words, if it could be shown that the marmosets, for example, have arisen by gradual modification of the ordinary platyrhini, or that both marmosets and platyrhini are modified ramifications of a primitive stock--then, there would be no rational ground for doubting that man might have originated, in the one case, by the gradual modification of a man-like ape; or, in the othercase, as a ramification of the same primitive stock as those apes. at the present moment, but one such process of physical causation has any evidence in its favour; or, in other words, there is but one hypothesis regarding the origin of species of animals in general which has any scientific existence--that propounded by mr. darwin. for lamarck, sagacious as many of his views were, mingled them with so much that was crude and even absurd, as to neutralize the benefit which his originality might have effected, had he been a more sober and cautious thinker; and though i have heard of the announcement of a formula touching "the ordained continuous becoming of organic forms," it is obvious that it is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible, and that a qua-quâ-versal proposition of this kind, which may be read backwards, or forwards, or sideways, with exactly the same amount of signification, does not really exist, though it may seem to do so. at the present moment, therefore, the question of the relation of man to the lower animals resolves itself, in the end, into the larger question of the tenability or untenability of mr. darwin's views. but here we enter upon difficult ground, and it behoves us to define our exact position with the greatest care. it cannot be doubted, i think, that mr. darwin has satisfactorily proved that what he terms selection, or selective modification, must occur, and does occur, in nature; and he has also proved to superfluity that such selection is competent to produce forms as distinct, structurally, as some genera even are. if the animated world presented us with none but structural differences, i should have no hesitation in saying that mr. darwin had demonstrated the existence of a true physical cause, amply competent to account for the origin of living species, and of man among the rest. but, in addition to their structural distinctions, the species of animals and plants, or at least a great number of them, exhibit physiological characters--what are known as distinct species, structurally, being for the most part either altogether incompetent to breed one with another; or if they breed, the resulting mule, or hybrid, is unable to perpetuate its race with another hybrid of the same kind. a true physical cause is, however, admitted to be such only on one condition--that it shall account for all the phenomena which come within the range of its operation. if it is inconsistent with any one phenomenon, it must be rejected; if it fails to explain any one phenomenon, it is so far weak, so far to be suspected; though it may have a perfect right to claim provisional acceptance. now, mr. darwin's hypothesis is not, so far as i am aware, inconsistent with any known biological fact; on the contrary, if admitted, the facts of development, of comparative anatomy, of geographical distribution, and of palæontology, become connected together, and exhibit a meaning such as they never possessed before; and i, for one, am fully convinced, that if not precisely true, that hypothesis is as near an approximation to the truth as, for example, the copernican hypothesis was to the true theory of the planetary motions. but, for all this, our acceptance of the darwinian hypothesis must be provisional so long as one link in the chain of evidence is wanting; and so long as all the animals and plants certainly produced by selective breeding from a common stock are fertile, and their progeny are fertile with one another, that link will be wanting. for, so long, selective breeding will not be proved to be competent to do all that is required of it to produce natural species. i have put this conclusion as strongly as possible before the reader, because the last position in which i wish to find myself is that of an advocate for mr. darwin's, or any other views--if by an advocate is meant one whose business it is to smooth over real difficulties, and to persuade where he cannot convince. in justice to mr. darwin, however, it must be admitted that the conditions of fertility and sterility are very ill understood, and that every day's advance in knowledge leads us to regard the hiatus in his evidence as of less and less importance, when set against the multitude of facts which harmonize with, or receive an explanation from, his doctrines. i adopt mr. darwin's hypothesis, therefore, subject to the production of proof that physiological species may be produced by selective breeding; just as a physical philosopher may accept the undulatory theory of light, subject to the proof of the existence of the hypothetical ether; or as the chemist adopts the atomic theory, subject to the proof of the existence of atoms; and for exactly the same reasons, namely, that it has an immense amount of primâ facie probability; that it is the only means at present within reach of reducing the chaos of observed facts to order; and lastly, that it is the most powerful instrument of investigation which has been presented to naturalists since the invention of the natural system of classification, and the commencement of the systematic study of embryology. but even leaving mr. darwin's views aside, the whole analogy of natural operations furnishes so complete and crushing an argument against the intervention of any but what are termed secondary causes, in the production of all the phenomena of the universe; that, in view of the intimate relations between man and the rest of the living world; and between the forces exerted by the latter and all other forces, i can see no excuse for doubting that all are co-ordinated terms of nature's great progression, from the formless to the formed--from the inorganic to the organic--from blind force to conscious intellect and will. * * * * * science has fulfilled her function when she has ascertained and enunciated truth; and were these pages addressed to men of science only, i should now close this essay, knowing that my colleagues have learned to respect nothing but evidence, and to believe that their highest duty lies in submitting to it, however it may jar against their inclinations. but desiring, as i do, to reach the wider circle of the intelligent public, it would be unworthy cowardice were i to ignore the repugnance with which the majority of my readers are likely to meet the conclusions to which the most careful and conscientious study i have been able to give to this matter, has led me. on all sides i shall hear the cry--"we are men and women, not a mere better sort of apes, a little longer in the leg, more compact in the foot, and bigger in brain than your brutal chimpanzees and gorillas. the power of knowledge--the conscience of good and evil--the pitiful tenderness of human affections, raise us out of all real fellowship with the brutes, however closely they may seem to approximate us." to this i can only reply that the exclamation would be most just and would have my own entire sympathy, if it were only relevant. but, it is not i who seek to base man's dignity upon his great toe, or insinuate that we are lost if an ape has a hippocampus minor. on the contrary, i have done my best to sweep away this vanity. i have endeavoured to show that no absolute structural line of demarcation, wider than that between the animals which immediately succeed us in the scale, can be drawn between the animal world and ourselves; and i may add the expression of my belief that the attempt to draw a psychical distinction is equally futile, and that even the highest faculties of feeling and of intellect begin to germinate in lower forms of life.[ ] at the same time, no one is more strongly convinced than i am of the vastness of the gulf between civilized man and the brutes; or is more certain that whether _from_ them or not, he is assuredly not _of_ them. no one is less disposed to think lightly of the present dignity, or despairingly of the future hopes, of the only consciously intelligent denizen of this world. we are indeed told by those who assume authority in these matters, that the two sets of opinions are incompatible, and that the belief in the unity of origin of man and brutes involves the brutalization and degradation of the former. but is this really so? could not a sensible child confute, by obvious arguments, the shallow rhetoricians who would force this conclusion upon us? is it, indeed, true, that the poet, or the philosopher, or the artist whose genius is the glory of his age, is degraded from his high estate by the undoubted historical probability, not to say certainty, that he is the direct descendant of some naked and bestial savage, whose intelligence was just sufficient to make him a little more cunning than the fox, and by so much more dangerous than the tiger? or is he bound to howl and grovel on all fours because of the wholly unquestionable fact, that he was once an egg, which no ordinary power of discrimination could distinguish from that of a dog? or is the philanthropist or the saint to give up his endeavours to lead a noble life, because the simplest study of man's nature reveals, at its foundations, all the selfish passions and fierce appetites of the merest quadruped? is mother-love vile because a hen shows it, or fidelity base because dogs possess it? the common sense of the mass of mankind will answer these questions without a moment's hesitation. healthy humanity, finding itself hard pressed to escape from real sin and degradation, will leave the brooding over speculative pollution to the cynics and the "righteous overmuch" who, disagreeing in everything else, unite in blind insensibility to the nobleness of the visible world, and in inability to appreciate the grandeur of the place man occupies therein. nay more, thoughtful men, once escaped from the blinding influences of traditional prejudice, will find in the lowly stock whence man has sprung, the best evidence of the splendour of his capacities; and will discern in his long progress through the past, a reasonable ground of faith in his attainment of a nobler future. they will remember that in comparing civilized man with the animal world, one is as the alpine traveller, who sees the mountains soaring into the sky and can hardly discern where the deep shadowed crags and roseate peaks end, and where the clouds of heaven begin. surely the awe-struck voyager may be excused if, at first, he refuses to believe the geologist, who tells him that these glorious masses are, after all, the hardened mud of primeval seas, or the cooled slag of subterranean furnaces--of one substance with the dullest clay, but raised by inward forces to that place of proud and seemingly inaccessible glory. but the geologist is right; and due reflection on his teachings, instead of diminishing our reverence and our wonder, adds all the force of intellectual sublimity to the mere æsthetic intuition of the uninstructed beholder. and after passion and prejudice have died away, the same result will attend the teachings of the naturalist respecting that great alps and andes of the living world--man. our reverence for the nobility of manhood will not be lessened by the knowledge, that man is, in substance and in structure, one with the brutes; for, he alone possesses the marvellous endowment of intelligible and rational speech, whereby, in the secular period of his existence, he has slowly accumulated and organized the experience which is almost wholly lost with the cessation of every individual life in other animals; so that now he stands raised upon it as on a mountain top, far above the level of his humble fellows, and transfigured from his grosser nature by reflecting, here and there, a ray from the infinite source of truth. _a succinct history of the controversy respecting the cerebral structure of man and the apes_ up to the year all anatomists of authority, who had occupied themselves with the cerebral structure of the apes--cuvier, tiedemann, sandifort, vrolik, isidore g. st. hilaire, schroeder van der kolk, gratiolet--were agreed that the brain of the apes possesses a posterior lobe. tiedemann, in , figured and acknowledged in the text of his "icones," the existence of the posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle in the apes, not only under the title of "scrobiculus parvus loco cornu posterioris"--a fact which has been paraded--but as "cornu posterius" (icones, p. ), a circumstance which has been, as sedulously, kept in the back ground. cuvier (lecons, t. iii. p. ) says, "the anterior or lateral ventricles possess a digital cavity [posterior cornu] only in man and the apes.... its presence depends on that of the posterior lobes." schroeder van der kolk and vrolik, and gratiolet, had also figured and described the posterior cornu in various apes. as to the hippocampus minor tiedemann had erroneously asserted its absence in the apes; but schroeder van der kolk and vrolik had pointed out the existence of what they considered a rudimentary one in the chimpanzee, and gratiolet had expressly affirmed its existence in these animals. such was the state of our information on these subjects in the year . in the year , however, professor owen, either in ignorance of these well-known facts or else unjustifiably suppressing them, submitted to the linnæan society a paper "on the characters, principles of division, and primary groups of the class mammalia," which was printed in the society's journal, and contains the following passage:--"in man, the brain presents an ascensive step in development, higher and more strongly marked than that by which the preceding subclass was distinguished from the one below it. not only do the cerebral hemispheres overlap the olfactory lobes and cerebellum, but they extend in advance of the one and further back than the other. the posterior development is so marked, that anatomists have assigned to that part the character of a third lobe; _it is peculiar to the genus homo, and equally peculiar is the posterior horn of the lateral ventricle and the 'hippocampus minor,' which characterise the hind lobe of each hemisphere_."--_journal of the proceedings of the linnæan society_, vol. ii. p. . as the essay in which this passage stands had no less ambitious an aim than the remodelling of the classification of the mammalia, its author might be supposed to have written under a sense of peculiar responsibility, and to have tested, with especial care, the statements he ventured to promulgate. and even if this be expecting too much, hastiness, or want of opportunity for due deliberation, cannot now be pleaded in extenuation of any shortcomings; for the propositions cited were repeated two years afterwards in the reade lecture, delivered before so grave a body as the university of cambridge, in . when the assertions, which i have italicised in the above extract, first came under my notice, i was not a little astonished at so flat a contradiction of the doctrines current among well-informed anatomists; but, not unnaturally imagining that the deliberate statements of a responsible person must have some foundation in fact, i deemed it my duty to investigate the subject anew before the time at which it would be my business to lecture thereupon came round. the result of my inquiries was to prove that mr. owen's three assertions, that "the third lobe, the posterior horn of the lateral ventricle, and the hippocampus minor," are "peculiar to the genus _homo_," are contrary to the plainest facts. i communicated this conclusion to the students of my class; and then, having no desire to embark in a controversy which could not redound to the honour of british science, whatever its issue, i turned to more congenial occupations. the time speedily arrived, however, when a persistence in this reticence would have involved me in an unworthy paltering with truth. at the meeting of the british association at oxford, in , professor owen repeated these assertions in my presence, and, of course, i immediately gave them a direct and unqualified contradiction, pledging myself to justify that unusual procedure elsewhere. i redeemed that pledge by publishing, in the january number of the _natural history review_ for , an article wherein the truth of the three following propositions was fully demonstrated (l. c. p. ):-- " . that the third lobe is neither peculiar to, nor characteristic of, man seeing that it exists in all the higher quadrumana." " . that the posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle is neither peculiar to, nor characteristic of, man, inasmuch as it also exists in the higher quadrumana." " . that the _hippocampus minor_ is neither peculiar to, nor characteristic of, man, as it is found in certain of the higher quadrumana." furthermore, this paper contains the following paragraph (p. ): "and lastly, schroeder van der kolk and vrolik (op. cit. p. ), though they particularly note that 'the lateral ventricle is distinguished from that of man by the very defective proportions of the posterior cornu, wherein only a stripe is visible as an indication of the hippocampus minor;' yet the figure , in their second plate, shows that this posterior cornu is a perfectly distinct and unmistakeable structure, quite as large as it often is in man. it is the more remarkable that professor owen should have overlooked the explicit statement and figure of these authors, as it is quite obvious, on comparison of the figures, that his woodcut of the brain of a chimpanzee (l. c. p. ) is a reduced copy of the second figure of messrs. schroeder van der kolk and vrolik's first plate. "as m. gratiolet (l. c. p. ), however, is careful to remark, 'unfortunately the brain which they have taken as a model was greatly altered (profondément affaissé), whence the general form of the brain is given in these plates in a manner which is altogether incorrect.' indeed, it is perfectly obvious, from a comparison of a section of the skull of the chimpanzee with these figures, that such is the case; and it is greatly to be regretted that so inadequate a figure should have been taken as a typical representation of the chimpanzee's brain." from this time forth, the untenability of his position might have been as apparent to professor owen as it was to every one else; but, so far from retracting the grave errors into which he had fallen, professor owen has persisted in and reiterated them; first, in a lecture delivered before the royal institution on the th of march, , which is admitted to have been accurately reproduced in the "athenæum" for the rd of the same month, in a letter addressed by professor owen to that journal on the th of march. the "athenæum" report was accompanied by a diagram purporting to represent a gorilla's brain, but in reality so extraordinary a misrepresentation, that professor owen substantially, though not explicitly, withdraws it in the letter in question. in amending this error, however, professor owen fell into another of much graver import, as his communication concludes with the following paragraph: "for the true proportion in which the cerebrum covers the cerebellum in the highest apes, reference should be made to the figure of the undissected brain of the chimpanzee in my 'reade's lecture on the classification, &c. of the mammalia,' p. , fig. , vo. ." it would not be credible, if it were not unfortunately true, that this figure, to which the trusting public is referred, without a word of qualification, "for the true proportion in which the cerebrum covers the cerebellum in the highest apes," is exactly that unacknowledged copy of schroeder van der kolk and vrolik's figure whose utter inaccuracy had been pointed out years before by gratiolet, and had been brought to professor owen's knowledge by myself in the passage of my article in the "natural history review" above quoted. i drew public attention to this circumstance again in my reply to professor owen, published in the "athenæum" for april th, ; but the exploded figure was reproduced once more by professor owen, without the slightest allusion to its inaccuracy, in the "annals of natural history" for june ! this proved too much for the patience of the original authors of the figure, messrs. schroeder van der kolk and vrolik, who, in a note addressed to the academy of amsterdam, of which they were members, declared themselves to be, though decided opponents of all forms of the doctrine of progressive development, above all things, lovers of truth: and that, therefore, at whatever risk of seeming to lend support to views which they disliked, they felt it their duty to take the first opportunity of publicly repudiating professor owen's misuse of their authority. in this note they frankly admitted the justice of the criticisms of m. gratiolet, quoted above, and they illustrated, by new and careful figures, the posterior lobe, the posterior cornu, and the hippocampus minor of the orang. furthermore, having demonstrated the parts, at one of the sittings of the academy, they add, "la présence des parties contestées y a été universellement reconnue par les anatomistes présents à la séance. le seul doute qui soit resté se rapporte au pes hippocampi minor.... a l'état frais l'indice du petit pied d'hippocampe était plus prononcé que maintenant." professor owen repeated his erroneous assertions at the meeting of the british association in , and again, without any obvious necessity, and without adducing a single new fact or new argument, or being able in any way to meet the crushing evidence from original dissections of numerous apes' brains, which had in the meanwhile been brought forward by prof. rolleston,[ ] f.r.s., mr. marshall,[ ] f.r.s., mr. flower,[ ] mr. turner,[ ] and myself,[ ] revived the subject at the cambridge meeting of the same body in . not content with the tolerably vigorous repudiation which these unprecedented proceedings met with in section d, professor owen sanctioned the publication of a version of his own statements, accompanied by a strange misrepresentation of mine (as may be seen by comparison of the "times" report of the discussion), in the "medical times" for october th, . i subjoin the conclusion of my reply in the same journal for october th. "if this were a question of opinion, or a question of interpretation of parts or of terms,--were it even a question of observation in which the testimony of my own senses alone was pitted against that of another person, i should adopt a very different tone in discussing this matter. i should, in all humility, admit the likelihood of having myself erred in judgment, failed in knowledge, or been blinded by prejudice. "but no one pretends now, that the controversy is one of terms or of opinions. novel and devoid of authority as some of professor owen's proposed definitions may have been, they might be accepted without changing the great features of the case. hence, though special investigations into these matters have been undertaken during the last two years by dr. allen thomson, by dr. rolleston, by mr. marshall, and by mr. flower, all, as you are aware, anatomists of repute in this country, and by professors schroeder van der kolk, and vrolik (whom professor owen incautiously tried to press into his own service) on the continent, all these able and conscientious observers have with one accord testified to the accuracy of my statements, and to the utter baselessness of the assertions of professor owen. even the venerable rudolph wagner, whom no man will accuse of progressionist proclivities, has raised his voice on the same side; while not a single anatomist, great or small, has supported professor owen. "now, i do not mean to suggest that scientific differences should be settled by universal suffrage, but i do conceive that solid proofs must be met by something more than empty and unsupported assertions. yet during the two years through which this preposterous controversy has dragged its weary length, professor owen has not ventured to bring forward a single preparation in support of his often-repeated assertions. "the case stands thus, therefore:--not only are the statements made by me in consonance with the doctrines of the best older authorities, and with those of all recent investigators, but i am quite ready to demonstrate them on the first monkey that comes to hand; while professor owen's assertions are not only in diametrical opposition to both old and new authorities, but he has not produced, and, i will add, cannot produce, a single preparation which justifies them." i now leave this subject, for the present.--for the credit of my calling i should be glad to be, hereafter, for ever silent upon it. but, unfortunately, this is a matter upon which, after all that has occurred, no mistake or confusion of terms is possible--and in affirming that the posterior lobe, the posterior cornu, and the hippocampus minor exist in certain apes, i am stating either that which is true, or that which i must know to be false. the question has thus become one of personal veracity. for myself, i will accept no other issue than this, grave as it is, to the present controversy. footnotes: [ ] it will be understood that, in the preceding essay, i have selected for notice from the vast mass of papers which have been written upon the man-like apes, only those which seem to me to be of special moment. [ ] we are not at present thoroughly acquainted with the brain of the gorilla, and therefore, in discussing cerebral characters, i shall take that of the chimpanzee as my highest term among the apes. [ ] "more than once," says peter camper, "have i met with more than six lumbar vertebræ in man.... once i found thirteen ribs and four lumbar vertebræ." fallopius noted thirteen pair of ribs and only four lumbar vertebræ; and eustachius once found eleven dorsal vertebræ and six lumbar vertebræ.--"oeuvres de pierre camper," t. , p. . as tyson states, his "pygmie" had thirteen pair of ribs and five lumbar vertebræ. the question of the curves of the spinal column in the apes requires further investigation. [ ] it has been affirmed that hindoo crania sometimes contain as little as ounces of water, which would give a capacity of about cubic inches. the minimum capacity which i have assumed above, however, is based upon the valuable tables published by professor r. wagner in his "vorstudien zu einer wissenschaftlichen morphologie und physiologie des menschlichen gehirns." as the result of the careful weighing of more than human brains, professor wagner states that one-half weighed between and grammes, and that about two-ninths, consisting for the most part of male brains, exceed grammes. the lightest brain of an adult male, with sound mental faculties, recorded by wagner, weighed grammes. as a gramme equals . grains, and a cubic inch of water contains . grains, this is equivalent to cubic inches of water; so that as brain is heavier than water, we are perfectly safe against erring on the side of diminution in taking this as the smallest capacity of any adult male human brain. the only adult male brain, weighing as little as grammes, is that of an idiot; but the brain of an adult woman, against the soundness of whose faculties nothing appears, weighed as little as grammes ( . cubic inches of water); and reid gives an adult female brain of still smaller capacity. the heaviest brain ( grammes, or about cubic inches) was, however, that of a woman; next to it comes the brain of cuvier ( grammes), then byron ( grammes), and then an insane person ( grammes). the lightest adult brain recorded ( grammes) was that of an idiotic female. the brains of five children, four years old, weighed between and grammes. so that it may be safely said, that an average european child of four years old has a brain twice as large as that of an adult gorilla. [ ] in speaking of the foot of his "pygmie," tyson remarks, p. :--"but this part in the formation and in its function too, being liker a hand than a foot: for the distinguishing this sort of animals from others, i have thought whether it might not be reckoned and called rather quadrumanus than quadrupes, _i.e._ a four-handed rather than a four-footed animal." as this passage was published in , m. i. g. st. hilaire is clearly in error in ascribing the invention of the term "quadrumanous" to buffon, though "bimanous" may belong to him. tyson uses "quadrumanus" in several places, as at p. .... "our _pygmie_ is no man, nor yet the _common ape_, but a sort of _animal_ between both; and though a _biped_, yet of the _quadrumanus_-kind: though some _men_ too have been observed to use their _feet_ like _hands_, as i have seen several." [ ] see the note at the end of this essay for a succinct history of the controversy to which allusion is here made. [ ] i say _help_ to furnish: for i by no means believe that it was any original difference of cerebral quality, or quantity, which caused that divergence between the human and the pithecoid stirpes, which has ended in the present enormous gulf between them. it is no doubt perfectly true, in a certain sense, that all difference of function is a result of difference of structure; or, in other words, of difference in the combination of the primary molecular forces of living substance; and, starting from this undeniable axiom, objectors occasionally, and with much seeming plausibility, argue that the vast intellectual chasm between the ape and man implies a corresponding structural chasm in the organs of the intellectual functions; so that, it is said, the non-discovery of such vast differences proves, not that they are absent, but that science is incompetent to detect them. a very little consideration, however, will, i think, show the fallacy of this reasoning. its validity hangs upon the assumption, that intellectual power depends altogether on the brain--whereas the brain is only one condition out of many on which intellectual manifestations depend; the others being, chiefly, the organs of the senses and the motor apparatuses, especially those which are concerned in prehension and in the production of articulate speech. a man born dumb, notwithstanding his great cerebral mass and his inheritance of strong intellectual instincts, would be capable of few higher intellectual manifestations than an orang or a chimpanzee, if he were confined to the society of dumb associates. and yet there might not be the slightest discernible difference between his brain and that of a highly intelligent and cultivated person. the dumbness might be the result of a defective structure of the mouth, or of the tongue, or a mere defective innervation of these parts; or it might result from congenital deafness, caused by some minute defect of the internal ear, which only a careful anatomist could discover. the argument, that because there is an immense difference between a man's intelligence and an ape's, therefore, there must be an equally immense difference between their brains, appears to me to be about as well based as the reasoning by which one should endeavour to prove that, because there is a "great gulf" between a watch that keeps accurate time and another that will not go at all, there is therefore a great structural hiatus between the two watches. a hair in the balance-wheel, a little rust on a pinion, a bend in a tooth of the escapement, a something so slight that only the practised eye of the watchmaker can discover it, may be the source of all the difference. and believing, as i do, with cuvier, that the possession of articulate speech is the grand distinctive character of man (whether it be absolutely peculiar to him or not), i find it very easy to comprehend, that some equally inconspicuous structural difference may have been the primary cause of the immeasurable and practically infinite divergence of the human from the simian stirps. [ ] it is so rare a pleasure for me to find professor owen's opinions in entire accordance with my own, that i cannot forbear from quoting a paragraph which appeared in his essay "on the characters, &c., of the class mammalia," in the "journal of the proceedings of the linnean society of london" for , but is unaccountably omitted in the "reade lecture" delivered before the university of cambridge two years later, which is otherwise nearly a reprint of the paper in question. prof. owen writes: "not being able to appreciate or conceive of the distinction between the psychical phenomena of a chimpanzee and of a boschisman or of an aztec, with arrested brain growth, as being of a nature so essential as to preclude a comparison between them, or as being other than a difference of degree, i cannot shut my eyes to the significance of that all-pervading similitude of structure--every tooth, every bone, strictly homologous--which makes the determination of the difference between _homo_ and _pithecus_ the anatomist's difficulty." surely it is a little singular that the "anatomist," who finds it "difficult" to "determine the difference" between _homo_ and _pithecus_, should yet range them on anatomical grounds, in distinct sub-classes! [ ] on the affinities of the brain of the orang. nat. hist. review, april, . [ ] on the brain of a young chimpanzee. ibid., july, . [ ] on the posterior lobes of the cerebrum of the quadrumana. philosophical transactions, . [ ] on the anatomical relations of the surfaces of the tentorium to the cerebrum and cerebellum in man and the lower mammals. proceedings of the royal society of edinburgh, march, . [ ] on the brain of ateles. proceedings of zoological society, . iii on some fossil remains of man. i have endeavoured to show, in the preceding essay, that the anthropini, or man family, form a very well defined group of the primates, between which and the immediately following family, the catarhini, there is, in the existing world, the same entire absence of any transitional form or connecting link, as between the catarhini and platyrhini. it is a commonly received doctrine, however, that the structural intervals between the various existing modifications of organic beings may be diminished, or even obliterated, if we take into account the long and varied succession of animals and plants which have preceded these now living and which are known to us only by their fossilized remains. how far this doctrine is well based, how far, on the other hand, as our knowledge at present stands, it is an overstatement of the real facts of the case, and an exaggeration of the conclusions fairly deducible from them, are points of grave importance, but into the discussion of which i do not, at present, propose to enter. it is enough that such a view of the relations of extinct to living beings has been propounded, to lead us to inquire, with anxiety, how far the recent discoveries of human remains in a fossil state bear out, or oppose, that view. i shall confine myself, in discussing this question, to those fragmentary human skulls from the caves of engis in the valley of the meuse, in belgium, and of the neanderthal near düsseldorf, the geological relations of which have been examined with so much care by sir charles lyell; upon whose high authority i shall take it for granted, that the engis skull belonged to a contemporary of the mammoth (_elephas primigenius_) and of the woolly rhinoceros (_rhinocerus tichorhinus_), with the bones of which it was found associated; and that the neanderthal skull is of great, though uncertain, antiquity. whatever be the geological age of the latter skull, i conceive it is quite safe (on the ordinary principles of paleontological reasoning) to assume that the former takes us to, at least, the further side of the vague biological limit, which separates the present geological epoch from that which immediately preceded it. and there can be no doubt that the physical geography of europe has changed wonderfully, since the bones of men and mammoths, hyænas and rhinoceroses were washed pell-mell into the cave of engis. the skull from the cave of engis was originally discovered by professor schmerling, and was described by him, together with other human remains disinterred at the same time, in his valuable work, "recherches sur les ossemens fossiles découverts dans les cavernes de la province de liège," published in (p. , _et seq._), from which the following paragraphs are extracted, the precise expressions of the author being, as far as possible, preserved. "in the first place, i must remark that these human remains, which are in my possession, are characterized, like the thousands of bones which i have lately been disinterring, by the extent of the decomposition which they have undergone, which is precisely the same as that of the extinct species: all, with a few exceptions, are broken; some few are rounded, as is frequently found to be the case in fossil remains of other species. the fractures are vertical or oblique; none of them are eroded; their colour does not differ from that of other fossil bones, and varies from whitish yellow to blackish. all are lighter than recent bones, with the exception of those which have a calcareous incrustation, and the cavities of which are filled with such matter. "the cranium which i have caused to be figured, plate i., figs. , , is that of an old person. the sutures are beginning to be effaced: all the facial bones are wanting, and of the temporal bones only a fragment of that of the right side is preserved. [illustration: fig. .--the skull from the cave of engis--viewed from the right side. _a_, glabella, _b_, occipital protuberance, (_a_ to _b_ glabello-occipital line), _c_, auditory foramen.] "the face and the base of the cranium had been detached before the skull was deposited in the cave, for we were unable to find those parts, though the whole cavern was regularly searched. the cranium was met with at a depth of a metre and a half [five feet nearly] hidden under an osseous breccia, composed of the remains of small animals, and containing one rhinoceros tusk, with several teeth of horses and of ruminants. this breccia, which has been spoken of above (p. ), was a metre [ - / feet about] wide, and rose to the height of a metre and a half above the floor of the cavern, to the walls of which it adhered strongly. "the earth which contained this human skull exhibited no trace of disturbance: teeth of rhinoceros, horse, hyæna, and bear, surrounded it on all sides. "the famous blumenbach[ ] has directed attention to the differences presented by the form and the dimensions of human crania of different races. this important work would have assisted us greatly, if the face, a part essential for the determination of race, with more or less accuracy, had not been wanting in our fossil cranium. "we are convinced that even if the skull had been complete, it would not have been possible to pronounce, with certainty, upon a single specimen; for individual variations are so numerous in the crania of one and the same race, that one cannot, without laying oneself open to large chances of error, draw any inference from a single fragment of a cranium to the general form of the head to which it belonged. "nevertheless, in order to neglect no point respecting the form of this fossil skull, we may observe that, from the first, the elongated and narrow form of the forehead attracted our attention. "in fact, the slight elevation of the frontal, its narrowness, and the form of the orbit, approximate it more nearly to the cranium of an ethiopian than to that of an european: the elongated form and the produced occiput are also characters which we believe to be observable in our fossil cranium; but to remove all doubt upon that subject i have caused the contours of the cranium of an european and of an ethiopian to be drawn and the foreheads represented. plate ii., figs. and , and, in the same plate, figs. and , will render the differences easily distinguishable; and a single glance at the figures, will be more instructive than a long and wearisome description. "at whatever conclusion we may arrive as to the origin of the man from whence this fossil skull proceeded, we may express an opinion without exposing ourselves to a fruitless controversy. each may adopt the hypothesis which seems to him most probable: for my own part, i hold it to be demonstrated that this cranium has belonged to a person of limited intellectual faculties, and we conclude thence that it belonged to a man of a low degree of civilization: a deduction which is borne out by contrasting the capacity of the frontal with that of the occipital region. "another cranium of a young individual was discovered in the floor of the cavern beside the tooth of an elephant; the skull was entire when found, but the moment it was lifted it fell into pieces, which i have not, as yet, been able to put together again. but i have represented the bones of the upper jaw, plate i., fig. . the state of the alveoli and the teeth, shows that the molars had not yet pierced the gum. detached milk molars and some fragments of a human skull, proceed from this same place. the figure , represents a human superior incisor tooth, the size of which is truly remarkable.[ ] "figure is a fragment of a superior maxillary bone, the molar teeth of which are worn down to the roots. "i possess two vertebræ, a first and last dorsal. "a clavicle of the left side (see plate iii., fig. ); although it belonged to a young individual, this bone shows that he must have been of great stature.[ ] "two fragments of the radius, badly preserved, do not indicate that the height of the man, to whom they belonged, exceeded five feet and a half. "as to the remains of the upper extremities, those which are in my possession, consist merely of a fragment of an ulna and of a radius (plate iii., fig. and ). "figure , plate iv., represents a metacarpal bone, contained in the breccia, of which we have spoken; it was found in the lower part above the cranium: add to this some metacarpal bones, found at very different distances, half-a-dozen metatarsals, three phalanges of the hand, and one of the foot. "this is a brief enumeration of the remains of human bones collected in the cavern of engis, which has preserved for us the remains of three individuals, surrounded by those of the elephant, of the rhinoceros, and of carnivora of species unknown in the present creation." * * * * * from the cave of engihoul, opposite that of engis, on the right bank of the meuse, schmerling obtained the remains of three other individuals of man, among which were only two fragments of parietal bones, but many bones of the extremities. in one case, a broken fragment of an ulna was soldered to a like fragment of a radius by stalagmite, a condition frequently observed among the bones of the cave bear (_ursus spelæus_), found in the belgian caverns. it was in the cavern of engis that professor schmerling found, incrusted with stalagmite and joined to a stone, the pointed bone implement, which he has figured in fig. of his plate xxxvi., and worked flints were found by him in all those belgian caves, which contained an abundance of fossil bones. a short letter from m. geoffroy st. hilaire, published in the comptes rendus of the academy of sciences of paris, for july nd, , speaks of a visit (and apparently a very hasty one) paid to the collection of professor "schermidt" (which is presumably a misprint for schmerling) at liège. the writer briefly criticises the drawings which illustrate schmerling's work, and affirms that the "human cranium is a little longer than it is represented" in schmerling's figure. the only other remark worth quoting is this:--"the aspect of the human bones differs little from that of the cave bones, with which we are familiar, and of which there is a considerable collection in the same place. with respect to their special forms, compared with those of the varieties of recent human crania, few _certain_ conclusions can be put forward; for much greater differences exist between the different specimens of well-characterized varieties, than between the fossil cranium of liège and that of one of those varieties selected as a term of comparison." geoffroy st. hilaire's remarks are, it will be observed, little but an echo of the philosophic doubts of the describer and discoverer of the remains. as to the critique upon schmerling's figures, i find that the side view given by the latter is really about / ths of an inch shorter than the original, and that the front view is diminished to about the same extent. otherwise the representation is not, in any way, inaccurate, but corresponds very well with the cast which is in my possession. a piece of the occipital bone, which schmerling seems to have missed, has since been fitted on to the rest of the cranium by an accomplished anatomist, dr. spring of liège, under whose direction an excellent plaster cast was made for sir charles lyell. it is upon and from a duplicate of that cast that my own observations and the accompanying figures, the outlines of which are copied from very accurate camera lucida drawings, by my friend mr. busk, reduced to one-half of the natural size, are made. as professor schmerling observes, the base of the skull is destroyed, and the facial bones are entirely absent; but the roof of the cranium, consisting of the frontal, parietal, and the greater part of the occipital bones, as far as the middle of the occipital foramen, is entire or nearly so. the left temporal bone is wanting. of the right temporal, the parts in the immediate neighbourhood of the auditory foramen, the mastoid process, and a considerable portion of the squamous element of the temporal are well preserved (fig. ). the lines of fracture which remain between the coadjusted pieces of the skull, and are faithfully displayed in schmerling's figure, are readily traceable in the cast. the sutures are also discernible, but the complex disposition of their serrations, shown in the figure, is not obvious in the cast. though the ridges which give attachment to muscles are not excessively prominent, they are well marked, and taken together with the apparently well developed frontal sinuses, and the condition of the sutures, leave no doubt on my mind that the skull is that of an adult, if not middle-aged man. the extreme length of the skull is . inches. its extreme breadth, which corresponds very nearly with the interval between the parietal protuberances, is not more than . inches. the proportion of the length to the breadth is therefore very nearly as to . if a line be drawn from the point at which the brow curves in towards the root of the nose, and which is called the "glabella" (_a_), (fig. ), to the occipital protuberance (_b_), and the distance to the highest point of the arch of the skull be measured perpendicularly from this line, it will be found to be . inches. viewed from above, fig. , a, the forehead presents an evenly rounded curve, and passes into the contour of the sides and back of the skull, which describes a tolerably regular elliptical curve. the front view (fig. , b) shows that the roof of the skull was very regularly and elegantly arched in the transverse direction, and that the transverse diameter was a little less below the parietal protuberances, than above them. the forehead cannot be called narrow in relation to the rest of the skull, nor can it be called a retreating forehead; on the contrary, the antero-posterior contour of the skull is well arched, so that the distance along that contour, from the nasal depression to the occipital protuberance, measures about . inches. the transverse arc of the skull, measured from one auditory foramen to the other, across the middle of the sagittal suture, is about inches. the sagittal suture itself is . inches long. the supraciliary prominences or brow-ridges (on each side of _a_, fig. ) are well, but not excessively, developed, and are separated by a median depression. their principal elevation is disposed so obliquely that i judge them to be due to large frontal sinuses. if a line joining the glabella and the occipital protuberance (_a_, _b_, fig. ) be made horizontal, no part of the occipital region projects more than / th an inch behind the posterior extremity of that line, and the upper edge of the auditory foramen (_c_) is almost in contact with a line drawn parallel with this upon the outer surface of the skull. a transverse line drawn from one auditory foramen to the other traverses, as usual, the forepart of the occipital foramen. the capacity of the interior of this fragmentary skull has not been ascertained. [illustration: fig. .--the engis skull viewed from above (_a_) and in front (_b_).] * * * * * the history of the human remains from the cavern in the neanderthal may best be given in the words of their original describer, dr. schaaffhausen,[ ] as translated by mr. busk. "in the early part of the year , a human skeleton was discovered in a limestone cave in the neanderthal, near hochdal, between düsseldorf and elberfeld. of this, however, i was unable to procure more than a plaster cast of the cranium, taken at elberfeld, from which i drew up an account of its remarkable conformation, which was, in the first instance, read on the th of february, , at the meeting of the lower rhine medical and natural history society, at bonn.[ ] subsequently dr. fuhlrott, to whom science is indebted for the preservation of these bones, which were not at first regarded as human, and into whose possession they afterwards came, brought the cranium from elberfeld to bonn, and entrusted it to me for more accurate anatomical examination. at the general meeting of the natural history society of prussian rhineland and westphalia, at bonn, on the nd of june, ,[ ] dr. fuhlrott himself gave a full account of the locality, and of the circumstances under which the discovery was made. he was of opinion that the bones might be regarded as fossil; and in coming to this conclusion, he laid especial stress upon the existence of dendritic deposits, with which their surface was covered, and which were first noticed upon them by professor mayer. to this communication i appended a brief report on the results of my anatomical examination of the bones. the conclusions at which i arrived were:-- st. that the extraordinary form of the skull was due to a natural conformation hitherto not known to exist, even in the most barbarous races. nd. that these remarkable human remains belonged to a period antecedent to the time of the celts and germans, and were in all probability derived from one of the wild races of northwestern europe, spoken of by latin writers; and which were encountered as autochthones by the german immigrants. and rdly. that it was beyond doubt that these human relics were traceable to a period at which the latest animals of the diluvium still existed; but that no proof of this assumption, nor consequently of their so-termed _fossil_ condition, was afforded by the circumstances under which the bones were discovered." as dr. fuhlrott has not yet published his description of these circumstances, i borrow the following account of them from one of his letters. "a small cave or grotto, high enough to admit a man, and about feet deep from the entrance, which is or feet wide, exists in the southern wall of the gorge of the neanderthal, as it is termed, at a distance of about feet from the düssel, and about feet above the bottom of the valley. in its earlier and uninjured condition, this cavern opened upon a narrow plateau lying in front of it, and from which the rocky wall descended almost perpendicularly into the river. it could be reached, though with difficulty, from above. the uneven floor was covered to a thickness of or feet with a deposit of mud, sparingly intermixed with rounded fragments of chert. in the removing of this deposit, the bones were discovered. the skull was first noticed, placed nearest to the entrance of the cavern; and further in, the other bones, lying in the same horizontal plane. of this i was assured, in the most positive terms, by two labourers who were employed to clear out the grotto, and who were questioned by me on the spot. at first no idea was entertained of the bones being human; and it was not till several weeks after their discovery that they were recognised as such by me, and placed in security. but, as the importance of the discovery was not at the time perceived, the labourers were very careless in the collecting, and secured chiefly only the larger bones; and to this circumstance it may be attributed that fragments merely of the probably perfect skeleton came into my possession." my anatomical examination of these bones afforded the following results:-- the cranium is of unusual size, and of a long elliptical form. a most remarkable peculiarity is at once obvious in the extraordinary development of the frontal sinuses, owing to which the superciliary ridges, which coalesce completely in the middle, are rendered so prominent, that the frontal bone exhibits a considerable hollow or depression above, or rather behind them, whilst a deep depression is also formed in the situation of the root of the nose. the forehead is narrow and low, though the middle and hinder portions of the cranial arch are well developed. unfortunately, the fragment of the skull that has been preserved consists only of the portion situated above the roof of the orbits and the superior occipital ridges, which are greatly developed, and almost conjoined so as to form a horizontal eminence. it includes almost the whole of the frontal bone, both parietals, a small part of the squamous and the upper-third of the occipital. the recently fractured surfaces show that the skull was broken at the time of its disinterment. the cavity holds , grains of water, whence its cubical contents may be estimated at . inches, or . cubic centimetres. in making this estimation, the water is supposed to stand on a level with the orbital plate of the frontal, with the deepest notch in the squamous margin of the parietal, and with the superior semicircular ridges of the occipital. estimated in dried millet-seed, the contents equalled ounces, prussian apothecaries' weight. the semicircular line indicating the upper boundary of the attachment of the temporal muscle, though not very strongly marked, ascends nevertheless to more than half the height of the parietal bone. on the right superciliary ridge is observable an oblique furrow or depression, indicative of an injury received during life.[ ] the coronal and sagittal sutures are on the exterior nearly closed, and on the inside so completely ossified as to have left no traces whatever, whilst the lambdoidal remains quite open. the depressions for the pacchionian glands are deep and numerous; and there is an unusually deep vascular groove immediately behind the coronal suture, which, as it terminates in a foramen, no doubt transmitted a _vena emissaria_. the course of the frontal suture is indicated externally by a slight ridge; and where it joins the coronal, this ridge rises into a small protuberance. the course of the sagittal suture is grooved, and above the angle of the occipital bone the parietals are depressed. mm.[ ] the length of the skull from the nasal process of the frontal over the vertex to the superior semicircular lines of the occipital measures ( )= . ". circumference over the orbital ridges and the superior semicircular lines of the occipital ( )= . " or ". width of the frontal from the middle of the temporal line on one side to the same point on the opposite ( )= . "- . ". length of the frontal from the nasal process to the coronal suture ( )= . "- ". extreme width of the frontal sinuses ( )= . "- . ". vertical height above a line joining the deepest notches in the squamous border of the parietals = . ". width of hinder part of skull from one parietal protuberance to the other ( )= . "- . ". distance from the upper angle of the occipital to the superior semicircular lines ( )= . "- . ". thickness of the bone at the parietal protuberance . ---- at the angle of the occipital . ---- at the superior semicircular line of the occipital = . ". besides the cranium, the following bones have been secured:-- . both thigh-bones, perfect. these, like the skull, and all the other bones, are characterized by their unusual thickness, and the great development of all the elevations and depressions for the attachment of muscles. in the anatomical museum at bonn, under the designation of "giant's-bones," are some recent thigh-bones, with which in thickness the foregoing pretty nearly correspond, although they are shorter. giant's bones. fossil bones. mm. mm. length = . " = . " diameter of head of femur = . " = . " " of lower articular end, from one condyle to the other = . " = . " diameter of femur in the middle = . " = . " . a perfect right humerus, whose size shows that it belongs to the thigh-bones. mm. length = . " thickness in the middle = . " diameter of head = . " also a perfect right radius of corresponding dimensions, and the upper-third of a right ulna corresponding to the humerus and radius. . a left humerus, of which the upper-third is wanting, and which is so much slenderer than the right as apparently to belong to a distinct individual; a left _ulna_, which, though complete, is pathologically deformed, the coronoid process being so much enlarged by bony growth, that flexure of the elbow beyond a right angle must have been impossible; the anterior fossa of the humerus for the reception of the coronoid process being also filled up with a similar bony growth. at the same time, the olecranon is curved strongly downwards. as the bone presents no sign of rachitic degeneration, it may be supposed that an injury sustained during life was the cause of the anchylosis. when the left ulna is compared with the right radius, it might at first sight be concluded that the bones respectively belonged to different individuals, the ulna being more than half an inch too short for articulation with a corresponding radius. but it is clear that this shortening, as well as the attenuation of the left humerus, are both consequent upon the pathological condition above described. . a left _ilium_, almost perfect, and belonging to the femur; a fragment of the right _scapula_; the anterior extremity of a rib of the right side; and the same part of a rib of the left side; the hinder part of a rib of the right side; and, lastly, two hinder portions and one middle portion of ribs, which, from their unusually rounded shape, and abrupt curvature, more resemble the ribs of a carnivorous animal than those of a man. dr. h. v. meyer, however, to whose judgment i defer, will not venture to declare them to be ribs of any animal; and it only remains to suppose that this abnormal condition has arisen from an unusually powerful development of the thoracic muscles. the bones adhere strongly to the tongue, although, as proved by the use of hydrochloric acid, the greater part of the cartilage is still retained in them, which appears, however, to have undergone that transformation into gelatine which has been observed by v. bibra in fossil bones. the surface of all the bones is in many spots covered with minute black specks, which, more especially under a lens, are seen to be formed of very delicate _dendrites_. these deposits, which were first observed on the bones by dr. meyer, are most distinct on the inner surface of the cranial bones. they consist of a ferruginous compound, and, from their black colour, may be supposed to contain manganese. similar dendritic formations also occur, not unfrequently, on laminated rocks, and are usually found in minute fissures and cracks. at the meeting of the lower rhine society at bonn, on the st april, , prof. meyer stated that he had noticed in the museum of poppelsdorf similar dendritic crystallizations on several fossil bones of animals, and particularly on those of _ursus spelæus_, but still more abundantly and beautifully displayed on the fossil bones and teeth of _equus adamiticus_, _elephas primigenius_, &c., from the caves of bolve and sundwig. faint indications of similar _dendrites_ were visible in a roman skull from siegburg; whilst other ancient skulls, which had lain for centuries in the earth, presented no trace of them.[ ] i am indebted to h. v. meyer for the following remarks on this subject:-- "the incipient formation of dendritic deposits, which were formerly regarded as a sign of a truly fossil condition, is interesting. it has even been supposed that in diluvial deposits the presence of _dendrites_ might be regarded as affording a certain mark of distinction between bones mixed with the diluvium at a somewhat later period and the true diluvial relics, to which alone it was supposed that these deposits were confined. but i have long been convinced that neither can the absence of _dendrites_ be regarded as indicative of recent age, nor their presence as sufficient to establish the great antiquity of the objects upon which they occur. i have myself noticed upon paper, which could scarcely be more than a year old, dendritic deposits, which could not be distinguished from those on fossil bones. thus i possess a dog's skull from the roman colony of the neighbouring heddersheim, _castrum hadrianum_, which is in no way distinguishable from the fossil bones from the frankish caves; it presents the same colour, and adheres to the tongue just as they do; so that this character also, which, at a former meeting of german naturalists at bonn, gave rise to amusing scenes between buckland and schmerling, is no longer of any value. in disputed cases, therefore, the condition of the bone can scarcely afford the means for determining with certainty whether it be fossil, that is to say, whether it belong to geological antiquity or to the historical period." as we cannot now look upon the primitive world as representing a wholly different condition of things, from which no transition exists to the organic life of the present time, the designation of _fossil_, as applied to _a bone_, has no longer the sense it conveyed in the time of cuvier. sufficient grounds exist for the assumption that man coexisted with the animals found in the _diluvium_; and many a barbarous race may, before all historical time, have disappeared, together with the animals of the ancient world, whilst the races whose organization is improved have continued the genus. the bones which form the subject of this paper present characters which, although not decisive as regards a geological epoch, are, nevertheless, such as indicate a very high antiquity. it may also be remarked that, common as is the occurrence of diluvial animal bones in the muddy deposits of caverns, such remains have not hitherto been met with in the caves of the neanderthal; and that the bones, which were covered by a deposit of mud not more than four or five feet thick, and without any protective covering of stalagmite, have retained the greatest part of their organic substance. these circumstances might be adduced against the probability of a geological antiquity. nor should we be justified in regarding the cranial conformation as perhaps representing the most savage primitive type of the human race, since crania exist among living savages, which, though not exhibiting such a remarkable conformation of the forehead, which gives the skull somewhat the aspect of that of the large apes, still in other respects, as for instance in the greater depth of the temporal fossæ, the crest-like, prominent temporal ridges, and a generally less capacious cranial cavity, exhibit an equally low stage of development. there is no reason for supposing that the deep frontal hollow is due to any artificial flattening, such as is practised in various modes by barbarous nations in the old and new world. the skull is quite symmetrical, and shows no indication of counter-pressure at the occiput, whilst, according to morton, in the flat-heads of the columbia, the frontal and parietal bones are always unsymmetrical. its conformation exhibits the sparing development of the anterior part of the head which has been so often observed in very ancient crania, and affords one of the most striking proofs of the influence of culture and civilization on the form of the human skull. in a subsequent passage, dr. schaaffhausen remarks: "there is no reason whatever for regarding the unusual development of the frontal sinuses in the remarkable skull from the neanderthal as an individual or pathological deformity; it is unquestionably a typical race-character, and is physiologically connected with the uncommon thickness of the other bones of the skeleton, which exceeds by about one-half the usual proportions. this expansion of the frontal sinuses, which are appendages of the air-passages, also indicates an unusual force and power of endurance in the movements of the body, as may be concluded from the size of all the ridges and processes for the attachment of the muscles or bones. that this conclusion may be drawn from the existence of large frontal sinuses, and a prominence of the lower frontal region, is confirmed in many ways by other observations. by the same characters, according to pallas, the wild horse is distinguished from the domesticated, and, according to cuvier, the fossil cave-bear from every recent species of bear, whilst, according to roulin, the pig, which has become wild in america, and regained a resemblance to the wild boar, is thus distinguished from the same animal in the domesticated state, as is the chamois from the goat; and, lastly, the bull-dog, which is characterised by its large bones and strongly-developed muscles from every other kind of dog. the estimation of the facial angle, the determination of which, according to professor owen, is also difficult in the great apes, owing to the very prominent supra-orbital ridges, in the present case is rendered still more difficult from the absence both of the auditory opening and of the nasal spine. but if the proper horizontal position of the skull be taken from the remaining portions of the orbital plates, and the ascending line made to touch the surface of the frontal bone behind the prominent supra-orbital ridges, the facial angle is not found to exceed °.[ ] unfortunately, no portions of the facial bones, whose conformation is so decisive as regards the form and expression of the head, have been preserved. the cranial capacity, compared with the uncommon strength of the corporeal frame, would seem to indicate a small cerebral development. the skull, as it is, holds about ounces of millet-seed; and as, from the proportionate size of the wanting bones, the whole cranial cavity should have about ounces more added, the contents, were it perfect, may be taken at ounces. tiedemann assigns, as the cranial contents in the negro, , , and ounces. the cranium holds rather more than ounces of water, which corresponds to a capacity of . cubic centimetres. huschke estimates the cranial contents of a negress at cubic centimetres; of an old negro at cubic centimetres. the capacity of the malay skulls, estimated by water, equalled , ounces, whilst in the diminutive hindoos it falls to as little as ounces." after comparing the neanderthal cranium with many others, ancient and modern, professor schaaffhausen concludes thus:-- "but the human bones and cranium from the neanderthal exceed all the rest in those peculiarities of conformation which lead to the conclusion of their belonging to a barbarous and savage race. whether the cavern in which they were found, unaccompanied with any trace of human art, were the place of their interment, or whether, like the bones of extinct animals elsewhere, they had been washed into it, they may still be regarded as the most ancient memorial of the early inhabitants of europe." mr. busk, the translator of dr. schaaffhausen's paper, has enabled us to form a very vivid conception of the degraded character of the neanderthal skull, by placing side by side with its outline, that of the skull of a chimpanzee, drawn to the same absolute size. * * * * * some time after the publication of the translation of professor schaaffhausen's memoir, i was led to study the cast of the neanderthal cranium with more attention than i had previously bestowed upon it, in consequence of wishing to supply sir charles lyell with a diagram, exhibiting the special peculiarities of this skull, as compared with other human skulls. in order to do this it was necessary to identify, with precision, those points in the skulls compared which corresponded anatomically. of these points, the glabella was obvious enough; but when i had distinguished another, defined by the occipital protuberance and superior semicircular line, and had placed the outline of the neanderthal skull against that of the engis skull, in such a position that the glabella and occipital protuberance of both were intersected by the same straight line, the difference was so vast and the flattening of the neanderthal skull so prodigious (compare figs. and , a), that i at first imagined i must have fallen into some error. and i was the more inclined to suspect this, as, in ordinary human skulls, the occipital protuberance and superior semicircular curved line on the exterior of the occiput correspond pretty closely with the "lateral sinuses" and the line of attachment of the tentorium internally. but on the tentorium rests, as i have said in the preceding essay, the posterior lobe of the brain; and hence, the occipital protuberance, and the curved line in question, indicate, approximately, the lower limits of that lobe. was it possible for a human being to have the brain thus flattened and depressed; or, on the other hand, had the muscular ridges shifted their position? in order to solve these doubts, and to decide the question whether the great supraciliary projections did, or did not, arise from the development of the frontal sinuses, i requested sir charles lyell to be so good as to obtain for me from dr. fuhlrott, the possessor of the skull, answers to certain queries, and if possible a cast, or at any rate drawings, or photographs, of the interior of the skull. [illustration: fig. .--the skull from the neanderthal cavern. a. side, b. front, and c. top view. one-third the natural size. the outlines from camera lucida drawings, one-half the natural size, by mr. busk: the details from the cast and from dr. fuhlrott's photographs. _a_, glabella; _b_, occipital protuberance; _d_, lambdoidal suture.] dr. fuhlrott replied, with a courtesy and readiness for which i am infinitely indebted to him, to my inquiries, and furthermore sent three excellent photographs. one of these gives a side view of the skull, and from it fig. , a. has been shaded. the second (fig. , a.) exhibits the wide openings of the frontal sinuses upon the inferior surface of the frontal part of the skull, into which, dr. fuhlrott writes, "a probe may be introduced to the depth of an inch," and demonstrates the great extension of the thickened supraciliary ridges beyond the cerebral cavity. the third, lastly (fig. , b.), exhibits the edge and the interior of the posterior, or occipital, part of the skull, and shows very clearly the two depressions for the lateral sinuses, sweeping inwards towards the middle line of the roof of the skull, to form the longitudinal sinus. it was clear, therefore, that i had not erred in my interpretation, and that the posterior lobe of the brain of the neanderthal man must have been as much flattened as i suspected it to be. [illustration: fig. .--drawings from dr. fuhlrott's photographs of parts of the interior of the neanderthal cranium. a. view of the under and inner surface of the frontal region, showing the inferior apertures of the frontal sinuses (_a_). b. corresponding view of the occipital region of the skull, showing the impressions of the lateral sinuses (_a_ _a_).] in truth, the neanderthal cranium has most extraordinary characters. it has an extreme length of inches, while its breadth is only . inches, or, in other words, its length is to its breadth as : . it is exceedingly depressed, measuring only about . inches from the glabello-occipital line to the vertex. the longitudinal arc, measured in the same way as in the engis skull, is inches; the transverse arc cannot be exactly ascertained, in consequence of the absence of the temporal bones, but was probably about the same, and certainly exceeded - / inches. the horizontal circumference is inches. but this great circumference arises largely from the vast development of the supraciliary ridges, though the perimeter of the brain case itself is not small. the large supraciliary ridges give the forehead a far more retreating appearance than its internal contour would bear out. to an anatomical eye the posterior part of the skull is even more striking than the anterior. the occipital protuberance occupies the extreme posterior end of the skull, when the glabello-occipital line is made horizontal, and so far from any part of the occipital region extending beyond it, this region of the skull slopes obliquely upward and forward, so that the lambdoidal suture is situated well upon the upper surface of the cranium. at the same time, notwithstanding the great length of the skull, the sagittal suture is remarkably short ( - / inches), and the squamosal suture is very straight. in reply to my questions dr. fuhlrott writes that the occipital bone "is in a state of perfect preservation as far as the upper semicircular line, which is a very strong ridge, linear at its extremities, but enlarging towards the middle, where it forms two ridges (bourrelets), united by a linear continuation, which is slightly depressed in the middle." "below the left ridge the bone exhibits an obliquely inclined surface, six lines (french) long, and twelve lines wide." this last must be the surface, the contour of which is shown in fig. , a, below _b_. it is particularly interesting, as it suggests that, notwithstanding the flattened condition of the occiput, the posterior cerebral lobes must have projected considerably beyond the cerebellum, and as it constitutes one among several points of similarity between the neanderthal cranium and certain australian skulls. * * * * * such are the two best known forms of human cranium, which have been found in what may be fairly termed a fossil state. can either be shown to fill up or diminish, to any appreciable extent, the structural interval which exists between man and the man-like apes? or, on the other hand, does neither depart more widely from the average structure of the human cranium, than normally formed skulls of men are known to do at the present day? it is impossible to form any opinion on these questions, without some preliminary acquaintance with the range of variation exhibited by human structure in general--a subject which has been but imperfectly studied, while even of what is known, my limits will necessarily allow me to give only a very imperfect sketch. the student of anatomy is perfectly well aware that there is not a single organ of the human body the structure of which does not vary, to a greater or less extent, in different individuals. the skeleton varies in the proportions, and even to a certain extent in the connexions, of its constituent bones. the muscles which move the bones vary largely in their attachments. the varieties in the mode of distribution of the arteries are carefully classified, on account of the practical importance of a knowledge of their shiftings to the surgeon. the characters of the brain vary immensely, nothing being less constant than the form and size of the cerebral hemispheres, and the richness of the convolutions upon their surface, while the most changeable structures of all in the human brain, are exactly those on which the unwise attempt has been made to base the distinctive characters of humanity, viz. the posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle, the hippocampus minor, and the degree of projection of the posterior lobe beyond the cerebellum. finally, as all the world knows, the hair and skin of human beings may present the most extraordinary diversities in colour and in texture. so far as our present knowledge goes, the majority of the structural varieties to which allusion is here made, are individual. the ape-like arrangement of certain muscles which is occasionally met with[ ] in the white races of mankind, is not known to be more common among negroes or australians: nor because the brain of the hottentot venus was found to be smoother, to have its convolutions more symmetrically disposed, and to be, so far, more ape-like than that of ordinary europeans, are we justified in concluding a like condition of the brain to prevail universally among the lower races of mankind, however probable that conclusion may be. we are, in fact, sadly wanting in information respecting the disposition of the soft and destructible organs of every race of mankind but our own; and even of the skeleton, our museums are lamentably deficient in every part but the cranium. skulls enough there are, and since the time when blumenbach and camper first called attention to the marked and singular differences which they exhibit, skull collecting and skull measuring has been a zealously pursued branch of natural history, and the results obtained have been arranged and classified by various writers, among whom the late active and able retzius must always be the first named. human skulls have been found to differ from one another, not merely in their absolute size and in the absolute capacity of the brain case, but in the proportions which the diameters of the latter bear to one another; in the relative size of the bones of the face (and more particularly of the jaws and teeth) as compared with those of the skull; in the degree to which the upper jaw (which is of course followed by the lower) is thrown backwards and downwards under the forepart of the brain case, or forwards and upwards in front of and beyond it. they differ further in the relations of the transverse diameter of the face, taken through the cheek bones, to the transverse diameter of the skull; in the more rounded or more gable-like form of the roof of the skull, and in the degree to which the hinder part of the skull is flattened or projects beyond the ridge, into and below which, the muscles of the neck are inserted. in some skulls the brain case may be said to be "_round_," the extreme length not exceeding the extreme breadth by a greater proportion than to , while the difference may be much less.[ ] men possessing such skulls were termed by retzius "_brachycephalic_," and the skull of a calmuck, of which a front and side view (reduced outline copies of which are given in figure ) are depicted by von baer in his excellent "crania selecta," affords a very admirable example of that kind of skull. other skulls, such as that of a negro copied in fig. from mr. busk's "crania typica," have a very different, greatly elongated form, and may be termed "_oblong_." in this skull the extreme length is to the extreme breadth as to not more than , and the transverse diameter of the human skull may fall below even this proportion. people having such skulls were called by retzius "_dolichocephalic_." the most cursory glance at the side views of these two skulls will suffice to prove that they differ, in another respect, to a very striking extent. the profile of the face of the calmuck is almost vertical, the facial bones being thrown downwards and under the fore part of the skull. the profile of the face of the negro, on the other hand, is singularly inclined, the front part of the jaws projecting far forward beyond the level of the fore part of the skull. in the former case the skull is said to be "_orthognathous_" or straight-jawed; in the latter, it is called "_prognathous_," a term which has been rendered, with more force than elegance, by the saxon equivalent,--"snouty." various methods have been devised in order to express with some accuracy the degree of prognathism or orthognathism of any given skull; most of these methods being essentially modifications of that devised by peter camper, in order to attain what he called the "facial angle." [illustration: fig. .--side and front views of the round and orthognathous skull of a calmuck after von baer. one-third the natural size.] but a little consideration will show that any "facial angle" that has been devised, can be competent to express the structural modifications involved in prognathism and orthognathism, only in a rough and general sort of way. for the lines, the intersection of which forms the facial angle, are drawn through points of the skull, the position of each of which is modified by a number of circumstances, so that the angle obtained is a complex resultant of all these circumstances, and is not the expression of any one definite organic relation of the parts of the skull. i have arrived at the conviction that no comparison of crania is worth very much, that is not founded upon the establishment of a relatively fixed base line, to which the measurements, in all cases, must be referred. nor do i think it is a very difficult matter to decide what that base line should be. the parts of the skull, like those of the rest of the animal framework, are developed in succession: the base of the skull is formed before its sides and roof; it is converted into cartilage earlier and more completely than the sides and roof: and the cartilaginous base ossifies, and becomes soldered into one piece long before the roof. i conceive then that the base of the skull may be demonstrated developmentally to be its relatively fixed part, the roof and sides being relatively moveable. the same truth is exemplified by the study of the modifications which the skull undergoes in ascending from the lower animals up to man. in such a mammal as a beaver (fig. ), a line (_a_. _b_.) drawn through the bones, termed basioccipital, basisphenoid, and presphenoid, is very long in proportion to the extreme length of the cavity which contains the cerebral hemispheres (_g_. _h_.). the plane of the occipital foramen (_b_. _c_.) forms a slightly acute angle with this "basicranial axis," while the plane of the tentorium (_i_. _t_.) is inclined at rather more than ° to the "basicranial axis"; and so is the plane of the perforated plate (_a_. _d_.) by which the filaments of the olfactory nerve leave the skull. again, a line drawn through the axis of the face, between the bones called ethmoid and vomer--the "basifacial axis" (_f_. _e_.) forms an exceedingly obtuse angle, where, when produced, it cuts the "basicranial axis." [illustration: fig. .--oblong and prognathous skull of a negro; side and front views. one-third of the natural size.] if the angle made by the line _b_. _c_. with _a_. _b_., be called the "occipital angle," and the angle made by the line _a_. _d_. with _a_. _b_. be termed the "olfactory angle," and that made by _i_. _t_. with _a_. _b_. the "tentorial angle," then all these, in the mammal in question, are nearly right angles, varying between ° and °. the angle _e_. _f_. _b_., or that made by the cranial with the facial axis, and which may be termed the "cranio-facial angle," is extremely obtuse, amounting, in the case of the beaver, to at least °. but if a series of sections of mammalian skulls, intermediate between a rodent and a man (fig. ), be examined, it will be found that in the higher crania the basicranial axis becomes shorter relatively to the cerebral length; that the "olfactory angle" and "occipital angle" become more obtuse; and that the "cranio-facial angle" becomes more acute by the bending down, as it were, of the facial axis upon the cranial axis. at the same time, the roof of the cranium becomes more and more arched, to allow of the increasing height of the cerebral hemispheres, which is eminently characteristic of man, as well as of that backward extension, beyond the cerebellum, which reaches its maximum in the south american monkeys. so that, at last, in the human skull (fig. ), the cerebral length is between twice and thrice as great as the length of the basicranial axis; the olfactory plane is ° or ° on the _under_ side of that axis; the occipital angle, instead of being less than °, is as much as ° or °; the cranio-facial angle may be ° or less, and the vertical height of the skull may have a large proportion to its length. it will be obvious, from an inspection of the diagrams, that the basicranial axis is, in the ascending series of mammalia, a relatively fixed line, on which the bones of the sides and roof of the cranial cavity, and of the face, may be said to revolve downwards and forwards or backwards, according to their position. the arc described by any one bone or plane, however, is not by any means always in proportion to the arc described by another. now comes the important question, can we discern, between the lowest and the highest forms of the human cranium anything answering, in however slight a degree, to this revolution of the side and roof bones of the skull upon the basicranial axis observed upon so great a scale in the mammalian series? numerous observations lead me to believe that we must answer this question in the affirmative. [illustration: fig. .--longitudinal and vertical sections of the skulls of a beaver (_castor canadensis_), a lemur (_l. catta_), and a baboon (_cynocephalus papio_), _a b_, the basicranial axis; _b c_, the occipital plane; _i t_, the tentorial plane; _a d_, the olfactory plane; _f e_, the basifacial axis; _c b a_, occipital angle; _t i a_, tentorial angle; _d a b_, olfactory angle; _e f b_, cranio-facial angle; _g h_, extreme length of the cavity which lodges the cerebral hemispheres or "cerebral length." the length of the basicranial axis as to this length, or, in other words, the proportional length of the line _g h_ to that of _a b_ taken as , in the three skulls, is as follows:--beaver to ; lemur to ; baboon to . in an adult male gorilla the cerebral length is as to the basicranial axis taken as , in the negro (fig. ) as to . in the constantinople skull (fig. ) as to . the cranial difference between the highest ape's skull and the lowest man's is therefore very strikingly brought out by these measurements. in the diagram of the baboon's skull the dotted lines _d^ d^ _, &c., give the angles of the lemur's and beaver's skull, as laid down upon the basicranial axis of the baboon. the line _a b_ has the same length in each diagram.] the diagrams in figure are reduced from very carefully made diagrams of sections of four skulls, two round and orthognathous, two long and prognathous, taken longitudinally and vertically, through the middle. the sectional diagrams have then been superimposed, in such a manner, that the basal axes of the skulls coincide by their anterior ends, and in their direction. the deviations of the rest of the contours (which represent the interior of the skulls only) show the differences of the skulls from one another, when these axes are regarded as relatively fixed lines. the dark contours are those of an australian and of a negro skull: the light contours are those of a tartar skull, in the museum of the royal college of surgeons; and of a well developed round skull from a cemetery in constantinople, of uncertain race, in my own possession. it appears, at once, from these views, that the prognathous skulls, so far as their jaws are concerned, do really differ from the orthognathous in much the same way as, though to a far less degree than, the skulls of the lower mammals differ from those of man. furthermore, the plane of the occipital foramen (_b c_) forms a somewhat smaller angle with the axis in these particular prognathous skulls than in the orthognathous; and the like may be slightly true of the perforated plate of the ethmoid--though this point is not so clear. but it is singular to remark that, in another respect, the prognathous skulls are less ape-like than the orthognathous, the cerebral cavity projecting decidedly more beyond the anterior end of the axis in the prognathous, than in the orthognathous, skulls. it will be observed that these diagrams reveal an immense range of variation in the capacity and relative proportion to the cranial axis, of the different regions of the cavity which contains the brain, in the different skulls. nor is the difference in the extent to which the cerebral overlaps the cerebellar cavity less singular. a round skull (fig. , _const._) may have a greater posterior cerebral projection than a long one (fig. , _negro_). [illustration: fig. .--sections of orthognathous (light contour) and prognathous (dark contour) skulls, one-third of the natural size. _a b_, basicranial axis; _b c_, _b´ c´_, plane of the occipital foramen; _d d´_, hinder end of the palatine bone; _e e´_, front end of the upper jaw; _tt_´, insertion of the tentorium.] until human crania have been largely worked out in a manner similar to that here suggested--until it shall be an opprobrium to an ethnological collection to possess a single skull which is not bisected longitudinally--until the angles and measurements here mentioned, together with a number of others of which i cannot speak in this place, are determined, and tabulated with reference to the basicranial axis as unity, for large numbers of skulls of the different races of mankind, i do not think we shall have any very safe basis for that ethnological craniology which aspires to give the anatomical characters of the crania of the different races of mankind. at present, i believe that the general outlines of what may be safely said upon that subject may be summed up in a very few words. draw a line on a globe from the gold coast in western africa to the steppes of tartary. at the southern and western end of that line there live the most dolichocephalic, prognathous, curly-haired, dark-skinned of men--the true negroes. at the northern and eastern end of the same line there live the most brachycephalic, orthognathous, straight-haired, yellow-skinned of men--the tartars and calmucks. the two ends of this imaginary line are indeed, so to speak, ethnological antipodes. a line drawn at right angles, or nearly so, to this polar line through europe and southern asia to hindostan, would give us a sort of equator, around which round-headed, oval-headed, and oblong-headed, prognathous and orthognathous, fair and dark races--but none possessing the excessively marked characters of calmuck or negro--group themselves. it is worthy of notice that the regions of the antipodal races are antipodal in climate, the greatest contrast the world affords, perhaps, being that between the damp, hot, steaming, alluvial coast plains of the west coast of africa and the arid, elevated steppes and plateaux of central asia, bitterly cold in winter, and as far from the sea as any part of the world can be. from central asia eastward to the pacific islands and subcontinents on the one hand, and to america on the other, brachycephaly and orthognathism gradually diminish, and are replaced by dolichocephaly and prognathism, less, however, on the american continent (throughout the whole length of which a rounded type of skull prevails largely, but not exclusively)[ ] than in the pacific region, where, at length, on the australian continent and in the adjacent islands, the oblong skull, the projecting jaws, and the dark skin reappear; with so much departure, in other respects, from the negro type, that ethnologists assign to these people the special title of "negritoes." the australian skull is remarkable for its narrowness and for the thickness of its walls, especially in the region of the supraciliary ridge, which is frequently, though not by any means invariably, solid throughout, the frontal sinuses remaining undeveloped. the nasal depression, again, is extremely sudden, so that the brows overhang and give the countenance a particularly lowering, threatening expression. the occipital region of the skull, also, not unfrequently becomes less prominent; so that it not only fails to project beyond a line drawn perpendicular to the hinder extremity of the glabello-occipital line, but even, in some cases, begins to shelve away from it, forwards, almost immediately. in consequence of this circumstance, the parts of the occipital bone which lie above and below the tuberosity make a much more acute angle with one another than is usual, whereby the hinder part of the base of the skull appears obliquely truncated. many australian skulls have a considerable height, quite equal to that of the average of any other race, but there are others in which the cranial roof becomes remarkably depressed, the skull, at the same time, elongating so much that, probably, its capacity is not diminished. the majority of skulls possessing these characters, which i have seen, are from the neighbourhood of port adelaide in south australia, and have been used by the natives as water vessels; to which end the face has been knocked away, and a string passed through the vacuity and the occipital foramen, so that the skull was suspended by the greater part of its basis. figure represents the contour of a skull of this kind from western port, with the jaw attached, and of the neanderthal skull, both reduced to one-third of the size of nature. a small additional amount of flattening and lengthening, with a corresponding increase of the supraciliary ridge, would convert the australian brain case into a form identical with that of the aberrant fossil. * * * * * [illustration: fig. .--an australian skull from western port, in the museum of the royal college of surgeons, with the contour of the neanderthal skull. both reduced to one-third the natural size.] and now, to return to the fossil skulls, and to the rank which they occupy among, or beyond, these existing varieties of cranial conformation. in the first place, i must remark, that, as professor schmerling well observed (_supra_, p. ) in commenting upon the engis skull, the formation of a safe judgment upon the question is greatly hindered by the absence of the jaws from both the crania, so that there is no means of deciding, with certainty, whether they were more or less prognathous than the lower existing races of mankind. and yet, as we have seen, it is more in this respect than any other, that human skulls vary, towards and from, the brutal type--the brain case of an average dolichocephalic european differing far less from that of a negro, for example, than his jaws do. in the absence of the jaws, then, any judgment on the relations of the fossil skulls to recent races must be accepted with a certain reservation. but taking the evidence as it stands, and turning first to the engis skull, i confess i can find no character in the remains of that cranium which, if it were a recent skull, would give any trustworthy clue as to the race to which it might appertain. its contours and measurements agree very well with those of some australian skulls which i have examined--and especially has it a tendency towards that occipital flattening, to the great extent of which, in some australian skulls, i have alluded. but all australian skulls do not present this flattening, and the supraciliary ridge of the engis skull is quite unlike that of the typical australians. on the other hand, its measurements agree equally well with those of some european skulls. and assuredly, there is no mark of degradation about any part of its structure. it is, in fact, a fair average human skull, which might have belonged to a philosopher, or might have contained the thoughtless brains of a savage. the case of the neanderthal skull is very different. under whatever aspect we view this cranium, whether we regard its vertical depression, the enormous thickness of its supraciliary ridges, its sloping occiput, or its long and straight squamosal suture, we meet with ape-like characters, stamping it as the most pithecoid of human crania yet discovered. but professor schaaffhausen states (_supra_, p. ), that the cranium, in its present condition, holds . cubic centimetres of water, or about cubic inches, and as the entire skull could hardly have held less than an additional cubic inches, its capacity may be estimated at about cubic inches, which is the average capacity given by morton for polynesian and hottentot skulls. [illustration: fig. .--ancient danish skull from a tumulus at borreby; one-third of the natural size. from a camera lucida drawing by mr. busk.] so large a mass of brain as this, would alone suggest that the pithecoid tendencies, indicated by this skull, did not extend deep into the organization; and this conclusion is borne out by the dimensions of the other bones of the skeleton given by professor schaaffhausen, which show that the absolute height and relative proportions of the limbs, were quite those of an european of middle stature. the bones are indeed stouter, but this and the great development of the muscular ridges noted by dr. schaaffhausen, are characters to be expected in savages. the patagonians, exposed without shelter or protection to a climate possibly not very dissimilar from that of europe at the time during which the neanderthal man lived, are remarkable for the stoutness of their limb bones. in no sense, then, can the neanderthal bones be regarded as the remains of a human being intermediate between men and apes. at most, they demonstrate the existence of a man whose skull may be said to revert somewhat towards the pithecoid type--just as a carrier, or a pouter, or a tumbler, may sometimes put on the plumage of its primitive stock, the _columba livia_. and indeed, though truly the most pithecoid of known human skulls, the neanderthal cranium is by no means so isolated as it appears to be at first, but forms, in reality, the extreme term of a series leading gradually from it to the highest and best developed of human crania. on the one hand, it is closely approached by the flattened australian skulls, of which i have spoken, from which other australian forms lead us gradually up to skulls having very much the type of the engis cranium. and, on the other hand, it is even more closely affined to the skulls of certain ancient people who inhabited denmark during the "stone period," and were probably either contemporaneous with, or later than, the makers of the "refuse heaps," or "kjokkenmöddings" of that country. the correspondence between the longitudinal contour of the neanderthal skull and that of some of those skulls from the tumuli at borreby, very accurate drawings of which have been made by mr. busk, is very close. the occiput is quite as retreating, the supraciliary ridges are nearly as prominent, and the skull is as low. furthermore, the borreby skull resembles the neanderthal form more closely than any of the australian skulls do, by the much more rapid retrocession of the forehead. on the other hand, the borreby skulls are all somewhat broader, in proportion to their length, than the neanderthal skull, while some attain that proportion of breadth to length ( : ) which constitutes brachycephaly. * * * * * in conclusion, i may say, that the fossil remains of man hitherto discovered do not seem to me to take us appreciably nearer to that lower pithecoid form, by the modification of which he has, probably, become what he is. and considering what is now known of the most ancient races of men; seeing that they fashioned flint axes and flint knives and bone-skewers, of much the same pattern as those fabricated by the lowest savages at the present day, and that we have every reason to believe the habits and modes of living of such people to have remained the same from the time of the mammoth and the tichorhine rhinoceros till now, i do not know that this result is other than might be expected. where, then, must we look for primæval man? was the oldest _homo sapiens_ pliocene or miocene, or yet more ancient? in still older strata do the fossilized bones of an ape more anthropoid, or a man more pithecoid, than any yet known await the researches of some unborn paleontologist? time will show. but, in the meanwhile, if any form of the doctrine of progressive development is correct, we must extend by long epochs the most liberal estimate that has yet been made of the antiquity of man. footnotes: [ ] decas collectionis suæ craniorum diversarum gentium illustrata. gottingæ, - . [ ] in a subsequent passage, schmerling remarks upon the occurrence of an incisor tooth "of enormous size" from the caverns of engihoul. the tooth figured is somewhat long, but its dimensions do not appear to me to be otherwise remarkable. [ ] the figure of this clavicle measures inches from end to end in a straight line--so that the bone is rather a small than a large one. [ ] on the crania of the most ancient races of man. by professor d. schaaffhausen, of bonn. (from müller's archiv., , p. .) with remarks, and original figures, taken from a cast of the neanderthal cranium. by george busk, f.r.s., &c. natural history review, april, . [ ] verhandl. d. naturhist. vereins der preuss. rheinlande und westphalens., xiv. bonn, . [ ] ib. correspondenzblatt. no. . [ ] this, mr. busk has pointed out, is probably the notch for the frontal nerve. [ ] the numbers in brackets are those which i should assign to the different measures, as taken from the plaster cast.--g. b. [ ] verh. des naturhist. vereins in bonn, xiv. . [ ] estimating the facial angle in the way suggested, on the cast i should place it at ° to °.--g. b. [ ] see an excellent essay by mr. church on the myology of the orang, in the natural history review, for . [ ] in no normal human skull does the breadth of the brain-case exceed its length. [ ] see dr. d. wilson's valuable paper "on the supposed prevalence of one cranial type throughout the american aborigines."--canadian journal, vol. ii., . iv the present condition of organic nature. when it was my duty to consider what subject i would select for the six lectures which i shall now have the pleasure of delivering to you, it occurred to me that i could not do better than endeavour to put before you in a true light, or in what i might perhaps with more modesty call, that which i conceive myself to be the true light, the position of a book which has been more praised and more abused, perhaps, than any book which has appeared for some years;--i mean mr. darwin's work on the "origin of species." that work, i doubt not, many of you have read; for i know the inquiring spirit which is rife among you. at any rate, all of you will have heard of it,--some by one kind of report and some by another kind of report; the attention of all and the curiosity of all have been probably more or less excited on the subject of that work. all i can do, and all i shall attempt to do, is to put before you that kind of judgment which has been formed by a man, who, of course, is liable to judge erroneously; but at any rate, of one whose business and profession it is to form judgments upon questions of this nature. and here, as it will always happen when dealing with an extensive subject, the greater part of my course--if, indeed, so small a number of lectures can be properly called a course--must be devoted to preliminary matters, or rather to a statement of those facts and of those principles which the work itself dwells upon, and brings more or less directly before us. i have no right to suppose that all or any of you are naturalists; and even if you were, the misconceptions and misunderstandings prevalent even among naturalists on these matters would make it desirable that i should take the course i now propose to take,--that i should start from the beginning,--that i should endeavour to point out what is the existing state of the organic world--that i should point out its past condition,--that i should state what is the precise nature of the undertaking which mr. darwin has taken in hand; that i should endeavour to show you what are the only methods by which that undertaking can be brought to an issue, and to point out to you how far the author of the work in question has satisfied those conditions, how far he has not satisfied them, how far they are satisfiable by man, and how far they are not satisfiable by man. to-night, in taking up the first part of the question, i shall endeavour to put before you a sort of broad notion of our knowledge of the condition of the living world. there are many ways of doing this. i might deal with it pictorially and graphically. following the example of humboldt in his "aspects of nature," i might endeavour to point out the infinite variety of organic life in every mode of its existence, with reference to the variations of climate and the like; and such an attempt would be fraught with interest to us all; but considering the subject before us, such a course would not be that best calculated to assist us. in an argument of this kind we must go further and dig deeper into the matter; we must endeavour to look into the foundations of living nature, if i may so say, and discover the principles involved in some of her most secret operations. i propose, therefore, in the first place, to take some ordinary animal with which you are all familiar, and, by easily comprehensible and obvious examples drawn from it, to show what are the kind of problems which living beings in general lay before us; and i shall then show you that the same problems are laid open to us by all kinds of living beings. but, first, let me say in what sense i have used the words "organic nature." in speaking of the causes which lead to our present knowledge of organic nature, i have used it almost as an equivalent of the word "living," and for this reason,--that in almost all living beings you can distinguish several distinct portions set apart to do particular things and work in a particular way. these are termed "organs," and the whole together is called "organic." and as it is universally characteristic of them, the term "organic" has been very conveniently employed to denote the whole of living nature,--the whole of the plant world, and the whole of the animal world. few animals can be more familiar to you than that whose skeleton is shown on our diagram. you need not bother yourselves with this "_equus caballus_" written under it; that is only the latin name of it, and does not make it any better. it simply means the common horse. suppose we wish to understand all about the horse. our first object must be to study the structure of the animal. the whole of his body is inclosed within a hide, a skin covered with hair; and if that hide or skin be taken off, we find a great mass of flesh, or what is technically called muscle, being the substance which by its power of contraction enables the animal to move. these muscles move the hard parts one upon the other, and so give that strength and power of motion which renders the horse so useful to us in the performance of those services in which we employ him. and then, on separating and removing the whole of this skin and flesh, you have a great series of bones, hard structures, bound together with ligaments, and forming the skeleton which is represented here. [illustration: fig. .] in that skeleton there are a number of parts to be recognized. the long series of bones, beginning from the skull and ending in the tail, is called the spine, and those in front are the ribs; and then there are two pairs of limbs, one before and one behind; and there are what we all know as the fore-legs and the hind-legs. if we pursue our researches into the interior of this animal, we find within the framework of the skeleton a great cavity, or rather, i should say, two great cavities,--one cavity beginning in the skull and running through the neck-bones, along the spine, and ending in the tail, containing the brain and the spinal marrow, which are extremely important organs. the second great cavity, commencing with the mouth, contains the gullet, the stomach, the long intestine, and all the rest of those internal apparatus which are essential for digestion; and then in the same great cavity, there are lodged the heart and all the great vessels going from it; and, besides that, the organs of respiration--the lungs; and then the kidneys, and the organs of reproduction, and so on. let us now endeavour to reduce this notion of a horse that we now have, to some such kind of simple expression as can be at once, and without difficulty, retained in the mind, apart from all minor details. if i make a transverse section, that is, if i were to saw a dead horse across, i should find that, if i left out the details, and supposing i took my section through the anterior region, and through the fore-limbs, i should have here this kind of section of the body (fig. ). here would be the upper part of the animal--that great mass of bones that we spoke of as the spine (_a_, fig. ). here i should have the alimentary canal (_b_, fig. ). here i should have the heart (_c_, fig. ); and then you see, there would be a kind of double tube, the whole being inclosed within the hide; the spinal marrow would be placed in the upper tube (_a_, fig. ), and in the lower tube (_d d_, fig. ), there would be the alimentary canal (_b_), and the heart (_c_); and here i shall have the legs proceeding from each side. for simplicity's sake, i represent them merely as stumps (_e e_, fig. ). now that is a horse--as mathematicians would say--reduced to its most simple expression. carry that in your minds, if you please, as a simplified idea of the structure of the horse. the considerations which i have now put before you belong to what we technically call the "anatomy" of the horse. now, suppose we go to work upon these several parts,--flesh and hair, and skin and bone, and lay open these various organs with our scalpels, and examine them by means of our magnifying-glasses, and see what we can make of them. we shall find that the flesh is made up of bundles of strong fibres. the brain and nerves, too, we shall find, are made up of fibres, and these queer-looking things that are called ganglionic corpuscles. if we take a slice of the bone and examine it, we shall find that it is very like this diagram of a section of the bone of an ostrich, though differing, of course, in some details; and if we take any part whatsoever of the tissue, and examine it, we shall find it all has a minute structure, visible only under the microscope. all these parts constitute microscopic anatomy or "histology." these parts are constantly being changed; every part is constantly growing, decaying, and being replaced during the life of the animal. the tissue is constantly replaced by new material; and if you go back to the young state of the tissue in the case of muscle, or in the case of skin, or any of the organs i have mentioned, you will find that they all come under the same condition. every one of these microscopic filaments and fibres (i now speak merely of the general character of the whole process)--every one of these parts--could be traced down to some modification of a tissue which can be readily divided into little particles of fleshy matter, of that substance which is composed of the chemical elements, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, having such a shape as this (fig. ). these particles, into which all primitive tissues break up, are called cells. if i were to make a section of a piece of the skin of my hand, i should find that it was made up of these cells. if i examine the fibres which form the various organs of all living animals, i should find that all of them, at one time or other, had been formed out of a substance consisting of similar elements; so that you see, just as we reduced the whole body in the gross to that sort of simple expression given in fig. , so we may reduce the whole of the microscopic structural elements to a form of even greater simplicity; just as the plan of the whole body may be so represented in a sense (fig. ), so the primary structure of every tissue may be represented by a mass of cells (fig. ). [illustration: fig. .] having thus, in this sort of general way, sketched to you what i may call, perhaps, the architecture of the body of the horse, (what we term technically its morphology,) i must now turn to another aspect. a horse is not a mere dead structure: it is an active, living, working machine. hitherto we have, as it were, been looking at a steam-engine with the fires out, and nothing in the boiler; but the body of the living animal is a beautifully-formed active machine, and every part has its different work to do in the working of that machine, which is what we call its life. the horse, if you see him after his day's work is done, is cropping the grass in the fields, as it may be, or munching the oats in his stable. what is he doing? his jaws are working as a mill--and a very complex mill too--grinding the corn, or crushing the grass to a pulp. as soon as that operation has taken place, the food is passed down to the stomach, and there it is mixed with the chemical fluid called the gastric juice, a substance which has the peculiar property of making soluble and dissolving out the nutritious matter in the grass, and leaving behind those parts which are not nutritious; so that you have, first, the mill, then a sort of chemical digester; and then the food, thus partially dissolved, is carried back by the muscular contractions of the intestines into the hinder parts of the body, while the soluble portions are taken up into the blood. the blood is contained in a vast system of pipes, spreading through the whole body, connected with a force-pump,--the heart,--which, by its position and by the contractions of its valves, keeps the blood constantly circulating in one direction, never allowing it to rest; and then, by means of this circulation of the blood, laden as it is with the products of digestion, the skin, the flesh, the hair, and every other part of the body, draws from it that which it wants, and every one of these organs derives those materials which are necessary to enable it to do its work. the action of each of these organs, the performance of each of these various duties, involve in their operation a continual absorption of the matters necessary for their support, from the blood, and a constant formation of waste products, which are returned to the blood, and conveyed by it to the lungs and the kidneys, which are organs that have allotted to them the office of extracting, separating, and getting rid of these waste products; and thus the general nourishment, labour, and repair of the whole machine is kept up with order and regularity. but not only is it a machine which feeds and appropriates to its own support the nourishment necessary to its existence--it is an engine for locomotive purposes. the horse desires to go from one place to another; and to enable it to do this, it has those strong contractile bundles of muscles attached to the bones of its limbs, which are put in motion by means of a sort of telegraphic apparatus formed by the brain and the great spinal cord running through the spine or backbone; and to this spinal cord are attached a number of fibres termed nerves, which proceed to all parts of the structure. by means of these the eyes, nose, tongue, and skin--all the organs of perception--transmit impressions or sensations to the brain, which acts as a sort of great central telegraph-office, receiving impressions and sending messages to all parts of the body, and putting in motion the muscles necessary to accomplish any movement that may be desired. so that you have here an extremely complex and beautifully-proportioned machine, with all its parts working harmoniously together towards one common object--the preservation of the life of the animal. now, note this: the horse makes up its waste by feeding, and its food is grass or oats, or perhaps other vegetable products; therefore, in the long run, the source of all this complex machinery lies in the vegetable kingdom. but where does the grass, or the oat, or any other plant, obtain this nourishing food-producing material? at first it is a little seed, which soon begins to draw into itself from the earth and the surrounding air matters which in themselves contain no vital properties whatever; it absorbs into its own substance water, an inorganic body; it draws into its substance carbonic acid, an inorganic matter; and ammonia, another inorganic matter, found in the air; and then, by some wonderful chemical process, the details of which chemists do not yet understand, though they are near foreshadowing them, it combines them into one substance, which is known to us as "protein," a complex compound of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, which alone possesses the property of manifesting vitality and of permanently supporting animal life. so that, you see, the waste products of the animal economy, the effete materials which are continually being thrown off by all living beings, in the form of organic matters, are constantly replaced by supplies of the necessary repairing and rebuilding materials drawn from the plants, which in their turn manufacture them, so to speak, by a mysterious combination of those same inorganic materials. let us trace out the history of the horse in another direction. after a certain time, as the result of sickness or disease, the effect of accident, or the consequence of old age, sooner or later, the animal dies. the multitudinous operations of this beautiful mechanism flag in their performance, the horse loses its vigour, and after passing through the curious series of changes comprised in its formation and preservation, it finally decays, and ends its life by going back into that inorganic world from which all but an inappreciable fraction of its substance was derived. its bones become mere carbonate and phosphate of lime; the matter of its flesh, and of its other parts, becomes, in the long run, converted into carbonic acid, into water, and into ammonia. you will now, perhaps, understand the curious relation of the animal with the plant, of the organic with the inorganic world, which is shown in this diagram. the plant gathers these inorganic materials together and makes them up into its own substance. the animal eats the plant and appropriates the nutritious portions to its own sustenance, rejects and gets rid of the useless matters; and, finally, the animal itself dies, and its whole body is decomposed and returned into the inorganic world. there is thus a constant circulation from one to the other, a continual formation of organic life from inorganic matters, and as constant a return of the matter of living bodies to the inorganic world; so that the materials of which our bodies are composed are largely, in all probability, the substances which constituted the matter of long extinct creations, but which have in the interval constituted a part of the inorganic world. [illustration: inorganic world. vegetable world. animal world. fig. .] thus we come to the conclusion, strange at first sight, that the matter constituting the living world is identical with that which forms the inorganic world. and not less true is it that, remarkable as are the powers or, in other words, as are the forces which are exerted by living beings, yet all these forces are either identical with those which exist in the inorganic world, or they are convertible into them; i mean in just the same sense as the researches of physical philosophers have shown that heat is convertible into electricity, that electricity is convertible into magnetism, magnetism into mechanical force or chemical force, and any one of them with the other, each being measurable in terms of the other,--even so, i say, that great law is applicable to the living world. consider why is the skeleton of this horse capable of supporting the masses of flesh and the various organs forming the living body, unless it is because of the action of the same forces of cohesion which combines together the particles of matter composing this piece of chalk? what is there in the muscular contractile power of the animal but the force which is expressible, and which is in a certain sense convertible, into the force of gravity which it overcomes? or, if you go to more hidden processes, in what does the process of digestion differ from those processes which are carried on in the laboratory of the chemist? even if we take the most recondite and most complex operations of animal life--those of the nervous system, these of late years have been shown to be--i do not say identical in any sense with the electrical processes--but this has been shown, that they are in some way or other associated with them; that is to say, that every amount of nervous action is accompanied by a certain amount of electrical disturbance in the particles of the nerves in which that nervous action is carried on. in this way the nervous action is related to electricity in the same way that heat is related to electricity; and the same sort of argument which demonstrates the two latter to be related to one another shows that the nervous forces are correlated to electricity; for the experiments of m. dubois reymond and others have shown that whenever a nerve is in a state of excitement, sending a message to the muscles or conveying an impression to the brain, there is a disturbance of the electrical condition of that nerve which does not exist at other times; and there are a number of other facts and phenomena of that sort; so that we come to the broad conclusion that not only as to living matter itself, but as to the forces that matter exerts, there is a close relationship between the organic and the inorganic world--the difference between them arising from the diverse combination and disposition of identical forces, and not from any primary diversity, so far as we can see. i said just now that the horse eventually died and became converted into the same inorganic substances from whence all but an inappreciable fraction of its substance demonstrably originated, so that the actual wanderings of matter are as remarkable as the transmigrations of the soul fabled by indian tradition. but before death has occurred, in the one sex or the other, and in fact in both, certain products or parts of the organism have been set free, certain parts of the organisms of the two sexes have come into contact with one another, and from that conjunction, from that union which then takes place, there results the formation of a new being. at stated times the mare, from a particular part of the interior of her body, called the ovary, gets rid of a minute particle of matter comparable in all essential respects with that which we called a cell a little while since, which cell contains a kind of nucleus in its centre, surrounded by a clear space and by a viscid mass of protein substance (fig. ); and though it is different in appearance from the eggs which we are mostly acquainted with, it is really an egg. after a time this minute particle of matter, which may only be a small fraction of a grain in weight, undergoes a series of changes,--wonderful, complex changes. finally, upon its surface there is fashioned a little elevation, which afterwards becomes divided and marked by a groove. the lateral boundaries of the groove extend upwards and downwards, and at length give rise to a double tube. in the upper and smaller tube the spinal marrow and brain are fashioned; in the lower, the alimentary canal and heart; and at length two pairs of buds shoot out at the sides of the body, and they are the rudiments of the limbs. in fact a true drawing of a section of the embryo in this state would in all essential respects resemble that diagram of a horse reduced to its simplest expression, which i first placed before you (fig. ). slowly and gradually these changes take place. the whole of the body, at first, can be broken up into "cells," which become in one place metamorphosed into muscle,--in another place into gristle and bone,--in another place into fibrous tissue,--and in another into hair; every part becoming gradually and slowly fashioned, as if there were an artificer at work in each of these complex structures that i have mentioned. this embryo, as it is called, then passes into other conditions. i should tell you that there is a time when the embryos of neither dog, nor horse, nor porpoise, nor monkey, nor man, can be distinguished by any essential feature one from the other; there is a time when they each and all of them resemble this one of the dog. but as development advances, all the parts acquire their speciality, till at length you have the embryo converted into the form of the parent from which it started. so that, you see, this living animal, this horse, begins its existence as a minute particle of nitrogenous matter, which, being supplied with nutriment (derived, as i have shown, from the inorganic world), grows up according to the special type and construction of its parents, works and undergoes a constant waste, and that waste is made good by nutriment derived from the inorganic world; the waste given off in this way being directly added to the inorganic world. eventually the animal itself dies, and, by the process of decomposition, its whole body is returned to those conditions of inorganic matter in which its substance originated. this, then, is that which is true of every living form, from the lowest plant to the highest animal--to man himself. you might define the life of every one in exactly the same terms as those which i have now used; the difference between the highest and the lowest being simply in the complexity of the developmental changes, the variety of the structural forms, and the diversity of the physiological functions which are exerted by each. if i were to take an oak tree, as a specimen of the plant world, i should find that it originated in an acorn, which, too, commenced in a cell; the acorn is placed in the ground, and it very speedily begins to absorb the inorganic matters i have named, adds enormously to its bulk, and we can see it, year after year, extending itself upward and downward, attracting and appropriating to itself inorganic materials, which it vivifies, and eventually, as it ripens, gives off its own proper acorns, which again run the same course. but i need not multiply examples,--from the highest to the lowest the essential features of life are the same, as i have described in each of these cases. so much, then, for these particular features of the organic world, which you can understand and comprehend, so long as you confine yourself to one sort of living being, and study that only. but, as you know, horses are not the only living creatures in the world; and again, horses, like all other animals, have certain limits--are confined to a certain area on the surface of the earth on which we live,--and, as that is the simpler matter, i may take that first. in its wild state, and before the discovery of america, when the natural state of things was interfered with by the spaniards, the horse was only to be found in parts of the earth which are known to geographers as the old world; that is to say, you might meet with horses in europe, asia, or africa; but there were none in australia, and there were none whatsoever in the whole continent of america, from labrador down to cape horn. this is an empirical fact, and it is what is called, stated in the way i have given it you, the "geographical distribution" of the horse. why horses should be found in europe, asia, and africa, and not in america, is not obvious; the explanation that the conditions of life in america are unfavourable to their existence, and that, therefore, they had not been created there, evidently does not apply; for when the invading spaniards, or our own yeomen farmers, conveyed horses to these countries for their own use, they were found to thrive well and multiply very rapidly; and many are even now running wild in those countries, and in a perfectly natural condition. now, suppose we were to do for every animal what we have here done for the horse,--that is, to mark off and distinguish the particular district or region to which each belonged; and supposing we tabulated all these results, that would be called the geographical distribution of animals, while a corresponding study of plants would yield as a result the geographical distribution of plants. i pass on from that now, as i merely wished to explain to you what i meant by the use of the term "geographical distribution." as i said, there is another aspect, and a much more important one, and that is, the relations of the various animals to one another. the horse is a very well-defined matter-of-fact sort of animal, and we are all pretty familiar with its structure. i dare say it may have struck you, that it resembles very much no other member of the animal kingdom, except perhaps the zebra or the ass. but let me ask you to look along these diagrams. here is the skeleton of the horse, and here the skeleton of the dog. you will notice that we have in the horse a skull, a backbone and ribs, shoulder-blades and haunch-bones. in the fore-limb, one upper arm-bone, two fore arm-bones, wrist-bones (wrongly called knee), and middle hand-bones, ending in the three bones of a finger, the last of which is sheathed in the horny hoof of the fore-foot: in the hind-limb, one thigh-bone, two leg-bones, ankle-bones, and middle foot-bones, ending in the three bones of a toe, the last of which is encased in the hoof of the hind-foot. now turn to the dog's skeleton. we find identically the same bones, but more of them, there being more toes in each foot, and hence more toe-bones. well, that is a very curious thing! the fact is that the dog and the horse--when one gets a look at them without the outward impediments of the skin--are found to be made in very much the same sort of fashion. and if i were to make a transverse section of the dog, i should find the same organs that i have already shown you as forming parts of the horse. well, here is another skeleton--that of a kind of lemur--you see he has just the same bones; and if i were to make a transverse section of it, it would be just the same again. in your mind's eye turn him round, so as to put his backbone in a position inclined obliquely upwards and forwards, just as in the next three diagrams, which represent the skeletons of an orang, a chimpanzee, and a gorilla, and you find you have no trouble in identifying the bones throughout; and lastly turn to the end of the series, the diagram representing a man's skeleton, and still you find no great structural feature essentially altered. there are the same bones in the same relations. from the horse we pass on and on, with gradual steps, until we arrive at last at the highest known forms. on the other hand, take the other line of diagrams, and pass from the horse downwards in the scale to this fish; and still, though the modifications are vastly greater, the essential framework of the organization remains unchanged. here, for instance, is a porpoise; here is its strong backbone, with the cavity running through it, which contains the spinal cord; here are the ribs, here the shoulder-blade; here is the little short upper-arm bone, here are the two forearm bones, the wrist-bone, and the finger-bones. strange, is it not, that the porpoise should have in this queer-looking affair--its flapper (as it is called), the same fundamental elements as the fore-leg of the horse or the dog, or the ape or man; and here you will notice a very curious thing,--the hinder limbs are absent. now, let us make another jump. let us go to the codfish: here you see is the forearm, in this large pectoral fin--carrying your mind's eye onward from the flapper of the porpoise. and here you have the hinder limbs restored in the shape of these ventral fins. if i were to make a transverse section of this, i should find just the same organs that we have before noticed. so that, you see, there comes out this strange conclusion as the result of our investigations, that the horse, when examined and compared with other animals, is found by no means to stand alone in nature; but that there are an enormous number of other creatures which have backbones, ribs, and legs, and other parts arranged in the same general manner, and in all their formation exhibiting the same broad peculiarities. i am sure that you cannot have followed me even in this extremely elementary exposition of the structural relations of animals, without seeing what i have been driving at all through, which is, to show you that, step by step, naturalists have come to the idea of a unity of plan, or conformity of construction, among animals which appeared at first sight to be extremely dissimilar. and here you have evidence of such a unity of plan among all the animals which have backbones, and which we technically call _vertebrata_. but there are multitudes of other animals, such as crabs, lobsters, spiders, and so on, which we term _annulosa_. in these i could not point out to you the parts that correspond with those of the horse,--the backbone, for instance,--as they are constructed upon a very different principle, which is also common to all of them; that is to say, the lobster, the spider, and the centipede, have a common plan running through their whole arrangement, in just the same way that the horse, the dog, and the porpoise assimilate to each other. yet other creatures--whelks, cuttlefishes, oysters, snails, and all their tribe (_mollusca_)--resemble one another in the same way, but differ from both _vertebrata_ and _annulosa_; and the like is true of the animals called _coelenterata_ (polypes) and _protozoa_ (animalcules and sponges). now, by pursuing this sort of comparison, naturalists have arrived at the conviction that there are,--some think five, and some seven,--but certainly not more than the latter number--and perhaps it is simpler to assume five--distinct plans or constructions in the whole of the animal world; and that the hundreds of thousands of species of creatures on the surface of the earth, are all reducible to those five, or, at most, seven, plans of organization. but can we go no further than that? when one has got so far, one is tempted to go on a step and inquire whether we cannot go back yet further and bring down the whole to modifications of one primordial unit. the anatomist cannot do this; but if he call to his aid the study of development, he can do it. for we shall find that, distinct as those plans are, whether it be a porpoise or man, or lobster, or any of those other kinds i have mentioned, every one begins its existence with one and the same primitive form,--that of the egg, consisting, as we have seen, of a nitrogenous substance, having a small particle or nucleus in the centre of it. furthermore, the earlier changes of each are substantially the same. and it is in this that lies that true "unity of organization" of the animal kingdom which has been guessed at and fancied for many years; but which it has been left to the present time to be demonstrated by the careful study of development. but is it possible to go another step further still, and to show that in the same way the whole of the organic world is reducible to one primitive condition of form? is there among the plants the same primitive form of organization, and is that identical with that of the animal kingdom? the reply to that question, too, is not uncertain or doubtful. it is now proved that every plant begins its existence under the same form; that is to say, in that of a cell--a particle of nitrogenous matter having substantially the same conditions. so that if you trace back the oak to its first germ, or a man, or a horse, or lobster, or oyster, or any other animal you choose to name, you shall find each and all of these commencing their existence in forms essentially similar to each other: and, furthermore, that the first processes of growth, and many of the subsequent modifications, are essentially the same in principle in almost all. in conclusion, let me, in a few words, recapitulate the positions which i have laid down. and you must understand that i have not been talking mere theory; i have been speaking of matters which are as plainly demonstrable as the commonest propositions of euclid--of facts that must form the basis of all speculations and beliefs in biological science. we have gradually traced down all organic forms, or, in other words, we have analyzed the present condition of animated nature, until we found that each species took its origin in a form similar to that under which all the others commenced their existence. we have found the whole of the vast array of living forms with which we are surrounded, constantly growing, increasing, decaying, and disappearing; the animal constantly attracting, modifying, and applying to its sustenance the matter of the vegetable kingdom, which derived its support from the absorption and conversion of inorganic matter. and so constant and universal is this absorption, waste, and reproduction, that it may be said with perfect certainty that there is left in no one of our bodies at the present moment a millionth part of the matter of which they were originally formed! we have seen, again, that not only is the living matter derived from the inorganic world, but that the forces of that matter are all of them correlative with and convertible into those of inorganic nature. this, for our present purposes, is the best view of the present condition of organic nature which i can lay before you: it gives you the great outlines of a vast picture, which you must fill up by your own study. in the next lecture i shall endeavour in the same way to go back into the past, and to sketch in the same broad manner the history of life in epochs preceding our own. v the past condition of organic nature. in the lecture which i delivered last monday evening, i endeavoured to sketch in a very brief manner, but as well as the time at my disposal would permit, the present condition of organic nature, meaning by that large title simply an indication of the great, broad, and general principles which are to be discovered by those who look attentively at the phenomena of organic nature as at present displayed. the general result of our investigations might be summed up thus: we found that the multiplicity of the forms of animal life, great as that may be, may be reduced to a comparatively few primitive plans or types of construction; that a further study of the development of those different forms revealed to us that they were again reducible, until we at last brought the infinite diversity of animal, and even vegetable life, down to the primordial form of a single cell. we found that our analysis of the organic world, whether animals or plants, showed, in the long run, that they might both be reduced into, and were, in fact, composed of the same constituents. and we saw that the plant obtained the materials constituting its substance by a peculiar combination of matters belonging entirely to the inorganic world; that, then, the animal was constantly appropriating the nitrogenous matters of the plant to its own nourishment, and returning them back to the inorganic world, in what we spoke of as its waste; and that, finally, when the animal ceased to exist, the constituents of its body were dissolved and transmitted to that inorganic world whence they had been at first abstracted. thus we saw in both the blade of grass and the horse but the same elements differently combined and arranged. we discovered a continual circulation going on,--the plant drawing in the elements of inorganic nature and combining them into food for the animal creation; the animal borrowing from the plant the matter for its own support, giving off during its life products which returned immediately to the inorganic world; and that, eventually, the constituent materials of the whole structure of both animals and plants were thus returned to their original source: there was a constant passage from one state of existence to another, and a returning back again. lastly, when we endeavoured to form some notion of the nature of the forces exercised by living beings, we discovered that they--if not capable of being subjected to the same minute analysis as the constituents of those beings themselves--that they were correlative with--that they were the equivalents of the forces of inorganic nature--that they were, in the sense in which the term is now used, convertible with them. that was our general result. and now, leaving the present, i must endeavour in the same manner to put before you the facts that are to be discovered in the past history of the living world, in the past conditions of organic nature. we have, to-night, to deal with the facts of that history--a history involving periods of time before which our mere human records sink into utter insignificance--a history the variety and physical magnitude of whose events cannot even be foreshadowed by the history of human life and human phenomena--a history of the most varied and complex character. we must deal with the history, then, in the first place, as we should deal with all other histories. the historical student knows that his first business should be to inquire into the validity of his evidence, and the nature of the record in which the evidence is contained, that he may be able to form a proper estimate of the correctness of the conclusions which have been drawn from that evidence. so, here, we must pass, in the first place, to the consideration of a matter which may seem foreign to the question under discussion. we must dwell upon the nature of the records, and the credibility of the evidence they contain; we must look to the completeness or incompleteness of those records themselves, before we turn to that which they contain and reveal. the question of the credibility of the history, happily for us, will not require much consideration, for, in this history, unlike those of human origin, there can be no cavilling, no differences as to the reality and truth of the facts of which it is made up; the facts state themselves, and are laid out clearly before us. but, although one of the greatest difficulties of the historical student is cleared out of our path, there are other difficulties--difficulties in rightly interpreting the facts as they are presented to us--which may be compared with the greatest difficulties of any other kinds of historical study. what is this record of the past history of the globe, and what are the questions which are involved in an inquiry into its completeness or incompleteness? that record is composed of mud; and the question which we have to investigate this evening resolves itself into a question of the formation of mud. you may think, perhaps, that this is a vast step--of almost from the sublime to the ridiculous--from the contemplation of the history of the past ages of the world's existence to the consideration of the history of the formation of mud! but, in nature, there is nothing mean and unworthy of attention; there is nothing ridiculous or contemptible in any of her works; and this inquiry, you will soon see, i hope, takes us to the very root and foundations of our subject. how, then, is mud formed? always, with some trifling exception, which i need not consider now--always, as the result of the action of water, wearing down and disintegrating the surface of the earth and rocks with which it comes in contact--pounding and grinding it down, and carrying the particles away to places where they cease to be disturbed by this mechanical action, and where they can subside and rest. for the ocean, urged by winds, washes, as we know, a long extent of coast, and every wave, loaded as it is with particles of sand and gravel as it breaks upon the shore, does something towards the disintegrating process. and thus, slowly but surely, the hardest rocks are gradually ground down to a powdery substance; and the mud thus formed, coarser or finer, as the case may be, is carried by the rush of the tides, or currents, till it reaches the comparatively deeper parts of the ocean, in which it can sink to the bottom, that is, to parts where there is a depth of about fourteen or fifteen fathoms, a depth at which the water is, usually, nearly motionless, and in which, of course, the finer particles of this detritus, or mud as we call it, sinks to the bottom. or, again, if you take a river, rushing down from its mountain sources, brawling over the stones and rocks that intersect its path, loosening, removing, and carrying with it in its downward course the pebbles and lighter matters from its banks, it crushes and pounds down the rocks and earths in precisely the same way as the wearing action of the sea waves. the matters forming the deposit are torn from the mountain-side and whirled impetuously into the valley, more slowly over the plain, thence into the estuary, and from the estuary they are swept into the sea. the coarser and heavier fragments are obviously deposited first, that is, as soon as the current begins to lose its force by becoming amalgamated with the stiller depths of the ocean, but the finer and lighter particles are carried further on, and eventually deposited in a deeper and stiller portion of the ocean. it clearly follows from this that mud gives us a chronology; for it is evident that supposing this, which i now sketch, to be the sea bottom, and supposing this to be a coast-line; from the washing action of the sea upon the rock, wearing and grinding it down into a sediment of mud, the mud will be carried down and, at length, deposited in the deeper parts of this sea-bottom, where it will form a layer; and then, while that first layer is hardening, other mud which is coming from the same source will, of course, be carried to the same place; and, as it is quite impossible for it to get beneath the layer already there, it deposits itself above it, and forms another layer, and in that way you gradually have layers of mud constantly forming and hardening one above the other, and conveying a record of time. it is a necessary result of the operation of the law of gravitation that the uppermost layer shall be the youngest and the lowest the oldest, and that the different beds shall be older at any particular point or spot in exactly the ratio of their depth from the surface. so that if they were upheaved afterwards, and you had a series of these different layers of mud, converted into sandstone, or limestone, as the case might be, you might be sure that the bottom layer was deposited first, and that the upper layers were formed afterwards. here, you see, is the first step in the history--these layers of mud give us an idea of time. the whole surface of the earth,--i speak broadly, and leave out minor qualifications,--is made up of such layers of mud, so hard, the majority of them, that we call them rock, whether limestone or sandstone, or other varieties of rock. and, seeing that every part of the crust of the earth is made up in this way, you might think that the determination of the chronology, the fixing of the time which it has taken to form this crust is a comparatively simple matter. take a broad average, ascertain how fast the mud is deposited upon the bottom of the sea, or in the estuary of rivers; take it to be an inch, or two, or three inches a year, or whatever you may roughly estimate it at; then take the total thickness of the whole series of stratified rocks, which geologists estimate at twelve or thirteen miles, or about seventy thousand feet, make a sum in short division, divide the total thickness by that of the quantity deposited in one year, and the result will, of course, give you the number of years which the crust has taken to form. truly, that looks a very simple process! it would be so except for certain difficulties, the very first of which is that of finding how rapidly sediments are deposited; but the main difficulty--a difficulty which renders any certain calculations of such a matter out of the question--is this, the sea-bottom on which the deposit takes place is continually shifting. instead of the surface of the earth being that stable, fixed thing that it is popularly believed to be, being, in common parlance, the very emblem of fixity itself, it is incessantly moving, and is, in fact, as unstable as the surface of the sea, except that its undulations are infinitely slower and enormously higher and deeper. now, what is the effect of this oscillation? take the case to which i have previously referred. the finer or coarser sediments that are carried down by the current of the river will only be carried out a certain distance, and eventually, as we have already seen, on reaching the stiller part of the ocean, will be deposited at the bottom. let c _y_ (fig. ) be the sea-bottom, _y_ d the shore, _x y_ the sea-level, then the coarser deposit will subside over the region b, the finer over a, while beyond a there will be no deposit at all; and, consequently, no record will be kept, simply because no deposit is going on. now, suppose that the whole land, c, d, which we have regarded as stationary, goes down, as it does so, both a and b go further out from the shore, which will be at _y_^ , _x_^ _y_^ , being the new sea-level. the consequence will be that the layer of mud (a), being now, for the most part, further than the force of the current is strong enough to convey even the finest _débris_, will, of course, receive no more deposits, and having attained a certain thickness, will now grow no thicker. [illustration: fig. .] we should be misled in taking the thickness of that layer, whenever it may be exposed to our view, as a record of time in the manner in which we are now regarding this subject, as it would give us only an imperfect and partial record: it would seem to represent too short a period of time. suppose, on the other hand, that the land (c d) had gone on rising slowly and gradually--say an inch or two inches in the course of a century,--what would be the practical effect of that movement? why, that the sediment a and b which has been already deposited, would eventually be brought nearer to the shore-level, and again subjected to the wear and tear of the sea; and directly the sea begins to act upon it, it would of course soon cut up and carry it away, to a greater or less extent, to be re-deposited further out. well, as there is, in all probability, not one single spot on the whole surface of the earth, which has not been up and down in this way a great many times, it follows that the thickness of the deposits formed at any particular spot cannot be taken (even supposing we had at first obtained correct data as to the rate at which they took place) as affording reliable information as to the period of time occupied in its deposit. so that you see it is absolutely necessary from these facts, seeing that our record entirely consists of accumulations of mud, superimposed one on the other; seeing in the next place that any particular spots on which accumulations have occurred, have been constantly moving up and down, and sometimes out of the reach of a deposit, and at other times its own deposit broken up and carried away, it follows that our record must be in the highest degree imperfect, and we have hardly a trace left of thick deposits, or any definite knowledge of the area that they occupied in a great many cases. and mark this! that supposing even that the whole surface of the earth had been accessible to the geologist,--that man had had access to every part of the earth, and had made sections of the whole, and put them all together,--even then his record must of necessity be imperfect. but to how much has man really access? if you will look at this map you will see that it represents the proportion of the sea to the earth: this coloured part indicates all the dry land, and this other portion is the water. you will notice at once that the water covers three-fifths of the whole surface of the globe, and has covered it in the same manner ever since man has kept any record of his own observations, to say nothing of the minute period during which he has cultivated geological inquiry. so that three-fifths of the surface of the earth is shut out from us because it is under the sea. let us look at the other two-fifths, and see what are the countries in which anything that may be termed searching geological inquiry has been carried out: a good deal of france, germany, and great britain and ireland, bits of spain, of italy, and of russia, have been examined, but of the whole great mass of africa, except parts of the southern extremity, we know next to nothing; little bits of india, but of the greater part of the asiatic continent nothing; bits of the northern american states and of canada, but of the greater part of the continent of north america, and in still larger proportion, of south america, nothing! under these circumstances, it follows that even with reference to that kind of imperfect information which we can possess, it is only of about the ten-thousandth part of the accessible parts of the earth that has been examined properly. therefore, it is with justice that the most thoughtful of those who are concerned in these inquiries insist continually upon the imperfection of the geological record; for, i repeat, it is absolutely necessary, from the nature of things, that that record should be of the most fragmentary and imperfect character. unfortunately this circumstance has been constantly forgotten. men of science, like young colts in a fresh pasture, are apt to be exhilarated on being turned into a new field of inquiry, to go off at a hand-gallop, in total disregard of hedges and ditches, to lose sight of the real limitation of their inquiries, and to forget the extreme imperfection of what is really known. geologists have imagined that they could tell us what was going on at all parts of the earth's surface during a given epoch; they have talked of this deposit being contemporaneous with that deposit, until, from our little local histories of the changes at limited spots of the earth's surface, they have constructed a universal history of the globe as full of wonders and portents as any other story of antiquity. but what does this attempt to construct a universal history of the globe imply? it implies that we shall not only have a precise knowledge of the events which have occurred at any particular point, but that we shall be able to say what events, at any one spot, took place at the same time with those at other spots. let us see how far that is in the nature of things practicable. suppose that here i make a section of the lake of killarney, and here the section of another lake--that of loch lomond in scotland for instance. the rivers that flow into them are constantly carrying down deposits of mud, and beds, or strata, are being as constantly formed, one above the other, at the bottom of those lakes. now, there is not a shadow of doubt that in these two lakes the lower beds are all older than the upper--there is no doubt about that; but what does _this_ tell us about the age of any given bed in loch lomond, as compared with that of any given bed in the lake of killarney? it is, indeed, obvious that if any two sets of deposits are separated and discontinuous, there is absolutely no means whatever given you by the nature of the deposit of saying whether one is much younger or older than the other; but you may say, as many have said and think, that the case is very much altered if the beds which we are comparing are continuous. suppose two beds of mud hardened into rock,--a and b are seen in section (fig. .) [illustration: fig. .] well, you say, it is admitted that the lowermost bed is always the older. very well; b, therefore, is older than a. no doubt, _as a whole_, it is so; or if any parts of the two beds which are in the same vertical line are compared, it is so. but suppose you take what seems a very natural step further, and say that the part _a_ of the bed a is younger than the part _b_ of the bed b. is this sound reasoning? if you find any record of changes taking place at _b_, did they occur before any events which took place while _a_ was being deposited? it looks all very plain sailing, indeed, to say that they did; and yet there is no proof of anything of the kind. as the former director of this institution, sir h. de la beche, long ago showed, this reasoning may involve an entire fallacy. it is extremely possible that _a_ may have been deposited ages before _b_. it is very easy to understand how that can be. to return to fig. ; when a and b were deposited, they were _substantially_ contemporaneous; a being simply the finer deposit, and b the coarser of the same detritus or waste of land. now suppose that that sea-bottom goes down (as shown in fig. ), so that the first deposit is carried no farther than _a_, forming the bed a^ , and the coarse no farther than _b_, forming the bed b^ , the result will be the formation of two continuous beds, one of fine sediment (a a^ ) over-lapping another of coarse sediment (b b^ ). now suppose the whole sea-bottom is raised up, and a section exposed about the point a^ ; no doubt, _at this spot_, the upper bed is younger than the lower. but we should obviously greatly err if we concluded that the mass of the upper bed at a was younger than the lower bed at b; for we have just seen that they are contemporaneous deposits. still more should we be in error if we supposed the upper bed at a to be younger than the continuation of the lower bed at b^ ; for a was deposited long before b^ . in fine, if, instead of comparing immediately adjacent parts of two beds, one of which lies upon another, we compare distant parts, it is quite possible that the upper may be any number of years older than the under, and the under any number of years younger than the upper. now you must not suppose that i put this before you for the purpose of raising a paradoxical difficulty; the fact is, that the great mass of deposits have taken place in sea-bottoms which are gradually sinking, and have been formed under the very conditions i am here supposing. do not run away with the notion that this subverts the principle i laid down at first. the error lies in extending a principle which is perfectly applicable to deposits in the same vertical line to deposits which are not in that relation to one another. it is in consequence of circumstances of this kind, and of others that i might mention to you, that our conclusions on and interpretations of the record are really and strictly only valid so long as we confine ourselves to one vertical section. i do not mean to tell you that there are no qualifying circumstances, so that, even in very considerable areas, we may safely speak of conformably superimposed beds being older or younger than others at many different points. but we can never be quite sure in coming to that conclusion, and especially we cannot be sure if there is any break in their continuity, or any very great distance between the points to be compared. well now, so much for the record itself,--so much for its imperfections,--so much for the conditions to be observed in interpreting it, and its chronological indications, the moment we pass beyond the limits of a vertical linear section. now let us pass from the record to that which it contains,--from the book itself to the writing and the figures on its pages. this writing and these figures consist of remains of animals and plants which, in the great majority of cases, have lived and died in the very spot in which we now find them, or at least in the immediate vicinity. you must all of you be aware--and i referred to the fact in my last lecture--that there are vast numbers of creatures living at the bottom of the sea. these creatures, like all others, sooner or later die, and their shells and hard parts lie at the bottom; and then the fine mud which is being constantly brought down by rivers and the action of the wear and tear of the sea, covers them over and protects them from any further change or alteration; and, of course, as in process of time the mud becomes hardened and solidified, the shells of these animals are preserved and firmly embedded in the limestone or sandstone which is being thus formed. you may see in the galleries of the museum upstairs specimens of limestones in which such fossil remains of existing animals are embedded. there are some specimens in which turtles' eggs have been embedded in calcareous sand, and before the sun had hatched the young turtles, they became covered over with calcareous mud, and thus have been preserved and fossilized. not only does this process of embedding and fossilization occur with marine and other aquatic animals and plants, but it affects those land animals and plants which are drifted away to sea, or become buried in bogs or morasses; and the animals which have been trodden down by their fellows and crushed in the mud at the river's bank, as the herd have come to drink. in any of these cases, the organisms may be crushed or be mutilated, before or after putrefaction, in such a manner that perhaps only a part will be left in the form in which it reaches us. it is, indeed, a most remarkable fact, that it is quite an exceptional case to find a skeleton of any one of all the thousands of wild land animals that we know are constantly being killed, or dying in the course of nature: they are preyed on and devoured by other animals, or die in places where their bodies are not afterwards protected by mud. there are other animals existing in the sea, the shells of which form exceedingly large deposits. you are probably aware that before the attempt was made to lay the atlantic telegraphic cable, the government employed vessels in making a series of very careful observations and soundings of the bottom of the atlantic; and although, as we must all regret, that up to the present time that project has not succeeded, we have the satisfaction of knowing that it yielded some most remarkable results to science. the atlantic ocean had to be sounded right across, to depths of several miles in some places, and the nature of its bottom was carefully ascertained. well, now, a space of about miles wide from east to west, and i do not exactly know how many from north to south, but at any rate or miles, was carefully examined, and it was found that over the whole of that immense area an excessively fine chalky mud is being deposited; and this deposit is entirely made up of animals whose hard parts are deposited in this part of the ocean, and are doubtless gradually acquiring solidity and becoming metamorphosed into a chalky limestone. thus, you see, it is quite possible in this way to preserve unmistakable records of animal and vegetable life. whenever the sea-bottom, by some of those undulations of the earth's crust that i have referred to, becomes upheaved, and sections or borings are made, or pits are dug, then we become able to examine the contents and constituents of these ancient sea-bottoms, and find out what manner of animals lived at that period. now it is a very important consideration in its bearing on the completeness of the record, to inquire how far the remains contained in these fossiliferous limestones are able to convey anything like an accurate or complete account of the animals which were in existence at the time of its formation. upon that point we can form a very clear judgment, and one in which there is no possible room for any mistake. there are of course a great number of animals--such as jelly-fishes, and other animals--without any hard parts, of which we cannot reasonably expect to find any traces whatever: there is nothing of them to preserve. within a very short time, you will have noticed, after they are removed from the water, they dry up to a mere nothing; certainly they are not of a nature to leave any very visible traces of their existence on such bodies as chalk or mud. then again, look at land animals; it is, as i have said, a very uncommon thing to find a land animal entire after death. insects and other carnivorous animals very speedily pull them to pieces, putrefaction takes place, and so, out of the hundreds of thousands that are known to die every year, it is the rarest thing in the world to see one embedded in such a way that its remains would be preserved for a lengthened period. not only is this the case, but even when animal remains have been safely embedded, certain natural agents may wholly destroy and remove them. almost all the hard parts of animals--the bones and so on--are composed chiefly of phosphate of lime and carbonate of lime. some years ago, i had to make an inquiry into the nature of some very curious fossils sent to me from the north of scotland. fossils are usually hard bony structures that have become embedded in the way i have described, and have gradually acquired the nature and solidity of the body with which they are associated; but in this case i had a series of _holes_ in some pieces of rock, and nothing else. those holes, however, had a certain definite shape about them, and when i got a skilful workman to make castings of the interior of these holes, i found that they were the impressions of the joints of a backbone and of the armour of a great reptile, twelve or more feet long. this great beast had died and got buried in the sand, the sand had gradually hardened over the bones, but remained porous. water had trickled through it, and that water being probably charged with a superfluity of carbonic acid, had dissolved all the phosphate and carbonate of lime, and the bones themselves had thus decayed and entirely disappeared; but as the sandstone happened to have consolidated by that time, the precise shape of the bones was retained. if that sandstone had remained soft a little longer, we should have known nothing whatsoever of the existence of the reptile whose bones it had encased. how certain it is that a vast number of animals which have existed at one period on this earth have entirely perished, and left no trace whatever of their forms, may be proved to you by other considerations. there are large tracts of sandstone in various parts of the world, in which nobody has yet found anything but footsteps. not a bone of any description, but an enormous number of traces of footsteps. there is no question about them. there is a whole valley in connecticut covered with these footsteps, and not a single fragment of the animals which made them have yet been found. let me mention another case while upon that matter, which is even more surprising than those to which i have yet referred. there is a limestone formation near oxford, at a place called stonesfield, which has yielded the remains of certain very interesting mammalian animals, and up to this time, if i recollect rightly, there have been found seven specimens of its lower jaws, and not a bit of anything else, neither limb-bones nor skull, or any part whatever; not a fragment of the whole system! of course, it would be preposterous to imagine that the beasts had nothing else but a lower jaw! the probability is, as dr. buckland showed, as the result of his observations on dead dogs in the river thames, that the lower jaw, not being secured by very firm ligaments to the bones of the head, and being a weighty affair, would easily be knocked off, or might drop away from the body as it floated in water in a state of decomposition. the jaw would thus be deposited immediately, while the rest of the body would float and drift away altogether, ultimately reaching the sea, and perhaps becoming destroyed. the jaw becomes covered up and preserved in the river silt, and thus it comes that we have such a curious circumstance as that of the lower jaws in the stonesfield slates. so that, you see, faulty as these layers of stone in the earth's crust are, defective as they necessarily are as a record, the account of contemporaneous vital phenomena presented by them is, by the necessity of the case, infinitely more defective and fragmentary. it was necessary that i should put all this very strongly before you, because, otherwise, you might have been led to think differently of the completeness of our knowledge by the next facts i shall state to you. the researches of the last three-quarters of a century have, in truth, revealed a wonderful richness of organic life in those rocks. certainly not fewer than thirty or forty thousand different species of fossils have been discovered. you have no more ground for doubting that these creatures really lived and died at or near the places in which we find them than you have for like scepticism about a shell on the sea-shore. the evidence is as good in the one case as in the other. our next business is to look at the general character of these fossil remains, and it is a subject which will be requisite to consider carefully; and the first point for us is to examine how much the extinct _flora_ and _fauna_ as a _whole_--disregarding altogether the _succession_ of their constituents, of which i shall speak afterwards--differ from the _flora_ and _fauna_ of the present day;--how far they differ in what we _do_ know about them, leaving altogether out of consideration speculations based on what we _do not_ know. i strongly imagine that if it were not for the peculiar appearance that fossilized animals have, that any of you might readily walk through a museum which contains fossil remains mixed up with those of the present forms of life, and i doubt very much whether your uninstructed eyes would lead you to see any vast or wonderful difference between the two. if you looked closely, you would notice, in the first place, a great many things very like animals with which you are acquainted now: you would see differences of shape and proportion, but on the whole a close similarity. i explained what i meant by orders the other day, when i described the animal kingdom as being divided into sub-kingdoms, classes, and orders. if you divide the animal kingdom into orders, you will find that there are above one hundred and twenty. the number may vary on one side or the other, but this is a fair estimate. that is the sum total of the orders of all the animals which we know now, and which have been known in past times, and left remains behind. now, how many of those are absolutely extinct? that is to say, how many of these orders of animals have lived at a former period of the world's history, but have at present no representatives? that is the sense in which i meant to use the word "extinct." i mean that those animals did live on this earth at one time, but have left no one of their kind with us at the present moment. so that estimating the number of extinct animals is a sort of way of comparing the past creation as a whole with the present as a whole. among the mammalia and birds there are none extinct; but when we come to the reptiles there is a most wonderful thing: out of the eight orders, or thereabouts, which you can make among reptiles, one-half are extinct. these diagrams of the plesiosaurus, the ichthyosaurus, the pterodactyle, give you a notion of some of these extinct reptiles. and here is a cast of the pterodactyle and bones of the ichthyosaurus and the plesiosaurus, just as fresh as if it had been recently dug up in a churchyard. thus, in the reptile class, there are no less than half of the orders which are absolutely extinct. if we turn to the _amphibia_, there was one extinct order, the labyrinthodonts, typified by the large salamander-like beast shown in this diagram. no order of fishes is known to be extinct. every fish that we find in the strata--to which i have been referring--can be identified and placed in one of the orders which exist at the present day. there is not known to be a single ordinal form of insect extinct. there are only two orders extinct among the _crustacea_. there is not known to be an extinct order of these creatures, the parasitic and other worms; but there are two, not to say three, absolutely extinct orders of this class, the _echinodermata_; out of all the orders of the _coelenterata_ and _protozoa_ only one, the rugose corals. so that, you see, out of somewhere about orders of animals, taking them altogether, you will not, at the outside estimate, find above ten or a dozen extinct. summing up all the orders of animals which have left remains behind them, you will not find above ten or a dozen which cannot be arranged with those of the present day; that is to say, that the difference does not amount to much more than ten per cent.: and the proportion of extinct orders of plants is still smaller. i think that that is a very astounding, a most astonishing fact: seeing the enormous epochs of time which have elapsed during the constitution of the surface of the earth as it at present exists; it is, indeed, a most astounding thing that the proportion of extinct ordinal types should be so exceedingly small. but now, there is another point of view in which we must look at this past creation. suppose that we were to sink a vertical pit through the floor beneath us, and that i could succeed in making a section right through in the direction of new zealand, i should find in each of the different beds through which i passed the remains of animals which i should find in that stratum and not in the others. first, i should come upon beds of gravel or drift containing the bones of large animals, such as the elephant, rhinoceros, and cave tiger. rather curious things to fall across in piccadilly! if i should dig lower still, i should come upon a bed of what we call the london clay, and in this, as you will see in our galleries upstairs, are found remains of strange cattle, remains of turtles, palms, and large tropical fruits; with shell-fish such as you see the like of now only in tropical regions. if i went below that, i should come upon the chalk, and there i should find something altogether different, the remains of ichthyosauri and pterodactyles, and ammonites, and so forth. i do not know what mr. godwin austin would say comes next, but probably rocks containing more ammonites, and more ichthyosauri and plesiosauri, with a vast number of other things; and under that i should meet with yet older rocks, containing numbers of strange shells and fishes; and in thus passing from the surface to the lowest depths of the earth's crust, the forms of animal life and vegetable life which i should meet with in the successive beds would, looking at them broadly, be the more different the further that i went down. or, in other words, inasmuch as we started with the clear principle, that in a series of naturally-disposed mud beds the lowest are the oldest, we should come to this result, that the farther we go back in time the more difference exists between the animal and vegetable life of an epoch and that which now exists. that was the conclusion to which i wished to bring you at the end of this lecture. vi the method by which the causes of the present and past conditions of organic nature are to be discovered.--the origination of living beings. in the two preceding lectures i have endeavoured to indicate to you the extent of the subject-matter of the inquiry upon which we are engaged; and having thus acquired some conception of the past and present phenomena of organic nature, i must now turn to that which constitutes the great problem which we have set before ourselves;--i mean, the question of what knowledge we have of the causes of these phenomena of organic nature, and how such knowledge is obtainable. here, on the threshold of the inquiry, an objection meets us. there are in the world a number of extremely worthy, well-meaning persons, whose judgments and opinions are entitled to the utmost respect on account of their sincerity, who are of opinion that vital phenomena, and especially all questions relating to the origin of vital phenomena, are questions quite apart from the ordinary run of inquiry, and are, by their very nature, placed out of our reach. they say that all these phenomena originated miraculously, or in some way totally different from the ordinary course of nature, and that therefore they conceive it to be futile, not to say presumptuous, to attempt to inquire into them. to such sincere and earnest persons, i would only say, that a question of this kind is not to be shelved upon theoretical or speculative grounds. you may remember the story of the sophist who demonstrated to diogenes in the most complete and satisfactory manner that he could not walk; that, in fact, all motion was an impossibility; and that diogenes refuted him by simply getting up and walking round his tub. so, in the same way, the man of science replies to objections of this kind, by simply getting up and walking onward, and showing what science has done and is doing,--by pointing to that immense mass of facts which have been ascertained and systematized under the forms of the great doctrines of morphology, of development, of distribution, and the like. he sees an enormous mass of facts and laws relating to organic beings, which stand on the same good sound foundation as every other natural law. with this mass of facts and laws before us, therefore, seeing that, as far as organic matters have hitherto been accessible and studied, they have shown themselves capable of yielding to scientific investigation, we may accept this as proof that order and law reign there as well as in the rest of nature. the man of science says nothing to objectors of this sort, but supposes that we can and shall walk to a knowledge of the origin of organic nature, in the same way that we have walked to a knowledge of the laws and principles of the inorganic world. but there are objectors who say the same from ignorance and ill-will. to such i would reply that the objection comes ill from them, and that the real presumption, i may almost say the real blasphemy, in this matter, is in the attempt to limit that inquiry into the causes of phenomena, which is the source of all human blessings, and from which has sprung all human prosperity and progress; for, after all, we can accomplish comparatively little; the limited range of our own faculties bounds us on every side,--the field of our powers of observation is small enough, and he who endeavours to narrow the sphere of our inquiries is only pursuing a course that is likely to produce the greatest harm to his fellow-men. but now, assuming, as we all do, i hope, that these phenomena are properly accessible to inquiry, and setting out upon our search into the causes of the phenomena of organic nature, or, at any rate, setting out to discover how much we at present know upon these abstruse matters, the question arises as to what is to be our course of proceeding, and what method we must lay down for our guidance. i reply to that question, that our method must be exactly the same as that which is pursued in any other scientific inquiry, the method of scientific investigation being the same for all orders of facts and phenomena whatsoever. i must dwell a little on this point, for i wish you to leave this room with a very clear conviction that scientific investigation is not, as many people seem to suppose, some kind of modern black art. i say that you might easily gather this impression from the manner in which many persons speak of scientific inquiry, or talk about, inductive and deductive philosophy, or the principles of the "baconian philosophy." i do protest that, of the vast number of cants in this world, there are none, to my mind, so contemptible as the pseudo-scientific cant which is talked about the "baconian philosophy." to hear people talk about the great chancellor,--and a very great man he certainly was,--you would think that it was he who had invented science, and that there was no such thing as sound reasoning before the time of queen elizabeth! of course you say, that cannot possibly be true; you perceive, on a moment's reflection, that such an idea is absurdly wrong; and yet, so firmly rooted is this sort of impression,--i cannot call it an idea, or conception,--the thing is too absurd to be entertained,--but so completely does it exist at the bottom of most men's minds, that this has been a matter of observation with me for many years past. there are many men who, though knowing absolutely nothing of the subject with which they may be dealing, wish, nevertheless, to damage the author of some view with which they think fit to disagree. what they do, then, is not to go and learn something about the subject, which one would naturally think the best way of fairly dealing with it; but they abuse the originator of the view they question, in a general manner, and wind up by saying that, "after all, you know, the principles and method of this author are totally opposed to the canons of the baconian philosophy." then everybody applauds, as a matter of course, and agrees that it must be so. but if you were to stop them all in the middle of their applause, you would probably find that neither the speaker nor his applauders could tell you how or in what way it was so; neither the one nor the other having the slightest idea of what they mean when they speak of the "baconian philosophy." you will understand, i hope, that i have not the slightest desire to join in the outcry against either the morals, the intellect, or the great genius of lord chancellor bacon. he was undoubtedly a very great man, let people say what they will of him; but notwithstanding all that he did for philosophy, it would be entirely wrong to suppose that the methods of modern scientific inquiry originated with him, or with his age; they originated with the first man, whoever he was; and indeed existed long before him, for many of the essential processes of reasoning are exerted by the higher order of brutes as completely and effectively as by ourselves. we see in many of the brute creation the exercise of one, at least, of the same powers of reasoning as that which we ourselves employ. the method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind. it is simply the mode at which all phenomena are reasoned about, rendered precise and exact. there is no more difference, but there is just the same kind of difference, between the mental operations of a man of science and those of an ordinary person, as there is between the operations and methods of a baker or of a butcher weighing out his goods in common scales, and the operations of a chemist in performing a difficult and complex analysis by means of his balance and finely-graduated weights. it is not that the action of the scales in the one case, and the balance in the other, differ in the principles of their construction or manner of working; but the beam of one is set on an infinitely finer axis than the other, and of course turns by the addition of a much smaller weight. you will understand this better, perhaps, if i give you some familiar example. you have all heard it repeated, i dare say, that men of science work by means of induction and deduction, and that by the help of these operations, they, in a sort of sense, wring from nature certain other things, which are called natural laws, and causes, and that out of these, by some cunning skill of their own, they build up hypotheses and theories. and it is imagined by many, that the operations of the common mind can be by no means compared with these processes, and that they have to be acquired by a sort of special apprenticeship to the craft. to hear all these large words, you would think that the mind of a man of science must be constituted differently from that of his fellow-men; but if you will not be frightened by terms, you will discover that you are quite wrong, and that all these terrible apparatus are being used by yourselves every day and every hour of your lives. there is a well-known incident in one of molière's plays, where the author makes the hero express unbounded delight on being told that he had been talking prose during the whole of his life. in the same way, i trust, that you will take comfort, and be delighted with yourselves, on the discovery that you have been acting on the principles of inductive and deductive philosophy during the same period. probably there is not one here who has not in the course of the day had occasion to set in motion a complex train of reasoning, of the very same kind, though differing of course in degree, as that which a scientific man goes through in tracing the causes of natural phenomena. a very trivial circumstance will serve to exemplify this. suppose you go into a fruiterer's shop, wanting an apple,--you take up one, and, on biting it, you find it is sour; you look at it, and see that it is hard and green. you take up another one, and that too is hard, green, and sour. the shopman offers you a third; but, before biting it, you examine it, and find that it is hard and green, and you immediately say that you will not have it, as it must be sour, like those that you have already tried. nothing can be more simple than that, you think; but if you will take the trouble to analyze and trace out into its logical elements what has been done by the mind, you will be greatly surprised. in the first place, you have performed the operation of induction. you found that, in two experiences, hardness and greenness in apples went together with sourness. it was so in the first case, and it was confirmed by the second. true, it is a very small basis, but still it is enough to make an induction from; you generalize the facts, and you expect to find sourness in apples where you get hardness and greenness. you found upon that a general law, that all hard and green apples are sour; and that, so far as it goes, is a perfect induction. well, having got your natural law in this way, when you are offered another apple which you find is hard and green, you say, "all hard and green apples are sour; this apple is hard and green, therefore this apple is sour." that train of reasoning is what logicians call a syllogism, and has all its various parts and terms,--its major premiss, its minor premiss, and its conclusion. and, by the help of further reasoning, which, if drawn out, would have to be exhibited in two or three other syllogisms, you arrive at your final determination, "i will not have that apple." so that, you see, you have, in the first place, established a law by induction, and upon that you have founded a deduction, and reasoned out the special conclusion of the particular case. well now, suppose, having got your law, that at some time afterwards, you are discussing the qualities of apples with a friend: you will say to him, "it is a very curious thing,--but i find that all hard and green apples are sour!" your friend says to you, "but how do you know that?" you at once reply, "oh, because i have tried them over and over again, and have always found them to be so." well, if we were talking science instead of common sense, we should call that an experimental verification. and, if still opposed, you go further, and say, "i have heard from the people in somersetshire and devonshire, where a large number of apples are grown, that they have observed the same thing. it is also found to be the case in normandy, and in north america. in short, i find it to be the universal experience of mankind wherever attention has been directed to the subject." whereupon, your friend, unless he is a very unreasonable man, agrees with you, and is convinced that you are quite right in the conclusion you have drawn. he believes, although perhaps he does not know he believes it, that the more extensive verifications are,--that the more frequently experiments have been made, and results of the same kind arrived at,--that the more varied the conditions under which the same results are attained, the more certain is the ultimate conclusion, and he disputes the question no further. he sees that the experiment has been tried under all sorts of conditions, as to time, place, and people, with the same result; and he says with you, therefore, that the law you have laid down must be a good one, and he must believe it. in science we do the same thing;--the philosopher exercises precisely the same faculties, though in a much more delicate manner. in scientific inquiry it becomes a matter of duty to expose a supposed law to every possible kind of verification, and to take care, moreover, that this is done intentionally, and not left to a mere accident, as in the case of the apples. and in science, as in common life, our confidence in a law is in exact proportion to the absence of variation in the result of our experimental verifications. for instance, if you let go your grasp of an article you may have in your hand, it will immediately fall to the ground. that is a very common verification of one of the best established laws of nature--that of gravitation. the method by which men of science establish the existence of that law is exactly the same as that by which we have established the trivial proposition about the sourness of hard and green apples. but we believe it in such an extensive, thorough, and unhesitating manner because the universal experience of mankind verifies it, and we can verify it ourselves at any time; and that is the strongest possible foundation on which any natural law can rest. so much, then, by way of proof that the method of establishing laws in science is exactly the same as that pursued in common life. let us now turn to another matter, (though really it is but another phase of the same question,) and that is, the method by which, from the relations of certain phenomena, we prove that some stand in the position of causes towards the others. i want to put the case clearly before you, and i will therefore show you what i mean by another familiar example. i will suppose that one of you, on coming down in the morning to the parlour of your house, finds that a tea-pot and some spoons which had been left in the room on the previous evening are gone,--the window is open, and you observe the mark of a dirty hand on the window-frame, and perhaps, in addition to that, you notice the impress of a hob-nailed shoe on the gravel outside. all these phenomena have struck your attention instantly, and before two seconds have passed you say, "oh, somebody has broken open the window, entered the room, and run off with the spoons and the tea-pot!" that speech is out of your mouth in a moment. and you will probably add, "i know there has; i am quite sure of it!" you mean to say exactly what you know; but in reality you are giving expression to what is, in all essential particulars, an hypothesis. you do not _know_ it at all; it is nothing but an hypothesis rapidly framed in your own mind! and, it is an hypothesis founded on a long train of inductions and deductions. what are those inductions and deductions, and how have you got at this hypothesis? you have observed, in the first place, that the window is open; but by a train of reasoning involving many inductions and deductions, you have probably arrived long before at the general law--and a very good one it is--that windows do not open of themselves; and you therefore conclude that something has opened the window. a second general law that you have arrived at in the same way is, that tea-pots and spoons do not go out of a window spontaneously, and you are satisfied that, as they are not now where you left them, they have been removed. in the third place, you look at the marks on the window-sill, and the shoe-marks outside, and you say that in all previous experience the former kind of mark has never been produced by anything else but the hand of a human being; and the same experience shows that no other animal but man at present wears shoes with hob-nails in them such as would produce the marks in the gravel. i do not know, even if we could discover any of those "missing links" that are talked about, that they would help us to any other conclusion! at any rate the law which states our present experience is strong enough for my present purpose. you next reach the conclusion, that as these kinds of marks have not been left by any other animals than men, or are liable to be formed in any other way than by a man's hand and shoe, the marks in question have been formed by a man in that way. you have, further, a general law, founded on observation and experience, and that, too, is, i am sorry to say, a very universal and unimpeachable one,--that some men are thieves; and you assume at once from all these premisses--and that is what constitutes your hypothesis--that the man who made the marks outside and on the window-sill, opened the window, got into the room, and stole your tea-pot and spoons. you have now arrived at a _vera causa_;--you have assumed a cause which it is plain is competent to produce all the phenomena you have observed. you can explain all these phenomena only by the hypothesis of a thief. but that is a hypothetical conclusion, of the justice of which you have no absolute proof at all; it is only rendered highly probable by a series of inductive and deductive reasonings. i suppose your first action, assuming that you are a man of ordinary common sense, and that you have established this hypothesis to your own satisfaction, will very likely be to go off for the police, and set them on the track of the burglar, with the view to the recovery of your property. but just as you are starting with this object, some person comes in, and on learning what you are about, says, "my good friend, you are going on a great deal too fast. how do you know that the man who really made the marks took the spoons? it might have been a monkey that took them, and the man may have merely looked in afterwards." you would probably reply, "well, that is all very well, but you see it is contrary to all experience of the way tea-pots and spoons are abstracted; so that, at any rate, your hypothesis is less probable than mine." while you are talking the thing over in this way, another friend arrives, one of that good kind of people that i was talking of a little while ago. and he might say, "oh, my dear sir, you are certainly going on a great deal too fast. you are most presumptuous. you admit that all these occurrences took place when you were fast asleep, at a time when you could not possibly have known anything about what was taking place. how do you know that the laws of nature are not suspended during the night? it may be that there has been some kind of supernatural interference in this case." in point of fact, he declares that your hypothesis is one of which you cannot at all demonstrate the truth, and that you are by no means sure that the laws of nature are the same when you are asleep as when you are awake. well, now, you cannot at the moment answer that kind of reasoning. you feel that your worthy friend has you somewhat at a disadvantage. you will feel perfectly convinced in your own mind, however, that you are quite right, and you say to him, "my good friend, i can only be guided by the natural probabilities of the case, and if you will be kind enough to stand aside and permit me to pass, i will go and fetch the police." well, we will suppose that your journey is successful, and that by good luck you meet with a policeman; that eventually the burglar is found with your property on his person, and the marks correspond to his hand and to his boots. probably any jury would consider those facts a very good experimental verification of your hypothesis, touching the cause of the abnormal phenomena observed in your parlour, and would act accordingly. now, in this supposititious case, i have taken phenomena of a very common kind, in order that you might see what are the different steps in an ordinary process of reasoning, if you will only take the trouble to analyze it carefully. all the operations i have described, you will see, are involved in the mind of any man of sense in leading him to a conclusion as to the course he should take in order to make good a robbery and punish the offender. i say that you are led, in that case, to your conclusion by exactly the same train of reasoning as that which a man of science pursues when he is endeavouring to discover the origin and laws of the most occult phenomena. the process is, and always must be, the same; and precisely the same mode of reasoning was employed by newton and laplace in their endeavours to discover and define the causes of the movements of the heavenly bodies, as you, with your own common sense, would employ to detect a burglar. the only difference is, that the nature of the inquiry being more abstruse, every step has to be most carefully watched, so that there may not be a single crack or flaw in your hypothesis. a flaw or crack in many of the hypotheses of daily life may be of little or no moment as affecting the general correctness of the conclusions at which we may arrive; but in a scientific inquiry a fallacy, great or small, is always of importance, and is sure to be in the long run constantly productive of mischievous, if not fatal results. do not allow yourselves to be misled by the common notion that an hypothesis is untrustworthy simply because it is an hypothesis. it is often urged, in respect to some scientific conclusion, that, after all, it is only an hypothesis. but what more have we to guide us in nine-tenths of the most important affairs of daily life than hypotheses, and often very ill-based ones? so that in science, where the evidence of an hypothesis is subjected to the most rigid examination, we may rightly pursue the same course. you may have hypotheses and hypotheses. a man may say, if he likes, that the moon is made of green cheese: that is an hypothesis. but another man, who has devoted a great deal of time and attention to the subject, and availed himself of the most powerful telescopes and the results of the observations of others, declares that in his opinion it is probably composed of materials very similar to those of which our own earth is made up: and that is also only an hypothesis. but i need not tell you that there is an enormous difference in the value of the two hypotheses. that one which is based on sound scientific knowledge is sure to have a corresponding value; and that which is a mere hasty random guess is likely to have but little value. every great step in our progress in discovering causes has been made in exactly the same way as that which i have detailed to you. a person observing the occurrence of certain facts and phenomena asks, naturally enough, what process, what kind of operation known to occur in nature applied to the particular case, will unravel and explain the mystery? hence you have the scientific hypothesis; and its value will be proportionate to the care and completeness with which its basis had been tested and verified. it is in these matters as in the commonest affairs of practical life: the guess of the fool will be folly, while the guess of the wise man will contain wisdom. in all cases, you see that the value of the result depends on the patience and faithfulness with which the investigator applies to his hypothesis every possible kind of verification. i dare say i may have to return to this point by-and-by; but having dealt thus far with our logical methods, i must now turn to something which, perhaps, you may consider more interesting, or, at any rate, more tangible. but in reality there are but few things that can be more important for you to understand than the mental processes and the means by which we obtain scientific conclusions and theories.[ ] having granted that the inquiry is a proper one, and having determined on the nature of the methods we are to pursue and which only can lead to success, i must now turn to the consideration of our knowledge of the nature of the processes which have resulted in the present condition of organic nature. here, let me say at once, lest some of you misunderstand me, that i have extremely little to report. the question of how the present condition of organic nature came about, resolves itself into two questions. the first is: how has organic or living matter commenced its existence? and the second is: how has it been perpetuated? on the second question i shall have more to say hereafter. but on the first one, what i now have to say will be for the most part of a negative character. if you consider what kind of evidence we can have upon this matter, it will resolve itself into two kinds. we may have historical evidence and we may have experimental evidence. it is, for example, conceivable, that inasmuch as the hardened mud which forms a considerable portion of the thickness of the earth's crust contains faithful records of the past forms of life, and inasmuch as these differ more and more as we go further down,--it is possible and conceivable that we might come to some particular bed or stratum which should contain the remains of those creatures with which organic life began upon the earth. and if we did so, and if such forms of organic life were preservable, we should have what i would call historical evidence of the mode in which organic life began upon this planet. many persons will tell you, and indeed you will find it stated in many works on geology, that this has been done, and that we really possess such a record; there are some who imagine that the earliest forms of life of which we have as yet discovered any record, are in truth the forms in which animal life began upon the globe. the grounds on which they base that supposition are these:--that if you go through the enormous thickness of the earth's crust and get down to the older rocks, the higher vertebrate animals--the quadrupeds, birds, and fishes--cease to be found; beneath them you find only the invertebrate animals; and in the deepest and lowest rocks those remains become scantier and scantier, not in any very gradual progression, however, until, at length, in what are supposed to be the oldest rocks, the animal remains which are found are almost always confined to four forms,--_oldhamia_, whose precise nature is not known, whether plant or animal; _lingula_, a kind of mollusc; _trilobites_, a crustacean animal, having the same essential plan of construction, though differing in many details from a lobster or crab; and _hymenocaris_, which is also a crustacean. so that you have all the _fauna_ reduced, at this period, to four forms: one a kind of animal or plant that we know nothing about, and three undoubted animals--two crustaceans and one mollusc. i think, considering the organization of these mollusca and crustacea, and looking at their very complex nature, that it does indeed require a very strong imagination to conceive that these were the first created of all living things. and you must take into consideration the fact that we have not the slightest proof that these which we call the oldest beds are really so: i repeat, we have not the slightest proof of it. when you find in some places that in an enormous thickness of rocks there are but very scanty traces of life, or absolutely none at all; and that in other parts of the world rocks of the very same formation are crowded with the records of living forms, i think it is impossible to place any reliance on the supposition, or to feel oneself justified in supposing that these are the forms in which life first commenced. i have not time here to enter upon the technical grounds upon which i am led to this conclusion,--that could hardly be done properly in half a dozen lectures on that part alone;--i must content myself with saying that i do not at all believe that these are the oldest forms of life. i turn to the experimental side to see what evidence we have there. to enable us to say that we know anything about the experimental origination of organization and life, the investigator ought to be able to take inorganic matters, such as carbonic acid, ammonia, water, and salines, in any sort of inorganic combination, and be able to build them up into protein matter, and then that protein matter ought to begin to live in an organic form. that, nobody has done as yet, and i suspect it will be a long while before anybody does do it. but the thing is by no means so impossible as it looks; for the researches of modern chemistry have shown us--i won't say the road towards it, but, if i may so say, they have shown the finger-post pointing to the road that may lead to it. it is not many years ago--and you must recollect that organic chemistry is a young science, not above a couple of generations old, you must not expect too much of it,--it is not many years ago since it was said to be perfectly impossible to fabricate any organic compound; that is to say, any non-mineral compound which is to be found in an organized being. it remained so for a very long period; but it is now a considerable number of years since a distinguished foreign chemist contrived to fabricate urea, a substance of a very complex character, which forms one of the waste products of animal structures. and of late years a number of other compounds, such as butyric acid, and others, have been added to the list. i need not tell you that chemistry is an enormous distance from the goal i indicate; all i wish to point out to you is, that it is by no means safe to say that that goal may not be reached one day. it may be that it is impossible for us to produce the conditions requisite to the origination of life; but we must speak modestly about the matter, and recollect that science has put her foot upon the bottom round of the ladder. truly he would be a bold man who would venture to predict where she will be fifty years hence. there is another inquiry which bears indirectly upon this question, and upon which i must say a few words. you are all of you aware of the phenomena of what is called spontaneous generation. our forefathers, down to the seventeenth century, or thereabouts, all imagined, in perfectly good faith, that certain vegetable and animal forms gave birth, in the process of their decomposition, to insect life. thus, if you put a piece of meat in the sun, and allowed it to putrefy, they conceived that the grubs which soon began to appear were the result of the action of a power of spontaneous generation which the meat contained. and they could give you receipts for making various animal and vegetable preparations which would produce particular kinds of animals. a very distinguished italian naturalist, named redi, took up the question, at a time when everybody believed in it; among others our own great harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood. you will constantly find his name quoted, however, as an opponent of the doctrine of spontaneous generation; but the fact is, and you will see it if you take the trouble to look into his works, harvey believed it as profoundly as any man of his time; but he happened to enunciate a very curious proposition--that every living thing came from an _egg_; he did not mean to use the word in the sense in which we now employ it, he only meant to say that every living thing originated in a little rounded particle of organized substance; and it is from this circumstance, probably, that the notion of harvey having opposed the doctrine originated. then came redi, and he proceeded to upset the doctrine in a very simple manner. he merely covered the piece of meat with some very fine gauze, and then he exposed it to the same conditions. the result of this was that no grubs or insects were produced; he proved that the grubs originated from the insects who came and deposited their eggs in the meat, and that they were hatched by the heat of the sun. by this kind of inquiry he thoroughly upset the doctrine of spontaneous generation, for his time at least. then came the discovery and application of the microscope to scientific inquiries, which showed to naturalists that besides the organisms which they already knew as living beings and plants, there were an immense number of minute things which could be obtained apparently almost at will from decaying vegetable and animal forms. thus, if you took some ordinary black pepper or some hay, and steeped it in water, you would find in the course of a few days that the water had become impregnated with an immense number of animalcules swimming about in all directions. from facts of this kind naturalists were led to revive the theory of spontaneous generation. they were headed here by an english naturalist,--needham,--and afterwards in france by the learned buffon. they said that these things were absolutely begotten in the water of the decaying substances out of which the infusion was made. it did not matter whether you took animal or vegetable matter, you had only to steep it in water and expose it, and you would soon have plenty of animalcules. they made an hypothesis about this which was a very fair one. they said, this matter of the animal world, or of the higher plants, appears to be dead, but in reality it has a sort of dim life about it, which, if it is placed under fair conditions, will cause it to break up into the forms of these little animalcules, and they will go through their lives in the same way as the animal or plant of which they once formed a part. the question now became very hotly debated. spallanzani, an italian naturalist, took up opposite views to those of needham and buffon, and by means of certain experiments he showed that it was quite possible to stop the process by boiling the water, and closing the vessel in which it was contained. "oh!" said his opponents, "but what do you know you may be doing when you heat the air over the water in this way? you may be destroying some property of the air requisite for the spontaneous generation of the animalcules." however, spallanzani's views were supposed to be upon the right side, and those of the others fell into discredit; although the fact was that spallanzani had not made good his views. well, then, the subject continued to be revived from time to time, and experiments were made by several persons; but these experiments were not altogether satisfactory. it was found that if you put an infusion in which animalcules would appear if it were exposed to the air into a vessel and boiled it, and then sealed up the mouth of the vessel, so that no air, save such as had been heated to °, could reach its contents, that then no animalcules would be found; but if you took the same vessel and exposed the infusion to the air, then you would get animalcules. furthermore, it was found that if you connected the mouth of the vessel with a red-hot tube in such a way that the air would have to pass through the tube before reaching the infusion, that then you would get no animalcules. yet another thing was noticed: if you took two flasks containing the same kind of infusion, and left one entirely exposed to the air, and in the mouth of the other placed a ball of cotton wool, so that the air would have to filter itself through it before reaching the infusion, that then, although you might have plenty of animalcules in the first flask, you would certainly obtain none from the second. these experiments, you see, all tended towards one conclusion--that the infusoria were developed from little minute spores or eggs which were constantly floating in the atmosphere, and which lose their power of germination if subjected to heat. but one observer now made another experiment, which seemed to go entirely the other way, and puzzled him altogether. he took some of this boiled infusion that i have been speaking of, and by the use of a mercurial bath--a kind of trough used in laboratories--he deftly inverted a vessel containing the infusion into the mercury, so that the latter reached a little beyond the level of the mouth of the _inverted_ vessel. you see that he thus had a quantity of the infusion shut off from any possible communication with the outer air by being inverted upon a bed of mercury. he then prepared some pure oxygen and nitrogen gases, and passed them by means of a tube going from the outside of the vessel, up through the mercury into the infusion; so that he thus had it exposed to a perfectly pure atmosphere of the same constituents as the external air. of course, he expected he would get no infusorial animalcules at all in that infusion; but, to his great dismay and discomfiture, he found he almost always did get them. furthermore, it has been found that experiments made in the manner described above answer well with most infusions; but that if you fill the vessel with boiled milk, and then stop the neck with cotton-wool, you _will_ have infusoria. so that you see there were two experiments that brought you to one kind of conclusion, and three to another; which was a most unsatisfactory state of things to arrive at in a scientific inquiry. some few years after this, the question began to be very hotly discussed in france. there was m. pouchet, a professor at rouen, a very learned man, but certainly not a very rigid experimentalist. he published a number of experiments of his own, some of which were very ingenious, to show that if you went to work in a proper way, there was a truth in the doctrine of spontaneous generation. well, it was one of the most fortunate things in the world that m. pouchet took up this question, because it induced a distinguished french chemist, m. pasteur, to take up the question on the other side; and he has certainly worked it out in the most perfect manner. i am glad to say, too, that he has published his researches in time to enable me to give you an account of them. he verified all the experiments which i have just mentioned to you--and then finding those extraordinary anomalies, as in the case of the mercury bath and the milk, he set himself to work to discover their nature. in the case of milk he found it to be a question of temperature. milk in a fresh state is slightly alkaline; and it is a very curious circumstance, but this very slight degree of alkalinity seems to have the effect of preserving the organisms which fall into it from the air from being destroyed at a temperature of °, which is the boiling point. but if you raise the temperature ° when you boil it, the milk behaves like everything else; and if the air with which it comes in contact, after being boiled at this temperature, is passed through a red-hot tube, you will not get a trace of organisms. he then turned his attention to the mercury bath, and found on examination that the surface of the mercury was almost always covered with a very fine dust. he found that even the mercury itself was positively full of organic matters; that from being constantly exposed to the air, it had collected an immense number of these infusorial organisms from the air. well, under these circumstances he felt that the case was quite clear, and that the mercury was not what it had appeared to m. schwann to be,--a bar to the admission of these organisms; but that, in reality, it acted as a reservoir from which the infusion was immediately supplied with the large quantity that had so puzzled him. but not content with explaining the experiments of others, m. pasteur went to work to satisfy himself completely. he said to himself: "if my view is right, and if, in point of fact, all these appearances of spontaneous generation are altogether due to the falling of minute germs suspended in the atmosphere,--why, i ought not only to be able to show the germs, but i ought to be able to catch and sow them, and produce the resulting organisms." he, accordingly, constructed a very ingenious apparatus to enable him to accomplish the trapping of the "_germ dust_" in the air. he fixed in the window of his room a glass tube, in the centre of which he had placed a ball of gun-cotton, which, as you all know, is ordinary cotton-wool, which, from having been steeped in strong acid, is converted into a substance of great explosive power. it is also soluble in alcohol and ether. one end of the glass tube was, of course, open to the external air; and at the other end of it he placed an aspirator, a contrivance for causing a current of the external air to pass through the tube. he kept this apparatus going for four-and-twenty hours, and then removed the _dusted_ gun-cotton, and dissolved it in alcohol and ether. he then allowed this to stand for a few hours, and the result was, that a very fine dust was gradually deposited at the bottom of it. that dust, on being transferred to the stage of a microscope, was found to contain an enormous number of starch grains. you know that the materials of our food and the greater portion of plants are composed of starch, and we are constantly making use of it in a variety of ways, so that there is always a quantity of it suspended in the air. it is these starch grains which form many of those bright specks that we see dancing in a ray of light sometimes. but besides these, m. pasteur found also an immense number of other organic substances such as spores of fungi, which had been floating about in the air and had got caged in this way. he went farther, and said to himself, "if these really are the things that give rise to the appearance of spontaneous generation, i ought to be able to take a ball of this _dusted_ gun-cotton and put it into one of my vessels, containing that boiled infusion which has been kept away from the air, and in which no infusoria are at present developed, and then, if i am right, the introduction of this gun-cotton will give rise to organisms." accordingly, he took one of these vessels of infusion, which had been kept eighteen months, without the least appearance of life in it, and by a most ingenious contrivance, he managed to break it open and introduce such a ball of gun-cotton, without allowing the infusion or the cotton ball to come into contact with any air but that which had been subjected to a red heat, and in twenty-four hours he had the satisfaction of finding all the indications of what had been hitherto called spontaneous generation. he had succeeded in catching the germs and developing organisms in the way he had anticipated. it now struck him that the truth of his conclusions might be demonstrated without all the apparatus he had employed. to do this, he took some decaying animal or vegetable substance, such as urine, which is an extremely decomposable substance, or the juice of yeast, or perhaps some other artificial preparation, and filled a vessel having a long tubular neck, with it. he then boiled the liquid and bent that long neck into an s shape or zig-zag, leaving it open at the end. the infusion then gave no trace of any appearance of spontaneous generation, however long it might be left, as all the germs in the air were deposited in the beginning of the bent neck. he then cut the tube close to the vessel, and allowed the ordinary air to have free and direct access; and the result of that was the appearance of organisms in it, as soon as the infusion had been allowed to stand long enough to allow of the growth of those it received from the air, which was about forty-eight hours. the result of m. pasteur's experiments proved, therefore, in the most conclusive manner, that all the appearances of spontaneous generation arose from nothing more than the deposition of the germs of organisms which were constantly floating in the air. to this conclusion, however, the objection was made, that if that were the cause, then the air would contain such an enormous number of these germs, that it would be a continual fog. but m. pasteur replied that they are not there in anything like the number we might suppose, and that an exaggerated view has been held on that subject; he showed that the chances of animal or vegetable life appearing in infusions, depend entirely on the conditions under which they are exposed. if they are exposed to the ordinary atmosphere around us, why, of course, you may have organisms appearing early. but, on the other hand, if they are exposed to air at a great height, or in some very quiet cellar, you will often not find a single trace of life. so that m. pasteur arrived at last at the clear and definite result, that all these appearances are like the case of the worms in the piece of meat, which was refuted by redi, simply germs carried by the air and deposited in the liquids in which they afterwards appear. for my own part, i conceive that, with the particulars of m. pasteur's experiments before us, we cannot fail to arrive at his conclusions; and that the doctrine of spontaneous generation has received a final _coup de grâce_. you, of course, understand that all this in no way interferes with the _possibility_ of the fabrication of organic matters by the direct method to which i have referred, remote as that possibility may be. footnotes: [ ] those who wish to study fully the doctrines of which i have endeavoured to give some rough and ready illustrations, must read mr. john stuart mill's "system of logic." vii the perpetuation of living beings, hereditary transmission and variation. the inquiry which we undertook, at our last meeting, into the state of our knowledge of the causes of the phenomena of organic nature,--of the past and of the present,--resolved itself into two subsidiary inquiries: the first was, whether we know anything, either historically or experimentally, of the mode of origin of living beings; the second subsidiary inquiry was, whether, granting the origin, we know anything about the perpetuation and modifications of the forms of organic beings. the reply which i had to give to the first question was altogether negative, and the chief result of my last lecture was, that, neither historically nor experimentally, do we at present know anything whatsoever about the origin of living forms. we saw that, historically, we are not likely to know anything about it, although we may perhaps learn something experimentally; but that at present we are an enormous distance from the goal i indicated. i now, then, take up the next question, what do we know of the reproduction, the perpetuation, and the modifications of the forms of living beings, supposing that we have put the question as to their origination on one side, and have assumed that at present the causes of their origination are beyond us, and that we know nothing about them? upon this question the state of our knowledge is extremely different; it is exceedingly large: and, if not complete, our experience is certainly most extensive. it would be impossible to lay it all before you, and the most i can do, or need do to-night, is to take up the principal points and put them before you with such prominence as may subserve the purposes of our present argument. the method of the perpetuation of organic beings is of two kinds,--the asexual and the sexual. in the first the perpetuation takes place from and by a particular act of an individual organism, which sometimes may not be classed as belonging to any sex at all. in the second case, it is in consequence of the mutual action and inter-action of certain portions of the organisms of usually two distinct individuals--the male and the female. the cases of asexual perpetuation are by no means so common as the cases of sexual perpetuation; and they are by no means so common in the animal as in the vegetable world. you are all probably familiar with the fact, as a matter of experience, that you can propagate plants by means of what are called "cuttings"; for example, that by taking a cutting from a geranium plant, and rearing it properly, by supplying it with light and warmth and nourishment from the earth, it grows up and takes the form of its parent, having all the properties and peculiarities of the original plant. sometimes this process, which the gardener performs artificially, takes place naturally; that is to say, a little bulb, or portion of the plant, detaches itself, drops off, and becomes capable of growing as a separate thing. that is the case with many bulbous plants, which throw off in this way secondary bulbs, which are lodged in the ground and become developed into plants. this is an asexual process, and from it results the repetition or reproduction of the form of the original being from which the bulb proceeds. among animals the same thing takes place. among the lower forms of animal life, the infusorial animalculæ we have already spoken of throw off certain portions, or break themselves up in various directions, sometimes transversely or sometimes longitudinally; or they may give off buds, which detach themselves and develop into their proper forms. there is the common fresh-water polype, for instance, which multiplies itself in this way. just in the same way as the gardener is able to multiply and reproduce the peculiarities and characters of particular plants by means of cuttings, so can the physiological experimentalist,--as was shown by the abbé trembley many years ago,--so can he do the same thing with many of the lower forms of animal life. m. de trembley showed that you could take a polype and cut it into two, or four, or many pieces, mutilating it in all directions, and the pieces would still grow up and reproduce completely the original form of the animal. these are all cases of asexual multiplication, and there are other instances, and still more extraordinary ones, in which this process takes place naturally, in a more hidden, a more recondite kind of way. you are all of you familiar with that little green insect, the _aphis_ or blight, as it is called. these little animals, during a very considerable part of their existence, multiply themselves by means of a kind of internal budding, the buds being developed into essentially asexual animals, which are neither male nor female; they become converted into young _aphides_, which repeat the process, and their offspring after them, and so on again; you may go on for nine or ten, or even twenty or more successions; and there is no very good reason to say how soon it might terminate, or how long it might not go on if the proper conditions of warmth and nourishment were kept up. sexual reproduction is quite a distinct matter. here, in all these cases, what is required is the detachment of two portions of the parental organisms, which portions we know as the egg or the spermatozoon. in plants it is the ovule and the pollen-grain, as in the flowering plants, or the ovule and the antherozooid, as in the flowerless. among all forms of animal life, the spermatozoa proceed from the male sex, and the egg is the product of the female. now, what is remarkable about this mode of reproduction is this, that the egg by itself, or the spermatozoa by themselves, are unable to assume the parental form; but if they be brought into contact with one another, the effect of the mixture of organic substances proceeding from two sources appears to confer an altogether new vigour to the mixed product. this process is brought about, as we all know, by the sexual intercourse of the two sexes, and is called the act of impregnation. the result of this act on the part of the male and female is, that the formation of a new being is set up in the ovule or egg; this ovule or egg soon begins to be divided and subdivided, and to be fashioned into various complex organisms, and eventually to develop into the form of one of its parents, as i explained in the first lecture. these are the processes by which the perpetuation of organic beings is secured. why there should be the two modes--why this reinvigoration should be required on the part of the female element we do not know; but it is most assuredly the fact, and it is presumable, that, however long the process of asexual multiplication could be continued,--i say there is good reason to believe that it would come to an end if a new commencement were not obtained by a conjunction of the two sexual elements. that character which is common to these two distinct processes is this, that, whether we consider the reproduction, or perpetuation, or modification of organic beings as they take place asexually, or as they may take place sexually,--in either case, i say, the offspring has a constant tendency to assume, speaking generally, the character of the parent. as i said just now, if you take a slip of a plant, and tend it with care, it will eventually grow up and develop into a plant like that from which it had sprung; and this tendency is so strong that, as gardeners know, this mode of multiplying by means of cuttings is the only secure mode of propagating very many varieties of plants; the peculiarity of the primitive stock seems to be better preserved if you propagate it by means of a slip than if you resort to the sexual mode. again, in experiments upon the lower animals, such as the polype, to which i have referred, it is most extraordinary that, although cut up into various pieces, each particular piece will grow up into the form of the primitive stock; the head, if separated, will reproduce the body and the tail; and if you cut off the tail, you will find that that will reproduce the body and all the rest of the members, without in any way deviating from the plan of the organism from which these portions have been detached. and so far does this go, that some experimentalists have carefully examined the lower orders of animals,--among them the abbé spallanzani, who made a number of experiments upon snails and salamanders,--and have found that they might mutilate them to an incredible extent; that you might cut off the jaw or the greater part of the head, or the leg or the tail, and repeat the experiment several times, perhaps, cutting off the same member again and again; and yet each of those types would be reproduced according to the primitive type: nature making no mistake, never putting on a fresh kind of leg, or head, or tail, but always tending to repeat and to return to the primitive type. it is the same in sexual reproduction: it is a matter of perfectly common experience, that the tendency on the part of the offspring always is, speaking broadly, to reproduce the form of the parents. the proverb has it that the thistle does not bring forth grapes; so, among ourselves, there is always a likeness, more or less marked and distinct, between children and their parents. that is a matter of familiar and ordinary observation. we notice the same thing occurring in the cases of the domestic animals--dogs, for instance, and their offspring. in all these cases of propagation and perpetuation, there seems to be a tendency in the offspring to take the characters of the parental organisms. to that tendency a special name is given--and as i may very often use it, i will write it up here on this blackboard that you may remember it--it is called _atavism_; it expresses this tendency to revert to the ancestral type, and comes from the latin word _atavus_, ancestor. well, this _atavism_which i shall speak of, is, as i said before, one of the most marked and striking tendencies of organic beings; but, side by side with this hereditary tendency there is an equally distinct and remarkable tendency to variation. the tendency to reproduce the original stock has, as it were, its limits, and side by side with it there is a tendency to vary in certain directions, as if there were two opposing powers working upon the organic being, one tending to take it in a straight line, and the other tending to make it diverge from that straight line, first to one side and then to the other. so that you see these two tendencies need not precisely contradict one another, as the ultimate result may not always be very remote from what would have been the case if the line had been quite straight. this tendency to variation is less marked in that mode of propagation which takes place asexually; it is in that mode that the minor characters of animal and vegetable structures are most completely preserved. still, it will happen sometimes, that the gardener, when he has planted a cutting of some favourite plant, will find, contrary to his expectation, that the slip grows up a little different from the primitive stock--that it produces flowers of a different colour or make, or some deviation in one way or another. this is what is called the "sporting" of plants. in animals the phenomena of asexual propagation are so obscure, that at present we cannot be said to know much about them; but if we turn to that mode of perpetuation which results from the sexual process, then we find variation a perfectly constant occurrence, to a certain extent; and, indeed, i think that a certain amount of variation from the primitive stock is the necessary result of the method of sexual propagation itself; for, inasmuch as the thing propagated proceeds from two organisms of different sexes and different makes and temperaments, and as the offspring is to be either of one sex or the other, it is quite clear that it cannot be an exact diagonal of the two, or it would be of no sex at all; it cannot be an exact intermediate form between that of each of its parents--it must deviate to one side or the other. you do not find that the male follows the precise type of the male parent, nor does the female always inherit the precise characteristics of the mother,--there is always a proportion of the female character in the male offspring, and of the male character in the female offspring. that must be quite plain to all of you who have looked at all attentively on your own children or those of your neighbours; you will have noticed how very often it may happen that the son shall exhibit the maternal type of character, or the daughter possess the characteristics of the father's family. there are all sorts of intermixtures and intermediate conditions between the two, where complexion, or beauty, or fifty other different peculiarities belonging to either side of the house, are reproduced in other members of the same family. indeed, it is sometimes to be remarked in this kind of variation, that the variety belongs, strictly speaking, to neither of the immediate parents; you will see a child in a family who is not like either its father or its mother; but some old person who knew its grandfather or grandmother, or, it may be, an uncle, or, perhaps, even a more distant relative, will see a great similarity between the child and one of these. in this way it constantly happens that the characteristic of some previous member of the family comes out and is reproduced and recognized in the most unexpected manner. but apart from that matter of general experience, there are some cases which put that curious mixture in a very clear light. you are aware that the offspring of the ass and the horse, or rather of the he-ass and the mare, is what is called a mule; and, on the other hand, the offspring of the stallion and the she-ass is what is called a _hinny_. it is a very rare thing in this country to see a hinny. i never saw one myself; but they have been very carefully studied. now, the curious thing is this, that although you have the same elements in the experiment in each case, the offspring is entirely different in character, according as the male influence comes from the ass or the horse. where the ass is the male, as in the case of the mule, you find that the head is like that of the ass, that the ears are long, the tail is tufted at the end, the feet are small, and the voice is an unmistakable bray; these are all points of similarity to the ass; but, on the other hand, the barrel of the body and the cut of the neck are much more like those of the mare. then, if you look at the hinny,--the result of the union of the stallion and the she-ass, then you find it is the horse that has the predominance; that the head is more like that of the horse, the ears are shorter, the legs coarser, and the type is altogether altered; while the voice, instead of being a bray, is the ordinary neigh of the horse. here, you see, is a most curious thing: you take exactly the same elements, ass and horse, but you combine the sexes in a different manner, and the result is modified accordingly. you have in this case, however, a result which is not general and universal--there is usually an important preponderance, but not always on the same side. here, then, is one intelligible, and, perhaps, necessary cause of variation: the fact, that there are two sexes sharing in the production of the offspring, and that the share taken by each is different and variable, not only for each combination, but also for different members of the same family. secondly, there is a variation, to a certain extent,--though in all probability the influence of this cause has been very much exaggerated--but there is no doubt that variation is produced, to a certain extent, by what are commonly known as external conditions,--such as temperature, food, warmth, and moisture. in the long run, every variation depends, in some sense, upon external conditions, seeing that everything has a cause of its own. i use the term "external conditions" now in the sense in which it is ordinarily employed: certain it is, that external conditions have a definite effect. you may take a plant which has single flowers, and by dealing with the soil, and nourishment, and so on, you may by-and-by convert single flowers into double flowers, and make thorns shoot out into branches. you may thicken or make various modifications in the shape of the fruit. in animals, too, you may produce analogous changes in this way, as in the case of that deep bronze colour which persons rarely lose after having passed any length of time in tropical countries. you may also alter the development of the muscles very much, by dint of training; all the world knows that exercise has a great effect in this way; we always expect to find the arm of a blacksmith hard and wiry, and possessing a large development of the brachial muscles. no doubt, training, which is one of the forms of external conditions, converts what are originally only instructions, teachings, into habits, or, in other words, into organizations, to a great extent; but this second cause of variation cannot be considered to be by any means a large one. the third cause that i have to mention, however, is a very extensive one. it is one that, for want of a better name, has been called "spontaneous variation"; which means that when we do not know anything about the cause of phenomena, we call it spontaneous. in the orderly chain of causes and effects in this world, there are very few things of which it can be said with truth that they are spontaneous. certainly not in these physical matters,--in these there is nothing of the kind,--everything depends on previous conditions. but when we cannot trace the cause of phenomena, we call them spontaneous. of these variations, multitudinous as they are, but little is known with perfect accuracy, i will mention to you some two or three cases, because they are very remarkable in themselves, and also because i shall want to use them afterwards. réaumur, a famous french naturalist, a great many years ago, in an essay which he wrote upon the art of hatching chickens,--which was indeed a very curious essay,--had occasion to speak of variations and monstrosities. one very remarkable case had come under his notice of a variation in the form of a human member, in the person of a maltese, of the name of gratio kelleia, who was born with six fingers upon each hand, and the like number of toes to each of his feet. that was a case of spontaneous variation. nobody knows why he was born with that number of fingers and toes, and as we don't know, we call it a case of "spontaneous" variation. there is another remarkable case also. i select these, because they happen to have been observed and noted very carefully at the time. it frequently happens that a variation occurs, but the persons who notice it do not take any care in noting down the particulars, until at length, when inquiries come to be made, the exact circumstances are forgotten; and hence, multitudinous as may be such "spontaneous" variations, it is exceedingly difficult to get at the origin of them. the second case is one of which you may find the whole details in the "philosophical transactions" for the year , in a paper communicated by colonel humphreys to the president of the royal society,--"on a new variety in the breed of sheep," giving an account of a very remarkable breed of sheep, which at one time was well known in the northern states of america, and which went by the name of the ancon or the otter breed of sheep. in the year , there was a farmer of the name of seth wright in massachusetts, who had a flock of sheep, consisting of a ram and, i think, of some twelve or thirteen ewes. of this flock of ewes, one at the breeding-time bore a lamb which was very singularly formed; it had a very long body, very short legs, and those legs were bowed! i will tell you by-and-by how this singular variation in the breed of sheep came to be noted, and to have the prominence that it now has. for the present, i mention only these two cases; but the extent of variation in the breed of animals is perfectly obvious to any one who has studied natural history with ordinary attention, or to any person who compares animals with others of the same kind. it is strictly true that there are never any two specimens which are exactly alike; however similar, they will always differ in some certain particular. now let us go back to atavism,--to the hereditary tendency i spoke of. what will come of a variation when you breed from it, when atavism comes, if i may say so, to intersect variation? the two cases of which i have mentioned the history, give a most excellent illustration of what occurs. gratio kelleia, the maltese, married when he was twenty-two years of age, and, as i suppose there were no six-fingered ladies in malta, he married an ordinary five-fingered person. the result of that marriage was four children; the first, who was christened salvator, had six fingers and six toes, like his father; the second was george, who had five fingers and toes, but one of them was deformed, showing a tendency to variation; the third was andrè; he had five fingers and five toes, quite perfect; the fourth was a girl, marie; she had five fingers and five toes, but her thumbs were deformed, showing a tendency toward the sixth. these children grew up, and when they came to adult years, they all married, and of course it happened that they all married five-fingered and five-toed persons. now let us see what were the results. salvator had four children; they were two boys, a girl, and another boy: the first two boys and the girl were six-fingered and six-toed like their grandfather; the fourth boy had only five fingers and five toes. george had only four children: there were two girls with six fingers and six toes; there was one girl with six fingers and five toes on the right side, and five fingers and five toes on the left side, so that she was half and half. the last, a boy, had five fingers and five toes. the third, andrè, you will recollect, was perfectly well-formed, and he had many children whose hands and feet were all regularly developed. marie, the last, who, of course, married a man who had only five fingers, had four children: the first, a boy, was born with six toes, but the other three were normal. now observe what very extraordinary phenomena are presented here. you have an accidental variation arising from what you may call a monstrosity; you have that monstrosity tendency or variation diluted in the first instance by an admixture with a female of normal construction, and you would naturally expect that, in the results of such an union, the monstrosity, if repeated, would be in equal proportion with the normal type; that is to say, that the children would be half and half, some taking the peculiarity of the father, and the others being of the purely normal type of the mother; but you see we have a great preponderance of the abnormal type. well, this comes to be mixed once more with the pure, the normal type, and the abnormal is again produced in large proportion, notwithstanding the second dilution. now what would have happened if these abnormal types had intermarried with each other; that is to say, suppose the two boys of salvator had taken it into their heads to marry their first cousins, the two first girls of george, their uncle? you will remember that these are all of the abnormal type of their grandfather. the result would probably have been, that their offspring would have been in every case a further development of that abnormal type. you see it is only in the fourth, in the person of marie, that the tendency, when it appears but slightly in the second generation, is washed out in the third, while the progeny of andrè, who escaped in the first instance, escape altogether. we have in this case a good example of nature's tendency to the perpetuation of a variation. here it is certainly a variation which carried with it no use or benefit; and yet you see the tendency to perpetuation may be so strong, that, notwithstanding a great admixture of pure blood, the variety continues itself up to the third generation, which is largely marked with it. in this case, as i have said, there was no means of the second generation intermarrying with any but five-fingered persons, and the question naturally suggests itself, what would have been the result of such marriage? réaumur narrates this case only as far as the third generation. certainly it would have been an exceedingly curious thing if we could have traced this matter any further; had the cousins intermarried, a six-fingered variety of the human race might have been set up. to show you that this supposition is by no means an unreasonable one, let me now point out what took place in the case of seth wright's sheep, where it happened to be a matter of moment to him to obtain a breed or raise a flock of sheep like that accidental variety that i have described--and i will tell you why. in that part of massachusetts where seth wright was living, the fields were separated by fences, and the sheep, which were very active and robust, would roam abroad, and without much difficulty jump over these fences into other people's farms. as a matter of course, this exuberant activity on the part of the sheep constantly gave rise to all sorts of quarrels, bickerings, and contentions among the farmers of the neighbourhood; so it occurred to seth wright, who was, like his successors, more or less 'cute, that if he could get a stock of sheep like those with the bandy legs, they would not be able to jump over the fences so readily; and he acted upon that idea. he killed his old ram, and as soon as the young one arrived at maturity, he bred altogether from it. the result was even more striking than in the human experiment which i mentioned just now. colonel humphreys testifies that it always happened that the offspring were either pure ancons or pure ordinary sheep; that in no case was there any mixing of the ancons with the others. in consequence of this, in the course of a very few years, the farmer was able to get a very considerable flock of this variety, and a large number of them were spread throughout massachusetts. most unfortunately, however--i suppose it was because they were so common--nobody took enough notice of them to preserve their skeletons; and although colonel humphreys states that he sent a skeleton to the president of the royal society at the same time that he forwarded his paper, i am afraid that the variety has entirely disappeared; for a short time after these sheep had become prevalent in that district, the merino sheep were introduced; and as their wool was much more valuable, and as they were a quiet race of sheep, and showed no tendency to trespass or jump over fences, the otter breed of sheep, the wool of which was inferior to that of the merino, was gradually allowed to die out. you see that these facts illustrate perfectly well what may be done if you take care to breed from stocks that are similar to each other. after having got a variation, if, by crossing a variation with the original stock, you multiply that variation, and then take care to keep that variation distinct from the original stock, and make them breed together,--then you may almost certainly produce a race whose tendency to continue the variation is exceedingly strong. this is what is called "selection"; and it is by exactly the same process as that by which seth wright bred his ancon sheep, that our breeds of cattle, dogs, and fowls, are obtained. there are some possibilities of exception, but still, speaking broadly, i may say that this is the way in which all our varied races of domestic animals have arisen; and you must understand that it is not one peculiarity or one characteristic alone in which animals may vary. there is not a single peculiarity or characteristic of any kind, bodily or mental, in which offspring may not vary to a certain extent from the parent and other animals. among ourselves this is well known. the simplest physical peculiarity is mostly reproduced. i know a case of a woman who has the lobe of one of her ears a little flattened. an ordinary observer might scarcely notice it, and yet every one of her children has an approximation to the same peculiarity to some extent. if you look at the other extreme, too, the gravest diseases, such as gout, scrofula, and consumption, may be handed down with just the same certainty and persistence as we noticed in the perpetuation of the bandy legs of the ancon sheep. however, these facts are best illustrated in animals, and the extent of the variation, as is well known, is very remarkable in dogs. for example, there are some dogs very much smaller than others; indeed, the variation is so enormous that probably the smallest dog would be about the size of the head of the largest; there are very great variations in the structural forms not only of the skeleton but also in the shape of the skull, and in the proportions of the face and the disposition of the teeth. the pointer, the retriever, bulldog, and the terrier, differ very greatly, and yet there is every reason to believe that every one of these races has arisen from the same source,--that all the most important races have arisen by this selective breeding from accidental variation. a still more striking case of what may be done by selective breeding, and it is a better case, because there is no chance of that partial infusion of error to which i alluded, has been studied very carefully by mr. darwin,--the case of the domestic pigeons. i dare say there may be some among you who may be pigeon _fanciers_, and i wish you to understand that in approaching the subject, i would speak with all humility and hesitation, as i regret to say that i am not a pigeon fancier. i know it is a great art and mystery, and a thing upon which a man must not speak lightly; but i shall endeavour, as far as my understanding goes, to give you a summary of the published and unpublished information which i have gained from mr. darwin. among the enormous variety,--i believe there are somewhere about a hundred and fifty kinds of pigeons,--there are four kinds which may be selected as representing the extremest divergences of one kind from another. their names are the carrier, the pouter, the fantail, and the tumbler. in these large diagrams that i have here they are each represented in their relative sizes to each other. this first one is the carrier; you will notice this large excrescence on its beak; it has a comparatively small head; there is a bare space round the eyes; it has a long neck, a very long beak, very strong legs, large feet, long wings, and so on. the second one is the pouter, a very large bird, with very long legs and beak. it is called the pouter because it is in the habit of causing its gullet to swell up by inflating it with air. i should tell you that all pigeons have a tendency to do this at times, but in the pouter it is carried to an enormous extent. the birds appear to be quite proud of their power of swelling and puffing themselves out in this way; and i think it is about as droll a sight as you can well see to look at a cage full of these pigeons puffing and blowing themselves out in this ridiculous manner. this diagram is a representation of the third kind i mentioned--the fantail. it is, you see, a small bird, with exceedingly small legs and a very small beak. it is most curiously distinguished by the size and extent of its tail, which, instead of containing twelve feathers, may have many more,--say thirty, or even more--i believe there are some with as many as forty-two. this bird has a curious habit of spreading out the feathers of its tail in such a way that they reach forward, and touch its head; and if this can be accomplished, i believe it is looked upon as a point of great beauty. but here is the last great variety,--the tumbler; and of that great variety, one of the principal kinds, and one most prized, is the specimen represented here--the short-faced tumbler. its beak, you see, is reduced to a mere nothing. just compare the beak of this one and that of the first one, the carrier--i believe the orthodox comparison of the head and beak of a thoroughly well-bred tumbler is to stick an oat into a cherry, and that will give you the proper relative proportions of the beak and head. the feet and legs are exceedingly small, and the bird appears to be quite a dwarf when placed side by side with this great carrier. these are differences enough in regard to their external appearance; but these differences are by no means the whole or even the most important of the differences which obtain between these birds. there is hardly a single point of their structure which has not become more or less altered; and to give you an idea of how extensive these alterations are, i have here some very good skeletons, for which i am indebted to my friend mr. tegetmeier, a great authority in these matters; by means of which, if you examine them by-and-by, you will be able to see the enormous difference in their bony structures. i had the privilege, some time ago, of access to some important mss. of mr. darwin, who, i may tell you, has taken very great pains and spent much valuable time and attention on the investigation of these variations, and getting together all the facts that bear upon them. i obtained from these mss. the following summary of the differences between the domestic breeds of pigeons; that is to say, a notification of the various points in which their organization differs. in the first place, the back of the skull may differ a good deal, and the development of the bones of the face may vary a great deal; the back varies a good deal; the shape of the lower jaw varies; the tongue varies very greatly, not only in correlation to the length and size of the beak, but it seems also to have a kind of independent variation of its own. then the amount of naked skin round the eyes, and at the base of the beak, may vary enormously; so may the length of the eyelids, the shape of the nostrils, and the length of the neck. i have already noticed the habit of blowing out the gullet, so remarkable in the pouter, and comparatively so in the others. there are great differences, too, in the size of the female and the male, the shape of the body, the number and width of the processes of the ribs, the development of the ribs, and the size, shape, and development of the breastbone. we may notice, too,--and i mention the fact because it has been disputed by what is assumed to be high authority,--the variation in the number of the sacral vertebræ. the number of these varies from eleven to fourteen, and that without any diminution in the number of the vertebræ of the back or of the tail. then the number and position of the tail-feathers may vary enormously, and so may the number of the primary and secondary feathers of the wings. again, the length of the feet and of the beak,--although they have no relation to each other, yet appear to go together,--that is, you have a long beak wherever you have long feet. there are differences also in the periods of the acquirement of the perfect plumage,--the size and shape of the eggs,--the nature of flight, and the powers of flight,--so-called "_homing_" birds having enormous flying powers;[ ] while, on the other hand, the little tumbler is so called because of its extraordinary faculty of turning head over heels in the air, instead of pursuing a distinct course. and, lastly, the dispositions and voices of the birds may vary. thus the case of the pigeons shows you that there is hardly a single particular,--whether of instinct, or habit, or bony structure, or of plumage,--of either the internal economy or the external shape, in which some variation or change may not take place, which, by selective breeding, may become perpetuated, and form the foundation of, and give rise to, a new race. if you carry in your mind's eye these four varieties of pigeons, you will bear with you as good a notion as you can have, perhaps, of the enormous extent to which a deviation from a primitive type may be carried by means of this process of selective breeding. footnotes: [ ] the "_carrier_," i learn from mr. tegetmeier, does not _carry_; a high-bred bird of this breed being but a poor flier. the birds which fly long distances, and come home,--"homing" birds,--and are consequently used as carriers, are not "carriers" in the fancy sense. viii the conditions of existence as affecting the perpetuation of living beings. in the last lecture i endeavoured to prove to you that, while, as a general rule, organic beings tend to reproduce their kind, there is in them, also, a constantly recurring tendency to vary--to vary to a greater or to a less extent. such a variety, i pointed out to you, might arise from causes which we do not understand; we therefore called it spontaneous; and it might come into existence as a definite and marked thing, without any gradations between itself and the form which preceded it. i further pointed out, that such a variety having once arisen, might be perpetuated to some extent, and indeed to a very marked extent, without any direct interference, or without any exercise of that process which we called selection. and then i stated further, that by such selection, when exercised artificially--if you took care to breed only from those forms which presented the same peculiarities of any variety which had arisen in this manner--the variation might be perpetuated, as far as we can see, indefinitely. the next question, and it is an important one for us, is this: is there any limit to the amount of variation from the primitive stock which can be produced by this process of selective breeding? in considering this question, it will be useful to class the characteristics, in respect of which organic beings vary, under two heads: we may consider structural characteristics, and we may consider physiological characteristics. in the first place, as regards structural characteristics, i endeavoured to show you, by the skeletons which i had upon the table, and by reference to a great many well-ascertained facts, that the different breeds of pigeons, the carriers, pouters, and tumblers, might vary in any of their internal and important structural characters to a very great degree; not only might there be changes in the proportions of the skull, and the characters of the feet and beaks, and so on; but that there might be an absolute difference in the number of the vertebræ of the back, as in the sacral vertebræ of the pouter; and so great is the extent of the variation in these and similar characters that i pointed out to you, by reference to the skeletons and the diagrams, that these extreme varieties may absolutely differ more from one another in their structural characters than do what naturalists call distinct species of pigeons; that is to say, that they differ so much in structure that there is a greater difference between the pouter and the tumbler than there is between such wild and distinct forms as the rock pigeon or the ring pigeon, or the ring pigeon and the stock dove; and indeed the differences are of greater value than this, for the structural differences between these domesticated pigeons are such as would be admitted by a naturalist, supposing he knew nothing at all about their origin, to entitle them to constitute even distinct genera. as i have used this term species, and shall probably use it a good deal, i had better perhaps devote a word or two to explaining what i mean by it. animals and plants are divided into groups, which become gradually smaller, beginning with a kingdom, which is divided into sub-kingdoms; then come the smaller divisions called provinces; and so on from a province to a class, from a class to an order, from _orders_ to _families_, and from these to genera, until we come at length to the smallest groups of animals which can be defined one from the other by constant characters, which are not sexual; and these are what naturalists call species in practice, whatever they may do in theory. if in a state of nature you find any two groups of living beings, which are separated one from the other by some constantly-recurring characteristic, i don't care how slight and trivial, so long as it is defined and constant, and does not depend on sexual peculiarities, then all naturalists agree in calling them two species; that is what is meant by the use of the word species--that is to say, it is, for the practical naturalist, a mere question of structural differences.[ ] we have seen now--to repeat this point once more, and it is very essential that we should rightly understand it--we have seen that breeds, known to have been derived from a common stock by selection, may be as different in their structure from the original stock as species may be distinct from each other. but is the like true of the physiological characteristics of animals? do the physiological differences of varieties amount in degree to those observed between forms which naturalists call distinct species? this is a most important point for us to consider. as regards the great majority of physiological characteristics, there is no doubt that they are capable of being developed, increased, and modified by selection. there is no doubt that breeds may be made as different as species in many physiological characters. i have already pointed out to you very briefly the different habits of the breeds of pigeons, all of which depend upon their physiological peculiarities,--as the peculiar habit of tumbling, in the tumbler,--the peculiarities of flight, in the "homing" birds,--the strange habit of spreading out the tail, and walking in a peculiar fashion, in the fantail,--and, lastly, the habit of blowing out the gullet, so characteristic of the pouter. these are all due to physiological modifications, and in all these respects these birds differ as much from each other as any two ordinary species do. so with dogs in their habits and instincts. it is a physiological peculiarity which leads the greyhound to chase its prey by sight,--that enables the beagle to track it by the scent,--that impels the terrier to its rat-hunting propensity,--and that leads the retriever to its habits of retrieving. these habits and instincts are all the results of physiological differences and peculiarities, which have been developed from a common stock, at least there is every reason to believe so. but it is a most singular circumstance, that while you may run through almost the whole series of physiological processes, without finding a check to your argument, you come at last to a point where you do find a check, and that is in the reproductive processes. for there is a most singular circumstance in respect to natural species--at least about some of them--and it would be sufficient for the purposes of this argument, if it were true of only one of them, but there is, in fact, a great number of such cases--and that is, that similar as they may appear to be to mere races or breeds, they present a marked peculiarity in the reproductive process. if you breed from the male and female of the same race, you of course have offspring of the like kind, and if you make the offspring breed together, you obtain the same result, and if you breed from these again, you will still have the same kind of offspring; there is no check. but if you take members of two distinct species, however similar they may be to each other, and make them breed together, you will find a check, with some modifications and exceptions, however, which i shall speak of presently. if you cross two such species with each other, then,--although you may get offspring in the case of the first cross, yet, if you attempt to breed from the products of that crossing, which are what are called hybrids--that is, if you couple a male and a female hybrid--then the result is that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred you will get no offspring at all: there will be no result whatsoever. the reason of this is quite obvious in some cases; the male hybrids, although possessing all the external appearances and characteristics of perfect animals, are physiologically imperfect and deficient in the structural parts of the reproductive elements necessary to generation. it is said to be invariably the case with the male mule, the cross between the ass and the mare; and hence it is, that, although crossing the horse with the ass is easy enough, and is constantly done, as far as i am aware, if you take two mules, a male and a female, and endeavour to breed from them, you get no offspring whatever; no generation will take place. this is what is called the sterility of the hybrids between two distinct species. you see that this is a very extraordinary circumstance; one does not see why it should be. the common teleological explanation is, that it is to prevent the impurity of the blood resulting from the crossing of one species with another, but you see it does not in reality do anything of the kind. there is nothing in this fact that hybrids cannot breed with each other, to establish such a theory; there is nothing to prevent the horse breeding with the ass, or the ass with the horse. so that this explanation breaks down, as a great many explanations of this kind do, that are only founded on mere assumptions. thus you see that there is a great difference between "mongrels," which are crosses between distinct races, and "hybrids," which are crosses between distinct species. the mongrels are, so far as we know, fertile with one another. but between species, in many cases, you cannot succeed in obtaining even the first cross: at any rate it is quite certain that the hybrids are often absolutely infertile one with another. here is a feature, then, great or small as it may be, which distinguishes natural species of animals. can we find any approximation to this in the different races known to be produced by selective breeding from a common stock? up to the present time the answer to that question is absolutely a negative one. as far as we know at present, there is nothing approximating to this check. in crossing the breeds between the fantail and the pouter, the carrier and the tumbler, or any other variety or race you may name--so far as we know at present--there is no difficulty in breeding together the mongrels. take the carrier and the fantail, for instance, and let them represent the horse and the ass in the case of distinct species; then you have, as the result of their breeding, the carrier-fantail mongrel,--we will say the male and female mongrel,--and, as far as we know, these two when crossed would not be less fertile than the original cross, or than carrier with carrier. here, you see, is a physiological contrast between the races produced by selective modification and natural species. i shall inquire into the value of this fact, and of some modifying circumstances by and by; for the present i merely put it broadly before you. but while considering this question of the limitations of species, a word must be said about what is called recurrence--the tendency of races which have been developed by selective breeding from varieties to return to their primitive type. this is supposed by many to put an absolute limit to the extent of selective and all other variations. people say, "it is all very well to talk about producing these different races, but you know very well that if you turned all these birds wild, these pouters, and carriers, and so on, they would all return to their primitive stock." this is very commonly assumed to be a fact, and it is an argument that is commonly brought forward as conclusive; but if you will take the trouble to inquire into it rather closely, i think you will find that it is not worth very much. the first question of course is, do they thus return to the primitive stock? and commonly as the thing is assumed and accepted, it is extremely difficult to get anything like good evidence of it. it is constantly said, for example, that if domesticated horses are turned wild, as they have been in some parts of asia minor and south america, that they return at once to the primitive stock from which they were bred. but the first answer that you make to this assumption is, to ask who knows what the primitive stock was; and the second answer is, that in that case the wild horses of asia minor ought to be exactly like the wild horses of south america. if they are both like the same thing, they ought manifestly to be like each other! the best authorities, however, tell you that it is quite different. the wild horse of asia is said to be of a dun colour, with a largish head, and a great many other peculiarities; while the best authorities on the wild horses of south america tell you that there is no similarity between their wild horses and those of asia minor; the cut of their heads is very different, and they are commonly chestnut or bay-coloured. it is quite clear, therefore, that as by these facts there ought to have been two primitive stocks, they go for nothing in support of the assumption that races recur to one primitive stock, and so far as this evidence is concerned, it falls to the ground. suppose for a moment that it were so, and that domesticated races, when turned wild, did return to some common condition, i cannot see that this would prove much more than that similar conditions are likely to produce similar results; and that when you take back domesticated animals into what we call natural conditions, you do exactly the same thing as if you carefully undid all the work you had gone through, for the purpose of bringing the animal from its wild to its domesticated state. i do not see anything very wonderful in the fact, if it took all that trouble to get it from a wild state, that it should go back into its original state as soon as you removed the conditions which produced the variation to the domesticated form. there is an important fact, however, forcibly brought forward by mr. darwin, which has been noticed in connection with the breeding of domesticated pigeons; and it is, that however different these breeds of pigeons may be from each other, and we have already noticed the great differences in these breeds, that if, among any of those variations, you chance to have a blue pigeon turn up, it will be sure to have the black bars across the wings, which are characteristic of the original wild stock, the rock pigeon. now, this is certainly a very remarkable circumstance; but i do not see myself how it tells very strongly either one way or the other. i think, in fact, that this argument in favour of recurrence to the primitive type might prove a great deal too much for those who so constantly bring it forward. for example, mr. darwin has very forcibly urged, that nothing is commoner than if you examine a dun horse--and i had an opportunity of verifying this illustration lately, while in the islands of the west highlands, where there are a great many dun horses--to find that horse exhibit a long black stripe down his back, very often stripes on his shoulder, and very often stripes on his legs. i, myself, saw a pony of this description a short time ago, in a baker's cart, near rothesay, in bute: it had the long stripe down the back, and stripes on the shoulders and legs, just like those of the ass, the quagga, and the zebra. now, if we interpret the theory of recurrence as applied to this case, might it not be said that here was a case of a variation exhibiting the characters and conditions of an animal occupying something like an intermediate position between the horse, the ass, the quagga, and the zebra, and from which these had been developed? in the same way with regard even to man. every anatomist will tell you that there is nothing commoner, in dissecting the human body, than to meet with what are called muscular variations--that is, if you dissect two bodies very carefully, you will probably find that the modes of attachment and insertion of the muscles are not exactly the same in both, there being great peculiarities in the mode in which the muscles are arranged; and it is very singular, that in some dissections of the human body you will come upon arrangements of the muscles very similar indeed to the same parts in the apes. is the conclusion in that case to be, that this is like the black bars in the case of the pigeon, and that it indicates a recurrence to the primitive type from which the animals have been probably developed? truly, i think that the opponents of modification and variation had better leave the argument of recurrence alone, or it may prove altogether too strong for them. to sum up,--the evidence as far as we have gone is against the argument as to any limit to divergences, so far as structure is concerned; and in favour of a physiological limitation. by selective breeding we can produce structural divergences as great as those of species, but we cannot produce equal physiological divergences. for the present i leave the question there. now, the next problem that lies before us--and it is an extremely important one--is this: does this selective breeding occur in nature? because, if there is no proof of it, all that i have been telling you goes for nothing in accounting for the origin of species. are natural causes competent to play the part of selection in perpetuating varieties? here we labour under very great difficulties. in the last lecture i had occasion to point out to you the extreme difficulty of obtaining evidence even of the first origin of those varieties which we know to have occurred in domesticated animals. i told you, that almost always the origin of these varieties is overlooked, so that i could only produce two or three cases, as that of gratio kelleia and of the ancon sheep. people forget, or do not take notice of them until they come to have a prominence; and if that is true of artificial cases, under our own eyes, and in animals in our own care, how much more difficult it must be to have at first hand good evidence of the origin of varieties in nature! indeed, i do not know that it is possible by direct evidence to prove the origin of a variety in nature, or to prove selective breeding; but i will tell you what we can prove--and this comes to the same thing--that varieties exist in nature within the limits of species, and, what is more, that when a variety has come into existence in nature, there are natural causes and conditions, which are amply competent to play the part of a selective breeder; and although that is not quite the evidence that one would like to have--though it is not direct testimony--yet it is exceeding good and exceedingly powerful evidence in its way. as to the first point, of varieties existing among natural species, i might appeal to the universal experience of every naturalist, and of any person who has ever turned any attention at all to the characteristics of plants and animals in a state of nature; but i may as well take a few definite cases, and i will begin with man himself. i am one of those who believe that, at present, there is no evidence whatever for saying, that mankind sprang originally from any more than a single pair; i must say, that i cannot see any good ground whatever, or even any tenable sort of evidence, for believing that there is more than one species of man. nevertheless, as you know, just as there are numbers of varieties in animals, so there are remarkable varieties of men. i speak not merely of those broad and distinct variations which you see at a glance. everybody, of course, knows the difference between a negro and a white man, and can tell a chinaman from an englishman. they each have peculiar characteristics of colour and physiognomy; but you must recollect that the characters of these races go very far deeper--they extend to the bony structure, and to the characters of that most important of all organs to us--the brain; so that, among men belonging to different races, or even within the same race, one man shall have a brain a third, or half, or even seventy per cent bigger than another; and if you take the whole range of human brains, you will find a variation in some cases of a hundred per cent. apart from these variations in the size of the brain, the characters of the skull vary. thus if i draw the figures of a mongul and of a negro head on the blackboard, in the case of the last the breadth would be about seven-tenths, and in the other it would be nine-tenths of the total length. so that you see there is abundant evidence of variation among men in their natural condition. and if you turn to other animals there is just the same thing. the fox, for example, which has a very large geographical distribution all over europe, and parts of asia, and on the american continent, varies greatly. there are mostly large foxes in the north, and smaller ones in the south. in germany alone, the foresters reckon some eight different sorts. of the tiger, no one supposes that there is more than one species; they extend from the hottest parts of bengal, into the dry, cold, bitter steppes of siberia, into a latitude of °,--so that they may even prey upon the reindeer. these tigers have exceedingly different characteristics, but still they all keep their general features, so that there is no doubt as to their being tigers. the siberian tiger has a thick fur, a small mane, and a longitudinal stripe down the back, while the tigers of java and sumatra differ in many important respects from the tigers of northern asia. so lions vary; so birds vary; and so, if you go further back and lower down in creation, you find that fishes vary. in different streams, in the same country even, you will find the trout to be quite different to each other and easily recognizable by those who fish in the particular streams. there is the same differences in leeches; leech collectors can easily point out to you the differences and the peculiarities which you yourself would probably pass by; so with fresh-water mussels; so, in fact, with every animal you can mention. in plants there is the same kind of variation. take such a case even as the common bramble. the botanists are all at war about it; some of them wanting to make out that there are many species of it, and others maintaining that they are but many varieties of one species; and they cannot settle to this day which is a species and which is a variety! so that there can be no doubt whatsoever that any plant and any animal may vary in nature; that varieties may arise in the way i have described,--as spontaneous varieties,--and that those varieties may be perpetuated in the same way that i have shown you spontaneous varieties are perpetuated; i say, therefore, that there can be no doubt as to the origin and perpetuation of varieties in nature. but the question now is:--does selection take place in nature? is there anything like the operation of man in exercising selective breeding, taking place in nature? you will observe that, at present, i say nothing about species; i wish to confine myself to the consideration of the production of those natural races which everybody admits to exist. the question is, whether in nature there are causes competent to produce races, just in the same way as man is able to produce, by selection, such races of animals as we have already noticed. when a variety has arisen, the conditions of existence are such as to exercise an influence which is exactly comparable to that of artificial selection. by conditions of existence i mean two things,--there are conditions which are furnished by the physical, the inorganic world, and there are conditions of existence which are furnished by the organic world. there is, in the first place, climate; under that head i include only temperature and the varied amount of moisture of particular places. in the next place there is what is technically called station, which means--given the climate, the particular kind of place in which an animal or a plant lives or grows; for example, the station of a fish is in the water, of a fresh-water fish in fresh water; the station of a marine fish is in the sea, and a marine animal may have a station higher or deeper. so again with land animals: the differences in their stations are those of different soils and neighbourhoods; some being best adapted to a calcareous, and others to an arenaceous soil. the third condition of existence is food, by which i mean food in the broadest sense, the supply of the materials necessary to the existence of an organic being; in the case of a plant the inorganic matters, such as carbonic acid, water, ammonia, and the earthy salts or salines; in the case of the animal the inorganic and organic matters, which we have seen they require; then these are all, at least the two first, what we may call the inorganic or physical conditions of existence. food takes a mid-place, and then come the organic conditions; by which i mean the conditions which depend upon the state of the rest of the organic creation, upon the number and kind of living beings, with which an animal is surrounded. you may class these under two heads: there are organic beings, which operate as _opponents_, and there are organic beings which operate as _helpers_ to any given organic creature. the opponents may be of two kinds: there are the _indirect opponents_, which are what we may call _rivals_; and there are the _direct opponents_, those which strive to destroy the creature; and these we call _enemies_. by rivals i mean, of course, in the case of plants, those which require for their support the same kind of soil and station, and, among animals, those which require the same kind of station, or food, or climate; those are the indirect opponents; the direct opponents are, of course, those which prey upon an animal or vegetable. the _helpers_ may also be regarded as direct and indirect: in the case of a carnivorous animal, for example, a particular herbaceous plant may in multiplying be an indirect helper, by enabling the herbivora on which the carnivore preys to get more food, and thus to nourish the carnivore more abundantly; the direct helper may be best illustrated by reference to some parasitic creature, such as the tape-worm. the tape-worm exists in the human intestines, so that the fewer there are of men the fewer there will be of tape-worms, other things being alike. it is a humiliating reflection, perhaps, that we may be classed as direct helpers to the tape-worm, but the fact is so: we can all see that if there were no men there would be no tape-worms. it is extremely difficult to estimate, in a proper way, the importance and the working of the conditions of existence. i do not think there were any of us who had the remotest notion of properly estimating them until the publication of mr. darwin's work, which has placed them before us with remarkable clearness; and i must endeavour, as far as i can in my own fashion, to give you some notion of how they work. we shall find it easiest to take a simple case, and one as free as possible from every kind of complication. i will suppose, therefore, that all the habitable part of this globe--the dry land, amounting to about , , square miles,--i will suppose that the whole of that dry land has the same climate, and that it is composed of the same kind of rock or soil, so that there will be the same station everywhere; we thus get rid of the peculiar influence of different climates and stations. i will then imagine that there shall be but one organic being in the world, and that shall be a plant. in this we start fair. its food is to be carbonic acid, water and ammonia, and the saline matters in the soil, which are, by the supposition, everywhere alike. we take one single plant, with no opponents, no helpers, and no rivals; it is to be a "fair field, and no favour." now, i will ask you to imagine further that it shall be a plant which shall produce every year fifty seeds, which is a very moderate number for a plant to produce; and that, by the action of the winds and currents, these seeds shall be equally and gradually distributed over the whole surface of the land. i want you now to trace out what will occur, and you will observe that i am not talking fallaciously any more than a mathematician does when he expounds his problem. if you show that the conditions of your problem are such as may actually occur in nature and do not transgress any of the known laws of nature in working out your proposition, then you are as safe in the conclusion you arrive at as is the mathematician in arriving at the solution of his problem. in science, the only way of getting rid of the complications with which a subject of this kind is environed, is to work in this deductive method. what will be the result, then? i will suppose that every plant requires one square foot of ground to live upon; and the result will be that, in the course of nine years, the plant will have occupied every single available spot in the whole globe! i have chalked upon the blackboard the figures by which i arrive at the result:-- plants. plants. × in st year = × " nd " = , , × " rd " = , , × " th " = , , , , × " th " = , , , , × " th " = , , , , , , × " th " = , , , , , , × " th " = , , , , , , , , × " th " = , , , , , , , sq. miles--the dry surface} of the earth × , , --the } = sq. ft. , , , , , number of sq. ft. in sq. mile } --------------------- being , , , , square feet less than would be required at the end of the ninth year. you will see from this that, at the end of the first year the single plant will have produced fifty more of its kind; by the end of the second year these will have increased to ; and so on, in succeeding years, you get beyond even trillions; and i am not at all sure that i could tell you what the proper arithmetical denomination of the total number really is; but, at any rate, you will understand the meaning of all those noughts. then you see that, at the bottom, i have taken the , , of square miles, constituting the surface of the dry land; and as the number of square feet are placed under and subtracted from the number of seeds that would be produced in the ninth year, you can see at once that there would be an immense number more of plants than there would be square feet of ground for their accommodation. this is certainly quite enough to prove my point; that between the eighth and ninth year after being planted the single plant would have stocked the whole available surface of the earth. this is a thing which is hardly conceivable--it seems hardly imaginable--yet it is so. it is indeed simply the law of malthus exemplified. mr. malthus was a clergy-man, who worked out this subject most minutely and truthfully some years ago; he showed quite clearly,--and although he was much abused for his conclusions at the time, they have never yet been disproved and never will be--he showed that in consequence of the increase in the number of organic beings in a geometrical ratio, while the means of existence cannot be made to increase in the same ratio, that there must come a time when the number of organic beings will be in excess of the power of production of nutriment, and that thus some check must arise to the further increase of those organic beings. at the end of the ninth year we have seen that each plant would not be able to get its full square foot of ground, and at the end of another year it would have to share that space with fifty others the produce of the seeds which it would give off. what, then, takes place? every plant grows up, flourishes, occupies its square foot of ground, and gives off its fifty seeds; but notice this, that out of this number only one can come to anything; there is thus, as it were, forty-nine chances to one against its growing up; it depends upon the most fortuitous circumstances whether any one of these fifty seeds shall grow up and flourish, or whether it shall die and perish. this is what mr. darwin has drawn attention to, and called the "struggle for existence"; and i have taken this simple case of a plant because some people imagine that the phrase seems to imply a sort of fight. i have taken this plant and shown you that this is the result of the ratio of the increase, the necessary result of the arrival of a time coming for every species when exactly as many members must be destroyed as are born; that is the inevitable ultimate result of the rate of production. now, what is the result of all this? i have said that there are forty-nine struggling against every one; and it amounts to this, that the smallest possible start given to any one seed may give it an advantage which will enable it to get ahead of all the others; anything that will enable any one of these seeds to germinate six hours before any of the others will, other things being alike, enable it to choke them out altogether. i have shown you that there is no particular in which plants will not vary from each other; it is quite possible that one of our imaginary plants may vary in such a character as the thickness of the integument of its seeds; it might happen that one of the plants might produce seeds having a thinner integument, and that would enable the seeds of that plant to germinate a little quicker than those of any of the others, and those seeds would most inevitably extinguish the forty-nine times as many that were struggling with them. i have put it in this way, but you see the practical result of the process is the same as if some person had nurtured the one and destroyed the other seeds. it does not matter how the variation is produced, so long as it is once allowed to occur. the variation in the plant once fairly started tends to become hereditary and reproduce itself; the seeds would spread themselves in the same way and take part in the struggle with the forty-nine hundred, or forty-nine thousand, with which they might be exposed. thus, by degrees, this variety with some slight organic change or modification, must spread itself over the whole surface of the habitable globe, and extirpate or replace the other kinds. that is what is meant by natural selection; that is the kind of argument by which it is perfectly demonstrable that the conditions of existence may play exactly the same part for natural varieties as man does for domesticated varieties. no one doubts at all that particular circumstances may be more favourable for one plant and less so for another, and the moment you admit that, you admit the selective power of nature. now, although i have been putting a hypothetical case, you must not suppose that i have been reasoning hypothetically. there are plenty of direct experiments which bear out what we may call the theory of natural selection; there is extremely good authority for the statement that if you take the seed of mixed varieties of wheat and sow it, collecting the seed next year and sowing it again, at length you will find that out of all your varieties only two or three have lived, or perhaps even only one. there were one or two varieties which were best fitted to get on, and they have killed out the other kinds in just the same way and with just the same certainty as if you had taken the trouble to remove them. as i have already said, the operation of nature is exactly the same as the artificial operation of man. but if this be true of that simple case, which i put before you, where there is nothing but the rivalry of one member of a species with others, what must be the operation of selective conditions, when you recollect as a matter of fact, that for every species of animal or plant there are fifty or a hundred species which might all, more or less, be comprehended in the same climate, food, and station;--that every plant has multitudinous animals which prey upon it, and which are its direct opponents; and that these have other animals preying upon them,--that every plant has its indirect helpers in the birds that scatter abroad its seed, and the animals that manure it with their dung;--i say, when these things are considered, it seems impossible that any variation which may arise in a species in nature should not tend in some way or other either to be a little better or worse than the previous stock; if it is a little better it will have an advantage over and tend to extirpate the latter in this crush and struggle; and if it is a little worse it will itself be extirpated. i know nothing that more appropriately expresses this, than the phrase, "the struggle for existence"; because it brings before your minds, in a vivid sort of way, some of the simplest possible circumstances connected with it. when a struggle is intense there must be some who are sure to be trodden down, crushed, and overpowered by others; and there will be some who just manage to get through only by the help of the slightest accident. i recollect reading an account of the famous retreat of the french troops, under napoleon, from moscow. worn out, tired, and dejected, they at length came to a great river over which there was but one bridge for the passage of the vast army. disorganized and demoralized as that army was, the struggle must certainly have been a terrible one--every one heeding only himself, and crushing through the ranks and treading down his fellows. the writer of the narrative, who was himself one of those who were fortunate enough to succeed in getting over, and not among the thousands who were left behind or forced into the river, ascribed his escape to the fact that he saw striding onward through the mass a great strong fellow,--one of the french cuirassiers, who had on a large blue cloak--and he had enough presence of mind to catch and retain a hold of this strong man's cloak. he says, "i caught hold of his cloak, and although he swore at me and cut at and struck me by turns, and at last, when he found he could not shake me off, fell to entreating me to leave go or i should prevent him from escaping, besides not assisting myself, i still kept tight hold of him, and would not quit my grasp until he had at last dragged me through." here you see was a case of selective saving--if we may so term it--depending for its success on the strength of the cloth of the cuirassier's cloak. it is the same in nature; every species has its bridge of beresina; it has to fight its way through and struggle with other species; and when well nigh overpowered, it may be that the smallest chance, something in its colour, perhaps--the minutest circumstance--will turn the scale one way or the other. suppose that by a variation of the black race it had produced the white man at any time--you know that the negroes are said to believe this to have been the case, and to imagine that cain was the first white man, and that we are his descendants--suppose that this had ever happened, and that the first residence of this human being was on the west coast of africa. there is no great structural difference between the white man and the negro, and yet there is something so singularly different in the constitution of the two, that the malarias of that country, which do not hurt the black at all, cut off and destroy the white. then you see there would have been a selective operation performed; if the white man had risen in that way, he would have been selected out and removed by means of the malaria. now there really is a very curious case of selection of this sort among pigs, and it is a case of selection of colour, too. in the woods of florida there are a great many pigs, and it is a very curious thing that they are all black, every one of them. professor wyman was there some years ago, and on noticing no pigs but these black ones, he asked some of the people how it was that they had no white pigs, and the reply was that in the woods of florida there was a root which they called the paint root, and that if the white pigs were to eat any of it, it had the effect of making their hoofs crack, and they died, but if the black pigs ate any of it, it did not hurt them at all. here was a very simple case of natural selection. a skilful breeder could not more carefully develop the black breed of pigs, and weed out all the white pigs, than the paint root does. to show you how remarkably indirect may be such natural selective agencies as i have referred to, i will conclude by noticing a case mentioned by mr. darwin, and which is certainly one of the most curious of its kind. it is that of the humble bee. it has been noticed that there are a great many more humble bees in the neighbourhood of towns, than out in the open country; and the explanation of the matter is this: the humble bees build nests, in which they store their honey and deposit the larvæ and eggs. the field mice are amazingly fond of the honey and larvæ; therefore, wherever there are plenty of field mice, as in the country, the humble bees are kept down; but in the neighbourhood of towns, the number of cats which prowl about the fields eat up the field mice, and of course the more mice they eat up the less there are to prey upon the larvæ of the bees--the cats are therefore the indirect helpers of the bees.[ ] coming back a step farther we may say that the old maids are also indirect friends of the humble bees, and indirect enemies of the field mice, as they keep the cats which eat up the latter! this is an illustration somewhat beneath the dignity of the subject, perhaps, but it occurs to me in passing, and with it i will conclude this lecture. footnotes: [ ] i lay stress here on the _practical_ signification of "species." whether a physiological test between species exist or not, it is hardly ever applicable by the practical naturalist. [ ] the humble bees, on the other hand, are direct helpers of some plants, such as the heartsease and red clover, which are fertilized by the visits of the bees; and they are indirect helpers of the numerous insects which are more or less completely supported by the heartsease and red clover. ix a critical examination of the position of mr. darwin's work, "on the origin of species," in relation to the complete theory of the causes of the phenomena of organic nature. in the preceding lectures i have endeavoured to give you an account of those facts, and of those reasonings from facts, which form the data upon which all theories regarding the causes of the phenomena of organic nature must be based. and, although i have had frequent occasion to quote mr. darwin--as all persons hereafter, in speaking upon these subjects, will have occasion to quote his famous book on the "origin of species,"--you must yet remember that, wherever i have quoted him, it has not been upon theoretical points, or for statements in any way connected with his particular speculations, but on matters of fact, brought forward by himself, or collected by himself, and which appear incidentally in his book. if a man _will_ make a book, professing to discuss a single question, an encyclopædia, i cannot help it. now, having had an opportunity of considering in this sort of way the different statements bearing upon all theories whatsoever, i have to lay before you, as fairly as i can, what is mr. darwin's view of the matter and what position his theories hold, when judged by the principles which i have previously laid down, as deciding our judgments upon all theories and hypotheses. i have already stated to you that the inquiry respecting the causes of the phenomena of organic nature resolves itself into two problems--the first being the question of the origination of living or organic beings; and the second being the totally distinct problem of the modification and perpetuation of organic beings when they have already come into existence. the first question mr. darwin does not touch; he does not deal with it at all; but he says:--"given the origin of organic matter--supposing its creation to have already taken place, my object is to show in consequence of what laws and what demonstrable properties of organic matter, and of its environments, such states of organic nature as those with which we are acquainted must have come about." this, you will observe, is a perfectly legitimate proposition; every person has a right to define the limits of the inquiry which he sets before himself; and yet it is a most singular thing that in all the multifarious, and, not unfrequently, ignorant attacks which have been made upon the "origin of species," there is nothing which has been more speciously criticised than this particular limitation. if people have nothing else to urge against the book, they say--"well, after all, you see mr. darwin's explanation of the 'origin of species' is not good for much, because, in the long run, he admits that he does not know how organic matter began to exist. but if you admit any special creation for the first particle of organic matter you may just as well admit it for all the rest; five hundred or five thousand distinct creations are just as intelligible, and just as little difficult to understand, as one." the answer to these cavils is two-fold. in the first place, all human inquiry must stop somewhere; all our knowledge and all our investigation cannot take us beyond the limits set by the finite and restricted character of our faculties, or destroy the endless unknown, which accompanies, like its shadow, the endless procession of phenomena. so far as i can venture to offer an opinion on such a matter, the purpose of our being in existence, the highest object that human beings can set before themselves, is not the pursuit of any such chimera as the annihilation of the unknown; but it is simply the unwearied endeavour to remove its boundaries a little further from our little sphere of action. i wonder if any historian would for a moment admit the objection, that it is preposterous to trouble ourselves about the history of the roman empire, because we do not know anything positive about the origin and first building of the city of rome! would it be a fair objection to urge, respecting the sublime discoveries of a newton, or a kepler, those great philosophers, whose discoveries have been of the profoundest benefit and service to all men,--to say to them--"after all that you have told us as to how the planets revolve, and how they are maintained in their orbits, you cannot tell us what is the cause of the origin of the sun, moon, and stars. so what is the use of what you have done?" yet these objections would not be one whit more preposterous than the objections which have been made to the "origin of species." mr. darwin, then, had a perfect right to limit his inquiry as he pleased, and the only question for us--the inquiry being so limited--is to ascertain whether the method of his inquiry is sound or unsound; whether he has obeyed the canons which must guide and govern all investigation, or whether he has broken them; and it was because our inquiry this evening is essentially limited to that question, that i spent a good deal of time in a former lecture (which, perhaps some of you thought might have been better employed) in endeavouring to illustrate the method and nature of scientific inquiry in general. we shall now have to put in practice the principles that i then laid down. i stated to you in substance, if not in words, that wherever there are complex masses of phenomena to be inquired into, whether they be phenomena of the affairs of daily life, or whether they belong to the more abstruse and difficult problems laid before the philosopher, our course of proceeding in unravelling that complex chain of phenomena with a view to get at its cause, is always the same; in all cases we must invent an hypothesis; we must place before ourselves some more or less likely supposition respecting that cause; and then, having assumed an hypothesis, having supposed a cause for the phenomena in question, we must endeavour, on the one hand, to demonstrate our hypothesis, or, on the other, to upset and reject it altogether, by testing it in three ways. we must, in the first place, be prepared to prove that the supposed causes of the phenomena exist in nature; that they are what the logicians call _vera causæ_--true causes;--in the next place, we should be prepared to show that the assumed causes of the phenomena are competent to produce such phenomena as those which we wish to explain by them; and in the last place, we ought to be able to show that no other known causes are competent to produce these phenomena. if we can succeed in satisfying these three conditions we shall have demonstrated our hypothesis; or rather i ought to say, we shall have proved it as far as certainty is possible for us; for, after all, there is no one of our surest convictions which may not be upset, or at any rate modified by a further accession of knowledge. it was because it satisfied these conditions that we accepted the hypothesis as to the disappearance of the tea-pot and spoons in the case i supposed in a previous lecture; we found that our hypothesis on that subject was tenable and valid, because the supposed cause existed in nature, because it was competent to account for the phenomena, and because no other known cause was competent to account for them; and it is upon similar grounds that any hypothesis you choose to name is accepted in science as tenable and valid. what is mr. darwin's hypothesis? as i apprehend it--for i have put it into a shape more convenient for common purposes than i could find _verbatim_ in his book--as i apprehend it, i say, it is, that all the phenomena of organic nature, past and present, result from, or are caused by, the inter-action of those properties of organic matter, which we have called atavism and variability, with the conditions of existence; or, in other words,--given the existence of organic matter, its tendency to transmit its properties, and its tendency occasionally to vary; and, lastly, given the conditions of existence by which organic matter is surrounded--that these put together are the causes of the present and of the past conditions of organic nature. such is the hypothesis as i understand it. now let us see how it will stand the various tests which i laid down just now. in the first place, do these supposed causes of the phenomena exist in nature? is it the fact that in nature these properties of organic matter--atavism and variability--and those phenomena which we have called the conditions of existence,--is it true that they exist? well, of course, if they do not exist, all that i have told you in the last three or four lectures must be incorrect, because i have been attempting to prove that they do exist, and i take it that there is abundant evidence that they do exist; so far, therefore, the hypothesis does not break down. but in the next place comes a much more difficult inquiry:--are the causes indicated competent to give rise to the phenomena of organic nature? i suspect that this is indubitable to a certain extent. it is demonstrable, i think, as i have endeavoured to show you, that they are perfectly competent to give rise to all the phenomena which are exhibited by races in nature. furthermore, i believe that they are quite competent to account for all that we may call purely structural phenomena which are exhibited by species in nature. on that point also i have already enlarged somewhat. again, i think that the causes assumed are competent to account for most of the physiological characteristics of species, and i not only think that they are competent to account for them, but i think that they account for many things which otherwise remain wholly unaccountable and inexplicable, and i may say incomprehensible. for a full exposition of the grounds on which this conviction is based, i must refer you to mr. darwin's work; all that i can do now is to illustrate what i have said by two or three cases taken almost at random. i drew your attention, on a previous evening, to the facts which are embodied in our systems of classification, which are the results of the examination and comparison of the different members of the animal kingdom one with another. i mentioned that the whole of the animal kingdom is divisible into five sub-kingdoms; that each of these sub-kingdoms is again divisible into provinces; that each province may be divided into classes, and the classes into the successively smaller groups, orders, families, genera, and species. now, in each of these groups, the resemblance in structure among the members of the group is closer in proportion as the group is smaller. thus, a man and a worm are members of the animal kingdom in virtue of certain apparently slight though really fundamental resemblances which they present. but a man and a fish are members of the same sub-kingdom _vertebrata_, because they are much more like one another than either of them is to a worm, or a snail, or any member of the other sub-kingdoms. for similar reasons men and horses are arranged as members of the same class, _mammalia_; men and apes as members of the same order, _primates_; and if there were any animals more like men than they were like any of the apes, and yet different from men in important and constant particulars of their organization, we should rank them as members of the same family, or of the same genus, but as of distinct species. that it is possible to arrange all the varied forms of animals into groups, having this sort of singular subordination one to the other, is a very remarkable circumstance; but, as mr. darwin remarks, this is a result which is quite to be expected, if the principles which he lays down be correct. take the case of the races which are known to be produced by the operation of atavism and variability, and the conditions of existence which check and modify these tendencies. take the case of the pigeons that i brought before you: there it was shown that they might be all classed as belonging to some one of five principal divisions, and that within these divisions other subordinate groups might be formed. the members of these groups are related to one another in just the same way as the genera of a family, and the groups themselves as the families of an order, or the orders of a class; while all have the same sort of structural relations with the wild rock-pigeon, as the members of any great natural group have with a real or imaginary typical form. now, we know that all varieties of pigeons of every kind have arisen by a process of selective breeding from a common stock, the rock-pigeon; hence, you see, that if all species of animals have proceeded from some common stock, the general character of their structural relations, and of our systems of classification, which express those relations, would be just what we find them to be. in other words, the hypothetical cause is, so far, competent to produce effects similar to those of the real cause. take, again, another set of very remarkable facts,--the existence of what are called rudimentary organs, organs for which we can find no obvious use, in the particular animal economy in which they are found, and yet which are there. such are the splint-like bones in the leg of the horse, which i here show you, and which correspond with bones which belong to certain toes and fingers in the human hand and foot. in the horse you see they are quite rudimentary, and bear neither toes nor fingers; so that the horse has only one "finger" in his fore-foot and one "toe" in his hind-foot. but it is a very curious thing that the animals closely allied to the horse show more toes than he; as the rhinoceros, for instance: he has these extra toes well formed, and anatomical facts show very clearly that he is very closely related to the horse indeed. so we may say that animals, in an anatomical sense nearly related to the horse, have those parts which are rudimentary in him, fully developed. again, the sheep and the cow have no cutting-teeth, but only a hard pad in the upper jaw. that is the common characteristic of ruminants in general. but the calf has in its upper jaw some rudiments of teeth which never are developed, and never play the part of teeth at all. well, if you go back in time, you find some of the older, now extinct, allies of the ruminants have well-developed teeth in their upper jaws; and at the present day the pig (which is in structure closely connected with ruminants) has well-developed teeth in its upper jaw; so that here is another instance of organs well developed and very useful, in one animal, represented by rudimentary organs, for which we can discover no purpose whatsoever, in another closely allied animal. the whalebone whale, again, has horny "whalebone" plates in its mouth, and no teeth; but the young foetal whale, before it is born, has teeth in its jaws; they, however, are never used, and they never come to anything. but other members of the group to which the whale belongs have well-developed teeth in both jaws. upon any hypothesis of special creation, facts of this kind appear to me to be entirely unaccountable and inexplicable, but they cease to be so if you accept mr. darwin's hypothesis, and see reason for believing that the whalebone whale and the whale with teeth in its mouth both sprang from a whale that had teeth, and that the teeth of the foetal whale are merely remnants--recollections, if we may so say--of the extinct whale. so in the case of the horse and the rhinoceros: suppose that both have descended by modification from some earlier form which had the normal number of toes, and the persistence of the rudimentary bones which no longer support toes in the horse becomes comprehensible. in the language that we speak in england, and in the language of the greeks, there are identical verbal roots, or elements entering into the composition of words. that fact remains unintelligible so long as we suppose english and greek to be independently created tongues; but when it is shown that both languages are descended from one original, the sanscrit, we give an explanation of that resemblance. in the same way the existence of identical structural roots, if i may so term them, entering into the composition of widely different animals, is striking evidence in favour of the descent of those animals from a common original. to turn to another kind of illustration:--if you regard the whole series of stratified rocks--that enormous thickness of sixty or seventy thousand feet that i have mentioned before, constituting the only record we have of a most prodigious lapse of time, that time being, in all probability, but a fraction of that of which we have no record;--if you observe in these successive strata of rocks successive groups of animals arising and dying out, a constant succession, giving you the same kind of impression, as you travel from one group of strata to another, as you would have in travelling from one country to another;--when you find this constant succession of forms, their traces obliterated except to the man of science,--when you look at this wonderful history, and ask what it means, it is only a paltering with words if you are offered the reply,--"they were so created." but if, on the other hand, you look on all forms of organized beings as the results of the gradual modification of a primitive type, the facts receive a meaning, and you see that these older conditions are the necessary predecessors of the present. viewed in this light the facts of palæontology receive a meaning--upon any other hypothesis, i am unable to see, in the slightest degree, what knowledge or signification we are to draw out of them. again, note as bearing upon the same point, the singular likeness which obtains between the successive faunæ and floræ, whose remains are preserved on the rocks: you never find any great and enormous difference between the immediately successive faunæ and floræ, unless you have reason to believe there has also been a great lapse of time or a great change of conditions. the animals, for instance, of the newest tertiary rocks, in any part of the world, are always, and without exception, found to be closely allied with those which now live in that part of the world. for example, in europe, asia, and africa, the large mammals are at present rhinoceri, hippopotami, elephants, lions, tigers, oxen, horses, &c.; and if you examine the newest tertiary deposits, which contain the animals and plants which immediately preceded those which now exist in the same country, you do not find gigantic specimens of ant-eaters and kangaroos, but you find rhinoceroses, elephants, lions, tigers, &c.,--of different species to those now living,--but still their close allies. if you turn to south america, where, at the present day, we have great sloths and armadilloes and creatures of that kind, what do you find in the newest tertiaries? you find the great sloth-like creature, the _megatherium_, and the great armadillo, the _glyptodon_, and so on. and if you go to australia you find the same law holds good, namely, that that condition of organic nature which has preceded the one which now exists, presents differences perhaps of species, and of genera, but that the great types of organic structure are the same as those which now flourish. what meaning has this fact upon any other hypothesis or supposition than one of successive modification? but if the population of the world, in any age, is the result of the gradual modification of the forms which peopled it in the preceding age,--if that has been the case, it is intelligible enough; because we may expect that the creature that results from the modification of an elephantine mammal shall be something like an elephant, and the creature which is produced by the modification of an armadillo-like mammal shall be like an armadillo. upon that supposition, i say, the facts are intelligible; upon any other, that i am aware of, they are not. so far, the facts of palæontology are consistent with almost any form of the doctrine of progressive modification; they would not be absolutely inconsistent with the wild speculations of de maillet, or with the less objectionable hypothesis of lamarck. but mr. darwin's views have one peculiar merit; and that is, that they are perfectly consistent with an array of facts which are utterly inconsistent with and fatal to, any other hypothesis of progressive modification which has yet been advanced. it is one remarkable peculiarity of mr. darwin's hypothesis that it involves no necessary progression or incessant modification, and that it is perfectly consistent with the persistence for any length of time of a given primitive stock, contemporaneously with its modifications. to return to the case of the domestic breeds of pigeons, for example; you have the dove-cot pigeon, which closely resembles the rock-pigeon, from which they all started, existing at the same time with the others. and if species are developed in the same way in nature, a primitive stock and its modifications may, occasionally, all find the conditions fitted for their existence; and though they come into competition, to a certain extent, with one another, the derivative species may not necessarily extirpate the primitive one, or _vice versâ_. now palæontology shows us many facts which are perfectly harmonious with these observed effects of the process by which mr. darwin supposes species to have originated, but which appear to me to be totally inconsistent with any other hypothesis which has been proposed. there are some groups of animals and plants, in the fossil world, which have been said to belong to "persistent types," because they have persisted, with very little change indeed, through a very great range of time, while everything about them has changed largely. there are families of fishes whose type of construction has persisted all the way from the carboniferous rock right up to the cretaceous; and others which have lasted through almost the whole range of the secondary rocks, and from the lias to the older tertiaries. it is something stupendous this--to consider a genus lasting without essential modifications through all this enormous lapse of time while almost everything else was changed and modified. thus i have no doubt that mr. darwin's hypothesis will be found competent to explain the majority of the phenomena exhibited by species in nature; but in an earlier lecture i spoke cautiously with respect to its power of explaining all the physiological peculiarities of species. there is, in fact, one set of these peculiarities which the theory of selective modification, as it stands at present, is not wholly competent to explain, and that is the group of phenomena which i mentioned to you under the name of hybridism, and which i explained to consist in the sterility of the offspring of certain species when crossed one with another. it matters not one whit whether this sterility is universal, or whether it exists only in a single case. every hypothesis is bound to explain, or, at any rate, not be inconsistent with, the whole of the facts which it professes to account for; and if there is a single one of these facts which can be shown to be inconsistent with (i do not merely mean inexplicable by, but contrary to,) the hypothesis, the hypothesis falls to the ground,--it is worth nothing. one fact with which it is positively inconsistent is worth as much, and as powerful in negativing the hypothesis, as five hundred. if i am right in thus defining the obligations of an hypothesis, mr. darwin, in order to place his views beyond the reach of all possible assault, ought to be able to demonstrate the possibility of developing from a particular stock by selective breeding, two forms, which should either be unable to cross one with another, or whose cross-bred offspring should be infertile with one another. for, you see, if you have not done that you have not strictly fulfilled all the conditions of the problem; you have not shown that you can produce, by the cause assumed, all the phenomena which you have in nature. here are the phenomena of hybridism staring you in the face, and you cannot say, "i can, by selective modification, produce these same results." now, it is admitted on all hands that, at present, so far as experiments have gone, it has not been found possible to produce this complete physiological divergence by selective breeding. i stated this very clearly before, and i now refer to the point, because, if it could be proved, not only that this _has_ not been done, but that it _cannot_ be done; if it could be demonstrated that it is impossible to breed selectively, from any stock, a form which shall not breed with another, produced from the same stock; and if we were shown that this must be the necessary and inevitable result of all experiments, i hold that mr. darwin's hypothesis would be utterly shattered. but has this been done? or what is really the state of the case? it is simply that, so far as we have gone yet with our breeding, we have not produced from a common stock two breeds which are not more or less fertile with one another. i do not know that there is a single fact which would justify any one in saying that any degree of sterility has been observed between breeds absolutely known to have been produced by selective breeding from a common stock. on the other hand, i do not know that there is a single fact which can justify any one in asserting that such sterility cannot be produced by proper experimentation. for my own part, i see every reason to believe that it may, and will be so produced. for, as mr. darwin has very properly urged, when we consider the phenomena of sterility, we find they are most capricious; we do not know what it is that the sterility depends on. there are some animals which will not breed in captivity; whether it arises from the simple fact of their being shut up and deprived of their liberty, or not, we do not know, but they certainly will not breed. what an astounding thing this is, to find one of the most important of all functions annihilated by mere imprisonment! so, again, there are cases known of animals which have been thought by naturalists to be undoubted species, which have yielded perfectly fertile hybrids; while there are other species which present what everybody believes to be varieties[ ] which are more or less infertile with one another. there are other cases which are truly extraordinary; there is one, for example, which has been carefully examined,--of two kinds of sea-weed, of which the male element of the one, which we may call a, fertilizes the female element of the other, b; while the male element of b will not fertilize the female element of a; so that, while the former experiment seems to show us that they are _varieties_, the latter leads to the conviction that they are _species_. when we see how capricious and uncertain this sterility is, how unknown the conditions on which it depends, i say that we have no right to affirm that those conditions will not be better understood by and by, and we have no ground for supposing that we may not be able to experiment so as to obtain that crucial result which i mentioned just now. so that though mr. darwin's hypothesis does not completely extricate us from this difficulty at present, we have not the least right to say it will not do so. there is a wide gulf between the thing you cannot explain and the thing that upsets you altogether. there is hardly any hypothesis in this world which has not some fact in connection with it which has not been explained, but that is a very different affair to a fact that entirely opposes your hypothesis; in this case all you can say is, that your hypothesis is in the same position as a good many others. now, as to the third test, that there are no other causes competent to explain the phenomena, i explained to you that one should be able to say of an hypothesis, that no other known causes than those supposed by it are competent to give rise to the phenomena. here, i think, mr. darwin's view is pretty strong. i really believe that the alternative is either darwinism or nothing, for i do not know of any rational conception or theory of the organic universe which has any scientific position at all beside mr. darwin's. i do not know of any proposition that has been put before us with the intention of explaining the phenomena of organic nature, which has in its favour a thousandth part of the evidence which may be adduced in favour of mr. darwin's views. whatever may be the objections to his views, certainly all other theories are absolutely out of court. take the lamarckian hypothesis, for example. lamarck was a great naturalist, and to a certain extent went the right way to work; he argued from what was undoubtedly a true cause of some of the phenomena of organic nature. he said it is a matter of experience that an animal may be modified more or less in consequence of its desires and consequent actions. thus, if a man exercise himself as a blacksmith, his arms will become strong and muscular; such organic modification is a result of this particular action and exercise. lamarck thought that by a very simple supposition based on this truth he could explain the origin of the various animal species: he said, for example, that the short-legged birds which live on fish, had been converted into the long-legged waders by desiring to get the fish without wetting their feathers, and so stretching their legs more and more through successive generations. if lamarck could have shown experimentally, that even races of animals could be produced in this way, there might have been some ground for his speculations. but he could show nothing of the kind, and his hypothesis has pretty well dropped into oblivion, as it deserved to do. i said in an earlier lecture that there are hypotheses and hypotheses, and when people tell you that mr. darwin's strongly-based hypothesis is nothing but a mere modification of lamarck's, you will know what to think of their capacity for forming a judgment on this subject. but you must recollect that when i say i think it is either mr. darwin's hypothesis or nothing; that either we must take his view, or look upon the whole of organic nature as an enigma, the meaning of which is wholly hidden from us; you must understand that i mean that i accept it provisionally, in exactly the same way as i accept any other hypothesis. men of science do not pledge themselves to creeds; they are bound by articles of no sort; there is not a single belief that it is not a bounden duty with them to hold with a light hand and to part with it, cheerfully, the moment it is really proved to be contrary to any fact, great or small. and if in course of time i see good reasons for such a proceeding, i shall have no hesitation in coming before you, and pointing out any change in my opinion without finding the slightest occasion to blush for so doing. so i say that we accept this view as we accept any other, so long as it will help us, and we feel bound to retain it only so long as it will serve our great purpose--the improvement of man's estate and the widening of his knowledge. the moment this, or any other conception, ceases to be useful for these purposes, away with it to the four winds; we care not what becomes of it! but to say truth, although it has been my business to attend closely to the controversies roused by the publication of mr. darwin's book, i think that not one of the enormous mass of objections and obstacles which have been raised is of any very great value, except that sterility case which i brought before you just now. all the rest are misunderstandings of some sort, arising either from prejudice, or want of knowledge, or still more from want of patience and care in reading the work. for you must recollect that it is not a book to be read, with as much ease, as its pleasant style may lead you to imagine. you spin through it as if it were a novel the first time you read it, and think you know all about it; the second time you read it you think you know rather less about it; and the third time, you are amazed to find how little you have really apprehended its vast scope and objects. i can positively say that i never take it up without finding in it some new view, or light, or suggestion that i have not noticed before. that is the best characteristic of a thorough and profound book; and i believe this feature of the "origin of species" explains why so many persons have ventured to pass judgment and criticisms upon it which are by no means worth the paper they are written on. before concluding these lectures there is one point to which i must advert,--though, as mr. darwin has said nothing about man in his book, it concerns myself rather than him;--for i have strongly maintained on sundry occasions that if mr. darwin's views are sound, they apply as much to man as to the lower mammals, seeing that it is perfectly demonstrable that the structural differences which separate man from the apes are not greater than those which separate some apes from others. there cannot be the slightest doubt in the world that the argument which applies to the improvement of the horse from an earlier stock, or of ape from ape, applies to the improvement of man from some simpler and lower stock than man. there is not a single faculty--functional or structural, moral, intellectual, or instinctive,--there is no faculty whatever that is not capable of improvement; there is no faculty whatsoever which does not depend upon structure, and as structure tends to vary, it is capable of being improved. well, i have taken a good deal of pains at various times to prove this, and i have endeavoured to meet the objections of those who maintain, that the structural differences between man and the lower animals are of so vast a character and enormous extent, that even if mr. darwin's views are correct, you cannot imagine this particular modification to take place. it is, in fact, easy matter to prove that, so far as structure is concerned, man differs to no greater extent from the animals which are immediately below him than these do from other members of the same order. upon the other hand, there is no one who estimates more highly than i do the dignity of human nature, and the width of the gulf in intellectual and moral matters, which lies between man and the whole of the lower creation. but i find this very argument brought forward vehemently by some. "you say that man has proceeded from a modification of some lower animal, and you take pains to prove that the structural differences which are said to exist in his brain do not exist at all, and you teach that all functions, intellectual, moral, and others, are the expression or the result, in the long run, of structures, and of the molecular forces which they exert." it is quite true that i do so. "well, but," i am told at once, somewhat triumphantly, "you say in the same breath that there is a great moral and intellectual chasm between man and the lower animals. how is this possible when you declare that moral and intellectual characteristics depend on structure, and yet tell us that there is no such gulf between the structure of man and that of the lower animals?" i think that objection is based upon a misconception of the real relations which exist between structure and function, between mechanism and work. function is the expression of molecular forces and arrangements no doubt; but, does it follow from this, that variation in function so depends upon variation in structure that the former is always exactly proportioned to the latter? if there is no such relation, if the variation in function which follows on a variation in structure, may be enormously greater than the variation of the structure, then, you see, the objection falls to the ground. take a couple of watches--made by the same maker, and as completely alike as possible; set them upon the table, and the function of each--which is its rate of going--will be performed in the same manner, and you shall be able to distinguish no difference between them; but let me take a pair of pincers, and if my hand is steady enough to do it, let me just lightly crush together the bearings of the balance-wheel, or force to a slightly different angle the teeth of the escapement of one of them, and of course you know the immediate result will be that the watch, so treated, from that moment will cease to go. but what proportion is there between the structural alteration and the functional result? is it not perfectly obvious that the alteration is of the minutest kind, yet that slight as it is, it has produced an infinite difference in the performance of the functions of these two instruments? well, now, apply that to the present question. what is it that constitutes and makes man what he is? what is it but his power of language--that language giving him the means of recording his experience--making every generation somewhat wiser than its predecessor,--more in accordance with the established order of the universe? what is it but this power of speech, of recording experience, which enables men to be men--looking before and after and, in some dim sense, understanding the working of this wondrous universe--and which distinguishes man from the whole of the brute world? i say that this functional difference is vast, unfathomable, and truly infinite in its consequences; and i say at the same time, that it may depend upon structural differences which shall be absolutely inappreciable to us with our present means of investigation. what is this very speech that we are talking about? i am speaking to you at this moment, but if you were to alter, in the minutest degree, the proportion of the nervous forces now active in the two nerves which supply the muscles of my glottis, i should become suddenly dumb. the voice is produced only so long as the vocal chords are parallel; and these are parallel only so long as certain muscles contract with exact equality; and that again depends on the equality of action of those two nerves i spoke of. so that a change of the minutest kind in the structure of one of these nerves, or in the structure of the part in which it originates, or of the supply of blood to that part, or of one of the muscles to which it is distributed, might render all of us dumb. but a race of dumb men, deprived of all communication with those who could speak, would be little indeed removed from the brutes. and the moral and intellectual difference between them and ourselves would be practically infinite, though the naturalist should not be able to find a single shadow of even specific structural difference. but let me dismiss this question now, and, in conclusion, let me say that you may go away with it as my mature conviction, that mr. darwin's work is the greatest contribution which has been made to biological science since the publication of the "règne animal" of cuvier, and since that of the "history of development," of von baer. i believe that if you strip it of its theoretical part it still remains one of the greatest encyclopædias of biological doctrine that any one man ever brought forth; and i believe that, if you take it as the embodiment of an hypothesis, it is destined to be the guide of biological and psychological speculation for the next three or four generations. footnotes: [ ] and as i conceive with very good reason; but if any objector urges that we cannot prove that they have been produced by artificial or natural selection, the objection must be admitted--ultra-sceptical as it is. but in science, scepticism is a duty. x on the educational value of the natural history sciences. the subject to which i have to beg your attention during the ensuing hour is "the relation of physiological science to other branches of knowledge." had circumstances permitted of the delivery, in their strict logical order, of that series of discourses of which the present lecture is a member, i should have preceded my friend and colleague mr. henfrey, who addressed you on monday last; but while, for the sake of that order, i must beg you to suppose that this discussion of the educational bearings of biology in general _does_ precede that of special zoology and botany, i am rejoiced to be able to take advantage of the light thus already thrown upon the tendency and methods of physiological science. regarding physiological science then, in its widest sense--as the equivalent of _biology_--the science of individual life--we have to consider in succession: . its position and scope as a branch of knowledge. . its value as a means of mental discipline. . its worth as practical information. and lastly, . at what period it may best be made a branch of education. our conclusions on the first of these heads must depend, of course, upon the nature of the subject-matter of biology; and i think a few preliminary considerations will place before you in a clear light the vast difference which exists between the living bodies with which physiological science is concerned, and the remainder of the universe;--between the phænomena of number and space, of physical and of chemical force, on the one hand, and those of life on the other. the mathematician, the physicist, and the chemist contemplate things in a condition of rest; they look upon a state of equilibrium as that to which all bodies normally tend. the mathematician does not suppose that a quantity will alter, or that a given point in space will change its direction with regard to another point, spontaneously. and it is the same with the physicist. when newton saw the apple fall, he concluded at once that the act of falling was not the result of any power inherent in the apple, but that it was the result of the action of something else on the apple. in a similar manner, all physical force is regarded as the disturbance of an equilibrium to which things tended before its exertion,--to which they will tend again after its cessation. the chemist equally regards chemical change in a body, as the effect of the action of something external to the body changed. a chemical compound once formed would persist for ever, if no alteration took place in surrounding conditions. but to the student of life the aspect of nature is reversed. here, incessant, and, so far as we know, spontaneous change is the rule, rest the exception--the anomaly to be accounted for. living things have no inertia and tend to no equilibrium. permit me, however, to give more force and clearness to these somewhat abstract considerations, by an illustration or two. imagine a vessel full of water, at the ordinary temperature, in an atmosphere saturated with vapour. the _quantity_ and the _figure_ of that water will not change, so far as we know, for ever. suppose a lump of gold be thrown into the vessel--motion and disturbance of figure exactly proportional to the momentum of the gold will take place. but after a time the effects of this disturbance will subside--equilibrium will be restored, and the water will return to its passive state. expose the water to cold--it will solidify--and in so doing its particles will arrange themselves in definite crystalline shapes. but once formed, these crystals change no further. again, substitute for the lump of gold some substance capable of entering into chemical relations with the water:--say, a mass of that substance which is called "protein"--the substance of flesh:--a very considerable disturbance of equilibrium will take place--all sorts of chemical compositions and decompositions will occur; but in the end, as before, the result will be the resumption of a condition of rest. instead of such a mass of _dead_ protein, however, take a particle of _living_ protein--one of those minute microscopic living things which throng our pools, and are known as infusoria--such a creature, for instance, as an euglena, and place it in our vessel of water. it is a round mass provided with a long filament, and except in this peculiarity of shape, presents no appreciable physical or chemical difference whereby it might be distinguished from the particle of dead protein. but the difference in the phænomena to which it will give rise is immense: in the first place it will develope a vast quantity of physical force--cleaving the water in all directions, with considerable rapidity, by means of the vibrations of the long filament or cilium. nor is the amount of chemical energy which the little creature possesses less striking. it is a perfect laboratory in itself, and it will act and react upon the water and the matters contained therein; converting them into new compounds resembling its own substance and, at the same time, giving up portions of its own substance which have become effete. furthermore, the euglena will increase in size; but this increase is by no means unlimited, as the increase of a crystal might be. after it has grown to a certain extent it divides, and each portion assumes the form of the original and proceeds to repeat the process of growth and division. nor is this all. for after a series of such divisions and subdivisions, these minute points assume a totally new form, lose their long tails--round themselves, and secrete a sort of envelope or box, in which they remain shut up for a time, eventually to resume, directly or indirectly, their primitive mode of existence. now, so far as we know, there is no natural limit to the existence of the euglena, or of any other living germ. a living species once launched into existence tends to live for ever. consider how widely different this living particle is from the dead atoms with which the physicist and chemist have to do! the particle of gold falls to the bottom and rests--the particle of dead protein decomposes and disappears--it also rests: but the _living_ protein mass neither tends to exhaustion of its forces nor to any permanency of form, but is essentially distinguished as a disturber of equilibrium so far as force is concerned,--as undergoing continual metamorphosis and change, in point of form. tendency to equilibrium of force, and to permanency of form then, are the characters of that portion of the universe which does not live--the domain of the chemist and physicist. tendency to disturb existing equilibrium,--to take on forms which succeed one another in definite cycles, is the character of the living world. what is the cause of this wonderful difference between the dead particle and the living particle of matter appearing in other respects identical? that difference to which we give the name of life? i, for one, cannot tell you. it may be that, by and bye, philosophers will discover some higher laws of which the facts of life are particular cases--very possibly they will find out some bond between physico-chemical phænomena on the one hand, and vital phænomena on the other. at present, however, we assuredly know of none; and i think we shall exercise a wise humility in confessing that, for us at least, this successive assumption of different states--(external conditions remaining the same)--this _spontaneity of action_--if i may use a term which implies more than i would be answerable for--which constitutes so vast and plain a practical distinction between living bodies and those which do not live, is an ultimate fact; indicating as such, the existence of a broad line of demarcation between the subject-matter of biological and that of all other sciences. for i would have it understood that this simple euglena is the type of _all_ living things, so far as the distinction between these and inert matter is concerned. that cycle of changes, which is constituted by perhaps not more than two or three steps in the euglena, is as clearly manifested in the multitudinous stages through which the germ of an oak or of a man passes. whatever forms the living being may take on, whether simple or complex,--_production_, _growth_, _reproduction_,--are the phænomena which distinguish it from that which does not live. if this be true, it is clear that the student, in passing from the physico-chemical to the physiological sciences, enters upon a totally new order of facts; and it will next be for us to consider how far these new facts involve _new_ methods, or require a modification of those with which he is already acquainted. now a great deal is said about the peculiarity of the scientific method in general, and of the different methods which are pursued in the different sciences. the mathematics are said to have one special method; physics another, biology a third, and so forth. for my own part, i must confess that i do not understand this phraseology. so far as i can arrive at any clear comprehension of the matter, science is not, as many would seem to suppose, a modification of the black art, suited to the tastes of the nineteenth century, and flourishing mainly in consequence of the decay of the inquisition. science is, i believe, nothing but _trained and organized common sense_, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only so far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club. the primary power is the same in each case, and perhaps the untutored savage has the more brawny arm of the two. the _real_ advantage lies in the point and polish of the swordsman's weapon; in the trained eye quick to spy out the weakness of the adversary; in the ready hand prompt to follow it on the instant. but after all, the sword exercise is only the hewing and poking of the clubman developed and perfected. so, the vast results obtained by science are won by no mystical faculties, by no mental processes, other than those which are practised by every one of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. a detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that by which cuvier restored the extinct animals of montmartre from fragments of their bones. nor does that process of induction and deduction by which a lady, finding a stain of a peculiar kind upon her dress, concludes that somebody has upset the inkstand thereon, differ in any way, in kind, from that by which adams and leverrier discovered a new planet. the man of science, in fact, simply uses with scrupulous exactness, the methods which we all, habitually and at every moment, use carelessly; and the man of business must as much avail himself of the scientific method--must be as truly a man of science--as the veriest book-worm of us all; though i have no doubt that the man of business will find himself out to be a philosopher with as much surprise as m. jourdain exhibited when he discovered that he had been all his life talking prose. if, however, there be no real difference between the methods of science and those of common life, it would seem on the face of the matter highly improbable that there should be any difference between the methods of the different sciences; nevertheless, it is constantly taken for granted, that there is a very wide difference between the physiological and other sciences in point of method. in the first place it is said--and i take this point first, because the imputation is too frequently admitted by physiologists themselves--that biology differs from the physico-chemical and mathematical sciences, in being "inexact." now, this phrase "inexact" must refer either to the _methods_ or to the _results_ of physiological science. it cannot be correct to apply it to the methods; for, as i hope to show you by and bye, these are identical in all sciences, and whatever is true of physiological method is true of physical and mathematical method. is it then the _results_ of biological science which are "inexact"? i think not. if i say that respiration is performed by the lungs; that digestion is effected in the stomach; that the eye is the organ of sight; that the jaws of a vertebrated animal never open sideways, but always up and down; while those of an annulose animal always open sideways, and never up and down--i am enumerating propositions which are as exact as anything in euclid. how then has this notion of the inexactness of biological science come about? i believe from two causes: first, because, in consequence of the great complexity of the science and the multitude of interfering conditions, we are very often only enabled to predict approximately what will occur under given circumstances; and secondly, because, on account of the comparative youth of the physiological sciences, a great many of their laws are still imperfectly worked out. but in an educational point of view, it is most important to distinguish between the essence of a science and the accidents which surround it; and essentially, the methods and results of physiology are as exact as those of physics or mathematics. it is said that the physiological method is especially _comparative_[ ]; and this dictum also finds favour in the eyes of many. i should be sorry to suggest that the speculators on scientific classification have been misled by the accident of the name of one leading branch of biology--_comparative anatomy_; but i would ask whether _comparison_, and that classification which is the result of comparison, are not the essence of every science whatsoever? how is it possible to discover a relation of cause and effect of _any_ kind without comparing a series of cases together in which the supposed cause and effect occur singly, or combined? so far from comparison being in any way peculiar to biological science, it is, i think, the essence of every science. a speculative philosopher again tells us that the biological sciences are distinguished by being sciences of observation and not of experiment![ ] of all the strange assertions into which speculation without practical acquaintance with a subject may lead even an able man, i think this is the very strangest. physiology not an experimental science! why, there is not a function of a single organ in the body which has not been determined wholly and solely by experiment? how did harvey determine the nature of the circulation, except by experiment? how did sir charles bell determine the functions of the roots of the spinal nerves, save by experiment? how do we know the use of a nerve at all, except by experiment? nay, how do you know even that your eye is your seeing apparatus, unless you make the experiment of shutting it; or that your ear is your hearing apparatus, unless you close it up and thereby discover that you become deaf? it would really be much more true to say that physiology is _the_ experimental science _par excellence_ of all sciences; that in which there is least to be learnt by mere observation, and that which affords the greatest field for the exercise of those faculties which characterize the experimental philosopher. i confess, if any one were to ask me for a model application of the logic of experiment, i should know no better work to put into his hands than bernard's late researches on the functions of the liver.[ ] not to give this lecture a too controversial tone however, i must only advert to one more doctrine, held by a thinker of our own age and country, whose opinions are worthy of all respect. it is, that the biological sciences differ from all others, inasmuch as in _them_, classification takes place by type and not by definition.[ ] it is said, in short, that a natural-history class is not capable of being defined--that the class rosaceæ, for instance, or the class of fishes, is not accurately and absolutely definable, inasmuch as its members will present exceptions to every possible definition; and that the members of the class are united together only by the circumstance that they are all more like some imaginary average rose or average fish, than they resemble anything else. but here, as before, i think the distinction has arisen entirely from confusing a transitory imperfection with an essential character. so long as our information concerning them is imperfect, we class all objects together according to resemblances which we _feel_, but cannot _define_: we group them round _types_, in short. thus, if you ask an ordinary person what kinds of animals there are, he will probably say, beasts, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, &c. ask him to define a beast from a reptile, and he cannot do it; but he says, things like a cow or a horse are beasts, and things like a frog or a lizard are reptiles. you see _he does_ class by type, and not by definition. but how does this classification differ from that of the scientific zoologist? how does the meaning of the scientific class-name of "mammalia" differ from the unscientific of "beasts"? why, exactly because the former depends on a definition, the latter on a type. the class mammalia is scientifically defined as "all animals which have a vertebrated skeleton and suckle their young." here is no reference to type, but a definition rigorous enough for a geometrician. and such is the character which every scientific naturalist recognizes as that to which his classes must aspire--knowing, as he does, that classification by type is simply an acknowledgment of ignorance and a temporary device. so much in the way of negative argument as against the reputed differences between biological and other methods. no such differences, i believe, really exist. the subject-matter of biological science is different from that of other sciences, but the methods of all are identical; and these methods are-- . _observation_ of facts--including under this head that _artificial observation_ which is called _experiment_. . that process of tying up similar facts into bundles, ticketed and ready for use, which is called _comparison_ and _classification_,--the results of the process, the ticketed bundles, being named _general propositions_. . _deduction_, which takes us from the general proposition to facts again--teaches us, if i may so say, to anticipate from the ticket what is inside the bundle. and finally-- . _verification_, which is the process of ascertaining whether, in point of fact, our anticipation is a correct one. such are the methods of all science whatsoever; but perhaps you will permit me to give you an illustration of their employment in the science of life; and i will take as a special case, the establishment of the doctrine of the _circulation of the blood_. in this case, _simple observation_ yields us a knowledge of the existence of the blood from some accidental hæmorrhage, we will say: we may even grant that it informs us of the localisation of this blood in particular vessels, the heart, &c., from some accidental cut or the like. it teaches also the existence of a pulse in various parts of the body, and acquaints us with the structure of the heart and vessels. here, however, _simple observation_ stops, and we must have recourse to _experiment_. you tie a vein, and you find that the blood accumulates on the side of the ligature opposite the heart. you tie an artery, and you find that the blood accumulates on the side near the heart. open the chest, and you see the heart contracting with great force. make openings into its principal cavities, and you will find that all the blood flows out, and no more pressure is exerted on either side of the arterial or venous ligature. now all these facts, taken together, constitute the evidence that the blood is propelled by the heart through the arteries, and returns by the veins--that, in short, the blood circulates. suppose our experiments and observations have been made on horses, then we group and ticket them into a general proposition, thus:--_all horses have a circulation of their blood_. henceforward a horse is a sort of indication or label, telling us where we shall find a peculiar series of phænomena called the circulation of the blood. here is our _general proposition_ then. how and when are we justified in making our next step--a _deduction_ from it? suppose our physiologist, whose experience is limited to horses, meets with a zebra for the first time,--will he suppose that his generalization holds good for zebras also? that depends very much on his turn of mind. but we will suppose him to be a bold man. he will say, "the zebra is certainly not a horse, but it is very like one,--so like, that it must be the 'ticket' or mark of a blood-circulation also; and, i conclude that the zebra has a circulation." that is a deduction, a very fair deduction, but by no means to be considered scientifically secure. this last quality in fact can only be given by _verification_--that is, by making a zebra the subject of all the experiments performed on the horse. of course in the present case the _deduction_ would be _confirmed_ by this process of verification, and the result would be, not merely a positive widening of knowledge, but a fair increase of confidence in the truth of one's generalizations in other cases. thus, having settled the point in the zebra and horse, our philosopher would have great confidence in the existence of a circulation in the ass. nay, i fancy most persons would excuse him, if in this case he did not take the trouble to go through the process of verification at all; and it would not be without a parallel in the history of the human mind, if our imaginary physiologist now maintained that he was acquainted with asinine circulation _à priori_. however, if i might impress any caution upon your minds, it is, the utterly conditional nature of all our knowledge,--the danger of neglecting the process of verification under any circumstances; and the film upon which we rest, the moment our deductions carry us beyond the reach of this great process of verification. there is no better instance of this than is afforded by the history of our knowledge of the circulation of the blood in the animal kingdom until the year . in every animal possessing a circulation at all, which had been observed up to that time, the current of the blood was known to take one definite and invariable direction. now, there is a class of animals called _ascidians_, which possess a heart and a circulation, and up to the period of which i speak, no one would have dreamt of questioning the propriety of the deduction, that these creatures have a circulation in one direction; nor would any one have thought it worth while to verify the point. but, in that year, m. von hasselt happening to examine a transparent animal of this class, found to his infinite surprise, that after the heart had beat a certain number of times, it stopped, and then began beating the opposite way--so as to reverse the course of the current, which returned by and bye to its original direction. i have myself timed the heart of these little animals. i found it as regular as possible in its periods of reversal: and i know no spectacle in the animal kingdom more wonderful than that which it presents--all the more wonderful that to this day it remains an unique fact, peculiar to this class among the whole animated world. at the same time i know of no more striking case of the necessity of the _verification_ of even those deductions which seem founded on the widest and safest inductions. such are the methods of biology--methods which are obviously identical with those of all other sciences, and therefore wholly incompetent to form the ground of any distinction between it and them.[ ] but i shall be asked at once, do you mean to say that there is no difference between the habit of mind of a mathematician and that of a naturalist? do you imagine that laplace might have been put into the jardin des plantes, and cuvier into the observatory, with equal advantage to the progress of the sciences they professed? to which i would reply, that nothing could be further from my thoughts. but different habits and various special tendencies of two sciences do not imply different methods. the mountaineer and the man of the plains have very different habits of progression, and each would be at a loss in the other's place; but the method of progression, by putting one leg before the other, is the same in each case. every step of each is a combination of a lift and a push; but the mountaineer lifts more and the lowlander pushes more. and i think the case of two sciences resembles this. i do not question for a moment, that while the mathematician is busy with deductions _from_ general propositions, the biologist is more especially occupied with observation, comparison, and those processes which lead _to_ general propositions. all i wish to insist upon is, that this difference depends not on any fundamental distinction in the sciences themselves, but on the accidents of their subject-matter, of their relative complexity, and consequent relative perfection. the mathematician deals with two properties of objects only, number and extension, and all the inductions he wants have been formed and finished ages ago. he is occupied now with nothing but deduction and verification. the biologist deals with a vast number of properties of objects, and his inductions will not be completed, i fear, for ages to come; but when they are, his science will be as deductive and as exact as the mathematics themselves. such is the relation of biology to those sciences which deal with objects having fewer properties than itself. but as the student in reaching biology looks back upon sciences of a less complex and therefore more perfect nature, so on the other hand does he look forward to other more complex and less perfect branches of knowledge. biology deals only with living beings as isolated things--treats only of the life of the individual: but there is a higher division of science still, which considers living beings as aggregates--which deals with the relation of living beings one to another--the science which _observes_ men--whose _experiments_ are made by nations one upon another, in battle-fields--whose _general propositions_ are embodied in history, morality, and religion--whose _deductions_ lead to our happiness or our misery,--and whose _verifications_ so often come too late, and serve only "to point a moral or adorn a tale"-- i mean the science of society or _sociology_. i think it is one of the grandest features of biology, that it occupies this central position in human knowledge. there is no side of the human mind which physiological study leaves uncultivated. connected by innumerable ties with abstract science, physiology is yet in the most intimate relation with humanity; and by teaching us that law and order, and a definite scheme of development, regulate even the strangest and wildest manifestations of individual life, she prepares the student to look for a goal even amidst the erratic wanderings of mankind, and to believe that history offers something more than an entertaining chaos--a journal of a toilsome, tragi-comic march nowhither. the preceding considerations have, i hope, served to indicate the replies which befit the two first of the questions which i set before you at starting, viz. what is the range and position of physiological science as a branch of knowledge, and what is its value as a means of mental discipline? its _subject-matter_ is a large moiety of the universe--its _position_ is midway between the physico-chemical and the social sciences. its _value_ as a branch of discipline is partly that which it has in common with all sciences--the training and strengthening of common sense; partly that which is more peculiar to itself--the great exercise which it affords to the faculties of observation and comparison; and i may add, the _exactness_ of knowledge which it requires on the part of those among its votaries who desire to extend its boundaries. if what has been said as to the position and scope of biology be correct, our third question--what is the practical value of physiological instruction?--might, one would think, be left to answer itself. on other grounds even, were mankind deserving of the title "rational," which they arrogate to themselves, there can be no question that they would consider as the most necessary of all branches of instruction for themselves and for their children--that which professes to acquaint them with the conditions of the existence they prize so highly--which teaches them how to avoid disease and to cherish health, in themselves and those who are dear to them. i am addressing, i imagine, an audience of educated persons; and yet i dare venture to assert, that with the exception of those of my hearers who may chance to have received a medical education, there is not one who could tell me what is the meaning and use of an act which he performs a score of times every minute, and whose suspension would involve his immediate death;--i mean the act of breathing--or who could state in precise terms why it is that a confined atmosphere is injurious to health. the _practical value_ of physiological knowledge! why is it that educated men can be found to maintain that a slaughter-house in the midst of a great city is rather a good thing than otherwise?--that mothers persist in exposing the largest possible amount of surface of their children to the cold, by the absurd style of dress they adopt, and then marvel at the peculiar dispensation of providence, which removes their infants by bronchitis and gastric fever? why is it that quackery rides rampant over the land; and that not long ago, one of the largest public rooms in this great city could be filled by an audience gravely listening to the reverend expositor of the doctrine--that the simple physiological phenomena known as spirit-rapping, table-turning, phreno-magnetism, and by i know not what other absurd and inappropriate names, are due to the direct and personal agency of satan? why is all this, except from the utter ignorance as to the simplest laws of their own animal life, which prevails among even the most highly educated persons in this country? but there are other branches of biological science, besides physiology proper, whose practical influence, though less obvious, is not, as i believe, less certain. i have heard educated men speak with an ill-disguised contempt of the studies of the naturalist, and ask, not without a shrug, "what is the use of knowing all about these miserable animals--what bearing has it on human life?" i will endeavour to answer that question. i take it that all will admit there is definite government of this universe--that its pleasures and pains are not scattered at random, but are distributed in accordance with orderly and fixed laws, and that it is only in accordance with all we know of the rest of the world, that there should be an agreement between one portion of the sensitive creation and another in these matters. surely then it interests us to know the lot of other animal creatures--however far below us, they are still the sole created things which share with us the capability of pleasure and the susceptibility to pain. i cannot but think that he who finds a certain proportion of pain and evil inseparably woven up in the life of the very worms, will bear his own share with more courage and submission; and will, at any rate, view with suspicion those weakly amiable theories of the divine government, which would have us believe pain to be an oversight and a mistake,--to be corrected by and bye. on the other hand, the predominance of happiness among living things--their lavish beauty--the secret and wonderful harmony which pervades them all, from the highest to the lowest, are equally striking refutations of that modern manichean doctrine, which exhibits the world as a slave-mill, worked with many tears, for mere utilitarian ends. there is yet another way in which natural history may, i am convinced, take a profound hold upon practical life,--and that is, by its influence over our finer feelings, as the greatest of all sources of that pleasure which is derivable from beauty. i do not pretend that natural-history knowledge, as such, can increase our sense of the beautiful in natural objects. i do not suppose that the dead soul of peter bell, of whom the great poet of nature says,-- "a primrose by the river's brim, a yellow primrose was to him,-- and it was nothing more,"-- would have been a whit roused from its apathy, by the information that the primrose is a dicotyledonous exogen, with a monopetalous corolla and central placentation. but i advocate natural-history knowledge from this point of view, because it would lead us to _seek_ the beauties of natural objects, instead of trusting to chance to force them on our attention. to a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or sea-side stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall. teach him something of natural history, and you place in his hands a catalogue of those which are worth turning round. surely our innocent pleasures are not so abundant in this life, that we can afford to despise this or any other source of them. we should fear being banished for our neglect to that limbo, where the great florentine tells us are those who during this life "wept when they might be joyful." but i shall be trespassing unwarrantably on your kindness, if i do not proceed at once to my last point--the time at which physiological science should first form a part of the curriculum of education. the distinction between the teaching of the facts of a science as instruction, and the teaching it systematically as knowledge, has already been placed before you in a previous lecture: and it appears to me, that, as with other sciences, the _common facts_ of biology--the uses of parts of the body--the names and habits of the living creatures which surround us--may be taught with advantage to the youngest child. indeed, the avidity of children for this kind of knowledge, and the comparative ease with which they retain it, is something quite marvellous. i doubt whether any toy would be so acceptable to young children as a vivarium, of the same kind as, but of course on a smaller scale than, those admirable devices in the zoological gardens. on the other hand, systematic teaching in biology cannot be attempted with success until the student has attained to a certain knowledge of physics and chemistry: for though the phænomena of life are dependent neither on physical nor on chemical, but on vital forces, yet they result in all sorts of physical and chemical changes, which can only be judged by their own laws. and now to sum up in a few words the conclusions to which i hope you see reason to follow me. biology needs no apologist when she demands a place--and a prominent place--in any scheme of education worthy of the name. leave out the physiological sciences from your curriculum, and you launch the student into the world, undisciplined in that science whose subject-matter would best develope his powers of observation; ignorant of facts of the deepest importance for his own and others' welfare; blind to the richest sources of beauty in god's creation; and unprovided with that belief in a living law, and an order manifesting itself in and through endless change and variety, which might serve to check and moderate that phase of despair through which, if he take an earnest interest in social problems, he will assuredly sooner or later pass. finally, one word for myself. i have not hesitated to speak strongly where i have felt strongly; and i am but too conscious that the indicative and imperative moods have too often taken the place of the more becoming subjunctive and conditional. i feel, therefore, how necessary it is to beg you to forget the personality of him who has thus ventured to address you, and to consider only the truth or error in what has been said. footnotes: [ ] "in the third place, we have to review the method of comparison, which is so specially adapted to the study of living bodies, and by which, above all others, that study must be advanced. in astronomy, this method is necessarily inapplicable; and it is not till we arrive at chemistry that this third means of investigation can be used, and then only in subordination to the two others. it is in the study, both statical and dynamical, of living bodies that it first acquires its full development; and its use elsewhere can be only through its application here."--_comte's positive philosophy_, translated by miss martineau. vol. i. p. . by what method does m. comte suppose that the equality or inequality of forces and quantities and the dissimilarity or similarity of forms--points of some slight importance not only in astronomy and physics, but even in mathematics,--are ascertained, if not by comparison? [ ] "proceeding to the second class of means,--experiment cannot but be less and less decisive, in proportion to the complexity of the phænomena to be explored; and therefore we saw this resource to be less effectual in chemistry than in physics: and we now find that it is eminently useful in chemistry in comparison with physiology. _in fact, the nature of the phænomena seems to offer almost insurmountable impediments to any extensive and prolific application of such a procedure in biology._"--comte, vol. i. p. . m. comte, as his manner is, contradicts himself two pages further on, but that will hardly relieve him from the responsibility of such a paragraph as the above. [ ] nouvelle fonction du foie considéré comme organe producteur de matière sucrée chez l'homme et les animaux, par m. claude bernard. [ ] "_natural groups given by type, not by definition...._ the class is steadily fixed, though not precisely limited; it is given, though not circumscribed; it is determined, not by a boundary-line without, but by a central point within; not by what it strictly excludes, but what it eminently includes; by an example, not by a precept; in short, instead of definition we have a _type_ for our director. a type is an example of any class, for instance, a species of a genus, which is considered as eminently possessing the characters of the class. all the species which have a greater affinity with this type-species than with any others, form the genus, and are ranged about it, deviating from it in various directions and different degrees."--_whewell, the philosophy of the inductive sciences_, vol. i. pp. - . [ ] save for the pleasure of doing so, i need hardly point out my obligations to mr. j. s. mill's "system of logic," in this view of scientific method. xi on the persistent types of animal life. the successive modifications which the views of physical geologists have undergone since the infancy of their science, with regard to the amount and the nature of the changes which the crust of the globe has suffered, have all tended in one direction, viz. towards the establishment of the belief, that throughout that vast series of ages which was occupied by the deposition of the stratified rocks, and which may be called "geological time," (to distinguish it from the "historical time" which followed, and the "pre-geological time," which preceded it) the intensity and the character of the physical forces which have been in operation, have varied within but narrow limits; so that, even in silurian or cambrian times, the aspect of physical nature must have been much what it is now. this uniformitarian view of telluric conditions, so far as geological time is concerned, is, however, perfectly consistent with the notion of a totally different state of things in antecedent epochs, and the strongest advocate of such "physical uniformity" during the time of which we have a record might, with perfect consistency, hold the so-called "nebular hypothesis," or any other view involving the conception of a long series of states very different from that which we now know, and whose succession occupied pre-geological time. the doctrine of physical uniformity and that of physical progression are therefore perfectly consistent, if we regard geological time as having the same relation to pre-geological time as historical time has to it. the accepted doctrines of palæontology are by no means in harmony with these tendencies of physical geology. it is generally believed that there is a vast contrast between the ancient and the modern organic worlds--it is incessantly assumed that we are acquainted with the beginning of life, and with the primal manifestation of each of its typical forms: nor does the fact that the discoveries of every year oblige the holders of these views to change their ground, appear sensibly to affect the tenacity of their adhesion. without at all denying the considerable positive differences which really exist between the ancient and the modern forms of life, and leaving the negative ones to be met by the other lines of argument, an impartial examination of the facts revealed by palæontology seems to show that these differences and contrasts have been greatly exaggerated. thus, of some two hundred known orders of plants, not one is exclusively fossil. among animals, there is not a single totally extinct class; and of the orders, at the outside not more than seven per cent. are unrepresented in the existing creation. again, certain well marked forms of living beings have existed through enormous epochs, surviving not only the changes of physical conditions, but persisting comparatively unaltered, while other forms of life have appeared and disappeared. some forms may be termed "persistent types" of life; and examples of them are abundant enough in both the animal and the vegetable worlds. among plants, for instance, ferns, club mosses, and _coniferæ_, some of them apparently generically identical with those now living, are met with as far back as the carboniferous epoch; the cone of the oolitic _araucaria_ is hardly distinguishable from that of existing species; a species of _pinus_ has been discovered in the purbecks, and a walnut (_juglans_) in the cretaceous rocks.[ ] all these are types of vegetable structure, abounding at the present day; and surely it is a most remarkable fact to find them persisting with so little change through such vast epochs. every sub-kingdom of animals yields instances of the same kind. the _globigerina_ of the atlantic soundings is identical with the cretaceous species of the same genus; and the casts of lower silurian _foraminifera_, recently described by ehrenberg, assure us of the very close resemblance between the oldest and the newest forms of many of the _protozoa_. among the _coelenterata_, the tabulate corals of the silurian epoch are wonderfully like the millepores of our own seas, as every one may convince himself who compares _heliolites_ with _heliopora_. turning to the _mollusca_, the genera _crania_, _discina_, _lingula_, have persisted from the silurian epoch to the present day, with so little change, that very competent malacologists are sometimes puzzled to distinguish the ancient from the modern species. _nautili_ have a like range, and the shell of the liassic _loligo_ is similar to that of the "squid" of our own seas. among the _annulosa_, the carboniferous insects are in several cases referable to existing genera, as are the _arachnida_, the highest group of which, the scorpions, is represented in the coal by a genus differing from its living congeners only in the disposition of its eyes. the vertebrate sub-kingdom furnishes many examples of the same kind. the _ganoidei_ and _elasmobranchii_ are known to have persisted from at least the middle of the palæozoic epoch to our own times, without exhibiting a greater amount of deviation from the typical characters of these orders, than may be found within their limits at the present day. among the _reptilia_, the highest group, that of the _crocodilia_, was represented at the beginning of the mesozoic epoch, if not earlier, by species identical in the essential character of their organization with those now living, and presenting differences only in such points as the form of the articular faces of their vertebræ, in the extent to which the nasal passages are separated from the mouth by bone, and in the proportions of the limbs. even such imperfect knowledge as we possess of the ancient mammalian fauna leads to the belief that certain of its types, such as that of the _marsupialia_, have persisted with no greater change through as vast a lapse of time. it is difficult to comprehend the meaning of such facts as these, if we suppose that each species of animal and plant, or each great type of organization, was formed and placed upon the surface of the globe at long intervals by a distinct act of creative power; and it is well to recollect that such an assumption is as unsupported by tradition or revelation as it is opposed to the general analogy of nature. if, on the other hand, we view "persistent types," in relation to that hypothesis which supposes the species of living beings living at any time to be the result of the gradual modification of pre-existing species--a hypothesis which though unproven, and sadly damaged by some of its supporters, is yet the only one to which physiology lends any countenance--their existence would seem to show, that the amount of modification which living beings have undergone during geological time is but very small in relation to the whole series of changes which they have suffered. in fact, palæontology and physical geology are in perfect harmony, and coincide in indicating that all we know of the conditions in our world during geological time, is but the last term of a vast and, so far as our present knowledge reaches, unrecorded progression. footnotes: [ ] i state these facts on the authority of my friend dr. hooker.--t. h. h. xii time and life. mr. darwin's "origin of species" everyone knows that that superficial film of the earth's substance, hardly ten miles thick, which is accessible to human investigation, is composed for the most part of beds or strata of stone, the consolidated muds and sands of former seas and lakes, which have been deposited one upon the other, and hence are the older the deeper they lie. these multitudinous strata present such resemblances and differences among themselves that they are capable of classification into groups or formations, and these formations again are brigaded together into still larger assemblages, called by the older geologists, primary, secondary, and tertiary; by the moderns, palæozoic, mesozoic, and cainozoic: the basis of the former nomenclature being the relative age of the groups of strata; that of the latter, the kinds of living forms contained in them. though but a film if compared with the total diameter of our planet, the total series of formations is vast indeed when measured by any human standard, and, as all action implies time, so are we compelled to regard these mineral masses as a measure of the time which has elapsed during their accumulation. the amount of the time which they represent is, of course, in the inverse proportion of the intensity of the forces which have been in operation. if, in the ancient world, mud and sand accumulated on sea-bottoms at tenfold their present rate, it is clear that a bed of mud or sand ten feet thick would have been formed then in the same time as a stratum of similar materials one foot thick would be formed now, and _vice versâ_. at the outset of his studies, therefore, the physical geologist had to choose between two hypotheses; either, throughout the ages which are represented by the accumulated strata, and which we may call _geologic time_, the forces of nature have operated with much the same average intensity as at present, and hence the lapse of time which they represent must be something prodigious and inconceivable, or, in the primeval epochs, the natural powers were infinitely more intense than now, and hence the time through which they acted to produce the effects we see was comparatively short. the earlier geologists adopted the latter view almost with one consent. for they had little knowledge of the present workings of nature, and they read the records of geologic time as a child reads the history of rome or greece, and fancies that antiquity was grand, heroic, and unlike the present because it is unlike his little experience of the present. even so the earlier observers were moved with wonder at the seeming contrast between the ancient and the present order of nature. the elemental forces seemed to have been grander and more energetic in primeval times. upheaved and contorted, rifted and fissured, pierced by dykes of molten matter or worn away over vast areas by aqueous action, the older rocks appeared to bear witness to a state of things far different from that exhibited by the peaceful epoch on which the lot of man has fallen. but by degrees thoughtful students of geology have been led to perceive that the earliest efforts of nature have been by no means the grandest. alps and andes are children of yesterday when compared with snowdon and the cumberland hills; and the so-called glacial epoch--that in which perhaps the most extensive physical changes of which any record remains occurred--is the last and the newest of the revolutions of the globe. and in proportion as physical geography--which is the geology of our own epoch--has grown into a science, and the present order of nature has been ransacked to find what, _hibernicè_, we may call precedents for the phenomena of the past, so the apparent necessity of supposing the past to be widely different from the present has diminished. the transporting power of the greatest deluge which can be imagined sinks into insignificance beside that of the slowly floating, slowly melting iceberg, or the glacier creeping along at its snail's pace of a yard a day. the study of the deltas of the nile, the ganges, and the mississippi has taught us how slow is the wearing action of water, how vast its effects when time is allowed for its operation. the reefs of the pacific, the deep-sea soundings of the atlantic, show that it is to the slow-growing coral and to the imperceptible animalcule, which lives its brief space and then adds its tiny shell to the muddy cairn left by its brethren and ancestors, that we must look as the agents in the formation of limestone and chalk, and not to hypothetical oceans saturated with calcareous salts and suddenly depositing them. and while the inquirer has thus learnt that existing forces--_give them time_--are competent to produce all the physical phenomena we meet with in the rocks, so, on the other side, the study of the marks left in the ancient strata by past physical actions shows that these were similar to those which now obtain. ancient beaches are met with whose pebbles are like those found on modern shores; the hardened sea-sands of the oldest epochs show ripple-marks, such as may now be found on every sandy coast; nay, more, the pits left by ancient rain-drops prove that even in the very earliest ages, the "bow in the clouds" must have adorned the palæozoic firmament. so that if we could reverse the legend of the seven sleepers,--if we could sleep back through the past, and awake a million ages before our own epoch, in the midst of the earliest geologic times,--there is no reason to believe that sea, or sky, or the aspect of the land would warn us of the marvellous retrospection. such are the beliefs which modern physical geologists hold, or, at any rate, tend towards holding. but, in so doing, it is obvious that they by no means prejudge the question, as to what the physical condition of the globe may have been before our chapters of its history begin, in what may be called (with that licence which is implied in the often-used term "prehistoric epoch") "pregeologic time." the views indicated, in fact, are not only quite consistent with the hypothesis, that, in the still earlier period referred to, the condition of our world was very different; but they may be held by some to necessitate that hypothesis. the physical philosopher who is accurately acquainted with the velocity of a cannon-ball, and the precise character of the line which it traverses for a yard of its course, is necessitated by what he knows of the laws of nature to conclude that it came from a certain spot, whence it was impelled by a certain force, and that it has followed a certain trajectory. in like manner, the student of physical geology, who fully believes in the uniformity of the general condition of the earth through geologic time, may feel compelled by what he knows of causation, and by the general analogy of nature, to suppose that our solar system was once a nebulous mass, that it gradually condensed, that it broke up into that wonderful group of harmoniously rolling balls we call planets and satellites, and that then each of these underwent its appointed metamorphosis, until at last our own share of the cosmic vapour passed into that condition in which we first meet with definite records of its state, and in which it has since, with comparatively little change, remained. the doctrine of uniformity and the doctrine of progression are, therefore, perfectly consistent; perhaps, indeed, they might be shown to be necessarily connected with one another. if, however, the condition of the world, which has obtained throughout geologic time, is but the sequel to a vast series of changes which took place in pregeologic time, then it seems not unlikely that the duration of this latter is to that of the former as the vast extent of geologic time is to the length of the brief epoch we call the historical period; and that even the oldest rocks are records of an epoch almost infinitely remote from that which could have witnessed the first shaping of our globe. it is probable that no modern geologist would hesitate to admit the general validity of these reasonings when applied to the physics of his subject, whence it is the more remarkable that the moment the question changes from one of physics and chemistry to one of natural history, scientific opinions and the popular prejudices, which reflect them in a distorted form, undergo a sudden metamorphosis. geologists and palæontologists write about the "beginning of life" and the "first-created forms of living beings," as if they were the most familiar things in the world; and even cautious writers seem to be on quite friendly terms with the "archetype" whereby the creator was guided "amidst the crash of falling worlds." just as it used to be imagined that the ancient universe was physically opposed to the present, so it is still widely assumed that the living population of our globe, whether animal or vegetable, in the older epochs, exhibited forms so strikingly contrasted with those which we see around us, that there is hardly anything in common between the two. it is constantly tacitly assumed that we have before us all the forms of life which have ever existed; and though the progress of knowledge, yearly and almost monthly, drives the defenders of that position from their ground, they entrench themselves in the new line of defences as if nothing had happened, and proclaim that the _new_ beginning is the _real_ beginning. * * * * * without for an instant denying or endeavouring to soften down the considerable positive differences (the negative ones are met by another line of argument) which undoubtedly obtain between the ancient and the modern worlds of life, we believe they have been vastly overstated and exaggerated, and this belief is based upon certain facts whose value does not seem to have been fully appreciated, though they have long been more or less completely known. the multitudinous kinds of animals and plants, both recent and fossil, are, as is well known, arranged by zoologists and botanists, in accordance with their natural relations, into groups which receive the names of sub-kingdoms, classes, orders, families, genera and species. now it is a most remarkable circumstance that, viewed on the great scale, living beings have differed so little throughout all geologic time that there is no sub-kingdom and no class wholly extinct or without living representatives. if we descend to the smaller groups, we find that the number of orders of plants is about two hundred; and i have it on the best authority that not one of these is exclusively fossil; so that there is absolutely not a single extinct ordinal type of vegetable life; and it is not until we descend to the next group, or the families, that we find types which are wholly extinct. the number of orders of animals, on the other hand, may be reckoned at a hundred and twenty, or thereabouts, and of these, eight or nine have no living representatives. the proportion of extinct ordinal types of animals to the existing types, therefore, does not exceed seven per cent.--a marvellously small proportion when we consider the vastness of geologic time. another class of considerations--of a different kind, it is true, but tending in the same direction--seems to have been overlooked. not only is it true that the general plan of construction of animals and plants has been the same in all recorded time as at present, but there are particular kinds of animals and plants which have existed throughout vast epochs, sometimes through the whole range of recorded time, with very little change. by reason of this persistency, the typical form of such a kind might be called a "persistent type," in contradistinction to those types which have appeared for but a short time in the course of the world's history. examples of these persistent types are abundant enough in both the vegetable and the animal kingdoms. the oldest group of plants with which we are well acquainted is that of whose remains coal is constituted; and, so far as they can be identified, the carboniferous plants are ferns, or club-mosses, or coniferæ, in many cases generically identical with those now living! among animals, instances of the same kind may be found in every sub-kingdom. the _globigerina_ of the atlantic soundings is identical with that which occurs in the chalk; and the casts of lower silurian _foraminifera_, which ehrenberg has recently described, seem to indicate the existence at that remote period of forms singularly like those which now exist. among the corals, the palæozoic _tabulata_ are constructed on precisely the same type as the modern millepores; and if we turn to molluscs, the most competent malacologists fail to discover any generic distinction between the _craniæ_, _lingulæ_, and _discinæ_ of the silurian rocks and those which now live. our existing _nautilus_ has its representative species in every great formation, from the oldest to the newest; and _loligo_, the squid of modern seas, appears in the lias, or at the bottom of the mesozoic series, in a form, at most, specifically different from its living congeners. in the great assemblage of annulose animals, the two highest classes, the insects and spider tribe, exhibit a wonderful persistency of type. the cockroaches of the carboniferous epoch are exceedingly similar to those which now run about our coal-cellars; and its locusts, termites, and dragon-flies are closely allied to the members of the same groups which now chirrup about our fields, undermine our houses, or sail with swift grace about the banks of our sedgy pools. and, in like manner, the palæozoic scorpions can only be distinguished by the eye of a naturalist from the modern ones. finally, with respect to the _vertebrata_, the same law holds good: certain types, such as those of the ganoid and placoid fishes, having persisted from the palæozoic epoch to the present time without a greater amount of deviation from the normal standard than that which is seen within the limits of the group as it now exists. even among the _reptilia_--the class which exhibits the largest proportion of entirely extinct forms of any--one type, that of the _crocodilia_, has persisted from at least the commencement of the mesozoic epoch up to the present time with so much constancy, that the amount of change which it exhibits may fairly, in relation to the time which has elapsed, be called insignificant. and the imperfect knowledge we have of the ancient mammalian population of our earth leads to the belief that certain of its types, such as that of the _marsupialia_, have persisted with correspondingly little change through a similar range of time. thus it would appear to be demonstrable, that, notwithstanding the great change which is exhibited by the animal population of the world as a whole, certain types have persisted comparatively without alteration, and the question arises, what bearing have such facts as these on our notions of the history of life through geological time? the answer to this question would seem to depend on the view we take respecting the origin of species in general. if we assume that every species of animal and of plant was formed by a distinct act of creative power, and if the species which have incessantly succeeded one another were placed upon the globe by these separate acts, then the existence of persistent types is simply an unintelligible irregularity. such assumption, however, is as unsupported by tradition or by revelation as it is opposed by the analogy of the rest of the operations of nature; and those who imagine that, by adopting any such hypothesis, they are strengthening the hands of the advocates of the letter of the mosaic account, are simply mistaken. if, on the other hand, we adopt that hypothesis to which alone the study of physiology lends any support--that hypothesis which, having struggled beyond the reach of those fatal supporters, the telliameds and vestigiarians, who so nearly caused its suffocation by wind in early infancy, is now winning at least the provisional assent of all the best thinkers of the day--the hypothesis that the forms or species of living beings, as we know them, have been produced by the gradual modification of pre-existing species--then the existence of persistent types seems to teach us much. just as a small portion of a great curve appears straight, the apparent absence of change in direction of the line being the exponent of the vast extent of the whole, in proportion to the part we see; so, if it be true that all living species are the result of the modification of other and simpler forms, the existence of these little altered persistent types, ranging through all geological time, must indicate that they are but the final terms of an enormous series of modifications, which had their being in the great lapse of pregeologic time, and are now perhaps for ever lost. in other words, when rightly studied, the teachings of palæontology are at one with those of physical geology. our farthest explorations carry us back but a little way above the mouth of the great river of life: where it arose, and by what channels the noble tide has reached the point when it first breaks upon our view, is hidden from us. the foregoing pages contain the substance of a lecture delivered before the royal institution of great britain many months ago, and of course long before the appearance of the remarkable work on the "origin of species," just published by mr. darwin, who arrives at very similar conclusions. although, in one sense, i might fairly say that my own views have been arrived at independently, i do not know that i can claim any equitable right to property in them; for it has long been my privilege to enjoy mr. darwin's friendship, and to profit by corresponding with him, and by, to some extent, becoming acquainted with the workings of his singularly original and well-stored mind. it was in consequence of my knowledge of the general tenor of the researches in which mr. darwin had been so long engaged; because i had the most complete confidence in his perseverance, his knowledge, and, above all things, his high-minded love of truth; and, moreover, because i found that the better i became acquainted with the opinions of the best naturalists regarding the vexed question of species, the less fixed they seemed to be, and the more inclined they were to the hypothesis of gradual modification, that i ventured to speak as strongly as i have done in the final paragraphs of my discourse. thus, my daw having so many borrowed plumes, i see no impropriety in making a tail to this brief paper by taking another handful of feathers from mr. darwin; endeavouring to point out in a few words, in fact, what, as i gather from the perusal of his book, his doctrines really are, and on what sort of basis they rest. and i do this the more willingly, as i observe that already the hastier sort of critics have begun, not to review my friend's book, but to howl over it in a manner which must tend greatly to distract the public mind. no one will be better satisfied than i to see mr. darwin's book refuted, if any person be competent to perform that feat; but i would suggest that refutation is retarded, not aided, by mere sarcastic misrepresentation. every one who has studied cattle-breeding, or turned pigeon-fancier, or "pomologist," must have been struck by the extreme modifiability or plasticity of those kinds of animals and plants which have been subjected to such artificial conditions as are imposed by domestication. breeds of dogs are more different from one another than are the dog and the wolf; and the purely artificial races of pigeons, if their origin were unknown, would most assuredly be reckoned by naturalists as distinct species and even genera. these breeds are always produced in the same way. the breeder selects a pair, one or other, or both, of which present an indication of the peculiarity he wishes to perpetuate, and then selects from the offspring of them those which are most characteristic, rejecting the others. from the selected offspring he breeds again, and, taking the same precautions as before, repeats the process until he has obtained the precise degree of divergence from the primitive type at which he aimed. if he now breeds from the variety thus established for some generations, taking care always to keep the stock pure, the tendency to produce this particular variety becomes more and more strongly hereditary; and it does not appear that there is any limit to the persistency of the race thus developed. men like lamarck, apprehending these facts, and knowing that varieties comparable to those produced by the breeder are abundantly found in nature, and finding it impossible to discriminate in some cases between varieties and true species, could hardly fail to divine the possibility that species even the most distinct were, after all, only exceedingly persistent varieties, and that they had arisen by the modification of some common stock, just as it is with good reason believed that turnspits and greyhounds, carrier and tumbler pigeons, have arisen. but there was a link wanting to complete the parallel. where in nature was the analogue of the breeder to be found? how could that operation of selection, which is his essential function, be carried out by mere natural agencies? lamarck did not value this problem; neither did he admit his impotence to solve it; but he guessed a solution. now, guessing in science is a very hazardous proceeding, and lamarck's reputation has suffered woefully for the absurdities into which his baseless suppositions led him. lamarck's conjectures, equipped with a new hat and stick, as sir walter scott was wont to say of an old story renovated, formed the foundation of the biological speculations of the "vestiges," a work which has done more harm to the progress of sound thought on these matters than any that could be named; and, indeed, i mention it here simply for the purpose of denying that it has anything in common with what essentially characterises mr. darwin's work. the peculiar feature of the latter is, in fact, that it professes to tell us what in nature takes the place of the breeder; what it is that favours the development of one variety into which a species may run, and checks that of another; and, finally, shows how this natural selection, as it is termed, may be the physical cause of the production of species by modification. that which takes the place of the breeder and selector in nature is death. in a most remarkable chapter, "on the struggle for existence," mr. darwin draws attention to the marvellous destruction of life which is constantly going on in nature. for every species of living thing, as for man, "_eine bresche ist ein jeder tag_."--every species has its enemies; every species has to compete with others for the necessaries of existence; the weakest goes to the wall, and death is the penalty inflicted on all laggards and stragglers. every variety to which a species may give rise is either worse or better adapted to surrounding circumstances than its parent. if worse, it cannot maintain itself against death, and speedily vanishes again. but if better adapted, it must, sooner or later, "improve" its progenitor from the face of the earth, and take its place. if circumstances change, the victor will be similarly supplanted by its own progeny; and thus, by the operation of natural causes, unlimited modification may in the lapse of long ages occur. for an explanation of what i have here called vaguely "surrounding circumstances," and of why they continually change--for ample proof that the "struggle for existence" is a very great reality, and assuredly _tends_ to exert the influence ascribed to it--i must refer to mr. darwin's book. i believe i have stated fairly the position upon which his whole theory must stand or fall; and it is not my purpose to anticipate a full review of his work. if it can be proved that the process of natural selection, operating upon any species, can give rise to varieties of species so different from one another that none of our tests will distinguish them from true species, mr. darwin's hypothesis of the origin of species will take its place among the established theories of science, be its consequences whatever they may. if, on the other hand, mr. darwin has erred, either in fact or in reasoning, his fellow-workers will soon find out the weak points in his doctrines, and their extinction by some nearer approximation to the truth will exemplify his own principle of natural selection. in either case the question is one to be settled only by the painstaking, truth-loving investigation of skilled naturalists. it is the duty of the general public to await the result in patience; and, above all things, to discourage, as they would any other crimes, the attempt to enlist the prejudices of the ignorant, or the uncharitableness of the bigoted, on either side of the controversy. xiii darwin on the origin of species. mr. darwin's long-standing and well-earned scientific eminence probably renders him indifferent to that social notoriety which passes by the name of success; but if the calm spirit of the philosopher have not yet wholly superseded the ambition and the vanity of the carnal man within him, he must be well satisfied with the results of his venture in publishing the "origin of species." overflowing the narrow bounds of purely scientific circles, the "species question" divides with italy and the volunteers the attention of general society. everybody has read mr. darwin's book, or, at least, has given an opinion upon its merits or demerits; pietists, whether lay or ecclesiastic, decry it with the mild railing which sounds so charitable; bigots denounce it with ignorant invective; old ladies, of both sexes, consider it a decidedly dangerous book, and even savans, who have no better mud to throw, quote antiquated writers to show that its author is no better than an ape himself; while every philosophical thinker hails it as a veritable whitworth gun in the armoury of liberalism, and all competent naturalists and physiologists, whatever their opinions as to the ultimate fate of the doctrines put forth, acknowledge that the work in which they are embodied is a solid contribution to knowledge and inaugurates a new epoch in natural history. nor has the discussion of the subject been restrained within the limits of conversation. when the public is eager and interested, reviewers must minister to its wants, and the genuine _littérateur_ is too much in the habit of acquiring his knowledge from the book he judges--as the abyssinian is said to provide himself with steaks from the ox which carries him--to be withheld from criticism of a profound scientific work by the mere want of the requisite preliminary scientific acquirement; while, on the other hand, the men of science who wish well to the new views, no less than those who dispute their validity, have naturally sought opportunities of expressing their opinions. hence it is not surprising that almost all the critical journals have noticed mr. darwin's work at greater or less length, and so many disquisitions, of every degree of excellence, from the poor product of ignorance, too often stimulated by prejudice, to the fair and thoughtful essay of the candid student of nature, have appeared, that it seems an almost hopeless task to attempt to say anything new upon the question. but it may be doubted if the knowledge and acumen of prejudged scientific opponents, or the subtlety of orthodox special pleaders, have yet exerted their full force in mystifying the real issues of the great controversy which has been set afoot, and whose end is hardly likely to be seen by this generation; so that at this eleventh hour, and even failing anything new, it may be useful to state afresh that which is true, and to put the fundamental positions advocated by mr. darwin in such a form that they may be grasped by those whose special studies lie in other directions; and the adoption of this course may be the more advisable, because notwithstanding its great deserts, and indeed partly on account of them, the "origin of species" is by no means an easy book to read--if by reading is implied the full comprehension of an author's meaning. we do not speak jestingly in saying that it is mr. darwin's misfortune to know more about the question he has taken up than any man living. personally and practically exercised in zoology, in minute anatomy, in geology; a student of geographical distribution, not on maps and in museums only, but by long voyages and laborious collection; having largely advanced each of these branches of science, and having spent many years in gathering and sifting materials for his present work, the store of accurately registered facts upon which the author of the "origin of species" is able to draw at will is prodigious. but this very superabundance of matter must have been embarrassing to a writer who, for the present, can only put forward an abstract of his views, and thence it arises, perhaps, that notwithstanding the clearness of the style, those who attempt fairly to digest the book find much of it a sort of intellectual pemmican--a mass of facts crushed and pounded into shape, rather than held together by the ordinary medium of an obvious logical bond: due attention will, without doubt, discover this bond, but it is often hard to find. again, from sheer want of room, much has to be taken for granted which might readily enough be proved, and hence, while the adept, who can supply the missing links in the evidence from his own knowledge, discovers fresh proof of the singular thoroughness with which all difficulties have been considered and all unjustifiable supposition avoided, at every reperusal of mr. darwin's pregnant paragraphs, the novice in biology is apt to complain of the frequency of what he fancies is gratuitous assumption. thus while it may be doubted if, for some years, any one is likely to be competent to pronounce judgment on all the issues raised by mr. darwin, there is assuredly abundant room for him, who, assuming the humbler, though perhaps as useful, office of an interpreter between the "origin of species" and the public, contents himself with endeavouring to point out the nature of the problems which it discusses; to distinguish between the ascertained facts and the theoretical views which it contains; and finally, to show the extent to which the explanation it offers satisfies the requirements of scientific logic. at any rate, it is this office which we purpose to undertake in the following pages. it may be safely assumed that our readers have a general conception of the nature of the objects to which the word "species" is applied; but it has, perhaps, occurred to few, even of those who are naturalists _ex professo_, to reflect, that, as commonly employed, the term has a double sense and denotes two very different orders of relations. when we call a group of animals, or of plants, a species, we may imply thereby either, that all these animals or plants have some common peculiarity of form or structure; or, we may mean that they possess some common functional character. that part of biological science which deals with form and structure is called morphology--that which concerns itself with function, physiology--so that we may conveniently speak of these two senses or aspects of "species"--the one as morphological, the other as physiological. regarded from the former point of view, a species is nothing more than a kind of animal or plant, which is distinctly definable from all others, by certain constant and not merely sexual, morphological peculiarities. thus horses form a species, because the group of animals to which that name is applied is distinguished from all others in the world by the following constantly associated characters. they have . a vertebral column; . mammæ; . a placental embryo; . four legs; . a single well-developed toe in each foot provided with a hoof; . a bushy tail; and . callosities on the inner sides of both the fore and the hind legs. the asses again, form a distinct species, because, with the same characters, as far as the fifth in the above list, all asses have tufted tails, and have callosities only on the inner side of the fore-legs. if animals were discovered having the general characters of the horse, but sometimes with callosities only on the fore legs, and more or less tufted tails; or animals having the general characters of the ass, but with more or less bushy tails, and sometimes with callosities on both pairs of legs, besides being intermediate in other respects--the two species would have to be merged into one. they could no longer be regarded as morphologically distinct species, for they would not be distinctly definable one from the other. however bare and simple this definition of species may appear to be, we confidently appeal to all practical naturalists, whether zoologists, botanists, or palæontologists, to say if, in the vast majority of cases, they know, or mean to affirm, anything more of the group of animals or plants they so denominate than what has just been stated. even the most decided advocates of the received doctrines respecting species admit this. "i apprehend," says professor owen,[ ] "that few naturalists now-a-days, in describing and proposing a name for what they call 'a new _species_,' use that term to signify what was meant by it twenty or thirty years ago, that is, an originally distinct creation, maintaining its primitive distinction by obstructive generative peculiarities. the proposer of the new species now intends to state no more than he actually knows; as for example, that the differences in which he founds the specific character are constant in individuals of both sexes, so far as observation has reached; and that they are not due to domestication or to artificially superinduced external circumstances, or to any outward influence within his cognizance; that the species is wild, or is such as it appears by nature." if we consider, in fact, that by far the largest proportion of recorded existing species are known only by the study of their skins, or bones, or other lifeless exuvia; that we are acquainted with none, or next to none, of their physiological peculiarities, beyond those which can be deduced from their structure, or are open to cursory observation; and that we cannot hope to learn more of any of those extinct forms of life which now constitute no inconsiderable proportion of the known flora and fauna of the world; it is obvious that the definitions of these species can be only of a purely structural or morphological character. it is probable that naturalists would have avoided much confusion of ideas if they had more frequently borne these necessary limitations of our knowledge in mind. but while it may safely be admitted that we are acquainted with only the morphological characters of the vast majority of species--the functional or physiological peculiarities of a few have been carefully investigated, and the result of that study forms a large and most interesting portion of the physiology of reproduction. the student of nature wonders the more and is astonished the less, the more conversant he becomes with her operations; but of all the perennial miracles she offers to his inspection, perhaps the most worthy of admiration is the development of a plant or of an animal from its embryo. examine the recently laid egg of some common animal, such as a salamander or a newt. it is a minute spheroid in which the best microscope will reveal nothing but a structureless sac, enclosing a glairy fluid, holding granules in suspension. but strange possibilities lie dormant in that semi-fluid globule. let a moderate supply of warmth reach its watery cradle, and the plastic matter undergoes changes so rapid and yet so steady and purpose-like in their succession, that one can only compare them to those operated by a skilled modeller upon a formless lump of clay. as with an invisible trowel, the mass is divided and subdivided into smaller and smaller portions, until it is reduced to an aggregation of granules not too large to build withal the finest fabrics of the nascent organism. and, then, it is as if a delicate finger traced out the line to be occupied by the spinal column, and moulded the contour of the body; pinching up the head at one end, the tail at the other, and fashioning flank and limb into due salamandrine proportions, in so artistic a way, that, after watching the process hour by hour, one is almost involuntarily possessed by the notion, that some more subtle aid to vision than an achromatic would show the hidden artist, with his plan before him, striving with skilful manipulation to perfect his work. as life advances, and the young amphibian ranges the waters, the terror of his insect contemporaries, not only are the nutritious particles supplied by its prey, by the addition of which to its frame growth takes place, laid down, each in its proper spot, and in such due proportion to the rest, as to reproduce the form, the colour and the size, characteristic of the parental stock; but even the wonderful powers of reproducing lost parts possessed by these animals are controlled by the same governing tendency. cut off the legs, the tail, the jaws, separately or all together, and, as spallanzani showed long ago, these parts not only grow again, but the redintegrated limb is formed on the same type as those which were lost. the new jaw or leg is a newt's, and never by any accident more like that of a frog. what is true of the newt is true of every animal and of every plant; the acorn tends to build itself up again into a woodland giant such as that from whose twig it fell; the spore of the humblest lichen reproduces the green or brown incrustation which gave it birth; and at the other end of the scale of life, the child that resembled neither the paternal nor the maternal side of the house would be regarded as a kind of monster. so that the one end to which in all living beings the formative impulse is tending--the one scheme which the archæus of the old speculators strives to carry out, seems to be to mould the offspring into the likeness of the parent. it is the first great law of reproduction, that the offspring tends to resemble its parent or parents, more closely than anything else. science will some day show us how this law is a necessary consequence of the more general laws which govern matter; but for the present, more can hardly be said than that it appears to be in harmony with them. we know that the phenomena of vitality are not something apart from other physical phenomena, but one with them; and matter and force are the two names of the one artist who fashions the living as well as the lifeless. hence living bodies should obey the same great laws as other matter--nor, throughout nature, is there a law of wider application than this, that a body impelled by two forces takes the direction of their resultant. but living bodies may be regarded as nothing but extremely complex bundles of forces held in a mass of matter, as the complex forces of a magnet are held in the steel by its coercive force; and since the differences of sex are comparatively slight, or, in other words, the sum of the forces in each has a very similar tendency, their resultant, the offspring, may reasonably be expected to deviate but little from a course parallel to either, or to both. represent the reason of the law to ourselves by what physical metaphor or analogy we will, however, the great matter is to apprehend its existence and the importance of the consequences deducible from it. for things which are like to the same are like to one another, and if, in a great series of generations, every offspring is like its parent, it follows that all the offspring and all the parents must be like one another; and that, given an original parental stock with the opportunity of undisturbed multiplication, the law in question necessitates the production, in course of time, of an indefinitely large group, the whole of whose members are at once very similar and are blood relations, having descended from the same parent, or pair of parents. the proof that all the members of any given group of animals, or plants, had thus descended, would be ordinarily considered sufficient to entitle them to the rank of physiological species, for most physiologists consider species to be definable as "the offspring of a single primitive stock." but though it is quite true that all those groups we call species _may_, according to the known laws of reproduction, have descended from a single stock, and though it is very likely they really have done so, yet this conclusion rests on deduction and can hardly hope to establish itself upon a basis of observation. and the primitiveness of the supposed single stock, which, after all, is the essential part of the matter, is not only a hypothesis, but one which has not a shadow of foundation, if by "primitive" be meant "independent of any other living being." a scientific definition, of which an unwarrantable hypothesis forms an essential part, carries its condemnation within itself; but even supposing such a definition were, in form, tenable, the physiologist who should attempt to apply it in nature would soon find himself involved in great, if not inextricable difficulties. as we have said, it is indubitable that offspring _tend_ to resemble the parental organism, but it is equally true that the similarity attained never amounts to identity, either in form or in structure. there is always a certain amount of deviation, not only from the precise characters of a single parent, but when, as in most animals and many plants, the sexes are lodged in distinct individuals, from an exact mean between the two parents. and, indeed, on general principles, this slight deviation seems as intelligible as the general similarity, if we reflect how complex the co-operating "bundles of forces" are, and how improbable it is that, in any case, their true resultant shall coincide with any mean between the more obvious characters of the two parents. whatever be its cause, however, the co-existence of this tendency to minor variation with the tendency to general similarity, is of vast importance in its bearing on the question of the origin of species. as a general rule, the extent to which an offspring differs from its parent is slight enough; but, occasionally, the amount of difference is much more strongly marked, and then the divergent offspring receives the name of a variety. multitudes, of what there is every reason to believe are such varieties, are known, but the origin of very few has been accurately recorded, and of these we will select two as more especially illustrative of the main features of variation. the first of them is that of the "ancon," or "otter" sheep, of which a careful account is given by colonel david humphreys, f.r.s., in a letter to sir joseph banks, published in the philosophical transactions for . it appears that one seth wright, the proprietor of a farm on the banks of the charles river, in massachusetts, possessed a flock of fifteen ewes and a ram of the ordinary kind. in the year , one of the ewes presented her owner with a male lamb, differing, for no assignable reason, from its parents by a proportionally long body and short bandy legs, whence it was unable to emulate its relatives in those sportive leaps over the neighbours' fences, in which they were in the habit of indulging, much to the good farmer's vexation. the second case is that detailed by a no less unexceptionable authority than réaumur, in his "art de faire éclorre les poulets." a maltese couple, named kelleia, whose hands and feet were constructed upon the ordinary human model, had born to them a son, gratio, who possessed six perfectly moveable fingers on each hand and six toes, not quite so well formed, on each foot. no cause could be assigned for the appearance of this unusual variety of the human species. two circumstances are well worthy of remark in both these cases. in each, the variety appears to have arisen in full force, and, as it were, _per saltum_; a wide and definite difference appearing, at once, between the ancon ram and the ordinary sheep; between the six-fingered and six-toed gratio kelleia and ordinary men. in neither case is it possible to point out any obvious reason for the appearance of the variety. doubtless there were determining causes for these as for all other phenomena; but they do not appear, and we can be tolerably certain that what are ordinarily understood as changes in physical conditions, as in climate, in food, or the like, did not take place and had nothing to do with the matter. it was no case of what is commonly called adaptation to circumstances; but, to use a conveniently erroneous phrase, the variations arose spontaneously. the fruitless search after final causes leads their pursuers a long way; but even those hardy teleologists, who are ready to break through all the laws of physics in chase of their favourite will-o'-the-wisp, may be puzzled to discover what purpose could be attained by the stunted legs of seth wright's ram or the hexadactyle members of gratio kelleia. varieties then arise we know not why; and it is more than probable that the majority of varieties have arisen in the spontaneous manner, though we are, of course, far from denying that they may be traced, in some cases, to distinct external influences, which are assuredly competent to alter the character of the tegumentary covering, to change colour, to increase or diminish the size of muscles, to modify constitution, and, among plants, to give rise to the metamorphosis of stamens into petals, and so forth. but however they may have arisen, what especially interests us at present is, to remark that, once in existence, varieties obey the fundamental law of reproduction that like tends to produce like, and their offspring exemplify it by tending to exhibit the same deviation from the parental stock as themselves. indeed, there seems to be, in many instances, a pre-potent influence about a newly-arisen variety which gives it what one may call an unfair advantage over the normal descendants from the same stock. this is strikingly exemplified by the case of gratio kelleia, who married a woman with the ordinary pentadactyle extremities, and had by her four children, salvator, george, andré, and marie. of these children salvator, the eldest boy, had six fingers and six toes, like his father; the second and third, also boys, had five fingers and toes, like their mother, though the hands and feet of george were slightly deformed; the last, a girl, had five fingers and toes, but the thumbs were slightly deformed. the variety thus reproduced itself purely in the eldest, while the normal type reproduced itself purely in the third, and almost purely in the second and last: so that it would seem, at first, as if the normal type were more powerful than the variety. but all these children grew up and intermarried with normal wives and husbands, and then, note what took place: salvator had four children, three of whom exhibited the hexadactyle members of their grandfather and father, while the youngest had the pentadactyle limbs of the mother and grandmother; so that here, notwithstanding a double pentadactyle dilution of the blood, the hexadactyle variety had the best of it. the same pre-potency of the variety was still more markedly exemplified in the progeny of two of the other children, marie and george. marie (whose thumbs only were deformed) gave birth to a boy with six toes, and three other normally formed children; but george, who was not quite so pure a pentadactyle, begot, first, two girls, each of whom had six fingers and toes; then a girl with six fingers on each hand and six toes on the right foot, but only five toes on the left; and lastly, a boy with only five fingers and toes. in these instances, therefore, the variety, as it were, leaped over one generation to reproduce itself in full force in the next. finally, the purely pentadactyle andré was the father of many children, not one of whom departed from the normal parental type. if a variation which approaches the nature of a monstrosity can strive thus forcibly to reproduce itself, it is not wonderful that less aberrant modifications should tend to be preserved even more strongly; and the history of the ancon sheep is, in this respect, particularly instructive. with the "'cuteness" characteristic of their nation, the neighbours of the massachusetts farmer imagined it would be an excellent thing if all his sheep were imbued with the stay-at-home tendencies enforced by nature upon the newly-arrived ram; and they advised wright to kill the old patriarch of his fold, and instal the ancon ram in his place. the result justified their sagacious anticipations, and coincided very nearly with what occurred to the progeny of gratio kelleia. the young lambs were almost always either pure ancons, or pure ordinary sheep.[ ] but when sufficient ancon sheep were obtained to interbreed with one another, it was found that the offspring was always pure ancon. colonel humphreys, in fact, states that he was acquainted with only "one questionable case of a contrary nature." here, then, is a remarkable and well-established instance, not only of a very distinct race being established _per saltum_, but of that race breeding "true" at once, and showing no mixed forms, even when crossed with another breed. by taking care to select ancons of both sexes, for breeding from, it thus became easy to establish an extremely well-marked race, so peculiar that even when herded with other sheep, it was noted that the ancons kept together, and there is every reason to believe that the existence of this breed might have been indefinitely protracted; but the introduction of the merino sheep, which were not only very superior to the ancons in wool and meat, but quite as quiet and orderly, led to the complete neglect of the new breed, so that, in , colonel humphreys found it difficult to obtain the specimen whose skeleton was presented to sir joseph banks. we believe that, for many years, no remnant of it has existed in the united states. gratio kelleia was not the progenitor of a race of six-fingered men, as seth wright's ram became a nation of ancon sheep, though the tendency of the variety to perpetuate itself appears to have been fully as strong in the one case as in the other. and the reason of the difference is not far to seek. seth wright took care not to weaken the ancon blood by matching his ancon ewes with any but males of the same variety, while gratio kelleia's sons were too far removed from the patriarchal times to intermarry with their sisters; and his grandchildren seem not to have been attracted by their six-fingered cousins. in other words, in the one example a race was produced, because, for several generations, care was taken to _select_ both parents of the breeding stock, from animals exhibiting a tendency to vary in the same direction, while in the other no race was evolved, because no such selection was exercised. a race is a propagated variety, and as, by the laws of reproduction, offspring tend to assume the parental form, they will be more likely to propagate a variation exhibited by both parents than that possessed by only one. there is no organ of the body of an animal which may not, and does not, occasionally, vary more or less from the normal type; and there is no variation which may not be transmitted, and which, if selectively transmitted, may not become the foundation of a race. this great truth, sometimes forgotten by philosophers, has long been familiar to practical agriculturists and breeders: and upon it rest all the methods of improving the breeds of domestic animals, which for the last century have been followed with so much success in england. colour, form, size, texture of hair or wool, proportions of various parts, strength or weakness of constitution, tendency to fatten or to remain lean, to give much or little milk, speed, strength, temper, intelligence, special instincts; there is not one of these characters whose transmission is not an every-day occurrence within the experience of cattle-breeders, stock-farmers, horse-dealers, and dog and poultry fanciers. nay, it is only the other day that an eminent physiologist, dr. brown sequard, communicated to the royal society his discovery that epilepsy, artificially produced in guinea-pigs, by a means which he has discovered, is transmitted to their offspring. but a race, once produced, is no more a fixed and immutable entity than the stock whence it sprang; variations arise among its members, and as these variations are transmitted like any others, new races may be developed out of the pre-existing ones _ad infinitum_, or, at least, within any limit at present determined. given sufficient time and sufficiently careful selection, and the multitude of races which may arise from a common stock is as astonishing as are the extreme structural differences which they may present. a remarkable example of this is to be found in the rock-pigeon, which mr. darwin has, in our opinion, satisfactorily demonstrated to be the progenitor of all our domestic pigeons, of which there are certainly more than a hundred well-marked races. the most noteworthy of these races are, the four great stocks known to the "fancy" as tumblers, pouters, carriers, and fantails; birds which not only differ most singularly in size, colour, and habits, but in the form of the beak and of the skull; in the proportions of the beak to the skull; in the number of tail-feathers; in the absolute and relative size of the feet; in the presence or absence of the uropygial gland; in the number of vertebræ in the back; in short, in precisely those characters in which the genera and species of birds differ from one another. and it is most remarkable and instructive to observe, that none of these races can be shown to have been originated by the action of changes in what are commonly called external circumstances, upon the wild rock-pigeon. on the contrary, from time immemorial, pigeon fanciers have had essentially similar methods of treating their pets, which have been housed, fed, protected and cared for in much the same way in all pigeonries. in fact, there is no case better adapted than that of the pigeons, to refute the doctrine which one sees put forth on high authority, that "no other characters than those founded on the development of bone for the attachment of muscles" are capable of variation. in precise contradiction of this hasty assertion, mr. darwin's researches prove that the skeleton of the wings in domestic pigeons has hardly varied at all from that of the wild type; while, on the other hand, it is in exactly those respects, such as the relative length of the beak and skull, the number of the vertebræ, and the number of the tail-feathers, in which muscular exertion can have no important influence, that the utmost amount of variation has taken place. * * * * * we have said that the following out of the properties exhibited by physiological species would lead us into difficulties, and at this point they begin to be obvious; for, if, as a result of spontaneous variation and of selective breeding, the progeny of a common stock may become separated into groups distinguished from one another by constant, not sexual, morphological characters, it is clear that the physiological definition of species is likely to clash with the morphological definition. no one would hesitate to describe the pouter and the tumbler as distinct species, if they were found fossil, or if their skins and skeletons were imported, as those of exotic wild birds commonly are--and, without doubt, if considered alone, they are good and distinct morphological species. on the other hand, they are not physiological species, for they are descended from a common stock, the rock-pigeon. under these circumstances, as it is admitted on all sides that races occur in nature, how are we to know whether any apparently distinct animals are really of different physiological species, or not, seeing that the amount of morphological difference is no safe guide? is there any test of a physiological species? the usual answer of physiologists is in the affirmative. it is said that such a test is to be found in the phenomena of hybridization--in the results of crossing races as compared with the results of crossing species. so far as the evidence goes at present, individuals, of what are certainly known to be mere races produced by selection, however distinct they may appear to be, not only breed freely together, but the offspring of such crossed races are also perfectly fertile with one another. thus, the spaniel and the greyhound, the dray-horse and the arab, the pouter and the tumbler, breed together with perfect freedom, and their mongrels, if matched with other mongrels of the same kind, are equally fertile. on the other hand, there can be no doubt that the individuals of many natural species are either absolutely infertile, if crossed with individuals of other species, or, if they give rise to hybrid offspring, the hybrids so produced are infertile when paired together. the horse and the ass, for instance, if so crossed, give rise to the mule, and there is no certain evidence of offspring ever having been produced by a male and female mule. the unions of the rock-pigeon and the ring-pigeon appear to be equally barren of result. here, then, says the physiologist, we have a means of distinguishing any two true species from any two varieties. if a male and a female, selected from each group, produce offspring, and that offspring is fertile with others produced in the same way, the groups are races and not species. if, on the other hand, no result ensues, or if the offspring are infertile with others produced in the same way, they are true physiological species. the test would be an admirable one, if, in the first place, it were always practicable to apply it, and if, in the second, it always yielded results susceptible of a definite interpretation. unfortunately, in the great majority of cases, this touchstone for species is wholly inapplicable. the constitution of many wild animals is so altered by confinement that they will not even breed with their own females, so that the negative results obtained from crosses are of no value, and the antipathy of wild animals of different species for one another, or even of wild and tame members of the same species, is ordinarily so great, that it is hopeless to look for such unions in nature. the hermaphrodism of most plants, the difficulty in the way of ensuring the absence of their own, or the proper working of other pollen, are obstacles of no less magnitude in applying the test to them. and in both animals and plants is superadded the further difficulty, that experiments must be continued over a long time for the purpose of ascertaining the fertility of the mongrel or hybrid progeny, as well as of the first crosses from which they spring. not only do these great practical difficulties lie in the way of applying the hybridization test, but even when this oracle can be questioned, its replies are sometimes as doubtful as those of delphi. for example, cases are cited by mr. darwin, of plants which are more fertile with the pollen of another species than with their own; and there are others, such as certain _fuci_, whose male element will fertilize the ovule of a plant of distinct species, while the males of the latter species are ineffective with the females of the first. so that, in the last-named instance, a physiologist, who should cross the two species in one way, would decide that they were true species; while another, who should cross them in the reverse way, would, with equal justice, according to the rule, pronounce them to be mere races. several plants, which there is great reason to believe are mere varieties, are almost sterile when crossed; while both animals and plants, which have always been regarded by naturalists as of distinct species, turn out, when the test is applied, to be perfectly fertile. again, the sterility or fertility of crosses seems to bear no relation to the structural resemblances or differences of the members of any two groups. mr. darwin has discussed this question with singular ability and circumspection, and his conclusions are summed up as follows at page of his work:-- "first crosses between forms sufficiently distinct to be ranked as species, and their hybrids, are very generally, but not universally, sterile. the sterility is of all degrees, and is often so slight that the two most careful experimentalists who have ever lived have come to diametrically opposite conclusions in ranking forms by this test. the sterility is innately variable in individuals of the same species, and is eminently susceptible of favourable and unfavourable conditions. the degree of sterility does not strictly follow systematic affinity, but is governed by several curious and complex laws. it is generally different, and sometimes widely different, in reciprocal crosses between the same two species. it is not always equal in degree in a first cross, and in the hybrid produced from this cross. "in the same manner as in grafting trees, the capacity of one species or variety to take on another is incidental on generally unknown differences in their vegetative systems, so in crossing, the greater or less facility of one species to unite with another is incidental on unknown differences in their reproductive systems. there is no more reason to think that species have been specially endowed with various degrees of sterility to prevent them crossing and breeding in nature, than to think that trees have been specially endowed with various and somewhat analogous degrees of difficulty in being grafted together, in order to prevent them becoming inarched in our forests. "the sterility of first crosses between pure species, which have their reproductive systems perfect, seems to depend on several circumstances; in some cases largely on the early death of the embryo. the sterility of hybrids which have their reproductive systems imperfect, and which have had this system and their whole organization disturbed by being compounded of two distinct species, seems closely allied to that sterility which so frequently affects pure species when their natural conditions of life have been disturbed. this view is supported by a parallelism of another kind; namely, that the crossing of forms only slightly different is favourable to the vigour and fertility of the offspring; and that slight changes in the conditions of life are apparently favourable to the vigour and fertility of all organic beings. it is not surprising that the degree of difficulty in uniting two species, and the degree of sterility of their hybrid offspring should generally correspond, though due to distinct causes; for both depend on the amount of difference of some kind between the species which are crossed. nor is it surprising that the facility of effecting a first cross, the fertility of hybrids produced from it, and the capacity of being grafted together--though this latter capacity evidently depends on widely different circumstances--should all run to a certain extent parallel with the systematic affinity of the forms which are subjected to experiment; for systematic affinity attempts to express all kinds of resemblance between all species. "first crosses between forms known to be varieties, or sufficiently alike to be considered as varieties, and their mongrel offspring, are very generally, but not quite universally, fertile. nor is this nearly general and perfect fertility surprising, when we remember how liable we are to argue in a circle with respect to varieties in a state of nature; and when we remember that the greater number of varieties have been produced under domestication by the selection of mere external differences, and not of differences in the reproductive system. in all other respects, excluding fertility, there is a close general resemblance between hybrids and mongrels" (pp. - ). we fully agree with the general tenor of this weighty passage, but forcible as are these arguments, and little as the value of fertility or infertility as a test of species may be, it must not be forgotten that the really important fact, so far as the inquiry into the origin of species goes, is, that there are such things in nature as groups of animals and of plants, whose members are incapable of fertile union with those of other groups; and that there are such things as hybrids, which are absolutely sterile when crossed with other hybrids. for if such phenomena as these were exhibited by only two of those assemblages of living objects, to which the name of species (whether it be used in its physiological or in its morphological sense) is given, it would have to be accounted for by any theory of the origin of species, and every theory which could not account for it would be, so far, imperfect. up to this point we have been dealing with matters of fact, and the statements which we have laid before the reader would, to the best of our knowledge, be admitted to contain a fair exposition of what is at present known respecting the essential properties of species, by all who have studied the question. and whatever may be his theoretical views, no naturalist will probably be disposed to demur to the following summary of that exposition:-- living beings, whether animals or plants, are divisible into multitudes of distinctly definable kinds, which are morphological species. they are also divisible into groups of individuals, which breed freely together, tending to reproduce their like, and are physiological species. normally, resembling their parents, the offspring of members of these species are still liable to vary, and the variation may be perpetuated by selection, as a race, which race, in many cases, presents all the characteristics of a morphological species. but it is not as yet proved that a race ever exhibits, when crossed with another race of the same species, those phenomena of hybridization which are exhibited by many species when crossed with other species. on the other hand, not only is it not proved that all species give rise to hybrids infertile _inter se_, but there is much reason to believe that, in crossing, species exhibit every gradation from perfect sterility to perfect fertility. such are the most essential characteristics of species. even were man not one of them--a member of the same system and subject to the same laws--the question of their origin, their causal connexion, that is, with the other phenomena of the universe, must have attracted his attention, as soon as his intelligence had raised itself above the level of his daily wants. indeed history relates that such was the case, and has embalmed for us the speculations upon the origin of living beings, which were among the earliest products of the dawning intellectual activity of man. in those early days positive knowledge was not to be had, but the craving after it needed, at all hazards, to be satisfied, and according to the country, or the turn of thought of the speculator, the suggestion that all living things arose from the mud of the nile, from a primeval egg, or from some more anthropomorphic agency, afforded a sufficient resting-place for his curiosity. the myths of paganism are as dead as osiris or zeus, and the man who should revive them, in opposition to the knowledge of our time, would be justly laughed to scorn; but the coeval imaginations current among the rude inhabitants of palestine, recorded by writers whose very name and age are admitted by every scholar to be unknown, have unfortunately not yet shared their fate, but, even at this day, are regarded by nine-tenths of the civilized world as the authoritative standard of fact and the criterion of the justice of scientific conclusions, in all that relates to the origin of things, and, among them, of species. in this nineteenth century, as at the dawn of modern physical science, the cosmogony of the semi-barbarous hebrew is the incubus of the philosopher and the opprobrium of the orthodox. who shall number the patient and earnest seekers after truth from the days of galileo until now, whose lives have been embittered and their good name blasted by the mistaken zeal of bibliolaters? who shall count the host of weaker men whose sense of truth has been destroyed in the effort to harmonize impossibilities--whose life has been wasted in the attempt to force the generous new wine of science into the old bottles of judaism, compelled by the outcry of the same strong party? it is true that if philosophers have suffered, their cause has been amply avenged. extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of hercules, and history records that whenever science and dogmatism have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed, if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain. but orthodoxy is the bourbon of the world of thought. it learns not, neither can it forget; and though at present bewildered and afraid to move, it is as willing as ever to insist that the first chapter of genesis contains the beginning and the end of sound science, and to visit with such petty thunderbolts as its half-paralysed hands can hurl, those who refuse to degrade nature to the level of primitive judaism. philosophers, on the other hand, have no such aggressive tendencies. with eyes fixed on the noble goal to which "per aspera et ardua" they tend, they may, now and then, be stirred to momentary wrath by the unnecessary obstacles with which the ignorant, or the malicious, encumber, if they cannot bar, the difficult path; but why should their souls be deeply vexed? the majesty of fact is on their side, and the elemental forms of matter are working for them. not a star comes to the meridian at its calculated time but testifies to the justice of their methods--their beliefs are "one with the falling rain and with the growing corn." by doubt they are established, and open inquiry is their bosom friend. such men have no fear of traditions however venerable, and no respect for them when they become mischievous and obstructive; but they have better than mere antiquarian business in hand, and if dogmas, which ought to be fossil but are not, are not forced upon their notice, they are too happy to treat them as non-existent. * * * * * the hypotheses respecting the origin of species, which profess to stand upon a scientific basis, and, as such, alone demand serious attention, are of two kinds. the one, the "special creation" hypothesis, presumes every species to have originated from one or more stocks, these not being the result of the modification of any other form of living matter--or arising by natural agencies--but being produced, as such, by a supernatural creative act. the other, the so-called "transmutation" hypothesis, considers that all existing species are the result of the modification of pre-existing species and those of their predecessors, by agencies similar to those which at the present day produce varieties and races, and therefore in an altogether natural way; and it is a probable, though not a necessary consequence of this hypothesis, that all living beings have arisen from a single stock. with respect to the origin of this primitive stock or stocks, the doctrine of the origin of species is obviously not necessarily concerned. the transmutation hypothesis, for example, is perfectly consistent either with the conception of a special creation of the primitive germ, or with the supposition of its having arisen, as a modification of inorganic matter, by natural causes. the doctrine of special creation owes its existence very largely to the supposed necessity of making science accord with the hebrew cosmogony; but it is curious to observe that, as the doctrine is at present maintained by men of science, it is as hopelessly inconsistent with the hebrew view as any other hypothesis. if there be any result which has come more clearly out of geological investigation than another, it is, that the vast series of extinct animals and plants is not divisible, as it was once supposed to be, into distinct groups, separated by sharply marked boundaries. there are no great gulfs between epochs and formations--no successive periods marked by the appearance of plants, of water animals, and of land animals, _en masse_. every year adds to the list of links between what the older geologists supposed to be widely separated epochs; witness the crags linking the drift with the older tertiaries; the maestricht beds linking the tertiaries with the chalk; the st. cassian beds exhibiting an abundant fauna of mixed mesozoic and paleozoic types, in rocks of an epoch once supposed to be eminently poor in life; witness, lastly, the incessant disputes as to whether a given stratum shall be reckoned devonian or carboniferous, silurian or devonian, cambrian or silurian. this truth is further illustrated in a most interesting manner by the impartial and highly competent testimony of m. pictet, from whose calculations of what percentage of the genera of animals existing in any formation lived during the preceding formation, it results that in no case is the proportion less than _one-third_, or per cent. it is the triassic formation, or the commencement of the mesozoic epoch, which has received this smallest inheritance from preceding ages. the other formations not uncommonly exhibit , , or even per cent. of genera in common with those whose remains are imbedded in their predecessor. not only is this true, but the subdivisions of each formation exhibit new species characteristic of, and found only in, them, and in many cases, as in the lias for example, the separate beds of these subdivisions are distinguished by well marked and peculiar forms of life. a section, a hundred feet thick, will exhibit at different heights a dozen species of ammonite, none of which passes beyond its particular zone of limestone or clay into the zone below it or into that above it; so that those who adopt the doctrine of special creation must be prepared to admit, that at intervals of time, corresponding with the thickness of these beds, the creator thought fit to interfere with the natural course of events for the purpose of making a new ammonite. it is not easy to transplant oneself into the frame of mind of those who can accept such a conclusion as this, on any evidence, short of absolute demonstration; and it is difficult to see what is to be gained by so doing, since, as we have said, it is obvious that such a view of the origin of living beings is utterly opposed to the hebrew cosmogony. deserving no aid from the powerful arm of bibliolatry, then, does the received form of the hypothesis of special creation derive any support from science or sound logic? assuredly not much. the arguments brought forward in its favour all take one form: if species were not supernaturally created, we cannot understand the facts _x_, or _y_, or _z_; we cannot understand the structure of animals or plants, unless we suppose they were contrived for special ends; we cannot understand the structure of the eye, except by supposing it to have been made to see with; we cannot understand instincts, unless we suppose animals to have been miraculously endowed with them. as a question of dialectics, it must be admitted that this sort of reasoning is not very formidable to those who are not to be frightened by consequences. it is an argumentum ad ignorantiam--take this explanation or be ignorant. but suppose we prefer to admit our ignorance rather than adopt a hypothesis at variance with all the teachings of nature? or suppose for a moment we admit the explanation, and then seriously ask ourselves how much the wiser are we? what does the explanation explain? is it any more than a grandiloquent way of announcing the fact, that we really know nothing about the matter? a phenomenon is explained, when it is shown to be a case of some general law of nature; but the supernatural interposition of the creator can by the nature of the case exemplify no law, and if species have really arisen in this way, it is absurd to attempt to discuss their origin. or, lastly, let us ask ourselves whether any amount of evidence which the nature of our faculties permits us to attain, can justify us in asserting that any phenomenon is out of the reach of natural causation. to this end it is obviously necessary that we should know all the consequences to which all possible combinations, continued through unlimited time, can give rise. if we knew these, and found none competent to originate species, we should have good ground for denying their origin by natural causation. till we know them, any hypothesis is better than one which involves us in such miserable presumption. but the hypothesis of special creation is not only a mere specious mask for our ignorance; its existence in biology marks the youth and imperfection of the science. for what is the history of every science but the history of the elimination of the notion of creative, or other interferences, with the natural order of the phenomena which are the subject-matter of that science? when astronomy was young "the morning stars sang together for joy," and the planets were guided in their courses by celestial hands. now, the harmony of the stars has resolved itself into gravitation according to the inverse squares of the distances, and the orbits of the planets are deducible from the laws of the forces which allow a schoolboy's stone to break a window. the lightning was the angel of the lord; but it has pleased providence, in these modern times, that science should make it the humble messenger of man, and we know that every flash that skimmers about the horizon on a summer's evening is determined by ascertainable conditions, and that its direction and brightness might, if our knowledge of these were great enough, have been calculated. the solvency of great mercantile companies rests on the validity of the laws, which have been ascertained to govern the seeming irregularity of that human life which the moralist bewails as the most uncertain of things; plague, pestilence, and famine are admitted, by all but fools, to be the natural result of causes for the most part fully within human control, and not the unavoidable tortures inflicted by wrathful omnipotence upon his helpless handiwork. harmonious order governing eternally continuous progress--the web and woof of matter and force interweaving by slow degrees, without a broken thread, that veil which lies between us and the infinite--that universe which alone we know, or can know;--such is the picture which science draws of the world, and in proportion as any part of that picture is in unison with the rest, so may we feel sure that it is rightly painted. shall biology alone remain out of harmony with her sister sciences? such arguments against the hypothesis of the direct creation of species as these are plainly enough deducible from general considerations, but there are, in addition, phenomena exhibited by species themselves, and yet not so much a part of their very essence as to have required earlier mention, which are in the highest degree perplexing, if we adopt the popularly accepted hypothesis. such are the facts of distribution in space and in time; the singular phenomena brought to light by the study of development; the structural relations of species upon which our systems of classification are founded; the great doctrines of philosophical anatomy, such as that of homology, or of the community of structural plan exhibited by large groups of species differing very widely in their habits and functions. the species of animals which inhabit the sea on opposite sides of the isthmus of panama are wholly distinct; the animals and plants which inhabit islands are commonly distinct from those of the neighbouring mainlands, and yet have a similarity of aspect. the mammals of the latest tertiary epoch in the old and new worlds belong to the same genera, or family groups, as those which now inhabit the same great geographical area. the crocodilian reptiles which existed in the earliest secondary epoch were similar in general structure to those now living, but exhibit slight differences in their vertebræ, nasal passages, and one or two other points. the guinea-pig has teeth which are shed before it is born, and hence can never subserve the masticatory purpose for which they seem contrived, and, in like manner, the female dugong has tusks which never cut the gum. all the members of the same great group run through similar conditions in their development, and all their parts, in the adult state, are arranged according to the same plan. man is more like a gorilla than a gorilla is like a lemur. such are a few, taken at random, among the multitudes of similar facts which modern research has established; but when the student seeks for an explanation of them from the supporters of the received hypothesis of the origin of species, the reply he receives is, in substance, of oriental simplicity and brevity--"mashallah! it so pleases god!" there are different species on opposite sides of the isthmus of panama, because they were created different on the two sides. the pliocene mammals are like the existing ones, because such was the plan of creation; and we find rudimental organs and similarity of plan, because it has pleased the creator to set before himself a "divine exemplar or archetype," and to copy it in his works; and somewhat ill, those who hold this view imply, in some of them. that such verbal hocus-pocus should be received as science will one day be regarded as evidence of the low state of intelligence in the nineteenth century, just as we amuse ourselves with the phraseology about nature's abhorrence of a vacuum, wherewith torricelli's compatriots were satisfied to explain the rise of water in a pump. and be it recollected that this sort of satisfaction works not only negative but positive ill, by discouraging inquiry, and so depriving man of the usufruct of one of the most fertile fields of his great patrimony, nature. the objections to the doctrine of origin of species by special creation which have been detailed, must have occurred with more or less force to the mind of every one who has seriously and independently considered the subject. it is therefore no wonder that, from time to time, this hypothesis should have been met by counter hypotheses, all as well, and some better, founded than itself; and it is curious to remark that the inventors of the opposing views seem to have been led into them as much by their knowledge of geology as by their acquaintance with biology. in fact, when the mind has once admitted the conception of the gradual production of the present physical state of our globe, by natural causes operating through long ages of time, it will be little disposed to allow that living beings have made their appearance in another way, and the speculations of de maillet and his successors are the natural complement of scilla's demonstration of the true nature of fossils. a contemporary of newton and of leibnitz, sharing therefore in the intellectual activity of the remarkable age which witnessed the birth of modern physical science, benoît de maillet spent a long life as a consular agent of the french government in various mediterranean ports. for sixteen years, in fact, he held the office of consul-general in egypt, and the wonderful phenomena offered by the valley of the nile appear to have strongly impressed his mind, to have directed his attention to all facts of a similar order which came within his observation, and to have led him to speculate on the origin of the present condition of our globe and of its inhabitants. but, with all his ardour for science, de maillet seems to have hesitated to publish views which, notwithstanding the ingenious attempts to reconcile them with the hebrew hypothesis contained in the preface to "telliamed" (and which we recommend for mr. maccausland's perusal), were hardly likely to be received with favour by his contemporaries. but a short time had elapsed since more than one of the great anatomists and physicists of the italian school had paid dearly for their endeavours to dissipate some of the prevalent errors; and their illustrious pupil, harvey, the founder of modern physiology, had not fared so well, in a country less oppressed by the benumbing influences of theology, as to tempt any man to follow his example. probably not uninfluenced by these considerations, his catholic majesty's consul-general for egypt kept his theories to himself throughout a long life, for "telliamed," the only scientific work which is known to have proceeded from his pen, was not printed till , when its author had reached the ripe age of seventy-nine; and though de maillet lived three years longer, his book was not given to the world before . even then it was anonymous to those who were not in the secret of the anagrammatic character of its title, and the preface and dedication are so worded as, in case of necessity, to give the printer a fair chance of falling back on the excuse that the work was intended for a mere jeu d'esprit. the speculations of the supposititious indian sage, though quite as sound as those of many a "mosaic geology" which sells exceedingly well, have no great value if we consider them by the light of modern science. the waters are supposed to have originally covered up the whole globe; to have deposited the rocky masses which compose its mountains by processes comparable to those which are now forming mud, sand, and shingle; and then to have gradually lowered their level, leaving the spoils of the animal and vegetable inhabitants embedded in the strata. as the dry land appeared, certain of the aquatic animals are supposed to have taken to it, and to have become gradually adapted to terrestrial and aerial modes of existence. but if we regard the general tenor and style of the reasoning in relation to the state of knowledge of the day, two circumstances appear very well worthy of remark. the first, that de maillet had a notion of the modifiability of living forms (though without any precise information on the subject), and how such modifiability might account for the origin of species; the second, that he very clearly apprehended the great modern geological doctrine, so strongly insisted upon by hutton, and so ably and comprehensively expounded by lyell, that we must look to existing causes for the explanation of past geological events. the following passage of the preface indeed, in which de maillet is supposed to speak of the indian philosopher telliamed, his _alter ego_, might have been written by the most philosophical uniformitarian of the present day. "ce qu'il y a d'étonnant, est que pour arriver à ces connoissances il semble avoir perverti l'ordre naturel, puisqu'au lieu de s'attacher d'abord à rechercher l'origine de notre globe il a commencé par travailler à s'instruire de la nature. mais à l'entendre, ce renversement de l'ordre a été pour lui l'effet d'un génie favorable qui l'a conduit pas à pas et comme par la main aux découvertes les plus sublimes. c'est en décomposant la substance de ce globe par une anatomie exacte de toutes ses parties qu'il a premièrement appris de quelles matières il était composé et quels arrangemens ces mêmes matières observaient entre elles. ces lumières jointes à l'esprit de comparaison toujours nécessaire à quiconque entreprend de percer les voiles dont la nature aime à se cacher, ont servi de guide à notre philosophe pour parvenir à des connoissances plus intéressantes. par la matière et l'arrangement de ces compositions il prétend avoir reconnu quelle est la véritable origine de ce globe que nous habitons, comment et par qui il a été formé."--(pp. xix. xx.) but de maillet was before his age, and as could hardly fail to happen to one who speculated on a zoological and botanical question before linnæus, and on a physiological problem before haller, he fell into great errors here and there; and hence, perhaps, the general neglect of his work. robinet's speculations are rather behind than in advance of those of de maillet, and though linnæus may have played with the hypothesis of transmutation, it obtained no serious support until lamarck adopted it, and advocated it with great ability in his "philosophie zoologique." impelled towards the hypothesis of the transmutation of species, partly by his general cosmological and geological views; partly by the conception of a graduated, though irregularly branching scale of being, which had arisen out of his profound study of plants and of the lower forms of animal life, lamarck, whose general line of thought often closely resembles that of de maillet, made a great advance upon the crude and merely speculative manner in which that writer deals with the question of the origin of living beings, by endeavouring to find physical causes competent to effect that change of one species into another which de maillet had only supposed to occur. and lamarck conceived that he had found in nature such causes, amply sufficient for the purpose in view. it is a physiological fact, he says, that organs are increased in size by action, atrophied by inaction; it is another physiological fact that modifications produced are transmissible to offspring. change the actions of an animal, therefore, and you will change its structure, by increasing the development of the parts newly brought into use and by the diminution of those less used; but by altering the circumstances which surround it you will alter its actions, and hence, in the long run, change of circumstance must produce change of organization. all the species of animals, therefore, are in lamarck's view the result of the indirect action of changes of circumstance upon those primitive germs which he considered to have originally arisen, by spontaneous generation, within the waters of the globe. it is curious, however, that lamarck should insist so strongly[ ] as he has done, that circumstances never in any degree directly modify the form or the organization of animals, but only operate by changing their wants, and consequently their actions; for he thereby brings upon himself the obvious question, how, then, do plants, which cannot be said to have wants or actions, become modified? to this he replies, that they are modified by the changes in their nutritive processes, which are effected by changing circumstances; and it does not seem to have occurred to him that such changes might be as well supposed to take place among animals. when we have said that lamarck felt that mere speculation was not the way to arrive at the origin of species, but that it was necessary in order to the establishment of any sound theory on the subject, to discover by observation or otherwise, some _vera causa_, competent to give rise to them; that he affirmed the true order of classification to coincide with the order of their development one from another; that he insisted on the necessity of allowing sufficient time, very strongly; and that all the varieties of instinct and reason were traced back by him to the same cause as that which has given rise to species, we have enumerated his chief contributions to the advance of the question. on the other hand, from his ignorance of any power in nature competent to modify the structure of animals, except the development of parts, or atrophy of them, in consequence of a change of needs, lamarck was led to attach infinitely greater weight than it deserves to this agency, and the absurdities into which he was led have met with deserved condemnation. of the struggle for existence, on which as we shall see mr. darwin lays such great stress, he had no conception; indeed, he doubts whether there really are such things as extinct species, unless they be such large animals as may have met their death at the hands of man; and so little does he dream of there being any other destructive causes at work, that, in discussing the possible existence of fossil shells, he asks, "pourquoi d'ailleurs seroient-ils perdues dès que l'homme n'a pu opérer leur destruction?" ("phil. zool.," vol. i. p. ). of the influence of selection lamarck has as little notion, and he makes no use of the wonderful phenomena which are exhibited by domesticated animals, and illustrate its powers. the vast influence of cuvier was employed against the lamarckian views, and as the untenability of some of his conclusions was easily shown, his doctrines sank under the opprobrium of scientific as well as of theological heterodoxy. nor have the efforts made of late years to revive them, tended to re-establish their credit in the minds of sound thinkers acquainted with the facts of the case; indeed it may be doubted whether lamarck has not suffered more from his friends than from his foes. two years ago, in fact, though we venture to question if even the strongest supporters of the special creation hypothesis had not, now and then, an uneasy consciousness that all was not right, their position seemed more impregnable than ever, if not by its own inherent strength, at any rate by the obvious failure of all the attempts which had been made to carry it. on the other hand, however much the few, who thought deeply on the question of species, might be repelled by the generally received dogmas, they saw no way of escaping from them, save by the adoption of suppositions, so little justified by experiment or by observation, as to be at least equally distasteful; the choice lay between two absurdities and a middle condition of uneasy scepticism; which last, however unpleasant and unsatisfactory, was obviously the only justifiable state of mind under the circumstances. such being the general ferment in the minds of naturalists, it is no wonder that they mustered strong in the rooms of the linnæan society, on the first of july of the year , to hear two papers by authors living on opposite sides of the globe, working out their results independently, and yet professing to have discovered one and the same solution of all the problems connected with species. the one of these authors was an able naturalist, mr. wallace, who had been employed for some years in studying the productions of the islands of the indian archipelago, and who had forwarded a memoir embodying his views to mr. darwin for communication to the linnæan society. on perusing the essay mr. darwin was not a little surprised to find that it embodied some of the leading ideas of a great work which he had been preparing for twenty years, and parts of which, containing a development of the very same views, had been perused by his private friends fifteen or sixteen years before. perplexed in what manner to do full justice both to his friend and to himself, mr. darwin placed the matter in the hands of dr. hooker and sir charles lyell, by whose advice he communicated a brief abstract of his own views to the linnæan society, at the same time that mr. wallace's paper was read. of that abstract, the work on the "origin of species" is an enlargement, but a complete statement of mr. darwin's doctrine is looked for in the large and well-illustrated work which he is said to be preparing for publication.[ ] * * * * * the darwinian hypothesis has the merit of being eminently simple and comprehensible in principle, and its essential positions may be stated in a very few words: all species have been produced by the development of varieties from common stocks, by the conversion of these, first into permanent races and then into new species, by the process of _natural selection_, which process is essentially identical with that artificial selection by which man has originated the races of domestic animals--the _struggle for existence_ taking the place of man, and exerting, in the case of natural selection, that selective action which he performs in artificial selection. the evidence brought forward by mr. darwin in support of his hypothesis is of three kinds. first, he endeavours to prove that species may be originated by selection; secondly, he attempts to show that natural causes are competent to exert selection; and thirdly, he tries to prove that the most remarkable and apparently anomalous phenomena exhibited by the distribution, development, and mutual relations of species, can be shown to be deducible from the general doctrine of their origin, which he propounds, combined with the known facts of geological change; and that, even if not all these phenomena are at present explicable by it, none are necessarily inconsistent with it. there cannot be a doubt that the method of inquiry which mr. darwin has adopted is not only rigorously in accordance with the canons of scientific logic, but that it is the only adequate method. critics exclusively trained in classics or in mathematics, who have never determined a scientific fact in their lives by induction from experiment or observation, prate learnedly about mr. darwin's method, which is not inductive enough, not baconian enough, forsooth, for them. but even if practical acquaintance with the process of scientific investigation is denied them, they may learn, by the perusal of mr. mill's admirable chapter "on the deductive method," that there are multitudes of scientific inquiries, in which the method of pure induction helps the investigator but a very little way. "the mode of investigation" (says mr. mill) "which from the proved inapplicability of direct methods of observation and experiment remains to us as the main source of the knowledge we possess, or can acquire, respecting the conditions and laws of recurrence of the more complex phenomena, is called, in its most general expression, the deductive method, and consists of three operations: the first, one of direct induction; the second, of ratiocination; and the third, of verification." now, the conditions which have determined the existence of species are not only exceedingly complex, but, so far as the great majority of them are concerned, are necessarily beyond our cognisance. but what mr. darwin has attempted to do is in exact accordance with the rule laid down by mr. mill; he has endeavoured to determine certain great facts inductively, by observation and experiment; he has then reasoned from the data thus furnished; and lastly, he has tested the validity of his ratiocination by comparing his deductions with the observed facts of nature. inductively, mr. darwin endeavours to prove that species arise in a given way. deductively, he desires to show that, if they arise in that way, the facts of distribution, development, classification, &c., may be accounted for, _i.e._ may be deduced from their mode of origin, combined with admitted changes in physical geography and climate, during an indefinite period. and this explanation, or coincidence of observed with deduced facts, is, so far as it extends, a verification of the darwinian view. there is no fault to be found with mr. darwin's method, then; but it is another question whether he has fulfilled all the conditions imposed by that method. is it satisfactorily proved, in fact, that species may be originated by selection? that there is such a thing as natural selection? that none of the phenomena exhibited by species are inconsistent with the origin of species in this way? if these questions can be answered in the affirmative, mr. darwin's view steps out of the ranks of hypotheses into those of proved theories; but so long as the evidence at present adduced falls short of enforcing that affirmation, so long, to our minds, must the new doctrine be content to remain among the former--an extremely valuable, and in the highest degree probable, doctrine, indeed the only extant hypothesis which is worth anything in a scientific point of view; but still a hypothesis, and not yet the theory of species. after much consideration, and with assuredly no bias against mr. darwin's views, it is our clear conviction that, as the evidence stands, it is not absolutely proven that a group of animals, having all the characters exhibited by species in nature, has ever been originated by selection, whether artificial or natural. groups having the morphological character of species, distinct and permanent races in fact, have been so produced over and over again; but there is no positive evidence at present that any group of animals has, by variation and selective breeding, given rise to another group which was even in the least degree infertile with the first. mr. darwin is perfectly aware of this weak point, and brings forward a multitude of ingenious and important arguments to diminish the force of the objection. we admit the value of these arguments to their fullest extent; nay, we will go so far as to express our belief that experiments, conducted by a skilful physiologist, would very probably obtain the desired production of mutually more or less infertile breeds from a common stock, in a comparatively few years; but still, as the case stands at present, this "little rift within the lute" is not to be disguised nor overlooked. in the remainder of mr. darwin's argument our own private ingenuity has not hitherto enabled us to pick holes of any great importance; and judging by what we hear and read, other adventurers in the same field do not seem to have been much more fortunate. it has been urged, for instance, that in his chapters on the struggle for existence and on natural selection, mr. darwin does not so much prove that natural selection does occur, as that it must occur; but, in fact, no other sort of demonstration is attainable. a race does not attract our attention in nature until it has, in all probability, existed for a considerable time, and then it is too late to inquire into the conditions of its origin. again, it is said that there is no real analogy between the selection which takes place under domestication, by human influence, and any operation which can be effected by nature, for man interferes intelligently. reduced to its elements, this argument implies that an effect produced with trouble by an intelligent agent must, _à fortiori_ be more troublesome, if not impossible, to an unintelligent agent. even putting aside the question whether nature, acting as she does according to definite and invariable laws, can be rightly called an unintelligent agent, such a position as this is wholly untenable. mix salt and sand, and it shall puzzle the wisest of men with his mere natural appliances to separate all the grains of sand from all the grains of salt; but a shower of rain will effect the same object in ten minutes. and so while man may find it tax all his intelligence to separate any variety which arises, and to breed selectively from it, the destructive agencies incessantly at work in nature, if they find one variety to be more soluble in circumstances than the other, will inevitably in the long run eliminate it. a frequent and a just objection to the lamarckian hypothesis of the transmutation of species is based upon the absence of transitional forms between many species. but against the darwinian hypothesis this argument has no force. indeed, one of the most valuable and suggestive parts of mr. darwin's work is that in which he proves, that the frequent absence of transitions is a necessary consequence of his doctrine, and that the stock whence two or more species have sprung, need in no respect be intermediate between these species. if any two species have arisen from a common stock in the same way as the carrier and the pouter, say, have arisen from the rock-pigeon, then the common stock of these two species need be no more intermediate between the two than the rock-pigeon is between the carrier and pouter. clearly appreciate the force of this analogy, and all the arguments against the origin of species by selection, based on the absence of transitional forms, fall to the ground. and mr. darwin's position might, we think, have been even stronger than it is if he had not embarrassed himself with the aphorism, "_natura non facit saltum_," which turns up so often in his pages. we believe, as we have said above, that nature does make jumps now and then, and a recognition of the fact is of no small importance in disposing of many minor objections to the doctrine of transmutation. but we must pause. the discussion of mr. darwin's arguments in detail would lead us far beyond the limits within which we proposed, at starting, to confine this article. our object has been attained if we have given an intelligible, however brief, account of the established facts connected with species, and of the relation of the explanation of those facts offered by mr. darwin to the theoretical views held by his predecessors and his contemporaries, and, above all, to the requirements of scientific logic. we have ventured to point out that it does not, as yet, satisfy all those requirements; but we do not hesitate to assert that it is as superior to any preceding or contemporary hypothesis, in the extent of observational and experimental basis on which it rests, in its rigorously scientific method, and in its power of explaining biological phenomena, as was the hypothesis of copernicus to the speculations of ptolemy. but the planetary orbits turned out to be not quite circular after all, and grand as was the service copernicus rendered to science, kepler and newton had to come after him. what if the orbit of darwinism should be a little too circular? what if species should offer residual phenomena here and there, not explicable by natural selection? twenty years hence naturalists may be in a position to say whether this is, or is not, the case; but in either event they will owe the author of "the origin of species" an immense debt of gratitude. we should leave a very wrong impression on the reader's mind if we permitted him to suppose that the value of that work depends wholly on the ultimate justification of the theoretical views which it contains. on the contrary, if they were disproved to-morrow, the book would still be the best of its kind--the most compendious statement of well-sifted facts bearing on the doctrine of species that has ever appeared. the chapters on variation, on the struggle for existence, on instinct, on hybridism, on the imperfection of the geological record, on geographical distribution, have not only no equals, but, so far as our knowledge goes, no competitors, within the range of biological literature. and viewed as a whole, we do not believe that, since the publication of von baer's researches on development, thirty years ago, any work has appeared calculated to exert so large an influence, not only on the future of biology, but in extending the domination of science over regions of thought into which she has, as yet, hardly penetrated. footnotes: [ ] "on the osteology of the chimpanzees and orangs." transactions of the zoological society, . [ ] colonel humphreys' statements are exceedingly explicit on this point:--"when an ancon ewe is impregnated by a common ram the increase resembles wholly either the ewe or the ram. the increase of the common ewe impregnated by an ancon ram follows entirely the one or the other, without blending any of the distinguishing and essential peculiarities of both. frequent instances have happened where common ewes have had twins by ancon rams, when one exhibited the complete marks and features of the ewe, the other of the ram. the contrast has been rendered singularly striking, when one short-legged and one long-legged lamb, produced at a birth, have been seen sucking the dam at the same time."--philosophical transactions, , pt. i. pp. , . [ ] see phil. zoologique, vol. i. p. , _et seq._ [ ] the reader will remember that huxley was writing in . xiv the darwinian hypothesis. darwin on the origin of species there is a growing immensity in the speculations of science to which no human thing or thought at this day is comparable. apart from the results which science brings us home and securely harvests, there is an expansive force and latitude in its tentative efforts, which lifts us out of ourselves and transfigures our mortality. we may have a preference for moral themes, like the homeric sage, who had seen and known much:-- "cities of men and manners, climates, councils, governments;" yet we must end by confessing that "the windy ways of men are but dust which rises up and is lightly laid again," in comparison with the work of nature, to which science testifies, but which has no boundaries in time or space to which science can approximate. there is something altogether out of the reach of science, and yet the compass of science is practically illimitable. hence it is that from time to time we are startled and perplexed by theories which have no parallel in the contracted moral world; for the generalizations of science sweep on in ever-widening circles, and more aspiring flights, though a limitless creation. while astronomy, with its telescope, ranges beyond the known stars, and physiology, with its microscope, is subdividing infinite minutiæ, we may expect that our historic centuries may be treated as inadequate counters in the history of the planet on which we are placed. we must expect new conceptions of the nature and relations of its denizens, as science acquires the materials for fresh generalizations; nor have we occasion for alarms if a highly advanced knowledge, like that of the eminent naturalist before us, confronts us with an hypothesis as vast as it is novel. this hypothesis may or may not be sustainable hereafter; it may give way to something else, and higher science may reverse what science has here built up with so much skill and patience, but its sufficiency must be tried by the tests of science _alone_, if we are to maintain our position as the heirs of bacon and the acquitters of galileo. we must weigh this hypothesis strictly in the controversy which is coming, by the only tests which are appropriate, and by no others whatsoever. the hypothesis to which we point, and of which the present work of mr. darwin is but the preliminary outline, may be stated in his own language as follows:--"_species originated by means of natural selection, or through the preservation of the favoured races in the struggle for life_." to render this thesis intelligible, it is necessary to interpret its terms. in the first place, what is a species? the question is a simple one, but the right answer to it is hard to find, even if we appeal to those who should know most about it. it is all those animals or plants which have descended from a single pair of parents; it is the smallest distinctly definable group of living organisms; it is an eternal and immutable entity; it is a mere abstraction of the human intellect having no existence in nature. such are a few of the significations attached to this simple word which may be culled from authoritative sources; and if, leaving terms and theoretical subtleties aside, we turn to facts and endeavour to gather a meaning for ourselves, by studying the things to which, in practice, the name of species is applied, it profits us little. for practice varies as much as theory. let the botanist or the zoologist examine and describe the productions of a country, and one will pretty certainly disagree with the other as to the number, limits, and definitions of the species into which he groups the very same things. in these islands we are in the habit of regarding mankind as of one species, but a fortnight's steam will land us in a country where divines and savans, for once in agreement, vie with one another in loudness of assertion, if not in cogency of proof, that men are of different species; and, more particularly, that the species negro is so distinct from our own that the ten commandments have actually no reference to him. even in the calm region of entomology, where, if anywhere in this sinful world, passion and prejudice should fail to stir the mind, one learned coleopterist will fill ten attractive volumes with descriptions of species of beetles, nine-tenths of which are immediately declared by his brother beetle-mongers to be no species at all. the truth is that the number of distinguishable living creatures almost surpasses imagination. at least a hundred thousand such kinds of insects alone have been described and may be identified in collections, and the number of separable kinds of living things is under estimated at half a million. seeing that most of these obvious kinds have their accidental varieties, and that they often shade into others by imperceptible degrees, it may well be imagined that the task of distinguishing between what is permanent and what fleeting, what is a species and what a mere variety, is sufficiently formidable. but is it not possible to apply a test whereby a true species may be known from a mere variety? is there no criterion of species? great authorities affirm that there is--that the unions of members of the same species are always fertile, while those of distinct species are either sterile, or their offspring, called hybrids, are so. it is affirmed not only that this is an experimental fact, but that it is a provision for the preservation of the purity of species. such a criterion as this would be invaluable; but, unfortunately, not only is it not obvious how to apply it in the great majority of cases in which its aid is needed, but its general validity is stoutly denied. the hon. and rev. mr. herbert, a most trustworthy authority, not only asserts as the result of his own observations and experiments that many hybrids are quite as fertile as the parent species, but he goes so far as to assert that the particular plant _crinum capense_ is much more fertile when crossed by a distinct species than when fertilised by its proper pollen! on the other hand the famous gaertner, though he took the greatest pains to cross the primrose and cowslip, succeeded only once or twice in several years; and yet it is a well-established fact that the primrose and the cowslip are only varieties of the same kind of plant. again, such cases as the following are well established. the female of species a if crossed with the male of species b is fertile, but if the female of b is crossed with the male of a, she remains barren. facts of this kind destroy the value of the supposed criterion. if, weary of the endless difficulties involved in the determination of species, the investigator, contenting himself with the rough practical distinction of separable kinds, endeavours to study them as they occur in nature--to ascertain their relations to the conditions which surround them, their mutual harmonies and discordances of structure, the bond of union of their parts and their past history, he finds himself, according to the received notions, in a mighty maze, and with, at most, the dimmest adumbration of a plan. if he starts with any one clear conviction, it is that every part of a living creature is cunningly adapted to some special use in its life. has not his paley told him that that seemingly useless organ, the spleen, is beautifully adjusted as so much packing between the other organs? and yet, at the outset of his studies, he finds that no adaptive reason whatsoever can be given for one-half of the peculiarities of vegetable structure; he also discovers rudimentary teeth, which are never used, in the gums of the young calf and in those of the foetal whale; insects which never bite have rudimental jaws, and others which never fly have rudimental wings; naturally blind creatures have rudimental eyes; and the halt have rudimentary limbs. so, again, no animal or plant puts on its perfect form at once, but all have to start from the same point, however various the course which each has to pursue. not only men and horses, and cats and dogs, lobsters and beetles, periwinkles and mussels, but even the very sponges and animalcules commence their existence under forms which are essentially undistinguishable; and this is true of all the infinite variety of plants. nay, more, all living beings march side by side along the high road of development, and separate the later the more like they are; like people leaving church, who all go down the aisle, but having reached the door some turn into the parsonage, others go down the village, and others part only in the next parish. a man in his development runs for a little while parallel with, though never passing through, the form of the meanest worm, then travels for a space beside the fish, then journeys along with the bird and the reptile for his fellow travellers; and only at last, after a brief companionship with the highest of the four-footed and four-handed world, rises into the dignity of pure manhood. no competent thinker of the present day dreams of explaining these indubitable facts by the notion of the existence of unknown and undiscoverable adaptations to purpose. and we would remind those who, ignorant of the facts, must be moved by authority, that no one has asserted the incompetence of the doctrine of final causes, in its application to physiology and anatomy, more strongly than our own eminent anatomist, professor owen, who, speaking of such cases, says (_on the nature of limbs_, pp. , ): "i think it will be obvious that the principle of final adaptations fails to satisfy all the conditions of the problem." but, if the doctrine of final causes will not help us to comprehend the anomalies of living structure, the principle of adaptation must surely lead us to understand why certain living beings are found in certain regions of the world and not in others. the palm, as we know, will not grow in our climate, nor the oak in greenland. the white bear cannot live where the tiger thrives, nor _vice versâ_, and the more the natural habits of animal and vegetable species are examined, the more do they seem, on the whole, limited to particular provinces. but when we look into the facts established by the study of the geographical distribution of animals and plants it seems utterly hopeless to attempt to understand the strange and apparently capricious relations which they exhibit. one would be inclined to suppose _à priori_ that every country must be naturally peopled by those animals that are fittest to live and thrive in it. and yet how, on this hypothesis, are we to account for the absence of cattle in the pampas of south america when those parts of the new world were discovered? it is not that they were unfit for cattle, for millions of cattle now run wild there; and the like holds good of australia and new zealand. it is a curious circumstance, in fact, that the animals and plants of the northern hemisphere are not only as well adapted to live in the southern hemisphere as its own autochthones, but are in many cases absolutely better adapted, and so overrun and extirpate the aborigines. clearly, therefore, the species which naturally inhabit a country are not necessarily the best adapted to its climate and other conditions. the inhabitants of islands are often distinct from any other known species of animal or plants (witness our recent examples from the work of sir emerson tennent, on ceylon), and yet they have almost always a sort of general family resemblance to the animals and plants of the nearest mainland. on the other hand, there is hardly a species of fish, shell, or crab common to the opposite sides of the narrow isthmus of panama. wherever we look, then, living nature offers us riddles of difficult solution, if we suppose that what we see is all that can be known of it. but our knowledge of life is not confined to the existing world. whatever their minor differences, geologists are agreed as to the vast thickness of the accumulated strata which compose the visible part of our earth, and the inconceivable immensity of the time of whose lapse they are the imperfect, but the only accessible witnesses. now, throughout the greater part of this long series of stratified rocks are scattered, sometimes very abundantly, multitudes of organic remains, the fossilised exuviæ of animals and plants which lived and died while the mud of which the rocks are formed was yet soft ooze, and could receive and bury them. it would be a great error to suppose that these organic remains were fragmentary relics. our museums exhibit fossil shells of immeasurable antiquity, as perfect as the day they were formed, whole skeletons without a limb disturbed--nay, the changed flesh, the developing embryos, and even the very footsteps of primæval organisms. thus the naturalist finds in the bowels of the earth species as well defined as, and in some groups of animals more numerous than, those that breathe the upper air. but, singularly enough, the majority of these entombed species are wholly distinct from those that now live. nor is this unlikeness without its rule and order. as a broad fact, the further we go back in time the less the buried species are like existing forms; and the further apart the sets of extinct creatures are the less they are like one another. in other words, there has been a regular succession of living beings, each younger set being in a very broad and general sense somewhat more like those which now live. it was once supposed that this succession had been the result of vast successive catastrophes, destructions, and re-creations _en masse_; but catastrophes are now almost eliminated from geological, or at least paleontological speculation; and it is admitted on all hands that the seeming breaks in the chain of being are not absolute, but only relative to our imperfect knowledge; that species have replaced species, not in assemblages, but one by one; and that, if it were possible to have all the phenomena of the past presented to us, the convenient epochs and formations of the geologist, though having a certain distinctness, would fade into one another with limits as undefinable as those of the distinct and yet separable colours of the solar spectrum. such is a brief summary of the main truths which have been established concerning species. are these truths ultimate and irresolvable facts, or are their complexities and perplexities the mere expressions of a higher law? a large number of persons practically assume the former position to be correct. they believe that the writer of the pentateuch was empowered and commissioned to teach us scientific as well as other truth, that the account we find there of the creation of living things is simply and literally correct, and that anything which seems to contradict it is, by the nature of the case, false. all the phenomena which have been detailed are, on this view, the immediate product of a creative fiat and consequently are out of the domain of science altogether. whether this view prove ultimately to be true or false, it is, at any rate, not at present supported by what is commonly regarded as logical proof, even if it be capable of discussion by reason; and hence we consider ourselves at liberty to pass it by, and to turn to those views which profess to rest on a scientific basis only, and therefore admit of being argued to their consequences. and we do this with the less hesitation as it so happens that those persons who are practically conversant with the facts of the case (plainly a considerable advantage) have always thought fit to range themselves under the latter category. the majority of these competent persons have up to the present time maintained two positions,--the first, that every species is, within certain defined or definable limits, fixed and incapable of modification; the second, that every species was originally produced by a distinct creative act. the second position is obviously incapable of proof or disproof, the direct operations of the creator not being subjects of science; and it must therefore be regarded as a corollary from the first, the truth or falsehood of which is a matter of evidence. most persons imagine that the arguments in favour of it are overwhelming; but to some few minds, and these, it must be confessed, intellects of no small power and grasp of knowledge, they have not brought conviction. among these minds that of the famous naturalist lamarck, who possessed a greater acquaintance with the lower forms of life than any man of his day, cuvier not excepted, and was a good botanist to boot, occupies a prominent place. two facts appear to have strongly affected the course of thought of this remarkable man--the one, that finer or stronger links of affinity connect all living beings with one another, and that thus the highest creature grades by multitudinous steps into the lowest; the other, that an organ may be developed in particular directions by exerting itself in particular ways, and that modifications once induced may be transmitted and become hereditary. putting these facts together, lamarck endeavoured to account for the first by the operation of the second. place an animal in new circumstances, says he, and its needs will be altered; the new needs will create new desires, and the attempt to gratify such desires will result in an appropriate modification of the organs exerted. make a man a blacksmith, and his brachial muscles will develope in accordance with the demands made upon them, and in like manner, says lamarck, "the efforts of some shortnecked bird to catch fish without wetting himself have, with time and perseverance, given rise to all our herons and long-necked waders." the lamarckian hypothesis has long since been justly condemned, and it is the established practice for every tyro to raise his heel against the carcass of the dead lion. but it is rarely either wise or instructive to treat even the errors of a really great man with mere ridicule, and in the present case the logical form of the doctrine stands on a very different footing from its substance. if species have really arisen by the operation of natural conditions, we ought to be able to find those conditions now at work; we ought to be able to discover in nature some power adequate to modify any given kind of animal or plant in such a manner as to give rise to another kind, which would be admitted by naturalists as a distinct species. lamarck imagined that he had discovered this _vera causa_ in the admitted facts that some organs may be modified by exercise; and that modifications, once produced, are capable of hereditary transmission. it does not seem to have occurred to him to inquire whether there is any reason to believe that there are any limits to the amount of modification producible, or to ask how long an animal is likely to endeavour to gratify an impossible desire. the bird, in our example, would surely have renounced fish dinners long before it had produced the least effect on leg or neck. since lamarck's time almost all competent naturalists have left speculations on the origin of species to such dreamers as the author of the _vestiges_, by whose well-intentioned efforts the lamarckian theory received its final condemnation in the minds of all sound thinkers. notwithstanding this silence, however, the transmutation theory, as it has been called, has been a "skeleton in the closet" to many an honest zoologist and botanist who had a soul above the mere naming of dried plants and skins. surely, has such an one thought, nature is a mighty and consistent whole, and the providential order established in the world of life must, if we could only see it rightly, be consistent with that dominant over the multiform shapes of brute matter. but what is the history of astronomy, of all the branches of physics, of chemistry, of medicine, but a narration of the steps by which the human mind has been compelled, often sorely against its will, to recognize the operation of secondary causes in events where ignorance beheld an immediate intervention of a higher power? and when we know that living things are formed of the same elements as the inorganic world, that they act and react upon it, bound by a thousand ties of natural piety, is it probable, nay is it possible, that they, and they alone, should have no order in their seeming disorder, no unity in their seeming multiplicity, should suffer no explanation by the discovery of some central and sublime law of mutual connexion? questions of this kind have assuredly often arisen, but it might have been long before they received such expression as would have commanded the respect and attention of the scientific world, had it not been for the publication of the work which prompted this article. its author, mr. darwin, inheritor of a once celebrated name, won his spurs in science when most of those now distinguished were young men, and has for the last years held a place in the front ranks of british philosophers. after a circumnavigatory voyage, undertaken solely for the love of his science, mr. darwin published a series of researches which at once arrested the attention of naturalists and geologists; his generalizations have since received ample confirmation, and now command universal assent, nor is it questionable that they have had the most important influence on the progress of science. more recently mr. darwin, with a versatility which is among the rarest of gifts, turned his attention to a most difficult question of zoology and minute anatomy; and no living naturalist and anatomist has published a better monograph than that which resulted from his labours. such a man, at all events, has not entered the sanctuary with unwashed hands, and when he lays before us the results of years' investigation and reflection we must listen even though we be disposed to strike. but, in reading his work it must be confessed that the attention which might at first be dutifully, soon becomes willingly, given, so clear is the author's thought, so outspoken his conviction, so honest and fair the candid expression of his doubts. those who would judge the book must read it; we shall endeavour only to make its line of argument and its philosophical position intelligible to the general reader in our own way. the baker-street bazaar has just been exhibiting its familiar annual spectacle. straight-backed, small-headed, big-barrelled oxen, as dissimilar from any wild species as can well be imagined, contended for attention and praise with sheep of half-a-dozen different breeds and styes of bloated preposterous pigs, no more like a wild boar or sow than a city alderman is like an ourang-outang. the cattle show has been, and perhaps may again be, succeeded by a poultry show, of whose crowing and clucking prodigies it can only be certainly predicated that they will be very unlike the aboriginal _phasianus gallus_. if the seeker after animal anomalies is not satisfied, a turn or two in seven dials will convince him that the breeds of pigeons are quite as extraordinary and unlike one another and their parent stock, while the horticultural society will provide him with any number of corresponding vegetable aberrations from nature's types. he will learn with no little surprise, too, in the course of his travels, that the proprietors and producers of these animal and vegetable anomalies regard them as distinct species, with a firm belief, the strength of which is exactly proportioned to their ignorance of scientific biology, and which is the more remarkable as they are all proud of their skill in _originating_ such "species." on careful inquiry it is found that all these, and the many other artificial breeds or races of animals and plants, have been produced by one method. the breeder--and a skilful one must be a person of much sagacity and natural or acquired perceptive faculty--notes some slight difference, arising he knows not how, in some individuals of his stock. if he wish to perpetuate the difference, to form a breed with the peculiarity in question strongly marked, he selects such male and female individuals as exhibit the desired character, and breeds from them. their offspring are then carefully examined, and those which exhibit the peculiarity the most distinctly are selected for breeding, and this operation is repeated until the desired amount of divergence from the primitive stock is reached. it is then found that by continuing the process of selection--always breeding, that is, from well-marked forms, and allowing no impure crosses to interfere,--a race may be formed, the tendency of which to reproduce itself is exceedingly strong; nor is the limit to the amount of divergence which may be thus produced known, but one thing is certain, that, if certain breeds of dogs, or of pigeons, or of horses, were known only in a fossil state, no naturalist would hesitate in regarding them as distinct species. but, in all these cases we have _human interference_. without the breeder there would be no selection, and without the selection no race. before admitting the possibility of natural species having originated in any similar way, it must be proved that there is in nature some power which takes the place of man, and performs a selection _suâ sponte_. it is the claim of mr. darwin that he professes to have discovered the existence and the _modus operandi_ of this natural selection, as he terms it; and, if he be right, the process is perfectly simple and comprehensible, and irresistibly deducible from very familiar but well nigh forgotten facts. who, for instance, has duly reflected upon all the consequences of the marvellous struggle for existence which is daily and hourly going on among living beings? not only does every animal live at the expense of some other animal or plant, but the very plants are at war. the ground is full of seeds that cannot rise into seedlings; the seedlings rob one another of air and light and water, the strongest robber winning the day, and extinguishing his competitors. year after year, the wild animals with which man never interferes are, on the average, neither more nor less numerous than they were; and yet we know that the annual produce of every pair is from one to perhaps a million young,--so that it is mathematically certain that, on the average, as many are killed by natural causes as are born every year, and those only escape which happen to be a little better fitted to resist destruction than those which die. the individuals of a species are like the crew of a foundered ship, and none but good swimmers have a chance of reaching the land. such being unquestionably the necessary conditions under which living creatures exist, mr. darwin discovers in them the instrument of natural selection. suppose that in the midst of this incessant competition some individuals of a species (a) present accidental variations which happen to fit them a little better than their fellows for the struggle in which they are engaged, then the chances are in favour, not only of these individuals being better nourished than the others, but of their predominating over their fellows in other ways, and of having a better chance of leaving offspring, which will of course tend to reproduce the peculiarities of their parents. their offspring will, by a parity of reasoning, tend to predominate over their contemporaries, and there being (suppose) no room for more than one species such as a, the weaker variety will eventually be destroyed by the new destructive influence which is thrown into the scale, and the stronger will take its place. surrounding conditions remaining unchanged, the new variety (which we may call b)--supposed, for argument's sake, to be the best adapted for these conditions which can be got out of the original stock--will remain unchanged, all accidental deviations from the type becoming at once extinguished, as less fit for their post than b itself. the tendency of b to persist will grow with its persistence through successive generations, and it will acquire all the characters of a new species. but, on the other hand, if the conditions of life change in any degree, however slight, b may no longer be that form which is best adapted to withstand their destructive, and profit by their sustaining, influence; in which case if it should give rise to a more competent variety (c), this will take its place and become a new species; and thus, by _natural selection_, the species b and c will be successively derived from a. that this most ingenious hypothesis enables us to give a reason for many apparent anomalies in the distribution of living beings in time and space, and that it is not contradicted by the main phenomena of life and organization appear to us to be unquestionable, and so far it must be admitted to have an immense advantage over any of its predecessors. but it is quite another matter to affirm absolutely either the truth or falsehood of mr. darwin's views at the present stage of the inquiry. goethe has an excellent aphorism defining that state of mind which he calls _thätige skepsis_--active doubt. it is doubt which so loves truth that it neither dares rest in doubting, nor extinguish itself by unjustified belief; and we commend this state of mind to students of species, with respect to mr. darwin's or any other hypothesis, as to their origin. the combined investigations of another years may, perhaps, enable naturalists to say whether the modifying causes and the selective power, which mr. darwin has satisfactorily shown to exist in nature, are competent to produce all the effects he ascribes to them, or whether, on the other hand, he has been led to over-estimate the value of his principle of natural selection, as greatly as lamarck over-estimated his _vera causa_ of modification by exercise. but there is, at all events, one advantage possessed by the more recent writer over his predecessor. mr. darwin abhors mere speculation as nature abhors a vacuum. he is as greedy of cases and precedents as any constitutional lawyer, and all the principles he lays down are capable of being brought to the test of observation and experiment. the path he bids us follow professes to be not a mere airy track, fabricated of ideal cobwebs, but a solid and broad bridge of facts. if it be so, it will carry us safely over many a chasm in our knowledge, and lead us to a region free from the snares of those fascinating but barren virgins, the final causes, against whom a high authority has so justly warned us. "my sons, dig in the vineyard," were the last words of the old man in the fable; and, though the sons found no treasure, they made their fortunes by the grapes. xv a lobster; or, the study of zoology natural history is the name familiarly applied to the study of the properties of such natural bodies as minerals, plants, and animals; the sciences which embody the knowledge man has acquired upon these subjects are commonly termed natural sciences, in contradistinction to other, so-called "physical," sciences; and those who devote themselves especially to the pursuit of such sciences have been, and are, commonly termed "naturalists." linnæus was a naturalist in this wide sense, and his "systema naturæ" was a work upon natural history in the broadest acceptation of the term; in it, that great methodizing spirit embodied all that was known in his time of the distinctive characters of minerals, animals, and plants. but the enormous stimulus which linnæus gave to the investigation of nature soon rendered it impossible that any one man should write another "systema naturæ," and extremely difficult for any one to become a naturalist such as linnæus was. great as have been the advances made by all the three branches of science, of old included under the title of natural history, there can be no doubt that zoology and botany have grown in an enormously greater ratio than mineralogy, and hence, as i suppose, the name of "natural history" has gradually become more and more definitely attached to these prominent divisions of the subject, and by "naturalist" people have meant more and more distinctly to imply a student of the structure and functions of living beings. however this may be, it is certain that the advance of knowledge has gradually widened the distance between mineralogy and its old associates, while it has drawn zoology and botany closer together; so that of late years it has been found convenient (and indeed necessary) to associate the sciences which deal with vitality and all its phenomena under the common head of "biology"; and the biologists have come to repudiate any blood-relationship with their foster-brothers, the mineralogists. certain broad laws have a general application throughout both the animal and the vegetable worlds, but the ground common to these kingdoms of nature is not of very wide extent, and the multiplicity of details is so great, that the student of living beings finds himself obliged to devote his attention exclusively either to the one or the other. if he elects to study plants, under any aspect, we know at once what to call him; he is a botanist and his science is botany. but if the investigation of animal life be his choice, the name generally applied to him will vary, according to the kind of animals he studies, or the particular phenomena of animal life to which he confines his attention. if the study of man is his object, he is called an anatomist, or a physiologist, or an ethnologist; but if he dissects animals, or examines into the mode in which their functions are performed, he is a comparative anatomist or comparative physiologist. if he turns his attention to fossil animals he is a palæontologist. if his mind is more particularly directed to the description, specific discrimination, classification, and distribution of animals he is termed a zoologist. for the purposes of the present discourse, however, i shall recognise none of these titles save the last, which i shall employ as the equivalent of botanist, and i shall use the term zoology as denoting the whole doctrine of animal life, in contradistinction from botany, which signifies the whole doctrine of vegetable life. employed in this sense, zoology, like botany, is divisible into three great but subordinate sciences, morphology, physiology, and distribution, each of which may, to a very great extent, be studied independently of the other. zoological morphology is the doctrine of animal form or structure. anatomy is one of its branches, development is another; while classification is the expression of the relations which different animals bear to one another, in respect of their anatomy and their development. zoological distribution is the study of animals in relation to the terrestrial conditions which obtain now, or have obtained at any previous epoch of the earth's history. zoological physiology, lastly, is the doctrine of the functions or actions of animals. it regards animal bodies as machines impelled by certain forces, and performing an amount of work, which can be expressed in terms of the ordinary forces of nature. the final object of physiology is to deduce the facts of morphology on the one hand, and those of distribution on the other, from the laws of the molecular forces of matter. such is the scope of zoology. but if i were to content myself with the enunciation of these dry definitions, i should ill exemplify that method of teaching this branch of physical science, which it is my chief business to-night to recommend. let us turn away then from abstract definitions. let us take some concrete living thing, some animal, the commoner the better, and let us see how the application of common sense and common logic to the obvious facts it presents, inevitably leads us into all these branches of zoological science. i have before me a lobster. when i examine it, what appears to be the most striking character it presents? why, i observe that this part which we call the tail of the lobster, is made up of six distinct hard rings and a seventh terminal piece. if i separate one of the middle rings, say the third, i find it carries upon its under surface a pair of limbs or appendages, each of which consists of a stalk and two terminal pieces. so that i can represent a transverse section of the ring and its appendages upon the diagram board in this way. if i now take the fourth ring, i find it has the same structure, and so have the fifth and the second; so that in each of these divisions of the tail i find parts which correspond with one another, a ring and two appendages; and in each appendage a stalk and two end pieces. these corresponding parts are called in the technical language of anatomy "homologous parts." the ring of the third division is the "homologue" of the ring of the fifth, the appendage of the former is the homologue of the appendage of the latter. and as each division exhibits corresponding parts in corresponding places, we say that all the divisions are constructed upon the same plan. but now let us consider the sixth division. it is similar to, and yet different from, the others. the ring is essentially the same as in the other divisions; but the appendages look at first as if they were very different; and yet when we regard them closely, what do we find? a stalk and two terminal divisions exactly as in the others, but the stalk is very short and very thick, the terminal divisions are very broad and flat, and one of them is divided into two pieces. i may say, therefore, that the sixth segment is like the others in plan, but that it is modified in its details. the first segment is like the others, so far as its ring is concerned, and though its appendages differ from any of those yet examined in the simplicity of their structure, parts corresponding with the stem and one of the divisions of the appendages of the other segments can be readily discerned in them. thus it appears that the lobster's tail is composed of a series of segments which are fundamentally similar, though each presents peculiar modifications of the plan common to all. but when i turn to the forepart of the body i see, at first, nothing but a great shield-like shell, called technically the "carapace," ending in front in a sharp spine, on either side of which are the curious compound eyes, set upon the ends of stout moveable stalks. behind these, on the under side of the body, are two pairs of long feelers or antennæ, followed by six pairs of jaws, folded against one another over the mouth, and five pairs of legs, the foremost of these being the great pinchers, or claws, of the lobster. it looks, at first, a little hopeless to attempt to find in this complex mass a series of rings, each with its pair of appendages, such as i have shown you in the abdomen, and yet it is not difficult to demonstrate their existence. strip off the legs, and you will find that each pair is attached to a very definite segment of the under wall of the body; but these segments, instead of being the lower parts of free rings, as in the tail, are such parts of rings which are all solidly united and bound together; and the like is true of the jaws, the feelers, and the eye-stalks, every pair of which is borne upon its own special segment. thus the conclusion is gradually forced upon us that the body of the lobster is composed of as many rings as there are pairs of appendages, namely, twenty in all, but that the six hindmost rings remain free and moveable, while the fourteen front rings become firmly soldered together, their backs forming one continuous shield--the carapace. unity of plan, diversity in execution, is the lesson taught by the study of the rings of the body, and the same instruction is given still more emphatically by the appendages. if i examine the outermost jaw i find it consists of three distinct portions, an inner, a middle, and an outer, mounted upon a common stem; and if i compare this jaw with the legs behind it, or the jaws in front of it, i find it quite easy to see, that, in the legs, it is the part of the appendage which corresponds with the inner division, which becomes modified into what we know familiarly as the "leg," while the middle division disappears, and the outer division is hidden under the carapace. nor is it more difficult to discern that, in the appendages of the tail, the middle division appears again and the outer vanishes; while on the other hand, in the foremost jaw, the so-called mandible, the inner division only is left; and, in the same way, the parts of the feelers and of the eye-stalks, can be identified with those of the legs and jaws. but whither does all this tend? to the very remarkable conclusion that a unity of plan, of the same kind as that discoverable in the tail or abdomen of the lobster, pervades the whole organization of its skeleton, so that i can return to the diagram representing any one of the rings of the tail, which i drew upon the board, and by adding a third division to each appendage, i can use it as a sort of scheme or plan of any ring of the body. i can give names to all the parts of that figure, and then if i take any segment of the body of the lobster, i can point out to you exactly, what modification the general plan has undergone in that particular segment; what part has remained moveable, and what has become fixed to another; what has been excessively developed and metamorphosed, and what has been suppressed. but i imagine i hear the question, how is all this to be tested? no doubt it is a pretty and ingenious way of looking at the structure of any animal, but is it anything more? does nature acknowledge in any deeper way this unity of plan we seem to trace? the objection suggested by these questions is a very valid and important one, and morphology was in an unsound state, so long as it rested upon the mere perception of the analogies which obtain between fully formed parts. the unchecked ingenuity of speculative anatomists proved itself fully competent to spin any number of contradictory hypotheses out of the same facts, and endless morphological dreams threatened to supplant scientific theory. happily, however, there is a criterion of morphological truth, and a sure test of all homologies. our lobster has not always been what we see it; it was once an egg, a semi-fluid mass of yolk, not so big as a pin's head, contained in a transparent membrane, and exhibiting not the least trace of any one of those organs, whose multiplicity and complexity, in the adult, are so surprising. after a time a delicate patch of cellular membrane appeared upon one face of this yolk, and that patch was the foundation of the whole creature, the clay out of which it would be moulded. gradually investing the yolk, it became subdivided by transverse constrictions into segments, the forerunners of the rings of the body. upon the ventral surface of each of the rings thus sketched out, a pair of bud-like prominences made their appearance--the rudiments of the appendages of the ring. at first, all the appendages were alike, but, as they grew, most of them became distinguished with a stem and two terminal divisions, to which in the middle part of the body was added a third outer division; and it was only at a later period, that by the modification, or abortion, of certain of these primitive constituents, the limbs acquired their perfect form. thus the study of development proves that the doctrine of unity of plan is not merely a fancy, that it is not merely one way of looking at the matter, but that it is the expression of deep-seated natural facts. the legs and jaws of the lobster may not merely be regarded as modifications of a common type,--in fact and in nature they are so,--the leg and the jaw of the young animal being, at first, indistinguishable. these are wonderful truths, the more so because the zoologist finds them to be of universal application. the investigation of a polype, of a snail, of a fish, of a horse, or of a man would have led us, though by a less easy path, perhaps, to exactly the same point. unity of plan everywhere lies hidden under the mask of diversity of structure--the complex is everywhere evolved out of the simple. every animal has at first the form of an egg, and every animal and every organic part, in reaching its adult state, passes through conditions common to other animals and other adult parts; and this leads me to another point. i have hitherto spoken as if the lobster were alone in the world, but, as i need hardly remind you, there are myriads of other animal organisms. of these some, such as men, horses, birds, fishes, snails, slugs, oysters, corals, and sponges, are not in the least like the lobster. but other animals, though they may differ a good deal from the lobster, are yet either very like it, or are like something that is like it. the cray fish, the rock lobster, and the prawn, and the shrimp, for example, however different, are yet so like lobsters, that a child would group them as of the lobster kind, in contradistinction to snails and slugs; and these last again would form a kind by themselves, in contradistinction to cows, horses, and sheep, the cattle kind. but this spontaneous grouping into "kinds" is the first essay of the human mind at classification, or the calling by a common name of those things that are alike, and the arranging them in such a manner as best to suggest the sum of their likenesses and unlikenesses to other things. those kinds which include no other subdivisions than the sexes, or various breeds, are called, in technical language, species. the english lobster is a species, our cray fish is another, our prawn is another. in other countries, however, there are lobsters, cray fish, and prawns, very like ours, and yet presenting sufficient differences to deserve distinction. naturalists, therefore, express this resemblance and this diversity by grouping them as distinct species of the same "genus." but the lobster and the cray fish, though belonging to distinct genera, have many features in common, and hence are grouped together in an assemblage which is called a family. more distant resemblances connect the lobster with the prawn and the crab, which are expressed by putting all these into the same order. again, more remote, but still very definite, resemblances unite the lobster with the woodlouse, the king crab, the water flea, and the barnacle, and separate them from all other animals; whence they collectively constitute the larger group, or class, _crustacea_. but the _crustacea_ exhibit many peculiar features in common with insects, spiders, and centipedes, so that these are grouped into the still larger assemblage or "province" _articulata_, and, finally, the relations which these have to worms and other lower animals, are expressed by combining the whole vast aggregate into the sub-kingdom _annulosa_. if i had worked my way from a sponge instead of a lobster, i should have found it associated, by like ties, with a great number of other animals into the sub-kingdom _protozoa_; if i had selected a fresh-water polype or a coral, the members of what naturalists term the sub-kingdom _coelenterata_, would have grouped themselves around my type; had a snail been chosen, the inhabitants of all univalve and bivalve, land and water shells, the lamp shells, the squids, and the sea-mat would have gradually linked themselves on to it as members of the same sub-kingdom of _mollusca_; and finally starting from man, i should have been compelled to admit first, the ape, the rat, the horse, the dog, into the same class, and then the bird, the crocodile, the turtle, the frog, and the fish, into the same sub-kingdom of _vertebrata_. and if i had followed out all these various lines of classification fully, i should discover in the end that there was no animal, either recent or fossil, which did not at once fall into one or other of these sub-kingdoms. in other words, every animal is organised upon one or other of the five, or more, plans, whose existence renders our classification possible. and so definitely and precisely marked is the structure of each animal that, in the present state of our knowledge, there is not the least evidence to prove that a form, in the slightest degree transitional between any two of the groups _vertebrata_, _annulosa_, _mollusca_, and _coelenterata_, either exists, or has existed, during that period of the earth's history which is recorded by the geologist. nevertheless, you must not for a moment suppose, because no such transitional forms are known, that the members of the sub-kingdoms are disconnected from, or independent of, one another. on the contrary, in their earliest condition they are all alike, and the primordial germs of a man, a dog, a bird, a fish, a beetle, a snail, and a polype are in no essential structural respects, distinguishable. in this broad sense, it may with truth be said, that all living animals, and all those dead creations which geology reveals, are bound together by an all-pervading unity of organisation, of the same character, though not equal in degree, to that which enables us to discern one and the same plan amidst the twenty different segments of a lobster's body. truly it has been said, that to a clear eye the smallest fact is a window through which the infinite may be seen. turning from these purely morphological considerations, let us now examine into the manner in which the attentive study of the lobster impels us into other lines of research. lobsters are found in all the european seas; but on the opposite shores of the atlantic and in the seas of the southern hemisphere they do not exist. they are, however, represented in these regions by very closely allied, but distinct forms--the _homarus americanus_ and the _homarus capensis_, so that we may say that the european has one species of _homarus_; the american, another; the african, another; and thus the remarkable facts of geographical distribution begin to dawn upon us. again, if we examine the contents of the earth's crust, we shall find in the later of those deposits, which have served as the great burying grounds of past ages, numberless lobster-like animals, but none so similar to our living lobster as to make zoologists sure that they belonged even to the same genus. if we go still further back in time, we discover in the oldest rocks of all, the remains of animals, constructed on the same general plan as the lobster, and belonging to the same great group of _crustacea_; but for the most part totally different from the lobster, and indeed from any other living form of crustacean; and thus we gain a notion of that successive change of the animal population of the globe, in past ages, which is the most striking fact revealed by geology. consider, now, where our inquiries have led us. we studied our type morphologically, when we determined its anatomy and its development, and when comparing it, in these respects, with other animals, we made out its place in a system of classification. if we were to examine every animal in a similar manner we should establish a complete body of zoological morphology. again, we investigated the distribution of our type in space and in time, and, if the like had been done with every animal, the sciences of geographical and geological distribution would have attained their limit. but you will observe one remarkable circumstance, that, up to this point, the question of the life of these organisms has not come under consideration. morphology and distribution might be studied almost as well, if animals and plants were a peculiar kind of crystals and possessed none of those functions which distinguish living beings so remarkably. but the facts of morphology and distribution have to be accounted for, and the science, whose aim it is to account for them, is physiology. let us return to our lobster once more. if we watched the creature in its native element, we should see it climbing actively the submerged rocks, among which it delights to live, by means of its strong legs; or swimming by powerful strokes of its great tail, the appendages of whose sixth joint are spread out into a broad fan-like propeller; seize it and it will show you that its great claws are no mean weapons of offence; suspend a piece of carrion among its haunts, and it will greedily devour it, tearing and crushing the flesh by means of its multitudinous jaws. suppose that we had known nothing of the lobster but as an inert mass, an organic crystal, if i may use the phrase, and that we could suddenly see it exerting all these powers, what wonderful new ideas and new questions would arise in our minds! the great new question would be "how does all this take place?" the chief new idea would be the idea of adaptation to purpose,--the notion that the constituents of animal bodies are not mere unconnected parts, but organs working together to an end. let us consider the tail of the lobster again from this point of view. morphology has taught us that it is a series of segments composed of homologous parts, which undergo various modifications--beneath and through which a common plan of formation is discernible. but if i look at the same part physiologically, i see that it is a most beautifully constructed organ of locomotion, by means of which the animal can swiftly propel itself either backwards or forwards. but how is this remarkable propulsive machine made to perform its functions? if i were suddenly to kill one of these animals and to take out all the soft parts, i should find the shell to be perfectly inert, to have no more power of moving itself than is possessed by the machinery of a mill, when disconnected from its steam-engine or water-wheel. but if i were to open it, and take out the viscera only, leaving the white flesh, i should perceive that the lobster could bend and extend its tail as well as before. if i were to cut off the tail i should cease to find any spontaneous motion in it--but on pinching any portion of the flesh, i should observe that it underwent a very curious change--each fibre becoming shorter and thicker. by this act of contraction, as it is termed, the parts to which the ends of the fibre are attached are, of course, approximated--and according to the relations of their points of attachment to the centres of motions of the different rings, the bending or the extension of the tail results. close observation of the newly-opened lobster would soon show that all its movements are due to the same cause--the shortening and thickening of these fleshy fibres, which are technically called muscles. here, then, is a capital fact. the movements of the lobster are due to muscular contractility. but why does a muscle contract at one time and not at another? why does one whole group of muscles contract when the lobster wishes to extend his tail, and another group, when he desires to bend it? what is it originates, directs and controls, the motive power? experiment, the great instrument for the ascertainment of truth in physical science, answers this question for us. in the head of the lobster there lies a small mass of that peculiar tissue which is known as nervous substance. cords of similar matter connect this brain of the lobster, directly or indirectly, with the muscles. now, if these communicating cords are cut, the brain remaining entire, the power of exerting what we call voluntary motion in the parts below the section is destroyed, and on the other hand, if, the cords remaining entire, the brain mass be destroyed, the same voluntary mobility is equally lost. whence the inevitable conclusion is, that the power of originating these motions resides in the brain, and is propagated along the nervous cords. in the higher animals the phenomena which attend this transmission have been investigated, and the exertion of the peculiar energy which resides in the nerves, has been found to be accompanied by a disturbance of the electrical state of their molecules. if we could exactly estimate the signification of this disturbance; if we could obtain the value of a given exertion of nerve force by determining the quantity of electricity or of heat of which it is the equivalent; if we could ascertain upon what arrangement, or other condition of the molecules of matter, the manifestation of the nervous and muscular energies depends, (and doubtless science will some day or other ascertain these points,) physiologists would have attained their ultimate goal in this direction; they would have determined the relation of the motive force of animals to the other forms of force found in nature; and if the same process had been successfully performed for all the operations which are carried on, in and by, the animal frame, physiology would be perfect, and the facts of morphology and distribution would be deducible from the laws which physiologists had established, combined with those determining the condition of the surrounding universe. there is not a fragment of the organism of this humble animal, whose study would not lead us into regions of thought as large as those which i have briefly opened up to you; but what i have been saying, i trust, has not only enabled you to form a conception of the scope and purport of zoology, but has given you an imperfect example of the manner in which, in my opinion, that science, or indeed any physical science, may be best taught. the great matter is to make teaching real and practical, by fixing the attention of the student on particular facts, but at the same time it should be rendered broad and comprehensive by constant reference to the generalizations of which all particular facts are illustrations. the lobster has served as a type of the whole animal kingdom, and its anatomy and physiology have illustrated for us some of the greatest truths of biology. the student who has once seen for himself the facts which i have described, has had their relations explained to him, and has clearly comprehended them, has so far a knowledge of zoology, which is real and genuine, however limited it may be, and which is worth more than all the mere reading knowledge of the science he could ever acquire. his zoological information is, so far, knowledge and not mere hearsay. and if it were my business to fit you for the certificate in zoological science granted by this department, i should pursue a course precisely similar in principle to that which i have taken to-night. i should select a fresh-water sponge, a fresh-water polype or a _cyanæa_, a fresh-water mussel, a lobster, a fowl, as types of the five primary divisions of the animal kingdom. i should explain their structure very fully, and show how each illustrated the great principles of zoology. having gone very carefully and fully over this ground, i should feel that you had a safe foundation, and i should then take you in the same way, but less minutely, over similarly selected illustrative types of the classes; and then i should direct your attention to the special forms enumerated under the head of types, in this syllabus, and to the other facts there mentioned. that would, speaking generally, be my plan. but i have undertaken to explain to you the best mode of acquiring and communicating a knowledge of zoology, and you may therefore fairly ask me for a more detailed and precise account of the manner in which i should propose to furnish you with the information i refer to. my own impression is that the best model for all kinds of training in physical science is that afforded by the method of teaching anatomy, in use in the medical schools. this method consists of three elements--lectures, demonstrations, and examinations. the object of lectures is, in the first place, to awaken the attention and excite the enthusiasm of the student; and this, i am sure, may be effected to a far greater extent by the oral discourse and by the personal influence of a respected teacher, than in any other way. secondly, lectures have the double use of guiding the student to the salient points of a subject, and at the same time forcing him to attend to the whole of it, and not merely to that part which takes his fancy. and lastly, lectures afford the student the opportunity of seeking explanations of those difficulties which will, and indeed ought to, arise in the course of his studies. but for a student to derive the utmost possible value from lectures, several precautions are needful. i have a strong impression that the better the discourse is, as an oration, the worse it is as a lecture. the flow of the discourse carries you on without proper attention to its sense; you drop a word or a phrase, you lose the exact meaning for a moment, and while you strive to recover yourself, the speaker had passed on to something else. the practice i have adopted in late years in lecturing to students, is to condense the substance of the hour's discourse into a few dry propositions, which are read slowly and taken down from dictation; the reading of each being followed by a free commentary, expanding and illustrating the proposition, explaining terms, and removing any difficulties that may be attackable in that way, by diagrams made roughly, and seen to grow under the lecturer's hand. in this manner you, at any rate, insure the co-operation of the student to a certain extent. he cannot leave the lecture-room entirely empty if the taking of notes is enforced, and a student must be preternaturally dull and mechanical if he can take notes and hear them properly explained, and yet learn nothing. what books shall i read? is a question constantly put by the student to the teacher. my reply usually is, "none; write your notes out carefully and fully; strive to understand them thoroughly; come to me for the explanation of anything you cannot understand, and i would rather you did not distract your mind by reading." a properly composed course of lectures ought to contain fully as much matter as a student can assimilate in the time occupied by its delivery; and the teacher should always recollect that his business is to feed, and not to cram, the intellect. indeed, i believe that a student who gains from a course of lectures the simple habit of concentrating his attention upon a definitely limited series of facts, until they are thoroughly mastered, has made a step of immeasurable importance. but however good lectures may be, and however extensive the course of reading by which they are followed up, they are but accessories to the great instrument of scientific teaching--demonstration. if i insist unweariedly, nay fanatically, upon the importance of physical science as an educational agent, it is because the study of any branch of science, if properly conducted, appears to me to fill up a void left by all other means of education. i have the greatest respect and love for literature; nothing would grieve me more than to see literary training other than a very prominent branch of education; indeed, i wish that real literary discipline were far more attended to than it is; but i cannot shut my eyes to the fact that there is a vast difference between men who have had a purely literary, and those who have had a sound scientific, training. seeking for the cause of this difference, i imagine i can find it in the fact, that, in the world of letters, learning and knowledge are one, and books are the source of both; whereas in science, as in life, learning and knowledge are distinct, and the study of things, and not of books, is the source of the latter. all that literature has to bestow may be obtained by reading and by practical exercise in writing and in speaking; but i do not exaggerate when i say, that none of the best gifts of science are to be won by these means. on the contrary, the great benefit which a scientific education bestows, whether as training or as knowledge, is dependent upon the extent to which the mind of the student is brought into immediate contact with facts--upon the degree to which he learns the habit of appealing directly to nature, and of acquiring through his senses concrete images of those properties of things, which are and always will be, but approximately expressed in human language. our way of looking at nature, and of speaking about her, varies from year to year; but a fact once seen, a relation of cause and effect, once demonstratively apprehended, are possessions which neither change nor pass away, but, on the contrary, form fixed centres, about which other truths aggregate by natural affinity. therefore, the great business of the scientific teacher is, to imprint the fundamental, irrefragable, facts of his science, not only by words upon the mind, but by sensible impressions upon the eye and ear and touch, of the student, in so complete a manner that every term used, or law enunciated, should afterwards call up vivid images of the particular structural, or other, facts which furnished the demonstration of the law, or the illustration of the term. now this important operation can only be achieved by constant demonstration, which may take place to a certain imperfect extent during a lecture, but which ought also to be carried on independently, and which should be addressed to each individual student, the teacher endeavouring, not so much to show a thing to the learner, as to make him see it for himself. i am well aware that there are great practical difficulties in the way of effectual zoological demonstrations. the dissection of animals is not altogether pleasant, and requires much time; nor is it easy to secure an adequate supply of the needful specimens. the botanist has here a great advantage; his specimens are easily obtained, are clean and wholesome, and can be dissected in a private house as well as anywhere else; and hence, i believe, the fact, that botany is so much more readily and better taught than its sister science. but, be it difficult or be it easy, if zoological science is to be properly studied, demonstration, and, consequently, dissection, must be had. without it, no man can have a really sound knowledge of animal organization. a good deal may be done, however, without actual dissection on the student's part, by demonstrating upon specimens and preparations, and in all probability it would not be very difficult, were the demand sufficient, to organise collections of such objects, sufficient for all the purposes of elementary teaching, at a comparatively cheap rate. even without these, much might be effected, if the zoological collections, which are open to the public, were arranged according to what has been termed the "typical principle"; that is to say, if the specimens exposed to public view were so selected, that the public could learn something from them, instead of being, as at present, merely confused by their multiplicity. for example, the grand ornithological gallery at the british museum contains between two and three thousand species of birds, and sometimes five or six specimens of a species. they are very pretty to look at and some of the cases are, indeed, splendid; but i will undertake to say, that no man but a professed ornithologist has ever gathered much information from the collection. certainly, no one of the tens of thousands of the general public who have walked through that gallery ever knew more about the essential peculiarities of birds when he left the gallery, than when he entered it. but if, somewhere in that vast hall, there were a few preparations, exemplifying the leading structural peculiarities and the mode of development of a common fowl; if the types of the genera, the leading modifications in the skeleton, in the plumage at various ages, in the mode of nidification, and the like, among birds, were displayed; and if the other specimens were put away in a place where the men of science, to whom they are alone useful, could have free access to them, i can conceive that this collection might become a great instrument of scientific education.[ ] the last implement of the teacher to which i have adverted is examination--a means of education now so thoroughly understood that i need hardly enlarge upon it. i hold that both written and oral examinations are indispensable, and, by requiring the description of specimens, they may be made to supplement demonstration. * * * * * such is the fullest reply the time at my disposal will allow me to give to the question--how may a knowledge of zoology be best acquired and communicated? but there is a previous question which may be moved, and which, in fact, i know many are inclined to move. it is the question why should training masters be encouraged to acquire a knowledge of this, or any other branch, of physical science? what is the use, it is said, of attempting to make physical science a branch of primary education? is it not probable that teachers, in pursuing such studies, will be led astray from the acquirement of more important but less attractive knowledge? and, even if they can learn something of science without prejudice to their usefulness, what is the good of their attempting to instil that knowledge into boys whose real business is the acquisition of reading, writing, and arithmetic? these questions are, and will be, very commonly asked, for they arise from that profound ignorance of the value and true position of physical science, which infests the minds of the most highly educated and intelligent classes of the community. but if i did not feel well assured that they are capable of being easily and satisfactorily answered; that they have been answered over and over again; and that the time will come when men of liberal education will blush to raise such questions,--i should be ashamed of my position here to-night. without doubt, it is your great and very important function to carry out elementary education; without question, anything that should interfere with the faithful fulfilment of that duty on your part would be a great evil; and if i thought that your acquirement of the elements of physical science and your communication of those elements to your pupils, involved, any sort of interference with your proper duties, i should be the first person to protest against your being encouraged to do anything of the kind. but is it true that the acquisition of such a knowledge of science as is proposed, and the communication of that knowledge, are calculated to weaken your usefulness? or may i not rather ask is it possible for you to discharge your functions properly, without these aids? what is the purpose of primary intellectual education? i apprehend that its first object is to train the young in the use of those tools wherewith men extract knowledge from the ever-shifting succession of phenomena which pass before their eyes; and that its second object is to inform them of the fundamental laws which have been found by experience to govern the course of things, so that they may not be turned out into the world naked, defenceless, and a prey to the events they might control. a boy is taught to read his own and other languages, in order that he may have access to infinitely wider stores of knowledge than could ever be opened to him by oral intercourse with his fellow men; he learns to write, that his means of communication with the rest of mankind may be indefinitely enlarged, and that he may record and store up the knowledge he acquires. he is taught elementary mathematics that he may understand all those relations of number and form, upon which the transactions of men, associated in complicated societies, are built, and that he may have some practice in deductive reasoning. all these operations of reading, writing, and ciphering, are intellectual tools whose use should, before all things, be learned, and learned thoroughly; so that the youth may be enabled to make his life that which it ought to be, a continual progress in learning and in wisdom. but, in addition, primary education endeavours to fit a boy out with a certain equipment of positive knowledge. he is taught the great laws of morality; the religion of his sect; so much history and geography as will tell him where the great countries of the world are, what they are, and how they have become what they are. without doubt all these are most fitting and excellent things to teach a boy; i should be very sorry to omit any of them from any scheme of primary intellectual education. the system is excellent so far as it goes. but if i regard it closely a curious reflection arises. i suppose that fifteen hundred years ago, the child of any well-to-do roman citizen was taught just these same things; reading and writing in his own and, perhaps, the greek tongue; the elements of mathematics; and the religion, morality, history, and geography current in his time. furthermore, i do not think i err in affirming, that, if such a christian roman boy, who had finished his education, could be transplanted into one of our public schools, and pass through its course of instruction, he would not meet with a single unfamiliar line of thought; amidst all the new facts he would have to learn, not one would suggest a different mode of regarding the universe from that current in his own time. and yet surely there is some great difference between the civilization of the fourth century and that of the nineteenth, and still more between the intellectual habits and tone of thought of that day and of this? and what has made this difference? i answer fearlessly: the prodigious development of physical science within the last two centuries. modern civilisation rests upon physical science; take away her gifts to our own country, and our position among the leading nations of the world is gone to-morrow; for it is physical science only, that makes intelligence and moral energy stronger than brute force. the whole of modern thought is steeped in science; it has made its way into the works of our best poets, and even the mere man of letters, who affects to ignore and despise science, is unconsciously impregnated with her spirit and indebted for his best products to her methods. i believe that the greatest intellectual revolution mankind has yet seen is now slowly taking place by her agency. she is teaching the world that the ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment, and not authority; she is teaching it to estimate the value of evidence; she is creating a firm and living faith in the existence of immutable moral and physical laws, perfect obedience to which is the highest possible aim of an intelligent being. but of all this your old stereotyped system of education takes no note. physical science, its methods, its problems and its difficulties will meet the poorest boy at every turn, and yet we educate him in such a manner that he shall enter the world, as ignorant of the existence of the methods and facts of science, as the day he was born. the modern world is full of artillery; and we turn out our children to do battle in it, equipped with the shield and sword of an ancient gladiator. posterity will cry shame on us if we do not remedy this deplorable state of things. nay, if we live twenty years longer, our own consciences will cry shame on us. it is my firm conviction that the only way to remedy it is to make the elements of physical science an integral part of primary education. i have endeavoured to show you how that may be done for that branch of science which it is my business to pursue; and i can but add, that i should look upon the day when every schoolmaster throughout this land was a centre of genuine, however rudimentary, scientific knowledge, as an epoch in the history of the country. but let me entreat you to remember my last words. mere book learning in physical science, is a sham and a delusion--what you teach, unless you wish to be impostors, that you must first know; and real knowledge in science, means personal acquaintance with the facts, be they few or many. footnotes: [ ] since these remarks were made the natural history collection of the british museum has been removed to south kensington, and huxley himself wrote later on: "the visitor to the natural history museum in need go no further than the great hall to see the realisation of my hopes by the present director." printed by ballantyne, hanson & co. edinburgh & london * * * * * transcriber notes: punctuation has been normalized without note. inconsistent and archaic spelling in the original document have been preserved. obvious typographical errors have been corrected. page : "adioning" changed to "adjoining" (and in the adjoining regions). page , footnote : "dergees" changed to "degrees" (cape negro is in degrees). page : " / " changed to " / ths" (not more than / ths of its length). page , footnote : "pp." changed to "p." (from müller's archiv., , p. .) page : "kindgom" changed to "kingdom" (of the animal kingdom which has been guessed at) and (with that of the animal kingdom). page : "order" changed to "orders" (summing up all the orders of animals). this ebook was produced by john b. hare and proofread by carrie r. lorenz. the religion of the samurai a study of zen philosophy and discipline in china and japan by kaiten nukariya professor of kei-o-gi-jiku university and of so-to-shu buddhist college, tokyo contents introduction ( ) the southern and northern schools of buddhism ( ) the development and differentiation of buddhism ( ) the object of this book is the explaining of the mahayanistic view of life and the world ( ) zen holds a unique position among the established religions of the world ( ) the historical antiquity of zen ( ) the denial of scriptural authority by zen ( ) the practisers of zen hold the buddha as their predecessor, whose spiritual level they aim to attain ( ) the iconoclastic attitude of zen ( ) zen activity ( ) the physical and mental training ( ) the historical importance chapter i history of zen in china . the origin of zen in india . the introduction of zen into china by bodhidharma . bodhidharma and the emperor wu . bodhidharma and his successor, the second patriarch . bodhidharma's disciples and the transmission of the law . the second and the third patriarchs . the fourth patriarch and the emperor tai tsung . the fifth and the sixth patriarchs . the spiritual attainment of the sixth patriarch . the flight of the sixth patriarch . the development of the southern and the northern school of zen . the missionary activity of the sixth patriarch . the disciples under the sixth patriarch . three important elements of zen . decline of zen chapter ii history of zen in japan . the establishment of the rin zai school of zen in japan . the introduction of the so to school of zen . the characteristics of do-gen, the founder of the japanese so to sect . the social state of japan when zen was established by ei-sai and do-gen . the resemblance of the zen monk to the samurai . the honest poverty of the zen monk and the samurai . the manliness of the zen monk and the samurai . the courage and composure of mind of the zen monk and the samurai . zen and the regent generals of the ho-jo period . zen after the downfall of the ho-jo regency . zen in the dark age . zen under the toku-gawa shogunate . zen after the restoration chapter iii the universe is the scripture of zen . scripture is no more than waste paper . no need of the scriptural authority for zen . the usual explanation of the canon . sutras used by the zen masters . a sutra equal in size to the whole world . great men and nature . the absolute and reality are but an abstraction . the sermon of the inanimate chapter iv buddha, the universal spirit . the ancient buddhist pantheon . zen is iconoclastic . buddha is unnamable . buddha, the universal life . life and change . the pessimistic view of ancient hindus . hinayanism and its doctrine . change as seen by zen . life and change . life, change, and hope . everything is living according to zen . the creative force of nature and humanity . universal life is universal spirit . poetical intuition and zen . enlightened consciousness . buddha dwelling in the individual mind enlightened consciousness is not an intellectual insight . our conception of buddha is not final . how to worship buddha chapter v the nature of man . man is good-natured according to mencius . man is bad-natured according to siun tsz . man is both good-natured and bad-natured according to yan hiung . man is neither good-natured nor bad-natured according to su shih . there is no mortal who is purely moral . there is no mortal who is non-moral or purely immoral . where, then, does the error lie? , man is not good-natured nor bad-natured, but buddha natured . the parable of the robber kih . wang yang ming and a thief . the bad are the good in the egg . the great person and the small person . the theory of buddha-nature adequately explains the ethical states of man . buddha-nature is the common source of morals . the parable of a drunkard . shakya muni and the prodigal son . the parable of the monk and the stupid woman . 'each smile a hymn, each kindly word a prayer' . the world is in the making . the progress and hope of life . the betterment of life . the buddha of mercy chapter vi enlightenment . enlightenment is beyond description and analysis . enlightenment implies an insight into the nature of self . the irrationality of the belief of immortality . the examination of the notion of self . nature is the mother of all things . real self . the awakening of the innermost wisdom . zen is not nihilistic . zen and idealism . idealism is a potent medicine for self -created mental disease . idealistic scepticism concerning objective reality . idealistic scepticism concerning religion and morality . an illusion concerning appearance and reality . where does the root of the illusion lie? . thing-in-itself means thing-knowerless . the four alternatives and the five categories . personalism of b. p. bowne . all the worlds in ten directions are buddha's holy land chapter vii life . epicureanism and life . the errors of philosophical pessimists and religious optimists . the law of balance . life consists in conflict . the mystery of life . nature favours nothing in particular . the law of balance in life . the application of the law of causation to morals . the retribution in the past, the present, and the future life . the eternal life as taught by professor m?nsterberg . life in the concrete . difficulties are no match for an optimist . do thy best and leave the rest to providence chapter viii the training of the mind and the practice of meditation . the method of instruction adopted by zen masters . the first step in the mental training . the next step in the mental training . the third step in the mental training . zazen, or the sitting in meditation . the breathing exercise of the yogi . calmness of mind . zazen and the forgetting of self . zen and supernatural power . true dhyana . let go of your idle thoughts . 'the five ranks of merit' . 'the ten pictures of the cowherd' . zen and nirvana . nature and her lesson . the beatitude of zen appendix origin of man preface introduction chapter i refutation of delusive and prejudiced (doctrine) chapter ii refutation of incomplete and superficial (doctrine) . the doctrine for men and devas . the doctrine of the hinayanists . the mahayana doctrine of dharmalaksana . mahayana doctrine of the nihilists chapter iii the direct explanation of the real origin . the ekayana doctrine that teaches the ultimate reality chapter iv reconciliation of the temporary with the real doctrine introduction buddhism is geographically divided into two schools[fn# ]--the southern, the older and simpler, and the northern, the later and more developed faith. the former, based mainly on the pali texts[fn# ] is known as hinayana[fn# ] (small vehicle), or the inferior doctrine; while the latter, based on the various sanskrit texts,[ ] is known as mahayana (large vehicle), or superior doctrine. the chief tenets of the southern school are so well known to occidental scholars that they almost always mean the southern school by the word buddhism. but with regard to the northern school very little is known to the west, owing to the fact that most of its original texts were lost, and that the teachings based on these texts are written in chinese, or tibetan, or japanese languages unfamiliar to non-buddhist investigators. [fn# ] the southern school has its adherents in ceylon, burma, siam, anan, etc.; while the northern school is found in nepal, china, japan, tibet, etc. [fn# ] they chiefly consist of the four nikayas: ( ) digha nikaya (dirghagamas, translated into chinese by buddhaya?as, a.d. - ); ( ) majjhima nikaya (madhyamagamas, translated into chinese by gautama sanghadeva, a.d. - ); ( ) sanyutta nikaya (samyuktagamas, translated into chinese by gunabhadra, of the earlier sung dynasty, a.d. ); ( ) anguttara nikaya (ekottaragamas, translated into chinese by dharmanandi, a.d. - ). out of these hinayana books, the english translation of twenty-three suttas by rhys davids exist in 'sacred books of buddhist,' vols. ii.-iii., and of seven suttas by the same author in 'sacred books of the east,' vol. xi. [fn# ] the southern buddhists never call their faith hinayana, the name being an invention of later buddhists, who call their doctrine mahayana in contradistinction to the earlier form of buddhism. we have to notice that the word hinayana frequently occurs in mahayana books, while it does not in hinayana books. [fn# ] a catalogue of the buddhist canon, k'-yuen-luh, gives the titles of mahayana sutras, yet the most important books often quoted by northern buddhist teachers amount to little more than twenty. there exist the english translation of larger sukhavati-vyuha-sutra, smaller sukhavati-vyuha-sutra, vajracchedika-sutra, larger prajna-paramita-hradya-sutra, smaller prajna-paramita-hrdaya-sutra, by max m?ller, and amitayur-dhyana-sutra, by j. takakusu, in 'sacred books of the east,' vol. xlix. an english translation of saddharma-pundarika-sutra, by kern, is given in 'sacred books of the east,' vol. xxi. compare these books with 'outlines of mahayana buddhism,' by d. suzuki. it is hardly justifiable to cover the whole system of buddhism with a single epithet[fn# ] 'pessimistic' or 'nihilistic,' because buddhism, having been adopted by savage tribes as well as civilized nations, by quiet, enervated people as well as by warlike, sturdy hordes, during some twenty-five hundred years, has developed itself into beliefs widely divergent and even diametrically opposed. even in japan alone it has differentiated itself into thirteen main sects and forty-four sub-sects[fn# ] and is still in full vigour, though in other countries it has already passed its prime. thus japan seems to be the best representative of the buddhist countries where the majority of people abides by the guiding principle of the northern school. to study her religion, therefore, is to penetrate into mahayanism, which still lies an unexplored land for the western minds. and to investigate her faith is not to dig out the remains of buddhist faith that existed twenty centuries ago, but to touch the heart and soul of mahayanism that enlivens its devotees at the present moment. [fn# ] hinayanism is, generally speaking, inclined to be pessimistic, but mahayanism in the main holds the optimistic view of life. nihilism is advocated in some mahayana sutras, but others set forth idealism or realism. [fn# ] ( ) the ten dai sect, including three sub-sects; ( ) the shin gon sect, including eleven sub-sects; ( ) the ritsu sect; ( ) the rin zai sect, including fourteen sub-sects; ( ) the so to sect; ( ) the o baku sect; ( ) the jo do sect, including two sub-sects; ( ) the shin sect, including ten sub-sects; ( ) the nichi ren sect, including nine sub-sects; ( ) the yu zu nen butsu sect; ( ) the hosso sect; ( ) the ke gon sect; ( ) the ji sect. out of these thirteen buddhist sects, rin zai, so to, and o baku belong to zen. for further information, see 'a short history of the twelve japanese buddhist sects,' by dr. b. nanjo. the object of this little book is to show how the mahayanistic view of life and of the world differs markedly from that of hinayanism, which is generally taken as buddhism by occidentals, to explain how the religion of buddha has adapted itself to its environment in the far east, and also to throw light on the existing state of the spiritual life of modern japan. for this purpose we have singled out of thirteen japanese sects the zen sect, [fn# ] not only because of the great influence it has exercised on the nation, but because of the unique position it holds among the established religious systems of the world. in the first place, it is as old as buddhism itself, or even older, for its mode of practising meditation has been handed down without much alteration from pre-buddhistic recluses of india; and it may, on that account, provide the student of comparative religion with an interesting subject for his research. [fn# ] the word zen is the sinico-japanese abbreviation of the sanskrit dhyana, or meditation. it implies the whole body of teachings and discipline peculiar to a buddhist sect now popularly known as the zen sect. in the second place, in spite of its historical antiquity, ideas entertained by its advocates are so new that they are in harmony with those of the new buddhists;[fn# ] accordingly the statement of these ideas may serve as an explanation of the present movement conducted by young and able reformers of japanese buddhism. [fn# ] there exists a society formed by men who have broken with the old creeds of buddhism, and who call themselves the new buddhists. it has for its organ 'the new buddhism,' and is one of the influential religious societies in japan. we mean by the new buddhists, however, numerous educated young men who still adhere to buddhist sects, and are carrying out a reformation. thirdly, buddhist denominations, like non-buddhist religions, lay stress on scriptural authority; but zen denounces it on the ground that words or characters can never adequately express religious truth, which can only be realized by mind; consequently it claims that the religious truth attained by shakya muni in his enlightenment has been handed down neither by word of mouth nor by the letters of scriptures, but from teacher's mind to disciple's through the line of transmission until the present day. it is an isolated instance in the whole history of the world's religions that holy scriptures are declared to be 'no more than waste[fn# ] paper by religionists, as done by zen masters. [fn# ] lin tsi luh (rin-zai-roku). fourthly, buddhist as well as non-buddhist religions regard, without exception, their founders as superhuman beings, but the practisers of zen hold the buddha as their predecessor, whose spiritual level they confidently aim to attain. furthermore, they liken one who remains in the exalted position of buddhaship to a man bound by a gold chain, and pity his state of bondage. some of them went even so far as to declare buddhas and bodhisattvas to be their servants and slaves.[fn# ] such an attitude of religionists can hardly be found in any other religion. [fn# ] "shakya and maitreya," says go so, "are servants to the other person. who is that other person?" (zen-rin-rui-ju, vol. i., p. ). fifthly, although non-buddhist people are used to call buddhism idolatry, yet zen can never be called so in the accepted sense of the term, because it, having a grand conception of deity, is far from being a form of idol-worship; nay, it sometimes even took an iconoclastic attitude as is exemplified by tan hia, [fn# ] who warmed himself on a cold morning by making a fire of wooden statues. therefore our exposition on this point will show the real state of existing buddhism, and serve to remove religious prejudices entertained against it. [fn# ] a chinese zen teacher, well known for his peculiarities, who died in a.d. . for the details of this anecdote, see zen-rin-rui-ju, vol. i., p. . sixthly, there is another characteristic of zen, which cannot be found in any other religion-that is to say, its peculiar mode of expressing profound religious insight by such actions as the lifting up of a hair-brush, or by the tapping of the chair with a staff, or by a loud outcry, and so forth. this will give the student of religion a striking illustration of differentiated forms of religion in its scale of evolution. besides these characteristics, zen is noted for its physical and mental training. that the daily practice of zazen[fn# ] and the breathing exercise remarkably improves one's physical condition is an established fact. and history proves that most zen masters enjoyed a long life in spite of their extremely simple mode of living. its mental discipline, however, is by far more fruitful, and keeps one's mind in equipoise, making one neither passionate nor dispassionate, neither sentimental nor unintelligent, neither nervous nor senseless. it is well known as a cure to all sorts of mental disease, occasioned by nervous disturbance, as a nourishment to the fatigued brain, and also as a stimulus to torpor and sloth. it is self-control, as it is the subduing of such pernicious passions as anger, jealousy, hatred, and the like, and the awakening of noble emotions such as sympathy, mercy, generosity, and what not. it is a mode of enlightenment, as it is the dispelling of illusion and of doubt, and at the same time it is the overcoming of egoism, the destroying of mean desires, the uplifting of the moral ideal, and the disclosing of inborn wisdom. [fn# ] the sitting-in-meditation, for the full explanation of which see chapter viii. the historical importance of zen can hardly be exaggerated. after its introduction into china in the sixth century, a.d., it grew ascendant through the sui ( - ) and the tang dynasty ( - ), and enjoyed greater popularity than any other sect of buddhism during the whole period of the sung ( - ) and the southern sung dynasty ( - ). in these times its commanding influence became so irresistible that confucianism, assimilating the buddhist teachings, especially those of zen, into itself and changing its entire aspect, brought forth the so-called speculative philosophy.[fn# ] and in the ming dynasty ( - ) the principal doctrines of zen were adopted by a celebrated confucian scholar, wang yang ming,[fn# ] who thereby founded a school, through which zen exercised profound influence on chinese and japanese men of letters, statesmen, and soldiers. as regards japan, it was first introduced into the island as the faith first for the samurai or the military class, and moulded the characters of many distinguished soldiers whose lives adorn the pages of her history. afterwards it gradually found its way to palaces as well as to cottages through literature and art, and at last permeated through every fibre of the national life. it is zen that modern japan, especially after the russo-japanese war, has acknowledged as an ideal doctrine for her rising generation. [fn# ] see 'a history of chinese philosophy,' by ryukichi endo, and a history of chinese philosophy,' by giichi nakauchi. [fn# ] for the life of this distinguished scholar and soldier ( - ), see 'a detailed life of o yo meiâ�� by takejiro takase, and also 'o-yo-mei-shutsu-shin-sei-ran-roku.' chapter i history of zen in china . origin of zen in india. to-day zen as a living faith can be found in its pure form only among the japanese buddhists. you cannot find it in the so-called gospel of buddha anymore than you can find unitarianism in the pentateuch, nor can you find it in china and india any more than you can find life in fossils of bygone ages. it is beyond all doubt that it can be traced back to shakya muni himself, nay, even to pre-buddhistic times, because brahmanic teachers practised dhyana, or meditation,[fn# ] from earliest times. [fn# ] "if a wise man hold his body with its three parts (chest, neck, and head) erect, and turn his senses with the mind towards the heart, he will then in the boat of brahman cross all the torrents which cause fear. "compressing his breathings let him, who has subdued all motions, breathe forth through the nose with the gentle breath. let the wise man without fail restrain his mind, that chariot yoked with vicious horses. "let him perform his exercises in a place level, pure, free from pebbles, fire, and dust, delightful by its sounds, its water, and bowers; not painful to the eye, and full of shelters and eaves. "when yoga, is being performed, the forms which come first, producing apparitions in brahman, are those of misty smoke, sun, fire, wind, fire-flies, lightnings, and a crystal moon. "when, as earth, water, light, heat, and ether arises, the fivefold quality of yoga takes place, then there is no longer illness, old age, or pain for him who has obtained a body produced by the fire of yoga. the first results of yoga they call lightness, healthiness, steadiness, a good complexion, an easy pronunciation, a sweet odour, and slight excretions "(cvet. upanisad, ii. - ). "when the five instruments of knowledge stand still together with the mind, and when the intellect does not move, that is called the highest state. "this, the firm holding back of the senses, is what is called yoga. he must be free from thoughtlessness then, for yoga comes and goes" (katha upanisad, ii. , ). "this is the rule for achieving it (viz., concentration of the mind on the object of meditation): restraint of the breath, restraint of the senses, meditation, fixed attention, investigation, absorption-these are called the sixfold yoga. when beholding by this yoga, be beholds the gold-coloured maker, the lord, the person, brahman, the cause; then the sage, leaving behind good and evil, makes everything (breath, organs of sense, body, etc.) to be one in the highest indestructible (in the pratyagatman or brahman) " (maitr. upanisad, vi. ). "and thus it has been elsewhere: there is the superior fixed attention (dharana) for him-viz., if he presses the tip of the tongue down the palate, and restrain the voice, mind, and breath, he sees brahman by discrimination (taraka). and when, after the cessation of mind, he sees his own self, smaller than small, and shining as the highest self, then, having seen his self as the self, he becomes self-less, and because he is self-less, he is without limit, without cause, absorbed in thought. this is the highest mystery--viz., final liberation " (maitr. upanisad, vi. ). amrtab. upanisad, , describes three modes of sitting-namely, the lotus-seat (padmasana), the sitting with legs bent underneath; the mystic diagram seat (svastika); and the auspicious-seat (bhadrasana);--while yogacikha directs the choice of the lotus-posture, with attention concentrated on the tip of the nose, hands and feet closely joined. but brahmanic zen was carefully distinguished even by early buddhists[fn# ] as the heterodox zen from that taught by the buddha. our zen originated in the enlightenment of shakya muni, which took place in his thirtieth year, when he was sitting absorbed in profound meditation under the bodhi tree. [fn# ] the anonymous author of lankavatara-sutra distinguishes the heterodox zen from the hinayana zen, the hinayana zen from the mahayana zen, and calls the last by the name of the buddha's holy zen. the sutra is believed by many buddhists, not without reason, to be the exposition of that mahayana doctrine which acvaghosa restated in his craddhotpada-castra. the sutra was translated, first, into chinese by gunabbadra, in a.d. ; secondly, by bodhiruci in a.d. ; and, thirdly, by ciksanada in a.d. - . the book is famous for its prophecy about nagdrajuna, which (according to dr. nanjo's translation) is as follows: "after the nirvana of the tathagata, there will be a man in the future, listen to me carefully, o mahatma, a man who will hold my law. in the great country of south, there will be a venerable bhiksu the bodhisattva nagarjuna by name, who will destroy the views of astikas and nastikas, who will preach unto men my yana, the highest law of the mahayana, and will attain to the pramudita-bhumi." it is said that then he awoke to the perfect truth and declared: "all animated and inanimate beings are enlightened at the same time." according to the tradition[fn# ] of this sect shakya muni transmitted his mysterious doctrine from mind to mind to his oldest disciple mahakacyapa at the assembly hold on the mount of holy vulture, and the latter was acknowledged as the first patriarch, who, in turn, transmitted the doctrine to ananda, the second patriarch, and so till bodhidharma, the twenty-eighth[fn# ] patriarch. we have little to say about the historical value of this tradition, but it is worth while to note that the list of the names of these twenty-eight patriarchs contains many eminent scholars of mahayanism, or the later developed school of buddhism, such as acvaghosa,[fn# ] nagarjuna,[fn# ] kanadeva,[fn# ] and vasubhandhu.[fn# ] [fn# ] the incident is related as follows: when the buddha was at the assembly on the mount of holy vulture, there came a brahmaraja who offered the teacher a golden flower, and asked him to preach the dharma. the buddha took the flower and held it aloft in his hand, gazing at it in perfect silence. none in the assembly could understand what he meant, except the venerable mahakacyapa, who smiled at the teacher. then the buddha said: "i have the eye and treasury of good dharma, nirvana, the wonderful spirit, which i now hand over to mahakacyapa." the book in which this incident is described is entitled 'sutra on the great brahman king's questioning buddha to dispel a doubt,' but there exists no original text nor any chinese translation in the tripitaka. it is highly probable that some early chinese zen scholar of the sung dynasty (a.d. - ) fabricated the tradition, because wang ngan shih (o-an-seki), a powerful minister under the emperor shan tsung (shin-so, a.d. - ), is said to have seen the book in the imperial library. there is, however, no evidence, as far as we know, pointing to the existence of the sutra in china. in japan there exists, in a form of manuscript, two different translations of that book, kept in secret veneration by some zen masters, which have been proved to be fictitious by the present writer after his close examination of the contents. see the appendix to his zen-gaku-hi-han-ron. [fn# ] the following is the list of the names of the twenty-eight patriarchs: . mahakacyapa. . ananda. . canavasu. . upagupta. . dhrtaka. . micchaka. . vasumitra. . buddhanandi. . buddhamitra. . parcva. . punyayacas. . acvaghosa. . kapimala. . nagarjuna. . kanadeva. . rahulata. . samghanandi. . samghayacas. . kumarata. . jayata. . vasubandhu. . manura. . haklanayacas. . simha. . vacasuta. . punyamitra. . prajnyatara. . bodhidharma. the first twenty-three patriarchs are exactly the same as those given in 'the sutra on the nidana of transmitting dharmapitaka,' translated in a.d. . king teh chwen tang iuh (kei-toku-den-to-roku), a famous zen history of china, gives two elaborate narratives about the transmission of right dharma from teacher to disciple through these twenty-eight patriarchs, to be trusted without hesitation. it would not be difficult for any scholar of sense to find these statements were made from the same motive as that of the anonymous author who gives a short life, in dirghagama-sutra, of each of the six buddhas, the predecessors of shakya muni, if he carefully compare the list given above with the lists of the patriarchs of the sarvastivada school given by san yin (so-yu died a.d. ) in his chuh san tsung ki (shutsu-san zo-ki). [fn# ] one of the founders of mahayana buddhism, who flourished in the first century a.d. there exists a life of his translated into chinese by kumarajiva in a.d. - . the most important of his works are: mahayanacraddhotpada-castra, mahalankara-sutra-castra, buddha-caritakavya. [fn# ] the founder of the madhyamika school of mahayana buddhism, who lived in the second century a.d. a life of his was translated into chinese by kumarajiva in a.d. - . twenty-four books are ascribed to him, of which mahaprajñaparamita-castra, madhyamika-castra, prajnyadipa-castra, dvadacanikaya-castra, astadacakaca-castra, are well known. [fn# ] sometimes called aryadeva, a successor of nagarjuna. a life of his was translated into chinese by kumarajiva in a.d. - . the following are his important works: cata-castra, 'castra by the bodhisattva deva on the refutation of four heretical hinayana schools mentioned in the lankatvatara-sutra'; 'castra by the bodhisattva deva on the explanation of the nirvana by twenty hinayana teachers mentioned in the lankavatara-sutra.' [fn# ] a younger brother of asamga, a famous mahayanist of the fifth century a.d. there are thirty-six works ascribed to vasubandhu, of which dacabhumika-castra, aparimitayus-sutra-castra, mahapari-nirvana-sutra-castra, mahayana-catadharmavidyadvara-castra, vidya-matrasiddhi-tridaca-castra, bodhicittopadana-castra, buddha-gotra-castra, vidyamatrasiddhivincatigatha-castra, madhyantavibhaga-castra, abhidharma-koca-castra, tarka-castra, etc., are well known. . introduction of zen into china by bodhidharma. an epoch-making event took place in the buddhist history of china by bodhidharma's coming over from southern india to that country in about a.d. .[fn# ] it was the introduction, not of the dead scriptures, as was repeatedly done before him, but of a living faith, not of any theoretical doctrine, but of practical enlightenment, not of the relies of buddha, but of the spirit of shakya muni; so that bodhidharma's position as a representative of zen was unique. he was, however, not a missionary to be favourably received by the public. he seems to have behaved in a way quite opposite to that in which a modern pastor treats his flock. we imagine him to have been a religious teacher entirely different in every point from a popular christian missionary of our age. the latter would smile or try to smile at every face he happens to see and would talk sociably; while the former would not smile at any face, but would stare at it with the large glaring eyes that penetrated to the innermost soul. the latter would keep himself scrupulously clean, shaving, combing, brushing, polishing, oiling, perfuming, while the former would be entirely indifferent to his apparel, being always clad in a faded yellow robe. the latter would compose his sermon with a great care, making use of rhetorical art, and speak with force and elegance; while the former would sit as absolutely silent as the bear, and kick one off, if one should approach him with idle questions. [fn# ] buddhist historians differ in opinion respecting the date of bodhidharma's appearance in china. compare chwen fah chan tsung lun (den bo sho ju ron) and hwui yuen (e-gen). . bodhidharma and the emperor wu. no sooner had bodhidharma landed at kwang cheu in southern china than he was invited by the emperor[fn# ] wu, who was an enthusiastic buddhist and good scholar, to proceed to his capital of chin liang. when he was received in audience, his majesty asked him: "we have built temples, copied holy scriptures, ordered monks and nuns to be converted. is there any merit, reverend sir, in our conduct?" the royal host, in all probability, expected a smooth, flattering answer from the lips of his new guest, extolling his virtues, and promising him heavenly rewards, but the blue-eyed brahmin bluntly answered: "no merit at all." this unexpected reply must have put the emperor to shame and doubt in no small degree, who was informed simply of the doctrines of the orthodox buddhist sects. 'why not,' he might have thought within himself, 'why all this is futile? by what authority does he declare all this meritless? what holy text can be quoted to justify his assertion? what is his view in reference to the different doctrines taught by shakya muni? what does he hold as the first principle of buddhism?' thus thinking, he inquired: "what is the holy truth, or the first principle?" the answer was no less astonishing: "that principle transcends all. there is nothing holy." [fn# ] the emperor wu (bu-tei) of the liang dynasty, whose reign was a.d. - .] the crowned creature was completely at a loss to see what the teacher meant. perhaps he might have thought: 'why is nothing holy? are there not holy men, holy truths, holy paths stated in the scriptures? is he himself not one of the holy men?' "then who is that confronts us?" asked the monarch again. "i know not, your majesty," was the laconic reply of bodhidharma, who now saw that his new faith was beyond the understanding of the emperor. the elephant can hardly keep company with rabbits. the petty orthodoxy can by no means keep pace with the elephantine stride of zen. no wonder that bodhidharma left not only the palace of the emperor wu, but also the state of liang, and went to the state of northern wei.[fn# ] there he spent nine years in the shao lin[fn# ] monastery, mostly sitting silent in meditation with his face to the wall, and earned for himself the appellation of 'the wall-gazing brahmin.' this name itself suggests that the significance of his mission was not appreciated by his contemporaries. but neither he was nor they were to blame, because the lion's importance is appreciated only by the lion. a great personage is no less great because of his unpopularity among his fellow men, just as the great pang[fn# ] is no less great because of his unpopularity among the winged creatures. bodhidharma was not popular to the degree that he was envied by his contemporary buddhists, who, as we are told by his biographers, attempted to poison him three times,[fn# ] but without success. [fn# ] northern gi dynasty (a.d. - ). [fn# ] sho-rin-ji, erected by the emperor hiao ming of northern wei a.d. . [fn# ] chwang-tsz in his famous parable compares a great sage with the pang, an imaginary bird of enormous size, with its wings of ninety thousand miles. the bird is laughed at by wrens and sparrows because of its excessive size. [fn# ] this reminds us of nan yoh hwui sz (nan-gaku-e-shi, died a.d. ), who is said to have learned zen under bodhidharma. he says in his statement of a vow that he was poisoned three times by those who envied him. . bodhidharma and his successor the second patriarch. china was not, however, an uncultivated[fn# ] land for the seed of zen--nay, there had been many practisers of zen before bodhidharma. [fn# ] the translation of hinayana zen sutras first paved the way for our faith. fourteen zen sutras, including such important books as mahanapanadhyana-sutra, dhyanacarya-dharmasanyjnya-sutra, dhyanacarya-saptatrimcadvarga-sutra, were translated by ngan shi kao (an-sei-ko) as early as a.d. - . cullamargabhumi-sutra was translated by k' yao (shi-yo) in a.d. ; dharmatara-dhyana-sutra by buddhabhadra in a.d. - ; dhyananisthitasamadhi-dharma-parygya-sutra by kumarajiva in a.d. ; 'an abridged law on the importance of meditation' by kumarajiva in a.d. ; pancadvara-dhyanasutra-maharthadharma by dharmamitra in a.d. - . furthermore, mahayana books closely related to the doctrine of zen were not unknown to china before bodhidharma. pratyutpanna-buddhasammukhavasthita-samadhi was translated by k' leu cia chan (shi-ru-ga-sen) in a.d. - ; vimalakirttinirdeca-sutra, which is much used in zen, by kumarajiva in a.d. - ; lankavatara-sutra, which is said to have been pointed out by bodhidharma as the best explanation of zen, by gunabhadra in a.d. ; saddharma-pundarika-sutra, in its complete form, by kumarajiva in a.d. ; avatamsaka-sutra by buddhabhadra in a.d. ; mahaparinirvana-sutra by dharmaraksa in a.d. . if we are not mistaken, kumarajiva, who came to china a.d. , made a valuable contribution towards the foundation of zen in that country, not merely through his translation of zen sutras above mentioned, but by the education of his disciples, such as sang chao (so-jo, died a.d. ), sang shang (so-sho, whose writings undoubtedly influenced later zen teachers. a more important personage in the history of zen previous to the blue-eyed brahmin is buddhabhadra, a well-known zen master, who came over to china a.d. . his translation of dharmatara-dhyana-sutra (which is said to have been preached by bodhidharma himself when he was in india) and that of avatamsaka-sutra may be said without exaggeration to have laid the corner-stone for zen. he gave a course of lectures on the zen sutra for the first time in china in a.d. , and it was through his instruction that many native practisers of zen were produced, of whom chi yen (chi-gon) and huen kao (gen-ko) are well known. in these days zen should have been in the ascendant in india, because almost all indian scholars-at least those known to us-were called zen teachers-for instance, buddhabhadra, buddhasena, dharmadhi, and some others were all zen scholars. chinese buddhist scholars did no less than indian teachers toward the uprising of zen. the foremost among them is hwui yuen (e-on, died a.d. ), who practised zen by the instruction of buddhabhadra. he founded the society of the white lotus, which comprised eighteen eminent scholars of the age among its members, for the purpose of practising meditation and of adoring buddha amitabha. we must not forget that during the western and the eastern tsin (shin) dynasties (a.d. - ) both taoism and buddhism grew prosperous to no small extent. and china produced, on the one hand, taoists of an eccentric type, such as the seven wise men of the bamboo forest, while she gave birth to many recluse-like men of letters, such as tao yuen ming (to-yen-mei, died a.d. ) and some others on the other. besides there were some scholars who studied buddhism in connection with taoism and confucianism, and led a secluded life. to the last class of scholars belonged chwen hih (hu dai shi), known as chwen the great. he is said to have been accustomed to wear a confucianist hat, a buddhist robe, and taoist shoes. it was in a.d. that he presented a memorial to the emperor wu, in which he explained the three grades of good. "the highest good consists," says he, "in the emptiness of mind and non-attachment. transcendence is its cause, and nirvana is its result. the middle good consists in morality and good administration. it results in a peaceful and happy life in heaven and in earth. the lowest good consists in love and protection of sentient beings." thus his idea of good, as the reader will see without difficulty, is the result of a compromise of taoism and buddhism. sin wang ming (sin-o-mei, on the mind-king), one of his masterpieces, together with other minor poems, are still used as a textbook of zen. this fact unmistakably proves that taoist element found its way into the constituents of zen from its very outset in china. all that he had to do was to wait for an earnest seeker after the spirit of shakya muni. therefore he waited, and waited not in vain, for at last there came a learned confucianist, shang kwang (shin-ko) by name, for the purpose of finding the final solution of a problem which troubled him so much that he had become dissatisfied with confucianism, as it had no proper diet for his now spiritual hunger. thus shang kwang was far from being one of those half-hearted visitors who knocked the door of bodhidharma only for the sake of curiosity. but the silent master was cautious enough to try the sincerity of a new visitor before admitting him to the meditation hall. according to a biography[fn# ] of his, shang kwang was not allowed to enter the temple, and had to stand in the courtyard covered deep with snow. his firm resolution and earnest desire, however, kept him standing continually on one spot for seven days and nights with beads of the frozen drops of tears on his breast. at last he cut off his left arm with a sharp knife, and presented it before the inflexible teacher to show his resolution to follow the master even at the risk of his life. thereupon bodhidharma admitted him into the order as a disciple fully qualified to be instructed in the highest doctrine of mahayanism. [fn# ] king teh chwen tang luh (kei-toku-den-to-roku), published by tao yuen (do-gen) a.d. , gives a detailed narrative concerning this incident as stated here, but earlier historians tell us a different story about the mutilation of shang kwang's arm. compare suh kas san chwen (zoku-ko-so-den) and hwui yuen (e-gen). our master's method of instruction was entirely different from that of ordinary instructors of learning. he would not explain any problem to the learner, but simply help him to get enlightened by putting him an abrupt but telling question. shang kwang, for instance, said to bodhidharma, perhaps with a sigh: "i have no peace of mind. might i ask you, sir, to pacify my mind?" "bring out your mind (that troubles you so much)," replied the master, "here before me! i shall pacify it." "it is impossible for me," said the disciple, after a little consideration, "to seek out my mind (that troubles me so much)." "then," exclaimed bodhidharma, "i have pacified your mind." hereon shang kwang was instantly enlightened. this event is worthy of our notice, because such a mode of instruction was adopted by all zen teachers after the first patriarch, and it became one of the characteristics of zen. . bodhidharma's disciples and the transmission of the law.[fn# ] [fn# ] for details, see chwen tang luh and den ka roku, by kei zan. as for the life of bodhidharma, dr. b. matsumoto's 'a life of bodhidharma' may well be recommended to the reader. bodhidharma's labour of nine years in china resulted in the initiation of a number of disciples, whom some time before his death he addressed as follows: "now the time (of my departure from this world) is at hand. say, one and all, how do you understand the law?" tao fu (do-fuku) said in response to this: "the law does not lie in the letters (of the scriptures), according to my view, nor is it separated from them, but it works." the master said: "then you have obtained my skin." next tsung chi (so-ji), a nun, replied: "as ananda[fn# ] saw the kingdom of aksobhya[fn# ] only once but not twice, so i understand the law". the master said: "then you have attained to my flesh." then tao yuh (do-iku) replied: "the four elements[fn# ] are unreal from the first, nor are the five aggregates[fn# ] really existent. all is emptiness according to my view." the master said: "then you have acquired my bone." lastly, hwui ko (e-ka), which was the buddhist name given by bodhidharma, to shang kwang, made a polite bow to the teacher and stood in his place without a word. "you have attained to my marrow." so saying, bodhidharma handed over the sacred kachaya, [fn# ] which he had brought from india to hwui ko, as a symbol of the transmission of the law, and created him the second patriarch. [fn# ] a favourite disciple of shakya muni, and the third patriarch of zen. [fn# ] the: name means i immovable,' and represents the firmness of thought. [fn# ] earth, water, fire, and air. [fn# ] ( ) rupa, or form; ( ) vedana, or perception; ( ) samjnya, or consciousness; ( ) karman (or samskara), or action; ( ) vijnyana, or knowledge. [fn# ] the clerical cloak, which is said to have been dark green. it became an object of great veneration after the sixth patriarch, who abolished the patriarchal system and did not hand the symbol over to successors. . the second and the third patriarchs. after the death of the first patriarch, in a.d. , hwui ko did his best to propagate the new faith over sixty years. on one occasion a man suffering from some chronic disease called on him, and requested him in earnest: "pray, reverend sir, be my confessor and grant me absolution, for i suffer long from an incurable disease." "bring out your sin (if there be such a thing as sin)," replied the second patriarch, "here before me. i shall grant you absolution." "it is impossible," said the man after a short consideration, "to seek out my sin." "then," exclaimed the master, "i have absolved you. henceforth live up to buddha, dharma, and samgha."[fn# ] "i know, your reverence," said the man, "that you belong to samgha; but what are buddha and dharma?" "buddha is mind itself. mind itself is dharma. buddha is identical with dharma. so is samgha." "then i understand," replied the man, "there is no such thing as sin within my body nor without it, nor anywhere else. mind is beyond and above sin. it is no other than buddha and dharma." thereupon the second patriarch saw the man was well qualified to be taught in the new faith, and converted him, giving him the name of sang tsung (so-san). after two years' instruction and discipline, he[fn# ] bestowed on sang tsung the kachaya handed down from bodhidharma, and authorized him as the third patriarch. it is by sang tsung that the doctrine of zen was first reduced to writing by his composition of sin sin[fn# ] ming (sin zin-mei, on faith and mind), a metrical exposition of the faith. [fn# ] the so-called three treasures of the buddha, the law, and the order. [fn# ] the second patriarch died in a.d. --that is, sixty-five years after the departure of the first patriarch. [fn# ] a good many commentaries were written on the book, and it is considered as one of the best books on zen. . the fourth patriarch and the emperor tai tsung (tai-so). the third[fn# ] patriarch was succeeded by tao sin (do-shin), who being initiated at the age of fourteen, was created the fourth patriarch after nine years' study and discipline. tao sin is said never to have gone to bed for more than forty years of his patriarchal career.[fn# ] in a.d. the emperor tai tsung ( - ), knowing of his virtues, sent him a special messenger, requesting him to call on his majesty at the palace. but he declined the invitation by a memorial, saying that be was too aged and infirm to visit the august personage. the emperor, desirous of seeing the reputed patriarch, sent for him thrice, but in vain. then the enraged monarch ordered the messenger to behead the inflexible monk, and bring the head before the throne, in case he should disobey the order for the fourth time. as tao sin was told of the order of the emperor, he stretched out his neck ready to be decapitated. the emperor, learning from the messenger what had happened, admired all the more the imperturbable patriarch, and bestowed rich gifts upon him. this example of his was followed by later zen masters, who would not condescend to bend their knees before temporal power, and it became one of the characteristics of zen monks that they would never approach rulers and statesmen for the sake of worldly fame and profit, which they set at naught. [fn# ] he died in a.d. , after his labour of thirteen years as the teacher. [fn# ] he died in a.d. -that is, forty-five years after the death of the third patriarch. . the fifth and the sixth patriarchs. tao sin transmitted the law to hung jan (ko-nin), who being educated from infancy, distinguished himself as the abbot of the hwang mei monastery at ki cheu. the fifth patriarch, according to his biographer, gathered about him seven hundred pupils, who came from all quarters. of these seven hundred pupils the venerable shang sin (jin-shu) was most noted for his learning and virtues, and he might have become the legitimate successor of hung jan, had not the kachaya of bodhidharma been carried away by a poor farmer's son of sin cheu. hwui nang, the sixth patriarch, seems to have been born a zen teacher. the spiritual light of buddha first flashed in his mind when he happened to hear a monk reciting a sutra. on questioning the monk, be learned that the book was vajracchedika-prajnya-paramita-sutra,[fn# ] and that hung jan, the abbot of the hwang mei monastery, was used to make his disciples recite the book that it might help them in their spiritual discipline. hereupon he made up his mind to practise zen, and called on hung jan at the monastery. "who are you," demanded the fifth patriarch, "and whence have you come?" "i am a son of the farmer," replied the man, "of sin cheu in the south of ta yu ling." "what has brought you here?" asked the master again. "i have no other purpose than to attain to buddhahood," answered the man. "o, you, people of the south," exclaimed the patriarch, "you are not endowed with the nature of buddha." "there may be some difference between the southern and the northern people," objected the man, "but how could you distinguish one from the other as to the nature of buddha?" the teacher recognized a genius in the man, but he did not admit the promising newcomer into the order, so hwui nang had to stay in the monastery for eight months as a pounder of rice in order to qualify himself to be a zen teacher. [fn# ] the book was translated into chinese by kumarajiva in a.d. . ; also by bodhiruci in a.d. , and by paramartha in a.d. ; then by hiuen tsang in a.d. . many commentaries have been written on it by the prominent buddhist authors of china and japan. . the spiritual attainment of the sixth patriarch. some time before his death (in a.d.) the fifth patriarch announced to all disciples that the spirit of shakya muni is hard to realize, that they should express their own views on it, on condition that anyone who could prove his right realization should be given with the kachaya and created the sixth patriarch. then the venerable sung siu, the head of the seven hundred disciples, who was considered by his brothers to be the man entitled to the honour, composed the following verses: "the body is the bodhi-tree.[fn# ] the mind is like a mirror bright on its stand. dust it and wipe it from time to time, lest it be dimmed by dust and dirt." [fn# ] the idea expressed by these lines is clear enough. body is likened to the bodhi-tree, under which shakya muni attained to his supreme enlightenment; for it is not in another body in the future existence, but in this very body that one had to get enlightened. and mind is pure and bright in its nature like a mirror, but the dirt and dust of passions and of low desires often pollute and dim it. therefore one should dust and wipe it from time to time in order to keep it bright. all who read these lines thought that the writer was worthy of the expected reward, and the fifth patriarch also, appreciating the significance of the verses, said: "if men in the future would practise zen according to this view, they would acquire an excellent result." hwui nang, the rice-pounder, hearing of them, however, secretly remarked that they are beautiful, but hardly expressive of the spirit of shakya muni, and wrote his own verses, which ran as follows: "there is no bodhi-tree,[fn# ] nor is there a mirror stand. nothing exists from the first what can be dimmed by dust and dirt?" [fn# ] these verses have often been misunderstood as expressive of a nihilistic view, but the real meaning is anything but nihilistic. mind is pure and bright in its essence. it is always free from passions and mean desires, just as the sun is always bright, despite of cloud and mist that cover its face. therefore one must get an insight into this essential nature of mind, and realize that one has no mean desires and passions from the first, and also that there is no tree of bodhi nor the mirror of enlightenment without him, but they are within him. perhaps nobody ever dreamed such an insignificant fellow as the rice-pounder could surpass the venerable scholar in a religious insight, but the fifth patriarch saw at once an enlightened soul expressed in those lines; therefore he made up his mind to give the kachaya to the writer, in whom he found a great spiritual leader of future generations. but he did it secretly at midnight, lest some of the disciples from envy do violence to hwui nang. he was, moreover, cautious enough to advise his successor to leave the monastery at once, and go back to the south, that the latter might conceal his enlightenment until a time would come for his missionary activities. . flight of the sixth patriarch. on the following morning the news of what had happened during the night flew from mouth to mouth, and some of the enraged brothers attempted to pursue the worthy fugitive. the foremost among them, hwui ming (e-myo), overtook the sixth patriarch at a mountain pass not very far from the monastery. then hwui nang, laying down the kachaya on a rock by the road, addressed the pursuer: "this is a mere symbol of the patriarchal authority, and it is not a thing to be obtained by force. take it along with you, if you long for it." upon this hwui ming, who began to be ashamed of his base act, tried to lift the kachaya, but in vain, for it was, as he felt, as heavy as the rock itself. at last he said to the sixth patriarch: "i have come here, my brother, not for the sake of this robe, but for the sake of the law. grant my hearty desire of getting enlightened." "if you have come for the law," replied hwui nang, "you must put an end to all your struggles and longings. think neither of good nor of evil (make your mind pure from all idle thoughts), then see how is, hwui ming, your original (mental) physiognomy!" being thus questioned, ming found in an instant the divine light of buddha within himself, and became a disciple of the sixth patriarch. . the development of the southern and of the northern school of zen. after the death of the fifth patriarch the venerable shang siu, though not the legitimate successor of his master, was not inactive in the propagation of the faith, and gathered about him a number of enthusiastic admirers. this led to the foundation of the northern school of zen in opposition to the southern school led by the sixth patriarch. the empress tseh tien wa heu,[fn# ] the real ruler of china at that time, was an admirer of shang siu, and patronized his school, which nevertheless made no further development. [fn# ] the emperor chung tsung (chu-so, a.d. - ) was a nominal sovereign, and the empress was the real ruler from a.d. to . in the meanwhile the sixth patriarch, who had gone to the south, arrived at the fah sing monastery in kwang cheu, where yin tsung (in-shu), the abbot, was giving lectures on the mahayana sutras to a number of student monks. it was towards evening that he happened to overhear two monks of the monastery discussing about the flag floating in air. one of them said: "it is the wind that moves in reality, but not the flag." "no," objected the other, "it is the flag that moves in reality, but not the wind." thus each of them insisted on his own one-sided view, and came to no proper conclusion. then the sixth patriarch introduced himself and said to them: "it is neither the wind nor the flag, but your mind that moves in reality." yin tsung, having heard these words of the stranger, was greatly astonished, and thought the latter should have been an extraordinary personage. and when he found the man to be the sixth patriarch of zen, he and all his disciples decided to follow zen under the master. consequently hwui nang, still clad like a layman, changed his clothes, and began his patriarchal career at that monastery. this is the starting-point of the great development of zen in china. . missionary activity of the sixth patriarch. as we have seen above, the sixth patriarch was a great genius, and may be justly called a born zen teacher. he was a man of no erudition, being a poor farmer, who had served under the fifth patriarch as a rice-pounder only for eight months, but he could find a new meaning in buddhist terms, and show how to apply it to practical life. on one occasion, for instance, fah tah (ho-tatsu), a monk who had read over the saddharma-pundarika-sutra[fn# ] three thousand times, visited him to be instructed in zen. "even if you read the sutra ten thousand times," said the sixth patriarch, who could never read the text, "it will do you no good, if you cannot grasp the spirit of the sutra." "i have simply recited the book," confessed the monk, "as it is written in characters. how could such a dull fellow as i grasp its spirit?" "then recite it once," responded the master; "i shall explain its spirit." hereupon fah tah began to recite the sutra, and when he read it until the end of the second chapter the teacher stopped him, saying: "you may stop there. now i know that this sutra was preached to show the so-called greatest object of shakya muni's appearing on earth. that greatest object was to have all sentient beings enlightened just as he himself." in this way the sixth patriarch grasped the essentials of the mahayana sutras, and freely made use of them as the explanation of the practical questions about zen. [fn# ] one of the most noted mahayana sutras, translated by dharmaraksa (a.d. ) and by kumarajiva (a.d. ). the reader has to note that the author states the essential doctrine in the second chapter. see " sacred books of the east," vol. xxi., pp. - . . the disciples under the sixth patriarch. some time after this the sixth patriarch settled himself down at the pao lin monastery, better known as tsao ki shan (so-kei-zan), in shao cheu, and it grow into a great centre of zen in the southern states. under his instruction many eminent zen masters qualified themselves as leaders of the three worlds. he did not give the patriarchal symbol, the kachaya, to his successors, lest it might cause needless quarrels among the brethren, as was experienced by himself. he only gave sanction to his disciples who attained to enlightenment, and allowed them to teach zen in a manner best suited to their own personalities. for instance, huen kioh (gen-kaku), a scholar of the tien tai doctrine,[fn# ] well known as the teacher of yung kia[fn# ] (yo-ka), received a sanction for his spiritual attainment after exchanging a few words with the master in their first interview, and was at once acknowledged as a zen teacher. when he reached the zenith of his fame, he was presented with a crystal bowl together with rich gifts by the empress tseh tien; and it was in a.d. that the emperor chung tsung invited him in vain to proceed to the palace, since the latter followed the example of the fourth patriarch. [fn# ] the teacher of tien tai (ten-dai, a.d. - ), the founder of the buddhist sect of the same name, was a great scholar of originality. his doctrine and criticism on the tripitaka greatly influenced the whole of buddhism after him. his doctrine is briefly given in the second chapter. [fn# ] his ching tao ko (sho-do-ka), a beautiful metrical exposition of zen, is still read by most students of zen. after the death[fn# ] of the sixth patriarch (a.d. ), the southern zen was divided into two schools, one being represented by tsing yuen (sei-gen), the other by nan yoh (nan-gaku.) out of these two main schools soon developed the five[fn# ] branches of zen, and the faith made a splendid progress. after tsing yuen and nan yoh, one of the junior disciples of the sixth patriarch, hwui chung (e-chu), held an honourable position for sixteen years as the spiritual adviser to the emperor suh tsung (a.d. ) and to the emperor tai tsung (a.d. - ). these two emperors were enthusiastic admirers of zen, and ordered several times the kachaya of bodhidharma to be brought into the palace from the pao lin monastery that they might do proper homage to it. within some one hundred and thirty years after the sixth patriarch, zen gained so great influence among higher classes that at the time of the emperor suen tsung (a.d. - ) both the emperor and his prime minister, pei hiu, were noted for the practice of zen. it may be said that zen had its golden age, beginning with the reign of the emperor suh tsung, of the tang dynasty, until the reign of the emperor hiao tsung ( - ), who was the greatest patron of buddhism in the southern sung dynasty. to this age belong almost all the greatest zen scholars[fn# ] of china. [fn# ] there exists luh tan fah pao tan king (roku-so-ho-bo-dan-kyo), a collection of his sermons. it is full of bold statements of zen in its purest form, and is entirely free from ambiguous and enigmatical words that encumber later zen books. in consequence it is widely read by non-buddhist scholars in china and japan. both hwui chung (e-chu), a famous disciple of the sixth patriarch, and do-gen, the founder of the soto sect in japan, deny the authority of the book, and declare it to be misleading, because of errors and prejudices of the compilers. still, we believe it to be a collection of genuine sections given by the sixth patriarch, though there are some mistakes in its historical narratives. [fn# ] ( ) the tsao tung (so-to) sect, founded by tsing yuen (died in a.d. ) and his successors; ( ) the lin tsi (rin-zai) sect, founded by nan yoh (died in ) and his successors; ( ) the wei yan (yi-gyo) sect, founded by wei shan (yi-san, died in ) and his disciple yen shan (kyo-zan, died in ); ( ) the yun man (un-mon) sect, founded by yun man (died in ); ( ) the pao yen (ho-gen) sect, founded by pao yen (died in ). [fn# ] during the tang dynasty (a.d. - ) china produced, besides the sixth patriarch and his prominent disciples, such great zen teachers as ma tsu (ba-so, died in ), who is probably the originator of the zen activity; shih teu (seki-to, died in ), the reputed author of tsan tung ki (san-do-kai), a metrical writing on zen; poh chang (hyaku-jo, died ), who first laid down regulations for the zen monastery; wei shan (yi-san), yang shan (kyo-zan), the founders of the wei yang sect; hwang pah (o-baku, died in ), one of the founders of the lin tsi sect, and the author of chwen sin pao yao, (den-sin-ho-yo), one of the best works on zen; lin tsi (rin-zai, died in ), the real founder of the lin tsi sect; tung shan (to-zan, died in ), the real founder of the tsao tung sect; tsao shan (so-zan, died in ), a famous disciple of tung shan; teh shan (toku-san, died in ), who was used to strike every questioner with his staff; chang sha (cho-sha, died in ); chao cheu (jo-shu, died in ); nan tsuen (nan-sen, died in ); wu yeh (mu-go, died in ); who is said to have replied, 'away with your idle thoughts,' to every questioner; yun yen (un-gan, died in ); yoh shan (yaku-san, died in ); ta mei (tai-bai, died in ), a noted recluse; ta tsz (dai-ji, died in ); kwei fung (kei-ho, died in ), the author of 'the origin of man,' and other numerous works; and yun ku (un-go, died in ). to the period of the five dynasties (a.d. - ) belong such teachers as sueh fung (set-po, died in. ); huen sha (gen-sha, died in ); yun man (un-mon, died in ), the founder of the yun man sect; shen yueh (zen-getsu, died in ), a renowned zen poet; pu tai (ho-tei, died in ), well known for his peculiarities; chang king (cho-kei, died in ); nan yuen (nan-in, died in ); pao yen (ho-gen, died in ), the founder of the pao yen sect. during the sung dynasty (a.d. - ) appeared such teachers as yang ki (yo-gi, died in ), the founder of the yang ki school of zen; sueh teu (set-cho, died in ), noted for poetical works; hwang lung (o ryu, died in ), the founder of the hwang lung school of zen; hwang lin (ko-rin, died in ); tsz ming (ji-myo, died in ); teu tsy (to-shi, died in ); fu yun (fu-yo, died in ); wu tsu (go-so, died in ); yung ming (yo-myo, died in ), the author of tsung king luh (shu-kyo-roku); ki sung (kai-su, died in ), a great zen historian and author. in the southern sung dynasty (a.d. - ) flourished such masters as yuen wu (en-go, died in ), the author of pik yen tsih (heki-gan-shu); chan hieh (shin-ketsu, flourished in ); hung chi (wan-shi, died in ), famous for his poetical works; ta hwui (dai-e, died in ), a noted disciple of yuen wu; wan sung (ban-sho), flourished in - ), the author of tsung yun luh (sho-yo-roku); ju tsing (nyo-jo), died in ), the teacher to do-gen, or the founder of the so-to sect in japan. to this age belong almost all the eminent men of letters,[fn# ] statesmen, warriors, and artists who were known as the practisers of zen. to this age belongs the production of almost all zen books,[fn# ] doctrinal and historical. [fn# ] among the great names of zen believers the following are most important: pang yun (ho-on, flourished in - ), whose whole family was proficient in zen; tsui kiun (sai-gun, flourished in - ); luh kang (rik-ko), a lay disciple to nan tsun; poh loh tien (haku-raku-ten, died in ), one of the greatest chinese literary men; pei hiu (hai-kyu, flourished - ), the prime minister under the emperor suen tsung, a lay disciple to hwang pah; li ngao (ri-ko, lived about ), an author and scholar who practised zen under yoh shan; yu chuh (u-teki, flourished - ), a local governor, a friend of pang yun; yang yih (yo-oku, flourished in ), one of the greatest writers of his age; fan chung ngan (han-chu an, flourished - ), an able statesman and scholar; fu pih (fu shitsu, flourished - ), a minister under the emperor jan tsung; chang shang ying (cho-sho-yei, - ), a buddhist scholar and a statesman; hwang ting kien (ko-tei-ken, - ), a great poet; su shih (so-shoku, died in ), a great man of letters, well known as so-to-ba; su cheh (so-tetsu, died in ), a younger brother of so-to-ba, a scholar and minister under the emperor cheh tsung; chang kiu ching (cho-kyu-sei, flourished about ), a scholar and lay disciple of ta hwui; yang kieh (yo-ketsu, flourished - ), a scholar and statesman. [fn# ] of doctrinal zen books, besides sin sin ming by the third patriarch, and fah pao tan king by the sixth patriarch, the following are of great importance: ( ) ching tao ko (sho-do-ka), by huen kioh (gen-kaku). ( ) tsan tung ki (san-do-kai), by shih ten (seki-to). ( ) pao king san mei (ho-kyo-san-mai), by tung shan (to-zan). ( ) chwen sin pao yao (den-sin-ho-yo), by hwang pah (o-baku). ( ) pih yen tsih (heki-gan-shu), by yuen wu (en-go). ( ) lin tsi luh (rin-zai-roku), by lin tsi (rin-zai). ( ) tsung yun luh (sho-yo-roku), by wan sung (ban-sho). of historical zen books the following are of importance: ( ) king teh chwen tan-luh (kei-toku-den-to-roku), published in by tao yuen (do-gen). ( ) kwan tang luh (ko-to roku), published in by li tsun suh (ri-jun-kyoku). ( ) suh tang luh (zoku-o-roku), published in by wei poh (i-haku). ( ) lien tang luh (ren-o-roku), published in by hwui wang (mai-o). ( ) ching tsung ki (sho-ju-ki), published in by ki sung (kwai-su). ( ) pu tang luh (fu-o-roku), published in by ching sheu (sho-ju). ( ) hwui yuen (e-gen), published in by ta chwen (dai-sen). ( ) sin tang luh (sin-w-roku), published in - by sui (zui). ( ) suh chwen tang luh (zoku-den-to-roku), by wang siu (bun-shu). ( ) hwui yuen suh lioh (e-gen-zoku-ryaku), by tsing chu (jo-chu). ( ) ki tang luh (kei-to-roku), by yung kioh (yo-kaku). . three important elements of zen. to understand how zen developed during some four hundred years after the sixth patriarch, we should know that there are three important elements in zen. the first of these is technically called the zen number--the method of practising meditation by sitting cross-legged, of which we shall treat later.[fn# ] this method is fully developed by indian teachers before bodhidharma's introduction of zen into china, therefore it underwent little change during this period. the second is the zen doctrine, which mainly consists of idealistic and pantheistic ideas of mahayana buddhism, but which undoubtedly embraces some tenets of taoism. therefore, zen is not a pure indian faith, but rather of chinese origin. the third is the zen activity, or the mode of expression of zen in action, which is entirely absent in any other faith. [fn# ] see chapter vii. it was for the sake of this zen activity that hwang pah gave a slap three times to the emperor suen tsung; that lin tsi so often burst out into a loud outcry of hoh (katsu); that nan tsuen killed a cat at a single stroke of his knife in the presence of his disciples; and that teh shan so frequently struck questioners with his staff.[fn# ] the zen activity was displayed by the chinese teachers making use of diverse things such as the staff, the brush[fn# ] of long hair, the mirror, the rosary, the cup, the pitcher, the flag, the moon, the sickle, the plough, the bow and arrow, the ball, the bell, the drum, the cat, the dog, the duck, the earthworm--in short, any and everything that was fit for the occasion and convenient for the purpose. thus zen activity was of pure chinese origin, and it was developed after the sixth patriarch.[fn# ] for this reason the period previous to the sixth patriarch may be called the age of the zen doctrine, while that posterior to the same master, the age of the zen activity. [fn# ] a long official staff (shu-jo) like the crosier carried by the abbot of the monastery. [fn# ] an ornamental brush (hos-su) often carried by zen teachers. [fn# ] the giving of a slap was first tried by the sixth patriarch, who struck one of his disciples, known as ho tseh (ka-taku), and it was very frequently resorted to by the later masters. the lifting up of the brush was first tried by tsing yuen in an interview with his eldest disciple, shih ten, and it became a fashion among other teachers. the loud outcry of hoh was first made use of by ma tsu, the successor of nan yoh. in this way the origin of the zen activity can easily be traced to the sixth patriarch and his direct disciples. after the sung dynasty chinese zen masters seem to have given undue weight to the activity, and neglected the serious study of the doctrine. this brought out the degeneration severely reproached by some of the japanese zen teachers. . decline of zen. the blooming prosperity of zen was over towards the end of the southern sung dynasty ( - ), when it began to fade, not being bitten by the frost of oppression from without, but being weakened by rottenness within. as early as the sung dynasty ( - ) the worship of buddha amitabha[fn# ] stealthily found its way among zen believers, who could not fully realize the spirit of shakya muni, and to satisfy these people the amalgamation of the two faiths was attempted by some zen masters.[fn# ] [fn# ] the faith is based on larger sukhavati-vyuha, smaller sukhavati-vyuha, and amitayus-dhyana-sutra. it was taught in india by acvaghosa, nagariuna, and vasubandhu. in china hwui yuen (e-on, died in a.d. ), tan lwan (don-ran, died in ), tao choh (do-shaku), and shen tao (zen-do) (both of whom lived about - ), chiefly taught the doctrine. it made an extraordinary progress in japan, and differentiated itself into several sects, of which jodo shu and shin shu are the strongest. [fn# ] it is beyond all doubt that poh loh tien (haku-raku-ten) practised zen, but at the same time believed in amitabha; so also su shih (so-shoku), a most noted zen practiser, worshipped the same buddha, yang kieh (yo-keteu), who carried a picture of amitabha wherever he went and worshipped it, seems to have thought there is nothing incompatible between zen and his faith. the foremost of those zen masters of the sung dynasty that attempted the amalgamation is yung ming (yo-myo, died in ), who reconciled zen with the worship of amitabha in his wan shen tung kwei tsih (man-zen-do-ki-shu) and si ngan yan shan fu (sei-an-yo-sin-fu). he was followed by tsing tsz (jo-ji) and chan hieh (shin-ketsu, lived about ), the former of whom wrote kwei yuen chih chi (ki-gen-jiki-shi), and the latter tsing tu sin yao (jo-do-sin-yo), in order to further the tendency. in the yuen dynasty chung fung (chu-ho, died in ) encouraged the adoration of amitabha, together with the practice of zen, in his poetical composition (kwan-shu-jo-go). in the ming dynasty yun si (un-sei, died in ), the author of shen kwan tseh tsin (zen-kwan-saku-shin) and other numerous works, writing a commentary on sukhavati-vyuha-sutra, brought the amalgamation to its height. ku shan (ku-zan, died in ), a zen historian and author, and his prominent disciple wei lin (e-rin), axe well known as the amalgamators. yun ming declared that those who practise zen, but have no faith in amitabha, go astray in nine cases out of ten; that those who do not practise zen, but believe in amitabha, are saved, one and all; that those who practise zen, and have the faith in amitabha, are like the tiger provided with wings; and that for those who have no faith in amitabha, nor practise zen, there exist the iron floor and the copper pillars in hell. ku shan said that some practise zen in order to attain enlightenment, while others pray amitabha for salvation; that if they were sincere and diligent, both will obtain the final beatitude. wei lin also observed: "theoretically i embrace zen, and practically i worship amitabha." e-chu, the author of zen-to-nenbutsu ('on zen and the worship of amitabha'), points out that one of the direct disciples of the sixth patriarch favoured the faith of amitabha, but there is no trustworthy evidence, as far as we know, that proves the existence of the amalgamation in the tang dynasty. this tendency steadily increasing with time brought out at length the period of amalgamation which covered the yuen ( - ) and the ming dynasties ( - ), when the prayer for amitabha was in every mouth of zen monks sitting in meditation. the patrons of zen were not wanting in the yuen dynasty, for such a warlike monarch as the emperor shi tsu (sei-so), - ) is known to have practised zen under the instruction of miao kao, and his successor ching tsung ( - ) to have trusted in yih shan,[fn# ] a zen teacher of reputation at that time. moreover, lin ping chung (rin-hei-cha, died in ), a powerful minister under shi tsu, who did much toward the establishment of the administrative system in that dynasty, had been a zen monk, and never failed to patronize his faith. and in the ming dynasty the first emperor tai tsu ( - ), having been a zen monk, protected the sect with enthusiasm, and his example was followed by tai tsung ( - ), whose spiritual as well as political adviser was tao yen, a zen monk of distinction. thus zen exercised an influence unparalleled by any other faith throughout these ages. the life and energy of zen, however, was gone by the ignoble amalgamation, and even such great scholars as chung fung,[fn# ] yung si,[fn# ] yung kioh,[fn# ] were not free from the overwhelming influence of the age. [fn# ] the emperor sent him to japan in with some secret order, but he did nothing political, and stayed as a zen teacher until his death. [fn# ] a most renowned zen master in the yuen dynasty, whom the emperor jan tsung invited to visit the palace, but in vain. [fn# ] an author noted for his learning and virtues, who was rather a worshipper of amitabha than a zen monk. [fn# ] an author of voluminous books, of which tung shang ku cheh (to-jo-ko-tetsu) is well known. we are not, however, doing justice to the tendency of amalgamation in these times simply to blame it for its obnoxious results, because it is beyond doubt that it brought forth wholesome fruits to the chinese literature and philosophy. who can deny that this tendency brought the speculative[fn# ] philosophy of the sung dynasty to its consummation by the amalgamation of confucianism with buddhism especially with zen, to enable it to exercise long-standing influence on society, and that this tendency also produced wang yang ming,[fn# ] one of the greatest generals and scholars that the world has ever seen, whose philosophy of conscience[fn# ] still holds a unique position in the history of human thought? who can deny furthermore that wang's philosophy is zen in the confucian terminology? [fn# ] this well-known philosophy was first taught by cheu men shuh (shu-mo-shiku, died in ) in its definite form. he is said to have been enlightened by the instruction of hwui tang, a contemporary zen master. he was succeeded by chang ming tao (tei-mei-do, died in ) and chang i chwen (tei-i-sen, died in ), two brothers, who developed the philosophy in no small degree. and it was completed by chu tsz (shu-shi, died in ), a celebrated commentator of the confucian classics. it is worthy to note that these scholars practised meditation just as zen monks. see 'history of chinese philosophy' (pp. - ), by g. nakauchi, and 'history of development of chinese thought,' by r. endo. [fn# ] he was born in , and died in . his doctrine exercised a most fruitful influence on many of the great japanese minds, and undoubtedly has done much to the progress of new japan. [fn# ] see den-shu-roku and o-ya-mei-zen-sho. chapter ii history of zen in japan . the establishment of the rin zai[fn# ] school of zen in japan. [fn# ] the lin tsi school was started by nan yoh, a prominent disciple of the sixth patriarch, and completed by lin tsi or rin zai. the introduction of zen into the island empire is dated as early as the seventh century;[fn# ] but it was in that it was first established by ei-sai, a man of bold, energetic nature. he crossed the sea for china at the age of twenty-eight in , after his profound study of the whole tripitaka[fn# ] for eight years in the hi-yei monastery[fn# ] the then centre of japanese buddhism. [fn# ] zen was first introduced into japan by do sha ( - ) as early as - , at the time when the fifth patriarch just entered his patriarchal career. do-sho went over to china in , and met with huen tsang, the celebrated and great scholar, who taught him the doctrine of the dharma-laksana. it was huen tsang who advised do-sho to study zen under hwui man (e-man). after returning home, he built a meditation hall for the purpose of practising zen in the gan-go monastery, nara. thus zen was first transplanted into japan by do-sho, but it took no root in the soil at that time. next a chinese zen teacher, i kung (gi-ku), came over to japan in about , and under his instruction the empress danrin, a most enthusiastic buddhist, was enlightened. she erected a monastery named dan-rin-ji, and appointed i kung the abbot of it for the sake of propagating the faith. it being of no purpose, however, i kung went back to china after some years. thirdly, kaku-a in went over to china, where he studied zen under fuh hai (buk-kai), who belonged to the yang ki (yo-gi) school, and came home after three years. being questioned by the emperor taka-kura ( - ) about the doctrine of zen, he uttered no word, but took up a flute and played on it. but his first note was too high to be caught by the ordinary ear, and was gone without producing any echo in the court nor in society at large. [fn# ] the three divisions of the buddhist canon, viz.: ( ) sutra-pitaka, or a collection of doctrinal books. ( ) vinaya-pitaka, or a collection of works on discipline. ( ) abhidharma-pitaka, or a collection of philosophical and expository works. [fn# ] the great monastery erected in by sai-cho ( - ), the founder of the japanese ten dai sect, known as den gyo dai shi. after visiting holy places and great monasteries, he came home, bringing with him over thirty different books on the doctrine of the ten-dai sect.[fn# ] this, instead of quenching, added fuel to his burning desire for adventurous travel abroad. so he crossed the sea over again in , this time intending to make pilgrimage to india; and no one can tell what might have been the result if the chinese authorities did not forbid him to cross the border. thereon he turned his attention to the study of zen, and after five years' discipline succeeded in getting sanction for his spiritual attainment by the hu ngan (kio-an), a noted master of the rin zai school, the then abbot of the monastery of tien tung shan (ten-do-san). his active propaganda of zen was commenced soon after his return in with splendid success at a newly built temple[fn# ] in the province of chiku-zen. in yori-iye, the shogun, or the real governor of the state at that time, erected the monastery of ken-nin-ji in the city of kyo-to, and invited him to proceed to the metropolis. accordingly he settled himself down in that temple, and taught zen with his characteristic activity. [fn# ] the sect was named after its founder in china, chi i ( - ), who lived in the monastery of tien tai shan (ten-dai-san), and was called the great teacher of tien tai. in den-gyo went over to china by the imperial order, and received the transmission of the doctrine from tao sui (do-sui), a patriarch of the sect. after his return he erected a monastery on mount hi-yei, which became the centre of buddhistic learning. [fn# ] he erected the monastery of sho-fuku-ji in , which is still prospering. this provoked the envy and wrath of the ten dai and the shin gon[fn# ] teachers, who presented memorials to the imperial court to protest against his propagandism of the new faith. taking advantage of the protests, ei-sai wrote a book entitled ko-zen-go-koku-ron ('the protection of the state by the propagation of zen'), and not only explained his own position, but exposed the ignorance[fn# ] of the protestants. thus at last his merit was appreciated by the emperor tsuchi-mikado ( - ), and he was promoted to so jo, the highest rank in the buddhist priesthood, together with the gift of a purple robe in . some time after this he went to the city of kama-kura, the political centre, being invited by sane-tomo, the shogun, and laid the foundation of the so-called kama-kura zen, still prospering at the present moment. [fn# ] the shin gon or mantra sect is based on mahavairocanabhi-sambodhi-sutra, vajracekhara-sutra, and other mantra-sutras. it was established in china by vajrabodhi and his disciple amoahavajra, who came from india in . ku kai ( - ), well known as ko bo dai shi, went to china in , and received the transmission of the doctrine from hwui kwo (kei-ka), a, disciple of amoghavajra. in he came back and propagated the faith almost all over the country. for the detail see 'a short history of the twelve japanese buddhist sects' (chap. viii.), by dr. nanjo. [fn# ] sai-cho, the founder of the japanese ten dai sect, first learned the doctrine of the northern school of zen under gyo-hyo (died in ), and afterwards he pursued the study of the same faith under siao jan in china. therefore to oppose the propagation of zen is, for ten dai priests, as much as to oppose the founder of their own sect. . the introduction of the so-to school[fn# ] of zen. [fn# ] this school was started by tsing-yuen (sei-gen), an eminent disciple of the sixth patriarch, and completed by tsing shan (to-zan). although the rin zai school was, as mentioned above, established by ei-sai, yet he himself was not a pure zen teacher, being a ten dai scholar as well as an experienced practiser of mantra. the first establishment of zen in its purest form was done by do-gen, now known as jo yo dai shi. like ei-sai, he was admitted into the hi-yei monastery at an early age, and devoted himself to the study of the canon. as his scriptural knowledge increased, he was troubled by inexpressible doubts and fears, as is usual with great religious teachers. consequently, one day he consulted his uncle, ko-in, a distinguished ten dai scholar, about his troubles. the latter, being unable to satisfy him, recommended him ei-sai, the founder of the new faith. but as ei-sai died soon afterwards, he felt that he had no competent teacher left, and crossed the sea for china, at the age of twenty-four, in . there he was admitted into the monastery of tien tung shan (ten-do-san), and assigned the lowest seat in the hall, simply because be was a foreigner. against this affront he strongly protested. in the buddhist community, he said, all were brothers, and there was no difference of nationality. the only way to rank the brethren was by seniority, and he therefore claimed to occupy his proper rank. nobody, however, lent an ear to the poor new-comer's protest, so he appealed twice to the chinese emperor ning tsung ( - ), and by the imperial order he gained his object. after four years' study and discipline, he was enlightened and acknowledged as the successor by his master ju tsing (nyo-jo died in ), who belonged to the tsao tung (so to) school. he came home in , bringing with him three important zen books.[fn# ] some three years he did what bodhidharma, the wall-gazing brahmin, had done seven hundred years before him, retiring to a hermitage at fuka-kusa, not very far from kyo-to. just like bodhidharma, denouncing all worldly fame and gain, his attitude toward the world was diametrically opposed to that of ei-sai. as we have seen above, ei-sai never shunned, but rather sought the society of the powerful and the rich, and made for his goal by every means. but to the sage of fuka-kusa, as do-gen was called at that time, pomp and power was the most disgusting thing in the world. judging from his poems, be seems to have spent these years chiefly in meditation; dwelling now on the transitoriness of life, now on the eternal peace of nirvana; now on the vanities and miseries of the world; now listening to the voices of nature amongst the hills; now gazing into the brooklet that was, as he thought, carrying away his image reflected on it into the world. [fn# ] ( ) pao king san mei (ho-kyo-san-mai, 'precious mirror samadhi'), a metrical exposition of zen, by tung shan (to-zan, - ), one of the founders of the so to school. ( ) wu wei hien hueh (go-i-ken-ketsu. 'explanation of the five categories'), by tung shan and his disciple tsao shan (so-zan). this book shows us how zen was systematically taught by the authors. ( ) pih yen tsih (heki-gan-shu, 'a collection and critical treatment of dialogues'), by yuen wu. . the characteristics of do-gen, the founder of the japanese so to sect. in the meantime seekers after a new truth gradually began to knock at his door, and his hermitage was turned into a monastery, now known as the temple of ko-sho-ji.[fn# ] it was at this time that many buddhist scholars and men of quality gathered about him but the more popular he became the more disgusting the place became to him. his hearty desire was to live in a solitude among mountains, far distant from human abodes, where none but falling waters and singing birds could disturb his delightful meditation. therefore he gladly accepted the invitation of a feudal lord, and went to the province of echi-zen, where his ideal monastery was built, now known as ei-hei-ji.[fn# ] [fn# ] it was in this monastery (built in ) that zen was first taught as an independent sect, and that the meditation hall was first opened in japan. do-gen lived in the monastery for eleven years, and wrote some of the important books. za-zen-gi ('the method of practising the cross-legged meditation') was written soon after his return from china, and ben-do-wa and other essays followed, which are included in his great work, entitled sho-bo-gen-zo) ('the eye and treasury of the right law'). [fn# ] the monastery was built in by yoshi-shige (hatano), the feudal lord who invited do-gen. he lived in ei-hei-ji until his death, which took place in . it is still flourishing as the head temple of the so to sect. in , being requested by toki-yori, the regent general ( - ), he came down to kama-kura, where he stayed half a year and went back to ei-hei-ji. after some time toki-yori, to show his gratitude for the master, drew up a certificate granting a large tract of land as the property of ei-hei-ji, and handed it over to gen-myo, a disciple of do-gen. the carrier of the certificate was so pleased with the donation that he displayed it to all his brethren and produced it before the master, who severely reproached him saying: "o, shame on thee, wretch! thou art -defiled by the desire of worldly riches even to thy inmost soul, just as noodle is stained with oil. thou canst not be purified from it to all eternity. i am afraid thou wilt bring shame on the right law." on the spot gen-myo was deprived of his holy robe and excommunicated. furthermore, the master ordered the 'polluted' seat in the meditation hall, where gen-myo was wont to sit, to be removed, and the 'polluted' earth under the seat to be dug out to the depth of seven feet. in the ex-emperor go-sa-ga ( - ) sent a special messenger twice to the ei-hei monastery to do honour to the master with the donation of a purple robe, but he declined to accept it. and when the mark of distinction was offered for the third time, he accepted it, expressing his feelings by the following verses: "although in ei-hei's vale the shallow waters leap, yet thrice it came, imperial favour deep. the ape may smile and laugh the crane at aged monk in purple as insane." he was never seen putting on the purple robe, being always clad in black, that was better suited to his secluded life. . the social state of japan when zen was established by ei-sai and do-gen. now we have to observe the condition of the country when zen was introduced into japan by ei-sai and do-gen. nobilities that had so long governed the island were nobilities no more. enervated by their luxuries, effeminated by their ease, made insipient by their debauchery, they were entirely powerless. all that they possessed in reality was the nominal rank and hereditary birth. on the contrary, despised as the ignorant, sneered at as the upstart, put in contempt as the vulgar, the samurai or military class had everything in their hands. it was the time when yori-tomo[fn# ] ( - ) conquered all over the empire, and established the samurai government at kama-kura. it was the time when even the emperors were dethroned or exiled at will by the samurai. it was the time when even the buddhist monks[fn# ] frequently took up arms to force their will. it was the time when japan's independence was endangered by kublai, the terror of the world. it was the time when the whole nation was full of martial spirit. it is beyond doubt that to these rising samurais, rude and simple, the philosophical doctrines of buddhism, represented by ten dai and shin gon, were too complicated and too alien to their nature. but in zen they could find something congenial to their nature, something that touched their chord of sympathy, because zen was the doctrine of chivalry in a certain sense. [fn# ] the samurai government was first established by yoritomo, of the minamoto family, in , and japan was under the control of the military class until , when the political power was finally restored to the imperial house. [fn# ] they were degenerated monks (who were called monk-soldiers), belonging to great monasteries such as en-ryaku-ji (hi-yei), ko-fuku-ji (at nara), mi-i-dera, etc. . the resemblance of the zen monk to the samurai. let us point out in brief the similarities between zen and japanese chivalry. first, both the samurai and the zen monk have to undergo a strict discipline and endure privation without complaint. even such a prominent teacher as ei-sai, for example, lived contentedly in such needy circumstances that on one occasion[fn# ] he and his disciples had nothing to eat for several days. fortunately, they were requested by a believer to recite the scriptures, and presented with two rolls of silk. the hungry young monks, whose mouths watered already at the expectation of a long-looked-for dinner, were disappointed when that silk was given to a poor man, who called on ei-sai to obtain some help. fast continued for a whole week, when another poor follow came in and asked ei-sai to give something. at this time, having nothing to show his substantial mark of sympathy towards the poor, ei-sai tore off the gilt glory of the image of buddha bhecajya and gave it. the young monks, bitten both by hunger and by anger at this outrageous act to the object of worship, questioned ei-sai by way of reproach: "is it, sir, right for us buddhists to demolish the image of a buddha?" "well," replied ei-sai promptly, "buddha would give even his own life for the sake of suffering people. how could he be reluctant to give his halo?" this anecdote clearly shows us self-sacrifice is of first importance in the zen discipline. [fn# ] the incident is told by do-gen in his zui-mon-ki. . the honest poverty of the zen monk and the samurai. secondly, the so-called honest poverty is a characteristic of both the zen monk and the samurai. to get rich by an ignoble means is against the rules of japanese chivalry or bushido. the samurai would rather starve than to live by some expedient unworthy of his dignity. there are many instances, in the japanese history, of samurais who were really starved to death in spite of their having a hundred pieces of gold carefully preserved to meet the expenses at the time of an emergency; hence the proverb: "the falcon would not feed on the ear of corn, even if he should starve." similarly, we know of no case of zen monks, ancient and modern, who got rich by any ignoble means. they would rather face poverty with gladness of heart. fu-gai, one of the most distinguished zen masters just before the restoration, supported many student monks in his monastery. they were often too numerous to be supported by his scant means. this troubled his disciple much whose duty it was to look after the food-supply, as there was no other means to meet the increased demand than to supply with worse stuff. accordingly, one day the disciple advised fu-gai not to admit new students any more into the monastery. then the master, making no reply, lolled out his tongue and said: "now look into my mouth, and tell if there be any tongue in it." the perplexed disciple answered affirmatively. "then don't bother yourself about it. if there be any tongue, i can taste any sort of food." honest poverty may, without exaggeration, be called one of the characteristics of the samurais and of the zen monks; hence a proverb: "the zen monk has no money, moneyed monto[fn# ] knows nothing." [fn# ] the priest belonging to shin shu, who are generally rich. . the manliness of the zen monk and of the samurai. thirdly, both the zen monk and the samurai were distinguished by their manliness and dignity in manner, sometimes amounting to rudeness. this is due partly to the hard discipline that they underwent, and partly to the mode of instruction. the following story,[fn# ] translated by mr. d. suzuki, a friend of mine, may well exemplify our statement: [fn# ] the journal of the pali text society, - . when rin-zai[fn# ] was assiduously applying himself to zen discipline under obak (huang po in chinese, who died ), the head monk recognized his genius. one day the monk asked him how long he had been in the monastery, to which rin-zai replied: 'three years.' the elder said: 'have you ever approached the master and asked his instruction in buddhism?' rin-zai said: 'i have never done this, for i did not know what to ask.' 'why, you might go to the master and ask him what is the essence of buddhism?' [fn# ] lin tsi, the founder of the lin tsi school. "rin-zai, according to this advice, approached obak and repeated the question, but before he finished the master gave him a slap. "when rin-zai came back, the elder asked how the interview went. said rin-zai: 'before i could finish my question the master slapped me, but i fail to grasp its meaning.' the elder said: 'you go to him again and ask the same question.' when he did so, he received the same response from the master. but rin-zai was urged again to try it for the third time, but the outcome did not improve. "at last he went to the elder, and said 'in obedience to your kind suggestion, i have repeated my question three times, and been slapped three times. i deeply regret that, owing to my stupidity, i am unable to comprehend the hidden meaning of all this. i shall leave this place and go somewhere else.' said the elder: 'if you wish to depart, do not fail to go and see the master to say him farewell.' "immediately after this the elder saw the master, and said: 'that young novice, who asked about buddhism three times, is a remarkable fellow. when he comes to take leave of you, be so gracious as to direct him properly. after a hard training, he will prove to be a great master, and, like a huge tree, he will give a refreshing shelter to the world.' "when rin-zai came to see the master, the latter advised him not to go anywhere else, but to dai-gu (tai-yu) of kaoan, for he would be able to instruct him in the faith. "rin-zai went to dai-gu, who asked him whence he came. being informed that he was from obak, dai-gu further inquired what instruction he had under the master. rin-zai answered: 'i asked him three times about the essence of buddhism, and he slapped me three times. but i am yet unable to see whether i had any fault or not.' dai-gu said: 'obak was tender-hearted even as a dotard, and you are not warranted at all to come over here and ask me whether anything was faulty with you.' "being thus reprimanded, the signification of the whole affair suddenly dawned upon the mind of rin-zai, and he exclaimed: 'there is not much, after all, in the buddhism of obak.' whereupon dai-gu took hold of him, and said: 'this ghostly good-for-nothing creature! a few minutes ago you came to me and complainingly asked what was wrong with you, and now boldly declare that there is not much in the buddhism of obak. what is the reason of all this? speak out quick! speak out quick!' in response to this, rin-zai softly struck three times his fist at the ribs of dai-gu. the latter then released him, saying: 'your teacher is obak, and i will have nothing to do with you.' "rin-zai took leave of dai-gu and came back to obak, who, on seeing him come, exclaimed: 'foolish fellow! what does it avail you to come and go all the time like this?' rin-zai said: 'it is all due to your doting kindness.' "when, after the usual salutation, rin-zai stood by the side of obak, the latter asked him whence he had come this time. rin-zai answered: "in obedience to your kind instruction, i was with dai-gu. thence am i come.' and he related, being asked for further information, all that had happened there. "obak said: 'as soon as that fellow shows himself up here, i shall have to give him a good thrashing.' 'you need not wait for him to come; have it right this moment,' was the reply; and with this rin-zai gave his master a slap on the back. "obak said: 'how dares this lunatic come into my presence and play with a tiger's whiskers?' rin-zai then burst out into a ho,[fn# ] and obak said: 'attendant, come and carry this lunatic away to his cell.'" [fn# ] a loud outcry, frequently made use of by zen teachers, after rin-zai. its chinese pronunciation is 'hoh,' and pronounced 'katsu' in japanese, but 'tsu' is not audible. . the courage and the composure of mind of the zen monk and of the samurai. fourthly, our samurai encountered death, as is well known, with unflinching courage. he would never turn back from, but fight till his last with his enemy. to be called a coward was for him the dishonour worse than death itself. an incident about tsu yuen (so-gen), who came over to japan in , being invited by toki-mune[fn# ] (ho-jo), the regent general, well illustrates how much zen monks resembled our samurais. the event happened when he was in china, where the invading army of yuen spread terror all over the country. some of the barbarians, who crossed the border of the state of wan, broke into the monastery of tsu yuen, and threatened to behead him. then calmly sitting down, ready to meet his fate, he composed the following verses "the heaven and earth afford me no shelter at all; i'm glad, unreal are body and soul. welcome thy weapon, o warrior of yuen! thy trusty steel, that flashes lightning, cuts the wind of spring, i feel." [fn# ] a bold statesman and soldier, who was the real ruler of japan - . this reminds us of sang chao[fn# ] (so-jo), who, on the verge of death by the vagabond's sword, expressed his feelings in the follow lines: "in body there exists no soul. the mind is not real at all. now try on me thy flashing steel, as if it cuts the wind of spring, i feel." [fn# ] the man was not a pure zen master, being a disciple of kumarajiva, the founder of the san ron sect. this is a most remarkable evidence that zen, especially the rin zan school, was influenced by kumarajiva and his disciples. for the details of the anecdote, see e-gen. the barbarians, moved by this calm resolution and dignified air of tsu yuen, rightly supposed him to be no ordinary personage, and left the monastery, doing no harm to him. . zen and the regent generals of the ho-jo period. no wonder, then, that the representatives of the samurai class, the regent generals, especially such able rulers as toki-yori, toki-mune, and others noted for their good administration, of the ho-jo period ( - ) greatly favoured zen. they not only patronized the faith, building great temples[fn# ] and inviting best chinese zen teachers[fn# ] but also lived just as zen monks, having the head shaven, wearing a holy robe, and practising cross-legged meditation. [fn# ] to-fuku-ji, the head temple of a sub-sect of the rin zai under the same name, was built in . ken-cho-ji, the head temple of a subsect of the rin zai under the same name, was built in . en-gaku ji, the head temple of a sub-sect of the rin zai under the same name, was built in . nan-zen-ji, the head temple of a sub-sect of the rin zai under the same name, was erected in . [fn# ] tao lung (do-ryu), known as dai-kaku zen-ji, invited by tokiyori, came over to japan in . he became the founder of ken-cho-ji-ha, a sub-sect of the rin zai, and died in . of his disciples, yaku-o was most noted, and yaku-o's disciple, jaku-shitsu, became the founder of yo-genji-ha, another sub-sect of the rin zai. tsu yuen (so-gen), known as buk-ko-koku-shi, invited by toki-mune, crossed the sea in , became the founder of en-gaku-ji-ha (a sub-sect of the rin zai), and died in . tsing choh (sei-setsu), invited by taka-toki, came in , and died in . chu tsun (so-shun) came in , and died in . fan sien (bon-sen) came together with chu tsun, and died in . these were the prominent chinese teachers of that time. toki-yori ( - ), for instance, who entered the monastic life while be was still the real governor of the country, led as simple a life, as is shown in his verse, which ran as follows: "higher than its bank the rivulet flows; greener than moss tiny grass grows. no one call at my humble cottage on the rock, but the gate by itself opens to the wind's knock." toki-yori attained to enlightenment by the instruction of do-gen and do-ryu, and breathed his last calmly sitting cross-legged, and expressing his feelings in the following lines: "thirty-seven of years, karma mirror stood high; now i break it to pieces, path of great is then nigh." his successor, toki-mune ( - ), a bold statesman and soldier, was no less of a devoted believer in zen. twice he beheaded the envoys sent by the great chinese conqueror, kublai, who demanded japan should either surrender or be trodden under his foot. and when the alarming news of the chinese armada's approaching the land reached him, be is said to have called on his tutor, tsu yuen, to receive the last instruction. "now, reverend sir," said. he, "an imminent peril threatens the land." "how art thou going to encounter it?" asked the master. then toki-mune burst into a thundering ka with all his might to show his undaunted spirit in encountering the approaching enemy. "o, the lion's roar!" said tsu yuen. "thou art a genuine lion. go, and never turn back." thus encouraged by the teacher, the regent general sent out the defending army, and successfully rescued the state from the mouth of destruction, gaining a splendid victory over the invaders, almost all of whom perished in the western seas. . zen after the downfall of the ho-jo regency. towards the end of the ho-jo period,[fn# ] and after the downfall of the regency in , sanguinary battles were fought between the imperialists and the rebels. the former, brave and faithful as they were, being outnumbered by the latter, perished in the field one after another for the sake of the ill-starred emperor go-dai-go ( - ), whose eventful life ended in anxiety and despair. [fn# ] although zen was first favoured by the ho-jo regency and chiefly prospered at kama-kura, yet it rapidly began to exercise its influence on nobles and emperors at kyo-to. this is mainly due to the activity of en-ni, known as sho-ichi-koku-shi ( - ), who first earned zen under gyo-yu, a disciple of ei-sai, and afterwards went to china, where he was enlightened under the instruction of wu chun, of the monastery of king shan. after his return, michi-iye (fuji-wara), a powerful nobleman, erected for him to-fuku-ji in , and he became the founder of a sub-sect of the rin zai, named after that monastery. the emperor go-saga ( - ), an admirer of his, received the moral precepts from him. one of his disciples, to-zan, became the spiritual adviser of the emperor fushi-mi ( - ), and another disciple, mu kwan, was created the abbot of the monastery of nan-zen-ji by the emperor kame-yama ( - ), as the founder of a sub-sect of the rin zai under the same name. another teacher who gained lasting influence on the court is nan-po, known as dai-o-koku-shi ( - ), who was appointed the abbot of the monastery of man-ju-ji in kyo to by the emperor fushi-mi. one of his disciples, tsu-o, was the spiritual adviser to both the emperor hana-zono ( - ) and the emperor go-dai-go. and another disciple, myo-cho, known as dai-to-koku-shi ( - ), also was admired by the two emperors, and created the abbot of dai-toku-ji, as the founder of a sub-sect of the rin zai under the same name. it was for myo-cho's disciple, kan-zan ( ), that the emperor hana-zono turned his detached palace into a monastery, named myo-shin-ji, the head temple of a sub-sect of the rin zai under the same name. it was at this time that japan gave birth to masa-shige (kusu-noki), an able general and tactician of the imperialists, who for the sake of the emperor not only sacrificed himself and his brother, but by his will his son and his son's successor died for the same cause, boldly attacking the enemy whose number was overwhelmingly great. masa-shige's loyalty, wisdom, bravery, and prudence are not merely unique in the history of japan, but perhaps in the history of man. the tragic tale about his parting with his beloved son, and his bravery shown at his last battle, never fail to inspire the japanese with heroism. he is the best specimen of the samurai class. according to an old document,[fn# ] this masa-shige was the practiser of zen, and just before his last battle he called on chu tsun (so-shun) to receive the final instruction. "what have i to do when death takes the place of life?" asked masa-shige. the teacher replied: "be bold, at once cut off both ties, the drawn sword gleams against the skies." thus becoming, as it were, an indispensable discipline for the samurai, zen never came to an end with the ho-jo period, but grew more prosperous than before during the reign[fn# ] of the emperor go-dai-go, one of the most enthusiastic patrons of the faith. [fn# ] the event is detailed at length in a life of so-shun, but some historians suspect it to be fictitious. this awaits a further research. [fn# ] as we have already mentioned, do-gen, the founder of the japanese so to sect, shunned the society of the rich and the powerful, and led a secluded life. in consequence his sect did not make any rapid progress until the fourth patriarch of his line, kei-zan ( - ) who, being of energetic spirit, spread his faith with remarkable activity, building many large monasteries, of which yo-ko-ji, in the province of no-to, so-ji-ji (near yokohama), one of the head temples of the sect, are well known. one of his disciples, mei ho ( - ), propagated the faith in the northern provinces; while another disciple, ga-san ( - ), being a greater character, brought up more than thirty distinguished disciples, of whom tai-gen, tsu-gen, mu-tan, dai-tetsu, and jip-po, are best known. tai-gen (died ) and big successors propagated the faith over the middle provinces, while tsu-gen ( - ) and his successors spread the sect all over the north-eastern and south-western provinces. thus it is worthy of our notice that most of the rin zai teachers confined their activities within kamakura and kyo-to, while the so to masters spread the faith all over the country. the shoguns of the ashi-kaga period ( - ) were not less devoted to the faith than the emperors who succeeded the emperor go-dai-go. and even taka-uji ( - ), the notorious founder of the shogunate, built a monastery and invited so-seki,[fn# ] better known as mu-so-koku-shi, who was respected as the tutor by the three successive emperors after go-dai-go. taka-uji's example was followed by all succeeding shoguns, and shogun's example was followed by the feudal lords and their vassals. this resulted in the propagation of zen throughout the country. we can easily imagine how zen was prosperous in these days from the splendid monasteries[fn# ] built at this period, such as the golden hall temple and the silver hall temple that still adorn the fair city of kyo-to. [fn# ] so-seki ( - ) was perhaps the greatest zen master of the period. of numerous monasteries built for him, e-rin-ji, in the province of kae, and ten-ryu-ji, the head temple of a sub-sect of the rin zai under the same name, are of importance. out of over seventy eminent disciples of his, gi-do ( - ), the author of ku-ge-shu; shun-oku ( - ), the founder of the monastery of so-koku-ji, the head temple of a sub-sect of the rin zai under the same name; and zek-kai ( - ), author of sho-ken-shu, are best known. [fn# ] myo-shin-ji was built in by the emperor hana-zono; ten-ryu-ji was erected by taka-uji, the first shogun of the period, in ; so-koku-ji by yosh-imitsu, the third shogun, in ; kin-kaku-ji, or golden hall temple, by the same shogun, in ; gin-kaku-ji, or silver hall temple, by yoshi-masa, the eighth shogun, in . . zen in the dark age. the latter half of the ashikaga period was the age of arms and bloodshed. every day the sun shone on the glittering armour of marching soldiers. every wind sighed over the lifeless remains of the brave. everywhere the din of battle resounded. out of these fighting feudal lords stood two champions. each of them distinguished himself as a veteran soldier and tactician. each of them was known as an experienced practiser of zen. one was haru-nobu[fn# ] (take-da, died in ), better known by his buddhist name, shin-gen. the other was teru-tora[fn# ] (uye-sugi, died in ), better known by his buddhist name, ken-shin. the character of shin-gen can be imagined from the fact that he never built any castle or citadel or fortress to guard himself against his enemy, but relied on his faithful vassals and people; while that of ken-shin, from the fact that he provided his enemy, shin-gen, with salt when the latter suffered from want of it, owing to the cowardly stratagem of a rival lord. the heroic battles waged by these two great generals against each other are the flowers of the japanese war-history. tradition has it that when shin-gen's army was put to rout by the furious attacks of ken-shin's troops, and a single warrior mounted on a huge charger rode swiftly as a sweeping wind into shin-gen's head-quarters, down came a blow of the heavy sword aimed at shin-gen's forehead, with a question expressed in the technical terms of zen: "what shalt thou do in such a state at such a moment?" having no time to draw his sword, shin-gen parried it with his war-fan, answering simultaneously in zen words: "a flake of snow on the red-hot furnace!" had not his attendants come to the rescue shin-gen's life might have gone as 'a flake of snow on the red-hot furnace.' afterwards the horseman was known to have been ken-shin himself. this tradition shows us how zen was practically lived by the samurais of the dark age. [fn# ] shin-gen practised zen under the instruction of kwai-sen, who was burned to death by nobu-naga (o-da) in . see hon-cho-ko-so-den. [fn# ] ken-shin learned zen under shu-ken, a so ta master. see to-jo-ren-to-roku. although the priests of other buddhist sects had their share in these bloody affairs, as was natural at such a time, yet zen monks stood aloof and simply cultivated their literature. consequently, when all the people grew entirely ignorant at the end of the dark age, the zen monks were the only men of letters. none can deny this merit of their having preserved learning and prepared for its revival in the following period.[fn# ] [fn# ] after the introduction of zen into japan many important books were written, and the following are chief doctrinal works: ko-zen-go-koku-ron, by ei-sai; sho bo-gen-zo; gaku-do-yo-zin-shu; fu-kwan-za-zen-gi; ei-hei-ko-roku, by do-gen; za-zen-yo-zin-ki; and den-ko-roku, by kei-zan. . zen under the toku-gana shogunate. peace was at last restored by iye-yasu, the founder of the toku-gana shogunate ( - ). during this period the shogunate gave countenance to buddhism on one hand, acknowledging it as the state religion, bestowing rich property to large monasteries, making priests take rank over common people, ordering every householder to build a buddhist altar in his house; while, on the other hand, it did everything to extirpate christianity, introduced in the previous period ( ). all this paralyzed the missionary spirit of the buddhists, and put all the sects in dormant state. as for zen[fn# ] it was still favoured by feudal lords and their vassals, and almost all provincial lords embraced the faith. [fn# ] the so to sect was not wanting in competent teachers, for it might take pride in its ten-kei ( - ), whose religious insight was unsurpassed by any other master of the age; in its shi getsu, who was a commentator of various zen books, and died ; in its men-zan ( - ), whose indefatigable works on the exposition of so to zen are invaluable indeed; and its getsu-shu ( - ) and man-zan ( - ), to whose labours the reformation of the faith is ascribed. similarly, the rin zai sect, in its gu-do ( - ); in its isshi ( - ); in its taku-an ( - ), the favourite tutor of the third shogun, iye-mitsu; in its haku-in ( - ), the greatest of the rin zai masters of the day, to whose extraordinary personality and labour the revival of the sect is due; and its to-rei ( - ), a learned disciple of haku-in. of the important zen books written by these masters, ro-ji-tan-kin, by ten-kei; men-zan-ko-roku, by men-zan; ya-sen-kwan-wa, soku-ko-roku, kwai-an-koku-go, kei-so-doku-zui, by haku-in; shu-mon-mu-jin-to-ron, by to-rei, are well known. it was about the middle of this period that the forty-seven vassals of ako displayed the spirit of the samurai by their perseverance, self-sacrifice, and loyalty, taking vengeance on the enemy of their deceased lord. the leader of these men, the tragic tales of whom can never be told or heard without tears, was yoshi-o (o-ishi died ), a believer of zen,[fn# ] and his tomb in the cemetery of the temple of sen-gaku-ji, tokyo, is daily visited by hundreds of his admirers. most of the professional swordsmen forming a class in these days practised zen. mune-nori[fn# ](ya-gyu), for instance, established his reputation by the combination of zen and the fencing art. [fn# ] see "zen shu," no. . [fn# ] he is known as ta-jima, who practised zen under taku-an. the following story about boku-den (tsuka-hara), a great swordsman, fully illustrates this tendency: "on a certain occasion boku-den took a ferry to cross over the yabase in the province of omi. there was among the passengers a samurai, tall and square-shouldered, apparently an experienced fencer. he behaved rudely toward the fellow-passengers, and talked so much of his own dexterity in the art that boku-den, provoked by his brag, broke silence. 'you seem, my friend, to practise the art in order to conquer the enemy, but i do it in order not to be conquered,' said boku-den. 'o monk,' demanded the man, as boku-den was clad like a zen monk, 'what school of swordsmanship do you belong to?' well, mine is the conquering-enemy-without-fighting-school.' 'don't tell a fib, old monk. if you could conquer the enemy without fighting, what then is your sword for?' 'my sword is not to kill, but to save,' said boku-den, making use of zen phrases; 'my art is transmitted from mind to mind.' 'now then, come, monk,' challenged the man, 'let us see, right at this moment, who is the victor, you or i.' the gauntlet was picked up without hesitation. 'but we must not fight,' said boku-den, 'in the ferry, lest the passengers should be hurt. yonder a small island you see. there we shall decide the contest.' to this proposal the man agreed, and the boat was pulled to that island. no sooner had the boat reached the shore than the man jumped over to the land, and cried: 'come on, monk, quick, quick!' boku-den, however, slowly rising, said: 'do not hasten to lose your head. it is a rule of my school to prepare slowly for fighting, keeping the soul in the abdomen.' so saying he snatched the oar from the boatman and rowed the boat back to some distance, leaving the man alone, who, stamping the ground madly, cried out: 'o, you fly, monk, you coward. come, old monk!' 'now listen,' said boku-den, 'this is the secret art of the conquering-enemy-without-fighting-school. beware that you do not forget it, nor tell it to anybody else.' thus, getting rid of the brawling fellow, boku-den and his fellow-passengers safely landed on the opposite shore."[fn# ] the o baku school of zen was introduced by yin yuen (in-gen) who crossed the sea in , accompanied by many able disciples.[fn# ] the shogunate gave him a tract of land at uji, near kyo-to, and in he built there a monastery noted for its chinese style of architecture, now known as o-baku-san. the teachers of the same school[fn# ] came one after another from china, and zen[fn# ] peculiar to them, flourished a short while. [fn# ] shi-seki-shu-ran. [fn# ] in-gen ( - ) came over with ta-mei (dai-bi, died ), hwui lin (e-rin died ), tuh chan (doku-tan, died ), and others. for the life of in-gen: see zoku-ko-shu-den and kaku-shu-ko-yo. [fn# ] tsih fei (soku-hi died ), muh ngan (moku-an died ), kao tsuen (ko-sen died ), the author of fu-so-zen-rin-so-bo-den, to-koku-ko-so-den, and sen-un-shu, are best known. [fn# ] this is a sub-sect of the rin zai school, as shown in the following table: table of the transmission of zen from china to japan. . bodhidharma. . hwui ko (e-ka). . san tsang (so-san). . tao sin (do-shin). . hung jan (ko nin). ---the northern sect . shang siu (jin-shu). ---the southern sect . hwui nang (e-no). ---the rin zai school. . nan yoh (nan-gaku). --- . gi-ku. --- . lin tsi (rin-zai). --- . yuen wu (en-go). --- . fuh hai (bukkai). --- . kaku-a. ---the o baku school. . in-gen. --- . hti ngan (kyo-an). --- . ei-sai. ---the so to school. . tsing yuen (sei-gen). --- . shih teu (seki-to). --- . tung shan (to-zan). --- . ju tsing (nyo-jo). --- . do-gen. the o baku school is the amalgamation of zen and the worship of amitabha, and different from the other two schools. the statistics for give the following figures: the number of temples: the so to school , the rin zai school , the o baku school the number of teachers: the so to school , the rin zai school , the o baku school it was also in this period that zen gained a great influence on the popular literature characterized by the shortest form of poetical composition. this was done through the genius of ba-sho,[fn# ] a great literary man, recluse and traveller, who, as his writings show us, made no small progress in the study of zen. again, it was made use of by the teachers of popular[fn# ] ethics, who did a great deal in the education of the lower classes. in this way zen and its peculiar taste gradually found its way into the arts of peace, such as literature, fine art, tea-ceremony, cookery, gardening, architecture, and at last it has permeated through every fibre of japanese life. [fn# ] he (died ) learned zen under a contemporary zen master (buccho), and is said to have been enlightened before his reformation of the popular literature. [fn# ] the teaching was called shin-gaku, or the 'learning of mind.' it was first taught by bai-gan (ishi-da), and is the reconciliation of shintoism and buddhism with confucianism. bai-gan and his successors practised meditation, and were enlightened in their own way. do-ni (naka-zawa, died ) made use of zen more than any other teacher. . zen after the restoration. after the restoration of the mei-ji ( ) the popularity of zen began to wane, and for some thirty years remained in inactivity; but since the russo-japanese war its revival has taken place. and now it is looked upon as an ideal faith, both for a nation full of hope and energy, and for a person who has to fight his own way in the strife of life. bushido, or the code of chivalry, should be observed not only by the soldier in the battle-field, but by every citizen in the struggle for existence. if a person be a person and not a beast, then he must be a samurai-brave, generous, upright, faithful, and manly, full of self-respect and self-confidence, at the same time full of the spirit of self-sacrifice. we can find an incarnation of bushido in the late general nogi, the hero of port arthur, who, after the sacrifice of his two sons for the country in the russo-japanese war, gave up his own and his wife's life for the sake of the deceased emperor. he died not in vain, as some might think, because his simplicity, uprightness, loyalty, bravery, self-control, and self-sacrifice, all combined in his last act, surely inspire the rising generation with the spirit of the samurai to give birth to hundreds of nogis. now let us see in the following chapters what zen so closely connected with bushido teaches us. chapter iii the universe is the scripture[fn# ] of zen . scripture is no more than waste paper. [fn# ] zen is not based on any particular sutra, either of mahayana or of hinayana. there are twofold tripitakas (or the three collections of the buddhist scriptures)-namely, the mahayana-tripitaka and the hinayana-tripitaka. the former are the basis of the mahayana, or the higher and reformed buddhism, full of profound metaphysical reasonings; while the latter form that of the hinayana, or the lower and early buddhism, which is simple and ethical teaching. these twofold tripitakas are as follows: the mahayana-tripitaka. the sutra pitaka.-the saddharma-pundarika-sutra, samdhi-nirmocana-sutra, avatamsaka-sutra, prajnyaparamita-sutra, amitayus-sutra, mahaparinirvana-sutra, etc. the vinaya pitaka.--brahmajala-sutra, bodhisattva-caryanirdeca, etc. the abhidharma pitaka.--mahaprajnyaparamita-sutra, mahayana-craddhotpada-castra, madhyamaka-castra, yogacarya bhumi-castra, etc. the hinayana-tripitaka. the sutra pitaka.--dirghagama, ekottaragama, madhyamagama, samyuktagama, etc. the vinaya pitaka.--dharmagupta-vinaya, mahasamghika-vinaya, sarvastivada-vinaya, etc. the abhidharma pitaka.--dharma-skandha-pada, samgiti-paryaya-pada, jnyanaprasthana-castra, abhidharma-kosa-castra, etc. the term 'tripitaka,' however, was not known at the time of shakya muni, and almost all of the northern buddhist records agree in stating that the tripitaka was rehearsed and settled in the same year in which the muni died. mahavansa also says: "the book called abhidharma-pitaka was compiled, which was preached to god, and was arranged in due order by budhu priests." but we believe that shakya muni's teaching was known to the early buddhists, not as tripitaka, but as vinaya and dharma, and even at the time of king acoka (who ascended the throne about b.c.) it was not called tripitaka, but dharma, as we have it in his edicts. mahayanists unanimously assert the compilation of the tripitaka in the first council of rajagrha, but they differ in opinion as to the question who rehearsed the abhidharma; notwithstanding, they agree as for the other respects, as you see in the following: the sutra pitaka, compiled by ananda; the vinaya pitaka, compiled by upali; the abhidharma pitaka, compiled by ananda--according to nagarjuna (mahaprajnyaparamita-castra). the sutra pitaka, compiled by ananda; the vinaya pitaka, compiled by upali; the abhidharma pitaka, compiled by kacyapa according to huen tsang (ta-tan-si-yu-ki). the sutra pitaka, compiled by ananda; the vinaya pitaka, compiled by upali; the abhidharma pitaka, compiled by purna--according to paramartha ('a commentary on the history of the hinayana schools'). the above-mentioned discrepancy clearly betrays the uncertainty of their assertions, and gives us reason to discredit the compilation of abhidharma pitaka at the first council. besides, judging from the dharma-gupta-vinaya and other records, which states that purna took no part in the first council, and that he had different opinions as to the application of the rules of discipline from that of kacyapa, there should be some errors in paramartha's assertion. of these three collections of the sacred writings, the first two, or sutra and vinaya, of mahayana, as well as of himayana, are believed to be the direct teachings of shakya muni himself, because all the instructions are put in the mouth of the master or sanctioned by him. the mahayanists, however, compare the hinayana doctrine with a resting-place on the road for a traveller, while the mahayana doctrine with his destination. all the denominations of buddhism, with a single exception of zen, are based on the authority of some particular sacred writings. the ten dai sect, for instance, is based on saddharma-pundarika-sutra; the jo do sect on larger sukhavati-vyuha, smaller sukhavati-vyuha, and amitayus-dhyana-sutra; the ke gon sect on avatamsaka-sutra; the hosso sect on samdhi-nirmocana-sutra. zen is based on the highest spiritual plane attained by shakya muni himself. it can only be realized by one who has attained the same plane. to describe it in full by means of words is beyond the power even of gotama himself. it is for this reason that the author of lankavatara-sutra insists that shakya muni spoke no word through his long career of forty-nine years as a religious teacher, and that of mahaprajnyaparamita-sutra[fn# ] also express the same opinion. the scripture is no more nor less than the finger pointing to the moon of buddhahood. when we recognize the moon and enjoy its benign beauty, the finger is of no use. as the finger has no brightness whatever, so the scripture has no holiness whatever. the scripture is religious currency representing spiritual wealth. it does not matter whether money be gold, or sea-shells, or cows. it is a mere substitute. what it stands for is of paramount importance. away with your stone-knife! do not watch the stake against which a running hare once struck its head and died. do not wait for another hare. another may not come for ever. do not cut the side of the boat out of which you dropped your sword to mark where it sunk. the boat is ever moving on. the canon is the window through which we observe the grand scenery of spiritual nature. to hold communion directly with it we must get out of the window. it is a mere stray fly that is always buzzing within it, struggling to get out. those who spend most of their lives in the study of the scriptures, arguing and explaining with hair-splitting reasonings, and attain no higher plane in spirituality, are religious flies good for nothing but their buzzing about the nonsensical technicalities. it is on this account that rin-zai declared:[fn# ] 'the twelve divisions of the buddhist canon are nothing better than waste paper.' [fn# ] mahaprajnyaparamita-sutra, vol. . [fn# ] rin-zai-roku. . no need of the scriptural authority for zen. some occidental scholars erroneously identify buddhism with the primitive faith of hinayanism, and are inclined to call mahayanism, a later developed faith, a degenerated one. if the primitive faith be called the genuine, as these scholars think, and the later developed faith be the degenerated one, then the child should be called the genuine man and the grown-up people be the degenerated ones; similarly, the primitive society must be the genuine and the modern civilization be the degenerated one. so also the earliest writings of the old testament should be genuine and the four gospels be degenerated. beyond all doubt zen belongs to mahayanism, yet this does not imply that it depends on the scriptural authority of that school, because it does not trouble itself about the canon whether it be hinayana or mahayana, or whether it was directly spoken by shakya muni or written by some later buddhists. zen is completely free from the fetters of old dogmas, dead creeds, and conventions of stereotyped past, that check the development of a religious faith and prevent the discovery of a new truth. zen needs no inquisition. it never compelled nor will compel the compromise of a galileo or a descartes. no excommunication of a spinoza or the burning of a bruno is possible for zen. on a certain occasion yoh shan (yaku-san) did not preach the doctrine for a long while, and was requested to give a sermon by his assistant teacher, saying: "would your reverence preach the dharma to your pupils, who long thirst after your merciful instruction?" "then ring the bell," replied yoh shan. the bell rang, and all the monks assembled in the hall eager to bear the sermon. yoh shan went up to the pulpit and descended immediately without saying a word. "you, reverend sir," asked the assistant, "promised to deliver a sermon a little while ago. why do you not preach?" "sutras are taught by the sutra teachers," said the master; "castras are taught by the castra teachers. no wonder that i say nothing."[fn# ] this little episode will show you that zen is no fixed doctrine embodied in a sutra or a castra, but a conviction or realization within us. [fn# ] zen-rin-rui-shu and e-gen. to quote another example, an officer offered to tung shan (to-zan) plenty of alms, and requested him to recite the sacred canon. tung shan, rising from his chair, made a bow respectfully to the officer, who did the same to the teacher. then tung shan went round the chair, taking the officer with him, and making a bow again to the officer, asked: "do you see what i mean?" "no, sir," replied the other. "i have been reciting the sacred canon, why do you not see?"[fn# ] thus zen does not regard scriptures in black and white as its canon, for it takes to-days and tomorrows of this actual life as its inspired pages. [fn# ] zen-rin-rui-sha and to-zan-roku. . the usual explanation of the canon. an eminent chinese buddhist scholar, well known as ten dai dai shi (a.d. - ), arranged the whole preachings of shakya muni in a chronological order in accordance with his own religious theory, and observed that there were the five periods in the career of the buddha as a religious teacher. he tried to explain away all the discrepancies and contradictions, with which the sacred books are encumbered, by arranging the sutras in a line of development. his elucidation was so minute and clear, and his metaphysical reasonings so acute and captivating, that his opinion was universally accepted as an historical truth, not merely by the chinese, but also by the japanese mahayanists. we shall briefly state here the so-called five periods. shakya muni attained to buddhaship in his thirtieth year, and sat motionless for seven days under the bodhi tree, absorbed in deep meditation, enjoying the first bliss of his enlightenment. in the second week he preached his dharma to the innumerable multitude of bodhisattvas,[fn# ] celestial beings, and deities in the nine assemblies held at seven different places. this is the origin of a famous mahayana book entitled buddhavatamsaka-mahavaipulya-sutra. in this book the buddha set forth his profound law just as it was discovered by his highly enlightened mind, without considering the mental states of his hearers. consequently the ordinary hearers (or the buddha's immediate disciples) could not understand the doctrine, and sat stupefied as if they were 'deaf and dumb,' while the great bodhisattvas fully understood and realized the doctrine. this is called the first period, which lasted only two or three[fn# ] weeks. [fn# ] bodhisattva is an imaginary personage, or ideal saint, superior to arhat, or the highest saint of hinayanism. the term 'bodhisattva' was first applied to the buddha before his enlightenment, and afterwards was adopted by mahayanists to mean the adherent of mahayanism in contradistinction with the cravaka or hearers of hinayanism. [fn# ] bodhiruci says to the effect that the preachings in the first five assemblies were made in the first week, and the rest were delivered in the second week. nagarjuna says that the buddha spoke no word for fifty-seven days after his enlightenment. it is said in saddharma-pundarika-sutra that after three weeks the buddha preached at varanasi, and it says nothing respecting avatamsaka-sutra. though there are divers opinions about the buddha's first sermon and its date, all traditions agree in this that he spent some time in meditation, and then delivered the first sermon to the five ascetics at varanasi. thereupon shakya muni, having discovered that ordinary bearers were too ignorant to believe in the mahayana doctrine and appreciate the greatness of buddhahood, thought it necessary to modify his teaching so as to adjust it to the capacity of ordinary people. so he went to varanasi (or benares) and preached his modified doctrine--that is, hinayanism. the instruction given at that time has been handed down to us as the four agamas,[fn# ] or the four nikayas. this is called the second period, which lasted about twelve years. it was at the beginning of this period that the buddha converted the five ascetics,[fn# ] who became his disciples. most of the Ã�ravakas or the adherents of hinayanism were converted during this period. they trained their hearts in accordance with the modified law, learned the four noble truths,[fn# ] and worked out their own salvation. [fn# ] ( ) anguttara, ( ) majjhima, ( ) digha, ( ) samyutta. [fn# ] kondanynya, vappa, baddiya, mahanana, assaji. [fn# ] the first is the sacred truth of suffering; the second the truth of the origin of suffering--that is, lust and desire; the third the sacred truth of the extinction of suffering; the fourth the sacred truth of the path that leads to the extinction of suffering. there are eight noble paths that lead to the extinction of suffering--that is, right faith, right resolve, right speech, right action, right living, right effort, right thought, and right meditation. the buddha then having found his disciples firmly adhering to hinayanism without knowing that it was a modified and imperfect doctrine, he had to lead them up to a higher and perfect doctrine that he might lead them up to buddhahood. with this object in view shakya muni preached vimalakirtti-nirdeca-sutra[fn# ], lankavatara-sutra, and other sutras, in which he compared hinayanism with mahayanism, and described the latter in glowing terms as a deep and perfect law, whilst he set forth the former at naught as a superficial and imperfect one. thus he showed his disciples the inferiority of hinayanism, and caused them to desire for mahayanism. this is said to be the third period, which lasted some eight years. [fn# ] this is one of the most noted mahayana books, and is said to be the best specimen of the sutras belonging to this period. it is in this sutra that most of shakya's eminent disciples, known as the adherents of hinayanism, are astonished with the profound wisdom, the eloquent speech, and the supernatural power of vimalakirtti, a bodhisattva, and confess the inferiority of their faith. the author frequently introduces episodes in order to condemn hinayanism, making use of miracles of his own invention. the disciples of the buddha now understood that mahayanism was far superior to hinayanism, but they thought the higher doctrine was only for bodhisattvas and beyond their understanding. therefore they still adhered to the modified doctrine, though they did no longer decry mahayanism, which they had no mind to practise. upon this shakya muni preached prajnyaparamita-sutras[fn# ] in the sixteen assemblies held at four different places, and taught them mahayanism in detail in order to cause them to believe it and practise it. thus they became aware that there was no definite demarcation between mahayanism and hinayanism, and that they might become mahayanists. this is the fourth period, which lasted about twenty-two years. now, the buddha, aged seventy-two, thought it was high time to preach his long-cherished doctrine that all sentient beings can attain to supreme enlightenment; so he preached saddharma-pundarika-sutra, in which he prophesied when and where his disciples should become buddhas. it was his greatest object to cause all sentient beings to be enlightened and enable them to enjoy the bliss of nirvana. it was for this that he had endured great pain and hardships through his previous existences. it was for this that he had left his heavenly abode to appear on earth. it was for this that he had preached from time to time through his long career of forty-seven years. having thus realized his great aim, shakya muni had now to prepare for his final departure, and preached mahaparinirvana-sutra in order to show that all the animated and inanimate things were endowed with the same nature as his. after this last instruction he passed to eternity. this is called the fifth period, which lasted some eight years. [fn# ] nagarjuna's doctrine depends mainly on these sutras. these five periods above mentioned can scarcely be called historical in the proper sense of the term, yet they are ingeniously invented by ten dai dai shi to set the buddhist scriptures in the order of doctrinal development, and place saddharma-pundarika in the highest rank among the mahayana books. his argument, however dogmatic and anti-historical in no small degree, would be not a little valuable for our reader, who wants to know the general phase of the buddhist canon, consisting of thousands of fascicles. . sutras used by zen masters. ten dai failed to explain away the discrepancies and contradictions of which the canon is full, and often contradicted himself by the ignoring of historical[fn# ] facts. [fn# ] let us state our own opinion on the subject in question. the foundation of hinayanism consists in the four nikayas, or four agamas, the most important books of that school. besides the four agamas, there exist in the chinese tripitaka numerous books translated by various authors, some of which are extracts from agamas, and some the lives of the buddha, while others are entirely different sutras, apparently of later date. judging from these sources, it seems to us that most of shakya muni's original teachings are embodied into the four agamas. but it is still a matter of uncertainty that whether they are stated in agamas now extant just as they were, for the buddha's preachings were rehearsed immediately after the buddha's death in the first council held at rajagrha, yet not consigned to writing. they were handed down by memory about one hundred years. then the monks at vaisali committed the so-called ten indulgences, infringing the rules of the order, and maintained that shakya muni had not condemned them in his preachings. as there were, however, no written sutras to disprove their assertion, the elders, such as yaca, revata, and others, who opposed the indulgences, had to convoke the second council of monks, in which they succeeded in getting the indulgences condemned, and rehearsed the buddha's instruction for the second time. even in this council of vaisali we cannot find the fact that the master's preachings were reduced to writing. the decisions of the elders were not accepted by the party of opposition, who held a separate council, and settled their own rules and doctrine. thus the same doctrine of the teacher began to be differently stated and believed. this being the first open schism, one disruption after another took place among the buddhistic order. there were many different schools of the buddhists at the time when king acoka ascended the throne (about b.c.), and the patronage of the king drew a great number of pagan ascetics into the order, who, though they dressed themselves in the yellow robes, yet still preserved their religious views in their original colour. this naturally led the church into continual disturbances and moral corruption. in the eighteenth year of acoka's reign the king summoned the council of , monks at pataliputra (patna), and settled the orthodox doctrine in order to keep the dharma pure from heretical beliefs. we believe that about this time some of the buddha's preachings were reduced to writing, for the missionaries despatched by the king in the year following the council seem to have set out with written sutras. in addition to this, some of the names of the passages of the dharma are given in the bharbra edict of the king, which was addressed to the monks in magadha. we do not suppose, however, that all the sutras were written at once in these days, but that they were copied down from memory one after another at different times, because some of the sutras were put down in ceylon years after the council of patna. in the introductory book of ekottaragama (anguttara nikaya), now extant in the chinese tripitaka, we notice the following points: ( ) it is written in a style quite different from that of the original agama, but similar to that of the supplementary books of the mahayana sutras; ( ) it states ananda's compilation of the tripitaka after the death of the master; ( ) it refers to the past buddhas, the future buddha maitreya, and innumerable bodhisattvas; ( ) it praises the profound doctrine of mahayanism. from this we infer that the agama was put in the present form after the rise of the mahayana school, and handed down through the hand of mahasanghika scholars, who were much in sympathy with mahayanism. again, the first book of dirghagama, (digha nikaya), that describes the line of buddhas who appeared before shakya muni, adopts the whole legend of gotama's life as a common mode of all buddhas appearing on earth; while the second book narrates the death of gotama and the distribution of his relies, and refers to pataliputra, the new capital of acoka. this shows us that the present agama is not of an earlier date than the third century b.c. samyuktagama (samyutta nikaya) also gives a detailed account of acoka's conversion, and of his father bindusara. from these evidences we may safely infer that the hinayana sutras were put in the present shape at different times between the third century b.c. and the first century a.d. with regard to the mahayana sutras we have little doubt about their being the writings of the later buddhist reformers, even if they are put in the mouth of shakya muni. they are entirely different from the sutras of hinayanism, and cannot be taken as the preachings of one and the same person. the reader should notice the following points: ( ) four councils were held for the rehearsal of the tripitaka namely, the first at rajagrha, in the year of shakya muni's death; the second at vaisali, some years after the buddha; the third at the time of king acoka, about years after the master; the fourth at the time of king kanishka, the first century a.d. but all these councils were held to compile the hinayana sutras, and nothing is known of the rehearsal of the mahayana books. some are of opinion that the first council was held within the sattapanni cave, near rajagrha, where the hinayana tripitaka was rehearsed by monks, while outside the cave there assembled a greater number of monks, who were not admitted into the cave, and rehearsed the mahayana tripitaka. this opinion, however, is based on no reliable source. ( ) the indian orthodox buddhists of old declared that the mahayana sutras were the fabrication of heretics or of the evil one, and not the teachings of the buddha. in reply to this, the mahayanists had to prove that the mahayana sutras were compiled by the direct disciples of the master; but even nagarjuna could not vindicate the compilation of the doubtful books, and said (in mahaprajnyaparamita-castra) that they were compiled by ananda and manjucri, with myriads of bodhisattvas at the outside of the iron mountain range, which encloses the earth. asanga also proved (in mahayanalankara-sutra-castra) with little success that mahayanism was the buddha's direct teachings. some may quote bodhisattva-garbhastha-sutra in favour of the mahayana; but it is of no avail, as the sutra itself is the work of a later date. ( ) although almost all of the mahayana sutras, excepting avatamsaka-sutra, treat of hinayanism as the imperfect doctrine taught in the first part of the master's career, yet not merely the whole life of gotama, but also events which occurred after his death are narrated in the hinayana sutras. this shows that the mahayana sutras were composed after the establishment of early buddhism. ( ) the narratives given in the hinayana sutras in reference to shakya muni seem to be based on historical facts, but those in the mahayana books are full of wonders and extravagant miracles far from facts. ( ) the hinayana sutras retain the traces of their having been classified and compiled as we see in ekottaragama, while mahayana books appear to have been composed one after another by different authors at different times, because each of them strives to excel others, declaring itself to be the sutra of the highest doctrine, as we see in saddharma-pundarika, samdhinirmocana, suvarnaprabhasottamaraja, etc. ( ) the dialogues in the hinayana sutras are in general those between the buddha and his disciples, while in the mahayana books imaginary beings called bodhisattvas take the place of disciples. moreover, in some books no monks are mentioned. ( ) most of the mahayana sutras declare that they themselves possess those mystic powers that protect the reader or the owner from such evils as epidemic, famine, war, etc.; but the hinayana sutras are pure from such beliefs. ( ) the mahayana sutras extol not only the merits of the reading, but the copying of the sutras. this unfailingly shows the fact that they were not handed down by memory, as the hinayana sutras, but written by their respective authors. ( ) the hinayana sutras were written with a plain style in pali, while the mahayana books, with brilliant phraseology, in sanskrit. ( ) the buddha in the hinayana sutras is little more than a human being, while buddha or tathagata in the mahayana is a superhuman being or great deity. ( ) the moral precepts of the hinayana were laid down by the master every time when his disciples acted indecently, while those of the mahayana books were spoken all at once by tathagata. ( ) some mahayana sutras appear to be the exaggeration or modification of what was stated in the hinayana books, as we see in mahaparinirvana-sutra. ( ) if we take both the hinayana and the mahayana as spoken by one and the same person, we cannot understand why there are so many contradictory statements, as we see in the following: (a) historical contradictions.--for instance, hinayana sutras are held to be the first sermon of the buddha by the author of saddharma-pundarika, while avatamsaka declares itself to be the first sermon. nagarjuna holds that prajnya sutras are the first. (b) contradictions as to the person of the master.--for instance, agamas say the buddha's body was marked with thirty-two peculiarities, while the mahayana books enumerate ninety-seven peculiarities, or even innumerable marks. (c) doctrinal contradictions.--for instance, the hinayana sutras put forth the pessimistic, nihilistic view of life, while the mahayana books, as a rule, express the optimistic, idealistic view. ( ) the hinayana sutras say nothing of the mahayana books, while the latter always compare their doctrine with that of the former, and speak of it in contempt. it is clear that the name 'hinayana' was coined by the mahayanists, as there is no sutra which calls itself 'hinayana.' it is therefore evident that when the hinayana books took the present shape there appeared no mahayana sutras. ( ) the authors of the mahayana sutras should have expected the opposition of the hinayanists, because they say not seldom that there might be some who would not believe in and oppose mahayanism as not being the buddha's teaching, but that of the evil one. they say also that one who would venture to say the mahayana books are fictitious should fall into hell. for example, the author of mahaparinirvana-sutra says: "wicked bhiksus would say all vaipulya mahayana sutras are not spoken by the buddha, but by the evil one." ( ) there are evidences showing that the mahayana doctrine was developed out of the hinayana one. (a) the mahayanists' grand conception of tathagata is the natural development of that of those progressive hinayanists who belonged to the mahasamghika school, which was formed some one hundred years after the master. these hinayanists maintained that the buddha had infinite power, endless life, and limitlessly great body. the author of mahaparinirvana-sutra also says that buddha is immortal, his dharma-kaya is infinite and eternal. the authors of mahayana-mulagata-hrdayabhumi-dhyana-sutra and of suvarnaprabha-sottamaraja-sutra enumerate the three bodies of buddha, while the writer of lankavatara-sutra describes the four bodies, and that of avatamsaka-sutra the ten bodies of tathagata. (b) according to the hinayana sutras, there are only four stages of saintship, but the mahasamghika school increases the number and gives ten steps. some mahayana sutras also enumerate the ten stages of bodhisattva, while others give forty-one or fifty two stages. (c) the himayana sutras name six past buddhas and one future buddha maitreya, while the mahayana sutras name thirty-five, fifty-three, or three thousand buddhas. (d) the hinayana sutras give the names of six vijnyanas, while the mahayana books seven, eight, or nine vijnyanas. ( ) for a few centuries after the buddha we hear only of hinayanism, but not of mahayanism, there being no mahayana teacher. ( ) in some mahayana sutras (mahavairocanabhisambodhi-sutra, for example) tathagata vairocana takes the place of gotama, and nothing is said of the latter. ( ) the contents of the mahayana sutras often prove that they were, composed, or rewritten, or some additions were made, long after the buddha. for instance, mahamaya-sutra says that acvaghosa would refute heretical doctrines years after the master, and nagarjuna would advocate the dharma years after gotama, while lankavatara-sutra prophesies that nagarjuna would appear in south india. ( ) the author of san-ron-gen-gi tells us mahadeva, a leader of the mahasamghika school, used mahayana sutras, together with the orthodox tripitaka after the buddha. it is, however, doubtful that they existed at so early a date. ( ) mahaprajnyaparamita-castra, ascribed to nagarjuna, refers to many mahayana books, which include saddharma-pundarika, vimalakirtti-nirdeca, sukhavati-vyuha, mahaprajnyaparamita, pratyutpanna-buddhasammukhavasthita-samadhi, etc. he quotes in his dacabhumivibhasa-castra, mahaparinirvana, dacabhumi, etc. ( ) sthiramati, whose date is said to be earlier than nagarjuna and later than acvaghosa, tries to prove that mahayanism was directly taught by the master in his mahayanavataraka-castra. and mahayanottaratantra-castra, which is ascribed by some scholars to him, refers to avatamsaka, vajracchedikka-prajnyaparamita, saddharmapundarika, crimala-devi-simhananda, etc. ( ) chi-leu-cia-chin, who came to china in a.d. or a.d. , translated some part of mahayana books known as maharatnakuta-sutra and mahavaipulya-mahasannipata-sutra. ( ) an-shi-kao, who came to china in a.d. , translated such mahayana books as sukhavati-vyaha, candra-dipa-samadhi, etc. ( ) matanga, who came to china in a.d. , is said by his biographer to have been informed of both mahayanism and hinayanism to have given interpretations to a noted mahayana book, entitled suvarnaprabhasa. ( ) sandhinirmocana-sutra is supposed to be a work of asanga not without reason, because asanga's doctrine is identical with that of the sutra, and the sutra itself is contained in the latter part of yogacaryabhumi-castra. the author divides the whole preachings of the master into the three periods that he might place the idealistic doctrine in the highest rank of the mahayana schools. ( ) we have every reason to believe that mahayana sutras began to appear (perhaps prajnya sutras being the first) early in the first century a.d., that most of the important books appeared before nagarjuna, and that some of mantra sutras were composed so late as the time of vajrabodhi, who came to china in a.d. . to say nothing of the strong opposition raised by the japanese scholars,[fn# ] such an assumption can be met with an assumption of entirely opposite nature, and the difficulties can never be overcome. for zen masters, therefore, these assumptions and reasonings are mere quibbles unworthy of their attention. [fn# ] the foremost of them was chuki tominaga ( ), of whose life little is known. he is said to have been a nameless merchant at osaka. his shutsu-jo-ko-go is the first great work of higher criticism on the buddhist scriptures. to believe blindly in the scriptures is one thing, and to be pious is another. how often the childish views of creation and of god in the scriptures concealed the light of scientific truths; how often the blind believers of them fettered the progress of civilization; how often religious men prevented us from the realizing of a new truth, simply because it is against the ancient folk-lore in the bible. nothing is more absurd than the constant dread in which religious men, declaring to worship god in truth and in spirit, are kept at the scientific discovery of new facts incompatible with the folk-lore. nothing is more irreligious than to persecute the seekers of truth in order to keep up absurdities and superstitions of bygone ages. nothing is more inhuman than the commission of 'devout cruelty' under the mask of love of god and man. is it not the misfortune, not only of christianity, but of whole mankind, to have the bible encumbered with legendary histories, stories of miracles, and a crude cosmology, which from time to time come in conflict with science? the buddhist scriptures are also overloaded with indian superstitions and a crude cosmology, which pass under the name of buddhism. accordingly, buddhist scholars have confused not seldom the doctrine of the buddha with these absurdities, and thought it impious to abandon them. kaiseki,[fn# ] for instance, was at a loss to distinguish buddhism from the indian astronomy, which is utterly untenable in the face of the fact. he taxed his reason to the utmost to demonstrate the indian theory and at the same time to refute the copernican theory. one day he called on yeki-do[fn# ] a contemporary zen master, and explained the construction of the three worlds as described in the scriptures, saying that buddhism would come to naught if the theory of the three worlds be overthrown by the copernican. then yeki-do exclaimed: "buddhism aims to destroy the three worlds and to establish buddha's holy kingdom throughout the universe. why do you waste your energy in the construction of the three worlds?"[fn# ] [fn# ] a learned japanese buddhist scholar, who died in . [fn# ] a famous zen master, the abbot of the so-ji-ji monastery, who died in . [fn# ] kin-sei-zen-rin-gen-ko-roku. in this way zen does not trouble itself about unessentials of the scriptures, on which it never depends for its authority. do-gen, the founder of the japanese so to sect, severely condemns (in his sho-bo-gen-zo) the notions of the impurity of women inculcated in the scriptures. he openly attacks those chinese monks who swore that they would not see any woman, and ridicules those who laid down rules prohibiting women from getting access to monasteries. a zen master was asked by a samurai whether there was hell in sooth as taught in the scriptures. "i must ask you," replied he, "before i give you an answer. for what purpose is your question? what business have you, a samurai, with a thing of that sort? why do you bother yourself about such an idle question? surely you neglect your duty and are engaged in such a fruitless research. does this not amount to your stealing the annual salary from your lord?" the samurai, offended not a little with these rebukes, stared at the master, ready to draw his sword at another insult. then the teacher said smilingly: "now you are in hell. don't you see?" does, then, zen use no scripture? to this question we answer both affirmatively and negatively: negatively, because zen regards all sutras as a sort of pictured food which has no power of appeasing spiritual hunger; affirmatively, because it freely makes use of them irrespective of mahayana or hinayana. zen would not make a bonfire of the scriptures as caliph omar did of the alexandrian library. a zen master, having seen a confucianist burning his books on the thought that they were rather a hindrance to his spiritual growth, observed: "you had better burn your books in mind and heart, but not the books in black and white."[fn# ] [fn# ] ukiyo-soshi. as even deadly poison proves to be medicine in the band of a good doctor, so a heterodox doctrine antagonistic to buddhism is used by the zen teachers as a finger pointing to the principle of zen. but they as a rule resorted to lankavatara-sutra,[fn# ] vajracchedika-prajnya-paramita-sutra,[fn# ] vimalakirtti-nirdeca-sutra[fn# ] mahavaipulya-purnabuddha-sutra[fn# ] mababuddhosnisa-tathagata-guhyahetu-saksatkrta-prasannatha-sarvabhodhi sattvacarya-surangama-sutra,[fn# ] mahapari-nirvana-sutra,[fn# ] saddharma-pundarika-sutra, avatamsaka-sutra, and so forth. [fn# ] this book is the nearest approach to the doctrine of zen, and is said to have been pointed out by bodhidharma as the best book for the use of his followers. see nanjo's catalogue, nos. , . [fn# ] the author of the sutra insists on the unreality of all things. the book was first used by the fifth patriarch, as we have seen in the first chapter. see nanjo's catalogue, nos. , , , , , . [fn# ] the sutra agrees with zen in many respects, especially in its maintaining that the highest truth can only be realized in mind, and cannot be expressed by word of mouth. see nanjo's catalogue, nos. , , , , , . [fn# ] the sutra was translated into chinese by buddhatrata in the seventh century. the author treats at length of samadhi, and sets forth a doctrine similar to zen, so that the text was used by many chinese zenists. see nanjo's catalogue, nos. and . [fn# ] the sutra was translated into chinese by paramiti and mikacakya, of the tang dynasty ( - ). the author conceives reality as mind or spirit. the book belongs to the mantra class, although it is much used by zenists. see nanjo's catalogue, no. . [fn# ] the author of the book sets forth his own conception of nirvana and of buddha, and maintains that all beings are endowed with buddha-nature. he also gives in detail an incredible account about gotama's death. . a sutra equal in size to the whole world. the holy writ that zen masters admire is not one of parchment nor of palm-leaves, nor in black and white, but one written in heart and mind. on one occasion a king of eastern india invited the venerable prajnyatara, the teacher of bodhidharma, and his disciples to dinner at his own palace. finding all the monks reciting the sacred sutras with the single exception of the master, the king questioned prajnyatara: "why do you not, reverend sir, recite the scriptures as others do?" "my poor self, your majesty," replied he, "does not go out to the objects of sense in my expiration nor is it confined within body and mind in my inspiration. thus i constantly recite hundreds, thousands, and millions of sacred sutras." in like manner the emperor wu, of the liang dynasty, once requested chwen hih (fu dai-shi) to give a lecture on the scriptures. chwen went upon the platform, struck the desk with a block of wood, and came down. pao chi (ho-shi), a buddhist tutor to the emperor, asked the perplexed monarch: "does your lordship understand him?" "no," answered his majesty. "the lecture of the great teacher is over." as it is clear to you from these examples, zen holds that the faith must be based not on the dead scriptures, but on living facts, that one must turn over not the gilt pages of the holy writ, but read between the lines in the holy pages of daily life, that buddha must be prayed not by word of mouth, but by actual deed and work, and that one must split open, as the author of avatamsaka-sutra allegorically tells us, the smallest grain of dirt to find therein a sutra equal in size to the whole world. "the so-called sutra," says do-gen, "covers the whole universe. it transcends time and space. it is written with the characters of heaven, of man, of beasts, of asuras,[fn# l] of hundreds of grass, and of thousands of trees. there are characters, some long, some short, some round, some square, some blue, some red, some yellow, and some white-in short, all the phenomena in the universe are the characters with which the sutra is written." shakya muni read that sutra through the bright star illuminating the broad expanse of the morning skies, when he sat in meditation under the bodhi tree. [fn# l] the name of a demon. ling yun (rei-un) read it through the lovely flowers of a peach-tree in spring after some twenty years of his research for light, and said: "a score of years i looked for light: there came and went many a spring and fall. e'er since the peach blossoms came in my sight, i never doubt anything at all." hian yen (kyo-gen) read it through the noise of bamboo, at which he threw pebbles. su shih (so-shoku) read it through a waterfall, one evening, and said: "the brook speaks forth the tathagata's words divine, the hills reveal his glorious forms that shine." . great men and nature. all great men, whether they be poets or scientists or religious men or philosophers, are not mere readers of books, but the perusers of nature. men of erudition are often lexicons in flesh and blood, but men of genius read between the lines in the pages of life. kant, a man of no great erudition, could accomplish in the theory of knowledge what copernicus did in astronomy. newton found the law of gravitation not in a written page, but in a falling apple. unlettered jesus realized truth beyond the comprehension of many learned doctors. charles darwin, whose theory changed the whole current of the world's thought, was not a great reader of books, but a careful observer of facts. shakespeare, the greatest of poets, was the greatest reader of nature and life. he could hear the music even of heavenly bodies, and said: "there's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest, but in his motion like an angel sings." chwang tsz (so-shi), the greatest of chinese philosophers, says: "thou knowest the music of men, but not the music of the earth. thou knowest the music of the earth, but not the music of the heaven."[fn# ] goethe, perceiving a profound meaning in nature, says: "flowers are the beautiful hieroglyphics of nature with which she indicates how much she loves us." [fn# ] chwang tsz, vol. i., p. . son-toku[fn# ] (ninomiya), a great economist, who, overcoming all difficulties and hardships by which he was beset from his childhood, educated himself, says: "the earth and the heaven utter no word, but they ceaselessly repeat the holy book unwritten." [fn# ] one of the greatest self-made men in japan, who lived - . . the absolute and reality are but an abstraction. a grain of sand you, trample upon has a deeper significance than a series of lectures by your verbal philosopher whom you respect. it contains within itself the whole history of the earth; it tells you what it has seen since the dawn of time; while your philosopher simply plays on abstract terms and empty words. what does his absolute, or one, or substance mean? what does his reality or truth imply? do they denote or connote anything? mere name! mere abstraction! one school of philosophy after another has been established on logical subtleties; thousands of books have been written on these grand names and fair mirages, which vanish the moment that your hand of experience reaches after them. "duke hwan," says chwang tsz,[fn# ] "seated above in his hall, was" (once) reading a book, and a wheelwright, phien, was making a wheel below it. laying aside his hammer and chisel, phien went up the steps and said: 'i venture to ask your grace what words you are reading?' the duke said: 'the words of sages.' 'are these sages alive?' phien continued. 'they are dead,' was the reply. 'then,' said the other, 'what you, my ruler, are reading is only the dregs and sediments of those old men.' the duke said: [fn# ] chwang tsz, vol. ii., p. . 'how should you, a wheelwright, have anything to say about the book which i am reading? if you can explain yourself, very well; if you cannot, you shall die.' the wheelwright said: 'your servant will look at the thing from the point of view of his own art. in making a wheel, if i proceed gently, that is pleasant enough, but the workmanship is not strong; if i proceed violently, that is toilsome and the joinings do not fit. if the movements of my hand are neither (too) gentle nor (too) violent, the idea in my mind is realized. but i cannot tell (how to do this) by word of mouth; there is a knack in it. i cannot teach the knack to my son, nor can my son learn it from me. thus it is that i am in my seventieth year, and am (still) making wheels in my old age. but these ancients, and what it was not possible for them to convey, are dead and gone. so then what you, my ruler, are reading is but their dregs and sediments." zen has no business with the dregs and sediments of sages of yore. . the sermon of the inanimate. the scripture of zen is written with facts simple and familiar, so simple and familiar with everyday life that they escape observation on that very account. the sun rises in the east. the moon sets in the west. high is the mountain. deep is the sea. spring comes with flowers; summer with the cool breeze; autumn with the bright moon; winter with the fakes of snow. these things, perhaps too simple and too familiar for ordinary observers to pay attention to, have had profound significance for zen. li ngao (ri-ko) one day asked yoh shan (yaku-san): "what is the way to truth?" yoh shan, pointing to the sky and then to the pitcher beside him, said: "you see?" "no, sir," replied li ngao. "the cloud is in the sky," said yoh shan, "and the water in the pitcher." huen sha (gen-sha) one day went upon the platform and was ready to deliver a sermon when he heard a swallow singing. "listen," said he, "that small bird preaches the essential doctrine and proclaims the eternal truth." then he went back to his room, giving no sermon.[fn# ] [fn# ] den-to-roku and e-gen. the letters of the alphabet, a, b, c, etc., have no meaning whatever. they are but artificial signs, but when spelt they can express any great idea that great thinkers may form. trees, grass, mountains, rivers, stars, moons, suns. these are the alphabets with which the zen scripture is written. even a, b, c, etc., when spelt, can express any great idea. why not, then, these trees, grass, etc., the alphabets of nature when they compose the volume of the universe? even the meanest clod of earth proclaims the sacred law. hwui chung[fn# ] (e-chu) is said first to have given an expression to the sermon of the inanimate. "do the inanimate preach the doctrine?" asked a monk of hwui chung on one occasion. "yes, they preach eloquently and incessantly. there is no pause in their orations," was the reply. "why, then, do i not hear them?" asked the other again. "even if you do not, there are many others who can hear them." "who can hear them?" "all the sages hear and understand them," said hwui chung. thus the sermon of the inanimate had been a favourite topic of discussion years before shakespeare who expressed the similar idea, saying: "and this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything." [fn# ] a direct disciple of the sixth patriarch. "how wonderful is the sermon of the inanimate," says tung shan (to-zan). "you cannot hear it through your ears, but you can hear it through your eyes." you should hear it through your mind's eyes, through your heart's eyes, through your inmost soul's eyes, not through your intellect, not through your perception, not through your knowledge, not through your logic, not through your metaphysics. to understand it you have to divine, not to define; you have to observe, not to calculate; you have to sympathize, not to analyze; you have to see through, not to criticize; you have not to explain, but to feel; you have not to abstract, but to grasp; you have to see all in each, but not to know all in all; you have to get directly at the soul of things, penetrating their hard crust of matter by your rays of the innermost consciousness. "the falling leaves as well as the blooming flowers reveal to us the holy law of buddha," says a japanese zenist. ye who seek for purity and peace, go to nature. she will give you more than ye ask. ye who long for strength and perseverance, go to nature. she will train and strengthen you. ye who aspire after an ideal, go to nature. she will help you in its realization. ye who yearn after enlightenment, go to nature. she will never fail to grant your request. chapter iv buddha, the universal spirit . the ancient buddhist pantheon. the ancient buddhist pantheon was full of deities or buddhas, , [fn# ] in number, or rather countless, and also of bodhisattvas no less than buddhas. nowadays, however, in every church of mahayanism one buddha or another together with some bodhisattvas reigns supreme as the sole object of worship, while other supernatural beings sink in oblivion. these enlightened beings, regardless of their positions in the pantheon, were generally regarded as persons who in their past lives cultivated virtues, underwent austerities, and various sorts of penance, and at length attained to a complete enlightenment, by virtue of which they secured not only peace and eternal bliss, but acquired divers supernatural powers, such as clairvoyance, clairaudience, all-knowledge, and what not. therefore, it is natural that some mahayanists[fn# ] came to believe that, if they should go through the same course of discipline and study, they could attain to the same enlightenment and bliss, or the same buddhahood, while other mahayanists[fn# ] came to believe in the doctrine that the believer is saved and led up to the eternal state of bliss, without undergoing these hard disciplines, by the power of a buddha known as having boundless mercy and fathomless wisdom whom he invokes. [fn# ] trikalpa-trisahasra-buddhanrama-sutra gives the names of , buddhas, and buddhabhisita-buddhanama-sutra enumerates buddhas and bodhisattvas , in number. see nanjo's catalogue, nos. , , , . [fn# ] those who believe in the doctrine of holy path. see 'a history of the twelve japanese buddhist sects,' pp. - . [fn# ] those who believe in the doctrine of the pure land. . zen is iconoclastic. for the followers of bodhidharma, however, this conception of buddha seemed too crude to be accepted unhesitatingly and the doctrine too much irrelevant with and uncongenial to actual life. since zen denounced, as we have seen in the previous chapter, the scriptural authority, it is quite reasonable to have given up this view of buddha inculcated in the mahayana sutras, and to set at naught those statues and images of supernatural beings kept in veneration by the orthodox buddhists. tan hia (tan-ka), a noted chinese zen master, was found warming himself on a cold morning by the fire made of a wooden statue of buddha. on another occasion he was found mounting astride the statue of a saint. chao chen (jo-shu) one day happened to find wang yuen (bun-yen) worshipping the buddha in the temple, and forthwith struck him with his staff. "is there not anything good in the worshipping of the buddha?" protested wang yuen. then the master said: "nothing is better than anything good."[fn# ] these examples fully illustrate zen's attitude towards the objects of buddhist worship. zen is not, nevertheless, iconoclastic in the commonly accepted sense of the term, nor is it idolatrous, as christian missionaries are apt to suppose. [fn# ] zen-rin-rui-shu. zen is more iconoclastic than any of the christian or the mohammedan denominations in the sense that it opposes the acceptance of the petrified idea of deity, so conventional and formal that it carries no inner conviction of the believers. faith dies out whenever one comes to stick to one's fixed and immutable idea of deity, and to deceive oneself, taking bigotry for genuine faith. faith must be living and growing, and the living and growing faith should assume no fixed form. it might seem for a superficial observer to take a fixed form, as a running river appears constant, though it goes through ceaseless changes. the dead faith, immutable and conventional, makes its embracer appear religious and respectable, while it arrests his spiritual growth. it might give its owner comfort and pride, yet it at bottom proves to be fetters to his moral uplifting. it is on this account that zen declares: "buddha is nothing but spiritual chain or moral fetters," and, "if you remember even a name of buddha, it would deprive you of purity of heart." the conventional or orthodox idea of buddha or deity might seem smooth and fair, like a gold chain, being polished and hammered through generations by religious goldsmiths; but it has too much fixity and frigidity to be worn by us. "strike off thy fetters, bonds that bind thee down of shining gold or darker, baser ore; know slave is slave caressed or whipped, not free; for fetters tho' of gold, are not less strong to bind." --the song of the sannyasin. . buddha is unnamable. give a definite name to deity, he would be no more than what the name implies. the deity under the name of brahman necessarily differs from the being under the appellation of jehovah, just as the hindu differs from the jew. in like manner the being designated by god necessarily differs from one named amitabha or from him entitled allah. to give a name to the deity is to give him tradition, nationality, limitation, and fixity, and it never brings us nearer to him. zen's object of worship cannot be named and determined as god, or brahman, or amitabha, or creator, or nature, or reality, or substance, or the like. neither chinese nor japanese masters of zen tried to give a definite name to their object of adoration. they now called him that one, now this one, now mind, now buddha, now tathagata, now certain thing, now the true, now dharma-nature, now buddha-nature, and so forth. tung shan[fn# ] (to-zan) on a certain occasion declared it to be "a certain thing that pillars heaven above and supports the earth below; dark as lacquer and undefinable; manifesting itself through its activities, yet not wholly comprisable within them." so-kei[fn# ] expressed it in the same wise: "there exists a certain thing, bright as a mirror, spiritual as a mind, not subjected to growth nor to decay." huen sha (gen-sha) comparing it with a gem says: "there exists a bright gem illuminating through the worlds in ten directions by its light."[fn# ] [fn# ] tung shan luh (to-zan-roku, 'sayings and doings of ta-zan') is one of the best zen books. [fn# ] so-kei, a korean zenist, whose work entitled zen-ke-ki-kwan is worthy of our note as a representation of korean zen. [fn# ] sho-bo-gen-zo. this certain thing or being is too sublime to be named after a traditional or a national deity, too spiritual to be symbolized by human art, too full of life to be formulated in terms of mechanical science, too free to be rationalized by intellectual philosophy, too universal to be perceived by bodily senses; but everybody can feel its irresistible power, see its invisible presence, and touch its heart and soul within himself. "this mysterious mind," says kwei fung (kei-ho), "is higher than the highest, deeper than the deepest, limitless in all directions. there is no centre in it. no distinction of east and west, and above and below. is it empty? yes, but not empty like space. has it a form? yes, but has no form dependent on another for its existence. is it intelligent? yes, but not intelligent like your mind. is it non-intelligent? yes, but not non-intelligent like trees and stone. is it conscious? yes, but not conscious like you when waking. is it bright? yes, but not bright like the sun or the moon." to the question, "what and who is buddha?" yuen wu (en-go) replied: "hold your tongue: the mouth is the gate of evils!" while pao fuh (ho-fuku) answered to the same question: "no skill of art can picture him." thus buddha is unnamable, indescribable, and indefinable, but we provisionally call him buddha. . buddha, the universal life. zen conceives buddha as a being, who moves, stirs, inspires, enlivens, and vitalizes everything. accordingly, we may call him the universal life in the sense that he is the source of all lives in the universe. this universal life, according to zen, pillars the heaven, supports the earth, glorifies the sun and moon, gives voice to thunder, tinges clouds, adorns the pasture with flowers, enriches the field with harvest, gives animals beauty and strength. therefore, zen declares even a dead clod of earth to be imbued with the divine life, just as lowell expresses a similar idea when he says: "every clod feels a stir of might, an instinct within it that reaches and towers, and groping blindly above it for light, climbs to a soul in grass and flowers." one of our contemporary zenists wittily observed that 'vegetables are the children of earth, that animals which feed on vegetables are the grand-children of earth, and that men who subsist on animals are the great-grand-children of earth.' if there be no life in earth, how could life come out of it? if there be no life, the same as the animal's life in the vegetables, how could animals sustain their lives feeding on vegetables? if there be no life similar to ours in animals, how could we sustain our life by subsisting on them? the poet must be in the right, not only in his esthetic, but in his scientific point of view, in saying- "i must confess that i am only dust. but once a rose within me grew; its rootlets shot, its flowerets flew; and all rose's sweetness rolled throughout the texture of my mould; and so it is that i impart perfume to them, whoever thou art." as we men live and act, so do our arteries; so does blood; so do corpuscles. as cells and protoplasm live and act, so do elements, molecules, and atoms. as elements and atoms live and act, so do clouds; so does the earth; so does the ocean, the milky way, and the solar system. what is this life which pervades the grandest as well as the minutest works of nature, and which may fitly be said 'greater than the greatest and smaller than the smallest?' it cannot be defined. it cannot be subjected to exact analysis. but it is directly experienced and recognized within us, just as the beauty of the rose is to be perceived and enjoyed, but not reduced to exact analysis. at any rate, it is something stirring, moving, acting and reacting continually. this something which can be experienced and felt and enjoyed directly by every one of us. this life of living principle in the microcosmos is identical with that of the macrocosmos, and the universal life of the macrocosmos is the common source of all lives. therefore, the mahaparinirvana-sutra says: "tathagata (another name for buddha) gives life to all beings, just as the lake anavatapta gives rise to the four great rivers." "tathagata," says the same sutra, "divides his own body into innumerable bodies, and also restores an infinite number of bodies to one body. now be becomes cities, villages, houses, mountains, rivers, and trees; now he has a large body; now he has a small body; now he becomes men, women, boys, and girls." . life and change. a peculiar phase of life is change which appears in the form of growth and decay. nobody can deny the transitoriness of life. one of our friends humorously observed: "everything in the world may be doubtful to you, but it can never be doubted that you will die." life is like a burning lamp. every minute its flame dies out and is renewed. life is like a running stream. every moment it pushes onward. if there be anything constant in this world of change, it should be change itself. is it not just one step from rosy childhood to snowy age? is it not just one moment from the nuptial song to the funeral-dirge? who can live the same moment twice? in comparison with an organism, inorganic matter appears to be constant and changeless; but, in fact, it is equally subjected to ceaseless alteration. every morning, looking into the mirror, you will find your visage reflected in it just as it was on the preceding day; so also every morning, looking at the sun and the earth, you will find them reflected in your retina just as they were on the previous morning; but the sun and the earth are no less changeless than you. why do the sun and the earth seem changeless and constant to you? only because you yourself undergo change more quickly than they. when you look at the clouds sweeping across the face of the moon, they seem to be at rest, and the moon in rapid motion; but, in fact, the clouds, as well as the moon, incessantly move on. science might maintain the quantitative constancy of matter, but the so-called matter is mere abstraction. to say matter is changeless is as much as to say is always , changeless and constant, because the arithmetical number is not more abstract than the physiological matter. the moon appears standing still when you look at her only a few moments. in like manner she seems to be free from change when you look at her in your short span of life. astronomers, nevertheless, can tell you how she saw her better days, and is now in her wrinkles and white hair. . pessimistic view of the ancient hindus. in addition to this, the new theory of matter has entirely over thrown the old conception of the unchanging atoms, and they are now regarded to be composed of magnetic forces, ions, and corpuscles in incessant motion. therefore we have no inert matter in the concrete, no unchanging thing in the sphere of experience, no constant organism in the transient universe. these considerations often led many thinkers, ancient and modern, to the pessimistic view of life. what is the use of your exertion, they would say, in accumulating wealth, which is doomed to melt away in the twinkling of an eye? what is the use of your striving after power, which is more short-lived than a bubble? what is the use of your endeavour in the reformation of society, which does not endure any longer than the castle in the air? how do kings differ from beggars in the eye of transience? how do the rich differ from the poor, how the beautiful from the ugly, bow the young from the old, how the good from the evil, how the lucky from the unlucky, how the wise from the unwise, in the court of death? vain is ambition. vain is fame. vain is pleasure. vain are struggles and efforts. all is in vain. an ancient hindu thinker[fn# ] says: "o saint, what is the use of the enjoyment of pleasures in this offensive, pithless body--a mere mass of bones, skins, sinews, marrow, and flesh? what is the use of the enjoyment of pleasures in this body, which is assailed by lust, hatred, greed, delusion, fear, anguish, jealousy, separation from what is loved, union with what is not loved, hunger, old age, death, illness, grief, and other evils? in such a world as this, what is the use of the enjoyment of pleasures, if he who has fed on them is to return to this world again and again? in this world i am like a frog in a dry well." [fn# ] maitrayana upanisad. it is this consideration on the transitoriness of life that led some taoist in china to prefer death to life, as expressed in chwang tsz (su-shi):[fn# ] "when kwang-zze went to khu, he saw an empty skull, bleached indeed, but still retaining its shape. tapping it with his horse-switch, he asked it saying: 'did you, sir, in your greed of life, fail in the lessons of reason and come to this? or did you do so, in the service of a perishing state, by the punishment of an axe? or was it through your evil conduct, reflecting disgrace on your parents and on your wife and children? or was it through your hard endurances of cold and hunger? or was it that you had completed your term of life?' "having given expression to these questions, he took up the skull and made a pillow of it, and went to sleep. at midnight the skull appeared to him in a dream, and said: 'what you said to me was after the fashion of an orator. all your words were about the entanglements of men in their lifetime. there are none of those things after death. would you like to hear me, sir, tell you about death?' 'i should,' said kwang-zze, and the skull resumed: 'in death there are not (the distinctions of) ruler above minister below. there are none of the phenomena of the four seasons. tranquil and at ease, our years are those of heaven and earth. no king in his court has greater enjoyment than we have.' kwang-zze did not believe it, and said: 'if i could get the ruler of our destiny to restore your body to life with its bones and flesh and skin, and to give you back your father and mother, your wife and children, and all your village acquaintances, would you wish me to do so?' the skull stared fixedly at him, and knitted its brows and said: 'how should i cast away the enjoyment of my royal court, and undertake again the toils of life among mankind?'" [fn# ] 'chwang tsz,' vol. vi., p. . . hinayanism and its doctrine. the doctrine of transience was the first entrance gate of hinayanism. transience never fails to deprive us of what is dear and near to us. it disappoints us in our expectation and hope. it brings out grief, fear, anguish, and lamentation. it spreads terror and destruction among families, communities, nations, mankind. it threatens with perdition the whole earth, the whole universe. therefore it follows that life is full of disappointment, sufferings, and miseries, and that man is like 'a frog in a dry well.' this is the doctrine called by the hinayanists the holy truth of suffering. again, when transcience once gets hold of our imagination, we can easily foresee ruins and disasters in the very midst of prosperity and happiness, and also old age and ugliness in the prime and youth of beauty. it gives rise quite naturally to the thought that body is a bag full of pus and blood, a mere heap of rotten flesh and broken pieces of bone, a decaying corpse inhabited by innumerable maggots. this is the doctrine called by the hinayanists the holy truth of impurity.[fn# ] [fn# ] mahasaptipatthana suttanta, , runs as follows: "and, moreover, bhikkhu, a brother, just as if he had been a body abandoned in the charnel-field, dead for one, two, or three days, swollen, turning black and blue, and decomposed, apply that perception to this very body (of his own), reflecting: 'this body, too, is even so constituted, is of such a nature, has not got beyond that (fate).'" and, again, transience holds its tyrannical sway not only over the material but over the spiritual world. at its touch atman, or soul, is brought to nothing. by its call devas, or celestial beings, are made to succumb to death. it follows, therefore, that to believe in atman, eternal and unchanging, would be a whim of the ignorant. this is the doctrine called by the hinayanists the holy truth of no-atman. if, as said, there could be nothing free from transience, constancy should be a gross mistake of the ignorant; if even gods have to die, eternity should be no more than a stupid dream of the vulgar; if all phenomena be flowing and changing, there could be no constant noumena underlying them. it therefore follows that all things in the universe are empty and unreal. this is the doctrine called by the hinayanists the holy truth of unreality. thus hinayana buddhism, starting from the doctrine of transience, arrived at the pessimistic view of life in its extreme form. . change as seen by zen. zen, like hinayanism, does not deny the doctrine of transience, but it has come to a view diametrically opposite to that of the hindus. transience for zen simply means change. it is a form in which life manifests itself. where there is life there is change or transience. where there is more change there is more vital activity. suppose an absolutely changeless body: it must be absolutely lifeless. an eternally changeless life is equivalent to an eternally changeless death. why do we value the morning glory, which fades in a few hours, more than an artificial glass flower, which endures hundreds of years? why do we prefer an animal life, which passes away in a few scores of years, to a vegetable life, which can exist thousands of years? why do we prize changing organism more than inorganic matter, unchanging and constant? if there be no change in the bright hues of a flower, it is as worthless as a stone. if there be no change in the song of a bird, it is as valueless as a whistling wind. if there be no change in trees and grass, they are utterly unsuitable to be planted in a garden. now, then, what is the use of our life, if it stand still? as the water of a running stream is always fresh and wholesome because it does not stop for a moment, so life is ever fresh and new because it does not stand still, but rapidly moves on from parents to children, from children to grandchildren, from grandchildren to great-grandchildren, and flows on through generation after generation, renewing itself ceaselessly. we can never deny the existence of old age and death--nay, death is of capital importance for a continuation of life, because death carries away all the decaying organism in the way of life. but for it life would be choked up with organic rubbish. the only way of life's pushing itself onward or its renewing itself is its producing of the young and getting rid of the old. if there be no old age nor death, life is not life, but death. . life and change. transformation and change are the essential features of life; life is not transformation nor change itself, as bergson seems to assume. it is something which comes under our observation through transformation and change. there are, among buddhists as well as christians, not a few who covet constancy and fixity of life, being allured by such smooth names as eternal life, everlasting joy, permanent peace, and what not. they have forgotten that their souls can never rest content with things monotonous. if there be everlasting joy for their souls, it must be presented to them through incessant change. so also if there be eternal life granted for their souls, it must be given through ceaseless alteration. what is the difference between eternal life, fixed and constant, and eternal death? what is the difference between everlasting bliss, changeless and monotonous, and everlasting suffering? if constancy, instead of change, govern life, then hope or pleasure is absolutely impossible. fortunately, however, life is not constant. it changes and becomes. pleasure arises through change itself. mere change of food or clothes is often pleasing to us, while the appearance of the same thing twice or thrice, however pleasing it may be, causes us little pleasure. it will become disgusting and tire us down, if it be presented repeatedly from time to time. an important element in the pleasure we derive from social meetings, from travels, from sight-seeings, etc., is nothing but change. even intellectual pleasure consists mainly of change. a dead, unchanging abstract truth, and make , excites no interest; while a changeable, concrete truth, such as the darwinian theory of evolution, excites a keen interest. . life, change, and hope. the doctrine of transcience never drives us to the pessimistic view of life. on the contrary, it gives us an inexhaustible source of pleasure and hope. let us ask you: are you satisfied with the present state of things? do you not sympathize with poverty-stricken millions living side by side with millionaires saturated with wealth? do you not shed tears over those hunger-bitten children who cower in the dark lanes of a great city? do you not wish to put down the stupendous oppressor--might-is-right? do you not want to do away with the so-called armoured peace among nations? do you not need to mitigate the struggle for existence more sanguine than the war of weapons? life changes and is changeable; consequently, has its future. hope is therefore possible. individual development, social betterment, international peace, reformation of mankind in general, can be hoped. our ideal, however unpractical it may seem at the first sight, can be realized. moreover, the world itself, too, is changing and changeable. it reveals new phases from time to time, and can be moulded to subserve our purpose. we must not take life or the world as completed and doomed as it is now. no fact verifies the belief that the world was ever created by some other power and predestined to be as it is now. it lives, acts, and changes. it is transforming itself continually, just as we are changing and becoming. thus the doctrine of transience supplies us with an inexhaustible source of hope and comfort, leads us into the living universe, and introduces us to the presence of universal life or buddha. the reader may easily understand how zen conceives buddha as the living principle from the following dialogues: "is it true, sir," asked a monk of teu tsz (to-shi), "that all the voices of nature are those of buddha?" "yes, certainly," replied teu tsz. "what is, reverend sir," asked a man of chao cheu (jo-shu), "the holy temple (of buddha)?" "an innocent girl," replied the teacher. "who is the master of the temple?" asked the other again. "a baby in her womb," was the answer. "what is, sir," asked a monk to yen kwan (yen-kan), "the original body of buddha vairocana?"[fn# ] "fetch me a pitcher with water," said the teacher. the monk did as he was ordered. "put it back in its place," said yen kwan again.[fn# ] [fn# ] literally, all illuminating buddha, the highest of the trikayas. see eitel, p. . [fn# ] zen-rin-rui-shu. . everything is living according to zen. everything alive has a strong innate tendency to preserve itself, to assert itself, to push itself forward, and to act on its environment, consciously or unconsciously. the innate, strong tendency of the living is an undeveloped, but fundamental, nature of spirit or mind. it shows itself first in inert matter as impenetrability, or affinity, or mechanical force. rock has a powerful tendency to preserve itself. and it is hard to crush it. diamond has a robust tendency to assert itself. and it permits nothing to destroy it. salt has the same strong tendency, for its particles act and react by themselves, and never cease till its crystals are formed. steam, too, should have the same, because it pushes aside everything in its way and goes where it will. in the eye of simple folks of old, mountains, rivers, trees, serpents, oxen, and eagles were equally full of life; hence the deification of them. no doubt it is irrational to believe in nymphs, fairies, elves, and the like, yet still we may say that mountains stand of their own accord, rivers run as they will, just as we say that trees and grass turn their leaves towards the sun of their own accord. neither is it a mere figure of speech to say that thunder speaks and hills respond, nor to describe birds as singing and flowers as smiling, nor to narrate winds as moaning and rain as weeping, nor to state lovers as looking at the moon, the moon as looking at them, when we observe spiritual element in activities of all this. haeckel says, not without reason: "i cannot imagine the simple chemical and physical forces without attributing the movement of material particles to conscious sensation." the same author says again: "we may ascribe the feeling of pleasure and pain to all atoms, and so explain the electric affinity in chemistry." . the creative force of nature and humanity. the innate tendency of self-preservation, which manifests itself as mechanical force or chemical affinity in the inorganic nature, unfolds itself as the desire of the preservation of species in the vegetables and animals. see how vegetables fertilize themselves in a complicated way, and how they spread their seeds far and wide in a most mysterious manner. a far more developed form of the same desire is seen in the sexual attachment and parental love of animals. who does not know that even the smallest birds defend their young against every enemy with self -sacrificing courage, and that they bring food whilst they themselves often starve and grow lean? in human beings we can observe the various transformations of the self-same desire. for instance, sorrow or despair is experienced when it is impossible; anger, when it is hindered by others; joy, when it is fulfilled; fear, when it is threatened; pleasure, when it is facilitated. although it manifests itself as the sexual attachment and parental love in lower animals, yet its developed forms, such as sympathy, loyalty, benevolence, mercy, humanity, are observed in human beings. again, the creative force in inorganic nature, in order to assert itself and act more effectively, creates the germ of organic nature, and gradually ascending the scale of evolution, develops the sense organs and the nervous system; hence intellectual powers, such as sensation, perception, imagination, memory, unfold themselves. thus the creative force, exerting itself gradually, widens its sphere of action, and necessitates the union of individuals into families, clans, tribes, communities, and nations. for the sake of this union and co-operation they established customs, enacted laws, and instituted political and educational systems. furthermore, to reinforce itself, it gave birth to languages and sciences; and to enrich itself, morality and religion. . universal life is universal spirit. these considerations naturally lead us to see that universal life is not a blind vital force, but creative spirit, or mind, or consciousness, which unfolds itself in myriads of ways. everything in the universe, according to zen, lives and acts, and at the same time discloses its spirit. to be alive is identically the same as to be spiritual. as the poet has his song, so does the nightingale, so does the cricket, so does the rivulet. as we are pleased or offended, so are horses, so are dogs, so are sparrows, ants, earthworms, and mushrooms. simpler the body, simpler its spirit; more complicated the body, more complicated its spirit. 'mind slumbers in the pebble, dreams in the plant, gathers energy in the animal, and awakens to self-conscious discovery in the soul of man.' it is this creative, universal spirit that sends forth aurora to illuminate the sky, that makes diana shed her benign rays and Ã�olus play on his harp, wreathes spring with flowers, that clothes autumn with gold, that induces plants to put forth blossoms, that incites animals to be energetic, and that awakens consciousness in man. the author of mahavaipulya-purnabuddha-sutra expressly states our idea when he says: "mountains, rivers, skies, the earth: all these are embraced in the true spirit, enlightened and mysterious." rin-zai also says: "spirit is formless, but it penetrates through the world in the ten directions."[fn# ] the sixth patriarch expresses the same idea more explicitly: "what creates the phenomena is mind; what transcends all the phenomena is buddha."[fn# ] [fn# ] rin-zai-roku. [fn# ] roku-so-dan-kyo. . poetical intuition and zen. since universal life or spirit permeates the universe, the poetical intuition of man never fails to find it, and to delight in everything typical of that spirit. "the leaves of the plantain," says a zen poet, "unfold themselves, hearing the voice of thunder. the flowers of the hollyhock turn towards the sun, looking at it all day long." jesus could see in the lily the unseen being who clothed it so lovely. wordsworth found the most profound thing in all the world to be the universal spiritual life, which manifests itself most directly in nature, clothed in its own proper dignity and peace. "through every star," says carlyle, "through every grass blade, most through every soul, the glory of present god still beams." it is not only grandeur and sublimity that indicate universal life, but smallness and commonplace do the same. a sage of old awakened to the faith[fn# ] when he heard a bell ring; another, when he looked at the peach blossom; another, when he heard the frogs croaking; and another, when he saw his own form reflected in a river. the minutest particles of dust form a world. the meanest grain of sand under our foot proclaims a divine law. therefore teu tsz jo-shi), pointing to a stone in front of his temple, said: "all the buddhas of the past, the present, and the future are living therein."[fn# ] [fn# ] both the chinese and the japanese history of zen are full of such incidents. [fn# ] zen-rin-rui-shu and to-shi-go-roku. . enlightened consciousness. in addition to these considerations, which mainly depend on indirect experience, we can have direct experience of life within us. in the first place, we experience that our life is not a bare mechanical motion or change, but is a spiritual, purposive, and self-directing force. in the second place, we directly experience that it knows, feels, and wills. in the third place, we experience that there exists some power unifying the intellectual, emotional, and volitional activities so as to make life uniform and rational. lastly, we experience that there lies deeply rooted within us enlightened consciousness, which neither psychologists treat of nor philosophers believe in, but which zen teachers expound with strong conviction. enlightened consciousness is, according to zen, the centre of spiritual life. it is the mind of minds, and the consciousness of consciousness. it is the universal spirit awakened in the human mind. it is not the mind that feels joy or sorrow; nor is it the mind that reasons and infers; nor is it the mind that fancies and dreams; nor is it the mind that hopes and fears; nor is it the mind that distinguishes good from evil. it is enlightened consciousness that holds communion with universal spirit or buddha, and realizes that individual lives are inseparably united, and of one and the same nature with universal life. it is always bright as a burnished mirror, and cannot be dimmed by doubt and ignorance. it is ever pure as a lotus flower, and cannot be polluted by the mud of evil and folly. although all sentient beings are endowed with this enlightened consciousness, they are not aware of its existence, excepting men who can discover it by the practice of meditation. enlightened consciousness is often called buddha-nature, as it is the real nature of universal spirit. zen teachers compare it with a precious stone ever fresh and pure, even if it be buried in the heaps of dust. its divine light can never be extinguished by doubt or fear, just as the sunlight cannot be destroyed by mist and cloud. let us quote a chinese zen poet to see how zen treats of it:[fn# ] "i have an image of buddha, the worldly people know it not. it is not made of clay or cloth, nor is it carved out of wood, nor is it moulded of earth nor of ashes. no artist can paint it; no robber can steal it. there it exists from dawn of time. it's clean, although not swept and wiped. although it is but one, divides itself to a hundred thousand million forms." [fn# ] see zen-gaku-ho-ten. . buddha dwelling in the individual mind. enlightened consciousness in the individual mind acquires for its possessor, not a relative knowledge of things as his intellect does, but the profoundest insight in reference to universal brotherhood of all beings, and enables him to understand the absolute holiness of their nature, and the highest goal for which all of them are making. enlightened consciousness once awakened within us serves as a guiding principle, and leads us to hope, bliss, and life; consequently, it is called the master[fn# ] of both mind and body. sometimes it is called the original[fn# ] mind, as it is the mind of minds. it is buddha dwelling in individuals. you might call it god in man, if you like. the following dialogues all point to this single idea: on one occasion a butcher, who was used to kill one thousand sheep a day, came to gotama, and, throwing down his butcher-knife, said "i am one of the thousand buddhas." "yes, really," replied gotama. a monk, hwui chao (e-cha) by name, asked pao yen (ho-gen): "what is buddha?" "you are hwui chao," replied the master. the same question was put to sheu shan (shu-zan), chi man (chi-mon), and teu tsz (to-shi), the first of whom answered: "a bride mounts on a donkey and her mother-in-law drives it;" and the second: "he goes barefooted, his sandals being worn out;" while the third rose from his chair and stood still without saying a word. chwen hih (fu-kiu) explains this point in unequivocal terms: "night after night i sleep with buddha, and every morning i get up with him. he accompanies me wherever i go. when i stand or sit, when i speak or be mute, when i am out or in, he never leaves me, even as a shadow accompanies body. would you know where he is? listen to that voice and word."[fn# ] [fn# ] it is often called the lord or master of mind. [fn# ] another name for buddha is the original mind" (kechi-myaku-ron). [fn# ] for such dialogues, see sho-yo-roku, mu-mon-kan, heki-gan-shu. fu-kiu's words are repeatedly quoted by zen masters. . enlightened consciousness is not an intellectual insight. enlightened consciousness is not a bare intellectual insight, for it is full of beautiful emotions. it loves, caresses, embraces, and at the same time esteems all beings, being ever merciful to them. it has no enemies to conquer, no evil to fight with, but constantly finds friends to help, good to promote. its warm heart beats in harmony with those of all fellow beings. the author of brahmajala-sutra fully expresses this idea as he says: "all women are our mothers; all men our fathers; all earth and water our bodies in the past existences; all fire and air our essence." thus relying on our inner experience, which is the only direct way of knowing buddha, we conceive him as a being with profound wisdom and boundless mercy, who loves all beings as his children, whom he is fostering, bringing up, guiding, and teaching. "these three worlds are his, and all beings living in them are his children."[fn# ] "the blessed one is the mother of all sentient beings, and gives them all the milk of mercy."[fn# ] some people named him absolute, as he is all light, all hope, all mercy, and all wisdom; some, heaven, as he is high and enlightened; some, god, as he is sacred and mysterious; some, truth, as he is true to himself; some, buddha, as he is free from illusion; some, creator, as he is the creative force immanent in the universe; some, path, as he is the way we must follow; some, unknowable, as he is beyond relative knowledge; some, self, as he is the self of individual selves. all these names are applied to one being, whom we designate by the name of universal life or spirit. [fn# ] saddharma-pundarika-sutra. [fn# ] mahaparinirvana-sutra. . our conception of buddha is not final. has, then, the divine nature of universal spirit been completely and exhaustively revealed in our enlightened consciousness? to this question we should answer negatively, for, so far as our limited experience is concerned, universal spirit reveals itself as a being with profound wisdom and boundless mercy; this, nevertheless, does not imply that the conception is the only possible and complete one. we should always bear in mind that the world is alive, and changing, and moving. it goes on to disclose a new phase, or to add a new truth. the subtlest logic of old is a mere quibble of nowadays. the miracles of yesterday are the commonplaces of to-day. now theories are formed, new discoveries are made, only to give their places to newer theories are discoveries. new ideals realized or new desires satisfied are sure to awaken newer and stronger desires. not an instant life remains immutable, but it rushes on, amplifying and enriching itself from the dawn of time to the end of eternity. therefore universal life may in the future possibly unfold its new spiritual content, yet unknown to us because it has refined, lifted up, and developed living beings from the amÅ�ba to man, increasing the intelligence and range of individuals, until highly civilized man emerge into the plane of consciousness-consciousness of divine light in him. thus to believe in buddha is to be content and thankful for the grace of his, and to hope for the infinite unfoldment of his glories in man. . how to worship buddha. the author of vimalakirtti-nirdeca-sutra well explains our attitude towards buddha when he says: "we ask buddha for nothing. we ask dharma for nothing. we ask samgha for nothing." nothing we ask of buddha. no worldly success, no rewards in the future life, no special blessing. hwang pah (o-baku) said: "i simply worship buddha. i ask buddha for nothing. i ask dharma for nothing. i ask samgha for nothing." then a prince[fn# ] questioned him: "you ask buddha for nothing. you ask dharma for nothing. you ask samgha for nothing. what, then, is the use of your worship?" the prince earned a slap as an answer to his utilitarian question.[fn# ] this incident well illustrates that worship, as understood by zen masters, is a pure act of thanksgiving, or the opening of the grateful heart; in other words, the disclosing of enlightened consciousness. we are living the very life of buddha, enjoying his blessing, and holding communion with him through speech, thought, and action. the earth is not 'the vale of tears,' but the glorious creation of universal spirit; nor man 'the poor miserable sinner' but the living altar of buddha himself. whatever we do, we do with grateful heart and pure joy sanctioned by enlightened consciousness; eating, drinking, talking, walking, and every other work of our daily life are the worship and devotion. we agree with margaret fuller when she says: "reverence the highest; have patience with the lowest; let this day's performance of the meanest duty be thy religion. are the stars too distant? pick up the pebble that lies at thy feet, and from it learn all." [fn# ] afterwards the emperor suen tsung (sen-so), of the tang dynasty. [fn# ] for the details, see heki-gan-shu. chapter v the nature of man . man is good-natured according to mencius.[fn# ] oriental scholars, especially the chinese men of letters, seem to have taken so keen an interest in the study of human nature that they proposed all the possible opinions respecting the subject in question-namely, ( ) man is good-natured; ( ) man is bad-natured; ( ) man is good-natured and bad-natured as well; ( ) man is neither good-natured nor bad-natured. the first of these opinions was proposed by a most reputed confucianist scholar, mencius, and his followers, and is still adhered to by the majority of the japanese and the chinese confucianists. mencius thought it as natural for man to do good as it is for the grass to be green. 'suppose a person has happened,' he would say, 'to find a child on the point of tumbling down into a deep well. he would rescue it even at the risk of his life, no matter how morally degenerated he might be. he would have no time to consider that his act might bring him some reward from its parents, or a good reputation among his friends and fellow-citizens. he would do it barely out of his inborn good-nature.' after enumerating some instances similar to this one, mencius concludes that goodness is the fundamental nature of man, even if he is often carried away by his brutal disposition. [fn# ] mencius ( - b.c.) is regarded as the best expounder of the doctrine of confucius. there exists a well-known work of his, entitled after his own name. see 'a history of chinese philosophy,' by r. endo, and also 'a history of chinese philosophy' (pp. - ), by g. nakauchi. . man is bad-natured according to siun tsz[fn# ] (jun-shi). the weaknesses of mencius's theory are fully exposed by another diametrically opposed theory propounded by siun tsz (jun-shi) and his followers. 'man is bad-natured,' says siun tsz, 'since he has inborn lust, appetite, and desire for wealth. as he has inborn lust and appetite, he is naturally given to intemperance and wantonness. as he has inborn desire for wealth, he is naturally inclined to quarrel and fight with others for the sake of gain.' leave him without discipline or culture, he would not be a whit better than the beast. his virtuous acts, such as charity, honesty, propriety, chastity, truthfulness, are conduct forced by the teachings of ancient sages against his natural inclination. therefore vices are congenial and true to his nature, while virtues alien and untrue to his fundamental nature. [fn# ] siun tsz's date is later by some fifty years than mencius. siun tsz gives the reason why man seeks after morality, saying that man seeks what he has not, and that he seeks after morality simply because he has not morality, just as the poor seek riches. see 'a history of chinese philosophy' (pp. - ), by g. nakauchi, and 'a history of development of chinese thought,' by r. endo. these two theories are not only far from throwing light on the moral state of man, but wrap it in deeper gloom. let us raise a few questions by way of refutation. if man's fundamental nature be good, as mencius maintains, why is it easy for him to be vicious without instruction, while he finds it hard to be virtuous even with instruction. if you contend that good is man's primary nature and evil the secondary one, why is be so often overpowered by the secondary nature? if you answer saying that man is good-natured originally, but he acquires the secondary nature through the struggle for existence, and it gradually gains power over the primary nature by means of the same cause, then the primitive tribes should be more virtuous than the highly civilized nations, and children than grownup people. is this not contrary to fact? if, again, man's nature is essentially bad, as siun tsz holds, how can he cultivate virtue? if you contend that ancient sages invented so-called cardinal virtues and inculcated them against his natural inclination, why does he not give them up? if vices be congenial and true to man's nature, but virtues be alien and untrue to him, why are virtues honoured by him? if vices be genuine and virtue a deception, as you think, why do you call the inventors of that deceiving art sages? how was it possible for man to do good before these sages' appearance on earth? . man is both good-natured and bad-natured according to yan hiung[fn# ] (yo-yu). according to yang hiung and his followers, good is no less real than evil, and evil is no more unreal than good. therefore man must be double-natured-that is, partly good and partly bad. this is the reason why the history of man is full of fiendish crimes, and, at the same time, it abounds with godly deeds. this is the reason why mankind comprises, on the one hand, a socrates, a confucius, a jesus, and, on the other, a nero and a kieh. this is the reason why we find to-day a honest fellow in him whom we find a betrayer to-morrow. [fn# ] yan hiung (died a.d. ) is the reputed author of tai huen (tai-gen) and fah yen (ho-gen). his opinion in reference to human nature is found in fah yen. this view of man's nature might explain our present moral state, yet it calls forth many questions bard to answer. if this assertion be true, is it not a useless task to educate man with the purpose of making him better and nobler? how could one extirpate man's bad nature implanted within him at his origin? if man be double-natured, how did he come to set good over evil? how did he come to consider that he ought to be good and ought not to be bad? how could you establish the authority of morality? . man is neither good-natured nor bad-natured according to su shih (so-shoku).[fn# ] the difficulty may be avoided by a theory given by su shih and other scholars influenced by buddhism, which maintains that man is neither good-natured nor bad-natured. according to this opinion man is not moral nor immoral by nature, but unmoral. he is morally a blank. he is at a crossroad, so to speak, of morality when he is first born. as he is blank, he can be dyed black or red. as he is at the cross-road, he can turn to the right or to the left. he is like fresh water, which has no flavour, and can be made sweet or bitter by circumstances. if we are not mistaken, this theory, too, has to encounter insurmountable difficulties. how could it be possible to make the unmoral being moral or immoral? we might as well try to get honey out of sand as to get good or evil out of the blank nature. there can be no fruit of good or evil where there is no seed of good or bad nature. thus we find no satisfactory solution of the problem at issue in these four theories proposed by the chinese scholars--the first theory being incompetent to explain the problem of human depravity; the second breaking down at the origin of morality; the third failing to explain the possibility of moral culture; the fourth being logically self-contradictory. [fn# ] su shih ( - ), a great man of letters, practiser of zen, noted for his poetical works. . there is no mortal who is purely moral. by nature man should be either good or bad; or he should be good as well as bad; or he should be neither good nor bad. there can be no alternative possible besides these four propositions, none of which can be accepted as true. then there must be some misconception in the terms of which they consist. it would seem to some that the error can be avoided by limiting the sense of the term 'man,' saying some persons are good-natured, some persons are bad-natured, some persons are good-natured and bad-natured as well, and some persons are neither good-natured nor bad-natured. there is no contradiction in these modified propositions, but still they fail to explain the ethical state of man. supposing them all to be true, let us assume that there are the four classes of people: ( ) those who are purely moral and have no immoral disposition; ( ) those who are half moral and half immoral; ( ) those who are neither moral nor immoral; ( ) those who are purely immoral and have no moral disposition. orthodox christians, believing in the sinlessness of jesus, would say he belongs to the first class, while mohammedans and buddhists, who deify the founder of their respective faith, would in such case regard their founder as the purely moral personage. but are your beliefs, we should ask, based on historical fact? can you say that such traditional and self-contradictory records as the four gospels are history in the strict sense of the term? can you assert that those traditions which deify mohammed and shakya are the statements of bare facts? is not jesus an abstraction and an ideal, entirely different from a concrete carpenter's son, who fed on the same kind of food, sheltered himself in the same kind of building, suffered from the same kind of pain, was fired by the same kind of anger, stung by the same kind of lust as our own? can you say the person who fought many a sanguinary battle, who got through many cunning negotiations with enemies and friends, who personally experienced the troubles of polygamy, was a person sinless and divine? we might allow that these ancient sages are superhuman and divine, then our classification has no business with them, because they do not properly belong to mankind. now, then, who can point out any sinless person in the present world? is it not a fact that the more virtuous one grows the more sinful he feels himself? if there be any mortal, in the past, the present, and the future, who declares himself to be pure and sinless, his very declaration proves that he is not highly moral. therefore the existence of the first class of people is open to question. . there is no mortal who is non-moral or purely immoral. the same is the case with the third and the fourth class of people who are assumed as non-moral or purely immoral. there is no person, however morally degraded he may be, but reveals some good nature in his whole course of life. it is our daily experience that we find a faithful friend in the person even of a pickpocket, a loving father even in a burglar, and a kind neighbour even in a murderer. faith, sympathy, friendship, love, loyalty, and generosity dwell not merely in palaces and churches, but also in brothels and gaols. on the other hand, abhorrent vices and bloody crimes often find shelter under the silk hat, or the robe, or the coronet, or the crown. life may fitly be compared with a rope made of white and black straw, and to separate one from the other is to destroy the rope itself; so also life entirely independent of the duality of good and bad is no actual life. we must acknowledge, therefore, that the third and the fourth propositions are inconsistent with our daily experience of life, and that only the second proposition remains, which, as seen above, breaks down at the origin of morality. . where, then, does the error lie? where, then, does the error lie in the four possible propositions respecting man's nature? it lies not in their subject, but in the predicate-that is to say, in the use of the terms 'good' and 'bad.' now let us examine how does good differ from bad. a good action ever promotes interests in a sphere far wider than a bad action. both are the same in their conducing to human interests, but differ in the extent in which they achieve their end. in other words, both good and bad actions are performed for one end and the same purpose of promoting human interests, but they differ from each other as to the extent of interests. for instance, burglary is evidently bad action, and is condemned everywhere; but the capturing of an enemy's property for the sake of one's own tribe or clan or nation is praised as a meritorious conduct. both acts are exactly the same in their promoting interests; but the former relates to the interests of a single individual or of a single family, while the latter to those of a tribe or a nation. if the former be bad on account of its ignoring others' interests, the latter must be also bad on account of its ignoring the enemy's interests. murder is considered bad everywhere; but the killing of thousands of men in a battle-field is praised and honoured, because the former is perpetrated to promote the private interests, while the latter those of the public. if the former be bad, because of its cruelty, the latter must also be bad, because of its inhumanity. the idea of good and bad, generally accepted by common sense, may be stated as follows: 'an action is good when it promotes the interests of an individual or a family; better when it promotes those of a district or a country; best when it promotes those of the whole world. an action is bad when it inflicts injury on another individual or another family; worse when it is prejudicial to a district or a country; worst when it brings harm on the whole world. strictly speaking, an action is good when it promotes interests, material or spiritual, as intended by the actor in his motive; and it is bad when it injures interests, material or spiritual, as intended by the actor in his motive.' according to this idea, generally accepted by common sense, human actions may be classified under four different heads: ( ) purely good actions; ( ) partly good and partly bad actions; ( ) neither good nor bad actions; ( ) purely bad actions. first, purely good actions are those actions which subserve and never hinder human interests either material or spiritual, such as humanity and love of all beings. secondly, partly good and partly bad actions are those actions which are both for and against human interests, such as narrow patriotism and prejudiced love. thirdly, neither good nor bad actions are such actions as are neither for nor against human interests--for example, an unconscious act of a dreamer. lastly, purely bad actions, which are absolutely against human interests, cannot be possible for man except suicide, because every action promotes more or less the interests, material or spiritual, of the individual agent or of someone else. even such horrible crimes as homicide and parricide are intended to promote some interests, and carry out in some measure their aim when performed. it follows that man cannot be said to be good or bad in the strict sense of the terms as above defined, for there is no human being who does the first class of actions and nothing else, nor is there any mortal who does the fourth class of actions and nothing else. man may be called good and bad, and at the same time be neither good nor bad, in that he always performs the second and the third class of actions. all this, nevertheless, is a more play of words. thus we are driven to conclude that the common-sense view of human nature fails to grasp the real state of actual life. . man is not good-natured nor bad-natured, but buddha-natured. we have had already occasion to observe that zen teaches buddha-nature, which all sentient beings are endowed with. the term 'buddha-nature,'[fn# ] as accepted generally by buddhists, means a latent and undeveloped nature, which enables its owner to become enlightened when it is developed and brought to actuality.[fn# ] therefore man, according to zen, is not good-natured nor bad-natured in the relative sense, as accepted generally by common sense, of these terms, but buddha-natured in the sense of non-duality. a good person (of common sense) differs from a bad person (of common sense), not in his inborn buddha-nature, but in the extent of his expressing it in deeds. even if men are equally endowed with that nature, yet their different states of development do not allow them to express it to an equal extent in conduct. buddha-nature may be compared with the sun, and individual mind with the sky. then an enlightened mind is like the sky in fair weather, when nothing prevents the beams of the sun; while an ignorant mind is like the sky in cloudy weather, when the sun sheds faint light; and an evil mind is like the sky in stormy weather, when the sun seems to be out of existence. it comes under our daily observation that even a robber or a murderer may prove to be a good father and a loving husband to his wife and children. he is an honest fellow when he remains at home. the sun of buddha-nature gives light within the wall of his house, but without the house the darkness of foul crimes shrouds him. [fn# ] for a detailed explanation of buddha-nature, see the chapter entitled buddha-nature in sho-bo-gen-zo. [fn# ] mahaparinirvana-sutra may be said to have been written for the purpose of stating this idea. . the parable of the robber kih.[fn# ] chwang tsz (so-shi) remarks in a humorous way to the following effect: "the followers of the great robber and murderer kih asked him saying: 'has the robber also any moral principles in his proceedings?' he replied: 'what profession is there which has not its principles? that the robber comes to the conclusion without mistake that there are valuable deposits in an apartment shows his wisdom; that he is the first to enter it shows his bravery; that he makes an equal division of the plunder shows his justice; that he never betrays the fellow-robbers shows his faithfulness; and that he is generous to the followers shows his benevolence. without all these five qualities no one in the world has ever attained to become a great robber.'" the parable clearly shows us buddha-nature of the robber and murderer expresses itself as wisdom, bravery, justice, faithfulness, and benevolence in his society, and that if he did the same outside it, he would not be a great robber but a great sage. [fn# ] the parable is told for the purpose of undervaluing confucian doctrine, but the author thereby accidentally touches human nature. we do not quote it here with the same purpose as the author's. . wang yang ming (o-yo-mei) and a thief. one evening when wang was giving a lecture to a number of students on his famous doctrine that all human beings are endowed with conscience,[fn# ] a thief broke into the house and hid himself in the darkest corner. then wang declared aloud that every human being is born with conscience, and that even the thief who had got into the house had conscience just as the sages of old. the burglar, overhearing these remarks, came out to ask the forgiveness of the master; since there was no way of escape for him, and he was half-naked, he crouched behind the students. wang's willing forgiveness and cordial treatment encouraged the man to ask the question how the teacher could know such a poor wretch as he was endowed with conscience as the sages of old. wang replied: "it is your conscience that makes you ashamed of your nakedness. you yourself are a sage, if you abstain from everything that will put shame on you." we firmly believe that wang is perfectly right in telling the thief that he was not different in nature from the sages of old. it is no exaggeration. it is a saving truth. it is also a most effective way of saving men out of darkness of sin. any thief ceases to be a thief the moment he believes in his own conscience, or buddha-nature. you can never correct criminals by your severe reproach or punishment. you can save them only through your sympathy and love, by which you call forth their inborn buddha-nature. nothing can produce more pernicious effects on criminals than to treat them as if they were a different sort of people and confirm them in their conviction that they are bad-natured. we greatly regret that even in a civilized society authorities neglecting this saving truth are driving to perdition those criminals under their care, whom it is their duty to save. [fn# ] it is not conscience in the ordinary sense of the term. it is 'moral' principle, according to wang, pervading through the universe. 'it expresses itself as providence in heaven, as moral nature in man, and as mechanical laws in things.' the reader will notice that wang's conscience is the nearest approach to buddha-nature. . the bad are the good in the egg. this is not only the case with a robber or a murderer, but also with ordinary people. there are many who are honest and good in their homesteads, but turn out to be base and dishonest folk outside them. similarly, there are those who, having an enthusiastic love of their local district, act unlawfully against the interests of other districts. they are upright and honourable gentlemen within the boundary of their own district, but a gang of rascals without it. so also there are many who are washingtons and william tells in their own, but at the same time pirates and cannibals in the other countries. again, there are not a few persons who, having racial prejudices, would not allow the rays of their buddha-nature to pass through a coloured skin. there are civilized persons who are humane enough to love and esteem any human being as their brother, but so unfeeling that they think lower creatures as their proper food. the highly enlightened person, however, cannot but sympathize with human beings and lower creatures as well, as shakya muni felt all sentient beings to be his children. these people are exactly the same in their buddha-nature, but a wide difference obtains among them in the extent of their expressing that nature in deeds. if thieves and murderers be called bad-natured, reformers and revolutionists should be called so. if, on the other hand, patriotism and loyalty be said to be good, treason and insurrection should likewise be so. therefore it is evident that a so-called good person is none but one who acts to promote wider interests of life, and a so-called bad person is none but one who acts to advance narrower ones. in other words, the bad are the good in the egg, so to speak, and the good are the bad on the wing. as the bird in the egg is one and the same as the bird on the wing, so the good in the egg is entirely of the same nature as the bad on the wing. to show that human nature transcends the duality of good and evil, the author of avatamsaka-sutra declares that 'all beings are endowed with the wisdom and virtue of tathagata.' kwei fung (kei-ho) also says: "all sentient beings have the real spirit of original enlightenment (within themselves). it is unchanging and pure. it is eternally bright and clear, and conscious. it is also named buddha-nature, or tathagata-garbha." . the great person and small person. for these reasons zen proposes to call man buddha-natured or good-natured in a sense transcendental to the duality of good and bad. it conveys no sense to call some individuals good in case there is no bad individual. for the sake of convenience, however, zen calls man good, as is exemplified by shakya muni, who was wont to address his hearers as 'good men and women,' and by the sixth patriarch in china, who called everybody 'a good and wise one.' this does not imply in the least that all human beings are virtuous, sinless, and saintly-nay, the world is full of vices and crimes. it is an undeniable fact that life is the warfare of good against evil, and many a valiant hero has fallen in the foremost ranks. it is curious, however, to notice that the champions on the both sides are fighting for the same cause. there can be no single individual in the world who is fighting against his own cause or interest, and the only possible difference between one party and the other consists in the extent of interests which they fight for. so-called bad persons, who are properly designated as 'small persons' by chinese and japanese scholars, express their buddha-nature to a small extent mostly within their own doors, while so-called good persons, or 'great persons' as the oriental scholars call them, actualize their buddha-nature to a large extent in the whole sphere of a country, or of the whole earth. enlightened consciousness, or buddha-nature, as we have seen in the previous chapter, is the mind of mind and the consciousness of consciousness, universal spirit awakened in individual minds, which realizes the universal brotherhood of all beings and the unity of individual lives. it is the real self, the guiding principle, the original physiognomy[fn# ] (nature), as it is called by zen, of man. this real self lies dormant under the threshold of consciousness in the minds of the confused; consequently, each of them is inclined to regard petty individual as his self, and to exert himself to further the interests of the individual self even at the cost of those of the others. he is 'the smallest person' in the world, for his self is reduced to the smallest extent possible. some of the less confused identify their selves with their families, and feel happy or unhappy in proportion as their families are happy or unhappy, for the sake of which they sacrifice the interests of other families. on the other hand, some of the more enlightened unite their selves through love and compassion with their whole tribe or countrymen, and consider the rise or fall of the tribe or of the country as their own, and willingly sacrifice their own lives, if need be, for the cause of the tribe or the country. when they are fully enlightened, they can realize the unity of all sentient lives, and be ever merciful and helpful towards all creatures. they are 'the greatest persons' on earth, because their selves are enlarged to the greatest extent possible. [fn# ] the expression first occurs in ho-bo-dan-kyo of the sixth patriarch, and is frequently used by later zenists. . the theory of buddha-nature adequately explains the ethical states of man. this theory of buddha-nature enables us to get an insight into the origin of morality. the first awakening of buddha-nature within man is the very beginning of morality, and man's ethical progress is the gradually widening expression of that nature in conduct. but for it morality is impossible for man. but for it not only moral culture or discipline, but education and social improvement must be futile. again, the theory adequately explains the ethical facts that the standard of morality undergoes change in different times and places, that good and bad are so inseparably knit together, and that the bad at times become good all on a sudden, and the good grow bad quite unexpectedly. first, it goes without saying that the standard of morality is raised just in proportion as buddha-nature or real self extends and amplifies itself in different times and places. secondly, since good is buddha-nature actualized to a large extent, and bad is also buddha-nature actualized to a small extent, the existence of the former presupposes that of the latter, and the mess of duality can never be got rid of. thirdly, the fact that the bad become good under certain circumstances, and the good also become bad often unexpectedly, can hardly be explained by the dualistic theory, because if good nature be so arbitrarily turned into bad and bad nature into good, the distinction of good and bad nature has no meaning whatever. according to the theory of buddha-nature, the fact that the good become bad or the bad become good, does not imply in the least a change of nature, but the widening or the narrowing of its actualization. so that no matter how morally degenerated one may be, he can uplift himself to a high ethical plane by the widening of his self, and at the same time no matter how morally exalted one may be, he can descend to the level of the brute by the narrowing of his self. to be an angel or to be a devil rests with one's degrees of enlightenment and free choice. this is why such infinite varieties exist both among the good and the bad. this is why the higher the peak of enlightenment the people climb, the more widely the vista of moral possibilities open before them. . buddha-nature is the common source of morals. furthermore, buddha-nature or real self, being the seat of love and the nucleus of sincerity, forms the warp and woof of all moral actions. he is an obedient son who serves his parents with sincerity and love. he is a loyal subject who serves his master with sincerity and love. a virtuous wife is she who loves her husband with her sincere heart. a trustworthy friend is he who keeps company with others with sincerity and love. a man of righteousness is he who leads a life of sincerity and love. generous and humane is he who sympathizes with his fellow-men with his sincere heart. veracity, chastity, filial piety, loyalty, righteousness, generosity, humanity, and what not-all-this is no other than buddha-nature applied to various relationships of human brotherhood. this is the common source, ever fresh and inexhaustible, of morality that fosters and furthers the interests of all. to-ju[fn# ] expresses the similar idea as follows: "there exists the inexhaustible source (of morality) within me. it is an invaluable treasure. it is called bright nature of man. it is peerless and surpasses all jewels. the aim of learning is to bring out this bright nature. this is the best thing in the world. real happiness can only be secured by it." thus, in the first place, moral conduct, which is nothing but the expression of buddha-nature in action, implies the assertion of self and the furtherance of one's interests. on this point is based the half-truth of the egoistic theory. secondly, it is invariably accompanied by a feeling of pleasure or satisfaction when it fulfils its end. this accidental concomitance is mistaken for its essence by superficial observers who adhere to the hedonistic theory. thirdly, it conduces to the furtherance of the material and spiritual interests of man, and it led the utilitarians to the confusion of the result with the cause of morality. fourthly, it involves the control or sacrifice of the lower and ignoble self of an individual in order to realize his higher and nobler self. this gave rise to the half-truth of the ascetic theory of morality. [fn# ] to-ju naka-e (died a.d. ), the founder of the japanese wang school of confucianism, known as the sage of omi. . the parable of a drunkard. now the question arises, if all human beings are endowed with buddha-nature, why have they not come naturally to be enlightened? to answer this question, the indian mahayanists[fn# ] told the parable of a drunkard who forgets the precious gems put in his own pocket by one of his friends. the man is drunk with the poisonous liquor of selfishness, led astray by the alluring sight of the sensual objects, and goes mad with anger, lust, and folly. thus he is in a state of moral poverty, entirely forgetting the precious gem of buddha-nature within him. to be in an honourable position in society as the owner of that valuable property, he must first get rid himself of the influence of the liquor of self, and detach himself from sensual objects, gain control over his passion, restore peace and sincerity to his mind, and illumine his whole existence by his inborn divine light. otherwise he has to remain in the same plight to all eternity. [fn# ] mahaparinirvana-sutra. lot us avail ourselves of another figure to explain more clearly the point at issue. universal spirit may fitly be likened to the universal water, or water circulating through the whole earth. this universal water exists everywhere. it exists in the tree. it exists in the grass. it exists in the mountain. it exists in the river. it exists in the sea. it exists in the air. it exists in the cloud. thus man is not only surrounded by water on all sides, but it penetrates his very body. but be can never appease his thirst without drinking water. in like manner universal spirit exists everywhere. it exists in the tree. it exists in the grass. it exists in the ground. it exists in the mountain. it exists in the river. it exists in the sea. it exists in the bird. it exists in the beast. thus man is not merely surrounded by spirit on all sides, but it permeates through his whole existence. but he can never be enlightened unless he awakens it within him by means of meditation. to drink water is to drink the universal water; to awaken buddha-nature is to be conscious of universal spirit. therefore, to get enlightened we have to believe that all beings are buddha-natured--that is, absolutely good-natured in the sense that transcends the duality of good and bad. "one day," to cite an example, "pan shan (ban-zan) happened to pass by a meat-shop. he heard a customer saying: 'give me a pound of fresh meat.' to which the shopkeeper, putting down his knife, replied: certainly, sir. could there be any meat that is not fresh in my shop?' pan shan, hearing these remarks, was enlightened at once." . shakya muni and the prodigal son. a great trouble with us is that we do not believe in half the good that we are born with. we are just like the only son of a well-to-do, as the author of saddharma-pundarika-sutra[fn# ] tells us, who, being forgetful of his rich inheritance, leaves his home and leads a life of hand-to-mouth as a coolie. how miserable it is to see one, having no faith in his noble endowment, burying the precious gem of buddha-nature into the foul rubbish of vices and crimes, wasting his excellent genius in the exertion that is sure to disgrace his name, falling a prey to bitter remorse and doubt, and casting himself away into the jaw of perdition. shakya muni, full of fatherly love towards all beings, looked with compassion on us, his prodigal son, and used every means to restore the half-starved man to his home. it was for this that he left the palace and the beloved wife and son, practised his self-mortification and prolonged meditation, attained to enlightenment, and preached dharma for forty-nine years; in other words, all his strength and effort were focussed on that single aim, which was to bring the prodigal son to his rich mansion of buddha-nature. he taught not only by words, but by his own actual example, that man has buddha-nature, by the unfoldment of which he can save himself from the miseries of life and death, and bring himself to a higher realm than gods. when we are enlightened, or when universal spirit awakens within us, we open the inexhaustible store of virtues and excellencies, and can freely make use of them at our will. [fn# ] see 'sacred books of the east,' vol. xxi., chap. iv., pp. - . . the parable of the monk and the stupid woman. the confused or unenlightened may be compared with a monk and a stupid woman in a japanese parable which runs as follows: "one evening a monk (who was used to have his head shaved clean), getting drunk against the moral precepts, visited a woman, known as a blockhead, at her house. no sooner had he got into her room than the female fell asleep so soundly that the monk could not wake her nap. thereupon he made up his mind to use every possible means to arouse her, and searched and searched all over the room for some instrument that would help him in his task of arousing her from death-like slumber. fortunately, he found a razor in one of the drawers of her mirror stand. with it he gave a stroke to her hair, but she did not stir a whit. then came another stroke, and she snored like thunder. the third and fourth strokes came, but with no better result. and at last her head was shaven clean, yet still she slept on. the next morning when she awoke, she could not find her visitor, the monk, as he had left the house in the previous night. 'where is my visitor, where my dear monk?' she called aloud, and waking in a state of somnambulation looked for him in vain, repeating the outcry. when at length her hand accidentally touched her shaven head, she mistook it for that of her visitor, and exclaimed: 'here you are, my dear, where am i myself gone then?" a great trouble with the confused is their forgetting of real self or buddha-nature, and not knowing 'where it is gone.' duke ngai, of the state of lu, once said to confucius: "one of my subjects, sir, is so much forgetful that he forgot to take his wife when be changed his residence." "that is not much, my lord," said the sage, "the emperors kieh[fn# ] and cheu[fn# ] forgot their own selves."[fn# ] [fn# ] the last emperor of the ha dynasty, notorious for his vices. his reign was - b.c. [fn# ] the last emperor of the yin dynasty, one of the worst despots. his reign was - b.c. [fn# ] ko-shi-ke-go. . 'each smile a hymn, each kindly word a prayer.' the glorious sun of buddha-nature shines in the zenith of enlightened consciousness, but men still dream a dream of illusion. bells and clocks of the universal church proclaim the dawn of bodhi, yet men, drunk with the liquors of the three poisons[fn# ] still slumber in the darkness of sin. let us pray to buddha, in whose bosom we live, for the sake of our own salvation. let us invoke buddha, whose boundless mercy ever besets us, for the sake of joy and peace of all our fellow-beings. let us adore him through our sympathy towards the poor, through our kindness shown to the suffering, through our thought of the sublime and the good. "o brother man, fold to thy heart thy brother; where pity dwells, the peace of god is there; to worship rightly is to love each other, each smile a hymn, each kindly word a prayer." --whittier. let, then, your heart be so pure that you may not be unworthy of the sunshine beaming upon you the light of universal spirit. let your thought be so noble that you may deserve fair flowers blooming before you, reminding you of merciful buddha. let your life be so good that you may not be ashamed of yourself in the presence of the blessed one. this is the piety of mahayanists, especially of zenists. [fn# ] lust, anger, and folly. . the world is in the making. our assertion is far from assuming that life is now complete, and is in its best state. on the contrary, it is full of defects and shortcomings. we must not be puffed up with modern civilization, however great victory it has scored for its side. beyond all doubt man is still in his cradle. he often stretches forth his hands to get at his higher ideal, yet is still satisfied with worthless playthings. it is too glaring a fact to be overlooked by us that faith in religion is dying out in the educated circles of society, that insincerity, cowardice, and double-tongue are found holding high positions in almost ever community, that lucrese and ezzeling are looking down upon the starving multitude from their luxurious palace, that mammon and bacchus are sometimes preying on their living victims, that even religion often sides with contention and piety takes part in cruelty, that anarchy is ever ready to spring on the crowned beings, that philosophy is disposed to turn the deaf ear to the petition of peace, while science provides fuel for the fire of strife. was the golden age of man, then, over in the remote past? is the doomsday coming instead? do you bear the trumpet call? do you feel the earth tremble? no, absolutely no, the golden age is not passed. it is yet to come. there are not a few who think that the world is in completion, and the creator has finished his work. we witness, however, that he is still working and working, for actually we hear his hammer-strokes resounding through heaven above and earth beneath. does he not show us new materials for his building? does he not give new forms to his design? does he not surprise us with novelties, extraordinaries, and mysteries? in a word, the world is in progress, not in retrogression. a stream does not run in a straight line. it now turns to the right, now to the left, now leaps down a precipice, now waters rich fields, now runs back towards its source; but it is destined to find its outlet in the ocean. so it is with the stream of life. it now leaps down the precipice of revolution. now it enriches the fertile field of civilization. now it expands itself into a glassy lake of peace. now it forms the dangerous whirlpool of strife. but its course is always toward the ocean of enlightenment, in which the gems of equality and freedom, jewels of truth and beauty, and treasures of wisdom and bliss can be had. . the progress and hope of life. how many myriads of years have passed since the germs of life first made appearance on earth none can tell; how many thousands of summers and winters it has taken to develop itself into higher animals, no scientist can calculate exactly. slowly but steadily it has taken its swerving course, and ascending stop by step the series of evolution, has reached at length the plane of the rational animal. we cannot tell how many billions of years it takes to develop ourselves and become beings higher than man himself, yet we firmly believe that it is possible for us to take the same unerring course as the organic germs took in the past. existing humanity is not the same as primitive one. it is quite another race. our desires and hopes are entirely different from those of primitive man. what was gold for them is now iron for us. our thoughts and beliefs are what they never dreamed of. of our knowledge they had almost none. that which they kept in veneration we trample under our feet. things they worshipped as deities now serve us as our slaves. things that troubled and tortured them we now turn into utilities. to say nothing of the customs and manners and mode of living which underwent extraordinary change, we are of a race in body and mind other than the primitive forefathers of good old days. in addition to this we have every reason to believe in the betterment of life. let us cast a glance to the existing state of the world. while the turco-italian war was raising its ferocious outcry, the chinese revolution lifted its head before the trembling throne. who can tell whether another sanguinary affair will not break out before the bulgarian bloodshed comes to an end? still we believe that, as fire drives out fire, to borrow shakespeare's phrase, so war is driving out war. as an ocean, which separated two nations in the past, serves to unite them now, so a war, which separated two people in the past, brings them to unity now. it goes without saying, that every nation groans under the burden of cannons and warships, and heartily desires peace. no nation can willingly wage war against any other nation. it is against the national conscience. it is no exaggeration to say the world is wholly the ear to hear the news from the goddess of peace. a time will surely come, if our purpose be steady and our resolution firm, when universal peace will be restored, and shakya muni's precept, 'not to kill,' will be realized by all mankind. . the betterment of life. again, people nowadays seem to feel keenly the wound of the economical results of war, but they are unfeeling to its moral injuries. as elements have their affinities, as bodies have their attractions, as creatures have their instinct to live together, so men have their inborn mutual love. 'god divided man into men that they might help each other.' their strength lies in their mutual help, their pleasure is in their mutual love, and their perfection is in their giving and receiving of alternate good. therefore shakya muni says: "be merciful to all living beings." to take up arms against any other person is unlawful for any individual. it is the violation of the universal law of life. we do not deny that there are not a few who are so wretched that they rejoice in their crimes, nor that there is any person but has more or less stain on his character, nor that the means of committing crimes are multiplied in proportion as modern civilization advances; yet still we believe that our social life is ever breaking down our wolfish disposition that we inherited from our brute ancestors, and education is ever wearing out our cannibalistic nature which we have in common with wild animals. on the one hand, the signs of social morals are manifest in every direction, such as asylums for orphans, poorhouses, houses of correction, lodgings for the penniless, asylums for the poor, free hospitals, hospitals for domestic animals, societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, schools for the blind and the dumb, asylums for the insane, and so forth; on the other hand, various discoveries and inventions have been made that may contribute to the social improvement, such as the discovery of the x rays and of radium, the invention of the wireless telegraph and that of the aeroplane and what not. furthermore, spiritual wonders such as clairvoyance, clairaudience, telepathy, etc., remind us of the possibilities of further spiritual unfoldment in man which he never dreamed of. thus life is growing richer and nobler step by step, and becoming more and more hopeful as we advance in the way of buddha. . the buddha of mercy. milton says: "virtue may be assailed, but never hurt; surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled. but evil on itself shall back recoil, and mix no more with goodness. if this fail, the pillared firmament is rottenness, and earth's base built on stubble." the world is built on the foundation of morality, which is another name for universal spirit, and moral order sustains it. we human beings, consciously or unconsciously, were, are, and will be at work to bring the world into perfection. this idea is allegorically expressed in the buddhist sutra,[fn# ] which details the advent of a merciful buddha named maitreya in the remote future. at that time, it says, there will be no steep hills, no filthy places, no epidemic, no famine, no earthquake, no storm, no war, no revolution, no bloodshed, no cruelty, and no suffering; the roads will be paved smoothly, grass and trees always blooming, birds ever singing, men contented and happy; all sentient beings will worship the buddha of mercy, accept his doctrine, and attain to enlightenment. this prophecy will be fulfilled, according to the sutra, , , , years after the death of shakya muni. this evidently shows us that the mahayanist's aim of life is to bring out man's inborn light of buddha-nature to illumine the world, to realize the universal brotherhood of all sentient beings, to attain to enlightenment, and to enjoy peace and joy to which universal spirit leads us. [fn# ] see nanjo's catalogue, nos. - . chapter vi enlightenment . enlightenment is beyond description and analysis. in the foregoing chapters we have had several occasions to refer to the central problem of zen or enlightenment, whose content it is futile to attempt to explain or analyze. we must not explain or analyze it, because by doing so we cannot but mislead the reader. we can as well represent enlightenment by means of explanation or analysis as we do personality by snapshots or by anatomical operations. as our inner life, directly experienced within us, is anything but the shape of the head, or the features of the face, or the posture of the body, so enlightenment experienced by zenists at the moment of their highest samadhi[fn# ] is anything but the psychological analysis of mental process, or the epistemological explanation of cognition, or the philosophical generalization of concepts. enlightenment can be realized only by the enlightened, and baffles every attempt to describe it, even by the enlightened themselves. the effort of the confused to guess at enlightenment is often likened by the zenists to the effort of the blind who feel an elephant to know what it looks like. some of them who happen to feel the trunk would declare it is like a rope, but those who happen to feel the belly would declare it is like a huge drum; while those who happen to feel the feet would declare it is like the trunk of a tree. but none of these conjectures can approach the living elephant. [fn# ] abstract contemplation, which the zenists distinguish from samadhi, practised by the brahmins. the author of 'an outline of buddhist sects' points out the distinction, saying: "contemplation of outside religionists is practised with the heterodox view that the lower worlds (the worlds for men, beasts, etc.) are disgusting, but the upper worlds (the worlds for devas) are desirable; contemplation of common people (ordinary lay believers of buddhism) is practised with the belief in the law of karma, and also with disgust (for the lower worlds) and desire (for the upper worlds); contemplation of hinayana is practised with an insight into the truth of anatman (non-soul); contemplation of mahayana is practised with an insight of unreality of atman (soul) as well as of dharma (thing); contemplation of the highest perfection is practised with the view that mind is pure in its nature, it is endowed with unpolluted wisdom, free from passion, and it is no other than buddha himself." . enlightenment implies an insight into the nature of self. we cannot pass over, however, this weighty problem without saying a word. we shall try in this chapter to present enlightenment before the reader in a roundabout way, just as the painter gives the fragmentary sketches of a beautiful city, being unable to give even a bird's-eye view of it. enlightenment, first of all, implies an insight into the nature of self. it is an emancipation of mind from illusion concerning self. all kinds of sin take root deep in the misconception of self, and putting forth the branches of lust, anger, and folly, throw dark shadows on life. to extirpate this misconception buddhism[fn# ] strongly denies the existence of the individual soul as conceived by common sense-that is, that unchanging spiritual entity provided with sight, hearing, touch, smell, feeling, thought, imagination, aspiration, etc., which survives the body. it teaches us that there is no such thing as soul, and that the notion of soul is a gross illusion. it treats of body as a temporal material form of life doomed to be destroyed by death and reduced to its elements again. it maintains that mind is also a temporal spiritual form of life, behind which there is no immutable soul. [fn# ] both mahayana and hinayana buddhism teach the doctrine of anatman, or non-self. it is the denial of soul as conceived by common sense, and of atman as conceived by indian heterodox thinkers. some mahayanists believe in the existence of real self instead of individual self, as we see in mahaparinirvana-sutra, whose author says: "there is real self in non-self." it is worthy of note that the hinayanists set forth purity, pleasure, atman, and eternity, as the four great misconceptions about life, while the same author regards them as the four great attributes of nirvana itself. an illusory mind tends either to regard body as self and to yearn after its material interests, or to believe mind dependent on soul as ego. those who are given to sensual pleasures, consciously or unconsciously, bold body to be the self, and remain the life-long slave to the objects of sense. those who regard mind as dependent on soul as the self, on the other hand, undervalue body as a mere tool with which the soul works, and are inclined to denounce life as if unworthy of living. we must not undervalue body, nor must we overestimate mind. there is no mind isolated from body, nor is there any body separated from mind. every activity of mind produces chemical and physiological changes in the nerve-centres, in the organs, and eventually in the whole body; while every activity of body is sure to bring out the corresponding change in the mental function, and eventually in the whole personality. we have the inward experience of sorrow when we have simultaneously the outward appearance of tears and of pallor; when we have the outward appearance of the fiery eyes and short breath, we have simultaneously the inward feeling of anger. thus body is mind observed outwardly in its relation to the senses; mind is body inwardly experienced in its relation to introspection. who can draw a strict line of demarcation between mind and body? we should admit, so far as our present knowledge is concerned, that mind, the intangible, has been formed to don a garment of matter in order to become an intelligible existence at all; matter, the solid, has faded under examination into formlessness, as that of mind. zen believes in the identification of mind and body, as do-gen[fn# ] says: "body is identical with mind; appearance and reality are one and the same thing." bergson denies the identification of mind and body, saying:[fn# ] "it (experience) shows us the interdependence of the mental and the physical, the necessity of a certain cerebral substratum for the psychical state-nothing more. from the fact that two things are mutually dependent, it does not follow that they are equivalent. because a certain screw is necessary for a certain machine, because the machine works when the screw is there and stops when the screw is taken away, we do not say that the screw is equivalent of the machine." bergson's simile of a screw and a machine is quite inadequate to show the interdependence of mind and body, because the screw does cause the machine to work, but the machine does not cause the screw to work; so that their relation is not interdependence. on the contrary, body causes mind to work, and at the same time mind causes body to work; so that their relation is perfectly interdependent, and the relation is not that of an addition of mind to body, or of body to mind, as the screw is added to the machine. bergson must have compared the working of the machine with mind, and the machine itself with body, if be wanted to show the real fact. moreover, he is not right in asserting that "from the fact that two things are mutually dependent, it does not follow that they are equivalent," because there are several kinds of interdependence, in some of which two things can be equivalent. for instance, bricks, mutually dependent in their forming an arch, cannot be equivalent one with another; but water and waves, being mutually dependent, can be identified. in like manner fire and heat, air and wind, a machine and its working, mind and body.[fn# ] [fn# ] the master strongly condemns the immortality of the soul as the heterodox doctrine in his sho-bo-gen-zo. the same argument is found in mu-chu-mon-do, by mu-so koku-shi. [fn# ] 'creative evolution,' pp. , . [fn# ] bergson, arguing against the dependence of the mind on brain, says: "that there is a close connection between a state of consciousness and the brain we do not dispute. but there is also a close connection between a coat and the nail on which it hangs, for if the nail is pulled out, the coat will fall to the ground. shall we say, then, that the shape of the nail gave the shape of the coat, or in any way corresponds to it? no more are we entitled to conclude, because the psychical fact is hung on to a cerebral state, that there is any parallelism between the two series, psychical and physiological." we have to ask, in what respects does the interrelation between mind and body resemble the relation between a coat and a nail? . the irrationality of the belief of immortality. occidental minds believe in a mysterious entity under the name of soul, just as indian thinkers believe in the so-called subtle body entirely distinct from the gross body of flesh and blood. soul, according to this belief, is an active principle that unites body and mind so as to form an harmonious whole of mental as well as bodily activities. and it acts through the instrumentality of the mind and body in the present life, and enjoys an eternal life beyond the grave. it is on this soul that individual immortality is based. it is immortal self. now, to say nothing of the origin of soul, this long-entertained belief is hardly good for anything. in the first place, it throws no light upon the relation of mind and body, because soul is an empty name for the unity of mind and body, and serves to explain nothing. on the contrary, it adds another mystery to the already mysterious relationships between matter and spirit. secondly, soul should be conceived as a psychical individual, subject to spacial determinations--but since it has to be deprived by death of its body which individualizes it, it will cease to be individuality after death, to the disappointment of the believer. how could you think anything purely spiritual and formless existing without blending together with other things? thirdly, it fails to gratify the desire, cherished by the believer, of enjoying eternal life, because soul has to lose its body, the sole important medium through which it may enjoy life. fourthly, soul is taken as a subject matter to receive in the future life the reward or the punishment from god for our actions in this life; but the very idea of eternal punishment is inconsistent with the boundless love of god. fifthly, it is beyond all doubt that soul is conceived as an entity, which unifies various mental faculties and exists as the foundation of individual personality. but the existence of such soul is quite incompatible with the well-known pathological fact that it is possible for the individual to have double or treble or multiple personalities. thus the belief in the existence of soul conceived by the common sense turns out not only to be irrational, but a useless encumbrance on the religious mind. therefore zen declares that there is no such thing as soul, and that mind and body are one. hwui chung (ye-chu), a famous disciple of the sixth patriarch in china, to quote an example, one day asked a monk: "where did you come from?" "i came, sir, from the south," replied the man. "what doctrine do the masters of the south teach?" asked hwui chung again. "they teach, sir, that body is mortal, but mind is immortal," was the answer. "that," said the master, "is the heterodox doctrine of the atman!" "how do you, sir," questioned the monk, "teach about that?" "i teach that the body and mind are one," was the reply.[fn# ] [fn# ] for further explanation, see sho-bo-gen-zo and mu-chu-mon-do. fiske, [fn# ] in his argument against materialism, blames the denial of immortality, saying: "the materialistic assumption that there is no such state of things, and that the life of the soul ends accordingly with the life of the body, is perhaps the most colossal instance of baseless assumption that is known to the history of philosophy." but we can say with equal force that the common-sense assumption that the life of soul continues beyond the grave is, perhaps, the most colossal instance of baseless assumption that is known to the history of thought, because, there being no scientific evidences that give countenance to the assumption, even the spiritualists themselves hesitate to assert the existence of a ghost or soul. again he[fn# ] says: "with this illegitimate hypothesis of annihilation the materialist transgresses the bounds of experience quite as widely as the poet who sings of the new jerusalem with its river of life and its street of gold. scientifically speaking, there is not a particle of evidence for either view." this is as much as to say there is not a particle of evidence, scientifically speaking, for the common-sense view of soul, because the poet's description of the new jerusalem is nothing but the result of the common-sense belief of immortality. [fn# ] 'the destiny of man,' p. . [fn# ] 'the destiny of man,' pp. , . . the examination of the notion of self. the belief in immortality is based on the strong instinct of self-preservation that calls forth an insatiable longing for longevity. it is another form of egoism, one of the relics of our brute forefathers. we must bear in mind that this illusion of the individual self is the foundation on which every form of immorality has its being. i challenge my readers to find in the whole history of mankind any crime not based on egoism. evil-doers have been as a rule pleasure-hunters, money-seekers, seekers after self-interests, characterized by lust, folly, and cruelty. has there been anyone who committed theft that he might further the interests of his villagers? has there been any paramour who disgraced himself that lie might help his neighbours? has there been any traitor who performed the ignoble conduct to promote the welfare of his own country or society at large? to get enlightened, therefore, we have to correct, first of all, our notions concerning self. individual body and mind are not the only important constituents of self. there are many other indispensable elements in the notion of self. for instance, i have come into existence as another form of my parents. i am theirs, and may justly be called the reincarnation of them. and again, my father is another form of his parents; my mother of hers; his and her parents of theirs; and ad infinitum. in brief, all my forefathers live and have their being in me. i cannot help, therefore, thinking that my physical state is the result of the sum total of my good and bad actions in the past lives i led in the persons of my forefathers, and of the influence i received therein;[fn# ] and that my psychical state is the result of that which i received, felt, imagined, conceived, experienced, and thought in my past existences in the persons of my ancestors. [fn# ] this is the law of karma. besides this, my brothers, my sisters, my neighbours--nay, all my follow-men and fellow-women are no other than the reincarnation of their parents and forefathers, who are also mine. the same blood invigorated the king as well as the beggar; the same nerve energized the white as well as the black men; the same consciousness vitalized the wise as well as the unwise. impossible it is to conceive myself independent of my fellow-men and fellow-women, for they are mine and i am theirs--that is, i live and move in them, and they live and move in me. it is bare nonsense to say that i go to school, not to be educated as a member of society, but simply to gratify my individual desire for knowledge; or that i make a fortune, not to lead the life of a well-to-do in society, but to satisfy my individual money-loving instinct; or that i seek after truth, neither to do good to my contemporaries nor to the future generations, but only for my individual curiosity or that i live neither to live with my family nor with my friends nor with anyone else, but to live my individual life. it is as gross absurdity to say that i am an individual absolutely independent of society as to say i am a husband with no wife, or i am a son to no parents. whatever i do directly or indirectly i contribute to the common fortune of man; whatever anyone else does directly or indirectly determines my fate. therefore we must realize that our selves necessarily include other members of the community, while other members' selves necessarily comprehend us. . nature is the mother of all things. furthermore, man has come into existence out of nature. he is her child. she provided him food, raiment, and shelter. she nourishes him, strengthens him, and vitalizes him. at the same time she disciplines, punishes, and instructs him. his body is of her own formation, his knowledge is of her own laws, and his activities are the responses to her own addresses to him. modern civilization is said by some to be the conquest of man over nature; but, in fact, it is his faithful obedience to her. "bacon truly said," says eucken,[fn# ] "that to rule nature man must first serve her. he forgot to add that, as her ruler, he is still destined to go on serving her." she can never be attacked by any being unless he acts in strict conformity to her laws. to accomplish anything against her law is as impossible as to catch fishes in a forest, or to make bread of rock. how many species of animals have perished owing to their inability to follow her steps! how immense fortunes have been lost in vain from man's ignorance of her order! how many human beings disappeared on earth from their disobedience to her unbending will! she is, nevertheless, true to those who obey her rules. has not science proved that she is truthful? has not art found that she is beautiful? [fn# ] eucken's 'philosophy of life,' by w. r. royce gibbon, p. . has not philosophy announced that she is spiritual? has not religion proclaimed that she is good? at all events, she is the mother of all beings. she lives in all things and they live in her. all that she possesses is theirs, and all that they want she supplies. her life is the same vitality that stirs all sentient beings. chwang tsz[fn# ] (so-shi) is right when he says: "heaven, earth, and i were produced together, and all things and i are one." and again: "if all things be regarded with love, heaven and earth are one with me." sang chao (so-jo) also says: "heaven and earth are of the same root as we. all things in the world are of one substance with me."[fn# ] [fn# ] chwang tsz, vol. i., p. . [fn# ] this is a favourite subject of discussion by zenists. . real self. if there be no individual soul either in mind or body, where does personality lie? what is real self? how does it differ from soul? self is living entity, not immutable like soul, but mutable and ever-changing life, which is body when observed by senses, and which is mind when experienced by introspection. it is not an entity lying behind mind and body, but life existent as the union of body and mind. it existed in our forefathers in the past, is existing in the present, and will exist in the future generations. it also discloses itself to some measure in vegetables and animals, and shadows itself forth in inorganic nature. it is cosmic life and cosmic spirit, and at the same time individual life and individual spirit. it is one and the same life which embraces men and nature. it is the self-existent, creative, universal principle that moves on from eternity to eternity. as such it is called mind or self by zenists. pan shan (ban-zan) says: "the moon of mind comprehends all the universe in its light." a man asked chang sha (cho-sha): "how can you turn the phenomenal universe into self ?" "how can you turn self into the phenomenal universe?" returned the master. when we get the insight into this self, we are able to have the open sesame to the mysteries of the universe, because to know the nature of a drop of water is to know the nature of the river, the lake, and the ocean--nay, even of vapour, mist, and cloud; in other words, to get an insight into individual life is the key to the secret of universal life. we must not confine self within the poor little person called body. that is the root of the poorest and most miserable egoism. we should expand that egoism into family-egoism, then into nation-egoism, then into race-egoism, then into human-egoism, then into living-being-egoism, and lastly into universe-egoism, which is not egoism at all. thus we deny the immortality of soul as conceived by common sense, but assume immortality of the great soul, which animates, vitalizes, and spiritualizes all sentient beings. it is hinayana buddhism that first denied the existence of atman or self so emphatically inculcated in the upanisads, and paved the way for the general conception of universal self, with the eulogies of which almost every page of mahayana books is filled. . the awakening of the innermost wisdom. having set ourselves free from the misconception of self, next we must awaken our innermost wisdom, pure and divine, called the mind of buddha,[fn# ] or bodhi,[fn# ] or prajnya[fn# ] by zen masters. it is the divine light, the inner heaven, the key to all moral treasures, the centre of thought and consciousness, the source of all influence and power, the seat of kindness, justice, sympathy, impartial love, humanity, and mercy, the measure of all things. when this innermost wisdom is fully awakened, we are able to realize that each and everyone of us is identical in spirit, in essence, in nature with the universal life or buddha, that each ever lives face to face with buddha, that each is beset by the abundant grace of the blessed one, that he arouses his moral nature, that he opens his spiritual eyes, that he unfolds his new capacity, that he appoints his mission, and that life is not an ocean of birth, disease, old age, and death, nor the vale of tears, but the holy temple of buddha, the pure land,[fn# ] where be can enjoy the bliss of nirvana. [fn# ] zen is often called the sect of buddha-mind, as it lays stress on the awakening of the mind of buddha. the words 'the mind of buddha' were taken from a passage in lankavatara-sutra. [fn# ] that knowledge by which one becomes enlightened. [fn# ] supreme wisdom. [fn# ] sukhavati, or the land of bliss. then our minds go through an entire revolution. we are no more troubled by anger and hatred, no more bitten by envy and ambition, no more stung by sorrow and chagrin, no more overwhelmed by melancholy and despair. not that we become passionless or simply intellectual, but that we have purified passions, which, instead of troubling us, inspire us with noble aspirations, such as anger and hatred against injustice, cruelty, and dishonesty, sorrow and lamentation for human frailty, mirth and joy for the welfare of follow-beings, pity and sympathy for suffering creatures. the same change purifies our intellect. scepticism and sophistry give way to firm conviction; criticism and hypothesis to right judgment; and inference and argument to realization. what we merely observed before we now touch with heart as well. what we knew in relation of difference before we now understand in relation of unity as well. how things happen was our chief concern before, but now we consider as well bow much value they have. what was outside us before now comes within us. what was dead and indifferent before grows now alive and lovable to us. what was insignificant and empty before becomes now important, and has profound meaning. wherever we go we find beauty; whomever we meet we find good; whatever we get we receive with gratitude. this is the reason why the zenists not only regarded all their fellow-beings as their benefactors, but felt gratitude even towards fuel and water. the present writer knows a contemporary zenist who would not drink even a cup of water without first making a salutation to it. such an attitude of zen toward things may well be illustrated by the following example: sueh fung (sep-po) and kin shan (kin-zan), once travelling through a mountainous district, saw a leaf of the rape floating down the stream. thereon kin shan said: "let us go up, dear brother, along the stream that we may find a sage living up on the mountain. i hope we shall find a good teacher in him." "no," replied sueh fung, "for he cannot be a sage who wastes even a leaf of the rape. he will be no good teacher for us." . zen is not nihilistic. zen judged from ancient zen masters' aphorisms may seem, at the first sight, to be idealistic in an extreme form, as they say: "mind is buddha" or, "buddha is mind," or, "there is nothing outside mind," or, "three worlds are of but one mind." and it may also appear to be nihilistic, as they say: "there has been nothing since all eternity," "by illusion you see the castle of the three worlds"; "by enlightenment you see but emptiness in ten directions."[fn# ] in reality, however, zen[fn# ] is neither idealistic nor nihilistic. zen makes use of the nihilistic idea of hinayana buddhism, and calls its students' attention to the change and evanescence of life and of the world, first to destroy the error of immutation, next to dispel the attachment to the sensual objects. [fn# ] these words were repeatedly uttered by chinese and japanese zenists of all ages. chwen hih (fu-dai-shi) expressed this very idea in his sin wang ming (shin-o-mei) at the time of bodhidharma. [fn# ] the rin-zai teachers mostly make use of the doctrine of unreality of all things, as taught in prajnya-paramita-sutras. we have to note that there are some differences between the mahayana doctrine of unreality and the hinayana doctrine of unreality. it is a misleading tendency of our intellect to conceive things as if they were immutable and constant. it often leaves changing and concrete individual objects out of consideration, and lays stress on the general, abstract, unchanging aspect of things. it is inclined to be given to generalization and abstraction. it often looks not at this thing or at that thing, but at things in general. it loves to think not of a good thing nor of a bad thing, but of bad and good in the abstract. this intellectual tendency hardens and petrifies the living and growing world, and leads us to take the universe as a thing dead, inert, and standing still. this error of immutation can be corrected by the doctrine of transcience taught by hinayana buddhism. but as medicine taken in an undue quantity turns into poison, so the doctrine of transcience drove the hinayanists to the suicidal conclusion of nihilism. a well-known scholar and believer of zen, kwei fung (kei-ha) says in his refutation of nihilism:[fn# ] "if mind as well as external objects be unreal, who is it that knows they are so? again, if there be nothing real in the universe, what is it that causes unreal objects to appear? we stand witness to the fact that there is no one of the unreal things on earth that is not made to appear by something real. if there be no water of unchanging fluidity, how can there be the unreal and temporary forms of waves? if there be no unchanging mirror, bright and clean, bow can there be the various images, unreal and temporary, reflected in it? if mind as well as external objects be nothing at all, no one can tell what it is that causes these unreal appearances. therefore this doctrine (of the unreality of all things) can never clearly disclose spiritual reality. so that mahabheri-harakaparivarta-sutra says: " all the sutras that teach the unreality of things belong to the imperfect doctrine " (of the shakya muni). mahaprajnya-paramita-sutra says the doctrine of unreality is the entrance-gate of mahayana." [fn# ] see the appendix, chap. ii., 'the mahayana doctrine of nihilism.' . zen and idealism. next zen makes use of idealism as explained by the dharmalaksana school of mahayana buddhism.[fn# ] for instance, the fourth patriarch says: "hundreds and thousands of laws originate with mind. innumerable mysterious virtues proceed from the mental source." niu teu (go-zu) also says: "when mind arises, various things arise; when mind ceases to exist, various things cease to exist." tsao shan (so-zan) carried the point so far that he cried out, on hearing the bell: "it hurts, it pains." then an attendant of his asked "what is the matter?" "it is my mind," said he, that is struck."[fn# ] [fn# ] appendix, chap. ii., 'the mahayana doctrine of dharmalaksana.' [fn# ] zen-rin-rui-shu. we acknowledge the truth of the following considerations: there exists no colour, nor sound, nor odour in the objective world, but there are the vibrations of ether, or the undulations of the air, or the stimuli of the sensory nerves of smell. colour is nothing but the translation of the stimuli into sensation by the optical nerves, so also sounds by the auditory, and odours by the smelling. therefore nothing exists objectively exactly as it is perceived by the senses, but all are subjective. take electricity, for example, it appears as light when perceived through the eye; it appears as sound when perceived through the ear; it appears as taste when perceived through the tongue; but electricity in reality is not light, nor sound, nor taste. similarly, the mountain is not high nor low; the river is not deep nor shallow; the house is not large nor small; the day is not long nor short; but they seem so through comparison. it is not objective reality that displays the phenomenal universe before us, but it is our mind that plays an important part. suppose that we have but one sense organ, the eye, then the whole universe should consist of colours and of colours only. if we suppose we were endowed with the sixth sense, which entirely contradicts our five senses, then the whole world would be otherwise. besides, it is our reason that finds the law of cause and effect in the objective world, that discovered the law of uniformity in nature, and that discloses scientific laws in the universe so as to form a cosmos. some scholars maintain that we cannot think of non-existence of space, even if we can leave out all objects in it; nor can we doubt the existence of time, for the existence of mind itself presupposes time. their very argument, however, proves the subjectivity of time and space, because, if they were objective, we should be able to think them non-existent, as we do with other external objects. even space and time, therefore are no more than subjective. . idealism is a potent medicine for self-created mental disease. in so far as buddhist idealism refers to the world of sense, in so far as it does not assume that to to be known is identical with to be, in so far as it does not assert that the phenomenal universe is a dream and a vision, we may admit it as true. on the one hand, it serves us as a purifier of our hearts polluted with materialistic desires, and uplifts us above the plain of sensualism; on the other hand, it destroys superstitions which as a rule arise from ignorance and want of the idealistic conception of things. it is a lamentable fact that every country is full of such superstitions people as described by one of the new thought writers: 'tens of thousands of women in this country believe that if two people look in a mirror at the same time, or if one thanks the other for a pin, or if one gives a knife or a sharp instrument to a friend, it will break up friendship. if a young lady is presented with a thimble, she will be an old maid. some people think that after leaving a house it is unlucky to go back after any article which has been forgotten, and, if one is obliged to do so, one should sit down in a chair before going out again; that if a broom touches a person while someone is sweeping, bad luck will follow; and that it is unlucky to change one's place at a table. a man took an opal to a new york jeweller and asked him to buy it. he said that it had brought him nothing but bad luck, that since it had come into his possession he had failed in business, that there bad been much sickness in his family, and all sorts of misfortune had befallen him. he refused to keep the cursed thing any longer. the jeweller examined the stone, and found that it was not an opal after all, but an imitation.' idealism is a most potent medicine for these self-created mental diseases. it will successfully drive away devils and spirits that frequent ignorant minds, just as jesus did in the old days. zen makes use of moral idealism to extirpate, root and branch, all such idle dreams and phantasmagoria of illusion and opens the way to enlightenment. . idealistic scepticism concerning objective reality. but extreme idealism identifies 'to be' with 'to be known,' and assumes all phenomena to be ideas as illustrated in mahayana-vidyamatra-siddhi-tridaca-castra[fn# ] and vidyamatra-vincati-castra,[fn# ] by vasubandhu. then it necessarily parts company with zen, which believes in universal life existing in everything instead of behind it. idealism shows us its dark side in three sceptic views: ( ) scepticism respecting objective reality; ( ) scepticism respecting religion; ( ) scepticism respecting morality. [fn# ] a philosophical work on buddhist idealism by vasubandhu, translated into chinese by hiuen tsang in a.d. . there exists a famous commentary on it, compiled by dharmapala, translated into chinese by hiuen tsang in a.d. . see nanjo's catalogue, nos. and . [fn# ] a simpler work on idealism, translated into chinese by hiuen tsang in a.d. . see nanjo's catalogue, nos. , , and . first it assumes that things exist in so far as they are known by us. it is as a matter of course that if a tree exists at all, it is known as having a trunk long or short, branches large or small, leaves green or yellow, flowers yellow or purple, etc., all of which are ideas. but it does not imply in the least that 'to be known' is equivalent to 'to be existent.' rather we should say that to be known presupposes to be existent, for we cannot know anything non-existent, even if we admit that the axioms of logic subsist. again, a tree may stand as ideas to a knower, but it can stand at the same time as a shelter in relation to some birds, as food in relation to some insects, as a world in relation to some minute worms, as a kindred organism to other vegetables. how could you say that its relation to a knower is the only and fundamental relation for the existence of the tree? the disappearance of its knower no more affects the tree than of its feeder; nor the appearance of its knower affects the tree any more than that of kindred vegetables. extreme idealism erroneously concludes that what is really existent, or what is directly proved to be existent, is only our sensations, ideas, thoughts; that the external world is nothing but the images reflected on the mirror of the mind, and that therefore objective reality of things is doubtful-nay, more, they are unreal, illusory, and dreams. if so, we can no longer distinguish the real from the visionary; the waking from the dreaming; the sane from the insane; the true from the untrue. whether life is real or an empty dream, we are at a loss to understand. . idealistic scepticism concerning religion and morality. similarly, it is the case with religion and morality. if we admit extreme idealism as true, there can be nothing objectively real. god is little more than a mental image. he must be a creature of mind instead of a creator. he has no objective reality. he is when we think he is. he is not when we think he is not. he is at the mercy of our thought. how much more unreal the world must be, which is supposed to have been created by an unreal god! providence, salvation, and divine grace--what are they? a bare dream dreamed in a dream! what is morality, then? it is subjective. it has no objective validity. a moral conduct highly valued by our fathers is now held to be immoral by us. immoral acts now strongly denounced by us may be regarded as moral by our posterity. good deeds of the savage are not necessarily good in the eyes of the civilized, nor evil acts of the orientals are necessarily evil before the face of the occidentals. it follows, then, that there is no definite standard of morality in any place at any time. if morality be merely subjective, and there be no objective standard, how can you distinguish evil from good? how can you single out angels from among devils? was not socrates a criminal? was not jesus also a criminal? how could you know him to be a divine man different from other criminals who were crucified with him? what you honour may i not denounce as disgrace? what you hold as duty may i not condemn as sin? every form of idealism is doomed, after all, to end in such confusion and scepticism. we cannot embrace radical idealism, which holds these threefold sceptical views in her womb. . an illusion concerning appearance and reality. to get enlightened we must next dispel an illusion respecting appearance and reality. according. to certain religionists, all the phenomena of the universe are to succumb to change. worldly things one and all are evanescent. they are nought in the long run. snowcapped mountains may sink into the bottom of the deep, while the sands in the fathomless ocean may soar into the azure sky at some time or other. blooming flowers are destined to fade and to bloom again in the next year. so destined are growing trees, rising generations, prospering nations, glowing suns, moons, and stars. this, they would say, is only the case with phenomena or appearances, but not with reality. growth and decay, birth and death, rise and fall, all these are the ebb and flow of appearances in the ocean of reality, which is always the same. flowers may fade and be reduced to dust, yet out of that dust come flowers. trees may die out, yet they are reproduced somewhere else. the time may come when the earth will become a dead sphere quite unsuitable for human habitation, and the whole of mankind will perish; yet who knows that whether another earth may not be produced as man's home? the sun might have its beginning and end, stars, moons, theirs as well; yet an infinite universe would have no beginning nor end. again, they say, mutation is of the world of sense or phenomenal appearances, but not of reality. the former are the phases of the latter shown to our senses. accordingly they are always limited and modified by our senses, just as images are always limited and modified by the mirror in which they are reflected. on this account appearances are subject to limitations, while reality is limitless. and it follows that the former are imperfect, while the latter is perfect; that the former is transient, while the latter is eternal; that the former is relative, while the latter is absolute; that the former is worldly, while the latter is holy; that the former is knowable, while the latter is unknowable. these considerations naturally lead us to an assertion that the world of appearances is valueless, as it is limited, short-lived, imperfect, painful, sinful, hopeless, and miserable; while the realm of reality is to be aspired for, as it is eternal, perfect, comfortable, full of hope, joy, and peace-hence the eternal divorce of appearance and reality. such a view of life tends to make one minimize the value of man, to neglect the present existence, and to yearn after the future. some religionists tell us that we men are helpless, sinful, hopeless, and miserable creatures. worldly riches, temporal honours, and social positions-nay, even sublimities and beauties of the present existence, are to be ignored and despised. we have no need of caring for those things that pass away in a twinkling moment. we must prepare for the future life which is eternal. we must accumulate wealth for that existence. we must endeavour to hold rank in it. we must aspire for the sublimity and beauty and glory of that realm. . where does the root of the illusion lie? now let us examine where illusion lies hidden from the view of these religionists. it lies deeply rooted in the misconstruction of reality, grows up into the illusive ideas of appearances, and throws its dark shadow on life. the most fundamental error lies in their construing reality as something unknowable existing behind appearances. according to their opinion, all that we know, or perceive, or feel, or imagine about the world, is appearances or phenomena, but not reality itself. appearances are 'things known as,' but not 'things as they are.' thing-in-itself, or reality, lies behind appearances permanently beyond our ken. this is probably the most profound metaphysical pit into which philosophical minds have ever fallen in their way of speculation. things appear, they would say, as we see them through our limited senses; but they must present entirely different aspects to those that differ from ours, just as the vibration of ether appears to us as colours, yet it presents quite different aspects to the colour-blind or to the purblind. the phenomenal universe is what appears to the human mind, and in case our mental constitution undergoes change, it would be completely otherwise. this argument, however, is far from proving that the reality is unknowable, or that it lies hidden behind appearances or presentations. take, for instance, a reality which appears as a ray of the sun. when it goes through a pane of glass it appears to be colourless, but it exhibits a beautiful spectrum when it passes through a prism. therefore you assume that a reality appearing as the rays of the sun is neither colourless nor coloured in itself, since these appearances are wholly due to the difference that obtains between the pane of glass and the prism. we contend, however, that the fact does not prove the existence of the reality named the sun's ray beyond or behind the white light, nor its existence beyond or behind the spectrum. it is evident that the reality exists in white light, and that it is known as the white light when it goes through a pane of glass; and that the same reality exists in the spectrum, and is known as the spectrum when it goes through the prism. the reality is known as the white light on the one hand, and as the spectrum on the other. it is not unknowable, but knowable. suppose that one and the same reality exhibits one aspect when it stands in relation to another object; two aspects when it stands in relation in two different objects; three aspects when it stands in relation to three different objects. the reality of one aspect never proves the unreality of another aspect, for all these three aspects can be equally real. a tree appears to us as a vegetable; it appears to some birds as a shelter; and it appears to some worms as a food. the reality of its aspect as a vegetable never proves the unreality of its aspect as food, nor the reality of its aspect as food disproves the reality of its aspect as shelter. the real tree does not exist beyond or behind the vegetable. we can rely upon its reality, and make use of it to a fruitful result. at the same time, the birds can rely on its reality as a shelter, and build their nests in it; the worms, too, can rely on its reality as food, and eat it-to their satisfaction. a reality which appears to me as my wife must appear to my son as his mother, and never as his wife. but the same real woman is in the wife and in the mother; neither is unreal. . thing-in-itself means thing-knowerless. how, then, did philosophers come to consider reality to be unknowable and hidden behind or beyond appearances? they investigated all the possible presentations in different relationships, and put them all aside as appearances, and brooded on the thing-in-itself, shut out from all possible relationship, and declared it unknowable. thing-in-itself means thing cut off from all possible relationships. to, put it in another way: thing-in-itself means thing deprived of its relation to its knower--that is to say, thing-knower-less. so that to declare thing-in-itself unknowable is as much as to declare thing-unknowable unknowable; there is no doubt about it, but what does it prove? deprive yourself of all the possible relationships, and see what you are. suppose you are not a son to your parents, nor the husband to your wife, nor the father to your children, nor a relative to your kindred, nor a friend to your acquaintances, nor a teacher to your students, nor a citizen to your country, nor an individual member to your society, nor a creature to your god, then you get you-in-yourself. now ask yourself what is you-in-yourself? you can never answer the question. it is unknowable, just because it is cut off from all knowable relations. can you thus prove that you-in-yourself exist beyond or behind you? in like manner our universe appears to us human beings as the phenomenal world or presentation. it might appear to other creatures of a different mental constitution as something else. we cannot ascertain how it might seem to devas, to asuras, to angels, and to the almighty, if there be such beings. however different it might seem to these beings, it does not imply that the phenomenal world is unreal, nor that the realm of reality is unknowable. 'water,' the indian tradition has it, 'seems to man as a drink, as emerald to devas, as bloody pus to pretas, as houses to fishes.' water is not a whit less real because of its seeming as houses to fishes, and fishes' houses are not less real because of its seeming as emerald to devas. there is nothing that proves the unreality of it. it is a gross illusion to conceive reality as transcendental to appearances. reality exists as appearances, and appearances are reality known to human beings. you cannot separate appearances from reality, and hold out the latter as the object of aspiration at the cost of the former. you must acknowledge that the so-called realm of reality which you aspire after, and which you seek for outside or behind the phenomenal universe, exists here on earth. let zen teachers tell you that "the world of birth and death is the realm of nirvana"; "the earth is the pure land of buddha." . the four alternatives and the five categories. there are, according to zen, the four classes of religious and philosophical views, technically called the four alternatives,[fn# ] of life and of the world. the first is 'the deprivation of subject and the non-deprivation of object' that is to say, the denial of subject, or mind, or atman, or soul, and the non-denial of object, or matter, or things--a view which denies the reality of mind and asserts the existence of things. such a view was held by a certain school of hinayanism, called sarvastivada, and still is held by some philosophers called materialists or naturalists. the second is the 'deprivation of object and the non-deprivation of subject'--that is to say, the denial of object, or matter, or things, and the non-denial of subject, or mind, or spirit-a view which denies the reality of material object, and asserts the existence of spirit or ideas. such a view was held by the dharmalaksana school of mahayanism, and is still held by some philosophers called idealists. the third is 'the deprivation of both subject and object'--that is to say, the denial of both subject or spirit, and of object or matter-a view which denies the reality of both physical and mental phenomena, and asserts the existence of reality that transcends the phenomenal universe. such a view was held by the madhyamika school of mahayanism, and is still held by some religionists and philosophers of the present day. the fourth is 'the non-deprivation of both subject and object'--that is to say, the non-denial of subject and object--a view which holds mind and body as one and the same reality. mind, according to this view, is reality experienced inwardly by introspection, and body is the selfsame reality observed outwardly by senses. they are one reality and one life. there also exist other persons and other beings belonging to the same life and reality; consequently all things share in one reality, and life in common with each other. this reality or life is not transcendental to mind and body, or to spirit and matter, but is the unity of them. in other words, this phenomenal world of ours is the realm of reality. this view was held by the avatamsaka school of mahayanism, and is still held by zenists. thus zen is not materialistic, nor idealistic, nor nihilistic, but realistic and monistic in its view of the world. [fn# ] shi-rya-ken in japanese, the classification mostly made use of by masters of the rin zai school of zen. for the details, see ki-gai-kwan, by k. watanabe. there are some scholars that erroneously maintain that zen is based on the doctrine of unreality of all things expounded by kumarajiva and his followers. ko-ben,[fn# ] known as myo-ye sho-nin, said years ago: "yang shan (kyo-zan) asked wei shan (i-san): 'what shall we do when hundreds, thousands, and millions of things beset us all at once?' 'the blue are not the yellow,' replied wei shan, 'the long are not the short. everything is in its own place. it has no business with you.' wei shan was a great zen master. he did not teach the unreality of all things. who can say that zen is nihilistic?" [fn# ] a well-known scholar ( - ) of the anatamsaka school of mahayanism. besides the four alternatives, zen uses the five categories[fn# ] in order to explain the relation between reality and phenomena. the first is 'relativity in absolute,' which means that the universe appears to be consisting in relativities, owing to our relative knowledge; but these relativities are based on absolute reality. the second is 'absolute in relativity,' which means absolute reality does not remain inactive, but manifests itself as relative phenomena. the third is 'relativity out of absolute,' which means absolute reality is all in all, and relative phenomena come out of it as its secondary and subordinate forms. the fourth is 'absolute up to relativity,' which means relative phenomena always play an important part on the stage of the world; it is through these phenomena that absolute reality comes to be understood. the fifth is the 'union of both absolute and relativity,' which means absolute reality is not fundamental or essential to relative phenomena, nor relative phenomena subordinate or secondary to absolute reality--that is to say, they are one and the same cosmic life, absolute reality being that life experienced inwardly by intuition, while relative phenomena are the same life outwardly observed by senses. the first four categories are taught to prepare the student's mind for the acceptance of the last one, which reveals the most profound truth. [fn# ] go-i in japanese, mostly used by the so-to school of zen. the detailed explanation is given in go-i-ken-ketsu. . personalism of b. p. bowne. b. p. bowne[fn# ] says: they (phenomena) are not phantoms or illusions, nor are they masks of a back-lying reality which is trying to peer through them." "the antithesis," he continues,[fn# ] "of phenomena and noumena rests on the fancy that there is something that rests behind phenomena which we ought to perceive but cannot, because the masking phenomena thrusts itself between the reality and us." just so far we agree with bowne, but we think he is mistaken in sharply distinguishing between body and self, saying:[fn# ] "we ourselves are invisible. the physical organism is only an instrument for expressing and manifesting the inner life, but the living self is never seen." "human form," he argues,[fn# ] "as an object in space apart from our experience of it as the instrument and expression of personal life, would have little beauty or attraction; and when it is described in anatomical terms, there is nothing in it that we should desire it. the secret of its beauty and its value lies in the invisible realm." "the same is true," he says again, "of literature. it does not exist in space, or in time, or in books, or in libraries . . . all that could be found there would be black marks on a white paper, and collections of these bound together in various forms, which would be all the eyes could see. but this would not be literature, for literature has its existence only in mind and for mind as an expression of mind, and it is simply impossible and meaningless in abstraction from mind." "our human history"--he gives another illustration[fn# ]--"never existed in space, and never could so exist. if some visitor from mars should come to the earth and look at all that goes on in space in connection with human beings, he would never get any hint of its real significance. he would be confined to integrations and dissipations of matter and motion. he could describe the masses and grouping of material things, but in all this be would get no suggestion of the inner life which gives significance to it all. as conceivably a bird might sit on a telegraph instrument and become fully aware of the clicks of the machine without any suspicion of the existence or meaning of the message, or a dog could see all that eye can see in a book yet without any hint of its meaning, or a savage could gaze at the printed score of an opera without ever suspecting its musical import, so this supposed visitor would be absolutely cut off by an impassable gulf from the real seat and significance of human history. the great drama of life, with its likes and dislikes, its loves and hates, its ambitions and strivings, and manifold ideas, inspirations, aspirations, is absolutely foreign to space, and could never in any way be discovered in space. so human history has its seat in the invisible." [fn# ] 'personalism,' p. . [fn# ] ibid., p. . [fn# ] ibid., p. . [fn# ] ibid., p. . [fn# ] 'personalism,' pp. , . in the first place, bowne's conception of the physical organism as but an instrument for the expression of the inner, personal life, just as the telegraphic apparatus is the instrument for the expression of messages, is erroneous, because body is not a mere instrument of inner personal life, but an essential constituent of it. who can deny that one's physical conditions determine one's character or personality? who can overlook the fact that one's bodily conditions positively act upon one's personal life? there is no physical organism which remains as a mere passive mechanical instrument of inner life within the world of experience. moreover, individuality, or personality, or self, or inner life, whatever you may call it, conceived as absolutely independent of physical condition, is sheer abstraction. there is no such concrete personality or individuality within our experience. in the second place, he conceives the physical organism simply as a mark or symbol, and inner personal life as the thing marked or symbolized; so he compares physical forms with paper, types, books, and libraries, and inner life, with literature. in so doing he overlooks the essential and inseparable connection between the physical organism and inner life, because there is no essential inseparable connection between a mark or symbol and the thing marked or symbolized. the thing may adopt any other mark or symbol. the black marks on the white paper, to use his figure, are not essential to literature. literature may be expressed by singing, or by speech, or by a series of pictures. but is there inner life expressed, or possible to be expressed, in any other form save physical organism? we must therefore acknowledge that inner life is identical with physical organism, and that reality is one and the same as appearance. . all the worlds in ten directions are buddha's holy land. we are to resume this problem in the following chapter. suffice it to say for the present it is the law of universal life that manifoldness is in unity, and unity is in manifoldness; difference is in agreement, and agreement in difference; confliction is in harmony, and harmony in confliction; parts are in the whole, and the whole is in parts; constancy is in change, and change in constancy; good is in bad, and bad in good; integration is in disintegration, and disintegration is in integration; peace is in disturbance, and disturbance in peace. we can find something celestial among the earthly. we can notice something glorious in the midst of the base and degenerated. 'there are nettles everywhere, but are not smooth, green grasses more common still?' can you recognize something awe-inspiring in the rise and fall of nations? can you not recognize something undisturbed and peaceful among disturbance and trouble? has not even grass some meaning? does not even a stone tell the mystery of life? does not the immutable law of good sway over human affairs after all, as tennyson says- "i can but trust that good shall fall at last-far off-at last, to all." has not each of us a light within him, whatever degrees of lustre there may be? was washington in the wrong when he said: "labour to keep alive in your heart that little spark of celestial fire called conscience." we are sure that we can realize the celestial bliss in this very world, if we keep alive the enlightened consciousness, of which bodhidharma and his followers showed the example. 'all the worlds in ten directions are buddha's holy lands!' that land of bliss and glory exists above us, under us, around us, within us, without us, if we open our eyes to see. 'nirvana is in life itself,' if we enjoy it with admiration and love. "life and death are the life of buddha," says do-gen. everywhere the elysian gates stand open, if we do not shut them up by ourselves. shall we starve ourselves refusing to accept the rich bounty which the blessed life offers to us? shall we perish in the darkness of scepticism, shutting our eyes to the light of tathagata? shall we suffer from innumerable pains in the self-created hell where remorse, jealousy, and hatred feed the fire of anger? let us pray to buddha, not in word only, but in the deed of generosity and tolerance, in the character noble and loving, and in the personality sublime and good. let us pray to buddha to save us from the hell of greed and folly, to deliver us from the thraldom of temptation. let us 'enter the holy of holies in admiration and wonder.' chapter vii life . epicureanism and life. there are a good many people always buoyant in spirit and mirthful in appearance as if born optimists. there are also no fewer persons constantly crestfallen and gloomy as if born pessimists. the former, however, may lose their buoyancy and sink deep in despair if they are in adverse circumstances. the latter, too, may regain their brightness and grow exultant if they are under prosperous conditions. as there is no evil however small but may cause him to groan under it, who has his heart undisciplined, so there is no calamity however great but may cause him to despair, who has his feelings in control. a laughing child would cry, a crying child would laugh, without a sufficient cause. 'it can be teased or tickled into anything.' a grown-up child is he who cannot hold sway over his passions. he should die a slave to his heart, which is wayward and blind, if he be indulgent to it. it is of capital importance for us to discipline the heart,[fn# ] otherwise it will discipline us. passions are like legs. they should be guided by the eye of reason. no wise serpent is led by its tail, so no wise man is led by his passion. passions that come first are often treacherous and lead us astray. we must guard ourselves against them. in order to gratify them there arise mean desires-the desires to please sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. these five desires are ever pursuing or, rather, driving us. we must not spend our whole lives in pursuit of those mirage-like objects which gratify our sensual desires. when we gratify one desire, we are silly enough to fancy that we have realized true happiness. but one desire gratified begets another stronger and more insatiable. thirst allayed with salt water becomes more intense than ever. [fn# ] compare gaku-do-yo-jin-shu, chap. i., and zen-kwan-saku shin. shakya muni compared an epicurean with a dog chewing a dry bone, mistaking the blood out of a wound in his mouth for that of the bone. the author of mahaparinirvana-sutra[fn# ] has a parable to the following effect: 'once upon a time a hunter skilled in catching monkeys alive went into the wood. he put something very sticky on the ground, and hid himself among the bushes. by-and-by a monkey came out to see what it was, and supposing it to be something eatable, tried to feed on it. it stuck to the poor creature's snout so firmly that he could not shake it off. then he attempted to tear it off with both his paws, which also stuck to it. thereupon he strove to kick it off with both his hind-legs, which were caught too. then the hunter came out, and thrusting his stick through between the paws and hind-legs of the victim, and thus carrying it on his shoulder, went home.' in like manner an epicurean (the monkey), allured by the objects of sense (something sticky), sticks to the five desires (the snout and the four limbs), and being caught by temptation (the hunter), loses his life of wisdom. [fn# ] the sutra translated by hwui yen and hwui kwan, a.d. - . we are no more than a species of monkeys, as evolutionists hold. not a few testify to this truth by their being caught by means of 'something eatable.' we abolished slavery and call ourselves civilized nations. have we not, nevertheless, hundreds of life-long slaves to cigars among us? have we not thousands of life-long slaves to spirits among us? have we not hundreds of thousands of life-long slaves to gold among us? have we not myriads of lifelong slaves to vanity among us? these slaves are incredibly loyal to, and incessantly work for, their masters, who in turn bestow on them incurable diseases, poverty, chagrin, and disappointment. a poor puppy with an empty can tied to his tail, thomas carlyle wittily observes, ran and ran on, frightened by the noise of the can. the more rapidly he ran, the more loudly it rang, and at last he fell exhausted of running. was it not typical of a so-called great man of the world? vanity tied an empty can of fame to his tail, the hollow noise of which drives him through life until he falls to rise no more. miserable! neither these men of the world nor buddhist ascetics can be optimists. the latter rigorously deny themselves sensual gratifications, and keep themselves aloof from all objects of pleasure. for them to be pleased is equivalent to sin, and to laugh, to be cursed. they would rather touch an adder's head than a piece of money.[fn# ] they would rather throw themselves into a fiery furnace than to come in contact with the other sex. body for them is a bag full of blood and pus;[fn# ] life, an idle, or rather evil, dream. vegetarianism and celibacy are their holy privileges. life is unworthy of having; to put an end to it is their deliverance.[fn# ] such a view of life is hardly worth our refutation. [fn# ] such is the precept taught in the vinaya of hinayanists. [fn# ] see mahasatiptthana suttanta, - . [fn# ] this is the logical conclusion of hinayanism. . the errors of philosophical pessimists and religious optimists. philosophical pessimists[fn# ] maintain that there are on earth many more causes of pain than of pleasure; and that pain exists positively, but pleasure is a mere absence of pain because we are conscious of sickness but not of health; of loss, but not of possession. on the contrary, religious optimists insist that there must not be any evil in god's universe, that evil has no independent nature, but simply denotes a privation of good--that is, evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound.' [fn# ] schopenhauer, 'the world as will and idea' (r. b. haldane and j. kemp's translation, vol. iii., pp. - ); hartman, 'philosophy of the unconsciousness' (w. c. coupland's translation, vol. iii., pp. - ). no matter what these one-sided observers' opinion may be, we are certain that we experience good as well as evil, and feel pain and pleasure as well. neither can we alleviate the real sufferings of the sick by telling them that sickness is no other than the absence of health, nor can we make the poor a whit richer by telling them that poverty is a mere absence of riches. how could we save the dying by persuading them that death is a bare privation of life? is it possible to dispirit the happy by telling them that happiness is unreal, or make the fortunate miserable by telling them that fortune has no objective reality, or to make one welcome evil by telling one that it is only the absence of good? you must admit there are no definite external causes of pain nor those of pleasure, for one and the same thing causes pain at one time and pleasure at another. a cause of delight to one person turns out to be that of aversion to another. a dying miser might revive at the sight of gold, yet a diogenes would pass without noticing it. cigars and wine are blessed gifts of heaven to the intemperate,[fn# ] but accursed poison to the temperate. some might enjoy a long life, but others would heartily desire to curtail it. some might groan under a slight indisposition, while others would whistle away a life of serious disease. an epicure might be taken prisoner by poverty, yet an epictetus would fearlessly face and vanquish him. how, then, do you distinguish the real cause of pain from that of pleasure? how do you know the causes of one are more numerous than the causes of the other? [fn# ] the author of han shu (kan sho) calls spirits the gift of heaven. expose thermometers of several kinds to one and the same temperature. one will indicate, say, °, another as high as °, another as low as °. expose the thermometers of human sensibilities, which are of myriads of different kinds, to one and the same temperature of environment. none of them will indicate the same degrees. in one and the same climate, which we think moderate, the eskimo would be washed with perspiration, while the hindu would shudder with cold. similarly, under one and the same circumstance some might be extremely miserable and think it unbearable, yet others would be contented and happy. therefore we may safely conclude that there are no definite external causes of pain and pleasure, and that there must be internal causes which modify the external. . the law of balance. nature governs the world with her law of balance. she puts things ever in pairs,[fn# ] and leaves nothing in isolation. positives stand in opposition to negatives, actives to passives, males to females, and so on. thus we get the ebb in opposition to the flood tide; the centrifugal force to the centripetal; attraction to repulsion; growth to decay; toxin to antitoxin; light to shade; action to reaction; unity to variety; day to night; the animate to the inanimate. look at our own bodies: the right eye is placed side by side with the left; the left shoulder with the right; the right lung with the left; the left hemisphere of the brain with that of the right; and so forth. [fn# ] zenists call them 'pairs of opposites.' it holds good also in human affairs: advantage is always accompanied by disadvantage; loss by gain; convenience by inconvenience; good by evil; rise by fall; prosperity by adversity; virtue by vice; beauty by deformity; pain by pleasure; youth by old age; life by death. 'a handsome young lady of quality,' a parable in mahaparinirvana-sutra tells us, 'who carries with her an immense treasure is ever accompanied by her sister, an ugly woman in rags, who destroys everything within her reach. if we win the former, we must also get the latter.' as pessimists show intense dislike towards the latter and forget the former, so optimists admire the former so much that they are indifferent to the latter. . life consists in conflict. life consists in conflict. so long as man remains a social animal he cannot live in isolation. all individual hopes and aspirations depend on society. society is reflected in the individual, and the individual in society. in spite of this, his inborn free will and love of liberty seek to break away from social ties. he is also a moral animal, and endowed with love and sympathy. he loves his fellow-beings, and would fain promote their welfare; but he must be engaged in constant struggle against them for existence. he sympathizes even with animals inferior to him, and heartily wishes to protect them; yet he is doomed to destroy their lives day and night. he has many a noble aspiration, and often soars aloft by the wings of imagination into the realm of the ideal; still his material desires drag him down to the earth. he lives on day by day to continue his life, but he is unfailingly approaching death at every moment. the more he secures new pleasure, spiritual or material, the more he incurs pain not yet experienced. one evil removed only gives place to another; one advantage gained soon proves itself a disadvantage. his very reason is the cause of his doubt and suspicion; his intellect, with which he wants to know everything, declares itself to be incapable of knowing anything in its real state; his finer sensibility, which is the sole source of finer pleasure, has to experience finer suffering. the more he asserts himself, the more he has to sacrifice himself. these conflictions probably led kant to call life "a trial time, wherein most succumb, and in which even the best does not rejoice in his life." "men betake themselves," says fichte, "to the chase after felicity. . . . but as soon as they withdraw into themselves and ask themselves, 'am i now happy?' the reply comes distinctly from the depth of their soul, 'oh no; thou art still just as empty and destitute as before!' . . . they will in the future life just as vainly seek blessedness as they have sought it in the present life." it is not without reason that the pessimistic minds came to conclude that 'the unrest of unceasing willing and desiring by which every creature is goaded is in itself unblessedness,' and that 'each creature is in constant danger, constant agitation, and the whole, with its restless, meaningless motion, is a tragedy of the most piteous kind.' 'a creature like the carnivorous animal, who cannot exist at all without continually destroying and tearing others, may not feel its brutality, but man, who has to prey on other sentient beings like the carnivorous, is intelligent enough, as hard fate would have it, to know and feel his own brutal living.' he must be the most miserable of all creatures, for he is most conscious of his own misery. furthermore, 'he experiences not only the misfortunes which actually befall him, but in imagination he goes through every possibility of evil.' therefore none, from great kings and emperors down to nameless beggars, can be free from cares and anxieties, which 'ever flit around them like ghosts.' . the mystery of life. thus far we have pointed out the inevitable conflictions in life in order to prepare ourselves for an insight into the depth of life. we are far from being pessimistic, for we believe that life consists in confliction, but that confliction does not end in confliction, but in a new form of harmony. hope comes to conflict with fear, and is often threatened with losing its hold on mind; then it renews its life and takes root still deeper than before. peace is often disturbed with wars, but then it gains a still firmer ground than ever. happiness is driven out of mind by melancholy, then it is re-enforced by favourable conditions and returns with double strength. spirit is dragged down by matter from its ideal heaven, then, incited by shame, it tries a higher flight. good is opposed by evil, then it gathers more strength and vanquishes its foe. truth is clouded by falsehood, then it issues forth with its greater light. liberty is endangered by tyranny, then it overthrows it with a splendid success. manifoldness stands out boldly against unity; difference against agreement; particularity against generality; individuality against society. manifoldness, nevertheless, instead of annihilating, enriches unity; difference, instead of destroying agreement, gives it variety; particularities, instead of putting an end to generality, increase its content; individuals, instead of breaking the harmony of society, strengthen the power of it. thus 'universal life does not swallow up manifoldness nor extinguish differences, but it is the only means of bringing to its full development the detailed content of reality; in particular, it does not abolish the great oppositions of life and world, but takes them up into itself and brings them into fruitful relations with each other.' therefore 'our life is a mysterious blending of freedom and necessity, power and limitation, caprice and law; yet these opposites are constantly seeking and finding a mutual adjustment.' . nature favours nothing in particular. there is another point of view of life, which gave the present writer no small contentment, and which he believes would cure one of pessimistic complaint. buddha, or universal life conceived by zen, is not like a capricious despot, who acts not seldom against his own laws. his manifestation as shown in the enlightened consciousness is lawful, impartial, and rational. buddhists believe that even shakya muni himself was not free from the law of retribution, which includes, in our opinion, the law of balance and that of causation. now let us briefly examine how the law of balance holds its sway over life and the world. when the cakravartin, according to an indian legend, the universal monarch, would come to govern the earth, a wheel would also appear as one of his treasures, and go on rolling all over the world, making everything level and smooth. buddha is the spiritual cakravartin, whose wheel is the wheel of the law of balance, with which he governs all things equally and impartially. first let us observe the simplest cases where the law of balance holds good. four men can finish in three days the same amount of work as is done by three men in four days. the increase in the number of men causes the decrease in that of days, the decrease in the number of men causes the increase in that of days, the result being always the same. similarly the increase in the sharpness of a knife is always accompanied by a decrease in its durability, and the increase of durability by a decrease of sharpness. the more beautiful flowers grow, the uglier their fruits become; the prettier the fruits grow, the simpler become their flowers. 'a strong soldier is ready to die; a strong tree is easy to be broken; hard leather is easy to be torn. but the soft tongue survives the hard teeth.' horned creatures are destitute of tusks, the sharp-tusked creatures lack horns. winged animals are not endowed with paws, and handed animals are provided with no wings. birds of beautiful plumage have no sweet voice, and sweet-voiced songsters no feathers of bright colours. the finer in quality, the smaller in quantity, and bulkier in size, the coarser in nature. nature favours nothing in particular. so everything has its advantage and disadvantage as well. what one gains on the one hand one loses on the other. the ox is competent in drawing a heavy cart, but he is absolutely incompetent in catching mice. a shovel is fit for digging, but not for ear-picking. aeroplanes are good for aviation, but not for navigation. silkworms feed on mulberry leaves and make silk from it, but they can do nothing with other leaves. thus everything has its own use or a mission appointed by nature; and if we take advantage of it, nothing is useless, but if not, all are useless. 'the neck of the crane may seem too long to some idle on-lookers, but there is no surplus in it. the limbs of the tortoise may appear too short, but there is no shortcoming in them.' the centipede, having a hundred limbs, can find no useless feet; the serpent, having no foot, feels no want. . the law of balance in life. it is also the case with human affairs. social positions high or low, occupations spiritual or temporal, work rough or gentle, education perfect or imperfect, circumstances needy or opulent, each has its own advantage as well as disadvantage. the higher the position the graver the responsibilities, the lower the rank the lighter the obligation. the director of a large bank can never be so careless as his errand-boy who may stop on the street to throw a stone at a sparrow; nor can the manager of a large plantation have as good a time on a rainy day as his day-labourers who spend it in gambling. the accumulation of wealth is always accompanied by its evils; no rothschild nor rockefeller can be happier than a poor pedlar. a mother of many children may be troubled by her noisy little ones and envy her sterile friend, who in turn may complain of her loneliness; but if they balance what they gain with what they lose, they will find the both sides are equal. the law of balance strictly forbids one's monopoly of happiness. it applies its scorpion whip to anyone who is given to pleasures. joy in extremity lives next door to exceeding sorrow. "where there is much light," says goethe, "shadow is deep." age, withered and disconsolate, lurks under the skirts of blooming youth. the celebration of birthday is followed by the commemoration of death. marriage might be supposed to be the luckiest event in one's life, but the widow's tears and the orphan's sufferings also might be its outcome. but for the former the latter can never be. the death of parents is indeed the unluckiest event in the son's life, but it may result in the latter's inheritance of an estate, which is by no means unlucky. the disease of a child may cause its parents grief, but it is a matter of course that it lessens the burden of their livelihood. life has its pleasures, but also its pains. death has no pleasure of life, but also none of its pain. so that if we balance their smiles and tears, life and death are equal. it is not wise for us, therefore, to commit suicide while the terms of our life still remain, nor to fear death when there is no way of avoiding it. again, the law of balance does not allow anyone to take the lion's share of nature's gifts. beauty in face is accompanied by deformity in character. intelligence is often uncombined with virtue. "fair girls are destined to be unfortunate," says a japanese proverb, "and men of ability to be sickly." "he makes no friend who never makes a foe." "honesty is next to idiocy." "men of genius," says longfellow, "are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor when it descends to earth is only a stone." honour and shame go hand in hand. knowledge and virtue live in poverty, while ill health and disease are inmates of luxury. every misfortune begets some sort of fortune, while every good luck gives birth to some sort of bad luck. every prosperity never fails to sow seeds of adversity, while every fall never fails to bring about some kind of rise. we must not, then, despair in days of frost and snow, reminding ourselves of sunshine and flowers that follow them; nor must we be thoughtless in days of youth and health, keeping in mind old age and ill health that are in the rear of them. in brief, all, from crowns and coronets down to rags and begging bowls, have their own happiness and share heavenly grace alike. . the application of the law of causation to morals. although it may be needless to state here the law of causation at any length, yet it is not equally needless to say a few words about its application to morals as the law of retribution, which is a matter of dispute even among buddhist scholars. the kernel of the idea is very simple-like seed, like fruit; like cause, like effect; like action, like influence--nothing more. as fresh air strengthens and impure air chokes us, so good conduct brings about good consequence, and bad conduct does otherwise.[fn# ] [fn# ] zen lays much stress on this law. see shu-sho-gi and ei-hei-ka-kun, by do-gen. over against these generalizations we raise no objection, but there are many cases, in practical life, of doubtful nature. an act of charity, for example, might do others some sort of damage, as is often the case with the giving of alms to the poor, which may produce the undesirable consequence of encouraging beggary. an act of love might produce an injurious effect, as the mother's love often spoils her children. some[fn# ] may think these are cases of good cause and bad effect. we have, however, to analyze these causes and effects in order to find in what relation they stand. in the first case the good action of almsgiving produces the good effect of lessening the sufferings of the poor, who should be thankful for their benefactor. the giver is rewarded in his turn by the peace and satisfaction of his conscience. the poor, however, when used to being given alms are inclined to grow lazy and live by means of begging. therefore the real cause of the bad effect is the thoughtlessness of both the giver and the given, but not charity itself. in the second case the mother's love and kindness produce a good effect on her and her children, making them all happy, and enabling them to enjoy the pleasure of the sweet home; yet carelessness and folly on the part of the mother and ingratitude on the part of the children may bring about the bad effect. [fn# ] dr. h. kato seems to have thought that good cause may bring out bad effect when he attacked buddhism on this point. history is full of numerous cases in which good persons were so unfortunate as to die a miserable death or to live in extreme poverty, side by side with those cases in which bad people lived in health and prosperity, enjoying a long life. having these cases in view, some are of the opinion that there is no law of retribution as believed by the buddhists. and even among the buddhist scholars themselves there are some who think of the law of retribution as an ideal, and not as a law governing life. this is probably due to their misunderstanding of the historical facts. there is no reason because he is good and honourable that he should be wealthy or healthy; nor is there any reason because he is bad that he should be poor or sickly. to be good is one thing, and to be healthy or rich is another. so also to be bad is one thing, and to be poor and sick is another. the good are not necessarily the rich or the healthy, nor are the bad necessarily the sick or the poor. health must be secured by the strict observance of hygienic rules, and not by the keeping of ethical precepts; nor can wealth ever be accumulated by bare morality, but by economical and industrial activity. the moral conduct of a good person has no responsibility for his ill health or poverty; so also the immoral action of a bad person has no concern with his wealth or health. you should not confuse the moral with the physical law, since the former belongs only to human life, while the latter to the physical world. the good are rewarded morally, not physically; their own virtues, honours, mental peace, and satisfaction are ample compensation for their goodness. confucius, for example, was never rich nor high in rank; he was, nevertheless, morally rewarded with his virtues, honours, and the peace of mind. the following account of him,[fn# ] though not strictly historical, well explains his state of mind in the days of misfortune: "when confucius was reduced to extreme distress between khan and zhai, for seven days he had no cooked meat to eat, but only some soup of coarse vegetables without any rice in it. his countenance wore the appearance of great exhaustion, and yet be kept playing on his lute and singing inside the house. yen hui (was outside) selecting the vegetables, while zze lu and zze kung were talking together, and said to him: 'the master has twice been driven from lu; he had to flee from wei; the tree beneath which he rested was cut down in sung; he was reduced to extreme distress in shang and kau; he is held in a state of siege here between khan and zhai; anyone who kills him will be held guiltless; there is no prohibition against making him a prisoner. and yet he keeps playing and singing, thrumming his lute without ceasing. can a superior man be without the feeling of shame to such an extent as this?' yen hui gave them no reply, but went in and told (their words) to confucius, who pushed aside his lute and said: 'yu and zhze are small men. call them here, and i will explain the thing to them.' [fn# ] the account is given by chwang tsz in his book, vol. xviii., p. . "when they came in, zze lu said: 'your present condition may be called one of extreme distress!' confucius replied: 'what words are these? when the superior man has free course with his principles, that is what we call his success; when such course is denied, that is what we call his failure. now i hold in my embrace the principles of righteousness and benevolence, and with them meet the evils of a disordered age; where is the proof of my being in extreme distress? therefore, looking inwards and examining myself, i have no difficulties about my principles; though i encounter such difficulties (as the present), i do not lose my virtue. it is when winter's cold is come, and the hoar-frost and snow are falling, that we know the vegetative power of the pine and cypress. this distress between khan and zhai is fortunate for me.' he then took back his lute so that it emitted a twanging sound, and began to play and sing. (at the same time) zze lu hurriedly seized a shield and began to dance, while zze kung said: 'i did not know (before) the height of heaven nor the depth of earth!'" thus the good are unfailingly rewarded with their own virtue, and the wholesome consequences of their actions on society at large. and the bad are inevitably recompensed with their own vices, and the injurious effects of their actions on their fellow-beings. this is the unshaken conviction of humanity, past, present, and future. it is the pith and marrow of our moral ideal. it is the crystallization of ethical truths, distilled through long experiences from time immemorial to this day. we can safely approve edwin arnold, as he says: "lo i as hid seed shoots after rainless years, so good and evil, pains and pleasures, hates and loves, and all dead deeds come forth again, bearing bright leaves, or dark, sweet fruit or sour." longfellow also says: "no action, whether foul or fair, is ever done, but it leaves somewhere a record-as a blessing or a curse." . retribution[fn# ] in the past, the present, and the future life. then a question suggests itself: if there be no soul that survives body (as shown in the preceding chapter), who will receive the retributions of our actions in the present life? to answer this question, we have to restate our conviction that life is one and the same; in other words, the human beings form one life or one self--that is to say, our ancestors in the past formed man's past life. we ourselves now form man's present life, and our posterity will form the future life. beyond all doubt, all actions of man in the past have brought their fruits on the present conditions of man, and all actions of the present man are sure to influence the conditions of the future man. to put it in another way, we now reap the fruits of what we sowed in our past life (or when we lived as our fathers), and again shall reap the fruits of what we now sow in our future life (or when we shall live as our posterity). there is no exception to this rigorous law of retribution, and we take it as the will of buddha to leave no action without being retributed. thus it is buddha himself who kindles our inward fire to save ourselves from sin and crimes. we must purge out all the stains in our hearts, obeying buddha's command audible in the innermost self of ours. it is the great mercy of his that, however sinful, superstitious, wayward, and thoughtless, we have still a light within us which is divine in its nature. when that light shines forth, all sorts of sin are destroyed at once. what is our sin, after all? it is nothing but illusion or error originating in ignorance and folly. how true it is, as an indian mahayanist declares, that 'all frost and the dewdrops of sin disappear in the sunshine of wisdom!'[fn# ] even if we might be imprisoned in the bottomless bell, yet let once the light of buddha shine upon us, it would be changed into heaven. therefore the author of mahakarunika-sutra[fn# ] says: "when i climb the mountain planted with swords, they would break under my tread. when i sail on the sea of blood, it will be dried up. when i arrive at hades, they will be ruined at once." [fn# ] the retribution cannot be explained by the doctrine of the transmigration of the soul, for it is incompatible with the fundamental doctrine of non-soul. see abhidharmamahavibhasa-castra, vol. cxiv. [fn# ] samantabhadra-dhyana-sutra. [fn# ] nanjo's catalogue, no. . . the eternal life as taught by professor munsterberg. some philosophical pessimists undervalue life simply because it is subject to limitation. they ascribe all evils to that condition, forgetting that without limitation life is a mere blank. suppose our sight could see all things at once, then sight has no value nor use for us, because it is life's purpose to choose to see one thing or another out of many; and if all things be present at once before us through sight, it is of no purpose. the same is true of intellect, bearing, smell, touch, feeling, and will. if they be limitless, they cease to be useful for us. individuality necessarily implies limitation, hence if there be no limitation in the world, then there is no room for individuality. life without death is no life at all. professor hugo munsterberg finds no value, so it seems to me, in 'such life as beginning with birth and ending with death.' he says:[fn# ] "my life as a causal system of physical and psychological processes, which lies spread out in time between the dates of my birth and of my death, will come to an end with my last breath; to continue it, to make it go on till the earth falls into the sun, or a billion times longer, would be without any value, as that kind of life which is nothing but the mechanical occurrence of physiological and psychological phenomena had as such no ultimate value for me or for you, or for anyone, at any time. but my real life, as a system of interrelated-will-attitudes, has nothing before or after because it is beyond time. it is independent of birth and death because it cannot be related to biological events; it is not born, and will not die; it is immortal; all possible thinkable time is enclosed in it; it is eternal." [fn# ] 'the eternal life,' p. . professor munsterberg tries to distinguish sharply life as the causal system of physiological and psychological processes, and life as a system of interrelated-will-attitudes, and denounces the former as fleeting and valueless, in order to prize the latter as eternal and of absolute value. how could he, however, succeed in his task unless he has two or three lives, as some animals are believed to have? is it not one and the same life that is treated on the one hand by science as a system of physiological and psychological processes, and is conceived on the other by the professor himself as a system of interrelated-will-attitudes? it is true that science treats of life as it is observed in time, space, and causality, and it estimates it of no value, since to estimate the value of things is no business of science. the same life observed as a system of interrelated-will-attitudes is independent of time, space, and causality as he affirms. one and the same life includes both phases, the difference being in the points of view of the observers. life as observed only from the scientific point of view is bare abstraction; it is not concrete life; nor is life as observed only in the interrelated-will-attitude point of view the whole of life. both are abstractions. concrete life includes both phases. moreover, professor munsterberg sees life in the relationship entirely independent-of time, space, and causality, saying: "if you agree or disagree with the latest act of the russian czar, the only significant relation which exists between him and you has nothing to do with the naturalistic fact that geographically 'an ocean lies between you; and if you are really a student of plato, your only important relation to the greek philosopher has nothing to do with the other naturalistic fact that biologically two thousand years lie between you"; and declares life (seen from that point of view) to be immortal and eternal. this is as much as to say that life, when seen in the relationship independent of time and space, is independent of time and space-that is, immortal and eternal. is it not mere tautology? he is in the right in insisting that life can be seen from the scientific point of view as a system of physiological and psychological processes, and at the same time as a system of interrelated-will-attitudes independent of time and space. but he cannot by that means prove the existence of concrete individual life which is eternal and immortal, because that which is independent of time and space is the relationship in which he observes life, but not life itself. therefore we have to notice that life held by professor munsterberg to be eternal and immortal is quite a different thing from the eternal life or immortality of soul believed by common sense. . life in the concrete. life in the concrete, which we are living, greatly differs from life in the abstract, which exists only in the class-room. it is not eternal; it is fleeting; it is full of anxieties, pains, struggles, brutalities, disappointments, and calamities. we love life, however, -not only for its smoothness, but for its roughness; not only for its pleasure, but for its pain; not only for its hope, but for its fear; not only for its flowers, but for its frost and snow. as issai[fn# ] (sato) has aptly put it: "prosperity is like spring, in which we have green leaves and flowers wherever we go; while adversity is like winter, in which we have snow and ice. spring, of course, pleases us; winter, too, displeases us not." adversity is salt to our lives, as it keeps them from corruption, no matter how bitter to taste it way be. it is the best stimulus to body and mind, since it brings forth latent energy that may remain dormant but for it. most people hunt after pleasure, look for good luck, hunger after success, and complain of pain, ill-luck, and failure. it does not occur to them that 'they who make good luck a god are all unlucky men,' as george eliot has wisely observed. pleasure ceases to be pleasure when we attain to it; another sort of pleasure displays itself to tempt us. it is a mirage, it beckons to us to lead us astray. when an overwhelming misfortune looks us in the face, our latent power is sure to be aroused to grapple with it. even delicate girls exert the power of giants at the time of emergency; even robbers or murderers are found to be kind and generous when we are thrown into a common disaster. troubles and difficulties call forth our divine force, which lies deeper than the ordinary faculties, and which we never before dreamed we possessed. [fn# ] a noted scholar ( - ) and author, who belonged to the wang school of confucianism. see gen-shi-roku. . difficulties are no match for the optimist. how can we suppose that we, the children of buddha, are put at the mercy of petty troubles, or intended to be crushed by obstacles? are we not endowed with inner force to fight successfully against obstacles and difficulties, and to wrest trophies of glory from hardships? are we to be slaves to the vicissitudes of fortune? are we doomed to be victims for the jaws of the environment? it is not external obstacles themselves, but our inner fear and doubt that prove to be the stumbling-blocks in the path to success; not material loss, but timidity and hesitation that ruin us for ever. difficulties are no match for the optimist, who does not fly from them, but welcomes them. he has a mental prism which can separate the insipid white light of existence into bright hues. he has a mental alchemy by which he can produce golden instruction out of the dross of failure. he has a spiritual magic which makes the nectar of joy out of the tears of sorrow. he has a clairvoyant eye that can perceive the existence of hope through the iron walls of despair. prosperity tends to make one forget the grace of buddha, but adversity brings forth one's religious conviction. christ on the cross was more christ than jesus at the table. luther at war with the pope was more luther than he at peace. nichi-ren[fn# ] laid the foundation of his church when sword and sceptre threatened him with death. shin-ran[fn# ] and hen-en[fn# ] established their respective faiths when they were exiled. when they were exiled, they complained not, resented not, regretted not, repented not, lamented not, but contentedly and joyously they met with their inevitable calamity and conquered it. ho-nen is said to have been still more joyous and contented when be bad suffered from a serious disease, because he had the conviction that his desired end was at hand. [fn# ] the founder ( - ) of the nichi ren sect, who was exiled in to the island of sado. for the history and doctrine of the sect, see i a short history of the twelve japanese buddhist sects,' by b. nanjo, pp. - . [fn# ] the founder ( - ) of the shin sect, who was banished to the province of eechigo in . see nanjo's 'history,' pp. - . [fn# ] the founder ( ) of the jo do sect, who was exiled to the island of tosa in . see nanjo's 'history,' pp. - . a chinese monk, e kwai by name, one day seated himself in a quiet place among hills and practised dhyana. none was there to disturb the calm enjoyment of his meditation. the genius of the hill was so much stung by his envy that he made up his mind to break by surprise the mental serenity of the monk. having supposed nothing ordinary would be effective, he appeared all on a sudden before the man, assuming the frightful form of a headless monster. e kwai being disturbed not a whit, calmly eyed the monster, and observed with a smile: "thou hast no head, monster! how happy thou shouldst be, for thou art in no danger of losing thy head, nor of suffering from headache!" were we born headless, should we not be happy, as we have to suffer from no headache? were we born eyeless, should we not be happy, as we are in no danger of suffering from eye disease? ho ki ichi,[fn# ] a great blind scholar, was one evening giving a lecture, without knowing that the light had been put out by the wind. when his pupils requested him to stop for a moment, he remarked with a smile: "why, how inconvenient are your eyes!" where there is contentment, there is paradise. [fn# ] hanawa ( - ), who published gun-sho-rui-zu in . . do thy best and leave the rest to providence. there is another point of view which enables us to enjoy life. it is simply this, that everything is placed in the condition best for itself, as it is the sum total of the consequences of its actions and reactions since the dawn of time. take, for instance, the minutest grains of dirt that are regarded by us the worst, lifeless, valueless, mindless, inert matter. they are placed in their best condition, no matter how poor and worthless they may seem. they can never become a thing higher nor lower than they. to be the grains of dirt is best for them. but for these minute microcosms, which, flying in the air, reflect the sunbeams, we could have no azure sky. it is they that scatter the sun's rays in mid-air and send them into our rooms. it is also these grains of dirt that form the nuclei of raindrops and bring seasonable rain. thus they are not things worthless and good for nothing, but have a hidden import and purpose in their existence. had they mind to think, heart to feel, they should be contented and happy with their present condition. take, for another example, the flowers of the morning glory. they bloom and smile every morning, fade and die in a few hours. how fleeting and ephemeral their lives are! but it is that short life itself that makes them frail, delicate, and lovely. they come forth all at once as bright and beautiful as a rainbow or as the northern light, and disappear like dreams. this is the best condition for them, because, if they last for days together, the morning glory shall no longer be the morning glory. it is so with the cherry-tree that puts forth the loveliest flowers and bears bitter fruits. it is so with the apple-tree, which bears the sweetest of fruits and has ugly blossoms. it is so with animals and men. each of them is placed in the condition best for his appointed mission. the newly-born baby sucks, sleeps, and cries. it can do no more nor less. is it not best for it to do so? when it attained to its boyhood, he goes to school and is admitted to the first-year class. he cannot be put in a higher nor lower class. it is best for him to be the first-year class student. when his school education is over, he may get a position in society according to his abilities, or may lead a miserable life owing to his failure of some sort or other. in any case he is in a position best for his special mission ordained by providence or the hum-total of the fruits of his actions and reactions since all eternity. he should be contented and happy, and do what is right with might and main. discontent and vexation only make him more worthy of his ruin therefore our positions, no matter, how high or low, no matter how favourable or unfavourable our environment, we are to be cheerful. "do thy best and leave the rest to providence," says a chinese adage. longfellow also says: "do thy best; that is best. leave unto thy lord the rest." chapter viii the training of the mind and the practice of meditation . the method of instruction adopted by zen masters. thus far we have described the doctrine of zen inculcated by both chinese and japanese masters, and in this chapter we propose to sketch the practice of mental training and the method of practising dhyana or meditation. zen teachers never instruct their pupils by means of explanation or argument, but urge them to solve by themselves through the practice of meditation such problems as--'what is buddha?' what is self?' 'what is the spirit of bodhidharma?' 'what is life and death?' 'what is the real nature of mind?' and so on. ten shwai (to-sotsu), for instance, was wont to put three questions[fn# ] to the following effect: ( ) your study and discipline aim at the understanding of the real nature of mind. where does the real nature of mind exist? ( ) when you understand the real nature of mind, you are free from birth and death. how can you be saved when you are at the verge of death? ( ) when you are free from birth and death, you know where you go after death. where do you go when your body is reduced to elements? the pupils are not requested to express their solution of these problems in the form of a theory or an argument, but to show how they have grasped the profound meaning implied in these problems, how they have established their conviction, and how they can carry out what they grasped in their daily life. [fn# ] the famous three difficult questions, known as the three gates of teu shwai (to sotsu san kwan), who died in . see mu mon kwan, xlvii. a chinese zen master[fn# ] tells us that the method of instruction adopted by zen may aptly be compared with that of an old burglar who taught his son the art of burglary. the burglar one evening said to his little son, whom he desired to instruct in the secret of his trade: "would you not, my dear boy, be a great burglar like myself?" "yes, father," replied the promising young man." "come with me, then. i will teach you the art." so saying, the man went out, followed by his son. finding a rich mansion in a certain village, the veteran burglar made a hole in the wall that surrounded it. through that hole they crept into the yard, and opening a window with complete ease broke into the house, where they found a huge box firmly locked up as if its contents were very valuable articles. the old man clapped his hands at the lock, which, strange to tell, unfastened itself. then he removed the cover and told his son to get into it and pick up treasures as fast as he could. no sooner had the boy entered the box than the father replaced the cover and locked it up. he then exclaimed at the top of his voice: "thief! thief! thief! thief!" thus, having aroused the inmates, he went out without taking anything. all the house was in utter confusion for a while; but finding nothing stolen, they went to bed again. the boy sat holding his breath a short while; but making up his mind to get out of his narrow prison, began to scratch the bottom of the box with his finger-nails. the servant of the house, listening to the noise, supposed it to be a mouse gnawing at the inside of the box; so she came out, lamp in hand, and unlocked it. on removing the cover, she was greatly surprised to find the boy instead of a little mouse, and gave alarm. in the meantime the boy got out of the box and went down into the yard, hotly pursued by the people. he ran as fast as possible toward the well, picked up a large stone, threw it down into it, and hid himself among the bushes. the pursuers, thinking the thief fell into the well, assembled around it, and were looking into it, while the boy crept out unnoticed through the hole and went home in safety. thus the burglar taught his son how to rid himself of overwhelming difficulties by his own efforts; so also zen teachers teach their pupils how to overcome difficulties that beset them on all sides and work out salvation by themselves. [fn# ] wu tsu (go so), the teacher of yuen wu (en go). . the first step in the mental training. some of the old zen masters are said to have attained to supreme enlightenment after the practice of meditation for one week, some for one day, some for a score of years, and some for a few months. the practice of meditation, however, is not simply a means for enlightenment, as is usually supposed, but also it is the enjoyment of nirvana, or the beatitude of zen. it is a matter, of course, that we have fully to understand the doctrine of zen, and that we have to go through the mental training peculiar to zen in order to be enlightened. the first step in the mental training is to become the master of external things. he who is addicted to worldly pleasures, however learned or ignorant he may be, however high or low his social position may be, is a servant to mere things. he cannot adapt the external world to his own end, but he adapts himself to it. he is constantly employed, ordered, driven by sensual objects. instead of taking possession of wealth, he is possessed by wealth. instead of drinking liquors, he is swallowed up by his liquors. balls and music bid him to run mad. games and shows order him not to stay at home. houses, furniture, pictures, watches, chains, hats, bonnets, rings, bracelets, shoes--in short, everything has a word to command him. how can such a person be the master of things? to ju (na-kae) says: "there is a great jail, not a jail for criminals, that contains the world in it. fame, gain, pride, and bigotry form its four walls. those who are confined in it fall a prey to sorrow and sigh for ever." to be the ruler of things we have first to shut up all our senses, and turn the currents of thoughts inward, and see ourselves as the centre of the world, and meditate that we are the beings of highest intelligence; that buddha never puts us at the mercy of natural forces; that the earth is in our possession; that everything on earth is to be made use of for our noble ends; that fire, water, air, grass, trees, rivers, hills, thunder, cloud, stars, the moon, the sun, are at our command; that we are the law-givers of the natural phenomena; that we are the makers of the phenomenal world; that it is we that appoint a mission through life, and determine the fate of man. . the next step in the mental training. in the next place we have to strive to be the master of our bodies. with most of the unenlightened, body holds absolute control over self. every order of the former has to be faithfully obeyed by the latter. even if self revolts against the tyranny of body, it is easily trampled down under the brutal hoofs of bodily passion. for example, self wants to be temperate for the sake of health, and would fain pass by the resort for drinking, but body would force self into it. self at times lays down a strict dietetic rule for himself, but body would threaten self to act against both the letter and spirit of the rule. now self aspires to get on a higher place among sages, but body pulls self down to the pavement of masses. now self proposes to give some money to the poor, but body closes the purse tightly. now self admires divine beauty, but body compels him to prefer sensuality. again, self likes spiritual liberty, but body confines him in its dungeons. therefore, to get enlightened, we must establish the authority of self over the whole body. we must use our bodies as we use our clothes in order to accomplish our noble purposes. let us command body not to shudder under a cold shower-bath in inclement weather, not to be nervous from sleepless nights, not to be sick with any sort of food, not to groan under a surgeon's knife, not to succumb even if we stand a whole day in the midsummer sun, not to break down under any form of disease, not to be excited in the thick of battlefield--in brief, we have to control our body as we will. sit in a quiet place and meditate in imagination that body is no more bondage to you, that it is your machine for your work of life, that you are not flesh, that you are the governor of it, that you can use it at pleasure, and that it always obeys your order faithfully. imagine body as separated from you. when it cries out, stop it instantly, as a mother does her baby. when it disobeys you, correct it by discipline, as a master does his pupil. when it is wanton, tame it down, as a horse-breaker does his wild horse. when it is sick, prescribe to it, as a doctor does to his patient. imagine that you are not a bit injured, even if it streams blood; that you are entirely safe, even if it is drowned in water or burned by fire. e-shun, a pupil and sister of ryo-an,[fn# ] a famous japanese master, burned herself calmly sitting cross-legged on a pile of firewood which consumed her. she attained to the complete mastery of her body. socrates' self was never poisoned, even if his person was destroyed by the venom he took. abraham lincoln himself stood unharmed, even if his body was laid low by the assassin. masa-shige was quite safe, even if his body was hewed by the traitors' swords. those martyrs that sang at the stake to the praise of god could never be burned, even if their bodies were reduced to ashes, nor those seekers after truth who were killed by ignorance and superstition. is it not a great pity to see a man endowed with divine spirit and power easily upset by a bit of headache, or crying as a child under a surgeon's knife, or apt to give up the ghost at the coming of little danger, or trembling through a little cold, or easily laid low by a bit of indisposition, or yielding to trivial temptation? [fn# ] ryo an (e-myo, died ), the founder of the monastery of sai-jo-ji, near the city of odawara. see to-jo-ren-to-roku. it is no easy matter to be the dictator of body. it is not a matter of theory, but of practice. you must train your body that you may enable it to bear any sort of suffering, and to stand unflinched in the face of hardship. it is for this that so-rai[fn# ] (ogiu) laid himself on a sheet of straw-mat spread on the ground in the coldest nights of winter, or was used to go up and down the roof of his house, having himself clad in heavy armour. it is for this that ancient japanese soldiers led extremely simple lives, and that they often held the meeting-of-perseverance,[fn# ] in which they exposed themselves to the coldest weather in winter or to the hottest weather in summer. it is for this that katsu awa practised fencing in the middle of night in a deep forest.[fn# ] [fn# ] one of the greatest scholars of the tokugawa period, who died in . see etsu-wa-bun-ko. [fn# ] the soldiers of the tokugawa period were used to hold such a meeting. [fn# ] kai-shu-gen-ko-roku. ki-saburo, although he was a mere outlaw, having his left arm half cut at the elbow in a quarrel, ordered his servant to cut it off with a saw, and during the operation he could calmly sit talking and laughing with his friends. hiko-kuro (takayama),[fn# ] a japanese loyalist of note, one evening happened to come to a bridge where two robbers were lying in wait for him. they lay fully stretching themselves, each with his head in the middle of the bridge, that he might not pass across it without touching them. hiko-kuro was not excited nor disheartened, but calmly approached the vagabonds and passed the bridge, treading upon their heads, which act so frightened them that they took to their heels without doing any harm to him.[fn# ] [fn# ] a well-known loyalist in the tokugawa period, who died in . [fn# ] etsu-wa-bun-ko. the history of zen is full of the anecdotes that show zen priests were the lords of their bodies. here we quote a single example by way of illustration: ta hwui (dai-ye), once having had a boil on his hip, sent for a doctor, who told him that it was fatal, that he must not sit in meditation as usual. then ta hwui said to the physician: "i must sit in meditation with all my might during my remaining days, for if your diagnosis be not mistaken, i shall die before long." he sat day and night in constant meditation, quite forgetful of his boil, which was broken and gone by itself.[fn# ] [fn# ] sho-bo-gen-zo-zui-mon-ki, by do-gen. . the third step in the mental training. to be the lord of mind is more essential to enlightenment, which, in a sense, is the clearing away of illusions, the putting out of mean desires and passions, and the awakening of the innermost wisdom. he alone can attain to real happiness who has perfect control over his passions tending to disturb the equilibrium of his mind. such passions as anger, hatred, jealousy, sorrow, worry, grudge, and fear always untune one's mood and break the harmony of one's mind. they poison one's body, not in a figurative, but in a literal sense of the word. obnoxious passions once aroused never fail to bring about the physiological change in the nerves, in the organs, and eventually in the whole constitution, and leave those injurious impressions that make one more liable to passions of similar nature. we do not mean, however, that we ought to be cold and passionless, as the most ancient hinayanists were used to be. such an attitude has been blamed by zen masters. "what is the best way of living for us monks?" asked a monk to yun ku (un-go), who replied: "you had better live among mountains." then the monk bowed politely to the teacher, who questioned: "how did you understand me?" "monks, as i understood," answered the man, "ought to keep their hearts as immovable as mountains, not being moved either by good or by evil, either by birth or by death, either by prosperity or by adversity." hereupon yun ku struck the monk with his stick and said: "you forsake the way of the old sages, and will bring my followers to perdition!" then, turning to another monk, inquired: "how did you understand me?" "monks, as i understand," replied the man, "ought to shut their eyes to attractive sights and close their ears to musical notes." "you, too," exclaimed yun ka, "forsake the way of the old sages, and will bring my followers to perdition!" an old woman, to quote another example repeatedly told by zen masters, used to give food and clothing to a monk for a score of years. one day she instructed a young girl to embrace and ask him: "how do you feel now?" "a lifeless tree," replied the monk coolly, "stands on cold rock. there is no warmth, as if in the coldest season of the year." the matron, being told of this, observed: "oh that i have made offerings to such a vulgar fellow for twenty years!" she forced the monk to leave the temple and reduced it to ashes.[fn# ] [fn# ] these instances are quoted from zen-rin-rui-shu. if you want to secure dhyana, let go of your anxieties and failures in the past; let bygones be bygones; cast aside enmity, shame, and trouble, never admit them into your brain; let pass the imagination and anticipation of future hardships and sufferings; let go of all your annoyances, vexations, doubts, melancholies, that impede your speed in the race of the struggle for existence. as the miser sets his heart on worthless dross and accumulates it, so an unenlightened person clings to worthless mental dross and spiritual rubbish, and makes his mind a dust-heap. some people constantly dwell on the minute details of their unfortunate circumstances, to make themselves more unfortunate than they really are; some go over and over again the symptoms of their disease to think themselves into serious illness; and some actually bring evils on them by having them constantly in view and waiting for them. a man asked poh chang (hyaku-jo): "how shall i learn the law?" "eat when you are hungry," replied the teacher; " sleep when you are tired. people do not simply eat at table, but think of hundreds of things; they do not simply sleep in bed, but think of thousands of things."[fn# ] [fn# ] e-gen and den-to-roku. a ridiculous thing it is, in fact, that man or woman, endowed with the same nature as buddha's, born the lord of all material objects, is ever upset by petty cares, haunted by the fearful phantoms of his or her own creation, and burning up his or her energy in a fit of passion, wasting his or her vitality for the sake of foolish or insignificant things. it is a man who can keep the balance of his mind under any circumstances, who can be calm and serene in the hottest strife of life, that is worthy of success, reward, respect, and reputation, for he is the master of men. it was at the age of forty-seven that wang yang ming[fn# ] (o-yo-mei) won a splendid victory over the rebel army which threatened the throne of the ming dynasty. during that warfare wang was giving a course of lectures to a number of students at the headquarters of the army, of which he was the commander-in-chief. at the very outset of the battle a messenger brought him the news of defeat of the foremost ranks. all the students were terror-stricken and grew pale at the unfortunate tidings, but the teacher was not a whit disturbed by it. some time after another messenger brought in the news of complete rout of the enemy. all the students, enraptured, stood up and cheered, but he was as cool as before, and did not break off lecturing. thus the practiser of zen has so perfect control over his heart that he can keep presence of mind under an impending danger, even in the presence of death itself. [fn# ] the founder of the wang school of confucianism, a practiser of meditation, who was born in , and died at the age of fifty-seven in . it was at the age of twenty-three that haku-in got on board a boat bound for the eastern provinces, which met with a tempest and was almost wrecked. all the passengers were laid low with fear and fatigue, but haku-in enjoyed a quiet sleep during the storm, as if he were lying on a comfortable bed. it was in the fifth of mei-ji era that doku-on[fn# ] lived for some time in the city of tokyo, whom some christian zealots attempted to murder. one day he met with a few young men equipped with swords at the gate of his temple. "we want to see doku-on; go and tell him," said they to the priest. "i am doku-on," replied he calmly, "whom you want to see, gentlemen. what can i do for you?" "we have come to ask you a favour; we are christians; we want your hoary head." so saying they were ready to attack him, who, smiling, replied: "all right, gentlemen. behead me forthwith, if you please." surprised by this unexpected boldness on the part of the priest, they turned back without harming even a hair of the old buddhist.[fn# ] [fn# ] doku on (ogino), a distinguished zen master, an abbot of so-koku-ji, who was born in , and died in . [fn# ] kin-sei-zen-rin-gen-ko-roku, by d. mori. these teachers could through long practice constantly keep their minds buoyant, casting aside useless encumbrances of idle thoughts; bright, driving off the dark cloud of melancholy; tranquil, putting down turbulent waves of passion; pure, cleaning away the dust and ashes of illusion; and serene, brushing off the cobwebs of doubt and fear. the only means of securing all this is to realize the conscious union with the universal life through the enlightened consciousness, which can be awakened by dint of dhyana. . zazen, or the sitting in meditation. habit comes out of practice, and forms character by degrees, and eventually works out destiny. therefore we must practically sow optimism, and habitually nourish it in order to reap the blissful fruit of enlightenment. the sole means of securing mental calmness is the practice of zazen, or the sitting in meditation. this method was known in india as yoga as early as the upanisad period, and developed by the followers of the yoga system.[fn# ] but buddhists sharply distinguished zazen from yoga, and have the method peculiar to themselves. kei-zan[fn# ] describes the method to the following effect: 'secure a quiet room neither extremely light nor extremely dark, neither very warm nor very cold, a room, if you can, in the buddhist temple located in a beautiful mountainous district. you should not practise zazen in a place where a conflagration or a flood or robbers may be likely to disturb you, nor should you sit in a place close by the sea or drinking-shops or brothel-houses, or the houses of widows and of maidens or buildings for music, nor should you live in close proximity to the place frequented by kings, ministers, powerful statesmen, ambitious or insincere persons. you must not sit in meditation in a windy or very high place lest you should get ill. be sure not to let the wind or smoke get into your room, not to expose it to rain and storm. keep your room clean. keep it not too light by day nor too dark by night. keep it warm in winter and cool in summer. do not sit leaning against a wall, or a chair, or a screen. you must not wear soiled clothes or beautiful clothes, for the former are the cause of illness, while the latter the cause of attachment. avoid the three insufficiencies-that is to say, insufficient clothes, insufficient food, and insufficient sleep. abstain from all sorts of uncooked or hard or spoiled or unclean food, and also from very delicious dishes, because the former cause troubles in your alimentary canal, while the latter cause you to covet after diet. eat and drink just too appease your hunger and thirst, never mind whether the food be tasty or not. take your meals regularly and punctually, and never sit in meditation immediately after any meal. do not practise dhyana soon after you have taken a heavy dinner, lest you should get sick thereby. sesame, barley, corn, potatoes, milk, and the like are the best material for your food. frequently wash your eyes, face, hands, and feet, and keep them cool and clean. [fn# ] see yoga sutra with the commentary of bhoja raja (translated by rajendralala mitra), pp. - . [fn# ] kei-zan (jo-kin), the founder of so-ji-ji, the head temple of the so to sect of zen, who died at the age of fifty-eight in . he sets forth the doctrine of zen and the method of practising zazen in his famous work, entitled za-zen-yo-jin-ki. 'there are two postures in zazen--that is to say, the crossed-leg sitting, and the half crossed-leg sitting. seat yourself on a thick cushion, putting it right under your haunch. keep your body so erect that the tip of the nose and the navel are in one perpendicular line, and both ears and shoulders are in the same plane. then place the right foot upon the left thigh, the left foot on the right thigh, so as the legs come across each other. next put your right hand with the palm upward on the left foot, and your left hand on the right palm with the tops of both the thumbs touching each other. this is the posture called the crossed-leg sitting. you may simply place the left foot upon the right thigh, the position of the hands being the same as in the cross-legged sitting. this posture is named the half crossed-leg sitting.' 'do not shut your eyes, keep them always open during whole meditation. do not breathe through the mouth; press your tongue against the roof of the mouth, putting the upper lips and teeth together with the lower. swell your abdomen so as to hold the breath in the belly; breathe rhythmically through the nose, keeping a measured time for inspiration and expiration. count for some time either the inspiring or the expiring breaths from one to ten, then beginning with one again. concentrate your attention on your breaths going in and out as if you are the sentinel standing at the gate of the nostrils. if you do some mistake in counting, or be forgetful of the breath, it is evident that your mind is distracted.' chwang tsz seems to have noticed that the harmony of breathing is typical of the harmony of mind, since he says: "the true men of old did not dream when they slept. their breathing came deep and silently. the breathing of true men comes (even) from his heels, while men generally breathe (only) from their throats."[fn# ] at any rate, the counting of breaths is an expedient for calming down of mind, and elaborate rules are given in the zen sutra,[fn# ] but chinese and japanese zen masters do not lay so much stress on this point as indian teachers. [fn# ] chwang tsz, vol. iii., p. . [fn# ] dharmatara-dhyana-sutra. . the breathing exercise of the yogi. breathing exercise is one of the practices of yoga, and somewhat similar in its method and end to those of zen. we quote here[fn# ] yogi ramacharaka to show how modern yogis practise it: "( ) stand or sit erect. breathing through the nostrils, inhale steadily, first filling the lower part of the lungs, which is accomplished by bringing into play the diaphragm, which, descending, exerts a gentle pressure on the abdominal organs, pushing forward the front walls of the abdomen. then fill the middle part of the lungs, pushing out the lower ribs, breastbone, and chest. then fill the higher portion of the lungs, protruding the upper chest, thus lifting the chest, including the upper six or seven pairs of ribs. in the final movement the lower part of the abdomen will be slightly drawn in, which movement gives the lungs a support, and also helps to fill the highest part of the lungs. at the first reading it may appear that this breath consists of three distinct movements. this, however, is not the correct idea. the inhalation is continuous, the entire chest cavity from the lower diaphragm to the highest point of the chest in the region of the collar-bone being expanded with a uniform movement. avoid a jerking series of inhalations, and strive to attain a steady, continuous action. practice will soon overcome the tendency to divide the inhalation into three movements, and will result in a uniform continuous breath. you will be able to complete the inhalation in a couple of seconds after a little practice. ( ) retain the breath a few seconds. ( ) exhale quite slowly, holding the chest in a firm position, and drawing the abdomen in a little and lifting it upward slowly as the air leaves the lungs. when the air is entirely exhaled, relax the chest and abdomen. a little practice will render this part of exercise easy, and the movement once acquired will be afterwards performed almost automatically." [fn# ] hatha yoga, pp. , . . calmness of mind. the yogi breathing above mentioned is fit rather for physical exercise than for mental balance, and it will be beneficial if you take that exercise before or after meditation. japanese masters mostly bold it very important to push forward. the lowest part of the abdomen during zazen, and they are right so far as the present writer's personal experiences go. 'if you feel your mind distracted, look at the tip of the nose; never lose sight of it for some time, or look at your own palm, and let not your mind go out of it, or gaze at one spot before you.' this will greatly help you in restoring the equilibrium of your mind. chwang tsz[fn# ] thought that calmness of mind is essential to sages, and said: "the stillness of the sages does not belong to them as a consequence of their skilful ability; all things are not able to disturb their minds; it is on this account that they are still. when water is still, its clearness shows the beard and eyebrows (of him who looks into it). it is a perfect level, and the greatest artificer takes his rule from it. such is the clearness of still water, and how much greater is that of the human spirit? the still mind of the sage is the mirror of heaven and earth, the glass of all things." forget all worldly concerns, expel all cares and anxieties, let go of passions and desires, give up ideas and thoughts, set your mind at liberty absolutely, and make it as clear as a burnished mirror. thus let flow your inexhaustible fountain of purity, let open your inestimable treasure of virtue, bring forth your inner hidden nature of goodness, disclose your innermost divine wisdom, and waken your enlightened consciousness to see universal life within you. "zazen enables the practiser," says kei-zan,[fn# ] "to open up his mind, to see his own nature, to become conscious of mysteriously pure and bright spirit, or eternal light within him." [fn# ] chwang tsz, vol. v., p. . [fn# ] za-zen-yo-jin-ki. once become conscious of divine life within you, yon can see it in your brethren, no matter how different they may be in circumstances, in abilities, in characters, in nationalities, in language, in religion, and in race. you can see it in animals, vegetables, and minerals, no matter how diverse they may be in form, no matter how wild and ferocious some may seem in nature, no matter how unfeeling in heart some may seem, no matter how devoid of intelligence some may appear, no matter how insignificant some may be, no matter how simple in construction some may be, no matter how lifeless some may seem. you can see that the whole universe is enlightened and penetrated by divine life. . zazen and the forgetting of self. zazen is a most effectual means of destroying selfishness, the root of all sin, folly, vice, and evil, since it enables us to see that every being is endowed with divine spirituality in common with men. it is selfishness that throws dark shadows on life, just as it is not the sun but the body that throws shadow before it. it is the self-same selfishness that gave rise to the belief in the immortality of soul, in spite of its irrationality, foolishness, and superstition. individual self should be a poor miserable thing if it were not essentially connected with the universal life. we can always enjoy pure happiness when we are united with nature, quite forgetful of our poor self. when you look, for example, into the smiling face of a pretty baby, and smile with it, or listen to the sweet melody of a songster and sing with it, you completely forget your poor self at that enraptured moment. but your feelings of beauty and happiness are for ever gone when you resume your self, and begin to consider them after your own selfish ideas. to forget self and identify it with nature is to break down its limitation and to set it at liberty. to break down petty selfishness and extend it into universal self is to unfetter and deliver it from bondage. it therefore follows that salvation can be secured not by the continuation of individuality in another life, but by the realization of one's union with universal life, which is immortal, free, limitless, eternal, and bliss itself. this is easily effected by zazen. . zen and supernatural power. yoga[fn# ] claims that various supernatural powers can be acquired by meditation, but zen does not make any such absurd claims. it rather disdains those who are believed to have acquired supernatural powers by the practice of austerities. the following traditions clearly show this spirit: "when fah yung (ho-yu) lived in mount niu teu[fn# ] (go-zu-san) he used to receive every morning the offerings of flowers from hundreds of birds, and was believed to have supernatural powers. but after his enlightenment by the instruction of the fourth patriarch, the birds ceased to make offering, because be became a being too divine to be seen by inferior animals." "hwang pah (o-baku), one day going up mount tien tai (ten-dai-san), which was believed to have been inhabited by arhats with supernatural powers, met with a monk whose eyes emitted strange light. they went along the pass talking with each other for a short while until they came to a river roaring with torrent. there being no bridge, the master bad to stop at the shore; but his companion crossed the river walking on the water and beckoned to hwang pah to follow him. thereupon hwang pah said: 'if i knew thou art an arhat, i would have doubled you up before thou got over there!' the monk then understood the spiritual attainment of hwang pah, and praised him as a true mahayanist." "on one occasion yang shan (kyo-zan) saw a stranger monk flying through the air. when that monk came down and approached him with a respectful salutation, he asked: 'where art thou from? 'early this morning,' replied the other, 'i set out from india.' 'why,' said the teacher, 'art thou so late?' 'i stopped,' responded the man, 'several times to look at beautiful sceneries.' thou mayst have supernatural powers,' exclaimed yang shan, 'yet thou must give back the spirit of buddha to me.' then the monk praised yang shan saying: 'i have come over to china in order to worship manyjucri,[fn# ] and met unexpectedly with minor shakya,' and, after giving the master some palm leaves he brought from india, went back through the air.'"[fn# ] [fn# ] 'yoga aphorisms of patanyjali,' chap. iii. [fn# ] a prominent disciple of the fourth patriarch, the founder of the niu teu school (go-zu-zen) of zen, who died in a.d. . [fn# ] manyjucri is a legendary bodhisattva, who became an object of worship of some mahayanists. he is treated as a personification of transcendental wisdom. [fn# ] hwui yuen (e-gen) and sho-bo-gen-zo. it is quite reasonable that zenists distinguish supernatural powers from spiritual uplifting, the former an acquirement of devas, or of asuras, or of arhats, or of even animals, and the latter as a nobler accomplishment attained only by the practisers of mahayanism. moreover, they use the term supernatural power in a meaning entirely different from the original one. lin tsi (rin-zai) says, for instance: "there are six supernatural powers of buddha: he is free from the temptation of form, living in the world of form; he is free from the temptation of sound, living in the world of sound; he is free from the temptation of smell, living in the world of smell; he is free from the temptation of taste, living in the world of taste; he is free from the temptation of dharma,[fn# ] living in the world of dharma. these are six supernatural powers."[fn# ] [fn# ] the things or objects, not of sense, but of mind. [fn# ] lin tsi luh (rin-zai-roku). sometimes zenists use the term as if it meant what we call zen activity, or the free display of zen in action, as you see in the following examples. tung shan (to-zan) was on one occasion attending on his teacher yun yen (un-gan), who asked: "what are your supernatural powers?" tung shan, saying nothing, clasped his hands on his breast, and stood up before yun yen. "how do you display your supernatural powers?" questioned the teacher again. then tung shan said farewell and went out. wei shan (e-san) one day was taking a nap, and seeing his disciple yang shan (kyo-zan) coming into the room, turned his face towards the wall. "you need not, sir," said yang shan, "stand on ceremony, as i am your disciple." wei shan seemed to try to get up, so yang shan went out; but wei shan called him back and said: "i shall tell you of a dream i dreamed." the other inclined his head as if to listen. "now," said wei shan, "divine my fortune by the dream." thereupon yang shan fetched a basin of water and a towel and gave them to the master, who washed his face thereby. by-and-by hiang yen (kyo-gen) came in, to whom wei shan said: "we displayed supernatural powers a moment ago. it was not such supernatural powers as are shown by hinayanists." "i know it, sir," replied the other, "though i was down below." "say, then, what it was," demanded the master. then hiang yen made tea and gave a cup to wei shan, who praised the two disciples, saying: "you surpass Ã�ariputra[fn# ] and maudgalyayana[fn# ] in your wisdom and supernatural powers."[fn# ] [fn# ] one of the prominent disciples of shakya muni, who became famous for his wisdom. [fn# ] one of the eminent disciples of shakya muni, noted for his supernatural powers. [fn# ] zen-rin-rui-sku. again, ancient zenists did not claim that there was any mysterious element in their spiritual attainment, as do-gen says[fn# ] unequivocally respecting his enlightenment: "i recognized only that my eyes are placed crosswise above the nose that stands lengthwise, and that i was not deceived by others. i came home from china with nothing in my hand. there is nothing mysterious in buddhism. time passes as it is natural, the sun rising in the east, and the moon setting into the west." [fn# ] ei-hei-ko-roku. . true dhyana. to sit in meditation is not the only method of practising zazen. "we practise dhyana in sitting, in standing, and in walking," says one of the japanese zenists. lin tsi (rin-zai) also says: "to concentrate one's mind, or to dislike noisy places, and seek only for stillness, is the characteristic of heterodox dhyana." it is easy to keep self-possession in a place of tranquillity, yet it is by no means easy to keep mind undisturbed amid the bivouac of actual life. it is true dhyana that makes our mind sunny while the storms of strife rage around us. it is true dhyana that secures the harmony of heart, while the surges of struggle toss us violently. it is true dhyana that makes us bloom and smile, while the winter of life covets us with frost and snow. "idle thoughts come and go over unenlightened minds six hundred and fifty times in a snap of one's fingers," writes an indian teacher,[fn# ] "and thirteen hundred million times every twenty-four hours." this might be an exaggeration, yet we cannot but acknowledge that one idle thought after another ceaselessly bubbles up in the stream of consciousness. "dhyana is the letting go," continues the writer--"that is to say, the letting go of the thirteen hundred million of idle thoughts." the very root of these thirteen hundred million idle thoughts is an illusion about one's self. he is indeed the poorest creature, even if he be in heaven, who thinks himself poor. on the contrary, he is an angel who thinks himself hopeful and happy, even though he be in hell. "pray deliver me," said a sinner to sang tsung (so-san).[fn# ] "who ties you up?" was the reply. you tie yourself up day and night with the fine thread of idle thoughts, and build a cocoon of environment from which you have no way of escape. 'there is no rope, yet you imagine yourself bound.' who could put fetters on your mind but your mind itself? who could chain your will but your own will? who could blind your spiritual eyes, unless you yourself shut them up? who could prevent you from enjoying moral food, unless you yourself refuse to eat? "there are many," said sueh fung (sep-po) on one occasion, "who starve in spite of their sitting in a large basket full of victuals. there are many who thirst in spite of seating themselves on the shore of a sea." "yes, sir," replied huen sha (gen-sha), "there are many who starve in spite of putting their heads into the basket full of victuals. there are many who thirst in spite of putting their heads into the waters of the sea."[fn# ] who could cheer him up who abandons himself to self-created misery? who could save him who denies his own salvation? [fn# ] the introduction to anapana-sutra by khin san hwui, who came to china a.d. . [fn# ] the third patriarch. [fn# ] hwui yuen (e-gen). . let go of your idle thoughts.[fn# ] [fn# ] a famous zenist, mu-go-koku-shi, is said to have replied to every questioner, saying: "let go of your idle thoughts." a brahmin, having troubled himself a long while with reference to the problem of life and of the world, went out to call on shakya muni that he might be instructed by the master. he got some beautiful flowers to offer them as a present to the muni, and proceeded to the place where he was addressing his disciples and believers. no sooner had he come in sight of the master than he read in his mien the struggles going on within him. "let go of that," said the muni to the brahmin, who was going to offer the flowers in both his hands. he dropped on the ground the flowers in his right hand, but still holding those in his left. "let go of that," demanded the master, and the brahmin dropped the flowers in his left hand rather reluctantly. "let go of that, i say," the muni commanded again; but the brahmin, having nothing to let go of, asked: "what shall i let go of, reverend sir? i have nothing in my hands, you know." "let go of that, you have neither in your right nor in your left band, but in the middle." upon these words of the muni a light came into the sufferer's mind, and he went home satisfied and in joy.[fn# ] "not to attach to all things is dhyana," writes an ancient zenist, "and if you understand this, going out, staying in, sitting, and lying are in dhyana." therefore allow not your mind to be a receptacle for the dust of society, or the ashes of life, or rags and waste paper of the world. you bear too much burden upon your shoulders with which you have nothing to do. [fn# ] 'sutra on the brahmacarin black-family,' translated into chinese by k' khien, of the wu dynasty (a.d. - ). learn the lesson of forgetfulness, and forget all that troubles you, deprives you of sound sleep, and writes wrinkles on your forehead. wang yang ming, at the age of seventeen or so, is said to have forgotten the day 'on which he was to be married to a handsome young lady, daughter of a man of high position. it was the afternoon of the very day on which their nuptials had to be held that he went out to take a walk. without any definite purpose he went into a temple in the neighbourhood, and there he found a recluse apparently very old with white hair, but young in countenance like a child. the man was sitting absorbed in meditation. there was something extremely calm and serene in that old man's look and bearing that attracted the young scholar's attention. questioning him as to his name, age, and birthplace, wang found that the venerable man had enjoyed a life so extraordinarily long that he forgot his name and age, but that he had youthful energy so abundantly that be could talk with a voice sounding as a large bell. being asked by wang the secret of longevity, the man replied: "there is no secret in it; i merely kept my mind calm and peaceful." further, he explained the method of meditation according to taoism and buddhism. thereupon wang sat face to face with the old man and began to practise meditation, utterly forgetful of his bride and nuptial ceremony. the sun began to cast his slanting rays on the wall of the temple, and they sat motionless; twilight came over them, and night wrapped them with her sable shroud, and they sat as still as two marble statues; midnight, dawn, at last the morning sun rose to find them still in their reverie. the father of the bride, who had started a search during the night, found to his surprise the bridegroom absorbed in meditation on the following day.[fn# ] [fn# ] o-yo-mei-shutsu-shin-sei-ran-roku. it was at the age of forty-seven that wang gained a great victory over the rebel army, and wrote to a friend saying: "it is so easy to gain a victory over the rebels fortifying themselves among the mountains, yet it is not so with those rebels living in our mind."[fn# ] tsai kiun mu (sai-kun-bo) is said to have had an exceedingly long and beautiful beard, and when asked by the emperor, who received him in audience, whether he should sleep with his beard on the comforters or beneath them, be could not answer, since he had never known how he did. being distracted by this question, he went home and tried to find out how he had been used to manage his beard in bed. first he put his beard on the comforters and vainly tried to sleep; then he put it beneath the comforters and thought it all right. nevertheless, he was all the more disturbed by it. so then, putting on the comforters, now putting it beneath them, he tried to sleep all night long, but in vain. you must therefore forget your mental beard that annoys you all the time. [fn# ] ibid. men of longevity never carried troubles to their beds. it is a well-known fact that zui-o (shi-ga)[fn# ] enjoyed robust health at the age of over one hundred years. one day, being asked whether there is any secret of longevity, he replied affirmatively, and said to the questioner: "keep your mind and body pure for two weeks, abstaining from any sort of impurity, then i shall tell you of the secret." the man did as was prescribed, and came again to be instructed in the secret. zui-o said: "now i might tell you, but be cautious to keep yourself pure another week so as to qualify yourself to learn the secret." when that week was over the old man said: "now i might tell you, but will you be so careful as to keep yourself pure three days more in order to qualify yourself to receive the secret?" the man did as he was ordered, and requested the instruction. thereupon zui-o took the man to his private room and softly whispered, with his mouth close to the ear of the man: "keep the secret i tell you now, even at the cost of your life. it is this-don't be passionate. that is all."[fn# ] [fn# ] this famous old man died in a.d. . [fn# ] se-ji-hyaku-dan. . 'the five ranks of merit.' thus far we have stated how to train our body and mind according to the general rules and customs established by zenists. and here we shall describe the different stages of mental uplifting through which the student of zen has to go. they are technically called 'the five ranks of merit.'[fn# ] the first stage is called the rank of turning,[fn# ] in which the student 'turns' his mind from the external objects of sense towards the inner enlightened consciousness. he gives up all mean desires and aspires to spiritual elevation. he becomes aware that he is not doomed to be the slave of material things, and strives to conquer over them. enlightened consciousness is likened to the king, and it is called the mind-king, while the student who now turns towards the king is likened to common people. therefore in this first stage the student is in the rank of common people. [fn# ] ko-kun-go-i. for further details, see so-to-ni-shi-roku. [fn# ] ko in japanese. the second stage is called the rank of service,[fn# ] in which the student distinguishes himself by his loyalty to the mind-king, and becomes a courtier to 'serve' him. he is in constant 'service' to the king, attending him with obedience and love, and always fearing to offend him. thus the student in this stage is ever careful not to neglect rules and precepts laid down by the sages, and endeavours to uplift himself in spirituality by his fidelity. the third stage is called the rank of merit,[fn# ] in which the student distinguishes himself by his 'meritorious' acts of conquering over the rebel army of passion which rises against the mind-king. now, his rank is not the rank of a courtier, but the rank of a general. in other words, his duty is not only to keep rules and instructions of the sages, but to subjugate his own passion and establish moral order in the mental kingdom. [fn# ] bu in japanese. [fn# ] ko in japanese. the fourth stage is called the rank of co-operative merit,[fn# ] in which the student 'co-operates' with other persons in order to complete his merit. now, he is not compared with a general who conquers his foe, but with the prime-minister who co-operates with other officials to the benefit of the people. thus the student in this stage is not satisfied with his own conquest of passion, but seeks after spiritual uplifting by means of extending his kindness and sympathy to his fellow-men. [fn# ] gu-ko in japanese. the fifth stage is called the rank of merit-over-merit,[fn# ] which means the rank of meritless-merit. this is the rank of the king himself. the king does nothing meritorious, because all the governmental works are done by his ministers and subjects. all that he has to do is to keep his inborn dignity and sit high on his throne. therefore his conduct is meritless, but all the meritorious acts of his subjects are done through his authority. doing nothing, he does everything. without any merit, he gets all merits. thus the student in this stage no more strives to keep precepts, but his doings are naturally in accord with them. no more he aspires for spiritual elevation, but his, heart is naturally pure from material desires. no more he makes an effort to vanquish his passion, but no passion disturbs him. no more he feels it his duty to do good to others, but he is naturally good and merciful. no more he sits in dhyana, but he naturally lives in dhyana at all times. it is in this fifth stage that the student is enabled to identify his self with the mind-king or enlightened consciousness, and to abide in perfect bliss. [fn# ] ko-ko in japanese. . 'the ten pictures of the cowherd.'[fn# ] [fn# ] the pictures were drawn by kwoh ngan (kaku-an), a chinese zenist. for the details, see zen-gaku-ho-ten. besides these five ranks of merit, zenists make use of the ten pictures of the cowherd, in order to show the different stages of mental training through which the student of zen has to go. some poems were written by chinese and japanese teachers on each of these pictures by way of explanation, but they are too ambiguous to be translated into english, and we rest content with the translation of a single japanese poem on each of the ten pictures, which are as follows: the first picture, called 'the searching of the cow,' represents the cowherd wandering in the wilderness with a vague hope of finding his lost cow that is running wild out of his sight. the reader will notice that the cow is likened to the mind of the student and the cowherd to the student himself. "i do not see my cow, but trees and grass, and hear the empty cries of cicadas." the second picture, called 'the finding of the cow's tracks,' represents the cowherd tracing the cow with the sure hope of restoring her, having found her tracks on the ground. "the grove is deep, and so is my desire. how glad i am, o lo! i see her tracks." the third picture, called 'the finding out of the cow,' represents the cowherd slowly approaching the cow from a distance. "her loud and wild mooing has led me here; i see her form afar, like a dark shadow." the fourth 'picture, called 'the catching of the cow,' represents the cowherd catching hold of the cow, who struggles to break loose from him. "alas! it's hard to keep the cow i caught. she tries to run and leap and snap the cord." the fifth picture, called 'the taming of the cow,' represents the cowherd pacifying the cow, giving her grass and water. "i'm glad the cow so wild is tamed and mild. she follows me, as if she were my shadow." the sixth picture, called 'the going home riding on the cow,' represents the cowherd playing on a flute, riding on the cow. "slowly the clouds return to their own hill, floating along the skies so calm and still. the seventh picture, called 'the forgetting of the cow and the remembering of the man,' represents the cowherd looking at the beautiful scenery surrounding his cottage. "the cow goes out by day and comes by night. i care for her in no way, but all is right." the eighth picture, called 'the forgetting of the cow and of the man,' represents a large empty circle. "there's no cowherd nor cow within the pen; no moon of truth nor clouds of doubt in men." the ninth picture, called 'the returning to the root and source,' represents a beautiful landscape full of lovely trees in full blossom. "there is no dyer of hills, yet they are green; so flowers smile, and titter rills at their own wills." the tenth picture, called 'the going into the city with open hands,' represents a smiling monk, gourd in hand, talking with a man who looks like a pedlar. "the cares for body make that body pine; let go of cares and thoughts, o child of mine!" these ten pictures of the cowherd correspond in meaning to the five ranks of merit above stated, even if there is a slight difference, as is shown in the following table: the five ranks.---the ten pictures. . the rank of turning--- . the searching of the cow. . the finding of the cow's tracks. . the rank of service--- . the finding of the cow. . the catching of the cow. . the rank of merit--- . the taming of the cow. . the going home, riding on the cow. . the rank of co-operative merit--- . the returning to the root and source. . the going into the city with open hands. . the rank of merit-over-merit--- . the forgetting of the cow and the remembering of the man. . the forgetting of the cow and of the man. . zen and nirvana. the beatitude of zen is nirvana, not in the hinayanistic sense of the term, but in the sense peculiar to the faith. nirvana literally means extinction or annihilation; hence the extinction of life or the annihilation of individuality. to zen, however, it means the state of extinction of pain and the annihilation of sin. zen never looks for the realization of its beatitude in a place like heaven, nor believes in the realm of reality transcendental of the phenomenal universe, nor gives countenance to the superstition of immortality, nor does it hold the world is the best of all possible worlds, nor conceives life simply as blessing. it is in this life, full of shortcomings, misery, and sufferings, that zen hopes to realize its beatitude. it is in this world, imperfect, changing, and moving, that zen finds the divine light it worships. it is in this phenomenal universe of limitation and relativity that zen aims to attain to highest nirvana. "we speak," says the author of vimalakirtti-nirdeca-sutra, "of the transitoriness of body, but not of the desire of the nirvana or destruction of it." "paranirvana," according to the author of lankavatarasutra, "is neither death nor destruction, but bliss, freedom, and purity." "nirvana," says kiai hwan,[fn# ] "means the extinction of pain or the crossing over of the sea of life and death. it denotes the real permanent state of spiritual attainment. it does not signify destruction or annihilation. it denotes the belief in the great root of life and spirit." it is nirvana of zen to enjoy bliss for all sufferings of life. it is nirvana of zen to be serene in mind for all disturbances of actual existence. it is nirvana of zen to be in the conscious union with universal life or buddha through enlightenment. [fn# ] a commentator of saddharma-pundarika-sutra. . nature and her lesson. nature offers us nectar and ambrosia every day, and everywhere we go the rose and lily await us. "spring visits us men," says gu-do,[fn# ] "her mercy is great. every blossom holds out the image of tathagata." "what is the spiritual body of buddha who is immortal and divine?" asked a man to ta lun (dai-ryu), who instantly replied: "the flowers cover the mountain with golden brocade. the waters tinge the rivulets with heavenly blue." "universe is the whole body of tathagata; observed do-gen. "the worlds in ten directions, the earth, grass, trees, walls, fences, tiles, pebbles-in a word, all the animated and inanimate objects partake of the buddha-nature. thereby, those who partake in the benefit of the wind and water that rise out of them are, all of them, helped by the mysterious influence of buddha, and show forth enlightenment."[fn# ] [fn# ] one of the distinguished zenists in the tokugawa period, who died in . [fn# ] sho-bo gen-zo. thus you can attain to highest bliss through your conscious union with buddha. nothing can disturb your peace, when you can enjoy peace in the midst of disturbances; nothing can cause you to suffer, when you welcome misfortunes and hardships in order to train and strengthen your character; nothing can tempt you to commit sin, when you are constantly ready to listen to the sermon given by everything around you; nothing can distress you, when you make the world the holy temple of buddha. this is the state of nirvana which everyone believing in buddha may secure. . the beatitude of zen. we are far from denying, as already shown in the foregoing chapters, the existence of troubles, pains, diseases, sorrows, deaths in life. our bliss consists in seeing the fragrant rose of divine mercy among the thorns of worldly trouble, in finding the fair oasis of buddha's wisdom in the desert of misfortunes, in getting the wholesome balm of his love in the seeming poison of pain, in gathering the sweet honey of his spirit even in the sting of horrible death. history testifies to the truth that it is misery that teaches men more than happiness, that it is poverty that strengthens them more than wealth, that it is adversity that moulds character more than prosperity, that it is disease and death that call forth the inner life more than health and long life. at least, no one can be blind to the fact that good and evil have an equal share in forming the character and working out the destiny of man. even such a great pessimist as schopenhauer says: "as our bodily frame would burst asunder if the pressure of atmosphere were removed, so if the lives of men were relieved of all need, hardship, and adversity, if everything they took in hand were successful, they would be so swollen with arrogance . . . that they would present the spectacle of unbridled folly. a ship without ballast is unstable, and will not go straight." therefore let us make our ship of life go straight with its ballast of miseries and hardships, over which we gain control. the believer in buddha is thankful to him, not only for the sunshine of life, but also for its wind, rain, snow, thunder, and lightning, because he gives us nothing in vain. hisa-nobu (ko-yama) was, perhaps, one of the happiest persons that japan ever produced, simply because he was ever thankful to the merciful one. one day he went out without an umbrella and met with a shower. hurrying up to go home, he stumbled and fell, wounding both his legs. as he rose up, he was overheard to say: "thank heaven." and being asked why he was so thankful, replied: "i got both my legs hurt, but, thank heaven, they were not broken." on another occasion he lost consciousness, having been kicked violently by a wild horse. when he came to himself, he exclaimed: "thank heaven," in hearty joy. being asked the reason why he was so joyful, he answered: "i have really given up my ghost, but, thank heaven, i have escaped death after all."[fn# ] a person in such a state of mind can do anything with heart and might. whatever he does is an act of thanks for the grace of buddha, and he does it, not as his duty, but as the overflowing of his gratitude which lie himself cannot check. here exists the formation of character. here exist real happiness and joy. here exists the realization of nirvana. [fn# ] ki-jin-den. most people regard death as the greatest of evils, only because they fear death. they fear death only because they have the instinct of self-preservation. hereupon pessimistic philosophy and religion propose to attain to nirvana by the extinction of will-to-live, or by the total annihilation of life. but this is as much as to propose death as the final cure to a patient. elie metchnikoff proposes, in his 'nature of man,' another cure, saying: 'if man could only contrive to live long enough--say, for one hundred and forty years--a natural desire for extinction would take the place of the instinct for self-preservation, and the call of death would then harmoniously satisfy his legitimate craving of a ripe old age.' why, we must ask, do you trouble yourself so much about death? is there any instance of an individual who escaped it in the whole history of mankind? if there be no way of escape, why do you trouble yourself about it? can you cause things to fall off the earth against the law of gravitation? is there any example of an individual object that escaped the government of that law in the whole history of the world? why, then, do you trouble yourself about it? it is no less silly to trouble yourself about death than you do about gravitation. can you realize that death, which you have yet no immediate experience of, is the greatest of evil? we dare to declare death to be one of the blessings which we have to be thankful for. death is the scavenger of the world; it sweeps away all uselessness, staleness, and corruption from the world, and keeps life clean and ever now. when you are of no use for the world it comes upon you, removes you to oblivion in order to relieve life of useless encumbrance. the stream of existence should be kept running, otherwise it would become putrid. if old lives were to stop the running stream it would stand still, and consequently become filthy, poisoned, and worthless. suppose there were only births and no deaths. the earth has to be packed with men and women, who are doomed to live to all eternity, jostling, colliding, bumping, trampling each other, and vainly struggling to get out of the black hole of the earth. thanks to death we are not in the black hole! only birth and no death is far worse than only death and no birth. "the dead," says chwang tsz, "have no tyrannical king about, no slavish subject to meet; no change of seasons overtakes them. the heaven and the earth take the places of spring and autumn. the king or emperor of a great nation cannot be happier than they." how would you be if death should never overtake you when ugly decrepitude makes you blind and deaf, bodily and mentally, and deprives you of all possible pleasures? how would you be if you should not die when your body is broken to pieces or terribly burned by an accident--say, by a violent earthquake followed by a great conflagration? just imagine satan, immortal satan, thrown down by the ire of god into hell's fiery gulf, rolling himself in dreadful torture to the end of time. you cannot but conclude that it is only death which relieves you of extreme sufferings, incurable diseases, and it is one of the blessings you ought to be thankful for. the believer of buddha is thankful even for death itself, the which is the sole means of conquering death. if he be thankful even for death, how much more for the rest of things! he can find a meaning in every form of life. he can perceive a blessing in every change of fortune. he can acknowledge a mission for every individual. he can live in contentment and joy under any conditions. therefore lin tsi (rin-zai) says: "all the buddhas might appear before me and i would not be glad. all the three regions[fn# ] and hells might suddenly present themselves before me, and i would not fear. . . . he (an enlightened person) might get into the fire, and it would not burn him. he might get into water, and it would not drown him. he might be born in hell, and he would be happy as if he were in a fair garden. he might be born among pretas and beasts, and he would not suffer from pain. how can he be so? because he can enjoy everything.'[fn# ] [fn# ] ( ) naraka, or hell; ( ) pretas, or hungry demons; ( ) beasts. [fn# ] lin tsi luk (rin-zai-roku). appendix origin of man (gen-nin-ron) by kwei fung tsung mih the seventh patriarch of the kegon sect translated by kaiten nukariya preface tsung mih (shu-mitsu, a.d. - ), the author of yuen jan lun ('origin of man'), one of the greatest scholars that china ever produced, was born in a confucianist family of the state of kwo cheu. having been converted by tao yuen (do-yen), a noted priest of the zen sect, he was known at the age of twenty-nine as a prominent member of that sect, and became the eleventh patriarch after bodhidharma, the first patriarch of the sect, who had come over to china from india about a.d. . some years after he studied under chino, kwan (cho-kwan) the philosophical doctrine of the avatamsaka school, now known in japan as the kegon sect, and distinguished himself as the seventh patriarch of that school. in a.d. he was received in audience by the emperor wan tsung, who questioned him in a general way about the buddhist doctrines, and bestowed upon him the honourable title of great virtuous teacher, together with abundant gifts. the author produced over ninety volumes of books, which include a commentary on avatamsaka-sutra, one on purnabuddha-sutra-prasannartha-sutra, and many others. yuen jan lun is one of the shortest of his essays, but it contains all the essential doctrines, respecting the origin of life and of the universe, which are found in taoism, confucianism, hinayanism, and mahayanism. how important a position it holds among the buddhist books can be well imagined from the fact that over twenty commentaries were written on it both by the chinese and the japanese buddhist scholars. it is said that a short essay under the same title by a noted contemporary confucianist scholar, han tui chi (kan-tai-shi, who flourished - ), suggested to him to write a book in order to make clear to the public the buddhist view on the same subject. thus be entitled the book 'origin of man,' in spite of his treating of the origin of life and of the universe. throughout the whole book occur coupled sentences, consisting mostly of the same number of chinese characters, and consequently while one sentence is too laconic, the other is overladen with superfluous words, put in to make the right number in the balanced group of characters. in addition to this, the text is full of too concise phrases, and often of ambiguous ones, as it is intended to state as briefly as possible all the important doctrines of the buddhist as well as of the outside schools. on this account the author himself wrote a few notes on the passages that lie thought it necessary to explain. the reader will find these notes beginning with 'a' put by the translator to distinguish them from his own. k. n. origin of man[fn# ] introduction all animated beings that live (under the sun) have an origin, while each of inanimate things, countless in number, owes its existence to some source.[fn# ] there can never be (any being nor) any thing that has (no origin, as there can be no) branch which has no root. how could man, the most spiritual of the three powers[fn# ] exist without an origin? [fn# ] the author treats the origin of life and of the universe, but the book was entitled as we have seen in the preface. [fn# ] the same idea and expression are found in tao teh king (do-toku-kyo), by lao tsz (ro-shi, - b.c.). [fn# ] the three powers are-( ) heaven, that has the power of revolution; ( ) earth, that has the power of production; and ( ) man, that has the power of thought. (it is said),[fn# ] moreover, that that which knows others is intellect, and that that which knows itself is wisdom. now if i, being born among men, know not whence i came (into this life), how could i know whither i am going in the after-life? how could i understand all human affairs, ancient and modern, in the world? so, for some scores of years i learned under many different tutors, and read extensively (not only) the buddhist (but also) outside books. by that means i tried to trace my self, and never stopped my research till i attained, as i had expected, to its origin. [fn# ] the sentence is a direct quotation of tao teh king. confucianists and taoists of our age, nevertheless, merely know that our nearest origin is the father or the grandfather, as we are descended from them, and they from their fathers in succession. (they say) that the remotest (origin) is the undefinable (primordial) gas[fn# ] in the state of chaos; that it split itself into the two (different) principles of the positive and the negative; that the two brought forth the three powers of heaven, earth, and man, which (in their turn) produced all other things; that man as well as other things originated in the gas. [fn# ] such a statement concerning the creation of the universe as the one here given is found in i king (eeki-kyo). the primordial substance is not exactly 'gas,' but we may conceive it as being something like a nebula. (some)[fn# ] buddhists, (however), maintain simply that the nearest (origin) is karma,[fn# ] as we were born among men as the results of the karma that we had produced in the past existences; and that the remotest (origin) is the alaya-vijnyana,[fn# ] (because) our karma is brought forth by illusion, and (illusion by attachment), and so forth, in one word, the alaya is the origin of life. although all of (these scholars) claim that they have already grasped the ultimate truth, yet not in fact. [fn# ] not all buddhists, but some of them, are meant here-that is, hinayanists and dharma-laksanists. [fn# ] according to hinayanists, karma (action) is that moral germ which survives death and continues in transmigration. it may be conceived as something like an energy, by the influence of which beings undergo metempsychosis. [fn# ] according to the dharma-laksana sect, alaya-vijnyana (receptacle-knowledge) is the spiritual substance which holds the 'seeds' or potentialities of all things. confucius, lao tsz, and shakya, however, were all the wisest of sages. each of them gave his teachings in a way different from the other two, that they might meet the spiritual needs of his time and fit to the capacities of men. (so that) the buddhist and the outside doctrines, each supplementing the other, have done good to the multitude. they were all (intended) to encourage thousands of virtuous acts by explaining the whole chain of causality. they were (also intended) to investigate thousands of things, and throw light on the beginning and on the end of their evolution. although all these doctrines (might) answer the purpose of the sages, yet there must be some teachings that would be temporary,[fn# ] while others would be eternal. the first two faiths are merely temporary, while buddhism includes both the temporary and the eternal. we may act according to the precepts of these three faiths, which aim at the peace and welfare (of man), in so far as they encourage thousands of virtuous acts by giving warning against evil and recommending good. (but) buddhism (alone) is altogether perfect and best of all, in investigating thousands of things and in tracing them back to their first cause, in order to acquire thorough understanding of the natures of things and to attain to the ultimate truth. [fn# ] the temporary doctrine means the teaching preached by shakya muni to meet the temporary needs of the hearers. the term is always used in contrast with the real or eternal doctrine. each of our contemporary scholars, nevertheless, adheres to one school of the (above mentioned) teachings. and there are some (even) among the buddhists who mistake the temporary for the eternal doctrine. in consequence they are never successful in tracing heaven, earth, man, and other things back to their first cause. but i am now (going to show how) to infer an ultimate cause for thousands of things, not only from the buddhist, but from outsiders' teachings. first i shall treat of the superficial doctrines, and then of the profound, (in order to) free the followers of the temporary faiths from those (prejudices that prove to be) obstructions in their way to the truth, and enable them to attain to the ultimate reality. afterwards i shall point out, according to the perfect doctrine, how things evolved themselves through one stage after another out of the first cause (in order to) make the incomplete doctrines fuse into the complete one, and to enable the followers to explain the phenomenal universe.[fn# ] [fn# ] a. 'that is, heaven, earth, man, and other things.' this essay is entitled 'origin of man,' and it consists of the (following) four chapters: ( ) refutation of delusive and prejudiced (doctrine); ( ) refutation of incomplete and superficial (doctrine); ( ) direct explanation of the real origin; ( ) reconciliation of the temporary with the eternal doctrine. chapter i refutation of delusive and prejudiced (doctrine)[fn# ] according to confucianism[fn# ] and taoism all sorts of beings, such as men and beasts, were born out of and brought up by the (so-called) great path of emptiness.[fn# ] that is to say, the path by the operation of its own law gave rise naturally to the primordial gas, and that gas produced heaven and earth, which (in their turn) brought forth thousands of things. accordingly the wise and the unwise, the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the happy and the miserable, are predestined to be so by the heavenly flat, and are at the mercy of time and providence. therefore they (must) come back after death to heaven and earth, from which (in turn) they return to the (path) of emptiness. the main purpose of these[fn# ] (two) outside teachings is simply to establish morals with regard to bodily actions, but not to trace life to its first cause. they tell of nothing beyond the phenomenal universe in their explanation of thousands of things. though they point out the great path as the origin, yet they never explain in detail (what is) the direct, and (what) the indirect cause of the phenomenal universe, or how it was created, or how it will be destroyed, how life came forth, whither it will go, (what is) good, (what) evil. therefore the followers of these doctrines adhere to them as the perfect teachings without knowing that they are merely temporary. [fn# ] a. 'those of confucianists and taoists.' [fn# ] confucianists are not of exactly the same opinion as taoists respecting the creation. the great path here mentioned refers exclusively to taoism. [fn# ] the great path of emptiness, hu wu ta tao, is the technical name for the taoist conception of the absolute. it is something existent in an undeveloped state before the creation of the phenomenal universe. according to tao teh king, it is 'self-existent, unchangeable, all-pervading, and the mother of all things. it is unnamable, but it is sometimes called the path or the great.' it is also called the emptiness, as it is entirely devoid of relative activities. [fn# ] confucianism mainly treats of ethical problems, but taoism is noted for its metaphysical speculation. now i (shall) raise, in brief, a few questions to point out their weaknesses. if everything in the universe, as they say, came out of the great path of emptiness, that great path itself should be the cause of (not only) of wisdom, (but) of folly, (not only) of life, (but) of death. it ought to be the source of prosperity (as well as) of adversity, of fortune (as well as) of misfortune. if this origin exist (as it is supposed) to all eternity, it must be possible neither to remove follies, villainies, calamities, and wars, nor to promote wisdom, good, happiness, and welfare. of what use (then) are the teachings of lao tsz and chwang tsz?[fn# ] the path, besides, should have reared the tiger and the wolf, given birth to kieh[fn# ] and cheu,[fn# ] caused the premature deaths of yen[fn# ] and jan,[fn# ] and placed i[fn# ] and tsi[fn# ] in their most lamentable condition. how could it be called a noble (path)? [fn# ] one of the greatest taoist philosophers, and the author of the book entitled after his name. he flourished - b.c. [fn# ] the last emperor of the hia dynasty, notorious for his vices. his reign was - b.c. [fn# ] the last emperor of the yin dynasty, one of the worst despots. his reign was - b.c. [fn# ] yen hwui (gan-kai, - b.c.), a most beloved disciple of confucius, known as a wise and virtuous scholar. [fn# ] jan poh niu (zen-pak-giu, - . . . b.c.), a prominent disciple, of confucius, distinguished for his virtues. [fn# ] poh i (haku-i), the elder brother of tsi, who distinguished himself by his faith and wisdom at the downfall of the yin dynasty. [fn# ] shuh tsi (shiku sei), the brother of i, with whom he shared the same fate. again, if, as they say, thousands of things could come naturally into existence without direct or indirect causes, they should come forth in all places where there are neither direct nor indirect causes. for instance, a stone would bring forth grass, while grass would give birth to man, and man would beget beasts, etc. in addition to this they would come out all at the same time, nothing being produced before or after the others. they would come into existence all at the same moment, nothing being produced sooner or later than the others. peace and welfare might be secured without the help of the wise and the good. humanity and righteousness might be acquired without instruction and study. one might even become an immortal genius[fn# ] without taking the miraculous medicine. why did lao tsz, chwang tsz, cheu kung[fn# ] and confucius do such a useless task as to found their doctrines and lay down the precepts for men? [fn# ] degenerated taoists maintained that they could prepare a certain miraculous draught, by the taking of which one could become immortal. [fn# ] cheu kung (shu-ko), a most noted statesman and scholar, the younger brother of the emperor wu ( - b.c.), the founder of the chen dynasty. again, if all things, as they say, were made of the primordial gas (which has no feeling nor will), how could an infant, just born of the gas, who had never learned to think, or love, or hate, or to be naughty, or wilful (even begin to think or feel)? if, as they may answer, the infant as soon as it was born could quite naturally love or hate, etc., as it wished, it could (as well) gain the five virtues[fn# ] and the six acquirements,[fn# ] as it wished. why does it wait for some direct or indirect causes (to gain its knowledge), and to acquire them through study and instruction? [fn# ] ( ) humanity, ( ) uprightness, ( ) propriety, ( ) wisdom, ( ) sincerity. [fn# ] ( ) reading, ( ) arithmetic, ( ) etiquette, ( ) archery, ( ) horsemanship, ( ) music. again, they might say life suddenly came into existence, it being formed of the gas, and suddenly goes to naught (at death), the gas being dispersed. what, then, are the spirits of the dead (which they believe in)? besides, there are in history some instances of persons[fn# ] who could see through previous existences, or of persons[fn# ] who recollected the events in their past lives. therefore we know that the present is the continuation of the past life, and that it did not come into existence on a sudden by the formation of a gas. again, there are some historical facts[fn# ] proving that the supernatural powers of spirits will not be lost. thus we know that life is not to be suddenly reduced to naught after death by the dispersion of the gas. therefore (matters concerning) sacrifices, services, and supplications (to the spirits) are mentioned in the sacred books.[fn# ] even more than that! are there not some instances, ancient and modern, of persons who revived after death to tell the matters concerning the unseen world, or who[fn# ] appeared to move the hearts of their wives and children a while after death, or who[fn# ] took vengeance (on the enemy), or who[fn# ] returned favours (to their friends)? [fn# ] according to tsin shu, a man, pao tsing by name, told his parents, when he was five years, that he had been in the previous life a son to li, an inhabitant of kuh yang, and that he had fallen into the well and died. thereupon the parents called on li, and found, to their astonishment, that the boy's statement was actually coincident with the fact. [fn# ] yan hu, a native of tsin chen, recollected, at the age of five, that he had been a son to the next-door neighbour, and that he had left his ring under a mulberry-tree close by the fence of the house. thereupon he went with his nurse and successfully restored it, to the astonishment of the whole family. [fn# ] all the ancient sages of china believed in spirits, and propitiated them by sacrifices. [fn# ] the sacred books of confucianism, shu king and li ki. [fn# ] pang shang, the prince of tsi, is said to have appeared after his death. [fn# ] poh yiu, of ching, is said to have become an epidemic spirit to take vengeance on his enemies. [fn# ] according to tso chwen (sa-den), when wei wu, a general of tsin, fought with tu hwui, the dead father of his concubine appeared, and prevented the march of the enemy in order to return favours done to him. the outside scholars might ask, by way of objection, if one live as a spirit after death, the spirits of the past would fill up streets and roads, and be seen by men; and why are there no eye-witnesses? i say in reply that (as) there are the six worlds[fn# ] for the dead, they do not necessarily live in the world of spirits. (even as spirits) they must die and be born again among men or other beings. how can the spirits of the past always live in a crowd? moreover, if (as you say) man was born of (primordial) gas which gave rise to heaven and earth, and which was unconscious from the very beginning, how could he be conscious all on a sudden after his birth? why are trees and grass which were also formed of the same gas unconscious? again, if, (as you say), the rich and the poor, the high and the low, the wise and the unwise, the good and the bad, the happy and the unhappy, the lucky and the unlucky, are predestinated alike by heavenly decree, why are so many destined by heaven to be poor and so few to be rich? why so many to be low and so few to be high? in short, why are so many destined to be unlucky and so few to be lucky? [fn# ] ( ) the heaven, or the world for devas; ( ) the earth, or the world for men; ( ) the world for asuras; ( ) the world for petras; ( ) the world for beasts; ( ) hell. if it be the will of heaven to bless so limited a number of persons at all, and to curse so many, why is heaven so partial? even more than that! are there not many who hold a high position without any meritorious conduct, while some are placed in a low one in spite of their keeping to (the rules of) conduct? are there not many who are rich without any virtues, while some are poor in spite of their virtues? are there not the unjust who are fortunate, while the just are unfortunate? are there not the humane, who die young, while the inhuman enjoy long lives? in short, the righteous (are doomed) to perish, while the unrighteous prosper! thus (we must infer) that all this depends on the heavenly will, which causes the unrighteous to prosper and the righteous to perish. how can there be reward for the good (as it is taught in your sacred books),[fn# ] that heaven blesses the good and shows grace to the humble? how can there be punishment for the bad (as it is taught in your holy books),[fn# ] that heaven curses the evil and inflicts punishment on the proud? [fn# ] shu king and i king. [fn# ] ibid. again, if even all such evils as wars, treacheries, and rebellions depend on the heavenly will, those sages would be in the wrong who, in the statement of their teaching, censure or chastise men, but not heaven or the heavenly will. therefore, even if shi[fn# ] is full of reproofs against maladministration, while shu[fn# ] of eulogies for the reigns of the wisest monarchs-even if propriety[fn# ] is recommended as a most effectual means of creating peace between the governors and the governed, while music[fn# ] (is recommended as a means of) ameliorating the customs and manners of the people--still, they can hardly be said to realize the will on high or to conform to the wishes of the creator. hence you must acknowledge that those who devote themselves to the study of these doctrines are not able to trace man to his origin. [fn# ] shu king, a famous book of odes. [fn# ] shu king, the records of the administrations of the wisest monarchs of old. [fn# ] li ki, the book on proprieties and etiquette. [fn# ] it is said in hiao king that music is the best means to improve customs and manners. chapter ii refutation of incomplete and superficial (doctrine)[fn# ] there are in the buddhist doctrines, to state briefly, the five grades (of development), beginning with the most superficial, and ending with the most profound teachings. (they are as follows:) ( ) the doctrine for men and devas; ( ) the doctrine of the hinayanists; ( ) the mahayana doctrine of dharma-laksana; ( ) the mahayana doctrine of the nihilists[fn# ]; ( ) the ekaydna doctrine that teaches the ultimate reality.[fn# ] [fn# ] a. 'the imperfect doctrines taught by the buddha.' [fn# ] a. 'these first four doctrines are treated of in this chapter.' [fn# ] a. 'this is mentioned in the third chapter.' . the doctrine for men and devas. the buddha, to meet temporarily the spiritual needs of the uninitiated, preached a doctrine concerning good or bad karma as the cause, and its retribution as the effect, in the three existences (of the past, the present, and the future). that is, one who commits the tenfold sin[fn# ] must be reborn after death in hell, when these sins are of the highest grade;[fn# ] among pretas,[fn# ] when of the middle grade; and among animals, when of the lowest grade. [fn# ] ( ) taking life, ( ) theft, ( ) adultery, ( ) lying, ( ) exaggeration, ( ) abuse, ( ) ambiguous talk, ( ) coveting, ( ) malice, ( ) unbelief. [fn# ] there are three grades in each of the tenfold sin. for instance, the taking of the life of a buddha, or of a sage, or of a parent, etc., is of the highest grade; while to kill fellow-men is of the middle; and to kill beasts and birds, etc., is of the lowest. again, to kill any being with pleasure is of the highest grade; while to repent after killing is of the middle; and killing by mistake is of the lowest. [fn# ] hungry spirits. therefore the buddha for a temporary purpose made these (uninitiated) observe the five precepts similar to the five virtues[fn# ] of the outside doctrine, in order to enable them to escape the three (worst) states[fn# ] of existence, and to be reborn among men. (he also taught that) those who cultivate[fn# ] the tenfold virtue[fn# ] of the highest grade, and who give alms, and keep the precepts, and so forth, are to be born in the six celestial realms of kama[fn# ] while those who practise the four[fn# ] dhyanas, the eight samadhis,[fn# ] are to be reborn in the heavenly worlds of rupa[fn# ] and arupa. for this reason this doctrine is called the doctrine for men and devas. according to this doctrine karma is the origin of life.[fn# ] [fn# ] the five cardinal virtues of confucianism are quite similar to the five precepts of buddhism, as we see by this table: virtues.---precepts. . humanity.--- . not to take life. . uprightness.--- . not to steal. . propriety.--- . not to be adulterous. . wisdom.--- . not to get drunk. . sincerity.--- . not to lie. [fn# ] ( ) hell, ( ) pretas, ( ) beasts. [fn# ] a. 'the buddhist precepts are different from the confucian teachings in the form of expression, but they agree in their warning against the evil and in encouraging the good. the moral conduct of the buddhist can be secured by the cultivation of the five virtues of humanity, uprightness, etc., as though people in this country hold up their hands joined in the respectable salutation, while the same object is attained by those of the fan, who stand with their bands hanging down. not to kill is humanity. not to steal is uprightness. not to be adulterous is propriety. not to lie is sincerity. not to drink spirits nor eat meat is to increase wisdom, keeping mind pure.' [fn# ] ( ) not to take life, ( ) not to steal, ( ) not to be adulterous, ( ) not to lie, ( ) not to exaggerate, ( ) not to abuse, ( ) not to talk ambiguously, ( ) not to covet, ( ) not to be malicious, ( ) not to unbelieve. [fn# ] kama-loka, the world of desire, is the first of the three worlds. it consists of the earth and the six heavenly worlds, all the inhabitants of which are subject to sensual desires. [fn# ] the buddhists taught the four dhyanas, or the four different degrees of abstract contemplation, by which the mind could free itself from all subjective and objective trammels, until it reached a state of absolute absence of unconcentrated thought. the practiser of the four dhyanas would be born in the four regions of the rupa-lokas in accordance with his spiritual state. [fn# ] namely, the above-mentioned four degrees of contemplation, and other four deeper ecstatic meditations. the practiser of the latter would be born in the four spiritual regions of arupa-loka in accordance with his state of abstraction. [fn# ] rupa-loka, the world of form, is the second of the three worlds. it consists of eighteen heavens, which were divided into four regions. the first dhyana region comprised the first three of the eighteen heavens, the second dhyana region the next three, the third dhyana region the following three, and the fourth dhyana region the remaining nine. arupa-loka, the world of formlessness, is the third of the three worlds. it consists of four heavens. the first is called 'the heaven of unlimited space,' the second 'the heaven of unlimited knowledge,' the third 'the heaven of absolute non-existence,' the fourth 'the heaven of neither consciousness nor unconsciousness.' a. 'none of heavens, or of hells, or of the worlds of spirits, is mentioned in the title of this book, because these worlds are entirely different from ours, and absolutely beyond the sight and hearing. ordinary people know not even the phenomena actually occurring before them; how could they understand the unseen? so i entitled it simply, "the origin of man " in agreement with the worldly teachings. now that i treat, however, of the buddhist doctrine, it is reasonable to enumerate these worlds in full.' [fn# ] a. 'but there are three sorts of karmas: ( ) the bad, ( ) the good, ( ) the immovable. there are the three periods for retribution: ( ) in this life, ( ) in the next life, ( ) in some remote future life.' now let me raise some questions by way of objection. granting that one has to be born in the five states of existences[fn# ] by virtue of karma produced (in previous lives), is it not doubtful who is the author of karma, and who the recipient of its consequences? if it might be said that the eyes, ears, hands, and feet produce karma, then the eyes, ears, hands, and feet of a newly-dead person are still as they were. so why do they not see and hear and thus produce karma? [fn# ] the states of--( ) heavenly beings, ( ) men, ( ) beings in hell, ( ) hungry spirits, ( ) beasts. if it be said that it is the mind that produces karma (i ask), what is the mind? if you mean the heart, the heart is a material thing, and is located within the body. how can it, by coming quickly into the eyes and ears, distinguish the pleasing from the disgusting in external objects? if there be no distinction between the pleasing and the disgusting, why does it accept the one or reject the other? besides, the heart is as much material and impenetrable as the eyes, ears, hands, and feet. how, then, can the heart within freely pass to the organs of sense without? how can this one put the others in motion, or communicate with them, in order to co-operate in producing karma? if it be said that only such passions as joy, anger, love, and hatred act through the body and the mouth and enable them to produce karma, (i should say) those passions--joy, anger, and the rest--are too transitory, and come and go in a moment. they have no substance (behind their appearances). what, then, is the chief agent that produces karma? it might be said that we should not seek after (the author of karma) by taking mind and body separately (as we have just done), because body and mind, as a whole, conjointly produce karma. who, then, after the destruction of body by death, would receive the retribution (in the form) of pain or of pleasure? if it be assumed that another body is to come into existence after death, then the body and mind of the present life, committing sins or cultivating virtues, would cause another body and mind in the future which would suffer from the pains or enjoy the pleasures. accordingly, those who cultivate virtues would be extremely unlucky, while those who commit sins very lucky. how can the divine law of causality be so unreasonable? therefore we (must) acknowledge that those who merely follow this doctrine are far from a thorough understanding of the origin of life, though they believe in the theory of karma. . the doctrine of the hinayanists. this doctrine tells us that (both) the body, that is formed of matter, and the mind, that thinks and reflects, continually exist from eternity to eternity, being destroyed and recreated by means of direct or indirect causes, just as the water of a river glides continually, or the flame of a lamp keeps burning constantly. mind and body unite themselves temporarily, and seem to be one and changeless. the common people, ignorant of all this, are attached to (the two combined) as being atman.[fn# ] [fn# ] atman means ego, or self, on which individuality is based. for the sake of this atman, which they hold to be the most precious thing (in the world), they are subject to the three poisons of lust,[fn# ] anger,[fn# ] and folly,[fn# ] which (in their turn) give impulse to the will and bring forth karma of all kinds through speech and action. karma being thus produced, no one can evade its effects. consequently all must be born[fn# ] in the five states of existence either to suffer pain or to enjoy pleasure; some are born in the higher places, while others in the lower of the three worlds.[fn# ] [fn# ] a. 'the passion that covets fame and gain to keep oneself in prosperity.' [fn# ] a. 'the passion against disagreeable things, for fear of their inflicting injuries on oneself.' [fn# ] a. 'wrong thoughts and inferences.' [fn# ] a. 'different sorts of beings are born by virtue of the individualizing karma.' [fn# ] a. 'worlds are produced by virtue of the karma common to all beings that live in them.' when born (in the future lives) they are attached again to the body (and mind) as atman, and become subject to lust and the other two passions. karma is again produced by them, and they have to receive its inevitable results. (thus) body undergoes birth, old age, disease, death, and is reborn after death; while the world passes through the stages of formation, existence, destruction, and emptiness, and is re-formed again after emptiness. kalpa after kalpa[fn# ] (passes by), life after life (comes on), and the circle of continuous rebirths knows no beginning nor end, and resembles the pulley for drawing water from the well.[fn# ] [fn# ] kalpa, a mundane cycle, is not reckoned by months and years. lt is a period during which a physical universe is formed to the moment when another is put into its place. a. "the following verses describe how the world was first created in the period of emptiness: a strong wind began to blow through empty space. its length and breadth were infinite. it was lakhs thick, and so strong that it could not be cut even with a diamond. its name was the world-supporting-wind. the golden clouds of abhasvara heaven (the sixth of eighteen heavens of the rupa-loka) covered all the skies of the three thousand worlds. down came the heavy rain, each drop being as large as the axle of a waggon. the water stood on the wind that checked its running down. it was lakhs deep. the first layer was made of adamant (by the congealing water). gradually the cloud poured down the rain and filled it. first the brahma-raja worlds, next the yama-heaven (the third of six heavens of the kama loka), were made. the pure water rose up, driven by the wind, and sumeru, (the central mountain, or axis of the universe) and the seven concentric circles of mountains, and so on, were formed. out of dirty sediments the mountains, the four continents, the hells, oceans, and outer ring of mountains, were made. this is called the formation of the universe. the time of one increase and one decrease (human life is increased from to , years, increasing by one year at every one hundred years; then it is decreased from , to years, decreasing by one year at every one hundred years) elapsed. in short, those beings in the second region of rupa-loka, whose good karma had spent its force, came down on the earth. at first there were the 'earth bread' and the wild vine for them. afterwards they could not completely digest rice, and began to excrete and to urinate. thus men were differentiated from women. they divided the cultivated land among them. chiefs were elected; assistants and subjects were sought out; hence different classes of people. a period of nineteen increases and decreases elapsed. added to the above-mentioned period, it amounted to twenty increases and decreases. this is called the kalpa of the formation of the universe. "now let us discuss this point. the kalpa of emptiness is what the taoist calls the path of emptiness. the path or the reality, however, is not empty, but bright, transcendental, spiritual, and omnipresent. lao tsz, led by his mistaken idea, called the kalpa of emptiness the path; otherwise he did so for the temporary purpose of denouncing worldly desires. the wind in the empty space is what the taoist calls the undefinable gas in the state of chaos. therefore lao tsz said, 'the path brings forth one.' the golden clouds, the first of all physical objects, is (what the confucianist calls) the first principle. the rain-water standing (on the wind) is the production of the negative principle. the positive, united with the negative, brought forth the phenomenal universe. the brahma-raja-loka, the sumeru, and others, are what they call the heaven. the dirty waters and sediment are the earth. so lao tsz said, 'one produces two.' those in the second region of the rupra-loka, whose good karma had spent its force, came down upon the earth and became human beings. therefore lao tsz said, 'the two produce three.' thus the three powers were completed. the earth-bread and different classes of people, and so on, are the so-called 'production of thousands of things by the three.' this was the time when people lived in eaves or wandered in the wilderness, and knew not the use of fire. as it belongs to the remote past of the prehistoric age, previous to the reigns of the first three emperors, the traditions handed down to us are neither clear nor certain. many errors crept into them one generation after another, and consequently no one of the statements given in the various works of scholars agrees with another. besides, when the buddhist books explain the formation of the three thousand worlds, they do not confine themselves merely within the limits of this country. hence their records are entirely different from those of the outsiders (which are confined to china). "'existence' means the kalpa of existence that lasts twenty increases and decreases. 'destruction' means the kalpa of destruction that lasts also twenty increases and decreases. during the first nineteen increases and decreases living beings are destroyed; while in the last worlds are demolished through the three periods of distress ( ) the period of water, ( ) the period of fire, ( ) the period of wind. 'emptiness' means the kalpa of emptiness, during which no beings nor worlds exist. this kalpa also lasts twenty increases and decreases." [fn# ] a. 'taoists merely know that there was one kalpa of emptiness before the formation of this present universe, and point out the emptiness, the chaos, the primordial gas, and the rest, naming them as the first or the beginningless. but they do not know that the universe had already gone through myriads of cycles of kalpas of formation, existence, destruction, and emptiness. thus even the most superficial of the hinayana doctrines far excels the most profound of the outside doctrines.' all this is due to ignorance which does not understand that no bodily existence, by its very nature, can be atman. the reason why it is not atman is this, that its formation is, after all, due to the union of matter and mind. now (let us) examine and analyze (mind and body). matter consists of the four elements of earth, water, fire, and wind, while mind consists of the four aggregates of perception,[fn# ] consciousness,[fn# ] conception,[fn# ] and knowledge.[fn# ] [fn# ] a. 'it receives both the agreeable and the disagreeable impressions from without.' it is yedana, the second of the five skandhas, or aggregates. [fn# ] a. 'it perceives the forms of external objects.' it is samjnya, name, the third of the five aggregates. [fn# ] a. 'it acts, one idea changing after another.' it is samskara, the fourth of the five aggregates. [fn# ] a. 'it recognizes.' it is vijnyana, the last of the five aggregates. if all (these elements) be taken as atman, there must be eight atmans (for each person). more than that! there are many different things, even in the element of earth. now, there are three hundred and sixty bones, each one distinct from the other. no one is the same as any other, either of the skin, hair, muscles, the liver, the heart, the spleen, and the kidneys. furthermore, there are a great many mental qualities each different from the others. sight is different from hearing. joy is not the same as anger. if we enumerate them, in short, one after another, there are eighty thousand passions.[fn# ] [fn# ] eighty thousand simply means a great many. as things are thus so innumerable, none can tell which of these (without mistake) is to be taken as the atman. in case all be taken as the atman, there must be hundreds and thousands of atmans, among which there would be as many conflicts and disturbances as there are masters living in the one (house of) body. as there exists no body nor mind separated from these things, one can never find the atman, even if he seeks for it over and over again. hereupon anyone understands that this life (of ours) is no more than the temporary union of numerous elements (mental and physical). originally there is no atman to distinguish one being from another. for whose sake, then, should he be lustful or angry? for whose sake should he take life,[fn# ] or commit theft, or give alms, or keep precepts? (thus thinking) at length he sets his mind free from the virtues and vices subjected to the passions[fn# ] of the three worlds, and abides in the discriminative insight into (the nature of) the anatman[fn# ] only. by means of that discriminative insight he makes himself pure from lust, and the other (two passions) puts an end to various sorts of karma, and realizes the bhutatathata[fn# ] of anatman. in brief, he attains to the state of arhat,[fn# ] has his body reduced to ashes, his intelligence annihilated, and entirely gets rid of sufferings. [fn# ] a. 'he understands the truth of misery.' the truth of duhkha, or misery, is the first of the four noble satyas, or truths, that ought to be realized by the hinayanists. according to the hinayana doctrine, misery is a necessary concomitant of sentient life.' [fn# ] a. 'he destroys samudaya.' the truth of samudaya, or accumulation, the second of the four satyas, means that misery is accumulated or produced by passions. this truth should be realized by the removal of passions. [fn# ] a. 'this is the truth of marga.' the truth of marga, or path, is the fourth of the four satyas. there are the eight right paths that lead to the extinction of passions; ( ) right view (to discern truth), ( ) right thought (or purity of will and thought), ( ) right speech (free from nonsense and errors), ( ) right action, ( ) right diligence, ( ) right meditation, ( ) right memory, ( ) right livelihood. [fn# ] a. 'this is the truth of nirodha.' nirodha, or destruction, the third of the four satyas, means the extinction of passions. bhutatathati of anatman means the truth of the non existence of atma or soul, and is the aim and end of the hinayanist philosophy. [fn# ] arhat, the killer of thieves (i.e., passions), means one who conquered his passions. it means, secondly, one who is exempted from birth, or one who is free from transmigration. thirdly, it means one deserving worship. so the arhat is the highest sage who has attained to nirvana by the destruction of all passions. according to the doctrine of this school the two aggregates, material and spiritual, together with lust, anger, and folly, are the origin of ourselves and of the world in which we live. there exists nothing else, either in the past or in the future, that can be regarded as the origin. now let us say (a few words) by way of refutation. that which (always) stands as the origin of life, birth after birth, generation after generation, should exist by itself without cessation. yet the five vijnyanas[fn# ] cease to perform their functions when they lack proper conditions, (while) the mano-vijnyana[fn# ] is lost at times (in unconsciousness). there are none of those four (material) elements in the heavenly worlds of arupa. how, then, is life sustained there and kept up in continuous birth after birth? therefore we know that those who devote themselves to the study of this doctrine also cannot trace life to its origin. [fn# ] a. 'the conditions are the indriyas and the visayas, etc.' indriyas are organs of sense, and visayas are objects on which the sense acts. five vijnyanas are--( ) the sense of sight, ( ) the sense of hearing, ( ) the sense of smell, ( ) the sense of taste, ( ) the sense of touch. [fn# ] mano-vijnyana is the mind itself, and the last of the six vijnyanas of the hinayana doctrine. a. '(for instance), in a state of trance, in deep slumber, in nirodha-samapatti (where no thought exists), in asamjnyi-samapatti (in which no consciousness exists), and in avrhaloka (the thirteenth of brahmalokas). . the mahayana doctrine of dharmalaksana.[fn# ] this doctrine tells us that from time immemorial all sentient beings naturally have eight different vijnyanas[fn# ] and the eighth, alaya-vijnyana,[fn# ] is the origin of them. (that is), the alaya suddenly brings forth the 'seeds'[fn# ] of living beings and of the world in which they live, and through transformation gives rise to the seven vijnyanas. each of them causes external objects on which it acts to take form and appear. in reality there is nothing externally existent. how, then, does alaya give rise to them through transformation? because, as this doctrine tells us, we habitually form the erroneous idea that atman and external objects exist in reality, and it acts upon alaya and leaves its impressions[fn# ] there. consequently, when vijnyanas are awakened, these impressions (or the seed-ideas) transform and present themselves (before the mind's eye) atman and external objects. [fn# ] this school studies in the main the nature of things (dharma), and was so named. the doctrine is based on avatamsaka-sutra and samdhi-nirmocana-sutra, and was systematized by asamga and vasu-bandhu. the latter's book, vidyamatra-siddhi-castra-karika, is held to be the best authoritative work of the school. [fn# ] ( ) the sense of sight; ( ) the sense of hearing; ( ) the sense of smell; ( ) the sense of taste; ( ) the sense of touch; ( ) mano-vijnyana (lit., mind-knowledge), or the perceptive faculty; ( ) klista-mano-vijnyana (lit., soiled-mind-knowledge), or an introspective faculty; ( ) alaya-vijnyana (lit., receptacle-knowledge), or ultimate-mind-substance. [fn# ] the first seven vijnyanas depend on the alaya, which is said to hold all the 'seeds' of physical and mental objects. [fn# ] this school is an extreme form of idealism, and maintains that nothing separated from the alaya can exist externally. the mind-substance, from the first, holds the seed ideas of everything, and they seem to the non-enlightened mind to be the external universe, but are no other than the transformation of the seed-ideas. the five senses, and the mano-vijnyana acting on them, take them for external objects really existent, while the seventh vijnyana mistakes the eighth for atman. [fn# ] the non-enlightened mind, habitually thinking that atman and external objects exist, leaves the impression of the seed-ideas on its own alaya. then the sixth and the seventh[fn# ] vijnyana veiled with avidya, dwelling on them, mistake them for real atman and the real external objects. this (error) may be compared with one diseased[fn# ] in the eye, who imagines that he sees various things (floating in the air) on account of his illness; or with a dreamer[fn# ] whose fanciful thoughts assume various forms of external objects, and present themselves before him. while in the dream he fancies that there exist external objects in reality, but on awakening he finds that they are nothing other than the transformation of his dreaming thoughts. [fn# ] avidya, or ignorance, which mistakes the illusory phenomena for realities. [fn# ] a. 'a person with a serious disease sees the vision of strange colours, men, and things in his trance.' [fn# ] a. 'that a dreamer fancies he sees things is well known to everybody.' so are our lives. they are no other than the transformation of the vijnyanas; but in consequence of illusion, we take them for the atman and external objects existing in reality. from these erroneous ideas arise delusive thoughts that lead to the production of karma; hence the round-of rebirth to time without end.[fn# ] when we understand these reasons, we can realize the fact that our lives are nothing but transformations of the vijnyanas, and that the (eighth) vijnyana is the origin.[fn# ] [fn# ] a. 'as it was detailed above.' [fn# ] a. 'an imperfect doctrine, which is refuted later.' . mahayana doctrine of the nihilists. this doctrine disproves (both) the mahayana and the hinayana doctrines above mentioned that adhere to dharma-laksana, and suggestively discloses the truth of transcendental reality which is to be treated later.[fn# ] let me state, first of all, what it would say in the refutation of dharma-laksana. [fn# ] a. "the nihilistic doctrine is stated not only in the various prajnya-sutras (the books having prajnya-paramita in their titles), but also in almost all mahayana sutras. the above-mentioned three doctrines were preached (by the buddha) in the three successive periods. but this doctrine was not preached at any particular period; it was intended to destroy at any time the attachment to the phenomenal objects. therefore nagarjuna tells us that there are two sorts of prajnyas, the common and the special. the Ã�ravakas (lit., hearers) and the pratyekabuddhas (lit., singly enlightened ones), or the hinayanists, could hear and believe in, with the bodhisattvas or the mahayanists, the common prajnya, as it was intended to destroy their attachment to the external objects. bodhisattvas alone could understand the special prajnya, as it secretly revealed the buddha nature, or the absolute. each of the two great indian teachers, Ã�ilabhadra and jnyanaprabha, divided the whole teachings of the buddha into three periods. (according to Ã�ilabhadra, a.d. , teacher of hiuen tsang, the buddha first preached the doctrine of 'existence' to the effect that every living being is unreal, but things are real. all the hinayana sutras belong to this period. next the buddha preached the doctrine of the middle path, in samdhi-nirmocana-sutra and others, to the effect that all the phenomenal universe is unreal, but that the mental substance is real. according to jnyanaprabha, the buddha first preached the doctrine of existence, next that of the existence of mental substance, and lastly that of unreality.) one says the doctrine of unreality was preached before that of dharma-laksana, while the others say it was preached after. here i adopt the latters' opinion." if the external objects which are transformed are unreal, how can the vijnyana, the transformer, be real? if you say the latter is really existent, but not the former,[fn# ] then (you assume that) the dreaming mind (which is compared with alaya-vijnyana) is entirely different from the objects seen in the dream (which are compared with external objects). if they are entirely different, you ought not to identify the dream with the things dreamed, nor to identify the things dreamed with the dream itself. in other words, they ought to have separate existences. (and) when you awake your dream may disappear, but the things dreamed would remain. [fn# ] a. 'in the following sentences i refute it, making use of the simile of the dream.' again, if (you say) that the things dreamed are not identical with the dream, then they would be really existent things. if the dream is not the same as the things dreamed, in what other form does it appear to you? therefore you must acknowledge that there is every reason to believe that both the dreaming mind and the things dreamed are equally unreal, and that nothing exists in reality, though it seems to you as if there were a seer, and a seen, in a dream. thus those vijnyanas also would be unreal, because all of them are not self-existent realities, their existence being temporary, and dependent upon various conditions. "there is nothing," (the author of) madhyamika-castra[fn# ] says, "that ever came into existence without direct and indirect causes. therefore there is anything that is not unreal in the world." he says again: "things produced through direct and indirect causes i declare to be the very things which are unreal." (the author of) craddhotdada-castra[fn# ] says: "all things in the universe present themselves in different forms only on account of false ideas. if separated from the (false) ideas and thoughts, no forms of those external objects exist." "all the physical forms (ascribed to buddha)," says (the author of) a sutra,[fn# ] "are false and unreal. the beings that transcend all forms are called buddhas."[fn# ] consequently you must acknowledge that mind as well as external objects are unreal. this is the eternal truth of the mahayana doctrine. we are driven to the conclusion that unreality is the origin of life, if we trace it back according to this doctrine. [fn# ] the principal textbook of the madhyamika school, by nagarjuna and nilanetra, translated into chinese (a.d. ) by kumarajiva. [fn# ] a well-known mahayana book ascribed to acvaghosa, translated into chinese by paramartha. there exists an english translation by d. suzuki. [fn# ] vajracchedha-prajnya-paramita-sutra, of which there exist three chinese translations. [fn# ] a. 'similar passages are found in every book of the mahayana tripitaka.' now let us say (a few words) to refute this doctrine also. if mind as well as external objects be unreal, who is it that knows they are so? again, if there be nothing real in the universe, what is it that causes unreal objects to appear? we stand witness to the fact there is no one of the unreal things on earth that is not made to appear by something real. if there be no water of unchanging fluidity,[fn# ] how can there be the unreal and temporary forms of waves? if there be no unchanging mirror, bright and clean, how can there be various images, unreal and temporary, reflected in it? it is true in sooth that the dreaming mind as well as the things dreamed, as said above, are equally unreal, but does not that unreal dream necessarily presuppose the existence of some (real) sleepers? [fn# ] the absolute is compared with the ocean, and the phenomenal universe with the waves. now, if both mind and external objects, as declared above, be nothing at all, no- one can tell what it is that causes these unreal appearances. therefore this doctrine, we know, simply serves to refute the erroneous theory held by those who are passionately attached to dharma-laksana, but never clearly discloses spiritual reality. so that mahabheri-harakaparivarta-sutra[fn# ] says as follows: "all the sutras that teach the unreality of things belong to an imperfect doctrine (of the buddha). mahaprajnya-paramita-sutra[fn# ] says: "the doctrine of unreality is the first entrance-gate to mahayanism." [fn# ] the book was translated into chinese by gunabhadra, a.d. - . [fn# ] this is not the direct quotation from the sutra translated by hiuen tsang. the words are found in mahaprajnya-paramita-sutra, the commentary on the sutra by nagarjuna. when the above-mentioned four doctrines are compared with one another in the order of succession, each is more profound than the preceding. they are called the superficial, provided that the follower, learning them a short while, knows them by himself to be imperfect; (but) if he adheres to them as perfect, these same (doctrines) are called incomplete. they are (thus) said to be superficial and incomplete with regard to the follower. chapter iii the direct explanation of the real origin[fn# ] . the ekayana doctrine that teaches the ultimate reality. this doctrine teaches us that all sentient beings have the real spirit[fn# ] of original enlightenment (within themselves). from time immemorial it is unchanging and pure. it is eternally bright, and clear, and conscious. it is also named the buddha-nature, or tathagata-garbha.[fn# ] as it is, however, veiled by illusion from time without beginning, (sentient beings) are not conscious of its existence, and think that the nature within themselves are degenerated. consequently they are given to bodily pleasures, and producing karma, suffer from birth and death. the great enlightened one, having compassion on them, taught that everything in the universe is unreal. he pointed out that the real spirit of mysterious enlightenment (within them) is pure and exactly the same as that of buddha. therefore he says in avatamsaka-sutra[fn# ]: "there are no sentient beings, the children of buddha, who are not endowed with wisdom of tathagata;[fn# ] but they cannot attain to enlightenment simply because of illusion and attachment. when they are free from illusion, the universal intelligence,[fn# ] the natural intelligence,[fn# ] the unimpeded intelligence,[fn# ] will be disclosed (in their minds)." [fn# ] a. 'the perfect doctrine, in which eternal truth is taught by the buddha.' [fn# ] the ultimate reality is conceived by the mahayanist as an entity self-existent, omnipresent, spiritual, impersonal, free from all illusions. it may be regarded as something like the universal and enlightened soul. [fn# ] tathagata's womb, tathagata being another name for buddha. [fn# ] the book was translated into chinese by buddhabhadra, a.d. - . [fn# ] the highest epithet of the buddha, meaning one who comes into the world like the coming of his predecessors. [fn# ] the all-knowing wisdom that is acquired by enlightenment. [fn# ] the inborn wisdom of the original enlightenment. [fn# ] the wisdom that is acquired by the union of enlightenment with the original enlightenment. then he tells a parable of a single grain of minute dust[fn# ] containing large volumes of sutra, equal in dimension of the great chiliocosmos.[fn# ] the grain is compared with a sentient being, and the sutra with the wisdom of buddha. again he says later:[fn# ] "once tathagata, having observed every sort of sentient beings all over the universe, said as follows: 'wonderful, how wonderful! that these various sentient beings, endowed with the wisdom of tathagata, are not conscious of it because of their errors and illusions! i shall teach them the sacred truth and make them free from illusion for ever. i shall (thus) enable them to find by themselves the great wisdom of tathagatha within them and make them equal to buddha.' [fn# ] one of the famous parables in the sutra. [fn# ] according to the buddhist literature, one universe comprises one sun, one moon, one central mountain or sumeru, four continents, etc. one thousand of these universes form the small thousand worlds; one thousand of the small thousand worlds form the middle thousand worlds; and the great thousand worlds, or great chiliocosmos, comprises one thousand of the middle thousand worlds. [fn# ] this is not an exact quotation of the sutra. let me say (a few words) about this doctrine by way of criticism. so many kalpas we spent never meeting with this true doctrine, and knew not how to trace our life back to its origin. having been attached to nothing but the unreal outward forms, we willingly acknowledged ourselves to be a common herd of lowly beings. some regarded themselves as beasts, (while) others as men. but now, tracing life to its origin according to the highest doctrine, we have fully understood that we ourselves were originally buddhas. therefore we should act in conformity to buddha's (action), and keep our mind in harmony with his. lot us betake ourselves once more to the source of enlightened spirit, restoring ourselves to the original buddhahood. let us cut off the bond of attachment, and remove the illusion that common people are habitually given to. illusion being destroyed,[fn# ] the will to destroy it is also removed, and at last there remains nothing to be done (except complete peace and joy). this naturally results in enlightenment, whose practical uses are as innumerable as the grains of sand in the ganges. this state is called buddhahood. we should know that the illusory as well as the enlightened are originally of one and the same real spirit. how great, how excellent, is the doctrine that traces man to such an origin![fn# ] [fn# ] the passage occurs in tao teh king. [fn# ] a. 'although all of the above-mentioned five doctrines were preached by the buddha himself, yet there are some that belong to the sudden, while others to the gradual, teachings. if there were persons of the middle or the lowest grade of understanding, he first taught the most superficial doctrine, then the less superficial, and "gradually" led them up to the profound. at the outset of his career as a teacher he preached the first doctrine to enable them to give up evil and abide by good; next he preached the second and the third doctrine that they might remove the pollution and attain to the purity; and, lastly, he preached the fourth and the fifth doctrine to destroy their attachment to unreal forms, and to show the ultimate reality. (thus) he reduced (all) the temporary doctrines into the eternal one, and taught them how to practise the law according to the eternal and attain to buddhahood. 'if there is a person of the highest grade of understanding, he may first of all learn the most profound, next the less profound, and, lastly, the most superficial doctrine-that is, he may at the outset come "suddenly" to the understanding of the one reality of true spirit, as it is taught in the fifth doctrine. when the spiritual reality is disclosed before his mind's eye, he may naturally see that it originally transcends all appearances which are unreal, and that unrealities appear on account of illusion, their existence depending on reality. then he must give up evil, practise good, put away unrealities by the wisdom of enlightenment, and reduce them to reality. when unrealities are all gone, and reality alone remains complete, he is called the dharma-kaya-buddha.' chapter iv reconciliation of the temporary with the real doctrine[fn# ] even if reality is the origin of life, there must be in all probability some causes for its coming into existence, as it cannot suddenly assume the form of body by accident. in the preceding chapters i have refuted the first four doctrines, merely because they are imperfect, and in this chapter i shall reconcile the temporary with the eternal doctrine. in short, i shall show that even confucianism is in the right.[fn# ] that is to say, from the beginning there exists reality (within all beings), which is one and spiritual. it can never be created nor destroyed. it does not increase nor decrease itself. it is subject to neither change nor decay. sentient beings, slumbering in (the night of) illusion from time immemorial, are not conscious of its existence. as it is hidden and veiled, it is named tathagata-garbha.[fn# ] on this tathagata-garbha the mental phenomena that are subject to growth and decay depend. real spirit, as is stated (in the acvaghosa's Ã�astra), that transcends creation and destruction, is united with illusion, which is subject to creation and destruction; and the one is not absolutely the same as nor different from the other. this union (with illusion) has the two sides of enlightenment and non -enlightenment,' and is called alaya-vijnyana. because of non-enlightenment,[fn# ] it first arouses itself, and forms some ideas. this activity of the vijnyana is named 'the state of karma.[fn# ] furthermore, since one does not understand that these ideas are unreal from the beginning, they transform themselves into the subject (within) and the object (without), into the seer and the seen. one is at a loss how to understand that these external objects are no more than the creation of his own delusive mind, and believes them to be really existent. this is called the erroneous belief in the existence of external objects.[fn# ] in consequence of these erroneous beliefs, he distinguishes self and non-self, and at last forms the erroneous belief of atman. since he is attached to the form of the self, he yearns after various objects agreeable to the sense for the sake of the good of his self. he is offended, (however), with various disagreeable objects, and is afraid of the injuries and troubles which they bring on him. (thus) his foolish passions[fn# ] are strengthened step by step. [fn# ] a. 'the doctrines refuted above are reconciled with the real doctrine in this chapter. they are all in the right in their pointing to the true origin.' [fn# ] a. 'the first section states the fifth doctrine that reveals the reality, and the statements in the following sections are the same as the other doctrines, as shown in the notes.' [fn# ] a. 'the following statement is similar to the fourth doctrine explained above in the refutation of the phenomenal existence subject to growth and decay.' compare Ã�raddhotpada-castra. [fn# ] a. 'the following statement is similar to the doctrine of dharma-laksana.' [fn# ] here karma simply means an active state; it should be distinguished from karma, produced by actions. [fn# ] a. 'the following statement is similar to the second doctrine, or hinayanism.' [fn# ] a. 'the following statement is similar to the first doctrine for men and devas.' thus (on one hand) the souls of those who committed the crimes of killing, stealing, and so on, are born, by the influence of the bad karma, in hell, or among pretas, or among beasts, or elsewhere. on the other hand, the souls of those who, being afraid of such sufferings, or being good-natured, gave alms, kept precepts, and so on, undergo antarabhava[fn# ] by the influence of the good kharma, enter into the womb of their mothers.[fn# ] [fn# ] the spiritual existence between this and another life. [fn# ] a. 'the following statement is similar to confucianism and taoism.' there they are endowed with the (so-called) gas, or material (for body).[fn# ] the gas first consists of four elements[fn# ] and it gradually forms various sense-organs. the mind first consists of the four aggregates,[fn# ] and it gradually forms various vijnyanas. after the whole course of ten months they are born and called men. these are our present bodies and minds. therefore we must know that body and mind has each its own origin, and that the two, being united, form one human being. they are born among devas and asuras, and so on in a manner almost similar to this. [fn# ] a. 'this harmonizes with the outside opinion that gas is the origin.' [fn# ] ( ) earth, ( ) water, ( ) fire, ( ) air. [fn# ] ( ) perception, ( ) consciousness, ( ) conception, ( ) knowledge. though we are born among men by virtue of 'the generalizing karma,'[fn# ] yet, by the influence of 'the particularizing karma,'[fn# ] some are placed in a high rank, while others in a low; some are poor, while others rich; some enjoy a long life, while others die in youth; some are sickly, while others healthy; some are rising, while others are falling; some suffer from pains, while others enjoy pleasures. for instance, reverence or indolence in the previous existence, working as the cause, brings forth high birth or low in the present as the effect. so also benevolence in the past results in long life in the present; the taking of life, a short life; the giving of alms, richness, miserliness, poverty. there are so many particular cases of retribution that cannot be mentioned in detail. hence there are some who happen to be unfortunate, doing no evil, while others fortunate, doing no good in the present life. so also some enjoy a long life, in spite of their inhuman conduct; while others die young, in spite of their taking no life, and so forth. as all this is predestinated by 'the particularizing karma' produced in the past, it would seem to occur naturally, quite independent of one's actions in the present life. outside scholars ignorant of the previous existences, relying simply on their observations, believe it to be nothing more than natural.[fn# ] [fn# ] the karma that determines different classes of beings, such as men, beasts, pretas, etc. [fn# ] the karma that determines the particular state of an individual in the world. [fn# ] a. 'this harmonizes with the outside opinion that everything occurs naturally.' besides, there are some who cultivated virtues in the earlier, and committed crimes in the later, stages of their past existences; while others were vicious in youth, and virtuous in old age. in consequence, some are happy in youth, being rich and noble, but unhappy in old age, being poor and low in the present life; while others lead poor and miserable lives when young, but grow rich and noble when old, and so on. hence outside scholars come to believe that one's prosperity or adversity merely depends on a heavenly decree.[fn# ] [fn# ] a. 'this harmonizes with the outside opinion that everything depends on providence.' the body with which man is endowed, when traced step by step to its origin, proves to be nothing but one primordial gas in its undeveloped state. and the mind with which man thinks, when traced step by step to its source, proves to be nothing but the one real spirit. to tell the truth, there exists nothing outside of spirit, and even the primordial gas is also a mode of it, for it is one of the external objects projected by the above-stated vijnyanas, and is one of the mental images of alaya, out of whose idea, when it is in the state of karma, come both the subject and the object. as the subject developed itself, the feebler ideas grow stronger step by step, and form erroneous beliefs that end in the production of karma.[fn# ] similarly, the object increases in size, the finer objects grow gradually grosser, and gives rise to unreal things that end in the formation[fn# ] of heaven and earth. when karma is ripe enough, one is endowed by father and mother with sperm and ovum, which, united with his consciousness under the influence of karma, completes a human form. [fn# ] a. 'as above stated.' [fn# ] a. "in the beginning, according to the outside school, there was 'the great changeableness,' which underwent fivefold evolutions, and brought out the five principles. out of that principle, which they call the great path of nature, came the two subordinate principles of the positive and the negative. they seem to explain the ultimate reality, but the path, in fact, no more than the 'perceiving division' of the alaya. the so-called primordial gas seems to be the first idea in the awakening alaya, but it is a mere external object." according to this view (of dharmalaksana), things brought forth through the transformations of alaya and the other vijnyanas are divided into two parts; one part (remaining), united with alaya and the other vijnyanas, becomes man, while the other, becoming separated from them, becomes heaven, earth, mountains, rivers, countries, and towns. (thus) man is the outcome of the union of the two; this is the reason why he alone of the three powers is spiritual. this was taught by the buddha[fn# ] himself when he stated that there existed two different kinds of the four elements--the internal and the external. [fn# ] ratnakuta-sutra (?), translated into chinese by jnyanagupta. alas! o ye half-educated scholars who adhere to imperfect doctrines, each of which conflicts with another! ye that seek after truth, if ye would attain to buddhahood, clearly understand which is the subtler and which is the grosser (form of illusive ideas), which is the originator and which is the originated. (then) give ye up the originated and return ye to the originator, and to reflect on the spirit, the source (of all). when the grosser is exterminated and the subtler removed, the wonderful wisdom of spirit is disclosed, and nothing is beyond its understanding. this is called the dharma-sambhoga-kaya. it can of itself transform itself and appear among men in numberless ways. this is called the nirmana-kaya of buddha.[fn# ] [fn# ] every buddha has three bodies: ( ) dharma-kaya, or spiritual body; ( ) sambhoga-kaya, or the body of compensation; ( ) nirmana-kaya, or the body capable of transformation. the end. obtained from the internet archive. the story of the earth and man. by j. w. dawson diagram of the earth's history. -------------------------------------------------------- animals rock formations plants -------------------------------------------------------- age n modern age of e t post-pliocene of man o i pliocene angiosperms (upper z m pliocene and strata) o e miocene plants and i eocene mammals c -------------------------------------------------------- m age e cretaceous age s t of of o i jurassic cycads z m and reptiles o e triassic pines i c -------------------------------------------------------- permian age of age of p amphibians a carboniferous acrogens and fishes l t Æ i erian or and ------ o m z e devonian gymnosperms age of o mollusks i silurian ------ corals c and siluro- age crustaceans cambrian of cambrian algæ huronian? ------------------------------------------------------ age of e laurentian plants protozoa o t z i not o m i e determinable c harper & brothers new york. the story of the earth and man, by j. w. dawson, ll.d., f.k.s., f.g.s., principal and vice-chancellor of mcgill university, montreal, author of "archaia," "acadian geology," etc. new york: harper & brothers, publishers, franklin square preface the science of the earth as illustrated by geological research, is one of the noblest outgrowths of our modern intellectual life. constituting the sum of all the natural sciences in their application to the history of our world, it affords a very wide and varied scope for mental activity, and deals with some of the grandest problems of space and time and of organic existence. it invites us to be present at the origin of things, and to enter into the very workshop of the creator. it has, besides, most important and intimate connection with the industrial arts and with the material resources at the disposal of man. its educational value, as a means of cultivating the powers of observing and reasoning, and of accustoming the mind to deal with large and intricate questions, can scarcely be overrated. but fully to serve these high ends, the study of geology must be based on a thorough knowledge of the subjects which constitute its elementary data. it must be divested as far as possible of merely local colouring, and of the prejudices of specialists. it must be emancipated from the control of the bald metaphysical speculations so rife in our time, and above all it must be delivered from that materialistic infidelity, which, by robbing nature of the spiritual element, and of its presiding divinity, makes science dry, barren, and repulsive, diminishes its educational value, and even renders it less efficient for purposes of practical research. that the want of these preliminary conditions mars much of the popular science of our day is too evident; and i confess that the wish to attempt something better, and thereby to revive the interest in geological study, to attract attention to its educational value, and to remove the misapprehensions which exist in some quarters respecting it, were principal reasons which induced me to undertake the series of papers for the _leisure hour_, which are reproduced, with some amendments and extension, in the present work. how far i have succeeded, i must leave to the intelligent and, i trust, indulgent reader to decide. in any case i have presented this many-sided subject in the aspect in which it appears to a geologist whose studies have led him to compare with each other the two great continental areas which are the classic ground of the science, and who retains his faith in those unseen realities of which the history of the earth itself is but one of the shadows projected on the field of time. to geologists who may glance at the following pages, i would say that, amidst much that is familiar, they will find here and there some facts which may be new to them, as well as some original suggestions and conclusions as to the relations of things, which though stated in familiar terms, i have not advanced without due consideration of a wide range of facts, to the general reader i have endeavoured to present the more important results of geological investigation divested of technical difficulties, yet with a careful regard to accuracy of statement, and in such a manner as to invite to the farther and more precise study of the subject in nature, and in works which enter into technical details. i have endeavoured as far as possible to mention the authors of important discoveries; but it is impossible in a work of this kind to quote authority for every statement, while the omission of much important matter relating to the topics discussed is also unavoidable. shortcomings in these respects must be remedied by the reader himself, with the aid of systematic text-books. those who may desire any farther explanation of the occasional allusions to the record of creation in genesis, will find this in my previously published volume entitled "archaia." j. w. d, mcgill college, montreal, _january, _. contents. page chapter i.--the genesis of the earth. uniformity and progress.--internal heat.--nebular theory.--probable condition of the primitive world chapter ii.--the eozoic ages. the laurentian rocks.--their character and distribution.--the conditions of their deposition.--their metamorphism.--eozoon canadense.--laurentian vegetation chapter iii.--the primordial or cambrian age. connection of the laurentian and primordial.--animals of the primordial seas.--lingula, trilobites, oldhamia, etc.--the terms cambrian and silurian.--statistics of primordial life chapter iv.--the silurian ages. geography of the continental plateaus.--life of the silurian.--reign of invertebrates.--corals, crinoids, mollusks, crustaceans.--the first vertebrates. silurian fishes.--land plants chapter v.--the devonian or erian age. physical character of the age.--difference of deposits in marginal and continental areas.--specialisation of physical geography.--corals, crustaceans, fishes, insects, plants chapter vi.--the carboniferous age. perfection of palæozoic life.--carboniferous geography.--colours of sediments.--vegetation.--origin of coal.--land life.--reptiles, land snails, millipedes, etc.--oceanic life chapter vii.--the permian age. movements of the land.--plication of the crust.--chemical conditions of dolomite, etc.--geographical results of permian movements.--life of the period. summary of palæozoic history chapter viii.--the mesozoic ages. characters of the trias.--summary of changes in the triassic and cretaceous periods.--changes of the continental plateaus.--relative duration of the palæozoic and mesozoic.--mesozoic forests.--land animals.--the reign of reptiles.--early mammals and birds chapter ix.--the mesozoic ages (continued). animals of the sea.--great sea lizards, fishes, cephalopods, etc.--chalk and its history.--tabular view of the mesozoic ages chapter x.--the neozoic ages. physical changes at the end of mesozoic.--subdivisions of the neozoic.--great eocene seas.--land animals and plants. life of the miocene.--reign of mammals chapter xi.--the neozoic ages (_continued_). later vegetation.--the animals of the pliocene period. approach of the glacial period.--character of the post-pliocene or glacial chapter xii.--close of the post-pliocene, and advent or man. connection of geological and human history.--the post-glacial period.--its relations to the pre-historic human period.--elevation of post-pliocene land.--introduction of man.--subsidence and re-elevation.--calculations as to time.--tabular view of the neozoic ages chapter xiii.--advent of man (_continued_). relations of post-pliocene and modern animals.--cavern deposits.--kent's cave.--general remarks. chapter xiv.--primitive man. theory of evolution as applied to man.--its demands.--its deficiencies.--fallacious character of arguments of derivationists. hypothesis of creation.--its demands and advantages chapter xv.--primitive man (_continued_). geological conditions of man's introduction.--his modern date.--his isolated position.--his higher powers.--pictures of primitive man according to evolution and creation.--general conclusion list of illustrations. page ideal sections illustrating the genesis or the earth america in the laurentian period eozoon canadense life in the primordial age organic limestone of the silurian life in the silurian life in the devonian vegetation of the devonian carboniferous plants oldest land snails carboniferous reptiles foldings of the crust in the permian period curves of elevation and depression culmination of types of palæozoic animals land animals of the mesozoic aquatic animals of the mesozoic foraminiferal rock-builders miocene mammals britain in the post-pliocene the story of the earth and man. chapter i. the genesis of the earth. the title of this work is intended to indicate precisely its nature. it consists of rough, broad sketches of the aspects of successive stages in the earth's history, as disclosed by geology, and as they present themselves to observers at the present time. the last qualification is absolutely necessary, when dealing with a science whose goal to-day will be its starting point to-morrow, and in whose view every geological picture must have its light and shaded portions, its clear foreground and its dim distance, varying according to the lights cast on them by the progress of investigation, and according to the standpoint of the observer. in such pictures results only can be given, not the processes by which they have been obtained; and with all possible gradations of light and distance, it may be that the artist will bring into too distinct outline facts still only dimly perceived, or will give too little prominence to others which, should appear in bold relief. he must in this judge for himself; and if the writer's impressions do not precisely correspond with those of others, he trusts that they will allow something for difference of vision and point of view. the difficulty above referred to perhaps rises to its maximum in the present chapter. for how can any one paint chaos, or give form and filling to the formless void? perhaps no word-picture of this period of the first phase of mundane history can ever equal the two negative touches of the inspired penman--"without form and void"--a world destitute of all its present order, and destitute of all that gives it life and animation. this it was, and not a complete and finished earth, that sprang at first from its creator's hand; and we must inquire in this first chapter what information science gives as to any such condition of the earth. in the first place, the geological history of the earth plainly intimates a beginning, by utterly negativing the idea that "all things continue as they were from the creation of the world." it traces back to their origin not only the animals and plants which at present live, but also their predecessors, through successive dynasties emerging in long procession from the depths of a primitive antiquity. not only so; it assigns to their relative ages all the rocks of the earth's crust, and all the plains and mountains built up of them. thus, as we go back in geological time, we leave behind us, one by one, all the things with which we are familiar, and the inevitable conclusion gains on us that we must be approaching a beginning, though this may be veiled from us in clouds and thick darkness. how is it, then, that there are "uniformitarians" in geology, and that it has been said that our science shows no traces of a beginning, no indications of an end? the question deserves consideration; but the answer is not difficult. in all the lapse of geological time there has been an absolute uniformity of natural law. the same grand machinery of force and matter has been in use throughout all the ages, working out the great plan. yet the plan has been progressive and advancing, nevertheless. the uniformity has been in the methods, the results have presented a wondrous diversity and development. again, geology, in its oldest periods, fails to reach the beginning of things. it shows us how course after course of the building has been laid, and how it has grown to completeness, but it contains as yet no record of the laying of the foundation-stones, still less of the quarry whence they were dug. still the constant progress which we have seen points to a beginning which we have not seen; and the very uniformity of the process by which the edifice has been erected, implies a time when it had not been begun, and when its stones were still reposing in their native quarry. what, then, is the oldest condition of the earth actually shown to us by geology,--that which prevailed in the eozoic or laurentian period, when the oldest rocks known, those constituting the foundation-stones of our present continents, were formed and laid in their places? with regard to physical conditions, it was a time when our existing continents were yet in the bosom of the waters, when the ocean was almost universal, yet when sediments were being deposited in it as at present, while there were also volcanic foci, vomiting forth molten matter from the earth's hidden interior. then, as now, the great physical agencies of water and fire were contending with one another for the mastery, doing and undoing, building up and breaking down. but is this all? has the earth no earlier history? that it must have had, we may infer from many indications; but as to the nature of these earlier states, we can learn from conjecture and inference merely, and must have recourse to other witnesses then those rocky monuments which are the sure guides of the geologist. one fact bearing on these questions which has long excited attention, is the observed increase in temperature in descending into deep mines, and in the water of deep artesian wells--an increase which may be stated in round numbers at one degree of heat of the centigrade thermometer for every feet of depth from the surface. these observations apply of course to a very inconsiderable depth, and we have no certainty that this rate continues for any great distance towards the centre of the earth. if, however, we regard it as indicating the actual law of increase of temperature, it would result that the whole crust of the earth is a mere shell covering a molten mass of rocky matter. thus a very slight step of imagination would carry us back to a time when this slender crust had not yet formed, and the earth rolled through space an incandescent globe, with all its water and other vaporisable matters in a gaseous state. astronomical calculation has, however, shown that the earth, in its relation to the other heavenly bodies, obeys the laws of a rigid ball, and not of a fluid globe. hence it has been inferred that its actual crust must be very thick, perhaps not less then , miles, and that its fluid portion must therefore be of smaller dimensions then has been inferred from the observed increase of temperature. further, it seems to have been rendered probable, from the density of rocky matter in the solid and liquid states, that a molten globe would solidify at the centre as well as at the surface, and consequently that the earth must not only have a solid crust of great thickness, but also a solid nucleus, and that any liquid portions must be of the nature of a sheet or of detached masses intervening between these. on the other hand, it has recently been maintained that the calculations which are supposed to have established the great thickness of the crust, on the ground that the earth does not change its form in obedience to the attraction of the sun and moon, are based on a misconception, and that a molten globe with a thin crust would attain to such a state of equilibrium in this respect as not to be distinguishable from a solid planet. this view has been maintained by the french physicist, delaunay, and for some time it made geologists suppose that, after all, the earth's crust may be very thin. sir william thomson, however, and archdeacon pratt, have ably maintained the previous opinion, based on hopkins' calculations; and it is now believed that we may rest upon this as representing the most probable condition of the interior of the earth at present. another fact bearing on this point is the form of the earth, which is now actually a spheroid of rotation; that is, of such a shape as would result from the action of gravity and centrifugal force in the motion of a huge liquid drop rotating in the manner in which the earth rotates. of course it may be said that the earth may have been made in that shape to fit it for its rotation; but science prefers to suppose that the form is the result of the forces acting on it. this consideration would of course corroborate the deductions from that just mentioned. again, if we examine a map showing the distribution of volcanoes upon the earth, and trace these along the volcanic belt of western america and eastern asia, and in the pacific islands, and in the isolated volcanic regions in other parts of the world; and if we add to these the multitude of volcanoes now extinct, we shall be convinced that the sources of internal heat, of which these are the vents, must be present almost everywhere under the earth's crust. lastly, if we consider the elevations and depressions which large portions of the crust of the earth have undergone in geological time, and the actual crumpling and folding of the crust visible in great mountain chains, we arrive at a similar conclusion, and also become convinced that the crust has been not too thick to admit of extensive fractures, flexures, and foldings. there are, however, it must be admitted, theories of volcanic action, strongly supported by the chemical nature of the materials ejected by modern volcanoes, which would refer all their phenomena to the softening, under the continued influence of heat and water, of materials within the crust of the earth rather then under it.[a] still, the phenomena of volcanic action, and of elevation and subsidence, would, under any explanation, suppose intense heat, and therefore probably an original incandescent condition. [a] dr. t. sterry hunt, in silliman'a journal, . la place long ago based a theory of the originally gaseous condition of the solar system on the relation of the planets to each other, and to the sun, on their planes of revolution, the direction of their revolution, and that of their satellites. on these grounds he inferred that the solar system had been formed out of a nebulous mass by the mutual attraction of its parts. this view was further strengthened by the discovery of nebulae, which it might be supposed were undergoing the same processes by which the solar system was produced. this nebular theory, as it was called, was long very popular. it was subsequently supposed to be damaged by the fact that some of the nebulæ which had been regarded as systems in progress of formation were found by improved telescopes to be really clusters of stars, and it was inferred that the others might be of like character. the spectroscope has, however, more recently shown that some nebulæ are actually gaseous; and it has even been attempted to demonstrate that they are probably undergoing change fitting them to become systems. this has served to revive the nebular hypothesis, which has been further strengthened by the known fact that the sun is still an incandescent globe surrounded by an immense luminous envelope of vapours rising from its nucleus and condensing at its surface. on the other hand, while the sun may be supposed, from its great magnitude, to remain intensely heated, and while it will not be appreciably less powerful for myriads of years, the moon seems to be a body which has had time to complete the whole history of geological change, and to become a dry, dead, and withered world, a type of what our earth would in process of time actually become. [illustration: _figs. to ._--_ideal sections illustrating the genesis of the earth._ fig. . a vaporous world. fig. . a world with a central fluid nucleus (_b_) and a photosphere (_a_). fig. . the photosphere darkened, and a solid crust (_c_) and solid nucleus (_d_) formed. fig. . water (_e_) deposited on the crust, forming a universal ocean. fig. . the crust crumpled by shrinkage, land elevated, and the water occupying the intervening depressions. the figures are all of uniform size; but the circle (a) shows th diameter of the globe when in the state of fig. , and that marked (b) its diameter when in the state of fig. . in all the figures (_a_) represents vapour or air; (_b_) liquid rock; (_c_) solid rock as a crust; (_d_) solid nucleus; (_e_) water.] such considerations lead to the conclusion that the former watery condition of our planet was not its first state, and that we must trace it back to a previous reign of fire. the reasons which can be adduced in support of this are no doubt somewhat vague, and may in their details be variously interpreted; but at present we have no other interpretation to give of that chaos, formless and void, that state in which "nor aught nor nought existed," which the sacred writings and the traditions and poetry of ancient nations concur with modern science in indicating as the primitive state of the earth. let our first picture, then, be that of a vaporous mass, representing our now solid planet spread out over a space nearly two thousand times greater in diameter then that which it now occupies, and whirling in its annual round about the still vaporous centre of our system, in which at an earlier period the earth had been but an exterior layer, or ring of vapour. the atoms that now constitute the most solid rocks are in this state as tenuous as air, kept apart by the expansive force of heat, which prevents not only their mechanical union, but also their chemical combination. but within the mass, slowly and silently, the force of gravitation is compressing the particles in its giant hand, and gathering the denser toward the centre, while heat is given forth on all sides from the condensing mass into the voids of space without. little by little the denser and less volatile matters collect in the centre as a fluid molten globe, the nucleus of the future planet; and in this nucleus the elements, obeying their chemical affinities hitherto latent, are arranging themselves in compounds which are to constitute the future rocks. at the same time, in the exterior of the vaporous envelope, matters cooled by radiation into the space without, are combining with each other, and are being precipitated in earthy rain or snow into the seething mass within, where they are either again vaporised and sent to the surface or absorbed in the increasing nucleus. as this process advances, a new brilliancy is given to the faint shining of the nebulous matter by the incandescence of these solid particles in the upper layers of its atmosphere, a condition which at this moment, on a greater scale, is that of the sun; in the case of the earth, so much smaller in volume, and farther from the centre of the system, it came on earlier, and has long since passed away. this was the glorious starlike condition of our globe: in a physical point of view, its most perfect and beautiful state, when, if there were astronomers with telescopes in the stars, they might have seen our now dull earth flash forth--a brilliant white star secondary to the sun. but in process of time this passes away. all the more solid and less volatile substances are condensed and precipitated; and now the atmosphere, still vast in bulk, and dark and misty in texture, contains only the water, chlorine, carbonic acid, sulphuric acid, and other more volatile substances; and as these gather in dense clouds at the outer surface, and pour in fierce corrosive rains upon the heated nucleus, combining with its materials, or flashing again into vapour, darkness dense and gross settles upon the vaporous deep, and continues for long ages, until the atmosphere is finally cleared of its acid vapours and its superfluous waters.[b] in the meantime, radiation, and the heat abstracted from the liquid nucleus by the showers of condensing material from the atmosphere, have so far cooled its surface that a crust of slag or cinder forms upon it. broken again and again by the heavings of the ocean of fire, it at length sets permanently, and receives upon its bare and blistered surface the ever-increasing aqueous and acid rain thrown down from the atmosphere, at first sending it all hissing and steaming back, but at length allowing it to remain a universal boiling ocean. then began the reign of the waters, and the dominion of fire was confined to the abysses within the solid crust. under the primeval ocean were formed the first stratified rocks, from the substances precipitated from its waters, which must have been loaded with solid matter. we must not imagine this primeval ocean like our own blue sea, clear and transparent, but filled with earthy and saline matters, thick and turbid, until these were permitted to settle to the bottom and form the first sediments. the several changes above referred to are represented in diagrammatic form in figs. to . [b] hunt, "chemistry of the primeval earth," _silliman's journal_, . in the meantime all is not at rest in the interior of the new-formed earth. under the crust vast oceans of molten rock may still remain, but a solid interior nucleus is being crystallised in the centre, and the whole interior globe is gradually shrinking. at length this process advances so far that the exterior crust, like a sheet of ice from below which the water has subsided, is left unsupported; and with terrible earthquake-throes it sinks downward, wrinkling up into huge folds, between which are vast sunken areas into which the waters subside, while from the intervening ridges the earth's pent-up fires belch forth ashes and molten rocks. (fig. .) so arose the first dry land:-- "the mountains huge appear emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave into the clouds, their tops ascend the sky, so high as heaved the tumid hills, so low down sunk a hollow bottom, broad and deep, capacious bed of waters." the cloud was its garment, it was swathed in thick darkness, and presented but a rugged pile of rocky precipices; yet well might the "morning stars sing together, and all the sons of god shout with joy," when its foundations were settled and its corner-stone laid, for then were inaugurated the changes which were to lead to the introduction of life on the earth, and to all the future development of the continents. physical geographers have taught us that the great continents, whether we regard their coasts or their mountain chains, are built up on lines which run north-east and south-west, and north-west and south-east; and it is also observed that these lines are great circles of the earth tangent to the polar circle. further, we find, as a result of geological investigation, that these lines determined the deposition and the elevation of the oldest rocks known to us. hence it is fair to infer that these were the original directions of the first lines of fracture and upheaval. whether these lines were originally drawn by the influence of of the seasons on the cooling globe, or by the currents of its molten interior, or of the superficial ocean, they bespeak a most uniform and equable texture for the crust, and a definite law of fracture and upheaval; and they have modified all the subsequent action of the ocean as a depositor of sediment, and of the internal heat as a cause of alteration and movement of rocks. against these earliest belts of land the ocean first chafed and foamed. along their margins marine denudation first commenced, and the oceanic currents first deposited banks of sediment; and along these first lines have the volcanic orifices of all periods been most plentiful, and elevatory movements most powerfully felt. we must not suppose that the changes thus shortly sketched were rapid and convulsive. they must have required periods of enormous duration, all of which had elapsed before the beginning of geological time, properly so called. from sir william thomson's calculations, it would appear that the time which has elapsed from the first formation of a solid crust on the earth to the modern period may have been from seventy to one hundred millions of years, and the whole time from the vaporous condition of the solar system to the present, must of course have been still greater then even this enormous series of ages. such a lapse of time is truly almost inconceivable, but it is only a few days to him with whom one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. how many and strange pictures does this series of processes call up! first, the uniform vaporous nebula. then the formation of a liquid nucleus, and a brilliant photosphere without. then the congealing of a solid crust under dark atmospheric vapours, and the raining down of acid and watery showers. then the universal ocean, its waves rolling unobstructed around the globe, and its currents following without hindrance the leading of heat and of the earth's rotation. then the rupture of the crust and the emergence of the nuclei of continents. some persons seem to think that by these long processes of creative work we exclude the creator, and would reduce the universe into a mere fortuitous concourse of atoms. to put it in more modern phrase, "given a quantity of detached fragments cast into space, then mutual gravitation and the collision of the fragments would give us the spangled heavens." but we have still to ask the old question, "whence the atoms?" and we have to ask it with all the added weight of our modern chemistry, so marvellous in its revelations of the original differences of matter and their varied powers of combination. we have to ask, what is gravitation itself, unless a mode of action of almighty power? we have to ask for the origin of of thousands of correlations, binding together the past and the future in that orderly chain of causes and effects which constitutes the plan of the creation. if it pleased god to create in the beginning an earth "formless and void" and to elaborate from this all that has since existed, who are we, to say that the plan was not the best? nor would it detract from our view of the creative wisdom and power if we were to hold that in ages to come the sun may experience the same change that has befallen the earth, and may become "black as sackcloth of hair," preparatory perhaps, to changes which may make him also the abode of life; or if the earth, cooling still further, should, like our satellite the moon, absorb all its waters and gases into its bosom, and become bare, dry, and parched, until there shall be "no more sea" how do we know but that then there shall be no more need of the sun, because a better light may be provided? or that there may not be a new baptism of fire in store for the earth, whereby, being melted with fervent heat, it may renew its youth in the fresh and heavenly loveliness of a new heaven and a new earth, free from all the evils and imperfections of the present? god is not slack in these things, as some men count slackness; but his ways are not like our ways. he has eternity wherein to do his work, and takes his own time for each of his operations. the divine wisdom, personified by a sacred writer, may well in this exalt his own office:-- "jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his work of old. i was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. when there were no deeps, t was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding in water. before the mountains were settled, before the hills, was i brought forth: while as yet he had not made the earth, nor the plains, nor the higher part of the habitable world, when he gave the sea his decree, that her waters should not pass his limits; when he determined the foundations of the earth." chapter ii. the eozoic ages. the dominion of heat has passed away; the excess of water has been precipitated from the atmosphere, and now covers the earth as a universal ocean. the crust has folded itself into long ridges, the bed of the waters has subsided into its place, and the sea for the first time begins to rave against the shores of the newly elevated land, while the rain, washing the bare surfaces of rocky ridges, carries its contribution of the slowly wasting rocks back into the waters whence they were raised, forming, with the material worn from the crust by the surf, the first oceanic sediments. do we know any of these earliest aqueous beds, or are they all hidden from view beneath newer deposits, or have they been themselves worn away and destroyed by denuding agencies? whether we know the earliest formed sediments is, and may always remain, uncertain; but we do know certain very ancient rocks which may be at least their immediate successors. [illustration: fig. .--the laurentian nucleus of the american continent.] deepest and oldest of all the rocks we are acquainted with in the crust of the earth, are certain beds much altered and metamorphosed, baked by the joint action of heat and heated moisture--rocks once called azoic, as containing no traces of life, but for which i have elsewhere proposed the name "eozoic," or those that afford the traces of the earliest known living beings. these rocks are the laurentian series of sir william logan, so named from the laurentide hills, north of the river st. lawrence, which are composed of these ancient beds, and where they are more largely exposed then in any other region. it may seem at first sight strange that any of these ancient rocks should be found at the surface of the earth; but this is a necessary result of the mode of formation of the continents. the oldest rocks, thrown up in places into high ridges, have either not been again brought under the waters, or have lost by denudation the sediments once resting on them; and being of a hard and resisting nature, still remain; and often rise into hills of considerable elevation, showing as it were portions of the skeleton of the earth protruding through its superficial covering. such rocks stretch along the north side of the st. lawrence river from labrador to lake superior, and thence northwardly to an unknown distance, constituting a wild and rugged district often rising into hills feet high, and in the deep gorge of the saguenay forming cliffs , feet in sheer height from the water's edge. south of this great ridge, the isolated mass of the adirondack mountains rises to the height of , feet, rivalling the newer, though still very ancient, chain of the white mountains. along the eastern coast of north america, a lower ridge of laurentian rock, only appearing here and there from under the overlying sediments, is seen in newfoundland, in new brunswick, possibly in nova scotia, and perhaps farther south in massachusetts, and as far as maryland. in the old world, rocks of this age do not, so far as known, appear so extensively. they have been recognised in norway and sweden, in the hebrides, and in bavaria, and may, no doubt, be yet discerned in other localities. still, the grandest and most instructive development of these rocks is in north america; and it is there that we may best investigate their nature, and endeavour to restore the conditions in which they were deposited. it has been already stated that the oldest wrinkles of the crust of the globe take the direction of great circles of the earth tangent to the polar circle, forming north-east and south-west, and north-west and south-east lines. to such lines are the great exposures of laurentian rock conformed, as may be well seen from the map of north america (fig. ), taken from dana, with some additions. the great angular laurentian belt is evidently the nucleus of the continent, and consists of two broad bands or ridges meeting in the region of the great lakes. the remaining exposures are parallel to these, and appear to indicate a subordinate coast-line of comparatively little elevation. it is known that these laurentian exposures constitute the oldest part of the continent, a part which was land before any of the rocks of the shaded portion of the map were deposited in the bed of the ocean--all this shaded portion being composed of rocks of various geological ages resting on the older laurentian. it is further to be observed that the beds occurring in the laurentian bands are crumpled and folded in a most remarkable manner, and that these folds were impressed upon them before the deposition of the rocks next in geological age. what then are these oldest rocks deposited by the sea--the first-born of the reign of the waters? they are very different in their external aspect from the silt and mud, the sand and gravel, and the shell and coral rocks of the modern sea, or of the more recent geological formations. yet the difference is one in condition rather then composition. the members of this ancient aristocracy of the rocks are made of the same clay with their fellows, but have been subjected to a refining and crystallizing process which has greatly changed their condition. they have been, as geologists say, metamorphosed; and are to ordinary rocks what a china vase is to the lump of clay from which it has been made. deeply buried in the earth under newer sediments, they have been baked, until sandstones, gravels, and clays came out bright and crystalline, as gneiss, mica-schist, hornblende-schist, and quartzite--all hard crystalline rocks showing at first sight no resemblance to their original material, except in the regularly stratified or bedded arrangement which serves to distinguish them from igneous or volcanic rocks. in like manner certain finer, calcareous sediments have been changed into labrador feldspar, sometimes gay with a beautiful play of colour, and what were once common limestones appear as crystalline marble. if the evidence of such metamorphoses is asked for, this is twofold. in the first place, these rocks are similar in structure to more modern beds which have been partially metamorphosed, and in which the transition from the unaltered to the altered state can be observed. secondly, there are limited areas in the laurentian itself, in which the metamorphism has been so imperfect as to permit traces of the original character of the rocks to remain. it seems also quite certain, and this is a most important point for our sketch, that the laurentian ocean was not universal, but that there were already elevated portions of the crust capable of yielding sediment to the sea. in north america these laurentian rocks attain to an enormous thickness. this has been estimated by sir w. e. logan at , feet, so that the beds would, if piled on each other horizontally, be as high as the highest mountains on earth. they appear to consist of two great series, the lower and upper laurentian. even if we suppose that in the earlier stages of the world's history erosion and deposition were somewhat more rapid then at present, the formation of such deposits, probably more widely spread then any that succeeded them, must have required an enormous length of time. geologists long looked in vain for evidences of life in the laurentian period; but just as astronomers' have suspected the existence of unknown planets from the perturbations due to their attraction, geologists have guessed that there must have been some living things on earth even at this early time. dana and sterry hunt especially have committed themselves to such speculations. the reasons for this belief may be stated thus: ( .) in later formations limestone is usually an organic rock, produced by the accumulation of shells, corals, and similar calcareous organisms in the sea, and there are enormous limestones in the laurentian, constituting regular beds. ( .) in later formations coaly matter is an organic substance, derived from vegetables, and there are large quantities of laurentian carbon in the form of graphite. ( .) in later formations deposits of iron ores are almost always connected with the deoxidising influence of organic matters as an efficient cause of their accumulation, and the laurentian contains immense deposits of iron ore, occurring in layers in the manner of later deposits of these minerals. ( .) the limestone, carbon, and iron of the laurentian exist in association with the other beds in the same manner as in the later formations in which they are known to be organic. [illustration: fig. .--_eozoon canadense._ dawson. the oldest known animal. portion of skeleton, two-thirds natural size, (_a_) tabulated cell-wall, magnified, (_b_) portion of canal system, magnified.] in addition to this inferential evidence, however, one well-marked animal fossil has at length been found in the laurentian of canada, eozoon canadense, (fig. ), a gigantic representative of one of the lowest forms of animal life, which the writer had the honour of naming and describing in --its name of "dawn-animal" having reference to its great antiquity and possible connection with the dawn of life on our planet. in the modern seas, among the multitude of low forms of life with which they swarm, occur some in which the animal matter is a mere jelly, almost without distinct parts or organs, yet unquestionably endowed with life of an animal character. some of these creatures, the foraminifera, have the power of secreting at the surface of their bodies a calcareous shell, often divided into numerous chambers, communicating with each other, and with the water without, by pores or orifices through which, the animal can extend soft and delicate prolongations of its gelatinous body, which, when stretched out into the water, serve for arms and legs. in modern times these creatures, though extremely abundant in the ocean, are usually small, often microscopic; but in a fossil state there are others of somewhat larger size, though few equaling the eozoon, which seems to been a sessile creature, resting on the bottom of the sea, and covering its gelatinous body with a thin crust of carbonate of lime or limestone, adding to this, as it grew in size, crust after crust, attached to each other by numerous partitions, and perforated with pores for the emission of gelatinous filaments. this continued growth of gelatinous animal matter and carbonate of lime went on from age to age, accumulating great beds of limestone, in some of which the entire form and most minute structures of the creature are preserved, while in other cases the organisms have been broken up, and the limestones are a mere congeries of their fragments. it is a remarkable instance of the permanence of fossils, that in these ancient organisms the minutest pores through which the semi-fluid matter of these humble animals passed, have been preserved in the most delicate perfection. the existence of such creatures supposes that of other organisms, probably microscopic plants, on which they could feed. no traces of these have been observed, though the great quantity of carbon in the beds probably implies the existence of larger sea-weeds. no other form of animal has yet been distinctly recognized in the laurentian limestones, but there are fragments of calcareous matter which may have belonged to organisms distinct from eozoon. of life on the laurentian land we know nothing, unless the great beds of iron ore already referred to may be taken as a proof of land vegetation.[c] [c] it is proper to state here that some geologists and naturalists still doubt the organic nature of eozoon. their objections however, so far as stated publicly, have been shown to depend on misapprehension as to the structures observed and their state of preservation; and specimens recently found in comparatively unaltered rocks have indicated the true character of those more altered by metamorphism. to an observer in the laurentian period, the earth would have presented an almost boundless ocean, its waters, perhaps, still warmed with the internal heat, and sending up copious exhalations to be condensed in thick clouds and precipitated in rain. here and there might be seen chains of rocky islands, many of them volcanic, or ranges of bleak hills, perhaps clothed with vegetation the forms of which are unknown to us. in the bottom of the sea, while sand and mud and gravel were being deposited in successive layers in some portions of the ocean floor, in others great reefs of eozoon were growing up in the manner of reefs of coral. if we can imagine the modern pacific, with its volcanic islands and reefs of coral, to be deprived of all other forms of life, 'we should have a somewhat accurate picture of the eozoic time as it appears to us now. i say as it appears to us now; for we do not know what new discoveries remain to be made. more especially the immense deposits of carbon and iron in the laurentian would seem to bespeak a profusion of plant life in the sea or on the land, or both, second to that of no other period that succeeded, except that of the great coal formation. perhaps no remnant of this primitive vegetation exists retaining its form or structure; but we may hope for better things, and cherish the expectation that some fortunate discovery may still reveal to us the forms of the vegetation of the laurentian time. it is remarkable that the humbly organized living things which built up the laurentian limestones have continued to exist unchanged, save in dimensions, up to modern times; and here and there throughout the geological series we find beds of foraminiferous limestone, similar, except in the species of foraminifera composing them, to that of the laurentian. it is true that other kinds of creatures, the coral animals more particularly, have been introduced, and have proved equally efficient builders of limestones; but in the deeper parts of the sea the foraminifera continue to assert their pre-eminence in this respect, and the dredge reveals in the depths of our modern oceans beds of calcareous matter which may be regarded as identical in origin with the limestones formed in the period which is to us the dawn of organic life. many inquiries suggest themselves to the zoologist in connection with the life of the laurentian period. was eozoon the first creature in which the wondrous forces of animal life were manifested, when, in obedience to the divine fiat, the waters first "swarmed with swarmers," as the terse and expressive language of the mosaic record phrases it? if so, in contemplating this organism we are in the presence of one of the greatest of natural wonders--brought nearer then in any other case to the actual workshop of the almighty maker. still we cannot affirm that other creatures even more humble may not have preceded eozoon, since such humble organisms are known in the present world. attempts have often been made, and very recently have been renewed with much affirmation of success, to prove that such low forms of life may originate spontaneously from their materials in the waters; but so far these attempts merely prove that the invisible germs of the lower animals and plants exist everywhere, and that they have marvellous powers of resisting extreme heat and other injurious influences. we need not, therefore, be surprised if even lower forms then eozoon may have preceded that creature, or if some of these may be found, like the organisms said to live in modern boiling springs, to have had the power of existing even at a time when the ocean may have been almost in a state of ebullition. another problem is that of means of subsistence for the eozoic foraminifera. a similar problem exists in the case of the modern ocean, in whose depths live multitudes of creatures, where, so far as we know, vegetable matter, ordinarily the basis of life, cannot exist in a living condition. it is probable, however, from the researches of dr. wyville thompson, that this is to be accounted for by the abundance of life at the surface and in the shallower parts of the sea, and by the consequent diffusion through the water of organic matter in an extremely tenuous state, but yet sufficient to nourish these creatures. the same may have been the case in the eozoic sea, where, judging from the vast amount of residual carbon, there must have been abundance of organic matter, either growing at the bottom, or falling upon it from the surface; and as the eozoon limestones are usually free from such material, we may assume that the animal life in them was sufficient to consume the vegetable pabulum. on the other hand, as detached specimens of eozoon occur in graphitic limestones, we suppose that in some cases the vegetable matter was in excess of the animal, and this may have been either because of its too great exuberance, or because the water was locally too shallow to permit eozoon and similar creatures to nourish. these details we must for the present fill up conjecturally; bu the progress of discovery may give us further light as to the precise conditions of the beginning of life in the "great and wide sea wherein are moving things innumerable" and which is as much a wonder now as in the days of the author of the "hymn of creation"[d] in regard to the life that swarms in all its breadth and depth, the vast variety of that life, and its low and simple types, of which we can affirm little else then that they move. [d] psalm civ. the enormous accumulations of sediment on the still thin crust of the earth in the laurentian period--accumulations probably arranged in lines parallel to the directions of disturbance already indicated--weighed down the surface, and caused great masses of the sediment to come within the influence of the heated interior nucleus. thus, extensive metamorphism took place, and at length the tension becoming too great to be any longer maintained, a second great collapse occurred, crumpling and disturbing the crust, and throwing up vast masses of the laurentian itself, probably into lofty mountains--many of which still remain of considerable height, though they have been subjected to erosion throughout all the extent of subsequent geological time. the eozoic age, whose history we have thus shortly sketched, is fertile in material of thought for the geologist and the naturalist. until the labours of murchison, sedgwick, hall, and barrande had developed the vast thickness and organic richness of the silurian and cambrian rocks, no geologist had any idea of the extent to which life had reached backward in time. but when this new and primitive world of siluria was unveiled, men felt assured that they had now at last reached to the beginnings of life. the argument on this side of the question was thus put by one of the most thoughtful of english geologists, professor phillips: "it is ascertained that in passing downwards through the lower palæozoic strata, the forms of life grow fewer and fewer, until in the lowest cambrian rocks they vanish entirely. in the thick series of these strata in the longmynd, hardly any traces of life occur, yet these strata are of such a kind as might be expected to yield them.... the materials are fine-grained or arenaceous, with or without mica, in laminae or beds quite distinct, and of various thicknesses, by no means unlikely to retain impressions of a delicate nature, such as those left by graptolites, or mollusks, or annulose crawlers. indeed, one or two such traces are supposed to have been recognised, so that the almost total absence of the traces of life in this enormous series is best understood by the supposition that in these parts of the sea little or no life existed. but the same remark of the excessive rarity of life in the lower deposits is made in north america, in norway, and in bohemia, countries well searched for this very purpose, so that all our observations lead to the conviction that the lowest of all the strata are quite deficient of organic remains. the absence is general--it appears due to a general cause. is it not probable that during these very early periods the ocean and its sediments were nearly devoid of plants and animals, and in the earliest time of all, which is represented by sediments, quite deprived of such?" these words were written ten years ago, and about the same time were published in america those anticipations of the probability of life in the laurentian already referred to, and lyell was protesting against the name primordial, on the ground that it implied that we had reached the beginning of life, when this was not proved. yet there were elements of truth in both views. it is true now, as then, that the primordial seems to be a morning hour of life, having, as we shall see in our next paper, unmistakable signs about it of that approach to the beginning to which phillips refers. it is also true that it is not so early a morning hour as one who has not risen with the dawn might suppose, since with its apparently small beginnings of life it is almost as far removed from the eozoon reefs of the early laurentian on the one hand, as it is from the modern period on the other. the dawn of life seems to have been a very slow and protracted process, and it may have required as long a time between the first appearance of eozoon and the first of those primordial trilobites which the next period will introduce to our notice, as between these and the advent of adam. perhaps no lesson is more instructive then this as to the length of the working days of the almighty. another lesson lies ready for us in these same facts. theoretically, plants should have preceded animals; and this also is the assertion of the first chapter of genesis; but the oldest fossil certainly known to us is an animal. what if there were still earlier plants, whose remains are still to be discovered? for my own part, i can see no reason to despair of the discovery of an _eophytic_ period preceding the eozoic; perhaps preceding it through ages of duration to us almost immeasurable, though still within the possible time of the existence of the crust of the earth. it is even possible that in a warm and humid condition of the atmosphere, before it had been caused "to rain upon the earth" and when dense "mists ascended from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground,"[e] vegetation may have attained to a profusion and grandeur unequalled in the periods whose flora is known to us. [e] genesis ii. . for a description of this eophytic period of genesis, see the author's "archaia," pp. _et seq._ but while eozoon thus preaches of progress and of development, it has a tale to tell of unity and sameness just as eozoon lived in the laurentian sea, and was preserved for us by the infiltration of its canals with siliceous mineral matters, so its successors and representatives have gone on through all the ages accumulating limestone in the sea bottom. to-day they are as active as they were then, and are being fossilised in the same way. the english chalk and the chalky modern mud of the atlantic sea-bed, are precisely similar in origin to the eozoic limestones. there is also a strange parallelism in the fact that in the modern seas foraminifera can live under conditions of deprivation of light and vital air, and of enormous pressure, under which few organisms of greater complexity could exist, and that in like manner eozoon could live in seas which were perhaps as yet unfit for most other forms of life. it has been attempted to press the eozoic foraminifers into the service of those theories of evolution which would deduce the animals of one geological period by descent with modification from those of another; but it must be confessed that eozoon proves somewhat intractable in this connection. in the first place, the creature is the grandest of his class, both in form and structure; and if, on the hypothesis of derivation, it has required the whole lapse of geological time to disintegrate eozoon into orbulina, globigerina, and other comparatively simple foraminifers of the modern seas, it may have taken as long, probably much longer, to develop eozoon from such simple forms in antecedent periods. time fails for such a process. again, the deep sea has been the abode of foraminifers from the first. in this deep sea they have continued to live without improvement, and with little material change. how little likely is it that in less congenial abodes they could have improved into higher grades of being; especially since we know that the result in actual fact of any such struggle for existence is merely the production of depauperated foraminifers? further, there is no link of connection known to us between eozoon and any of the animals of the succeeding primordial, which are nearly all essentially new types, vastly more different from eozoon then it is from many modern creatures. any such connection is altogether imaginary and unsupported by proof. the laws of creation actually illustrated by this primeval animal are only these: first, that there has been a progress in creation from few, low, and generalised types of life to more numerous, higher, and more specialised types; and secondly, that every type, low or high, was introduced at first in its best and highest form, and was, as a type, subject to degeneracy, and to partial or total replacement by higher types subsequently introduced. i do not mean that we could learn all this from eozoon alone; but that, rightly considered, it illustrates these laws, which we gather from the subsequent progress of the creative work. as to the mystery of the origin of living beings from dead matter, or any changes which they may have undergone after their creation, it is absolutely silent. chapter iii. the primordial, or cambrian age. between the time when _eozoon canadense_ flourished in the seas of the laurentian period, and the age which we have been in the habit of calling primordial, or cambrian, a great gap evidently exists in our knowledge of the succession of life on both of the continents, representing a vast lapse of time, in which the beds of the upper laurentian were deposited, and in which the laurentian sediments were altered, contorted, and upheaved, before another immense series of beds, the huronian, or lower cambrian, was formed in the bottom of the sea. eozoon and its companions occur in the lower laurentian. the upper laurentian has afforded no evidence of life; and even those conditions from which we could infer life are absent. the lowest cambrian, as we shall see, presents only a few traces of living beings. still, the physical history of this interval must have been most important. the wide level bottom of the laurentian sea was broken up and thrown into those bold ridges which were to constitute the nuclei of the existing continents. along the borders of these new-made lands intense volcanic eruptions broke forth, producing great quantities of lava and scoriæ and huge beds of conglomerate and volcanic ash, which are characteristic features of the older cambrian in both hemispheres. such conditions, undoubtedly not favourable to life, seem to have prevailed, and extended their influence very widely, so that the sediments of this period are among the most barren in fossils of any in the crust of the earth. if any quiet undisturbed spots existed in which the lower laurentian life could be continued and extended in preparation for the next period, we have yet discovered few of them. the experience of other geological periods would, however, entitle us to look for such oases in the lower cambrian desert, and to expect to find there some connecting links between the life of the eozoic and the very dissimilar fauna of the primordial. the western hemisphere, where the laurentian is so well represented, is especially unproductive in fossils of the immediately succeeding period. the only known exception is the occurrence of eozoon and of apparent casts of worm-burrows in rocks at madoc in canada, overlying the laurentian, and believed to be of huronian age, and certain obscure fossils of uncertain affinities, recently detected by mr. billings, in rocks supposed to be of this age, in newfoundland. here, however, the european series comes in to give us some small help. gümbel has described in bavaria a great series of gneissic rocks corresponding to the laurentian, or at least to the lower part of it; above these are what he calls the hercynian mica-slate and primitive clay-slate, in the latter of which he finds a peculiar species of eozoon, which he names _eozoon bavaricum_. in england also the longmynd groups of rocks in shropshire and in wales appears to be the immediate successor to the upper laurentian; and it has afforded some obscure "worm-burrows" or, perhaps, casts of sponges or fucoids, with a small shell of the genus _lingulella_, and also fragments of crustaceans (_palæeopyge_). the "fucoid sandstones" of sweden, believed to be of similar age, afford traces of marine plants and burrows of worms, while the harlech beds of wales have afforded to mr. hicks a considerable number of fossil animals, not very dissimilar from those of the upper cambrian. if these rocks are really the next in order to the eozoic, they show a marked advance in life immediately on the commencement of the primordial period. in ireland, the curious oldhamia, noticed below, appears to occur in rocks equally old. as we ascend, however, into the middle and upper parts of the cambrian, the menevian and lingula flag-beds of britain, and their equivalents in bohemia and scandinavia, and the acadian and potsdam groups of america, we find a rich and increasing abundance of animal remains, constituting the first primordial fauna of barrande. the rocks of the primordial are principally sandy and argillaceous, forming flags and slates, without thick limestones, and often through great thicknesses, very destitute of organic remains, but presenting some layers, especially in their upward extension, crowded with fossils. these are no longer mere protozoa, but include representatives of all the great groups of animals which yet exist, except the vertebrates. we shall not attempt any systematic classification of these; but, casting our dredge and tow-net into the primordial sea, examine what we collect, rather in the order of relative abundance then of classification. over great breadths of the sea bottom we find vast numbers of little bivalve shells of the form and size of a finger-nail, fastened by fleshy peduncles imbedded in the sand or mud; and thus anchored, collecting their food by a pair of fringed arms from the minute animals and plants which swarm in the surrounding waters. these are the _lingulæ_, from the abundance of which some of the primordial beds have received in england and wales the name of lingula flags. in america, in like manner, in some beds near st. john, new brunswick, the valves of these shells are so abundant as to constitute at least half of the material of the bed; and alike in europe and america, lingula and allied forms are among the most abundant primordial fossils. the lingulæ are usually reckoned to belong to the great sub-kingdom of mollusks, which includes all the bivalve and univalve shell-fish, and several other groups of creatures; but an able american naturalist, mr. morse, has recently shown that they have many points of resemblance to the worms; and thus, perhaps, constitute one of those curious old-fashioned "comprehensive" types, as they have been called, which present resemblances to groups of creatures, in more modern times quite distinct from each other. he has also found that the modern lingulæ are very tenacious of life, and capable of suiting themselves to different circumstances, a fact which, perhaps, has some connection with their long persistence in geological time. they are in any case members of the group of lamp-shells, creatures specially numerous and important in the earlier geological ages. [illustration: fig. .--life in the primordial sea. on the bottom are seen, proceeding from left to right, _oldhamia antiqua_, _lingulæ_, _arenicolæ_, _oldhamia radiata_, _paradoxides_, _histioderma_, _agnostus_, _oldhamia radiata_, _algæ_, and _lingulæ_. in the water are _hymenocaris_, different species of _trilobites_, and _pteropods_.] the lingulæ are especially interesting as examples of a type of beings continued almost from the dawn of life until now; for their shells, as they exist in the primordial, are scarcely distinguishable from those of members of the genus which still live. while other tribes of animals have run through a great number of different forms, these little creatures remain the same. another interesting point is a most curious chemical relation of the lingula, with reference to the material of its shell. the shells of mollusks generally, and even of the ordinary lamp-shells, are hardened by common limestone or carbonate of lime: the rarer substance, phosphate of lime, is in general restricted to the formation of the bones of the higher animals. in the case of the latter, this relation depends apparently on the fact that the albuminous substances on which animals are chiefly nourished require for their formation the presence of phosphates in the plant. hence the animal naturally obtains phosphate of lime or bone-earth with its food, and its system is related to this chemical fact in such wise that phosphate of lime is a most appropriate and suitable material for its teeth and bones. now, in the case of the lower animals of the sea, their food, not being of the nature of the richer land plants, but consisting mainly of minute algæ and of animals which prey on these, furnishes, not phosphate of lime, but carbonate. an exception to this occurs in the case of certain animals of low grade, sponges, etc., which, feeding on minute plants with siliceous cell-walls, assimilate the flinty matter and form a siliceous skeleton. but this is an exception of downward tendency, in which these animals approach to plants of low grade. the exception in the case of lingulæ is in the other direction. it gives to these humble creatures the same material for their hard parts which is usually restricted to animals of much higher rank. the purpose of this arrangement, whether in relation to the cause of the deviation from the ordinary rule or its utility to the animal itself, remains unknown. it has, however, been ascertained by dr. hunt, who first observed the fact in the case of the primordial lingulæ, that their modern successors coincide with them, and differ from their contemporaries among the mollusks in the same particular. this may seem a trifling matter, but it shows in this early period the origination of the difference still existing in the materials of which animals construct their skeletons, and also the wonderful persistence of the lingulæ, through all the geological ages, in the material of their shells. this is the more remarkable, in connection with our own very slender acquaintance with the phenomenon, in relation either to its efficient or final causes. before leaving the lingulæ, i may mention that mr. morse informs me that living specimens, when detached from their moorings, can creep like worms, leaving long furrows on the sand, and that they can also construct sand-tubes wherein to shelter themselves. this shows that some of the abundant "worm burrows" of the primordial may have been the work of these curious little shell-fishes, as well as, perhaps, some of the markings which have been described under the name of _eophyton_, and have been supposed, i think incorrectly, to be remains of land plants. in addition to lingula we may obtain, though rarely, lamp-shells of another type, that of the orthids, these have the valves hinged along a straight line, in the middle of which is a notch for the peduncle, and the valves are often marked with ribs or striae. the orthids were content with limestone for their shells, and apparently lived in the same circumstances with the lingulæ; and in the period succeeding the primordial they became far more abundant. yet they perished at an early stage of the world's progress, and have no representatives in the modern seas. in many parts of the primordial ocean the muddy bottom swarmed with crustaceans, relatives of our shrimps and lobsters, but of a form which differs so much from these modern shell-fishes that the question of their affinities has long been an unsettled one with zoologists. hundreds of species are known, some almost microscopic in size, others a foot in length. all are provided with a broad flat horseshoe-shaped head-plate, which, judging from its form and a comparison with the modern king-crabs or horseshoe-crabs, must have been intended as a sort of mud-plough to enable them to excavate burrows or hide themselves in the slimy ooze of the ocean bed. on the sides of this buckler are placed the prominent eyes, furnished with many separate lenses, on precisely the same plan with those of modern crustaceans and insects, and testifying, as buckland long ago pointed out, to the identity of the action of light in the ancient and the modern seas. the body was composed of numerous segments, each divided transversely into three lobes, whence they have received the name of _trilobites_, and the whole articulated, so that the creature could roll itself into a ball, like the modern slaters or wood-lice, which are not very distant relatives of these old crustaceans.[f] the limbs of trilobites were long unknown, and it was even doubted whether they had any; but recent discoveries have shown that they had a series of flat limbs useful both for swimming and creeping. the trilobites, under many specific and generic forms, range from the primordial to the carboniferous rocks, but are altogether wanting in the more recent formations and in the modern seas. the trilobites lived on muddy bottoms, and their remains are extremely abundant in shaly and slaty beds, though found also in limestone and sandstone. in the latter they have left most curious traces of their presence in the trails which they have produced. some of the most ancient sandstones have their surfaces covered with rows of punctured impressions (_protichnites_, first footprints), others have strange series of transverse grooves with longitudinal ones at the side (_climactichnites_, ladder footprints); others are oval burrows, marked with transverse lines and a ridge along the middle (_rusichnites_, wrinkle footprints). all of these so nearly resemble the trails and tracks of modern king-crabs that there can be little doubt as to their origin. many curious striated grooves and bifid marks, found on the surfaces of primordial beds, and which have been described as plants, are probably only the marks of the oral organs or feet of these and similar creatures, which passed their lives in grubbing for food in the soft, slimy ooze, though they could, no doubt, like the modern king-crabs, swim when necessary. some still more shrimp-like creatures, hymenocaris, which are found with them, certainly had this power. [f] woodward has recently suggested affinities of trilobites with the isopods or equal-footed crustaceans, on the evidence of a remarkable specimen with remains of feet described by billings. a lower type of annulose or ringed animal then that of the trilobites, is that of the worms. these creatures cannot be preserved in a fossil state, except in the case of those which inhabit calcareous tubes: but the marks which their jointed bodies and numerous side-bristles leave on the sand and mud may, when buried under succeeding sediments, remain; and extensive surfaces of very old rocks are marked in this way, either with cylindrical burrows or curious trails with side scratches looking like pinnate leaves. these constitute the genus _crusiana_, while others of more ordinary form belong to the genus _arenicolites_, so named from the common arenicola, or lobworm, whose burrows they are supposed to resemble. markings referable to seaweed also occur in the primordial rocks, and also some grotesque and almost inexplicable organisms known as _oldhamia_, which have been chiefly found in the primordial of ireland. one of the most common forms consists of a series of apparently jointed threads disposed in fan-like clusters on a central stem (_oldhamia antiqua_). another has a wider and simpler fan-like arrangement of filaments. these have been claimed by botanists as algæ, and have been regarded by zoologists as minute zoophytes, while some more sceptical have supposed that they may be mere inorganic wrinklings of the beds. this last view does not, however, seem tenable. they are, perhaps, the predecessors of the curious _graptolites_, which we shall have to represent in the silurian. singularly enough, foraminifera, the characteristic fossils of the laurentian, have been little recognised in the primordial, nor are there any limestones known so massive as those of the former series. there are, however, a number of remarkable organisms, which have usually been described as sponges, but are more probably partly of the nature of sponges and partly of that of foraminifera. of this kind are some of the singular conical fossils described by billings as _archæocyathus_, and found in the primordial limestone of labrador. they are hollow within, with radiating pores and plates, calcareous in some, and in others with siliceous spicules like those of modern sponges. some of them are several inches in diameter, and they must have grown rooted in muddy bottoms, in the manner of some of the deep-sea sponges of modern times. one species at least of these creatures was a true foraminifer, allied, though somewhat distantly, to eozoon. in some parts of the primordial sandstones, curious funnel-shaped casts in sand occur, sometimes marked with spiral lines. the name _histioderma_ has been given to some of these, and they have been regarded as mouths of worm-burrows. others of larger size have been compared to inverted stumps of trees. if they were produced by worms, some of these must have been of gigantic size, but billings has recently suggested that they may be casts of sponges that lived like some modern species imbedded in the sand. in accordance with this view i have represented these curious objects in the engraving, on the whole, the life of these oldest palæozoic rocks is not very abundant; but there are probably representatives of three of the great subdivisions of animals or, as some would reckon them, of four the protozoa, the radiata (coelenterata), the mollusca, and the annulosa. and it is most interesting thus to find in these very old rocks the modern subdivisions of animals already represented, and these by types some of them nearly allied to existing inhabitants of the seas i have endeavoured in the engraving to represent some of the leading forms of marine life in this ancient period. perhaps one of the most interesting discoveries in these rocks is that of rain-marks and shrinkage-cracks, in some of the very oldest beds--those of the longmynd in shropshire. on the modern muddy beach any ordinary observer is familiar with the cracks produced by the action of the sun and air on the dried surfaces left by the tides. such cracks, covered by the waters of a succeeding tide, may be buried in newer silt, and once preserved in this way are imperishable. in like manner, the pits left by passing showers of rain on the mud recently left bare by the tide may, when the mud has dried, become sufficiently firm to be preserved. in this way we have rain-marks of various geological ages; but the oldest known are those of the longmynd, where they are associated both with ripple-marks and shrinkage-cracks. we thus have evidence of the action of tides, of sun, and of rain, in these ancient periods just as in the present day. were there no land animals to prowl along the low tidal flats in search of food? were there no herbs or trees to drink in the rains and flourish in the sunshine? if there were, no bone or footprint on the shore, or drifted leaf or branch, has yet revealed their existence to the eyes of geologists the beds of the primordial age exist in england, in bohemia, in sweden and norway, and also in north america. they appear to have been deposited along the shores of the old laurentian continent, and probably some of them indicate very deep water. the primordial rocks are in many parts of the world altered and hardened. they have often assumed a slaty structure, and their bedding, and the fossils which they contain, are both affected by this. the usual view entertained as to what is called slaty structure is, that it depends on pressure, acting on more or less compressible material in some direction usually different from that of the bedding. such pressure has the effect of arranging all the flat particles as scales of mica, etc. in planes parallel to the compressing surface. hence, if much material of this kind is present in the sediment, the whole rock assumes a fissile character causing it to split readily into thin plates. that such yielding to pressure has actually taken place is seen very distinctly in microscopic sections of some slaty rocks, which often show not only a laminated structure, but an actual crumpling on a small scale, causing them to assume almost the aspect of woody fibre. such rocks often remind a casual observer of decaying trunks of trees, and sections of them under the microscope show the most minute and delicate crumpling. it is also proved by the condition of the fossils the beds contain. these are often distorted, so that some of them are lengthened and others shortened, and if specimens were selected with, that view, it would be quite easy to suppose that those lengthened by distortion are of different species from those distorted so as to be shortened. slaty cleavage and distortion are not, however, confined to primordial rocks, but occur in altered sediments of various ages. the primordial sediments must have at one time been very widely distributed, and must have filled up many of the inequalities produced by the rending and contortion of the laurentian beds. their thicker and more massive portions are, however, necessarily along the borders of the laurentian continents, and as they in their turn were raised up into land, they became exposed to the denuding action first of the sea, and afterwards of the rain and rivers, and were so extensively wasted away that only in a few regions do large areas of them remain visible. that of bohemia has afforded to barrande a great number of most interesting fossils. the rocks of st. david's in wales, those of shropshire in england, and those of wicklow in ireland are also of great interest; and next to these in importance are, perhaps, the huronian and acadian groups of north america, in which continent--as for example in nova scotia and in some parts of new england--there are extensive areas of old metamorphic rocks whose age has not been determined by fossils, but which may belong to this period. the question of division lines of formations is one much agitated in the case of the cambrian rocks. whether certain beds are to be called cambrian or silurian has been a point greatly controverted; and the terms primordial and primordial silurian have been used as means to avoid the raising of this difficulty. many of our division lines in geology are arbitrary and conventional, and this may be the case with that between the primordial and silurian, the one age graduating into the other. there appears to be, however, the best reason to recognise a distinct cambrian period, preceding the two great periods, those of the second and third faunas of barrande, to which the term silurian is usually applied. on the other hand, in so far as our knowledge extends at present, a strongly marked line of separation exists between the laurentian and primordial, the latter resting on the edges of the former, which seems then to have been as much altered as now. still a break of this kind may be, perhaps must be, merely local; and may vary in amount. thus, in some places we find rocks of silurian and later ages resting directly on the laurentian, without the intervention of the primordial. in any case, where a line of coast is steadily sinking, each succeeding deposit will overlap that which went before; and this seems to have been the case with the laurentian shore when the primordial and silurian were being deposited. hence over large spaces the primordial is absent, being probably buried up, except where exposed by denudation at the margin of the two formations. this occurs in several parts of canada, while the laurentian rocks have evidently been subjected to metamorphism and long-continued weathering before the lower silurian were deposited; and in some cases the latter rest on weather-worn and pitted surfaces, and are filled with angular bits of the underlying rock, as well as with drift-shells which have been cast on these old laurentian shores; while in other cases the silurian rests on smooth water-worn laurentian rocks, and is filled at the junction with well-rounded pebbles and grains of sand which have evidently been subjected to a more thorough attrition then those of the present beach. with respect to the line of division between the primordial and the next succeeding rocks, it will be seen that important movements of the continents occurred at the close of the cambrian, and in some places the cambrian rocks have been much disturbed before the deposition of the lower silurian. seated on some ancient promontory of the laurentian, and looking over the plain which, in the primordial and lower silurian periods was the sea, i have often wished for some shred of vegetable matter to tell what lived on that land when the primordial surf beat upon its shore, and washed up the trilobites and brachiopods of those old seas; but no rock has yet taken up its parable to reveal the secret, and the primordial is vocal only with the old story: "and god said, let the waters swarm with swarming living things, and it was so." so our picture of the period may represent a sea-bottom swarming with animals of low grade, some sessile, some locomotive; and we may merely suppose a distant shore with vegetation dimly seen, and active volcanoes; but a shore on which no foot of naturalist has yet trod to scan its productions. very different estimates have been formed of the amount of life in this period, according to the position given to its latest limit. taking some of the more modern views of this subject, we might have included among the primordial animals many additional creatures, which we prefer noticing in the silurian, since it may at least be affirmed that their head-quarters were in that age, even if they had a beginning in the primordial. it may be interesting here, however, to note the actual amount of life known to us in this period, taken in its largest scope. in doing this, i shall take advantage of an interesting table given by dr. bigsby,[g] and representing the state of knowledge in , and shall group the species in such a manner as to indicate the relative abundance of distinct types of structure. we find then-- plants (all, or nearly all, supposed to be sea-weeds, and some, probably, mere tracks or trails of animals) species. sponges, and similar creatures " corals and their allies " starfishes and their allies " worms " trilobites and other crustaceans " lamp-shells and other molluscoids " common bivalve mollusks " common univalve mollusks and their allies " higher mollusks, nautili, cuttle-fishes, etc. " --- in all " [g] "thesaurus siluricus." now in this enumeration we observe, in the first place, a representation of all the lower or invertebrate groups of the waters. we have next the remarkable fact that the radiata of cuvier, the lowest and most plant-like of the marine animals, are comparatively slenderly represented, yet that there are examples of their higher as well as of their lower forms. we have the further fact that the crustaceans, the highest marine animals of the annulose type, are predominant in the waters; and that in the mollusks the highest and lowest groups are most plentiful, the middle less so. the whole number of species is small, and this may arise either from our having here reached an early period in the history of life, or from our information being defective. both are probably true. still, of the animals known, we cannot say that the proportions of the different kinds depend on defective knowledge. there is no reason, for example, why corals should not have been preserved as well as trilobites, or why brachiopods should have been preserved rather then ordinary bivalves. the proportions, therefore, it may be more safe to reason from then the aggregate. in looking at these proportions, and comparing them with those of modern seas, we are struck with the great number of species representing some types either now extinct or comparatively rare: the trilobites and brachiopods more particularly. we are astonished at the enormous preponderance of these two groups, and especially of the trilobites. further, we observe that while some forms, like lingula and nautilus, have persisted down to modern times, others, like the trilobites and orthids, perished very early. in all this we can dimly perceive a fitness of living things to physical conditions, a tendency to utilise each type to the limit of its capacities for modification, and then to abandon it for something higher; a tendency of low types to appear first, but to appear in their highest perfection and variety; a sudden apparition of totally diverse plans of structure subserving similar ends simultaneously with each other, as for instance those of the mollusk and the crustacean; the appearance of optical and mechanical contrivances, as for example the compound eyes of the trilobite and the swimming float of the orthoceras, in all their perfection at first, just as they continue to this day in creatures of similar grade. that these and other similar things point to a uniform and far-reaching plan, no rational mind can doubt; and if the world had stopped short in the primordial period, and attained to no further development, this would have been abundantly apparent; though it shines forth more and more conspicuously in each succeeding page of the stony record. how far such unity and diversity can be explained by the modern philosophy of a necessary and material evolution out of mere death and physical forces, and how far it requires the intervention of a creative mind, are questions which we may well leave with the thoughtful reader, till we have traced this history somewhat further. chapter iv. the lower and upper silurian ages. by english geologists, the great series of formations which succeeds to the cambrian is usually included under the name silurian system, first proposed by sir roderick murchison. it certainly, however, consists of two distinct groups, holding the second and third faunas of barrande. the older of the two, usually called the lower silurian, is the upper cambrian of sedgwick, and may properly be called the _siluro-cambrian_. the newer is the true silurian, or silurian proper--the upper silurian of murchison. we shall in this chapter, for convenience, consider both in connection, using occasionally the term lower silurian as equivalent to siluro-cambrian. the silurian presents us with a definite physical geography, for the northern hemisphere at least; and this physical geography is a key to the life conditions of the time. the north american continent, from its great unbroken area, affords, as usual, the best means of appreciating this. in this period the northern currents, acting perhaps in harmony with old laurentian outcrops, had deposited in the sea two long submarine ridges, running to the southward from the extreme ends of the laurentian nucleus, and constituting the foundations of the present ridges of the rocky mountains and the alleghanies. between these the extensive triangular area now constituting the greater part of north america, was a shallow oceanic plateau, sheltered from the cold polar currents by the laurentian land on the north, and separated by the ridges already mentioned from the atlantic and pacific. it was on this great plateau of warm and sheltered ocean that what we call the silurian fauna lived; while of the creatures that inhabited the depths of the great bounding oceans, whose abysses must have been far deeper and at a much lower temperature, we know little. during the long silurian periods, it is true, the great american plateau underwent many revolutions, sometimes being more deeply submerged, and having clear water tenanted by vast numbers of corals and shell-fishes, at others rising so as to become shallow and to receive deposits of sand and mud; but it was always distinct from the oceanic area without. in europe, in like manner, there seems to have been a great internal plateau bounded by the embryo hills of western europe on the west, and harbouring a very similar assemblage of creatures to those existing in america. further, during these long periods there were great changes, from a fauna of somewhat primordial type up to a new order of things in the upper silurian, tending toward the novelties which were introduced in the succeeding devonian and carboniferous. we may, in the first place, sketch these changes as they occurred on the two great continental plateaus, noting as we proceed such hints as can be obtained with reference to the more extensive oceanic spaces. before the beginning of the age, both plateaus seem to have been invaded by sandy and muddy sediments charged at some periods and places with magnesian limestone; and these circumstances were not favourable to the existence or preservation of organic remains. such are the potsdam and calciferous beds of america and the tremadoc and llandeilo beds of england. the potsdam and tremadoc are by their fossils included in the cambrian, and may at least be regarded as transition groups. it is further to be observed, in the case of these beds, that if we begin at the west side of europe and proceed easterly, or at the east side of america and proceed westerly, they become progressively thinner, the greater amount of material being deposited at the edges of the future continents; just as on the sides of a muddy tideway the flats are higher, and the more coarse sediment deposited near the margin of the channel, and fine mud is deposited at a greater distance and in thinner beds. the cause, however, on the great scale of the atlantic, was somewhat different, ancient ridges determining the border of the channel. this statement holds good not only of these older beds, but of the whole of the silurian, and of the succeeding devonian and carboniferous, all deposited on these same plateaus. thus, in the case of the silurian in england and wales, the whole series is more then , feet thick, but in russia, it is less then , feet. in the eastern part of america the thickness is estimated at quite as great an amount as in europe, while in the region of the mississippi the silurian rocks are scarcely thicker then in russia, and consist in great part of limestones and fine sediments, the sandstones and conglomerates thinning out rapidly eastward of the appalachian mountains. in both plateaus the earlier period of coarse accumulations was succeeded by one in which was clear water depositing little earthy sediment, and this usually fine; and in which the sea swarmed with animal life, from the _débris_ of which enormous beds of limestone were formed the trenton limestone of america and the bala limestone of europe. the fossils of this part of the series open up to us the head-quarters of lower silurian life, the second great fauna of barrande, that of the upper cambrian of sedgwick; and in america more especially, the trenton and its associated limestones can be traced over forty degrees of longitude; and throughout the whole of this space its principal beds are composed entirely of comminuted corals, shells, and crinoids, and studded with organisms of the same kinds still retaining their forms. out of these seas, in the european area, arose in places volcanic islets, like those of the modern pacific. in the next succeeding era the clear waters became again invaded with muddy and sandy sediments, in various alternations, and with occasional bands of limestone, constituting the caradoc beds of britain and the utica and hudson river groups of america. during the deposition of these, the abounding life of the siluro-cambrian plateaus died away, and a middle group of sandstones and shales, the oneida and medina of america and the mayhill of england, form the base of the upper silurian. but what was taking place meanwhile in the oceanic areas separating our plateaus? these were identical with the basins of the atlantic and pacific, which already existed in this period as depressions of the earth's crust, perhaps not so deep as at present. as to the deposits in their deeper portions we know nothing; but on the margin of the atlantic area are some rocks which give us at least a little information. in the later part of the cambrian period the enormous thickness of the quebec group of north america appears to represent a broad stripe of deep water parallel to the eastern edge of the american plateau, and in which an immense thickness of beds of sand and mud was deposited with very few fossils, except in particular beds, and these of a more primordial aspect then those of the plateau itself. these rocks no doubt represent the margin of a deep atlantic area, over which cold currents destructive of life were constantly passing, and in which great quantities of sand and mud, swept from the icy regions of the north, were continually being laid. the researches of dr. carpenter and dr. wyville thomson show us that there are at present cold areas in the deeper parts of the atlantic, on the european side, as we have long known that they exist at less depths on the american side; and these same researches, with the soundings on the american banks, show that sand and gravel may be deposited not merely on shallows, but in the depths of the ocean, provided that these depths are pervaded by cold and heavy currents capable of eroding the bottom, and of moving coarse material. the quebec group in canada and the united states, and the metalliferous lower silurian rocks of nova scotia and newfoundland, destitute of great marine limestones and coral reefs, evidently represent deep and cold-water areas on the border of the atlantic plateau. at a later period, the beginning of the upper silurian, the richly fossiliferous and exceptional deposits of the island of anticosti, formed in the deep hollow of the gulf of st. laurence, show that when the plateau had become shallowed up by deposition and elevation, and converted into desolate sand-banks, the area of abundant life was transferred to the still deep atlantic basin and its bordering bays, in which the forms of lower silurian life continued to exist until they were mixed up with those of the upper silurian. if we turn now to these latter rocks, and inquire as to their conditions on our two great plateaus, we shall find a repetition of changes similar to those which occurred in the times preceding. the sandy shallows of the earlier part of this period give place to wide oceanic areas similar to those of the lower silurian; in these we find vast and thick coral and shell limestones, the wenlock of england and niagara of america, as rich in life as the limestones of the lower silurian, and with the generic and family forms similar, but the species for the most part different. in america these limestones were followed by a singularly shallow condition of the plateau, in which the surface was so raised as at times to be converted into separate salt lakes in which beds of salt were deposited. on both plateaus there were alternations of oceanic and shallow conditions, under which the lower helderberg and ludlow beds, the closing members of the silurian, were laid down. of the atlantic beds of this period we know little, except that the great limestones appear to be wanting, and to be replaced by sandy and muddy deposits, in some parts at least of the margins of the area. in some portions also of the plateaus and their margins, extensive volcanic outbursts seem to have occurred; so that the american plateau presented, at least in parts, the aspect of a coral sea with archipelagos of volcanic islands, the ejections from which became mixed with the aqueous deposits forming around them. having thus traced the interesting series of geographical conditions indicated by the silurian series, we may next take our station on one of the submerged plateaus, and inquire as to the new forms of life now introduced to our notice; and in doing so shall include the life of both the lower and upper silurian. [illustration: fig. .--fragment of lower silurian limestone, sliced and magnified ten diameters, showing the manner in which it is made up of fragments of corals, crinoids, and shells. (from a paper oil the microscopic structure of canadian limestone, "canadian naturalist.")] first, we may remark the vast abundance and variety of corals. the polyps, close relatives of the common sea-anemone of our coasts, which build up our modern coral reefs, were represented in the silurian seas by a great number of allied yet different forms, equally effectual in the great work of secreting carbonate of lime in stony masses, and therefore in the building-up of continents. let us note some of the differences. in the first place, whereas our modern coral-workers can show us but the topmost pinnacles of their creations, peeping above the surface of the sea in coral reefs and islands, the work of the coral animals of the silurian has been finished, by these limestones being covered with masses of new sediment consolidated into hard rock, and raised out of the sea to constitute a part of the dry land. in the silurian limestones we thus have, not merely the coral reefs, but the wide beds of comminuted coral, mixed with the remains of other animals, which are necessarily accumulated in the ocean bed around the reefs and islands. further, these beds, which we might find loose and unconsolidated in the modern sea, have their fragments closely cemented together in the old limestones. the nature of this difference can be well seen by comparing a fragment of modern coral or shell limestone from bermuda, with a similar fragment of the trenton limestone, both being sliced for examination under the microscope. the old limestone is black or greyish, the modern one is nearly white, because in the former the organic matter in the animal fragments has been carbonised or converted into coaly and bituminous matter. the old limestone is much more dense and compact, partly because its materials have been more closely compressed by superincumbent weight, but chiefly because calcareous matter in solution in water has penetrated all the interstices, and filled them up with a deposit of crystalline limestone. in examining a slice, however, under the microscope, it will be seen that the fragments of corals and other organisms are as distinct and well preserved as in the crumbling modern rock, except that they are perfectly imbedded in a paste of clear transparent limestone, or rather calcareous spar, infiltrated between them. i have examined great numbers of slices of these limestones, ever with new wonder at the packing of the organic fragments which they present. the hard marble-like limestones used for building in the silurian districts of europe and america, are thus in most cases consolidated masses of organic fragments. in the next place, the animals themselves must have differed somewhat from their modern successors. this we gather from the structure of their stony cells, which present points of difference indicating corresponding difference of detail in the soft parts. zoologists thus separate the rugose or wrinkled corals and the tabulate or floored corals of the silurian from those of the modern seas. the former must have been more like the ordinary coral animals; the latter were very peculiar, more especially in the close union of the cells, and in the transverse floors which they were in the habit of building across these cells as they grew in height. they presented, however, all the forms of our modern corals. some were rounded and massive in form, others delicate and branching. some were solitary or detached, others aggregative in communities. some had the individual animals large and probably showy, others had them of microscopic size. perhaps the most remarkable of all is the american _beatricea_,[h] which grew like a great trunk of a tree twenty feet or more in height, its solitary animal at the top like a pillar-saint, though no doubt more appropriate and comfortable; and multitudes of delicate and encrusting corals clinging like mosses or lichens to its sides. this creature belongs to the very middle of the silurian, and must have lived in great depths, undisturbed by swell or breakers, and sheltering vast multitudes of other creatures in its stony colonnades. [h] first described by mr. billings. it has been regarded as a plant, and as a cephalopod shell; but i believe it was a coral allied to _cystiphyllum_. [illustration: fig. .--life in the silurian age. on the bottom are seen, proceeding from left to right, corals (_stenopora_ and _beatricea_) and a gasteropod; _orthoceras_; coral (_patria_); crinoids, _lingulæ_, and cystideans; a _trilobite_ and _cyrtolites_. in the water is a large _pterygotus_, and under it a _trinucleus_. further on, are cephalopods, a heteropod, and fishes. at the surface, _phyllograptus_, _graptolithus_, and _bellerophon_. on the land, _lepidodendron_, _psilophyton_, and _prototaxites_.] lastly, the silurian corals nourished in latitudes more boreal then their modern representatives. in both hemispheres as far north as silurian limestones have been traced, well-developed corals have been found. on the great plateaus sheltered by laurentian ridges to the north, and exposed to the sun and to the warmer currents of the equatorial regions, they nourished most grandly and luxuriantly: but they lived also north of the laurentian bands in the arctic sea basins, though probably in the shallower and more sheltered parts. undoubtedly the geographical arrangements of the silurian period contributed to this. we have already seen how peculiarly adapted to an exuberant marine life were the submerged continents of the period; and there was probably little arctic land producing icebergs to chill the seas. the great arctic currents, which then as now flowed powerfully toward the equator, must have clung to the deeper parts of the ocean basins, while the return waters from the equator would spread themselves widely over the surface; so that wherever the arctic seas presented areas a little elevated out of the cold water bottom, there might be suitable abodes for coral animals. it has been supposed that in the silurian period the sea might have derived some appreciable heat from the crust of the earth below, and astronomical conditions have been suggested as tending to produce changes of climate; but it is evident that whatever weight may be due to these causes, the observed geographical conditions are sufficient to account for the facts of the case. it is also to be observed, that we cannot safely infer the requirements as to temperature of silurian coral animals from those of the tenants of the modern ocean. in the modern seas many forms of life thrive best and grow to the greatest size in the colder seas; and in the later tertiary period there were elephants and rhinoceroses sufficiently hardy to endure the rigours of an arctic climate. so there may have been in the silurian seas corals of much less delicate constitution then those now living. next to the corals we may place the crinoids, or stone-lilies--creatures abounding throughout the silurian seas, and realizing a new creative idea, to be expanded in subsequent geological time into all the multifarious types of star-fishes and sea-urchins. a typical crinoid, such as the _glyptocrinus_ of the lower silurian, consists of a flexible jointed stem, sometimes several feet in length, composed of short cylindrical discs, curiously articulated together, a box-like body on top made up of polygonal pieces attached to each other at the edges, and five radiating jointed arms furnished with branches and branchlets, or fringes, all articulated and capable of being flexed in any direction. such a creature has more the aspect of a flower then of an animal; yet it is really an animal, and subsists by collecting with its arms and drifting into its mouth minute creatures floating in the water. another group, less typical, but abundantly represented in the silurian seas, is that of the cystideans, in which the body is sack-like, and the arms few and sometimes attached to the body. they resemble the young or larvæ of crinoids. in the modern seas the crinoids are extremely few, though dredging in very deep water has recently added to the number of known species; but in the silurian period they had their birth, and attained to a number and perfection not afterwards surpassed. perhaps the stone-lilies of the upper silurian rocks of dudley, in england, are the most beautiful of palæozoic animals. judging from the immense quantities of their remains in some limestones, wide areas of the sea bottom must have been crowded with their long stalks and flower-like bodies, presenting vast submarine fields of these stony water-lilies. passing over many tribes of mollusks, continued or extended from the primordial--and merely remarking that the lamp-shells and the ordinary bivalve and univalve shell-fishes are all represented largely, more especially the former group, in the silurian--we come to the highest of the mollusca, represented in our seas by the cuttle-fishes and nautili, creatures which, like the crinoids, may be said to have had their birth in the silurian, and to have there attained to some of their grandest forms. the modern pearly nautilus shell, well known in every museum, is beautifully coiled in a disc-like form, and when sliced longitudinally shows a series of partitions dividing it into chambers, air-tight, and serving as a float to render the body of the creature independent of the force of gravity. as the animal grows it retracts its body toward the front of the shell, and forms new partitions, so that the buoyancy of the float always corresponds with the weight of the animal; while by the expansion and contraction of the body and removal of water from a tube or syphon which traverses the chambers, or the injection of additional water, slight differences can be effected, rendering the creature a very little lighter or heavier then the medium in which it swims. thus practically delivered from the encumbrance of weight, and furnished with long flexible arms provided with suckers, with great eyes and a horny beak, the nautilus becomes one of the tyrants of the deep, creeping on the bottom or swimming on the surface at will, and everywhere preying on whatever animals it can master. fortunately for us, as well as for the more feeble inhabitants of the sea, the nautili are not of great size, though some of their allies, the cuttle-fishes, which, however, want the floating apparatus, are sufficiently powerful to be formidable to man. in the silurian period, however, there were not only nautili like ours, but a peculiar kind of straight nautilus--the _orthoceratites_--which sometimes attained to gigantic size. the shells of these creatures may be compared to those of nautili straightened out, the chambers being placed in a direct line in front of each other. a great number of species have been discovered, many quite insignificant in size, but others as much as twelve feet in length and a foot in diameter at the larger end. indeed, accounts have been given of individuals of much larger growth. these large _orthoceratites_ were the most powerful marine animals known to us in the silurian, and must have been in those days the tyrants of the seas.[i] [i] zoologists will observe that i have, in the illustrations given the orthoceras the arms rather of a cuttle-fish then of a nautilus. the form of the outer chamber of the shell, i think, warrants this view of the structure of the animal, which must have been formed on a very comprehensive type. among the crustaceans, or soft shell-fishes of the silurian, we meet with the _trilobites_, continued from the primordial in great and increasing force, and represented by many and beautiful species; while an allied group of shell-fishes of low organization but gigantic size, the _eurypterids_, characteristic of the upper silurian, were provided with powerful limbs, long flexible bodies, and great eyes in the front of the head, and were sometimes several feet in length. instead of being mud grovellers, like the trilobites and modern king-crabs, these _eurypterids_ must have been swimmers, careering rapidly through the water, and probably active and predaceous. there were also great multitudes of those little crustaceans which are inclosed in two horny or shelly valves like a bivalve shell-fish, and the remains of which sometimes fill certain beds of silurian shale and limestone. no remains found in the silurian rocks have been more fertile sources of discussion then the so-called _graptolites_, or written stones--a name given long ago by linnæus, in allusion to the resemblance of some species having rows of cells on one side, to minute lines of writing. these little bodies usually appear as black coaly stains on the surface of the rock, showing a slender stem or stalk, with a row of little projecting cells at one side, or two rows, one on each side. the more perfect specimens show that, in many of the species at least, these fragments were branches of a complex organism spreading from a centre; and at this centre there is sometimes perceived a sort of membrane connecting the bases of the branches, and for which various uses have been conjectured. the branches themselves vary much in different species. they may be simple or divided, narrow, or broad and leaf-like, with one row of cells, or two rows of cells. hence arise generic distinctions into single and double graptolites, leaf and tree graptolites, net graptolites, and so on. but while it is easy to recognise these organisms, and to classify them in species and genera, it is not so easy to say what their affinities are with modern things. they are exclusively silurian, disappearing altogether at the close of this period, and, so far as we know, not succeeded by any similar creatures serving to connect them with modern forms. hence the most various conjectures as to their nature. they have been supposed to be plants, and have been successively referred to most of the great divisions of the lower animals. most recently they have been regarded by hall, nicholson,[j] and others, who have studied them most attentively, as zoophytes or hydroids allied to the sertularise, or tooth-corallines and sea-fir-corallines of our coasts, to the cell-bearing branches of which their fragments bear a very close resemblance. in this case, each of the little cells or teeth at the sides of the fibres must have been the abode of a little polyp, stretching out its tentacles into the water, and enjoying a common support and nutrition with the other polyps ranged with it. still the mode of life of the community of branching stems is uncertain. in some species there is a little radicle or spike at the base of the main stem, which may have been a means of attachment. in others the hollow central disk has been conjectured to have served as a float. occurring as the specimens do usually in shales and slates, which must have been muddy beds, they could not have been attached to stones or rocks, and they must have lived in clear water, either seated on the surface of the mud, attached to sea-weeds, or floating freely by means of hollow disks filled with air. after much thought on their structure and mode of occurrence, i am inclined to believe that in their younger stages they were attached, but by a very slender thread; that at a more advanced stage they became free, and acquiring a central membranous disk filled with air, floated by means of this at the surface, their long branches trailing in the waters below. they would thus be, with reference to their mode of life, though not to the details of their structure, prototypes of the modern portuguese man-of-war, which now drifts so gaily over the surface of the warmer seas. i have represented them in this attitude; but in case i should be mistaken, the reader may imagine it possible that they may be adhering to the lower surface of floating tangle. the head-quarters of the graptolites seem to be in the upper part of the cambrian, and in the siluro-cambrian, and they are widely distributed in europe, in america, and in australia. this very wide distribution of the species is probably connected with their floating and oceanic habits. [j] see also an able paper by carruthers, in the _geological magazine_, vol. v., p. . lastly, just as the silurian period was passing away, we find a new thing in the earth--vertebrate animals, represented by several species of shark-like fishes, which came in here as forerunners of the dynasty of the vertebrates, which from that day to this have been the masters of the world. these earliest vertebrates are especially interesting as the first known examples of a plan of structure which culminates only in man himself. they appear to have had cartilaginous skeletons; and in this and their shagreen-like skin, strong bony spines, and trenchant teeth, to have much resembled our modern sharks, or rather the dog-fishes, for they were of small size. one genus (_pteraspis_), apparently the oldest of the whole, belongs, however, to a tribe of mailed fishes allied to some of those of the old red sandstone. in both cases the groups of fishes representing the first known appearance of the vertebrates were allied to tribes of somewhat high organization in that class; and they asserted their claims to dominancy by being predaceous and carnivorous creatures, which must have rendered themselves formidable to their invertebrate contemporaries. coprolites, or fossil masses of excrement, which are found with them, indicate that they chased and devoured orthoceratites and sea-snails of various kinds, and snapped lingulæ and crinoids from their stalks; and we can well imagine that these creatures, when once introduced, found themselves in rich pasture and increased accordingly. space prevents us from following further our pictures of the animal life of the great silurian era, the monuments of which were first discovered by two of england's greatest geologists, murchison and sedgwick. how imperfect such a notice must be, may be learned from the fact that dr. bigsby, in his "thesaurus siluricus" in , catalogues , silurian species, of which only are known in the primordial. our illustration, carefully studied, may do more to present to the reader the teeming swarms of the silurian seas then our word-picture, and it includes many animal forms not mentioned above, more especially the curved and nautilus-like cuttle-fishes, those singular molluscous swimmers by fin or float known to zoologists as violet-snails, winged-snails or pteropods, and carinarias; and which, under various forms, have existed from the silurian to the present time. the old _lingulæ_ are also there as well as in the primordial, while the fishes and the land vegetation belong, as far as we yet know, exclusively to the upper silurian, and point forward to the succeeding devonian. we know as yet no silurian animal that lived on the land or breathed air. but our knowledge of land plants, though very meagre, is important. without regarding such obscure and uncertain forms as the _eophyton_ of sweden, hooker, page, and barrande have noticed, in the upper silurian, plants allied to the lycopods or club-mosses. i have found in the same deposits another group of plants allied to lycopods and pill-worts (psilophyton), and fragments of wood representing the curious and primitive type of pine-like trees known as _prototaxites_. these are probably only a small instalment of silurian land plants, such as a voyager might find floating in the sea on his approach to some unknown shore, which had not yet risen above his horizon. time and careful search will, no doubt, add largely to our knowledge. in the silurian, as in the cambrian, the head-quarters of animal life were in the sea. perhaps there was no animal life on the land; but here our knowledge may be at fault. it is, however, interesting to observe the continued operation of the creative fiat, "let the waters swarm with swarmers" which, beginning to be obeyed in the eozoic age, passes down through all the periods of geological time to the "moving things innumerable" of the modern ocean. can we infer anything further as to the laws of creation from these silurian multitudes of living things? one thing we can see plainly, that the life of the silurian is closely related to that of the cambrian. the same generic and ordinal forms are continued. even some species may be identical. does this indicate direct genetic connection, or only like conditions in the external world correlated with likeness in the organic world? it indicates both. first, it is in the highest degree probable that many of the animals of the lower silurian are descendants of those of the cambrian. sometimes these descendants may be absolutely unchanged. sometimes they may appear as distinct varieties. sometimes they may have been regarded as distinct though allied species. the continuance in this manner of allied forms of life is necessarily related to the continuance of somewhat similar conditions of existence, while changes in type imply changed external conditions. but is this all? i think not; for there are forms of life in the silurian which cannot be traced to the cambrian, and which relate to new and even prospective conditions, which the unaided powers of the animals of the earlier period could not have provided for. these new forms require the intervention of a higher power, capable of correlating the physical and organic conditions of one period with those of succeeding periods. whatever powers may be attributed to natural selection or to any other conceivable cause of merely genetic evolution, surely prophetic gifts cannot be claimed for it; and the life of all these geological periods is full of mute prophecies to be read only in the light of subsequent fulfilments. the fishes of the upper silurian are such a prophecy. they can claim no parentage in the older rocks, and they appear at once as kings of their class. with reference to the silurian itself, they are of little consequence; and in the midst of its gigantic forms of invertebrate life they seem almost misplaced. but they predict the coming devonian, and that long and varied reign of vertebrate life which culminates in man himself. no such prophetic ideas are represented by the giant crustaceans and cuttle-fishes and swarming graptolites. they had already attained their maximum, and were destined to a speedy and final grave in the silurian, or to be perpetuated only in decaying families whose poverty is rendered more conspicuous by the contrast with the better days gone by. the law of creation provided for new types, and at once for the elevation and degradation of them when introduced; and all this with reference to the physical conditions not of the present only but of the future. such facts, which cannot be ignored save by the wilfully blind, are beyond the reach of any merely material philosophy. the little that we know of silurian plants is as eloquent of plan and creation as that which we can learn of animals. i saw not long ago a series of genealogies in geological time reduced to tabular form by that ingenious but imaginative physiologist, haeckel. in one of these appeared the imaginary derivation of the higher plants from algæ or sea-weeds. nothing could more curiously contradict actual facts. algæ were apparently in the silurian neither more nor less elevated then in the modern seas, and those forms of vegetable life which may seem to bridge over the space between them and the land plants in the modern period, are wanting in the older geological periods, while land plants seem to start at once into being in the guise of club-mosses, a group by no means of low standing. our oldest land plants thus represent one of the highest types of that cryptogamous series to which they belong, and moreover are better developed examples of that type then those now existing. we may say, if we please, that all the connecting links have been lost; but this is begging the whole question, since no thing 'but the existence of such links could render the hypothesis of derivation possible. further, the occurrence of any number of successive yet distinct species would not be the kind of chain required, or rather would not be a chain at all. yet in some respects development is obvious in creation. old forms of life are often embryonic, or resemble the young of modern animals, but enlarged and exaggerated, as if they had overgrown themselves and had prematurely become adult. old forms are often generalized, or less specific in their adaptations then those of modern times. there is less division of labour among them. old forms sometimes not only rise to the higher places in their groups, but usurp attributes which in later times are restricted to their betters. old forms are often gigantic in size in comparison with their modern successors, which, if they could look back on their predecessors, might say, "there were giants in those days." some old forms have gone onward in successive stages of elevation by a regular and constant gradation. others have remained as they were through all the ages, some have no equals in their groups in modern days. all these things speak of order, but of order along with development, and this development not evolution; unless by this term we understand the emergence into material facts of the plans of the creative mind. these plans we may hope in some degree to understand, though we may not be able to comprehend the mode of action of creative power any more then the mode in which our own thought and will act upon the machinery of our own nerves. still, the power is not the less real, that we are ignorant of its mode of operation. the wind bloweth whither it listeth, and we feel its strength, though we may not be able to calculate the wind of to-morrow or the winds of last year. so is the spirit of god when it breathes into animals the breath of life, or the almighty word when it says, "let the waters bring forth." chapter v. the devonian age. paradoxical as it may appear, this period of geological history has been held as of little account, and has even been by some geologists regarded as scarcely a distinct age, just because it was one of the most striking and important of the whole. the devonian was an age of change and transition, in both physical and organic existence; and an age which introduced, in the northern hemisphere at least, more varied conditions of land and water and climate then had previously existed. hence, over large areas of our continents, its deposits are irregular and locally diverse; and the duration and importance of the period are to be measured rather by the changes and alterations of previous formations, and the ejection of masses of molten rock from beneath, then by a series of fossiliferous deposits. nevertheless, in some regions in north america and eastern europe, the formations of this era are of vast extent and volume, those of north america being estimated at the enormous thickness of , feet, while they are spread over areas of almost continental breadth. at the close of the upper silurian, the vast continental plateaus of the northern hemisphere were almost wholly submerged. no previous marine limestone spreads more widely then that of the upper silurian, and in no previous period have we much less evidence of the existence of dry land; yet before the end of the period we observe, in a few fragments of land plants scattered here and there in the marine limestones--evidence that islands rose amid the waste of waters. as it is said that the sailors of columbus saw the first indications of the still unseen western continent in drift canes, and fragments of trees floating in mid ocean, so the voyager through the silurian seas finds his approach to the verdant shores of the devonian presaged by a few drift plants borne from shores yet below the horizon. the small remains of land in the upper silurian were apparently limited to certain clusters of islands in the north-eastern part of america and north-western part of europe, with perhaps some in the intervening atlantic on these limited surfaces grew the first land plants certainly known to us--herbs and trees allied to the modern club-mosses, and perhaps forests of trees allied to the pines, though of humbler type; and this wide upper silurian sea, with archipelagos of wooded islands, may have continued for a long time. but with the beginning of the devonian, indications of an unstable condition of the earth's crust began to develop themselves. new lands were upheaved; great shallow, muddy, and sandy flats were deposited around them the domains of corals and sea-weeds were contracted and on banks, and in shallows and estuaries, there swarmed shoals of fishes of many species, and some of them of most remarkable organization. on the margins of these waters stretched vast swamps, covered with a rank vegetation. but the period was one of powerful igneous activity. volcanoes poured out their molten rocks over sea and land, and injected huge dykes of trap into the newly-formed beds. the land was shaken with earthquake throes, and was subject to many upheavals and subsidences. violent waves desolated the coasts, throwing sand and gravel over the flats, and tearing up newly-deposited beds; and poisonous exhalations, or sudden changes of level, often proved fatal to immense shoals of fishes. this was the time of the lower devonian, and it is marked, both in the old world and the new, by extensive deposits of sandstones and conglomerates. but the changes going on at the surface were only symptomatic of those occurring beneath. the immense accumulations of silurian sediment had by this time so overweighted certain portions of the crust, that great quantities of aqueous sediment had been pressed downward into the heated bowels of the earth, and were undergoing, under an enormous weight of superincumbent material, a process of baking and semi-fusion. this process was of course extremely active along the margins of the old silurian plateaus, and led to great elevation of land, while in the more central parts of the plateaus the oceanic conditions still continued; and in the middle devonian, in america at least, one of the most remarkable and interesting coral limestones in the world--the corniferous limestone--was deposited. in process of time, however, these clear waters became shallow, and were invaded by muddy sediments; and in the upper devonian the swampy flats and muddy shallows return in full force, and in some degree anticipate the still greater areas of this kind which existed in the succeeding coal formation. such is a brief sketch of the devonian, or, as it may be better called in america, from the vast development of its beds on the south side of lake erie, the _erian_ formation. in america the marine beds of the devonian were deposited on the same great continental plateau which supported the seas of the upper and lower silurian, and the beds were thicker towards the east and thinned towards the west, as in the case of the older series. but in the devonian there was much, land in the north-east of america; and on the eastern margin of this land, as in gaspé and new brunswick, the deposits throughout the whole period were sandstones and shales, without the great coral limestones of the central plateau. something of the same kind occurred in europe, where, however, the area of devonian sea was smaller. there the fossiliferous limestones of the middle devonian in devon, in the eifel district, in france and in russia, represent the great corniferous limestone of america; while the sandstones of south wales, of ireland, and of scotland, resemble the local conditions of gaspé and new brunswick, and belonged to a similar area in the north-west of europe, in which shallow water and land conditions prevailed during the whole of the devonian, and which was perhaps connected with the corresponding region in eastern america by a north atlantic archipelago, now submerged. this whole subject is so important to the knowledge of the devonian, and of geology in general, that i may be pardoned for introducing it here in a tabular form, taking the european series from etheridge's excellent and exhaustive paper in the "journal of the geological society." devonian of erian. divisions. central areas. devon. rhen. prussia. new york. {pilton group:-- clymenia, cypridina, chemung and portage. { brown calcareous etc. shales, sandstones upper { shales, brown and limestones, and and shales. { yellow sandstone. sandstones. plants and marine { land plants and plants and marine shells. { marine shells. shells. {ilfracombe group:-- eifel limestone, hamilton shales, { grey and red calceola shales, and corniferous middle { sandstones and etc. or cherty { flags, calcareous corals, shells, limestone. { slates and etc. many corals and { limestones, with shells, also { corals, etc. plants. {lynton group:-- coblentz and schoharie and { bed and purple wissenbach shales, caudagalli grits. lower { sandstones. marine rhenish greywacke, oriskany { shells, etc. spinier sandstones. { sandstone. marine shells. { marine shells. divisions. marginal areas. scotland. ireland. gaspé and new brunswick. {yellow and red yellow and red red and grey { sandstones. sandstones, etc. sandstones, grits upper {fishes and plants. plants, fishes, and shales, and { etc. conglomerates of { gaspé and mispeck. { plants. {red shales and grits and grey and red { sandstones, and sandstones of sandstones, and middle { conglomerates. dingle. grey and dark {caithness flags. shales. gaspé {fishes and plants. and st. john. { many plants and { fishes. {flagstones, shales glengariff grits, sandstone and { and conglomerates. etc. conglomerate. lower {fishes and plants. gaspé and st. { john. { plants and fishes. a glance at this table suffices to show that when we read hugh miller's graphic descriptions of the old red sandstone of scotland, with its numerous and wonderful fishes, we have before us a formation altogether distinct from that of devonshire or the eifel. but the one represents the shallow, and the other the deeper seas of the same period. we learn this by careful tracing of the beds to their junction with, corresponding series, and by the occasional occurrence of the characteristic fishes of the scottish strata in the english and german beds. in like manner a geologist who explores the gaspé sandstones or the new brunswick shales has under his consideration a group of beds very dissimilar from that which he would have to study on the shores of lake erie. but here again identity of relations to the silurian below and the carboniferous above, shows the contemporaneousness of the beds, and this is confirmed by the occurrence in both series of some of the same plants and shells and fishes. it will further be observed that it is in the middle that the greatest difference occurs. sand and mud and pebble-banks were almost universal over our two great continental plateaus in the older and newer devonian. but in the middle there were in some places deeper waters with coral reefs, in others shallow flats and swamps rich in vegetation. herein we see the greater variety and richness of the devonian. had we lived in that age, we should not have seen great continents like those that now exist, but we could have roamed over lovely islands with breezy hills and dense lowland jungles, and we could have sailed over blue coral seas, glowing below with all the fanciful forms and brilliant colours of polyp life, and filled with active and beautiful fishes. especially did all these conditions culminate in the middle devonian, when what are now the continental areas of the northern hemisphere must have much resembled the present insular and oceanic regions of the south pacific. out of the rich and varied life of the devonian i may select for illustration its corals, its crustaceans, its fishes, its plants, and its insects. [illustration: fig. .--corals, fishes, and crustaceans of the devonian in the foreground are corals of the genera _favosites_, _michelina_, _phillipsatrea_, _zaphrentis_, _blothrophyllum_, and _syringopora_, and the seaweed spirephyton; also fishes of the genera _cephalaspis_ and _pterichthys_. above are _pterygotus_ and _dinichtys_, with fishes of the genera _diplacanthus_, _osteolepis_, _holoptychius_, _pteraspis_, _coccosteus_, etc. the distant land had _lepidodendra_, pines and tree-ferns.] the central limestones of the devonian may be regarded as the head-quarters of the peculiar types of coral characteristic of the palæozoic age. here they were not only vastly numerous, but present some of their grandest and also their most peculiar forms. edwards and haime, in their "monograph of british fossil corals" in , enumerate one hundred and fifty well-ascertained species, and the number has since been largely increased; i have no doubt that my friend dr. bigsby, in his forth-coming "thesaurus devonicus," will more then double it. in the devonian limestones of england, as for instance at torquay, the specimens, though abundant and well preserved as to their internal structure, are too firmly imbedded in the rock to show their external forms. in the devonian of the continent of europe much finer specimens occur; but, perhaps, in no part of the world is there so clear an exhibition of them as in the devonian limestones of the united states and canada. sir charles lyell thus expresses his admiration of the exposure of these corals, which he saw at the falls of the ohio, near louisville. he says, "although the water was not at its lowest, i saw a grand display of what may be termed an ancient coral-reef, formed by zoophytes which flourished in a sea of earlier date then the carboniferous period. the ledges of horizontal limestone, over which the water flows, belong to the devonian group, and the softer parts of the stone have decomposed and wasted away, so that the harder calcareous corals stand out in relief. many branches of these zoophytes project from their erect stems precisely as if they were living. among other species i observed large masses, not less then five feet in diameter, of _favosites gothlandica_, with its beautiful honeycomb structure well displayed. there was also the cup-shaped _cyathophyllum_, and the delicate network of _fenestella_, and that elegant and well-known european species of fossil, the chain coral, _catenipora escharoides_, with a profusion of others which it would be tedious to all but the geologist to enumerate. although hundreds of fine specimens have been detached from these rocks to enrich the museums of europe and america, another crop is constantly working its way out under the action of the stream, and of the sun and rain in the warm season when the channel is laid dry."[k] these limestones have been estimated to extend, as an almost continuous coral reef, over the enormous area of five hundred thousand square miles of the now dry and inland surface of the great american continental plateau. the limestones described by sir charles are known in the western states as the "cliff limestone." in the state of new york and in western canada the "corniferous limestone," so called from the masses of hornstone, like the flint of the english chalk, contained in it, presents still more remarkable features. the corals which it contains have been replaced by the siliceous or flinty matter in such a manner that, when the surrounding limestone weathers away, they remain projecting in relief in all the beauty of their original forms. not only so, but on the surface of the country they remain as hard siliceous stones, and may be found in ploughing the soil and in stone fences and roadside heaps, so that tons of them could often be collected over a very limited space. when only partly disengaged from the matrix, the process may be completed by immersing them in a dilute acid. the beauty of these specimens when thus prepared is very great not at all inferior to that of modern corals, which they often much resemble in general form, though differing in details of structure. one of the most common forms is that of the _favosites_, or honeycomb coral, presenting regular hexagonal cells with transverse floors or tabulæ. of these there are several species, usually flat or massive in form; but one species, _f. polymorpha_, branches out like the modern stag-horn corals. another curious form, _michelina_, looks exactly like a mass of the papery cells of the great american hornet in a petrified state, and the convex floors simulate the covers of the cells, so that it is quite common to find them called fossil wasps' nests. some of the largest belong to the genus _phillipsastrea_ or _smithia_, which hugh miller has immortalized by comparing its crowded stars, with confluent rays, to the once-popular calico pattern known as "lane's net"--a singular instance of the accidental concurrence of a natural and artificial design. another very common type is that of the conical _zaphrentis_, with a deep cut at top to lodge the body of the animal, whose radiating chambers are faithfully represented by it's delicate lamellæ. perhaps the most delicate of the whole is the _syringopora_, with its cylindrical worm-like pipes bound together by transverse processes, and which sometimes can be dissolved out in all its fragile perfection by the action of an acid on a mass of corniferous limestone filled with these corals in a silicified state. [k] "travels in north america." second series. these devonian corals, like those of the silurian, belong to the great extinct groups of tabulate and rugose corals; groups which present, on the one hand, points of resemblance to the ordinary coral animals of the modern seas, and, on the other, to those somewhat exceptional corals, the millepores, which are produced by another kind of polyp, the hydroids. some of them obviously combine properties belonging to both, as, for example, the radiating partitions with the arrangement of the parts in multiples of four, the horizontal floors, and the external solid wall; and this fact countenances the conclusion that in these old corals we have a group of high and complex organization, combining properties now divided between two great groups of animals, neither of them probably, either in their stony skeletons or the soft parts of the animal, of as high organization as their paleozoic predecessors. this sort of disintegration of composite types, or dissolution of old partnerships, seems to have been no unusual occurrence in the history of life.[l] [l] verril has suggested that the tabulata may be divided into two groups, one referable to actinoids, the other to hydroids. if the devonian witnessed the culmination of the palæozoic corals, its later stages saw the final decadence of the great dynasty of the trilobites. of these creatures there are in the devonian some large and ornate species, remarkable for their spines and tubercles; as if in this, the latter day of their dominion, they had fallen into habits of luxurious decoration unknown to their sterner predecessors, and at the same time had found it necessary to surround their now disputed privileges with new safeguards of defensive armour. not improbably the decadence of the trilobites may have been connected with the introduction of the numerous and formidable fishes of the period. but while the venerable race of the trilobites was preparing to fight its last and unsuccessful battle, another and scarcely less ancient tribe of crustaceans, the eurypterids, already strong in the silurian, was armed with new and formidable powers. the _pterygotus anglicus_, which should have been named _scoticus_, since its head-quarters are in scotland, was in point of size the greatest of known crustaceans, recent or fossil. according to mr. henry woodward, who has published an admirable description and figures of the creature in the palæontographical society's memoirs, it must have been six feet in length, and nearly two feet in breadth. its antennæ were, unlike the harmless feelers of modern crustacea, armed with powerful claws. two great eyes stood in the front of the head, and two smaller ones on the top. it had four pairs of great serrated jaws, the largest as wide as a man's hand. at the sides were a pair of powerful paddles, capable of urging it swiftly through the water as it pursued its prey; and when attacked by any predaceous fish, it could strike the water with its broad tail, terminated by a great flat "telson," and retreat backward with the rapidity of an arrow. woodward says it must have been the "shark of the devonian seas;" rather, it was the great champion of the more ancient family of the lobsters, set to arrest, if possible, the encroachments of the coming sharks. the trilobites and eurypterids constitute a hard case for the derivationists. unlike those melchisedeks, the fishes of the silurian, which are without father or mother, the devonian crustaceans may boast of their descent, but they have no descendants. no distinct link connects them with any modern crustaceans except the limuli, or horse-shoe crabs; and here the connection is most puzzling, for while there seems some intelligible resemblance between the adult eurypterids and the horse-shoe, or king-crabs, the latter, in their younger state, rather resemble trilobites, as dr. packard has recently shown. thus the two great tribes of eurypterids and trilobites have united in the small modern group of king-crabs, while on the other hand, there are points of resemblance, as already stated, between trilobites and isopods, and the king-crabs had already begun to exist, since one species is now known in the upper silurian. so puzzling are these various relationships, that one naturalist of the derivationist school has recently attempted to solve the difficulty by suggesting that the trilobites are allied to the spiders! thus nature sports with our theories, showing us in some cases, as in the corals and fishes, partnerships split up into individuals, and in others distinct lines of being converging and becoming lost in one slender thread. barrande, the great palæontologist of bohemia, has recently, in an elaborate memoir on the trilobites, traced these and other points through all their structures and their whole succession in geological time thereby elaborating a most powerful inductive argument against the theory of evolution, and concluding that, so far from the history of these creatures favouring such a theory, it seems as if expressly contrived to exclude its possibility. but, while the gigantic eurypterids and ornate trilobites of the devonian were rapidly approaching their end, a few despised little crustaceans,--represented by the _amphipeltis_ of new brunswick and _kampecaris_ of scotland,--were obscurely laying the foundation of a new line of beings, that of the stomapods, destined to culminate in the squillas and their allies, which, however different in structure, are practically the eurypterids of the modern ocean. so change the dynasties of men and animals. "thou takest away their breath, they die, they return to their dust; thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created; thou renewest the form of the earth." the reign of fishes began in the upper silurian, for in the rocks of this age, more especially in england, several species have been found. they occur, however, only in the newer beds of this formation, and are not of large size, nor very abundant. it is to be observed that, in so far as the fragments discovered can be interpreted, they indicate the existence already of two distinct types of fishes, the ganoids, or gar-fishes, protected with bony plates and scales, and the placoids, or shark-like fishes; and that in the existing world these fishes are regarded as occupying a high place in their class. further, these two groups of fishes are those which throughout a large portion of geological time continue to prevail to the exclusion of other types, the ordinary bony fishes having been introduced only in comparatively recent periods. with the devonian, however, there comes a vast increase to the finny armies; and so characteristic are these that the devonian has been called the age of fishes _par excellence_, and we must try, with the help of our illustration, to paint these old inhabitants of the waters as distinctly as we can. among the most ancient and curious of these fishes are those singular forms covered with broad plates, of which the _pteraspis_ of the upper silurian is the herald, and which are represented in the lower devonian by several distinct genera. of these, one of the most curious is the _cephalaspis_, or buckler-head, distinguished by its broad flat head, rounded in front and prolonged at the sides into two great spines, which project far beyond the sides of the comparatively slender body. this fish, it may be mentioned, is the type of a family highly characteristic of the lower devonian, as well as of the upper silurian, and all of which are provided with large plate-like cephalic coverings, sometimes with a long snout in front, and, in so far as is known, a comparatively weak body and tail. they were all probably ground-living creatures, feeding on worms and shell-fishes, and "rooting" for these in the mud, or burrowing therein for their safety. in these respects they have a most curious analogy to the trilobites, which in habits they must have greatly resembled, though belonging by their structure to an entirely different and much higher class. so close is this resemblance, that their head-shields used to be mistaken for those of trilobites. the case is one of those curious analogies which often occur in nature, and which must always be distinguished from the true affinities which rest on structural resemblances. another group of small fishes, likewise cuirassed in bony armour of plates, may be represented by the _pterichthys_, with its two strong bony fins at the sides, which may have served for swimming, but probably also for defence, and for creeping on or shovelling up the mud at the bottom of the sea. but, besides the ganoids which were armed in plated cuirasses, there were others, active and voracious, clad in shining enamelled scales, like the bony pikes of the american rivers and the _polypterus_ of the nile. some of these, like the _diplacanthus_, or "double-spine" were of small size, and chiefly remarkable for their sharp defensive bony spines. others, like _holoptychius_ (wrinkled-scale) and _osteolepis_ (bone-scale), were strongly built, and sometimes of great size. one russian species of _asterolepis_ (star-scale) is supposed to have been twenty feet in length, and furnished with strong and trenchant teeth in two rows. these great fishes afford a good reason for the spines and armour-plates of the contemporary trilobites and smaller fishes. just as man has been endeavouring to invent armour impenetrable to shot, for soldiers and for ships, and, on the other hand, shot and shells that can penetrate any armoury so nature has always presented the spectacle of the most perfect defensive apparatus matched with the most perfect weapons for destruction. in the class of fishes, no age of the world is more eminent in these respects then the devonian.[m] in addition to these fishes, there were others, represented principally by their strong bony spines, which must have been allied to some of the families of modern sharks, most of them, however, probably to that comparatively harmless tribe which, furnished with flat teeth, prey upon shell-fishes. there are other fishes difficult to place in our systems of classification; and among these an eminent example is the huge _dinichthys_ of newberry, from the hamilton group of ohio. the head of this creature is more then three feet long and eighteen inches broad, with the bones extraordinarily strong and massive. in the upper jaw, in addition to strong teeth, there were in front two huge sabre-shaped tusks or incisors, each nearly a foot long; and corresponding to these in the massive lower jaw were two closely joined conical tusks, fitting between those of the upper jaw. no other fish presents so frightful an apparatus for destruction; and if, as is probable, this was attached to a powerful body, perhaps thirty feet in length, and capable of rapid motion through the water, we cannot imagine any creature so strong or so well armed as to cope with the mighty _dinichthys_. [m] many of these were discovered and successfully displayed and described by hugh miller, and are graphically portrayed in his celebrated work on the "old red sandstone," published in . the difference between the fishes of the devonian and those of the modern seas is well marked by the fact that, while the ordinary bony fishes now amount to probably , species, and the ganoid fishes to less then thirty, the finny tribes of the devonian are predominantly ganoids, and none of the ordinary type are known. to what is this related, with reference to conditions of existence? two explanations, different yet mutually connected, may be suggested. one is that armour was especially useful in the devonian as a means of defence from the larger predaceous species, and the gigantic crustaceans of the period. that this was the case may be inferred from the conditions of existence of some modern ganoids. the common bony pike of canada (_lepidosteus_), frequenting shallow and stagnant waters, seems to be especially exposed to injury from its enemies. consequently, while it is rare to find an ordinary fish showing any traces of wounds, a large proportion of the specimens of the bony pike which i have examined have scars on their scales, indicating injuries which they have experienced, and which possibly, to fishes not so well armed, might have proved fatal. again, in the modern amia, or mud-fish, in the bony pike and _polypterus_, there is an extremely large air-bladder, amply supplied with blood-vessels, and even divided into cells or chambers, and communicating with the mouth by an "air-duct." this organ is unquestionably in function a lung, and enables the animal to dispense in some degree with the use of its gills, which of course depend for their supply of vital air on the small quantity of oxygen dissolved in the water. hence, by the power of partially breathing air, these fishes can live in stagnant and badly aerated waters, where other fishes would perish. in the case of the _amia_, the grunting noises which it utters, its habit of frequenting the muddy creeks of swamps, and its possession of gill-cleaners, correspond with this view. it is possible that the devonian fishes possessed this semi-reptilian respiration; and if so, they would be better adapted then other fishes to live in water contaminated with organic matter in a state of decay, or in waters rich in carbonic acid or deficient in oxygen. possibly the palæozoic waters, as well as the palæozoic atmosphere, were less rich in pure oxygen then those of the present world; and it is certain that, in many of the beds in which the smaller devonian fishes abound, there was so much decaying vegetable matter as to make it probable that the water was unfit for the ordinary fishes. thus, though at first sight the possession of external armour and means to respire air, in the case of these peculiar fishes, may seem to have no direct connection with each other, their obvious correlation in some modern ganoids may have had its parallel on a more extensive scale among their ancient relatives. just as the modern gar-fish, by virtue of its lungs, can live in stagnant shallows and hunt frogs, but on that account needs strong armour to defend it against the foes that assail it in such places; so in the devonian the capacity to inhabit unaërated water and defensive plates and scales may have been alike necessary, especially to the feebler tribes of fishes. we shall find that in the succeeding carboniferous period there is equally good evidence of this. we have reserved little space for the devonian plants and insects; but we may notice both in a walk through a devonian forest, in which we may include the vegetation of the several subordinate periods into which this great era was divisible. the devonian woods were probably, like those of the succeeding carboniferous period, dense and dark, composed of but few species of plants, and these somewhat monotonous in appearance, and spreading out into broad swampy jungles, encroaching on the shallow bays and estuaries. landing on one of these flats, we may first cast our eyes over a wide expanse, covered with what at a distance we might regard as reeds or rushes. but on a near approach they appear very different; rising in slender, graceful stems, they fork again and again, and their thin branches are sparsely covered with minute needle-like leaves, while the young shoots curl over in graceful tresses, and the older are covered with little oval fruits, or spore-cases; for these plants are cryptogamous, or flowerless. this singular vegetation stretches for miles along the muddy flats, and rises to a height of two or three feet from a knotted mass of cylindrical roots or root-stocks, twining like snakes through and over the soil. this plant may, according as we are influenced by its fruit or structure, be regarded as allied to the modern club-mosses or the modern pill-worts. it is _psilophyton_, in every country one of the most characteristic plants of the period, though, when imperfectly preserved, often relegated by careless and unskilled observers to the all-engulfing group of fucoids. a little further inland we see a grove of graceful trees, forking like _psilophyton_, but of grander dimensions, and with the branches covered with linear leaves, and sometimes terminated by cones. these are _lepidodendra_, gigantic club-mosses, which were developed to still greater dimensions in the coal period. near these we may see a still more curious tree, more erect in its growth, with rounded and somewhat rigid leaves and cones of different form, and with huge cable-like roots, penetrating the mud, and pitted with the marks of long rootlets. this is _cyclostigma_, a plant near to the _lepidodendron_, but distinct, and peculiar to the devonian. some of its species attain to the dimensions of considerable trees; others are small and shrubby. another small tree, somewhat like the others, but with very long shaggy leaves, and its bark curiously marked with regular diamond-shaped scars, is the _leptophleum_. all these plants are probably allied to our modern club-mosses, which are, however, also represented by some low and creeping species cleaving to the ground. a little further, and we reach a dense clump of _sigillariæ_, with tall sparsely forking stems, and ribbed with ridges holding rows of leaf-scars a group of plants which we shall have further occasion to notice in the coal formation; and here is an extensive jungle of _calamites_, gigantic and overgrown mares'-tails, allies of the modern equisetums. [illustration: fig. .--vegetation of the devonian. to the left are _calamites_; next to these, _leptophleum_; in the centre are _lepidodendron_, _sigillaria_, and a pine. below are _psilophyton_, _cordaites_, ferns, and _asterophyllites_.] amidst these trees, every open glade is filled with delicate ferns of marvellous grace and beauty; and here and there a tree-fern rears its head, crowned with its spreading and graceful leaves, and its trunk clad with a shaggy mass of aërial roots--an old botanical device, used in these ancient times, as well as now, to strengthen and protect the stems of trees not fitted for lateral expansion. beyond this mass of vegetation, and rising on the slopes of the distant hills, we see great trees that look like pines. we cannot approach them more nearly; but here on the margin of a creek we see some drift-trunks, that have doubtless been carried down by a land flood. one of them is certainly a pine, in form and structure of its wood very like those now living in the southern hemisphere; it is a _dadoxylon_. another is different, its sides rough and gnarled, and marked with huge irregular ridges; its wood loose, porous, and stringy, more like the bark of modern pines, yet having rings of growth and a true bark of its own, and sending forth large branches and roots. it is the strange and mysterious _prototaxites_, one of the wonders of the devonian land, and whose leaves and fruits would be worth their weight in gold in our museums, could we only procure them. a solitary fragment further indicates that in the yet unpenetrated solitudes of the devonian forests there may be other trees more like our ordinary familiar friends of the modern woods; but of these we know as yet but little. what inhabitants have these forests? all that we yet know are a few large insects, relatives of our modern may-flies, flitting with broad veined wings over the stagnant waters in which their worm-like larvæ dwell, and one species at least assuming one of the properties of the grasshopper tribe, and enlivening the otherwise silent groves with a cricket-like chirp, the oldest music of living things that geology as yet reveals to us; and this, not by the hearing of the sound itself, but by the poor remains of the instrument attached to a remnant of a wing from the devonian shales of new brunswick. a remarkable illustration of the abundance of certain plants in the devonian, and also of the slow and gradual accumulation of some of its beds, is furnished by layers of fossil spore-cases, or the minute sacs which contain the microscopic germs of club-mosses and similar plants. in the american forests, in spring, the yellow pollen-grains of spruces and pines sometimes drift away in such quantities in the breeze that they fall in dense showers, popularly called showers of sulphur; and this vegetable sulphur, falling in lakes and ponds, is drifted to the shore in great sheets and swathes. the same thing appears to have occurred in the devonian, not with the pollen of flowering plants, but with the similar light spores and spore-cases of species of lepidodendron and allied trees. in a bed of shale, at kettle point, lake huron, from to feet thick, not only are the surfaces of the beds dotted over with minute round spore-cases, but, on making a section for the microscope, the substance of each layer is seen to be filled with them; and still more minute bodies, probably the escaped spores, are seen to fill up their interstices. the quantity of these minute bodies is so great that the shale is combustible, and burns with much flame. a bed of this nature must have been formed in shallow and still water, on the margin of an extensive jungle or forest; and as the spore-cases are similar to those of the lepidodendra of the coal-measures, the trees were probably of this kind. year after year, as the spores became ripe, they were wafted away, and fell in vast quantities into the water, to be mixed with the fine mud there accumulating. when we come to the coal period, we shall see that such beds of spore-cases occur there also, and that they have even been supposed to be mainly instrumental in the accumulation of certain beds of coal. their importance in this respect may have been exaggerated, but the fact of their occurrence in immense quantities in certain coals and shales is indisputable. this is but a slender sketch of the devonian forests: but we shall find many of the same forms of plants in the carboniferous period which succeeds. with one thought we may close. we are prone to ask for reasons and uses for things, but sometimes we cannot be satisfied. of what use were the devonian forests? they did not, like those of the coal formation, accumulate rich beds of coal for the use of man. except possibly a few insects, we know no animals that subsisted on their produce, nor was there any rational being to admire their beauty. their use, except as helping us in these last days to complete the order of the vegetable kingdom as it has existed in geological time, is a mystery. we can but fall back on that ascription of praise to him "who liveth for ever and ever," on the part of the heavenly elders who cast down their crowns before the throne and say, "thou art worthy, lord, to receive the glory, and the honour, and the might; because thou didst create all things, and by reason of _thy will_ they are and were created." chapter vi. the carboniferous age. that age of the world's history which, from its richness in accumulations of vegetable matter destined to be converted into coal, has been named the carboniferous, is in relation to living beings the most complete and noble of the palæozoic periods. in it those varied arrangements of land and water which had been increasing in perfection in the previous periods, attained to their highest development. in it the forms of animal and plant life that had been becoming more numerous and varied from the eozoic onward, culminated. the permian which succeeded was but the decadence of the carboniferous, preparatory to the introduction of a new order of things. thus the carboniferous was to the previous periods what the modern is to the preceding tertiary and mesozoic ages the summation and completion of them all, and the embodiment of their highest excellence. if the world's history had closed with the carboniferous, a naturalist, knowing nothing further, would have been obliged to admit that it had already fulfilled all the promise of its earlier years. it is important to remember this, since we shall find ourselves entering on an entirely new scene in the mesozoic period, and since this character of the carboniferous, as well as its varied conditions and products, may excuse us for dwelling on it a little longer then on the others, on the other hand, the immense economic importance of the coal formation, and the interesting points connected with it, have made the carboniferous more familiar to general readers then most other geological periods, so that we may select points less common and well-known for illustration. popular expositions of geology are, however, generally so one-sided and so distorted by the prevalent straining after effect, that the true aspect of this age is perhaps not much better known then that of others less frequently described. let us first consider the carboniferous geography of the northern hemisphere; and in doing so we may begin with a fact concerning the preceding age. one of the most remarkable features of the newer devonian is the immense quantity of red rocks, particularly red sandstones, contained in it. red sandstones, it is true, occur in older formations, but comparatively rarely; their great head-quarters, both in europe and america, in so far as the palæozoic is concerned, are in the upper devonian. now red sandstone is an infallible mark of rapid deposition, and therefore of active physical change. if we examine the grains of sand in a red sandstone, we shall find that they are stained or coated, externally, with the peroxide of iron, or iron rust; and that this coating, with perhaps a portion of the same substance in the intervening cement, is the cause of the colour. in finer sandstones and red clays the same condition exists, though less distinctly perceptible. consequently, if red sands and clays are long abraded or scoured in water, or are subjected to any chemical agent capable of dissolving the iron, they cease to be red, and resume their natural grey or white colour. now in nature, in addition to mechanical abrasion, there is a chemical cause most potent in bleaching red rocks, namely, the presence of vegetable or animal matter in a state of decay. without entering into chemical details, we may content ourselves with the fact that organic matter decaying in contact with peroxide of iron tends to take oxygen from it, and then to dissolve it in the state of protoxide, while the oxygen set free aids the decay. carrying this fact with us, we may next affirm that iron is so plentiful in the crust of the earth that nearly all sands and clays when first produced from the weathering of rocks are stained with it, and that when this weathering takes place in the air, the iron is always in the state of peroxide. more especially does this apply to the greater number of igneous or volcanic rocks, which nearly always weather brown or red. now premising that the original condition of sediment is that of being reddened with iron, and that it may lose this by abrasion, or by the action of organic matter, it follows that when sand has been produced by decay of rocks in the air, and when it is rapidly washed into the sea and deposited there, red beds will result. for instance, in the bay of fundy, whose rapid tides cut away the red rocks of its shores and deposit their materials quickly, red mud and sand constitute the modern deposit. on the other hand, when the red band and mud are long washed about, their red matter may disappear; and when the deposition is slow and accompanied with the presence of organic matter, the red colour is not only removed, but is replaced by the dark tints due to carbon. thus, in the gulf of st. lawrence, where red rocks similar to those of the bay of fundy are being more slowly wasted, and deposited in the presence of sea-weeds and other vegetable substances, the resulting sands and clays are white and grey or blackened in colour. an intermediate condition is sometimes observed, in which red beds are stained with grey spots and lines, where sea-weeds or land-plants have rested on them. i have specimens of devonian red shale with the forms of fern leaves, the substance of which has entirely perished, traced most delicately upon them in greenish marks. it follows from these facts that extensive and thick deposits of red beds evidence sub-aërial decay of rocks, followed by comparatively rapid deposition in water, and that such red rocks will usually contain few fossils, not only because of their rapid deposition, but because the few organic fragments deposited with them will probably have been destroyed by the chemical action of the superabundant oxide of iron, which, so to speak, "iron-moulds" them, just as stains of iron eat holes out of linen. now when sir roderick murchison tells us of , feet in thickness of red iron-stained rocks in the old red sandstone of england, we can see in this the evidence of rapid aqueous deposition, going on for a very long time, and baring vast areas of former land surface. consequently we have proof of changes of level and immense and rapid denudation--a conclusion further confirmed by the apparent unconformity of different members of the series to each other in some parts of the british islands, the lower beds having been tilted up before the newer were deposited. such was the state of affairs very generally at the close of the devonian, and it appears to have been accompanied with some degree of subsidence of the land, succeeded by re-elevation at the beginning of the carboniferous, when many and perhaps large islands and chains of islands were raised out of the sea, along whose margins there were extensive volcanic eruptions, evidenced by the dykes of trap traversing the devonian, and the beds of old lava interstratified in the lower part of the carboniferous, where also the occurrence of thick beds of conglomerate or pebble-rock indicates the tempestuous action of the sea. but a careful study of the lower carboniferous beds, where their margins rest upon the islands of older rocks, shows great varieties in these old shores. in some places there were shingly beaches; in others, extensive sand-banks; in others, swampy flats clothed with vegetation, and sometimes bearing peaty beds, still preserved as small seams of coal. the bays and creeks swarmed with, fishes. a few sluggish reptiles crept along the muddy or sandy shores, and out sea-ward were great banks and reefs of coral and shells in the clear blue sea. the whole aspect of nature, taken in a general view, in the older carboniferous period, must have much resembled that at present seen among the islands of the southern hemisphere. and the plants and animals, though different, were more like those of the modern south pacific then any others now living. as the age wore on, the continents were slowly lifted out of the water, and the great continental plateaus were changed from coral seas into swampy flats or low uplands, studded in many places with shallow lakes, and penetrated with numerous creeks and sluggish streams. in the eastern continent these land surfaces prevailed extensively, more especially in the west; and in america they spread both eastward and westward from the appalachian ridge, until only a long north and south mediterranean, running parallel to the rocky mountains, remained of the former wide internal ocean. on this new and low land, comparable with the "sylvas" of the south american continent, flourished the wondrous vegetation of the coal period, and were introduced the new land animals, whose presence distinguishes the close of the palæozoic. after a vast lapse of time, in which only slow and gradual subsidence occurred, a more rapid settlement of the continental areas brought the greater part of the once fertile plains of the coal formation again under the waters; and shifting sand-banks and muddy tides engulfed and buried the remains of the old forests, and heaped on them a mass of sediment, which, like the weights of a botanical press, flattened and compressed the vegetable _débris_ preserved in the leaves of the coal formation strata. then came on that strange and terrible permian period, which, like the more modern boulder-formation, marked the death of one age and the birth of another. the succession just sketched is the normal one; but the terms in which it has been described show that it cannot be universal. there are many places in which the whole thickness of the carboniferous is filled with fossils of the land, and of estuaries and creeks. there are places, on the other hand, where the deep sea appears to have continued during the whole period. in america this is seen on the grandest scale in the absence of the marine members along the western slopes of the appalachians, and the almost exclusive prevalence of marine beds in the far west, where the great carboniferous mediterranean of america spread itself, and continued uninterruptedly into the succeeding permian period. in our survey of the carboniferous age, though there are peculiarities in the life of its older, middle, and newer divisions, we may take the great coal measures of the middle portion as the type of the land life of the period, and the great limestones of the lower portion as that of the marine life; and as the former is in this period by far the most important, we may begin with it. before doing so, however, to prevent misapprehension, it is necessary to remind the reader that the flora of the middle coal period is but one of a succession of related floras that reach from the upper silurian to the permian. the meagre flora of club-mosses and their allies in the upper silurian and lower devonian was succeeded by a comparatively rich and varied assemblage of plants in the middle devonian. the upper devonian was a period of decadence, and in the lower carboniferous we have another feeble beginning, presenting features somewhat different from those of the upper devonian. this was the time of the culm of germany, the tweedian formation of the north of england and south of scotland, and the lower coal formation of nova scotia. it was a period eminently rich in lepidodendra. it was followed by the magnificent flora of the middle coal formation, and then there was a time of decadence in the upper coal formation and only a slight revival in the permian. in the present condition of our civilization, coal is the most important product which the bowels of the earth afford to man. and though there are productive beds of coal in most of the later geological formations, down to the peats of the modern period, which are only unconsolidated coals, yet the coal of the carboniferous age is the earliest valuable coal in point of time, and by far the most important in point of quantity. mineral coal may be defined to be vegetable matter which has been buried in the strata of the earth's crust, and there subjected to certain chemical and mechanical changes. the proof of its vegetable origin will grow upon us as we proceed. the chemical changes which it has undergone are not very material. wood or bark, taken as an example of ordinary vegetable matter, consists of carbon or charcoal, with the gases hydrogen and oxygen. coal has merely parted with a portion of these ingredients in the course of a slow and imperfect putrefaction, so that it comes to have much less oxygen and considerably less hydrogen then wood, and it has been blackened by the disengagement of a quantity of free carbon. the more bituminous flaming coals have a larger amount of residual hydrogen. in the anthracite coals the process of carbonisation has proceeded further, and little remains but charcoal in a dense and compact form. in cannel coals, and in certain bituminous shales, on the contrary, the process seems to have taken place entirely under water, by which putrefaction has been modified, so that a larger proportion then usual of hydrogen has been retained. the mechanical change which the coal has experienced consists in the flattening and hardening effect of the immense pressure of thousands of feet of superincumbent rock, which has crashed together the cell-walls of the vegetable matter, and reduced what was originally a pulpy mass of cellular tissue to the condition of a hard laminated rock. to understand this, perhaps the simplest way is to compare under the microscope a transverse section of recent pine-wood with a similar section of a pine trunk compressed into brown coal or jet. in the one the tissue appears as a series of meshes with thin woody walls and comparatively wide cavities for the transmission of the sap. in the other the walls of the cells have been forced into direct contact, and in some cases have altogether lost their separate forms, and have been consolidated into a perfectly compact structureless mass. with regard to its mode of occurrence, coal is found in beds ranging in vertical thickness from less then an inch to more then thirty feet, and of wide horizontal extent. many such beds usually occur in the thickness of the coal formation, or "coal measures," as the miners call it, separated from each other by beds of sandstone and compressed clay or shale. very often the coal occurs in groups of several beds, somewhat close to each other and separated from other groups by "barren measures" of considerable thickness. in examining a bed of coal, where it is exposed in a cutting or shore cliff, we nearly always find that the bed below it, or the "underclay," as it is termed by miners, is a sort of fossil soil, filled with roots and rootlets. on this rests the coal, which, when we examine it closely, is found to consist of successive thin layers of hard coal of different qualities as to lustre and purity, and with intervening laminae of a dusty fibrous substance, like charcoal, called "mother coal" by miners, and sometimes mineral charcoal. thin partings of dark shale also occur, and these usually present marks and impressions of the stems and leaves of plants. above the coal is its "roof" of hardened clay or sandstone, and this generally holds great quantities of remains of plants, and sometimes large stumps of trees with their bark converted into coal, and the hollow once occupied with wood filled with sandstone, while their roots spread over the surface of the coal. such fossil forests of erect stumps are also found at various levels in the coal measures, resting directly on under-clays without any coals. a bed of coal would thus appear to be a fossil bog or swamp. this much being premised about the general nature of the sooty blocks which fill our coal-scuttles, we may now transport ourselves into the forests and bogs of the coal formation, and make acquaintance with this old vegetation, while it still waved its foliage in the breeze and drank in the sunshine and showers. we are in the midst of one of those great low plains formed by the elevation of the former sea bed. the sun pours down its fervent rays upon us, and the atmosphere, being loaded with vapour, and probably more rich in carbonic acid then that of the present world, the heat is as it were accumulated and kept near the surface, producing a close and stifling atmosphere like that of a tropical swamp. this damp and oppressive air is, however, most favourable to the growth of the strange and grotesque trees which tower over our heads, and to the millions of delicate ferns and club-mosses, not unlike those of our modern woods, which carpet the ground. around us for hundreds of miles spreads a dense and monotonous forest, with here and there open spaces occupied by ponds and sluggish streams, whose edges are bordered with immense savannahs of reed-like plants, springing from the wet and boggy soil. everything bespeaks a rank exuberance of vegetable growth; and if we were to dig downward into the soil, we should find a thick bed of vegetable mould evidencing the prevalence of such conditions for ages. but the time will come when this immense flat will meet with the fate which in modern times befell a large district at the mouth of the indus. quietly, or with earthquake shocks, it will sink under the waters; fishes and mollusks will swarm where trees grew, beds of sand and mud will be deposited by the water, inclosing and preserving the remains of the vegetation, and in some places surrounding and imbedding the still erect trunks of trees. many feet of such deposits may be formed, and our forest surface, with its rich bed of vegetable mould, has been covered up and is in process of transformation into coal; while in course of time the shallow waters being filled up with deposit, or a slight re-elevation occurring, a new forest exactly like the last will flourish on the same spot. such changes would be far beyond the compass of the life even of a methuselah; but had we lived in the coal period, we might have seen all stages of these processes contemporaneously in different parts of either of the great continents. but let us consider the actual forms of vegetation presented to us in the coal period, as we can restore them from the fragments preserved to us in the beds of sandstone and shale, and as we would have seen them in our imaginary excursion through the carboniferous forests. to do this we must first glance slightly at the great subdivisions of modern plants, which we may arrange in such a way as to give an easy means for comparison of the aspects of the vegetable kingdom in ancient and modern times. in doing this i shall avail myself of an extract from a previous publication of my own on this subject. "the modern flora of the earth admits of a grand twofold division into the _phænogamous_, or flowering and seed-bearing plants, and the _cryptogamous_, or flowerless and spore-bearing plants. in the former series, we have, first, those higher plants which start in life with two seed-leaves, and have stems with distinct bark, wood, and pith--the _exogens_; secondly, those similar plants which begin life with one seed-leaf only, and have no distinction of bark, wood, and pith, in the stem--the _endogens_; and, thirdly, a peculiar group starting with two or several seed-leaves, and having a stem with bark, wood, and pith, but with very imperfect flowers, and wood of much simpler structure then either of the others--the _gymnosperms_. to the first of these groups or classes belong most of the ordinary trees of temperate climates. to the second belong the palms and allied trees found in tropical climates. to the third belong the pines and cycads. in the second or cryptogamous series we have also three classes,--( .) the _acrogens_, or ferns and club-mosses, with stems having true vessels marked on the sides with cross-bars--the scalariform vessels. ( .) the _anophytes_, or mosses and their allies, with stems and leaves, but no vessels. ( .) the _thallophytes_, or lichens, fungi, sea-weeds, etc., without true stems and leaves. "in the existing climates of the earth we find these classes of plants variously distributed as to relative numbers. in some, pines predominate. in others, palms and tree-ferns form a considerable part of the forest vegetation. in others, the ordinary exogenous trees predominate, almost to the exclusion of others. in some arctic and alpine regions, mosses and lichens prevail. in the coal period we have found none of the higher exogens, though one species is known in the devonian, and only a few obscure indications of the presence of endogens; but gymnosperms abound, and are highly characteristic. on the other hand, we have no mosses or lichens, and very few algæ, but a great number of ferns and lycopodiaceæ or club-mosses. thus the coal formation period is botanically a meeting-place of the lower phænogams and the higher cryptogams, and presents many forms which, when imperfectly known, have puzzled botanists in regard to their position in one or other series. in the present world, the flora most akin to that of the coal period is that of moist and warm islands in the southern hemisphere. it is not properly a tropical flora, nor is it the flora of a cold region, but rather indicative of a moist and equable climate. in accordance with this is the fact that the equable but not warm climate of the southern hemisphere at present (which is owing principally to its small extent of land) enables sub-tropical plants to extend into high latitudes. in the coal period this uniformity was evidently still more marked, since we find similar plants extending from regions within the arctic circle to others near to the tropics. still we must bear in mind that we may often be mistaken in reasoning as to the temperature required by extinct species of plants differing from those now in existence. further, we must not assume that the climatal conditions of the northern hemisphere were in the coal period at all similar to those which now prevail. as sir charles lyell has argued, a less amount of land in the higher latitudes would greatly modify climates, and there is every reason to believe that in the coal period there was less land then now. it has been shown by tyndall that a very small additional amount of carbonic acid in the atmosphere would, by obstructing the radiation of heat from the earth, produce almost the effect of a glass roof or conservatory, extending over the whole world. there is much in the structure of the leaves of the coal plants, as well as in the vast amount of carbon which they accumulated in the form of coal, and the characteristics of the animal life of the period, to indicate, on independent grounds, that the carboniferous atmosphere differed from that of the present world in this way, or in the presence of more carbonic acid--a substance now existing in the very minute proportion of one-thousandth of the whole by weight, a quantity adapted to the present requirements of vegetable and animal life, but probably not to those of the coal period." returning from this digression to the forests of the coal period, we may first notice that which is the most conspicuous and abundant tree in the swampy levels--the sigillaria or seal-tree, so called from the stamp-like marks left by the fall of its leaves--a plant which has caused much discussion as to its affinities. some regard it as a gymnosperm, others as a cryptogam. most probably we have under this name trees allied in part to both groups, and which, when better known, may bridge over the interval between them. these trees present tall pillar-like trunks, often ribbed vertically with raised bands, and marked with rows of scars left by the fallen leaves. they are sometimes branchless, or divide at top into a few thick limbs, covered with long rigid grass-like foliage. on their branches they bear long slender spikes of fruit, and we may conjecture that quantities of nut-like seeds scattered over the ground around their trunks are their produce. if we approach one of these trees closely, more especially a young specimen not yet furrowed by age, we are amazed to observe the accurate regularity and curious forms of the leaf-scars, and the regular ribbing, so very different from that of our ordinary forest trees. if we cut into its stem, we are still further astonished at its singular structure. externally it has a firm and hard rind. within this is a great thickness of soft cellular inner bark, traversed by large bundles of tough fibres. in the centre is a core or axis of woody matter very slender in proportion to the thickness of the trunk, and still further reduced in strength by a large cellular pith. thus a great stem four or five feet in diameter is little else then a mass of cellular tissue, altogether unfit to form a mast or beam, but excellently adapted, when flattened and carbonised, to blaze upon our winter hearth as a flake of coal. the roots of these trees were perhaps more singular then their stems; spreading widely in the soft soil by regular bifurcation, they ran out in long snake-like cords, studded all over with thick cylindrical rootlets, which spread from them in every direction. they resembled in form, and probably in function, those cable-like root-stocks of the pond-lilies which run through the slime of lakes, but the structure of the rootlets was precisely that of those of some modern cycads. it was long before these singular roots were known to belong to a tree. they were supposed to be the branches of some creeping aquatic plant, and botanists objected to the idea of their being roots; but at length their connection with sigillaria was observed simultaneously by mr. binney, in lancashire, and by mr. richard brown, in cape breton, and it has been confirmed by many subsequently observed facts. this connection, when once established, further explained the reason of the almost universal occurrence of stigmaria, as these roots were called, under the coal beds; while trunks of the same plants were the most abundant fossils of their partings and roofs. the growth of successive generations of sigillariæ was, in fact, found to be the principal cause of the accumulation of a bed of coal. two species form the central figures in our illustration. [illustration: fig. .--group of carboniferous plants, restored from actual specimens. (_a_) calamites (type of _c. suckovii_). (_b_) lepidofloios, or ulodendron. (_c_) sigillaria (type of _s. reniformis_). (_d_) (type of _s. elegans_). (_e_) lepidodendron (type of _l. corrugatum_). (_f_) megaphyton (type of _m. magnificum_). (_g_) cordaites, or pychnophyllum (type of _c. borassifolia_).] along with the trees last mentioned, we observe others of a more graceful and branching form, the successors of those lepidodendra already noticed in the devonian, and which still abound in the carboniferous, and attain to larger dimensions then their older relations, though they are certainly more abundant and characteristic in the lower portions of the carboniferous. relatives, as already stated, of our modern club-mosses, now represented only by comparatively insignificant species, they constitute the culmination of that type, which thus had attained its acme very long ago, though it still continues to exist under depauperated forms. they all branched by bifurcation, sometimes into the most graceful and delicate sprays. they had narrow slender leaves, placed in close spirals on the branches. they bore their spores in scaly cones. their roots were similar to stigmaria in general appearance, though differing in details. in the coal period there were several generic forms of these plants, all attaining to the dimensions of trees. like the sigillariæ, they contributed to the materials of the coal; and one mode of this has recently attracted some attention. it is the accumulation of their spores and spore-cases already referred to in speaking of the devonian, and which was in the carboniferous so considerable as to constitute an important feature locally in some beds of coal. a similar modern accumulation of spore-cases of tree-ferns occurs in tasmania; but both in the modern and the carboniferous, such beds are exceptional; though wherever spore-cases exist as a considerable constituent of coal, from their composition they give to it a highly bituminous character, an effect, however, which is equally produced by the hard scales supporting the spores, and by the outer epidermal tissues of plants when these predominate in the coal, more especially by the thick corky outer bark of sigillaria. in short, the corky substance of bark and similar vegetable tissues, from its highly carbonaceous character, its indestructibility, and its difficult permeability by water carrying mineral matter in solution, is the best of all materials for the production of coal; and the microscope shows that of this the principal part of the coal is actually composed. in the wide, open forest glades, tree-ferns almost precisely similar to those of the modern tropics reared their leafy crowns. but among them was one peculiar type, in which the fronds were borne in pairs on opposite sides of the stem, leaving when they fell two rows of large horseshoe-shaped scars marking the sides of the trunk. botanists, who have been puzzled with these plants almost as much as with the stigmaria, have supposed these scars to be marks of branches, of cones, and even of aërial roots; but specimens in my collection prove conclusively that the stem of this genus was a great caudex made up of the bases of two rows of huge leaves cemented together probably by intervening cellular tissue. as in the devonian and in modern times, the stems of the tree-ferns of the carboniferous strengthened themselves by immense bundles of cord-like aërial roots, which look like enormous fossil brooms, and are known under the name psaronius. we have only time to glance at the vast brakes of tall calamites which fringe the sigillaria woods, and stretch far sea-ward over tidal flats. they were allied to modern mares' tails or equisetums, but were of gigantic size, and much more woody structure of stem. the calamites grew on wet mud and sand-flats, and also in swamps; and they appear to have been especially adapted to take root in and clothe and mat together soft sludgy material recently deposited or in process of deposition. when the seed or spore of a calamite had taken root, it probably produced a little low whorl of leaves surrounding one small joint, from which another and another, widening in size, arose, producing a cylindrical stem, tapering to a point below. to strengthen the unstable base, the lower joints, especially if the mud had been accumulating around the plant, shot out long roots instead of leaves, while secondary stems grew out of the sides at the surface of the soil, and in time there was a stool of calamites, with tufts of long roots stretching downwards, like an immense brush, into the mud. when calamites thus grew on inundated flats, they would, by causing the water to stagnate, promote the elevation of the surface by new deposits, so that their stems gradually became buried; but this only favoured their growth, for they continually pushed out new stems, while the old buried ones shot out bundles of roots instead of regular whorls of leaves. the calamites, growing in vast fields along the margins of the sigillaria forests, must have greatly protected these from the effects of inundations, and by collecting the mud brought down by streams in times of flood, must have done much to prevent the intrusion of earthy deposits among the vegetable matter. their chief office, therefore, as coal-producers, seems to have been to form for the sigillaria forests those reedy fringes which, when inundations took place, would exclude mud, and prevent that mixture of earthy matter in the coal which would have rendered it too impure for use. quantities of fragments of their stems can, however, be detected by the microscope in most coals. the modern mares' tails have thin-walled hollow stems, and some of the gigantic calamites of the coal resembled them in this. but others, to which the name _calamodendron_, or reed-tree, has been given, had stems with thick woody walls of a remarkable structure, which, while similar in plan to that of the mares' tails, was much more perfect in its development. professor williamson has shown that there were forms intervening between these extremes; and thus in the calamites and calamodendrons we have another example of the exaltation in ancient times of a type now of humble structure; or, in other words, of a comprehensive type, low in the modern world, but in older periods taking to itself by anticipation the properties afterward confined to higher forms. the gigantic club-mosses of the coal period constitute a similar example, and it is very curious that both of these types have been degraded in the modern world, though retaining precisely their general aspect, while the tree-ferns contemporary with them in the palæozoic still survive in all their original grandeur. barely in the swampy flats, perhaps more frequently in the uplands, grew great pines of several kinds; trees capable of doing as good service for planks and beams as many of their modern successors, but which lived before their time, and do not appear even to have aided much in the formation of coal. these pines of the coal-period seem to have closely resembled some species still living in the southern hemisphere; and, like the ferns, they present to us a vegetable type which has endured through vast periods of time almost unchanged. indeed, in the middle devonian we have pines almost as closely resembling those of the modern world as do those of the coal period. it is in accordance with this long duration of the ferns and pines, that they are plants now of world-wide distribution--suited to all climates and stations. capacity to exist under varied conditions is near akin to capacity to survive cosmical changes. a botanist in the strange and monstrous woods which we have tried to describe, would probably have found many curious things among the smaller herbaceous plants, and might have gathered several precursors of the modern exogens and endogens which have not been preserved to us as fossils, or are known only as obscure fragments. but incomplete though our picture necessarily is, and obscured by the dust of time, it may serve in some degree to render green to our eyes those truly primeval forests which treasured up for our long winter nights the palæozoic sunshine, and established for us those storehouses of heat-giving material which work our engines and propel our ships and carriages. truly they lived not in vain, both as realizing for us a type of vegetation which otherwise we could not have imagined, and as preparing the most important of all the substrata of our modern arts and manufactures. in this last regard even the vegetable waste of the old coal swamps was most precious to us, as the means of producing the clay iron ores of the coal measures. i may close this notice of the carboniferous forests with a suggestive extract from a paper by professor huxley in the _contemporary review_:-- "nature is never in a hurry, and seems to have had always before her eyes the adage, 'keep a thing long enough, and you will find a use for it.' she has kept her beds of coal for millions of years without being able to find much use for them; she has sent them down beneath the sea, and the sea-beasts could make nothing of them: she has raised them up into dry land and laid the black veins bare, and still for ages and ages there was no living thing on the face of the earth that could see any sort of value in them; and it was only the other day, so to speak, that she turned a new creature oat of her workshop, who by degrees acquired sufficient wits to make a fire, and then to discover that the black rock would burn. "i suppose that nineteen hundred years ago, when julius cæsar was good enough to deal with britain as we have dealt with new zealand, the primeval briton, blue with cold and woad, may have known that the strange black stone, of which he found lumps here and there in his wanderings, would burn, and so help to warm his body and cook his food. saxon, dane, and norman swarmed into the land. the english people grew into a powerful nation, and nature still waited for a return for the capital she had invested in the ancient club-mosses. the eighteenth century arrived, and with it james watt. the brain of that man was the spore out of which was developed the steam-engine, and all the prodigious trees and branches of modern industry which have grown out of this. but coal is as much an essential condition of this growth and development as carbonic acid is for that of a club-moss. wanting the coal, we could not have smelted the iron needed to make our engines, nor have worked our engines when we had got them. but take away the engines, and the great towns of yorkshire and lancashire vanish like a dream. manufactures give place to agriculture and pasture, and not ten men could live where now ten thousand are amply supported. "thus all this abundant wealth of money and of vivid life is nature's investment in club-mosses and the like so long ago. but what becomes of the coal which is burnt in yielding the interest? heat comes out of it, light comes out of it, and if we could gather together all that goes up the chimney and all that remains in the grate of a thoroughly-burnt coal fire, we should find ourselves in possession of a quantity of carbonic acid, water, ammonia, and mineral matters, exactly equal in weight to the coal. but these are the very matters with which nature supplied the club-moss which made the coal. she is paid back principal and interest at the same time; and she straightway invests the carbonic acid, the water, and the ammonia in new forms of life, feeding with them the plants that now live. thrifty nature! surely no prodigal, but most notable of housekeepers!" all this is true and admirably put. its one weak point is the poetical personification of nature as an efficient planner of the whole. such an imaginary goddess is a mere superstition, unknown alike to science and theology. surely it is more rational to hold that the mind which can utilize the coal and understand the manner of its formation, is itself made in the image and likeness of the supreme creative spirit, in whom we live and move and have our being, who knows the end from the beginning, whose power is the origin of natural forces, whose wisdom is the source of laws and correlations of laws, and whose great plan is apparent alike in the order of nature of the palæozoic world and of the modern world, as well as in the relation of these to each other. in the carboniferous, as in the devonian age, insects existed, and in greater numbers. the winged insects of the period, so far as known, belong to three of the nine or ten orders into which modern insects are usually divided. conspicuous among them are representatives of our well-known domestic pests the cockroaches, which thus belong geologically to a very old family. the carboniferous roaches had not the advantage of haunting our larders, but they had abundance of vegetable food in the rank forests of their time, and no doubt lived much as the numerous wild out-of-door species of this family now do. it is, however, a curious fact that a group of insects created so long ago, should prove themselves capable of the kind of domestication to which these creatures attain in our modern days; and that, had we lived even so far back as the coal period, we might have been liable to the attacks of this particular kind of pest. another group, represented by many species in the coal forests, was that of the may-flies and shad-flies, or ephemeras, which spend their earlier days under water, feeding on vegetable matter, and affording food to many fresh-water fishes--a use which they no doubt served in the coal period also. some of them were giants in their way, being probably seven inches in expanse of wing, and their larvæ must have been choice morsels to the ganoid fishes, and would have afforded abundant bait had there been anglers in those days. another group of insects was that of the weevils, a family of beetles, whose grubs must have found plenty of nuts and fruits to devour, without attracting the wrathful attentions of any gardener or orchardist. a curious and exceptional little group of creatures in the present world is that of the galley-worms or millipedes; wingless, many-jointed, and many-footed crawlers, resembling worms, but more allied to insects. these animals seem to have swarmed in the coal forests, and perhaps attained their maximum numbers and importance in this period, though they still remain, a relic of an ancient comprehensive type. i have myself found specimens referred by mr. scudder, a most competent entomologist, to two genera and five species, in a few decayed fossil stumps in nova scotia, and several others have been discovered in other parts of the world. it is not wonderful that animals like these, feeding on decayed vegetable matter, should have flourished in the luxuriant sigillaria swamps. a few species of scorpions and spiders, very like those of the modern world, have been found in the coal measures, both in europe and america; so that while we know of no enemy of the devonian insects except the fishes, we know in addition to these in the carboniferous the spiders and their allies, and the smaller reptiles or batrachians to be noticed in the sequel. with reference to the latter, it is a curious fact that one of the first fragments of a winged insect found in the coal-fields of america was a part of a head and some other remains contained in the coprolites or excrementitious matter of one of the smaller fossil reptiles. it is perhaps equally interesting that this head shows one of the compound facetted eyes as perfectly developed as those of any modern neuropter, a group of insects remarkable even in the present world for their large and complex organs of vision. we may pause here to note that, just as in the primordial we already have the trilobites presenting all the modifications of which the type is susceptible, so in the carboniferous we have in the case of the terrestrial articulates a similar fact--highly specialised forms like the beetles, the spiders, and the scorpions, already existing along with comprehensive forms like the millipedes. let us formulate the law of creation which the primordial trilobites, the devonian fishes, and the carboniferous club-mosses and insects have taught us: it is, that every new type rapidly attains its maximum of development in magnitude and variety of forms, and then remains stationary, or even retrogrades, in subsequent ages. we may connect this with other laws in the sequel. in the coal measures we also meet, for the first time in our ascending progress, the land snails so familiar now in every part of the world, and which are represented by two little species found in the coal formation of nova scotia. the figures of these must speak for themselves; but the fact of their occurrence here and the mode of their preservation require some detailed mention. the great province of the mollusks we have carried with us since we met with the lingulæ in the primordial, but all its members have been aquatic, and probably marine. for the first time, in the carboniferous period, snails emerge from the waters, and walk upon the ground and breathe air; for, like the modern land snails, these creatures no doubt had air-sacks instead of gills. they come suddenly upon us--two species at once, and these representing two distinct forms of the snail tribe, the elongated and the rounded. they were very numerous. in the beds where they occur, probably thousands of specimens, more or less perfect, could be collected. were they the first-born of land snails? it would be rash to affirm this, more especially since in all the coal-fields of the world no specimens have been found except at one locality in nova scotia;[n] and in all the succeeding beds we meet with no more till we have reached a comparatively modern time. yet it is very unlikely that these creatures were in the coal period limited to one country, and that, after that period, they dropped out of existence for long ages, and then reappeared. still it may have been so. [n] bradley has recently announced the discovery of other species in the coal-field of illinois. the two oldest land snails. [illustration: fig. .--_pupa vetusta_, dawson. (_a_) natural size, (_b_) enlarged, (_c_) apex, enlarged, (_d_) sculpture, magnified.] [illustration: fig. .--_conulus priscus_, carpenter. (_a_) specimen enlarged, (_b_) sculpture, magnified.] there are cases of geographical limitation quite as curious now. here again another peculiarity meets us. if these are really the oldest land snails, it is curious that they are so small,--so much inferior to many of their modern successors even in the same latitudes. the climate of the coal period must have suited them, and there was plenty of vegetable food, though perhaps not the richest or most tender. there is no excuse for them in their outward circumstances. why, then, unlike so many other creatures, do they enter on existence in this poor and sneaking way. we must here for their benefit modify in two ways the statement broadly made in a previous chapter, that new types come in under forms of great magnitude. first, we often have, in advance of the main inroad of a new horde of animals, a few insignificant stragglers as a sort of prelude to the rest--precursors intimating beforehand what is to follow. we shall find this to be the case with the little reptiles of the coal, and the little mammals of the trias, preceding the greater forms which subsequently set in. secondly, this seems to be more applicable in the case of land animals then in the case of those of the waters. to the waters was the fiat to bring forth living things issued. they have always kept to themselves the most gigantic forms of life; and it seems as if new forms of life entering on the land had to begin in a small way and took more time to culminate. the circumstances in which the first specimens of carboniferous snails and gally-worms were found are so peculiar and so characteristic of the coal formation, that i must pause here to notice them, and to make of them an introduction to the next group of creatures we have to consider. in the coal formation in all parts of the world it is not unusual, as stated already in a previous page, to find erect trees or stumps of trees, usually sigillariæ, standing where they grew; and where the beds are exposed in coast cliffs, or road cuttings, or mines, these fossil trees can be extracted from the matrix and examined. they usually consist of an outer cylinder of coal representing the outer bark, while the space within, once occupied by the inner bark and wood, is filled with sandstone, sometimes roughly arranged in layers, the lowest of which is usually mixed with coaly matter or mineral charcoal derived from the fallen remains of the decayed wood, a kind of deposit which affords to the fossil botanist one of the best modes of investigating the tissues of these trees. these fossil stumps are not uncommon in the roofs of the coal-seams. in some places they are known to the miners as "coal pipes," and are dreaded by them in consequence of the accidents which occur from their suddenly falling after the coal which supported them has been removed. an old friend and helper of mine in carboniferous explorations had a lively remembrance of the fact that one of these old trees, falling into the mine in which he was working, had crushed his leg and given him a limp for life; and if he had been a few inches nearer to it would have broken his back. the manner in which such trees become fossilized may be explained as follows:--imagine a forest of sigillariæ growing on a low flat. this becomes submerged by subsidence or inundation, the soil is buried under several feet of sand or mud, and the trees killed by this agency stand up as bare and lifeless trunks. the waters subside, and the trees rapidly decay, the larvæ of wood-boring insects perhaps aiding in the process, as they now do in the american woods. the dense coaly outer bark alone resists decomposition, and stands as a hollow cylinder until prostrated by the wind or by the waters of another inundation, while perhaps a second forest or jungle has sprung up on the new surface. when it falls, the part buried in the soil becomes an open hole, with a heap of shreds of wood and bark in the bottom. such a place becomes a fit retreat for gally-worms and land-snails; and reptiles pursuing such animals, or pursued by their own enemies, or heedlessly scrambling among the fallen trunks, may easily fall into such holes and remain as prisoners. i remember to have observed, when a boy, a row of post-holes dug across a pasture-field and left open for a few days, and that in almost every hole one or two toads were prisoners. this was the fate which must have often befallen the smaller reptiles of the coal forests in the natural post-holes left by the decay of the sigillariæ. yet it may be readily understood that the combination of circumstances which would effect this result must have been rare, and consequently this curious fact has been as yet observed only in the coal formation of nova scotia; and in it only in one locality, and in this in one only out of more then sixty beds in which erect trees have been found. but these hollow trees must be filled up in order to preserve their contents; and as inundation and subsequent decay have been the grave-diggers for the reptiles, so inundations filled up their graves with sand, to be subsequently hardened into sandstone, burying up at the same time the newer vegetation which had grown upon the former surface. the idea that something interesting might be found in these erect stumps, first occurred to sir c. lyell and the writer while exploring the beautiful coast cliffs of western nova scotia in ; and it was in examining the fragments scattered on the beach that we found the bones of the first carboniferous reptile discovered in america, and the shell of the oldest known land snail. these were not, however, the earliest known instances of carboniferous reptiles. in , sir william logan found footprints of a reptile at horton bluff, in nova scotia, in rocks of lower carboniferous age. in , von dechen found reptilian bones in the coal-field of saarbruck; and in the same year dr. king found reptilian footprints in the carboniferous of pennsylvania. like robinson crusoe on his desert island, we saw the footprints before we knew the animals that produced them; and the fact that there were marks on a slab of shale or sandstone that must have been made by an animal walking on feet, was as clear and startling a revelation of the advent of a new and higher form of life, as were the footprints of man friday. within the thirty years since the discovery of the first slab of footprints, the knowledge of coal formation reptiles has grown apace. i can scarcely at present sum up exactly the number of species, but may estimate it at thirty-five at least. i must, however, here crave pardon of some of my friends for the use of the word reptile. in my younger days frogs and toads and newts used to be reptiles; now we are told that they are more like fishes, and ought to be called batrachians or amphibians, whereas reptiles are a higher type, more akin to birds then to these lower and more grovelling creatures. the truth is, that the old class reptilia bridges over the space between the fishes and the birds, and it is in some degree a matter of taste whether we make a strong line at the two ends of it alone, or add another line in the middle. i object to the latter course, however, in the period of the world's history of which i am now writing, since i am sure that there were animals in those days which were batrachians in some points and true reptiles in others; while there are some of them in regard to which it is quite uncertain whether they are nearer to the one group or the other. although, therefore, naturalists, with the added light and penetration which they obtain by striding on to the mesozoic and modern periods, may despise my old-fashioned grovellers among the mire of the coal-swamps, i shall, for convenience, persist in calling them reptiles in a general way, and shall bring out whatever claims i can to justify this title for some of them at least. perhaps the most fish-like of the whole are the curious creatures from the coal measures of saarbruck, first found by yon dechen, and which constitute the genus _archegosaurus_. their large heads, short necks, supports for permanent gills, feeble limbs, and long tails for swimming, show that they were aquatic creatures presenting many points of resemblance to the ganoid fishes with which they must have associated; still they were higher then these in possessing lungs and true feet, though perhaps better adapted for swimming then even for creeping. from these creatures the other coal reptiles diverge, and ascend along two lines of progress, the one leading to gigantic crocodile-like animals provided with powerful jaws and teeth, and probably haunting the margins of the waters and preying on fishes; the other leading to small and delicate lizard-like species, with well-developed limbs, large ribs, and ornate horny scales and spines, living on land and feeding on insects and similar creatures. [illustration: fig. .--restorations of baphetes, dendrerpeton. hylonomus, and hylerpeton, with carboniferous plants in the distance.] in the first direction we have a considerable number of species found in the jarrow coal-field in ireland, and described by professor huxley. some of them were like snakes in their general form, others more like lizards. still higher stand such animals as _baphetes_ and _eosaurus_ from the nova scotia coal-field and _anthracosaurus_ from that of scotland. the style and habits of these creatures it is easy to understand, however much haggling the comparative anatomists may make over their bones. they were animals of various size, ranging from a foot to at least ten feet in length, the body generally lizard-like in form, with stout limbs and a flattened tail useful in swimming. their heads were flat, stout, and massive, with large teeth, strengthened by the insertion and convolution of plates of enamel. the fore limbs were probably larger then the hind limbs, the better to enable them to raise themselves out of the water. the belly was strengthened by bony plates and closely imbricated scales, to resist, perhaps, the attacks of fishes from beneath, and to enable them without injury to drag their heavy bodies over trunks of trees and brushwood, whether in the water or on the land. their general aspect and mode of life were therefore by no means unlike those of modern alligators; and in the vast swamps of the coal measures, full of ponds and sluggish streams swarming with fish, such creatures must have found a most suitable habitat, and probably existed in great numbers, basking on the muddy banks, surging through the waters, and filling the air with their bellowings. the most curious point about these creatures is, that while rigid anatomy regards them as allied in structure more to frogs and toads and newts then to true lizards, it is obvious to common sense that they were practically crocodiles; and even anatomy must admit that their great ribs and breastplates, and powerful teeth and limbs, indicate a respiration, circulation, and general vitality, quite as high as those of the proper reptiles. hence, it happens that very different views are stated as to their affinities; questions into which we need not now enter, satisfied with the knowledge of the general appearance and mode of life of these harbingers of the reptilian life of the succeeding geological periods. in the other direction, we find several animals of small size but better developed limbs, leading to a group of graceful little creatures, quite as perplexing with regard to affinities as those first mentioned, but tending towards the smaller lizards of the modern world. at the top of these i may place the genus _hylonomus_ from hollow fossil trees of nova scotia, of which two species are represented as restored in our illustration. in these restorations i have adhered as faithfully as possible to the proportions of parts as seen in my specimens. imagine a little animal six or seven inches long, with small short head, not so flat as those of most lizards, but with a raised fore-head, giving it an aspect of some intelligence. its general form is that of a lizard, but with the hind feet somewhat large, to aid it in leaping and standing erect, and long and flexible toes. its belly is covered with bony scales, its sides with bright and probably coloured scale armour of horny consistency, and its neck and back adorned with horny crests, tubercles, and pendants. it runs, leaps, and glides through the herbage of the coal forests, intent on the pursuit of snails and insects, its eye glancing and its bright scales shining in the sun. this is a picture of the best known species of hylonomus drawn from the life. yet the anatomist, when he examines the imperfectly-ossified joints of its backbone, and the double joint at the back of its skull, will tell you that it is after all little better then a mere newt, an ass in a lion's skin, a jackdaw with borrowed feathers, and that it has no right to have fine scales, or to be able to run on the land. it may be so; but i may plead in its behalf, that in the old coal times, when reptiles with properly-made skeletons had not been created, the next best animals may have been entitled to wear their clothes and to assume their functions as well. in short, functionally or officially, our ancient batrachians were reptiles; in point of rank, as measured by type of skeleton, they belonged to a lower grade. to this view of the case i think most naturalists will agree, and they will also admit that the progress of our views has been in this direction, since the first discovery of carboniferous air-breathing vertebrates. in evidence of this i may quote from professor huxley's description of his recently found species,[o] after noticing the prevalent views that the coal reptiles were of low organization, he says: "discoveries in the nova scotia coal-fields first shook this view, which ceased to be tenable when the great _anthracosaurus_ of the scotch coal-field was found to have well-ossified biconcave vertebrae." [o] _geological magazine_, vol. iii. the present writer may, however, be suspected of a tendency to extend forms of life backward in time, since it has fallen to his lot to be concerned in this process of stretching backward in several cases. he has named and described the oldest known animal. he has described the oldest true exogen, and the oldest known pine-tree. he was concerned in the discovery of the oldest known land snails, and found the oldest millipedes. he has just described the oldest bituminous bed composed of spore-cases, and he claims that his genus hylonomus includes the oldest animals which have a fair claim to be considered reptiles. still this discovery of old things comes rather of fortune and careful search then of a desire to innovate; and a distinction should be drawn between that kind of novelty which consists in the development of new truths, and that which consists in the invention of new fancies, or the revival of old ones. there is too much of this last at present; and it would be a more promising line of work for our younger naturalists, if they would patiently and honestly question nature, instead of trying to extort astounding revelations by throwing her on the rack of their own imaginations. we may pause here a moment to contemplate the greatness of the fact we have been studying the introduction into our world of the earliest known vertebrate animals which could open their nostrils and literally "breathe the breath of life." all previous animals that we know, except a few devonian insects, had respired in the water by means of gills or similar apparatus, now we not only have the little land snails, with their imperfect substitutes for lungs, but animals which must have been able to draw in the vital air into capacious chambered lungs, and with this power must have enjoyed a far higher and more active style of vitality; and must have possessed the faculty of uttering truly vocal sounds. what wondrous possibilities unknown to these creatures, perhaps only dimly perceived by such rational intelligences as may have watched the growth of our young world, were implied in these gifts. it is one of the remarkable points in the history of creation in genesis, that this step of the creative work is emphatically marked. of all the creatures we have noticed up to this point, it is stated that god said, "let the waters bring them forth"--but it is said that "god created" great reptiles (_tanninim_).[p] no doubt these "great tanninim" culminate in the succeeding mesozoic age, but their first introduction dates as far back as the carboniferous; and this introduction was emphatically a creation, as being the commencement of a new feature among living beings. what further differences may be implied in the formulæ, "let the waters produce" and "god created," we do not know; very probably he who wrote the words did not fully know. but if we could give a scientific expression to this difference, and specify the cases to which its terms apply, we might be able to solve one of the most vexed questions of biology. [p] not "whales," as in our version. let us observe, however, that even here, where, if anywhere, we have actual creation, especial pains are taken to bridge over the gap, and to prevent any appearance of discontinuity in the work. the ganoid fishes of the coal period very probably had, like their modern congeners, well-developed air-bladders, serving to some extent, though very imperfectly, as lungs. the humbler and more aquatic reptiles of the period retained the gills, and also some of the other features of the fishes; so that, like some modern creatures of their class, they stood, as to respiration, on two stools, and seemed unwilling altogether to commit themselves to the new mode of life in the uncongenial element of air. even the larger and more lizard-like of the coal reptiles may--though this we do not certainly know, and in some cases there are reasons for doubting it--have passed the earliest stage of their lives in the water as gilled tadpoles, in the manner of our modern frogs. thus at the very point where one of the greatest advances of animal life has its origin, we have no sudden stop, but an inclined plane; and yet, as i have elsewhere endeavoured to show by arguments which cannot be repeated here,[q] we have not a shadow of reason to conclude that, in the coal period, fishes were transmuted into reptiles. [q] "air-breathers of the coal period," p. . but the reader may be wearied with our long sojourn in the pestilential atmosphere of the coal swamps, and in the company of their low-browed and squalid inhabitants. let us turn for a little to the sea, and notice the animal life of the great coral reefs and shell beds preserved for us in the carboniferous limestone. before doing so, one point merits attention. the coal formation for the first time distinctly presents to us the now familiar differences in the inhabitants of the open sea and those of creeks, estuaries and lakes. such distinctions are unknown to us in the silurian. there all is sea. they begin to appear in the devonian, in the shallow fish-banks and the anodon-like bivalves found with fossil plants. in the coal period they become very manifest. the animals found in the shales with the coal are all, even the aquatic ones, distinct from those of the open seas of the period. some of them may have lived in salt or brackish water, but not in the open sea. they are creatures of still and shallow waters. it is true that in some coal-fields marine beds occur in the coal measures with their characteristic fossils, but these are quite distinct from the usual animal remains of the coal-fields, and mark occasional overflows of the sea, owing to subsidence of the land. it is important to notice this geographical difference, marking the greater specialisation and division of labour, if we may so speak, that was in the process of introduction. the sea of the carboniferous period presented in the main similar great groups of animals to those of the devonian, represented however by different species. we may notice merely some of the salient points of resemblance or difference. the old types of corals continue in great force; but it is their last time, for they rapidly decay in the succeeding permian and disappear. the crinoids are as numerous and beautiful as in any other period, and here for the first time we meet with the new and higher type of the sea-urchin, in large and beautiful species. one curious group, that of the _pentremites_, a sort of larval form, is known here alone. among the lamp-shells we may note, as peculiarly and abundantly carboniferous, those with one valve very convex and the other very concave and anchored in the mud by long spines instead of a peduncle attached to stones and rocks.[r] there are many beautiful shells allied to modern scallops, and not a few sea-snails of various sorts. the grand _orthoceratites_ of the silurian diminish in size preparatory to their disappearance in the permian, and the more modern type of _nautilus_ and its allies becomes prevalent. among the crustaceans we may notice the appearance of the _limulus_, or king-crab, of which the single little species described by woodward from the upper silurian may be regarded as merely a prophecy. it is curious that the carboniferous king-crabs are very small, apparently another case of a new form appearing in humble guise; but as the young of modern king-crabs haunt creeks and swampy flats, while the adults live in the sea, it may be that only the young of the carboniferous species are yet known to us, the specimens found being mostly in beds likely to be frequented by the young rather then by the full-grown individuals. [r] the productidæ. the old order of the trilobites, which has accompanied us from primordial times, here fails us, and a few depauperated species alone remain, the sole survivors of their ancient race--small, unornamented, and feeble representatives of a once numerous and influential tribe. how strange that a group of creatures so numerous and apparently so well adapted to conditions of existence which still continue in the sea, should thus die out, while the little bivalved crustaceans, which began life almost as far back and lived on the same sea-floors with the trilobites, should still abound in all our seas; and while the king-crabs, of precisely similar habits with the trilobites, should apparently begin to prosper. equally strange is the fate of the great swimming eurypterids which we saw in the devonian. they also continue, but in diminished force, in the carboniferous, and there lay down for ever their well-jointed cuirasses and formidable weapons, while a few little shrimp-like creatures, their contemporaries, form the small point of the wedge of our great tribes of squillas and crabs and lobsters. some years ago the late lamented palæontologist, salter, a man who scarcely leaves his equal in his department, in conjunction with mr. henry woodward, prepared a sort of genealogical chart of the crustacea on which these facts are exhibited. some new species have since been discovered, and a little additional light about affinities has been obtained; but taken as it stands, the history of the crustacea as there shown in one glance, has in it more teaching on the philosophy of creation then i have been able to find in many ponderous quartos of tenfold its pretensions. had salter been enabled, with the aid of other specialists like woodward, to complete similar charts of other classes of invertebrate animals, scientific palaeontology in england would have been further advanced then it is likely to be in the next ten years. to return to our trilobites: one of the most remarkable points in their history is their appearance in full force in the primordial. in these rocks we have some of the largest in size--some species of paradoxides being nearly two feet long, and some of the very smallest. we have some with the most numerous joints, others with the fewest; some with very large tails, others with very small; some with no ornamentation, others very ornate; some with large eyes, others with none that have been made out, though it is scarcely probable that they were wholly blind. they increased in numbers and variety through the silurian and devonian, and then suddenly drop off at the end of the lower carboniferous. throughout their whole term of existence they kept rigidly to that type of the mud-plough which the king-crab still retains, and which renders the anterior extremity so different from that of the ordinary crustacea. they constitute one of the few cases in which we seem to see before us the whole history of an animal type; and the more we look into that history, the more do we wonder at their inscrutable introduction, the unity and variety mingled in their progress, and their strange and apparently untimely end. i have already referred (page ) to the use which barrande makes of this as an argument against theories of evolution; but must refer to his work for the details. one word more i must say before leaving their graves. i have reason to believe that they were not only the diggers of the burrows, and of the ladder-tracks and pitted tracks[s] of the silurian and primordial, but that with the strokes of their rounded or spinous tails, the digging of their snouts, and the hoe-work of their hard upper lips, or hypostomes, they made nearly all those strange marks in the primordial mud which have been referred to fucoids, and even to higher plants. the trilobites worked over all the mud bottoms of the primordial, even in places where no remains of them occur, and the peculiarities of the markings which they left are to be explained only by a consideration of the structures of individual species. [s] _climactichnites_ and _protichnites_. i had almost lost sight of the fishes of the carboniferous period, but after saying so much of those of the devonian, it would be unfair to leave their successors altogether unnoticed. in the carboniferous we lose those broad-snouted plate-covered species that form so conspicuous a feature in the devonian; and whatever its meaning, it is surely no accident that these mud-burrowing fishes should decay along with those crustacean mud-burrowers, the trilobites. but swarms of fishes remain, confined, as in the devonian, wholly to the two orders of the gar-fishes (_ganoids_) and the sharks (_placoids_). in the former we have a multitude of small and beautiful species haunting the creeks and ponds of the coal swamps, and leaving vast quantities of their remains in the shaly and even coaly beds formed in such places. such were the pretty, graceful fishes of the genera _palæoniscus_ and _amblypterus_. pursuing and feeding on these were larger ganoids, armed with strong bony scales, and formidable conical or sharp-edged teeth. of these were _rhizodus_ and _acrolepis_. there were besides multitudes of sharks whose remains consist almost wholly of their teeth and spines, their cartilaginous skeletons having perished. one group was allied to the few species of modern sharks whose mouths are paved with flat teeth for crushing shells. these were the most abundant sharks of the carboniferous--slow and greedy monsters, haunting shell banks and coral reefs, and grinding remorselessly all the shell-fishes that came in their way. there were also sharks furnished with sharp and trenchant teeth, which must have been the foes of the smaller mailed fishes, pursuing them into creeks and muddy shallows; and if we may judge from the quantity of their remains in some of these places, sometimes perishing in their eager efforts. on the whole, the fishes of the carboniferous were, in regard to their general type, a continuation of those of the devonian, but the sharks and the scaly ganoids were relatively more numerous. they differed from our modern fishes in the absence of the ordinary horny-scaled type to which all our more common fishes belong, and in the prevalence of that style of tail which has been termed "heterocercal," in which the continuation of the backbone forms the upper lobe of the tail, a style which, if we may judge from modern examples, gives more power of upward and downward movement, and is especially suitable to fishes which search for food only at the bottom, or only above the surface of the waters. most reluctantly i must here leave one of the most remarkable periods of the world's history, and reserve to our next chapter the summation of the history of the older world of life in its concluding stage, the permian. chapter vii. the permian age and close of the palÆozoic. the immense swamps and low forest-clad plains which occupied the continental areas of the northern hemisphere, and which we now know extended also into the regions south of the equator, appear at the close of the carboniferous age to have again sunk beneath the waves, or to have relapsed into the condition of sand and gravel banks; for a great thickness of such deposits rests on the coal measures and constitutes the upper coal formation, the upper "barren measures" of the coal-miners. there is something grand in the idea of this subsidence of a world of animal and vegetable life beneath the waters. the process was very slow, so slow that at first vegetable growth and deposition of silt kept pace with it; and this is the reason of the immense series of deposits, in some places nearly , feet thick, which inclose or rest upon the coal beds; but at length it became more rapid, so that forests and their inhabitants perished, and the wild surf drifted sand and pebbles over their former abodes. so the carboniferous world, like that of noah, being overflowed with water, perished. but it was not a wicked world drowned for its sins, but merely an old and necessarily preliminary system, which had fully served its purpose; and, like the stubble of last year, must be turned under by the plough that it may make way for a new verdure. the plough passed over it, and the winter of the permian came, and then the spring of a new age. the permian and the succeeding triassic are somewhat chilly and desolate periods of the earth's history. the one is the twilight of the palæozoic day, the other is the dawn of the mesozoic. yet to the philosophical geologist no ages excel them in interest. they are times of transition, when old dynasties and races pass away and are replaced by new and vigorous successors, founding new empires and introducing new modes of life and action. three great leading points merit our attention in entering on the permian age. the first is the earth-movements of the period. the second is the resulting mineral characteristics of the deposits formed. the third is the aspect of the animal and vegetable life of this age in their relation more especially to those which preceded. [illustration: diagram of foldings of the crust in the permian period. (the vertical scale of heights and depressions exaggerated more then six times.) the lower figure shows a portion of folded strata in the appalachians--after rogers.] with respect to the first point above named, the earth's crust was subjected in the permian period to some of the grandest movements which have occurred in the whole course of geologic time, and we can fix the limits of these, in europe and america at least, with some distinctness. if we examine the permian rocks in england and germany, we shall find that everywhere they lie on the upturned edges of the preceding carboniferous beds. in other words, the latter have been thrown into a series of folds, and the tops of these folds have been more or less worn away before the permian beds were placed on them. but if we pass on to the eastward, in the great plain between the volga and the ural mountains, where, in the "ancient kingdom of perm," the greatest known area of these rocks is found, an area equal in extent to twice that of france, and which sir r. i. murchison, who first proposed the name, took as the typical district, we find, on the contrary, that the permian and carboniferous are conformable to one another. if now we cross the atlantic and inquire how the case stands in america, we shall find it precisely the same. here the great succession of earth-waves constituting the appalachian mountains rises abruptly at the eastern edge of the continent, and becomes flatter and flatter, until, in the broad plains west of the mississippi, the permian beds appear, as in russia, resting upon the carboniferous so quietly that it is not always easy to draw a line of separation between them. as dana has remarked, we find at the western side of europe and the eastern side of america, great disturbances inaugurating the permian period; and in the interior of both, in the plains between the volga and the ural in one, and between the mississippi and rocky mountains in the other, an entire absence of these disturbances. the main difference is, that in eastern america the whole carboniferous areas have apparently been so raised up that no permian was deposited on them, while in europe considerable patches of the disturbed areas became or remained submerged. another american geologist has largely illustrated the fact that the movements which threw up the appalachian folds were strongest to the eastward, and that the ridges of rock are steepest on their west sides, the force which caused them acting from the direction of the sea. it seems as if the atlantic area had wanted elbow-room, and had crushed up the edges of the continents next to it. in other words, in the lapse of the palæozoic ages the nucleus of the earth had shrunk away from its coating of rocky layers, which again collapsed into great wrinkles. such a process may seem difficult of comprehension. to understand it we must bear in mind some of its conditions. first, the amount of this wrinkling was extremely small relatively to the mass of the earth. in the diagram on page it is greatly exaggerated, yet is seen to be quite insignificant, however gigantic in comparison with microscopic weaklings like ourselves. secondly, it was probably extremely slow. beds of solid rock cannot be suddenly bent into great folds without breaking, and the abruptness of some of the folds may be seen from our figure, copied from rogers (page ), of some of the foldings of the appalachian mountains. thirdly, the older rocks below the carboniferous and the devonian must have been in a softened and plastic state, and so capable of filling up the vacancies left by the bending of the hard crust above. in evidence of this, we have in the lower permian immense volcanic ejections--lavas and other molten rocks spewed out to the surface from the softened and molten masses below. fourthly, the basin of the atlantic must have been sufficiently strong to resist the immense lateral pressure, so that the yielding was all concentrated on the weaker parts of the crust near the old fractures at the margins of the great continents. in these places also, as we have seen in previous papers, the greatest thickness of deposits had been formed; so that there was great downward pressure, and probably, also, greater softening of the lower part of the crust. fifthly, as suggested in a previous chapter, the folding of the earth's crust may have resulted from the continued shrinkage of its interior in consequence of cooling, leading after long intervals to collapse of the surface. astronomers have, however, suggested another cause. the earth bulges at the equator, and is flattened at the poles in consequence of, or in connection with, the swiftness of its rotation; but it has been shown that the rotation of the earth is being very gradually lessened by the attraction of the moon.[t] pierce has recently brought forward the idea[u] that this diminution of rotation, by causing the crust to subside in the equatorial regions and expand in the polar, might produce the movements observed; and which, according to lesley, have amounted in the whole course of geological time to about two per cent, of the diameter of our globe. we thus have two causes, either of which seems sufficient to produce the effect. [t] sir william thomson, who quotes adams and delaunay. [u] "nature," february, . viewed in this way, the great disturbances at the close of the palæozoic period constitute one of the most instructive examples in the whole history of the earth of that process of collapse to which the crust was subject after long intervals, and of which no equally great instance occurs except at the close of the laurentian and the close of the mesozoic. the mineral peculiarities of the permian are also accounted for by the above considerations. let us now notice some of these. in nearly all parts of the world the permian presents thick beds of red sandstone and conglomerate as marked ingredients. these, as we have already seen, are indications of rapid deposition accompanying changes of level. in the permian, as elsewhere, these beds are accompanied by volcanic rocks, indicating the subterranean causes of the disturbances. again, these rocks are chiefly abundant in those regions, like western europe, where the physical changes were at a maximum. another remarkable feature of the permian rocks is the occurrence of great beds of magnesian limestone, or dolomite. in england, the thick yellow magnesian limestone, the outcrop of which crosses in nearly a straight line through durham, yorkshire, and nottingham, marks the edge of a great permian sea extending far to the eastward. in the marls and sandstones of the permian period there is also much gypsum. now, chemistry shows us that magnesian limestones and gypsums are likely to be deposited where sea water, which always contains salts of magnesia, is evaporating in limited or circumscribed areas into which carbonate of lime and carbonate of soda are being carried by streams from the land or springs from below;[v] and it is also to be observed that solutions of sulphuric acid, and probably also of sulphate of magnesia, are characteristic products of igneous activity. hence we find in various geological periods magnesian limestones occurring as a deposit in limited shallow sea basins, and also in connection with volcanic breccias. now these were obviously the new permian conditions of what had once been the wide flat areas of the carboniferous period. still further, we find in europe, as characteristic of this period, beds impregnated with metallic salts, especially of copper. of this kind are very markedly the copper slates of thuringia. such beds are not, any more then magnesian limestones, limited to this age; but they are eminently characteristic of it. to produce them it is required that water should bring forth from the earth's crust large quantities of metallic salts, and that these should come into contact with vegetable matters in limited submerged areas, so that sulphates of the metals should be deoxidized into sulphides. a somewhat different chemical process, as already explained, was very active in the coal period, and was connected with the production of its iron ores; but, in the permian, profound and extensive fractures opened up the way to the deep seats of copper and other metals, to enrich the copper slate and its associated beds. it is also to be observed that the alkaline springs and waters which contain carbonate of soda, very frequently hold various metallic salts; so that where, owing to the action of such waters, magnesian limestone is being deposited, we may expect also to find various metallic ores. [v] hunt, "silliman's journal," and . let us sum up shortly this history. we have foldings of the earth's crust, causing volcanic action and producing limited and shallow sea-basins, and at the same time causing the evolution of alkaline and metalliferous springs. the union of these mechanical and chemical causes explains at once the conglomerates, the red sandstones, the trap rocks, the magnesian limestones, the gypsum, and the metalliferous beds of the permian. the same considerations explain the occurrence of similar deposits in various other ages of the earth's history; though, perhaps, in none of these were they so general over the northern hemisphere as in the permian. from the size of the stones in some of the permian conglomerates, and their scratched surfaces, it has been supposed that there were in this period, on the margins of the continents, mountains sufficiently high to have snow-clad summits, and to send down glaciers, bearing rocks and stones to the sea, on which may have floated, as now in the north atlantic, huge icebergs.[w] this would be quite in accordance with the great elevation of land which we know actually occurred; and the existence of snow-clad mountains along with volcanoes would be a union of fire and frost of which we still have examples in some parts of the earth's surface, and this in proximity to forms of vegetable life very similar to those which we know existed in the permian. [w] ramsay has ably illustrated this in the permian conglomerates of england. with the exception of a few small and worthless beds in russia, the permian is not known to contain any coal. the great swamps of the coal period had disappeared. in part they were raised up into rugged mountains. in part they were sunken into shallow sea areas. thus, while there was much dry land, there was little opportunity for coal production, or for the existence of those rank forests which had accumulated so much vegetable matter in the carboniferous age. in like manner the fauna of the permian waters is poor. according to murchison, the permian limestones of europe have afforded little more then one-third as many species of fossils as the older carboniferous. the fossils themselves also have a stunted and depauperated aspect, indicating conditions of existence unfavourable to them. this is curiously seen in contrasting davidson's beautiful illustrations of the british lamp-shells of the permian and carboniferous periods. another illustrative fact is the exceptionally small size of the fossils even in limestones of the carboniferous period when these are associated with gypsum, red sandstones, and magnesian minerals; as, for instance, those of some parts of nova scotia. in truth, the peculiar chemical conditions conducive to the production of magnesian limestones and gypsum are not favourable to animal life, though no doubt compatible with its existence. hence the rich fauna of the carboniferous seas died out in the permian, and was not renewed; and the atlantic areas of the period are unknown to us. they were, however, probably very deep and abrupt in slope, and not rich in life. this would be especially the case if they were desolated by cold ice-laden currents. during the permian period there was in each of our continental areas a somewhat extensive inland sea. that of western america was a northward extension of the gulf of mexico. that of eastern europe was a northward extension of the euxine and caspian. in both, the deposits formed were very similar--magnesian limestones, sandstones, conglomerates, marls, and gypsums. in both, these alternate in such a way as to show that there were frequent oscillations of level, producing alternately shallow and deep waters. in both, the animal remains are of similar species, in many instances even identical. but in the areas intervening between these sea basins and the atlantic the conditions were somewhat different. in europe the land was interrupted by considerable water areas, not lakes, but inland sea basins; sometimes probably connected with the open sea, sometimes isolated. in these were, deposited the magnesian limestone and its associated beds in england, and the zechstein and rotheliegende with their associates in germany. in america the case was different. in all that immense area which extends from the atlantic to the plains east of the mississippi, we know no permian rocks, unless a portion of those reckoned as upper carboniferous, or permo-carboniferous in northern nova scotia, and prince edward island, should be included in this group. if such existed, they may possibly be covered up in some places by more modern deposits, or may have been swept away by denudation in the intervening ages; but even in these cases we should expect to find some visible remains of them. their entire absence would seem to indicate that a vast, and in many parts rugged and elevated, continent represented north america in the permian period. yet if so, that great continent is an absolute blank to us. we know nothing of the animals or plants which may have lived on it, nor do we even know with certainty that it had active volcanoes, or snow-clad mountains sending down glaciers. our picture of the permian world has not been inviting, yet in many respects it was a world more like that in which we live then was any previous one. it certainly presented more of variety and grand physical features then any of the previous ages; and we might have expected that on its wide and varied continents some new and higher forms of life would have been introduced. but it seems rather to have been intended to blot out the old palæozoic life, as an arrangement which had been fully tried and served its end, preparatory to a new beginning in the succeeding age. still the permian has some life features of its own, and we must now turn to these. the first is the occurrence here, not only of the representatives of the great batrachians of the coal period, but of true reptiles, acknowledged to be such by all naturalists. the animals of the genus _protorosaurus_, found in rocks of this age both in england and germany, were highly-organised lizards, having socketed teeth like those of crocodiles, and well-developed limbs, with long tails, perhaps adapted for swimming. they have, however, biconcave vertebræ like the lizard-like animals of the coal already mentioned, which, indeed, in their general form and appearance, they must have very closely resembled. the protorosaurs were not of great size; but they must have been creatures of more stately gait then their carboniferous predecessors, and they serve to connect them with the new and greater reptiles of the next period. another interesting feature of the permian is its flora, which, in so far as known, is closely related to that of the coal period, though the species are regarded as different; some of the forms, however, being so similar as to be possibly identical. in a picture of the permian flora we should perhaps place in the foreground the tree-ferns, which seem to have been very abundant, and furnished with dense clusters of aërial roots to enable them to withstand the storms of this boisterous age. the tree-ferns, now so plentiful in the southern hemisphere, should be regarded as one of the permanent vegetable institutions of our world--those of the far-back lower devonian, and of all intervening ages up to the present day, having been very much alike. the great reed-like calamites have had a different fate. in their grander forms they make their last appearance in the permian, where they culminate in great ribbed stems, sometimes nearly a foot in diameter, and probably of immense height. the brakes of these huge mares'-tails which overspread the lower levels of the permian in europe, would have been to us what the hayfields of brobdingnag were to gulliver. the lepidodendra also swarmed, though in diminished force; but the great sigillariæ of the coal are absent, or only doubtfully present. another feature of the permian woods was the presence of many pine-trees different in aspect from those of the coal period. some of these are remarkable for their slender and delicate branches and foliage.[x] others have more dense and scaly leaves, and thick short cones.[y] both of these styles of pines are regarded as distinct, on the one hand, from those of the coal formation, and on the other from those of the succeeding trias. i have shown, however, many years ago, that in the upper coal formation of america there are branches of pine-trees very similar to walchia, and, on the other hand, the permian pines are not very remote in form and structure from some of their modern relations. the pines of the first of the above-mentioned types (walchia) may indeed be regarded as allies of the modern araucarian pines of the southern hemisphere, and of the old conifers of the carboniferous. those of the second type (ulmannia) may be referred to the same group with the magnificent sequoias or redwoods of california. [x] walchia. [y] ulmannia. it is a curious indication of the doubts which sometimes rest on fossil botany, that some of the branches of these permian pines, when imperfectly preserved, have been described as sea-weeds, while others have been regarded as club-mosses. it is true, however, that the resemblance of some of them to the latter class of plants is very great; and were there no older pines, we might be pardoned for imagining in the permian a transition from club-mosses to pines. unfortunately, however, we have pines nearly as far back in geological time as we have club-mosses; and, in so far as we know, no more like the latter then are the pines of the permian, so that this connection fails us. in all probability the permian forests are much less perfectly known to us then those of the coal period, so that we can scarcely make comparisons. it appears certain, however, that the permian plants are much more closely related to the coal plants then to those of the next succeeding epoch, and that they are not so much a transition from the one to the other as the finishing of the older period to make way for the newer. but we must reserve some space for a few remarks on the progress and termination of the palæozoic as a whole, and on the place which it occupies in the world's history. these remarks we may group around the central question, what is the meaning or value of an age or period in the history of the earth, as these terms are understood by geologists? in most geological books terms referring to time are employed very loosely. period, epoch, age, system, series, formation, and similar terms, are used or abused in a manner which only the indefiniteness of our conceptions can excuse. a great american geologist[z] has made an attempt to remedy this by attaching definite values to such words as those above mentioned. in his system the greater divisions of the history were "times:" thus the eozoic was a time and the palæozoic was a time. the larger divisions of the times are "ages:" thus the lower and upper silurian, the devonian, and the carboniferous are ages, which are equivalent in the main to what english geologists call systems of formations. ages, again, may be divided into "periods:" thus, in the upper silurian, the ludlow of england, or lower helderberg of america, would constitute a period. these periods may again be divided into "epochs," which are equivalent to what english geologists call formations, a term referring not directly to the time elapsed, but to the work done in it. now this mode of regarding geological time introduces many thoughts as to the nature of our chronology and matters relating to it. a "time" in geology is an extremely long time, and the palæozoic was perhaps the longest of the whole. by the close of the palæozoic nine-tenths of all the rocks we know in the earth's crust were formed. at least this is the case if we reckon mere thickness. for aught that we know, the eozoic time may have accumulated as much rock as the palæozoic; but leaving this out of the question, the rocks of the palæozoic are vastly thicker then those of the mesozoic and cainozoic united. thus the earth's history seems to have dragged slowly in its earlier stages, or to have become accelerated in its latter times. to place it in another point of view, life changes were greater relatively to merely physical changes in the later then in the earlier times. [z] dana. the same law seems to have obtained within the palæozoic time itself. its older periods, as the cambrian and lower silurian, present immense thicknesses of rock with little changes in life. its later periods, the carboniferous and permian, have greater life-revolution relatively to less thickness of deposits. this again was evidently related to the growing complexity and variety of geographical conditions, which went on increasing all the way up to the permian, when they attained their maximum for the palæozoic time. again, each age was signalized, over the two great continental plateaus, by a like series of elevations and depressions. we may regard the siluro-cambrian, the silurian, the devonian, the carboniferous, and permian, as each of them a distinct age. each of these began with physical disturbances and coarse shallow-water deposits. in each this was succeeded by subsidence and by a sea area tenanted by corals and shell-fishes. in each case this was followed by a re-elevation, leading to a second but slow and partial subsidence, to be followed by the great re-elevation preparatory to the next period. thus we have throughout the palæozoic a series of cycles of physical change which we may liken to gigantic pulsations of the thick hide of mother earth. the final catastrophe of the permian collapse was quite different in kind from these pulsations as well as much greater in degree. the cambrian or primordial does not apparently present a perfect cycle of this kind, perhaps because in that early period the continental plateaus were not yet definitely formed, and thus its beds are rather portions of the general oceanic deposit. in this respect it is analogous in geological relations to the chalk formation of a later age, though very different in material. the cambrian may, however, yet vindicate its claim to be regarded as a definite cycle: and the recent discoveries of hicks in north wales, have proved the existence of a rich marine fauna far down in the lower part of this system. it is also to be observed that the peculiar character of the cambrian, as an oceanic bottom rather then a continental plateau, has formed an important element in the difficulties in establishing it as a distinct group; just as a similar difficulty in the case of the chalk has led to a recent controversy about the continuance of the conditions of that period into modern times. but in each of the great successive heaves or pulsations of the palæozoic earth, there was a growing balance in favour of the land as compared with the water. in each successive movement more and more elevated land was thrown up, until the permian flexures finally fixed the forms of our continents. this may be made evident to the eye in a series of curves, as in the following diagram, in which i have endeavoured to show the recurrence of similar conditions in each of the great periods of the palæozoic, and thus their equivalency to each other as cycles of the earth's history. there is thus in these great continental changes a law of recurrence and a law of progress; but as to the efficient causes of the phenomena we have as yet little information. it seems that original fractures and shrinkages of the crust were concerned in forming the continental areas at first. once formed, unequal burdening of the earth's still plastic mass by deposits of sediment in the waters, and unequal expansion by the heating and crystallization of immense thicknesses of the sediment, may have done the rest; but the results are surprisingly regular to be produced by such causes. we shall also find that similar cycles can be observed in the geological ages which succeeded the palæozoic. geologists have hitherto for the most part been content to assign these movements to causes purely terrestrial; but it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that the succession of geological cycles must have depended on some recurring astronomical force tending to cause the weaker parts of the earth's crust alternately to rise and subside at regular intervals of time. herschel, adhémar, and more recently croll, have directed attention to astronomical cycles supposed to have important influences on the temperature of the earth. whether these or other changes may have acted on the equilibrium of its crust is a question well worthy of attention, as its solution might give us an astronomical measure of geological time. this question, however, the geologist must refer to the astronomer. [illustration: curves showing the successive elevations and depressions of the american continent, in several cycles of the palÆozoic time.] there are two notes of caution which must here be given to the reader. first, it is not intended to apply the doctrine of continental oscillations to the great oceanic areas. whether they became shallower or deeper, their conditions would be different from those which occurred in the great shallow plateaus, and these conditions are little known to us. further, throughout the palæozoic period, the oscillations do not seem to have been sufficient to reverse the positions of the oceans and continents. secondly, it is not meant to affirm that the great permian plications were so widespread in their effects as to produce a universal destruction of life. on the contrary, after they had occurred, remnants of the carboniferous fauna still flourished even on the surfaces of the continents, and possibly the inhabitants of the deep ocean were little affected by these great movements. true it is that the life of the palæozoic terminates with the permian, but not by a great and cataclysmic overthrow. we know something at least of the general laws of continental oscillations during the palæozoic. do we know anything of law in the case of life? the question raises so many and diverse considerations that it seems vain to treat it in the end of a chapter; still we must try to outline it with at least a few touches. first, then, the life of the palæozoic was remarkable, as compared with that of the present world, in presenting a great prevalence of animals and plants of synthetic types, as they are called by agassiz that is, of creatures comprehending in one the properties of several groups which were to exist as distinct in the future. such types are also sometimes called embryonic, because the young of animals and plants often show these comprehensive features. such types were the old corals, presenting points of alliance with two distinct groups now widely separated; the old trilobites, half king-crabs and half isopods; the amphibians of the coal, part fish, part newt, and part crocodile; the sigillariæ, part club-mosses and part pines; the orthoceratites, half nautili and half cuttle-fishes. i proposed, in the illustration in a former article, to give a restoration of one of the curious creatures last mentioned, the orthoceratites; but on attempting this, with the idea that, as usually supposed, they were straight nautili, it appeared that the narrow aperture, the small outer chamber, the thin outer wall, often apparently only membranous, and the large siphuncle, would scarcely admit of this; and i finished by representing it as something like a modern squid; perhaps wrongly, but it was evidently somewhere between them and the nautili. secondly, these synthetic types often belonged to the upper part of a lower group, or to the lower part of an upper group. hence in one point of view they may be regarded as of high grade, in another as of low grade, and they are often large in size or in vegetative development.[aa] from this law have arisen many controversies about the grade and classification of the palæozoic animals and plants. [aa] it seems, indeed, as if the new synthetic forms intermediate between great groups were often large in size, while the new special types came in as small species. there are some remarkable cases of this in the plant world; though here we have such examples as the pines and tree-ferns continuing almost unchanged from an early palæozoic period until now. thirdly, extinctions of species occur in every great oscillation of the continental areas, but some species reappear after such oscillations, and the same genus often recurs under new specific forms. families and orders, such as those of the trilobites and orthoceratites, appear to have a grand and gradual culmination and decadence extending over several successive periods, or even over the whole stretch of the palæozoic time. toward the close of the palæozoic, while all the species disappear, some whole families and orders are altogether dropped, and, being chiefly synthetic groups, are replaced by more specialised types, some of which, however, make small beginnings alongside of the more general types which are passing away. our diagram (page ) illustrates these points. [illustration: diagram showing the advance, culmination, and decadence of some of the leading types of palÆozoic life.] fourthly, the progress in animal life in the palæozoic related chiefly to the lower or invertebrate tribes, and to the two lower classes of the vertebrates. the oldest animal known to us is not only a creature of the simplest structure, but also a representative of that great and on the whole low type of animal life, in which the parts are arranged around a central axis, and not on that plan of bilateral symmetry which constitutes one great leading distinction of the higher animals. with the cambrian, bilateral animals abound and belong to two very distinct lines of progress--the one, the mollusks, showing the nutritive organs more fully developed--the other, the articulates, having the organs of sense and of locomotion more fully organized. these three great types shared the world among them throughout the earlier palæozoic time, and only in its later ages began to be dominated by the higher types of fishes and reptiles. in so far as we know, it remained for the mesozoic to introduce the birds and mammals. in plant life the changes were less marked, though here also there is progress--land plants appear to begin, not with the lowest forms, but with the highest types of the lower of the two great series into which the vegetable kingdom is divided. from this they rapidly rise to a full development of the lowest type of the flowering plants, the pines and their allies, and there the progress ceases; for the known representatives of the higher plants are extremely few and apparently of little importance. fifthly, in general the history tells of a continued series of alternate victories and defeats of the species that had their birth on the land and in the shallow waters, and those which were born in the ocean depths, the former spread themselves widely after every upheaval, and then by every subsidence were driven back to their mountain fastnesses. the latter perished from the continental plateaus at every upheaval, but climbed again in new hordes and reoccupied the ground after every subsidence. but just as in human history every victory or defeat urges on the progress of events, and develops the great plan of god's providence in the elevation of man; so here every succeeding change brings in new and higher actors on the stage, and the scheme of creation moves on in a grand and steady progress towards the more varied and elevated life of the modern world. but, after all, how little do we know of these laws, which are only beginning to dawn on the minds of naturalists; and which the imperfections of our classification and nomenclature, and the defects in our knowledge of fossil species, render very dim and uncertain. all that appears settled is the existence of a definite plan, working over long ages, and connected with the most remarkable correlation of physical and organic change: going on with regular march throughout the palæozoic, and then brought to a close to make room for another great succession. this following mesozoic time must next engage our attention. we may close for the present with presenting to the eye in tabular form the periods over which we have passed. the table on page , and the diagram (page ), mutually illustrate each other; and it will be seen that each age constitutes cycle, similar in its leading features to the other cycles, while each is distinguished by some important fact in relation to the introduction of living beings. in this table i have, with mr. hull,[ab] for simplicity, arranged the formations of each age under three periods--an older, middle, and newer. of these, however, the last or newest is in each case so important and varied as to merit division into two, in the manner which i have suggested in previous publications for the palæozoic rocks of north america.[ac] under each period i have endeavoured to give some characteristic example from europe and america, except where, as in the case of the coal formation, the same names are used on both continents. such a table as this, it must be observed, is only tentative, and may admit of important modifications. the laurentian more especially may admit of division into several ages; and a separate age may be found to intervene between it and the cambrian. the reader will please observe that this table refers to the changes on the continental plateaus; and that on both of these each age was introduced with shallow water and usually coarse deposits, succeeded by deeper water and finer beds, usually limestones, and these by a mixed formation returning to the shallow water and coarse deposits of the older period of the age. this last kind of deposition culminates in the great swamps of the coal formation. [ab] "quarterly journal of science," july, . [ac] "acadian geology," p. . condensed tabular view of the ages and periods of the palÆozoic and eozoic. key to symbols ### tabulate and rugose corals, abundant. *** age of algæ. === age of acrogens and gymnosperms. +++ and god said, "let the waters bring forth abundantly the swarming living creatures." --- and god created great reptiles. times. ages. periods. animals and plants. palÆozoic { {newer. red sandstones, # { rauchwacke, etc. # beginning = - {permian {middle. zechstein, or # of age = - { magnesian limestone. # of reptiles. = - { {older. conglomerates, etc., # = - { rotheliegendes. # = - { # = - { {n. coal formation. # = - {carboniferous {m. carboniferous limestone. # age of = - { {o. lower coal measures and # batrachians. = { conglomerates. # = { # = { {n. upper old red, chemung. # = {devonian {m. eifel and corniferous # = { { limestones. # age of fishes. = { or erian {o. lower old red, oriskany # = { { sandstone. # = + { # + { {n. ludlow, lower helderberg. # + {upper silurian {m. wenlock and niagara # + { { limestones. # age of + { {o. mayhill, etc., oneida # mollusks. + { { conglomerates. # + { # + { {n. caradoc, hudson r. # + {lower silurian {m. bala and trenton # + { or { limestones. # * + {siluro-cambrian {o. llandielo, etc., chazy. # * + { # * + { {n. lingula flags, etc., * + { { potsdam sandstone. * + { { {acadian, etc.? age of * + {cambrian {m. (uncertain){ crustaceans. * + { { {menevian? * + { {o. longmynd, huronian? + + eozoic + + { {n. anorthosite gneiss, etc. + {laurentian {m. eozoon limestones, etc. age of + { {o. lower gneiss. protozoa. + chapter viii. the mesozoic ages. physically, the transition from the permian to the trias is easy. in the domain of life a great gulf lies between; and the geologist whose mind is filled with the forms of the palæozoic period, on rising into the next succeeding beds, feels himself a sort of rip van winkle, who has slept a hundred years and awakes in a new world. the geography of our continents seems indeed to have changed little from the time of the permian to that next succeeding group which all geologists recognise as the beginning of the mesozoic or middle age of the world's history, the triassic period. where best developed, as in germany, it gives us the usual threefold series, conglomerates and sandstones below, a shelly limestone in the middle, and sandstones and marls above. curiously enough, the germans, recognising this tripartite character here more distinctly then in their other formations, named this the _trias_ or triple group, a name which it still retains, though as we have seen it is by no means the earliest of the triple groups of strata. in england, where the middle limestone is absent, it is a "new red sandstone," and the same name may be appropriately extended to eastern america, where bright red sandstones are a characteristic feature. in the trias, as in the permian, the continents of the northern hemisphere presented large land areas, and there were lagoons and landlocked seas in which gypsum, magnesian limestones, and rock salt were thrown down, a very eminent example of which is afforded by the great salt deposits of cheshire. there were also tremendous outbursts of igneous activity along the margins of the continents, more especially in eastern america. but with all this there was a rich land flora and a wonderful exuberance of new animal life on the land; and in places there were even swamps in which pure and valuable beds of coal, comparable with those of the old coal formation, were deposited. the triple division of the trias as a cycle of the earth's history, and its local imperfection, are well seen in the european development of the group, thus:-- german series. french series. english series. keuper, sandstone and } marnes irisées {saliferous and gypseous shale } { shales and sandstones. muschelkalk, limestone} calcaire coquillier {wanting. and dolomite } bunter, sandstone and } grès bigarré {sandstone and conglomerate } { conglomerate. the trias is succeeded by a great and complex system of formations, usually known as the jurassic, from its admirable development and exposure in the range of the jura; but which the english geologists often name the "oolitic," from the occurrence in it of beds of oolite or roe-stone. this rock, of which the beautiful cream-coloured limestone of bath is an illustration, consists of an infinity of little spheres, like seeds or the roe of a fish. under the microscope these are seen to present concentric layers, each with a radiating fibrous: structure, and often to have a minute grain of sand or fragment of shell in the centre. they are, in short, miniature concretions, produced by the aggregation of the calcareous matter around centres, by a process of molecular attraction to which fine sediments, and especially those containing much lime, are very prone. this style of limestone is very abundant in the jurassic system, but it is not confined to it. i have seen very perfect oolites in the silurian and the carboniferous. the jurassic series, as developed in england, may be divided into three triplets or cycles of beds, in the following way: {purbeck beds. upper jurassic {portland limestone. {portland sand. {kimmeridge clay, etc. middle jurassic {coral rag, limestone. {lower calcareous grit, oxford clay, etc. {cornbrash and forest marble. lower jurassic[ad] {great and inferior oolite, limestone. {lias clays and limestones. [ad] this last group is very complex, and might perhaps admit of sub division, locally at least, into subordinate cycles. these rocks occupy a large space in england, as the names above given will serve to show; and they are also largely distributed over the continent of europe and asia which had evidently three great and long-continued dips under water, indicated by the three great limestones. in america the case was different. the jurassic has not been distinctly recognised in any part of the eastern coast of that continent, which then perhaps extended farther into the atlantic then it does at present; so that no marine beds were formed on its eastern border. but in the west, along the base of the rocky mountains and also in the arctic area, there were jurassic seas of large extent, swarming with characteristic animals. at the close of the jurassic period our continents seem to have been even more extensive then at present. in england and the neighbouring parts of the continent of europe, according to lyell, the fresh-water and estuarine beds known as the wealden have been traced miles from west to east, and miles from north-west to south-east, and their thickness in one part of this area is estimated at no less then , feet. such a deposit is comparable in extent with the deltas of such great rivers as the niger or even the mississippi, and implies the existence of a continent much more extensive and more uniform in drainage then europe as it at present exists. lyell even speculates on the possible existence of an atlantic continent west of europe. america also at this time had, as already stated, attained to even more then its present extension eastwards. thus this later jurassic period was the culmination of the mesozoic, the period of its most perfect continental development, corresponding in this to the carboniferous in the palæozoic. the next or closing period of this great mesozoic time brought a wondrous change. in the cretaceous period, so called from the vast deposits of chalk by which it is characterized, the continents sunk as they had never sunk before, so that vast spaces of the great continental plateaus were brought down, for the first time since the laurentian, to the condition of abyssal depths, tenanted by such creatures as live in the deepest recesses of our modern oceans. this great depression affected europe more severely then america; the depression of the latter being not only less, but somewhat later in date. in europe, at the period of greatest submergence, the hills of scandinavia and of britain, and the urals, perhaps alone stood out of the sea. the alps and their related mountains, and even the himalayas, were not yet born, for they have on their high summits deep-sea beds of the cretaceous and even of later date. in america, the appalachians and the old laurentian ranges remained above water; but the rocky mountains and the andes were in great part submerged, and a great cretaceous sea extended from the appalachians westward to the pacific, and southward to the gulf of mexico, opening probably to the north into the arctic ocean. this great depression must have been of very long continuance, since in western europe it sufficed for the production of nearly , feet in thickness of chalk, a rock which, being composed almost entirely of microscopic shells, is, as we shall see in the sequel, necessarily of extremely slow growth. if we regard the cretaceous group as one of our great ages or cycles, it seems to be incomplete. the sandstones and clays known as the greensand and gault constitute its lower or shallow-water member. the chalk is its middle or deep-sea member, but the upper shallow-water member is missing, or only very locally and imperfectly developed. and the oldest of the succeeding tertiary deposits, which indicate much less continuous marine conditions, rest on the chalk, as if the great and deep sea of the cretaceous age had been suddenly upheaved into land. this abrupt termination of the last cycle of the mesozoic is obviously the reason of the otherwise inexplicable fact that the prevalent life of the period ceases at the top of the chalk, and is exchanged immediately and without any transition for the very different fauna of the tertiary. this further accords with the fact that the cretaceous subsidence ended in another great crumpling of the crust, like that which distinguished the permian. by this the mesozoic time was terminated and the cainozoic inaugurated; while the rocky mountains, the andes, the alps, and the himalayas, rose to importance as great mountain ranges, and the continents were again braced up to retain a condition of comparative equilibrium during that later period of the earth's chronology to which we ourselves belong. [illustration: life on land in the mesozoic period. in the foreground are a pine, cycads, and a pandanus; also small mammals, an herbivorous dinosaur, and a labyrinthodont. in the distance are other dinosaurs and crocodiles. in the air are birds (_archæopterux_) and pterodactyls. was the length of the mesozoic time equal to that of the palæozoic? measured by recurring cycles it was. in the latter period we find five great cycles, from the lower silurian to the permian inclusive. so in the mesozoic we have five also, from the trias to the cretaceous inclusive. we have a right to reckon these cycles as ages or great years of the earth; and so reckoning them, the mesozoic time may have been as long as the palæozoic. but if we take another criterion the result will be different. the thickness of the deposits in the palæozoic as compared with the mesozoic, where these are severally best developed, may be estimated as at least four or five to one; so that if we suppose the beds to have been formed with equal rapidity in the two great periods, then the older of the two was between four and five times as long as the latter, which would indeed be only a little greater then one of the separate ages of the palæozoic. either, therefore, the deposits took place with greater rapidity in the palæozoic, or that period was by much the longer of the two. this it will be observed, is only another aspect of the great laws of geological sequence referred to in our last paper. let us look into this question a little more minutely. if the several pulsations of our continents depended upon any regularly recurring astronomical or terrestrial change, then they must represent, at least approximately, equal portions of time, and this, if proved, would settle the question in favour of an equal duration of these two great eras of the earth's history. but as we cannot yet prove this, we may consider what light we can derive from the nature of the rocks produced. these may be roughly classified as of two kinds: first, the beds of sediment, sand, clay, etc., accumulated by the slow chemical decay of rocks and the mechanical agency of water. secondly, the beds formed by accumulation of the harder and less perishable parts of living beings, of which the limestones are the chief. with reference to the first of these kinds of deposit, the action of the atmosphere and rains on rocks in the earlier times might have been somewhat more powerful if there was more carbonic acid in the atmosphere, that substance being the most efficient agent in the chemical decay of rocks. it might have been somewhat more powerful if there was a greater rainfall. it must, on the other hand, have been lessened by the apparently more equable temperature which then prevailed. these differences might perhaps nearly balance one another. then the rocks of the older time were quite as intractable as those of the newer, and they were probably neither so high nor so extensive. further, the dips and emergences of the great continental plateaus were equally numerous in the two great periods, though they were probably, with the exception of the latest one of each, more complete in the older period. in so far, then, as deposition of sediment is concerned, these considerations would scarcely lead us to infer that it was more rapid in the palæozoic. but the palæozoic sediments may be estimated in the aggregate at about , feet in thickness, while those of the mesozoic scarcely reach , . we might, therefore, infer that the palæozoic period was perhaps five or six times as long as the mesozoic. if we take the second class of rocks, the limestones, and suppose these to have been accumulated by the slow growth of corals, shells, etc., in the sea, we might, at first sight, suppose that palæozoic animals would not grow or accumulate limestone faster then their mesozoic successors. we must, however, consider here the probability that the older oceans contained more lime in solution then those which now exist, and that the equable temperature and extensive submerged plateaus gave very favourable conditions for the lower animals of the sea, so that it would perhaps be fair to allow a somewhat more rapid rate of growth of limestone for the palæozoic. now the actual proportions of limestone may be roughly stated at , feet in the palæozoic, and , feet in the mesozoic, which would give a proportion of about four and a quarter to one; and as a foot of limestone may be supposed on the average to require five times as long for its formation as a foot of sediment, this would give an even greater absolute excess in favour of the palæozoic on the evidence of the limestones an excess probably far too great to be accounted for by any more favourable conditions for the secretion of carbonate of lime by marine animals. the data for such calculations are very uncertain, and three elements of additional uncertainty closely related to each other must also be noticed. the first is the unknown length of the intervals in which no deposition whatever may have been taking place over the areas open to our investigation. the second is the varying amounts in which material once deposited may have been swept away by water. the third is the amount of difference that may have resulted from the progressive change of the geographical features of our continents. these uncertainties would all tend to diminish our estimate of the relative length of the mesozoic. lastly, the changes that have taken place in living beings, though a good measure of the lapse of time, cannot be taken as a criterion here, since there is much reason to believe that more rapid changes of physical conditions act as an inducing cause of rapid changes of life. on the whole, then, taking such facts as we have, and making large deductions for the several causes tending to exaggerate our conception of palæozoic time, we can scarcely doubt that the palæozoic may have been three times as long as the mesozoic. if so, the continental pulsations, and the changes in animal and vegetable life, must have gone on with accelerated rapidity in the later period,--a conclusion to which we shall again have occasion to refer when we arrive at the consideration of the tertiary or neozoic time, and the age of man, and the probable duration of the order of things under which we live. i have given this preliminary sketch of the whole mesozoic time, because we cannot here, as in the palæozoic, take up each age separately; and now we must try to picture to ourselves the life and action of these ages. in doing so we may look at, first, the plant life of this period; second, animal life on the land; and third, animal life in the waters and in the ocean depths. the mesozoic shores were clothed with an abundant flora, which changed considerably in its form during the lapse of this long time; but yet it has a character of its own distinct from that of the previous palæozoic and the succeeding tertiary. perhaps no feature of this period is more characteristic then the great abundance of those singular plants, the cycads, which in the modern flora are placed near to the pines, but in their appearance and habit more resemble palms, and which in the modern world are chiefly found in the tropical and warm temperate zones of asia and america. no plants certainly of this order occur in the carboniferous, where their nearest allies are perhaps some of the sigillariæ; and in the modern time the cycads are not so abundant, nor do they occur at all in climates where their predecessors appear to have abounded. in the quarries of the island of portland, we have a remarkable evidence of this in beds with numerous stems of cycads still _in situ_ in the soil in which they grew, and associated with stumps of pines which seem to have flourished along with them. in further illustration of this point, i may refer to the fact that carruthers, in a recent paper, catalogues twenty-five british species belonging to eight genera--a fact which markedly characterizes the british flora of the mesozoic period. these plants will therefore occupy a prominent place in our restoration of the mesozoic landscape, and we should give especial prominence to the beautiful species _williamsonia gigas_, discovered by the eminent botanist whose name it bears, and restored in his paper on the plant in the "linnæan transactions." these plants, with pines and gigantic equisetums, prevailed greatly in the earlier mesozoic flora, but as the time wore on, various kinds of endogens, resembling the palms and the screw-pines of the tropical islands, were introduced, and toward its close some representatives of the exogens very like our ordinary trees. among these we find for the first time in our upward progress in the history of the earth, species of our familiar oaks, figs, and walnut, along with some trees now confined to australia and the cape of good hope, as the banksias and "silver-trees," and their allies. in america a large number of the genera of the modern trees are present, and even some of those now peculiar to america, as the tulip-trees and sweet-gums. these forests of the later mesozoic must therefore have been as gay with flowers and as beautiful in foliage as those of the modern world, and there is evidence that they swarmed with insect life. further, the mesozoic plants produced in some places beds of coal comparable in value and thickness to those of the old coal formation. of this kind are the coal beds of brora in sutherlandshire, those of richmond in virginia, and deep river in n. carolina, those of vancouver's island, and a large part of those of china. to the same age have been referred some at least of the coal beds of australia and india. so important are these beds in china, that had geology originated in that country, the mesozoic might have been our age of coal. if the forests of the mesozoic present a great advance over those of the palæozoic, so do the animals of the land, which now embrace all the great types of vertebrate life. some of these creatures have left strange evidence of their existence in their footprints on the sand and clay, now cemented into beds of hard rock excavated by the quarryman. if we had landed on some wide muddy mesozoic shore, we might have found it marked in all directions with animal footprints. some of these are shaped much like a human hand. the creature that made this mark was a gigantic successor of the crocodilian newts or labyrinthodonts of the carboniferous, and this type seems to have attained its maximum in this period, where one species, _labyrinthodon giganteus_, had great teeth three or four inches in length, and presenting in their cross section the most complicated foldings of enamel imaginable. but we may see on the shores still more remarkable footprints. they indicate biped and three-toed animals of gigantic size, with a stride perhaps six feet in length. were they enormous birds? if so, the birds of this age must have been giants which would dwarf even our ostriches. but as we walk along the shore we see many other impressions, some of them much smaller and different in form. some, again, very similar in other respects, have four toes; and, more wonderful still, in tracing up some of the tracks, we find that here and there the creature has put down on the ground a sort of four-fingered hand, while some of these animals seem to have trailed long tails behind them. what were these portentous creatures--bird, beast, or reptile? the answer has been given to us by their bones, as studied by yon meyer and owen, and more recently by huxley and cope. we thus have brought before us the _dinosaurs_--the terrible saurians--of the mesozoic age, the noblest of the tanninim of old. these creatures constitute numerous genera and species, some of gigantic size, others comparatively small;--some harmless browsers on plants, others terrible renders of living flesh; but all remarkable for presenting a higher type of reptile organization then any now existing, and approaching in some respects to the birds and in others to the mammalia. let us take one example of each of the principal groups. and first marches before us the _iguanodon_ or his relation _hadrosaurus_--a gigantic biped, twenty feet or more in height, with enormous legs shaped like those of an ostrich, but of elephantine thickness. it strides along, not by leaps like a kangaroo, but with slow and stately tread, occasionally resting, and supporting itself on the tripod formed by its hind limbs and a huge tail, like the inverted trunk of a tree. the upper part of its body becomes small and slender, and its head, of diminutive size and mild aspect, is furnished with teeth for munching the leaves and fruits of trees, which it can easily reach with its small fore-limbs, or hands, as it walks through the woods. the outward appearance of these creatures we do not certainly know. it is not likely that they had bony plates like crocodiles, but they may have shone resplendent in horny scale armour of varied hues. but another and more dreadful form rises before us. it is _megalosaurus_ or perhaps _lælaps_. here we have a creature of equally gigantic size and biped habits; but it is much more agile, and runs with great swiftness or advances by huge leaps, and its feet and hands are armed with strong curved claws; while its mouth has a formidable armature of sharp-edged and pointed teeth. it is a type of a group of biped bird-like lizards, the most terrible and formidable of rapacious animals that the earth has ever seen. some of these creatures, in their short deep jaws and heads, resembled the great carnivorous mammals of modern times, while all in the structure of their limbs had a strange and grotesque resemblance to the birds. nearly all naturalists regard them as reptiles; but in their circulation and respiration they must have approached to the mammalia, and their general habit of body recalls that of the kangaroos. they were no doubt oviparous; and this, with their biped habit, seems to explain the strong resemblance of their hind quarters to those of birds. had we seen the eagle-clawed lælaps rushing on his prey; throwing his huge bulk perhaps thirty feet through the air, and crushing to the earth under his gigantic talons some feebler hadrosaur, we should have shudderingly preferred the companionship of modern wolves and tigers to that of those savage and gigantic monsters of the mesozoic. we must not leave the great land-lizards of the reptilian age, without some notice of that goliath of the race which, by a singular misnomer, has received the appellation of _ceteosaurus_ or "whale-saurian." it was first introduced to naturalists by the discovery of a few enormous vertebrae in the english oolite; and as these in size and form seemed best to fit an aquatic creature, it was named in accordance with this view. but subsequent discoveries have shown that, incredible though this at first appeared, the animal had limbs fitted for walking on the land. professor phillips has been most successful in collecting and restoring the remains of ceteosaurus, and devotes to its history a long and interesting section of his "geology of oxford." the size of the animal may be estimated, from the fact that its thigh-bone is sixty-four inches long, and thick in proportion. from this and other fragments of the skeleton, we learn that this huge monster must have stood ten feet high when on all fours, and that its length, could not have been less then fifty feet; perhaps much more. from a single tooth, which has been found, it seems to have been herbivorous; and it was probably a sort of reptilian hippopotamus, living on the rich herbage by the sides of streams and marshes, and perhaps sometimes taking to the water, where the strokes of its powerful tail would enable it to move more rapidly then on the land. in structure, it seems to have been a composite creature, resembling in many points the contemporary dinosaurs; but in others, approaching to the crocodiles and the lizards. but the wonders of mesozoic reptiles are not yet exhausted. while noticing numerous crocodiles and lizard: like creatures, and several kinds of tortoises, we are startled by what seems a flight of great bats, wheeling and screaming overhead, pouncing on smaller creatures of their own kind, as hawks seize sparrows and partridges, and perhaps diving into the sea for fish. these were the pterodactyles, the reptile bats of the mesozoic. they fly by means of a membrane stretched on a monstrously enlarged little finger, while the other fingers of the fore limb are left free to be used as hands or feet. to move these wings, they had large breast-muscles like those of birds. in their general structure, they were lizards, but no doubt of far higher organization then any animals of this order now living; and in accordance with this, the interior of their skull shows that they must have had a brain comparable with that of birds, which, they rivalled in energy and intelligence. some of them were larger then the largest modern birds of prey, others were like pigeons and snipes in size. specimens in the cambridge museum indicate one species twenty feet in the expanse of its wings. cope has recently described an equally gigantic species from the mesozoic of western america, and fragments of much larger species are said to exist.[ae] imagine such a creature, a flying dragon, with vast skinny wings, its body, perhaps, covered with scales, both wings and feet armed with strong claws, and with long jaws furnished with sharp teeth. nothing can be conceived more strange and frightful. some of them had the hind limbs long, like wading birds. some had short, legs, adapted perhaps for perching. they could probably fold up their wings, and walk on all fours. their skeleton, like that of birds, was very light, yet strong; and the hollow bones have pores, which show that, as in birds, air could be introduced into them from the lungs. this proves a circulation resembling that of birds, and warm blood. indeed, in many respects, these creatures bridge over the space between the birds and the reptiles. "that they lived," says seeley, "exclusively upon land or in the air is improbable, considering the circumstances under which their remains are found. it is likely that they haunted the sea-shores; and while sometimes rowing themselves over the water with their powerful wings, used the wing membrane, as does the bat, to encloses the prey and bring it to the mouth. the large pterodactyles probably pursued a more substantial prey then dragon-flies. their teeth were well suited for fish; but probably fowl and small mammal, and even fruits, made a variety in their food. as the lord of the cliff, it may be supposed to have taken toll of all animals that could be conquered with tooth and nail. from its brain, it might be regarded as an intelligent animal. the jaws present indications of having been sheathed with a horny covering, and some species show a rugose anterior termination of the snout, suggestive of fleshy lips like those of the bat, and which may have been similarly used to stretch and clean the wing-membrane." [ae] seeley: "_ornithosauria._" here, however, perched on the trees, we see true birds. at least they have beaks, and are clothed with feathers. but they have very strange wings, the feathers all secondaries, without any large quills, and several fingers with claws at the angle of the wing, so that though less useful as wings, they served the double purpose of wing and hand. more strange still, the tail was long and flexible, like that of a lizard, with the feathers arranged in rows along its sides. if the lizards of this strange and uncertain time had wings like bats, the birds had tails and hands like lizards. this was in short the special age of reptiles, when animals of that class usurped the powers which rightfully belonged to creatures yet in their nonage, the true birds and mammals of our modern days, while the birds were compelled to assume some reptilian traits. yet, strange to say, representatives of the higher creatures destined to inherit the earth at a later date actually existed. toward the close of the mesozoic we find birds approaching to those of our own day, and almost at the beginning of the time there were small mammals, remains of which are found both in the earlier and later formations of the mesozoic, but which never seem to have thriven; at least so far as the introduction of large and important species is concerned. traversing the mesozoic woods, we might see here and there little hairy creatures, which would strike a naturalist as allies of the modern bandicoots, kangaroo rats, and myrmecobius of australia; and closer study would confirm this impression, though showing differences of detail. in their teeth, their size, and general form, and probably in their pouched or marsupial reproduction, these animals were early representatives of the smaller quadrupeds of the austral continent, creatures which are not only small but of low organisation in their class. one of these mammals, known to us only by its teeth, and well named _microlestes_, the "little thief" sneaks into existence, so to speak, in the trias of europe, while another very similar, _dromatherium_, appears in rocks of similar age in america; and this is the small beginning of the great class mammalia, destined in its quadrupedal forms to culminate in the elephants and their contemporaries in the tertiary period. who that saw them trodden under foot lay the reptile aristocracy of the mesozoic could have divined their destiny? but, notwithstanding the struggle for existence, the weakest does not always "go to the wall." the weak things of this world are often chosen to confound those that are mighty; and the little quadrupeds of the mesozoic are an allegory. they may typify the true, the good, and the hopeful, mildly and humbly asserting themselves in the world that now is, in the presence of the dragon monsters of pride and violence, which in the days to come they will overthrow. physically the mesozoic has passed away, but still exists morally in an age of evil reptiles, whose end is as certain as that of the great dinosaurs of the old world. the mesozoic mammals are among the most interesting fossils known to us. in a recent memoir by professor owen, thirty-three species are indicated--all, or nearly all, marsupial--all small--all closely allied to modern australian animals; some herbivorous, some probably carnivorous. owen informs us that these animals are not merely marsupials, but marsupials of low grade, a point in which, however, huxley differs somewhat in opinion. they are at least not lower then some that still exist, and not so low as those lowest of mammals in modern australia, the duck-billed platypus and the echidna. owen further supposes that they were possibly the first mammals, and not only the predecessors but the progenitors of the modern marsupials. if so, we have the singular fact that they not only did not improve throughout the vast mesozoic time, but that they have been in the progress of subsequent geological ages expelled out of the great eastern continent, and, with the exception of the american opossums, banished, like convicts, to australia. yet, notwithstanding their multiplied travels and long experiences, they have made little advance. it thus seems that the mesozoic mammals were, from the evolutionist point of view, a decided failure, and the work of introducing mammals had to be done over again in the tertiary; and then, as we shall find, in a very different way. if nothing more, however, the mesozoic mammals were a mute prophecy of a better time, a protest that the age of reptiles was an imperfect age, and that better things were in store for the world. moses seems to have been more hopeful of them then owen or even huxley would have been. he says that god "created" the great tanninim, the dinosaurs and their allies, but only "made" the mammals of the following creative day; so that when microlestes and his companions quietly and unnoticed presented themselves in the mesozoic, they would appear in some way to have obviated, in the case of the tertiary mammals, the necessity of a repetition of the greater intervention implied in the word "create." how that was effected none of us know; but, perhaps, we may know hereafter. chapter ix. the mesozoic ages (_continued_). the waters of the mesozoic period present features quite as remarkable as the land. in our survey of their teeming multitudes, we indeed scarcely know where to begin or whither to turn. let us look first at the higher or more noble inhabitants of the waters. and here, just as in the case of the greater animals of the land, the mesozoic was emphatically an age of reptiles. in the modern world the highest animals the sea are mammals, and these belong to three great and somewhat diverse groups. the first is that of the seals and their allies, the walruses, sea-lions, etc. the second is that of the whales and dolphins and porpoises. the third is that of the manatees, or dugongs. all these creatures breathe air, and bring forth their young alive, and nourish them with milk. yet they all live habitually or constantly in the water. between these aquatic mammals and the fishes, we have some aquatic reptiles as the turtles, and a few sea-snakes and sea-lizards, and crocodiles; but the number of these is comparatively small, and in the more temperate latitudes there are scarcely any of them. all this was different in the mesozoic. in so far as we know, there were no representatives of the seals and whales and their allies, but there were vast numbers of marine reptiles, and many of these of gigantic size. britain at present does not possess one large reptile, and no marine reptile whatever. in the mesozoic, in addition to the great dinosaurs and pterodactyls of the land, it had at least fifty or sixty species of aquatic reptiles, besides many turtles. some of these were comparable in size with our modern whales, and armed with tremendous powers of destruction. america is not relatively rich in remains of mesozoic saurians, yet while the existing fauna of the temperate parts of north america is nearly destitute of aquatic reptiles, with the exception of the turtles, it can boast, according to cope's lists, about fifty mesozoic species, many of them of gigantic size, and the number of known species is increasing every year when it is taken in connection with these statistics, that while we know all the modern species, we know but a small percentage of the fossils, the discrepancy becomes still more startling. further, from the number of specimens and fragments found, it is obvious that these great aquatic saurians were by no means rare; and that some of the species at least must have been very abundant. could we have taken our post on the mesozoic shore, or sailed over its waters, we should have found ourselves in the midst of swarms of these strange, often hideous, and always grotesque creatures. let us consider for a little some of the more conspicuous forms, referring to our illustration for their portraits. every text-book figures the well-known types of the genera _ichthyosaurus_ and _plesiosaurus_; we need scarcely, therefore, dwell on them, except to state that the catalogues of british fossils include eleven species of the former genus and eighteen of the latter, we may, however, notice some of the less familiar points of comparison of the two genera. both were aquatic, and probably marine. both swam by means of paddles; both were carnivorous, and probably fed principally upon fishes; both were proper reptiles, and breathed air, and had large and capacious lungs. yet with these points in common, no two animals could have been more different in detail. the ichthyosaurus had an enormous head, with powerful jaws, furnished with numerous and strong teeth. its great eyes, strengthened by a circle of bony plates, exceeded in dimensions, and probably in power of vision under water, those of any other animal, recent or fossil. its neck was short, its trunk massive, with paddles or swimming limbs of comparatively small size, and a long tail, probably furnished with a caudal fin or paddle for propulsion through the water. the plesiosaur, on the other hand, had a small and delicate head, with slender teeth and small eyes. its neck, of great length and with numerous joints, resembled the body of a serpent. its trunk, short, compact, and inflexible, was furnished with large and strong paddles, and its tail was too short to be of any service except for steering. compared with the ichthyosaur, it was what the giraffe is to the rhinoceros, or the swan to the porpoise. two fishermen so variously and differently fitted for their work it would be difficult to imagine. but these differences were obviously related to corresponding differences in food and habit. the ichthyosaur was fitted to struggle with the waves of the stormy sea, to roll therein like modern whales and grampuses, to seize and devour great fishes, and to dive for them into the depths; and its great armour-plated eyes must have been well adapted for vision in the deeper waters. the plesiosaur, on the contrary, was fitted for comparatively still and shallow waters; swimming near the surface with its graceful neck curving aloft, it could dart at the smaller fishes on the surface, or stretch its long neck downward in search of those near the bottom. the ichthyosaurs rolled like porpoises in the surf of the liassic coral reefs and the waves beyond; the plesiosaurs careered gracefully in the quiet waters within. both had their beginning at the same time in the earlier mesozoic, and both found a common and final grave in its later sediments. some of the species were of very moderate size, but there were ichthyosaurs twenty five feet long, and plesiosaurs at least eighteen feet in length. another strange and monstrous group of creatures, the elasmosaurs and their allies, combined the long neck of plesiosaurs with the swimming tail of ichthyosaurs, the latter enormously elongated, so that these creatures were sometimes fifty feet in length, and whale-like in the dimensions of their bodies. it is curious that these composite creatures belong to a later period of the mesozoic then the typical ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, as if the characters at one time separated in these genera had united in their successors. one of the relatives of the plesiosaurs, the pliosaur, of which genus several species of great size are known perhaps realized in the highest degree possible the idea of a huge marine predaceous reptile. the head in some of the species was eight feet in length, armed with conical teeth a foot long. the neck was not only long, but massive and powerful, the paddles, four in number, were six or seven feet in length and must have urged the vast bulk of the animal, perhaps forty feet in extent, through the water with prodigious speed. the capacious chest and great ribs show a powerful heart and lungs. imagine such a creature raising its huge head twelve feet or more out of water, and rushing after its prey, impelled with perhaps the most powerful oars ever possessed by any animal. we may be thankful that such monsters, more terrible then even the fabled sea-serpent, are unknown in our days. buckland, i think, at one time indulged in the _jeu d'esprit_ of supposing an ichthyosaur lecturing on the human skull. "you will at once perceive," said the lecturer, "that the skull before us belonged to one of the lower orders of animals. the teeth are very insignificant, the power of the jaws trifling, and altogether it seems wonderful how the creature could have procured food." we cannot retort on the ichthyosaur and his contemporaries, for we can see that they were admirably fitted for the work they had in hand; but we can see that had man been so unfortunate as to have lived in their days, he might have been anything but the lord of creation. but there were sea-serpents as well as other monsters in the mesozoic seas. many years ago the lower cretaceous beds of st. peter's mount, near maestricht, afforded a skull three feet in length, of massive proportions, and furnished with strong conical teeth, to which the name _mosasaurus camperi_ was given. the skull and other parts of the skeleton found with it, were held to indicate a large aquatic reptile, but its precise position in its class was long a subject of dispute. faujas held it to be a crocodile; camper, cuvier, and owen regarded it as a gigantic lizard. more recently, additional specimens, especially those found in the cretaceous formations of north america, have thrown new light upon its structure, and have shown it to present a singular combination of the character of serpents, lizards, and of the great sea saurians already referred to. some parts of the head and the articulation of the jaws, in important points resemble those of serpents, while in other respects the head is that of a gigantic lizard. the body and tail are greatly lengthened out, having more then a hundred vertebral joints, and in one of the larger species attaining the length of eighty feet. the trunk itself is much elongated, and with ribs like those of a snake. there are no walking feet, but a pair of fins or paddles like those of ichthyosaurus. cope, who has described these great creatures as they occur in the cretaceous of the united states, thus sketches the mosasaur: "it was a long and slender reptile, with a pair of powerful paddles in front, a moderately long neck, and flat pointed head. the very long tail was flat and deep, like that of a great eel, forming a powerful propeller. the arches of the vertebral column were more extensively interlocked then in any other reptiles except the snakes. in the related genus _clidastes_ this structure is as fully developed as in the serpents, so that we can picture to ourselves its well-known consequences; their rapid progress through the water by lateral undulations, their lithe motions on the land, the rapid stroke, the ready coil, or the elevation of the head and vertebral column, literally a living pillar, towering above the waves or the thickets of the shore swamps." as in serpents, the mouth was wide in its gape, and the lower jaw capable of a certain separation from the skull to admit of swallowing large prey. besides this the lower jaw had an additional peculiarity, seen in some snakes, namely, a joint in the middle of the jaw enabling its sides to expand, so that the food might be swallowed "between the branches of the jaw." perhaps no creatures more fully realize in their enormous length and terrible powers the great tanninim (the stretched-out or extended reptiles) of the fifth day of the mosaic record, then the mosasaurus and elasmosaurus. when mr. cope showed me, a few years ago, a nearly complete skeleton of elasmosaurus, which for want of space he had stretched on a gallery along two sides of a large room, i could not help suggesting to him that the name of the creature should be _teinosaurus_[af] instead of that which he had given. marsh has recently ascertained that the mosasaurs were covered in part at least with bony scales. [af] heb. _tanan_; gr. _teino_, _tanuo_; sansc. _tanu_; lat. _tendo_.--ges. lex. [illustration: life in the mesozoic period. aquatic reptiles and cephalopods. _reptiles._--plesiosaur and osteopygis, ichthyosaur, teliosaur, plesiosaur, elasmosaur, mosasaur (in order of the heads from left to right).--_cephalopods._--ammonite, crioceras, belemnites, baculites, and ammonites (in order from left to right). the reptiles after hawkins and cope's restorations.] these animals may serve as specimens of the reptilian giants of the mesozoic seas; but before leaving them we must at least invite attention to the remarkable fact that they were contemporary with species which represent the more common aquatic reptiles of the modern world. in other words, the monsters which we have described existed over and above a far more abundant population of crocodiles and turtles then the modern waters can boast. the crocodiles were represented both in europe and america by numerous and large species, most of them with long snouts like the modern gavials, a few with broad heads like those of the alligators. the turtles again presented not only many species, but most of the aquatic subdivisions of the group known in modern times, as for instance the emydes or ordinary fresh-water forms, the snapping turtles, and the soft-shelled turtles. cope says that the cretaceous of new jersey alone affords twenty species, one of them a snapping turtle six feet in length. owen records above a dozen large species from the upper mesozoic of england, and dates the first appearance of the turtles in england about the time of the portland stone, or in the upper half of the mesozoic; but footprints supposed to be those of turtles are found as far back as the trias. perhaps no type of modern reptiles is more curiously specialized then these animals, yet we thus find them contemporaneous with many generalized types, and entering into existence perhaps as soon as they. the turtles did not culminate in the mesozoic, but go on to be represented by more numerous and larger species in the tertiary and modern. in the case of the crocodiles, while they attained perhaps a maximum toward the end of the mesozoic, it was in a peculiar form. the crocodiles of this old time had vertebrae with a hollow at each end like the fishes, or with a projection in the front. at the end of the mesozoic this was changed, and they assumed a better-knit back, with joints having a ball behind and a socket in front. in the cretaceous age, species having these two kinds of backbone were contemporaneous. perhaps this improvement in the crocodilian back had something to do with the persistence of this type after so many others of the sea-lizards of the mesozoic had passed away. of the fishes of the mesozoic we need only say that they were very abundant, and consisted of sharks and ganoids of various types, until near the close of the period, when the ordinary horny-scaled fishes, such as abound in our present seas, appear to have been introduced. one curious point of difference is that the unequally lobed tail of the palæozoic fishes is dropped in the case of the greater part of the ganoids, and replaced by the squarely-cut tail prevalent in modern times. in the sub-kingdom of the mollusca many important revolutions occurred. among the lamp-shells a little _leptaena_, no bigger then a pea, is the last and depauperated representative of a great palæozoic family. another, that of the spirifers, still shows a few species in the lower mesozoic. others, like rhynchonella, and terebratula, continue through the period, and extend into the modern. passing over the ordinary bivalves and sea-snails, which in the main conform to those of our own time, we find perhaps the most wonderful changes among the relatives of the cuttle-fishes and nautili. as far back as the silurian we find the giant orthoceratites contemporary with nautili, very like those of the present ocean. with the close of the palæozoic, however, the orthoceratites and their allies disappear, while the nautili continue, and are reinforced by multitudes of new forms of spiral chambered shells, some of them more wonderful and beautiful then any of those which either preceded or followed them. supreme among these is the great group of the _ammonites_,--beautifully spiral shells, thin and pearly like the nautilus, and chambered like it, so as to serve as a float, but far more elaborately constructed, inasmuch as the chambers were not simply curved, but crimped and convoluted, so as to give the outer wall much more effectual support. this outer wall, too, was worked into ornamental ribs and bands, which not only gave it exquisite beauty, but contributed to combine strength to resist pressure with the lightness necessary to a float. in some of these points it is true the gyroceras and goniatites of the palæozoic partially anticipated them, but much less perfectly. the animals which inhabited these shells must have been similar to that of nautilus, but somewhat different in the proportion of parts. they must have had the same power of rising and sinking in the water, but the mechanical construction of their shells was so much more perfect relatively to this end, that they were probably more active and locomotive then the nautili. they must have swarmed in the mesozoic seas, some beds of limestone and shale being filled with them; and as many as eight hundred species of this family are believed to be known, including, however, such forms as the _baculites_ or straight ammonites, bearing to them perhaps a relation similar to that of orthoceras to nautilus. further, some of the ammonites are of gigantic size, one species being three feet in diameter, while others are very minute. the whole family of ammonitids, which begins to be in force in the trias, disappears at the end of the mesozoic, so that this may be called the special age of ammonites as well as of reptiles. further, this time was likewise distinguished by the introduction of true cuttle-fishes, the most remarkable of which were those furnished with the internal supports or "bones," known as _belemnites_, from a fancied resemblance to javelins or thunder-bolts, a comparison at least as baseless as that often made in england of the ammonites to fossil snakes. the shell of the belemnite is a most curious structure. its usual general shape is a pointed cylinder or elongated cone. at top it has a deep cavity for the reception of certain of the viscera of the animal. below this is a conical series of chambers, the phragmacone; and the lower half of the shell is composed of a solid shelly mass or guard, which, in its structure of radiating fibres and concentric layers, resembles a stalactite, or a petrified piece of exogenous wood. this structure was an internal shell or support like those of the modern cuttle-fishes; but it is difficult to account for its peculiarities, so much more complex then in any existing species. the most rational supposition seems to be that it was intended to serve the triple purpose of a support, a float, and a sinker. unlike the shell of a nautilus, if thrown into the water it would no doubt have, sunk, and with the pointed end first. consequently, it was not a float simply, but a float and sinker combined, and its effect must have been to keep the animal at the bottom, with its head upward. the belemnite was therefore an exceptional cuttle-fish, intended to stand erect on the sea-bottom and probably to dart upward in search of its prey; for the suckers and hooks with which its arms were furnished show that, like other cuttle-fishes, it was carnivorous and predaceous. the guard may have been less ponderous when recent then in the fossil specimens, and in some species it was of small size or slender, and in others it was hollow. possibly, also, the soft tissues of the animal were not dense, and it may have had swimming fins at the sides. in any case they must have been active creatures, and no doubt could dart backward by expelling water from their gill chamber, while we know that they had ink-bags, provided with that wonderfully divided pigment, inimitable by art, with which the modern sepia darkens the water to shelter itself from its enemies. the belemnites must have swarmed in the mesozoic seas; and as squids and cuttles now afford choice morsels to the larger fishes, so did the belemnites in their day. there is evidence that even the great sea-lizards did not disdain to feed on them. we can imagine a great shoal of these creatures darting up and down, seizing with their ten hooked arms their finny or crustacean prey. in an instant a great fish or saurian darts down among them; they blacken the water with a thick cloud of inky secretion and disperse on all sides, while their enemy, blindly seizing a few mouthfuls, returns sullenly to the surface. a great number of species of belemnites and allied animals have been described; but it is probable that in naming them too little regard has been paid to distinctions of age and sex. the belemnites were for the most part small creatures; but there is evidence that there existed with them some larger and more formidable cuttles; and it is worthy of note that, in several of these, the arms, as in the belemnites, were furnished with hooks as well as suckers, an exceptional arrangement in their modern allies. it is probable that while the four-gilled or shell-bearing cuttles culminated in size and perfection in the ammonitids of the mesozoic, the modern cuttles of the two-gilled and shell-less type are grander in dimensions then their mesozoic predecessors. it is, however, not a little singular that a group so peculiar and apparently so well provided with means, both of offence and defence, as the belemnites, should come in and go out with the mesozoic, and that the nautiloid group, after attaining to the magnitude and complexity of the great ammonites, should retreat to a few species of diminutive and simply-constructed nautili; and in doing so should return to one of the old types dating as far back as the older palæozoic, and continuing unchanged through all the intervening time. the crustaceans of the mesozoic had lost all the antique peculiarities of the older time, and had so much of the aspect of those of the present day, that an ordinary observer, if he could be shown a quantity of jurassic or cretaceous crabs, lobsters, and shrimps, would not readily recognise the difference, which did not exceed what occurs in distant geographical regions in the present day. the same remark may be made as to the corals of the mesozoic; and with some limitations, as to the star-fishes and sea-urchins, which latter are especially numerous and varied in the cretaceous age. in short, all the invertebrate forms of life, and the fishes and reptiles among the vertebrates, had already attained their maximum elevation in the mesozoic; and some of them have subsequently sunk considerably in absolute as well as relative importance. in the course of the mesozoic, as indicated in the last chapter, there had been several great depressions and re-elevations of the continental areas. but these had been of the same quiet and partial character with those of the palæozoic, and it was not until the close of the mesozoic time, in the cretaceous age, that a great and exceptional subsidence involved for a long period the areas of our present continents in a submergence wider and deeper then any that had previously occurred since the dry land first rose out of the waters. every one knows the great chalk beds which appear in the south of england, and which have given its name to the latest age of the mesozoic. this great deposit of light-coloured and usually soft calcareous matter attains in some places to the enormous thickness of , feet. nor is it limited in extent. according to lyell, its european distribution is from ireland to the crimea, a distance of , geographical miles; and from the south of france to sweden, a distance of geographical miles. similar rocks, though not in all cases of the precise nature of chalk, occur extensively in asia and in africa, and also in north and south america. but what is chalk? it was, though one of the most familiar, one of the most inscrutable of rocks, until the microscope revealed its structure. the softer varieties, gently grated or kneaded down in water, or the harder varieties cut in thin slices, show a congeries of microscopic chambered shells belonging to the humble and simple group of protozoa. these shells and their fragments constitute the material of the ordinary chalk. with these are numerous spicules of sponges and silicious cell-walls of the minute one-celled plants called diatoms. further, the flinty matter of these organisms has by the law of molecular attraction been collected into concretions, which are the flints of the chalk. such a rock is necessarily oceanic; but more then this, it is abyssal. laborious dredging has shown that similar matter is now being formed only in the deep bed of the ocean, whither no sand or mud is drifted from the land, and where the countless hosts of microscopic shell-bearing protozoa continually drop their little skeletons on the bottom, slowly accumulating a chalky mud or slime. that such a rock should occur over vast areas of the continental plateaus, that both in europe and america it should be found to cover the tops of hills several thousand feet high, and that its thickness should amount to several hundreds of feet, are facts which evidence a revolution more stupendous perhaps then that at the close of the palæozoic. for the first time since the laurentian, the great continental plateaus changed places with the abysses of the ocean, and the successors of the laurentian eozoon again reigned on surfaces which through the whole lapse of palæozoic and mesozoic time had been separated more or less from that deep ocean out of which they rose at first. this great cretaceous subsidence was different from the disturbances of the permian age. there was at first no crumpling of the crust, but merely a slow and long-continued sinking of the land areas, followed, however, by crumpling of the most stupendous character, which led at the close of the cretaceous and in the earlier tertiary to the formation of what are now the greatest mountain chains in the world. as examples may be mentioned the himalaya, the andes, and the alps, on all which the deep-sea beds of the cretaceous are seen at great elevations. in europe this depression was almost universal, only very limited areas remaining out of water. in america a large tract remained above water in the region of the appalachians. this gives us some clue to the phenomena. the great permian collapse led to the crumpling-up of the appalachians and the urals, and the older hills of western europe. the cretaceous collapse led to the crumpling of the great n.w. and s.e. chain of the rocky mountains and andes, and to that of the east and west chains of the south of asia and europe. the cause was probably in both cases the same; but the crust gave way in a different part, and owing to this there was a greater amount of submergence of our familiar continental plateaus in the cretaceous then in the permian. another remarkable indication of the nature of the cretaceous subsidence, is the occurrence of beds filled with grains of the mineral glauconite or "green-sand." these grains are not properly sand, but little concretions, which form in the bottom of the deep sea, often filling and taking casts of the interior and fine tubes of foraminiferal shells. now this glauconite, a hydrous silicate of iron and potash, is akin to similar materials found filling the pores of fossils in silurian beds. it is also akin to the serpentine filling the pores of eozoon in the laurentian. such materials are formed only in the deeper parts of the ocean, and apparently most abundantly where currents of warm water are flowing at the surface, as in the area of the gulf stream. thus, not only in the prevalence of foraminifera, but in the formation of hydrous silicates, does the cretaceous recall the laurentian. such materials had no doubt been forming, and such animals living in the ocean depths, all through the intervening ages, but with the exception of a few and merely local instances, we know nothing of them, till the great subsidence and re-elevation of the cretaceous again allows them to ascend to the continental plateaus, and again introduces us to this branch of the world-making process. the attention recently drawn to these facts by the researches of dr. carpenter and others, and especially the similarity in mineral character and organic remains of some of the deposits now forming in the atlantic and those of the chalk, have caused it to be affirmed that in the bed of the atlantic these conditions of life and deposit have continued from the cretaceous up to the present time, or as it has been expressed, that "we are still living in the cretaceous epoch." now, this is true or false just as we apply the statement. we have seen that the distinction between abyssal areas, continental oceanic plateaus, and land surfaces has extended through the whole lapse of geological time. in this broad sense we may be said to be still living in the laurentian epoch. in other words, the whole plan of the earth's development is one and the same, and each class of general condition once introduced is permanent somewhere. but in another important sense we are not living in the cretaceous epoch; otherwise the present site of london would be a thousand fathoms deep in the ocean; the ichthyosaurs and ammonites would be disporting themselves in the water, and the huge dinosaurs and strange pterodactyls living on the land. the italian peasant is still in many important points living in the period of the old roman empire. the arab of the desert remains in the patriarchal period, and there are some tribes not yet beyond the primitive age of stone. but the world moves, nevertheless, and the era of victoria is not that of the plantagenets or of julius cæsar. so while we may admit that certain of the conditions of the cretaceous seas still prevail in the bed of the present ocean, we must maintain that nearly all else is changed, and that the very existence of the partial similarity is of itself the most conclusive proof of the general want of resemblance, and of the thorough character of the changes which have occurred. the duration of the cretaceous subsidence must have been very great. we do not know the rate at which the foraminifera accumulate calcareous mud. in some places, where currents heap up their shells, they may be gathered rapidly; but on the average of the ocean bed, afoot of such material must indicate the lapse of ages very long when compared with those of modern history. we need not wonder, therefore, that while some forms of deep-sea cretaceous life, especially of the lower grades, seem to have continued to our time, the inhabitants of the shallow waters and the land have perished; and that the neozoic or tertiary period introduces us to a new world of living beings. i say we need not wonder; yet there is no reason why we should expect this as a necessary consequence. as the cretaceous deluge rose over the continents of the mesozoic, the great sea saurians might have followed. those of the land might have retreated to the tracts still remaining out of water, and when the dry land again appeared in the earlier tertiary, they might again have replenished the earth, and we might thus have truly been living in the reptilian age up to this day. but it was not so. the old world again perished, and the dawn of the tertiary shows to us at once the dynasties of the mammalian age, which was to culminate in the introduction of man. with the great cretaceous subsidence the curtain falls upon the age of reptiles, and when it rises again, after the vast interval occupied in the deposition of the green-sand and chalk, the scene has entirely changed. there are new mountains and new plains, forests of different type, and animals such as no previous age had seen. how strange and inexplicable is this perishing of types in the geological ages! some we could well spare. we would not wish to have our coasts infested by terrible sea saurians, or our forests by carnivorous dinosaurs. yet why should these tyrants of creation so utterly disappear without waiting for us to make war on them? other types we mourn. how glorious would the hundreds of species of ammonites have shone in the cases of our museums, had they still lived! what images of beauty would they have afforded to the poets who have made so much of the comparatively humble nautilus! how perfectly, too, were they furnished with all those mechanical appliances for their ocean life, which are bestowed only with a niggardly hand on their successors! nature gives us no explanation of the mystery. "from scarped cliff and quarried stone, she cries--'a thousand types are gone.'" but why or how one was taken and another left she is silent, and i believe must continue to be so, because the causes, whether efficient or final, are beyond her sphere. if we wish for a full explanation, we must leave nature, and ascend to the higher domain of the spiritual. condensed tabular view of the ages and periods of the mesozoic. key to symbols ### duration of ammonites and belemnites. === ages of cycads and pines. --- beginning of age of angiospermous exogens. +++ "and god created great reptiles, and every living moving thing which the waters brought forth abundantly, and every flying creature after its kind." time. ages. periods. animals and plants. mesozoic. cretaceous {newer.{maestricht beds; fox hill # - + { {and pierre groups of # - + { {western america; greensand # - + { {of new jersey. # - + { # - + {middle.{chalk; benton and dakota # close of - + { {groups of western america. # reptilian - + { # ages. - + {older.{lower greensand and gault; # - + { {lower clays of new jersey # + { {and alabama. # + # + upper {n. purbeck beds. }jurassic # culmination + jurassic {m. portland limestone. } beds of # of + {o. portland sandstone. }nebraska # reptilian + } and # ages. + middle {n. kimmeridge clay, etc.}colorado.# = + jurassic {m. coralline limestone. } # = + {o. calcareous grit & } # = + { oxford clay. } # = + # = + lower {n. cornbrash & forest } lower # = + jurassic { marble. }jurassic # = + {m. great & inferior } of # = + { oolites., etc. } utah, # = + {o. lias clay and }nevada, # = + { limestone. } etc. = + = + {n. keuper {upper triassic appearance of = + { sandstone, {sandstones of mammals = + { etc. {prince edward i., and = + {m. muschelkalk.{connecticut, etc. birds. + triassic { + {o. bunter {lower triassic beginning of + { sandstone. {sandstones of reptilian + { {prince edward i., ages. + { {connecticut, etc. + chapter x. the neozoic ages. between the mesozoic and the next succeeding time which may be known as the neozoic or tertiary,[ag] there is in the arrangements of most geologists a great break in the succession of life; and undoubtedly the widespread and deep subsidence of the cretaceous, followed by the elevation of land on a great scale at the beginning of the next period, is a physical cause sufficient to account for vast life changes. yet we must not forget to consider that even in the cretaceous itself there were new features beginning to appear. let us note in this way, in the first place, the introduction of the familiar generic forms of exogenous trees. next we may mention the decided prevalence of the modern types of coral animals and of a great number of modern generic forms of mollusks. then we have the establishment of the modern tribes of lobsters and crabs, and the appearance of nearly all the orders of insects. among vertebrates, the ordinary fishes are now introduced. modern orders of reptiles, as the crocodiles and chelonians, had already appeared, and the first mammals. henceforth the progress of organic nature lies chiefly in the dropping of many mesozoic forms and in the introduction of the higher tribes of mammals and of man. [ag] the former name is related to palæozoic and mesozoic, the latter to the older terms primary and secondary. for the sake of euphony we shall use both. the term neozoic was proposed by edward forbes for the mesozoic and cainozoic combined; but i use it here as a more euphonious and accurate term for the cainozoic alone. it is further to be observed that the new things introduced in the later mesozoic came in little by little in the progress of the period, and anticipated the great physical changes occurring at its close. on the other hand, while many family and even generic types pass over from the mesozoic to the earlier tertiary, very few species do so. it would seem, therefore, as if changes of species were more strictly subordinate to physical revolutions then were changes of genera and orders--these last overriding under different specific forms many minor vicissitudes, and only in part being overwhelmed in the grander revolutions of the earth. both in europe and america there is evidence of great changes of level at the beginning of the tertiary. in the west of europe beds often of shallow-water or even fresh-water origin fill the hollows in the bent cretaceous strata. this is manifestly the case with the formations of the london and paris basins, contemporaneous but detached deposits of the tertiary age, lying in depressions of the chalk. still this does not imply much want of conformity, and according to the best explorers of those alpine regions in which both the mesozoic and tertiary beds have been thrown up to great elevations, they are in the main conformable to one another. something of the same kind occurs in america. on the atlantic coast the marine beds of the older tertiary cover the cretaceous, and little elevation seems to have occurred farther west the elevation increases, and in the upper part of the valley of the mississippi it amounts to feet. still farther west, in the region of the rocky mountains, there is evidence of elevation to the extent of as much as feet. throughout all these regions scarcely any disturbance of the old cretaceous sea-bottom seems to have occurred until after the deposition of the older tertiary, so that there was first a slow and general elevation of the cretaceous ocean bottom, succeeded by gigantic folds and fractures, and extensive extravasations of the bowels of the earth in molten rocks, in the course of the succeeding tertiary age. these great physical changes inaugurated the new and higher life of the tertiary, just as the similar changes in the permian did that of the mesozoic. the beginning of these movements consisted of a great and gradual elevation of the northern parts of both the old and new continents out of the sea, whereby a much greater land surface was produced, and such changes of depth and direction of currents in the ocean as must have very much modified the conditions of marine life. the effect of all these changes in the aggregate was to cause a more varied and variable climate, and to convert vast areas previously tenanted by marine animals into the abodes of animals and plants of the land, and of estuaries, lakes, and shallow waters. still, however, very large areas now continental were under the sea. as the tertiary period advanced, these latter areas were elevated, and in many cases were folded up into high mountains. this produced further changes of climate and habitat of animals, and finally brought our continents into all the variety of surface which they now present, and which fits them so well for the habitation of the higher animals and of man. the thoughtful reader will observe that it follows from the above statements that the partial distribution and diversity in different localities which apply to the deposits of such ages as the permian and the trias apply also to the earlier tertiary; and as the continents, notwithstanding some dips under water, have retained their present forms since the beginning of the tertiary, it follows that these beds are more definitely related to existing geographical conditions then are those of the older periods, and that the more extensive marine deposits of the tertiary are, to a great extent, unknown to us. this has naturally led to some difficulty in the classification of neozoic deposits--those of some of the tertiary ages being very patchy and irregular, while others spread very widely. in consequence of this, sir charles lyell, to whom we owe very much of our definite knowledge of this period, has proposed a subdivision based on the percentage of recent and fossil animals. in other words, he takes it for granted that a deposit which contains more numerous species of animals still living then another, may be judged on that account to be more recent. such a mode of estimation is, no doubt, to some extent arbitrary; but in the main, when it can be tested by the superposition of deposits, it has proved itself reliable. further, it brings before us this remarkable fact, that while in the older periods all the animals whose remains we find are extinct as species, so soon as we enter on the neozoic we find some which still continue to our time--at first only a very few, but in later and later beds in gradually increasing percentage, till the fossil and extinct wholly disappear in the recent and living. the lyellian classification of the tertiary will therefore stand as in the following table, bearing in mind that the percentage of fossils is taken from marine forms, and mainly from mollusks, and that the system has in some cases been modified by stratigraphical evidence:-- { post-pliocene, including that which immediately { precedes the modern. in this the shells, etc., { are recent, the mammalia in part extinct. { { pliocene, or more recent age. in this the { majority of shells found are recent in the tertiary, or { upper beds. in the lower beds the extinct neozoic time. { become predominant. { { miocene, or less recent. in this the large { majority of shells found are extinct. { { eocene, the dawn of the recent. in this only { a few recent shells occur. if we attempt to divide the tertiary time into ages corresponding to those of the older times, we are met by the difficulty that as the continents have retained their present forms and characters to a great extent throughout this time, we fail to find those evidences of long-continued submergences of the whole continental plateaus, or very large portions of them, which we have found so very valuable in the palæozoic and mesozoic. in the eocene, however, we shall discover one very instructive case in the great nummulitic limestone. in the miocene and pliocene the oscillations seem to have been slight and partial. in the post-pliocene we have the great subsidence of the glacial drift; but that seems to have been a comparatively rapid dip, though of long duration when measured by human history; not allowing time for the formation of great limestones, but only of fossiliferous sands and clays, which require comparatively short time for their deposition if then we ask as to the duration of the neozoic, i answer that we have not a definite measure of its ages, if it had any; and that it is possible that the neozoic may have as yet had but one age, which closed with the great drift period, and that we are now only in the beginning of its second age. some geologists, impressed with this comparative shortness of the tertiary, connect it with mesozoic, grouping both together. this, however, is obviously unnatural. the mesozoic time certainly terminated with the cretaceous, and what follows belongs to a distinct aeon. but we must now try to paint the character of this new and peculiar time; and this may perhaps be best done in the following sketches: . the seas of the eocene. . mammals from the eocene to the modern. . tertiary floras. . the glacial period. . the advent of man. the great elevation of the continents which closed the cretaceous was followed by a partial and unequal subsidence, affecting principally the more southern parts of the land of the northern hemisphere. thus, a wide sea area stretched across all the south of europe and asia, and separated the northern part of north america from what of land existed in the southern hemisphere. this is the age of the great nummulitic limestones of europe, africa, and asia, and the orbitoidal limestones of north america. the names are derived from the prevalence of certain forms of those humble shell-bearing protozoa which we first met with in the laurentian, and which we have found to be instrumental in building up the chalk, the _foraminifera_ of zoologists. (fig. p. .) but in the eocene the species of the chalk were replaced by certain broad flat forms, the appearance of which is expressed by the term nummulite, or money-stone; the rock appearing to be made up of fossils, somewhat resembling shillings, sixpences, or three-penny pieces, according to the size of the shells, each of which includes a vast number of small concentric chambers, which during life were filled with the soft jelly of the animal. the nummulite limestone was undoubtedly oceanic, and the other shells contained in it are marine species. after what we have already seen we do not need this limestone to convince us of the continent-building powers of the oceanic protozoa; but the distribution of these limestones, and the elevation which they attain, furnish the most striking proofs that we can imagine of the changes which the earth's crust has undergone in times geologically modern, and also of the extreme newness of man and his works. large portions of those countries which constitute the earliest seats of man in southern europe, northern africa, and western and southern asia, are built upon the old nummulitic sea-bottom. the egyptians and many other ancient nations quarried it for their oldest buildings. in some of these regions it attains a thickness of several thousand feet, evidencing a lapse of time in its accumulation equal to that implied in the chalk itself. in the swiss alps it reaches a height above the sea of , feet, and it enters largely into the structure of the carpathians and pyrenees. in thibet it has been observed at an elevation of , feet above the sea. thus we learn that at a time no more geologically remote then the eocene tertiary, lands now of this great elevation were in the bottom of the deep sea; and this not merely for a little time, but during a time sufficient for the slow accumulation of hundreds of feet of rock, made up of the shells of successive generations of animals. if geology presented to us no other revelation then this one fact, it would alone constitute one of the most stupendous pictures in physical geography which could be presented to the imagination. i beg leave here to present to the reader a little illustration of the limestone-making foraminifera of the cretaceous and eocene seas. in the middle above is a nummulite of the natural size. below is another, sliced to show its internal chambers. at one side is a magnified section of the common building stone of paris, the milioline limestone of the eocene, so called from its immense abundance of microscopic shells of the genus miliolina. at the other side is a magnified section of one of the harder varieties of chalk, ground so thin as to become transparent,[ah] and mounted in canada balsam. it shows many microscopic chambered shells of foraminifera. these may serve as illustrations of the functions of these humble inhabitants of the sea as accumulators of calcareous matter. it is further interesting to remark that some of the beds of nummulitic limestone are so completely filled with these shells, that we might from detached specimens suppose that they belonged to sea-bottoms whereon no other form of life was present. yet some beds of this age are remarkably rich in other fossils. lyell states that as many as six hundred species of shells have been found in the principal limestone of the paris basin alone; and the lower eocene beds afford remains of fishes, of reptiles, of birds, and of mammals. among the latter are the bones of gigantic whales, of which one of the most remarkable is the zeuglodon of alabama, a creature sometimes seventy feet in length, and which replaces in the tertiary the great elasmosaurs and ichthyosaurs of the mesozoic, marking the advent, even in the sea, of the age of mammals as distinguished from the age of reptiles. [ah] as for instance that of the giant's causeway, antrim. [illustration: foraminiferal rock-builders. a. nummulites lævigata--eocene. b. the same, showing chambered interior. c. milioline limestone, magnified--eocene, paris. d. hard chalk, section magnified--cretaceous.] this fact leads us naturally to consider in the second place the mammalia, and other land animals of the tertiary. at the beginning of the period we meet with that higher group of mammals, not pouched, which now prevails. among the oldest of these tertiary beasts are _coryphodon_, an animal related to the modern tapirs, and _arctocyon_, a creature related to the bears and racoons. these animals represent respectively the pachyderms, or thick-skinned mammals, and the ordinary carnivora. contemporary with or shortly succeeding these, were species representing the rodents, or gnawing animals, and many other creatures of the group pachydermata, allied to the modern tapirs and hogs, as well as several additional carnivorous quadrupeds. thus at the very beginning of the tertiary period we enter on the age of mammals, it may be well, however, to take these animals somewhat in chronological order. if the old egyptian, by quarrying the nummulite limestone, bore unconscious testimony to the recent origin of man (whose remains are wholly absent from the tertiary deposits), so did the ancient britons and gauls, when they laid the first rude foundations of future capitals on the banks of the themes and of the seine. both cities lie in basins of eocene tertiary, occupying hollows in the chalk. under london there is principally a thick bed of clay, the "london clay" attaining a thickness of five hundred feet. this bed is obviously marine, containing numerous species of sea shells; but it must have been deposited near land, as it also holds many fossil fruits and other remains of plants to which we shall refer in the sequel, and the bones of several species of large animals. among these the old reptiles of the mesozoic are represented by the vertebrae of a supposed "sea snake" (palæophis) thirteen feet long, and species of crocodile allied both to the alligators and the gavials. but besides these there are bones of several animals allied to the hog and tapir, and also a species of opossum, these remains must be drift carcases from neighbouring shores, and they show first the elevation of the old deep-sea bottom represented by the chalk, so that part of it became dry land; next, the peopling of that land by tribes of animals and plants unknown to the mesozoic; and lastly, that a warm climate must have existed, enabling england at this time to support many types of animals and plants now proper to intertropical regions. as lyell well remarks, it is most interesting to observe that these beds belong to the beginning of the tertiary, that they are older then those great nummulite limestones to which we have referred, and that they are older then the principal mountain chains of europe and asia. they show that no sooner was the cretaceous sea dried from off the new land, then there were abundance of animals and plants ready to occupy it, and these not the survivors of the flora and fauna of the wealden, but a new creation. the mention of the deposit last named places this in a striking light. we have seen that the wealden beds, under the chalk, represent a mesozoic estuary, and in it we have the remains of the animals and plants of the land that then was. the great cretaceous subsidence intervened, and in the london clay we have an estuary of the eocene. but if we pass through the galleries of a museum where these formations are represented, though we know that both existed in the same locality under a warm climate, we see that they belong to two different worlds, the one to that of the dinosaurs, the ammonites, the cycads, and the minute marsupials of the mesozoic, the other to that of the pachyderms, the palms, and the nautili of the tertiary. the london clay is lower eocene; but in the beds of the isle of wight and neighbouring parts of the south of england, we have the middle and upper members of the series. they are not, however, so largely developed as in the paris basin, where, resting on the equivalent of the london clay, we have a thick marine limestone, the calcaire grossier, abounding in marine remains, and in some beds composed of shells of foraminifera. the sea in which this limestone was deposited, a portion no doubt of the great atlantic area of the period, became shallow, so that beds of sand succeeded those of limestone, and finally it was dried up into lake basins, in which gypsum, magnesian sediments, and siliceous limestone were deposited. these lakes or ponds must at some period have resembled the american "salt-licks," and were no doubt resorted to by animals from all the surrounding country in search of the saline mud and water which they afforded. hence in some marly beds intervening between the layers of gypsum, numerous footprints occur, exactly like those already noticed in the trias. had there been a nimrod in those days to watch with bow or boomerang by the muddy shore, he would have seen herds of heavy short-legged and three-hoofed monsters (palæotherium), with large heads and long snouts, probably scantily covered with sleek hair, and closely resembling the modern tapirs of south america and india, laboriously wading through the mud, and grunting with indolent delight as they rolled themselves in the cool saline slime. others more light and graceful, combining some features of the antelope with those of the tapir (anoplotherium) ran in herds over the drier ridges, or sometimes timidly approached the treacherous clay, tempted by the saline waters. other creatures representing the modern damans or conies--"feeble folk" which, with the aspect of hares, have the structure of pachyderms--were also present. creatures of these types constituted the great majority of the animals of the parisian eocene lakes; but there were also carnivorous animals allied to the hyæna, the wolf, and the opossum, which prowled along the shores by night to seize unwary wanderers, or to prey on the carcases of animals mired in the sloughs. wading birds equal in size to the ostrich also stalked through the shallows, and tortoises crawled over the mud. lyell mentions the discovery of some bones of one of these gigantic birds (gastornis) in a bed of the rolled chalk flints which form the base of the paris series, resting immediately on the chalk; one of the first inhabitants perhaps to people some island of chalk just emerged from the waters, and under which lay the bones of the mighty dinosaurs, and in which were embedded those of sea birds that had ranged, like the albatross and petrel, over the wide expanse of the cretaceous ocean. these waders, however, like the tortoises and crocodiles and small marsupial mammals, form a link of connection in type at least between the eocene and the cretaceous, for bones of wading birds have been found in the greensands indicating their existence before the close of the mesozoic. the researches of baron cuvier in the bones collected in the quarries of montmartre were regarded as an astonishing triumph of comparative anatomy; and familiar as we now are with similar and yet more difficult achievements, we can yet afford to regard with admiration the work of the great french naturalist as it is recorded in its collected form in his "recherches sur les ossemens fossiles," published in . his clear and philosophical views as to the plan perceptible in nature, his admirable powers of classification, his acute perception of the correlation of parts in animals, his nice discrimination of the resemblances and differences of fossil and recent structures, and of the uses of these,--all mark him as one of the greatest minds ever devoted to the study of natural science. it is obvious, that had his intellect been occupied by the evolutionist metaphysics which pass for natural science with too many in our day, he would have effected comparatively little; and instead of the magnificent museum in the "règne animal" and the "ossemens fossiles," we might have had wearisome speculations on the derivation of species. it is reason for profound thankfulness that it was not so; and also that so many great observers and thinkers of our day, like sedgwick, murchison, lyell, owen, dana, and agassiz, have been allowed to work out their researches almost to completion before the advent of those poisoned streams and mephitic vapours which threaten the intellectual obscuration of those who should be their successors. if we pass from the eocene to the miocene, still confining ourselves mainly to mammalian life, we find three remarkable points of difference--( ) whereas the eocene mammals are remarkable for adherence to one general type, viz., that group of pachyderms most regular and complete in its dentition, we now find a great number of more specialised and peculiar forms; ( ) we find in the latter period a far greater proportion of large carnivorous animals; ( ) we find much greater variety of mammals then either in the eocene or the modern, and a remarkable abundance of species of gigantic size. the miocene is thus apparently the culminating age of the mammalia, in so far as physical development is concerned; and this, as we shall find, accords with its remarkably genial climate and exuberant vegetation. in europe, the beds of this age present, for the first time, examples of the monkeys, represented by two generic types, both of them apparently related to the modern long-armed species, or gibbons. among carnivorous animals we have cat-like creatures, one of which is the terrible _machairodus_, distinguished from all modern animals of its group by the long sabre-shaped canines of its upper jaw, fitting it to pull down and destroy those large pachyderms which could have easily shaken off a lion or a tiger. here also we have the elephants, represented by several species now extinct; the mastodon, a great, coarsely-built, hog-like elephant, some species of which had tusks both in the upper and lower jaw; the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, and the horse, all of extinct species. we have also giraffes, stags, and antelopes, the first ruminants known to us, and a great variety of smaller and less noteworthy creatures. here also, for the first time, we find the curious and exceptional group of edentates, represented by a large ant-eater. of all the animals of the european miocene, the most wonderful and unlike any modern beast, is the dinotherium, found in the miocene of epplesheim in germany; and described by kaup. some doubt rests on the form and affinities of the animal; but we may reasonably take it, as restored by its describer, and currently reproduced in popular books, to have been a quadruped of somewhat elephantine form. some years ago, however, a huge haunch bone, supposed to belong to this creature, was discovered in the south of france; and from this it was inferred that the dinothere may have been a marsupial or pouched animal, perhaps allied in form and habits to the kangaroos. the skull is three feet four inches in length; and when provided with its soft parts, including a snout or trunk in front, it must have been at least five or six feet long. such a head, if it belonged to a quadruped of ordinary proportions, must represent an animal as large in proportion to our elephant as an elephant to an ox. but its size is not its most remarkable feature. it has two large tusks firmly implanted in strong bony sockets; but they are attached to the end of the lower jaw and point downward at right angles to it, so that the lower jaw forms a sort of double-pointed pickaxe of great size and strength. this might have been used as a weapon; or, if the creature was aquatic, as a grappling iron to hold by the bank, or by floating timber; but more probably it was a grubbing-hoe for digging up roots or loosening the bases of trees which the animal might afterward pull down to devour them. however this may be, the creature laboured under the mechanical disadvantage of having to lift an immense weight in the process of mastication, and of being unable to bring its mouth to the ground, or to bite or grasp anything with the front of its jaws. to make up for this, it had muscles of enormous power on the sides of the head attached to great projecting processes; and it had a thick but flexible proboscis, to place in its mouth the food grubbed up by its tusks. taken altogether, the dinothere is perhaps the most remarkable of mammals, fossil or recent; and if the rest of its frame were as extraordinary as its skull, we have probably as yet but a faint conception of its peculiarities. we may apply to it, with added force, the admiring ejaculation of job, when he describes the strength of the hippopotamus, "he is the chief of the ways of god. he who made him, gave him his sword." [illustration: miocene mammals of the eastern continent. in the foreground _elephas_, _ganesa_, _hydracotherium_, _dinotherium_, _machairodus_, _mastodon longirostris_. in the middle distance, _apes_, two _anoplotheres_, _palæotherium_, _xiphodon_, and _sivatherium_. sequoias and fan palm in the background.] in asia, the siwalik hills afforded to falconer and cautley one of the most remarkable exhibitions of miocene animals in the world. these hills form a ridge subordinate to the himalayan chain; and rise to a height of , to , feet. in the miocene period, they were sandy and pebbly shores and banks lying at the foot of the then infant himalayas, which, with the table-lands to the north, probably formed a somewhat narrow east and west continental mass or large island. as a mere example of the marvellous fauna which inhabited this miocene land, it has afforded remains of seven species of elephants, mastodons, and allied animals; one of them, the _e. ganesa_, with tusks ten feet and a half long, and twenty-six inches in circumference at the base. besides these there are five species of rhinoceros, three of horse and allied animals, four or more of hippopotamus, and species of camel, giraffe, antelope, sheep, ox, and many other genera, as well as numerous large and formidable beasts of prey. there is also an ostrich; and, among other reptiles, a tortoise having a shell twelve feet in length, and this huge roof must have covered an animal eighteen feet long and seven feet high. among the more remarkable of the siwalik animals is the _sivatherium_, a gigantic four-horned antelope or deer, supposed to have been of elephantine size, and of great power and swiftness; and to have presented features connecting the ruminants and pachyderms. our restoration of this creature is to some extent conjectural; and a remarkably artistic, and probably more accurate, restoration of the animal has recently been published by dr. murie, in the geological magazine. we justly regard the mammalian fauna of modern india as one of the noblest in the world; but it is paltry in comparison with that of the much more limited miocene india; even if we suppose, contrary to all probability, that we know most of the animals of the latter. but if we consider the likelihood that we do not yet know a tenth of the miocene animals, the contrast becomes vastly greater. miocene america is scarcely behind the old world in the development of its land animals. from one locality in nebraska, leidy described in fifteen species of large quadrupeds; and the number has since been considerably increased. among these are species of rhinoceros, palæotherium, and machairodus; and one animal, the titanotherium, allied to the european anoplothere, is said to have attained a length of eighteen feet and a height of nine, its jaws alone being five feet long. in the illustration, i have grouped some of the characteristic mammalian forms of the miocene, as we can restore them from their scattered bones, more or less conjecturally; but could we have seen them march before us in all their majesty, like the edenic animals before adam, i feel persuaded that our impressions of this wonderful age would have far exceeded anything that we can derive either from words or illustrations. i insist on this the more that the miocene happens to be very slenderly represented in britain; and scarcely at all in north-eastern america; and hence has not impressed the imagination of the english race so strongly as its importance justifies. the next succeeding period, that of the pliocene, continues the conditions of the last, but with signs of decadence. many of the old gigantic pachyderms have disappeared; and in their stead some familiar modern genera were introduced. the pliocene was terminated by the cold or glacial period, in which a remarkable lowering of temperature occurred over all the northern hemisphere, accompanied, at least in a portion of the time, by a very general and great subsidence, which laid all the lower parts of our continents under water. this terminated much of the life of the pliocene, and replaced it with boreal and arctic forms, some of them, like the great hairy siberian mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros, fit successors of the gigantic miocene fauna. how it happened that such creatures were continued during the post-pliocene cold, we cannot understand till we have the tertiary vegetation before us. it must suffice now to say, that as the temperature was modified, and the land rose, and the modern period was inaugurated, these animals passed away, and those of the present time remained. perhaps the most remarkable fact connected with this change, is that stated by pictet, that all the modern european mammals are direct descendants of post-pliocene species; but that in the post-pliocene they were associated with many other species; and these, often of great dimensions, now extinct. in other words, the time from the pliocene to the modern, has been a time of diminution of species, while that from the eocene to the miocene was a time of rapid introduction of new species. thus the tertiary fauna culminated in the miocene. yet, strange though this may appear, man himself, the latest and noblest of all, would seem to have been a product of the later stages of the time of decadence. i propose, however, to return to the animals immediately preceding man and his contemporaries, after we have noticed the tertiary flora and the glacial period. chapter xi. the neozoic ages (_continued_). plant-life in the tertiary approaches very nearly to that of the modern world, in so far as its leading types are concerned; but in its distribution geographically it was wonderfully different from that with which we are at present familiar. for example, in the isle of sheppey, at the mouth of the themes, are beds of "london clay," fall of fossil nuts; and these, instead of being hazel nuts and acorns, belong to palms allied to species now found in the philippine islands and bengal, while with them are numerous cone-like fruits belonging to the proteaceæ (banksias, silver-trees, wagenbooms, etc.), a group of trees now confined to australia and south africa, but which in the northern hemisphere had already, as stated in a previous paper, made their appearance in the cretaceous, and were abundant in the eocene. the state of preservation of these fruits shows that they were not drifted far; and in some beds in hampshire, also of eocene age, the leaves of similar plants occur along with species of fig, cinnamon, and other forms equally australian or indian. in america, especially in the west, there are thick and widely-distributed beds of lignite or imperfect coal of the eocene period; but the plants found in the american eocene are more like those of the european miocene or the modern american flora, a fact to which we must revert immediately. in europe, while the eocene plants resemble those of australia, when we ascend into the miocene they resemble those of america, though still retaining some of the australian forms. in the leaf-beds of the isle of mull,--where beds of vegetable mould and leaves were covered up with the erupted matter of a volcano belonging to a great series of such eruptions which produced the basaltic cliffs of antrim and of staffa,--and at bovey, in devonshire, where miocene plants have accumulated in many thick beds of lignite, the prevailing plants are sequoias or red-woods, vines, figs, cinnamons, etc. in the sandstones at the base of the alps similar plants and also palms of american types occur. in the upper miocene beds of oeningen in the rhine valley, nearly five hundred species of plants have been found, and include such familiar forms as the maples, plane-trees, cypress, elm, and sweet-gum, more american, however, then european in their aspect. it thus appears that the miocene flora of europe resembles that of america at pre sent, while the eocene flora of europe resembles that of australia, and the eocene flora of america, as well as the modern, resembles the miocene of europe. in other words, the changes of the flora have been more rapid in europe then in america and probably slowest of all in australia. the eastern continent has thus taken the lead in rapidity of change in the tertiary period, and it has done so in animals as well as in plants. the following description of the flora of bovey is given, with slight alteration, in the words of dr. heer, in his memoir on that district. the woods that covered the slopes consisted mainly of a huge pine-tree (sequoia), whose figure resembled in all probability its highly-admired cousin, the giant wellingtonia of california. the leafy trees of most frequent occurrence were the cinnamon and an evergreen oak like those now seen in mexico. the evergreen figs, the custard apples, and allies of the cape jasmine, were rarer. the trees were festooned with vines, beside which the prickly rotang palm twined its snake-like form. in the shade of the forest throve numerous ferns, one species of which formed trees of imposing grandeur, and there were masses of under-wood belonging to various species of nyssa, like the tupelos and sour-gums of north america. this is a true picture, based on actual facts, of the vegetation of england in the miocene age. but all the other wonders of the miocene flora are thrown into the shade by the discoveries of plants of this age which have recently been made in greenland, a region now bound up in what we poetically call eternal ice, but which in the miocene was a fair and verdant land, rejoicing in a mild climate and rich vegetation. the beds containing these specimens occur in various places in north greenland; and the principal locality, atane-kerdluk, is in lat. n. and at an elevation of more then a thousand feet above the sea. the plants occur abundantly in sandstone and clay beds, and the manner in which delicate leaves and fruits are preserved shows that they have not been far water-borne, a conclusion which is confirmed by the occurrence of beds of lignite of considerable thickness, and which are evidently peaty accumulations containing trunks of trees. the collections made have enabled heer to catalogue species, all of them of forms proper to temperate, or even warm regions, and mostly american in character. as many as forty-six of the species already referred to as occurring at bovey tracey and oeningen occur also in the greenland beds. among the plants are many species of pines, some of them of large size; and the beeches, oaks, planes, poplars, maples, walnuts, limes, magnolias, and vines are apparently as well represented as in the warm temperate zone of america at the present day. this wonderful flora was not a merely local phenomenon, for similar plants are found in spitzbergen in lat. ° '. it is to be further observed, that while the general characters of these ancient arctic plants imply a large amount of summer heat and light, the evergreens equally imply a mild winter. further, though animal remains are not found with these plants, it is probable that so rich a supply of vegetable food was not unutilised, and that we shall some time find that there was an arctic fauna corresponding to the arctic flora. how such a climate could exist in greenland and spitzbergen is still a mystery. it has, however, been suggested that this effect might result from the concurrence of such astronomical conditions in connection with the eccentricity of the earth's orbit as would give the greatest amount of warmth in the northern hemisphere with such distribution of land and water as would give the least amount of cold northern land and the most favourable arrangement of the warm surface currents of the ocean.[ai] [ai] croll and lyell. before leaving these miocene plants, i must refer to a paragraph which dr. heer has thought it necessary to insert in his memoir on the greenland flora, and which curiously illustrates the feebleness of what with some men passes for science. he says: "in conclusion, i beg to offer a few remarks on the amount of certainty in identification which the determination of fossil plants is able to afford us. we know that the flowers, fruits, and seeds are more important as characteristics then the leaves. there are many genera of which the leaves are variable, and consequently would be likely to lead us astray if we trusted in them alone. however, many characters of the form and venation of leaves are well-known to be characteristic of certain genera, and can therefore afford us characters of great value for their recognition." in a similar apologetic style he proceeds through several sentences to plead the cause of his greenland leaves. that he should have to do so is strange, unless indeed the botany known to those for whom he writes is no more then that which a school-girl learns in her few lessons in dissecting a buttercup or daisy. it is easy for scientific triflers to exhibit collections of plants in which species of different genera and families are so similar in their leaves that a careless observer would mistake one for the other, or to get up composite leaves in part of one species and in part of another, and yet seeming the same, and in this way to underrate the labours of painstaking observers like heer. but it is nevertheless true that in any of these leaves, not only are there good characters by which they can be recognised, but that a single breathing pore, or a single hair, or a few cells, or a bit of epidermis not larger then a pin's head, should enable any one who understands his business to see as great differences as a merely superficial botanist would see between the flower of a ranunculus and that of a strawberry. heer himself, and the same applies to all other competent students of fossil plants, has almost invariably found his determinations from mere fragments of leaves confirmed when more characteristic parts were afterwards discovered. it is high time, in the interests of geology, that botanists should learn that constancy and correlation of parts are laws in the plant as well as in the animal; and this they can learn only by working more diligently with the microscope. i would, however, go further then this, and maintain that, in regard to some of the most important geological conclusions to be derived from fossils, even the leaves of plants are vastly more valuable then the hard parts of animals. for instance, the bones of elephants and rhinoceroses found in greenland would not prove a warm climate; because the creatures might have been protected from cold with hair like that of the musk-sheep, and they might have had facilities for annual migrations like the bisons. the occurrence of bones of reindeer in france does not prove that its climate was like that of lapland; but only that it was wooded, and that the animals could rove at will to the hills and to the coast. but, on the other hand, the remains of an evergreen oak in greenland constitute absolute proof of a warm and equable climate; and the occurrence of leaves of the dwarf birch in france constitutes a proof of a cool climate, worth more then that which can be derived from the bones of millions of reindeer and musk-sheep. still further, in all those greater and more difficult questions of geology which relate to the emergence and submergence of land areas, and to the geographical conditions of past geological periods, the evidence of plants, especially when rooted in place, is of far more value then that of animals, though it has yet been very little used. this digression prepares the way for the question: was the miocene period on the whole a better age of the world then that in which we live? in some respects it was. obviously there was in the northern hemisphere a vast surface of land under a mild and equable climate, and clothed with a rich and varied vegetation. had we lived in the miocene, we might have sat under our vine and fig-tree equally in greenland and spitzbergen and in those more southern climes to which this privilege is now restricted. we might have enjoyed a great variety of rich and nutritive fruits, and, if sufficiently muscular, and able to cope with the gigantic mammals of the period, we might have engaged in either the life of the hunter or that of the agriculturist under advantages which we do not now possess. on the whole, the miocene presents to us in these respects the perfection of the neozoic time, and its culmination in so far as the nobler forms of brute animals and of plants are concerned. had men existed in those days, however, they should have been, in order to suit the conditions surrounding them, a race of giants; and they would probably have felt the want of many of those more modern species belonging to the flora and fauna of europe and western asia on which man has so much depended for his civilization. some reasons have been adduced for the belief that in the miocene and eocene there were intervals of cold climate; but the evidence of this may be merely local and exceptional, and does not interfere with the broad characteristics of the age as sketched above. the warm climate and rich vegetation of the miocene extended far into the pliocene, with characters very similar to those already stated; but as the pliocene age went on, cold and frost settled down upon the northern hemisphere, and a remarkable change took place in its vegetable productions. for example, in the somewhat celebrated "forest bed" of cromer, in norfolk, which is regarded as newer pliocene, we have lost all the foreign and warm-climate plants of the miocene, and find the familiar scotch firs and other plants of the modern british flora. the animals, however, retain their former types; for two species of elephant, a hippopotamus, and a rhinoceros are found in connection with these plants. this is another evidence, in addition to those above referred to, that plants are better thermometers to indicate geological and climatal change then animals. this pliocene refrigeration appears to have gone on increasing into the next or post-pliocene age, and attained its maximum in the glacial period, when, as many geologists think, our continents were, even in the temperate latitudes, covered with a sheet of ice like that which now clothes greenland. then occurred a very general subsidence, in which they were submerged under the waters of a cold icy sea, tenanted by marine animals now belonging to boreal and arctic regions. after this last great plunge-bath they rose to constitute the dry land of man and his contemporaries. let us close this part of the subject with one striking illustration from heer's memoir on bovey tracey. at this place, above the great series of clays and lignites containing the miocene plants already described, is a thick covering of clay, gravel, and stones, evidently of much later date. this also contains some plants; but instead of the figs, and cinnamons, and evergreen oaks, they are the petty dwarf birch of scandinavia and the highland hills, and three willows, one of them the little arctic and alpine creeping willow. thus we have in the south of england a transition in the course of the pliocene period, from a climate much milder then that of modern england to one almost arctic in its character. our next topic for consideration is one of the most vexed questions among geologists, the glacial period which immediately preceded the advent of man. in treating of this it will be safest first to sketch the actual appearances which present themselves, and then to draw such pictures as we can of the conditions which they represent. the most recent and superficial covering of the earth's crust is usually composed of rock material more or less ground up and weathered. this may, with reference to its geological character and origin, be considered as of three kinds. it may be merely the rock weathered and decomposed to a certain extent _in situ_; or it may be alluvial matter carried or deposited by existing streams or tides, or by the rains; or, lastly, it may be material evidencing the operation of causes not now in action. this last constitutes what has been called drift or diluvial detritus, and is that with which we have now to do. such drift, then, is very widely distributed on our continents in the higher latitudes. in the northern hemisphere it extends from the arctic regions to about ° of north latitude in europe, and as low as ° in north america; and it occurs south of similar parallels in the southern hemisphere. farther towards the equator then the latitudes indicated, we do not find the proper drift deposits, but merely weathered rocks or alluvia, or old sea bottoms raised up. this limitation of the drift, at the very outset gives it the character of a deposit in some way connected with the polar cold. besides this, the general transport of stones and other material in the northern regions has been to the south; hence in the northern hemisphere this deposit may be called the _northern_ drift. if now we take a typical locality of this formation, such, for instance, as we may find in scotland, or scandinavia, or canada, we shall find it to consist of three members, as follows:-- . superficial sands or gravels. . stratified clays. . till or boulder clay. this arrangement may locally be more complicated, or it may be deficient in one of its members. the boulder clay may, for example, be underlaid by stratified sand or gravel, or even by peaty deposits; it may be intermixed with layers of clay or sand; the stratified clay or the boulder clay may be absent, or may be uncovered by any upper member. still we may take the typical series as above stated, and inquire as to its characters and teaching. the lower member, or boulder clay, is a very remarkable kind of deposit, consisting of a paste which may graduate from tough clay to loose sand, and which holds large angular and rounded stones or boulders confusedly intermixed; these stones may be either from the rocks found in the immediate vicinity of their present position, or at great distances. this mass is usually destitute of any lamination or subordinate stratification, whence it is often called _unstratified_ drift, and is of very variable thickness, often occurring in very thick beds in valleys, and being comparatively thin or absent on intervening hills. further, if we examine the stones contained in the boulder clay, we shall find that they are often scratched or striated and grooved; and when we remove the clay from the rock surfaces on which it rests, we find these in like manner striated, grooved and polished. these phenomena, viz., of polished and striated rocks and stones, are similar to those produced by those great sliding masses of ice, the glaciers of alpine regions, which in a small way and in narrow and elevated valleys, act on the rocks and stones in this manner, though they cannot form deposits precisely analogous to the boulder clay, owing to the wasting away of much of the finer material by the torrents, and the heaping of the coarser detritus in ridges and piles. further, we have in greenland a continental mass, with all its valleys thus filled with slowly-moving ice, and from this there drift off immense ice-islands, which continue at least the mud-and-stone-depositing process, and possibly also the grinding process, over the sea bottom. so far all geologists are agreed; but here they diverge into two schools. one of these, then of the glacier theorists, holds that the boulder clay is the product of land-ice; and this requires the supposition that at the time when it was deposited the whole of our continents north of ° or ° was in the condition of greenland at present. this is, however, a hypothesis so inconvenient, not to say improbable, that many hesitate to accept it, and prefer to believe that in the so-called glacial period the land was submerged, and that icebergs then as now drifted from the north in obedience to the arctic currents, and produced the effects observed. it would be tedious to go into all the arguments of the advocates of glaciers and icebergs, and i shall not attempt this, more especially as the only way to decide the question is to observe carefully the facts in every particular locality, and inquire as to the conclusions fairly deducible. with the view of aiding such a solution, however, i may state a few general principles applicable to the appearances observed. we may then suppose that boulder clay may be formed in three ways. ( ) it may be deposited on land, as what is called the bottom moraine of a land glacier. ( ) it may be deposited in the sea when such a glacier ends on the coast. ( ) it may be deposited by the melting or grounding on muddy bottoms of the iceberg masses floated off from the end of such a glacier. it is altogether likely, from the observations recently made in greenland, that in that country such a deposit is being formed in all these ways. in like manner, the ancient boulder clay may have been formed in one or more of these ways in any given locality where it occurs, though it may be difficult in many instances to indicate the precise mode. there are, however, certain criteria which may be applied to the determination of its origin, and i may state a few of these, which are the results of my own experience. ( ) where the boulder clay contains marine shells, or rounded stones which if exposed to the air would have been cracked to pieces, decomposed, or oxidized, it must have been formed under water. where the conditions are the reverse of these, it may have been formed on land. ( ) when the striations and transport of materials do not conform to the levels of the country, and take that direction, usually n.e. and s.w., which the arctic current would take if the country were submerged, the probability is that it was deposited in the sea. where, however, the striation and transport take the course of existing valleys, more especially in hilly regions, the contrary may be inferred. ( ) where most of the material, more especially the large stones, has been carried to great distances from its original site, especially over plains or up slopes, it has probably been sea-borne. where it is mostly local, local ice-action may be inferred. other criteria may be stated, but these are sufficient for our present purpose. their application in every special case i do not presume to make; but i am convinced that when applied to those regions in eastern america with which i am familiar, they necessitate the conclusion that in the period of extreme refrigeration, the greater part of the land was under water, and such hills and mountains as remained were little greenlands, covered with ice and sending down glaciers to the sea. in hilly and broken regions, therefore, and especially at considerable elevations, we find indications of _glacier_ action; on the great plains, on the contrary, the indications are those of _marine_ glaciation and transport. this last statement, i believe, applies to the mountains and plains of europe and asia as well as of america. this view requires not only the supposition of great refrigeration, but of a great subsidence of the land in the temperate latitudes, with large residual islands and hills in the arctic regions. that such subsidence actually took place is proved, not only by the frequent occurrence of marine shells in the boulder clay itself, but also by the occurrence of stratified marine clays filled with shells, often of deep-water species, immediately over that deposit. further, the shells, and also occasional land plants found in these beds, indicate a cold climate and much cold fresh water pouring into the sea from melting ice and snow. in canada these marine clays have been traced up to elevations of feet, and in great britain deposits of this kind occur on one of the mountains of wales at the height of feet above the level of the sea. nor is it to be supposed that this level marks the extreme height of the post-pliocene waters, for drift material not explicable by glaciers, and evidences of marine erosion, occur at still higher levels, and it is natural that on high and exposed points fewer remains of fossiliferous beds should be left then in plains and valleys. at the present day the coasts of britain and other parts of western europe enjoy an exceptionally warm temperature, owing to the warm currents of the atlantic being thrown on them, and the warm and moist atlantic air flowing over them, under the influence of the prevailing westerly winds. these advantages are not possessed by the eastern coast of north america, nor by some deep channels in the sea, along which the cold northern currents flow under the warmer water. hence these last-mentioned localities are inhabited by boreal shells much farther south then such species extend on the coasts and banks of great britain. in the glacial period this exceptional advantage was lost, and while the american seas, as judged by their marine animals, were somewhat colder then at present, the british seas were proportionally much more cooled down. no doubt, however, there were warmer and colder areas, determined by depth and prevailing currents, and as these changed their position in elevation and subsidence of the land, alternations and even mixtures of the inhabitants of cold and warm water resulted, which have often been very puzzling to geologists. i have taken the series of drift deposits seen in britain and in canada as typical, and the previous discussion has had reference to them. but it would be unfair not to inform the reader that this succession of deposits after all belongs to the margins of our continents rather then to their great central areas. this is the case at least in north america, where in the region of the great lakes the oldest glaciated surfaces are overlaid by thick beds of stratified clay, without marine fossils, and often without either stones or boulders, though these sometimes occur, especially toward the north. the clay, however, contains drifted fragments of coniferous trees. above this clay are sand and gravel, and the principal deposit of travelled stones and boulders rests on these. i cannot affirm that a similar succession occurs on the great inland plains of europe and asia: but i think it probable that to some extent it does. the explanation of this inland drift by the advocates of a great continental glacier is as follows: ( ) in the pliocene period the continents were higher then at present, and many deep valleys, since filled up, were cut in them. ( ) in the post-pliocene these elevated continents became covered with ice, by the movement of which the valleys were deepened and the surfaces striated. ( ) this ice-period was followed by a depression and submergence, in which the clays were deposited, filling up old channels, and much changing the levels of the land. lastly, as the land rose again from this submergence, sand and gravel were deposited, and boulders scattered over the surface by floating ice. the advocates of floating ice as distinguished from a continental glacier, merely dispense with the latter, and affirm that the striation under the clay, as well as that connected with the later boulders, is the effect of floating bergs. the occurrence of so much drift wood in the clay favours their view, as it is more likely that there would be islands clothed with trees in the sea, then that these should exist immediately after the country had been mantled in ice. the want of marine shells is a difficulty in either view, but may be accounted for by the rapid deposition of the clay and the slow spreading of marine animals over a submerged continent under unfavourable conditions of climate. in any case the reader will please observe that theorists must account for both the interior and marginal forms of these deposits. let us tabulate the facts and the modes of accounting for them. ------------------------------------+------------------------------------ facts observed. | theoretical views. -------------------+----------------+------------------------------------ inland plains. | marginal areas.|glacial theories.| floating ice | | | theories. ===================+================+==================================== terraces. | terraces and | emergence of modern land.[aj] | raised beaches.| -------------------+----------------+------------------------------------ travelled boulders |sand and gravel,| and glaciated |with sea shells | stones and rocks |and boulders. | shallow sea and floating ice. stratified sand | | and gravel. | | -------------------+----------------+------------------------------------ stratified clay |stratified clay | deep sea and floating ice. with drift wood, |with sea shells.+----------------+------------------- and a few stones. |boulder clay |submergence of |much floating ice and boulders. |with or without |the land. great |and local glaciers. striated rocks. |sea shells. |continental |submergence of |striated rocks. |mantle of ice. |pliocene land. -------------------+----------------+----------------+------------------- old channels, |old channels, |erosion by |erosion by indicating a higher|etc., indicating|continental |atmospheric level of the land. |previous dry |glacier. |agencies and |land. | |accumulation of | | |decomposed rock. -------------------+----------------+----------------+------------------- [aj] the phenomena of this period, with reference to rainfall, melting snows, and valley deposits, must be noticed in the next chapter. this table will suffice at least to reduce the great glacier controversy to its narrowest limits, when we have added the one further consideration that glaciers are the parents of icebergs, and that the question is not of one or the other exclusively, but of the relative predominance of the one or the other in certain given times and places. both theories admit a great post-pliocene subsidence. the abettors of glaciers can urge the elevation of the surface, the supposed powers of glaciers as eroding agents, and the transport of boulders. those whose theoretical views lean to floating ice, believe that they can equally account for these phenomena, and can urge in support of their theory the occurrence of drift wood in the inland clay and boulder clay, and of sea-shells in the marginal clay and boulder clay, and the atmospheric decomposition of rock in the pliocene period, as a source of the material of the clays, while to similar causes they can attribute the erosion of the deep valleys piled with the post-pliocene deposits. they can also maintain that the general direction of striation and drift implies the action of sea currents, while they appeal to local glaciers to account for special cases of glaciated rocks at the higher levels. how long our continental plateaus remained under the icy seas of the glacial period we do not know. relatively to human chronology, it was no doubt a long time; but short in comparison with those older subsidences in which the great palæozoic limestones were produced. at length, however, the change came. slowly and gradually, or by intermittent lifts, the land rose: and as it did so, shallow-water sands and gravels were deposited on the surface of the deep-sea clays, and the sides of the hills were cut into inland cliffs and terraces, marking the stages of recession of the waters. at length, when the process was complete, our present continents stood forth in their existing proportions ready for the occupancy of man. the picture which these changes present to the imagination is one of the most extraordinary in all geological history. we have been familiar with the idea of worlds drowned in water, and the primeval incandescent earth shows us the possibility of our globe being melted with fervent heat; but here we have a world apparently frozen out destroyed by cold, or doubly destroyed by ice and water. let us endeavour to realise this revolution, as it may have occurred in any of the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, thickly peopled with the magnificent animals that had come down from the grand old miocene time. gradually the warm and equable temperature gives place to cold winters and chilly wet summers. the more tender animals die out, and the less hardy plants begin to be winter-killed, or to fail to perfect their fruits. as the forests are thus decimated, other and hardier species replace those which disappear. the animals which have had to confine themselves to sheltered spots, or which have perished through cold or want of food, are replaced by others migrating from the mountains, or from colder regions. some, perhaps, in the course of generations, become dwarfed in stature, and covered with more shaggy fur. permanent snow at length appears upon the hill-tops, and glaciers plough their way downward, devastating the forests, encroaching on the fertile plains, and at length reaching the heads of the bays and fiords. while snow and ice are thus encroaching from above, the land is subsiding, and the sea is advancing upon it, while great icebergs drifting on the coasts still further reduce the temperature. torrents and avalanches from the hills carry mud and gravel over the plains. peat bogs accumulate in the hollows. glaciers heap up confused masses of moraine, and the advancing sea piles up stones and shingle to be imbedded in mud on its further advance, while boreal marine animals invade the now submerged plains. at length the ice and water meet everywhere, or leave only a few green strips where hardy arctic plants still survive, and a few well-clad animals manage to protract their existence. perhaps even these are overwhelmed, and the curtain of the glacial winter falls over the fair scenery of the pliocene. in every locality thus invaded by an apparently perpetual winter, some species of laud animals must have perished. others may have migrated to more genial climes, others under depauperated and hardy varietal forms may have continued successfully to struggle for existence. the general result must have been greatly to diminish the nobler forms of life, and to encourage only those fitted for the most rigorous climates and least productive soils. could we have visited the world in this dreary period, and have witnessed the decadence and death of that brilliant and magnificent flora and fauna which we have traced upward from the eocene, we might well have despaired of the earth's destinies, and have fancied it the sport of some malignant demon; or have supposed that in the contest between the powers of destruction and those of renovation the former had finally gained the victory. we must observe, however, that the suffering in such a process is less then we might suppose. so long as animals could exist, they would continue to enjoy life. the conditions unfavourable to them would be equally or more so to their natural enemies. only the last survivors would meet with what might be regarded as a tragical end. as one description of animal became extinct, another was prepared to occupy its room. if elephants and rhinoceroses perished from the land, countless herds of walruses and seals took their places. if gay insects died and disappeared, shell-fishes and sea-stars were their successors. thus in nature there is life even in death, and constant enjoyment even when old systems are passing away. but could we have survived the glacial period, we should have seen a reason for its apparently wholesale destruction. out of that chaos came at length an eden; and just as the permian prepared the way for the mesozoic, so the glaciers and icebergs of the post-pliocene were the ploughshare of god preparing the earth for the time when, with a flora and fauna more beautiful and useful, if less magnificent then that of the tertiary, it became as the garden of the lord, fitted for the reception of his image and likeness, immortal and intelligent man. we need not, however, with one modern school of philosophy, regard man himself as but a descendant of miocene apes, scourged into reason and humanity by the struggle for existence in the glacial period. we may be content to consider him as a son of god, and to study in the succeeding chapters that renewal of the post-pliocene world which preceded and heralded his advent. in the meantime, our illustration,[ak] borrowed in part from the magnificent representation of the post-pliocene fauna of england, by the great restorer of extinct animals, mr. waterhouse hawkins, may serve to give some idea of the grand and massive forms of animal life which, even in the higher latitudes, survived the post-pliocene cold, and only decayed and disappeared under that amelioration of physical conditions which marks the introduction of the human period. [ak] page . chapter xii. close of the post-pliocene, and advent of man. _in_ closing these sketches it may seem unsatisfactory not to link the geological ages with the modern period in which we live; yet, perhaps, nothing is more complicated or encompassed with greater difficulties or uncertainties. the geologist, emerging from the study of the older monuments of the earth's history, and working with the methods of physical science, here meets face to face the archæologist and historian, who have been tracing back in the opposite direction, and with very different appliances, the stream of human history and tradition. in such circumstances conflicts may occur, or at least the two paths of inquiry may refuse to connect themselves without concessions unpleasant to the pursuers of one or both. further, it is just at this meeting-place that the dim candle of traditional lore is almost burnt out in the hand of the antiquary, and that the geologist finds his monumental evidence becoming more scanty and less distinct. we cannot hope as yet to dispel all the shadows that haunt this obscure domain, but can at least point out some of the paths which traverse it. in attempting this, we may first classify the time involved as follows: ( ) the earlier post-pliocene period of geology may be called the _glacial_ era. it is that of a cold climate, accompanied by glaciation and boulder deposits. ( ) the later _post-pliocene_ may be called the post-glacial era. it is that of re-elevation of the continents and restoration of a mild temperature. it connects itself with the pre-historic period of the archæologist, inasmuch as remains of man and his works are apparently included in the same deposits which hold the bones of post-glacial animals. ( ) the _modern_ era is that of secular human history. it may be stated with certainty that the pliocene period of geology affords no trace of human remains or implements; and the same may i think be affirmed of the period of glaciation and subsidence which constitutes the earlier post-pliocene. with the rise of the land out of the glacial sea indications of man are believed to appear, along with remains of several mammalian species now his contemporaries. archæology and geology thus meet somewhere in the pre-historic period of the former, and in the post-glacial of the latter. wherever, therefore, human history extends farthest back, and geological formations of the most modern periods exist and have been explored, we may expect best to define their junctions. unfortunately it happens that our information on these points is still very incomplete and locally limited. in many extensive regions, like america and australia, while the geological record is somewhat complete, the historic record extends back at most a few centuries, and the pre-historic monuments are of uncertain date. in other countries, as in western asia and egypt, where the historic record extends very far back, the geology is less perfectly known. at the present moment, therefore, the main battle-field of these controversies is in western europe, where, though history scarce extends farther back then the time of the roman republic, the geologic record is very complete, and has been explored with some thoroughness. it is obvious, however, that we thus have to face the question at a point where the pre-historic gap is necessarily very wide. taking england as an example, all before the roman invasion is pre-historic, and with regard to this pre-historic period the evidence that we can obtain is chiefly of a geological character. the pre-historic men are essentially fossils. we know of them merely what can be learned from their bones and implements embedded in the soil or in the earth of the caverns in which some of them sheltered themselves. for the origin and date of these deposits the antiquary must go to the geologist, and he imitates the geologist in arranging his human fossils under such names as the "paleolithic," or period of rude stone implements; the "neolithic" or period of polished stone implements; the bronze period, and the iron period; though inasmuch as higher and lower states of the arts seem always to have coexisted, and the time involved is comparatively short, these periods are of far less value then those of geology. in britain the age of iron is in the main historic. that of bronze goes back to the times of early phoenician trade with the south of england. that of stone, while locally extending far into the succeeding ages, reaches back into an unknown antiquity, and is, as we shall see in the sequel, probably divided into two by a great physical change, though not in the abrupt and arbitrary way sometimes assumed by those who base their classification solely on the rude or polished character of stone implements. we must not forget, however, that in western asia the ages of bronze and iron may have begun two thousand years at least earlier then in britain, and that in some parts of america the palaeolithic age of chipped stone implements still continues. we must also bear in mind that when the archæologist appeals to the geologist for aid, he thereby leaves that kind of investigation in which dates are settled by years, for that in which they are marked merely by successive physical and organic changes. turning, then, to our familiar geological methods, and confining ourselves mainly to the northern hemisphere and to western europe, two pictures present themselves to us: (!) the physical changes preceding the advent of man; ( ) the decadence of the land animals of the post-pliocene age, and the appearance of those of the modern. in the last chapter i had to introduce the reader to a great and terrible revolution, whereby the old pliocene continents, with all their wealth of animals and plants, became sealed up in a mantle of greenland ice, or, slowly sinking beneath the level of the sea, were transformed into an ocean-bottom over which icebergs bore their freight of clay and boulders. we also saw that as the post-pliocene age advanced, the latter condition prevailed, until the waters stood more then a thousand feet deep over the plains of europe. in this great glacial submergence, which closed the earlier post-pliocene period, and over vast areas of the northern hemisphere, terminated the existence of many of the noblest forms of life, it is believed that man had no share. we have, at least as yet, no record of his presence. out of these waters the land again rose slowly and intermittently, so that the receding waves worked even out of hard rocks ranges of coast cliff which the further elevation converted into inland terraces, and that the clay and stones deposited by the glacial waters were in many places worked over and rearranged by the tides and waves of the shallowing sea before they were permanently raised up to undergo the action of the rains and streams, while long banks of sand and gravel were stretched across plains and the mouths of valleys, constituting "kames," or "eskers," only to be distinguished from moraines of glaciers by the stratified arrangement of their materials. further, as the land rose, its surface was greatly and rapidly modified by rains and streams. there is the amplest evidence, both in europe and america, that at this time the erosion by these means was enormous in comparison with anything we now experience. the rainfall must have been excessive, the volume of water in the streams very great; and the facilities for cutting channels in the old pliocene valleys, filled to the brim with mud and boulder-clay, were unprecedented. while the area of the land was still limited, much of it would be high and broken, and it would have all the dampness of an insular climate. as it rose in height, plains which had, while under the sea, been loaded with the _débris_ swept from the land, would be raised up to experience river erosion. it was the spring-time of the glacial era, a spring eminent for its melting snows, its rains, and its river floods.[al] to an observer living at this time it would have seemed as if the slow process of moulding the continents was being pushed forward with unexampled rapidity. the valleys were ploughed out and cleansed, the plains levelled and overspread with beds of alluvium, giving new features of beauty and utility to the land, and preparing the way for the life of the modern period, as if to make up for the time which had been lost in the dreary glacial age. it will readily be understood how puzzling these deposits have been to geologists, especially to those who fail to present to their minds the true conditions of the period; and how difficult it is to separate the river alluvia of this age from the deposits in the seas and estuaries, and these again from the older glacial beds. further, in not a few instances the animals of a cold climate must have lived in close proximity to those which belonged to ameliorated conditions, and the fossils of the older post-pliocene must often, in the process of sorting by water, have been mixed with those of the newer. [al] mr. tylor has well designated this period as the pluvial age. _journal of the geological society_, . many years ago the brilliant and penetrating intellect of edward forbes was directed to the question of the maximum extent of the later post-pliocene or post-glacial land; and his investigations into the distribution of the european flora, in connection with the phenomena of submerged terrestrial surfaces, led to the belief that the land had risen until it was both higher and more extensive then at present. at the time of greatest elevation, england was joined to the continent of europe by a level plain, and a similar plain connected ireland with its sister islands. over these plains the plants constituting the "germanic" flora spread themselves into the area of the british islands, and herds of mammoth, rhinoceros, and irish elk wandered and extended their range from east to west. the deductions of forbes have been confirmed and extended by others; and it can scarcely be doubted that in the post-glacial era, the land regained fully the extent which it had possessed in the time of the pliocene. in these circumstances the loftier hills might still reach the limits of perpetual snow, but their glaciers would no longer descend to the sea. what are now the beds of shallow seas would be vast wooded plains, drained by magnificent rivers, whose main courses are now submerged, and only their branches remain as separate and distinct streams, the cold but equable climate of the post-pliocene would now be exchanged for warm summers, alternating with sharp winters, whose severity would be mitigated by the dense forest covering, which would also contribute to the due supply of moisture, preventing the surface from being burnt into arid plains. it seems not improbable that it was when the continents had attained to their greatest extension and when animal and vegetable life had again over-spread the new land to its utmost limits, that man was introduced on the eastern continent, and with him several mammalian species, not known in the pliocene period, and some of which, as the sheep, the goat, the ox, and the dog, have ever since been his companions and humble allies. these, at least in the west of europe, were the "palaeolithic" men, the makers of the oldest flint implements; and armed with these, they had to assert the mastery of man over broader lands then we now possess, and over many species of great animals now extinct. in thus writing, i assume the accuracy of the inferences from the occurrence of worked stones with the bones of post-glacial animals, which must have lived during the condition of our continents above referred to. if these inferences are well founded, not only did man exist at this time, but man not even varietally distinct from modern european races. but if man really appeared in europe in the post-glacial era, he was destined to be exposed to one great natural vicissitude before his permanent establishment in the world. the land had reached its maximum elevation, but its foundations, "standing in the water and out of the water," were not yet securely settled, and it had to take one more plunge-bath before attaining its modern fixity. this seems to have been a comparatively rapid subsidence and re-elevation, leaving but slender traces of its occurrence, but changing to some extent the levels of the continents, and failing to restore them fully to their former elevation, so that large areas of the lower grounds still remained under the sea. if, as the greater number of geologists now believe, man was then on the earth, it is not impossible that this constituted the deluge recorded in that remarkable "log book" of noah preserved to us in genesis, and of which the memory remains in the traditions of most ancient nations. this is at least the geological deluge which separates the post-glacial period from the modern, and the earlier from the later pre-historic period of the archæologists.[am] [am] i have long thought that the narrative in gen. vii. and viii. can be understood only on the supposition that it is a contemporary journal or log of an eye-witness incorporated by the author of genesis in his work. the dates of the rising and fall of the water, the note of soundings over the hill-tops when the maximum was attained, and many other details, as well as the whole tone of the narrative, seem to require this supposition, which also removes all the difficulties of interpretation which have been so much felt. very important questions of time are involved in this idea of post-glacial man, and much will depend, in the solution of these, on the views which we adopt as to the rate of subsidence and elevation of the land. if, with the majority of british geologists, we hold that it is to be measured by those slow movements now in progress, the time required will be long. if, with most continental and some american geologists, we believe in paroxysmal movements of elevation and depression, it may be much reduced. we have seen in the progress of our inquiries that the movements of the continents seem to have occurred with accelerated rapidity in the more modern periods. we have also seen that these movements might depend on the slow contraction of the earth's crust due to cooling, but that the effects of this contraction might manifest themselves only at intervals. we have further seen that the gradual retardation of the rotation of the earth furnishes a cause capable of producing elevation and subsidence of the land, and that this also might be manifested at longer or shorter intervals, according to the strength and resisting power of the crust. under the influence of this retardation, so long as the crust of the earth did not give way, the waters would be driven toward the poles, and the northern land would be submerged; but so soon as the tension became so great as to rupture the solid shell, the equatorial regions would collapse, and the northern land would again be raised. the subsidence would be gradual, the elevation paroxysmal, and perhaps intermittent. let us suppose that this was what occurred in the glacial period, and that the land had attained to its maximum elevation. this might not prove to be permanent; the new balance of the crust might be liable to local or general disturbance in a minor degree, leading to subsidence and partial re-elevation, following the great post-glacial elevation. there is, therefore, nothing unreasonable in that view which makes the subsidence and re-elevation at the close of the post-glacial period somewhat abrupt, at least when compared with some more ancient movements. but what is the evidence of the deposits formed at this period? here we meet with results most diverse and contradictory, but i think there can be little doubt that on this kind of evidence the time required for the post-glacial period has been greatly exaggerated, especially by those geologists who refuse to receive such views as to subsidence and elevation as those above stated. the calculations of long time based on the gravels of the somme, on the cone of the tinière, on the peat bogs of france and denmark, on certain cavern deposits, have all been shown to be more or less at fault; and possibly none of these reach further back then the six or seven thousand years which, according to dr. andrews, have elapsed since the close of the boulder-clay deposits in america.[an] i am aware that such a statement will be regarded with surprise by many in england, where even the popular literature has been penetrated with the idea of a duration of the human period immensely long in comparison with what used to be the popular belief; but i feel convinced that the scientific pendulum must swing backward in this direction nearer to its old position. let us look at a few of the facts. much use has been made of the "cone" or delta of the tinière on the eastern side of the lake of geneva, as an illustration of the duration of the modern period. this little stream has deposited at its mouth a mass of _débris_ carried down from the hills. this being cut through by a railway, is found to contain roman remains to a depth of four feet, bronze implements to a depth of ten feet, stone implements at a depth of nineteen feet. the deposit ceased about three hundred years ago, and calculating to years for the roman period, we should have to , years as the age of the cone. but before the formation of the present cone, another had been formed twelve times as large. thus for the two cones together, a duration of more then , years is claimed. it appears, however, that this calculation has been made irrespective of two essential elements in the question. no allowance has been made for the fact that the inner layers of a cone are necessarily smaller then the outer; nor for the further fact that the older cone belongs to a distinct time (the pluvial age already referred to), when the rainfall was much larger, and the transporting power of the torrent great in proportion. making allowance for these conditions, the age of the newer cone, that holding human remains, falls between and years. the peat bed of abbeville, in the north of france, has grown at the rate of one and a half to two inches in a century. being twenty-six feet in thickness, the time occupied in its growth must have amounted to , years; and yet it is probably newer then some of the gravels on the same river containing flint implements. but the composition of the abbeville peat shows that it's a forest peat, and the erect stems preserved in it prove that in the first instance it must have grown at the rate of about three feet in a century, and after the destruction of the forest its rate of increase down to the present time diminished rapidly almost to nothing. its age is thus reduced to perhaps less then years. in i had an opportunity to examine the now celebrated gravels of st. acheul, on the somme, by some supposed to go back to a very ancient period. with the papers of prestwich and other able observers in my hand, i could conclude merely that the undisturbed gravels were older then the roman period, but how much older only detailed topographical surveys could prove; and that taking into account the probabilities of a different level of the land, a wooded condition of the country, a greater rainfall, and a glacial filling of the somme valley with clay and stones subsequently cut out by running water the gravels could scarcely be older then the abbeville peat. to have published such views in england would have been simply to have delivered myself into the hands of the philistines. i therefore contented myself with recording my opinion in canada. tylor[ao] and andrews[ap] have, however, i think, subsequently shown that my impressions were correct. in like manner, i fail to perceive, and i think all american geologists acquainted with the pre-historic monuments of the western continent must agree with me, any evidence of great antiquity in the caves of belgium and england, the kitchen-middens of denmark, the rock-shelters of france, the lake habitations of switzerland. at the same time, i would disclaim all attempt to resolve their dates into precise terms of years. i may merely add, that the elaborate and careful observations of dr. andrews on the raised beaches of lake michigan, observations of a much more precise character then any which, in so far as i know, have been made of such deposits in europe, enable him to calculate the time which has elapsed since north america rose out of the waters of the glacial period as between and years. this fixes at least the possible duration of the human period in north america, though i believe there are other lines of evidence which, would reduce the residence of man in america to a much shorter time. longer periods have, it is true, been deduced from the delta of the mississippi and the gorge of niagara; but the deposits of the former have been found by hilgard to be in great part marine, and the excavation of the latter began at a period probably long anterior to the advent of man. [an] "transactions, chicago academy," . [ao] "journal of geological society," vol. xxv. [ap] "silliman's journal," . but another question remains. from the similarities existing in the animals and plants of regions in the southern hemisphere now widely separated by the ocean, it has been inferred that post-pliocene land of great extent existed there; and that on this land men may have lived before the continents of the northern hemisphere were ready for them. it has even been supposed that, inasmuch as the flora and fauna of australia have an aspect like that of the eocene tertiary, and very low forms of man exist in that part of the world, these low races are the oldest of all, and may date from tertiary times. positive evidence of this, however, there is none. these races have no monuments; nor, so far as known, have they left their remains in post-pliocene deposits. it depends on the assumptions that the ruder races of men are the oldest; and that man has no greater migratory powers then other animals. the first is probably false, as being contrary to history; and also to the testimony of palaeontology with reference to the laws of creation. the second is certainly false; for we know that man has managed to associate himself with every existing fauna and flora, even in modern times; and that the most modern races have pitched their tents amid tree-ferns and proteaceæ, and have hunted kangaroos and emus. further, when we consider that the productions of the southern hemisphere are not only more antique then those of the northern, but, on the whole, less suited for the comfortable subsistence of man and the animals most useful to him; and that the post-pliocene animals of the southern hemisphere were of similar types with their modern successors, we are the less inclined to believe that these regions would be selected as the cradle of the human race. condensed tabular view of the ages and periods of the neozoic. key to symbols ### recent species of aquatic invertebrates. teleostian fishes and squaloid sharks prevail. --- ages of angiosperms and plants. === "and god said--let the land bring forth herbivorous beasts and carnivorous beasts, after their kinds; and it was so." +++ "and god created man in his own image." time. ages. periods. animals and plants. neozoic or cainozoic. {newer. still future (?) age of + modern {middle. historic. man + {older. pre-historic. + + {n. post-glacial gravels and cave # + { deposits. saxicava sand and # + post- { terraces (america). # + pliocene {m. marine clays. leda clays. erie # - + { clay (america). # - + {o. glacial drift. boulder clay # - + { (america). # - + # - + {n. norwich crag; sicilian and # - { val d'arno beds. # - pliocene {m. ____________ sumter group (america). # - {o. red and coralline crag; sub-appenine # - = { beds. # - = # - = {n. faluns of loraine; upper molasse; # - = { siwalik beds; oeningen plant beds. # - = { york-town beds (america). # - = miocene {m. ____________ # - = {o. upper paris beds; hempstead and bovey # - = { beds; lower molasse. nebraska beds # - = { (west america). # mammals. - = # - = {n. gypseous series, paris. vicksburg # - = { group (america). # = eocene {m. calcaire grossier, bagshot and alum # = { bay beds. jackson group (america). = {o. argile plastique; london clay. = { claiborne group (america). = chapter xiii. close of the post-pliocene, and advent of man. (_continued._) turning from these difficult questions of time, we may now look at the assemblage of land-animals presented by the post-glacial period. here, for the first time in the great series of continental elevations and depressions, we find the newly-emerging land peopled with familiar forms. nearly all the modern european animals have left their bones in the clays, gravels, and cavern deposits which belong to this period; but with them are others either not now found within the limits of temperate europe, or altogether extinct. thus the remarkable fact comes out, that the uprising land was peopled at first with a more abundant fauna then that which it now sustains, and that many species, and among these some of the largest and most powerful, have been weeded out, either before the advent of man or in the changes which immediately succeeded that event. that in the post-glacial period so many noble animal species should have been overthrown in the struggle for existence, without leaving any successors, at least in europe, is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of life on our planet. according to. pictet,[aq] the post-glacial beds of europe afford ninety-eight species of mammals, of which fifty-seven still live there, the remainder being either locally or wholly extinct. according to mr. boyd dawkins,[ar] in great britain about twelve pliocene species survived the glacial period, and reappeared in the british islands in the post-glacial. to these were added forty-one species making in all fifty-three, whose remains are found in the gravels and caves of the latter period. of these, in the modern period twenty-eight, or rather more then one-half, survive, fourteen are wholly extinct, and eleven are locally extinct. [aq] palæontologie. [ar] "journal of geological society," and palæontographical society's publications. [illustration: britain in the post-pliocene age. musk-sheep, hippopotamus, machairodus, mammoth, wooly rhinoceros, long-fronted ox, and irish stag. the animals are taken from mr. waterhouse hawkins's picture, "struggles of life among british animals of the antediluvian times." london: . the landscape is that of the later part of the cold post-pliocene period.] among the extinct beasts, were some of very remarkable character. there were two or more species of elephant, which seem in this age to have overspread, in vast herds, all the plains of northern europe and asia; and one of which we know, from the perfect specimen found embedded in the frozen soil of siberia, lived till a very modern period; and was clothed with long hair and fur, fitting it for a cold climate. there were also three or four species of rhinoceros, one of which at least (the _r. tichorhinus_) was clad with wool like the great siberian mammoth. with these was a huge hippopotamus (_h. major_), whose head-quarters would, however, seem to have been farther south then england, or which perhaps inhabited chiefly the swamps along the large rivers running through areas now under the sea. the occurrence of such an animal shows an abundant vegetation, and a climate so mild, that the rivers were not covered with heavy ice in winter; for the supposition that this old hippopotamus was a migratory animal seems very unlikely. another animal of this time, was the magnificent deer, known as the irish elk; and which perhaps had its principal abode on the great plain which is now the irish sea. the terrible machairodus, or cymetar-toothed tiger, was continued from the pliocene; and in addition to species of bear still living, there was a species of gigantic size, probably now extinct, the cave bear. evidences are accumulating, to show that all or nearly all these survived until the human period. if we turn now to those animals which are only locally extinct, we meet with some strange, and at first sight puzzling anomalies. some of these are creatures now limited to climates much colder then that of britain. others now belong to warmer climates. conspicuous among the former are the musk-sheep, the elk, the reindeer, the glutton, and the lemming. among the latter, we see the panther, the lion, and the cape hyena. that animals now so widely separated as the musk-sheep of arctic america and the hyena of south africa, could ever have inhabited the same forests, seems a dream of the wildest fancy. yet it is not difficult to find a probable solution of the mystery. in north america, at the present day, the puma, or american lion, comes up to the same latitudes with the caribou, or reindeer, and moose; and in asia, the tiger extends its migrations into the abodes of boreal animals in the plains of siberia. even in europe, within the historic period, the reindeer inhabited the forests of germany; and the lion extended its range nearly as far northward. the explanation lies in the co-existence of a densely wooded country with a temperate climate; the forests affording to southern animals shelter from the cold or winter; and equally to the northern animals protection from the heat of summer. hence our wonder at this association of animals of diverse habitudes as to climate, is merely a prejudice arising from the present exceptional condition of europe. still it is possible that changes unfavourable to some of these animals, were in progress before the arrival of man, with his clearings and forest fires and other disturbing agencies. even in america, the megalonyx, or gigantic sloth, the mammoth, the mastodon, the fossil horse, and many other creatures, disappeared before the modern period; and on both continents the great post-glacial subsidence or deluge may have swept away some of the species. such a supposition seems necessary to account for the phenomena of the gravel and cave deposits of england, and cope has recently suggested it in explanation of similar storehouses of fossil animals in america.[as] [as] proceedings of the american philosophical society, april . among the many pictures which this fertile subject calls up, perhaps none is more curious then that presented by the post-glacial cavern deposits. we may close our survey of this period with the exploration of one of these strange repositories; and may select kent's hole at torquay, so carefully excavated and illumined with the magnesium light of scientific inquiry by mr. pengelly and a committee of the british association. the somewhat extensive and ramifying cavern of kent's hole is an irregular excavation, evidently due partly to fissures in limestone rock, and partly to the erosive action of water enlarging such fissures into chambers and galleries. at what time it was originally cut we do not know, but it must have existed as a cavern at the close of the pliocene or beginning of the post-pliocene period, since which time it has been receiving a series of deposits which have quite filled up some of its smaller branches. first and lowest, according to mr. pengelly, is a "breccia" or mass of broken and rounded stones, with hardened red clay filling the interstices. most of the stones are of the rock which forms the roof and walls of the cave, but many, especially the rounded ones, are from more distant parts of the surrounding country. in this mass, the depth of which is unknown, are numerous bones, all of one kind of animal, the cave bear, a creature which seems to have lived in western europe from the close of the pliocene down to the modern period. it must have been one of the earliest and most permanent tenants of kent's hole at a time when its lower chambers were still filled with water. next above the breccia is a floor of "stalagmite" or stony carbonate of lime, deposited from the drippings of the roof, and in some places three feet thick. this also contains bones of the cave bear, deposited when there was less access of water to the cavern. mr. pengelly infers the existence of man at this time from a single flint flake and a single flint chip found in these beds; but mere flakes and chips of flint are too often natural to warrant such a conclusion. after the old stalagmite floor above mentioned was formed, the cave again received deposits of muddy water and stones; but now a change occurs in the remains embedded. this stony clay, or "cave earth" has yielded an immense quantity of teeth and bones, including those of the elephant, rhinoceros, horse, hyena, cave bear, reindeer, and irish elk. with these were found weapons of chipped flint, and harpoons, needles, and bodkins of bone, precisely similar to those of the north american indians and other rude races. the "cave earth" is four feet or more in thickness, it is not stratified, and contains many fallen fragments of rock, rounded stones, and broken pieces of stalagmite. it also has patches of the excrement of hyenas, which the explorers suppose to indicate the temporary residence of these animals; and in one spot, near the top, is a limited layer of burnt wood, with remains which indicate the cooking and eating of repasts of animal food by man. it is clear that when this bed was formed the cavern was liable to be inundated with muddy water, carrying stones and other heavy objects, and breaking up in places the old stalagmite floor. one of the most puzzling features, especially to those who take an exclusively uniformitarian view, is, that the entrance of water-borne mud and stones implies a level of the bottom of the water in the neighbouring valleys of about feet above its present height. the cave earth is covered by a second crust of stalagmite, less dense and thick then that below, and containing only a few bones, which are of the same general character with those below, but include a fragment of a human jaw with teeth. evidently, when this stalagmite was formed, the influx of water-borne materials had ceased, or nearly so; but whether the animals previously occupying the country still continued in it, or only accidental bones, etc., were introduced into the cave or lifted from the bed below, does not appear. the next bed marks a new change. it is a layer of black mould from three to ten inches thick. its microscopic structure does not seem to have been examined; but it is probably a forest soil, introduced by growth, by water, by wind, and by ingress of animals, at a time when the cave was nearly in its present state, and the surrounding country densely wooded. this bed contains bones of animals, all of them modern, and works of art ranging from the old british times before the roman invasion up to the porter-bottles and dropped halfpence of modern visitors. lastly, in and upon the black mould are many fallen blocks from the roof of the cave. there can be no doubt that this cave and the neighbouring one of brixham have done very much to impress the minds of british geologists with ideas of the great antiquity of man, and they have, more then any other post-glacial monuments, shown the persistence of some animals now extinct up to the human age. of precise data for determining time, they have, however, given nothing. the only measures which seed to have been applied, namely, the rate of growth of stalagmite and the rate of erosion of the neighbouring valleys, are, from the very sequence of the deposits, obviously worthless; and the only apparently available constant measure, namely, the fall of blocks from the roof, seems not yet to have been applied. we are therefore quite uncertain as to the number of centuries involved in the filling of this cave, and must remain so until a surer system of calculation is adopted. we may, however, attempt to sketch the series of events which it indicates. the animals found in kent's hole are all "post-glacial." they therefore inhabited the country after it rose from the great glacial submergence. perhaps the first colonists of the coasts of devonshire in this period were the cave bears, migrating on floating ice, and subsisting, like the arctic bear, and the black bears of anticosti, on fish, and on the garbage cast up by the sea. they found kent's hole a sea-side cavern, with perhaps some of its galleries still full of water, and filling with, breccia, with which the bones of dead bears became mixed. as the land rose, these creatures for the most part betook themselves to lower levels, and in process of time the cavern stood upon a hill-side, perhaps several hundreds of feet above the sea; and the mountain torrents, their beds not yet emptied of glacial detritus, washed into it stones and mud and carcases of animals of many species which had now swarmed across the plains elevated out of the sea, and multiplied in the land. this was the time of the cave earth; and before its deposit was completed, though how long before, a confused and often-disturbed bed of this kind cannot tell, man himself seems to have been added to the inhabitants of the british land. in pursuit of game he sometimes ascended the valleys beyond the cavern, or even penetrated into its outer chambers; or perhaps there were even in those days rude and savage hill-men, inhabiting the forests and warring with the more cultivated denizens of plains below, which are now deep under the waters. their weapons, lost in hunting, or buried in the flesh of wounded animals which crept to the streams to assuage their thirst, are those found in the cave earth. the absence of human bones may merely show that the mighty hunters of those days were too hardy, athletic, and intelligent, often to perish from accidental causes, and that they did not use this cavern for a place of burial. but the land again subsided. the valley of that now nameless river, of which the rhine the themes, and the severn may have alike been tributaries, disappeared under the sea; and some tribe, driven from the lower lands, took refuge in this cave, now again near the encroaching waves, and left there the remains of their last repasts ere they were driven farther inland or engulfed in the waters. for a time the cavern may have been wholly submerged, and the charcoal of the extinguished fires became covered with its thin coating of clay. but ere long it re-emerged to form part of an island, long barren and desolate; and the valleys having been cut deeper by the receding waters, it no longer received muddy deposits, and the crust formed by drippings from its roof contained only bones and pebbles washed by rains or occasional land floods from its own clay deposits. finally, the modern forests overspread the land, and were tenanted by the modern animals. man returned to use the cavern again as a place of refuge or habitation, and to leave there the relics contained in the black earth. this seems at present the only intelligible history of this curious cave and others resembling it; though, when we consider the imperfection of the results obtained even by a large amount of labour, and the difficult and confused character of the deposits in this and similar caves, too much value should not be attached to such histories, which may at any time be contradicted or modified by new facts or different explanations of those already known. the time involved depends very much, as already stated, on the question whether we regard the post-glacial subsidence and re-elevation as somewhat sudden, or as occupying long ages at the slow rate at which some parts of our continents are now rising or sinking.[at] [at] another element in this is also the question raised by dawkins, geikie, and others as to subdivisions of the post-glacial period and intermissions of the glacial cold. after careful consideration of these views, however, i cannot consider them as of much importance. such are the glimpses, obscure though stimulating to the imagination, which geology can give of the circumstances attending the appearance of man in western europe. how far we are from being able to account for his origin, or to give its circumstances and relative dates for the whole world, the reader will readily understand. still it is something to know that there is an intelligible meeting-place of the later geological ages and the age of man, and that it is one inviting to many and hopeful researches. it is curious also to find that the few monuments disinterred by geology, the antediluvian record of holy scripture, and the golden age of heathen tradition, seem alike to point to similar physical conditions, and to that simple state of the arts of life in which "gold and wampum and flint stones"[au] constituted the chief material treasures of the earliest tribes of men. they also point to the immeasurable elevation, then as now, of man over his brute rivals for the dominion of the earth. to the naturalist this subject opens up most inviting yet most difficult paths of research, to be entered on with caution and reverence, rather then in the bold and dashing spirit of many modern attempts. the christian, on his part, may feel satisfied that the scattered monumental relics of the caves and gravels will tell no story very different from that which he has long believed on other evidence, nor anything inconsistent with those views of man's heavenly origin and destiny which have been the most precious inheritance of the greatest and best minds of every age, from that early pre-historic period when men, "palaeolithic" men, no doubt, began to "invoke the name of jehovah," the coming saviour, down to those times when life and immortality are brought to light, for all who will see, by the saviour already come. [au] so i read the "gold, bedolah, and shoham" of the description of eden in genesis ii.--the oldest literary record of the stone age. in completing this series of pictures, i wish emphatically to insist on the imperfection of the sketches which i have been able to present, and which are less, in comparison with the grand march of the creative work, even as now imperfectly known to science, then the roughest pencilling of a child when compared with a finished picture. if they have any popular value, it will be in presenting such a broad general view of a great subject as may induce further study to fill up the details. if they have any scientific value, it will be in removing the minds of british students for a little from the too exclusive study of their own limited marginal area, which has been to them too much the "celestial empire" around which all other countries must be arranged, and in divesting the subject of the special colouring given to it by certain prominent cliques and parties. geology as a science is at present in a peculiar and somewhat exceptional state. under the influence of a few men of commanding genius belonging to the generation now passing away, it has made so gigantic conquests that its armies have broken up into bands of specialists, little better then scientific banditti, liable to be beaten in detail, and prone to commit outrages on common sense and good taste, which bring their otherwise good cause into disrepute. the leaders of these bands are, many of them, good soldiers, but few of them fitted to be general officers, and none of them able to reunite our scattered detachments. we need larger minds, of broader culture and wider sympathies, to organise and rule the lands which we have subdued, and to lead on to further conquests. in the present state of natural science in britain, this evil is perhaps to be remedied only by providing a wider and deeper culture for our young men. few of our present workers have enjoyed that thorough training in mental as well as physical science, which is necessary to enable men even of great powers to take large and lofty views of the scheme of nature. hence we often find men who are fair workers in limited departments, reasoning most illogically, taking narrow and local views, elevating the exception into the rule, led away by baseless metaphysical subtleties, quarrelling with men who look at their specialties from a different point of view, and even striving and plotting for the advancement of their own hobbies. such defects certainly mar much of the scientific work now being done. in the more advanced walks of scientific research, they are to some extent neutralised by that free discussion which true science always fosters; though even here they sometimes vexatiously arrest the progress of truth, or open floodgates of error which it may require much labour to close. but in public lectures and popular publications they run riot, and are stimulated by the mistaken opposition of narrow-minded good men, by the love of the new and sensational, and by the rivalry of men struggling for place and position. to launch a clever and startling fallacy which will float for a week and stir up a hard fight, seems almost as great a triumph as the discovery of an important fact or law; and the honest student is distracted with the multitude of doctrines, and hustled aside by the crowd of ambitious groundlings. the only remedy in the case is a higher and more general scientific education; and yet i do not wonder that many good men object to this, simply because of the difficulty of finding honest and competent teachers, themselves well grounded in their subjects, and free from that too common insanity of specialists and half-educated men, which impels them to run amuck at everything that does not depend on their own methods of research. this is a difficulty which can be met in our time only by the general good sense and right feeling of the community taking a firm hold of the matter, and insisting on the organization and extension of the higher scientific education, as well as that of a more elementary character, under the management of able and sane men. yet even if not so counteracted, present follies will pass away, and a new and better state of natural science will arise in the future, by its own internal development. science cannot long successfully isolate itself from god. its life lies in the fact that it is the exponent of the plans and works of the great creative will. it must, in spite of itself, serve his purposes, by dispelling blighting ignorance and superstition, by lighting the way to successive triumphs of human skill over the powers of nature, and by guarding men from the evils that flow from infringement of natural laws. and it cannot fail, as it approaches nearer to the boundaries of that which may be known by finite minds, to be humbled by the contemplation of the infinite, and to recognise therein that intelligence of which the human mind is but the image and shadow. it may be that theologians also are needed who shall be fit to take the place of moses to our generation, in teaching it again the very elements of natural theology; but let them not look upon science as a cold and godless demon, holding forth to the world a poisoned cup cunningly compounded of truth and falsehood; but rather as the natural ally and associate of the gospel of salvation. the matter is so put in one of those visions which close the canon of revelation, when the prophet sees a mighty angel having the "everlasting gospel to preach;" but he begins his proclamation by calling on men to "worship him _that made heaven and earth and the sea and the fountains of waters_." men must know god as the creator even before they seek him as a benefactor and redeemer. thus religion must go hand in hand with all true and honest science. in this way only may we look forward to a time when a more exact and large-minded science shall be in perfect accord with a more pure and spiritual christianity, when the natural and the spiritual shall be seen to be the necessary complements of each other, and when we shall hear no more of reconciliations between science and theology, because there will be no quarrels to reconcile. already, even in the present chaos of scientific and religious opinion, indications can be seen by the observant, that the divine spirit of order is breathing on the mass, and will evolve from it new and beautiful worlds of mental and spiritual existence. chapter xiv. primitive man. considered with reference to modern theories as to his origin. the geological record, as we have been reading it, introduces us to primitive man, but gives us no distinct information as to his origin. tradition and revelation have, it is true, their solutions of the mystery, but there are, and always have been, many who will not take these on trust, but must grope for themselves with the taper of science or philosophy into the dark caverns whence issue the springs of humanity. in former times it was philosophic speculation alone which lent its dim and uncertain light to these bold inquirers; but in our day the new and startling discoveries in physics, chemistry, and biology have flashed up with an unexpected brilliancy, and have at least served to dazzle the eyes and encourage the hopes of the curious, and to lead to explorations more bold and systematic then any previously undertaken. thus has been born amongst us, or rather renewed, for it is a very old thing, that evolutionist philosophy, which has been well characterised as the "baldest of all the philosophies which have sprung up in our world," and which solves the question of human origin by the assumption that human nature exists potentially in mere inorganic matter, and that a chain of spontaneous derivation connects incandescent molecules or star-dust with the world, and with man himself. this evolutionist doctrine is itself one of the strangest phenomena of humanity. it existed, and most naturally, in the oldest philosophy and poetry, in connection with the crudest and most uncritical, attempts of the human mind to grasp the system of nature; but that in our day a system destitute of any shadow of proof, and supported merely by vague analogies and figures of speech, and by the arbitrary and artificial coherence of its own parts, should be accepted as a philosophy, and should find able adherents to string upon its thread of hypotheses our vast and weighty stores of knowledge, is surpassingly strange. it seems to indicate that the accumulated facts of our age have gone altogether beyond its capacity for generalisation; and but for the vigour which one sees everywhere, it might be taken as an indication that the human mind has fallen into a state of senility, and in its dotage mistakes for science the imaginations which were the dreams of its youth. in many respects these speculations are important and worthy of the attention of thinking men. they seek to revolutionise the religious beliefs of the world, and if accepted would destroy most of the existing theology and philosophy. they indicate tendencies among scientific thinkers, which, though probably temporary, must, before they disappear, descend to lower strata, and reproduce themselves in grosser forms, and with most serious effects on the whole structure of society. with one class of minds they constitute a sort of religion, which so far satisfies the craving for truths higher then those which relate to immediate wants and pleasures. with another and perhaps larger class, they are accepted as affording a welcome deliverance from all scruples of conscience and fears of a hereafter. in the domain of science evolutionism has like tendencies. it reduces the position of man, who becomes a descendant of inferior animals, and a mere term in a series whose end is unknown. it removes from the study of nature the ideas of final cause and purpose; and the evolutionist, instead of regarding the world as a work of consummate plan, skill, and adjustment, approaches nature as he would a chaos of fallen rocks, which may present forms of castles and grotesque profiles of men and animals, but they are all fortuitous and without significance. it obliterates the fine perception of differences from the mind of the naturalist, and resolves all the complicated relations of living things into some simple idea of descent with modification. it thus destroys the possibility of a philosophical classification, reducing all things to a mere series, and leads to a rapid decay in systematic zoology and botany, which is already very manifest among the disciples of spencer and darwin in england. the effect of this will be, if it proceeds further, in a great degree to destroy the educational value and popular interest attaching to these sciences, and to throw them down at the feet of a system of debased metaphysics. as redeeming features in all this, are the careful study of varietal forms, and the inquiries as to the limits of species, which have sprung from these discussions, and the harvest of which will be reaped by the true naturalists of the future. thus these theories as to the origin of men and animals and plants are full of present significance, and may be studied with profit by all; and in no part of their applications more usefully then in that which relates to man. let us then inquire,-- . what is implied in the idea of evolution as applied to man? . what is implied in the idea of creation? . how these several views accord with what we actually know as the result of scientific investigation? the first and second of these questions may well occupy the whole of this chapter, and we shall be able merely to glance at their leading aspects. in doing so, it may be well first to place before us in general terms the several alternatives which evolutionists offer, as to the mode in which the honour of an origin from apes or ape-like animals can be granted to us, along with the opposite view as to the independent origin of man which have been maintained either on scientific or scriptural grounds. all the evolutionist theories of the origin of man depend primarily on the possibility of his having been produced from some of the animals more closely allied to him, by the causes now in operation which lead to varietal forms, or by similar causes which have been in operation; and some attach more and others less weight to certain of these causes, or gratuitously suppose others not actually known. of such causes of change some are internal and others external to the organism. with respect to the former, one school assumes an innate tendency in every species to change in the course of time.[av] another believes in exceptional births, either in the course of ordinary generation or by the mode of parthenogenesis.[aw] another refers to the known facts of reproductive accelleration or retardation observed in some humble creatures.[ax] new forms arising in any of these ways or fortuitously, may, it is supposed, be perpetuated and increased and further improved by favouring external circumstances and the effort of the organism to avail itself of these,[ay] or by the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest.[az] [av] parsons, owen. [aw] mivart, ferris. [ax] hyatt and cope. [ay] lamarck, etc. [az] darwin, etc. on the other hand, those who believe in the independent origin of man admit the above causes as adequate only to produce mere varieties, liable to return into the original stock. they may either hold that man has appeared as a product of special and miraculous creation, or that he has been created mediately by the operation of forces also concerned in the production of other animals, but the precise nature of which is still unknown to us; or lastly, they may hold what seems to be the view favoured by the book of genesis, that his bodily form is a product of mediate creation and his spiritual nature a direct emanation from his creator. the discussion of all these rival theories would occupy volumes, and to follow them into details would require investigations which have already bewildered many minds of some scientific culture. further, it is the belief of the writer that this plunging into multitudes of details has been fruitful of error, and that it will be a better course to endeavour to reach the root of the matter by looking at the foundations of the general doctrine of evolution itself, and then contrasting it with its rival. taking, then, this broad view of the subject, two great leading alternatives are presented to us. either man is an independent product of the will of a higher intelligence, acting directly or through the laws and materials of his own institution and production, or he has been produced by an unconscious evolution from lower things. it is true that many evolutionists, either unwilling to offend, or not perceiving the logical consequences of their own hypothesis, endeavour to steer a middle course, and to maintain that the creator has proceeded by way of evolution. but the bare, hard logic of spencer, the greatest english authority on evolution, leaves no place for this compromise, and shows that the theory, carried out to its legitimate consequences, excludes the knowledge of a creator and the possibility of his work. we have, therefore, to choose between evolution and creation; bearing in mind, however, that there may be a place in nature for evolution, properly limited, as well as for other things, and that the idea of creation by no means excludes law and second causes. limiting ourselves in the first place to theories of evolution, and to these as explaining the origin of species of living beings, and especially of man, we naturally first inquire as to the basis on which they are founded. now no one pretends that they rest on facts actually observed, for no one has ever observed the production of even one species. nor do they even rest, like the deductions of theoretical geology, on the extension into past time of causes of change now seen to be in action. their probability depends entirely on their capacity to account hypothetically for certain relations of living creatures to each other, and to the world without; and the strongest point of the arguments of their advocates is the accumulation of cases of such relations supposed to be accounted for. such being the kind of argument with which we have to deal, we may first inquire what we are required to believe as conditions of the action of evolution, and secondly, to what extent it actually does explain the phenomena. in the first place, as evolutionists, we are required to assume certain forces, or materials, or both, with which evolution shall begin. darwin, in his origin of species, went so far as to assume the existence of a few of the simpler types of animals; but this view, of course, was only a temporary resting-place for his theory. others assume a primitive protoplasm, or physical basis of life, and arbitrarily assigning to this substance properties now divided between organised and unorganised, and between dead and living matter, find no difficulty in deducing all plants and animals from it. still, even this cannot have been the ultimate material. it must have been evolved from something. we are thus brought back to certain molecules of star-dust, or certain conflicting forces, which must have had self-existence, and must have potentially included all subsequent creatures. otherwise, if with spencer we hold that god is "unknowable" and creation "unthinkable," we are left suspended on nothing over a bottomless void, and must adopt as the initial proposition of our philosophy, that all things were made out of nothing, and by nothing; unless we prefer to doubt whether anything exists, and to push the doctrine of relativity to the unscientific extreme of believing that we can study the relations of things non-existent or unknown. so we must allow the evolutionist some small capital to start with; observing, however, that self-existent matter in a state of endless evolution is something of which we cannot possibly have any definite conception. being granted thus much, the evolutionist next proceeds to demand that we shall also believe in the indefinite variability of material things, and shall set aside all idea that there is any difference in kind between the different substances which we know. they must all be mutually convertible, or at least derivable from some primitive material. it is true that this is contrary to experience. the chemist holds that matter is of different kinds, that one element cannot be converted into another; and he would probably smile if told that, even in the lapse of enormous periods of time, limestone could be evolved out of silica. he may think that this is very different from the idea that a snail can be evolved from an oyster, or a bird from a reptile. but the zoologist will inform him that species of animals are only variable within certain limits, and are not transmutable, in so far as experience and experiment are concerned. they have their allotropic forms, but cannot be changed into one another. but if we grant this second demand, the evolutionist has a third in store for us. we must also admit that by some inevitable necessity the changes of things must in the main take place in one direction, from the more simple to the more complex, from the lower to the higher. at first sight this seems not only to follow from the previous assumptions, but to accord with observation. do not all living things rise from a simpler to a more complex state? has not the history of the earth displayed a gradually increasing elevation and complexity? but, on the other hand, the complex organism becoming mature, resolves itself again into the simple germ, and finally is dissolved into its constituent elements. the complex returns into the simple, and what we see is not an evolution, but a revolution. in like manner, in geological time, the tendency seems to be ever to disintegration and decay. this we see everywhere, and find that elevation occurs only by the introduction of new species in a way which is not obvious, and which may rather imply the intervention of a cause from without; so that here also we are required to admit as a general principle what is contrary to experience. if, however, we grant the evolutionist these postulates, we must next allow him to take the facts of botany and zoology out of their ordinary connection, and thread them like a string of beads, as herbert spencer has done in his "biology," on the threefold cord thus fashioned. this done, we next find, as might have been expected, certain gaps or breaks which require to be cunningly filled with artificial material, in order to give an appearance of continuity to the whole. the first of these gaps which we notice is that between dead and living matter. it is easy to fill this with such a term as protoplasm, which includes matter both dead and living, and so to ignore this distinction; but practically we do not yet know as a possible thing the elevation of matter, without the agency of a previous living organism, from that plane in which it is subject merely to physical force, and is unorganised, to that where it becomes organised, and lives. under that strange hypothesis of the origin of life from meteors, with which sir william thomson closed his address at a late meeting of the british association, there was concealed a cutting sarcasm which the evolutionists felt. it reminded them that the men who evolve all things from physical forces do not yet know how these forces can produce the phenomena of life even in its humblest forms. it is true that the scientific world has been again and again startled by the announcement of the production of some of the lowest forms of life, either from dead organic matter, or from merely mineral substances; but in every case heretofore the effort has proved as vain as the analogies attempted to be set up between the formation of crystals and that of organized tissues are fallacious. a second gap is that which separates vegetable and animal life. these are necessarily the converse of each other, the one deoxidizes and accumulates, the other oxidizes and expends. only in reproduction or decay does the plant simulate the action of the animal, and the animal never in its simplest forms assumes the functions of the plant. those obscure cases in the humbler spheres of animal and vegetable life which have been supposed to show a union of the two kingdoms, disappear on investigation. this gap can, i believe, be filled up only by an appeal to our ignorance. there may be, or may have been, some simple creature unknown to us, on the extreme verge of the plant kingdom, that was capable of passing the limit and becoming an animal. but no proof of this exists. it is true that the primitive germs of many kinds of humble plants and animals are so much alike, that much confusion has arisen in tracing their development. it is also true that some of these creatures can subsist under very dissimilar conditions, and in very diverse states, and that under the specious name of biology,[ba] we sometimes find a mass of these confusions, inaccurate observations and varietal differences made to do duty for scientific facts. but all this does not invalidate the grand primary distinction between the animal and the plant, which should be thoroughly taught and illustrated to all young naturalists, as one of the best antidotes to the fallacies of the evolutionist school. [ba] it is doubtful whether men who deny the existence of vital force have a right to call their science "biology," any more then atheists have to call their doctrine "theology;" and it is certain that the assumption of a science of biology as distinct from phytology and zoology, or including both, is of the nature of a "pious fraud" on the part of the more enlightened evolutionists. the objections stated in the text, to what have been called archebiosis and heterogenesis seem perfectly applicable, in so far as i can judge from a friendly review by wallace, to the mass of heterogeneous material accumulated by dr. bastian in his recent volumes. the conclusions of this writer, would also, if established, involve evolution in a fatal _embarras des richesses_, by the hourly production during all geological time, of millions of new forms all capable of indefinite development. a third is that between any species of animal or plant and any other species. it was this gap, and this only, which darwin undertook to fill up by his great work on the origin of species, but, notwithstanding the immense amount of material thus expended, it yawns as wide as ever, since it must be admitted that no case has been ascertained in which an individual of one species has transgressed the limits between it and other species. however extensive the varieties produced by artificial breeding, the essential characters of the species remain, and even its minor characters may be reproduced, while the barriers established in nature between species by the laws of their reproduction, seem to be absolute. with regard to species, however, it must be observed that naturalists are not agreed as to what constitutes a species. many so-called species are probably races, or varieties, and one benefit of these inquiries has been to direct attention to the proper discrimination of species from varieties among animals and plants. the loose discrimination of species, and the tendency to multiply names, have done much to promote evolutionist views; but the researches of the evolutionists themselves have shown that we must abandon transmutation of true species as a thing of the present; and if we imagine it to have occurred, must refer it to the past. another gap is that between the nature of the animal and the self-conscious, reasoning, moral nature of man. we not only have no proof that any animal can, by any force in itself, or by any merely physical influences from without, rise to such a condition; but the thing is in the highest degree improbable. it is easy to affirm, with the grosser materialists, that thought is a secretion of brain, as bile is of the liver; but a moment's thought shows that no real analogy obtains between the cases. we may vaguely suppose, with darwin, that the continual exercise of such powers as animals possess, may have developed those of man. but our experience of animals shows that their intelligence differs essentially from that of man, being a closed circle ever returning into itself, while that of man is progressive, inventive, and accumulative, and can no more be correlated with that of the animal then the vital phenomena of the animal with those of the plant. nor can the gap between the higher religious and moral sentiments of man, and the instinctive affections of the brutes, be filled up with that miserable ape imagined by lubbock, which, crossed in love, or pining with cold and hunger, conceived, for the first time in its poor addled pate, "the dread of evil to come," and so became the father of theology. this conception, which darwin gravely adopts, would be most ludicrous, but for the frightful picture which it gives of the aspect in which religion appears to the mind of the evolutionist. the reader will now readily perceive that the simplicity and completeness of the evolutionist theory entirely disappear when we consider the unproved assumptions on which it is based, and its failure to connect with each other some of the most important facts in nature: that, in short, it is not in any true sense a philosophy, but merely an arbitrary arrangement of facts in accordance with a number of unproved hypotheses. such philosophies, "falsely so called," have existed ever since man began to reason on nature, and this last of them is one of the weakest and most pernicious of the whole. let the reader take up either of darwin's great books, or spencer's "biology," and merely ask himself as he reads each paragraph, "what is assumed here and what is proved?" and he will find the whole fabric melt away like a vision. he will find, however, one difference between these writers. darwin always states facts carefully and accurately, and when he comes to a difficulty tries to meet it fairly. spencer often exaggerates or extenuates with reference to his facts, and uses the arts of the dialectician where argument fails. many naturalists who should know better are puzzled with the great array of facts presented by evolutionists; and while their better judgment causes them to doubt as to the possibility of the structures which they study being produced by such blind and material processes, are forced to admit that there must surely be something in a theory so confidently asserted, supported by so great names, and by such an imposing array of relations which it can explain. they would be relieved from their weak concessions were they to study carefully a few of the instances adduced, and to consider how easy it is by a little ingenuity to group undoubted facts around a false theory. i could wish to present here illustrations of this, which abound in every part of the works i have referred to, but space will not permit. one or two must suffice. the first may be taken from one of the strong points often dwelt on by spencer in his "biology."[bb] [bb] "principles of biology," § . "but the experiences which most clearly illustrate to us the process of general evolution are our experiences of special evolution, repeated in every plant and animal. each organism exhibits, within a short space of time, a series of changes which, when supposed to occupy a period indefinitely great and to go on in various ways instead of one, may give us a tolerably clear conception of organic evolution in general. in an individual development we have compressed into a comparatively infinitesimal space a series of metamorphoses equally vast with those which the hypothesis of evolution assumes to have taken place during those unmeasurable epochs that the earth's crust tells us of. a tree differs from a seed immeasurably in every respect--in bulk, in structure, in colour, in form, in specific gravity, in chemical composition: differs so greatly that no visible resemblance of any kind can be pointed out between them. yet is the one changed in the course of a few years into the other; changed so gradually that at no moment can it be said, 'now the seed ceases to be and the tree exists.' what can be more widely contrasted then a newly-born child and the small gelatinous spherule constituting the human ovum? the infant is so complex in structure that a cyclopædia is needed to describe its constituent parts. the germinal vesicle is so simple that it may be defined in a line.... if a single cell under appropriate conditions becomes a man in the space of a few years, there can surely be no difficulty in understanding how, under appropriate conditions, a cell may in the course of untold millions of years give origin to the human race." "it is true that many minds are so unfurnished with those experiences of nature, out of which this conception is built, that they find difficulty in forming it.... to such the hypothesis that by any series of changes a protozoan should ever give origin to a mammal seems grotesque--as grotesque as did galileo's assertion of the earth's movement seem to the aristoteleans; or as grotesque as the assertion of the earth's sphericity seems now to the new zealanders." i quote the above as a specimen of evolutionist reasoning from the hand of a master, and as referring to one of the corner-stones of this strange philosophy. i may remark with respect to it, in the first place, that it assumes those "conditions" of evolution to which i have already referred. in the second place, it is full of inaccurate statements of fact, all in a direction tending to favour the hypothesis. for example, a tree does not differ "immeasurably" from a seed, especially if the seed is of the same species of tree, for the principal parts of the tree and its principal chemical constituents already exist and can be detected in the seed, and unless it were so, the development of the tree from the seed could not take place. besides, the seed itself is not a thing self-existent or fortuitous. the production of a seed without a previous tree of the same kind is quite as difficult to suppose as the production of a tree without a previous seed containing its living embryo. in the third place, the whole argument is one of analogy. the germ becomes a mature animal, passing through many intermediate stages, therefore the animal may have descended from some creature which when mature was as simple as the germ. the value of such an analogy depends altogether on the similarity of the "conditions" which, in such a case, are really the efficient causes at work. the germ of a mammal becomes developed by the nourishment supplied from the system of a parent, which itself produced the germ, and into whose likeness the young animal is destined to grow. these are the "appropriate conditions" of its development. but when our author assumes from this other "appropriate conditions," by which an organism, which on the hypothesis is not a germ but a mature animal, shall be developed into the likeness, of something different from its parent, he oversteps the bounds of legitimate analogy. further, the reproduction of the animal, as observed, is a closed series, beginning at the embryo and returning thither again; the evolution attempted to be established is a progressive series going on from one stage to another. a reproductive circle once established obeys certain definite laws, but its origin, or how it can leave its orbit and revolve in some other, we cannot explain without the introduction of some new efficient cause. the one term of the analogy is a revolution, and the other is an evolution. the revolution within the circle of the reproduction of the species gives no evidence that at some point the body will fly off at a tangent, and does not even inform us whether it is making progress in space. even if it is so making progress, its orbit of revolution may remain the same. but it may be said the reproduction of the species is not in a circle but in a spiral. within the limit of experience it is not so, since, however it may undulate, it always returns into itself. but supposing it to be a spiral, it may ascend or descend, or expand and contract; but this does not connect it with other similar spirals, the separate origin of which is to be separately accounted for. i have quoted the latter part of the passage because it is characteristic of evolutionists to decry the intelligence of those who differ from them. now it is fair to admit that it requires some intelligence and some knowledge of nature to produce or even to understand such analogies as those of mr. spencer and his followers, but it is no less true that a deeper insight into the study of nature may not only enable us to understand these analogies, but to detect their fallacies. i am sorry to say, however, that at present the hypothesis of evolution is giving so strong a colouring to much of popular and even academic teaching, more especially in the easy and flippant conversion of the facts of embryology into instances of evolution on the plan of the above extract, that the spencerians may not long have to complain of want of faith and appreciation on the part of the improved apes whom they are kind enough to instruct as to their lowly origin. the mention of "appropriate conditions" in the above extract reminds me of another fatal objection to evolution which its advocates continually overlook. an animal or plant advancing from maturity to the adult state is in every stage of its progress a complete and symmetrical organism, correlated in all its parts and adapted to surrounding conditions. suppose it to become modified in any way, to ever so small an extent, the whole of these relations are disturbed. if the modification is internal and spontaneous, there is no guarantee that it will suit the vastly numerous external agencies to which the creature is subjected. if it is produced by agencies from without, there is no guarantee that it will accord with the internal relations of the parts modified. the probabilities are incalculably great against the occurrence of many such disturbances without the breaking up altogether of the nice adjustment of parts and conditions. this is no doubt one reason of the extinction of so many species in geological time, and also of the strong tendency of every species to spring back to its normal condition when in any way artificially caused to vary. it is also connected with the otherwise mysterious law of the constant transmission of all the characters of the parent. spencer and darwin occasionally see this difficulty, though they habitually neglect it in their reasonings. spencer even tries to turn one part of it to account as follows:-- "suppose the head of a mammal to become very much more weighty--what must be the indirect results? the muscles of the neck are put to greater exertions; and the vertebræ have to bear additional tensions and pressures caused both by the increased weight of the head and the stronger contraction of muscles that support and move the head." he goes on to say that the processes of the vertebrae will have augmented strains put upon them, the thoracic region and fore limbs will have to be enlarged, and even the hind limbs may require modification to facilitate locomotion. he concludes: "any one who compares the outline of the bison with that of its congener, the ox, will clearly see how profoundly a heavier head affects the entire osseous and muscular system." we need not stop to mention the usual inaccuracies as to facts in this paragraph, as, for example, the support of the head being attributed to muscles alone, without reference to the strong elastic ligament of the neck. we may first notice the assumption that an animal can acquire a head "very much more weighty" then that which it had before, a very improbable supposition, whether as a monstrous birth dr as an effect of external conditions after birth. but suppose this to have occurred, and what is even less likely, that the very much heavier head is an advantage in some way, what guarantee can evolution give us that the number of other modifications required would take place simultaneously with this acquisition! it would be easy to show that this would depend on the concurrence of hundreds of other conditions within and without the animal, all of which must co-operate to produce the desired effect, if indeed they could produce this effect even by their conjoint action, a power which the writer, it will be observed, quietly assumes, as well as the probability of the initial change in the head. finally, the naivete with which it is assumed that the bison and the ox are examples of such an evolution, would be refreshing in these artificial days, if instances of it did not occur in almost every page of the writings of evolutionists. it would only weary the reader to follow evolution any further into details, especially as my object in this chapter is to show that generally, and as a theory of nature and of man, it has no good foundation; but we should not leave the subject without noting precisely the derivation of man according to this theory; and for this purpose i may quote darwin's summary of his conclusions on the subject.[bc] [bc] "descent of man," part ii., ch. . "man," says mr. darwin, "is descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the old world. this creature, if its whole structure had been examined by a naturalist, would have been classed amongst the quadrumana, as surely as would the common, and still more ancient, progenitor of the old and new world monkeys. the quadrumana and all the higher mammals are probably derived from an ancient marsupial animal; and this, through a long line of diversified forms, either from some reptile-like or some amphibian-like creature, and this again from some fish-like animal. in the dim obscurity of the past we can see that the early progenitor of all the vertebrata must have been an aquatic animal, provided with branchiæ, with the two sexes united in the same individual, and with the most important organs of the body (such as the brain and heart) imperfectly developed. this animal seems to have been more like the larvæ of our existing marine ascidians then any other form known." the author of this passage, in condescension to our weakness of faith, takes us no further back then to an ascidian, or "sea-squirt," the resemblance, however, of which to a vertebrate animal is merely analogical, and, though a very curious case of analogy, altogether temporary and belonging to the young state of the creature, without affecting its adult state or its real affinities with other mollusks. in order, however, to get the ascidian itself, he must assume all the "conditions" already referred to in the previous part of this article, and fill most of the gaps. he has, however, in the "origin of species" and "descent of man," attempted merely to fill one of the breaks in the evolutionary series, that between distinct species, leaving us to receive all the rest on mere faith. even in respect to the question of species, in all the long chain between the ascidian and the man, he has not certainly established one link; and in the very last change, that from the ape-like ancestor, he equally fails to satisfy us as to matters so trivial as the loss of the hair, which, on the hypothesis, clothed the pre-human back, and on matters so weighty as the dawn of human reason and conscience. we thus see that evolution as an hypothesis has no basis in experience or in scientific fact, and that its imagined series of transmutations has breaks which cannot be filled. we have now to consider how it stands with the belief that man has been created by a higher power. against this supposition the evolutionists try to create a prejudice in two ways. first, they maintain with herbert spencer that the hypothesis of creation is inconceivable, or, as they say, "unthinkable;" an assertion which, when examined, proves to mean only that we do not know perfectly the details of such an operation, an objection equally fatal to the origin either of matter or life, on the hypothesis of evolution. secondly, they always refer to creation as if it must be a special miracle, in the sense of a contravention of or departure from ordinary natural laws; but this is an assumption utterly without proof, since creation may be as much according to law as evolution, though in either case the precise laws involved may be very imperfectly known. how absurd, they say, to imagine an animal created at once, fully formed, by a special miracle, instead of supposing it to be slowly elaborated through, countless ages of evolution. to darwin the doctrine of creation is but "a curious illustration of the blindness of preconceived opinion." "these authors," he says, "seem no more startled at a miraculous act of creation then at an ordinary birth; but do they really believe that at innumerable periods in the earth's history, certain elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues?" darwin, with all his philosophic fairness, sometimes becomes almost spencerian in his looseness of expression; and in the above extract, the terms "miraculous," "innumerable," "elemental atoms," "suddenly," and "flash," all express ideas in no respect necessary to the work of creation. those who have no faith in evolution as a cause of the production of species, may well ask in return how the evolutionist can prove that creation must be instantaneous, that it must follow no law, that it must produce an animal fully formed, that it must be miraculous. in short, it is a portion of the policy of evolutionists to endeavour to tie down their opponents to a purely gratuitous and ignorant view of creation, and then to attack them in that position. what, then, is the actual statement of the theory of creation as it may be held by a modern man of science? simply this; that all things have been produced by the supreme creative will, acting either directly or through the agency of the forces and materials of his own production. this theory does not necessarily affirm that creation is miraculous, in the sense of being contrary to or subversive of law; law and order are as applicable to creation as to any other process. it does not contradict the idea of successive creations. there is no necessity that the process should be instantaneous and without progression. it does not imply that all kinds of creation are alike. there may be higher and lower kinds. it does not exclude the idea of similarity or dissimilarity of plan and function as to the products of creation. distinct products of creation may be either similar to each other in different degrees, or dissimilar. it does not even exclude evolution or derivation to a certain extent: anything once created may, if sufficiently flexible and elastic, be evolved or involved in various ways. indeed, creation and derivation may, rightly understood, be complementary to each other. created things, unless absolutely unchangeable, must be more or less modified by influences from within and from without, and derivation or evolution may account for certain subordinate changes of things already made. man, for example, may be a product of creation, yet his creation may have been in perfect harmony with those laws of procedure which the creator has set for his own operations. he may have been preceded by other creations of things more or less similar or dissimilar. he may have been created by the same processes with some or all of these, or by different means. his body may have been created in one way, his soul in another. he may, nay, in all probability would be, part of a plan of which some parts would approach very near to him in structure or functions. after his creation, spontaneous culture and outward circumstances may have moulded him into varieties, and given him many different kinds of speech and of habits. these points are so obvious to common sense that it would be quite unnecessary to insist on them, were they not habitually overlooked or misstated by evolutionists. the creation hypothesis is also free from some of the difficulties of evolution. it avoids the absurdity of an eternal progression from the less to the more complex. it provides in will, the only source of power actually known to us by ordinary experience, an intelligible origin of nature. it does not require us to contradict experience by supposing that there are no differences of kind or essence in things. it does not require us to assume, contrary to experience, an invariable tendency to differentiate and improve. it does not exact the bridging over of all gaps which may be found between the several grades of beings which exist or have existed. why, then, are so many men of science disposed to ignore altogether this view of the matter? mainly, i believe, because, from the training of many of them, they are absolutely ignorant of the subject, and from their habits of thought have come to regard physical force and the laws regulating it as the one power in nature, and to relegate all spiritual powers or forces, or, as they have been taught to regard them, "supernatural" things, to the domain of the "unknowable." perhaps some portion of the difficulty may be got over by abandoning altogether the word "supernatural," which has been much misused, and by holding nature to represent the whole cosmos, and to include both the _physical_ and the _spiritual_, both of them in the fullest sense subject to law, but each to the law of its own special nature. i have read somewhere a story of some ignorant orientals who were induced to keep a steam-engine supplied with water by the fiction that it contained a terrible _djin_, or demon, who, if allowed to become thirsty, would break out and destroy them all. had they been enabled to discard this superstition, and to understand the force of steam, we can readily imagine that they would now suppose they knew the whole truth, and might believe that any one who taught them that the engine was a product of intelligent design, was only taking them back to the old doctrine of the thirsty demon of the boiler. this is, i think, at present, the mental condition of many scientists with reference to creation. here we come to the first demand which the doctrine of creation makes on us by way of premises. in order that there may be creation there must be a primary self-existent spirit, whose will is supreme. the evolutionist cannot refuse to admit this on as good ground as that on which we hesitate to receive the postulates of his faith. it is no real objection to say that a god can be known to us only partially, and, with reference to his real essence, not at all; since, even if we admit this, it is no more then can be said of matter and force. i am not about here to repeat any of the ordinary arguments for the existence of a spiritual first cause, and creator of all things, but it may be proper to show that this assumption is not inconsistent with experience, or with the facts and principles of modern science. the statement which i would make on this point shall be in the words of a very old writer, not so well known as he should be to many who talk volubly enough about antagonisms between science and christianity: "that which is known of god is manifest in them (in men), for god manifested it unto them. for since the creation of the world his invisible things, even his eternal power and divinity are plainly seen, being perceived by means of things that are made."[bd] the statement here is very precise. certain things relating to god are manifest within men's minds, and are proved by the evidence of his works; these properties of god thus manifested being specially his power or control of all forces, and his divinity or possession of a nature higher then ours. the argument of the writer is that all heathens know this; and, as a matter of fact, i believe it must be admitted even by those most sceptical on such points, that some notion of a divinity has been derived from nature by men of all nations and tribes, if we except, perhaps, a few enlightened positivists of this nineteenth century whom excess of light has made blind. "if the light that is in man be darkness, how great is that darkness." but then this notion of a god is a very old and primitive one, and spencer takes care to inform us that "first thoughts are either wholly out of harmony with things, or in very incomplete harmony with them," and consequently that old beliefs and generally diffused notions are presumably wrong. [bd] paul's epistle to the romans, chap i. is it true, however, that the modern knowledge of nature tends to rob it of a spiritual first cause? one can conceive such a tendency, if all our advances in knowledge had tended more and more to identify force with matter in its grosser forms, and to remove more and more from our mental view those powers which are not material; but the very reverse of this is the case. modern discovery has tended more and more to attach importance to certain universally diffused media which do not seem to be subject to the laws of ordinary matter, and to prove at once the protean character and indestructibility of forces, the aggregate of which, as acting in the universe, gives us our nearest approach to the conception of physical omnipotence. this is what so many of our evolutionists mean when they indignantly disclaim materialism. they know that there is a boundless energy beyond mere matter, and of which matter seems the sport and toy. could they conceive of this energy as the expression of a personal will, they would become theists. man himself presents a microcosm of matter and force, raised to a higher plane then that of the merely chemical and physical. in him we find not merely that brain and nerve force which is common to him and lower animals, and which exhibits one of the most marvellous energies in nature, but we have the higher force of will and intellect, enabling him to read the secrets of nature, to seize and combine and utilize its laws like a god, and like a god to attain to the higher discernment of good and evil. nay, more, this power which resides within man rules with omnipotent energy the material organism, driving its nerve forces until cells and fibres are worn out and destroyed, taxing muscles and tendons till they break, impelling its slave the body even to that which will bring injury and death itself. surely, what we thus see in man must be the image and likeness of the great spirit. we can escape from this conclusion only by one or other of two assumptions, either of which is rather to be called a play upon words then a scientific theory. we may, with a certain class of physicists and physiologists, confine our attention wholly to the fire and the steam, and overlook the engineer. we may assume that with protoplasm and animal electricity, for example, we can dispense with life, and not only with life but with spirit also. yet he who regards vitality as an unmeaning word; and yet speaks of "living protoplasm," and "dead protoplasm," and affirms that between these two states, so different in their phenomena, no chemical or physical difference exists, is surely either laughing at us, or committing himself to what the duke of argyll calls a philosophical bull; and he who shows us that electrical discharges are concerned in muscular contraction, has just as much proved that there is no need of life or spirit, as the electrician who has explained the mysteries of the telegraph has shown that there can be no need of an operator. or we may, turning to the opposite extreme, trust to the metaphysical fallacy of those who affirm that neither matter, nor force, nor spirit, need concern them, for that all are merely states of consciousness in ourselves. but what of the conscious self this self which thinks, and which is in relation with surroundings which it did not create, and which presumably did not create it? and what is the unknown third term which must have been the means of setting up these relations? here again our blind guides involve us in an absolute self-contradiction. thus we are thrown back on the grand old truth that man, heathen and savage, or christian and scientific, opens his eyes on nature and reads therein both the physical and the spiritual, and in connection with both of these the power and divinity of an almighty creator. he may at first have many wrong views both of god and of his works, but as he penetrates further into the laws of matter and mind, he attains more just conceptions of their relations to the great centre and source of all, and instead of being able to dispense with creation, he hopes to be able at length to understand its laws and methods. if unhappily he abandons this high ambition, and contents himself with mere matter and physical force, he cannot rise to the highest development either of science or philosophy. it may, however, be said that evolution may admit all this, and still be held as a scientific doctrine in connection with a modified belief in creation. the work of actual creation may have been limited to a few elementary types, and evolution may have done the rest. evolutionists may still be theists. we have already seen that the doctrine, as carried out to its logical consequences, excludes creation and theism. it may, however, be shown that even in its more modified forms, and when held by men who maintain that they are not atheists, it is practically atheistic, because excluding the idea of plan and design, and resolving all things into the action of unintelligent forces. it is necessary to observe this, because it is the half-way evolutionism which professes to have a creator somewhere behind it, that is most popular; though it is, if possible, more unphilosophical then that which professes to set out from absolute and eternal nonentity, or from self-existent star-dust containing all the possibilities of the universe. absolute atheists recognise in darwinism, for example, a philosophy which reduces all things to a "gradual summation of innumerable minute and accidental material operations," and in this they are more logical then those who seek to reconcile evolution with design. huxley, in his "lay sermons," referring to paley's argument for design founded on the structure of a watch, says that if the watch could be conceived to be a product of a less perfect structure improved by natural selection, it would then appear to be the "result of a method of trial and error worked by unintelligent agents, as likely as of the direct application of the means appropriate to that end, by an intelligent agent." this is a bold and true assertion of the actual relation of even this modified evolution to rational and practical theism, which requires not merely this god "afar off," who has set the stone of nature rolling and then turned his back upon it, but a present god, whose will is the law of nature, now as in times past. the evolutionist is really in a position of absolute antagonism to the idea of creation, even when held with all due allowance for the variations of created things within certain limits. perhaps paley's old illustration of the watch, as applied by huxley, may serve to show this as well as any other. if the imperfect watch, useless as a time-keeper, is the work of the contriver, and the perfection of it is the result of unintelligent agents working fortuitously, then it is clear that creation and design have a small and evanescent share in the construction of the fabric of nature. but is it really so? can we attribute the perfection of the watch to "accidental material operations" any more then the first effort to produce such an instrument? paley himself long ago met this view of the case, but his argument may be extended by the admissions and pleas of the evolutionists themselves. for example, the watch is altogether a mechanical thing, and this fact by no means implies that it could not be made by an intelligent and spiritual designer, yet this assumption that physical laws exclude creation and design turns up in almost every page of the evolutionists. paley has well shown that if the watch contained within itself machinery for making other watches, this would not militate against his argument. it would be so if it could be proved that a piece of metal had spontaneously produced an imperfect watch, and this a more perfect one, and so on; but this is precisely what evolutionists still require to prove with respect both to the watch and to man. on the other hand it is no argument for the evolution of the watch that there may be different kinds of watches, some more and others less perfect, and that ruder forms may have preceded the more perfect. this is perfectly compatible with creation and design. evolutionists, however, generally fail to make this distinction. nor would it be any proof of the evolution of the watch to find that, as spencer would say, it was in perfect harmony with its environment, as, for instance, that it kept time with the revolution of the earth, and contained contrivances to regulate its motion under different temperatures, unless it could be shown that the earth's motion and the changes of temperature had been efficient causes of the motion and the adjustments of the watch; otherwise the argument would look altogether in the direction of design. nor would it be fair to shut up the argument of design to the idea that the watch must have suddenly flashed into existence fully formed and in motion. it would be quite as much a creation if slowly and laboriously made by the hand of the artificer, or if more rapidly struck off by machinery; and if the latter, it would not follow that the machine which produced the watch was at all like the watch itself. it might have been something very different. finally, when spencer tries to cut at the root of the whole of this argument, by affirming that man has no more right to reason from himself with regard to his maker then a watch would have to reason from its own mechanical structure and affirm the like of its maker, he signally fails. if the watch had such power of reasoning, it would be more then mechanical, and would be intelligent like its maker; and in any case, if thus reasoning it came to the conclusion that it was a result of "accidental material operations," it would be altogether mistaken. nor would it be nearer the truth if it held that it was a product of spontaneous evolution from an imperfect and comparatively useless watch that had been made millions of years before. we have taken this illustration of the watch merely as given to us by huxley, and without in the least seeking to overlook the distinction between a dead machine and a living organism; but the argument for creation and design is quite as strong in the case of the latter, so long as it cannot be proved by actual facts to be a product of derivation from a distinct species. this has not been proved either in the care of man or any other species; and so long as it has not, the theory of creation and design is infinitely more rational and scientific then that of evolution in any of its forms. but all this does not relieve us from the question, how can species be created?--the same question put to paul by the sceptics of the first century with reference to the resurrection--"how are the dead raised, and with what bodies do they come?" i do not wish to evade this question, whether applied to man or to a microscopic animalcule, and i would answer it with the following statements:-- . the advocate of creation is in this matter in no worse position then the evolutionist. this we have already shown, and i may refer here to the fact that darwin himself assumes at least one primitive form of animal and plant life, and he is confessedly just as little able to imagine this one act of creation as any other that may be demanded of him. . we are not bound to believe that all groups of individual animals, which naturalists may call species, have been separate products of creation. man himself has by some naturalists been divided into several species; but we may well be content to believe the creation of one primitive form, and the production of existing races by variation. every zoologist and botanist who has studied any group of animals or plants with care, knows that there are numerous related forms passing into each other, which some naturalists might consider to be distinct species, but which it is certainly not necessary to regard as distinct products of creation. every species is more or less variable, and this variability may be developed by different causes. individuals exposed to unfavourable conditions will be stunted and depauperated; those in more favourable circumstances may be improved and enlarged. important changes may thus take place without transgressing the limits of the species, or preventing a return to its typical forms; and the practice of confounding these more limited changes with the wider structural and physiological differences which separate true species is much to be deprecated. animals which pass through metamorphoses, or which, are developed through the instrumentality of intermediate forms or "nurses"[be] are not only liable to be separated by mistake into distinct species, but they may, tinder certain circumstances, attain to a premature maturity, or may be fixed for a time or permanently in an immature condition. further, species, like individuals, probably have their infancy, maturity, and decay in geological time, and may present differences in these several stages. it is the remainder of true specific types left after all these sources of error are removed, that creation has to account for; and to arrive at this remainder, and to ascertain its nature and amount, will require a vast expenditure of skilful and conscientious labour. [be] mr. mungo ponton, in his book "the beginning," has based a theory of derivation on this peculiarity. . since animals and plants have been introduced upon our earth in long succession throughout geologic time, and this in a somewhat regular manner, we have a right to assume that their introduction has been in accordance with a law or plan of creation, and that this may have included the co-operation of many efficient causes, and may have differed in its application to different cases. this is a very old doctrine of theology, for it appears in the early chapters of genesis. there the first aquatic animals, and man, are said to have been "created;" plants are said to have been "brought forth by the land;" the mammalia are said to have been "made." in the more detailed account of the introduction of man in the second chapter of the same book, he is said to have been "formed of the dust of the ground;" and in regard to his higher spiritual life, to have had this "breathed into" him by god. these are very simple expressions, but they are very precise and definite in the original, and they imply a diversity in the creative work. further, this is in accordance with the analogy of modern science. how diverse are the modes of production and development of animals and plants, though all under one general law; and is it not likely that the modes of their first introduction on the earth were equally diverse? . our knowledge of the conditions of the origination of species, is so imperfect that we may possibly appear for some time to recede from, rather then to approach to, a solution of the question. in the infancy of chemistry, it was thought that chemical elements could be transmuted into each other. the progress of knowledge removed this explanation of their origin, and has as yet failed to substitute any other in its place. it may be the same with organic species. the attempt to account for them by derivation may prove fallacious, yet it may be some time before we turn the corner, should this be possible, and enter the path which actually leads up to their origin. lastly, in these circumstances our wisest course is to take individual species, and to inquire as to their history in time, and the probable conditions of their introduction. such investigations are now being made by many quiet workers, whose labours are comparatively little known, and many of whom are scarcely aware of the importance of what they are doing toward a knowledge of, at least, the conditions of creation, which is perhaps all that we can at present hope to reach. in the next chapter we shall try to sum up what is known as to man himself, in the conditions of his first appearance on our earth, as made known to us by scientific investigation, and explained on the theory of creation as opposed to evolution. chapter xv. primitive man. considered with reference to modern theories as to his origin (continued). in the previous chapter we have seen that, on general grounds, evolution as applied to man is untenable; and that the theory of creation is more rational and less liable to objection. we may now consider how the geological and zoological conditions of man's advent on the earth accord with evolution; and i think we shall find, as might be expected, that they oppose great if not fatal difficulties to this hypothesis. one of the first and most important facts with reference to the appearance of man, is that he is a very recent animal, dating no farther back in geological time then the post-glacial period, at the close of the tertiary and beginning of the modern era of geology. further, inasmuch as the oldest known remains of man occur along with those of animals which still exist, and the majority of which are probably not of older date, there is but slender probability that any much older human remains will ever be found. now this has a bearing on the question of the derivation of man, which, though it has not altogether escaped the attention of the evolutionists, has not met with sufficient consideration. perhaps the oldest; known human skull is that which has been termed the "engis" skull, from the cave of engis, in belgium. with reference to this skull, professor huxley has candidly admitted that it may have belonged to an individual of one of the existing faces of men. i have a cast of it on the same shelf with the skulls of some algonquin indians, from the aboriginal hochelaga, which preceded montreal; and any one acquainted with cranial characters would readily admit that the ancient belgian may very well have been an american indian; while on the other hand his head is not very dissimilar from that of some modern european races. this belgian man is believed to have lived before the mammoth and the cave bear had passed away, yet he does not belong to an extinct species or even variety of man. further, as stated in a previous chapter, pictet catalogues ninety-eight species of mammals which inhabited europe in the post-glacial period. of these fifty-seven still exist unchanged, and the remainder have disappeared. not one can be shown to have been modified into a new form, though some of them have been obliged, by changes of temperature and other conditions, to remove into distant and now widely separated regions. further, it would seem that all the existing european mammals extended back in geological time at least as far as man, so that since the post-glacial period no new species have been introduced in any way. here we have a series of facts of the most profound significance. fifty-seven parallel lines of descent nave in europe run on along with man, from the post-glacial period, without change or material modification of any kind. some of them extend without change even farther back. thus man and his companion-mammals present a series of lines, not converging as if they pointed to some common progenitor, but strictly parallel to each other. in other words, if they are derived forms, their point of derivation from a common type is pushed back infinitely in geological time. the absolute duration of the human species does not affect this argument. if man has existed only six or seven thousand years, still at the beginning of his existence he was as distinct from lower animals as he is now, and shows no signs of gradation into other forms. if he has really endured since the great glacial period, and is to be regarded as a species of a hundred thousand years' continuance, still the fact is the same, and is, if possible, less favourable to derivation. similar facts meet us in other directions. i have for many years occupied a little of my leisure in collecting the numerous species of molluscs and other marine animals existing in a sub-fossil state in the post-pliocene clays of canada, and comparing them with their modern successors. i do not know how long these animals have lived. some of them certainly go far back into the tertiary; and recent computations would place even the glacial age at a distance from us of more then a thousand centuries. yet after carefully studying about two hundred species, and, of some of these, many hundreds of specimens, i have arrived at the conclusion that they are absolutely unchanged. some of them, it is true, are variable shells, presenting as many and great varieties as the human race itself; yet i find that in the post-pliocene even the varieties of each species were the same as now, though the great changes of temperature and elevation which have occurred, have removed many of them to distant places, and have made them become locally extinct in regions over which they once spread. here again we have an absolute refusal, on the part of all these animals, to admit that they are derived, or have tended to sport into new species. this is also, it is to be observed, altogether independent of that imperfection of the geological record of which so much is made; since we have abundance of these shells in the post-pliocene beds, and in the modern seas, and no one doubts their continued descent. to what does this point? evidently to the conclusion that all these species show no indication of derivation, or tendency to improve, but move back in parallel lines to some unknown creative origin. if it be objected to this conclusion that absence of derivation in the post-pliocene and modern does not prove that it may not previously have occurred, the answer is, that if the evolutionist admits that for a very long period (and this the only one of which we have any certain knowledge, and the only one which concerns man) derivation has been suspended, he in effect abandons his position. it may, however, be objected that what i have above affirmed of species may be affirmed of varieties, which are admitted to be derived. for example, it may be said that the negro variety of man has existed unchanged from the earliest historic times. it is carious that those who so often urge this argument as an evidence of the great antiquity of man, and the slow development of races, do not see that it proves too much. if the negro has been the same identical negro as far back as we can trace him, then his origin must have been independent, and of the nature of a creation, or else his duration as a negro must have been indefinite. what it does prove is a fact equally obvious from the study of post-pliocene molluscs and other fossils, namely, that new species tend rapidly to vary to the utmost extent of their possible limits, and then to remain stationary for an indefinite time. whether this results from an innate yet limited power of expansion in the species, or from the relations between it and external influences, it is a fact inconsistent with the gradual evolution of new species. hence we conclude that the recent origin of man, as revealed by geology, is, in connection with the above facts, an absolute bar to the doctrine of derivation. a second datum furnished to this discussion by geology and zoology is the negative one that no link of connection is known between man and any preceding animal. if we gather his bones and his implements from the ancient gravel-beds and cave-earths, we do not find them associated with any creature near of kin, nor do we find any such creature in those rich tertiary beds which have yielded so great harvests of mammalian bones. in the modern world we find nothing nearer to him then such anthropoid apes as the orangs and gorillas. but the apes, however nearly allied, cannot be the ancestors of man. if at all related to him by descent, they are his brethren or cousins, not his parents; for they must, on the evolutionist hypothesis, be themselves the terminal ends of distinct lines of derivation from previous forms. this difficulty is not removed by an appeal to the imperfection of the geological record. so many animals contemporary with man are known, both at the beginning of his geological history and in the present world, that it would be more then marvellous if no very near relative had ere this time been discovered at one extreme or the other, or at some portion of the intervening ages. further, all the animals contemporary with man in the post-glacial period, so far as is known, are in the same case. discoveries of this kind may, however, still be made, and we may give the evolutionist the benefit of the possibility. we may affirm, however, that in order to gain a substratum of fact for his doctrine, he must find somewhere in the later tertiary period animals much nearer to man then are the present anthropoid apes. this demand i make advisedly--first, because the animals in question must precede man in geological time; and secondly, because the apes, even if they preceded man, instead of being contemporary with him, are not near enough to fulfil the required conditions. what is the actual fact with regard to these animals, so confidently affirmed to resemble some not very remote ancestors of ours? zoologically they are not varieties of the same species with man they are not species of the same genus, nor do they belong to genera of the same family, or even to families of the same order. these animals are at least ordinally distinct from us in those grades of groups in which naturalists arrange animals. i am well aware that an attempt has been made to group man, apes, and lemurs in one order of "primates," and thus to reduce their difference to the grade of the family; but as pat by its latest and perhaps most able advocate, the attempt is a decided failure. one has only to read the concluding chapter of huxley's new book on the anatomy of the vertebrates to be persuaded of this, more especially if we can take into consideration, in addition to the many differences indicated, others which exist but are not mentioned by the author. ordinal distinctions among animals are mainly dependent on grade or rank, and are not to be broken down by obscure resemblances of internal anatomy, having no relation to this point, but to physiological features of very secondary importance. man must, on all grounds, rank much higher above the apes then they can do above any other order of mammals. even if we refuse to recognise all higher grounds of classification, and condescend, with some great zoologists of our time, to regard nature with the eyes of mere anatomists, or in the same way that a brick-layer's apprentice may be supposed to regard distinctions of architectural styles, we can arrive at no other conclusion. let us imagine an anatomist, himself neither a man nor a monkey, but a being of some other grade, and altogether ignorant of the higher ends and powers of our species, to contemplate merely the skeleton of a man and that of an ape. he must necessarily deduce therefrom an ordinal distinction, even on the one ground of the correlations and modifications of structure implied in the erect position. it would indeed be sufficient for this purpose to consider merely the balancing of the skull on the neck, or the structure of the foot, and the consequences fairly deducible from either of them. nay, were such imaginary anatomist a derivationist, and ignorant of the geological date of his specimens, and as careless of the differences in respect to brain as some of his human _confrères_, he might, referring to the loss specialised condition of man's teeth and foot, conclude, not that man is an improved ape, but that the ape is a specialised and improved man. he would be obliged, however, even on this hypothesis, to admit that there must be a host of missing links. nor would these be supplied by the study of the living races of men, because these want even specific distinctness, and differ from the apes essentially in those points on which an ordinal distinction can be fairly based. this isolated position of man throughout the whole period of his history, grows in importance the more that it is studied, and can scarcely be the result of any accident of defective preservation of intermediate forms. in the meantime, when taken in connection with, the fact previously stated, that man is equally isolated when he first appears on the stage, it deprives evolution, as applied to our species, of any precise scientific basis, whether zoological or geological. i do not attach any importance whatever, in this connection, to the likeness in type or plan between man and other mammals. evolutionists are in the habit of taking for granted that this implies derivation, and of reasoning as if the fact that the human skeleton is constructed on the same principles as that of an ape or a dog, must have some connection with a common ancestry of these animals. this is, however, as is usual with them, begging the question. creation, as well as evolution, admits of similarity of plan. when stephenson constructed a locomotive, he availed himself of the principles and of many of the contrivances of previous engines; but this does not imply that he took a mine-engine, or a marine-engine, and converted it into a railroad-engine. type or plan, whether in nature or art, may imply merely a mental evolution of ideas in the maker, not a derivation of one object from another. but while man is related in his type of structure to the higher animals, his contemporaries, it is undeniable that there are certain points in which he constitutes a new type; and if this consideration were properly weighed, i believe it would induce zoologists, notwithstanding the proverbial humility of the true man of science, to consider themselves much more widely separated from the brutes then even by the ordinal distinction above referred to. i would state this view of the matter thus:--it is in the lower animals a law that the bodily frame is provided with all necessary means of defence and attack, and with all necessary protection against external influences and assailants. in a very few cases, we have partial exceptions to this. a hermit-crab, for instance, has the hinder part of its body unprotected; and has, instead of armour, the instinct of using the cast-off shells of molluscs; yet even this animal has the usual strong claws of a crustacean, for defence in front. there are only a very few animals in which instinct thus takes the place of physical contrivances for defence or attack, and in these we find merely the usual unvarying instincts of the irrational animal. but in man, that which is the rare exception in all other animals, becomes the rule. he has no means of escape from danger, compared with those enjoyed by other animals no defensive armour, no natural protection from cold or heat, no effective weapons for attacking other animals. these disabilities would make him the most helpless of creatures, especially when taken in connection with his slow growth and long immaturity. his safety and his dominion over other animals, are secured by entirely new means, constituting a "new departure" in creation. contrivance and inventive power, enabling him to utilise the objects and forces of nature, replace in him the material powers bestowed on lower animals. obviously the structure of the human being is related to this, and so related to it as to place man in a different category altogether from any other animal. this consideration makes the derivation of man from brutes difficult to imagine. none of these latter appear even able to conceive or understand the modes of life and action of man. they do not need to attempt to emulate his powers, for they are themselves provided for in a different manner. they have no progressive nature like that of man. their relations to things without are altogether limited to their structures and instincts. man's relations are limited only by his powers of knowing and understanding. how then is it possible to conceive of an animal which is, so to speak, a mere living machine, parting with the physical contrivances necessary to its existence, and assuming the new role of intelligence and free action? this becomes still more striking if we adopt the view usually taken by evolutionists, that primitive man was a ferocious and carnivorous creature, warring with and overcoming the powerful animals of the post-glacial period, and contending with the rigours of a severe climate. this could certainly not be inferred from his structure, interpreted by that of the lower animals, which would inevitably lead to the conclusion that he must lave been a harmless and frugivorous creature, fitted to subsist only in the mildest climates, and where exempt from the attacks of the more powerful carnivorous animals. no one reasoning on the purely physical constitution of man, could infer that he might be a creature more powerful and ferocious then the lion or the tiger. it is also worthy of mention that the existence of primitive man as a savage hunter is, in another point of view, absolutely opposed to the darwinian idea of his origin from a frugivorous ape. these creatures, while comparatively inoffensive, conform to the general law of lower animals in having strong jaws and powerful canines for defence, hand-like feet to aid them in securing food, and escaping from their enemies, and hairy clothing to protect them from cold and heat. on the hypothesis of evolution we might conceive that if these creatures were placed in some eden of genial warmth, peace, and plenty, which rendered those appliances unnecessary, they might gradually lose these now valuable structures, from want of necessity, to use them. but, on the contrary, if such creatures were obliged to contend against powerful enemies, and to feed on flesh, all analogy would lead us to believe that they would become in their structures more like carnivorous beasts then men. on the other hand, the anthropoid apes, in the circumstances in which we find them, are not only as unprogressive as other animals, but little fitted to extend their range, and less gifted with the power of adapting themselves to new conditions then many other mammals less resembling man in external form. on the darwinian theory, such primitive men as geology reveals to us would be more likely to have originated from bears then apes, and we would be tempted to wish that man should become extinct, and that the chance should be given to the mild chimpanzee or orang to produce by natural selection an improved and less ferocious humanity for the future. the only rational hypothesis of human origin in the present state of our knowledge of this subject is, that man must have been produced under some circumstances in which animal food was not necessary to him, in which he was exempt from the attacks of the more formidable animals, and in less need of protection from the inclemency of the weather then is the case with any modern apes; and that his life as a hunter and warrior began after he had by his knowledge and skill secured to himself the means of subduing nature by force and cunning. this implies that man was from the first a rational being, capable of understanding nature, and it accords much more nearly with the old story of eden in the book of genesis, then with any modern theories of evolution. it is due to mr. wallace--who, next to darwin, has been a leader among english derivationists--to state that he perceives this difficulty. as a believer in natural selection, however, it presents itself to his mind in a peculiar form. he perceives that so soon as, by the process of evolution, man became a rational creature, and acquired his social sympathies, physical evolution must cease, and must be replaced by invention, contrivance, and social organisation. this is at once obvious and undeniable, and it follows that the natural selection applicable to man, as man, must relate purely to his mental and moral improvement. wallace, however, fails to comprehend the full significance of this feature of the case. given, a man destitute of clothing, he may never acquire such clothing by natural selection, because he will provide an artificial substitute. he will evolve not into a hairy animal, but into a weaver and a tailor. given, a man destitute of claws and fangs, he will not acquire these, but will manufacture weapons. but then, on the hypothesis of derivation, this is not what is given us as the raw material of man, but instead of this a hairy ape. admitting the power of natural selection, we might understand how this ape could become more hairy, or acquire more formidable weapons, as it became more exposed to cold, or more under the necessity of using animal food; but that it should of itself leave this natural line of development and enter on the entirely different line of mental progress is not conceivable, except as a result of creative intervention. absolute materialists may make light of this difficulty, and may hold that this would imply merely a change of brain; but even if we admit this, they fail to show of what use such better brain would be to a creature retaining the bodily form and instincts of the ape, or how such better brain could be acquired. but evolutionists are not necessarily absolute materialists, and darwin himself labours to show that the reasoning self-conscious mind, and even the moral sentiments of man, might be evolved from rudiments of such powers, perceptible in the lower animals. here, however, he leaves the court of natural science, properly so called, and summons us to appear before the judgment-seat of philosophy; and as naturalists are often bad mental philosophers, and philosophers have often small knowledge of nature, some advantage results, in the first instance, to the doubtful cause of evolution. since, however, mental science makes much more of the distinctions between the mind of man and the instinct of animals then naturalists, accustomed to deal merely with the external organism, can be expected to do, the derivationist, when his plea is fairly understood, is quite as certain to lose his cause as when tried by geology and zoology. he might indeed be left to be dealt with by mental science on its own ground; and as our province is to look at the matter from the standpoint of natural history, we might here close our inquiry. it may, however, be proper to give some slight notion of the width of the gulf to be passed when we suppose the mechanical, unconscious, repetitive nature of the animal to pass over into the condition of an intellectual and moral being. if we take, as the most favourable case for the evolutionist, the most sagacious of the lower animals--the dog,--for example and compare it with the least elevated condition of the human mind, as observed in the child or the savage, we shall find that even here there is something more then that "immense difference in degree" which darwin himself admits. making every allowance for similarities in external sense, in certain instinctive powers and appetites; and even in the power of comparison, and in certain passions and affections; and admitting, though we cannot be quite certain of this, that in these man differs from animals only in degree; there remain other and more important differences, amounting to the possession, on the part of man, of powers not existing at all in animals. of this kind are--first, the faculty of reaching abstract and general truth, ind consequently of reasoning, in the proper sense of the term; secondly, in connection with this, the power of indefinite increase in knowledge, and in deductions therefrom leading to practical results; thirdly, the power of expressing thought in speech; fourthly, the power of arriving at ideas of right and wrong, and thus becoming a responsible and free agent. lastly, we have the conception of higher spiritual intelligence, of supreme power and divinity, and the consequent feeling of religious obligation. these powers are evidently different in kind, rather then in degree, from those of the brute, and cannot be conceived to have arisen from the latter, more especially as one of the distinctive characters of these is their purely cyclical, repetitive, and unprogressive nature. sir john lubbock has, by a great accumulation of facts, or supposed facts, bearing on the low mental condition of savages, endeavoured to bridge over this chasm. it is obvious, however, from his own data, that the rudest savages are enabled to subsist only by the exercise of intellectual gifts far higher then those of animals; and that if these gifts were removed from them, they would inevitably perish. it is equally clear that even the lowest savages are moral agents; and that not merely in their religious beliefs and conceptions of good and evil, but also in their moral degradation, they show capacities not possessed by the brutes. it is also true that most of these savages are quite as little likely to be specimens of primitive man as are the higher races; and that many of them have fallen to so low a level as to be scarcely capable, of themselves, of rising to a condition of culture and civilisation. thus they are more likely to be degraded races, in "the eddy and backwater of humanity" then examples of the sources from whence it flowed. and here it must not be lost sight of, that a being like man has capacities for degradation commensurate with his capacities for improvement; and that at any point of his history we may have to seek the analogues of primeval man, rather in the average, then the extremes of the race. before leaving this subject, it may be well to consider the fact, that the occurrence of such a being as man in the last stages of the world's history is, in itself, an argument for the existence of a supreme creator. man is himself an image and likeness of god; and the fact that he can establish relations with nature around him, so as to understand and control its powers, implies either that he has been evolved as a soul of nature, by its own blind development, or that he has originated in the action of a higher being related to man. the former supposition has been above shown to be altogether improbable; so that we are necessarily thrown back upon the latter. we must thus regard man himself as the highest known work of a spiritual creator, and must infer that he rightly uses his reason when he infers from nature the power and divinity of god. the last point that i think necessary to bring forward here, is the information which geology gives as to the locality of the introduction of man. there can be no hesitation in affirming that to the temperate regions of the old continent belongs the honour of being the cradle of humanity. in these regions are the oldest historical monuments of our race; here geology finds the most ancient remains of human beings; here also seems to be the birthplace of the fauna and flora most useful and congenial to man; and here he attains to his highest pitch of mental and physical development. this, it is true, by no means accords with the methods of the derivationists. on their theory we should search for the origin of man rather in those regions where he is most depauperated and degraded, and where his struggles for existence are most severe. but it is surely absurd to affirm of any species of animal or plant that it must have originated at the limits of its range, where it can scarcely exist at all. on the contrary, common sense as well as science requires us to believe that species must have originated in those central parts of their distribution where they enjoy the most favourable circumstances, and must have extended themselves thence as far as external conditions would permit. one of the most wretched varieties of the human race, and as near as any to the brutes, is that which inhabits tierra del fuego, a country which scarcely affords any of the means for the comfortable sustenance of man. would it not be absolutely impossible that man should have originated in such a country? is it not certain, en the contrary, that the fuegian is merely a degraded variety of the aboriginal american race? precisely the same argument applies to the austral negro and the hottentot. they are all naturally the most aberrant varieties of man, as being at the extreme range of his possible extension, and placed in conditions unfavourable, either because of unsuitable climatal or organic associations. it is true that the regions most favourable to the anthropoid apes, and in which they may be presumed to have originated, are by no means the most favourable to man; but this only makes it the less likely that man could have been derived from such a parentage. while, therefore, the geological date of the appearance of man, the want of any link of connection between him and any preceding animal, and his dissimilar bodily and mental constitution from any creatures contemporary with him, render his derivation from apes or other inferior animals in the highest degree improbable, the locality of his probable origin confirms this conclusion in the strongest manner. it also shows that man and the higher apes are not likely to have originated in the same regions, or under the same conditions, and that the conditions of human origin are rather the coincidence of suitable climatal and organic surroundings then the occurrence of animals closely related in structure to man. changes of conditions in geological time will not meet this difficulty. they might lead to migrations, as they have done in the case of both plants and animals, but not to anything further. the hyena, whose bones are found in the english caves, has been driven by geological changes to south africa, but he is still the same hyena. the reindeer which once roamed in france is still the reindeer in lapland; and though under different geological conditions we might imagine the creature to have originated in the south of europe, a country not now suitable to it, this would neither give reason to believe that any animal now living in the south of europe was its progenitor, nor to doubt that it still remains unchanged in its new habitat. indeed, the absence of anything more then merely varietal change in man and his companion-animals, in consequence of the geological changes and migrations of the modern period, furnishes, as already stated, a strong if not conclusive argument against derivation; which here, as elsewhere, only increases our actual difficulties, while professing to extricate us from them. * * * * * the arguments in the preceding pages cover only a small portion of the extensive field opened up by this subject. they relate, however, to some of the prominent and important points, and i trust are sufficient to show that, as applied to man, the theory of derivation merely trifles with the great question of his origin, without approaching to its solution. i may now, in conclusion, sketch the leading features of primitive man, as he appears to us through the mist of the intervening ages, and compare the picture with that presented by the oldest historical records of our race. two pictures of primeval man are in our time before the world. one represents him as the pure and happy inhabitant of an eden, free from all the ills that have afflicted his descendants, and revelling in the bliss of a golden age. this is the representation of holy scripture, and it is also the dream of all the poetry and myth of the earlier ages of the world. it is a beautiful picture, whether we regard it as founded on historical fact, or derived from god himself, or from the yearnings of the higher spiritual nature of man. the other picture is a joint product of modern philosophy and of antiquarian research. it presents to us a coarse and filthy savage, repulsive in feature, gross in habits, warring with his fellow-savages, and warring yet more remorselessly with every living thing he could destroy, tearing half-cooked flesh, and cracking marrow-bones with stone hammers, sheltering himself in damp and smoky caves, with no eye heavenward, and with only the first rude beginnings of the most important arts of life. both pictures may contain elements of truth, for man is a many-sided monster, made up of things apparently incongruous, and presenting here and there features out of which either picture may be composed. evolutionists, and especially those who believe in the struggle for existence and natural selection, ignore altogether the evidence of the golden age of humanity, and refer us to the rudest of modern savages as the types of primitive man. those who believe in a divine origin for our race, perhaps dwell too much on the higher spiritual features of the edenic state, to the exclusion of its more practical aspects, and its relations to the condition of the more barbarous races. let us examine more closely both representations; and first, that of creation. the glacial period, with its snows and ice, had passed away, and the world rejoiced in a spring-time of renewed verdure and beauty. many great and formidable beasts of the tertiary time had disappeared in the revolutions which had occurred, and the existing fauna of the northern hemisphere had been established on the land. then it was that man was introduced by an act of creative power. in the preceding changes a region of western asia had been prepared for his residence. it was a table-land at the head waters of the rivers that flow into the euxine, the caspian, and the persian gulf. its climate was healthy and bracing, with enough of variety to secure vigour, and not so inclement as to exact any artificial provision for clothing or shelter. its flora afforded abundance of edible fruits, and was rich in all the more beautiful forms of plant life; while its clear streams, alluvial soil, and undulating surface, afforded every variety of station and all that is beautiful in scenery. it was not infested with the more powerful and predacious quadrupeds, and its geographical relations were such as to render this exemption permanent. in this paradise man found ample supplies of wholesome and nutritious food. his requirements as to shelter were met by the leafy bowers he could weave. the streams of eden afforded gold which he could fashion for use and ornament, pearly shells for vessels, and agate for his few and simple cutting instruments. he required no clothing, and knew of no use for it. his body was the perfection and archetype of the vertebrate form, full of grace, vigour, and agility. his hands enabled him to avail himself of all the products of nature for use and pleasure, and to modify and adapt them according to his inclination. his intelligence, along with his manual powers, allowed him to ascertain the properties of things, to plan, invent, and apply in a manner impossible to any other creature. his gift of speech enabled him to imitate and reduce to systematic language the sounds of nature, and to connect them with the thoughts arising in his own mind, and thus to express their relations and significance. above all, his maker had breathed into him a spiritual nature akin to his own, whereby he became different from all other animals, and the very shadow and likeness of god; capable of rising to abstractions and general conceptions of truth and goodness, and of holding communion with his creator. this was man edenic, the man of the golden age, as sketched in the two short narratives of the earlier part of genesis, which not only conform to the general traditions of our race on the subject, but bear to any naturalist who will read them in their original dress, internal evidence of being contemporary, or very nearly so, with the state of things to which they relate. "and god said, 'let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the herbivora, and over all the land.' and god blessed them, and said unto them, 'be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.' "and the lord god formed the man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. and the lord god planted a garden, eastward in eden, and there he placed the man whom he had formed. and out of the ground made the lord god to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. and a river went out of eden to water the garden, and parted from thence, becoming four heads (of great rivers). the name of the first is pison, compassing the whole land of chavila, where there is gold, and the gold of that land is good; there is (also) pearl and agate.... and the lord god took the man, and put him into the garden of eden, to cultivate it and to take care of it." before leaving this most ancient and most beautiful history, we may say that it implies several things of much importance to our conceptions of primeval man. it implies a centre of creation for man, and a group of companion animals and plants, and an intention to dispense in his case with any struggle for existence. it implies, also, that man was not to be a lazy savage, but a care-taker and utiliser, by his mind and his bodily labour, of the things given to him; and it also implies an intelligent submission on his part to his maker, and spiritual appreciation of his plans and intentions. it further implies that man was, in process of time, from eden, to colonise the earth, and subdue its wildness, so as to extend the conditions of eden widely over its surface. lastly, a part of the record not quoted above, but necessary to the consistency of the story, implies that, in virtue of his spiritual nature, and on certain conditions, man, though in bodily frame of the earth earthy, like the other animals, was to be exempted from the common law of mortality which had all along prevailed, and which continued to prevail, even among the animals of eden. further, if man fell from this condition into that of the savage of the age of stone, it must have been by the obscuration of his spiritual nature under that which is merely animal; in other words, by his ceasing to be spiritual and in communion with god, and becoming practically a sensual materialist. that this actually happened is asserted by the scriptural story, but its details would take us too far from our present subject. let us now turn to the other picture--that presented by the theory of struggle for existence and derivation from lower animals. it introduces us first to an ape, akin perhaps to the modern orang or gorilla, but unknown to us as yet by any actual remains. this creature, after living for an indefinite time in the rich forests of the miocene and earlier pliocene periods, was at length subjected to the gradually increasing rigours of the glacial age. its vegetable food and its leafy shelter failed it, and it learned to nestle among such litter as it could collect in dens and caves, and to seize and devour such weaker animals as it could overtake and master. at the same time, its lower extremities, no longer used for climbing trees, but for walking on the ground, gained in strength and size; its arms diminished; and its development to maturity being delayed by the intensity of the struggle for existence, its brain enlarged, it became more cunning and sagacious, and even learned to use weapons of wood or stone to destroy its victims. so it gradually grew into a fierce and terrible creature, "neither beast nor human," combining the habits of a bear and the agility of a monkey with some glimmerings of the cunning and resources of a savage. when the glacial period passed away, our nameless simian man, or manlike ape, might naturally be supposed to revert to its original condition, and to establish itself as of old in the new forests of the modern period. for some unknown reason, however, perhaps because it had gone too far in the path of improvement to be able to turn back, this reversion did not take place. on the contrary, the ameliorated circumstances and wider range of the new continents enabled it still further to improve. ease and abundance perfected what struggle and privation had begun; it added to the rude arts of the glacial time; it parted with the shaggy hair now unnecessary; its features became softer; and it returned in part to vegetable food. language sprang up from the attempt to articulate natural sounds. fire-making was invented and new arts arose. at length the spiritual nature, potentially present in the creature, was awakened by some access of fear, or some grand and terrible physical phenomenon; the idea of a higher intelligence was struck out, and the descendant of apes became a superstitious and idolatrous savage. how much trouble and discussion would have been saved, had he been aware of his humble origin, and never entertained the vain imagination that he was a child of god, rather then a mere product of physical evolution! it is, indeed, curious, that at this point evolutionism, like theism, has its "fall of man;" for surely the awakening of the religious sense, and of the knowledge of good and evil, must on that theory be so designated, since it subverted in the case of man the previous regular operation of natural selection, and introduced all that debasing superstition, priestly domination, and religious controversy which have been among the chief curses of our race, and which are doubly accursed if, as the evolutionist believes, they are not the ruins of something nobler and holier, but the mere gratuitous, vain, and useless imaginings of a creature who should have been content to eat and drink and die, without hope or fear, like the brutes from which he sprang. these are at present our alternative sketches: the genesis of theism, and the genesis of evolution. after the argument in previous pages, it is unnecessary here to discuss their relative degrees of probability. if we believe in a personal spiritual creator, the first becomes easy and natural, as it is also that which best accords with history and tradition. if, on the contrary, we reject all these, and accept as natural laws the postulates of the evolutionists which we have already discussed, we may become believers in the latter. the only remaining point is to inquire as to which explains best the actual facts of humanity as we find them. this is a view of which much has been made by evolutionists, and it therefore merits consideration. but it is too extensive to be fully treated of here, and i must content myself with a few illustrations of the failure of the theory of derivation to explain some of the most important features presented by even the ruder races of men. one of these is the belief in a future state of existence beyond this life. this belongs purely to the spiritual nature of man. it is not taught by physical nature, yet its existence is probably universal, and it lies near the foundation of all religious beliefs. lartet has described to us the sepulchral cave of aurignac, in which human skeletons, believed to be of post-glacial date, were associated with remains of funeral feasts, and with indications of careful burial, and with provisions laid up for the use of the dead. lyell well remarks on this, "if we have here before us, at the northern base of the pyrenees, a sepulchral vault with skeletons of human beings, consigned by friends and relatives to their last resting-place if we have also at the portal of the tomb the relics of funeral feasts, and within it indications of viands destined for the use of the departed on their way to a land of spirits; while among the funeral gifts are weapons wherewith in other fields to chase the gigantic deer, the cave-lion, the cave bear, and woolly rhinoceros--we have at last succeeded in tracing back the sacred rites of burial, and more interesting still, a belief in a future state, to times long anterior to those of history and tradition. rude and superstitious as may have been the savage of that remote era, he still deserved, by cherishing hopes of a hereafter, the epithet of 'noble,' which dryden gave to what he seems to have pictured to himself as the primitive condition of our race."[bf] [bf] "antiquity of man," p. in like manner, in the vast american continent, all its long isolated and widely separated tribes, many of them in a state of lowest barbarism, and without any external ritual of religious worship, believed in happy hunting-grounds in the spirit-land beyond the grave, and the dead warrior was buried with his most useful weapons and precious ornaments. "bring here the last gifts; and with them the last lament be said. let all that pleased and yet may please, be buried with the dead" was no unmeaning funeral song, but involved the sacrifice of the most precious and prized objects, that the loved one might enter the new and untried state provided for its needs. even the babe, whose life is usually accounted of so small value by savage tribes, was buried by the careful mother with precious strings of wampum, that had cost more months of patient labour then the days of its short life, that it might purchase the fostering care of the inhabitants of that unknown yet surely believed-in region of immortality. this "--wish that of the living whole no life may fail beyond the grave, derives it not from what we have the likest god within the soul?" is it likely to have germinated in the brain of an ape? and if so, of what possible use would it be in the struggle of a merely physical existence? is it not rather the remnant of a better spiritual life--a remembrance of the tree of life that grew in the paradise of god, a link of connection of the spiritual nature in man with, a higher divine spirit above? life and immortality, it is true, were brought to light by jesus christ, but they existed as beliefs more or less obscure from the first, and formed the basis for good and evil of the religions of the world. around this idea were gathered multitudes of collateral beliefs and religious observances; feasts and festivals for the dead; worship of dead heroes and ancestors; priestly intercessions and sacrifices for the dead; costly rites of sepulture. vain and without foundation many of these have no doubt been, but they have formed a universal and costly testimony to an instinct of immortality, dimly glimmering even in the breast of the savage, and glowing with higher brightness in the soul of the christian, but separated by an impassable gulf from anything derivable from a brute ancestry. the theistic picture of primeval man is in harmony with the fact that men, as a whole, are, and always have been, believers in god. the evolutionist picture is not. if man had from the first not merely a physical and intellectual nature, but a spiritual nature as well, we can understand how he came into relation with god, and how through all his vagaries and corruptions he clings to this relation in one form or another; but evolution affords no link of connection of this kind. it holds god to be unknowable even to the cultivated intellect of philosophy, and perceives no use in ideas with relation to him which, according to it must necessarily be fallacious, it leaves the theistic notions of mankind without explanation, and it will not serve its purpose to assert that some few and exceptional families of men have no notion of a god. even admitting this, and it is at best very doubtful, it can form but a trifling exception to a general truth. it appears to me that this view of the case is very clearly put in the bible, and it is curiously illustrated by a recent critique of "mr. darwin's critics," by professor huxley in the _contemporary review_. mr. mivart, himself a derivationist, but differing in some points from darwin, had affirmed, in the spirit rather of a romish theologian then of a biblical student or philosopher, that "acts unaccompanied by mental acts of conscious will" are "absolutely destitute of the most incipient degree of goodness." huxley well replies, "it is to my understanding extremely hard to reconcile mr. mivart's dictum with that noble summary of the whole duty of man, 'thou shalt love the lord thy god with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength; and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' according to mr. mivart's definition, the man who loves god and his neighbour, and, out of sheer love and affection for both, does all he can to please them, is nevertheless destitute of a particle of real goodness." huxley's reply deserves to be pondered by certain moralists and theologians whose doctrine savours of the leaven of the pharisees, but neither huxley nor his opponent see the higher truth that in the love of god we have a principle far nobler and more god-like and less animal then that of mere duty. man primeval, according to the doctrine of genesis, was, by simple love and communion with his god, placed in the position of a spiritual being, a member of a higher family then that of the animal. the "knowledge of good and evil" which he acquired later, and on which is based the law of conscious duty, was a less happy attainment, which placed him on a lower level then that of the unconscious love and goodness of primal innocence. no doubt man's sense of right and wrong is something above the attainment of animals, and which could never have sprung from them; but still more is this the case with his direct spiritual relation to god, which, whether it rises to the inspiration of the prophet or the piety of the christian, or sinks to the rude superstition of the savage, can be no part of the adam of the dust but only of the breath of life breathed into him from above. that man should love his fellow-man may not seem strange. certain social and gregarious and family instincts exist among the lower animals, and darwin very ably adduces these as akin to the similar affections of man; yet even in the law of love of our neighbour, as enforced by christ's teaching, it is easy to see that we have something beyond animal nature. but this becomes still more distinct in the love of god. man was the "shadow and likeness of god," says the old record in genesis--the shadow that clings to the substance and is inseparable from it, the likeness that represents it visibly to the eyes of men, and of the animals that man rules over. primeval man could "hear in the evening breeze the voice of god, walking to and fro in the garden." what mere animal ever had or could attain to such an experience? but if we turn from the edenic picture of man in harmony with heaven--"owning a father, when he owned a god"--to man as the slave of superstition; even in this terrible darkness of mistaken faith, of which it may be said, "fear mates her devils, and weak faith her gods, gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust, whose attributes are rage, revenge, or lust," we see the ruins, at least, of that sublime love of god. the animal clings to its young with a natural affection, as great as that of a human mother for her child, but what animal ever thought of throwing its progeny into the ganges, or into the fires of moloch's altar, for the saving of its soul, or to obtain the favour or avoid the wrath of god? no less in the vagaries of fetichism, ritualism, and idolatry, and in the horrors of asceticism and human sacrifice, then in the edenic communion with and hearing of god, or in the joy of christian love, do we see, in however ruined or degraded condition, the higher spiritual nature of man. this point leads to another distinction which, when properly viewed, widens the gap between man and the animals, or at least destroys one of the frail bridges of the evolutionists. lubbock and others affect to believe that the lowest savages of the modern world must be nearest to the type of primeval man. i have already attempted to show the fallacy of this. i may add here that in so holding they overlook a fundamental distinction, well pointed out by the duke of argyll, between the capacity of acquiring knowledge and knowledge actually acquired, and between the possession of a higher rational nature and the exercise of that nature in the pursuit of mechanical arts. in other words, primeval man must not be held to have been "utterly barbarous" because he was ignorant of mining or navigation, or of sculpture and painting. he had in him the power to attain to these things, but so long as he was not under necessity to exercise it, his mind may have expended its powers in other and happier channels. as well might it be affirmed that a delicately nurtured lady is an "utter barbarian" because she cannot build her own house, or make her own shoes. no doubt in such work she would be far more helpless then the wife of the rudest savage, yet she is not on that account to be held as an inferior being, or nearer to the animals. our conception of an angelic nature implies the absence of all our social institutions and mechanical arts; but does this necessitate our regarding an angel as an "utter barbarian"? in short, the whole notion of civilisation held by lubbock and those who think with him, is not only low and degrading, but utterly and absurdly wrong; and of course it vitiates all their conceptions of primeval man as well as of man's future destiny. further, the theistic idea implies that man was, without exhausting toil, to regulate and control nature, to rule over the animals, to cultivate the earth, to extend himself over it and subdue it; and all this as compatible with moral innocence, and at the same time with high intellectual and spiritual activity. there is, however, a still nicer and more beautiful distinction involved in this, and included in the wonderful narrative in genesis, so simple yet so much more profound then our philosophies; and which crops out in the same discussion of the critics of darwin, to which i have already referred. a writer in the _quarterly review_ had attempted to distinguish human reason from the intelligence of animals, as involving self-consciousness and reflection in our sensations and perceptions. huxley objects to this, instancing the mental action of a greyhound when it sees and pursues a hare, as similar to that of the gamekeeper when he lets slip the hound.[bg] [bg] _contemporary review_, november, , p. . "as it is very necessary to keep up a clear distinction between these two processes, let the one be called neurosis and the other psychosis. when the gamekeeper was first trained to his work, every step in the process of neurosis was accompanied by a corresponding step in that of psychosis, or nearly so. he was conscious of seeing something, conscious of making sure it was a hare, conscious of desiring to catch it, and therefore to loose the greyhound at the right time, conscious of the acts by which he let the dog out of the leash. but with practice, though the various steps of the neurosis remain--for otherwise the impression on the retina would not result in the loosing of the dog--the great majority of the steps of the psychosis vanish, and the loosing of the dog follows unconsciously, or, as we say, without thinking about, upon the sight of the hare. no one will deny that the series of acts which originally intervened between the sensation and the letting go of the dog were, in the strictest sense, intellectual and rational operations. do they cease to be so when the man ceases to be conscious of them? that depends upon what is the essence and what the accident of these operations, which taken together constitute ratiocination. now, ratiocination is resolvable into predication, and predication consists in marking, in some way, the existence, the co-existence, the succession, the likeness and unlikeness, of things or their ideas. whatever does this, reasons; and if a machine produces the effects of reason, i see no more ground for denying to it the reasoning power because it is unconscious, then i see for refusing to mr. babbage's engine the title of a calculating machine on the same grounds." here we have in the first place, the fact that an action, in the first instance rational and complex, becomes by repetition simple and instinctive. does the man then sink to the level of the hound, or, what is more to the purpose, does this in the least approach to showing that the hound can rise to the level of the man? certainly not; for the man is the conscious planner and originator of a course of action in which the instincts of the brute are made to take part, and in which the readiness that he attains by habit only enables him to dispense with certain processes of thought which were absolutely necessary at first. the man and the beast co-operate, but they meet each other from entirely different planes; the former from that of the rational consideration of nature, the latter from that of the blind pursuit of a mere physical instinct. the one, to use mr. huxley's simile, is the conscious inventor of the calculating machine, the other is the machine itself, and, though the machine can calculate, this fact is the farthest possible from giving it the power of growing into or producing its own inventor. but moses, or the more ancient authority from whom he quotes in genesis, knew this better then either of these modern combatants. his special distinctive mark of the superiority of man is that he was to have dominion over the earth and its animal inhabitants; and he represents this dominion as inaugurated by man's examining and naming the animals of eden, and finding among them no "help meet" for him.[bh] man was to find in them helps, but helps under his control, and that not the control of brute force, but of higher skill and of thought and even of love--a control still seen in some degree in the relation of man to his faithful companion, the dog. these old words of genesis, simple though they are, place the rational superiority of man on a stable basis, and imply a distinction between him and the lower animals which cannot be shaken by the sophistries of the evolutionists. [bh] literally, "corresponding," or "similar," to him. the theistic picture further accords with the fact that the geological time immediately preceding man's appearance was a time of decadence of many of the grander forms of animal life, especially in that area of the old continent where man was to appear. whatever may be said of the imperfection of the geological record, there can be no question of the fact that the miocene and earlier pliocene were distinguished by the prevalence of grand and gigantic forms of mammalian life, some of which disappeared in or before the glacial period, while others failed after that period in the subsidence of the post-glacial, or in connection with its amelioration of climate. the modern animals are also, as explained above, a selection from the grander fauna of the post-glacial period. to speak for the moment in darwinian language, there was for the time an evident tendency to promote the survival of the fittest, not in mere physical development, but in intelligence and sagacity. a similar tendency existed even in the vegetable world, replacing the flora of american aspect which had existed in the pliocene, with the richer and more useful flora of europe and western asia. this not obscurely indicates the preparing of a place for man, and the removal out of his way of obstacles and hindrances. that these changes had a relation to the advent of man, neither theist nor evolutionist can doubt, and it may be that we shall some day find that this relation implies the existence of a creative law intelligible by us; but while we fail to perceive any link of direct causation between the changes in the lower world, and the introduction of our race, we cannot help seeing that correlation which implies a far-reaching plan, and an intelligent design. finally, the evolutionist picture wants some of the fairest lineaments of humanity, and cheats us with a semblance of man without the reality. shave and paint your ape as you may, clothe him and set him up upon his feet, still he fails greatly of the "human form divine;" and so it is with him morally and spiritually as well. we have seen that he wants the instinct of immortality, the love of god, the mental and spiritual power of exercising dominion over the earth. the very agency by which he is evolved is of itself subversive of all these higher properties. the struggle for existence is essentially selfish, and therefore degrading. even in the lower animals, it is a false assumption that its tendency is to elevate; for animals when driven to the utmost verge of struggle for life, become depauperated and degraded. the dog which spends its life in snarling contention with its fellow-curs for insufficient food, will not be a noble specimen of its race. god does not so treat his creatures. there is far more truth to nature in the doctrine which represents him as listening to the young ravens when they cry for food. but as applied to man, the theory of the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest, though the most popular phase of evolutionism at present, is nothing less then the basest and most horrible of superstitions. it makes man not merely carnal, but devilish. it takes his lowest appetites and propensities, and makes them his god and creator. his higher sentiments and aspirations, his self-denying philanthropy, his enthusiasm for the good and true, all the struggles and sufferings of heroes and martyrs, not to speak of that self-sacrifice which is the foundation of christianity, are in the view of the evolutionist mere loss and waste, failure in the struggle of life. what does he give us in exchange? an endless pedigree of bestial ancestors, without one gleam of high or holy tradition to enliven the procession; and for the future, the prospect that the poor mass of protoplasm which constitutes the sum of our being, and which is the sole gain of an indefinite struggle in the past, must soon be resolved again into inferior animals or dead matter. that men of thought and culture should advocate such a philosophy, argues either a strange mental hallucination, or that the higher spiritual nature has been wholly quenched within them. it is one of the saddest of many sad spectacles that our age presents. still these men deserve credit for their bold pursuit of truth, or what seems to them to be truth; and they are, after all, nobler sinners then those who would practically lower us to the level of beasts by their negation even of intellectual life, or who would reduce us to apes, by making us the mere performers of rites and ceremonies, as a substitute for religion, or who would advise us to hand over reason and conscience to the despotic authority of fallible men dressed in strange garbs, and called by sacred names. the world needs a philosophy and a christianity of more robust mould, which shall recognise, as the bible does, at once body and soul and spirit, at once the sovereignty of god and the liberty of man; and which shall bring out into practical operation the great truth that god is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. such a religion might walk in the sunlight of truth and free discussion, hand in hand with science, education, liberty, and material civilisation, and would speedily consign evolution to the tomb which has already received so many superstitions and false philosophies. index. a abbeville, peat of, . acadian group, . advent of man, . agassiz on synthetic types, . _ammonitidæ_, . amphibians of the coal period, . andrews on the post-pliocene, . _anthracosaurus_, . anticosti formation, . antiquity of man, . _archæocyathus_, . archebiosis, . _arenicolites_, . _asterolepis_, . b _baculites_, . bala limestone, . _baphetes_, . barrande on primordial, . bastian on lower forms of life, . _beatricea_, . belemnites, . bigsby on silurian fauna, ; on primordial life, . billings on archæocyathus, ; on feet of trilobites, . binney on stigmaria, . biology as a term, . boulder clay, . brachiopods, or lamp-shells, . breccia of caverns, . brown, mr. k., on stigmaria, . c _calamites_, , , . calcaire grossier, . cambrian age, ; name defined, . caradoc rocks, . carbonic acid in atmosphere, . carboniferous age, ; land snails of the, ; crustaceans of the, ; insects of the, ; corals of the, ; plants of the, ; fishes of the, ; footprints in the, ; geography of the, ; reptiles of the, . carpenter on cretaceous sea, . carruthers on graptolites, . cave earth, . cavern deposits, . _cephalaspis_, . cephalopods of silurian, . _ceteosaurus_, ; foraminifera in the, . chalk, nature of, . chaos, . _climactichnites_, . coal, origin of, ; of the mesozoic, . colours of rocks, . continental plateaus, . continents, their origin, . _conulus prisons_, . cope on dinosaurs, ; on pterodactyl, ; on mososaurus, ; on caverns, . corals of the silurian, ; agency of, in forming limestone, , ; of the devonian, ; of the carboniferous, . corniferous limestone, . _coryphodon_, . creation, unity of, ; not by evolution, ; laws of, , ; statement of as a theory, ; requirements of, ; how treated by evolutionists, ; definition and explanation of, ; its probable conditions, . creator, evidence of a personal, , cretaceous period, , ; sea of the, . crinoids of the silurian, . croll on the post-pliocene, . _crusiana_, . crustaceans of the primordial, ; of the silurian, ; of the mesozoic, . crust of the earth, ; folding of, . cuvier on tertiary mammals, . cystideans, . d dana on geological periods, . darwin, nature of his theory, ; his account of the origin of man, ; his statement of descent of man, . davidson on brachiopods, . dawkins on post-glacial mammals, . delaunay on solidity of the earth, . deluge, the, . devonian, or brian age, ; physical condition of, ; tabular view of, ; corals of the, ; fishes of the, ; plants of the, ; geography of the, ; insects of the, . _dinichthys_, . dinosaurs, . _dromatherium_, . dudley, fossils of, . e earth, its earliest state, ; crust of the, ; folding of, ; gaseous state of, . edenic state of man, , . edwards, milne, on devonian corals, . _elasmosaurus_, . elephants, fossil, , . elevation and subsidence, , , , . enaliosaurs, . "engis" skull, its characters, . eocene seas, ; foraminifera of the, ; mammals of the, ; plants of the, ; footprints in the, . _eophyton_, . _eosaurus_, , eozoic period, . _eozoon bavaricum_, . _eozoon canadense_, , . erian, or devonian, ; reason of the name, ; table of erian formations, ; corals of the, ; fishes of the, ; plants of the, . eskers or kames, . etheridge on devonian, . _eurypterus_, , . evolution as applied to eozoon, ; primordial animals, ; silurian animals, ; trilobites, , ; reptiles, ; man, ; its character as a theory, ; its difficulties, ; its "fall of man," , f falconer on indian miocene, . _favosites_, . ferns of the devonian, ; of the carboniferous, . fishes, ganoid, ; of the silurian, ; of the devonian, ; of the carboniferous, . flora of the silurian, ; of the devonian, ; of the carboniferous, ; of the permian, ; of the mesozoic, ; of the eocene, ; of the miocene, . footprints in the carboniferous, ; in the trias, ; in the eocene, . foraminifera, nature of, ; laurentian, ; of the chalk, ; of the tertiary, . forbes on post-glacial land, . forests of the devonian, ; of the carboniferous, . g ganoid fishes, , . gaseous state of the earth, . genesis, book of, its account of chaos, ; of creation of land, ; of palæozoic animals, ; of creation of reptiles, ; of creation of mammals, , ; of the deluge, ; of creation of man, ; of eden, . genesis of the earth, . geography of the silurian, ; of the devonian, ; of the carboniferous, ; of the permian, . geological periods, , . glacial period, , . glauconite, . _glyptoerinus_, . graptolites, . greenland, miocene flora of, . greensand, . gümbel on bavarian eozoon, . h _hadrosaurus_, . hall on graptolites, ; harlech beds, . heer on tertiary plants, . helderberg rocks, . hercynian schists, . heterogenesis, . hicks on primordial fossils, . hilgard on mississippi delta, . hippopotamus, fossil, . _histioderma_, . hopkins on solidity of the earth, . hudson river group, . hull on geological periods, . hunt, dr. t. s., on volcanic action, ; on chemistry of primeval earth, ; on lingulæ, . huronian formation, . huxley on coal, ; on carboniferous reptiles, ; on dinosaurs, ; on paley's argument from design, ; on good and evil, ; on intuitive and rational actions, ; on tendency of evolutionist views, . _hylonomus_, . i ice-action in permian, ; in post-pliocene, . _ichthyosaurus_, . _iguanodon_, . insects, devonian, ; carboniferous, . intelligence of animals, nature of, . j jurassic, subdivisions of, . k kames, . kaup on dinotherium, . kent's cavern, . king-crabs of carboniferous, . king on carboniferous reptiles, . l _labyrinthodon_, , lælaps, . lamp-shells, . land-snails of carboniferous, . la place's nebular theory, . laurentian rocks, ; life in the, ; plants of the, . _lepidodendron_, , , . _leptophleum_, . limestone corniferous, ; nummulitic, ; milioline, ; silurian, ; origin of, , , . _limulus_, . _lingulæ_, . lingula flags, . logan, sir w., on laurentian rocks, ; on reptilian footprints, . london clay, . longmynd rocks, , . lower helderberg group, . ludlow group, . lyell, sir c., on devonian limestone, ; on wealden, ; on classification of the tertiary, . m _machairodus_, . magnesian limestones, . mammals of the mesozoic, ; of the eocene, ; of the miocene, ; of the pliocene, ; of the post-glacial, . man, advent of, . man, antiquity of, ; history of, according to theory of creation, ; according to evolution, ; widely different from apes, ; a new type, ; primitive, not a savage, ; his spiritual nature, , , ; locality of his origin, ; primeval, according to creation, ; according to evolution, . mayhill sandstone, . medina sandstone, . _megalosaurus_, . menevian formation, . mesozoic ages, ; subdivisions of, ; flora of, ; coal of, ; crustaceans of the, ; reptiles of the, , . metalliferous rocks, . metamorphism, . _microlestes_, . milioline limestones, . miller on old bed sandstone, . millipedes, fossil, . miocene plants, ; climate, ; mammals of, . mississippi, delta of the, . modern period, . _mosasaurus_, . morse on lingula, . murchison on the silurian, . n nebular theory, . neolithic age, . neozoic ages, ; divisions of, . newberry on dinichthys, . nicholson on graptolites, , nummulitic limestones, . o _oldhamia_, . old bed sandstone, . oneida conglomerate. . _orthoceratites_, , . oscillations of continents, . owen on dinosaurs, ; on marsupials, . p palæolithic age, , . _palæophis_, . palæozoic life, ; diagram of, . paley on design in nature; his illustration of the watch, . peat of abbeville, . pengelly on kent's hole, . _pentremites_, . periods, geological, , . permian age, ; geography of the, ; ice-action in the, ; plants of the, ; reptiles of the, . phillips on dawn of life, ; on ceteosaurus, . pictet on post-pliocene mammals, ; on post-glacial animals, . pictures of primeval man, . pierce on diminution of earth's rotation, . pines of the devonian, ; of the carboniferous, ; of the permian, . placoid fishes, . plants of the laurentian, ; of the silurian, ; of the devonian, ; of the carboniferous, ; of the permian, ; of the mesozoic, ; of the tertiary ; classification of, . plateaus, continental, . _plesiosaurus_, . pliocene, climate of, ; mammals of, . _pliosaurus_, . pluvial period, . post-glacial age, , . post-pliocene period, ; cold, ; ice-action in the, ; subsidence, ; elevation, ; shells, evidence of, against derivation, ; mammals, evidence of, against derivation, . potsdam sandstone, . prestwich on st. acheul, . primordial age, ; crustacean of the, . _protichnites_, . _protorosaurus_, . _prototaxites_, . _psilophyton_, , . _pteraspis_, . _pterichthys_, . pterodactyls, . _pterygotus_, . _pupa vetusta_, . q quebec group, . r rain-marks, . ramsay on permian, . red sandstones, their origin, , . reptiles of the carboniferous, ; of the permian, ; of the mesozoic, , . rhinoceros, fossil, . rocks, colours of, . rotation of the earth, its gradual diminution, . s salter on fossil crustacea, . sedgwick on cambrian, , . seeley on pterodactyls, . shrinkage-cracks, . _sigillaria_, , . silurian ages, ; cephalopoda of the, ; corals of the, ; crinoids of the ; crustaceans of the, ; fishes of the, ; plants of the, . siluro-cambrian, use of the term, . slaty structure, . solidity of the earth, . somme, r., gravels of, . species, nature of the, ; how created, . spencer, his exposition of evolution, , . spiritual nature of man, , , . spore-cases in coals and shales, . stalagmite of caves, . striated rock-surfaces, . stumps, fossil of carboniferous, . synthetic types, . t table of devonian rocks, ; of palæozoic ages, ; of mesozoic ages, ; of neozoic ages, ; of post-pliocene, . temperature of interior of the earth, . tertiary period, ; mammals of, , , ; classification of its rocks, . thomson, sir w., on solidity of the earth, . time, geological divisions of, . tinière, cone of, . trenton limestone, , . trias, divisions of, ; footprints in the, . trilobites, , , ; feet of, . turtles of mesozoic, . tylor on pluvial period, . tyndall on carbonic acid in atmosphere, . u uniformitarianism in geology, . utica shale, . v volcanic action, ; of cambrian age, ; of silurian age, ; of devonian age, , . von dechen on reptiles of carboniferous, , . von meyer on dinosaurs, . w _walchia_, . wallace, his views on inapplicability of natural selection to man, . wealden, . wenlock group, . _williamsonia gigas_, . williamson on calamites, . woodward on pterygotus, . z zaphrentis . valuable and interesting works for public & private libraries, published by harper & brothers, new york. 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(in a box.) * * * * * transcriber's notes all obvious typographical errors were corrected. on page , there is an opening quote; but no closing one follows. based on the text ("returning from this digression...") on page , it was assumed that the closing quote should have been at the end of the preceding paragraph. hyphenation and accents were standardized. however, some hyphenated and separate word usage (for example, sea bottom(s) and sea-bottom(s)) were retained due to their grammatic usage. big ancestor by f. l. wallace illustrated by emsh [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy science fiction november . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic race an inferiority complex--but then he tried to climb it! in repose, taphetta the ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a package. his four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. his neck was flat, too, arching out in another loop. of all his features, only his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long though narrower ribbons. taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good imitation of speech. "yes, i've heard the legend." "it's more than a legend," said sam halden, biologist. the reaction was not unexpected--non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient speculation and nothing more. "there are at least a hundred kinds of humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many widely scattered planets. obviously there was no contact throughout the ages before space travel--_and yet each planetary race can interbreed with a minimum of ten others_! that's more than a legend--one hell of a lot more!" "it is impressive," admitted taphetta. "but i find it mildly distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my species." "that's because you're unique," said halden. "outside of your own world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole exception of mankind. actually, the four of us here, though it's accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human development. "emmer, a neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the beginning of the scale. i'm from earth, near the middle, though on emmer's side. meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle. and beyond her, toward the far end, is kelburn, mathematician. there's a corresponding span of fertility. emmer just misses being able to breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that i'd be fertile with meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may extend to kelburn." * * * * * taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "but i thought it was proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years." "you're thinking of earth," said halden. "humans require a certain kind of planet. it's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a few of them. that's what happened on earth; when man arrived, there was actually a manlike creature there. naturally our early evolutionists stretched their theories to cover the facts they had. "but there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the stone age aren't related to anything else there. we have to conclude that man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now found. instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout this section of the milky way." "and so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor," commented taphetta dryly. "it seems an unnecessary simplification." "can you think of a better explanation?" asked kelburn. "something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the result of parallel evolution--not when a hundred human races are involved, and _only_ the human race." "i can't think of a better explanation." taphetta rearranged his ribbons. "frankly, no one else is much interested in man's theories about himself." it was easy to understand the attitude. man was the most numerous though not always the most advanced--ribboneers had a civilization as high as anything in the known section of the milky way, and there were others--and humans were more than a little feared. if they ever got together--but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin. still, taphetta the ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be very useful. a clear statement of their position was essential in helping him make up his mind. "you've heard of the adjacency mating principle?" asked sam halden. "vaguely. most people have if they've been around men." "we've got new data and are able to interpret it better. the theory is that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close. we've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. if planetary race f can mate with race e back to a and forward to m, and race g is fertile only back to b, but forward to o, then we assume that whatever their positions are now, at once time g was actually adjacent to f, but was a little further along. when we project back into time those star systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain pattern. kelburn can explain it to you." the normally pink body of the ribboneer flushed slightly. the color change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he was interested. * * * * * kelburn went to the projector. "it would be easier if we knew all the stars in the milky way, but though we've explored only a small portion of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past." he pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "we're looking down on the plane of the galaxy. this is one arm of it as it is today and here are the human systems." he pressed another control and, for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant. there was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "the whole milky way is rotating. and while stars in a given region tend to remain together, there's also a random motion. here's what happens when we calculate the positions of stars in the past." flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. kelburn stopped the motion. "two hundred thousand years ago," he said. there was a pattern of the identified stars. they were spaced at fairly equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed. taphetta rustled. "the math is accurate?" "as accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem." "and that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?" "to the best of our knowledge," said kelburn. "and whereas there are humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate with those they were adjacent to _two hundred thousand years ago_!" "the adjacency mating principle. i've never seen it demonstrated," murmured taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "is that the only era that satisfies the calculations?" "plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a representative section of territory," said kelburn. "however, we have other ways of dating it. on some worlds on which there are no other mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically. the evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the time right." taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "and you think that where the two ends of the curve cross is your original home?" "we think so," said kelburn. "we've narrowed it down to several cubic light-years--then. now it's far more. and, of course, if it were a fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our exploration. but we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it this trip." "it seems i must decide quickly." the ribboneer glanced out the visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them. "do you mind if i ask other questions?" "go ahead," kelburn invited sardonically. "but if it's not math, you'd better ask halden. he's the leader of the expedition." halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. it was true that kelburn was the most advanced human type present, but while there were differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't as great as once was thought. anyway, non-humans weren't trained in the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. and, higher or lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. and there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and this was kelburn's first trip. damn it, he thought, that rated some respect. the ribboneer shifted his attention. "aside from the sudden illness of your pilot, why did you ask for me?" "we didn't. the man became sick and required treatment we can't give him. luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four months to the nearest planet. they consented to take him back and told us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. we have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. we'd prefer to have an expert--and ribboneers are famous for their navigational ability." taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "i had other plans, but i can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. still, what are the incentives?" sam halden coughed. "the usual, plus a little extra. we've copied the ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the profits from any discoveries we may make." "i'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said taphetta, "but i really must have our own unsimplified version. if you want me, you'll take my contract. i came prepared." he extended a tightly bound roll that he had kept somewhere on his person. they glanced at one another as halden took it. "you can read it if you want," offered taphetta. "but it will take you all day--it's micro-printing. however, you needn't be afraid that i'm defrauding you. it's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly everywhere in this sector--places men have never been." there was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. besides, the integrity of ribboneers was not to be questioned. halden signed. "good." taphetta crinkled. "send it to the ship; they'll forward it for me. and you can tell the ship to go on without me." he rubbed his ribbons together. "now if you'll get me the charts, i'll examine the region toward which we're heading." * * * * * firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and an equal lack of grace. he seemed to have difficulty in taking his eyes off meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. but his planet had been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of his place in the human hierarchy. disdainfully, meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter, wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. her people had never given much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy to see why. muttering something about primitive women, firmon turned to the biologist. "the pilot doesn't like our air." "then change it to suit him. he's in charge of the ship and knows more about these things than i do." "more than a man?" firmon leered at meredith and, when she failed to smile, added plaintively, "i did try to change it, but he still complains." * * * * * halden took a deep breath. "seems all right to me." "to everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. he breathes through a million tubes scattered over his body." it would do no good to explain that taphetta wasn't a worm, that his evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense less complex than man. it was a paradox that some biologically higher humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. firmon's reaction was quite typical. "if he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said halden. "do anything you can to give it to him." "can't. this is as good as i can get it. taphetta thought you could do something about it." "hydroponics is your job. there's nothing _i_ can do." halden paused thoughtfully. "is there something wrong with the plants?" "in a way, i guess, and yet not really." "what is it, some kind of toxic condition?" "the plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as fast as they grow." "insects? there shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays. use them." "it's an animal," said firmon. "we tried poison and got a few, but now they won't touch the stuff. i had electronics rig up some traps. the animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that way." halden glowered at the man. "how long has this been going on?" "about three months. it's not bad; we can keep up with them." it was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot. "tell me what you know about it," said halden. "they're little things." firmon held out his hands to show how small. "i don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of places to hide." he looked up defensively. "this is an old ship with new equipment and they hide under the machinery. there's nothing we can do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward." firmon was right. the new equipment had been installed in any place just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding. they couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down because there weren't that many men to spare. besides, the use of weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were trying to protect than to the pest. he'd have to devise other ways. sam halden got up. "i'll take a look and see what i can do." "i'll come along and help," said meredith, untwining her legs and leaning against him. "your mistress ought to have some sort of privileges." halden started. so she _knew_ that the crew was calling her that! perhaps it was intended to discourage firmon, but he wished she hadn't said it. it didn't help the situation at all. * * * * * taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. with a less flexible body, he wouldn't have fitted. maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on the seat. the head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never quite still. he looked from halden to emmer and back again. "the hydroponics tech tells me you're contemplating an experiment. i don't like it." halden shrugged. "we've got to have better air. it might work." "pests on the ship? it's filthy! my people would never tolerate it!" "neither do we." the ribboneer's distaste subsided. "what kind of creatures are they?" "i have a description, though i've never seen one. it's a small four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. a typical pest." taphetta rustled. "have you found out how it got on?" "it was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist. "considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half a dozen planets. anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are possibilities. either way, it mutated, became a different animal. it's developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. other things it detects and avoids, even electronic traps." "then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's smarter?" "i'd say that, yes. it must be a fairly intelligent creature to be so hard to get rid of. but it can be lured into traps, if the bait's strong enough." "that's what i don't like," said taphetta, curling. "let me think it over while i ask questions." he turned to emmer. "i'm curious about humans. is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical ancestor?" emmer didn't look like the genius he was--a neanderthal genius, but nonetheless a real one. in his field, he rated very high. he raised a stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy hands through shaggier hair. "i can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "i was born on a world with the most extensive relics. as a child, i played in the ruins of their camp." "i don't question your authority," crinkled taphetta. "to me, all humans--late or early and male or female--look remarkably alike. if you are an archeologist, that's enough for me." he paused and flicked his speech ribbons. "camp, did you say?" * * * * * emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "you've never seen any pictures? impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and we'd give something to know what they're made of. presumably my world was one of the first they stopped at. they weren't used to roughing it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. one-story structures and that's how we can guess at their size. the doorways were forty feet high." "very large," agreed taphetta. it was difficult to tell whether he was impressed. "what did you find in the ruins?" "nothing," said emmer. "there were buildings there and that was all, not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. they covered a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five thousand years--and not one of them died that we have a record of." "a faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused taphetta. "but they didn't leave any information for their descendants. why?" "who knows? their mental processes were certainly far different from ours. they may have thought we'd be better off without it. we do know they were looking for a special kind of planet, like earth, because they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they never stayed. they were pretty special people themselves, big and long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found. perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet they needed in the entire milky way. their science was tremendously advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. most of us did." "this special planet sounds strange," murmured taphetta. "not really," said emmer. "fifty human races reached space travel independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and late species. it's well known that individuals among my people are often as bright as any of halden's or meredith's, but as a whole we don't have the total capacity that later man does, and yet we're as advanced in civilization. the difference? it must lie somewhere in the planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is." "what happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked taphetta. "we helped them," said emmer. and they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of atomic--because they were human. that was sometimes a frightening thing for non-humans, that the race stuck together. they weren't actually aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves aloof. the unknown ancestor again. who else had such an origin and, it was tacitly assumed, such a destiny? * * * * * taphetta changed his questioning. "what do you expect to gain from this discovery of the unknown ancestor?" it was halden who answered him. "there's the satisfaction of knowing where we came from." "of course," rustled the ribboneer. "but a lot of money and equipment was required for this expedition. i can't believe that the educational institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual curiosity." "cultural discoveries," rumbled emmer. "how did our ancestors live? when a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than physiology is changed--the pattern of life itself is altered. things that were easy for them are impossible for us. look at their life span." "no doubt," said taphetta. "an archeologist would be interested in cultural discoveries." "two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced civilization," added halden. "a faster-than-light drive, and we've achieved that only within the last thousand years." "but i think we have a better one than they did," said the ribboneer. "there may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics, but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?" halden nodded. "agreed. they couldn't find a suitable planet. so, working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and produced us. they _were_ master biologists." "i thought so," said taphetta. "i never paid much attention to your fantastic theories before i signed to pilot this ship, but you've built up a convincing case." he raised his head, speech ribbons curling fractionally and ceaselessly. "i don't like to, but we'll have to risk using bait for your pest." he'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's consent. and there was one question halden wanted to ask; it had been bothering him vaguely. "what's the difference between the ribboneer contract and the one we offered you? our terms are more liberal." "to the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as much as you think you will. the difference is this: _my_ terms don't permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race." taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding anything. halden examined his own attitudes. _he_ hadn't intended, but could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition? he couldn't, and it was too late now--whatever knowledge they acquired would have to be shared. that was what taphetta had been afraid of--there was one kind of technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. the race that could improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start that could never be headed. the ribboneer needn't worry now. * * * * * "why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked meredith, glancing up. "i'd rather be in hydroponics." halden shrugged. "they may or may not be smarter than planetbound animals, but they're warier. they don't come out when anyone's near." lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. he motioned to the two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a miniature keyboard. "ready?" when they nodded, halden said: "do as you've rehearsed. keep noise at a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. don't try to imitate them exactly." at first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape crept out. it slid through leaves, listened intently before coming forward. it jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open floor to the next. it paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching. looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the side of the tank. standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began nibbling what it could reach. suddenly it whirled. behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another shape, like it but larger. the newcomer inched forward. the small one retreated, skittering nervously. without warning, the big one leaped and the small one tried to flee. in a few jumps, the big one caught up and mauled the other unmercifully. it continued to bite even after the little one lay still. at last it backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. there was none. then it turned to the plant. when it had chewed off everything within reach, it climbed into the branches. the little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging itself away. it rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no noise as it fell. it seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying away, still within range of the screen. against the wall was a small platform. the little one climbed on top and there found something that seemed to interest it. it sniffed around and reached and felt the discovery. wounds were forgotten as it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent defeat. this time it had no trouble with the raised section. it leaped and landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. the big animal heard and twisted around. it saw and clambered down hastily, jumping the last few feet. squealing, it hit the floor and charged. the small one stood still till the last instant--and then a paw flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of the charging creature. red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed. the knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped moving. the small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its foe. then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been found--_and laid it down_. * * * * * at halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too bright for anything to be visible. "go in and get them," said halden. "we don't want the pests to find out that the bodies aren't flesh." "it was realistic enough," said meredith as the crewmen shut off their machines and went out. "do you think it will work?" "it might. we had an audience." "did we? i didn't notice." meredith leaned back. "were the puppets exactly like the pests? and if not, will the pests be fooled?" "the electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't have to identify them as their species. if they're smart enough, they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it." "what if they're smarter? suppose they know a knife can't be used by a creature without real hands?" "that's part of our precautions. they'll never know until they try--and they'll never get away from the trap to try." "very good. i never thought of that," said meredith, coming closer. "i like the way your primitive mind works. at times i actually think of marrying you." "primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew that, in relation to her, he was _not_ advanced. "it's almost a curse, isn't it?" she laughed and took the curse away by leaning provocatively against him. "but barbaric lovers are often nice." here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. to her, i'm merely a passionate savage. they went to his cabin. she sat down, smiling. was she pretty? maybe. for her own race, she wasn't tall, only by terran standards. her legs were disproportionately long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless, except for a thin, straight, short nose. it was her eyes that made the difference, he decided. a notch or two up the scale of visual development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on the violet end of the spectrum. she settled back and looked at him. "it might be fun living with you on primeval earth." he said nothing; she knew as well as he that earth was as advanced as her own world. she had something else in mind. "i don't think i will, though. we might have children." "would it be wrong?" he asked. "i'm as intelligent as you. we wouldn't have subhuman monsters." "it would be a step up--for you." under her calm, there was tension. it had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the surface now. "do i have the right to condemn the unborn? should i make them start lower than i am?" the conflict was not new nor confined to them. in one form or another, it governed personal relations between races that were united against non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves. "i haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly. "because you're afraid i'd refuse." it was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a permanent union. "why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded halden. "love," she said gloomily. "physical attraction. but i can't let it lead me astray." "why not make a play for kelburn? if you're going to be scientific about it, he'd give you children of the higher type." "kelburn." it didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "i don't like him and he wouldn't marry me." "he wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough. there's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive." * * * * * she provocatively arched her back. not even the women of kelburn's race had a body like hers and she knew it. "racially, there should be a chance," she said. "actually, kelburn and i would be infertile." "can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act unconcerned. "how can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique smile narrowing her eyes. "i know we can't." his face felt anesthetized. "did you have to tell me that?" she got up and came to him. she nuzzled against him and his reaction was purely reflexive. his hand swung out and he could feel the flesh give when his knuckles struck it. she fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. when she took it away, blood spurted. she groped toward the mirror and stood in front of it. she wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully. "you've broken my nose," she said factually. "i'll have to stop the blood and pain." she pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. she closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. then she stepped back and looked at herself critically. "it's set and partially knitted. i'll concentrate tonight and have it healed by morning." she felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across the bridge. then she came over to him. "i wondered what you'd do. you didn't disappoint me." he scowled miserably at her. her face was almost plain and the bandage, invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. how could he still feel that attraction to her? "try emmer," he suggested tiredly. "he'll find you irresistible, and he's even more savage than i am." "is he?" she smiled enigmatically. "maybe, in a biological sense. too much, though. you're just right." he sat down on the bed. again there was only one way of knowing what emmer would do--and she knew. she had no concept of love outside of the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage--what advantage?--for the children she intended to have. outside of that, nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. and yet he wanted her. "i do think i love you," she said. "and if love's enough, i may marry you in spite of everything. but you'll have to watch out whose children i have." she wriggled into his arms. the racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not completely her fault. besides.... besides what? she had a beautiful body that could bear superior children--and they might be his. he twisted away. with those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. were they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime toward the highest goal they could conceive of? climbing over--no, _through_--everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry--onward and upward. he raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger was turned. "careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "you've already broken it once." he kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive. * * * * * there were no immediate results from the puppet performance and so it was repeated at intervals. after the third time, firmon reported, coming in as halden pored over the meager biological data he'd gathered on the unknown ancestor. wild guesses mostly, not one real fact in all the statistics. after two hundred thousand years, there wasn't much left to work with. firmon slouched down. "it worked," he said. "got three a few hours ago." halden looked at him; he had hoped it wouldn't work. there was satisfaction in being right, but he would rather face something less intelligent. wariness was one thing, the shyness and slyness of an unseen animal, but intelligence was more difficult to predict. "where are they?" he asked. "did you want them?" firmon seemed surprised at the idea. halden sighed; it was his own fault. firmon had a potentially good mind, but he hadn't been trained to use it and that counted for more than people thought. "any animal smart enough to appreciate the value of a knife is worth study on that account. that goes double when it's a pest." "i'll change the cremation setting," said firmon. "next time, we'll just stun them." the trap setting was changed and several animals were taken. physically, they were very much as halden had described them to taphetta, small four-legged creatures with fleshy antennae. dissection revealed a fairly large brain capacity, while behavior tests indicated an intelligence somewhat below what he had assumed. still, it was more than he wanted a pest to have, especially since it also had hands. the biological mechanism of the hands was simple. it walked on the back of the front paws, on the fingers of which were fleshy pads. when it sat upright, as it often did, the flexibility of the wrists permitted the forepaws to be used as hands. clumsy, but because it had a thumb, it could handle such tools as a knife. he had made an error there. he had guessed the intelligence, but he hadn't known it could use the weapon he had put within reach. a tiny thing with an inch-long knife was not much more dangerous than the animal alone, but he didn't like the idea of it loose on the ship. the metal knife would have to be replaced with something else. technicians could compound a plastic that would take a keen edge for a while and deteriorate to a soft mass in a matter of weeks. meanwhile, he had actually given the animal a dangerous weapon--the concept of a tool. there was only one way to take that away from them, by extermination. but that would have to wait. fortunately, the creature had a short life and a shorter breeding period. the actual replacement rate was almost negligible. in attaining intelligence, it had been short-changed in fertility and, as a consequence, only in the specialized environment of this particular ship was it any menace at all. they were lucky; a slightly higher fertility and the thing could threaten their existence. as it was, the ship would have to be deverminized before it could land on an inhabited planet. halden took the data to the ribboneer pilot and, after some discussion, it was agreed that the plastic knife should supplant the metal one. it was also decided to allow a few to escape with the weapon; there had to be some incentive if the creature was to visit the trap more than a few times. besides, with weapons there was always the chance of warfare between different groups. they might even exterminate each other. gradually, over a period of weeks, the damage to hydroponics subsided; the pests were under control. there was nothing to worry about unless they mutated again, which was unlikely. * * * * * kelburn scowled at the pilot. "where are we now?" he challenged, his face creased with suspicion. "you have access to all the instruments, so you should know," said taphetta. he was crouching and seemed about to spring, but he was merely breathing relaxedly through a million air tubes. "i do know. my calculations show one star as the most probable. we should have reached it two days ago--and we're nowhere near it." "true," admitted taphetta. "we're heading toward what you would consider the fifth or sixth most likely star." kelburn caught the implication. they all did. "then you know where it is?" he asked, suspicion vanishing. "not in the sense you're asking--no, i'm not sure it's what you're looking for. but there was once a great civilization there." "you knew this and didn't tell us?" "why should i?" taphetta looked at him in mild astonishment. "before you hired me, i wouldn't tell you for obvious reasons. and afterward--well, you engaged all my skill and knowledge and i used them to bring you here by the shortest route. i didn't think it necessary to tell you until we actually arrived. is that wrong?" it wasn't wrong; it merely illustrated the difference in the way an alien mind worked. sooner or later, they would have found the place, but he had saved them months. "what's it like?" emmer asked. taphetta jiggled his ribbons. "i don't know. i was passing near here and saw the planet off to one side." "and you didn't stop?" emmer was incredulous. "why should i? we're great navigators because we do so much of it. we would never get very far if we stopped to examine everything that looks interesting. besides, it's not a good policy in a strange region, especially with an unarmed ship." they wouldn't have that problem. the ship was armed well enough to keep off uncivilized marauders who had very recently reached the spaceship age, and only such people were apt to be inhospitable. "when will we land?" asked halden. "in a few hours, but you can see the planet on our screens." taphetta extended a head ribbon toward a knob and a planet came into view. there weren't two civilizations in the milky way that built on such a large scale, even from the distance that they could see it. great, distinctive cities were everywhere. there was no question as to what they had found. "now you'll learn why they ran away," said taphetta. "a new theory," kelburn said, though it wasn't, for they _had_ left. "what makes you think they were afraid?" "no air. if your calculations are right, there must have been an extensive atmosphere a few hundred thousand years ago and now there isn't any. a planet this size doesn't lose air that fast. therefore, it's an artificial condition. who takes the trouble to leave a planet uninhabitable except someone who's afraid others will use it--and who else runs away?" "they may have done it to preserve what they left," suggested halden. "perhaps," said taphetta, but it was obvious he didn't think so. * * * * * the lack of air had one thing to recommend it--they needn't worry about their pests escaping. the disadvantage was that they had to wear spacesuits. they landed on top of a great building that was intact after thousands of years and still strong enough to support the added weight. and then-- then there was nothing. buildings, an enormous number and variety of them, huge, not one of them less than five stories high, all with ramps instead of stairs. this was to be expected, considering the great size of the people who had lived there, and it followed the familiar pattern. but there was nothing in those buildings! on this airless world, there was no decay, no rust or corrosion--_and nothing to decay or corrode_. no pictures, tools, nothing that resembled sculpture, and while there were places where machines had stood, none were there now. here and there in inaccessible locations were featureless blobs of metal. the implication was clear: where they hadn't been able to remove a machine, they had melted in down on the spot. the thoroughness was bewildering. it wasn't done by some enemy; he would have stood off and razed the cities. but there was no rubble and the buildings were empty. the inhabitants themselves had removed all that was worth taking along. a whole people had packed and moved away, leaving behind only massive, echoing structures. there was plenty to learn, but nothing to learn it from. buildings can indicate only so much and then there must be something else--at least some of the complex artifacts of a civilization--and there was none. outside the cities, on the plains, there were the remains of plants and animals that indicated by their condition that airlessness had come suddenly. sam halden, the biologist, had examined them, but he discovered no clues. the unknown ancestor was still a mystery. and the others--emmer, the archeologist, and meredith, the linguist--had nothing to work on, though they searched. it was kelburn who found the first hint. having no specific task, now that the planet was located, he wandered around in a scout ship. on the other side of the planet, he signaled that there was a machine and that it was intact! the crew was hurriedly recalled, the equipment brought back into the ship, and they took off for the plain where kelburn waited. and there was the machine, immense, like everything on the planet. it stood alone, tapering toward the sky. at the base was a door, which, when open, was big enough to permit a spaceship to enter easily--only it was closed. kelburn stood beside the towering entrance, a tiny figure in a spacesuit. he gazed up at it as the three came near. "all we have to do is open it," he said. "how?" asked meredith. she seemed to have forgotten that she disliked him. he had made a chance discovery because he had nothing to do while the others were busy, but she regarded it as further proof of his superiority. * * * * * it was hard to watch the happiness that her face directed toward kelburn. halden turned away. "just press the button," he said. emmer noticed his expression. "it's such a big button," he objected. "it's going to be hard to know when we find it." "there's an inscription of some sort," said kelburn loftily. "this thing was left for a purpose. somewhere there must be operating instructions." "from here, it looks like a complex wave-form," a voice crinkled in their radio--taphetta from the spaceship. "all we have to do is to find the right base in the electromagnetic spectrum and duplicate it on a beam broadcast and the door should open. you're too close to see it as clearly as i can." * * * * * perhaps they were too close to the big ancestor, decided halden moodily as they went back. it had overshadowed much of their thinking, and who really knew what the ancestor was like and what had motivated him? but the ribboneer was right about the signal, though it took several days to locate it. and then the huge door swung open and air whistled out. inside was another disappointment, a bare hall with a ramp leading upward, closed off at the ceiling. they could have forced through, but they had no desire to risk using a torch to penetrate the barrier--in view of the number of precautions they'd already encountered, it was logical to assume that there were more waiting for them. it was emmer who found the solution. "in appearance, it resembles a spaceship. let's assume it is, minus engines. it was never intended to fly. listen. "there's no air, so you can't hear," said emmer impatiently. "but you could if there were air. put your hands against the wall." a distinct vibration ran through the whole structure. it hadn't been there before the door opened. some mechanism had been triggered. the rumbling went on, came to a stop, and began again. was it some kind of communication? hastily rigged machines were hauled inside the chamber to generate an air supply so that sounds would be produced for the recorders. translating equipment was set up and focused and, after some experimentation with signals, the door was slowly closed. no one remained inside; there was no guarantee that it would be as easy to get out as it had been to get in. they waited a day and a half while the sounds were being recorded. the delay seemed endless. the happiest of the crew was kelburn. biologically the highest human on the expedition, he was stimulated. he wandered aimlessly and smiled affably, patting meredith, when he came to her, in the friendliest fashion. startled, she smiled back and looked around wanly. halden was behind her. if i had not been there, thought halden--and thereafter made it a point to be there. * * * * * meredith was excited, but not precisely happy. the work was out of her hands until the translating equipment was retrieved. as the second highest biological type, she, too, was affected, until she pointedly went to her room and locked it from the inside. halden kept himself awake with anti-fatigue pills, in part because meredith could change her mind about kelburn, and because of that locked door. emmer tried to be phlegmatic and seemed to succeed. taphetta alone was unconcerned; to him, it was an interesting and perhaps profitable discovery, but important only because of that. he would not be changed at all by whatever he learned. hours crawled by and at last the door opened; the air came rushing out again. the translating equipment was brought back to the ship and meredith was left alone with it. it was half a day before she admitted the others to the laboratory. "the machine is still working," she said. "there seems to have been some attempt to make the message hard to decode. but the methods they used were exactly the clues that the machine needed to decipher it. my function as a linguist was to help out with the interpretation of key words and phrases. i haven't got even a little part of the message. you'll know what it is as soon as i do. after the first part, the translator didn't seem to have much trouble." they sat down facing it--taphetta, kelburn, meredith, halden and emmer. meredith was midway between kelburn and himself. was there any significance in that, wondered halden, or was he reading more in her behavior than was actually there? "the translation is complete," announced the machine. "go ahead," meredith ordered. "the words will be speeded up to human tempo," said the translator. "insofar as possible, speech mannerisms of the original will be imitated. please remember that it is only an imitation, however." the translator coughed, stuttered and began. "we have purposely made access to our records difficult. if you can translate this message, you'll find, at the end, instructions for reaching the rest of our culture relics. as an advanced race, you're welcome to them. we've provided a surprise for anyone else. "for ourselves, there's nothing left but an orderly retreat to a place where we can expect to live in peace. that means leaving this galaxy, but because of our life span, we're capable of it and we won't be followed." taphetta crinkled his ribbons in amusement. kelburn frowned at the interruption, but no one else paid any attention. the translator went on. "our metabolic rate is the lowest of any creature we know of. we live several thousand revolutions of any recorded planet and our rate of increase is extremely low; under the most favorable circumstances, we can do no more than double our numbers in two hundred generations." "this doesn't sound as if they were masters of biological science," rustled taphetta. * * * * * halden stirred uneasily. it wasn't turning out at all the way he had expected. "at the time we left," the message continued, "we found no other intelligent race, though there were some capable of further evolution. perhaps our scout ships long ago met your ancestors on some remote planet. we were never very numerous, and because we move and multiply so slowly, we are in danger of being swept out of existence in the foreseeable future. we prefer to leave while we can. the reason we must go developed on our own planet, deep beneath the cities, in the underworks, which we had ceased to inspect because there was no need to. this part was built to last a million generations, which is long even for us." emmer sat upright, annoyed at himself. "of course! there are always sewers and i didn't think of looking there!" "in the last several generations, we sent out four expeditions, leisurely trips because we then thought we had time to explore thoroughly. with this planet as base of operations, the successive expeditions fanned out in four directions, to cover the most representative territory." kelburn stiffened, mingled pride and chagrin on his face. his math had been correct, as far as he had figured it. but had there been any reason to assume that they would confine their exploration to one direction? no, they would want to cover the whole milky way. taphetta paled. four times as many humans to contend with! he hadn't met the other three-fourths yet--and, for him, it wasn't at all a pleasant thought. "after long preparation, we sent several ships to settle one of the nearer planets that we'd selected on the first expedition. to our dismay, we found that the plague was there--though it hadn't been on our first visit!" halden frowned. they were proving themselves less and less expert biologists. and this plague--there had to be a reason to leave, and sickness was as good as any--but unless he was mistaken, plague wasn't used in the strict semantic sense. it might be the fault of the translation. "the colonists refused to settle; they came back at once and reported. we sent out our fastest ships, heavily armed. we didn't have the time to retrace our path completely, for we'd stopped at innumerable places. what we did was to check a few planets, the outward and return parts of all four voyages. in every place, the plague was there, too, and we knew that we were responsible. "we did what we could. exhausting our nuclear armament, we obliterated the nearest planets on each of the four spans of our journeys." "i _wondered_ why the route came to an end," crinkled taphetta, but there was no comment, no answer. "we reconstructed what had happened. for a long time, the plague had lived in our sewers, subsisting on wastes. at night, because they are tiny and move exceedingly fast, they were able to make their way into our ships and were aboard on every journey. we knew they were there, but because they were so small, it was difficult to dislodge them from their nesting places. and so we tolerated their existence." * * * * * "they weren't so smart," said taphetta. "we figured out that angle long ago. true, our ship is an exception, but we haven't landed anywhere, and won't until we deverminize it." "we didn't guess that next to the hull in outer space and consequently exposed to hard radiation," the message went on, "those tiny creatures would mutate dangerously and escape to populate the planets we landed on. they had always been loathsome little beasts that walked instead of rolling or creeping, but now they became even more vicious, spawning explosively and fighting with the same incessant violence. they had always harbored diseases which spread to us, but now they've become hot-houses for still smaller parasites that also are able to infect us. finally, we are now allergic to them, and when they are within miles of us, it is agony to roll or creep." taphetta looked around. "who would have thought it? you were completely mistaken as to your origin." kelburn was staring vacantly ahead, but didn't see a thing. meredith was leaning against halden; her eyes were closed. "the woman has finally chosen, now that she knows she was once vermin," clicked the ribboneer. "but there are tears in her eyes." "the intelligence of the beast has advanced slightly, though there isn't much difference between the highest and the lowest--and we've checked both ends of all four journeys. but before, it was relatively calm and orderly. now it is malignantly insane." taphetta rattled his ribbons. "turn it off. you don't have to listen to this. we all are of some origin or other and it wasn't necessarily pretty. this being was a slug of some kind--and are you now what it describes? perhaps mentally a little, out of pride, but the pride was false." "we can't demolish all the planets we unthinkingly let it loose on; there are too many and it lives too fast. the stars drift and we would lose some, and before we could eliminate the last one, it would develop space travel--it has little intelligence, but it could get that far--and it would escape ahead of us. we know an impossible task when we see it. and so we're leaving, first making sure that this animal will never make use of the products of our civilization. it may reach this planet, but it will not be able to untangle our code--it's too stupid. you who will have to face it, please forgive us. it's the only thing that we're ashamed of." "don't listen," said the ribboneer and, bending his broad, thin body, he sprang to the translator, shook it and banged with his ribbons until the machine was silent. "you don't have to tell anyone," crackled taphetta. "don't worry about me--i won't repeat it." he looked around at the faces. "but i can see that you will report to everyone exactly what you found. that pride you've developed--you'll need it." taphetta sat on top of the machine, looking like nothing so much as a huge fancy bow on a gift-wrapped package. they noted the resemblance vaguely. but each of them knew that, as a member of the most numerous race in the milky way, no longer feared for their mysterious qualities--despised, instead--wherever they went, there would never be any gifts for them--for any man. the geological evidence of the antiquity of man by sir charles lyell, bt., f.r.s., etc. london: published by j.m. dent & sons ltd. and in new york by e.p. dutton & co. with introduction and notes by r.h. rastall, m.a., f.g.s. everyman i will go with thee & be thy guide in thy most need to go by thy side. everyman's library edited by ernest rhys. science. hoc solum scio quod nihil scio. introduction. the "antiquity of man" was published in , and ran into a third edition in the course of that year. the cause of this is not far to seek. darwin's "origin of species" appeared in , only four years earlier, and rapidly had its effect in drawing attention to the great problem of the origin of living beings. the theories of darwin and wallace brought to a head and presented in a concrete shape the somewhat vague speculations as to development and evolution which had long been floating in the minds of naturalists. in the actual working out of darwin's great theory it is impossible to overestimate the influence of lyell. this is made abundantly clear in darwin's letters, and it must never be forgotten that darwin himself was a geologist. his training in this science enabled him to grasp the import of the facts so ably marshalled by lyell in the "principles of geology," a work which, as professor judd has clearly shown,* contributed greatly to the advancement of evolutionary theory in general. (* judd "the coming of evolution" ("cambridge manuals of science and literature") cambridge chapters and .) from a study of the evolution of plants and of the lower animals it was an easy and obvious transition to man, and this step was soon taken. since in his physical structure man shows so close a resemblance to the higher animals it was a natural conclusion that the laws governing the development of the one should apply also to the other, in spite of preconceived opinions derived from authority. unfortunately the times were then hardly ripe for a calm and logical treatment of this question: prejudice in many cases took the place of argument, and the result was too often an undignified squabble instead of a scientific discussion. however, the dogmatism was not by any means all on one side. the disciples as usual went farther than the master, and their teaching when pushed to extremities resulted in a peculiarly dreary kind of materialism, a mental attitude which still survives to a certain extent among scientific and pseudo-scientific men of the old school. in more recent times this dogmatic agnosticism of the middle victorian period has been gradually replaced by speculations of a more positive type, such as those of the mendelian school in biology and the doctrines of bergson on the philosophical side. with these later developments we are not here concerned. in dealing with the evolution and history of man as with that of any other animal, the first step is undoubtedly to collect the facts, and this is precisely what lyell set out to do in the "antiquity of man." the first nineteen chapters of the book are purely an empirical statement of the evidence then available as to the existence of man in pre-historic times: the rest of the book is devoted to a consideration of the connection between the facts previously stated and darwin's theory of the origin of species by variation and natural selection. the keynote of lyell's work, throughout his life, was observation. lyell was no cabinet geologist; he went to nature and studied phenomena at first hand. possessed of abundant leisure and ample means he travelled far and wide, patiently collecting material and building up the modern science of physical geology, whose foundations had been laid by hutton and playfair. from the facts thus collected he drew his inferences, and if later researches showed these inferences to be wrong, unlike some of his contemporaries, he never hesitated to say so. thus and thus only is true progress in science attained. lyell is universally recognised as the leader of the uniformitarian school of geologists, and it will be well to consider briefly what is implied in this term. the principles of uniformitarianism may be summed up thus: the present is the key to the past. that is to say, the processes which have gone on in the past were the same in general character as those now seen in operation, though probably differing in degree. this theory is in direct opposition to the ideas of the catastrophic school, which were dominant at the beginning of the nineteenth century. the catastrophists attributed all past changes to sudden and violent convulsions of nature, by which all living beings were destroyed, to be replaced by a fresh creation. at least such were the tenets of the extremists. in opposition to these views the school of hutton and lyell introduced the principle of continuity and development. there is no discrepancy between uniformitarianism and evolution. the idea of uniformitarianism does not imply that things have always been the same; only that they were similar, and between these two terms there is a wide distinction. evolution of any kind whatever naturally implies continuity, and this is the fundamental idea of lyellian geology. in spite, however, of this clear and definite conception of natural and organic evolution, in all those parts of his works dealing with earth-history, with the stratified rocks and with the organisms entombed in them, lyell adopted a plan which has now been universally abandoned. he began with the most recent formations and worked backwards from the known to the unknown. to modern readers this is perhaps the greatest drawback to his work, since it renders difficult the study of events in their actual sequence. however, it must be admitted that, taking into account the state of geological knowledge before his time, this course was almost inevitable. the succession of the later rocks was fairly well known, thanks to the labours of william smith and others, but in the lower part of the sequence of stratified rocks there were many gaps, and more important still, there was no definite base. although this want of a starting point has been largely supplied by the labours of sedgwick, murchison, de la beche, ramsay, and a host of followers, still considerable doubt prevails as to which constitutes the oldest truly stratified series, and the difficulty has only been partially circumvented by the adoption of an arbitrary base-line, from which the succession is worked out both upwards and downwards. so the problem is only removed a stage further back. in the study of human origins a similar difficulty is felt with special acuteness; the beginnings must of necessity be vague and uncertain, and the farther back we go the fainter will naturally be the traces of human handiwork and the more primitive and doubtful those traces when discovered. the reprinting of the "antiquity of man" is particularly appropriate at the present time, owing to the increased attention drawn to the subject by recent discoveries. ever since the publication of the "origin of species" and the discussions that resulted from that publication, the popular imagination has been much exercised by the possible existence of forms intermediate between the apes and man; the so-called "missing link." much has been written on this subject, some of it well-founded and some very much the reverse. the discovery of the neanderthal skull is fully described in this volume, and this skull is certainly of a low type, but it is more human than ape-like. the same remark applies still more strongly to the engis skull, the man of spy, the recently discovered sussex skull, and other well-known examples of early human remains. the pithecanthropus of java alone shows perhaps more affinity to the apes. the whole subject has been most ably discussed by professor sollas in his recent book entitled "ancient hunters." the study of palaeolithic flint implements has been raised to a fine art. both in england and france a regular succession of primitive types has been established and correlated with the gravel terraces of existing rivers, and even with the deposits of rivers no longer existing and with certain glacial deposits. but with all of these the actual bodily remains of man are comparatively scanty. from this it may be concluded that primitive methods of burial were such as to be unfavourable to the actual preservation of human remains. attempts have also been made to prove the existence of man in pre-glacial times, but hitherto none of these have met with general acceptance, since in no case is the evidence beyond doubt. one of the most important results of recent research in the subject has been the establishment of the existence of man in interglacial times. when lyell wrote, it was not fully recognised that the glaciation of europe was not one continuous process, but that it could be divided into several episodes, glaciations, or advances of the ice, separated by a warm interglacial period. the monumental researches of penck and bruckner in the alps have there established four glaciations with mild interglacial periods, but all of these cannot be clearly traced in britain. one very important point also is the recognition of the affinities of certain types of palaeolithic man to the eskimo, the australians, and the bushmen of south africa. however, it is impossible to give here a review of the whole subject. full details of recent researches will be found in the works mentioned in the notes at the end of the book. another point of great interest and importance, arising directly from the study of early man is the nature of the events constituting the glacial period in britain and elsewhere. this has been for many years a fertile subject of controversy, and is likely to continue such. lyell, in common with most of the geologists of his day, assumes that during the glacial period the british isles were submerged under the sea to a depth of many hundreds of feet, at any rate as regards the region north of a line drawn from london to bristol. later authors, however, explained the observed phenomena on the hypothesis of a vast ice-sheet of the greenland type, descending from the mountains of scotland and scandinavia, filling up the north sea and spreading over eastern england. this explanation is now accepted by the majority, but it must be recognised that it involves enormous mechanical difficulties. it is impossible to pursue the subject here; for a full discussion reference may be made to professor bonney's presidential address to the british association at sheffield in . it will be seen, therefore, that the "antiquity of man" opens up a wide field of speculation into a variety of difficult and obscure though interesting subjects. in the light of modern research it would be an easy task to pile up a mountain of criticism on points of detail. but, though easy, it would be a thankless task. it is scarcely too much to say that the dominant impression of most readers after perusing this book will be one of astonishment and admiration at the insight and breadth of view displayed by the author. when it was written the subject was a particularly thorny one to handle, and it undoubtedly required much courage to tackle the origin and development of the human race from a purely critical and scientific standpoint. it must be admitted on all hands that the result was eminently successful, taking into account the paucity of the available material, and the "antiquity of man" must ever remain one of the classics of prehistoric archaeology. this edition of the "antiquity of man" has been undertaken in order to place before the public in an easily accessible form one of the best known works of the great geologist sir charles lyell; the book had an immense influence in its own day, and it still remains one of the best general accounts of an increasingly important branch of knowledge. in order to avoid a multiplicity of notes and thus to save space, the nomenclature has been to a certain extent modernised: a new general table of strata has been inserted in the first chapter, in place of the one originally there printed, which was cumbrous and included many minor subdivisions of unnecessary minuteness. the notes have been kept as short as possible, and they frequently contain little more than references to recent literature elucidating the points under discussion in the text. r.h. rastall. . bibliography. the passage of the beresina (in verse), . principles of geology, being an attempt to explain the former changes of the earth's surface, by reference to causes now in operation, - (third edition, ; fourth, ; fifth, ; sixth, ; seventh, ; ninth, entirely revised edition, ; tenth, entirely revised edition, , ; eleventh, entirely revised edition, ; twelfth, edited by l. lyell, ). elements of geology, (second edition, ). a manual of elementary geology (third and entirely revised edition of the former work, ; fourth and entirely revised edition, ; fifth, enlarged edition, ; supplement to the fifth edition, ; second edition of the supplement, revised, ). elements of geology, sixth edition, greatly enlarged, . travels in north america, with geological observations on the united states, canada, and nova scotia, . a second visit to the united states of north america, . the students' elements of geology, (second edition, revised and corrected, ; third, revised, with a table of british fossils [by r. etheridge], ; fourth, revised by p.m. duncan, with a table of british fossils [by r. etheridge], ). the geological evidences of the antiquity of man, with remarks on theories of the origin of species by variation, ; (second edition, revised, ; third edition, revised, ; fourth edition, revised, ). there has also been published the student's lyell: a manual of elementary geology, edited by j.w. judd, (second edition revised and enlarged, ). lectures, addresses, and articles: on a recent formation of freshwater limestone in forfarshire ("transactions of the geological society" nd series, volume , , part ). on a dike of serpentine in the county of forfar ("edinburgh journal of science" ). english scientific societies ("quarterly review" volume ; three papers with sir roderick and mrs. murchison; "edinburgh philosophical journal," ; abstract in "proceedings of the geological society" ; "annales des sciences naturelles" ; abstract in "proceedings of the geological society" ). address delivered at the geological society of london, . lectures on geology--eight lectures on geology, delivered at the broadway tabernacle, new york ("new york tribune" ). a paper on madeira ("quarterly journal of the geological society" , ). on the structure of lavas which have consolidated on steep slopes ("philosophical transactions" ). address (to the british association) . translations: antiquity of man, translated into french by m. chaper, ; and into german by l. buchner, . elements of geology (sixth edition), translated into french by m. j. gineston, . report, extracted from the "aberdeen free press" and translated into french, of sir c. lyell's address before the british association, , under the title of antiquities antediluviennes: l'homme fossile. life: life, letters and journals of sir charles lyell, edited by his sister-in-law, mrs. lyell, . see also: life and letters of charles darwin, . life and letters of sedgwick, by clark and hughes, . list of contents. chap. . introductory. preliminary remarks on the subjects treated of in this work. definition of the terms recent and pleistocene. tabular view of the entire series of fossiliferous strata. chap. . recent period--danish peat and shell mounds-- swiss lake-dwellings. works of art in danish peat-mosses. remains of three periods of vegetation in the peat. ages of stone, bronze, and iron. shell-mounds or ancient refuse-heaps of the danish islands. change in geographical distribution of marine mollusca since their origin. embedded remains of mammalia of recent species. human skulls of the same period. swiss lake-dwellings built on piles. stone and bronze implements found in them. fossil cereals and other plants. remains of mammalia, wild and domesticated. no extinct species. chronological computations of the date of the bronze and stone periods in switzerland. lake-dwellings, or artificial islands called "crannoges," in ireland. chap. . fossil human remains and works of art of the recent period--continued. delta and alluvial plain of the nile. burnt bricks in egypt before the roman era. borings in - . ancient mounds of the valley of the ohio. their antiquity. sepulchral mound at santos in brazil. delta of the mississippi. ancient human remains in coral reefs of florida. changes in physical geography in the human period. buried canoes in marine strata near glasgow. upheaval since the roman occupation of the shores of the firth of forth. fossil whales near stirling. upraised marine strata of sweden on shores of the baltic and the ocean. attempts to compute their age. chap. . pleistocene period--bones of man and extinct mammalia in belgian caverns. earliest discoveries in caves of languedoc of human remains with bones of extinct mammalia. researches in of dr. schmerling in the liege caverns. scattered portions of human skeletons associated with bones of elephant and rhinoceros. distribution and probable mode of introduction of the bones. implements of flint and bone. schmerling's conclusions as to the antiquity of man ignored. present state of the belgian caves. human bones recently found in cave of engihoul. engulfed rivers. stalagmitic crust. antiquity of the human remains in belgium how proved. chap. . pleistocene period--fossil human skulls of the neanderthal and engis caves. human skeleton found in cave near dusseldorf. its geological position and probable age. its abnormal and ape-like characters. fossil human skull of the engis cave near liege. professor huxley's description of these skulls. comparison of each, with extreme varieties of the native australian race. range of capacity in the human and simian brains. skull from borreby in denmark. conclusions of professor huxley. bearing of the peculiar characters of the neanderthal skull on the hypothesis of transmutation. chap. . pleistocene alluvium and cave deposits with flint implements. general position of drift with extinct mammalia in valleys. discoveries of m. boucher de perthes at abbeville. flint implements found also at st. acheul, near amiens. curiosity awakened by the systematic exploration of the brixham cave. flint knives in same, with bones of extinct mammalia. superposition of deposits in the cave. visits of english and french geologists to abbeville and amiens. chap. . peat and pleistocene alluvium of the valley of the somme. geological structure of the valley of the somme and of the surrounding country. position of alluvium of different ages. peat near abbeville. its animal and vegetable contents. works of art in peat. probable antiquity of the peat, and changes of level since its growth began. flint implements of antique type in older alluvium. their various forms and great numbers. chap. . pleistocene alluvium with flint implements of the valley of the somme--concluded. fluvio-marine strata, with flint implements, near abbeville. marine shells in same. cyrena fluminalis. mammalia. entire skeleton of rhinoceros. flint implements, why found low down in fluviatile deposits. rivers shifting their channels. relative ages of higher and lower-level gravels. section of alluvium of st. acheul. two species of elephant and hippopotamus coexisting with man in france. volume of drift, proving antiquity of flint implements. absence of human bones in tool-bearing alluvium, how explained. value of certain kinds of negative evidence tested thereby. human bones not found in drained lake of haarlem. chap. . works of art in pleistocene alluvium of france and england. flint implements in ancient alluvium of the basin of the seine. bones of man and of extinct mammalia in the cave of arcy. extinct mammalia in the valley of the oise. flint implement in gravel of same valley. works of art in pleistocene drift in valley of the thames. musk ox. meeting of northern and southern fauna. migrations of quadrupeds. mammals of mongolia. chronological relation of the older alluvium of the thames to the glacial drift. flint implements of pleistocene period in surrey, middlesex, kent, bedfordshire, and suffolk. chap. . cavern deposits, and places of sepulture of the pleistocene period. flint implements in cave containing hyaena and other extinct mammalia in somersetshire. caves of the gower peninsula in south wales. rhinoceros hemitoechus. ossiferous caves near palermo. sicily once part of africa. rise of bed of the mediterranean to the height of three hundred feet in the human period in sardinia. burial-place of pleistocene date of aurignac in the south of france. rhinoceros tichorhinus eaten by man. m. lartet on extinct mammalia and works of art found in the aurignac cave. relative antiquity of the same considered. chap. . age of human fossils of le puy in central france and of natchez on the mississippi discussed. question as to the authenticity of the fossil man of denise, near le puy-en-velay, considered. antiquity of the human race implied by that fossil. successive periods of volcanic action in central france. with what changes in the mammalian fauna they correspond. the elephas meridionalis anterior in time to the implement-bearing gravel of st. acheul. authenticity of the human fossil of natchez on the mississippi discussed. the natchez deposit, containing bones of mastodon and megalonyx, probably not older than the flint implements of st. acheul. chap. . antiquity of man relatively to the glacial period and to the existing fauna and flora. chronological relation of the glacial period, and the earliest known signs of man's appearance in europe. series of tertiary deposits in norfolk and suffolk immediately antecedent to the glacial period. gradual refrigeration of climate proved by the marine shells of successive groups. marine newer pliocene shells of northern character near woodbridge. section of the norfolk cliffs. norwich crag. forest bed and fluvio-marine strata. fossil plants and mammalia of the same. overlying boulder clay and contorted drift. newer freshwater formation of mundesley compared to that of hoxne. great oscillations of level implied by the series of strata in the norfolk cliffs. earliest known date of man long subsequent to the existing fauna and flora. chap. . chronological relations of the glacial period and the earliest signs of man's appearance in europe. chronological relations of the close of the glacial period and the earliest geological signs of the appearance of man. effects of glaciers and icebergs in polishing and scoring rocks. scandinavia once encrusted with ice like greenland. outward movement of continental ice in greenland. mild climate of greenland in the miocene period. erratics of recent period in sweden. glacial state of sweden in the pleistocene period. scotland formerly encrusted with ice. its subsequent submergence and re-elevation. latest changes produced by glaciers in scotland. remains of the mammoth and reindeer in scotch boulder clay. parallel roads of glen roy formed in glacier lakes. comparatively modern date of these shelves. chap. . chronological relations of the glacial period and the earliest signs of man's appearance in europe--continued. signs of extinct glaciers in wales. great submergence of wales during the glacial period proved by marine shells. still greater depression inferred from stratified drift. scarcity of organic remains in glacial formations. signs of extinct glaciers in england. ice action in ireland. maps illustrating successive revolutions in physical geography during the pleistocene period. southernmost extent of erratics in england. successive periods of junction and separation of england, ireland, and the continent. time required for these changes. probable causes of the upheaval and subsidence of the earth's crust. antiquity of man considered in relation to the age of the existing fauna and flora. chap. . extinct glaciers of the alps and their chronological relation to the human period. extinct glaciers of switzerland. alpine erratic blocks on the jura. not transported by floating ice. extinct glaciers of the italian side of the alps. theory of the origin of lake-basins by the erosive action of glaciers considered. successive phases in the development of glacial action in the alps. probable relation of these to the earliest known date of man. correspondence of the same with successive changes in the glacial condition of the scandinavian and british mountains. cold period in sicily and syria. chap. . human remains in the loess, and their probable age. nature, origin, and age of the loess of the rhine and danube. impalpable mud produced by the grinding action of glaciers. dispersion of this mud at the period of the retreat of the great alpine glaciers. continuity of the loess from switzerland to the low countries. characteristic organic remains not lacustrine. alpine gravel in the valley of the rhine covered by loess. geographical distribution of the loess and its height above the sea. fossil mammalia. loess of the danube. oscillations in the level of the alps and lower country required to explain the formation and denudation of the loess. more rapid movement of the inland country. the same depression and upheaval might account for the advance and retreat of the alpine glaciers. himalayan mud of the plains of the ganges compared to european loess. human remains in loess near maestricht, and their probable antiquity. chap. . post-glacial dislocations and foldings of cretaceous and drift strata in the island of moen, in denmark. geological structure of the island of moen. great disturbances of the chalk posterior in date to the glacial drift, with recent shells. m. puggaard's sections of the cliffs of moen. flexures and faults common to the chalk and glacial drift. different direction of the lines of successive movement, fracture, and flexure. undisturbed condition of the rocks in the adjoining danish islands. unequal movements of upheaval in finmark. earthquake of new zealand in . predominance in all ages of uniform continental movements over those by which the rocks are locally convulsed. chap. . the glacial period in north america. post-glacial strata containing remains of mastodon giganteus in north america. scarcity of marine shells in glacial drift of canada and the united states. greater southern extension of ice-action in north america than in europe. trains of erratic blocks of vast size in berkshire, massachusetts. description of their linear arrangement and points of departure. their transportation referred to floating and coast ice. general remarks on the causes of former changes of climate at successive geological epochs. supposed effects of the diversion of the gulf stream in a northerly instead of north-easterly direction. development of extreme cold on the opposite sides of the atlantic in the glacial period not strictly simultaneous. effect of marine currents on climate. pleistocene submergence of the sahara. chap. . recapitulation of geological proofs of man's antiquity. recapitulation of results arrived at in the earlier chapters. ages of stone and bronze. danish peat and kitchen-middens. swiss lake-dwellings. local changes in vegetation and in the wild and domesticated animals and in physical geography coeval with the age of bronze and the later stone period. estimates of the positive date of some deposits of the later stone period. ancient division of the age of stone of st. acheul and aurignac. migrations of man in that period from the continent to england in post-glacial times. slow rate of progress in barbarous ages. doctrine of the superior intelligence and endowments of the original stock of mankind considered. opinions of the greeks and romans, and their coincidence with those of the modern progressionist. chap. . theories of progression and transmutation. antiquity and persistence in character of the existing races of mankind. theory of their unity of origin considered. bearing of the diversity of races on the doctrine of transmutation. difficulty of defining the terms "species" and "race." lamarck's introduction of the element of time into the definition of a species. his theory of variation and progression. objections to his theory, how far answered. arguments of modern writers in favour of progression in the animal and vegetable world. the old landmarks supposed to indicate the first appearance of man, and of different classes of animals, found to be erroneous. yet the theory of an advancing series of organic beings not inconsistent with facts. earliest known fossil mammalia of low grade. no vertebrata as yet discovered in the oldest fossiliferous rocks. objections to the theory of progression considered. causes of the popularity of the doctrine of progression as compared to that of transmutation. chap. . on the origin of species by variation and natural selection. mr. darwin's theory of the origin of species by natural selection. memoir by mr. wallace. manner in which favoured races prevail in the struggle for existence. formation of new races by breeding. hypotheses of definite and indefinite modifiability equally arbitrary. competition and extinction of races. progression not a necessary accompaniment of variation. distinct classes of phenomena which natural selection explains. unity of type, rudimentary organs, geographical distribution, relation of the extinct to the living fauna and flora, and mutual relations of successive groups of fossil forms. light thrown on embryological development by natural selection. why large genera have more variable species than small ones. dr. hooker on the evidence afforded by the vegetable kingdom in favour of creation by variation. steenstrup on alternation of generations. how far the doctrine of independent creation is opposed to the laws now governing the migration of species. chap. . objections to the hypothesis of transmutation considered. statement of objections to the hypothesis of transmutation founded on the absence of intermediate forms. genera of which the species are closely allied. occasional discovery of the missing links in a fossil state. davidson's monograph on the brachiopoda. why the gradational forms, when found, are not accepted as evidence of transmutation. gaps caused by extinction of races and species. vast tertiary periods during which this extinction has been going on in the fauna and flora now existing. genealogical bond between miocene and recent plants and insects. fossils of oeningen. species of insects in britain and north america represented by distinct varieties. falconer's monograph on living and fossil elephants. fossil species and genera of the horse tribe in north and south america. relation of the pliocene mammalia of north america, asia, and europe. species of mammalia, though less persistent than the mollusca, change slowly. arguments for and against transmutation derived from the absence of mammalia in islands. imperfection of the geological record. intercalation of newly discovered formation of intermediate age in the chronological series. reference of the st. cassian beds to the triassic periods. discovery of new organic types. feathered archaeopteryx of the oolite. chap. . origin and development of languages and species compared. aryan hypothesis and controversy. the races of mankind change more slowly than their languages. theory of the gradual origin of languages. difficulty of defining what is meant by a language as distinct from a dialect. great number of extinct and living tongues. no european language a thousand years old. gaps between languages, how caused. imperfection of the record. changes always in progress. struggle for existence between rival terms and dialects. causes of selection. each language formed slowly in a single geographical area. may die out gradually or suddenly. once lost can never be revived. mode of origin of languages and species a mystery. speculations as to the number of original languages or species unprofitable. chap. . bearing of the doctrine of transmutation on the origin of man, and his place in the creation. whether man can be regarded as an exception to the rule if the doctrine of transmutation be embraced for the rest of the animal kingdom. zoological relations of man to other mammalia. systems of classification. term quadrumanous, why deceptive. whether the structure of the human brain entitles man to form a distinct sub-class of the mammalia. intelligence of the lower animals compared to the intellect and reason of man. grounds on which man has been referred to a distinct kingdom of nature. immaterial principle common to man and animals. non-discovery of intermediate links among fossil anthropomorphous species. hallam on the compound nature of man, and his place in the creation. great inequality of mental endowment in different human races and individuals developed by variation and ordinary generation. how far a corresponding divergence in physical structure may result from the working of the same causes. concluding remarks. notes. plates and figures. plate . a village built on piles in a swiss lake. figure . section of the neanderthal cave. figure . side view of the cast of part of a human skull found by dr. schmerling embedded amongst the remains of extinct mammalia in the cave of engis. figure . side view of the cast of a part of a human skull from a cave in the neanderthal. figure . outline of the skull of an adult chimpanzee, of that from the neanderthal, and of that of a european. figure . skull associated with ground flint implements. figure . outlines of the skull from the neanderthal, of an australian skull from port adelaide, and of the skull from the cave of engis. figure . section across the valley of the somme in picardy. figure . flint implement from st. acheul, near amiens, of the spear-head shape. figure . oval-shaped flint hatchet from mautort. figure . flint tool from st. acheul. figures , and . dendrites on surfaces of flint hatchets in the drift of st. acheul. figure . flint knife or flake from below the sand containing cyrena fluminalis. figure . fossils of the white chalk. figure . section of fluvio-marine strata, containing flint implements and bones of extinct mammalia. figure . cyrena fluminalis, o.f. muller, sp. figure . elephas primigenius. figure . elephas antiquus, falconer. figure . elephas meridionalis, nesti. figure . section of gravel pit containing flint implements at st. acheul. figure . contorted fluviatile strata at st. acheul. figure . section across the valley of the ouse. figure . section showing the position of the flint weapons at hoxne. figure . section of part of the hill of fajoles. figure . section through the alluvial plain of the mississippi. figure . diagram to illustrate the general succession of the strata in the norfolk cliffs. figure . cyclas (pisidium) amnica var.(?) figure . cliff feet high between bacton gap and mundesley. figure . folding of the strata between east and west runton. figure . section of concentric beds west of cromer. figure . included pinnacle of chalk at old hythe point. figure . section of the newer fresh-water formation in the cliffs at mundesley. figure . paludina marginata, michaud (p. minuta, strickland). hydrobia marginata. figure . oval and flattish pebbles. plate . view of the mouths of glen roy and glen spean. figure . map of the parallel roads of glen roy. figure . section through side of loch. figure . dome-shaped rocks, or "roches moutonees." figure . map of the british isles and part of the north-west of europe, showing the great amount of supposed submergence of land beneath the sea during part of the glacial period. figure . map showing what parts of the british islands would remain above water after a subsidence of the area to the extent of feet. figure . map of part of the north-west of europe, including the british isles, showing the extent of sea which would become land if there were a general rise of the area to the extent of feet. figure . map showing the supposed course of the ancient and now extinct glacier of the rhone. figure . map of the moraines of extinct glaciers extending from the alps into the plains of the po near turin. figure . succinea oblonga. figure . pupa muscorum. figure . helix hispida, lin.; h. plebeia, drap. figure . southern extremity of moens klint. figure . section of moens klint. figure . post-glacial disturbances of vertical, folded, and shifted strata of chalk and drift, in the dronningestol. figure . map showing the relative position and direction of seven trains of erratic blocks in berkshire, massachusetts, and in part of the state of new york. figure . erratic dome-shaped block of compact chloritic rock. figure . section showing the position of the block in figure . figure . section through canaan and richmond valleys at a time when they were marine channels. figure . upper surface of brain of chimpanzee, distorted. figure . side view of brain of chimpanzee, distorted. figure . correct side view of chimpanzee's brain. figure . correct view of upper surface of chimpanzee's brain. figure . side view of human brain.) geological evidence of the antiquity of man. chapter . -- introductory. preliminary remarks on the subjects treated of in this work. definition of the terms recent and pleistocene. tabular view of the entire series of fossiliferous strata. no subject has lately excited more curiosity and general interest among geologists and the public than the question of the antiquity of the human race--whether or no we have sufficient evidence in caves, or in the superficial deposits commonly called drift or "diluvium," to prove the former co-existence of man with certain extinct mammalia. for the last half-century the occasional occurrence in various parts of europe of the bones of man or the works of his hands in cave-breccias and stalagmites, associated with the remains of the extinct hyaena, bear, elephant, or rhinoceros, has given rise to a suspicion that the date of man must be carried farther back than we had heretofore imagined. on the other hand extreme reluctance was naturally felt on the part of scientific reasoners to admit the validity of such evidence, seeing that so many caves have been inhabited by a succession of tenants and have been selected by man as a place not only of domicile, but of sepulture, while some caves have also served as the channels through which the waters of occasional land-floods or engulfed rivers have flowed, so that the remains of living beings which have peopled the district at more than one era may have subsequently been mingled in such caverns and confounded together in one and the same deposit. but the facts brought to light in , during the systematic investigation of the brixham cave, near torquay in devonshire, which will be described in the sequel, excited anew the curiosity of the british public and prepared the way for a general admission that scepticism in regard to the bearing of cave evidence in favour of the antiquity of man had previously been pushed to an extreme. since that period many of the facts formerly adduced in favour of the co-existence in ancient times of man with certain species of mammalia long since extinct have been re-examined in england and on the continent, and new cases bearing on the same question, whether relating to caves or to alluvial strata in valleys, have been brought to light. to qualify myself for the appreciation and discussion of these cases, i have visited in the course of the last three years many parts of england, france, and belgium, and have communicated personally or by letter with not a few of the geologists, english and foreign, who have taken part in these researches. besides explaining in the present volume the results of this inquiry, i shall give a description of the glacial formations of europe and north america, that i may allude to the theories entertained respecting their origin, and consider their probable relations in a chronological point of view to the human epoch, and why throughout a great part of the northern hemisphere they so often interpose an abrupt barrier to all attempts to trace farther back into the past the signs of the existence of man upon the earth. in the concluding chapters i shall offer a few remarks on the recent modifications of the lamarckian theory of progressive development and transmutation, which are suggested by mr. darwin's work on the "origin of species by variation and natural selection," and the bearing of this hypothesis on the different races of mankind and their connection with other parts of the animal kingdom. nomenclature. some preliminary explanation of the nomenclature adopted in the following pages will be indispensable, that the meaning attached to the terms recent, pleistocene, and post-tertiary may be correctly understood. [ ] previously to the year , when i published the third volume of the "principles of geology," the strata called tertiary had been divided by geologists into lower, middle, and upper; the lower comprising the oldest formations of the environs of paris and london, with others of like age; the middle, those of bordeaux and touraine; and the upper, all that lay above or were newer than the last-mentioned group. when engaged in in preparing for the press the treatise on geology above alluded to, i conceived the idea of classing the whole of this series of strata according to the different degrees of affinity which their fossil testacea bore to the living fauna. having obtained information on this subject during my travels on the continent, i learnt that m. deshayes of paris, already celebrated as a conchologist, had been led independently by the study of a large collection of recent and fossil shells to very similar views respecting the possibility of arranging the tertiary formations in chronological order, according to the proportional number of species of shells identical with living ones, which characterised each of the successive groups above mentioned. after comparing fossil species with living ones, the result arrived at was, that in the lower tertiary strata there were about / per cent identical with recent; in the middle tertiary (the faluns of the loire and gironde), about per cent; and in the upper tertiary, from to , and sometimes in the most modern beds as much as to per cent. for the sake of clearness and brevity, i proposed to give short technical names to these sets of strata, or the periods to which they respectively belonged. i called the first or oldest of them eocene, the second miocene, and the third pliocene. the first of the above terms, eocene, is derived from greek eos, dawn, and greek kainos, recent; because an extremely small proportion of the fossil shells of this period could be referred to living species, so that this era seemed to indicate the dawn of the present testaceous fauna, no living species of shells having been detected in the antecedent or secondary rocks. some conchologists are now unwilling to allow that any eocene species of shell has really survived to our times so unaltered as to allow of its specific identification with a living species. i cannot enter in this place into this wide controversy. it is enough at present to remark that the character of the eocene fauna, as contrasted with that of the antecedent secondary formations, wears a very modern aspect, and that some able living conchologists still maintain that there are eocene shells not specifically distinguishable from those now extant; though they may be fewer in number than was supposed in . the term miocene (from greek meion, less; and greek kainos, recent) is intended to express a minor proportion of recent species (of testacea); the term pliocene (from greek pleion, more; and greek kainos, recent), a comparative plurality of the same. it has sometimes been objected to this nomenclature that certain species of infusoria found in the chalk are still existing, and, on the other hand, the miocene and older pliocene deposits often contain the remains of mammalia, reptiles, and fish, exclusively of extinct species. but the reader must bear in mind that the terms eocene, miocene, and pliocene were originally invented with reference purely to conchological data, and in that sense have always been and are still used by me. since the first introduction of the terms above defined, the number of new living species of shells obtained from different parts of the globe has been exceedingly great, supplying fresh data for comparison, and enabling the palaeontologist to correct many erroneous identifications of fossil and recent forms. new species also have been collected in abundance from tertiary formations of every age, while newly discovered groups of strata have filled up gaps in the previously known series. hence modifications and reforms have been called for in the classifications first proposed. the eocene, miocene, and pliocene periods have been made to comprehend certain sets of strata of which the fossils do not always conform strictly in the proportion of recent to extinct species with the definitions first given by me, or which are implied in the etymology of those terms. these innovations have been treated of in my "elements or manual of elementary geology," and in the supplement to the fifth edition of the same, published in , where some modifications of my classification, as first proposed, are introduced; but i need not dwell on these on the present occasion, as the only formations with which we shall be concerned in the present volume are those of the most modern date, or the post-tertiary. it will be convenient to divide these into two groups, the recent and the pleistocene. in the recent we may comprehend those deposits in which not only all the shells but all the fossil mammalia are of living species; in the pleistocene those strata in which, the shells being recent, a portion, and often a considerable one, of the accompanying fossil quadrupeds belongs to extinct species. cases will occur where it may be scarcely possible to draw the line of demarcation between the newer pliocene and pleistocene, or between the latter and the recent deposits; and we must expect these difficulties to increase rather than diminish with every advance in our knowledge, and in proportion as gaps are filled up in the series of geological records. the annexed tabular view (table / ) of the whole series of fossiliferous strata will enable the reader to see at a glance the chronological relation of the recent and pleistocene to the antecedent periods. [ ] table / . stratified rocks. kainozoic or tertiary: pleistocene and recent. pliocene. miocene. oligocene. eocene. mesozoic or secondary: cretaceous. jurassic. triassic. palaeozoic or primary: permian. carboniferous. devonian or old red sandstone. silurian. ordovician. cambrian. precambrian or archaean. chapter . -- recent period--danish peat and shell mounds--swiss lake-dwellings. [illustration: plate . a village built on piles in a swiss lake] (restored by dr. f. keller, partly from dumont d'urville's sketch of similar habitations in new guinea.) works of art in danish peat-mosses. remains of three periods of vegetation in the peat. ages of stone, bronze, and iron. shell-mounds or ancient refuse-heaps of the danish islands. change in geographical distribution of marine mollusca since their origin. embedded remains of mammalia of recent species. human skulls of the same period. swiss lake-dwellings built on piles. stone and bronze implements found in them. fossil cereals and other plants. remains of mammalia, wild and domesticated. no extinct species. chronological computations of the date of the bronze and stone periods in switzerland. lake-dwellings, or artificial islands called "crannoges," in ireland. works of art in danish peat. when treating in the "principles of geology" of the changes of the earth which have taken place in comparatively modern times, i have spoken of the embedding of organic bodies and human remains in peat, and explained under what conditions the growth of that vegetable substance is going on in northern and humid climates. of late years, since i first alluded to the subject, more extensive investigations have been made into the history of the danish peat-mosses. of the results of these inquiries i shall give a brief abstract in the present chapter, that we may afterwards compare them with deposits of older date, which throw light on the antiquity of the human race. the deposits of peat in denmark,* varying in depth from to feet, have been formed in hollows or depressions in the northern drift or boulder formation hereafter to be described. (* an excellent account of these researches of danish naturalists and antiquaries has been drawn up by an able swiss geologist, m.a. morlot, and will be found in the "bulletin de la societe vaudoise des sci. nat." tome lausanne .) the lowest stratum, to feet thick, consists of swamp-peat composed chiefly of moss or sphagnum, above which lies another growth of peat, not made up exclusively of aquatic or swamp plants. around the borders of the bogs, and at various depths in them, lie trunks of trees, especially of the scotch fir (pinus sylvestris), often feet in diameter, which must have grown on the margin of the peat-mosses, and have frequently fallen into them. this tree is not now, nor has ever been in historical times, a native of the danish islands, and when introduced there has not thriven; yet it was evidently indigenous in the human period, for steenstrup has taken out with his own hands a flint instrument from below a buried trunk of one of these pines. it appears clear that the same scotch fir was afterwards supplanted by the sessile variety of the common oak, of which many prostrate trunks occur in the peat at higher levels than the pines; and still higher the pedunculated variety of the same oak (quercus robur, l.) occurs with the alder, birch (betula verrucosa, ehrh.), and hazel. the oak has now in its turn been almost superseded in denmark by the common beech. other trees, such as the white birch (betula alba), characterise the lower part of the bogs, and disappear from the higher; while others again, like the aspen (populus tremula), occur at all levels, and still flourish in denmark. all the land and freshwater shells, and all the mammalia as well as the plants, whose remains occur buried in the danish peat, are of recent species. [ ] it has been stated, that a stone implement was found under a buried scotch fir at a great depth in the peat. by collecting and studying a vast variety of such implements, and other articles of human workmanship preserved in peat and in sand-dunes on the coast, as also in certain shell-mounds of the aborigines presently to be described, the danish and swedish antiquaries and naturalists, mm. nilsson, steenstrup, forchhammer, thomsen, worsaae, and others, have succeeded in establishing a chronological succession of periods, which they have called the ages of stone, of bronze, and of iron, named from the materials which have each in their turn served for the fabrication of implements. the age of stone in denmark coincided with the period of the first vegetation, or that of the scotch fir, and in part at least with the second vegetation, or that of the oak. but a considerable portion of the oak epoch coincided with "the age of bronze," for swords and shields of that metal, now in the museum of copenhagen, have been taken out of peat in which oaks abound. the age of iron corresponded more nearly with that of the beech tree.* (* morlot "bulletin de la societe vaudoise des sci. nat." tome page .) [ ] m. morlot, to whom we are indebted for a masterly sketch of the recent progress of this new line of research, followed up with so much success in scandinavia and switzerland, observes that the introduction of the first tools made of bronze among a people previously ignorant of the use of metals, implies a great advance in the arts, for bronze is an alloy of about nine parts of copper and one of tin; and although the former metal, copper, is by no means rare, and is occasionally found pure or in a native state, tin is not only scarce but never occurs native. to detect the existence of this metal in its ore, then to disengage it from the matrix, and finally, after blending it in due proportion with copper, to cast the fused mixture in a mould, allowing time for it to acquire hardness by slow cooling, all this bespeaks no small sagacity and skilful manipulation. accordingly, the pottery found associated with weapons of bronze is of a more ornamental and tasteful style than any which belongs to the age of stone. some of the moulds in which the bronze instruments were cast, and "tags," as they are called, of bronze, which are formed in the hole through which the fused metal was poured, have been found. the number and variety of objects belonging to the age of bronze indicates its long duration, as does the progress in the arts implied by the rudeness of the earlier tools, often mere repetitions of those of the stone age, as contrasted with the more skilfully worked weapons of a later stage of the same period. it has been suggested that an age of copper must always have intervened between that of stone and bronze; but if so, the interval seems to have been short in europe, owing apparently to the territory occupied by the aboriginal inhabitants having been invaded and conquered by a people coming from the east, to whom the use of swords, spears, and other weapons of bronze was familiar. hatchets, however, of copper have been found in the danish peat. the next stage of improvement, or that manifested by the substitution of iron for bronze, indicates another stride in the progress of the arts. iron never presents itself, except in meteorites, in a native state, so that to recognise its ores, and then to separate the metal from its matrix, demands no inconsiderable exercise of the powers of observation and invention. to fuse the ore requires an intense heat, not to be obtained without artificial appliances, such as pipes inflated by the human breath, or bellows, or some other suitable machinery. danish shell-mounds, or kjokkenmodding.* (* mr. john lubbock published, after these sheets were written, an able paper on the danish "shell-mounds" in the october number of the "natural history review" page , in which he has described the results of a recent visit to denmark, made by him in company with mr. busk.) in addition to the peat-mosses, another class of memorials found in denmark has thrown light on the pre-historical age. at certain points along the shores of nearly all the danish islands, mounds may be seen, consisting chiefly of thousands of cast-away shells of the oyster, cockle, and other molluscs of the same species as those which are now eaten by man. these shells are plentifully mixed up with the bones of various quadrupeds, birds, and fish, which served as the food of the rude hunters and fishers by whom the mounds were accumulated. i have seen similar large heaps of oysters, and other marine shells with interspersed stone implements, near the seashore, both in massachusetts and in georgia, u.s.a., left by the native north american indians at points near to which they were in the habit of pitching their wigwams for centuries before the white man arrived. such accumulations are called by the danes, kjokkenmodding, or "kitchen-middens." scattered all through them are flint knives, hatchets, and other instruments of stone, horn, wood, and bone, with fragments of coarse pottery, mixed with charcoal and cinders, but never any implements of bronze, still less of iron. the stone hatchets and knives had been sharpened by rubbing, and in this respect are one degree less rude than those of an older date, associated in france with the bones of extinct mammalia, of which more in the sequel. the mounds vary in height from to feet, and in area are some of them feet long, and from to wide. they are rarely placed more than feet above the level of the sea, and are confined to its immediate neighbourhood, or if not (and there are cases where they are several miles from the shore), the distance is ascribable to the entrance of a small stream, which has deposited sediment, or to the growth of a peaty swamp, by which the land has been made to advance on the baltic, as it is still doing in many places, aided, according to puggaard, by a very slow upheaval of the whole country at the rate of or inches in a century. there is also another geographical fact equally in favour of the antiquity of the mounds, namely, that they are wanting on those parts of the coast which border the western ocean, or exactly where the waves are now slowly eating away the land. there is every reason to presume that originally there were stations along the coast of the north sea as well as that of the baltic, but by the gradual undermining of the cliffs they have all been swept away. another striking proof, perhaps the most conclusive of all, that the "kitchen-middens" are very old, is derived from the character of their embedded shells. these consist entirely of living species; but, in the first place, the common eatable oyster is among them, attaining its full size, whereas the same ostrea edulis cannot live at present in the brackish waters of the baltic except near its entrance, where, whenever a north-westerly gale prevails, a current setting in from the ocean pours in a great body of salt water. yet it seems that during the whole time of the accumulation of the "kitchen-middens" the oyster flourished in places from which it is now excluded. in like manner the eatable cockle, mussel, and periwinkle (cardium edule, mytilus edulis, and littorina littorea), which are met with in great numbers in the "middens," are of the ordinary dimensions which they acquire in the ocean, whereas the same species now living in the adjoining parts of the baltic only attain a third of their natural size, being stunted and dwarfed in their growth by the quantity of fresh water poured by rivers into that inland sea.* (* see "principles of geology" chapter .) hence we may confidently infer that in the days of the aboriginal hunters and fishers, the ocean had freer access than now to the baltic, communicating probably through the peninsula of jutland, jutland having been at no remote period an archipelago. even in the course of the nineteenth century, the salt waters have made one irruption into the baltic by the lymfiord, although they have been now again excluded. it is also affirmed that other channels were open in historical times which are now silted up.* (* see morlot "bulletin de la societe vaudoise des sci. nat." tome .) if we next turn to the remains of vertebrata preserved in the mounds, we find that here also, as in the danish peat-mosses, all the quadrupeds belong to species known to have inhabited europe within the memory of man. no remains of the mammoth, or rhinoceros, or of any extinct species appear, except those of the wild bull (bos urus, linn., or bos primigenius, bojanus), which are in such numbers as to prove that the species was a favourite food of the ancient people. but as this animal was seen by julius caesar, and survived long after his time, its presence alone would not go far to prove the mounds to be of high antiquity. the lithuanian aurochs or bison (bos bison, l., bos priscus, boj.), which has escaped extirpation only because protected by the russian czars, surviving in one forest in lithuania) has not yet been met with, but will no doubt be detected hereafter, as it has been already found in the danish peat. the beaver, long since destroyed in denmark, occurs frequently, as does the seal (phoca gryppus, fab.), now very rare on the danish coast. with these are mingled bones of the red deer and roe, but the reindeer has not yet been found. there are also the bones of many carnivora, such as the lynx, fox, and wolf, but no signs of any domesticated animals except the dog. the long bones of the larger mammalia have been all broken as if by some instrument, in such a manner as to allow of the extraction of the marrow, and the gristly parts have been gnawed off, as if by dogs, to whose agency is also attributed the almost entire absence of the bones of young birds and of the smaller bones and softer parts of the skeletons of birds in general, even of those of large size. in reference to the latter, it has been proved experimentally by professor steenstrup, that if the same species of birds are now given to dogs, they will devour those parts of the skeleton which are missing, and leave just those which are preserved in the old "kitchen-middens." the dogs of the mounds, the only domesticated animals, are of a smaller race than those of the bronze period, as shown by the peat-mosses, and the dogs of the bronze age are inferior in size and strength to those of the iron age. the domestic ox, horse, and sheep, which are wanting in the mounds, are confined to that part of the danish peat which was formed in the ages of bronze and iron. among the bones of birds, scarcely any are more frequent in the mounds than those of the auk (alca impennis), now extinct. the capercailzie (tetrao urogallus) is also met with, and may, it is suggested, have fed on the buds of the scotch fir in times when that tree flourished around the peat-bogs. the different stages of growth of the roedeer's horns, and the presence of the wild swan, now only a winter visitor, have been appealed to as proving that the aborigines resided in the same settlements all the year round. that they also ventured out to sea in canoes such as are now found in the peat-mosses, hollowed out of the trunk of a single tree, to catch fish far from land, is testified by the bony relics of several deep-sea species, such as the herring, cod, and flounder. the ancient people were not cannibals, for no human bones are mingled with the spoils of the chase. skulls, however, have been obtained not only from peat, but from tumuli of the stone period believed to be contemporaneous with the mounds. these skulls are small and round, and have a prominent ridge over the orbits of the eyes, showing that the ancient race was of small stature, with round heads and overhanging eyebrows--in short, they bore a considerable resemblance to the modern laplanders. the human skulls of the bronze age found in the danish peat, and those of the iron period, are of an elongated form and larger size. there appear to be very few well-authenticated examples of crania referable to the bronze period--a circumstance no doubt attributable to the custom prevalent among the people of that era of burning their dead and collecting their bones in funeral urns. no traces of grain of any sort have hitherto been discovered, nor any other indication that the ancient people had any knowledge of agriculture. the only vegetable remains in the mounds are burnt pieces of wood and some charred substance referred by dr. forchhammer to the zostera marina, a sea plant which was perhaps used in the production of salt. what may be the antiquity of the earliest human remains preserved in the danish peat cannot be estimated in centuries with any approach to accuracy. in the first place, in going back to the bronze age, we already find ourselves beyond the reach of history or even of tradition. in the time of the romans the danish isles were covered, as now, with magnificent beech forests. nowhere in the world does this tree flourish more luxuriantly than in denmark, and eighteen centuries seem to have done little or nothing towards modifying the character of the forest vegetation. yet in the antecedent bronze period there were no beech trees, or at most but a few stragglers, the country being then covered with oak. in the age of stone again, the scotch fir prevailed, and already there were human inhabitants in those old pine forests. how many generations of each species of tree flourished in succession before the pine was supplanted by the oak, and the oak by the beech, can be but vaguely conjectured, but the minimum of time required for the formation of so much peat must, according to the estimate of steenstrup and other good authorities, have amounted to at least years; and there is nothing in the observed rate of the growth of peat opposed to the conclusion that the number of centuries may not have been four times as great, even though the signs of man's existence have not yet been traced down to the lowest or amorphous stratum. as to the "kitchen-middens," they correspond in date to the older portion of the peaty record, or to the earliest part of the age of stone as known in denmark. ancient swiss lake-dwellings, built on piles. [illustration: plate . swiss lake-dwellings] in the shallow parts of many swiss lakes, where there is a depth of no more than from to feet of water, ancient wooden piles are observed at the bottom sometimes worn down to the surface of the mud, sometimes projecting slightly above it. these have evidently once supported villages, nearly all of them of unknown date, but the most ancient of which certainly belonged to the age of stone, for hundreds of implements resembling those of the danish shell-mounds and peat-mosses have been dredged up from the mud into which the piles were driven. the earliest historical account of such habitations is that given by herodotus of a thracian tribe, who dwelt, in the year b.c., in prasias, a small mountain-lake of paeonia, now part of modern roumelia.* (* herodotus lib. cap. . rediscovered by m. de ville "natural history review" volume page .) their habitations were constructed on platforms raised above the lake, and resting on piles. they were connected with the shore by a narrow causeway of similar formation. such platforms must have been of considerable extent, for the paeonians lived there with their families and horses. their food consisted largely of the fish which the lake produced in abundance. in rude and unsettled times, such insular sites afforded safe retreats, all communication with the mainland being cut off, except by boats, or by such wooden bridges as could be easily removed. the swiss lake-dwellings seem first to have attracted attention during the dry winter of - , when the lakes and rivers sank lower than had ever been previously known, and when the inhabitants of meilen, on the lake of zurich, resolved to raise the level of some ground and turn it into land, by throwing mud upon it obtained by dredging in the adjoining shallow water. during these dredging operations they discovered a number of wooden piles deeply driven into the bed of the lake, and among them a great many hammers, axes, celts, and other instruments. all these belonged to the stone period with two exceptions, namely, an armlet of thin brass wire, and a small bronze hatchet. fragments of rude pottery fashioned by the hand were abundant, also masses of charred wood, supposed to have formed parts of the platform on which the wooden cabins were built. of this burnt timber, on this and other sites, subsequently explored, there was such an abundance as to lead to the conclusion that many of the settlements must have perished by fire. herodotus has recorded that the paeonians, above alluded to, preserved their independence during the persian invasion, and defied the attacks of darius by aid of the peculiar position of their dwellings. "but their safety," observes mr. wylie,* "was probably owing to their living in the middle of the lake, (greek) en mese te limne, whereas the ancient swiss settlers were compelled by the rapidly increasing depth of the water near the margins of their lakes to construct their habitations at a short distance from the shore, within easy bowshot of the land, and therefore not out of reach of fiery projectiles, against which thatched roofs and wooden walls could present but a poor defence." (* w.m. wylie "archaeologia" volume , a valuable paper on the swiss and irish lake-habitations.) to these circumstances and to accidental fires we are probably indebted for the frequent preservation, in the mud around the site of the old settlements, of the most precious tools and works of art, such as would never have been thrown into the danish "kitchen-middens," which have been aptly compared to a modern dusthole. dr. ferdinand keller of zurich has drawn up a series of most instructive memoirs, illustrated with well-executed plates, of the treasures in stone, bronze, and bone brought to light in these subaqueous repositories, and has given an ideal restoration of part of one of the old villages (see plate above),* such as he conceives may have existed on the lakes of zurich and bienne. (*keller "pfahlbauten, antiquarische gesellschaft in zurich" bd. and - . in the fifth number of the "natural history review" january , , mr. lubbock has published an excellent account of the works of the swiss writers on their lake-habitations.) in this view, however, he has not simply trusted to his imagination, but has availed himself of a sketch published by m. dumont d'urville, of similar habitations of the papuans in new guinea in the bay of dorei. it is also stated by dr. keller, that on the river limmat, near zurich, so late as the last century, there were several fishing-huts constructed on this same plan.* (* keller "pfahlbauten, antiquarische gesellschaft in zurich" bd. page note.) it will be remarked that one of the cabins is represented as circular. that such was the form of many in switzerland is inferred from the shape of pieces of clay which lined the interior, and which owe their preservation apparently to their having been hardened by fire when the village was burnt. in the sketch (plate ), some fishing-nets are seen spread out to dry on the wooden platform. the swiss archaeologist has found abundant evidence of fishing-gear, consisting of pieces of cord, hooks, and stones used as weights. a canoe also is introduced, such as are occasionally met with. one of these, made of the trunk of a single tree, fifty feet long and three and a half feet wide, was found capsized at the bottom of the lake of bienne. it appears to have been laden with stones, such as were used to raise the foundation of some of the artificial islands. it is believed that as many as wooden huts were sometimes comprised in one settlement, and that they may have contained about inhabitants. at wangen, m. lohle has calculated that , piles were used, probably not all planted at one time nor by one generation. among the works of great merit devoted specially to a description of the swiss lake-habitations is that of m. troyon, published in .* (* "sur les habitations lacustres.") the number of sites which he and other authors have already enumerated in switzerland is truly wonderful. they occur on the large lakes of constance, zurich, geneva, and neufchatel, and on most of the smaller ones. some are exclusively of the stone age, others of the bronze period. of these last more than twenty are spoken of on the lake of geneva alone, more than forty on that of neufchatel, and twenty on the small lake of bienne. one of the sites first studied by the swiss antiquaries was the small lake of moosseedorf, near berne, where implements of stone, horn, and bone, but none of metal, were obtained. although the flint here employed must have come from a distance (probably from the south of france), the chippings of the material are in such profusion as to imply that there was a manufactory of implements on the spot. here also, as in several other settlements, hatchets and wedges of jade have been observed of a kind said not to occur in switzerland or the adjoining parts of europe, and which some mineralogists would fain derive from the east; amber also, which, it is supposed, was imported from the shores of the baltic. at wangen near stein, on the lake of constance, another of the most ancient of the lake-dwellings, hatchets of serpentine and greenstone, and arrow-heads of quartz have been met with. here also remains of a kind of cloth, supposed to be of flax, not woven but plaited, have been detected. professor heer has recognised lumps of carbonised wheat, triticum vulgare, and grains of another kind, t. dicoccum, and barley, hordeum distichum, and flat round cakes of bread; and at robbenhausen and elsewhere hordeum hexastichum in fine ears, the same kind of barley which is found associated with egyptian mummies, showing clearly that in the stone period the lake-dwellers cultivated all these cereals, besides having domesticated the dog, the ox, the sheep, and the goat. carbonised apples and pears of small size, such as still grow in the swiss forests, stones of the wild plum, seeds of the raspberry and blackberry, and beech-nuts, also occur in the mud, and hazel-nuts in great plenty. near morges, on the lake of geneva, a settlement of the bronze period, no less than forty hatchets of that metal have been dredged up, and in many other localities the number and variety of weapons and utensils discovered, in a fine state of preservation, is truly astonishing. it is remarkable that as yet all the settlements of the bronze period are confined to western and central switzerland. in the more eastern lakes those of the stone period alone have as yet been discovered. the tools, ornaments, and pottery of the bronze period in switzerland bear a close resemblance to those of corresponding age in denmark, attesting the wide spread of a uniform civilisation over central europe at that era. in some few of the swiss aquatic stations a mixture of bronze and iron implements has been observed, but no coins. at tiefenau, near berne, in ground supposed to have been a battle-field, coins and medals of bronze and silver, struck at marseilles, and of greek manufacture, and iron swords, have been found, all belonging to the first and pre-roman division of the age of iron. in the settlements of the bronze era the wooden piles are not so much decayed as those of the stone period; the latter having wasted down quite to the level of the mud, whereas the piles of the bronze age (as in the lake of bienne, for example) still project above it. professor rutimeyer of basle, well-known to palaeontologists as the author of several important memoirs on fossil vertebrata, has recently published a scientific description of great interest of the animal remains dredged up at various stations where they had been embedded for ages in the mud into which the piles were driven.* (* "die fauna der pfahlbauten in der schweiz" basel .) these bones bear the same relation to the primitive inhabitants of switzerland and some of their immediate successors as do the contents of the danish "kitchen-middens" to the ancient fishing and hunting tribes who lived on the shores of the baltic. the list of wild mammalia enumerated in this excellent treatise contains no less than twenty-four species, exclusive of several domesticated ones: besides which there are eighteen species of birds, the wild swan, goose, and two species of ducks being among them; also three reptiles, including the eatable frog and freshwater tortoise; and lastly, nine species of freshwater fish. all these (amounting to fifty-four species) are with one exception still living in europe. the exception is the wild bull (bos primigenius), which, as before stated, survived in historical times. the following are the mammalia alluded to:--the bear (ursus arctos), the badger, the common marten, the polecat, the ermine, the weasel, the otter, wolf, fox, wild cat, hedgehog, squirrel, field-mouse (mus sylvaticus), hare, beaver, hog (comprising two races, namely, the wild boar and swamp-hog), the stag (cervus elaphus), the roe-deer, the fallow-deer, the elk, the steinbock (capra ibex), the chamois, the lithuanian bison, and the wild bull. the domesticated species comprise the dog, horse, ass, pig, goat, sheep, and several bovine races. the greater number, if not all, of these animals served for food, and all the bones which contained marrow have been split open in the same way as the corresponding ones found in the shell-mounds of denmark before mentioned. the bones both of the wild bull and the bison are invariably split in this manner. as a rule, the lower jaws with teeth occur in greater abundance than any other parts of the skeleton--a circumstance which, geologists know, holds good in regard to fossil mammalia of all periods. as yet the reindeer is missing in the swiss lake-settlements as in the danish "kitchen-middens," although this animal in more ancient times ranged over france, together with the mammoth, as far south as the pyrenees. a careful comparison of the bones from different sites has shown that in settlements such as wangen and moosseedorf, belonging to the earliest age of stone, when the habits of the hunter state predominated over those of the pastoral, venison, or the flesh of the stag and roe, was more eaten than the flesh of the domestic cattle and sheep. this was afterwards reversed in the later stone period and in the age of bronze. at that later period also the tame pig, which is wanting in some of the oldest stations, had replaced the wild boar as a common article of food. in the beginning of the age of stone, in switzerland, the goats outnumbered the sheep, but towards the close of the same period the sheep were more abundant than the goats. the fox in the first era was very common, but it nearly disappears in the bronze age, during which period a large hunting-dog, supposed to have been imported into switzerland from some foreign country, becomes the chief representative of the canine genus. a single fragment of the bone of a hare (lepus timidus) has been found at moosseedorf. the almost universal absence of this quadruped is supposed to imply that the swiss lake-dwellers were prevented from eating that animal by the same superstition which now prevails among the laplanders, and which julius caesar found in full force amongst the ancient britons.* (* "commentaries" lib chapter .) that the lake-dwellers should have fed so largely on the fox, while they abstained from touching the hare, establishes, says rutimeyer, a singular contrast between their tastes and ours. even in the earliest settlements, as already hinted, several domesticated animals occur, namely, the ox, sheep, goat, and dog. of the three last, each was represented by one race only; but there were two races of cattle, the most common being of small size, and called by rutimeyer bos brachyceros (bos longifrons, owen), or the marsh cow, the other derived from the wild bull; though, as no skull has yet been discovered, this identification is not so certain as could be wished. it is, however, beyond question that at a later era, namely, towards the close of the stone and beginning of the bronze period, the lake-dwellers had succeeded in taming that formidable brute the bos primigenius, the urus of caesar, which he described as very fierce, swift, and strong, and scarcely inferior to the elephant in size. in a tame state its bones were somewhat less massive and heavy, and its horns were somewhat smaller than in wild individuals. still in its domesticated form, it rivalled in dimensions the largest living cattle, those of friesland, in north holland, for example. when most abundant, as at concise on the lake of neufchatel, it had nearly superseded the smaller race, bos brachyceros, and was accompanied there for a short time by a third bovine variety, called bos trochoceros, an italian race, supposed to have been imported from the southern side of the alps. (caesar "commentaries" lib chapter .) this last-mentioned race, however, seems only to have lasted for a short time in switzerland. the wild bull (bos primigenius) is supposed to have flourished for a while in a wild and tame state, just as now in europe the domestic pig co-exists with the wild boar; and rutimeyer agrees with cuvier and bell,* in considering our larger domestic cattle of northern europe as the descendants of this wild bull, an opinion which owen disputes.** (* "british quadrupeds" page .) (** "british fossil mammal." page .) in the later division of the stone period, there were two tame races of the pig, according to rutimeyer; one large, and derived from the wild boar, the other smaller, called the "marsh-hog," or sus scrofa palustris. it may be asked how the osteologist can distinguish the tame from the wild races of the same species by their skeletons alone. among other characters, the diminished thickness of the bones and the comparative smallness of the ridges, which afford attachment to the muscles, are relied on; also the smaller dimensions of the tusks in the boar, and of the whole jaw and skull; and, in like manner, the diminished size of the horns of the bull and other modifications, which are the effects of a regular supply of food, and the absence of all necessity of exerting their activity and strength to obtain subsistence and defend themselves against their enemies. a middle-sized race of dogs continued unaltered throughout the whole of the stone period; but the people of the bronze age possessed a larger hunting-dog, and with it a small horse, of which genus very few traces have been detected in the earlier settlements--a single tooth, for example, at wangen, and only one or two bones at two or three other places. in passing from the oldest to the most modern sites, the extirpation of the elk and beaver, and the gradual reduction in numbers of the bear, stag, roe, and freshwater tortoise are distinctly perceptible. the aurochs, or lithuanian bison, appears to have died out in switzerland about the time when weapons of bronze came into use. it is only in a few of the most modern lake-dwellings, such as noville and chavannes in the canton de vaud (which the antiquaries refer to the sixth century), that some traces are observable of the domestic cat, as well as of a sheep with crooked horns and with them bones of the domestic fowl. after the sixth century, no extinction of any wild quadruped nor introduction of any tame one appears to have taken place, but the fauna was still modified by the wild species continuing to diminish in number and the tame ones to become more diversified by breeding and crossing, especially in the case of the dog, horse, and sheep. on the whole, however, the divergence of the domestic races from their aboriginal wild types, as exemplified at wangen and moosseedorf, is confined, according to professor rutimeyer, within narrow limits. as to the goat, it has remained nearly constant and true to its pristine form, and the small race of goat-horned sheep still lingers in some alpine valleys in the upper rhine; and in the same region a race of pigs, corresponding to the domesticated variety of sus scrofa palustris, may still be seen. amidst all this profusion of animal remains extremely few bones of man have been discovered; and only one skull, dredged up from meilen, on the lake of zurich, of the early stone period, seems as yet to have been carefully examined. respecting this specimen, professor his observes that it exhibits, instead of the small and rounded form proper to the danish peat-mosses, a type much more like that now prevailing in switzerland, which is intermediate between the long-headed and short-headed form. (rutimeyer "die fauna der pfahlbauten in der schweiz" page .) so far, therefore, as we can draw safe conclusions from a single specimen, there has been no marked change of race in the human population of switzerland during the periods above considered. it is still a question whether any of these subaqueous repositories of ancient relics in switzerland go back so far in time as the kitchen-middens of denmark, for in these last there are no domesticated animals except the dog, and no signs of the cultivation of wheat or barley; whereas we have seen that, in one of the oldest of the swiss settlements, at wangen, no less than three cereals make their appearance, with four kinds of domestic animals. yet there is no small risk of error in speculating on the relative claims to antiquity of such ancient tribes, for some of them may have remained isolated for ages and stationary in their habits, while others advanced and improved. we know that nations, both before and after the introduction of metals, may continue in very different stages of civilisation, even after commercial intercourse has been established between them, and where they are separated by a less distance than that which divides the alps from the baltic. the attempts of the swiss geologists and archaeologists to estimate definitely in years the antiquity of the bronze and stone periods, although as yet confessedly imperfect, deserve notice, and appear to me to be full of promise. the most elaborate calculation is that made by m. morlot, respecting the delta of the tiniere, a torrent which flows into the lake of geneva near villeneuve. this small delta, to which the stream is annually making additions, is composed of gravel and sand. its shape is that of a flattened cone, and its internal structure has of late been laid open to view in a railway cutting feet long and feet deep. the regularity of its structure throughout implies that it has been formed very gradually, and by the uniform action of the same causes. three layers of vegetable soil, each of which must at one time have formed the surface of the cone, have been cut through at different depths. the first of these was traced over a surface of , square feet, having an average thickness of inches, and being about feet below the present surface of the cone. this upper layer belonged to the roman period, and contained roman tiles and a coin. the second layer, followed over a surface of , square feet, was inches thick, and lay at a depth of feet. in it were found fragments of unvarnished pottery and a pair of tweezers in bronze, indicating the bronze epoch. the third layer, followed for , square feet, was or inches thick and feet deep. in it were fragments of rude pottery, pieces of charcoal, broken bones, and a human skeleton having a small, round and very thick skull. m. morlot, assuming the roman period to represent an antiquity of from sixteen to eighteen centuries, assigns to the bronze age a date of between and years, and to the oldest layer, that of the stone period, an age of from to years. another calculation has been made by m. troyon to obtain the approximate date of the remains of an ancient settlement built on piles and preserved in a peat-bog at chamblon, near yverdun, on the lake of neufchatel. the site of the ancient roman town of eburodunum (yverdun), once on the borders of the lake, and between which and the shore there now intervenes a zone of newly-gained dry land, feet in breadth, shows the rate at which the bed of the lake has been filled up with river sediment in fifteen centuries. assuming the lake to have retreated at the same rate before the roman period, the pile-works of chamblon, which are of the bronze period, must be at the least years old. for the third calculation, communicated to me by m. morlot, we are indebted to m. victor gillieron, of neuveville, on the lake of bienne. it relates to the age of a pile-dwelling, the mammalian bones of which are considered by m. rutimeyer to indicate the earliest portion of the stone period of switzerland, and to correspond in age with the settlement of moosseedorf. the piles in question occur at the pont de thiele, between the lakes of bienne and neufchatel. the old convent of st. jean, founded years ago, and built originally on the margin of the lake of bienne, is now at a considerable distance from the shore, and affords a measure of the rate of the gain of land in seven centuries and a half. assuming that a similar rate of the conversion of water into marshy land prevailed antecedently, we should require an addition of sixty centuries for the growth of the morass intervening between the convent and the aquatic dwelling of pont de thiele, in all years. m. morlot, after examining the ground, thinks it highly probable that the shape of the bottom on which the morass rests is uniform; but this important point has not yet been tested by boring. the result, if confirmed, would agree exceedingly well with the chronological computation before mentioned of the age of the stone period of tiniere. as i have not myself visited switzerland since these chronological speculations were first hazarded, i am unable to enter critically into a discussion of the objections which have been raised to the two first of them, or to decide on the merits of the explanations offered in reply. irish lake-dwellings or crannoges. the lake-dwellings of the british isles, although not explored as yet with scientific zeal, as those of switzerland have been in the last ten years, are yet known to be very numerous, and when carefully examined will not fail to throw great light on the history of the bronze and stone periods. in the lakes of ireland alone, no less than forty-six examples of artificial islands, called crannoges, have been discovered. they occur in leitrim, roscommon, cavan, down, monaghan, limerick, meath, king's county, and tyrone.* (* w.m. wylie "archaeologia" volume page .) one class of these "stockaded islands," as they have been sometimes called, was formed, according to mr. digby wyatt, by placing horizontal oak beams at the bottom of the lake, into which oak posts, from to feet high, were mortised, and held together by cross beams, till a circular enclosure was obtained. a space of feet diameter, thus enclosed at lagore, was divided into sundry timbered compartments, which were found filled up with mud or earth, from which were taken "vast quantities of the bones of oxen, swine, deer, goats, sheep, dogs, foxes, horses, and asses." all these were discovered beneath feet of bog, and were used for manure; but specimens of them are said to be preserved in the museum of the royal irish academy. from the same spot were obtained a great collection of antiquities, which, according to lord talbot de malahide and mr. wylie, were referable to the ages of stone, bronze, and iron.* (* w.m. wylie "archaeologia" volume page , who cites "archaeological journal" volume page .) in ardekillin lake, in roscommon, an islet of an oval form was observed, made of a layer of stones resting on logs of timber. round this artificial islet or crannoge thus formed was a stone wall raised on oak piles. a careful description has been put on record by captain mudge, r.n., of a curious log-cabin discovered by him in in drumkellin bog, in donegal, at a depth of feet from the surface. it was feet square and feet high, being divided into two stories each feet high. the planking was of oak split with wedges of stone, one of which was found in the building. the roof was flat. a staked enclosure had been raised round the cabin, and remains of other similar huts adjoining were seen but not explored. a stone celt, found in the interior of the hut, and a piece of leather sandal, also an arrow-head of flint, and in the bog close at hand a wooden sword, give evidence of the remote antiquity of this building, which may be taken as a type of the early dwellings on the crannoge islands. "the whole structure," says captain mudge, "was wrought with the rudest kind of implements, and the labour bestowed on it must have been immense. the wood of the mortises was more bruised than cut, as if by a blunt stone chisel."* (* mudge "archaeologia" volume .) such a chisel lay on the floor of the hut, and by comparing it with the marks of the tool used in forming the mortises, they were found "to correspond exactly, even to the slight curved exterior of the chisel; but the logs had been hewn by a larger instrument, in the shape of an axe. on the floor of the dwelling lay a slab of freestone, feet long and inches thick, in the centre of which was a small pit three quarters of an inch deep, which had been chiselled out. this is presumed to have been used for holding nuts to be cracked by means of one of the round shingle stones, also found there, which had served as a hammer. some entire hazel-nuts and a great quantity of broken shells were strewed about the floor." the foundations of the house were made of fine sand, such as is found with shingle on the seashore about miles distant. below the layer of sand the bog or peat was ascertained, on probing it with an instrument, to be at least feet thick. although the interior of the building when discovered was full of "bog" or peaty matter, it seems when inhabited to have been surrounded by growing trees, some of the trunks and roots of which are still preserved in their natural position. the depth of overlying peat affords no safe criterion for calculating the age of the cabin or village, for i have shown in the "principles of geology" that both in england and ireland, within historical times, bogs have burst and sent forth great volumes of black mud, which has been known to creep over the country at a slow pace, flowing somewhat at the rate of ordinary lava-currents, and sometimes overwhelming woods and cottages, and leaving a deposit upon them of bog-earth feet thick. none of these irish lake-dwellings were built, like those of helvetia, on platforms supported by piles deeply driven into the mud. "the crannoge system of ireland seems," says mr. wylie, "well nigh without a parallel in swiss waters." chapter . -- fossil human remains and works of art of the recent period--continued. delta and alluvial plain of the nile. burnt bricks in egypt before the roman era. borings in - . ancient mounds of the valley of the ohio. their antiquity. sepulchral mound at santos in brazil. delta of the mississippi. ancient human remains in coral reefs of florida. changes in physical geography in the human period. buried canoes in marine strata near glasgow. upheaval since the roman occupation of the shores of the firth of forth. fossil whales near stirling. upraised marine strata of sweden on shores of the baltic and the ocean. attempts to compute their age. delta and alluvial plain of the nile. some new facts of high interest illustrating the geology of the alluvial land of egypt were brought to light between the years and , in consequence of investigations suggested to the royal society by mr. leonard horner, and which were partly carried out at the expense of the society. the practical part of the undertaking was entrusted by mr. horner to an armenian officer of engineers, hekekyan bey, who had for many years pursued his scientific studies in england, and was in every way highly qualified for the task. it was soon found that to obtain the required information respecting the nature, depth, and contents of the nile mud in various parts of the valley, a larger outlay was called for than had been originally contemplated. this expense the late viceroy, abbas pasha, munificently undertook to defray out of his treasury, and his successor, after his death, continued the operations with the same princely liberality. several engineers and a body of sixty workmen were employed under the superintendence of hekekyan bey, men inured to the climate and able to carry on the sinking of shafts and borings during the hot months, after the waters of the nile had subsided, and in a season which would have been fatal to europeans. the results of chief importance arising out of this inquiry were obtained from two sets of shafts and borings sunk at intervals in lines crossing the great valley from east to west. one of these consisted of no fewer than fifty-one pits and artesian borings, made where the valley is miles wide from side to side between the arabian and libyan deserts, in the latitude of heliopolis, about miles above the apex of the delta. the other line of borings and pits, twenty-seven in number, was in the parallel of memphis, where the valley is only five miles broad. everywhere in these sections the sediment passed through was similar in composition to the ordinary nile mud of the present day, except near the margin of the valley, where thin layers of quartzose sand, such as is sometimes blown from the adjacent desert by violent winds, were observed to alternate with the loam. a remarkable absence of lamination and stratification was observed almost universally in the sediment brought up from all points except where the sandy layers above alluded to occurred. mr. horner attributes this want of all indication of successive deposition to the extreme thinness of the film of matter which is thrown down annually on the great alluvial plain during the season of inundation. the tenuity of this layer must indeed be extreme, if the french engineers are tolerably correct in their estimate of the amount of sediment formed in a century, which they suppose not to exceed on the average inches. when the waters subside, this thin layer of new soil, exposed to a hot sun, dries rapidly, and clouds of dust are raised by the winds. the superficial deposit, moreover, is disturbed almost everywhere by agricultural labours, and even were this not the case, the action of worms, insects, and the roots of plants would suffice to confound together the deposits of two successive years. all the remains of organic bodies, such as land-shells, and the bones of quadrupeds, found during the excavations belonged to living species. bones of the ox, hog, dog, dromedary and ass were not uncommon, but no vestiges of extinct mammalia. no marine shells were anywhere detected; but this was to be expected, as the borings, though they sometimes reached as low as the level of the mediterranean, were never carried down below it--a circumstance much to be regretted, since where artesian borings have been made in deltas, as in those of the po and ganges, to the depth of several hundred feet below the sea level it has been found, contrary to expectation, that the deposits passed through were fluviatile throughout, implying, probably, that a general subsidence of those deltas and alluvial formations has taken place. whether there has been in like manner a sinking of the land in egypt, we have as yet no means of proving; but sir gardner wilkinson infers it from the position in the delta on the shore near alexandria of the tombs commonly called cleopatra's baths, which cannot, he says, have been originally built so as to be exposed to the sea which now fills them, but must have stood on land above the level of the mediterranean. the same author adduces, as additional signs of subsidence, some ruined towns, now half under water, in the lake menzaleh, and channels of ancient arms of the nile submerged with their banks beneath the waters of that same lagoon. in some instances, the excavations made under the superintendence of hekekyan bey were on a large scale for the first or feet, in which cases jars, vases, pots and a small human figure in burnt clay, a copper knife, and other entire articles were dug up; but when water soaking through from the nile was reached the boring instrument used was too small to allow of more than fragments of works of art being brought up. pieces of burnt brick and pottery were extracted almost everywhere, and from all depths, even where they sank feet below the surface towards the central parts of the valley. in none of these cases did they get to the bottom of the alluvial soil. it has been objected, among other criticisms, that the arabs can always find whatever their employers desire to obtain. even those who are too well acquainted with the sagacity and energy of hekekyan bey to suspect him of having been deceived, have suggested that the artificial objects might have fallen into old wells which had been filled up. this notion is inadmissible for many reasons. of the ninety-five shafts and borings, seventy or more were made far from the sites of towns or villages; and allowing that every field may once have had its well, there would be but small chance of the borings striking upon the site even of a small number of them in seventy experiments. others have suggested that the nile may have wandered over the whole valley, undermining its banks on one side and filling up old channels on the other. it has also been asked whether the delta with the numerous shifting arms of the river may not once have been at every point where the auger pierced.* (* for a detailed account of these sections, see mr. horner's paper in the "philosophical transactions" for to .) to all these objections there are two obvious answers:--first, in historical times the nile has on the whole been very stationary, and has not shifted its position in the valley; secondly, if the mud pierced through had been thrown down by the river in ancient channels, it would have been stratified, and would not have corresponded so closely with inundation mud, we learn from captain newbold that he observed in some excavations in the great plain alternations of sand and clay, such as are seen in the modern banks of the nile; but in the borings made by hekekyan bey, such stratification seems scarcely in any case to have been detected. the great aim of the criticisms above enumerated has been to get rid of the supposed anomaly of finding burnt brick and pottery at depths and places which would give them claim to an antiquity far exceeding that of the roman domination in egypt. for until the time of the romans, it is said, no clay was burnt into bricks in the valley of the nile. but a distinguished antiquary, mr. s. birch, assures me that this notion is altogether erroneous, and that he has under his charge in the british museum, first, a small rectangular baked brick, which came from a theban tomb which bears the name of thothmes, a superintendent of the granaries of the god amen ra, the style of art, inscription, and name, showing that it is as old as the th dynasty (about b.c.); secondly, a brick bearing an inscription, partly obliterated, but ending with the words "of the temple of amen ra." this brick, decidedly long anterior to the roman dominion, is referred conjecturally, by mr. birch, to the th dynasty, or b.c. sir gardner wilkinson has also in his possession pieces of mortar, which he took from each of the three great pyramids, in which bits of broken pottery and of burnt clay or brick are embedded. m. girard, of the french expedition to egypt, supposed the average rate of the increase of nile mud on the plain between assouan and cairo to be five english inches in a century. this conclusion, according to mr. horner, is very vague, and founded on insufficient data; the amount of matter thrown down by the waters in different parts of the plain varying so much that to strike an average with any approach to accuracy must be most difficult. were we to assume six inches in a century, the burnt brick met with at a depth of feet would be , years old. another fragment of red brick was found by linant bey, in a boring feet deep, being or feet below the level of the mediterranean, in the parallel of the apex of the delta, metres distant from the river, on the libyan side of the rosetta branch.* (* horner "philosophical transactions" .) m. rosiere, in the great french work on egypt, has estimated the mean rate of deposit of sediment in the delta at / inches in a century;* were we to take / inches, a work of art feet deep must have been buried more than , years ago. (* description de l'egypte "histoire naturelle" tome page .) but if the boring of linant bey was made where an arm of the river had been silted up at a time when the apex of the delta was somewhat farther south, or more distant from the sea than now, the brick in question might be comparatively very modern. the experiments instituted by mr. horner at the pedestal of the fallen statue of king rameses at memphis, in the hope of obtaining an accurate chronometric scale for testing the age of a given thickness of nile sediment, are held by some experienced egyptologists not to be satisfactory, on the ground of the uncertainty of the rate of deposit accumulated at that locality. the point sought to be determined was the exact amount of nile mud which had accumulated there since the time when that statue is supposed by some antiquaries to have been erected. could we have obtained possession of such a measure, the rate of deposition might be judged of, approximately at least, whenever similar mud was observed in other places, or below the foundations of those same monuments. but the ancient egyptians are known to have been in the habit of enclosing with embankments the areas on which they erected temples, statues, and obelisks, so as to exclude the waters of the nile; and the point of time to be ascertained, in every case where we find a monument buried to a certain depth in mud, as at memphis and heliopolis, is the era when the city fell into such decay that the ancient embankments were neglected, and the river allowed to inundate the site of the temple, obelisk, or statue. even if we knew the date of the abandonment of such embankments, the enclosed areas would not afford a favourable opportunity for ascertaining the average rate of deposit in the alluvial plain; for herodotus tells us that in his time those spots from which the nile waters had been shut out for centuries appeared sunk, and could be looked down into from the surrounding grounds, which had been raised by the gradual accumulation over them of sediment annually thrown down. if the waters at length should break into such depressions, they must at first carry with them into the enclosure much mud washed from the steep surrounding banks, so that a greater quantity would be deposited in a few years than perhaps in as many centuries on the great plain outside the depressed area, where no such disturbing causes intervened. ancient mounds of the valley of the ohio. as i have already given several european examples of monuments of prehistoric date belonging to the recent period, i will now turn to the american continent. before the scientific investigation by messrs. squier and davis of the "ancient monuments of the mississippi valley",* no one suspected that the plains of that river had been occupied, for ages before the french and british colonists settled there, by a nation of older date and more advanced in the arts than the red indians whom the europeans found there. (* "smithsonian contributions" volume .) there are hundreds of large mounds in the basin of the mississippi, and especially in the valleys of the ohio and its tributaries, which have served, some of them for temples, others for outlook or defence, and others for sepulture. the unknown people by whom they were constructed, judging by the form of several skulls dug out of the burial-places, were of the mexican or toltec race. some of the earthworks are on so grand a scale as to embrace areas of or acres within a simple enclosure, and the solid contents of one mould are estimated at million of cubic feet, so that four of them would be more than equal in bulk to the great pyramid of egypt, which comprises million. from several of these repositories pottery and ornamental sculpture have been taken, and various articles in silver and copper, also stone weapons, some composed of hornstone unpolished, and much resembling in shape some ancient flint implements found near amiens and other places in europe, to be alluded to in the sequel. it is clear that the ohio mound-builders had commercial intercourse with the natives of distant regions, for among the buried articles some are made of native copper from lake superior, and there are also found mica from the alleghenies, sea-shells from the gulf of mexico, and obsidian from the mexican mountains. the extraordinary number of the mounds implies a long period, during which a settled agricultural population had made considerable progress in civilisation, so as to require large temples for their religious rites, and extensive fortifications to protect them from their enemies. the mounds were almost all confined to fertile valleys or alluvial plains, and some at least are so ancient that rivers have had time since their construction to encroach on the lower terraces which support them, and again to recede for the distance of nearly a mile, after having undermined and destroyed a part of the works. when the first european settlers entered the valley of the ohio, they found the whole region covered with an uninterrupted forest, and tenanted by the red indian hunter, who roamed over it without any fixed abode, or any traditionary connection with his more civilised predecessors. the only positive data as yet obtained for calculating the minimum of time which must have elapsed since the mounds were abandoned, have been derived from the age and nature of the trees found growing on some of these earthworks. when i visited marietta in , dr. hildreth took me to one of the mounds, and showed me where he had seen a tree growing on it, the trunk of which when cut down displayed eight hundred rings of annual growth.* (* lyell's "travels in north america" volume page .) but the late general harrison, president in of the united states, who was well skilled in woodcraft, has remarked, in a memoir on this subject, that several generations of trees must have lived and died before the mounds could have been overspread with that variety of species which they supported when the white man first beheld them, for the number and kinds of trees were precisely the same as those which distinguished the surrounding forest. "we may be sure," observed harrison, "that no trees were allowed to grow so long as the earthworks were in use; and when they were forsaken, the ground, like all newly cleared land in ohio, would for a time be monopolised by one or two species of tree, such as the yellow locust and the black or white walnut. when the individuals which were the first to get possession of the ground had died out one after the other, they would in many cases, instead of being replaced by the same species, be succeeded (by virtue of the law which makes a rotation of crops profitable in agriculture) by other kinds, till at last, after a great number of centuries (several thousand years, perhaps), that remarkable diversity of species characteristic of north america, and far exceeding what is seen in european forests, would be established." mounds of santos in brazil. i will next say a few words respecting certain human bones embedded in a solid rock at santos in brazil, to which i called attention in my "travels in north america" in .* (* volume page .) i then imagined the deposit containing them to be of submarine origin--an opinion which i have long ceased to entertain. we learn from a memoir of dr. meigs that the river santos has undermined a large mound, feet in height, and about acres in area, covered with trees, near the town of st. paul, and has exposed to view many skeletons, all inclined at angles between and degrees, and all placed in a similar east and west position.* (* meigs "transactions of the american philosophical society" page .) seeing, in the museum of philadelphia, fragments of the calcareous stone or tufa from this spot, containing a human skull with teeth, and in the same matrix, oysters with serpulae attached, i at first concluded that the whole deposit had been formed beneath the waters of the sea, or at least, that it had been submerged after its origin, and again upheaved; also, that there had been time since its emergence for the growth on it of a forest of large trees. but after reading again, with more care, the original memoir of dr. meigs, i cannot doubt that the shells, like those of eatable kinds, so often accumulated in the mounds of the north american indians not far from the sea, may have been brought to the place and heaped up with other materials at the time when the bodies were buried. subsequently, the whole artificial earthwork, with its shells and skeletons, may have been bound together into a solid stone by the infiltration of carbonate of lime, and the mound may therefore be of no higher antiquity than some of those above alluded to on the ohio, which, as we have seen, have in like manner been exposed in the course of ages to the encroachments and undermining action of rivers. delta of the mississippi. i have shown in my "travels in north america" that the deposits forming the delta and alluvial plain of the mississippi consist of sedimentary matter, extending over an area of , square miles, and known in some parts to be several hundred feet deep. although we cannot estimate correctly how many years it may have required for the river to bring down from the upper country so large a quantity of earthy matter--the data for such a computation being as yet incomplete--we may still approximate to a minimum of the time which such an operation must have taken, by ascertaining experimentally the annual discharge of water by the mississippi, and the mean annual amount of solid matter contained in its waters. the lowest estimate of the time required would lead us to assign a high antiquity, amounting to many tens of thousands of years (probably more than , ) to the existing delta. whether all or how much of this formation may belong to the recent period, as above defined, i cannot pretend to decide, but in one part of the modern delta near new orleans, a large excavation has been made for gas-works, where a succession of beds, almost wholly made up of vegetable matter, has been passed through, such as we now see forming in the cypress swamps of the neighbourhood, where the deciduous cypress (taxodium distichum), with its strong and spreading roots, plays a conspicuous part. in this excavation, at the depth of sixteen feet from the surface, beneath four buried forests superimposed one upon the other, the workmen are stated by dr. b. dowler to have found some charcoal and a human skeleton, the cranium of which is said to belong to the aboriginal type of the red indian race. as the discovery in question had not been made when i saw the excavation in progress at the gas-works in , i cannot form an opinion as to the value of the chronological calculations which have led dr. dowler to ascribe to this skeleton an antiquity of , years. in several sections, both natural in the banks of the mississippi and its numerous arms, and where artificial canals had been cut, i observed erect stumps of trees, with their roots attached, buried in strata at different heights, one over the other. i also remarked, that many cypresses which had been cut through, exhibited many hundreds of rings of annual growth, and it then struck me that nowhere in the world could the geologist enjoy a more favourable opportunity for estimating in years the duration of certain portions of the recent epoch.* (* dowler cited by dr. w. usher in nott and gliddon's "types of mankind" page .) coral reefs of florida. professor agassiz has described a low portion of the peninsula of florida as consisting of numerous reefs of coral, which have grown in succession so as to give rise to a continual annexation of land, gained gradually from the sea in a southerly direction. this growth is still in full activity, and assuming the rate of advance of the land to be one foot in a century, the reefs being built up from a depth of feet, and that each reef has in its turn added ten miles to the coast, professor agassiz calculates that it has taken , years to form the southern half of this peninsula. yet the whole is of post-tertiary origin, the fossil zoophytes and shells being all of the same species as those now inhabiting the neighbouring sea.* (* agassiz in nott and gliddon ibid. page .) in a calcareous conglomerate forming part of the above-mentioned series of reefs, and supposed by agassiz, in accordance with his mode of estimating the rate of growth of those reefs, to be about , years old, some fossil human remains were found by count pourtales. they consisted of jaws and teeth, with some bones of the foot. recent deposits of seas and lakes. i have shown, in the "principles of geology," where the recent changes of the earth illustrative of geology are described at length, that the deposits accumulated at the bottom of lakes and seas within the last or years can neither be insignificant in volume or extent. they lie hidden, for the most part, from our sight; but we have opportunities of examining them at certain points where newly-gained land in the deltas of rivers has been cut through during floods, or where coral reefs are growing rapidly, or where the bed of a sea or lake has been heaved up by subterranean movements and laid dry. as examples of such changes of level by which marine deposits of the recent period have become accessible to human observation, i have adduced the strata near naples in which the temple of serapis at pozzuoli was entombed.* (* "principles of geology" index "serapis.") these upraised strata, the highest of which are about feet above the level of the sea, form a terrace skirting the eastern shore of the bay of baiae. they consist partly of clay, partly of volcanic matter, and contain fragments of sculpture, pottery, and the remains of buildings, together with great numbers of shells, retaining in part their colour, and of the same species as those now inhabiting the neighbouring sea. their emergence can be proved to have taken place since the beginning of the sixteenth century. [ ] in the same work, as an example of a freshwater deposit of the recent period, i have described certain strata in cashmere, a country where violent earthquakes, attended by alterations in the level of the ground, are frequent, in which freshwater shells of species now inhabiting the lakes and rivers of that region are embedded, together with the remains of pottery, often at the depth of fifty feet, and in which a splendid hindoo temple has lately been discovered, and laid open to view by the removal of the lacustrine silt which had enveloped it for four or five centuries. in the same treatise it is stated that the west coast of south america, between the andes and the pacific, is a great theatre of earthquake movements, and that permanent upheavals of the land of several feet at a time have been experienced since the discovery of america. in various parts of the littoral region of chile and peru, strata have been observed enclosing shells in abundance, all agreeing specifically with those now swarming in the pacific. in one bed of this kind, in the island of san lorenzo, near lima, mr. darwin found, at the altitude of feet above the sea, pieces of cotton-thread, plaited rush, and the head of a stalk of indian corn, the whole of which had evidently been embedded with the shells. at the same height, on the neighbouring mainland, he found other signs corroborating the opinion that the ancient bed of the sea had there also been uplifted feet since the region was first peopled by the peruvian race. but similar shelly masses are also met with at much higher elevations, at innumerable points between the chilean and peruvian andes and the sea-coast, in which no human remains have as yet been observed. the preservation for an indefinite period of such perishable substances as thread is explained by the entire absence of rain in peru. the same articles, had they been enclosed in the permeable sands of an european raised beach, or in any country where rain falls even for a small part of the year, would probably have disappeared entirely [ ] in the literature of the eighteenth century, we find frequent allusion to the "era of existing continents," a period supposed to have coincided in date with the first appearance of man upon the earth, since which event it was imagined that the relative level of the sea and land had remained stationary, no important geographical changes having occurred, except some slight additions to the deltas of rivers, or the loss of narrow strips of land where the sea had encroached upon its shores. but modern observations have tended continually to dispel this delusion, and the geologist is now convinced that at no given era of the past have the boundaries of land and sea, or the height of the one and depth of the other, or the geographical range of the species inhabiting them, whether of animals or plants, become fixed and unchangeable. of the extent to which fluctuations have been going on since the globe had already become the dwelling-place of man, some idea may be formed from the examples which i shall give in this and the next nine chapters. upheaval since the human period of the central district of scotland. [ ] it has long been a fact familiar to geologists, that, both on the east and west coasts of the central part of scotland, there are lines of raised beaches, containing marine shells of the same species as those now inhabiting the neighbouring sea.* (* r. chambers "sea margins" and papers by mr. smith of jordan hill "memoirs of the wernerian society" volume and by mr. c. maclaren. ) the two most marked of these littoral deposits occur at heights of about and feet above high-water mark, that of feet being considered as the more ancient, and owing its superior elevation to a continuance of the upheaving movement. they are seen in some places to rest on the boulder clay of the glacial period, which will be described in future chapters. in those districts where large rivers, such as the clyde, forth, and tay, enter the sea, the lower of the two deposits, or that of feet, expands into a terrace fringing the estuaries, and varying in breadth from a few yards to several miles. of this nature are the flat lands which occur along the margin of the clyde at glasgow, which consist of finely laminated sand, silt, and clay. mr. john buchanan, a zealous antiquary, writing in , informs us that in the course of the eighty years preceding that date, no less than seventeen canoes had been dug out of this estuarine silt, and that he had personally inspected a large number of them before they were exhumed. five of them lay buried in silt under the streets of glasgow, one in a vertical position with the prow uppermost as if it had sunk in a storm. in the inside of it were a number of marine shells. twelve other canoes were found about yards back from the river, at the average depth of about feet from the surface of the soil, or feet above high-water mark; but a few of them were only or feet deep, and consequently more than feet above the sea-level. one was sticking in the sand at an angle of degrees, another had been capsized and lay bottom uppermost; all the rest were in a horizontal position, as if they had sunk in smooth water.* (* j. buchanan "report of the british association" page ; also "glasgow, past and present" .) almost every one of these ancient boats was formed out of a single oak-stem, hollowed out by blunt tools, probably stone axes, aided by the action of fire; a few were cut beautifully smooth, evidently with metallic tools. hence a gradation could be traced from a pattern of extreme rudeness to one showing great mechanical ingenuity. two of them were built of planks, one of the two, dug up on the property of bankton in , being feet in length, and very elaborately constructed. its prow was not unlike the beak of an antique galley; its stern, formed of a triangular-shaped piece of oak, fitted in exactly like those of our day. the planks were fastened to the ribs, partly by singularly shaped oaken pins, and partly by what must have been square nails of some kind of metal; these had entirely disappeared, but some of the oaken pins remained. this boat had been upset, and was lying keel uppermost, with the prow pointing straight up the river. in one of the canoes, a beautifully polished celt or axe of greenstone was found, in the bottom of another a plug of cork, which, as mr. geikie remarks, "could only have come from the latitudes of spain, southern france, or italy."* (* geikie, "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page .) there can be no doubt that some of these buried vessels are of far more ancient date than others. those most roughly hewn, may be relics of the stone period; those more smoothly cut, of the bronze age; and the regularly built boat of bankton may perhaps come within the age of iron. the occurrence of all of them in one and the same upraised marine formation by no means implies that they belong to the same era, for in the beds of all great rivers and estuaries, there are changes continually in progress brought about by the deposition, removal, and redeposition of gravel, sand, and fine sediment, and by the shifting of the channel of the main currents from year to year, and from century to century. all these it behoves the geologist and antiquary to bear in mind, so as to be always on their guard, when they are endeavouring to settle the relative date, whether of objects of art or of organic remains embedded in any set of alluvial strata. some judicious observations on this head occur in mr. geikie's memoir above cited, which are so much in point that i shall give them in full, and in his own words. "the relative position in the silt, from which the canoes were exhumed, could help us little in any attempt to ascertain their relative ages, unless they had been found vertically above each other. the varying depths of an estuary, its banks of silt and sand, the set of its currents, and the influence of its tides in scouring out alluvium from some parts of its bottom and redepositing it in others, are circumstances which require to be taken into account in all such calculations. mere coincidence of depth from the present surface of the ground, which is tolerably uniform in level, by no means necessarily proves contemporaneous deposition. nor would such an inference follow even from the occurrence of the remains in distant parts of the very same stratum. a canoe might be capsized and sent to the bottom just beneath low-water mark; another might experience a similar fate on the following day, but in the middle of the channel. both would become silted up on the floor of the estuary; but as that floor would be perhaps feet deeper in the centre than towards the margin of the river, the one canoe might actually be twenty feet deeper in the alluvium than the other; and on the upheaval of the alluvial deposits, if we were to argue merely from the depth at which the remains were embedded, we should pronounce the canoe found at the one locality to be immensely older than the other, seeing that the fine mud of the estuary is deposited very slowly and that it must therefore have taken a long period to form so great a thickness as feet. again, the tides and currents of the estuary, by changing their direction, might sweep away a considerable mass of alluvium from the bottom, laying bare a canoe that may have foundered many centuries before. after the lapse of so long an interval, another vessel might go to the bottom in the same locality and be there covered up with the older one on the same general plane. these two vessels, found in such a position, would naturally be classed together as of the same age, and yet it is demonstrable that a very long period may have elapsed between the date of the one and that of the other. such an association of these canoes, therefore, cannot be regarded as proving synchronous deposition; nor, on the other hand, can we affirm any difference of age from mere relative position, unless we see one canoe actually buried beneath another."* (* geikie, "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume , page .) at the time when the ancient vessels, above described, were navigating the waters where the city of glasgow now stands, the whole of the low lands which bordered the present estuary of the clyde formed the bed of a shallow sea. the emergence appears to have taken place gradually and by intermittent movements, for mr. buchanan describes several narrow terraces one above the other on the site of the city itself, with steep intervening slopes composed of the laminated estuary formation. each terrace and steep slope probably mark pauses in the process of upheaval, during which low cliffs were formed, with beaches at their base. five of the canoes were found within the precincts of the city at different heights on or near such terraces. as to the date of the upheaval, the greater part of it cannot be assigned to the stone period, but must have taken place after tools of metal had come into use. until lately, when attempts were made to estimate the probable antiquity of such changes of level, it was confidently assumed, as a safe starting-point, that no alteration had occurred in the relative level of land and sea, in the central district of scotland, since the construction of the roman or pictish wall (the "wall of antonine"), which reached from the firth of forth to that of the clyde. the two extremities, it was said, of this ancient structure, bear such a relation to the present level of the two estuaries, that neither subsidence nor elevation of the land could have occurred for seventeen centuries at least. but mr. geikie has lately shown that a depression of feet on the forth would not lay the eastern extremity of the roman wall at carriden under water, and he was therefore desirous of knowing whether the western end of the same would be submerged by a similar amount of subsidence. it has always been acknowledged that the wall terminated upon an eminence called the chapel hill, near the village of west kilpatrick, on the clyde. the foot of this hill, mr. geikie estimates to be about or feet above high-water mark, so that a subsidence of feet could not lay it under water. antiquaries have sometimes wondered that the romans did not carry the wall farther west than this chapel hill; but mr. geikie now suggests, in explanation, that all the low land at present intervening between that point and the mouth of the clyde, was sixteen or seventeen centuries ago, washed by the tides at high water. the wall of antonine, therefore, yields no evidence in favour of the land having remained stationary since the time of the romans, but on the contrary, appears to indicate that since its erection the land has actually risen. recent explorations by mr. geikie and dr. young, of the sites of the old roman harbours along the southern margin of the firth of forth, lead to similar inferences. in the first place, it has long been known that there is a raised beach containing marine shells of living littoral species, at a height of about feet, at leith, as well as at other places along the coast above and below edinburgh. inveresk, a few miles below that city, is the site of an ancient roman port, and if we suppose the sea at high water to have washed the foot of the heights on which the town stood, the tide would have ascended far up the valley of the esk, and would have made the mouth of that river a safe and commodious harbour; whereas, had it been a shoaling estuary, as at present, it is difficult to see how the romans should have made choice of it as a port. at cramond, at the mouth of the river almond, above edinburgh, was alaterva, the chief roman harbour on the southern coast of the forth, where numerous coins, urns, sculptured stones and the remnant of a harbour have been detected. the old roman quays built along what must then have been the sea margin, have been found on what is now dry land, and although some silt carried down in suspension by the waters of the forth may account for a part of the gain of low land, we yet require an upward movement of about feet to explain the growth of the dreary expanse of mud now stretching along the shore and extending outwards, where it attains its greatest breadth, well-nigh two miles, across which vessels, even of light burden, can now only venture at full tide. had these shoals existed eighteen centuries ago, they would have prevented the romans from selecting this as their chief port; whereas, if the land were now to sink feet, cramond would unquestionably be the best natural harbour along the whole of the south side of the forth.* (* geikie, "edinburgh new philosophical journal" for july .) corresponding in level with the raised beach at leith, above mentioned (or about feet above high-water mark), is the carse of stirling, a low tract of land consisting of loamy and peaty beds, in which several skeletons of whales of large size have been found. one of these was dug up at airthrie,* near stirling, about a mile from the river, and miles from the sea. (* bald, "edinburgh philosophical journal" page and "memoirs of the wernerian society" page .) mr. bald mentions that near it were found two pieces of stag's horn, artificially cut, through one of which a hole, about an inch in diameter, had been perforated. another whale, feet long, was found at dunmore, a few miles below stirling,* which, like that of airthrie, lay about feet above high-water mark. (* "edinburgh philosophical journal" pages , .) three other skeletons of whales were found at blair drummond, between the years and , miles up the estuary above stirling,* also at an elevation of between and feet above the sea. near two of these whales, pointed instruments of deer's horn were found, one of which retained part of a wooden handle, probably preserved by having been enclosed in peat. this weapon is now in the museum at edinburgh. (* "memoirs of the wernerian society" volume page .) the position of these fossil whales and bone implements, and still more of an iron anchor found in the carse of falkirk, below stirling, shows that the upheaval by which the raised beach of leith was laid dry extended far westward probably as far as the clyde, where, as we have seen, marine strata containing buried canoes rise to a similar height above the sea. the same upward movement which reached simultaneously east and west from sea to sea was also felt as far north as the estuary of the tay. this may be inferred from the celtic name of inch being attached to many hillocks, which rise above the general level of the alluvial plains, implying that these eminences were once surrounded by water or marshy ground. at various localities also in the silt of the carse of gowrie iron implements have been found. the raised beach, also containing a great number of marine shells of recent species, traced up to a height of feet above the sea by mr. w.j. hamilton at elie, on the southern coast of fife, is doubtless another effect of the same extensive upheaval.* (* "proceedings of the geological society" volume page .) a similar movement would also account for some changes which antiquaries have recorded much farther south, on the borders of the solway firth; though in this case, as in that of the estuary of the forth, the conversion of sea into land has always been referred to the silting up of estuaries, and not to upheaval. thus horsley insists on the difficulty of explaining the position of certain roman stations, on the solway, the forth, and the clyde, without assuming that the sea has been excluded from certain areas which it formerly occupied.* (* "britannia" page .) on a review of the whole evidence, geological and archaeological, afforded by the scottish coast-line, we may conclude that the last upheaval of feet took place not only since the first human population settled in the island; but long after metallic implements had come into use, and there seems even a strong presumption in favour of the opinion that the date of the elevation may have been subsequent to the roman occupation. but the feet rise is only the last stage of a long antecedent process of elevation, for examples of recent marine shells have been observed feet and upwards above the sea in ayrshire. at one of these localities, mr. smith of jordanhill informs me that a rude ornament made of cannel coal has been found on the coast in the parish of dundonald, lying feet above the sea-level, on the surface of the boulder-clay or till, and covered with gravel containing marine shells. if we suppose the upward movement to have been uniform in central scotland before and after the roman era, and assume that as feet indicate seventeen centuries, so feet imply a lapse of twice that number, or years, we should then carry back the date of the ornament in question to fifteen centuries before our era, or to the days of pharaoh, and the period usually assigned to the exodus of the israelites from egypt. [ ] but all such estimates must be considered, in the present state of science, as tentative and conjectural, since the rate of movement of the land may not have been uniform, and its direction not always upwards, and there may have been long stationary periods, one of which of more than usual duration seems indicated by the -foot raised beach, which has been traced for vast distances along the western coast of scotland. coast of cornwall. sir h. de la beche has adduced several proofs of changes of level, in the course of the human period, in his "report on the geology of cornwall and devon," . he mentions (page ) that several human skulls and works of art, buried in an estuary deposit, were found in mining gravel for tin at pentuan, near st. austell, the skulls lying at the depth of feet from the surface, and others at carnon at the depth of feet. the overlying strata were marine, containing sea-shells of living species, and bones of whales, besides the remains of several living species of mammalia. other examples of works of art, such as stone hatchets, canoes, and ships, buried in ancient river-beds in england, and in peat and shell-marl, i have mentioned in my work before cited. sweden and norway. in the same work i have shown that near stockholm, in sweden, there occur, at slight elevations above the sea-level, horizontal beds of sand, loam, and marl, containing the same peculiar assemblage of testacea which now live in the brackish waters of the baltic. mingled with these, at different depths, have been detected various works of art implying a rude state of civilization, and some vessels built before the introduction of iron, and even the remains of an ancient hut, the marine strata containing it, which had been formed during a previous depression, having been upraised, so that the upper beds are now feet higher than the surface of the baltic. in the neighbourhood of these recent strata, both to the north-west and south of stockholm, other deposits similar in mineral composition occur, which ascend to greater heights, in which precisely the same assemblage of fossil shells is met with, but without any intermixture, so far as is yet known, of human bones or fabricated articles. on the opposite or western coast of sweden, at uddevalla, post-tertiary strata, containing recent shells, not of that brackish water character peculiar to the baltic, but such as now live in the northern ocean, ascend to the height of feet; and beds of clay and sand of the same age attain elevations of and even feet in norway, where they have been usually described as "raised beaches." they are, however, thick deposits of submarine origin, spreading far and wide, and filling valleys in the granite and gneiss, just as the tertiary formations, in different parts of europe, cover or fill depressions in the older rocks. although the fossil fauna characterising these upraised sands and clays consists exclusively of existing northern species of testacea, it is more than probable that they may not all belong to that division of the pleistocene strata which we are now considering. if the contemporary mammalia were known, they would, in all likelihood, be found to be referable, at least in part, to extinct species; for, according to loven (an able living naturalist of norway), the species do not constitute such an assemblage as now inhabits corresponding latitudes in the north sea. on the contrary, they decidedly represent a more arctic fauna. in order to find the same species flourishing in equal abundance, or in many cases to find them at all, we must go northwards to higher latitudes than uddevalla in sweden, or even nearer the pole than central norway. judging by the uniformity of climate now prevailing from century to century, and the insensible rate of variation in the geographical distribution of organic beings in our own times, we may presume that an extremely lengthened period was required even for so slight a modification in the range of the molluscous fauna, as that of which the evidence is here brought to light. there are also other independent reasons for suspecting that the antiquity of these deposits may be indefinitely great as compared to the historical period. i allude to their present elevation above the sea, some of them rising, in norway, to the height of feet or more. the upward movement now in progress in parts of norway and sweden extends, as i have elsewhere shown,* throughout an area about miles north and south, and for an unknown distance east and west, the amount of elevation always increasing as we proceed towards the north cape, where it is said to equal feet in a century. (* "principles" th edition chapter .) if we could assume that there had been an average of / feet in each hundred years for the last fifty centuries, this would give an elevation of feet in that period. in other words, it would follow that the shores, and a considerable area of the former bed of the north sea, had been uplifted vertically to that amount, and converted into land in the course of the last years. a mean rate of continuous vertical elevation of / feet in a century would, i conceive, be a high average; yet, even if this be assumed, it would require , years for parts of the sea-coast of norway, where the pleistocene marine strata occur, to attain the height of feet. [ ] chapter . -- pleistocene period--bones of man and extinct mammalia in belgian caverns. earliest discoveries in caves of languedoc of human remains with bones of extinct mammalia. researches in of dr. schmerling in the liege caverns. scattered portions of human skeletons associated with bones of elephant and rhinoceros. distribution and probable mode of introduction of the bones. implements of flint and bone. schmerling's conclusions as to the antiquity of man ignored. present state of the belgian caves. human bones recently found in cave of engihoul. engulfed rivers. stalagmitic crust. antiquity of the human remains in belgium how proved. having hitherto considered those formations in which both the fossil shells and the mammalia are of living species, we may now turn our attention to those of older date, in which the shells being all recent, some of the accompanying mammalia are extinct, or belong to species not known to have lived within the times of history or tradition. discoveries of mm. tournal and christol in in the south of france. in the "principles of geology," when treating of the fossil remains found in alluvium and the mud of caverns, i gave an account in of the investigations made by mm. tournal and christol in the south of france.* (* st edition volume chapter , and th edition page , .) m. tournal stated in his memoir that in the cavern of bize, in the department of the aude, he had found human bones and teeth, together with fragments of rude pottery, in the same mud and breccia cemented by stalagmite in which land-shells of living species were embedded, and the bones of mammalia, some of extinct, others of recent species. the human bones were declared by his fellow-labourer, m. marcel de serres, to be in the same chemical condition as those of the accompanying quadrupeds.* (* "annales des sciences naturelles" tome page .) speaking of these fossils of the bize cavern five years later, m. tournal observed that they could not be referred, as some suggested, to a "diluvial catastrophe," for they evidently had not been washed in suddenly by a transient flood, but must have been introduced gradually, together with the enveloping mud and pebbles, at successive periods.* (* "annales de chimie et de physique" page .) m. christol, who was engaged at the same time in similar researches in another part of languedoc, published an account of them a year later, in which he described some human bones, as occurring in the cavern of pondres, near nimes, in the same mud with the bones of an extinct hyaena and rhinoceros.* (* christol, "notice sur les ossements humains des cavernes du gard" montpellier .) the cavern was in this instance filled up to the roof with mud and gravel, in which fragments of two kinds of pottery were detected, the lowest and rudest near the bottom of the cave, below the level of the extinct mammalia. it has never been questioned that the hyaena and rhinoceros found by m. christol were of extinct species; but whether the animals enumerated by m. tournal might not all of them be referred to quadrupeds which are known to have been living in europe in the historical period seems doubtful. they were said to consist of a stag, an antelope, and a goat, all named by m. marcel de serres as new; but the majority of palaeontologists do not agree with this opinion. still it is true, as m. lartet remarks, that the fauna of the cavern of bize must be of very high antiquity, as shown by the presence, not only of the lithuanian aurochs (bison europaeus), but also of the reindeer, which has not been an inhabitant of the south of france in historical times, and which, in that country, is almost everywhere associated, whether in ancient alluvium or in the mud of caverns, with the mammoth. in my work before cited,* i stated that m. desnoyers, an observer equally well versed in geology and archaeology, had disputed the conclusion arrived at by mm. tournal and christol, that the fossil rhinoceros, hyaena, bear, and other lost species had once been inhabitants of france contemporaneously with man. (* "principles" th edition page .) "the flint hatchets and arrow-heads," he said, "and the pointed bones and coarse pottery of many french and english caves, agree precisely in character with those found in the tumuli, and under the dolmens (rude altars of unhewn stone) of the primitive inhabitants of gaul, britain, and germany. the human bones, therefore, in the caves which are associated with such fabricated objects, must belong not to antediluvian periods, but to a people in the same stage of civilization as those who constructed the tumuli and altars." "in the gaulish monuments," he added, "we find, together with the objects of industry above mentioned, the bones of wild and domestic animals of species now inhabiting europe, particularly of deer, sheep, wild boars, dogs, horses, and oxen. this fact has been ascertained in quercy and other provinces; and it is supposed by antiquaries that the animals in question were placed beneath the celtic altars in memory of sacrifices offered to the gaulish divinity hesus, and in the tombs to commemorate funeral repasts, and also from a superstition prevalent among savage nations, which induces them to lay up provisions for the manes of the dead in a future life. but in none of these ancient monuments have any bones been found of the elephant, rhinoceros, hyaena, tiger, and other quadrupeds, such as are found in caves, which might certainly have been expected had these species continued to flourish at the time that this part of gaul was inhabited by man."* (* desnoyers, "bulletin de la societe geologique de france" tome page ; and article on caverns, "dictionnaire universelle d'histoire naturelle" paris .) after giving no small weight to the arguments of m. desnoyers, and the writings of dr. buckland on the same subject, and myself visiting several caves in germany, i came to the opinion that the human bones mixed with those of extinct animals, in osseous breccias and cavern mud, in different parts of europe, were probably not coeval. the caverns having been at one period the dens of wild beasts, and having served at other times as places of human habitation, worship, sepulture, concealment, or defence, one might easily conceive that the bones of man and those of animals, which were strewed over the floors of subterranean cavities, or which had fallen into tortuous rents connecting them with the surface, might, when swept away by floods, be mingled in one promiscuous heap in the same ossiferous mud or breccia.* (* "principles" th edition page .) that such intermixtures have really taken place in some caverns, and that geologists have occasionally been deceived, and have assigned to one and the same period fossils which had really been introduced at successive times, will readily be conceded. but of late years we have obtained convincing proofs, as we shall see in the sequel, that the mammoth, and many other extinct mammalian species very common in caves, occur also in undisturbed alluvium, embedded in such a manner with works of art, as to leave no room for doubt that man and the mammoth coexisted; such discoveries have led me, and other geologists, to reconsider the evidence previously derived from caves brought forward in proof of the high antiquity of man. with a view of re-examining this evidence, i have lately explored several caverns in belgium and other countries, and re-read the principal memoirs and treatises treating of the fossil remains preserved in them, the results of which inquiries i shall now proceed to lay before the reader. researches, in - , of dr. schmerling in the caverns near liege. the late dr. schmerling of liege, a skilful anatomist and palaeontologist, after devoting several years to the exploring of the numerous ossiferous caverns which border the valleys of the meuse and its tributaries, published two volumes descriptive of the contents of more than forty caverns. one of these volumes consisted of an atlas of plates, illustrative of the fossil bones.* (* "recherches sur les ossements fossiles decouverts dans les cavernes de la province de liege", liege - .) many of the caverns had never before been entered by scientific observers, and their floors were encrusted with unbroken stalagmite. at a very early stage of his investigations, dr. schmerling found the bones of man so rolled and scattered as to preclude all idea of their having been intentionally buried on the spot. he also remarked that they were of the same colour, and in the same condition as to the amount of animal matter contained in them, as those of the accompanying animals, some of which, like the cave-bear, hyaena, elephant, and rhinoceros, were extinct; others, like the wild cat, beaver, wild boar, roe-deer, wolf, and hedgehog, still extant. the fossils were lighter than fresh bones, except such as had their pores filled with carbonate of lime, in which case they were often much heavier. the human remains of most frequent occurrence were teeth detached from the jaw, and the carpal, metacarpal, tarsal, metatarsal, and phalangeal bones separated from the rest of the skeleton. the corresponding bones of the cave-bear, the most abundant of the accompanying mammalia, were also found in the liege caverns more commonly than any others, and in the same scattered condition. occasionally, some of the long bones of mammalia were observed to have been first broken across, and then reunited or cemented again by stalagmite, as they lay on the floor of the cave. no gnawed bones nor any coprolites were found by schmerling. he therefore inferred that the caverns of the province of liege had not been the dens of wild beasts, but that their organic and inorganic contents had been swept into them by streams communicating with the surface of the country. the bones, he suggested, may often have been rolled in the beds of such streams before they reached their underground destination. to the same agency the introduction of many land-shells dispersed through the cave-mud was ascribed, such as helix nemoralis, h. lapicida, h. pomatia, and others of living species. mingled with such shells, in some rare instances, the bones of freshwater fish, and of a snake (coluber), as well as of several birds, were detected. the occurrence here and there of bones in a very perfect state, or of several bones belonging to the same skeleton in natural juxtaposition, and having all their most delicate apophyses uninjured, while many accompanying bones in the same breccia were rolled, broken, or decayed, was accounted for by supposing that portions of carcasses were sometimes floated in during floods while still clothed with their flesh. no example was discovered of an entire skeleton, not even of one of the smaller mammalia, the bones of which are usually the least injured. the incompleteness of each skeleton was especially ascertained in regard to the human subjects, dr. schmerling being careful, whenever a fragment of such presented itself, to explore the cavern himself, and see whether any other bones of the same skeleton could be found. in the engis cavern, distant about eight miles to the south-west of liege, on the left bank of the meuse, the remains of at least three human individuals were disinterred. the skull of one of these, that of a young person, was embedded by the side of a mammoth's tooth. it was entire but so fragile, that nearly all of it fell to pieces during its extraction. another skull, that of an adult individual, and the only one preserved by dr. schmerling in a sufficient state of integrity to enable the anatomist to speculate on the race to which it belonged, was buried feet deep in a breccia, in which the tooth of a rhinoceros, several bones of a horse, and some of the reindeer, together with some ruminants, occurred. this skull, now in the museum of the university of liege, is figured in chapter (figure ), where further observations will be offered on its anatomical character, after a fuller account of the contents of the liege caverns has been laid before the reader. on the right bank of the meuse, on the opposite side of the river to engis, is the cavern of engihoul. bones of extinct animals mingled with those of man were observed to abound in both caverns; but with this difference, that whereas in the engis cave there were several human crania and very few other bones, in engihoul there occurred numerous bones of the extremities belonging to at least three human individuals, and only two small fragments of a cranium. the like capricious distribution held good in other caverns, especially with reference to the cave-bear, the most frequent of the extinct mammalia. thus, for example in the cave of chokier, skulls of the bear were few, and other parts of the skeleton abundant, whereas in several other caverns these proportions were exactly reversed, while at goffontaine skulls of the bear and other parts of the skeleton were found in their natural numerical proportions. speaking generally, it may be said that human bones, where any were met with, occurred at all depths in the cave-mud and gravel, sometimes above and sometimes below those of the bear, elephant, rhinoceros, hyaena, etc. some rude flint implements of the kind commonly called flint knives or flakes, of a triangular form in the cross section (as in figure ), were found by schmerling dispersed generally through the cave-mud, but he was too much engrossed with his osteological inquiries to collect them diligently. he preserved some few of them, however, which i have seen in the museum at liege. he also discovered in the cave of chokier, / miles south-west from liege, a polished and jointed needle-shaped bone, with a hole pierced obliquely through it at the base; such a cavity, he observed, as had never given passage to an artery. this instrument was embedded in the same matrix with the remains of a rhinoceros.* (* schmerling part page .) another cut bone and several artificially-shaped flints were found in the engis cave, near the human skulls before alluded to. schmerling observed, and we shall have to refer to the fact in the sequel (chapter ), that although in some forty fossiliferous caves explored by him human bones were the exception, yet these flint implements were universal, and he added that "none of them could have been subsequently introduced, being precisely in the same position as the remains of the accompanying animals." "i therefore," he continues, "attach great importance to their presence; for even if i had not found the human bones under conditions entirely favourable to their being considered as belonging to the antediluvian epoch, proofs of man's existence would still have been supplied by the cut bones and worked flints."* (* schmerling, part page .) dr. schmerling, therefore, had no hesitation in concluding from the various facts ascertained by him, that man once lived in the liege district contemporaneously with the cave-bear and several other extinct species of quadrupeds. but he was much at a loss when he attempted to invent a theory to explain the former state of the fauna of the region now drained by the meuse; for he shared the notion, then very prevalent among naturalists, that the mammoth and the hyaena* were beasts of a warmer climate than that now proper to western europe. (* ibid. part pages and .) in order to account for the presence of such "tropical species," he was half-inclined to imagine that they had been transported by a flood from some distant region; then again he raised the question whether they might not have been washed out of an older alluvium, which may have pre-existed in the neighbourhood. this last hypothesis was directly at variance with his own statements, that the remains of the mammoth and hyaena were identical in appearance, colour, and chemical condition with those of the bear and other associated fossil animals, none of which exhibited signs of having been previously enveloped in any dissimilar matrix. another enigma which led schmerling astray in some of his geological speculations was the supposed presence of the agouti, a south american rodent, "proper to the torrid zone." my friend m. lartet, guided by schmerling's figures of the teeth of this species, suggests, and i have little doubt with good reason, that they appertain to the porcupine, a genus found fossil in pleistocene deposits of certain caverns in the south of france. in the year , i passed through liege, on my way to the rhine, and conversed with dr. schmerling, who showed me his splendid collection, and when i expressed some incredulity respecting the alleged antiquity of the fossil human bones, he pointedly remarked that if i doubted their having been contemporaneous with the bear or rhinoceros, on the ground of man being a species of more modern date, i ought equally to doubt the co-existence of all the other living species, such as the red deer, roe, wild cat, wild boar, wolf, fox, weasel, beaver, hare, rabbit, hedgehog, mole, dormouse, field-mouse, water-rat, shrew, and others, the bones of which he had found scattered everywhere indiscriminately through the same mud with the extinct quadrupeds. the year after this conversation i cited schmerling's opinions, and the facts bearing on the antiquity of man, in the rd edition of my "principles of geology" (page , ), and in succeeding editions, without pretending to call in question their trustworthiness, but at the same time without giving them the weight which i now consider they were entitled to. he had accumulated ample evidence to prove that man had been introduced into the earth at an earlier period than geologists were then willing to believe. one positive fact, it will be said, attested by so competent a witness, ought to have outweighed any amount of negative testimony, previously accumulated, respecting the non-occurrence elsewhere of human remains in formations of the like antiquity. in reply, i can only plead that a discovery which seems to contradict the general tenor of previous investigations is naturally received with much hesitation. to have undertaken in , with a view of testing its truth, to follow the belgian philosopher through every stage of his observations and proofs, would have been no easy task even for one well-skilled in geology and osteology. to be let down, as schmerling was, day after day, by a rope tied to a tree, so as to slide to the foot of the first opening of the engis cave,* where the best-preserved human skulls were found; and, after thus gaining access to the first subterranean gallery, to creep on all fours through a contracted passage leading to larger chambers, there to superintend by torchlight, week after week and year after year, the workmen who were breaking through the stalagmitic crust as hard as marble, in order to remove piece by piece the underlying bone-breccia nearly as hard; to stand for hours with one's feet in the mud, and with water dripping from the roof on one's head, in order to mark the position and guard against the loss of each single bone of a skeleton; and at length, after finding leisure, strength, and courage for all these operations, to look forward, as the fruits of one's labour, to the publication of unwelcome intelligence, opposed to the prepossessions of the scientific as well as of the unscientific public--when these circumstances are taken into account, we need scarcely wonder, not only that a passing traveller failed to stop and scrutinise the evidence, but that a quarter of a century should have elapsed before even the neighbouring professors of the university of liege came forth to vindicate the truthfulness of their indefatigable and clear-sighted countryman. (* schmerling part page .) in , when i revisited liege, twenty-six years after my interview with schmerling, i found that several of the caverns described by him had in the interval been annihilated. not a vestige, for example, of the caves of engis, chokier, and goffontaine remained. the calcareous stone, in the heart of which the cavities once existed, had been quarried away, and removed bodily for building and lime-making. fortunately, a great part of the engihoul cavern, situated on the right bank of the meuse, was still in the same state as when schmerling delved into it in , and drew from it the bones of three human skeletons. i determined, therefore, to examine it, and was so fortunate as to obtain the assistance of a zealous naturalist of liege, professor malaise, who accompanied me to the cavern, where we engaged some workmen to break through the crust of stalagmite, so that we could search for bones in the undisturbed earth beneath. bones and teeth of the cave-bear were soon found, and several other extinct quadrupeds which schmerling has enumerated. my companion, continuing the work perseveringly for weeks after my departure, succeeded at length in extracting from the same deposit, at the depth of feet below the crust of stalagmite, three fragments of a human skull, and two perfect lower jaws with teeth, all associated in such a manner with the bones of bears, large pachyderms, and ruminants, and so precisely resembling these in colour and state of preservation, as to leave no doubt in his mind that man was contemporary with the extinct animals. professor malaise has given figures of the human remains in the "bulletin" of the royal academy of belgium for .* (* volume page .) the rock in which the liege caverns occur belongs generally to the carboniferous or mountain limestone, in some few cases only to the older devonian formation. whenever the work of destruction has not gone too far, magnificent sections, sometimes and feet in height, are exposed to view. they confirm schmerling's doctrine, that most of the materials, organic and inorganic, now filling the caverns, have been washed into them through narrow vertical or oblique fissures, the upper extremities of which are choked up with soil and gravel, and would scarcely ever be discoverable at the surface, especially in so wooded a country. among the sections obtained by quarrying, one of the finest which i saw was in the beautiful valley of fond du foret, above chaudefontaine, not far from the village of magnee, where one of the rents communicating with the surface has been filled up to the brim with rounded and half-rounded stones, angular pieces of limestone and shale, besides sand and mud, together with bones, chiefly of the cave-bear. connected with this main duct, which is from to feet in width, are several minor ones, each from to inches wide, also extending to the upper country or table-land, and choked up with similar materials. they are inclined at angles of and degrees, their walls being generally coated with stalactite, pieces of which have here and there been broken off and mingled with the contents of the rents, thus helping to explain why we so often meet with detached pieces of that substance in the mud and breccia of the belgian caves. it is not easy to conceive that a solid horizontal floor of hard stalagmite should, after its formation, be broken up by running water; but when the walls of steep and tortuous rents, serving as feeders to the principal fissures and to inferior vaults and galleries are encrusted with stalagmite, some of the incrustation may readily be torn up when heavy fragments of rock are hurried by a flood through passages inclined at angles of or degrees. the decay and decomposition of the fossil bones seem to have been arrested in most of the caves by a constant supply of water charged with carbonate of lime, which dripped from the roofs while the caves were becoming gradually filled up. by similar agency the mud, sand, and pebbles were usually consolidated. the following explanation of this phenomenon has been suggested by the eminent chemist liebig. on the surface of franconia, where the limestone abounds in caverns, is a fertile soil in which vegetable matter is continually decaying. this mould or humus, being acted on by moisture and air, evolves carbonic acid, which is dissolved by rain. the rain water, thus impregnated, permeates the porous limestone, dissolves a portion of it, and afterwards, when the excess of carbonic acid evaporates in the caverns, parts with the calcareous matter and forms stalactite. so long as water flows, even occasionally, through a suite of caverns, no layer of pure stalagmite can be produced; hence the formation of such a layer is generally an event posterior in date to the cessation of the old system of drainage, an event which might be brought about by an earthquake causing new fissures, or by the river wearing its way down to a lower level, and thenceforth running in a new channel. in all the subterranean cavities, more than forty in number, explored by schmerling, he only observed one cave, namely that of chokier, where there were two regular layers of stalagmite, divided by fossiliferous cave-mud. in this instance, we may suppose that the stream, after flowing for a long period at one level, cut its way down to an inferior suite of caverns, and, flowing through them for centuries, choked them up with debris; after which it rose once more to its original higher level: just as in the mountain limestone district of yorkshire some rivers, habitually absorbed by a "swallow hole," are occasionally unable to discharge all their water through it; in which case they rise and rush through a higher subterranean passage, which was at some former period in the regular line of drainage, as is often attested by the fluviatile gravel still contained in it. there are now in the basin of the meuse, not far from liege, several examples of engulfed brooks and rivers: some of them, like that of st. hadelin, east of chaudefontaine, which reappears after an underground course of a mile or two; others, like the vesdre, which is lost near goffontaine, and after a time re-emerges; some, again, like the torrent near magnee, which, after entering a cave, never again comes to the day. in the season of floods such streams are turbid at their entrance, but clear as a mountain-spring where they issue again; so that they must be slowly filling up cavities in the interior with mud, sand, pebbles, snail-shells, and the bones of animals which may be carried away during floods. the manner in which some of the large thigh and shank bones of the rhinoceros and other pachyderms are rounded, while some of the smaller bones of the same creatures, and of the hyaena, bear, and horse, are reduced to pebbles, shows that they were often transported for some distance in the channels of torrents, before they found a resting-place. when we desire to reason or speculate on the probable antiquity of human bones found fossil in such situations as the caverns near liege, there are two classes of evidence to which we may appeal for our guidance. first, considerations of the time required to allow of many species of carnivorous and herbivorous animals, which flourished in the cave period, becoming first scarce, and then so entirely extinct as we have seen that they had become before the era of the danish peat and swiss lake dwellings; secondly, the great number of centuries necessary for the conversion of the physical geography of the liege district from its ancient to its present configuration; so many old underground channels, through which brooks and rivers flowed in the cave period, being now laid dry and choked up. the great alterations which have taken place in the shape of the valley of the meuse and some of its tributaries are often demonstrated by the abrupt manner in which the mouths of fossiliferous caverns open in the face of perpendicular precipices feet or more in height above the present streams. there appears also, in many cases, to be such a correspondence in the openings of caverns on opposite sides of some of the valleys, both large and small, as to incline one to suspect that they originally belonged to a series of tunnels and galleries which were continuous before the present system of drainage came into play, or before the existing valleys were scooped out. other signs of subsequent fluctuations are afforded by gravel containing elephant's bones at slight elevations above the meuse and several of its tributaries. it may be objected that, according to the present rate of change, no lapse of ages would suffice to bring about such revolutions in physical geography as we are here contemplating. this may be true. it is more than probable that the rate of change was once far more active than it is now in the basin of the meuse. some of the nearest volcanoes, namely, those of the lower eifel about miles to the eastward, seem to have been in eruption in pleistocene times, and may perhaps have been connected and coeval with repeated risings or sinkings of the land in the liege district. it might be said, with equal truth, that according to the present course of events, no series of ages would suffice to reproduce such an assemblage of cones and craters as those of the eifel (near andernach, for example); and yet some of them may be of sufficiently modern date to belong to the era when man was contemporary with the mammoth and rhinoceros in the basin of the meuse. but, although we may be unable to estimate the minimum of time required for the changes in physical geography above alluded to, we cannot fail to perceive that the duration of the period must have been very protracted, and that other ages of comparative inaction may have followed, separating the pleistocene from the historical periods, and constituting an interval no less indefinite in its duration. chapter . -- pleistocene period--fossil human skulls of the neanderthal and engis caves. human skeleton found in cave near dusseldorf. its geological position and probable age. its abnormal and ape-like characters. fossil human skull of the engis cave near liege. professor huxley's description of these skulls. comparison of each, with extreme varieties of the native australian race. range of capacity in the human and simian brains. skull from borreby in denmark. conclusions of professor huxley. bearing of the peculiar characters of the neanderthal skull on the hypothesis of transmutation. fossil human skeleton of the neanderthal cave near dusseldorf. before i speak more particularly of the opinions which anatomists have expressed respecting the osteological characters of the human skull from engis, near liege, mentioned in the last chapter and described by dr. schmerling, it will be desirable to say something of the geological position of another skull, or rather skeleton, which, on account of its peculiar conformation, has excited no small sensation in the last few years. i allude to the skull found in in a cave situated in that part of the valley of the dussel, near dusseldorf, which is called the neanderthal. the spot is a deep and narrow ravine about english miles north-east of the region of the liege caverns treated of in the last chapter, and close to the village and railway station of hochdal between dusseldorf and elberfeld. the cave occurs in the precipitous southern or left side of the winding ravine, about sixty feet above the stream, and a hundred feet below the top of the cliff. the accompanying section (figure .) will give the reader an idea of its position. [illustration: figure ] when dr. fuhlrott of elberfeld first examined the cave, he found it to be high enough to allow a man to enter. the width was or feet, and the length or depth . i visited the spot in , in company with dr. fuhlrott, who had the kindness to come expressly from elberfeld to be my guide, and who brought with him the original fossil skull, and a cast of the same, which he presented to me. in the interval of three years, between and , the ledge of rock, f, on which the cave opened, and which was originally feet wide, had been almost entirely quarried away, and, at the rate at which the work of dilapidation was proceeding, its complete destruction seemed near at hand. (figure . section of the neanderthal cave near dusseldorf. a. cavern feet above the dussel, and feet below the surface of the country at c. b. loam covering the floor of the cave near the bottom of which the human skeleton was found. b, c. rent connecting the cave with the upper surface of the country. d. superficial sandy loam. e. devonian limestone. f. terrace, or ledge of rock.) in the limestone are many fissures, one of which, still partially filled with mud and stones, is represented in the section at a c as continuous from the cave to the upper surface of the country. through this passage the loam, and possibly the human body to which the bones belonged, may have been washed into the cave below. the loam, which covered the uneven bottom of the cave, was sparingly mixed with rounded fragments of chert, and was very similar in composition to that covering the general surface of that region. there was no crust of stalagmite overlying the mud in which the human skeleton was found, and no bones of other animals in the mud with the skeleton; but just before our visit in the tusk of a bear had been met with in some mud in a lateral embranchment of the cave, in a situation precisely similar to b, figure , and on a level corresponding with that of the human skeleton. this tusk, shown us by the proprietor of the cave, was / inches long and quite perfect; but whether it was referable to a recent or extinct species of bear, i could not determine. from a printed letter of dr. fuhlrott we learn that on removing the loam, which was five feet thick, from the cave, the human skull was first noticed near the entrance, and, further in, the other bones lying in the same horizontal plane. it is supposed that the skeleton was complete, but the workmen, ignorant of its value, scattered and lost most of the bones, preserving only the larger ones.* (* fuhlrott, letter to professor schaaffhausen, cited "natural history review" number page . see also "naturhistorischer verein" bonn .) the cranium, which dr. fuhlrott showed me, was covered both on its outer and inner surface, and especially on the latter, with a profusion of dendritical crystallisations, and some other bones of the skeleton were ornamented in the same way. these markings, as dr. hermann von meyer observes, afford no sure criterion of antiquity, for they have been observed on roman bones. nevertheless, they are more common in bones that have been long embedded in the earth. the skull and bones, moreover, of the neanderthal skeleton had lost so much of their animal matter as to adhere strongly to the tongue, agreeing in this respect with the ordinary condition of fossil remains of the pleistocene period. on the whole, i think it probable that this fossil may be of about the same age as those found by schmerling in the liege caverns; but, as no other animal remains were found with it, there is no proof that it may not be newer. its position lends no countenance whatever to the supposition of its being more ancient. when the skull and other parts of the skeleton were first exhibited at a german scientific meeting at bonn, in , some doubts were expressed by several naturalists, whether it was truly human. professor schaaffhausen, who, with the other experienced zoologists, did not share these doubts, observed that the cranium, which included the frontal bone, both parietals, part of the squamous, and the upper third of the occipital, was of unusual size and thickness, the forehead narrow and very low, and the projection of the supra-orbital ridges enormously great. he also stated that the absolute and relative length of the thigh bone, humerus, radius, and ulna, agreed well with the dimensions of a european individual of like stature at the present day; but that the thickness of the bones was very extraordinary, and the elevations and depressions for the attachment of muscles were developed in an unusual degree. some of the ribs, also, were of a singularly rounded shape and abrupt curvature, which was supposed to indicate great power in the thoracic muscles.* (* professor schaaffhausen's "memoir" translated "natural history review" april .) in the same memoir, the prussian anatomist remarks that the depression of the forehead (see figure .), is not due to any artificial flattening, such as is practised in various modes by barbarous nations in the old and new world, the skull being quite symmetrical, and showing no indication of counter-pressure at the occiput; whereas, according to morton, in the flat-heads of the columbia, the frontal and parietal bones are always unsymmetrical.* (* "natural history review" number page .) on the whole, professor schaaffhausen concluded that the individual to whom the neanderthal skull belonged must have been distinguished by small cerebral development, and uncommon strength of corporeal frame. when on my return to england i showed the cast of the cranium to professor huxley, he remarked at once that it was the most ape-like skull he had ever beheld. mr. busk, after giving a translation of professor schaaffhausen's memoir in the "natural history review," added some valuable comments of his own on the characters in which this skull approached that of the gorilla and chimpanzee. professor huxley afterwards studied the cast with the object of assisting me to give illustrations of it in this work, and in doing so discovered what had not previously been observed, that it was quite as abnormal in the shape of its occipital as in that of its frontal or superciliary region. before citing his words on the subject, i will offer a few remarks on the engis skull which the same anatomist has compared with that of the neanderthal. [ ] fossil skull of the engis cave near liege. among six or seven human skeletons, portions of which were collected by dr. schmerling from three or four caverns near liege, embedded in the same matrix with the remains of the elephant, rhinoceros, bear, hyaena, and other extinct quadrupeds, the most perfect skull, as i have before stated, was that of an adult individual found in the cavern of engis. this skull, dr. schmerling figured in his work, observing that it was too imperfect to enable the anatomist to determine the facial angle, but that one might infer, from the narrowness of the frontal portion, that it belonged to an individual of small intellectual development. he speculated on its ethiopian affinities, but not confidently, observing truly that it would require many more specimens to enable an anatomist to arrive at sound conclusions on such a point. m. geoffroy st. hilaire and other osteologists, who examined the specimen, denied that it resembled a negro's skull. when i saw the original in the museum at liege, i invited dr. spring, one of the professors of the university, to whom we are indebted for a valuable memoir on the human bones found in the cavern of chauvaux, near namur, to have a cast made of this engis skull. he not only had the kindness to comply with my request, but rendered a service to the scientific world by adding to the original cranium several detached fragments which dr. schmerling had obtained from engis, and which were found to fit in exactly, so that the cast represented at figure is more complete than that given in the first plate of schmerling's work. it exhibits on the right side the position of the auditory foramen (see figure ), which was not included in schmerling's figure. mr. busk, when he saw this cast, remarked to me that, although the forehead was, as schmerling had truly stated, somewhat narrow, it might nevertheless be matched by the skulls of individuals of european race, an observation since fully borne out by measurements, as will be seen in the sequel. observations by professor huxley on the human skulls of engis and the neanderthal. [illustration: figure ] "the engis skull, as originally figured by professor schmerling, was in a very imperfect state; but other fragments have since been added to it by the care of dr. spring, and the cast upon which my observations are based (figure ) exhibits the frontal, parietal, and occipital regions, as far as the middle of the occipital foramen, with the squamous and mastoid portions of the right temporal bone entire, or nearly so, while the left temporal bone is wanting. from the middle of the occipital foramen to the middle of the roof of each orbit, the base of the skull is destroyed, and the facial bones are entirely absent. "the extreme length of the skull is . inches, and as its extreme breadth is not more than . , its form is decidedly dolichocephalic. at the same time its height ( / inches from the plane of the glabello-occipital line (a d) to the vertex) is good, and the forehead is well arched; so that while the horizontal circumference of the skull is about / inches, the longitudinal arc from the nasal spine of the frontal bone to the occipital protuberance (d) measures about / inches. the transverse arc from one auditory foramen to the other across the middle of the sagittal suture measures about inches. the sagittal suture (b c) is / inches in length. the superciliary prominences are well, but not excessively, developed, and are separated by a median depression in the region of the glabella. they indicate large frontal sinuses. if a line joining the glabella and the occipital protuberance (a d) be made horizontal, no part of the occiput projects more than / th of an inch behind the posterior extremity of that line; and the upper edge of the auditory foramen is almost in contact with the same line, or rather with one drawn parallel to it on the outer surface of the skull. (figure . side view of the cast of part of a human skull found by dr. schmerling embedded amongst the remains of extinct mammalia in the cave of engis, near liege. a. superciliary ridge and glabella. b. coronal suture. c. the apex of the lamboidal suture. d. the occipital protuberance.) "the neanderthal skull, with which also i am acquainted only by means of professor schaaffhausen's drawings of an excellent cast and of photographs, is so extremely different in appearance from the engis cranium, that it might well be supposed to belong to a distinct race of mankind. it is inches in extreme length and . inches in extreme breadth, but only measures . inches from the glabello-occipital line to the vertex. the longitudinal arc, measured as above, is inches; the transverse arc cannot be exactly ascertained, in consequence of the absence of the temporal bones, but was probably about the same, and certainly exceeded / inches. the horizontal circumference is inches. this great circumference arises largely from the vast development of the superciliary ridges, which are occupied by great frontal sinuses whose inferior apertures are displayed exceedingly well in one of dr. fuhlrott's photographs, and form a continuous transverse prominence, somewhat excavated in the middle line, across the lower part of the brows. in consequence of this structure, the forehead appears still lower and more retreating than it really is. to an anatomical eye the posterior part of the skull is even more striking than the anterior. the occipital protuberance occupies the extreme posterior end of the skull when the glabello-occipital line is made horizontal, and so far from any part of the occipital region extending beyond it, this region of the skull slopes obliquely upward and forward, so that the lambdoidal suture is situated well upon the upper surface of the cranium. at the same time, notwithstanding the great length of the skull, the sagittal suture is remarkably short ( / inches), and the squamosal suture is very straight. [illustration: figure . cast of human skull] (figure . side view of the cast of a part of a human skull from a cave in the neanderthal, near dusseldorf. a. superciliary ridge and glabella. b. the coronal suture. c. the apex of the lamboidal suture. d. the occipital protuberance.) "in human skulls, the superior curved ridge of the occipital bone and the occipital protuberance correspond, approximatively, with the level of the tentorium and with the lateral sinuses, and consequently with the inferior limit of the posterior lobes of the brain. at first, i found some difficulty in believing that a human brain could have its posterior lobes so flattened and diminished as must have been the case in the neanderthal man, supposing the ordinary relation to obtain between the superior occipital ridges and the tentorium; but on my application, through sir charles lyell, dr. fuhlrott, the possessor of the skull, was good enough not only to ascertain the existence of the lateral sinuses in their ordinary position, but to send convincing proofs of the fact, in excellent photographic views of the interior of the skull, exhibiting clear indications of these sinuses. "there can be no doubt that, as professor schaaffhausen and mr. busk have stated, this skull is the most brutal of all known human skulls, resembling those of the apes not only in the prodigious development of the superciliary prominences and the forward extension of the orbits, but still more in the depressed form of the brain-case, in the straightness of the squamosal suture, and in the complete retreat of the occiput forwards and upward, from the superior occipital ridges. [illustration: figure . skull of chimpanzee] (figure . outline of the skull of an adult chimpanzee, of that from the neanderthal, and of that of a european, drawn to the same absolute size, in order better to exhibit their relative differences. the superciliary region of the neanderthal skull appears less prominent than in figure , as the contours are all taken along the middle line where the superciliary projection of the neanderthal skull is least marked. a. the glabella. b. the occipital protuberance, or the point on the exterior of each skull which corresponds roughly with the attachment of the tentorium, or with the inferior boundary of the posterior cerebral lobes.) "but the cranium, in its present condition, is stated by professor schaaffhausen to contain . cubic centimetres of water, or, in other words, about english cubic inches. as the entire skull could hardly have held less than cubic inches more, its minimum capacity may be estimated at cubic inches. the most capacious healthy european skull yet measured had a capacity of cubic inches, the smallest (as estimated by weight of brain) about cubic inches, while, according to professor schaaffhausen, some hindoo skulls have as small a capacity as about cubic inches ( ounces of water). the largest cranium of any gorilla yet measured contained . cubic inches. the neanderthal cranium stands, therefore, in capacity, very nearly on a level with the mean of the two human extremes, and very far above the pithecoid maximum. [illustration: figure . skull] (figure . skull associated with ground flint implements, from a tumulus at borreby in denmark, after a camera lucida drawing by mr. g. busk, f.r.s. the thick dark line indicates so much of the skull as corresponds with the fragment from the neanderthal. a. superciliary ridge. b. coronal suture. c. the apex of the lamboidal suture. d. the occipital protuberance. e. the auditory foramen.) "hence, even in the absence of the bones of the arm and thigh, which, according to professor schaaffhausen, had the precise proportions found in man, although they were stouter than ordinary human bones, there could be no reason for ascribing this cranium to anything but a man; while the strength and development of the muscular ridges of the limb-bones are characters in perfect accordance with those exhibited, in a minor degree, by the bones of such hardy savages, exposed to a rigorous climate, as the patagonians. "the neanderthal cranium has certainly not undergone compression, and, in reply to the suggestion that the skull is that of an idiot, it may be urged that the onus probandi lies with those who adopt the hypothesis. idiotcy is compatible with very various forms and capacities of the cranium, but i know of none which present the least resemblance to the neanderthal skull; and, furthermore, i shall proceed to show that the latter manifests but an extreme degree of a stage of degradation exhibited, as a natural condition, by the crania of certain races of mankind. "mr. busk drew my attention, some time ago, to the resemblance between some of the skulls taken from tumuli of the stone period at borreby in denmark, of which mr. busk possesses numerous accurate figures, and the neanderthal cranium. one of the borreby skulls in particular (figure ) has remarkably projecting superciliary ridges, a retreating forehead, a low flattened vertex, and an occiput which shelves upward and forward. but the skull is relatively higher and broader, or more brachycephalic, the sagittal suture longer, and the superciliary ridges less projecting, than in the neanderthal skull. nevertheless, there is, without doubt, much resemblance in character between the two skulls--a circumstance which is the more interesting, since the other borreby skulls have better foreheads and less prominent superciliary ridges, and exhibit altogether a higher conformation. "the borreby skulls belong to the stone period of denmark, and the people to whom they appertained were probably either contemporaneous with, or later than, the makers of the 'refuse-heaps' of that country. in other words, they were subsequent to the last great physical changes of europe, and were contemporaries of the urus and bison, not of the elephas primigenius, rhinoceros tichorhinus, and hyaena spelaea. "supposing for a moment, what is not proven, that the neanderthal skull belonged to a race allied to the borreby people and was as modern as they, it would be separated by as great a distance of time as of anatomical character from the engis skull, and the possibility of its belonging to a distinct race from the latter might reasonably appear to be greatly heightened. "to prevent the possibility of reasoning in a vicious circle, however, i thought it would be well to endeavour to ascertain what amount of cranial variation is to be found in a pure race at the present day; and as the natives of southern and western australia are probably as pure and homogeneous in blood, customs, and language, as any race of savages in existence, i turned to them, the more readily as the hunterian museum contains a very fine collection of such skulls. "i soon found it possible to select from among these crania two (connected by all sorts of intermediate gradations), the one of which should very nearly resemble the engis skull, while the other should somewhat less closely approximate the neanderthal cranium in form, size, and proportions. and at the same time others of these skulls presented no less remarkable affinities with the low type of borreby skull. "that the resemblances to which i allude are by no means of a merely superficial character, is shown by the accompanying diagram (figure ), which gives the contours of the two ancient and of one of the australian skulls, and by the following table of measurements. table / . column : type of skull. column (a): the horizontal circumference in the plane of a line joining the glabella with the occipital protuberance. column (b): the longitudinal arc from the nasal depression along the middle line of the skull to the occipital tuberosity. column (c): from the level of the glabello-occipital line on each side, across the middle of the sagittal suture to the same point on the opposite side. column (d): the vertical height from the glabello-occipital line. column (e): the extreme longitudinal measurement. column (f): the extreme transverse measurement.* (* i have taken the glabello-occipital line as a base in these measurements, simply because it enables me to compare all the skulls, whether fragments or entire, together. the greatest circumference of the english skull lies in a plane considerably above that of the glabello-occipital line, and amounts to inches.) engis : / : / : / : / : / : / . australian, number : / : : : / : / : / . australian, number : : / : / : / : . : / . neanderthal: : : : / : : / . "the question whether the engis skull has rather the character of one of the high races or of one of the lower has been much disputed, but the following measurements of an english skull, noted in the catalogue of the hunterian museum as typically caucasian (see figure ) will serve to show that both sides may be right, and that cranial measurements alone afford no safe indication of race. english : : / : / : / : / : / . "in making the preceding statement, it must be clearly understood that i neither desire to affirm that the engis and neanderthal skulls belong to the australian race, nor to assert even that the ancient skulls belong to one and the same race, so far as race is measured by language, colour of skin, or character of hair. against the conclusion that they are of the same race as the australians various minor anatomical differences of the ancient skulls, such as the great development of the frontal sinuses, might be urged; while against the supposition of either the identity, or the diversity, of race of the two arises the known independence of the variation of cranium on the one hand, and of hair, colour, and language on the other. "but the amount of variation of the borreby skulls, and the fact that the skulls of one of the purest and most homogeneous of existing races of men can be proved to differ from one another in the same characters, though perhaps not quite to the same extent, as the engis and neanderthal skulls, seem to me to prohibit any cautious reasoner from affirming the latter to have been necessarily of distinct races. [illustration: figure . outlines of skulls] (figure . outlines of the skull from the neanderthal, of an australian skull from port adelaide, and of the skull from the cave of engis, drawn to the same absolute length, in order the better to contrast their proportions. a. the glabella. b. the occipital protuberance, or the point on the exterior of each skull which corresponds roughly with the attachment of the tentorium, or with the inferior boundary of the posterior cerebral lobes. e. the position of the auditory foramen of the engis skull.) "the marked resemblances between the ancient skulls and their modern australian analogues, however, have a profound interest, when it is recollected that the stone axe is as much the weapon and the implement of the modern as of the ancient savage; that the former turns the bones of the kangaroo and of the emu to the same account as the latter did the bones of the deer and the urus; that the australian heaps up the shells of devoured shellfish in mounds which represent the "refuse-heaps" or "kjokkenmodding," of denmark; and, finally, that, on the other side of torres straits, a race akin to the australians are among the few people who now build their houses on pile-works, like those of the ancient swiss lakes. "that this amount of resemblance in habit and in the conditions of existence is accompanied by as close a resemblance in cranial configuration, illustrates on a great scale that what cuvier demonstrated of the animals of the nile valley is no less true of men; circumstances remaining similar, the savage varies little more, it would seem, than the ibis or the crocodile, especially if we take into account the enormous extent of the time over which our knowledge of man now extends, as compared with that measured by the duration of the sepulchres of egypt. "finally, the comparatively large cranial capacity of the neanderthal skull, overlaid though it may be by pithecoid bony walls, and the completely human proportions of the accompanying limb-bones, together with the very fair development of the engis skull, clearly indicate that the first traces of the primordial stock whence man has proceeded need no longer be sought, by those who entertain any form of the doctrine of progressive development, in the newest tertiaries; but that they may be looked for in an epoch more distant from the age of the elephas primigenius than that is from us." the two skulls which form the subject of the preceding comments and illustrations have given rise to nearly an equal amount of surprise for opposite reasons; that of engis because being so unequivocally ancient, it approached so near to the highest or caucasian type; that of the neanderthal, because, having no such decided claims to antiquity, it departs so widely from the normal standard of humanity. professor huxley's observation regarding the wide range of variation, both as to shape and capacity, in the skulls of so pure a race as the native australian, removes to no small extent this supposed anomaly, assuming what though not proved is very probable, that both varieties co-existed in the pleistocene period in western europe. as to the engis skull, we must remember that although associated with the elephant, rhinoceros, bear, tiger, and hyaena, all of extinct species, it nevertheless is also accompanied by a bear, stag, wolf, fox, beaver, and many other quadrupeds of species still living. indeed many eminent palaeontologists, and among them professor pictet, think that, numerically considered, the larger portion of the mammalian fauna agrees specifically with that of our own period, so that we are scarcely entitled to feel surprised if we find human races of the pleistocene epoch undistinguishable from some living ones. it would merely tend to show that man has been as constant in his osteological characters as many other mammalia now his contemporaries. the expectation of always meeting with a lower type of human skull, the older the formation in which it occurs, is based on the theory of progressive development, and it may prove to be sound; nevertheless we must remember that as yet we have no distinct geological evidence that the appearance of what are called the inferior races of mankind has always preceded in chronological order that of the higher races. it is now admitted that the differences between the brain of the highest races of man and that of the lowest,* though less in degree, are of the same order as those which separate the human from the simian brain; and the same rule holds good in regard to the shape of the skull. (* "natural history review" page .) the average negro skull differs from that of the european in having a more receding forehead, more prominent superciliary ridges, and more largely developed prominences and furrows for the attachment of muscles; the face also, and its lines, are larger proportionally. the brain is somewhat less voluminous on the average in the lower races of mankind, its convolutions rather less complicated, and those of the two hemispheres more symmetrical, in all which points an approach is made to the simian type. it will also be seen, by reference to the late dr. morton's works, and by the foregoing statements of professor huxley, that the range of size or capacity between the highest and lowest human brain is greater than that between the highest simian and lowest human brain; but the neanderthal skull, although in several respects it is more ape-like than any human skull previously discovered, is, in regard to volume, by no means contemptible. eminent anatomists have shown that in the average proportions of some of the bones the negro differs from the european, and that in most of these characters, he makes a slightly nearer approach to the anthropoid quadrumana;* but professor schaaffhausen has pointed out that in these proportions the neanderthal skeleton does not differ from the ordinary standard, so that the skeleton by no means indicates a transition between homo and pithecus. (* "the inferior races of mankind exhibit proportions which are in many respects intermediate between the higher, or european, orders, and the monkeys. in the negro, for instance, the stature is less than in the european. the cranium, as is well known, bears a small proportion to the face. of the extremities the upper are proportionately longer, and there is, in both upper and lower, a less marked preponderance of the proximal over the distal segments. for instance, in the negro, the thigh and arm are rather shorter than in the european; the leg is actually of equal length in both races, and is therefore, relatively, a little longer in the negro; the fore-arm in the latter is actually, as well as relatively, a little longer; the foot is an eighth, and the hand a twelfth longer than in the european. it is well known that the foot is less well formed in the negro than in the european. the arch of the instep, the perfect conformation of which is essential to steadiness and ease of gait, is less elevated in the former than in the latter. the foot is thereby rendered flatter as well as longer, more nearly resembling the monkey's, between which and the european there is a marked difference in this particular."--from "a treatise on the human skeleton" by dr. humphry, lecturer on surgery and anatomy in the cambridge university medical school, page .) there is doubtless, as shown in the diagram figure , a nearer resemblance in the outline of the neanderthal skull to that of a chimpanzee than had ever been observed before in any human cranium; and professor huxley's description of the occipital region shows that the resemblance is not confined to the mere excessive prominence of the superciliary ridges. the direct bearing of the ape-like character of the neanderthal skull on lamarck's doctrine of progressive development and transmutation, or on that modification of it which has of late been so ably advocated by mr. darwin, consists in this, that the newly observed deviation from a normal standard of human structure is not in a casual or random direction, but just what might have been anticipated if the laws of variation were such as the transmutationists require. for if we conceive the cranium to be very ancient, it exemplifies a less advanced stage of progressive development and improvement. if it be a comparatively modern race, owing its peculiarities of conformation to degeneracy, it is an illustration of what botanists call "atavism," or the tendency of varieties to revert to an ancestral type, which type, in proportion to its antiquity, would be of lower grade. to this hypothesis, of a genealogical connection between man and the lower animals, i shall again allude in the concluding chapters. [ ] chapter . -- pleistocene alluvium and cave deposits with flint implements. general position of drift with extinct mammalia in valleys. discoveries of m. boucher de perthes at abbeville. flint implements found also at st. acheul, near amiens. curiosity awakened by the systematic exploration of the brixham cave. flint knives in same, with bones of extinct mammalia. superposition of deposits in the cave. visits of english and french geologists to abbeville and amiens. pleistocene alluvium containing flint implements in the valley of the somme. throughout a large part of europe we find at moderate elevations above the present river-channels, usually at a height of less than feet, but sometimes much higher, beds of gravel, sand, and loam containing bones of the elephant, rhinoceros, horse, ox, and other quadrupeds, some of extinct, others of living, species, belonging for the most part to the fauna already alluded to in the fourth chapter as characteristic of the interior of caverns. the greater part of these deposits contain fluviatile shells, and have undoubtedly been accumulated in ancient river-beds. these old channels have long since been dry, the streams which once flowed in them having shifted their position, deepening the valleys, and often widening them on one side. it has naturally been asked, if man co-existed with the extinct species of the caves, why were his remains and the works of his hands never embedded outside the caves in ancient river-gravel containing the same fossil fauna? why should it be necessary for the geologist to resort for evidence of the antiquity of our race to the dark recesses of underground vaults and tunnels which may have served as places of refuge or sepulture to a succession of human beings and wild animals, and where floods may have confounded together in one breccia the memorials of the fauna of more than one epoch? why do we not meet with a similar assemblage of the relics of man, and of living and extinct quadrupeds, in places where the strata can be thoroughly scrutinised in the light of day? recent researches have at length demonstrated that such memorials, so long sought for in vain, do in fact exist, and their recognition is the chief cause of the more favourable reception now given to the conclusions which mm. tournal, christol, schmerling, and others, arrived at thirty years ago respecting the fossil contents of caverns. [ ] a very important step in this new direction was made thirteen years after the publication of schmerling's researches, by m. boucher de perthes, who found in ancient alluvium at abbeville, in picardy, some flint implements, the relative antiquity of which was attested by their geological position. the antiquarian knowledge of their discoverer enabled him to recognise in their rude and peculiar type a character distinct from that of the polished stone weapons of a later period, usually called "celts." in the first volume of his "antiquites celtiques," published in , m. boucher de perthes styled these older tools "antediluvian," because they came from the lowest beds of a series of ancient alluvial strata bordering the valley of the somme, which geologists had termed "diluvium." he had begun to collect these implements in . from that time they had been annually dug out of the drift or deposits of gravel and sand, of which fine sections were laid open from to feet in depth, whenever excavations were made in repairing the fortifications of abbeville; or as often as flints were wanted for the roads, or loam for making bricks. for years previously bones of quadrupeds of the genera elephant, rhinoceros, bear, hyaena, stag, ox, horse, and others, had been collected there, and sent from time to time to paris to be examined and named by cuvier, who had described them in his ossements fossiles. a correct account of the associated flint tools and of their position was given in by m. boucher de perthes in his work above cited, and they were stated to occur at various depths, often or feet from the surface, in sand and gravel, especially in those strata which were nearly in contact with the subjacent white chalk. but the scientific world had no faith in the statement that works of art, however rude, had been met with in undisturbed beds of such antiquity. few geologists visited abbeville in winter, when the sand-pits were open, and when they might have opportunities of verifying the sections, and judging whether the instruments had really been embedded by natural causes in the same strata with the bones of the mammoth, rhinoceros, and other extinct mammalia. some of the tools figured in the "antiquites celtiques" were so rudely shaped, that many imagined them to have owed their peculiar forms to accidental fracture in a river's bed; others suspected frauds on the part of the workmen, who might have fabricated them for sale, or that the gravel had been disturbed, and that the worked flints had got mingled with the bones of the mammoth long after that animal and its associates had disappeared from the earth. no one was more sceptical than the late eminent physician of amiens, dr. rigollot, who had long before (in the year ) written a memoir on the fossil mammalia of the valley of the somme. he was at length induced to visit abbeville, and, having inspected the collection of m. boucher de perthes, returned home resolved to look for himself for flint tools in the gravel-pits near amiens. there, accordingly, at a distance of about miles from abbeville, he immediately found abundance of similar flint implements, precisely the same in the rudeness of their make, and the same in their geological position; some of them in gravel nearly on a level with the somme, others in similar deposits resting on chalk at a height of about feet above the river. dr. rigollot having in the course of four years obtained several hundred specimens of these tools, most of them from st. acheul in the south-east suburbs of amiens, lost no time in communicating an account of them to the scientific world, in a memoir illustrated by good figures of the worked flints and careful sections of the beds. these sections were executed by m. buteux, an engineer well qualified for the task, who had written a good description of the geology of picardy. dr. rigollot, in this memoir, pointed out most clearly that it was not in the vegetable soil, nor in the brick-earth with land and freshwater shells next below, but in the lower beds of coarse flint-gravel, usually , , or feet below the surface, that the implements were met with, just as they had been previously stated by m. boucher de perthes to occur at abbeville. the conclusion, therefore, which was legitimately deduced from all the facts, was that the flint tools and their fabricators were coeval with the extinct mammalia embedded in the same strata. brixham cave, near torquay, devonshire. four years after the appearance of dr. rigollot's paper, a sudden change of opinion was brought about in england respecting the probable co-existence, at a former period, of man and many extinct mammalia, in consequence of the results obtained from a careful exploration of a cave at brixham, near torquay, in devonshire. as the new views very generally adopted by english geologists had no small influence on the subsequent progress of opinion in france, i shall interrupt my account of the researches made in the valley of the somme, by a brief notice of those which were carried on in in devonshire with more than usual care and scientific method. dr. buckland, in his celebrated work, entitled "reliquiae diluvianae," published in , in which he treated of the organic remains contained in caves, fissures, and "diluvial gravel" in england, had given a clear statement of the results of his own original observations, and had declared that none of the human bones or stone implements met with by him in any of the caverns could be considered to be as old as the mammoth and other extinct quadrupeds. opinions in harmony with this conclusion continued until very lately to be generally in vogue in england; although about the time that schmerling was exploring the liege caves, the reverend mr. mcenery, a catholic priest, residing near torquay, had found in a cave one mile east of that town, called "kent's hole," in red loam covered with stalagmite, not only bones of the mammoth, tichorhine rhinoceros, hippopotamus, cave-bear, and other mammalia, but several remarkable flint tools, some of which he supposed to be of great antiquity, while there were also remains of man in the same cave of a later date.* (* the manuscript and plates prepared for a joint memoir on kent's hole, by mr. mcenery and dr. buckland, have recently been published by mr. vivian of torquay, from which, as well as from some of the unprinted manuscript, i infer that mr. mcenery only refrained out of deference to dr. buckland from declaring his belief in the contemporaneousness of certain flint implements of an antique type and the bones of extinct animals. two of these implements from kent's hole, figured in plate of the posthumous work above alluded to, approach very closely in form and size to the common abbeville implements.) about ten years afterwards, in a "memoir on the geology of south devon," published in by the geological society of london,* an able geologist, mr. godwin-austen, declared that he had obtained in the same cave (kent's hole) works of man from undisturbed loam or clay, under stalagmite, mingled with the remains of extinct animals, and that all these must have been introduced "before the stalagmite flooring had been formed." he maintained that such facts could not be explained away by the hypothesis of sepulture, as in dr. buckland's well-known case of the human skeleton of paviland, because in the devon cave the flint implements were widely distributed through the loam, and lay beneath the stalagmite. (* "transactions of the geological society" nd series volume page .) as the osseous and other contents of kent's hole had, by repeated diggings, been thrown into much confusion, it was thought desirable in , when a new and intact bone-cave was discovered at brixham, about four miles south of torquay, to have a thorough and systematic examination made of it. the royal society, chiefly at the instance of dr. falconer, made two grants towards defraying the expenses, and miss burdett-coutts contributed liberally towards the same object. a committee of geologists was charged with the investigations, among whom dr. falconer and mr. prestwich took a prominent part, visiting torquay while the excavations were in progress. mr. pengelly, another member of the committee, well qualified for the task by nearly twenty years' previous experience in cave explorations, zealously directed and superintended the work. by him, in , i was conducted through the subterranean galleries after they had been cleared out; and dr. falconer, who was also at torquay, showed me the numerous fossils which had been discovered, and which he was then studying, all numbered and labelled, with reference to a journal in which the geological position of each specimen was recorded with scrupulous care. the discovery of the existence of this suite of caverns near the sea at brixham was made accidentally by the roof of one of them being broken through in quarrying. none of the four external openings now exposed to view in steep cliffs or in the sloping side of a valley were visible before the breccia and earthy matter which blocked them up were removed during the late exploration. according to a ground-plan drawn up by professor ramsay, it appears that some of the passages which run nearly north and south are fissures connected with the vertical dislocation of the rocks, while another set, running nearly east and west, are tunnels, which have the appearance of having been to a great extent hollowed out by the action of running water. the central or main entrance, leading to what is called the "reindeer gallery," because a perfect antler of that animal was found sticking in the stalagmitic floor, is feet above the level of the sea, being also above the bottom of the adjoining valley. the united length of the galleries which were cleared out amounted to several hundred feet. their width never exceeded feet. they were sometimes filled up to the roof with mud, but occasionally there was a considerable space between the roof and floor. the latter, in the case of the fissure-caves, was covered with stalagmite, but in the tunnels it was usually free from any such incrustation. the following was the general succession of the deposits forming the contents of the underground passages and channels:-- first. at the top, a layer of stalagmite varying in thickness from to inches, which sometimes contained bones, such as the reindeer's horn, already mentioned, and an entire humerus of the cave-bear. secondly. next below, loam or bone-earth, of an ochreous red colour, with angular stones and some pebbles, from to feet in thickness. thirdly. at the bottom of all, gravel with many rounded pebbles in it. this was everywhere removed so long as the tunnels which narrowed downwards were wide enough to be worked. it proved to be almost entirely barren of fossils. the mammalia obtained from the bone-earth consisted of elephas primigenius, or mammoth; rhinoceros tichorhinus; ursus spelaeus; hyaena spelaea; felis spelaea, or the cave-lion; cervus tarandus, or the reindeer; a species of horse, ox, and several rodents, and others not yet determined. no human bones were obtained anywhere during these excavations, but many flint knives, chiefly from the lowest part of the bone-earth; and one of the most perfect lay at the depth of feet from the surface, and was covered with bone-earth of that thickness. neglecting the less perfect specimens, some of which were met with even in the lowest gravel, about fifteen knives, recognised as artificially formed by the most experienced antiquaries, were taken from the bone-earth, and usually from near the bottom. such knives, considered apart from the associated mammalia, afford in themselves no safe criterion of antiquity, as they might belong to any part of the age of stone, similar tools being sometimes met with in tumuli posterior in date to the era of the introduction of bronze. but the contemporaneity of those at brixham with the extinct animals is demonstrated not only by the occurrence at one point in overlying stalagmite of the bone of a cave-bear, but also by the discovery at the same level in the bone-earth, and in close proximity to a very perfect flint tool, of the entire left hind-leg of a cave-bear. this specimen, which was shown me by dr. falconer and mr. pengelly, was exhumed from the earthy deposit in the reindeer gallery, near its junction with the flint-knife gallery, at the distance of about sixty-five feet from the main entrance. the mass of earth containing it was removed entire, and the matrix cleared away carefully by dr. falconer in the presence of mr. pengelly. every bone was in its natural place, the femur, tibia, fibula, ankle-bone, or astragalus, all in juxtaposition. even the patella or detached bone of the knee-pan was searched for, and not in vain. here, therefore, we have evidence of an entire limb not having been washed in a fossil state out of an older alluvium, and then swept afterwards into a cave, so as to be mingled with flint implements, but having been introduced when clothed with its flesh, or at least when it had the separate bones bound together by their natural ligaments, and in that state buried in mud. if they were not all of contemporary date, it is clear from this case, and from the humerus of the ursus spelaeus, before cited, as found in a floor of stalagmite, that the bear lived after the flint tools were manufactured, or in other words, that man in this district preceded the cave-bear. a glance at the position of windmill hill, in which the caverns are situated, and a brief survey of the valleys which bound it on three sides, are enough to satisfy a geologist that the drainage and geographical features of this region have undergone great changes since the gravel and bone-earth were carried by streams into the subterranean cavities above described. some worn pebbles of haematite, in particular, can only have come from their nearest parent rock, at a period when the valleys immediately adjoining the caves were much shallower than they now are. the reddish loam in which the bones are embedded is such as may be seen on the surface of limestone in the neighbourhood, but the currents which were formerly charged with such mud must have run at a level feet above that of the stream now flowing in the same valley. it was remarked by mr. pengelly that the stones and bones in the loam had their longest axes parallel to the direction of the tunnels and fissures, showing that they were deposited by the action of a stream.* (* pengelly, "geologist" volume page .) it appears that so long as the flowing water had force enough to propel stony fragments, no layer of fine mud could accumulate, and so long as there was a regular current capable of carrying in fine mud and bones, no superficial crust of stalagmite. in some passages, as before stated, stalagmite was wanting, while in one place seven or eight alternations of stalagmite and loam were observed, seeming to indicate a prevalence of more rainy seasons, succeeded by others, when the water was for a time too low to flood the area where the calcareous incrustation accumulated. if the regular sequence of the three deposits of pebbles, mud, and stalagmite was the result of the causes above explained, the order of superposition would be constant, yet we could not be sure that the gravel in one passage might not sometimes be coeval with the bone-earth or stalagmite in another. if therefore the flint knives had not been very widely dispersed, and if one of them had not been at the bottom of the bone-earth, close to the leg of the bear above described, their antiquity relatively to the extinct mammalia might have been questioned. no coprolites were found in the brixham excavations, and very few gnawed bones. these few may have been brought from some distance before they reached their place of rest. upon the whole, the same conclusion which dr. schmerling came to, respecting the filling up of the caverns near liege, seems applicable to the caves of brixham. dr. falconer, after aiding in the investigations above alluded to near torquay, stopped at abbeville on his way to sicily, in the autumn of , and saw there the collection of m. boucher de perthes. being at once satisfied that the flints called hatchets had really been fashioned by the hand of man, he urged mr. prestwich, by letter, thoroughly to explore the geology of the valley of the somme. this he accordingly accomplished, in company with mr. john evans [ ], of the society of antiquaries, and, before his return that same year, succeeded in dissipating all doubts from the minds of his geological friends by extracting, with his own hands, from a bed of undisturbed gravel, at st. acheul, a well-shaped flint hatchet. this implement was buried in the gravel at a depth of feet from the surface, and was lying on its flat side. there were no signs of vertical rents in the enveloping matrix, nor in the overlying beds of sand and loam, in which were many land and freshwater shells; so that it was impossible to imagine that the tool had gradually worked its way downwards, as some had suggested, through the incumbent soil, into an older formation.* (* prestwich, "proceedings of the royal society" and "philosophical transactions" .) there was no one in england whose authority deserved to have so much weight in overcoming incredulity in regard to the antiquity of the implements in question. for mr. prestwich, besides having published a series of important memoirs on the tertiary formations of europe, had devoted many years specially to the study of the drift and its organic remains. his report, therefore, to the royal society, accompanied by a photograph showing the position of the flint tool in situ before it was removed from its matrix, not only satisfied many inquirers, but induced others to visit abbeville and amiens; and one of these, mr. flower, who accompanied mr. prestwich on his second excursion to st. acheul, in june , succeeded, by digging into the bank of gravel, in disinterring, at the depth of feet from the surface, a fine, symmetrically-shaped weapon of an oval form, lying in and beneath strata which were observed by many witnesses to be perfectly undisturbed.* (* "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page .) shortly afterwards, in the year , i visited the same pits, and obtained seventy flint tools, one of which was taken out while i was present, though i did not see it before it had fallen from the matrix. i expressed my opinion in favour of the antiquity of the flint tools to the meeting of the british association at aberdeen, in the same year.* (* see "report of british association" for . ) on my way through rouen, i stated my convictions on this subject to m. george pouchet, who immediately betook himself to st. acheul, commissioned by the municipality of rouen, and did not quit the pits till he had seen one of the hatchets extracted from gravel in its natural position.* (* "actes du musee d'histoire naturelle de rouen" page .) m. gaudry also gave the following account of his researches in the same year to the royal academy of sciences at paris. "the great point was not to leave the workmen for a single instant, and to satisfy oneself by actual inspection whether the hatchets were found in situ. i caused a deep excavation to be made, and found nine hatchets, most distinctly in situ in the diluvium, associated with teeth of equus fossilis and a species of bos, different from any now living, and similar to that of the diluvium and of caverns."* (* "comptes rendus" september and october , .) in , m. hebert, an original observer of the highest authority, declared to the geological society of france that he had, in , or four years before mr. prestwich's visit to st. acheul, seen the sections at abbeville and amiens, and had come to the opinion that the hatchets were imbedded in the "lower diluvium," and that their origin was as ancient as that of the mammoth and the rhinoceros. m. desnoyers also made excavations after m. gaudry, at st. acheul, in , with the same results.* (* "bulletin" volume page .) after a lively discussion on the subject in england and france, it was remembered, not only that there were numerous recorded cases leading to similar conclusions in regard to cavern deposits, but, also, that mr. frere had, so long ago as , found flint weapons, of the same type as those of amiens, in a freshwater formation in suffolk, in conjunction with elephant remains; and nearly a hundred years earlier ( ), another tool of the same kind had been exhumed from the gravel of london, together with bones of an elephant; to all which examples i shall allude more fully in the sequel. i may conclude this chapter by quoting a saying of professor agassiz, "that whenever a new and startling fact is brought to light in science, people first say, 'it is not true,' then that 'it is contrary to religion,' and lastly, 'that everybody knew it before.'" if i were considering merely the cultivators of geology, i should say that the doctrine of the former co-existence of man with many extinct mammalia had already gone through these three phases in the progress of every scientific truth towards acceptance. but the grounds of this belief have not yet been fully laid before the general public, so as to enable them fairly to weigh and appreciate the evidence. i shall therefore do my best in the next three chapters to accomplish this task. chapter . -- peat and pleistocene alluvium of the valley of the somme. geological structure of the valley of the somme and of the surrounding country. position of alluvium of different ages. peat near abbeville. its animal and vegetable contents. works of art in peat. probable antiquity of the peat, and changes of level since its growth began. flint implements of antique type in older alluvium. their various forms and great numbers. geological structure of the somme valley. the valley of the somme in picardy, alluded to in the last chapter, is situated geologically in a region of white chalk with flints, the strata of which are nearly horizontal. the chalk hills which bound the valley are almost everywhere between and feet in height. on ascending to that elevation, we find ourselves on an extensive table-land, in which there are slight elevations and depressions. the white chalk itself is scarcely ever exposed at the surface on this plateau, although seen on the slopes of the hills, as at b and c (figure ). the general surface of the upland region is covered continuously for miles in every direction by loam or brick-earth (number ), about feet thick, devoid of fossils. to the wide extent of this loam the soil of picardy chiefly owes its great fertility. here and there we also observe, on the chalk, outlying patches of tertiary sand and clay (number , figure ), with eocene fossils, the remnants of a formation once more extensive, and which probably once spread in one continuous mass over the chalk, before the present system of valleys had begun to be shaped out. it is necessary to allude to these relics of tertiary strata, of which the larger part is missing, because their denudation has contributed largely to furnish the materials of gravels in which the flint implements and bones of extinct mammalia are entombed. from this source have been derived not only the regular-formed egg-shaped pebbles, so common in the old fluviatile alluvium at all levels, but those huge masses of hard sandstone, several feet in diameter, to which i shall allude in the sequel. the upland loam also (number ) has often, in no slight degree, been formed at the expense of the same tertiary sands and clays, as is attested by its becoming more or less sandy or argillaceous, according to the nature of the nearest eocene outlier in the neighbourhood. the average width of the valley of the somme between amiens and abbeville is one mile. the height, therefore, of the hills, in relation to the river-plain, could not be correctly represented in the annexed diagram (figure ), as they would have to be reduced in altitude; or if not, it would be necessary to make the space between c and b four times as great. the dimensions also of the masses, of drift or alluvium, and , have been exaggerated, in order to render them sufficiently conspicuous; for, all important as we shall find them to be as geological monuments of the pleistocene period, they form a truly insignificant feature in the general structure of the country, so much so, that they might easily be overlooked in a cursory survey of the district, and are usually unnoticed in geological maps not specially devoted to the superficial formations. [illustration: figure . valley of the somme] (figure . section across the valley of the somme in picardy. . peat, to feet thick, resting on gravel, a. . lower level gravel with elephants' bones and flint tools, covered with fluviatile loam, to feet thick. . higher level gravel with similar fossils, and with overlying loam, in all feet thick. . upland loam without shells (limon des plateaux), or feet thick. . eocene strata, resting on the chalk in patches.) it will be seen by the description given of the section (figure ) that number indicates the lower level gravels, and number the higher ones, or those rising to elevations of or feet above the river. newer than these is the peat number , which is from to feet in thickness, and which is not only of later date than the alluvium, and , but is also posterior to the denudation of those gravels, or to the time when the valley was excavated through them. underneath the peat is a bed of gravel, a, from to feet thick, which rests on undisturbed chalk. this gravel was probably formed, in part at least, when the valley was scooped out to its present depth, since which time no geological change has taken place, except the growth of the peat, and certain oscillations in the general level of the country, to which we shall allude by and by. a thin layer of impervious clay separates the gravel a from the peat number , and seems to have been a necessary preliminary to the growth of the peat. peat of the valley of the somme. as hitherto, in our retrospective survey, we have been obliged, for the sake of proceeding from the known to the less known, to reverse the natural order of history, and to treat of the newer before the older formations, i shall begin my account of the geological monuments of the valley of the somme by saying something of the most modern of all of them, the peat. this substance occupies the lower parts of the valley far above amiens, and below abbeville as far as the sea. it has already been stated to be in some places feet thick, and is even occasionally more than feet, corresponding in that respect to the danish mosses before described (chapter ). like them, it belongs to the recent period; all the embedded mammalia, as well as the shells, being of the same species as those now inhabiting europe. the bones of quadrupeds are very numerous, as i can bear witness, having seen them brought up from a considerable depth near abbeville, almost as often as the dredging instrument was used. besides remains of the beaver, i was shown, in the collection of m. boucher de perthes, two perfect lower jaws with teeth of the bear, ursus arctos; and in the paris museum there is another specimen, also from the abbeville peat. the list of mammalia already comprises a large proportion of those proper to the swiss lake-dwellings, and to the shell-mounds and peat of denmark; but unfortunately as yet no special study has been made of the french fauna, like that by which the danish and swiss zoologists and botanists have enabled us to compare the wild and tame animals and the vegetation of the age of stone with that of the age of iron. notwithstanding the abundance of mammalian bones in the peat, and the frequency of stone implements of the celtic and gallo-roman periods, m. boucher de perthes has only met with three or four fragments of human skeletons. at some depth in certain places in the valley near abbeville, the trunks of alders have been found standing erect as they grew, with their roots fixed in an ancient soil, afterwards covered with peat. stems of the hazel, and nuts of the same, abound; trunks, also, of the oak and walnut. the peat extends to the coast, and is there seen passing under the sand-dunes and below the sea-level. at the mouth of the river canche, which joins the sea near the embouchure of the somme, yew trees, firs, oaks, and hazels have been dug out of peat, which is there worked for fuel, and is about three feet thick.* (* d'archiac, "histoire des progres" volume page .) during great storms, large masses of compact peat, enclosing trunks of flattened trees, have been thrown up on the coast at the mouth of the somme; seeming to indicate that there has been a subsidence of the land and a consequent submergence of what was once a westward continuation of the valley of the somme into what is now a part of the english channel. whether the vegetation of the lowest layers of peat differed as to the geographical distribution of some of the trees from the middle, and this from the uppermost peat, as in denmark, has not yet been ascertained; nor have careful observations been made with a view of calculating the minimum of time which the accumulation of so dense a mass of vegetable matter must have taken. a foot in thickness of highly compressed peat, such as is sometimes reached in the bottom of the bogs, is obviously the equivalent in time of a much greater thickness of peat of spongy and loose texture, found near the surface. the workmen who cut peat, or dredge it up from the bottom of swamps and ponds, declare that in the course of their lives none of the hollows which they have found, or caused by extracting peat, have ever been refilled, even to a small extent. they deny, therefore, that the peat grows. this, as m. boucher de perthes observes, is a mistake; but it implies that the increase in one generation is not very appreciable by the unscientific. the antiquary finds near the surface gallo-roman remains, and still deeper celtic weapons of the stone period. [ ] but the depth at which roman works of art occur varies in different places, and is no sure test of age; because in some parts of the swamps, especially near the river, the peat is often so fluid that heavy substances may sink through it, carried down by their own gravity. in one case, however, m. boucher de perthes observed several large flat dishes of roman pottery, lying in a horizontal position in the peat, the shape of which must have prevented them from sinking or penetrating through the underlying peat. allowing about fourteen centuries for the growth of the superincumbent vegetable matter, he calculated that the thickness gained in a hundred years would be no more than three centimetres.* (* "antiquites celtiques" volume page .) this rate of increase would demand so many thousands of years for the formation of the entire thickness of feet that we must hesitate before adopting it as a chronometric scale. yet, by multiplying observations of this kind, and bringing one to bear upon and check another, we may eventually succeed in obtaining data for estimating the age of the peaty deposit. [ ] the rate of increase in denmark may not be applicable to france; because differences in the humidity of the climate, or in the intensity and duration of summer's heat and winter's cold, as well as diversity in the species of plants which most abound, would cause the peat to grow more or less rapidly, not only when we compare two distinct countries in europe, but the same country at two successive periods. i have already alluded to some facts which favour the idea that there has been a change of level on the coast since the peat began to grow. this conclusion seems confirmed by the mere thickness of peat at abbeville, and the occurrence of alder and hazel-wood near the bottom of it. if feet of peat were now removed, the sea would flow up and fill the valley for miles above abbeville. yet this vegetable matter is all of supra-marine origin, for where shells occur in it they are all of terrestrial or fluviatile kinds, so that it must have grown above the sea-level when the land was more elevated than now. we have already seen what changes in the relative level of sea and land have occurred in scotland subsequently to the time of the romans, and are therefore prepared to meet with proofs of similar movements in picardy. in that country they have probably not been confined simply to subsidence, but have comprised oscillations in the level of the land, by which marine shells of the pleistocene period have been raised some feet or more above the level of the sea. small as is the progress hitherto made in interpreting the pages of the peaty record, their importance in the valley of the somme is enhanced by the reflection that, whatever be the number of centuries to which they relate, they belong to times posterior to the ancient implement-bearing beds, which we are next to consider, and are even separated from them, as we shall see, by an interval far greater than that which divides the earliest strata of the peat from the latest. flint implements of the pleistocene period in the valley of the somme. the alluvium of the valley of the somme exhibits nothing extraordinary or exceptional in its position or external appearance, nor in the arrangement or composition of its materials, nor in its organic remains; in all these characters it might be matched by the drift of a hundred other valleys in france or england. its claim to our peculiar attention is derived from the wonderful number of flint tools, of a very antique type, which, as stated in the last chapter, occur in undisturbed strata, associated with the bones of extinct quadrupeds. as much doubt has been cast on the question, whether the so-called flint hatchets have really been shaped by the hands of man, it will be desirable to begin by satisfying the reader's mind on that point, before inviting him to study the details of sections of successive beds of mud, sand, and gravel, which vary considerably even in contiguous localities. since the spring of , i have paid three visits to the valley of the somme, and examined all the principal localities of these flint tools. in my excursions around abbeville, i was accompanied by m. boucher de perthes, and during one of my explorations in the amiens district, by mr. prestwitch. the first time i entered the pits at st. acheul, i obtained seventy flint instruments, all of them collected from the drift in the course of the preceding five or six weeks. the two prevailing forms of these tools are represented in the annexed figures and , each of which are half the size of the originals; the first being the spear-headed form, varying in length from six to eight inches; the second, the oval form, which is not unlike some stone implements, used to this day as hatchets and tomahawks by natives of australia, but with this difference, that the edge in the australian weapons (as in the case of those called celts in europe) has been produced by friction, whereas the cutting edge in the old tools of the valley of the somme was always gained by the simple fracture of the flint, and by the repetition of many dexterous blows. the oval-shaped australian weapons, however, differ in being sharpened at one end only. the other, though reduced by fracture to the same general form, is left rough, in which state it is fixed into a cleft stick, which serves as a handle. to this it is firmly bound by thin straps of opossum's hide. one of these tools, now in my possession, was given me by mr. farquharson of haughton, who saw a native using it in on the auburn river, in burnet district, north australia. out of more than a hundred flint implements which i obtained at st. acheul, not a few had their edges more or less fractured or worn, either by use as instruments before they were buried in gravel, or by being rolled in the river's bed. some of these tools were probably used as weapons, both of war and of the chase, others to grub up roots, cut down trees, and scoop out canoes. some of them may have served, as mr. prestwich has suggested, for cutting holes in the ice both for fishing and for obtaining water, as will be explained in the eighth chapter when we consider the arguments in favour of the higher level drift having belonged to a period when the rivers were frozen over for several months every winter. [illustration: figure . flint implement] (figure . flint implement from st. acheul, near amiens, of the spear-head shape (half the size of the original, which is / inches long). a. side view. b. same seen edgewise. these spear-headed implements have been found in greater number, proportionally to the oval ones, in the upper level gravel at st. acheul, than in any of the lower gravels in the valley of the somme. in these last the oval form predominates, especially at abbeville.) when the natural form of a chalk-flint presented a suitable handle at one end, as in the specimen, figure , that part was left as found. the portion, for example, between b and c has probably not been altered; the protuberances which are fractured having been broken off by river action before the flint was chipped artificially. the other extremity, a, has been worked till it acquired a proper shape and cutting edge. [illustration: figures and . flint implements] (figures and . flint implements from the pleistocene drift of abbeville and amiens. figure . a. oval-shaped flint hatchet from mautort, near abbeville, half size of original, which is / inches long, from a bed of gravel underlying the fluvio-marine stratum. b. same seen edgewise. c. shows a recent fracture of the edge of the same at the point a, or near the top. this portion of the tool, c, is drawn of the natural size, the black central part being the unaltered flint, the white outer coating, the layer which has been formed by discoloration or bleaching since the tool was first made. the entire surface of number must have been black when first shaped, and the bleaching to such a depth must have been the work of time, whether produced by exposure to the sun and air before it was embedded, or afterwards when it lay deep in the soil. figure . flint tool from st. acheul, seen edgewise; original / inches long, and inches wide. b, c. portion not artificially shaped. a, b. part chipped into shape, and having a cutting edge at a.) many of the hatchets are stained of an ochreous-yellow colour, when they have been buried in yellow gravel, others have acquired white or brown tints, according to the matrix in which they have been enclosed. this accordance in the colouring of the flint tools with the character of the bed from which they have come, indicates, says mr. prestwich, not only a real derivation from such strata, but also a sojourn therein of equal duration to that of the naturally broken flints forming part of the same beds.* (* "philosophical transactions" page .) [illustration: figures , and . dendrites on fling hatchets] (figures , and . dendrites on surfaces of flint hatchets in the drift of st. acheul, near amiens. figure . a. natural size. figure . b. natural size. c. magnified. figure . d. natural size. e. magnified.) the surface of many of the tools is encrusted with a film of carbonate of lime, while others are adorned by those ramifying crystallisations called dendrites (see figures , and ), usually consisting of the mixed oxides of iron and manganese, forming extremely delicate blackish brown sprigs, resembling the smaller kinds of sea weed. they are a useful test of antiquity when suspicions are entertained of the workmen having forged the hatchets which they offer for sale. the most general test, however, of the genuineness of the implements obtained by purchase is their superficial varnish-like or vitreous gloss, as contrasted with the dull aspect of freshly fractured flints. i also remarked, during each of my three visits to amiens, that there were some extensive gravel-pits, such as those of montiers and st. roch, agreeing in their geological character with those of st. acheul, and only a mile or two distant, where the workmen, although familiar with the forms, and knowing the marketable value of the articles above described, assured me that they had never been able to find a single implement. respecting the authenticity of the tools as works of art, professor ramsay, than whom no one could be a more competent judge, observes: "for more than twenty years, like others of my craft, i have daily handled stones, whether fashioned by nature or art; and the flint hatchets of amiens and abbeville seem to me as clearly works of art as any sheffield whittle."* (* "athenaeum" july , .) mr. evans classifies the implements under three heads, two of which, the spear heads and the oval or almond-shaped kinds, have already been described. the third form (figure ) consists of flakes, apparently intended for knives or some of the smaller ones for arrow heads. [illustration: figure . flint knife or flake] (figure . flint knife or flake from below the sand containing cyrena fluminalis. menchecourt, abbeville. d. transverse section along the line of fracture, b, c. size, two-thirds of the original.) in regard to their origin, mr. evans observes that there is a uniformity of shape, a correctness of outline, and a sharpness about the cutting edges and points, which cannot be due to anything but design.* (* "archaeologia" volume .) of these knives and flakes, i obtained several specimens from a pit which i caused to be dug at abbeville, in sand in contact with the chalk, and below certain fluvio-marine beds, which will be alluded to in the next chapter. between the spear-head and oval shapes, there are various intermediate gradations, and there are also a vast variety of very rude implements, many of which may have been rejected as failures, and others struck off as chips in the course of manufacturing the more perfect ones. some of these chips can only be recognised by an experienced eye as bearing marks of human workmanship. it has often been asked, how, without the use of metallic hammers, so many of these oval and spear-headed tools could have been wrought into so uniform a shape. mr. evans, in order experimentally to illustrate the process, constructed a stone hammer, by mounting a pebble in a wooden handle, and with this tool struck off flakes from the edge on both sides of a chalk flint, till it acquired precisely the same shape as the oval tool, figure . if i were invited to estimate the probable number of the more perfect tools found in the valley of the somme since , rejecting all the knives, and all that might be suspected of being spurious or forged, i should conjecture that they far exceeded a thousand. yet it would be a great mistake to imagine that an antiquary or geologist, who should devote a few weeks to the exploration of such a valley as that of the somme, would himself be able to detect a single specimen. but few tools were lying on the surface. the rest have been exposed to view by the removal of such a volume of sand, clay, and gravel, that the price of the discovery of one of them could only be estimated by knowing how many hundred labourers have toiled at the fortifications of abbeville, or in the sand and gravel pits near that city, and around amiens, for road materials and other economic purposes, during the last twenty years. [illustration: figure . fossils of the white chalk] (figure . fossils of the white chalk. a, b. coscinopora globularis, d'orbigny. orbitolina concava, parker and jones. c. part of same magnified.) in the gravel pits of st. acheul, and in some others near amiens, small round bodies, having a tubular cavity in the centre, occur. they are well known as fossils of the white chalk. dr. rigollot suggested that they might have been strung together as beads, and he supposed the hole in the middle to have been artificial. some of these round bodies are found entire in the chalk and in the gravel, others have naturally a hole passing through them, and sometimes one or two holes penetrating some way in from the surface, but not extending to the other side. others, like b, figure , have a large cavity, which has a very artificial aspect. it is impossible to decide whether they have or have not served as personal ornaments, recommended by their globular form, lightness, and by being less destructible than ordinary chalk. granting that there were natural cavities in the axis of some of them, it does not follow that these may not have been taken advantage of for stringing them as beads, while others may have been artificially bored through. dr. rigollot's argument in favour of their having been used as necklaces or bracelets, appears to me a sound one. he says he often found small heaps or groups of them in one place, all perforated, just as if, when swept into the river's bed by a flood, the bond which had united them together remained unbroken.* (* rigollot, "memoire sur des instruments en silex" etc., amiens page .) chapter . -- pleistocene alluvium with flint implements of the valley of the somme--concluded. fluvio-marine strata, with flint implements, near abbeville. marine shells in same. cyrena fluminalis. mammalia. entire skeleton of rhinoceros. flint implements, why found low down in fluviatile deposits. rivers shifting their channels. relative ages of higher and lower-level gravels. section of alluvium of st. acheul. two species of elephant and hippopotamus coexisting with man in france. volume of drift, proving antiquity of flint implements. absence of human bones in tool-bearing alluvium, how explained. value of certain kinds of negative evidence tested thereby. human bones not found in drained lake of haarlem. in the section of the valley of the somme given in figure , the successive formations newer than the chalk are numbered in chronological order, beginning with the most modern, or the peat, which is marked number , and which has been treated of in the last chapter. next in the order of antiquity are the lower-level gravels, number , which we have now to describe; after which the alluvium, number , found at higher levels, or about and feet above the river-plain, will remain to be considered. i have selected, as illustrating the old alluvium of the somme occurring at levels slightly elevated above the present river, the sand and gravel-pits of menchecourt, in the northwest suburbs of abbeville, to which, as before stated, attention was first drawn by m. boucher de perthes, in his work on celtic antiquities. here, although in every adjoining pit some minor variations in the nature and thickness of the superimposed deposits may be seen, there is yet a general approach to uniformity in the series. the only stratum of which the relative age is somewhat doubtful, is the gravel marked a, underlying the peat, and resting on the chalk. it is only known by borings, and some of it may be of the same age as number ; but i believe it to be for the most part of more modern origin, consisting of the wreck of all the older gravel, including number , and formed during the last hollowing out and deepening of the valley immediately before the commencement of the growth of peat. the greater number of flint implements have been dug out of number , often near the bottom, and twenty-five, thirty, or even more than thirty feet below the surface of number . a geologist will perceive by a glance at the section that the valley of the somme must have been excavated nearly to its present depth and width when the strata of number were thrown down, and that after the deposits numbers , , and had been formed in succession, the present valley was scooped out, patches only of numbers and being left. for these deposits cannot originally have ended abruptly as they now do, but must have once been continuous farther towards the centre of the valley. [illustration: figure . fluvio-marine strata] (figure . section of fluvio-marine strata, containing flint implements and bones of extinct mammalia, at menchecourt, abbeville.* (* for detailed sections and maps of this district, see prestwich, "philosophical transactions" page .) . brown clay with angular flints, and occasionally chalk rubble, unstratified, following the slope of the hill, probably of subaerial origin, of very varying thickness, from to feet and upwards. . calcareous loam, buff-coloured, resembling loess, for the most part unstratified, in some places with slight traces of stratification, containing freshwater and land shells, with bones of elephants, etc.; thickness about feet. . alternations of beds of gravel, marl, and sand, with freshwater and land shells, and, in some of the lower sands, a mixture of marine shells; also bones of elephant, rhinoceros, etc., and flint implements; thickness about feet. a. gravel underlying peat, age undetermined. b. layer of impervious clay, separating the gravel from the peat.) to begin with the oldest, number , it is made up of a succession of beds, chiefly of freshwater origin, but occasionally a mixture of marine and fluviatile shells is observed in it, proving that the sea sometimes gained upon the river, whether at high tides or when the fresh water was less in quantity during the dry season, and sometimes perhaps when the land was slightly depressed in level. all these accidents might occur again and again at the mouth of any river, and give rise to alternations of fluviatile and marine strata, such as are seen at menchecourt. in the lowest beds of gravel and sand in contact with the chalk, flint hatchets, some perfect, others much rolled, have been found; and in a sandy bed in this position some workmen, whom i employed to sink a pit, found four flint knives. above this sand and gravel occur beds of white and siliceous sand, containing shells of the genera planorbis, limnea, paludina, valvata, cyclas, cyrena, helix, and others, all now natives of the same part of france, except cyrena fluminalis (figure ), which no longer lives in europe, but inhabits the nile, and many parts of asia, including cashmere, where it abounds. no species of cyrena is now met with in a living state in europe. mr. prestwich first observed it fossil at menchecourt, and it has since been found in two or three contiguous sand-pits, always in the fluvio-marine bed. [ ] [illustration: figure . cyrena fluminalis] (figure . cyrena fluminalis, o.f. muller, sp.* (* for synonyms, see s. woodward "tibet shells" "proceedings of the zoological society" july , .) a. interior of left valve, from gray's thurrock, essex. b. hinge of the same magnified. c. interior of right valve of a small specimen, from shacklewell, london. d. outer surface of right valve, from erith, kent.) table / . dates of specific names. column : species. column : date. living: tellina fluminalis, o.f. muller: . venus fluminalis euphratis, chemnitz: . cyclas euphratica, lam.: . cyrena cor, lam. (nile): . cyrena consobrina, caillaud (nile): . cyrena cashmiriensis, desh.: corbicuia fluminalis, muhlfeldt.: . fossil: cyrena trigonula, s. woodward: . cyrena gemmellarii, philippi: . cyrena duchastelii, nyst: . the following marine shells occur mixed with the freshwater species above enumerated:--buccinum undatum, littorina littorea, nassa reticulata, purpura lapillus, tellina solidula, cardium edule, and fragments of some others. several of these i have myself collected entire, though in a state of great decomposition, lying in the white sand called "sable aigre" by the workmen. they are all littoral species now proper to the contiguous coast of france. their occurrence in a fossil state associated with freshwater shells at menchecourt had been noticed as long ago as by mm. ravin and baillon, before m. boucher de perthes commenced the researches which have since made the locality so celebrated.* (* d'archiac, "histoire des progres" etc. volume page .) the numbers since collected preclude all idea of their having been brought inland as eatable shells by the fabricators of the flint hatchets found at the bottom of the fluvio-marine sands. from the same beds, and in marls alternating with the sands, remains of the elephant, rhinoceros, and other mammalia have been exhumed. above the fluvio-marine strata are those designated number in the section (figure ), which are almost devoid of stratification, and probably formed of mud or sediment thrown down by the waters of the river when they overflowed the ancient alluvial plain of that day. some land shells, a few river shells, and bones of mammalia, some of them extinct, occur in number . its upper surface has been deeply furrowed and cut into by the action of water, at the time when the earthy matter of number was superimposed. the materials of this uppermost deposit are arranged as if they had been the result of land floods, taking place after the formations and had been raised, or had become exposed to denudation. the fluvio-marine strata and overlying loam of menchecourt recur on the opposite or left bank of the alluvial plain of the somme, at a distance of or miles. they are found at mautort, among other places, and i obtained there the flint hatchet shown in figure , of an oval form. it was extracted from gravel, above which were strata containing a mixture of marine and freshwater shells, precisely like those of menchecourt. in the alluvium of all parts of the valley, both at high and low levels, rolled bones are sometimes met with in the gravel. some of the flint tools in the gravel of abbeville have their angles very perfect, others have been much triturated, as if in the bed of the main river or some of its tributaries. the mammalia most frequently cited as having been found in the deposits numbers and at menchecourt, are the following:-- elephas primigenius. rhinoceros tichorhinus. equus fossilis, owen. bos primigenius. cervus somonensis, cuvier. c. tarandus priscus, cuvier. felis spelaea. hyaena spelaea. the ursus spelaeus has also been mentioned by some writers; but m. lartet says he has sought in vain for it among the osteological treasures sent from abbeville to cuvier at paris, and in other collections. the same palaeontologist, after a close scrutiny of the bones sent formerly to the paris museum from the valley of the somme, observed that some of them bore the evident marks of an instrument, agreeing well with incisions such as a rude flint-saw would produce. among other bones mentioned as having been thus artificially cut, are those of a rhinoceros tichorhinus, and the antlers of cervus somonensis.* (* "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page .) the evidence obtained by naturalists that some of the extinct mammalia of menchecourt really lived and died in this part of france, at the time of the embedding of the flint tools in fluviatile strata, is most satisfactory; and not the less so for having been put on record long before any suspicion was entertained that works of art would ever be detected in the same beds. thus m. baillon, writing in to m. ravin, says: "they begin to meet with fossil bones at the depth of or feet in the menchecourt sand-pits, but they find a much greater quantity at the depth of and feet. some of them were evidently broken before they were embedded, others are rounded, having, without doubt, been rolled by running water. it is at the bottom of the sand-pits that the most entire bones occur. here they lie without having undergone fracture or friction, and seem to have been articulated together at the time when they were covered up. i found in one place a whole hind limb of a rhinoceros, the bones of which were still in their true relative position. they must have been joined together by ligaments, and even surrounded by muscles at the time of their interment. the entire skeleton of the same species was lying at a short distance from the spot."* (* "societe roy. d'emulation d'abbeville" page .) if we suppose that the greater number of the flint implements occurring in the neighbourhood of abbeville and amiens were brought by river action into their present position, we can at once explain why so large a proportion of them are found at considerable depths from the surface, for they would naturally be buried in gravel and not in fine sediment, or what may be termed "inundation mud," such as number (figure ), a deposit from tranquil water, or where the stream had not sufficient force or velocity to sweep along chalk flints, whether wrought or unwrought. hence we have almost always to pass down through a mass of incumbent loam with land shells, or through fine sand with freshwater molluscs, before we get into the beds of gravel containing hatchets. occasionally a weapon used as a projectile may have fallen into quiet water, or may have dropped from a canoe to the bottom of the river, or may have been floated by ice, as are some stones occasionally by the thames in severe winters, and carried over the meadows bordering its banks; but such cases are exceptional, though helping to explain how isolated flint tools or pebbles and angular stones are now and then to be seen in the midst of the finest loams. the endless variety in the sections of the alluvium of the valley of the somme, may be ascribed to the frequent silting up of the main stream and its tributaries during different stages of the excavation of the valley, probably also during changes in the level of the land. as a rule, when a river attacks and undermines one bank, it throws down gravel and sand on the opposite side of its channel, which is growing somewhere shallower, and is soon destined to be raised so high as to form an addition to the alluvial plain, and to be only occasionally inundated. in this way, after much encroachment on cliff or meadow at certain points, we find at the end of centuries that the width of the channel has not been enlarged, for the new made ground is raised after a time to the average height of the older alluvial tract. sometimes an island is formed in midstream, the current flowing for a while on both sides of it, and at length scooping out a deeper channel on one side so as to leave the other to be gradually filled up during freshets and afterwards elevated by inundation mud, or "brick-earth." during the levelling up of these old channels, a flood sometimes cuts into and partially removes portions of the previously stratified matter, causing those repeated signs of furrowing and filling up of cavities, those memorials of doing and undoing, of which the tool-bearing sands and gravels of abbeville and amiens afford such reiterated illustrations, and of which a parallel is furnished by the ancient alluvium of the thames valley, where similar bones of extinct mammalia and shells, including cyrena fluminalis, are found. professor noeggerath, of bonn, informs me that, about the year , when the bed of the rhine was deepened artificially by the blasting and removal of rock in the narrows at bingerloch, not far from bingen, several flint hatchets and an extraordinary number of iron weapons of the roman period were brought up by the dredge from the bed of the great river. the decomposition of the iron had caused much of the gravel to be cemented together into a conglomerate. in such a case we have only to suppose the rhine to deviate slightly from its course, changing its position, as it has often done in various parts of its plain in historical times, and then tools of the stone and iron periods would be found in gravel at the bottom with a great thickness of sand and overlying loam deposited above them. changes in a river plain, such as those above alluded to, give rise frequently to ponds, swamps, and marshes, marking the course of old beds or branches of the river not yet filled up, and in these depressions shells proper both to running and stagnant water may be preserved, and quadrupeds may be mired. the latest and uppermost deposit of the series will be loam or brick-earth, with land and amphibious shells (helix and succinea), while below will follow strata containing freshwater shells, implying continuous submergence; and lowest of all in most sections will be the coarse gravel accumulated by a current of considerable strength and velocity. when the st. katharine docks were excavated at london, and similar works executed on the banks of the mersey, old ships were dug out, as i have elsewhere noticed,* showing how the thames and mersey have in modern times been shifting their channels. (* "principles of geology" th edition volume page .) recently, an old silted-up bed of the thames has been discovered by boring at shoeburyness at the mouth of the river opposite sheerness, as i learn from mr. mylne. the old deserted branch is separated from the new or present channel of the thames, by a mass of london clay which has escaped denudation. the depth of the old branch, or the thickness of fluviatile strata with which it has been filled up, is feet. the actual channel in the neighbourhood is now feet deep, but there is probably or feet of stratified sand and gravel at the bottom; so that, should the river deviate again from its course, its present bed might be the receptacle of a fluvio-marine formation feet thick, equal to the former one of shoeburyness, and more considerable than that of abbeville. it would consist both of freshwater and marine strata, as the salt water is carried by the tide far up above sheerness; but in order that such deposits should resemble, in geological position, the menchecourt beds, they must be raised or feet above their present level, and be partially eroded. such erosion they would not fail to suffer during the process of upheaval, because the thames would scour out its bed, and not alter its position relatively to the sea, while the land was gradually rising. before the canal was made at abbeville, the tide was perceptible in the somme for some distance above that city. it would only require, therefore, a slight subsidence to allow the salt water to reach menchecourt, as it did in the pleistocene period. as a stratum containing exclusively land and freshwater shells usually underlies the fluvio-marine sands at menchecourt, it seems that the river first prevailed there, after which the land subsided; and then there was an upheaval which raised the country to a greater height than that at which it now stands, after which there was a second sinking, indicated by the position of the peat, as already explained. all these changes happened since man first inhabited this region. at several places in the environs of abbeville there are fluviatile deposits at a higher level by feet than the uppermost beds at menchecourt, resting in like manner on the chalk. one of these occurs in the suburbs of the city at moulin quignon, feet above the somme and on the same side of the valley as menchecourt, and containing flint implements of the same antique type and the bones of elephants; but no marine shells have been found there, nor in any gravel or sand at higher elevations than the menchecourt marine shells. it has been a matter of discussion among geologists whether the higher or the lower sands and gravels of the somme valley are the more ancient. as a general rule, when there are alluvial formations of different ages in the same valley, those which occupy a more elevated position above the river plain are the oldest. in auvergne and velay, in central france, where the bones of fossil quadrupeds occur at all heights above the present rivers from to feet, we observe the terrestrial fauna to depart in character from that now living in proportion as we ascend to higher terraces and platforms. we pass from the lower alluvium, containing the mammoth, tichorhine rhinoceros, and reindeer, to various older groups of fossils, till, on a tableland feet high (near le puy, for example), the abrupt termination of which overlooks the present valley, we discover an old extinct river-bed covered by a current of ancient lava, showing where the lowest level was once situated. in that elevated alluvium the remains of a tertiary mastodon and other quadrupeds of like antiquity are embedded. if the menchecourt beds had been first formed, and the valley, after being nearly as deep and wide as it is now, had subsided, the sea must have advanced inland, causing small delta-like accumulations at successive heights, wherever the main river and its tributaries met the sea. such a movement, especially if it were intermittent, and interrupted occasionally by long pauses, would very well account for the accumulation of stratified debris which we encounter at certain points in the valley, especially around abbeville and amiens. but we are precluded from adopting this theory by the entire absence of marine shells, and the presence of freshwater and land species, and mammalian bones, in considerable abundance, in the drift both of higher and lower levels above abbeville. had there been a total absence of all organic remains, we might have imagined the former presence of the sea, and the destruction of such remains might have been ascribed to carbonic acid or other decomposing causes; but the pleistocene and implement-bearing strata can be shown by their fossils to be of fluviatile origin. flint implements in gravel near amiens. gravel of st. acheul. when we ascend the valley of the somme, from abbeville to amiens, a distance of about miles, we observe a repetition of all the same alluvial phenomena which we have seen exhibited at menchecourt and its neighbourhood, with the single exception of the absence of marine shells and of cyrena fluminalis. we find lower-level gravel, such as number , figure , and higher-level alluvium, such as number , the latter rising to feet above the plain, which at amiens is about feet above the level of the river at abbeville. in both the upper and lower gravels, as dr. rigollot stated in , flint tools and the bones of extinct animals, together with river shells and land shells of living species, abound. [illustration: figures , and . elephas] (figure .* elephas primigenius. penultimate molar, lower jaw, right side, one-third of natural size, pleistocene. co-existed with man.) (figure .* elephas antiquus, falconer. penultimate molar, lower jaw, right side, one-third of natural size, pleistocene and newer pliocene. co-existed with man.) (figure .* elephas meridionalis, nesti. penultimate molar, lower jaw, right side, one-third of natural size, newer pliocene, saint prest, near chartres, and norwich crag. not yet proved to have coexisted with man.) (* for figure i am indebted to m. lartet, and figure will be found in his paper in "bulletin de la societe geologique de france" march . figure is from falconer and cautley "fauna sivalensis.") immediately below amiens, a great mass of stratified gravel, slightly elevated above the alluvial plain of the somme, is seen at st. roch, and half a mile farther down the valley at montiers. between these two places a small tributary stream, called the celle, joins the somme. in the gravel at montiers, mr. prestwich and i found some flint knives, one of them flat on one side, but the other carefully worked, and exhibiting many fractures, clearly produced by blows skilfully applied. some of these knives were taken from so low a level as to satisfy us that this great bed of gravel at montiers, as well as that of the contiguous quarries of st. roch, which seems to be a continuation of the same deposit, may be referred to the human period. dr. rigollot had already mentioned flint hatchets as obtained by him from st. roch, but as none have been found there of late years, his statement was thought to require confirmation. the discovery, therefore, of these flint knives in gravel of the same age was interesting, especially as many tusks of a hippopotamus have been obtained from the gravel of st. roch--some of these recently by mr. prestwich; while m. garnier of amiens has procured a fine elephant's molar from the same pits, which dr. falconer refers to elephas antiquus, see figure . hence i infer that both these animals co-existed with man. the alluvial formations of montiers are very instructive in another point of view. if, leaving the lower gravel of that place, which is topped with loam or brick-earth (of which the upper portion is about feet above the level of the somme), we ascend the chalk slope to the height of about feet, another deposit of gravel and sand, with fluviatile shells in a perfect condition, occurs, indicating most clearly an ancient river-bed, the waters of which ran habitually at that higher level before the valley had been scooped out to its present depth. this superior deposit is on the same side of the somme, and about as high, as the lowest part of the celebrated formation of st. acheul, or miles distant, to which i shall now allude. the terrace of st. acheul may be described as a gently sloping ledge of chalk, covered with gravel, topped as usual with loam or fine sediment, the surface of the loam being feet above the somme, and about above the sea. many stone coffins of the gallo-roman period have been dug out of the upper portion of this alluvial mass. the trenches made for burying them sometimes penetrate to the depth of or feet from the surface, entering the upper part of number of the sections figures and . they prove that when the romans were in gaul they found this terrace in the same condition as it is now, or rather as it was before the removal of so much gravel, sand, clay, and loam, for repairing roads, and for making bricks and pottery. [illustration: figure . section of gravel pit] (figure . section of gravel pit containing flint implements at st. acheul, near amiens, observed in july . . vegetable soil and made ground, to feet thick. . brown loam with some angular flints, in parts passing into ochreous gravel, filling up indentations on the surface of number , feet thick. . white siliceous sand with layers of chalky marl, and included fragments of chalk, for the most part unstratified, feet. . flint-gravel, and whitish chalky sand, flints subangular, average size of fragments, inches diameter, but with some large unbroken chalk flints intermixed, cross stratification in parts. bones of mammalia, grinder of elephant at b, and flint implement at c, to feet. . chalk with flints. a. part of elephant's molar, feet from the surface. b. entire molar of elephas primigenius, feet from the surface. c. position of flint hatchet, feet from the surface.) in the annexed section (figure ), which i observed during my last visit in , it will be seen that a fragment of an elephant's tooth is noticed as having been dug out of unstratified sandy loam at the point a, feet from the surface. this was found at the time of my visit; and at a lower point, at b, feet from the surface, a large nearly entire and unrolled molar of the same species was obtained, which is now in my possession. it has been pronounced by dr. falconer to belong to elephas primigenius. a stone hatchet of an oval form, like that represented at figure , was discovered at the same time, about one foot lower down, at c, in densely compressed gravel. the surface of the fundamental chalk is uneven in this pit, and slopes towards the valley-plain of the somme. in a horizontal distance of feet, i found a difference in vertical height of feet. in the chalky sand, sometimes occurring in interstices between the separate fragments of flint, constituting the coarse gravel number , entire as well as broken freshwater shells are often met with. to some it may appear enigmatical how such fragile objects could have escaped annihilation in a river-bed, when flint tools and much gravel were shoved along the bottom; but i have seen the dredging instrument employed in the thames, above and below london bridge, to deepen the river, and worked by steam power, scoop up gravel and sand from the bottom, and then pour the contents pell-mell into the boat, and still many specimens of limnaea, planorbis, paludina, cyclas, and other shells might be taken out uninjured from the gravel. it will be observed that the gravel number is obliquely stratified, and that its surface had undergone denudation before the white sandy loam number was superimposed. the materials of the gravel at d must have been cemented or frozen together into a somewhat coherent mass to allow the projecting ridge, d, to stand up feet above the general surface, the sides being in some places perpendicular. in number we probably behold an example of a passage from river-silt to inundation mud. in some parts of it, land shells occur. it has been ascertained by mm. buteux, ravin, and other observers conversant with the geology of this part of france, that in none of the alluvial deposits, ancient or modern, are there any fragments of rocks foreign to the basin of the somme--no erratics which could only be explained by supposing them to have been brought by ice, during a general submergence of the country, from some other hydrographical basin. but in some of the pits at st. acheul there are seen in the beds number , figure , not only well-rounded tertiary pebbles, but great blocks of hard sandstone, of the kind called in the south of england "greywethers," some of which are or feet and upwards in diameter. they are usually angular, and when spherical owe their shape generally to an original concretionary structure, and not to trituration in a river's bed. these large fragments of stone abound both in the higher and lower level gravels round amiens and at the higher level at abbeville. they have also been traced far up the valley above amiens, wherever patches of the old alluvium occur. they have all been derived from the tertiary strata which once covered the chalk. their dimensions are such that it is impossible to imagine a river like the present somme, flowing through a flat country, with a gentle fall towards the sea, to have carried them for miles down its channel unless ice co-operated as a transporting power. their angularity also favours the supposition of their having been floated by ice, or rendered so buoyant by it as to have escaped much of the wear and tear which blocks propelled along the bottom of a river channel would otherwise suffer. we must remember that the present mildness of the winters in picardy and the northwest of europe generally is exceptional in the northern hemisphere, and that large fragments of granite, sandstone, and limestone are now carried annually by ice down the canadian rivers in latitudes farther south than paris.* (* "principles of geology" th edition page .) [illustration: figure . contorted strata] (figure . contorted fluviatile strata at st. acheul (prestwich, "philosophical transactions" , page ). . surface soil. . brown loam as in figure , thickness, feet. . white sand with bent and folded layers of marl, thickness, feet. . gravel, as in figure , with bones of mammalia and flint implements. a. graves filled with made ground and human bones. b and c. seams of laminated marl often bent round upon themselves. d. beds of gravel with sharp curves.) another sign of ice agency, of which mr. prestwich has given a good illustration in one of his published sections, and which i myself observed in several pits at st. acheul, deserves notice. it consists in flexures and contortions of the strata of sand, marl, and gravel (as seen at b, c, and d, figure ), which they have evidently undergone since their original deposition, and from which both the underlying chalk and part of the overlying beds of sand number are usually exempt. in my former writings i have attributed this kind of derangement to two causes; first, the pressure of ice running aground on yielding banks of mud and sand; and, secondly, the melting of masses of ice and snow of unequal thickness, on which horizontal layers of mud, sand, and other fine and coarse materials had accumulated. the late mr. trimmer first pointed out in what manner the unequal failure of support caused by the liquefaction of underlying or intercalated snow and ice might give rise to such complicated foldings.* (* see chapter .) when "ice-jams" occur on the st. lawrence and other canadian rivers (latitude degrees north), the sheets of ice, which become packed or forced under or over one another, assume in most cases a highly inclined and sometimes even a vertical position. they are often observed to be coated on one side with mud, sand, or gravel frozen on to them, derived from shallows in the river on which they rested when congelation first reached the bottom. as often as portions of these packs melt near the margin of the river, the layers of mud, sand, and gravel, which result from their liquefaction, cannot fail to assume a very abnormal arrangement--very perplexing to a geologist who should undertake to interpret them without having the ice-clue in his mind. mr. prestwich has suggested that ground-ice may have had its influence in modifying the ancient alluvium of the somme.* (* prestwich, memoir read to royal society, april .) it is certain that ice in this form plays an active part every winter in giving motion to stones and gravel in the beds of rivers in european russia and siberia. it appears that when in those countries the streams are reduced nearly to the freezing point, congelation begins frequently at the bottom; the reason being, according to arago, that the current is slowest there, and the gravel and large stones, having parted with much of their heat by radiation, acquire a temperature below the average of the main body of the river. it is, therefore, when the water is clear, and the sky free from clouds, that ground ice forms most readily, and oftener on pebbly than on muddy bottoms. fragments of such ice, rising occasionally to the surface, bring up with them gravel, and even large stones. without dwelling longer on the various ways in which ice may affect the forms of stratification in drift, so as to cause bendings and foldings in which the underlying or over-lying strata do not participate, a subject to which i shall have occasion again to allude in the sequel, i will state in this place that such contortions, whether explicable or not, are very characteristic of glacial formations. they have also no necessary connection with the transportation of large blocks of stone, and they therefore afford, as mr. prestwich remarks, independent proof of ice-action in the pleistocene gravel of the somme. let us, then, suppose that, at the time when flint hatchets were embedded in great numbers in the ancient gravel which now forms the terrace of st. acheul, the main river and its tributaries were annually frozen over for several months in winter. in that case, the primitive people may, as mr. prestwich hints, have resembled in their mode of life those american indians who now inhabit the country between hudson's bay and the polar sea. the habits of those indians have been well described by hearne, who spent some years among them. as often as deer and other game become scarce on the land, they betake themselves to fishing in the rivers; and for this purpose, and also to obtain water for drinking, they are in the constant practice of cutting round holes in the ice, a foot or more in diameter, through which they throw baited hooks or nets. often they pitch their tent on the ice, and then cut such holes through it, using ice-chisels of metal when they can get copper or iron, but when not, employing tools of flint or hornstone. the great accumulation of gravel at st. acheul has taken place in part of the valley where the tributary streams, the noye and the arve, now join the somme. these tributaries, as well as the main river, must have been running at the height first of feet, and afterwards at various lower levels above the present valley-plain, in those earlier times when the flint tools of the antique type were buried in successive river beds. i have said at various levels, because there are, here and there, patches of drift at heights intermediate between the higher and lower gravel, and also some deposits, showing that the river once flowed at elevations above as well as below the level of the platform of st. acheul. as yet, however, no patch of gravel skirting the valley at heights exceeding feet above the somme has yielded flint tools or other signs of the former sojourn of man in this region. possibly, in the earlier geographical condition of this country, the confluence of tributaries with the somme afforded inducements to a hunting and fishing tribe to settle there, and some of the same natural advantages may have caused the first inhabitants of amiens and abbeville to fix on the same sites for their dwellings. if the early hunting and fishing tribes frequented the same spots for hundreds or thousands of years in succession, the number of the stone implements lost in the bed of the river need not surprise us. ice-chisels, flint hatchets, and spear-heads may have slipped accidentally through holes kept constantly open, and the recovery of a lost treasure once sunk in the bed of the ice-bound stream, inevitably swept away with gravel on the breaking up of the ice in the spring, would be hopeless. during a long winter, in a country affording abundance of flint, the manufacture of tools would be continually in progress; and, if so, thousands of chips and flakes would be purposely thrown into the ice-hole, besides a great number of implements having flaws, or rejected as too unskilfully made to be worth preserving. as to the fossil fauna of the drift, considered in relation to the climate, when, in , i took a collection which i had made of all the more common species of land and freshwater shells from the amiens and abbeville drift, to my friend m. deshayes at paris, he declared them to be, without exception, the same as those now living in the basin of the seine. this fact may seem at first sight to imply that the climate had not altered since the flint tools were fabricated; but it appears that all these species of molluscs now range as far north as norway and finland, and may therefore have flourished in the valley of the somme when the river was frozen over annually in winter.* (* see prestwich, paper read to the royal society in .) in regard to the accompanying mammalia, some of them, like the mammoth and tichorhine rhinoceros, may have been able to endure the rigours of a northern winter as well as the reindeer, which we find fossil in the same gravel. it is a more difficult point to determine whether the climate of the lower gravels (those of menchecourt, for example) was more genial than that of the higher ones. mr. prestwich inclines to this opinion. none of those contortions of the strata above described have as yet been observed in the lower drift. it contains large blocks of tertiary sandstone and grit, which may have required the aid of ice to convey them to their present sites; but as such blocks already abounded in the older and higher alluvium, they may simply be monuments of its destruction, having been let down successively to lower and lower levels without making much seaward progress. the cyrena fluminalis of menchecourt and the hippopotamus of st. roch seem to be in favour of a less severe temperature in winter; but so many of the species of mammalia, as well as of the land and freshwater shells, are common to both formations, and our information respecting the entire fauna is still so imperfect, that it would be premature to pretend to settle this question in the present state of our knowledge. we must be content with the conclusion (and it is one of no small interest), that when man first inhabited this part of europe, at the time that the st. acheul drift was formed, the climate as well as the physical geography of the country differed considerably from the state of things now established there. among the elephant remains from st. acheul, in m. garnier's collection, dr. falconer recognised a molar of the elephas antiquus, figure , the same species which has been already mentioned as having been found in the lower-level gravels of st. roch. this species, therefore, endured while important changes took place in the geographical condition of the valley of the somme. assuming the lower-level gravel to be the newer, it follows that the elephas antiquus and the hippopotamus of st. roch continued to flourish long after the introduction of the mammoth, a well characterised tooth of which, as i before stated, was found at st. acheul at the time of my visit in . as flint hatchets and knives have been discovered in the alluvial deposits both at high and low levels, we may safely affirm that man was as old an inhabitant of this region as were any of the fossil quadrupeds above enumerated, a conclusion which is independent of any difference of opinion as to the relative age of the higher and lower gravels. the disappearance of many large pachyderms and beasts of prey from europe has often been attributed to the intervention of man, and no doubt he played his part in hastening the era of their extinction; but there is good reason for suspecting that other causes co-operated to the same end. no naturalist would for a moment suppose that the extermination of the cyrena fluminalis throughout the whole of europe--a species which co-existed with our race in the valley of the somme, and which was very abundant in the waters of the thames at the time when the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus flourished on its banks--was accelerated by human agency. the great modification in climate and in other conditions of existence which affected this aquatic mollusc, may have mainly contributed to the gradual dying out of many of the large mammalia. we have already seen that the peat of the valley of the somme is a formation which, in all likelihood, took thousands of years for its growth. but no change of a marked character has occurred in the mammalian fauna since it began to accumulate. the contrast of the fauna of the ancient alluvium, whether at high or low levels, with the fauna of the oldest peat is almost as great as its contrast with the existing fauna, the memorials of man being common to the whole series; hence we may infer that the interval of time which separated the era of the large extinct mammalia from that of the earliest peat, was of far longer duration than that of the entire growth of the peat. yet we by no means need the evidence of the ancient fossil fauna to establish the antiquity of man in this part of france. the mere volume of the drift at various heights would alone suffice to demonstrate a vast lapse of time during which such heaps of shingle, derived both from the eocene and the cretaceous rocks, were thrown down in a succession of river-channels. we observe thousands of rounded and half-rounded flints, and a vast number of angular ones, with rounded pieces of white chalk of various sizes, testifying to a prodigious amount of mechanical action, accompanying the repeated widening and deepening of the valley, before it became the receptacle of peat; and the position of many of the flint tools leaves no doubt in the mind of the geologist that their fabrication preceded all this reiterated denudation. on the absence of human bones in the alluvium of the somme. it is naturally a matter of no small surprise that, after we have collected many hundred flint implements (including knives, many thousands), not a single human bone has yet been met with in the old alluvial sand and gravel of the somme. this dearth of the mortal remains of our species holds true equally, as yet, in all other parts of europe where the tool-bearing drift of the pleistocene period has been investigated in valley deposits. yet in these same formations there is no want of bones of mammalia belonging to extinct and living species. in the course of the last quarter of a century, thousands of them have been submitted to the examination of skilful osteologists, and they have been unable to detect among them one fragment of a human skeleton, not even a tooth. yet cuvier pointed out long ago, that the bones of man found buried in ancient battle-fields were not more decayed than those of horses interred in the same graves. we have seen that in the liege caverns, the skulls, jaws, and teeth, with other bones of the human race, were preserved in the same condition as those of the cave-bear, tiger, and mammoth. that ere long, now that curiosity has been so much excited on this subject, some human remains will be detected in the older alluvium of european valleys, i confidently expect. in the meantime, the absence of all vestige of the bones which belonged to that population by which so many weapons were designed and executed, affords a most striking and instructive lesson in regard to the value of negative evidence, when adduced in proof of the non-existence of certain classes of terrestrial animals at given periods of the past. it is a new and emphatic illustration of the extreme imperfection of the geological record, of which even they who are constantly working in the field cannot easily form a just conception. we must not forget that dr. schmerling, after finding extinct mammalia and flint tools in forty-two belgian caverns, was only rewarded by the discovery of human bones in three or four of those rich repositories of osseous remains. in like manner, it was not till the year that the first skull of the musk ox (bubalus moschatus) was detected in the fossiliferous gravel of the thames, and not till , as will be seen in the next chapter, that the same quadruped was proved to have co-existed in france with the mammoth. the same theory which will explain the comparative rarity of such species would no doubt account for the still greater scarcity of human bones, as well as for our general ignorance of the pleistocene terrestrial fauna, with the exception of that part of it which is revealed to us by cavern researches. in valley drift we meet commonly with the bones of quadrupeds which graze on plains bordering rivers. carnivorous beasts, attracted to the same ground in search of their prey, sometimes leave their remains in the same deposits, but more rarely. the whole assemblage of fossil quadrupeds at present obtained from the alluvium of picardy is obviously a mere fraction of the entire fauna which flourished contemporaneously with the primitive people by whom the flint hatchets were made. instead of its being part of the plan of nature to store up enduring records of a large number of the individual plants and animals which have lived on the surface, it seems to be her chief care to provide the means of disencumbering the habitable areas lying above and below the waters of those myriads of solid skeletons of animals, and those massive trunks of trees, which would otherwise soon choke up every river, and fill every valley. to prevent this inconvenience she employs the heat and moisture of the sun and atmosphere, the dissolving power of carbonic and other acids, the grinding teeth and gastric juices of quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, and fish, and the agency of many of the invertebrata. we are all familiar with the efficacy of these and other causes on the land; and as to the bottoms of seas, we have only to read the published reports of mr. macandrew, the late edward forbes, and other experienced dredgers, who, while they failed utterly in drawing up from the deep a single human bone, declared that they scarcely ever met with a work of art even after counting tens of thousands of shells and zoophytes, collected on a coast line of several hundred miles in extent, where they often approached within less than half a mile of a land peopled by millions of human beings. lake of haarlem. it is not many years since the government of holland resolved to lay dry that great sheet of water formerly called the lake of haarlem, extending over , acres. they succeeded, in , in turning it into dry land, by means of powerful pumps constantly worked by steam, which raised the water and discharged it into a canal running for or miles round the newly-gained land. this land was depressed feet beneath the mean level of the ocean. i travelled, in , over part of the bed of this old lake, and found it already converted into arable land, and peopled by an agricultural population of souls. mr. staring, who had been for some years employed by the dutch government in constructing a geological map of holland, was my companion and guide. he informed me that he and his associates had searched in vain for human bones in the deposits which had constituted for three centuries the bed of the great lake. there had been many a shipwreck, and many a naval fight in those waters, and hundreds of dutch and spanish soldiers and sailors had met there with a watery grave. the population which lived on the borders of this ancient sheet of water numbered between thirty and forty thousand souls. in digging the great canal, a fine section had been laid open, about miles long, of the deposits which formed the ancient bottom of the lake. trenches, also, innumerable, several feet deep, had been freshly dug on all the farms, and their united length must have amounted to thousands of miles. in some of the sandy soil recently thrown out of the trenches, i observed specimens of freshwater and brackish-water shells, such as unio and dreissena, of living species; and in clay brought up from below the sand, shells of tellina, lutraria, and cardium, all of species now inhabiting the adjoining sea. as the dreissena is believed by conchologists to have been introduced into western europe in very modern times, brought with foreign timber in the holds of vessels from the rivers flowing into the black sea, the layer of sand containing it in the haarlem lake is probably not more than a hundred years old. one or two wrecked spanish vessels, and arms of the same period, have rewarded the antiquaries who had been watching the draining operations in the hope of a richer harvest, and who were not a little disappointed at the result. in a peaty tract on the margin of one part of the lake a few coins were dug up; but if history had been silent, and if there had been a controversy whether man was already a denizen of this planet at the time when the area of the haarlem lake was under water, the archaeologist, in order to answer this question, must have appealed, as in the case of the valley of the somme, not to fossil bones, but to works of art embedded in the superficial strata. mr. staring, in his valuable memoir on the "geological map of holland," has attributed the general scarcity of human bones in dutch peat, notwithstanding the many works of art preserved in it, to the power of the humic and sulphuric acids to dissolve bones, the peat in question being plentifully impregnated with such acids. his theory may be correct, but it is not applicable to the gravel of the valley of the somme, in which the bones of fossil mammalia are frequent, nor to the uppermost freshwater strata forming the bottom of a large part of the haarlem lake, in which it is not pretended that such acids occur. the primitive inhabitants of the valley of the somme may have been too wary and sagacious to be often surprised and drowned by floods, which swept away many an incautious elephant or rhinoceros, horse and ox. but even if those rude hunters had cherished a superstitious veneration for the somme, and had regarded it as a sacred river (as the modern hindoos revere the ganges), and had been in the habit of committing the bodies of their dead or dying to its waters--even had such funeral rites prevailed, it by no means follows that the bones of many individuals would have been preserved to our time. a corpse cast into the stream first sinks, and must then be almost immediately overspread with sediment of a certain weight, or it will rise again when distended with gases, and float perhaps to the sea before it sinks again. it may then be attacked by fish of marine species, some of which are capable of digesting bones. if, before being carried into the sea and devoured, it is enveloped with fluviatile mud and sand, the next flood, if it lie in mid-channel, may tear it out again, scatter all the bones, roll some of them into pebbles, and leave others exposed to destroying agencies; and this may be repeated annually, till all vestiges of the skeleton may disappear. on the other hand, a bone washed through a rent into a subterranean cavity, even though a rarer contingency, may have a greater chance of escaping destruction, especially if there be stalactite dropping from the roof of the cave or walls of a rent, and if the cave be not constantly traversed by too strong a current of engulfed water. chapter . -- works of art in pleistocene alluvium of france and england. flint implements in ancient alluvium of the basin of the seine. bones of man and of extinct mammalia in the cave of arcy. extinct mammalia in the valley of the oise. flint implement in gravel of same valley. works of art in pleistocene drift in valley of the thames. musk ox. meeting of northern and southern fauna. migrations of quadrupeds. mammals of mongolia. chronological relation of the older alluvium of the thames to the glacial drift. flint implements of pleistocene period in surrey, middlesex, kent, bedfordshire, and suffolk. flint implements in pleistocene alluvium in the basin of the seine. in the ancient alluvium of the valleys of the seine and its principal tributaries, the same assemblage of fossil animals, which has been alluded to in the last chapter as characterising the gravel of picardy, has long been known; but it was not till the year , and when diligent search had been expressly made for them, that flint implements of the amiens type were discovered in this part of france. in the neighbourhood of paris deposits of drift occur answering both to those of the higher and lower levels of the basin of the somme before described.* (* prestwich, "proceedings of the royal society" .) in both are found, mingled with the wreck of the tertiary and cretaceous rocks of the vicinity, a large quantity of granitic sand and pebbles, and occasionally large blocks of granite, from a few inches to a foot or more in diameter. these blocks are peculiarly abundant in the lower drift commonly called the "diluvium gris." the granitic materials are traceable to a chain of hills called the morvan, where the head waters of the yonne take their rise, miles to the south-south-east of paris. it was in this lowest gravel that m. h.t. gosse, of geneva, found, in april , in the suburbs of paris, at la motte piquet, on the left bank of the seine, one or two well-formed flint implements of the amiens type, accompanied by a great number of ruder tools or attempts at tools. i visited the spot in with m. hebert, and saw the stratum from which the worked flints had been extracted, feet below the surface, and near the bottom of the "grey diluvium," a bed of gravel from which i have myself, in and near paris, frequently collected the bones of the elephant, horse, and other mammalia. more recently, m. lartet has discovered at clichy, in the environs of paris, in the same lower gravel, a well-shaped flint implement of the amiens type, together with remains both of elephas primigenius and e. antiquus. no tools have yet been met with in any of the gravels occurring at the higher levels of the valley of the seine; but no importance can be attached to this negative fact, as so little search has yet been made for them. mr. prestwich has observed contortions indicative of ice-action, of the same kind as those near amiens, in the higher-level drift of charonne, near paris; but as yet no similar derangement has been seen in the lower gravels--a fact, so far as it goes, in unison with the phenomena observed in picardy. in the cavern of arcy-sur-yonne a series of deposits have lately been investigated by the marquis de vibraye, who discovered human bones in the lowest of them, mixed with remains of quadrupeds of extinct and recent species. this cavern occurs in jurassic limestone, at a slight elevation above the cure, a small tributary of the yonne, which last joins the seine near fontainebleau about miles south of paris. the lowest formation in the cavern resembles the "diluvium gris" of paris, being composed of granitic materials, and like it derived chiefly from the waste of the crystalline rocks of the morvan. in it have been found the two branches of a human lower jaw with teeth well-preserved, and the bones of the elephas primigenius, rhinoceros tichorhinus, ursus spelaeus, hyaena spelaea, and cervus tarandus, all specifically determined by m. lartet. i have been shown this collection of fossils by m. de vibraye, and remarked that the human and other remains were in the same condition and of the same colour. above the grey gravel is a bed of red alluvium, made up of fragments of jurassic limestone, in a red argillaceous matrix, in which were embedded several flint knives, with bones of the reindeer and horse, but no extinct mammalia. over this, in a higher bed of alluvium, were several polished hatchets of the more modern type called "celts," and above all loam or cave-mud, in which were gallo-roman antiquities.* (* "bulletin de la societe geologique de france" .) the french geologists have made as yet too little progress in identifying the age of the successive deposits of ancient alluvium of various parts of the basin of the seine, to enable us to speculate with confidence as to the coincidence in date of the granitic gravel with human bones of the grotte d'arcy and the stone-hatchets buried in "grey diluvium" of la motte piquet, before mentioned; but as the associated extinct mammalia are of the same species in both localities, i feel strongly inclined to believe that the stone hatchets found by m. gosse at paris, and the human bones discovered by m. de vibraye, may be referable to the same period. valley of the oise. a flint hatchet, of the old abbeville and amiens type, was found lately by m. peigne delacourt at precy, near creil, on the oise, in gravel, resembling, in its geological position, the lower-level gravels of montiers, near amiens, already described. i visited these extensive gravel-pits in , in company with mr. prestwich; but we remained there too short a time to entitle us to expect to find a flint implement, even if they had been as abundant as at st. acheul. in , i examined, in a higher part of the same valley of the oise, near chauny and noyon, some fine railway cuttings, which passed continuously through alluvium of the pleistocene period for half a mile. all this alluvium was evidently of fluviatile origin, for, in the interstices between the pebbles, the ancylus fluviatilis and other freshwater shells were abundant. my companion, the abbe e. lambert, had collected from the gravel a great many fossil bones, among which m. lartet has recognised both elephas primigenius and e. antiquus, besides a species of hippopotamus (h. major?), also the reindeer, horse, and the musk ox (bubalus moschatus). the latter seems never to have been seen before in the old alluvium of france.* (* lartet, "annales des sciences naturelles zoologiques" tome page .) over the gravel above mentioned, near chauny, are seen dense masses of loam like the loess of the rhine, containing shells of the genera helix and succinea. we may suppose that the gravel containing the flint hatchet at precy is of the same age as that of chauny, with which it is continuous, and that both of them are coeval with the tool-bearing beds of amiens, for the basins of the oise and the somme are only separated by a narrow water-shed, and the same fossil quadrupeds occur in both. the alluvium of the seine and its tributaries, like that of the somme, contains no fragments of rocks brought from any other hydrographical basin; yet the shape of the land, or fall of the river, or the climate, or all these conditions, must have been very different when the grey alluvium in which the flint tools occur at paris was formed. the great size of some of the blocks of granite, and the distance which they have travelled, imply a power in the river which it no longer possesses. we can hardly doubt that river-ice once played a much more active part than now in the transportation of such blocks, one of which may be seen in the museum of the ecole des mines at paris, or feet in diameter. pleistocene alluvium of england, containing works of art. in the ancient alluvium of the basin of the thames, at moderate heights above the main river and its tributaries, we find fossil bones of the same species of extinct and living mammalia, accompanied by recent species of land and freshwater shells, as we have shown to be characteristic of the basins of the somme and the seine. we can scarcely therefore doubt that these quadrupeds, during some part of the pleistocene period, ranged freely from the continent of europe to england, at a time when there was an uninterrupted communication by land between the two countries. the reader will not therefore be surprised to learn that flint implements of the same antique type as those of the valley of the somme have been detected in british alluvium. the most marked feature of this alluvium in the thames valley is that great bed of ochreous gravel, composed chiefly of broken and slightly worn chalk flints, on which a great part of london is built. it extends from above maidenhead through the metropolis to the sea, a distance from west to east of miles, having a width varying from to miles. its thickness ranges commonly from to feet.* (* prestwich, "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page .) interstratified with this gravel, in many places, are beds of sand, loam, and clay, the whole containing occasionally remains of the mammoth and other extinct quadrupeds. fine sections have been exposed to view, at different periods, at brentford and kew bridge, others in london itself, and below it at erith in kent, on the right bank of the thames, and at ilford and gray's thurrock in essex, on the left bank. the united thickness of the beds of sand, gravel, and loam amounts sometimes to or even feet. they are for the most part elevated above, but in some cases they descend below, the present level of the overflowed plain of the thames. if the reader will refer to the section of the pleistocene sands and gravels of menchecourt, near abbeville, given at page , he will perfectly understand the relations of the ancient thames alluvium to the modern channel and plain of the river, and their relation, on the other hand, to the boundary formations of older date, whether tertiary or cretaceous. so far as they are known, the fossil mollusca and mammalia of the two districts also agree very closely, the cyrena fluminalis being common to both, and being the only extra-european shell, this and all the species of testacea being recent. of this agreement with the living fauna there is a fine illustration in essex; for the determination of which we are indebted to the late mr. john brown, f.g.s., who collected at copford, in essex, from a deposit containing bones of the mammoth, a large bear (probably ursus spelaeus), a beaver, stag, and aurochs, no less than sixty-nine species of land and freshwater shells. forty-eight of these were terrestrial, and two of them, helix incarnata and h. ruderata, no longer inhabit the british isles, but are still living on the continent, ruderata in high northern latitudes.* (* "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page . mr. brown calls them extinct species, which may mislead some readers, but he merely meant extinct in england. see also jeffreys, "brit. conch." page .) the cyrena fluminalis and the unio littoralis, to which last i shall presently allude, were not among the number. i long ago suggested the hypothesis, that in the basin of the thames there are indications of a meeting in the pleistocene period of a northern and southern fauna. to the northern group may have belonged the mammoth (elephas primigenius) and the rhinoceros tichorhinus, both of which pallas found in siberia, preserved with their flesh in the ice. with these are occasionally associated the reindeer. in the skull of the musk ox (bubalus moschatus) was also found in the ochreous gravel of maidenhead, by the reverend c. kingsley and mr. lubbock; the identification of this fossil with the living species being made by professor owen. a second fossil skull of the same arctic animal was afterwards found by mr. lubbock near bromley, in the valley of a small tributary of the thames; and two other skulls, those of a bull and a cow were dug up near bath easton from the gravel of the valley of the avon by mr. charles moore. professor owen has truly said, that "as this quadruped has a constitution fitting it at present to inhabit the high northern regions of america, we can hardly doubt that its former companions, the warmly-clad mammoth and the two-horned woolly rhinoceros (r. tichorhinus), were in like manner capable of supporting life in a cold climate."* (* "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page .) i have already alluded to the recent discovery of this same ox near chauny, in the valley of the oise, in france; and in i found a skull of it preserved in the museum at berlin, which professor quenstedt, the curator, had correctly named so long ago as , when the fossil was dug out of drift, in the hill called the kreuzberg, in the southern suburbs of that city. by an account published at the time, we find that the mammalia which accompanied the musk ox were the mammoth and tichorhine rhinoceros, with the horse and ox;* but i can find no record of the occurrence of a hippopotamus, nor of elephas antiquus or rhinoceros leptorhinus, in the drift of the north of germany, bordering the baltic. (* "leonhard and bronn's jahrbuch" page .) on the other hand, in another locality in the same drift of north germany, dr. hensel, of berlin, detected, near quedlinburg, the norwegian lemming (myodes lemmus), and another species of the same family called by pallas myodes torquatus (by hensel, misothermus torquatus)--a still more arctic quadruped, found by parry in latitude degrees, and which never strays farther south than the northern borders of the woody region. professor beyrich also informs me that the remains of the rhinoceros tichorhinus were obtained at the same place.* (* "zeitschrift der deutschen geologischen gesellschaft" volume page etc.) as an example of what may possibly have constituted a more southern fauna in the valley of the thames, i may allude to the fossil remains found in the fluviatile alluvium of gray's thurrock, in essex, situated on the left bank of the river, miles below london. the strata of brick-earth, loam, and gravel exposed to view in artificial excavations in that spot, are precisely such as would be formed by the silting up of an old river channel. among the mammalia are elephas antiquus, rhinoceros leptorhinus (r. megarhinus, christol), hippopotamus major, species of horse, bear, ox, stag, etc., and, among the accompanying shells, cyrena fluminalis, which is extremely abundant, instead of being scarce, as at abbeville. it is associated with unio littoralis also in great numbers and with both valves united. this conspicuous freshwater mussel is no longer an inhabitant of the british isles, but still lives in the seine, and is still more abundant in the loire. another freshwater univalve (paludina marginata, michaud), not british, but common in the south of france, likewise occurs, and a peculiar variety of cyclas amnica, which by some naturalists has been regarded as a distinct species. with these, moreover, is found a peculiar variety of valvata piscinalis. if we consult dr. von schrenck's account of the living mammalia of mongolia, lying between latitude and degrees north, we learn that, in that part of north-eastern asia recently annexed to the russian empire, no less than thirty-four out of fifty-eight living quadrupeds are identical with european species, while some of those which do not extend their range to europe are arctic, others tropical forms. the bengal tiger ranges northwards occasionally to latitude degrees north, where he chiefly subsists on the flesh of the reindeer, and the same tiger abounds in latitude degrees, to which the small tailless hare or pika, a polar resident, sometimes wanders southwards.* (* mammalia of amoorland, "natural history review" volume page .) we may readily conceive that the countries now drained by the thames, the somme, and the seine, were, in the pleistocene period, on the borders of two distinct zoological provinces, one lying to the north, the other to the south, in which case many species belonging to each fauna endowed with migratory habits, like the living musk-ox or the bengal tiger, may have been ready to take advantage of any, even the slightest, change in their favour to invade the neighbouring province, whether in the summer or winter months, or permanently for a series of years, or centuries. the elephas antiquus and its associated rhinoceros leptorhinus may have preceded the mammoth and tichorhine rhinoceros in the valley of the thames, or both may have alternately prevailed in the same area in the pleistocene period. in attempting to settle the chronology of fluviatile deposits, it is almost equally difficult to avail ourselves of the evidence of organic remains and of the superposition of the strata, for we may find two old river-beds on the same level in juxtaposition, one of them perhaps many thousands of years posterior in date to the other. i have seen an example of this at ilford, where the thames, or a tributary stream, has at some former period cut through sands containing cyrena fluminalis, and again filled up the channel with argillaceous matter, evidently derived from the waste of the tertiary london clay. such shiftings of the site of the main channel of the river, the frequent removal of gravel and sand previously deposited, and the throwing down of new alluvium, the flooding of tributaries, the rising and sinking of the land, fluctuations in the cold and heat of the climate--all these changes seem to have given rise to that complexity in the fluviatile deposits of the thames, which accounts for the small progress we have hitherto made in determining their order of succession, and that of the imbedded groups of quadrupeds. it may happen, as at brentford and ilford, that sand-pits in two adjoining fields may each contain distinct species of elephant and rhinoceros; and the fossil remains in both cases may occur at the same depth from the surface, yet may be severally referable to different parts of the pleistocene epoch, separated by thousands of years. the relation of the glacial period to alluvial deposits, such as that of gray's thurrock, where the cyrena fluminalis, unio littoralis, and the hippopotamus seem rather to imply a warmer climate, has been a matter of long and animated discussion. patches of the northern drift, at elevations of about feet above the thames, occur in the neighbourhood of london, as at muswell hill, near highgate. in this drift, blocks of granite, syenite, greenstone, coal-measure sandstone with its fossils, and other palaeozoic rocks, and the wreck of chalk and oolite, occur confusedly mixed together. the same glacial formation is also found capping some of the essex hills farther to the east, and extending some way down their southern slopes towards the valley of the thames. although no fragments washed out of these older and upland drifts have been found in the gravel of the thames containing elephants' bones, it is fair to presume, as mr. prestwich has contended,* that the glacial formation is the older of the two. (* prestwich, "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page ; ibid. volume page ; ibid. volume page .) in short, we must suppose that the basin of the thames and all its fluviatile deposits are post-glacial, in the modified sense of that term; i.e. that they were subsequent to the drift of the central and northern counties. having offered these general remarks on the alluvium of the thames, i may now say something of the implements hitherto discovered in it. in the british museum there is a flint weapon of the spear-headed form, such as is represented in figure , which we are told was found with an elephant's tooth at black mary's, near gray's inn lane, london. in a letter dated , printed in herne's edition of "leland's collectanea," volume page , it is stated to have been found in the presence of mr. conyers, with the skeleton of an elephant.* (* evans, "archaeologia" .) so many bones of the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus have been found in the gravel on which london stands, that there is no reason to doubt the statement as handed down to us. fossil remains of all these three genera have been dug up on the site of waterloo place, st. james's square, charing cross, the london docks, limehouse, bethnal green, and other places within the memory of persons now living. in the gravel and sand of shacklewell, in the north-east district of london, i have myself collected specimens of the cyrena fluminalis in great numbers (see figure c), with the bones of deer and other mammalia. in the alluvium also of the wey, near guildford, in a place called pease marsh, a wedge-shaped flint implement, resembling one brought from st. acheul by mr. prestwich, and compared by some antiquaries to a sling-stone, was obtained in by mr. whitburn, feet deep in sand and gravel, in which the teeth and tusks of elephants had been found. the wey flows through the gorge of the north downs at guildford to join the thames. mr. austen has shown that this drift is so ancient that one part of it had been disturbed and tilted before another part was thrown down.* (* "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page .) among other places where flint tools of the antique type have been met with in the course of the last three years, i may mention one of an oval form found by mr. whitaker in the valley of the darent, in kent, and another which mr. evans found lying on the shore at swalecliff, near whitstable, in the same county, where mr. prestwich had previously described a freshwater deposit, resting on the london clay, and consisting chiefly of gravel, in which an elephant's tooth and the bones of a bear were embedded. the flint implement was deeply discoloured and of a peculiar bright light-brown colour, similar to that of the old fluviatile gravel in the cliff. another flint implement was found in by mr. t. leech, at the foot of the cliff between herne bay and the reculvers, and on further search five other specimens of the spear-head pattern so common at amiens. messrs. prestwich and evans have since found three other similar tools on the beach, at the base of the same wasting cliff, which consists of sandy eocene strata, covered by a gravelly deposit of freshwater origin, about feet above the sea-level, from which the flint weapons must have been derived. such old alluvial deposits now capping the cliffs of kent seem to have been the river-beds of tributaries of the thames before the sea encroached to its present position and widened its estuary. on following up one of these freshwater deposits westward of the reculvers, mr. prestwich found in it, at chislet, near grove ferry, the cyrena fluminalis among other shells. the changes which have taken place in the physical geography of this part of england during, or since, the pleistocene period, have consisted partly of such encroachments of the sea on the coast as are now going on, and partly of a general subsidence of the land. among the signs of the latter movement may be mentioned a freshwater formation at faversham, below the level of the sea. the gravel there contains exclusively land and fluviatile shells of the same species as those of other localities of the pleistocene alluvium before mentioned, and must have been formed when the river was at a higher level and when it extended farther east. at that era it was probably a tributary of the rhine, as represented by mr. trimmer in his ideal restoration of the geography of the olden time.* (* "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume plate number .) for england was then united to the continent, and what is now the north sea was land. it is well known that in many places, especially near the coast of holland, elephants' tusks and other bones are often dredged up from the bed of that shallow sea, and the reader will see in the map given in chapter how vast would be the conversion of sea into land by an upheaval of feet. vertical movements of much less than half that amount would account for the annexation of england to the continent, and the extension of the thames and its valley far to the north-east, and the flowing of rivers from the easternmost parts of kent and essex into the thames, instead of emptying themselves into its estuary. more than a dozen flint weapons of the amiens type have already been found in the basin of the thames; but the geological position of no one of them has as yet been ascertained with the same accuracy as that of many of the tools dug up in the valley of the somme. flint implements of the valley of the ouse, near bedford. the ancient fluviatile gravel of the valley of the ouse, around bedford, has been noted for the last thirty years for yielding to collectors a rich harvest of the bones of extinct mammalia. by observations made in and , mr. prestwich had ascertained that the valley was bounded on both sides by oolitic strata, capped by boulder clay, and that the gravel number , figure , contained bones of the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, ox, horse, and deer, which animals he therefore inferred must have been posterior in date to the boulder clay, through which, as well as the subjacent oolite, the valley had been excavated. mr. evans had found in the same gravel many land and freshwater shells, and these discoveries induced mr. james wyatt, of bedford, to pay two visits to st. acheul in order to compare the implement-bearing gravels of the somme with the drift of the valley of the ouse. after his return he resolved to watch carefully the excavation of the gravel-pits at biddenham, miles west-north-west of bedford, in the hope of finding there similar works of art. with this view he paid almost daily visits for months in succession to those pits, and was at last rewarded by the discovery of two well-formed implements, one of the spear-head and the other of the oval shape, perfect counterparts of the two prevailing french types. both specimens were thrown out by the workmen on the same day from the lowest bed of stratified gravel and sand, feet thick, containing bones of the elephant, deer, and ox, and many freshwater shells. the two implements occurred at the depth of feet from the surface of the soil, and rested immediately on solid beds of oolitic limestone, as represented in the accompanying section (figure ). having been invited by mr. wyatt to verify these facts, i went to biddenham within a fortnight of the date of his discovery (april ), and, for the first time, saw evidence which satisfied me of the chronological relations of those three phenomena, the antique tools, the extinct mammalia, and the glacial formation. on that occasion i examined the pits in company with messrs. prestwich, evans, and wyatt, and we collected ten species of shells from the stratified drift number , or the beds overlying the lowest gravel from which the flint implements had been exhumed. they were all of common fluviatile and land species now living in the same part of england. since our visit, mr. wyatt has added to them paludina marginata, michaud (hydrobia of some authors), a species of the south of france no longer inhabiting the british isles. the same geologist has also found, since we were at biddenham, several other flint tools of corresponding type, both there and at other localities in the valley of the ouse, near bedford. [figure . valley of the ouse] (figure . section across the valley of the ouse, two miles west-north-west of bedford.* (* prestwich, "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page ; and wyatt, "geologist" page .) . oolitic strata. . boulder clay, or marine northern drift, rising to about ninety feet above the ouse. . ancient gravel, with elephant bones, freshwater shells, and flint implements. . modern alluvium of the ouse. a. biddenham gravel pits, at the bottom of which flint tools were found.) the boulder clay number extends for miles in all directions, and was evidently once continuous from b to c before the valley was scooped out. it is a portion of the great marine glacial drift of the midland counties of england, and contains blocks, some of large size, not only of the oolite of the neighbourhood, but of chalk and other rocks transported from still greater distances, such as syenite, basalt, quartz, and new red sandstone. these erratic blocks of foreign origin are often polished and striated, having undergone what is called glaciation, of which more will be said by and by. blocks of the same mineral character, embedded at biddenham in the gravel number , have lost all signs of this striation by the friction to which they were subjected in the old river bed. the great width of the valley of the ouse, which is sometimes miles, has not been expressed in the diagram. it may have been shaped out by the joint action of the river and the tides when this part of england was emerging from the waters of the glacial sea, the boulder clay being first cut through, and then an equal thickness of underlying oolite. after this denudation, which may have accompanied the emergence of the land, the country was inhabited by the primitive people who fashioned the flint tools. the old river, aided perhaps by the continued upheaval of the whole country, or by oscillations in its level, went on widening and deepening the valley, often shifting its channel, until at length a broad area was covered by a succession of the earliest and latest deposits, which may have corresponded in age to the higher and lower gravels of the valley of the somme, already described. at biddenham, and elsewhere in the same gravel, remains of elephas antiquus have been discovered, and mr. wyatt obtained, january , a flint implement associated with bones and teeth of hippopotamus from gravel at summerhouse hill, which lies east of bedford, lower down the valley of the ouse, and miles from biddenham. one step at least we gain by the bedford sections, which those of amiens and abbeville had not enabled us to make. they teach us that the fabricators of the antique tools, and the extinct mammalia coeval with them, were all post-glacial. flint implements in a freshwater deposit at hoxne in suffolk [ ]. so early as the first year of the nineteenth century, a remarkable paper was communicated to the society of antiquaries by mr. john frere, in which he gave a clear description of the discovery at hoxne, near diss, in suffolk, of flint tools of the type since found at amiens, adding at the same time good geological reasons for presuming that their antiquity was very great, or, as he expressed it, beyond that of the present world, meaning the actual state of the physical geography of that region. "the flints," he said, "were evidently weapons of war, fabricated and used by a people who had not the use of metals. they lay in great numbers at the depth of about feet in a stratified soil which was dug into for the purpose of raising clay for bricks. under a foot and a half of vegetable earth was clay / feet thick, and beneath this one foot of sand with shells, and under this feet of gravel, in which the shaped flints were found generally at the rate of or in a square yard. in the sandy beds with shells were found the jawbone and teeth of an enormous unknown animal. the manner in which the flint weapons lay would lead to the persuasion that it was a place of their manufacture, and not of their accidental deposit. their numbers were so great that the man who carried on the brick-work told me that before he was aware of their being objects of curiosity, he had emptied baskets full of them into the ruts of the adjoining road." mr. frere then goes on to explain that the strata in which the flints occur are disposed horizontally, and do not lie at the foot of any higher ground, so that portions of them must have been removed when the adjoining valley was hollowed out. if the author had not mistaken the freshwater shells associated with the tools for marine species, there would have been nothing to correct in his account of the geology of the district, for he distinctly perceived that the strata in which the implements were embedded had, since that time, undergone very extensive denudation.* (* frere, "archaeologia" volume page .) specimens of the flint spear-heads, sent to london by mr. frere, are still preserved in the british museum, and others are in the collection of the society of antiquaries. [illustration: figure . position of flint weapons] (figure . section showing the position of the flint weapons at hoxne, near diss, suffolk. see prestwich "philosophical transactions" plate .) . gravel of gold brook, a tributary of the waveney. . higher-level gravel overlying the freshwater deposit. and . sand and gravel, with freshwater shells, and flint implements, and bones of mammalia. . peaty and clayey beds, with same fossils. . boulder clay or glacial drift. . sand and gravel below boulder clay. . chalk with flints.) mr. prestwich's attention was called by mr. evans to these weapons, as well as to mr. frere's memoir after his return from amiens in , and he lost no time in visiting hoxne, a village five miles eastward of diss. it is not a little remarkable that he should have found, after a lapse of sixty years, that the extraction of clay was still going on in the same brick-pit. only a few months before his arrival, two flint instruments had been dug out of the clay, one from a depth of and the other of feet from the surface. others have since been disinterred from undisturbed beds of gravel in the same pit. mr. amyot of diss has also obtained from the underlying freshwater strata the astragalus of an elephant, and bones of the deer and horse; but although many of the old implements have recently been discovered in situ in regular strata and preserved by sir edward kerrison, no bones of extinct mammalia seem as yet to have been actually seen in the same stratum with one of the tools. by reference to the annexed section, the geologist will see that the basin-shaped hollow a, b, c has been filled up gradually with the freshwater strata , , , after the same cavity a, b, c had been previously excavated out of the more ancient boulder clay number . the relative position of these formations will be better understood when i have described in the twelfth chapter the structure of norfolk and suffolk as laid open in the sea-cliffs at mundesley, about miles distant from hoxne, in a north-north-east direction. i examined the deposits at hoxne in , when i had the advantage of being accompanied by the reverend j. gunn and the reverend s.w. king. in the loamy beds and , figure , we observed the common river shell valvata piscinalis in great numbers. with it, but much more rare, were limnaea palustris, planorbis albus, p. spirorbis, succinea putris, bithynia tentaculata, cyclas cornea; and mr. prestwich mentions cyclas amnica and fragments of a unio, besides several land shells. in the black peaty mass number , fragments of wood of the oak, yew, and fir have been recognised. the flint weapons which i have seen from hoxne are so much more perfect, and have their cutting edge so much sharper than those from the valley of the somme, that they seem neither to have been used by man, nor to have been rolled in the bed of a river. the opinion of mr. frere, therefore, that there may have been a manufactory of weapons on the spot, appears probable. flint implements at icklingham in suffolk. in another part of suffolk, at icklingham, in the valley of the lark, below bury st. edmund's, there is a bed of gravel, in which teeth of elephas primigenius and several flint tools, chiefly of a lance-head form, have been found. i have twice visited the spot, which has been correctly described by mr. prestwich.* (* "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume , page .) the section of the bedford tool-bearing alluvium, given in figure , may serve to illustrate that of icklingham, if we substitute chalk for oolite, and the river lark for the ouse. in both cases, the present bed of the river is about feet below the level of the old gravel, and the chalk hill, which bounds the valley of the lark on the right side, is capped like the oolite of biddenham by boulder clay, which rises to the height of feet above the lark. about twelve years ago, a large erratic block, above feet in diameter, was dug out of the boulder clay at icklingham, which i found to consist of a hard siliceous schist, which must have come from a remote region. the tool-bearing gravel here, as in the case to which it has been compared near bedford, is proved to be newer than the glacial drift, by containing pebbles of basalt and other rocks derived from that formation. chapter . -- cavern deposits, and places of sepulture of the pleistocene period. flint implements in cave containing hyaena and other extinct mammalia in somersetshire. caves of the gower peninsula in south wales. rhinoceros hemitoechus. ossiferous caves near palermo. sicily once part of africa. rise of bed of the mediterranean to the height of three hundred feet in the human period in sardinia. burial-place of pleistocene date of aurignac in the south of france. rhinoceros tichorhinus eaten by man. m. lartet on extinct mammalia and works of art found in the aurignac cave. relative antiquity of the same considered. works of art associated with extinct mammalia in a cavern in somersetshire. the only british cave from which implements resembling those of amiens have been obtained, since the attention of geologists has been awakened to the importance of minutely observing the position of such relics relatively to the associated fossil mammalia, is that recently opened near wells in somersetshire. it occurs near the cave of wookey hole, from the mouth of which the river axe issues on the southern flanks of the mendips. no one had suspected that on the left side of the ravine, through which the river flows after escaping from its subterranean channel, there were other caves and fissures concealed beneath the green sward of the steep sloping bank. about ten years ago, a canal was made, several hundred yards in length, for the purpose of leading the waters of the axe to a paper-mill, now occupying the middle of the ravine. in carrying out this work, about feet of the left bank was cut away, and a cavernous fissure, choked up to the roof with ossiferous loam, was then, for the first time, exposed to view. this great cavity, originally feet high and wide, traversed the dolomitic conglomerate; and fragments of that rock, some angular and others water-worn, were scattered through the red mud of the cave, in which fossil remains were abundant. for an account of them and the position they occupied we are indebted to mr. dawkins, f.g.s., who, in company with mr. williamson, explored the cavern in , and obtained from it the bones of the hyaena spelaea in such numbers as to lead him to conclude that the cavern had for a long time been a hyaena's den. among the accompanying animals found fossil in the same bone-earth, were observed elephas primigenius, rhinoceros tichorhinus, ursus spelaeus, bos primigenius, megaceros hibernicus, cervus tarandus (and other species of cervus), felis spelaea, canis lupus, canis vulpes, and teeth and bones of the genus equus in great numbers. intermixed with the above fossil bones were some arrowheads, made of bone, and many chipped flints, and chipped pieces of chert, a white or bleached flint weapon of the spearhead amiens type, which was taken out of the undisturbed matrix by mr. williamson himself, together with a hyaena's tooth, showing that man had either been contemporaneous with or had preceded the extinct fauna. after penetrating feet from the entrance, mr. dawkins found the cave bifurcating into two branches, one of which was vertical. by this rent, perhaps, some part of the contents of the cave may have been introduced.* (* boyd dawkins, "proceedings of the geological society" january .) when i examined the spot in , after i had been shown some remains of the hyaena collected there, i felt convinced that a complete revolution must have taken place in the topography of the district since the time of the extinct quadrupeds. i was not aware at the time that flint tools had been met with in the same bone-deposit. caves of gower in glamorganshire, south wales. the ossiferous caves of the peninsula of gower in glamorganshire have been diligently explored of late years by dr. falconer and lieutenant-colonel e.r. wood, who have thoroughly investigated the contents of many which were previously unknown. among these dr. falconer's skilled eye has recognised the remains of almost every quadruped which he had elsewhere found fossil in british caves: in some places the elephas primigenius, accompanied by its usual companion, the rhinoceros tichorhinus, in others elephas antiquus, associated with rhinoceros hemitoechus, falconer; the extinct animals being often embedded, as in the belgian caves, in the same matrix with species now living in europe, such as the common badger (meles taxus), the common wolf, and the fox. in a cavernous fissure called the raven's cliff, teeth of several individuals of hippopotamus major, both young and old, were found; and this in a district where there is now scarce a rill of running water, much less a river in which such quadrupeds could swim. in one of the caves, called spritsail tor, bones of the elephants above named were observed, with a great many other quadrupeds of recent and extinct species. from one fissure, called bosco's den, no less than one thousand antlers of the reindeer, chiefly of the variety called cervus guettardi, were extracted by the persevering exertions of colonel wood, who estimated that several hundred more still remained in the bone-earth of the same rent. they were mostly shed horns, and of young animals; and had been washed into the rent with other bones, and with angular fragments of limestone, and all enveloped in the same ochreous mud. among the other bones, which were not numerous, were those of the cave-bear, wolf, fox, ox, stag, and field-mouse. but the discovery of most importance, as bearing on the subject of the present work, is the occurrence in a newly-discovered cave, called long hole, by colonel wood, in , of the remains of two species of rhinoceros, r. tichorhinus and r. hemitoechus, falconer, in an undisturbed deposit, in the lower part of which were some well-shaped flint knives, evidently of human workmanship. it is clear from their position that man was coeval with these two species. we have elsewhere independent proofs of his co-existence with every other species of the cave-fauna of glamorganshire; but this is the first well-authenticated example of the occurrence of r. hemitoechus in connection with human implements. in the fossil fauna of the valley of the thames, rhinoceros leptorhinus was mentioned as occurring at gray's thurrock with elephas antiquus. dr. falconer, in a memoir which he is now preparing for the press on the european pliocene and pleistocene species of the genus rhinoceros, has shown that, under the above name of r. leptorhinus, three distinct species have been confounded by cuvier, owen, and other palaeontologists:-- . r. megarhinus, christol, being the original and typical r. leptorhinus of cuvier, founded on cortesi's monte zago cranium, and the only pliocene, or pleistocene european species, that had not a nasal septum.--gray's thurrock, etc. . r. hemitoechus, falconer, in which the ossification of the septum dividing the nostrils is incomplete in the middle, besides other cranial and dental characters distinguishing it from r. tichorhinus, accompanies elephas antiquus in most of the oldest british bone-caves, such as kirkdale, cefn, durdham down, minchin hole, and other gower caverns--also found at clacton, in essex, and in northamptonshire. . r. etruscus, falconer, a comparatively slight and slender form, also with an incomplete bony septum,* occurs deep in the val d'arno deposits, and in the "forest bed," and superimposed blue clays, with lignite, of the norfolk coast, but nowhere as yet found in the ossiferous caves in britain. (* falconer, "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page .) dr. falconer announced in his opinion that the filling up of the gower caves in south wales took place after the deposition of the marine boulder clay,* an opinion in harmony with what we have since learnt from the section of the gravels near bedford, given above (figure ), where a fauna corresponding to that of the welsh caves characterises the ancient alluvium, and is shown to be clearly post-glacial, in the sense of being posterior in date to the boulder-clay of the midland counties. (* ibid. volume page .) in the same sense the late edward forbes declared, in , his conviction that not only the cervus megaceros, but also the mammoth and other extinct pachyderms and carnivora, had lived in britain in post-glacial times.* (* "memoir of the geological survey" pages to .) the gower caves in general have their floors strewed over with sand, containing marine shells, all of living species; and there are raised beaches on the adjoining coast, and other geological signs of great alteration in the relative level of land and sea, since that country was inhabited by the extinct mammalia, some of which, as we have seen, were certainly coeval with man. ossiferous caves in the north of sicily. geologists have long been familiar with the fact that on the northern coast of sicily, between termini on the east, and trapani on the west, there are several caves containing the bones of extinct animals. these caves are situated in rocks of hippurite limestone, a member of the cretaceous series, and some of them may be seen on both sides of the bay of palermo. if in the neighbourhood of that city we proceed from the sea inland, ascending a sloping terrace, composed of the marine newer pliocene strata, we reach about a mile from the shore, and at the height of about feet above it a precipice of limestone, at the base of which appear the entrances of several caves. in that of san ciro, on the east side of the bay, we find at the bottom sand with marine shells, forty species of which have been examined, and found almost all to agree specifically with mollusca now inhabiting the mediterranean. higher in position, and resting on the sand, is a breccia, composed of pieces of limestone, quartz, and schist in a matrix of brown marl, through which land shells are dispersed, together with bones of two species of hippopotamus, as determined by dr. falconer. certain bones of the skeleton were counted in such numbers as to prove that they must have belonged to several hundred individuals. with these were associated the remains of elephas antiquus, and bones of the genera bos, cervus, sus, ursus, canis, and a large felis. some of these bones have been rolled as if partially subjected to the action of water, and may have been introduced by streams through rents in the hippurite limestone; but there is now no running water in the neighbourhood, no river such as the hippopotamus might frequent, not even a small brook, so that the physical geography of the district must have been altogether changed since the time when such remains were swept into fissures, or into the channels of engulfed rivers. no proofs seem yet to have been found of the existence of man at the period when the hippopotamus and elephas antiquus flourished at san ciro. but there is another cave called the grotto di maccagnone, which much resembles it in geological position, on the opposite or west side of the bay of palermo, near carini. in the bottom of this cave a bone deposit like that of san ciro occurs, and above it other materials reaching to the roof, and evidently washed in from above, through crevices in the limestone. in this upper and newer breccia dr. falconer discovered flint knives, bone splinters, bits of charcoal, burnt clay, and other objects indicating human intervention, mingled with entire land shells, teeth of horses, coprolites of hyaenas, and other bones, the whole agglutinated to one another and to the roof by the infiltration of water holding lime in solution. the perfect condition of the large fragile helices (helix vermiculata) afforded satisfactory evidence, says dr. falconer, that the various articles were carried into the cave by the tranquil agency of water, and not by any tumultuous action. at a subsequent period other geographical changes took place, so that the cave, after it had been filled, was washed out again, or emptied of its contents with the exception of those patches of breccia which, being cemented together by stalactite, still adhere to the roof.* (* "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page .) baron anca, following up these investigations, explored, in , another cave at mondello, west of palermo, and north of mount gallo, where he discovered molars of the living african elephant, and afterwards additional specimens of the same species in the neighbouring grotto of olivella. in reference to this elephant, dr. falconer has reminded us that the distance between the nearest part of sicily and the coast of africa, between marsala and cape bon, is not more than miles, and admiral smyth, in his memoir on the mediterranean, states (page ) that there is a subaqueous plateau, named by him adventure bank, uniting sicily to africa by a succession of ridges which are not more than from to fathoms under water.* (* cited by horner, "presidential address to the geological society" page .) sicily therefore might be re-united to africa by movements of upheaval not greater than those which are already known to have taken place within the human period on the borders of the mediterranean, of which i shall now proceed to cite a well-authenticated example, observed in sardinia. rise of the bed of the sea to the height of feet, in the human period, in sardinia. count albert de la marmora, in his description of the geology of sardinia,* has shown that on the southern coast of that island, at cagliari and in the neighbourhood, an ancient bed of the sea, containing marine shells of living species, and numerous fragments of antique pottery, has been elevated to the height of from to feet above the present level of the mediterranean. (* "partie geologique" volume pages and .) oysters and other shells, of which a careful list has been published, including the common mussel (mytilus edulis), many of them having both valves united, occur, embedded in a breccia in which fragments of limestone abound. the mussels are often in such numbers as to impart, when they have decomposed, a violet colour to the marine stratum. besides pieces of coarse pottery, a flattened ball of baked earthenware, with a hole through its axis, was found in the midst of the marine shells. it is supposed to have been used for weighting a fishing net. of this and of one of the fragments of ancient pottery count de la marmora has given figures. the upraised bed of the sea probably belongs in this instance to the pleistocene period, for in a bone breccia, filling fissures in the rocks around cagliari, the remains of extinct mammalia have been detected; among which is a new genus of carnivorous quadruped, named cynotherium by m. studiati, and figured by count de la marmora in his atlas (plate ), also an extinct species of lagomys, determined by cuvier in . embedded in the same bone-breccia, and enveloped with red earth like the mammalian remains, were detected shells of the mytilus edulis before mentioned, implying that the marine formation containing shells and pottery had been already upheaved and exposed to denudation before the remains of quadrupeds were washed into these rents and included in the red earth. in the vegetable soil covering the upraised marine stratum, fragments of roman pottery occur. if we assume the average rate of upheaval to have been, as before hinted, / feet in a century, feet would give an antiquity of , years to the cagliari pottery, even if we simply confine our estimate to the upheaval above the sea-level, without allowing for the original depth of water in which the mollusca lived. even then our calculation would merely embrace the period during which the upward movement was going on; and we can form at present no conjecture as to the probable era of its commencement or termination. i learn from captain spratt, r.n., that the island of crete or candia, about miles in length, has been raised at its western extremity about feet; so that ancient ports are now high and dry above the sea, while at its eastern end it has sunk so much that the ruins of old towns are seen under water. revolutions like these in the physical geography of the countries bordering the mediterranean, may well help us to understand the phenomena of the palermo caves, and the presence in sicily of african species of mammalia. climate and habits of the hippopotamus. as i have alluded more than once in this chapter to the occurrence of the remains of the hippopotamus in places where there are now no rivers, not even a rill of water, and as other bones of the same genus have been met with in the lower-level gravels of the somme where large blocks of sandstone seem to imply that ice once played a part in their transportation, it may be well to consider, before proceeding farther, what geographical and climatal conditions are indicated by the presence of these fossil pachyderms. it is now very generally conceded that the mammoth and tichorhine rhinoceros were fitted to inhabit northern regions, and it is therefore natural to begin by asking whether the extinct hippopotamus may not in like manner have flourished in a cold climate. in answer to this inquiry, it has been remarked that the living hippopotami, anatomically speaking so closely allied to the extinct species, are so aquatic and fluviatile in their habits as to make it difficult to conceive that their congeners could have thriven all the year round in regions where, during winter, the rivers were frozen over for months. moreover, i have been unable to learn that, in any instance, bones of the hippopotamus have been found in the drift of northern germany associated with the remains of the mammoth, tichorhine rhinoceros, musk-ox, reindeer, lemming, and other arctic quadrupeds before alluded to; yet, though not proved to have ever made a part of such a fauna, the presence of the fossil hippopotamus north of the fiftieth parallel of latitude naturally tempts us to speculate on the migratory powers and instincts of some of the extinct species of the genus. they may have resembled, in this respect, the living musk-ox, herds of which pass for hundreds of miles over the ice to the rich pastures of melville island, and then return again to southern latitudes before the ice breaks up. we are indebted to sir andrew smith,* an experienced zoologist, for having given us an account of the migratory habits of the living hippopotamus of southern africa (h. amphibius, linn.). (* "illustrations of the zoology of south africa": article "hippopotamus.") he states that, when the dutch first colonised the cape of good hope, this animal abounded in all the great rivers, as far south as the land extends; whereas, in , they had all disappeared, scarcely one remaining even within a moderate distance of the colony. he also tells us that this species evinces great sagacity in changing its quarters whenever danger threatens, quitting every district invaded by settlers bearing fire-arms. bulky as they are, they can travel speedily for miles over land from one pool of a dried-up river to another; but it is by water that their powers of locomotion are surpassingly great, not only in rivers, but in the sea, for they are far from confining themselves to fresh water. indeed, sir a. smith finds it "difficult to decide whether, during the daytime and when not feeding, they prefer the pools of rivers or the waters of the ocean for their abode." in districts where they have been disturbed by man, they feed almost entirely in the night, chiefly on certain kinds of grass, but also on brushwood. sir a. smith relates that, in an expedition which he made north of port natal, he found them swarming in all the rivers about the tropic of capricorn. here they were often seen to have left their footprints on the sands, entering or coming out of the salt water; and on one occasion smith's party tried in vain to intercept a female with her young as she was making her way to the sea. another female, which they had wounded on her precipitate retreat to the sea, was afterwards shot in that element. the geologist, therefore, may freely speculate on the time when herds of hippopotami issued from north african rivers, such as the nile, and swam northwards in summer along the coasts of the mediterranean, or even occasionally visited islands near the shore. here and there they may have landed to graze or browse, tarrying awhile and afterwards continuing their course northwards. others may have swum in a few summer days from rivers in the south of spain or france to the somme, thames, or severn, making timely retreat to the south before the snow and ice set in. burial-place at aurignac, in the south of france, of pleistocene date. i have alluded in the beginning of the fourth chapter to a custom prevalent among rude nations of consigning to the tomb works of art, once the property of the dead, or objects of their affection, and even of storing up, in many cases, animal food destined for the manes of the defunct in a future life. i also cited m. desnoyers' comments on the absence among the bones of wild and domestic animals found in old gaulish tombs of all intermixture of extinct species of quadrupeds, as proving that the oldest sepulchral monuments then known in france ( ) had no claims to high antiquity founded on palaeontological data. m. lartet, however, has recently published a circumstantial account of what seems clearly to have been a sepulchral vault of the pleistocene period, near aurignac, not far from the foot of the pyrenees. i have had the advantage of inspecting the fossil bones and works of art obtained by him from that grotto, and of conversing and corresponding with him on the subject, and can see no grounds for doubting the soundness of his conclusions.* (* see lartet, "annales des sci. nat." mo. ser. zoologie volume page translated in "natural history review" london january .) [illustration: figure . hill of fajoles] (figure . section of part of the hill of fajoles passing through the sepulchral grotto of aurignac (e. lartet). a. part of the vault in which the remains of seventeen human skeletons were found. b. layer of made ground, two feet thick, inside the grotto in which a few human bones, with entire bones of extinct and living species of animals, and many works of art were embedded. c. layers of ashes and charcoal, six inches thick, with broken, burnt, and gnawed bones of extinct and recent mammalia; also hearth-stones and works of art; no human bones. d. deposit with similar contents and a few scattered cinders. e. talus of rubbish washed down from the hill above. f, g. slab of rock which closed the vault, not ascertained whether it extended to h. f i. rabbit burrow which led to the discovery of the grotto. h, k. original terrace on which the grotto opened. n. nummulitic limestone of hill of fajoles.) the town of aurignac is situated in the department of the haute-garonne, near a spur of the pyrenees; adjoining it is the small flat-topped hill of fajoles, about feet above the brook called rodes, which flows at its foot on one side. it consists of nummulitic limestone, presenting a steep escarpment towards the north-west, on which side in the face of the rock, about feet above the brook, is now visible the entrance of a grotto a, figure , which opened originally on the terrace h, c, k, which slopes gently towards the valley. until the year , the opening into this grotto was masked by a talus of small fragments of limestone and earthy matter e, such as the rain may have washed down the slope of the hill. in that year a labourer named bonnemaison, employed in repairing the roads, observed that rabbits, when hotly pursued by the sportsman, ran into a hole which they had burrowed in the talus, at i f, figure . on reaching as far into the opening as the length of his arm, he drew out, to his surprise, one of the long bones of the human skeleton; and his curiosity being excited, and having a suspicion that the hole communicated with a subterranean cavity, he commenced digging a trench through the middle of the talus, and in a few hours found himself opposite a large heavy slab of rock f h, placed vertically against the entrance. having removed this, he discovered on the other side of it an arched cavity a, or feet in its greatest height, in width, and in horizontal depth. it was almost filled with bones, among which were two entire skulls, which he recognised at once as human. the people of aurignac, astonished to hear of the occurrence of so many human relics in so lonely a spot, flocked to the cave, and dr. amiel, the mayor, ordered all the bones to be taken out and reinterred in the parish cemetery. but before this was done, having as a medical man a knowledge of anatomy, he ascertained by counting the homologous bones that they must have formed parts of no less than seventeen skeletons of both sexes, and all ages; some so young that the ossification of some of the bones was incomplete. unfortunately the skulls were injured in the transfer; and what is worse, after the lapse of eight years, when m. lartet visited aurignac, the village sexton was unable to tell him in what exact place the trench was dug, into which the skeletons had been thrown, so that this rich harvest of ethnological knowledge seems for ever lost to the antiquary and geologist. m. lartet having been shown, in , the remains of some extinct animals and works of art, found in digging the original trench made by bonnemaison through the bed d under the talus, and some others brought out from the interior of the grotto, determined to investigate systematically what remained intact of the deposits outside and inside the vault, those inside, underlying the human skeletons, being supposed to consist entirely of made ground. having obtained the assistance of some intelligent workmen, he personally superintended their labours, and found outside the grotto, resting on the sloping terrace h k, the layer of ashes and charcoal c, about inches thick, extending over an area of or square yards, and going as far as the entrance of the grotto and no farther, there being no cinders or charcoal in the interior. among the cinders outside the vault were fragments of fissile sandstone, reddened by heat, which were observed to rest on a levelled surface of nummulitic limestone and to have formed a hearth. the nearest place from whence such slabs of sandstone could have been brought was the opposite side of the valley. among the ashes, and in some overlying earthy layers, d, separating the ashes from the talus e, were a great variety of bones and implements; amongst the latter not fewer than a hundred flint articles--knives, projectiles, sling stones, and chips, and among them one of those siliceous cores or nuclei with numerous facets, from which flint flakes or knives had been struck off, seeming to prove that some instruments were occasionally manufactured on the very spot. among other articles outside the entrance was found a stone of a circular form, and flattened on two sides, with a central depression, composed of a tough rock which does not belong to that region of the pyrenees. this instrument is supposed by the danish antiquaries to have been used for removing by skilful blows the edges of flint knives, the fingers and thumb being placed in the two opposite depressions during the operation. among the bone instruments were arrows without barbs, and other tools made of reindeer horn, and a bodkin formed out of the more compact horn of the roedeer. this instrument was well shaped, and sharply pointed, and in so good a state of preservation that it might still be used for piercing the tough skins of animals. scattered through the same ashes and earth were the bones of the various species of animals enumerated in the subjoined lists, with the exception of two, marked with an asterisk, which only occurred in the interior of the grotto:-- table / . numbers of individuals, bones of which were found in the aurignac cave. column : name of species. column : number of individuals. . carnivora . ursus spelaeus (cave-bear): to . . ursus arctos? (brown bear): . . meles taxus (badger): to . . putorius vulgaris (polecat): . . *felis spelaea (cave-lion): . . felis catus ferus (wild cat): . . hyaena spelaea (cave-hyaena): to . . canis lupus (wolf): . . canis vulpes (fox): to . . herbivora. . elephas primigenius (mammoth, two molars). . rhinoceros tichorhinus (siberian rhinoceros): . . equus caballus (horse): to . . equus asinus (?) (ass): . . *sus scrofa (pig, two incisors). . cervus elaphus (stag): . . megaceros hibernicus (gigantic irish deer): . . c. capreolus (roebuck): to . . c. tarandus (reindeer): to . . bison europaeus (aurochs): to . the bones of the herbivora were the most numerous, and all those on the outside of the grotto which had contained marrow were invariably split open, as if for its extraction, many of them being also burnt. the spongy parts, moreover, were wanting, having been eaten off and gnawed after they were broken, the work, according to m. lartet, of hyaenas, the bones and coprolites of which were mixed with the cinders, and dispersed through the overlying soil d. these beasts of prey are supposed to have prowled about the spot and fed on such relics of the funeral feasts as remained after the retreat of the human visitors, or during the intervals between successive funeral ceremonies which accompanied the interment of the corpses within the sepulchre. many of the bones were also streaked, as if the flesh had been scraped off by a flint instrument. among the various proofs that the bones were fresh when brought to the spot, it is remarked that those of the herbivora not only bore the marks of having had the marrow extracted and having afterwards been gnawed and in part devoured as if by carnivorous beasts, but that they had also been acted upon by fire (and this was especially noticed in one case of a cave-bear's bone), in such a manner as to show that they retained in them at the time all their animal matter. among other quadrupeds which appear to have been eaten at the funeral feasts, and of which the bones occurred among the ashes, were those of a young rhinoceros tichorhinus, the bones of which had been, like those of the accompanying herbivora, broken and gnawed by a beast of prey at both extremities. outside of the great slab of stone forming the door, not one human bone occurred; inside of it there were found, mixed with loose soil, the remains of as many as seventeen human individuals, besides some works of art and bones of animals. we know nothing of the arrangement of these bones when they were first broken into. m. lartet inferred at first that the bodies were bent down upon themselves in a squatting attitude, a posture known to have been adopted in most of the sepulchres of primitive times; and he has so represented them in his restoration of the cave: but this opinion he has since retracted. his artist also has inadvertently, in the same drawing, delineated the arched grotto as if it were shaped very regularly and smoothly, like a finished piece of masonry, whereas the surface was in truth as uneven and irregular as are the roofs of all natural grottos. there was no stalagmite in the grotto, and m. lartet, an experienced investigator of ossiferous caverns in the south of france, came to the conclusion that all the bones and soil found in the inside were artificially introduced. the substratum b, figure , which remained after the skeletons had been removed, was about feet thick. in it were found about ten detached human bones, including a molar tooth; and m. delesse ascertained by careful analysis of one of these, as well as of the bones of a rhinoceros, bear, and some other extinct animals, that they all contained precisely the same proportion of nitrogen, or had lost an equal amount of their animal matter. my friend mr. evans, before cited, has suggested to me that such a fact, taken alone, may not be conclusive in favour of the equal antiquity of the human and other remains. no doubt, had the human skeletons been found to contain more gelatine than those of the extinct mammalia, it would have shown that they were the more modern of the two; but it is possible that after a bone has gone on losing its animal matter up to a certain point, it may then part with no more so long as it continues enveloped in the same matrix. if this be so, it follows that bones of very different degrees of antiquity, after they have lain for many thousands of years in a particular soil, may all have reached long ago the maximum of decomposition attainable in such a matrix. in the present case, however, the proof of the contemporaneousness of man and the extinct animals does not depend simply on the identity of their mineral condition. the chemical analysis of m. delesse is only a fact in corroboration of a great mass of other evidence. mixed with the human bones inside the grotto first removed by bonnemaison, were eighteen small, round, and flat plates of a white shelly substance, made of some species of cockle (cardium), pierced through the middle as if for being strung into a bracelet. in the substratum also in the interior examined by m. lartet was found the tusk of a young ursus spelaeus, the crown of which had been stripped of its enamel, and which had been carved perhaps in imitation of the head of a bird. it was perforated lengthwise as if for suspension as an ornament or amulet. a flint knife also was found in the interior which had evidently never been used; in this respect, unlike the numerous worn specimens found outside, so that it is conjectured that it may, like other associated works of art, have been placed there as part of the funeral ceremonies. a few teeth of the cave-lion, felis spelaea, and two tusks of the wild boar, also found in the interior, were memorials perhaps of the chase. no remains of the same animals were met with among the external relics. on the whole, the bones of animals inside the vault offer a remarkable contrast to those of the exterior, being all entire and uninjured, none of them broken, gnawed, half-eaten, scraped, or burnt like those lying among the ashes on the other side of the great slab which formed the portal. the bones of the interior seem to have been clothed with their flesh when buried in the layer of loose soil strewed over the floor. in confirmation of this idea, many bones of the skeleton were often observed to be in juxtaposition, and in one spot all the bones of the leg of an ursus spelaeus were lying together uninjured. add to this, the entire absence in the interior of cinders and charcoal, and we can scarcely doubt that we have here an example of an ancient place of sepulture, closed at the opening so effectually against the hyaenas or other carnivora that no marks of their teeth appear on any of the bones, whether human or brute. john carver, in his travels in the interior of north america in a - (chapter .), gave a minute account of the funeral rites of an indian tribe which inhabited the country now called iowa, at the junction of the st. peter's river with the mississippi; and schiller, in his famous "nadowessische todtenklage," has faithfully embodied in a poetic dirge all the characteristic features of the ceremonies so graphically described by the english traveller, not omitting the many funeral gifts which, we are told, were placed "in a cave" with the bodies of the dead. the lines beginning, "bringet her die letzten gaben," have been thus translated, truthfully, and with all the spirit of the original, by sir e. l. bulwer*:-- "here bring the last gifts!--and with these the last lament be said; let all that pleased, and yet may please, be buried with the dead. "beneath his head the hatchet hide, that he so stoutly swung; and place the bear's fat haunch beside-- the journey hence is long! "and let the knife new sharpened be that on the battle-day shore with quick strokes--he took but three-- the foeman's scalp away! "the paints that warriors love to use, place here within his hand, that he may shine with ruddy hues amidst the spirit-land." (* "poems and ballads of schiller.") if we accept m. lartet's interpretation of the ossiferous deposits of aurignac, both inside and outside the grotto, they add nothing to the palaeontological evidence in favour of man's antiquity, for we have seen all the same mammalia associated elsewhere with flint implements, and some species, such as the elephas antiquus, rhinoceros hemitoechus, and hippopotamus major, missing here, have been met with in other places. an argument, however, having an opposite leaning may perhaps be founded on the phenomena of aurignac. it may--indeed it has been said, that they imply that some of the extinct mammalia survived nearly to our times: first--because of the modern style of the works of art at aurignac. secondly--because of the absence of any signs of change in the physical geography of the country since the cave was used for a place of sepulture. in reference to the first of these propositions, the utensils, it is said, of bone and stone indicate a more advanced state of the arts than the flint implements of abbeville and amiens. m. lartet, however, is of opinion that they do not, and thinks that we have no right to assume that the fabricators of the various spear-headed and other tools of the valley of the somme possessed no bone instruments or ornaments resembling those discovered at aurignac. these last, moreover, he regards as extremely rude in comparison with others of the stone period in france, which can be proved palaeontologically, at least by strong negative evidence, to be of subsequent date. thus, for example, at savigne, near civray, in the department of vienne, there is a cave in which there are no extinct mammalia, but where remains of the reindeer abound. the works of art of the stone period found there indicate considerable progress in skill beyond that attested by the objects found in the aurignac grotto. among the savigne articles, there is the bone of a stag, on which figures of two animals, apparently meant for deer, are engraved in outline, as if by a sharp-pointed flint. in another cave, that of massat, in the department of ariege, which m. lartet ascribes to the period of the aurochs, a quadruped which survived the reindeer in the south of france, there are bone instruments of a still more advanced state of the arts, as, for example, barbed arrows with a small canal in each, believed to have served for the insertion of poison; also a needle of bird's bone, finely shaped, with an eye or perforation at one end, and a stag's horn, on which is carved a representation of a bear's head, and a hole at one end as if for suspending it. in this figure we see, says m. lartet, what may perhaps be the earliest known example of lines used to express shading. the fauna of the aurochs (bison europaeus) agrees with that of the earlier lake dwellings in switzerland, in which hitherto the reindeer is wanting; whereas the reindeer has been found in a swiss cave, in mont saleve, supposed by lartet to be more ancient than the lake dwellings. according to this view, the mammalian fauna has undergone at least two fluctuations since the remains of some extinct quadrupeds were eaten, and others buried as funeral gifts in the sepulchral vault of aurignac. as to the absence of any marked changes in the physical configuration of the district since the same grotto was a place of sepulture, we must remember that it is the normal state of the earth's surface to be undergoing great alterations in one place, while other areas, often in close proximity, remain for ages without any modification. in one region, rivers are deepening and widening their channels, or the waves of the sea are undermining cliffs, or the land is sinking beneath or rising above the waters, century after century, or the volcano is pouring forth torrents of lava or showers of ashes; while, in tracts hard by, the ancient forest, or extensive heath, or the splendid city continue scatheless and motionless. had the talus which concealed from view the ancient hearth with its cinders and the massive stone portal of the aurignac grotto escaped all human interference for thousands of years to come, there is no reason to suppose that the small stream at the foot of the hill of fajoles would have undermined it. at the end of a long period the only alteration might have been the thickening of the talus which protected the loose cinders and bones from waste. we behold in many a valley of auvergne, within feet of the present river channel, a volcanic cone of loose ashes, with a crater at its summit, from which powerful currents of basaltic lava have poured, usurping the ancient bed of the torrent. by the action of the stream, in the course of ages, vast masses of the hard columnar basalt have been removed, pillar after pillar, and much vesicular lava, as in the case, for example, of the puy rouge, near chalucet, and of the puy de tartaret, near nechers.* (* scrope's "volcanoes of central france" page .) the rivers have even in some cases, as the sioule, near chalucet, cut through not only the basalt which dispossessed them of their ancient channels, but have actually eaten feet into the subjacent gneiss; yet the cone, an incoherent heap of scoriae and spongy ejectamenta, stands unmolested. had the waters once risen, even for a day, so high as to reach the level of the base of one of these cones--had there been a single flood or feet in height since the last eruption occurred, a great part of these volcanoes must inevitably have been swept away as readily as all traces of the layer of cinders; and the accompanying bones would have been obliterated by the rodes near aurignac, had it risen, since the days of the mammoth, rhinoceros, and cave-bear, feet above its present level. the aurignac cave adds no new species to the list of extinct quadrupeds, which we have elsewhere, and by independent evidence, ascertained to have once flourished contemporaneously with man. but if the fossil memorials have been correctly interpreted--if we have here before us at the northern base of the pyrenees a sepulchral vault with skeletons of human beings, consigned by friends and relatives to their last resting-place--if we have also at the portal of the tomb the relics of funeral feasts, and within it indications of viands destined for the use of the departed on their way to a land of spirits; while among the funeral gifts are weapons wherewith in other fields to chase the gigantic deer, the cave-lion, the cave-bear, and woolly rhinoceros--we have at last succeeded in tracing back the sacred rites of burial, and, more interesting still, a belief in a future state, to times long anterior to those of history and tradition. rude and superstitious as may have been the savage of that remote era, he still deserved, by cherishing hopes of a hereafter, the epithet of "noble," which dryden gave to what he seems to have pictured to himself as the primitive condition of our race, "as nature first made man when wild in woods the noble savage ran."* (* "siege of granada" part act scene .) chapter . -- age of human fossils of le puy in central france and of natchez on the mississippi discussed. question as to the authenticity of the fossil man of denise, near le puy-en-velay, considered. antiquity of the human race implied by that fossil. successive periods of volcanic action in central france. with what changes in the mammalian fauna they correspond. the elephas meridionalis anterior in time to the implement-bearing gravel of st. acheul. authenticity of the human fossil of natchez on the mississippi discussed. the natchez deposit, containing bones of mastodon and megalonyx, probably not older than the flint implements of st. acheul. among the fossil remains of the human species supposed to have claims to high antiquity, and which have for many years attracted attention, two of the most prominent examples are:-- first--"the fossil man of denise," comprising the remains of more than one skeleton, found in a volcanic breccia near the town of le puy-en-velay, in central france. secondly--the fossil human bone of natchez, on the mississippi, supposed to have been derived from a deposit containing remains of mastodon and megalonyx. having carefully examined the sites of both of these celebrated fossils, i shall consider in this chapter the nature of the evidence on which the remote date of their entombment is inferred. fossil man of denise. an account of the fossil remains, so called, was first published in by m. aymard of le puy, a writer of deservedly high authority both as a palaeontologist and archaeologist.* (* "bulletin de la societe geologique de france" , , .) m. pictet, after visiting le puy and investigating the site of the alleged discovery, was satisfied that the fossil bones belonged to the period of the last volcanic eruptions of velay; but expressly stated in his important treatise on palaeontology that this conclusion, though it might imply that man had co-existed with the extinct elephant, did not draw with it the admission that the human race was anterior in date to the filling of the caverns of france and belgium with the bones of extinct mammalia.* (* "traite de paleontologie" volume page .) at a meeting of the "scientific congress" of france, held at le puy in , the question of the age of the denise fossil bones was fully gone into, and in the report of their proceedings published in that year, the opinions of some of the most skilful osteologists respecting the point in controversy are recorded. the late abbe croizet, a most experienced collector of fossil bones in the volcanic regions of central france, and an able naturalist, and the late m. laurillard, of paris, who assisted cuvier in modelling many fossil bones, and in the arrangement of the museum of the jardin, declared their opinion that the specimen preserved in the museum of le puy is no counterfeit. they believed the human bones to have been enveloped by natural causes in the tufaceous matrix in which we now see them. in the year , professor hebert and m. lartet visited le puy, expressly to investigate the same specimen, and to inquire into the authenticity of the bones and their geological age. later in the same year, i went myself to le puy, having the same object in view, and had the good fortune to meet there my friend mr. poulett scrope, with whom i examined the montagne de denise, where a peasant related to us how he had dug out the specimen with his own hands and in his own vineyard, not far from the summit of the volcano. i employed a labourer to make under his directions some fresh excavations, following up those which had been made a month earlier by mm. hebert and lartet, in the hope of verifying the true position of the fossils, but all of us without success. we failed even to find in situ any exact counterpart of the stone of the le puy museum. the osseous remains of that specimen consist of a frontal and some other parts of the skull, including the upper jaw with teeth, both of an adult and young individual; also a radius, some lumbar vertebrae, and some metatarsal bones. they are all embedded in a light porous tuff, resembling in colour and mineral composition the ejectamenta of several of the latest eruptions of denise. but none of the bones penetrate into another part of the same specimen, which consists of a more compact rock thickly laminated. nevertheless, i agree with the abbe croizet and m. aymard, that it is not conceivable even that the less coherent part of the museum specimen which envelopes the human bones should have been artificially put together, whatever may have been the origin of certain other slabs of tuff which were afterwards sold as coming from the same place, and which also contained human remains. whether some of these were spurious or not is a question more difficult to decide. one of them, now in the possession of m. pichot-dumazel, an advocate of le puy, is suspected of having had some plaster of paris introduced into it to bind the bones more firmly together in the loose volcanic tuff. i was assured that a dealer in objects of natural history at le puy had been in the habit of occasionally securing the cohesion in that manner of fragments of broken bones, and the juxtaposition of uninjured ones found free and detachable in loose volcanic tuffs. from this to the fabrication of a factitious human fossil was, it is suggested, but a short step. but in reference to m. pichot's specimen, an expert anatomist remarked to me that it would far exceed the skill, whether of the peasant who owned the vineyard or of the dealer above mentioned, to put together in their true position all the thirty-eight bones of the hand and fingers, or the sixteen of the wrist, without making any mistake, and especially without mixing those of the right with the homologous bones of the left hand, assuming that they had brought bones, from some other spot, and then artificially introduced them into a mixture of volcanic tuff and plaster of paris. granting, however, that the high prices given for "human fossils" at le puy may have led to the perpetration of some frauds, it is still an interesting question to consider whether the admission of the genuineness of a single fossil, such as that now in the museum at le puy, would lead us to assign a higher antiquity to the existence of man in france than is deducible from many other facts explained in the last seven chapters. in reference to this point, i may observe that although i was not able to fix with precision the exact bed in the volcanic mountain from which the rock containing the human bones was taken, m. felix robert has, nevertheless, after studying "the volcanic alluviums" of denise, ascertained that, on the side of cheyrac and the village of malouteyre, blocks of tuff frequently occur exactly like the one in the museum. that tuff he considers a product of the latest eruption of the volcano. in it have been found the remains of hyaena spelaea and hippopotamus major. the eruptions of steam and gaseous matter which burst forth from the crater of denise broke through laminated tertiary clays, small pieces of which, some of them scarcely altered, others half converted into scoriae, were cast out in abundance, while other portions must have been in a state of argillaceous mud. showers of such materials would be styled by the neapolitans "aqueous lava" or "lava d'aqua," and we may well suppose that some human individuals, if any existed, would, together with wild animals, be occasionally overwhelmed in these tuffs. from near the place on the mountain whence the block with human bones now in the museum is said to have come, a stream of lava, well marked by its tabular structure, flowed down the flanks of the hill, within a few feet of the alluvial plain of the borne, a small tributary of the loire, on the opposite bank of which stands the town of le puy. its continuous extension to so low a level clearly shows that the valley had already been deepened to within a few feet of its present depth at the time of the flowing of the lava. we know that the alluvium of the same district, having a similar relation to the present geographical outline of the valleys, is of pleistocene date, for it contains around le puy the bones of elephas primigenius and rhinoceros tichorhinus; and this affords us a palaeontological test of the age of the human skeleton of denise, if the latter be assumed to be coeval with the lava stream above referred to. it is important to dwell on this point, because some geologists have felt disinclined to believe in the genuineness of the "fossil man of denise," on the ground that, if conceded, it would imply that the human race was contemporary with an older fauna, or that of the elephas meridionalis. such a fauna is found fossil in another layer of tuff covering the slope of denise, opposite to that where the museum specimen was exhumed. the quadrupeds obtained from that more ancient tuff comprise elephas meridionalis, hippopotamus major, rhinoceros megarhinus, antilope torticornis, hyaena brevirostris, and twelve others of the genera horse, ox, stag, goat, tiger, etc., all supposed to be of extinct species. this tuff, found between malouteyre and polignac, m. robert regards as the product of a much older eruption, and referable to the neighbouring montagne de st. anne, a volcano in a much more wasted and denuded state than denise, and classed by m. bertrand de doue as of intermediate age between the ancient and modern cones of velay. the fauna to which elephas meridionalis and its associates belong, can be shown to be of anterior date, in the north of france, to the flint implements of st. acheul, by the following train of reasoning. the valley of the seine is not only geographically contiguous to the valley of the somme, but its ancient alluvium contains the same mammoth and other fossil species. the eure, one of the tributaries of the seine, in its way to join that river, flows in a valley which follows a line of fault in the chalk; and this valley is seen to be comparatively modern, because it intersects at st. prest, miles below chartres, an older valley belonging to an anterior system of drainage, which has been filled by a more ancient fluviatile alluvium, consisting of sand and gravel, feet thick. i have examined the site of this older drift, and the fossils have been determined by dr. falconer. they comprise elephas meridionalis, a species of rhinoceros (not r. tichorhinus), and other mammalia differing from those of the implement-bearing gravels of the seine and somme. the latter, belonging to the period of the mammoth, might very well have been contemporary with the modern volcanic eruptions of central france; and we may presume, even without the aid of the denise fossil, that man may have witnessed these. but the tuffs and gravels in which the elephas meridionalis are embedded were synchronous with an older epoch of volcanic action, to which the cone of st. anne, near le puy, and many other mountains of m. bertrand de doue's middle period belong, having cones and craters, which have undergone much waste by aqueous erosion. we have as yet no proof that man witnessed the origin of these hills of lava and scoriae of the middle phase of volcanic action. some surprise was expressed in , by several of the assembled naturalists at le puy, that the skull of the "fossil man of denise," although contemporary with the mammoth, and coeval with the last eruptions of the le puy volcanoes [ ], should be of the ordinary caucasian or european type; but the observations of professor huxley on the engis skull, cited in the fifth chapter, showing the near approach of that ancient cranium to the european standard, will help to remove this source of perplexity. human fossil of natchez on the mississippi. i have already alluded to dr. dowler's attempt to calculate, in years, the antiquity of the human skeleton said to have been buried under four cypress forests in the delta of the mississippi, near new orleans (see above, chapter ). in that case no remains of extinct animals were found associated with those of man: but in another part of the basin of the mississippi, a human bone, accompanied by bones of mastodon and megalonyx, is supposed to have been washed out of a more ancient alluvial deposit. after visiting the spot in , i described the geological position of the bones, and discussed their probable age, with a stronger bias, i must confess, as to the antecedent improbability of the contemporaneous entombment of man and the mastodon than any geologist would now be justified in entertaining. [illustration: figure . alluvial plain of the mississippi] (figure . section through the alluvial plain of the mississippi. . modern alluvium of the mississippi. . loam or loess. . f. eocene. . cretaceous.) in the latitude of vicksburg, degrees minutes north, the broad, flat, alluvial plain of the mississippi, a b, figure , is bounded on its eastern side by a table-land d e, about feet higher than the river, and extending miles eastward with a gentle upward slope. this elevated platform ends abruptly at d, in a line of perpendicular cliffs or bluffs, the base of which is continually undermined by the great river. the table-land d-e consists at vicksburg, through which the annexed section, figure , passes, of loam, overlying the tertiary strata f-f. between the loam and the tertiary formation there is usually a deposit of stratified sand and gravel, containing large fragments of silicified corals and the wreck of older palaeozoic rocks. the age of this underlying drift, which is feet thick at natchez, has not yet been determined; but it may possibly belong to the glacial period. natchez is about miles in a straight line south of vicksburg, on the same left bank of the mississippi. here there is a bluff, the upper feet of which consists of a continuous portion of the same calcareous loam as at vicksburg, equally resembling the rhenish loess in mineral character and in being sometimes barren of fossils, sometimes so full of them that bleached land-shells stand out conspicuously in relief in the vertical and weathered face of cliffs which form the banks of streams, everywhere intersecting the loam. so numerous are the shells that i was able to collect at natchez, in a few hours, in , no less than twenty species of the genera helix, helicina, pupa, cyclostoma, achatina, and succinea, all identical with shells now living in the same country; and in one place i observed (as happens also occasionally in the valley of the rhine) a passage of the loam with land-shells into an underlying marly deposit of subaqueous origin, in which shells of the genera limnaea, planorbis, paludina, physa, and cyclas were embedded, also consisting of recent american species. such deposits, more distinctly stratified than the loam containing land-shells, are produced, as before stated, in all great alluvial plains, where the river shifts its position, and where marshes, ponds, and lakes are formed in its old deserted channels. in this part of america, however, it may have happened that some of these lakes were caused by partial subsidences, such as were witnessed, during the earthquakes of - , around new madrid, in the valley of the mississippi. owing to the destructible nature of the yellow loam, d e, figure , every streamlet flowing over the platform has cut for itself, in its way to the mississippi, a deep gully or ravine; and this erosion has of late years, especially since , proceeded with accelerated speed, ascribable in some degree to the partial clearing of the native forest, but partly also to the effects of the earthquake of - . by that convulsion the region around natchez was rudely shaken and much fissured. one of the narrow valleys near natchez, due to this fissuring, is now called the mammoth ravine. though no less than miles long, and in some parts feet deep, i was assured by a resident proprietor, colonel wiley, that it had no existence before . with its numerous ramifications, it is said to have been entirely formed since the earthquake at new madrid. before that event, colonel wiley had ploughed some of the land exactly over a spot now traversed by part of this water-course. i satisfied myself that the ravine had been considerably enlarged and lengthened a short time before my visit, and it was then freshly undermined and undergoing constant waste. from a clayey deposit immediately below the yellow loam, bones of the mastodon ohioticus, a species of megalonyx, bones of the genera equus, bos, and others, some of extinct and others presumed to be of living species, had been detached, and had fallen to the base of the cliffs. mingled with the rest, the pelvic bone of a man, os innominatum, was obtained by dr. dickeson of natchez, in whose collection i saw it. it appeared to be quite in the same state of preservation, and was of the same black colour as the other fossils, and was believed to have come like them from a depth of about feet from the surface. in my "second visit to america," in , i suggested, as a possible explanation of this association of a human bone with remains of mastodon and megalonyx, that the former may possibly have been derived from the vegetable soil at the top of the cliff, whereas the remains of extinct mammalia were dislodged from a lower position, and both may have fallen into the same heap or talus at the bottom of the ravine. the pelvic bone might, i conceived, have acquired its black colour by having lain for years or centuries in a dark superficial peaty soil, common in that region. i was informed that there were many human bones, in old indian graves in the same district, stained of as black a dye. on suggesting this hypothesis to colonel wiley of natchez, i found that the same idea had already occurred to his mind. no doubt, had the pelvic bone belonged to any recent mammifer other than man, such a theory would never have been resorted to; but so long as we have only one isolated case, and are without the testimony of a geologist who was present to behold the bone when still engaged in the matrix, and to extract it with his own hands, it is allowable to suspend our judgment as to the high antiquity of the fossil. if, however, i am asked whether i consider the natchez loam, with land-shells and the bones of mastodon and megalonyx, to be more ancient than the alluvium of the somme containing flint implements and the remains of the mammoth and hyaena, i must declare that i do not. both in europe and america the land and freshwater shells accompanying the extinct pachyderms are of living species, and i could detect no shell in the natchez loam so foreign to the basin of the mississippi as is the cyrena fluminalis to the rivers of modern europe. if, therefore, the relative ages of the picardy and natchez alluvium were to be decided on conchological data alone, the fluvio-marine beds of abbeville might rank as a shade older than the loess of natchez. my reluctance in to regard the fossil human bone as of pleistocene date arose in part from the reflection that the ancient loess of natchez is anterior in time to the whole modern delta of the mississippi. the table-land, d e, figure , was, i believe, once a part of the original alluvial plain or delta of the great river before it was upraised. it has now risen more than feet above its pristine level. after the upheaval, or during it, the mississippi cut through the old fluviatile formation of which its bluffs are now formed, just as the rhine has in many parts of its valley excavated a passage through the ancient loess. if i was right in calculating that the present delta of the mississippi must have required many tens of thousands of years for its growth, and if the claims of the natchez man to have co-existed with the mastodon are admitted, it would follow that north america was peopled by the human race many tens of thousands of years before our time. but even were that true, we could not presume, reasoning from ascertained geological data, that the natchez bone was anterior in date to the antique flint hatchets of st. acheul. when we ascend the mississippi from natchez to vicksburg, and then enter the ohio, we are accompanied everywhere by a continuous fringe of terraces of sand and gravel at a certain height above the alluvial plain, first of the great river, and then of its tributary. we also find that the older alluvium contains the remains of mastodon everywhere, and in some places, as at evansville, those of the megalonyx. as in the valley of the somme in europe, those old pleistocene gravels often occur at more than one level, and the ancient mounds of the ohio, with their works of art, are newer than the old terraces of the mastodon period, just as the gallo-roman tombs of st. acheul or the celtic weapons of the abbeville peat are more modern than the tools of the mammoth-bearing alluvium. in the first place, i may remind the reader that the vertical movement of feet, required to elevate the loess of natchez to its present height, is exceeded by the upheaval which the marine stratum of cagliari, containing pottery, has been ascertained by count de la marmora to have experienced. such changes of level, therefore, have actually occurred in europe in the human epoch, and may therefore have happened in america. in the second place, i may observe that if, since the natchez mastodon was embedded in clay, the delta of the mississippi has been formed, so, since the mammoth and rhinoceros of abbeville and amiens were enveloped in fluviatile mud and gravel, together with flint tools, a great thickness of peat has accumulated in the valley of the somme; and antecedently to the first growth of peat, there had been time for the extinction of a great many mammalia, requiring, perhaps, a lapse of ages many times greater than that demanded for the formation of feet of peat, for since the earliest growth of the latter there has been no change in the species of mammalia in europe. should future researches, therefore, confirm the opinion that the natchez man co-existed with the mastodon, it would not enhance the value of the geological evidence in favour of man's antiquity, but merely render the delta of the mississippi available as a chronometer, by which the lapse of pleistocene time could be measured somewhat less vaguely than by any means of measuring which have as yet been discovered or rendered available in europe. chapter . -- antiquity of man relatively to the glacial period and to the existing fauna and flora. chronological relation of the glacial period, and the earliest known signs of man's appearance in europe. series of tertiary deposits in norfolk and suffolk immediately antecedent to the glacial period. gradual refrigeration of climate proved by the marine shells of successive groups. marine newer pliocene shells of northern character near woodbridge. section of the norfolk cliffs. norwich crag. forest bed and fluvio-marine strata. fossil plants and mammalia of the same. overlying boulder clay and contorted drift. newer freshwater formation of mundesley compared to that of hoxne. great oscillations of level implied by the series of strata in the norfolk cliffs. earliest known date of man long subsequent to the existing fauna and flora. frequent allusions have been made in the preceding pages to a period called the glacial, to which no reference is made in the chronological table of formations given above (chapter ). it comprises a long series of ages, during which the power of cold, whether exerted by glaciers on the land, or by floating ice on the sea, was greater in the northern hemisphere, and extended to more southern latitudes than now. [ ] it often happens that when in any given region we have pushed back our geological investigations as far as we can in search of evidence of the first appearance of man in europe, we are stopped by arriving at what is called the "boulder clay" or "northern drift." this formation is usually quite destitute of organic remains, so that the thread of our inquiry into the history of the animate creation, as well as of man, is abruptly cut short. the interruption, however, is by no means encountered at the same point of time in every district. in the case of the danish peat, for example, we get no farther back than the recent period of our chronologic table, and then meet with the boulder clay; and it is the same in the valley of the clyde, where the marine strata contain the ancient canoes before described (chapter ), and where nothing intervenes between that recent formation and the glacial drift. but we have seen that, in the neighbourhood of bedford the memorials of man can be traced much farther back into the past, namely, into the pleistocene epoch, when the human race was contemporary with the mammoth and many other species of mammalia now extinct. nevertheless, in bedfordshire as in denmark, the formation next antecedent in date to that containing the human implements is still a member of the glacial drift, with its erratic blocks. if the reader remembers what was stated in the eighth chapter as to the absence or extreme scarcity of human bones and works of art in all strata, whether marine or freshwater, even in those formed in the immediate proximity of land inhabited by millions of human beings, he will be prepared for the general dearth of human memorials in glacial formations, whether recent, pleistocene, or of more ancient date. if there were a few wanderers over lands covered with glaciers, or over seas infested with ice-bergs, and if a few of them left their bones or weapons in moraines or in marine drift, the chances, after the lapse of thousands of years, of a geologist meeting with one of them must be infinitesimally small. it is natural, therefore, to encounter a gap in the regular sequence of geological monuments bearing on the past history of man, wherever we have proofs of glacial action having prevailed with intensity, as it has done over large parts of europe and north america, in the pleistocene period. as we advance into more southern latitudes approaching the th parallel of latitude in europe, and the th in north america, this disturbing cause ceases to oppose a bar to our inquiries; but even then, in consequence of the fragmentary nature of all geological annals, our progress is inevitably slow in constructing anything like a connected chain of history, which can only be effected by bringing the links of the chain found in one area to supply the information which is wanting in another. the least interrupted series of consecutive documents to which we can refer in the british islands, when we desire to connect the pliocene with the pleistocene periods, are found in the counties of norfolk, suffolk, and essex; and i shall speak of them in this chapter, as they have a direct bearing on the relations of the human and glacial periods, which will be the subject of several of the following chapters. the fossil shells of the deposits in question clearly point to a gradual refrigeration of climate, from a temperature somewhat warmer than that now prevailing in our latitudes to one of intense cold; and the successive steps which have marked the coming on of the increasing cold are matters of no small geological interest. [ ] it will be seen in the chronological table, that next before the pleistocene period stands the pliocene. the shelly and sandy beds representing these periods in norfolk and suffolk are termed provincially crag, having under the name been long used in agriculture to fertilise soils deficient in calcareous matter, or to render them less stiff and impervious. in suffolk, the older pliocene strata called crag are divisible into the coralline and the red crags, the former being the older of the two. in norfolk, a more modern formation, commonly termed the "norwich," or sometimes the "mammaliferous" crag, which is referable to the newer pliocene period, occupies large areas. we are indebted to mr. searles wood, f.g.s., for an admirable monograph on the fossil shells of these british pliocene formations. he has not himself given us an analysis of the results of his treatise, but the following tables have been drawn up for me by mr. s.p. woodward, the well-known author of the "manual of mollusca, recent and fossil" (london - ), in order to illustrate some of the general conclusions to which mr. wood's careful examination of species of mollusca has led. table / . number of known species of marine testacea in the three english pliocene deposits, called the norwich, the red, and the coralline crags. column : name. column : number. brachiopoda: . lamellibranchia: . gasteropoda: . total: . table / . distribution of the above marine testacea. column : name. column : number. norwich crag: . red crag: . coralline crag: . species common to the norwich and red crag (not in coralline): . species common to the norwich and coralline (not in red): . species common to the red and coralline (not in norwich): . species common to the norwich, red, and coralline: .* (* these species must be added to the numbers , , and respectively, in order to obtain the full amount of common species in each of those cases.) table / . proportion of recent to extinct species. column : name. column : number of recent. column : number of extinct. column : percentage of recent. norwich crag: : : %. red crag: : : %. coralline crag: : : %. table / . recent species not living now in british seas. column : name. column : number of northern. column : number of southern. norwich crag: : . red crag: : . coralline crag: : . in the above list i have not included the shells of the glacial beds of the clyde and of several other british deposits of newer origin than the norwich crag, in which nearly all--perhaps all--the species are recent. the land and freshwater shells, thirty-two in number, have also been purposely omitted, as well as three species of london clay shells, suspected by mr. wood himself to be spurious. by far the greater number of the living marine species included in these tables are still inhabitants of the british seas; but even these differ considerably in their relative abundance, some of the commonest of the crag shells being now extremely scarce; as, for example, buccinopsis dalei; and others, rarely met with in a fossil state, being now very common, as murex erinaceus and cardium echinatum. the last table throws light on a marked alteration in the climate of the three successive periods. it will be seen that in the coralline crag there are twenty-seven southern shells, including twenty-six mediterranean, and one west indian species (erato maugeriae). of these only thirteen occur in the red crag, associated with three new southern species, while the whole of them disappear from the norwich beds. on the other hand, the coralline crag contains only two shells closely related to arctic forms of the genera admete and limopsis. the red crag contains, as stated in the table, eight northern species, all of which recur in the norwich crag, with the addition of four others, also inhabitants of the arctic regions; so that there is good evidence of a continual refrigeration of climate during the pliocene period in britain. the presence of these northern shells cannot be explained away by supposing that they were inhabitants of the deep parts of the sea; for some of them, such as tellina calcarea and astarte borealis, occur plentifully, and sometimes, with the valves united by their ligament, in company with other littoral shells, such as mya arenaria and littorina rudis, and evidently not thrown up from deep water. yet the northern character of the norwich crag is not fully shown by simply saying that it contains twelve northern species. it is the predominance of certain genera and species, such as tellina calcarea, astarte borealis, scalaria groenlandica, and fusus carinatus, which satisfies the mind of a conchologist as to the arctic character of the norwich crag. in like manner, it is the presence of such genera as pyrula, columbella, terebra, cassidaria, pholadomya, lingula, discina, and others which give a southern aspect to the coralline crag shells. the cold, which had gone on increasing from the time of the coralline to that of the norwich crag, continued, though not perhaps without some oscillations of temperature, to become more and more severe after the accumulation of the norwich crag, until it reached its maximum in what has been called the glacial epoch. the marine fauna of this last period contains, both in ireland and scotland, recent species of mollusca now living in greenland and other seas far north of the areas where we find their remains in a fossil state. the refrigeration of climate from the time of the older to that of the newer pliocene strata is not now announced for the first time, as it was inferred from a study of the crag shells in by the late edward forbes.* (* "memoirs of the geological survey" london page .) the most southern point to which the marine beds of the norwich crag have yet been traced is at chillesford, near woodbridge, in suffolk, about miles north-east of london, where, as messrs. prestwich and searles wood have pointed out,* they exhibit decided marks of having been deposited in a sea of a much lower temperature than that now prevailing in the same latitude. (* "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page .) out of twenty-three shells obtained in that locality from argillaceous strata feet thick, two only, namely, nucula cobboldiae and tellina obliqua, are extinct, and not a few of the other species, such as leda lanceolata, cardium groenlandicum, lucina borealis, cyprina islandica, panopaea norvegica, and mya truncata, betray a northern, and some of them an arctic character. these chillesford beds are supposed to be somewhat more modern than any of the purely marine strata of the norwich crag exhibited by the sections of the norfolk cliffs north-west of cromer, which i am about to describe. yet they probably preceded in date the "forest bed" and fluvio-marine deposits of those same cliffs. they are, therefore, of no small importance in reference to the chronology of the glacial period, since they afford evidence of an assemblage of fossil shells with a proportion of between eight and nine in a hundred of extinct species occurring so far south as latitude degrees north, and indicating so cold a climate as to imply that the glacial period commenced before the close of the pliocene era. [illustration: figure . succession of strata] (figure . diagram to illustrate the general succession of the strata in the norfolk cliffs, extending several miles north-west and south-east of cromer. a. site of cromer jetty. . upper chalk with flints in regular stratification. . norwich crag, rising from low water at cromer to the top of the cliffs at weybourn, seven miles distant. . "forest bed," with stumps of trees in situ and remains of elephas meridionalis, e. primigenius, e. antiquus, rhinoceros etruscus, etc. this bed increases in depth and thickness eastward. no crag (number ) known east of cromer jetty. prime. fluvio-marine series. at cromer and eastward, with abundant lignite beds and mammalian remains, and with cones of the scotch and spruce firs and wood. at runton, north-west of cromer, expanding into a thick freshwater deposit, with overlying marine strata, elsewhere consisting of alternating sands and clays, tranquilly deposited, some with marine, others with freshwater shells. . boulder clay of glacial period, with far transported erratics, some of them polished and scratched, to feet in thickness. . contorted drift. . superficial gravel and sand with covering of vegetable soil.) the annexed section (figure ) will give a general idea of the ordinary succession of the pliocene and pleistocene strata which rest upon the chalk in the norfolk and suffolk cliffs. these cliffs vary in height from fifty to above three hundred feet. at the north-western extremity of the section at weybourn (beyond the limits of the annexed diagram), and from thence to cromer, a distance of miles, the norwich crag, a marine deposit, reposes immediately upon the chalk. a vast majority of its shells are of living species such as cardium edule, cyprina islandica, scalaria groenlandica, and fusus antiquus, and some few extinct, as tellina obliqua, and nucula cobboldiae. at cromer jetty this formation thins out, as expressed in the diagram at a; and to the south we find number , or what is commonly called the "forest bed," reposing immediately upon the chalk, and occupying, as it were, the place previously held by the marine crag number . this buried forest has been traced for more than miles, being exposed at certain seasons and states of the beach between high and low water mark. it extends from cromer to near kessingland, and consists of the stumps of numerous trees standing erect, with their roots attached to them, and penetrating in all directions into the loam or ancient vegetable soil on which they grew. they mark the site of a forest which existed there for a long time, since, besides the erect trunks of trees, some of them and feet in diameter, there is a vast accumulation of vegetable matter in the immediately overlying clays. thirty years ago, when i first examined this bed, i saw many trees, with their roots in the old soil, laid open at the base of the cliff near happisburgh; and long before my visit, other observers, and among them the late mr. j.c. taylor, had noticed the buried forest. of late years it has been repeatedly seen at many points by mr. gunn, and, after the great storms of the autumn of , by mr. king. in order to expose the stumps to view, a vast body of sand and shingle must be cleared away by the force of the waves. [ ] as the sea is always gaining on the land, new sets of trees are brought to light from time to time, so that the breadth as well as length of the area of ancient forest land seems to have been considerable. next above number , we find a series of sands and clays with lignite (number prime), sometimes feet thick, and containing alternations of fluviatile and marine strata, implying that the old forest land, which may at first have been considerably elevated above the level of the sea, had sunk down so as to be occasionally overflowed by a river, and at other times by the salt waters of an estuary. there were probably several oscillations of level which assisted in bringing about these changes, during which trees were often uprooted and laid prostrate, giving rise to layers of lignite. occasionally marshes were formed and peaty matter accumulated, after which salt water again predominated, so that species of mytilus, mya, leda, and other marine genera, lived in the same area where the unio, cyclas, and paludina had flourished for a time. that the marine shells lived and died on the spot, and were not thrown up by the waves during a storm, is proved, as mr. king has remarked, by the fact that at west runton, north-west of cromer, the mya truncata and leda myalis are found with both valves united and erect in the loam, all with their posterior or siphuncular extremities uppermost. this attitude affords as good evidence to the conchologist that those mollusca lived and died on the spot as the upright position of the trees proves to the botanist that there was a forest over the chalk east of cromer. between the stumps of the buried forest, and in the lignite above them, are many well-preserved cones of the scotch and spruce firs, pinus sylvestris, and pinus abies. the specific names of these fossils were determined for me in , by a botanist of no less authority than the late robert brown; and professor heer has lately examined a large collection from the same stratum, and recognised among the cones of the spruce some which had only the central part or axis remaining, the rest having been bitten off, precisely in the same manner as when in our woods the squirrel has been feeding on the seeds. there is also in the forest-bed a great quantity of resin in lumps, resembling that gathered for use, according to professor heer, in switzerland, from beneath spruce firs. the following is a list of some of the plants and seeds which were collected by the reverend s.w. king, in , from the forest bed at happisburgh, and named by professor heer:-- plants and seeds of the forest and lignite beds below the glacial drift of the norfolk cliffs. pinus sylvestris, scotch fir. pinus abies, spruce fir. taxus baccata, yew. nuphar luteum, yellow water-lily. ceratophyllum demersum, hornwort. potamogeton, pondweed. prunus spinosus, common sloe. menyanthes trifoliata, buckbean. nymphaea alba, white water-lily. alnus, alder. quercus, oak. betula, birch. the insects, so far as they are known, including several species of donacia, are, like the plants and freshwater shells, of living species. it may be remarked, however, that the scotch fir has been confined in historical times to the northern parts of the british isles, and the spruce fir is nowhere indigenous in great britain. the other plants are such as might now be found in norfolk, and many of them indicate fenny or marshy ground.* (* mr. king discovered in , in the forest bed, several rhizomes of the large british fern osmunda regalis, of such dimensions as they are known to attain in marshy places. they are distinguishable from those of other british ferns by the peculiar arrangement of the vessels, as seen under the microscope in a cross section.) when we consider the familiar aspect of the flora, the accompanying mammalia are certainly most extraordinary. there are no less than three elephants, a rhinoceros and hippopotamus, a large extinct beaver, and several large estuarine and marine mammalia, such as the walrus, the narwhal, and the whale. the following is a list of some of the species of which the bones have been collected by messrs. gunn and king. those marked (asterisk) have been recorded by professor owen in his british fossil mammalia. those marked (dagger) have been recognised by the same authority in the cabinets of messrs. gunn and king, or in the norwich museum; the other three are given on the authority of dr. falconer. mammalia of the forest and lignite beds below the glacial drift of the norfolk cliffs. elephas meridionalis. (asterisk) elephas primigenius. elephas antiquus. rhinoceros etruscus. (asterisk) hippopotamus (major?). (asterisk) sus scrofa. (asterisk) equus (fossilis?). (asterisk) ursus (sp.?). (dagger) canis lupus. (dagger) bison priscus. (dagger) megaceros hibernicus. (asterisk) cervus capreolus. (dagger) cervus tarandus. (dagger) cervus sedgwickii. (asterisk) arvicola amphibia. (asterisk) castor (trogontherium) cuvieri. (asterisk) castor europaeus. (asterisk) palaeospalax magnus. (dagger) trichecus rosmarus, walrus. (dagger) monodon monoceros, narwhal. (dagger) balaenoptera. mr. gunn informs me that the vertebrae of two distinct whales were found in the fluvio-marine beds at bacton, and that one of them, shown to professor owen, is said by him to imply that the animal was feet long. a narwhal's tusk was discovered by mr. king near cromer, and the remains of a walrus. no less than three species of elephant, as determined by dr. falconer, have been obtained from the strata and prime, of which, according to mr. king, e. meridionalis is the most common, the mammoth next in abundance, and the third, e. antiquus, comparatively rare. the freshwater shells accompanying the fossil quadrupeds, above enumerated, are such as now inhabit rivers and ponds in england; but among them, as at runton, between the "forest bed" and the glacial deposits, a remarkable variety of the cyclas amnica occurs (figure ), identical with that which accompanies the elephas antiquus at ilford and grays in the valley of the thames. all the freshwater shells of the beds intervening between the forest-bed number , and the glacial formation , figure , are of recent species. as to the small number of marine shells occurring in the same fluvio-marine series, i have seen none which belonged to extinct species, although one or two have been cited by authors. i am in doubt, therefore, whether to class the forest bed and overlying strata as pleistocene, or to consider them as beds of passage between the pliocene and pleistocene periods. the fluvio-marine series usually terminates upwards in finely laminated sands and clays without fossils, on which reposes the boulder clay. [illustration: figure . cyclas] (figure . cyclas (pisidium) amnica var.? the two middle figures are of the natural size.) this formation, number , is of very varying thickness. its glacial character is shown, not only by the absence of stratification, and the great size and angularity of some of the included blocks of distant origin, but also by the polished and scratched surfaces of such of them as are hard enough to retain any markings. near cromer, blocks of granite from to feet in diameter have been met with, and smaller ones of syenite, porphyry, and trap, besides the wreck of the london clay, chalk, oolite, and lias, mixed with more ancient fossiliferous rocks. erratics of scandinavian origin occur chiefly in the lower portions of the till. i came to the conclusion in , that they had really come from norway and sweden, after having in that year traced the course of a continuous stream of such blocks from those countries to denmark, and across the elbe, through westphalia, to the borders of holland. it is not surprising that they should then reappear on our eastern coast between the tweed and the thames, regions not half so remote from parts of norway as are many russian erratics from the sources whence they came. [ ] [illustration: figure . cliff] (figure . cliff feet high between bacton gap and mundesley. section through gravel (top), sand, loam and till (bottom).) according to the observations of the reverend j. gunn and the late mr. trimmer, the glacial drift in the cliffs at lowestoft consists of two divisions, the lower of which abounds in the scandinavian blocks, supposed to have come from the north-east; while the upper, probably brought by a current from the north-west, contains chiefly fragments of oolitic rocks, more rolled than those of the lower deposit. the united thickness of the two divisions, without reckoning some interposed laminated beds, is feet, but it probably exceeds feet near happisburgh.* (* "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page .) although these subdivisions of the drift may be only of local importance, they help to show the changes of currents and other conditions, and the great lapse of time which the accumulation of so varied a series of deposits must have required. the lowest part of the glacial till, resting on the laminated clays before mentioned, is very even and regular, while its upper surface is remarkable for the unevenness of its outline, owing partly, in all likelihood, to denudation, but still more to other causes presently to be discussed. the overlying strata of sand and gravel, number , figure , often display a most singular derangement in their stratification, which in many places seems to have a very intimate relation to the irregularities of outline in the subjacent till. there are some cases, however, where the upper strata are much bent, while the lower beds of the same series have continued horizontal. thus the annexed section (figure ) represents a cliff about feet high, at the bottom of which is till, or unstratified clay, containing boulders, having an even horizontal surface, on which repose conformably beds of laminated clay and sand about feet thick, which, in their turn, are succeeded by vertical, bent, and contorted layers of sand and loam feet thick, the whole being covered by flint gravel. the curves of the variously coloured beds of loose sand, loam, and pebbles, are so complicated that not only may we sometimes find portions of them which maintain their verticality to a height of or feet, but they have also been folded upon themselves in such a manner that continuous layers might be thrice pierced in one perpendicular boring. [illustration: figures and . strata] (figure . folding of the strata between east and west runton.) (figure . section of concentric beds west of cromer. . blue clay. . white sand. . yellow sand. . striped loam and clay. . laminated blue clay.) at some points there is an apparent folding of the beds round a central nucleus, as at a, figure , where the strata seem bent round a small mass of chalk, or, as in figure , where the blue clay number is in the centre; and where the other strata , , , are coiled round it; the entire mass being feet in perpendicular height. this appearance of concentric arrangement around a nucleus is, nevertheless, delusive, being produced by the intersection of beds bent into a convex shape; and that which seems the nucleus being, in fact, the innermost bed of the series, which has become partially visible by the removal of the protuberant portions of the outer layers. to the north of cromer are other fine illustrations of contorted drift reposing on a floor of chalk horizontally stratified and having a level surface. these phenomena, in themselves sufficiently difficult of explanation, are rendered still more anomalous by the occasional enclosure in the drift of huge fragments of chalk many yards in diameter. one striking instance occurs west of sheringham, where an enormous pinnacle of chalk, between and feet in height, is flanked on both sides by vertical layers of loam, clay, and gravel (figure ). [illustration: figure . pinnacle of chalk] (figure . included pinnacle of chalk at old hythe point, west of sheringham. d. chalk with regular layers of flints. c. layer called "the pan," of chalk, flints, and marine shells of recent species, cemented by oxide of iron.) this chalky fragment is only one of many detached masses which have been included in the drift, and forced along with it into their present position. the level surface of the chalk in situ (d) may be traced for miles along the coast, where it has escaped the violent movements to which the incumbent drift has been exposed.* (* for a full account of the drift of east norfolk, see a paper by the author, "philosophical magazine" number may .) we are called upon, then, to explain how any force can have been exerted against the upper masses, so as to produce movements in which the subjacent strata have not participated. it may be answered that, if we conceive the till and its boulders to have been drifted to their present place by ice, the lateral pressure may have been supplied by the stranding of ice-islands. we learn, from the observations of messrs. dease and simpson in the polar regions, that such islands, when they run aground, push before them large mounds of shingle and sand. it is therefore probable that they often cause great alterations in the arrangement of pliant and incoherent strata forming the upper part of shoals or submerged banks, the inferior portions of the same remaining unmoved. or many of the complicated curvatures of these layers of loose sand and gravel may have been due to another cause, the melting on the spot of ice-bergs and coast ice in which successive deposits of pebbles, sand, ice, snow, and mud, together with huge masses of rock fallen from cliffs, may have become interstratified. ice-islands so constituted often capsize when afloat, and gravel once horizontal may have assumed, before the associated ice was melted, an inclined or vertical position. the packing of ice forced up on a coast may lead to a similar derangement in a frozen conglomerate of sand or shingle, and, as mr. trimmer has suggested,* alternate layers of earthy matter may have sunk down slowly during the liquefaction of the intercalated ice so as to assume the most fantastic and anomalous positions, while the strata below, and those afterwards thrown down above, may be perfectly horizontal (see above). (* "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume pages , .) in most cases where the principal contortions of the layers of gravel and sand have a decided correspondence with deep indentations in the underlying till, the hypothesis of the melting of large lumps and masses of ice once mixed up with the till affords the most natural explanation of the phenomena. the quantity of ice now seen in the cliffs near behring's straits, in which the remains of fossil elephants are common, and the huge fragments of solid ice which meyendorf discovered in siberia, after piercing through a considerable thickness of incumbent soil, free from ice, is in favour of such an hypothesis, the partial failure of support necessarily giving rise to foldings in the overlying and previously horizontal layers, as in the case of creeps in coal mines.* (* see "manual of geology" by the author, page .) in the diagram of the cliffs at page , the bent and contorted beds number , last alluded to, are represented as covered by undisturbed beds of gravel and sand number . these are usually destitute of organic remains; but at some points marine shells of recent species are said to have been found in them. they afford evidence at many points of repeated denudation and redeposition, and may be the monuments of a long series of ages. mundesley post-glacial freshwater formation. in the range of cliffs above described at mundesley, about miles south-east of cromer, a fine example is seen of a freshwater formation, newer than all those already mentioned, a deposit which has filled up a depression hollowed out of all the older beds , , and of the section figure . [illustration: figure . newer freshwater formation] (figure . section of the newer freshwater formation i n the cliffs at mundesley, eight miles south-east of cromer, drawn up by the reverend s.w. king. height of cliff where lowest, feet above high water. older series. . fundamental chalk, below the beach line. . forest bed, with elephant, rhinoceros, stag, etc., and with tree roots and stumps, also below the beach line. prime. finely laminated sands and clays, with thin layer of lignite, and shells of cyclas and valvata, and with mytilus in some beds. . glacial boulder till. . contorted drift. . gravel overlying contorted drift. n.b.--number of the section, figure , is wanting here. newer freshwater beds. a. coarse river gravel, with shells of anodon, valvata, cyclas, succinea, limnaea, paludina, etc., seeds of ceratophyllum demersum, nuphar lutea, scales and bones of pike, perch, salmon, etc., elytra of donacia, copris, harpalus, and other beetles. c. yellow sands. d. drift gravel.) when i examined this line of coast in , the section alluded to was not so clearly laid open to view as it has been of late years, and finding at that period not a few of the fossils in the lignite beds number prime above the forest bed, identical in species with those from the post-glacial deposits b c, i supposed the whole to have been of contemporaneous origin, and so described them in my paper on the norfolk cliffs.* (* "philosophical magazine" volume page .) mr. gunn was the first to perceive this mistake, which he explained to me on the spot when i revisited mundesley in the autumn of in company with dr. hooker and mr. king. the last-named geologist has had the kindness to draw up for me the annexed diagram (figure ) of the various beds which he has recently studied in detail.* (* mr. prestwich has given a correct account of this section in a paper read to the british association, oxford, . see "the geologist" volume .) the formations , , and already described, figure , were evidently once continuous, for they may be followed for miles north-west and south-east without a break, and always in the same order. a valley or river channel was cut through them, probably during the gradual upheaval of the country, and the hollow became afterwards the receptacle of the comparatively modern freshwater beds a, b, c, and d. they may well represent a silted up river-channel, which remained for a time in the state of a lake or mere, and in which the black peaty mass b accumulated by a very slow growth over the gravel of the river-bed a. in b we find remains of some of the same plants which were enumerated as common in the ancient lignite in prime, such as the yellow water-lily and hornwort, together with some freshwater shells which occur in the same fluvio-marine series prime. [illustration: figure . paludina marginata] (figure . paludina marginata, michaud (p. minuta, strickland). hydrobia marginata.* (* this shell is said to have a sub-spiral operculum (not a concentric one, as in paludina), and therefore to be referable to the hydrobia, a sub-genus of rissoa. but this species is always associated with freshwater shells, while the rissoae frequent marine and brackish waters.) the middle figure is of the natural size.) the only shell which i found not referable to a british species is the minute paludina, figure , already alluded to. when i showed the scales and teeth of the pike, perch, roach, and salmon, which i obtained from this formation, to m. agassiz, he thought they varied so much from their nearest living representatives that they might rank as distinct species; but mr. yarrell doubted the propriety of so distinguishing them. the insects, like the shells and plants, are identical, so far as they are known, with living british species. no progress has yet been made at mundesley in discovering the contemporary mammalia. by referring to the description and section before given of the freshwater deposit at hoxne, the reader will at once perceive the striking analogy of the mundesley and hoxne deposits, the latter so productive of flint implements of the amiens type. both of them, like the bedford gravel with flint tools and the bones of extinct mammalia, are post-glacial. it will also be seen that a long series of events, accompanied by changes in physical geography, intervened between the "forest bed," number , figure , when the elephas meridionalis flourished, and the period of the mundesley fluviatile beds a, b, c; just as in france i have shown that the same e. meridionalis belonged to a system of drainage different from and anterior to that with which the flint implements of the old alluvium of the somme and the seine were connected. before the growth of the ancient forest, number , figure , the mastodon arvernensis, a large proboscidian, characteristic of the norwich crag, appears to have died out, or to have become scarce, as no remains of it have yet been found in the norfolk cliffs. there was, no doubt, time for other modifications in the mammalian fauna between the era of the marine beds, number , figure (the shells of which imply permanent submergence beneath the sea), and the accumulation of the uppermost of the fluvio-marine, and lignite beds, number prime, which overlie both numbers and , or the buried forest and the crag. in the interval we must suppose repeated oscillations of level, during which land covered with trees, an estuary with its freshwater shells, and the sea with its mya truncata and other mollusca still retaining their erect position, gained by turns the ascendency. these changes were accompanied by some denudation followed by a grand submergence of several hundred feet, probably brought about slowly, and when floating ice aided in transporting erratic blocks from great distances. the glacial till number then originated, and the gravel and sands number were afterwards superimposed on the boulder clay, first in horizontal beds, which became subsequently contorted. these were covered in their turn by other layers of gravel and sand, number , figures and , the downward movement still continuing. the entire thickness of the beds above the chalk at some points near the coast, and the height at which they now are raised, are such as to show that the subsidence of the country after the growth of the forest bed exceeded feet. the re-elevation must have amounted to nearly as many feet, as the site of the ancient forest, originally sub-aerial, has been brought up again to within a few feet of high-water mark. lastly, after all these events, and probably during the final process of emergence, the valley was scooped out in which the newer freshwater strata of mundesley, figure , were gradually deposited. throughout the whole of this succession of geographical changes, the flora and invertebrate fauna of europe appear to have undergone no important revolution in their specific characters. the plants of the forest bed belonged already to what has been called the germanic flora. the mollusca, the insects, and even some of the mammalia, such as the european beaver and roebuck, were the same as those now co-existing with man. yet the oldest memorials of our species at present discovered in great britain are post-glacial, or posterior in date to the boulder clay, number , figures and . the position of the hoxne flint implements corresponds with that of the mundesley beds, from a to d, figure , and the most likely stratum in which to find hereafter flint tools is no doubt the gravel a of that section, which has all the appearance of an old river-bed. no flint tools have yet been observed there, but had the old alluvium of amiens or abbeville occurred in the norfolk cliffs instead of the valley of the somme, and had we depended on the waves of the sea instead of the labour of many hundred workmen continued for twenty years, for exposing the flint implements to view, we might have remained ignorant to this day of the fossil relics brought to light by m. boucher de perthes and those who have followed up his researches. neither need we despair of one day meeting with the signs of man's existence in the forest bed number , or in the overlying strata prime, on the ground of any uncongeniality in the climate or incongruity in the state of the animate creation with the well-being of our species. for the present we must be content to wait and consider that we have made no investigations which entitle us to wonder that the bones or stone weapons of the era of the elephas meridionalis have failed to come to light. if any such lie hid in those strata, and should hereafter be revealed to us, they would carry back the antiquity of man to a distance of time probably more than twice as great as that which separates our era from that of the most ancient of the tool-bearing gravels yet discovered in picardy, or elsewhere. but even then the reader will perceive that the age of man, though pre-glacial, would be so modern in the great geological calendar, as given in chapter , that he would scarcely date so far back as the commencement of the pleistocene period. chapter . -- chronological relations of the glacial period and the earliest signs of man's appearance in europe. chronological relations of the close of the glacial period and the earliest geological signs of the appearance of man. effects of glaciers and icebergs in polishing and scoring rocks. scandinavia once encrusted with ice like greenland. outward movement of continental ice in greenland. mild climate of greenland in the miocene period. erratics of recent period in sweden. glacial state of sweden in the pleistocene period. scotland formerly encrusted with ice. its subsequent submergence and re-elevation. latest changes produced by glaciers in scotland. remains of the mammoth and reindeer in scotch boulder clay. parallel roads of glen roy formed in glacier lakes. comparatively modern date of these shelves. the chronological relations of the human and glacial periods were frequently alluded to in the last chapter, and the sections obtained near bedford, and at hoxne, in suffolk, and a general view of the norfolk cliffs, have taught us that the earliest signs of man's appearance in the british isles, hitherto detected, are of post-glacial date. we may now therefore inquire whether the peopling of europe by the human race and by the mammoth and other mammalia now extinct, was brought about during the concluding phases of the glacial epoch. although it may be impossible in the present state of our knowledge to come to a positive conclusion on this head, i know of no inquiry better fitted to clear up our views respecting the geological state of the northern hemisphere at the time when the fabricators of the flint implements of the amiens type flourished. i shall therefore now proceed to consider the chronological relations of that ancient people with the final retreat of the glaciers from the mountains of scandinavia, scotland, wales, and switzerland. superficial markings and deposits left by glaciers and icebergs. in order fully to discuss this question, i must begin by referring to some of the newest theoretical opinions entertained on the glacial question. when treating of this subject in the "principles of geology," chapter , and in the "manual (or elements) of geology," chapter , i have stated that the whole mass of the ice in a glacier is in constant motion, and that the blocks of stone detached from boundary precipices, and the mud and sand swept down by avalanches of snow, or by rain from the surrounding heights, are lodged upon the surface and slowly borne along in lengthened mounds, called in switzerland moraines. these accumulations of rocky fragments and detrital matter are left at the termination of the glacier, where it melts in a confused heap called the "terminal moraine," which is unstratified, because all the blocks, large and small, as well as the sand and the finest mud, are carried to equal distances and quietly deposited in a confused mass without being subjected to the sorting power of running water, which would convey the finer materials farther than the coarser ones, and would produce, as the strength of the current varied from time to time in the same place, a stratified arrangement. in those regions where glaciers reach the sea, and where large masses of ice break off and float away, moraines, such as i have just alluded to, may be transported to indefinite distances, and may be deposited on the bottom of the sea wherever the ice happens to melt. if the liquefaction take place when the berg has run aground and is stationary, and if there be no current, the heap of angular and rounded stones, mixed with sand and mud, may fall to the bottom in an unstratified form called "till" in scotland, and which has been shown in the last chapter to abound in the norfolk cliffs; but should the action of a current intervene at certain points or at certain seasons, then the materials will be sorted as they fall, and arranged in layers according to their relative weight and size. hence there will be passages from till to stratified clay, gravel, and sand. some of the blocks of stone with which the surfaces of glaciers are loaded, falling occasionally through fissures in the ice, get fixed and frozen into the bottom of the moving mass, and are pushed along under it. in this position, being subjected to great pressure, they scoop out long rectilinear furrows or grooves parallel to each other on the subjacent solid rock. smaller scratches and striae are made on the polished surface by crystals or projecting edges of the hardest minerals, just as a diamond cuts glass. in all countries the fundamental rock on which the boulder formation reposes, if it consists of granite, gneiss, marble, or other hard stone capable of permanently retaining any superficial markings which may have been imprinted upon it, is smoothed or polished, and exhibits parallel striae and furrows having a determinate direction. this prevailing direction, both in europe and north america, is evidently connected with the course taken by the erratic blocks in the same district, and is very commonly from north to south, or if it be twenty or thirty or more degrees to the east or west of north, still always corresponds to the direction in which the large angular and rounded stones have travelled. these stones themselves also are often furrowed and scratched on more than one side, like those already spoken of as occurring in the glacial drift of bedford, and in that of norfolk. when we contemplate the area which is now exposed to the abrading action of ice, or which is the receptacle of moraine matter thrown down from melting glaciers or bergs, we at once perceive that the submarine area is the most extensive of the two. the number of large icebergs which float annually to great distances in the northern and southern hemispheres is extremely great, and the quantity of stone and mud which they carry about with them enormous. some floating islands of ice have been met with from to miles in length, and from to feet in height above water, the submerged portion, according to the weight of ice relatively to sea water, being from six to eight times more considerable than the part which is visible. such masses, when they run aground on the bottom of the sea, must exert a prodigious mechanical power, and may polish and groove the subjacent rocks after the manner of glaciers on the land. hence there will often be no small difficulty in distinguishing between the effects of the submarine and supramarine agency of ice. scandinavia once covered with ice, and a centre of dispersion of erratics. in the north of europe, along the borders of the baltic, where the boulder formation is continuous for hundreds of miles east and west, it has been long known that the erratic blocks, often of very large size, are of northern origin. some of them have come from norway and sweden, others from finland, and their present distribution implies that they were carried southwards, for a part at least of their way, by floating ice, at a time when much of the area over which they are scattered was under water. but it appears from the observations of boetlingk, in , and those of more recent inquirers, that while many blocks have travelled to the south, others have been carried northwards, or to the shores of the polar sea, and others north-eastward, or to those of the white sea. in fact, they have wandered towards all points of the compass, from the mountains of scandinavia as a centre, and the rectilinear furrows imprinted by them on the polished surfaces of the mountains where the rocks are hard enough to retain such markings, radiate in all directions, or point outwards from the highest land, in a manner corresponding to the course of the erratics above mentioned.* (* sir r.i. murchison, in his "russia and the ural mountains" ( ) has indicated on a map not only the southern limits of the scandinavian drift, but by arrows the direction in which "it proceeded eccentrically from a common central region.") before the glacial theory was adopted, the swedish and norwegian geologists speculated on a great flood, or the sudden rush of an enormous body of water charged with mud and stones, descending from the central heights or watershed into the adjoining lower lands. the erratic blocks were supposed in their downward passage to have smoothed and striated the rock surfaces over which they were forced along. it would be a waste of time, in the present state of science, to controvert this hypothesis, as it is now admitted that even if the rush of a diluvial current, invented for the occasion and wholly without analogy in the known course of nature, be granted, it would be inadequate to explain the uniformity, parallelism, persistency, and rectilinearity of the so-called glacial furrows. it is moreover ascertained that heavy masses of rock, not fixed in ice, and moving as freely as they do when simply swept along by a muddy current, do not give rise to such scratches and furrows. m. kjerulf of christiania, in a paper lately communicated to the geological society of berlin,* has objected, and perhaps with reason, to what he considers the undue extent to which i have, in some of my writings, supposed the mountains of northern europe, to have been submerged during the glacial period. (* "zeitschrift der deutschen geologischen gesellschaft" berlin .) he remarks that the signs of glacial action on the scandinavian mountains ascend as high as feet, whereas fossil marine shells of the same period never reach elevations exceeding feet. the land, he says, may have been much higher than it now is, but it has evidently not been much lower since the commencement of the glacial period, or marine shells would be traceable to more elevated points. in regard to the absence of marine shells, i shall point out in the sequel how small is the dependence we can place on this kind of negative evidence, if we desire to test by it the extent to which the land has been submerged. i cannot therefore consent to limit the probable depression and re-elevation of scandinavia to feet. but that the larger part of the glaciation of that country has been supramarine, i am willing to concede. in support of this view m. kjerulf observes that the direction of the furrows and striae, produced by glacial abrasion, neither conforms to a general movement of floating ice from the polar regions, nor to the shape of the existing valleys, as it would do if it had been caused by independent glaciers generated in the higher valleys after the land had acquired its actual shape. their general arrangement and apparent irregularities are, he contends, much more in accordance with the hypothesis of there having been at one time a universal covering of ice over the whole of norway and sweden, like that now existing in greenland, which, being annually recruited by fresh falls of snow, was continually pressing outwards and downwards to the coast and lower regions, after crossing many of the lower ridges, and having no relation to the minor depressions, which were all choked up with ice and reduced to one uniform level. continental ice of greenland. in support of this view, he appeals to the admirable description of the continental ice of greenland, lately published by dr. h. rink of copenhagen,* who resided three or four years in the danish settlements in baffin's bay, on the west coast of greenland, between latitudes and degrees north. (* "journal of royal geographical society" volume page .) "in that country, the land," says dr. rink, "may be divided into two regions, the 'inland' and the 'outskirts.' the 'inland,' which is miles from west to east, and of much greater length from north to south, is a vast unknown continent, buried under one continuous and colossal mass of permanent ice, which is always moving seaward, but a small proportion only of it in an easterly direction, since nearly the whole descends towards baffin's bay." at the heads of the fjords which intersect the coast, the ice is seen to rise somewhat abruptly from the level of the sea to the height of feet, beyond which the ice of the interior rises continuously as far as the eye can reach, and to an unknown altitude. all minor ridges and valleys are levelled and concealed, but here and there steep mountains protrude abruptly from the icy slope, and a few superficial lines of stones or moraines are visible at seasons when no recent snow has fallen. [ ] although all the ice is moving seaward, the greatest quantity is discharged at the heads of certain large fjords, usually about miles wide, which, if the climate were milder, would be the outlet of as many great rivers. through these the ice is now protruded in huge blocks, several miles wide, and from to feet in height or thickness. when these masses reach the fjords, they do not melt or break up into fragments, but continue their course in a solid form in the salt water, grating along the rocky bottom, which they must polish and score at depths of hundreds and even of more than feet. at length, when there is water enough to float them, huge portions, having broken off, fill baffin's bay with icebergs of a size exceeding any which could be produced by ordinary valley glaciers. stones, sand, and mud are sometimes included in these bergs which float down baffin's bay. at some points, where the ice of the interior of greenland reaches the coast, dr. rink saw mighty springs of clayey water issuing from under the edge of the ice even in winter, showing the grinding action of the glacial mass mixed with sand on the subjacent surface of the rocks. the "outskirts," where the danish colonies are stationed, consist of numerous islands, of which disco island is the largest in latitude degrees north, and of many peninsulas, with fjords from to miles long, running into the land, and through which the ice above alluded to passes on its way to the bay. this area is , square miles in extent, and contains in it some mountains feet to feet high. the perpetual snow usually begins at the height of feet, below which level the land is for the most part free from snow between june and august, and supports a vegetation of several hundred species of flowering plants, which ripen their seeds before the winter. there are even some places where phanerogamous plants have been found at an elevation of feet; a fact which, when we reflect on the immediate vicinity of so large and lofty a region of continental ice in the same latitude, well deserves the attention of the geologist, who should also bear in mind, that while the danes are settled to the west in the "outskirts," there exists, due east of the most southern portion of this ice-covered continent, at the distance of about miles, the home of the laplanders with their reindeer, bears, wolves, seals, walruses, and whales. if, therefore, there are geological grounds for suspecting that scandinavia or scotland or wales was ever in the same glacial condition as greenland now is, we must not imagine that the contemporaneous fauna and flora were everywhere poor and stunted, or that they may not, especially at the distance of a few hundred miles in a southward direction, have been very luxuriant. [ ] another series of observations made by captain graah, during a survey of greenland between and , and by dr. pingel in - , adds not a little to the geological interest of the "outskirts," in their bearing on glacial phenomena of ancient date. those danish investigators, with one of whom, dr. pingel, i conversed at copenhagen in , ascertained that the whole coast from latitude to about degrees north has been subsiding for the last four centuries, so that some ancient piles driven into the beach to support the boats of the settlers have been gradually submerged, and wooden buildings have had to be repeatedly shifted farther inland.* (* "principles of geology" chapter .) in norway and sweden, instead of such a subsiding movement, the land is slowly rising; but we have only to suppose that formerly, when it was covered like greenland with continental ice, it sank at the rate of several feet in a century, and we shall be able to explain why marine deposits are found above the level of the sea, and why these generally overlie polished and striated surfaces of rock. we know that greenland was not always covered with snow and ice, for when we examine the tertiary strata of disco island (of the upper miocene period) we discover there a multitude of fossil plants, which demonstrate that, like many other parts of the arctic regions, it formerly enjoyed a mild and genial climate. among the fossils brought from that island, latitude degrees north, professor heer has recognised sequoia langsdorfii, a coniferous species which flourished throughout a great part of europe in the miocene period, and is very closely allied to the living sequoia sempervirens of california. the same plant has been found fossil by sir john richardson within the arctic circle, far to the west on the mackenzie river, near the entrance of bear river, also by some danish naturalists in iceland to the east. the icelandic surturbrand, or lignite, of this age has also yielded a rich harvest of plants, more than thirty-one of them, according to steenstrup and heer, in a good state of preservation, and no less than fifteen specifically identical with miocene plants of europe. thirteen of the number are arborescent; and amongst others is a tulip-tree (liriodendron), with its fruit and characteristic leaves, a plane (platanus), a walnut, and a vine, affording unmistakable evidence of a climate in the parallel of the arctic circle which precludes the supposition of glaciers then existing in the neighbourhood, still less any general crust of continental ice, like that of greenland.* (* heer, "recherches sur la vegetation du pays tertiaire" etc. page .) as the older pliocene flora of the tertiary strata of italy, like the shells of the coralline crag, before adverted to, chapter , indicate a temperature milder than that now prevailing in europe, though not so warm as that of the upper miocene period, it is probable that the accumulation of snow and glaciers on the mountains and valleys of greenland did not begin till after the commencement of the pliocene period, and may not have reached its maximum until the close of that period. norway and sweden appear to have passed through all the successive phases of glaciation which greenland has experienced, and others which that country will one day undergo, if the climate which it formerly enjoyed should ever be restored to it. there must have been first a period of separate glaciers in scandinavia, then a greenlandic state of continental ice, and thirdly, when that diminished, a second period of enormous separate glaciers filling many a valley now wooded with fir and birch. lastly, under the influence of the gulf stream, and various changes in the height and extent of land in the arctic circle, a melting of nearly all the permanent ice between latitudes and north, corresponding to the parallels of the continental ice of greenland, has occurred, so that we have now to go farther north than latitude degrees before we encounter any glacier coming down to the sea coast. among other signs of the last retreat of the extinct glaciers, kjerulf and other authors describe large transverse moraines left in many of the norwegian and swedish glens. chronological relations of the human and glacial periods in sweden. we may now consider whether any, and what part, of these changes in scandinavia may have been witnessed by man. in sweden, in the immediate neighbourhood of upsala, i observed, in , a ridge of stratified sand and gravel, in the midst of which occurs a layer of marl, evidently formed originally at the bottom of the baltic, by the slow growth of the mussel, cockle, and other marine shells of living species intermixed with some proper to fresh water. the marine shells are all of dwarfish size, like those now inhabiting the brackish waters of the baltic; and the marl, in which myriads of them are embedded, is now raised more than feet above the level of the gulf of bothnia. upon the top of this ridge (one of those called osars in sweden) repose several huge erratics consisting of gneiss, for the most part unrounded, from to feet in diameter, and which must have been brought into their present position since the time when the neighbouring gulf was already characterised by its peculiar fauna. here, therefore, we have proof that the transport of erratics continued to take place, not merely when the sea was inhabited by the existing testacea, but when the north of europe had already assumed that remarkable feature of its physical geography, which separates the baltic from the north sea, and causes the gulf of bothnia to have only one-fourth of the saltness belonging to the ocean. i cannot doubt that these large erratics of upsala were brought into their present position during the recent period, not only because of their moderate elevation above the sea-level in a country where the land is now rising every century, but because i observed signs of a great oscillation of level which had taken place at sodertelje, south of stockholm (about miles distant from upsala), after the country had been inhabited by man. i described, in the "philosophical transactions" for , the section there laid open in digging a level in , which showed that a subsidence followed by a re-elevation of land, each movement amounting to more than feet, had occurred since the time when a rude hut had been built on the ancient shore. the wooden frame of the hut, with a ring of hearthstones on the floor, and much charcoal, were found, and over them marine strata, more than feet thick, containing the dwarf variety of mytilus edulis, and other brackish-water shells of the bothnian gulf. some vessels put together with wooden pegs, of anterior date to the use of metals, were also embedded in parts of the same marine formation, which has since been raised, so that the upper beds are more than feet above the sea-level, the hut being thus restored to about its original position relatively to the sea. we have seen in the account of the danish kitchen-middens of the recent period that even at the comparatively late period of their origin the waters of the baltic had been rendered more salt than they are now. the upsala erratics may belong to nearly the same era as these. but were we to go back to a long antecedent epoch, or to that of the belgian and british caves with their extinct animals, and the signs they afford of a state of physical geography departing widely from the present, or to the era of the implement-bearing alluvium of st. acheul, we might expect to find scandinavia overwhelmed with glaciers, and the country uninhabitable by man. at a much remoter period the same country was in the state in which greenland now is, overspread with one uninterrupted coating of continental ice, which has left its peculiar markings on the highest mountains. this period, probably anterior to the earliest traces yet brought to light of the human race, may have coincided with the submergence of england, and the accumulation of the boulder-clay of norfolk, suffolk, and bedfordshire, before mentioned. it has already been stated that the syenite and some other rocks of the norfolk till seem to have come from scandinavia, and there is no era when icebergs are so likely to have floated them so far south as when the whole of sweden and norway were enveloped in a massive crust of ice; a state of things the existence of which is deduced from the direction of the glacial furrows, and their frequent unconformity to the shape of the minor valleys. glacial period in scotland [ ]. professor agassiz, after his tour in scotland in , announced the opinion that erratic blocks had been dispersed from the scottish mountains as from an independent centre, and that the capping of ice had been of extraordinary thickness.* (* agassiz, "proceedings of the geological society" and "edinburgh philosophical journal" page .) mr. robert chambers, after visiting norway and sweden, and comparing the signs of glacial action observed there with similar appearances in the grampians, came to the conclusion that the highlands both of scandinavia and scotland had once been "moulded in ice," and that the outward and downward movement and pressure of the frozen mass had not only smoothed, polished, and scratched the rocks, but had, in the course of ages, deepened and widened the valleys, and produced much of that denudation which has commonly been ascribed exclusively to aqueous action. the glaciation of the scotch mountains was traced by him to the height of at least feet.* (* "ancient sea margins" edinburgh . glacial phenomena "edinburgh new philosophical journal" april and january .) mr. t.f. jamieson, of ellon, in aberdeenshire, has recently brought forward an additional body of facts in support of this theory. according to him the grampians were at the period of extreme cold enveloped "in one great winding sheet of snow and ice," which reached everywhere to the coast-line, the land being then more elevated than it is now. he describes the glacial furrows sculptured on the solid rocks as pointing in aberdeenshire to the south-east, those of the valley of the forth at edinburgh, from west to east, and higher up the same valley at stirling, from north-west to south-east, as they should do if the ice had followed the lines of what is now the principal drainage. the observations of sir james hall, mr. maclaren, mr. chambers, and dr. fleming, are cited by him in confirmation of this arrangement of the glacial markings, while in sutherland and ross-shire he shows that the glacial furrows along the north coast point northwards, and in argyleshire westwards, always in accordance with the direction of the principal glens and fjords. another argument is also adduced by him in proof of the ice having exerted its mechanical force in a direction from the higher and more inland country to the lower region and sea-coast. isolated hills and minor prominences of rock are often polished and striated on the land side, while they remain rough and jagged on the side fronting the sea. this may be seen both on the east and west coast. mention is also made of blocks of granite which have travelled from south to north in aberdeenshire, of which there would have been no examples had the erratics been all brought by floating ice from the arctic regions when scotland was submerged. it is also urged against the doctrine of attributing the general glaciation to submergence, that the glacial grooves, instead of radiating as they do from a centre, would, if they had been due to ice coming from the north, have been parallel to the coast-line, to which they are now often almost at right angles. the argument, moreover, which formerly had most weight in favour of floating ice, namely, that it explained why so many of the stones did not conform to the contour and direction of the minor hills and valleys, is now brought forward, and with no small effect, in favour of the doctrine of continental ice on the greenlandic scale, which, after levelling up the lesser inequalities, would occasionally flow in mighty ice-currents, in directions often at a high angle to the smaller ridges and glens. the application to scandinavia and scotland of this theory makes it necessary to reconsider the validity of the proofs formerly relied on as establishing the submergence of a great part of scotland beneath the sea, at some period subsequent to the commencement of the glacial period. in all cases where marine shells overlie till, or rest on polished and striated surfaces of rock, the evidence of the land having been under water, and having been since upheaved, remains unshaken; but this special proof rarely extends to heights exceeding feet. in the basin of the clyde we have already seen that recent strata occur feet above the sea-level, with existing species of marine testacea, and with buried canoes, and other works of art. at the higher level of feet occurs the well-known raised beach of the western coast, which, according to mr. jamieson, contains, near fort william and on loch fyne and elsewhere, an assemblage of shells implying a colder climate than that of the -foot terrace, or that of the present sea; just as, in the valley of the somme, the higher-level gravels are supposed to belong to a colder period than the lower ones, and still more decidedly than that of the present era. at still greater elevations, older beds containing a still more arctic group of shells have been observed at airdrie, miles south-east of glasgow, feet above the level of the sea. they were embedded in stratified clays, with the unstratified boulder till both above and below them, and in the overlying unstratified drift were some boulders of granite which must have come from distances of miles at the least.* (* smith of jordanhill, "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page .) the presence of tellina calcarea, and several other northern shells, implies a climate colder than that of the present scottish seas. in the north of scotland, marine shells have been found in deposits of the same age in caithness and in aberdeenshire at heights of feet, and on the shores of the moray firth, as at gamrie in banff, at an elevation of feet; and the stratified sands and beds of pebbles which belong to the same formation ascend still higher--to heights of feet at least.* (* prestwich, "proceedings of the geological society" volume page ; jamieson, "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume .) at much greater heights, stratified masses of drift occur in which hitherto no organic remains, whether of marine or freshwater animals, have ever been found. it is still an undecided question whether the origin of all such deposits in the grampians can be explained without the intervention of the sea. one of the most conspicuous examples has been described by mr. jamieson as resting on the flank of a hill called meal uaine, in perthshire, on the east side of the valley of the tummel, just below killiecrankie. it consists of perfectly horizontal strata, the lowest portion of them feet above the river and feet above the sea. from this elevation to an altitude of nearly feet the same series of strata is traceable, continuously, up the slope of the mountain, and some patches are seen here and there even as high as feet above the sea. they are made up in great part of finely laminated silt, alternating with coarser materials, through which stones from to feet in length are scattered. these large boulders, and some smaller ones, are polished on one or more sides, and marked with glacial striae. the subjacent rocks, also, of gneiss, mica slate, and quartz, are everywhere grooved and polished as if by the passage of a glacier.* (* jamieson, "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page .) at one spot a vertical thickness of feet of this series of strata is exposed to view by a mountain torrent, and in all more than layers of clay, sand, and gravel were counted, the whole evidently accumulated under water. some beds consist of an impalpable mud, like putty, apparently derived from the grinding down of felspar, and resembling the mud produced by the grinding action of modern glaciers. mr. jamieson, when he first gave an account of this drift, inferred, in spite of the absence of marine shells, that it implied the submergence of scotland beneath the ocean after the commencement of the glacial period, or after the era of continental ice indicated by the subjacent floor of polished and grooved rock. this conclusion would require a submergence of the land as far up as feet above the present sea-level, after which a great re-upheaval must have occurred. but the same author, having lately revisited the valley of the tummel, suggests another possible, and i think probable, explanation of the same phenomena. the stratified drift in question is situated in a deep depression between two buttresses of rock, and if an enormous glacier be supposed to have once filled the valley of the tummel to the height of the stratified drift, it may have dammed up the mouth of a mountain torrent by a transverse barrier, giving rise to a deep pond, in which beds of clay and sand brought down by the waters of the torrent were deposited. charpentier in his work on the swiss glaciers has described many such receptacles of stratified matter now in progress, and due to such blockages, and he has pointed out the remnants of ancient and similar formations left by extinct glaciers of an earlier epoch. he specially notices that angular stones of various dimensions, often polished and striated, which rest on the glacier and are let fall when the torrent undermines the side of the moving ice, descend into the small lake and become interstratified with the gravel and fine sediment brought down by the torrent into the same.* (* charpentier, "essai sur les glaciers" page .) the evidence of the former sojourn of the sea upon the land after the commencement of the glacial period was formerly inferred from the height to which erratic blocks derived from distant regions could be traced, besides the want of conformity in the glacial furrows to the present contours of many of the valleys. some of these phenomena may now, as we have seen, be accounted for by assuming that there was once a crust of ice resembling that now covering greenland. the grampians in forfarshire and in perthshire are from to feet high. to the southward lies the broad and deep valley of strathmore, and to the south of this again rise the sidlaw hills to the height of feet and upwards. on the highest summits of this chain, formed of sandstone and shale, and at various elevations, i have observed huge angular fragments of mica-schist, some and others feet in diameter, which have been conveyed for a distance of at least miles from the nearest grampian rocks from which they could have been detached. others have been left strewed over the bottom of the large intervening vale of strathmore.* (* "proceedings of the geological society" volume page .) it may be argued that the transportation of such blocks may have been due not to floating ice, but to a period when strathmore was filled up with land ice, a current of which extended from the perthshire highlands to the summit of the sidlaw hills, and the total absence of marine or freshwater shells from all deposits, stratified or unstratified, which have any connection with these erratics in forfarshire and perthshire may be thought to favour such a theory. but the same mode of transport can scarcely be imagined for those fragments of mica-schist, one of them weighing from to tons, which were observed much farther south by mr. maclaren on the pentland hills, near edinburgh, at the height of feet above the sea, the nearest mountain composed of this formation being miles distant.* (* maclaren, "geology of fife" etc. page .) on the same hills, also, at all elevations, stratified gravels occur which, although devoid of shells, it seems hardly possible to refer to any but a marine origin. although i am willing, therefore, to concede that the glaciation of the scotch mountains, at elevations exceeding feet, may be explained by land ice, it seems difficult not to embrace the conclusion that a subsidence took place not merely of or feet, as demonstrated by the marine shells, but to a much greater amount, as shown by the present position of erratics and some patches of stratified drift. the absence of marine shells at greater heights than feet above the sea, will be treated of in a future chapter. it may in part, perhaps, be ascribed to the action of glaciers, which swept out marine strata from all the higher valleys, after the re-emergence of the land. latest changes produced by glaciers in scotland. we may next consider the state of scotland after its emergence from the glacial sea, when we cannot fail to be approaching the time when man co-existed with the mammoth and other mammalia now extinct. in a paper which i published in , on the ancient glaciers of forfarshire, i endeavoured to show that some of these existed after the mountains and glens had acquired precisely their present shape,* and had left moraines even in the minor valleys, just where they would now leave them were the snow and ice again to gain ground. (* "proceedings of the geological society" volume page .) i described also one remarkable transverse mound, evidently the terminal moraine of a retreating glacier, which crosses the valley of the south esk, a few miles above the point where it issues from the grampians, and about miles below the kirktown of clova. its central part, at a place called glenarm, is feet above the level of the sea. the valley is about half a mile broad, and is bounded by steep and lofty mountains, but immediately above the transverse barrier it expands into a wide alluvial plain, several miles broad, which has evidently once been a lake. the barrier itself, about feet high, consists in its lower part of till with boulders, feet thick, precisely resembling the moraine of a swiss glacier, above which there is a mass of stratified sand, varying in thickness from to feet, which has the appearance of consisting of the materials of the moraine rearranged in a stratified form, possibly by the waters of a glacier lake. the structure of the barrier has been laid open by the esk, which has cut through it a deep passage about yards wide. i have also given an account of another striking feature in the physical geography of perthshire and forfarshire, which i consider to belong to the same period; namely, a continuous zone of boulder clay, forming ridges and mounds from to feet high (the upper part of the mounds usually stratified), enclosing numerous lakes, some of them several miles long, and many ponds and swamps filled with shell-marl and peat. this band of till, with grampian boulders and associated river-gravel, may be traced continuously for a distance of miles, with a width of / miles, from near dunkeld, by coupar, to the south of blairgowrie, then through the lowest part of strathmore, and afterwards in a straight line through the greatest depression in the sidlaw hills, from forfar to lunan bay. although no great river now takes its course through this line of ancient lakes, moraines, and river gravel, yet it evidently marks an ancient line by which, first, a great glacier descended from the mountains to the sea, and by which, secondly, at a later period, the principal water drainage of this country was effected. the subsequent modification in geography is comparable in amount to that which has taken place since the higher level gravels of the valley of the somme were formed, or since the belgian caves were filled with mud and bone-breccia. [illustration: figure . oval and flattish pebbles in deserted channels] (figure . oval and flattish pebbles in deserted channels.) mr. jamieson has remarked, in reference to this and some other extinct river-channels of corresponding date, that we have the means of ascertaining the direction in which the waters flowed by observing the arrangement of the oval and flattish pebbles in their deserted channels; for in the bed of a fast-flowing river such pebbles are seen to dip towards the current, as represented in figure , such being the position of greatest resistance to the stream.* (* jamieson, "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page .) if this be admitted, it follows that the higher or mountainous country bore the same relation to the lower lands, at the time when a great river passed through this chain of lakes, as it does at present. we also seem to have a test of the comparatively modern origin of the mounds of till which surround the above-mentioned chain of lakes (of which that of forfar is one), in the species of organic remains contained in the shell-marl deposited at their bottom. all the mammalia as well as shells are of recent species. unfortunately, we have no information as to the fauna which inhabited the country at the time when the till itself was formed. there seem to be only three or four instances as yet known in all scotland of mammalia having been discovered in boulder clay. mr. r. bald has recorded the circumstances under which a single elephant's tusk was found in the unstratified drift of the valley of the forth, with the minuteness which such a discovery from its rarity well deserved. he distinguishes the boulder clay, under the name of "the old alluvial cover," from that more modern alluvium, in which the whales of airthrie, described in chapter , were found. this cover he says is sometimes feet thick. having never observed any organic remains in it, he watched with curiosity and care the digging of the union canal between edinburgh and falkirk, which passed for no less than miles almost continuously through it. mr. baird, the engineer who superintended the works, assisted in the inquiry, and at one place only in this long section did they meet with a fossil, namely, at cliftonhall, in the valley of the almond. it lay at a depth of between and feet from the surface, in very stiff clay, and consisted of an elephant's tusk, inches long and in circumference, in so fresh a state that an ivory turner purchased it and turned part of it into chessmen before it was rescued from destruction. the remainder is still preserved in the museum at edinburgh, but by exposure to the air it has shrunk considerably.* (* "memoirs of the wernerian society" edinburgh volume page .) in , two other tusks and some bones of the elephant, as we learn from the same authority (mr. bald), were met with, / feet long and inches in circumference, lying in an horizontal position, feet deep in clay, with marine shells, at kilmaurs, in ayrshire. the species of shells are not given.* (* ibid. volume page .) in another excavation through the scotch boulder clay, made in digging the clyde and forth junction railway, the antlers of a reindeer were found at croftamie, in dumbartonshire, in the basin of the river endrick, which flows into loch lomond. they had cut through feet of till with angular and rounded stones, some of large size, and then through feet of underlying clay, when they came upon the deer's horns, feet from the surface, and within a foot of the sandstone on which the till rested. at the distance of a few yards, and in the same position, but a foot or two deeper, were observed marine shells, cyprina islandica, astarte elliptica, a. compressa, fusus antiquus, littorina littorea, and a balanus. the height above the level of the sea was between and feet. the reindeer's horn was seen by professor owen, who considered it to be that of a young female of the large variety, called by the hudson's bay trappers the caribou. the remains of elephants, now in the museums of glasgow and edinburgh, purporting to come from the superficial deposits of scotland have been referred to elephas primigenius. in cases where tusks alone have been found unaccompanied by molar teeth, such specific determinations may be uncertain; but if any one specimen be correctly named, the occurrence of the mammoth and reindeer in the scotch boulder-clay, as both these quadrupeds are known to have been contemporary with man, favours the idea which i have already expressed, that the close of the glacial period in the grampians may have coincided in time with the existence of man in those parts of europe where the climate was less severe, as, for example, in the basins of the thames, somme, and seine, in which the bones of many extinct mammalia are associated with flint implements of the antique type. parallel roads of glen roy in scotland. [illustration: plate . glen roy and glen spean] (plate . view of the mouths of glen roy and glen spean, by sir t. dick lauder. vv. hill of bohuntine. vvv. glen roy. v(inverted)v. mealderry. v. entrance of glen spean vv(superscript)v. point of division between glens roy and spean.) perhaps no portion of the superficial drift of scotland can lay claim to so modern an origin on the score of the freshness of its aspect, as that which forms what are called the parallel roads of glen roy. if they do not belong to the recent epoch, they are at least posterior in date to the present outline of mountain and glen, and to the time when every one of the smaller burns ran in their present channels, though some of them have since been slightly deepened. the almost perfect horizontality, moreover, of the roads, one of which is continuous for about miles from east to west, and miles from north to south, shows that since the era of their formation no change has taken place in the relative levels of different parts of the district. [illustration: figure . map of glen roy] (figure . map of the parallel roads of glen roy or lochaber. a. five miles distant south-west from this point is fort william, where the lochy joins an arm of the sea, called loch eil. vertical lines. cols or watersheds at the heads of the glens--once the westward outlet of the lakes. dots. conspicuous delta deposits as laid down by mr. t.f. jamieson.) glen roy is situated in the western highlands, about miles east-north-east of fort william, near the western end of the great glen of scotland, or caledonian canal, and near the foot of the highest of the grampians, ben nevis. (see map, figure .) throughout nearly its whole length, a distance of more than miles, three parallel roads or shelves are traced along the steep sides of the mountains, as represented in the annexed view, plate , by the late sir t. dick lauder, each maintaining a perfect horizontality, and continuing at exactly the same level on the opposite sides of the glen. seen at a distance, they appear like ledges, or roads, cut artificially out of the sides of the hills; but when we are upon them, we can scarcely recognise their existence, so uneven is their surface, and so covered with boulders. they are from to feet broad, and merely differ from the side of the mountain by being somewhat less steep. on closer inspection, we find that these terraces are stratified in the ordinary manner of alluvial or littoral deposits, as may be seen at those points where ravines have been excavated by torrents. the parallel shelves, therefore, have not been caused by denudation, but by the deposition of detritus, precisely similar to that which is dispersed in smaller quantities over the declivities of the hills above. these hills consist of clay-slate, mica schist, and granite, which rocks have been worn away and laid bare at a few points immediately above the parallel roads. the lowest of these roads is about feet above the level of the sea, the next about feet higher, and the third feet above the second. there is a fourth shelf, which occurs only in a contiguous valley called glen gluoy, which is feet above the highest of all the glen roy roads, and consequently about feet above the level of the sea.* (* another detached shelf also occurs at kilfinnan. (see map, figure .)) one only, the lowest of the three roads of glen roy, is continued throughout glen spean, a large valley with which glen roy unites. (see plate and map, figure .) as the shelves, having no slope towards the sea like ordinary river terraces, are always at the same absolute height, they become continually more elevated above the river in proportion as we descend each valley; and they at length terminate very abruptly, without any obvious cause, or any change either in the shape of the ground or in the composition or hardness of the rocks. i should exceed the limits of this work, were i to attempt to give a full description of all the geographical circumstances attending these singular terraces, or to discuss the ingenious theories which have been severally proposed to account for them by dr. macculloch, sir t. lauder, and messrs. darwin, agassiz, milne, and chambers. there is one point, however, on which all are agreed, namely, that these shelves are ancient beaches, or littoral formations, accumulated round the edges of one or more sheets of water which once stood for a long time successively at the level of the several shelves. [illustration: figure . section through side of loch] (figure . section through side of loch. ab. supposed original surface of rock. cd. roads or shelves in the outer alluvial covering of the hill.) it is well known, that wherever a lake or marine fjord exists surrounded by steep mountains subject to disintegration by frost or the action of torrents, some loose matter is washed down annually, especially during the melting of snow, and a check is given to the descent of this detritus at the point where it reaches the waters of the lake. the waves then spread out the materials along the shore, and throw some of them upon the beach; their dispersing power being aided by the ice, which often adheres to pebbles during the winter months, and gives buoyancy to them. the annexed diagram (figure ) illustrates the manner in which dr. macculloch and mr. darwin suppose "the roads" to constitute mere excrescences of the superficial alluvial coating which rests upon the hillside, and consists chiefly of clay and sharp unrounded stones. among other proofs that the parallel roads have really been formed along the margin of a sheet of water, it may be mentioned, that wherever an isolated hill rises in the middle of the glen above the level of any particular shelf, as in mealderry, plate , a corresponding shelf is seen at the same level passing round the hill, as would have happened if it had once formed an island in a lake or fjord. another very remarkable peculiarity in these terraces is this; each of them comes in some portion of its course to a col, or parting ridge, between the heads of glens, the explanation of which will be considered in the sequel. those writers who first advocated the doctrine that the roads were the ancient beaches of freshwater lakes, were unable to offer any probable hypothesis respecting the formation and subsequent removal of barriers of sufficient height and solidity to dam up the water. to introduce any violent convulsion for their removal was inconsistent with the uninterrupted horizontality of the roads, and with the undisturbed aspect of those parts of the glens where the shelves come suddenly to an end. mr. agassiz and dr. buckland, desirous, like the defenders of the lake theory, to account for the limitation of the shelves to certain glens, and their absence in contiguous glens, where the rocks are of the same composition, and the slope and inclination of the ground very similar, first started the theory that these valleys were once blocked up by enormous glaciers descending from ben nevis, giving rise to what are called, in switzerland and in the tyrol, glacier-lakes. in corroboration of this view, they contended that the alluvium of glen roy, as well as of other parts of scotland, agrees in character with the moraines of glaciers seen in the alpine valleys of switzerland. it will readily be conceded that this hypothesis was preferable to any previous lacustrine theory, by accounting more easily for the temporary existence and entire disappearance of lofty transverse barriers, although the height required for the supposed dams of ice appeared very enormous. before the idea of glacier-lakes had been suggested by agassiz, mr. darwin examined glen roy, and came to the opinion that the shelves were formed when the glens were still arms of the sea, and, consequently, that there never were any seaward barriers. according to him, the land emerged during a slow and uniform upward movement, like that now experienced throughout a large part of sweden and finland; but there were certain pauses in the upheaving process, at which times the waters of the sea remained stationary for so many centuries as to allow of the accumulation of an extraordinary quantity of detrital matter, and the excavation, at many points immediately above the sea-level, of deep notches and bare cliffs in the hard and solid rock. this theory i adopted in ("elements," nd edition), as appearing to me less objectionable than any other then proposed. the phenomena most difficult to reconcile with it are, first, the abrupt cessation of the roads at certain points in the different glens; secondly, their unequal number in different valleys connecting with each other, there being three, for example, in glen roy, and only one in glen spean; thirdly, the precise horizontality of level maintained by the same shelf over a space many leagues in length, requiring us to assume, that during a rise of feet no one portion of the land was raised even a few yards above another; fourthly, the coincidence of level already alluded to of each shelf with a col, or the point forming the head of two glens, from which the rain-waters flow in opposite directions. this last-mentioned feature in the physical geography of lochaber mr. darwin endeavoured to explain in the following manner. he called these cols "land-straits," and regarding them as having been anciently sounds or channels between islands, he pointed out that there is a tendency in such sounds to be silted up, and always the more so in proportion to their narrowness. in a chart of the falkland islands, by captain sulivan, r.n., it appears that there are several examples there of straits where the soundings diminish regularly towards the narrowest part. one is so nearly dry that it can be walked over at low water, and another, no longer covered by the sea, is supposed to have recently dried up in consequence of a small alteration in the relative level of sea and land. "similar straits," observes mr. chambers, "hovering, in character, between sea and land, and which may be called fords, are met with in the hebrides. such, for example, is the passage dividing the islands of lewis and harris, and that between north uist and benbecula, both of which would undoubtedly appear as cols, coinciding with a terrace or raised beach, all round the islands if the sea were to subside."* (* r. chambers, "ancient sea margins" page .) the first of the difficulties above alluded to, namely, the non-extension of the shelves over certain parts of the glens, might be explained, said mr. darwin, by supposing in certain places a quick growth of green turf on a good soil, which prevented the rain from washing away any loose materials lying on the surface. but wherever the soil was barren, and where green sward took long to form, there may have been time for the removal of the gravel. in one case an intermediate shelf appears for a short distance (three quarters of a mile) on the face of the mountain called tombhran, between the two upper shelves, and is seen nowhere else. it occurs where there was the longest space of open water, and where the waves may have acquired a more than ordinary power to heap up detritus. the unequal number of the shelves in valleys communicating with each other, and in which the boundary rocks are similar in composition, and the general absence of any shelves at corresponding altitudes in glens on the opposite watershed, like that of the spey, and in valleys where the waters flow eastward, are difficulties attending the marine theory which have never yet been got over. mr. t.f. jamieson, before cited, has, during a late visit to lochaber, in , observed many facts highly confirmatory of the hypothesis of glacier-lakes which, as i have already stated, was originally advanced by mr. agassiz. in the first place, he found much superficial scoring and polishing of rocks, and accumulation of boulders at those points where signs of glacial action ought to appear, if ice had once dammed up the waters of the glens in which the "roads" occur. ben nevis may have sent down its glaciers from the south, and glen arkaig from the north, for the mountains at the head of the last-mentioned glen are feet high, and may, together with other tributary glens, have helped to choke up the great caledonian valley with ice, so as to block up for a time the mouths of the spean, roy, and gluoy. the temporary conversion of these glens into glacier-lakes is the more conceivable, because the hills at their upper ends not being lofty nor of great extent, they may not have been filled with ice at a time when great glaciers were generated in other adjoining and much higher regions. secondly. the shelves, says mr. jamieson, are more precisely defined and unbroken than any of the raised beaches or acknowledged ancient coast-lines visible on the west of scotland, as in argyllshire, for example. thirdly. at the level of the lower shelf in glen roy, at points where torrents now cut channels through the shelf as they descend the hill-side, there are small delta-like extensions of the shelf, perfectly preserved, as if the materials, whether fine or coarse, had originally settled there in a placid lake, and had not been acted upon by tidal currents, mingling them with the sediment of other streams. these deltas are too entire to allow us to suppose that they have at any time since their origin been exposed to the waves of the sea. fourthly. the alluvium on the cols or watersheds, before alluded to, is such as would have been formed if the waters of the rivers had been made to flow east, or out of the upper ends of the supposed glacier-lakes, instead of escaping at the lower ends, in a westerly direction, where the great blockages of ice are assumed to have occurred. in addition to these arguments of mr. jamieson, i may mention that in switzerland, at present, no testacea live in the cold waters of glacier-lakes; so that the entire absence of fossil shells, whether marine or freshwater, in the stratified materials of each shelf, would be accounted for if the theory above mentioned be embraced. when i examined "the parallel roads" in , in company with dr. buckland, neither this glacier theory nor mr. darwin's suggestion of ancient sea-margins had been proposed, and i have never since revisited lochaber. but i retain in my memory a vivid recollection of the scenery and physical features of the district, and i now consider the glacier-lake theory as affording by far the most satisfactory solution of this difficult problem. the objection to it, which until lately appeared to be the most formidable, and which led mr. robert chambers in his "sea margins," to reject it entirely, was the difficulty of conceiving how the waters could be made to stand so high in glen roy as to allow the uppermost shelf to be formed. grant a barrier of ice in the lower part of the glen of sufficient altitude to stop the waters from flowing westward, still, what prevented them from escaping over the col at the head of glen glaster? this col coincides exactly in level, as mr. milne home first ascertained, with the second or middle shelf of glen roy. the difficulty here stated appears now to be removed by supposing that the higher lines or roads were formed before the lower ones, and when the quantity of ice was most in excess. we must imagine that at the time when the uppermost shelf of glen roy was forming in a shallow lake, the lower part of that glen was filled up with ice, and, according to mr. jamieson, a glacier from loch treig then protruded itself across glen spean and rested on the flank of the hill on the opposite side in such a manner as effectually to prevent any water from escaping over the glen glaster col. the proofs of such a glacier having actually existed at the point in question consist, he says, in numerous cross striae observable in the bottom of glen spean, and in the presence of moraine matter in considerable abundance on the flanks of the hill extending to heights above the glen glaster col. when the ice shrank into less dimensions the second shelf would be formed, having its level determined by the col last mentioned, glen spean in the meantime being filled with a glacier. finally, the ice blockage common to glens roy, spean, and laggan, which consisted probably of a glacier from ben nevis, gave rise to the lowest and most extensive lake, the waters of which escaped over the pass of muckul or the col at the head of loch laggan, which, as mr. jamieson has now ascertained: agrees precisely in level with the lowest of all the shelves, and where there are unequivocal signs of a river having flowed out for a considerable period. dr. hooker has described some parallel terraces, very analogous in their aspect to those of glen roy, as existing in the higher valleys of the himalaya, of which his pencil has given us several graphic illustrations. he believes these indian shelves to have originated on the borders of glacier-lakes, the barriers of which were usually formed by the ice and moraines of lateral or tributary glaciers, which descended into and crossed the main valley, as we have supposed in the case of glen roy; but others he ascribes to the terminal moraine of the principal glacier itself, which had retreated during a series of milder seasons, so as to leave an interval between the ice and the terminal moraine. this interspace caused by the melting of ice becomes filled with water and forms a lake, the drainage of which usually takes place by percolation through the porous parts of the moraine, and not by a stream overflowing that barrier. such a glacier-lake dr. hooker actually found in existence near the head of the yangma valley in the himalaya. it was moreover partially bounded by recently formed marginal terraces or parallel roads, implying changes of level in the barrier of ice and moraine matter.* (* hooker, "himalayan journal" volume page ; pages , , . i have also profited by the author's personal explanations.) it has been sometimes objected to the hypothesis of glacier-lakes, as applied to the case of glen roy, that the shelves must have taken a very long period for their formation. such a lapse of time, it is said, might be consistent with the theory of pauses or stationary periods in the rise of the land during an intermittent upward movement, but it is hardly compatible with the idea of so precarious and fluctuating a barrier as a mass of ice. but the reader will have seen that the permanency of level in such glacier-lakes has no necessary connection with minor changes in the height of the supposed dam of ice. if a glacier descending from higher mountains through a tributary glen enters the main valley in which there happens to be no glacier, the river is arrested in its course and a lake is formed. the dam may be constantly repaired and may vary in height several hundreds of feet without affecting the level of the lake, so long as the surplus waters escape over a col or parting ridge of rock. the height at which the waters remain stationary is determined solely by the elevation of the col, and not by the barrier of ice, provided the barrier is higher than the col. but if we embrace the theory of glacier-lakes, we must be prepared to assume not only that the sea had nothing to do with the original formation of the "parallel roads," but that it has never, since the disappearance of the lakes, risen in any one of the glens up to the level of the lowest shelf, which is about feet high; for in that case the remarkable persistency and integrity of the roads and deltas, before described, must have been impaired. we have seen that miles to the south of lochaber, the glacier formations of lanarkshire with marine shells of arctic character have been traced to the height of feet. about miles to the south-east in perthshire are those stratified clays and sands, near killiecrankie, which were once supposed to be of submarine origin, and which in that case would imply the former submergence of what is now dry land to the extent of feet, or several hundred feet beyond the highest of the parallel roads. even granting that these laminated drifts may have had a different origin, as above suggested, there are still many facts connected with the distribution of erratics and the striation of rocks in scotland which are not easily accounted for without supposing the country to have sunk, since the era of continental ice, to a greater depth than feet, the highest point to which marine shells have yet been traced. after what was said of the pressure and abrading power of a general crust of ice, like that now covering greenland, it is almost superfluous to say that the parallel roads must have been of later date than such a state of things, for every trace of them must have been obliterated by the movement of such a mass of ice. it is no less clear that as no glacier-lakes can now exist in greenland [ ], so there could have been none in scotland, when the mountains were covered with one great crust of ice. it may, however, be contended that the parallel roads were produced when the general crust of ice first gave place to a period of separate glaciers, and that no period of deep submergence ever intervened in lochaber after the time of the lakes. even in that case, however, it is difficult not to suppose that the glen roy country participated in the downward movement which sank part of lanarkshire feet beneath the sea, subsequently to the first great glaciation of scotland. yet that amount of subsidence might have occurred, and even a more considerable one, without causing the sea to rise to the level of the lowest shelf, or to a height of feet above the present sea-level. this is a question on which i am not prepared at present to offer a decided opinion. whether the horizontality of the shelves or terrace-lines is really as perfect as has been generally assumed is a point which will require to be tested by a more accurate trigonometrical survey than has yet been made. the preservation of precisely the same level in the lowest line throughout the glens of roy, spean, and laggan, for a distance of miles east and west, and or miles north and south, would be very wonderful if ascertained with mathematical precision. mr. jamieson, after making in several measurements with a spirit-level, has been led to suspect a rise in the lowest shelf of one foot in a mile in a direction from west to east, or from the mouth of glen roy to a point miles east of it in glen spean. to confirm such observations, and to determine whether a similar rate of rise continues eastward, as far as the pass of muckul, would be most important. on the whole, i conclude that the glen roy terrace-lines and those of some neighbouring valleys, were formed on the borders of glacier-lakes, in times long subsequent to the principal glaciation of scotland. they may perhaps have been nearly as late, especially the lowest of the shelves, as that portion of the pleistocene period in which man co-existed in europe with the mammoth. chapter . -- chronological relations of the glacial period and the earliest signs of man's appearance in europe--continued. signs of extinct glaciers in wales. great submergence of wales during the glacial period proved by marine shells. still greater depression inferred from stratified drift. scarcity of organic remains in glacial formations. signs of extinct glaciers in england. ice action in ireland. maps illustrating successive revolutions in physical geography during the pleistocene period. southernmost extent of erratics in england. successive periods of junction and separation of england, ireland, and the continent. time required for these changes. probable causes of the upheaval and subsidence of the earth's crust. antiquity of man considered in relation to the age of the existing fauna and flora. extinct glaciers in wales. the considerable amount of vertical movement in opposite directions, which was suggested in the last chapter, as affording the most probable explanation of the position of some of the stratified and fossiliferous drifts of scotland, formed since the commencement of the glacial period, will appear less startling if it can be shown that independent observations lead us to infer that a geographical revolution of still greater magnitude accompanied the successive phases of glaciation through which the welsh mountains have passed. that wales was once an independent centre of the dispersion of erratic blocks has long been acknowledged. dr. buckland published in his reasons for believing that the snowdonian mountains in caernarvonshire were formerly covered with glaciers, which radiated from the central heights through the seven principal valleys of that chain, where striae and flutings are seen on the polished rocks directed towards as many different points of the compass. he also described the "moraines" of the ancient glaciers, and the rounded masses of polished rock, called in switzerland "roches moutonnees." his views respecting the old extinct glaciers of north wales were subsequently confirmed by mr. darwin, who attributed the transport of many of the larger erratic blocks to floating ice. much of the welsh glacial drift had already been shown by mr. trimmer to have had a submarine origin, and mr. darwin maintained that when the land rose again to nearly its present height, glaciers filled the valleys, and "swept them clean of all the rubbish left by the sea."* (* "philosophical magazine" series volume page .) professor ramsay, in a paper read to the geological society in , and in a later work on the glaciation of north wales, described three successive glacial periods, during the first of which the land was much higher than it now is, and the quantity of ice excessive; secondly, a period of submergence when the land was feet lower than at present, and when the higher mountain tops only stood out of the sea as a cluster of low islands, which nevertheless were covered with snow; and lastly, a third period when the marine boulder drift formed in the middle period was ploughed out of the larger valleys by a second set of glaciers, smaller than those of the first period. this last stage of glaciation may have coincided with that of the parallel roads of glen roy, spoken of in the last chapter. in wales it was certainly preceded by submergence, and the rocks had been exposed to glacial polishing and friction before they sank. fortunately the evidence of the sojourn of the welsh mountains beneath the waters of the sea is not deficient, as in scotland, in that complete demonstration which the presence of marine shells affords. the late mr. trimmer discovered such shells on moel tryfan, in north wales, in drift elevated more than feet above the level of the sea. it appears from his observations, and those of the late edward forbes, corroborated by others of professor ramsay and mr. prestwich, that about twelve species of shells, including fusus bamfius, f. antiquus, venus striatula (forbes and hanley), have been met with at heights of between and feet, in drift, reposing on a surface of rock which had been previously exposed to glacial friction and striation.* (* ramsay, "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page .) the shells, as a whole, are those of the glacial period, and not of the norwich crag. two localities of these shells in wales, in addition to that first pointed out by mr. trimmer, have since been observed by professor ramsay, who, however, is of opinion that the amount of submergence can by no means be limited to the extreme height to which the shells happen to have been traced; for drift of the same character as that of moel tryfan extends continuously to the height of feet. [ ] rarity of organic remains in glacial formations. the general dearth of shells in such formations, below as well as above the level at which mr. trimmer first found them, deserves notice. whether we can explain it or not, it is a negative character which seems to belong very generally to deposits formed in glacial seas. the porous nature of the strata, and the length of time during which they have been permeated by rain-water, may partly account, as we hinted in a former chapter, for the destruction of organic remains. but it is also possible that they were originally scarce, for we read of the waters of the sea being so freshened and chilled by the melting of ice-bergs in some norwegian and icelandic fjords, that the fish are driven away, and all the mollusca killed. the moraines of glaciers are always from the first devoid of shells, and if transported by ice-bergs to a distance, and deposited where the ice melts, may continue as barren of every indication of life as they were when they originated. nevertheless, it may be said, on the other hand, that herds of seals and walruses crowd the floating ice of spitzbergen in latitude degrees north, of which mr. lamont has recently given us a lively picture,*nand huge whales fatten on myriads of pteropods in polar regions. (* "seasons with the sea-horses" .) it had been suggested that the bottom of the sea, at the era of extreme submergence in scotland and wales, was so deep as to reach the zero of animal life, which, in part of the mediterranean (the aegean, for example), the late edward forbes fixed, after a long series of dredgings, at fathoms. but the shells of the glacial drift of scotland and wales, when they do occur, are not always those of deep seas; and, moreover, our faith in the uninhabitable state of the ocean at great depths has been rudely shaken, by the recent discovery of captain mcclintock and dr. wallich, of starfish in water more than a thousand fathoms deep ( feet!), midway between greenland and iceland. that these radiata were really dredged up from the bottom, and that they had been living and feeding there, appeared from the fact that their stomachs were full of globigerina, of which foraminiferous creatures, both living and dead, the oozy bed of the ocean at that vast depth was found to be exclusively composed. [ ] whatever may be the cause, the fact is certain, that over large areas in scotland, ireland, and wales, i might add throughout the northern hemisphere on both sides of the atlantic, the stratified drift of the glacial period is very commonly devoid of fossils, in spite of the occurrence here and there, at the height of , , and even feet, of marine shells. these, when met with, belong, with few exceptions, to known living species. i am therefore unable to agree with mr. kjerulf that the amount of former submergence can be measured by the extreme height at which shells happen to have been found. glacial formations in england. [illustration: figure . dome-shaped rocks] (figure . dome-shaped rocks, or "roches moutonees," in the valley of the rothay, near ambleside, from a drawing by e. hull, f.g.s.* (* "edinburgh new philosophical journal" volume plate page .)) the mountains of cumberland and westmorland, and the english lake district, afford equally unequivocal vestiges of ice-action not only in the form of polished and grooved surfaces, but also of those rounded bosses before mentioned as being so abundant in the alpine valleys of switzerland, where glaciers exist, or have existed. mr. hall has lately published a faithful account of these phenomena, and has given a representation of some of the english "roches moutonnees," which precisely resemble hundreds of dome-shaped protuberances in north wales, sweden, and north america.* (* hull, "edinburgh new philosophical journal" july .) the marks of glaciation on the rocks, and the transportation of erratics from cumberland to the eastward, have been traced by professor phillips over a large part of yorkshire, extending to a height of feet above the sea; and similar northern drift has been observed in lancashire, cheshire, derbyshire, shropshire, staffordshire, and worcestershire. it is rare to find marine shells, except at heights of or feet; but a few instances of their occurrence have been noticed, especially of turritella communis (a gregarious shell), far in the interior, at elevations of feet, and even of in derbyshire, and some adjacent counties, as i learn from mr. binney and mr. prestwich. such instances are of no small theoretical interest, as enabling us to account for the scattering of large erratic blocks at equal or much greater elevations, over a large part of the northern and midland counties, such as could only have been conveyed to their present sites by floating ice. of this nature, among others, is a remarkable angular block of syenitic greenstone, / feet by feet square, and feet thick, which mr. darwin describes as lying on the summit of ashley heath, in staffordshire, feet above the sea, resting on new red sandstone.* (* ancient glaciers of caernarvonshire, "philosophical magazine" series , page .) signs of ice-action and submergence in ireland during the glacial period. in ireland we encounter the same difficulty as in scotland in determining how much of the glaciation of the higher mountains should be referred to land glaciers, and how much to floating ice, during submergence. the signs of glacial action have been traced by professor jukes to elevations of feet in the killarney district, and to great heights in other mountainous regions; but marine shells have rarely been met with higher than feet above the sea, and that chiefly in gravel, clay, and sand in wicklow and wexford. they are so rare in the drift east of the wicklow mountains, that an exception to the rule, lately observed at ballymore eustace, by professor jukes, is considered as a fact of no small geological interest. the wide extent of drift of the same character, spread over large areas in ireland, shows that the whole island was, in some part of the glacial period, an archipelago, as represented in the maps, figures and . speaking of the wexford drift, the late professor e. forbes states that sir h. james found in it, together with many of the usual glacial shells, several species which are characteristic of the crag; among others the reversed variety of fusus antiquus, called f. contrarius, and the extinct species nucula cobboldiae, and turritella incrassata. perhaps a portion of this drift of the south of ireland may belong to the close of the pliocene period, and may be of a somewhat older date than the shells of the clyde, alluded to in chapter . they may also correspond still more nearly in age with the fauna of the uppermost strata of the norwich crag, occurring at chillesford. [ ] the scarcity of mammalian remains in the irish drift favours the theory of its marine origin. in the superficial deposits of the whole island, i have only met with three recorded examples of the mammoth, one in the south near dungarvan, where the bones of elephas primigenius, two species of bear (ursus arctos and ursus spelaeus?), the reindeer, horse, etc., were found in a cave;* another in the centre of the island near belturbet, in the county of cavan. (* e. brenan and dr. carte, dublin .) perhaps the conversion into land of the bed of the glacial sea, and the immigration into the newly upheaved region of the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, which co-existed with the fabricators of the st. acheul flint hatchets, were events which preceded in time the elevation of the irish drift, and the union of that island with england. ireland may have continued for a longer time in the state of an archipelago, and was therefore for a much shorter time inhabited by the large extinct pleistocene pachyderms. in one of the reports of the geological survey of ireland, published in , professor jukes, in explanation of sheet of the maps, alludes to beds of sand and gravel, and signs of the polishing and furrowing of the rocks in the counties of kerry and killarney, as high as feet above the sea, and supposes (perhaps with good reason) that the land was depressed even to that extent. he observes that above that elevation ( feet) the rocks are rough, and not smoothed, as if by ice. some of the drift was traced as high as feet, the highest hills there exceeding feet. mr. jukes, however, is by no means inclined to insist on submergence to the extent of feet, as he is aware that ice, like that now prevailing in greenland, might explain most, if not all, the appearances of glaciation in the highest regions. although the course taken by the irish erratics in general is such that their transportation seems to have been due to floating ice or coast-ice, yet some granite blocks have travelled from south to north, as recorded by sir r. griffiths, namely, those of the ox mountains in sligo; a fact from which mr. jamieson infers that those mountains formed at one time a centre of dispersion. in the same part of ireland, the general direction in which the boulders have travelled is everywhere from north-west to south-east, a course directly at right angles to the prevailing trend of the present mountain ridges. maps illustrating successive revolutions in physical geography during the pleistocene period. [illustration: figure . map of the british isles] (figure . map of the british isles and part of the north-west of europe, showing the great amount of supposed submergence of land beneath the sea during part of the glacial period. the submergence of scotland is to the extent of feet, and of other parts of the british isles, . in the map, the dark shade expresses the land which alone remained above water. the area shaded by diagonal lines is that which cannot be shown to have been under water at the period of floating ice by the evidence of erratics, or by marine shells of northern species. how far the several parts of the submerged area were simultaneously or successively laid under water, in the course of the glacial period, cannot, in the present state of our knowledge, be determined.) [illustration: figure . map british islands] (figure . map showing what parts of the british islands would remain above water after a subsidence of the area to the extent of feet. the authorities to whom i am indebted for the information contained in this map are--for: scotland: a. geikie, esquire, f.g.s., and t.f. jamieson, esquire, of ellon, aberdeenshire. england: for the counties of: yorkshire, lancashire, and durham: colonel sir henry james, r.e. dorsetshire, hampshire, and isle of wight: h.w. bristow, esquire. gloucestershire, somersetshire, and part of devon: r. etheridge, esquire. kent and sussex: frederick drew, esquire. isle of man: w. whitaker, esquire. ireland: reduced from a contour map constructed by lieutenant larcom, r.e., in , for the railway commissioners.) [illustration: figure . map of part of the north-west of europe] (figure . map of part of the north-west of europe, including the british isles, showing the extent of sea which would become land if there were a general rise of the area to the extent of feet. the darker shade expresses what is now land, the lighter shade the space intervening between the present coastline and the fathom line, which would be converted by such a movement into land. the original of this map will be found in sir h. de la beche's "theoretical researches" page , , but several important corrections have been introduced into it from recently published admiralty surveys, especially: st. a deep channel passing from the north sea into the entrance of the baltic. nd. the more limited westerly extension of the west coast of ireland.) the late mr. trimmer, before referred to, has endeavoured to assist our speculations as to the successive revolutions in physical geography, through which the british islands have passed since the commencement of the glacial period, by four "sketch maps" as he termed them, in the first of which he gave an ideal restoration of the original continental period, called by him the first elephantine period, or that of the forest of cromer, before described. he was not aware that the prevailing elephant of that era (e. meridionalis) was distinct from the mammoth. at this era he conceived ireland and england to have been united with each other and with france, but much of the area represented as land in the map, figure , was supposed to be under water. his second map, of the great submergence of the glacial period, was not essentially different from our map, figure . his third map expressed a period of partial re-elevation, when ireland was reunited to scotland and the north of england; but england still separated from france. this restoration appears to me to rest on insufficient data, being constructed to suit the supposed area over which the gigantic irish deer, or megaceros, migrated from east to west, also to explain an assumed submergence of the district called the weald, in the south-east of england, which had remained land during the grand glacial submergence. the fourth map is a return to nearly the same continental conditions as the first--ireland, england, and the continent being united. this he called the second elephantine period; and it would coincide very closely with that part of the pleistocene era in which man co-existed with the mammoth, and when, according to mr. trimmer's hypothesis previously indicated by mr. godwin-austen, the thames was a tributary of the rhine.* (* joshua trimmer, "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume , plate , and godwin-austen, ibid. volume page and plate .) these geographical speculations were indulged in ten years after edward forbes had published his bold generalisations on the geological changes which accompanied the successive establishment of the scandinavian, germanic, and other living floras and faunas in the british islands, and, like the theories of his predecessor, were the results of much reflection on a vast body of geological facts. it is by repeated efforts of this kind, made by geologists who are prepared for the partial failure of some of their first attempts, that we shall ultimately arrive at a knowledge of the long series of geographical revolutions which have followed each other since the beginning of the pleistocene period. the map, figure , will give some idea of the great extent of land which would be submerged, were we to infer, as many geologists have done, from the joint evidence of marine shells, erratics, glacial striae and stratified drift at great heights, that scotland was, during part of the glacial period, feet below its present level, and other parts of the british isles, feet. a subsidence to this amount can be demonstrated in the case of north wales by marine shells. in the lake district of cumberland, in yorkshire, and in ireland, we must depend on proofs derived from glacial striae and the transportation of erratics for so much of the supposed submergence as exceeds feet. as to central england, or the country north of the thames and bristol channel, marine shells of the glacial period sometimes reach as high as and feet, and erratics still higher, as we have seen above. but this region is of such moderate elevation above the sea, that it would be almost equally laid under water, were there a sinking of no more than feet. to make this last proposition clear, i have constructed, from numerous documents, many of them unpublished, the map, figure , which shows how that small amount of subsidence would reduce the whole of the british isles to an archipelago of very small islands, with the exception of parts of scotland, and the north of england and wales, where four islands of considerable dimensions would still remain. the map does not indicate a state of things supposed to have prevailed at any one moment of the past, because the district south of the thames and the bristol channel seems to have remained land during the whole of the glacial period, at a time when the northern area was under water. the map simply represents the effects of a downward movement of a hundred fathoms, or english feet, assumed to be uniform over the whole of the british isles. it shows the very different state of the physical geography of the area in question, when contrasted with the results of an opposite movement, or one of upheaval, to an equal amount, of which sir henry de la beche had already given us a picture, in his excellent treatise called "theoretical researches."* (* also repeated in de la beche's "geological observer.") his map i have borrowed (figure ), after making some important corrections in it. if we are surprised when looking at the first map, figure , at the vast expanse of sea which so moderate a subsidence as feet would cause, we shall probably be still more astonished to perceive, in figure , that a rise of the same number of feet would unite all the british isles, including the hebrides, orkneys, and shetlands, with one another and the continent, and lay dry the sea now separating great britain from sweden and denmark. it appears from soundings made during various admiralty surveys, that the gained land thus brought above the level of the sea, instead of presenting a system of hills and valleys corresponding with those usually characterising the interior of most of our island, would form a nearly level terrace, or gently inclined plane, sloping outwards like those terraces of denudation and deposition which i have elsewhere described as occurring on the coasts of sicily and the morea.* (* "manual of geology" page .) it seems that, during former and perhaps repeated oscillations of level undergone by the british isles, the sea has had time to cut back the cliffs for miles in many places, while in others the detritus derived from wasting cliffs drifted along the shores, together with the sediment brought down by rivers and swept by currents into submarine valleys, has exerted a levelling power, filling up such depressions as may have pre-existed. owing to this twofold action few marked inequalities of level have been left on the sea-bottom, the "silver-pits" off the mouth of the humber offering a rare exception to the general rule, and even there the narrow depression is less than feet in depth. beyond the fathom line, the submarine slope surrounding the british coast is so much steeper that a second elevation of equal amount (or of feet) would add but slightly to the area of gained land; in other words, the and fathom lines run very near each other.* (* de la beche, "geological researches" page .) the naturalist would have been entitled to assume the former union, within the pleistocene period, of all the british isles with each other and with the continent, as expressed in the map, figure , even if there had been no geological facts in favour of such a junction. for in no other way would he be able to account for the identity of the fauna and flora found throughout these lands. had they been separated ever since the miocene period, like madeira, porto santo, and the desertas, constituting the small madeiran archipelago, we might have expected to discover a difference in the species of land-shells, not only when ireland was compared to england, but when different islands of the hebrides were contrasted one with another, and each of them with england. it would not, however, be necessary, in order to effect the complete fusion of the animals and plants which we witness, to assume that all parts of the area formed continuous land at one and the same moment of time, but merely that the several portions were so joined within the pleistocene era as to allow the animals and plants to migrate freely in succession from one district to another. southernmost extent of erratics in england. in reference to that portion of the south of england which is marked by diagonal lines in figure , the theory of its having been an area of dry land during the period of great submergence and floating ice does not depend merely on negative evidence, such as the absence of the northern drift or boulder clay on its surface; but we have also, in favour of the same conclusion, the remarkable fact of the presence of erratic blocks on the southern coast of sussex, implying the existence there of an ancient coast-line at a period when the cold must have been at its height. these blocks are to be seen in greatest number at pagham and selsea, miles south of chichester, in latitude degrees minutes north. they consist of fragments of granite, syenite and greenstone, as well as of devonian and silurian rocks, some of them of large size. i measured one of granite at pagham, feet in circumference. they are not of northern origin, but must have come from the coast of normandy or brittany, or from land which may once have existed to the south-west, in what is now the english channel. they were probably drifted into their present site by coast ice, and the yellow clay and gravel in which they are embedded are a littoral formation, as shown by the shells. beneath the gravel containing these large erratics, is a blue mud in which skeletons of elephas antiquus, and other mammalia, have been observed. still lower occurs a sandy loam, from which mr. r.g. austen* has collected thirty-eight species of marine shells, all recent, but forming an assemblage differing as a whole from that now inhabiting the english channel. (* "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page .) the presence among them of lutraria rugosa and pecten polymorphus, not known to range farther north in the actual seas than the coast of portugal, indicates a somewhat warmer temperature at the time when they flourished. subsequently, there must have been great cold when the selsea erratics were drifted into their present position, and this cold doubtless coincided in time with a low temperature farther north. [ ] these transported rocks of sussex are somewhat older than a sea-beach with recent marine shells which at brighton is covered by chalk rubble, called the "elephant-bed" which i cannot describe in this place, but i allude to it as one of many geological proofs of the former existence of a seashore in this region, and of ancient cliffs bounding the channel between france and england, all of older date than the close of the glacial period. [ ] in order to form a connected view of the most simple series of changes in physical geography which can possibly account for the phenomena of the glacial period, and the period of the establishment of the present provinces of animals and plants, the following geographical states of the british and adjoining areas may be enumerated. first, a continental period, towards the close of which the forest of cromer flourished: when the land was at least feet above its present level, perhaps much higher, and its extent probably greater than that given in the map, figure . secondly, a period of submergence, by which the land north of the thames and bristol channel, and that of ireland, was gradually reduced to such an archipelago as is pictured in map, figure ; and finally to such a general prevalence of sea as is seen in map, figure . this was the period of great submergence and of floating ice, when the scandinavian flora, which occupied the lower grounds during the first continental period, may have obtained exclusive possession of the only lands not covered with perpetual snow. thirdly, a second continental period when the bed of the glacial sea, with its marine shells and erratic blocks, was laid dry, and when the quantity of land equalled that of the first period, and therefore probably exceeded that represented in the map, figure . during this period there were glaciers in the higher mountains of scotland and wales, and the welsh glaciers, as we have seen, pushed before them and cleared out the marine drift with which some valleys had been filled during the period of submergence. the parallel roads of glen roy are referable to some part of the same era. as a reason for presuming that the land which in map, figure , is only represented as feet above its present level, was during part of this period much higher, professor ramsay has suggested that, as the previous depression far exceeded fathoms (amounting in wales to feet, as shown by marine shells, and to , by stratified drift), it is not improbable that the upward movement was on a corresponding scale. in passing from the period of chief submergence to this second continental condition of things, we may conceive a gradual change first from that of map to map , then from the latter phase to that of map , and finally to still greater accessions of land. during this last period the passage of the germanic flora into the british area took place, and the scandinavian plants, together with northern insects, birds, and quadrupeds, retreated into the higher grounds. judging from the evidence at present before us, the first appearance of man, when, together with the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, or with the elephas antiquus, rhinoceros hemitoechus, and hippopotamus major, he ranged freely from all parts of the continent into the british area, took place during this second continental period. fourthly, the next and last change comprised the breaking up of the land of the british area once more into numerous islands, ending in the present geographical condition of things. there were probably many oscillations of level during this last conversion of continuous land into islands, and such movements in opposite directions would account for the occurrence of marine shells at moderate heights above the level of the sea, notwithstanding a general lowering of the land. to the close of this era belong the marine deposits of the clyde and the carses of the tay and forth, before alluded to. in a memoir by professor e. forbes, before cited, he observes, that the land of passage by which the plants and animals migrated into ireland consisted of the upraised marine drift which had previously formed the bottom of the glacial sea. portions of this drift extend to the eastern shores of wicklow and wexford, others are found in the isle of man full of arctic shells, others on the british coast opposite ireland. the freshwater marl, containing numerous skeletons of the great deer, or megaceros, overlie in the isle of man that marine glacial drift. professor forbes also remarks that the subsequent disjunction of ireland from england, or the formation of the irish channel, which is less than feet in its greatest depth, preceded the opening of the straits of dover, or the final separation of england from the continent. this he inferred from the present distribution of species both in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. thus, for example, there are twice as many reptiles in belgium as in england, and the number inhabiting england is twice that found in ireland. yet the irish species are all common to england, and all the english to belgium. it is therefore assumed that the migration of species westward having been the work of time, there was not sufficient lapse of ages to complete the fusion of the continental and british reptilian fauna, before france was separated from england and england from ireland. for the same reason there are also a great number of birds of short flight, and small quadrupeds, inhabiting england which do not cross to ireland, the irish channel seeming to have arrested them in their westward course.* (* e. forbes, fauna and flora of british isles, "memoir of the geological survey" volume page .) the depth of the irish channel in the narrower parts is only feet, and the english channel between dover and calais less than , and rarely anywhere more than feet; so that vertical movements of slight amount compared to some of those previously considered, with the aid of denuding operations or the waste of sea cliffs, and the scouring out of the channel, might in time effect the insulation of the lands above alluded to. time required for successive changes in physical geography in the pleistocene period. the time which it would require to bring about such changes of level, according to the average rate assumed in chapter , however vast, will not be found to exceed that which would best explain the successive fluctuations in terrestrial temperature, the glaciation of solid rocks, the transportation of erratics above and below the sea-level, the height of arctic shells above the sea, and last, not least, the migration of the existing species of animals and plants into their actual stations, and the extinction of some conspicuous forms which flourished during the pleistocene ages. when we duly consider all these changes which have taken place since the beginning of the glacial epoch, or since the forest of cromer and the elephas meridionalis flourished, we shall find that the phenomena become more and more intelligible in proportion to the slowness of the rate of elevation and depression which we assume. the submergence of wales to the extent of feet, as proved by glacial shells, would require , years, at the rate of / feet per century; but taking professor ramsay's estimate of feet more, that depression being implied by the position of some of the stratified drift, we must demand an additional period of , years, amounting in all to , ; and the same time would be required for the re-elevation of the tract to its present height. but if the land rose in the second continental period as much as feet above its present level, as in figure , this feet, first of rising and then of sinking, would require , years more; the whole of the grand oscillation, comprising the submergence and re-emergence, having taken about , years for its completion; and this, even if there were no pause or stationary period, when the downward movement ceased, and before it was converted into an upward one. i am aware that it may be objected that the average rate here proposed is a purely arbitrary and conjectural one, because, at the north cape, it is supposed that there has been a rise of about feet in a century, and at spitsbergen, according to mr. lamont, a still faster upheaval during the last years.* (* "seasons with the sea-horses" page .) but, granting that in these and some exceptional cases (none of them as yet very well established) the rising or sinking has, for a time, been accelerated, i do not believe the average rate of motion to exceed that above proposed. mr. darwin, i find, considers that such a mean rate of upheaval would be as high as we could assume for the west coast of south america, where we have more evidence of sudden changes of level than anywhere else. he has not, however, attempted to estimate the probable rate of secular elevation in that or any other region. little progress has yet been made in divining the most probable causes of these great movements of the earth's crust; yet what little we know of the state of the interior leads us to expect that the gradual expansion or contraction of large portions of the solid crust may be the result of fluctuations in temperature, with which the existence of hundreds of active and thousands of extinct volcanoes is probably connected. it is ascertained that solid rocks, such as granite and sandstone, expand and contract annually, even under such a moderate range of temperature as that of a canadian winter and summer. if the heat should go on increasing through a thickness, say only of miles of the earth's crust, the gradual upheaval of the incumbent mass may amount to many hundreds of feet; and the elevation may be carried still farther, by the complete fusion of part of the inferior rocks. according to the experiments of deville, the contraction of granite, in passing from a melted, or as some would say its plastic condition, to a solid state, must be more than per cent.* (* "bull. societe geologique france" nd series volume page .) so that we have at our command a source of depression on a grand scale, at every period when granitic rocks have originated in the interior of the earth's crust. all mineralogists are agreed that the passage of voluminous masses, from a liquid or pasty to a solid and crystalline state, must be an extremely slow process. it may often happen that, in the same series of superimposed rocks, some are expanding while still solid or while partially melting, while others are at the same time crystallising and contracting; so that the alterations of level at the surface may be the result of complicated and often of conflicting agencies. the more gradually we conceive such changes to take place, the more comprehensible they become in the eyes of the chemist and natural philosopher who speculates on the changes of the earth's interior; and the more fertile are they in the hands of the geologist in accounting for revolutions on the habitable surface. we may presume, that after the movement has gone on for a long time in one determinate direction, whether of elevation or depression, the change to an opposite movement, implying the substitution of a heating for a refrigerating operation, or the reverse, would not take place suddenly; but would be marked by a period of inaction, or of slight movement, or such a state of quiescence, as prevails throughout large areas of dry land in the normal condition of the globe. i see no reason for supposing that any part of the revolutions in physical geography, to which the maps above described have reference, indicate any catastrophes greater than those which the present generation has witnessed. if man was in existence when the cromer forest was becoming submerged, he would have felt no more alarm than the danish settlers on the east coast of baffin's bay, when they found the poles, which they had driven into the beach to secure their boats, had subsided below their original level. already, perhaps, the melting ice has thrown down till and boulders upon those poles, a counterpart of the boulder clay which overlies the forest-bed on the norfolk cliffs. we have seen that all the plants and shells, marine and freshwater, of the forest bed, and associated fluvio-marine strata of norfolk, are specifically identical with those of the living european flora and fauna; so that if upon such a stratum a deposit of the present period, whether freshwater or marine, should be thrown down, it might lie conformably over it, and contain the same invertebrate fauna and flora. the strata so superimposed would, in ordinary geological language, be called contemporaneous, not only as belonging to the same epoch, but as appertaining strictly to the same subdivision of one and the same epoch; although they would in fact have been separated by an interval of several hundred thousand years. if, in the lower of the two formations, some of the mammalia of the genera elephant and rhinoceros were found to be distinct in species from those of the same genera in the upper or "recent" stratum, it might appear as though there had been a sudden coming in of new forms, and a sudden dying out of old ones; for there would not have been time in the interval for any perceptible change in the invertebrate fauna, by which alone we usually measure the lapse of time in the older formations. when we are contrasting the vertebrate contents of two sets of superimposed strata of the cretaceous, oolitic, or any other ancient formation in which the shells are identical in species, we ought never to lose sight of the possibility of their having been separated by such intervals or by two or three thousand centuries. that number of years may sometimes be of small moment in reference to the rate of fluctuation of species in the lower animals, but very important when the succession of forms in the highest classes of vertebrata is concerned. if we reflect on the long series of events of the pleistocene and recent periods contemplated in this chapter, it will be remarked that the time assigned to the first appearance of man, so far as our geological inquiries have yet gone, is extremely modern in relation to the age of the existing fauna and flora, or even to the time when most of the living species of animals and plants attained their actual geographical distribution. at the same time it will also be seen, that if the advent of man in europe occurred before the close of the second continental period, and antecedently to the separation of ireland from england and of england from the continent, the event would be sufficiently remote to cause the historical period to appear quite insignificant in duration, when compared to the antiquity of the human race. chapter . -- extinct glaciers of the alps and their chronological relation to the human period. extinct glaciers of switzerland. alpine erratic blocks on the jura. not transported by floating ice. extinct glaciers of the italian side of the alps. theory of the origin of lake-basins by the erosive action of glaciers considered. successive phases in the development of glacial action in the alps. probable relation of these to the earliest known date of man. correspondence of the same with successive changes in the glacial condition of the scandinavian and british mountains. cold period in sicily and syria. extinct glaciers of switzerland. we have seen in the preceding chapters that the mountains of scandinavia, scotland, and north wales have served, during the glacial period, as so many independent centres for the dispersion of erratic blocks, just as at present the ice-covered continent of north greenland is sending down ice in all directions to the coast, and filling baffin's bay with floating bergs, many of them laden with fragments of rocks. another great european centre of ice-action during the pleistocene period was the alps of switzerland, and i shall now proceed to consider the chronological relations of the extinct alpine glaciers to those of more northern countries previously treated of. [ ] the alps lie far south of the limits of the northern drift described in the foregoing pages, being situated between the th and th degrees of north latitude. on the flanks of these mountains, and on the sub-alpine ranges of hills or plains adjoining them, those appearances which have been so often alluded to, as distinguishing or accompanying the drift, between the th and th parallels of north latitude, suddenly reappear and assume, in a southern region, a truly arctic development. where the alps are highest, the largest erratic blocks have been sent forth; as, for example, from the regions of mont blanc and monte rosa, into the adjoining parts of switzerland and italy; while in districts where the great chain sinks in altitude, as in carinthia, carniola, and elsewhere, no such rocky fragments, or a few only and of smaller bulk, have been detached and transported to a distance. in the year , m. venetz first announced his opinion that the alpine glaciers must formerly have extended far beyond their present limits, and the proofs appealed to by him in confirmation of this doctrine were afterwards acknowledged by m. charpentier, who strengthened them by new observations and arguments, and declared in his conviction that the glaciers of the alps must once have reached as far as the jura, and have carried thither their moraines across the great valley of switzerland. m. agassiz, after several excursions in the alps with m. charpentier, and after devoting himself some years to the study of glaciers, published in an admirable description of them and of the marks which attest the former action of great masses of ice over the entire surface of the alps and the surrounding country.* (* agassiz, "etudes sur les glaciers et systeme glaciaire.") he pointed out that the surface of every large glacier is strewed over with gravel and stones detached from the surrounding precipices by frost, rain, lightning, or avalanches. and he described more carefully than preceding writers the long lines of these stones, which settle on the sides of the glacier, and are called the lateral moraines; those found at the lower end of the ice being called terminal moraines. such heaps of earth and boulders every glacier pushes before it when advancing, and leaves behind it when retreating. when the alpine glacier reaches a lower and a warmer situation, about or feet above the sea, it melts so rapidly that, in spite of the downward movement of the mass, it can advance no farther. its precise limits are variable from year to year, and still more so from century to century; one example being on record of a recession of half a mile in a single year. we also learn from m. venetz, that whereas, between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, all the alpine glaciers were less advanced than now, they began in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to push forward, so as to cover roads formerly open, and to overwhelm forests of ancient growth. these oscillations enable the geologist to note the marks which a glacier leaves behind it as it retrogrades; and among these the most prominent, as before stated, are the terminal moraines, or mounds of unstratified earth and stones, often divided by subsequent floods into hillocks, which cross the valley like ancient earthworks, or embankments made to dam up a river. some of these transverse barriers were formerly pointed out by saussure below the glacier of the rhone, as proving how far it had once transgressed its present boundaries. on these moraines we see many large angular fragments, which, having been carried along the surface of the ice, have not had their edges worn off by friction; but the greater number of the boulders, even those of large size, have been well rounded, not by the power of water, but by the mechanical force of the ice, which has pushed them against each other, or against the rocks flanking the valley. others have fallen down the numerous fissures which intersect the glacier, where, being subject to the pressure of the whole mass of ice, they have been forced along, and either well rounded or ground down into sand, or even the finest mud, of which the moraine is largely constituted. as the terminal moraines are the most prominent of all the monuments left by a receding glacier, so are they the most liable to obliteration; for violent floods or debacles are sometimes occasioned in the alps by the sudden bursting of glacier-lakes, or those temporary sheets of water before alluded to which are caused by the damming up of a river by a glacier which has increased during a succession of cold seasons, and descending from a tributary into the main valley, has crossed it from side to side. on the failure of this icy barrier the accumulated waters, being let loose, sweep away and level many a transverse mound of gravel and loose boulders below, and spread their materials in confused and irregular beds over the river-plain. another mark of the former action of glaciers in situations where they exist no longer, is the polished, striated, and grooved surfaces of rocks before described. stones which lie underneath the glacier and are pushed along by it sometimes adhere to the ice, and as the mass glides slowly along at the rate of a few inches, or at the utmost or feet per day, abrade, groove, and polish the rock, and the larger blocks are reciprocally grooved and polished by the rock on their lower sides. as the forces both of pressure and propulsion are enormous, the sand acting like emery polishes the surface; the pebbles, like coarse gravers, scratch and furrow it; and the large stones scoop out grooves in it. lastly, projecting eminences of rock, called "roches moutonnees," are smoothed and worn into the shape of flattened domes where the glaciers have passed over them. although the surface of almost every kind of rock when exposed to the open air wastes away by decomposition, yet some retain for ages their polished and furrowed exterior: and if they are well protected by a covering of clay or turf, these marks of abrasion seem capable of enduring for ever. they have been traced in the alps to great heights above the present glaciers, and to great horizontal distances beyond them. another effect of a glacier is to lodge a ring of stones round the summit of a conical peak which may happen to project through the ice. if the glacier is lowered greatly by melting, these circles of large angular fragments, which are called "perched blocks," are left in a singular situation near the top of a steep hill or pinnacle, the lower parts of which may be destitute of boulders. alpine erratic blocks on the jura. now some or all the marks above enumerated,--the moraines, erratics, polished surfaces, domes, striae, and perched rocks--are observed in the alps at great heights above the present glaciers and far below their actual extremities; also in the great valley of switzerland, miles broad; and almost everywhere on the jura, a chain which lies to the north of this valley. the average height of the jura is about one-third that of the alps, and it is now entirely destitute of glaciers; yet it presents almost everywhere moraines, and polished and grooved surfaces of rocks. the erratics, moreover, which cover it present a phenomenon which has astonished and perplexed the geologist for more than half a century. no conclusion can be more incontestable than that these angular blocks of granite, gneiss, and other crystalline formations, came from the alps, and that they have been brought for a distance of miles and upwards across one of the widest and deepest valleys of the world; so that they are now lodged on the hills and valleys of a chain composed of limestone and other formations, altogether distinct from those of the alps. their great size and angularity, after a journey of so many leagues, has justly excited wonder, for hundreds of them are as large as cottages; and one in particular, composed of gneiss, celebrated under the name of pierre a bot, rests on the side of a hill about feet above the lake of neufchatel, and is no less than feet in diameter. but there are some far-transported masses of granite and gneiss which are still larger, and which have been found to contain , and , cubic feet of stone; and one limestone block at devens, near bex, which has travelled miles, contains , cubic feet, its angles being sharp and unworn. von buch, escher, and studer inferred, from an examination of the mineral composition of the boulders, that those resting on the jura, opposite the lakes of geneva and neufchatel, have come from the region of mont blanc and the valais, as if they had followed the course of the rhone to the lake of geneva, and had then pursued their way uninterruptedly in a northerly direction. m. charpentier, who conceived the alps in the period of greatest cold to have been higher by several thousand feet than they are now, had already suggested that the alpine glaciers once reached continuously to the jura, conveying thither the large erratics in question.* (* d'archiac, "histoire des progres" etc. volume page .) m. agassiz, on the other hand, instead of introducing distinct and separate glaciers, imagined that the whole valley of switzerland might have been filled with ice, and that one great sheet of it extended from the alps to the jura, the two chains being of the same height as now relatively to each other. to this idea it was objected that the difference of altitude, when distributed over a space of miles, would give an inclination of two degrees only, or far less than that of any known glacier. in spite of this difficulty, the hypothesis has since received the support of professor james forbes in his very able work on the alps published in . in , i advanced jointly with mr. darwin* the theory that the erratics may have been transferred by floating ice to the jura, at the time when the greater part of that chain and the whole of the swiss valley to the south was under the sea. (* see "elements of geology" nd edition .) we pointed out that if at that period the alps had attained only half their present altitude they would yet have constituted a chain as lofty as the chilean andes, which in a latitude corresponding to switzerland now send down glaciers to the head of every sound, from which icebergs covered with blocks of granite are floated seaward. opposite that part of chile where the glaciers abound is situated the island of chiloe miles in length with a breadth of miles, running parallel to the continent. the channel which separates it from the main land is of considerable depth and miles broad. parts of its surface, like the adjacent coast of chile, are overspread with recent marine shells, showing an upheaval of the land during a very modern period; and beneath these shells is a boulder deposit in which mr. darwin found large blocks of granite and syenite which had evidently come from the andes. a continuance in future of the elevatory movement now observed to be going on in this region of the andes and of chiloe might cause the former chain to rival the alps in altitude and give to chiloe a height equal to that of the jura. the same rise might dry up the channel between chiloe and the main land so that it would then represent the great valley of switzerland. sir roderick i. murchison, after making several important geological surveys of the alps, proposed in a theory agreeing essentially with that suggested by mr. darwin and myself, namely that the erratics were transported to the jura at a time when the great strath of switzerland and many valleys receding far into the alps were under water. he thought it impossible that the glacial detritus of the rhone could ever have been carried to the lake of geneva and beyond it by a glacier, or that so vast a body of ice issuing from one narrow valley could have spread its erratics over the low country of the cantons of vaud, fribourg, berne, and soleure, as well as the slopes of the jura, comprising a region of about miles in breadth from south-west to north-east, as laid down in the map of charpentier. he therefore imagined the granitic blocks to have been translated to the jura by ice-floats when the intermediate country was submerged.* (* "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page .) it may be remarked that this theory, provided the water be assumed to have been salt or brackish, demands quite as great an oscillation in the level of the land as that on which charpentier had speculated, the only difference being that the one hypothesis requires us to begin with a subsidence of or feet, and the other with an elevation to the same amount. we should also remember that the crests or watersheds of the alps and jura are about miles apart, and if once we suppose them to have been in movement during the glacial period it is very probable that the movements at such a distance may not have been strictly uniform. if so the alps may have been relatively somewhat higher, which would have greatly facilitated the extension of alpine glaciers to the flanks of the less elevated chain. five years before the publication of the memoir last mentioned, m. guyot had brought forward a great body of new facts in support of the original doctrine of charpentier, that the alpine glaciers once reached as far as the jura and that they had deposited thereon a portion of their moraines.* (* "bulletin de la societe des sciences naturelles de neufchatel" .) the scope of his observations and argument was laid with great clearness before the british public in by mr. charles maclaren, who had himself visited switzerland for the sake of forming an independent opinion on a theoretical question of so much interest and on which so many eminent men of science had come to such opposite conclusions.* (* "edinburgh new philosophical magazine" october .) m. guyot had endeavoured to show that the alpine erratics, instead of being scattered at random over the jura and the great plain of switzerland, are arranged in a certain determinate order strictly analogous to that which ought to prevail if they had once constituted the lateral, medial, and terminal moraines of great glaciers. the rocks chiefly relied on as evidence of this distribution consist of three varieties of granite, besides gneiss, chlorite-slate, euphotide, serpentine, and a peculiar kind of conglomerate, all of them foreign alike to the great strath between the alps and jura and to the structure of the jura itself. in these two regions limestones, sandstones, and clays of the secondary and tertiary formations alone crop out at the surface, so that the travelled fragments of alpine origin can easily be distinguished and in some cases the precise localities pointed out from whence they must have come. [illustration: figure . map of ancient glacier] (figure . map showing the supposed course of the ancient and now extinct glacier of the rhone, and the distribution of the erratic blocks and drift conveyed by it to the great valley of switzerland and the jura.) the accompanying map or diagram (figure ) slightly altered from one given by mr. maclaren will enable the reader more fully to appreciate the line of argument relied on by m. guyot. the dotted area is that over which the alpine fragments were spread by the supposed extinct glacier of the rhone. the site of the present reduced glacier of that name is shown at a. from that point the boulders may first be traced to b, or martigny, where the valley takes an abrupt turn at right angles to its former course. here the blocks belonging to the right side of the river or derived from c d e have not crossed over to the left side at b, as they should have done had they been transported by floating ice, but continue to keep to the side to which they belonged, assuming that they once formed part of a right lateral moraine of a great extinct glacier. that glacier, after arriving at the lower end of the long narrow valley of the upper rhone at f, filled the lake of geneva, f, i, with ice. from f, as from a great vomitory, it then radiated in all directions bearing along with it the moraines with which it was loaded and spreading them out on all sides over the great plain. but the principal icy mass moved straight onwards in a direct line towards the hill of chasseron, g (precisely opposite f), where the alpine erratics attain their maximum of height on the jura, that is to say english feet above the level of the lake of neufchatel or feet above the sea. the granite blocks which have ascended to this eminence g came from the east shoulder of mont blanc h, having travelled in the direction b, f, g. when these and the accompanying blocks resting on the south-eastern declivity of the jura are traced from their culminating point g in opposite directions, whether westward towards geneva or eastwards towards soleure, they are found to decline in height from the middle of the arc g towards the two extremities i and k, both of which are at a lower level than g, by about feet. in other words the ice of the extinct glacier, having mounted up on the sloping flanks of the jura in the line of greatest pressure to its highest elevation, began to decline laterally in the manner of a pliant or viscous mass with a gentle inclination till it reached two points distant from each other no less than miles. [ ] in further confirmation of this theory m. guyot observed that fragments derived from the right bank of the great valley of the rhone c d e are found on the right side of the great swiss basin or strath as at l and m, while those derived from the left bank p h occur on the left side of the basin or on the jura between g and i; and those again derived from places farthest up on the left bank and nearest the source of the rhone, as n o, occupy the middle of the great basin, constituting between m and k what m. guyot calls the frontal or terminal moraine of the eastern prolongation of the old glacier. a huge boulder of talcose granite, now at steinhoff, miles east from k, or soleure, containing , french cubic feet, or equal in bulk to a mass measuring feet in every direction, was ascertained by charpentier from its composition to have been derived from n, one of the highest points on the left side of the rhone valley far above martigny. from this spot it must have gone all round by f, which is the only outlet to the deep valley, so as to have performed a journey of no less than miles! general transportation of erratics in switzerland due to glaciers and not to floating ice. it is evident that the above described restriction of certain fragments of peculiar lithological character to that bank of the rhone where the parent rocks are alone met with and the linear arrangement of the blocks in corresponding order on the opposite side of the great plain of switzerland, are facts which harmonise singularly well with the theory of glaciers while they are wholly irreconcilable with that of floating ice. against the latter hypothesis all the arguments which charpentier originally brought forward in opposition to the first popular doctrine of a grand debacle or sudden flood rushing down from the alps to the jura might be revived. had there ever been such a rush of muddy water, said he, the blocks carried down the basins of the principal swiss rivers, such as the rhone, aar, reuss, and limmat, would all have been mingled confusedly together instead of having each remained in separate and distinct areas as they do and should do according to the glacial hypothesis. m. morlot presented me in with an unpublished map of switzerland in which he had embodied the results of his own observations and those of mm. guyot, escher, and others, marking out by distinct colours the limits of the ice-transported detritus proper to each of the great river-basins. the arrangement of the drift and erratics thus depicted accords perfectly well with charpentier's views and is quite irreconcilable with the supposition of the scattered blocks having been dispersed by floating ice when switzerland was submerged. as opposed to the latter hypothesis, i may also state that nowhere as yet have any marine shells or other fossils than those of a terrestrial character, such as the bones of the mammoth and a few other mammalia and some coniferous wood, been detected in those drifts, though they are often many hundreds of feet in thickness. a glance at m. morlot's map, above mentioned,* will show that the two largest areas, indicated by a single colour, are those over which the rhone and the rhine are supposed to have spread out in ancient times their enormous moraines. (* see map, "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page plate .) one of these only, that of the rhone, has been exhibited in our diagram, figure . the distinct character of the drift in the two cases is such as it would be if two colossal glaciers should now come down from the higher alps through the valleys traversed by those rivers, leaving their moraines in the low country. the space occupied by the glacial drift of the rhine is equal in dimensions or rather exceeds that of the rhone, and its course is not interfered with in the least degree by the lake of constance, miles long, any more than is the dispersion of the erratics of the rhone by the lake of geneva, about miles in length. the angular and other blocks have in both instances travelled on precisely as if those lakes had no existence, or as if, which was no doubt the case, they had been filled with solid ice. during my last visit to switzerland in , i made excursions, in company with several distinguished geologists, for the sake of testing the relative merits of the two rival theories above referred to, and i examined parts of the jura above neufchatel in company with m. desor, the country round soleure with m. langen, the southern side of the great strath near lausanne with m. morlot, the basin of the aar around berne with m. escher von der linth; and having satisfied myself that all the facts which i saw north of the alps were in accordance with m. guyot's views, i crossed to the italian side of the great chain and became convinced that the same theory was equally applicable to the ancient moraines of the plains of the po. m. escher pointed out to me at trogen in appenzel on the left bank of the rhine fragments of a rock of a peculiar mineralogical character, commonly called the granite of pontelyas, the natural position of which is well known near trons, miles from trogen, on the left bank of the rhine about miles from the source of that river. all the blocks of this peculiar granite keep to the left bank, even where the valley turns almost at right angles to its former course near mayenfeld below chur, making a sharp bend resembling that of the valley of the rhone at martigny. the granite blocks, where they are traced to the low country, still keep to the left side of the lake of constance. that they should not have crossed over to the opposite river-bank below chur is quite inexplicable if, rejecting the aid of land-ice, we appeal to floating ice as the transporting power. in m. morlot's map already cited we behold between the areas occupied by the glacial drift of the rhine and rhone three smaller yet not inconsiderable spaces distinguished by distinct colours, indicating the peculiar detritus brought down by the three great rivers, the aar, reuss, and limmat. the ancient glacier of the first of these, the aar, has traversed the lakes of brienz and thun and has borne angular, polished, and striated blocks of limestone and other rocks as far as berne and somewhat below that city. the reuss has also stamped the lithological character of its own mountainous region upon the lower part of its hydrographical basin by covering it with its peculiar alpine drift. in like manner the old extinct glacier of the limmat during its gradual retreat has left monuments of its course in the lake of zurich in the shape of terminal moraines, one of which has almost divided that great sheet of water into two lakes. the ice-work done by the extinct glaciers, as contrasted with that performed by their dwarfed representatives of the present day, is in due proportion to the relative volume of the supposed glaciers, whether we measure them by the distances to which they have carried erratic blocks or the areas which they have strewed over with drift or the hard surfaces of rock and number of boulders which they have polished and striated. instead of a length of , , or miles and a thickness of , , or at the utmost feet, those giants of the olden time must have been from to miles long and between and feet deep. in like manner the glaciation although identical in kind is on so small a scale in the existing alpine glaciers as at first sight to disappoint a swedish, scotch, welsh, or north american geologist. when i visited the terminal moraine of the glacier of the rhone in and tried to estimate the number of angular or rounded pebbles and blocks which exhibited glacial polishing or scratches as compared to those bearing no such markings, i found that several thousand had to be reckoned before i arrived at the first which was so striated or polished as to differ from the stones of an ordinary torrent-bed. even in the moraines of the glaciers of zermatt, viesch, and others, in which fragments of limestone and serpentine are abundant (rocks which most readily receive and most faithfully retain the signs of glaciation), i found, for one which displayed such indications, several hundreds entirely free from them. of the most opposite character were the results obtained by me from a similar scrutiny of the boulders and pebbles of the terminal moraine of one of the old extinct glaciers, namely, that of the rhone in the suburbs of soleure. thus at the point k in the map, figure , i observed a mass of unstratified clay or mud, through which a variety of angular and rubbed stones were scattered and a marked proportion of the whole were polished and scratched and the clay rendered so compact, as if by the incumbent pressure of a great mass of ice, that it has been found necessary to blow it up with gunpowder in making railway cuttings through part of it. a limestone of the age of our portland stone on which this old moraine rests, has its surface polished like a looking-glass, displaying beautiful sections of fossil shells of the genera nerinaea and pteroceras, while occasionally, besides finer striae, there are deep rectilinear grooves, agreeing in direction with the course in which the extinct glacier would have moved according to the theory of m. guyot, before explained. extinct glaciers of the italian side of the alps. [illustration: figure . map of the moraines of extinct glaciers] (figure . map of the moraines of extinct glaciers extending from the alps into the plains of the po near turin. from map of the ancient glaciers of the italian side of the alps by signor gabriel de mortillet. a. crest or watershed of the alps. b. snow-covered alpine summits which fed the ancient glaciers. c. moraines of ancient or extinct glaciers.) to select another example from the opposite or southern side of the alps. it will be seen in the elaborate map recently executed by signor gabriel de mortillet of the ancient glaciers of the italian flank of the alps that the old moraines descend in narrow strips from the snow-covered ridges through the principal valleys to the great basin of the po, on reaching which they expand and cover large circular or oval areas. each of these groups of detritus is observed (see map, figure ) to contain exclusively the wreck of such rocks as occur in situ on the alpine heights of the hydrographical basins to which the moraines respectively belong. i had an opportunity of verifying this fact, in company with signor gastaldi as my guide, by examining the erratics and boulder formation between susa and turin, on the banks of the dora riparia, which brings down the waters from mont cenis and from the alps south-west of it. i there observed striated fragments of dolomite and gypsum, which had come down from mont cenis and had travelled as far as avigliana; also masses of serpentine brought from less remote points, some of them apparently exceeding in dimensions the largest erratics of switzerland. i afterwards visited, in company with signori gastaldi and michelotti, a still grander display of the work of a colossal glacier of the olden time, miles north-east of turin, the moraine of which descended from the two highest of the alps, mont blanc and monte rosa, and after passing through the valley of aosta, issued from a narrow defile above ivrea (see map, figure ). from this vomitory the old glacier poured into the plains of the po that wonderful accumulation of mud, gravel, boulders, and large erratics, which extend for miles from above ivrea to below caluso and which when seen in profile from turin have the aspect of a chain of hills. in many countries, indeed, they might rank as an important range of hills, for where they join the mountains they are more than feet high, and retain more than half that height for a great part of their course, rising very abruptly from the plain, often with a slope of from to degrees. this glacial drift reposes near the mountains on ancient metamorphic rocks and farther from them on marine pliocene strata. portions of the ridges of till and stratified matter have been cut up into mounds and hillocks by the action of the river, the dora baltea, and there are numerous lakes, so that the entire moraine much resembles, except in its greater height and width, the line of glacial drift of perthshire and forfarshire before described. its complicated structure can only be explained by supposing that the ancient glacier advanced and retreated several times and left large lateral moraines, the more modern mounds within the limits of the older ones, and masses of till thrown down upon the rearranged and stratified materials of the first set of moraines. such appearances accord well with the hypothesis of the successive phases of glacial action in switzerland, to which i shall presently advert. contorted strata of glacial drift south of ivrea. at mazze near caluso (see figure ), the southern extremity of this great moraine has recently been cut through in making a tunnel for the railway which runs from turin to ivrea. in the fine section thus exposed signor gastaldi and i had an opportunity of observing the internal structure of the glacial formation. in close juxtaposition to a great mass of till with striated boulders, we saw stratified beds of alternating gravel, sand, and loam, which were so sharply bent that many of them had been twice pierced through in the same vertical cutting. whether they had been thus folded by the mechanical power of an advancing glacier, which had pushed before it a heap of stratified matter, as the glacier of zermatt has been sometimes known to shove forward blocks of stone through the walls of houses, or whether the melting of masses of ice, once interstratified with sand and gravel, had given rise to flexures in the manner before suggested; it is at least satisfactory to have detected this new proof of a close connection between ice-action and contorted stratification, such as has been described as so common in the norfolk cliffs and which is also very often seen in scotland and north america, where stratified gravel overlies till. i have little doubt that if the marine pliocene strata which underlie a great part of the moraine below ivrea were exposed to view in a vertical section, those fundamental strata would be found not to participate in the least degree in the plications of the sands and gravels of the overlying glacial drift. to return to the marks of glaciation: in the moraine at mazze there are many large blocks of protogine and large and small ones of limestone and serpentine which have been brought down from monte rosa, through the gorge of ivrea, after having travelled for a distance of miles. confining my attention to a part of the moraine where pieces of limestone and serpentine were very numerous, i found that no less than one-third of the whole number bore unequivocal signs of glacial action; a state of things which seems to bear some relation to the vast volume and pressure of the ice which once constituted the extinct glacier and to the distance which the stones had travelled. when i separated the pebbles of quartz, which were never striated, and those of granite, mica-schist, and diorite, which do not often exhibit glacial markings, and confined my attention to the serpentine alone i found no less than nineteen in twenty of the whole number polished and scratched; whereas in the terminal moraines of some modern glaciers, where the materials have travelled not more than or , instead of miles, scarce one in twenty even of the serpentine pebbles exhibit glacial polish and striation. theory of the origin of lake-basins by the erosive action of glaciers, considered. geologists are all agreed that the last series of movements to which the alps owe their present form and internal structure occurred after the deposition of the miocene strata; and it has been usual to refer the origin of the numerous lake-basins of alpine and sub-alpine regions both in switzerland and northern italy to the same movements; for it seemed not unnatural to suppose, that forces capable of modifying the configuration of the greatest european chain, by uplifting some of its component tertiary strata (those of marine origin of the miocene period) several thousand feet above their former level, after throwing them into vertical and contorted positions, must also have given rise to many superficial inequalities, in some of which large bodies of water would collect. m. desor, in a memoir on the swiss and italian lakes, suggested that they may have escaped being obliterated by sedimentary deposition by having been filled with ice during the whole of the glacial period. subsequently to the retreat of the great glaciers we know that the lake-basins have been to a certain extent encroached upon and turned into land by river deltas; one of which, that of the rhone at the head of the lake of geneva, is no less than miles long and several miles broad, besides which there are many torrents on the borders of the same lake, forming smaller deltas. m. gabriel de mortillet after a careful study of the glacial formations of the alps agreed with his predecessors that the great lakes had existed before the glacial period, but came to the opinion in that they had all been first filled up with alluvial matter and then re-excavated by the action of ice, which during the epoch of intense cold had by its weight and force of propulsion scooped out the loose and incoherent alluvial strata, even where they had accumulated to a thickness of feet. besides this erosion, the ice had carried the whole mass of mud and stones up the inclined planes, from the central depths to the lower outlets of the lakes and sometimes far beyond them. as some of these rock-basins are , others more than feet deep, having their bottoms in some cases , in others feet below the level of the sea, and having areas from to miles in length and from to in breadth, we may well be startled at the boldness of this hypothesis. the following are the facts and train of reasoning which induced m. de mortillet to embrace these views. at the lower ends of the great italian lakes, such as maggiore, como, garda, and others, there are vast moraines which are proved by their contents to have come from the upper alpine valleys above the lakes. such moraines often repose on an older stratified alluvium, made up of rounded and worn pebbles of precisely the same rocks as those forming the moraines, but not derived from them, being small in size, never angular, polished, or striated, and the whole having evidently come from a great distance. these older alluvial strata must, according to m. de mortillet, be of pre-glacial date and could not have been carried past the sites of the lakes, unless each basin had previously been filled and levelled up with mud, sand, and gravel, so that the river channel was continuous from the upper to the lower extremity of each basin. professor ramsay, after acquiring an intimate knowledge of the glacial phenomena of the british isles, had taught many years before that small tarns and shallow rock-basins such as we see in many mountain regions owe their origin to glaciers which erode the softer rocks, leaving the harder ones standing out in relief and comparatively unabraded. following up this idea after he had visited switzerland and without any communication with m. de mortillet or cognisance of his views, he suggested in that the lake-basins were not of pre-glacial date, but had been scooped out by ice during the glacial period, the excavation having for the most part been effected in miocene sandstone, provincially called, on account of its softness, "molasse." by this theory he dispensed with the necessity of filling up pre-existing cavities with stratified alluvium, in the manner proposed by m. de mortillet. i will now explain to what extent i agree with, and on what points i feel compelled to differ from the two distinguished geologists above cited. first. it is no doubt true, as professor ramsay remarks, that heavy masses of ice, creeping for ages over a surface of dry land (whether this comprise hills, plateaus, and valleys, as in the case of greenland, before described, or be confined to the bottoms of great valleys, as now in the higher alps), must often by their grinding action produce depressions, in consequence of the different degrees of resistance offered by rocks of unequal hardness. thus, for example, where quartzose beds of mica-schist alternate with clay-slate, or where trap-dykes, often causing waterfalls in the courses of torrents, cut through sandstone or slate--these and innumerable other common associations of dissimilar stony compounds must give rise to a very unequal amount of erosion and consequently to lake-basins on a small scale. but the larger the size of any lake, the more certain it will be to contain within it rocks of every degree of hardness, toughness, and softness; and if we find a gradual deepening from the head towards the central parts and a shallowing again from the middle to the lower end, as in several of the great swiss and italian lakes, which are or miles in length, we require a power capable of acting with a considerable degree of uniformity on these masses of varying powers of resistance. secondly. several of the great lakes are by no means in the line of direction which they ought to have taken had they been scooped out by the pressure and onward movement of the extinct glaciers. the lake of geneva, for instance, had it been the work of ice, would have been prolonged from the termination of the upper valley of the rhone towards the jura, in the direction from f to g of the map, figure , instead of running from f to i. thirdly. it has been ascertained experimentally, that in a glacier, as in a river, the rate of motion is accelerated or lessened, according to the greater or less slope of the ground; also, that the lower strata of ice, like those of water, move more slowly than those above them. in the lago maggiore, which is more than feet deep ( metres), the ice, says professor ramsay, had to descend a slope of about degrees for the first miles, and then to ascend for the last miles (from the deepest part towards the outlet) at an angle of degrees. it is for those who are conversant with the dynamics of glacier motion to divine whether in such a case the discharge of ice would not be entirely effected by the superior and faster moving strata, and whether the lowest would not be motionless or nearly so, and would therefore exert very little, if any, friction on the bottom. fourthly. but the gravest objection to the hypothesis of glacial erosion on so stupendous a scale is afforded by the entire absence of lakes of the first magnitude in several areas where they ought to exist if the enormous glaciers which once occupied those spaces had possessed the deep excavating power ascribed to them. thus in the area laid down on the map, figure , or that covered by the ancient moraine of the dora baltea, we see the monuments of a colossal glacier derived from mont blanc and monte rosa, which descended from points nearly miles distant, and then emerging from the narrow gorge above ivrea deployed upon the plains of the po, advancing over a floor of marine pliocene strata of no greater solidity than the miocene sandstone and conglomerate in which the lake-basins of geneva, zurich, and some others are situated. why did this glacier fail to scoop out a deep and wide basin rivalling in size the lakes of maggiore or como, instead of merely giving rise to a few ponds above ivrea, which may have been due to ice action? there is one lake, it is true--that of candia, near the southern extremity of the moraine--which is larger; but even this, as will be seen by the map, is quite of subordinate importance, and whether it is situated in a rock basin or is simply caused by a dam of moraine matter has not yet been fully made out. there ought also to have been another great lake, according to the theory under consideration, in the space now occupied by the moraine of the dora riparia, between susa and turin (see map, figure ). signor gastaldi has shown that all the ponds in that area consist exclusively of what m. de mortillet has denominated morainic lakes, i.e. caused by barriers of glacier-mud and stones. fifthly. in proof of the great lakes having had no existence before the glacial period, professor ramsay observes that we do not find in the alps any freshwater strata of an age intermediate between "the close of the miocenic and the commencement of the glacial epoch."* (* "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume .) but although such formations are scarce, they are by no means wholly wanting; and if it can be shown that any one of the principal lakes, that of zurich for example, existed prior to the glacial era it will follow that in the alps the erosive power of ice was not required to produce lake-basins on a large scale. the deposits alluded to on the borders of the lake of zurich are those of utznach and durnten, situated each about feet above the present level of the lake and containing valuable beds of lignite. the first of them, that of utznach, is a delta formed at the head of the ancient and once more extensive lake. the argillaceous and lignite-bearing strata, more than feet in thickness, rest unconformably on highly inclined and sometimes vertical miocene molasse. these clays are covered conformably by stratified sand and gravel feet thick, partly consolidated, in which the pebbles are of rocks belonging to the upper valleys of the limmat and its tributaries, all of them small and not glacially striated and wholly without admixture of large angular stones. on the top of all repose very large erratic blocks, affording clear evidence that the colossal glacier which once filled the valley of the limmat covered the old littoral deposit. the great age of the lignite is partly indicated by the bones of elephas antiquus found in it. i visited utznach in company with m. escher von der linth in , and during the same year examined the lignite of durnten, many miles farther down on the right bank of the lake, in company with professor heer and m. marcou. the beds there are of the same age and within a few feet of the same height above the level of the lake. they might easily have been overlooked or confounded with the general glacial drift of the neighbourhood, had not the bed of lignite, which is from to feet thick, been worked for fuel, during which operation many organic remains came to light. among these are the teeth of elephas antiquus, determined by dr. falconer, and rhinoceros leptorhinus? (r. megarhinus, christol), the wild bull and red deer (bos primigenius, boj., and cervus elaphus, l.), the last two determined by professor rutimeyer. in the same beds i found many freshwater shells of the genera paludina, limnaea, etc., all of living species. the plants named by professor heer are also recent and agree singularly with those of the cromer buried forest, before described. among them are the scotch and spruce firs, pinus sylvestris and pinus abies, and the buckbean, or menyanthes trifoliata, etc., besides the common birch and other european plants. overlying this lignite are first, as at utznach, stratified gravel not of glacial origin, about feet thick; and secondly, highest of all, huge angular erratic blocks clearly indicating the presence of a great glacier posterior in date to all the organic remains above enumerated. if any one of the existing swiss lakes were now lowered by deepening its outlet, or by raising the higher portion of it relatively to the lower, we should see similar deltas of comparatively modern date exposed to view, some of them with embedded trunks of pines of the same species drifted down during freshets. such deposits would be most frequent at the upper ends of the lakes, but a few would occur on either bank not far from the shore where torrents once entered, agreeing in geographical position with the lignite formations of utznach and durnten. there are other freshwater formations with lignite, besides those on the lake of zurich, as those of wetzikon near the pfaffikon lake, of kaltbrunnen, of buchberg, and that of morschweil between st. gall and rorschach, but none probably older than the durnten beds. like the buried forest of cromer they are all pre-glacial, yet they by no means represent the older nor even the newer pliocene period, but rather the beginning of the pleistocene. it is therefore true, as professor ramsay remarks, that, as yet, no strata "of the age of the english crag" have been detected in any alpine valley. in other words, there are no freshwater formations yet known corresponding in date to the pliocene beds of the upper val d'arno, above florence--a fact from which we may infer (though with diffidence, as the inference is based on negative evidence), that, although the great alpine valleys were eroded in pliocene times, the lake-basins were, nevertheless, of pleistocene date--some of them formed before, others during, the glacial epoch. sixthly. in what manner then did the great lake-basins originate if they were not hollowed out by ice? my answer is, they are all due to unequal movements of upheaval and subsidence. we have already seen that the buried forest of cromer, which by its organic contents seems clearly to be of the same age as the lignite of durnten, was pre-glacial and that it has undergone a great oscillation of level (about feet in both directions) since its origin, having first sunk to that extent below the sea and then been raised up again to the sea-level. in the countless post-miocene ages which preceded the glacial period there was ample time for the slow erosion by water of all the principal hydrographical basins of the alps, and the sites of all the great lakes coincide, as professor ramsay truly says, with these great lines of drainage. the lake-cavities do not lie in synclinal troughs, following the strike and foldings of the strata, but often, as the same geologist remarks, cross them at high angles; nor are they due to rents or gaping fissures, although these, with other accidents connected with the disturbing movements of the alps, may sometimes have determined originally the direction of the valleys. the conformity of the lake-basins to the principal watercourses is explicable if we assume them to have resulted from inequalities in the upward and downward movements of the whole country in pleistocene times, after the valleys were eroded. we know that in sweden the rate of the rise of the land is far from uniform, being only a few inches in a century near stockholm, while north of it and beyond gefle it amounts to as many feet in the same number of years. let us suppose with charpentier that the alps gained in height several thousand feet at the time when the intense cold of the glacial period was coming on. this gradual rise would be an era of aqueous erosion and of the deepening, widening, and lengthening of the valleys. it is very improbable that the elevation would be everywhere identical in quantity, but if it was never in excess in the outskirts as compared to the central region or crest of the chain, it would not give rise to lakes. when, however, the period of upheaval was followed by one of gradual subsidence, the movement not being everywhere strictly uniform, lake-basins would be formed wherever the rate of depression was in excess in the upper country. let the region, for example, near the head waters of the great rivers sink at the rate of from to feet per century, while only half as much subsidence occurs towards the circumference of the mountains--the rate diminishing about an inch per mile in a distance, say of miles--this might convert many of the largest and deepest valleys at their lower ends into lakes. we have no certainty that such movements may not now be in progress in the alps; for if they are as slow as we have assumed, they would be as insensible to the inhabitants as is the upheaval of scandinavia or the subsidence of greenland to the swedes and danes who dwell there. they only know of the progress of such geographical revolutions because a slight change of level becomes manifest on the margin of the sea. the lines of elevation or depression above supposed might leave no clear geological traces of their action on the high ridges and table-lands separating the valleys of the principal rivers; it is only when they cross such valleys that the disturbance caused in the course of thousands of years in the drainage becomes apparent. if there were no ice, the sinking of the land might not give rise to lakes. to accomplish this in the absence of ice, it is necessary that the rate of depression should be sufficiently fast to make it impossible for the depositing power of the river to keep pace with it, or in other words to fill up the incipient cavity as fast as it begins to form. such levelling operations once complete, the running water, aided by sand and pebbles, will gradually cut a gorge through the newly raised rock so as to prevent it from forming a barrier. but if a great glacier fill the lower part of the valley all the conditions of the problem are altered. instead of the mud, sand, and stones drifted down from the higher regions being left behind in the incipient basin, they all travel onwards in the shape of moraines on the top of the ice, passing over and beyond the new depression, so that when at the end of fifty or a thousand centuries the glacier melts, a large and deep basin representing the difference in the movement of two adjoining mountain areas--namely, the central and the circumferential--is for the first time rendered visible. by adopting this hypothesis, we concede that there is an intimate connection between the glacial period and a predominance of lakes, in producing which the action of ice is threefold; first, by its direct power in scooping out shallow basins where the rocks are of unequal hardness; an operation which can by no means be confined to the land, for it must extend to below the level of high water a thousand feet and more in such fjords as have been described as filled with ice in greenland. secondly. the ice will act indirectly by preventing cavities caused by inequalities of subsidence or elevation from becoming the receptacles first of water and then of sediment, by which the cavities would be levelled up and the lakes obliterated. thirdly. the ice is also an indirect cause of lakes, by heaping up mounds of moraine matter and thus giving rise to ponds and even to sheets of water several miles in diameter. the comparative scarcity, therefore, of lakes of pleistocene date in tropical countries, and very generally south of the fortieth and fiftieth parallels of latitude, may be accounted for by the absence of glacial action in such regions. post-glacial lake-dwelling in the north of italy. we learn from m. de mortillet that in the peat which has filled up one of the "morainic lakes" formed by the ancient glacier of the ticino, m. moro has discovered at mercurago the piles of a lake-dwelling like those of switzerland, together with various utensils and a canoe hollowed out of the trunk of a tree. from this fact we learn that south of the alps as well as north of them a primitive people having similar habits flourished after the retreat of the great glaciers. successive phases of glacial action in the alps, and their relation to the human period [ ]. according to the geological observations of m. morlot, the following successive phases in the development of ice-action in the alps are plainly recognisable:-- first. there was a period when the ice was in its greatest excess, when the glacier of the rhone not only reached the jura, but climbed to the height of feet above the lake of neufchatel, and feet above the sea, at which time the alpine ice actually entered the french territory at some points, penetrating by certain gorges, as through the defile of the fort de l'ecluse, among others. second. to this succeeded a prolonged retreat of the great glaciers, when they evacuated not only the jura and the low country between that chain and the alps, but retired some way back into the alpine valleys. m. morlot supposes their diminution in volume to have accompanied a general subsidence of the country to the extent of at least feet. the geological formations of the second period consist of stratified masses of sand and gravel, called the "ancient alluvium" by mm. necker and favre, corresponding to the "older or lower diluvium" of some writers. their origin is evidently due to the action of rivers, swollen by the melting of ice, by which the materials of parts of the old moraines were rearranged and stratified and left usually at considerable heights above the level of the present valley plains. third. the glaciers again advanced and became of gigantic dimensions, though they fell far short of those of the first period. that of the rhone, for example, did not again reach the jura, though it filled the lake of geneva and formed enormous moraines on its borders and in many parts of the valley between the alps and jura. fourth. a second retreat of the glaciers took place when they gradually shrank nearly into their present limits, accompanied by another accumulation of stratified gravels which form in many places a series of terraces above the level of the alluvial plains of the existing rivers. in the gorge of the dranse, near thonon, m. morlot discovered no less than three of these glacial formations in direct superposition, namely, at the bottom of the section, a mass of compact till or boulder-clay (number ) feet thick, including striated boulders of alpine limestone, and covered by regularly stratified ancient alluvium (number ) feet thick, made up of rounded pebbles in horizontal beds. this mass is in its turn overlaid by a second formation (number ) of unstratified boulder clay, with erratic blocks and striated pebbles, which constituted the left lateral moraine of the great glacier of the rhone when it advanced for the second time to the lake of geneva. at a short distance from the above section terraces (number ) composed of stratified alluvium are seen at the heights of , , , and feet above the lake of geneva, which by their position can be shown to be posterior in date to the upper boulder-clay and therefore belong to the fourth period, or that of the last retreat of the great glaciers. in the deposits of this fourth period the remains of the mammoth have been discovered, as at morges, for example, on the lake of geneva. the conical delta of the tiniere, mentioned in chapter as containing at different depths monuments of the roman as well as of the antecedent bronze and stone ages, is the work of alluvial deposition going on when the terrace of feet was in progress. this modern delta is supposed by m. morlot to have required , years for its accumulation. at the height of feet above the lake, following up the course of the same torrent, we come to a more ancient delta, about ten times as large, which is therefore supposed to be the monument of about ten times as many centuries, or , years, all referable to the fourth period mentioned in the preceding page, or that which followed the last retreat of the great glaciers.* (* morlot, terrain quaternaire du bassin de leman "bulletin de la societe vaudoise des sciences naturelles" number .) if the lower flattened cone of tiniere be referred in great part to the age of the oldest lake-dwellings, the higher one might perhaps correspond with the pleistocene period of st. acheul, or the era when man and the elephas primigenius flourished together; but no human remains or works of art have as yet been found in deposits of this age or in any alluvium containing the bones of extinct mammalia in switzerland. upon the whole, it is impossible not to be struck with an apparent correspondence in the succession of events of the glacial period of switzerland and that of the british isles before described. the time of the first alpine glaciers of colossal dimensions, when that chain perhaps was several thousand feet higher than now, may have agreed with the first continental period when scotland was invested with a universal crust of ice. the retreat of the first alpine glaciers, caused partly by a lowering of that chain, may have been synchronous with the period of great submergence and floating ice in england. the second advance of the glaciers may have coincided in date with the re-elevation of the alps, as well as of the scotch and welsh mountains; and lastly, the final retreat of the swiss and italian glaciers may have taken place when man and the extinct mammalia were colonising the north-west of europe and beginning to inhabit areas which had formed the bed of the glacial sea during the era of chief submergence. but it must be confessed that in the present state of our knowledge these attempts to compare the chronological relations of the periods of upheaval and subsidence of areas so widely separated as are the mountains of scandinavia, the british isles, and the alps, or the times of the advance and retreat of glaciers in those several regions and the greater or less intensity of cold, must be looked upon as very conjectural. we may presume with more confidence that when the alps were highest and the alpine glaciers most developed, filling all the great lakes of northern italy and loading the plains of piedmont and lombardy with ice, the waters of the mediterranean were chilled and of a lower average temperature than now. such a period of refrigeration is required by the conchologist to account for the prevalence of northern shells in the sicilian seas about the close of the pliocene or commencement of the pleistocene period. for such shells as cyprina islandica, panopoea norvegica (= p. bivonae, philippi), leda pygmaea, munst, and some others, enumerated among the fossils of the latest tertiary formations of sicily by philippi and edward forbes, point unequivocally to a former more severe climate. dr. hooker also in his late journey to syria (in the autumn of ) found the moraines of extinct glaciers, on which the whole of the ancient cedars of lebanon grow, to descend feet below the summit of that chain. the temperature of syria is now so much milder that there is no longer perpetual snow even on the summit of lebanon, the height of which was ascertained to be , feet above the mediterranean.* (* hooker, "natural history review" number january page .) such monuments of a cold climate in latitudes so far south as syria and the north of sicily, between and degrees north, may be confidently referred to an early part of the glacial period, or to times long anterior to those of man and the extinct mammalia of abbeville and amiens. chapter . -- human remains in the loess, and their probable age. nature, origin, and age of the loess of the rhine and danube. impalpable mud produced by the grinding action of glaciers. dispersion of this mud at the period of the retreat of the great alpine glaciers. continuity of the loess from switzerland to the low countries. characteristic organic remains not lacustrine. alpine gravel in the valley of the rhine covered by loess. geographical distribution of the loess and its height above the sea. fossil mammalia. loess of the danube. oscillations in the level of the alps and lower country required to explain the formation and denudation of the loess. more rapid movement of the inland country. the same depression and upheaval might account for the advance and retreat of the alpine glaciers. himalayan mud of the plains of the ganges compared to european loess. human remains in loess near maestricht, and their probable antiquity. nature and origin of the loess. intimately connected with the subjects treated of in the last chapter, is the nature, origin, and age of certain loamy deposits, commonly called loess, which form a marked feature in the superficial deposits of the basins of the rhine, danube, and some other large rivers draining the alps, and which extend down the rhine into the low countries, and were once perhaps continuous with others of like composition in the north of france. [ ] it has been reported of late years that human remains have been detected at several points in the loess of the meuse around and below maestricht. i have visited the localities referred to; but, before giving an account of them, it will be desirable to explain what is meant by the loess, a step the more necessary as a french geologist for whose knowledge and judgment i have great respect, tells me he has come to the conclusion that "the loess" is "a myth," having no real existence in a geological sense or as holding a definite place in the chronological series. no doubt it is true that in every country, and at all geological periods, rivers have been depositing fine loam on their inundated plains in the manner explained above in chapter , where the nile mud was spoken of. this mud of the plains of egypt, according to professor bischoff's chemical analysis agrees closely in composition with the loess of the rhine.* (* "chemical and physical geology" volume page .) i have also shown when speaking of the fossil man of natchez, how identical in mineral character and in the genera of its terrestrial and amphibious shells is the ancient fluviatile loam of the mississippi with the loess of the rhine. but granting that loam presenting the same aspect has originated at different times and in distinct hydrographical basins, it is nevertheless true that during the glacial period the alps were a great centre of dispersion, not only of erratics, as we have seen in the last chapter, and of gravel which was carried farther than the erratics, but also of very fine mud which was transported to still greater distances and in greater volume down the principal river-courses between the mountains and the sea. mud produced by glaciers. they who have visited switzerland are aware that every torrent which issues from an icy cavern at the extremity of a glacier is densely charged with an impalpable powder, produced by the grinding action to which the subjacent floor of rock and the stones and sand frozen into the ice are exposed in the manner before described. we may therefore readily conceive that a much greater volume of fine sediment was swept along by rivers swollen by melting ice at the time of the retreat of the gigantic glaciers of the olden time. the fact that a large proportion of this mud, instead of being carried to the ocean where it might have formed a delta on the coast or have been dispersed far and wide by the tides and currents, has accumulated in inland valleys, will be found to be an additional proof of the former occurrence of those grand oscillations in the level of the alps and parts of the adjoining continent which were required to explain the alternate advance and retreat of the glaciers, and the superposition of more than one boulder clay and stratified alluvium. the position of the loess between basle and bonn is such as to imply that the great valley of the rhine had already acquired its present shape, and in some places, perhaps more than its actual depth and width, previously to the time when it was gradually filled up to a great extent with fine loam. the greater part of this loam has been since removed, so that a fringe only of the deposit is now left on the flanks of the boundary hills, or occasionally some outliers in the middle of the great plain of the rhine where it expands in width. these outliers are sometimes on such a scale as to admit of minor hills and valleys, having been shaped out of them by the action of rain and small streamlets, as near freiburg in the breisgau and other districts. fossil shells of the loess. [illustration: figures , , and ] (figure . succinea oblonga.) (figure . pupa muscorum.) (figure . helix hispida, lin.; h. plebeia, drap.) the loess is generally devoid of fossils, although in many places they are abundant, consisting of land-shells, all of living species, and comprising no small part of the entire molluscous fauna now inhabiting the same region. the three shells most frequently met with are those represented in the annexed figures ( , and ). the slug, called succinea, is not strictly aquatic, but lives in damp places, and may be seen in full activity far from rivers, in meadows where the grass is wet with rain or dew; but shells of the genera limnaea, planorbis, paludina, cyclas, and others, requiring to be constantly in the water, are extremely exceptional in the loess, occurring only at the bottom of the deposit where it begins to alternate with ancient river-gravel on which it usually reposes. this underlying gravel consists in the valley of the rhine for the most part of pebbles and boulders of alpine origin, showing that there was a time when the rivers had power to convey coarse materials for hundreds of miles northwards from switzerland towards the sea; whereas at a later period an entire change was brought about in the physical geography of the same district, so that the same river deposited nothing but fine mud, which accumulated to a thickness of feet or more above the original alluvial plain. but although most of the fundamental gravel was derived from the alps, there has been observed in the neighbourhood of the principal mountain chains bordering the great valley, such as the black forest, vosges, and odenwald, an admixture of detritus characteristic of those several chains. we cannot doubt therefore that as some of these mountains, especially the vosges, had during the glacial period their own glaciers, a part of the fine mud of their moraines must have been mingled with loess of alpine origin; although the principal mass of the latter must have come from switzerland, and can in fact be traced continuously from basle to belgium. geographical distribution of the loess. it was stated in the last chapter that at the time of the greatest extension of the swiss glaciers the lake of constance and all the other great lakes were filled with ice, so that gravel and mud could pass freely from the upper alpine valley of the rhine to the lower region between basle and the sea, the great lake intercepting no part of the moraines whether fine or coarse. on the other hand the aar with its great tributaries the limmat and the reuss does not join the rhine till after it issues from the lake of constance; and by their channels a large part of the alpine gravel and mud could always have passed without obstruction into the lower country, even after the ice of the great lake had melted. it will give the reader some idea of the manner in which the rhenish loess occurs, if he is told that some of the earlier scientific observers imagined it to have been formed in a vast lake which occupied the valley of the rhine from basle to mayence, sending up arms or branches into what are now the valleys of the main, neckar, and other large rivers. they placed the barrier of this imaginary lake in the narrow and picturesque gorge of the rhine between bingen and coblenz: and when it was objected that the lateral valley of the lahn, communicating with that gorge, had also been filled with loess, they were compelled to transfer the great dam farther down and to place it below bonn. strictly speaking it must be placed much farther north, or in the st parallel of latitude, where the limits of the loess have been traced out by mm. omalius d'halloy, dumont, and others, running east and west by cologne, juliers, louvain, oudenarde, and courtrai in belgium to cassel, near dunkirk in france. this boundary line may not indicate the original seaward extent of the formation, as it may have stretched still farther north and its present abrupt termination may only show how far it was cut back at some former period by the denuding action of the sea. even if the imbedded fossil shells of the loess had been lacustrine, instead of being, as we have seen, terrestrial and amphibious, the vast height and width of the required barrier would have been fatal to the theory of a lake: for the loess is met with in great force at an elevation of no less than feet above the sea, covering the kaiserstuhl, a volcanic mountain which stands in the middle of the great valley of the rhine, near freiburg in breisgau. the extent to which the valley has there been the receptacle of fine mud afterwards removed is most remarkable. the loess of belgium was called "hesbayan mud" in the geological map of the late m. dumont, who, i am told, recognised it as being in great part composed of alpine mud. m. d'archiac, when speaking of the loess, observes that it envelopes hainault, brabant, and limburg like a mantle everywhere uniform and homogeneous in character, filling up the lower depressions of the ardennes and passing thence into the north of france, though not crossing into england. in france, he adds, it is found on high plateaus feet above some of the rivers, such as the marne; but as we go southwards and eastwards of the basin of the seine, it diminishes in quantity, and finally thins out in those directions.* (* d'archiac, "histoire des progres" volume pages , .) it may even be a question whether the "limon des plateaux," or upland loam of the somme valley, before alluded to,* may not be a part of the same formation. (* number figure .) as to the higher and lower level gravels of that valley, which, like that of the seine, contain no foreign rocks, we have seen that they are each of them covered by deposits of loess or inundation-mud belonging respectively to the periods of the gravels, whereas the upland loam is of much older date, more widely spread, and occupying positions often independent of the present lines of drainage. to restore in imagination the geographical outline of picardy, to which rivers charged with so much homogeneous loam and running at such heights may once have belonged is now impossible.* (* see above, chapter . ) in the valley of the rhine, as i before observed, the body of the loess, instead of having been formed at successively lower and lower levels as in the case of the basin of the somme, was deposited in a wide and deep pre-existing basin, or strath, bounded by lofty mountain chains such as the black forest, vosges, and odenwald. in some places the loam accumulated to such a depth as first to fill the valley and then to spread over the adjoining table-lands, as in the case of the lower eifel, where it encircled some of the modern volcanic cones of loose pumice and ashes. in these instances it does not appear to me that the volcanoes were in eruption during the time of the deposition of the loess, as some geologists have supposed. the interstratification of loam and volcanic ejectamenta was probably occasioned by the fluviatile mud having gradually enveloped the cones of loose scoriae after they were completely formed. i am the more inclined to embrace this view after having seen the junction of granite and loess on the steep slopes of some of the mountains bounding the great plain of the rhine on its right bank in the bergstrasse. thus between darmstadt and heidelberg perpendicular sections are seen of loess feet thick, at various heights above the river, some of them at elevations of feet and upwards. in one of these may be seen, resting on the hill side of melibocus in the odenwald, the usual yellow loam free from pebbles at its contact with a steep slope of granite, but divided into horizontal layers for a short distance from the line of junction. in these layers, which abut against the granite, a mixture of mica and of unrounded grains of quartz and felspar occur, evidently derived from the disintegration of the crystalline rock, which must have decomposed in the atmosphere before the mud had reached this height. entire shells of helix, pupa, and succinea, of the usual living species, are embedded in the granitic mixture. we may therefore be sure that the valley bounded by steep hills of granite existed before the tranquil accumulation of this vast body of loess. during the re-excavation of the basin of the rhine successive deposits of loess of newer origin were formed at various heights; and it is often difficult to distinguish their relative ages, especially as fossils are often entirely wanting, and the mineral composition of the formation is so uniform. the loess in belgium is variable in thickness, usually ranging from to feet. it caps some of the highest hills or table-land around brussels at the height of feet above the sea. in such places it usually rests on gravel and rarely contains shells, but when they occur they are of recent species. i found the succinea oblonga, before mentioned, and helix hispida in the belgian loess at neerepen, between tongres and hasselt, where m. bosquet had previously obtained remains of an elephant referred to e. primigenius. this pachyderm and rhinoceros tichorhinus are cited as characterising the loess in various parts of the valley of the rhine. several perfect skeletons of the marmot have been disinterred from the loess of aix-la-chapelle. but much remains to be done in determining the species of mammalia of this formation and the relative altitudes above the valley-plain at which they occur. if we ascend the basin of the neckar, we find that it is filled with loess of great thickness, far above its junction with the rhine. at canstadt near stuttgart, loess resembling that of the rhine contains many fossil bones, especially those of elephas primigenius, together with some of rhinoceros tichorhinus, the species having been lately determined by dr. falconer. at this place the loess is covered by a thick bed of travertine, used as a building stone, the product of a mineral spring. in the travertine are many fossil plants, all recent except two, an oak and poplar, the leaves of which professor heer has not been able to identify with any known species. below the loess of canstadt, in which bones of the mammoth are so abundant, is a bed of gravel evidently an old river channel now many feet above the level of the neckar, the valley having there been excavated to some depth below its ancient channel so as to lie in the underlying red sandstone of keuper. although the loess, when traced from the valley of the rhine into that of the neckar, or into any other of its tributaries, often undergoes some slight alteration in its character, yet there is so much identity of composition as to suggest the idea that the mud of the main river passed far up the tributary valleys, just as that of the mississippi during floods flows far up the ohio, carrying its mud with it into the basin of that river. but the uniformity of colour and mineral composition does not extend indefinitely into the higher parts of every basin. in that of the neckar, for example, near tubingen, i found the fluviatile loam or brick-earth, enclosing the usual helices and succineae, together with the bones of the mammoth, very distinct in colour and composition from ordinary rhenish loess, and such as no one could confound with alpine mud. it is mottled with red and green, like the new red sandstone or keuper, from which it has clearly been derived. such examples, however, merely show that where a basin is so limited in size that the detritus is derived chiefly or exclusively from one formation, the prevailing rock will impart its colour and composition in a very decided manner to the loam; whereas, in the basin of a great river which has many tributaries, the loam will consist of a mixture of almost every variety of rock, and will therefore exhibit an average result nearly the same in all countries. thus, the loam which fills to a great depth the wide valley of the saone, which is bounded on the west side by an escarpment of inferior oolite, and by the chain of the jura on the east, is very like the loess found in the continuation of the same great basin after the junction of the rhone, by which a large supply of alpine mud has been added and intermixed. in the higher parts of the basin of the danube, loess of the same character as that of the rhine, and which i believe to be chiefly of alpine origin, attains a far greater elevation above the sea than any deposits of rhenish loess; but the loam which, according to m. stur, fills valleys on the north slope of the carpathians almost up to the watershed between galicia and hungary, may be derived from a distinct source. oscillations of level required to explain the accumulation and denudation of the loess. a theory, therefore, which attempts to account for the position of the loess cannot be satisfactory unless it be equally applicable to the basins of the rhine and danube. so far as relates to the source of so much homogeneous loam, there are many large tributaries of the danube which, during the glacial period, may have carried an ample supply of moraine-mud from the alps to that river; and in regard to grand oscillations in the level of the land, it is obvious that the same movements both downward and upward of the great mountain-chain would be attended with analogous effects, whether the great rivers flowed northwards or eastwards. in each case fine loam would be accumulated during subsidence and removed during the upheaval of the land. changes, therefore, of level analogous to those on which we have been led to speculate when endeavouring to solve the various problems presented by the glacial phenomena, are equally available to account for the nature and geological distribution of the loess. but we must suppose that the amount of depression and re-elevation in the central region was considerably in excess of that experienced in the lower countries, or those nearer the sea, and that the rate of subsidence in the latter was never so considerable as to cause submergence, or the admission of the sea into the interior of the continent by the valleys of the principal rivers. we have already assumed that the alps were loftier than now, when they were the source of those gigantic glaciers which reached the flanks of the jura. at that time gravel was borne to the greatest distances from the central mountains through the main valleys, which had a somewhat steeper slope than now, and the quantity of river-ice must at that time have aided in the transportation of pebbles and boulders. to this state of things gradually succeeded another of an opposite character, when the fall of the rivers from the mountains to the sea became less and less, while the alps were slowly sinking, and the first retreat of the great glaciers was taking place. suppose the depression to have been at the rate of feet in a century in the mountains and only as many inches in the same time nearer the coast, still, in such areas as the eye could survey at once, comprising a small part only of switzerland or of the basin of the rhine, the movement might appear to be uniform and the pre-existing valleys and heights might seem to remain relatively to each other as before. such inequality in the rate of rising or sinking, when we contemplate large continental spaces, is quite consistent with what we know of the course of nature in our own times as well as at remote geological epochs. thus in sweden, as before stated, the rise of land now in progress is nearly uniform as we proceed from north to south for moderate distances; but it greatly diminishes southwards if we compare areas hundreds of miles apart; so that instead of the land rising about feet in a hundred years as at the north cape, it becomes less than the same number of inches at stockholm, and farther south the land is stationary, or, if not, seems rather to be descending than ascending.* (* "principles of geology" chapter th edition page et seq.) to cite an example of high geological antiquity, m. hebert has demonstrated that, during the oolitic and cretaceous periods, similar inequalities in the vertical movements of the earth's crust took place in switzerland and france. by his own observations and those of m. lory he has proved that the area of the alps was rising and emerging from beneath the ocean towards the close of the oolitic epoch, and was above water at the commencement of the cretaceous era; while, on the other hand, the area of the jura, about miles to the north, was slowly sinking at the close of the oolitic period, and had become submerged at the commencement of the cretaceous. yet these oscillations of level were accomplished without any perceptible derangement in the strata, which remained all the while horizontal, so that the lower cretaceous or neocomian beds were deposited conformably on the oolitic.* (* "bulletin de la societe geologique de france" series volume page .) taking for granted then that the depression was more rapid in the more elevated region, the great rivers would lose century after century some portion of their velocity or carrying power, and would leave behind them on their alluvial plains more and more of the moraine-mud with which they were charged, till at length, in the course of thousands or some tens of thousands of years, a large part of the main valleys would begin to resemble the plains of egypt where nothing but mud is deposited during the flood season. the thickness of loam containing shells of land and amphibious mollusca might in this way accumulate to any extent, so that the waters might overflow some of the heights originally bounding the valley and deposits of "platform mud," as it has been termed in france, might be extensively formed. at length, whenever a re-elevation of the alps at the time of the second extension of the glaciers took place, there would be renewed denudation and removal of such loess; and if, as some geologists believe, there has been more than one oscillation of level in the alps since the commencement of the glacial period, the changes would be proportionally more complicated and terraces of gravel covered with loess might be formed at different heights and at different periods. himalayan mud of the ganges compared to european loess. some of the revolutions in physical geography above suggested for the continent of europe during the pleistocene epoch, may have had their counterparts in india in the recent period. the vast plains of bengal are overspread with himalayan mud, which as we ascend the ganges extends inland for miles from the sea, continuing very homogeneous on the whole, though becoming more sandy as it nears the hills. they who sail down the river during a season of inundation see nothing but a sheet of water in every direction, except here and there where the tops of trees emerge above its level. to what depth the mud extends is not known, but it resembles the loess in being generally devoid of stratification, and of shells, though containing occasionally land shells in abundance, as well as calcareous concretions, called kunkur, which may be compared to the nodules of carbonate of lime sometimes observed to form layers in the rhenish loess. i am told by colonel strachey and dr. hooker that above calcutta, in the hooghly, when the flood subsides, the gangetic mud may be seen in river cliffs feet high, in which they were unable to detect organic remains, a remark which i found to hold equally in regard to the recent mud of the mississippi. dr. wallich, while confirming these observations, informs me that at certain points in bengal, farther inland, he met with land-shells in the banks of the great river. borings have been made at calcutta, beginning not many feet above the sea-level, to the depth of and feet; and wherever organic remains were found in the strata pierced through they were of a fluviatile or terrestrial character, implying that during a long and gradual subsidence of the country the sediment thrown down by the ganges and brahmaputra had accumulated at a sufficient rate to prevent the sea from invading that region. at the bottom of the borings, after passing through much fine loam, beds of pebbles, sand, and boulders were reached, such as might belong to an ancient river channel; and the bones of a crocodile and the shell of a freshwater tortoise were met with at the depth of feet from the surface. no pebbles are now brought down within a great distance of this point, so that the country must once have had a totally different character and may have had its valleys, hills, and rivers, before all was reduced to one common level by the accumulation upon it of fine himalayan mud. if the latter were removed during a gradual re-elevation of the country, many old hydrographical basins might reappear, and portions of the loam might alone remain in terraces on the flanks of hills, or on platforms, attesting the vast extent in ancient times of the muddy envelope. a similar succession of events has, in all likelihood, occurred in europe during the deposition and denudation of the loess of the pleistocene period, which, as we have seen in a former chapter, was long enough to allow of the gradual development of almost any amount of such physical changes. human remains in the loess near strasburg. m. ami boue, well known by his numerous works on geology and a well-practised observer in every branch of the science, disinterred in the year with his own hands many bones of a human skeleton from ancient undisturbed loess at lahr, nearly opposite strasburg, on the right side of the great valley of the rhine. no skull was detected, but the tibia, fibula, and several other bones were obtained in a good state of preservation and shown at the time to cuvier, who pronounced them to be human. human remains in loess near maestricht. the banks of the meuse at maestricht, like those of the rhine at bonn and cologne, are slightly elevated above the level of the alluvial plain. on the right bank of the meuse, opposite maestricht, the difference of level is so marked that a bridge with many arches has been constructed to keep up, during the flood season, a communication between the higher parts of the alluvial plain and the hills or bluffs which bound it. this plain is composed of modern loess, undistinguishable in mineral character from that of higher antiquity, before alluded to, and entirely without signs of successive deposition and devoid of terrestrial or fluviatile shells. it is extensively worked for brick-earth to the depth of about feet. the bluffs before alluded to often consist of a terrace of gravel, from to feet in thickness, covered by an older loess, which is continuous as we ascend the valley to liege. in the suburbs of that city patches of loess are seen at the height of feet above the level of the meuse. the table-land in that region, composed of carboniferous and devonian rocks, is about feet high, and is not overspread with loess. a terrace of gravel covered with loess has been mentioned as existing on the right bank of the meuse at maestricht. answering to it another is also seen on the left bank below that city, and a promontory of it projecting into the alluvial plain of the meuse and approaching to within a hundred yards of the river, was cut through during the excavation of a canal running from maestricht to hocht, between the years and . this section occurs at the village of smeermass, and is about feet deep, the lower feet consisting of stratified gravel and the upper of feet of loess. the number of molars, tusks, and bones (probably parts of entire skeletons) of elephants obtained during these diggings, was extraordinary. not a few of them are still preserved in the museums of maestricht and leyden, together with some horns of deer, bones of the ox-tribe and other mammalia, and a human lower jaw, with teeth. according to professor crahay, who published an account of it at the time, this jaw, which is now preserved at leyden, was found at the depth of feet from the surface, where the loess joins the underlying gravel, in a stratum of sandy loam resting on gravel and overlaid by some pebbly and sandy beds. the stratum is said to have been intact and undisturbed, but the human jaw was isolated, the nearest tusk of an elephant being six yards removed from it in horizontal distance. most of the other mammalian bones were found; like these human remains, in or near the gravel, but some of the tusks and teeth of elephants were met with much nearer the surface. i visited the site of these fossils in in company with m. van binkhorst, and we found the description of the ground, published by the late professor crahay of louvain, to be very correct.* (* m. van binkhorst has shown me the original manuscript read to the maestricht athenaeum in . the memoir was published in in the "bulletin de l'academie royale de belgique" volume page .) the projecting portion of the terrace, which was cut through in making the canal, is called the hill of caberg, which is flat-topped, feet high, and has a steep slope on both sides towards the alluvial plain. m. van binkhorst (who is the author of some valuable works on the palaeontology of the maestricht chalk) has recently visited leyden, and ascertained that the human fossil above mentioned is still entire in the museum of the university. although we had no opportunity of verifying the authenticity of professor crahay's statements, we could see no reason for suspecting the human jaw to belong to a different geological period from that of the extinct elephant. if this were granted, it might have no claims to a higher antiquity than the human remains which dr. schmerling disentombed from the belgian caverns; but the fact of their occurring in a pleistocene alluvial deposit in the open plains, would be one of the first examples of such a phenomenon. the top of the hill of caberg is not so high above the meuse as is the terrace of st. acheul with its flint implements above the somme, but at st. acheul no human bones have yet been detected. in the museum at maestricht are preserved a human frontal and a pelvic bone, stained of a dark peaty colour; the frontal very remarkable for its lowness and the prominence of the superciliary ridges, which resemble those of the borreby skull, figure . these remains may be the same as those alluded to by professor crahay in his memoir, where he says that in a black deposit in the suburbs of hocht were found leaves, nuts, and freshwater shells in a very perfect state, and a human skull of a dark colour. they were of an age long posterior to that of the loess containing the bones of elephants and in which the human jaw now at leyden is said to have been embedded. chapter . -- post-glacial dislocations and foldings of cretaceous and drift strata in the island of moen, in denmark. geological structure of the island of moen. great disturbances of the chalk posterior in date to the glacial drift, with recent shells. m. puggaard's sections of the cliffs of moen. flexures and faults common to the chalk and glacial drift. different direction of the lines of successive movement, fracture, and flexure. undisturbed condition of the rocks in the adjoining danish islands. unequal movements of upheaval in finmark. earthquake of new zealand in . predominance in all ages of uniform continental movements over those by which the rocks are locally convulsed. in the preceding chapters i have endeavoured to show that the study of the successive phases of the glacial period in europe, and the enduring marks which they have left on many of the solid rocks and on the character of the superficial drift are of great assistance in enabling us to appreciate the vast lapse of ages which are comprised in the pleistocene epoch. they enlarge at the same time our conception of the antiquity, not only of the living species of animals and plants but of their present geographical distribution, and throw light on the chronological relations of these species to the earliest date yet ascertained for the existence of the human race. that date, it will be seen, is very remote if compared to the times of history and tradition, yet very modern if contrasted with the length of time during which all the living testacea, and even many of the mammalia, have inhabited the globe. in order to render my account of the phenomena of the glacial epoch more complete, i shall describe in this chapter some other changes in physical geography and in the internal structure of the earth's crust, which have happened in the pleistocene period, because they differ in kind from any previously alluded to, and are of a class which were thought by the earlier geologists to belong exclusively to epochs anterior to the origin of the existing fauna and flora. of this nature are those faults and violent local dislocations of the rocks, and those sharp bendings and foldings of the strata, which we so often behold in mountain chains, and sometimes in low countries also, especially where the rock-formations are of ancient date. post-glacial dislocations and foldings of cretaceous and drift strata in the island of moen, denmark. a striking illustration of such convulsions of pleistocene date may be seen in the danish island of moen, which is situated about miles south of copenhagen. the island is about miles in circumference, and consists of white chalk, several hundred feet thick, overlaid by boulder clay and sand, or glacial drift which is made up of several subdivisions, some unstratified and others stratified, the whole having a mean thickness of feet, but sometimes attaining nearly twice that thickness. in one of the oldest members of the formation fossil marine shells of existing species have been found. throughout the greater part of moen the strata of the drift are undisturbed and horizontal, as are those of the subjacent chalk; but on the north-eastern coast they have been throughout a certain area bent, folded, and shifted, together with the beds of the underlying cretaceous formation. within this area they have been even more deranged than is the english chalk-with-flints along the central axis of the isle of wight in hampshire, or of purbeck in dorsetshire. the whole displacement of the chalk is evidently posterior in date to the origin of the drift, since the beds of the latter are horizontal where the fundamental chalk is horizontal, and inclined, curved, or vertical where the chalk displays signs of similar derangement. although i had come to these conclusions respecting the structure of moen in , after devoting several days in company with dr. forchhammer to its examination,* (* lyell, "geological transactions" nd series volume page .) i should have hesitated to cite the spot as exemplifying convulsions on so grand a scale, of such extremely modern date, had not the island been since thoroughly investigated by a most able and reliable authority, the danish geologist, professor puggaard, who has published a series of detailed sections of the cliffs. these cliffs extend through the north-eastern coast of the island, called moens klint,* where the chalk precipices are bold and picturesque, being and feet high, with tall beech-trees growing on their summits, and covered here and there at their base with huge taluses of fallen drift, verdant with wild shrubs and grass, by which the monotony of a continuous range of white chalk cliffs is prevented. (* puggaard, "geologie d. insel moen" bern ; and "bulletin de la societe geologique de france" .) [illustration: figure and . southern extremity of moens klint] (figure . southern extremity of moens klint (puggaard). a. horizontal drift. b. chalk and overlying drift beginning to rise. c. first flexure and fault. height of cliff at this point, feet.) (figure . section of moens klint (puggaard), continued from figure . s. fossil shells of recent species in the drift at this point. g. greatest height near g, feet.) in the low part of the island, at a, figure , or the southern extremity of the line of section above alluded to, the drift is horizontal, but when we reach b, a change, both in the height of the cliffs and in the inclination of the strata, begins to be perceptible, and the chalk number soon makes its appearance from beneath the overlying members of the drift numbers , , , and . this chalk, with its layers of flints, is so like that of england as to require no description. the incumbent drift consists of the following subdivisions, beginning with the lowest: number . stratified loam and sand, feet thick, containing at one spot near the base of the cliff, at s, figure , cardium edule, tellina solidula, and turritella, with fragments of other shells. between number and the chalk number , there usually intervenes a breccia of broken flints. number . unstratified blue clay or till, with small pebbles and fragments of scandinavian rocks occasionally scattered through it, feet thick. number . a second unstratified mass of yellow and more sandy clay feet thick, with pebbles and angular polished and striated blocks of granite and other scandinavian rocks, transported from a distance. number . stratified sands and gravel, with occasionally large erratic blocks; the whole mass varying from to feet in thickness, but this only in a few spots. the angularity of many of the blocks in numbers and , the glaciated surfaces of others, and the transportation from a distance attested by their crystalline nature, prove them to belong to the northern drift or glacial period. it will be seen that the four subdivisions , , , and begin to rise at b, figure , and that at c, where the cliff is feet high, there is a sharp flexure shared equally by the chalk and the incumbent drift. between d and g, figure , we observe a great fracture in the rocks with synclinal and anticlinal folds, exhibited in cliffs nearly feet high, the drift beds participating in all the bendings of the chalk; that is to say, the three lower members of the drift, including number , which, at the point s in this diagram, contains the shells of recent species before alluded to. near the northern end of the moens klint, at a place called "taler," more than feet high, are seen similar folds, so sharp that there is an appearance of four distinct alternations of the glacial and cretaceous formations in vertical or highly inclined beds; the chalk at one point bending over so that the position of all the beds is reversed. [illustration: figure . post-glacial disturbances] (figure . post-glacial disturbances of vertical, folded, and shifted strata of chalk and drift, in the dronningestol, moen, height feet (puggaard). . chalk with flints. . marine stratified loam, lowest member of glacial formation. . blue clay or till, with erratic blocks unstratified. . yellow sandy till, with pebbles and glaciated boulders. . stratified sand and gravel with erratics.) but the most wonderful shiftings and faultings of the beds are observable in the dronningestol part of the same cliff, feet in perpendicular height, where, as shown in figure , the drift is thoroughly entangled and mixed up with the dislocated chalk. if we follow the lines of fault, we may see, says m. puggaard, along the planes of contact of the shifted beds, the marks of polishing and rubbing which the chalk flints have undergone, as have many stones in the gravel of the drift, and some of these have also been forced into the soft chalk. the manner in which the top of some of the arches of bent chalk have been cut off in this and several adjoining sections, attests the great denudation which accompanied the disturbances, portions of the bent strata having been removed, probably while they were emerging from beneath the sea. m. puggaard has deduced the following conclusions from his study of these cliffs. first. the white chalk, when it was still in horizontal stratification, but after it had suffered considerable denudation, subsided gradually, so that the lower beds of drift number , with their littoral shells, were superimposed on the chalk in a shallow sea. second. the overlying unstratified boulder clays and were thrown down in deeper water by the aid of floating ice coming from the north. third. irregular subsidences then began, and occasionally partial failures of support, causing the bending and sometimes the engulfment of overlying masses both of the chalk and drift, and causing the various dislocations above described and depicted. the downward movement continued till it exceeded feet, for upon the surface even of number , in some parts of the island, lie huge erratics feet or more in diameter, which imply that they were carried by ice in a sea of sufficient depth to float large icebergs. but these big erratics, says puggaard, never enter into the fissures as they would have done had they been of date anterior to the convulsions. fourth. after this subsidence, the re-elevation and partial denudation of the cretaceous and glacial beds took place during a general upward movement, like that now experienced in parts of sweden and norway. in regard to the lines of movement in moen, m. puggaard believes, after an elaborate comparison of the cliffs with the interior of the island, that they took at least three distinct directions at as many successive eras, all of post-glacial date; the first line running from east-south-east to west-north-west, with lines of fracture at right angles to them; the second running from south-south-east to north-north-west, also with fractures in a transverse direction; and lastly, a sinking in a north and south direction, with other subsidences of contemporaneous date running at right angles or east and west. when we approach the north-west end of moens klint, or the range of coast above described, the strata begin to be less bent and broken, and after travelling for a short distance beyond we find the chalk and overlying drift in the same horizontal position as at the southern end of the moens klint. what makes these convulsions the more striking is the fact that in the other adjoining danish islands, as well as in a large part of moen itself, both the secondary and tertiary formations are quite undisturbed. it is impossible to behold such effects of reiterated local movements, all of post-tertiary date, without reflecting that, but for the accidental presence of the stratified drift, all of which might easily have been missing, where there has been so much denudation, even if it had once existed, we might have referred the verticality and flexures and faults of the rocks to an ancient period, such as the era between the chalk with flints and the maestricht chalk, or to the time of the latter formation, or to the eocene, or miocene, or pliocene eras, even the last of them long prior to the commencement of the glacial epoch. hence we may be permitted to suspect that in some other regions, where we have no such means at our command for testing the exact date of certain movements, the time of their occurrence may be far more modern than we usually suppose. in this way some apparent anomalies in the position of erratic blocks, seen occasionally at great heights above the parent rocks from which they have been detached, might be explained, as well as the irregular direction of certain glacial furrows like those described by professor keilhau and mr. horbye on the mountains of the dovrefjeld in latitude degrees north, where the striation and friction is said to be independent of the present shape and slope of the mountains.* (* "observations sur les phenomenes d'erosion en norwege" .) although even in such cases it remains to be proved whether a general crust of continental ice, like that of greenland described by rink (see above, chapter ), would not account for the deviation of the furrows and striae from the normal directions which they ought to have followed had they been due to separate glaciers filling the existing valleys. it appears that in general the upward movements in scandinavia, which have raised sea-beaches containing marine shells of recent species to the height of several hundred feet, have been tolerably uniform over very wide spaces; yet a remarkable exception to this rule was observed by m. bravais at altenfjord in finmark, between latitude and degrees north. an ancient water-level, indicated by a sandy deposit forming a terrace and by marks of the erosion of the waves, can be followed for miles from south to north along the borders of a fjord rising gradually from a height of feet to an elevation of feet above the sea, or at the rate of about feet in a mile.* (* "proceedings of the geological society" volume page .) to pass to another and very remote part of the world, we have witnessed so late as january in the northern island of new zealand a sudden and permanent rise of land on the northern shores of cook's straits, which at one point, called muko-muka, was so unequal as to amount to feet vertically, while it declined gradually from this maximum of upheaval in a distance of about miles north-west of the greatest rise, to a point where no change of level was perceptible. mr. edward roberts of the royal engineers, employed by the british government at the time of the shock in executing public works on the coast, ascertained that the extreme upheaval of certain ancient rocks followed a line of fault running at least miles from south to north into the interior; and what is of great geological interest, immediately to the east of this fault the country, consisting of tertiary strata, remained unmoved or stationary; a fact well established by the position of a line of nullipores marking the sea-level before the earthquake, both on the surface of the tertiary and palaeozoic rocks.* (* "bulletin de la societe geologique de france" volume page , where i have described the facts communicated to me by messrs. roberts and walter mantell.) the repetition of such unequal movements, especially if they recurred at intervals along the same lines of fracture, would in the course of ages cause the strata to dip at a high angle in one direction, while towards the opposite point of the compass they would terminate abruptly in a steep escarpment. but it is probable that the multiplication of such movements in the post-tertiary period has rarely been so great as to produce results like those above described in moen, for the principal movements in any given period seem to be of a more uniform kind, by which the topography of limited districts and the position of the strata are not visibly altered except in their height relatively to the sea. were it otherwise we should not find conformable strata of all ages, including the primary fossiliferous of shallow-water origin, which must have remained horizontal throughout vast areas during downward movements of several thousand feet going on at the period of their accumulation. still less should we find the same primary strata, such as the carboniferous, devonian, or silurian, still remaining horizontal over thousands of square leagues, as in parts of north america and russia, having escaped dislocation and flexure throughout the entire series of epochs which separate palaeozoic from recent times. not that they have been motionless, for they have undergone so much denudation, and of such a kind, as can only be explained by supposing the strata to have been subjected to great oscillations of level, and exposed in some cases repeatedly to the destroying and planing action of the waves of the sea. it seems probable that the successive convulsions in moen were contemporary with those upward and downward movements of the glacial period which were described in the thirteenth and some of the following chapters, and that they ended before the upper beds of number , figure , with its large erratic blocks, were deposited, as some of those beds occurring in the disturbed parts of moen appear to have escaped the convulsions to which numbers , , and were subjected. if this be so, the whole derangement, although pleistocene, may have been anterior to the human epoch, or rather to the earliest date to which the existence of man has as yet been traced back. chapter . -- the glacial period in north america. post-glacial strata containing remains of mastodon giganteus in north america. scarcity of marine shells in glacial drift of canada and the united states. greater southern extension of ice-action in north america than in europe. trains of erratic blocks of vast size in berkshire, massachusetts. description of their linear arrangement and points of departure. their transportation referred to floating and coast ice. general remarks on the causes of former changes of climate at successive geological epochs. supposed effects of the diversion of the gulf stream in a northerly instead of north-easterly direction. development of extreme cold on the opposite sides of the atlantic in the glacial period not strictly simultaneous. effect of marine currents on climate. pleistocene submergence of the sahara. on the north american continent, between the arctic circle and the nd parallel of latitude, we meet with signs of ice-action on a scale as grand as, if not grander than, in europe; and there also the excess of cold appears to have been first felt at the close of the tertiary, and to have continued throughout a large portion of the pleistocene period. [ ] the general absence of organic remains in the north american glacial formation makes it as difficult as in europe to determine what mammalia lived on the continent at the time of the most intense refrigeration, or when extensive areas were becoming strewed over with glacial drift and erratic blocks, but it is certain that a large proboscidean now extinct, the mastodon giganteus, cuv., together with many other quadrupeds, some of them now living and others extinct, played a conspicuous part in the post-glacial era. by its frequency as a fossil species, this pachyderm represents the european elephas primigenius, although the latter also occurs fossil in the united states and canada, and abounds, as i learn from sir john richardson, in latitudes farther north than those to which the mastodon has been traced. in the state of new york, the mastodon is not unfrequently met with in bogs and lacustrine deposits formed in hollows in the drift, and therefore, in a geological position, much resembling that of recent peat and shell-marl in the british isles, denmark, or the valley of the somme, as before described. sometimes entire skeletons have been discovered within a few feet of the surface, in peaty earth at the bottom of small ponds, which the agriculturists had drained. the shells in these cases belong to freshwater genera, such as limnaea, physa, planorbis, cyclas, and others, differing from european species, but the same as those now proper to ponds and lakes in the same parts of america. i have elsewhere given an account of several of these localities which i visited in ,* and can state that they certainly have a more modern aspect than almost all the european deposits in which remains of the mammoth occur, although a few instances are cited of elephas primigenius having been dug out of peat in great britain. (* "travels in north america" volume page london ; and "manual of geology" chapter th edition page .) thus i was shown a mammoth's tooth in the museum at torquay in devonshire which is believed to have been dredged up from a deposit of vegetable matter now partially submerged beneath the sea. a more elevated part of the same peaty formation constitutes the bottom of the valley in which tor abbey stands. this individual elephant must certainly have been of more modern date than his fellows found fossil in the gravel of the brixham cave, before described, for it flourished when the physical geography of devonshire, unlike that of the cave period, was almost identical with that now established. i cannot help suspecting that many tusks and teeth of the mammoth, said to have been found in peat, may be as spurious as are the horns of the rhinoceros cited more than once in the "memoirs of the wernerian society" as having been obtained from shell-marl in forfarshire and other scotch counties; yet, between the period when the mammoth was most abundant and that when it died out, there must have elapsed a long interval of ages when it was growing more and more scarce; and we may expect to find occasional stragglers buried in deposits long subsequent in date to others, until at last we may succeed in tracing a passage from the pleistocene to the recent fauna, by geological monuments, which will fill up the gap before alluded to as separating the era of the flint tools of amiens and abbeville from that of the peat of the valley of the somme. how far the lacustrine strata of north america above mentioned may help to lessen this hiatus, and whether some individuals of the mastodon giganteus may have come down to the confines of the historical period, is a question not so easily answered as might at first sight be supposed. a geologist might naturally imagine that the fluviatile formation of goat island, seen at the falls of niagara, and at several points below the falls,* was very modern, seeing that the fossil shells contained in it are all of species now inhabiting the waters of the niagara, and seeing also that the deposit is more modern than the glacial drift of the same locality. (* "travels in north america" by the author, volume chapter and volume chapter .) in fact, the old river bed, in which bones of the mastodon occur, holds the same position relatively to the boulder formation as the strata of shell-marl and bog-earth with bones of mastodon, so frequent in the state of new york, bear to the glacial drift, and all may be of contemporaneous date. but in the case of the valley of the niagara we happen to have a measure of time which is wanting in the other localities, namely, the test afforded by the recession of the falls, an operation still in progress, by which the deep ravine of the niagara, miles long, between queenstown and goat island has been hollowed out. this ravine is not only post-glacial, but also posterior in date to the fluviatile or mastodon-bearing beds. the individual therefore found fossil near goat island flourished before the gradual excavation of the deep and long chasm, and we must reckon its antiquity, not by thousands, but by tens of thousands of years, if i have correctly estimated the minimum of time which was required for the erosion of that great ravine.* (* "principles of geology" th edition page ; and "travels in north america" volume page .) the stories widely circulated of bones of the mastodon having been observed with their surfaces pierced as if by arrow-heads or bearing the marks of wounds inflicted by some stone implement, must in future be more carefully inquired into, for we can scarcely doubt that the mastodon in north america lived down to a period when the mammoth co-existed with man in europe. but i need say no more on this subject, having already explained my views in regard to the evidence of the antiquity of man in north america when treating of the human bone discovered at natchez on the mississippi. in canada and the united states we experience the same difficulty as in europe when we attempt to distinguish between glacial formations of submarine and those of supra-marine origin. in the new world, as in scotland and england, marine shells of this era have rarely been traced higher than feet above the sea, and feet seems to be the maximum to which at present they are known to ascend. in the same countries, erratic blocks have travelled from north to south, following the same direction as the glacial furrows and striae imprinted almost everywhere on the solid rocks underlying the drift. their direction rarely deviates more than fifteen degrees east or west of the meridian, so that we can scarcely doubt, in spite of the general dearth of marine shells, that icebergs floating in the sea and often running aground on its rocky bottom were the instruments by which most of the blocks were conveyed to southern latitudes. there are, nevertheless, in the united states, as in europe, several groups of mountains which have acted as independent centres for the dispersion of erratics, as, for example, the white mountains, latitude degrees north, the highest of which, mount washington, rises to about feet above the sea; and according to professor hitchcock some of the loftiest of the hills of massachusetts once sent down their glaciers into the surrounding lower country. great southern extension of trains of erratic blocks in berkshire, massachusetts, u.s., latitude degrees north. having treated so fully in this volume of the events of the glacial period, i am unwilling to conclude without laying before the reader the evidence displayed in north america of ice-action in latitudes farther south by about ten degrees than any seen on an equal scale in europe. this extension southwards of glacial phenomena in regions where there are no snow-covered mountains like the alps to explain the exception, nor any hills of more than moderate elevation, constitutes a feature of the western as compared to the eastern side of the atlantic, and must be taken into account when we speculate on the causes of the refrigeration of the northern hemisphere during the pleistocene period. [illustration: figure . erratic blocks in berkshire, massachusetts] (figure . map showing the relative position and direction of seven trains of erratic blocks in berkshire, massachusetts, and in part of the state of new york. distance in a straight line, between the mountain ranges a and c, about eight miles. a. canaan range, in the state of new york. the crest consists of green chloritic rock. b. richmond range, the western division of which consists in merriman's mount of the same green rock as a, but in a more schistose form, while the eastern division is composed of slaty limestone. c. the lenox range, consisting in part of mica-schist, and in some districts of crystalline limestone. d. knob in the range a, from which most of the train number is supposed to have been derived. e. supposed starting point of the train number in the range a. f. hiatus of yards, or space without blocks. g. sherman's house. h. perry's peak. k. flat rock. l. merriman's mount. m. dupey's mount. n. largest block of train, number . see figures and . p. point of divergence of part of the train number , where a branch is sent off to number . number . the most southerly train examined by messrs. hall and lyell, between stockbridge and richmond, composed of blocks of black slate, blue limestone and some of the green canaan rock, with here and there a boulder of white quartz. number . train composed chiefly of large limestone masses, some of them divided into two or more fragments by natural joints. number . train composed of blocks of limestone and the green canaan rock; passes south of the richmond station on the albany and boston railway; is less defined than numbers and . number . train chiefly of limestone blocks, some of them thirty feet in diameter, running to the north-west of the richmond station, and passing south of the methodist meeting-house, where it is intersected by a railway cutting. number . south train of dr. reid, composed entirely of large blocks of the green chloritic canaan rock; passes north of the old richmond meeting-house, and is three-quarters of a mile north of the preceding train (number ). number . the great or principal train (north train of dr. reid), composed of very large blocks of the canaan rock, diverges at p, and unites by a branch with train number . number . a well-defined train of limestone blocks, with a few of the canaan rock, traced from the richmond to the slope of the lenox range.) in , accompanied by mr. james hall, state geologist of new york, author of many able and well-known works on geology and palaeontology, i examined the glacial drift and erratics of the county of berkshire, massachusetts, and those of the adjoining parts of the state of new york, a district about miles inland from the atlantic coast and situated due west of boston in latitude degrees minutes north. this latitude corresponds in europe to that of the north of portugal. here numerous detached fragments of rock are seen, having a linear arrangement or being continuous in long parallel trains, running nearly in straight lines over hill and dale for distances of , , and miles, and sometimes greater distances. seven of the more conspicuous of these trains, from to inclusive, figure , are laid down in the accompanying map or ground plan.* (* this ground plan, and a farther account of the berkshire erratics was given in an abstract of a lecture delivered by me to the royal institution of great britain, april , and published in their proceedings.) it will be remarked that they run in a north-west and south-east direction, or almost transversely to the ranges of hills a, b, and c, which run north-north-east and south-south-west. the crests of these chains are about feet in height above the intervening valleys. the blocks of the northernmost train, number , are of limestone derived from the calcareous chain b; those of the two trains next to the south, numbers and , are composed exclusively in the first part of their course of a green chloritic rock of great toughness, but after they have passed the ridge b, a mixture of calcareous blocks is observed. after traversing the valley for a distance of miles these two trains pass through depressions or gaps in the range c, as they had previously done in crossing the range b, showing that the dispersion of the erratics bears some relation to the acutal inequalities of the surface, although the course of the same blocks is perfectly independent of the more leading features of the geography of the country, or those by which the present lines of drainage are determined. the greater number of the green chloritic fragments in trains and have evidently come from the ridge a, and a large proportion of the whole from its highest summit d, where the crest of the ridge has been worn into those dome-shaped masses called "roches moutonnees," already alluded to, and where several fragments having this shape, some of them feet long, are seen in situ, others only slightly removed from their original position, as if they had been just ready to set out on their travels. although smooth and rounded on their tops they are angular on their lower parts, where their outline has been derived from the natural joints of the rock. had these blocks been conveyed from d by glaciers, they would have radiated in all directions from a centre, whereas not one even of the smaller ones is found to the westward of a, though a very slight force would have made them roll down to the base of that ridge, which is very steep on its western declivity. it is clear, therefore, that the propelling power, whatever it may have been, acted exclusively in a south-easterly direction. professor hall and i observed one of the green blocks-- feet long, poised upon another about feet in length. the largest of all on the west flank of m, or dupey's mount, called the alderman, is above feet in diameter, and nearly feet in circumference. we counted at some points between forty and fifty blocks visible at once, the smallest of them larger than a camel. [illustration: figure . dome-shaped block] (figure . erratic dome-shaped block of compact chloritic rock (n in map in figure ), near the richmond meeting-house, berkshire, massachusetts, latitude degrees minutes north. length, feet; width, feet; height above the soil, feet.) the annexed drawing (figure ) represents one of the best known of train number , being that marked n on the map (figure ). according to our measurement it is feet long by in width, its height above the drift in which it is partially buried being feet. at the distance of several yards occurs a smaller block, or feet in height, feet long, and broad, composed of the same compact chloritic rock, and evidently a detached fragment from the bigger mass, to the lower and angular part of which it would fit on exactly. this erratic n has a regularly rounded top, worn and smoothed like the "roches moutonnees" before mentioned, but no part of the attrition can have occurred since it left its parent rock, the angles of the lower portion being quite sharp and unblunted. [illustration: figure . position of block in figure ] (figure . section showing the position of the block in figure . a. the large block in figure and n in the map in figure . b. fragment detached from the same. c. unstratified drift with boulders. d. silurian limestone in inclined stratification.) from railway cuttings through the drift of the neighbourhood and other artificial excavations, we may infer that the position of the block n, if seen in a vertical section, would be as represented in figure . the deposit c in that section consists of sand, mud, gravel, and stones, for the most part unstratified, resembling the till or boulder clay of europe. it varies in thickness from to feet, being of greater depth in the valleys. the uppermost portion is occasionally, though rarely, stratified. some few of the imbedded stones have flattened, polished, striated, and furrowed sides. they consist invariably, like the seven trains above mentioned, of kinds of rock confined to the region lying to the north-west, none of them having come from any other quarter. whenever the surface of the underlying rock has been exposed by the removal of the superficial detritus, a polished and furrowed surface is seen, like that underneath a glacier, the direction of the furrows being from north-west to south-east, or corresponding to the course of the large erratics. as all the blocks, instead of being dispersed from a centre, have been carried in one direction and across the ridges a, b, c and the intervening valleys, the hypothesis of glaciers is out of the question. i conceive, therefore, that the erratics were conveyed to the places they now occupy by coast ice, when the country was submerged beneath the waters of a sea cooled by icebergs coming annually from arctic regions. [illustration: figure . canaan and richmond valleys] (figure . section through canaan and richmond valleys at a time when they were marine channels. d, e. masses of floating ice carrying fragments of rock.) suppose the highest peaks of the ridges a, b, c in the annexed diagram (figure ) to be alone above water, forming islands, and d e to be masses of floating ice, which drifted across the canaan and richmond valleys at a time when they were marine channels, separating islands or rather chains of islands, having a north-north-east and south-south-west direction. a fragment of ice such as d, freighted with a block from a, might run aground and add to the heap of erratics at the north-west base of the island (now ridge) b, or, passing through a sound between b and the next island of the same group, might float on till it reached the channel between b and c. year after year two such exposed cliffs in the canaan range as d and e of the map, figure , undermined by the waves, might serve as the points of departure of blocks, composing the trains numbers and . it may be objected that oceanic currents could not always have had the same direction; this may be true, but during a short season of the year when the ice was breaking up the prevailing current may have always run south-east. if it be asked why the blocks of each train are not more scattered, especially when far from their source, it may be observed that after passing through sounds separating islands, they issued again from a new and narrow starting-point; moreover, we must not exaggerate the regularity of the trains, as their width is sometimes twice as great in one place in as another; and number sends off a branch at p, which joins number . there are also stragglers, or large blocks here and there in the spaces between the two trains. as to the distance to which any given block would be carried, that must have depended on a variety of circumstances; such as the strength of the current, the direction of the wind, the weight of the block or the quantity and draught of the ice attached to it. the smaller fragments would, on the whole, have the best chance of going farthest; because, in the first place, they were more numerous, and then, being lighter, they required less ice to float them, and would not ground so readily on shoals, or if stranded, would be more easily started again on their travels. many of the blocks, which at first sight seem to consist of single masses, are found when examined to be made up of two, three, or more pieces divided by natural joints. in the case of a second removal by ice, one or more portions would become detached and be drifted to different points further on. whenever this happened, the original size would be lessened, and the angularity of the block previously worn by the breakers would be restored, and this tendency to split may explain why some of the far-transported fragments remain very angular. these various considerations may also account for the fact that the average size of the blocks of all the seven trains laid down on the plan, figure , lessens sensibly in proportion as we recede from the principal points of departure of particular kinds of erratics, yet not with any regularity, a huge block now and then recurring when the rest of the train consists of smaller ones. all geologists acquainted with the district now under consideration are agreed that the mountain ranges a, b, and c, as well as the adjoining valleys, had assumed their actual form and position before the drift and erratics accumulated on and in them and before the surface of the fixed rocks was polished and furrowed. i have the less hesitation in ascribing the transporting power to coast-ice, because i saw in an angular block of sandstone, feet in diameter, which had been brought down several miles by ice only three years before to the mouth of the petitcodiac estuary, in nova scotia, where it joins the bay of fundy; and i ascertained that on the shores of the same bay, at the south joggins, in the year , much larger blocks had been removed by coast-ice, and after they had floated half a mile, had been dropped in salt water by the side of a pier built for loading vessels with coal, so that it was necessary at low tide to blast these huge ice-borne rocks with gunpowder in order that the vessels might be able to draw up alongside the pier. these recent exemplifications of the vast carrying powers of ice occurred in latitude degrees north (corresponding to that of bordeaux), in a bay never invaded by icebergs. i may here remark that a sheet of ice of moderate thickness, if it extend over a wide area, may suffice to buoy up the largest erratics which fall upon it. the size of these will depend, not on the intensity of the cold but on the manner in which the rock is jointed, and the consequent dimensions of the blocks into which it splits when falling from an undermined cliff. when i first endeavoured in the "principles of geology" in ,* to explain the causes, both of the warmer and colder climates which have at former periods prevailed on the globe, i referred to successive variations in the height and position of the land and its extent relatively to the sea in polar and equatorial latitudes--also to fluctuations in the course of oceanic currents and other geographical conditions, by the united influence of which i still believe the principal revolutions in the meteorological state of the atmosphere at different geological periods have been brought about. (* st edition chapter ; th edition ibid.) the gulf stream was particularly alluded to by me as moderating the winter climate of northern europe and as depending for its direction on temporary and accidental peculiarities in the shape of the land, especially that of the narrow straits of bahama, which a slight modification in the earth's crust would entirely alter. mr. hopkins, in a valuable essay on the causes of former changes of climate,*nhas attempted to calculate how much the annual temperature of europe would be lowered if this gulf stream were turned in some other and new direction, and estimates the amount at about six or seven degrees of fahrenheit. (* hopkins, "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page .) he also supposes that if at the same time a considerable part of northern and central europe were submerged, so that a cold current from the arctic seas should sweep over it, an additional refrigeration of three or four degrees would be produced. he has speculated in the same essay on the effects which would be experienced in the eastern hemisphere if the same mighty current of warm water, instead of crossing the atlantic, were made to run northwards from the gulf of mexico through the region now occupied by the valley of the mississippi, and so onwards to the arctic regions. after reflecting on what has been said in the thirteenth chapter of the submergence and re-elevation of the british isles and the adjoining parts of europe, and the rising and sinking of the alps and the basins of some of the great rivers flowing from that chain, since the commencement of the glacial period, a geologist will not be disposed to object to the theory above adverted to, on the score of its demanding too much conversion of land into sea, or almost any amount of geographical change in pleistocene times. but a difficulty of another kind presents itself. we have seen that, during the glacial period, the cold in europe extended much farther south than it does at present, and in this chapter we have demonstrated that in north america the cold also extended no less than degrees of latitude still farther southwards than in europe; so that if a great body of heated water, instead of flowing north-eastward, were made to pass through what is now the centre of the american continent towards the arctic circle, it could not fail to mitigate the severity of the winter's cold in precisely those latitudes where the cold was greatest and where it has left monuments of ice-action surpassing in extent any exhibited on the european side of the ocean. in the actual state of the globe, the isothermal lines, or lines of equal winter temperature when traced westward from europe to north america bend degrees south, there being a marked excess of winter cold in corresponding latitudes west of the atlantic. during the glacial period, viewing it as a whole, we behold signs of a precisely similar deflection of these same isothermal lines when followed from east to west; so that if, in the hope of accounting for the former severity of glacial action in europe, we suppose the absence of the gulf stream and imagine a current of equivalent magnitude to have flowed due north from the gulf of mexico, we introduce, as we have just hinted, a source of heat into precisely that part of the continent where the extreme conditions of refrigeration are most manifest. viewed in this light, the hypothesis in question would render the glacial phenomena described in the present chapter more perplexing and anomalous than ever. but here another question arises, whether the eras at which the maximum of cold was attained on the opposite sides of the atlantic were really contemporaneous? we have now discovered not only that the glacial period was of vast duration, but that it passed through various phases and oscillations of temperature; so that, although the chief polishing and furrowing of the rocks and transportation of erratics in europe and north america may have taken place contemporaneously, according to the ordinary language of geology, or when the same testacea and the same pleistocene assemblage of mammalia flourished, yet the extreme development of cold on the opposite sides of the ocean may not have been strictly simultaneous, but on the contrary the one may have preceded or followed the other by a thousand or more than a thousand centuries. it is probable that the greatest refrigeration of norway, sweden, scotland, wales, the vosges, and the alps coincided very nearly in time; but when the scandinavian and scotch mountains were encrusted with a general covering of ice, similar to that now enveloping greenland, this last country may not have been in nearly so glacial a condition as now, just as we find that the old icy crust and great glaciers, which have left their mark on the mountains of norway and sweden, have now disappeared, precisely at a time when the accumulation of ice in greenland is so excessive. in other words, we see that in the present state of the northern hemisphere, at the distance of about miles, two meridional zones enjoying very different conditions of temperature may co-exist, and we are, therefore, at liberty to imagine some former alternations of colder and milder climates on the opposite sides of the ocean throughout the pleistocene era of a compensating kind, the cold on the one side balancing the milder temperature on the other. by assuming such a succession of events we can more easily explain why there has not been a greater extermination of species, both terrestrial and aquatic, in polar and temperate regions during the glacial epoch, and why so many species are common to pre-glacial and post-glacial times. the numerous plants which are common to the temperate zones north and south of the equator have been referred by mr. darwin and dr. hooker to migrations which took place along mountain chains running from north to south during some of the colder phases of the glacial epoch.* (* darwin, "origin of species" chapter page ; hooker, "flora of australia" introduction page .) such an hypothesis enables us to dispense with the doctrine that the same species ever originated independently in two distinct and distant areas; and it becomes more feasible if we admit the doctrine of the co-existence of meridional belts of warmer and colder climate, instead of the simultaneous prevalence of extreme cold both in the eastern and western hemisphere. it also seems necessary, as colder currents of water always flow to lower latitudes, while warmer ones are running towards polar regions, that some such compensation should take place, and that an increase of cold in one region must to a certain extent be balanced by a mitigation of temperature elsewhere. sir john f. herschel, in his recent work on "physical geography," when speaking of the open sea which is caused in part of the polar regions by the escape of ice through behring's straits, and the flow of warmer water northwards through the same channel, observes that these straits, by which the continents of asia and north america are now parted, "are only thirty miles broad where narrowest and only twenty-five fathoms in their greatest depth." but "this narrow channel," he adds, "is yet important in the economy of nature, inasmuch as it allows a portion of the circulating water from a warmer region to find its way into the polar basin, aiding thereby not only to mitigate the extreme rigour of the polar cold, but to prevent in all probability a continual accretion of ice, which else might rise to a mountainous height."* (* herschel's "physical geography" page .) behring's straits, here alluded to, happen to agree singularly in width and depth with the straits of dover, the difference in depth not being more than or feet; so that at the rate of upheaval, which is now going on in many parts of scandinavia, of / feet in a century, such straits might be closed in years, and a vast accumulation of ice to the northward commence forthwith. but, on the other hand, although such an accumulation might spread its refrigerating influence for many miles southwards beyond the new barrier, the warm current which now penetrates through the straits, and which at other times is chilled by floating ice issuing from them, would when totally excluded from all communication with the icy sea have its temperature raised and its course altered, so that the climate of some other area must immediately begin to improve. there is still another probable cause of a vast change in the temperature of central europe in comparatively modern times, to which no allusion has yet been made; namely, the conversion of the great desert of the sahara from sea into land since the commencement of the pleistocene period. when that vast region was still submerged, no sirocco blowing for days in succession carried its hot blasts from a wide expanse of burning sand across the mediterranean. the south winds were comparatively cool, allowing the snows of the alps to augment to an extent which the colossal dimensions of the moraines of extinct glaciers can alone enable us to estimate. the scope and limits of this volume forbid my pursuing these speculations and reasonings farther; but i trust i have said enough to show that the monuments of the glacial period, when more thoroughly investigated, will do much towards expanding our views as to the antiquity of the fauna and flora now contemporary with man, and will therefore enable us the better to determine the time at which man began in the northern hemisphere to form part of the existing fauna. [ ] chapter . -- recapitulation of geological proofs of man's antiquity. recapitulation of results arrived at in the earlier chapters. ages of stone and bronze. danish peat and kitchen-middens. swiss lake-dwellings. local changes in vegetation and in the wild and domesticated animals and in physical geography coeval with the age of bronze and the later stone period. estimates of the positive date of some deposits of the later stone period. ancient division of the age of stone of st. acheul and aurignac. migrations of man in that period from the continent to england in post-glacial times. slow rate of progress in barbarous ages. doctrine of the superior intelligence and endowments of the original stock of mankind considered. opinions of the greeks and romans, and their coincidence with those of the modern progressionist. the ages of stone and bronze, so called by archaeologists, were spoken of in the earlier chapters of this work. that of bronze has been traced back to times anterior to the roman occupation of helvetia, gaul, and other countries north of the alps. when weapons of that mixed metal were in use, a somewhat uniform civilisation seems to have prevailed over a wide extent of central and northern europe, and the long duration of such a state of things in denmark and switzerland is shown by the gradual improvement which took place in the useful and ornamental arts. such progress is attested by the increasing variety of the forms, and the more perfect finish and tasteful decoration of the tools and utensils obtained from the more modern deposits of the bronze age, those from the upper layers of peat, for example, as compared to those found in the lower ones. the great number also of the swiss lake-dwellings of the bronze age (about seventy villages having been already discovered), and the large population which some of them were capable of containing, afford indication of a considerable lapse of time, as does the thickness of the stratum of mud in which in some of the lakes the works of art are entombed. the unequal antiquity, also, of the settlements is occasionally attested by the different degrees of decay which the wooden stakes or piles have undergone, some of them projecting more above the mud than others, while all the piles of the antecedent age of stone have rotted away quite down to the level of the mud, such part of them only as was originally driven into the bed of the lake having escaped decomposition.* (* troyon, "habitations lacustres" lausanne .) among the monuments of the stone period, which immediately preceded that of bronze, the polished hatchets called celts are abundant, and were in very general use in europe before metallic tools were introduced. we learn, from the danish peat and shell-mounds, and from the older swiss lake-settlements, that the first inhabitants were hunters who fed almost entirely on game, but their food in after ages consisted more and more of tamed animals and still later a more complete change to a pastoral state took place, accompanied as population increased by the cultivation of some cereals. both the shells and quadrupeds belonging to the later stone period and to the age of bronze consist exclusively of species now living in europe, the fauna being the same as that which flourished in gaul at the time when it was conquered by julius caesar, even the bos primigenius, the only animal of which the wild type is lost, being still represented, according to cuvier, bell, and rutimeyer, by one of the domesticated races of cattle now in europe. these monuments, therefore, whether of stone or bronze, belong to what i have termed geologically the recent period, the definition of which some may think rather too dependent on negative evidence, or on the non-discovery hitherto of extinct mammalia, such as the mammoth, which may one day turn up in a fossil state in some of the oldest peaty deposits, as indeed it is already said to have done at some spots, though i have failed as yet to obtain authentic evidence of the fact.* (* a molar of e. primigenius, in a very fresh state, in the museum at torquay, believed to have been washed up by the waves of the sea out of the submerged mass of vegetable matter at the extremity of the valley in which tor abbey stands, is the best case i have seen. see above, chapter .) no doubt some such exceptional cases may be met with in the course of future investigations, for we are still imperfectly acquainted with the entire fauna of the age of stone in denmark as we may infer from an opinion expressed by steenstrup, that some of the instruments exhumed by antiquaries from the danish peat are made of the bones and horns of the elk and reindeer. yet no skeleton or uncut bone of either of those species has hitherto been observed in the same peat. nevertheless, the examination made by naturalists of the various danish and swiss deposits of the recent period has been so searching, that the finding in them of a stray elephant or rhinoceros, should it ever occur, would prove little more than that some few individuals lingered on, when the species was on the verge of extinction, and such rare exceptions would not render the classification above proposed inappropriate. at the time when many wild quadrupeds and birds were growing scarce and some of them becoming locally extirpated in denmark, great changes were taking place in the vegetation. the pine, or scotch fir, buried in the oldest peat, gave place at length to the oak, and the oak, after flourishing for ages, yielded in its turn to the beech, the periods when these three forest trees predominated in succession tallying pretty nearly with the ages of stone, bronze, and iron in denmark. in the same country also, during the stone period, various fluctuations, as we have seen, occurred in physical geography. thus, on the ocean side of certain islands, the old refuse-heaps, or "kitchen-middens," were destroyed by the waves, the cliffs having wasted away, while on the side of the baltic, where the sea was making no encroachment or where the land was sometimes gaining on the sea, such mounds remained uninjured. it was also shown that the oyster, which supplied food to the primitive people, attained its full size in parts of the baltic where it cannot now exist owing to a want of saltness in the water, and that certain marine univalves and bivalves, such as the common periwinkle, mussel, and cockle, of which the castaway shells are found in the mounds, attained in the olden time their full dimensions, like the oysters, whereas the same species, though they still live on the coast of the inland sea adjoining the mounds, are dwarfed and never half their natural size, the water being rendered too fresh for them by the influx of so many rivers. some archaeologists and geologists of merit have endeavoured to arrive at positive dates, or an exact estimate of the minimum of time assignable to the later age of stone. these computations have been sometimes founded on changes in the level of the land, or on the increase of peat, as in the danish bogs, or on the conversion of water into land by alluvial deposits, since certain lake-settlements in switzerland were abandoned. alterations also in the geographical distribution or preponderance of certain living species of animals and plants have been taken into account in corroboration, as have the signs of progress in human civilisation, as serving to mark the lapse of time during the stone and bronze epochs. m. morlot has estimated with care the probable antiquity of three superimposed vegetable soils cut open at different depths in the delta of the tiniere, each containing human bones or works of art, belonging successively to the roman, bronze, and later stone periods. according to his estimate, an antiquity of years at least must be assigned to the oldest of these remains, though believed to be long posterior in date to the time when the mammoth and other extinct mammalia flourished together with man in europe. such computations of past time must be regarded as tentative in the present state of our knowledge and much collateral evidence will be required to confirm them; yet the results appear to me already to afford a rough approximation to the truth. between the newer or recent division of the stone period and the older division, which has been called the pleistocene, there was evidently a vast interval of time--a gap in the history of the past, into which many monuments of intermediate date will one day have to be intercalated. of this kind are those caves in the south of france, in which m. lartet has lately found bones of the reindeer, associated with works of art somewhat more advanced in style than those of st. acheul or of aurignac. in the valley of the somme we have seen that peat exists of great thickness, containing in its upper layers roman and celtic memorials, the whole of which has been of slow growth, in basins or depressions conforming to the present contour and drainage levels of the country, and long posterior in date to older gravels, containing bones of the mammoth and a large number of flint implements of a very rude and antique type. some of those gravels were accumulated in the channels of rivers which flowed at higher levels by feet than the present streams, and before the valley had attained its present depth and form. no intermixture has been observed in those ancient river beds of any of the polished weapons, called "celts," or other relics of the more modern times, or of the second or recent stone period, nor any interstratified peat; and the climate of those pleistocene ages, when man was a denizen of the north-west of france and of southern and central england, appears to have been much more severe in winter than it is now in the same region, though far less cold than in the glacial period which immediately preceded. we may presume that the time demanded for the gradual dying out or extirpation of a large number of wild beasts which figure in the pleistocene strata and are missing in the recent fauna was of protracted duration, for we know how tedious a task it is in our own times, even with the aid of fire-arms, to exterminate a noxious quadruped, a wolf, for example, in any region comprising within it an extensive forest or a mountain chain. in many villages in the north of bengal, the tiger still occasionally carries off its human victims, and the abandonment of late years by the natives of a part of the sunderbunds or lower delta of the ganges, which they once peopled, is attributed chiefly to the ravages of the tiger. it is probable that causes more general and powerful than the agency of man, alterations in climate, variations in the range of many species of animals, vertebrate and invertebrate, and of plants, geographical changes in the height, depth, and extent of land and sea, some or all of these combined, have given rise in a vast series of years to the annihilation, not only of many large mammalia, but to the disappearance of the cyrena fluminalis, once common in the rivers of europe, and to the different range or relative abundance of other shells which we find in the european drifts. that the growing power of man may have lent its aid as the destroying cause of many pleistocene species, must, however, be granted; yet, before the introduction of fire-arms, or even the use of improved weapons of stone, it seems more wonderful that the aborigines were able to hold their own against the cave-lion, hyaena, and wild bull, and to cope with such enemies, than that they failed to bring about their speedy extinction. it is already clear that man was contemporary in europe with two species of elephant, now extinct, e. primigenius and e. antiquus, two also of rhinoceros, r. tichorhinus and r. hemitoechus (falc.), at least one species of hippopotamus, the cave-bear, cave-lion, and cave-hyaena, various bovine, equine, and cervine animals now extinct, and many smaller carnivora, rodentia, and insectivora. while these were slowly passing away, the musk ox, reindeer, and other arctic species which have survived to our times were retreating northwards from the valleys of the thames and seine to their present more arctic haunts. the human skeletons of the belgian caverns of times coeval with the mammoth and other extinct mammalia do not betray any signs of a marked departure in their structure, whether of skull or limb, from the modern standard of certain living races of the human family. as to the remarkable neanderthal skeleton (chapter ), it is at present too isolated and exceptional, and its age too uncertain, to warrant us in relying on its abnormal and ape-like characters, as bearing on the question whether the farther back we trace man into the past, the more we shall find him approach in bodily conformation to those species of the anthropoid quadrumana which are most akin to him in structure. in the descriptions already given of the geographical changes which the british isles have undergone since the commencement of the glacial period (as illustrated by several maps, figures to ), it has been shown that there must have been a free communication by land between the continent and these islands, and between the several islands themselves, within the pleistocene epoch, in order to account for the germanic fauna and flora having migrated into every part of the area, as well as for the scandinavian plants and animals to have retreated into the higher mountains. during some part of the pleistocene ages, the large pachyderms and accompanying beasts of prey, now extinct, wandered from the continent to england; and it is highly probable that france was united with some part of the british isles as late as the period of the gravels of st. acheul and the era of those engulfed rivers which, in the basin of the meuse near liege, swept into many a rent and cavern the bones of man and of the mammoth and cave-bear. there have been vast geographical revolutions in the times alluded to, and oscillations of land, during which the english channel, which can be shown by the pagham erratics and the old brighton beach (chapter ), to be of very ancient origin, may have been more than once laid dry and again submerged. during some one of these phases, man may have crossed over, whether by land or in canoes, or even on the ice of a frozen sea (as mr. prestwich has hinted), for the winters of the period of the higher-level gravels of the valley of the somme were intensely cold. the primitive people, who co-existed with the elephant and rhinoceros in the valley of the ouse at bedford, and who made use of flint tools of the amiens type, certainly inhabited part of england which had already emerged from the waters of the glacial sea and the fabricators of the flint tools of hoxne, in suffolk, were also, as we have seen, post-glacial. we may likewise presume that the people of pleistocene date, who have left their memorials in the valley of the thames, were of corresponding antiquity, posterior to the boulder clay but anterior to the time when the rivers of that region had settled into their present channels. the vast distance of time which separated the origin of the higher and lower gravels of the valley of the somme, both of them rich in flint implements of similar shape (although those of oval form predominate in the newer gravels), leads to the conclusion that the state of the arts in those early times remained stationary for almost indefinite periods. there may, however, have been different degrees of civilisation and in the art of fabricating flint tools, of which we cannot easily detect the signs in the first age of stone, and some contemporary tribes may have been considerably in advance of others. those hunters, for example, who feasted on the rhinoceros and buried their dead with funeral rites at aurignac may have been less barbarous than the savages of st. acheul, as some of their weapons and utensils have been thought to imply. to a european who looks down from a great eminence on the products of the humble arts of the aborigines of all times and countries, the stone knives and arrows of the red indian of north america, the hatchets of the native australian, the tools found in the ancient swiss lake-dwellings or those of the danish kitchen-middens and of st. acheul, seem nearly all alike in rudeness and very uniform in general character. the slowness of the progress of the arts of savage life is manifested by the fact that the earlier instruments of bronze were modelled on the exact plan of the stone tools of the preceding age, although such shapes would never have been chosen had metals been known from the first. the reluctance or incapacity of savage tribes to adopt new inventions has been shown in the east by their continuing to this day to use the same stone implements as their ancestors, after that mighty empires, where the use of metals in the arts was well known, had flourished for three thousand years in their neighbourhood. we see in our own times that the rate of progress in the arts and sciences proceeds in a geometrical ratio as knowledge increases, and so when we carry back our retrospect into the past, we must be prepared to find the signs of retardation augmenting in a like geometrical ratio; so that the progress of a thousand years at a remote period may correspond to that of a century in modern times, and in ages still more remote man would more and more resemble the brutes in that attribute which causes one generation exactly to imitate in all its ways the generation which preceded it. the extent to which even a considerably advanced state of civilisation may become fixed and stereotyped for ages, is the wonder of europeans who travel in the east. one of my friends declared to me, that whenever the natives expressed to him a wish "that he might live a thousand years," the idea struck him as by no means extravagant, seeing that if he were doomed to sojourn for ever among them, he could only hope to exchange in ten centuries as many ideas, and to witness as much progress as he could do at home in half a century. it has sometimes happened that one nation has been conquered by another less civilised though more warlike, or that during social and political revolutions, people have retrograded in knowledge. in such cases, the traditions of earlier ages, or of some higher and more educated caste which has been destroyed, may give rise to the notion of degeneracy from a primaeval state of superior intelligence, or of science supernaturally communicated. but had the original stock of mankind been really endowed with such superior intellectual powers and with inspired knowledge and had possessed the same improvable nature as their posterity, the point of advancement which they would have reached ere this would have been immeasurably higher. we cannot ascertain at present the limits, whether of the beginning or the end, of the first stone period when man co-existed with the extinct mammalia, but that it was of great duration we cannot doubt. during those ages there would have been time for progress of which we can scarcely form a conception, and very different would have been the character of the works of art which we should now be endeavouring to interpret--those relics which we are now disinterring from the old gravel-pits of st. acheul, or from the liege caves. in them, or in the upraised bed of the mediterranean, on the south coast of sardinia, instead of the rudest pottery or flint tools so irregular in form as to cause the unpractised eye to doubt whether they afford unmistakable evidence of design, we should now be finding sculptured forms surpassing in beauty the masterpieces of phidias or praxiteles; lines of buried railways or electric telegraphs from which the best engineers of our day might gain invaluable hints; astronomical instruments and microscopes of more advanced construction than any known in europe, and other indications of perfection in the arts and sciences such as the nineteenth century has not yet witnessed. still farther would the triumphs of inventive genius be found to have been carried, when the later deposits, now assigned to the ages of bronze and iron, were formed. vainly should we be straining our imaginations to guess the possible uses and meaning of such relics--machines, perhaps, for navigating the air or exploring the depths of the ocean, or for calculating arithmetical problems beyond the wants or even the conception of living mathematicians. the opinion entertained generally by the classical writers of greece and rome, that man in the first stage of his existence was but just removed from the brutes, is faithfully expressed by horace in his celebrated lines, which begin:-- quum prorepserunt primis animalia terris.--sat. lib. , , . the picture of transmutation given in these verses, however severe and contemptuous the strictures lavishly bestowed on it by christian commentators, accords singularly with the train of thought which the modern doctrine of progressive development has encouraged. "when animals," he says, "first crept forth from the newly formed earth, a dumb and filthy herd, they fought for acorns and lurking-places with their nails and fists, then with clubs, and at last with arms, which, taught by experience, they had forged. they then invented names for things and words to express their thoughts, after which they began to desist from war, to fortify cities and enact laws." they who in later times have embraced a similar theory, have been led to it by no deference to the opinions of their pagan predecessors, but rather in spite of very strong prepossessions in favour of an opposite hypothesis, namely, that of the superiority of their original progenitors, of whom they believe themselves to be the corrupt and degenerate descendants. so far as they are guided by palaeontology, they arrive at this result by an independent course of reasoning; but they have been conducted partly to the same goal as the ancients by ethnological considerations common to both, or by reflecting in what darkness the infancy of every nation is enveloped and that true history and chronology are the creation, as it were, of yesterday. chapter . -- theories of progression and transmutation. antiquity and persistence in character of the existing races of mankind. theory of their unity of origin considered. bearing of the diversity of races on the doctrine of transmutation. difficulty of defining the terms "species" and "race." lamarck's introduction of the element of time into the definition of a species. his theory of variation and progression. objections to his theory, how far answered. arguments of modern writers in favour of progression in the animal and vegetable world. the old landmarks supposed to indicate the first appearance of man, and of different classes of animals, found to be erroneous. yet the theory of an advancing series of organic beings not inconsistent with facts. earliest known fossil mammalia of low grade. no vertebrata as yet discovered in the oldest fossiliferous rocks. objections to the theory of progression considered. causes of the popularity of the doctrine of progression as compared to that of transmutation. when speaking in a former work of the distinct races of mankind,* i remarked that, "if all the leading varieties of the human family sprang originally from a single pair" (a doctrine, to which then, as now, i could see no valid objection), "a much greater lapse of time was required for the slow and gradual formation of such races as the caucasian, mongolian, and negro, than was embraced in any of the popular systems of chronology." (* "principles of geology" th edition page , ; see also th edition page .) in confirmation of the high antiquity of two of these, i referred to pictures on the walls of ancient temples in egypt, in which, a thousand years or more before the christian era, "the negro and caucasian physiognomies were portrayed as faithfully, and in as strong contrast, as if the likenesses of these races had been taken yesterday." in relation to the same subject, i dwelt on the slight modification which the negro has undergone, after having been transported from the tropics and settled for more than two centuries in the temperate climate of virginia. i therefore concluded that, "if the various races were all descended from a single pair, we must allow for a vast series of antecedent ages, in the course of which the long-continued influence of external circumstances gave rise to peculiarities increased in many successive generations and at length fixed by hereditary transmission." so long as physiologists continued to believe that man had not existed on the earth above six thousand years, they might with good reason withhold their assent from the doctrine of a unity of origin of so many distinct races but the difficulty becomes less and less, exactly in proportion as we enlarge our ideas of the lapse of time during which different communities may have spread slowly, and become isolated, each exposed for ages to a peculiar set of conditions, whether of temperature, or food, or danger, or ways of living. the law of the geometrical rate of the increase of population which causes it always to press hard on the means of subsistence, would ensure the migration in various directions of offshoots from the society first formed abandoning the area where they had multiplied. but when they had gradually penetrated to remote regions by land or water--drifted sometimes by storms and currents in canoes to an unknown shore--barriers of mountains, deserts, or seas, which oppose no obstacle to mutual intercourse between civilised nations, would ensure the complete isolation for tens or thousands of centuries of tribes in a primitive state of barbarism. some modern ethnologists, in accordance with the philosophers of antiquity, have assumed that men at first fed on the fruits of the earth, before even a stone implement or the simplest form of canoe had been invented. they may, it is said, have begun their career in some fertile island in the tropics, where the warmth of the air was such that no clothing was needed and where there were no wild beasts to endanger their safety. but as soon as their numbers increased they would be forced to migrate into regions less secure and blest with a less genial climate. contests would soon arise for the possession of the most fertile lands, where game or pasture abounded and their energies and inventive powers would be called forth, so that at length they would make progress in the arts. but as ethnologists have failed, as yet, to trace back the history of any one race to the area where it originated, some zoologists of eminence have declared their belief that the different races, whether they be three, five, twenty, or a much greater number (for on this point there is an endless diversity of opinion),* have all been primordial creations, having from the first been stamped with the characteristic features, mental and bodily, by which they are now distinguished, except where intermarriage has given rise to mixed or hybrid races. (* see "transactions of the ethnological society" volume .) were we to admit, say they, a unity of origin of such strongly marked varieties as the negro and european, differing as they do in colour and bodily constitution, each fitted for distinct climates and exhibiting some marked peculiarities in their osteological, and even in some details of cranial and cerebral conformation, as well as in their average intellectual endowments--if, in spite of the fact that all these attributes have been faithfully handed down unaltered for hundreds of generations, we are to believe that, in the course of time, they have all diverged from one common stock, how shall we resist the arguments of the transmutationist, who contends that all closely allied species of animals and plants have in like manner sprung from a common parentage, albeit that for the last three or four thousand years they may have been persistent in character? where are we to stop, unless we make our stand at once on the independent creation of those distinct human races, the history of which is better known to us than that of any of the inferior animals? so long as geology had not lifted up a part of the veil which formerly concealed from the naturalist the history of the changes which the animate creation had undergone in times immediately antecedent to the recent period, it was easy to treat these questions as too transcendental, or as lying too far beyond the domain of positive science to require serious discussion. but it is no longer possible to restrain curiosity from attempting to pry into the relations which connect the present state of the animal and vegetable worlds, as well as of the various races of mankind, with the state of the fauna and flora which immediately preceded. in the very outset of the inquiry, we are met with the difficulty of defining what we mean by the terms "species" and "race;" and the surprise of the unlearned is usually great, when they discover how wide is the difference of opinion now prevailing as to the significance of words in such familiar use. but, in truth, we can come to no agreement as to such definitions, unless we have previously made up our minds on some of the most momentous of all the enigmas with which the human intellect ever attempted to grapple. it is now thirty years since i gave an analysis in the first edition of my "principles of geology" (volume ) of the views which had been put forth by lamarck, in the beginning of the century, on this subject. in that interval the progress made in zoology and botany, both in augmenting the number of known animals and plants, and in studying their physiology and geographical distribution and above all in examining and describing fossil species, is so vast that the additions made to our knowledge probably exceed all that was previously known; and what lamarck then foretold has come to pass; the more new forms have been multiplied, the less are we able to decide what we mean by a variety, and what by a species. in fact, zoologists and botanists are not only more at a loss than ever how to define a species, but even to determine whether it has any real existence in nature, or is a mere abstraction of the human intellect, some contending that it is constant within certain narrow and impassable limits of variability, others that it is capable of indefinite and endless modification. before i attempt to explain a great step, which has recently been made by mr. darwin and his fellow-labourers in this field of inquiry, i think it useful to recapitulate in this place some of the leading features of lamarck's system, without attempting to adjust the claims of some of his contemporaries (geoffroy st. hilaire in particular) to share in the credit of some of his original speculations. from the time of linnaeus to the commencement of the present century, it seemed a sufficient definition of the term species to say that "a species consisted of individuals all resembling each other, and reproducing their like by generation." but lamarck after having first studied botany with success, had then turned his attention to conchology, and soon became aware that in the newer (or tertiary) strata of the earth's crust there were a multitude of fossil species of shells, some of them identical with living ones, others simply varieties of the living, and which as such were entitled to be designated, according to the ordinary rules of classification, by the same names. he also observed that other shells were so nearly allied to living forms that it was difficult not to suspect that they had been connected by a common bond of descent. he therefore proposed that the element of time should enter into the definition of a species, and that it should run thus: "a species consists of individuals all resembling each other, and reproducing their like by generation, so long as the surrounding conditions do not undergo changes sufficient to cause their habits, characters, and forms to vary." he came at last to the conclusion that none of the animals and plants now existing were primordial creations, but were all derived from pre-existing forms, which, after they may have gone on for indefinite ages reproducing their like, had at length, by the influence of alterations in climate and in the animate world been made to vary gradually, and adapt themselves to new circumstances, some of them deviating in the course of ages so far from their original type as to have claims to be regarded as new species. in support of these views, he referred to wild and cultivated plants and to wild and domesticated animals, pointing out how their colour, form, structure, physiological attributes and even instincts were gradually modified by exposure to new soils and climates, new enemies, modes of subsistence, and kinds of food. nor did he omit to notice that the newly acquired peculiarities may be inherited by the offspring for an indefinite series of generations, whether they be brought about naturally--as when a species, on the extreme verge of its geographical range, comes into competition with new antagonists and is subjected to new physical conditions; or artificially--as when by the act of the breeder or horticulturist peculiar varieties of form or disposition are selected. but lamarck taught not only that species had been constantly undergoing changes from one geological period to another, but that there also had been a progressive advance of the organic world from the earliest to the latest times, from beings of the simplest to those of more and more complex structure, and from the lowest instincts up to the highest, and finally from brute intelligence to the reasoning powers of man. the improvement in the grade of being had been slow and continuous, and the human race itself was at length evolved out of the most highly organised and endowed of the inferior mammalia. in order to explain how, after an indefinite lapse of ages, so many of the lowest grades of animal or plant still abounded, he imagined that the germs or rudiments of living things, which he called monads, were continually coming into the world and that there were different kinds of these monads for each primary division of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. this last hypothesis does not seem essentially different from the old doctrine of equivocal or spontaneous generation; it is wholly unsupported by any modern experiments or observation, and therefore affords us no aid whatever in speculating on the commencement of vital phenomena on the earth. some of the laws which govern the appearance of new varieties were clearly pointed out by lamarck. he remarked, for example, that as the muscles of the arm become strengthened by exercise or enfeebled by disuse, some organs may in this way, in the course of time, become entirely obsolete, and others previously weak become strong and play a new or more leading part in the organisation of a species. and so with instincts, where animals experience new dangers they become more cautious and cunning, and transmit these acquired faculties to their posterity. but not satisfied with such legitimate speculations, the french philosopher conceived that by repeated acts of volition animals might acquire new organs and attributes, and that in plants, which could not exert a will of their own, certain subtle fluids or organising forces might operate so as to work out analogous effects. after commenting on these purely imaginary causes, i pointed out in , as the two great flaws in lamarck's attempt to explain the origin of species, first, that he had failed to adduce a single instance of the initiation of a new organ in any species of animal or plant; and secondly, that variation, whether taking place in the course of nature or assisted artificially by the breeder and horticulturist, had never yet gone so far as to produce two races sufficiently remote from each other in physiological constitution as to be sterile when intermarried, or, if fertile, only capable of producing sterile hybrids, etc.* (* "principles of geology" st edition volume chapter .) to this objection lamarck would, no doubt, have answered that there had not been time for bringing about so great an amount of variation; for when cuvier and some other of his contemporaries appealed to the embalmed animals and plants taken from egyptian tombs, some of them years old, which had not experienced in that long period the slightest modification in their specific characters, he replied that the climate and soil of the valley of the nile had not varied in the interval, and that there was therefore no reason for expecting that we should be able to detect any change in the fauna and flora. "but if," he went on to say, "the physical geography, temperature, and other conditions of life had been altered in egypt as much as we know from geology has happened in other regions, some of the same animals and plants would have deviated so far from their pristine types as to be thought entitled to take rank as new and distinct species." although i cited this answer of lamarck in my account of his theory,* i did not at the time fully appreciate the deep conviction which it displays of the slow manner in which geological changes have taken place and the insignificance of thirty or forty centuries in the history of a species, and that, too, at a period when very narrow views were entertained of the extent of past time by most of the ablest geologists, and when great revolutions of the earth's crust, and its inhabitants, were generally attributed to sudden and violent catastrophes. (* ibid. page .) while in i argued against lamarck's doctrine of the gradual transmutation of one species into another, i agreed with him in believing that the system of changes now in progress in the organic world would afford, when fully understood, a complete key to the interpretation of all the vicissitudes of the living creation in past ages. i contended against the doctrine, then very popular, of the sudden destruction of vast multitudes of species and the abrupt ushering into the world of new batches of plants and animals. i endeavoured to sketch out (and it was, i believe, the first systematic attempt to accomplish such a task) the laws which govern the extinction of species, with a view of showing that the slow but ceaseless variations now in progress in physical geography, together with the migration of plants and animals into new regions, must in the course of ages give rise to the occasional loss of some of them and eventually cause an entire fauna and flora to die out; also that we must infer from geological data that the places thus left vacant from time to time are filled up without delay by new forms adapted to new conditions, sometimes by immigration from adjoining provinces, sometimes by new creations. among the many causes of extinction enumerated by me were the power of hostile species, diminution of food, mutations in climate, the conversion of land into sea and of sea into land, etc. i firmly opposed brocchi's hypothesis of a decline in the vital energy of each species;* maintaining that there was every reason to believe that the reproductive powers of the last surviving representatives of a species were as vigorous as those of their predecessors, and that they were as capable, under favourable circumstances, of repeopling the earth with their kind. (* "principles of geology" st edition volume chapter ; and th edition page .) the manner in which some species are now becoming scarce and dying out, one after the other, appeared to me to favour the doctrine of the fixity of the specific character, showing a want of pliancy and capability of varying, which ensured their annihilation whenever changes adverse to their well-being occurred; time not being allowed for such a transformation as might be conceived capable of adapting them to the new circumstances, and of converting them into what naturalists would call new species.* (* laws of extinction, "principles of geology" st edition volume chapters to inclusive; and th edition chapters to inclusive .) but while rejecting transmutation, i was equally opposed to the popular theory that the creative power had diminished in energy, or that it had been in abeyance ever since man had entered upon the scene. that a renovating force which had been in full operation for millions of years should cease to act while the causes of extinction were still in full activity, or even intensified by the accession of man's destroying power, seemed to me in the highest degree improbable. the only point on which i doubted was whether the force might not be intermittent instead of being, as lamarck supposed, in ceaseless operation. might not the births of new species, like the deaths of old ones, be sudden? might they not still escape our observation? if the coming in of one new species, and the loss of one other which had endured for ages, should take place annually, still, assuming that there are a million of animals and plants living on the globe, it would require, i observed, a million of years to bring about a complete revolution in the fauna and flora. in that case, i imagined that, although the first appearance of a new form might be as abrupt as the disappearance of an old one, yet naturalists might never yet have witnessed the first entrance on the stage of a large and conspicuous animal or plant, and as to the smaller kinds, many of them may be conceived to have stolen in unseen, and to have spread gradually over a wide area, like species migrating into new provinces.* (* "principles of geology" st edition volume chapter ; and th edition page .) it may now be useful to offer some remarks on the very different reception which the twin branches of lamarck's development theory, namely, progression and transmutation, have met with, and to inquire into the causes of the popularity of the one and the great unpopularity of the other. we usually test the value of a scientific hypothesis by the number and variety of the phenomena of which it offers a fair or plausible explanation. if transmutation, when thus tested, has decidedly the advantage over progression and yet is comparatively in disfavour, we may reasonably suspect that its reception is retarded, not so much by its own inherent demerits, as by some apprehended consequences which it is supposed to involve and which run counter to our preconceived opinions. theory of progression. in treating of this question, i shall begin with the doctrine of progression, a concise statement of which, so far as it relates to the animal kingdom, was thus given twelve years ago by professor sedgwick, in the preface to his "discourse on the studies of the university of cambridge." "there are traces," he says, "among the old deposits of the earth of an organic progression among the successive forms of life. they are to be seen in the absence of mammalia in the older, and their very rare appearance in the newer secondary groups; in the diffusion of warm-blooded quadrupeds (frequently of unknown genera) in the older tertiary system, and in their great abundance (and frequently of known genera) in the upper portions of the same series; and lastly, in the recent appearance of man on the surface of the earth." "this historical development," continues the same author, of the forms and functions of organic life during successive epochs, "seems to mark a gradual evolution of creative power, manifested by a gradual ascent towards a higher type of being." "but the elevation of the fauna of successive periods was not made by transmutation, but by creative additions; and it is by watching these additions that we get some insight into nature's true historical progress, and learn that there was a time when cephalopoda were the highest types of animal life, the primates of this world; that fishes next took the lead, then reptiles; and that during the secondary period they were anatomically raised far above any forms of the reptile class now living in the world. mammals were added next, until nature became what she now is, by the addition of man."* (* professor sedgwick's "discourse on the studies of the university of cambridge" preface to th edition pages , , , .) although in the half century which has elapsed between the time of lamarck and the publication of the above summary, new discoveries have caused geologists to assign a higher antiquity both to man and the oldest fossil mammalia, fish, and reptiles than formerly, yet the generalisation, as laid down by the woodwardian professor, as to progression, still holds good in all essential particulars. the progressive theory was propounded in the following terms by the late hugh miller in his "footprints of the creator." "it is of itself an extraordinary fact without reference to other considerations, that the order adopted by cuvier in his "animal kingdom," as that in which the four great classes of vertebrate animals, when marshalled according to their rank and standing, naturally range, should be also that in which they occur in order of time. the brain, which bears an average proportion to the spinal cord of not more than two to one, comes first--it is the brain of the fish; that which bears to the spinal cord an average proportion of two and a half to one succeeded it--it is the brain of the reptile; then came the brain averaging as three to one--it is that of the bird. next in succession came the brain that averages as four to one--it is that of the mammal; and last of all there appeared a brain that averages as twenty-three to one--reasoning, calculating man had come upon the scene."* (* "footprints of the creator" edinburgh page .) m. agassiz, in his "essay on classification," has devoted a chapter to the "parallelism between the geological succession of animals and plants and their present relative standing;" in which he has expressed a decided opinion that within the limits of the orders of each great class there is a coincidence between their relative rank in organisation and the order of succession of their representatives in time.* (* "contributions to the natural history of the united states" part .--essay on classification page .) professor owen, in his palaeontology, has advanced similar views, and has remarked, in regard to the vertebrata that there is much positive as well as negative evidence in support of the doctrine of an advance in the scale of being, from ancient to more modern geological periods. we observe, for example, in the triassic, oolitic, and cretaceous strata, not only an absence of placental mammalia, but the presence of innumerable reptiles, some of large size, terrestrial and aquatic, herbivorous and predaceous, fitted to perform the functions now discharged by the mammalia. the late professor bronn, of heidelberg, after passing in review more than , fossil animals and plants, which he had classified and referred each to their geological position in his "index palaeontologicus," came to the conclusion that, in the course of time, there had been introduced into the earth more and more highly organised types of animal and vegetable life; the modern species being, on the whole, more specialised, i.e. having separate organs, or parts of the body, to perform different functions, which, in the earlier periods and in beings of simpler structure, were discharged in common by a single part or organ. professor adolphe brongniart, in an essay published in on the botanical classification and geological distribution of the genera of fossil plants,* arrives at similar results as to the progress of the vegetable world from the earliest periods to the present. (* tableau des genres de vegetaux fossiles, etc. "dictionnaire universel d'histoire naturelle" paris .) he does not pretend to trace an exact historical series from the sea-weed to the fern, or from the fern again to the conifers and cycads, and lastly from those families to the palms and oaks, but he, nevertheless, points out that the cryptogamic forms, especially the acrogens, predominate among the fossils of the primary formations, the carboniferous especially, while the gymnosperms or coniferous and cycadeous plants abound in all the strata, from the trias to the wealden inclusive; and lastly, the more highly developed angiosperms, both monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous, do not become abundant until the tertiary period. it is a remarkable fact, as he justly observes, that the angiospermous exogens, which comprise four-fifths of living plants--a division to which all our native european trees, except the coniferae, belong, and which embrace all the compositae, leguminosae, umbelliferae, cruciferae, heaths, and so many other families--are wholly unrepresented by any fossils hitherto discovered in the primary and secondary formations from the silurian to the oolitic inclusive. it is not till we arrive at the cretaceous period that they begin to appear, sparingly at first, and only playing a conspicuous part, together with the palms and other endogens, in the tertiary epoch. when commenting on the eagerness with which the doctrine of progression was embraced from the close of the last century to the time when i first attempted, in , to give some account of the prevailing theories in geology, i observed that far too much reliance was commonly placed on the received dates of the first appearances of certain orders or classes of animals or plants, such dates being determined by the age of the stratum in which we then happened to have discovered the earliest memorials of such types. at that time ( ), it was taken for granted that man had not co-existed with the mammoth and other extinct mammalia, yet now that we have traced back the signs of his existence to the pleistocene era, and may anticipate the finding of his remains on some future day in the pliocene period, the theory of progression is not shaken; for we cannot expect to meet with human bones in the miocene formations, where all the species and nearly all the genera of mammalia belong to types widely differing from those now living; and had some other rational being, representing man, then flourished, some signs of his existence could hardly have escaped unnoticed, in the shape of implements of stone or metal, more frequent and more durable than the osseous remains of any of the mammalia. in the beginning of this century it was one of the canons of the popular geological creed that the first warm-blooded quadrupeds which had inhabited this planet were those derived from the eocene gypsum of montmartre in the suburbs of paris, almost all of which cuvier had shown to belong to extinct genera. this dogma continued in force for more than a quarter of a century, in spite of the discovery in of a marsupial quadruped in the stonesfield strata, a member of the lower oolite, near oxford. some disputed the authority of cuvier himself as to the mammalian character of the fossil; others, the accuracy of those who had assigned to it so ancient a place in the chronological series of rocks. in i pointed out that the occurrence of this single fossil in the oolite was "fatal to the theory of successive development" as then propounded.* (* "principles of geology" nd edition .) since that period great additions have been made to our knowledge of the existence of land quadrupeds in the olden times. we have ascertained that, in eocene strata older than the gypsum of paris, no less than four distinct sets of placental mammalia have flourished; namely, first, those of the headon series in the isle of wight, from which fourteen species have been procured; secondly, those of the antecedent bagshot and bracklesham beds, which have yielded, together with the contemporaneous "calcaire grossier" of paris, twenty species; thirdly, the still older beds of kyson, near ipswich, and those of herne bay, at the mouth of the thames, in which seven species have been found; and fourthly, the woolwich and reading beds, which have supplied ten species.* (* lyell's supplement to th edition of "elements" .) we can scarcely doubt that we should already have traced back the evidence of this class of fossils much farther had not our inquiries been arrested, first by the vast gap between the tertiary and secondary formations, and then by the marine nature of the cretaceous rocks. the mammalia next in antiquity, of which we have any cognisance, are those of the upper oolite of purbeck, discovered between the years and , and comprising no less than fourteen species, referable to eight or nine genera; one of them, plagiaulax, considered by dr. falconer to have been a herbivorous marsupial. the whole assemblage appear, from the joint observations of professor owen and dr. falconer, to indicate a low grade of quadruped, probably of the marsupial type. they were, for the most part, diminutive, the two largest not much exceeding our common hedgehog and polecat in size. next anterior in age are the mammalia of the lower oolite of stonesfield, of which four species are known, also very small and probably marsupial, with one exception, the stereognathus ooliticus, which, according to professor owen's conjecture, may have been a hoofed quadruped and placental, though, as we have only half of the lower jaw with teeth, and the molars are unlike any living type, such an opinion is of course hazarded with due caution. still older than the above are some fossil quadrupeds of small size, found in the upper trias of stuttgart in germany, and more lately by mr. c. moore in beds of corresponding age near frome, which are also of a very low grade, like the living myrmecobius of australia. beyond this limit our knowledge of the highest class of vertebrata does not as yet extend into the past, but the frequent shifting back of the old landmarks, nearly all of them once supposed in their turn to indicate the date of the first appearance of warm-blooded quadrupeds on this planet, should serve as a warning to us not to consider the goal at present reached by palaeontology as one beyond which they who come after us are never destined to pass. on the other hand, it may be truly said in favour of progression that after all these discoveries the doctrine is not gainsaid, for the less advanced marsupials precede the more perfect placental mammalia in the order of their appearance on the earth. if the three localities where the most ancient mammalia have been found--purbeck, stonesfield, and stuttgart--had belonged all of them to formations of the same age, we might well have imagined so limited an area to have been peopled exclusively with pouched quadrupeds, just as australia now is, while other parts of the globe were inhabited by placentals, for australia now supports one hundred and sixty species of marsupials, while the rest of the continents and islands are tenanted by about seventeen hundred species of mammalia, of which only forty-six are marsupial, namely, the opossums of north and south america. but the great difference of age of the strata in each of these three localities seems to indicate the predominance throughout a vast lapse of time (from the era of the upper trias to that of the purbeck beds) of a low grade of quadrupeds; and this persistency of similar generic and ordinal types in europe while the species were changing, and while the fish, reptiles, and mollusca were undergoing vast modifications, raises a strong presumption that there was also a vast extension in space of the same marsupial forms during that portion of the secondary epoch which has been termed "the age of reptiles." as to the class reptilia, some of the orders which prevailed when the secondary rocks were formed are confessedly much higher in their organisation than any of the same class now living. if the less perfect ophidians, or snakes, which now abound on the earth had taken the lead in those ancient days among the land reptiles, and the deinosaurians had been contemporary with man, there can be no doubt that the progressionist would have seized upon this fact with unfeigned satisfaction as confirmatory of his views. now that the order of succession is precisely reversed, and that the age of the iguanodon was long anterior to that of the eocene palaeophis and living boa, while the crocodile is in our own times the highest representative of its class, a retrograde movement in this important division of the vertebrata must be admitted. it may perhaps be accounted for by the power acquired by the placental mammalia, when they became dominant, a power before which the class of vertebrata next below them, as coming most directly in competition with them, may more than any other have given way. for no less than thirty-four years it had been a received axiom in palaeontology that reptiles had never existed before the permian or magnesian limestone period, when at length in this supposed barrier was thrown down, and carboniferous reptiles, terrestrial and aquatic, of several genera were brought to light; and discussions are now going on as to whether some remains of an enaliosaur (perhaps a large labyrinthodon) have not been detected in the coal of nova scotia, and whether certain sandstones near elgin in scotland, containing the bones of lacertian, crocodilian, and rhynchosaurian reptiles, may not be referable to the "old red" or devonian group. still, no traces of this class have yet been detected in rocks as ancient as those in which the oldest fish have been found. [ ] as to fossil representatives of the ichthyic type, the most ancient were not supposed before to be of a date anterior to the coal, but they have since been traced back, first to the devonian, and then to the silurian rocks. no remains, however, of them or of any vertebrate animal have yet been discovered in the ordovician strata, rich as these are in invertebrate fossils, nor in the still older cambrian; so that we seem authorised to conclude, though not without considerable reserve, that the vertebrate type was extremely scarce, if not wholly wanting, in those epochs often spoken of as "primitive," but which, if the development theory be true, were probably the last of a long series of antecedent ages in which living beings flourished. as to the mollusca, which afford the most unbroken series of geological medals, the highest of that class, the cephalopoda, abounded in older silurian times, comprising several hundred species of chambered univalves. had there been strong prepossessions against the progressive theory, it would probably have been argued that when these cephalopods abounded, and the siphonated gasteropods were absent, a higher order of zoophagous mollusca discharged the functions afterwards performed by an inferior order in the secondary, tertiary, and post-tertiary seas. but i have never seen this view suggested as adverse to the doctrine of progress, although much stress has been laid on the fact that the silurian brachiopoda, creatures of a lower grade, formerly discharged the functions of the existing lamellibranchiate bivalves, which are higher in the scale. it is said truly that the ammonite, orthoceras, and nautilus of these ancient rocks were of the tetrabranchiate division, and none of them so highly organised as the belemnite and other dibranchiate cephalopods which afterwards appeared, and some of which now flourish in our seas. therefore, we may infer that the simplest forms of the cephalopoda took precedence of the more complex in time. but if we embrace this view, we must not forget that there are living cephalopoda, such as the octopods, which are devoid of any hard parts, whether external or internal, and which could leave behind them no fossil memorials of their existence, so that we must make a somewhat arbitrary assumption, namely, that at a remote era, no such dibranchiata were in being, in order to avail ourselves of this argument in favour of progression. on the other hand, it is true that in the lower cambrian not even the shell-bearing tetrabranchiates have yet been discovered. in regard to plants, although the generalisation above cited of m. adolphe brongniart is probably true, there has been a tendency in the advocates of progression to push the inferences deducible from known facts, in support of their favourite dogma, somewhat beyond the limits which the evidence justifies. dr. hooker observes, in his recent "introductory essay to the flora of australia," that it is impossible to establish a parallel between the successive appearances of vegetable forms in time, and their complexity of structure or specialisation of organs as represented by the successively higher groups in the natural method of classification. he also adds that the earliest recognisable cryptogams are not only the highest now existing, but have more highly differentiated vegetative organs than any subsequently appearing, and that the dicotyledonous embryo and perfect exogenous wood, with the highest specialised tissue known (the coniferous with glandular tissue), preceded the monocotyledonous embryo and endogenous wood in date of appearance on the globe--facts wholly opposed to the doctrine of progression, and which can only be set aside on the supposition that they are fragmentary evidence of a time farther removed from the origin of vegetation than from the present day.* (* "introductory essay to the flora of australia," page london . published separately.) [ ] it would be an easy task to multiply objections to the theory now under consideration; but from this i refrain, as i regard it not only as a useful, but rather in the present state of science as an indispensable hypothesis, and one which though destined hereafter to undergo many and great modifications will never be overthrown. it may be thought almost paradoxical that writers who are most in favour of transmutation (mr. c. darwin and dr. j. hooker, for example) are nevertheless among those who are most cautious, and one would say timid, in their mode of espousing the doctrine of progression; while, on the other hand, the most zealous advocates of progression are oftener than not very vehement opponents of transmutation. we might have anticipated a contrary leaning on the part of both, for to what does the theory of progression point? it supposes a gradual elevation in grade of the vertebrate type in the course of ages from the most simple ichthyic form to that of the placental mammalia and the coming upon the stage last in the order of time of the most anthropomorphous mammalia, followed by the human race--this last thus appearing as an integral part of the same continuous series of acts of development, one link in the same chain, the crowning operation as it were of one and the same series of manifestations of creative power. if the dangers apprehended from transmutation arise from the too intimate connection which it tends to establish between the human and merely animal natures, it might have been expected that the progressive development of organisation, instinct, and intelligence might have been unpopular, as likely to pioneer the way for the reception of the less favoured doctrine. but the true explanation of the seeming anomaly is this, that no one can believe in transmutation who is not profoundly convinced that all we know in palaeontology is as nothing compared with what we have yet to learn, and they who regard the record as so fragmentary, and our acquaintance with the fragments which are extant as so rudimentary, are apt to be astounded at the confidence placed by the progressionists in data which must be defective in the extreme. but exactly in proportion as the completeness of the record and our knowledge of it are overrated, in that same degree are many progressionists unconscious of the goal towards which they are drifting. their faith in the fullness of the annals leads them to regard all breaks in the series of organic existence, or in the sequence of the fossiliferous rocks, as proofs of original chasms and leaps in the course of nature--signs of the intermittent action of the creational force, or of catastrophes which devastated the habitable surface. they do not doubt that there is a continuity of plan, but they believe that it exists in the divine mind alone, and they are therefore without apprehension that any facts will be discovered which would imply a material connection between the outgoing organisms and the incoming ones. chapter . -- on the origin of species by variation and natural selection. mr. darwin's theory of the origin of species by natural selection. memoir by mr. wallace. manner in which favoured races prevail in the struggle for existence. formation of new races by breeding. hypotheses of definite and indefinite modifiability equally arbitrary. competition and extinction of races. progression not a necessary accompaniment of variation. distinct classes of phenomena which natural selection explains. unity of type, rudimentary organs, geographical distribution, relation of the extinct to the living fauna and flora, and mutual relations of successive groups of fossil forms. light thrown on embryological development by natural selection. why large genera have more variable species than small ones. dr. hooker on the evidence afforded by the vegetable kingdom in favour of creation by variation. steenstrup on alternation of generations. how far the doctrine of independent creation is opposed to the laws now governing the migration of species. for many years after the promulgation of lamarck's doctrine of progressive development, geologists were much occupied with the question whether the past changes in the animate and inanimate world were brought about by sudden and paroxysmal action, or gradually and continuously, by causes differing neither in kind nor degree from those now in operation. the anonymous author of "the vestiges of creation" published in a treatise, written in a clear and attractive style, which made the english public familiar with the leading views of lamarck on transmutation and progression, but brought no new facts or original line of argument to support those views, or to combat the principal objections which the scientific world entertained against them. no decided step in this direction was made until the publication in of two papers, one by mr. darwin and another by mr. wallace, followed in by mr. darwin's celebrated work on "the origin of species by means of natural selection; or, the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life." the author of this treatise had for twenty previous years strongly inclined to believe that variation and the ordinary laws of reproduction were among the secondary causes always employed by the author of nature, in the introduction from time to time of new species into the world, and he had devoted himself patiently to the collecting of facts and making of experiments in zoology and botany, with a view of testing the soundness of the theory of transmutation. part of the manuscript of his projected work was read to dr. hooker as early as and some of the principal results were communicated to me on several occasions. [ ] dr. hooker and i had repeatedly urged him to publish without delay, but in vain, as he was always unwilling to interrupt the course of his investigations; until at length mr. alfred r. wallace, who had been engaged for years in collecting and studying the animals of the east indian archipelago, thought out independently for himself one of the most novel and important of mr. darwin's theories. this he embodied in an essay "on the tendency of varieties to depart indefinitely from the original type." it was written at ternate in february , and sent to mr. darwin with a request that it might be shown to me if thought sufficiently novel and interesting. dr. hooker and i were of opinion that it should be immediately printed, and we succeeded in persuading mr. darwin to allow one of the manuscript chapters of his "origin of species," entitled "on the tendency of species to form varieties, and on the perpetuation of species and varieties by natural means of selection," to appear at the same time.* (* see "proceedings of the linnaean society" .) by reference to these memoirs it will be seen that both writers begin by applying to the animal and vegetable worlds the malthusian doctrine of population, or its tendency to increase in a geometrical ratio, while food can only be made to augment even locally in an arithmetical one. there being therefore no room or means of subsistence for a large proportion of the plants and animals which are born into the world, a great number must annually perish. hence there is a constant struggle for existence among the individuals which represent each species and the vast majority can never reach the adult state, to say nothing of the multitudes of ova and seeds which are never hatched or allowed to germinate. of birds it is estimated that the number of those which die every year equals the aggregate number by which the species to which they respectively belong is on the average permanently represented. the trial of strength which must decide what individuals are to survive and what to succumb occurs in the season when the means of subsistence are fewest, or enemies most numerous, or when the individuals are enfeebled by climate or other causes; and it is then that those varieties which have any, even the slightest, advantage over others come off victorious. they may often owe their safety to what would seem to a casual observer a trifling difference, such as a darker or lighter shade of colour rendering them less visible to a species which preys upon them, or sometimes to attributes more obviously advantageous, such as greater cunning or superior powers of flight or swiftness of foot. these peculiar qualities and faculties, bodily and instinctive, may enable them to outlive their less favoured rivals, and being transmitted by the force of inheritance to their offspring will constitute new races, or what mr. darwin calls "incipient species." if one variety, being in other respects just equal to its competitors, happens to be more prolific, some of its offspring will stand a greater chance of being among those which will escape destruction, and their descendants, being in like manner very fertile, will continue to multiply at the expense of all less prolific varieties. as breeders of domestic animals, when they choose certain varieties in preference to others to breed from, speak technically of their method as that of "selecting," mr. darwin calls the combination of natural causes, which may enable certain varieties of wild animals or plants to prevail over others of the same species, "natural selection." a breeder finds that a new race of cattle with short horns or without horns may be formed in the course of several generations by choosing varieties having the most stunted horns as his stock from which to breed; so nature, by altering in the course of ages, the conditions of life, the geographical features of a country, its climate, the associated plants and animals, and consequently the food and enemies of a species and its mode of life, may be said, by this means to select certain varieties best adapted for the new state of things. such new races may often supplant the original type from which they have diverged, although that type may have been perpetuated without modification for countless anterior ages in the same region, so long as it was in harmony with the surrounding conditions then prevailing. lamarck, when speculating on the origin of the long neck of the giraffe, imagined that quadruped to have stretched himself up in order to reach the boughs of lofty trees, until by continued efforts and longing to reach higher he obtained an elongated neck. mr. darwin and mr. wallace simply suppose that, in a season of scarcity, a longer-necked variety, having the advantage in this respect over most of the herd, as being able to browse on foliage out of their reach, survived them and transmitted its peculiarity of cervical conformation to its successors. by the multiplying of slight modifications in the course of thousands of generations and by the handing down of the newly-acquired peculiarities by inheritance, a greater and greater divergence from the original standard is supposed to be effected, until what may be called a new species, or in a greater lapse of time a new genus will be the result. every naturalist admits that there is a general tendency in animals and plants to vary; but it is usually taken for granted, though he have no means of proving the assumption to be true, that there are certain limits beyond which each species cannot pass under any circumstances or in any number of generations. mr. darwin and mr. wallace say that the opposite hypothesis, which assumes that every species is capable of varying indefinitely from its original type, is not a whit more arbitrary, and has this manifest claim to be preferred, that it will account for a multitude of phenomena which the ordinary theory is incapable of explaining. we have no right, they say, to assume, should we find that a variable species can no longer be made to vary in a certain direction, that it has reached the utmost limit to which it might under more favourable conditions or if more time were allowed be made to diverge from the parent type. hybridisation is not considered by mr. darwin as a cause of new species, but rather as tending to keep variation within bounds. varieties which are nearly allied cross readily with each other, and with the parent stock, and such crossing tends to keep the species true to its type, while forms which are less nearly related, although they may intermarry, produce no mule offspring capable of perpetuating their kind. the competition of races and species, observes mr. darwin, is always most severe between those which are most closely allied and which fill nearly the same place in the economy of nature. hence when the conditions of existence are modified the original stock runs great risk of being superseded by some one of its modified offshoots. the new race or species may not be absolutely superior in the sum of its powers and endowments to the parent stock, and may even be more simple in structure and of a lower grade of intelligence, as well as of organisation, provided on the whole it happens to have some slight advantage over its rivals. progression, therefore, is not a necessary accompaniment of variation and natural selection, though when a higher organisation happens to be coincident with superior fitness to new conditions, the new species will have greater power and a greater chance of permanently maintaining and extending its ground. one of the principal claims of mr. darwin's theory to acceptance is that it enables us to dispense with a law of progression as a necessary accompaniment of variation. it will account equally well for what is called degradation, or a retrograde movement towards a simpler structure, and does not require lamarck's continual creation of monads; for this was a necessary part of his system, in order to explain how, after the progressive power had been at work for myriads of ages, there were as many beings of the simplest structure in existence as ever. mr. darwin argues, and with no small success, that all true classification in zoology and botany is in fact genealogical, and that community of descent is the hidden bond which naturalists have been unconsciously seeking, while they often imagined that they were looking for some unknown plan of creation. as the "origin of species"* is in itself a condensed abstract of a much larger work not yet published [ ] i could not easily give an analysis of its contents within narrower limits than those of the original, but it may be useful to enumerate briefly some of the principal classes of phenomena on which the theory of "natural selection" would throw light. (* "origin of species" page .) in the first place it would explain, says mr. darwin, the unity of type which runs through the whole organic world, and why there is sometimes a fundamental agreement in structure in the same class of beings which is quite independent of their habits of life, for such structure, derived by inheritance from a remote progenitor, has been modified in the course of ages in different ways according to the conditions of existence. it would also explain why all living and extinct beings are united, by complex radiating and circuitous lines of affinity with one another into one grand system;* also, there having been a continued extinction of old races and species in progress and a formation of new ones by variation, why in some genera which are largely represented, or to which a great many species belong, many of these are closely but unequally related; also, why there are distinct geographical provinces of species of animals and plants, for after long isolation by physical barriers each fauna and flora by varying continually must become distinct from its ancestral type, and from the new forms assumed by other descendants which have diverged from the same stock. (* "origin" page .) the theory of indefinite modification would also explain why rudimentary organs are so useful in classification, being the remnants preserved by inheritance of organs which the present species once used--as in the case of the rudiments of eyes in insects and reptiles inhabiting dark caverns, or of the wings of birds and beetles which have lost all power of flight. in such cases the affinities of species are often more readily discerned by reference to these imperfect structures than by others of much more physiological importance to the individuals themselves. the same hypothesis would explain why there are no mammalia in islands far from continents, except bats, which can reach them by flying; and also why the birds, insects, plants, and other inhabitants of islands, even when specifically unlike, usually agree generically with those of the nearest continent, it being assumed that the original stock of such species came by migration from the nearest land. variation and natural selection would also afford a key to a multitude of geological facts otherwise wholly unaccounted for, as for example why there is generally an intimate connection between the living animals and plants of each great division of the globe and the extinct fauna and flora of the post-tertiary or tertiary formations of the same region; as, for example, in north america, where we not only find among the living mollusca peculiar forms foreign to europe, such as gnathodon and fulgur (a subgenus of fusus), but meet also with extinct species of those same genera in the tertiary fauna of the same part of the world. in like manner, among the mammalia we find in australia not only living kangaroos and wombats, but fossil individuals of extinct species of the same genera. so also there are recent and fossil sloths, armadilloes and other edentata in south america, and living and extinct species of elephant, rhinoceros, tiger, and bear in the great europeo-asiatic continent. the theory of the origin of new species by variation will also explain why a species which has once died out never reappears and why the fossil fauna and flora recede farther and farther from the living type in proportion as we trace them back to remoter ages. it would also account for the fact that when we have to intercalate a new set of fossiliferous strata between two groups previously known, the newly discovered fossils serve to fill up gaps between specific or generic types previously familiar to us, supplying often the missing links of the chain, which, if transmutation is accepted, must once have been continuous. one of the most original speculations in mr. darwin's work is derived from the fact that, in the breeding of animals, it is often observed that at whatever age any variation first appears in the parent, it tends to reappear at a corresponding age in the offspring. hence the young individuals of two races which have sprung from the same parent stock are usually more like each other than the adults. thus the puppies of the greyhound and bull-dog are much more nearly alike in their proportions than the grown-up dogs, and in like manner the foals of the carthorse and racehorse than the adult individuals. for the same reason we may understand why the species of the same genus, or genera of the same family, resemble each other more nearly in their embryonic than in their more fully developed state, or how it is that in the eyes of most naturalists the structure of the embryo is even more important in classification than that of the adult, "for the embryo is the animal in its less modified state, and in so far it reveals the structure of its progenitor. in two groups of animals, however much they may at present differ from each other in structure and habits, if they pass through the same or similar embryonic stages, we may feel assured that they have both descended from the same or nearly similar parents, and are therefore in that degree closely related. thus community in embryonic structure reveals community of descent, however much the structure of the adult may have been modified."* (* darwin, "origin" etc. page .) if then there had been a system of progressive development, the successive changes through which the embryo of a species of a high class, a mammifer for example, now passes, may be expected to present us with a picture of the stages through which, in the course of ages, that class of animals has successively passed in advancing from a lower to a higher grade. hence the embryonic states exhibited one after the other by the human individual bear a certain amount of resemblance to those of the fish, reptile, and bird before assuming those of the highest division of the vertebrata. mr. darwin, after making a laborious analysis of many floras, found that those genera which are represented by a large number of species contain a greater number of variable species, relatively speaking, than the smaller genera or those less numerously represented. this fact he adduces in support of his opinion that varieties are incipient species, for he observes that the existence of the larger genera implies that the manufacturing of species has been active in the period immediately preceding our own, in which case we ought generally to find the same forces still in full activity, more especially as we have every reason to believe the process by which new species are produced is a slow one.* (* "origin of species" chapter page .) dr. hooker tells us that he was long disposed to doubt this result, as he was acquainted with so many variable small genera, but after examining mr. darwin's data, he was compelled to acquiesce in his generalisation.* (* "introductory essay to the flora of australia" page .) it is one of those conclusions, to verify which requires the investigation of many thousands of species, and to which exceptions may easily be adduced both in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, so that it will be long before we can expect it to be thoroughly tested, and if true, fairly appreciated. among the most striking exceptions will be some genera still large, but which are beginning to decrease, the conditions favourable to their former predominance having already begun to change. to many, this doctrine of "natural selection," or "the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life," seems so simple, when once clearly stated, and so consonant with known facts and received principles, that they have difficulty in conceiving how it can constitute a great step in the progress of science. such is often the case with important discoveries, but in order to assure ourselves that the doctrine was by no means obvious, we have only to refer back to the writings of skilful naturalists who attempted in the earlier part of the nineteenth century to theorise on this subject, before the invention of this new method of explaining how certain forms are supplanted by new ones and in what manner these last are selected out of innumerable varieties and rendered permanent. dr. hooker on the theory of "creation by variation" as applied to the vegetable kingdom. of dr. hooker, whom i have often cited in this chapter, mr. darwin has spoken in the introduction to his "origin of species," as one "who had, for fifteen years, aided him in every possible way, by his large stores of knowledge, and his excellent judgment." this distinguished botanist published his "introductory essay to the flora of australia" in december , the year after the memoir on "natural selection" was communicated to the linnaean society, and a month after the appearance of the "origin of species." having, in the course of his extensive travels, studied the botany of arctic, temperate, and tropical regions, and written on the flora of india, which he had examined at all heights above the sea from the plains of bengal to the limits of perpetual snow in the himalaya, and having specially devoted his attention to "geographical varieties," or those changes of character which plants exhibit when traced over wide areas and seen under new conditions; being also practically versed in the description and classification of new plants, from various parts of the world, and having been called upon carefully to consider the claims of thousands of varieties to rank as species, no one was better qualified by observation and reflection to give an authoritative opinion on the question, whether the present vegetation of the globe is or is not in accordance with the theory which mr. darwin has proposed. we cannot but feel, therefore, deeply interested when we find him making the following declaration: "the mutual relations of the plants of each great botanical province, and, in fact, of the world generally, is just such as would have resulted if variation had gone on operating throughout indefinite periods, in the same manner as we see it act in a limited number of centuries, so as gradually to give rise in the course of time, to the most widely divergent forms." in the same essay, this author remarks, "the element of mutability pervades the whole vegetable kingdom; no class, nor order, nor genus of more than a few species claims absolute exemption from it, whilst the grand total of unstable forms, generally assumed to be species, probably exceeds that of the stable." yet he contends that species are neither visionary, nor even arbitrary creations of the naturalist, but realities, though they may not remain true for ever. the majority of them, he remarks, are so far constant, "within the range of our experience," and their forms and characters so faithfully handed down through thousands of generations, that they admit of being treated as if they were permanent and immutable. but the range of "our experience" is so limited, that it will "not account for a single fact in the present geographical distribution, or origin of any one species of plant, nor for the amount of variation it has undergone, nor will it indicate the time when it first appeared, nor the form it had when created."* (* hooker, "introductory essay to the flora of australia.") to what an extent the limits of species are indefinable, is evinced, he says, by the singular fact that, among those botanists who believe them to be immutable, the number of flowering plants is by some assumed to be , , and by others over , . the general limitation of species to certain areas suggests the idea that each of them, with all their varieties, have sprung from a common parent and have spread in various directions from a common centre. the frequency also of the grouping of genera within certain geographical limits is in favour of the same law, although the migration of species may sometimes cause apparent exceptions to the rule and make the same types appear to have originated independently at different spots.* (* ibid. page .) certain genera of plants, which, like the brambles, roses, and willows in europe, consist of a continuous series of varieties between the terms of which no intermediate forms can be intercalated, may be supposed to be newer types and on the increase, and therefore undergoing much variation; whereas genera which present no such perplexing gradations may be of older date and may have been losing species and varieties by extinction. in this case, the annihilation of intermediate forms which once existed makes it an easy task to distinguish those which remain. it had usually been supposed by the advocates of the immutability of species that domesticated races, if allowed to run wild, always revert to their parent type. mr. wallace had said in reply that a domesticated species, if it loses the protection of man, can only stand its ground in a wild state by resuming those habits and recovering those attributes which it may have lost when under domestication. if these faculties are so much enfeebled as to be irrecoverable it will perish; if not and if it can adapt itself to the surrounding conditions, it will revert to the state in which man first found it: for in one, two, or three thousand years, which may have elapsed since it was originally tamed, there will not have been time for such geographical, climatal, and organic changes as would only be suited to a new race or a new and allied species. but in regard to plants dr. hooker questions the fact of reversion. according to him, species in general do not readily vary, but when they once begin to do so the new varieties, as every horticulturist knows, show a great inclination to go on departing more and more from the old stock. as the best marked varieties of a wild species occur on the confines of the area which it inhabits, so the best marked varieties of a cultivated plant are those last produced by the gardener. cabbages, for example, wall fruits, and cereal, show no disposition, when neglected, to assume the characters of the wild states of these plants. hence the difficulty of determining what are the true parent species of most of our cultivated plants. thus the finer kinds of apples, if grown from seed, degenerate and become crabs, but in so doing they do not revert to the original wild crab-apple, but become crab states of the varieties to which they belong.* (* "introductory essay to the flora of australia" page .) it would lead me into too long a digression were i to attempt to give a fuller analysis of this admirable essay; but i may add that none of the observations are more in point, as bearing on the doctrine of what hooker terms "creation by variation," than the great extent to which the internal characters and properties of plants, or their physiological constitution, are capable of being modified, while they exhibit externally no visible departure from the normal form. thus, in one region a species may possess peculiar medicinal qualities which it wants in another, or it may be hardier and better able to resist cold. the average range in altitude, says hooker, of each species of flowering plant in the himalayan mountains, whether in the tropical, temperate, or alpine region, is feet, which is equivalent to twelve degrees of isothermals of latitude. if an individual of any of these species be taken from the upper limits of its range and carried to england, it is found to be better able to stand our climate than those from the lower or warmer stations. when several of these internal or physiological modifications are accompanied by variation in size, habits of growth, colour of the flowers, and other external characters, and these are found to be constant in successive generations, botanists may well begin to differ in opinion as to whether they ought to regard them as distinct species or not. alternation of generations. hitherto, no rival hypothesis has been proposed as a substitute for the doctrine of transmutation; for what we term "independent creation," or the direct intervention of the supreme cause, must simply be considered as an avowal that we deem the question to lie beyond the domain of science. the discovery by steenstrup of alternate generation enlarges our views of the range of metamorphosis through which a species may pass, so that some of its stages (as when a sertularia and a medusa interchange) deviate so far from others as to have been referred by able zoologists to distinct genera, or even families. but in all these cases the organism, after running through a certain cycle of change, returns to the exact point from which it set out, and no new form or species is thereby introduced into the world. the only secondary cause therefore which has as yet been even conjecturally brought forward, to explain how in the ordinary course of nature a new specific form may be generated is, as lamarck declared, "variation," and this has been rendered a far more probable hypothesis by the way in which "natural selection" is shown to give intensity and permanency to certain varieties. independent creation. when i formerly advocated the doctrine that species were primordial creations and not derivative, i endeavoured to explain the manner of their geographical distribution, and the affinity of living forms to the fossil types nearest akin to them in the tertiary strata of the same part of the globe, by supposing that the creative power, which originally adapts certain types to aquatic and others to terrestrial conditions, has at successive geological epochs introduced new forms best suited to each area and climate, so as to fill the places of those which may have died out. in that case, although the new species would differ from the old (for these would not be revived, having been already proved by the fact of their extinction to be incapable of holding their ground), still they would resemble their predecessors generically. for, as mr. darwin states in regard to new races, those of a dominant type inherit the advantages which made their parent species flourish in the same country, and they likewise partake in those general advantages which made the genus to which the parent species belonged a large genus in its own country. we might therefore, by parity of reasoning, have anticipated that the creative power, adapting the new types to the new combination of organic and inorganic conditions of a given region, such as its soil, climate, and inhabitants, would introduce new modifications of the old types--marsupials, for example, in australia, new sloths and armadilloes in south america, new heaths at the cape, new roses in the northern and new calceolarias in the southern hemisphere. but to this line of argument mr. darwin and dr. hooker reply that when animals or plants migrate into new countries, whether assisted by man or without his aid, the most successful colonisers appertain by no means to those types which are most allied to the old indigenous species. on the contrary it more frequently happens that members of genera, orders, or even classes, distinct and foreign to the invaded country, make their way most rapidly and become dominant at the expense of the endemic species. such is the case with the placental quadrupeds in australia, and with horses and many foreign plants in the pampas of south america, and numberless instances in the united states and elsewhere which might easily be enumerated. hence the transmutationists infer that the reason why these foreign types, so peculiarly fitted for these regions, have never before been developed there is simply that they were excluded by natural barriers. but these barriers of sea or desert or mountain could never have been of the least avail had the creative force acted independently of material laws or had it not pleased the author of nature that the origin of new species should be governed by some secondary causes analogous to those which we see preside over the appearance of new varieties, which never appear except as the offspring of a parent stock very closely resembling them. chapter . -- objections to the hypothesis of transmutation considered. statement of objections to the hypothesis of transmutation founded on the absence of intermediate forms. genera of which the species are closely allied. occasional discovery of the missing links in a fossil state. davidson's monograph on the brachiopoda. why the gradational forms, when found, are not accepted as evidence of transmutation. gaps caused by extinction of races and species. vast tertiary periods during which this extinction has been going on in the fauna and flora now existing. genealogical bond between miocene and recent plants and insects. fossils of oeningen. species of insects in britain and north america represented by distinct varieties. falconer's monograph on living and fossil elephants. fossil species and genera of the horse tribe in north and south america. relation of the pliocene mammalia of north america, asia, and europe. species of mammalia, though less persistent than the mollusca, change slowly. arguments for and against transmutation derived from the absence of mammalia in islands. imperfection of the geological record. intercalation of newly discovered formation of intermediate age in the chronological series. reference of the st. cassian beds to the triassic periods. discovery of new organic types. feathered archaeopteryx of the oolite. theory of transmutation--absence of intermediate links. the most obvious and popular of the objections urged against the theory of transmutation may be thus expressed: if the extinct species of plants and animals of the later geological periods were the progenitors of the living species, and gave origin to them by variation and natural selection, where are all the intermediate forms, fossil and living, through which the lost types must have passed during their conversion into the living ones? and why do we not find almost everywhere passages between the nearest allied species and genera, instead of such strong lines of demarcation and often wide intervening gaps? we may consider this objection under two heads:-- first. to what extent are the gradational links really wanting in the living creation or in the fossil world, and how far may we expect to discover such as are missing by future research? secondly. are the gaps more numerous than we ought to anticipate, allowing for the original defective state of the geological records, their subsequent dilapidation and our slight acquaintance with such parts of them as are extant, and allowing also for the rate of extinction of races and species now going on, and which has been going on since the commencement of the tertiary period? first. as to the alleged absence of intermediate varieties connecting one species with another, every zoologist and botanist who has engaged in the task of classification has been occasionally thrown into this dilemma--if i make more than one species in this group, i must, to be consistent, make a great many. even in a limited region like the british isles this embarrassment is continually felt. scarcely any two botanists, for example, can agree as to the number of roses, still less as to how many species of bramble we possess. of the latter genus, rubus, there is one set of forms respecting which it is still a question whether it ought to be regarded as constituting three species or thirty-seven. mr. bentham adopts the first alternative and mr. babington the second, in their well-known treatises on british plants. we learn from dr. hooker that at the antipodes, both in new zealand and australia, this same genus rubus is represented by several species rich in individuals and remarkable for their variability. when we consider how, as we extend our knowledge of the same plant over a wider area, new geographical varieties commonly present themselves, and then endeavour to imagine the number of forms of the genus rubus which may now exist, or probably have existed, in europe and in regions intervening between europe and australia, comprehending all which may have flourished in tertiary and post-tertiary periods, we shall perceive how little stress should be laid on arguments founded on the assumed absence of missing links in the flora as it now exists. if in the battle of life the competition is keenest between closely allied varieties and species, as mr. darwin contends, many forms can never be of long duration, nor have a wide range, and these must often pass away without leaving behind them any fossil memorials. in this manner we may account for many breaks in the series which no future researches will ever fill up. davidson on fossil brachiopoda. it is from fossil conchology more than from any other department of the organic world that we may hope to derive traces of a transition from certain types to others, and fossil memorials of all the intermediate shades of form. we may especially hope to gain this information from the study of some of the lower groups, such as the brachiopoda, which are persistent in type, so that the thread of our inquiry is less likely to be interrupted by breaks in the sequence of the fossiliferous rocks. the splendid monograph just concluded by mr. davidson on the british brachiopoda, illustrates, in the first place, the tendency of certain generic forms in this division of the mollusca to be persistent throughout the whole range of geological time yet known to us; for the four genera, rhynchonella, crania, discina, and lingula, have been traced through the silurian, devonian, carboniferous, permian, jurassic, cretaceous, tertiary, and recent periods, and still retain in the existing seas the identical shape and character which they exhibited in the earliest formations. on the other hand, other brachiopoda have gone through in shorter periods a vast series of transformations, so that distinct specific and even generic names have been given to the same varying form, according to the different aspects and characters it has put on in successive sets of strata. in proportion as materials of comparison have accumulated, the necessity of uniting species previously regarded as distinct under one denomination has become more and more apparent. mr. davidson, accordingly, after studying not less than reputed species from the british carboniferous rocks, has been obliged to reduce that number to , to which he has added species either entirely new or new to the british strata; but he declares his conviction that, when our knowledge of these brachiopoda is more complete, a further reduction of species will take place. speaking of one of these forms, which he calls spirifer trigonalis, he says that it is so dissimilar to another extreme of the series, s. crassa, that in the first part of his memoir (published some ten years ago) he described them as distinct, and the idea of confounding them together must, he admits, appear absurd to those who have never seen the intermediate links, such as are presented by s. bisulcata, and at least four others with their varieties, most of them shells formerly recognised as distinct by the most eminent palaeontologists, but respecting which these same authorities now agree with mr. davidson in uniting them into one species.* (* "monograph on british brachiopoda" palaeontographical society page .) the same species has sometimes continued to exist under slightly modified forms throughout the whole of the ordovician and silurian as well as the entire devonian and carboniferous periods, as in the case of the shell generally known as leptaena rhomboidalis, wahlenberg. no less than fifteen commonly received species are demonstrated by mr. davidson by the aid of a long series of transitional forms, to appertain to this one type; and it is acknowledged by some of the best writers that they were induced on purely theoretical grounds to give distinct names to some of the varieties now suppressed, merely because they found them in rocks so widely remote in time that they deemed it contrary to analogy to suppose that the same species could have endured so long: a fallacious mode of reasoning, analogous to that which leads some zoologists and botanists to distinguish by specific names slight varieties of living plants and animals met with in very remote countries, as in europe and australia, for example; it being assumed that each species has had a single birthplace or area of creation, and that they could not by migration have gone from the northern to the southern hemisphere across the intervening tropics. examples are also given by mr. davidson of species which pass from the devonian into the carboniferous, and from that again into the permian rocks. the vast longevity of such specific forms has not been generally recognised in consequence of the change of names which they have undergone when derived from such distant formations, as when atrypa unguicularis assumes, when derived from a carboniferous rock, the name of spirifer urei, besides several other synonyms, and then, when it reaches the permian period, takes the name of spirifer clannyana, king; all of which forms the author of the monograph, now under consideration, asserts to be one and the same. no geologist will deny that the distance of time which separates some of the eras above alluded to, or the dates of the earliest and latest appearances of some of the fossils above mentioned, must be reckoned by millions of years. according to mr. darwin's views, it is only by having at our command the records of such enormous periods that we can expect to be able to point out the gradations which unite very distinct specific forms. but the advocate of transmutation must not be disappointed if, when he has succeeded in obtaining some of the proofs which he was challenged to produce, they make no impression on the mind of his opponent. all that will be conceded is that specific variation in the brachiopoda, at least, has a wider range than was formerly suspected. so long as several allied species were brought nearer and nearer to each other, considerable uneasiness might have been felt as to the reality of species in general, but when fifteen or more are once fairly merged in one group, constituting in the aggregate a single species, one and indivisible, and capable of being readily distinguished from every other group at present known, all misgivings are at an end. implicit trust in the immutability of species is then restored, and the more insensible the shades from one extreme to the other, in a word, the more complete the evidence of transition, the more nugatory does the argument derived from it appear. it then simply resolves itself into one of those exceptional instances of what is called a protean form. thirty years ago a great london dealer in shells, himself an able naturalist, told me that there was nothing he had so much reason to dread, as tending to depreciate his stock in trade, as the appearance of a good monograph on some large genus of mollusca; for, in proportion as the work was executed in a philosophical spirit, it was sure to injure him, every reputed species pronounced to be a mere variety becoming from that time unsaleable. fortunately, so much progress has since been made in england in estimating the true ends and aims of science, that specimens indicating a passage between forms usually separated by wide gaps, whether in the recent or fossil fauna, are eagerly sought for, and often more prized than the mere normal or typical forms. it is clear that the more ancient the existing mollusca, or the farther back into the past we can trace the remains of shells still living, the more easy it becomes to reconcile with the doctrine of transmutation the distinctness in character of the majority of living species. for, what we want is time, first, for the gradual formation, and then for the extinction of races and allied species, occasioning gaps between the survivors. in the year i announced, on the authority of m. deshayes, that about one-fifth of the mollusca of the falunian or upper miocene strata of europe, belonged to living species. although the soundness of that conclusion was afterwards called in question by two or three eminent conchologists (and by the late m. alcide d'orbigny among others), it has since been confirmed by the majority of living naturalists and is well borne out by the copious evidence on the subject laid before the public in the magnificent work edited by dr. hoernes, and published under the auspices of the austrian government, "on the fossil shells of the vienna basin." the collection of tertiary shells from which those descriptions and beautiful figures were taken is almost unexampled for the fine state of preservation of the specimens, and the care with which all the varieties have been compared. it is now admitted that about one-third of these miocene forms, univalves and bivalves included, agree specifically with living mollusca, so that much more than the enormous interval which divides the miocene from the recent period must be taken into our account when we speculate on the origin by transmutation of the shells now living, and the disappearance by extinction of intermediate varieties and species. miocene plants and insects related to recent species. geologists were acquainted with about three hundred species of marine shells from the falunian strata on the banks of the loire, before they knew anything of the contemporary insects and plants. at length, as if to warn us against inferring from negative evidence the poverty of any ancient set of strata in organic remains proper to the land, a rich flora and entomological fauna was suddenly revealed to us characteristic of central europe during the upper miocene period. this result followed the determination of the true position of the oeningen beds in switzerland, and of certain formations of "brown coal" in germany. professor heer, who has described nearly five hundred species of fossil plants from oeningen, besides many more from other miocene localities in switzerland,* estimates the phanerogamous species which must have flourished in central europe at that time at , and the insects as having been more numerous in the same proportion as they now exceed the plants in all latitudes. (* heer, "flora tertiaria helvetiae" ; and gaudin's french translation, with additions, .) this european miocene flora was remarkable for the preponderance of arborescent and shrubby evergreens, and comprised many generic types no longer associated together in any existing flora or geographical province. some genera, for example, which are at present restricted to america, co-existed in switzerland with forms now peculiar to asia, and with others at present confined to australia. professor heer has not ventured to identify any of this vast assemblage of miocene plants and insects with living species, so far at least as to assign to them the same specific names, but he presents us with a list of what he terms homologous forms, which are so like the living ones that he supposes the one to have been derived genealogically from the others. he hesitates indeed as to the manner of the transformation or the precise nature of the relationship, "whether the changes were brought about by some influence exerted continually for ages, or whether at some given moment the old types were struck with a new image." among the homologous plants alluded to are forty species, of which both the leaves and fruits are preserved, and thirty others, known at present by their leaves only. in the first list we find many american types, such as the tulip tree (liriodendron), the deciduous cypress (taxodium), the red maple and others, together with japanese forms, such as a cinnamon, which is very abundant. and what is worthy of notice, some of these fossils so closely allied to living plants occur not only in the upper, but even some few of them as far back in time as the lower miocene formations of switzerland and germany, which are probably as distant from the upper miocene or oeningen beds as are the latter from our own era. some of the fossil plants to which professor heer has given new names have been regarded as recent species by other eminent naturalists. thus, one of the trees allied to the elm unger had called planera richardi, a species which now flourishes in the caucasus and crete. professor heer had attempted to distinguish it from the living tree by the greater size of its fruit, but this character he confessed did not hold good, when he had an opportunity ( ) of comparing all the varieties of the living planera richardi which dr. hooker laid before him in the rich herbarium of kew. as to the "homologous insects" of the upper miocene period in switzerland, we find among them, mingled with genera now wholly foreign to europe, some very familiar forms, such as the common glowworm, lampyris noctiluca, linn., the dung-beetle, geotrupes stercorarius, linn., the ladybird, coccinella septempunctata, linn., the ear-wig, forficula auricularia, linn., some of our common dragon-flies, as libellula depressa, linn., the honey-bee, apis mellifera, linn., the cuckoo spittle insect, aphrophora spumaria, linn., and a long catalogue of others, to all of which professor heer had given new names, but which some entomologists may regard as mere varieties until some stronger reasons are adduced for coming to a contrary opinion. several of the insects above enumerated, like the common ladybird, are well known at present to have a very wide range over nearly the whole of the old world, for example, without varying, and might therefore be expected to have been persistent throughout many successive changes of the earth's surface and climate. yet we may fairly anticipate that even the most constant types will have undergone some modifications in passing from the miocene to the recent epoch, since in the former period the geography and climate of europe, the height of the alps, and the general fauna and flora were so different from what they now are. but the deviation may not exceed that which would generally be expressed by what is called a well-marked variety. before i pass on to another topic, it may be well to answer a question which may have occurred to the reader; how it happens that we remained so long ignorant of the vegetation and insects of the upper miocene period in europe? the answer may be instructive to those who are in the habit of underrating the former richness of the organic world wherever they happen to have no evidence of its condition. a large part of the upper miocene insects and plants alluded to have been met with at oeningen, near the lake of constance, in two or three spots embedded in thinly laminated marls, the entire thickness of which scarcely exceeds or feet, and in two quarries of very limited dimensions. the rare combination of causes which seems to have led to the faithful preservation of so many treasures of a perishable nature in so small an area, appear to have been the following: first, a river flowing into a lake; secondly, storms of wind, by which leaves and sometimes the boughs of trees were torn off and floated by the stream into the lake; thirdly, mephitic gases rising from the lake, by which insects flying over its surface were occasionally killed: and fourthly, a constant supply of carbonate of lime in solution from mineral springs, the calcareous matter when precipitated to the bottom mingling with fine mud and thus forming the fossiliferous marls. species of insects in britain and north america, represented by distinct varieties. if we compare the living british insects with those of the american continent, we frequently find that even those species which are considered to be identical, are nevertheless varieties of the european types. i have noticed this fact when speaking of the common english butterfly, vanessa atalanta, or "red admiral," which i saw flying about the woods of alabama in mid-winter. i was unable to detect any difference myself, but all the american specimens which i took to the british museum were observed by mr. doubleday to exhibit a slight peculiarity in the colouring of a minute part of the anterior wing,* a character first detected by mr. t.f. stephens, who has also discovered that similar slight, but equally constant variations, distinguish other lepidoptera now inhabiting the opposite sides of the atlantic, insects which, nevertheless, he and mr. westwood and the late mr. kirby, have always agreed to regard as mere varieties of the same species. (* lyell's "second visit to the united states" volume page .) mr. t.v. wollaston, in treating of the variation of insects in maritime situations and small islands, has shown how the colour, growth of the wings, and many other characters, undergo modification under the influence of local conditions, continued for long periods of time;* and mr. brown has lately called our attention to the fact that the insects of the shetland isles present slight deviations from the corresponding types occurring in great britain, but far less marked than those which distinguish the american from the european varieties.** in the case of shetland, mr. brown remarks, a land communication may well be supposed to have prevailed with scotland at a more modern era than that between europe and america. in fact, we have seen that shetland can hardly fail to have been united with scotland after the commencement of the glacial period (see map, figure ); whereas a communication between the north of europe by iceland and greenland (which, as before stated, once enjoyed a genial climate) must have been anterior to the glacial epoch. a much larger isolation, and the impossibility of varieties formed in the two separated areas crossing with each other, would account, according to mr. darwin's theory, for the much wider divergence observed in the specific types of the two regions. (* wollaston, "on the variation of species" etc. london .) (** "transactions of northern entomological society" .) the reader will remember that at the commencement of the glacial period there was scarcely any appreciable difference between the molluscous fauna and that now living. when therefore the events of the glacial period, as described in the earlier part of this volume, are duly pondered on, and when we reflect that in the upper miocene period the living species of mollusca constitute only one-third of the whole fauna, we see clearly by how high a figure we must multiply the time in order to express the distance between the miocene period and our own days. species of mammalia recent and fossil--proboscidians. but it may perhaps be said that the mammalia afford more conspicuous examples than do the mollusca, insects, or plants of the wide gaps which separate species and genera, and that if in this higher class such a multitude of transitional forms had ever existed as would be required to unite the tertiary and recent species into one series or net-work of allied or transitional forms, they could not so entirely have escaped observation whether in the fossil or living fauna. a zoologist who entertains such an opinion would do well to devote himself to the study of some one genus of mammalia, such as the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, bear, horse, ox, or deer; and after collecting all the materials he can get together respecting the extinct and recent species, decide for himself whether the present state of science justifies his assuming that the chain could never have been continuous, the number of the missing links being so great. among the extinct species formerly contemporary with man, no fossil quadruped has so often been alluded to in this work as the mammoth, elephas primigenius. from a monograph on the proboscidians by dr. falconer, it appears that this species represents one extreme of a type of which the pliocene mastodon borsoni represents the other. between these extremes there are already enumerated by dr. falconer no less than twenty-six species, some of them ranging as far back in time as the miocene period, others still living, like the indian and african forms. two of these species, however, he has always considered as doubtful, stegodon ganesa, probably a mere variety of one of the others, and elephas priscus of goldfuss, founded partly on specimens of the african elephant, assumed by mistake to be fossil, and partly on some aberrant forms of e. antiquus. the first effect of the intercalation of so many intermediate forms between the two most divergent types, has been to break down almost entirely the generic distinction between mastodon and elephas. dr. falconer, indeed, observes that stegodon (one of several subgenera which he has founded) constitutes an intermediate group, from which the other species diverge through their dental characters, on the one side into the mastodons, and on the other into the elephants.* (* "quarterly journal of the geological society" volume page .) the next result is to diminish the distance between the several members of each of these groups. dr. falconer has discovered that no less than four species of elephant were formerly confounded together under the title of elephas primigenius, whence its supposed ubiquity in pleistocene times, or its wide range over half the habitable globe. but even when this form has been thus restricted in its specific characters, it has still its geographical varieties; for the mammoth's teeth brought from america may in most instances, according to dr. falconer, be distinguished from those proper to europe. on this american variety dr. leidy has conferred the name of e. americanus. another race of the same mammoth (as determined by dr. falconer) existed, as we have seen, before the glacial period, or at the time when the buried forest of cromer and the norfolk cliffs was deposited; and the swiss geologists have lately found remains of the mammoth in their country, both in pre-glacial and post-glacial formations. since the publication of dr. falconer's monograph, two other species of elephant, f. mirificus, leidy, and f. imperator, have been obtained from the pliocene formations of the niobrara valley in nebraska, one of which, however, may possibly be found hereafter to be the same as e. columbi, falc. a remarkable dwarf species also (elephas melitensis) has been discovered, belonging, like the existing e. africanus, to the group loxodon. this species has been established by dr. falconer on remains found by captain spratt r.n. in a cave in malta.* (* "proceedings of the geological society" london .) how much the difficulty of discriminating between the fossil representatives of this genus may hereafter augment, when all the species with their respective geographical varieties are known, may be inferred from the following fact--professor h. schlegel, in a recently published memoir, endeavours to show that the living elephant of sumatra agrees with that of ceylon, but is a distinct species from that of continental india, being distinguishable by the number of its dorsal vertebrae and ribs, the form of its teeth, and other characteristics.* (* schlegel, "natural history review" number page .) dr. falconer, on the other hand, considers these two living species as mere geographical varieties, the characters referred to not being constant, as he has ascertained, on comparing different individuals of e. indicus in different parts of bengal in which the ribs vary from nineteen to twenty, and different varieties of e. africanus in which they vary from twenty to twenty-one. an inquiry into the various species of the genus rhinoceros, recent and fossil, has led dr. falconer to analogous results, as might be inferred from what was said in chapter , and as a forthcoming memoir by the same writer will soon more fully demonstrate. among the fossils brought in by mr. hayden from the niobrara valley, dr. leidy describes a rhinoceros so like the asiatic species, r. indicus, that he at first referred it to the same, and, what is most singular, he remarks generally of the pliocene fauna of that part of north america that it is far more related in character to the pleistocene and recent fauna of europe than to that now inhabiting the american continent. it seems indeed more and more evident that when we speculate in future on the pedigree of any extinct quadruped which abounds in the drift or caverns of europe, we shall have to look to north and south america as a principal source of information. thirty years ago, if we had been searching for fossil types which might fill up a gap between two species or genera of the horse tribe (or great family of the solipedes), we might have thought it sufficient to have got together as ample materials as we could obtain from the continents of europe, africa, and asia. we might have presumed that as no living representative of the equine family, whether horse, ass, zebra, or quagga, had been furnished by north or south america when those regions were first explored by europeans, a search in the transatlantic world for fossil species might be dispensed with. but how different is the prospect now opening before us! mr. darwin first detected the remains of a fossil horse during his visit to south america, since which two other species have been met with on the same continent, while in north america, in the valley of the nebraska alone, mr. hayden, besides a species not distinguishable from the domestic horse, has obtained, according to dr. leidy, representatives of five other fossil genera of solipedes. these he names, hipparion, protohippus, merychippus, hypohippus, and parahippus. on the whole, no less than twelve equine species, belonging to seven genera (including the miocene anchitherium of nebraska), being already detected in the tertiary and post-tertiary formations of the united states.* (* "proceedings of the academy of natural science" philadelphia for page .) professors unger* and heer** have advocated, on botanical grounds, the former existence of an atlantic continent during some part of the tertiary period, as affording the only plausible explanation that can be imagined, of the analogy between the miocene flora of central europe and the existing flora of eastern america. professor oliver, on the other hand, after showing how many of the american types found fossil in europe are common to japan, inclines to the theory, first advanced by dr. asa gray, that the migration of species, to which the community of types in the eastern states of north america and the miocene flora of europe is due, took place when there was an overland communication from america to eastern asia between the fiftieth and sixtieth parallels of latitude, or south of behring straits, following the direction of the aleutian islands.*** by this course they may have made their way, at any epoch, miocene, pliocene, or pleistocene, antecedently to the glacial epoch, to mongolia, on the east coast of northern asia. (* "die versunkene insel atlantis.") (** "flora tertiaria helvetiae.") (*** oliver, lecture at the royal institution, march , .) we have already seen that a large proportion of the living quadrupeds of mongolia ( out of ) are specifically identical with those at present inhabiting the continent of western europe and the british isles. a monograph on the hippopotamus, bear, ox, stag, or any other genus of mammalia common in the european drift or caverns, might equally well illustrate the defective state of the materials at present at our command. we are rarely in possession of one perfect skeleton of any extinct species, still less of skeletons of both sexes, and of different ages. we usually know nothing of the geographical varieties of the pleistocene and pliocene species, least of all, those successive changes of form which they must have undergone in the preglacial epoch between the upper miocene and pleistocene eras. such being the poverty of our palaeontological data, we cannot wonder that osteologists are at variance as to whether certain remains found in caverns are of the same species as those now living; whether, for example, the talpa fossilis is really the common mole, the meles morreni the common badger, lutra antiqua the otter of europe, sciurus priscus the squirrel, arctomys primigenia the marmot, myoxus fossilis the dormouse, schmerling's felis engihoulensis the european lynx, or whether ursus spelaeus and ursus priscus are not extinct races of the living brown bear (ursus arctos). if at some future period all the above-mentioned species should be united with their allied congeners, it cannot fail to enlarge our conception of the modifications which a species is capable of undergoing in the course of time, although the same form may appear absolutely immutable within the narrow range of our experience. longevity of species in the mammalia. in the "principles of geology," in ,* i stated that the longevity of species in the class mollusca exceeded that in the mammalia. it has been since found that this generalisation can be carried much farther, and that in fact the law which governs the changes in organic being is such that the lower their place in a graduated scale, or the simpler their structure, the more persistent are they in form and organisation. i soon became aware of the force of this rule in the class mollusca, when i first attempted to calculate the numerical proportion of recent species in the newer pliocene formations as compared to the older pliocene, and of them again as contrasted with the miocene; for it appeared invariably that a greater number of the lamellibranchs could be identified with living species than of the gasteropods, and of these last a greater number in the lower division, that of entire-mouthed univalves, than in that of the siphonated. in whatever manner the changes have been brought about, whether by variation and natural selection, or by any other causes, the rate of change has been greater where the grade of organisation is higher. (* st edition volume pages and .) it is only, therefore, where there is a full representation of all the principal orders of mollusca, or when we compare those of corresponding grade, that we can fully rely on the percentage test, or on the proportion of recent to extinct species as indicating the relation of two groups to the existing fauna. the foraminifera which exemplify the lowest stage of animal existence exhibit, as we learn from the researches of dr. carpenter and of messrs. jones and parker, extreme variability in their specific forms, and yet these same forms are persistent throughout vast periods of time, exceeding, in that respect, even the brachiopods before mentioned. dr. hooker observes, in regard to plants of complex floral structure, that they manifest their physical superiority in a greater extent of variation and in thus better securing a succession of race, an attribute which in some senses he regards as of a higher order than that indicated by mere complexity or specialisation of organ.* (* "introductory essay to the flora of australia" page .) as one of the consequences of this law, he says that species, genera, and orders are, on the whole, best limited in plants of higher grade, the dicotyledons better than the monocotyledons, and the dichlamydeae better than the achlamydeae. mr. darwin remarks, "we can, perhaps, understand the apparently quicker rate of change in terrestrial, and in more highly organised productions, compared with marine and lower productions, by the more complex relations of the higher beings to their organic and inorganic conditions of life."* (* "origin of species" rd edition page .) if we suppose the mammalia to be more sensitive than are the inferior classes of the vertebrata, to every fluctuation in the surrounding conditions, whether of the animate or inanimate world, it would follow that they would oftener be called upon to adapt themselves by variation to new conditions, or if unable to do so, to give place to other types. this would give rise to more frequent extinction of varieties, species, and genera, whereby the surviving types would be better limited, and the average duration of the same unaltered specific types would be lessened. absence of mammalia in islands considered in reference to transmutation. but if mammalia vary upon the whole at a more rapid rate than animals lower in the scale of being, it must not be supposed that they can alter their habits and structures readily, or that they are convertible in short periods into new species. the extreme slowness with which such changes of habits and organisation take place, when new conditions arise, appears to be well exemplified by the absence even of small warm-blooded quadrupeds in islands far from continents, however well such islands may be fitted by their dimensions to support them. mr. darwin has pointed to this absence of mammalia as favouring his views, observing that bats, which are the only exceptions to the rule, might have made their way to distant islands by flight, for they are often met with on the wing far out at sea. unquestionably, the total exclusion of quadrupeds in general, which could only reach such isolated habitations by swimming, seems to imply that nature does not dispense with the ordinary laws of reproduction when she peoples the earth with new forms; for if causes purely immaterial were alone at work, we might naturally look for squirrels, rabbits, polecats, and other small vegetable feeders and beasts of prey, as often as for bats, in the spots alluded to. on the other hand, i have found it difficult to reconcile the antiquity of certain islands, such as those of the madeiran archipelago, and those of still larger size in the canaries, with the total absence of small indigenous quadrupeds, for, judging by ancient deposits of littoral shells, now raised high above the level of the sea, several of these volcanic islands (porto santo and the grand canary among others) must have existed ever since the upper miocene period. but, waiving all such claims to antiquity, it is at least certain that since the close of the newer pliocene period, madeira, and porto santo have constituted two separate islands, each in sight of the other, and each inhabited by an assemblage of land shells (helix, pupa, clausilia, etc.), for the most part different or proper to each island. about thirty-two fossil species have been obtained in madeira, and forty-two in porto santo, only five of the whole being common to both islands. in each the living land-shells are equally distinct, and correspond, for the most part, with the species found fossil in each island respectively. among the fossil species, one or two appear to be entirely extinct, and a larger number have disappeared from the fauna of the madeiran archipelago, though still extant in africa and europe. many which were amongst the most common in the pliocene period, have now become the scarcest, and others formerly scarce, are now most numerously represented. the variety-making force has been at work with such energy--perhaps we ought to say, has had so much time for its development--that almost every isolated rock within gun-shot of the shores has its peculiar living forms, or those very marked races to which mr. lowe, in his excellent description of the fauna, has given the name of "sub-species." since the fossil shells were embedded in sand near the coast, these volcanic islands have undergone considerable alterations in size and shape by the wasting action of the waves of the atlantic beating incessantly against the cliffs, so that the evidence of a vast lapse of time is derivable from inorganic as well as from organic phenomena. during this period no mammalia, not even of small species, excepting bats, have made their appearance, whether in madeira and porto-santo or in the larger and more numerous islands of the canarian group. it might have been expected, from some expressions met with here and there in the "origin of species," though not perhaps from a fair interpretation of the whole tenor of the author's reasoning, that this dearth of the highest class of vertebrata is inconsistent with the powers of mammalia to accommodate their habits and structures to new conditions. why did not some of the bats, for example, after they had greatly multiplied, and were hard pressed by a scarcity of insects on the wing, betake themselves to the ground in search of prey, and, gradually losing their wings, become transformed into non-volant insectivora? mr. darwin tells me that he has learnt that there is a bat in india which has been known occasionally to devour frogs. one might also be tempted to ask, how it has happened that the seals which swarmed on the shores of madeira and the canaries, before the european colonists arrived there, were never induced, when food was scarce in the sea, to venture inland from the shores, and begin in teneriffe, and the grand canary especially, and other large islands, to acquire terrestrial habits, venturing first a few yards inland, and then farther and farther until they began to occupy some of the "places left vacant in the economy of nature." during these excursions, we might suppose some varieties, which had the skin of the webbed intervals of their toes less developed, to succeed best in walking on the land, and in the course of several generations they might exchange their present gait or manner of shuffling along and jumping by aid of the tail and their fin-like extremities, for feet better adapted for running. it is said that one of the bats in the island of palma (one of the canaries) is of a peculiar species, and that some of the cheiroptera of the pacific islands are even of peculiar genera. if so, we seem, on organic as well as on geological grounds, to be precluded from arguing that there has not been time for great divergence of character. we seem also entitled to ask why the bats and rodents of australia, which are spread so widely among the marsupials over that continent, have never, under the influence of the principle of progression, been developed into higher placental types, since we have now ascertained that that continent was by no means unfitted to sustain such mammalia, for these when once introduced by man have run wild and become naturalised in many parts. the following answers may perhaps be offered to the above criticisms of some of mr. darwin's theoretical views. first, as to the bats and seals: they are what zoologists call aberrant and highly specialised types, and therefore precisely those which might be expected to display a fixity and want of pliancy in their organisation, or the smallest possible aptitude for deviating in new directions towards new structures, and the acquisition of such altered habits as a change from aquatic to terrestrial or from volant to non-volant modes of living would imply. secondly, the same powers of flight which enabled the first bats to reach madeira or the canaries, would bring others from time to time from the african continent, which, mixing with the first emigrants and crossing with them, would check the formation of new races, or keep them true to the old types, as is found to be actually the case with the birds of madeira and the bermudas. this would happen the more surely, if, as mr. darwin has endeavoured to prove, the offspring of races slightly varying are usually more vigorous than the progeny of parents of the same race, and would be more prolific, therefore, than the insular stock which had been for a long time breeding in and in. the same cause would tend in a still more decided manner to prevent the seals from diverging into new races or "incipient species," because they range freely over the wide ocean, and, may therefore have continual intercourse with all other individuals of their species. thirdly, as to peculiar species, and even genera of bats in islands, we are perhaps too little acquainted at present with all the species and genera of the neighbouring continents to be able to affirm, with any degree of confidence, that the forms supposed to be peculiar do not exist elsewhere: those of the canaries in africa, for example. but what is still more important, we must bear in mind how many species and genera of pleistocene mammalia have everywhere become extinct by causes independent of man. it is always possible, therefore, that some types of cheiroptera, originally derived from the main land, have survived in islands, although they have gradually died out on the continents from whence they came; so that it would be rash to infer that there has been time for the creation, whether by variation or other agency, of new species or genera in the islands in question. as to the rodents and cheiroptera of australia, we are as yet too ignorant of the pleistocene and pliocene fauna of that part of the world, to be able to decide whether the introduction of such forms dates from a remote geological time. we know, however, that, before the recent period, that continent was peopled with large kangaroos, and other herbivorous and carnivorous marsupials, of species long since extinct, their remains having been discovered in ossiferous caverns. the preoccupancy of the country by such indigenous tribes may have checked the development of the placental rodents and cheiroptera, even were we to concede the possibility of such forms being convertible by variation and progressive development into higher grades of mammalia. imperfection of the geological record [ ]. when treating in the eighth chapter of the dearth of human bones in alluvium containing flint implements in abundance, i pointed out that it is not part of the plan of nature to write everywhere, and at all times, her autobiographical memoirs. on the contrary, her annals are local and exceptional from the first, and portions of them are afterwards ground into mud, sand, and pebbles, to furnish materials for new strata. even of those ancient monuments now forming the crust of the earth, which have not been destroyed by rivers and the waves of the sea, or which have escaped being melted by volcanic heat, three-fourths lie submerged beneath the ocean, and are inaccessible to man; while of those which form the dry land, a great part are hidden for ever from our observation by mountain masses, thousands of feet thick, piled over them. mr. darwin has truly said that the fossiliferous rocks known to geologists consist, for the most part, of such as were formed when the bottom of the sea was subsiding. this downward movement protects the new deposits from denudation, and allows them to accumulate to a great thickness; whereas sedimentary matter, thrown down where the sea-bottom is rising, must almost invariably be swept away by the waves as fast as the land emerges. when we reflect, therefore, on the fractional state of the annals which are handed down to us, and how little even these have as yet been studied, we may wonder that so many geologists should attribute every break in the series of strata and every gap in the past history of the organic world to catastrophes and convulsions of the earth's crust or to leaps made by the creational force from species to species, or from class to class. for it is clear that, even had the series of monuments been perfect and continuous at first (an hypothesis quite opposed to the analogy of the working of causes now in action), it could not fail to present itself to our eyes in a broken and disconnected state. those geologists who have watched the progress of discovery during the last half century can best appreciate the extent to which we may still hope by future exertion to fill up some of the wider chasms which now interrupt the regular sequence of fossiliferous rocks. the determination, for example, of late years of the true place of the hallstadt and st. cassian beds on the north and south flanks of the austrian alps, has revealed to us, for the first time, the marine fauna of a period (that of the upper trias) of which, until lately, but little was known. in this case, the palaeontologist is called upon suddenly to intercalate about species of mollusca and radiata, between the fauna of the lower lias and that of the middle trias. the period in question was previously believed, even by many a philosophical geologist, to have been comparatively barren of organic types. in england, france, and northern germany, the only known strata of upper triassic date had consisted almost entirely of fresh or brackish-water beds, in which the bones of terrestrial and amphibious reptiles were the most characteristic fossils. the new fauna was, as might have been expected, in part peculiar, not a few of the species of mollusca being referable to new genera; while some species were common to the older, and some to the newer rocks. on the whole, the new forms have helped greatly to lessen the discordance, not only between the lias and trias, but also generally between palaeozoic and mesozoic formations. thus the genus orthoceras has been for the first time recognised in a mesozoic deposit, and with it we find associated, for the first time, large ammonites with foliated lobes, a form never seen before below the lias; also the ceratites, a family of cephalopods never before met with in the upper trias, and never before in the same stratum with such lobed ammonites. we can now no longer doubt that should we hereafter have an opportunity of studying an equally rich marine fauna of the age of the lower trias (or bunter sandstein), the marked hiatus which still separates the triassic and permian eras would almost disappear. archaeopteryx macrurus, owen. i could readily add a copious list of minor deposits, belonging to the primary, secondary and tertiary series, which we have been called upon in like manner to intercalate in the course of the last quarter of a century into the chronological series previously known; but it would lead me into too long a digression. i shall therefore content myself with pointing out that it is not simply new formations which are brought to light from year to year, reminding us of the elementary state of our knowledge of palaeontology, but new types also of structure are discovered in rocks whose fossil contents were supposed to be peculiarly well known. the last and most striking of these novelties is "the feathered fossil" from the lithographic stone of solenhofen. until the year , no well-determined skeleton of a bird had been detected in any rocks older than the tertiary. in that year, mr. lucas barrett found in the cambridge greensand of the cretaceous series, the femur, tibia, and some other bones of a swimming bird, supposed by him to be of the gull tribe. his opinion as to the ornithic character of the remains was afterwards confirmed by professor owen. the archaeopteryx macrurus, owen, recently acquired by the british museum, affords a second example of the discovery of the osseous remains of a bird in strata older than the eocene. it was found in the great quarries of lithographic limestone at solenhofen in bavaria, the rock being a member of the upper oolite. it was at first conjectured in germany, before any experienced osteologist had had an opportunity of inspecting the original specimen, that this fossil might be a feathered pterodactyl (flying reptiles having been often met with in the same stratum), or that it might at least supply some connecting links between a reptile and a bird. but professor owen, in a memoir lately read to the royal society (november , ), has shown that it is unequivocally a bird, and that such of its characters as are abnormal are by no means strikingly reptilian. the skeleton was lying on its back when embedded in calcareous sediment, so that the ventral part is exposed to view. it is about foot inches long, and foot across, from the apex of the right to that of the left wing. the furculum, or merry-thought, which is entire, marks the fore part of the trunk; the ischium, scapula, and most of the wing and leg bones are preserved, and there are impressions of the quill feathers and of down on the body. the vanes and shafts of the feathers can be seen by the naked eye. fourteen long quill feathers diverge on each side of the metacarpal and phalangial bones, and decrease in length from inches to inch. the wings have a general resemblance to those of gallinaceous birds. the tarso-metatarsal, or drumstick, exhibits at its distal end a trifid articular surface supporting three toes, as in birds. the furculum, pelvis, and bones of the tail are in their natural position. the tail consists of twenty vertebrae, each of which supports a pair of plumes. the length of the tail with its feathers is / inches, and its breadth / . it is obtusely truncated at the end. in all living birds the tail-feathers are arranged in fan-shaped order and attached to a coccygean bone, consisting of several vertebrae united together, whereas in the embryo state these same vertebrae are distinct. the greatest number is seen in the ostrich, which has eighteen caudal vertebrae in the foetal state, which are reduced to nine in the adult bird, many of them having been anchylosed together. professor owen therefore considers the tail of the archaeopteryx as exemplifying the persistency of what is now an embryonic character. the tail, he remarks, is essentially a variable organ; there are long-tailed bats and short-tailed bats, long-tailed rodents and short-tailed rodents, long-tailed pterodactyls and short-tailed pterodactyls. the archaeopteryx differs from all known birds, not only in the structure of its tail, but in having two, if not three, digits in the hand; but there is no trace of the fifth digit of the winged reptile. the conditions under which the skeleton occurs are such, says professor owen, as to remind us of the carcass of a gull which has been a prey to some carnivore, which had removed all the soft parts, and perhaps the head, nothing being left but the bony legs and the indigestible quill-feathers. but since professor owen's paper was read, mr. john evans, whom i have often had occasion to mention in the earlier chapters of this work, seems to have found what may indicate a part of the missing cranium. he has called our attention to a smooth protuberance on the otherwise even surface of the slab of limestone which seems to be the cast of the brain or interior of the skull. some part even of the cranial bone itself appears to be still buried in the matrix. mr. evans has pointed out the resemblance of this cast to one taken by himself from the cranium of a crow, and still more to that of a jay, observing that in the fossil the median line which separates the two hemispheres of the brain is visible. to conclude, we may learn from this valuable relic how rashly the existence of birds at the epoch of the secondary rocks has been questioned, simply on negative evidence, and secondly, how many new forms may be expected to be brought to light in strata with which we are already best acquainted, to say nothing of the new formations which geologists are continually discovering. chapter . -- origin and development of languages and species compared [ ]. aryan hypothesis and controversy. the races of mankind change more slowly than their languages. theory of the gradual origin of languages. difficulty of defining what is meant by a language as distinct from a dialect. great number of extinct and living tongues. no european language a thousand years old. gaps between languages, how caused. imperfection of the record. changes always in progress. struggle for existence between rival terms and dialects. causes of selection. each language formed slowly in a single geographical area. may die out gradually or suddenly. once lost can never be revived. mode of origin of languages and species a mystery. speculations as to the number of original languages or species unprofitable. the supposed existence, at a remote and unknown period, of a language conventionally called the aryan, has of late years been a favourite subject of speculation among german philologists, and professor max muller has given us lately the most improved version of this theory, and has set forth the various facts and arguments by which it may be defended, with his usual perspicuity and eloquence. he observes that if we know nothing of the existence of latin--if all historical documents previous to the fifteenth century had been lost--if tradition even was silent as to the former existence of a roman empire, a mere comparison of the italian, spanish, portuguese, french, wallachian, and rhaetian dialects would enable us to say that at some time there must have been a language from which these six modern dialects derive their origin in common. without this supposition it would be impossible to account for their structure and composition, as, for example, for the forms of the auxiliary verb "to be," all evidently varieties of one common type, while it is equally clear that no one of the six affords the original form from which the others could have been borrowed. so also in none of the six languages do we find the elements of which these verbal and other forms could have been composed; they must have been handed down as relics from a former period, they must have existed in some antecedent language, which we know to have been the latin. but, in like manner, he goes on to show, that latin itself, as well as greek, sanscrit, zend (or bactrian), lithuanian, old sclavonic, gothic, and armenian are also eight varieties of one common and more ancient type, and no one of them could have been the original from which the others were borrowed. they have all such an amount of mutual resemblance as to point to a more ancient language, the aryan, which was to them what latin was to the six romance languages. the people who spoke this unknown parent speech, of which so many other ancient tongues were off-shoots, must have migrated at a remote era to widely separated regions of the old world, such as northern asia, europe, and india south of the himalaya.* (* max muller, "comparative mythology" oxford essays .) the soundness of some parts of this aryan hypothesis has lately been called in question by mr. crawfurd, on the ground that the hindoos, persians, turks, scandinavians, and other people referred to as having derived not only words but grammatical forms from an aryan source, belong each of them to a distinct race, and all these races have, it is said, preserved their peculiar characters unaltered from the earliest dawn of history and tradition. if, therefore, no appreciable change has occurred in three or four thousand years, we should be obliged to assume a far more remote date for the first branching off of such races from a common stock than the supposed period of the aryan migrations, and the dispersion of that language over many and distant countries. but mr. crawfurd has, i think, himself helped us to remove this stumbling-block, by admitting that a nation speaking a language allied to the sanscrit (the oldest of the eight tongues alluded to), once probably inhabited that region situated to the north-west of india, which within the period of authentic history has poured out its conquering hordes over a great extent of western asia and eastern europe. the same people, he says, may have acted the same part in the long, dark night which preceded the dawn of tradition.* (* crawfurd, "transactions of the ethnological society" volume .) these conquerors may have been few in number when compared to the populations which they subdued. in such cases the new settlers, although reckoned by tens of thousands, might merge in a few centuries into the millions of subjects which they ruled. it is an acknowledged fact that the colour and features of the negro or european are entirely lost in the fourth generation, provided that no fresh infusion of one or other of the two races takes place. the distinctive physical features, therefore, of the aryan conquerors might soon wear out and be lost in those of the nations they overran; yet many of the words, and, what is more in point, some of the grammatical forms of their language, might be retained by the masses which they had governed for centuries, these masses continuing to preserve the same features of race which had distinguished them long before the aryan invasions. there can be no question that if we could trace back any set of cognate languages now existing to some common point of departure, they would converge and meet sooner in some era of the past than would the existing races of mankind; in other words, races change much more slowly than languages. but, according to the doctrine of transmutation, to form a new species would take an incomparably longer period than to form a new race. no language seems ever to last for a thousand years, whereas many a species seems to have endured for hundreds of thousands. a philologist, therefore, who is contending that all living languages are derivative and not primordial, has a great advantage over a naturalist who is endeavouring to inculcate a similar theory in regard to species. it may not be uninstructive, in order fairly to appreciate the vast difficulty of the task of those who advocate transmutation in natural history, to consider how hard it would be even for a philologist to succeed, if he should try to convince an assemblage of intelligent but illiterate persons that the language spoken by them, and all those talked by contemporary nations, were modern inventions, moreover that these same forms of speech were still constantly undergoing change, and none of them destined to last for ever. we will suppose him to begin by stating his conviction, that the living languages have been gradually derived from others now extinct, and spoken by nations which had immediately preceded them in the order of time, and that those again had used forms of speech derived from still older ones. they might naturally exclaim, "how strange it is that you should find records of a multitude of dead languages, that a part of the human economy which in our own time is so remarkable for its stability, should have been so inconstant in bygone ages! we all speak as our parents and grandparents spoke before us, and so, we are told, do the germans and french. what evidence is there of such incessant variation in remoter times? and, if it be true, why not imagine that when one form of speech was lost, another was suddenly and supernaturally created by a gift of tongues or confusion of languages, as at the building of the tower of babel? where are the memorials of all the intermediate dialects, which must have existed, if this doctrine of perpetual fluctuation be true? and how comes it that the tongues now spoken do not pass by insensible gradations the one into the other, and into the dead languages of dates immediately antecedent? "lastly, if this theory of indefinite modifiability be sound, what meaning can be attached to the term language, and what definition can be given of it so as to distinguish a language from a dialect?" in reply to this last question, the philologist might confess that the learned are not agreed as to what constitutes a language as distinct from a dialect. some believe that there are living languages, others that there are , so that the mode of defining them is clearly a mere matter of opinion. some contend, for example, that the danish, norwegian, and swedish form one scandinavian tongue, others that they constitute three different languages, others that the danish and norwegian are one--mere dialects of the same language, but that swedish is distinct. the philologist, however, might fairly argue that this very ambiguity was greatly in favour of his doctrine, since if languages had all been constantly undergoing transmutation, there ought often to be a want of real lines of demarcation between them. he might, however, propose that he and his pupils should come to an understanding that two languages should be regarded as distinct whenever the speakers of them are unable to converse together, or freely to exchange ideas, whether by word or writing. scientifically speaking, such a test might be vague and unsatisfactory, like the test of species by their capability of producing fertile hybrids; but if the pupil is persuaded that there are such things in nature as distinct languages, whatever may have been their origin, the definition above suggested might be of practical use, and enable the teacher to proceed with his argument. he might begin by undertaking to prove that none of the languages of modern europe were a thousand years old. no english scholar, he might say, who has not specially given himself up to the study of anglo-saxon, can interpret the documents in which the chronicles and laws of england were written in the days of king alfred, so that we may be sure that none of the english of the nineteenth century could converse with the subjects of that monarch if these last could now be restored to life. the difficulties encountered would not arise merely from the intrusion of french terms, in consequence of the norman conquest, because that large portion of our language (including the articles, pronouns, etc.), which is saxon has also undergone great transformations by abbreviation, new modes of pronunciation, spelling, and various corruptions, so as to be unlike both ancient and modern german. they who now speak german, if brought into contact with their teutonic ancestors of the ninth century, would be quite unable to converse with them, and, in like manner, the subjects of charlemagne could not have exchanged ideas with the goths of alaric's army, or with the soldiers of arminius in the days of augustus caesar. so rapid indeed has been the change in germany, that the epic poem called the nibelungen lied, once so popular, and only seven centuries old, cannot now be enjoyed, except by the erudite. if we then turn to france, we meet again with similar evidence of ceaseless change. there is a treaty of peace still extant a thousand years old, between charles the bald and king louis of germany (dated a.d. ), in which the german king takes an oath in what was the french tongue of that day, while the french king swears in the german of the same era, and neither of these oaths would now convey a distinct meaning to any but the learned in these two countries. so also in italy, the modern italian cannot be traced back much beyond the time of dante, or some six centuries before our time. even in rome, where there had been no permanent intrusion of foreigners, such as the lombard settlers of german origin in the plains of the po, the common people of the year spoke quite a distinct language from that of their roman ancestors or their italian descendants, as is shown by the celebrated chronicle of the monk benedict, of the convent of st. andrea on mount soracte, written in such barbarous latin, and with such strange grammatical forms, that it requires a profoundly skilled linguist to decipher it.* (* see g. pertz, "monumenta germanica" volume .) having thus established the preliminary fact, that none of the tongues now spoken were in existence ten centuries ago, and that the ancient languages have passed through many a transitional dialect before they settled into the forms now in use, the philologist might bring forward proofs of the great numbers both of lost and living forms of speech. strabo tells us that in his time, in the caucasus alone (a chain of mountains not longer than the alps, and much narrower), there were spoken at least seventy languages. at the present period the number, it is said, would be still greater if all the distinct dialects of those mountains were reckoned. several of these caucasian tongues admit of no comparison with any known living or lost asiatic or european language. others which are not peculiar are obsolete forms of known languages, such as the georgian, mongolian, persian, arabic, and tartarian. it seems that as often as conquering hordes swept over that part of asia, always coming from the north and east, they drove before them the inhabitants of the plains, who took refuge in some of the retired valleys and high mountain fastnesses, where they maintained their independence, as do the circassians in our time in spite of the power of russia. in the himalayan mountains, from assam to its extreme north-western limit, and generally in the more hilly parts of british india, the diversity of languages is surprisingly great, impeding the advance of civilisation and the labours of the missionary. in south america and mexico, alexander humboldt reckoned the distinct tongues by hundreds, and those of africa are said to be equally numerous. even in china, some eighteen provincial dialects prevail, almost all deviating so much from others that the speakers are not mutually intelligible, and besides these there are other distinct forms of speech in the mountains of the same empire. the philologist might next proceed to point out that the geographical relations of living and dead languages favour the hypothesis of the living ones having been derived from the extinct, in spite of our inability, in most instances, to adduce documentary evidence of the fact or to discover monuments of all the intermediate and transitional dialects which must have existed. thus he would observe that the modern romance languages are spoken exactly where the ancient romans once lived or ruled, and the greek of our days where the older classical greek was formerly spoken. exceptions to this rule might be detected, but they would be explicable by reference to colonisation and conquest. as to the many and wide gaps sometimes encountered between the dead and living languages, we must remember that it is not part of the plan of any people to preserve memorials of their forms of speech expressly for the edification of posterity. their manuscripts and inscriptions serve some present purpose, are occasional and imperfect from the first, and are rendered more fragmentary in the course of time, some being intentionally destroyed, others lost by the decay of the perishable materials on which they are written; so that to question the theory of all known languages being derivative on the ground that we can rarely trace a passage from the ancient to the modern through all the dialects which must have flourished one after the other in the intermediate ages, implies a want of reflection on the laws which govern the recording as well as the obliterating processes. but another important question still remains to be considered, namely, whether the trifling changes which can alone be witnessed by a single generation, can possibly represent the working of that machinery which, in the course of many centuries, has given rise to such mighty revolutions in the forms of speech throughout the world. everyone may have noticed in his own lifetime the stealing in of some slight alterations of accent, pronunciation or spelling, or the introduction of some words borrowed from a foreign language to express ideas of which no native term precisely conveyed the import. he may also remember hearing for the first time some cant terms or slang phrases, which have since forced their way into common use, in spite of the efforts of the purist. but he may still contend that "within the range of his experience," his language has continued unchanged, and he may believe in its immutability in spite of minor variations. the real question, however, at issue is, whether there are any limits to this variability. he will find on farther investigation, that new technical terms are coined almost daily in various arts, sciences, professions, and trades, that new names must be found for new inventions, that many of these acquire a metaphorical sense, and then make their way into general circulation, as "stereotyped," for instance, which would have been as meaningless to the men of the seventeenth century as would the new terms and images derived from steamboat and railway travelling to the men of the eighteenth. if the numerous words, idioms, and phrases, many of them of ephemeral duration, which are thus invented by the young and old in various classes of society, in the nursery, the school, the camp, the fleet, the courts of law and the study of the man of science or literature, could all be collected together and put on record, their number in one or two centuries might compare with the entire permanent vocabulary of the language. it becomes, therefore, a curious subject of inquiry, what are the laws which govern not only the invention, but also the "selection" of some of these words or idioms, giving them currency in preference to others?--for as the powers of the human memory are limited, a check must be found to the endless increase and multiplication of terms, and old words must be dropped nearly as fast as new ones are put into circulation. sometimes the new word or phrase, or a modification of the old ones, will entirely supplant the more ancient expressions, or, instead of the latter being discarded, both may flourish together, the older one having a more restricted use. although the speakers may be unconscious that any great fluctuation is going on in their language--although when we observe the manner in which new words and phrases are thrown out, as if at random or in sport, while others get into vogue, we may think the process of change to be the result of mere chance--there are nevertheless fixed laws in action, by which, in the general struggle for existence, some terms and dialects gain the victory over others. the slightest advantage attached to some new mode of pronouncing or spelling, from considerations of brevity or euphony, may turn the scale, or more powerful causes of selection may decide which of two or more rivals shall triumph and which succumb. among these are fashion, or the influence of an aristocracy, whether of birth or education, popular writers, orators, preachers--a centralised government organising its schools expressly to promote uniformity of diction, and to get the better of provincialisms and local dialects. between these dialects, which may be regarded as so many "incipient languages," the competition is always keenest when they are most nearly allied, and the extinction of any one of them destroys some of the links by which a dominant tongue may have been previously connected with some other widely distinct one. it is by the perpetual loss of such intermediate forms of speech that the great dissimilarity of the languages which survive is brought about. thus, if dutch should become a dead language, english and german would be separated by a wider gap. some languages which are spoken by millions, and spread over a wide area, will endure much longer than others which have never had a wide range, especially if the tendency to incessant change in one of these dominant tongues is arrested for a time by a standard literature. but even this source of stability is insecure, for popular writers themselves are great innovators, sometimes coining new words, and still oftener new expressions and idioms, to embody their own original conceptions and sentiments, or some peculiar modes of thought and feeling characteristic of their age. even when a language is regarded with superstitious veneration as the vehicle of divine truths and religious precepts, and which has prevailed for many generations, it will be incapable of permanently maintaining its ground. hebrew had ceased to be a living language before the christian era. sanscrit, the sacred language of the hindoos, shared the same fate, in spite of the veneration in which the vedas are still held, and in spite of many a sanscrit poem once popular and national. the christians of constantinople and the morea still hear the new testament and their liturgy read in ancient greek, while they speak a dialect in which paul might have preached in vain at athens. so in the catholic church, the italians pray in one tongue and talk another. luther's translation of the bible acted as a powerful cause of "selection," giving at once to one of many competing dialects (that of saxony) a prominent and dominant position in germany; but the style of luther has, like that of our english bible, already become somewhat antiquated. if the doctrine of gradual transmutation be applicable to languages, all those spoken in historical times must each of them have had a closely allied prototype; and accordingly, whenever we can thoroughly investigate their history, we find in them some internal evidence of successive additions by the invention of new words or the modification of old ones. proofs also of borrowing are discernible, letters being retained in the spelling of some words which have no longer any meaning as they are now pronounced--no connection with any corresponding sounds. such redundant or silent letters, once useful in the parent speech, have been aptly compared by mr. darwin to rudimentary organs in living beings, which, as he interprets them, have at some former period been more fully developed, having had their proper functions to perform in the organisation of a remote progenitor. if all known languages are derivative and not primordial creations, they must each of them have been slowly elaborated in a single geographical area. no one of them can have had two birthplaces. if one were carried by a colony to a distant region, it would immediately begin to vary unless frequent intercourse was kept up with the mother country. the descendants of the same stock, if perfectly isolated, would in five or six centuries, perhaps sooner, be quite unable to converse with those who remained at home, or with those who may have migrated to some distant region, where they were shut out from all communication with others speaking the same tongue. a norwegian colony which settled in iceland in the ninth century, maintained its independence for about years, during which time the old gothic which they at first spoke became corrupted and considerably modified. in the meantime the natives of norway, who had enjoyed much commercial intercourse with the rest of europe, acquired quite a new speech, and looked on the icelandic as having been stationary, and as representing the pure gothic original of which their own was an offshoot. a german colony in pennsylvania was cut off from frequent communication with europe for about a quarter of a century, during the wars of the french revolution between and . so marked had been the effect even of this brief and imperfect isolation, that when prince bernhard of saxe-weimar travelled among them a few years after the peace, he found the peasants speaking as they had done in germany in the preceding century,*) and retaining a dialect which at home had already become obsolete. (* "travels of prince bernhard of saxe-weimar, in north america, in and ", page .) even after the renewal of the german emigration from europe, when i travelled in among the same people in the retired valleys of the alleghenies, i found the newspapers full of terms half english and half german, and many an anglo-saxon word, which had assumed a teutonic dress, as "fencen," to fence, instead of umzaunen, "flauer" for flour, instead of mehl, and so on. what with the retention of terms no longer in use in the mother country, and the borrowing of new ones from neighbouring states, there might have arisen in pennsylvania in five or six generations, but for the influx of newcomers from germany, a mongrel speech equally unintelligible to the anglo-saxon and to the inhabitants of the european fatherland. if languages resemble species in having had each their "specific centre" or single area of creation, in which they have been slowly formed, so each of them is alike liable to slow or to sudden extinction. they may die out very gradually in consequence of transmutation, or abruptly by the extermination of the last surviving representatives of the unaltered type. we know in what century the last dodo perished, and we know that in the seventeenth century the language of the red indians of massachusetts, into which father eliot had translated the bible, and in which christianity was preached for several generations, ceased to exist, the last individuals by whom it was spoken having at that period died without issue.* (* lyell, "travels in north america" volume page .) but if just before that event the white man had retreated from the continent, or had been swept off by an epidemic, those indians might soon have repeopled the wilderness, and their copious vocabulary and peculiar forms of expression might have lasted without important modification to this day. the extinction, however, of languages in general is not abrupt, any more than that of species. it will also be evident from what has been said, that a language which has once died out can never be revived, since the same assemblage of conditions can never be restored even among the descendants of the same stock, much less simultaneously among all the rounding nations with whom they may be in contact. we may compare the persistency of languages, or the tendency of each generation to adopt without change the vocabulary of its predecessor, to the force of inheritance in the organic world, which causes the offspring to resemble its parents. the inventive power which coins new words or modifies old ones, and adapts them to new wants and conditions as often as these arise, answers to the variety-making power in the animate creation. progressive improvement in language is a necessary consequence of the progress of the human mind from one generation to another. as civilisation advances, a greater number of terms are required to express abstract ideas, and words previously used in a vague sense, so long as the state of society was rude and barbarous, gradually acquire more precise and definite meanings, in consequence of which several terms must be employed to express ideas and things, which a single word had before signified, though somewhat loosely and imperfectly. the farther this subdivision of function is carried, the more complete and perfect the language becomes, just as species of higher grade have special organs, such as eyes, lungs, and stomach, for seeing, breathing, and digesting, which in simple organisms are all performed by one and the same part of the body.* (* see herbert spencer's "psychology" and "scientific essays.") when we had satisfied ourselves that all the existing languages, instead of being primordial creations, or the direct gifts of a supernatural power, have been slowly elaborated, partly by the modification of pre-existing dialects, partly by borrowing terms at successive periods from numerous foreign sources, and partly by new inventions made some of them deliberately, and some casually and as it were fortuitously--when we have discovered the principal causes of selection, which have guided the adoption or rejection of rival names for the same things and ideas, rival modes of pronouncing the same words and provincial dialects competing one with another--we are still very far from comprehending all the laws which have governed the formation of each language. it was a profound saying of william humboldt, that "man is man only by means of speech, but in order to invent speech he must be already man." other animals may be able to utter sounds more articulate and as varied as the click of the bushman, but voice alone can never enable brute intelligence to acquire language. when we consider the complexity of every form of speech spoken by a highly civilised nation, and discover that the grammatical rules and the inflections which denote number, time, and equality are usually the product of a rude state of society--that the savage and the sage, the peasant and man of letters, the child and the philosopher, have worked together, in the course of many generations, to build up a fabric which has been truly described as a wonderful instrument of thought, a machine, the several parts of which are so well adjusted to each other as to resemble the product of one period and of a single mind--we cannot but look upon the result as a profound mystery, and one of which the separate builders have been almost as unconscious as are the bees in a hive of the architectural skill and mathematical knowledge which is displayed in the construction of the honeycomb. in our attempts to account for the origin of species, we find ourselves still sooner brought face to face with the working of a law of development of so high an order as to stand nearly in the same relation as the deity himself to man's finite understanding, a law capable of adding new and powerful causes, such as the moral and intellectual faculties of the human race, to a system of nature which had gone on for millions of years without the intervention of any analogous cause. if we confound "variation" or "natural selection" with such creational laws, we deify secondary causes or immeasurably exaggerate their influence. yet we ought by no means to undervalue the importance of the step which will have been made, should it hereafter become the generally received opinion of men of science (as i fully expect it will), that the past changes of the organic world have been brought about by the subordinate agency of such causes as "variation" and "natural selection." all our advances in the knowledge of nature have consisted of such steps as these, and we must not be discouraged because greater mysteries remain behind wholly inscrutable to us. if the philologist is asked whether in the beginning of things there was one or five, or a greater number of languages, he may answer that, before he can reply to such a question, it must be decided whether the origin of man was single, or whether there were many primordial races. but he may also observe, that if mankind began their career in a rude state of society, their whole vocabulary would be limited to a few words, and that if they then separated into several isolated communities, each of these would soon acquire an entirely distinct language, some roots being lost and others corrupted and transformed beyond the possibility of subsequent identification, so that it might be hopeless to expect to trace back the living and dead languages to one starting point, even if that point were of much more modern date than we have now good reason to suppose. in like manner it may be said of species, that if those first formed were of very simple structure, and they began to vary and to lose some organs by disuse and acquire new ones by development, they might soon differ as much as so many distinctly created primordial types. it would therefore be a waste of time to speculate on the number of original monads or germs from which all plants and animals were subsequently evolved, more especially as the oldest fossiliferous strata known to us may be the last of a long series of antecedent formations, which once contained organic remains. it was not till geologists ceased to discuss the condition of the original nucleus of the planet, whether it was solid or fluid, and whether it owed its fluidity to aqueous or igneous causes, that they began to achieve their great triumphs; and the vast progress which has recently been made in showing how the living species may be connected with the extinct by a common bond of descent, has been due to a more careful study of the actual state of the living world, and to those monuments of the past in which the relics of the animate creation of former ages are best preserved and least mutilated by the hand of time. chapter . -- bearing of the doctrine of transmutation on the origin of man, and his place in the creation. whether man can be regarded as an exception to the rule if the doctrine of transmutation be embraced for the rest of the animal kingdom. zoological relations of man to other mammalia. systems of classification. term quadrumanous, why deceptive. whether the structure of the human brain entitles man to form a distinct sub-class of the mammalia. intelligence of the lower animals compared to the intellect and reason of man. grounds on which man has been referred to a distinct kingdom of nature. immaterial principle common to man and animals. non-discovery of intermediate links among fossil anthropomorphous species. hallam on the compound nature of man, and his place in the creation. great inequality of mental endowment in different human races and individuals developed by variation and ordinary generation. how far a corresponding divergence in physical structure may result from the working of the same causes. concluding remarks. some of the opponents of transmutation, who are well versed in natural history, admit that though that doctrine is untenable, it is not without its practical advantages as a "useful working hypothesis," often suggesting good experiments and observations and aiding us to retain in the memory a multitude of facts respecting the geographical distribution of genera and species, both of animals and plants, the succession in time of organic remains, and many other phenomena which, but for such a theory, would be wholly without a common bond of relationship. it is in fact conceded by many eminent zoologists and botanists, as before explained, that whatever may be the nature of the species-making power or law, its effects are of such a character as to imitate the results which variation, guided by natural selection, would produce, if only we could assume with certainty that there are no limits to the variability of species. but as the anti-transmutationists are persuaded that such limits do exist, they regard the hypothesis as simply a provisional one, and expect that it will one day be superseded by another cognate theory, which will not require us to assume the former continuousness of the links which have connected the past and present states of the organic world, or the outgoing with the incoming species. in like manner, many of those who hesitate to give in their full adhesion to the doctrine of progression, the other twin branch of the development theory, and who even object to it, as frequently tending to retard the reception of new facts supposed to militate against opinions solely founded on negative evidence, are nevertheless agreed that on the whole it is of great service in guiding our speculations. indeed it cannot be denied that a theory which establishes a connection between the absence of all relics of vertebrata in the oldest fossiliferous rocks, and the presence of man's remains in the newest, which affords a more than plausible explanation of the successive appearance in strata of intermediate age of the fish, reptile, bird, and mammal, has no ordinary claims to our favour as comprehending the largest number of positive and negative facts gathered from all parts of the globe, and extending over countless ages, that science has perhaps ever attempted to embrace in one grand generalisation. but will not transmutation, if adopted, require us to include the human race in the same continuous series of developments, so that we must hold that man himself has been derived by an unbroken line of descent from some one of the inferior animals? we certainly cannot escape from such a conclusion without abandoning many of the weightiest arguments which have been urged in support of variation and natural selection considered as the subordinate causes by which new types have been gradually introduced into the earth. many of the gaps which separate the most nearly allied genera and orders of mammalia are, in a physical point of view, as wide as those which divide man from the mammalia most nearly akin to him, and the extent of his isolation, whether we regard his whole nature or simply his corporeal attributes, must be considered before we can discuss the bearing of transmutation upon his origin and place in the creation. systems of classification. in order to qualify ourselves to judge of the degree of affinity in physical organisation between man and the lower animals, we cannot do better than study those systems of classification which have been proposed by the most eminent teachers of natural history. of these an elaborate and faithful summary has recently been drawn up by the late isidore geoffroy st. hilaire, which the reader will do well to consult.* (* "histoire naturale generale des regnes organiques" paris volume .) he begins by passing in review numerous schemes of classification, each of them having some merit, and most of them having been invented with a view of assigning to man a separate place in the system of nature, as, for example, by dividing animals into rational and irrational, or the whole organic world into three kingdoms, the human, the animal, and the vegetable--an arrangement defended on the ground that man is raised as much by his intelligence above the animals as are these by their sensibility above plants. admitting that these schemes are not unphilosophical, as duly recognising the double nature of man (his moral and intellectual, as well as his physical attributes), isidore g. st. hilaire observes that little knowledge has been imparted by them. we have gained, he says, much more from those masters of the science who have not attempted any compromise between two distinct orders of ideas, the physical and psychological, and who have confined their attention strictly to man's physical relation to the lower animals. linnaeus led the way in this field of inquiry by comparing man and the apes, in the same manner as he compared these last with the carnivores, ruminants, rodents, or any other division of warm-blooded quadrupeds. after several modifications of his original scheme, he ended by placing man as one of the many genera in his order primates, which embraced not only the apes and lemurs, but the bats also, as he found these last to be nearly allied to some of the lowest forms of the monkeys. but all modern naturalists, who retain the order primates, agree to exclude from it the bats or cheiroptera; and most of them class man as one of several families of the order primates. in this, as in most systems of classification, the families of modern zoologists and botanists correspond with the genera of linnaeus. blumenbach, in , proposed to deviate from this course, and to separate man from the apes as an order apart, under the name of bimana, or two-handed. in making this innovation he seems at first to have felt that it could not be justified without calling in psychological considerations to his aid, to strengthen those which were purely anatomical; for, in the earliest edition of his "manual of natural history," he defined man to be "animal rationale, loquens, erectum, bimanum," whereas in later editions he restricted himself entirely to the two last characters, namely, the erect position and the two hands, or "animal erectum, bimanum." the terms "bimanous" and "quadrumanous" had been already employed by buffon in , but not applied in a strict zoological classification till so used by blumenbach. twelve years later, cuvier adopted the same order bimana for the human family, while the apes, monkeys, and lemurs constituted a separate order called quadrumana. respecting this last innovation, isidore g. st. hilaire asks, "how could such a division stand, repudiated as it was by the anthropologists in the name of the moral and intellectual supremacy of man; and by the zoologists, on the ground of its incompatibility with natural affinities and with the true principles of classification? separated as a group of ordinal value, placed at the same distance from the ape as the latter from the carnivore, man is at once too near and too distant from the higher mammalia--too near if we take into account those elevated faculties, which, raising man above all other organised beings, accord to him not only the first, but a separate place in the creation--too far if we merely consider the organic affinities which unite him with the quadrumana; with the apes especially, which, in a purely physical point of view, approach man more nearly than they do the lemurs." "what, then, is this order of bimana of blumenbach and cuvier? an impracticable compromise between two opposite and irreconcilable systems--between two orders of ideas which are clearly expressed in the language of natural history by these two words: the human kingdom and the human family. it is one of those would-be via media propositions which, once seen through, satisfy no one, precisely because they are intended to please everybody; half-truths, perhaps, but also half-falsehoods; for what, in science, is a half-truth but an error?" isidore g. st. hilaire then proceeds to show how, in spite of the great authority of blumenbach and cuvier, a large proportion of modern zoologists of note have rejected the order bimana, and have regarded man simply as a family of one and the same order, primates. term "quadrumanous," why deceptive. even the term "quadrumanous" has lately been shown by professor huxley, in a lecture delivered by him in the spring of - , which i had the good fortune to hear, to have proved a fertile source of popular delusion, conveying ideas which the great anatomists blumenbach and cuvier never entertained themselves, namely, that in the so-called quadrumana the extremities of the hind-limbs bear a real resemblance to the human hands, instead of corresponding anatomically with the human feet. as this subject bears very directly on the question, how far man is entitled, in a purely zoological classification, to rank as an order apart, i shall proceed to cite, in an abridged form, the words of the lecturer above alluded to.* (* professor huxley's third lecture "on the motor organs of man compared with those of other animals," delivered in the royal school of mines, in jermyn street (march ) has been embodied with the rest of the course in his work entitled "evidence as to man's place in nature.") "to gain," he observes, "a precise conception of the resemblances and differences of the hand and foot, and of the distinctive characters of each, we must look below the skin, and compare the bony framework and its motor apparatus in each. "the foot of man is distinguished from his hand by:-- " . the arrangement of the tarsal bones. " . by having a short flexor and a short extensor muscle of the digits. " . by possessing the muscle termed peronaeus longus. "and if we desire to ascertain whether the terminal division of a limb in other animals is to be called a foot or a hand, it is by the presence or absence of these characters that we must be guided, and not by the mere proportions, and greater or lesser mobility of the great toe, which may vary indefinitely without any fundamental alteration in the structure of the foot. keeping these considerations in mind, let us now turn to the limbs of the gorilla. the terminal division of the fore-limb presents no difficulty--bone for bone, and muscle for muscle, are found to be arranged precisely as in man, or with such minute differences as are found as varieties in man. the gorilla's hand is clumsier, heavier, and has a thumb somewhat shorter in proportion than that of man; but no one has ever doubted its being a true hand. "at first sight, the termination of the hind-limb of the gorilla looks very hand-like, and as it is still more so in the lower apes, it is not wonderful that the appellation 'quadrumana,' or four-handed creatures, adopted from the older anatomists by blumenbach, and unfortunately rendered current by cuvier, should have gained such wide acceptance as a name for the ape order. but the most cursory anatomical investigation at once proves that the resemblance of the so-called 'hindhand' to a true hand is only skin deep, and that, in all essential respects, the hind-limb of the gorilla is as truly terminated by a foot as that of man. the tarsal bones, in all important circumstances of number, disposition, and form, resemble those of man. the metatarsals and digits, on the other hand, are proportionally longer and more slender, while the great toe is not only proportionally shorter and weaker, but its metatarsal bone is united by a far more movable joint with the tarsus. at the same time, the foot is set more obliquely upon the leg than in man. "as to the muscles, there is a short flexor, a short extensor, and a peronaeus longus, while the tendons of the long flexors of the great toe and of the other toes are united together and into an accessory fleshy bundle. "the hind-limb of the gorilla, therefore, ends in a true foot with a very movable great toe. it is a prehensile foot, if you will, but is in no sense a hand: it is a foot which differs from that of man in no fundamental character, but in mere proportions--degree of mobility--and secondary arrangement of its parts. "it must not be supposed, however, that because i speak of these differences as not fundamental, that i wish to underrate their value. they are important enough in their way, the structure of the foot being in strict correlation with that of the rest of the organism; but after all, regarded anatomically, the resemblances between the foot of man and the foot of the gorilla are far more striking and important than the differences."* (* professor huxley, ibid.) after dwelling on some points of anatomical detail, highly important, but for which i have not space here, the professor continues--"throughout all these modifications, it must be recollected that the foot loses no one of its essential characters. every monkey and lemur exhibits the characteristic arrangement of tarsal bones, possesses a short flexor and short extensor muscle, and a peronaeus longus. varied as the proportions and appearance of the organ may be, the terminal division of the hind-limb remains in plan and principle of construction a foot, and never in the least degree approaches a hand."* (* ibid.) for these reasons, professor huxley rejects the term "quadrumana," as leading to serious misconception, and regards man as one of the families of the primates. this method of classification he shows to be equally borne out by an appeal to another character on which so much reliance has always been placed in classification, as affording in the mammalia the most trustworthy indications of affinity, namely, the dentition. "the number of teeth in the gorilla and all the old world monkeys, except the lemurs, is thirty-two, the same as in man, and the general pattern of their crowns the same. but besides other distinctions, the canines in all but man project in the upper or lower jaws almost like tusks. but all the american apes have four more teeth in their permanent set, or thirty-six in all, so that they differ in this respect more from the old world apes than do these last from man." if therefore, by reference to this character, we place man in a separate order, we must make several orders for the apes, monkeys, and lemurs, and so, in regard to the structure of the hands and feet before alluded to, "the gorilla differs far more from some of the quadrumana than he differs from man." indeed, professor huxley contends that there is more difference between the hand and foot of the gorilla and those of the orang, one of the anthropomorphous apes, than between those of the gorilla and man, for "the thumb of the orang differs by its shortness and by the absence of any special long flexor muscle from that of the gorilla more than it differs from that of man." the carpus also of the orang, like that of most lower apes, contains nine bones, while in the gorilla, as in man and the chimpanzee, there are only eight." other characters are also given to show that the orang's foot separates it more widely from the gorilla than that of the gorilla separates that ape from man. in some of the lower apes, the divergence from the human type of hand and foot, as well as from those of the gorilla, is still greater, as, for example, in the spider-monkey and marmoset."* (* huxley, ibid. page .) if the muscles, viscera, or any other part of the animal fabric, including the brain, be compared, the results are declared to be similar. whether the structure of the human brain entitles man to form a distinct sub-class of the mammalia. in consequence of these and many other zoological considerations, the order bimana had already been declared, in , by isidore g. st. hilaire in his history of the science above quoted "to have become obsolete," even though sanctioned by the great names of blumenbach and cuvier. but in opposition to the new views professor owen announced, the year after the publication of g. st. hilaire's work, that he had been led by purely anatomical considerations to separate man from the other primates and from the mammalia generally as a distinct sub-class, thus departing farther from the classification of blumenbach and cuvier than they had ventured to do from that of linnaeus. the proposed innovation was based chiefly on three cerebral characters belonging, it was alleged, exclusively to man and thus described in the following passages of a memoir communicated to the linnaean society in , in which all the mammalia were divided, according to the structure of the brain, into four sub-classes, represented by the kangaroo, the beaver, the ape, and man respectively:-- "in man, the brain presents an ascensive step in development, higher and more strongly marked than that by which the preceding sub-class was distinguished from the one below it. not only do the cerebral hemispheres overlap the olfactory lobes and cerebellum, but they extend in advance of the one and farther back than the other. their posterior development is so marked that anatomists have assigned to that part the character of a third lobe; it is peculiar to the genus homo, and equally peculiar is the 'posterior horn of the lateral ventricle' and the 'hippocampus minor' which characterises the hind-lobe of each hemisphere. the superficial grey matter of the cerebrum, through the number and depth of its convolutions, attains its maximum of extent in man. "peculiar mental powers are associated with this highest form of brain, and their consequences wonderfully illustrate the value of the cerebral character; according to my estimate of which i am led to regard the genus homo as not merely a representative of a distinct order, but of a distinct sub-class of the mammalia, for which i propose the name of 'archencephala.'"* (* owen, "proceedings of the linnaean society" london volume page .) the above definition is accompanied in the same memoir by the following note:--"not being able to appreciate, or conceive, of the distinction between the psychical phenomena of a chimpanzee and of a boschisman, or of an aztec with arrested brain-growth, as being of a nature so essential as to preclude a comparison between them, or as being other than a difference of degree, i cannot shut my eyes to the significance of that all-pervading similitude of structure--every tooth, every bone, strictly homologous--which makes the determination of the difference between homo and pithecus the anatomist's difficulty; and therefore, with every respect for the author of the records of creation,* i follow linnaeus and cuvier in regarding mankind as a legitimate subject of zoological comparison and classification." (* the late archbishop of canterbury, dr. sumner.) [illustration: figure , and . brain of chimpanzee] (figure . upper surface of brain of chimpanzee, distorted (from schroeder van der kolk and vrolik.) scale half the diameter of the natural size. a. left cerebral hemisphere. b. right cerebral hemisphere. c. cerebellum displaced.) (figure . side view of brain of chimpanzee, distorted (from schroeder van der kolk and vrolik.) scale half the diameter of the natural size. e. the extension of the displaced cerebellum beyond the cerebrum at d.) (figure . correct side view of chimpanzee's brain (from gratiolet). scale half the diameter of the natural size. d. backward extension of the cerebrum, beyond the cerebellum at e. f. fissure of sylvius.) [illustration: figure and . chimpanzee and human brain] (figure . correct view of upper surface of chimpanzee's brain (from gratiolet), in which the cerebrum covers and conceals the cerebellum. scale half the diameter of the natural size.) (figure . side view of human brain (from gratiolet), namely, that of the bushwoman called the hottentot venus. scale half the diameter of the natural size. a. left cerebral hemisphere. c. cerebellum. ff. fissure of sylvius.) to illustrate the difference between the human and simian brain, professor owen gave figures of the negro's brain as represented by tiedemann, an original one of a south american monkey, midas rufimanus, and one of the chimpanzee (figure ), from a memoir published in by mm. schroeder van der kolk and m. vrolik.* (* "comptes rendus de l'academie royale des sciences" amsterdam volume .) the selection of figure was most unfortunate, for three years before, m. gratiolet, the highest authority in cerebral anatomy of our age, had, in his splendid work on "the convolutions of the brain in man and the primates" (paris, ), pointed out that, though this engraving faithfully expressed the cerebral foldings as seen on the surface, it gave a very false idea of the relative position of the several parts of the brain, which, as very commonly happens in such preparations, had shrunk and greatly sunk down by their own weight.* (* gratiolet's words are: "les plis cerebraux du chimpanze y sont fort bien etudies, malheureusement le cerveau qui leur a servi de modele etait profondement affaisse, aussi la forme generale du cerveau est-elle rendue, dans leurs planches, d'une maniere tout-a-fait fausse." ibid. page .) anticipating the serious mistakes which would arise from this inaccurate representation of the brain of the ape, published under the auspices of men so deserving of trust as the two above-named dutch anatomists, m. gratiolet thought it expedient, by way of warning to his readers, to repeat their incorrect figures (figures and ), and to place by the side of them two correct views (figures and ) of the brain of the same ape. by reference to these illustrations, as well as to figure , the reader will see not only the contrast of the relative position of the cerebrum and cerebellum, as delineated in the natural as well as in the distorted state, but also the remarkable general correspondence between the chimpanzee brain and that of the human subject in everything save in size. the human brain (figure ) here given, by gratiolet, is that of an african bushwoman, called the hottentot venus, who was exhibited formerly in london, and who died in paris. respecting this striking analogy of cerebral structure in man and the apes, gratiolet says, in the work above cited: "the convoluted brain of man and the smooth brain of the marmoset resemble each other by the quadruple character of a rudimentary olfactory lobe, a posterior lobe completely covering the cerebellum, a well-defined fissure of sylvius (ff, figure ), and lastly a posterior horn in the lateral ventricle. these characters are not met with together except in man and the apes."* (* gratiolet, ibid. avant-propos page .) in reference to the other figure of a monkey given by professor owen, namely, that of the midas, one of the marmosets, he states, in as he had done in , that the posterior part of the cerebral hemispheres "extends, as in most of the quadrumana, over the greater part of the cerebellum."* (* "proceedings of the linnaean society" page note, and "philosophical transactions" page .) in , in his rede lecture, delivered to the university of cambridge, the same illustrations of the ape's brain were given, namely, that of the midas and the distorted one of the dutch anatomists already cited (figure ).* (* see appendix m.) two years later, professor huxley, in a memoir "on the zoological relations of man with the lower animals," took occasion to refer to gratiolet's warning, and to cite his criticism on the dutch plates;* but this reminder appears to have been overlooked by professor owen, who six months later came out with a new paper on "the cerebral character of man and the ape," in which he repeated the incorrect representation of schroeder van der kolk and vrolik, associating it with tiedemann's figure of a negro's brain, expressly to show the relative and different extent to which the cerebellum is overlapped by the cerebrum in the two cases respectively.** in the ape's brain as thus depicted, the portion of the cerebellum left uncovered is greater than in the lemurs, the lowest type of primates, and almost as large as in the rodentia, or some of the lowest grades of the mammalia. (* huxley, "natural history review" january , page .) (** "annals and magazine of natural history" volume page and plate .) when the dutch naturalists above mentioned found their figures so often appealed to as authority, by one the weight of whose opinion on such matters they well knew how to appreciate, they resolved to do their best towards preventing the public from being misled. accordingly, they addressed to the royal academy of amsterdam a memoir "on the brain of an orang-outang" which had just died in the zoological gardens of that city.* (* this paper is reprinted in the original french in the "natural history review" volume page .) the dissection of this ape, in , fully bore out the general conclusions at which they had previously arrived in , as to the existence both in the human and the simian brain of the three characters, which professor owen had represented as exclusively appertaining to man, namely, the occipital or posterior lobe, the hippocampus minor, and the posterior cornu. these last two features consist of certain cavities and furrows in the posterior lobes, which are caused by the foldings of the brain, and are only visible when it is dissected. mm. schroeder van der kolk and vrolik took this opportunity of candidly confessing that m. gratiolet's comments on the defects of their two figures (figures and ) were perfectly just, and they expressed regret that professor owen should have overstated the differences existing between the brain of man and the quadrumana, "led astray, as they supposed, by his zeal to combat the darwinian theory respecting the transformation of species," a doctrine against which they themselves protested strongly, saying that it belongs to a class of speculations which are sure to be revived from time to time, and are always "peculiarly seductive to young and sanguine minds."* (* ibid. page .) as the two memoirs before alluded to by us, the one by mr. darwin on "natural selection," and the other by mr. wallace "on the tendency of varieties to depart indefinitely from the original type," did not appear till , a year after professor owen's classification of the mammalia, and as darwin's "origin of species" was not published till another year had elapsed, we cannot accept the explanation above offered to us of the causes which led the founder of the sub-class archencephala to seek for new points of distinction between the human and simian brains; but the dutch anatomists may have fallen into this anachronism by having just read, in the paper by professor owen in the "annals," some prefatory allusions to "the vestiges of creation," "natural selection, and the question whether man be or be not a descendant of the ape." the number of original and important memoirs to which this discussion on the cerebral relations of man to the primates has already given rise in less than five years, must render the controversy for ever memorable in the history of comparative anatomy.* (* rolleston, "natural history review" april . huxley, on "brain of ateles" "proceedings of the zoological society" . flower, "posterior lobe in quadrumana" etc., "philosophical transactions" . id. "javan loris" "proceedings of the zoological society" . id. on "anatomy of pithecia" ibid. .) in england alone, no less than fifteen genera of the primates (the subjects having been almost all furnished by that admirable institution the zoological gardens of london) have been anatomically examined, and they include nearly all the leading types of structure of the old and new world apes and monkeys, from the most anthropoid form to that farthest removed from man; in other words, from the chimpanzee to the lemur. these are:-- troglodytes (chimpanzee). pithecus (orang). hylobates (gibbon). semnopithecus. cercopithecus. macacus. cynocephalus (baboon). ateles (spider monkey). cebus (capuchin monkey). pithecia (saki). nyctipithecus (douricouli). hapale (marmoset). otolicnus. stenops. lemur. in july mr. marshall, in a paper on the brain of a young chimpanzee, which he had dissected immediately after its death, gave a series of photographic drawings, showing that when the parts are all in a fresh state, the posterior lobe of the cerebrum, instead of simply covering the cerebellum, is prolonged backwards beyond it even to a greater extent than in gratiolet's figure, , and, what is more in point, in a greater degree relatively speaking (at least in the young state of the animal) than in man. in fact, "the projection is to the extent of about one-ninth of the total length of the cerebrum, whereas the average excess of overlapping is only one-eleventh in the human brain."* (* marshall, "natural history review" july . see also on this subject professor rolleston on the slight degree of backward extension of the cerebrum in some races of man. "medical times" october , page .) the same author gives an instructive account of the manner in which displacement and distortion take place when such brains are preserved in spirits as in the ordinary preparations of the anatomist. mr. flower, in a recent paper on the posterior lobe of the cerebrum in the quadrumana,* remarks, that although tiedemann had declared himself unable in to detect the hippocampus minor or the posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle in the brain of a macacus dissected by him, cuvier, nevertheless, mentions the latter as characteristic of man and the apes, and m. serres in his well-known work on the brain in , has shown in at least four species of apes the presence of both the hippocampus minor and the posterior cornu. (* "philosophical transactions" page .) tiedemann had expressly stated that "the third or hinder lobe in the ape covered the cerebellum as in man,"* and as to his negative evidence in respect to the internal structure of that lobe, it can have no weight whatever against the positive proofs obtained to the contrary by a host of able observers. even before tiedemann's work was published, kuhl had dissected, in , the brain of the spider-monkey (ateles beelzebuth), and had given a figure of a long posterior cornu to the lateral ventricle, which he had described as such.** (* tiedemann, "icones cerebri simiarum" etc. page .) (** "beitrage zur zoologie" etc. frankfurt am main .) the general results arrived at by the english anatomists already cited, and by professor rolleston in various papers on the same subject, have thus been briefly stated by professor huxley:-- "every lemur which has yet been examined has its cerebellum partially visible from above, and its posterior lobe, with the contained posterior cornu and hippocampus minor, more or less rudimentary. every marmoset, american monkey, old world monkey, baboon, or man-like ape, on the contrary, has its cerebellum entirely hidden, and possesses a large posterior cornu, with a well-developed hippocampus minor. "in many of these creatures, such as the saimiri (chrysothrix), the cerebral lobes overlap and extend much farther behind the cerebellum in proportion than they do in man."* (* huxley, "evidence as to man's place in nature" page .) it is by no means pretended that these conclusions of british observers as to the affinity in cerebral structure of man and the primates are new, but on the contrary that they confirm the inductions previously made by the principal continental teachers of the last and present generations, such as tiedemann, cuvier, serres, leuret, wagner, schroeder van der kolk, vrolik, gratiolet, and others. at a late meeting of the british association ( ), professor owen read a paper "on the brain and limb characters of the gorilla as contrasted with those of man"* in which, he observes, that in the gorilla the cerebrum "extends over the cerebellum, not beyond it." (* medical times and gazette" october page .) this statement, although slightly at variance with one published the year before ( ) by professor huxley, who maintains that it does project beyond, is interesting as correcting the description of the same brain given by professor owen in that year, in a lecture to the royal institution, in which a considerable part of the cerebellum of the gorilla was represented as uncovered.* (* "athenaeum" report of royal institution lecture, march , , and reference to it by professor owen as to gorilla, ibid. march page .) in the same memoir, it is remarked that in the maimon baboon the cerebrum not only covers but "extends backwards even beyond the cerebellum."* (* for report of professor owen's cambridge british association paper see "medical times" october , page .) this baboon, therefore, possesses a posterior lobe, according to every description yet given of such a lobe, including a new definition of the same lately proposed by professor owen. for the posterior lobe was formerly considered to be that part of the cerebrum which covers the cerebellum, whereas professor owen defines it as that part which covers the posterior third of the cerebellum, and extends beyond it. we may, therefore, consider the attempt to distinguish the brain of man from that of the ape on the ground of newly-discovered cerebral characters, presenting differences in kind, as virtually abandoned by its originator, and if the sub-class archencephala is to be retained, it must depend on differences in degree, as, for example, the vast increase of the brain in man, as compared with that of the highest ape, "in absolute size, and the still greater superiority in relative size to the bulk and weight of the body."* (* owen, ibid. page .) if we ask why this character, though well known to cuvier and other great anatomists before our time, was not considered by them to entitle man, physically considered, to claim a more distinct place in the group called primates than that of a separate order, or, according to others, a separate genus or family only, we shall find the answer thus concisely stated by professor huxley in his new work, before cited:-- "so far as i am aware, no human cranium belonging to an adult man has yet been observed with a less cubical capacity than cubic inches, the smallest cranium observed in any race of men, by morton, measuring cubic inches; while on the other hand, the most capacious gorilla skull yet measured has a content of not more than / cubic inches. let us assume for simplicity's sake, that the lowest man's skull has twice the capacity of the highest gorilla's. no doubt this is a very striking difference, but it loses much of its apparent systematic value, when viewed by the light of certain other equally indubitable facts respecting cranial capacities. "the first of these is, that the difference in the volume of the cranial cavity of different races of mankind is far greater, absolutely, than that between the lowest man and the highest ape, while, relatively, it is about the same; for the largest human skull measured by morton contained cubic inches, that is to say, had very nearly double the capacity of the smallest, while its absolute preponderance of over cubic inches is far greater than that by which the lowest adult male human cranium surpasses the largest of the gorillas ( minus / = / ). secondly, the adult crania of gorillas which have as yet been measured, differ among themselves by nearly one-third, the maximum capacity being . cubic inches, the minimum cubic inches; and, thirdly, after making all due allowance for difference of size, the cranial capacities of some of the lower apes fall nearly as much relatively below those of the higher apes, as the latter fall below man."* (* huxley, "evidence as to man's place in nature" london page . ) are we then to conclude that differences in mental power have no intimate connection with the comparative volume of the brain? we cannot draw such an inference, because the highest and most civilised races of man exceed in the average of their cranial capacity the lowest races, the european brain, for example, being larger than that of the negro, and somewhat more convoluted and less symmetrical, and those apes, on the other hand, which approach nearest to man in the form and volume of their brain being more intelligent than the lemurs, or still lower divisions of the mammalia, such as the rodents and marsupials, which have smaller brains. but the extraordinary intelligence of the elephant and dog, so far exceeding that of the larger part of the quadrumana, although their brains are of a type much more remote from the human, may serve to convince us how far we are as yet from understanding the real nature of the dependence of intellectual superiority on cerebral structure. professor rolleston, in reference to this subject, remarks, that "even if it were to be proved that the differences between man's brain and that of the ape are differences entirely of quantity, there is no reason, in the nature of things, why so many and such weighty differences in degree should not amount to a difference in kind. "differences of degree and differences of kind are, it is true, mutually exclusive terms in the language of the schools; but whether they are so also in the laboratory of nature, we may very well doubt."* (* report of a lecture delivered at the royal institution by professor george rolleston "on the brain of man and animals" "medical gazette" march , page .) the same physiologist suggests, that as there is considerable plasticity in the human frame, not only in youth and during growth, but even in the adult, we ought not always to take for granted, as some advocates of the development theory seem to do, that each advance in psychical power depends on an improvement in bodily structure, for why may not the soul, or the higher intellectual and moral faculties, play the first instead of the second part in a progressive scheme? intelligence of the lower animals compared to that of man. ever since the days of leibnitz, metaphysicians who have attempted to draw a line of demarcation between the intelligence of the lower animals and that of man, or between instinct and reason, have experienced difficulties analogous to those which the modern anatomist encounters when he tries to distinguish the brain of an ape from that of man by some characters more marked than those of mere size and weight, which vary so much in individuals of the same species, whether simian or human. professor agassiz, after declaring that as yet we scarcely possess the most elementary information requisite for a scientific comparison of the instincts and faculties of animals with those of man, confesses that he cannot say in what the mental faculties of a child differ from those of a young chimpanzee. he also observes, that "the range of the passions of animals is as extensive as that of the human mind, and i am at a loss to perceive a difference of kind between them, however much they may differ in degree and in the manner in which they are expressed. the gradations of the moral faculties among the higher animals and man are, moreover, so imperceptible, that to deny to the first a certain sense of responsibility and consciousness would certainly be an exaggeration of the difference between animals and man. there exists, besides, as much individuality within their respective capabilities among animals as among man, as every sportsman, or every keeper of menageries, or every farmer and shepherd can testify, who has had a large experience with wild, or tamed, or domesticated animals. this argues strongly in favour of the existence in every animal of an immaterial principle, similar to that which, by its excellence and superior endowments, places man so much above animals. yet the principle exists unquestionably, and whether it be called soul, reason, or instinct, it presents, in the whole range of organised beings, a series of phenomena closely linked together, and upon it are based not only the higher manifestations of the mind, but the very permanence of the specific differences which characterise every organ. most of the arguments of philosophy in favour of the immortality of man apply equally to the permanency of this principle in other living beings."* (* contributions to the "natural history of the united states of north america" volume part pages and .) professor huxley, when commenting on a passage in professor owen's memoir, above cited, argues that there is a unity in psychical as in physical plan among animated beings, and adds, that although he cannot go so far as to say that "the determination of the difference between homo and pithecus is the anatomist's difficulty," yet no impartial judge can doubt that the roots, as it were, of those great faculties which confer on man his immeasurable superiority above all other animate things are traceable far down into the animate world. the dog, the cat, and the parrot, return love for our love and hatred for our hatred. they are capable of shame and of sorrow, and though they may have no logic nor conscious ratiocination, no one who has watched their ways can doubt that they possess that power of rational cerebration which evolves reasonable acts from the premises furnished by the senses--a process which takes fully as large a share as conscious reason in human activity.* (* "natural history review" number january page .) grounds for referring man to a distinct kingdom of nature. few if any of the authors above cited, while they admit so fully the analogy which exists between the faculties of man and the inferior animals, are disposed to underrate the enormous gap which separates man from the brutes, and if they scarcely allow him to be referable to a distinct order, and much less to a separate sub-class, on purely physical grounds, it does not follow that they would object to the reasoning of m. quatrefages, who says, in his work on the "unity of the human species," that man must form a kingdom by himself if once we permit his moral and intellectual endowments to have their due weight in classification. as to his organisation, he observes, "we find in the mammalia nearly absolute identity of anatomical structure, bone for bone, muscle for muscle, nerve for nerve--similar organs performing like functions. it is not by a vertical position on his feet, the os sublime of ovid, which he shares with the penguin, nor by his mental faculties, which, though more developed, are fundamentally the same as those of animals, nor by his powers of perception, will, memory, and a certain amount of reason, nor by articulate speech, which he shares with birds and some mammalia, and by which they express ideas comprehended not only by individuals of their own species but often by man, nor is it by the faculties of the heart, such as love and hatred, which are also shared by quadrupeds and birds, but it is by something completely foreign to the mere animal, and belonging exclusively to man, that we must establish a separate kingdom for him (page ). these distinguishing characters," he goes on to say, "are the abstract notion of good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, or the moral faculty, and a belief in a world beyond ours, and in certain mysterious beings, or a being of a higher nature than ours, whom we ought to fear or revere; in other words, the religious faculty."--page . by these two attributes the moral and the religious, not common to man and the brutes, m. quatrefages proposes to distinguish the human from the animal kingdom. but he omits to notice one essential character, which dr. sumner, the late archbishop of canterbury, brought out in strong relief fifty years ago in his "records of creation." "there are writers," he observes, "who have taken an extraordinary pleasure in levelling the broad distinction which separates man from the brute creation. misled to a false conclusion by the infinite variety of nature's productions, they have described a chain of existence connecting the vegetable with the animal world, and the different orders of animals one with another, so as to rise by an almost imperceptible gradation from the tribe of simiae to the lowest of the human race, and from these upwards to the most refined. but if a comparison were to be drawn, it should be taken, not from the upright form, which is by no means confined to mankind, nor even from the vague term reason, which cannot always be accurately separated from instinct, but from that power of progressive and improvable reason, which is man's peculiar and exclusive endowment." "it has been sometimes alleged, and may be founded on fact, that there is less difference between the highest brute animal and the lowest savage than between the savage and the most improved man. but, in order to warrant the pretended analogy, it ought to be also true that this lowest savage is no more capable of improvement than the chimpanzee or orang-outang." "animals," he adds, "are born what they are intended to remain. nature has bestowed upon them a certain rank, and limited the extent of their capacity by an impassable decree. man she has empowered and obliged to become the artificer of his own rank in the scale of beings by the peculiar gift of improvable reason."* (* "records of creation" volume chapter nd edition .) we have seen that professor agassiz, in his "essay on classification," above cited, speaks of the existence in every animal of "an immaterial principle similar to that which, by its excellence and superior endowments, places man so much above animals;" and he remarks, "that most of the arguments of philosophy in favour of the immortality of man, apply equally to the permanency of this principle in other living beings." although the author has no intention by this remark to impugn the truth of the great doctrine alluded to, it may be well to observe, that if some of the arguments in favour of a future state are applicable in common to man and the lower animals, they are by no means those which are the weightiest and most relied on. it is no doubt true that, in both, the identity of the individual outlasts many changes of form and structure which take place during the passage from the infant to the adult state, and from that to old age, and the loss again and again of every particle of matter which had entered previously into the composition of the body during its growth, and the substitution of new elements in their place, while the individual remains always the same, carries the analogy a step farther. but beyond this we cannot push the comparison. we cannot imagine this world to be a place of trial and moral discipline for any of the inferior animals, nor can any of them derive comfort and happiness from faith in a hereafter. to man alone is given this belief, so consonant to his reason, and so congenial to the religious sentiments implanted by nature in his soul, a doctrine which tends to raise him morally and intellectually in the scale of being, and the fruits of which are, therefore, most opposite in character to those which grow out of error and delusion. the opponents of the theory of transmutation sometimes argue that, if there had been a passage by variation from the lower primates to man, the geologist ought ere this to have detected some fossil remains of the intermediate links of the chain. but what we have said respecting the absence of gradational forms between the recent and pliocene mammalia may serve to show the weakness in the present state of science of any argument based on such negative evidence, especially in the case of man, since we have not yet reached those pages of the great book of nature, in which alone we have any right to expect to find records of the missing links alluded to. the countries of the anthropomorphous apes are the tropical regions of africa, and the islands of borneo and sumatra, lands which may be said to be quite unknown in reference to their pliocene and pleistocene mammalia. man is an old-world type, and it is not in brazil, the only equatorial region where ossiferous caverns have yet been explored, that the discovery, in a fossil state, of extinct forms allied to the human, could be looked for. lund, a danish naturalist, found in brazil, not only extinct sloths and armadilloes, but extinct genera of fossil monkeys, but all of the american type, and, therefore, widely departing in their dentition and some other characters from the primates of the old world. at some future day, when many hundred species of extinct quadrumana may have been brought to light, the naturalist may speculate with advantage on this subject; at present we must be content to wait patiently, and not to allow our judgment respecting transmutation to be influenced by the want of evidence, which it would be contrary to analogy to look for in pleistocene deposits in any districts, which as yet we have carefully examined. for, as we meet with extinct kangaroos and wombats in australia, extinct llamas and sloths in south america, so in equatorial africa, and in certain islands of the east indian archipelago, may we hope to meet hereafter with lost types of the anthropoid primates, allied to the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang-outang. [ ] europe, during the pliocene period, seems not to have enjoyed a climate fitting it to be the habitation of the quadrumanous mammalia; but we no sooner carry back our researches into miocene times, where plants and insects, like those of oeningen, and shells, like those of the faluns of the loire, would imply a warmer temperature both of sea and land, than we begin to discover fossil apes and monkeys north of the alps and pyrenees. among the few species already detected, two at least belong to the anthropomorphous class. one of these, the dryopithecus of lartet, a gibbon or long-armed ape, about equal to man in stature, was obtained in the year in the upper miocene strata at sansan, near the foot of the pyrenees in the south of france, and one bone of the same ape is reported to have been since procured from a deposit of corresponding age at eppelsheim, near darmstadt, in a latitude answering to that of the southern counties of england.* (* owen, "geologist" november .) but according to the doctrine of progression it is not in these miocene strata, but in those of pliocene and pleistocene date, in more equatorial regions, that there will be the greatest chance of discovering hereafter some species more highly organised than the gorilla and chimpanzee. the only reputed fossil monkey of eocene date, namely, that found in at kyson, in suffolk, and so determined by professor owen, has recently been pronounced by the same anatomist, after re-examination, and when he had ampler materials at his command, to be a pachyderm. m. rutimeyer,* however, an able osteologist, referred to in the earlier chapters of this work, has just announced the discovery in eocene strata, in the swiss jura, of a monkey allied to the lemurs, but as he has only obtained as yet a small fragment of a jaw with three molar teeth, we must wait for fuller information before we confidently rely on the claims of his coenopithecus lemuroides to take rank as one of the primates. (* rutimeyer, "eocene saugethiere" zurich .) hallam on man's place in the creation. hallam, in his "literature of europe," after indulging in some profound reflections on "the thoughts of pascal," and the theological dogmas of his school respecting the fallen nature of man, thus speaks of man's place in the creation--"it might be wandering from the proper subject of these volumes if we were to pause, even shortly, to inquire whether, while the creation of a world so full of evil must ever remain the most inscrutable of mysteries, we might not be led some way in tracing the connection of moral and physical evil in mankind, with his place in that creation, and especially, whether the law of continuity, which it has not pleased his maker to break with respect to his bodily structure, and which binds that, in the unity of one great type, to the lower forms of animal life by the common conditions of nourishment, reproduction, and self-defence, has not rendered necessary both the physical appetites and the propensities which terminate in self; whether again the superior endowments of his intellectual nature, his susceptibility of moral emotion, and of those disinterested affections which, if not exclusively, he far more intensely possesses than an inferior being--above all, the gifts of conscience and a capacity to know god, might not be expected, even beforehand, by their conflict with the animal passions, to produce some partial inconsistencies, some anomalies at least, which he could not himself explain in so compound a being. every link in the long chain of creation does not pass by easy transition into the next. there are necessary chasms, and, as it were, leaps from one creature to another, which, though no exceptions to the law of continuity, are accommodations of it to a new series of being. if man was made in the image of god, he was also made in the image of an ape. the framework of the body of him who has weighed the stars and made the lightning his slave, approaches to that of a speechless brute, who wanders in the forests of sumatra. thus standing on the frontier land between animal and angelic natures, what wonder that he should partake of both!"* (* hallam, "introduction to the literature of europe" etc. volume page .) the law of continuity here spoken of, as not being violated by occasional exceptions, or by leaps from one creature to another, is not the law of variation and natural selection above explained (chapter ), but that unity of plan supposed to exist in the divine mind, whether realised or not materially and in the visible creation, of which the "links do not pass by an easy transition" the one into the other, at least as beheld by us. dr. asa gray, an eminent american botanist, to whom we are indebted for a philosophical essay of great merit on the "origin of species by variation and natural selection," has well observed, when speaking of the axiom of leibnitz, "natura non agit saltatim," that nature secures her ends and makes her distinctions, on the whole, manifest and real, but without any important breaks or long leaps. "we need not wonder that gradations between species and varieties should occur, or that genera and other groups should not be absolutely limited, though they are represented to be so in our systems. the classifications of the naturalist define abruptly where nature more or less blends. our systems are nothing if not definite." the same writer reminds us that "plants and animals are so different, that the difficulty of the ordinary observer would be to find points of comparison, whereas, with the naturalist, it is all the other way. all the broad differences vanish one by one as we approach the lower confines of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and no absolute distinction whatever is now known between them."* (* gray, "natural selection not inconsistent with natural theology" trubner & co. london page .) the author of an elaborate review of darwin's "origin of species," himself an accomplished geologist, declares that if we embrace the doctrine of the continuous variation of all organic forms from the lowest to the highest, including man as the last link in the chain of being, there must have been a transition from the instinct of the brute to the noble mind of man; and in that case, "where," he asks, "are the missing links, and at what point of his progressive improvement did man acquire the spiritual part of his being, and become endowed with the awful attribute of immortality?"* (* physical theories of the phenomena of life "fraser's magazine" july page .) before we raise objections of this kind to a scientific hypothesis, it would be well to pause and inquire whether there are no analogous enigmas in the constitution of the world around us, some of which present even greater difficulties than that here stated. when we contemplate, for example, the many hundred millions of human beings who now people the earth, we behold thousands who are doomed to helpless imbecility, and we may trace an insensible gradation between them and the half-witted, and from these again to individuals of perfect understanding, so that tens of thousands must have existed in the course of ages, who in their moral and intellectual condition, have exhibited a passage from the irrational to the rational, or from the irresponsible to the responsible. moreover we may infer from the returns of the registrar general of births and deaths in great britain, and from quetelet's statistics of belgium, that one-fourth of the human race die in early infancy, nearly one-tenth before they are a month old; so that we may safely affirm that millions perish on the earth in every century, in the first few hours of their existence. to assign to such individuals their appropriate psychological place in the creation is one of the unprofitable themes on which theologians and metaphysicians have expended much ingenious speculation. the philosopher, without ignoring these difficulties, does not allow them to disturb his conviction that "whatever is, is right," nor do they check his hopes and aspirations in regard to the high destiny of his species; but he also feels that it is not for one who is so often confounded by the painful realities of the present, to test the probability of theories respecting the past, by their agreement or want of agreement with some ideal of a perfect universe which those who are opposed to opinions may have pictured to themselves. we may also demur to the assumption that the hypothesis of variation and natural selection obliges us to assume that there was an absolutely insensible passage from the highest intelligence of the inferior animals to the improvable reason of man. the birth of an individual of transcendent genius, of parents who have never displayed any intellectual capacity above the average standard of their age or race, is a phenomenon not to be lost sight of, when we are conjecturing whether the successive steps in advance by which a progressive scheme has been developed may not admit of occasional strides, constituting breaks in an otherwise continuous series of psychical changes. the inventors of useful arts, the poets and prophets of the early stages of a nation's growth, the promulgators of new systems of religion, ethics, and philosophy, or of new codes of laws, have often been looked upon as messengers from heaven, and after their death have had divine honours paid to them, while fabulous tales have been told of the prodigies which accompanied their birth. nor can we wonder that such notions have prevailed when we consider what important revolutions in the moral and intellectual world such leading spirits have brought about; and when we reflect that mental as well as physical attributes are transmissible by inheritance, so that we may possibly discern in such leaps the origin of the superiority of certain races of mankind. in our own time the occasional appearance of such extraordinary mental powers may be attributed to atavism; but there must have been a beginning to the series of such rare and anomalous events. if, in conformity with the theory of progression, we believe mankind to have risen slowly from a rude and humble starting point, such leaps may have successively introduced not only higher and higher forms and grades of intellect, but at a much remoter period may have cleared at one bound the space which separated the highest stage of the unprogressive intelligence of the inferior animals from the first and lowest form of improvable reason manifested by man. to say that such leaps constitute no interruption to the ordinary course of nature is more than we are warranted in affirming. in the case of the occasional birth of an individual of superior genius there is certainly no break in the regular genealogical succession; and when all the mists of mythological fiction are dispelled by historical criticism, when it is acknowledged that the earth did not tremble at the nativity of the gifted infant and that the face of heaven was not full of fiery shapes, still a mighty mystery remains unexplained, and it is the order of the phenomena, and not their cause, which we are able to refer to the usual course of nature. dr. asa gray, in the excellent essay already cited, has pointed out that there is no tendency in the doctrine of variation and natural selection to weaken the foundations of natural theology, for, consistently with the derivative hypothesis of species, we may hold any of the popular views respecting the manner in which the changes of the natural world are brought about. we may imagine "that events and operations in general go on in virtue simply of forces communicated at the first, and without any subsequent interference, or we may hold that now and then, and only now and then, there is a direct interposition of the deity; or, lastly, we may suppose that all the changes are carried on by the immediate orderly and constant, however infinitely diversified, action of the intelligent, efficient cause." they who maintain that the origin of an individual, as well as the origin of a species or a genus, can be explained only by the direct action of the creative cause, may retain their favourite theory compatibly with the doctrine of transmutation. professor agassiz, having observed that, "while human thought is consecutive, divine thought is simultaneous," dr. asa gray has replied that, "if divine thought is simultaneous, we have no right to affirm the same of divine action." the whole course of nature may be the material embodiment of a preconcerted arrangement; and if the succession of events be explained by transmutation, the perpetual adaptation of the organic world to new conditions leaves the argument in favour of design, and therefore of a designer, as valid as ever; "for to do any work by an instrument must require, and therefore presuppose, the exertion rather of more than of less power, than to do it directly."* (* asa gray, "natural selection not inconsistent with natural theology" trubner & co. london page .) as to the charge of materialism brought against all forms of the development theory, dr. gray has done well to remind us that "of the two great minds of the seventeenth century, newton and leibnitz, both profoundly religious as well as philosophical, one produced the theory of gravitation, the other objected to that theory, that it was subversive of natural religion."* (* ibid. page .) it may be said that, so far from having a materialistic tendency, the supposed introduction into the earth at successive geological periods of life--sensation--instinct--the intelligence of the higher mammalia bordering on reason--and lastly the improvable reason of man himself, presents us with a picture of the ever-increasing dominion of mind over matter. notes. [footnote : the classification of the strata above the chalk, as at present employed by the majority of british geologists, is merely a slight modification of that proposed by lyell in . the subdivisions generally recognised are as follows (lake and rastall, "textbook of geology," london, , page ):-- neogene: pleistocene pliocene miocene. palaeogene: oligocene eocene. this differs chiefly from lyell's classification in the introduction of the term oligocene for the upper part of the original eocene, which was somewhat unwieldy. in the earlier editions of the "antiquity of man" and of the "principles of geology," the strata here classed as pleistocene were designated as post-pliocene. the term "diluvium," now obsolete in britain but still lingering on the continent, is equivalent to pleistocene. this subdivision is still sometimes separated from the tertiary, as the quaternary epoch. this, however, is unnecessary and indeed objectionable, as attributing too great importance to relatively insignificant deposits. there is no definite break, either stratigraphical or palaeontological, at the top of the pliocene, and it is most natural to regard the tertiary epoch as still in progress. equally unnecessary is the separation of the post-glacial deposits as "recent," a distinction which still prevails in many quarters, apparently with the sole object of adding another name to an already over-burdened list.] [footnote : the table of strata here printed is not that given by lyell in the later editions of the "antiquity of man." this would have required so much explanation in the light of modern work that it was thought better to abolish it altogether and to substitute an entirely new table, which is to some extent a compromise between the numerous classifications now in vogue. in this form it is only strictly applicable to the british isles, though the divisions adopted in other countries are generally similar, and in many cases identical.] [footnote : a similar succession of forest-beds, five in number, has been observed in the peat of the fenland, near ely. each bed consists for the most part of a single species of tree, and a definite succession of oak, yew, scotch fir, alder, and willow has been made out. the forest beds are supposed to indicate temporarily drier conditions, due either to changes of climate or to slight uplift of the land, the growth of peat being renewed during periods of damp climate or of depression of the land. (see clement reid, "submerged forests," cambridge, .)] [footnote : since the "stone age," in the sense in which the term is here employed, obviously occupied an enormous lapse of time and embraced very different stages of culture, it has been found convenient to subdivide it into two primary subdivisions. for these lord avebury proposed in the terms palaeolithic and neolithic. (" prehistoric times," london, , page .) the first comprises the ages during which man fabricated flint implements solely by chipping, whereas the implements of neolithic age are polished by rubbing. but there is another and more fundamental distinction. palaeolithic man was exclusively a hunter, and consequently nomadic in his habits; neolithic man possessed domesticated animals and cultivated crops. a pastoral and agricultural life implies a settled abode, and these are found, for example, in the lake-villages of switzerland. the "kitchen-middens" of denmark also indicate long continuance in one place, in this instance the seashore.] [footnote : the famous case of the so-called temple of serapis at pozzuoli, has given rise to a considerable literature. the subject is discussed by suess at length ("des antlitz der erde," vienna, , volume page , or english translation, "the face of the earth," oxford, ). this author shows that the whole region is highly volcanic, and consequently very liable to disturbance, much relative movement of land and sea having occurred within historic times. hence the facts here observed cannot be taken as evidence for any general upward or downward movement of wide-spread or universal extent.] [footnote : darwin, "voyage of the beagle," chapter , and a much fuller account in the same author's "geological observations on the volcanic islands and parts of south america visited during the voyage of h.m.s. beagle," chapter .] [footnote : for a full discussion of the evidence for and against continental elevation and subsidence in general, and as affecting the british isles and scandinavia in particular, see sir a. geikie's presidential address to the geological society for (" proceedings of the geological society"' volume , , pages to .). here it is shown that the oldest raised beaches of scotland are pre-glacial, and the same also holds for the south of ireland.] [footnote : the argument here employed is fallacious, since the mere existence of a distinct beach implies a pause in the movement and a long continuance at one level. it is impossible to form any estimate of the lapse of time necessary for the building up of a beach-terrace. we can only, in some cases, obtain a measure of the time that elapsed between the formation of two successive beaches, as in this instance.] [footnote : the "strand lines," or raised beaches of norway, have given rise to much discussion, of which a summary will be found in the address cited in note .] [footnote : a considerable number of skulls and skeletons of the neanderthal type have now been found in different parts of southern europe, extending from belgium to gibraltar and croatia, and it is now known that this type of skull is associated with flint implements of mousterian age. (see note .)] [footnote : the most important discovery of recent years in this connection is that made in sussex by mr. c. dawson and dr. a. smith woodward; this find is described in great detail in the "quarterly journal of the geological society," volume , , pages to . at a height of about feet above the present level of the river ouse, at piltdown, near uckfield, is a gravel, containing many brown flints of peculiar character, some of which are implements of chellean or earlier type, associated with some remains of pleistocene animals and a few of older date, derived from pliocene deposits. embedded in this gravel were found fragments of a human skull and lower jaw of very remarkable type, showing in some respects distinctly simian characters, while in other respects it is less ape-like than the mousterian skulls of neanderthal and other localities. for this form the name of eoanthropus has been proposed, thus constituting a new genus of the hominidae.] [footnote : it will be well at this point to give a brief summary of the modern classification of the palaeolithic implement-bearing deposits of europe. from the labours of many geologists and prehistoric archaeologists, especially in france, a definite succession of types of implement has been established, and in some cases it has been found possible to correlate these with actual human remains and with certain well-marked events in the physical history of pleistocene times, especially with the advance and retreat of ice-sheets. the present state of our knowledge is admirably summarised by professor sollas ("ancient hunters," london, ), and from that work the following note is condensed. the stages of palaeolithic culture now recognised are as follows:-- azilian magdalenian solutrean aurignacian mousterian acheulean chellean strepyan mesvinian. below the mesvinian comes the nebulous region of "eoliths," which are not yet definitely proved to be of human workmanship. the neanderthal skull belongs to the mousterian stage, but the oldest known definitely human remain, the jaw from the mauer sands near heidelberg, may be older than any of these, indeed by some it is assigned to the first interglacial period of penck and bruckner (see note ). for figures of the types of implement characterising each period, see "guide to the antiquities of the stone age in the department of british and medieval antiquities," british museum, nd edition, london, , pages to . this publication gives an admirable summary of recent knowledge on this subject. for an excellent and critical summary of the latest researches on palaeolithic man up till the end of the aurignacian period, see duckworth, "prehistoric man," cambridge, . see also note .] [footnote : sir john evans, k.c.b. ( - ), was one of the foremost authorities on prehistoric archaeology and a prolific writer on the subject. his best known work is "the ancient stone implements, weapons, and ornaments of great britain," nd edition, .] [footnote : by the expression "celtic weapons of the stone period" is presumably meant neolithic implements, with polished surfaces.] [footnote : it has recently been shown that the growth of peat is a very slow process, and at the present time it is in many places either at a standstill or even in a state of retrogression. in the peat-mosses of scotland, lewis has traced nine successive layers, marked by different floras. the lowest of these and another at a higher level are distinctly of an arctic character, the intermediate forest beds, on the other hand, indicate periods of milder climate, when the limit of the growth of trees was at a higher level in scotland than is now the case. from these facts it is certain that the peat-mosses of scotland and northern england date back at least as far as the later stages of the glacial period, and indicate at least one mild interglacial episode, when the climate was somewhat warmer than it now is. (see lewis, "science progress," volume , , page .) hence the statements of the french workmen, here quoted, do not possess much significance.] [footnote : cyrena fluminalis is very abundant in the gravels of an old terrace of the river cam, at barnwell, in the suburbs of cambridge, and also in glacial gravels at kelsey hill in holderness. it is a very remarkable fact that this shell, now an inhabitant of warm regions, should be so abundant in these pleistocene deposits, in close association with glacial accumulations.] [footnote : the implement-bearing deposits of hoxne, in suffolk, were investigated with great care by a committee of the british association, and the results were published in a special and detailed report ("the relation of palaeolithic man to the glacial epoch," "report of the british association," liverpool, , pages to ). the deposit consists of a series of lacustrine or fluviatile strata with plant remains, some being arctic in character, resting on chalky boulder clay, and this again on sand. the palaeolithic deposits are all clearly later than the latest boulder-clay of east anglia, and between their formation and that of the glacial deposits at least two important climatic changes took place, indicating a very considerable lapse of time. mention may conveniently be made here of the supposed discovery of the remains of pre-glacial man at ipswich, which appears to be founded on errors of observation. the boulder-clay above the interment is, according to the best authorities, merely a landslip or flow.] [footnote : it has been suggested with a considerable degree of probability, that in auvergne volcanic eruptions persisted even into historic times. the subject is obscure, depending on the interpretation of difficult passages in two latin chronicles of the fifth century. the most obvious meaning of both passages would certainly appear to be the occurrence of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, but attempts have been made to explain them as referring to some artificial conflagration, possibly the burning of a town by an invader. (see bonney, "volcanoes," rd edition, london, , page .)] [footnote : in the early days of glacial geology in britain, it was commonly accepted that the phenomena could be most satisfactorily explained on the hypothesis of a general submergence of the northern parts of the country to a depth of many hundreds of feet, and this in spite of the original comparison by agassiz of the glacial deposits of britain to those of the alps. in later times, however, a school of geologists arose who attributed the glaciation of britain to land-ice of the continental or greenland type. of late years this school has been dominant in british geology, with a few notable exceptions, of whom the most important is professor bonney. the difficulties presented by both theories are almost equally great, and at the present time, in spite of the vehemence of the supporters of the land-ice theory, it is impossible to hold any dogmatic views on the subject. against the doctrine of submergence is the absence of glacial deposits in places where they would naturally be expected to occur if the whole of the british isles north of the thames and bristol channel had been covered by the sea, together with the very general absence of sea-shells in the deposits. the objections to the land-ice hypothesis are largely of a mechanical nature. if we take into account the lateral extent and the thickness that can be assigned to the ice-sheet, we are at once confronted by very considerable difficulties as to the sufficiency of the driving-power behind the ice. another great difficulty is the shallowness of the north sea, in which a comparatively thin mass of ice would run aground at almost any point. it has been calculated that the maximum slope of the surface of the ice from norway to the english coast could not exceed half a degree, and it is therefore difficult to see what force could compel it to move forward at all, much less to climb steep slopes in the way postulated by the extremists of this school.] [footnote : the most complete account of the geology of the norfolk coast is contained in "the geology of cromer," by clement reid ("memoir of the geological survey"). (see also harmer, "the pleistocene period in the eastern counties of england," "geology in the field, the jubilee volume of the geologists association," , chapter .). above the norwich crag several more subdivisions are now recognised, and the complete succession of the pliocene and pleistocene strata of east anglia may be summarised as follows:-- pleistocene: peat and alluvium gravel terraces of the present river systems gravels of the old river-systems plateau gravels chalky boulder-clay interglacial sands and gravels and contorted drift cromer till arctic plant bed. pliocene: cromer forest series weybourn crag chillesford crag norwich crag red crag coralline crag. [footnote : it is now generally agreed that the tree-stumps in the cromer forest bed are not in the position of growth. many of them are upside down or lying on their sides, and they were probably floated into their present position by the waters of a river flowing to the north. this river was a tributary of the rhine which then flowed for several hundred miles over a plain now forming the bed of the north sea, collecting all the drainage of eastern england, and debouching into the north atlantic somewhere to the south of the faroe isles. (see harmer, "the pleistocene period in the eastern counties of england," "geological association jubilee volume," london, , pages to .)] [footnote : of late years an enormous number of characteristic rocks from norway and sweden have been recognised in the drifts of eastern england, as far south as essex and middlesex. one of the most easily identifiable types is the well-known rhombporphyry of the christiania fjord, a rock which occurs nowhere else in the world, and is quite unmistakable in appearance. along with it are many of the distinctive soda-syenites found in the same district, the granites of southern sweden, and many others. the literature of the subject is very large, but many details may be found in the annual reports of the british association for the last twenty years.] from a study of these erratics it has been found possible to draw important conclusions as to the direction and sequence of the ice streams which flowed over these regions during the different stages of the glacial period.] [footnote : during his first crossing of greenland from east to west, nansen attained a height of feet on a vast expanse of frozen snow, and it is believed that towards the north the surface of this great snow-plateau rises to even greater elevations. the surface of the snow is perfectly clean and free from moraine-material. no rock in situ has been seen in the interior of greenland at a distance greater than miles from the coast. a great amount of valuable information concerning the glacial conditions of greenland is to be found in the "meddelelser om gronland," a danish publication, but containing many summaries in french or english. for a good account of the phenomena seen in the coastal region of the west coast, see drygalski, "gronland-expedition," a large monograph published by the gesellschaft fur physischen erdkunde, berlin, .] [footnote : the argument is here considerably understated. the southern point of greenland, cape farewell, is in the same latitude as the shetland islands and christiania, and only one degree north of stockholm; disko is in about the same latitude as the north cape. hence the inhabited portion of greenland is in the same latitude as norway and sweden, both fertile and well-populated countries. even in central norway, in the gudbrandsdal and romsdal, thick forests grow up to a height of at least feet above sea-level, a much greater elevation than trees now attain in the british isles. this latter fact is probably to be attributed to the protective effect of thick snow lying throughout the winter.] [footnote : for a summary of the most recent views as to the classification and succession of the glacial deposits of the british isles, see lake an rastall, "textbook of geology," london, , pages to . reference may also be made to jukes-browne, "the building of the british isles," london, , pages to .] [footnote : glacier-lakes are fairly common among the fjords of the west coast of greenland, and illustrate very well what must have been the state of affairs in glen roy at the time of formation of the parallel roads.] [footnote : the high-level shell-bearing deposits of moel tryfan, gloppa, near oswestry, and macclesfield, have given rise to much controversy between the supporters of submergence and of land-ice. at moel tryfan certain sands and gravels, with erratics, at a height of about feet, contain abundant marine shells, generally much broken. the northern or seaward face of the hill is much plastered with drift, but none is to be found on the landward side, and it is suggested that the shell-bearing material is the ground-moraine of a great ice-sheet that came in from the irish sea, and was forced up on to the welsh coast, just reaching the watershed, but failing to overtop it. with regard to the explanation by submergence, the great objection is the absence of marine drift on the landward side, which is very difficult to explain if the whole had been submerged sufficiently to allow of normal marine deposits at such a great height. the shell beds of macclesfield and gloppa are at a less elevation but of essentially similar character. the shell-bearing deposits of moel tryfan were examined by a committee of the british association. (see "report of the british association" dover, , pages to .) at the end of this report is an extensive bibliography.] [footnote : during the last forty years the deep-sea dredging expeditions of h. m.s. challenger and others have shown the abundance and variety of animal life at great depths, especially in the arctic and antarctic seas. for a recent summary, see murray and hjort, "the depths of the ocean," london, .] [footnote : it is now generally admitted that these shell-beds in wexford are of pliocene age, and they therefore have no bearing on the subject under discussion.] [footnote : the boulder deposit at selsey has been described by mr. clement reid ("quarterly journal of the geological society," volume , , page ). immediately above the tertiary beds is a hard greenish clay, full of derived tertiary fossils and pleistocene shells with large flints and erratic blocks, some of the latter weighing several tons. they include granite, greenstone, schist, slate, quartzite, and sandstone, and most of them must have been transported for a long distance. above them are black muds with marine shells, then a shingle beach, and above all the coombe rock. (see next note.)] [footnote : the brighton elephant-bed and its equivalent, the coombe rock, are fully described by clement reid ("on the origin of dry chalk valleys and the coombe rock," "quarterly journal of the geological society," volume , , page ). the coombe rock is a mass of unstratified flints and chalk debris filling the lower parts of the dry valleys (coombes) of the south downs and gradually passing into the brick-earth (loam) of the coastal plain. it is clearly a torrential accumulation, and is supposed to have been formed while the chalk was frozen, thus preventing percolation of water and causing the surface water to run off as strong streams. this must have occurred during some part of the glacial period, which would naturally be a period of heavy precipitation. of very similar origin is the "head" of cornwall, a surface deposit often rich in tinstone and other minerals of economic value. the coombe rock has recently been correlated with deposits of mousterian age.] [footnote : the former extension of the alpine glaciers and the deposits formed by them have been exhaustively investigated by penck and bruckner ("die alpen im eiszeitalter," volumes, leipzig, to ). in this monumental work the authors claim to have established the occurrence of four periods of advance of the ice, to which they give the names of gunz, mindel, riss, and wurm glaciations, with corresponding interglacial genial episodes, when the climate was possibly even somewhat warmer than now. their conclusions and the data on which they are established are summarised by sollas (" ancient hunters," london, , especially pages to ). for a general account of the glaciers of the alps and their accompanying phenomena, see bonney, "the building of the alps," london, , pages to .] [footnote : at the time of the maximum advance of the ice, during the riss period of penck and bruckner, the terminal moraine of the great glacier of the rhone extended as far as the city of lyon, and towards the north-east it became continuous with the similar moraine of the rhine glacier.] [footnote : for the successive phases of advance and retreat of the alpine glaciers, see the works quoted in note .] [footnote : the loess of central europe includes deposits of two different ages. according to penck the "older loess" was formed in the period of warm and dry climate that intervened between the third and fourth glacial episodes, while the "younger loess" is post-glacial. both divisions are for the most part aeolian deposits, formed by the redistribution of fine glacial mud originally laid down in water and carried by the wind often to considerable heights. a part, however, of the so-called loess of northern france, e.g. in the valley of the somme, is rain-wash, similar in character to the brick-earth of parts of south-eastern england. the older loess contains acheulean implements, while the younger loess is of aurignacian age. the greatest development of the loess is in central asia and in china. (see richthofen, "china," berlin, .) in china the loess reaches a thickness of several thousand feet, and whole mountain-ranges are sometimes almost completely buried in it. in the deserts of central asia the formation of the loess is still in progress. a very similar deposit, called adobe, is also found in certain parts of the mississippi valley. the loess is a fine calcareous silt or clay of a yellowish colour, quite soft and crumbling between the fingers. however, it resists denudation in a remarkable manner, and in china it often stands up in vertical walls hundreds of feet in height. this property is probably assisted by the presence of numerous fine tubes arranged vertically and lined with calcium carbonate; these are supposed to have been formed in the first place by fibrous rootlets.] [footnote : although highly probable, it cannot yet be regarded as conclusively demonstrated that the pleistocene glaciations of europe and of north america were exactly contemporaneous. the ice--sheets in each case radiated from independent centres which were not in the extreme north of either continent, and were not in any way connected with a general polar ice-cap. the european centre was over the baltic region or the south of scandinavia, and the american centre in the neighbourhood of hudson's bay. the southern margin of the american ice-sheet extended about as far south as latitude degrees north in the area lying south of the great lakes, whereas the north european ice barely passed the limit of degrees north in central europe. this greater southward extension in america was doubtless correlated with the same causes as now produce the low winter temperatures of the eastern states, especially the cold newfoundland current. the literature of north american glacial geology has now attained colossal dimensions, and it is impossible to give here even a short abstract of the main conclusions. for a general summary reference may be made to chamberlin and salisbury, "geology," volume ; "earth history," london and new york, ; or the same authors' "geology, shorter course," london and new york, .] [footnote : during the last fifty years scarcely any geological subject has given rise to a greater amount of speculation than the cause of the ice age, and the solution of the problem is still apparently far off. the theories put forward may for convenience be divided into three groups, namely astronomical, geographical, and meteorological. as examples of astronomical explanation, we may take the well-known theory of adhemar and crohl, which is founded on changes in the ellipticity of the earth's orbit. this is expounded and amplified by sir robert ball in his "cause of an ice age." the weak point of this theory, which is mathematically unassailable, is that it proves too much, and postulates a constant succession of glacial periods throughout earth-history, and for this there is no evidence. the geographical explanations are chiefly founded on supposed changes in the distribution of sea and land, with consequent diversion of cold and warm currents. another suggestion is that the glaciated areas had undergone elevation into mountain regions, but this is in conflict with evidence for submergence beneath the sea in certain cases. meteorological hypotheses, such as that of harmer, founded on a different arrangement of air pressures and wind-directions, seem to offer the most promising field for exploration and future work, but it is clear that much still remains to be explained.] [footnote : the reptile-bearing elgin sandstones are of triassic age, and they contain a most remarkable assemblage of strange and eccentric forms, especially anomodont reptiles resembling those found in the karroo formation of south africa.] [footnote : the meaning of this statement is not very clear. the conifers are not dicotyledons: their seeds contain numerous cotyledons, up to twenty in number, and the whole plant, and especially the reproductive system, belongs to a lower stage of development. the argument here employed is therefore fallacious, and in point of fact the different groups actually appeared in the order postulated by the theory of evolution, namely: ( ) gymnosperms, ( ) monocotyledons, ( ) dicotyledons. see arber, "the origin of gymnosperms," "science progress," volume , , pages to .] [footnote : the part of the manuscript read to dr. hooker in was undoubtedly the "essay of ," forming the second part of the "foundations of the origin of species," a volume published by sir francis darwin on the occasion of the darwin centenary at cambridge in . (see also darwin's "life and letters," volume pages to .)] [footnote : this projected larger work, which is often referred to in the "origin of species," was never published as such, but darwin's views on various aspects of evolution were set forth in several later books, such as "the variation of animals and plants under domestication," "the descent of man," "various contrivances by which orchids are fertilised by insects," "movements and habits of climbing plants," "insectivorous plants," and others.] [footnote : with this section compare the famous chapter with the same title in the "origin of species."] [footnote : no attempt has been made to annotate this chapter, owing to the impossibility of doing so within reasonable compass. many of the theories here quoted, and the conclusions drawn from them, have not stood the test of time, and recent philological and ethnographical research have clearly shown the danger of attempting to infer the relationships of different peoples from their languages. the modifications undergone by the languages themselves are also subject to influences of such complex character, so largely artificial in their origin, that any attempt to compare them with natural evolution in the organic world must lead to false analogies. the chapter must be regarded as an interesting exposition of one phase of mid-victorian scientific thought, but having little real bearing on the subjects discussed in the rest of the book.] [footnote : that the prophecy here given was justified is shown by the discovery in java in , of the skull and parts of the skeleton of pithecanthropus erectus, a form which, according to the best authorities, must be regarded as in many ways intermediate between man and the apes, though perhaps with more human than ape-like characteristics. for an account of the circumstances of its discovery and a general description of the remains, see sollas, "ancient hunters," london, , pages to (with many references). within the last year or two interest in the ancestry of man has been greatly increased, especially by the piltdown discovery (see note ). this has led to a revision of the whole subject, and the views formerly held have undergone a certain amount of modification. it now seems certain that the different types of culture as represented by the succession of stages given in note do not correspond to a continuous development of one single race of mankind. there is, undoubtedly, a great break between the mousterian and aurignacian. mousterian or neanderthal man appears to have become extinct, possibly having been exterminated by a migration of the more highly developed aurignacian race, which may be regarded as the ancestor of modern man in europe. it appears, therefore, that the really important line of division comes, not as was formerly thought between palaeolithic and neolithic, but in the middle of the palaeolithic between mousterian and aurignacian. hence it appears that our classification will in the near future have to undergo revision, since the stages of culture from aurignacian to azilian show a much closer affinity to the neolithic than they do to the earlier palaeolithic. at the present time scarcely sufficient data are available to determine the relationship of pithecanthropus and eoanthropus to the later types of man. for an excellent summary of the most recent views see thacker, "the significance of the piltdown discovery," "science progress," volume , , page .] natural man by arthur b. moss price one penny. london: the progressive publishing company, stonecutter street. . natural man concerning the when and how of the origin of man nothing positive is known. genesis states that "god made man," but as the greatest intellects of modern times doubt the existence of deity, a ready acceptance of the mosaic account of the creation of the haman species can only take place among those who are not well qualified to weigh evidence, balance probabilities, and appraise the evidence of rival theories. the researches of men of science lead us to the belief that the authors of the first and second chapters of genesis were mistaken. they formulated a theory and imagined it to be a fact. darwin, haeckel, huxley, and other eminent scientists, dispute altogether the theory that man was created perfect, and in their works have proved to demonstration that the beings called men have evolved from lower organisms; that they have the same anatomical structure as the catarrhini apes; that there is a distinct blood-relationship between them, and that they have both had a common parentage. to establish the truth of the evolution theory, it is enough to look fairly at the facts of nature; to observe man under various aspects; to consider him in barbaric times, or in countries where he is not yet civilised; to see him in a nude condition, with nothing to cover him but a mass of hair which nature provides; to watch him in his struggle for life with his enemies, the destructive lower animals and his fellow men, and to find in the course of years that a higher form of man has evolved out of this barbaric creature. the evolution theory accounts for the facts as they are observed in life--facts which upon any other theory are quite inexplicable. and it must not be supposed that because the theory does not give a complete explanation to all the phenomena that it therefore is not reliable. haeckel says ("pedigree of man," p. ): "if we can only prove the general truth of the darwinian theory, our idea of the origin of man from lower vertebrata follows of necessity, and we are not obliged to give a special proof as to this latter view if the general proposition is well established." that the general proposition is well established is now admitted by the most enlightened of the opponents of darwinism. what is called the "evolution theory" is generally acknowledged to be removed from the region of hypothesis to that of fact. but it is not my purpose further to pursue the subject of man's origin, which, while it is confessedly a most interesting question, is one upon which no man who is not a skilled scientist can write or speak with authority. i can only deal with probabilities. nobody, so far as we know, was present to witness the first man spring into existence. indeed, we do not know that there was a first man! and if there was a first, it does not follow that he was conscious of being made, or when he was completed that he had the pleasure of seeing his maker, who told him how it was done. or, on the other hand, if he were evolved from some lower creature it does not follow that he was conscious of the evolution. but at least we can be sure that history speaks with no uncertain sound concerning man's progress in the world and the means by which it was achieved. as a civilised creature man is not many centuries old. even now we find many savage races existing on the earth, and in type so low in the scale are they that they more nearly resemble the brute beasts, both in intellect and in physique, than the higher forms of men. now if we would study the progress of the human race to any advantage, we must study it apart from all prejudice, and not allow religious or superstitious notions concerning the superiority of one class of people to warp our minds and prevent us from understanding the important part played by savage peoples in the battle of life. for it must always be remembered that man's history is one of fearful warfare, not only between men and men, but between man and the lower animals. it is no flight of the imagination to say that there exist the clearest proofs that man many ages ago lived in "holes in the earth," and went in constant fear of animals who sought him as their prey. sometimes he would have to scramble up trees to elude the vigilance of these sagacious beasts; sometimes the tree would form no place of safety, and he would have to run for dear life or become a living sacrifice to these savage beings. in the course of time man learnt how to keep himself warm, while the beasts of the field perished from cold or parched with thirst and famished with hunger, sunk and died; he learnt how to huddle himself up close to a fire in his mud-hut, out of all danger from the enemy. in addition to this he learnt how to speak, to communicate his thoughts to his fellows. these were great steps in advance. man was still in a nude condition. but now he began to form a theory as to the cause of the phænomena of the universe. he began to establish the reign of the gods. all his gods, naturally enough, at first were fetishes. those animals which he considered superior to himself he elected as special objects of worship. as soon as he found that these were not superior, but inferior, to himself, he began to make gods after his own image. out of small tribes in course of ages grew great nations. men could now manufacture weapons of destruction with which they could procure food and destroy their enemies; thus little by little were built up the nations of the earth. all advance, all progress towards civilisation made by primitive man was made by opposing with all his strength and skill the destructive forces of nature, and by strenuous attempts at improving upon human nature itself. was man then inherently depraved and prone to evil continually? not so. the germs of evil and good were alike sown in his nature; and if either of these was developed by favorable circumstances an evil or a good result followed of necessity. that man was not depraved by nature is seen by the fact that in the general evolution of things, instead of growing worse he has continued to improve--from the low, brutal and immoral creature of the past, to the purer, loftier, nobler being--the highest that can be found to-day. in his natural state, it is true, man was a wicked being. he had no intuitive knowledge of right and wrong. he had to perform an act, and he was never sure until he felt the results whether it was good or bad. in his natural state he was dirty, untruthful, unjust. no god came to tell him that "cleanliness was next to godliness;" nor admonish him to be truthful and just in all his dealings. he was left alone to use his own unaided intelligence as best he might. to test the truth of these assertions one has only to turn to savage races existing to-day. it will be found on investigation that not only are they unclean in their habits and destitute of any idea of justice, but for the most part they are unblushing liars and ingenious thieves. all the characteristics in human nature that are called virtues are purely of artificial growth, and result from man's cultivation of his better self; or, in other words, from his improvement upon nature's spontaneous course of action. in support of this view i may here quote j. s. mill, who says ("essay on nature," p. ): "children and the lower classes of most countries seem to be actually fond of dirt: the vast majority of the human race are indifferent to it: whole nations of otherwise civilised and cultivated human beings tolerate it in some of its worst forms, and only a very small minority are consistently offended by it. indeed, the universal law of the subject appears to be that uncleanliness offends only those to whom it is unfamiliar, so that those who have lived in so artificial a state as to be unused to it in any form, are the sole persons whom it disgusts in all forms. of all virtues this is the most evidently not instinctive, but a triumph over instinct. assuredly neither cleanliness nor the love of cleanliness is natural to man, but only the capacity of acquiring a love of cleanliness." on page the same writer declares that "savages are always liars. they have not the faintest notion of truth as a virtue." having then all these bad qualities of nature, how is it that man has been able to put them into subjection and advance along the road to civilisation even at the pace that we have seen? such advance has been wholly dependent upon the energy and skill with which he has opposed the destructive forces of nature, using one law to counteract another, and upon the determination with which he has striven to improve upon human nature itself. for centuries man groped about in the dark. nature was deaf to his appeals and blind to his sufferings, and her daily performances frightened and bewildered him. and yet he did his best to ascertain the causes of the phænomena of the universe. but his best guesses were wide of the mark. outside of nature he sought for explanation. he thought he had scaled nature's heights and fathomed her debts when he had merely gazed a few miles into the vast expanse of space above; and when the most learned among them declared that god was the author of the universe, a great theological enterprise commenced. every nation started a god on its own account, and if one proved to be insufficient, a few more were easily drafted in, with a devil to keep them company. these gods and devils, which were material or spiritual, according as occasion required, were hereafter put forward as explanations of nature's workings. and the people believed in them. how could they do otherwise? their credulity was perfectly natural. they could not investigate; all their faculties were untrained. even the most learned among them were superlatively ignorant; incapable by virtue of an untrained mind of accurately perceiving, recording, remembering, or judging of nature's manifold manifestations. and so the theologian had a good time of it. he believed thoroughly in his own pretensions; believed that he possessed the key which opened the door of all mysteries; that he was a god-appointed teacher of men; and in all the countries of the world he was looked upon as second only in importance to the gods themselves. but all this time the people were anxious to know not only what sort of deity it was they worshipped, but what kind of action would be likely to win his favor. they were told that god was a jealous being, and that their first duty was obedience to his will. they believed it. when, therefore, they were instructed to slaughter their neighbors who worshipped a different deity, they went to the task with all the ardor of their nature, imagining in their ignorance that the more brutally they executed the deity's will, the more pleasantly would he smile upon them. the jews killed the midianites, the amalakites, the baalites, and all other peoples they were capable of mastering who despised their god. later, the mahommedans with equal mercilessness followed the example of their jewish brethren. later still, the christians persecuted and murdered many who stubbornly refused to acknowledge that jesus was the christ; and each nation could not only refer the deed back to the priest from whom the wicked instructions came, but the priest in his turn could point to the passage in his sacred book distinctly commanding or sanctioning such barbarities. the bible contained instructions for the jews not only to kill unbelieving people of other nations, but minute details were given as to how believers of their own kith and kin should be put to death (leviticus xxiv., ). the koran was equally explicit in its directions to murder the infidels (chapter on the "cow," p. ); and the new testament, which the christians accepted as a guide, not only bade the believer have "no fellowship with unbelievers," but into whatever city they went, and the people were indisposed to give heed to their preachings, they were to "shake off the dust of their feet," and god would make it warmer for such people in the next world than for ordinary sinners. nay more: the christian could point to the strong declaration of jesus: "but those mine enemies who would not that i should reign over them, bring hither and slay before me" (luke xix., ). the people were told that angels existed. they believed it. they were told that witches were displeasing to the sight of god; that he had given instructions that they were not to be "suffered" to live. they believed it; and did their best to remove the witches from the face of the earth. they were told that their god liked nothing so much as roast lamb. they believed it. and when they couldn't spare a lamb, they thought it would be pleasant at least for their deity to smell the flavor of it. they were told that god was the father of all men; that he was just and good; but that he liked some nations better than others; and considered some men fit only to be the slaves of others. they believed it. they were told that god made man. they believed it. they were told that he made all other animals for man's pleasure and assistance. they believed it. they were told that he made the sun and the stars to give light to the earth. they believed it. they were told that he made the earth. they believed it. that it was flat, and they were flats enough to believe that also. but they were not told who made god; what intelligent mind designed him before he was made; who made the intelligent mind that designed the god that made the world out of nothing. these matters were allowed to remain impenetrable mysteries. in course of time morality improved. the would-be murderer found that there were men in the nation who could defend themselves against all assaults of the enemy; and that the only way to be secure from attack was to promise not to be the aggressive party. and the thief found that if he stole others would steal from him; that only by being honest could he hope to have his own property protected. though very early in the progress of man laws had been made against murder and theft, it was not until men saw that their own life and property were at stake, and that unless they were peaceful and honest themselves they ran a risk of losing all they had, that anything approaching harmony existed among the people of the nations that were on the high road to civilisation. among savage races, murder, theft and other crimes are almost as rife as ever; and it is only when barbarous races come in contact with races higher up the scale of life that their morality manifests rapid improvement. scepticism is the sign of a healthy mind. doubt and unbelief invariably arise as the result of earnest inquiry and vigorous thought. except among the philosophical greeks and cultured romans, doubts concerning the truth of theology were not openly expressed, even by the few, until many centuries after the christian era began. of course, among the early christians there were many who doubted; some who denied the divinity of jesus; many who questioned the truth of the resurrection; among the brahmins and buddhists, many who were sceptical on dogmatic points of their faith. but it was not until the middle of the sixteenth century that we find men questioning the pretensions of theologians, and exposing with admirable fearlessness and candor the errors of theology. martin luther early in the sixteenth century boldly questioned the dogmas of the romish church. he was ably supported by philip melancthon, but these reformers, although fighting bravely for the right of freethought, were fearful lest others in the exercise of this freedom should go further than they did. bruno, telesio, campanella and vanini are among the first mentioned in history who courageously declared their disbelief in the prevailing theology. bruno was a pantheist. he denied that god was a person, and declared that he was an essence. he affirmed that matter was indestructible; that nature produced "all phænomena as the fruit of her own womb." he believed in the plurality of worlds, and denied the teachings of aristotle. telesio and campanella held much the same belief. vanini was an atheist. for their heresies telesio and oampanella were imprisoned; bruno and vanini both died at the stake. no doubt there were many others who entertained doubts similar to those expressed by these noble philosophers; but when they found that their scepticism would be burnt out of them if they expressed it, they doubtlessly came to the conclusion that they had better keep it to themselves until men were more prepared for the reception of it. and probably the time would never have come had it not been for the heroism of a bruno, the defiance of a vanini, and the persistent teaching of other less known freethought worthies. galileo the astronomer must also be numbered among the sceptics. he denied that the earth was the centre of the universe, and in opposition to such teaching declared that it moved round the sun. for making known this now well-established fact the great astronomer was imprisoned, and a short interval allowed for him to recant or die the death of an infidel. he was an old man, and life was sweet. he elected to live. he had sown the seeds of doubt concerning the church's teaching of astronomy--he left it to blossom in its own good time. in europe periodical efforts had been made to improve the social and domestic life of the people. feudalism having developed to its highest point, decayed, and upon its ruins were established strong monarchies, which vied with each other in voluptuousness and wickedness. but if the nation showed any signs of going forward in the march of progress, there was always one chain at least to drag them hopelessly back again. this was the romish church with, its slavish theology and horrible corruption. "for centuries the popes at intervals had embroiled italy. sometimes several popes ruled at once, and sometimes the catholic church had no pope at all. to unite and maintain, the temporal and spiritual power in their own persons was ever the ruling passion of the catholic potentates; and for this they have spilt rivers of human blood. under their absolute power the church and its vices has grown up for centuries. rooted into the heart of society the people had learnt to revere the ancient institution. their imaginations were captivated by its showy services; its priesthood had the keeping of their consciences; was their only means of access to heaven; gave consolation in sickness; married, buried, and sent them to paradise. its superstitions and centuries of cruelty had as yet only increased its power. europe was filled with its images of saints and martyrs, real or counterfeit, and the people were instructed to fall down and worship them. dead saints were made the medium of access to the deity; the services of religion were muttered in dead languages; priests were decked in dazzling garments; wax candles burnt in the churches at noonday; vessels of gold and silver stood on the altars; preaching had become rare, and had degenerated into frivolous talking; monks who lived a life of ease or idleness, and often of vice, were scattered in multitudes throughout every nation of christendom; and in order to prevent inquiry and crush opposition, the inquisition was established and the fire of persecution lit. pope alexander vi., a man of unusual depravity, burnt savonarola for preaching reform in the church. in short, a frightful spiritual despotism, such as europe had never seen before, held the human mind in abject bondage" (dr. bollock's "history of modern europe," p. ). after the reformation the disputes between christians, regarding the doctrines of the protestant as well as the catholic church, were numerous and exceedingly bitter. but the masses of the people having to work hard for a small pittance and little leisure, took comparatively small notice of these theological disputes, and applied themselves with commendable zeal to more useful labor than watching the wretched encounters of fanatical religionists. the printing-press having now got into working order, began to disturb the peace of mind of the clergy and others in authority. every shot from the armory of intelligence shook to their foundation the dogmas of the church. the people continued to work. scientific men, too, continued their labors quietly. columbus discovered america, and frightened credulous believers in the flatness of the earth out of all the wits they ever had. descartes in france, spinoza in holland, formulated a philosophy that knocked the anthropomorphic deity of the christians quite off his pedestal; it was done, however, in such a learned manner that the common people heard scarcely anything about it. these continued the useful labors of the world. they tilled the soil; they bred cattle; they erected magnificent houses for the rich and small hovels for the poor; they made gaudy raiment wherewith to bedeck the persons of kings and priests, and plain dresses as a covering for the common people. periodically, their progress was thwarted by being called upon to fight religious wars for the priests, and wars for the glorification or vanity of kings. running rapidly over the pages of history one important fact stands prominently out. it is this, that as soon as the nations were at peace, for however short a while, the sceptics appeared again, and with the growing intelligence of the people, spoke in language of unmistakeable plainness about religion. thomas paine directed his powerful intellect against the upas tree; voltaire's wit went like a javelin to its core; while mirabaud and d'holbach tore off the mask and left theology's errors exposed in all their glaring hideousness. and now the dawn of a new era for freethought began to appear. the clergy maligned great sceptics, but scepticism increased notwithstanding. heretical works were condemned and the authors imprisoned; but the seeds of doubt having been widely sown, nothing short of the wholesale destruction of persons suspected of entertaining these doubts was likely to prove effectual in the extirpation of them. from this point rapid progress towards the higher civilisation was made in all countries in europe where the people were bold enough to free themselves from the dogmatism of the priests, read the works of scientific men, take advantage of every new discovery, interest themselves in the political and social movements of the country. in short, man advanced in proportion as he devoted himself to the work of the world, and left the next world and all opinions in regard to it to take care of themselves. so far we have seen the progress of man has been won by a vigorous struggling against the harmful forces of nature. in truth, nature has been a very useful servant to those who understand her, but a harsh and brutal master to those who were ignorant of her ways. she is not, nor ever has been, worthy of worship. she destroys every being that lives once, and sometimes by the most painful process it is possible to conceive. how many thousands she has starved with hunger, frozen with cold, poisoned, drowned, or swept away by earthquakes or other frightful calamities, mankind will never know. all we can know is that thousands have been thus sacrificed, and that in proportion as man used one force of nature to counteract the effect of another he has advanced. when the sceptical man had a chance of life, his advance towards civilisation was rapid. the sceptical mind investigated; new discoveries were made; the printing press increased in usefulness and power; new forms of industry were started, and a higher happiness made possible for the masses of the people. the art of agriculture steadily improved; and the shipping of merchandise from one nation to another was greatly facilitated by improved skill in navigation. great, however, as were the strides towards civilisation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they were all eclipsed in the early part of the nineteenth century by the utilisation of steam-power, electricity, and other great natural forces, which had the effect of greatly increasing the wealth-producing power of those nations that adopted them. nor was this all; for immediately following, machinery, which saved an enormous amount of labor, was introduced. food and clothing became cheaper. the people multiplied rapidly, and with this increase of population grew a proportionate demand for food and labor. in a short time the struggle for existence was manifestly keener than it had ever been before; the rich became richer and richer, while among the poor the tendency was to get poorer and more poor. uncomplainingly the people devoted themselves to the labor of each day. theology they set aside for six days of the week, and concerned themselves about the gods on sunday. though they did not often say so, the majority of men thought it was far better for them to be diligent workmen, performing all the secular duties of daily life--building houses, making clothes, machinery, writing books; acting the part of good husbands, fathers, or citizens--than to have the most orthodox belief it was possible for a being to entertain. and this sentiment grew stronger and stronger, and proved of immense importance to mankind. for hundreds of years theologians had talked about the importance of saving men's souls; and those who possessed the smallest seemed to make the most fuss about them. but now the aspect of things was changed. men began to talk about looking after their bodies; and some ventured to suggest that if they had souls in their bodies it would, perhaps, be no disadvantage to them if their bodies were well fed, well clothed, and their whole being well trained. necessity forced all but a small minority into the labor market. and after years of labor the earth was converted from a howling wilderness into a home fit for habitation. here let me distinctly affirm that all that is admirable in civilised life--the comfort of home, the pleasure of education, the fascination of the drama, the beauty of painting or sculpture, the usefulness of scientific acquirements--owe their value to the secular labor of mankind. theology deserves no credit in respect to these things. theology did not help man to supersede the sailing vessel by the steamship, the old coach by the railroad, the reaping machine by the scythe (vice versa, dw), nor the fastest locomotion by the telegraph wires. the theologian did not discover the telephone, nor did he learn how to light--with a brilliancy previously unknown to man--our streets and great public buildings by means of electricity. one stephenson is worth a thousand theologians; one edison of more value to the world than all the gods that men's imagination have ever pictured. but see what additional wonders the secular laborer has accomplished. he has removed forests of trees and converted them into houses, the hides of cattle he turned into boots and shoes, the wool of sheep he has transformed into robes of beauty and utility. he has bedecked our walls with paintings, put books upon our shelves, and with sweet music gladdened our hearts. to accomplish all this he has had to rely solely upon his reason. yet theologians call this splendid attribute _carnal reason,_ and declare that it is no safe guide to man. it has been man's only guide; and when he has trusted it he has been more often in the right than otherwise. even his errors have assisted hint in future labors. faith he has had, but it has always been secular faith. experience has been his guide, science a lamp unto his feet. even when he has walked down the wrong path he has done so with his eyes open. theological faith is sightless. it allures you to the brink of a precipice and precipitates you to the earth beneath. it is a ship without a rudder; the tempestuous waves toss it about recklessly, the wind drives it savagely against the rocks, and to-day this ship called "theological faith" is a dreary wreck. but reason grows stronger and clearer as the ages roll on. man has discovered that he can trust it; that he can use it; that he can assist himself and others by the employment of it. in other words, he can do his own thinking, reason out his own principles, act his own life. he can be a man. and it is better for an individual to be a bad original than a good copy of somebody else. man is civilised to-day. he has fought a good fight, he has conquered a foe; but better than all, he has converted an enemy into a friend. what is man's future policy? is there not still plenty of labor for him to perform? is there not an ocean of enigmas yet to be fathomed, a gold-mine of knowledge yet to be explored? is there not poverty to be remedied, pain to be alleviated, ignorance to be removed? the reformer has yet something to inspire his fervid soul; the philanthropist plenty to touch his generous heart. why even now the wealthy rogue struts pompously upon the stage of life in grand attire, and fares sumptuously every day; while honest poverty in rags lies hungry and fainting at his door. even now the rich own all the land, and many poor have not where to lay their head. even now all men are not equal in the sight of the law; and one man gets pensioned for work for which another is incarcerated in gaol. even now our sisters are outraged and turned adrift upon the world to be the playthings of vicious men for evermore. even now our workhouses are filled with men and women who are able to work for an honest living--if they could get it--but cannot because labor is cheap, and there are too many waiting to perform it. even now our gaols are filled with society-made criminals, that education and better circumstances might have rescued from a life of misery and crime. even now youth is stunted and starved, and men and women pine away, racked with some terrible disease which thoughtless and careless parents have transmitted to them. reformers abate not your enthusiasm, but work bravely on. through the world diffuse the glorious light of knowledge, let men learn that all crime is a mistake, that effects always follow causes, and that a good effect never follows from a bad cause in a nation that is governed on the principles of truth and justice. remove poverty by sound advice to the poor and by strenuous efforts to improve men's surroundings. stay the drunkard in his downward course, and assist unceasingly all social and political progress. popularity you may never attain; even praise for your unselfish labor may be denied you while you live. but good work must leave its influence in the world; and your children's children will assuredly profit by it. for as carlyle truly says: "beautiful it is to see and understand that no worth, or known or unknown, can die even on this earth. the work an unknown good man has done is like a hidden vein of water flowing underground, secretly making the ground green. it flows and flows; it joins itself with other veins and veinlets, and one day it will start forth as a visible perennial well." in an extended version, also linking to free sources for education worldwide ... mooc's, educational materials,...) images generously made available by the internet achive. we moderns: enigmas and guesses by edwin muir edited with introduction by h. l. mencken new york alfred. a. knopf mcmxx contents introduction i. the old age, ii. original sin, iii. what is modern? iv. art and literature, v. creative love, vi. the tragic view. introduction that a young scotsman, reacting from the vast emotional assault of the late ferocious war, should have withdrawn himself into an ivory tower in glasgow town, and there sat himself down in heroic calm to wrestle with the vexatious and no doubt intrinsically insoluble problems of being and becoming--this was surely nothing to cause, whispers among connoisseurs of philosophical passion, for that grim, persistent, cold-blooded concern with the fundamental mysteries of the world has been the habit of the scots ever since they emerged from massacre and blue paint. from blue paint, indeed, the transition was almost instantaneous to blue souls, and the conscience of britain, such as it is, has dwelt north of the cheviot hills ever since. find a scot, and you are at once beset by a metaphysician, or, at all events, by a theologian. but for a young man of those damp, desolate parts, throwing himself into the racial trance, to emerge with a set of ideas reaching back, through nietzsche and even worse heretics, to the spacious, innocent, somewhat gaudy days of the greek illumination--for such a fellow, so bred and circumscribed, to come out of his tower with a concept of life as a grand and glittering adventure, a tremendous spectacle, an overpowering ecstasy, almost an orgy--such a phenomenon was, and is, quite sufficient to lift the judicious eyebrow. yet here is this mr. edwin muir of caledonia bearing just that outlandish contraband, offering just that strange flouting of all things traditionally scotch. what he preaches in the ensuing aphorisms is the emancipation of the modern spirit from its rotting heritage of ingenuous fears and exploded certainties. what he denounces most bitterly is the abandonment of a world that is beautifully surprising and charming to the rule of sordid, timid and unimaginative men--the regimentation of ideas in a system that is half a denial of the obvious and half a conglomeration of outworn metaphors, all taken too literally. and what he pleads for most eloquently, with his cold, reserved northern eloquence, is the whole-hearted acceptance of "life as a sacrament,... life as joy triumphing over fate,... life made innocent,... life washed free from how much filth of remorse, guilt, contempt, 'sin'."... it goes without saying that the red hand of nietzsche is in all this. the naumburg antichrist, damned for five years running by the indignation of all right-thinking men, has made steady and enormous progress under cover. there has never been a time, indeed, when his notions enjoyed a wider dispersion or were poll-parrotted unwittingly by greater numbers of the righteous. excessive draughts of the democratic cure-all, swallowed label, cork, testimonials and all, have brought christendom to bed with _katzenjammer--_and there stands the seductive antidote in its leering blue bottles. where would philosophical opponents of bolshevism be without nietzsche? who would devise arguments for them, eloquence for them, phrases for them? on all sides one hears echoes of him--often transformed from his harsh bass to a piping falsetto, but nevertheless recognizable enough. any port in a storm! if god is asleep, then turn to the devil! the show offers the best laughing that heathen have enjoyed, perhaps, since the hundred years' war. and there is an extra snicker in the fact that scotland, once again, seems to resume the old trade of intellectual smuggling. if one scot is to the front with so forthright a piece as "we moderns," then surely there must be a thousand other scots hard at it in a _pianissimo_ manner. thus, i suppose, the crime of carlyle is repeated on a wholesale scale, and once again the poor sassenach is inoculated with pathogenic prussian organisms. on this side of the ocean the business is less efficiently organized; we have no race of illicit metaphysicians on our border. but the goods come in all the same. i have heard more prattling of stale nietzscheism of late, from men bearing the flag in one hand and the cross in the other, than i ever heard in the old days from parlour anarchists and unfrocked priests. nietzsche, belatedly discovered by a world beset by terrors too great for it and mysteries too profound, becomes almost respectable, nay, almost episcopalian! what ails it, at bottom, is the delusion that all the mysteries, given doctors enough, theories enough, pills enough, may be solved--that it is all a matter of finding a panacea, unearthing a prophet, passing a bill. if it turns to nietzsche, however gingerly and suspiciously, it will turn only to fresh disappointment and dismay, for nietzsche is no quack with another sure cure, but simply an iconoclast who shows that all the sure cures of the past and present have failed, and _must_ fail--and particularly the sure cure of the mob, the scheme of determining the diagnosis by taking a vote, the notion that the medicine which most pleases the grossest palates is the medicine to get the patient upon his legs. nietzsche is no reformer; he is an assassin of reformers; if he preaches anything at all, it is that reform is useless, illusory--above all, unnecessary. the patient is really not dying at all. let him get up and dance! let him pick up his bed and employ it upon the skulls of his physicians! life is not a disease to be treated with boluses and philtres, not an affliction to be shirked and sentimentalized, but an adventure to be savoured and enjoyed--life, here and now, is the highest imaginable experience. what the world needs is not a cure for it, but room for it, freedom for it, innocent zest for it. so accepted and regarded, half of its terrors vanish at once, and even its unescapable catastrophes take on a certain high stateliness, a fine æsthetic dignity. this is the tragic view that mr. muir cries up--life as joy triumphing over fate. "for the character of tragedy is not negative and condemnatory, but deeply affirmative and joyous." the ideal man is not the time-serving slave of christendom, in endless terror of god, forever flattering and bribing god, but the nietzschean _ja-sager,_ the yes-sayer, facing destiny courageously and a bit proudly, living to the full the life that lies within his grasp in the present, accepting its terms as he finds them, undaunted by the impenetrable shadows that loom ahead. what mr. muir, following nietzsche, is most dissatisfied with in the modern spirt is its intolerable legalism--its fatuous frenzy to work everything out to nine places of constabulary decimals, to establish windy theories and principles, to break the soul of man to a rule. in part, of course, that effort is of respectable enough origin. it springs from intelligent self-assertion, healthy curiosity, the sense of competence; it is a by-product of the unexampled conquests of nature that have gone on in the modern age. but in other parts it is no more than a by-product of the democratic spirit, the rise of the inferior, the emancipation of the essentially in competent. science is no longer self-sufficient, isolated from moral ideas, an end in itself; it tends to become a mere agent of mob tyranny; it takes on gratuitous and incomprehensible duties and responsibilities; like the theology that it has supplanted, it has friendlier and friendlier dealings with the secular arm. and art, too, begins to be poisoned by this moral obsession of the awakened proletariat. it ceases to be an expression of well-being, of healthy functioning, of unpolluted joy in life, and becomes a thing of obscure and snuffling purposes, a servant of some low enterprise of the cocksure. the mob is surely no scientist and no artist; it is, in fact, eternally the anti-scientist, the anti-artist; science and art offer it unscalable heights and are hence its enemies. but in a world dominated by mob yearnings and mob passions, even science and art must take on some colour from below. the enemies, if they cannot be met and overthrown on a fair field, can at least be degraded. and when the mob degrades, it always degrades to moral tunes. morality is its one avenue to superiority--false but none the less soothing. it can always be good. it can always dignify its stupidity, its sordidness and its cowardice with terms borrowed from ethical revelation. the good man is a numskull, but nevertheless he is good. mr. muir has at the modern spirit on many other counts, but nearly all of them may be converted with more or less plausibility into an objection to its ethical obsession, its idiotic craze to legislate and admonish. when he says, for example, that realism in the novel and the drama is hollow, he leaves his case but half stated; there is undoubtedly a void where imagination, feeling and a true sense of the tragic ought to be, but it is filled with the common garbage of mob thinking, to wit, with the common garbage of moral purpose. all of the chief realists, from zola to barbusse, are pre-eminently moralists disguised as scientists; what one derives from them, reading them sympathetically, is not illumination but merely indignation. they are always violently against something--and that something is usually the fact that the world is not as secure and placid a place as a methodist sunday-school. their affectation of moral agnosticism need deceive no one. they are secretly appalled (and delighted) by their own "scientific" pornographies, just as their brethren of the vice crusades are appalled and delighted. realism, of course, can never be absolute. it must always stress something and leave out something. what it commonly stresses is the colossal failure of society to fit into an orderly scheme of causes and effects, virtues and rewards, crimes and punishments. what it leaves out is the glow of romance that hangs about that failure--the poignant drama of blind chance, the fascination of the unknowable. the realists are bad artists because they are anæsthetic to beauty. and a good many scientists are bad scientists for precisely the same reason. in their hands the gorgeous struggle of man against the mysteries and foul ambuscades of nature is converted into a banal cause before a police court, with the complainant put on the stand to prove that his own hands are clean. one cannot read some of the modern medical literature, particularly on the side of public hygiene, without giving one's sympathy to the tubercle bacilli and the spirochætæ. science of that sort ceases to be a fit concern for men of dignity, superior men, gentlemen; it becomes a concern for evangelists, uplifters, bounders. its aim is no longer to penetrate the impenetrable, to push forward the bounds of human knowledge, to overreach the sinister trickeries of god; its aim is simply to lengthen the lives of human ciphers and to reinforce their delusion that they confer a favour upon the universe by living at all. worse, it converts the salvation of such vacuums into a moral obligation, and sets up the absurd doctrine that human progress is furthered by diminishing the death-rate in the balkans, by rescuing georgia crackers from the hookworm and by reducing the whole american people, the civilized minority with the barbarian mass, to a race of teetotalling ascetics, full of pious indignations and freudian suppressions. the western world reeks with this new sentimentality. it came on in europe with the fall of feudalism and the rise of the lower orders. even war, the last surviving enterprise of natural man, has been transformed from a healthy play of innocent instincts into a combat of moral ideas, nine-tenths of them obviously unsound. it no longer offers a career to a gustavus adolphus, a prince eugene or a napoleon i. it loses even the spirit of gallant adventure that dignified the theological balderdash of the crusades--in which, as every one knows, the balderdash was quickly absorbed altogether by the adventure. it becomes the business of specialists in moral indignation. the modern general must not only know the elements of military science; he must also show some of the gifts of a chautauqua orator, including particularly the gift of right-thinking; it would do him more harm to speak of his opponent with professional politeness, as one lawyer might speak of another, than it would do him to lose an important battle. worse, war gets out of the hands of soldiers altogether. it becomes an undertaking of boob-bumpers, spy-hunters, emotion-pumpers, propaganda-mongers--all sorts of disgusting cads. its great prizes tend to go, not to the men fighting in the field, but to the man manufacturing shells, alarms, and moral indignation. at the time of the last great series of wars it was said that every musketeer of france carried a marshal's baton in his haversack. the haversack of the musketeer now contains only official literature, informing him of the causes of the war as most lately determined, the names of its appointed moral heroes, and the penalties for discussing its aims, for swapping tobacco with the boys on the other side, and for inviting a pretty peasant-girl into his shell-hole. the baton is being fought for by a press-agent, a labour leader and a y.m.c.a. secretary. it is against such degradations that mr. muir raises his voice, and in particular against such degradations in the field of the fine arts. the superficial, i daresay, will mistake him (once they get over the sheer immorality of his relation to nietzsche) as simply one more pleader for _l'art pour l'art--_one more prophet of a superior and disembodied æstheticism. well, turn to his singularly acute and accurate estimate of walter pater: there is the answer to that error. he has, in fact, no leanings whatsoever in any such direction. the thing he argues for, despite all his fury against the debasement of art to mob uses, is not an art that shall be transcendental, but an art that shall relate itself to life primarily and unashamedly, an art that shall accept and celebrate life. he preaches, of course, out of season. there has never been a time in the history of the world when the natural delight of man in himself was held in greater suspicion. christianity, after two thousand years, seems triumphant at last. from the ashes of its barbaric theology there arises the phoenix of its maudlin sentimentality; the worship of inferiority becomes its dominating cult. in all directions that worship goes on. it gives a new colour to politics, and not only to politics, but also to the sciences and the arts. perhaps we are at the mere beginning of the process. the doctrine that all men are equal in the sight of god is now defended and propagated by machine guns; it becomes a felony to deny it; one is already taxed in america to make good the lofty aspirations of poles, jugo-slavs and armenians. in england there are signs of a further step. an ehrlich or a koch, miraculously at work there, might be jailed for slitting the throat of a white rat: all the lower animals, too, it appears, are god's creatures. so viewed, a guinea-pig becomes the peer of a beethoven, as a farm-hand is already the peer of a bach. it is too late to turn back; let us hope that the logic of it is quickly worked out to its unescapable conclusion. once the _pediculus vestimenti_ and the streptococcus are protected, there will be a chance again, it may be, for the law of natural selection to achieve its benign purgation. meanwhile, mr. muir cannot expect his ideas to get much attention. a gaudy parade is passing and the populace is busy cheering. nevertheless, they were ideas worth playing with, and they are now worth printing and pondering. it seems to me that, in more than one way, they help to illuminate the central æsthetic question--the problem as to the nature and function of artistic representation. they start from nietzschean beginnings, but they get further than nietzsche ever got. his whole æsthetic was hampered by the backwardness of psychology in his time. he made many a brilliant guess, but more than once he was hauled up rather sharply by his ignorance of the machinery of thought. mr. muir not only has nietzsche behind him; he also has freud, as he shows, for example, in § . beyond him there is still a lot of room. he will not stop the parade--but he will help the next man. * * * * * edwin muir was born in the orkney islands in . his father was a small crofter there. when he was fourteen years old the family moved to glasgow. within four years his father, his mother and two older brothers died, and he was forced to fend for himself. he became a clerk in a glasgow office and remained there until very recently, when he moved to london. like all other young men with the itch to write, he tried poetry before prose, and his first verses were printed in _the new age._ but his discovery of nietzsche, at the age of twenty-two, exerted such a powerful influence upon him that he soon turned to prose, and five or six years later his first philosophical speculations were printed, again in _the new age._ they attracted attention and were republished in book-form, in , as "we moderns." at the last minute the author succumbed to modesty and put the _nom de plume_ of edward moore upon his book. but now, in this american edition (for which he has made certain revisions), he returns to his own name. h. l. mencken. i the old age _the advanced_ among the advanced one observes a strange contradiction: the existence in one and the same person of confidence and enthusiasm about certain aspects of life along with diffidence and pessimism about life itself. the advanced have made up their minds about all the problems of existence but not about the problem of existence. in dealing with these problems they find their greatest happiness; they are there sure-footed, convinced and convincing. but brought face to face with that other problem, how helpless, vacillating and spiritless are they! what! are propaganda, reform, and even revolution, perchance, with many of them simply their escape from their problem? _the intellectual coquettes_ an intellectual coquetry is one of the worst vices of this age. from what does it arise? from fear of a decision? or from love of freedom? it cannot be from the latter, for to abstain from a choice is not freedom but irresponsibility. to be free, is, on the contrary, itself a choice, a decision involving, in its acceptance, responsibility. and it is responsibility that the intellectual coquettes fear: rather than admit that one burden they will bear all the others of scepticism, pessimism and impotence. to accept a new gospel, to live it out in all its ramifications, is too troublesome, too dangerous. the average man in them pleads, "be prudent! where may not this resolution lead you? through what perils? into what hells?" and so they remain in their prison house of doubt, neither pagans nor christians, neither theists nor atheists, ignorant of the fact that they are slaves and that a decision would set them free. but in the end the soul has its revenge, for their coquetry destroys not only the power but the will to choose. to flirt with dangerous ideas in a graceful manner: that becomes their destiny. for the intellectual coquette, like other coquettes, dislikes above everything passion--passion with its seriousness, sincerity and--demand for a decision. _modern realism_ how crude and shallow is the whole theory of modern realism: a theory of art by the average man for the average man! it makes art intelligible by simplifying or popularizing it; in short, as nietzsche would say, by vulgarizing it. the average man perceives, for instance, that there is in great drama an element of representation. come, he says, let us make the representation as "thorough" as possible! let every detail of the original be reproduced! let us have life as it is lived! and when he has accomplished this, when representation has become reproduction, he is very well pleased and thinks how far he has advanced beyond the poor greeks. but it is hardly so! for the greeks did not aim at the reproduction but at the interpretation of life, for which they would accept no symbol less noble than those _ideal_ figures which move in the world of classical tragedy. to the greeks, indeed, the world of art was precisely this world: not a paltry, sober and conscientious dexterity in the "catching" of the aspects of existence (nothing so easy!), but a symbolizing of the deepest questions and enigmas of life--a thing infinitely more noble, profound and subtle than realistic art. the greeks would have demanded of realism, why do you exist? what noble end is served by the reproduction of ordinary existence? are you not simply superfluous--and vilely smelling at that? and realism could have given no reply, for the truth is that realism _is_ superfluous. it is without a _raison d'être._ the average man, however, takes a second glance at classical tragedy and reaches a second discovery. there is something enigmatical, he finds, behind the greek clearness of representation, something unexplained; in short, a problem. this problem, however, is not sufficiently clear. let us state our problems clearly, he cries! let us have problems which can be recognized at a glance by every one! let us write a play about "the marriage question," or bad-housing, or the labour party! but, again, the theory of the greeks, at least before euripides, was altogether different. the "problem" in their tragedies was precisely not a problem which could be stated in a syllogism or solved in a treatise: it was the eternal problem, and it was not stated to be "solved." thus the moderns, in their attempt to simplify art, to understand it or misunderstand it--what does it matter which word is used?--have succeeded in destroying it. the realistic and the "problem" drama alike are for the inartistic. the first is drama without a _raison d'être,_ the second is a _raison d'être_ without drama. _the modern tragic_ in realistic novels and dramas a new type of the tragic has been evolved. it may be called tragedy without a meaning. in classical and shakespearean tragedy, the inevitable calamities incident to human existence were given significance and nobility by the poets. that interpretive power of drama was, indeed, the essential thing to the great artists, to whom representation was only a means. but the realists with their shallow rationalizing of art have changed all that. they have cut out the essential part of drama so as to make the other part more "complete": in short, their tragedy is now simply "tragedy" in the newspaper sense. and it is obvious that this kind of "art" is much easier to produce than tragedy in the grand style: one has not even to read a meaning into it. this absence of meaning, however, is itself, in the long run, made to appear the last word of an unfathomably ironical wisdom. and in this light, how much modern wisdom is understood! the superficiality which can see only the surface here parades as the profundity which has dived into every abyss and found it empty. no! it is not tragedy but the modern tragedian who is without a _raison d'être!_ _realism as a symptom of poverty_ in an age in which the power of creation is weak, men will choose the easiest forms: those in which sustained elevation is not demanded and creation itself is eked out in various ways. the world of our day has therefore as its characteristic production the realistic novel, which in form is more loose, in content and execution more unequal, and in imaginative power less rich and inventive than poetic drama, or _any_ of the higher forms of literature. if we deduct from the modern "literary artist," the diarist, the sociologist, the reporter, and the collector of documents, there is not much left. for creation there is very little room in his works; perhaps it is as well! _compliments and art_ the convention of gallantry observed by the sexes is the foundation of all refined understanding between them. for in the mutual game of compliment it is the spiritual attitude and not the spoken word that matters. there is truth in this attitude, however unreal the words may seem: a thousand times more truth than in the modern egalitarian, go-as-you-please camaraderie of the sexes. here there is truth neither in the spirit nor in the letter. to be candid, about this new convention there is something faintly fatuous: the people who act thus are not subtle! yet they are hardly to be blamed; it is the age that is at fault. there is no time for reflection upon men, women and manners, and consequently no refinement of understanding, no form in the true sense. we work so hard and have so little leisure that when we meet we are tired and wish to "stretch our legs," as nietzsche said. it is far from our thoughts that a convention between men and women might be _necessary_; we are not disposed to inquire why this convention arose; it presents itself to us as something naively false; and we have time only to be unconventional. the ceremonious in manners arose from the recognition that between the sexes there must be distance--respect as well as intimacy--understanding. the old gallantry enabled men and women to be intimate and distant at the same time: it was the perfection of the art of manners. indeed, we can hardly have sufficient respect for this triumphant circumvention of a natural difficulty, whereby it was made a source of actual pleasure. but now distance and understanding have alike disappeared. the moderns, so obtuse have they become, see here no difficulty at all, consequently no need for manners: brotherhood--comradeship--laziness has superseded that. nothing is any longer _understood;_ but a convention means essentially that something is understood. indeed, it is already a gaucherie to explain the meaning of a good convention. but what can one do? against obtuseness the only weapon is obtuseness. in literature this decline into bad taste and denseness is most clearly to be seen. so incapable have readers become, so resourceless writers, that whatever is said now must be said right out; sex must be called sex; and no one has sufficient subtlety to suggest or to follow a suggestion. hence, realism. an artist has to write exactly what he means: the word must be word and nothing more. but this is to misunderstand art. for the words of the true artist undergo a transubstantiation and become flesh and blood, even spirit. his words are deeds--to say nothing of what he writes _between_ his lines! realism in art and "comradeship" between the sexes are two misunderstandings, or, rather, two aspects of a misunderstanding. and that misunderstanding is perhaps attributable to a lack of leisure? and that to modern hurry? and that to the industrial system? _a modern problem_ it has been observed again and again that as societies--forms of production, of government, and so on--become more complex, the mastery of the individual over his destiny grows weaker. in other words, the more man subjugates "nature," the more of a slave he becomes. the industrial system, for instance, which is the greatest modern example of man's subjugation of nature, is at the same time the greatest modern example of man's enslavement. what are we to think, then? is the problem a moral one, and shall we say that a conquest of nature which is not preceded by a conquest of human nature is bound to be bad? in a society which has not surpassed the phase of slavery does every addition to man's power over nature simply intensify the slavery? or is the problem intellectual? and when the intellect concentrates upon one branch of knowledge to the neglect of the other, is the outcome bound to be the enslavement of the others? for instance the nineteenth century devoted far more of its brains to industry than to politics--its politics, indeed, was merely the reflection of its industry--with the result that industry has now enslaved us all. yes, it has enslaved us all--not merely the wage-earners, not merely the salariat! in the old days the workman, indeed, was a slave, but now the employer is a slave as well. in this age, therefore, in which man appears as the helpless appendage of a machine too mighty for him, it is natural that theories of determinism should flourish. it is natural, also, that the will should become weak and discouraged, and, consequently, that the power of creation should languish. and so the world of art has withered and turned barren. the artist needs above all things a sense of power; it is out of the abundance of this sense that he creates. but confronted with modern society, that vast machine, and surrounded by its hopeless mechanics and slaves, he feels the sense dying within him; nor does the evil cease there, for along with the sense of power, power itself dies. well, does not the moral become clearer and clearer? if art and literature are to flourish again, artists, writers, nay, the whole community must regain the sense of power. therefore, economic emancipation first! _leisure and good things_ the very greatest danger confronts a people who renounce leisure: that people will become shallow--just consider england! for of all things noble it is hard to see the immediate utility: patience and reverence are needed before one can see in them a meaning at all. art, literature and philosophy are not obvious goods: at the first glance they appear even repellent: alas, then, for them in an age of first glances! in such an age, it is true, they will not altogether disappear. something worse will happen. they will be degraded, made obvious, misunderstood; in one word, popularized--the fate of our time. society should be organized so as to give to its members the maximum of leisure; thus would the dissemination of art and philosophy be made at least possible. but society should at the same time provide for a privileged class of artists and philosophers, with _absolute_ leisure, who would work only when the inner compulsion made them. the second condition is at least as important as the first. _wanted: a history of hurry_ is there a critic who wishes to be at once edifying and entertaining? let him write a history of hurry in its relation to literature and art. has literature decayed as hurry has intensified? have standards of balance, repose and leisured grace gradually shrunk since, say, the industrial revolution? has the curtailment of the realm of literature, its reduction from the romantic school to the victorian circle and from that to the decadent clique, been due to the everstrengthening encroachment of hurry? and has hurry now become finally triumphant so that our critics and even our artists and savants are nothing more than journalists? for certainly they seem to be so. these are questions to be investigated by our historian. _the sex novel_ how did the vogue of the sex novel arise? perhaps from the great attention which was in the last century given to the sciences of biology and physiology; and perhaps, more especially from the popularization of these sciences. love was, under the spell of science, translated by the novelists into sex. not the psychology, but the physiology of love was found interesting: with the result that for the production of a modern novel one qualification alone is now necessary: a "knowledge of the simple facts of physiology," as the primer-writers say. well, what is the remedy for this? not a denial of physiology: those who have learned it cannot now erase it from their memory and become voluntarily ignorant. no; let, rather, the opposite course be taken! let us popularize psychology as well! _these advanced people_ a. free love is all right in theory, but all wrong in practice. b. on the contrary! i think it is all right in practice, but all wrong in theory. _sex in literature_ in english literature, until very modern times, sex was treated only within the limits of a very well-understood convention. from this convention the physiological was strictly excluded. yet, of our classical writers, even in the most artificial periods, it cannot be said that they did not understand sex. no matter how "unreal" they might be in writing about love, the physiological contingencies of love were unmistakably implied in their works, but only, it is true, implied. the moderns, however, saw in this treatment of love nothing but a convention, a "lie"; and they became impatient of the artificiality, as if art could be anything but artificial! to what was the change of attitude due? not to a failure in the artistic convention: that was perfectly sound. no, it was the reader who had failed: a generation of readers had arisen who had not learnt the art of reading, who did not understand reading as a cultured amateur of the eighteenth century, for instance, understood it. literature was to this reader a document, not an art. he had no eye for what is written between the lines--for symbolism, idealization, "literature." and it was to satisfy him that the realistic school arose: it arose, indeed, out of himself. in the realist the modern reader has become writer: the man who could not learn the art of reading has here essayed the more difficult art of writing--documentary art! _history of a realist_ who will write a series of biographies of modern writers, illustrating this thesis: that they are nothing more than modern readers wielding a hasty pen? such a set of memoirs would almost compensate us for having read the works of these writers. how interesting, for instance, it would be to know how many years--surely it would be years?--they spent in trying to understand literature before they dedicated themselves to its service. how interesting, again, to discover how many hours each day x, the celebrated novelist, devotes to contemplation, how many to writing for the newspapers, and how many to his present masterpiece. what! one hour's thought has actually preceded five hours' dictation! this revelation is, after all, not so startling. on second thought, these memoirs seem superfluous; we can read everything we wish to know of the moderns in their works. yet, for our better amusement, will not some one write his one and only novel, giving the true history of the novelist? a novel against novels! but for that we need a second cervantes, yet how unlike the first! for on this occasion it is not don quixote that must be satirized, but sancho panza. _novelists by habit_ all of us who read are novelists more or less nowadays: that is to say, we collect "impressions," "analyse" ourselves, make a pother about sex, and think that people, once they are divorced, live happily ever after. the habit of reading novels has turned us into this! when one of us becomes articulate, however--in the form of a novel--he only makes explicit his kinship with the rest; he proclaims to all the world that he is a mediocrity. _the only course_ all the figures in this novel are paltry; we despise them, and, if we were in danger of meeting them in real life, would take steps to avoid them; yet such is the author's adroitness that we are led on helplessly through the narrative, through unspeakable sordidness of circumstance and soul, hating ourselves and him, and feeling nothing better than slaves. to rouse our anxiety lest herbert lose five pounds, or mabel find it impossible to get a new dress, this is art, this is modern art! but to feel _anxiety_ about such things is ignoble; and to live in a sordid atmosphere, even if it be of a book, is the part of a slave. and yet we cannot but admire. for in this novel what subtlety in the treatment there must be overlying the fundamental vulgarity of the theme! how is art, which should make man free, here transformed into a potent means for enslaving him! it is impossible to yield oneself to the sway of a modern realist without a loss in one's self-respect. to what is due this conspicuous absence of nobility in modern writers? but is the question, indeed, worth the asking? for to the artist and to him who would retain freedom of soul, there is only one course with the paltry in literature--to avoid it. _the average man_ it is surely one of g. k. chesterton's paradoxes that he praises the average man. for he is not himself an average man, but a man of genius; he does not write of the average man, but of grotesques; he is not read by the average man, but by intellectuals and the nonconformist middle-class. the true prophets of the average man are the popular realistic novelists. for they write of him and for him--yes, even when they write "for themselves," when they are "serious artists." who, then, but them should extol him? it is their _métier_. _the "new" writers_ the fault of the most modern writers--and especially of the novelists--is not that they are too modern, but that they are too traditional. it is true, they are not traditional in the historical manner of g. k. chesterton, who wishes to destroy one tradition--the modern tradition--in order to get back to another--the mediæval. to mr. chesterton tradition is a matter of selection; the dead tradition seems to him nobler than the living; and, deliberately, therefore, he would return to it. the new writers, however, follow a tradition also, though a much narrower one; they, too, believe in the past, but only, alas, in the immediate past; they are slaves to the generation which preceded theirs. in short, that which is disgusting in them is their inability to rise high enough to _see_ their little decade or two, and to challenge it, if they cannot from the standpoint of a nobler future, then, at least, from that of the noblest past. but how weak must a generation be which is not strong enough to challenge and supersede arnold bennett, for instance. _the modern reader_ what is it that the modern reader demands from those who write for him? to be challenged, and again to be challenged, and evermore to be challenged--but on no account to be asked to accept a challenge, on no account to be expected to take sides! a seat at the tournament is all that he asks, where he may watch the most sincere and intrepid spirits of his time waging their desperate battle and spilling their life blood upon the sand. how he loves them when, with high gesture, they fling down their gauntlets and utter their blasphemies! his heart then exults within him; but, why? simply because he is a connoisseur; simply because he _collects_ gauntlets! _the public_ of the modern writers who are in earnest, mr. chesterton has had the most ironical fate: he has been read by the people who will never agree with him. to the average man for whom he writes he is an intellectual made doubly inaccessible by his orthodoxy and his paradoxy. it is the advanced, his _bête noire,_ who read him, admire him, and--disagree with him. _reader and writer_ the modern reader loves to be challenged. the modern writer, if he is in earnest, however, is bound to challenge him. this is his greatest burden; that he _must_ fall a victim of the advanced idlers. but one day he thinks he see a way of escape. he has noticed that the reader desires not only to be challenged, but to be able to understand the challenge at a glance. and here he sees his advantage. i shall write, he says, to himself, in a manner beautiful, exact, and yet not easily understood; so i shall throw off the intellectual coquettes and secure my audience of artists, for my style is beautiful; an audience of critics, for my style is exact; an audience of patient, resolute, conscientious intellects, for my style is difficult. this, perhaps, was the conscious practice of nietzsche. but he did not foresee that, for the benefit of the intellectual coquettes, who must have hold of new thoughts by one end or another, a host of popularizers would be born; he did not reckon with the nietzscheans! _popularity_ how amazingly popular he is. even the man in the street reads him. yes; but it is because he has first read the man in the street. _middle age's betrayals_ it is not easy to tell by a glance what is the character of a young man; his soul has not yet etched itself clearly enough upon his body. but one may read a middle-aged man's soul with perfect ease; and not only his soul but his history. for when a man has passed five-and-forty, he looks--not what he is, perhaps--but certainly what he has been. if he has been invariably respectable, he is now the very picture of respectability. if he has been a man about town or a secret toper, the fact is blazoned so clearly on his face that even a child can read it. if he has studied, his very walk, to use a phrase of nietzsche's, is learned. as for the poet, we know how terribly poetical he looks in middle age--poor devil! well, to every one of you, i say, beware! _the novelists and the artist_ is it the modern novelists who are to be blamed for the degraded image of the artist which lives in the minds of the cultured populace? turgenieff in "on the eve," and henry james in "roderick hudson" display the artist simply as a picturesque waster, an oh so charming, impulsive, childlike, naïve waster. but, in doing so, they surely confused the artist with the man of artistic temperament. of the artistic temperament, however, the great artists had very often little or nothing--far less, certainly, than either shubin or roderick. the great examples of last century, the goethes, ibsens, and nietzsches, knew that there were qualities more essential to them than temperament; discipline, for instance, perseverance, truth to themselves, self-control. how is it possible, indeed, without these virtues--virtues of the most difficult and heroic kind--for the artist to bring his gifts to maturity, to become great? his discipline to beauty must be as severe as the discipline of the saint to holiness. and, then, how has his sensuousness been misconstrued and vulgarized; and treated precisely, indeed, as if it were the licentiousness of a present-day tom jones! that artists can be thought about in such a way proves only one thing, namely, in what poor esteem they are now held. we need a new ideal of the artist; or, failing that, an old one, that of plato, perhaps, or of leonardo, or of nietzsche. _decadence and health_ it is in the decadent periods that the most triumphantly healthy men--one or two--appear. the corrupt italy of the renaissance gave birth to leonardo; the europe of gautier, baudelaire and wilde produced nietzsche. in decadent eras both disease and health become more self-conscious; they are cultivated, enhanced and refined. it has been said that the best way to remain healthy is not to think of health. but lack of self-consciousness speaks here. perhaps the middle ages were as diseased as our own--only they did not know it! is decadence nothing more than the symptom of a self-conscious age? and is "objectivity" the antidote? well, we might believe this if we could renounce our faith that mankind will yet become healthy--if we could become optimists in the present-day sense! _art in modern society_ an object of beauty has in modern surroundings a dangerous seduction which it did not possess in less hideous eras. in this is there to be found a contributory explanation of decadence--the decadent being one who feels the power of beauty intensely, and the repulsion from his environment as intensely, and who plunges into the enjoyment of beauty madly, with abandonment? in a society, however, which was not hideous as ours is, and in which beauty was distributed widely over all the aspects and forms of existence, the intoxication of beauty would not be felt with the same terrible intensity; a beautiful object would be enjoyed simply as one among many lovely things. in short, it would be enjoyed in the manner of health, not in that of sickness. it is the _contrast_ that is dangerous; the aridity of modern life arouses a terrible thirst, which is suddenly presented with the spectacle of a beauty unaccountable and awful; and this produces a dislocation and convulsion of the very soul. so that the present-day artist, if he would retain his health--if he would remain an artist--must curb his very love of the beautiful, and treat beauty, when he meets it, as he always does, in the gutter, a little cynically. otherwise he will lose his wits, and art will become his circe. therefore, mockery and hard laughter--alas, that it _must_ be so! _art in industry_ in those wildernesses of dirt, ugliness and obscenity, our industrial towns, there are usually art galleries, where the daintiest and most beautiful things, the flowers of greek statuary, for instance, bloom among the grime like a band of gods imprisoned in a slum. the spectacle of art in such surroundings sometimes strikes us as being at once ludicrous and pathetic, like something delicate and lovely sprawling in the gutter, or an angel with a dirty face. _conventions_ the revolt against conventions in art, thought, life and manners may be due to at least more than one cause. it is usually ascribed to "vitality" which "breaks through" forms, because it desires to be "free." but common sense tells us that more than two or three of our friends abjure convention for an altogether different reason--to be candid, on account of a _lack_ of vitality resulting in laziness and the inability to endure restraint of any kind. and, for the others, we shall judge their "vitality" to be justified when they build new conventions worthy of observance, instead of running their heads finally into illimitable space. or does their strength not go just so far? there is something suspicious about this vitality which cannot create: it resembles impotence so much! heaven preserve the moderns from their "vitality"! _"vitality"_ when moderns talk of the "vitality" of their most lauded writer, what they mean is finally the size of his muscles, physical energy, or, at the most, strong emotions; not vigour of mind. well, let us on no account make the opposite mistake and revile the large muscle and energetic feelings: they are admirable things. let us point out, however, that vitality of emotion undisciplined by vitality of thought leads nowhere, is often disruptive and cannot build. but to build is our highest duty and our peculiar form of freedom--we who have realized that there is no freedom without power. as for the old freedom--it is only the slaves who are not already tired of it. _decadence_ the decisive thing, determining whether an artist shall be major or minor, is very often not artistic at all, but moral. yes, though it shock our modern ears, let this be proclaimed! the more "temperament" an artist has, the more character he requires to govern it, to make it fruitful for him, if he would not have it get beyond control, and wreck both him and itself. and, consequently, the great artists show, as a rule, less "temperament" than the minor; they appear more self-contained and less "artistic." indeed, they smile with the hint of irony at the merely "artistic." it is, perhaps, when the traditions of artistic morality and discipline have broken down, when the "temperament" has, therefore, become unfettered and lawless, that decadence in art is born. the sincerity of the artist, his chief virtue, is gone--the sincerity which commands him to create only under the pressure of an artistic necessity, which tells him, in other words, to produce nothing which is not genuine. without sincerity, severity and patience, nothing great in art can be created. and it is precisely in these virtues that the decadent is lacking. a love of beauty is his only credential as an artist, but, undisciplined, it degenerates very soon into a love of mere effect. an effect of beauty at all costs, whether it be the true beauty or not! that becomes his object. without a root in any soil, he aspires to the condition of the water lily, and, in due time, becomes a full-blown æsthete. is it because he is incapable of becoming anything else? has he in despair grown "artistic" simply because he is not an artist? is decadence the most subtle disguise of impotence? and are decadents those who, if they had submitted to an artistic discipline of sincerity, would never have written at all? of some of them this is true, but of others it is not; and in that lies the tragedy of decadence. wilde himself was, perhaps, a decadent by misadventure; for on occasion he could rise above decadence into sincerity. "the ballad of reading gaol" proves that. he was the victim of a bad æsthetic morality, to which, it is true, he had a predisposition. and if this is true of him, it is true, also, of his followers. a baleful artistic ethic still rules, demoralizing the young artist at the moment when he should be disciplining himself; and turning, perhaps, some one with the potentiality of greatness into a minor artist. by neglecting the harder virtues, the decadents have made minor art inevitable and great art almost impossible. the old tradition of artistic discipline must be regained, then, or a new and even more severe tradition inaugurated. a text-book of morality for artists is now overdue. when it has been written, and the new discipline has been hailed and submitted to by the artists, who can say if greatness may not again be possible? _decadence again_ how is the dissolution of the tradition of artistic discipline to be explained? to what cause is it to be traced? perhaps to the more general dissolution of tradition which has taken place in modern times. when theological dogmas and moral values are thrown into the melting-pot, and the discipline of centuries is dissolved into anarchy, it is natural that artistic traditions should perish along with them. decadence follows free-thought: it appears at the time when the old values lie deliquescent and the new values have not yet risen, the dry land has not yet appeared. but this does not happen always: the old traditions of morality, theology, politics and industry are overthrown, the beginnings of a new tradition appear tentatively, everything fixed has vanished, the wildest hopes and the most chilling despair are the common possession of one and the same generation--but, throughout, the artistic tradition is held securely and confidently, it remains the one thing fixed in a world of dissolution. then an art arises greater even than that of the eras of tradition. the pathos of the dying and the inexpressible hope of the newly born find expression side by side; all chains are broken, and the world appears suddenly to be immeasurable. is this what happened at the renaissance? _wilde_ the refined degeneracy of oscar wilde might be explained on the assumption that he was at once over--and under--civilized: he had acquired all the exquisite and superfluous without the necessary virtues. these "exquisite" virtues are unfortunately dangerous to all but those who have become masters of the essential ones; they are qualities of the body more than of the mind; they are developments and embellishments of the shell of man. in acquiring them, wilde ministered to his body merely, and, as a consequence, it became more and more powerful and subtle--far more powerful and subtle than his mind. eventually this body--senses, passions and appetite--actually became the intellectual principle in him, of which his mind was merely a drugged and stupefied slave! _wilde and the sensualists_ the so-called paganism of our time, the movement towards sensualism of the followers of wilde, is not an attempt, however absurd, to supersede christianity; nor is it even in essence anti-christian. at the most it is a reaction--not a step beyond current religion into a new world of the spirit, but a changing from one foot to the other, a reliance on the senses for a little, so that the over-laboured soul may rest. and there is still much of christianity in this modern paganism. its devotees are too deeply corrupted to be capable either of pure sensuousness or of pure spirituality. they speak of christ like voluptuaries, and of eros like penitents. but it is impossible now to become a pagan: one must remember ibsen's julian and take warning. two thousand years of "bad conscience," of christian self-probing, with its deepening of the soul, cannot be disavowed, forgotten, unlived. for paganism a simpler spirit, mind and sensuousness are required than we can reproduce. we cannot feel, we cannot think, above all, we cannot feel without thinking of our feelings, as the pagans did. our modern desire to take out our soul and look at it separates us from the naïve classic sensuousness. what, then, does modern sensualism mean? what satisfaction does it bring to those, by no means few in number, its "followers"? a respite, an escapade, a holiday from christianity, from the inevitable. for christianity is assumed by them to be the inevitable, and it fills them with the loathing which is evoked by the enforced contemplation of things tyrannical and permanent. to escape from it they plunge madly into sensuality as into a sea of redemption. but the disgust which drives them there will eventually drive them forth again--into asceticism and the denial of the senses. christianity will then appear stronger than ever, having been purged of its "uncleanness." yes, the sensualists of our time are the best unconscious friends of christianity, its "saviours," who have taken its sins upon their shoulders. there still remain the few who do not assume christianity to be inevitable, who desire, no matter how hopeless the fight may seem, to surmount it, and who see that men have played too long the game of reaction. "to cure the senses by the soul and the soul by the senses" seems to them a creed for invalids. and, therefore, that against which, above all, they guard, is a mere relapse into sensualism. not by fleeing from christianity do they hope to reach their goal; but by understanding it, perhaps by "seeing through" it, certainly by benefiting in so far as they can by it, and, finally, emancipating themselves from it. they know that the soil no longer exists out of which grew the flower of paganism, and that they must pass through christianity if they would reach a new sensuality and a new spirituality. but their motto is, spirituality first, and, after that, only as much sensuality as our spirituality can govern! they hold that as men become more spiritual they may safely become more sensual; but that, to the man without spirit, sensuality and asceticism are alike an indulgence and a curse. that the spirit should rule--such is their desire; but it must rule as a constitutional governor, not as an arbitrary tyrant. for the senses, too, as heine said, have their rights. _arnold going down the hill_ one section of the realist school--that represented by bennett and john galsworthy--may be described as a reaction from asceticism. men had become tired of experiencing life only in its selected and costly "sensations," and sought an escape from "sensations," sought the ordinary. but another section of the school--george moore, for example--was merely a bad translation of æstheticism. equally tired of the exquisite, already having sampled all that luxury in "sensation" could provide, the artists now sought _new "sensations"_--and nothing else--in the squalid. it was the _rôle_ of the æsthetes to go downhill gracefully, but when they turned realists they ceased even to do that. they went downhill _sans_ art. yet, in doing so, did they not rob æstheticism of its seductiveness? and should we not, therefore, feel grateful to them? alas, no; for to the taste of this age, grace and art have little fascination: it is the heavy, unlovely and sordid that seduces. to disfigure æstheticism was to popularize it. and now the very man in the street is--artistically speaking--corrupted: a calamity second in importance only to the corruption of the artists and thinkers. _pater and the Æsthetes_ how much of walter pater's exclusiveness and reclusiveness was a revulsion from the ugliness of his time--an ugliness which he was not strong enough to contemplate, far less to fight--it is hard to say. perhaps his phase of the decadence may be defined as largely a reaction against industrialism, just as that of wilde may be defined as largely a reaction against christianity: but, in the former case as in the latter, that against which the reaction was made was assumed to be permanent. indeed, by escaping from industrialism instead of fighting it, pater and his followers made its persistence only a little more secure. it is true, there are excuses enough to palliate their weakness: the delicateness of their own nerves and senses, making them peculiarly liable to suffering, the ugliness and apparent invulnerability of industrialism, the beauty and repose of the world of art wherein they might take refuge and be happy. art as forgetfulness, art as lethe, the seduction of that cry was strong! but to yield to it was none the less unforgivable: it was an act traitorous not only to society but to art itself. for what was the confession underlying it? that the society of today and of tomorrow is, and _must be,_ barren; that no great art can hereafter be produced; that there is nothing left but to enjoy what has been accomplished! against that presumption, not the philistines but the great artists will cry as the last word of nihilism. pater's creed marks, therefore, a degradation of the conception of art. art as something exclusive, fragile and a little odd, the occupation of a few æsthetic eccentrics--this is the most pitiable caricature! to make themselves understood by one another, this little clique invented a jargon of their own; in this jargon pater's books are written, and not only his, but those of his followers to this day. it is a style lacking, above all, in good taste; it very easily drops into absurdity; indeed, it is always on the verge of absurdity. it has no masculinity, no hardness; and it is meant to be read by people a little insincerely "æsthetic," who are conscious that they are open to ridicule, and who are accordingly indulgent to the ridiculous; the fabians of art. to admire pater's style, it is necessary first to put oneself into the proper attitude. _creator and Æsthete_ the true creators and the mere æsthetes agree in this, that they are not realists. neither of them copies existence in its external details: wherein do they differ? in that the creators write of certain realities behind life, and the æsthetes--of the words standing for these realities. _hypocrisy of words_ the æsthetes, and pater and wilde in particular, made a cult of the use of decorative words. they demanded, not that a word should be _true,_ nor even that it should be true and pretty at the same time, but simply that it should be pretty. it cannot be denied that writers here and there before them had been guilty of using a fine word where a common one was most honest; but this had been generally regarded as a forgiveable, "artistic" weakness. wilde and his followers, however, chose "exquisite" words systematically, in conformity to an artistic dogma, and held that literature consisted in doing nothing else. and that was dangerous; for truth was thereby banished from the realm of diction and a hypocrisy of words arose. in short, language no longer grasped at realities, and literature ceased to express any thing at all, except a writer's taste in words. _the average man_ in this welter of dissolving values, the intellectuals of our time find themselves struggling, and liable at any moment to be engulfed. a few of them, however, have snatched at something which, in the prevailing deliquescence, appears to be solid--the average man. encamped upon him, they have won back sanity and happiness. but their act is nevertheless simply a reaction; here the real problem has not yet been faced! what is it that makes the average man more sane and happy than the modern man? the possession of dogmas, says g. k. chesterton; let us therefore have dogmas! but, alas, for them he goes back and not forward. and not only back, but back to the very dogmas against which modern thought, and decadence with it, are a reaction, nay, the _inevitable_ reaction. what! has mr. chesterton, then, postponed the solution of the problem? and on the heels of his remedy does there tread the old disease over again? perhaps it is so. the acceptance of the old dogmas will be followed by a new reaction from them, a new disintegration of values therefore, and a new decadence. the hands of the clock can be put back, it is true; but they will eventually reach the time when the hour shall strike _again_ for the solution of the modern problem. and that is the criticism which modern men must pass upon mr. chesterton; that he interposed in the course of their malady to bring relief with a remedy which was not a remedy. the modern problem should have been worked out to a new solution, to its own solution. instead of going back to the old dogmas, we should have strained on towards the new. and if, in this generation, the new dogmas are still out of sight, if we have meantime to live our lives without peace or stability, does it matter so very much? to do so is, perhaps, our allotted task. and as sacrifices to the future we justify our very fruitlessness, our very modernity! ii original sin _original sin_ original sin and the future are essentially irreconcilable conceptions. the believer in the future looks upon humanity as plastic: the good and the bad in man are not fixed quantities, always, in every age, past and future, to be found in the same proportions: an "elevation of the type man" is, therefore, possible. but the believer in original sin regards mankind as that in which--the less said about the good, the better--there is, at any rate, a fixed substratum of the bad. and _that_ can never be lessened, never weakened, never conquered. therefore, man has to fight constantly to escape the menace of an ever-present defeat. a battle in which victory is impossible; a contest in which man has to climb continually in order not to fall lower; existence as the tread mill: that is what is meant by original sin. and as such it is the great enemy of the future, the believers in which hold that there is not this metaphysical drag. but it is more. at all things aspiring it sets the tongue in the cheek, gladly provides a caricature for them, and becomes their sancho panza. to the great man it says, through the mouths of its chosen apostles, the average men, "what matter how high you climb! this load which you carry even as we will bring you back to us at last. and the higher you climb the greater will be your fall. humanity cannot rise above its own level." and therefore, humility, equality, radicalism, comradeship in sin--the ideas of christianity! _again_ distrust of the future springs from the same root as distrust of great men. it derives from the belief in the average man, which derives from the belief in original sin. the egalitarian sentiment strives always to become unconditional. it claims not only that all men are equal, but that the men who live now are no more than the equals of those who lived one, or five, thousand years ago, and no less than the equals of those who will live in another one, or five, thousand years. and it desires that this should be so: its jealousy embraces not only the living, but the dead and the unborn. _again_ society is a conspiracy, said emerson, against the great man. and to blast him utterly in the centre of his being, it invented original sin. is original sin, then, a theological dogma or a political device? _equality_ is equality, in truth, a generous dogma? does it express, as every one assumes, the solidarity of men in their higher attributes? it is time to question this, and to ask if inequality be not the more noble and generous belief. for, surely, it is in their nobler qualities that men are most unequal. it was not in his genius that shakespeare was only the equal, for instance, of his commentators; it was in the groundwork of his nature, in those feelings and desires without which he would not have been a man at all, in the things which made him human, but which did not make him shakespeare: in a word, in that which is for us of no significance. equality in the common part of man's nature, equality in sin, equality before god--it is the same thing--that is the only equality which can be admitted. and if its admission is insisted upon by apologists for christianity, that is because to the common part of man's nature they give so much importance, because they are believers in original sin. in their equality there is accordingly more malice than generosity. the belief that no one is other than themselves, the will that no one shall be other than themselves--there is nothing generous in that belief and that will. for man, according to them, is guilty from the womb. and what, then, is equality but the infinitely consoling consciousness of tainted creatures that every one on this earth is tainted? the believer in original sin will, of course, deny this, and say that in his philosophy men are equals also in their higher _rôle_ as "sons of god." but is this so? is salvation, like sin, common to all men? is it not, on the contrary, something _conferred_ as the reward of a belief and a choice--a belief and a choice which an atheist, for instance, simply cannot embrace? so that here, touching the highest part of men, their soul, there is introduced, by christianity itself, a distinction, an inequality--the distinction, the inequality between the "saved" and the "lost." men are equal inasmuch as they are all damned, but they are not equal inasmuch as they are not all redeemed. gazing at man, however, no longer through the eyes of the serpent, shall we not be bound to find, if we look _high_ enough, distinction, superiority, inferiority, valuation? the dogma of equality is itself a device to evade valuation. for valuation is difficult, and demands generosity for its exercise. to recognize that one is greater than you, and cheerfully to acknowledge it; to see that another is less than you, and to treat the inferiority as a trifling thing, that is difficult, that requires generosity. but one who believes in inequality will always be looking for greatness in others; his eye, habituated to the contemplation of lofty things, will become subtle in the detection of concealed nobility; while to the ignoble he will give only a glance--and is it not good, where one may not help, to pass on the other side? the egalitarians will cry that it is ungenerous to believe that some men are vile; but it is a strange generosity which would persuade us with them that all men are vile. let us be frank. to those who believe in the future, inequality is a holy thing; their pledge that greatness shall not disappear from the earth; the rainbow assuring them that man shall not go down beneath the vast tide of mankind. all great men are to them at once forerunners and sacrifices; the imperfect forms which the future has shattered in trying to incarnate itself; the sublime ruins of _future_ greatness. _if men were equal_ if men had been equal at the beginning, they would never have risen above the savage. for in absolute equality even the concept of greatness could not have come into being. inequality is the source of all advancement. _the fall of man_ in very early times men must have had a deep sense of the tragicality of existence: life was then so full of pain; death, as a rule, so sudden and unforeseen, and the world generally so beset with terrors. the few who were fortunate enough to escape violent death had yet to toil incessantly to retain a footing on this unkind star. life would, accordingly, appear to them in the most sombre tones and colours. and it was to explain this human misfortune, and not sin at all, that the whole fable of adam and eve and the fall was invented. the doctrine of original sin was simply an interpretation which was afterwards read into the story, an interpretation, perhaps, as arbitrary as the orthodox interpretation of the song of songs. how would the fable arise? well, a primitive poet one day in a fit of melancholy made the whole thing up. out of his misery his desires created for him an imaginary state, its opposite, the garden of eden. but this state being created, the problem arose, how did man fall from it? and the tree was brought in. but to the naïve, untheological poet, this tree had nothing to do with metaphysics or with sin, the child of metaphysics. it was simply a magical tree, and if man ate of the fruit of it, something terrible would happen to him. the fall of man was a _mystery_ to the poet, which he did not rationalize or theologize. well, man succumbed to curiosity, and pain and misfortune befell the human race. but we must not assume in the modern manner that with the eating of the fruit early man associated any idea of guilt. rather the contrary; he regarded the act simply as unfortunate, just as at the present day we regard as unfortunate the foolish princess in some fairy tale. so the fall was not to him a crime, branding all mankind with a metaphysical stigma. that conception came much later, when the conscience had become deeper, more subtle and more neurotic; when individualism had been introduced into morality. and at that time, too, the ideal of the redeemer became vitiated. early man, if he did envisage a redeemer, envisaged him as one who would set him back in the garden of eden again, in the literal, terrestrial garden of eden, be it understood: theology had not yet been etherealized. and this redeemer would redeem _all_ men: the distinction of the individual came afterwards. it was not until later, too, that this ideal was "interpreted," and, as a concession to the conscience, salvation was made a conditional thing: the reward of those who were successful in a competition in credulity, in which the first prize went to the most simple, most stupid. the "guilt" now implicated in the fall was not purged away from all men by the redeemer, but only from such as would "accept" it. and, lastly, with the passing of jesus, the redemption was still further de-actualized. it was found that acceptance of the redeemer did _not_ reinstate man in an earthly garden: paradise was, therefore, drawn on the invisible wires of theology into the inaccessible heavens. salvation lay at the other side of the grave, and there it was safe from assault. nevertheless, what our primitive poet meant by the fall and the redemption was probably something entirely different. the fall to him was the fall into misfortune, not into sin: the redemption to him was the redemption from misfortune, not from sin. and his redeemer would be, therefore--whom? perhaps it is impossible for us to imagine the nature of such a being. this is not an interpretation, but an attempted explanation of the story of the fall. _interpretations_ how inexhaustible is myth! in the story of the fall is a meaning for every age and every creed. the interpretation called original sin is only one of a thousand, and not the greatest of them. let us dip our bucket into the well. the tree of the knowledge of good and evil--that was the tree of morality! and morality was then the original sin? and through _it_ man lost his innocence? the antithesis of morality and innocence is as old as the world. and if we are to capture innocence again, if the world is to become æsthetically acceptable to us, we must dispense more and more with morality and limit its domain. this, one desperate glance into the depths of the myth tells us. instinct is upheld in it against isolated reason and exterior law. detached, "abstract" reason brought sin into the world, but instinct, which is fundamentally love, creation, will to power, is forever innocent, beyond good and evil. it was when reason, no longer the sagacity of instinct, no longer the eyes of love, became its opponent and oppressor, that morality arose and man fell. or to take another guess, granted we read original sin in the fall, must we not read there, also, the way to get rid of it? if by original sin man fell, then by renouncing it let him arise again. but how renounce it? what! cannot man renounce a metaphor? yet how powerful is metaphor! man is ruled by metaphor. the gods were nothing but that, some sublime, some terrible, some lovely, all metaphors, jehovah, moloch, apollo, eros. life is now stained through and through with metaphor. and there are further transfigurations still possible! yet we would not destroy the beauty already starring life's skies, the lovely hues lent by aphrodite, and artemis, and dionysos, or the sublime colours of jehovah and thor. but the heavy disfiguring blot tarnishing all, love, innocence, ecstasy, wrath, that we would rather altogether extirpate and annul. original sin we would cut off as a disfigurement and disease of life. or, again, may not the myth be an attempt to glorify man and to clothe him with a sad splendour. and not original sin, but original innocence is the true reading of the fable? its _raison d'être_ is the garden of eden, not the fall? to glorify humanity at its source it set there a superman. the fall from innocence--that was the fall from the superman into man. and how, then, is man to be redeemed? by the return of the superman! let that be our reading of the myth! _the use of myth_ in the early world myth was used to dignify man by idealizing his origin. henceforward it must be used to dignify him by idealizing his goal. _that_ is the task of the poets and artists. _before the fall_ innocence is the morality of the instincts. original sin--that was war upon the instincts, morality become abstract, separate, self-centred, accusing and tyrannical. this self-consciousness of morality, this disruption in the nature of man, was the fall. _beyond original sin_ how far is man still from his goal? how sexual, foul in word and thought, naively hedonistic! how little of spirit is in him! how clumsily his mind struggles in the darkness! how far he is still from his goal!--this is a cry which the believer in original sin cannot understand, because he accepts all this imperfection as inevitable, as the baleful heritage of man, from which he cannot escape. the feeling of pure joy in life, the feeling that life is a sacrament--that also is forever denied to the believer in original sin. for life is not a sacrament to him, but a sin of which joy itself is only an aggravation. _the eternal bluestocking_ the bluestocking is as old as mankind. her original was eve, the first dabbler in moral philosophy. _the sin of intellectualism_ the first sin, the original sin was that of the intellectuals. the knowledge of good and evil was not an instantaneous "illumination"; it was the result of long experiment and analysis: the apple took perhaps hundreds of years to eat! before that, in the happy day of innocence, good and evil were not, for instinct and morality were one and not twain. as time passed, however, the physically lazy, who had been from the beginning, became weaker and wiser. enforced contemplation, the contemplation of those who were not strong enough to hunt or to labour, made them more subtle than their simple brethren; they formed themselves into a priesthood, and created a theology. in these priests instinct was not strong: they were invalids with powerful reason. but they had the lust for power; they wished to conquer by means of their reason; therefore, they said to themselves, belittle instinct, tyrannize over instinct, discover an absolute "good" and an absolute "evil," become moral. morality, which had in the days of innocence been unconscious, the harmony of the instincts, was now given a separate existence. the cry was morality against the instincts. thus triumphed the priests, the intellectuals, by means of their reason. original sin was their sin--the result of the analysis by which they had separated morality and the instincts. if we are to speak of original sin at all, let it be in this manner. _once more_ the belief in original sin--that was itself man's original sin. _apropos gautier_ he had just read "mlle. de maupin," "what seduction there is still for man in the senses!" he exclaimed. "how much more of an animal than a spirit he must be to be charmed and enslaved by this book!" yet, what ground had he to conclude that because the sensual intoxicates man, therefore man is more sensual than spiritual? for we are most fatally attracted by what is most alien to us. _psychology of the humble_ there is something very naïve in those who speak of humility as a certain good and of pride as a proven evil. in the first place these are not opposites at all; there are a hundred kinds of both, and humility is sometimes simply a refined form of pride. humility may be prudence, or good taste, or timidity, or a concealment, or a sermon, or a snub. how much of it, for instance, is simple prudence? is not this, indeed, its chief _utility,_ that it saves men from the dangers which accompany pride? on the day on which some one discovered that "pride goeth before a fall," humility became no mean virtue. for if one become the servant and proclaim himself the least of all, how can he still fall? yet if he does it is a fall into greater humility, and his virtue only shows the brighter. this is the sagacity of the humble, that they turn even ignominy to their glorification. humility is most commonly used with a different meaning, however. there are people who wish to be anonymous and uniform, and people who desire to be personal and distinct. or, more exactly, it is their instincts that seek these ends. the first are humble in the fundamental sense that they are instinctively so; the latter are proud in the same sense. humility, then, is the desire to be as others are and to escape notice; and this desire can only be realized in conformity. it is true, people become conceited after a while about their very conformity, and would be wounded in their vanity if they failed to comply with fashion; but vanity and humility are not incompatible. pride, however, is something much more subtle. the naïve, unconditional contemners of pride, who plead with men to cast it out, have certainly no idea what would happen if they were obeyed. for pride is the condition of all fruitful action. this thought must be consciously or subconsciously present in the doer, what i do is of value! i am capable of doing a thing which is worth doing! the christian, it is true, still acts, though he is convinced that all action is sinful and of little worth. but it is only his mind that is convinced: his instincts are by no means persuaded of the truth of this! for though in the conscious there may be self-doubt, in the unconscious there _must_ be pride, or actions would not be performed at all. moreover, in all those qualities which are personal and not common--in personality--pride is an essential ingredient. the pronoun "i" is itself an affirmation of pride. the feeling, this is myself, this quality is _my_ quality, by possessing it i am different from you, these things constitute _my_ personality and _are_ me: what a naïve assumption of the valuableness of these qualities do we have there, how much pride is there in that unconscious confession! and without this instinctive pride, these qualities, personality could never have been possible. in the heart of all distinct, valuable and heroic things, pride lies coiled. yes, even in the heart of humility, of the most refined, spiritual humility. for such humility is _not_ a conformity; it separates and individualizes its possessor as effectually as pride could; it takes its own path and not that of the crowd; and so its source must be in an inward sense of worth, of independence: it is a form of pride. but pride is so closely woven into life that to wound it is to wound life; to abolish it, if that were possible, would be to abolish life. well do its subtler defamers know that! and when they shoot their arrows at pride, it is life they hope to hit. _les humbles_ humility is the chief virtue, said a humble man. then are you the vainest man, said his friend, for you are renowned for your humility. good taste demands from writers who praise humility a little aggressiveness and dogmatism, lest they be taken for humble, and, therefore, proud. on the other hand, if humility is the chief virtue, it is immoral not to practise it. and, therefore, one should praise humility, and practise it? or praise it and not practise it? or not praise it and practise it? there is contradiction in every course. that is the worst of believing in paradoxical virtues! _against the ostentatiously humble_ he who is truly humble conceals even his humility. _the pessimists_ in pessimistic valuations of life, the alternative contemplated is generally not between life and death, but between different types of life. the real goal of schopenhauerism is not the extinction of life, for death is a perfectly normal aspect of existence, and life would not be denied even if death became universal. in order to deny life and to triumph over it, the pessimist must continue at least to exist, in a sort of death in life: he must be dead, but he must also know it. that is the goal of schopenhauerism; perhaps not so difficult, perhaps frequently attained! "they have not enough life even to die," said nietzsche. _sickness and health_ some men have such unconquerable faith in life that they defy their very maladies, creating out of them forms of ecstasy: that is their way of triumphing over them. perhaps some poetry, certainly not a little religion has sprung from this. in religions defaming the senses and enjoining asceticism, or, in other words, a lowering of vitality, the chronic sufferers _affirm_ life in their own way; for sickness _is_ their life: their praise of sickness is their praise of life. and if they sometimes morbidly invite death, that is because death is nothing but another form of experience, of life. to the sick, if they are to retain self-respect and pride, these doctrines are perhaps the best possible; it is only to the healthy that they are noxious. for the healthy who are converted by them, become sick through them, yet not so sick as to find comfort in them. the aspiration after an ascetic life contends in these men with their old health, their desire to live fully, and causes untold perplexities and conflicts; leaving them at last with nothing but a despairing desire for release. thus, a religion of consolation becomes for the strong a will to death--the very opposite of that which it was to those who created it. _the pride of the sterile_ ecclesiastical, ceremonious humility is the pride of those who cannot create or initiate, either because they are sterile, or because the obstacles in their way are too great. their pride is centred, not on what they can do, but on what they can endure. the anchorite goes into the wilderness, perhaps rather to get his background than to escape attention, and there imposes upon himself the most difficult and loathsome tasks, enduring not only outward penances, fasting and goading of the flesh, but such inward convulsions, portents and horrors, as the soul of man has by no other means experienced. here, in endurance, is his power, and here, therefore, is his pride: the poor atlas, who does not remove, but supports mountains, and these of his own making! men who have the power to create but are at the same time extremely timid belong to this class. rather than venture outside themselves they will do violence to their own nature. the forces which in creation would have been liberated are pent within them and cause untold restlessness, uneasiness and pain. religions which stigmatize "self-expression," separating the individual into an "outward" and an "inward" and raising a barrier between the two, encourage the growth of this type of man. these religions themselves have their roots in a timidity, a fear of pain. for self-expression is by no means painless; it is, on the contrary, a great cause of suffering. essentially its outcome is strife, the clash of egos: tragedy is the great recognition in art of this truth. christianity saw the suffering which conflict brought with it, said it was altogether evil, and sought to abolish it. but a law of life cannot be abolished: strife, driven from the world of outward event, retreated into the very core of man, and there became baleful, indeed, disintegrating, and subversive. the early christians did not see that men would suffer more from that inward psychic conflict than from the other. it was the greeks who elevated conflict to an honourable position in their outward actions; with them, as nietzsche said, there was no distinction between the "outward" and "inward"; they lived completely and died once. but the christians, to use the words of st. paul, "died daily." how true was that of those proudly humble anchorites! what a light it throws upon their sternly endured convulsions of the soul! in the end, death itself came no doubt to many of them as a relief from this terribly protracted "dying." perhaps one thing, however, made their lives bearable and even enjoyable--the power of the soul to plumb its own sufferings and capacity for endurance. psychology arose first among the ecclesiastically humble men. well, let us count up our gains and losses. spiritual humility, wherever it has spread, has certainly weakened the expression of life: for it has weakened man by introducing within him a disrupting conflict. but it has also made life subtler and deeper; it has enlarged the inward world of man, even if it has straitened the world outside. so that when we return--as we must--to the pagan ideal of "expression," our works shall be richer than those of the pagans, for man has now _more_ to express. _when pride is necessary_ perhaps in all great undertakings into which uncertainty enters pride is necessary. in the elizabethan age, our most productive and adventurous age, pride was at its zenith. was that pride the necessary condition of that productiveness? would the poets, the thinkers and the discoverers have attempted what they did attempt, had they been humble men? what is needed is more enquiry: a new psychology, and, above all, a new history of pride. _humility and the artists_ there is one man, at any rate, who has always owed more to pride than to humility--the artist. whether it be in himself, where it is almost the condition of productiveness, or in others, where it is the cause of all actions and movements æsthetically agreeable, pride is his great benefactor. all artists are proud, but not all have the good conscience of their pride. in their thoughts they permit themselves to be persuaded too much by the theologians; they have not enough "free spirit" to say, "pride is my atmosphere, in which i create. i do not choose to refuse my atmosphere." but if pride were banished even from the remainder of life, how poor would the artists be left! for every gesture that is beautiful, all free, spirited, swift movement and all noble repose have in them pride. humility uglifies, except, indeed, the humility which is a form of pride; that has a sublimity of its own. even the christian church--the church of the humble--had to make its ceremonies magnificent to make itself æsthetically presentable; without its magnificence it would have been an impossible institution. humility, to be supportable, must have in it an admixture of pride. that gives it _standing._ it was his subtle pride that communicated to the humility of jesus its gracious "charm." poetic tragedy and pride are profoundly associated. no event is tragic which has not arisen out of pride, and has not been borne proudly: the greeks knew that. but, as well, is not pride at times laughable and absurd? well, what does that prove, except that comedy as well as tragedy has been occasioned by it? humility is not even laughable! _love and pride_ pride is so indissolubly bound up with everything great--joy, beauty, courage, creation--that surely it must have had some celestial origin. who created it? was it love, who wished to shape a weapon for itself, the better to fashion things? pride has so much to do with creation that sometimes it imagines it is a creator. but that it is not. only love can create. pride was fashioned out of a rib taken from the side of love. _pride and the fall_ it was not humility that was the parent of the fable of the fall. or is it humility to boast of one's high ancestry, and if the ancestry does not exist, to invent it? the naïve poet who created that old allegory did not foresee the number of interpretations which would be read into it. he did not foresee that it would be used to humiliate man instead of to exalt him; he did not at all foresee original sin. as less than justice, then, has been meted to him, let us now accord him more than justice. let us say that he was a divine philosopher who perceived that in unconditional morality lay the grand misfortune of mankind. man is innocent; thus, he said, it is an absolute ethic that defiles him--the knowledge of good and evil. sweep that away, and he is innocent and back in the garden of eden again. let us say this of the first poet, for certainly he did not mean it! perhaps he knew nothing at all about morality! all that he wished for was to provide a dignified family tree for his generation. _the good conscience_ what a revolution for mankind it would be to get back "the good conscience"? life made innocent, washed free from how much filth of remorse, guilt, contempt, "sin"--that vision arouses a longing more intense than that of the religious for any heaven. and it seems at least equally possible of realization! bad conscience arises when religion and the instincts are in opposition; the more comprehensive and deep this conflict, the more guilty the conscience. but there have been religions not antagonistic to the instincts, which, instead of condemning them, have thought so well of them as to become their rule, their discipline. the religion of the greeks was an example of this; and in greece, accordingly, there was no "bad conscience" in our sense. well, how is it possible, if it _is_ possible, to regain "the good conscience"? not by any miracle! not by an instantaneous "change of heart," for even the heart changes slowly. but suppose that a new instinctive religion and morality were to be set up, and painfully complied with, until they became a second nature as ours have become, should we not then gradually lose our bad conscience, born as it is out of the antagonism between instinct and morality? nay, if we were to persevere still further until instinct and religion and morality became intermingled and indistinguishable, might we not enter the garden of eden again, might not innocence itself become ours? but to attain that end, an unremitting discipline, extending over hundreds of years, might be necessary; and who, in the absence of gods, is to impose that discipline? _the other side_ the life-defaming creeds are not to be condemned unconditionally: even they are not evil. "guilt," asceticism, contempt for the world--these are the physiologically bad things which have sharpened, deepened and made subtle the soul of man. the greeks were simple compared with modern man; a thousand times more healthy, it is true--perhaps because they were incapable of contracting our maladies. well, let us judge christianity, which in europe was mainly responsible for this deepening of man, by an artistic criterion: let us judge it by the effects it achieved, not by what it said. _effects of christianity_ if there are gods who take an interest in man, and experiment upon him, what better means could they have devised for getting out of him certain "effects," not christian at all, than christianity? far more significant for mankind than the virtues of christianity, are its contradictions, excesses and "states of mind." the "way of life," christian morality, is of little account compared with the permanent physiological and psychological transformations effected upon man by the discipline of centuries of religion. not that man has been forced into the mould of christian morality, but that in the process he has undergone the most unique convulsions, adaptations and permutations, that an entire new world of conflict, pain, fear, horror, exaltation, faith and scepticism has been born within him, that life, driven within itself, has deepened, enriched and invested him--_that_ is from the standpoint of human culture the most important thing, beside which what is usually understood by the christianizing of europe is relatively insignificant. not christian morality, but the effects of christian morality it is that now concern us. and these effects are not themselves christian; rather the contrary. christianity has made man more complex, contradictory, sceptical, tragic and sublime; it has given him more capacity for good and for evil, and has added to these two qualities subtlety and spirituality. iii what is modern? _whither?_ the fever of modern thought which burns in our veins, and from which we refuse to escape by reactionary backdoors--christianity and the like--is not without its distinction: it is an "honourable sickness," to use the phrase of nietzsche. i speak of those who sincerely strive to seek an issue from this fever; to pass through it into a new health. of the others to whom fever is the condition of existence, who make a profession of their maladies, the valetudinarians of the spirit, the dabblers in quack soul-remedies for their own sake, it is impossible to speak without disdain. our duty is to exterminate them, by ridicule or any other means found effectual. but we are ourselves already too grievously harassed; we are caught in the whirlwind of modern thought, which contains as much dust as wind. we see outside our field of conflict a region of christian calm, but never, never, never can we return there, for our instincts as well as our intellect are averse to it. the problem must have a different solution. and what, indeed, is the problem? to some of us it is still that of emancipation--that which confronted goethe, ibsen, nietzsche, and the other great spirits of last century. it is an error to think that these men have yet been refuted or even understood; they have simply been buried beneath the corpses of later writers. and it is the worst intellectual weakness, and, therefore, crime, of our age that ideas are no longer disproved, but simply superseded by newer ideas. the latest is the true, and time refutes everything! that is our modern superstition. we have still, then, to go back--or, rather, forward--to goethe, ibsen and nietzsche. our problem is still that of clearing a domain of freedom around us, of enlarging our field of choice, and so making destiny itself more spacious; and, then, having delivered ourselves from prejudice and superstition--and how many other things!--of setting an aim before us for the unflinching pursuit of which we make ourselves responsible. greater freedom, and therefore greater responsibility, above all greater aims, an enlargement of life, not a whittling of it down to christian standards--that is our problem still! _the "restoration" of christianity_ will christianity ever be established again? it is doubtful. at the most, it may be "restored"--in the manner of the architectural "restorations," against which ruskin declaimed. the difficulty of re-establishing it must needs be greater than that of establishing it. for it has now been battered by science (people no longer believe in miracles) and by history (people have read what the church has done--or has not done). christianity has become a church, and the church, an object of criticism. as the body which housed the spirit of christianity, men have studied it with secular eyes, and have found little to reverence, much to censure; and in the disrepute into which the body has fallen, the spirit, also, has shared. and now the atmosphere cannot be created in which christianity may grow young again and recapture its faith. the necessary credulity, or, at any rate, the proper kind of credulity, is no longer ours. for christianity grew, like the mushrooms, _in the night._ had there been newspapers in judea, there had been no christianity. and this age of ours, in which the clank of the printing press drowns all other sounds, is fatal to any noble mystery, to any noble birth or rebirth. _that_ night, at all events, we can never pass through again, and, therefore, christianity will probably never renew itself. _a drug for diseased souls_ the utmost that can be expected is a "restoration," and in that direction we have gone already a long way. for christianity is not now, as it was at the beginning, a spring of inspiration, a thing spiritual, spontaneous, dionysian. it is mainly a remedy, or, more often, a drug for diseased souls; and, therefore, to be husbanded strictly by the modern medicine men, to be dispensed carefully, and, yes, to be advertised as well! its birth was out of an exuberance of spiritual life; its "restoration" will be out of a hopeless debility and fatigue. and, therefore---- _the dogmatists_ all religions may be regarded from two sides; from that of their creators, and from that of their followers. among the creators are to be numbered not only the founders of religion, but the saints, the inspired prophets and every one who has in some degree the genius for religion. they are not distinguished by much reverence for dogma, but by the "religious feeling"; and when this emotion carries them away in its flood they often treat dogma in a way to make the orthodox gape with horror. but, in truth, they do not themselves take much account of dogma; every dogma is a crutch, and they do not feel the need of one. but the people who are not sustained by this inward spring of emotion, who can never know what religion really is, these need a crutch; it is for them that dogma was designed. and, of course, the real religious men see their advantage also in the adherence of the dogmatists, the many; for the more widely a religion is spread, the more secure it becomes, and the greater chance it has of enduring. dogma, then, is religion for the irreligious. to the saint religion is a thing inward and creative; to the dogmatist it is a thing outward, accomplished and fixed, to which he may cling. the former is the missionary of religion, the latter, its conserver. the one is religious because he has religion, the other, because he needs it. _the religious impulse_ the time comes in the history of a faith when the "religious feeling" dies, and nothing is left but dogma. the dogmatists then become the missionaries of religion. the fount is dried up; there is no longer an inward force seeking for expression; there is only the fear of the dogmatist lest his staff, his guide, his horizon should be taken from him. religion is then supported most frenziedly by the irreligious; weakness then speaks with a more poignant eloquence than strength itself. and that is what is happening with christianity. its "religious feeling" is dead: there has been no great religious figure in europe in our time. and the church is now being defended on grounds neither religious nor theological, but secular and even utilitarian. the real religious impulse is now to be found in the movement outside, and, _therefore,_ against christianity. but, alas, as nietzsche feared, there may not after all be "sufficient religion in the world to destroy religion." _the decay of prophecy_ the past should be studied only in order to divine the future. the new soothsayers should seek for omens, not, as their ancient brethren did, in the stars and the entrails of animals, but in the book of history, past and becoming. "the new soothsayers," for soothsaying has not died; it has become popular--and degenerate. every one may now foretell the future, but no one may believe what is foretold. and that is because the soothsayers do not themselves believe their auguries; when they happen to speak the truth, no one is more surprised than they. but in the antique world the augurs had, at any rate, responsibility; to foretell the future was not to them an amusement but a vocation. to what is due the decay of the art of soothsaying? partly, no doubt, to the dissemination of popular knowledge, by which people have become less credulous; partly to the "scientific temper" of those who, had they lived in the old world, would have been the soothsayers; partly to other causes known to every one. but, allowing for these, may there not be _something_ due to the fact that people are no longer interested, as they used to be, in the future? they know the past, ah, perhaps too well: they have looked into it so long that at length they feel that the future holds nothing which it has not held, that fate has now no fresh metamorphosis or apotheosis, and that time must henceforth be content to plagiarize itself. and so the future has lost the seduction which it once held for the noblest spirits. it is true, men still amuse themselves by guessing which of time's well-thumbed and greasy cards will turn up at the next deal, or by playing at patience with the immemorial possibilities. but that is not soothsaying, nor is it even playing with the future: it is playing with the past. and the great modern discovery is not the discovery of the future, but the discovery of the past. and as with soothsaying, so with prophecy. if we could but look for a moment into the soul of an old prophet and see his deepest thoughts and visions, what a conception of the future would be ours! but that is impossible. we cannot now understand the faith of the men who, unmoved, prophesied the advent of supernatural beings, the christ or another; to whom the future was a new world more strange than america was to columbus. that attitude of mind has been killed; and now comes one who says the belief in the future is a weakness. would he, perchance, have said that to john the baptist, the great modern of his time? had he lived in that pre-christian world, would he have believed in the god in whom he now believes? the orthodox christian here finds himself in a laughable dilemma. admitting nothing wonderful in the future, he is yet constrained to believe in a past wonderful beyond the dreams of poets or of madmen--a past in which supernatural beings, miracles and portents were almost the rule. and so the future is to him not even so wonderful as the past. it is an expurgated edition of the past--an edition with the incidents and marvels left out, a novel without a hero or a plot. so, for good or for evil, we no longer believe in the future as we did: it is steadily becoming less marvellous, and, therefore, less seductive for us. but, without the bait of the strange and the new to lure it on, must not humanity halt on its way? _can_ man act at all without believing in the future in some fashion? must not things be _foreseen_ before they can be accomplished? is not soothsaying implicit in every deliberate act? are not all sincere ideals involuntary auguries? is it not the future rather than the prophecy which "comes true"? did not the old prophecies "come true" _because_ they were prophesied? did not christ arise _because_ he was foretold? and are not the believers in the future, then, the creators of the future, and the true priests of progress? when we can envisage a future noble enough, it will not then be weakness to believe in it. _the great immoralists_ the morality of nietzsche is more strict and exacting than that of christianity. when the christians argue against it, therefore, they are arguing in favour of a morality more comfortable, pleasing and indulgent to the natural man; consequently, even on religious grounds, of a morality more immoral. what! is nietzsche, then, the great moralist, and are the christians the great immoralists? this notion may appear to us absurd, or merely ingenious, but will it appear so to future generations? will timidity, conformity, mediocrity, judicious blindness, unwillingness to offend, be synonymous, to them also, with morality? or will they look back upon christianity as a creed too indulgent and not noble enough? as a sort of epicureanism, for instance? _the first and the last_ we all know what the weak have suffered from the strong; but who shall compute what the strong have suffered from the weak? "the last shall be first"; but when they become first they become also the worst tyrants--impalpable, anonymous and petty. _humility in pride_ the pride of some gifted men is not pride in their person, but in something within them, of which they regard themselves the guardians and servants. if there is dignity in their demeanour it is a reflected, impersonal dignity. just so a peasant might feel ennobled who guarded a king in danger and exile. _the modern devil_ the devil is not wicked but corrupt, in modern phraseology, decadent. the qualities of the mediæval devil, rage, cruelty, hatred, pride, avarice, are in their measure necessary to life, necessary to virtue itself. but corruption is wholly bad; it contaminates even those who fight it. hell relaxes: mr. shaw's conception is profoundly true. but if the devil is corruption, cannot the devil be abolished? it is true, man cannot extirpate cruelty, hatred and pride without destroying life; but life is made more powerful by the destruction of the corrupt. god created man; but it was man that created the devil. _master and servant_ to summon out of the void a task, and then incontinently to make of himself its slave: that is the happiness of many a man. a great means of happiness! _criterions_ it is not expedient to choose on _every_ occasion the higher rather than the lower, for one may not be able to endure too much living on the heights. if will and capacity were always equal! then, it is true, there would not be any difficulty; but life is life, after all--that is, our will _is_ greater than our capacity. on the other hand, it is not well to develop equally all our faculties--the formula of the humanist--for among them there is a hierarchy, and some are more worthy of development than others. what course is left? to act always in the interest of what is highest in us, and when we partake of a lower pleasure to regard it as a form of sleep, of necessary forgetting? for even the mind must slumber occasionally if it is to remain healthy. _intellectual prudence_ among athletes there is a thing known as over-training: if it is persisted in it wrecks the body. a similar phenomenon is to be found among thinkers: thought too severe and protracted may ruin the mind. was this the explanation of nietzsche's downfall? certainly, his intellectual health was that of the athlete who remains vigorous by virtue of a never-sleeping discipline, who maintains his balance by a continuous effort. this is perhaps the highest, the most exquisite form of health, but it is at the same time the most dangerous--a little more, a little less, and the engine of thought is destroyed. it is important that the thinker should discover exactly how far he may discipline himself, and how far permit indulgence. what in the ordinary man--conscious of no _secondary raison d'être_--is performed without fuss by the instincts, must by him be _thought out_--a task of great peril. _a dilemma_ to be a man is easy: to be a purpose is more difficult; but, on the whole--easy. in the first instance, one has but to exist; in the second, to act. but to unite man and purpose in the same person--to be a type--is both difficult and precarious. for that a balance is imperative: "being" and "doing" must be prevented from injuring each other: action must become rhythm, and rest, a form of energy. to be in doing, to do in being--that is the task of the future man. the danger of our being mere man is that mankind may remain forever stationary, without a goal. the danger of our being mere purpose is that our humanity may altogether drop out and nothing but the purpose be left. and would not that defeat the purpose? _dangers of genius_ why is it that so many men of genius have been destroyed by falling into chasms of desire which are safely trodden by common men? is it because there is within the exceptional man greater compass, and, therefore, greater danger? the genius has left the animal further behind than the ordinary man; indeed, in the genius of the nobler sort there is an almost passionate avoidance and disavowal of the animal. in this disavowal lie at once his safety and his danger: by means of it he climbs to perilous heights, and is also secure upon them. but let him abrogate even once this denial of kinship, and he is in the utmost danger. he now finds himself stationed on the edge of a precipice up to which he seems to have climbed in a dream, a dreadful dizziness assails him, along with a mad desire to fling himself into the depths. it was perhaps a leap of this kind that marlowe made, and shelley. meantime, the ordinary man lives in safety at the foot of the precipice: he is never so far above the animal as to be injured by a fall into animalism. only to the noble does spiritual _danger_ come. _a strange failure_ he failed; for the task was too _small_ for him--a common tale among men of genius. you have been unsuccessful in trivial things? there is always a remedy left: to essay the great. how often has man become impotent simply because there was no task heroic enough to demand greatness of him! _dangers of the spiritual_ if you are _swept off your feet_ by a strongly sensuous book, it is probably a sign that you have become too highly spiritualized. for a sensualist would simply have enjoyed it, while feeling, perhaps, a little bored and dissatisfied. it was only a religious anchorite who could have lost his _soul_ to anatole france's thaïs. for the salvation of man it is more than ever imperative that a reconciliation should be effected between the spirit and the senses. until it is, the highest men--the most spiritual--will be in the very greatest peril, and will almost inevitably be wrecked or frustrated. it is for the good of the _soul_ that this reconciliation must now be sought. _again_ from the diabolization of the senses innumerable evils have flowed; physical and mental disease, disgust with the world, cruelty towards everything natural. but, worst of all, it has made sensuality a greater _danger_ than it was ever before. in the anchorite, seeking to live entirely in the spirit, and ignoring or chastising the body, sensuality was driven into the very soul, and there was magnified a hundredfold. to the thinker avoiding the senses as much as possible--for he had been taught to distrust them--sensuality, in the moments when he was brought face to face with it, had acquired a unique seductiveness, and had become a problem and a danger. if he yielded, it was perilous in a degree unknown to the average sensual man; if he resisted, a good half of his spiritual energy was wasted in keeping the senses at bay. in either case, the thinker suffered. so that now it is the spirit that has become the champion of the senses, but for the good of the spirit. _god and animal_ until the marriage of the soul and the senses has been accomplished, man cannot manifest himself in any _new_ type. what has been the history of humanity during the last two thousand years? the history of humanity, that is, as distinct from the history of communities? a record of antithetic tyrannies, the spiritual alternating with the sensual; an uncertain tussle between god and animal, now one uppermost, now the other; not a tragedy--for in tragedy there is significance--but a gloomy farce. and this farce must continue so long as the spirit contems sense as evil in itself--for neither of them can be abolished! whether we like it or not, the senses, so long as they are oppressed and defamed, will continue to break out in terrible insurrections of sensuality and excess, until, tired and satiated, they return again under the tyranny of the spirit--at the appointed time, however, to revolt once more. from this double _cul de sac_ man can be freed only by a reconciliation between the two. when this happens, however, it will be the beginning of a higher era in the history of humanity; man will then become spiritual in a new sense. spirit will then affirm life, instead of, as now, slandering it; existence will become joyful and tragic; for to live in accordance with life itself--voluntarily to approve struggle, suffering and change--is the most difficult and heroic of lives. the softening of the rigour of existence, its reduction and weakening by asceticism, humility, "sin," is the _easier_ path; _narrow_ is the way that leads to nihilism! the error of heine was that he prophesied a _happier_ future from the reconciliation of the body and the soul: his belief in the efficacy of happiness was excessive. but this reconciliation is, nevertheless, of importance for _nothing else_ than its _spiritual_ significance: by means of it man is freed from his labyrinth, and can at last _move forward_--he becomes more tragic. _ultimate pessimism_ to the most modern man must have come at some time the thought, what if this thing spirit be _essentially_ the enemy of the senses? what if, like the vampire, it _can_ live only by drinking blood? what if the conflict between spirit and "life" is and must forever be an implacable and destructive one? he is then for a moment a christian, but with an added bitterness which few christians have known. for if his thought be true, then the weakening and final nullification of life must be our object. to prove that the spirit and the senses are not eternally irreconcilable enemies is still a task. those who believe they are, do so as an act of faith: their opponents are in the same case. we should never cease to read spirit into life-affirming things, such as pride, heroism and love, and to magnify and exalt these aspects of the spirit. _leisure and productiveness_ granted that the society which produces the highest goods in the greatest profusion is the best--let us not argue from this that society should be organized with the direct aim of producing goods. for what if goods be to society what happiness is said to be to men--things to be attained only by striving for something else? in all good things--whether it be in art, literature or philosophy--there is much of the free, the perverse, the unique, the incalculable. in short, good things can only be produced by great men--and these are exceptions. the best we can do, then, is to inaugurate a society in which great men will find it possible to live, will be even encouraged to live. can a society in which rights are affixed to functions serve for that? a function, in practice, in a democratic state--that will mean something which can be seen to be useful for today, but not for tomorrow, far less for any distant future. the more subtle, spiritual, posthumous the activity of a man the less it will be seen to be a function. art and philosophy arise when leisure and not work is the ruling convention. it is true that artists and philosophers work, and at a higher tension than other men; but it is in leisure that they must _conceive_ their works: what obvious function do they then fulfil? even the most harassed of geniuses, even burns would never have become immortal had he not had the leisure to ponder, dream and love. idleness is as necessary for the production of a work of art as labour. and with some men perhaps whole years of idleness are needed. artists must always be privileged creatures. it is privileges, and not rights, that they want. _what is freedom?_ the athlete, by the disciplining of his body, creates for himself a new world of actions; he can now do things which before were prohibited to him; in consequence, he has enlarged the sphere of his freedom. the thinker and the artist by discipline of a different kind are rewarded in the same way. they are now more free, because they have now more capacity. there are people, however, who think one can be free whether one has the capacity for freedom or not--a characteristically modern fallacy. but a man the muscles of whose body and mind are weak cannot do _anything;_ how can he be free? the concept of freedom cannot be separated from that of power. _freedom, in the dance_ even the most unbridled dance is a form of constraint. the completest freedom of movement is the reward of the severest discipline. _a moral for moderns_ a spring gushed forth here on the airy height; but the soil was not hard enough to retain it; and the water sapped away among the soft moss. one day a man came and laid down a hard channel for the spring. imprisoned on both sides, it now imperiously sought an outlet and--a miracle!--leapt glittering into the sunshine. the history of freedom. _the renaissance: a thesis_ how unsatisfactory are those explanations of the renaissance which give as its cause the breaking up of the restrictive intellectual canons of the middle ages--as if a mere negation could explain such a unique creative era! what has here to be discovered is how freedom and the _capacity_ for freedom should have appeared at the same moment. perhaps the middle ages have now been sufficiently reviled by the admirers of the renaissance; perhaps that event owed more than we are willing to acknowledge to the centuries of mediæval repression and discipline. during these centuries the human spirit had been confined in the granite channel cut for it by mediæval christianity, a channel of which even the mouth was stopped. in the fifteenth century the stream swept away every obstacle and leapt forth, a brilliant cascade, scattering almost pagan warmth and light. the fall of constantinople and the other circumstances usually given as the explanation of this outburst were only its occasion; the cause lay much deeper, in the long storing up, conserving and strengthening of human powers. the freedom of which the renaissance was an expression was more, then, than the simple removal of restriction. it was a freedom not political or moral, but vital; a positive enhancement if the natural power of man, who could now do things which hitherto he could not do--an event in the history, not merely of society, but of man. accordingly, the "freedom of the individual," so dear to some moderns, does not teach us much here. it was not because freedom was given to them that men now created: the freedom was claimed because they now possessed more power, could do more, and had, therefore, the _right_ to a larger sphere of freedom. the more naturally free--that is, individually powerful--a people become, the more they will demand and obtain of "individual freedom"; but it is perhaps inexpedient to offer to a people individually weak any more freedom than they can use. they are still at the disciplinary stage; they are preparing for their renaissance; and to the student of human culture the periods of preparation, of unproductiveness, are more worthy of consideration than the productive periods. for in the future we must prepare for our eras of fruition, and not leave them, as in the past, to pure chance. at the renaissance, however, it was not even individual freedom in the modern democratic sense that was claimed and allowed; it was at the most the freedom of certain individuals, the naturally free, the powerful. not until a later time was this claim to be universalized by the unconditional theorists, the generalizers _sans_ distinction, the egalitarians. the french revolution was the renaissance rationalized and popularized. _the unproductive periods_ without the middle ages the renaissance would have been impossible; the one, therefore, was as necessary as the other; and our reprobation of the former for its comparative sterility is entirely without justification. if we happen to be living in an unproductive age, it is our misfortune, then; but we are not entitled, in contemplating this age, to the luxury of condemnation, reproof or scorn. what we _may_ demand of any period now is that it should be a period either of preparation or of fruition. so the present era _is,_ after all, deserving of condemnation, but only because it is not an era of preparation--not for any other reason. _duties of the unproductive_ the history of culture is the history of long ages of unproductiveness broken by short eras of production; but unproductiveness is the rule. the men born in barren periods have not, then, the right to bewail their lot: _we_ have not that right. but what is of the first importance, for the sake of culture, is to find out what are the duties proper to men in a sterile age. certainly their duty it is not to produce whether they are productive or not; that can only result in abortions and painful caricatures: does not contemporary literature demonstrate it? the work that is born out of the poverty of the artist is, as nietzsche pointed out, decadent work, and debases the spectator, lowers his vitality. what, then, are the tasks of a writer in an unproductive age? to live sparely and conserve strength? to make discipline more rigid? to preserve and fortify the tradition of culture? to render more accessible the sources from which creative literature draws its life, so that the _next_ generation may be better placed? to observe vigilantly the signs of today--and not only of today? it may be so; but, also, when necessary, to throw these prudent and preservative tasks to the winds and spend his last ounce of strength in battling with the demons who make a productive era forever impossible. yes, this last duty is for us today--the most important. and, we may depend, it is the creators--those who produce what they should not--who will fight most bitterly on the opposite side. _"emancipation"_ the rallying cry of the great writers of the last century was "emancipation." goethe, heine and ibsen alike professed as their task the emancipation of man; nietzsche, their successor, elevated the freed man, the superman, into an ideal, in the pursuit of which it was necessary meantime that men should discipline themselves. the later moderns, our own contemporaries, have belittled this freedom, seeing in it nothing but a negation, the freedom _from_ some one thing or another. but ibsen and heine, these men of true genius, who believed most sincerely that they were "brave soldiers in the war of the liberation of humanity" did not perhaps waste their powers in battling for a thing so trivial! it is barely possible that they meant by emancipation something much more profound; something spiritual and positive; indeed, nothing less than an enhancement of the powers of man! certainly both poets looked forward to new "developments" of man: heine with his "happier and more perfect generations, begot in free and voluntary embraces, blossoming forth in a religion of joy"; ibsen with his perplexed figures painfully "working their way out to freedom." it was the task of us in this generation, who should have been the heirs of this tradition, but are not, to supply the commentary to this noble vision, to carry forward this religion of hope further and further. but the _cult_ of modernity has itself prevented this; the latest theory has always seized us and exacted our belief for its hour; the present has invariably triumphed; and we have discarded the great work of last century before we have understood it. heine has been seized mainly by the decadents; his healthy and noble sensuousness, his desire to restore the harmony between the senses and the soul, _as a means_ towards the emancipation of man, and as nothing else, has been perverted by them into worship of the senses for their own sake--a thing which to heine would have seemed despicable. ibsen has fallen among the realists and propagandists; all the spiritual value of his work has for this age been lost--and what a loss!--his battle to deliver man from his weakness and inward slavery has been reduced --it is no exaggeration--to a battle to deliver the women of the middle classes from their husbands. the old story of emanation has been again repeated, with the distinction that here there is no trace left of the original source except negative ones! well, we have to turn back again, our task, second to none in grandeur, before which we may well feel abashed, is still the same as that of goethe, ibsen and nietzsche, the task of emancipation. to restore dignity to literature, indeed, it would be necessary to create such a task if it did not already exist. _genealogy of the moderns_ this is what has happened. the conventional moderns of our time are the descendants _not_ of heine and ibsen, but of the race against which the poets fought. they live unthinkingly in the present, just as their spiritual ancestors lived unthinkingly in the past. but slavery to the past has long ago fallen into the second place among dangers to humanity: it is slavery to the present that is now by far the greatest peril. not because they broke the tyranny of the past, but because they had an ideal in the future are the great fighters of last century significant. to think of them as iconoclasts is to mistake for their aim the form of their activity: the past lay between them and their object: on that account alone did they destroy it. but the great obstacle now is the domination of the present; and were the demi-gods of last century alive today, they would be fighting precisely against _you,_ my dear moderns, who live so complacently in your provincial present, making of it almost a cult. to be a modern in the true sense, however, is to be a fore-runner; there is in this age, an age of preparation, no other test of the modern. to believe that there are still potentialities in man; to have faith that the "elevation of the type man" is possible, yes, that the time is ripe to prepare for it; and to write and live in and by that thought: this is to be modern. _domination of the present_ to be modern in the accepted, intellectually fashionable sense: what is that? to propagate always the newest theory, whatever it be; to be the least possible distance behind the times, behind the latest second of the times, whether they be good or bad; and, of course, to assume one is "in the circle" and to adopt the tone of the circle: in short, to make ideas a matter of fashion, to choose views as a well-to-do woman chooses dresses--to be intellectually without foundation, principles or taste. how did this convention arise? perhaps out of lack of leisure: superficiality is bound to engulf a generation who abandon leisure. but to be enslaved to the present in this way is the most _dangerous_ form of superficiality: it is to be ignorant of the very thing that makes man significant, and with idiotic cheerfulness and unconcern to render his existence meaningless and trivial. in two ways' can man become sublime; by regarding himself as the heir of a great tradition: by making of himself a fore-runner. both ways are open to the true modern, and both must be followed by him. for the past and the future are greater than the present: the sense of continuity is necessary for human dignity. the men of this age, however, are isolated--to use an electrical metaphor--from the current of humanity: they have become almost entirely individuals, temporal units, "men"; what has been the outcome? inevitably the loss of the concept man, for man is a concept which can be understood only through the contemplation on a grand scale of the history of mankind. man ceases to be dramatic when there are no longer spectators for the drama of humanity. the present generation have, therefore, no sentiment of the human sublime; they see that part of the grand tragedy which happens to pass before them, but without caring about what went before or what will come after, without a clue, however poor, to the mystery of existence. they know men only, the men of their time. they are provincial--that is, lacking the sentiment of man. how much decadence may not be traced to this! in art, the conventions of realism and of Æstheticism have arisen. the first is just the portrayal of present-day men _as_ present-day men; nothing more, therefore, than "contemporary art"; an appendage of the present, a triviality. the second has as its creed enjoyment of the moment; and if it contemplates the past at all, it is with the eyes of the voluptuous antiquary--but a collector is not an heir. art has in our time, both in theory and in practice, become deliberately more fleeting. in morality, there is humanitarianism, or, in other words, the conviction that the suffering of today is the most important thing, coupled with the belief that there is nothing at present existing which can justify and redeem this suffering: therefore, unconditional pity, alleviation, "the greatest happiness of the greatest number." modern pessimism, which springs from the same source, is the obverse of this belief. it, also, regards only the present, and says, perhaps with truth, that _it,_ at any rate, is not noble enough to deserve and demand the suffering necessary for its existence--consequently, _all life_ is an error! all these theories, however, are breaks with the spiritual tradition of emancipation; they are founded on the magnification of the temporary--of that which only in a present continually carried forward seems to be important. this judgment of life with the eyes of the present, this narrowest and most false of interpretations: how has it confused and finally stultified the finest talents of our time! the modern man is joyless; his joylessness has arisen out of his modernity; and now to find forgetfulness of it he plunges more madly than before--into modernity! for his own sake, as much as for that of humanity, it is our duty to free him from his wheel. one can live with dignity only if one have a sense of the tragedy of man. it is the first task of the true modern to destroy the domination of the present. _encyclopædists_ strange that the great dramatic poets of modern times have had a weakness for turning their tragedies into encyclopædias! consider "faust" and "brand," for instance. is it that the sentiment of the eternal was already beginning to weaken in goethe and ibsen? were they overburdened by their own age? their world was too much with them; and so they did not reach the highest peaks of tragedy: they were not universal. _what is modern_ it is time we erected a standard whereby to test what is modern. to be an adherent of all the latest movements--that is at most to be anarchistic, eclectic, inconsistent--call it what you will. futurism, realism, feminism, traditionalism may be all of them opposed or irrelevant to modernity. it is not sufficient that movements should be new--if they are ever new; the question is, to what end are they? if they are movements in the direction of emancipation, "the elevation of the type man," then they are modern; if they are not, then they are movements to be opposed or ignored by moderns. if modernism be a vital thing it must needs have roots in the past and be an essential expression of humanity, to be traced, therefore, in the history of humanity: in short, it can only be a tradition. the true modern is a continuator of tradition as much as the christian or the conservative: the tine fight between progress and stagnation is always a fight between antagonistic _traditions._ to battle against tradition _as such_ is, therefore, not the task of the modern; but rather to enter the conflict--an eternal one--for his tradition against its opposite: nietzsche found for this antithesis the symbolism of dionysus and apollo. does such a tradition of modernity exist? is there a "modern spirit" not dependent upon time and place, and in all ages modern? if there is--and there is--the possession of it in some measure will alone entitle us to the name of moderns, give us dignity and make the history of man once more dramatic and tragical. it is a pity that some historian has not yet traced, in its expression in events, the history of this conflict--a task requiring the deepest subtlety and insight. meantime, for this tradition may be claimed with confidence such events as greek tragedy, most of the renaissance, and the emancipators of last century. these are triumphant expressions of "the modern spirit," but that spirit is chiefly to be recognized as a principle not always triumphant or easy of perception, constantly struggling, assuming many disguises and tirelessly creative. it is not, indeed, only a tradition of persons, of dogmas, or of sentiments: it is a principle of life itself. this conception, it is true, is grand, and even terrifying--a disadvantage in this age. but is there any other which grants modernity more than the status of an accident of time and fashion? _how we shall be known_ in an age it is not always what is most characteristic that survives: posterity will probably know us not by our true qualities, but by the exceptions to them. the present-day writers in english who will endure after their age has passed are probably joseph conrad, w. h. hudson, and hillaire belloc for a few of his essays and lyrics--none of them representative, none of them modern. they might have been born in any era: they are in the oldest tradition. the most striking characteristic of our time, however, is its lack of a tradition. the sentiment of transiency is our most deeply rooted sentiment: it is the very spirit of the age. but by its essential nature it cannot hope to endure, to be known by future generations; for we shall not produce immortal works until we become interested in some idea long enough to be inspired by it, and to write monumentally and surely of it. we hold our ideas by the day; but for a masterpiece to be born, an idea must have taken root and defied time. permanence of form, moreover, would seriously embarrass a modern writer, who wishes to change with the hour, and does not want his crotchets of yesterday to live to be refutations of his fads of today. thus we are too fleeting to make even our transitoriness eternal. the very sentiment of immortality has perished amongst us, and we actually prefer that our work should die--witness the futurists! the most self-conscious heirs of modernity, these propounded the theory that _it is better_ that works of art should not endure: well, in that case, their own creations have been true works of art! nevertheless, all they did in this theory was to erect into a system the shallowness, provinciality and frivolousness of the present--and thereby to proclaim themselves the enemies of the future. iv art and literature _psychology of style_ there are writers with a style--it may be either good or bad--and writers with no style at all, who just write badly. what quality or combination of qualities is it which makes a writer a stylist? style probably arises out of a duality; the association in a writer of the scribe and the spectator. the first having set down his thought, the second goes aside, contemplates it, as things should be contemplated, _from a distance,_ and and asks, "how does this strike me? how does it look, sound, move?" and he suggests here a toning down of colour, there an acceleration of speed, somewhere else, it may be, an added lucidity, for clearness is an æsthetic as well as an intellectual virtue. the writer without style, however, just writes on without second thought; the spectator is altogether lacking in him; he cannot contemplate his work from a distance, nor, indeed, at all. this explains the unconsciousness and innocence in bad writing--not in bad style, which is neither unconscious nor innocent! the stylist, on the other hand, is always the actor to his own spectator; he must get his effect; even truth he uses as a means to his effect. if a truth is too repulsive, he throws this or that cloak over it; if it is uninteresting, he envelops it in mysticism (mysticism is simply an artist's trick); in a word, he æstheticizes, that is, falsifies everything, to please the second person in his duality, the spectator. even if he gets his effects by moderation of statements, he is to be distrusted, for it is the moderation and not truth that is aimed at. and, then, his temptation to employ metaphors, to work up an interesting madness, to rhapsodize--these most potent means to great effects, these falsifications! well, are we to assent, then, to the old philosophic prejudice against style and refuse to believe any philosopher who does not write badly? _modern writing_ the greatest fault of modern style is that it is a smirking style. it fawns upon the reader, it insinuates, it has the manner of an amiable dog. if it does something smart, it stops immediately, wags its tail, and waits confidently for your approval. you will guess now why those little regiments of dots are scattered so liberally over the pages of the best-known english novelist. it is h.g. wells's style wagging its tail. _the precise_ there have been writers--there _are_ writers--whose only title to fame is an interesting defect. they are unable to write soundly, and this inability, being abnormal, is more interesting than sound writing, which is only normal. for to limp or to hop on one leg is never pedestrian--what do i say?--is _not even_ pedestrian. _paradox_ what is paradox? the "bull" raised to a form of literary art? _the platitude_ there should be no platitudes in the works of a sincere author. a platitude is an idea not understood by its writer--in one word, a shibboleth. _praise?_ it is usual to extol the industry of those realists who put _everything_ into their books, but they should rather be censured for their want of taste. the truth is that they lack the selective faculty--lack, that is, art. afraid to omit anything from their reproductions of existence--lest they omit what is most significant--they include _all_: the easiest course. the easiest course, that is--for the writers. _hostility of thinkers_ when a thinker has a world of thought of his own, he generally becomes cold towards other thinkers, and to none more than to him whose star is nearest his own. it is necessary, therefore, that he should read, above all, the philosopher whose thought most closely resembles his, for to him he is most likely to be unjust. we are the most hostile to those who say what we say, but say it in a way we do not like. _the twice subtle_ the thinker who has been twice subtle arrives at simplicity. and in doing so he has, at the same time, discovered a new truth. but this other thinker has possessed simplicity from the beginning. has he also possessed this truth? at any rate, he does not know it. _mastery of one's thoughts_ one should know how to keep one's thoughts at a distance. the french can do this, and, therefore, write at once wittily and profoundly of serious things. but the germans live, perhaps, too near their thoughts, and are possessed by them: hence, their obscurity and heaviness. wit--lightness of hand--shows that one is master of one's thought, and is not mastered by it. nevertheless, the thoughts of the germans may be the mightier. in this matter the complete thinker should be able to become french or german as occasion demands. _psychologists_ the keenest psychologists are those who are burdened with no social mission and get along with a minimum of theory. joseph conrad, for instance, is infinitely more subtle in his analysis of the human mind and heart than is h. g. wells or john galsworthy. he has the happy unconcern and detachment of a connoisseur in humanity, of one who experiences the same fine interest in an unusual human situation as the dilettante finds in some recondite trifle. henry james carried this attitude to a high degree of refinement. he walked among men and women as a botanist might walk among a collection of "specimens," dismissing the ordinary with the assured glance of an expert, and lingering only before the distinctive and the significant. should we who nurse a mission deplore the spirit in which these disinterested observers enter into their task? by no means. but for them, certain domains of human nature would never have been discovered, and we should have been correspondingly the losers. for we revolutionists must know the human kind before we can alter them. the non-missionary is as necessary as the missionary, and to none more than to the missionary. _realism_ novels which take for their subject-matter mere ordinary, pedestrian existence--and of this kind are three-fourths of present-day novels -are invariably dull in one of two ways. in the first instance, they are written by pettifogging talents to whom only the ordinary is of interest, by people, that is to say, who are incapable of writing a book that is not dull. in the other, they are written by men generally of considerable, sometimes of brilliant, ability, who, misled by a theory, concern themselves laboriously with a domain of life which they dislike and which even bores them. but if the writer is bored, how much more so must be the reader! in short, the realist theory produces bad books because it forces the writer to select subjects the only emotion towards which it is possible to feel is boredom. and great art may arise out of hate, grief, even despair, but never out of boredom. _fate and mr. wells_ fate has dealt ironically with h. g. wells. it has turned his volumes of fiction into prophecies, and his volumes of prophecies into fiction. mr. g. k. chesterton a man's philosophy may be uninteresting, although he writes about it in an interesting manner. just as the many write dully about interesting things, so a few write interestingly about dull things. and mr. chesterton is one of these. equality is a dull creed, christianity is a dry bone, tradition is wisdom for ants and the chinese. but mr. chesterton is a very interesting man. how is it possible for an interesting man to have an uninteresting philosophy? is this simply the last paradox of a master of paradox? mr. chesterton's most charming quality is a capacity for being surprised. he writes paradoxically, because to him everything is a paradox--the most simple thing, the most uninteresting thing. and that is his weakness, as well as his strength. he has found the common things so wonderful that he has not searched for the uncommon things. the average man is to him such a miracle, that he will not admit the genius is a far greater miracle. the theories he finds established, christianity, equality, democracy, traditionalism, interest him so much that he has not gone beyond them to inquire into other theories perhaps more interesting. and this, because he lacks intellectual curiosity, along with that which frequently accompanies it, subtlety of mind. for the intellectually curious man is precisely the man who is _not_ interested in things, or, at any rate, is interested in them only for a little, and then passes on or burrows deeper to find something further. one dogma after another he studies and deserts, this faith--- less searcher, this philanderer, this philosopher; and that which leads him on is the hope that at last he will find something to interest him for an eternity. perhaps it is this dissatisfaction of the mind which has always driven men to seek knowledge; perhaps, if all mankind had been like mr. chesterton, we should not have had even christianity, equality, democracy and the other theories which he holds and adorns. for mr. chesterton's impressions are all first impressions. like his own deity, he sees everything for the first time always. and he lacks, therefore, the power, called vision, of seeing _into_ things: the outside of things is already sufficiently interesting to him. he possesses imagination, however, and kindly and grotesque fancies which he hangs on the ear of the most common clodhopper of a reality. in fantasy he reaches greatness. but his philosophy is not interesting. it is himself that is interesting. _nietzsche_ nietzsche loved man, but not men: in that love were comprehended his nobility and his cruelty. he demanded that men should become man before they asked to be loved. _strindberg_ this writer, despite his genius, earnestness and courage, arouses in us a feeling of profound disappointment. nor is the cause very far to seek. for along with earnestness and courage in a writer we instinctively look for nobility and joy: if the latter qualities are absent we feel that the _raison d'être_ of the former is gone, and that earnestness and courage divorced from nobility and joy are aimless, wasted, almost inconceivable. and in strindberg they are so divorced. a disappointed courage; an ignoble earnestness! these are his pre-eminent qualities. and with them he essayed tragedy--the form of art in which nobility and joy are most required! as a consequence, the problems which he treats are not only treated inadequately; the inadequacy, when we stop to reflect upon it, absolutely amazes us. his crises are simply rows. his women, when they are angry, are intellectual fishwives; and--more disgusting still--so are his men. all his characters, indeed, intellectual and talented as they are, move on an amazingly low spiritual plane. the worst in their nature comes to light at the touch of tragedy, and an air of sordidness surrounds all. posterity will not tolerate this "low" tragedy, this tragedy without a _raison d'être,_ this drama of the dregs. _dostoieffsky_ dostoieffsky depicted the subconscious as conscious; that was how he achieved his complex and great effects. for the subconscious is the sphere of all that is most primeval, mysterious and sublime in man; the very bed out of which springs the flower of tragedy. but did dostoieffsky do well to lay bare that world previously so reverently hidden, and to bring the reader behind the scenes of tragedy? the artist will deny it--the artist who always demands as an ingredient in his highest effects mystery. for how can mystery be retained when the very realm of mystery, the subconscious, is surveyed and mapped? in dostoieffsky's imperishable works the spirit of full tragedy is perhaps never evoked. what he provides in them, however, is such a criticism of tragedy as is nowhere else to be found. his genius was for criticism; the artist in him created these great figures in order that afterwards the psychologist might dissect them. and so well are they dissected, even down to the subconsciousness, that, to use a phrase of the critics, we know them better than the people we meet. well, that is precisely what we object to--as lovers of art! _again_ not only is dostoieffsky himself a great psychologist; all his chief characters are great psychologists as well. raskolnikoff, for instance, porphyrius petrovitch, svidragaïloff, prince muishkin, walk through his pages as highly self-conscious figures, and as people who have one and all looked deeply into the shadowy world of human motives, and have generalized. the crises in dostoieffsky's books are, therefore, of a peculiarly complex kind. it is not only the human passions and desires that meet one another in a conflict more or less spontaneous; the whole wealth of psychological observation and generalization of the conflicting character is thrown into their armoury, and with that, too, they do battle. the resulting effect is more large, rich and subtle than anything else in modern fiction, but also, if the truth must be told, more impure, in the artistic sense, more sophisticated. sometimes, so inextricably are passion and "psychology" mingled, that the crises are more like the duels of psychologists than the conflicts of human souls. in the end, one turns with relief to the pure tragedy of the classical writers, the tragedy which is not brought about by people who act like amateur psychologists. _tolerance of artists_ no matter what their conscious theories may be, all artists are unconsciously aristocratic, and even intolerant in their attitude to other men. they are more blind than most people to the _raison d'être_ of the politician, the business man and the philosopher--these unaccountable beings who will not acknowledge the primacy of creation and beauty. but at last they magnanimously conclude that these exist to form their audience, _not_ the subject-matter of their art--that is the modern fallacy! _climate_ there are natures exquisitely sensitive to their human environment. this man depresses them, they feel the vitality ebbing out of them in his presence; that other brings exhilaration, at the touch of his mind their powers increase and become creative. it is a question of atmosphere. the first has a wintry, grey soul; the latter carries a sun--_their_ sun--in his bosom. and these artists require sunlight and soft air, before the flowers and fruit can hang from their boughs. every artist of this type should go to italy or france and live there; or, failing that, create for himself an italy or france of friends. others require the tempest with its lowering skies. but that is easier to seek; they can generally find it within themselves. _sensibility_ it may be wisdom for the man of action to smother his griefs, and follow resolutely his course. but with the artist it is different. he should not close his heart against sorrow, for sorrow is of use to him; his task is to transfigure it; thus he makes himself richer. every conquest of suffering which is attained by isolating the pang makes the artist poorer; the part of him so isolated dies: he loses bit by bit his sensitiveness, and how much does his sensitiveness mean to him! the artist is more defenceless than other men, and he must be so. for his sensitiveness should be such that the faintest rose-leaf of emotion or thought cannot touch his heart without evoking in him infinite delight or pain; and, at the same time, he should be able to respond to the great tempests and terrible moods of life. great strength, great love, great productiveness, these are required if he is to endure his sensitiveness; alas, for him, if he have them not! then he must suffer and suffer, until he has cut off one by one the sources of his suffering, until he has mutilated and lamed what is most godlike in him, and has made himself ordinary at last--or a schopenhauerian. _the artist's enemy_ i waited once beside a lake, created surely to mirror innocence, so pure it was. the passage of a butterfly over it or the breath of a rose-leaf's fall was enough to stir its surface, infinitely delicate and sensitive. yet tempests did not affright it, for it laughed and danced beneath the whip of the fiercest storm. and it could bury, as in a bottomless tomb, the stones thrown at it by the most spiteful hands; to these, indeed, it responded with a puck-like radiating smile that spread until it broke in soft laughter upon its marge. so strong and delicate it lay, and yet, it seemed, so defenceless. yet what could harm it? storm, shower, sunshine, and darkness alike but ministered to it, and even the missiles of its enemies were lost in its boundless security. it seemed invulnerable. i returned years later, and looked once, looked and fled. for the lake had grown old, blind and torpid, so that even the light lay dead in it. then i noticed that on every side, almost invisible, there were innumerable black streams oozing--infection! the tragedy of the artist. _uniformity_ in the mien of children there is sometimes to be noted a natural nobility and pride; they walk with the unconscious grace of conquerors. but this grace and freedom soon disappear, and when the child has become man there is nothing left of them: his bearing is as undistinguished as his neighbour's. nowhere, now, is nobility of presence and movement to be found, except among children, the chieftains of half-barbarous peoples, and some animals. the farther man departs from the animal the less dignified he becomes, and the more his appearance conforms to a common level: indeed, civilization seems, on one side, to be a labourious attempt to arrive at the undistinguished and indistinguishable. is man, then, the mediocre animal par excellence? only, perhaps, under an egalitarian régime. wherever a hierarchy exists in europe there is more of nobility of demeanour than elsewhere. equality and humility are the great fosterers of the mediocre: and not only, alas! of the mediocre in demeanour. who can tell how many proud, graceful and gallant thoughts and emotions have been killed by shame--the shame which the egalitarians and the humble have heaped upon them? and how much art, therefore, has lost? certainly, in the minds of children there are many brave, generous and noble thoughts which are never permitted to come to maturity. ye must become as little children----. _immortality of the artist_ an artist one day forgot death, so entirely had he become life's, rapt in a world of living contemplation; and, established there, he created a form. that hour was immortal, and, therefore, the form was immortal. this is the "timelessness" of true art-work; they are fashioned "in eternity," as blake said, and so speak to the eternal in man. _the descent of the artist_ at the beginning of his journey he climbed daringly, leaping from rock to rock, exuberant, tireless, until he reached what he thought was his highest peak. then began his descent, and, lo, immediately great weariness fell upon him. a friend of his wondered, is he going downhill because he is tired? or is he tired because he is going downhill? _apropos the cynic_ he wrote with an assumption of extreme heartlessness, and the public said, "how tender his heart must be when he hides it under _such_ a disguise!" but what he was hiding all the time was his lack of heart. _artist and philosopher_ in all ages the philosophers have _pardoned_ the artists their lack of depth, on account of their divine love of the beautiful. in our time, however, this only reason for pardoning them has disappeared, and they are now entirely deserving of condemnation. for the realists abjure equally thought--interpretation, and beauty--selection. to be an eye, with a fountain pen attached to it; that is their aim, successfully attained, alas! a single eye and not a single thought: the definition of the realist. _an evil_ art is at the present day far too easy for comprehension, far too obvious. our immediate task should be to make it _difficult,_ and the concern of a dedicated few. thus only shall we win back reverence for it. when it is reverenced, however, it will then be time to extend its sway; but not until then. art must be approached with reverence, or not at all. a democratic familiarity with it--such as exists among the middle classes, _not_ among the working classes, in whom reverence is not yet dead--is an abomination. _modern art themes_ how sordid are the themes which modern art has chosen for itself! the loss of money or of position, poverty, social entanglements--the little accidents which a thinker laughs at! are modern artists as bourgeois as this? a coterie of shop-keepers? tragic art has no concern with the accidental: that is the sphere of comedy. tragedy should move inevitably once it has begun to revolve; it is beyond fashion, universal, essential; fate, not circumstance, is its theme. the presence of the accidental in a tragedy is sufficient to condemn it. for it is the inevitable, the "fate" in tragedy, that makes of it a heroic and _joyful_ thing. it cannot be improvised like comedy. it demands in its creator a sense of the eternal, just as comedy, on the other hand, demands an exquisite appreciation of temporal fashion. tragedy is the greater art; comedy, perhaps, the more difficult. our modern tragedies, however, are mainly about accidents, and very mean accidents; they are improvised misfortunes and their effect is depressing. _the illusionists_ how shallow are most artists! how childish! how subject to illusion! this novelist at the end of his novels leaves his characters in a utopia, from which all sorrow and trial have been banished, a condition absolutely unreal, contemptible and absurd. and all his readers admire without thinking, and call the author profound! he is not profound, but shallow and commonplace. except for his gift of mimicry, which he calls art, he is just an average man. and, moreover, he is tired: the "happy ending" is his exhaustion speaking through his art, his will to stagnation and surrender. works of art should only end tragically, or enigmatically, as in "a doll's house," or at the gateway of a new ideal, as in "an enemy of the people." _majorities and art_ when it is said that in modern society poetic tragedy is out of season and cannot _succeed,_ an assumption is made which on literary grounds can never be admitted. it is that majorities count in literature as in politics; that "brand" was a failure and "a doll's house" a success. but from another point of view, "brand" was the success, "a doll's house" the failure. and the whole "problem" drama a failure with it, and all the realistic schools, as well--a failure! this is _certainly_ how the future historian of literature will regard it. our era with its depressing "masterpieces" will be called the barren era, because the grand _exception,_ great art, has not bloomed in it, because even our critics have judged contemporary art by a criterion of success instead of the eternal spiritual criterion: their championship of "problem" art proves it! in the meantime, then, realism is considered "the thing," and people speak pityingly of poetic tragedy. only those forms of art which can "survive" in the struggle for existence are counted good--so deeply, so unwisely have we drunk at the darwinian spring! _the decay of man_ the aim of art was once to enrich existence by the creation of gods and demi-gods; it is now to duplicate existence by the portrayal of men. art has become imitation, realism has triumphed. and how much has materialism had to do with this! in an age lacking a vivid ideal of man, men become interesting. the eyes of the artist, no longer having an ideal to feed upon, are turned towards the actual, and imitation succeeds creation. every one busies himself in the study of men, and art becomes half a science, the artists actually collecting their data, as if they were professors of psychology! theories glorifying men are born, and the cult of the average man arises, which is nothing but the exaltation of men at the expense of man. in due time all ideals perish, only an inspiration towards averageness remains, and equality is everywhere enthroned. art has no longer a heaven to fly to, there to create loftier heavens. in despair, she descends to earth and the ordinary, and for her salvation _must_ find the ordinary interesting, must _make_ the ordinary interesting. realism arises when ideals of man decay: it is the egalitarianism of art. _a new valuation_ but why do ideals of man decay--why _did_ the ideal of man decay? because there were no longer examples to inspire the artists in the creation of their grand, superhuman figures. suspicion, envy, equality--call it what you will--had become strong: the great man could no longer fight it and remain great. by the radicals the genius was regarded as an insult to the remainder of mankind. and how ordinary he was, this genius, compared with the grand figures of the time of the renaissance; that time when men were weighed and valued, when elevation and inequality were acknowledged and acted upon, and man became greater in stature, with art his will to greatness! well, we must weigh men again; we must deny equality; we must affirm aristocracy--in everything but commerce and production, where democracy is really a return to the aristocratic tradition. and, you artists, you must turn from men to man, from realism to myth. and if you can find in your age no example to inspire you to the creation of a great ideal of man, then become your own examples! man must be born again, if you would enter into your heaven. _the man and the hour_ a. let people say about aristocracy what they will, it remains true that man generally is equal to the event. events are the true stepping-stones on which man rises to higher things. b. ah! you are not speaking of man, but of men, of the many. the great man, however, does not require an event to call his greatness forth. he is his own event--and also that of others! _the lover to the artists_ love idealizes the object. if you would create an ideal art, must you not, then, learn to love? and that you are realists--does it not prove that you have not love? _origin of the tragic_ here is yet another guess at the origin of the tragic: a man is told of some calamity, altogether unexpected, the engulfing of a vessel by the sea, an avalanche which wipes out a town, or a fire in which a family of little ones perish, leaving the father and mother unharmed and disconsolate; and at once the very grandest feelings awaken within him, he finds himself enlarged spiritually, and life itself is enriched for him--the people in the vessel and in the town, the children and the parents of the children, are raised to a little more than human elevation by the favouritism of calamity. next day he hears that the news was false, and immediately, along with the feeling of relief, he experiences an unmistakable disappointment and loss; for all those grand emotions and the contemplation of life in that greater aspect are snatched from him! perhaps in primitive times, when the means of disseminating news were more untrustworthy than they are today, disappointments of this kind would occur very often; and one day some rude poet, having noted the elevation which calamity brings, would in luxurious imagination _invent_ a calamity, in order to experience _at will_ this enlargement of the soul. but a tale of calamity, being invented, would inevitably please the poet's hearers, both for the feelings it aroused and the grand image of man it represented. so much for the origin and persistence--not the meaning--of the tragic. _tragedy and comedy_ tragedy is the aristocratic form of art. in it the stature of man is made larger. the great tragic figures are superhuman, unapproachable: we do not sorrow with them, but for them, with an impersonal pity and admiration. and that is because man, and not men, is represented by them: idealization and myth are, therefore, proper to their delineation. but comedy is democratic. its subject is men, the human-all-too-human, the unrepresentative: it belittles men in a jolly egalitarianism. this static fraternity, this acceptance of men as they are, is resented by the aristocratic natures, who would make man nobler; but to the average men it is flattering, for it proclaims that the great are absurd even as they, it unites men in a brotherhood of absurdity. thus, all comedy is an involuntary satire, all tragedy an involuntary idealization of men. tragedy is the supreme affirmation of life, for it affirms life even in its most painful aspects, struggle, suffering, death; so that we say, "yes, this, too, is beautiful!" _that_ was the _raison d'être_ of classical tragedy--and not nihilism! well, in which of these forms, tragedy or comedy, may our hopes and visions of the future best be expressed? surely in that which idealizes man and says yea to suffering, tragedy, the dynamic form of art. _super-art_ in the works of some artists everything is on a slightly superhuman scale. the figures they create fill us with astonishment; we cannot understand how such unparalleled creatures came into being. when we contemplate them, in the works of michelangelo or of nietzsche, there arise unvoluntarily in our souls sublime dreams of what man may yet attain. our thoughts travel into the immeasurable, the undiscovered, and the future becomes almost an intoxication to us. in nietzsche, especially, this attempt to make art perform the impossible--this _successful_ attempt to make art perform the impossible--is to be noted in every book, almost in every word. for he strains language to the utmost it can endure; his words seem to be striving to escape from the bonds of language, seeking to transcend language. "it is my ambition," he says in "the twilight of the idols," "to say in ten sentences what every one else says in a whole book--what every one else does _not_ say in a whole book." in the same way, when in his first book he wrote about tragedy, he raised it to an elevation greater than it had ever known before, except, perhaps, in the works of Æschylus; when, in his essay upon "schopenhauer as educator," he adumbrated his conception of the philosopher, philosophy seemed to become a task for the understandings of gods; and when, having criticized the prevailing morality, he set up another, it seemed to his generation an impossible code for human beings, a code cruel, over-noble. finally, when he wrote of man, it was to create the superman. he touched nothing which he did not ennoble. and, consequently, in art his chosen form was myth; he held it beneath the nobility of great art to create anything less than demi-gods; religion and art were in him a unity. in super-art, in these works of leonardo and michelangelo, of Æschylus and nietzsche, man is incited again and again to surpass himself, to become more than "human." _love poetry_ love poetry, so long as it glorifies love, is supremely worthy of our reverence. everything that idealizes and transfigures love, making it more desirable and full even of transcendental meaning, is of unquestionable advantage to mankind; on the other hand, a crudely physiological statement, even though this may be _formally_ true, serves neither love nor life. it is assuredly not the function of art to treat love in this way. on the contrary, amatory poetry by its idealization allures to love; this is true even of such of it as is tragic: we are prepared by it to experience gladly even the suffering of love. the only poetry that is noxious is that which bewails the "vanity" of love, and that in which a deliberate sterility is adumbrated. these are decadent. _literature and literature_ literature that is judged by literary standards merely is not of the highest rank. for the greatest works are themselves the standards by which literature is judged. how, then, are they to be valued? by a standard outside of literature, by their consonance with that which is the _raison d'être_ of literature? in them a far greater problem than any literary problem faces us, the problem, why does literature exist? what is the meaning of literature? through whole generations men forget this problem, and literature becomes to them a specialized form of activity to be pursued for its own sake, a part of man's soul, thrown off and become static and separate, with a sterile life of its own. the more shallow theory and practice of literature then come into being; realism and art for art's sake flourish. but the eternal question always returns again, why does literature exist? what is its meaning? and, then, the possibility of another blossoming of literature is not far away. _the old poet_ an old poet who had lived in the good days when poets were _makers_--of moralities and gods, among other things--lately re-visited the earth, and after a study of the very excellent exercises in literature to be found in our libraries, delivered himself thus:-- "how has our power decayed! into litterateurs have we declined who were creators. perish all literature that is only literature! poets live to create gods; to glorify gods should all their arts of adornment and idealization be used. but i see here adornment without the object worthy of adornment; beautification for the sake of beautification; art for art's sake. these artists are only half artists. they have surely made art into a game." the critics did not understand him, and, _therefore,_ disagreed. the artists thought he was mad, besides knowing nothing of æsthetics. the moral fanatics acclaimed him vociferously, mistaking him for a popular preacher. only a philosophico-artistic dilettante listened attentively, and said, a little patronizingly, "he is wrong, but he is more right than wrong." _the old gods_ perhaps there is too much made of anthropomorphism. man's first gods were not "human" gods; they were stars, animals, plants and the like. it was not until he became an artist that he made gods after his own form: anthropomorphism is just an artistic convention! for gods are in their _content_ superhuman. there has never been a man like jehovah or zeus or odin. the essential thing in them is that they embody an ideal, a fiction, adumbrating something _more_ than man. religion is poetry in the grand style, and, as poetry, must have its conventions. _the old poets_ in primitive times the poet was far more both of an inventor and a liar than he is at present. for many centuries the lies of the poets have been innocent lies, a convention merely, and to be recognized as such before "æsthetic" enjoyment can begin. but the lies the old poets told were believed literally--as they were meant to be! yes, the poet at the beginning was just a liar, a great liar. how else, if he had not deceived man, could he have peopled the heavens with man's deities? and as the father of whole families of gods, he has done more to decide the fate of humanity than all the philosophers, heroes and martyrs. these are only his servants, who explain war or die for his fictions. and not merely error, as nietzsche held, but lying has from the earliest times been the most potent factor of progress. but not all lying; only the lies told out of great love have been creative and life-giving. art, imagination, prophecy, hallucination, ecstasy, vision--all these were united in the first poets, the true creators. _the creator redivivus_ the only modern who has dared to be a poet through and through, that is, a liar in the noble and tragic sense, is the author of the superman. in nietzsche, again, after centuries of divine toying, the poet has appeared in his great _rôle_ of a creator of gods, a figure beside whom the "poet" seems like nothing more than the page boy of the muse. _literature as praise_ a. would you erase from the book of literature all that is not idealization and myth, you neo-moderns? would you deprive us of all the charming, serious, whimsical, and divinely frivolous works which are human-all-too-human? b. if we could--a thousand times no! we would only destroy what defames life. all that praises life, all that enchants to life, we would cherish as things holy. idealization, it is true, is the highest form of praise, because it arises out of love; but there are other forms. modern realism, however, is a calumny against life. _Écrasez l'infâme!_ _the poet speaks_ how unhappy must all those poor mortals be who are not poets! they feel and cannot express. they are dumb when their soul would utter its divinest thoughts. cloddish and fragmentary, they are scarcely human, these poor mortals! for one must be a poet to be altogether human. yes! in the ideal society of the future every one will be a poet, even the average man! _myth_ the worst evil of our time is this, that there is nothing greater than the current average existence to which man can look; religion has dried up, art has decayed from an idealization of life into a reflection of it. in short, art has become a passive thing, where once it was the "great stimulus to life." the idealization and enchantment which the moderns have so carefully eliminated from it was precisely its _raison d'être._ and modern art, which sets out to copy life, has forgotten art altogether, its origin, its meaning and its end. against this aimless realism, we must oppose idealization, and especially that which is its highest expression, myth. and let no one say that it is impossible at this stage in man's history to resuscitate myth. the past has certainly lost its mystery for us, and it was in the past, at the source of humanity, that the old poets set their sublime fictions. but the future is still ours, and there, at man's goal, our myths must be planted. and thither, indeed, has set the great literature of the last hundred years. faust, mephistopheles, brand, peer gynt, zarathustra--there were no greater figures in the literature of the last century--were all myths, and all forecasts of the future. the soil out of which literature grows, then, has not yet been exhausted! if we but break away from realism, if we make art symbolic, if we bring about a marriage between art and religion, art will rise again. that this is possible, we who have faith in the future _must_ believe. v creative love _creative love_ to us who nourish hopes for the future of man, the important distinction to be drawn in love is not that between the sacred and the profane. we ask, rather, is our love creative or barren? that love should bring happiness, or union, or fulfilment, seems to us not such a very great matter! the will to create something, out of oneself, not oneself, whether it be in bodies, or in art or philosophy--that is the thing for ever worthy of our reverence. there is another love; that whose end is enjoyment. it is the enemy of creative love. it is the love which, in various forms, is known as liberalism, or humanitarianism, or the greatest happiness of the greatest number. sympathy is its central dogma; and it is never tired of exalting itself at the expense of the other love, which it calls cruel, senseless and unholy. but the same blasphemy is here repeated that socrates once was guilty of and afterwards so divinely atoned. for it is not creative love, but sympathetic love, that is unholy. this would spare the beloved the pangs of love, even if, in doing so, it had to sacrifice the fruits of love. it springs from disbelief in existence. life is suffering, it cries, suffering must be alleviated, and, therefore, life must be abated, weakened and lamed! and this love is barren. but creative love does not bring enjoyment, but rapture and pain. it is the will to suffer gladly; it finds relief from the pains of existence, not in alleviation, but in creation. this love is, indeed, a siren--we would not mitigate the awfulness of that symbol--luring man to peril, perhaps to shipwreck. yet, by the holiest law of his being, he listens, he follows. and, if his ears have been sealed by reason he _unseals_ them again, he listens with his very soul, yielding to that which is for him certainly danger, perhaps death, knowing that, even in death, he will be affirming life in the highest. this love, the earnest of future greatness, this terrible, unconditional and innocent thing, we _cannot but_ reverence. _where man is innocent_ there is one region in man where innocence and a good conscience still reign--in the unconscious. love and the joy in love are of the unconscious. the rapture which love brings is neither, as schopenhauer said, merely a device to ensure the propagation of mankind, nor the race rejoicing in and through the individual to its own perpetuation; but the joy of unconscious man, still innocent as before the fall, with a good conscience enjoying the anticipatory rapture of new life. the instincts believe in life entirely without questioning; doubt and guilt are simply not present in their world: it is reflection that makes sinners of us all. the thoughts that come to us in the season of love--we do not need to search in metaphysical heavens for their source. they arise from the very well spring, the very central ego of man, out of the unconscious, the innocent, the real. poetry, in that which is incomprehensible and mystical in it, arises from this also. so there is hope still for man, all ye who believe not in primal depravity! the real man is _even now_ innocent: original sin is only mind deep, conscience deep. the instincts still behave as if life-defaming doctrines _were not_: they have not yet begun to mourn at the spring and exult at the autumn. and in the ecstasies of creative love, whether it be of persons or of things, they continue to celebrate, without misgiving, their jubilee. _a criterion_ to find out whether a thing is decadent or no, let us henceforth put this question, does it spring from creative love? is the will to suffering incarnate in it, or the will to alleviate suffering? how much must by this standard be condemned! humanitarianism and its child, reform, or the desire to alleviate others' pain; Æstheticism and its step-brother, realism, or the wish to alleviate one's own: these spring from the same source--a dearth of love. for creative love would enjoin, not sympathy with suffering, but the will to transcend suffering; not reform, whose aim is happiness, but revolution, whose aim is growth; not art for art's sake, an escape from life into a stationary æsthetic world, but the creation, out of life, of ever new art; not realism or the need to find men interesting; but idealization, or the desire to _make_ men interesting. john galsworthy and oscar wilde alike are decadent for this reason, that they lack love. the real difference between them is that the one is a collectivist, and sympathizes with the people, and the other is an individualist, and sympathizes with himself. but both degrade love to the level of hedonism; both rebel against the cruelty of love, desiring a love which will not hurt, and, therefore, _must_ be barren. but wherever peoples, faiths or arts decay, the decay of love--this strong, energetic love--has come first. the current frivolousness about intellectual matters, the philandering of the literary coquettes, springs simply from a lack of love. for the great problems demand passion for their comprehension, and our intellectuals dislike passion. in politics and in religion it is the same: creative love has everywhere disappeared to be replaced by barren sympathy. but is it possible by preaching to increase love? can it be willed into power? well, praise may call it forth. _love at the renaissance_ how may a great creative age like the renaissance be interpreted on the hypothesis of love? shall it yet be found that the mainspring of the renaissance was a newly discovered love of life and, therefore, of man? in the middle ages that part of life, then called god, had become isolated and abstract, and was worshipped to the detriment of all other life; while man was neglected where he was not belittled. thus, a strong current of man's love was diverted away from man altogether, and the earth became dark and sterile. how was the earth to recapture its love again, and drink back into itself its rapture and creativeness? by a marriage in which god and the universe were made one flesh; by the incorporation of god into life, and, therefore, into man. hence arose the pantheism of the renaissance. to love life with a good conscience, to love life unconditionally, it was necessary to call life god. out of this love sprang not only the art but the science of the renaissance. for man once more became interested in himself, and, from himself, in life; ultimately discoveries were made and more than one new world was brought to light. perhaps it is the defect of all theistic, objective theologies that they become, sooner or later, barren. only by being translated into the subjective do they regain their creative power: pantheism is the remedy for theism. yet to theism we owe this, that it lent intensity and elevation to love. the love of the pantheists of the renaissance was not ordinary human love; it united in a unique emotion the love that had formerly been given to man along with that which had formerly been given to god. it loved man as god should be loved--a dangerous thing. but out of this love of god in man it created, nevertheless, something great, somewhat less than the one, somewhat more than the other--the demi-god. the renaissance was the age of the demi-gods. _sympathy_ sympathy is love bereft of his bow and arrows--but still blind. a self-evident proposition this is certain, that god is love. how, else, could he have created the universe? _"god is love"_ when jesus said, "god is love," he denned a religion of becoming. was it not necessarily so? for love is not something which may _choose_ to create; it _must_ create, it is fundamentally the will and the power to create. and eternal love, or god, is, therefore, eternal creation, eternal change, eternal becoming. consequently, there is no ultimate goal, no perfection, except that which is realized at every moment in the self-expression of love. a vision? a nightmare? well, it depends whether one is in favour of life, or of death; whether one lives, or is lived. and, therefore, whether religion is subjective, or objective? whether god is within us, or outside us? for so long as god is within us, we must create. that should be our becoming! _love and mr. galsworthy_ the art of mr. galsworthy is such an ambiguous thing--half impersonal portrayal, half personal plea, the _art pour l'art_ of a social reformer--and the subjects he chooses are so controversial--the abuses of society--that it is hard to place him as an artist. when "the dark flower" appeared, however, we thought we had him. here was a great subject to his hand, an artist's question at last, love. alas! even in writing about it, he could not altogether exclude the reformer. well, that itself, perhaps, told us something! however that may be, we do get here mr. galsworthy's conception of love. it is an inadequate conception, a realist's conception: love, with the meaning left out. the ardours, the longing, the disappointment and anguish--all the _symptoms_--of love are given; but not a hint that love has any significance beyond the emotions it brings: that which redeems love, creation, is ignored altogether! mr. galsworthy has seen that love is cruel, but he has not seen beyond the cruelty: it is the ultimate thing to him. well, that is perhaps the most that could be expected of a humanitarian trying to comprehend love! in this book are all the symptoms of humanitarianism--pity for every one, reform of institutions, suffering always considered the sufficient reason for abolishing or palliating things: a creed thrice inadequate, thrice shallow, thrice blind. love would find relief from suffering in creation. but one feels that mr. galsworthy would abolish life if he could. humanitarianism unconsciously seeks the annihilation of life, for in life suffering is integral. _mr. thomas hardy_ in mr. hardy's conception of love, unlike mr. galsworthy's, the contingency of creation is never absent; but to him creation is not a justification of the pangs of love. it is an intensification of them; it is love's last and worst indignity. but even when love does not bestow this ultimate insult of creation, it cannot resist the satisfaction of torturing its victims; it is wanton and irrelevant in its distribution of pain. mr. hardy's books are filled with the torments of love. was it not fitting that he should aim his main indictment of life against it, seeing that it is the trick whereby the blunder of life is perpetuated? and so mr. hardy is certainly a decadent; but he is a great decadent--one of those who by the power of their denial of life seem to make life more profound and tragic, and inspire the healthy artists to an even greater love and reverence for it. he is great, however, not by his theories, but by his art. the contrast between the sordidness of his thought and the splendidness of his art fills us sometimes with amazement. he sets out in his books to prove that life is a mean blunder; and, in spite of himself, the tragedy of this blunder becomes in his hands splendid and impressive, so that life is enriched even while it is defamed. art, which is _necessarily_ idealization and glorification, triumphs in him over even his most deeply founded conscious ideas. in all his greater books, it refutes his pessimism and turns his curses into involuntary blessings. so divine is art! _mr. george moore_ in writing about love, mr. moore falls into the same realistic error as mr. galsworthy: he writes about its manifestations without knowledge of that which gives them meaning and connection. love to him is just certain sensations--and not only love, but everything else. art is a sensation; religion, a sensation; the soul, a sensation. take out of his books sensation, and there will be little of account left. he knows the religious feeling, but not religion: he always confounds spirituality with refined sensualism. so he knows the sensation of love, but not love. but mr. moore is learned in the senses: he knows them in everything but their purity. yes, even sensuality is in his books corrupted. how true this is we realize when in "evelyn innes" he compares one of his characters to a faun. we are almost distressed at this, for we feel that the word is not only coarsened, but used with a wrong meaning altogether: we feel that mr. moore is incapable of understanding what a faun is! these sophisticated, scented and somewhat damaged voluptuaries of his, in whose conversation there is always an atmosphere of expensive feminine lingerie, and who "know" women so intimately; how perverted must be the taste which can compare them with the hardy, nimble, unconscious creatures of ancient greece! but mr. moore is much nearer in temper to oscar wilde than to the realists. he is an æsthete essentially, and a realist only in the second place, and only because he is an æsthete. the province of selected exquisite beauty had been exhausted by wilde and his school; so mr. moore turned to the squalid, the commonplace and the diseased in life, there to find his "æsthetic emotion." this explains the curious effect at once of colour and of drabness in his books. he is a perverted wilde; doubly a decadent. _mr. bernard shaw_ both the strength and the weakness of mr. shaw spring from a defect--his lack of love. freedom from illusion is his strength. he possesses common sense minus common sentiment; that, and probably nothing more; and that gives to his thought an appearance of subtlety, though it is not really subtle. thus, his common sense tells him that love is essentially creation. he sees through the illusions which love spins round its purpose, because he does not see these illusions at all. love, indeed, is known to him in all but its illusions; but who knows love that knows not love's illusions? still, it is to his honour that he has conceived love as creation. his weakness consists in that his attitude to love is purely intellectual. he lacks love more than any other man of his time. in grappling with the great problems of existence, it is not love but the very absence of love that has been his most useful weapon; and so he has seen much, but grasped nothing, created nothing. and because he has never loved, he can never be called an artist. for how can one who has not loved idealize? and how can one who has not idealized be an artist? in mr. shaw, nature has gone out of her way to create the very antithesis of the artist. what nietzsche said about socrates is true of mr. shaw even in a higher degree; that his reason is stronger than his instincts, and has usurped the place of his instincts. without love, he yet affirms creation. what can be his reason for doing so? why should he wish life to persist if he does not love life? is it in order that people might still converse wittily, and the epigram might not die? or so that exceptional men might experience forever the joy of intellectual conflict, the satisfaction found in the ruthless exposure of fallacy and weakness, and the proud feeling of mental power? we know that mr. shaw regards the brain as an end--the purpose of life being to perfect a finer and finer brain--and we know, too, that to mr. shaw the highest joy the brain can experience is not that of knowing, but of fighting. knowledge to him is a weapon with which to wage war. does he desire life to continue so that controversy might continue? well, let us look, then, for some other reason for his praise of love. he himself lacks love:--can it be that he praises it for the same reason for which the christian praises what he is not but would fain be? and his love of love is then something pathetic, founded on "unselfishness"? and himself, a romantic? _mr. h. g. wells_ how much has mr. wells's scientific training had to do with his conception of love? as a student of biology, it was natural he should see love as sex. in all his theories, indeed, there is more of the scientist than of the artist. scientific certainly, is his simple acceptance of sex as a fact, and his unhesitating association of it with generation, and of both with love. the innocence of the scientist and not of the artist is his, an innocence darwinian, not goethean. and so, although his purpose is fine--to restore in his books an innocent conception of sexual love--in doing so, his biology always runs away with his art. for he would render sex significant by reading it into all creation, as the meaning of creation; thus making the instrument more than the agent, the very meaning of the agent! but this robs both creation and sex of their significance. the way to restore an innocent conception of sexual love is by reading creation into it, by seeing it as part of the universal becoming, by carrying it away on the great purifying stream of becoming. in spite of his genius, and still more of his cleverness, mr. wells here began at the wrong end. but it is doubtful whether any one in this generation has sufficient artistic power and elevation to express in art this conception of love. within the limits of realism, especially of "physiological realism," it certainly cannot be expressed. nothing less than the symbolic may serve for it. _the idealism of love_ the writer who discovered that love idealizes the object might have pushed his discovery a little further; for it is no less true that love idealizes the subject. none knows better than the poets how to take advantage of this self-idealization: one has only to read their love poems to find out how much more is said about the poet's beautiful feelings than about the object which presumably evoked them. heine, particularly, was a shameless offender in this way. a woman was to him simply an excuse for seeing himself in imagination in a romantic attitude. but even with the others who appear less obtrusive and more disinterested the implication is the same. how elevated and even divine we must be, they seem to say, when we can feel in this manner; and how happy, when we are privileged to love an object of such loveliness! yes! love has such power that it idealizes everything--even the subject! _love and becoming_ the great heraclitus propounded the doctrine of becoming. everything changes, is built up and dissolved; "stability" is only a little sluggishness in the flux of things. zeus, the great child, the divine artist, constructs and destroys at his pleasure and for his amusement: all the worlds are his playthings. this conception of the universe is innocent and beautiful, an artist's conception; but it is at the same time terrifying. and that because all meaning is left out of it; for all things without meaning, no matter how beautiful they may be, are in the end terrifying. nietzsche, the modern counterpart of heraclitus, re-affirmed this doctrine; but he coupled with it the idea of creative love: that is his chief distinction. certainly, those who do not comprehend nietzsche's love do not comprehend nietzsche. it is the key to his religion of becoming. becoming without love is meaningless; love without becoming is meaningless. but, united, each gives its meaning to the other, each redeems the other. but have things a meaning in themselves? is it not man that forever interprets and interprets? very well. but is not a thing incomplete without its interpretation? is not its interpretation a part of it? _static values_ stagnant waters become noisome after a while. and stagnant values? certainly within these eternal pools not a few repulsive things have been born: in perfection, sin; in justice, guilt. it was when human judgments were apotheosized and became eternal justice that guilt was insinuated into the core of life. a falsehood, a presumption! what man found necessary at one moment in his history for his preservation, that, forsooth, was a law governing the spheres, the everlasting edict of god himself. and when life did not operate in conformity with this law, it was life that must needs be guilty--a very ingenious method of world-vilification! it was human vanity that created the eternal verities. and how much have we suffered from them! for the deification of things meant the diabolization of man, nay, of life itself. the metaphysician who created heaven created hell at the self-same moment; but, ever since, it has been hell that has given birth to the metaphysicians. being _condemns_ becoming, and pollutes all life with sin. so in the pools of being we can no longer cleanse ourselves, and our preference for a doctrine of becoming may be at bottom a hygienic preference. _the god of becoming_ love is the god of becoming. all the other gods are static gods, changeless for yesterday, today and tomorrow. but love belongs altogether to the future. it is the deity of those who would create a future. _utopias_ it is sympathy that has built the utopias. on every one of them is written, "conflict and suffering are bad." utopia is nothing but a place where men are happy, like how many heavens, an ideal of exhaustion. the thing that is omitted from it is always love, for love would shatter all utopias and leave them behind. in nowhere man no longer creates, but enjoys. but creation and pain go hand in hand; for what is creation? the dissolution of the outworn, the birth of the new; a continuous fury in which the throes of death and of life are mingled. and love calls man to that fate. what we need is an ideal of energy. but that must needs be an ideal of man, not of society; for man is the dynamic, society the static. utopia is a goal, but the superman is a goal beyond a goal; for, once attained, he is naught but the arrow to shoot into _his_ future. to attain the superman is to surpass the superman. only ideals of this kind are unassailable by love. _"primacy of things"_ if we aim at a state of society in which static values, as far as we can know them, are conformed with, we aim at a state in which the creative impulse will not only be needless, but harmful. for does not belief in absolute values necessarily imply belief in a utopia? and therefore in something antagonistic to love? the metaphor of static perfection, lovely as it is, has perhaps ruled us too long, and it is time we superseded it by another. or is it still, as it has always been, a crime to substitute one metaphor for another? even if it is love that drives us on? progress conceived as a discovery of the unknown instead of as a pursuit of perfection--might not that take us a long way? did nietzsche, perhaps, create his superman, and give him his hardness and lightness for no other purpose than to carry out that task? perfection is something that we have yet to discover! in this conception of progress all utopias are transcended, all goals renounced, yet a set of values, a morality, is retained. the morality might be judged by the criterion, does it aid us in our quest? a future of discovery, of creation and change, not of enjoyment: what a task for energetic love does that open out! the superman is a goal, but what is the superman's goal? the superman is something that must be surpassed! _perfection_ when men write largely of perfection, as if it were a concept every one could understand, we are entitled to ask what exactly they mean. do they mean a sort of synthesis or hotchpotch of the virtues in which they believe? does x believe in a christian and y in a nietzschean perfection? as a rule, conceptions of perfection are offshoots of the morality prevalent at any given time. and, for action, people's conception of perfection is much more important than perfection itself. therefore, let us ceaselessly repeat, perfection is something still to be discovered! as for the current conception, is conflict an ingredient in it, or rest? is it an ideal of life, or a thing impossible, self-contradictory, static, an eternal stick with which to chastise existence? the first question to be asked. _goals_ when people speak of the unthinkableness of eternal becoming which has no goal in being, what they express is their longing for rest. it is unendurable, they feel, that life, creation, change, should travel on their way forever: at the very thought their minds become tired, and being is conjured up. hitherto, our goals have not been resting stages, but eternal termini. but a true goal should not be a cul-de-sac, but the peak from which to descry our next goal. and so on eternally? well, why not? finality was born when the mind became weary at the thought of eternal ascent and found refuge in that of eternal rest. we have not fully learned yet how to live: struggle is still with us an argument against life. what we need is perhaps a few re-incarnations! when we have learned to live, however, we shall welcome struggle as a necessary part of life, and becoming will be as desirable to us as being now. and not till then shall we be _fit_ for immortality. _love and sympathy_ love and hatred are not the true opposites, but love and sympathy. love is creation, that is to say, strife: a battle between the inanimate not yet dead, and the living still unborn. and it is also, therefore, the hatred of the one for the other. true, this hatred may not be of individuals but of things; but does that make it any more harmless? it is naïve democratic prejudice to think that hatred of things is less _wicked_ than hatred of individuals; the very opposite is the case! the former is a thousand times more dangerous and destructive than the latter, which, indeed, is little more than an idiosyncrasy. hatred is contained in and is an aspect of love; it is love seen as destruction. well, only love has a right to hatred, for only love can create. sympathy, however, would maintain in existence what should be dead, and would bid what should be living remain forever unborn. for in death and in birth alike there is pain. sympathy--that is, sympathy with the _necessary_ suffering of existence--is a far greater danger than hatred. _the humanitarians_ hatred only to things, not to men; love only to men, not to things: the formula of the half-and-half. love and the virtues love is the mother of all the harder virtues, and that because she requires them. for how without them could she suffer to create, and endure the pain of becoming? everything dynamic must become virtuous. the soft, hedonistic, and degenerate in morality, however, arise from sympathy. sympathy needs the comfortable virtues; it seeks the static, for movement is pain, and pain, of the devil--if sympathy will admit a devil! its virtues are all in bad training. _the other side_ he ceaselessly groaned that he was weary of life and wished to be rid of it; but all the time it was life that wished to be rid of him. _love and danger_ the fear that danger might perish--the immortal fear of nietzsche--need cause us no anxiety, could we but believe that creative love will continue to exist. for love is the great source of danger, and of the heroic in action and thought. if military wars were to disappear from the earth, danger need not be diminished; it might become emancipated and voluntary: it might be raised from a common necessity to an individual task. perhaps in the distant future nations will become more pacific, men more war-like; peace will be maintained among nations _in order_ that individuals may have a free arena in which to carry on their great contests--"without powder," as nietzsche said. the battles, born of love, of the brands and zarathustras, not those of the napoleons: that is what creative love would envisage! but this prophecy has not sufficient foundation as yet, alas, to be called even a conjecture! _fellowship and love_ fellowship is of two kinds: that which is inspired by sympathy, and that which is an expression of love. men unite for the mere satisfaction which union brings, or for that which is found in the struggle for more remote things--an aspiration or a vision. this latter thing, impractical and paradoxical, which lends man what nobility he has--it was love that gave it to him. fellowship is the sublime attempt to complete the figure of man. my friend is he who possesses the qualities which i lack and most need: in that sense, he creates me. fellowship should enrich _all_ who partake of it, make their highest qualities productive, and throw bridges over the chasms of their defects. but the association of men for mere enjoyment is not worthy the name of friendship. sympathy is its parent. _the paradox_ it is possible to live nobly without happiness, but not without love. love, however, confers the highest happiness. is it because love is indifferent to happiness that happiness flutters around it, and caresses it with its wings? _moral indignation_ we should altogether eschew moral censoriousness in our contemplation of life, for it is merely destructive. to destroy that which we cannot re-create in a better form is a crime. only love should condemn, for only love can create. to bring the good into existence, or prepare the way of those who can create the good--that should be our only form of condemnation. in what consists the passion of the moral fanatic? in respect for the law, that it should not be violated. so he would extirpate whatever does not conform, even though thus he should destroy all life, and have no power to create it anew. no wonder he is gloomy: the vulture is not a bird of cheerful mien. _morality and love_ into what a dilemma falls the poor lover of life who goes to make the choice of morality! he sees that both great types of morality, the humanitarian and the military, the hedonistic and the spartan, lead in the end to nihilism, the one by liquefying, the other by hardening. the former becomes too sensitive to endure life; the latter, too insensible to feel it. yet they were to serve life; but they soon forgot the purpose for which they were formed; they exalted themselves as something higher than life; they become "absolute," and a stumbling-block to existence. and this was because they were not founded in the beginning upon the very principle of life, which is love, but upon accidentals. the conflict between morality and love has accordingly been a conflict between the forces of death and of life: for "works" without love are dead. morality should be but the discipline which love imposes upon itself in order to create. it should crown all the virtues which oppose a gallant and affirmative countenance to suffering and change, such as heroism, fortitude, joy, temperance. this morality is the antithesis of the humanitarian morality sprung from sympathy. _paradise regained_ if life is but an expression of creative love, then a morality founded upon love must be the only true morality. and, moreover, in it ethics and the instincts are reconciled; innocence is grasped. _love and knowledge_ if in all life there is change, creation, becoming, and if in our lives we know these things only in the interpretation of them which we call love, must not love be a necessary part of our knowledge of life? observation, investigation and the weighing of results may tell us much _about_ life, and show it to us in many aspects, but it does not give us immediate knowledge. is it possible to know life? if life be the expression of love----! upon that "if" depends everything. for if it is justified, then we have within us the clue to the riddle of existence. perhaps here we discern the faint struggling for birth of that undiscovered faculty of the mind of which men speak. the comprehension of life through love! the profoundest of intuitions? the maddest of dreams? _proverb and commentary_ love is blind, but it is with excess of light. _bad thoughts_ she was as perfect as a drop of dew or a beam of light; a pure thought of god, delicate, spontaneous and finished. there was nothing misshapen in body or soul; love did well to create such a being. but the others, the crooked, blind and defiled! are these the bad thoughts of god? from whence do they come? whither do they go? conceived in darkness, born for destruction? _love and sympathy_ we must not think of love as a mere concept. for it is something more real than life itself: the very life of life, the very soul of becoming. it is a force both spiritual and physical, but transcending the distinction of spiritual and physical. we must not conceive love as a thing akin to sympathy. it is not humanitarian or even human; it is a force as unsullied by humanity as the mountain winds or the tides of the ocean. nevertheless, it is within man, just as it is within the stars and seas; a great creative, destructive, transforming and purifying force; beyond good and evil as the dew and the lightning are. this is the power that is known by man in his moments of love. he is then free to create and enjoy, as if he were re-born, with a will new, joyful and innocent. but seldom does he attain this knowledge: his moments of exultation are brief. yet love has not on that account lost any of its potence. man may decay and become corrupt; but love remains unalterable, forever pure, incapable of corruption. _multum in parvo_ you are but a drop in the ocean of life. true: but it is in the ocean _of life!_ _love and the senses_ when one loves, the distinction between soul and body is passed. in love alone is the dream of goethe, heine, and the moderns realized: here the reconciliation of the spirit and the senses is celebrated in perfect innocence. for love irradiates and makes fragrant the body in which it dwells, and raises it aloft to sit by its brother the soul. _love and innocence_ life takes us back to its bosom when we love. the heavens, the earth and the race of men no longer appear things external and hostile, against which we must arm ourselves. we return from exile in personality; our thought sweeps to the farthest horizons, and plunges into the deepest gulfs of existence, at home in all places. the "external" is no longer external: we contemplate it from the inside, we gaze through its eyes. for the very principle of life, of which all living things are the expression, has been apprehended by us. our personality has been emancipated. this feeling of universal comprehension is called innocence. _love and the fall_ has the fable of the fall still another interpretation for us? was the fall of man the fall from love? when the feeling of universal comprehension was lost, personality in the individualistic sense arose. and sin was the child of this individualism. to the first man bereft of love, the earth assumed a terrible mien; nature glared at him with a million baleful eyes: he became an outcast in his home. no longer knowing the earth or other men, he experienced terror, hatred and despair. to protect himself against existence, he created love's substitute, morality. and with morality arose sin, and perished innocence. _love and its object_ nietzsche's psychology was wrong when he spoke of love as a narrowly egoistic thing isolating two people and making them indifferent to every one else. there is too much of the philosopher and too little of the psychologist in this observation. for mankind cannot be loved, life cannot be loved, until one has been loved. only lovers can generate such wealth of life that it overflows, enriching their friends, their enemies, all the world. to love one is to love all. _freedom in love_ in true love there is a feeling of entire freedom. is it because the lovers have by a divine chance found their true path, have become a pulse in the very heart of life? if love is the principle of life, then in love alone is perfect freedom. ethics and instinct become one. this is the road that leads beyond good and evil: man must learn to love. _love and the sensualists_ on those who affirm life as innocent and holy, there is an obligation laid. their lives must be innocent: life must be to them a sustained act of worship. how many of them have been lacking just here! heine failed, in spite of his real nobility. goethe, however, attained unity and sincerity; and nietzsche was a figure of beautiful integrity and innocence. they were neither of them mere "writers." nor must we be: there is upon us the compulsion to prove that a life of innocence is possible. and as a first step, we must separate ourselves from those who, before they have sought innocence, praise the senses. for they confuse and defile everything. _free will_ only those who have knowledge of becoming can know what the freedom of the will is. freedom--that is to will becoming with all its suffering, voluntarily to go on the way which fate and the highest life direct us. slavery--that is to deny becoming, to cling to the static, and to be dragged along the stream of change. to be dragged, not to remain stationary; for men by taking thought cannot gain immunity from change. their will and their desires avail them nothing. for the stream of becoming is unchangeable in its power. it is man that changes. when he affirms becoming, he is enlarged; when he denies it, he is straitened. _tragedy, life and love_ in the highest life two qualities are always to be found together, exuberance and suffering. life is founded on this paradox, which is fundamental; for in the emotion of love we are most conscious of it. love is the most joyful and most suffering thing: its plenitude of joy is so great that it can endure gladly the worst griefs. and tragedy is the truest expression in art of life and of love; for its characteristic, too, is a joy triumphing over fate. vi the tragic view _life as expression_ schopenhauer interpreted life as the expression of a will to live. nietzsche showed with profound truth that beneath this will there was something more fundamental, the will to power. have we here got to the foundation, or shall we find that underlying the will to power there is something more fundamental still? _why_ do all living things strive for power? is it, indeed, power that they desire in their striving, power for the sake of power? that which everything by a law of its being searches for is _expression:_ the will to power is merely an outcome of that search. for seeing that the sun of created life is split up into individuals, related and yet diverse, the expression of one unit is bound to collide with that of another, and the outcome is a conflict. life, therefore, is essentially something that injures itself, and injures itself the more the more powerful it is; in a word, life is essentially tragic. most people, however, live in illusion, knowing nothing of this. the philosophers, and, before them, the priests, were those who perceived that life was of this nature; but, alas, from the truth they drew the immediate and not the more profound conclusion. they sought, unconscious hedonists, a palliative for life, and contemned expression, which they saw was the cause of suffering. these were the creators of that morality which has prevailed to our own day; a morality antagonistic to life, anti-tragic, negative. all the systems which have been created in this way are colossal panaceas and remedies: they are not fundamental. there were others, however, who saw as the priests did that life was tragic, but who at the same time affirmed it. these were the tragic poets. they were more deeply versed in life than the priests: tragic art is more profound than morality. for morality is based on the belief that man desires above everything else happiness. but tragedy has perceived that this is not so. man will express himself, it proclaims, whatever the outcome, whether it be joy or suffering. since then morality has sunk deep into life, and there is now almost a second instinct in man striving against expression. consequently there are many existences passed without expression; sometimes even in a resolute struggle against it, as in the case of innumerable religious men and ascetics. to some men it seems that their spirit has been lying frozen and dead within them, until one day an influence touches them, and they feel an imperious desire to express themselves, to create. this influence is nothing else than love, which is the desire for expression itself. when its rule is recognized and obeyed life reaches its highest degree of joy and of pain, and becomes creative. this is the state which is glorified by the tragic poets. to those who affirm, it is the highest condition of life. _"self-expression"_ self-expression is something infinitely more subtle than the moderns conceive. this man studied to express himself: he investigated his ego, and thereby cut himself off from life more completely than any anchorite, for the anchorite had at least heaven in addition to himself. this neo-anchorite, however, turned his eyes deliberately inward and strove to find expression for what he discovered there, but for nothing more. thus he became his own prison. eventually he turned out an æsthete. this other man found that his thoughts and desires flew away from him as irrevocably as a flock of wild birds and became lost or strangers. he seemed constrained to express everything _not_ himself, everything foreign, remote and as exalted; but in the end he discovered that it was himself he had expressed. "thy true being," said nietzsche, "lies not deeply hidden in thee, but an infinite height above thee, or at least above that which thou dost commonly take to be thyself." _life as a value_ those who say that the belief in life as a value is not a belief which will arouse the heroic passions and make men die for it, use a form of reasoning, at any rate, which is erroneous. they first confuse the ideal of more complete existence with the more complete existence of an individual, and then demonstrate that this individual will not lay down his life for the sake of _his_ more complete existence! but life as an ideal is just as impersonal as any other ideal, whether it be justice or perfection or renunciation. true, it has not yet become static, but on that account its attraction is only the stronger; it arouses our very love. and men will die for what they love: they will die for life. _hebbel's theory of tragedy_ hebbel's theory of tragedy is noble and profound. not in the misdirection of wills does he find the source of the tragic, but in the core of the will itself, in the inexorable expression and collision of wills. this conception raises tragedy from a mere consequence and punishment of sin to an expression of life itself, to the most profound and essential expression of life. and this is just and worthy of tragedy. for the character of tragedy is not negative and condemnatory, but deeply affirmative and joyous. how shallow then must be the theories which would deny tragedy to the good, to those whose wills are highly directed! tragedy is not a punishment. the more noble man becomes the more tragic he will also become. _tragic philosophy_ the belief, against which nietzsche declaimed, that reason brings happiness has become to the modern man second nature, so that now the notions of reason and happiness are indissolubly connected in his mind. any argument for a tragic view of life must therefore appear, first of all, unreasonable; for happiness as an end is the only reason that will be acknowledged. it remains for us to show that happiness is itself unreasonable, an impossibility, a chimera. there is no happiness as an end. reason does not bring happiness, nor does virtue, nor does asceticism, nor does comfort. happiness is an accident. and not even a modern can make accidents happen! to this modern world, with its belief in happiness, nietzsche was bound to appear unreasonable, for he brought with him not only a tragic conception of life, but a tragic philosophy. a tragic philosophy--the marriage of knowledge and tragedy: nothing could have seemed more irrational to modern europe than that! _tragedy and arguments_ those who desire to restore a tragic conception of life should not use these arguments: that happiness is a condition which, if it were possible of realization, would become intolerable, producing its opposite, unhappiness; or that only when the individual renounces happiness does happiness become his. these are the statements of a hedonism once removed. the argument for the tragic view should be founded on considerations altogether irrelevant to happiness. it should not care enough about happiness even to disdain it. _morality and happiness_ philosophers have from the beginning acknowledged that happiness is not won by seeking for it, but by striving for other things. this, however, has not prevented them from proclaiming happiness as the goal of man and as the deliberate object of ethics. contradiction upon contradiction! if the individual cannot by taking thought capture happiness, is it conceivable that a community can, or the human race, in toto? to throw a net round this mirage compounded of desire and fancy--surely reason was itself the most unreasonable thing to attempt that. and, after all, does man desire happiness? tragedy denies it. _end or effect_ one may possess all the virtues save love, and remain unhappy. love, however, brings happiness with it as the sun brings light. is happiness, then, the end of morality? or an effect of love? _superiority_ in order to despise enjoyment, one need only be supremely happy or supremely wretched. _beauty and tragedy_ in every beautiful face there is nobility, strength and a touch of sadness--the seal of tragedy is upon it. to make life beautiful, then, would be to make it tragic? nay, rather let us say that to make life tragic is to make it beautiful. supreme beauty is but the expression in which are comprised in a miracle of unity the sorrow and the joy of tragedy. for in the most radiant manifestation of beauty there is a brooding solemnity; in the most sorrowful there is triumph. _experimenting in life_ the aim of the æsthetes was without enduring tragedy to enjoy beauty. to that end they devised their creed of experimentation in life: they wished to know all the joys of the soul and of the senses without inconvenience to themselves. perceiving that love and beauty bring suffering in their train, they decided to _take the initiative_ against them, in other words, to "experience" them. all they experienced, however, was--their experiences. that, indeed, was all they desired: their "experimenting in life" was escaping from life. without the courage to accept life with the dionysians or to renounce it with the ascetics, they hit upon the plan of stealing a march upon it. well, it was certainly not upon life that they stole a march! _christian and dionysian_ the christian and the dionysian are both of them step-children and solutions of pessimism. a gloomy and realistic view of the world was necessary before either of them could be born. in christianity pessimism was translated into symbols. "original sin" and "transgression against god"--these were the theological counterparts of the pessimist's "suffering," "the tyranny of the will." how did christianity find relief from this fundamental pessimism? by a pathetic illusion in which mankind were transformed into erring children, who, however, were forgiven by an indulgent father. here suffering was still an argument against life, and a palliative was sought and found. the dionysian, however, affirmed life in the very tragicality of its aspect, and, by so doing, achieved a victory over it. in short, to the dionysian life is a tragedy; to the christian it is a pathetic tale with a happy ending. _history of the dionysian_ in the beginning he possessed innocence: the world appeared to him as beautiful, man as good, and the future as immeasurable. the great illusion of rousseau was his--a "natural man" himself, believing in the "natural man," a romanticist, a credulous, not too sincere, "beautiful" soul--a youth with the qualities of youth. but a day came when unwillingly and painfully his soul forced his eyes open and compelled them to look, and he saw without illusion; the cruelty beneath smiling appearance, the red claw, and conscienceless, inappeasable appetite. looking at man he found him a powerless little creature, condemned to a few years in this world, cut off by death, and even during his life circumscribed by invincible limitation. nevertheless, this man disdained to hide his head in the sands of illusion; and immediately he became altogether more worthy of respect, more real, almost sublime. a noble resignation to life now characterized him; the classical writers, especially the greeks with their naturalistic pessimism, seemed to him the highest thing; and he accepted the theory of original sin. all honour to him when he reached, after a painful journey, this spare but real conclusion! all honour to this pessimist who would not deceive himself! one day, however, the thought came to him, "even if pain and necessity be the truths of life! there is something within me which can turn these, also, to account! i can transfigure them. pain, struggle, change--these will no longer enslave me; for these shall be my slaves!" at that moment he became a dionysian: he had turned the corner of pessimism, and had gained freedom. original sin was no longer true for him; for a new truth had dawned in whose light the old was quenched. from an illusive freedom in the beginning, through bondage to necessity, to a new freedom--the history of the dionysian. the pessimist is more profound than the "natural man," but the dionysian is the most profound of all. he burrows deeper than pessimism itself; he grows, the most happy of men, out of the very soil of pessimism. _tragic affirmation_ to feel happy at this moment--is not that to approve of your whole life, of its suffering, conflict, ennui and scepticism no less than its victories and festivals? this moment is what it is by virtue of these experiences; justify it and you justify them. the physical agony which left its mark upon you; the anguish of bereavement and of disillusionment; the cynicism with which you consoled yourself; the years when you lived altogether bereft of hope; your most profound and most petty thoughts and actions; your meanest, bitterest and noblest experiences: all these are unconsciously affirmed in your affirmation of this moment. let them be affirmed consciously! or is your soul afraid to go as far as your will? looking back now with new eyes over your life, you find that precisely what you cannot do is to repent--least of all of your sins and griefs! for to repent is to will life to be other than life, and essentially not to affirm. he who contemplates his life thus, perhaps understands for the first time what is the meaning of tragedy. _mastery and tragedy_ the desire of man to subjugate nature and fate and obtain mastery over his resources--perhaps it is as well that this is meantime unattainable! for man's spirit is not yet noble enough for him to use his power aright: he would use it, if he could grasp it now, as a means to happiness! our first duty is to fight the idea of happiness, to make man tragic. once man wills tragedy, however, the more mastery he acquires the better. _the hidden faculty_ when we speak hopefully of the discovery of still undiscovered faculties in man, to what do we look forward? in plain terms, how do we expect this faculty to be of use to us? in bringing about happiness? it is almost a tragedy--it is a tragedy without the nobility--that in our time the most beautiful, heroic and powerful things have to bow their heads and become slaves to this weak and pathetic tyrant, happiness. should we then oppose the addition of one more divine power to the imprisoned? well, a hope consoles us. for the discovery of a new faculty in man will not make him more happy, but simply more powerful; his self-expression in action will be the more complete; the essential conflict of life will be magnified; life will become more tragic. so think well, you votaries of happiness, before you bring to life another power of the tragic creature, man. far better for your ends if you could but succeed in killing some of those he already possesses. but have you not sometimes tried to do that? _the other side_ and yet man cannot create without happiness. the soul that lives in shadow becomes unhealthy and sterile: sunshine is after all the great health-bringing and fructifying thing. happiness does make a man nobler; more ready to generosity and heroism; more careless of enjoyment. happiness! but what is happiness? the happiness that is essential to the best life is a state of the soul: this is doubtless that which goethe and heine praised. but the other, the happiness of the utilitarian, is an effect of calculated action, the reward of a sort of ethical thrift. the first, however, is independent of calculation, and even a little scornful of it; for in its confidence and plenitude it dares to put out on the gloomiest seas. it is not unrelated to love, this effect of an affirmative attitude to life. when people praise happiness, how one desires to believe it is this that they praise. _the two species_ the few have a conception of life different from that of the many. to the latter still pertain such notions as "do as you would be done by," and so forth. they understand a morality but not the end of morality. the few, however, who understand both the morality and the reason for it, who have a conception of life more difficult and unyielding, seem to the many cold and a little inhuman. the lives of the latter, on the other hand, appear to the few as a naively happy, narrow and absurd form of existence. _nietzsche_ what was nietzsche, that subtlest of modern riddles? first, a great tragic poet: it was by a divine accident that he was at the same time a profound thinker and the deepest psychologist. but his tragic affirmative was the core of his work, of which thought and analysis were but outgrowths. without it, his subtlety might have made him another pascal. the will to power, which makes suffering integral in life; the order of rank whereby the bulk of mankind are doomed to slavery; the superman himself, that most sublime child of tragedy; and the last affirmation, the eternal recurrence: these are the conceptions of a tragic poet. it is, indeed, by virtue of his tragic view of life that nietzsche is for us a force of such value. for only by means of it could modern existence, sunk in scepticism, pessimism and the greatest happiness of the greatest number, be re-created. for the last two centuries europe has been under the domination of the concept of happiness as progress. altruism, the ideology of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, altruism as a means of universalizing happiness, was preached in the eighteenth century; until after a while it was seen by such clear-sighted observers as voltaire that men did not obey this imperative of altruism; therefore they were condemned: the moral indignation of the eighteenth century, the century of censoriousness par excellence, was the result. first, an impossible morality was demanded, and for the attainment of an unattainable ideal; then man was condemned because he failed to comply with it, because he was man. thus in the end the ideal of the greatest happiness worked out in pessimism: life became hideous and, worst of all, immoral, to the utilitarian, when it was seen that altruism and happiness are alike impossible. schopenhauer is here the heir of voltaire: the moral condemnation of the one has become in the other a condemnation of life itself, more profound, more poetical, more logical. altruism has in schopenhauer deepened into pity; for pity is altruism bereft of the illusion of happiness. how was man to avoid now the almost inevitable bourne of nihilism? by renouncing altogether happiness as a value; by restoring a conception of life in which happiness was neither a positive nor a negative standard, but something irrelevant, an accident: in short, by setting up a tragic conception of life. this was the task of nietzsche: in how far he succeeded how can we yet say? _again_ nietzsche loved not goodness but greatness: the true, the _great_ and the beautiful. was not this the necessary corollary of his æsthetic evaluation of life? _sacrifices_ "the first of the first fruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of the lord thy god." thus spoke the oldest reverence. we should not scoff at this feeling but rather try to understand it; for it is only too rare in our time. what was its meaning to the rulers of israel? gratitude, a beautiful, affirmative thing. to enrich life with our highest gifts, which we freely offer in thanksgiving for what life has given us,--that should be our form of sacrifice. and we should perform it gladly, with festive, overflowing heart, not with sullen and conscientious face, as if life were a usurer. _our poverty_ the spiritual poverty of modern life is appalling; and all the more because men are unconscious of it. prayer was in former times the channel whereby a profound current of spiritual life flowed into the lives of men and enriched them. this source of wealth has now almost ceased, and man has become less spiritual, more impoverished. we must seek a new form of prayer. better not live at all than live without reverence and gratitude! let our sacramental attitude to life be our form of prayer. let us no longer desire to live when that has perished. _finis_ "to abjure half measures and to live resolutely in the whole, the full, the beautiful."--goethe. "to try to see in all things necessity as beauty."--nietzsche. the end human, all too human a book for free spirits by friedrich nietzsche translated by alexander harvey chicago charles h. kerr & company copyright by charles h. kerr & company contents author's preface of the first and last things history of the moral feelings the religious life preface. it is often enough, and always with great surprise, intimated to me that there is something both ordinary and unusual in all my writings, from the "birth of tragedy" to the recently published "prelude to a philosophy of the future": they all contain, i have been told, snares and nets for short sighted birds, and something that is almost a constant, subtle, incitement to an overturning of habitual opinions and of approved customs. what!? everything is merely--human--all too human? with this exclamation my writings are gone through, not without a certain dread and mistrust of ethic itself and not without a disposition to ask the exponent of evil things if those things be not simply misrepresented. my writings have been termed a school of distrust, still more of disdain: also, and more happily, of courage, audacity even. and in fact, i myself do not believe that anybody ever looked into the world with a distrust as deep as mine, seeming, as i do, not simply the timely advocate of the devil, but, to employ theological terms, an enemy and challenger of god; and whosoever has experienced any of the consequences of such deep distrust, anything of the chills and the agonies of isolation to which such an unqualified difference of standpoint condemns him endowed with it, will also understand how often i must have sought relief and self-forgetfulness from any source--through any object of veneration or enmity, of scientific seriousness or wanton lightness; also why i, when i could not find what i was in need of, had to fashion it for myself, counterfeiting it or imagining it (and what poet or writer has ever done anything else, and what other purpose can all the art in the world possibly have?) that which i always stood most in need of in order to effect my cure and self-recovery was faith, faith enough not to be thus isolated, not to look at life from so singular a point of view--a magic apprehension (in eye and mind) of relationship and equality, a calm confidence in friendship, a blindness, free from suspicion and questioning, to two sidedness; a pleasure in externals, superficialities, the near, the accessible, in all things possessed of color, skin and seeming. perhaps i could be fairly reproached with much "art" in this regard, many fine counterfeitings; for example, that, wisely or wilfully, i had shut my eyes to schopenhauer's blind will towards ethic, at a time when i was already clear sighted enough on the subject of ethic; likewise that i had deceived myself concerning richard wagner's incurable romanticism, as if it were a beginning and not an end; likewise concerning the greeks, likewise concerning the germans and their future--and there may be, perhaps, a long list of such likewises. granted, however, that all this were true, and with justice urged against me, what does it signify, what can it signify in regard to how much of the self-sustaining capacity, how much of reason and higher protection are embraced in such self-deception?--and how much more falsity is still necessary to me that i may therewith always reassure myself regarding the luxury of my truth. enough, i still live; and life is not considered now apart from ethic; it _will_ [have] deception; it thrives (lebt) on deception ... but am i not beginning to do all over again what i have always done, i, the old immoralist, and bird snarer--talk unmorally, ultramorally, "beyond good and evil"? thus, then, have i evolved for myself the "free spirits" to whom this discouraging-encouraging work, under the general title "human, all too human," is dedicated. such "free spirits" do not really exist and never did exist. but i stood in need of them, as i have pointed out, in order that some good might be mixed with my evils (illness, loneliness, strangeness, _acedia_, incapacity): to serve as gay spirits and comrades, with whom one may talk and laugh when one is disposed to talk and laugh, and whom one may send to the devil when they grow wearisome. they are some compensation for the lack of friends. that such free spirits can possibly exist, that our europe will yet number among her sons of to-morrow or of the day after to-morrow, such a brilliant and enthusiastic company, alive and palpable and not merely, as in my case, fantasms and imaginary shades, i, myself, can by no means doubt. i see them already coming, slowly, slowly. may it not be that i am doing a little something to expedite their coming when i describe in advance the influences under which i see them evolving and the ways along which they travel? it may be conjectured that a soul in which the type of "free spirit" can attain maturity and completeness had its decisive and deciding event in the form of a great emancipation or unbinding, and that prior to that event it seemed only the more firmly and forever chained to its place and pillar. what binds strongest? what cords seem almost unbreakable? in the case of mortals of a choice and lofty nature they will be those of duty: that reverence, which in youth is most typical, that timidity and tenderness in the presence of the traditionally honored and the worthy, that gratitude to the soil from which we sprung, for the hand that guided us, for the relic before which we were taught to pray--their sublimest moments will themselves bind these souls most strongly. the great liberation comes suddenly to such prisoners, like an earthquake: the young soul is all at once shaken, torn apart, cast forth--it comprehends not itself what is taking place. an involuntary onward impulse rules them with the mastery of command; a will, a wish are developed to go forward, anywhere, at any price; a strong, dangerous curiosity regarding an undiscovered world flames and flashes in all their being. "better to die than live _here_"--so sounds the tempting voice: and this "here," this "at home" constitutes all they have hitherto loved. a sudden dread and distrust of that which they loved, a flash of contempt for that which is called their "duty," a mutinous, wilful, volcanic-like longing for a far away journey, strange scenes and people, annihilation, petrifaction, a hatred surmounting love, perhaps a sacrilegious impulse and look backwards, to where they so long prayed and loved, perhaps a flush of shame for what they did and at the same time an exultation at having done it, an inner, intoxicating, delightful tremor in which is betrayed the sense of victory--a victory? over what? over whom? a riddle-like victory, fruitful in questioning and well worth questioning, but the _first_ victory, for all--such things of pain and ill belong to the history of the great liberation. and it is at the same time a malady that can destroy a man, this first outbreak of strength and will for self-destination, self-valuation, this will for free will: and how much illness is forced to the surface in the frantic strivings and singularities with which the freedman, the liberated seeks henceforth to attest his mastery over things! he roves fiercely around, with an unsatisfied longing and whatever objects he may encounter must suffer from the perilous expectancy of his pride; he tears to pieces whatever attracts him. with a sardonic laugh he overturns whatever he finds veiled or protected by any reverential awe: he would see what these things look like when they are overturned. it is wilfulness and delight in the wilfulness of it, if he now, perhaps, gives his approval to that which has heretofore been in ill repute--if, in curiosity and experiment, he penetrates stealthily to the most forbidden things. in the background during all his plunging and roaming--for he is as restless and aimless in his course as if lost in a wilderness--is the interrogation mark of a curiosity growing ever more dangerous. "can we not upset every standard? and is good perhaps evil? and god only an invention and a subtlety of the devil? is everything, in the last resort, false? and if we are dupes are we not on that very account dupers also? _must_ we not be dupers also?" such reflections lead and mislead him, ever further on, ever further away. solitude, that dread goddess and mater saeva cupidinum, encircles and besets him, ever more threatening, more violent, more heart breaking--but who to-day knows what solitude is? from this morbid solitude, from the deserts of such trial years, the way is yet far to that great, overflowing certainty and healthiness which cannot dispense even with sickness as a means and a grappling hook of knowledge; to that matured freedom of the spirit which is, in an equal degree, self mastery and discipline of the heart, and gives access to the path of much and various reflection--to that inner comprehensiveness and self satisfaction of over-richness which precludes all danger that the spirit has gone astray even in its own path and is sitting intoxicated in some corner or other; to that overplus of plastic, healing, imitative and restorative power which is the very sign of vigorous health, that overplus which confers upon the free spirit the perilous prerogative of spending a life in experiment and of running adventurous risks: the past-master-privilege of the free spirit. in the interval there may be long years of convalescence, years filled with many hued painfully-bewitching transformations, dominated and led to the goal by a tenacious will for health that is often emboldened to assume the guise and the disguise of health. there is a middle ground to this, which a man of such destiny can not subsequently recall without emotion; he basks in a special fine sun of his own, with a feeling of birdlike freedom, birdlike visual power, birdlike irrepressibleness, a something extraneous (drittes) in which curiosity and delicate disdain have united. a "free spirit"--this refreshing term is grateful in any mood, it almost sets one aglow. one lives--no longer in the bonds of love and hate, without a yes or no, here or there indifferently, best pleased to evade, to avoid, to beat about, neither advancing nor retreating. one is habituated to the bad, like a person who all at once sees a fearful hurly-burly _beneath_ him--and one was the counterpart of him who bothers himself with things that do not concern him. as a matter of fact the free spirit is bothered with mere things--and how many things--which no longer _concern_ him. a step further in recovery: and the free spirit draws near to life again, slowly indeed, almost refractorily, almost distrustfully. there is again warmth and mellowness: feeling and fellow feeling acquire depth, lambent airs stir all about him. he almost feels: it seems as if now for the first time his eyes are open to things _near_. he is in amaze and sits hushed: for where had he been? these near and immediate things: how changed they seem to him! he looks gratefully back--grateful for his wandering, his self exile and severity, his lookings afar and his bird flights in the cold heights. how fortunate that he has not, like a sensitive, dull home body, remained always "in the house" and "at home!" he had been beside himself, beyond a doubt. now for the first time he really sees himself--and what surprises in the process. what hitherto unfelt tremors! yet what joy in the exhaustion, the old sickness, the relapses of the convalescent! how it delights him, suffering, to sit still, to exercise patience, to lie in the sun! who so well as he appreciates the fact that there comes balmy weather even in winter, who delights more in the sunshine athwart the wall? they are the most appreciative creatures in the world, and also the most humble, these convalescents and lizards, crawling back towards life: there are some among them who can let no day slip past them without addressing some song of praise to its retreating light. and speaking seriously, it is a fundamental cure for all pessimism (the cankerous vice, as is well known, of all idealists and humbugs), to become ill in the manner of these free spirits, to remain ill quite a while and then bit by bit grow healthy--i mean healthier. it is wisdom, worldly wisdom, to administer even health to oneself for a long time in small doses. about this time it becomes at last possible, amid the flash lights of a still unestablished, still precarious health, for the free, the ever freer spirit to begin to read the riddle of that great liberation, a riddle which has hitherto lingered, obscure, well worth questioning, almost impalpable, in his memory. if once he hardly dared to ask "why so apart? so alone? renouncing all i loved? renouncing respect itself? why this coldness, this suspicion, this hate for one's very virtues?"--now he dares, and asks it loudly, already hearing the answer, "you had to become master over yourself, master of your own good qualities. formerly they were your masters: but they should be merely your tools along with other tools. you had to acquire power over your aye and no and learn to hold and withhold them in accordance with your higher aims. you had to grasp the perspective of every representation (werthschätzung)--the dislocation, distortion and the apparent end or teleology of the horizon, besides whatever else appertains to the perspective: also the element of demerit in its relation to opposing merit, and the whole intellectual cost of every affirmative, every negative. you had to find out the _inevitable_ error[ ] in every yes and in every no, error as inseparable from life, life itself as conditioned by the perspective and its inaccuracy.[ ] above all, you had to see with your own eyes where the error[ ] is always greatest: there, namely, where life is littlest, narrowest, meanest, least developed and yet cannot help looking upon itself as the goal and standard of things, and smugly and ignobly and incessantly tearing to tatters all that is highest and greatest and richest, and putting the shreds into the form of questions from the standpoint of its own well being. you had to see with your own eyes the problem of classification, (rangordnung, regulation concerning rank and station) and how strength and sweep and reach of perspective wax upward together: you had"--enough, the free spirit knows henceforward which "you had" it has obeyed and also what it now can do and what it now, for the first time, _dare_. [ ] ungerechtigkeit, literally wrongfulness, injustice, unrighteousness. accordingly, the free spirit works out for itself an answer to that riddle of its liberation and concludes by generalizing upon its experience in the following fashion: "what i went through everyone must go through" in whom any problem is germinated and strives to body itself forth. the inner power and inevitability of this problem will assert themselves in due course, as in the case of any unsuspected pregnancy--long before the spirit has seen this problem in its true aspect and learned to call it by its right name. our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law to our to-day. granted, that it is the problem of classification[ ] of which we free spirits may say, this is _our_ problem, yet it is only now, in the midday of our life, that we fully appreciate what preparations, shifts, trials, ordeals, stages, were essential to that problem before it could emerge to our view, and why we had to go through the various and contradictory longings and satisfactions of body and soul, as circumnavigators and adventurers of that inner world called "man"; as surveyors of that "higher" and of that "progression"[ ] that is also called "man"--crowding in everywhere, almost without fear, disdaining nothing, missing nothing, testing everything, sifting everything and eliminating the chance impurities--until at last we could say, we free spirits: "here--a _new_ problem! here, a long ladder on the rungs of which we ourselves have rested and risen, which we have actually been at times. here is a something higher, a something deeper, a something below us, a vastly extensive order, (ordnung) a comparative classification (rangordnung), that we perceive: here--_our_ problem!" [ ] rangordnung: the meaning is "the problem of grasping the relative importance of things." [ ] uebereinander: one over another. to what stage in the development just outlined the present book belongs (or is assigned) is something that will be hidden from no augur or psychologist for an instant. but where are there psychologists to-day? in france, certainly; in russia, perhaps; certainly not in germany. grounds are not wanting, to be sure, upon which the germans of to-day may adduce this fact to their credit: unhappily for one who in this matter is fashioned and mentored in an un-german school! this _german_ book, which has found its readers in a wide circle of lands and peoples--it has been some ten years on its rounds--and which must make its way by means of any musical art and tune that will captivate the foreign ear as well as the native--this book has been read most indifferently in germany itself and little heeded there: to what is that due? "it requires too much," i have been told, "it addresses itself to men free from the press of petty obligations, it demands fine and trained perceptions, it requires a surplus, a surplus of time, of the lightness of heaven and of the heart, of otium in the most unrestricted sense: mere good things that we germans of to-day have not got and therefore cannot give." after so graceful a retort, my philosophy bids me be silent and ask no more questions: at times, as the proverb says, one remains a philosopher only because one says--nothing! nice, spring, . of the first and last things. =chemistry of the notions and the feelings.=--philosophical problems, in almost all their aspects, present themselves in the same interrogative formula now that they did two thousand years ago: how can a thing develop out of its antithesis? for example, the reasonable from the non-reasonable, the animate from the inanimate, the logical from the illogical, altruism from egoism, disinterestedness from greed, truth from error? the metaphysical philosophy formerly steered itself clear of this difficulty to such extent as to repudiate the evolution of one thing from another and to assign a miraculous origin to what it deemed highest and best, due to the very nature and being of the "thing-in-itself." the historical philosophy, on the other hand, which can no longer be viewed apart from physical science, the youngest of all philosophical methods, discovered experimentally (and its results will probably always be the same) that there is no antithesis whatever, except in the usual exaggerations of popular or metaphysical comprehension, and that an error of the reason is at the bottom of such contradiction. according to its explanation, there is, strictly speaking, neither unselfish conduct, nor a wholly disinterested point of view. both are simply sublimations in which the basic element seems almost evaporated and betrays its presence only to the keenest observation. all that we need and that could possibly be given us in the present state of development of the sciences, is a chemistry of the moral, religious, aesthetic conceptions and feeling, as well as of those emotions which we experience in the affairs, great and small, of society and civilization, and which we are sensible of even in solitude. but what if this chemistry established the fact that, even in _its_ domain, the most magnificent results were attained with the basest and most despised ingredients? would many feel disposed to continue such investigations? mankind loves to put by the questions of its origin and beginning: must one not be almost inhuman in order to follow the opposite course? =the traditional error of philosophers.=--all philosophers make the common mistake of taking contemporary man as their starting point and of trying, through an analysis of him, to reach a conclusion. "man" involuntarily presents himself to them as an aeterna veritas as a passive element in every hurly-burly, as a fixed standard of things. yet everything uttered by the philosopher on the subject of man is, in the last resort, nothing more than a piece of testimony concerning man during a very limited period of time. lack of the historical sense is the traditional defect in all philosophers. many innocently take man in his most childish state as fashioned through the influence of certain religious and even of certain political developments, as the permanent form under which man must be viewed. they will not learn that man has evolved,[ ] that the intellectual faculty itself is an evolution, whereas some philosophers make the whole cosmos out of this intellectual faculty. but everything essential in human evolution took place aeons ago, long before the four thousand years or so of which we know anything: during these man may not have changed very much. however, the philosopher ascribes "instinct" to contemporary man and assumes that this is one of the unalterable facts regarding man himself, and hence affords a clue to the understanding of the universe in general. the whole teleology is so planned that man during the last four thousand years shall be spoken of as a being existing from all eternity, and with reference to whom everything in the cosmos from its very inception is naturally ordered. yet everything evolved: there are no eternal facts as there are no absolute truths. accordingly, historical philosophising is henceforth indispensable, and with it honesty of judgment. [ ] geworden. =appreciation of simple truths.=--it is the characteristic of an advanced civilization to set a higher value upon little, simple truths, ascertained by scientific method, than upon the pleasing and magnificent errors originating in metaphysical and æsthetical epochs and peoples. to begin with, the former are spoken of with contempt as if there could be no question of comparison respecting them, so rigid, homely, prosaic and even discouraging is the aspect of the first, while so beautiful, decorative, intoxicating and perhaps beatific appear the last named. nevertheless, the hardwon, the certain, the lasting and, therefore, the fertile in new knowledge, is the higher; to hold fast to it is manly and evinces courage, directness, endurance. and not only individual men but all mankind will by degrees be uplifted to this manliness when they are finally habituated to the proper appreciation of tenable, enduring knowledge and have lost all faith in inspiration and in the miraculous revelation of truth. the reverers of forms, indeed, with their standards of beauty and taste, may have good reason to laugh when the appreciation of little truths and the scientific spirit begin to prevail, but that will be only because their eyes are not yet opened to the charm of the utmost simplicity of form or because men though reared in the rightly appreciative spirit, will still not be fully permeated by it, so that they continue unwittingly imitating ancient forms (and that ill enough, as anybody does who no longer feels any interest in a thing). formerly the mind was not brought into play through the medium of exact thought. its serious business lay in the working out of forms and symbols. that has now changed. any seriousness in symbolism is at present the indication of a deficient education. as our very acts become more intellectual, our tendencies more rational, and our judgment, for example, as to what seems reasonable, is very different from what it was a hundred years ago: so the forms of our lives grow ever more intellectual and, to the old fashioned eye, perhaps, uglier, but only because it cannot see that the richness of inner, rational beauty always spreads and deepens, and that the inner, rational aspect of all things should now be of more consequence to us than the most beautiful externality and the most exquisite limning. =astrology and the like.=--it is presumable that the objects of the religious, moral, aesthetic and logical notions pertain simply to the superficialities of things, although man flatters himself with the thought that here at least he is getting to the heart of the cosmos. he deceives himself because these things have power to make him so happy and so wretched, and so he evinces, in this respect, the same conceit that characterises astrology. astrology presupposes that the heavenly bodies are regulated in their movements in harmony with the destiny of mortals: the moral man presupposes that that which concerns himself most nearly must also be the heart and soul of things. =misconception of dreams.=--in the dream, mankind, in epochs of crude primitive civilization, thought they were introduced to a second, substantial world: here we have the source of all metaphysic. without the dream, men would never have been incited to an analysis of the world. even the distinction between soul and body is wholly due to the primitive conception of the dream, as also the hypothesis of the embodied soul, whence the development of all superstition, and also, probably, the belief in god. "the dead still live: for they appear to the living in dreams." so reasoned mankind at one time, and through many thousands of years. =the scientific spirit prevails only partially, not wholly.=--the specialized, minutest departments of science are dealt with purely objectively. but the general universal sciences, considered as a great, basic unity, posit the question--truly a very living question--: to what purpose? what is the use? because of this reference to utility they are, as a whole, less impersonal than when looked at in their specialized aspects. now in the case of philosophy, as forming the apex of the scientific pyramid, this question of the utility of knowledge is necessarily brought very conspicuously forward, so that every philosophy has, unconsciously, the air of ascribing the highest utility to itself. it is for this reason that all philosophies contain such a great amount of high flying metaphysic, and such a shrinking from the seeming insignificance of the deliverances of physical science: for the significance of knowledge in relation to life must be made to appear as great as possible. this constitutes the antagonism between the specialties of science and philosophy. the latter aims, as art aims, at imparting to life and conduct the utmost depth and significance: in the former mere knowledge is sought and nothing else--whatever else be incidentally obtained. heretofore there has never been a philosophical system in which philosophy itself was not made the apologist of knowledge [in the abstract]. on this point, at least, each is optimistic and insists that to knowledge the highest utility must be ascribed. they are all under the tyranny of logic, which is, from its very nature, optimism. =the discordant element in science.=--philosophy severed itself from science when it put the question: what is that knowledge of the world and of life through which mankind may be made happiest? this happened when the socratic school arose: with the standpoint of _happiness_ the arteries of investigating science were compressed too tightly to permit of any circulation of the blood--and are so compressed to-day. =pneumatic explanation of nature.=[ ]--metaphysic reads the message of nature as if it were written purely pneumatically, as the church and its learned ones formerly did where the bible was concerned. it requires a great deal of expertness to apply to nature the same strict science of interpretation that the philologists have devised for all literature, and to apply it for the purpose of a simple, direct interpretation of the message, and at the same time, not bring out a double meaning. but, as in the case of books and literature, errors of exposition are far from being completely eliminated, and vestiges of allegorical and mystical interpretations are still to be met with in the most cultivated circles, so where nature is concerned the case is--actually much worse. [ ] pneumatic is here used in the sense of spiritual. pneuma being the greek word in the new testament for the holy spirit.--ed. =metaphysical world.=--it is true, there may be a metaphysical world; the absolute possibility of it can scarcely be disputed. we see all things through the medium of the human head and we cannot well cut off this head: although there remains the question what part of the world would be left after it had been cut off. but that is a purely abstract scientific problem and one not much calculated to give men uneasiness: yet everything that has heretofore made metaphysical assumptions valuable, fearful or delightful to men, all that gave rise to them is passion, error and self deception: the worst systems of knowledge, not the best, pin their tenets of belief thereto. when such methods are once brought to view as the basis of all existing religions and metaphysics, they are already discredited. there always remains, however, the possibility already conceded: but nothing at all can be made out of that, to say not a word about letting happiness, salvation and life hang upon the threads spun from such a possibility. accordingly, nothing could be predicated of the metaphysical world beyond the fact that it is an elsewhere,[ ] another sphere, inaccessible and incomprehensible to us: it would become a thing of negative properties. even were the existence of such a world absolutely established, it would nevertheless remain incontrovertible that of all kinds of knowledge, knowledge of such a world would be of least consequence--of even less consequence than knowledge of the chemical analysis of water would be to a storm tossed mariner. [ ] anderssein. =the harmlessness of metaphysic in the future.=--as soon as religion, art and ethics are so understood that a full comprehension of them can be gained without taking refuge in the postulates of metaphysical claptrap at any point in the line of reasoning, there will be a complete cessation of interest in the purely theoretical problem of the "thing in itself" and the "phenomenon." for here, too, the same truth applies: in religion, art and ethics we are not concerned with the "essence of the cosmos".[ ] we are in the sphere of pure conception. no presentiment [or intuition] can carry us any further. with perfect tranquility the question of how our conception of the world could differ so sharply from the actual world as it is manifest to us, will be relegated to the physiological sciences and to the history of the evolution of ideas and organisms. [ ] "wesen der welt an sich." =language as a presumptive science.=--the importance of language in the development of civilization consists in the fact that by means of it man placed one world, his own, alongside another, a place of leverage that he thought so firm as to admit of his turning the rest of the cosmos on a pivot that he might master it. in so far as man for ages looked upon mere ideas and names of things as upon aeternae veritates, he evinced the very pride with which he raised himself above the brute. he really supposed that in language he possessed a knowledge of the cosmos. the language builder was not so modest as to believe that he was only giving names to things. on the contrary he thought he embodied the highest wisdom concerning things in [mere] words; and, in truth, language is the first movement in all strivings for wisdom. here, too, it is _faith in ascertained truth_[ ] from which the mightiest fountains of strength have flowed. very tardily--only now--it dawns upon men that they have propagated a monstrous error in their belief in language. fortunately, it is too late now to arrest and turn back the evolutionary process of the reason, which had its inception in this belief. logic itself rests upon assumptions to which nothing in the world of reality corresponds. for example, the correspondence of certain things to one another and the identity of those things at different periods of time are assumptions pure and simple, but the science of logic originated in the positive belief that they were not assumptions at all but established facts. it is the same with the science of mathematics which certainly would never have come into existence if mankind had known from the beginning that in all nature there is no perfectly straight line, no true circle, no standard of measurement. [ ] glaube an die gefundene wahrheit, as distinguished from faith in what is taken on trust as truth. =dream and civilization.=--the function of the brain which is most encroached upon in slumber is the memory; not that it is wholly suspended, but it is reduced to a state of imperfection as, in primitive ages of mankind, was probably the case with everyone, whether waking or sleeping. uncontrolled and entangled as it is, it perpetually confuses things as a result of the most trifling similarities, yet in the same mental confusion and lack of control the nations invented their mythologies, while nowadays travelers habitually observe how prone the savage is to forgetfulness, how his mind, after the least exertion of memory, begins to wander and lose itself until finally he utters falsehood and nonsense from sheer exhaustion. yet, in dreams, we all resemble this savage. inadequacy of distinction and error of comparison are the basis of the preposterous things we do and say in dreams, so that when we clearly recall a dream we are startled that so much idiocy lurks within us. the absolute distinctness of all dream-images, due to implicit faith in their substantial reality, recalls the conditions in which earlier mankind were placed, for whom hallucinations had extraordinary vividness, entire communities and even entire nations laboring simultaneously under them. therefore: in sleep and in dream we make the pilgrimage of early mankind over again. =logic of the dream.=--during sleep the nervous system, through various inner provocatives, is in constant agitation. almost all the organs act independently and vigorously. the blood circulates rapidly. the posture of the sleeper compresses some portions of the body. the coverlets influence the sensations in different ways. the stomach carries on the digestive process and acts upon other organs thereby. the intestines are in motion. the position of the head induces unaccustomed action. the feet, shoeless, no longer pressing the ground, are the occasion of other sensations of novelty, as is, indeed, the changed garb of the entire body. all these things, following the bustle and change of the day, result, through their novelty, in a movement throughout the entire system that extends even to the brain functions. thus there are a hundred circumstances to induce perplexity in the mind, a questioning as to the cause of this excitation. now, the dream is a _seeking and presenting of reasons_ for these excitations of feeling, of the supposed reasons, that is to say. thus, for example, whoever has his feet bound with two threads will probably dream that a pair of serpents are coiled about his feet. this is at first a hypothesis, then a belief with an accompanying imaginative picture and the argument: "these snakes must be the _causa_ of those sensations which i, the sleeper, now have." so reasons the mind of the sleeper. the conditions precedent, as thus conjectured, become, owing to the excitation of the fancy, present realities. everyone knows from experience how a dreamer will transform one piercing sound, for example, that of a bell, into another of quite a different nature, say, the report of cannon. in his dream he becomes aware first of the effects, which he explains by a subsequent hypothesis and becomes persuaded of the purely conjectural nature of the sound. but how comes it that the mind of the dreamer goes so far astray when the same mind, awake, is habitually cautious, careful, and so conservative in its dealings with hypotheses? why does the first plausible hypothesis of the cause of a sensation gain credit in the dreaming state? (for in a dream we look upon that dream as reality, that is, we accept our hypotheses as fully established). i have no doubt that as men argue in their dreams to-day, mankind argued, even in their waking moments, for thousands of years: the first _causa_, that occurred to the mind with reference to anything that stood in need of explanation, was accepted as the true explanation and served as such. (savages show the same tendency in operation, as the reports of travelers agree). in the dream this atavistic relic of humanity manifests its existence within us, for it is the foundation upon which the higher rational faculty developed itself and still develops itself in every individual. dreams carry us back to the earlier stages of human culture and afford us a means of understanding it more clearly. dream thought comes so easily to us now because we are so thoroughly trained to it through the interminable stages of evolution during which this fanciful and facile form of theorising has prevailed. to a certain extent the dream is a restorative for the brain, which, during the day, is called upon to meet the many demands for trained thought made upon it by the conditions of a higher civilization.--we may, if we please, become sensible, even in our waking moments, of a condition that is as a door and vestibule to dreaming. if we close our eyes the brain immediately conjures up a medley of impressions of light and color, apparently a sort of imitation and echo of the impressions forced in upon the brain during its waking moments. and now the mind, in co-operation with the imagination, transforms this formless play of light and color into definite figures, moving groups, landscapes. what really takes place is a sort of reasoning from effect back to cause. as the brain inquires: whence these impressions of light and color? it posits as the inducing causes of such lights and colors, those shapes and figures. they serve the brain as the occasions of those lights and colors because the brain, when the eyes are open and the senses awake, is accustomed to perceiving the cause of every impression of light and color made upon it. here again the imagination is continually interposing its images inasmuch as it participates in the production of the impressions made through the senses day by day: and the dream-fancy does exactly the same thing--that is, the presumed cause is determined from the effect and _after_ the effect: all this, too, with extraordinary rapidity, so that in this matter, as in a matter of jugglery or sleight-of-hand, a confusion of the mind is produced and an after effect is made to appear a simultaneous action, an inverted succession of events, even.--from these considerations we can see how _late_ strict, logical thought, the true notion of cause and effect must have been in developing, since our intellectual and rational faculties to this very day revert to these primitive processes of deduction, while practically half our lifetime is spent in the super-inducing conditions.--even the poet, the artist, ascribes to his sentimental and emotional states causes which are not the true ones. to that extent he is a reminder of early mankind and can aid us in its comprehension. =association.=[ ]--all strong feelings are associated with a variety of allied sentiments and emotions. they stir up the memory at the same time. when we are under their influence we are reminded of similar states and we feel a renewal of them within us. thus are formed habitual successions of feelings and notions, which, at last, when they follow one another with lightning rapidity are no longer felt as complexities but as unities. in this sense we hear of moral feelings, of religious feelings, as if they were absolute unities. in reality they are streams with a hundred sources and tributaries. here again, the unity of the word speaks nothing for the unity of the thing. [ ] miterklingen: to sound simultaneously with. =no within and without in the world.=[ ]--as democritus transferred the notions above and below to limitless space, where they are destitute of meaning, so the philosophers do generally with the idea "within and without," as regards the form and substance (wesen und erscheinung) of the world. what they claim is that through the medium of profound feelings one can penetrate deep into the soul of things (innre), draw close to the heart of nature. but these feelings are deep only in so far as with them are simultaneously aroused, although almost imperceptibly, certain complicated groups of thoughts (gedankengruppen) which we call deep: a feeling is deep because we deem the thoughts accompanying it deep. but deep thought can nevertheless be very widely sundered from truth, as for instance every metaphysical thought. take from deep feeling the element of thought blended with it and all that remains is _strength_ of feeling which is no voucher for the validity of knowledge, as intense faith is evidence only of its own intensity and not of the truth of that in which the faith is felt. [ ] kein innen und aussen in der welt: the above translation may seem too literal but some dispute has arisen concerning the precise idea the author means to convey. =phenomenon and thing-in-itself.=--the philosophers are in the habit of placing themselves in front of life and experience--that which they call the world of phenomena--as if they were standing before a picture that is unrolled before them in its final completeness. this panorama, they think, must be studied in every detail in order to reach some conclusion regarding the object represented by the picture. from effect, accordingly is deduced cause and from cause is deduced the unconditioned. this process is generally looked upon as affording the all sufficient explanation of the world of phenomena. on the other hand one must, (while putting the conception of the metaphysical distinctly forward as that of the unconditioned, and consequently of the unconditioning) absolutely deny any connection between the unconditioned (of the metaphysical world) and the world known to us: so that throughout phenomena there is no manifestation of the thing-in-itself, and getting from one to the other is out of the question. thus is left quite ignored the circumstance that the picture--that which we now call life and experience--is a gradual evolution, is, indeed, still in process of evolution and for that reason should not be regarded as an enduring whole from which any conclusion as to its author (the all-sufficient reason) could be arrived at, or even pronounced out of the question. it is because we have for thousands of years looked into the world with moral, aesthetic, religious predispositions, with blind prejudice, passion or fear, and surfeited ourselves with indulgence in the follies of illogical thought, that the world has gradually become so wondrously motley, frightful, significant, soulful: it has taken on tints, but we have been the colorists: the human intellect, upon the foundation of human needs, of human passions, has reared all these "phenomena" and injected its own erroneous fundamental conceptions into things. late, very late, the human intellect checks itself: and now the world of experience and the thing-in-itself seem to it so severed and so antithetical that it denies the possibility of one's hinging upon the other--or else summons us to surrender our intellect, our personal will, to the secret and the awe-inspiring in order that thereby we may attain certainty of certainty hereafter. again, there are those who have combined all the characteristic features of our world of phenomena--that is, the conception of the world which has been formed and inherited through a series of intellectual vagaries--and instead of holding the intellect responsible for it all, have pronounced the very nature of things accountable for the present very sinister aspect of the world, and preached annihilation of existence. through all these views and opinions the toilsome, steady process of science (which now for the first time begins to celebrate its greatest triumph in the genesis of thought) will definitely work itself out, the result, being, perhaps, to the following effect: that which we now call the world is the result of a crowd of errors and fancies which gradually developed in the general evolution of organic nature, have grown together and been transmitted to us as the accumulated treasure of all the past--as the _treasure_, for whatever is worth anything in our humanity rests upon it. from this world of conception it is in the power of science to release us only to a slight extent--and this is all that could be wished--inasmuch as it cannot eradicate the influence of hereditary habits of feeling, but it can light up by degrees the stages of the development of that world of conception, and lift us, at least for a time, above the whole spectacle. perhaps we may then perceive that the thing-in-itself is a meet subject for homeric laughter: that it seemed so much, everything, indeed, and is really a void--void, that is to say, of meaning. =metaphysical explanation.=--man, when he is young, prizes metaphysical explanations, because they make him see matters of the highest import in things he found disagreeable or contemptible: and if he is not satisfied with himself, this feeling of dissatisfaction is soothed when he sees the most hidden world-problem or world-pain in that which he finds so displeasing in himself. to feel himself more unresponsible and at the same time to find things (dinge) more interesting--that is to him the double benefit he owes to metaphysics. later, indeed, he acquires distrust of the whole metaphysical method of explaining things: he then perceives, perhaps, that those effects could have been attained just as well and more scientifically by another method: that physical and historical explanations would, at least, have given that feeling of freedom from personal responsibility just as well, while interest in life and its problems would be stimulated, perhaps, even more. =the fundamental problems of metaphysics.=--if a history of the development of thought is ever written, the following proposition, advanced by a distinguished logician, will be illuminated with a new light: "the universal, primordial law of the apprehending subject consists in the inner necessity of cognizing every object by itself, as in its essence a thing unto itself, therefore as self-existing and unchanging, in short, as a substance." even this law, which is here called "primordial," is an evolution: it has yet to be shown how gradually this evolution takes place in lower organizations: how the dim, mole eyes of such organizations see, at first, nothing but a blank sameness: how later, when the various excitations of desire and aversion manifest themselves, various substances are gradually distinguished, but each with an attribute, that is, a special relationship to such an organization. the first step towards the logical is judgment, the essence of which, according to the best logicians, is belief. at the foundation of all beliefs lie sensations of pleasure or pain in relation to the apprehending subject. a third feeling, as the result of two prior, single, separate feelings, is judgment in its crudest form. we organic beings are primordially interested by nothing whatever in any thing (ding) except its relation to ourselves with reference to pleasure and pain. between the moments in which we are conscious of this relation, (the states of feeling) lie the moments of rest, of not-feeling: then the world and every thing (ding) have no interest for us: we observe no change in them (as at present a person absorbed in something does not notice anyone passing by). to plants all things are, as a rule, at rest, eternal, every object like itself. from the period of lower organisms has been handed down to man the belief that there are like things (gleiche dinge): only the trained experience attained through the most advanced science contradicts this postulate. the primordial belief of all organisms is, perhaps, that all the rest of the world is one thing and motionless.--furthest away from this first step towards the logical is the notion of causation: even to-day we think that all our feelings and doings are, at bottom, acts of the free will; when the sentient individual contemplates himself he deems every feeling, every change, a something isolated, disconnected, that is to say, unqualified by any thing; it comes suddenly to the surface, independent of anything that went before or came after. we are hungry, but originally we do not know that the organism must be nourished: on the contrary that feeling seems to manifest itself without reason or purpose; it stands out by itself and seems quite independent. therefore: the belief in the freedom of the will is a primordial error of everything organic as old as the very earliest inward prompting of the logical faculty; belief in unconditioned substances and in like things (gleiche dinge) is also a primordial and equally ancient error of everything organic. inasmuch as all metaphysic has concerned itself particularly with substance and with freedom of the will, it should be designated as the science that deals with the fundamental errors of mankind as if they were fundamental truths. =number.=--the invention of the laws of number has as its basis the primordial and prior-prevailing delusion that many like things exist (although in point of fact there is no such thing is a duplicate), or that, at least, there are things (but there is no "thing"). the assumption of plurality always presupposes that _something_ exists which manifests itself repeatedly, but just here is where the delusion prevails; in this very matter we feign realities, unities, that have no existence. our feelings, notions, of space and time are false for they lead, when duly tested, to logical contradictions. in all scientific demonstrations we always unavoidably base our calculation upon some false standards [of duration or measurement] but as these standards are at least _constant_, as, for example, our notions of time and space, the results arrived at by science possess absolute accuracy and certainty in their relationship to one another: one can keep on building upon them--until is reached that final limit at which the erroneous fundamental conceptions, (the invariable breakdown) come into conflict with the results established--as, for example, in the case of the atomic theory. here we always find ourselves obliged to give credence to a "thing" or material "substratum" that is set in motion, although, at the same time, the whole scientific programme has had as its aim the resolving of everything material into motions [themselves]: here again we distinguish with our feeling [that which does the] moving and [that which is] moved,[ ] and we never get out of this circle, because the belief in things[ ] has been from time immemorial rooted in our nature.--when kant says "the intellect does not derive its laws from nature, but dictates them to her" he states the full truth as regards the _idea of nature_ which we form (nature = world, as notion, that is, as error) but which is merely the synthesis of a host of errors of the intellect. to a world not [the outcome of] our conception, the laws of number are wholly inapplicable: such laws are valid only in the world of mankind. [ ] wir scheiden auch hier noch mit unserer empfindung bewegendes und bewegtes. [ ] glaube an dinge. =some backward steps.=--one very forward step in education is taken when man emerges from his superstitious and religious ideas and fears and, for instance, no longer believes in the dear little angels or in original sin, and has stopped talking about the salvation of the soul: when he has taken this step to freedom he has, nevertheless, through the utmost exertion of his mental power, to overcome metaphysics. then a backward movement is necessary: he must appreciate the historical justification, and to an equal extent the psychological considerations, in such a movement. he must understand that the greatest advances made by mankind have resulted from such a course and that without this very backward movement the highest achievements of man hitherto would have been impossible.--with regard to philosophical metaphysics i see ever more and more who have arrived at the negative goal (that all positive metaphysic is a delusion) but as yet very few who go a few steps backward: one should look out over the last rungs of the ladder, but not try to stand on them, that is to say. the most advanced as yet go only far enough to free themselves from metaphysic and look back at it with an air of superiority: whereas here, no less than in the hippodrome, it is necessary to turn around in order to reach the end of the course. =presumable [nature of the] victory of doubt.=--let us assume for a moment the validity of the skeptical standpoint: granted that there is no metaphysical world, and that all the metaphysical explanations of the only world we know are useless to us, how would we then contemplate men and things? [menschen und dinge]. this can be thought out and it is worth while doing so, even if the question whether anything metaphysical has ever been demonstrated by or through kant and schopenhauer, be put altogether aside. for it is, to all appearances, highly probable that men, on this point, will be, in the mass, skeptical. the question thus becomes: what sort of a notion will human society, under the influence of such a state of mind, form of itself? perhaps the _scientific demonstration_ of any metaphysical world is now so difficult that mankind will never be free from a distrust of it. and when there is formed a feeling of distrust of metaphysics, the results are, in the mass, the same as if metaphysics were refuted altogether and _could_ no longer be believed. in both cases the historical question, with regard to an unmetaphysical disposition in mankind, remains the same. =disbelief in the "monumentum aere perennius".=[ ]--a decided disadvantage, attending the termination of metaphysical modes of thought, is that the individual fixes his mind too attentively upon his own brief lifetime and feels no strong inducement to aid in the foundation of institutions capable of enduring for centuries: he wishes himself to gather the fruit from the tree that he plants and consequently he no longer plants those trees which require centuries of constant cultivation and are destined to afford shade to generation after generation in the future. for metaphysical views inspire the belief that in them is afforded the final sure foundation upon which henceforth the whole future of mankind may rest and be built up: the individual promotes his own salvation; when, for example, he builds a church or a monastery he is of opinion that he is doing something for the salvation of his immortal soul:--can science, as well, inspire such faith in the efficacy of her results? in actual fact, science requires doubt and distrust as her surest auxiliaries; nevertheless, the sum of the irresistible (that is all the onslaughts of skepticism, all the disintegrating effects of surviving truths) can easily become so great (as, for instance, in the case of hygienic science) as to inspire the determination to build "eternal" works upon it. at present the contrast between our excitated ephemeral existence and the tranquil repose of metaphysical epochs is too great because both are as yet in too close juxtaposition. the individual man himself now goes through too many stages of inner and outer evolution for him to venture to make a plan even for his life time alone. a perfectly modern man, indeed, who wants to build himself a house feels as if he were walling himself up alive in a mausoleum. [ ] monument more enduring than brass: horace, odes iii:xxx. =age of comparison.=--the less men are bound by tradition, the greater is the inner activity of motives, the greater, correspondingly, the outer restlessness, the promiscuous flow of humanity, the polyphony of strivings. who now feels any great impulse to establish himself and his posterity in a particular place? for whom, moreover, does there exist, at present, any strong tie? as all the methods of the arts were copied from one another, so were all the methods and advancements of moral codes, of manners, of civilizations.--such an age derives its significance from the fact that in it the various ideas, codes, manners and civilizations can be compared and experienced side by side; which was impossible at an earlier period in view of the localised nature of the rule of every civilization, corresponding to the limitation of all artistic effects by time and place. to-day the growth of the aesthetic feeling is decided, owing to the great number of [artistic] forms which offer themselves for comparison. the majority--those that are condemned by the method of comparison--will be allowed to die out. in the same way there is to-day taking place a selection of the forms and customs of the higher morality which can result only in the extinction of the vulgar moralities. this is the age of comparison! that is its glory--but also its pain. let us not, however shrink from this pain. rather would we comprehend the nature of the task imposed upon us by our age as adequately as we can: posterity will bless us for doing so--a posterity that knows itself to be [developed] through and above the narrow, early race-civilizations as well as the culture-civilization of comparison, but yet looks gratefully back upon both as venerable monuments of antiquity. =possibility of progress.=--when a master of the old civilization (den alten cultur) vows to hold no more discussion with men who believe in progress, he is quite right. for the old civilization[ ] has its greatness and its advantages behind it, and historic training forces one to acknowledge that it can never again acquire vigor: only intolerable stupidity or equally intolerable fanaticism could fail to perceive this fact. but men may consciously determine to evolve to a new civilization where formerly they evolved unconsciously and accidentally. they can now devise better conditions for the advancement of mankind, for their nourishment, training and education, they can administer the earth as an economic power, and, particularly, compare the capacities of men and select them accordingly. this new, conscious civilization is killing the other which, on the whole, has led but an unreflective animal and plant life: it is also destroying the doubt of progress itself--progress is possible. i mean: it is hasty and almost unreflective to assume that progress must _necessarily_ take place: but how can it be doubted that progress is possible? on the other hand, progress in the sense and along the lines of the old civilization is not even conceivable. if romantic fantasy employs the word progress in connection with certain aims and ends identical with those of the circumscribed primitive national civilizations, the picture presented of progress is always borrowed from the past. the idea and the image of progress thus formed are quite without originality. [ ] cultur, culture, civilisation etc., but there is no exact english equivalent. =private ethics and world ethics.=--since the extinction of the belief that a god guides the general destiny of the world and, notwithstanding all the contortions and windings of the path of mankind, leads it gloriously forward, men must shape oecumenical, world-embracing ends for themselves. the older ethics, namely kant's, required of the individual such a course of conduct as he wishes all men to follow. this evinces much simplicity--as if any individual could determine off hand what course of conduct would conduce to the welfare of humanity, and what course of conduct is preëminently desirable! this is a theory like that of freedom of competition, which takes it for granted that the general harmony [of things] _must_ prevail of itself in accordance with some inherent law of betterment or amelioration. it may be that a later contemplation of the needs of mankind will reveal that it is by no means desirable that all men should regulate their conduct according to the same principle; it may be best, from the standpoint of certain ends yet to be attained, that men, during long periods should regulate their conduct with reference to special, and even, in certain circumstances, evil, objects. at any rate, if mankind is not to be led astray by such a universal rule of conduct, it behooves it to attain a _knowledge of the condition of culture_ that will serve as a scientific standard of comparison in connection with cosmical ends. herein is comprised the tremendous mission of the great spirits of the next century. =reaction as progress.=--occasionally harsh, powerful, impetuous, yet nevertheless backward spirits, appear, who try to conjure back some past era in the history of mankind: they serve as evidence that the new tendencies which they oppose, are not yet potent enough, that there is something lacking in them: otherwise they [the tendencies] would better withstand the effects of this conjuring back process. thus luther's reformation shows that in his century all the impulses to freedom of the spirit were still uncertain, lacking in vigor, and immature. science could not yet rear her head. indeed the whole renaissance appears but as an early spring smothered in snow. but even in the present century schopenhauer's metaphysic shows that the scientific spirit is not yet powerful enough: for the whole mediaeval christian world-standpoint (weltbetrachtung) and conception of man (mensch-empfindung)[ ] once again, notwithstanding the slowly wrought destruction of all christian dogma, celebrated a resurrection in schopenhauer's doctrine. there is much science in his teaching although the science does not dominate, but, instead of it, the old, trite "metaphysical necessity." it is one of the greatest and most priceless advantages of schopenhauer's teaching that by it our feelings are temporarily forced back to those old human and cosmical standpoints to which no other path could conduct us so easily. the gain for history and justice is very great. i believe that without schopenhauer's aid it would be no easy matter for anyone now to do justice to christianity and its asiatic relatives--a thing impossible as regards the christianity that still survives. after according this great triumph to justice, after we have corrected in so essential a respect the historical point of view which the age of learning brought with it, we may begin to bear still farther onward the banner of enlightenment--a banner bearing the three names: petrarch, erasmus, voltaire. we have taken a forward step out of reaction. [ ] literally man-feeling or human outlook. =a substitute for religion.=--it is supposed to be a recommendation for philosophy to say of it that it provides the people with a substitute for religion. and in fact, the training of the intellect does necessitate the convenient laying out of the track of thought, since the transition from religion by way of science entails a powerful, perilous leap,--something that should be advised against. with this qualification, the recommendation referred to is a just one. at the same time, it should be further explained that the needs which religion satisfies and which science must now satisfy, are not immutable. even they can be diminished and uprooted. think, for instance, of the christian soul-need, the sighs over one's inner corruption, the anxiety regarding salvation--all notions that arise simply out of errors of the reason and require no satisfaction at all, but annihilation. a philosophy can either so affect these needs as to appease them or else put them aside altogether, for they are acquired, circumscribed needs, based upon hypotheses which those of science explode. here, for the purpose of affording the means of transition, for the sake of lightening the spirit overburdened with feeling, art can be employed to far better purpose, as these hypotheses receive far less support from art than from a metaphysical philosophy. then from art it is easier to go over to a really emancipating philosophical science. =discredited words.=--away with the disgustingly over-used words optimism and pessimism! for the occasion for using them grows daily less; only drivelers now find them indispensably necessary. what earthly reason could anyone have for being an optimist unless he had a god to defend who _must_ have created the best of all possible worlds, since he is himself all goodness and perfection?--but what thinking man has now any need for the hypothesis that there is a god?--there is also no occasion whatever for a pessimistic confession of faith, unless one has a personal interest in denouncing the advocate of god, the theologian or the theological philosopher, and maintaining the counter proposition that evil reigns, that wretchedness is more potent than joy, that the world is a piece of botch work, that phenomenon (erscheinung) is but the manifestation of some evil spirit. but who bothers his head about the theologians any more--except the theologians themselves? apart from all theology and its antagonism, it is manifest that the world is neither good nor bad, (to say nothing about its being the best or the worst) and that these ideas of "good" and "bad" have significance only in relation to men, indeed, are without significance at all, in view of the sense in which they are usually employed. the contemptuous and the eulogistic point of view must, in every case, be repudiated. =intoxicated by the perfume of flowers.=--the ship of humanity, it is thought, acquires an ever deeper draught the more it is laden. it is believed that the more profoundly man thinks, the more exquisitely he feels, the higher the standard he sets for himself, the greater his distance from the other animals--the more he appears as a genius (genie) among animals--the nearer he gets to the true nature of the world and to comprehension thereof: this, indeed, he really does through science, but he thinks he does it far more adequately through his religions and arts. these are, certainly, a blossoming of the world, but not, therefore, _nearer the roots of the world_ than is the stalk. one cannot learn best from it the nature of the world, although nearly everyone thinks so. _error_ has made men so deep, sensitive and imaginative in order to bring forth such flowers as religions and arts. pure apprehension would be unable to do that. whoever should disclose to us the essence of the world would be undeceiving us most cruelly. not the world as thing-in-itself but the world as idea[ ] (as error) is rich in portent, deep, wonderful, carrying happiness and unhappiness in its womb. this result leads to a philosophy of world negation: which, at any rate, can be as well combined with a practical world affirmation as with its opposite. [ ] vorstellung: this word sometimes corresponds to the english word "idea", at others to "conception" or "notion." =evil habits in reaching conclusions.=--the most usual erroneous conclusions of men are these: a thing[ ] exists, therefore it is right: here from capacity to live is deduced fitness, from fitness, is deduced justification. so also: an opinion gives happiness, therefore it is the true one, its effect is good, therefore it is itself good and true. here is predicated of the effect that it gives happiness, that it is good in the sense of utility, and there is likewise predicated of the cause that it is good, but good in the sense of logical validity. conversely, the proposition would run: a thing[ ] cannot attain success, cannot maintain itself, therefore it is evil: a belief troubles [the believer], occasions pain, therefore it is false. the free spirit, who is sensible of the defect in this method of reaching conclusions and has had to suffer its consequences, often succumbs to the temptation to come to the very opposite conclusions (which, in general, are, of course, equally erroneous): a thing cannot maintain itself: therefore it is good; a belief is troublesome, therefore it is true. [ ] sache, thing but not in the sense of ding. sache is of very indefinite application (res). =the illogical is necessary.=--among the things which can bring a thinker to distraction is the knowledge that the illogical is necessary to mankind and that from the illogical springs much that is good. the illogical is so imbedded in the passions, in language, in art, in religion and, above all, in everything that imparts value to life that it cannot be taken away without irreparably injuring those beautiful things. only men of the utmost simplicity can believe that the nature man knows can be changed into a purely logical nature. yet were there steps affording approach to this goal, how utterly everything would be lost on the way! even the most rational man needs nature again, from time to time, that is, his illogical fundamental relation (grundstellung) to all things. =being unjust is essential.=--all judgments of the value of life are illogically developed and therefore unjust. the vice of the judgment consists, first, in the way in which the subject matter comes under observation, that is, very incompletely; secondly in the way in which the total is summed up; and, thirdly, in the fact that each single item in the totality of the subject matter is itself the result of defective perception, and this from absolute necessity. no practical knowledge of a man, for example, stood he never so near to us, can be complete--so that we could have a logical right to form a total estimate of him; all estimates are summary and must be so. then the standard by which we measure, (our being) is not an immutable quantity; we have moods and variations, and yet we should know ourselves as an invariable standard before we undertake to establish the nature of the relation of any thing (sache) to ourselves. perhaps it will follow from all this that one should form no judgments whatever; if one could but merely _live_ without having to form estimates, without aversion and without partiality!--for everything most abhorred is closely connected with an estimate, as well as every strongest partiality. an inclination towards a thing, or from a thing, without an accompanying feeling that the beneficial is desired and the pernicious contemned, an inclination without a sort of experiential estimation of the desirability of an end, does not exist in man. we are primordially illogical and hence unjust beings _and can recognise this fact_: this is one of the greatest and most baffling discords of existence. =error respecting living for the sake of living essential.=--every belief in the value and worthiness of life rests upon defective thinking; it is for this reason alone possible that sympathy with the general life and suffering of mankind is so imperfectly developed in the individual. even exceptional men, who can think beyond their own personalities, do not have this general life in view, but isolated portions of it. if one is capable of fixing his observation upon exceptional cases, i mean upon highly endowed individuals and pure souled beings, if their development is taken as the true end of world-evolution and if joy be felt in their existence, then it is possible to believe in the value of life, because in that case the rest of humanity is overlooked: hence we have here defective thinking. so, too, it is even if all mankind be taken into consideration, and one species only of impulses (the less egoistic) brought under review and those, in consideration of the other impulses, exalted: then something could still be hoped of mankind in the mass and to that extent there could exist belief in the value of life: here, again, as a result of defective thinking. whatever attitude, thus, one may assume, one is, as a result of this attitude, an exception among mankind. now, the great majority of mankind endure life without any great protest, and believe, to this extent, in the value of existence, but that is because each individual decides and determines alone, and never comes out of his own personality like these exceptions: everything outside of the personal has no existence for them or at the utmost is observed as but a faint shadow. consequently the value of life for the generality of mankind consists simply in the fact that the individual attaches more importance to himself than he does to the world. the great lack of imagination from which he suffers is responsible for his inability to enter into the feelings of beings other than himself, and hence his sympathy with their fate and suffering is of the slightest possible description. on the other hand, whosoever really _could_ sympathise, necessarily doubts the value of life; were it possible for him to sum up and to feel in himself the total consciousness of mankind, he would collapse with a malediction against existence,--for mankind is, in the mass, without a goal, and hence man cannot find, in the contemplation of his whole course, anything to serve him as a mainstay and a comfort, but rather a reason to despair. if he looks beyond the things that immediately engage him to the final aimlessness of humanity, his own conduct assumes in his eyes the character of a frittering away. to feel oneself, however, as humanity (not alone as an individual) frittered away exactly as we see the stray leaves frittered away by nature, is a feeling transcending all feeling. but who is capable of it? only a poet, certainly: and poets always know how to console themselves. =for tranquility.=--but will not our philosophy become thus a tragedy? will not truth prove the enemy of life, of betterment? a question seems to weigh upon our tongue and yet will not put itself into words: whether one _can_ knowingly remain in the domain of the untruthful? or, if one _must_, whether, then, death would not be preferable? for there is no longer any ought (sollen), morality; so far as it is involved "ought," is, through our point of view, as utterly annihilated as religion. our knowledge can permit only pleasure and pain, benefit and injury, to subsist as motives. but how can these motives be distinguished from the desire for truth? even they rest upon error (in so far, as already stated, partiality and dislike and their very inaccurate estimates palpably modify our pleasure and our pain). the whole of human life is deeply involved in _untruth_. the individual cannot extricate it from this pit without thereby fundamentally clashing with his whole past, without finding his present motives of conduct, (as that of honor) illegitimate, and without opposing scorn and contempt to the ambitions which prompt one to have regard for the future and for one's happiness in the future. is it true, does there, then, remain but one way of thinking, which, as a personal consequence brings in its train despair, and as a theoretical [consequence brings in its train] a philosophy of decay, disintegration, self annihilation? i believe the deciding influence, as regards the after-effect of knowledge, will be the _temperament_ of a man; i can, in addition to this after-effect just mentioned, suppose another, by means of which a much simpler life, and one freer from disturbances than the present, could be lived; so that at first the old motives of vehement passion might still have strength, owing to hereditary habit, but they would gradually grow weaker under the influence of purifying knowledge. a man would live, at last, both among men and unto himself, as in the natural state, without praise, reproach, competition, feasting one's eyes, as if it were a play, upon much that formerly inspired dread. one would be rid of the strenuous element, and would no longer feel the goad of the reflection that man is not even [as much as] nature, nor more than nature. to be sure, this requires, as already stated, a good temperament, a fortified, gentle and naturally cheerful soul, a disposition that has no need to be on its guard against its own eccentricities and sudden outbreaks and that in its utterances manifests neither sullenness nor a snarling tone--those familiar, disagreeable characteristics of old dogs and old men that have been a long time chained up. rather must a man, from whom the ordinary bondages of life have fallen away to so great an extent, so do that he only lives on in order to grow continually in knowledge, and to learn to resign, without envy and without disappointment, much, yes nearly everything, that has value in the eyes of men. he must be content with such a free, fearless soaring above men, manners, laws and traditional estimates of things, as the most desirable of all situations. he will freely share the joy of being in such a situation, and he has, perhaps, nothing else to share--in which renunciation and self-denial really most consist. but if more is asked of him, he will, with a benevolent shake of the head, refer to his brother, the free man of fact, and will, perhaps, not dissemble a little contempt: for, as regards his "freedom," thereby hangs a tale.[ ] [ ] den mit dessen "freiheit" hat es eine eigene bewandtniss. history of the moral feelings. =advantages of psychological observation.=--that reflection regarding the human, all-too-human--or as the learned jargon is: psychological observation--is among the means whereby the burden of life can be made lighter, that practice in this art affords presence of mind in difficult situations and entertainment amid a wearisome environment, aye, that maxims may be culled in the thorniest and least pleasing paths of life and invigoration thereby obtained: this much was believed, was known--in former centuries. why was this forgotten in our own century, during which, at least in germany, yes in europe, poverty as regards psychological observation would have been manifest in many ways had there been anyone to whom this poverty could have manifested itself. not only in the novel, in the romance, in philosophical standpoints--these are the works of exceptional men; still more in the state of opinion regarding public events and personages; above all in general society, which says much about men but nothing whatever about man, there is totally lacking the art of psychological analysis and synthesis. but why is the richest and most harmless source of entertainment thus allowed to run to waste? why is the greatest master of the psychological maxim no longer read?--for, with no exaggeration whatever be it said: the educated person in europe who has read la rochefoucauld and his intellectual and artistic affinities is very hard to find; still harder, the person who knows them and does not disparage them. apparently, too, this unusual reader takes far less pleasure in them than the form adopted by these artists should afford him: for the subtlest mind cannot adequately appreciate the art of maxim-making unless it has had training in it, unless it has competed in it. without such practical acquaintance, one is apt to look upon this making and forming as a much easier thing than it really is; one is not keenly enough alive to the felicity and the charm of success. hence present day readers of maxims have but a moderate, tempered pleasure in them, scarcely, indeed, a true perception of their merit, so that their experiences are about the same as those of the average beholder of cameos: people who praise because they cannot appreciate, and are very ready to admire and still readier to turn away. =objection.=--or is there a counter-proposition to the dictum that psychological observation is one of the means of consoling, lightening, charming existence? have enough of the unpleasant effects of this art been experienced to justify the person striving for culture in turning his regard away from it? in all truth, a certain blind faith in the goodness of human nature, an implanted distaste for any disparagement of human concerns, a sort of shamefacedness at the nakedness of the soul, may be far more desirable things in the general happiness of a man, than this only occasionally advantageous quality of psychological sharpsightedness; and perhaps belief in the good, in virtuous men and actions, in a plenitude of disinterested benevolence has been more productive of good in the world of men in so far as it has made men less distrustful. if plutarch's heroes are enthusiastically imitated and a reluctance is experienced to looking too critically into the motives of their actions, not the knowledge but the welfare of human society is promoted thereby: psychological error and above all obtuseness in regard to it, help human nature forward, whereas knowledge of the truth is more promoted by means of the stimulating strength of a hypothesis; as la rochefoucauld in the first edition of his "sentences and moral maxims" has expressed it: "what the world calls virtue is ordinarily but a phantom created by the passions, and to which we give a good name in order to do whatever we please with impunity." la rochefoucauld and those other french masters of soul-searching (to the number of whom has lately been added a german, the author of "psychological observations") are like expert marksmen who again and again hit the black spot--but it is the black spot in human nature. their art inspires amazement, but finally some spectator, inspired, not by the scientific spirit but by a humanitarian feeling, execrates an art that seems to implant in the soul a taste for belittling and impeaching mankind. =nevertheless.=--the matter therefore, as regards pro and con, stands thus: in the present state of philosophy an awakening of the moral observation is essential. the repulsive aspect of psychological dissection, with the knife and tweezers entailed by the process, can no longer be spared humanity. such is the imperative duty of any science that investigates the origin and history of the so-called moral feelings and which, in its progress, is called upon to posit and to solve advanced social problems:--the older philosophy does not recognize the newer at all and, through paltry evasions, has always gone astray in the investigation of the origin and history of human estimates (werthschätzungen). with what results may now be very clearly perceived, since it has been shown by many examples, how the errors of the greatest philosophers have their origin in a false explanation of certain human actions and feelings; how upon the foundation of an erroneous analysis (for example, of the so called disinterested actions), a false ethic is reared, to support which religion and like mythological monstrosities are called in, until finally the shades of these troubled spirits collapse in physics and in the comprehensive world point of view. but if it be established that superficiality of psychological observation has heretofore set the most dangerous snares for human judgment and deduction, and will continue to do so, all the greater need is there of that steady continuance of labor that never wearies putting stone upon stone, little stone upon little stone; all the greater need is there of a courage that is not ashamed of such humble labor and that will oppose persistence, to all contempt. it is, finally, also true that countless single observations concerning the human, all-too-human, have been first made and uttered in circles accustomed, not to furnish matter for scientific knowledge, but for intellectual pleasure-seeking; and the original home atmosphere--a very seductive atmosphere--of the moral maxim has almost inextricably interpenetrated the entire species, so that the scientific man involuntarily manifests a sort of mistrust of this species and of its seriousness. but it is sufficient to point to the consequences: for already it is becoming evident that events of the most portentous nature are developing in the domain of psychological observation. what is the leading conclusion arrived at by one of the subtlest and calmest of thinkers, the author of the work "concerning the origin of the moral feelings", as a result of his thorough and incisive analysis of human conduct? "the moral man," he says, "stands no nearer the knowable (metaphysical) world than the physical man."[ ] this dictum, grown hard and cutting beneath the hammer-blow of historical knowledge, can some day, perhaps, in some future or other, serve as the axe that will be laid to the root of the "metaphysical necessities" of men--whether more to the blessing than to the banning of universal well being who can say?--but in any event a dictum fraught with the most momentous consequences, fruitful and fearful at once, and confronting the world in the two faced way characteristic of all great facts. [ ] "der moralische mensch, sagt er, steht der intelligiblen (metaphysischen) welt nicht näher, als der physische mensch." =to what extent useful.=--therefore, whether psychological observation is more an advantage than a disadvantage to mankind may always remain undetermined: but there is no doubt that it is necessary, because science can no longer dispense with it. science, however, recognizes no considerations of ultimate goals or ends any more than nature does; but as the latter duly matures things of the highest fitness for certain ends without any intention of doing it, so will true science, doing with ideas what nature does with matter,[ ] promote the purposes and the welfare of humanity, (as occasion may afford, and in many ways) and attain fitness [to ends]--but likewise without having intended it. [ ] als die nachahmung der natur in begriffen, literally: "as the counterfeit of nature in (regard to) ideas." he to whom the atmospheric conditions of such a prospect are too wintry, has too little fire in him: let him look about him, and he will become sensible of maladies requiring an icy air, and of people who are so "kneaded together" out of ardor and intellect that they can scarcely find anywhere an atmosphere too cold and cutting for them. moreover: as too serious individuals and nations stand in need of trivial relaxations; as others, too volatile and excitable require onerous, weighty ordeals to render them entirely healthy: should not we, the more intellectual men of this age, which is swept more and more by conflagrations, catch up every cooling and extinguishing appliance we can find that we may always remain as self contained, steady and calm as we are now, and thereby perhaps serve this age as its mirror and self reflector, when the occasion arises? =the fable of discretionary freedom.=--the history of the feelings, on the basis of which we make everyone responsible, hence, the so-called moral feelings, is traceable in the following leading phases. at first single actions are termed good or bad without any reference to their motive, but solely because of the utilitarian or prejudicial consequences they have for the community. in time, however, the origin of these designations is forgotten [but] it is imagined that action in itself, without reference to its consequences, contains the property "good" or "bad": with the same error according to which language designates the stone itself as hard[ness] the tree itself as green[ness]--for the reason, therefore, that what is a consequence is comprehended as a cause. accordingly, the good[ness] or bad[ness] is incorporated into the motive and [any] deed by itself is regarded as morally ambiguous. a step further is taken, and the predication good or bad is no longer made of the particular motives but of the entire nature of a man, out of which motive grows as grow the plants out of the soil. thus man is successively made responsible for his [particular] acts, then for his [course of] conduct, then for his motives and finally for his nature. now, at last, is it discovered that this nature, even, cannot be responsible, inasmuch as it is only and wholly a necessary consequence and is synthesised out of the elements and influence of past and present things: therefore, that man is to be made responsible for nothing, neither for his nature, nor his motives, nor his [course of] conduct nor his [particular] acts. by this [process] is gained the knowledge that the history of moral estimates is the history of error, of the error of responsibility: as is whatever rests upon the error of the freedom of the will. schopenhauer concluded just the other way, thus: since certain actions bring depression ("consciousness of guilt") in their train, there must, then, exist responsibility, for there would be no basis for this depression at hand if all man's affairs did not follow their course of necessity--as they do, indeed, according to the opinion of this philosopher, follow their course--but man himself, subject to the same necessity, would be just the man that he is--which schopenhauer denies. from the fact of such depression schopenhauer believes himself able to prove a freedom which man in some way must have had, not indeed in regard to his actions but in regard to his nature: freedom, therefore, to be thus and so, not to act thus and so. out of the _esse_, the sphere of freedom and responsibility, follows, according to his opinion, the _operari_, the spheres of invariable causation, necessity and irresponsibility. this depression, indeed, is due apparently to the _operari_--in so far as it be delusive--but in truth to whatever _esse_ be the deed of a free will, the basic cause of the existence of an individual: [in order to] let man become whatever he wills to become, his [to] will (wollen) must precede his existence.--here, apart from the absurdity of the statement just made, there is drawn the wrong inference that the fact of the depression explains its character, the rational admissibility of it: from such a wrong inference does schopenhauer first come to his fantastic consequent of the so called discretionary freedom (intelligibeln freiheit). (for the origin of this fabulous entity plato and kant are equally responsible). but depression after the act does not need to be rational: indeed, it is certainly not so at all, for it rests upon the erroneous assumption that the act need not necessarily have come to pass. therefore: only because man deems himself free, but not because he is free, does he experience remorse and the stings of conscience.--moreover, this depression is something that can be grown out of; in many men it is not present at all as a consequence of acts which inspire it in many other men. it is a very varying thing and one closely connected with the development of custom and civilization, and perhaps manifest only during a relatively brief period of the world's history.--no one is responsible for his acts, no one for his nature; to judge is tantamount to being unjust. this applies as well when the individual judges himself. the proposition is as clear as sunlight, and yet here everyone prefers to go back to darkness and untruth: for fear of the consequences. =above animal.=--the beast in us must be wheedled: ethic is necessary, that we may not be torn to pieces. without the errors involved in the assumptions of ethics, man would have remained an animal. thus has he taken himself as something higher and imposed rigid laws upon himself. he feels hatred, consequently, for states approximating the animal: whence the former contempt for the slave as a not-yet-man, as a thing, is to be explained. =unalterable character.=--that character is unalterable is not, in the strict sense, true; rather is this favorite proposition valid only to the extent that during the brief life period of a man the potent new motives can not, usually, press down hard enough to obliterate the lines imprinted by ages. could we conceive of a man eighty thousand years old, we should have in him an absolutely alterable character; so that the maturities of successive, varying individuals would develop in him. the shortness of human life leads to many erroneous assertions concerning the qualities of man. =classification of enjoyments and ethic.=--the once accepted comparative classification of enjoyments, according to which an inferior, higher, highest egoism may crave one or another enjoyment, now decides as to ethical status or unethical status. a lower enjoyment (for example, sensual pleasure) preferred to a more highly esteemed one (for example, health) rates as unethical, as does welfare preferred to freedom. the comparative classification of enjoyments is not, however, alike or the same at all periods; when anyone demands satisfaction of the law, he is, from the point of view of an earlier civilization, moral, from that of the present, non-moral. "unethical" indicates, therefore, that a man is not sufficiently sensible to the higher, finer impulses which the present civilization has brought with it, or is not sensible to them at all; it indicates backwardness, but only from the point of view of the contemporary degree of distinction.--the comparative classification of enjoyments itself is not determined according to absolute ethics; but after each new ethical adjustment, it is then decided whether conduct be ethical or the reverse. =inhuman men as survivals.=--men who are now inhuman must serve us as surviving specimens of earlier civilizations. the mountain height of humanity here reveals its lower formations, which might otherwise remain hidden from view. there are surviving specimens of humanity whose brains through the vicissitudes of heredity, have escaped proper development. they show us what we all were and thus appal us; but they are as little responsible on this account as is a piece of granite for being granite. in our own brains there must be courses and windings corresponding to such characters, just as in the forms of some human organs there survive traces of fishhood. but these courses and windings are no longer the bed in which flows the stream of our feeling. =gratitude and revenge.=--the reason the powerful man is grateful is this. his benefactor has, through his benefaction, invaded the domain of the powerful man and established himself on an equal footing: the powerful man in turn invades the domain of the benefactor and gets satisfaction through the act of gratitude. it is a mild form of revenge. by not obtaining the satisfaction of gratitude the powerful would have shown himself powerless and have ranked as such thenceforward. hence every society of the good, that is to say, of the powerful originally, places gratitude among the first of duties.--swift has added the dictum that man is grateful in the same degree that he is revengeful. =two-fold historical origin of good and evil.=--the notion of good and bad has a two-fold historical origin: namely, first, in the spirit of ruling races and castes. whoever has power to requite good with good and evil with evil and actually brings requital, (that is, is grateful and revengeful) acquires the name of being good; whoever is powerless and cannot requite is called bad. a man belongs, as a good individual, to the "good" of a community, who have a feeling in common, because all the individuals are allied with one another through the requiting sentiment. a man belongs, as a bad individual, to the "bad," to a mass of subjugated, powerless men who have no feeling in common. the good are a caste, the bad are a quantity, like dust. good and bad is, for a considerable period, tantamount to noble and servile, master and slave. on the other hand an enemy is not looked upon as bad: he can requite. the trojan and the greek are in homer both good. not he, who does no harm, but he who is despised, is deemed bad. in the community of the good individuals [the quality of] good[ness] is inherited; it is impossible for a bad individual to grow from such a rich soil. if, notwithstanding, one of the good individuals does something unworthy of his goodness, recourse is had to exorcism; thus the guilt is ascribed to a deity, the while it is declared that this deity bewitched the good man into madness and blindness.--second, in the spirit of the subjugated, the powerless. here every other man is, to the individual, hostile, inconsiderate, greedy, inhuman, avaricious, be he noble or servile; bad is the characteristic term for man, for every living being, indeed, that is recognized at all, even for a god: human, divine, these notions are tantamount to devilish, bad. manifestations of goodness, sympathy, helpfulness, are regarded with anxiety as trickiness, preludes to an evil end, deception, subtlety, in short, as refined badness. with such a predisposition in individuals, a feeling in common can scarcely arise at all, at most only the rudest form of it: so that everywhere that this conception of good and evil prevails, the destruction of the individuals, their race and nation, is imminent.--our existing morality has developed upon the foundation laid by ruling races and castes. =sympathy greater than suffering.=--there are circumstances in which sympathy is stronger than the suffering itself. we feel more pain, for instance, when one of our friends becomes guilty of a reprehensible action than if we had done the deed ourselves. we once, that is, had more faith in the purity of his character than he had himself. hence our love for him, (apparently because of this very faith) is stronger than is his own love for himself. if, indeed, his egoism really suffers more, as a result, than our egoism, inasmuch as he must take the consequences of his fault to a greater extent than ourselves, nevertheless, the unegoistic--this word is not to be taken too strictly, but simply as a modified form of expression--in us is more affected by his guilt than the unegoistic in him. =hypochondria.=--there are people who, from sympathy and anxiety for others become hypochondriacal. the resulting form of compassion is nothing else than sickness. so, also, is there a christian hypochondria, from which those singular, religiously agitated people suffer who place always before their eyes the suffering and death of christ. =economy of blessings.=--the advantageous and the pleasing, as the healthiest growths and powers in the intercourse of men, are such precious treasures that it is much to be wished the use made of these balsamic means were as economical as possible: but this is impossible. economy in the use of blessings is the dream of the craziest of utopians. =well-wishing.=--among the small, but infinitely plentiful and therefore very potent things to which science must pay more attention than to the great, uncommon things, well-wishing[ ] must be reckoned; i mean those manifestations of friendly disposition in intercourse, that laughter of the eye, every hand pressure, every courtesy from which, in general, every human act gets its quality. every teacher, every functionary adds this element as a gratuity to whatever he does as a duty; it is the perpetual well spring of humanity, like the waves of light in which everything grows; thus, in the narrowest circles, within the family, life blooms and flowers only through this kind feeling. the cheerfulness, friendliness and kindness of a heart are unfailing sources of unegoistic impulse and have made far more for civilization than those other more noised manifestations of it that are styled sympathy, benevolence and sacrifice. but it is customary to depreciate these little tokens of kindly feeling, and, indeed, there is not much of the unegoistic in them. the sum of these little doses is very great, nevertheless; their combined strength is of the greatest of strengths.--thus, too, much more happiness is to be found in the world than gloomy eyes discover: that is, if the calculation be just, and all these pleasing moments in which every day, even the meanest human life, is rich, be not forgotten. [ ] wohl-wollen, kind feeling. it stands here for benevolence but not benevolence in the restricted sense of the word now prevailing. =the desire to inspire compassion.=--la rochefoucauld, in the most notable part of his self portraiture (first printed ) reaches the vital spot of truth when he warns all those endowed with reason to be on their guard against compassion, when he advises that this sentiment be left to men of the masses who stand in need of the promptings of the emotions (since they are not guided by reason) to induce them to give aid to the suffering and to be of service in misfortune: whereas compassion, in his (and plato's) view, deprives the heart of strength. to be sure, sympathy should be manifested but men should take care not to feel it; for the unfortunate are rendered so dull that the manifestation of sympathy affords them the greatest happiness in the world.--perhaps a more effectual warning against this compassion can be given if this need of the unfortunate be considered not simply as stupidity and intellectual weakness, not as a sort of distraction of the spirit entailed by misfortune itself (and thus, indeed, does la rochefoucauld seem to view it) but as something quite different and more momentous. let note be taken of children who cry and scream in order to be compassionated and who, therefore, await the moment when their condition will be observed; come into contact with the sick and the oppressed in spirit and try to ascertain if the wailing and sighing, the posturing and posing of misfortune do not have as end and aim the causing of pain to the beholder: the sympathy which each beholder manifests is a consolation to the weak and suffering only in as much as they are made to perceive that at least they have the power, notwithstanding all their weakness, to inflict pain. the unfortunate experiences a species of joy in the sense of superiority which the manifestation of sympathy entails; his imagination is exalted; he is always strong enough, then, to cause the world pain. thus is the thirst for sympathy a thirst for self enjoyment and at the expense of one's fellow creatures: it shows man in the whole ruthlessness of his own dear self: not in his mere "dullness" as la rochefoucauld thinks.--in social conversation three fourths of all the questions are asked, and three fourths of all the replies are made in order to inflict some little pain; that is why so many people crave social intercourse: it gives them a sense of their power. in these countless but very small doses in which the quality of badness is administered it proves a potent stimulant of life: to the same extent that well wishing--(wohl-wollen) distributed through the world in like manner, is one of the ever ready restoratives.--but will many honorable people be found to admit that there is any pleasure in administering pain? that entertainment--and rare entertainment--is not seldom found in causing others, at least in thought, some pain, and in raking them with the small shot of wickedness? the majority are too ignoble and a few are too good to know anything of this pudendum: the latter may, consequently, be prompt to deny that prosper mérimée is right when he says: "know, also, that nothing is more common than to do wrong for the pleasure of doing it." =how appearance becomes reality.=--the actor cannot, at last, refrain, even in moments of the deepest pain, from thinking of the effect produced by his deportment and by his surroundings--for example, even at the funeral of his own child: he will weep at his own sorrow and its manifestations as though he were his own audience. the hypocrite who always plays one and the same part, finally ceases to be a hypocrite; as in the case of priests who, when young men, are always, either consciously or unconsciously, hypocrites, and finally become naturally and then really, without affectation, mere priests: or if the father does not carry it to this extent, the son, who inherits his father's calling and gets the advantage of the paternal progress, does. when anyone, during a long period, and persistently, wishes to appear something, it will at last prove difficult for him to be anything else. the calling of almost every man, even of the artist, begins with hypocrisy, with an imitation of deportment, with a copying of the effective in manner. he who always wears the mask of a friendly man must at last gain a power over friendliness of disposition, without which the expression itself of friendliness is not to be gained--and finally friendliness of disposition gains the ascendancy over him--he _is_ benevolent. =the point of honor in deception.=--in all great deceivers one characteristic is prominent, to which they owe their power. in the very act of deception, amid all the accompaniments, the agitation in the voice, the expression, the bearing, in the crisis of the scene, there comes over them a belief in themselves; this it is that acts so effectively and irresistibly upon the beholders. founders of religions differ from such great deceivers in that they never come out of this state of self deception, or else they have, very rarely, a few moments of enlightenment in which they are overcome by doubt; generally, however, they soothe themselves by ascribing such moments of enlightenment to the evil adversary. self deception must exist that both classes of deceivers may attain far reaching results. for men believe in the truth of all that is manifestly believed with due implicitness by others. =presumed degrees of truth.=--one of the most usual errors of deduction is: because someone truly and openly is against us, therefore he speaks the truth. hence the child has faith in the judgments of its elders, the christian in the assertions of the founder of the church. so, too, it will not be admitted that all for which men sacrificed life and happiness in former centuries was nothing but delusion: perhaps it is alleged these things were degrees of truth. but what is really meant is that, if a person sincerely believes a thing and has fought and died for his faith, it would be too _unjust_ if only delusion had inspired him. such a state of affairs seems to contradict eternal justice. for that reason the heart of a sensitive man pronounces against his head the judgment: between moral conduct and intellectual insight there must always exist an inherent connection. it is, unfortunately, otherwise: for there is no eternal justice. =falsehood.=--why do men, as a rule, speak the truth in the ordinary affairs of life? certainly not for the reason that a god has forbidden lying. but because first: it is more convenient, as falsehood entails invention, make-believe and recollection (wherefore swift says that whoever invents a lie seldom realises the heavy burden he takes up: he must, namely, for every lie that he tells, insert twenty more). therefore, because in plain ordinary relations of life it is expedient to say without circumlocution: i want this, i have done this, and the like; therefore, because the way of freedom and certainty is surer than that of ruse.--but if it happens that a child is brought up in sinister domestic circumstances, it will then indulge in falsehood as matter of course, and involuntarily say anything its own interests may prompt: an inclination for truth, an aversion to falsehood, is quite foreign and uncongenial to it, and hence it lies in all innocence. =ethic discredited for faith's sake.=--no power can sustain itself when it is represented by mere humbugs: the catholic church may possess ever so many "worldly" sources of strength, but its true might is comprised in those still numberless priestly natures who make their lives stern and strenuous and whose looks and emaciated bodies are eloquent of night vigils, fasts, ardent prayer, perhaps even of whip lashes: these things make men tremble and cause them anxiety: what, if it be really imperative to live thus? this is the dreadful question which their aspect occasions. as they spread this doubt, they lay anew the prop of their power: even the free thinkers dare not oppose such disinterestedness with severe truth and cry: "thou deceived one, deceive not!"--only the difference of standpoint separates them from him: no difference in goodness or badness. but things we cannot accomplish ourselves, we are apt to criticise unfairly. thus we are told of the cunning and perverted acts of the jesuits, but we overlook the self mastery that each jesuit imposes upon himself and also the fact that the easy life which the jesuit manuals advocate is for the benefit, not of the jesuits but the laity. indeed, it may be questioned whether we enlightened ones would become equally competent workers as the result of similar tactics and organization, and equally worthy of admiration as the result of self mastery, indefatigable industry and devotion. =victory of knowledge over radical evil.=--it proves a material gain to him who would attain knowledge to have had during a considerable period the idea that mankind is a radically bad and perverted thing: it is a false idea, as is its opposite, but it long held sway and its roots have reached down even to ourselves and our present world. in order to understand _ourselves_ we must understand _it_; but in order to attain a loftier height we must step above it. we then perceive that there is no such thing as sin in the metaphysical sense: but also, in the same sense, no such thing as virtue; that this whole domain of ethical notions is one of constant variation; that there are higher and deeper conceptions of good and evil, moral and immoral. whoever desires no more of things than knowledge of them attains speedily to peace of mind and will at most err through lack of knowledge, but scarcely through eagerness for knowledge (or through sin, as the world calls it). he will not ask that eagerness for knowledge be interdicted and rooted out; but his single, all powerful ambition to _know_ as thoroughly and as fully as possible, will soothe him and moderate all that is strenuous in his circumstances. moreover, he is now rid of a number of disturbing notions; he is no longer beguiled by such words as hell-pain, sinfulness, unworthiness: he sees in them merely the flitting shadow pictures of false views of life and of the world. =ethic as man's self-analysis.=--a good author, whose heart is really in his work, wishes that someone would arise and wholly refute him if only thereby his subject be wholly clarified and made plain. the maid in love wishes that she could attest the fidelity of her own passion through the faithlessness of her beloved. the soldier wishes to sacrifice his life on the field of his fatherland's victory: for in the victory of his fatherland his highest end is attained. the mother gives her child what she deprives herself of--sleep, the best nourishment and, in certain circumstances, her health, her self.--but are all these acts unegoistic? are these moral deeds miracles because they are, in schopenhauer's phrase "impossible and yet accomplished"? is it not evident that in all four cases man loves one part of himself, (a thought, a longing, an experience) more than he loves another part of himself? that he thus analyses his being and sacrifices one part of it to another part? is this essentially different from the behavior of the obstinate man who says "i would rather be shot than go a step out of my way for this fellow"?--preference for something (wish, impulse, longing) is present in all four instances: to yield to it, with all its consequences, is not "unegoistic."--in the domain of the ethical man conducts himself not as individuum but as dividuum. =what can be promised.=--actions can be promised, but not feelings, for these are involuntary. whoever promises somebody to love him always, or to hate him always, or to be ever true to him, promises something that it is out of his power to bestow. but he really can promise such courses of conduct as are the ordinary accompaniments of love, of hate, of fidelity, but which may also have their source in motives quite different: for various ways and motives lead to the same conduct. the promise to love someone always, means, consequently: as long as i love you, i will manifest the deportment of love; but if i cease to love you my deportment, although from some other motive, will be just the same, so that to the people about us it will seem as if my love remained unchanged.--hence it is the continuance of the deportment of love that is promised in every instance in which eternal love (provided no element of self deception be involved) is sworn. =intellect and ethic.=--one must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one makes. one must have a strong imagination in order to feel sympathy. so closely is ethics connected with intellectual capacity. =desire for vengeance and vengeance itself.=--to meditate revenge and attain it is tantamount to an attack of fever, that passes away: but to meditate revenge without possessing the strength or courage to attain it is tantamount to suffering from a chronic malady, or poisoning of body and soul. ethics, which takes only the motive into account, rates both cases alike: people generally estimate the first case as the worst (because of the consequences which the deed of vengeance may entail). both views are short sighted. =ability to wait.=--ability to wait is so hard to acquire that great poets have not disdained to make inability to wait the central motive of their poems. so shakespeare in othello, sophocles in ajax, whose suicide would not have seemed to him so imperative had he only been able to cool his ardor for a day, as the oracle foreboded: apparently he would then have repulsed somewhat the fearful whispers of distracted thought and have said to himself: who has not already, in my situation, mistaken a sheep for a hero? is it so extraordinary a thing? on the contrary it is something universally human: ajax should thus have soothed himself. passion will not wait: the tragic element in the lives of great men does not generally consist in their conflict with time and the inferiority of their fellowmen but in their inability to put off their work a year or two: they cannot wait.--in all duels, the friends who advise have but to ascertain if the principals can wait: if this be not possible, a duel is rational inasmuch as each of the combatants may say: "either i continue to live and the other dies instantly, or vice versa." to wait in such circumstances would be equivalent to the frightful martyrdom of enduring dishonor in the presence of him responsible for the dishonor: and this can easily cost more anguish than life is worth. =glutting revenge.=--coarse men, who feel a sense of injury, are in the habit of rating the extent of their injury as high as possible and of stating the occasion of it in greatly exaggerated language, in order to be able to feast themselves on the sentiments of hatred and revenge thus aroused. =value of disparagement.=--not a few, perhaps the majority of men, find it necessary, in order to retain their self esteem and a certain uprightness in conduct, to mentally disparage and belittle all the people they know. but as the inferior natures are in the majority and as a great deal depends upon whether they retain or lose this uprightness, so-- =the man in a rage.=--we should be on our guard against the man who is enraged against us, as against one who has attempted our life, for the fact that we still live consists solely in the inability to kill: were looks sufficient, it would have been all up with us long since. to reduce anyone to silence by physical manifestations of savagery or by a terrorizing process is a relic of under civilization. so, too, that cold look which great personages cast upon their servitors is a remnant of the caste distinction between man and man; a specimen of rude antiquity: women, the conservers of the old, have maintained this survival, too, more perfectly than men. =whither honesty may lead.=--someone once had the bad habit of expressing himself upon occasion, and with perfect honesty, on the subject of the motives of his conduct, which were as good or as bad as the motives of all men. he aroused first disfavor, then suspicion, became gradually of ill repute and was pronounced a person of whom society should beware, until at last the law took note of such a perverted being for reasons which usually have no weight with it or to which it closes its eyes. lack of taciturnity concerning what is universally held secret, and an irresponsible predisposition to see what no one wants to see--oneself--brought him to prison and to early death. =punishable, not punished.=--our crime against criminals consists in the fact that we treat them as rascals. =sancta simplicitas of virtue.=--every virtue has its privilege: for example, that of contributing its own little bundle of wood to the funeral pyre of one condemned. =morality and consequence.=--not alone the beholders of an act generally estimate the ethical or unethical element in it by the result: no, the one who performed the act does the same. for the motives and the intentions are seldom sufficiently apparent, and amid them the memory itself seems to become clouded by the results of the act, so that a man often ascribes the wrong motives to his acts or regards the remote motives as the direct ones. success often imparts to an action all the brilliance and honor of good intention, while failure throws the shadow of conscience over the most estimable deeds. hence arises the familiar maxim of the politician: "give me only success: with it i can win all the noble souls over to my side--and make myself noble even in my own eyes."--in like manner will success prove an excellent substitute for a better argument. to this very day many well educated men think the triumph of christianity over greek philosophy is a proof of the superior truth of the former--although in this case it was simply the coarser and more powerful that triumphed over the more delicate and intellectual. as regards superiority of truth, it is evident that because of it the reviving sciences have connected themselves, point for point, with the philosophy of epicurus, while christianity has, point for point, recoiled from it. =love and justice.=--why is love so highly prized at the expense of justice and why are such beautiful things spoken of the former as if it were a far higher entity than the latter? is the former not palpably a far more stupid thing than the latter?--certainly, and on that very account so much the more agreeable to everybody: it is blind and has a rich horn of plenty out of which it distributes its gifts to everyone, even when they are unmerited, even when no thanks are returned. it is impartial like the rain, which according to the bible and experience, wets not alone the unjust but, in certain circumstances, the just as well, and to their skins at that. =execution.=--how comes it that every execution causes us more pain than a murder? it is the coolness of the executioner, the painful preparation, the perception that here a man is being used as an instrument for the intimidation of others. for the guilt is not punished even if there be any: this is ascribable to the teachers, the parents, the environment, in ourselves, not in the murderer--i mean the predisposing circumstances. =hope.=--pandora brought the box containing evils and opened it. it was the gift of the gods to men, a gift of most enticing appearance externally and called the "box of happiness." thereupon all the evils, (living, moving things) flew out: from that time to the present they fly about and do ill to men by day and night. one evil only did not fly out of the box: pandora shut the lid at the behest of zeus and it remained inside. now man has this box of happiness perpetually in the house and congratulates himself upon the treasure inside of it; it is at his service: he grasps it whenever he is so disposed, for he knows not that the box which pandora brought was a box of evils. hence he looks upon the one evil still remaining as the greatest source of happiness--it is hope.--zeus intended that man, notwithstanding the evils oppressing him, should continue to live and not rid himself of life, but keep on making himself miserable. for this purpose he bestowed hope upon man: it is, in truth, the greatest of evils for it lengthens the ordeal of man. =degree of moral susceptibility unknown.=--the fact that one has or has not had certain profoundly moving impressions and insights into things--for example, an unjustly executed, slain or martyred father, a faithless wife, a shattering, serious accident,--is the factor upon which the excitation of our passions to white heat principally depends, as well as the course of our whole lives. no one knows to what lengths circumstances (sympathy, emotion) may lead him. he does not know the full extent of his own susceptibility. wretched environment makes him wretched. it is as a rule not the quality of our experience but its quantity upon which depends the development of our superiority or inferiority, from the point of view of good and evil. =the martyr against his will.=--in a certain movement there was a man who was too cowardly and vacillating ever to contradict his comrades. he was made use of in each emergency, every sacrifice was demanded of him because he feared the disfavor of his comrades more than he feared death: he was a petty, abject spirit. they perceived this and upon the foundation of the qualities just mentioned they elevated him to the altitude of a hero, and finally even of a martyr. although the cowardly creature always inwardly said no, he always said yes with his lips, even upon the scaffold, where he died for the tenets of his party: for beside him stood one of his old associates who so domineered him with look and word that he actually went to his death with the utmost fortitude and has ever since been celebrated as a martyr and exalted character. =general standard.=--one will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit and mean actions to fear. =misunderstanding of virtue.=--whoever has obtained his experience of vice in connection with pleasure as in the case of one with a youth of wild oats behind him, comes to the conclusion that virtue must be connected with self denial. whoever, on the other hand, has been very much plagued by his passions and vices, longs to find in virtue the rest and peace of the soul. that is why it is possible for two virtuous people to misunderstand one another wholly. =the ascetic.=--the ascetic makes out of virtue a slavery. =honor transferred from persons to things.=--actions prompted by love or by the spirit of self sacrifice for others are universally honored wherever they are manifest. hence is magnified the value set upon whatever things may be loved or whatever things conduce to self sacrifice: although in themselves they may be worth nothing much. a valiant army is evidence of the value of the thing it fights for. =ambition a substitute for moral feeling.=--moral feeling should never become extinct in natures that are destitute of ambition. the ambitious can get along without moral feeling just as well as with it.--hence the sons of retired, ambitionless families, generally become by a series of rapid gradations, when they lose moral feeling, the most absolute lunkheads. =vanity enriches.=--how poor the human mind would be without vanity! as it is, it resembles a well stacked and ever renewed ware-emporium that attracts buyers of every class: they can find almost everything, have almost everything, provided they bring with them the right kind of money--admiration. =senility and death.=--apart from the demands made by religion, it may well be asked why it is more honorable in an aged man, who feels the decline of his powers, to await slow extinction than to fix a term to his existence himself? suicide in such a case is a quite natural and due proceeding that ought to command respect as a triumph of reason: and did in fact command respect during the times of the masters of greek philosophy and the bravest roman patriots, who usually died by their own hand. eagerness, on the other hand, to keep alive from day to day with the anxious counsel of physicians, without capacity to attain any nearer to one's ideal of life, is far less worthy of respect.--religions are very rich in refuges from the mandate of suicide: hence they ingratiate themselves with those who cling to life. =delusions regarding victim and regarding evil doer.=--when the rich man takes a possession away from the poor man (for example, a prince who deprives a plebeian of his beloved) there arises in the mind of the poor man a delusion: he thinks the rich man must be wholly perverted to take from him the little that he has. but the rich man appreciates the value of a single possession much less because he is accustomed to many possessions, so that he cannot put himself in the place of the poor man and does not act by any means as ill as the latter supposes. both have a totally false idea of each other. the iniquities of the mighty which bulk most largely in history are not nearly so monstrous as they seem. the hereditary consciousness of being a superior being with superior environment renders one very callous and lulls the conscience to rest. we all feel, when the difference between ourselves and some other being is exceedingly great, that no element of injustice can be involved, and we kill a fly with no qualms of conscience whatever. so, too, it is no indication of wickedness in xerxes (whom even the greeks represent as exceptionally noble) that he deprived a father of his son and had him drawn and quartered because the latter had manifested a troublesome, ominous distrust of an entire expedition: the individual was in this case brushed aside as a pestiferous insect. he was too low and mean to justify continued sentiments of compunction in the ruler of the world. indeed no cruel man is ever as cruel, in the main, as his victim thinks. the idea of pain is never the same as the sensation. the rule is precisely analogous in the case of the unjust judge, and of the journalist who by means of devious rhetorical methods, leads public opinion astray. cause and effect are in all these instances entwined with totally different series of feeling and thoughts, whereas it is unconsciously assumed that principal and victim feel and think exactly alike, and because of this assumption the guilt of the one is based upon the pain of the other. =the soul's skin.=--as the bones, flesh, entrails and blood vessels are enclosed by a skin that renders the aspect of men endurable, so the impulses and passions of the soul are enclosed by vanity: it is the skin of the soul. =sleep of virtue.=--if virtue goes to sleep, it will be more vigorous when it awakes. =subtlety of shame.=--men are not ashamed of obscene thoughts, but they are ashamed when they suspect that obscene thoughts are attributed to them. =naughtiness is rare.=--most people are too much absorbed in themselves to be bad. =the mite in the balance.=--we are praised or blamed, as the one or the other may be expedient, for displaying to advantage our power of discernment. =luke : improved.=--he that humbleth himself wisheth to be exalted. =prevention of suicide.=--there is a justice according to which we may deprive a man of life, but none that permits us to deprive him of death: this is merely cruelty. =vanity.=--we set store by the good opinion of men, first because it is of use to us and next because we wish to give them pleasure (children their parents, pupils their teacher, and well disposed persons all others generally). only when the good opinion of men is important to somebody, apart from personal advantage or the desire to give pleasure, do we speak of vanity. in this last case, a man wants to give himself pleasure, but at the expense of his fellow creatures, inasmuch as he inspires them with a false opinion of himself or else inspires "good opinion" in such a way that it is a source of pain to others (by arousing envy). the individual generally seeks, through the opinion of others, to attest and fortify the opinion he has of himself; but the potent influence of authority--an influence as old as man himself--leads many, also, to strengthen their own opinion of themselves by means of authority, that is, to borrow from others the expedient of relying more upon the judgment of their fellow men than upon their own.--interest in oneself, the wish to please oneself attains, with the vain man, such proportions that he first misleads others into a false, unduly exalted estimate of himself and then relies upon the authority of others for his self estimate; he thus creates the delusion that he pins his faith to.--it must, however, be admitted that the vain man does not desire to please others so much as himself and he will often go so far, on this account, as to overlook his own interests: for he often inspires his fellow creatures with malicious envy and renders them ill disposed in order that he may thus increase his own delight in himself. =limits of the love of mankind.=--every man who has declared that some other man is an ass or a scoundrel, gets angry when the other man conclusively shows that the assertion was erroneous. =weeping morality.=--how much delight morality occasions! think of the ocean of pleasing tears that has flowed from the narration of noble, great-hearted deeds!--this charm of life would disappear if the belief in complete irresponsibility gained the upper hand. =origin of justice.=--justice (reasonableness) has its origin among approximate equals in power, as thucydides (in the dreadful conferences of the athenian and melian envoys) has rightly conceived. thus, where there exists no demonstrable supremacy and a struggle leads but to mutual, useless damage, the reflection arises that an understanding would best be arrived at and some compromise entered into. the reciprocal nature is hence the first nature of justice. each party makes the other content inasmuch as each receives what it prizes more highly than the other. each surrenders to the other what the other wants and receives in return its own desire. justice is therefore reprisal and exchange upon the basis of an approximate equality of power. thus revenge pertains originally to the domain of justice as it is a sort of reciprocity. equally so, gratitude.--justice reverts naturally to the standpoint of self preservation, therefore to the egoism of this consideration: "why should i injure myself to no purpose and perhaps never attain my end?"--so much for the origin of justice. only because men, through mental habits, have forgotten the original motive of so called just and rational acts, and also because for thousands of years children have been brought to admire and imitate such acts, have they gradually assumed the appearance of being unegotistical. upon this appearance is founded the high estimate of them, which, moreover, like all estimates, is continually developing, for whatever is highly esteemed is striven for, imitated, made the object of self sacrifice, while the merit of the pain and emulation thus expended is, by each individual, ascribed to the thing esteemed.--how slightly moral would the world appear without forgetfulness! a poet could say that god had posted forgetfulness as a sentinel at the portal of the temple of human merit! =concerning the law of the weaker.=--whenever any party, for instance, a besieged city, yields to a stronger party, under stipulated conditions, the counter stipulation is that there be a reduction to insignificance, a burning and destruction of the city and thus a great damage inflicted upon the stronger party. thus arises a sort of equalization principle upon the basis of which a law can be established. the enemy has an advantage to gain by its maintenance.--to this extent there is also a law between slaves and masters, limited only by the extent to which the slave may be useful to his master. the law goes originally only so far as the one party may appear to the other potent, invincible, stable, and the like. to such an extent, then, the weaker has rights, but very limited ones. hence the famous dictum that each has as much law on his side as his power extends (or more accurately, as his power is believed to extend). =the three phases of morality hitherto.=--it is the first evidence that the animal has become human when his conduct ceases to be based upon the immediately expedient, but upon the permanently useful; when he has, therefore, grown utilitarian, capable of purpose. thus is manifested the first rule of reason. a still higher stage is attained when he regulates his conduct upon the basis of honor, by means of which he gains mastery of himself and surrenders his desires to principles; this lifts him far above the phase in which he was actuated only by considerations of personal advantage as he understood it. he respects and wishes to be respected. this means that he comprehends utility as a thing dependent upon what his opinion of others is and their opinion of him. finally he regulates his conduct (the highest phase of morality hitherto attained) by his own standard of men and things. he himself decides, for himself and for others, what is honorable and what is useful. he has become a law giver to opinion, upon the basis of his ever higher developing conception of the utilitarian and the honorable. knowledge makes him capable of placing the highest utility, (that is, the universal, enduring utility) before merely personal utility,--of placing ennobling recognition of the enduring and universal before the merely temporary: he lives and acts as a collective individuality. =ethic of the developed individual.=--hitherto the altruistic has been looked upon as the distinctive characteristic of moral conduct, and it is manifest that it was the consideration of universal utility that prompted praise and recognition of altruistic conduct. must not a radical departure from this point of view be imminent, now that it is being ever more clearly perceived that in the most personal considerations the most general welfare is attained: so that conduct inspired by the most personal considerations of advantage is just the sort which has its origin in the present conception of morality (as a universal utilitarianism)? to contemplate oneself as a complete personality and bear the welfare of that personality in mind in all that one does--this is productive of better results than any sympathetic susceptibility and conduct in behalf of others. indeed we all suffer from such disparagement of our own personalities, which are at present made to deteriorate from neglect. capacity is, in fact, divorced from our personality in most cases, and sacrificed to the state, to science, to the needy, as if it were the bad which deserved to be made a sacrifice. now, we are willing to labor for our fellowmen but only to the extent that we find our own highest advantage in so doing, no more, no less. the whole matter depends upon what may be understood as one's advantage: the crude, undeveloped, rough individualities will be the very ones to estimate it most inadequately. =usage and ethic.=--to be moral, virtuous, praiseworthy means to yield obedience to ancient law and hereditary usage. whether this obedience be rendered readily or with difficulty is long immaterial. enough that it be rendered. "good" finally comes to mean him who acts in the traditional manner, as a result of heredity or natural disposition, that is to say does what is customary with scarcely an effort, whatever that may be (for example revenges injuries when revenge, as with the ancient greeks, was part of good morals). he is called good because he is good "to some purpose," and as benevolence, sympathy, considerateness, moderation and the like come, in the general course of conduct, to be finally recognized as "good to some purpose" (as utilitarian) the benevolent man, the helpful man, is duly styled "good". (at first other and more important kinds of utilitarian qualities stand in the foreground.) bad is "not habitual" (unusual), to do things not in accordance with usage, to oppose the traditional, however rational or the reverse the traditional may be. to do injury to one's social group or community (and to one's neighbor as thus understood) is looked upon, through all the variations of moral laws, in different ages, as the peculiarly "immoral" act, so that to-day we associate the word "bad" with deliberate injury to one's neighbor or community. "egoistic" and "non-egoistic" do not constitute the fundamental opposites that have brought mankind to make a distinction between moral and immoral, good and bad; but adherence to traditional custom, and emancipation from it. how the traditional had its origin is quite immaterial; in any event it had no reference to good and bad or any categorical imperative but to the all important end of maintaining and sustaining the community, the race, the confederation, the nation. every superstitious custom that originated in a misinterpreted event or casualty entailed some tradition, to adhere to which is moral. to break loose from it is dangerous, more prejudicial to the community than to the individual (because divinity visits the consequences of impiety and sacrilege upon the community rather than upon the individual). now every tradition grows ever more venerable--the more remote is its origin, the more confused that origin is. the reverence due to it increases from generation to generation. the tradition finally becomes holy and inspires awe. thus it is that the precept of piety is a far loftier morality than that inculcated by altruistic conduct. =delight in the moral.=--a potent species of joy (and thereby the source of morality) is custom. the customary is done more easily, better, therefore preferably. a pleasure is felt in it and experience thus shows that since this practice has held its own it must be good. a manner or moral that lives and lets live is thus demonstrated advantageous, necessary, in contradistinction to all new and not yet adopted practices. the custom is therefore the blending of the agreeable and the useful. moreover it does not require deliberation. as soon as man can exercise compulsion, he exercises it to enforce and establish his customs, for they are to him attested lifewisdom. so, too, a community of individuals constrains each one of their number to adopt the same moral or custom. the error herein is this: because a certain custom has been agreeable to the feelings or at least because it proves a means of maintenance, this custom must be imperative, for it is regarded as the only thing that can possibly be consistent with well being. the well being of life seems to spring from it alone. this conception of the customary as a condition of existence is carried into the slightest detail of morality. inasmuch as insight into true causation is quite restricted in all inferior peoples, a superstitious anxiety is felt that everything be done in due routine. even when a custom is exceedingly burdensome it is preserved because of its supposed vital utility. it is not known that the same degree of satisfaction can be experienced through some other custom and even higher degrees of satisfaction, too. but it is fully appreciated that all customs do become more agreeable with the lapse of time, no matter how difficult they may have been found in the beginning, and that even the severest way of life may be rendered a matter of habit and therefore a pleasure. =pleasure and social instinct.=--through his relations with other men, man derives a new species of delight in those pleasurable emotions which his own personality affords him; whereby the domain of pleasurable emotions is made infinitely more comprehensive. no doubt he has inherited many of these feelings from the brutes, which palpably feel delight when they sport with one another, as mothers with their young. so, too, the sexual relations must be taken into account: they make every young woman interesting to every young man from the standpoint of pleasure, and conversely. the feeling of pleasure originating in human relationships makes men in general better. the delight in common, the pleasures enjoyed together heighten one another. the individual feels a sense of security. he becomes better natured. distrust and malice dissolve. for the man feels the sense of benefit and observes the same feeling in others. mutual manifestations of pleasure inspire mutual sympathy, the sentiment of homogeneity. the same effect is felt also at mutual sufferings, in a common danger, in stormy weather. upon such a foundation are built the earliest alliances: the object of which is the mutual protection and safety from threatening misfortunes, and the welfare of each individual. and thus the social instinct develops from pleasure. =the guiltless nature of so-called bad acts.=--all "bad" acts are inspired by the impulse to self preservation or, more accurately, by the desire for pleasure and for the avoidance of pain in the individual. thus are they occasioned, but they are not, therefore, bad. "pain self prepared" does not exist, except in the brains of the philosophers, any more than "pleasure self prepared" (sympathy in the schopenhauer sense). in the condition anterior to the state we kill the creature, be it man or ape, that attempts to pluck the fruit of a tree before we pluck it ourselves should we happen to be hungry at the time and making for that tree: as we would do to-day, so far as the brute is concerned, if we were wandering in savage regions.--the bad acts which most disturb us at present do so because of the erroneous supposition that the one who is guilty of them towards us has a free will in the matter and that it was within his discretion not to have done these evil things. this belief in discretionary power inspires hate, thirst for revenge, malice, the entire perversion of the mental processes, whereas we would feel in no way incensed against the brute, as we hold it irresponsible. to inflict pain not from the instinct of self preservation but in requital--this is the consequence of false judgment and is equally a guiltless course of conduct. the individual can, in that condition which is anterior to the state, act with fierceness and violence for the intimidation of another creature, in order to render his own power more secure as a result of such acts of intimidation. thus acts the powerful, the superior, the original state founder, who subjugates the weaker. he has the right to do so, as the state nowadays assumes the same right, or, to be more accurate, there is no right that can conflict with this. a foundation for all morality can first be laid only when a stronger individuality or a collective individuality, for example society, the state, subjects the single personalities, hence builds upon their unification and establishes a bond of union. morality results from compulsion, it is indeed itself one long compulsion to which obedience is rendered in order that pain may be avoided. at first it is but custom, later free obedience and finally almost instinct. at last it is (like everything habitual and natural) associated with pleasure--and is then called virtue. =shame.=--shame exists wherever a "mystery" exists: but this is a religious notion which in the earlier period of human civilization had great vogue. everywhere there were circumscribed spots to which access was denied on account of some divine law, except in special circumstances. at first these spots were quite extensive, inasmuch as stipulated areas could not be trod by the uninitiated, who, when near them, felt tremors and anxieties. this sentiment was frequently transferred to other relationships, for example to sexual relations, which, as the privilege and gateway of mature age, must be withdrawn from the contemplation of youth for its own advantage: relations which many divinities were busy in preserving and sanctifying, images of which divinities were duly placed in marital chambers as guardians. (in turkish such an apartment is termed a harem or holy thing, the same word also designating the vestibule of a mosque). so, too, kingship is regarded as a centre from which power and brilliance stream forth, as a mystery to the subjects, impregnated with secrecy and shame, sentiments still quite operative among peoples who in other respects are without any shame at all. so, too, is the whole world of inward states, the so-called "soul," even now, for all non-philosophical persons, a "mystery," and during countless ages it was looked upon as a something of divine origin, in direct communion with deity. it is, therefore, an adytum and occasions shame. =judge not.=--care must be taken, in the contemplation of earlier ages, that there be no falling into unjust scornfulness. the injustice in slavery, the cruelty in the subjugation of persons and peoples must not be estimated by our standard. for in that period the instinct of justice was not so highly developed. who dare reproach the genoese calvin for burning the physician servetus at the stake? it was a proceeding growing out of his convictions. and the inquisition, too, had its justification. the only thing is that the prevailing views were false and led to those proceedings which seem so cruel to us, simply because such views have become foreign to us. besides, what is the burning alive of one individual compared with eternal hell pains for everybody else? and yet this idea then had hold of all the world without in the least vitiating, with its frightfulness, the other idea of a god. even we nowadays are hard and merciless to political revolutionists, but that is because we are in the habit of believing the state a necessity, and hence the cruelty of the proceeding is not so much understood as in the other cases where the points of view are repudiated. the cruelty to animals shown by children and italians is due to the same misunderstanding. the animal, owing to the exigencies of the church catechism, is placed too far below the level of mankind.--much, too, that is frightful and inhuman in history, and which is almost incredible, is rendered less atrocious by the reflection that the one who commands and the one who executes are different persons. the former does not witness the performance and hence it makes no strong impression on him. the latter obeys a superior and hence feels no responsibility. most princes and military chieftains appear, through lack of true perception, cruel and hard without really being so.--egoism is not bad because the idea of the "neighbor"--the word is of christian origin and does not correspond to truth--is very weak in us, and we feel ourselves, in regard to him, as free from responsibility as if plants and stones were involved. that another is in suffering must be learned and it can never be wholly learned. "=man always does right.="--we do not blame nature when she sends a thunder storm and makes us wet: why then do we term the man who inflicts injury immoral? because in the latter case we assume a voluntary, ruling, free will, and in the former necessity. but this distinction is a delusion. moreover, even the intentional infliction of injury is not, in all circumstances termed immoral. thus, we kill a fly intentionally without thinking very much about it, simply because its buzzing about is disagreeable; and we punish a criminal and inflict pain upon him in order to protect ourselves and society. in the first case it is the individual who, for the sake of preserving himself or in order to spare himself pain, does injury with design: in the second case, it is the state. all ethic deems intentional infliction of injury justified by necessity; that is when it is a matter of self preservation. but these two points of view are sufficient to explain all bad acts done by man to men. it is desired to obtain pleasure or avoid pain. in any sense, it is a question, always, of self preservation. socrates and plato are right: whatever man does he always does right: that is, does what seems to him good (advantageous) according to the degree of advancement his intellect has attained, which is always the measure of his rational capacity. =the inoffensive in badness.=--badness has not for its object the infliction of pain upon others but simply our own satisfaction as, for instance, in the case of thirst for vengeance or of nerve excitation. every act of teasing shows what pleasure is caused by the display of our power over others and what feelings of delight are experienced in the sense of domination. is there, then, anything immoral in feeling pleasure in the pain of others? is malicious joy devilish, as schopenhauer says? in the realm of nature we feel joy in breaking boughs, shattering rocks, fighting with wild beasts, simply to attest our strength thereby. should not the knowledge that another suffers on our account here, in this case, make the same kind of act, (which, by the way, arouses no qualms of conscience in us) immoral also? but if we had not this knowledge there would be no pleasure in one's own superiority or power, for this pleasure is experienced only in the suffering of another, as in the case of teasing. all pleasure is, in itself, neither good nor bad. whence comes the conviction that one should not cause pain in others in order to feel pleasure oneself? simply from the standpoint of utility, that is, in consideration of the consequences, of ultimate pain, since the injured party or state will demand satisfaction and revenge. this consideration alone can have led to the determination to renounce such pleasure.--sympathy has the satisfaction of others in view no more than, as already stated, badness has the pain of others in view. for there are at least two (perhaps many more) elementary ingredients in personal gratification which enter largely into our self satisfaction: one of them being the pleasure of the emotion, of which species is sympathy with tragedy, and another, when the impulse is to action, being the pleasure of exercising one's power. should a sufferer be very dear to us, we divest ourselves of pain by the performance of acts of sympathy.--with the exception of some few philosophers, men have placed sympathy very low in the rank of moral feelings: and rightly. =self defence.=--if self defence is in general held a valid justification, then nearly every manifestation of so called immoral egoism must be justified, too. pain is inflicted, robbery or killing done in order to maintain life or to protect oneself and ward off harm. a man lies when cunning and delusion are valid means of self preservation. to injure intentionally when our safety and our existence are involved, or the continuance of our well being, is conceded to be moral. the state itself injures from this motive when it hangs criminals. in unintentional injury the immoral, of course, can not be present, as accident alone is involved. but is there any sort of intentional injury in which our existence and the maintenance of our well being be not involved? is there such a thing as injuring from absolute badness, for example, in the case of cruelty? if a man does not know what pain an act occasions, that act is not one of wickedness. thus the child is not bad to the animal, not evil. it disturbs and rends it as if it were one of its playthings. does a man ever fully know how much pain an act may cause another? as far as our nervous system extends, we shield ourselves from pain. if it extended further, that is, to our fellow men, we would never cause anyone else any pain (except in such cases as we cause it to ourselves, when we cut ourselves, surgically, to heal our ills, or strive and trouble ourselves to gain health). we conclude from analogy that something pains somebody and can in consequence, through recollection and the power of imagination, feel pain also. but what a difference there always is between the tooth ache and the pain (sympathy) that the spectacle of tooth ache occasions! therefore when injury is inflicted from so called badness the degree of pain thereby experienced is always unknown to us: in so far, however, as pleasure is felt in the act (a sense of one's own power, of one's own excitation) the act is committed to maintain the well being of the individual and hence comes under the purview of self defence and lying for self preservation. without pleasure, there is no life; the struggle for pleasure is the struggle for life. whether the individual shall carry on this struggle in such a way that he be called good or in such a way that he be called bad is something that the standard and the capacity of his own intellect must determine for him. =justice that rewards.=--whoever has fully understood the doctrine of absolute irresponsibility can no longer include the so called rewarding and punishing justice in the idea of justice, if the latter be taken to mean that to each be given his due. for he who is punished does not deserve the punishment. he is used simply as a means to intimidate others from certain acts. equally, he who is rewarded does not merit the reward. he could not act any differently than he did act. hence the reward has only the significance of an encouragement to him and others as a motive for subsequent acts. the praise is called out only to him who is running in the race and not to him who has arrived at the goal. something that comes to someone as his own is neither a punishment nor a reward. it is given to him from utiliarian considerations, without his having any claim to it in justice. hence one must say "the wise man praises not because a good act has been done" precisely as was once said: "the wise man punishes not because a bad act has been done but in order that a bad act may not be done." if punishment and reward ceased, there would cease with them the most powerful incentives to certain acts and away from other acts. the purposes of men demand their continuance [of punishment and reward] and inasmuch as punishment and reward, blame and praise operate most potently upon vanity, these same purposes of men imperatively require the continuance of vanity. =the water fall.=--at the sight of a water fall we may opine that in the countless curves, spirations and dashes of the waves we behold freedom of the will and of the impulses. but everything is compulsory, everything can be mathematically calculated. thus it is, too, with human acts. we would be able to calculate in advance every single action if we were all knowing, as well as every advance in knowledge, every delusion, every bad deed. the acting individual himself is held fast in the illusion of volition. if, on a sudden, the entire movement of the world stopped short, and an all knowing and reasoning intelligence were there to take advantage of this pause, he could foretell the future of every being to the remotest ages and indicate the path that would be taken in the world's further course. the deception of the acting individual as regards himself, the assumption of the freedom of the will, is a part of this computable mechanism. =non-responsibility and non-guilt.=--the absolute irresponsibility of man for his acts and his nature is the bitterest drop in the cup of him who has knowledge, if he be accustomed to behold in responsibility and duty the patent of nobility of his human nature. all his estimates, preferences, dislikes are thus made worthless and false. his deepest sentiment, with which he honored the sufferer, the hero, sprang from an error. he may no longer praise, no longer blame, for it is irrational to blame and praise nature and necessity. just as he cherishes the beautiful work of art, but does not praise it (as it is incapable of doing anything for itself), just as he stands in the presence of plants, he must stand in the presence of human conduct, his own included. he may admire strength, beauty, capacity, therein, but he can discern no merit. the chemical process and the conflict of the elements, the ordeal of the invalid who strives for convalescence, are no more merits than the soul-struggles and extremities in which one is torn this way and that by contending motives until one finally decides in favor of the strongest--as the phrase has it, although, in fact, it is the strongest motive that decides for us. all these motives, however, whatever fine names we may give them, have grown from the same roots in which we believe the baneful poisons lurk. between good and bad actions there is no difference in kind but, at most, in degree. good acts are sublimated evil. bad acts are degraded, imbruted good. the very longing of the individual for self gratification (together with the fear of being deprived of it) obtains satisfaction in all circumstances, let the individual act as he may, that is, as he must: be it in deeds of vanity, revenge, pleasure, utility, badness, cunning, be it in deeds of self sacrifice, sympathy or knowledge. the degrees of rational capacity determine the direction in which this longing impels: every society, every individual has constantly present a comparative classification of benefits in accordance with which conduct is determined and others are judged. but this standard perpetually changes. many acts are called bad that are only stupid, because the degree of intelligence that decided for them was low. indeed, in a certain sense, all acts now are stupid, for the highest degree of human intelligence that has yet been attained will in time most certainly be surpassed and then, in retrospection, all our present conduct and opinion will appear as narrow and petty as we now deem the conduct and opinion of savage peoples and ages.--to perceive all these things may occasion profound pain but there is, nevertheless, a consolation. such pains are birth pains. the butterfly insists upon breaking through the cocoon, he presses through it, tears it to pieces, only to be blinded and confused by the strange light, by the realm of liberty. by such men as are capable of this sadness--how few there are!--will the first attempt be made to see if humanity may convert itself from a thing of morality to a thing of wisdom. the sun of a new gospel sheds its first ray upon the loftiest height in the souls of those few: but the clouds are massed there, too, thicker than ever, and not far apart are the brightest sunlight and the deepest gloom. everything is necessity--so says the new knowledge: and this knowledge is itself necessity. all is guiltlessness, and knowledge is the way to insight into this guiltlessness. if pleasure, egoism, vanity be necessary to attest the moral phenomena and their richest blooms, the instinct for truth and accuracy of knowledge; if delusion and confusion of the imagination were the only means whereby mankind could gradually lift itself up to this degree of self enlightenment and self emancipation--who would venture to disparage the means? who would have the right to feel sad if made aware of the goal to which those paths lead? everything in the domain of ethic is evolved, changeable, tottering; all things flow, it is true--but all things are also in the stream: to their goal. though within us the hereditary habit of erroneous judgment, love, hate, may be ever dominant, yet under the influence of awaking knowledge it will ever become weaker: a new habit, that of understanding, not-loving, not-hating, looking from above, grows up within us gradually and in the same soil, and may, perhaps, in thousands of years be powerful enough to endow mankind with capacity to develop the wise, guiltless man (conscious of guiltlessness) as unfailingly as it now developes the unwise, irrational, guilt-conscious man--that is to say, the necessary higher step, not the opposite of it. the religious life. =the double contest against evil.=--if an evil afflicts us we can either so deal with it as to remove its cause or else so deal with it that its effect upon our feeling is changed: hence look upon the evil as a benefit of which the uses will perhaps first become evident in some subsequent period. religion and art (and also the metaphysical philosophy) strive to effect an alteration of the feeling, partly by an alteration of our judgment respecting the experience (for example, with the aid of the dictum "whom god loves, he chastizes") partly by the awakening of a joy in pain, in emotion especially (whence the art of tragedy had its origin). the more one is disposed to interpret away and justify, the less likely he is to look directly at the causes of evil and eliminate them. an instant alleviation and narcotizing of pain, as is usual in the case of tooth ache, is sufficient for him even in the severest suffering. the more the domination of religions and of all narcotic arts declines, the more searchingly do men look to the elimination of evil itself, which is a rather bad thing for the tragic poets--for there is ever less and less material for tragedy, since the domain of unsparing, immutable destiny grows constantly more circumscribed--and a still worse thing for the priests, for these last have lived heretofore upon the narcoticizing of human ill. =sorrow is knowledge.=--how willingly would not one exchange the false assertions of the homines religiosi that there is a god who commands us to be good, who is the sentinel and witness of every act, every moment, every thought, who loves us, who plans our welfare in every misfortune--how willingly would not one exchange these for truths as healing, beneficial and grateful as those delusions! but there are no such truths. philosophy can at most set up in opposition to them other metaphysical plausibilities (fundamental untruths as well). the tragedy of it all is that, although one cannot believe these dogmas of religion and metaphysics if one adopts in heart and head the potent methods of truth, one has yet become, through human evolution, so tender, susceptible, sensitive, as to stand in need of the most effective means of rest and consolation. from this state of things arises the danger that, through the perception of truth or, more accurately, seeing through delusion, one may bleed to death. byron has put this into deathless verse: "sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth, the tree of knowledge is not that of life." against such cares there is no better protective than the light fancy of horace, (at any rate during the darkest hours and sun eclipses of the soul) expressed in the words "quid aeternis minorem consiliis animum fatigas? cur non sub alta vel platano vel hac pinu jacentes."[ ] [ ] then wherefore should you, who are mortal, outwear your soul with a profitless burden of care say, why should we not, flung at ease neath this pine, or a plane-tree's broad umbrage, quaff gaily our wine? (translation of sir theodore martin.) at any rate, light fancy or heavy heartedness of any degree must be better than a romantic retrogression and desertion of one's flag, an approach to christianity in any form: for with it, in the present state of knowledge, one can have nothing to do without hopelessly defiling one's intellectual integrity and surrendering it unconditionally. these woes may be painful enough, but without pain one cannot become a leader and guide of humanity: and woe to him who would be such and lacks this pure integrity of the intellect! =the truth in religion.=--in the ages of enlightenment justice was not done to the importance of religion, of this there can be no doubt. it is also equally certain that in the ensuing reaction of enlightenment, the demands of justice were far exceeded inasmuch as religion was treated with love, even with infatuation and proclaimed as a profound, indeed the most profound knowledge of the world, which science had but to divest of its dogmatic garb in order to possess "truth" in its unmythical form. religions must therefore--this was the contention of all foes of enlightenment--sensu allegorico, with regard for the comprehension of the masses, give expression to that ancient truth which is wisdom in itself, inasmuch as all science of modern times has led up to it instead of away from it. so that between the most ancient wisdom of man and all later wisdom there prevails harmony, even similarity of viewpoint; and the advancement of knowledge--if one be disposed to concede such a thing--has to do not with its nature but with its propagation. this whole conception of religion and science is through and through erroneous, and none would to-day be hardy enough to countenance it had not schopenhauer's rhetoric taken it under protection, this high sounding rhetoric which now gains auditors after the lapse of a generation. much as may be gained from schopenhauer's religio-ethical human and cosmical oracle as regards the comprehension of christianity and other religions, it is nevertheless certain that he erred regarding the value of religion to knowledge. he himself was in this but a servile pupil of the scientific teachers of his time who had all taken romanticism under their protection and renounced the spirit of enlightenment. had he been born in our own time it would have been impossible for him to have spoken of the sensus allegoricus of religion. he would instead have done truth the justice to say: never has a religion, directly or indirectly, either as dogma or as allegory, contained a truth. for all religions grew out of dread or necessity, and came into existence through an error of the reason. they have, perhaps, in times of danger from science, incorporated some philosophical doctrine or other into their systems in order to make it possible to continue one's existence within them. but this is but a theological work of art dating from the time in which a religion began to doubt of itself. these theological feats of art, which are most common in christianity as the religion of a learned age, impregnated with philosophy, have led to this superstition of the sensus allegoricus, as has, even more, the habit of the philosophers (namely those half-natures, the poetical philosophers and the philosophising artists) of dealing with their own feelings as if they constituted the fundamental nature of humanity and hence of giving their own religious feelings a predominant influence over the structure of their systems. as the philosophers mostly philosophised under the influence of hereditary religious habits, or at least under the traditional influence of this "metaphysical necessity," they naturally arrived at conclusions closely resembling the judaic or christian or indian religious tenets--resembling, in the way that children are apt to look like their mothers: only in this case the fathers were not certain as to the maternity, as easily happens--but in the innocence of their admiration, they fabled regarding the family likeness of all religion and science. in reality, there exists between religion and true science neither relationship nor friendship, not even enmity: they dwell in different spheres. every philosophy that lets the religious comet gleam through the darkness of its last outposts renders everything within it that purports to be science, suspicious. it is all probably religion, although it may assume the guise of science.--moreover, though all the peoples agree concerning certain religious things, for example, the existence of a god (which, by the way, as regards this point, is not the case) this fact would constitute an argument against the thing agreed upon, for example the very existence of a god. the consensus gentium and especially hominum can probably amount only to an absurdity. against it there is no consensus omnium sapientium whatever, on any point, with the exception of which goethe's verse speaks: "all greatest sages to all latest ages will smile, wink and slily agree 'tis folly to wait till a fool's empty pate has learned to be knowing and free. so children of wisdom must look upon fools as creatures who're never the better for schools." stated without rhyme or metre and adapted to our case: the consensus sapientium is to the effect that the consensus gentium amounts to an absurdity. =origin of religious worship.=--let us transport ourselves back to the times in which religious life flourished most vigorously and we will find a fundamental conviction prevalent which we no longer share and which has resulted in the closing of the door to religious life once for all so far as we are concerned: this conviction has to do with nature and intercourse with her. in those times nothing is yet known of nature's laws. neither for earth nor for heaven is there a must. a season, sunshine, rain can come or stay away as it pleases. there is wanting, in particular, all idea of natural causation. if a man rows, it is not the oar that moves the boat, but rowing is a magical ceremony whereby a demon is constrained to move the boat. all illness, death itself, is a consequence of magical influences. in sickness and death nothing natural is conceived. the whole idea of "natural course" is wanting. the idea dawns first upon the ancient greeks, that is to say in a very late period of humanity, in the conception of a moira [fate] ruling over the gods. if any person shoots off a bow, there is always an irrational strength and agency in the act. if the wells suddenly run dry, the first thought is of subterranean demons and their pranks. it must have been the dart of a god beneath whose invisible influence a human being suddenly collapses. in india, the carpenter (according to lubbock) is in the habit of making devout offerings to his hammer and hatchet. a brahmin treats the plume with which he writes, a soldier the weapon that he takes into the field, a mason his trowel, a laborer his plow, in the same way. all nature is, in the opinion of religious people, a sum total of the doings of conscious and willing beings, an immense mass of complex volitions. in regard to all that takes place outside of us no conclusion is permissible that anything will result thus and so, must result thus and so, that we are comparatively calculable and certain in our experiences, that man is the rule, nature the ruleless. this view forms the fundamental conviction that dominates crude, religion-producing, early civilizations. we contemporary men feel exactly the opposite: the richer man now feels himself inwardly, the more polyphone the music and the sounding of his soul, the more powerfully does the uniformity of nature impress him. we all, with goethe, recognize in nature the great means of repose for the soul. we listen to the pendulum stroke of this great clock with longing for rest, for absolute calm and quiescence, as if we could drink in the uniformity of nature and thereby arrive first at an enjoyment of oneself. formerly it was the reverse: if we carry ourselves back to the periods of crude civilization, or if we contemplate contemporary savages, we will find them most strongly influenced by rule, by tradition. the individual is almost automatically bound to rule and tradition and moves with the uniformity of a pendulum. to him nature--the uncomprehended, fearful, mysterious nature--must seem the domain of freedom, of volition, of higher power, indeed as an ultra-human degree of destiny, as god. every individual in such periods and circumstances feels that his existence, his happiness, the existence and happiness of the family, the state, the success or failure of every undertaking, must depend upon these dispositions of nature. certain natural events must occur at the proper time and certain others must not occur. how can influence be exercised over this fearful unknown, how can this domain of freedom be brought under subjection? thus he asks himself, thus he worries: is there no means to render these powers of nature as subject to rule and tradition as you are yourself?--the cogitation of the superstitious and magic-deluded man is upon the theme of imposing a law upon nature: and to put it briefly, religious worship is the result of such cogitation. the problem which is present to every man is closely connected with this one: how can the weaker party dictate laws to the stronger, control its acts in reference to the weaker? at first the most harmless form of influence is recollected, that influence which is acquired when the partiality of anyone has been won. through beseeching and prayer, through abject humiliation, through obligations to regular gifts and propitiations, through flattering homages, it is possible, therefore, to impose some guidance upon the forces of nature, to the extent that their partiality be won: love binds and is bound. then agreements can be entered into by means of which certain courses of conduct are mutually concluded, vows are made and authorities prescribed. but far more potent is that species of power exercised by means of magic and incantation. as a man is able to injure a powerful enemy by means of the magician and render him helpless with fear, as the love potion operates at a distance, so can the mighty forces of nature, in the opinion of weaker mankind, be controlled by similar means. the principal means of effecting incantations is to acquire control of something belonging to the party to be influenced, hair, finger nails, food from his table, even his picture or his name. with such apparatus it is possible to act by means of magic, for the basic principle is that to everything spiritual corresponds something corporeal. with the aid of this corporeal element the spirit may be bound, injured or destroyed. the corporeal affords the handle by which the spiritual can be laid hold of. in the same way that man influences mankind does he influences some spirit of nature, for this latter has also its corporeal element that can be grasped. the tree, and on the same basis, the seed from which it grew: this puzzling sequence seems to demonstrate that in both forms the same spirit is embodied, now large, now small. a stone that suddenly rolls, is the body in which the spirit works. does a huge boulder lie in a lonely moor? it is impossible to think of mortal power having placed it there. the stone must have moved itself there. that is to say some spirit must dominate it. everything that has a body is subject to magic, including, therefore, the spirits of nature. if a god is directly connected with his portrait, a direct influence (by refraining from devout offerings, by whippings, chainings and the like) can be brought to bear upon him. the lower classes in china tie cords around the picture of their god in order to defy his departing favor, when he has left them in the lurch, and tear the picture to pieces, drag it through the streets into dung heaps and gutters, crying: "you dog of a spirit, we housed you in a beautiful temple, we gilded you prettily, we fed you well, we brought you offerings, and yet how ungrateful you are!" similar displays of resentment have been made against pictures of the mother of god and pictures of saints in catholic countries during the present century when such pictures would not do their duty during times of pestilence and drought. through all these magical relationships to nature countless ceremonies are occasioned, and finally, when their complexity and confusion grow too great, pains are taken to systematize them, to arrange them so that the favorable course of nature's progress, namely the great yearly circle of the seasons, may be brought about by a corresponding course of the ceremonial progress. the aim of religious worship is to influence nature to human advantage, and hence to instil a subjection to law into her that originally she has not, whereas at present man desires to find out the subjection to law of nature in order to guide himself thereby. in brief, the system of religious worship rests upon the idea of magic between man and man, and the magician is older than the priest. but it rests equally upon other and higher ideas. it brings into prominence the sympathetic relation of man to man, the existence of benevolence, gratitude, prayer, of truces between enemies, of loans upon security, of arrangements for the protection of property. man, even in very inferior degrees of civilization, does not stand in the presence of nature as a helpless slave, he is not willy-nilly the absolute servant of nature. in the greek development of religion, especially in the relationship to the olympian gods, it becomes possible to entertain the idea of an existence side by side of two castes, a higher, more powerful, and a lower, less powerful: but both are bound together in some way, on account of their origin and are one species. they need not be ashamed of one another. this is the element of distinction in greek religion. =at the contemplation of certain ancient sacrificial proceedings.=--how many sentiments are lost to us is manifest in the union of the farcical, even of the obscene, with the religious feeling. the feeling that this mixture is possible is becoming extinct. we realize the mixture only historically, in the mysteries of demeter and dionysos and in the christian easter festivals and religious mysteries. but we still perceive the sublime in connection with the ridiculous, and the like, the emotional with the absurd. perhaps a later age will be unable to understand even these combinations. =christianity as antiquity.=--when on a sunday morning we hear the old bells ringing, we ask ourselves: is it possible? all this for a jew crucified two thousand years ago who said he was god's son? the proof of such an assertion is lacking.--certainly, the christian religion constitutes in our time a protruding bit of antiquity from very remote ages and that its assertions are still generally believed--although men have become so keen in the scrutiny of claims--constitutes the oldest relic of this inheritance. a god who begets children by a mortal woman; a sage who demands that no more work be done, that no more justice be administered but that the signs of the approaching end of the world be heeded; a system of justice that accepts an innocent as a vicarious sacrifice in the place of the guilty; a person who bids his disciples drink his blood; prayers for miracles; sins against a god expiated upon a god; fear of a hereafter to which death is the portal; the figure of the cross as a symbol in an age that no longer knows the purpose and the ignominy of the cross--how ghostly all these things flit before us out of the grave of their primitive antiquity! is one to believe that such things can still be believed? =the un-greek in christianity.=--the greeks did not look upon the homeric gods above them as lords nor upon themselves beneath as servants, after the fashion of the jews. they saw but the counterpart as in a mirror of the most perfect specimens of their own caste, hence an ideal, but no contradiction of their own nature. there was a feeling of mutual relationship, resulting in a mutual interest, a sort of alliance. man thinks well of himself when he gives himself such gods and places himself in a relationship akin to that of the lower nobility with the higher; whereas the italian races have a decidedly vulgar religion, involving perpetual anxiety because of bad and mischievous powers and soul disturbers. wherever the olympian gods receded into the background, there even greek life became gloomier and more perturbed.--christianity, on the other hand, oppressed and degraded humanity completely and sank it into deepest mire: into the feeling of utter abasement it suddenly flashed the gleam of divine compassion, so that the amazed and grace-dazzled stupefied one gave a cry of delight and for a moment believed that the whole of heaven was within him. upon this unhealthy excess of feeling, upon the accompanying corruption of heart and head, christianity attains all its psychological effects. it wants to annihilate, debase, stupefy, amaze, bedazzle. there is but one thing that it does not want: measure, standard (das maas) and therefore is it in the worst sense barbarous, asiatic, vulgar, un-greek. =being religious to some purpose.=--there are certain insipid, traffic-virtuous people to whom religion is pinned like the hem of some garb of a higher humanity. these people do well to remain religious: it adorns them. all who are not versed in some professional weapon--including tongue and pen as weapons--are servile: to all such the christian religion is very useful, for then their servility assumes the aspect of christian virtue and is amazingly adorned.--people whose daily lives are empty and colorless are readily religious. this is comprehensible and pardonable, but they have no right to demand that others, whose daily lives are not empty and colorless, should be religious also. =the everyday christian.=--if christianity, with its allegations of an avenging god, universal sinfulness, choice of grace, and the danger of eternal damnation, were true, it would be an indication of weakness of mind and character not to be a priest or an apostle or a hermit, and toil for one's own salvation. it would be irrational to lose sight of one's eternal well being in comparison with temporary advantage: assuming these dogmas to be generally believed, the every day christian is a pitiable figure, a man who really cannot count as far as three, and who, for the rest, just because of his intellectual incapacity, does not deserve to be as hard punished as christianity promises he shall be. =concerning the cleverness of christianity.=--it is a master stroke of christianity to so emphasize the unworthiness, sinfulness and degradation of men in general that contempt of one's fellow creatures becomes impossible. "he may sin as much as he pleases, he is not by nature different from me. it is i who in every way am unworthy and contemptible." so says the christian to himself. but even this feeling has lost its keenest sting for the christian does not believe in his individual degradation. he is bad in his general human capacity and he soothes himself a little with the assertion that we are all alike. =personal change.=--as soon as a religion rules, it has for its opponents those who were its first disciples. =fate of christianity.=--christianity arose to lighten the heart, but now it must first make the heart heavy in order to be able to lighten it afterwards. christianity will consequently go down. =the testimony of pleasure.=--the agreeable opinion is accepted as true. this is the testimony of pleasure (or as the church says, the evidence of strength) of which all religions are so proud, although they should all be ashamed of it. if a belief did not make blessed it would not be believed. how little it would be worth, then! =dangerous play.=--whoever gives religious feeling room, must then also let it grow. he can do nothing else. then his being gradually changes. the religious element brings with it affinities and kinships. the whole circle of his judgment and feeling is clouded and draped in religious shadows. feeling cannot stand still. one should be on one's guard. =the blind pupil.=--as long as one knows very well the strength and the weakness of one's dogma, one's art, one's religion, its strength is still low. the pupil and apostle who has no eye for the weaknesses of a dogma, a religion and so on, dazzled by the aspect of the master and by his own reverence for him, has, on that very account, generally more power than the master. without blind pupils the influence of a man and his work has never become great. to give victory to knowledge, often amounts to no more than so allying it with stupidity that the brute force of the latter forces triumph for the former. =the breaking off of churches.=--there is not sufficient religion in the world merely to put an end to the number of religions. =sinlessness of men.=--if one have understood how "sin came into the world," namely through errors of the reason, through which men in their intercourse with one another and even individual men looked upon themselves as much blacker and wickeder than was really the case, one's whole feeling is much lightened and man and the world appear together in such a halo of harmlessness that a sentiment of well being is instilled into one's whole nature. man in the midst of nature is as a child left to its own devices. this child indeed dreams a heavy, anxious dream. but when it opens its eyes it finds itself always in paradise. =irreligiousness of artists.=--homer is so much at home among his gods and is as a poet so good natured to them that he must have been profoundly irreligious. that which was brought to him by the popular faith--a mean, crude and partially repulsive superstition--he dealt with as freely as the sculptor with his clay, therefore with the same freedom that Æschylus and aristophanes evinced and with which in later times the great artists of the renaissance, and also shakespeare and goethe, drew their pictures. =art and strength of false interpretation.=--all the visions, fears, exhaustions and delights of the saint are well known symptoms of sickness, which in him, owing to deep rooted religious and psychological delusions, are explained quite differently, that is not as symptoms of sickness.--so, too, perhaps, the demon of socrates was nothing but a malady of the ear that he explained, in view of his predominant moral theory, in a manner different from what would be thought rational to-day. nor is the case different with the frenzy and the frenzied speeches of the prophets and of the priests of the oracles. it is always the degree of wisdom, imagination, capacity and morality in the heart and mind of the interpreters that got so much out of them. it is among the greatest feats of the men who are called geniuses and saints that they made interpreters for themselves who, fortunately for mankind, did not understand them. =reverence for madness.=--because it was perceived that an excitement of some kind often made the head clearer and occasioned fortunate inspirations, it was concluded that the utmost excitement would occasion the most fortunate inspirations. hence the frenzied being was revered as a sage and an oracle giver. a false conclusion lies at the bottom of all this. =promises of wisdom.=--modern science has as its object as little pain as possible, as long a life as possible--hence a sort of eternal blessedness, but of a very limited kind in comparison with the promises of religion. =forbidden generosity.=--there is not enough of love and goodness in the world to throw any of it away on conceited people. =survival of religious training in the disposition.=--the catholic church, and before it all ancient education, controlled the whole domain of means through which man was put into certain unordinary moods and withdrawn from the cold calculation of personal advantage and from calm, rational reflection. a church vibrating with deep tones; gloomy, regular, restraining exhortations from a priestly band, who involuntarily communicate their own tension to their congregation and lead them to listen almost with anxiety as if some miracle were in course of preparation; the awesome pile of architecture which, as the house of a god, rears itself vastly into the vague and in all its shadowy nooks inspires fear of its nerve-exciting power--who would care to reduce men to the level of these things if the ideas upon which they rest became extinct? but the results of all these things are nevertheless not thrown away: the inner world of exalted, emotional, prophetic, profoundly repentant, hope-blessed moods has become inborn in man largely through cultivation. what still exists in his soul was formerly, as he germinated, grew and bloomed, thoroughly disciplined. =religious after-pains.=--though one believe oneself absolutely weaned away from religion, the process has yet not been so thorough as to make impossible a feeling of joy at the presence of religious feelings and dispositions without intelligible content, as, for example, in music; and if a philosophy alleges to us the validity of metaphysical hopes, through the peace of soul therein attainable, and also speaks of "the whole true gospel in the look of raphael's madonna," we greet such declarations and innuendoes with a welcome smile. the philosopher has here a matter easy of demonstration. he responds with that which he is glad to give, namely a heart that is glad to accept. hence it is observable how the less reflective free spirits collide only with dogmas but yield readily to the magic of religious feelings; it is a source of pain to them to let the latter go simply on account of the former.--scientific philosophy must be very much on its guard lest on account of this necessity--an evolved and hence, also, a transitory necessity--delusions are smuggled in. even logicians speak of "presentiments" of truth in ethics and in art (for example of the presentiment that the essence of things is unity) a thing which, nevertheless, ought to be prohibited. between carefully deduced truths and such "foreboded" things there lies the abysmal distinction that the former are products of the intellect and the latter of the necessity. hunger is no evidence that there is food at hand to appease it. hunger merely craves food. "presentiment" does not denote that the existence of a thing is known in any way whatever. it denotes merely that it is deemed possible to the extent that it is desired or feared. the "presentiment" is not one step forward in the domain of certainty.--it is involuntarily believed that the religious tinted sections of a philosophy are better attested than the others, but the case is at bottom just the opposite: there is simply the inner wish that it may be so, that the thing which beautifies may also be true. this wish leads us to accept bad grounds as good. =of the christian need of salvation.=--careful consideration must render it possible to propound some explanation of that process in the soul of a christian which is termed need of salvation, and to propound an explanation, too, free from mythology: hence one purely psychological. heretofore psychological explanations of religious conditions and processes have really been in disrepute, inasmuch as a theology calling itself free gave vent to its unprofitable nature in this domain; for its principal aim, so far as may be judged from the spirit of its creator, schleier-macher, was the preservation of the christian religion and the maintenance of the christian theology. it appeared that in the psychological analysis of religious "facts" a new anchorage and above all a new calling were to be gained. undisturbed by such predecessors, we venture the following exposition of the phenomena alluded to. man is conscious of certain acts which are very firmly implanted in the general course of conduct: indeed he discovers in himself a predisposition to such acts that seems to him to be as unalterable as his very being. how gladly he would essay some other kind of acts which in the general estimate of conduct are rated the best and highest, how gladly he would welcome the consciousness of well doing which ought to follow unselfish motive! unfortunately, however, it goes no further than this longing: the discontent consequent upon being unable to satisfy it is added to all other kinds of discontent which result from his life destiny in particular or which may be due to so called bad acts; so that a deep depression ensues accompanied by a desire for some physician to remove it and all its causes.--this condition would not be found so bitter if the individual but compared himself freely with other men: for then he would have no reason to be discontented with himself in particular as he is merely bearing his share of the general burden of human discontent and incompleteness. but he compares himself with a being who alone must be capable of the conduct that is called unegoistic and of an enduring consciousness of unselfish motive, with god. it is because he gazes into this clear mirror, that his own self seems so extraordinarily distracted and so troubled. thereupon the thought of that being, in so far as it flits before his fancy as retributive justice, occasions him anxiety. in every conceivable small and great experience he believes he sees the anger of the being, his threats, the very implements and manacles of his judge and prison. what succors him in this danger, which, in the prospect of an eternal duration of punishment, transcends in hideousness all the horrors that can be presented to the imagination? before we consider this condition in its further effects, we would admit to ourselves that man is betrayed into this condition not through his "fault" and "sin" but through a series of delusions of the reason; that it was the fault of the mirror if his own self appeared to him in the highest degree dark and hateful, and that that mirror was his own work, the very imperfect work of human imagination and judgment. in the first place a being capable of absolutely unegoistic conduct is as fabulous as the phoenix. such a being is not even thinkable for the very reason that the whole notion of "unegoistic conduct," when closely examined, vanishes into air. never yet has a man done anything solely for others and entirely without reference to a personal motive; indeed how could he possibly do anything that had no reference to himself, that is without inward compulsion (which must always have its basis in a personal need)? how could the ego act without ego?--a god, who, on the other hand, is all love, as he is usually represented, would not be capable of a solitary unegoistic act: whence one is reminded of a reflection of lichtenberg's which is, in truth, taken from a lower sphere: "we cannot possibly feel for others, as the expression goes; we feel only for ourselves. the assertion sounds hard, but it is not, if rightly understood. a man loves neither his father nor his mother nor his wife nor his child, but simply the feelings which they inspire." or, as la rochefoucauld says: "if you think you love your mistress for the mere love of her, you are very much mistaken." why acts of love are more highly prized than others, namely not on account of their nature, but on account of their utility, has already been explained in the section on the origin of moral feelings. but if a man should wish to be all love like the god aforesaid, and want to do all things for others and nothing for himself, the procedure would be fundamentally impossible because he _must_ do a great deal for himself before there would be any possibility of doing anything for the love of others. it is also essential that others be sufficiently egoistic to accept always and at all times this self sacrifice and living for others, so that the men of love and self sacrifice have an interest in the survival of unloving and selfish egoists, while the highest morality, in order to maintain itself must formally enforce the existence of immorality (wherein it would be really destroying itself.)--further: the idea of a god perturbs and discourages as long as it is accepted but as to how it originated can no longer, in the present state of comparative ethnological science, be a matter of doubt, and with the insight into the origin of this belief all faith collapses. what happens to the christian who compares his nature with that of god is exactly what happened to don quixote, who depreciated his own prowess because his head was filled with the wondrous deeds of the heroes of chivalrous romance. the standard of measurement which both employ belongs to the domain of fable.--but if the idea of god collapses, so too, does the feeling of "sin" as a violation of divine rescript, as a stain upon a god-like creation. there still apparently remains that discouragement which is closely allied with fear of the punishment of worldly justice or of the contempt of one's fellow men. the keenest thorn in the sentiment of sin is dulled when it is perceived that one's acts have contravened human tradition, human rules and human laws without having thereby endangered the "eternal salvation of the soul" and its relations with deity. if finally men attain to the conviction of the absolute necessity of all acts and of their utter irresponsibility and then absorb it into their flesh and blood, every relic of conscience pangs will disappear. if now, as stated, the christian, through certain delusive feelings, is betrayed into self contempt, that is by a false and unscientific view of his acts and feelings, he must, nevertheless, perceive with the utmost amazement that this state of self contempt, of conscience pangs, of despair in particular, does not last, that there are hours during which all these things are wafted away from the soul and he feels himself once more free and courageous. the truth is that joy in his own being, the fulness of his own powers in connection with the inevitable decline of his profound excitation with the lapse of time, bore off the palm of victory. the man loves himself once more, he feels it--but this very new love, this new self esteem seems to him incredible. he can see in it only the wholly unmerited stream of the light of grace shed down upon him. if he formerly saw in every event merely warnings, threats, punishments and every kind of indication of divine anger, he now reads into his experiences the grace of god. the latter circumstance seems to him full of love, the former as a helpful pointing of the way, and his entirely joyful frame of mind now seems to him to be an absolute proof of the goodness of god. as formerly in his states of discouragement he interpreted his conduct falsely so now he does the same with his experiences. his state of consolation is now regarded as the effect produced by some external power. the love with which, at bottom, he loves himself, seems to be the divine love. that which he calls grace and the preliminary of salvation is in reality self-grace, self-salvation. therefore a certain false psychology, a certain kind of imaginativeness in the interpretation of motives and experiences is the essential preliminary to being a christian and to experiencing the need of salvation. upon gaining an insight into this wandering of the reason and the imagination, one ceases to be a christian. =of christian asceticism and sanctity.=--much as some thinkers have exerted themselves to impart an air of the miraculous to those singular phenomena known as asceticism and sanctity, to question which or to account for which upon a rational basis would be wickedness and sacrilege, the temptation to this wickedness is none the less great. a powerful impulse of nature has in every age led to protest against such phenomena. at any rate science, inasmuch as it is the imitation of nature, permits the casting of doubts upon the inexplicable character and the supernal degree of such phenomena. it is true that heretofore science has not succeeded in its attempts at explanation. the phenomena remain unexplained still, to the great satisfaction of those who revere moral miracles. for, speaking generally, the unexplained must rank as the inexplicable, the inexplicable as the non-natural, supernatural, miraculous--so runs the demand in the souls of all the religious and all the metaphysicians (even the artists if they happen to be thinkers), whereas the scientific man sees in this demand the "evil principle."--the universal, first, apparent truth that is encountered in the contemplation of sanctity and asceticism is that their nature is complicated; for nearly always, within the physical world as well as in the moral, the apparently miraculous may be traced successfully to the complex, the obscure, the multi-conditioned. let us venture then to isolate a few impulses in the soul of the saint and the ascetic, to consider them separately and then view them as a synthetic development. there is an obstinacy against oneself, certain sublimated forms of which are included in asceticism. certain kinds of men are under such a strong necessity of exercising their power and dominating impulses that, if other objects are lacking or if they have not succeeded with other objects they will actually tyrannize over some portions of their own nature or over sections and stages of their own personality. thus do many thinkers bring themselves to views which are far from likely to increase or improve their fame. many deliberately bring down the contempt of others upon themselves although they could easily have retained consideration by silence. others contradict earlier opinions and do not shrink from the ordeal of being deemed inconsistent. on the contrary they strive for this and act like eager riders who enjoy horseback exercise most when the horse is skittish. thus will men in dangerous paths ascend to the highest steeps in order to laugh to scorn their own fear and their own trembling limbs. thus will the philosopher embrace the dogmas of asceticism, humility, sanctity, in the light of which his own image appears in its most hideous aspect. this crushing of self, this mockery of one's own nature, this spernere se sperni out of which religions have made so much is in reality but a very high development of vanity. the whole ethic of the sermon on the mount belongs in this category: man has a true delight in mastering himself through exaggerated pretensions or excessive expedients and later deifying this tyrannically exacting something within him. in every scheme of ascetic ethics, man prays to one part of himself as if it were god and hence it is necessary for him to treat the rest of himself as devil. =man is not at all hours equally moral=; this is established. if one's morality be judged according to one's capacity for great, self sacrificing resolutions and abnegations (which when continual, and made a habit are known as sanctity) one is, in affection, or disposition, the most moral: while higher excitement supplies wholly new impulses which, were one calm and cool as ordinarily, one would not deem oneself even capable of. how comes this? apparently from the propinquity of all great and lofty emotional states. if a man is brought to an extraordinary pitch of feeling he can resolve upon a fearful revenge or upon a fearful renunciation of his thirst for vengeance indifferently. he craves, under the influences of powerful emotion, the great, the powerful, the immense, and if he chances to perceive that the sacrifice of himself will afford him as much satisfaction as the sacrifice of another, or will afford him more, he will choose self sacrifice. what concerns him particularly is simply the unloading of his emotion. hence he readily, to relieve his tension, grasps the darts of the enemy and buries them in his own breast. that in self abnegation and not in revenge the element of greatness consisted must have been brought home to mankind only after long habituation. a god who sacrifices himself would be the most powerful and most effective symbol of this sort of greatness. as the conquest of the most hardly conquered enemy, the sudden mastering of a passion--thus does such abnegation _appear_: hence it passes for the summit of morality. in reality all that is involved is the exchange of one idea for another whilst the temperament remained at a like altitude, a like tidal state. men when coming out of the spell, or resting from such passionate excitation, no longer understand the morality of such instants, but the admiration of all who participated in the occasion sustains them. pride is their support if the passion and the comprehension of their act weaken. therefore, at bottom even such acts of self-abnegation are not moral inasmuch as they are not done with a strict regard for others. rather do others afford the high strung temperament an opportunity to lighten itself through such abnegation. =even the ascetic seeks to make life easier=, and generally by means of absolute subjection to another will or to an all inclusive rule and ritual, pretty much as the brahmin leaves absolutely nothing to his own volition but is guided in every moment of his life by some holy injunction or other. this subjection is a potent means of acquiring dominion over oneself. one is occupied, hence time does not bang heavy and there is no incitement of the personal will and of the individual passion. the deed once done there is no feeling of responsibility nor the sting of regret. one has given up one's own will once for all and this is easier than to give it up occasionally, as it is also easier wholly to renounce a desire than to yield to it in measured degree. when we consider the present relation of man to the state we perceive unconditional obedience is easier than conditional. the holy person also makes his lot easier through the complete surrender of his life personality and it is all delusion to admire such a phenomenon as the loftiest heroism of morality. it is always more difficult to assert one's personality without shrinking and without hesitation than to give it up altogether in the manner indicated, and it requires moreover more intellect and thought. after having discovered in many of the less comprehensible actions mere manifestations of pleasure in emotion for its own sake, i fancy i can detect in the self contempt which characterises holy persons, and also in their acts of self torture (through hunger and scourgings, distortions and chaining of the limbs, acts of madness) simply a means whereby such natures may resist the general exhaustion of their will to live (their nerves). they employ the most painful expedients to escape if only for a time from the heaviness and weariness in which they are steeped by their great mental indolence and their subjection to a will other than their own. =the most usual means= by which the ascetic and the sanctified individual seeks to make life more endurable comprises certain combats of an inner nature involving alternations of victory and prostration. for this purpose an enemy is necessary and he is found in the so called "inner enemy." that is, the holy individual makes use of his tendency to vanity, domineering and pride, and of his mental longings in order to contemplate his life as a sort of continuous battle and himself as a battlefield, in which good and evil spirits wage war with varying fortune. it is an established fact that the imagination is restrained through the regularity and adequacy of sexual intercourse while on the other hand abstention from or great irregularity in sexual intercourse will cause the imagination to run riot. the imaginations of many of the christian saints were obscene to a degree; and because of the theory that sexual desires were in reality demons that raged within them, the saints did not feel wholly responsible for them. it is to this conviction that we are indebted for the highly instructive sincerity of their evidence against themselves. it was to their interest that this contest should always be kept up in some fashion because by means of this contest, as already stated, their empty lives gained distraction. in order that the contest might seem sufficiently great to inspire sympathy and admiration in the unsanctified, it was essential that sexual capacity be ever more and more damned and denounced. indeed the danger of eternal damnation was so closely allied to this capacity that for whole generations christians showed their children with actual conscience pangs. what evil may not have been done to humanity through this! and yet here the truth is just upside down: an exceedingly unseemly attitude for the truth. christianity, it is true, had said that every man is conceived and born in sin, and in the intolerable and excessive christianity of calderon this thought is again perverted and entangled into the most distorted paradox extant in the well known lines the greatest sin of man is the sin of being born. in all pessimistic religions the act of procreation is looked upon as evil in itself. this is far from being the general human opinion. it is not even the opinion of all pessimists. empedocles, for example, knows nothing of anything shameful, devilish and sinful in it. he sees rather in the great field of bliss of unholiness simply a healthful and hopeful phenomenon, aphrodite. she is to him an evidence that strife does not always rage but that some time a gentle demon is to wield the sceptre. the christian pessimists of practice, had, as stated, a direct interest in the prevalence of an opposite belief. they needed in the loneliness and the spiritual wilderness of their lives an ever living enemy, and a universally known enemy through whose conquest they might appear to the unsanctified as utterly incomprehensible and half unnatural beings. when this enemy at last, as a result of their mode of life and their shattered health, took flight forever, they were able immediately to people their inner selves with new demons. the rise and fall of the balance of cheerfulness and despair maintained their addled brains in a totally new fluctuation of longing and peace of soul. and in that period psychology served not only to cast suspicion on everything human but to wound and scourge it, to crucify it. man wanted to find himself as base and evil as possible. man sought to become anxious about the state of his soul, he wished to be doubtful of his own capacity. everything natural with which man connects the idea of badness and sinfulness (as, for instance, is still customary in regard to the erotic) injures and degrades the imagination, occasions a shamed aspect, leads man to war upon himself and makes him uncertain, distrustful of himself. even his dreams acquire a tincture of the unclean conscience. and yet this suffering because of the natural element in certain things is wholly superfluous. it is simply the result of opinions regarding the things. it is easy to understand why men become worse than they are if they are brought to look upon the unavoidably natural as bad and later to feel it as of evil origin. it is the master stroke of religions and metaphysics that wish to make man out bad and sinful by nature, to render nature suspicious in his eyes and to so make himself evil, for he learns to feel himself evil when he cannot divest himself of nature. he gradually comes to look upon himself, after a long life lived naturally, so oppressed by a weight of sin that supernatural powers become necessary to relieve him of the burden; and with this notion comes the so called need of salvation, which is the result not of a real but of an imaginary sinfulness. go through the separate moral expositions in the vouchers of christianity and it will always be found that the demands are excessive in order that it may be impossible for man to satisfy them. the object is not that he may become moral but that he may feel as sinful as possible. if this feeling had not been rendered agreeable to man--why should he have improvised such an ideal and clung to it so long? as in the ancient world an incalculable strength of intellect and capacity for feeling was squandered in order to increase the joy of living through feastful systems of worship, so in the era of christianity an equally incalculable quantity of intellectual capacity has been sacrificed in another endeavor: that man should in every way feel himself sinful and thereby be moved, inspired, inspirited. to move, to inspire, to inspirit at any cost--is not this the freedom cry of an exhausted, over-ripe, over cultivated age? the circle of all the natural sensations had been gone through a hundred times: the soul had grown weary. then the saints and the ascetics found a new order of ecstacies. they set themselves before the eyes of all not alone as models for imitation to many, but as fearful and yet delightful spectacles on the boundary line between this world and the next world, where in that period everyone thought he saw at one time rays of heavenly light, at another fearful, threatening tongues of flame. the eye of the saint, directed upon the fearful significance of the shortness of earthly life, upon the imminence of the last judgment, upon eternal life hereafter; this glowering eye in an emaciated body caused men, in the old time world, to tremble to the depths of their being. to look, to look away and shudder, to feel anew the fascination of the spectacle, to yield to it, sate oneself upon it until the soul trembled with ardor and fever--that was the last pleasure left to classical antiquity when its sensibilities had been blunted by the arena and the gladiatorial show. =to sum up all that has been said=: that condition of soul at which the saint or expectant saint is rejoiced is a combination of elements which we are all familiar with, except that under other influences than those of mere religious ideation they customarily arouse the censure of men in the same way that when combined with religion itself and regarded as the supreme attainment of sanctity, they are object of admiration and even of prayer--at least in more simple times. very soon the saint turns upon himself that severity that is so closely allied to the instinct of domination at any price and which inspire even in the most solitary individual the sense of power. soon his swollen sensitiveness of feeling breaks forth from the longing to restrain his passions within it and is transformed into a longing to master them as if they were wild steeds, the master impulse being ever that of a proud spirit; next he craves a complete cessation of all perturbing, fascinating feelings, a waking sleep, an enduring repose in the lap of a dull, animal, plant-like indolence. next he seeks the battle and extinguishes it within himself because weariness and boredom confront him. he binds his self-deification with self-contempt. he delights in the wild tumult of his desires and the sharp pain of sin, in the very idea of being lost. he is able to play his very passions, for instance the desire to domineer, a trick so that he goes to the other extreme of abject humiliation and subjection, so that his overwrought soul is without any restraint through this antithesis. and, finally, when indulgence in visions, in talks with the dead or with divine beings overcomes him, this is really but a form of gratification that he craves, perhaps a form of gratification in which all other gratifications are blended. novalis, one of the authorities in matters of sanctity, because of his experience and instinct, betrays the whole secret with the utmost simplicity when he says: "it is remarkable that the close connection of gratification, religion and cruelty has not long ago made men aware of their inner relationship and common tendency." =not what the saint is but what he was in= the eyes of the non-sanctified gives him his historical importance. because there existed a delusion respecting the saint, his soul states being falsely viewed and his personality being sundered as much as possible from humanity as a something incomparable and supernatural, because of these things he attained the extraordinary with which he swayed the imaginations of whole nations and whole ages. even he knew himself not for even he regarded his dispositions, passions and actions in accordance with a system of interpretation as artificial and exaggerated as the pneumatic interpretation of the bible. the distorted and diseased in his own nature with its blending of spiritual poverty, defective knowledge, ruined health, overwrought nerves, remained as hidden from his view as from the view of his beholders. he was neither a particularly good man nor a particularly bad man but he stood for something that was far above the human standard in wisdom and goodness. faith in him sustained faith in the divine and miraculous, in a religious significance of all existence, in an impending day of judgment. in the last rays of the setting sun of the ancient world, which fell upon the christian peoples, the shadowy form of the saint attained enormous proportions--to such enormous proportions, indeed, that down even to our own age, which no longer believes in god, there are thinkers who believe in the saints. it stands to reason that this sketch of the saint, made upon the model of the whole species, can be confronted with many opposing sketches that would create a more agreeable impression. there are certain exceptions among the species who distinguish themselves either by especial gentleness or especial humanity, and perhaps by the strength of their own personality. others are in the highest degree fascinating because certain of their delusions shed a particular glow over their whole being, as is the case with the founder of christianity who took himself for the only begotten son of god and hence felt himself sinless; so that through his imagination--that should not be too harshly judged since the whole of antiquity swarmed with sons of god--he attained the same goal, the sense of complete sinlessness, complete irresponsibility, that can now be attained by every individual through science.--in the same manner i have viewed the saints of india who occupy an intermediate station between the christian saints and the greek philosophers and hence are not to be regarded as a pure type. knowledge and science--as far as they existed--and superiority to the rest of mankind by logical discipline and training of the intellectual powers were insisted upon by the buddhists as essential to sanctity, just as they were denounced by the christian world as the indications of sinfulness. human life by s. s. knight [illustration] new york r. f. fenno & company east th street copyright, , by s. s. knight contents chapter page i. the habitat of man ii. the length of time during which man has existed iii. the physical limitations of existence iv. the purpose of life v. knowledge and education vi. religion and ethics vii. love viii. problems of the future dedication this volume is dedicated to my mother and my wife--the two women whose influence has most largely shaped my life, and whose companionship has afforded me so much happiness. it was written with the hope that it might be of value to my two children, and may they find as much happiness in life as has the author. human life chapter i the habitat of man in reviewing the facts concerning humanity, which are well authenticated at the present date, with the object of getting a composite view of the greatest of all "world riddles"--"life"--possibly nothing tends so largely to expand our mental horizon as a study of the earth itself or man's place of abode. the ideas of the educated and cultured mind, at the beginning of the twentieth century, upon cosmogony, are necessarily of such a character that man's heretofore undisputed boast of being the objective and acme of creation or evolution is forced into that great mass of theories which science has proven to be absolutely untenable. since the relative importance of the factors of heredity and adaptation has become known, the environment, or conditions surrounding man's existence in times past, is of exceptional importance, as, from an understanding of these prehistoric limitations, we are better able to judge what must have been the achievement of the individual and the race than we could be when in ignorance of these facts. the length of prehistoric time (so far as our earth is concerned) has been the subject of much intelligent labor and thought, as well as the occasion for much dissenting of opinion and more or less designed misstatement. until very recently, it has been difficult to reconcile the theories, as promulgated by the authorities in the various departments of science; but, notwithstanding this, some light may be obtained by the summarization of the most plausible hypotheses now advocated. we cannot take the space to go into detail concerning these, but will merely touch upon the most salient points. the constancy of the supply of heat furnished by the sun and the division of the year into definite seasons was one of the first phenomena which attracted the attention of man at the dawn of history, and in the many accounts of the creation which we find in literature we see the feeble attempts of man to account for what he observed. although the knowledge which we have at the present time is not complete enough to warrant any feeling of pride, yet we do know enough to say, with certainty, some things concerning the solar system. we know that our sun cannot forever radiate away its heat into space without sometime becoming as cold or colder than we are, unless the energy which it is losing in the form of heat be restored to it by some means not at this time known. sir william thomson (lord kelvin) has calculated that at the present rate of solar radiation, which amounts to about twenty-eight calories per minute, per square centimeter, at the distance of the mean radius of the earth's orbit, it would have taken somewhat more than fifteen million years for the heat generated by the contraction of the sun's mass from the orbit of the outer planet, neptune, to its present size, to have been radiated away into space. this means that gravity, as a source of heat development, at the rate of solar radiation now known, would account for, perhaps, twenty million years' expenditure of energy in reducing the sun's diameter to but one-thirteen-thousandth part of what it once was. not only does the nebular hypothesis fall short of accounting for the facts, as will subsequently be shown in this one particular of the length of time during which our solar system has existed, but it does not account for the variation in the obliquity of the poles of the planets, which are the attendants upon the sun; nor does gravitative attraction alone enable us to account for the tremendous velocities of some of the stars through space, such as arcturus,--so that it may be safely assumed that we shall be forced to modify our ideas as to the value of the nebular hypothesis as a working basis, before we can harmonize our deductions from astronomical and geological grounds. fortunately, the study of the spiral nebulæ has done much to elucidate our conceptions of the formation of the planetary systems, and from the discoveries made concerning these highly attenuated bodies of matter, a new hypothesis has been formed which will completely harmonize, perhaps, with these above stated facts, which could not be made to accord with the nebular theory as previously held. one source of the continued acquisition of energy by our sun, whose value is hard to estimate, is the shooting stars, or meteors, which constantly fall into it. astronomical records show that, from the earth alone, no less than twenty million shooting stars are daily within the limits of vision, and inasmuch as the solar system is moving with a velocity of some twenty miles per second through space, it will be seen that the number of meteors which would come within the influence of the sun, being as it is about one and one-third million times the volume of the earth, would be practically infinite. what then must be said of the amount of energy acquired by the sun from these, although each meteor may have a mass of but a few grams, and perhaps may be only several hundred miles away from its successor? it is clearly demonstrated that, if no such additions of energy were received by our sun, in about ten million years its diameter would be reduced to one-half of what it is now, and its mass, where now it exists as a gas, would then become a solid, at least upon the surface, and the quantity of heat received by the earth would become so small that life here, as we know of it, would be an impossibility. but if it be granted that the sun annually gathers, by its gravitative attraction, a combined mass of matter equal to the one-hundredth part of our earth, at a distance away from its center equal to the main radius of the earth's orbit, the energy dissipated by its radiation of heat at its present rate would be accounted for, while the sensible heat of the sun would not diminish, and the supply would be kept up indefinitely. that such additions of mass are made, there can be no doubt, but as to their quantity, we cannot, with our present knowledge, even hazard a guess. in speaking of the solar heat and man's dependence upon it in a constant definite quantity, as one of the conditions of his existence, perhaps it will give us some just appreciation of his place in nature when we consider that the earth receives somewhat less than one two-billionth part of the heat radiated away by the sun, and while this expression makes the quantity which we receive seem rather small, it is, nevertheless, large enough annually to melt a layer of ice one hundred and seventy-five feet thick--all over the surface of the earth, and is a little more than one six-thousandth part of the quantity of heat which would be generated by the burning of a mass of coal as large as the sun. the researches of halley and adams have shown that from some cause, probably the result of gravity acting in conjunction with the varying eccentricity of the earth's orbit, the motion of the moon has been slightly accelerated as time went on, while the diurnal motion of the earth has been reduced by the action of the tides, and that the amount of this loss, in time, is equal to about one second in the length of our day, in , years. now, this retardation in the earth's motion has not taken place at a uniform rate if caused by the reaction of the tides, as the nearer to the earth the moon was, the greater would be the tides, and, consequently, the greater would be the reaction; _i. e._, the retardation. but assuming that this retardation took place, on the whole, at twice the rate now prevailing, we would still have a period of six million years since the moon was thrown off by the earth, when our days were but three hours long. turning from the theories of astronomy, which are obviously more or less inaccurate, owing to their very nature and the character and duration of the observations upon which they are based, we come to the nearer and more certain deductions of geology. here we have the phenomena of denudation and deposition with which to deal, and inasmuch as these are measurable at many places, and under many conditions upon the earth to-day, it is safe to assume that computations made from these measurements cannot be far from the truth. we know that practically all of the great formations of the earth were depositions of material from water which contained them, and that, in many cases, heat caused these strata to be metamorphosed or crystallized ages after they were deposited, and that in this crystallization many of the fossils remaining imbedded in the deposited matter were destroyed. concerning this deposition we know that it is going on to-day in the atlantic and pacific oceans, where, in the deeper portions the globigerina ooze is filling in these depressions with a deposit, resembling chalk, at the rate of perhaps an inch per century. we know that the gulf of mexico and several other ocean areas are being filled in with silt at the rate of as high as three inches per century. this silt is brought down in the tributary rivers and emptied into the gulfs. we also know that large areas in the indian ocean are being covered with coral and the débris from the coral reefs. we are absolutely certain that every geological period has had its characteristic fauna and flora, and that, in both the animal and vegetable kingdoms, some persistent types have connected it with both the past and the future, so that the fossils have become the "open sesame" to the geological records. we further know that the strata composing the earth's surface are subject to elevation and subsidence, such as is now going on in the delta of the nile, on the coast of the netherlands, and in many other places, and that such movement is a measurable quantity, given only the necessary time. the total thickness of known strata measures but about one-three hundred and twentieth part of the earth's diameter, or, in round numbers, twenty-five miles. thirty thousand feet of this is quite readily identified as belonging to the old archaic or laurentian period, and constitutes the oldest stratified deposit known. even in this, we find the remains of the eozoon canadense, which is now universally acknowledged to be the petrifaction of a foraminiferous living organism with a chambered shell. this means that, at this time, the earth's atmosphere must have been very similar to what it is at the present, and that the temperature of the sea was somewhere between the boiling and the freezing points of water. what time had elapsed since the earth was thrown off by the sun in an incandescent state can only be faintly imagined. at the rate of deposition given for the deepest of ocean deposits, this archaic period would have taken perhaps thirty-six million years; but inasmuch as the water may have been far warmer then than now, and the rainfall more abundant, and the forces of denudation in all respects more active, this figure may be excessive. the next eighteen thousand feet of strata are easily identified as lower silurian, by the diatoms which occur imbedded in them, and these formations include some of the largest deposits of limestone known. at our rate of calculation, this deposit would require no less than nine and one-half million years, and, in assuming this figure, no account is made of the intervals of time during which no deposit took place, although such periods of inactivity must necessarily have been. the upper silurian strata consists of twenty thousand feet, the fossils of which are the lower fishes, and for which we must assign a period of time equal to no less than twenty-five million years, inasmuch as these deposits are limestones and sandstones, or the remains of water-living animals and plants. coming now to the devonian and carboniferous periods, the strata of the former, which is filled with fossils of the dipnoi, and the latter with those of the amphibia; we have deposits aggregating about forty thousand feet, and inasmuch as long intervals of time must have existed during the subsidence and elevation, and _vice versa_, of the land, while the process of coal-forming was going on, it is certain that our rate of deposition as heretofore used, is entirely too high. dawson and huxley have estimated, after most careful investigation, that the period of time consumed in laying down the coal measures, could not be less than six million years, and upon this basis it is safe to assume that between seventy-five and eighty million years were consumed in laying down the devonian and carboniferous deposits. this makes paleozoic time occupy about one hundred and fifty million years, which is probably under- rather than over-estimated. the flora of the carboniferous period was composed of tree ferns of the sagillaria and lepidodendron species which have since become extinct; but the lingula, a shell in the cambrian and upper silurian formations, and the terbratula, another shell, is found in the devonian rocks. both of these are found living to-day, of the same identical genus and species. in the silurian rocks, we find the remains of an air-breathing scorpion, very similar to that found to-day, which shows that the atmosphere at that remote period was practically the same as we have at the present time. in the mesozoic time, we find deposits aggregating some fifteen thousand feet, and inasmuch as the triassic sandstones were formations of slow deposition, our heretofore established rate will not answer the conditions. it has been estimated, after the most careful study of the triassic and jurassic measures, that probably no less than thirty million years were occupied by these periods, and that the chalk deposits of the cretaceous must have taken at the present known rate, in like formations, somewhat over six million years of ceaseless activity. this gives to mesozoic time a period of thirty-six million years, as a minimum, and, from what we know of the rate of biological evolution, this figure is conservative. the first period of the mesozoic time was characterized by monotremes, the jurassic by marsupials, and the latter by the first of man's direct progenitors, the placentals. the flora of this period consisted almost entirely of gymnosperms, or naked seed plants, and, as far as we know, at the close of this second great division of geological time, conditions on the earth were, in all respects, very much as they are to-day. concerning the climatic conditions at the beginning of the cenozoic time, we have every reason to believe that from the commencement of the lower silurian epoch, until then, there were no climatic zones upon the earth. not only have coral formations been found in what are now arctic waters, when we know that such reefs are formed only in waters where a moderately warm temperature is constantly maintained, but the cephalipods of the genus ammonitoidea are found in what is now the antarctic zone, and in the torrid. while, at the present time, we cannot see how the obliquity of the earth's poles to the plane of the ecliptic could have been changed after the earth began its career as an independent planet, yet the facts above stated show that the climatic zones must have been unknown during the tertiary period. our common cypress, which is now so plentiful in florida and california, had very close relatives living as far north as spitzbergen, as lately as miocene time. magnolias, which are now so abundant in all of the gulf states, are plentifully found in the miocene strata of greenland. returning to the length of the tertiary period, it is well to note that, covering wyoming and nebraska, there was an immense lake, at least as large as lake superior is to-day, and into which several quite large rivers emptied, whose head waters were in the surrounding mountain ranges. this lake was at one time at least five thousand feet deep, and was completely filled up by the fine mud and silt, as the formation now shows, although at the known rate of filling in of smaller modern lakes, into which rivers, which originate in glaciers, empty, this would have taken the better part of fifty thousand years. this figure is particularly conservative, as during the eocene period, there could have been neither glaciers nor melting snowfields to assist in the denudation at the head waters of the tributary rivers. during the miocene period, many of the best geologists hold that america and europe were connected, and there are certain similarities in their fauna and flora which make this very probable. supposing that this depression which constitutes the bed of the north atlantic ocean, took place at the highest known rate of subsidence, as measured upon the coast of sweden to-day, it is almost impossible to state the amount of time that necessarily elapsed from the beginning of the sinking of this strip until it finally went below the surface of the water. that such changes in level did take place in the tertiary period, no one can doubt, as chalk deposits in england, which must have been laid down in the deep oceans, have now an elevation of thousands of feet. the nummulite limestone of this same period is found in both the alps and the himalayas, at an elevation as great as ten thousand feet. the consideration of the fact that the greatest known rate of elevation or subsidence is, perhaps, scarcely more than two feet per century makes the figure of five hundred thousand years, as a minimum for pliocene time, seem rather conservative. toward the close of the tertiary era the finishing touches were placed upon some of the greatest of the geological works. the folding of the strata, which had been going on for a long period in eastern new york, was brought to an end by a violent rupture therein, and the out-rushing igneous rock, which was subsequently cooled rapidly by the floods of water flowing over it, gave us the beautiful palisades of the hudson river. in the west, this folding resulted in the rocky mountains and the coast range, with their attendant high plateaux. in europe, the alps and the pyrenees mountains both belong to this period, while the grandest and highest of all mountain chains, the himalayas, of asia, were the culminating effect of the gigantic foldings of the earth's crust. the deposits of the tertiary period will aggregate somewhat more than three thousand feet, and, inasmuch as this entire time was one of continued change in level, or the fluctuation between the subsidence of the earth's strata on the one hand and the elevation on the other (particularly in the pliocene period), it is very hard to form any conjecture as to the actual amount of time required to do this work. certainly, from what we know of the rate at which like phenomena are taking place at the present time in northeastern north america, in northwestern europe, and western asia, the figure, as sometimes given, of ten million years seems very conservative. in the brief review which we have just given, of what can be conservatively considered the minimum limits of geological time, we have taken into account generally only periods of activity, and in but a few cases has any estimation been hazarded as to the proportion which this was of the whole time consumed in bringing about the changes which the fossils show so clearly to have taken place during the various epochs. but one thing should be kept clearly in mind, and that is, that no matter how long geological time may seem, it is but an infinitely small fraction of the period which must have elapsed since the world came into existence, as this globe had to cool down to below the boiling point of water before any geological records could be made. when thought of in this way, the laurentian period becomes as but yesterday, and even man's dwelling place, which seems relatively so large, dwindles into nothingness, when compared with the vastness of the interstellar spaces or the size of the larger stars. whoever conscientiously endeavors to form any idea of the teachings of astronomy and geology, must necessarily feel any prejudice which he had for man as the object and culmination of either the evolutionary or creative power, shrink at a tremendous rate, while over his mentality comes the sense of his diminutiveness, which awakens in him a brotherly feeling for even the primitive single-celled laurentian eozoon canadensis, or the unnucleated monera of the present time. it must have been this same sense-perception in the hindoos which made them worship and revere life wherever they found it, and which inspired them with so active a sympathy toward all living things. chapter ii the length of time during which man has existed in the preceding chapter, no mention has been made of the length of the quaternary sub-division of cenozoic time, and it will now be our aim to briefly review this period and then investigate the evidence which we have as to how much of this time man has been a portion of its fauna. with the opening of the quaternary period, we come to what is undoubtedly the most remarkable era in all geological time. from a climate which had been, heretofore, uniformly, warmly temperate, with but few exceptions, we come to a period known as the glacial, in which, by a depression in the temperature, all vegetation and animals in high latitudes were killed; _viz._: in the central west--almost to the ohio river; in europe--to the northern part of italy--while the addition of vast quantities of ice to the oceans, destroyed all life in them to about the latitude of the northern portion of the gulf of mexico. nor was this period of cold confined to the northern hemisphere, as the southern part of south america and africa show. concerning the cause of the glacial period, but little is positively known. of the theories which have been advanced, it seems very plausible that perhaps two more clearly account for the conditions which must have then existed, if we consider them together, than all the rest. the geological record teaches us that in the so-called glacial period, at least two distinct epochs of low temperature, and the consequential accumulation of ice, are to be definitely discerned. still further back, we see evidence of glacial action in the permian strata, and possibly as far back as the cambrian formations, although these eras of cold are not comparable with the period at the beginning of the quaternary time. croll, the scottish physicist, first called attention to the fact that at certain regular intervals of time, the precession of the equinoxes, and the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, would so act in conjunction as to render favorable a great many conditions which would certainly all point toward a period of extreme cold. he calculated that the earth was traveling around the sun in an ellipse of maximum eccentricity, and that winter was occurring in the northern hemisphere when the earth was furthest from the sun, for the last time some quarter of a million years ago. about eighty thousand years after this date, the coincidence of the two phenomena reached a maximum effect, and about eighty thousand years later, climatic conditions were again about as we have them to-day. upon this hypothesis, another period of extreme cold must have existed some one-half million years earlier, as calculations upon the same premises as were used in the last computation will show. it is likewise true that, according to this theory, there must have been at least one other such period further back in geological time, and it is now to be seen whether our records, as shown by the strata, establish these facts. prior to the enunciation of this theory by croll, the famous english geologist, sir charles lyell, from measurements of the strata, had calculated that the last period of glaciation occurred about as croll stated, and that a period of cold and ice far more intense and extensive occurred some four or five hundred thousand years earlier. mr. laing has shown that, in order to make such conditions as must have existed at this time, not only is a low temperature necessary, but a certain amount of land must have an elevation sufficient to give the required initial fall to the ice river, so that it may move over the obstacles in its way, and that the higher such elevations in the arctic zones, and the greater the humidity of the air when it strikes such elevated polar plateaux, the more augmented will be the probability of glacial activity. the rapidity of the glacier's movement can have no bearing upon the duration of the glacial period, inasmuch as a certain length of time may have been required for the ice-cap to form and push forward to a certain place, and it may have remained there for an indeterminate period, governed only by the amount of snow deposited upon the original source, and the rapidity of melting at the moraine. in eastern england, no less than four distinct boulder clays have been found separated by the débris deposited from the moraines of each ice sheet, and a few hundred miles away in france, the record is so certain that we know that the arctic fauna and flora gave away twice for that of the warmer parts of the temperate zones. we are certain that both that portion of scandinavia and canada, which were the centers of the great european and american ice-caps, had an elevation greatly in excess of what it is to-day, at the time of the glacial epoch. during the first glaciation, eastern canada, or that part south of hudson's bay, was certainly twenty-five hundred feet higher than it is now, and the area covered by ocean formations or marine beds to the southward, show that at the same time these sections were very much lower than they are at the present day. on the other side of the atlantic ocean, the elevation in norway was at least a couple of thousand feet more than at present; while both england and ireland have risen a considerable amount since this period. there are other ways by which we may form some estimate of the time which has elapsed since the melting away of the great glaciers, besides that given by croll. from measurements taken on table rock, at niagara falls, which we know has receded in post-glacial times from lewiston to the place which it occupies at present, we are certain that lyell was not far wrong when he estimated this to have taken at least sixty thousand years. shaler, on entirely different grounds,--mainly the redistribution of certain angiosperms--has arrived at figures in excess of these. calculations made upon the canyons of the columbia, san joaquin, and colorado rivers, all show the estimations previously given to be conservative. of course, the figures given will apply only to the time which has elapsed since the melting of the american ice-cap, as we have no means of knowing that the american and european glaciers acted at all in unison in their retreat to the northward. the manner in which we can get some idea of the length of time required to account for the enormous quantity of work done in the champlain period, is by taking into account the deposits which lie in almost all of the great river valleys which were covered by the glaciers, or whose watersheds were made into lakes by the subsidence of the land to the north, and the rapid melting of that portion of the ice-cap which contained stones, dirt, and other material picked up in the travels of the glacier across the country. the rhine, the rhone, and the danube in europe, and the st. lawrence, the connecticut, and the mississippi in america, all flow through valleys lined with cliffs of loess. these accumulations overlying the coarser sands and gravels, and conforming to the river valleys, have been measured in the case of the rhine, and were found to be about eight hundred feet in depth. it is unreasonable to suppose that these deposits being, as they are, material thrown down out of the water after the rivers had lost their transporting power, could have accumulated at a greater rate than that now going on in the rivers, such as the mississippi and the nile, to-day, and if this was the case, these deposits must have taken no less than three hundred and twenty-five thousand years to form. inasmuch as this work was all done during the champlain period, this figure can be safely taken as the minimum for the measure of the duration of that time. arriving now at the recent period of quaternary time, we find in europe evidences of a very short and less intense period of cold; in the remains of the reindeer and other arctic animals in southern france. associated with these, although of a later period, we find the bones of the cave bear, hyena, and lion, and in many of the localities intimately associated with these are the bones of man. in fact, since the first discovery of the paleolithic implements in the gravels of the somme, there have been almost countless finds of human remains in england, france, belgium, spain, italy, and greece, in europe; algiers, morocco, egypt, and natal, in africa; in china, japan, india, syria, and palestine, in asia; in brazil and argentina in south america, and in no less than ten states of this country, associated with stone implements or paleoliths, and all of which, dating from the beginning of the quaternary period, have established the certainty of human existence during the entire quaternary era, beyond the possibility of doubt. the evidences of the existence of the human species during tertiary time are many, and hardly a year goes by without adding another discovery of human remains in the deposits belonging to this period. to begin with, the existence of man so generally and widely distributed as we find him to be at the beginning of the quaternary period, is almost _prima facie_ evidence of his occupation of the earth for some time previous. with the means of communication and the motives for it, such as they must have been at this remote period, we know that thousands of years would have been required to scatter any species all over the earth, as we have seen that man was from the locations of the remains found. further than this, there are three well-authenticated cases where the bones of tertiary animals have been found, upon which there were cuts made by edged tools, which could have been made only by human agency. since these have been discovered, crude implements as well as human bones have been found in no less than a dozen places in both the eastern and western hemispheres, which attest, beyond doubt, to man's having existed since the middle miocene or early pliocene time. we not only have the opinions of such authorities as rames, hamy, mortillet, quatrefages, and delauney, to accept in this matter, but the more recent thorough investigations of laing and haeckel. turning now from geological evidence to that founded upon other observations, as to the length of time man has been an inhabitant of the earth, perhaps one of the most interesting discoveries was that of the tumuli or mounds of shells of such animals as the oyster, cockle, limpet, etc., and, along with this, the bones of birds, wild animals, and fish, together with stone implements and rude pottery. these kitchen-middens were first discovered in denmark, but they have since been found in many countries where savages have lived along the coast. in many of the swiss lakes, such as zurich and neufchatel, there have been found piles driven into the ground, around which, in dredging, human bones, as well as stone implements, have been brought up, and which are now known to have been the dwelling-places and remains of prehistoric peoples, who located in this manner so as to protect themselves from prowling wild animals and from their savage neighbors. from the amount and character of these deposits, we are forced to assume that the habitations were used for a long period, and from geological computation of the time required to deposit the silt around these piles in the swiss lake-villages, and from the similarity of the remains in the danish peat-mosses and the kitchen-middens no period could be assigned to their antiquity of less than seven thousand years. our earliest record of historic man is found in the valley of the nile, where we can say with certainty that, over seven thousand years ago, there existed a high state of civilization under the old egyptian empire. menes was the first recorded king who sat on the throne, and during the six dynasties of kings which composed this period, we see the rise to supremacy of memphis, the building of the pyramids, the accumulation of a varied and extensive literature, and the perfection of the industrial and fine arts. in fact, so faithfully and indestructibly were the lines of human faces reproduced upon stone and other materials, that, at this day, we have no difficulty in identifying the different races of men from their resemblance at the present time. menes, himself, carried to completion the great engineering feat of turning the course of the nile so as to obtain a site for his capital, at memphis. his successor was not only a patron but a practitioner of the art of medicine. from the monuments and papyri of the great tombs of ghizeh and sakkara, we have learned so much of the social and political life of egypt at this period through the deciphering of the rosetta stone by champollion, that we may be said to have a very accurate knowledge of mankind, as his existence was conditioned in egypt from four to five thousand years before the beginning of our present era. from memphis, the seat of the government first shifts to heracleopolis, and then to thebes, and, during these changes, we see egypt go back into the night of semi-barbarism (comparatively speaking), and after a long period of time to again develop a high state of civilization, under a new language and a new religion, in the eleventh dynasty. egyptian influence extended from the equator on the south, to southern syria on the north, and isis and osiris were the deities that commanded the veneration of the then civilized world. the kings of this dynasty built the famous labyrinth of fayoum, where in the desert was formed a large artificial lake with tunnels and sluices so arranged that the annual inundations of the nile were partially controlled by allowing the surplus water to fill this lake, and in the time of a drouth, letting it out to irrigate the valley as needed. many temples, obelisks, and statues were erected, and the period was one of social and literary activity. about two thousand years before christ, the seat of the government was transferred from thebes to the delta, and, shortly after this, the hyksos dynasty began with a conquest by these invaders, who laid all egypt under tribute. the conquerors adopted both the civilization and the religion of their subjects, and reigned over egypt somewhat more than five hundred years. their expulsion marks the beginning of the new empire, which extended the egyptian influence from the persian gulf to the mediterranean, and subjugated both babylon and nineveh. from this time on, we are on certain and firm historical grounds, and with the founding of the great library at alexandria, by ptolemy philadelphus, egypt received her last great literary impulse, and since the fourth century of this era the part which she has played in the struggle of humanity has been inconsiderable. from other data gathered by horner, who sunk numerous shafts across the nile valley at memphis, and who brought up copper knives and pottery from depths approximately of sixty feet, it has been calculated, from the rate of deposition in that valley to-day, that these remains are upward of twenty-five thousand years old. in other places, paleoliths have been found that are undoubtedly very much older than the oldest temples and tombs. furthermore, we know that in all the traditions of this country, the first inhabitants are represented as being autochthonous, which, if correct, must mean a very great state of antiquity, so far as man is concerned; if it be granted that this egyptian civilization, which is known to have existed at memphis, had to develop of its own accord in the valley of the nile, abundantly fertile though it always has been. in the valleys of the euphrates and tigris rivers, we have further evidence of the existence of a high state of civilization, as taken from the cylinder of sargon i, which reads, "sharrukin the mighty king am i, who knew not his father, but whose mother was a royal princess, who, to conceal my birth, placed me in a basket of rushes closed with pitch, and cast me into the river, from which i was saved by akki, the water-carrier, who brought me up as his own child." the date of this king is generally accepted as about four thousand years before christ, and his exploits have been found pictured and described on the relics taken from cyprus, syria, and babylonia. he did for mesopotamia what menes did for egypt, and the prestige of his arms, and the renown of his civilization, spread over all asia minor. as a patron of literature, he founded some of the most famous libraries in babylonia, and compiled a work of seventy-two volumes on astronomy and astrology, which was even translated into greek. from recent researches, which have resulted in the finding of a great many clay tablets from the libraries of mesopotamia, it seems certain that this sargon i, upon his ascension to the throne, found the accadian people (he was a semite) already enjoying a high civilization, with sacred temples, a sacred and profane literature, and one who had a large and well-ordered knowledge of astronomy, as well as of agriculture and the industrial arts. from the archæological remains which have been discovered, and, in particular, the marble statue of a king by the name of david, which was recently found at bisinya, and whose antiquity is probably greater than , b. c., it is entirely conservative to assume that chaldean civilization was as old, if not older, than that of egypt; while no figure can be set upon the length of time which was required in these fertile valleys for this state of affairs to develop from a condition of barbarism. in china, strangely enough, where the oldest historical records would be expected, we can find nothing to compare with the egyptian papyri or the chaldean clay-cylinders, and competent authorities are well agreed that there is great reason to suppose that much of the early civilization was brought from accadia. in any case, at the dawn of history, we find china just as she is to-day:--an overpopulated, agricultural country, where blind imitation of predecessors ruled, and, consequently, progress, unless brought in by conquest, is extremely slow. if the empire was founded, as has been supposed, by an accadian invasion or immigration, which must have occurred about , b. c., or at least before the time of sargon i, then these wanderers drove out the aboriginal inhabitants, the mioutse, who have been crowded at last into the mountains of the western provinces. certain it is that no greater date can be assigned to the civilization of this country, at the beginning of its historical record, than about , b. c., which time is known in chinese tradition as the "age of the five rulers." perhaps next in order of antiquity, comes the small country known as elam, lying between the tigris river and the lagros mountains, and extending to the south along the eastern shore of the persian gulf to the arabian sea. as in both egypt and chaldea, this country was brought into prominence by an aggressive and warlike king,--the famous cyrus of history,--and, fortunately, his clay-cylinder; from one of the magnificent libraries of susa, or shushan; was recently found by mr. rassam, amid the débris composing the mound, which is now the only mark left to show where these great centers of population once were, in the fertile valleys and coast plains of this part of asia; and this cylinder is now kept, with hundreds from like sources, in the british museum at london. on this memorial cylinder, cyrus gives his genealogy and an account of his exploits, and we find that he came from a line of kings, and held to the popular faith of his country, thanking and petitioning the whole elamite hierarchy of gods. cyrus carried the elamite arms into southern syria and palestine, and overthrew mesopotamia about , b. c. it was the reaction from this conquest that caused some of the most gigantic struggles of antiquity. of the phoenician cities of tyre and sidon, no definite historical record can be found earlier than from fifteen hundred to two thousand years before christ. the hittite civilization and influence we find at their height at about the same time, but here we can get no inkling of a greater antiquity for man than that given in the middle egyptian empire. in the cities of troy and mycenæ, we find civilization at its crest some five hundred years later, and it is not until we come to arabia that we again find evidence of such high antiquity as we find in chaldea and egypt. the old kingdom of saba was built upon the ruins of a still older, known as ma'in, and the former was in its decline as an empire at the beginning of the eighth century, b. c. now, contemporary history shows that this country has gone through all the transformations which egypt and chaldea had, and if this is also true of the ma'in kingdom, then a date of great antiquity must be given to it. but these are not certainties, while in the cases of chaldea and egypt there can be no mistake. the israelite civilization was at its height under david and solomon, about contemporaneously with that of troy and mycenæ, and even the hebrew tradition does not attempt to antedate the year , b. c., so that we can obtain no information from this source. greece flourished but five hundred years before the present era, and even if we regard homer as authentic, no more remote date can be given to their earliest civilization than that of the attack by the hellenes upon troy, which was about , b. c. in the western hemisphere archeologists are every year making valuable discoveries in mexico and peru which will probably give a remote date for the civilizations which flourished in these countries long before the conquests of the spaniards. the great pyramids of the sun and moon on the mexican plateau and the similarity of their design and orientation with the egyptian all point to an interchange of ideas between the east and the west in prehistoric time. the geological table given at the close of this chapter may be of interest, as a careful consideration of it, and the foregoing facts, will show the real value of man in nature. that man is ascendent now, does not, in the light of experience, mean necessarily that he will by any means remain so. in the warm champlain period, we know that brute mammals thrived and attained gigantic size, and, as dana aptly remarks, "the great abundance of their remains and their conditions show that the climate and food were all that could have been desired." yet the mastodon and the cave-bear have gone, together with countless other species which have become extinct, and, if science teaches anything at all, it tells us that nature delights in fostering one species at the expense of another. in the case of man, we most clearly see this. "for the historical succession of vertebrate fossils corresponds completely with the morphological scale which is revealed to us by comparative anatomy and ontology. after the silurian fishes come the dipnoi of the devonian period,--the carboniferous amphibia, the permian reptilia and the mesozoic mammals. of these again, the lowest forms, the monotremes, appear first in the triassic period; the marsupials in the jurassic, and then the oldest placentals in the cretaceous. of the placentals, in turn, the first to appear in the oldest tertiary period are the lowest primates, the prosimiæ, which are followed by the simiæ, in the miocene. of the carrhinæ, the cynopitheci precede the anthropomorpha; from one branch of the latter, during the pliocene period, arises the apeman, without speech, and from him descends finally the speaking man. "since the germ of the human embryo passes through the same chordula-stages as the germ of all other vertebrates; since it evolves, similarly, out of the two germinal layers of a gastrula, we infer by virtue of the biogenetic law, the early existence of corresponding ancestral forms. most important of all is the fact that the human embryo, like that of all other animals, arises, originally, from a single cell, for this stem-cell--the impregnated egg cell--points, indubitably, to a corresponding unicellular ancestor, a primitive laurentian protozoon." in the foregoing quotation, haeckel clearly states what every geologist and embryologist plainly knows to be the truth, and in this case, as in all others, does it hold good: "because truth is truth, to follow truth were wisdom, in the scorn of consequence." for any human being, endowed with reason, to wilfully deceive himself could be nothing less than the height of folly. there is nothing more pitiful in all literature than cicero, at the close of his "de senectute," bowed down with years, and crushed with grief over the loss of his son and intimate friends, saying that if his belief in personal immortality be illogical and untrue, as he almost intimates that he thinks it more than likely to be, then he wishes to willingly delude himself for the satisfaction which he will get therefrom. how different from the man who, in his impeachment of verres, or his defense of archias, runs the chance of public disfavor,--always little less than death to the politician,--or even to that staunch patriot, who, with almost his last breath, defied the powerful antony, although it cost him his life! how strange it is that tully did not realize that allegiance to the truth, regardless of whether it be for or against us, carries with it, _per se_, the greatest of all virtues,--the virtue of sincerity. polonius' death demonstrated the truth of his philosophy: "this above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." in considering this problem of the origin and destiny of man, which, axiomatically, includes ourselves, let us remember that it matters not what we may wish, for we have no choice in the matter,--the truth is inexorable, and, consequently, cannot be influenced. it is directly up to each human being to work out this problem for himself, and this can only be done by the fearless recognition of the truth, wherever found. it is in this spirit that the preceding and the succeeding chapters are written, and if they contain misstatements and errors, the author will not only most cheerfully acknowledge the same, when proven to him, but will accept the logical conclusions drawn therefrom, although they may completely revolutionize the philosophy of life as he now sees it, and is trying to live it. geological table, showing approximate minimum duration in time. comparative duration of periods: paleozoic, / ths; mesozoic, / ths; cenozoic, / th. geological time, at least , , years. geological epoch | petrographic | ascendant form | thickness sub-division | formation | of life | of of g. e. | | | deposits | | | paleozoic | | | | | | laurentian | archaic igneous | eozoon | | rocks | canadense | , ft. cambrian or | | | l. silurian | potsdam sandstone |} | | magnesian limestone |} diatoms | , ft. | trenton limestone |} | | | | upper silurian| niagara limestone |} | | medina sandstone |} | | saline formations |} lower fishes | , ft. | lower helderberg |} | | oriskany sandstone |} | | | | devonian | corniferous or |} | | upper helderberg |} | | limestone, |} dipnoi | | hamilton, |} | | portage and chemung|} | | shales |} | | | | carboniferous | crinoidal limestone |} | | lower coal measures |} | | mill stone grit |} amphibia and | , ft. | upper coal measures |} sagillaria | | permian sandstone |} | | | | mesozoic | | | | | | triassic | sandstones | monotremes and | | | gymnosperms | jurassic | wassatch mountains | marsupials | , ft. | | | cretaceous | sandstone and chalk | placentals | | | | cenozoic | | | | | | tertiary-- | | lowest primates | eocene | | and angiosperms| , ft. miocene | | simiæ | pliocene | | catarrhinæ | | | | quaternary-- | | | glacial | | | champlain| | | recent | | | chapter iii the physical limitations of existence the tremendous strides made in the sciences of biology, histology, physiology, and psychology in the latter part of the last century, in connection with the development of the science of organic chemistry, have done much to unravel the life-mystery from a physical point of view. one by one the determining characteristics of the mentality of the _genus homo_ have dwindled down until to-day even reason in its broadest sense is granted by the most conservative to some of the vegetable forms of life, and any unbiased mind will have hard work to determine the difference between the so-called "brownian" movement of particles of gamboge when macerated in a little water, or even of bits of camphor when dropped upon the surface of water, and the movements of the particles of a protoplasmic mass; although one is caused by temperature changes, and the other by chemism. the selectative growth of a vertex of a crystal in a saturated solution, and the claw of a crab, both of which have previously suffered the loss of their respective parts, are perhaps not so different as the words "organic" or "inorganic" would lead us to believe when applied as a classification to their principals. we know that in the life-process, as everywhere else, the law of substance and the law of the conservation of energy are held inviolate, and the theory which treats of life as a characteristic entity apart from the condition which makes it possible, is certainly false. the matter which composes the living body is chemically the same as that which we find everywhere. the fact that some living bodies have the power to form protoplasm out of its chemical elements or simple combinations of them, or only assimilate such protoplasm after it has been formed from inorganic matter, constitutes, in the broadest sense, the difference between the vegetable and the animal life, as we now know it. but, whether living or dead, the protoplasm has about the same composition, and, therefore, it must be that life _per se_ is in reality only the manifestation of a form of motion. science, by deduction, teaches us to look upon the living body very much as a theoretically perfect motor-generator set, the line terminals of the dynamo being the feed wires of the motor. such a machine, standing still, would be "dead" in all senses of the word, although, potentially, its integrity would be the same as when in operation. but, once put in motion, this machine would directly come up to speed, and maintain itself at its normal rate of rotation until something interfered with it, or set up resistance within its circuit. from this time on, its rate of rotation would diminish until it stopped. if its integrity were suddenly violated, this stop would come at once. fifty years ago, heat, light, and electricity were all talked of, and believed to be forces whose existence was in no way dependent upon matter. since the investigations of thomson and helmholtz, there is no unbiased scientist who can for a minute think that the manifestation of any of these could possibly exist without material of some sort, such as in a general way we call matter. even chemism, the most obscure of all physical forces, we know to be very closely allied to gravitative attraction, and to be so powerful since it operates through such short distances. in fact, if we adopt the only known feasible hypothesis to account for the formation of matter, we must, in the end, admit that motion, and not matter, is the most potent of all the primal causes which we can imagine to-day. if we could eliminate motion entirely from the universe, we do not know of a single characteristic which would be left, by which we could identify existence as we know it, certainly not even matter itself. every investigation or experiment which has been made in the domain of the natural sciences has only amassed additional evidence to the tremendous amount already gathered; all going certainly to prove that at least the former two of the old three universally accepted postulates were false, _viz._: the free moral agency of man, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of a personal god, or a power outside of and superior to nature. the latter will in no wise interest us, inasmuch as experience has taught us that, in general as well as in particular, the universe is governed by law; all honor to humboldt and descartes for so clearly demonstrating this. we are quite sure to-day that, roughly estimated, each pound of human flesh represents an amount of potential energy equal to about sixteen million foot-pounds, and that all of the life-processes are, in the last analysis, purely physical, and that they follow physical laws. any exertion, either muscular or nervous, which we make, over and above that supplied by the energy in our assimilated food, will have to be taken from the stock as represented in the tissue,--consequently, continued work means hunger; if continued longer without food, it means exhaustion, and if continued longer without food and rest intervening, it means the deterioration of the tissues. the recent investigations of matthews upon the manner of nerve action, and the fact that the same is due to substances known as reversible gelatines, as well as to the cause of the negative variation of nerves exposed to exciting stimuli, all show that these most complex of life's processes are as purely physical, in the largest sense, as the most simple ones. the artificial fertilization of sterile eggs by the use of dilute solutions, whose actions might almost be called catalytic, still further emphasizes the fact that life's processes, even in the embryo, are essentially physical. take, for instance, the sterile egg of the sea-urchin; the two per cent. solution of potassium cyanide; the continued constant temperature for a definite time, and all of the other conditions which enter into the development of this crude protoplasmic mass, are all physical factors, regardless of the fact that the result is a living organism, where we would, according to our old ideas, certainly expect an undeveloped sterile egg, or a potentially dead body. as with this ovum, so with the vegetable protoplasmic mass in the germinal radical of a seed: if its development is once started, it must continue its natural course without interference, upon pain of speedy degeneration upon interruption, and, in this light, both the egg and the grain of seed are places where life can be started (or motion on a larger scale begun) rather than living things before their development began, or while they were lying in their dormant state. the death-knell to the theory of the personal immortality of the human soul, as ordinarily enunciated, was rung in by the german biologist, hertzig, when he succeeded in bringing the living ovum into the presence of the ciliated sperm-cells under the microscope, while in the field of a lens of sufficient power to enable him to see clearly what took place. it is sufficient for our purpose to state that the minute the spermatozoon had pierced the cell wall of the egg-cell, the new individual of that species came into existence, and had, potentially, all of the life-possibilities, or was, in fact, as much alive as it would have been if this had happened under conditions which would have been favorable to its further development. the fact that the fertilized egg-cell immediately forms a mucous sheath the moment that its nucleus coalesces with that of the spermatozoon to prevent the further entrance of other spermatozoa, has done much to give rise and impetus to the theory that each cell has a soul, and that when these two nuclei completely fuse together, the resulting cytula, or fertilized ovum or stem-cell, has a soul peculiarly its own; which is made up in much the same way as two corresponding magnetic fields which are blended when two magnets are brought within the territory of each other's influence and unite to form a resultant field. that each of the sexual una-cells is distinguished by a form of sensation and motion of its own, and that this is true throughout the whole animal world, has given peculiar significance to these empirical facts of conception; as these will at once offer an explanation of the mysterious influence of heredity, such as was never possible heretofore. that each human individual has a beginning of existence with the coalescing of the nuclei of the parent cells, just as he has an end of existence with the violation of the integrity of his physical body, whether after the lapsing of one second or one century, must, to anyone who has observed biological phenomena like the above, be perfectly clear. with the recent development of the science of embryology, there is no longer any ground upon which man can lay claim, in the largest sense, to free moral agency. conditioned as he is, even before birth, by the influence of heredity, which science has now localized to the inner nucleus of the cytula, not only are his natural tastes and temperament quite largely determined for him, but often, in at least as large a sense, his mental and physical possibilities. it was our genial dr. holmes, who, some years ago, said, "if you would make a man, you must begin at least four generations before he is born," and, as embryology has since proven, he spoke more truth than he thought. any person possessing a normally trained observation cannot help but note in their aptitude, or in their manner of doing certain things, their debt to their ancestors. how seldom (we might say, never) do we find in our friends what we had pictured and hoped for, owing, perhaps more than anything else, to the baneful influence of heredity. degenerate features, scrofula, epilepsy, melancholia, etc., are all practically in every case the gift of some progenitor. tendencies to insanity and crime are clearly recognized to-day by the administrators of the law, in every civilized country, as possible a legacy as coin, real estate, or chattels were a few centuries ago. whatever influence can be ascribed to heredity, as a positive limitation to human existence, we know absolutely that in a much larger sense is man a victim of his environment, particularly during the period of his childhood and adolescence. professor loeb has shown that at least as large proportion (possibly one-half) of the influence of heredity may be eliminated by the artificial fertilization of the ovum of many species, but embryology tells us that it is beyond the possibilities of science to ever render impotent the adaptive tendency of the individual. with human beings, the importance of environment is much greater under a high state of civilization than in the condition of savagery or barbarism, since the possibilities of achievement are infinitely greater in the individual well-educated than in a condition of illiteracy. what would the mathematical genius of newton or leibnitz accomplish in developing the calculus, had they been born among the patagonians or the bushmen of australia? would napoleon's military talent have availed him anything if he had been placed by birth among the cliff-dwellers of arizona instead of the fomenting political corruption of overpopulated france? even in a much more restricted sense, austerlitz, marengo, and lodi could not have become noted as the stepping-stones toward his imperialism, had he not attended the military school at brienne. in the discussion of this question, of the freedom of the will, or the free moral agency of man, it seems almost preposterous that educated people still cling to a theory so at variance with all known facts. that all men are created free and equal is not only relatively but absolutely untrue in the largest sense, but that they are all entitled to, and have equal possibilities, so far as is within their power, is not only the meaning which the writer of the "declaration" intended to convey, but is what every fair-minded man must necessarily accord to all of his fellow-men, even regardless of sex. in jefferson's time, the last clause could not have been inserted, but at the beginning of the twentieth century, at least in four of the states of this country, woman has been given her full property rights, and in one she has full and complete citizenship on an equal basis with man. it cannot be many years until culture and a sense of equity will have been so disseminated that, at least under democratic forms of government, woman will be given her full civil and political rights, and regarded, as she justly should be, as no longer a forced parasite of man, but as potentially his equal in every respect. while considering this matter, it is worthy of note that no less an authority than havelock ellis has conclusively shown that, not only in the moral world, where woman is and has been the acknowledged superior of man, is she at least his peer, but also in her intellectual power and physical development as concerns the evolution of the race when surrounded by equally advantageous conditions has she occupied the very van. the chivalrous and insane worship which man has bestowed upon her as an exchange for her condoning his moral crimes, has tended both to make him lax in his morality, by reason of her readily granted forgiveness, and to rob her of her rights as his equal, by keeping her in seclusion and incapacitated for self-support. probably no one thing has worked more harm to the race as a whole than this, and it is perhaps the crowning glory of the age in which we are living that woman, in america, no longer has to accept the physical and moral derelict which the average man is when he comes to the age at which he has finished "sowing his wild oats," and wishes to settle down to a domestic existence, as a candidate for reform under the tutelage of a pure and virtuous woman; or by refusing his proffer of marriage, become the laughing-stock of not only her suitor, but of her own sex as well, under the name of "an old maid." as woman has become capable of self-support, man has lost his power over her, and his accountability for his actions has directly increased, just as woman has gone from under his power. that woman can have an honorable destiny to fulfill other than as a convenience or source of amusement for man is, at last, after countless ages of darkness, beginning to dawn upon the world of culture and intelligence. perhaps the greatest of all human limitations arises from the fact that after the gratification of physical desire, of whatsoever kind, comes satiety. the food which, to the starving man, was priceless, and which afforded him keen delight as he ate it, but nauseates him when temporarily his appetite is satisfied and try, as hard as he may, he can contain no more. how many a man has failed to realize this, and, after a youth of penury has, by the closest application, obtained a competence, and by its use, a gratification of his desires, but without consideration kept up his earning power, and hoarded his wealth, only to find, to his sorrow, that it was impossible to furnish gratifications when he no longer had the shadow of a desire! no matter how much of a gormand a man is he can eat but a certain small quantity of food per day, the amount of which varies directly with the manual labor which he does, and, as a usual thing, the more he is able to purchase, the less likely he is to do that labor which alone will make his money of value to him from a gastronomic standpoint. should his desire be to pale "the lilies of the field" with his raiment, he is still limited to a certain quantity and character of vesture, so that in comparison with "unreasoning" vegetable life, his pride will not be greatly gratified should he possess any sense of humor at all. if prestige and prowess resulting as the outcome of any physical endeavor be his ambition, he must realize that whatever pinnacle of popularity he may attain to, it will be only a few years until he must acknowledge a successful rival. in the constant mutation of all the conditions which surround human existence, we find another most potent limitation to life. how few of these vital conditions, from a physical standpoint, are under our control? and yet how important some of the even trivial ones really are? the extent to which we are dependent upon health, comeliness, wealth, location, the physical aspects in the lives of our friends, and all of those complex details which go to make up our routine of life, can hardly be over-estimated. starting, as the individual does, with a complete lack of experience from which to judge, and without even the power to exercise his reason, as this develops within him after years of mistakes, until his fund of recollection of these errors constitutes a basis of experimental knowledge, he is at best upon most dangerous ground in early life. he is handicapped just in proportion as he has not some guardian who pilots him until he is able to judge for himself of the character of his actions. it is the most pathetic thought which the human mind is capable of comprehending, that nature cannot be imprecated, bribed, or frightened out of her relentless rule of exacting full and complete consequence of our every action. ignorance is no plea for mercy before her court, and her penalties are exacted without either fear or favor. nor is her tribunal cognizant of any plan of vicarious atonement, but in many cases partially are we visited with the penalties of our progenitors' disobedience to her immutable laws. in view of these truths, let us not falsely be inflated with pride, because of any ephemeral successes. let us in the moments of aggrandizement remember massillon, as he stood at the bier of "le grand monarch," and when we consider the truth in his opening statement, in that magnificent funeral oration, "god only is great," we must feel our sense of importance leave us. whoever stood erect with egotism over the corpse of a friend, even though he be as mad as lear, raving, "o that a horse, a dog, a rat hath life, and thou no breath!"? our control over our physical condition is worthy of mention only on account of its paucity, and we can never appreciate our true position on earth, until at times we are filled with the sentiment, so well expressed by bryant: "in sadness then i ponder, how quickly fleets the hour, of human strength and action, man's courage and his power." it is not for us to be crushed with the appreciation of our real lack of importance, from a physical and moral viewpoint, but no scheme of life can be built upon a sure foundation without an understanding of what in the case of schopenhauer, and some other brilliant intellects, formed the basis of their pessimistic philosophy. that we are not absolutely free, morally, to select our course, does not keep us from being relatively so, and, after all, the destiny of the individual is very largely within his power to shape. it is only through incessant and vigorous struggle that anything worth while is accomplished, and nature, in this and many other instances, is with us, since we become capacitated for greater endeavor through practice, and the habit, once formed, makes the effort for advancement become almost an instinct within us, so that our mental activity does not have to be continually consumed in holding our will to the course, but can be applied to fighting our way upward along it. just as fresh recruits are unable to render the efficient service of veterans in actual warfare, so our capabilities, morally and intellectually, become augmented by constant practice. in the succeeding chapters, we shall attempt to show what is possible to be got from life by the use of all of the advantages which we have, and, in doing this, we shall elucidate a philosophy which is as consistent with the facts of life as known to us as we can make it. in the days of the decadence of the roman empire, when perhaps life was as uncertain as it ever was in the history of the world, the walls of the banquet halls of a certain clique were always adorned with skulls and other tokens of death, and according to all accounts, the mirth was more furious, and the licentiousness greater, as the guests were brought to realize the shortness of the time during which they had to live. we moderns may well get an idea from these feasts, in which the sentiment of solomon, as voiced a thousand years earlier--than the instance cited, and under similar conditions, "let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die," is the dominating one, and, in considering the shortness of life, realize that every minute should be filled with effort, as time which is passed is gone forever. even at the best, whatever we may elect to accomplish, should take all of our attention, and, although we may give it this, we will still be able to find moments in which we did not live up to our possibilities. chapter iv the purpose of life in the preceding chapters, we have attempted to get a view of life from a purely physical standpoint, and to show in what ways our race is connected with the terrestrial past, and how much the individual is dependent upon physical conditions, beyond his control, which constitute both the background and the framework of his existence. but as great as are these limitations, they are still not so important as they at first sight would seem, since at least a portion of each person's environment is of his own choosing, and both his body and his mind are, to a greater or lesser degree, what he may elect to make them. diligence and pertinacity have accomplished wonders along this line, and the poor struggling manual laborer very frequently turns out to be the great discoverer, not only in the province of geography, perhaps on the "dark continent," but along all the lines of truth. nor is even age a bar to achievement, as our own bard tells us: "cato learned greek at eighty; sophocles wrote his grand oedipus, and simonides bore off the prize of verse from his compeers when each had numbered more than fourscore years; and theophrastus, at fourscore and ten, had but begun his 'characters of men.' chaucer at woodstock, with his nightingales, at sixty, wrote the canterbury tales. goethe, at weimar, toiling to the last, completed faust, when eighty years were past." however, it is far more safe to assume that, whatever we have to do, should be started early in life, for, if we are to carve out our own destinies, we shall need all the time which we have at our disposal. while fully realizing the limiting conditions of heredity and environment, it is difficult to disprove the statement of cassius, when he says: "men, at some time, are masters of their fates; the fault, dear brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves; that we are underlings." perhaps bulwer-lytton has, in other words, more forcibly expressed a similar idea when he says: "we are our own fates. our own deeds are our own doomsmen." let us not shift the responsibility of our being other than we desire upon the shoulders of either our progenitors or circumstances, but, taking what is, as a fact, we should try to so regulate our conduct that what we wish may come to pass. it is not he who mourns the power which he has not--who becomes either the master of himself or of others, as the parable of the talents tells us, but it is he who, with a strong heart, dares and does, that achieves the great things on this earth. perhaps as close an analogy as we can get to the real life-condition, is to represent the individual's power over himself and his destiny, by one line, and the power of heredity and forced environment by one of equal length; then his power of accomplishment will be the _vector sum_ of these two lines. the line representing the uncontrollable condition will necessarily be longer (as the influence is more powerful) in youth, while, during the life period, it gradually shortens up until it reaches its minimum at the physical and mental culmination of life, or when the individual is at his best, and lengthens again as old age comes on, and the physical and mental forces decline, and habit and environment become the prevailing factors. with our responsibility clearly before us, then, let us investigate what is worth having. at this particular time, when all of the occidental world is hopelessly insane with its machiavelian money greed, it would seem that one of horace's sentiments, uttered satirically, had become the slogan of the battle: "get place and wealth, if possible, with grace; if not, by any means, get wealth and place." everything is thrown away by the average individual to-day, in his haste to satisfy his desire for inordinate wealth;--friendship, liberty, decency, humanity, honor, and even life itself, is hurled into the maw of this mammon, which is not satisfied with such sacrifices, and gives only hard, cold gold as a return for the priceless jewels of the human soul, and even this usually at a time in life when the little value which the mental ever possessed has gone, since there are no longer desires to gratify by it, with the one exception of that calling constantly for more of the counters which have lost their purchasing power. our forefathers thought of wealth as worth having only because with it came leisure, and with leisure came culture through application. sir john lubbock has well said, "if wealth is to be valued because it gives leisure, clearly it would be a mistake to sacrifice leisure in the struggle for wealth." unfortunately, our country is going through that period which all other nations that have risen to "world power" have had to pass through, only, in our case, we have reached this period much earlier in point of time, owing to our vast natural resources, the activity of scientific research, and the multitude of inventions resulting therefrom within the last century. but, with the enormous increase in our national wealth, the legislative branch of our government neglected to pass such restraining measures as would insure that no gigantic individual fortunes were amassed, or, in case that they were to have such wealth, bear its proportion of the tax; and, consequently, we are confronting a condition of both anarchy and socialism, inasmuch as, to-day, our law-making and higher judiciary branches of government both have a decided leaning toward whatever is favorable to capital, as against the interests of the laboring people. our lower judicial and executive officials, however, are in this country and in england, owing to rank partisan political influence, almost hopelessly under the domination of organized labor, whose leaders (necessarily demagogues) use all the means within their power to corrupt our system of jurisprudence to further their own ends. it remains to be seen whether our government, owing to its democratic form, will be able to right these evils and withstand the stress and strain which such a changed social system must necessarily involve. remembering our experience at the time of the civil war, which was brought about by very similar causes, we have every reason to be hopeful of the outcome. our vast alien population is the only factor which would be decidedly against us at a time such as this, since these foreigners have not had the privileges of citizenship where they were born, and into them has been instilled the blind hatred of all who possess wealth, owing to the monarchical feudal oppression of the poorer laboring classes, by the titled and plutocratic nobility of europe. the most crying need of our time is a law equitable for poor and rich alike, and a judicial and executive system which will see that this law is enforced and its penalties are imposed impartially. perhaps the worst feature about the possession of wealth, is that it tends to dwarf and belittle the finer sensibilities of man. its acquisition becomes a passion of such violence that, in the majority of cases, its possessor no longer cares for anything but the few paltry pleasures which it will buy. and as few as these apparently are, they are even less upon closer examination, since only the counterfeits of anything of real moral value can be purchased for money. purity, sincerity, culture, or love, owing to their nature, never could be bought for gold. yet many an individual has acquired the opposite of the four "pearls of great price" just mentioned, by having too much money at his disposal; and most truly has it been said that "poverty is one of the greatest teachers of virtue." in fact, if it were not for the truth of our american aphorism, that "three generations cover the time it takes one of our wealthy families to go from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves," our wealthy aristocracy would be much more profligate. there can be no heritage of equal value to children, so long as their poverty does not interfere with their fundamental education, comparable to their being born in straitened, rather than in opulent, circumstances. consequently, we must accept the fact that beyond a small competence set aside against age, money has no value of moment, nor is it worthy of greater than a reasonable effort being spent to acquire it. in this age of bustle and hurry, the nervous system is operated at a very high tension, and as a result often refuses to do the work demanded of it. as a consequence, artificial stimulants are resorted to, with the most baneful effects upon our citizen body. caffine, thermo-bromine, nicotine, narcine, alcohol, and, frequently, chloral, cocaine, morphine, and hyoscine, are used in some quantity, and often under several forms, for this purpose by over seventy-five per cent. of our population; and we have seen the statement that over ninety per cent. of the males, over the age of twenty-one, are addicted to some narcotic habit in this country. as a result of this, the vitality of the individual, suffering from these habits, is eventually lowered, owing to the effect which such stimulants have upon the involuntary muscular fibre; while the over-wrought nervous system, sooner or later, collapses, and we become, both mentally and physically, human wrecks. particularly is the taking of the weaker stimulants, such as are more commonly used, harmful to children, inasmuch as, at this period of development, nature has about all that she can well care for, without interference from the outside, and abnormal activity of the imagination at this time is not to be desired; since, under these circumstances with the majority of human beings, the imaginative impulse runs more to sensual than to æsthetic things. the demands of our present civilization upon the individual, especially if he belongs to the coterie constituting the so-called social set, is so great for both time and effort, that the use of narcotic stimulants with this class is even greater than with the majority. hence, it happens in america, where wealth is often acquired very quickly, that instead of bringing with it leisure, health, education, and refinement, as it should, we see very frequently the opposite result. on this account, in our country, we have no aristocracy, in any real sense of the word, and, in general we are forced to believe that real culture and refinement are becoming all the time more rare. the late mark twain has well illustrated this tendency in his trite character sketch, "the man who corrupted hadleyburg." if our age tends toward degeneration ethically from this cause, it does so even more from a physiological point of view. it is becoming more imperative all the while that we ascertain, for certain, that those with whom we must enter upon intimate relationship, should be able to show a clean bill of health, not only in a strictly physical sense, but in a moral sense as well. to-day, luxury and vice in our centers of population are corrupting and ruining a far larger proportion of our young and middle-aged men than ever before. since all branches of our government are influenced by plutocratic power, we are at a loss immediately to rectify these evils by closing up the dens of vice, and raising the age of consent, to stem the tide of infamy. any system of ethics is valuable as a guide for conduct just to that extent to which our interest is aroused. inasmuch as with us all, self is always the paramount consideration, the safest and surest basis upon which we can build an ethical system is self-interest. every human being of intelligence must sooner or later realize that he is on earth primarily by no choice of his own, and, since he is here, it is of the first importance to him that he should know, early in life, in just what way he will be able to secure the most out of his terrestrial existence. now, as we take it, happiness, in its broadest and best sense, is alone the desideratum which is _per se_ worth the individual's effort, and, in the aggregate, is worth the pains, both as an end to be attained, and through the effects of the struggle of obtaining it upon others. by happiness, we mean that feeling of contentment and satisfaction which should, at all times, be with the conscientious and sincere being, whether he is expecting to live a few more decades, or if he has arrived at that inevitable hour which must sometime come to all. in other words, let his end come when it will, if he has happiness, in our sense, he feels and knows that he has had all that he could get out of life, and, if he had to live it over again, he would wish to operate upon only those principles which he had used to guide his existence. in this sense, then, should happiness be the purpose of life, we will now attempt to show what conditions must, of necessity, be fulfilled in order to attain it. happiness, for the individual, is but slightly dependent upon circumstances outside of his control, and, in general, is the result of living up to the highest moral possibility, which means the development of self in the highest conception. since any environment can be made to serve the purpose, we are always so conditioned that some degree of happiness may be ours. the presence of the objects of our affection, in the form of human beings, is perhaps an actual necessary detail of our environment, without which we cannot experience that feeling of satisfaction and contentment which we call "happiness." the matter of the greatest importance is so ordering your life that, in all your actions, you may be equitable in the most amplified sense of the word. this has, at all times, been understood by those teachers of humanity who have been reformers or saviors, from the priests of osiris in egypt and zoroaster in bactria, more than five thousand years ago, to abbas effendi in palestine, within the last century. and, strange as it may seem, the world has advanced perhaps less in the understanding and practice of this, than in any of the truths of lesser importance. the exposition of the decalogue of the pentateuch is less refined and more constricted in meaning and application than the negative confession in the egyptian book of the dead, or the vedantic philosophy, as given in the older hindoo writings, or in the more modern upanishads. from this point of view, the ethics of the zend or of the chinese sages are infinitely beyond the best modern practice of a majority of the people in any part of the earth. but all conscientious and fearless thinkers, regardless of the date or locality in which they existed, have realized that in every sense the "golden rule" is the only safe guide for conduct, if contentment and real happiness were the end sought. and if we once get thoroughly fixed in the individual's mind that this is certain, and that, no matter what the intention, if our acts are not ordered in accordance with this fundamental principle of equity, we cannot be happy; we can rest assured that the individual would no sooner pursue a line of action which he absolutely knows will end in his own misery, than he would wilfully take a dose of poison. it is the putting of ethical matters upon a plain commonsense basis that will greatly assist, socially and morally, in revolutionizing the world. we have too long deformed and twisted facts to fit our fancies and prejudices, and we, as well as the rest of the human race, have paid "a pretty penny" for our delusion. the prevalence in all of the western countries since constantine raised christianity to the prominence of a state religion, of a belief in a scheme of vicarious atonement, has worked inestimable harm to the human race. certainly, in one particular, the doctrine taught by the gospel of gautama buddha is immeasurably further advanced ethically than that of his subsequent rival, jesus of nazareth, if we accept their gospels as correct reports of their teachings. our blood, to-day, is tainted with venereal diseases, and our minds with a predisposition to infamy, because our ancestors were not taught, and did not know, that from the consequence of their actions, both physically and mentally, they could not escape. how many men would work day and night to accumulate wealth, at the expense of their fellows, through unfair advantage and unjust means, if they only knew that this could not, on account of immutable law, add one iota to their happiness after they had secured possession of their so much coveted gold? how many women, for the consideration of a home of leisure and luxury, would rush into a marriage "of convenience" with a man for whom they knew they had no semblance of an affection, if they felt, with certainty, that nature does not discriminate, even for a marriage license and a religious ceremony, between prostitution within the bonds of wedlock, and without, and that the horrors of remorse and disappointment are just as frightful in one case as in the other? how many young men would go out into the world with a satanic sneer upon their faces, a cigarette between their lips, and a glass of champagne in their hands, to sow their wild oats under the tutelage of their older degenerate friends, if they fully realized that, in this one act, they were forever incapacitating themselves for the highest pleasure of life, and that no matter what their lives might be thereafter, that nature would ruthlessly hold them to the strictest accountability for their actions, and that ignorance would be no plea for mercy before her bar? this inexorable impartiality of nature is at once the saddest and the sublimest matter of contemplation, depending entirely upon whether we are considering the awful weight of her penalties or the magnificence of her rewards. the old axiom of prudery that "knowledge often comes hard," is, in the cold light of fact and reason, a most palpable absurdity. it is to-day, the man and woman who _knows_; not necessarily from his or her own experience, but from the authentic records of the results of the actions of others, whose motives of narration cannot be questioned, who are well-equipped to fight the battles of life, and get from terrestrial existence all the real pleasure which is to be obtained. it is from such simple yet grand souls that we have inspirations, and fortunate is that individual who can call himself a friend to a man or woman whose life has, from the earliest childhood, been so ordered that purity and sincerity have been kept inviolate, and all of the fundamental conditions of equity, as applicable to our fellow human beings, have been observed. a friendship with this character of human being is one of the few unalloyed pleasures of life, inasmuch as their company, when present, or their memory, when absent, is equally delightful. but to get the highest enjoyment from such a person, we must not only strive to reach his or her level, but, just in proportion as we do attain their moral altitude, we will have our capacity for enjoyment augmented. perhaps in nothing more than in our moments of relaxation and amusement should we be careful that we make our actions accord with this law of equity. how many a careless thing we do without thinking what the result will be upon someone else! while the indulging in some amusements, such as a game of chance, for an insignificant stake, in order to maintain the interest, may be done with impunity by parties whose financial condition is such that the counters involved are of no moment to them, and the stability of their temperament is sedate enough so that the excitement of the game will not fascinate them with a snake's charm; yet are these particular participants sure that this is true of all of the company at such times? if not--and in no gathering of this kind can we be sure--there is a possibility of great harm being done. the same is also true of an occasional glass of stimulant, so much in vogue on all social occasions; of the occasional cigar or cigarette; of a little gossip or scandalous small-talk, which we all enjoy so much; and of a thousand and one other things which, in themselves, are almost positively not so harmful when properly conditioned, but which may, and frequently do, become the means of a fellow mortal's ruin. it is the lack of discerning and realizing our responsibility in these matters of conduct that causes almost all of the misery of the world. it is not, however, enough that we act equitably only toward our friends and strangers, but we must, within reasonable limits, follow the injunction which the chinese philosopher has so well enunciated twenty-five hundred years ago: "requite hatred with goodness." in this particular instance, lao-tse's philosophy is more sensible than christ's, who commanded us to turn the other cheek. it is not the part of good judgment that we should throw ourselves open to the ravages of our enemies, but it is essential that we do not wilfully harm or wrong even the least of human beings. it has been the most unfortunate thing for the occidental world that those in high authority in the christian movement should have so belittled their physical self in comparison with their spiritual natures, that anything pertaining to the flesh was thought unclean and worthy of no consideration. everything which tends toward real beauty and sincerity, and helps to make us learned, just, and charitable, must necessarily be worth striving for; and the possession of this should be counted above all other things. at the same time, we must appreciate the awfulness of our responsibility, and continually test our actions in the light of their equity toward others, if we would be following the safe line of conduct. on the other hand, we should not be blind to the evil in others, and we should be willing to go to any reasonable self-sacrifice to better terrestrial conditions. the philosophy, as enunciated in the foregoing, is not at all altruistic; it is, on the contrary, very selfish, and as such it has its chief value. if we teach our children that they must be good, not for the sake of doing the right thing, but for the purpose of increasing their happiness, it would seem but reasonable that such incentive in the latter case would be more potent than that given in the former one. above all, the idea of vicarious atonement must be abhorred as a false conceit, and human beings should be taught that, in the moral as in the physical world, consequences are always absolutely true to their antecedents. as orlando j. smith so forcefully and tritely says, "know that the consequences of your every act and thought are registered instantly in your character. this day, this hour, this moment, is your time of judgment. he who deceives, betrays, kills--he who entertains malice, treachery, or other vileness, secretly in his heart--takes the penalty instantly in the debasement of his character. and so, also, for every good thought or act, be it open or secret, he shall receive an instant reward in the improvement of his character. "every night as you lie down to sleep, you are a little better or a little worse, a little richer or a little poorer, than you were in the morning. you have nothing that is substantial, nothing that is truly your own, but your character. you shall lose your money and your property; your home shall be your home no longer; the scenes which know you now shall know you no more; your flesh shall be food for worms; the earth upon which you tread shall be cinders and cosmic dust. your character alone shall stay with you, surviving all wreckage, decay, and death; your character is you, it shall be you forever. your character is the perfect register of your progress or of your degradation, of your victory or of your defeat; it shall be your glory or your shame, your blessing or your curse, your heaven or your hell." truly has plato said: "character is man's destiny." "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." chapter v knowledge and education in entering upon the consideration of the part which knowledge plays in the making of human happiness, it seems impossible to secure a view of satisfactory breadth. what we, as children, knew as recently established facts was with our fathers, in many instances, entirely undreamed-of, so rapidly has the fund of knowledge grown within the last century. with us now, more than at any other time, is correctness of judgment advantageous, since, with increased learning, has come a fiercer competition in all the affairs of life, and more dependent than ever before is the individual now, upon his intelligence for his livelihood, as well as for his happiness. in this day, as never previously, are the words of bacon true: "crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them, and wise men use them." at the present time, also, as at no time in the historic past, is experience gained at the hands of others or through them; so that the youth of to-day does not have to suffer the consequences of getting experience "first hand" on account of the lack of books, or of the prejudice or ignorance of his parents and teachers, as was so often the case in the not remote past. furthermore, intelligent parents are taking their children into their confidence, and informing them upon all subjects with perfect freedom, since, inasmuch as knowledge must come to children at some time, it is vastly preferable that it should come through those who have the interest of the inexperienced at heart, so that the proper color and perspective may be given to each and every fact. it is almost an axiom of pedagogics to-day that "ignorance is the most potent cause of crime." with the unprecedented dissemination of knowledge which has taken place during the past few decades, there has necessarily been a proportionate advancement in the culture of the masses, and, with culture, comes refinement and conscience. the cheapness and attractiveness of current literature, before the decline in culture which engulfed this country with the rise of commercialism and imperialism, was a thing of which america had every reason to be proud; and while we are now in the trough of the wave of progress, and will continue to be until money and commercial influence lose their present prestige, yet it does not take an optimist to see that, sooner or later, and somewhere, humanity will take advantage of its hard-won victories of the past and commence again its march toward better conditions. here, again, as with the individual, so with the entire race. as we outgrow the things of our childhood at the arrival of mature years, so has and will the human family as a whole. who cannot remember the marvelous width and depth of the vistas of youth, as looked back at in the transmuting light of memory; and yet, when, after years of toil, we look at the same scenes again in reality, how disappointing and dwarfed they are! it is not the actual physical distance which has been altered, but we, ourselves. our horizons have unconsciously widened every day; our standards of comparison have been insidiously raised. just as an inch, when compared with a foot, seems relatively small, with a yard, smaller, and so on until we reach the "light year," the value of the fraction is reduced to almost an inappreciable sum; so, as we progress through life, the momentous events of our youth lose their importance, and we look at our past through the minifying glass of experience, until at last we can hardly believe that the person whose life we have been reviewing is, in reality, one with our present self. furthermore, events seen at a distance assume their true proportions, and we are less influenced by passions and prejudices after the lapse of time; hence it is only in retrospection that we are able to secure a view of anything which we have experienced without distortion. all normal human beings are so constituted that their psychic activity runs through a long series of periods of evolution during each individual life. as haeckel has shown, five of these, at least, can be clearly defined: st--the infantile stage--from birth to the beginning of self-consciousness. nd--the adolescent stage--from self-consciousness to puberty. rd--the idealistic stage--from puberty to the period of sexual intercourse. th--the mature stage--from the time of sexual intercourse to the beginning of degeneration with age. th--the senile stage--from the commencement of degeneration with age until death. the investigation of a human life, according to this outline, will prove, quite readily, the psychic possibilities of mundane existence. as is well known, the child enters life with its cerebellum almost devoid of functions. the vital processes are carried on through the cerebrum and the medulla oblongata, purely by virtue of the stamp of heredity, and it is only after some days that the outside stimuli, such as light, heat, pressure or contact, etc., of the most elementary and primitive sort, are responded to by the infant. its life is a matter of little or no individual interest to it, and it is usually only after many months, and, in some cases, years, before the child has any conception of its own existence. previous to the comprehension of its existence, the infant has to learn to see and judge something of the distance and size of objects by the use of its eyes, if not to invert the retina image. in a non-monistic sense, the child, during this period, has no soul, and its life or death is of absolutely no moment to it. in the second, or adolescent stage, the most important of the individual's concrete knowledge is obtained--that upon which the basis of judgment rests in after-years. the developing mentality seizes new facts with avidity, and the memory is more keen, potentially, at this stage than at any other. the value of correct associations at this era cannot be over-estimated, as ideas and habits formed in this period cling tenaciously to the individual. so deeply seated do they become that they form a part of what we call, in after-years, our instinct, and upon these memories and the foundation of habits we build our later intuition. voltaire has somewhere remarked that "mankind is led more by instinct than by reason," and his observation is a just one. the acquisition of concrete facts or knowledge, in a specialized form, takes place at a very much more rapid rate at this period than during any other one, and the child's mind is very plastic, and absorbs information greedily. nature has so arranged it that at this time, when most is to be learned, learning comes more easily than before or afterwards. in the normal child, the sense of duty begins to make itself felt at this juncture, and while this may be entirely an objective idea, nevertheless, it clearly shows an appreciation of justice in a regard for the rights of others. coupled with this, there is a satisfaction which comes both from a sense of our knowledge--little though it be--and the feeling that this is being used as a guide to our conduct; a sentiment which bacon eloquently expresses in his aphorism: "no pleasure is comparable with the standing upon the vantage ground of truth." with this realization, life for the first time becomes worth living, and our desire for more knowledge follows directly upon our appreciation of the power which truth gives over our destiny. the grasping and comprehension of this idea by the child is one of the greatest, if not the most important, points to be attained in any educational system. the absorption of abstract facts does not constitute, primarily, any part of an education, as spencer has so clearly shown; but the implanting of the desire for truth, and the manner in which we should assimilate and use it, does attain the highest aim of any scheme of erudition. it is in this second stage of development that this must be done rudimentally; consequently, compulsory education must be carried at least through this period. at the beginning of the third subdivision in the life of the individual, we find a peculiar nervous tension, which is invariably an accompaniment of this stage of physical development. the imaginative faculties are enormously stimulated, and, unless directed into the right channels, are sure to work to the eternal harm of both male and female children. they should have been given a general knowledge of their physical peculiarities, previous to this time, by their parents, and should be allowed the companionship of playmates of the opposite sex so long as their characters are not objectionable. these close acquaintances between girls and boys should be fostered and allowed to become friendship, rather than be discouraged and ridiculed, by the parents and guardians, as is so often the case. the polarity of sex will assert itself at this early age, and the boys will strive to appear manly, strong and noble, while the girls, in a less positive sense, perhaps, but in an equally beneficial manner, will attempt to assume the womanly peculiarities of reserved kindliness and sympathy, which has made the female character so lovable and universally admired through all the ages. in this matter of the intersexual association of children, our public school system is usually in error, since, in most towns, the playgrounds of the boys and girls are separated by high fences, and communication is entirely cut off during play times. the association with a large number of individuals of the opposite sex gives the child a broader basis upon which to form a judgment concerning any one, and if taught at the same time to use his mind analytically, will mean a correspondingly high ideal of his own. the ideal of the child is but the selected striking characteristics of his own acquaintances, coalesced into an imaginative being. this ideal is high or low, just as he has been taught to reverence and worship beautiful or unlovely and vile things; but, all conditions being equal, there is no other time in life when the human mind will so readily respond to the pure and noble stimulation of æstheticism as against the baseness and depravity of unbridled sensuality. much has been said concerning the difference in the systems of education and the class of facts to be presented to the male, as distinguished from the female, mind. there can be no doubt that the desired result of education in either case is broadly similar--the fitting of the individual for a useful and happy life. but it does not follow that, because in our present civilization, the woman is necessarily the guardian of the æsthetic, while the man is engrossed with the practical, that the same set of facts and power of investigation and reason are not just as good a preparation with which to meet the identical world-problems in the one life as in the other. truth is the same to the boy as to the girl, and the material facts do not change whether faced by one sex or its opposite. since in our industrial life, we have allowed woman to assume already no mean part, we have more than ever a valid reason for giving her the same course of training in general which we prescribe for her brother. nor are we speaking of intellectual and moral education alone--but the physical as well--and this in its broadest sense. if we can but stamp indelibly upon the minds of our children that the natural consequences of their actions are the punishments, _per se_, which they must suffer in person, we have done about all possible toward making their pathways through the world lead at least through negative enjoyment, in place of absolute grief. there must be inculcated a frankness and sincerity into the processes of their mentality, before correct judgment can exist, and, without this, no scheme of education can fulfill its mission. this honesty of character or intro-active integrity is a hard matter to instill into the child, since our methods and actions are very rarely consistent, as richter, rousseau, spencer, and others--in truth, all of our great educational thinkers--have so well realized. the indispensability of this candor and fervor is none the less appreciated, however, owing to the almost insurmountable difficulties attending its procuration. it is just in this connection that intimate friendships with members of both sexes so nicely supplement the work accomplished by parental association, since the restraint certain to come from the authority of the parent or guardian, is unknown as an influence between those equal in age and station in life. in the use of the beginning of sexual intercourse, as a line of demarcation between periods of human existence, it would seem that a most natural and rational selection were made. as a proof of this, it is but necessary to call to mind the large number of barbaric and semi-civilized peoples who observe some initiatory rites or mysteries connected with the arrival of the individual at puberty or nubility, which with them is, to all intents and purposes, the same as, if not absolutely identical with, the beginning of sexual indulgence. under our civic law, it is at this time that, through marriage, the human being assumes his full responsibilities, and, by the beginning of an independent family relation, becomes an integral, co-ordinate member of the state. it is at this "stress and storm" period that the real work of life--the fruition of existence--takes place. beginning with the intimate association with another human being, whose rights and privileges are so interwoven with our own that it is frequently a hard matter to respect them without becoming distant, tolerating the idiosyncrasies, and lauding the virtues, in such a way that the former are diminished, while the latter are increased; trying to anticipate the wants and wishes of the other so that they may be gratified--not for their own satisfaction, primarily, but for our own; seeing the pleasures of sensuality transmuted in the crucible of pain into the gold of a new existence; feeling the supplementary affection and interest, which, for the want of a better name, we call parental love, and, as the offspring grow older, the pride and elation which comes with their achievements; standing at last beside the grave, crushed with grief, raving like macbeth in despair, or inspired with a transcendental insanity like richter's--these all are the vicissitudes of mature human life, when at its best. but, great and varied as they are, we find them, in fact, very closely fused together; and like all life-processes, they take place at a comparatively slow rate, so that before we are aware, we have arrived at the beginning of senile degeneration. prior to the ending of this fourth stage, the education of the individual has been finished, and it depends largely upon the previous mode of living, and the manner of thinking whether he may not remain at his best for a while, or must at once begin the descent, from which there is no return. fortunate, indeed, is he whose "star remains long bright at the zenith." considering now what constitutes an education and the best means of obtaining it, we can profitably review the principles involved. as spencer has shown, intellectual, moral, and even physical development for the human being must proceed in one direction--call it what we will. there can be no question that the infant, as an individuality, is homogeneous in its ignorance and positive influence; that the first facts which dawn upon its germinating intelligence are concrete and empirical, and that all of its acts are simple, resulting from comparatively simple stimuli. education, in its broadest sense, is the development, cultivation, and direction of all the natural powers of man, and its purpose should be to fit the individual for a useful and happy life. education can come only through the acquisition of knowledge, but knowledge can be obtained in two ways. by knowledge, we mean assurance born of conviction, based upon sufficient evidence, that a mental conception corresponds with that which it represents. the primal way of gaining knowledge is by experience, and undoubtedly this is the most satisfactory and thorough in all cases, where the result of such experience is not of such a nature as to potentially lessen the possibilities of the individual for future usefulness and happiness. where this would occur, or where, for any reason, such as lack of time or opportunity, it cannot be resorted to, the accurately recorded experience of others can be assimilated through the memory and reasoning faculties, and added to the store of knowledge for the mind's use. in using the second method of acquiring knowledge, we should not only exercise the utmost care in selecting authorities who have a reputation for keenness of perception and truthfulness of narration, but we should not accept their dictum for what seems to be to us contrary to our previous experience, and unsound to our reason and judgment. unless we are able to follow with our reason their narration of the causes of events, it is of but little avail that we reach their conclusion. the adoption of the scientific as distinguished from the aristotelian system of education by the leading teachers of all the occidental countries within the last century, has been of enormous benefit to the human race. we know now that the first thing to be learned is to maintain the body in as nearly perfect physical condition as possible--since the mind, to a marked degree, reflects the pathological state of the flesh. consequently, hygiene becomes the fundamental science in the education of the human being, and facts relating thereto should take precedence generally over all others in the priority of time in a youth's education. with the habit of health once established, the next matter is to see that those studies which will place the individual in possession of the greatest numbers of facts concerning his physical and mental environments, and which will give him the best training in observation and reasoning, are pursued. for this, natural science and its accompanying mathematics, are supreme, although enough manual training and domestic science should be included in the curriculum to insure an acquaintance with the matters of everyday life. human physiology and anatomy, as well as the subject of parenthood, should also have a share of attention commensurate with their importance--and this has long been denied them. elementary psychology must also have a place even in that course of education which should be made compulsory in every state. a knowledge of the elementary latin and greek is also to be desired in those countries whose vernaculars are largely made up from word-roots to be found in these dead languages. as a matter of amusement and erudition every individual should have some line of work other than that of his daily routine, upon which to devote his spare time, regardless of the educational advantages which he may have had before assuming his responsibilities in the world's work. this is equally true of woman. however, this should not be done with the intention of winning fame--although that is not impossible, since newton developed his calculus in his spare time after hours, while working as a clerk upon a very moderate salary--or attracting the attention of others, but as a means of self-development. either some particular unsolved problem may be taken hold of, such as the sciences of chemistry, physics, or biology are so replete with, or the subject of literature and _belles lettres_ may be studied most entertainingly and profitably. this class of workers were very much more numerous formerly than at present, owing to the rise of commercialism recently over the whole world, and it is among these that labor for love, rather than for profit, that much of the real accomplishment occurs. from our standpoint, no plan of human existence can be complete, in the highest and best sense of the word, which does not include this phase of life, nor can any scheme of education be comprehensive which does not lead up to it. there is probably no natural law, the knowledge of which is of so much importance to the human race at large, as that commonly known as the law of compensation. how many of the thinking vulgar have for ages repeated the ancient adage: "you cannot have your pie and eat it." but it has remained for modern science to demonstrate how absolutely true this is, and emerson only partly stated his case in one of his best essays: "tit for tat; an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth; blood for blood; measure for measure, love for love. give and it shall be given to you. nothing venture, nothing have. thou shalt be paid exactly for what thou hast done, no more, no less. who doth not work, shall not eat. harm watch, harm catch. curses always recoil on the head of him who imprecates them. if you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own. bad council confounds the adviser. 'what will you have?' quoth god; 'pay for it and take it.'" it is one of the largest parts of any education, yea, it is the major, to know that you must pay for what you get in life whether you will or no, and that you are forced constantly to bargain and barter what you have for what you have not, and it is imperative that you see that you get something which you really want, and which will add to your happiness. and, in spite of yourself, you will get what you really want, for you can't help it; but for it you will have to pay out something, as you are doing all the time. be sure to get something back of value, let your ideals be high, choose the thing which will give you the most happiness, but, remember, that you must pay its price. it is the sudden realization of the law of compensation, held possibly to an untenable extreme, that accounts for the recent rapid proselyting of the christian science cult. chapter vi religion and ethics those who have noticed little children playing contentedly in the early evening, when one of their number suggested the change of amusement to the game of bugoo-bear, could not have failed to see the almost immediate alteration in the infantile mind from the most happy placidity to the most tense apprehension. although the lights still burned at their utmost brilliancy and the game was entered into with perfect good faith by the children, nevertheless it was a matter of but a short while until all were thoroughly scared and expected the bugoo-bear to appear in any dark or shadowed place. this phenomenon has always seemed to be a very close analogy to just what happens with grown persons who are working up a religious fervor. just as the darker the room is, the more apprehensive the children become, so the deeper the ignorance of natural science is which engulfs the mature human individuals, directly in that proportion will be their capacity for religious fanaticism. the consciousness of man that he is dependent upon some supernatural being, has been and always will be the only basis upon which religious belief can be postulated. if we insert the idea of natural causes in place of the supernatural being in the foregoing sentence, then instead of a religious belief, we have the foundation for a system of ethics. the dissemination of scientific knowledge in the last century has done more to break down religious caste and hatred than all other influences combined previous to that time. the authority of age has been appreciably lessened, the significance of miracles as certain proofs of divinity on the part of religious teachers has changed, the reasonableness or expediency of any system of vicarious atonement as a means of attaining either spiritual or moral "grace," and the realization of humanity in general that the individual expiates his physical crimes by bodily suffering, and his moral sins by the tortures of a guilty conscience, are all verifications of what has occurred in the spiritual and moral world recently. the enormous strides made in proselyting by monism within the last few decades, speak volumes upon this topic. the statement has recently been made, as the result of an ecclesiastical census conducted by one of the largest christian denominations, that less than twenty-five per cent. of our people in this country regularly attend church service. the demand of the age for demonstration does not well accord with the credulity insisted upon by the powerful religious organizations of to-day. religious beliefs are of necessity mere matters of superstition, and are based very largely upon the tendency of the human mind to bow down before authority, particularly, if it is insolent, and the power of a falsehood to put on the appearance of a truth, if it can but gain sufficient repetition. "credidi propter quod, locutus sum." the brazenness of this in much of the literature of religious revelation, particularly in the hebrew, christian, and mohammedan collections, is most readily apparent to the most cursory critic. in fact, no strictly religious literature at the time of the supremacy of the belief is free from it. it is true of all religions that into the warp of superstition the woof of a code of ethics is interwoven. in the earlier stages of culture it has long been one of the accepted criteria of any faith whether its accompanying science of duty, as developed in it, was relatively good or bad. that there is a logical connection between these two elements no one can doubt, but this inter-relation is more frequently accidental than it is essential. facts show that the instituters and early promulgators of all of the great religions of which we have knowledge, have seized with avidity upon any moral stipulations which were necessary for their locality or condition of life, and that if capital could be made out of these peculiar provincial circumstances, they were not slow in coining them to their advantage. an instance of this will be readily recognized in the inculcating within their tenets such doctrines as the existence of an omnipresent and omniscient deity, whose favor may be won by supplication, humility, or sacrifice, or that of a personal immortality for each individual in a pleasurable condition as one of the rewards for belief and an endless existence of pain for its lack. as the number of converts increased, there has, in almost every case, grown up a powerful and wealthy sacerdotal class having special privileges. this cult of priesthood is soon corrupted by idleness and luxury, and the great influence which is attached to it by virtue of its vocation, has sooner or later been largely exerted to keep its parishioners under its control by means of ignorance and superstition. no matter how pure and sincere may have been its founder, or how elevating or altruistic its doctrines might be, practically all religions have suffered from the infamy and gross selfishness of their priesthoods, who by their short-sighted policies of opposing all adjustment of its dogma to newly-discovered facts, or their advancement along with contemporary civilizations, have but precipitated their downfall. from one to another of the gods of heaven has the "sceptre of power and the purple of authority" passed with advancing ages, until it is no wonder that thinking people are asking, "who will next occupy the old throne?" the earliest religion of which we have any knowledge was that prevailing in the valley of the nile over seven, and perhaps as long as ten, thousand years ago. the origin of these egyptian aborigines we do not know--some have supposed that they came from a mixture of conquering lybians, with the early dwellers along the lower courses of the river. time has effaced all record of any religious texts which they may have possessed, yet we can tell from the manner in which they buried their dead, when not dismembered, with their faces always to the south, and lying upon their left side, while the corpse was wrapped in the skins of gazelles or in grass mats--that their ideas of a future life were tolerably well-defined. the civilization of this people was modified by the arrival of the conquering immigrants who probably came from asia, either by way of arabia or across the red sea, and who, in turn, engrafted upon the religion of the conquered certain tenets of their own, and in this way formed a new system, the records of which we find in "the book of the dead," which is not only the oldest book extant, but also the most antiquated collection of sacred literature of which we have knowledge. exploration in egyptian burying-grounds plainly shows that between the time of the disposition of the dead, as first noted, and the date of the supremacy of the "book of the dead," that there existed civilizations in this valley who no longer buried their dead whole, with crude attempts at embalming with bitumen, but who burned their corpses more or less completely, and threw the remaining bones into a shallow pit. after this came a race who dismembered the bodies of their dead, burying the hands and feet in one place, while the trunk and the rest of the arms and legs were placed in a grave, separate again from the head. it is impossible, of course, to even guess at the length of time necessary to effect such changes in the customs of people, but we do know that at least seventy centuries ago the ritual contained in the "book of the dead" was generally accepted. and from this remote pre-dynastic time down to the seventh century after christ, mummifying was, in some form or other, continually practiced in the valley of the nile. at the earliest time of which we have record, we find the egyptians worshiping a number of autochthonic gods, of whom osiris and his sister isis were the chief. their ideas of the deities were entirely anthropomorphic. osiris having lived and suffered death and mutilation, and having been embalmed, was by his sisters, isis and nephthys, provided with a series of charms, by which he was protected from all evil and harm in the future life, and who had recited certain magical formulæ which had, in the world to come, given him everlasting life. it is certain that the practice of this belief changed in minor details many times as the semi-barbarous and sensual north africans were subjected to the influence of their more highly moral and spiritual asiatic conquerors. their tombs changed from shallow pits to brick sepulchres, and these were in turn replaced, by those who could afford it, by pyramids--the most substantial form of human architecture left by historic races. as showing the height of the civilization reached by the ancient egyptians, it is worthy of note that the great pyramid of cheops is not only the most gigantic tomb ever built, but that it was designed to serve also as an astronomical observatory, and that its orientation for this purpose is very accurate, when we consider that the egyptians had no transits or other instruments such as we have now. consequently, in the location of this work, they were forced to either use the shadow or polar method, and the latter being the most accurate was, in fact, selected by them. had they known anything of the refraction of light as it passes from space into our atmosphere, and been able to make the correction for horizontal parallax, their location would have been accurate. the purposes of their astronomical observations, as made from this pyramid, were astrological undoubtedly, as the completion of the tomb shut off the galleries which had been so carefully located. according to the "book of the dead," the human economy was composed of nine different integral parts, all of which, except the "ren" or name, are comprised broadly within our idea of _body_ and _soul_. the judgment of each individual took place after death, before the tribunal of osiris, and in his hall of judgment. here the soul, stripped of all chance of deceit or subterfuge, was forced to make, as his address to osiris, the justly famous "negative confession," and the truth being apparent to osiris and his forty-two associates, judgment was given impartially and upon an absolute basis of fact. the standard of ethics demanded of the individual can be realized from the fragments quoted from this address:--"in truth i have come to thee and i have brought right and truth to thee, and i have destroyed wickedness for thee. i have not brought forward my name for exaltation to honors. i have had no association with worthless men. i have not uttered evil words against any man. i have not stirred up strife. i have not judged hastily. i have not made haughty my voice, nor behaved with insolence. i have not ill-treated servants. i have not caused harm to be done to the servant by his master. i have not made to be the first consideration of each day that excessive labor should be performed for me. i have not oppressed the members of my family. i have not defrauded the oppressed one of his property. i have neither filched away land, nor have i encroached upon the fields of others. i have not diminished from the bushel, nor have i misread the pointer of the scales nor added to the weights. i have not carried away the milk from the mouths of children. i have caused no man to suffer hunger. i have made no one to weep. i have not acted deceitfully. i have not uttered falsehood. i have not wrought evil in the place of right and truth. i have not committed theft. i have not done violence to any man. i have done no murder. i have ordered no murder done for me. i have not caused pain. i have not done iniquity. i have not defiled the wife of any man. i have not committed fornication, nor have i lain with any man. i have not done evil to mankind. i have not committed any sin against purity. i am pure. i am pure. i am pure." those who were condemned before this tribunal were instantly devoured by the "eater of the dead," while the good were admitted into the realm of osiris to enjoy everlasting happiness and life. we turn now from the valley of the nile to that of the tigris and euphrates, lying about one thousand miles eastward. here we find the home of the assyrian and babylonian empires, and interwoven with their religion we find many of the old myths which, in a corrupted form, occur in our own bible. as the papyri of egypt have been forced to give up their secrets, so have the clay cylinders of mesopotamia. these, now lying in the british and berlin museums, tell in a purer and more primitive form than that found in the old testament, the story of the fall of man, and upon an old cylinder seal we have it illustrated, apple tree, woman, serpent, and all. the story of the deluge is also there taken from the library of sardanapalus at nineveh, just as it was written upon the cylinder more than two thousand years before christ. all that is required to duplicate this deluge as far as the valley of mesopotamia is concerned, is a tremendous downpour of water, coincident with a tornado blowing up the persian gulf, just as some thirty years ago, in the delta of the ganges, nearly a quarter of a million persons perished during a like phenomenon in the bay of bengal. here also we find the creation myth, and how after a terrible struggle with the engulfing waters, marduk finally cut them in twain, and out of one-half made the roof of heaven, while out of the other half he made the earth. then, too, out of mingled clay and celestial blood, he made the first two human beings, man and woman. the babylonians and assyrians believed in the immortality of the soul, dependent, of course, upon the mode in which it lived here. thus, we find the fifth, sixth, and seventh commandments just as we have them in the pentateuch, together with injunctions of humanity, charity, mercy, and love on the part of the follower of babel. speaking the truth and keeping one's word, as well as freedom from deceit, are also commanded, and infringements of these were regarded as sins punishable by human afflictions and ailments of all sorts, including death. their idea of heaven was fairly well-developed, very greatly in excess of that of the hebrews. their heaven was a place of delight and ease, while sheol was a place full of thirst and discomfort. it is also interesting to know that the jews got their ideas of angels from the babylonians, with whom, as far as we know, this idea was original, inasmuch as we find no mention of them in the egyptian religious system. considering now the civilization which existed in the valleys of mesopotamia from five to six thousand years ago, the first thing which arrests our attention is their knowledge of astronomy. in place of the egyptian pyramid, with its sides oriented toward the cardinal points, we find the ziggurat pointing the angles instead. this one fact shows that chaldea did not borrow from egypt, but developed her science independently of her western neighbor. the planets were all known and named, eclipses were foretold with accuracy, and to accadia we owe not only our observance of sunday, but our angular duodecimal scale. what length of time must have been required to admit of such a highly-developed civilization as this, with such advanced religious and ethical ideas, is beyond the faintest conjecture. far more remote than that time, however, were the first settlements on the alluvial plains by the rude aborigines of the highlands. on the plateau of iran, in central asia, we find the location of the oldest known habitation of the aryan race. here, in the earliest twilight of our history, we find tribes of human beings who possessed well-developed religious and ethical ideas, and whose descendants, moving toward the southeast and into the valleys of the himalayas, formulated the hymns which, when compiled, constitute the vedas or the sacred literature of the aryan indians, while the portion who remained behind, became the progenitors of the aryan iranians whose religious lore we find in that wonderful collection known as the avesta. in these two literatures, both of which are worthy of the deepest investigation and maturest deliberation, we have, so far as is known, the oldest idea of a non-anthropomorphic deity. his attributes with the indian were so subdivided and abstracted as to allow this one god essence to almost fill a panthenon. their worship took the form of adoration for the striking grandeurs of nature, each of whom they regarded as a separate personal consciousness possessed of superhuman powers. their religion seems to the superficial investigator to be but an exceptionally pure form of pantheism, but this is not, in fact, the case, since philologists to-day recognize that the overwhelming spontaneous impulse which forces the barbaric human mentality to give utterance to its deepest emotions, is a certain index of a crude monotheistic conception. it is brahma who is the universal self-existent soul, and who comprises, in his infinity, both the god and the adorer. of course, as time went on, these ideas became more gross, until, with the introduction of caste, the ancient vedic religion had lost much of its beauty and purity. the religious system had become both dogmatic and pretentious, and particularly insolent in its authority with the rise in power of the sacerdotal class, the brahmans. while the vedic religion is imbued with a spirit of strong belief in the efficacy of sacrifice and prayer, we find that this steadily increases in domination as we approach modern times. to all, except the sudras or serfs, a course of life conduct is prescribed consisting of four stages, _viz._: as a religious student, as a householder, as an anchorite, and last, as a religious mendicant. corresponding to these, there were four sacred debts, _viz._: that due to the gods and paid by worship; that due to the ancient sages and discharged by vedic study; that which he owes to his manes, and which he relieves himself of by the perpetuation of his name in a son; and last, that which he owes to mankind, and which demands his incessantly practicing kindness and hospitality. they believed in the immortality of the soul and through metempsychosis, in its reward or punishment, according to its existence here. in the sixth century before christ, there lived in india a member of the brahman class who was destined to more than restore brahmanism to its pristine purity. gautama buddha was born as the son of a local ruler and his wife, whose conception was accomplished by her falling into a trance and dreaming that the future buddha had become a superb white elephant, who, walking around her and striking her upon the right side with a lotus flower, entered her womb. such is the hindoo myth. this reformer altogether denied the existence of the soul, as an entity or substance possessing immortality in the individual sense, and he taught that the soul's future happiness in the abstract was entirely dependent upon its performance while here, as distinguished from any recollection or effect of its previous existences. he denied the authority of the veda and the efficacy of prayer--in fact, his creed is best shown by a quotation from his gospel: "rituals have no efficacy, prayers are but vain repetitions, and incantations have no saving power. but to abandon covetousness and lust, to become free from all evil passions, and to give up all hatred and ill-will; that is the right sacrifice and the true worship." this is the kernel of the pure buddhistic belief, and this declaration at once reduces his system from a religious to a purely ethical one. excepting the myth of his conception, his life was a perfectly natural one. nothing could be more real than his discovery of sorrow and misery, and his inquiry after its cause; nothing can be more touching than his parting from his wife and son, whom he loved so much that he could not hazard the pleasure of a last farewell. and under the stress of this situation, we are particularly told that he was human enough to give way to tears. no ethics could be higher in the aggregate than his--not once, but time and again, does he speak thus: "indulge in lust but little, and lust, like a child, will grow. charity is rich in returns; charity is the greatest wealth, for though it scatters, it brings no repentance. better than sovereignty over the earth, better than living in heaven, better than lordship over all the worlds, is the fruit of holiness. for seeking true religion, there is never a time that can be inopportune. the present reaps what the past has sown, and the future is the product of the present. far better is it to revere the truth than try to appease the gods by the shedding of blood. what love can a man possess who believes that the destruction of life will atone for evil deeds? can a new wrong expiate old wrongs? and can the slaughter of an innocent victim take away the sins of mankind? this is practicing religion by the neglect of moral conduct. the sensual man is the slave of his passions, and pleasure-seeking is degrading and vulgar. but to satisfy the necessities of life is not evil. to keep the body in good health is a duty, for otherwise we shall not be able to trim the lamp of wisdom, and keep our mind strong and clear. there is no savior in the world except in truth; there is no immortality except in truth. the truth is best as it is, have faith in the truth and live it. not by birth does one become an outcast; not by birth does one become a brahman; by deeds one becomes an outcast and by deeds one becomes a brahman." what could more strongly emphasize the position of buddha in regard to the infamy of the caste system, as it has been developed in india, than the parable of the low-caste girl at the well who had been asked by the disciple ananda for a drink. this girl, seeing that he was a brahman, or member of the highest caste, replied that she could not give him even a drink of water without contaminating his holiness. to this, ananda promptly replied: "i ask not for caste, but for water." and when she came to buddha with her heart full of gratitude and love for ananda, he spoke to her in the following language: "verily, there is great merit in the generosity of a king when he is kind to a slave, but there is greater merit in the slave when, ignoring the wrongs which he suffers, he cherishes kindness and good-will to all mankind. he will cease to hate his oppressors, and even when powerless to resist their usurpation will, with compassion, pity their arrogance and supercilious demeanor. blessed are thou, prakrita, for although you are of low caste, you will be a model for noblemen and noblewomen. you are of low caste, but brahmans will learn a lesson from you. swerve not from the path of justice and righteousness, and you will outshine the royal glory of queens." very little wonder is it that, from north hindustan, the doctrines of buddha soon largely prevailed over central, southern, and eastern asia. of the almost numberless sects into which buddhism is divided, all go back for their inspiration to his teachings. in fact, he left little for his disciples to do in the matter of enunciating a pure and virtuous system of ethics, so thoroughly did he cover the ground himself. when we remember that confucius was living in china at almost the identical time that buddha was preaching in hindustan, we cannot help but wonder at the strangeness of the occurrence--both enunciating a philosophy or system of ethics which was destined to affect the conduct of so large a portion of the human race. as we read lao-tse's injunction to "requite hatred with goodness," it seems that he must have drawn his inspiration from an indian source. we return now to the location in central asia, and to the remote antiquity from which we digressed. at the same time the indians in the southeast have been developing their religion, the iranians have not remained quiescent. their great sage, zarathustra, or zoroaster, had been teaching his dualism--in many respects the most subtle religious philosophy ever promulgated. from what little of the zend lore that has escaped the ravages of time, we are able to-day to trace the outlines of a religion and philosophy based upon primal polarities. ahura is to zoroaster the great life-spirit-lord, the great creator, the great wise one. his six characteristics are the fundamental laws of a righteous universe; simple, clear, and pure. ahura creates the world during six periods: in the first, heaven; in the second, water; in the third, earth; in the fourth, plants; in the fifth, animals; and in the sixth, man. all of the human race is descended from a primitive pair. there is a deluge, and one man is selected to save and protect representatives of each species so that the earth may be repeopled with a better race. zoroaster questions ahura on the mount of holy conversations, and receives from him answers. so far, the parallel between zoroastrianism and judaism is complete. the difference now appears, for the former held that the world was to last four periods--during the first two, ahura has complete authority. then comes ahriman, the self-existent evil-principle, and their conflict fills the third period. the fourth period, which opens with the advent of zoroaster, ends with the downfall of ahriman, and the resurrection of the soul for a future life. it is entirely within the power of the individual as to whether he wishes to come under the power of the good or evil spirit, and with whom he chooses to ally himself. but the struggle is incessant, and watchfulness must always be maintained. so much for the religion--now for the ethics. to the zoroastrian, the natural and normal in life is not derided and scorned, nor is woman looked upon as "a necessary evil," as is the case in buddhism, christianity, and mohammedanism. here is a quotation from the zend avesta from the mouth of ahura himself: "verily, i say unto you, the man who has a wife is far above him who lives in continence; he who keeps a house is far above him who has none; he who has children is far above him who is childless; he who has riches is far above him who has none." if we can use the moral code of the only remaining zoroastrians in the world to-day, the parsees, as a criterion to judge by, we must acknowledge that no religion enjoys a purer and more perfect course of conduct. dr. haug tells us that the following are strictly denounced by its code: murder, infanticide, poisoning, adultery on the part of men as well as of women, sorcery, sodomy, cheating in weight and measure, breach of promise, regardless of to whom made, deception of any kind, false covenants, slander and calumny, perjury, dishonest appropriation of wealth, taking bribes, keeping back the wages of laborers, misappropriation of religious property, removal of a boundary stone, turning people out of their property, maladministration and defrauding, apostasy, heresy, and rebellion. besides these, there are a number of special precepts relating to the enforcement of sanitary regulations, kindness to animals, hospitality to strangers, respect to superiors, and help to the poor and needy. the following are especially condemned--abandoning the husband, not acknowledging the children on the part of the father, cruelty toward subjects on the part of a ruler, avarice, laziness, illiberality, egotism, and envy. here we find a system of religion whose predominating symbolism was the worship of fire as the nearest human concept of ahura, and well it might be, for those primitive people who had so sacredly to cherish it. in the greek mythology, prometheus was inconceivably tortured for filching from heaven the divine fire and carrying it to mortals. but according to the zoroastrian philosophy, ahura has placed all good within the reach of man, and it is for him to choose whether he will avail himself of this or become a slave of ahriman. it seems strange that from bactria, either from the old mazdaism or through zoroaster, the world should have conceived its only monotheistic conception reasonably free from anthropomorphism, and whose associated code of ethics was so reasonable, firm and pure. there is in zoroastrianism no thought of dogmatic bigotry any more than there is in ancient buddhism, and its philosophy of primitive polarity well corresponds with what modern science has taught us within the last five decades. both of these systems are meditative rather than militant, and, consequently, have not exercised the influence over the destiny of the human race which judaism has. in the consideration of the jewish religion and its descendants, christianity and mohammedanism, we are face to face with the most warlike and combative monotheism which history has recorded. in the earlier form, and as in the hebrew worship of to-day, jehovah shares his authority with no one--in the christian system, god and christ are equally powerful, while with islam it would seem that mahomet had slightly the balance of power, notwithstanding the oft-repeated declaration that "there is no god but allah." here we have the idea of a chosen people of god carried to its logical conclusion; the jealousy of jehovah being in no wise an efficient operative cause for the terrible butcheries of men, women, and children, such as we have described in the old testament, as having befallen the enemies of the hebrews when they were victorious. this wild and fanatical worship of a suspicious and revengeful god, although it called for the waging of countless wars upon his supposed orders, and even for the immolation upon the sacrificial altar of one's own children; yet it did not promise, until the rise of the pharisees into potent influence; the pleasure of a personal immortality for his followers, or the punishment by endless torture for his non-adherents. the effect of the selfish idea of god-ownership we see inherited by christianity with the ancient heredity qualification changed to one of faith. there can be no question that the historical christ was, perhaps, next to buddha, the greatest religious reformer whom the world has known, if we accept as a criterion the number of individuals affected, and the nature of their work. as the enunciator of a system of ethics, it is impossible to see how the jew could be regarded as the equal of the indian; although no estimate of christ can be consistently formed from the st. james version of the bible, owing to the many and important interpolations of recent church enthusiasts. the plan of vicarious atonement is one of the most immoral doctrines of which the world has a record, and the contempt for woman which the hebrew shows is not equalled by buddha, although he, too, was filled with that eastern asceticism which looked with disdain upon intersexual affection. the narrowness and bigotry which can regard an omnipresent and omniscient deity as working for the benefit of but a few followers as against the great proportion of human beings who have passed through an earthly existence entirely in ignorance of him, and who, on account of this, have to suffer eternal torture, has been responsible for no less than ten million murders in the name of christ alone, to say nothing of the numberless victims of war and famine who have perished as a result of the insatiable thirst of jehovah, christ, and mahomet for more influence in terrestrial affairs and an augmentation of adherents. the code of ethics prescribed by the jewish régime was good--far in advance of that of the greater portion of their neighbors. but egypt and chaldea both played a very important part in this matter, as we must remember that hebrew chronology only places the creation some four thousand years ago, and we now know that at least three and perhaps five thousand years previous to the possession of the garden of eden by adam and eve, the valley of the nile was teeming with a well-developed civilization. christianity in the egyptian city of the greeks, through philo, became deeply imbued with the spirit of zoroaster, and the aid thus derived has been of incalculable value to it. the religion of islam remains much as mahomet left it, and it has been, and now is, well suited for much of the territory over which it has dominion. while its code of ethics is reasonably high, its conceptions are usually grossly sensual, and, unfortunately, since shortly after the death of its founder, the institution of the church and the political organization of the various countries where it prevails, have both been under the same head, and are both, consequently, full of corruption. before taking up the possibility of a religious conception based upon the best knowledge we have, there is an interesting point to be considered. between the two dates of b. c., and a. d., we have the work of buddha, confucius, mencius, christ, philo, and mahomet, as well as a score of lesser lights; in fact, all the great religious reformers who have been instrumental in shaping the beliefs of the majority of mankind since their time. and, stranger still, that since mahomet, the world has seen no reformer who could wrest a following of any note from the established religions, although now, with modern facilities for publication, it would seem to be a much easier task than formerly. and so it would be, were it not for the dissemination of knowledge, and the influence of the scientific system which has come about during the last century, so that now there is not that fanaticism prevalent concerning religious matters which was so rife at almost all stages of the world's history until recently. more and more are people beginning to realize the truth which pope so well expressed in his alexandrine: "for modes of faith, let graceless zealots fight, his can't be wrong, whose life is in the right." about a. d., there began to be felt among scientific men a possibility that perhaps all of the natural phenomena of which we have knowledge are so inter-related that all of our observations are but different views of a few fundamental primary laws. these so-called laws or statements of facts in their natural order of sequence were always, and under all conditions, operative in natural affairs, had been quite thoroughly understood since humboldt's time. but it remained for herbert spencer in england, and ernest haeckel in germany, to correlate the vast quantity of facts gained from experiment and observation along the various lines of scientific research. particularly has the latter been a most potent factor in formulating the new and necessarily predominating theology of the future--a system of belief which is in accordance with everything which the individual knows, and which is always ready to accept a new fact upon demonstration, although its reception may revolutionize even its fundamental concepts. this doctrine, which has been most aptly termed "monism," stands squarely upon its basis of "empirical investigation of facts, and the rational study of their efficient causes." in place of worshiping the trinities of the old superstitions, it holds for reverence the "good, the true, and the beautiful" wherever found, and in antithesis to the sacredness of sabbath and the church, it holds that for the contemplation of the objects of its trinity, "all seasons to be summer and all climates june." while denying the existence of a god outside of nature, the freedom of the human will and the possibility of an immortality for the individual human soul, as usually understood, it does insist upon the sequence of effect upon cause, and shows that here, in this earthly existence, we are forced to be virtuous if we would be happy, and that although we are not completely masters of our fates, yet it fundamentally lies with us, in the vast majority of cases, to so conduct our lives that either misery or happiness will result therefrom. monistic ethics differ from those of any religious system, from the fact that the good of all is selected and digested into a code which looks toward the "greatest good to the greatest number." in doing this, individual effort is lauded and not proscribed, and altruism and egotism are developed with equal emphasis. the pleasures of this life are not forfeited to gain delectation in another, nor is the "illitative sense" considered a safe guide for conduct. woman is not looked upon as fundamentally "unclean," nor is she denied any right or any privilege which man enjoys. the righteousness of intersexual love and association is maintained, when in operation within a proper constraint, and the family is not only the social and political unit, but the religious as well. love is held to be more potent than hate, and justice more beneficial than charity. there is no such thing as either the forgiveness or remission of sins--the responsibility of our actions is ours, and ours alone, and can be assumed by no other. the result is the same whether our acts come through ignorance or intention--it is for the individual to know before doing. in the foregoing, a very brief outline of the progress which humanity has made in historic times in religion and ethics has been attempted, and, if an interest has been aroused in this subject, its purpose will have been fulfilled. no matter what creed we hold, we cannot afford to be bigoted, as simple investigation will show that in many ways we are but little in advance of our progenitors of seven thousand years ago. only in the matter that we have a scientific basis to work upon, and a vast accumulation of observed facts, have we any reason for pride. and this has been gained, at almost all times, against every obstacle which the church, as established at the moment, could bring into potency. chapter vii love without doubt, the greatest source of happiness, as known to human beings, is love. scott voiced the sentiment of all rational and normal persons when he said: "love rules the court, the camp, the grove, and men below and saints above, for love is heaven, and heaven is love." it is owing to the fact that we cannot enjoy anything to the fullest extent alone, since our nature is so constituted that we must have company in our pleasures, that friends are indispensable. cicero realized this over two thousand years ago when he said that, "the fruit of talent, and worth, and every excellence, is gathered most fully when it is bestowed upon every one most nearly connected with us." appreciating this, nature has given us the love and friendship of parents in our childhood; of the companions of our youth as we grow older; of our life-partner at a later period, and last, the love of our children and grandchildren, so that, by an interest in their lives, we may become ourselves rejuvenated. in this, as in everything else of a physical or mental character, we start at the bottom, and, by a crescendo movement, reach the acme of the condition which with age diminishes, but in this instance the quality does not deteriorate. our likelihood of forming acquaintances and friends in later years is very much less than in youth, and, certainly, with our habits and idiosyncrasies established, as they are after middle age, the possibility of forming intimate friendships is very much decreased. in childhood and youth, we are more imaginative and less practical, and, consequently, our inclinations in the line of friendships will be more natural and less influenced by considerations alien to friendship itself. nothing can be more true than the axiom of cicero, "friendship does not follow upon advantage, but advantage upon friendship." clearly demonstrated as this is, but few people seem to realize it. for the fundamental truth at the bottom of this matter is, as he further states, "the basis of that steadfastness and constancy which we seek in friendship is sincerity. for nothing is enduring which is insincere." of all virtues, sincerity is the greatest, yet, broadly speaking, how extremely rare! there is almost no trouble and pains which people will not take to make the world think that they are something other than they really are, when but a fraction of the cost might make them what they are trying to seem to be. the reciprocal relation of friendship demands sincerity, just in proportion as it becomes intimate, and this applies to all friendships, of whatsoever character. the love of children is perhaps the greatest of all affections in the aggregate, because experience has not taught them to doubt and impugn the motives of others, since everything to them is just what it superficially appears to be. our most violent heartaches come through dissimulation toward others, and nothing tends to make so callous and blunt our finer sensibilities as this. but just in proportion as we are sincere, must we be careful as to who arouses an interest of more than passing moment within us, as after affection is once started and nurtured into luxuriance, it is not within our power to control it. while love, when reciprocated, can afford an ecstasy and happiness, otherwise unknown, it can, also, when not returned by the object of our affection, become the most potent cause of superlative pain and anguish. the expression of this truth by the greatest of all english poets, would, in itself, make his name forever immortal had he never written another line, and constitutes not only the soundest philosophy, but the most sublime of all sentiments evolved from the human mind: "love is not love that alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. oh no! it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests, and is never shaken; it is the star to every wandering bark whose worth's unknown, altho' his height is taken. love's not time's fool; though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come. love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out e'en to the edge of doom." if all the race thoroughly understood the truth of these words, how much more happiness there would be in the world! it is our trifling with our affections, or the reckless manner in which we bestow them upon others, which causes us our deepest sorrows. in childhood, with ordinarily kind parents, we have such experiences as afford us pleasant memories throughout life, simply because we lived in accordance with nature's law, which she makes easy for us at this age to follow, when we have no experience or reason by which we may be guided; but as we grow older, we form those habits of dissimulation which lead us into all sorts of trouble; simply because we can do certain things without our friends and acquaintances becoming cognizant of our actions, we are foolish enough to think that no harm can be done. if we would use our intelligence at all, we would see at once, that while it may be possible to deceive others in the matter of our thoughts and actions, we cannot delude ourselves. we would also realize that our actions and our thoughts are efficient causes in the making of our own characters. we would further see that in order to get any real enjoyment out of a friendship, of even the most platonic kind, we must be able to play our part sincerely; in other words, we must be all that we attempt to make our friends think we are. the old proverb which tells us that we should go courting in our old clothes, is true in the largest sense in which we can apply it. when we consider how much we are dependent upon our after-affections and their outcome for our happiness, we see that coleridge resorted to no hyperbole when he wrote: "all thoughts, all passions, all delights, whatever stirs this mortal frame, are but the ministers of love and feed his sacred flame." nor did he overestimate the bearing which each and every act of our life has upon our ability to either love or to be loved, since it is only when we are capable of returning affection as pure and unsullied as is given us, that we achieve the acme of delight. it is on account of the necessity of the possession of these qualities which we have found to constitute the only possible basis for really lasting love, that we are so much interested in those of great affection. emerson truly said that "all mankind loves a lover," and equally valid is his observation that "love is not for levity, but for the total worth of man." it is the affection of any human being which constitutes his life and his friendships, both as living and when coming into his companionship, and when dead, as forming the memories upon which the imagination will fondly dwell, and that bring into his life whatever real satisfaction he may have. as a means of æsthetic development, nothing is of higher value than the affections, and, as a stimulant for action along this line, they are without an equal. we have only to remember the story of damon and pythias, to see that the ancients fully realized the power of affection; or to read what plato puts into the mouth of phoedrus, when he has him say, "love will make men dare to die for their beloved, and women as well as men." what we have noted, heretofore, refers to all affections. now we come to the culmination of all affairs of friendship,--that relationship which is known as marriage. upon the immensity of the importance of this ceremony have almost all of the religious ideas of man been built, and in many cases, if not in all, to the utter profanation of the thing itself. in the old tribal civilization which prevailed, the idea of marriage was ill-defined, and it was only as the desire for the ownership of children grew that moral ideas in this relation became at all definite. the fact that men wished to leave to their children property and chattels, which they might not have the opportunity of disposing of satisfactorily before their death, brought about a desire for marriage upon the monogamous and monandrous basis; and the fact that man was the owner of the property, and that the wife, until recently, had no inherent right therein, made the matter of the ownership of the children of primal importance, so that the wishes of the father in regard to the inheritance might be fulfilled. it was on account of the supremacy of man in his own home that the family became the unit upon which the state is built, just as the male individual was the unit upon which the family was built, and citizenship was primarily evolved and applicable only to the male portion of the population, inasmuch as they were necessary to the state both as tax-payers and as warriors. this idea of the ownership of children enforced upon woman the moral code under which she lives in occidental countries to-day; and, at the same time, and for the reasons above stated, kept man immune from it. the significance attached to the sexual desire in this relationship is and has been greatly overestimated, to the greatest disadvantage of mankind at large. the most distinguishing feature about connubial affection as compared with platonic friendship, is that in matrimony there is the added unification of the parties thereto, owing to the community of interest between them. their individualities are merged into one another; their development must be along similar or parallel lines. richter has given us a good account of what a man should select in the character of his wife "to whom he may be able to give readings concerning the more essential principles of psychology and astronomy without her bringing up the subject of his stockings in the middle of his loftiest and fullest flights of enthusiasm; yet he will be well content should one possessed of moderate excellencies fall to his lot--one who shall be capable of accompanying him, side by side, in his flights so far as they extend--whose eyes and heart may be able to take in the blooming earth and the shining heavens, in great, grand masses at a time, and not in mere infinitesimal particles; one for whom this universe may be something higher than a nursery or ball-room, and one who, with feelings delicate and tender, both pious and wide, will be continually making her husband better and holier." since the time of jean paul richter, woman has been allowed educational advantages more nearly equal to those of her brothers than heretofore; and, as a consequence, in many instances and quite often, do we find the lady not only the better but the larger half of the home, intellectually. as geoffrey mortimer has well shown, love among cultured people is largely dependent upon the imagination. in savages and in the human race, primarily, when at this period of their existence, it took the form of hedonism, or even the more gross sex-worship, and it was not until mankind was removed far from the brute that his imagination developed, and his mind was capable of abstract thought, that his æsthetic nature began to develop. as his intellect became more profound, and his mental range wider, his power of abstract thinking was accordingly augmented, until to-day, with the average human being, love is only, in a restricted sense, dependent upon physical gratification. herbert spencer has given a very sure test of love, based upon its dependence upon the imaginative faculty. according to him, when we are absent from the one we love, the mental picture which we form of her, and the attributes which we at that time give her, are all found in her when in her actual presence. then, we are really in love with the person whose faults we cannot see. the truth of the old adage, "absence makes the heart grow fonder," still further shows the part which the imagination plays in love. there is no human being who has been so fortunate as to marry the first object upon which his affections settled, providing, of course, that his previous life has been spent so that he can enter into this relationship equitably, who did not find that if his love was reciprocated, life possessed a transcendent charm which words cannot express. such an affection is necessarily based upon a most profound respect, and can only continue when this deferential regard exists. while feeling a security in its sense of ownership of the one loved, yet it asks and demands nothing, and can only bud, blossom, and ripen into its fullness in the atmosphere of kindness and absolute liberty. while sensual gratification, in the earlier stages, has been the means of nature in perpetuating the species, it is also the most powerful factor in the evolution of that community of interest which is the very soul of this attachment. the infinite number of little incidents which are never to be forgotten by any real lover, are all of a purely physical nature, but, in the aggregate, they form the nucleus of that "amazement of love and friendship and intimacy" which is like the melodious harmony of the sweetest sounds, which lead us into an ecstasy in every way supersensual. it is in the realization of such delight that gay remarks, "not to know love, is not to live." we can best understand the real potency of sensual gratification in love, if we consider that those moments which are the subject of our most pleasant memories, are not those in which our desires were gratified, but those in which we ourselves practiced the most ascetic self-denial. well has schlegel expressed this sentiment when he says, in his essay upon the limits of the beautiful:--"those who yield their souls captive to the brief intoxication of (sensual) love, if no higher and holier feeling mingle with and consecrate their dreams of bliss, will shrink tremblingly from the pangs which attend their awakening." but nature has here so arranged her course, that after marriage, our children's, or, in their absence, our lovers' affairs, become a part and parcel of our lives, and thus, what began as selfish interest, from the pleasure which we obtain from the presence of our loved one, is transmuted into altruism of the highest type. to those who love, there is nothing of the spirit of boasting in the words of "valentine," when he says: "she is mine own, and i as rich in having such a jewel as twenty seas, if all their sands were pearls, the water nectar, and the rocks pure gold"; but rather of a pious appreciation of the being who has brought him such great happiness. there is something unaccountable about this passion called love, and anyone who has experienced it does not wonder at the words of madame de stael, "love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notions of time, effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end." in speaking of the happiness which is to be attained by means of love, we should not fail to note the fact that in order to secure the most enjoyment from it, we must be able to satisfy the conditions for which such a close and reciprocal relationship calls. it is here that the philosophy of living, based upon self-interest, is by far the safest guide of conduct known, since once the fact that we must be able to give to the ones whom we love all that we ask of them is instilled in our minds, we will have a most powerful stimulant to virtuous living. and in this matter, there is no chance for misunderstanding. if we would get all the happiness out of love, we must go into it according to the old injunction given to clients who were both about to try their case before a court in equity: "you must enter with clean hands." it is strange, that even in the affairs of a platonic friendship, a citizen of morally rotten rome at the time of the decadence of the consulate, should realize that "nothing is more amiable than virtue; nothing which more strongly allures us to love it," and yet, two thousand years later, so few people are practicing this truth, and many, who, in their ignorance, will utterly deny it. this has largely come about from the fact that, in times past, man has been able to mold the opinions of his sisters, and, consequently, virtue was not demanded from him. but if we will teach our children that it is essential to their happiness that they should be virtuous, so that they may enter into an _affair d'amour_ with equity, and obtain from it the happiness which it only can bring, we would sweep from their paths, with one stroke, the temptations of licentiousness which are to-day proving to be the ruin of the majority of the young men of this country. we should teach our boys that they must be able to give to their wives a mind and body as unpolluted by debauchery as they expect and insist upon receiving, and that unless they are able to do this, the pleasures of love, as it affects the marriage relationship, are forever beyond their power to experience. we should teach our girls that they should demand, from the man who asks for their hand, as clean and as spotless a past as they are able to give him, and that, unless they insist upon this, matrimony will not turn out to be the "grand, sweet song" which they have been told about, but will be more like an "armed truce." connubial love is of such a nature that it will not find happiness in the contemplation of the possibility of a rival, and of all of the exacting passions with which humanity has to deal, undoubtedly this of love is the strongest. the old saying that "familiarity breeds contempt," is based upon this fact--that unless we are able to maintain, in the one we love, the esteem for us, which under a smaller knowledge of our individuality, we have excited, the sentiment of attraction soon turns to one of repulsion even more potent than its opposite, and even as great a source of misery as is the repulsion of hatred; not even being secondary when compared with jealousy, which "mocks the meat it feeds upon." what possibility of happiness is there in marriage where there is constantly running through the mind a comparison of the partner which you have, and a possibility of what you have given up? how much happiness is possible when you are always comparing yourself with some rival, and wondering what your lover sees in him which you do not possess? it is the strongest argument in favor of monogamy and monandry, that only under this condition can the marriage relationship be equitably fulfilled, even more potent than the necessity of parental guidance in directing the development of the growing mind. man is, by nature, socially inclined, and it is only in the society of his fellow-men that he really matures intellectually and morally. under the influence of love, in the most intimate association with a limited number of others, preferably of his own kin, who will reprove his faults gently and reasonably laud his courage and achievements--he finds the perfect element for inspiration and development. holmes has expressed this sentiment beautifully in his lines: "soft as the breath of a maiden's 'yes'; not the light gossamer stirs with less; but never a cable holds so fast through all the battles of wave and blast." the enthusiasm which comes from the struggle of maintaining a home for your loved ones, where privacy and comfort may be found; a retreat from the cares and trifling annoyances of the work-a-day world, makes the place of abode a shrine where all of our interests are centered. most truly has longfellow said: "each man's chimney is his golden milestone; is the central point from which he measures every distance, through the gateways of the world around him." without having experienced a real and genuine affection, no man can realize the highest possibility. edwin markham has most truly said that the love adventure is the episode of every human life, and, without it, no existence is complete. there is no other earthly possession with which it can be compared; consequently, we cannot be too careful in seeing that our lives conform to the necessary demands of the nature of this passion. the effect of love upon human ethics cannot be doubted. the finest faculty which we have is that by means of which we are able to judge right from wrong, and is what we call conscience. with this truth in mind, we have only to remember a portion of an incomplete sonnet of shakespeare's, saying, "conscience is born of love." in this observation, as in many of his others, the bard of avon has reached the heart of the matter at once. without love, we would have, and could have, no conscience, as we are only considerate of others when we have much at stake ourselves, and wish this consideration for reciprocal reasons. had we no affection, we would have but little incentive to moral discrimination. in this sense, as well as for its happy memories, "it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." in considering the advantages of real love, it is also important that the disadvantages of its counterfeits should be made clear. in the first place, many of the noted teachers during the last decade have called attention to the frightful reduction in our marriage and birth rates; and this, notwithstanding the fact that we feel that we are progressing upward in the scale of civilization. now, while many of our political economists believe that the increased cost of living has been largely responsible for this, it seems that we should not, however, attach too great importance to the claim. there has been a growing of the moral sense among women of the western nations, and particularly in america, during the last few years, which has tremendously influenced the foundations of our civilization. the women's christian temperance movement, under the guiding hand of miss willard, not only advocated the prohibition of the sale of alcoholic stimulants, but also became a tremendous power in the social purity crusade, which began to sweep over this country some twenty-five years ago. the agitation, which resulted from this reform movement, developed facts which were previously unknown to the general public, and in every way caused people to begin to think about subjects which had previously never been brought to their attention in a specific way. when the statistics were published that, in this country of eighty million people, we were having one divorce for every twelve marriages, and that every year showed a decrease in the marriage and birth rate, thinking people of all classes began to seek to find the cause for such facts. it would seem that one of the primal causes for the decrease in the marriage rate is the ease with which vice has been allowed to become organized in this country into a regular system, which is conducted upon a basis of cold-blooded business calculation. the fact that we have between six hundred thousand and three-quarters of a million of prostitutes in america, and that this class of people is being recruited at the rate of over fifteen thousand per annum from foreign countries and about seventy-five thousand per annum from our own country, is certainly highly significant. furthermore, the fact that probably three-quarters of the women in america who marry are forced to undergo major operations within the first five years of their married life, on account of the moral delinquency of their husbands, has certainly not given any impetus to marriage in our own country. we have also to remember that over one-third of all the blindness in this country is traceable to a like cause, and that this occurs in innocent children, who usually are less than a week old when their sight is lost, as the result of venereal infection. furthermore, in many of the homes which we all have an opportunity to observe, there is not that happiness existing which would lead thinking people to rush ruthlessly into matrimony, and the necessity for making divorce easy and the marriage relationship hard to enter into was never as imperative as it is to-day. the majority of the children being born, and in whose hands the entire welfare of this state in the future will rest, are usually those of parents who are either unfitted or unable, physically, intellectually, and morally, to give them such character and education as will make them good citizens; in other words, vice and crime are breeding faster by far than moral restraint and virtue. whenever we are able to have our young men understand that self-control on their part is a matter of first importance in the requirements of good citizenship, and a prime requisite if individual happiness is desired, then and only then will we begin to find marriage becoming more popular and divorce less to be desired by those who have entered into this relationship. chapter viii problems of the future the close of the last century found humanity under a different aspect than ever before. westward and ever westward had swept the course of empire until the early years of this decade found the mongolian again demonstrating his superiority over the slavonic people of eastern europe. for centuries the battles for individual freedom of body and mind had been fought in torture chambers, at heresy trials, at the stake of every auto-da-fé, as well as in the legislative halls of insular and continental europe, and finally this struggle has culminated in the greatest, fiercest and most devastating war of modern times, which was america's tribute to the cause of democracy and freedom. the nations of europe have looked with wonder upon the growth and sudden rise into importance of the american confederacy of states, and crowned and titled tyrants, ruling by the "divine right," have long dreaded the absorption of american ideas by their subjects or american interference with the course of governmental procedure. with the advancement and dissemination of learning, democratic government has got to come, and woe to those who oppose it when the time is ripe. poor, bleeding, ignorant russia is at this minute in the throes of internecine strife, and no one realizes better than those of the autocracy who by their selfishness and sloth have brought upon themselves the engulfing tide of revolution, what was meant by the dissolute associates of the french court directly before the horrors of the commune when they used to say "after us the deluge." and little as they expected it, this deluge did not wait for them to leave, but in many instances helped to usher them from the field of human activity, upon the block, before the guillotine. it is not at this time even improbable that the great siberian prisons may soon be filled with the bluest blood of royalty, and perhaps the kara mines will yet be worked in by their owners, for the benefit of the revolutionists. but whether this comes to pass or not, we know that we have seen absolutism gradually give way to constitutional forms of government, and these in turn become metamorphosed into republics. and in these democracies we see a tendency to return to a centralized form of government, particularly when the chief executive is an individual whose judgment, although it is in error, has been actuated by motives which no one can impugn. what then is the meaning of this--is humanity traveling in cycles? politically, we can answer emphatically, no. the ease with which knowledge is communicated among people to-day and the unimpeachable integrity of the great middle classes are the surest guarantee that never will we return to the degrading darkness and servility of the past, while the trenchant manner in which our press uses the weapons of ridicule and cartoon insures for our posterity an even better and more active public conscience, which will demand duty performed commensurate with privileges granted. municipalities and commonwealths may be full of political rottenness and corruption, senates may be filled by the paid agents of capital, representative halls may be packed by demagogues elected by the most radical element of organized labor, but regardless of temporary mistakes, just as long as we maintain an efficient public school system and make education compulsory and leave the press unshackled, we cannot under a democratic form of government, where tenure of office is for a short period only, ever permanently retrograde. students of contemporaneous american history who have followed closely the exposure of municipal officials guilty of the worst forms of malfeasance, will probably be led to believe that we are going from bad to worse politically in our larger cities. owing to the publicity, however, which such matters get, and the fact that our citizen body in the aggregate respect honesty and integrity, we have nothing to fear. the reform wave which oftentimes sweeps with violence over our cities, to be checked only when persons of much influence have their liberty jeopardized, will inevitably bring about an understanding on the part of the majority of the citizens that politics must not be corrupted by people who make a business of seducing the electorate of our cities. the commission form of government has already done much to lead the way to a better state of affairs, and even if it had not, it would be only a question of but a short time until publicity itself would bring about a better, purer, and more economic administration of government. as a nation, we are more seriously menaced by the accumulation of gigantic individual fortunes than from any other one and perhaps from all other sources combined, as in but very few cases does a competency mean the use of time for a leisure of culture and ennoblement, but rather for the development of selfishness, avarice, cruelty, and immorality. christ certainly did not overrate the awful disadvantage of riches, particularly if considered in relation to the recent developments of our criminal trials in our great cities, when he said that "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven." wealth in the hands of the young is the worst condition with which they can be surrounded--it almost forces them into the company of irresponsible and immoral persons who lead them into vice, thus sapping their vitality, as well as engrossing them in habits of infamy, which their weakened mentality can usually never shake off. the direst poverty, on the other hand, pinches and confines both the body and mind through lack of proper nutrition and time for rest and recreation, so that it is of double importance to the state to see that enormous private accumulations of wealth do not exist, and more especially that they cannot be inherited. a reasonable sum should be fixed upon by our lawmakers as the maximum amount which could be inherited by any one individual, and any part of an estate which was not legally disposed of under this act, by will or otherwise, should pass into the undisputed possession of the state and should be spent, not for the ordinary administration of the law, but for the building of schools, hospitals, parks, museums, and the purchase of public utilities, such as water, lighting, power and transportation companies. should the means above suggested prove too slow in operation or inadequate to meet present emergencies, an income-tax might, for a decade or two, be a necessity--the returns from which should be expended as suggested above. unless something of this character is done within the next century, it would seem that our country cannot continue to advance in civilization, although she might in political prestige and commercial importance, but would follow in the steps of so many other great states, and sooner or later arrive at a time where her present would be but a meagre shadow of her majestic past. if we would have the most that is to be got out of life, we should see to it that more time and attention is paid to the development of the æsthetic side of our natures. our public buildings are to-day usually designed upon grand and majestic lines; some of our public parks are laid out with the idea of showing the beauty of simplicity and harmony; a few of our private mansions are architecturally works of art; we have in our large cities a few museums which are kept open a few hours to the public upon days when it has leisure, but, further than this, how little are we taught, or do we see, the beautiful aside from its arrangement in nature in the ordinary routine of life? with all but the wealthier class, the getting of a livelihood and the attention to other material things, consumes all the time and energy available under the present régime so that no leisure is left to cultivate an appreciation or desire for the beautiful. it is the amount of development of the æsthetic nature of the masses which is the surest and most certain index of any civilization. schlegel has most justly observed that "when men are left to the sole guidance of artificial law, they become reduced to mere empty shadows and soulless forms; while the undivided sway of nature leaves them savage and loveless." it is therefore in this middle ground that we should provide stimuli for the growth of this cult of the beautiful, and to do this we must begin with the children. it should be the care of the state to see that our streets are kept clean, that grass plots and flower beds are harmoniously and tastily arranged at the intersection of the highways, wherever possible, and that all houses intended for tenement purposes be so built that plenty of light and air can be always available. powerful and elevating music should be performed in public parks at frequent intervals, whenever the weather will permit of general gatherings in the open air. the best talent should be secured to address the people upon subjects of a general nature, such as topics of the day, political economy, popular science, etc. our school rooms should not only be clean and well ventilated, but their walls should be hung with interesting and beautiful pictures, and our school libraries, as well as our public libraries, should be numerous, and filled with the best literature that money can buy. in our homes, we should see that every refining influence possible is thrown around the children, and, above all, they should be taught the beauty of self-sacrifice and heroism. particularly should they be taught the value and beauty of affection, and they should be both told and shown that the pleasure derived therefrom, and its value to the human species, depends almost wholly upon the self-restraint and self-sacrifice which is exercised in connection with the intimate relations arising from it. schlegel again speaks right to the point, "every inordinate indulgence involves a corresponding amount of suffering.... others, on the contrary, who devote themselves to glorious deeds and seek enjoyment only in the intervals of more serious exertion, will have their best reward in the pure, unchanging happiness purchased by such self-denial. pleasure, indeed, has a higher zest when spontaneous and self-created; and it rises in value in proportion to its affinity with that perfection of beauty in which moral excellence is allied to external charms." our attention as a nation to the acquisition of material wealth to the utter disregard of our æsthetic natures may very largely account for the fact that america has produced but few of those literary and artistic stars which are almost always coincident with commercial prosperity. we seem to have neither passed the elizabethan nor the victorian age in literature upon this side of the water--not because we have not produced talent along these lines, but because the quantity has been so small and seems to be growing less every year. since the opening of the present century, there has practically been nothing produced which will demand recognition among literary and artistic people after our own generation. there seems to be only one other great problem before humanity to-day. next to the distribution of wealth, it, however, is undoubtedly the most perplexing question with which every democratic country will sooner or later have to deal. in its two forms--as prostitution and the restriction of birth--it constitutes what for a better name is commonly called "the social evil." under our civilization and in our system of social caste we have no class of serfs; but as low, if not lower, than these we have those women who sell their favors for money to anyone who will pay the price. unfortunately, we have not yet reached the place where the majority of our male population decry moral looseness on the part of women with whom they are not connected by blood or matrimony; although this may or may not have been done for profit, as the case may be. it is still largely a matter as to how general the knowledge is, as to how great is the crime. nevertheless, with those unfortunates whose character is generally known, our modern society has no place--they are outcasts in the true sense of the word. worse than all, is the fact that society refuses to proscribe immorality of this nature in man as it does in woman--consequently, she alone before the world is made to suffer for what he is as much to blame for as she is, and very frequently more so. the incongruity of this, under a democratic form of government, is readily apparent to anyone and that such a condition of affairs may not exist permanently under our civilization cannot be doubted. it would therefore seem that either one of two things will have to come to pass in the future; either we shall have to regard our prostitutes as a class, as they were probably esteemed in ancient greece, or we shall have to attach an equal calumny to man as we now attach to woman in these relations. in the first instance, we tacitly admit that the nature of man differs from that of woman, in that continence and monogamy are not fitted for him but are for her, which every fair-minded person knows to be a falsehood; or else in the other alternative we have the entire sentiment of this country upon this whole matter to make over and that against those who are in power. mrs. parsons, in her carefully prepared and comprehensive study, entitled "the family," does not, it would seem, speak other than satirically when she proposes that the same license be allowed woman before she bears children as society now allows man. this would seem to be a step backward, inasmuch as there is to-day, with no small percentage of the people in this country, a decided stigma attached to promiscuity on the part of man, and this should be fostered and encouraged, at any expense. her recommendation of early trial marriage also smacks of the satirical, while her propositions "to make the transmission of venereal diseases in marriage a penal offense, to render identical the age of consent with the legal age of marriage, and to abolish all laws requiring parental consent to marriage, to consider parental duties the same in the case of an illegitimate as in that of a legitimate child, and to abolish legal separation and divorce law provisions prohibiting the defendant to remarry," must appeal to all fair-minded persons as exactly what is needed. with sentiment once well started in this direction, we can hope that the next two or three decades will accomplish much--more particularly if we lose our money madness and return from "the flesh-pots" to things that are of real value. the happiness and virtue of our children will never be secure until society is founded upon a basis of real monogamy, and male as well as female continence before marriage, and the sooner this fact is admitted and enforced the better will it be for the human race. in this molding of sentiment, woman can be and is an important factor, and her position becomes the more commanding as she becomes more independent financially. if she demands purity on the part of her male friends--sooner or later it will be accorded to her--if she insists upon it in her lover, her prince charming will come forth with the quality. concerning that part of this question which deals with the restriction of birth, it has always seemed that outside of voluntary childless marriages the importance of "race suicide" was over-estimated. where there is no pathological reason why children should not be born, there can be no question but that voluntary childless marriage is what has been well termed "a progressive substitute for prostitution." but where not used to consummate this end, but to keep within the limits of the proper education and the bringing up of the progeny of a human pair, such practice as does not involve infanticide cannot be against the best interests of the race. consequently, it would seem that, before marriage, young men and women should become acquainted with the fundamental phenomena of conception, with the purpose in view of regulating the number of children which they bring into the world to such a number as they can properly educate and equip for the struggle of existence. such biological knowledge as is necessary to attain this should become the common property of humanity, and the state should not restrict the sale of such articles as would further this end. on the other hand, young men and women should be taught that it is their duty to have what children they can care for, and at such times and under such conditions during wedlock as will insure their descendants the best physical and mental equipment. infanticide in any form and at any time, except when performed under the jurisdiction of a reputable physician, should be made a crime and proper punishment provided therefor. in this phase of the question, there is also a place for the fostering of proper sentiment. parents should show their children that they constitute a very large proportion of their happiness, and that child-bearing, within the limits above set forth, is a privilege and not a burden. under these conditions, voluntary childless marriage will become less frequent and the family will occupy the position of primary importance in the state to which it is entitled. it is impossible to estimate the far-reaching influence of the woman's rights movement. the agitation to-day extends completely around the world, and even such oriental countries as turkey, japan, and china are being forced to realize that they have it to face in the near future. politically, there can be no question but that the movement will tend more towards the purity of the administration of justice and the elimination of corruption in politics than any movement which has been started within the history of man; and, as examples of this, we have only to look for ample proof in countries where women have been given full rights of citizenship, such as new zealand, and in colorado, idaho, wyoming, and nevada states in this country. socially, we have already noticed the effect which this movement will have as tending towards the purity of masculine morals. economically, however, it presents a far different aspect, since every woman who enters commercial life, whether in the office or factory, diminishes the child-bearing population of the earth, and with the greater sense of justice and equity which comes from the higher education, the demands of woman will not only become more and more exacting, but she will be becoming constantly more potent in their enforcement. the economic phase of this problem is so great that it is impossible to state at this time what the outcome will be, but a still further tremendous decrease in the birth rate is absolutely sure to come about; and it would seem that possibly those evils which will, in the long run, be most largely rectified by this movement will be augmented in the immediate future, as a result of this agitation, until such a time as the majority of our citizens may be given such education as will enable them to reason more logically about the fundamental propositions of life. we have looked at a few of the phases of human existence; what shall be said of the value of life? modern science has forever taken from us the comforting delusions of a personal deity, an immortality for the soul in a personal sense, and the idea of our possessing a will, free to force our direction whithersoever we elect. it has left, in place of these, the idea of duty--individual and personal responsibility--which cannot be shirked. george eliot, in the epilogue of romola, preaches as strong a sermon as she ever could to mr. meyers, when she talked to him upon that now famous evening in may at cambridge. carlyle, no less than his countrywoman, realized, not only the importance of living up to individual responsibility, but also understood how hard it often was to know just what should be done. his rule, which is most worthy of emulation, was: "do the nearest duty that lies to your hand, and already the next duty will have become plainer." in order that we may be the better prepared to fulfill our responsibilities, we should obtain all the knowledge possible, even although it may cause us lack of insight temporarily, and much mental agony. faith is not comparable to knowledge, any more than wishing is equal to the obtaining of results. we should therefore be aggressive in the discharge of our duty--liberal and tolerant, pure and upright, loving and unselfish, virtuous and truly religious, so that it may be said of us, when we have finished, that the world is a little better, and life has been, for as many as possible, a little happier for our having lived. the end the ~"how does it work"~ series no. . =electricity.= by thomas w. corbin. with many illustrations. price, cents, cloth. explains in simple language the working of dynamos, motors, heating and lighting apparatus, trainways, railways, &c. "the information given is clear and easily understood, and many excellent halftones and line drawings are given. it is an a book for any boy or man with a leaning towards things electric."--_publishers' circular._ "the descriptions are given in very plain language and there are excellent illustrations." no. . =model making.= by cyril hall. cloth. with many diagrams. price, cents. contains instructions for making a steam locomotive--turbine--steam boat--electric engines--motors--yacht--printing press--steam crane--telephone--electric bells--telegraph, &c. no. . =modern engines.= by thomas w. corbin. with many illustrations. price, cloth, cents. steam engines, gas engines, petrol engines, marine engines, steam pumps, steam boilers, &c., &c. at all booksellers or postpaid by r. f. fenno & company transcriber's note text in italics has been surrounded with _underscores_, underlined words with ~signs~, bold with =signs= and small capitals changed to all capitals. the first two columns of the geological table at the end of chapter ii have been combined to keep the width within limits. the following corrections were made, on page "posession" changed to "possession" (after they had secured possession of their) "formluæ" changed to "formulæ" (had recited certain magical formulæ which had) ' changed to " (never to have loved at all.") " added ("the information given is clear). otherwise the original has been preserved, including archaic and unusual words, as well as unusual or inconsistent spelling and hyphenation. for instance: phoedrus is usually spelled as phædrus, this has not been changed. transcriber's note: italic text has been marked with _underscores_. please see the end of this book for further notes. human origins _human origins._ published july , copies. reprinted august , copies. reprinted september , copies. human origins by s. laing author of "problems of the future," "modern science and modern thought," "a modern zoroastrian," etc. with illustrations _fifth thousand_ london: chapman and hall, ld. [_all rights reserved_] richard clay & sons, limited, london & bungay. contents. page introduction part i.--evidence from history. chapter i. egypt. historical standard of time--short date inconsistent with evolution--laws of historical evidence--history begins with authentic records--records of egypt oldest--manetho's lists--confirmed by hieroglyphics--origin of writing--the alphabet--phonetic writing--clue to hieroglyphics--the rosetta stone--champollion--principles of hieroglyphic writing--language coptic--can be read with certainty--confirmed by monuments--manetho's date for menes b.c.--old, middle, and new empires--old empire, menes, to end of sixth dynasty--break between old and middle empires--works of twelfth dynasty--fayoum--thirteenth and fourteenth dynasties--hyksos conquests--duration of hyksos rule--their expulsion and foundation of new empire--conquests in asia of seventeenth and eighteenth dynasties--wars with hittites and assyrians--persian and greek dynasties--summary of evidence for date of menes--period prior to menes--horsheshu--sphynx--stone age--neolithic and palæolithic remains--horner, haynes, and pitt-rivers chapter ii. chaldÆa. chronology--berosus--his dates mythical--dates in genesis--synchronisms with egypt and assyria--monuments--cuneiform inscriptions--how deciphered--behistan inscription--grotefend and rawlinson--layard--library of koyunjik--how preserved--accadian translations and grammars--historical dates--elamite conquest--commencement of modern history--ur-ea and dungi--nabonidus--sargon i., b.c.--ur of the chaldees--sharrukin's cylinder--his library--his son naram-sin--semites and accadians--accadians and chinese--period before sargon i.--patesi--de sarzec's find at sirgalla--gud-ea, to b.c.--advance of delta--astronomical records--chaldæa and egypt give similar results---historic period or years--and no trace of a beginning chapter iii. other historical records. _china_--oldest existing civilization--but records much later than those of egypt and chaldæa--language and traditions accadian--communication how effected. _elam_--very early civilization--susa, an old city in first chaldæan records--conquered chaldæa in b.c.--conquered by assyrians b.c.--statue of nana--cyrus an elamite king--his cylinder--teaches untrustworthiness of legendary history. _phoenicia_--great influence on western civilization--but date comparatively late--traditions of origin--first distinct mention in egyptian monuments b.c.--great movements of maritime nations--invasions of egypt by sea and land, under menepthah, b.c., and ramses iii., b.c.--lists of nations--show advanced civilization and intercourse--but nothing beyond or b.c. _hittites_--great empire in asia minor and syria--turanian race--origin cappadocia--great wars with egypt--battle of kadesh--treaty with ramses ii.--power rapidly declined--but only finally destroyed b.c. by sargon ii.--capital carchemish--great commercial emporium--hittite hieroglyphic inscriptions and monuments--only recently and partially deciphered--results. _arabia_--recent discoveries--inscriptions--sabæa--minæans--thirty-two kings known--ancient commerce and trade-routes--incense and spices--literature--old traditions--oannes--punt--seat of semites--arabian alphabet--older than phoenician--bearing on old testament histories. _troy and mycenæ_--dr. schliemann's excavations--hissarlik--buried fortifications, palaces, and treasures of ancient troy--mycenæ and tiryns--proof of civilization and commerce--tombs--absence of inscriptions and religious symbols--date of mycenæan civilization--school of art--pictures on vases--type of race chapter iv. ancient religions. egypt--book of the dead--its morality--metaphysical character--origins of religions--ghosts--animism--astronomy and astrology--morality--pantheism and polytheism--egyptian ideas of future life and judgment--egyptian genesis--divine emanations--plurality of gods and animal worship--sun worship and solar myths--knowledge of astronomy--orientation of pyramids--theory of future life--the ka--the soul--confession of faith before osiris. chaldæan religion--oldest form accadian--shamanism--growth of philosophical religion--astronomy and astrology--accadian trinities--anu, mull-il, ea--twelve great gods--bel-ishtar--merodach--assur--pantheism--wordsworth--magic and omens--penitential psalms--conclusions from chapter v. ancient science and art. evidence of antiquity--pyramids and temples--arithmetic--decimal and duodecimal scales--astronomy--geometry reached in egypt at earliest dates--great pyramid--piazzi smyth and pyramid-religion--pyramids formerly royal tombs, but built on scientific plans--exact orientation on meridian--centre in ° n. latitude--tunnel points to pole--possible use as an observatory--procter--probably astrological--planetary influences--signs of the zodiac--mathematical coincidences of great pyramid--chaldæan astronomy--ziggurats--tower of babel--different orientation from egyptian pyramids--astronomical treatise from library of sargon i., b.c.--eclipses and phases of venus--measures of time from old chaldæan--moon and sun--found among so many distant races--implies commerce and intercourse--art and industry--embankment of menes--sphynx--industrial arts--fine arts--sculpture and painting--the oldest art the best--chaldæan art--de sarzec's find at sirgalla--statues and works of art--imply long use of bronze--whence came the copper and tin--phoenician and etruscan commerce--bronze known years earlier--same alloy everywhere--possible sources of supply--age of copper--names of copper and tin--domestic animals--horse--ox and ass--agriculture--all proves extreme antiquity chapter vi. prehistoric traditions. short duration of tradition--no recollection of stone age--celts taken for thunderbolts--stone age in egypt--palæolithic implements--earliest egyptian traditions--extinct animals forgotten--their bones attributed to giants--chinese and american traditions--traditions of origin of man--philosophical myths--cruder myths from stones, trees, and animals--totems--recent events soon forgotten--autochthonous nations--wide diffusion of prehistoric myths--the deluge--importance of, as test of inspiration--more definite than legend of creation--what the account of the deluge in genesis really says--date--extent--duration--all life destroyed except pairs preserved in the ark--such a deluge impossible--contradicted by physical science--by geology--by zoology--by ethnology--by history--how deluge myths arise--local floods--sea shells on mountains--solar myths--deluge of hasisadra--noah's deluge copied from it--revised in a monotheistic sense at a comparatively late period--conclusion--rational view of inspiration chapter vii. the historical element in the old testament. moral and religious distinct from historical inspiration--myth and allegory--the higher criticism--all ancient history unconfirmed by monuments untrustworthy--cyrus--old testament and monuments--jerusalem--tablet of tell-el-amarna--flinders petrie's exploration of pre-hebrew cities--ramses and pi-thom--first certain synchronism rehoboam--composite structure of old testament--elohist and jehovist--priests' code--canon driver--results--book of chronicles--methods of jewish historians--post-exilic references--tradition of esdras--nehemiah and ezra--foundation of modern judaism--different from pre-exilic--discovery of book of the law under josiah--deuteronomy--earliest sacred writings--conclusions--aristocratic and prophetic schools--triumph of pietism with exile--both compiled partly from old materials--crudeness and barbarism of parts--pre-abrahamic period clearly mythical--derived from chaldæa--abraham--unhistoric character--his age--lot's wife--his double adventure with sarah--abraham to moses--sojourn in egypt--discordant chronology--josephus' quotation from manetho--small traces of egyptian influence--future life--legend of joseph--moses--osarsiph--life of moses full of fabulous legends--his birth--plagues of egypt--the exodus--colenso--contradictions and impossibilities--immoralities--massacres--joshua and the judges--barbarisms and absurdities--only safe conclusion no history before the monarchy--david and solomon--comparatively modern date part ii.--evidence from science. chapter viii. geology and palÆontology. proved by contemporary monuments--as in history--summary of historical evidence--geological evidence of human periods--neolithic period--palæolithic or quaternary--tertiary--secondary and older periods--the recent or post-glacial period--lake-villages--bronze age--kitchen-middens--scandinavian peat-mosses--neolithic remains comparatively modern--definition of post-glacial period--its duration--mellard read's estimate--submerged forests--changes in physical geography--huxley--objections from america--niagara--quaternary period--immense antiquity--presence of man throughout--first glacial period--scandinavian and laurentian ice-caps--immense extent--mass of _débris_--elevation and depression--in britain--inter-glacial and second glacial periods--antiquity measured by changes of land--lyell's estimate--glacial _débris_ and loess--recent erosion--bournemouth--evans--prestwich--wealden ridge and southern drift--contain human implements--evidence from new world--california chapter ix. the glacial period and croll's theory. causes of glacial periods--actual conditions of existing glacial regions--high land in high latitudes--cold alone insufficient--large evaporation required--formation of glaciers--they flow like rivers--icebergs--greenland and antarctic circle--geographical and cosmic causes--cooling of earth and sun, cold spaces in space, and change in earth's axis, reviewed and rejected--precession alone insufficient--unless with high eccentricity--geographical causes, elevation of land--aërial and oceanic currents--gulf stream and trade winds--evidence for greater elevation of land in america, europe, and asia--depression--warmer tertiary climates--alps and himalayas--wallace's _island life_--lyell--croll's theory--sir r. ball--former glacial periods--correspondence with croll's theory--length of the different phases--summary--croll's theory a secondary cause--conclusions as to man's antiquity chapter x. quaternary man. no longer doubted--men not only existed, but in numbers and widely spread--palæolithic implements of similar type found everywhere--progress shown--tests of antiquity--position of strata--fauna--oldest types--mixed northern and southern species--reindeer period--correspondence of human remains with these three periods--advance of civilization--clothing and barbed arrows--drawing and sculpture--passage into neolithic and recent periods--corresponding progress of physical man--distinct races--how tested--tests applied to historical, neolithic, and palæolithic man--long heads and broad heads--aryan controversy--primitive european types--canon taylor--huxley--preservation of human remains depends mainly on burials--about forty skulls and skeletons known from quaternary times--summary of results--quatrefages and hamy--races of canstadt--cro-magnon--furfooz--truchere--skeletons of neanderthal and spy--canstadt type oldest--cro-magnon type next--skeleton of cro-magnon--broad-headed and short race resembling lapps--american type--no evidence from asia, africa, india, polynesia, and australia--negroes, negrillos, and negritos--summary of results chapter xi. tertiary man. definition of periods--passage from pliocene to quaternary--scarcity of human remains in tertiary--denudation--evidence from caves wanting--tertiary man a necessary inference from widespread existence of quaternary man--both equally inconsistent with genesis--was the first great glaciation pliocene or quaternary?--section of perrier--confirms croll's theory--elephas meridionalis--mammoth--st. prest--cut bones--instances of tertiary man--halitherium--balæonotus--puy-courny--thenay--evidence for--proofs of human agency--latest conclusions--gaudry's theory--dryopithecus--type of tertiary man--skeleton of castelnedolo--shows no approach to the missing link--contrary to theory of evolution--must be sought in the eocene--evidence from the new world--glacial period in america--palæolithic implements--quaternary man--similar to europe--california--conditions different--auriferous gravels--volcanic eruptions--enormous denudation--great antiquity--flora and fauna--point to tertiary age--discovery of human remains--table mountain--latest finds--calaveras skull--summary of evidence--other evidence--tuolumne--brazil--buenos ayres--nampa images--take us farther from first origins and the missing link--if darwin's theory applies to man, must go back to the eocene chapter xii. races of mankind. monogeny or polygeny--darwin--existing races--colour--hair--skulls and brains--dolichocephali and brachycephali--jaws and teeth--stature--other tests--isaac taylor--prehistoric types in europe--huxley's classification--language no test of race--egyptian monuments--human and animal races unchanged for years--neolithic races--palæolithic--different races of man as far back as we can trace--types of canstadt, cro-magnon, and furfooz--oldest races dolichocephalic--skulls of neanderthal and spy--simian characters--objections--evidence confined to europe--american man--calaveras skull--tertiary man--skull of castelnedolo--leaves monogeny or polygeny an open question--arguments on each side--old arguments from the bible and philology exploded--what darwinian theory requires--animal types traced up to the eocene--secondary origins--dog and horse--fertility of races--question of hybridity--application to man--difference of constitutions--negro and white--bearing on question of migration--apes and monkeys--question of original locality of man--asiatic theory--eur-african--american--arctic--none based on sufficient evidence--mere speculations--conclusion--summary of evidence as to human origins illustrations tablet of snefura at wady magerah specimen of hieroglyphic alphabet pyramids of gizeh and sphynx fellah woman and head of second hyksos statue hyksos sphynx statue of prince rahotep's wife khufu-ankh and his servants--early egyptians cuneiform symbols cylinder seal of sargon i head of ancient chaldÆan statue of gud-ea, with inscription sea-fight in the time of ramses iii king of the hittites chief of punt and two men queen sending warrior to battle adam, eve, and the serpent judgment of the soul by osiris pyramid ziggurat restored the village sheik palÆolithic celt palÆolithic celt in argillite palÆolithic flint celt palÆolithic celt of quartzite from natal portrait of mammoth earliest portrait of a man with serpents and horses' heads reindeer feeding arrow-heads cuts with flint knife on rib of balÆonotus--pliocene cut magnified by microscope flint scraper from high level drift, kent upper miocene implements. puy courny copare quaternary implements section at thenay middle miocene implements middle miocene implements compare quaternary implements section of great californian lava stream, cut through by rivers section across table mountain, tuolumne county, california the nampa image l'homme avant l'histoire human origins. introduction. the reception which has been given to my former works leads me to believe that they have had a certain educational value for those who, without being specialists, wish to keep themselves abreast of the culture of the day, and to understand the leading results and pending problems of modern science. of these results the most interesting are those which bear upon the origin and evolution of the human race. in my former works i have treated of these mainly from the point of view of geology and palæontology, and have hardly touched on the province which lies nearest to us, that of history and of prehistoric traditions. in this province, however, a revolution has been effected by the discoveries of the present century, which is no less important than that made by geological research and by the doctrine of evolution. down to the middle of the nineteenth century, and to a considerable extent down to the present day, the hebrew bible was held to be the sole and sufficient authority as to the early history of the human race. it was believed, with a certainty which made doubt impious, that the first man adam was created in or about the year b.c., or not quite years ago; and that all human and other life was destroyed by a universal deluge, years later, with the exception of noah and his wife, their sons and their wives, and pairs of all living creatures, by whom the earth was repeopled from the mountain-peak of ararat as a centre. the latest conclusions of modern science show that uninterrupted historical records, confirmed by contemporary monuments, carry history back at least years before the supposed creation of man, and years before the date of the deluge, and show then no trace of a commencement; but populous cities, celebrated temples, great engineering works, and a high state of the arts and of civilization, already existing. this is of the highest interest, both as bearing on the dogma of the divine inspiration of the historical and scientific, as distinguished from the moral and religious, portions of the bible, and on the still more important question of the true theory of man's origin and relations to the universe. the so-called conflict between religion and science is at bottom one between two conflicting theories of the universe--the first that it is the creation of a personal god who constantly interferes by miracles to correct his original work; the second, that whether the first cause be a personal god or something inscrutable to human faculties, the work was originally so perfect that the whole succession of subsequent events has followed by evolution acting by invariable laws. the former is the theory of orthodox believers, the latter that of men of science, and of liberal theologians who, like bishop temple, find that the theory of "original impress" is more in accordance with the idea of an omnipotent and omniscient creator, to whom "a thousand years are as a day," than the traditional theory of a creator constantly interfering to supplement and amend his original creation by supernatural interferences. it is evidently important for all who desire to arrive at truth, and to keep abreast of the culture of the day, to have some clear conception of what historical and geological records really teach, and what sort of a standard or measuring-rod they supply in attempting to carry back our researches into the depths of prehistoric and of geological time. i have therefore in this work begun with the historic period, as giving us a solid foundation and standard of time, by which to gauge the vastly longer periods which lie behind, and ascended from this by successive steps through the neolithic and palæolithic ages, and the quaternary and tertiary periods, so far as the most recent discoveries throw any light on the mysterious question of "human origins." if i have succeeded in stimulating some minds, especially those of my younger readers, and of the working-classes who are striving after culture, to feel an interest in these subjects, and to pursue them further, my object will have been attained. they have been to me the solace of a long life, the delight of many quiet days, and the soother of many troubled ones, and i should be glad to think that i had been the means, however humble, of introducing to others what i have found such a source of enjoyment, and enlisting, if it were only a few, in the service of that "divine philosophy," in which i have ever found, as wordsworth did in nature, "the anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, the guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul of all my moral being." part i.--history. chapter i. egypt. historical standard of time--short date inconsistent with evolution--laws of historical evidence--history begins with authentic records--records of egypt oldest--manetho's lists--confirmed by hieroglyphics--origin of writing--the alphabet--phonetic writing--clue to hieroglyphics--the rosetta stone--champollion--principles of hieroglyphic writing--language coptic--can be read with certainty--confirmed by monuments--manetho's date for menes b.c.--old, middle, and new empires--old empire, menes, to end of sixth dynasty--break between old and middle empires--works of twelfth dynasty--fayoum--thirteenth and fourteenth dynasties--hyksos conquests--duration of hyksos rule--their expulsion and foundation of new empire--conquests in asia of seventeenth and eighteenth dynasties--wars with hittites and assyrians--persian and greek dynasties--summary of evidence for date of menes--period prior to menes--horsheshu--sphynx--stone age--neolithic and palæolithic remains--horner, haynes, and pitt-rivers. in measuring the dimensions of space we have to start from some fixed standard, such as the foot or yard, taken originally from the experience of our ordinary senses and capable of accurate verification. from this we arrive by successive inductions at the size of the earth, the distance of the sun, moon, and planets, and finally at the parallax of the fixed stars. so in speculations as to the origin and evolution of the human race, history affords the standard from which we start, through the successive stages of prehistoric, neolithic, and palæolithic man, until we pass into the wider ranges of geological time. any error in the original standard becomes magnified indefinitely, whether in space or time, as we extend our researches backwards into remoter regions. thus whether the authentic records of history extend only for some years backwards from the present time to the scriptural date of noah's flood, as was universally assumed to be the case until quite recently; or whether egyptian and chaldæan records carry us back for years, and show us then a dense population, powerful empires, large cities, and generally a highly advanced civilization already existing, makes a wonderful difference in the standpoint from which we view the course of human evolution. to begin with, a short date necessitates supernatural interferences. it is quite impossible that if man and all animal life were created only about years b.c., and were then all destroyed save the few pairs saved in noah's ark, and made a fresh start from a single centre some years later, there can be any truth in darwin's theory of evolution. we know for a certainty from the concurrent testimony of all history, and from egyptian monuments, that the different races of men and animals were in existence years ago as they are at the present day; and that no fresh creations or marked changes of type have taken place during that period. if then all these types, and all the different races and nations of men, sprung up in the interval of less than years, which is the longest that can by any possibility be allowed between the biblical date of the deluge and the clash of the mighty monarchies of assyria and egypt in palestine, the date of which is proved both by the bible and by profane historians, it is obviously impossible that such a state of things could have been brought about by natural causes. but if authentic historical records carry us back not for or , but for or years, and then show no trace of a beginning, the case is altered, and we may assume an almost unlimited duration of time, through historical, prehistoric, neolithic, and palæolithic ages, during which evolution may have operated. it is of the first importance therefore to inquire what these records really teach in the light of modern research, and what is the evidence for the longer dates which are now generally accepted. furnished with such a measuring-rod it becomes easier to attempt to bring into some sort of co-ordination the vast mass of facts which have been accumulated in recent years as to prehistoric, neolithic, and palæolithic man; and the glimpses of light respecting the origin, antiquity, and early history of the human race, which have come in from other sciences such as astronomy, geology, zoology, and philology. to do this exhaustively would be an encyclopædic task which i do not pretend to accomplish, but i am not without hope that the following chapters, connected as they are by the one leading idea of tracing human origins backward to their source, may assist inquiry, and create an interest in this most interesting of all questions, especially among the young who are striving after knowledge, and the millions who, not having the time and opportunity for reading technical works, feel a desire to keep themselves abreast of modern thought and of the advanced culture of the close of the nineteenth century. before examining these records in detail it is well to begin with the general laws upon which historical evidence is based. history begins with writings. all experience shows that what may be transmitted by memory and word of mouth, consists mainly of hymns and portions of ritual, such as the vedas of the hindoos; and to a certain extent of heroic poems and ballads in which the historical element is so overlaid by mythology and poetry, that it is impossible to discriminate between fact and fancy. thus the legend of hercules is evidently in the main a solar myth, and his twelve labours are related to the signs of the zodiac, but it is possible that there may have been a real hercules, the actual or eponymic ancestor of the tribe of heraclides. so, at a later period, the descent of the romans from the pious Æneas, and of the britons from another trojan hero brute, are obviously fabulous; and at a still more recent date, our own arthurian legends are evidently a mediæval romance, though it is possible that there may have been a chief of that name of the christianized romano-britons, who opposed a gallant resistance to the flood of saxon invasion. but to make real history we require something very different; concurrent and uninterrupted testimony of known historians; absence of impossible and obviously fabulous dates and events; and, above all, contemporary records, written or engraved on tombs, temples, and monuments, or preserved in papyri or clay cylinders. another remark is, that these authentic records of early history only begin to appear when civilization is so far advanced as to have established powerful dynasties and priestly organizations. the history of a nation is at first the history of its kings, and its records are enumerations of their genealogies, successive reigns, foundation or repair of temples, great industrial works, and warlike exploits. these are made and preserved by special castes of priestly colleges and learned scribes, and they are to a great extent precise in date and accurate in fact. before the establishment of such historical dynasties we have nothing but legends and traditions, which are vague and mythical, the mythological element rapidly predominating as we go backwards in time, until we soon arrive at reigns of gods, and lives of thousands of years. but as we approach the period of historical dynasties the mythological element diminishes, and we pass from gods reigning , years, and patriarchs living to , to later patriarchs living or years, and finally to mortal men, living, and kings reigning, to natural ages. in fact, with the first appearance of authentic records the supernatural disappears, and the average duration of lives, reigns, and dynasties, and the general course of events, are much the same as at present, and fully confirm, the statement of the egyptian priests to herodotus, that during the long succession of ages of the high priests of heliopolis, whose statues they showed him in the great temple of the sun, there had been no change in the length of human life or in the course of nature, and each one of the had been a _piromis_, or mortal man, the son of a _piromis_. the first question is how far back these authentic historical records can be traced, and egypt affords the first answer. the first step in the inquiry as to egyptian antiquity is afforded by the history of manetho. ptolemy philadelphus, whose reign began b.c., was an enlightened king. he founded the great alexandrian library, and was specially curious in collecting everything which bore on the early history of his own and other countries. with this view he had the greek translation, known as the septuagint, made of the sacred books of the hebrews, and he commissioned manetho to compile a history of egypt from the earliest times, from the most authentic temple records and other sources of information. manetho was eminently qualified for such a task, being a learned and judicious man, and a priest of sebennytus, one of the oldest and most famous temples. the history of manetho is unfortunately lost, being probably the greatest loss the world has sustained by the burning of the alexandrian library, but fragments of it have been preserved in the works of josephus, eusebius, julius africanus and syncellus, of whom eusebius and africanus profess to give manetho's lists and dates of dynasties and kings from the first king menes down to the conquest of alexander the great in b.c. with the curious want of critical faculty of almost all the christian fathers, these extracts, though professing to be quotations from the same book, contain many inconsistencies, and in several instances they have obviously been tampered with, especially by eusebius, in order to bring their chronology more in accordance with that of the old testament. but enough remains to show that manetho's lists comprised thirty-one dynasties, and about kings, whose successive reigns extended over a period of about years, from the accession of menes to the conquest of egypt by alexander the great in b.c., making the date of the first historical king who united upper and lower egypt, about b.c. there may be some doubt as to the precise dates, for the lists, of manetho have obviously been tampered with to some extent by the christian fathers who quoted them, but there can be no doubt that his original work assigned an antiquity to menes of over b.c. the only other historical information as to the history of ancient egypt was gleaned from references to it in the extant works of josephus and of greek authors, especially homer, herodotus, and diodorus siculus. josephus, in his _antiquity of the jews_, quotes passages from manetho, but they only extend to the period of the hyksos invasion, the captivity of the jews, and the exodus, which are all comparatively recent events in manetho's annals. homer's account of hundred-gated thebes does not carry us back beyond the echo which had reached ionian greece of the splendours of the nineteenth dynasty. herodotus visited egypt about b.c., and wrote a description of it from what he saw and heard on the spot. it contains a good deal of valuable information, for he was a shrewd observer. but he was credulous, and not very critical in distinguishing between fact and fable, and it is evident that his sources of information were often not much better than vague popular traditions, or the tales told by guides, and even the more authentic information is so disconnected and mixed with fable, that it can hardly be accepted as material for history. as far as it goes, however, it tends to confirm manetho, as, for instance, in giving the names correctly of the kings who built the three great pyramids, and in saying that he saw the statues of successive high priests of the great temple of heliopolis, which correspond very well with manetho's lists of kings. diodorus gives us very much the same narratives as those of herodotus; and, on the whole, we had to fall back on manetho as the only authority for anything like precise dates and connected history. manetho's dates, however, were so inconsistent with preconceived ideas based on the chronology of the bible, that they were universally thought to be fabulous. they were believed either to represent the exaggerations of egyptian priests desirous of magnifying the antiquity of their country, or, if historical, to give in succession the names of a number of kings and dynasties who had really reigned simultaneously in different provinces. so stood the question until the discovery of reading hieroglyphics enabled us to test the accuracy of manetho's lists by the light of contemporary monuments and manuscripts. this discovery is of such supreme importance that it may be well to begin at the beginning, and lay a solid foundation by showing how it was made, and the demonstration on which it rests. reading presupposes writing, as writing presupposes speech. ideas are conveyed from one mind to another in speech through the ear, in writing through the eye. the origin of the latter method is doubtless to be found in picture-writing. the palæolithic savage who drew a mammoth with the point of a flint on a piece of ivory, was attempting to write, in his rude way, a record of some memorable chase. and the accounts of the old empires of mexico and peru at the time of the spanish conquest, show that a considerable amount of civilization can be attained and information conveyed by this primitive method. but for the purpose of historical record more is required. it is essential to have a system of signs and symbols which shall be generally understood, and by which knowledge shall be handed down unchanged to successive generations. all experience shows that before knowledge is thus fixed and recorded, anything that may be transmitted by memory and word of mouth, fades off almost immediately into myth, and leaves no certain record of time, place, and circumstance. a few religious hymns and prayers like those of the vedas, a few heroic ballads like those of homer, a few genealogies like those of agamemnon or abraham, may be thus preserved, but nothing definite or accurate in the way of fact and date. history, therefore, begins with writing, and writing begins with the invention of fixed signs to represent words. a system of writing is possible, like the chinese, in which each separate word has its own separate sign, but this is extremely cumbrous, and quite unintelligible to those who have not got a living key to explain the meaning of each symbol. it is calculated that an educated chinese has to learn by heart the meaning of some , separate signs before he can read and write correctly. we have a trace of this ideographic system in our own language, as where arbitrary signs such as , , , represent not the sounds of one, two, and three, but the ideas conveyed by them. but for all practical purposes, intelligible writing has to be phonetic, that is, representing spoken words, not by the ideas they convey, but by the sounds of which they are composed. in other words there must be an alphabet. the alphabet is the first lesson of childhood, and it seems such a simple thing that we are apt to forget that it is one of the most important and original inventions of the human intellect. some prehistoric genius, musing on the meaning of spoken words, has seen that they might all be analyzed into a few simple sounds. to make this more easily intelligible, i will suppose the illustrations to be taken from our own language. "dog" and "dig" express very different ideas; but a little reflection will show that the primary sounds made by the tongue, teeth, and palate, viz. 'd' and 'g,' are the same in each, and that they differ only by a slight variation in the soft breathing or vowel, which connects them and renders them vocal. the next step would be to see that such words as "good" or "god," consisted of the same root-sounds, only transposed and connected with a slight vowel difference. pursuing the analysis, it would finally be discovered that the many thousand words of spoken language could all be resolved into a very small number of radical sounds, each of which might be represented and suggested to the mind through the eye instead of the ear by some conventional sign or symbol. here is the alphabet, and here the art of writing. this great achievement of the human intellect appears to have been made in prehistoric times; and where not obviously imported from a foreign source, as in the phoenician alphabet from the egyptian and the greek from the phoenician, it is attributed to some god, that is, to an unknown antiquity. thus in egypt, thoth the second, known to the greeks as hermes trismegistus, a fabulous demi-god of the period succeeding the reign of the great gods, is said to have invented the alphabet and the art of writing. the analysis of primary sounds varies a little in different times and countries in order to suit peculiarities in the pronunciation of different races and convenience in writing; but about sixteen primitive sounds, which is the number of the letters of the first alphabet brought by cadmus to greece, are always its basis. in our own alphabet it is easy to see that it is not formed on strictly scientific principles, some of the letters being redundant. thus the soft sound of 'c' is expressed by 's,' and the hard sound by 'k'; and 'x' is an abbreviation of three other letters, 'eks.' some letters also express sounds which run so closely into one another that in some alphabets they are not distinguished, as 'f' and 'v,' 'd' and 't', 'l' and 'r'; while some races have guttural and other sounds, such as 'kh' and 'sj,' which occur so frequently as to require separate signs, while they baffle the vocal organs of other races, and in some cases syllables which frequently occur, instead of being spelt out alphabetically, are represented by single signs. but these are mere details, the question substantially is this--if a collection of unknown signs is phonetic, and we can get any clue to its alphabet, it can be read; if not it must remain a sealed book. to apply this to hieroglyphics; it had been long known that the monuments of ancient egypt were carved with mysterious figures, representing commonly birds, animals, and other natural objects, but all clue to their meaning had been lost. it seemed more natural to suppose that they were ideographic; that a lion for instance represented a real lion, or some quality associated with him, such as fierceness, valour, and kingly aspect, rather than that his picture stood simply for our letter 'l.' the long-desired clue was afforded by the famous rosetta stone. this is a mutilated block of black basalt, which was discovered in by an engineer officer of the french expedition, in digging the foundations of a fort near rosetta. it was captured, with other trophies, by the british army, when the french were driven out of egypt, and is now lodged at the british museum. it bears on it three inscriptions, one in hieroglyphics, the second in the demotic egyptian character employed for popular use, and the third in greek. the greek can of course be read, and it is an inscription commemorating the coronation of ptolemy epiphanes and his queen arsinoe, in the year b.c. it was an obvious conjecture that the two egyptian inscriptions were to the same effect, and that the greek was a literal translation of this. to turn this conjecture, however, into a demonstration, a great deal of ingenuity and patient research were required. the principle upon which all interpretation of unknown signs rests may be most easily understood by taking an illustration from our own language. the first step in the problem is to know whether these unknown signs are ideographic or phonetic. thus if we have two groups of signs, one of which we have reason to know stands for "ptolemy" and the other for "cleopatra," if they are phonetic, the first sign in ptolemy will correspond with the fifth in cleopatra; the second with the seventh, the third with the fourth, the fourth with the second, and the fifth with the third; and we shall have established five letters of the unknown alphabet, 'p, t, o, l,' and 'e.' other names will give other letters, as if we know "arsinoe," its comparison with "cleopatra" will give 'a' and 'r,' and confirm the former induction as to 'o' and 'e.' and it will be extremely probable that the two last signs in ptolemy represent 'm' and 'y'; the first in cleopatra 'c'; and the third, fourth, and fifth in arsinoe, 's, i,' and 'n.' suppose now that we find in an inscription on an ancient temple at thebes, a name which begins with our known sign for 'r,' followed by our known 'a,' then by our conjectural 'm,' then by the sign which we find third in arsinoe, or 's,' then by our known 'e,' and ending with a repetition of 's,' we have no difficulty in reading "ramses," and identifying it with one of the kings of that name mentioned by manetho as reigning at thebes. the identification of letters was facilitated by the custom of inclosing the names of kings in what is called a cartouche or oval. [illustration: tablet of snefura at wady magerah. (the oldest inscription in the world, probably years old. the king conquering an arabian or asiatic enemy.)] this name reads "snefura," which is the name of the king of the third dynasty who reigned about b.c., or before the building of the great pyramids, which inscription is the earliest contemporary one of an egyptian king as yet discovered. it was found at the copper mines of wady magerah, in the peninsula of sinai, and represents the victory of the king over an arabian or asiatic enemy. the first step towards the decipherment of the hieroglyphics on the rosetta stone was made in by dr. young, who was one of the most ingenious and original thinkers of the nineteenth century, and is also famous as the first discoverer of the undulatory theory of light. but in both cases he merely indicated the right path and laid down the correct principles. the development of his theories was reserved for two frenchmen; fresnel in the case of light, and champollion in that of hieroglyphics. the task was one which required immense patience and ingenuity, for the hieroglyphic alphabet turned out to be one of great complexity. not only were many of the signs not phonetic, but ideographic or determinative; and some of them standing for syllables and not letters; but the letters themselves were not represented, as in modern languages, each by a single sign or at most by two signs, as a and a, but by several different signs. the egyptian alphabet was in fact constructed very much as young children often learn theirs, by-- a was an apple-pie, b bit it, c cut it; with this difference, that several objects, whose names begin with a and other letters, might be used to represent them. thus some of the hieroglyphic letters had as many as twenty-five different signs or homophones. it is as if we could write for 'a,' the picture either of an apple, or of an ass, archer, arrow, anchor, or any word beginning with 'a.' however, champollion with infinite difficulty, and aided by the constant discovery of fresh inscriptions, solved the problem, and succeeded in producing a complete alphabet of hieroglyphics comprising all the various signs, thus enabling us to translate every hieroglyphic sign into its corresponding sound or spoken word. the next question was, what did these words mean, and could they be recognized in any known language? the answer to this was easy; the egyptians spoke egyptic, or as it is abbreviated coptic, a modern form of which is almost a living language, and is preserved in translations of the bible still in use and studied by the aid of coptic dictionaries and grammars. this enabled champollion to construct a hieroglyphic dictionary and grammar, which have been so completed by the labours of subsequent egyptologists, that it is not too much to say that any inscription or manuscript in hieroglyphics can be read with nearly as much certainty as if it had been written in greek or in hebrew. [illustration: specimen of hieroglyphic alphabet. (from champollion's _egypt_.)] the above illustrations from english characters are only given as the simplest way of conveying to the minds of those who have had no previous acquaintance with the subject, an idea of the nature of the process and force of the evidence, upon which the decipherment of hieroglyphic inscriptions is based. in reality the process was far from being so simple. though many of the hieroglyphics are phonetics, like our letters of the alphabet, they are not all so, and many of them are purely ideographic, as when we write , , , for one, two, and three. all writing has begun with picture-writing, and each character was originally a likeness of the object which it was wished to represent. the next stage was to use the character not only for the material object, but as a symbol for some abstract idea associated with it. thus the picture of a lion might stand either for an actual lion, or for fierceness, courage, majesty, or other attribute of the king of animals. in this way it became possible to convey meanings to the mind through the eye, but it involved both an enormous number of characters, and the use of homophones, _i.e._ of single characters standing for a number of separate ideas. to obviate this, what are called "determinatives" were invented, _i.e._ special signs affixed to characters or groups of characters to determine the sense in which they were to be taken. for instance, the picture of a star (*) affixed to a group of hieroglyphics may be used to denote that they represent the name of a god, or some divine or heavenly attribute; and the picture of rippling water ~~~~~~~~ to show that the group means something connected with water, as a sea or river. beyond this the chinese have hardly gone, and it is reckoned that it requires some separate characters, or conventionalized pictures, taken in distinct groups, to be able to read and write correctly the , words in the chinese language. even for the ordinary purposes of life a chinaman instead of committing to memory twenty-six letters of the alphabet, like an english child, has to learn by heart some or groups of characters often distinguished only by slight dots and dashes. such a system is cumbrous in the extreme, and involves spending many of the best years of life in acquiring the first rudiments of knowledge. indeed it is only possible when not only writing but speech has been arrested at the first stage of its development, and a nation speaks a language of monosyllables. in the case of egypt and other ancient nations the standpoint of writing went further, and the symbolic pictures came to represent phonograms, _i.e._ sounds or spoken words instead of ideas or objects; and these again were further analyzed into syllabaries, or the component articulate sounds which make up words; and these finally into their ultimate elements of a few simple sounds, or letters of an alphabet, the various combinations of which will express all the complex sounds or words of a spoken language. now in the hieroglyphic writing of ancient egypt, along with those pure phonetics or letters of an alphabet, are found numerous survivals of the older systems from which they sprung, and champollion, who first attempted the task of forming a hieroglyphic dictionary and grammar, had to contend with all the difficulties of ideograms, polyphones, determinatives, and other obstacles. those who wish to pursue this interesting subject further will do well to read dr. isaac taylor's book on the alphabet, and sayce on the science of writing; but for my present purpose it is sufficient to establish the scientific certainty of the process by which hieroglyphic texts are read. with this key a vast mass of constantly accumulating evidence has been brought to light, illustrating not only the chronology and history of ancient egypt, but also its social and political condition, its literature and religion, science and art. the first question naturally was how far the monuments confirmed or disproved the lists of manetho. manetho was a learned priest of a celebrated temple, who must have had access to all the temple and royal records and other literature of egypt, and who must have been also conversant with foreign literature, to have been selected as the best man to write a complete history of his native country for the royal library in greek. manetho's lists of the reigns of dynasties and kings when summed up show a date of b.c. for the foundation of the united egyptian empire by menes, a date which is of course absolutely inconsistent with those given by genesis, not only for the deluge, but for the original creation. it is evident that the monuments alone could confirm or contradict these lists, and give a solid basis for egyptian chronology and history. this has now been done to such an extent that it may fairly be said that manetho has been confirmed, and it is fully established, as a fact acquired by science, that nearly all his kings and dynasties are proved by monuments to have existed, and that successively and not simultaneously, so that the margin of uncertainty as to the date of menes is reduced to one of a few hundred years on one side or other of b.c. mariette, who is the best and latest authority, and who has done so much to discover monuments of the earlier dynasties, concludes, as the result of a careful revision of manetho's lists, and of the authentic records from temples, tombs, and papyri, that b.c. is the most probable date for the accession of menes, and this date is generally adopted by modern egyptologists. some make it rather longer, as boeck b.c., and unger b.c.; while others make it a little shorter, as maspero b.c., and brugsch[ ] ; but it is to be observed that the date has always lengthened with the progress of discovery. thus the earlier egyptologists such as wilkinson, birch, and poole assigned a date not exceeding b.c. for the accession of menes; twenty years later bunsen and lepsius gave respectively and b.c.; and since the latest discoveries, no competent scholar assigns a lower date than b.c., while some go up to b.c., and that most generally accepted is b.c. it is safe to conclude, therefore, that about b.c., or very nearly years before the present time, may be taken provisionally as the date of the commencement of authentic egyptian history, and that if this date be corrected by future discoveries it is more likely to be increased than diminished. [ ] brugsch, however, confines himself mainly to kings whose names are confirmed by monuments, and takes no account of the numerous names of unknown kings in royal genealogies, of which no confirmation has yet been found, so that practically his estimate is not inconsistent with that of mariette. this immensely long period of egyptian history is divided into three stages--the old, the middle, and the new empires. the old empire began with menes, and lasted without interruption for about years, under six dynasties of kings, who ruled over the whole of egypt. it was a period of peace, prosperity, and progress, during which the pyramids, the greatest of all human works, were built, literature flourished, and the industrial and fine arts attained a high degree of perfection. at the very commencement of this period we find the first king menes carrying out a great work of hydraulic engineering, by which the course of the nile was diverted, and a site obtained on its western banks for the new capital of memphis. his immediate successor is said to have written a celebrated treatise on medicine, and the extremely life-like portrait-statues and wooden statuettes, which were never equalled in any subsequent stage of egyptian art, date back to the fourth dynasty. [illustration: pyramids of gizeh and sphynx. (from champollion's _egypt_.)] it is singular that this extremely ancient period is the one of which, although the oldest, we know most, for the monuments, the papyri, and especially the tombs in the great cemeteries of sakkarah and ghizeh, give us the fullest details of the political and social life of egypt during the fourth, fifth, and sixth dynasties, with sufficient information as to the three first dynasties to check and confirm the lists of manetho. we really know the life of memphis years ago better than we do that of london under the saxon kings, or of paris under the descendants of clovis. the sixth dynasty was succeeded by a period which seems to have been one of civil war and anarchy, during which there was a complete cessation of monuments; or, if they existed, they have not yet been discovered. the probable duration of this eclipse of egyptian records is somewhat uncertain, as we cannot be sure, in the absence of monuments, that the four dynasties of short reigns assigned to the interval between the sixth and the eleventh dynasties by manetho, and the numerous names of unknown kings on the tablets, were successive sovereigns who reigned over united egypt, or local chiefs who got possession of power in different parts of the empire. all we can see is that the supremacy of memphis declined, and that its last great dynasty was replaced, either in whole or in part, by a rebellion in upper egypt which introduced two dynasties whose seat was at heracleopolis on the middle nile, in any case the duration of this period must have been very long, for the eclipse was very complete, and when we once more find ourselves in the presence of records in the eleventh dynasty, the seat of empire is established at thebes, and the state of the arts, religion, and civilization are different and much ruder than they were at the close of the great memphite empire with the sixth dynasty. mariette says, "when egypt, with the eleventh dynasty, awoke from its long sleep, the ancient traditions were forgotten. the proper names of the kings and ancient nobility, the titles of the high functionaries, the style of the hieroglyphic writing, and even the religion, all seemed new. the monuments are rude, primitive, and sometimes even barbarous, and to see them one would be inclined to think that egypt under the eleventh dynasty was beginning again the period of infancy which it had already passed through years earlier under the third." the tomb of one of these kings of the eleventh dynasty, entef i., is remarkable as showing on a funeral pillar the sportsman-king surrounded by his four favourite dogs, whose names are given, and which are of different breeds, from a large greyhound to a small turnspit. however, the chronology of this eleventh dynasty is well attested, its kings are known, and under them upper and lower egypt were once more consolidated into a single state, forming what is known as the middle empire. under the twelfth dynasty, which succeeded it, this empire bloomed rapidly into one of the greatest and most glorious periods of egyptian history. the dynasty only lasted for years, under seven kings, whose names were all either amenemes or osirtasen; but during their reigns the frontiers of egypt were extended far to the south, nubia was incorporated with the empire, and egyptian influence extended over the whole soudan, and perhaps nearly to the equator on the one hand, and over southern syria on the other. but the dynasty was still more famous for the arts of peace. one of the greatest works of hydraulic engineering which the world has seen was carried out by amenemes iii., who took advantage of a depression in the desert limestone near the basin of fayoum, to form a large artificial lake connected with the nile by canals, tunnelled through rocky ridges and provided with sluices, so as to admit the water when the river rose too high, and let it out when it fell too low, and thus regulate the inundation of a great part of middle and lower egypt, independently of the seasons. connected with this lake moeris was the famous labyrinth, which herodotus pronounced to be a greater wonder than even the great pyramid. it was a vast square building erected on a small plateau on the east side of the lake, constructed of blocks of granite which must have been brought from syene, with a façade of white limestone; and containing in the interior a vast number of small square chambers and vaults--herodotus says --each roofed with a single large slab of stone, and connected by narrow passages, so intricate that a stranger entering without a clue would be infallibly lost. the object seems to have been to provide a safe repository for statues of gods and kings and other precious objects. in the centre was a court containing twelve hypostyle chapels, six facing the south and six the north, and at the north angle of the square was a pyramid of brick faced with stone forming the tomb of amenemes iii. in addition to this colossal work, the kings of this dynasty built and restored many of the most famous temples and erected statues and obelisks, among the latter the one now standing at heliopolis. it was also an age of great literary activity, and the biographies of many of the priests, nobles, and high officers, inscribed on their tombs and recorded in papyri, give us the most minute knowledge of the history and social life of this remote period. the prosperity of egypt during the middle empire was continued under the thirteenth dynasty of sixty theban kings, to whom manetho assigns the period of years. less is known of this period than of the great twelfth dynasty which preceded it, but a sufficient number of monuments have been preserved to confirm the general accuracy of manetho's statements. a colossal statue of the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth king, sevckhotef vi., found on the island of argo near dongola, shows that the frontier fixed by the conquests of amenemes at semneh, had not only been maintained, but extended nearly fifty leagues to the south into the heart of ethiopia; and another statue found at tanis shows that the rule of this dynasty was firmly established in lower egypt. but the scarcity of the monuments, and the inferior execution of the works of art, show that this long dynasty was one of gradual decline, and the rise of the next or fourteenth dynasty at xois, transferring the seat of power from thebes to the delta, points to civil wars and revolutions. [illustration: fellah woman and head of second hyksos statue. (from photograph by naville in _harper's magazine_.)] [illustration: hyksos sphynx. (from photograph by naville in _harper's magazine_.)] manetho assigns seventy-five kings and years to the fourteenth dynasty, and it is to this period that a good deal of uncertainty attaches, for there are no monuments, and nothing to confirm manetho's lists, except a number of unknown names of kings of the dynasty enumerated among the royal ancestors in the papyrus of turin. if manetho's figures are correct, the period must have been one of anarchy and civil war, for the average duration of each reign is less than six and a half years, while that of the twelfth and other well-known historical dynasties exceeds thirty years. the same remark applies to the thirteenth dynasty, the reigns of whose sixty kings average only seven and a half years each, and it is probable that the end of this dynasty and the whole of the fourteenth was a period of anarchy, during which so-called kings rose and fell in rapid succession, as in the case of our own dynasties of lancaster and york, and the annals are so confused that the dates are unreliable. what is certain is that the great middle empire sank rapidly into a state of anarchy and impotence, which prepared the way for a great catastrophe. this catastrophe came in the form of an invasion of foreigners, who, about the year b.c., broke through the eastern frontier of the delta, and apparently without much resistance, conquered the whole of lower egypt up to memphis, and reduced the princes of the upper provinces to a state of vassalage. there is considerable doubt who these invaders were, who were known as hyksos or shepherd kings. they consisted probably, mainly of nomad tribes of canaanites, arabians, and other semitic races, but the turanian hittites seem to have been associated with them, and the leaders to have been turanian, judging from the portrait-statues of two of the later kings of the hyksos dynasty which have been recently discovered by naville at bubastis, and which are unmistakably turanian and even chinese in type. our information as to this hyksos conquest is derived mainly from fragments of manetho quoted by josephus, and from traditions repeated by herodotus, and is very vague and imperfect. but this much seems certain, that at first the hyksos acted as savage barbarians, burning cities, demolishing temples, and massacring part of the population and reducing the rest to slavery. but, as in the parallel case of the tartar conquest of china, as time went on they adopted the superior civilization of their subjects, and the later kings were transformed into genuine pharaohs, differing but little from those of the old national dynasties. this is conclusively proved by the discoveries recently made at tanis and bubastis, which have revealed important monuments of this dynasty. at tanis an avenue of sphynxes was discovered, copied evidently from those at thebes and from the great sphynx at gizeh, with lion bodies and human heads, the latter with a different head-dress from the egyptian, and a different type of feature. at bubastis two colossal statues of hyksos kings, with their heads broken off, but one of them nearly perfect, were unexpectedly discovered by naville in , and it was proved that they had stood on each side of the entrance to an addition made by those kings to the ancient and celebrated temple of the egyptian goddess bast, thus proving that the hyksos had adopted not only the civilization but also the religion of the egyptian nation. there are but few inscriptions known of the hyksos dynasty, for their cartouches have generally been effaced, and those of later kings chiselled over them; but enough remains to show that they were in the hieroglyphic character, and the names of two or three of their kings can still be deciphered, among which are two apepis, the second probably the last of the dynasty. it was probably under one of these hyksos kings that joseph came to egypt, and the tribes of israel settled on its eastern frontier. the duration of the hyksos rule is thus left in some uncertainty. manetho, if correctly quoted by josephus, says they ruled over egypt for years, though his lists only show one dynasty of years, and then the theban dynasty, who reigned over upper egypt for years contemporaneously with hyksos kings in lower egypt. we regain, however, firm historical ground with the rise of the eighteenth theban dynasty of native egyptian kings, who finally expelled the hyksos, after a long war, and founded what is known as the new empire. the date of this event is fixed by the best authorities at about b.c., and from this time downwards we have an uninterrupted succession of undoubted historical records, confirmed by contemporary monuments and by the annals of other nations, down to the christian era. the reaction which followed the expulsion of the hyksos led to campaigns in asia on a great scale, in which egypt came into collision with powerful nations, and for a long time was the dominant power in western asia, extending its conquests from the persian gulf to the black sea and mediterranean, and receiving tribute from babylon and nineveh. then followed wars, waged on more equal terms, with the hittites, who had founded a great empire in asia minor and syria; and as their power declined and that of assyria rose, with the long series of warlike assyrian monarchs, who gradually obtained the ascendency, and not only stripped egypt of its foreign conquests, but on more than one occasion invaded its territory and captured its principal cities. it is during this period that we find the first of the certain synchronisms between egyptian history and the old testament, beginning with the capture of jerusalem by shishak in the reign of rehoboam, and ending with the captivity of the jews and temporary conquest of egypt by nebuchadnezzar. then came the persian conquest by cambyses and alternate periods of national independence and of persian rule, until the conquest of alexander and the establishment of the dynasty of the ptolemies, which lasted until the reign of cleopatra, and ended finally by the annexation of egypt as a province of the roman empire. the history of this long period is extremely interesting, as showing what may be called the commencement of the modern era of great wars, and of the rise and fall of civilized empires; but for the present purpose i only refer to it as helping to establish the chronological standard which i am in search of as a measuring-rod to gauge the duration of historical time. we may sum up the conclusions derived from manetho's lists and the monuments as follows:-- manetho's lists, as they have come down to us, show a date of years b.c. for the accession of menes. of this period, we may say that we know years for the new empire and the period of the persians and the ptolemies, from contemporary monuments and records, with such certainty that any possible error cannot exceed fifty or one hundred years. the hyksos period is less certain, but there is no sufficient reason for doubting that it may have lasted for about years. manetho could have had no object in overstating the duration of the rule of hated foreigners, and a long time must have elapsed before the rude invaders could have so completely adopted the civilization of the subject race. the dates of the middle empire, to which manetho assigns years, are more uncertain, and we can only check them by monuments for the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth dynasties. the length of the fourteenth xoite dynasty seems to be exaggerated, and the later obscure theban dynasties may have been contemporary with the rule of the hyksos in lower egypt. of the years assigned to the ancient empire, the first from menes to the end of the sixth dynasty are well authenticated by monuments and inscriptions, and the for the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth are obscure, though a considerable time must have elapsed for such a complete eclipse of the monuments and arts as appears to have occurred between the nourishing period of the sixth dynasty and the revival of the middle empire under the eleventh. we may say, therefore, that we have about years of undoubted history between the accession of menes and the christian era, and more years for which we have only the authority of manetho's lists, and the names of unknown kings in genealogical records, with a few scattered monuments, and to which it is difficult to assign specific dates. this may enable us to appreciate the nature of the evidence upon which mariette and so many of the best and oldest authorities base their estimates in assigning a date of about b.c. for the accession of menes. the glimpses of light into the prehistoric stages of egyptian civilization prior to menes are few and far between. we are told that before the consolidation of the empire by menes, egypt was divided into a number of separate nomes or provinces, each gathered about its own independent city and temple, and ruled by the horsheshu or servants of horus, who were apparently the chief priests of the respective temples, combining with the character of priest that of king, or local ruler. parts of the todtenbuch or sacred book of the dead certainly date from this period, and the great temple of the sun at heliopolis had been founded, for we are told that certain prehistoric heliopolitan hymns formed the basis of the sacred books of a later age. at edfu the later temple occupies the site of a very ancient structure, traditionally said to date back to the mythic reign of the gods, and to have been built according to a plan designed by nuhotef the son of pthah. at denderah an inscription found by mariette in one of the crypts of the great temple, expressly identifies the earliest sanctuary built upon the spot with the time of the horsheshu. it reads, "there was found the great fundamental ordinance of denderah, written upon goatskin in ancient writing of the time of the horsheshu. it was found in the inside of a brick wall during the reign of king pepi" (_i.e._ pepi-merira of the sixth dynasty). the name of chufu, the king of the fourth dynasty, who built the great pyramid, was found by naville in a restoration of part of the famous temple of bubastis, and its foundation doubtless dates back to the same prehistoric period. but the most important prehistoric monuments are those connected with the great sphynx. an inscription of chufu (cheops) preserved in the museum of boulak, says that a temple adjoining the sphynx was discovered by chance in his reign, which had been buried under the sand of the desert, and forgotten for many generations. this temple was uncovered by mariette, and found to be constructed of enormous blocks of granite of syene and of alabaster, supported by square pillars, each of a single block of stone, without any mouldings or ornaments, and no trace of hieroglyphics. it is, in fact, a sort of transition from the rude dolmen to scientific architecture. but the masonry, and still more the transport of such enormous blocks from syene to the plateau of the desert at gizeh, show a great advance already attained in the resources of the country and the state of the industrial arts. the sphynx itself probably dates from the same period, for it is mentioned on the same inscription as being much older than the great pyramids, and requiring repairs in the time of chufu. it is a gigantic work consisting of a natural rock sculptured into the form of a lion's body, to which a human head has been added, built up of huge blocks of hewn stone. it is directed accurately towards the east so as to face the rising sun at the equinox, and was an image of hormachen, the sun of the lower world, which traverses the abode of the dead. in addition to the direct evidence for its prehistoric antiquity, it is certain that if such a monument had been erected by any of the historical kings, it would have been inscribed with hieroglyphics, and the fact recorded in manetho's lists and contemporary records, whereas all tradition of its origin seems to have been lost in the night of ages. although there are no monuments of the stone age in egypt like those of the swiss lake villages and danish kitchen-middens, to enable us to trace in detail the progress of arts and civilization from rude commencements through the neolithic and prehistoric ages, yet there is abundant evidence to show that the same stages had been traversed in the valley of the nile long prior to the time of menes. borings have been made on various occasions and at various localities through the alluvial deposits of the nile valley, from which fragments of pottery have been brought up from depths which show a high antiquity. horner sunk ninety-six shafts in four rows at intervals of eight miles, across the valley of the nile, at right angles to the river near memphis, and brought up pottery from various depths, which, at the known rate of deposit of the nile mud of about three inches per century, indicate an antiquity of at least , years. in another boring a copper knife was brought up from a depth of twenty-four feet, and pottery, from sixty feet below the surface. this is specially interesting, as making it probable that here, as in many other countries, an age of copper preceded that of bronze, while a depth of sixty feet at the normal rate of deposit would imply an antiquity of , years. borings, however, are not very conclusive, as it is always open to contend that they may have been made at spots where, owing to some local circumstances, the deposit was much more rapid than the average. these objections, however, cannot apply to the evidence which has been afforded by the discovery of flint implements, both of the neolithic and palæolithic type, in many localities and by various skilled observers. professor haynes found, a few miles east of cairo, not only a number of flint implements of the types usual in europe, but an actual workshop or manufactory where they had been made, showing that they had not been imported, but produced in the country in the course of its native development. he also found multitudes of worked flints of the ordinary neolithic and palæolithic types scattered on the hills near thebes. lenormant and hamy saw the same workshop and remains of the stone period, and various other finds have been reported by other observers. finally, general pitt-rivers and professor haynes found well-developed palæolithic implements of the st. acheul type, not only on the surface and in superficial deposits, but from six and a half to ten feet deep in hard stratified gravel at djebel-assas, near thebes, in a terrace on the side of one of the ravines falling from the libyan desert into the nile valley, which was certainly deposited in early quaternary ages by a torrent pouring down from a plateau where, under existing geographical and climatic conditions, rain seldom or never falls. these relics, as mr. campbell says, who was associated with general pitt-rivers in the discovery, are "beyond calculation older than the oldest egyptian temples and tombs," and they certainly go far to prove that the high civilization of egypt at the earliest dawn of history or tradition had been a plant of extremely slow growth from a state of provincial savagery. [illustration: statue of prince rahotep's wife. (refined type.) (gizeh museum.--discovered in in a tomb near meydoon.--according to the chronological table of mariette, it is years old.--from a photograph by sebah, cairo.)] it is remarkable that all the traditions of the egyptians represent them as being autochthonous. there is no legend of any immigration, no oannes who comes out of the sea and teaches the arts of civilization. on the contrary, thoth and osiris are native egyptian gods or kings, who reigned long ago in egyptian cities. there are no legends of an inferior race who were exterminated or driven up the nile; though it would seem from the portraits on early monuments that there were two types in the very early ages one coarse and approximating to the african, the other a refined and aristocratic type, more resembling that of the highest asiatic or arabian races. [illustration: khufu-ankh and his servants--early egyptians. (coarse type.)] it has been conjectured that this latter race may have come from punt, that is, from southern arabia, and the opposite african coast of soumali land, where there are races of a high, civilization at a very early period. this conjecture is based on the fact that punt is constantly referred to in the egyptian monuments as a divine or sacred land, while other surrounding nations are loaded with opprobrious epithets. also the earliest traditions refer the origin of egyptian civilization not to lower egypt, where the isthmus of suez affords a land route from asia, nor to upper egypt, as if it had descended the nile from africa, but to abydos and this in middle egypt, where the gods were feigned to have reigned, which are comparatively close to coptos, the port on the red sea by which intercourse was most easily kept up between the valley of the nile and the land of punt. this conjecture, however, is very vague, and when we come to positive facts we find that the language and system of writing, when we first meet with them, are fully formed and apparently of native growth, not derived from any semitic, aryan, or turanian speech of any historical nation. it is certainly an agglutinative language originally, but far advanced beyond the simpler forms of that mode of speech as spoken by mongolians. it shows some distant affinities with semitic, or rather with what may have been a proto-semitic, before it had been fully formed, and is perhaps nearer to what may have been the primitive language of the libyans of north africa. but there is nothing in the language from which we can infer origin, and the pictures from which hieroglyphics are derived are those of animals and objects proper to the nile valley, and not like those of the accadians and chinese, such as point to a prehistoric nomad existence on elevated plains. the only positive fact tending to confirm the existence of two races in egypt, one rude and aboriginal, the other of high type, is the difference of type shown by the early portraits and the discovery by mr. flinders petrie, in the very old cemetery of meydoon, of two distinct modes of interment, one of the ordinary mummy extended at full length, the other in a crouching attitude as is common in neolithic graves. for any further inquiries as to the origin and antiquity of egyptian civilization, we have to fall back on the state of religion, science, literature, and art, which we find prevailing in the earliest records which have come down to us, and which i will proceed to examine in subsequent chapters. but before doing so, i will endeavour to exhaust the field of positive history, and inquire how far the annals of other ancient nations contradict or confirm the date of about years b.c., which has been shown to be approximately that of the accession of menes. chapter ii. chaldÆa. chronology--berosus--his dates mythical--dates in genesis--synchronisms with egypt and assyria--monuments--cuneiform inscriptions--how deciphered--behistan inscription--grotefend and rawlinson--layard--library of koyunjik--how preserved--accadian translations and grammars--historical dates--elamite conquest--commencement of modern history--ur-ea and dungi--nabonidus--sargon i., b.c.--ur of the chaldees--sharrukin's cylinder--his library--his son naram-sin--semites and accadians--accadians and chinese--period before sargon i.--patesi--de sarzec's find at sirgalla--gud-ea, to b.c.--advance of delta--astronomical records--chaldæa and egypt give similar results--historic period or years--and no trace of a beginning. chaldæan chronology has within the last few years been brought into the domain of history, and carried back to a date almost, if not quite, as remote as that of egypt. and this has been effected by a process identical in the two cases, the decipherment of an unknown language in inscriptions on ancient monuments. until this discovery the little that was known of the early history of chaldæa was derived almost entirely from two sources: the bible, and the fragments quoted by later writers from the lost work of berosus. berosus was a learned priest of babylon, who lived about b.c., shortly after the conquest of alexander, and wrote in greek a history of the country from the most ancient times, compiled from the annals preserved in the temples, and from the oldest traditions. he began with a cosmogony, fragments of which only are preserved, from which little could be inferred, except that it bore some general resemblance to that of genesis, until the complete chaldæan cosmogony was deciphered by mr. george smith from tablets in the british museum. then followed a mythical period of the reigns of ten gods or demi-gods, reigning for , years, in the middle of which period the divine fish-man, ea-han or oannes, was said to have come up out of the persian gulf, and taught mankind letters, sciences, laws, and all the arts of civilization; , years after oannes, under xisuthros (the greek translation of hasisastra), the last of the ten kings, a deluge is said to have occurred; which is described in terms so similar to the narrative of noah's deluge in genesis, as to leave no doubt that they are different versions of the same legend. prior to the appearance of oannes, berosus relates, "that chaldæa had been colonized by a mixed multitude of men of foreign race, who lived without order like animals," thus carrying back the existence of mankind in large numbers, to some date anterior to , years before the deluge. there is also a legend resembling that of the tower of babel and the confusion of languages, recorded in another fragment of berosus. these accounts are all so obviously mythical that no historical value can be attached to them, and they have only been preserved because early christian writers saw in them some sort of distorted confirmation of the corresponding narratives in the old testament. for anything like historical dates therefore the bible remained the principal authority, until the recent discoveries made from the monuments of chaldæa and assyria. this authority does not carry us very far back. the first event which can advance any claim to be considered as historical, is that of the migration of terah from ur of the chaldees to haran, and the further migration of his son abraham from haran to palestine. this is said to have taken place in the ninth generation after noah, about years after the deluge, and it presupposes the existence of a dense population and a number of large cities both in upper and lower mesopotamia. it mentions also an event, apparently historical, as occurring in abraham's time, viz. a campaign by chedorlaomer, king of elam, with four allies, one of whom is a king of shinar, against five petty kings in southern syria. chedorlaomer has been identified from inscriptions with khuder-lagomer, one of the kings of the elamite dynasty, who conquered chaldæa about b.c., and were expelled before b.c. a long interval then occurs during which the scattered notices in the bible relate mainly to the intercourse of the hebrews with egypt, with the races of canaan, with the philistines, with the phoenicians of tyre, and with the syrians of damascus. mesopotamia first appears after the rise of the assyrian empire had united nearly the whole of western asia under the warlike kings who reigned at nineveh, and when palestine had become the battle-field between them and the declining power of egypt, which under the eighteenth and nineteenth egyptian dynasties had extended to the euphrates. the capture of jerusalem in the reign of rehoboam by shishak, the first king of the twenty-second egyptian dynasty, affords the first certain synchronism between sacred and profane history. the date may be fixed within a few years at b.c. assyria first appears on the scene two hundred years later in the reign of menahem king of israel, when pul, better known as tiglath-pileser ii., came against the land, and exacted a large ransom from menahem, whom he confirmed as a tributary vassal. from this time forward the succession of assyrian kings is recorded more or less accurately in the bible. tiglath-pileser accepted vassalage and a large tribute from ahaz to come to his assistance against rezin king of syria, and pekah king of israel, who were besieging jerusalem, and tiglath-pileser came to his aid and captured and sacked damascus. shalmaneser came up against hoshea king of judah, who submitted, but was deposed for intriguing with egypt, and shalmaneser then took samaria and carried the ten tribes of israel away into assyria, placing them in the cities of the medes. sennacherib, in the fourteenth year of hezekiah, took all the fenced cities of judah, and his general, rab-shakeh, besieged jerusalem, which was saved by the repulse of the main army under the king when marching to invade egypt. the murder of sennacherib by his two sons and the succession of esarhaddon are next mentioned. nineveh then disappears from the scene, and the great babylonian conqueror, nebuchadnezzar, puts an end to the kingdom of judæa, by taking jerusalem and carrying the people captive to babylon. this historical retrospect carries us back a very short distance, and little can be gathered in the way of accurate chronology from the few vague references prior to this date. so stood the question until the date of chaldæan history and civilization was unexpectedly carried back at least years by the discovery of its monuments. when the first assyrian sculptures were found by botta and layard not fifty years ago in the mounds of rubbish which covered the ruins of nineveh, and brought home to europe, it was seen that they were covered with inscriptions in an unknown character. it was called the cuneiform, because it was made up of combinations of a single sign, resembling a thin wedge or arrow-head. this sign was made in three fundamental ways, _i.e._ either horizontal [symbol], vertical [symbol], or angular [symbol], and all the characters were made up of combinations of these primary forms, which were obviously produced by impressing a style with a triangular head on moist clay. they resembled, in fact, very much the strokes and dashes used in spelling out the words conveyed by the electric telegraph, in which letters are formed by oscillations of the needle. [illustration} this mode of writing had apparently been developed from picture-writing, for several, of the groups of characters bore an unmistakable resemblance to natural objects. in the very oldest inscriptions which have been discovered the writing, is hardly yet cuneiform, and the primitive pictorial character of the signs is apparent. but the bulk of the cuneiform inscriptions not being pictorial, there could be little doubt that they were phonetic, or represented sounds. the question was, what sounds these characters signified, and when translated into sounds, what words and what language did the groups of signs represent? the first clue to these questions was, as in the parallel case of egypt, afforded by a trilingual inscription. the kings of the persian empire reigned over subjects of various races and languages. the three principal were the persians, an aryan race who spoke an inflectional language which has been preserved in old persian and zend; semites, who spoke aramaic, a language closely allied to hebrew; and descendants of the older accadian races, whose language was turanian, or agglutinative. it is almost the same at the present day in the same region, where edicts or inscriptions, to be readily intelligible to all classes of subjects, would require to be made in persian, arabic, and turkish. accordingly, the pompous inscriptions and royal edicts of these ancient monarchs were frequently made in the three languages, and specimens of these were brought to europe. the difficulty of deciphering them was, however, great, for the inscriptions were all written, though in different languages, in the same cuneiform characters, so that the aid afforded in the case of the rosetta stone by a greek translation of the hieroglyphic inscription was not forthcoming. the ingenuity of a german scholar, grotefend, furnished the first clue by discovering that certain groups of signs represented the names of known persian kings, and thus identifying the component signs in the persian inscription as letters of an alphabet. a few years later sir henry rawlinson copied, and succeeded in deciphering, a famous inscription engraved by the great persian monarch, darius the first, high up in the face of a precipice forming the wall of a narrow defile at behistan, and giving an historical record of the exploits of his reign. the clue thus afforded was rapidly followed up by a host of scholars, among whom the names of rawlinson, burnouf, lassen, and oppert were most conspicuous, and before long the text of inscriptions in persian and semitic could be read with great certainty. the task was one which required a vast amount of patience and ingenuity, for the cuneiform writing turned out to be one of great complexity, though phonetic in the main, the characters did not always represent the simple elements of sounds, or letters of an alphabet, but frequently syllables containing one or more consonants united by vowels, and a considerable number were ideographic or conventional representations of ideas, like our numerals , , , which have no relation to spoken sounds. thus the simple vertical wedge [symbol] represented "man," and was prefixed to proper names of kings so as to show that the signs which followed denoted the name of a man; the sign [symbol] denoted country, and so on. the difficulties were, however, surmounted, and inscriptions in the two known languages could be read with considerable certainty. [illustration] the third language, however, remained unknown until the finishing stroke to its decipherment was given by the discovery by layard under the great mound of koyunjik near mosul on the tigris, the site of the ancient nineveh, of the royal palace of asshurbanipal, or sardanapalus, the grandson of sennacherib, and one of the greatest assyrian monarchs, who lived about b.c. this palace contained a royal library like that of alexandria or the british museum, the contents of which had been carefully collected from the oldest records of previous libraries and temples, and almost miraculously preserved. the secret of the preservation of these assyrian and chaldæan remains, is that the district contains no stone, and all the great buildings were constructed mainly of sun-dried bricks, and built on mounds or platforms of the same material to raise them above the alluvial plain. these, when the cities were deserted, crumbled rapidly under the action of the air and rains, which are torrential at certain seasons, into shapeless rubbish heaps of fine dry dust and sand, under which everything of more durable material was securely buried. so rapid was the process, that when xenophon on the famous retreat of the ten thousand traversed the site of nineveh only two hundred years after its destruction, he found nothing but the ruins of a deserted city, the very name and memory of which had been lost. as regards the contents of the library the explanation of their perfect preservation is equally simple. the books were written, not on perishable paper or parchment, but on cylinders of clay. it is evident that the cuneiform characters were exceedingly well adapted for this description of writing, and probably originated from the nature of the material. a fine tenacious clay cost nothing, was readily moulded into cylinders, and when slightly moist was easily engraved by a tool or style stamping on it those wedge-like characters, so that when hardened by a slow fire the book was practically indestructible. so much so, indeed, that though the palace, including the library with its shelves and upper stories, had all fallen to the ground, and the book-cylinders lay scattered on the floor, they were mostly in a state of perfect preservation. other similar finds have been made since, notably one of another great library of the priestly college at erech, founded or enlarged as far back as b.c. by sargon ii. among the books thus preserved there are fortunately translations of old accadian works into the more modern aramaic or assyrian, either interlined or in parallel columns, and, also grammars and dictionaries of the old language to assist in its study. it appears that as far back as years b.c. this old language had already become obsolete, and was preserved as latin or vedic sanscrit are at the present day, as the venerable language for religious uses, in which the earliest sacred books, historical annals, and astrological and magical formulas had been written. with these aids this ancient accadian language can now be read with almost as much certainty as egyptian hieroglyphics, and the records written in it are accumulating rapidly with every fresh exploration. some idea of the wealth of the materials already found may be formed from the fact that the number of tablets in the different museums of europe from the nineveh library alone exceeds , . they present to us a most interesting picture of the religion, literature, laws, and social life of a period long antecedent to that commonly assigned for the destruction of the world by noah's deluge, or even to that of the creation of adam. to some of these we shall have occasion subsequently to refer, but for the present i confine myself to the immediate object in view, that of verifying the earliest historical dates. the first certain date is fixed by the annals of the assyrian king asshurbanipal, grandson of sennacherib, who conquered elam and destroyed its capital, susa, in the year b.c. the king says that he took away all the statues from the great temple of susa, and among others, one of the chaldæan goddess nana, which had been carried away from her own temple in the city of erech, by a king of elam who conquered the land of accad years before. this conquest, and the accession of an elamite dynasty which lasted for nearly years, is confirmed from a variety of other sources, and its date is thus fixed, beyond the possibility of a doubt, at _b.c._ a king of this dynasty, khudur-lagamar, synchronizes with abraham, assuming abraham and the narrative in the old testament respecting his defeat of that monarch to be historical. this elamite conquest of chaldæa is a memorable historical era, for it inaugurates the period of great wars and of the rise and fall of empires, which play such a conspicuous part in the subsequent annals of nations. elam was a small province between the kurdish mountains and the tigris, extending to the persian gulf, and its capital, susa, was an ancient and famous city; which afterwards became one of the principal seats of the persian monarchs. the elamites were originally a turanian race like the accads, and spoke a language which was a dialect of accadian, but, as in chaldæa and assyria, the kings and aristocracy appear to have been semites from an early period. it was apparently an organized and civilized state, and the conquest was not a passing irruption of barbarians, but the result of a campaign by regular troops, who founded a dynasty which lasted for more than years. it evidently disturbed the equilibrium of western asia, and led to a succession of wars. the invasion of egypt by the hyksos followed closely on it. then came the reaction which drove the elamites from chaldæa and the hyksos from egypt. then the great wars of the eighteenth egyptian dynasty, which carried the arms of ahmes and thotmes to the euphrates and black sea, and established for a time the supremacy of egypt over western asia. then the rise of the hittite empire, which extended over asia minor, and contended on equal terms with ramses ii. in syria. then the rise of the assyrian empire, which crushed the hittites and all surrounding nations, and twice conquered and overran egypt. finally, the rise of the medes, the fall of nineveh, the short supremacy of babylon, and the establishment of the great persian empire. from the persian we pass to the greek, and then to the roman empire, and find ourselves in full modern history. it may be fairly said, therefore, that modern history, with its series of great wars and revolutions, commences with this record of the elamite conquest of chaldæa in b.c. the next tolerably certain date is that of ur-ea, and his son dungi, two kings of the old accadian race, who reigned at ur over the united kingdoms of sumir and accad. they were great builders and restorers of temples, and have left numerous traces of their existence in the monuments both at ur, and at larsam, sirgalla, erech, and other ancient cities. among other relics of these kings there is in the british museum the signet-cylinder of ur-ea himself, on which is engraved the moon-god, the patron deity of ur, with the king and priests worshipping him. the date of ur-ea is ascertained as follows--nabonidus, the last king of babylon, b.c., was a great restorer of the old temples, and, as professor sayce says, "a zealous antiquarian who busied himself much with the disinterment of the memorial cylinders which their founders and restorers had buried beneath their foundations." the results of his discoveries he recorded on special cylinders for the information of posterity, which have fortunately been preserved. among others he restored the sun-temple at larsam, in which he found intact in its chamber under the corner-stone, a cylinder of king hummurabi or khammuragas, stating that the temple was commenced by ur-ea and finished by his son dungi, years before his time. hummurabi was a well-known historical king who expelled the elamites, and made babylon for the first time the capital of chaldæa, about b.c. the date of ur-ea cannot therefore be far from b.c. the same fortunate circumstance of the habit, by kings who built or restored famous temples, of laying the foundation-stone, such as our royal personages often do at the present day, and depositing under it, in a secure chamber, a cylinder recording the fact, has given us a still more ancient date, that of sharrukin or sargon i. of agade. the same nabonidus repaired the great sun-temple of sippar, and he says "that having dug deep in its foundations for the cylinders of the founder, the sun-god suffered him to behold the foundation cylinder of naram-sin, son of sharrukin or (sargon i.), which for three thousand and two hundred years none of the kings who lived before him had seen." this gives b.c. as the date of naram-sin, or, allowing for the long reign of sargon i., about b.c. as the date of that monarch. this discovery revolutionized the accepted ideas of chaldæan chronology, and carried it back at one stroke years before the date of ur-ea, making it contemporary with the fourth egyptian dynasty who built the great pyramids. the evidence is not so conclusive as in the case of egypt, where the lists of manetho give us the whole series of successive kings and dynasties, a great majority of which are confirmed by contemporary records and monuments. the date of sargon i. rests mainly on the authority of nabonidus, who lived more than years later, and may have been mistaken, but he was in the best position to consult the oldest records, and had apparently no motive to make a wilful mis-statement. moreover, other documents have been found in different places confirming the statement on the cylinder of nabonidus, and the opinion of the best and latest authorities has come round to accept the date of about b.c. as authentic. professor sayce, in his hibbert lecture in , gives a detailed account of the evidence which had overcome his original scepticism, and forced him to admit the accuracy of this very distant date. since the discovery of the cylinder of nabonidus, several tablets have been found and deciphered, containing lists of kings and dynasties of the same character as the egyptian lists of manetho. one tablet of the kings who reigned at babylon takes us back, reign by reign, to about b.c. other tablets, though incomplete, give the names of at least sixty kings which are not found in this record of the babylonian era, and who presumedly reigned during the interval of about years between khammuragas and sargon i. the names are mostly accadian, and if they did not reign during this interval they must have preceded the foundation of a semite dynasty by sargon i., and thus extend the date of chaldæan history still further back. the probability of such a remote date is enhanced by the certainty that a high civilization existed in egypt as long ago as b.c., and there is no apparent reason why it should not have existed in the valleys of the tigris and euphrates as soon as in that of the nile. boscawen, in a paper read at the victoria institute in , says that inscriptions found at larsa, a neighbouring city to ur of the chaldees, show that from as early a period as _b.c._ a semitic population existed in the latter city, speaking a language akin to hebrew, carrying on trade and commerce, and with a religion which, although not monotheist, had at the head of its pantheon a supreme god, ilu or el, from whose name that of elohim and allah has been inherited as the name of god by the hebrews and arabs. the latest discoveries all point to the earliest dates, and some authorities think that genuine traces of the earliest accadian civilization can be found as far back as b.c. there can be no doubt, moreover, that this sharrukin or sargon i. is a perfect historical personage. a statue of him has been found at agade or accad, and also his cylinder with an inscription on it giving his name and exploits. it begins, "sharrukin the mighty king am i," and goes on to say, "that he knew not his father, but his mother was a royal princess, who to conceal his birth placed him in a basket of rushes closed with bitumen, and cast him into the river, from which he was saved by akki the water-carrier, who brought him up as his own child." it is singular how the same or a very similar story is told of moses, cyrus, and other heroes of antiquity. it is probable from this that he was a military adventurer who rose to the throne; but there can be no doubt that he was a great monarch, who united the two provinces of shumir and accad, or of lower and upper mesopotamia, into one kingdom, as menes did the upper and lower egypts, and extended his rule over some of the adjoining countries. he says "that he had reigned for forty-five years, and governed the black-headed (accadian) race. in multitudes of bronze chariots i rode over rugged lands. i governed the upper countries. three times to the coast of the sea i advanced." if there is any truth in this inscription it would be very interesting as showing the existence in western asia of nations to be conquered in great campaigns, with a force of horse-chariots, at this remote period, years earlier than the campaigns of ahmes and thotmes recorded in the egyptian monuments of the eighteenth dynasty. [illustration: cylinder seal of sargon i., from agade. (hommel, "gesch. babyloniens u. assyriens.")] the reality of these campaigns is moreover confirmed by inscriptions and images of this sargon having been found in cyprus and on the opposite coast of syria, and by a babylonian cylinder of his son naram-sin, found by cesnola in the cyprian temple of kurion. in another direction he and his son carried their arms into the peninsula of sinai, attracted doubtless by the copper and turquoise mines of wady maghera, which were worked by the egyptians under the third dynasty. sargon i. is also known to have been a great patron of literature, and to have founded the library of agade, which was long one of the most famous in babylonia. a work on astronomy and astrology, in seventy-two books, which was so well known in the time of berosus as to be translated by him into greek, was also compiled for him. another king of the same name, known as sargon ii., who reigned about b.c., either founded or enlarged the library of the priestly college at erech, which was one of the oldest and most famous cities of lower chaldæa, and known as the "city of books." it was also considered to be a sacred city, and its necropolis extends over a great part of the adjoining desert, and contains innumerable tombs and graves ranging over all periods of chaldæan and assyrian history, up to an unknown antiquity. the exact historical date of sargon i. may be a little uncertain; but whatever its antiquity may be, it is evident that it is already far removed from the beginnings of chaldæan civilization. sargon ii. is perfectly historical, and his library and the state of the arts and literature in his reign prove this conclusively. he states in his tablets that kings had reigned before him, and in such a literary age he could hardly have made such a statement without some foundation. if anything like this number of kings had reigned before b.c., the date of sargon ii.'s chaldæan chronology would have to be extended to a date preceding that of egypt. moreover, sargon was a semite, who founded a powerful monarchy over a mixed population, consisting mainly of a primitive accadian race, who had already built large cities and famous temples, written sacred books, and made considerable progress in literature, science, agriculture, and industrial arts. this primitive race was neither semitic nor aryan, but turanian. they spoke an agglutinative language, and resembled the chinese very much both in physical type and in character. they were a short, thick-set people, with yellow skins, coarse black hair, and, judging from the ancient statues recently discovered, of decidedly tartar or mongolian features. they were, like the chinese, a peaceable, patient, and industrious people, addicted to agriculture, and specially skilled in irrigation. they were educated and literary, but very superstitious in regard to ghosts, omens, and evil spirits. this resemblance to the chinese has been remarkably confirmed by the discovery made within the last few years, that the accadian and chinese languages are closely allied, and that a great many words are identical. the early prehistoric and astronomical legends were almost similar, and in some instances, as in the division of the year, the names and order of the planets, and the number and duration of the fabulous reigns of gods, so identical as to leave no doubt of their having had a common origin. but as the chinese annals do not extend farther back than about b.c., the priority of invention must be assigned to the accadians. this turanian population had been long settled in mesopotamia before the accession of sargon i., and before the supremacy of the semitic races began to assert itself. though called accadian, which is said to mean "highlanders," their principal seat was in shumir or lower mesopotamia, in the alluvial delta formed in the course of ages by the euphrates, tigris, and other rivers which flow into the persian gulf; and their traditions point to their civilization having come from the shores of this gulf, and having gradually spread northwards. their most ancient cities and temples were in the lower province of shumir, and the bulk of the population continued for ages to be turanian, while in accad or upper mesopotamia, where the land rises from the alluvial plain up to the mountains of kurdistan and armenia, the semitic element preponderated from an early period, though the civilization and religion long remained those of shumir or chaldæa proper. when the semite sargon i. founded the united monarchy, the capital of which was agade in the upper province, he made no change in the established state of things, maintained the old temples, and built new ones to the same gods. before his reign we have, as in the parallel case of egypt before menes, little definite information from monuments or historical records. we only know that the country was divided into a number of small states, each grouped about a city with a temple dedicated to some god; as eridhu, the sanctuary of ea, one of the trinity of supreme gods; larsam, with its temple of the sun; ur, the city of the moon-god; sirgalla, with another famous temple. these small states were ruled by _patesi_, or priest-kings, a term corresponding to the horsheshu of egypt; and a fortunate discovery by m. de sarzec in at tell-loh, the site of the ancient sirgalla, has given us valuable information respecting its _patesi_. to the surprise of the scientific world, with whom it had been a settled belief that no statues were ever found in assyrian art, m. de sarzec discovered and brought home nine large statues of diorite, a very hard black basalt of the same material as that of the statue of chephren, the builder of the second pyramid, and in the same sitting attitude. the heads had been broken off, but one head was discovered which was of unmistakably turanian type, beardless, shaved, and with a turban for head-dress. with these statues a number of small works of art were found, representing men and animals of a highly artistic design and exquisite finish, and also several cylinders. both these and the backs of the statues are covered with cuneiform inscriptions in the old accadian characters, which furnish valuable historical information. the name of one of the _patesi_ whose statues were found was gud-ea, and his date is computed by some of the best authorities at from to b.c., probably earlier, and certainly not later than b.c. this makes the _patesi_ of sirgalla contemporary with the earliest egyptian kings, or even earlier, and it shows a state of the arts and civilization then prevailing in chaldæa very similar to those of the fourth dynasty in egypt, and in both cases as advanced as those of or years later date. [illustration: head of ancient chaldÆan. from tell-loh (sirgalla). sarzec collection. (perrot and chipiez.)] before such a temple as that of sirgalla could have been built and such statues and works of art made, there must have been older and smaller temples and ruder works, just as in egypt the brick pyramids of sakkarah and the oldest temples of heliopolis and denderah preceded the great pyramids of gizeh, the temple of pthah at memphis, and the diorite statues, wooden statuettes, and other finished works of art of the fourth dynasty. [illustration: statue of gud-ea, with inscription; from tell-loh (sirburla or sirgalla) sarzec collection. (hommel.)] it is important to remark that in those earliest monuments both the language and art are primitive accadian, with no trace of semitic influences, which must have long prevailed before sargon i. could have established a semitic dynasty over an united population of accads and semites living together on friendly terms. the normal semites must have settled gradually in chaldæa, and adopted to a great extent the higher civilization of the accadians, much as the tartars in later times did that of the chinese. it is remarkable also that this pre-semitic accadian people must have had extensive intercourse with foreign regions, for the diorite of which the statues of sirgalla are formed is exactly similar to that of the statue of the egyptian chephren, and in both cases is only found in the peninsula of sinai. in fact, an inscription on one of the statues tells us that the stone was brought from the land of magan, which was the accadian name for that peninsula. this implies a trade by sea, between eridhu, the sea-port of chaldæa in early times, and the red sea, as such blocks of diorite could hardly have been transported such a distance over such mountains and deserts by land; and this is confirmed by references in old geographical tablets to magan as the land of bronze from the copper mines of wady-maghera, and to "ships of magan" trading from eridhu. in any case, it is certain that a very long period of purely accadian civilization must have existed prior to the introduction of semitic influences, and long before the foundation of a semitic dynasty by sargon i. with these facts it will no longer seem surprising that some high authorities assign as early a date as b.c. for the dawn of chaldæan civilization, and consider that it may be quite as old or even older than that of egypt. the great antiquity assigned to these dates from books and monuments is confirmed by other deductions. the city of eridhu, which was generally considered to be the oldest in chaldæa, and was the sanctuary of the principal god, eâ, appears to have been a sea-port in those early days, situated where the euphrates flowed into the persian gulf. the ruins now stand far inland, and sayce computes that about years must have elapsed since the sea reached up to them. astronomy affords a still more definite confirmation. the earliest records and traditions show that before the commencement of any historic period the year had been divided into twelve months, the course of the sun mapped out among the stars, and a zodiac established of the twelve constellations, which has continued in use to the present day. the year began with the vernal equinox, and the first month was named after the "propitious bull," whose figure constantly appears on the monuments as opening the year. the sun, therefore, was in taurus at the vernal equinox when this calendar was formed, which could only be after long centuries of astronomical observation; but it has been in aries since about b.c., and first entered in taurus about b.c. records of eclipses were also kept in the time of sargon i., which imply a long preceding period of accurate observation; and the ziggurat, or temple observatory, built up in successive stages above the alluvial plain, which gave rise to the legend of the tower of babel, is found in connection with the earliest temples. the diorite statues also and engraved gems found at sirgalla testify to a thorough knowledge of the arts of metallurgy at this remote period, and to a commercial intercourse with foreign countries from which the copper and tin must have been derived for making bronze tools capable of cutting such hard materials. the existence of such a commercial intercourse in remote times is confirmed by the example of egypt, where bronze implements must have been in use long before the date of menes; and although copper might have been obtained from sinai or cyprus, tin or bronze must have been imported from distant foreign countries alike in egypt and in chaldæa. chaldæan chronology therefore leads to almost exactly the same results as that of egypt. in each case we have a standard or measuring-rod of authentic historical record, of certainly not less than , and more probably years from the present time; and in each case we find ourselves at this remote date, in presence, not of rude beginnings, but of a civilization already ancient and far advanced. we have populous cities, celebrated temples, an organized priesthood, an advanced state of agriculture and of the industrial and fine arts; writing and books so long known that their origin is lost in myth; religions in which advanced philosophical and moral ideas are already developed; astronomical systems which imply a long course of accurate observations. how long this prehistoric age may have lasted, and how many centuries it may have taken to develop such a civilization, from the primitive beginnings of neolithic and palæolithic origins, is a matter of conjecture. bunsen thinks it may have taken , years, but there are no dates from which we can infer the time that may be required for civilization to grow up by spontaneous evolution, among nations where it is not aided by contact with more advanced civilizations from without. all we can infer is, that it must have required an immense time, probably much longer than that embraced by the subsequent period of historical record. and we can say with certainty that during the whole of this historical period of or years there has been no change in the established order of nature. the earth has revolved round its axis and round the sun, the moon and planets have pursued their courses, the duration of human life has not varied, and there have been no destructions and renovations of life or other traces of miraculous interference. and more than this, we can affirm with absolute certainty that years have not been enough to alter in any perceptible degree the existing physical types of the different races of men and animals, or the primary linguistic types of their forms of speech. the negro, the turanian, the semite, and the aryan, all stand out as clearly distinguished in the paintings on egyptian monuments as they do at the present day; and the agglutinative languages are as distinct from the inflectional, and the semite from the aryan forms of inflections, in the old chaldæan cylinders as they are in the nineteenth century. chapter iii. other historical records. _china_--oldest existing civilization--but records much later than those of egypt and chaldæa--language and traditions accadian--communication how effected. _elam_--very early civilization--susa, an old city in first chaldæan records--conquered chaldæa in b.c.--conquered by assyrians b.c.--statue of nana--cyrus an elamite king--his cylinder--teaches untrustworthiness of legendary history. _phoenicia_--great influence on western civilization--but date comparatively late--traditions of origin--first distinct mention in egyptian monuments b.c.--great movements of maritime nations--invasions of egypt by sea and land, under menepthah, b.c., and ramses iii., b.c.--lists of nations--show advanced civilization and intercourse--but nothing beyond or b.c. _hittites_--great empire in asia minor and syria--turanian race--origin cappadocia--great wars with egypt--battle of kadesh--treaty with ramses ii.--power rapidly declined--but only finally destroyed b.c. by sargon ii.--capital carchemish--great commercial emporium--hittite hieroglyphic inscriptions and monuments--only recently and partially deciphered--results. _arabia_--recent discoveries--inscriptions--sabæa--minæans--thirty-two kings known--ancient commerce and trade-routes--incense and spices--literature--old traditions--oannes--punt--seat of semites--arabian alphabet--older than phoenician--- bearing on old testament histories. _troy and mycenæ_--dr. schliemann's excavations--hissarlik--buried fortifications, palaces, and treasures of ancient troy--mycenæ and tiryns--proof of civilization and commerce--tombs--absence of inscriptions and religious symbols--date of mycenæan civilization--school of art--pictures on vases--type of race. china. the first country to which we might naturally look for independent annals approaching in antiquity those of egypt and chaldæa is china. chinese civilization is in one respect the oldest in the world; that is, it is the one which has come down to the present day from a remote antiquity with the fewest changes. what china is to-day it was more than years ago; a populous empire with a peaceful and industrial population devoted to agriculture and skilled in the arts of irrigation; a literary people acquainted with reading and writing; orderly and obedient, organized under an emperor and official hierarchy; paying divine honours to ancestors, and a religious veneration to the moral and ceremonial precepts of sages and philosophers. addicted to childish superstitions, and yet eminently prosaic, practical, and utilitarian. unlike other nations they have no traditions attributing the origin of arts and sciences to foreign importation, as in the chaldæan legend of oannes, or, as in egypt, to native gods; that is, to development on the soil from an unknown antiquity. the chinese annals begin with human emperors, who are only divine in the sense of being wise and virtuous ancestors, and who are represented as uttering long discourses on the whole duty of man, in a high moral and philosophical tone. but these annals do not profess to go back further than to about b.c., or to a period at least and probably years later than the commencement of historical annals, confirmed by monuments in egypt and chaldæa, and any traditions prior to this period are of the vaguest and most shadowy descriptions. we only know with certainty that prior to chinese civilization there was an aboriginal, semi-savage race, the miou-tse, remnants of whom are still to be found in the mountainous western provinces; and it had been conjectured from the form of the hieroglyphics to which the chinese written characters can be traced back, that they were invented by a pastoral people who roamed with flocks and herds over the steppes of central asia. thus the sheep plays a very prominent part, the idea of "beauty" being conveyed by an ideogram meaning "a large sheep"; that of "right" or "property" by one which means "my sheep," and so on in many other instances. there is a tradition also of a clan of families who came down from the west and descended the valley of the yang-tse-kiang, expelling the aboriginal miou-tse. but for any real information as to chinese origins we are indebted to recent discoveries of accadian records. it has been proved by lacouperie, bell, and other experts in the oldest forms of the chinese and accadian languages, that they are not only closely allied, as both forming part of the ugrian or turkish branch of the turanian family, but almost identical. thus, by following the well-known philological law by which an initial 'g' is often softened in course of time into a 'y,' it was found that by writing 'g' for 'y' in many chinese words beginning with the latter letter, pure accadian words were obtained. thus "to speak" is in accadian _gu_, in the mandarin chinese _yu_, and in the old form of chinese spoken in japan _go_; night is _ye_ in chinese, _ge_ in accadian. the very close connection between accadian and chinese civilization is still more conclusively shown by the identity in many matters which could not have been invented independently. thus the prehistoric period of chaldæa before the deluge is divided, according to berosus and the tablets, into ten periods of ten kings, whose reigns lasted for sari or , years, a myth which is purely astronomical. the early chinese writers had a myth of precisely the same number of ten kings and the same period of , years for their united reigns. chinese astronomy also, said by their annals to have been invented by the emperor yao about b.c., was an almost exact counterpart of that of the earliest accadian records. they recognized the same planets, and gave them names with the same meanings; they divided the year into the chaldæan period of twelve months of thirty days each, making the new year begin, as in chaldæa, in the third month after the winter solstice; and counting the calendar for the surplus days by the same cycle of intercalary days. the oldest chinese dictionaries give names of the months, which had become obsolete, since the usage of mentioning the months by their numbers, as second, third, and fourth months, had become general, and the meaning of which had been lost. it turns out that several of these names correspond with those of the accadian calendar. such coincidences as these cannot be accidental, and it is obvious that one nation must have derived its civilization from the other, or both from a common source. there can be little doubt in this case that chaldæa taught china, for its astronomy, knowledge of the arts, and general culture are proved by its records to have existed at least , and probably years b.c., and then to be attributed to mythical gods and to a fabulous antiquity; while in china they are said to have been taught ready-made by human emperors, at a date from to years later. the inference is irresistible that somehow the elements of accadian civilization must have been imported into china from chaldæa, at what is a comparatively modern date in the history of the latter country. the only approach to a clue to this date is that the great chinese historian szema-tsien says that the first of their emperors was nai-kwangti, who built an observatory, and by the aid of astronomy "ruled the varied year." the name is singularly like that of kuder-na-hangti, who was the elamite king who conquered babylonia about b.c. it is difficult to see how such an intercourse between chaldæa and china could have been established across such an enormous intervening distance of mountains and deserts, or by such a long sea-voyage; but it is still more difficult to conceive how not only language, physical characteristics, and civilization should have been so similar, but myths and calendars should have been almost _verbatim_ the same in the two countries, unless a communication really existed between them. nor will the theory of a common origin apply, for it is impossible to suppose that any common ancestors of the chinese and accadians could have attained to such a knowledge of astronomy, and of the industrial arts and agriculture, while wandering as nomad shepherds over the steppes of central asia. we must remember also the fact that caravans actually do travel, and have travelled for time immemorial, over enormous distances, across the steppes of central and northern asia, and that within quite recent historical times, a whole nation of calmucks migrated under every conceivable difficulty from hostile tribes, pursuing armies, and the extremes of winter cold and summer heat, first from china to the volga, and then back again from the volga to china. nor must we overlook the fact that ur and eridhu were great sea-ports at a very remote period, and that the facilities for pushing their commerce far to the east were great, owing to the regular monsoons, and the configuration of the coast. we must be content, therefore, to take the facts as we find them, and admit that china gives us no aid in carrying back authentic history for anything like the time for which we have satisfactory evidence from the monuments and records of egypt and chaldæa. elam. as regards other nations of antiquity, their own historical records are either altogether wanting or comparatively recent, and our only authentic information respecting them in very early times is derived from egyptian or babylonian monuments. the most important of them is elam, which was evidently a civilized kingdom at a very remote period, contemporary probably with the earliest accadian civilization, and which continued to play a leading part in history down to the recent date of cyrus. elam was a small district between the zagros mountains and the tigris, extending to the south along the eastern shore of the persian gulf to the arabian sea. its capital was shushan or susa, an ancient and renowned city, the name of which survives in the persian province of shusistan, as that of persia proper does in the mountainous district next to the east of elam, known as farsistan. the original population was turanian, speaking an agglutinative language, akin to though not identical with accadian, and its religion and civilization were apparently the same, or closely similar. as in chaldæa and assyria, a semitic element seems to have intruded on the turanian at an early date, and to have become the ruling race, while much later the aryan persians to some extent superseded the semites. the name "elam" is said to have the same significance as "accad," both meaning "highland," and indicating that both races must have had a common origin in the mountains and steppes of central asia. the native name was anshad, and susa was "the city of anshad." elam was always considered an ancient land and susa an ancient city, by the accadians, and there is every reason to believe that elamite civilization must have been at least as old as accadian. this much is certain, that as far back as b.c., elam was a sufficiently organized and powerful state to conquer the larger and more populous country of mesopotamia, and found an elamite dynasty which lasted for nearly years, and carried on campaigns in districts as far distant as southern syria and the dead sea. the dynasty was subverted and the elamites driven back within their own frontiers, but there they retained their independence, and took a leading part in all the wars waged by chaldæa and other surrounding nations against the rising power of the warlike assyrian kings of nineveh. the statue of the goddess nana, which had been taken by the elamite conquerors from erech in b.c., remained in the temple at susa for years, until the city was at length taken by one of the latest assyrian kings, asshurbanipal, in the year b.c. we have already pointed out the great historical importance of the elamite conquest of mesopotamia in _b.c._ as inaugurating the era of great wars between civilized states, and probably giving the impulse to western asia, which hurled the hyksos on egypt, and by its reaction first brought the egyptians to nineveh, and then the assyrians to memphis. a still more important movement at the very close of what may be called ancient history, originated from elam. to the surprise of all students of history, it has been proved that the account we have received from herodotus and other greek sources, of the great cyrus, is to a great extent fabulous. a cylinder and tablet of cyrus himself were quite recently discovered by mr. rassam and brought to the british museum, in which he commemorates his conquest of babylon. he describes himself as "cyrus the great king, the king of babylon, the king of sumir and accad, the king of the four zones, the son of kambyses the great king, the king of elam; the grandson of cyrus the great king, the king of elam; the great-grandson of teispes the great king, the king of elam; of the ancient seed-royal, whose rule has been beloved by bel and nebo"; and he goes on to say how by the favour of "merodach the great lord, the god who raises the dead to life, who benefits all men in difficulty and prayer, he had conquered the men of kurdistan and all the barbarians, and also the black-headed race (the accadians), and finally entered babylon in peace and ruled there righteously, favoured by gods and men, and receiving homage and tribute from all the kings who dwelt in the high places of all regions from the upper to the lower sea, including phoenicia." and he concludes with an invocation to all the gods whom he had restored to their proper temples from which they had been taken by nabonidus, "to intercede before bel and nebo to grant me length of days; may they bless my projects with prosperity; and may they say to merodach my lord, that cyrus the king, thy worshipper, and kambyses his son deserve his favour." this is confirmed by a cylinder of a few years earlier date, of nabonidus the last king of babylon, who relates how "cyrus the king of elam, the young servant of merodach," overthrew the medes, there called "mandan" or barbarians, captured their king astyages, and carried the spoil of the royal city ecbatana to the land of elam. how many of our apparently most firmly established historical dates are annihilated by these little clay cylinders! it appears that cyrus was not a persian at all, or an adventurer who raised himself to power by a successful revolt, but the legitimate king of elam, descended from its ancient royal race through an unbroken succession of several generations. he was in fact a later and greater kudur-na-hangti, like the early conqueror of that name who founded the first elamite empire some years earlier. it may be doubtful whether he was even an aryan. at any rate this much is certain, that his religion was babylonian, and that we must dismiss all jewish myths of him as a zoroastrian monotheist, the servant of the most high god, who favoured the chosen race from sympathy with their religion. on his own showing he was as devoted a worshipper of merodach, bel, and nebo, and the whole pantheon of local gods, as nebuchadnezzar or tiglath-pileser.[ ] [ ] sayce, in his _fresh light from ancient monuments_, says, "both in his cylinder and in the annalistic tablet, cyrus, hitherto supposed to be a persian and zoroastrian monotheist, appears as an elamite and a polytheist." it is pretty certain, however, that although descended from elamite kings, these were kings of persian race, who, after the destruction of the old monarchy by asshurbanipal, had established a new dynasty at the city of anshad or susa. cyrus always traces his descent from achæmenes, the chief of the leading persian clan of pasargadæ, and he was buried there in a tomb visited by alexander. but as regards religion, it is clear that cyrus professed himself, and was taken by his contemporaries to be, a devoted servant of merodach, nebo, and the other babylonian deities, to whom he prays for protection and thanks for victories, without any mention of the zoroastrian supreme god, ahura-mazda. zoroastrian monotheism only came in with darius hystaspes, the founder of the purely persian second dynasty, after that of cyrus became extinct with his son cambyses. what a lesson does this teach us as to the untrustworthy nature of the scraps of ancient history which have come down to us from verbal traditions, and are not confirmed by contemporary monuments! herodotus wrote within a few generations of cyrus, and the relations of greece to the persian empire had been close and uninterrupted. his account of its founder cyrus is not in itself improbable, and is full of details which have every appearance of being historical. it is confirmed to a considerable extent by the old testament, and by the universal belief of early classical writers, and yet it is shown to be in essential respects legendary and fabulous, by the testimony of cyrus himself. phoenicia. phoenicia is another country which exercised a great influence on the civilization and commerce of the ancient world, though its history does not go back to the extreme antiquity of the early dynasties of egypt and of chaldæa. the phoenicians spoke a language which was almost identical with that of the hebrews and canaanites, and closely resembled that of assyria and babylonia, after the semite language had superseded that of the ancient accadians. according to their own tradition, they came from the persian gulf, and the island of tyros, now bahrein, in that gulf, is quoted as a proof that it was the original seat of the people who founded tyre. there is no certain date for the period when they migrated from the east, and settled in the narrow strip of land along the coast of the mediterranean between the mountain range of lebanon and the sea, stretching from the promontory of carmel on the south to the gulf of antioch on the north. this little strip of about miles in length, and ten to fifteen in breadth, afforded many advantages for a maritime people, owing to the number of islands close to the coast and small indented bays, which afforded excellent harbours and protection from enemies, which was further secured by the precipitous range of the lebanon sending down steep spurs into the mediterranean, and thus isolating phoenicia from the military route of the great valley of coelo-syria, between the parallel ranges of the lebanon and anti-lebanon, which was taken by armies in the wars between egypt and asia. here the phoenicians founded nine cities, of which byblos or gebal was reputed to be the most ancient, and first sidon and then tyre became the most important. they became fishermen, manufacturers of purple from the dye procured from the shell-fish on their shores, and above all mariners and merchants. before the growth of other naval powers in the mediterranean they had established factories along the coasts of asia minor, greece, and italy, and in all the islands of the egæan and the cyclades. they had founded colonies in cyprus, crete, sicily, and on the mainland of greece at boeotian thebes. they had mined extensively wherever metals were to be found, and, as herodotus states, had overturned a whole mountain at thasos by tunnelling it for gold. they had even extended their settlements into the black sea, along the northern coast of africa, and somewhat later to spain, passed the straits of gibraltar, and finally reached the british isles in pursuit of tin. there can be no question that this phoenician commerce was a principal element in introducing not only their alphabet, but many of the early arts of civilization, among the comparatively rude races of greece, italy, spain, and britain. the date however of this earliest phoenician commerce is very uncertain. all we can discern is that, after having enjoyed an undisputed supremacy, the progress of civilization among the mediterranean races enabled them to develop a maritime power of their own, superior to that of phoenicia, and to drive the phoenicians from most of their settlements on the mainland and islands, confining them to a few trading posts and factories, and directing their more important enterprises towards the western mediterranean, where they encountered less formidable rivals. but although phoenicia contributed thus largely to the civilization of the ancient world, its antiquity cannot be compared to that of egypt and chaldæa. the first reference to the country is found in the cylinder of sargon i., b.c. , who marched to the coast of the mediterranean, and crossed over to cyprus, where a cylinder of his son dungi has been found, but there is nothing to show that the district was then occupied by the phoenicians of later times. kopt, or the land of palms, of which phoenicia is the greek translation, is first mentioned in the egyptian annals of the middle empire, and during the rule of the hyksos the mouth of the nile had become so thickly populated by phoenician emigrants as to be known as kopt-ur, caphtor, or greater phoenicia. the priests of the temple of baal melcart, the patron deity of tyre, told herodotus that it had been founded years before his time, or about b.c., and old tyre which stood on the mainland was reputed to be more ancient than the city of new tyre which stood on an island. but this date is negatived by the fact that in an egyptian papyrus in which an envoy from ramses ii. or menepthah to the court of babylon about b.c. records his journey, he mentions byblos, beryta, and sidon as important cities, while tyre is only an insignificant fishing town. the first distinct mention of phoenician cities in egyptian annals is in the enumeration of towns captured by thotmes iii., b.c. , in his victorious campaigns in syria, among which are to be found the names of beyrut and acco, and two centuries later seti i., the father of ramses ii., records the capture of zor or tyre, probably the old city on the mainland. the first authentic information, however, as to the movements of the mediterranean maritime races is afforded by the egyptian annals, which describe two formidable invasions by combined land armies and fleets, which were with difficulty repulsed. the first took place in the reign of menepthah, son of the great ramses ii. of the eighteenth dynasty, about b.c.; the second under ramses iii. of the nineteenth dynasty, about b.c. the first invasion came from the west, and was headed by the king of the lybians, a white race, who have been identified with the numidians and modern kabyles, but were reinforced to a confederacy of nearly all the mediterranean races who sent auxiliary contingents both of sea and land forces. among these appear, along with dardanians, teucri and lycians of asia minor, who were already known as allies of the hittites in their wars against ramses ii., a new class of auxiliaries from greece, italy, and the islands, whose names have been identified by some egyptologists as achæans, tuscans, sicilians, and sardinians. [illustration: sea-fight in the time of ramses iii. (from temple of ammon at medinet-abou.)] the second and more formidable attack came from the east, and was made by a combined fleet and land army, the latter composed of hittites and philistines, with the same auxiliaries from asia minor, and the fleet of the same confederation of maritime states as in the first invasion, except that the achæans have disappeared as leaders of the greek powers, and their place is taken by the danaoi, confirming the greek tradition of the substitution of the dynasty of danaus for that of inachus, on the throne of argos and mycenæ. the phoenicians alone of the maritime states do not seem to have taken any part in these invasions, and, on the contrary, to have lived on terms of friendly vassalage and close commercial relations with egypt ever since the expulsion of the hyksos, and the great conquests of ahmes and thotmes iii. in syria and asia. it is probably during this period that the early commerce and navigation of jebail and sidon took such a wide extension. the details of these two great invasions, which are fully given in the egyptian monuments, together with a picture of the naval combat, in which the invading fleet was finally defeated by ramses iii., after having forced an entrance into the eastern branch of the nile, are extremely interesting. they show an advanced state of civilization already prevailing among nations whose very names were unknown or legendary. more than years before the siege of troy it appears that asia minor and the greek mainland and islands were already inhabited by nations sufficiently advanced in civilization to fit out fleets which commanded the seas, and to form political confederations, to undertake distant expeditions, and to wage war on equal terms with the predominant powers of asia and of egypt. but though ancient as regards classical history, these beginnings of greek civilization are comparatively modern, and cannot be carried back further than about b.c., while there is no evidence to carry the preceding period of phoenician supremacy and commerce in the eastern mediterranean, with the existence of the great trading cities of its earliest period, byblos and sidon, beyond , or, at the very outside, b.c. hittites. the history of another great empire has been partially brought to light, which was destroyed in b.c. by the progress of assyrian conquest, after having lasted more than years, and long exercised a predominant influence over western asia, viz. that of the hittites. the first mention of them in the old testament appears in the time of abraham, when we find them in southern syria, mixed with tribes of the canaanites and amorites, and grouped principally about hebron. they are represented as on friendly terms with abraham, selling him a piece of land for a sepulchre, and intermarrying with his family--rebecca's soul being vexed by the contumacious behaviour of her daughters-in-law, "the daughters of heth." this, however, was only an outlying branch of the nation, whose capital cities, when they appear clearly in history, were further north at kadesh on the orontes, and carchemish on the upper euphrates, commanding the fords on that river on the great commercial route between babylonia and the mediterranean. they were a turanian race, whose original seat was in cappadocia, and the high plateaux and mountainous region extending from the taurus range to the black sea. they are easily recognized on the egyptian monuments by their yellow colour, peculiar features which are of ugro-turkish type, and their dress, which is that of highlanders inhabiting a snowy district, with close-fitting tunics, mittens, and boots resembling snowshoes with turned-up toes. they have also the mongolian characters of beardless faces, and coarse black hair, which is sometimes trained into a pigtail. [illustration: king of the hittites. (from photograph by flinders petrie, from egyptian temple at luxor.)] the earliest mention of them is found in the tablets which were compiled for the library of sargon i. of accad, in which reference is made to the khatti, which probably means hittites, showing that at this remote period, about b.c., they had already moved down from their northern home into the valley of the euphrates and upper syria. their affinity with the accadians of chaldæa is clearly proved by their language, which the recent discovery of papyri at tell-el-amara, containing despatches from the tributary king of the hittites to amenophus iv., written in cuneiform characters, has proved to be almost identical with accadian. it seems probable that part of the army which fought in defence of troy may have been hittite, and there are many indications that the etruscans, who were generally believed to have come from lydia, were of the same race and spoke the same language. it is in egyptian records, however, that we meet with the first definite historical data respecting this ancient hittite empire. in these they are referred to as "kheta," and probably formed part of the great hyksos invasion; but the first certain mention of them occurs in the reign of thotmes i., about b.c., and they appear as a leading nation in the time of thotmes iii., who defeated a combined army of canaanites and hittites under the hittite king of kadesh, at megiddo, and in fourteen victorious campaigns carried the egyptian arms to the euphrates and tigris. for several subsequent reigns we find the hittites enumerated as one of the nations paying tribute to egypt, whose extensive empire then reckoned mesopotamia, assyria, phoenicia, palestine, cyprus, and the soudan among its tributary states. gradually the power of egypt declined, and in the troubled times which followed the attempt of the heretic king ku-en-aten to supersede the old religion of egypt by the worship of the solar disc, the conquered nations threw off the yoke, and the frontiers of egypt receded to the old limits. as egypt declined, the power of the hittites evidently increased, for when we next meet with them it is contending on equal terms in palestine with the revival of the military power of egypt under ramses i., the founder of the nineteenth dynasty, and his son seti i. the contest continued for more than a century with occasional treaties of peace and various vicissitudes of fortune, and at last culminated in the great battle of kadesh, commemorated by the egyptian epic poem of pentaur, and followed by the celebrated treaty of peace between ramses ii. and kheta-sira, "the great king of the hittites," the hittite text of which was engraved on a silver tablet in the characters of carchemish, and the egyptian copy of it was engraved in hieroglyphics on the walls of the temples of ramses, of which we fortunately possess the entire text. the alliance was on equal terms, defining the frontier, and providing for the mutual extradition of refugees, and it was ratified by the marriage of ramses with the daughter of the hittite king. the peace lasted for some time; but in the reign of ramses iii. of the twentieth dynasty, we find the hittites again heading the great confederacy of the nations of asia minor and of the islands of the mediterranean, who attacked egypt by sea and land. the hittites formed the greater part of the land army, which was defeated with great slaughter after an obstinate battle at pelusium, about b.c. from this time forward the power both of the hittites and of egypt seems to have steadily declined. we hear no more of them as a leading power in palestine and syria, where the kingdoms of judah, israel, and damascus superseded them, until all were swallowed up by the assyrian conquests of the warrior-kings of nineveh, and finally the hittites disappear altogether from history with the capture of their capital carchemish by sargon ii. in b.c. the wide extent, however, of the hittite empire when at its height is proved by the fact that at the battle of kadesh the hittite army was reinforced by vassals or allies from nearly the whole of western asia. the dardanians from the troad, the mysians from their cities of ilion, the colchians from the caucasus, the syrians from the orontes, and the phoenicians from arvad are enumerated as sending contingents; and in the invasion of egypt in the reign of ramses iii., the hittites headed the great confederacy of hittites, teucrians, lycians, philistines, and other asiatic nations who attacked egypt by land, in concert with the great maritime confederacy of greeks, pelasgians, tuscans, sicilians, and sardinians who attacked it by sea. the mere fact of carrying on such campaigns and forming such political alliances is sufficient to show that the hittites must have attained to an advanced state of civilization. but there is abundant proof that this was the case from other sources. they were a commercial people, and their capital, carchemish, was for many centuries the great emporium of the caravan trade between the east and west. the products of the east, probably as far as bactria and india, reached it from babylon and nineveh, and were forwarded by two great commercial routes, one to the south-west to syria and phoenicia, the other to the north-west through the pass of karakol, to sardis and the mediterranean. the commercial importance of carchemish is attested by the fact that its silver mina became the standard of value at babylon, and throughout the whole of western asia. the hittites were also great miners, working the silver mines of the taurus on an extensive scale, and having a plentiful supply of bronze and other metals, as is shown by the large number of chariots attached to their armies from the earliest times. they were also a literary people, and had invented a system of hieroglyphic writing of their own, distinct alike from that of egypt and from the cuneiform characters of the accadians. inscriptions in these peculiar characters, associated with sculptures in a style of art different from that of either egypt or chaldæa, but representing figures identical in dress and features with those of hittites in the egyptian monuments, have been found over a wide extent of asia minor, at hamath and aleppo; boghaz-keni and eyuk in cappadocia; at the pass of karakol near sardis, and at various other places. several of those attributed by the greeks to sesostris or to fabulous passages of their own mythology, have been proved to be hittite, as, for instance, the figure carved on the rocks of mount sipylos, near ephesus, and said to be that of niobe, is proved to be a sitting figure of the great goddess of carchemish. for a long time these inscriptions were an enigma to philologists, but the researches of professor sayce and other scholars have quite recently thrown much light on the subject, and enabled us partially to decipher some of them, and the recent discovery of papyri at tel-el-amara written partly in the hittite language in cuneiform characters, removes all doubt as to its nature and affinities. it may be sufficient to state the result, that the hittite language was turanian or agglutinative, closely allied, and indeed almost identical, with accadian on the one hand, and on the other so similar to the ancient lydian and etruscan, as to leave it doubtful whether these nations were themselves hittites, or only very close cousins descended from a common stock. for instance, the well-known etruscan names of tarquin and lar occur as parts of many names of hittite kings, and in the same, or a slightly modified form, in accadian, and survive to the present day in various turkic and mongolian dialects. this much appears to be clear, that this hittite empire, which vanished so completely from history more than years ago, had for nearly years previously exercised a paramount influence in western asia, and was one of the principal channels through which asiatic mythology and art reached greece in early times, and through the etruscans formed an important element in the civilization of ancient rome. it was itself probably an offshoot from the still older civilization of accadia, though after a time semitic and egyptian influences were introduced, as appears from the fact that sutek, set or seth, was the supreme god of the hittites, as is shown by the text of the treaty of peace between their great king khota-sira and ramses ii. as regards chronology, therefore, hittite history only carries us back about half-way to the earliest dates of egypt and chaldæa, and only confirm these dates incidentally, by showing that other powerful and civilized states already existed in asia at a remote period. arabia. the best chance of finding records which may vie in antiquity with those of egypt and chaldæa, has come to us quite recently from an unexpected quarter. arabia has been from time immemorial one of the least known and least accessible regions of the earth. especially of recent years moslem fanaticism has made it a closed country to christian research, and it is only quite lately that a few scientific travellers, taking their lives in their hands, have succeeded in penetrating into the interior, discovering the sites of ruined cities, and copying numerous inscriptions. dr. glaser especially has three times explored southern arabia, and brought home no less than inscriptions, many of them of the highest historical interest. by the aid of these and other inscriptions we are able to reduce to some sort of certainty the vague traditions that had come down to us of ancient nations and an advanced state of civilization and commerce, existing in arabia in very ancient times. in the words of professor sayce, "the dark past of the arabian peninsula has been suddenly lighted up, and we find that long before the days of mohammed it was a land of culture and literature, a seat of powerful kingdoms and wealthy commerce, which cannot fail to have exercised an influence upon the general history of the world."[ ] [ ] the facts of this section are taken mainly from two articles by professor sayce in the _contemporary review_, entitled "ancient arabia" and "results of oriental archæology." the visit of the queen of sheba to solomon affords one of the first glimpses into this past history. it is evident that she either was, or was supposed to be by the compiler of the book of kings not many centuries later, the queen of a well-known, civilized, and powerful country, which, from the description of her offerings, could hardly be other than arabia felix, the spice country of southern arabia, the sabæa or saba of the ancient world, though her kingdom, or commercial relations, may have extended over the opposite coast of abyssinia and somali-land, and probably far down the east coast of africa. assyrian inscriptions show that saba was a great kingdom in the eighth century b.c., when its frontiers extended so far to the north as to bring it in contact with those of the empire of nineveh under tiglath-pileser and sargon ii. it was then an ancient kingdom, and, as the inscriptions show, had long since undergone the same transformation as egypt and chaldæa, from the rule of priest-kings of independent cities into an unified empire. these priest-kings were called "makârib," or high-priests of saba, showing that the original state must have been a theocracy, and the name saba like assur that of a god. but the inscriptions reveal this unexpected fact, that old as the kingdom of saba may be, it was not the oldest in this district, but rose to power on the decay of a still older nation, whose name of ma'in has come down to us in dim traditions under the classical form of minæans. we are already acquainted with the names of thirty-two minæan kings, and as comparatively few inscriptions have as yet been discovered, many more will doubtless be found. among those known, however, are some which show that the authority of the minæan kings was not confined to their original seat in the south, but extended over all arabia and up to the frontiers of syria and of egypt. three names of these kings have been found at teima, the tema of the old testament, on the road to damascus and sinai; and a votive tablet from southern arabia is inscribed by its authors, "in gratitude to athtar (istar or astarte), for their rescue in the war between the ruler of the south and the ruler of the north, and in the conflict between madhi and egypt, and for their safe return to their own city of quarnu." the authors of this inscription describe themselves as being under the minæan king "abi-yadá yathi," and being "governors of tsar and ashur and the further bank of the river." tsar is often mentioned in the egyptian monuments as a frontier fortress on the arabian side of what is now the suez canal, while another inscription mentions gaza, and shows that the authority of the minæan rulers extended to edom, and came into close contact with palestine and the surrounding tribes. doubtless the protection of trade-routes was a main cause of this extension of fortified posts and wealthy cities, over such a wide extent of territory. from the most ancient times there has always been a stream of traffic between east and west, flowing partly by the red sea and persian gulf, and from the ends of these eastern seas to the mediterranean, and partly by caravan routes across asia. the possession of one of these routes by solomon in alliance with tyre, led to the ephemeral prosperity of the jewish kingdom at a much later period; and the wars waged between egyptians, assyrians, and hittites were doubtless influenced to a considerable extent by the desire to command these great lines of commerce. arabia stood in a position of great advantage as regards this international commerce, being a half-way house between east and west, protected from enemies by impassable deserts, and with inland and sheltered seas in every direction. its southern provinces also had the advantage of being the great, and in some cases the sole, producers of commodities of great value and in constant request. frankincense and other spices were indispensable in temples where bloody sacrifices formed part of the religion. the atmosphere of solomon's temple must have been that of a sickening slaughterhouse, and the fumes of incense could alone enable the priests and worshippers to support it. this would apply to thousands of other temples through asia, and doubtless the palaces of kings and nobles suffered from uncleanliness and insanitary arrangements, and required an antidote to evil smells to make them endurable. the consumption of incense must therefore have been immense in the ancient world, and it is not easy to see where it could have been derived from except from the regions which exhaled. "sabæan odours from the shores of araby the blest." the next interesting result, however, of these arabian discoveries is, that they disclose not only a civilized and commercial kingdom at a remote antiquity, but that they show us a literary people, who had their own alphabet and system of writing at a date comparable to that of egyptian hieroglyphics and chaldæan cuneiforms, and long prior to the oldest known inscription in phoenician characters. the first arabian inscriptions were discovered and copied by seetzen in , and were classed together as himyaritic, from himyar, the country of the classical homerites. it was soon discovered that the language was semitic, and that the alphabet resembled that of the ethiopic or gheez, and was a modification of the phoenician written vertically instead of horizontally. further discoveries and researches have led to the result, which is principally due to dr. glaser, that the so-called himyaritic inscriptions fell into two groups, one of which is distinctly older than the other, containing fuller and more primitive grammatical forms. these are minæan, while the inscriptions in the later dialect are sabæan. it is apparent, therefore, that the minæan rule and literature must have preceded those of sabæa by a time sufficiently long to have allowed for considerable changes both in words and grammar to have grown up, not by foreign conquest, but by evolution among the tribes of the same race within arabia itself. now the sabæan kingdom can be traced back with considerable certainty to the time of solomon, years b.c., and had in all probability existed many centuries before; while we have already a list of thirty-three minæan kings, which number will doubtless be enlarged by further discoveries; and the oldest inscriptions point, as in egypt, to an antecedent state of commerce and civilization. it is evident therefore that arabia must be classed with egypt and chaldæa as one of the countries which point to the existence of highly civilized communities in an extreme antiquity; and that it is by no means impossible that the records of southern arabia may ultimately be carried back as far as those of sargon i., or even of menes. this is the more probable as several ancient traditions point to southern arabia, and possibly to the adjoining coast of north-eastern africa, as the source of the earliest civilizations. thus oannes is said to have come up from the persian gulf and taught the chaldæans the first arts of civilization. the phoenicians traced their origin to the bahrein islands in the same gulf. the egyptians looked with reverence and respect to punt, which is generally believed to have meant arabia felix and somali-land; and they placed the origin of their letters and civilization, not in upper or lower, but in middle egypt, at abydos where thoth and osiris were said to have reigned, where the nile is only separated from the red sea by a narrow land pass which was long one of the principal commercial routes between arabia and egypt. the close connection between egypt and punt in early times is confirmed by the terms of respect in which punt is spoken of in egyptian inscriptions, contrasting with the epithets of "barbarian" and "vile," which are applied to other surrounding nations such as the hittites, libyans, and negroes. and the celebrated equipment of a fleet by the great queen hatasu of the nineteenth dynasty, to make a commercial voyage to punt, and its return with a rich freight, and the king and queen of the country with offerings, on a visit to the pharaoh, reminding one of the visit of the queen of sheba to solomon, shows that the two nations were on friendly terms, and that the red sea and opposite coast of africa had been navigated from a very early period. the physical type also of the chiefs of punt as depicted on the egyptian monuments is very like that of the aristocratic type of the earliest known egyptian portraits. [illustration: chief of punt and two men.] one point seems sufficiently clear; that wherever may have been the original seat of the aryans, that of the semites must be placed in arabia. everywhere else we can trace them as an immigrating or invading people, who found prior populations of different race, but in arabia they seem to have been aboriginal. thus in chaldæa and assyria, the semites are represented in the earliest history and traditions as coming from the south, partly by the persian gulf and partly across the arabian and syrian deserts, and by degrees amalgamating with and superseding the previous accadian population. in egypt the semitic element was a late importation which never permanently affected the old egyptian civilization. in syria and palestine, the phoenicians, canaanites, and hebrews were all immigrants from the persian gulf or arabian frontier, either directly or through the medium of egypt and assyria, who did not even pretend to be the earliest inhabitants, but found other races, as the amorites and hittites, in possession, whose traditions again went back to barbarous aborigines of zammumim, who seemed to them to stammer their unintelligible language. the position of semites in the moslem world in asia and africa is distinctly due to the conquests of the arab mohammed and the spread of his religion. in arabia alone we find semites and semites only, from the very beginning, and the peculiar language and character of the race must have been first developed in the growing civilization which preceded the ancient minæan empire, probably as the later stone age was passing into that of metal, and the primitive state of hunters and fishers into the higher social level of agriculturists and traders. to return from these remote speculations to a subject of more immediate interest, the discovery of these minæan inscriptions shows the existence of an alphabet older than that of the earliest known inscriptions in phoenician letters. the alphabets of greece, rome, and all modern nations are beyond all doubt derived from that of phoenicia, and it has been generally supposed that this was formed from an abridgment of the hieroglyphics or hieratics of egypt. but the minæan inscriptions raise the question whether the phoenician alphabet itself and the kindred alphabets of palestine, syria, and other countries near the arabian frontier were not derived from arabia rather than from egypt. the minæan language and letters are certainly older forms of semitic speech and writing, and it seems more likely that they should have been adopted, with dialectic variations, by other semitic races, with whom arabia had a long coterminous position and constant intercourse by caravans, than that these races should have remained totally ignorant of letters, until phoenicia borrowed them from egypt. moreover, as professor sayce shows, this theory gives a better explanation of the names of the phoenician letters, which in many cases have no resemblance to the symbols which denote them. thus the first letter aleph, "an ox," really resembles the head of that animal in the minæan inscriptions, while no likeness can be traced to any egyptian hieroglyph used for 'a.' should these speculations be confirmed, they will considerably modify our conceptions as to the early history of the old testament. it would seem that canaan, before the israelite invasion, was already a settled and civilized country, with a distinct alphabet and literature of its own, older than those of phoenicia; and it may be hoped that further researches in arabia and palestine may disclose records, buried under the ruins of ancient cities, which may vie in antiquity with those of egypt and chaldæa. but in the meantime we must be content to rely on the records and monuments of these two countries, and especially those of egypt, as giving us the longest standard of genuine historical time, extending backwards about years from the present century. troy and mycenÆ. the existence of civilization and commerce among other ancient nations which have disappeared from history, have received a remarkable confirmation from the excavations of dr. schliemann at troy and mycenæ. the site of troy has been identified with the mound of hissarlik which formed its citadel, and the accuracy of the descriptions in homer's _iliad_ has been wonderfully verified. the ruins of seven successive towns, superimposed one on the other, have been found in excavating the mass of _débris_ down to the bed rock. the lowest of these was a settlement apparently of the later neolithic or earliest bronze ages, while the next, built on the ruins of the first at a level of eleven to twenty feet above it, was a strongly fortified city, which had been destroyed by fire, and which answers almost exactly to the description of homer's troy. the citadel hill had been inclosed by massive walls, and was surmounted by a stately palace and other buildings, the foundations of which still remain. it was protected on one side by the river scamander, and on the other the city extended over the plain at the foot of the citadel, and was itself also surrounded by a strong wall, of which a small fragment remains. the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth settlements consisted of mean huts or dwelling-houses built of quarry stones and clay, and the seventh, or uppermost, was the græco-roman ilion of classical writers. the main interest therefore centres in the second city, which, from the articles found in it and the many repairs and alterations of the walls and buildings, must have been for a long time the seat of a nourishing and powerful people, enriched by commerce, and far advanced in the industrial and fine arts. notwithstanding the destruction and probable plunder of the city, the quantity of gold and silver found was very considerable, chiefly in the vaults or casemates built into the foundations of the walls, which were covered up with _débris_ when the citadel was burnt, and the roofs and upper buildings fell in. in one place alone dr. schliemann found the celebrated treasure containing sixty articles of gold and silver, which had evidently been packed together in a square wooden box, which had disappeared with the intense heat. the nature of these citadels shows a high degree not only of civilization but of wealth and luxury, as proved by the skill and taste of jeweller's work displayed in the female ornaments, which comprise three sumptuous diadems, ear-rings, hairpins, and bracelets. there are also numerous vases and cups of terra-cotta, and a few of gold and silver, and bars of silver which have every appearance of being used for money, being of the same form and weight. the fragments of ordinary pottery are innumerable, the finer and more perfect vases are often of a graceful form, and moulded into shapes of animals or human heads, and decorated with spirals, rosettes, and other ornaments of the type which is more fully illustrated as that of the pre-hellenic civilization of mycenæ. for schliemann has not only restored the historic reality of priam and the city of troy, but also that of agamemnon "king of men," and his capital of mycenæ. the result of his explorations on this site has been to show that a still larger and more wealthy city existed here for a longer period than troy, and which affected a more extensive area, for its peculiar art and civilization were widely diffused over the whole of the eastern coast of greece and the adjoining islands, and specimens of it have been found on the opposite coasts of asia minor, as we have seen at troy, and as far off as cyprus and egypt, where they were doubtless carried by commerce. the existence of an extensive commerce is proved by the profusion of gold which has been found in the vaults and tombs buried under the _débris_ of the ruined city, for gold is not a native product, but must have been obtained from abroad, as also the bronze, copper, and tin required for the manufacture of weapons. the city also evidently owed its importance to its situation on the isthmus of corinth, commanding the trade route between the gulfs of argos and of corinth, and thus connecting the eastern mediterranean and asia with the western sea and europe. the still older city of tiryns, of which mycenæ was probably an offshoot, stood nearly on the shore of the eastern gulf, while mycenæ was in the middle of the isthmus about eight miles from either gulf. tiryns was also explored by schliemann, and showed the same plans of buildings and fortifications as troy and mycenæ, and the same class of relics, only less extensive and more archaic than those of mycenæ, which was evidently the more important city during the golden period of this great mycenæan civilization. those who wish to pursue this interesting subject further will find an admirable account of it in the english translation of schliemann's works and essays, with a full description of each exploration, and numerous illustrations of the buildings and articles found. for my present object i only refer to it as an illustration of the position that egypt and chaldæa do not stand alone in presenting proofs of high antiquity, but that other nations, such as the chinese, the hittites, the minæans of southern arabia, the mycenæans, trojans, lydians, phrygians, cretans, and doubtless many others, also existed as populous, powerful, and civilized states, at a time long antecedent to the dawn of classical history. if these ancient empires and civilization became so completely forgotten, or survived only in dim traditions of myths and poetical legends, the reason seems to be that they kept no written records, or at any rate none in the form of enduring inscriptions. we know ancient egypt from its hieroglyphics, and from manetho's history; chaldæa and assyria from the cuneiform writing on clay tablets; china, up to about b.c., from its written histories; but it is singular that the other ancient civilizations have left few or no inscriptions. this is the more remarkable in the case of the mycenæan cities explored by dr. schliemann, for their date is not so very remote, their jewellery, vases, and signet-rings are profusely decorated, their dead interred in stately tombs with large quantities of gold and silver, and yet not a single instance has been found of anything resembling alphabetical or symbolical writing, or of any form of inscription. atreus, agamemnon, and a long line of kings lie in their stately tombs, with their gold masks and breastplates, and their arms and treasures about them, without a word or sign to distinguish father from son, ancestor from successor. their queens are buried in their robes of cloth of gold, their tiaras, necklaces, bracelets, rings and jewels, equally without a word to say which was clytemnestra and which electra. how different is this from the egyptian royal tombs and palaces, where pompous inscriptions record the genealogies of kings for fifty or more generations, and the first care of every pharaoh is to carve the annals of his exploits on imperishable granite! another strange peculiarity of this mycenæan civilization is the absence of religious subjects. images and pictures of their gods abound on all the monuments of egypt and chaldæa. every frieze and tablet, every seal and scarabæus, is full of representations of osiris and isis, of thoth and ammon; or in chaldæa of bel, merodach, and istar, and their other pantheon of gods, each under its own symbolical form, and innumerable little idols or figurines attested their hold on the population. but at troy, tiryns, and mycenæ there is nothing of the sort. animals and mortal men are freely depicted on the vases, and moulded as ornaments for domestic utensils, but religious subjects are so scarce that it is even doubtful whether a few scanty specimens bear this character or not. there is a pit in the central court of the palace at mycenæ which has been thought to be a sacrificial pit under an altar, but this rather because such an altar is described in homer, than for any positive evidence. there are also a very few figurines of terra-cotta, which have been thought to be idols, because they are too clumsy to be taken for representations of the human figure by such skilled artists, and because they bear some sort of resemblance to the rude phoenician idols of the goddess astarte. but, with this exception, there is nothing at troy or mycenæ to indicate a belief in the homeric or any other mythology. as a question of dates, we know that the supremacy of mycenæ and its civilization came to an end with the invasion of the dorians, which is generally placed about b.c. we know also that it must have had a long existence, but for anything approaching to a date we must refer to the few traces which connect it with egypt. a scarabæus was found at mycenæ with the name of queen ti engraved on it who lived in the thirteenth century b.c. mycenæan vases have been found of the older type with lines and spirals, in egyptian tombs of about b.c., and of the later type with animals in tombs of about b.c., and mr. flinders petrie, by whom they were discovered, says that any error in these dates cannot exceed years. mycenæan pottery has also been found at thera under volcanic ashes which geologists say were thrown up about b.c. we are pretty safe, therefore, in supposing this mycenæan civilization to have flourished between the limits of and b.c. in this case it must have been contemporary with the great events of the new empire in egypt which followed on the expulsion of the hyksos; with the victorious campaigns of ahmes and thotmes which carried the egyptian arms to the euphrates and to the black sea; with the rise of the hittite power which extended far and wide over asia minor, and contended on equal terms in syria with ramses ii.; and with the coalition of naval powers which on two occasions, in the reigns of menepthah and ramses iii., commanded the sea and invaded egypt. the mention of achæans among the allies whose fleet was defeated in the sea-fight on the pelusian mouth of the nile, depicted on the triumphal tablet of ramses iii., becomes an historical reality, and some of the hostile galleys may well have been those of a predecessor of agamemnon. it is doubtful, however, whether these mycenæans or achæans can be properly called greek. both their civilization and art are asiatic rather than hellenic; they have left no clue to their language in any writing or inscription; and the type of the race, as far as we can judge of it from paintings on the vases, was totally unlike that of classical greece. [illustration: queen sending warrior to battle. (from "warrior vase," mycenæ. schliemann.)] in one instance alone the human form is represented on the vases found at mycenæ, viz. on that known as the great "warrior vase." this is a large amphora, with a broad band of figures round it, representing on one side attacking warriors hurling spears, and on the other a queen, or female figure, sending out warriors to repel them. the vase is broken, but there are in all eight figures with their heads nearly perfect, and all of the same type, which is such an extraordinary one, that i annex a copy of the woman and one of the warriors. one asks oneself in amazement, can this swine-snouted caricature of humanity be the divine helen, whose beauty set contending nations in arms, and even as a shade made faust immortal with a kiss; and this other, agamemnon, king of men, or the god-like achilles? and yet certainly they must be faces which the dwellers in mycenæ either copied from nature, or introduced as conventional ideals. they cannot be taken as first childish attempts at drawing the human face, like those of the palæolithic savages of the grottos of the vezere, for they are the work of advanced artists who, in other cases, drew beautiful decorations and life-like animals; and in these figures the attitudes, dress, and armour show that they could draw with spirit and accuracy, and give a faithful representation of details when they chose to do so. [illustration: adam, eve, and the serpent. (from a babylonian cylinder.)] the only approach to a clue i can find for an explanation of these extraordinary mycenæan faces is afforded by the picture of adam and eve, with the serpent and tree of life, on an old babylonian cylinder in the british museum. it will be seen at once that there is a considerable resemblance between the two types of countenance, and it strikes me as possible that, as mycenæan art was so largely derived from babylonian, this may have become a conventional type for the first human ancestors, in which it was thought by the mycenæan copyists that heroes and kings ought to be represented. this, however, is a mere conjecture, and all we can infer with any certainty from troy and mycenæ is, that a considerable civilization and commerce must have prevailed in the eastern mediterranean at a date long prior to the commencement of classical history, though much later than that of the older records of egypt and chaldæa. chapter iv. ancient religions. egypt--book of the dead--its morality--metaphysical character--origins of religions--ghosts--animism--astronomy and astrology--morality--pantheism and polytheism--egyptian ideas of future life and judgment--egyptian genesis--divine emanations--plurality of gods and animal worship--sun worship and solar myths--knowledge of astronomy--orientation of pyramids--theory of future life--the ka--the soul--confession of faith before osiris. chaldæan religion--oldest form accadian--shamanism--growth of philosophical religion--astronomy and astrology--accadian trinities--anu, mull-il, ea--twelve great gods--bel-ishtar--merodach--assur--pantheism--wordsworth--magic and omens--penitential psalms--conclusions from. the religious ideas of a nation afford a pretty good test of the antiquity of its civilization. thus, if years hence all traces of england being lost except a copy of the athanasian creed, it would be a legitimate inference that the race who retained such a creed as part of their ritual, had long passed the primitive period of fetichism or animism, had schools of priests and philosophers, and that their religion had developed into a stage of subtle and profound metaphysical speculations. if this would be true in the hypothetical case of england, it is equally true in the actual case of egypt. in its sacred book, the todtenbuch, or book of the dead, which we meet with at the earliest periods of egyptian history, we find conceptions of the great first cause of the universe, which are in many respects identical with those of athanasius. in fact, with some slight alterations of expression, his creed might be a chapter of the todtenbuch, and it is clear that in his controversy with arius he got his inspiration from his native alexandria, and from the old egyptian religion stripped of its polytheistic and idolatrous elements, and adapted to the modern ideas of the neo-platonic philosophy and of christianity. the egyptian religion, as disclosed to us in the earliest records, is one which of itself proves its great antiquity. there is an extensive literature of a religious character; the book of the dead, which contains many of the principal prayers and hymns, and descriptions of the last judgment, is already a sacred book. portions of it are certainly older than the time of menes, and it had already acquired such an authority in the times of pepi, teta, and unas, of the sixth dynasty, about b.c., that the inner walls of their pyramids are covered with hieroglyphics of chapters taken from it. from this time forward, almost every tomb and mummy-case contains quotations from it, just as passages of the bible are quoted on our own gravestones. the book of isis, and hymns to various gods, are of the same nature and early date; and in addition to these, there are ethical treatises, ascribed to kings of the oldest dynasties, as well as works on medicine, geometry, mensuration, and arithmetic. education was very general, as is proved by the fact that the workmen at the mines of wady magarah could scrawl hieroglyphic inscriptions on the walls of their tunnels, and on their blocks of dressed stone. birch, in his _ancient history of egypt from_ _the monuments_, which i prefer to quote from as, being published by the society for promoting christian knowledge, it cannot be suspected of any bias to discredit orthodoxy, says that, "in their moral law the egyptians followed the same precepts as the decalogue (ascribed to moses years later), and enumerated treason, murder, adultery, theft, and the practice of magic as crimes of the deepest dye." the position of women is one of the surest tests of an advanced civilization; for in rude times, and among savage races, force reigns supreme, and the weaker sex is always the slave or drudge of the stronger one. it is only when intellectual and moral considerations are firmly established that the claims of women to an equality begin to be recognized. now in the earliest records of domestic and political life in egypt, we find this equality more fully recognized than it is perhaps among ourselves in the nineteenth century. quoting again from birch, "the egyptian woman appears always as the equal and companion of her father, brethren, and husband. she was never secluded in a harem, sat at meals with them, had equal rights before the law, served in the priesthood, and even mounted the throne." in fact the state of civilization in egypt years ago appears to have been higher in all essential respects than it has ever been since, or is now, in any asiatic and in many european countries. and it has every appearance of being indigenous, and having grown up on the soil. there are no traces in the oldest traditions of any foreign importation, such as we find in the early traditions of other countries. there is no fish-man who comes up out of the persian gulf and teaches the chaldæans the first elements of civilization; no cadmus who teaches the greeks their first letters; no manco-capac who lands on the shore of peru. on the contrary, all the egyptian traditions are of egyptian gods, like osiris and thoth, who reigned in the valley of the nile, and invented hieroglyphics and other arts. these are lost in a fabulous antiquity, and the only trace of a link to connect the historical egyptians with the neolithic races whose remains are found in abundance in the form of flint knives and arrows, and are brought up by borings through thick deposits of nile mud, or the still older palæolithic savages, whose rude implements were found by general pitt-rivers and other explorers in quaternary gravels near thebes of geological antiquity, is furnished by the use of a stone knife to make the first incision on the corpse in turning it into a mummy, and by the animal worship, which may have been a relic of primitive fetichism and totemism. the highly metaphysical nature of the egyptian creed is another conclusive proof of the antiquity of the religion. among existing races we find similar religions corresponding to similar stages of civilization. with the very rudest races, religion consists mainly of ghost worship and animism. herbert spencer has shown how dreams lead to the belief that man consists of two elements, a body and a spirit, or shadowy self, which wanders forth in sleep, meets with strange adventures, and returns when the body awakes. in the longer sleep of death, this shadowy self becomes a ghost which haunts its old abodes and former associates, mostly with an evil intent, and which has to be deceived or propitiated, to prevent it from doing mischief. hence the sacrifices and offerings, and the many devices for cheating the ghost by carrying the dead body by devious paths to some safe locality. hence also the superstitious dread of evil spirits, and the interment with the corpse of food and implements to induce the ghost to remain tranquilly in the grave, or to set out comfortably on its journey to another world. animism is another tap-root of savage superstition. as the child sees life in the doll, so the savage sees life in every object, animate or inanimate, which comes in contact with him, and affects his existence. animals, and even stocks and stones, are supposed to have souls, and who knows that these may not be the souls of departed ancestors, and have some mysterious power of helping or of hurting him? in any case the safer plan is to propitiate them by worship and sacrifice. from these rude beginnings we see nations as they advance in civilization rising to higher conceptions, developing their ghosts into gods, and confining their operations to the greater phenomena of nature, such as the sky, the earth, the sea, the sun, the stars, storms, seasons, thunder, and the like. and by degrees the unity of nature begins to be felt by the higher minds; priestly castes are established who have leisure for meditation; ideas are transmitted from generation to generation; and the vague and primitive nature worship passes into the phase of philosophical and scientific religion. the popular rites and superstitions linger on with the mass of the population, but an inner circle of hereditary priests refines and elevates them, and begins to ask for a solution of the great problems of the universe; what it means, and how it was created; the mystery of good and evil; man's origin, future life and destiny; and all the questions which, down to the present day, are asked though never answered by the higher minds of the higher races of civilized man. in this stage of religious development metaphysical speculations occupy a foremost place. priests of heliopolis, magi of eridhu and of ur, reasoned like christian fathers and milton's devils of "fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute," and like them "found no end, in wandering mazes lost." theories of theism and pantheism, of creations and incarnations, of trinities and atonements, of polarities between good and evil, free-will and necessity, were argued and answered, now in one direction and now in another. science contributed its share, sometimes in the form of crude cosmogonies and first attempts at ethnology, but principally through the medium of astronomy. an important function of the priests was to form a calendar, predict the seasons, and regulate the holding of religious rites at the proper times. hence the course of the heavens was carefully watched, the stars were mapped out into constellations, through which the progress of the sun and planets was recorded; and myths sprang into existence based on the sun's daily rising and setting, and its annual journey through the seasons and the signs of the zodiac. mixed up with astronomy was astrology, which, watching the sun, moon, and five planets, inferred life from motion, and recognized gods exerting a divine influence on human events. the sacred character of the priests was confirmed by the popular conviction that they were at the same time prophets and magicians, and that they alone were able to interpret the will of personified powers of nature, and influence them for good or evil. the element of morality is one of the latest to appear. it is only after a long progress in civilization that ideas of personal sin and righteousness, of an overruling justice and goodness, of future rewards and punishments, are developed from the cruder conceptions and superstitious observances of earlier times. it was a long road from the jealous and savage local god of the hebrew tribes, who smelt the sweet savour of burnt sacrifices and was pleased, and who commanded the extermination of enemies, and the slaughter of women and children, to the supreme jehovah, who loved justice and mercy better than the blood of bulls and rams. it is one great merit of the bible, intelligently read, that it records so clearly the growth and evolution of moral ideas, from a plane almost identical with that of the red indians, to the supreme height of the sermon on the mount and st. paul's definition of charity. there is one phenomenon which appears very commonly in these ancient religions, that of degeneration. after having risen to a certain height of pure and lofty conception they cease to advance, branch out into fanciful fables accompanied by cruel and immoral rites, and finally decay and perish. this is an inevitable consequence of the law of birth, growth, maturity, decay and death, which underlies all existence. "the old order changes, giving place to new." environment changes, and religions, laws, and social institutions change with it. empires rise and fall, old civilizations disappear, old creeds become incredible, and often, for a time, the course of humanity seems to be retrograde. but as the flowing tide rises, though the successive waves on the shore advance and recede, evolution, or the law of progress, in the long run prevails, and amidst the many oscillations of temporary conditions, carries the human race ever upwards towards higher things. in the case of ancient religions it is easy to see how this process of degeneration is carried out. priests who were the pioneers of progress, and leaders of advanced thought, became first conservatives, and then obscurantists. pantheistic conceptions, and personifications of divine attributes, lead to polytheism. as religions become popular, and pass from the learned few to the ignorant many, they become vulgarized, and the real meaning of myths and symbols is either lost or confined to a select inner circle. but for my present purpose, which is mainly chronological, these vicissitudes in religious beliefs are not important. if, at the earliest date to which authentic history extends, we find a national religion which has already passed from the primitive into the metaphysical stage, and which embodies abstract ideas, astronomical observations, and a high and pure code of morals, it is a legitimate inference that it is the outcome of a long antecedent era of civilization. this is eminently the case with regard to the ancient religions of egypt and chaldæa. the ancient egyptians were the most religious people ever known. their thoughts were so fixed on a future life that, as herodotus says, they looked upon their houses as mere temporary inns, and their tombs as their true permanent homes. the idea of an immediate day of judgment for each individual soul after death was so fixed in their minds that it exercised a constant practical influence on their life and conduct. piety to the gods, loyalty to the throne, obedience to superiors, justice and mercy to inferiors, and observance of all the principal moral laws, and especially that of truthfulness, were enforced by the conviction that no sooner had the breath departed from the body, and it had been deposited as a mummy, with its ka or second shadowy self, in the tomb, than the soul would have to appear before the supreme judge osiris, and the forty-two heavenly jurors, where it would have to confess the naked truth, and be tried and rewarded or punished according to its merits. it is very interesting, therefore, to learn what the religion was which had taken such a firm hold of the minds of an entire nation, and which maintained that hold for the best part of years. [illustration: judgment of the soul by osiris.--weighing good and bad deeds. (from champollion's _egypt_.)] our authority for the nature of this religion is derived mainly from the todtenbuch or book of the dead, which was the egyptian bible. this sacred book was of immense antiquity, and much of it was certainly in existence before the time of menes. we know it from the multiplied copies which were frequently deposited in tombs, and from the innumerable extracts and quotations which appear on almost every mummy-case and sarcophagus, as well as from the many manuscripts of works on religious subjects which have been preserved in papyri. the fundamental idea was that of a primitive ocean, or, if you like to call it chaos, of nebulous matter without form and void, and of a one infinite and eternal god who evolved himself and the universe from his own essence. he is called in the todtenbuch "the one only being, the sole creator, unchangeable in his infinite perfection, present in all time, past and future, everywhere and yet nowhere." but although one in essence, god is not one in person. he exists as father, but reproduces himself under another aspect as mother, and under a third as son. this trinity is three and yet one, and has all the attributes of the one--infinity, eternity, and omnipotence. thus far the athanasian creed might be a chapter of the todtenbuch, and it is very evident where the alexandrian saint got those subtle metaphysical ideas, which are so opposed to the rigid monotheistic creeds of judaism and mahometanism. but the egyptian religion was more logical, and carried these ideas much further than an original trinity. it is evident that if we admit the two fundamental ideas, st, that god is the only real existence, author of and identical with the universe; nd, that this incomprehensible essence or first cause can be made more comprehensible by personifying his various qualities and manifestations, there is no reason why we should stop at three. if we admit a trinity of father, mother, and son, why not admit a daughter and other descendants; or if you personify the power to make a universe, the knowledge how to make it, and the will to do it, as father, son, and holy ghost, why not the benevolence to do it well, the malevolence to do it badly, and a hundred other attributes which metaphysical ingenuity can devise to account for the complication of the known, and the mysteries of the unknown facts of existence? the egyptian priests accepted this view, and admitted a whole pantheon of secondary gods who were either personifications of different attributes of the supreme god, or separate portions of the one divine essence. thus ammon was god considered in his attribute of the first generative power; pthah the supreme artist who fashioned all things wisely; osiris the good and benevolent aspect of the deity; set or typhon his opposite or the author of evil, and so on. and once personified, these attributes soon came to be considered as separate beings; to have a female principle or wives added to them, and to be worshipped as the patron gods of separate temples and provinces. finally, the pantheistic idea became so prevalent, and that of separate personifications of the deity was carried so far, that portions of the divine essence were supposed to be incarnated in the sun and heavenly bodies, in the pharaoh and his family, and even in bulls, cats, and other sacred animals. in the latter case it may be a question whether we do not see a survival of the old superstitious fetiches and totems of semi-savage times, adopted by the priests into their theology, as so many pagan superstitions were by the early christian missionaries. at any rate such was the result, a mixture of the most childish and absurd forms of popular superstition, with a highly philosophical and moral creed, held by the educated classes and stamped upon the mass of the nation by the firmly established belief in a future life and day of judgment. among the more philosophical articles of this creed, astronomy assumed a prominent place from a very early date. the sun, it is true, was described in the original cosmogony as having been called into existence by the word of the supreme god, but it came to be taken as his visible representative, and finally worshipped as a god itself. its different phases were studied and received different names, as horus when on the horizon rising or setting, ra in its midday splendour, osiris during its journey in the night through the underground world of darkness. of these ra naturally had the pre-eminence; the title of pharaoh, or pi-ra, was that given to kings, who were assumed to be semi-divine beings descended from the sun. the osiris myth which was the basis of the national belief in a future life and day of judgment was clearly solar. egyptian astronomy, like that of the chaldees and all early nations, assumed that the sky was a crystal dome or firmament which separated the waters of the upper world from the earth and waters below, and corresponded with a similar nether world of darkness below the earth. the sun was born or rose into the upper world every morning, waxed in strength and glory as his bark navigated the upper waters until noon, then declined and finally sank into the nether world or died, slain by an envious typhon, but to be born again next morning after traversing the perils and encountering the demons of the realm of darkness. the same idea was repeated by the annual course of the sun through spring, summer, autumn, and winter, and it translated itself as applied to man into the ideas of birth, growth, manhood, decline, and death, to be followed by a sojourn in hades, a day of judgment, and a resurrection. the egyptian religion, however, seems never to have been so largely astronomical as that of chaldæa, and to have concentrated itself mainly on the sun. the planets and signs of the zodiac did not, as with the chaldees, afford a principal element of their sacred books and mythologies. the egyptian priests had doubtless long studied astronomy; they had watched the stars, traced the annual course of the sun, divided the year into months and the circle into °, and constructed calendars for bringing the civil into correspondence with the sidereal year. they not only had intercalated the five supplemental days, bringing the duration of the year from to , but they had invented a sothic cycle for the odd quarter of a day, by which at the end of every years a year was added, and the sun brought back to rise on the first day of the first month of thoth in the same place in the heavens, determined by the heliacal risings of the brightest of the stars, sothis or sirius. but they applied this knowledge, which must have been gathered from long observations, mainly to practical purposes, such as the reform of the calendar and the orientation of the pyramids, temples, and tombs, rather than to mythology. the idea of a future life, which took such a firm hold of all classes of ancient egypt, is that to which we are indebted for the preservation of these wonderful records of the remote past. the theory was that man consisted of three parts; the body or ordinary living man; the ka or double, which was a sort of shadowy self which came out of the body and returned to it as in dreams; and the soul, a still more subtle essence, which at death went to the gods, was judged, and either rewarded for its merits by living with them in heaven, or punished for its sins by being sent to the nether world of torment. but this soul still retained such a connection with its former body as to come down from time to time to visit it; while the ka or double retained the old connection so closely as to live habitually in it, only coming out to eat, drink, and repeat the acts of its former life, but incapable of existing without a physical basis in the old body or some likeness of it. the same doctrine of the double was applied to all animated and even to inanimate objects, so that the shadowy man could come out of his mummy, live in his own shadowy house, feed on shadowy food, be surrounded by shadowy geese, oxen, and other objects of his former possessions. hence arose the extraordinary care in providing a fitting tomb and preserving the mummy, or, failing the mummy, which in course of time might decay, providing a portrait-statue or painted likeness, which might give a _point d'appui_ for the ka, and a receptacle for the occasional visits of the soul. while these were preserved, conscious personal life was continued beyond the grave, and the good man who went to heaven was immortal. but if these were destroyed and the physical basis perished, the ka and soul were left without a home, and either perished also, or were left to flit like gibbering ghosts through the world of shadows without a local habitation or a name. the origin of this theory as regards the ka is easily explained. it is, as herbert spencer has conclusively shown, a natural inference from dreams, and is found everywhere, from interments of the stone period down to the crude beliefs of existing savages. it even survives among many civilized races in the belief in ghosts, and the precautions taken to prevent the ka's of dead men from returning to haunt their former homes and annoy their posterity. the origin of the third element or soul is not so clear. it may either be a relic of the animism, which among savage races attributes life to every object in nature, or a philosophical deduction of more advanced periods, which sees an universal spirit underlying all creation, and recognizing in man a spark of this spirit which is indestructible, and either migrates into fresh forms, or into fresh spheres of celestial or infernal regions, and is finally absorbed in the great ocean from which it sprang. it is singular that we find almost the precise form of this egyptian belief among many existing savage or semi-civilized men separated by wide distances in different quarters of the world. the negroes of the gold coast believe in the same three entities, and they call the soul which exists independently of the man, before his birth and after his death, the kra, a name which is almost identical with the egyptian ka. the navajos and other tribes of red indians have precisely the same belief. it seems probable that as we find it in the earliest egyptian records, it was a development, evolved through ages of growing civilization by a succession of learned priests, from the primitive fetichism and fear of ghosts of rude ancestors; and in the animal worship and other superstitions of later times we find traces of these primitive beliefs still surviving among the mass of the population. be this as it may, this theory of a future life was firmly rooted at the dawn of egyptian history, and we are indebted to it, and to the dryness of the climate, for the marvellous preservation of records which give us such an intimate acquaintance with the history, the religion, the literature, and the details of a domestic and social life which is distant from our own by an interval of more than years. no other nation ever attained to such a vivid and practical belief in a future existence as these ancient egyptians. taking merely the material test of money, what an enormous capital must have been expended in pyramids, tombs, and mummies; what a large proportion of his income must every egyptian of the upper classes have spent in the preparations for a future life; how shadowy and dim does the idea of immortality appear in comparison among the foremost races of the present day! the elevated moral code of the todtenbuch is another proof of the great antiquity of egyptian civilization. morality is a plant of slow growth which has hardly an existence among rude and primitive tribes, and is only slowly evolved either by contact with superior races or by long ages of settled social order. how many centuries did it take before the crude and ferocious ideas of the hebrew tribes wandering in the desert or warring with the canaanites, were transformed into the lofty and humane conceptions of the later prophets, of hillel and of jesus! and yet we find all the best maxims of this later morality already existing years before the sermon on the mount, in the sacred book of ancient egypt. the prayer of the soul pleading in the day of judgment before osiris and the celestial jury, which embodies the idea of moral perfection entertained by the contemporaries of menes, contains the following articles-- "i have told no lies; committed no frauds; been good to widows; not overtasked servants; not lazy or negligent; done nothing hateful to the gods; been kind to slaves; promoted no strife; caused no one to weep; committed no murder; stolen no offerings to the dead; made no fraudulent gains; seized no lands wrongfully; not tampered with weights and measures; not taken the milk from sucklings; not molested sacred beasts or birds; not cut off or monopolized watercourses; have sown joy and not sorrow; have given food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, and clothed the naked: "i am pure, i am pure." it is evident that such an ideal of life, not imported from foreign sources, but the growth of an internal civilization, must be removed by an enormous time from the cannibal feasts and human sacrifices of the first glimpses of ideas of a future life in the stone ages. it is to be observed also that the religion of ancient egypt seems to be of native growth. no trace is to be found, either in record or tradition, of any importation from a foreign source, such as may be seen in the chaldæan legend of oannes and other religions of antiquity. on the contrary, all the egyptian myths and traditions ascribe the invention of religion, arts, and literature, to thoth, osiris, horus, and other native egyptian gods. the invention of the art of writing by hieroglyphics affords strong confirmation of this view. it is evidently a development on egyptian soil, in prehistoric times, of the picture-writing of a primitive period. the symbols are taken from egypt and not from foreign objects, and are essentially different from those of the chaldæan cuneiform, which is the only other form of writing which might possibly compare in point of antiquity with the egyptian hieroglyphics and hieratic. these were certainly known prior to the time of menes, and they are the parents of the phoenician, hebrew, greek, and all more modern alphabets. in all other ancient systems of writing, such as chaldæan and chinese, we see the development from the original picture-writing into conventional signs, syllabaries, and finally into ideographs and phonetics; but in the case of egyptian, when we first get sight of it in the earliest dynasties, it is already fully formed, and undergoes no essential changes during the next years. even the hieratic, or cursive hieroglyphic for ordinary purposes, was current in the old empire, as is proved by the celebrated prisse papyrus. the chaldæan religion is not so easily described as that of egypt, for it started from a lower level, and went through more changes in the course of its evolution. in the case of egypt, the earliest records show us a highly intellectual and moral religion, with only a few traces remaining of primitive barbarism in the form of animal worship, and this religion remained substantially unchanged until the conversion of the country to christianity. the influences of semitic and other foreign conquests and intercourse left few traces, and the only serious attempt at a radical religious revolution by the heretic king who endeavoured to dethrone the old egyptian gods, and substitute a system more nearly monotheistic under the emblem of the winged solar-disc, produced no permanent effect, and disappeared in one or two generations. but in chaldæa, semitic influences prevailed from a very early period, and when we reach the historical periods of the great babylonian and assyrian empires, the kings, priests, and nobles were semite, and the accadian had become a dead language, which could only be read as we read latin or hebrew, by the aid of translations and of grammars and dictionaries. still its records remained, as the hebrew bible does to us, and the sacred books of the old religion and its fundamental ideas were only developed and not changed. in the background of this accadian religion we seem to see a much nearer approach than we do in that of egypt to the primitive superstitions peculiar to the turanian race. to this day the religion of the semi-barbarous races of that stock is essentially what is called "shamanism"; a fear of ghosts and goblins, a belief that the universe swarms with myriads of spirits, mostly evil, and that the only escape from them is by the aid of conjuror-priests, who know magical rites and formulas which can baffle their malevolent designs. these incantations, and the interpretation of omens and auguries, occupy a great part of the oldest sacred books, and more than tablets have been already recovered from the great work on astronomy and astrology, compiled from them by the priests of agade, for the royal library of sargon i. they are for the most part of the most absurd and puerile character; as, for instance, "if a sheep give birth to a lion there will be war "; "if a mare give birth to a dog there will be disaster and famine"; "if a white dog enter a temple its foundation will subsist; if a gray dog, the temple will lose its possessions," and so on. this character of magicians and soothsayers clung to the chaldæan priests even down to a later period, and under the roman empire chaldæan rites were identified with sorcery and divination. but out of this jungle of silly superstitions the elements of an enlightened and philosophical religion had evolved themselves in early accadian times, and were continually developed as semitic influences gradually fused themselves with accadian, and formed the composite races and religions which came to be known in later times as babylonian and assyrian. the fundamental principle of this religion was the same as that of egypt, and of most of the great religions of the east, viz. pantheism. the great underlying first cause, or spirit of the universe, was considered as identical with his manifestations. the subtle metaphysical conceptions which still survive in the creed of st. athanasius, were invoked to make the incomprehensible comprehensible, by emanations, incarnations, and personified attributes. these again were attached to the striking phenomena of the universe, the sun, moon, and planets, the earth and sky, the winds, rains, and thunder. and ever as more phenomena were observed more gods were invented, who were thought to be symbols, or partial personifications, of the one great spirit, and not more inconsistent with his unity than the "and yet there are not three gods, but one god" of athanasius. but the chaldæan, like the egyptian priests, did not stop at one trinity, but invented a whole hierarchy of trinities, rising one above the other to form the twelve great gods, while below them were an indefinite number of minor gods and goddesses personifying different aspects of natural phenomena, and taken for the most part from astronomical myths of the sun, moon, planets, and seasons. for the religion of the chaldees was, even more than that of the egyptians, based on astronomy and astrology, as may be seen in their national epic of izdubar, which is simply a solar myth of the passage of the sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac, the last chapter but one being a representation of the passage through the sign of aquarius, in the fable of a universal deluge. the first accadian triad was composed of anu, mull-il, and ea. anu, or ana, is the word for heaven, and the god is described as the "lord of the starry heavens," and "the first-born, the oldest, the father of the gods." it is the same idea in fact as that expressed by the sanscrit varuna, the greek ouranus. mull-il, the next member of this triad, is the god of the abyss and nether world, while ea is the god of the earth, seas, and rivers, "the lord of the deep," and personifies the wise and beneficent side of the divine intelligence, the maintainer of order and harmony, the friend of man. very early with the introduction of semitic influences mull-il dropped out of his place in the trinity, and was superseded by bel, who was conceived as being the son of ea, the personification of the active and combative energy which carries out the wise designs of ea by reducing the chaos to order, creating the sun and heavenly bodies, and directing them in their courses, subduing evil spirits and slaying monsters. his name simply signifies "the lord," and is applied to other inferior deities as a title of honour, as bel-marduk, the lord marduk or merodach, the patron god of babylon. in this capacity bel is clearly associated with the midday sun, as the emblem of a terrible yet beneficent power, the enemy of evil spirits and dragons of darkness. the next triad is more distinctly astronomical. it consists of uruk the moon, ud the sun, and mermer the god of the air, of rain and tempest. these are the old accadian names, but they are better known by the semitic translations of sin, shamash, and raman. the next group of gods is purely astronomical, consisting of the five planets, mars, mercury, jupiter, venus, and saturn, personified as nergal, nebo, marduk, ishtar, and nindar. the number of gods was further increased by introducing the primary polarity of sex, and assigning a wife to each male deity. thus belit, or "the lady," was the wife of bel, he representing the masculine element of nature, strength and courage; she the feminine principle of tenderness and maternity. so also nana the earth was the wife of anu, the god of the strong heavens; annunit the moon the wife of shamash the sun; and ishtar (astarte, astoreth, or aphrodite), the planet venus, the goddess of love and beauty, though a great goddess in her own right, was fabled to have had tammuz or thammuz, one of the names of the sun, as a husband, whence in later times came the myth of nature mourning for the sun-god, slain by the envious boar, winter. but of these only belit and istar were admitted into the circle of the twelve great gods, consisting of the two triads and the planets, who held the foremost place in the chaldæan and assyrian mythology. of the minor gods, meri-dug or marduk, the merodach of the bible, is the most remarkable, for he represents the idea which, some years later, became the fundamental one of the christian religion; that of a son of god, "being of one substance with the father," who acts the part of mediator and friend of man. he is the son of ea and damkina, _i.e._ of heaven and earth, and an emanation from the supreme spirit considered in its attribute of benevolence. the tablets are full of inscriptions on which he is represented as applying to his father ea for aid and advice to assist suffering humanity, most commonly by teaching the spells which will drive away the demons who are supposed to be the cause of all misfortunes and illness. it is not surprising, therefore, to find that he and istar, the lovely goddess, were the favourite deities, and occupied much the same position as jesus and the virgin mary do in the catholic religion of the present day, while the other deities were local gods attached to separate cities where their temples stood, and where they occupied a position not unlike that of the patron saints and holy relics of which almost every considerable town and cathedral boasted in mediæval christianity. thus they rose and fell in rank with the ascendancy or decline of their respective cities, just as pthah and ammon did in egypt according as the seat of empire was at memphis or thebes. in one instance only in later times, in assyria, which had become exclusively semitic, do we find the idea of one supreme god, who was national and not local, and who overshadowed all other gods, as jahve in the later days of the jewish monarchy, and in the conception of the hebrew prophets, did the gods of the surrounding nations. assur, the local god of the city of assur, the first capital of assyria, became, with the growth of the assyrian empire, the one supreme god, in whose name wars were undertaken, cities destroyed, and captives massacred or mutilated. in fact the resemblance is very close between assur and the ferocious and vindictive jahve of the israelites during the rude times of the judges. they are both jealous gods, delighting in the massacre and torture of prisoners, women and children, and enjoining the extermination of nations who insult their dignity by worshipping other gods. we almost seem to see, when we read the records of tiglath-pileser and sennacherib and the books of judges and of samuel, the origin of religious wars, and the spirit of cold-blooded cruelty inspired by a gloomy fanaticism, which is so characteristic of the semitic nature, and which in later times led to the propagation of mahometanism by the sword. with the hebrews this conception of a cruel and vindictive jahve was beaten out of them by persecutions and sufferings, and that of a one merciful god evolved from it, but assyria went through no such schooling and retained its arrogant prosperity down to the era of its disappearance from history with the fall of nineveh; but it is easy to see that the course of events might have been different, and monotheism might have been evolved from the conception of assur. these, however, are speculations relating to a much later period than the primitive religion with which we are principally concerned. it is remarkable how many of our modern religious conceptions find an almost exact counterpart in those of this immensely remote period. incarnations, emanations, atonements, personifications of divine attributes, are all there, and also the subtle metaphysical theories by which the human intellect, striving to penetrate the mysteries of the unknowable, endeavours to account for the existence of good and evil, and to reconcile multiplicity of manifestation with unity of essence. if wordsworth sings of a "sense sublime of something far more deeply interposed, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of man; a motion and a spirit that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things," he conveys the fundamental idea which was at the bottom of these earliest religions, and which has been perpetuated in the east through their successors, brahmanism and buddhism--the idea of pantheism, or of an universe which is one with its first cause, and not a mechanical work called into existence from without by a personal creator. an ancient priest of egypt or chaldæa might have written these verses of the philosophic poet of the nineteenth century, only he would have written horus or bel for the "setting sun"; ea for the "round ocean"; anur for the "sky," and so on. side by side with these intellectual and philosophical conceptions of these ancient religions, we find the element of personal piety occupying a place which contrasts wonderfully with the childish and superstitious idea of evil spirits, magical spells, and omens. we read in the same collections of tablets, of mares bringing forth dogs and women lions; and psalms, which in their elevation of moral tone and intensity of personal devotion might readily be mistaken for the hebrew psalms attributed to david. there is a large collection of what are known as "the penitential psalms," in which the chaldæan penitent confesses his sins, pleads ignorance, and sues for mercy, almost in the identical words of the sweet singer of israel. in one of these, headed "the complaints of the repentant heart," we find such verses as these-- "i eat the food of wrath, and drink the waters of anguish." * * * * * "oh, my god, my transgressions are very great, very great my sins. "the lord in his wrath has overwhelmed me with confusion." * * * * * "i lie on the ground, and none reaches a hand to me. i am silent and in tears, and none takes me by the hand. i cry out, and there is none who hears me." * * * * * "my god, who knowest the unknown,[ ] be merciful to me. my goddess, who knowest the unknown, be merciful." [ ] or, as some translators read, "who knowest that i knew not," _i.e._ that i sinned in ignorance. * * * * * "god, who knowest the unknown, in the midst of the stormy waters take me by the hand; my sins are seven times seven, forgive my sins!" another hymn is remarkable for its artistic construction. it is in regular strophes, the penitent speaking in each five double lines, to which the priest adds two, supporting his prayer. the whole is in precisely the same style as the similar penitential psalms of the hebrew bible, as will appear from the following quotation of one of the strophes from the translation of zimmern. _penitent._ "i, thy servant, full of sighs call to thee. whoso is beset with sin, his ardent supplication thou acceptest. if thou lookest on a man with pity, that man liveth. ruler of all, mistress of mankind, merciful one to whom it is good to turn, who dost receive sighs." _priest._ "while his god and his goddess are wroth with him he calls on thee. thy countenance turn on him, take hold of his hand." these hymns are remarkable, both as showing that the sentiments of personal piety and contrition for sin as a thing hateful to the supreme being, might be as intense in a polytheistic as in a monotheistic religion; and as illustrating the immense interval of time which must have elapsed before such sentiments could have grown up from the rude beginnings of savage or semi-civilized superstitions. the two oldest religions of the world, those of egypt and chaldæa, tell the same story; that of the immense interval which must have elapsed prior to the historical date of b.c. when written records begin, to allow of such ideas and such a civilization having grown up from such a state of things as we find prevailing during the neolithic period, and still prevailing among the inferior races of the world, who have remained isolated and unchanged in the hunting or nomad condition. i have dwelt at some length on the ancient religions, for nothing tends more to open the mind, and break down the narrow barriers of sectarian prejudice, than to see how the ideas which we have believed to be the peculiar possession of our own religion, are in fact the inevitable products of the evolution of the human race from barbarism to civilization, and have appeared in substantially the same forms in so many ages and countries. and surely, in these days, when faith in direct inspiration has been so rudely shaken, it must be consoling to many enlightened christians to find that the fundamental articles of their creed, trinities, emanations, incarnations, atonements, a future life and day of judgment, are not the isolated conceptions of a minority of the human race in recent times, but have been held from a remote antiquity by all the nations which have taken a leading part in civilization. to all enlightened minds also, whatever may be their theological creeds, it must be a cheering reflection that the fundamental axioms of morality do not depend on the evidence that the decalogue was written on a stone by god's own finger, or that the sermon on the mount is correctly reported, but on the evolution of the natural instincts of the human mind. all advanced and civilized communities have had their decalogues and sermons on the mount, and it is impossible for any dispassionate observer to read them without feeling that in substance they are all identical, whether contained in the egyptian todtenbuch, the babylonian hymns, the zoroastrian zendavesta, the sacred books of brahmanism and buddhism, the maxims of confucius, the doctrines of plato and the stoics, or the christian bible. none are absolutely perfect and complete, and of some it may be said that they contain precepts of the highest practical importance which are either omitted or contradicted in the christian formulas. for instance, the virtue of diligence, and the injunction not to be idle, in the egyptian and zoroastrian creeds contrast favourably with the "take no thought for the morrow," and "trust to be fed like the sparrows," of the sermon on the mount. but in this, and in all these summaries of moral axioms, apparent differences arise not from fundamental oppositions, but from truth having two sides, and passing over readily into "the falsehood of extremes." even the injunction to "take no thought for the morrow," is only an extreme way of stating that the active side of human life, strenuous effort, self-denial, and foresight, must not be pushed so far as to stifle all higher aspirations. probably if the same concrete case of conduct had been submitted to an egyptian, a babylonian or zoroastrian priest, and to the late bishop of peterborough, their verdicts would not have been different. such a wide extension does the maxim take, "one touch of nature makes the world akin," when we educate ourselves up to the culture which gives some general idea of how civilized man has everywhere felt and believed since the dawn of history very much as we ourselves do at the close of the nineteenth century. chapter v. ancient science and art. evidence of antiquity--pyramids and temples--arithmetic--decimal and duodecimal scales--astronomy--geometry reached in egypt at earliest dates--great pyramid--piazzi smyth and pyramid-religion--pyramids formerly royal tombs, but built on scientific plans--exact orientation on meridian--centre in ° n. latitude--tunnel points to pole--possible use as an observatory--procter--probably astrological--planetary influences--signs of the zodiac--mathematical coincidences of great pyramid--chaldæan astronomy--ziggurats--tower of babel--different orientation from egyptian pyramids--astronomical treatise from library of sargon i., b.c.--eclipses and phases of venus--measures of time from old chaldæan--moon and sun--found among so many distant races--implies commerce and intercourse--art and industry--embankment of menes--sphynx--industrial arts--fine arts--sculpture and painting--the oldest art the best--chaldæan art--de sarzec's find at sirgalla--statues and works of art--imply long use of bronze--whence came the copper and tin--phoenician and etruscan commerce--bronze known years earlier--same alloy everywhere--possible sources of supply--age of copper--names of copper and tin--domestic animals--horse--ox and ass--agriculture--all proves extreme antiquity. the conclusion drawn from the religions of egypt and chaldæa, as to the existence of a very long period of advanced civilization prior to the historical era, is fully confirmed by the state of the arts and sciences at the commencement of the earliest records. a knowledge of astronomy implies a long series of observations and a certain amount of mathematical calculation. the construction of great works of hydraulic engineering, and of such buildings as temples and pyramids, also proves an advanced state of scientific knowledge. such a building, for instance, as the great pyramid must have required a considerable acquaintance with geometry, and with the effects of strains and pressures; and the same is true of the early temples and ziggurats, or temple observatories of chaldæa. there must have been regular schools of astronomers and architects, and books treating on scientific subjects, before such structures could have been possible. the knowledge of science possessed by a nation affords a more definite test of its antecedent civilization than its religion. it is always possible to say that advanced religious ideas may have been derived from some supernatural revelation, but in the case of the exact sciences, such as arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, this is no longer possible, and their progress can be traced step by step by the development of human reason. thus there are savage races, like the australians at the present day, who cannot count beyond "one, two, and a great number"; and some philologists tell us that traces of this state can be discovered in the origin of civilized languages, from the prevalence of dual forms which seem to have preceded those of the plural. the next stage is that of counting by the fingers, which gives rise to a natural system of decimal notation, as shown by such words as ten, which invariably means two hands; twenty, which is twice ten, and so on. many existing races, who are a little more advanced than the australians, use their fingers for counting, and can count up to five or ten, and even the chimpanzee sally could count to five. but when we come to a duodecimal system we may feel certain that a considerable advance has been made, and arithmetic has come into existence as a science; for the number has no natural basis of support like , and can only have been adopted because it was exactly divisible into whole numbers by , , , . the mere fact therefore of the existence of a duodecimal system shows that the nation which adopts it must have progressed a long way from the primitive "one, two, a great many," and acquired ideas both as to the relation of numbers, and a multitude of other things, such as the division of the circle, of days, months, and years, of weights and measures, and other matters, in which ready division into whole parts without fractions had become desirable. and at the very first in egypt, chaldæa, and among the turanian races generally, we find this duodecimal system firmly established. the circle has degrees, the year days, the day single or double hours, and so on. but from this point the journey is a long one to calculations which imply a knowledge of geometry and mathematics, and observations of celestial bodies which imply a long antecedent science of astronomy, and accurate records of the motions of the sun, moon, and planets, and of eclipses and other memorable events. the earliest records, both of egypt and chaldæa, show that such an advanced state of science had been reached at the first dawn of the historical period, and we read of works on astronomy, geometry, medicine, and other sciences, written, or compiled from older treatises, by egyptian kings of the old empire, and by sargon i. of accade from older accadian works. but the monuments prove still more conclusively that such sciences must have been long known. especially the great pyramid of cheops affords a very definite proof of the progress which must have been made in geometrical, mechanical, and astronomical science at the time of its erection. if we were to believe professor piazzi smyth, and the little knot of his followers who have founded what may be called a pyramid-religion, this remarkable structure contains a revelation in stone for future ages, of almost all the material scientific facts which have been discovered since by years of painful research by the unaided human intellect. its designers must have known and recorded, with an accuracy surpassing that of modern observation, such facts as the dimensions of the earth, the distance of the sun, the ratio of the area of a circle to its diameter, the precise determination of latitude and of a true meridian line, and the establishment of standards of measure taken, like the metre, from a definite division of the earth's circumference. it is argued that such facts as these could not have been discovered so accurately in the infancy of science, and without the aid of the telescope, and therefore that they must have been made known by revelation, and the great pyramid is looked upon therefore as a sort of bible in stone, which is, in some not very intelligible way, to be taken as a confirmation of the inspiration of the hebrew bible, and read as a sort of supplement to it. this is of course absurd. a supernatural revelation to teach a chosen people the worship of the one true god, is at any rate an intelligible proposition, but scarcely that of such a revelation to an idolatrous monarch and people, to teach details of abstruse sciences, which in point of fact were not taught, for the monument on which they were recorded was sealed up by a casing of polished stone almost directly after it was built, and its contents were only discovered by accident, long after the facts and figures which it is supposed to teach had been discovered elsewhere by human reason. the only thing approaching to a revelation of religious import which piazzi smyth professed to have discovered in the pyramid was a prediction, which is now more than ten years overdue, of the advent of the millennium in . but these extravagances have had the good effect of giving us accurate measurements of nearly all the dimensions of the great pyramid, and raising a great deal of discussion as to its aim and origin. in the first place it is quite clear that its primary object was to provide a royal tomb. a tomb of solid masonry with a base larger than lincoln's inn fields, and feet higher than st. paul's, seems very incomprehensible to modern ideas, but there can be no doubt as to the fact. when the interior is explored both of this and other pyramids, nothing is found but one or two small sepulchral chambers containing the stone coffins of a king or queen. the great pyramid is not an exceptional monument, but one of a series of some seventy pyramid-tombs of kings, beginning with earlier and continued by later dynasties of the old empire. the reason of their construction is obvious. it originates from the peculiar ideas, which have been already pointed out, of the existence of a ka or shadowy double, and a still more ethereal soul or spirit, whose immortality depended on the preservation of a material basis in the form of a mummy or likeness of the deceased person, preferably no doubt by the preservation of the mummy. this led to the enormous outlay, not by kings only, but by private persons, on costly tombs, which, as herodotus says, were considered to be their permanent habitations. with an absolute monarchy in which the divine right of kings was strained so far that the monarch was considered as an actual god, it was only natural that their tombs should far exceed those of their richest subjects, and that unusual care should be taken to prevent them from being desecrated in future ages by new and foreign dynasties. suppose a great and powerful monarch to have an unusually long and prosperous reign, it is quite conceivable that he should wish to have a tomb which should not only surpass those of his predecessors, but any probable effort of his successors, and be an unique monument defying the attacks not only of future generations, but of time itself. this seems, without doubt, to have been the primary motive of the great pyramid, and in a lesser degree of all pyramids, sepulchral mounds, and costly tombs. but the pyramids, and especially the great pyramid, are not mere piles of masonry heaped together without plan or design. on the contrary, they are all built on a settled plan, which implies an acquaintance with the sciences of geometry and astronomy, and which, in the case of the great pyramid, is carried to an extent which shows a very advanced knowledge of those sciences, and goes far to prove that it must have been used, during part of the period of its construction, as a national observatory. the full details of this plan are given by procter in his work on the great pyramid, and although the want of a more accurate knowledge of egyptology has led him into some erroneous speculations as to the age and object of this pyramid, his authority is undoubted as to the scientific facts and the astronomical and geometrical conclusions which are to be drawn from them. it appears that the first object of all pyramid builders was to secure a correct orientation; that is, that the four sides should face truly to the north, south, east, and west, or in other words that a line drawn through the centre of the base parallel to the sides should stand on a true meridian line. this would be a comparatively easy task with modern instruments, but before the invention of the telescope it must have required great nicety of observation to obtain such extremely accurate results in all the sides and successive layers of such an enormous building. there are only two ways in which it could be attempted--one by observing the shadow cast by a vertical gnomon when the sun was on the meridian, the other by keeping a standard line constantly directed to the true north pole of the heavens. in the case of the great pyramid another object seems to have been in view which required the same class of observations, viz. to place the centre of the base on the thirtieth degree of north latitude, being the latitude in which the pole of the heavens is exactly one-third of the way from the horizon to the zenith. both these objects have been attained with wonderful accuracy. the orientation of the great pyramid is correct, and the centre of its base corresponds with the thirtieth degree of north latitude within a slight error which was inevitable, if, as is probable, the egyptian astronomers were unacquainted with the effect of atmospheric refraction in raising the apparent above the true place of celestial bodies, or had formed an insufficient estimate of its amount. the centre of the base is yards south of the real thirtieth parallel of latitude, which is yards north of the position which would have been deduced from the pole-star method, and yards south of that from the shadow method, by astronomers ignorant of the effect of refraction. the shadow method could never have been so reliable as the polar method, and it is certain therefore _à priori_ that the latter must have been adopted either wholly or principally, and this conclusion is confirmed by the internal construction of the pyramid itself, which is shown by the subjoined vertical section. [illustration: pyramid] the tunnel a b c is bored for a distance of feet underground through the solid rock, and is inclined at an angle pointing directly to what was then the pole-star, alpha draconis, at its lower culmination. as there is no bright star at the true pole, its position is ascertained by taking the point half-way between the highest and lowest positions of the conspicuous star nearest to it, and which therefore revolves in the smallest circle about it. this star is not always the same on account of the precession of the equinoxes, and alpha draconis supplied the place of the present pole-star about b.c., and practically for several centuries before and after that date. now the underground tunnel is bored exactly at the angle of ° ´ to the horizon, at which alpha draconis would shine down it at its lower culmination when ° ´ from the pole; and the ascending passage and grand gallery are inclined at the same angle in an opposite direction, so that the image of the star reflected from a plane mirror or from water at b, would be seen on the southern meridian line by an observer in the grand gallery, while another very conspicuous star in the southern hemisphere, alpha centauri, would at that period shine directly down it. the passages therefore would have the double effect, st, of enabling the builders to orient the base and lower layers of the pyramid up to the king's chamber in a perfectly true north and south line; nd, of making the grand gallery the equivalent of an equatorially-mounted telescope of a modern observatory, by which the transit of heavenly bodies in a considerable section of the sky comprising the equatorial and zodiacal regions, across the meridian, and therefore at their highest elevations, could be observed by the naked eye with great accuracy. those who wish to study the evidence in detail should read procter's work on the _problems of the pyramids_, but for the present purpose it may be sufficient to sum up the conclusions of that accomplished astronomer. he says, "the sun's annual course round the celestial sphere could be determined much more exactly than by any gnomon by observations made from the great gallery. the moon's monthly path and its changes could have been dealt with in the same effective way. the geometric paths, and thence the true paths of the planets, could be determined very accurately. the place of any visible star along the zodiac could be most accurately determined." if therefore the pyramid had only been completed up to the fiftieth layer, which would leave the southern opening of the great gallery uncovered, the object might have been safely assumed to be the erection of a great national observatory. but this supposition is negatived by the fact that the grand gallery must have been shut up, and the building rendered useless for astronomical purposes in a very short time, by the completion of the pyramid, which was then covered over by a casing of polished stone, evidently with a view of concealing all traces of the passages which led to the tomb. the only possible solution seems to be that suggested by procter, that the object was astrological rather than astronomical, and that all those minute precautions were taken in order to provide not only a secure tomb but an accurate horoscope for the reigning monarch. astrology and astronomy were in fact closely identified in the ancient world, and relics of the superstition still linger in the form of zadkiel almanacs. when the sun, moon, and five planets had been identified as the celestial bodies possessing motion, and therefore, as it was inferred, life, and had been converted into gods, nothing was more natural than to suppose that they exercised an influence on human affairs, and that their configuration affected the destinies both of individuals and of nations. a superstitious people who saw auguries in the flight of birds, the movements of animals, the rustling of leaves, and in almost every natural occurrence, could not fail to be impressed by the higher influences and omens of those majestic orbs, which revolved in such mysterious courses through the stationary stars of the host of heaven. accordingly in the very earliest traditions of the accadians and egyptians we find an astrological significance attached to the first astronomical facts which were observed and recorded. the week of seven days, which was doubtless founded on the first attempts to measure time by the four phases of the lunar month, became associated with the seven planets in the remotest antiquity, and the names of their seven presiding gods, in the same order and with the same meaning, have descended unchanged to our own times, as will be shown more fully in a subsequent chapter. observations on the sun's annual course led to the fixing of it along a zodiac of twelve signs, corresponding roughly to twelve lunar months, and defined by constellations, or groups of stars, having a fanciful resemblance to animals or deified heroes. those zodiacal signs are of immense antiquity and world-wide universality. we find them in the earliest mythology of chaldæa and egypt, in the labours of hercules, in the traditions of a deluge associated with the sign of aquarius, and even, though in a somewhat altered form, in such distant countries as china and mexico. probably they originated in chaldæa, where the oldest records and universal tradition show the primitive accadians to have been astronomers, who from time immemorial had made observations on the heavenly bodies, and who remained down to the roman empire the most celebrated astrologers, though it is not quite clear whether egyptian astronomy and astrology were imported from chaldæa or invented independently at an equally remote period. even if we admit, however, procter's suggestion that the pyramids had an astrological origin in addition to their primary object as tombs, it is difficult to understand how such enormous structures could have been built. the great pyramid must have been built on a plan designed from the first, and not by any haphazard process of adding a layer each year according to the number of years the monarch happened to reign. how could he foresee the exact number of years of an unusually long life and reign, or what security could he have that, if he died early, his successor would complete his pyramid in addition to erecting one of almost equal magnitude for himself? how could three successive kings have devoted such an amount of the nation's capital and resources to the building of three such pyramids as those of cheops, chephren, and mycerinus, without provoking insurrections? herodotus has a piece of gossip, probably picked up from some ignorant guides, which represents cheops and chephren as detested tyrants, who shut up the temples of the gods, and confounds the national hatred of the shepherd kings, who conquered egypt some years later, with that of these pyramid-builders; but this is confuted by the monuments, which show them as pious builders or restorers of temples of the national gods in other localities, as for instance at bubastis, where the cartouche of chephren was lately found by m. naville on an addition to the temple of isis. all the records also of the fourth or pyramid-building dynasty, and of the two next dynasties, show it to have been a period of peace and prosperity. the pyramids therefore must still remain a subject enveloped in mystery, but enough is certain from the undoubted astronomical facts disclosed in their construction to show the advanced state of this science at this remote period. nor is this all, for the dimensions of the great pyramid, when stripped of the fanciful coincidences and mystical theories of piazzi smyth, still show enough to prove a wonderful knowledge of mathematics and geometry. the following may be taken as undoubted facts from the most accurate measurements of their dimensions. st. the triangular area of each of the four sloping sides equals the square of the vertical height. this was mentioned by herodotus, and there can be no doubt that it was a real relation intended by the builders. nd. the united length of the four sides of the square base bears to the vertical height the same proportion as that of the circumference of a circle to its radius. in other words it gives the ratio, which under the symbol [greek: pi] plays such an important part in all the higher mathematics. there are other remarkable coincidences which seem to show a still more wonderful advance in science, though they are not quite so certain, as they depend on the assumption that the builders took as their unit of measurement, a pyramid inch and sacred cubit different from those in ordinary use, the former being equal to the , , th part of the earth's diameter, and the latter containing twenty-five of those inches, or about the , , th part of that diameter. to arrive at such standards it is evident that the priestly astronomers must have measured very accurately an arc of the meridian or length of the line on the earth's surface which just raised or lowered the pole of the heavens by °; and inferred from it that the earth was a spherical body of given dimensions. those dimensions would not be quite accurate, for they must have been ignorant of the compression of the earth at its poles and protuberance at the equator, but the measurement of such an arc at or near ° of north latitude would give a close approximation to the mean value of the earth's diameter. procter thinks that from the scientific knowledge which must have been possessed by the builders of the pyramid, it is quite possible that they may have measured an arc of the meridian with considerable accuracy, and calculated from it the length of the earth's diameter, assuming it to be a perfect sphere. and if so they may have intended to make the side of the square base of the pyramid of a length which would bear in inches some relation to the length of this diameter; for it is probable that at this stage of the world's science, the mysterious or rather magical value which was attached to certain words would attach equally to the fundamental facts, figures, and important discoveries of the growing sciences. it is quite probable, therefore, that the sacred inch and cubit may have been invented, like the _metre_, from an aliquot part of the earth's supposed diameter, so as to afford an invariable standard. but there is no positive proof of this from the pyramid itself, the dimensions of which may be expressed just as well in the ordinary working cubit, and it must remain open to doubt whether the coincidences prove the pyramid inch, or the inch was invented to prove the coincidences. assuming, however, for the moment that these measures were really used, some of the coincidences are very remarkable. the length of each side of the square base is - / of these sacred cubits, or equal to the length of the year in days. the height is inches, and the sun's distance from the earth, taken at , , miles, which is very nearly correct, is just thousand millions of such inches. it has been thought, therefore, that this height was intended to symbolize the sun's distance. but independently of the fact that this distance could not have been known with any approach to accuracy before the invention of the telescope, it is forgotten that this height had been already determined by a totally unconnected consideration, viz. the ratio of the diameter of a circle to its circumference. the coincidence, therefore, of the sun's distance must be purely accidental. a still more startling coincidence has been found in the fact that the two diagonals of the base contain , pyramid inches, or almost exactly the number of years in the precessional period. this also must be accidental, for the number of inches in the diagonals follows as a matter of course from the sides being taken at - / cubits, corresponding to the length of the year; and there can be no connection between this and the precession of the equinoxes, which, moreover, was unknown in the astronomy of the ancient world until it was discovered in the time of the ptolemies by hipparchus. but with all these doubtful coincidences, and the many others which have been discovered by devotees of the pyramid religion, quite enough remains to justify the conclusion that between and years ago there were astronomers, mathematicians, and architects in egypt, who had carried their respective sciences to a high degree of perfection corresponding to that shown by their engineers and artists. when we turn to chaldæa we find similar evidence as to the advance of science, and especially of astronomical science, in the earliest historical times. every important city had its temple, and attached to its temple its ziggurat, which was a temple-observatory. the ziggurat is in some respects the counterpart of the pyramid, being a pyramidal structure built up in successive stages or platforms superimposed on one another and narrowing as they rose, so as to leave a small platform on the top, on which was a small shrine or temple, and from which observations could be made. these ziggurats being built entirely of bricks, mostly sun-burnt, have crumbled into shapeless mounds of rubbish, but a fair idea of their size and construction may be obtained from the descriptions and pictures of them preserved in contemporary tablets and slabs, especially from those of the great ziggurat of the seven spheres or planets at borsippa, a suburb of babylon, which was rebuilt by nebuchadnezzar about b.c., on the site of a much more ancient ruined construction. this, which was the largest and most famous of the ziggurats, became identified in after times with the tower of babel and the legend of the confusion of tongues, but it was in fact an astronomical building in seven stages dedicated to the sun, moon, and five planets, taken in the order of magnitude of their respective orbits, and each distinguished by their respective colours. thus the lowest or largest platform was dedicated to saturn, and coloured black; the second to jupiter was orange; the third to mars red; the fourth to the sun golden; the fifth to venus pale yellow; the sixth to mercury an azure blue, obtained by vitrifying the facing bricks; and the seventh to the moon was probably coated with plates of silver. the height of this ziggurat was feet, and standing as it did on a level alluvial plain, it must have been a very imposing object. [illustration: ziggurat restored (perrot and chipiez), the tower of babel.] it may be affirmed of all these ziggurats that they were not tombs like the egyptian pyramids, but were erected exclusively for astronomical and astrological purposes. the number of stages had always reference to some religious or astronomical fact, as three to symbolize the great triad; five for the five planets; or seven for these and the sun and moon; the number of seven being never exceeded, and the order the same as that adopted for the days of the week, viz. according to the magnitudes of their respective orbits. they were oriented with as much care as the pyramids, which is of itself a proof that they were used as observatories, but with this difference, that their angles instead of their faces were directed towards the true north and south. to this rule there are only two exceptions, probably of late date after egyptian influences had been introduced, but the original and national ziggurats invariably observe the rule of pointing angles and not sides to the four cardinal points. this is a remarkable fact as showing that the astronomies of egypt and chaldæa were not borrowed one from the other, but evolved independently in prehistoric times. an explanation of it has been found in the fact recorded on a geographical tablet, that the accadians were accustomed to use the terms north, south, east, and west to denote, not the real cardinal points, but countries which lay to the n.w., s.e., and s.w. of them. it is inconceivable, however, that such skilful astronomers should have supposed that the north pole was in the north-west, and a more probable explanation is to be found in the meaning of the word ziggurat, which is holy mountain. it was a cardinal point in their cosmogony that the heavens formed a crystal vault, which revolved round an exceedingly high mountain as an axis, and the ziggurats were miniature representations of this sacred mountain of the gods. the early astronomers must have known that this mountain could be nowhere but in the true north, as the daily revolutions of the heavenly bodies took place round the north pole. it was natural, therefore, that they should direct the apex or angle of a model of this mountain rather than its side to the position in the true north occupied by the peak of the world's pivot. be this as it may, the fact that the ziggurats were carefully oriented, and certainly used as observatories at the earliest dates of chaldæan history, is sufficient to prove that the priestly astronomers must have already attained an advanced knowledge of science, and kept an accurate record of long-continued observations. this is fully confirmed by the astronomical and astrological treatise compiled for the royal library of sargon i., date b.c., which treats of eclipses, the phases of venus, and other matters implying a long previous series of accurate and refined astronomical observations. the most conclusive proof, however, of the antiquity of chaldæan science is afforded by the measures of time which were established prior to the commencement of history, and have come down to the present era in the days of the week and the signs of the zodiac. there can be no doubt that the first attempts to measure time beyond the single day and night, were lunar, and not solar. the phases of the moon occur at short intervals, and are more easily discerned and measured than those of the sun in its annual revolution. the beginning and end of a solar year, and the solstices and equinoxes are not marked by any decided natural phenomena, and it is only by long-continued observations of the sun's path among the fixed stars that any tolerably accurate number of days can be assigned to the duration of the year and seasons. but the recurrence of new and full moon, and more especially of the half-moons when dusk and light are divided by a straight line, must have been noted by the first shepherds who watched the sky at night, and have given rise to the idea of the month, and its first approximate division into four weeks of seven days each. accordingly we find that in all primitive languages and cosmogonies the moon takes its name from a root which signifies "the measurer," while the sun is the bright or shining one. a relic of this superior importance of the moon as the measurer of time is found in the old accadian mythology, in which the moon-god is masculine and the sun-god feminine, while with the semites and other nations of a later and more advanced civilization, the sun is the husband, and the moon his wife. for as observations multiplied and science advanced, it would be found that the lunar month of twenty-eight days was only an approximation, and that the solar year and months defined by the sun's progress through the fixed stars afforded a much more accurate chronometer. thus we find the importance of the moon and of lunar myths gradually superseded by the sun, whose daily risings and settings, death in winter and resurrection in spring, and other myths connected with its passage through the signs of the solar zodiac, assume a preponderating part in ancient religions. traces, however, of the older period of lunar science and lunar mythology still survived, especially in the week of seven days, and the mysterious importance attached to the number . this was doubtless aided by the discovery which could not fail to be made with the earliest accurate observations of the heavens, that there were seven moving bodies, the sun, moon, and five planets, which revolved in settled courses, while all the other stars remained fixed. scientific astrology, as distinguished from a mere superstitious regard of the flight of birds and other omens, had its origin in this discovery. the first philosophers who pondered on these celestial phenomena were certain to infer that motion implied life, and in the case of such brilliant and remote bodies divine life; and that as the sun and moon exerted such an obvious influence on the seasons and other human affairs, so probably did the other planets or the gods who presided over them. the names and order of the days of the week, which have remained so similar among such a number of ancient and modern nations, show how far these astrological notions must have progressed when they assumed their present form, for the order is a highly artificial one. why do we divide time into weeks of seven days, and call the days sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, and saturday, and why are these names of special planets, or of the special gods associated with them, identical, and occur in the same order among so many different nations? for whether we say thor's-day or jove's-day, and call it "thursday" or "jeudi," the same god is meant, who is identified with the same planet, and so for the others. it is quite clear that the names of the seven days of the week were originally taken from the seven planets--i.e. from the seven celestial bodies which were observed by ancient astronomers to move, and, therefore, be presumably endowed with life, while the rest of the host of heaven remained stationary. these bodies are in order of apparent magnitude:-- . the sun. . the moon. . jupiter. . venus. . mars. . saturn. . mercury and this is the natural order in which we might have expected to find them appropriated to the days of the week. but, obviously, this is not the principle on which the days have been named; for, to give a single instance, the nimble mercury, the smallest of the visible planets, comes next before the majestic jupiter, the ruler of the heavens and wielder of the thunderbolt. let us try another principle, that of classifying the planets in importance, not by their size and splendour, but by the magnitude of their orbits and length of their revolutions. this will give the following order:-- . saturn. . jupiter. . mars. . the sun (_i.e._ really the earth). . venus. . mercury. . the moon. we are now on the track of the right solution, though there is still apparently hopeless discord between this order and that of the days of the week. the true solution is such an artificial one, that we should never have discovered it if it had not been disclosed to us by the clay tablets exhumed from ancient royal libraries in the temples and palaces of chaldæa. these tablets are extremely ancient, going back in many cases to the times of the old accadians who inhabited chaldæa prior to the advent of the semites. some of them, in fact, are from the royal library of sargon i., of accade, whose date is fixed by the best authorities at about b.c. these accadians were a civilized and literary people, well versed in astronomy, but extremely superstitious, and addicted beyond measure to astrology. every city had its ziggurat, or observatory-tower, attached to its temple, from which priests watched the heavens and calculated times and seasons. to some of those ancient priests it occurred that the planets must be gods watching over and influencing human events, and that, as mars was ruddy, he was probably the god of war; venus, the lovely evening star, the goddess of love; jupiter, powerful; saturn, slow and malignant; and mercury, quick and nimble. by degrees the idea expanded, and it was thought that each planet exerted its peculiar influence, not only on the days of the week, but on the hours of the day; and the planet which presided over the first hour of the day was thought to preside over the whole of that day. but the day had been already divided into twenty-four hours, because the earliest chaldæans had adopted the duodecimal scale, and counted by sixes, twelves, and sixties. now, twenty-four is not divisible by seven, and, therefore, the same planets do not recur in the same order, to preside over the same hours of successive days. if saturn ruled the first hour, he would rule the twenty-second hour; and, if we refer to the above list of the planets, ranged according to the magnitude of their orbits, we shall find that the sun would rule the first hour of the succeeding day, and then in succession the moon, mars, mercury, jupiter, and venus, round to saturn again, in the precise order of our days of the week. this order is so artificial that it cannot have been invented separately, and wherever we find it we may feel certain that it has descended from the astrological fancies of accadian priestly astronomers at least years ago. now for the sabbath. the same clay tablets, older by some years than the accepted biblical date for the creation of the world, mention both the name and the institution. the "sabbath" was the day ruled over by the gloomy and malignant saturn, the oldest of the planetary gods, as shown by his wider orbit, but dimmed with age, and morose at having been dethroned by his brilliant son, jupiter. it was unlucky in the extreme, therefore, to do any work, or begin any undertaking, on the "sabbath," or saturday. hence, long centuries before jewish pharisees or english puritans, rules of sabbatarian strictness were enforced at babylon and nineveh, which remind one of the knight who "hanged his cat on monday for killing of a mouse on sunday." the king was not allowed to ride or walk on the sabbath; and, even if taken ill, had to wait till the following day before taking medicine. this superstition as to the unluckiness of saturn's day was common to all ancient nations, including the jews; but when the idea of a local deity, one among many others, expanded, under the influence of the later prophets and the exile, unto that of one universal god, the ruler of the universe and special patron of his chosen people, the compilers of the old testament dealt with the sabbath as they did with the deluge, the creation, and other myths borrowed from the chaldæans. that is to say, they revised them in a monotheistic sense, wrote "god" for "gods," and gave them a religious, rather than an astronomical or astrological, meaning. thus the origin of the sabbath, as a day when no work was to be done, was transferred from saturn to jehovah, and the reason assigned was that "in six days the lord created the heaven and the earth, and all that therein is, and rested on the seventh day." one more step only remains to bring us to our modern sunday, and this also, like the last, is to be attributed to a religious motive. the early christian church wished to wean the masses from paganism, and very wisely, instead of attacking old-established usages in front, turned their flank by assigning them to different days. thus the day of rest was shifted from saturday to sunday, which was made the christian sabbath, and the name changed by the latin races from the day of the sun to the lord's day, "dominica dies," or "dimanche." it has remained saturday, however, with the jews, and it is quite clear that it was on a saturday, and not a sunday, that jesus walked through the fields with his disciples, plucking ears of corn, and saying, "the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath." it is equally clear that our modern sabbatarians are much nearer in spirit to the pharisees whom jesus rebuked, and to the old accadian astrologers, than to the founder of christianity. it is encouraging, however, to those who believe in progress, to observe how in this, as in many other cases, the course of evolution makes for good. the absurd superstitions of accadian astrologers led to the establishment of one day of rest out of every seven days--an institution which is in harmony with the requirements of human nature, and which has been attended by most beneficial results. the religious sanctions which attached themselves to this institution, first, as the hebrew sabbath, and, secondly, as transformed into the christian sunday, have been a powerful means of preserving this day of rest through so many social and political revolutions. let us, therefore, not be too hasty in condemning everything which, on the face of it, appears to be antiquated and absurd. millions will enjoy a holiday, get a breath of fresh air and glimpse of nature, or go to church or chapel cleanly and respectable in behaviour and attire, because there were accadian zadkiels years ago, who believed in the maleficent influence of the planet saturn. when we find that these highly intricate and artificial calculations of advanced astrological and astronomical lore existed at the dawn of chaldæan history, and are found in so many and such widely separated races and regions, it is impossible to avoid two conclusions. st. that an immense time must have elapsed since the rude accadian highlanders first settled in and reclaimed the alluvial valleys and marshy deltas of the tigris and euphrates. nd. that the intercourse between remote regions, whether by land or sea, and by commerce or otherwise, must have been much closer in prehistoric times than has been generally supposed. as in the days of the week, so in the festivals of the year, we trace their first origin to astronomical observations. when nations passed from the condition of savages, hunters, or nomads, into the agricultural stage, and developed dense populations, cities, temples, priests, and an organized society, we find the oldest traces of it everywhere in the science of astronomy. they watched the phases of the moon, counted the planets, followed the sun in its annual course, marking it first by seasons, and, as science advanced, by its progress through groups of fixed stars fancifully defined as constellations. everywhere the moon seems to have been taken as the first standard for measuring time beyond the primary unit of day and night. its name very generally denotes the "measurer" in primitive languages, and it appears as the male, and the sun as female, in the oldest mythologies--a distinction of sex which is still maintained in modern german. this is natural, for the monthly changes of the moon come much more frequently, and are more easily measured from day to day, than the annual courses of the sun. but, as observations accumulate and become more accurate, it is found that the sun, and not the moon, regulates the seasons, and that the year repeats on a larger scale the phenomenon presented by the day and night, of a birth, growth, maturity, decay, and death of the sun, followed by a resurrection or new birth, when the same cycle begins anew. hence the oldest civilized nations have taken from the two phenomena of the day and year the same fundamental ideas and festivals. the ideas are those of a miraculous birth, death, and resurrection, and of an upper and lower world, the one of light and life, the other of darkness and death, through which the sun-god and human souls have to pass to emerge again into life. the festivals are those of the four great divisions of the year: the winter solstice, when the aged sun sinks into the tomb and rises again with a new birth; the spring equinox, when he passes definitively out of the domain of winter into that of summer; the summer solstice, when he is in full manhood, "rejoicing like a giant to run his course," and withering up vegetation as with the hot breath of a raging lion; and, finally, the autumnal equinox, when he sinks once more into the wintry half of the year and fades daily amidst storms and deluges to the tomb from which he started. of these festivals christmas and easter have survived to the present day, and the last traces of the feast of the summer solstice are still lingering in the remote parts of scotland and ireland in the bel fires, which, when i was young, were lighted on midsummer night on the highest hills of orkney and shetland. as a boy, i have rushed, with my playmates, through the smoke of those bonfires without a suspicion that we were repeating the homage paid to baal in the valley of hinnom. when we turn from science to art and industry, the same conclusion of immense antiquity is forcibly impressed on us. in egypt the reign of menes, b.c., was signalized by a great engineering work, which would have been a considerable achievement at the present day. he built a great embankment, which still remains, by which the old course of the nile close to the libyan hills was diverted, and a site obtained for the new capital of memphis on the west side of the river, placing it between the city and any enemy from the east. at the same time this dyke assisted in regulating the flow of the inundation, and it may be compared for magnitude and utility to the modern _barrage_ attempted by linant bey and carried out by sir colin moncrieff. evidently such a work implies great engineering skill, and great resources, and it prepares us for what we have seen a few centuries later in the construction of the great pyramids. many of the most famous cities and temples also of egypt date back for their original foundation to a period prior to that of menes. there is indeed every reason to suppose that one of the most colossal and remarkable monuments, the sphynx, with the little temple of granite and alabaster between its paws, is older than the accession of menes. a tablet discovered by mariette informs us that khufu, the builder of the great pyramid, discovered this temple, which had been buried in the sand, and restored it. if a building of such simplicity and solidity of structure required repairs, it must have existed for a long time and been lost sight of. it is almost certain also that if such a colossal and celebrated monument as the sphynx had been constructed by any of the historical kings, it would have been mentioned by manetho, as for instance is that of the step-pyramid of sakkarah by the fourth king of the first dynasty, and of a temple of pthah at memphis, and a treatise on medicine, by the king who succeeded menes. the name of the sphynx also, "the great hor," points to the period of the horsheshu, or ruler priests of horus, prior to the foundation of the empire by menes, and to the time before osiris superseded horus, as the favourite personification of the solar god. be this as it may, there is abundant proof that at the dawn of egyptian history, some years ago, the arts of architecture, engineering, irrigation, and agriculture had reached a high level corresponding to that shown by the state of religion, science, and letters. a little later the paintings on the tombs of the old empire show that all the industrial arts, such as spinning, weaving, working in wood and metals, rearing cattle, and a thousand others, which are the furniture of an old civilized country, were just as well understood and practised in egypt or years ago as they are at the present day. this being the case, i must refer those who wish to pursue this branch of the subject to professed works on egyptology. for my present purpose, if the oldest records of monuments prove the existence of a long antecedent civilization, it is superfluous to trace the proofs in detail through the course of later ages. when we turn to the fine arts we find the same evidence. the difficulty is not to trace a golden age up to rude beginnings, but to explain the seeming paradox that the oldest art is the best. a visit to the museum of boulak, where mariette's collection of works of the first six dynasties is deposited, will convince any one that the statues, statuettes, wall-pictures, and other works of art of the ancient empire from memphis and its cemetery of sakkarah, are in point of conception and execution superior to those of a later period. none of the later statues equal the tour _de force_ by which the majestic portrait statue of chephren, the builder of the second great pyramid, has been chiselled out from a block of diorite, one of the hardest stones known, and hardly assailable by the best modern tools. nor has portraiture in wood or stone ever surpassed the ease, grace, and life-like expression of such statues as that known as the village sheik, from its resemblance to the functionary who filled that office years later in the village where the statue was discovered; or those of the kneeling scribes, one handing in his accounts, the other writing from dictation. and the pictures on the walls of tombs, of houses, gardens, fishing and musical parties, and animals and birds of all kinds, tame and wild, are equally remarkable for their colouring and drawing, and for the vivacity and accuracy with which attitudes and expressions are rendered. in short egypt begins where most modern countries seem to be ending, with a very perfect school of realistic art. [illustration: the village sheik, a wooden statuette. boulak museum, from gizeh.--according to the chronological table of mariette, this statue is over years old. from a photograph by brugsch bey.] for it is remarkable that this first school of art of the old empire is thoroughly naturalistic, and knows very little of the ideal or supernatural. and the tombs tell the same story. the statues and paintings represent natural objects and not theological conventions; the tombs are fac-simile representations of the house in which the deceased lived, with his mummy and those of his family, and pictures of his oxen, geese, and other belongings, but no gods, and few of those quotations from the todtenbuch which are so universal in later ages. it would seem that at this early period of egyptian history life was simple and cheerful, and both art and religion less fettered by superstitions and conventions than they were when despotism and priestcraft had been for centuries stereotyped institutions, and originality of any sort was little better than heresy. war also and warlike arms hardly appear on these earliest representations of egyptian life, and wars were probably confined to frontier skirmishes with bedouins and libyans, such as we see commemorated on the tablet of snefura at wady magerah. in chaldæa the evidence for great antiquity is derived less from architectural monuments and arts, and more from books, than in egypt, for the obvious reason that stone was wanting and clay abundant in mesopotamia. where temples and palaces were built of sun-dried bricks, they rapidly crumbled into mounds of rubbish, and nothing was preserved but the baked clay tablets with cuneiform inscriptions. in like manner sculpture and wall-painting never flourished in a country devoid of stone, and the religious ideas of chaldæa never took the egyptian form of the continuance of ordinary life after death by the ka or ghost requiring a house, a mummy, and representations of belongings. the bas-relief and fringes sculptured on slabs of alabaster brought home by layard and others, belong mostly to the later period of the assyrian empire. accordingly, the oldest works of art from chaldæa consist mainly of books and documents in the form of clay cylinders, and of gems, amulets, and other small articles of precious stones or metals. but the recent discovery of de sarzec at sirgalla shows that in the very earliest period of chaldæan history the arts stood at a level which is fairly comparable to that of the old empire in egypt. he found in the ruins of the very ancient temple of the sun nine statues of patesi or priest-kings of accadian race, who had ruled there prior to the consolidation of sumir and accad into one empire by sargon i., somewhere about b.c. the remarkable thing about these statues is that they are of diorite, similar to that of the statue of chephren, which is believed to be only found in the peninsula of sinai, and is so hard that it must have taken excellent tools and great technical skill to carve it. the statues are much of the same size and in the same seated attitude as that of chephren, and have the appearance of belonging to the same epoch and school of art. this is confirmed by the discovery along with the statues of a number of statuettes and small objects of art which are also in an excellent style, very similar to that of the old egyptian dynasty, and show great proficiency both in taste and in technical execution. the discovery of these diorite statues at such a very early date both in egypt and chaldæa, raises a very interesting question as to the tools by which such an intractable material could be so finely wrought. evidently these tools must have been of the very hardest bronze, and the construction of such works as the dyke of menes and the pyramids, shows that the art of masonry must have been long known and extensively practised. but this again implies a large stock of metals and long acquaintance with them since the close of the latest stone period. perhaps there is no test which is more conclusive of the state of prehistoric civilization and commerce than that which is afforded by the general knowledge and use of metals. it is true that a knowledge of some of the metals which are found in a native state, or in easily fusible ores, may coexist with very primitive barbarism. some even of the cannibal tribes of africa are well acquainted with iron, and know how to smelt its ores and manufacture tools and weapons. gold also, which is so extensively found in the native state, could not fail to be known from the earliest times; and in certain districts pure copper presents itself as only a peculiar and malleable sort of stone. but when we come to metals which require great knowledge of mining to detect them in their ores, and to produce them in large quantities; and to alloys, which require a long practice of metallurgy to discover, and to mix in the proper proportions, the case is different, and the stone period must be already far behind. still more is this the case when tools and weapons of such artificial alloys are found in universal use in countries where nature has provided no metals, and where their presence can only be accounted for by the existence of an international commerce with distant metal-producing countries. iron was no doubt known at a very early period, but it was extremely scarce, and even as late as homer's time was so valuable that a lump of it constituted one of the principal prizes at the funeral games of patroclus. nor is there any reason to suppose that the art of making from it the best steel, which alone could have competed with bronze in cutting granite and diorite, had been discovered. it may be assumed, therefore, that bronze was the material universally used for the finer tools and weapons by the great civilized empires of egypt and chaldæa during the long interval between the neolithic stone age and the later adoption of iron. evidently then, both the egyptians and the chaldæans must have been well provided with bronze tools capable of hewing and polishing the hardest rocks. now bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. copper is a common metal, easily reduced from its ores, and not infrequently occurring in a metallic state, as in the mines of lake superior, where the north american indians hammered out blocks of it from the native metal. and we have proofs that the ancient egyptians obtained copper at a very early date from the mines of wady magerah in the peninsula of sinai, and probably also from cyprus. but where did they get their tin, without which there is no bronze? tin is a metal which is only found in a few localities, and in the form of a black oxide which requires a considerable knowledge of metallurgy to detect and to reduce. the only considerable sources of tin now known are those of cornwall, malacca, banca, and australia. of these, the last was of course unknown to the ancient world, and it is hardly probable that its supplies were obtained from such remote sources as those of the extreme east. not that it is at all impossible that it might have been brought from malacca by prehistoric sea-routes to india, and thence to egypt by the red sea and to chaldæa by the persian gulf, and this is the conjecture of one of the latest authorities in a very interesting work just published on the _dawn of ancient art_. but it seems highly improbable that, if such routes had been established, they should have been so completely abandoned as they certainly were when the supply of tin for the eastern world was brought from the west. in fact, when we get the first authoritative information as to the commerce in tin, about b.c., we find that it was supplied mainly by tyre, and came from the west beyond the straits of gibraltar; and in the greek periplus, written in the first century, it is distinctly stated that india was supplied with tin from britain by way of alexandria and the red sea, which is hardly consistent with the supposition that the tin of malacca had been long known and worked. in the celebrated th chapter of ezekiel, which describes the commerce of tyre when in the height of its glory, tin is only mentioned once as being imported along with silver, iron, and lead from tarshish, _i.e._ from the emporium of gades or cadiz, to which it had doubtless been brought from cornwall. the only other reference to tin is, that javan, tubal, and meshech, _i.e._ the ionians, and tribes of asia minor in the mountainous districts to the south of the black sea, traded with slaves and vessels of brass, and if brass meant bronze, this would imply a knowledge of tin. the only other considerable supply of tin which is certainly known came from the etruscans, who worked extensive tin mines in northern italy. but the evidence of these does not go back farther than from to b.c., and it leaves untouched the question how egypt and chaldæa had obtained large stocks of bronze, certainly long before b.c.; and how they kept up these stocks for certainly more than years before the phoenicians appeared on the scene to supply tin by maritime commerce. it is in some other direction that we must look, for it is certain that neither egypt nor chaldæa had any native sources of this metal. they must have imported, and that from a distance, either the manufactured bronze, or the tin with which to manufacture it themselves by alloying copper. the latter seems most probable, for the egyptians worked the copper mines of sinai from a very early date, and drew supplies of copper from cyprus, which could only have been made useful by alloying it with tin, while if they imported all the immense quantity of bronze which they must have used, in the manufactured state, the pure copper would have been useless to them. a remarkable fact is that the bronze found from the earliest monuments downwards, throughout most of the ancient world, including the dolmens, lake villages, and other prehistoric monuments in which metal begins to appear, is almost entirely of uniform composition, consisting of an alloy of to per cent. of tin to or per cent. of copper. that is for tools and weapons where great hardness was required, for objects of art and statuettes were often made of pure copper, or with a smaller alloy of tin, showing that the latter metal was too scarce and valuable to be wasted.[ ] evidently this alloy must have been discovered in some locality where tin and copper were both found, and trials could be made of the proportions which gave the best result, and the secret must have been communicated to other nations along with the tin which was necessary for the manufacture. where could the sources have been which supplied this tin and this knowledge how to use it, to the two great civilized nations of egypt and chaldæa, where we can say with certainty that bronze was in common use prior to b.c.? if we exclude britain and the extreme east, there are only two localities in which extensive remains of ancient workings for tin have been discovered; one in georgia on the slopes of the caucasus, and the other on the northern slope of the hindoo-kush in the neighbourhood of bamian. and the knowledge both of bronze and of other metals, such as iron and gold, seems to have been universally diffused among the turanian races who were the primitive inhabitants of northern asia. how could egypt have got its tin even from the nearest known source? consider the length of the caravan route; the number of beasts of burden required; the necessity for roads, depôts, and stations; the mountain ranges, rivers, and deserts to be traversed; such a journey is scarcely conceivable either through districts sparsely peopled and without resources, or infested by savage tribes and robbers. and yet if the tin did not come by land, it must have come for the greater part of the way by water, floating down the euphrates or tigris, and being shipped from ur or eridhu by way of the persian gulf and red sea. [ ] this normal alloy does not seem to have been in general use in egypt before the eighteenth dynasty, and the bronze of earlier periods contains less tin. but evidently a very hard alloy of copper must have been used from the earliest times, to chisel out statues of granite and diorite, and although tin was too scarce for common use, the tools for such purposes must have contained a considerable percentage of it. it is difficult to conceive that such an international commerce can have existed at such a remote period, and the difficulty is increased by the fact that in europe, where we can pretty well trace the passage from the neolithic into the bronze period, bronze does not seem to have been known until some or years later, when the phoenicians had migrated to the eastern shore of the mediterranean, and extended their commerce and navigation far and wide over its northern coasts and islands; and at a still later period, when the etruscans had established themselves in italy and exported the products of the tuscan tin mines by trade routes over the rhætian alps. it is even doubtful whether there was any knowledge of metals in europe prior to the phoenician period, as the aryan names for gold, silver, copper, tin, and iron are borrowed from foreign sources; and have no common origin in any ancestral language of the aryan races before they were differentiated into greek, latin, teutonic, celtic, and slavic. copper seems to have been the first metal known, and there are traces of a copper age prior to that of bronze in some of the older neolithic lake villages of switzerland and italy, and in very old tombs and dolmens in hungary, france, and the south-west of spain. but these copper implements are very few and far between, they are evidently modelled in the prior forms of polished stone, and must have been superseded after a very short time by the invention or importation of bronze, which, as already stated, implies a supply of tin, and a common knowledge of the art of alloying copper with it in the same uniform proportion which gives the best result. but in the historic records and remains of egypt and chaldæa, which go so much further back, bronze had evidently been long known when history commences. the accadian name for tin, _id-kasdaru_, is the oldest known, and reappears in the sanscrit _kastira_, the assyrian _kasugeteira_, and the greek _kassiteros_. the oldest known name for copper is the accadian _urud_ or _urudu_, which singularly enough is preserved in the basque _urraida_, while _as rauta_ it reappears as the name for iron in finnish, and as _ruda_ for metal generally in old slavonic. in semitic babylonian, copper is _eru_, which confirms the induction that the metal was unknown to the primitive semites, and adopted by them from the previously existing accadian civilization. we are thus driven back by every line of evidence to the conclusion that egypt and chaldæa were in the full, bronze age, and had left the stone period far behind them, long before the primitive stocks of the more modern aryan and semitic populations of europe and western asia had emerged from the neolithic stage, and for an unknown period before the definite date when their history commences, certainly not less than years ago. we are also driven to the conclusion that other nations, capable of conducting extensive mining operations, must have been in existence in the caucasus, the hindoo-kush, the altai, or other remote regions; and that routes of international commerce must have been established by which the scarce but indispensable tin could be transported from these regions to the dense and civilized communities which had grown up in the alluvial valleys and deltas of the nile and the euphrates. it is very singular, however, that if such an intercourse existed, the knowledge of other objects of what may be called the first necessity, should have been so long limited to certain areas and races. for instance, in the case of the domestic animals, the horse was unknown in egypt and arabia till after the hyksos conquest, when in a short time it became common, and these countries supplied the finest breeds and the greatest number of horses for exportation. on the other hand, the horse must have been known at a very early period in chaldæa, for the tablet of sargon i., b.c. , talks of riding in brazen chariots over rugged mountains. this makes it the more singular that the horse should have remained so long unknown in egypt and arabia, for it is such an eminently useful animal, both for peace and war, that one would think it must have been introduced almost from the very first moment when trading caravans arrived. and yet tin must have arrived from regions where in all probability the horse had been long domesticated before the time of menes. the only explanation i can see is, that the tin must have come by sea, but by what maritime route could it have come prior to the rise of phoenician commerce, which was certainly not earlier than about b.c., or some years after the date of menes? could it have come down the euphrates or tigris and been exported from the great sea-ports of eridhu or ur by way of the persian gulf and red sea? this seems the more probable, as eridhu was certainly an important maritime port at the early period of chaldæan civilization. the diorite statues found at tell-loh by m. de sarzec are stated by an inscription on them to have come from sinai, and indeed they could have come from no other locality, as this is the only known site of the peculiar greenish-black basalt or diorite of which those statues and the similar one of the egyptian chephren of the second pyramid are made. and in this case the transport of such heavy blocks for such a distance could only have been effected by sea. there are traces also of the maritime commerce of eridhu having extended as far as india. teak wood, which could only have come from the malabar coast, has been found in the ruins of ur; and "sindhu," which is indian cloth or muslin, was known from the earliest times. it seems not improbable, therefore, that eridhu and ur may have played the part which was subsequently taken by sidon and tyre, in the prehistoric stages of the civilizations both of egypt and of chaldæa, and this is confirmed by the earliest traditions of the primitive accadians, which represent these cities on the persian gulf as maritime ports, whose people were well acquainted with ships, as we see in their version of the deluge, which, instead of the hebrew ark of noah, has a well-equipped ship with sails and a pilot, in the legend of xisuthros. the instance of the horse is the more remarkable, as throughout a great part of the stone period the wild horse was the commonest of animals, and afforded the staple food of the savages whose remains are found in all parts of europe. at one station alone, at solutre in burgundy, it is computed that the remains of more than , horses are found in the vast heap of _débris_ of a village of the stone period. what became of these innumerable horses, and how is it that the existence of the animal seems to have been so long unknown to the great civilized races? it is singular that a similar problem presents itself in america, where the ancestral tree of the horse is most clearly traced through the eocene and miocene periods, and where the animal existed in vast numbers both in the northern and southern continent, under conditions eminently favourable for its existence, and yet it became so completely extinct that there was not even a tradition of it remaining at the time of the spanish conquest. on the other hand, the ass seems to have been known from the earliest times, both to the egyptians and the semites of arabia and syria, and unknown to the aryans, whose names for it are all borrowed from the semitic. large herds of asses are enumerated among the possessions of great egyptian landowners as far back as the fifth and sixth dynasties, and no doubt it had been the beast of burden in egypt for time immemorial. it is in this respect only, viz. the introduction of the horse, that we can discern any foreign importation calculated to materially affect the native civilization of egypt, during the immensely long period of its existence. it had no doubt a great deal to do with launching egypt on a career of foreign wars and conquests under the eighteenth dynasty, and so bringing it into closer contact with other nations, and subjecting it to the vicissitudes of alternate triumphs and disasters, now carrying the egyptian arms to the euphrates and tigris, and now bringing assyrian and persian conquerors to thebes and memphis. but in the older ages of the first and middle empire, the ox, the ass, the sheep, ducks and geese, and the dog, seem to have been the principal domestic animals. gazelles also were tamed and fed in herds during the old empire, and the cat was domesticated from an african species during the middle empire. agriculture was conducted both in egypt and chaldæa much as it is in china at the present day, by a very perfect system of irrigation depending on embankments and canals, and by a sort of garden cultivation enabling a large population to live in a limited area. the people also, both in egypt and chaldæa, seem to have been singularly like the modern chinese, patient industrious, submissive to authority, unwarlike, practical, and prosaic. everything, therefore, conspires to prove that an enormous time must have elapsed before the dawn of history years ago, to convert the aborigines who left their rude stone implements in the sands and gravels of these localities, into the civilized and populous communities which we find existing there long before the reigns of menes and of sargon. chapter vi. prehistoric traditions. short duration of tradition--no recollection of stone age--celts taken for thunderbolts--stone age in egypt--palæolithic implements--earliest egyptian traditions--extinct animals forgotten--their bones attributed to giants--chinese and american traditions--traditions of origin of man--philosophical myths--cruder myths from stones, trees, and animals--totems--recent events soon forgotten--autochthonous nations--wide diffusion of prehistoric myths--the deluge--importance of, as test of inspiration--more definite than legend of creation--what the account of the deluge in genesis really says--date--extent--duration--all life destroyed except pairs preserved in the ark--such a deluge impossible--contradicted by physical science--by geology--by zoology--by ethnology--by history--how deluge myths arise--local floods--sea shells on mountains--solar myths--deluge of hasisadra--noah's deluge copied from it--revised in a monotheistic sense at a comparatively late period--conclusion--national view of inspiration. in passing from the historical period, in which we can appeal to written records and monuments, into that of palæontology and geology, where we have to rely on scientific facts and reasons, we have to traverse an intermediate stage in which legends and traditions still cast a dim and glimmering twilight. the first point to notice is that this, like the twilight of tropical evenings, is extremely brief, and fades almost at once into the darkness of night. it is singular in how short a time all memory is lost of events which are not recorded in some form of writing or inscription, and depend solely on oral tradition. thus it may be safely affirmed that no nation which has passed into the metal age retains any distinct recollection of that of polished stone, and _à fortiori_ none of the palæolithic period, or of the origins of their own race or of mankind. the proof of this is found in the fact that the stone axes and arrow-heads which are found so abundantly in many countries are everywhere taken for thunderbolts or fairy arrows shot down from the skies. this belief was well-nigh universal throughout the world; we find it in all the classical nations, in modern europe, in china, japan, and india. its antiquity is attested by the fact that neolithic arrow-heads have been found attached as amulets in necklaces from egyptian and etruscan tombs, and palæolithic celts in the foundations of chaldæan temples. in india many of the best specimens of palæolithic implements were obtained from the gardens of ryots, where they had been placed on posts, and offerings of ghee duly made to them. like so many old superstitions, this still lingers in popular belief, and the common name for the finely-chipped arrow-heads which are so plentifully scattered over the soil from scotland to japan, is that of elf-bolts, supposed to have been shot down from the skies by fairies or spirits. until the discoveries of boucher-de-perthes were confirmed only half a century ago, this belief was not only that of simple peasants, but of the learned men of all countries, and the volumes are innumerable that have been written to explain how the "cerauni," or stone-celts, taken to be thunderbolts, were formed in the air during storms. they are already described by pliny, and a chinese encyclopædia says that "some of these lightning stones have the shape of a hatchet, others of a knife, some are made like mallets. they are metals, stones, and pebbles, which the fire of the thunder has metamorphosed by splitting them suddenly and uniting inseparably different substances. on some of them a kind of vitrification is distinctly to be observed." the chinese philosopher was evidently acquainted with real meteorites and with the stone implements which were mistaken for them, and his account is comparatively sober and rational. but the explanations of the christian fathers and mediæval philosophers, and even of scientific writers down to a very recent period, are vastly more mystical. a single specimen may suffice which is quoted by tylor in his _early history of mankind_. tollius in figures some ordinary palæolithic stone axes and hammers, and tells us that "the naturalists say they are generated in the sky by a fulgurous exhalation conglobed in a cloud by the circumfused humour, and are as it were baked hard by intense heat, and the weapon becomes pointed by the damp mixed with it flying from the dry part, and leaving the other end denser, but the exhalations press it so hard that it breaks out through the cloud and makes thunder and lightning." but these attempts at scientific explanations were looked upon with disfavour by theologians, the orthodox belief being that the "cerauni" were the bolts by which satan and his angels had been driven from heaven into the fiery abyss. these speculations, however, of later ages are of less importance for our present purpose than the fact that in no single instance can anything like a real historical tradition be found connecting the stone age with that of metals, and giving a true account of even the latest forms of neolithic implements. this is the more remarkable in the case of egypt, where historical records go back so very far, for here, as we have seen in a previous chapter, the relics of a stone age exist in considerable numbers. there is every probability, therefore, that egyptian civilization had been developed, mainly on the spot, from the rude beginnings of a palæolithic age, through the incipient civilization of the neolithic, into the age of metals, and the advanced civilization which preceded the consolidation of the empire under menes and the commencement of history.[ ] and yet no tradition, with a pretence to be historical, goes back farther than with a very dim and nickering light for a few centuries before menes, when the horsheshu, or priests of horus, ruled independent cities, and small districts attached to the temples. there are accounts of some passages of the todtenbuch being taken from old hymns written on goatskin in the time of these horsheshu, and of historical temples built on plans taken from older temples and attributed to thoth; and it seems probable also that the sphynx and its temple may date from the same period. but beyond these few and vague instances, there is nothing to confirm the statement attributed to manetho, that, prior to menes, historical kings had reigned in thebes for years, in memphis for years, and in this for years; before whom came heroes and kings for years, heroes for years, and gods for , years. [ ] stone implements were used for common purposes, especially for sickles to cut heads of corn, down to a comparatively late period, but as spurrell observes in petrie's, _illahun kahun and gurob_, "these implements do not represent work of the stone age properly considered." they are not so much survivals of neolithic forms, as imitations, in the cheaper material of flint, of metallic forms for rough work and common use. the use of a flint knife for making the first incision on the corpse in preparing it for a mummy, is the only fact which looks like a survival from neolithic into historical times. the disappearance of all historical recollections of a stone age is paralleled by the oblivion of the origin of the remains of the great extinct quaternary animals which were contemporary with man. everywhere we find the fossil bones of the elephant and rhinoceros attributed to monsters and giants, both in the ancient and modern worlds. st. augustine denounces infidels who do not believe that "men's bodies were formerly much greater than now," and quotes, in proof of the assertion, that he had seen himself "so huge a molar tooth of a man, that it would cut up into a hundred teeth of ordinary men,"--doubtless the molar of a fossil elephant. marcus scaurus brought to rome from joppa the bones of the monster who was to have devoured andromeda. the chinese encyclopædia, already referred to, describes the "fon-shu, an animal which dwells in the extreme cold on the coast of the northern sea, which resembles a rat in shape, but is as big as an elephant, and lives in dark caverns, ever shunning the light. there is got from it an ivory as white as that of an elephant;" evidently referring to the frozen mammoths found in siberia. similar circumstances gave rise to the same myth in south america, and the natives told darwin that the skeletons of the mastodon on the banks of the parana were those of a huge burrowing animal, like the bizchaca or prairie-rat. numerous similar instances are given by tyler in his _early history of mankind_, and among the whole multitude of this class of myths, there is only one which has the least semblance of being derived from actual tradition, viz. the bas-relief of the sacrifice of a human victim by a mexican priest, who wears a mask of an animal with a trunk resembling an elephant or mastodon; and certain vague traditions among some of the red indian tribes speak of an animal with an arm protruding from its shoulder. it is more probable, however, that these may have been derived from traditions brought over from asia like the mexican calendar, or be creations of the fancy, like dragons and griffins, inspired by some idea of an exaggerated tapir, than that, in this solitary instance, a mexican priest should have been actually a contemporary of the mammoth or mastodon. if fossil animals have thus given rise everywhere to legends of giants, fossil shells have played the same part as regards legends of a deluge. these are in many cases so abundant at high levels that they could not fail to be observed, and, if observed, to be attributed to the sea having once covered these levels, and inundated all the earth except the highest peaks. the tradition of an universal deluge is however so important that i reserve it for separate consideration at the end of the present chapter. if then all memory of a period so comparatively recent as that of the neolithic stone age and of the latest extinct animals was completely lost when the first dawn of history commences, it follows as a matter of course that nothing like an historical tradition survives anywhere of the immensely longer palæolithic period and of the origin of man. man in all ages has asked himself how he came here, and has indulged in speculations as to his origin. these speculations have taken a form corresponding very much to the stage of culture and civilization to which he had attained. they are of almost infinite variety, but may be classed generally under three heads. those nations which had attained a sufficient degree of culture to personify first causes and the phenomena of nature as gods, attribute the creation of the world and of man to some one or more of these gods; and as they advance further in philosophical reasonings, embellish the myth with allegories embodying the problems of human existence. thus if bel makes man out of clay, and moulds him with his own blood; or jehovah fashions him from dust, and breathes into his nostrils the breath of life; in each case it is an obvious allegory to explain the fact that man has a dual nature, animal and spiritual. so the myth of the garden of eden, the temptation by the serpent, the trees of knowledge and of life, and the fall of adam, which we see represented on a babylonian cylinder as well as in the second chapter of genesis, is obviously an allegorical attempt to explain what remains to this day the perplexing problem of the origin of evil. these philosophical myths are, however, very various among different nations. thus the orthodox belief of , , of hindoos is that mankind were created in castes, the brahmins by an emanation from brahma's head, the warriors from his chest, the traders and artisans from his legs, and the sudras or lowest caste from his feet; obviously an _ex post facto_ myth to account for the institution of castes, and to stamp it with divine authority. but before reflection had risen to this level, and among the savage and semi-barbarous people of the present day, we find much more crude speculations, which, in the main, correspond with the kindred creeds of animism and totemism. when life and magical powers were attributed to inanimate objects, nothing was more natural than to suppose that stones and trees might be converted into men and women, and conversely men and women into trees and stones. thus we find the stone theory very widely diffused. even with a people so far advanced as the early greeks, it meets us in the celebrated fable of deucalion and pyrrha peopling the earth by throwing stones behind them, which turned into men and women; and the same myth, of stones turning into the first men, meets us at the present day in almost every reliable myth of creation, brought home by missionaries and anthropologists from africa, america, and polynesia. in some cases trees take the place of stones, and transformations of men into both are among the commonest occurrences. from daphne into a laurel, and lot's wife into a pillar of salt, down to the cornish maidens transformed into a circle of stones for dancing on sunday, we find everywhere that wherever natural objects present any resemblance to the human figure, such myths sprung up spontaneously in all ages and countries. another great school of creation-myths originates in the widespread institution of the totem. it is a step in advance of the pure fetich-worship of stocks and stones, to conceive of animals as having thought and language, and being in fact men under a different form. from this it is a short step to endowing them with magical attributes and supernatural powers, adopting them as patrons of tribes and families, and finally considering them as ancestors. myths of this kind are common among the lower races, especially in america, where many of the tribes considered themselves as descendants of some great bear or elk, or of some extremely wise fox or beaver, and held this belief so firmly, that intermarriage among members of the same totem was considered to be incestuous. the same system prevails among most races at an equally low or lower stage of civilization, as in australia; and there are traces of its having existed among old civilized nations at remote periods. thus the animal-worship of egypt was probably a survival of the old faith in totems, differing among different clans, which was so firmly rooted in the popular traditions, that the priests had to accommodate their religious conceptions to it, as the christian fathers did with so many pagan superstitions. the division of the twelve tribes of israel seems also to have been originally totemic, judging from the old saga in which jacob gives them his blessing, identifying judah with a lion, dan with an adder, and so on. and even at the present day, the crest of the duke of sutherland carries us back to the time when the wild-cat was the badge, and very probably some great and fierce wild-cat the ancestor, in popular belief, of the fighting clan chattan. but in all these various and discordant myths of the creation of man, it is evident there is nothing which comes within a hundred miles of being a possible historical reminiscence of anything that actually occurred; and they must be relegated to the same place as the corresponding myths of the creation of the animal world and of the universe. they are neither more or less credible than the theories that the earth is a great tortoise floating on the water, or the sky a crystal dome with windows in it to let down the rain, and stars hung from it like lamps to illuminate a tea-garden. even when we come to comparatively recent periods, and have to deal with traditions, not of how races originated, but how they came into the abodes where we find them, it is astonishing how little we can depend on anything prior to written records. most ancient nations fancied themselves autochthonous, and took a pride in believing that they sprang from the soil on which they lived. and this is also the case with ruder races, unless where the migrations and conquests recorded are of very recent date. thus ancient egypt believed itself to be autochthonous, and traced the origin of arts and sciences to native gods. chaldæa, according to berosus, was inhabited from time immemorial by a mixed multitude, and though oannes brought letters and arts from the shores of the persian gulf, he taught them to a previously existing population. this is the more remarkable as the name of accad and the form of the oldest accadian hieroglyphics make it almost certain that they had migrated into mesopotamia from the highlands of kurdistan or of central asia. the athenians also and other greek tribes all claimed to be autochthonous, and their legends of men springing from the stones of deucalion, and from the dragon's teeth of cadmus, all point in the same direction. the great aryan races also have no trustworthy traditions of any ancient migrations from asia into europe, or _vice versâ_, and their languages seem to denote a common residence during the formation of the different dialects in those regions of northern europe and southern russia in which we find them living when we first catch sight of them. the only exception to this is in the record in the zendavesta of successive migrations from the pamer or altai, down the oxus and jaxartes into bactria, and from thence into persia. but this is not found in the original portion of the zendavesta, and only in later commentaries on it, and is very probably a legend introduced to exemplify the constant warfare between ormuzd and ahriman. the hindoo vedas contain no history, and the inference that the aryans lived in the punjaub when the rig-veda was composed, and conquered hindostan later, is derived from the references contained in the oldest hymns which point to that conclusion, rather than from any definite historical record. rome again had no tradition of umbrian pile-dwellers descending from neolithic switzerland, expelling iberians, and being themselves expelled by etruscans. it is singular, considering the almost total absence of genuine historical traditions, how certain myths and usages have been universally diffused, and come down to the present day from a very remote antiquity. the identity of the days of the week, based on a highly artificial and complicated calculation of chaldæan astrology, has been already referred to as a striking instance of the wide diffusion of astronomical myths in very early times. many of the most popular nursery tales also, such as jack the giant-killer, jack and the beanstalk, and cinderella, are found almost in the same form in the most remote regions and among the most various races, both civilized and uncivilized, and many of them are obviously derived from the oldest and simplest forms of solar myths. i come now to the tradition of a deluge, which is most important both on account of its prevalence among a number of different races and nations, often remote from one another, and because it affords the most immediate and crucial test of the claim of the bible to be taken as a literally true and inspired account, not only of matters of moral and religious import, but of all the historical and scientific facts recorded in its pages. the confession of faith of an able and excellent man, the late mr. spurgeon, and adopted by fifteen or twenty other nonconformist ministers, says-- "we avow our firmest belief in the verbal inspiration of all holy scripture as originally given. to us the bible does not merely _contain_ the word of god, but _is_ the word of god." following this example, thirty-eight clergymen of the church of england have put forward a similar declaration. they say-- "we solemnly profess and declare our unfeigned belief in all the canonical scriptures of the old and new testaments, as handed down to us by the undivided church in the original languages. we believe that they are inspired by the holy ghost; that they are what they profess to be; that they mean what they say; and that they declare incontrovertibly the actual historical truth in all records, both of past events, and of the delivery of predictions to be thereafter fulfilled." it is perfectly obvious that for those who accept these confessions of faith, not only the so-called "higher biblical criticism," but all the discoveries of modern science, from galileo and newton down to lyall and darwin, are simple delusions. there can be no question that if the words of the old testament are "literally inspired," and "mean what they say," they oppose an inflexible _non possumus_ to all the most certain discoveries of astronomy, geology, zoology, biology, egyptology, assyriology, and other modern sciences. now the account of the deluge in genesis affords the readiest means of bringing this theory to the test, and proving or disproving it, by the process which euclid calls the _reductio ad absurdum_. not that other narratives, such as those of the creation in genesis, do not contain as startling contradictions, if we keep in mind the assertion of the orthodox thirty-eight, that the inspired words of the old testament "mean what they say," _i.e._ that they mean what they were necessarily taken to mean by contemporaries and long subsequent generations; for instance, that if the inspired writer says days defined by a morning and an evening, he means natural days, and not indefinitely long periods. but this is just what the defenders of orthodoxy always ignore, and all the attempts at reconciling the accounts of creation in genesis with the conclusions of science turn on the assumption that the inspired writers do _not_ "mean what they say," but something entirely different. if they say "days," they mean geological periods of which no reader had the remotest conception until the present century. if they say that light was made before the sun, and the earth before the sun, moon, and stars, they really mean, in some unexplained way, to indicate newton's law of gravity, laplace's nebular theory, and the discoveries of the spectroscope. by using words therefore in a non-natural sense, and surrounding them with a halo of mystical and misty eloquence, they evade bringing the pleadings to a distinct and definite issue such as the popular mind can at once understand. but in the case of the deluge no such evasion is possible. the narrative is a specific statement of facts alleged to have occurred at a comparatively recent date, not nearly so remote as the historical records of egypt and chaldæa, and which beyond all question must be either true or false. but if false, there is an end of any attempt to consider the whole scientific and historical portions of the bible as written by divine inspiration; for the narrative is not one of trivial importance, but of what is really a second creation of all life, including man, from a single or very few pairs miraculously preserved and radiating from a single centre.[ ] [ ] the following arguments so closely resemble those of professor huxley in a recent article in the _nineteenth century_, that it may be well to state that they were written before i had seen that article. i insert them not as attempting to vie with the greatest living master of english prose, but as showing that the same conclusions inevitably force themselves on all who understand the first rudiments of modern science. consider then what the narrative of the deluge really tells us. first, as to date. the hebrew bible, from which our own is translated, gives the names of the ten generations from noah to abraham, with the precise dates of each birth and death, making the total number of years from the flood to abraham. for abraham, assuming him to be historical, we have a synchronism which fixes the date within narrow limits. he was a contemporary of chedorlaomer, or khuder-lagomar, known to us from chaldæan inscriptions as one of the last of the elamite dynasty, who subverted the old dynasty in the year b.c., and who reigned for years. abraham's date is, therefore, approximately about b.c., and that of the deluge about b.c. the septuagint version assigns years more than that of the hebrew bible for the interval between abraham and noah; but this is only done by increasing the already fabulous age of the patriarchs. accepting, however, this septuagint version, though it has been constantly repudiated by the jews themselves, and by nearly all christian authorities from st. jerome down to archbishop usher, the date of the deluge cannot be carried further back than to about b.c., a date at least , and more probably , years later than that shown by the records and monuments of egypt and chaldæa, when great empires, populous cities, and a high degree of civilization already existed in those countries. the statement of the bible, therefore, is that, at a date not earlier than b.c., or at the very earliest b.c., a deluge occurred which "covered all the high hills that were under the whole heaven," and prevailed upon the earth for days before it began to subside; that seven months and sixteen days elapsed before the tops of the mountains were first seen; and that only after twelve months and ten days from the commencement of the flood was the earth sufficiently dried to allow noah and the inmates of the ark to leave it. naturally all life was destroyed, with the exception of noah and those who were with him in the ark, consisting of his wife, his three sons and their wives, and pairs, male and female, of all beasts, fowls, and creeping things; or, as another account has it, seven pairs of clean beasts and of birds, and single pairs of unclean beasts and creeping things. the statement is absolutely specific: "all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon earth, and every man." and again: "every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both men and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven, and they were destroyed from the earth; and noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark." and finally, when the ark was opened, "god spake unto noah and said, go forth of the ark, thou and thy wife, and thy sons and sons' wives with thee. bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, that they may breed abundantly on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply upon the earth." it is evident that such a narrative cannot be tortured into any reminiscence of a partial and local inundation. it might possibly be taken for a poetical exaggeration of some vague myth or tradition of a local flood, if it were found in the legends of some early races, or semi-civilized tribes. but such an interpretation is impossible when the narrative is taken, as orthodox believers take it, as a divinely-inspired and literally true account contained in one of the most important chapters in the history of the relations of man to god. in this view it is a still more signal instance than the fall of adam, of god's displeasure with sin and its disastrous consequences, of his justice and mercy in sparing the innocent and rewarding righteousness; it establishes a new departure for the human race, a new distinction between the chosen people of israel and the accursed canaanites, based not on cain's murder of abel, but on ham's irreverence towards his father; and it introduces a covenant between god and noah, which continued through abraham and david, and became the basis of jewish nationality and of the christian dispensation. if in such a narrative there are manifest errors, the theory of divine inspiration obviously breaks down, and the book which contains it must be amenable to the ordinary rules of historical criticism. now, that no such deluge as that described in genesis ever took place is as certain as that the earth moves about the sun. physical science tells us that it never _could_ have occurred; geology, zoology, ethnology, and history all tell us alike that it never _did_ occur. physical science tells us two things about water: that it cannot be made out of nothing, and that it always finds its level. in order to cover the highest mountains on the earth and remain stationary at that level for months, we must suppose an uniform shell of water of six miles in depth to be added to the existing water of the earth. even if we take ararat as the highest mountain covered, the shell must have been three miles in thickness over the whole globe. where did this water come from, and where did it go to? rain is simply water raised from the seas by evaporation, and is returned to them by rivers. it does not add a single drop of water to that already existing on the earth and in its atmosphere. the heaviest rains do nothing but swell rivers and inundate the adjacent flat lands to a depth of a few feet, which rapidly subsides. the only escape from this law of nature is to suppose some sudden convulsion, such as a change in the position of the earth's axis of rotation, by which the existing waters of the earth were drained in some latitudes and heaped up in others. but any such local accumulation of water implies a sudden and violent rush to heap it up in forty days, and an equally violent rush to run it down to its old level when the disturbing cause ceased, as it must have done in days. such a disturbance in recent times is not only inconsistent with all known facts, but with the positive statement of the narrative that the whole earth was covered, and that the ark floated quietly on the waters, drifting slowly northwards, until it grounded on ararat. the only other alternative is to suppose a subsidence of the land below the level of the sea. but a subsidence which carried a whole continent , , or even feet down, followed by an elevation which brought it back to the old level, both accomplished within the space of twelve months, is even more impossible than a cataclysmal deluge of water. such movements are now, and have been throughout all the geological periods, excessively slow, and certainly not exceeding, at the very outside, a few feet in a century. and, if physical science shows that no such deluge as that described in genesis could have occurred, geology is equally positive that it never did occur. the drift and boulders which cover a great part of europe and north america are beyond all doubt glacial, and not diluvial. they are strictly limited by the extension of glaciers and ice-sheets, and of the streams flowing from them. the high-level gravels in which human remains are found in conjunction with those of extinct animals, are the result of the erosion of valleys by rivers. they are not marine, they are interstratified with beds of sand and silt, containing often delicate fluviatile shells, which were deposited when the stream ran tranquilly, as the coarser gravels were when it ran with a stronger torrent. and the gravels of adjacent valleys, even when separated by a low water-shed, are not intermixed, but each composed of the _débris_ of its own system of drainage, by which small rivers like the somme and the avon have, in the course of ages, scooped out their present valleys to an extent of more than feet in depth and two miles in width. masses of loose sand, volcanic ashes, and other incoherent materials of tertiary formation remain on the surface, which must have been swept away by anything resembling a diluvial wave. and, above all, egypt and other flat countries adjoining the sea, such as the deltas of the euphrates, the ganges, and the mississippi, which must have been submerged by a slight elevation of the sea or subsidence of the land, show by borings, carried in some cases to the depth of feet and upwards, nothing but an accumulation of such tranquil deposits as are now going on, continued for hundreds of centuries, and uninterrupted by anything like a marine or diluvial deposit. zoology is even more emphatic than geology in showing the impossibility of accepting the narrative of the deluge as a true representation of actual events. whoever wrote it must have had ideas of science as infantile as those of the children who are amused by a toy ark in the nursery. his range of vision could hardly have extended beyond the confines of his own country. and, if a _reductio ad absurdum_ were needed of the fallacies to which reconcilers are driven, it would be afforded by sir j. dawson's comparison of the ark to an american cattle-steamer. recollect that the date assigned to the deluge affords no time for the development of new species and races, since every "living substance was destroyed that was upon the face of the ground," except the pairs preserved in the ark. it is a question, therefore, not of one pair of bears, but of many--polar, grizzly, brown, and all the varieties, down to the pigmy bear of sumatra. so of cattle: there must have been not only pairs of the wild and domestic species of europe, but of the gaur of india, the brahmin bull, the yak, the musk-ox, and of all the many species of buffaloes and bisons. if we take the larger animals only, there must have been several pairs of elephants, rhinoceroses, camels, horses, oxen, buffaloes, elk, deer and antelopes, apes, zebras, and innumerable others of the herbivora, to say nothing of lions, tigers, and other carnivora. let any one calculate the cubic space which such a collection would require for a year's voyage under hatches, and he will see at once the absurdity of supposing that they could have been stowed away in the ark. and this is only the beginning of the difficulty, for all the smaller animals, all birds, and all creeping things have also to be accommodated, and to live together for a year under conditions of temperature and otherwise which, if suited for some, must inevitably have been fatal for others. how did polar bears, lemmings, and snowy owls live in a temperature suited for monkeys and humming-birds? then there is the crowning difficulty of the food. go to the zoological gardens, and inquire as to the quantity and bulk of a year's rations for elephants, giraffes, and lions, or multiply by the daily allowance of hay and oats for horses, and of grass of green food for bullocks, and he will soon find that the bulk required for food is far greater than that of the animals. and what did the birds and creeping things feed upon? were there rats and mice for the owls, gnats for the swallows, worms and butterflies for the thrushes, and generally a supply of insects for the lizards, toads, and other insectivora, whether birds, reptiles, or mammals? and of the humbler forms which live on microscopic animals and on each other, were they also included in the destruction of "every living substance," and was the earth repeopled with them from the single centre of ararat? here also zoology has a decisive word to say. the earth could not have been repeopled, within any recent geological time, from any single centre, for in point of fact it is divided into distinct zoological provinces. the fauna of australia, for instance, is totally different from that of europe, asia, and america. how did the kangaroo get there, if he is descended from a pair preserved in the ark? did he perchance jump at one bound from ararat to the antipodes? ethnology again takes up a limited branch of the same subject, but one which is more immediately interesting to us--that of the variety of human races. the narrative of genesis states positively that "every man in whose nostrils was the breath of life" was destroyed by the flood, except those who were saved in the ark, and that "the whole earth was overspread" of the three sons of noah--shem, ham, and japheth. that is, it asserts distinctly that all the varieties of the human race have descended from one common ancestor, noah, who lived not more than years ago. consider the vast variety and diversity of human races existing now, and in some of the most typical instances shown by egyptian and chaldæan monuments to have existed before noah was born--the black and woolly-haired negroes, the yellow mongolians, the australians, the negritos, the hottentots, the pygmies of stanley's african forest, the esquimaux, the american red indians, and an immense number of others, differing fundamentally from one another in colour, stature, language, and almost every trait, physical and moral. to suppose these to have all descended from a single pair, noah and his wife, and to have "spread over the whole earth" from ararat, since years b.c., is simply absurd. no man of good faith can honestly say that he believes it to be true; and, if not true, what becomes of inspiration? if anything were wanting to complete the demonstration, it would be furnished by history. we have perfectly authentic historical records, confirmed by monuments, extending in egypt to a date certainly years older than that assigned for noah's deluge; and similar records in chaldæa probably going back as far. in none of these is there any mention of an universal deluge as an historical event actually occurring within the period of time embraced by those records. the only reference to such a deluge is contained in one chapter of a chaldæan epic poem based on a solar myth, and placed in an immense and fabulous antiquity. in egypt the case is, if possible, even stronger, for here the configuration of the nile valley is such that anything approaching an universal deluge must have destroyed all traces of civilization, and buried the country thousands of feet under a deep ocean. even a very great local inundation must have spread devastation far and wide and been a memorable event in all subsequent annals. when remarkable natural events, such as earthquakes, did occur, they are mentioned in the annals of the reigning king, but no mention is made of any deluge. on the contrary, all the records and monuments confirm the statement made by the priests of heliopolis to herodotus when they showed him the statues of the successive high priests who had all been "mortal men, sons of mortal men," that during this long period there had been no change in the average duration of human life, and no departure from the ordinary course of nature. when this historical evidence is added to that of geology, which shows that nothing resembling a deluge could have occurred in the valleys of the nile or euphrates without leaving unmistakable traces of its passage which are totally absent, the demonstration seems as conclusive as that of any of the propositions of euclid. it remains to consider how so many traditions of a deluge should be found among so many different races often so widely separated. there are three ways in which deluge-myths must have been inevitably originated. . from tradition of destructive local floods. . from the presence of marine shells on what is now dry land. . from the diffusion of solar myths like that of izdubar. there can be no doubt that destructive local floods must have frequently occurred in ancient and prehistoric times as they do at the present day. such an inundation as that of the yang-tse-kiang, which only the other year was said to have destroyed half a million of people, or the hurricane wave which swept over the sunderbunds, must have left an impression which, among isolated and illiterate people, might readily take the form of an universal deluge. and such catastrophes must have been specially frequent in the early post-glacial period, when the ice-dams, which converted many valleys into lakes, were melting. but i am inclined to doubt whether the tradition of such local floods was ever preserved long enough to account for deluge-myths. all experience shows that the memory of historical events fades away with surprising rapidity when it is not preserved by written records. if, as xenophon records, all memory of the great city of nineveh had disappeared in years after its destruction, how can it be expected that oral tradition shall preserve a recollection of prehistoric local floods magnified into universal deluges? and when the deluge-myths of different nations are examined closely, it generally appears that they have had an origin rather in solar myths or cosmogonical speculations, than in actual facts. for instance, the tradition of a deluge in mexico has often been referred to as a confirmation of the noachian flood. but when looked into, it appears that this mexican deluge was only a part of their mythical cosmogony which told of four successive destructions and renovations of the world by the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water. the first period being closed by earthquakes, the second by hurricanes, the third by volcanoes, it did not require any local tradition to ensure the fourth being closed by a flood. again, deluge-myths must have inevitably arisen from the presence of marine shells, fossil and recent, in many localities where they were too numerous to escape notice. if palæolithic stone implements and bones of fossil elephants gave rise to myths of thunderbolts and giants, sea-shells on mountain-tops must have given rise to speculations as to deluges. at the very beginning of history, egyptian and chaldæan astronomers were sufficiently advanced in science to wish to account for such phenomena, and to argue that where sea-shells were found the sea must once have been. many of the deluge-myths of antiquity, such as that of deucalion and pyrrha, look very much as if this had been their origin. they are too different from the chaldæan and biblical deluge, as for instance in repeopling the world by stones, to have been copied from the same original, and they fit in with the very general belief of ancient nations that they were autochthonous. in a majority of cases, however, i believe it will be found that deluge-myths have originated from some transmission, more or less distorted, of the very ancient chaldæan astronomical myths of the passage of the sun through the signs of the zodiac. this is clearly the case in the hindoo mythology, where the fish-god ea-han, or oannes, is introduced as a divine fish who swims up to the ark and guides it to a place of refuge. the legend in genesis is much closer to the original myth, and in fact almost identical with that of the deluge of hasisadra in the chaldæan epic, discovered by mr. george smith among the clay tablets in the british museum. this poem was obviously based on an astronomical myth. it was in twelve chapters, dedicated to the sun's passage through the twelve signs of the zodiac. the adventures of izdubar, like those of heracles, have obvious reference to these signs, and to the sun's birth, growth, summer splendour, decline to the tomb when smitten with the sickness of approaching winter by the incensed nature-goddess, and final new birth and resurrection from the nether world. the deluge is introduced as an episode told to izdubar during his descent to the lower regions by his ancestor hasisadra, one of the god-kings, who are said to have reigned for periods of tens of thousands of years in a fabulous antiquity. it has every appearance of being a myth to commemorate the sun's passage through the rainy sign of aquarius, just as the contests of izdubar and heracles with leo, taurus, draco, sagittarius, etc., symbolize his passage through other zodiacal constellations. it forms the eleventh chapter of the epic of izdubar, corresponding to the eleventh month of the chaldæan year, which was the time of heavy rains and floods. now, this deluge of hasisadra, as related by berosus, and still more distinctly by smith's izdubar tablets, corresponds so closely with that of noah that no doubt can remain that one is taken from the other. all the principal incidents and the order of events are the same, and even particular expressions, such as the dove finding no rest for the sole of her foot, are so identical as to show that they must have been taken from the same written record. even the name noah is that of nouah, the semitic translation of the accadian god who presided over the realm of water, and navigated the bark or ark of the sun across it, when returning from its setting in the west to its rising in the east. the chief difference is the same as in the chaldæan and biblical cosmogonies of the creation of the universe--viz. that the former is polytheistic, and the latter monotheistic. where the former talks of bel, ea, and istar, the latter attributes everything to jehovah or elohim. thus the warning to hasisadra is given in a dream sent by ea, who is a sort of chaldæan prometheus, or kindly god, who wishes to save mankind from the total destruction contemplated by the wrathful superior god, bel; while in genesis it is "elohim said unto noah." in genesis the altar is built to the lord, who smells the sweet savour of the sacrifice, while in the chaldæan legend the altar is built to the seven gods, who "smelt the sweet savour of sacrifice, and swarmed like bees about it." the chaldæan narrative is more prolix, more realistic, and, on the whole, more scientific. that is, it mitigates some of the more obvious impossibilities of the noachian narrative. instead of an ark, there is a ship with a steersman, which was certainly more likely to survive the perils of a long voyage on the stormy waters of an universal ocean. the duration of the deluge and of the voyage is shortened from a year to a little more than a month; more human beings are saved, as hasisadra takes on board not his own family only, but several of his friends and relations; and the difficulty of repeopling the earth from a single centre is diminished by throwing the date of the deluge back to an immense and mythical antiquity. on the other hand, the moral and religious significance of the legend is accentuated in the hebrew narrative. it is no longer the capricious anger of an offended bel which decrees the destruction of mankind, but the righteous indignation of the one supreme god against sin, tempered by justice and mercy towards the upright man who was "perfect in his generations." if we had to decide on internal evidence only, there could be little doubt that the hebrew narrative is of much later date than the chaldæan. it is, in fact, very much what might be expected from a revised edition of it, made at the date which is assigned by all competent critics for the first collection of the legends and traditions of the hebrew people into a sacred book--viz. at or about the date when the first mention is made of such a book as being discovered in the temple in the reign of josiah. kuenen, wellhausen, and other leading authorities place the date of the elohistic and jehovistic narratives, which include the creation and deluge, even later; and, if not compiled during or after the babylonian captivity, they were certainly revised, and have come down to us in their present form after that event. even the most orthodox critics, such as dillman and canon driver, admit that they were written in the golden age of hebrew literature, and in the spirit of the later prophets, such as isaiah and jeremiah, and do not think it possible to assign to them an earlier date than or b.c., while many parts may be much later. but the question is not one of internal evidence only, but of the positive fact that, even if these chapters of genesis were written by moses, or about b.c., and even accepting the septuagint addition of years to the already mythical duration of the lives of the patriarchs, the date of the biblical deluge cannot be carried back beyond or b.c., while a practically identical account of the same event is given, as a legendary episode of fabulous antiquity, in an epic poem, based on a solar myth, which was certainly reduced to writing many centuries before the earliest possible date of the scriptural deluge. it is absolutely certain also that the egyptian records and traditions, which extend in an uninterrupted succession of dynasties and kings for at least years before this alleged universal deluge, know nothing whatever of such an event; and, on the contrary, assume an unvarying continuance of the ordinary laws of nature. i have dwelt at such length on the deluge because it affords a crucial test of the dogma of divine inspiration for the whole of the bible. the account of the creation may be obscured by forced interpretations and misty eloquence; but there can be no mistake as to the specific and precise statements respecting the second creation of man and of animal life. either they are true or untrue; and the issue is one upon which any unprejudiced mind of ordinary intelligence and information can arrive at a conclusive verdict. if there never was an universal deluge within historical times; if the highest mountains were never covered; if all life was never destroyed, except the contents of the ark; if the whole animal creation, including beasts, birds, and creeping things, never lived together for twelve months cooped up in it; and if the earth was not repeopled with all the varieties of the human race, and all the orders, genera, and species of animal life, from a single centre at ararat, then the bible is not inspired as regards its scientific and historical statements. this, however, in no way affects the question of the inspiration of the religious and moral portions of the bible. i have sometimes thought how, if i were an advocate stating the case for the inspiration of the bible, i should be inclined to put it. i should start with bishop temple's definition of the first cause, a personal god, with faculties like ours, but so transcendentally greater that he had no occasion to be perpetually patching and mending his work, but did everything by an original impress, which included all subsequent evolution, as the nucleolus in the primitive ovum includes the whole evolution and subsequent life of the chicken, mammal, or man. i should go on to say that the bible has clearly been an important factor in this evolution of the human race; that it consists of two portions--one of moral and religious import, the other of scientific statements and theories, relating to such matters of purely human reason as astronomy, geology, literary criticism, and ancient history; and that these two parts are essentially different. it is quite conceivable that, on the hypothesis of a divine creator, one step in the majestic evolution from the original impress should have been that men of genius and devout nature should write books containing juster notions of man's relations to his maker than prevailed in the polytheisms of early civilizations, and thus gradually educating a peculiar people who accepted these writings as sacred, and preparing the ground for a still higher and purer religion. but it is not conceivable that this, which may be called inspiration, of the religious and moral teaching, should have been extended to closing the record of all human discovery and progress, by teaching, as it were by rote, all that subsequent generations have, after long and painful effort, found out for themselves. in point of fact, the bible does not teach such truths, for in the domain of science it is full of the most obvious errors, and teaches nothing but what were the primitive myths, legends, and traditions of the early races. it is to be observed also that, on the theory of "original impress," those errors are just as much a part of the evolution of the divine idea as the moral and religious truths. those who insist that all of the bible must be inspired or none, remind me of the king who said that, if god had only consulted him in his scheme of creation, he could have saved him from a good many mistakes. it is not difficult to understand how, even if we assume the theory of inspiration, or of original impress, for the religious portion of the bible, the other or scientific portion should have been purposely left open to all the errors and contradictions of the human intellect in its early strivings to arrive at some sort of conception of the origin of things, and of the laws of the universe. and also that a collection of narratives of different dates and doubtful authorship should bear on the face of them evidence of the writers sharing in the errors and prejudices, and generally adopting points of view of successive generations of contemporaries. assuming this theory, i can only say for myself that the removal of the wet blanket of literal inspiration makes me turn to the bible with increased interest. it is a most valuable record of the ways of thinking, and of the early conceptions of religion and science in the ancient world, and a most instructive chapter in the history of the evolution of the human mind from lower to higher things. above all, it is a record of the preparation of the soil, in a peculiar race, for christianity, which has been and is such an important factor in the history of the foremost races and highest civilizations. with all the errors and absurdities, all the crimes and cruelties which have attached themselves to it, but which in the light of science and free thought are rapidly being sloughed off, it cannot be denied that the european, and especially our english-speaking races, stand on a higher platform than if gibbon's suggestion had been realized, the arabs had been victorious at tours, and moslem ulemas had been expounding the koran at the university of oxford. chapter vii. the historical element in the old testament. moral and religious distinct from historical inspiration--myth and allegory--the higher criticism--all ancient history unconfirmed by monuments untrustworthy--cyrus--old testament and monuments--jerusalem--tablet of tell-el-amarna--flinders petrie's exploration of pre-hebrew cities--ramses and pi-thom--first certain synchronism rehoboam--composite structure of old testament--elohist and jehovist--priests' code--canon driver--results--book of chronicles--methods of jewish historians--post-exilic references--tradition of esdras--nehemiah and ezra--foundation of modern judaism--different from pre-exilic--discovery of book of the law under josiah--deuteronomy--earliest sacred writings--conclusions--aristocratic and prophetic schools--triumph of pietism with exile--both compiled partly from old materials--crudeness and barbarism of parts--pre-abrahamic period clearly mythical--derived from chaldæa--abraham--unhistoric character--his age--lot's wife--his double adventure with sarah--abraham to moses--sojourn in egypt--discordant chronology--josephus' quotation from manetho--small traces of egyptian influence--future life--legend of joseph--moses--osarsiph--life of moses full of fabulous legends--his birth--plagues of egypt--the exodus--colenso--contradictions and impossibilities--immoralities--massacres--joshua and the judges--barbarisms and absurdities--only safe conclusion no history before the monarchy--david and solomon--comparatively modern date. in dealing with the historical portion of the old testament, it is important to keep clearly in view the distinction between the historical and the religious and moral elements which are contained in the collection of works comprised in it. it is quite open to any one to hold that a certain moral and religious idea runs through the whole of these writings, which is gradually developed from rude beginnings into pure and lofty views of an almighty god who created all things, and who loves justice and mercy better than the blood of bulls and rams. it is open to him to call this inspiration, and to see it also in the series of influences and events by which the jews were moulded into a peculiar people, through whose instrumentality the three great monotheistic religions of the world, judaism, christianity, and mahometanism, superseded the older forms of polytheism. with inspiration in this sense i have no quarrel, any more than i have with bishop temple's definition of "original impress," though possibly i might think "evolution" a more modest term to apply, with our limited faculties and knowledge, to that "unceasing purpose" which the poet tells us "through the ages runs, and the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns." but admitting this, i do not see how any candid man, who is at all acquainted with the results of modern science and of historical criticism, can doubt that the materials with which this edifice was gradually built up, consist, to a great extent, of myths, legends, and traditions of rude and unscientific ages which have no pretension to be true statements, or real history. after all this is only applying to the old, the same principles of interpretation as are applied to the new testament. if the theory of literal inspiration requires us to accept the manifest impossibilities of noah's deluge, why does it not equally compel us to believe that there really was a certain rich man who fared sumptuously every day, a beggar named lazarus, and definite localities of a heaven and hell within speaking distance of one another, though separated by an impassable gulf. the assertion is made positively and without any reservation. there _was_ a rich man; lazarus _died, and was carried to abraham's bosom_; and dives _cried_ to abraham, who _answered him in a detailed colloquy_. but common sense steps in and says, all this never actually occurred, but was invented to illustrate by a parable the moral truth that it is wrong for the selfish rich to neglect the suffering poor. why should not common sense equally step in, and say of the narrative of the garden of eden with its trees of knowledge and of life, that here is an obvious allegory, stating the problem which has perplexed so many generations of men, of the origin of evil, man's dual nature, and how to reconcile the _fact_ of the existence of sin and suffering with the _theory_ of a benevolent and omnipotent creator? or again, why hesitate to admit that the story of the deluge is not literal history, but a version of a chapter of an old chaldæan solar epic, revised in a monotheistic sense, and used for the purpose of impressing the lesson that the ways of sin are ways of destruction, and that righteousness is the true path of safety? this is in effect what continental critics have long recognized, and what the most liberal and learned anglican divines of the present day are beginning to recognize; and we find men like canon driver, professor of hebrew at oxford, and canon cheyne, insisting on "the fundamental importance of disengaging the religious from the critical and historical problems of the old testament." we hear a great deal about the "higher criticism," and those who dislike its conclusions try to represent it as something very obscure and unintelligible, spun from the inner consciousness of german pedants. but really there is nothing obscure about it. it is simply the criticism of common sense applied from a higher point of view, which embraces, not the immediate subject only, but all branches of human knowledge which are related to it. this new criticism bears the same relation to the old, as mommsen's _history of rome_ does to the school-boy manuals which used to assume romulus and remus, numa and tarquin, as real men who lived and reigned just as certainly as julius cæsar and augustus, and who found nothing to stagger them in livy's speaking oxen. this criticism has now been carried so far by the labours of a number of earnest and learned men in all the principal countries of europe for the last century, that it has become to a great extent one of the modern sciences, and although there are still differences as to details, the leading outlines are no more in dispute than those of geology or biology. the conclusions of enlightened english divines like canons driver and cheyne are practically very nearly the same as those of foreign professors, like kuenen, welhausen, dillman, and renan, and any one who wishes to have any intelligent understanding of the hebrew bible must take them into consideration. although the old testament does not carry history back nearly as far as the records of egypt and chaldæa, still, when freed from the incubus of literal inspiration, it affords a very interesting picture of the ways of thinking of ancient races, of their manners and customs, their first attempts to solve problems of science and philosophy, and of their popular legends and traditions. it is with these historical results only that i propose to deal, and this not in the way of minute criticism, but of the broad, common-sense aspects of the question, and in view of the salient facts which rise up like guiding pillars in the vast mass of literature on the subject, of which it may be said, in the words of st. john's gospel, that if all that has been written were collected, "i suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books." i may begin by referring to the extreme uncertainty that attaches to all ancient history unless it is confirmed by monuments, or by comparison with annals of other nations which have been so confirmed. the instance of cyrus is a most instructive one. here is one of the greatest conquerors the world has seen, and the founder of a mighty empire; who flourished at a comparatively recent period, and whose life and exploits are related by well-known historians, such as herodotus, who wrote within a few generations after his death; confirmed also to a great extent by almost contemporary records of hebrew writers who were in close relations with him. the picture given of him is that of the son of a median princess by an obscure persian; in common with so many of the gods and heroes of antiquity, he is said to have been exposed in infancy and saved miraculously or marvellously; he incites the poor and hardy people of persia to revolt; defeats the medes, consolidates media and persia, conquers lydia and all asia minor; and finally, as the "servant of the most high god," and instrument of his vengeance on babylon, takes and destroys the cruel city of nebuchadnezzar, and allows the jews to return from exile out of sympathy with their religion. unexpectedly a tablet of cyrus himself turns up, and plays havoc alike with prophets and historians instead of being the son of an obscure persian father, he proves to be the legitimate descendant of a long line of elamite kings; instead of being a servant of the most high god, or even a zoroastrian, he appears as a devoted worshipper of the chaldæan gods, assur, merodach, and nebo; so far from being an instrument of divine vengeance for the destruction of babylon, he enters it without a battle, and is welcomed by its priests and people as an orthodox deliverer from the heretical tendencies of the last native king nabonidus. it is apparent from this and other records, that darius and not cyrus was the real founder of the persian empire. cyrus indeed founded a great empire, but it fell to pieces after the death of his son cambyses and the usurpation of the magi, and it was darius who, after years of hard fighting, suppressed revolts, really besieged and took babylon, and reconstituted the empire, which now for the first time became persian and zoroastrian. such an example teaches us to regard with considerable doubt all history prior to the fifth or sixth century b.c. which is not confirmed by contemporary monuments. of such nations, egypt and chaldæa (including in the latter term assyria) alone give us a series of annals, proved by monuments confirming native historians, which extend for some years back, from the commencement of what may be called the modern and scientific history of the greek period. the historical portion of the old testament is singularly deficient in this essential point of confirmation by monumental evidence. of hebrew inscriptions there are none except that of the time of hezekiah in the tunnel which brought water from the pool of siloam into the city; and the moabite stone, which confirms the narrative in kings of the siege of rabbah by jehoshaphat and jehoram, and their repulse after the sacrifice of his eldest son in sight of the armies by the king of moab. both of these inscriptions are of comparatively modern date, and close to or within the period when contact with the assyrian empire removes all uncertainty as to the history of judæa and israel under their later kings. the capture of jerusalem by david and the building of the temple there by solomon are doubtless historical facts, but they cannot be said to receive any additional confirmation from monuments. there have been so many destructions and rebuildings of temples on this site, that it is difficult to say to what era the lower strata belong. it is apparent, moreover, from the egyptian tablets of tel-el-amarna, the city founded by the heretic king, amenophis iv., about b.c., that jerusalem was a well-known city and sacred shrine prior to the hebrew conquest, and even to the date of the exodus. professor sayce tells us that on one of these tablets is written, "the city of the mountain of jerusalem (or urasalim), the city of the temple of the god uras, whose name there is marra, the city of the king, which adjoins the locality of the men of keilah." uras was a babylonian deity, and marra is probably the aramaic mare, "lord," from which it may be conjectured that mount moriah received its name from the temple of uras which stood there. some of the other tablets show that in the century before the exodus, jerusalem was occupied by a semi-independent king, who claimed to have derived his authority from "the oracle of the mighty king," which is explained to mean a deity, though he acknowledged the superiority of egypt, which still retained the conquests of the eighteenth dynasty in palestine. this, however, relates not to the hebrews, but to the state of things prior to their invasion, when palestine was occupied by comparatively civilized races of amorites and canaanites, and studded with numerous fenced cities. a glimpse at the later state of things, when those earlier nations and cities were overwhelmed by an invasion of a rude nomad race, as described in the books of joshua and judges, has been afforded quite recently by the exploration by mr. flinders petrie of a mound on the plain of southern judæa, which he is disposed to identify with the ancient lachish. a section of this mound has been exposed by the action of a brook, and it shows, as in dr. schliemann's excavations on the supposed site of troy at hissarlik, several successive occupations. the lowest and earliest city was fortified by a wall of sun-burnt bricks, feet inches thick, and which still stands to a height of feet. it shows signs of great antiquity, having been twice repaired, and a large accumulation of broken pottery was found both outside and within it. this city, which petrie identifies with one of those amorite cities which were "walled up to heaven," had been taken and destroyed, and the wall had fallen into ruins. then, to use professor sayce's words, "came a period when the site was occupied by rude herdsmen, unskilled in the arts either of making bricks or of fortifying towns. their huts were built of mud and rolled stones from the wady below, and resembled the wretched shanties of the half-savage bedouins, which we may still see on the outskirts of the holy land. they must have been inhabited by the invading israelitish tribes, who had overthrown the civilization which had long existed in the cities of canaan, and were still in a state of nomadic barbarism." above this come newer walls, which had been built and repaired three or four times over by the jewish kings, one of the later rebuildings being a massive brick wall feet thick, with a glacis of large blocks of polished stone traced to a height of feet, which petrie refers to the reign of manasseh. then comes a destruction, probably by the assyrians under sennacherib, and then other buildings of minor importance, the latest being those of a colony of greeks, who were swept away before the age of alexander the great. this discovery is of first-rate importance as regards the early history of the hebrews, and especially as to their relations with egypt, their sojourn there, and the exodus. if abraham really came from ur of chaldæa, the seat of a very old civilization; and if his descendants really lived for years or longer in egypt, mixed up a good deal with the native population, and for a great part of the time treated with favour, and occupying, if the legend of joseph be true, the highest posts in the land; and if they really left egypt, as described in the exodus, laden with the spoils of the egyptians, and led by moses, a priest of heliopolis skilled in all the lore of that ancient temple, it is inconceivable that in a single generation they should have sunk to such a level as that of the half-savage bedouins, as indicated by petrie's researches. and yet who else could have been the barbarians whose inroad destroyed the walled city of the amorites; and how well does this condition of rude savagery correspond with the bloodthirsty massacres, and the crude superstitions, which meet us at every turn in the traditions of the period between the departure from egypt and the establishment of a monarchy, which have been used by the compilers of the books of exodus, joshua, and judges? if we are ever to know anything beyond legend and conjecture as to this obscure period, it is to the pick and the spade that we must look for certain information, and the exploration of mounds of ruined cities must either confirm or modify petrie's inference as to the extreme rudeness of the nomad tribes who broke in upon the civilized inhabitants of older races. another exploration by mr. flinders petrie, that of the ruins of pi-thom and ramses, gives a certain amount of monumental confirmation to the statement in exodus i. , that during the captivity of the israelites in egypt they were employed as slaves by ramses ii. in building two treasure cities, ramses and pi-thom. some wall-paintings show slaves or forced labourers, of a jewish cast of countenance, working at the brick walls under the sticks of taskmasters. the first certain synchronism, however, between the egyptian monuments and jewish history is afforded by the capture of jerusalem by shishak in the reign of rehoboam in the year b.c. among the wall-paintings in the temple at thebes commemorating the triumphs of this campaign of shishak, is a portrait of a captive with jewish features, inscribed yuten-malek. this has been read "king of the jews," and taken to be a portrait of rehoboam, but it is more probable that it means "kingdom of the jews," and that the portrait is one representative of the country conquered. in any case this gives us the first absolutely certain date in old testament history. from this time downwards there is no reason to doubt that annals substantially correct, of successive kings of judah and israel, were kept, and after the reign of ahaz, when the great assyrian empire appeared on the scene, we have a full confirmation, from the assyrian monuments, of the principal events recorded in the book of kings. in fact, we may say that from the foundation of the jewish monarchy by saul and david, we are fairly in the stream of history, but that for everything prior to about b.c. we have to grope our way almost entirely by the light of the internal evidence afforded by the old testament itself. the first point evidently is to have some clear idea of what this old testament really consists of. until the recent era of scientific criticism, it was assumed to constitute, in effect, one volume, the earlier chapters of which were written by moses, and the later ones by a continuance of the same divine inspiration, which made the bible from genesis to chronicles one consistent and infallible whole, in which it was impossible that there should be any error or contradiction. such a theory could not stand a moment's investigation in the free light of reason. it is only necessary to read the two first chapters of genesis to see that the book is of a composite structure, made up of different and inconsistent elements. we have only to include in the first chapter the two first verses printed in the second chapter, and to write the original hebrew word "elohim" for "god," and "yahve" or jehovah for "lord god," to see this at a glance. the two accounts of the creation of the heaven and earth, of animal and vegetable life, and of man, are quite different. in the first man is created last, male and female, in the image of god, with dominion over all the previous forms of matter and of life, which have been created for his benefit. in the second man is formed from the dust of the earth immediately after the creation of the heavens and earth and of the vegetable world, and subsequently all the beasts of the field and fowls of the air are formed out of the ground, and brought to adam to name, while, last of all, woman is made from a rib taken from adam to be an helpmeet for him. the two narratives, elohistic and jehovistic, distinguished both by the different names of god, and by a number of other peculiarities, run almost side by side through a great part of the earlier portion of the old testament, presenting often flagrant contradictions. thus lamech, the father of noah, is represented in one as a descendant of cain, in the other of seth. canaan is in one the grandson of adam, in the other the grandson of noah. the elohist says that noah took two of each sort of living things, a male and a female, into the ark; the jehovist that he took seven pairs of clean, and single pairs of unclean animals. the difference between these narratives, the elohistic and jehovistic, is, however, only the first and most obvious instance of the composite character of the pentateuch. these narratives are distinguished from one another by a number of minute peculiarities of language and expressions, and they are both embedded in a much larger mass of matter which relates mainly to the sacrificial and ceremonial system of the israelites, and to the position, privileges, and functions of the priests and priestly caste of levites. this is commonly known as the "priests' code," and a great deal of it is obviously of late date, having relation to practices and ceremonies which had gradually grown up after the foundation of the temple at jerusalem. a vast amount of erudition has been expended in the minute analysis of these different documents by learned scholars who have devoted their lives to the subject. i shall not attempt to enter upon it, but content myself with taking the main results from canon driver, both because he is thoroughly competent from his knowledge of the latest foreign criticism and from his position as professor of hebrew, and because he cannot be suspected of any adverse leaning to the old orthodox views. in fact he is a strenuous advocate of the inspiration of the bible, taken in the larger sense of a religious and moral purpose underlying the often mistaken and conflicting statements of fallible writers. the conclusions at which he arrives, in common with a great majority of competent critics in all countries, are-- . that the old orthodox belief that the pentateuch is one work written by moses is quite untenable. . that the pentateuch and book of joshua have been formed by the combination of different _layers_ of narrative, each marked by characteristic features of its own. . that the elohistic and jehovistic narratives, which are the oldest portion of the collection, have nothing archaic in their style, but belong to the golden period of hebrew literature, the date assigned to them by most critics being not earlier than the eighth or ninth century b.c., though of course they may be founded partly on older legends and traditions; and, on the other hand, they contain many passages which could only have been introduced by some post-exilic editor. . that deuteronomy, which is placed almost unanimously by critics in the reign of either josiah or manasseh, is absolutely inconsistent in many respects with the priests' code, and apparently of earlier date, before the priestly system had crystallized into such a definite code of minute regulations, as we find it in the later days of jewish history after the exile. . there is a difference of opinion, however, in respect to the date of the priests' code, kuenen, wellhausen, and graf holding it to be post-deuteronomic, and probably committed to writing during the period from the beginning of the exile to the time of nehemiah, while dillman assigns the main body to about b.c., though admitting that additions may have been made as late as the time of ezra. being concerned mainly with the historical question, i shall not attempt to pursue this higher criticism further, but content myself with referring to the principal points which, judged by the broad conclusions of common-sense, stand out as guiding pillars in the mass of details. taking these in ascending order of time, they seem to me to be-- . the book of chronicles. . the foundation of modern judaism as described in the books of ezra and nehemiah. . the discovery of the book of the law or deuteronomy in the reign of josiah. the book of chronicles is important because we know its date, viz. about b.c., and to a great extent the materials from which it was compiled, viz. the books of samuel and kings. we have thus an object-lesson as to the way in which a hebrew writer, as late as b.c., or nearly years after the exile, composed history and treated the earlier records. it is totally different from the method of a classical or modern historian, and may be aptly described as a "scissors and paste" method. that is to say, he makes excerpts from the sources at his disposal; sometimes inserts them consecutively and without alteration; at other times makes additions and changes of his own; and, in canon driver's words, "does not scruple to omit what is not required for his purpose, and in fact treats his authorities with considerable freedom." he also does not scruple to put in the mouth of david and other historical characters of the olden time, speeches which, from their spirit, grammar, and vocabulary, are evidently of his own age and composition. if this was the method of a writer as late as b.c., whose work was afterwards received as canonical, two things are evident. first, that the canon of the earlier books of the old testament could not have been then fixed and invested with the same sacred authority as we find to be the case two or three centuries later, when the thora, or book of moses and the prophets, was regarded very much as the moslems regard the koran, as an inspired volume which it was impious to alter by a single jot or tittle. this late date for fixing the canon of the books of the old testament is confirmed by canon cheyne's learned and exhaustive work on the psalter, in which he shows that a great majority of the psalms, attributed to david, were written in the time of the maccabees, and that there are only one or two doubtful cases in which it can be plausibly contended that any of the psalms are pre-exilic. secondly, that if a writer, as late as b.c., could employ this method, and get his work accepted as a part of the sacred canon, a writer who lived earlier, say any time between the chronicler and the foundation of the jewish monarchy, might probably adopt the same methods. if the chronicler put a speech of his own composition into the mouth of david, the deuteronomist might well do so in the case of moses. according to the ideas of the age and country, this would not be considered to be what we moderns would call literary forgery, but rather a legitimate and praiseworthy means of giving authority to good precepts and sentiments. a perfect illustration of this which i have called the "scissors and paste" method, is afforded by the first two chapters of genesis, and the way in which the elohistic and jehovistic narratives are so strangely interblended throughout the pentateuch. no attempt is made to blend the two narratives into one harmonious and consistent whole, but excerpts, sometimes from one and sometimes from the other, are placed together without any attempt to explain away the evident contradictions. clearly the same hand could not have written both narratives, and the compilation must have been made by some subsequent editor, or editors, for there is conclusive proof that the final edition, as it has come down to us, could not have been made until after the exile. thus in leviticus xxvi. we find, "i will scatter you among the heathen, and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste," and "they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies' land." and in deuteronomy xxix., "and the lord rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is to this day." even in genesis, which professes to be the earliest book, we find (xii. ), "and the canaanite was then in the land." this could not have been written until the memory of the canaanite had become a tradition of a remote past, and this could not have been until after the return of the jews from the babylonian captivity, for we find from the books of ezra and nehemiah that the canaanites were then still in the land, and the jewish leaders, and even priests and levites, were intermarrying freely with canaanite wives. the apocryphal book of esdras contains a legend that the sacred books of the law having been lost or destroyed when jerusalem was taken by nebuchadnezzar, they were re-written miraculously by ezra dictating to five ready writers at once in a wonderfully short time. this is a counterpart of the legend of the septuagint being a translation of the hebrew text into greek, made by seventy different translators, whose separate versions agreed down to the minutest particular. this legend, in the case of the septuagint, is based on an historical fact that there really was a greek translation of the hebrew sacred books made by order of ptolemy _philadelphus_; and it may well be that the legend of esdras contains some reminiscence of an actual fact, that a new and complete edition of the old writings was made and stamped with a sacred character among the other reforms introduced by ezra. these reforms, and the condition of the jewish people after the return from the captivity, as disclosed by the books of nehemiah and ezra, afford what i call the second guiding pillar, in our attempt to trace backwards the course of jewish history. these books were indeed not written in their present form until a later period, and, as most critics think, by the same hand as chronicles; but there is no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of the historical facts recorded, which relate, not to a remote antiquity, but to a comparatively recent period after the use of writing had become general. they constitute in fact the dividing line between ancient and modern judaism, and show us the origin of the latter. modern judaism, that is, the religious and social life of the jewish people, since they fairly entered into the current of modern history, has been marked by many strong and characteristic peculiarities. they have been zealously and almost fanatically attached to the idea of one supreme god, jehovah, with whom they had a special covenant inherited from abraham, and whose will, in regard to all religious rites and ceremonies and social usages, was conveyed to them in a sacred book containing the inspired writings of moses and the prophets. this led them to consider themselves a peculiar people, and to regard all other nations with aversion, as being idolaters and unclean, feelings which were returned by the rest of the world, so that they stood alone, hating and being hated. no force or persuasion were required in order to prevent them from lapsing into idolatry or intermarrying with heathen women. on the contrary, they were inspired to the most heroic efforts, and ready to endure the severest sufferings and martyrdom for the pure faith. the belief in the sacred character of their ancient writings gradually crystallized into a faith as absolute as that of the moslems in the koran; a canon was formed, and although, as we have seen in the case of the chronicles and psalms, some time must have elapsed before this sacred character was fully recognized, it ended in a theory of the literal inspiration of every word of the old testament down even to the commas and vowel points, and the establishment of learned schools of scribes and pharisees, whose literary labours were concentrated on expounding the text in synagogues, and writing volumes of talmudic commentaries. now during the period preceding the exile all this was very different. so far from being zealous for one supreme god, jehovah was long recognized only as a tribal or national god, one among the many gods of surrounding nations. when the idea of a supreme deity, who loved justice and mercy better than the blood of bullocks and rams, was at length elaborated by the later prophets, it received but scant acceptance. the great majority of the kings and people, both of judah and israel, were always ready to lapse into idolatry, worship strange gods, golden calves, and brazen serpents, and flock to the alluring rites of baal and astarte, in groves and high places. they were also always ready to intermarry freely with heathen wives, and to form political alliances with heathen nations. there is no trace of the religious and social repulsion towards other races which forms such a marked trait in modern judaism. nor, as we shall see presently, is there any evidence, prior to the reign of josiah, of anything like a sacred book or code of divine laws, universally known and accepted. the books of nehemiah and ezra afford invaluable evidence of the time and manner in which this modern judaism was stamped upon the character of the people after the return from exile. we are told that when ezra came to jerusalem from babylon, armed with a decree of artaxerxes, he was scandalized at finding that nearly all the jews, including the principal nobles and many priests and levites, had intermarried with the daughters of the people of the land, "of the canaanites, hittites, perizzites, jebusites, ammonites, moabites, egyptians, and amorites." backed by nehemiah, the cup-bearer and favourite of artaxerxes, who had been appointed governor of jerusalem, he persuaded or compelled the jews to put away these wives and their children, and to separate themselves as a peculiar and exclusive people from other nations. it was a cruel act, characteristic of the fanatical spirit of priestly domination, which never hesitates to trample on the natural affections and the laws of charity and mercy, but it was the means of crystallizing the jewish race into a mould so rigid, that it defied wars, persecutions, and all dissolving influences, and preserved the idea of monotheism to grow up into the world-wide religions of christianity and mahometanism, so true is it that evolution works out its results by unexpected means often opposed to what seem like the best instincts of human nature. what is important, however, for the present object is, to observe that clearly at this date the population of the holy land must have consisted mainly of the descendants of the old races, who had been conquered but not exterminated by the israelites. such a sentence as, "for the canaanites were then in the land," could not have been written till long after the time when the jews were intermarrying freely with canaanite wives. nor does it seem possible that codes, such as those of leviticus, numbers, and the priests' code, could have been generally known and accepted as sacred books written by moses under divine inspiration, when the rulers, nobles, and even priests and levites acted in such apparent ignorance of them. in fact we are told in nehemiah that ezra read and explained the book of the law, whatever that may have included, to the people, who apparently had no previous knowledge of it. by far the most important landmark, however, in the history of the old testament, is afforded by the account in kings xxii. and xxiii. of the discovery of the book of the law in the temple in the eighteenth year of the reign of josiah. it says that shaphan the scribe, having been sent by the king to hilkiah the high priest, to obtain an account of the silver collected from the people for the repairs of the temple, hilkiah told him that he had "found the book of the law in the house of the lord." shaphan brought it to the king and read it to him; whereupon josiah, in great consternation at finding that so many of its injunctions had been violated, and that such dreadful penalties were threatened, rent his clothes, and being confirmed in his fears by huldah the prophetess, proceeded to take stringent measures to stamp out idolatry, which, from the account given in kings xxiii., seems to have been almost universal. we read of vessels consecrated to baal and to the host of heaven in the temple itself, and of horses and chariots of the sun at its entrance; of idolatrous priests who had been ordained by the kings of judah to burn incense "unto baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven"; and of high places close to jerusalem, with groves, images, and altars, which had been built by solomon to ashtaroth, the goddess of the sidonians, chemosh the god of the moabites, and milcom the god of the ammonites, and had apparently remained undisturbed and places of popular worship ever since the time of solomon. on any ordinary principles of criticism it is impossible to doubt that, if this narrative is correct, there could have been no previous book of the law in existence, and generally recognized as a sacred volume written by divine inspiration. when even such a great and wise king as solomon could establish such a system of idolatry, and pious kings like hezekiah, and josiah during the first eighteen years of his reign, could allow it to continue, there could have been no knowledge that it was in direct contravention of the most essential precepts of a sacred law dictated by jehovah to moses. it is generally admitted by critics that the book of the law discovered by hilkiah was deuteronomy, or rather perhaps an earlier or shorter original of the deuteronomy which has come down to us, and which had already been re-edited with additions after the exile. the title "deuteronomy," which might seem to imply that it was a supplement to an earlier law, is taken, like the other headings of the books of the old testament in our bible, from the septuagint version, and in the original hebrew the heading is "the book of the law." the internal evidence points also to deuteronomy, as placing the threats of punishment and promises of reward mainly on moral grounds, and in the spirit of the later prophets, such as isaiah, who lived shortly before the discovery of the book by hilkiah. and it is apparent that when deuteronomy was written, the priests' code, which forms such an important part of the other books of the pentateuch, could not have been known, as so many of the ceremonial rites and usages are clearly inconsistent with it. it is not to be inferred that there were no writings in existence before the reign of josiah. doubtless annals had been kept of the principal events of each reign from the foundation of the monarchy, and many of the old legends and traditions of the race had been collected and reduced to writing during the period from solomon to the later kings. the priests' code also, though of later date in its complete form, was doubtless not an invention of any single priest, but a compilation of usages, some of which had long existed, while others had grown up in connection with the second temple after the return from exile. so also the civil and social legislation was not a code promulgated, like the code napoleon, by any one monarch or high priest, but a compilation from usages and precedents which had come to be received as having an established authority. but what is plainly inconsistent with the account of the discovery of the book of the law in the reign of josiah, is the supposition that there had been, in long previous existence, a collection of sacred books, recognized as a bible or work of divine inspiration, as the old testament came to be among the jews of the first or second century b.c. it is to be observed that among early nations, such historical annals and legislative enactments never form the first stratum of a sacred literature, which consists invariably of hymns, prayers, ceremonial rites, and astronomical or astrological myths. thus the rig veda of the hindoos, the early portions of the vendedad of the iranians, the book of the dead of the egyptians, and the penitential psalms and invocations of the chaldæans formed the oldest sacred books, about which codes and commentaries, and in some cases historical allusions and biographies, gradually accumulated, though never attaining to quite an equal authority. there is abundant internal evidence in the books of the old testament which profess to be older than the reign of josiah, to show that they are in great part, at any rate, of later compilation, and could not have been recognized as the sacred thora or bible of the nation. to take a single instance, that of solomon. is it conceivable that this greatest and wisest of kings, who had held personal commune with jehovah, and who knew everything down to the hyssop on the wall, could have been ignorant of such a sacred book if it had been in existence? and if he had known it, or even the decalogue, is it conceivable that he should have totally ignored its first and fundamental precepts, "thou shalt have no other gods but me," and "thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image"? could uxoriousness, divided among wives, have turned the heart of such a monarch so completely as to make him worship ashtaroth and milcom, and build high places for chemosh and moloch? and could he have done this without the opposition, and apparently with the approval, of the priests and the people? and again, could these high places and altars and vessels dedicated to baal and the host of heaven have been allowed to remain in the temple, down to the eighteenth year of josiah, under a succession of kings several of whom were reputed to be pious servants of jehovah? and the idolatrous tendencies of the ten tribes of israel, who formed the majority of the hebrew race, and had a common history and traditions, are even more apparent. in the speeches put into the mouth of solomon in kings, in which reference is made to "statutes and commandments spoken by jehovah by the hand of moses," there is abundant evidence that their composition must be assigned to a much later date. they are full of references to the captivity in a foreign land and return from exile ( kings viii. -- , and ix. -- ). similar references to the exile are found throughout the book of kings, and even in books of the pentateuch which profess to be written by moses. if such a code of sacred writings had been in existence in the time of josiah, instead of rending his clothes in dismay when shaphan brought him the book of the law found by hilkiah, he would have said, "why this is only a different version of what we know already." on the whole the evidence points to this conclusion. the idea of a one supreme god who was a spirit, while all other gods were mere idols made by men's hands; who created and ruled all things in heaven and earth; and who loved justice and mercy rather than the blood of rams and bullocks, was slowly evolved from the crude conceptions of a jealous, vindictive, and cruel anthropomorphic local god, by the prophets and best minds of israel after it had settled down under the monarchy into a civilized and cultured state. it appears for the first time distinctly in isaiah and amos, and was never popular with the majority of the kings and upper classes, or with the mass of the nation until the exile, but it gradually gained ground during the calamities of the later days, when assyrian armies were threatening destruction. a strong opposition arose in the later reigns between the aristocracy, who looked on the situation from a political point of view and trusted to armies and alliances, and what may be called the pietist or evangelical party of the prophets, who took a purely religious view of matters, and considered the misfortunes of the country as a consequence of its sins, to be averted only by repentance and divine interposition. it was a natural, and under the circumstances of the age and country quite a justifiable proceeding on the part of the prophetic school to endeavour to stamp their views with divine authority, and recommend them for acceptance as coming from moses, the traditional deliverer of israel from egypt. for this purpose no doubt numerous materials existed in the form of legends, traditions, customs, and old records, and very probably some of those had been collected and reduced to writing, like the sagas of the old norsemen, though without any idea of collecting them into a sacred volume. the first attempt in this direction was made in the reign of josiah, and it had only a partial success, as we find the nation "doing evil in the sight of the lord," that is, relapsing into the old idolatrous practices, in the reigns of his three next successors, jehoiachin, jehoiachim, and zedechiah. but the crowning calamity of the capture of jerusalem by nebuchadnezzar, and the seventy years' exile, seems to have crushed out the old aristocratic and national party, and converted all the leading minds among the jews of the captivity, including the priests, to the prophetical view that the essence of the question was the religious one, and that the only hope for the future lay in repentance for sins and drawing closer to the worship of jehovah and the covenant between him and his chosen people. prophets disappear from this period because priests, scribes, and rulers had adopted their views, and there was no longer room for itinerant and unofficial missionaries. under such circumstances the religion, after the return from the exile, crystallized rapidly into definite forms. creeds, rituals, and sacred books were multiplied down to the third century b.c. or later, when the canon was closed with the books of chronicles and daniel and the later psalms, and the era began of commentaries on the text of a koran or bible, every word of which was held to be infallibly inspired. the different crystals in solution have now united into one large crystal of fixed form, and henceforward we are in the full age of talmudism and pharisaism. it is not to be supposed, however, that the books which thus came to be considered sacred were the inventions of priests and scribes of this later age. doubtless they were based to a great extent on old traditions, legends, and written annals and records, compiled perhaps in the reigns of solomon and his successors, but based themselves on still older materials. the very crudeness of many of the representations, and the barbarism of manners, point to an early origin. it is impossible to conceive any contemporary of isaiah, or of the cultured court of solomon, describing the almighty ruler of the universe as showing his hinder part to moses, or sewing skins to clothe adam and eve; and the conception of a jealous and vindictive jehovah who commanded the indiscriminate massacre of prisoners of war, women and children, must be far removed from that of a god who loved justice and mercy. these crude, impossible, and immoral representations must have existed in the form of sagas during the early and semi-barbarous stage of the people of israel, and become so rooted in the popular mind that they could not be neglected when authors of later ages came to fix the old traditions in writing, and religious reformers to use them in endeavouring to enforce higher views and a purer morality. it is from this jungle of old legends and traditions, written and re-written, edited and re-edited, many times over, to suit the ideas of various stages of advancing civilization, that we have to pick out as we best can what is really historical, prior to the foundation of the monarchy, from which time downwards we doubtless have more or less authentic annals, and meet with confirmations from egyptian and assyrian history. the first figure which arrests our attention in the old testament as possibly historical, is that of abraham. prior to him everything is plainly myth and legend. we have two accounts of the creation of the universe and of man in genesis, contradictory with one another, and each hopelessly inconsistent with the best established conclusions of astronomy, geology, ethnology, and other sciences. then follow ten antediluvian patriarchs, who live on the average years each, and correspond manifestly with the ten reigns of gods or demi-gods in the chaldæan mythology; while side by side with this genealogy is a fragment of one which is entirely different, mentioning seven only of the ten patriarchs, and tracing the descent of enoch and noah from adam through cain instead of through seth. then comes the deluge with all the flagrant impossibilities which have been pointed out in a preceding chapter; the building of the tower of babel, with the dispersion of mankind and confusion of languages, equally opposed to the most certain conclusions of history, ethnology, and philology. the descent from noah to abraham is then traced through ten other patriarchs, whose ages average years each, and similar genealogies are given for the descendants of the other two sons of noah, ham and japheth. it is evident that these genealogies are not history but ethnology, and that of a very rude and primitive description, by a writer with imperfect knowledge and a limited range of vision. a great majority of the primitive races of the world, such as the negroes and the mongolians, are omitted altogether, and semitic canaan is coupled with turanian hittite as a descendant not of shem but of ham. it is unnecessary to go into details, for when we find such an instance as that canaan begat sidon his first-born, it is evident that this does not mean that two such men really lived, but is an oriental way of stating that the phoenicians were of the same race as the canaanites, and that sidon was their earliest sea-port on the shore of the mediterranean. the whole of this biblical literature prior to abraham is clearly myth and legend, and not history; and whoever will compare it dispassionately with the much older chaldæan myths and legends known to us from berosus and the tablets, can hardly doubt that it is taken mainly from this source, revised at a later date, in a monotheistic sense. whole passages are simply altered by writing "god" for "gods," and pruning off or toning down grotesque and revolting incidents. to give a single instance, where the chaldæan solar epic of izdubar, in the chapter on the passage of the sun through the rainy sign of aquarius, which describes the deluge, says that "the gods smelt the sweet savour of the sacrifice offered by hasisadra on emerging from the ark, and flocked like flies about the altar," genesis says simply that "the lord smelled a sweet savour"; and where the mixture of a divine and animal nature in man is symbolized in the chaldæan legend by bel cutting off his own head and kneading the clay with the blood into the first man, the jehovist narrative in genesis ii. says, that "the lord god formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." but when we arrive at abraham we feel as if we might be treading on really historical ground. there is the universal tradition of the hebrew race that he was their ancestor, and his figure is very like what in the unchanging east may be met with to the present day. we seem to see the dignified sheik sitting at the door of his tent dispensing hospitality, raiding with his retainers on the rear of a retreating army and capturing booty, and much exercised by domestic difficulties between the women of his household. surely this is an historical figure. but when we look closer, doubts and difficulties appear. in the first place the name "abram" suggests that of an eponymous ancestor, like shem for the semites, or canaan for the canaanites. abram, sayce tells us, is the babylonian abu-ramer or "exalted father," a name much more likely to be given to a mythical ancestor than to an actual man. this is rendered more probable by the fact that, as we have already seen, the genealogy of abraham traced upwards consists mainly of eponyms: while those which radiate from him downwards are of the same character. thus two of his sons by keturah are jokshan and midian; and sheba, dedan, and assurim are among his descendants. again, abraham is said to have lived for years, and to have had a son by sarah when she was ninety-nine and he one hundred; and a large family by keturah, whom he married after sarah's death. figures such as these are a sure test that legend has taken the place of authentic history. another circumstance which tells strongly against the historical character of abraham is his connection with lot, and the legend of lot's wife. the history of this legend is a curious one. for many centuries, in fact down to quite modern times, the volcanic phenomena of the dead sea were appealed to as convincing confirmations of the account in genesis of the destruction of sodom and gomorrha, and hundreds of pious pilgrims saw, touched, and tasted the identical pillar of salt into which lot's wife was changed. it is now certain that the volcanic eruptions were of an earlier geological age, and that the story of lot's wife is owing to the disintegration of a stratum of salt marl, which weathers away under the action of wind and rain into columnar masses, like those described by lyell in a similar formation in catalonia. innumerable travellers and pilgrims from early christian times down to the seventeenth century returned from palestine testifying that they had seen lot's wife, and this was appealed to by theologians as a convincing proof of the truth of the scripture narrative. some saw her big, some little, some upright, and some prostrate, according to the state of disintegration of the pillars pointed out by the guides, which change their form rapidly under the influence of the weather, but no doubt was entertained as to the attestation of the miracle. it turns out, however, to be one of those geological myths of precisely the same nature as that which attributed the devil's dyke near brighton to an arrested attempt of the evil one to cut a trench through the south downs, so as to let in the sea and drown the weald. the episode of lot and his daughters is also clearly a myth to account for the aversion of the hebrews to races so closely akin to them as the moabites and ammonites, and it could hardly have originated until after the date of the book of ruth, which shows no trace of such a racial aversion. many of the events recorded of abraham's life, though not so wildly extravagant as those attributed to noah, are still clearly unhistorical. that a woman getting on towards one hundred years old should be so beautiful that her husband passes her off for his sister, fearing that, if known to be his wife, the king would kill him in order to take her into his harem, does not seem to be very probable. but when precisely the same thing is said to have occurred twice over to the same man, once at the court of pharaoh and again at that of abimelech; and a third time to his son isaac, at the same place, gerar, and to the same king abimelech, the improbability becomes impossibility, and the legend is obviously mythical. nor is it very consistent with the character of the pious patriarch, the father of the chosen people, to have told such lies, and apparently connived at his wife's prostitution, so that he could save his own skin, and grow rich on the "sheep and oxen, asses, manservants, maidservants, and camels" given him by the king on the supposition that he was sarah's brother. nor can we take as authentic history, abraham talking with the lord, and holding a sort of dutch auction with him, in which he beats down from fifty to ten the number of righteous men who, if found in sodom, are to save it from destruction. on the whole, i do not see that there is anything in the account of abraham and his times which we can safely assume to be historical, except the general fact that the hebrews were descended from a semitic family or clan, who migrated from the district of ur in lower chaldæa probably about the time, and possibly in consequence, of the elamite conquest, about b.c., which set in motion so many wars, revolutions, and migrations in western asia. the chronology from abraham to moses is hopelessly confused. if abraham is really an historical character, his synchronism with chedorlaomer or kudur-lagomer, the elamite king of chaldæa, must be admitted, which fixes his date at about b.c. again, if the narrative of the exodus is historical, it is generally agreed that it took place in the reign of menepthah, or about b.c. the interval between abraham and moses therefore must have been about years. but if we take the genealogies as authentic history, jacob, in whose time the hebrews went into egypt, was abraham's grandson, and moses, under whom they left it, was the son of jochebed, who was the granddaughter of levi, the son of jacob, who was a man advanced in life when he came to egypt. the genealogies therefore do not allow of more than five generations, or, at a high average for each, about years for this interval between abraham and moses. the tradition respecting this seems to have been already very confused when genesis was compiled, for we find in chap. xv. vers. , , the lord saying to abraham, that his descendants shall come back to palestine and possess the whole country from the river of egypt to the river euphrates, "in the fourth generation" after abraham had "gone to his fathers in peace, and been buried in a good old age"; while only one verse before it is said, "thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them for four hundred years." even if years were allowed for the sojourn of the hebrews in egypt, it would not extend the interval between moses and abraham to more than years, or years less than is required by the synchronism with chedorlaomer. it is needless to say that neither in the fourth or in any other generation did the descendants of abraham "possess the whole country from the river of egypt to the river euphrates." there is no period of jewish history so obscure as that of the sojourn in egypt. the long date is based entirely on the distinct statement in genesis xii., that the sojourning of the children of israel was years, and other statements that it was years, both of which are hopelessly inconsistent with the genealogies. genealogies are perhaps more likely to be preserved accurately by oral tradition than dates and figures, which oriental races generally deal with in a very arbitrary way. but there are serious difficulties in the way of accepting either date as historical. there is no mention of any specific event during the sojourn of the israelites in egypt between their advent in the time of joseph and the exodus, except their oppression by a new king who knew not joseph, and the building of the treasure cities, pi-thom and ramses, by their forced labour. the latter fact may be taken as probably true from the monuments discovered by mr. flinders petrie; and if so, it occurred in the reign of ramses ii. but there is no other confirmation, from egyptian records or monuments, of any of the events related in the pentateuch, until we come to the passage quoted from manetho by josephus, which describes how the unclean people and lepers were oppressed; how they revolted under the leadership of a priest of hieropolis, who changed his name from osarphis to moyses; how they fortified avaris and called in help from the expelled hyksos settled at jerusalem; how the egyptian king and his army retreated before them into ethiopia without striking a blow; and the revolters ruled egypt for thirteen years, killing the sacred animals and desecrating the temples; and how, at the end of this period, the king and his son returned with a great army, defeated the rebels and shepherds with great slaughter, and pursued them to the bounds of syria. this account is evidently very different from that of exodus, and does not itself read very like real history, nor is there anything in the egyptian monuments to confirm it, but rather the reverse. menepthah certainly reigned many years after he was said to have been drowned in the red sea, and his power and that of his immediate successors, though greatly diminished, still extended with a sort of suzerainty over palestine and southern syria. it is said that the egyptians purposely omitted all mention of disasters and defeats, but this is distinctly untrue, for manetho records events such as the conquest of egypt by the hyksos without a battle, and the retreat of menepthah into ethiopia for thirteen years before the impure rebels, which were much more disgraceful than would have been the destruction of a pursuing force of chariots by the returning tide of the red sea. the question therefore of the sojourn of the israelites in egypt and the exodus has to be considered solely by the light of the internal evidence afforded by the books of the old testament. the long period of years is open to grave objections. it is inconceivable that a people who had lived for four centuries in an old and highly-civilized empire, for part of the time at any rate on equal or superior terms under the king who "knew joseph"; and who appear to have been so much intermixed with the native egyptians as to have been borrowing from them as neighbours before their flight, should have carried away with them so little of egyptian manners and relics. beyond a few rites and ceremonies, and a certain tendency to revert to the animal worship of the golden calf, there is nothing to show that the hebrews had ever been in contact with egyptian civilization. this is most remarkable in the absence of all belief in a resurrection of the body, future life, and day of judgment, which were the cardinal axioms of the practical daily life of the egyptian people. temporal rewards and punishments to the individual and his posterity in the present life, are the sole inducements held out to practise virtue and abstain from vice, from the decalogue down to the comparatively late period of ecclesiastes, where solomon the wise king is represented as saying, "there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge in the grave whither thou goest." even down to the christian era the sadducees, who were the conservative aristocracy who stood on the old ways and on the law of moses, and from whose ranks most of the high priests were taken, were opposed to the newfangled pharisaic doctrine of a resurrection. how completely foreign the idea was to the jewish mind is apparent from the writings of the prophets and the book of job, where the obvious solution of the problem why goodness was not always rewarded and wickedness punished, afforded by the theory of a judgment after death and future life, was never even hinted at by job or his friends, however hardly they might be pressed in argument. if the sojourn in egypt really lasted for years, it must have embraced many of the greatest events in egyptian history. the descendants of jacob must have witnessed a long period of the rule of the hyksos, and lived through the desolating thirty years' war by which these foreign conquerors were gradually driven back by the native armies of upper egypt. they must have been close to the scene of the final campaigns, the siege of avaris, and the expulsion of the hyksos. they must have been subjects of ahmes, thotmes, and the conquering kings of the eighteenth dynasty, who followed up the fugitive hyksos, and carried the conquering arms of egypt not only over palestine and syria, but up to the euphrates and tigris, and over nearly the whole of western asia. they must have witnessed the decline of this empire, the growth of the hittites, and the half-century of wars waged between them and the egyptians in palestine and syria. the victory of ramses ii. at kadesh and the epic poem of pentaur must have been known to the generation before the exodus as signal events. and if there is any truth in the account quoted by josephus, they must have been aware that they did not fly from egypt as a body of fugitive slaves, but as retreating warriors who for thirteen years had held egypt up to ethiopia in subjection. and yet of all these memorable events there is not the slightest trace in the hebrew annals which have come down to us. an even greater difficulty is to understand how, if the children of israel had lived for anything like years in such a civilized empire as egypt, they could have emerged from it in such a plane of low civilization, or rather of ferocious savagery and crude superstitions as are shown by the books of the old testament, where they burst like a host of red indians on the settlements and cities of the amorites, and other more advanced nations of palestine. the discoveries at lachish already referred to show that their civilization could not have exceeded that of the rudest bedouins, and their myths and legends are so similar to those of the north american indians as to show that they must have originated in a very similar stage of mental development. if we adopt the short date of the genealogies we are equally confronted by difficulties. if the exodus occurred in the reign of menepthah, years back from that date would take us, not to the hyksos dynasty where alone it would have been possible for joseph to be a vizier, and for a semitic tribe of shepherds to be welcomed in egypt, but into the midst of the great and glorious eighteenth dynasty who had expelled the hyksos, and carried the dominion of egypt to the euphrates. nor would there have been time for the seventy souls, who we are told were all of the family of jacob who migrated into egypt, to have increased in three generations into a nation numerous enough to alarm the egyptians, and conquer the canaanites. the legend of joseph is very touching and beautiful, but it may just as well be a novel as history, and this suspicion is strengthened by the fact that the episode of potiphar's wife is almost verbatim the same as one of the chapters of the egyptian novel of the _two brothers_. nor does it seem likely that such a seven years' famine and such a momentous change as the conversion of all the land of egypt from freehold into a tenure held from the king subject to payment of a rent of one-fifth of the gross produce, should have left no trace in the records. again, the age of years assigned to joseph, and to his father, are a sufficient proof that we are not upon strictly historical ground; and on the whole this narrative does not go far, in the absence of any confirmation from monuments, to assist us in fixing dates, or enabling us to form any consistent idea of the real conditions of the sojourn of the people of israel in egypt. it places them on far too high a level of civilization at first, to have fallen to such a low one as we find depicted in the books of exodus, joshua, and judges. further excavations in the mounds of ruined cities in judæa and palestine, like those of schliemann on the sites of troy and mycenæ, can alone give us anything like certain facts as to the real condition of the hebrew tribes who destroyed the older walled cities of the comparatively civilized amorites and canaanites. if the conclusion of mr. flinders petrie from the section of the mound of lachish, as to the extremely rude condition of the tribes who built the second town of mud-huts on the ruins of the amorite city, should be confirmed, it would go far to negative the idea that the accounts of their having been trained in an advanced code of mosaic legislation, can have any historical foundation. we come next to moses. it is difficult to refuse an historical character to a personage who has been accepted by uniform tradition as the chief who led the israelites out of egypt, and as the great legislator who laid the foundations of the religious and civil institutions of the peculiar people. and if the passage from manetho is correctly quoted by josephus, and was really taken from contemporary egyptian annals, and is not a later version of the account in the pentateuch modified to suit egyptian prejudices, moses is clearly identified with osarsiph the priest of hieropolis, who abandoned the worship of the old gods, and headed the revolt of the unclean people, which probably meant the heretics. it may be conjectured that this may have had some connection with the great religious revolution of the heretic king of tel-el-amarna, which for a time displaced the national gods, worshipped in the form of sacred animals and symbolic statues, by an approach to monotheism under the image of the winged solar disc. such a reform must have had many adherents to have survived as the state religion for two or three reigns, and must have left a large number of so-called heretics when the nation returned to its ancient faith; and it is quite intelligible that some of the more enlightened priests should have assimilated to it the doctrine of one supreme god, which was always at the bottom of the religious metaphysics of the earliest ages in egypt, and was probably preserved as an esoteric doctrine in the priestly colleges. this, however, must remain purely a conjecture, and we must look for anything specific in regard to moses exclusively to the old testament. and here we are at once assailed by formidable difficulties. as long as we confine ourselves to general views it may be accepted as historical that the israelites really came out of egypt under a great leader and legislator; but when we come to details, and to the events connected with moses, and to a great extent supposed to have been written by him or taken from his journals, they are for the most part more wildly and hopelessly impossible than anything related of the earlier patriarchs, abraham and joseph. the story of his preservation in infancy is a variation of the myth common to so many nations, of an infant hero or god, whose life is sought by a wicked king, and who is miraculously saved. we find it in the myths of khrishna, buddha, cyrus, romulus, and others, and in the inscription by sargon i. of accade on his own tablet; he states himself to have been saved in an ark floated on the river euphrates, just as moses was on the nile. when grown up he is represented first as the adopted son of pharaoh's daughter, and then as a shepherd in the wilderness of midian talking with the lord in a fiery bush, who for the first time communicates his real name of jehovah, which he says was not known to abraham, isaac, or jacob, although constantly used by them, and although men began to call him by that name in the time of enos, adam's grandson. at jehovah's command moses throws his rod on the ground, when it becomes a serpent from which he flies, and when he takes it up by the tail it becomes a rod again; and as a farther sign his hand is changed from sound to leprous as white as snow, and back again to sound, in a minute or two of time. on returning to egypt moses is represented as going ten times into the presence of pharaoh demanding of him to let the hebrews depart, and inflicting on egypt a succession of plagues, each one more than sufficient to have convinced the king of the futility of opposing such supernatural powers, and to have made him only too anxious to get rid of the hebrews from the land at any price. what could have been the condition of egypt, if for seven days "the streams, the rivers, the ponds and pools, and even the water in the vessels of wood and of stone, through all the land of egypt," had been really turned into blood? and what sort of magicians must they have been who could do the same with their enchantments? the whole account of these plagues has distinctly the air of being an historical romance rather than real history. those repeated interviews accompanied by taunts and reproaches of moses, the representative of an oppressed race of slaves, in the august presence of a pharaoh who, like the inca of peru or the mikado of japan, was half monarch and half deity, are totally inconsistent with all we know of egyptian usage. the son and successor of the splendid ramses ii., who has been called the louis xiv. of egyptian history, would certainly, after the first interview and miracle, either have recognized the supernatural power which it was useless to resist, or ordered moses to instant execution. it is remarkable also how the series of plagues reproduce the natural features of the egyptian seasons. recent travellers tell us how at the end of the dry season when the nile is at its lowest, and the adjacent plains are arid and lifeless, suddenly one morning at sunrise they see the river apparently turned into blood. it is the phenomenon of the red nile, which is caused by the first flush of the abyssinian flood, coming from banks of red marl. after a few days the real rise commences, the nile resumes its usual colour, percolates through its banks, fills the tanks and ponds, and finally overflows and saturates the dusty plains. the first signal of the renewal of life is the croaking of innumerable frogs, and soon the plains are alive with flies, gnats, and all manner of creeping and hopping insects, as if the dust had been turned into lice. then after the inundation subsides come the other plagues which in the summer and autumn seasons frequently afflict the young crops and the inhabitants--local hail-storms, locusts, murrain among the cattle, boils and other sicknesses while the stagnant waters are drying up. it reads like what some rider haggard of the court of solomon might have written in working up the tales of travellers and old popular traditions into an historical romance of the deliverance of israel from egypt. when we come to the exodus the impossibilities of the narrative are even more obvious. the robust common-sense of bishop colenso, sharpened by a mathematical education, has reduced many of these to the convincing test of arithmetic. the host of israelites who left egypt is said to have comprised , fighting men above the age of twenty; exclusive of the levites and of a mixed multitude who followed. this implies a total population of at least , , , who are said to have wandered about for forty years in the desert of sinai, one of the most arid wildernesses in the world, destitute alike of water, arable soil, and pasture, and where a bedouin tribe of even souls would find it difficult to exist. they are said to have been miraculously fed during these forty years on manna, a sweetish, gummy exudation from the scanty foliage of certain prickly desert plants, which is described as being "as small as the hoar frost," and as being so imbued with sabbatarian principles, as to keep fresh only for the day it is gathered during the week, but for two days if gathered on a friday, so as to prevent the necessity of doing any work on the sabbath. bishop colenso points out with irresistible force the obvious impossibilities in regard to food, water, fuel, sanitation, transport, and other matters, which was involved in the supposition that a population, half as large as that of london, wandered about under tents from camp to camp for forty years in a desert. no attempt has ever been made to refute him, except by vague suppositions that the deserts of sinai and arabia may then have been in a very different condition, and capable of supporting a large population. but this is impossible in the present geological age and under existing geographical conditions. these deserts form part of the great rainless zone of the earth between the north tropical and south temperate zones, where cultivation is only possible when the means of irrigation are afforded by lakes, rivers, or melting snow. but there are none of these in the deserts of sinai and northern arabia, and therefore no water and no vegetation sufficient to support any population. no army has ever invaded egypt from asia, or asia from egypt, except by the short route adjoining the mediterranean between pelusium and jaffa, and with the command of the sea and assistance of trains to carry supplies and water. and the account in exodus itself confirms this, for both food and water are stated to have been supplied miraculously, and there is no mention made of anything but the present arid and uninhabited desert in the various encampments and marches. in fact, the bible constantly dwells on the inhospitable character of the "howling wilderness," where there was neither grass nor water. accordingly reconcilers have been reduced to the supposition that ciphers may have been added by copyists, and that the real number may have been , or even, as some writers think, . but this is inconsistent with the detailed numeration by twelve separate tribes, which works out to the same figure of , fighting men for the total number. nor is it consistent with the undoubted fact that the hebrews did evacuate egypt in sufficient numbers and sufficiently armed to burst through the frontiers, and capture the walled cities of considerable nations like the amorites and canaanites, who had been long settled in the country. the narrative of manetho, quoted by josephus, seems much more like real history; that the hebrews formed part of an army, which, after having held lower egypt for thirteen years, was finally defeated, and retreated by the usual military route across the short part of the desert from pelusium to palestine, the hebrews, for some reason, branching off, and taking to a bedouin life on the outskirts of the desert and cultivated land, just as many bedouin tribes live a semi-nomad life in the same regions at the present day. apart from statistics, however, the books of the pentateuch ascribed to moses are full of the most flagrant contradictions and absurdities. it is evident that, instead of being the production of some one contemporary writer, they have been compiled and edited, probably many times over, by what i have called the "scissors and paste method," of clipping out extracts from old documents and traditions, and piecing them together in juxtaposition or succession, without regard to their being contradictory or repetitions. thus in exodus xxxiii. , god says to moses: "thou canst not see my face and live; for there shall no man see me and live"; and accordingly he shows moses only his "back parts"; while in ver. in the very same chapter we read, "and the lord spoke unto moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto a friend." again in exodus xxiv. the lord says to moses, "that he alone shall come near the lord" (ver. ), while in vers. -- of the same chapter, we are told that "moses, aaron, nadab, and abihu, and seventy of the elders of israel went up; and they saw the god of israel, and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone," and although they saw god, were none the worse for it, but survived and "did eat and drink." is it possible to believe that these excessively crude representations of the deity, and these flagrant inconsistencies, were all written at the same time, by the same hand, and that the hand of a man who, if not a holy inspired prophet, was at any rate an educated and learned ex-priest of hieropolis, skilled in all the knowledge of the egyptians? the contradictions in the ideas and precepts of morality and religion are even more startling. these oscillate between the two extremes of the conception of the later prophets of a one supreme god, who loves justice and mercy better than sacrifice, and that of a ferocious and vindictive tribal god, whose appetite for human blood is as insatiable as that of the war-god of the mexicans. thus we have, on the one hand, the commandment, "thou shalt do no murder," and on the other, the injunction to commit indiscriminate massacres. a single instance may suffice. the "book of the law of moses" is quoted in kings xiv. as saying, "the fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor the children for the fathers; but every man shall be put to death for his own sin." in numbers xxxi., moses, the "meekest of mankind," is represented as extremely wroth with the captains who, having warred against midian at the lord's command, had only slaughtered the males, and taken the women of midian and their little ones captives; and he commands them to "kill every male among the little ones, and every woman that hath known man by lying with him; but all the women children that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." these midianites, be it remembered, being the people whose high priest jethro had hospitably received moses when he fled for his life from egypt, and gave him his daughter as a wife, by whom he had children who were half midianites, so that if the zealous phinehas was right in slaying the hebrew who had married a midianite woman, moses himself deserved the same fate. the same injunction of indiscriminate massacre in order to escape the jealous wrath of an offended jehovah is repeated, over and over again, in joshua and judges, and even as late as after the foundation of the monarchy, we find samuel telling saul in the name of the lord of hosts, to "go and smite amalek, and utterly destroy them, slaying both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass," and denouncing saul, and hewing agag in pieces before the lord, because this savage injunction had not been literally obeyed. even under david, the man after the lord's own heart, we find him torturing to death the prisoners taken at the fall of rabbah, and giving up seven of the sons of saul to the gibeonites to be sacrificed before the lord as human victims. it is one of the strangest contradictions of human nature that such atrocious violations of the moral sense should have been received for so many centuries as a divine revelation, rather than as instances of what may be more appropriately called "devil worship." nor is it a less singular proof of the power of cherished prepossessions that such a medley of the sublime religious ideas and lofty poetry of the prophetic ages, with such a mass of puerile and absurd legends, such obvious contradictions, and such a number of passages obviously dating from a later period, should be received by many men of intelligence, even to the present day, as the work of a single contemporary writer, the inspired prophet moses. when we pass from the pentateuch to the succeeding books of joshua and of judges the same remarks apply. the falling of the walls of jericho at the sound of the trumpet, and the defeat of an army of , men of midian and amalek with a slaughter of , , by men under gideon, armed with pitchers and trumpets, are on a par with the wandering of , , israelites in the desert for forty years, fed with manna of the size of hoar-frost. the moral atmosphere also continues to be that of red indians down to the time of david, for we read of nothing but murders and massacres, sometimes of other races, sometimes of one tribe by another; while the actions selected for special commendation are like those of jael, who drove a nail into the head of the sleeping fugitive whom she had invited into her tent; or of jephthah, who sacrificed his daughter as an offering to the lord in obedience to a vow. this barbarous state of manners is confirmed by flinders petrie's discoveries at the supposed site of lachish, which show the ruins of a walled city of the amorites, built upon by the mud hovels of a race as rude as the rudest bedouins who now wander on the edge of the arabian desert. the only safe conclusion seems to be that authentic annals of jewish history only begin with the monarchy, and that everything prior to david and solomon, or possibly saul and samuel, consists of myth, legend, and oral tradition, so inextricably blended, and so mixed up with successive later additions, as to give no certain information as to events or dates. all that it is safe to assume is, that in a general way the hebrews were originally a semitic tribe who migrated from chaldæa into palestine and thence into egypt, where they remained for an uncertain time and were oppressed by the national dynasty which expelled the hyksos; that they left egypt probably in the reign of menepthah, and as a consequence of the rebellion recorded by manetho; that they then lived for an unknown time as wandering bedouins on the frontier of palestine in a state of very rude barbarism; and finally burst in like a horde of aztecs on the older and more civilized toltecs of mexico. for a long period after this, perhaps for or years, they lived in a state of chronic warfare with one another, and with their neighbours, massacring and being massacred with the alternate vicissitudes of war, but with the same rudeness and ferocity of superstitions and manners. gradually, however, they advanced in civilization, and something of a national feeling arose, which led to a partial consolidation under priests, and a more complete one under kings. the first king, saul, was opposed by priestly influence and defeated and slain in battle, but a captain of condottieri, david, arose, a man of great energy and military genius, who gradually formed a standing army and conquered province after province, until at his death he left to his successor, solomon, an empire extending from the frontier of egypt to damascus, and from the red sea almost to the mediterranean. this kingdom commanded two of the great commercial routes between the east and west, the caravan route between tyre and babylon, _viâ_ damascus and tadmor, and the route from tyre to the terminus at ezion-gebir, of the sea-routes to arabia, africa, and india. solomon entered into close commercial relations with tyre, and during his long and splendid reign, jerusalem blossomed rapidly into a wealthy and a cultured city, and the surrounding cities and districts shared in the general prosperity. the greatness of the kingdom did not last long, for the revolt of the ten tribes and the growth of other powers soon reduced judæa and samaria to political insignificance; but jerusalem, down to the time of its final destruction by nebuchadnezzar, _i.e._ for a period of some years after solomon, never seems to have lost its character of a considerable and civilized city. it is evident from the later prophets that it was the seat of a good deal of wealth and luxury, for their invectives are, to a great extent, what we should call at the present day, socialist denunciations of the oppression of the poor by the rich, land-grabbing by the powerful, and extravagance of dress by the ladies of fashion. there were hereditary nobles, organized colleges of priests and scribes, and no doubt there was a certain amount of intellectual life and literary activity. but of a sacred book there is no trace until the discovery of one in the temple in the reign of josiah; and the peculiar tenets of modern judaism had no real hold on the mass of the people until after the return from exile and the reforms of ezra and nehemiah. the history, therefore, contained in the old testament is comparatively modern. there is nothing which can be relied on as authentic in regard to events and dates prior to the establishment of the monarchy, and even the wildest myths and the most impossible legends do not carry us back within years of the time when we have genuine historical annals attested by monuments both in egypt and chaldæa. part ii. evidence from science. chapter viii. geology and palÆontology. proved by contemporary monuments--as in history--summary of historical evidence--geological evidence of human periods--neolithic period--palæolithic or quaternary--tertiary--secondary and older periods--the recent or post-glacial period--lake-villages--bronze age--kitchen-middens--scandinavian peat-mosses--neolithic remains comparatively modern--definition of post-glacial period--its duration--mellard read's estimate--submerged forests--changes in physical geography--huxley--objections from america--niagara--quaternary period--immense antiquity--presence of man throughout--first glacial period--scandinavian and laurentian ice-caps--immense extent--mass of _débris_--elevation and depression--in britain--inter-glacial and second glacial periods--antiquity measured by changes of land--lyell's estimate--glacial _débris_ and loess--recent erosion--bournemouth--evans--prestwich--wealden ridge and southern drift--contain human implements--evidence from new world--california. we have now to take leave of historical records and fall back on the exact sciences for further traces of human origins. our guides are still contemporary records, but these are no longer stately tombs and temples, massive pyramids and written inscriptions. instead of these we have flint implements, incised bones, and a few rare specimens of human skulls and skeletons, the meaning of which has to be deciphered by skilled experts in their respective departments of science. still these records tell their tale as conclusively as any hieroglyphic or cuneiform writings in egyptian manuscripts or on babylonian cylinders. the celt, the knife, the lance and arrow-heads, and other weapons and implements, can be traced in an uninterrupted progressive series from the oldest and rudest palæolithic specimens, up to the highly-finished ones of polished stone, and through these into the age of metals, and into historic times and the actual implements of existing savage races. it is impossible to doubt that one of the palæolithic celts from st. acheul or st. prest is as truly a work of the human hand, guided by human intelligence, as a modern axe; and that an arrow-head from moustier or kent's cavern is no more an elf-bolt, or a _lusus naturæ_, than is a winchester rifle. before entering on this new line of investigation, it may be well to sum up briefly the evidence as to the starting-point from history and tradition. the commencement of the strictly historical period takes us back certainly for and in all probability for years in egypt, and certainly for and probably for or years in chaldæa. in each case we find populous cities, important temples and public works, writing and other advanced arts and industries, and all the signs of an old civilization already existing. other nations also evidently then existed with whom these ancient empires had relations of war and of commerce, though the annals of even the oldest of them, such as china, do not carry us back further than from to years. traditions do not add much to our information from monuments, and fade rapidly away into myths and legends. the oldest and most authentic, those of egypt, simply confirm the inference of great antiquity for its civilization prior to menes, but give no clue as to its origin. they neither trace it up to the stone age, which we know existed in the valley of the nile, nor refer it to any foreign source. the egyptian people thought themselves autochthonous, and attributed their arts, industries, and sciences to the inventions of native gods, or demi-gods, who reigned like mortal kings, in a remote and fabulous antiquity. we can gather nothing therefore from tradition that would enable us to add even years with certainty to the date of menes; while from the high state of civilization which had been evolved prior to his accession, from the primitive conditions of the stone period whose remains are found at cairo and thebes, we might fairly add , or , years to his date of years _b.c._, as a matter of probable conjecture for the first dawn of historical civilization. in any case we shall be well within the mark if we take , years as our first unit, or standard of chronological measurement, with which to start in our further researches, as we do with terrestrial standards in gauging the distances of suns and stars. it may be well also to supplement this statement of the historical standard by a brief review of the previous geological periods through which evidences of man's existence can be traced. immediately behind the historic age lies the recent period during which the existing fauna and flora, climate and configuration of seas and lands, have undergone no material change. it is characterized generally as the neolithic period, in which we find polished stone superseding the older and ruder forms of chipped stone, and passing itself into the copper, bronze, and iron ages of early history. it may also be called the recent or post-glacial period, for it coincides with the final disappearance of the last great glaciation, and the establishment of conditions of climate resembling those of the present day. behind this again comes the quaternary or pleistocene period, so called from its fauna, which, although containing extinct species, shows along with them many existing forms, some of which have migrated and some remain. this also may be called the glacial period, for although the commencement, termination, and different phases of the two great glaciations and intermediate inter-glacial periods cannot be exactly defined, and hard-and-fast lines drawn between the later pliocene at one end and the post-glacial at the other, there is no doubt that in a general way the quaternary and glacial periods coincide, and that the changes of climate were to a considerable extent the cause of the changes of flora and fauna. behind the quaternary comes in the tertiary, with its three great divisions of pliocene, miocene, and eocene, each containing numerous subdivisions, and all showing a progressive advance in forms of life, from older and more generalized types towards newer and more specialized ones, and a constant approach towards genera and species now existing. behind the tertiary comes the secondary period, into which it is unnecessary to enter for the present purpose, for all is different, and even mammalian life is only known to be present in a few forms of small and feeble marsupials. nor is it necessary to enter on any detailed consideration of the eocene or earlier tertiary, for the types of mammalian life are so different from those of later periods, that it cannot be supposed that any animal so highly organized as man had then come into existence. the utmost we can suppose is that, as in the case of the horse, some ancestral form from which the quadrumana and man may possibly have been developed may be found. but up to the present time nothing has been found in the eocene more nearly approaching such a missing link than an ancient form of lemur; and it is not until we get into the miocene that any evidence presents itself that man, or some near ancestor of man, may possibly have existed.[ ] [ ] since this was written the scientific world has been startled by the discovery announced by professor ameghino in the lower tertiary, supposed to be eocene, of patagonia, of numerous small monkeys of the american type of cebidæ, affording evidence of the existence of anthropoid primates at this extremely early date.--lydekker in _natural science_ for april . he adds, "perhaps still more noteworthy are the signs of affinity exhibited by these early primates to the extinct south american protopytheridæ. the latter are clearly related to the aberrant ungulate typotherium of the south american tertiaries, which appears to be allied on the one hand to the extinct toxodon, and on the other to the rodents. if substantiated, such an unexpected relationship as that of the american primates to the toxodonts will materially modify some of our present views as to the mutual relationships of mammals." and i may add, throw a flood of light on the question of the "missing link," and the development of man and the quadrumana from a common ancestral type. my present object being not to write a book on geology, but on human origins, i shall not attempt to trace back the geological evidence beyond the miocene, or to enter on any details of the later periods, except so far as they bear on what may be called geological chronology, _i.e._ on the probable dates which may be assigned to the first appearance and subsequent evolution of the human race going back from historical times. beginning with the recent or post-glacial period, the swiss and italian lake-villages supply clear evidence of the progress of man in western europe through the neolithic into the historical period. they afford us an unbroken series of substantially the same state of society, existing down to the time of the romans, for a great many centuries back of communities living in lake-villages built upon piles, like the villages in thrace described by herodotus, or those of the present day in new guinea. some of these have been occupied continuously, so that the _débris_ of different ages are stored in consecutive order like geological strata, and afford an unerring test of their relative antiquity. it is clear that many of those lake-villages were founded in the age of stone, and passed through that of bronze into the age of iron. the oldest settlements belong to the neolithic age, and contain polished stone implements and pottery, but they show a state of civilization not yet very far advanced. the inhabitants were only just emerging from the hunting into the pastoral stage. they lived principally on the produce of the chase, the bones of the stag and wild boar being very plentiful, while those of ox and sheep are rare. agriculture and the cereals seem to have been unknown, though stores of acorns and hazel nuts were found which had been roasted for food. by degrees the bones of wild animals become scarce, and those of ox and sheep common, showing that the pastoral stage had been reached; and the goat, pig, and horse were added to the list of domestic animals--the dog being included from the first, and the horse only at a later period. agriculture follows next in order, and considerable proficiency was attained, barley and wheat being staple articles of food, and apples, pears, and other fruit being stored for winter consumption. flax also was grown, and the arts of spinning and weaving were introduced, so that clothing, instead of being confined to skins, was made of coarse linen and woollen stuffs. the most important advance, however, in the arts of civilization is afforded by the introduction of metals. these begin to appear about the middle of the neolithic period, at first very sparingly, and in a few districts such as spain, upper italy, and hungary, where native copper was found and was hammered into shapes modelled on the old stone implements; but as a general rule, and in all the later settlements, bronze, in new and improved shapes, supersedes stone and copper. for the most part these bronze implements seem to have been obtained by foreign commerce from the phoenicians, etruscans, and other nations bordering on the mediterranean, though in some cases they were cast on the spot from native or imported ores. the existence of bronze, however, must go back to a far greater antiquity than the time when the neolithic people of europe obtained their first supplies from phoenician traders. bronze, as we have seen in a former chapter, is an alloy of two metals, copper and tin, and the hardest and most serviceable alloy is only to be obtained by mixing the two in a certain definite proportion. now it is to be noted, that nearly all the prehistoric bronze found in europe is an alloy in this definite proportion. clearly all this bronze, or the art of making it, must have originated from some common centre. all this, however, is very conjectural, and all that can be concluded from it is, that any indications as to the antiquity of man derived from the bronze age as known to us in europe, hardly carry us back to dates as remote as those furnished by the monuments of egypt and chaldæa. indeed, there are no facts certainly known to us from remains of the bronze age in europe that imply a greater antiquity than or possibly years b.c., a date at which bronze had undoubtedly been already known in egypt and the east for many centuries. the neolithic period which preceded that of metals is of longer duration, but still comparatively recent. attempts have been made to measure it by a sort of natural chronometer in the case of the lake-villages, by comparing the amount of silting up since the villages were built with the known rate of silting up since roman times. the calculations vary very much, and can only be taken as approximative; but the oldest dates assigned do not exceed b.c., and most of them are not more than or b.c. it must be remembered however that the foundation of a lake-village on piles implies a long antecedent neolithic period, to have arrived at a stage of civilization which made the construction of such villages possible. this civilization coincides wonderfully with that of the primitive aryans as shown by linguistic palæontology. the discussion as to the origin of the aryans has thrown a great deal of light on this question, and has gone far to dispel the old notion that they radiated from some centre in asia, and overran europe in successive waves. on the contrary, all the evidence and all the best authorities point to their having occupied, when we first get traces of them, pretty much the same districts of the great plain of northern europe and southern russia as we now find them in, and developed there their distinct dialects and nationalities; while the words common to all or nearly all the aryan families point to their having been pastoral nomads, in a state of civilization very like that of the earlier lake-villagers, before this separation took place. the scandinavian kitchen-middens, or shell-mounds, carry us further back into this early neolithic period. the shell-mounds which are found in great numbers along the baltic shore of denmark are often of great size. they are formed of an accumulation of shells of oysters, mussels, and other shell-fish, bones of wild animals, birds, and fish, all of existing species, with numerous implements of flint or bone, and occasional fragments of coarse pottery. they are decidedly more archaic than the lake-dwellings, showing a much ruder civilization of savages living like the fuegians of the present day, in scanty tribes on the sea-shore, supported mainly by shell-fish, supplemented by the chase of wild animals. the dog was their only domestic animal, and their only arts the fabrication of rude pottery and implements of stone and bone, unless it can be inferred from the occasional presence of bones of cod and other deep-sea fish, that they possessed some form of boat or canoe, and had hooks and lines or nets. these mounds must have taken an enormous time to accumulate, for they are very numerous, and often of great bulk, some of them being feet long, feet wide, and ten feet thick. how long such masses must have taken to accumulate must be apparent when we consider that the state of civilization implies a very scanty population. it has been calculated that if the neolithic population of denmark required as many square miles for its support as the similar existing populations of greenland and patagonia, their total number could not have exceeded , and each mound must have been the accumulation of perhaps two or three families. ancient, however, as these mounds must be, they are clearly neolithic. they are sharply distinguished from the far older remains of the palæolithic period by the knowledge, however rude, of pottery and polished stone, and still more by the fauna, which is entirely recent, and from which the extinct animals of the quaternary period have disappeared; while the position of the mounds shows that only slight geological changes, such as are now going on, have occurred since they were accumulated. similar mounds, on even a larger scale, occur on the sea-coasts of various districts in europe and america, but they afford no indication of their date beyond that of great antiquity. the peat-mosses of denmark have been appealed to as affording something like a conjectural date for the early neolithic period in that country. these are formed in hollows of the glacial drift, which have been small lakes or ponds in the midst of forests, into which trees have fallen, and which have become gradually converted into peat by the growth of marsh plants. it is clearly established that there have been three successive ages of forest growth, the upper one of beech, below it one of oak, and lowest of all one of fir. the implements and relics found in the beech stratum are all modern, those in the oak stratum are of the later neolithic and bronze ages, and those in the lowest, or fir-horizon, are earlier and ruder neolithic, resembling those found in the older lake-villages and shell-mounds. now beech has been the characteristic forest tree of denmark certainly since the roman period, or for years, and no one can say for how much longer. if the speculations as to the origin of the aryan race in northern europe are correct, it must have been for very much longer, as the word for beech is common to so many of the dialects into which the primitive aryan language became divided. the stages of oaks and firs must equally have been of long duration, and the different stages could only have been brought about by slow secular variations of climate during the post-glacial period. still this affords no reliable information as to specific dates, and we can only take steenstrup's calculation of from to , years for the formation of some of these peat-bogs as a very vague estimate, and this only carries us back to a time when egypt and chaldæa must have been already densely peopled, and far advanced in civilization. on the whole, it seems that the neolithic arrow-heads found in egypt, and the fragments of pottery brought up by borings through the deposits of the nile, are the oldest certain human relics of the neolithic age which have yet been discovered, and these do not carry us back further than a possible date of , or , years b.c. nor is there any certainty that any of the neolithic remains found in the newer deposits of rivers and the upper strata of caves go further, or even so far back as these relics of an egyptian stone period. all that the evidence really shows is, that while the neolithic period must have lasted for a long time as compared with historical standards, its duration is almost infinitesimally small as compared with that of the preceding palæolithic period. thus in kent's cavern neolithic remains are only found in a small surface layer of black earth from three to twelve inches thick; while below this, palæolithic implements and a quaternary fauna occur in an upper stalagmite one to three feet thick, below it in red cave earth five to six feet thick; then in a lower stalagmite in places ten or twelve feet thick, and below it again in a breccia three or four feet thick. this is confirmed by the evidence of all the caves explored in all parts of the world, which uniformly show any neolithic remains confined to a superficial layer of a few inches with many feet of palæolithic strata below them. and river-drifts in the same manner show neolithic remains confined to the alluvia and peat-beds of existing streams, while palæolithic remains occur during the whole series of deposits while these rivers were excavating their present valleys. if we say feet for inches, or twelve for one, we shall be well within the mark in estimating the comparative duration of the palæolithic and neolithic periods, as measured by the thickness of their deposits in caves and river-drifts; and as we shall see hereafter, other geological evidence from elevations and depressions, denudations and depositions, point to even a higher figure. in going back from the neolithic into the palæolithic period, we are confronted by the difficulty to which i have already referred, of there being no hard-and-fast lines by which geological eras are clearly separated from one another. zoologically there seems to be a very decided break between the recent and the quaternary. the instances are rare and doubtful in which we can see any trace of the remains of palæolithic man, and of the fauna of extinct animals, passing gradually into those of neolithic and recent times. but geologically there is no such abrupt break. we cannot draw a line at the culmination of the last great glaciation and say, here the glacial period ends and the post-glacial begins. nor can we say of any definite period or horizon, this is glacial and this recent. a great number of palæolithic remains and of quaternary fossils are undoubtedly post-glacial in the sense of being found in deposits which have accumulated since the last great glaciers and ice-caps began to retreat. existing valleys have been excavated to a great extent since the present rivers, swollen by the melting snows and torrential rains of this period of the latest glacial retreat, superseded old lines of drainage, and began to wear down the surface of the earth into its present aspect. this phase is more properly included in the term glacial, for both the coming on and the disappearance of the periods of intense cold are as much part of the phenomenon as their _maximum_ culmination, and very probably occupied much longer intervals of time. in like manner, we cannot positively say when this post-glacial period ended and the recent began. not, i should say, until the exceptional effects of the last great glacial period had finally disappeared, and the climate, geographical conditions, and fauna had assumed nearly or entirely the modern conditions in which we find them at the commencement of history. and this may have been different in different countries, for local conditions might make the glacial period commence sooner and continue later in some districts than in others. thus in north america, where the glaciation was more intense, and the ice-cap extended some ten degrees further south than in europe, it might well be that it was later in retreating and disappearing. the elevation of the laurentian highlands into the region of perpetual snow was evidently one main factor of the american ice-cap, just as that of scandinavia was of that of europe, and it by no means follows that their depression was simultaneous. it would be unwise, for instance, to take the time occupied in cutting back the niagara gorge by a river which only began to run at some stage of the post-glacial period, as an absolute test of the duration of that period all over the world. indeed, the glacial period cannot be said to have ended and the post-glacial begun at the present day in greenland, if the disappearance of the ice-cap over very extensive regions is to be taken as the test. any approximation to the duration of the post-glacial period in any given locality can only be obtained by defining its commencement with the first deposits which lie above the latest glacial drift, and measuring the amount of work done since. this has been done very carefully by the officers of the geological survey and other eminent authorities in england and scotland, and the result clearly shows that since the last glaciation left the country buried in a thick mantle of boulder-clay and drift, such an amount of denudation, and such movements of elevation and depression have taken place, as must have required a great lapse of time. the most complete attempt at an estimate of this time is that made by mr. mellard read of the geological survey, from the changes proved to have occurred in the mersey valley. in this case it is shown that the valley, almost in its present dimensions, must have been first carved out of an uniform plain of glacial drift and upper boulder-clay by sub-aërial denudation; then that a depression let the sea into the valley and accumulated a series of estuarine clays and silts; then an elevation raised the whole into a plain on which grew an extensive forest of oak rooted in the clays; this again must have subsided and let in the sea for a second time, which must have remained long enough to leave a large estuarine deposit, and finally the whole must have been raised to the present level before historical times. the phenomenon of the submerged forest is a very general one, being traced along almost all the sea-coasts of western europe, where shelving shores and sheltered bays favour the preservation of patches of this primæval forest. it testifies to a considerable amount of elevation and subsequent depression, for its remains can be traced below low-water mark, and are occasionally dredged up far out to sea, and stately oaks could not have flourished unless more or less continental conditions had prevailed. it is evident that in this age of forests the german ocean must have been dry land, and the continent of europe must have extended beyond the orkneys and hebrides, probably to the hundred fathom line. such movements of elevation and depression, so far as we know anything of them, are extremely slow. there has been no change in the fords of rivers in britain since roman times, and the spit connecting st. michael's mount with cornwall was dry at ebb and covered at flood as at the present day, when the british carted their tin across it to trade with the phoenicians years ago. mr. read goes into elaborate calculations based on the time required for these geological changes, and arrives at the conclusion that they point to a date of not less than , or , years ago for the commencement of the post-glacial period. these calculations are disputed, but it seems certain that several multiples of the historical standard of say , years, must be required to measure the period since the glacial age finally disappeared, and the earth, with its existing fauna, climate, and geographical conditions, came fairly into view. this is confirmed by the great changes which have taken place in the distribution of land and water since the quaternary period. huxley, in an article on the aryan question, points out that in recent times four great separate bodies of water--the black sea, the caspian, the sea of aral, and lake balkash--occupied the southern end of the vast plains which extend from the arctic sea to the highlands of the balkan peninsula, of asia minor, of persia and afghanistan, and of the high plateaux of central asia, as far as the altai. but he says, "this state of things is comparatively modern. at no very distant period the land of asia minor was continuous with that of europe, across the present site of the bosphorus, forming a barrier several hundred feet high, which dammed up the waters of the black sea. a vast extent of eastern europe and of west-central asia thus became one vast ponto-aralian mediterranean, into which the largest rivers of europe and asia, the danube, volga, oxus, and jaxartes, discharged their waters, and which sent its overflow northwards through the present basin of the obi." the time necessary for such changes goes far to confirm mellard read's estimate for the long duration of the recent or post-glacial period. in fact, all the evidence from the old world goes to confirm the long duration of the post-glacial period, and the immensely greater antiquity of the glacial period taken as a whole. it is only from the new world that any serious arguments are forthcoming to abridge those periods, or rather the post-glacial period, for that alone is affected by the facts adduced. it is said that recent measurements of the recession of the falls of niagara show, that instead of requiring , years, as estimated by lyell, to cut back the gorge of seven miles from kingston to the falls, , years at the outside would have been amply sufficient; and that this is confirmed by the gorges of other rivers, such as that of the mississippi at st. paul's. the evidence is not conclusive, for it depends on the rate of erosion going on for the last twenty or thirty years, which may obviously give a different result from the true average, and in fact older estimates, based on longer periods, gave the rate adopted by lyell. but if we admit the accuracy of the modern estimates, it does not affect the total duration of the glacial period, but simply that of a late phase of the post-glacial, when the ice-cap which covered north america to a depth often of or feet, had melted away and shrunk back miles from its original southern boundary, so as to admit of the waters of the great lakes finding an outlet to the north-east instead of by the old drainage to the south. nothing is more likely than that, as the great laurentian ice-cap of america was deeper and extended further than the scandinavian ice-cap of europe, it may have taken longer to melt the larger accumulation of ice, and thus postponed the establishment of post-glacial conditions and river-drainage to a later period than in the warmer and more insular climate of europe. it is a matter of everyday observation, that the larger a snowball is the longer it takes to melt, and that when the mass is large it requires a long time to make it disappear even after mild weather has set in. the only other argument for a short glacial period is drawn from the rate of advance of the glaciers in greenland, which is shown to be much more rapid than that of the glaciers of switzerland, from which former calculations had been made. but obviously the rate at which the fronts of glaciers advance when forced by a mass of continental ice down fiords on a steep descending gradient, into a deep sea, where the front is floated off in icebergs, affords no clue as to that of an ice-cap spread, with a front of miles, over half a continent, retarded by friction, and surmounting mountain chains feet high. nor does the rate of advance afford the slightest clue to the time during which the ice-cap may have remained stationary, alternately advanced and retreated, and finally disappeared.[ ] [ ] the following is the latest pronouncement on the subject from a well-known american geologist:-- "students of the ice age will read with interest a paper by mr. n. s. shaler on the antiquity of the last glacial period, submitted to the boston society of natural history, and printed in the latest instalment of the society's proceedings. mr. shaler differs decidedly from those geologists who suppose that the end of the glacial period is probably not very remote from our own day. one of the strongest of his arguments is derived from the distribution of the vegetation, which in america has regained possession, by migration, of the glaciated district. we must conceive, he points out, that as the ice retreated and gradually disappeared from the surface, a considerable time elapsed before existing forests attained their organization. he assumes as certain that the black walnut and the pignut hickory, between western minnesota and the atlantic coast, have advanced, on the average, a distance of miles north of the ancient ice front to which their ancestors were driven by the presence of the glacial sheet. for several reasons he believes that the northward progress of these forms must have been due mainly, not to the action of streams or tornadoes, but to the natural spread of the seed from the extremities of boughs, and to the carriage of the seed by rodents. but allowing for every conceivable method of transportation, he argues that a period of ten or even twenty thousand years is wholly inadequate to account for the present distribution of these large-seeded trees. if they occurred only sporadically in the northernmost part of the field they occupy, their implantation might be regarded as due to chance action. the fact, however, that they extend from the atlantic to minnesota indicates that the advance was accomplished by causes of a general and continuous nature." we have now to adjust our time-telescope to a wider range, and see what the quaternary or glacial period teaches us as to the antiquity of man. the first remark is, that if the post-glacial period is much longer than that for which we have historical records, the glacial exceeds the post-glacial in a far higher proportion. the second, that throughout the whole of this glacial period, from its commencement to its close, we have conclusive evidence of the existence of man, and that not only in a few limited localities, but widely spread over nearly all the habitable regions of the earth. the first point has been so conclusively established by all geologists of all countries, from the time of lyell down to the present day, that it is unnecessary to enter on any detailed arguments, and the leading facts may be taken as established. it may be sufficient, therefore, if i give a short summary of those facts, and quote a few of the instances which show the enormous lapse of time which must have elapsed between the close of the tertiary and the commencement of the modern epoch. the glacial period was not one and simple, but comprised several phases. during the pliocene the climate was gradually becoming colder, and either towards its close or at the commencement of the quaternary, this culminated in a first and most intense glaciation. ice-caps radiating from scandinavia crept outwards, filling up the north sea, crossing valleys and mountains, and covering with their boulders and moraines a wide circle, embracing britain down to the thames valley, germany to the hartz mountains, and russia almost as far east as the urals. in north america a still more massive ice-cap overflowed mountain ranges feet high, and covered the whole eastern half of the continent with an unbroken mantle of ice as far south as new york and washington. at the same time every great mountain chain and high plateau sent out enormous glaciers, which, in the case of the alps, filled up the valley of the rhone and the lake of geneva, buried the whole of the lower country of switzerland under feet of ice, and left the boulders of its terminal moraine, carried from the mont blanc range, at that height on the opposite range of the jura. nor is this a solitary instance. we find everywhere traces of enormous glaciers in the pyrenees and carpathians, the atlas and lebanon, the taurus and caucasus, the highlands of scotland, ireland, and wales; in the rocky mountains and sierra nevada; the andes and cordilleras of south america; in south africa and in new zealand. these may not have all been simultaneous, but they certainly all belong to the same period of the great glaciation, and show that it must have been affected by some general cause, and not been entirely due to mere local accidents. how this first great glacial period came on, or how long it lasted, we do not know, unless croll's astronomical theory, which will be considered later, affords a clue. but we know generally that it must have lasted for an immense time from the amount of work done and the changes which took place. the ice, which covered so great a portion of the northern hemisphere, was not a polar ice-cap, but spread outwards in all directions from great masses of elevated land, as is proved conclusively from the direction of the striæ which were engraved by it on the subjacent rocks. this land must have been more elevated than at present, so as to rise, like greenland, far into the region of perpetual snow, where all rain falls and accumulates in the solid form; and also to supply the enormous mass of _débris_ which the ice-caps and glaciers left behind them. it is not too much to say that a million of square miles in europe, and more in north america, were covered by the _débris_ of rocks ground down by these glaciers, and often to great depths. most of the _débris_ of the first glaciation have been removed by denudation, or ploughed out by the second great advance of the ice, leaving only the larger and harder boulders to testify to their extent; but enough remains to show that the first series of boulder-clays and drifts must have been on a scale larger than those of the second and subsequent glaciations, which now form the superficial stratum of so much of the earth's surface, and often attain a depth of several hundred feet. wright, in his _ice age in north america_, estimates that "not less than , , square miles of territory in north america is still covered with an average depth of fifty feet of glacial _débris_." however, this first period of elevation and of intense glaciation passed away, and was succeeded by one of depression and of milder climate. whether or no the depression was due, as some think, to the weight of the enormous mass of ice weighing down the yielding crust of the earth, and whether or no the milder climate was partly occasioned by this depression letting in the sea, the fact is certain that the two coincided, and were general and not merely local phenomena. marine shells at the top of what are now high hills, and which during the preceding glaciation were probably higher, attest the fact that a large amount of land must have sunk below the sea towards the close of this first glacial period. it is equally clear that a long inter-glacial period ensued, during which many changes took place in the geographical conditions and in the fauna and flora, requiring a very long time. thus britain, which had been reduced to an arctic archipelago, in which only a few of the highest mountain peaks emerged as frozen islands, became united to the continent, and the abode of a fauna consisting in great part of african animals. at one time boreal shells were deposited, at the bottom of an arctic ocean, on what is now the top of moel-tryfen in wales, a hill feet above the present sea-level; while at another the hippopotamus found its way, in some great river flowing from the south, as far north as yorkshire, and the remains of african animals such as the hyena accumulated in our caves. in southern france we had at one time a vegetation of the arctic willow and reindeer moss, at another that of the fig-tree and canary-laurel. when we consider that little if any change has occurred either in geographical conditions or in fauna or flora, within the historical period of some , years, it is difficult to assign the time which would be sufficient to bring about such changes by any known natural causes. and yet it comprises only a portion of the glacial period, for after this inter-glacial period had lasted for an indefinite time the climate again became cold, and culminated in a second glaciation, which, if not equal to the first, was still of extreme severity, and brought back ice-caps and glaciers almost to their former limits, passing away slowly and with several vicissitudes and alternate retreats and advances. it is not always easy to determine the position of each individual phase of the two glacial and the inter-glacial periods, for they must often be intermixed, and the results of the last glaciation and of subsequent denudation have to a great extent obscured those of the earlier periods. but taking a general view of the glacial period as a whole, there are a few leading facts which testify conclusively to its immense antiquity. first, there is the amount of elevation and depression. we have seen that marine arctic shells have been found on the top of moel-tryfen, feet above the present sea-level. nor is this an isolated instance, for marine drifts apparently of the same character have been traced on the mountains of scotland, wales, and ireland to a height of between and feet. in norway, also, old sea beaches are found up to a height of feet. nor are these great movements confined to the old world or to limited localities. according to professor le conte, at the last meeting of the geological congress at washington, a great continental movement, commencing in the later tertiary and terminating in the beginning of the quaternary, caused changes of level amounting to or feet on both sides of the continent of north america. now elevation and depression of large masses of land are, as far as we know anything certain about them, very slow processes, especially in countries unaffected by recent volcanic action, which is the case with nearly all the regions in north america and europe which were covered by the great ice-sheets. there has been little or no perceptible change anywhere since the commencement of history, and the only accurate measurements of changes now going on are those made in sweden, where it appears that in some cases elevation, and in others depression, is taking place at the rate of about two and a half feet in a century. in volcanic regions earthquakes have occasionally caused movements of greater amount in limited areas, but there is no trace of anything of the sort in these movements of the glacial period which have apparently gone on by slight secular changes in the earth's crust as they are now doing in scandinavia. but in this case a depression of feet, followed by an elevation of equal amount, at lyell's rate of two and a half feet per century, would require , years, without allowing for any pauses during the process. and this only embraces part of the whole glacial period, for the depression did not begin until after the climax of the first great glaciation, when the land probably stood higher than at present. of course the actual movements may have been more rapid, but unless we resort to the exploded theories of cataclysms and catastrophes, the time for such movements must have been very great. an equally conclusive proof of the immense antiquity of the glacial period is afforded by the formation known as the loess, which fills up so many of the valley systems of europe, asia, and america to great depths, and spreads over the adjacent table-lands. it is a tranquil land deposit of fine glacial mud, from sheets of water which inundated the country when great rivers from glaciated districts ran at higher levels, and began to excavate their present valleys. lyell estimates the thickness of this deposit in the rhine valley at feet, and it is found at much higher levels on upland plains. now this loess is not a marine or lacustrine deposit, as is proved by the shells it contains, which are all of land species; nor is it a deposit of running water, for there are no sands or gravels, but distinctly such a deposit from tranquil sheets of muddy water as is now accumulated in egypt by the inundations of the nile. when the rhine brought down such volumes of muddy water from the glaciers of the alps as to overflow the upland plains, it must have flowed at a level many hundred feet higher than its present valley, which must have been since scooped out by sub-aërial denudation. the rate of deposition of the nile mud is about three inches per century, and there seems no reason why that of the fine glacial mud should have been more rapid, charged as the nile is every year with mud from the torrential rains of the abyssinian highlands. at this rate it would have required , years to accumulate the feet of loess of the rhine valley. here again the rate may have been faster, but it is sufficient to show that an immense time must have elapsed, and the loess is a distinctly glacial deposit, containing palæolithic human remains and a pleistocene fauna, and embracing only a portion of the quaternary period. nor is it an isolated phenomenon confined to europe, but is found over the whole world wherever rivers have flowed from regions which were formerly buried under ice and snow. it is found in great force in the valleys of the yang-tse-kang and the mississippi, and sir charles lyell, referring to the fossil human bone found in it at natchez, says--"my reluctance in to regard the fossil human bone as of post-pliocene date arose, in part, from the reflection that the ancient loess of natchez is anterior in time to the whole modern delta of the mississippi. the table-land was, i believe, once a part of the original alluvial plain or delta of the great river before it was upraised. it has now risen more than feet above its pristine level. after the upheaval, or during it, the mississippi cut through the whole fluviatile formation, of which its bluffs are now formed, just as the rhine has in many parts of its valley excavated a passage through its ancient loess. if i was right in calculating that the present delta of the mississippi has acquired, as a minimum of time, more than , years for its growth, it would follow, if the claims of the natchez man to have coexisted with the mastodon are admitted, that north america was peopled more than a thousand centuries ago by the human race. but, even were that true, we could not presume, reasoning from ascertained geological data, the natchez bone was anterior in date to the antique flint _haches_ of st. acheul." human remains have since been found in the united states, both in the loess and in drifts, which are presumably older; but even if this were doubtful, the evidence would remain the same for the immense time required for such a deposit, and there is abundant proof in europe, that human implements, and even skulls and skeletons, have been found at considerable depths in the loess, along with remains of the mammoth and other extinct animals. it must be remembered also, that the loess is only one part of the work due to glacial erosion. it is, in fact, only the deposit of the fine mud ground from the rocks by glaciers, and carried down further by rivers issuing from them than the coarser _débris_, which, as we have seen, cover , , square miles to an average depth of fifty feet in north america alone. the volumes, therefore, of the loess and of the _débris_ correspond, and tell the same story of enormous erosion requiring immense periods of time. even in comparatively recent times striking proofs of immense antiquity are afforded by the amounts of denudation and erosion which have taken place since the ice disappeared and the lands and seas assumed substantially their present contours and levels. i will give one instance which, although comparatively modern, will come home readily to most british readers. dr. evans in his _ancient stone implements_, referring to those found at bournemouth feet above the present sea-level in the gravels of the old solent river, which then ran at that height, says-- "who, standing on the edge of the lofty cliff at bournemouth, and gazing over the wide expanse of waters between the present shore and a line connecting the needles on the one hand and the ballard-down foreland on the other, can fully comprehend how immensely remote was the epoch when what is now that vast bay was high and dry land, and a long range of chalk downs, feet above the sea, bounded the horizon on the south? and yet this must have been the sight that met the eyes of those primæval men who frequented that ancient river, which buried their handiworks in gravels that now cap the cliffs, and of the course of which so strange but indubitable a memorial subsists, in what has now become the solent sea." and the same may be said of the still wider strait which separates england from france. no geologist could look either at the needles and ballard foreland, or at shakespeare's cliff and cape grisnez, without a conviction that the chalk ridge was once continuous, and has been worn away, inch by inch, by the very same process as is now going on. nor can the action of ice or river floods be evoked to accelerate the process, for evidently it has throughout been a case of marine erosion. the only question is whether this dates back even into the later phases of the glacial period, for the opposite cliffs show no sign of having been either depressed beneath the sea or elevated above it, but rather appear to have stood at their present level since the erosion began. in any case it can only have occupied a comparatively short and recent phase of the glacial period, for there is abundant evidence that the british islands have been connected with the continent in comparatively recent times. great, however, as is the antiquity shown by these comparatively modern instances, they sink into insignificance compared with that shown by a recent discovery, which i quote the more readily because it rests on the high authority of professor prestwich, who has been foremost among modern geologists in reducing the time required for the glacial period and for the existence of man. this is afforded by the upland gravels in kent and surrey, which are scattered over wide areas of the chalk downs and green-sand, at elevations far above existing valleys and watersheds, and which could only have been deposited before the present rivers began to run, and when the configuration of the country was altogether different. quite recently mr. harrison, a shopkeeper at ightham in kent, who is an ardent field-geologist, discovered palæolithic implements, in considerable numbers and in various localities, up to an elevation of feet above the sea level, in these gravels of the great southern drift. these discoveries, which have since been repeated by other observers, led professor prestwich to institute an exhaustive inquiry as to these upland drifts; and the startling conclusion he arrives at is, that the oldest of them, or great southern drift, in which the implements are found, could only have come from a mountain range to feet high, which formerly ran from east to west in the line of the anticlinal axis which runs down the centre of the present weald of kent, between the north and south chalk-downs, and which has been since worn down to the present low forest-ridge by sub-aërial denudation. the reasoning by which this inference is supported seems irresistible. the drift could not have been deposited by the present rivers or with the present configuration of the country, for it is found at levels or feet higher than the highest watersheds between the existing valleys. it consists not only of chalk flints, but to a great extent of cherts and sandstones, such as are found at present in the forest-ridge of the wealden and nowhere else. it must have been brought by water, for the gravels are to a considerable extent rounded and water-worn. this water must have run down-hill and with considerable velocity during floods, from the size of the rolled stones, and it must have come from the south, because the cherts and grits are only found there, and because the levels at which the gravels are found rise in that direction. by following these levels as far as the present surface extends, which is to the southern edge of the green-sand, it is easy to plot out what must have been the continuation of this rising gradient to the south, and what the elevation of the southern range in which these northward-flowing streams took their origin. prestwich has gone into the question in full detail, and his conclusion is, that the height of this wealden ridge must have been at least feet, or in other words, that about feet must have disappeared by denudation. this is the more conclusive as prestwich is the highest authority, and he approached the subject with a bias for shortening rather than lengthening the periods commonly assigned for the glacial epoch and the antiquity of man. the present average rate of denudation of continents has been approximately measured by calculating the amount of solid matter brought down by rivers. it varies a good deal according to the nature of the area drained, but the average is about one foot in years. at this rate the time required for the removal of feet of the wealden ridge would be no less than , , years; but of course this would be no fair test, as denudation would be vastly more rapid than the present average rate, on hilly ranges and under glacial conditions of climate. it is enough to say that the time required must have been extremely great, and quite ample to fit in with the most extended time required by croll's theory of the varying eccentricity of the earth's orbit. it is to be noted also, that prestwich pronounces part of this high level or southern drift to be older than the westleton pebble drift which forms part of the upper pliocene series in suffolk and norfolk, and which the professor has traced over many of our southern counties. if this conclusion is correct, it solves the problem of tertiary man by showing numerous palæolithic implements in a stage older than an undoubted pliocene bed. the implements found in these high-level southern drifts are all of a very rude type, and the discovery is confirmed by similar implements having been found at corresponding elevations on the chalk downs of hertfordshire and on the south downs.[ ] [ ] in a recent paper read to the anthropological society by professor prestwich, in feb. , he confirms the above statement, and says that specimens have now been found at heights of from to feet, and extending over an area of twenty miles in length; while similar implements have been found on the south downs near eastbourne feet above the sea level; and at heights of and feet on the hills near dunstable. he says, "looking at the very distinctive features of those plateau implements, such as their rudeness of make, choice of material, depth of wear and staining, peculiarity of form--taken in conjunction with the extreme rarity of valley forms--they constitute characters so essentially different from those of the latter implements, that by these characters alone they might be attributed to a more primitive race of men; and as this view accords with the geological evidence, which shows that the drift-beds on the chalk plateau with implements are older than the valley drifts, i do not see how we are to avoid the conclusion, that not only was the plateau race not contemporary with the valley men, but also that the former belonged to a period considerably anterior to the latter--either an early glacial or a pre-glacial period." i will mention only one other instance, which shows that the new world confirms the conclusion as to the antiquity of the quaternary age. the auriferous gravels of california consist of an enormous mass of _débris_ washed down by pre-glacial or early glacial rivers from the western slopes of the great coast range. during their deposition they became interstratified with lavas and tuffs from eruptions of volcanoes long since extinct, and finally covered by an immense flow of basalts, which formed a gently inclined plane from the sierra nevada to the pacific. this plane was attacked by the denudations of the existing river-courses, and cut down into a series of flat-topped hills, divided by steep cañons and by the valleys of the present great rivers. in one case, that of the colombia river, this denudation has been carried down to a depth of over feet, and the river flows between precipitous cliffs of this height. the present gold-mining is carried on mainly by shafts and tunnels driven through superficial gravels and sheets of basalts and tuffs, to the gravels of the pre-glacial rivers, which are brought down in great masses by hydraulic jets. in a great number of these cases stone implements of undoubted human origin have been found at great depths under several successive sheets of basalts, tuffs, and gravels. mr. skertchly, an eminent english geologist, who recently visited the district, says of these gravels, "whatever may be their absolute age from a geological standpoint, their immense antiquity historically is beyond question. the present great river system of the sacramento, joaquin, and other rivers has been established; cañons feet deep have been carried through lava, gravels, and into the bed rock; and the gravels, once the bed of large rivers, now cap hills feet high. there is ample ground for the belief that these gravels are of pliocene age, but the presence of objects of human formation invests them with a higher interest to the anthropologist than even to the geologist." i will return to this subject more fully in a later chapter, when dealing with the question of the human remains found in these californian gravels. those who wish to pursue the subject further will find abundant evidence in the works of lyell, geikie, evans, boyd dawkins, and other modern geologists, and a popular summary of it in my _modern science and modern thought_. it is sufficient for my present purpose to have shown that even taking the quaternary period alone, geology shows that there is an abundant balance in the bank of time to meet any demands that may be made upon it by any of the kindred sciences. but it is to those we must look for any chance of even an approximate measurement in years or centuries, for geology and palæontology only show immense periods, but give no certain information as to definite durations. the clue, if any, must be sought in croll's astronomical theory of the glacial period, which i now proceed to consider. chapter ix. the glacial period and croll's theory. causes of glacial periods--actual conditions of existing glacial regions--high land in high latitudes--cold alone insufficient--large evaporation required--formation of glaciers--they flow like rivers--icebergs--greenland and antarctic circle--geographical and cosmic causes--cooling of earth and sun, cold spaces in space, and change in earth's axis, reviewed and rejected--precession alone insufficient--unless with high eccentricity--geographical causes, elevation of land--aerial and oceanic currents--gulf stream and trade winds--evidence for greater elevation of land in america, europe, and asia--depression--warmer tertiary climates--alps and himalayas--wallace's _island life_--lyell--croll's theory--sir r. ball--former glacial periods--correspondence with croll's theory--length of the different phases--summary--croll's theory a secondary cause--conclusions as to man's antiquity. i turn from the effects to the causes of that great glacial period which has been described in the last chapter. this line of investigation is peculiarly interesting in the search after human origins, for it affords the only chance of reducing the vague periods of immense duration shown by geology, to something like a definite chronology of years and centuries. if astronomical causes, the dates of which admit of mathematical calculation, can be shown to have been, if not the sole or principal, yet one of the causes which must have influenced the phenomena of the glacial epoch, we may assume these dates for the occurrence of the human remains which accompany these phenomena. otherwise we must fall back on immense antiquity, which may mean anything from , or , , to , or , , years, since the first authentic evidence for palæolithic man. the first step towards an investigation of the cause of glacial periods, is to consider what are the conditions of the actual ones which are now prevailing. we have one such period in greenland, another in the antarctic region, a third in high mountain chains like those of alaska, and of the swiss and new zealand alps. in all these cases we find certain common conditions. high land in high latitudes, rising in great masses above the snow-line or temperature which condenses water in the solid form; and winds which are charged with great quantities of watery vapour raised by evaporation, to be so condensed. cold alone is insufficient to produce glaciers and ice-caps, as may be seen by the example of the coldest regions in the world, siberia and the tundras of northern asia and of north america, where the earth is permanently frozen to a depth of many feet; but there are no glaciers, the reason obviously is, that there is no sufficient supply of moist air from warm oceans to furnish more snow in winter than is melted in summer. heat is in a certain sense as necessary as cold to account for glacial periods, for snow and ice can no more than other things be made out of nothing, and every snowflake implies an equal amount of aqueous vapour raised somewhere else by evaporation. but if an abundant supply of liquid or gaseous water is combined with cold sufficient to condense it into the solid form, it becomes fixed, and if the summer heat is insufficient to melt the excess of snow, it necessarily accumulates. the growth of glaciers, follows as an inevitable consequence. the snow is converted into ice by pressure and by alternate freezing and melting, and this grows year by year, until an equilibrium is established by the ice pushing down glaciers into lower levels, where the melting is more rapid, or into the sea, where the front is floated off in icebergs, and drifts into lower latitudes. the process is the same as that by which the rainfall on high levels is drained off by rivers into the sea, so that an equilibrium is established between waste and supply. and it is to be remarked that the glacier, though composed of solid ice, behaves exactly like a river, or rather like a river of some viscous fluid like pitch or treacle. its size depends on the magnitude of the reservoir or area drained by it; it conforms to the configuration of the valley by which it descends and the obstacles which it encounters; it flows rapidly, and with a broken current, through narrow gorges and down steep inclines; slowly and tranquilly over wide and level areas; its velocity is greatest at the surface and in the middle where friction is least, slowest at the bottom and sides where it is greatest. in short a glacier is simply a solid and slowly-flowing river, discharging an excess of solid ice to the lower level from which it came, just as a liquid river does with the rainfall of warmer regions. the cause of this tendency of solid and brittle ice to flow like a viscous fluid is not quite understood, though recent researches, especially those of tyndall, have thrown a good deal of light upon it; but all glacialists are agreed on the _fact_ that it does so, and we can argue from it with great confidence as to the conditions under which glaciation has acted in the past and is now acting. thus even if namsen had never crossed greenland, or ross had never discovered mounts erebus and terror, we might have inferred with certainty the existence of enormous ice-caps, implying continental masses of elevated land, in both the arctic and antarctic circles, from the number and size of the icebergs floated off into the northern atlantic and southern pacific oceans. icebergs are frequently met with in the latter down to ° south latitude, or even lower, of a mile in length and feet high above the sea; and in some instances icebergs three miles long and feet high have been recorded. as upwards of eight feet of ice must be under water for every foot that floats above it, some of these icebergs must be considerably over a mile in thickness, which implies that there must be land ice towards the south pole so thick that it is, in places, over feet in thickness at its outer margin. it has been estimated from the great size and abundance of these icebergs, that in the interior of the great antarctic continent the ice may be twenty miles or more thick, and in greenland the great interior ice-cap rises in a dome to at least or , feet above the sea-level, a great part of which is solid ice, while during the great glacial period it was certainly very much thicker. as a first step therefore towards a solution of the problem of the glacial period we may start with the axiom that it requires abundant evaporation, combined with a temperature low enough to precipitate an excess of that evaporation in the solid form. this does not necessarily imply any great and permanent refrigeration of the whole earth, for although this would give the cold it would not give the evaporation, and would tend rather to extend the conditions of siberia than those of greenland. longer and colder winters with shorter and hotter summers would seem more adapted to the growth of glaciers. but for a more exact investigation our next step must be to inquire what are the causes which may have produced these postulates of a glacial period, lower temperature with larger evaporation. they may be classed under two heads. st. geographical causes, arising from latitude, aërial and oceanic currents, and a different distribution of sea and land. nd. cosmic causes, such as variations of solar and terrestrial heat, passage through colder regions of space, the position of the poles, precession, and the eccentricity of the earth's orbit. all these have had supporters in their time, but the result of the latest science has been to leave only two seriously in the field--lyell's theory of a different distribution and elevation of sea and land, carrying with it changes in aërial and oceanic currents; and croll's theory of the effects of precession combined with high eccentricity of the earth's orbit. thus, of the geographical causes, latitude is no doubt an important factor in determining temperature, but it cannot of itself be the cause of the glacial periods, for it has remained unchanged through all the vicissitudes of heat and cold in geological times. the latitude of greenland and spitzbergen is presumably the same now as it was in the miocene period, when they were the seat of a luxuriant temperate vegetation; and at the present day we have only to follow the isothermal lines to see to what a great extent climate in the same latitudes is modified by other influences, such as the gulf stream. of cosmic causes, the progressive cooling of the earth naturally presents itself, at the first blush, as sufficient to account for the glacial period. but although this has doubtless been an all-important factor in pregeological times, in fashioning our planet from glowing vapour into a habitable earth, it is no longer operative as an immediate cause of vicissitudes of temperature. it is enough to say that if it were, the cooling ought to be progressive, and having once got into a glacial period we never ought to have got out of it. but we clearly have recovered from the paroxysms of cold, both of the first and second great glaciations of the recent period; and according to most geologists, from the immensely earlier ones of the permian and carboniferous, and perhaps of the cambrian ages. as far as it acts at all on surface temperature, the secular cooling of the earth only acts indirectly by causing elevations and depressions of the outer crust, and crumpling it into wrinkles, which originate mountain chains, as the nucleus contracts, and thus affecting geographical conditions. the same objection applies with equal force to the theory that the glacial period was caused by the sun giving out less heat owing to its cooling by radiation. here also it is obvious that if a glacial period were once established from such a cause it ought never to recover, but progress from bad to worse. we ought also, in this case, to have had a uniform progressive refrigeration from the beginning of geological time down to the present day, which has certainly not been the case. on the contrary, geologists are generally agreed that there are unmistakable traces of at least two glacial periods in the carboniferous and permian ages, and the earliest eocene was certainly cooler than its later stages, as shown by their flora. the conjecture that the sun is a variable star is also negatived by the consideration that in this case there ought to have been periodical variations in the earth's temperature, and hot and cold climates recurring at regular intervals throughout geological time, which has certainly not been the case. again, the passage of the solar system through cold regions of space has been suggested, but it is a mere conjecture, unsupported by a particle of evidence, and opposed to all we know of the laws of heat, and of the constitution of the universe. it is hard to conceive how hot regions can exist surrounded by cold ones, or _vice versâ_, without walls of a non-conducting medium to separate them, or that the faint heat from the fixed stars can ever have perceptibly affected the temperature of space. and such a theory, if it were possible, would fail to account for the frequent vicissitudes of hot and cold at short intervals within the glacial period, and for the great differences of temperature prevailing in the same latitudes. an alteration in the position, of the poles has also been suggested, but this also is clearly inadmissible. there is no evidence that the present position has ever materially varied, and there is no known law that could cause such a variation. on the contrary, all the elaborate mathematical calculations by which the motions of the sun, moon, and planets are deduced from newton's law of gravity, tend to negative such a supposition. and what is perhaps even more convincing to a nonmathematical mind, the position of the poles implies the position of the equator, and cannot change without a corresponding change in the earth's shape. now the earth is not a sphere, but an oblate spheroid, of almost the exact shape which a fluid mass would take revolving about the present axis. the centrifugal force arising from the greater velocity of rotation in going from the poles to the equator would pile up a protuberant belt where the velocity was greatest, and in point of fact the earth's equatorial diameter is longer than the polar diameter by about twenty-eight miles. any displacement therefore of the poles, which carried them away from their present position, must displace the present equator to a corresponding extent. this mass of twenty-eight miles in thickness of earth and ocean must be thrown out of the old position, and driven to establish a new equilibrium in a position many degrees north or south of it in order to affect climates materially, submerging all existing lands, and leaving, until removed by denudation, miles upon miles of solid earth in unsymmetrical belts, like the moraines of retreating glaciers, as the equator shifted into new positions. and all this must have occurred, not once, but twice at least, and that with many minor vicissitudes, within the narrow limit of the quaternary period. it is unnecessary to say that nothing of the sort could by any possibility have occurred. some evidence has recently been adduced that some very slight changes in latitude are going on at the observatories of dorpat and greenwich, but if confirmed these can only be of very minute amount, arising from slight changes in the position of the earth's centre of gravity owing to partial elevations and depressions, and could never have been sufficient to account for great variations of climate.[ ] [ ] the latest researches seem to show that these slight variations in latitude do not exceed " or ", and are periodical, with a period of no longer than to days. neither could the precession of the equinoxes have been of itself a principal cause, for here also the limit of time negatives the supposition. this precessional circle carries the perihelion and aphelion, and with it the seasons, completely round, and brings them back to the old position, in about , years, and therefore if glacial periods were occasioned by them, there ought to be alternations from _maximum_ of cold to _maximum_ of warmth in each hemisphere every , years. but this has certainly not been the case even in recent times, and still less if we go back to the quaternary, tertiary, and earlier geological periods. in fact it is only when combined with periods of high eccentricity of the earth's orbit, according to croll's theory, that precession can pretend to have any claim to be an important factor in the production of glacial periods. and even then the question is not of its being the sole or principal cause, but only whether it has had such a perceptible auxiliary effect on other more powerful causes, as may enable us to use it as a chronometer in assigning approximate dates for some of the more important phenomena of the long and varied period between the close of the tertiary and the establishment of the recent period. as man certainly existed throughout the whole of this period, the possibility of finding such a chronometer becomes intensely interesting, and i proceed to discuss the latest state of scientific opinion respecting it. but as croll's theory if a real is clearly only an auxiliary cause, i will, in the first instance, point out what are the certain and admitted causes which account for variations of temperature irrespective of latitude. they may be summed up, in lyell's words, as different combinations of sea and land, for on these depend the secondary conditions which affect temperature. thus elevation of land is as certain a cause of cold as high latitude, and even kilimanjaro, under the equator, retains patches of unmelted snow throughout the year. it is estimated that a rise of feet in height is about equivalent to a fall of ° f. in mean annual temperature, and that the line of perpetual snow is, on the average, a little higher than the line where this mean annual temperature is at ° f., or freezing-point. if there is any mass of land so high as to be below this temperature, snow accumulates and forms glaciers, which descend some feet below the snow-line before the excess of ice pushing down is melted off by the summer heat unless it has been previously floated off in icebergs at a higher level. now the mean temperature of the north of scotland at sea-level is about ° f., so that an elevation of or , feet would bring a great part of it well above the snow-line, and vast glaciers would inevitably accumulate, which would push down through the principal valleys almost to the sea-level; a state of things which actually exists in new zealand, where glaciers from the southern alps at about this elevation descend, in some instances to within feet of the sea-level, in the latitude of devonshire. but a still more important factor of temperature is found in aërial and oceanic currents, which again, to a great extent, are a product of the configuration of sea and land. the most familiar instance is that of the gulf stream, which raises the temperature of western europe some °, and in norway as much as ° f., above that due to latitude, and which prevails on the other side of the atlantic. the northern extremity of the british islands in shetland is on the same parallel of latitude as the southern extremity of greenland, cape farewell. one is buried under perpetual ice, in the other there is so little frost in winter that skating is an unknown art. what is the reason of this? we must go to the tropics to find it. a vast mass of vapour is raised by the sun's heat from the oceans near the equator, which being lighter rises and overflows, the trade winds rushing in from the north to supply its place, and being deflected to the west by the earth's rotation. this prevalence of easterly surface winds sweeps the waters of the atlantic to the west, where they are intercepted by south america, turned northwards into the gulf of mexico, where they circle round under a tropical sun and become greatly heated, and finally run out through the straits of florida with a rapid current, and spread a surface return current eastwards over the northern atlantic. the shores of north-west europe are thus in the position of a house warmed by hot-water pipes, while their neighbours over the way in north-eastern america have no such apparatus. this oceanic circuit of warm water has a counterpart in the aërial circuit of heated air. the vapour which rose in the tropics overflows, and as it cools and gets beyond the region of the trade winds, descends mainly over the northern atlantic, carrying with it its greater velocity of rotation, and so causing westerly winds, which reach our shores after blowing over a wide expanse of ocean heated by the gulf stream, thus bringing us warmth and wet, while the corresponding counter-currents which blow over continental europe and asia from the north-east bring cold and drought. the extreme effects of this may be seen by comparing the black sea at odessa, where ice often stops navigation, with the north sea at the lafoden islands, where the cod-fishing is carried on in open boats in the middle of winter. we in england are in the happy position where on the whole the mild and genial west winds prevail, though not exclusively, so as to give us the drenching rains of western ireland and scotland, or to prevent spells of a continental climate which give us bracing frosts in winter, and alternations of cold and heat in summer. if we turn from these temperate regions to those in which exactly opposite conditions prevail, we find them still in the icy chains of a glacial period. greenland, for instance, which is a typical case, shows us what happens when a continental mass of land stands at a high elevation in high latitudes with no gulf stream, but instead of it cold currents from a polar ocean, and seas around it frozen or covered with icebergs for nine months out of the year. we have a dome of solid ice piled up to the height of feet or upwards, and sending millions upon millions of tons of glaciers down to the sea to be floated off as icebergs. the only trace we can see here of the old great glacial period is that these conditions were formerly more intense. thus the glaciation of some of the mountain sides and islands off the coast of greenland seem to show that the ice formerly stood or feet higher than at present, a result which would be attained if the whole continental mass, which is now slowly subsiding, had then been elevated to that extent. the southern hemisphere affords a still more striking example of this on a larger scale, for we have there, in all probability, higher land in higher latitudes, surrounded by frozen seas, and washed by cold currents. i pass from this however, as beyond these general facts the special conditions of the antarctic circle are not known to us like those of greenland. from the above facts we are very safe in drawing the conclusion that during the great quaternary glacial period the conditions which now cause glaciation must have existed in an aggravated degree, and those which now give us temperate climates in regions once glaciated must have disappeared or been reversed. on the other hand, the warm climates which prevailed during the tertiary and other geological epochs, and permitted a temperate flora to flourish as far north as grinnell land and spitzbergen, could only have occurred under conditions exactly the reverse of those which produced the cold. if high land in high latitudes is the principal cause of the present glaciation of greenland, still higher land must have been so in causing the still greater glaciation of the former period. scandinavia, laurentia, the british islands, the alps, apennines, rocky mountains, sierra nevada, and all great mountain ranges in the northern hemisphere must have stood at greater elevations. there must have been such an accumulation of ice and snow as to chill the air, cause fogs, and prevent the summer heat of the sun from melting off the water which fell in the solid form during winter; and on the other hand, there must have been hot summers and great expanses of ocean to the south to supply the abundant evaporation which became condensed by contact with the chilly mountains and uplands of the north. one supposition is that the isthmus of panama was then submerged, so that the gulf stream ran into the pacific. but this wants geological confirmation, as the isthmus shows no sign of such recent marine formations as must have been deposited if it had been submerged to a sufficient depth to let the gulf stream escape, and the extension of the ice-cap in north america to much lower latitudes than in europe, points rather to the conclusion that the gulf stream must have run very much in its present course. the only geological evidence bearing on this question is the recent discovery of deep oceanic deposits such as the globigerena ooze, above tertiary deposits in barbadoes and jamaica, leading to the inference that the whole west indian area was a deep sea in comparatively modern times. this no doubt might affect both the temperature and the velocity of the gulf stream to a considerable extent. but the geological evidence is much more conclusive for the greater elevation of the land during the periods of greater glaciation as well as for its depression during the inter-glacial period. american geologists estimate that a large part of eastern canada with adjacent regions must have been at least , and may have been as much as feet above its present level during the first great glaciation; while the champlain marine beds show that it was some hundreds of feet below the present, sea-level during part of the inter-glacial period. scandinavia stood at least feet higher than at present during the climax of the glacial period as proved by the depths of the fiords, and afterwards or lower as proved by the raised beaches. in great britain and ireland we have conclusive evidence both of higher elevation, and of depression of at least feet, and probably more than feet below the present sea-level, as proved by the marine shells on the top of moel-tryfen. but these elevations and depressions are small in amount compared with the mountain building which is known to have occurred in asia in comparatively recent geological times. here the himalayas, stretching for miles from east to west, and rising to heights of from , to , feet above the sea, have been formed in great part during this period. within the same period the great table-lands of thibet and central asia have been uplifted, and the asian mediterranean sea, of which the black sea, the caspian, the salt deserts and lake balkash are the remnants, has been converted into dry land. movements of this magnitude, of which there are many other examples, may well account for great changes in isothermal lines and climates. the complete removal of the conditions which produced the glacial period might go far to account for the preceding tertiary period. we have only to suppose a different configuration of sea and land; nothing but low lands and islands in high latitudes; free access for warm oceanic currents like the gulf stream into the limited area of the polar basin; no great continents or lofty mountain ranges to drain the return trade winds of their moisture; in short, all the conditions of a mild and moist insular climate, as opposed to those of a continental one, to understand how forests of temperate trees might flourish as far north as greenland and spitzbergen. and the geological evidence which, as we have seen, shows that great elevation of land in the northern hemisphere did in fact inaugurate the glacial period, favours the conclusion that the reverse conditions actually prevailed during the tertiary and preceding epochs. the presence of the nummulitic and other marine eocene and miocene formations over such extensive areas, and at such great elevations, is a conclusive proof that a great part of our existing continents were then at the bottom of deep oceans. the alps were certainly , feet lower than their present level, and the himalayas more so; and when this was the case a great part of europe and asia must have been sea, in which only a few of the highest peaks and elevated plateaux stood up as islands. the pacific and indian oceans as well as the atlantic might then have poured their gulf streams into the polar basin, and prevalent southerly and westerly winds, blowing over wide expanses of water, have deposited their vapour in genial showers instead of in solid snow. the effect of such geographical conditions in producing both heat and cold is admirably worked out by wallace in his _island life_, and few who read it can doubt that lyell was right in saying that they have been the principal causes of the vicissitudes of climate. and here i may say a word to express my admiration of the innate sagacity with which lyell, many years ago, and with comparatively few facts to work upon, sketched out the leading lines of geology, which have been confirmed by subsequent research. details may have been corrected or added, but his main theories have stood the fullest test of the survival of the fittest. his law of the uniformity of natural causes, continued for long intervals of time, holds the field unchallenged. these causes may have operated a little more quickly or slowly in former ages than at present, but they have been of the same order. the waste of continents, instead, of averaging one foot in years, may have averaged ten or twenty feet during certain periods, and certain portions of the earth's crust may have been elevated or depressed at a quicker rate than is now going on in scandinavia; but no one any longer believes in paroxysms throwing up mountain chains or sinking continents below the ocean at a single blow. in like manner later geologists have corrected details in the distribution of land and sea suggested by lyell to account for the glacial period, but his main law has only received confirmation--viz. that this distribution, and especially high land in high latitudes, has been the principal cause of such periods. at the same time there is a pretty general consensus of the best and latest geologists, that, as lyell himself suggested, elevation and depression and other geographical changes, though the principal, are not the sole causes of the glacial period. the main argument is, that the phases of this period, though not exactly simultaneous over the whole world, are too nearly so to be due to mere local movements, and require the intervention of some general cosmic cause. we have already seen that of such causes there is none which appears feasible except croll's theory of the effects of precession combined with high eccentricity. let us consider what this theory really asserts. if the earth were a perfect sphere, its orbit round the sun a perfect circle, and the equator coincided with the ecliptic, there would be no seasons. the four quarters of the year would each receive the same quantity of solar heat and light, and the days and nights would be always equal. but the inclination of the equator to the ecliptic, that is, of the earth's plane of daily rotation to that of its annual revolution, necessitates seasons. each pole must be alternately turned to and away from the sun every year. each hemisphere, therefore, must have alternately its spring, summer, autumn, and winter. but if the earth's orbit were exactly circular, these seasons would be of equal duration, and the distance from the sun no greater in one than in another. but the earth's orbit is not circular, but elliptic, and the eccentricity, or deviation of the oval from the circular form, varies considerably over very long periods, though always coming back to the amount from which it started. these variations are due to perturbations from the other bodies of the solar system acting according to the law of newton's gravitation, and therefore calculable. again, the earth is not a perfect sphere, but a spheroid, and there is a factor called precession, due to the attraction on the protuberant mass at and towards the equator. the effect of this is, that instead of the earth's axis pointing uniformly towards the same celestial pole, it describes a small circle round it. this circle is completed in about , years, so that if the earth is nearest to the sun when the north pole is turned away from it, and it is winter in the northern hemisphere, as is now the case, in , years the conditions will be reversed, and the southern hemisphere will be in perihelion, or nearest the sun, when its pole points away from it. and as the perihelion portion of the earth's orbit is, owing to its eccentricity, shorter and more quickly traversed than the aphelion portion, this means practically that winters will be shorter than summers in the hemisphere which precession favours, and longer in that to which it is adverse. as precession now favours the northern hemisphere, which is warmer than the southern in corresponding latitudes, it might be thought at first sight that this was the cause of the glacial period. but it is evident that this is not the case, for the precessional revolutions come round far too rapidly, and it is impossible to suppose that there have been glacial and genial periods alternating every , years, with all the inevitable changes of seas and lands, and of fauna and flora, accompanying each alternation throughout the whole of geological time. in fact, it is abundantly evident, on historical evidence alone, that there has been no approach to any such changes during the last , years, which carries us back to a period when our northern summers were short and our winters long. but croll's theory brings in the secular variation of the eccentricity, and contends that although precession may have little or no effect while the earth's orbit is nearly circular, as it is now, it must have a considerable effect when the orbit flattens out, so that the distances from the sun and the durations of summer and winter become exaggerated. croll calculated the periods when such _maxima_ and _minima_ of eccentricity occurred for several revolutions back from the formula of the great astronomer leverrier, and found that going back for the last , years there had been two _maxima_ of high eccentricity, one , years, and the other, and more intense, , years ago, with corresponding _minima_ of low eccentricity between, which corresponded remarkably well with the refrigeration commencing in the pliocene, culminating towards its close or in the early quaternary, subsiding into a long inter-glacial period, rising again in the later quaternary to a second glacial _maximum_ a little less intense than the first, and finally gradually subsiding into the low eccentricity and temperate climates of more recent times; especially as the geological evidence shows many minor oscillations of heat and cold and advances and retreats of glaciers during each phase of these periods, such as must have occurred from the shorter recurrent effects of precession according to croll's theory. croll's calculations show that, at the period of _maximum_ eccentricity , years ago, the earth would have been in mid-winter , , miles further from the sun than it is now, and the winter half of the year nearly twenty-eight days longer than the summer half, instead of being six days shorter as at present. it appears, moreover, from a volume just published, _on the astronomical causes of an ice age_, by sir r. ball, one of the highest authorities on mathematics and astronomy, that croll had understated his case. ball says that "croll, misled by a statement of herschell's, had assumed the number of units of heat received from the sun, in a hemisphere of the earth, as equal in summer and winter. but in reality, of such units, are received in summer and only in winter. as the maximum of eccentricity which is possible would produce an inequality between summer and winter of days, they had the following possible conditions in a hemisphere--summer days and winter days, or summer days and winter days. in each case it must be borne in mind that heat units arrived in summer and in winter. if the summer were a long one and the winter short, then the allotment of heat between the two seasons would be fairly adjusted. the units were distributed over days and the units over days, and a general inter-glacial state was the result on the hemisphere. if, however, a torrent of heat represented by units was poured in during a brief summer of days, whilst, the balance of units is made to stretch itself over days, a brief, intensely hot summer would be followed by a very long and cold winter, and as this condition lasted for many centuries, it seemed sufficient to produce a glacial epoch." it would be going, too far, however, to assume that these conditions necessarily produced glacial periods whenever they occurred, and ball himself points out that even on astronomical grounds, several conditions must concur before high eccentricity alone would affect climate. but even with this reservation the same objection applies to assigning, this as the sole or principal cause of ice ages, as to precession alone, viz. that periods of high eccentricity occur too frequently to allow us to suppose that every such period in the past has had its corresponding glacial period. there was a _maximum_ phase of eccentricity , years ago, even higher than that of , years, and there must have been at least two or three such _maxima_ within each of the twenty-eight geological ages. but there are only two or three traces of glacial periods in past epochs on which geologists can rely with confidence, as proving extensive ice-action--one in the permian, the other in the carboniferous age. there are a few other instances which look like glacial action, as the conglomerate of the superga at turin, the flysch of switzerland, the great conglomerate at the base of the devonian; and professor geikie thinks that the oldest cambrian rocks in the west highlands have been rounded and smoothed by ice before the silurian strata were deposited on them. but even if these were authenticated and proved to be due to general and not merely local causes, they would not supply anything like the number of glacial periods required by croll's theory. croll attempts to meet this by the extensive denudation which has repeatedly carried away such large portions of land surface; but this scarcely explains the absence of the boulders of hard rocks, which accompany every moraine and iceberg; and still less the continuance of the same fauna and flora throughout whole geological periods with little or no change. we have no such abrupt changes as during the last glacial period, when at one time the canary laurel flourished in central france, while at another the reindeer moss and arctic willow extended to the pyrenees, both occurring within what may be called a short time, geologically speaking. on the contrary, there seems to have been no material changes in the flora throughout very long geological periods such as that of the coal measures. the only real answer to this objection is that the question is, not whether croll's theory is the sole or even the principal cause of glacial periods, or able to influence them materially if the geographical conditions favour genial climates; but whether it has not a co-operating effect, when these conditions are such as to produce glaciation. it seems difficult to suppose that such contrasts of conditions as are pointed out by sir r. ball can have had no perceptible effect on climates; or that such close coincidences as are shown between the astronomical theory and geological facts, during the last glacial period, can be due to mere accident. geology shows six phases of this period:--( ) a refrigeration coming on in the pliocene; ( ) its culmination in a first and most intense _maximum_; ( ) a gradual return to a milder inter-glacial period; ( ) a second refrigeration; ( ) its culmination in a second _maximum_; ( ) a second return to genial conditions, such as still prevail. croll's theory shows six astronomical phases, corresponding to these six geological phases. geology shows that each of its six phases involves several minor alternations of hot and cold; croll shows that this must have been the case owing to the effects of the shorter cycles of precession, occurring during the long cycles of variations in eccentricity. geology tells us that cold alone would not account for a glacial period; we must have heat to supply the evaporation which is condensed by the cold; croll shows that with high eccentricity cold and long winters must have been accompanied by short and hot summers. and sir r. ball's recent calculations show that the argument is really very much stronger than croll puts it. the duration of each of the phases of croll's theory corresponds also, on the whole, remarkably well with that required for each phase of the geological record. they would average about , years each for croll's phases, and a less time can hardly be allowed for the immense amount of geological work in the way of denudation and deposition, elevation and depression, and changes of fauna and flora which have occurred since the commencement of the great refrigeration in the late pliocene. in fact the only reasonable doubt seems to be whether croll's times are sufficient, and whether, as lyell was inclined to think, the first and greatest glaciation must not be carried back to the extreme period of high eccentricity which occurred about , years ago. unless we are prepared to ignore all these considerations and deny that croll's theory, as amended by sir r. ball, has had any appreciable effect on the conditions of the glacial period, it follows with mathematical certainty, that this period, taking it from the commencement of the great refrigeration in the pliocene to its final disappearance in the recent, must have lasted for about , years. and as man clearly existed in the pre-glacial period, and was already widely spread and in considerable numbers in the early glacial, , years may be taken as an approximation to the _minimum_ duration of the existence of the human race on the earth. to this must be added an indefinitely long period beyond, unless we are prepared to disprove the apparently excessively strong evidence for its existence in the pliocene and even in the miocene periods; evidence which has been rapidly accumulating of late years; and to which, as far as i know, there has been no serious and unbiassed attempt at scientific refutation; and to which confirmation is given by the undoubted fact that the dryopithecus, the hylobates, and other quadrumana, closely resembling man in physical structure, already existed in the miocene, and, if professor ameghino's discoveries referred to at p. are confirmed, in the vastly more remote period of the early eocene. chapter x. quaternary man. no longer doubted--men not only existed, but in numbers and widely spread--palæolithic implements of similar type found everywhere--progress shown--tests of antiquity--position of strata--fauna--oldest types--mixed northern and southern species--reindeer period--correspondence of human remains with these three periods--advance of civilization--clothing and barbed arrows--drawing and sculpture--passage into neolithic and recent periods--corresponding progress of physical man--distinct races--how tested--tests applied to historical, neolithic, and palæolithic man--long heads and broad heads--aryan controversy--primitive european types--canon taylor--huxley--preservation of human remains depends mainly on burials--about forty skulls and skeletons known from quaternary times--summary of results--quatrefages and hamy--races of canstadt--cro-magnon--furfooz--truchere--skeletons of neanderthal and spy--canstadt type oldest--cro-magnon type next--skeleton of cro-magnon--broad-headed and short race resembling lapps--american type--no evidence from asia, africa, india, polynesia, and australia--negroes, negrillos, and negritos--summary of results. the time is past when it is necessary to go into any lengthened argument to prove that man has existed throughout the quaternary period. less than half a century has elapsed since the confirmation of boucher-de-perthes' discovery of palæolithic implements in the old gravels of the somme, and yet the proofs have multiplied to such an extent that they are now reckoned, not by scores or hundreds, but by tens of thousands. they have been found not in one locality or in one formation only, but in all the deposits of the quaternary age, from the earliest to the latest, and in association with all the phases of the quaternary period, from the extinct mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, and cave-bear, to the reindeer, horse, ox, and other existing animals. no geologist or palæontologist, who approaches the subject with anything like competent knowledge, and without theological or other prepossessions, doubts that man is as much a characteristic member of the quaternary fauna as any of these extinct or existing animals, and that reasonable doubt only begins when we pass from the quaternary into the tertiary ages. i will content myself, therefore, instead of going over old ground and proving facts which are no longer disputed, with showing what bearing they have on the question of human origins. [illustration: palÆolithic celt (type of st. acheul). from quaternary deposits of the nerbudda, india.] [illustration: palÆolithic celt in argillite. from the delaware, united states (abbott).] the first remarkable fact to note is, that at this remote period man not only existed, but existed in considerable numbers, and already widely spread over nearly the whole surface of the habitable earth. implements and weapons of the palæolithic type, such as celts or hatchets, lance and arrow-heads, knives, borers and scrapers of flint, or if that be wanting of some hard stone of the district, fashioned entirely by chipping without any grinding or polishing, have been found in the sands and gravels of most of the rivers of southern england, france, belgium and germany, of the tagus and manzanares in spain, and the tiber in italy. still more numerously also in the caves and glacial drifts of these and other european countries. nor are they confined to europe. stone implements of the same type have been found in algeria, morocco, and egypt, and in natal and south africa. also in greece, syria, palestine, hindostan, and as far east as china and japan, while in the new world they have been found in maryland, ohio, california, and other states in north america, and in brazil, and the argentine pampas in the south. and this has been the result of the explorations of little more than thirty years, prior to which the coexistence of man with the extinct animals was almost universally denied; and of explorations which except in a few european countries have been very partial. [illustration: palÆolithic flint celt (type of st. acheul). from algeria (lubbock).] [illustration: palÆolithic celt of quartzite from natal, south africa. (_quatrefages._)] in fact the area over which these evidences of man's existence have been found may be best defined by the negative, where they have not been found, as there is every probability that it will eventually be proved that, with a few exceptions, wherever man could have existed during the quaternary period, there he did exist. the northern portions of europe which were buried under ice-caps are the only countries where considerable search has failed to discover palæolithic implements, while nearly all asia, africa, and america, and vast extents of desert and forests remain unexplored. the next point to observe is, that throughout the whole of the quaternary period there has been a constant progression of human intelligence upwards. any theory of human origins which says that man has fallen and not risen is demonstrably false. how do we know this? the time scale of the quaternary as of other geological periods is determined partly by the superposition of strata, and partly by the changes of fauna. in the case of existing rivers which have excavated their present valleys in the course of ages, it is evident that the highest deposits are the oldest. if the somme, seine, or thames left remains of their terraces and patches of their silts and gravels at heights feet or more above their present level, it is because they began to run at these higher levels, and gradually worked their way downwards, leaving traces of their floods ever lower and lower. in the case of deposits in caves or in still water, or where glacial moraines and _débris_ are superimposed on one another, the case is reversed, and the lowest are the oldest and the highest the most recent. in like manner if the fauna has changed, the remains found in the highest deposits of rivers and lowest, of caves will be the oldest, and will become more modern as we descend in the one case or ascend in the others. this is practically confirmed by the coincidence of innumerable observations. the oldest quaternary fauna is characterized by a preponderance of three species, the mammoth (elephas primigenius), the woolly rhinoceros (rhinoceros tichorinus), and the cave-bear (ursus spelæus). there are a few survivals from the pliocene, as the gigantic elephant (elephas antiquus) and a few anticipations of later phases, as the reindeer, horse, and ox, but the three mentioned are, with palæolithic man, the most characteristic. then comes a long period when a strange mixture of northern and southern forms occurs. side by side with the remains of arctic animals such as the mammoth, the glutton, the musk ox, and the lemming, are found those of african species adapted only for a warm climate, the lion, panther, hyena, and above all the hippopotamus, not distinguishable from the existing species, which could certainly not have lived in rivers that were frozen in winter. the intermixture is most difficult to account for. no doubt africa and europe were then united, and the theory of migration is invoked. the arctic animals may, it is said, have moved south in winter and the african animals north in summer, and this was doubtless the case to some extent. but there are some facts which militate against this theory; for instance, the hyena caves, which seem to show a continuous occupation by the same african species for long periods. nor is it easy to conceive how the hippopotamus could have travelled every summer from africa to yorkshire, and retreated every autumn with the approach of frost. such instances point rather to long inter-glacial periods with vicissitudes of climate, enabling now a northern, and now a southern fauna to inhabit permanently the same region. be this as it may, the fact is certain that this strange intermixture of northern and southern species is found in almost all the european deposits of the quaternary age, until towards its close with the coming on of the second great glacial period, when the southern forms disappear, and the reindeer, with an arctic or boreal flora and fauna, become preponderant, and extend themselves over southern france and germany up to the alps and pyrenees. the quaternary period is therefore roughly divided by geologists into three stages: st, that of the mammoth and cave-bear, there being some difference of opinion as to which came first, though probably they were simultaneous; nd, the middle stage of the mixed fauna; rd, the latest stage, that of the reindeer. now to these stages there is an exact correspondence in the character of the human implements found in them. in the earliest, those of the oldest deposits and of the oldest animals, we find the rudest implements. they consist almost exclusively of native stones, chipped roughly into a few primitive shapes: celts, which are merely lumps of flint or other hard stone with a little chipping to supplement natural fractures in bringing them to a point or edge, while the butt-end is left rough to be grasped by the hand; scrapers with a little chipping to an edge on one side; very rude arrow-heads without the vestige of a barb or socket; and flakes struck off at a blow, which may have served for knives. as we ascend to later deposits we find these primitive types constantly improving. the celts are chipped all over and the butt-ends adapted for haftings, so also are the other implements and weapons, and the arrow-heads by degrees acquire barbs. but the great advance occurs with the use of bone, which seems to have been as important a civilizing agent for palæolithic as metals were for neolithic man. this again seems to have been due to the increasing preponderance of the reindeer, whose horns afforded an abundant and easily manipulated material for working into the desired forms by flint knives. at any rate the fact is, that as we trace palæolithic man upwards into the later half of the quaternary period when the reindeer became abundant, we find a notable advance of civilization. needles appear, showing that skins of animals were stitched together with sinews to provide clothing. barbed arrows and harpoons show that the arts of war and of the chase had made a great advance on the primitive unhafted celt. and finally we arrive at a time when certain tribes showed not only an advance in the industrial arts, but a really marvellous proficiency in the arts of sculpture and drawing. in the later reindeer period, when herds of that animal and of the wild horse and ox roamed over the plains of southern france and germany, and when the mammoth and cave-bear, though not extinct, were becoming scarce, tribes of palæolithic savages who lived in the caves and rock shelters of the valleys of southern france and germany, and of switzerland and belgium, drew pictures of their chases and of the animals with which they were surrounded, with the point of a flint on pieces of bone or of schist. they also carved bones into images of these animals, to adorn the handles of their weapons or as idols or amulets. both drawings and sculptures are in many cases admirably executed, so as to leave no doubt of the animal intended, especially in the case of the wild animals, for the rare portraits of the human figure are very inferior. most of them represent the reindeer in various attitudes, but the mammoth, the cave-bear, the wild horse, the bos primigenius, and others, are also represented with wonderful fidelity. with the close of the reindeer age we pass into the recent period and from palæolithic to neolithic man. physically there is no very decided break, and we cannot draw a hard-and-fast line where one ends and the other begins. all we can say is, that there is general evidence of constantly decreasing cold during the whole post-glacial period, from the climax of the second great glaciation until modern conditions of climate are fairly established, and the existing fauna has completely superseded that of the quaternary, the older characteristic forms of which having either become extinct or migrated. how does this affect the most characteristic of all quaternary forms, that of man? can we trace an uninterrupted succession from the earliest quaternary to the latest modern times, or is there a break between the quaternary and recent periods which with our present knowledge cannot be bridged over? and did the division of mankind into distinct and widely different races, which is such a prominent feature at the present day and ever since the commencement of history, exist in the case of the palæolithic man, whose remains are so widespread? these are questions which can only be answered by the evidence of actual remains of the human body. implements and weapons may have altered gradually with the lapse of ages, and new forms may have been introduced by commerce and conquest, without any fundamental change in the race using them. still less can language be appealed to as a test of race, for experience shows how easily the language of a superior race may be imposed on populations with which it has no affinity in blood. to establish distinction of races we consult the anthropologist rather than the geologist or philologist. [illustration: portrait of mammoth. drawn with a flint on a piece of mammoth's ivory; from cave of la madeleine, dordogne, france.] [illustration: earliest portrait of a man with serpents and horses' heads. from grotto of les eyzies. reindeer period.] [illustration: reindeer feeding. from grotto of thayngen, near schaffhausen, switzerland.] on what are the distinctions of the human race founded? mainly on colour, stature, hair, and on the anatomical character of skulls and skeletons. these are wonderfully persistent, and have been so since historical times, intermediate characters only appearing where there has been intercrossing between different races. but the primitive types have continued unchanged, and no one has ever seen a white race of negroes, or a black one of europeans. and this has certainly been the case during the historical period, or for at least years, for the paintings on old egyptian tombs show us the types of the negro, the libyan, the syrian, and the copt as distinct as at the present day, and the negroes especially, with their black colour, long heads, projecting muzzles, and woolly hair growing in separate tufts, might pass for typical photographs of the african negro of the nineteenth century. of these indications of race we cannot hope to meet with any of the former class in quaternary gravel or caves. we have to trust to the anatomical character to be drawn from skulls and skeletons, of which it may be inferred, as a matter of course, that they will be few and scanty, and will become constantly fewer and more imperfect as we ascend the stream of time to earlier periods. it must be remembered also that even these scanty specimens of early man are confined almost entirely to one comparatively small portion of the earth, that of europe, and that we have hardly a single palæolithic skull or skeleton of the black, the yellow, the olive, the copper-coloured, or other typical race into which the population of the earth is actually divided. we are confined therefore to europe for anything like positive evidence of these anatomical characters of prehistoric and primæval man, and can only draw inferences from implements as to those of other portions of the earth and other races. fortunately these racial characters are very persistent, especially those of the skull and stature, and they exist in ample abundance throughout the historic, prehistoric, and neolithic ages, to enable us to draw very certain conclusions. thus at present, and as far as we can see back with certainty, the races which have inhabited europe may be classified under the heads, tall and short, long-headed and broad-headed, and those of intermediate types, which latter may be dismissed for the present, though constituting a majority of most modern countries, as they are almost certainly not primitive, but the result of intercrossing. colour, complexion, and hair are also very persistent, though, as we have pointed out, we have no certain evidence by which to test them beyond the historical period. but the form of skulls, jaws, teeth, and other parts of the skeleton remain wonderfully constant in races where there has been little or no intermixture. the first great division is in the form of the skull. comparing the extreme breadth of the skull with its extreme length from front to back, if the breadth does not exceed three-fourths or per cent. of the length, the skull is said to be dolicocephalic or long-headed; if it equals or exceeds per cent. it is called brachycephalic, _i.e._ short or broad-headed. intermediate indices between and per cent. are called sub-dolicocephalic, or sub-brachycephalic, according as they approach one or the other of these extremes, but these are of less importance, as they probably are the result of intercrossing. the prognathism also of the jaws, the form of the eye-orbits and nasal bones, the superciliary ridges, the proportion of the frontal to the posterior regions of the skull, the stature and proportions of the limbs, are also both characteristic and persistent features, and correspond generally with the type of the skull. the controversy as to the origin of the aryans has led to a great deal of argument as to these ethnological traits in prehistoric and neolithic times, and the interesting volume of canon taylor's on the _origin of the aryans_, and professor huxley's article on the same subject in the _nineteenth century_ for november , give a summary of the latest researches on the subject. we shall have to refer to these more fully in discussing the question as to the place or places of human origins; but for the present it is sufficient to state the general result at which the latest science has arrived. the theory of a common asiatic centre from which all the races of mankind have migrated is given up as unsupported by the slightest vestige of evidence. when we first know anything of the aryan and other european races, we find them occupying substantially very much the same regions as at present. there are four distinct european types, two tall and two short, two long-headed and two broad-headed. of these two were fair, and two dark, and one, apparently the oldest in western europe and in the mediterranean region, and probably represented by the iberians, and now by the spanish basques, was short, dark, and long-headed; a second short, dark, and broad-headed, who are probably represented by the ancient ligurians, and survive now in the auvergnats and savoyards; a third, tall, fair, and long-headed, whose original seats were in the regions of the baltic and north sea, and who were always an energetic and conquering race; and the fourth, like the third, tall and fair, but with broad heads, and possibly not a primitive race, but the result of some very ancient intermixture of the third or northern type with some of the broad-headed races. now as far back as frequent human remains enable us to form some satisfactory conclusion, that is up to the early neolithic period, we find similar race-types already existing, and to a considerable extent in the same localities. in modern and historical times we find, according to canon taylor, "all the anthropological tests agreeing in exhibiting two extreme types--the african, with long heads, long eye-orbits, and flat hair; and the mongolian, with round heads, round orbits, and round hair. the european type is intermediate--the head, orbits, and sections of hair are oval. in the east of europe we find an approximation to the asiatic type; in the south of europe to the african." more specifically, we find in europe the four races mentioned above of tall and short long-heads, and tall and short broad-heads. the question is, how far back can any of these races be identified? the preservation of human remains depends mainly on the practice of burying the dead. until the corpse is placed in a tomb protected by a stone coffin or dolmen, or in a grave dug in a cave, or otherwise sheltered from rains, floods, and wild beasts, the chances of its preservation are few and far between. now it is not until the neolithic period that the custom of burying the dead became general, and even then it was not universal, and in many nations even in historical times corpses were burnt, not buried. it was connected doubtless with ideas of a future existence, which either required troublesome ghosts to be put securely out of the way, or to retain a shadowy existence by some mysterious connection with the body which had once served them for a habitation. such ideas, however, only come with some advance of civilization, and it is questionable whether in palæolithic times the human animal had any more notion of preserving the body after death than the other animals by which he was surrounded. this neolithic habit moreover of burying, though it preserves many relics of its own time, increases the difficulty when we come to deal with those of an earlier age. a great many caves which had been inhabited by palæolithic man were selected as fitting spots for the graves of their neolithic successors, and thus the remains of the two periods became intermixed. it is never safe to rely on the antiquity of skulls and skeletons found in association with palæolithic implements and extinct animals, unless the exploration has been made with the greatest care by some well-known scientific observer, or the circumstances of the case are such as to preclude the possibility of later interments. thus in the famous cavern of aurignac there is no doubt that it had been long a palæolithic station, and that many of the human remains date back to this period; but whether the fourteen skeletons which were found in it, and lost owing to the pietistic zeal of the mayor who directed their burial, were really palæolithic, is a disputed point, or rather the better opinion is that they were part of a secondary neolithic interment. but to return to undoubted neolithic skulls, we have very clear evidence that the four distinct european races already existed. thus in britain we have two distinct forms of barrows or burial tombs, one long, the other round, and it has become proverbial that long skulls go with long barrows, and round skulls with round barrows. the long barrows are the oldest, and belong entirely to the stone age, no trace of metal, according to canon greenwell, having ever been found in them. the skulls and skeletons are those of a long-headed, short, and feeble race, who may be identified with the iberians; while the round barrows contain bronze and finally iron, and the people buried in them were the tall, fair, round-headed gauls or celts of early history, or intermediate types between these and the older race. later came in the tall, fair, and long-headed anglo-saxon and scandinavian races, so that we have three out of the four european types clearly defined in the british islands and traceable in their descendants of the present day. but when we attempt to go beyond the iberians of the neolithic age in britain, we are completely at fault. we have abundant remains of palæolithic implements, but scarcely a single undoubted specimen of a palæolithic skeleton, and it is impossible to say whether the men who feasted on the mammoth and rhinoceros in kent's cavern, or who left their rude implements in the high-level gravel of the chalk downs, were tall or short, long-headed or round-headed. on the contrary, there seems a great hiatus between the neolithic and the palæolithic periods, and, as geikie has shown, this appears to be the case not in england only but in a great part of europe. it would almost seem as if the old era had disappeared with the last glacial period, and a completely new one had been introduced. but although the skulls and bones of palæolithic races are wanting in britain and scarce everywhere, enough of them have been found in other european countries to enable anthropologists not merely to say that different races already existed at this immensely remote period, but to classify them by their types, and see how far these correspond with those of later times. this has been done especially in france and belgium, where the discoveries of palæolithic skeletons and skulls have been far more frequent than elsewhere. debierre in his _l'homme avant l'histoire_, published in the _bibliothèque scientifique_ of , enumerates upwards of forty instances of such undoubted quaternary human remains, of which at least twenty consisted of entire skulls, and others of jaws and other important bones connected with racial type. the best and latest conclusions of modern anthropology from these remains will be found in this work of debierre's, and in hamy's _palæontologie humaine_, quatrefages' _races humaines_, and topinard's _anthropologie_, and it will be sufficient to give a short summary of the results. the history of quaternary fossil man is divided, in the _crania ethnica_ of quatrefages and hamy, into four races: st, the canstadt race; nd, the cro-magnon race; rd, the races of grenelle and furfooz; th, the race of truchere. the canstadt race, so called from the first skull of this type, which was discovered in the loess of the valley of the rhone near wurtemburg, though it is better known from the celebrated neanderthal skull, which gave rise to so much discussion, and was pronounced by some that of an idiot, by others the most pithecoid specimen of a human skull yet known, in fact almost the long-sought-for missing link. a still later discovery, however, has set at rest all doubt as to the reality of this neanderthal type, and of its being the oldest quaternary human type known in western europe. in the year two belgian savants, messrs. fraissent and lohest, one an anatomist, the other a geologist, discovered in a cave at spy near namur two skeletons with the skulls complete, which presented the neanderthal type in an exaggerated form. they were found under circumstances which leave no doubt as to their belonging to the earliest quaternary deposit, being at the bottom of the cave, in the lowest of three distinct strata, the two uppermost of which were full of the usual palæolithic implements of stone and bone, while the few found in the lowest stratum with the skeletons were of the rudest description. huxley pronounces the evidence such as will bear the severest criticism, and he sums up the anatomical characters of the skeletons in the following terms-- "they were short of stature, but powerfully built, with strong, curiously curved thigh-bones, the lower ends of which are so fashioned that they must have walked with a bend at the knees. their long depressed skulls had very strong brow-ridges, their lower jaws, of brutal depth and solidity, sloped away from the teeth downwards and backwards, in consequence of the absence of that especially characteristic feature of the higher type of man, the chin prominence." m. fraissent says, "we consider ourselves in a position to say that, having regard merely to the anatomical structure of the man of spy, he possessed a greater number of pithecoid characters than any other race of mankind." and again he says-- "the distance which separates the man of spy from the modern anthropoid ape is undoubtedly enormous; but we must be permitted to point out that if the man of the quaternary age is the stock whence existing races have sprung, he has travelled a very great way. from the data now obtained, it is permissible to believe that we shall be able to pursue the ancestral type of man and the anthropoid apes still further, perhaps as far as the eocene and even beyond." this canstadt or neanderthal type was widely diffused early in the quaternary period, having been found in a skull from the breccia of gibraltar, in skulls from italy, spain, austria, sweden, and in france, belgium, and western germany; in fact almost everywhere where skulls and skeletons have been found in the oldest deposits of caves and river-beds, notably in the alluvia of the seine valley near paris, where three distinct superimposed strata are found, each with different human types, that of canstadt being the oldest. wherever explorations have been carefully made it seems to be certain that the oldest race of all in europe was dolicocephalic, and probable that it was of the canstadt type, the skulls of which are all low and long, the length being attained by a great development of the posterior part of the head, which compensates for a deficient forehead. this type is also interesting because, although the oldest, it shows occasional signs of survival through the later palæolithic and neolithic ages down to recent times. the skulls of st. manserg, a mediæval bishop of toul, and of lykke, a scientific dane of the last century, closely resemble the neanderthal skull in type, and can scarcely be accounted for except as instances of that atavism, or reversion to old ancestral forms, which occasionally crops up both in the human and in animal species. it is thought by many that these earliest palæolithic men may be the ancestors of the tall, fair, long-headed race of northern europe; and professor virchow states that in the frisian islands off the north german coast, where the original teutonic type has been least affected by intermixture, the frisian skull unmistakably approaches the neanderthal and spy type. but if this be so, the type must have persisted for an immense time, for, as huxley observes, "the difference is abysmal between these rude and brutal savages, and the comely, fair, tall, and long-headed races of historical times and of civilized nations." at the present day the closest resemblance to the neanderthal type is afforded by the skulls of certain tribes of native australians. next in antiquity to the canstadt type, though still in the early age when the mammoth and cave-bear were abundant, and the implements and weapons still very rude, a totally different type appears, that of cro-magnon. the name is taken from the skeleton of an old man, which was found entire in the rock shelter of cro-magnon in the valley of the vezere, near the station of moustier, which gave the type of some of the oldest and rudest stone implements of the age of the mammoth. the skeleton was found in the inner extremity of the shelter, buried under a mass of _débris_ and fallen blocks of limestone, and associated with bones of the mammoth and implements of the moustier type, so that there can be no doubt, of its extreme antiquity. the skull, like that of the canstadt type, is dolichocephalic, but in all other respects totally different. the brow-ridges and generally bestial characters have disappeared; the brain is of fair or even large capacity; the stature tall; the forehead fairly high and well-rounded; the face large; the nose straight, the jaws prognathous, and the chin prominent. this type is found in a number of localities, especially in the south-west of france, belgium, and italy, and it continued through the quaternary into the neolithic period, being found in the caves of the reindeer age, and in the dolmens. it is thought by some ethnologists to present analogies to the berber type of north africa, and to that of the extinct guanches of the canary islands. coexistent with or a little later than this type is one of a totally different character both from it and from that of canstadt, viz. that of a brachycephalic race of very short stature, closely resembling the modern lapps. this has been subdivided into the several races of furfooz, grenelle, and truchere, according to the degree of brachycephaly and other features; but practically we may look on these as the results of local variations or intercrossings, and consider all the short, brachycephalic races as forming a third type sharply opposed to those of canstadt and cro-magnon. we have thus distinct evidence that the quaternary fauna in europe comprised at least three distinct races of palæolithic men, and there is a good deal of evidence for the existence of a fourth distinct race in america with features differing from any of the european races, and resembling those of the native american men in recent times. but this affords absolutely no clue as to the existence of other palæolithic types in asia, africa, india, australia, and other countries, forming quite three-fourths of the inhabited world, in which totally different races now exist and have existed since the commencement of history, who cannot possibly have been derived from any of the european types within the lapse of time comprised within the quaternary period. the negro race is the most striking instance of this, for it differs essentially from any other in many particulars, which are all in the direction of an approximation towards the pithecoid type. the size of the brain is less, and a larger proportion of it is in the hinder half; the muzzle much more projecting, and the nose flatter; the fore-arm longer; and various other anatomical peculiarities all point in the same direction, though the type remains perfectly human in the main features. it diverges, however, from the known types of quaternary man in europe and from the american type, as completely as it does from those of modern man, and it is impossible to suppose that it can be derived from them, or they from it, in the way of direct descent. if there is any truth in evolution, the negro type must be one of the oldest, as nearest to the animal ancestor, and this ancestor must be placed very far back beyond the quaternary period, to allow sufficient time for the development of such entirely different and improved races. this will be the more evident if we consider the case of the pygmy negritos and negrillos, who are spread over a wide tropical belt of half the circumference of the earth, from new guinea to western africa. they seem originally to have occupied a large part of this belt, and to have been driven into dense forests, high mountains, and isolated islands, by taller and stronger races, such as the true negro, the melanesian, and the malay, and probably represent therefore a more primitive race. but they had already existed long enough to develop various sub-types among themselves, for although always approaching more to the negro type than any other, the asiatic negrito and the african negrillo and bushman differ in the length of skull, colour, hair, prognathism, and other particulars. but they all agree in the one respect which makes it impossible to associate them with any known quaternary type, either as ancestors or descendants, viz. that of dwarfish stature. as a rule the bushmen and negritos do not average above four feet six inches, and the females three inches less; while in some cases they are as low as four feet--_i.e._ they are quite a foot shorter than the average of the higher races, and nearly a foot and a half below that of the quaternary cro-magnon and mentone skeletons, and of the modern swedes and scotchmen. and they are small and slightly built in proportion, and by no means deformed specimens of humanity. professor flower suggests that they may be "the primitive type from which the african negroes on the one hand, and the melanesians on the other have sprung." in any case they must certainly have existed as a distinct type in the quaternary period, and probably much earlier. it is remarkable also that the very oldest human implements known get continually smaller as they get older, until those of the miocene, from thenay and puy courny, are almost too small for the hands even of stanley's pygmies. if mere guesses were worth anything, it would be rather a plausible one that the original adam and eve were something between a monkey and an andaman islander. in concluding this summary of the evidence as to quaternary man, i must remark on the analogy which it presents to that of the historical period dealt with in the earlier chapters. in each case we have distinct evidence carrying us a long way back; in that of the historical period for years; in that of the quaternary for a vastly longer time, which, if the effects of high eccentricity, postulated by croll's theory, had any influence on the two last glacial periods, cannot be less than , years, an estimate which is confirmed by the amount of geological work and changes of flora and fauna which have taken place. in each case also the positive evidence takes us back to a state of things which gives the most incontrovertible proof of long previous existence; in the historical case the evidence of a dense population and high civilization already long prevailing when written records began; in the case of palæolithic man, that of his existence in the same state of rude civilization in the most remote regions, and over the greater part of the habitable earth, his almost uniform progression upwards from a lower to a higher civilization, and his existing at the beginning of the quaternary period already differentiated into races as remote from one another as the typical races of the present day. these facts of themselves afford an irresistible presumption that the origin of the human race must be sought much further back, and it remains to consider what positive evidence has been adduced in support of this presumption. chapter xi. tertiary man. definition of periods--passage from pliocene to quaternary--scarcity of human remains in tertiary--denudation--evidence from caves wanting--tertiary man a necessary inference from widespread existence of quaternary man--both equally inconsistent with genesis--was the first great glaciation pliocene or quaternary?--section of perrier--confirms croll's theory--elephas meridionalis--mammoth--st. prest--cut bones--instances of tertiary man--halitherium--balæonotus--puy courny--thenay--evidence for--proofs of human agency--latest conclusions--gaudry's theory--dryopithecus--type of tertiary man--skeleton of castelnedolo--- shows no approach to the missing link--contrary to theory of evolution--- must be sought in the eocene--evidence from the new world--glacial period in america--palæolithic implements--quaternary man--similar to europe--california--conditions different--auriferous gravels--- volcanic eruptions--enormous denudation--great antiquity--flora and fauna--point to tertiary age--discovery of human remains--table mountain--latest finds--calaveras skull--summary of evidence--other evidence--tuolumne--brazil--buenos ayres--nampa images--take us farther from first origins and the missing link--if darwin's theory applies to man, must go back to the eocene. the first difficulty which meets us in this question is that of distinguishing clearly between the different geological periods. no hard-and-fast line separates the quaternary from the pliocene, the pliocene from the miocene, or the miocene from the eocene. they pass from one into the other by insensible gradations, and the names given to them merely imply that such considerable changes have taken place in the fauna as to enable us to distinguish one period from another. and even this only applies when we take the periods as a whole, and see what have been the predominant types, for single types often survive through successive periods. the course of evolution seems to be that types and species, like individuals, have their periods of birth, growth, maturity, decay, and death. thus fish of the ganoid type appear sparingly in the silurian, culminate in the devonian, and gradually die out in the later formations. so also saurian reptiles appear in the carboniferous, culminate in the lias, and die out with the secondary, or so nearly so that the crocodilia are their sole remaining representatives. and this applies when we attempt to take our first step backwards in tracing the origin of man, and follow him from the quaternary into the pliocene. when did the pliocene end and the quaternary begin? within which of the two did the first great glacial period fall? does pre-glacial mean pliocene, or is it included in the quaternary? and to which do the oldest human remains belong, such as the skeletons of spy? the difficulty of answering these questions is increased because, as we go back in time, the human remains which guide us in the quaternary age necessarily become scarcer. mankind must have been fewer in number, and their relics to a great extent removed by denudation. thus the evidence from caves, which affords by far the most information as to quaternary man, entirely fails us as to the pliocene and earlier periods. this may be readily accounted for when we consider the great amount of the earth's surface which has been removed by denudation. in fact we have seen that nearly feet of a mountain range must have disappeared from denudation in the weald of kent, since the streams from it rolled down the gravels with human implements, scattered over the north downs as described by professor prestwich. what chance would tertiary caves have of surviving such an extensive denudation? moreover, if any of the present caves existed before the glacial period, their original contents must have been swept out, perhaps more than once, before they became filled by the present deposits. there is evidence in many caves that this was the case, from small patches of the older deposit being found adhering to the roof, as at brixham and maccaguone in sicily, in which latter case flakes of chipped stone and pieces of carbon were found by dr. falconer in these patches of a hard breccia. there is another consideration also which must have greatly diminished the chance of finding human remains in tertiary deposits. why did men take to living in dark and damp caves? presumably for protection against cold. but in the miocene and the greater part of the pliocene there was no great cold. the climate, as shown by the vegetation, was mild, equable, and ranged from semi-tropical to south-temperate, and the earth was to a certain extent covered by forests sustaining many fruit-bearing trees. under such conditions men would have every inducement to live in the open air, and in or near forests where they could obtain food and shelter, rather than in caves. and a few scattered savages, thus living, would leave exceedingly few traces of their existence. if the pygmy races of central africa, or of the andaman islands, became extinct, the chances would be exceedingly small of a future geologist finding any of their stone implements, which alone would have a chance of surviving, dropped under secular accumulations of vegetable mould in a wide forest. it is the more important therefore where instances of human remains in tertiary strata, supported by strong _primâ facie_ evidence, and vouched for by competent authorities, do actually occur, to examine them dispassionately, and not, as a good many of our english geologists are disposed to do, dismiss them with a sort of scientific _non possumus_, like that which was so long opposed to the existence of quaternary man, and the discoveries of boucher-de-perthes. it is perfectly evident from the admitted existence of man throughout the quaternary period, already spread over a great part of the earth's surface, and divided into distinct types, that if there is any truth in evolution, mankind must have had a long previous existence. the only other possible alternative would be the special miraculous creations of men of several different types, and in many different centres, at the particular period of time when the tertiary was replaced by the quaternary. in other words that, while all the rest of the animal creation have come into existence by evolution from ancestral types, man alone, and that not merely as regards his spiritual qualities, but physical man, with every bone and muscle having its counterpart in the other quadrumana, was an exception to this universal law, and sprang into existence spontaneously or by repeated acts of supernatural interference. as long as the account of the creation in genesis was held to be a divinely-inspired narrative, and no facts contradicting it had been discovered, it is conceivable that such a theory might be held, but to admit evolution for quaternary, and refuse to admit it for tertiary man, is an extreme instance of "straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel," for a duration of even , or , years is just as inconsistent with genesis as one of , or half a million. in attacking the question of tertiary man, the first point is to aim at some clear conception of where the pliocene ends and the quaternary begins. these are after all but terms applied to gradual changes through long intervals of time; still they require some definition, or otherwise we should be beating the air, and ticketing in some museums as tertiary the identical specimens which in others were labelled as quaternary. this turns very much on whether the first great glaciation was pliocene or quaternary, and must be decided partly by the order of superposition and partly by the fauna. if we can find a section where a thick morainic deposit is interposed between two stratified deposits, a lower one characterized by the usual fauna of the older pliocene, and an upper one by that of the newer pliocene, it is evident that the glacier or ice-cap which left this moraine must have existed in pliocene times. we know that the climate became colder in the pliocene, and rapidly colder towards its close, and that in the cliffs of cromer, the forest bed with a temperate climate had given place to arctic willows and mosses, before the first and lowest boulder-clay had brought blocks of scandinavian granite to england. we should be prepared, therefore, for evidence that this first period of greatest cold had occurred within the limits of the pliocene period. such evidence is afforded by the valleys which radiate from the great central boss of france in the auvergne. the hill of perrier had long been known as a rich site of the fossil remains of the extinct pliocene fauna, and its section has been carefully studied by some of the best french geologists, whose results are summed up as follows by hamy in his _palæontologie humaine_-- "the bed-rock is primitive protogine, which is covered by nearly horizontal lacustrine miocene, itself covered by some metres of fluviatile gravels. above comes a bed of fine sand, a mètre thick, which contains numerous specimens of the well-known mammalian fauna of the lower pliocene, characterized by two mastodons (_m. armenicus_ and _m. borsoni_). then comes a mass of conglomerates mètres thick, consisting of pebbles and boulders cemented by yellowish mud; and above this a distinct layer of upper pliocene characterized by the _elephas meridionalis_. "the boulders, some of which are of great size, are all angular, never rounded or stratified, often scratched, and mostly consisting of trachyte, which must have been transported twenty-five kilomètres from the puy de dôme. in short, the conglomerate is absolutely indistinguishable from any other glacial moraine, whether of the quaternary period or of the present day. it is divided into three sections by two layers of rolled pebbles and sands, which could only have been caused by running water, so that the glacier must have advanced and retreated three times, leaving each time a moraine fifty mètres thick, and the whole of this must have occurred before the deposit of the upper pliocene stratum with its _elephas meridionalis_ and other pliocene mammals." the importance of this will presently be seen, for the _elephas meridionalis_ is one of the extinct animals which is most directly connected with the proofs of man's existence before the quaternary period. it is also important as confirming the immense time which must have elapsed between the date of the first and second _maxima_ of glacial cold, and thus adding probability to the calculations derived from croll's periods of maximum and minimum eccentricity. the three advances and retreats of the great perrier glacier also fit in extremely well with the calculated effects of precession during high eccentricity, as about three of such periods must have occurred in the period of the coming on, culminating, and receding of each phase of maximum eccentricity. this evidence from perrier does not stand alone, for in the neighbouring valleys, and in many other localities, isolated boulders of foreign rocks which could only have been transported by ice, are found at heights considerably above those of the more recent moraines and boulders which had been supposed to mark the limit of the greatest glaciation. thus on the slopes of the jura and the vosges, boulders of alpine rocks, much worn by age, and whose accompanying drifts and moraines have disappeared by denudation, are found at heights or mètres above the more obvious moraines and boulders, which themselves rise to a height of nearly feet, and must have been the front of glaciers from the alps which buried the plain of switzerland under that thickness of solid ice. the only possible alternative to this evidence from perrier would be to throw back the duration of the quaternary and limit that of the pliocene enormously, by supposing that all the deposits above the great glacial conglomerate or old moraine, are inter-glacial and not tertiary. this is, as has been pointed out, very much a question of words, for the phenomena and the time required to account for them remain the same by whatever name we elect to call them. but it still has its importance, for it involves the fundamental principle of geology, that of classifying eras and formations by their fauna. if the _elephas meridionalis_ is a pliocene and not a quaternary species, we must admit, with the great majority of continental geologists, that the first and greatest glaciation fell within the pliocene period. if, on the other hand, this elephant is, like the mammoth, part of the quaternary fauna, we may believe, as many english geologists do, that the first glacial period coincided with and probably occasioned the change from pliocene to quaternary, and that everything above the oldest boulder-clays and moraines is not tertiary but inter-glacial. as bones of the _elephas meridionalis_ have been frequently found in connection with human implements, and with cuts on them which could only have been made by flint knives ground by the human hand, it will be seen at once what an interest attaches to this apparently dry geological question, of the age of the great southern elephant. the transition from the mastodon into the elephant took place in the old world (for in america the succession is different) in the pliocene period. in the older pliocene we have nothing but mastodons, in the newer nothing but elephants, and the transition from the older to the newer type is distinctly traced by intermediate forms in the fossil fauna of the sewalek hills. the _elephas meridionalis_ is the oldest known form of true elephant, and it is characteristic of all the different formations of the upper pliocene, while it is nowhere found in cave or river deposits which belong unmistakably to the quaternary. it was a gigantic animal, fully four feet higher than the tallest existing elephant, and bulky in proportion. it had a near relation in the _elephas antiquus_, which was of equal size, and different from it mainly in a more specialized structure of the molar teeth, and the remains of this elephant have been found in the lower strata of some of the oldest bone-caves and river-silts, as to which it is difficult to say whether they are older or younger than the first glacial period. the remains of a pygmy elephant, no bigger than an ass, have also been found in the upper pliocene, at malta and sicily, and those of the existing african elephant in sicily and spain. it would seem, therefore, that the upper pliocene was the golden age of the elephants where they were most widely diffused, and comprised most species and most varieties, both in the direction of gigantic and of diminutive size. but in passing from the pliocene into the quaternary period, they all, or almost all, disappeared, and were superseded by the _elephas primigenius_, or mammoth, which had put in a first appearance in the latest pliocene, and became the principal representative of the genus _elephas_ in europe and northern asia down to comparatively recent times. this succession is confirmed by that of the rhinoceros, of which several species were contemporary with the _elephas meridionalis_, while the _rhinoceros tichorinus_, or woolly rhinoceros, who is the inseparable companion of the mammoth, appeared and disappeared with him. in these matters, those who are not themselves specialists must rely on authority, and when we find lyell, geikie, and prestwich coinciding with all modern french, german, italian, and belgian geologists, in considering _elephas meridionalis_ as one of the characteristic upper pliocene fauna, we can have no hesitation in adopting their conclusion. in this case the section of st. prest, near chartres, affords a first absolutely secure foothold in tracing our way backwards towards human origins beyond the quaternary. the sands and gravels of a river which ran on the bed rock without any underlying glacial _débris_ are here exposed. it had no relation to the existing river eure, the bed of which it crosses at an angle, and it must have run before that river had begun to excavate its valley, and when the drainage of the country was quite different. the sands contain an extraordinary number of bones of the _elephas meridionalis_, associated with old species of rhinoceros, and other pliocene species. lyell, who visited the spot, had no hesitation in calling it a pliocene river. in fact it never would have been disputed if the question of man's antiquity had not been involved in it, for in these sands and gravels have been found numerous specimens of cut bones of the _elephas meridionalis_, together with the flint knives which made the cuts, and other stone implements, rude but still unmistakably of the usual palæolithic type. the subjoined plate will enable the reader to compare the arrow-head, which is the commonest type found at st. prest, with a comparatively recent arrow-head from the yorkshire wolds, and see how impossible it is to concede human agency to the post-glacial and deny it to the pliocene specimen. [illustration: pliocene. arrow-head--st. prest. (hamy, _palæontologie humaine_.) post-glacial. arrow-head--yorkshire wolds. (evans, _stone implements_.)] in this and other instances, cut bones afford one of the most certain tests of the presence of man. the bones tell their own tale, and their geological age can be certainly identified. sharp cuts could only be made on them while the bones were fresh, and the state of fossilization, and presence of dendrites or minute crystals alike on the side of the cuts and on the bone, negative any idea of forgery. the cuts can be compared with those on thousands of undoubted human cuts on bones from the reindeer and other later periods, and with cuts now made with old flint knives on fresh bones. all these tests have been applied by some of the best anthropologists of the day, who have made a special study of the subject, and who have shown their caution and good faith by rejecting numerous specimens which did not fully meet the most rigorous requirements, with the result that in several cases there could be no reasonable doubt that the cuts were really made by human implements guided by human hands. the only possible alternative suggested is, that they might have been made by gnawing animals or fishes. but as quatrefages observes, even an ordinary carpenter would have no difficulty in distinguishing between a clean cut made by a sharp knife, and a groove cut by repeated strokes of a narrow chisel; and how much more would it be impossible for a professor trained to scientific investigation, and armed with a microscope, to mistake a groove gnawed out by a shark or rodent for a cut made by a flint knife. no one who will refer to quatrefages' _hommes fossilés_, and look at the figures of cut bones given there from actual photographs, can feel any doubt that the cuts there delineated were made by flint knives held by the human hand. in addition to this instance of st. prest, quatrefages in his _histoire des races humaines_, published in , and containing the latest summary of the evidence generally accepted by french geologists as to tertiary man, says that, omitting doubtful cases, the presence of man has been signalized in deposits undoubtedly tertiary in five different localities, viz. in france by the abbé bourgeois, in the lower miocene of thenay near pontlevoy (loir-et-cher); by m. rames at puy courny near aurillac (cantal), in the upper miocene; in italy by m. capellini in the pliocene of monte aperto near sienna, and by m. ragazzoni in the lower pliocene of castelnedolo near brescia; in portugal by m. ribiero at otta, in the valley of the tagus, in the upper miocene. [illustration: cuts with flint knife on rib of balÆonotus--pliocene. from monte aperto, italy. (quatrefages, _histoire des races humaines_.)] [illustration: cut magnified by microscope.] to these may be added the cut bones of halitherium, a miocene species, from pouancé (maine et loire), by m. delaunay; and those on the tibia of a rhinoceros etruscus, and other fossil bones from the upper pliocene of the val d'arno. in addition to these are the numerous remains, certainly human and presumably tertiary, from north and south america, which will be referred to later, and a considerable number of cases where there is a good deal of _primâ facie_ evidence for tertiary human remains, but where doubts remain and their authenticity is still denied by competent authorities. among these ought to be placed the instance from portugal, for although a large celt very like those of the oldest palæolithic type was undoubtedly found in strata which had always been considered as miocene, the congress of palæontologists who assembled at lisbon were divided in opinion as to the conclusiveness of the evidence. but there remain six cases in the old world, ranging from st. prest in the upper pliocene to thenay in the lower miocene, in which the preponderance of evidence and authority in support of tertiary man seems so decisive, that nothing but a preconceived bias against the antiquity of the human race can refuse to accept it. i have already discussed this evidence so fully in a former work (_problems of the future_, ch. v. on tertiary man) that i do not propose to go over the ground again, but merely to refer briefly to some of the more important points which come out in the above six instances. in three of them, those of the halitherium of pouancé, the balæonotus of monte aperto, and the rhinoceros of the val d'arno, the evidence depends entirely on cut bones, and in the case of st. prest on that of cut bones of _elephas meridionalis_ combined with palæolithic implements. the evidence from cut bones is for the reasons already stated very conclusive, and when a jury of four or five of the leading authorities, such as quatrefages, hamy, mortillet, and delaunay, who have devoted themselves to this branch of inquiry, and have shown their great care and conscientiousness by rejecting numbers of cases which did not satisfy the most rigid tests, arrive unanimously at the conclusion that many of the cuts on the bones of tertiary animals are unmistakably of human origin, there seems no room left for any reasonable scepticism. i cannot doubt therefore that we have positive evidence to confirm the existence of man, at any rate from the pliocene period, through the long series of ages intervening between it and the quaternary. but the discovery of flint implements at puy courny in the upper miocene, and at thenay in the lower miocene, carry us back a long step further, and involves such important issues as to the origin of the human race, that it may be well to recapitulate the evidence upon which those discoveries rest. the first question is as to the geological age of the deposits in which these chipped implements have been found. in the case of puy courny this is beyond dispute. in the central region of the auvergne there have been two series of volcanic eruptions, the latest towards the close of the pliocene or commencement of the quaternary period, and an older one, which, from its position and fossils, is clearly of the upper miocene. the gravels in which the chipped flints were discovered by m. rames, a very competent geologist, were interstratified with tuffs and lavas of these older volcanoes, and no doubt as to their geological age was raised by the congress of french archæologists to whom they were submitted. the whole question turns therefore on the sufficiency of the proofs of human origin, as to which the same congress expressed themselves as fully satisfied. [illustration: flint scraper from high level drift, kent. (prestwich.)] the specimens consist of several well-known palæolithic types, celts, scrapers, arrow-heads and flakes, only ruder and smaller than those of later periods. they were found at three different localities in the same stratum of gravel, and comply with all the tests by which the genuineness of quaternary implements is ascertained, such as bulbs of percussion, conchoidal fractures, and above all, intentional chipping in a determinate direction. it is evident that a series of small parallel chips or trimmings, confined often to one side only of the flint, and which have the effect of bringing it into a shape which is known from quaternary and recent implements to be adapted for human use, imply intelligent design, and could not have been produced by the casual collisions of pebbles rolled down by an impetuous torrent. thus the annexed plate of an implement from the high level drift on the north downs, shown by professor prestwich to the anthropological society, is rude enough, but no one has ever expressed the least doubt of its human origin. the chipped flints from puy courny also afford another very conclusive proof of intelligent design. the gravelly deposit in which they are found contains five different varieties of flints, and of these all that look like human implements are confined to one particular variety, which from its nature is peculiarly adapted for human use. as quatrefages says, no torrents or other natural causes could have exercised such a discrimination, which could only have been made by an intelligent being, selecting the stones best adapted for his tools and weapons. [illustration: upper miocene implements. puy courny. scraper, or lance-head. puy courny. upper miocene (rames). (quatrefages, _races humaines_, p. .) scraper. puy courny. upper miocene (rames) (quatrefages, _races humaines_, p. .)] the general reader must be content to rely to a great extent on the verdict of _experts_, and in this instance of puy courny need not perhaps go further than the conclusion of the french congress of archæologists, who pronounced in favour both of their miocene and human origin. it may be well, however, to annex a plate showing in two instances how closely the specimens from puy courny resemble those of later periods, of the human origin of which no doubt has ever been entertained. it is certainly carrying scientific scepticism to an unreasonable pitch to doubt that whatever cause fashioned the two lower figures, the same cause must equally have fashioned the upper ones; and if that cause be human intelligence in the quaternary period it must have been human or human-like intelligence in the upper miocene. [illustration: copare quaternary implements. wokey hole--glacial. (evans, _stone implements_, p .) plateau drift. north downs, kent (prestwich).] the evidence for the still older implements of thenay is of the same nature as that for those of puy courny. first as regards the geological horizon. subjoined is the section at thenay as made by m. bourgeois, verified by mm. vibraye, delaunay, schmidt, belgrand, and others, from personal inspection, and given by m. hamy in his _palæontologie humaine_. it would seem that there could be little doubt as to the geological position of the strata from which the alleged chipped flints come. the faluns are a well-known marine deposit of a shallow sea spread over a great part of central and southern france, and identified, beyond a doubt, as upper miocene by its shells. the orleans sands are another miocene deposit perfectly characterized by its mammalian fauna, in which the _mastodon angustidens_ first appears, with other peculiar species. the calcaire de beauce is a solid freshwater limestone formed in the great lake which in the miocene age occupied the plain of the beauce and extended into touraine. it forms a clear horizon or dividing line between the upper miocene, characterized by the mastodon, and the lower miocene, of which the acrotherium, a four-toed and hornless rhinoceros, is the most characteristic fossil. [illustration: section at thenay.] the supposed chipped flints are said to appear sparingly in the upper deposits, disappear in the calcaire de beauce, and reappear, at first sparingly and then plentifully, in the lacustrian marls below the limestone. they are by far the most numerous in a thin layer of greenish-yellow clay, no. of section, below which they rapidly disappear. there can be no question therefore that if the flints really came from the alleged deposits, and really show the work of human hands, the savages by whom they were chipped must have lived on the shores or sand-banks of this miocene lake. as regards the geological question, it is right to observe that professor prestwich, who visited the section a good many years ago in company with the abbé bourgeois, and who is one of the highest authorities on this class of questions, remained unconvinced that the flints shown him really came from the alleged strata below the calcaire de beauce, and thought that the specimens which appeared to show human manufacture might have come from the surface, and become intermixed with the natural flints of the lower strata. the geological horizon, however, seems to have been generally accepted by french and continental geologists, especially by the latest authorities, and the doubts which have been expressed have turned mainly on the proof of human design shown by the implements. this is a question which must be decided by the authority of experts, for it requires special experience to be able to distinguish between accidental fractures and human design, in implements of the extremely rude type of the earlier formations. the test is mainly afforded by the nature of the chipping. if it consists of a number of small chips, all in the same direction, with the result of bringing one face or side into a definite form, adapted for some special use, the inference is strong that the chips were the work of design. the general form might be the result of accident, but fractures from frost or collisions simulating chipping could hardly be all in the same direction, and confined to one part of the stone. the inference is strengthened if the specimen shows bulbs of percussion, where the blows had been struck to fashion the implement, and if the microscope discloses parallel striæ and other signs of use on the chipped edge, such as would be made by scraping bones or skins, while nothing of the sort is seen on the other natural edges, though they may be sharper. but above all, the surest test is afforded by a comparison with other implements of later dates, or even of existing savages, which are beyond all doubts products of human manufacture. tried by these tests, the evidence stands as follows-- when specimens of the flints from thenay were first submitted to the anthropological congress at brussels, in , their human origin was admitted by mm. worsae, de vibraye, de mortillet, and schmidt, and rejected by mm. nilson, hebert, and others, while m. quatrefages reserved his opinion, thinking a strong case made out, but not being entirely satisfied. m. bourgeois himself was partly responsible for these doubts, for, like boucher-de-perthes, he had injured his case by overstating it, and including a number of small flints, which might have been, and probably were, merely natural specimens. but the whole collection having been transferred to the archæological museum at st. germain, its director, m. mortillet, selected those which appeared most demonstrative of human origin, and placed them in a glass case, side by side with similar types of undoubted quaternary implements. this removed a great many doubts, and later discoveries of still better specimens of the type of scrapers have, in the words of quatrefages, "dispelled his last doubts," while not a single instance has occurred of any convert in the opposite direction, or of any opponent who has adduced facts contradicting the conclusions of quatrefages, mortillet, and hamy, after an equally careful and minute investigation. [illustration: middle miocene implements. scraper from thenay. (hamy, _palæontologie humaine_, p. .) scraper, or borer. thenay. (showing bulb of percussion. quatrefages, _races humaines_, p. .)] in order to assist the reader in forming an opinion as to the claim of these flints from thenay, to show clear traces of human design, i subjoin some illustrations of photographs in which they are compared with specimens of later date, which are undoubtedly and by universal consent works of human hands, guided by human intelligence. these figures seem to leave no reasonable doubt that some at least of the flints from thenay show unmistakable signs of human handiwork, and i only hesitate to accept them as conclusive proofs of the existence of man in the middle miocene, because such an authority as prestwich retains doubts of their having come from the geological horizon accepted by the most eminent modern french geologists. [illustration: middle miocene implements. borer, or awl. thenay. miocene. (congrès préhistorique, bruxelles, .) knife, or scraper. thenay. (gaudry. quatrefages, p. .)] the evidence of the authenticity of these implements from thenay is, moreover, greatly strengthened by the discovery of other miocene implements at puy courny, which have not been seriously impugned, and by the essay of professor prestwich, confirming the discovery of numerous flint implements in the upper level gravels of the north downs, which could only have been deposited by streams flowing from a mountain ridge along the anticlinal of the weald, of which feet must have disappeared by sub-aërial denudation since these rivers flowed northwards from its flanks. how far back such a denudation may carry us is a matter of speculation. certainly, as prestwich admits, into the pre-glacial or very early glacial ages, and possibly into the tertiaries, but at any rate for a time which, by whatever name we call it, must be enormous according to any standard of centuries or millenniums. and what is specially interesting in these extremely ancient implements is that, in prestwich's words, "these plateau implements exhibit distinct characters and types such as would denote them to be the work of a more primitive and ruder race than those fabricated by palæolithic men of the valley drift times." [illustration: compare quaternary implements. scraper. yorkshire wold. (evans, _stone implements_.) quaternary. mammoth period. river drift, mesvin. belgium. (congrès préhistorique, bruxelles, .) quaternary. chaleux, belgium. reindeer period. (congrès préhistorique, bruxelles, .)] in fact we have only to look at the figures which accompany prestwich's essay,[ ] to see that their types resemble those of puy courny and thenay, rather than those of st. acheul and moustier. [ ] _journal of anthropological institute_, feb. , p. . the following remarks of the professor would apply almost as well to the miocene implements as to those of the plateau-- "unlike the valley implements, the plateau implements are, as a rule, made of the _fragments_ of natural drift flints, that are found scattered over the surface of the ground, or picked up in gravel-beds and merely roughly trimmed. sometimes the work is so slight as to be scarcely apparent; at others, it is sufficient to show a distinct design and object. it indicates the very infancy of the art, and probably the earliest efforts of man to fabricate his tools and weapons from other substances than wood or bone. that there was an object and design is manifest from the fact that they admit of being grouped according to certain patterns. these are very simple, but they answered to the wants of a primitive people. "with few exceptions, the implements are small, from to inches in length, and mostly such as could have been used in the hand, and in the hand only. there is, with the exceptions before named, an almost entire absence of the large massive spear-head forms of the valley drifts, and a large preponderance of forms adapted for chipping, hammering, and scraping. with these are some implements that could not have been used in the hand, but they are few and rude. the difference between the plateau and the valley implements is as great or greater than between the latter and the neolithic implements. though the work on the plateau implements is often so slight as scarcely to be recognizable, even modern savage work, such as exhibited for example by the stone implements of the australian natives, show, when divested of their mounting, an amount of work no greater or more distinct, than do these early palæolithic specimens. "some persons may be disposed to look upon the slight and rude work which these flints have received as the result only of the abrasion and knocking about caused by collision during the transport of the drift. this belief prevailed for a time even in the case of the comparatively well-fashioned valley implements. a little practice, and comparison with natural drift flints, will show the difference, notwithstanding the, at first, unpromising appearance of these early specimens of man's handicraft. it is as such, and from their being the earliest such work with which we are acquainted, that they are of so great interest, for they give us some slight insight into the occupation and surroundings of the race by whom they were used. a main object their owners would seem to have had in view, was the trimming of flints to supply them with implements adapted to the breaking of bones for the sake of the marrow, scraping skins, and round bodies such as bones or sticks, for use as simple tools or poles. from the scarcity of the large massive implements of the pointed and adze type, so common in the valley drifts, it would seem as though offensive and defensive weapons of this class had not been so much needed, whether from the rarity of the large mammalia, so common later on in the low-level valley drifts, or from the habits and character of those early people." the positive evidence is therefore extremely strong that men existed in the tertiaries, and if we add to it the irresistible inference that he must have done so to develop so many different races, and leave his rude implements in so many and such remote regions as we found early in the quaternary, i do not see how it is possible to avoid accepting it as an established fact. but in using the term tertiary man, i do not venture to define the exact meaning of "man," or the precise stage in his evolution which had been attained at this enormously remote period. m. gaudry, an excellent authority, while admitting that the flints from thenay showed evidence of intentional chipping, thought that they might have been the work of the dryopithecus, a fossil ape, supposed to be nearer man than any existing anthropoid, whose remains had been found at sausan in the middle miocene. but the dryopithecus has been deposed from his pride of place by the subsequent discovery of a more perfect jaw, and he is now considered, though undoubtedly an anthropoid ape, to be of a lower type than the chimpanzee or gorilla.[ ] the strongest argument however for the essentially human character of the artificers of the flints of thenay and puy courny is that their type continues, with no change except that of slight successive improvements, through the pliocene, quaternary, and even down to the present day. the scraper of the esquimaux and the andaman islanders is but an enlarged and improved edition of the miocene scraper, and in the latter case the stones seem to have been split by the same agency, viz. that of fire. the early knowledge of fire is also confirmed by the discovery, reported by m. bourgeois in the orleans sand at thenay, with bones of mastodon and dinotherium, of a stony fragment mixed with carbon, in a sort of hardened paste, which, as we can hardly suppose pottery to have been known, must be the remnant of a hearth on which there had been a fire. [ ] having applied to professor flower, as the highest authority, to inform me of the actual position of the evidence as to the dryopithecus, he was good enough to reply to me as follows-- "dryopithecus (middle miocene of france) is an undoubted anthropoid, allied to gorilla and chimpanzee, but the recent discovery of a more complete jaw than that first found shows that it is rather a lower form than the two just mentioned, instead of higher as once thought. see gaudry, mem. soc. geol. france--_palæontologie_, . "the animal called _pliopithecus_, from the same formation, is now generally considered to be not distinguishable from the genus hylobates (gibbon). "so there is no doubt about the existence of anthropoid apes in the miocene of europe, but not of a higher type than the present african or asiatic species. yours truly, "w. flower." there must always, however, remain a doubt as to the nature of this ancestral tertiary man, until actual skulls and skeletons have been found, under circumstances which preclude doubt, and in sufficient numbers to enable anthropologists to speak with the same confidence as to types and races, as they can of his quaternary successors. this again is difficult from the rarity of such remains, and from the fact that after burial of the dead was introduced, graves must often have been dug down from the surface into older strata, with which in course of time their contents become intermixed. no case, therefore, can be safely admitted where the find was not made by well-known scientific authorities, under circumstances which preclude the possibility of subsequent interment, and vouch for the geological age of the undisturbed deposit. this test disposes of all the alleged discoveries of human remains in the tertiaries of the old world, except one, and although it is quite possible that some may be genuine among those rejected, it is safer not to rely on them. there is one, however, which is supported by extremely strong evidence, and the discussion of which i have reserved for the last, as if accepted it throws a new and unexpected light on the evolution of the human race. the following is the account of it, taken from quatrefages' _races humaines_-- "the bones of four individuals, a woman and two children, were found at castelnedolo, near brescia, in a bed identified by its fossils as lower pliocene. the excavations were made with the utmost care, in undisturbed strata, by m. ragazzoni, a well-known scientific man, assisted by m. germani, and the results confirmed by m. sergi, a well-known geologist, after a minute personal investigation. the deposit was removed in successive horizontal layers, and not the least trace was found of the beds having been mixed or disturbed. the human bones presented the same fossilized appearance as those of the extinct animals in the same deposit. the female skeleton was almost entire, and the fragments of the skull were sufficiently perfect to admit of their being pieced together so as to show almost its entire form." the first conjecture naturally was that it must have been a case of subsequent interment, a conjecture which was strengthened by the fact of the female skeleton being so entire; but this is negatived by the undisturbed nature of the beds, and by the fact that the other bones were found scattered at considerable distances throughout the stratum. m. quatrefages sums up the evidence by saying, "that there exists no serious reason for doubting the discovery, and that if made in a quaternary deposit, no one would have thought of contesting its accuracy. nothing can be opposed to it but theoretical _à priori_ objections similar to those which so long repelled the existence of quaternary man." but if we accept this discovery, it leads to the remarkable conclusion that tertiary man not only existed, but has undergone little change in the thousands of centuries which have since elapsed. the skull is of fair capacity, very much like what might be expected from a female of the canstadt type, and less rude and ape-like than the skulls of spy and neanderthal, or those of modern bushmen and australians. and the other bones of the skeleton show no marked peculiarities. this makes it difficult to accept the discovery unreservedly, notwithstanding the great weight of positive evidence in its favour. the great objection to tertiary man has been, that as all other species had changed, and many had become extinct two or three times over since the miocene, it was unlikely that an animal so highly specialized as man should alone have had a continuous existence. and this argument of course becomes stronger the more it can be shown that the oldest skeletons differed little if it at all from man of the quaternary and recent ages. moreover, the earlier specimens of quaternary man which are so numerous and authentic, show, if not anything that can be fairly called the "missing link," still a decided tendency, as they get older, towards the type of the rudest existing races, which again show a distinct though distant approximation towards the type of the higher apes. the oldest quaternary skulls are dolichocephalic, very thick with enormous frontal sinuses; low and receding foreheads; flattened vertices; prognathous jaws, and slight and receding' chins. the average cranial capacity is about cubic centimètres, or fully one-fourth less than that of modern european man, and of this smaller brain a larger proportion is in the posterior region. the other peculiarities of the skeletons all tend in the same direction, and, as we have seen in huxley's description of the men of spy, sometimes go a long way in the pithecoid direction, even to the extent of not being able to straighten the knee in walking. it would, therefore, be contrary to all our ideas of evolution to find that some , or , , or more probably , or , years prior to these men of spy and neanderthal, the human race had existed in higher physical perfection nearer to the existing type of modern man. quatrefages meets this by saying that tertiary men with a larger brain, and therefore more intelligence than the other tertiary mammals, might have survived, where these succumbed to changes and became extinct. this is doubtless true to some extent, but it hardly seems sufficient to account for the presence of a higher and more recent type, like that of castelnedolo in the lower pliocene, that is a whole geological period earlier than that of the lower quaternary. it is more to the purpose to say with gaudry that the changes on which the distinction of species are founded are often so slight that they might just as well be attributed to variations of races; and to appeal to instances like that of the hylobates of the miocene, one of the nearest congeners of man, in which no genuine difference can be detected from the hylobates or gibbon of the present day; and if the discovery referred to at p. , of anthropoid primates in the eocene of patagonia, should be confirmed, it would greatly strengthen the argument for the persistence of the order to which man belongs through several geological periods. in any case we require more than the evidence of this one discovery before we can assume the type of tertiary man as a proved fact with the same confidence as we can the existence of something like man in those remote ages, from the repeated evidence of chipped stones and cut bones, showing unmistakable signs of being the work of human intelligence. and in the meantime, the only safe conclusion seems to be that it is very probable that we may have to go back to the eocene to find the "missing link," or the ancestral animal which may have been the common progenitor of man and of the other quadrumana. i turn now to the evidence from the new world. i have kept this distinct, for there is no such proof of synchronism between the later geological phases of this and of the old world as would warrant us in assuming that what is true in one is necessarily true in the other. thus in europe the presence of the mastodon is a conclusive proof that the formation in which its remains are found is upper miocene or pliocene, and it has completely disappeared before the glacial period and the quaternary era. but in north america it has survived both these periods, and it is even a question whether it is not found in recent peat-mosses with arrow-heads of the historical indians. the glacial period also, which in the old world affords such a clear demarcation between tertiary and recent ages, and such manifest proofs of two great glaciations with a long inter-glacial period, presents different conditions in america, where the ice-caps radiated from different centres, and extended further south and over wider areas. there is no proof whether the great cold set in sooner or later, and whether the elevations and depressions of land synchronized with those of europe. the evidence for a long inter-glacial period is by no means so clear, and the best american geologists differ respecting it. and above all, the glacial period seems to have lasted longer, and the time required for post-glacial or recent denudation, and erosion of river-gorges, to be less than is required to account for post-glacial phenomena on this side of the atlantic. the evidence, therefore, from the new world, though conclusive as to the existence of man from an immense antiquity, can hardly be accepted as equally so in an attempt to prove that antiquity to be tertiary in the sense of identifying it with specific european formations. with this reservation i proceed to give a short account of this evidence as bearing on the question of the oldest proofs of man's existence. the first step or proof of the presence of man in the quaternary deposits which correspond with the oldest river-drifts of europe, has only been made quite recently. mr. abbott was the first to discover such implements of the usual palæolithic type in quaternary gravels of the river delaware, near trenton in new jersey, and since then they have been frequently found, as described by dr. wright in his recently-published _ice age in america_, in ohio, illinois, and other states, in the old gravels of rivers which carried the drainage of the great lake district to the hudson and the mississippi, before the present line of drainage was established by the falls of niagara and the st. lawrence. so far the evidence merely confirms that drawn from similar finds in the old world of the existence of man in the early glacial or quaternary times, already widely diffused, and everywhere in a similar condition of primitive savagery, and chipping his rude stone implements into the same forms. but if we cross the rocky mountains into california, we find evidence which apparently carries us further back and raises new questions. the whole region west of the rocky mountains is comparatively recent. the coast range which now fronts the pacific is composed entirely of marine tertiary strata, and when they were deposited, the waves of the pacific beat against the flanks of the sierra nevada. at length the coast range was upheaved and a wide valley left between it and the sierra of over miles in length, and with an average breadth of seventy-five miles. the sierra itself is old land, the lower hills consisting of triassic slates and the higher ranges of granite, and it has never been under water since the secondary age though doubtless it stood much higher before it was so greatly denuded. all along its western flank and far down into the great valley is an enormous bed of auriferous gravel, doubtless derived from the waste of the rocks of the sierra during an immense time by old rivers now buried under their own deposits. while these deposits were going on a great outburst of volcanoes occurred on the western slope of the sierra, and successive sheets of tuffs, ashes, and lavas are interstratified with the gravels, while finally an immense flow of basalt covered up everything. the country then presented the appearance of a great plain, sloping gradually downwards from the sierra according to the flow of the basalt and lavas. this plain was in its turn attacked by denudation and worn down by the existing main rivers into valleys and gorges, and by their tributary streams into a series of flat-topped hills, capped by basalt and divided from one another by deep and narrow cañons. the immense time required for this latest erosion may be inferred when it is stated that where the columbia river cuts through the axis of the cascade mountains, the precipitous rocks on either side, to a height of from to feet, consist of this late tertiary or post-tertiary basalt, and that the deschutes river has been cut into the great basaltic plain for miles to a depth of from to feet, without reaching the bottom of the lava. the american and yuba valleys have been lowered from to feet, and the gorge of the stanislas river has cut through one of these basalt-covered hills to the depth of feet. [illustration: section of great californian lava stream, cut through by rivers. _a_, _a_, basalt; _b_, _b_, volcanic ashes; _c_, _c_, tertiary; _d_, _d_, cretaceous rocks; _r_, _r_, direction of the old river-bed; _r´_, _r´_, sections of the present river-beds. (le conte, from whitney.)] the enormous gorge of the colorado has cut its cañons for hundreds of miles from to feet deep through all the orders of sedimentary rocks from the tertiaries down, and from to feet into the primordial granite below, thus draining the great lakes which in tertiary times occupied a vast space in the interior of america which is now an arid desert. evidently the gravels which lie below the basalt, and interstratified with the tuffs and lavas, or below them, and which belong to an older and still more extensive denudation, must be of immense antiquity, an antiquity which remains the same whether we call it quaternary or tertiary. it is in these gravels that gold is found, and in the search for it great masses have been removed in which numerous stone implements have been found. the great antiquity of those gravels and volcanic tuffs is further confirmed by the changes in the flora and fauna which are proved to have occurred. the animal remains found beneath the basaltic cap are very numerous, and all of extinct species. they belong to the genera rhinoceros, elatherium, felis, canis, bos, tapirus, hipparion, elephas (primigenius), mastodon, and auchenia, and form an assemblage entirely distinct from any now living in any part of north america. some of the genera survived into the quaternary age as in europe, but many, both of the genera and species, are among those most characteristic of the pliocene period. the flora also, which is well preserved in the white clays formed from the volcanic ash, comprises forty-nine species of deciduous trees and shrubs, all distinct from those now living, without a single trace of the pines, firs, and other conifera which are now the prevalent trees throughout california. tried by any test, therefore, of fauna, flora, and of immensely long deposit before the present drainage and configuration of the country had begun to be established, professor whitney's contention that the auriferous gravels are of tertiary origin seems to be fully established. it can only be met by obliterating all definite distinction between the quaternary and the pliocene, and adding to the former all the time subtracted from the latter. and even if we apply this to the physical changes, it would upset all our standards of geological formations characterized by fossils, to suppose that a fauna comprising the elatherium, hipparion, and auchenia could be properly transferred to the quaternary. in fact no one would have thought of doing so if human implements and remains had not been found in them. the discovery of such implements was first reported in , and since then a large number have been found, but their authenticity has been hotly contested. the most common were stone mortars very like those of the indians of the present day, only ruder, and it was objected, first, that they were ground and not chipped, and therefore belonged to the neolithic age; secondly, that they might have slipped down from the surface or been taken down by miners. the difficulty in meeting these objections was that the implements had been found not by scientific men _in situ_, but by ignorant miners, who were too keen in the pursuit of gold to notice the particulars of the find, and only knew that they had picked them out in sorting loads of the gravels, and generally thrown them aside. this, however, had occurred in such a number of instances, over such wide areas, and with such a total absence of any motive on the part of the miners to misrepresent or commit a fraud, that the cumulative evidence became almost irresistible; and we cannot sum it up better than in the words of the latest and best authority, professor wright, in an article in the _century_ of april , which is the more important because only two years previously, in his _ice age in north america_, he had still expressed himself as retaining doubts. he says, "but so many of such discoveries have been reported as to make it altogether improbable that the miners were in every case mistaken; and we must conclude that rude stone implements do actually occur in connection with the bones of various extinct animals in the undisturbed strata of the gold-bearing gravel." fortunately the most important human remains have been found in what may be considered as a test case, where it was physically impossible that they could have been introduced by accident, and where the evidence of a common workman as to the locality of the find is as good as that of a professed geologist. during the deposition of the auriferous gravel on the western flanks of the sierra there were great outbursts of volcanoes near the summits of that range. towards their close a vast stream of lava flowed down the shallow valley of the ancient stanislas river, filling up its channel for forty miles or more, and covering its extensive gravel deposits. the modern stanislas river has cut across its former bed, and now flows in a gorge from to feet deeper than the old valley which was filled up by the lava stream, the surface of which appears as a long flat-topped ridge, known as table mountain. in many places the sides of the valley which originally directed the course of the lava have been worn away, so that the walls on either side present a perpendicular face one hundred feet or more in height. the gravel of the ancient stanislas river being very auriferous, great efforts have been made to reach the portion of it which lies under table mountain. large sums have been spent in sinking shafts from the top through the lava cap, and tunnelling into it from the sides. great masses of gravel have been thus quarried and removed, and a considerable amount of gold obtained, though in most cases not enough to meet the expenses, and the workings have been mostly discontinued. [illustration: section across table mountain, tuolumne county, california. _b_, lava; _g_, gravel; _s_, slate; _r_, old river-bed; _r´_, present river-bed. (le conte.)] it is evident that objects brought from a great depth below this lava cap must have remained there undisturbed since they were deposited along with the gravels, and that the evidence of the simplest miner, who says he brought them with a truck-load of dirt from the bottoms of shafts, or ends of tunnels pierced for hundreds of feet through the solid lava, is, if he speaks the truth, as good as if a scientist had found them _in situ_. and this evidence, together with that of mining inspectors and respectable residents who took an interest in scientific subjects, has been forthcoming in such a large number of instances as to preclude any supposition of mistake or fraud. three of the latest of these discoveries were reported at the meeting of the geological society of america on the th december, , and they seem to be supported by very first-class evidence.[ ] mr. becker, one of the staff of the united states geological survey, to whom has been, committed the responsible work of reporting upon the gold-bearing gravels of california, exhibited to the society a stone mortar, and some arrow or spear-heads, with the sworn statement from mr. neale, a well-known mining superintendent, that he took them with his own hands from undisturbed gravel in a mine of which he had charge under the lava of table mountain. [ ] professor wright in _century_, april . a second object exhibited was a pestle found by mr. king, who was at one time general director of the united states geological survey, and is an expert whose judgment on such matters should be final, and who had no doubt that the gravel in which he found the object must have lain in place ever since the lava came down and covered it. the third object was a mortar taken from the old gravel at the end of a tunnel driven diagonally feet from the western edge of the basalt cliff, and feet or more below the surface of the flat top of table mountain, as supported by evidence entirely satisfactory to professor wright, who had just visited the locality and cross-examined the principal witnesses. this may prepare us to consider the case of the celebrated calaveras skull as by no means an isolated or exceptional one, but antecedently probable from the number of human implements found in the same gravels, under the same beds of basalt and lava, at table mountain and numerous other places. professor wright in the article already referred to, which is the latest on the subject, and made after his visit to california in , which he says enabled him to add some important evidence, sums up the facts as follows-- "in february , mr. mattenson, a blacksmith living near table mountain, in the county calaveras, employed his spare earnings in driving a tunnel under the portion of the sierra lava flow known as bald hill. at a depth of feet below the surface, of which feet consisted of solid lava, and the last fifty of interstratified beds of lava, gravel, and volcanic tuffs, he came upon petrified wood, and an object which he at first took for the root of a tree, thickly encased in cemented gravel. but seeing what he took for one of the roots was a lower jaw, he took the mass to the surface, and gave it to mr. scribner, the agent of an express company, and still living in the neighbourhood, and highly respected. mr. scribner, on perceiving what it was, sent it to dr. jones, a medical gentleman of the highest reputation, now living at san francisco, who gave it to professor whitney, who visited the spot, and after a careful inquiry was fully satisfied with the evidence. soon afterwards professor whitney took the skull home with him to cambridge, where, in conjunction with dr. wynam, he subjected it to a very careful investigation to see if the relic itself confirmed the story told by the discoverer, and this it did to such a degree that, to use professor wright's words, the circumstantial evidence alone places its genuineness beyond all reasonable question." this is not a solitary instance, for the professor reports as the result of his personal inquiries only a year ago in the district, that "the evidence that human implements and fragments of the human skeleton have been found in the stratum of gravel underneath the lava of table mountain seems to be abundantly sufficient;" among others a fragment of a skull which came up with a bucketful of dirt from feet below the surface of table mountain at tuolumne. dr. wallace, in an article on the "antiquity of man in north america," in the _nineteenth century_ of november , thus enumerates some of the principal instances-- "in tuolumne county from to stone mortars and platters were found in the auriferous gravel along with bones and teeth of mastodon feet below the surface, and a stone muller was obtained in a tunnel driven under table mountain. in a stone mortar was found at a depth of feet in gravel under clay and 'cement,' as the hard clay with vegetable remains (the old volcanic ash) is called by the miners. in calaveras county from to many mortars and other stone implements were found in the gravels under lava beds, and in other auriferous gravels and clays at a depth of feet. in amador county stone mortars have been found in similar gravel at a depth of feet. in placer county stone platters and dishes have been found in auriferous gravels from to feet below the surface. in nevada county stone mortars and ground discs have been found from to feet deep in the gravel. in butte county similar mortars and pestles have been found in the lower gravel beneath lava beds and auriferous gravel; and many other similar finds have been recorded.... "even these californian remains do not exhaust the proofs of man's great antiquity in america, since we have the record of another discovery which indicates that he may, possibly, have existed at an even more remote epoch. mr. e. l. berthoud has described the finding of stone implements of a rude type in the tertiary gravels of the crow creek, colorado. some shells were obtained from the same gravels, which were determined by mr. t. a. conrad to be species which are 'certainly not older than older pliocene, or possibly miocene.'" i do not dwell on the discoveries which have been made of human implements and skeletons in the cases of minas geraes in brazil, and in the drift or loess of the pampas of buenos ayres, for although associated with extinct animals usually considered as pliocene, there is a difference of opinion among competent geologists, whether the deposits are really tertiary or only early quaternary. there is, however, one discovery, made since the date of these above recorded, of human work below the great basalt cap of north-western america, brought up from a great depth of underlying gravels and sands of a silted-up lake, formerly forming part of the course of the snake river at nampa in idaho, which is as startling in its way as that of the calaveras skull. the following account of it is given on the authority of professor wright, who, having visited the locality in the summer of , states that he found "abundant confirmatory evidence"-- the nampa image was brought up in boring an artesian well, at nampa in ada county, idaho, through a lava-cap feet thick, and below it about feet of the quicksands and clays of a silted-up lake, formed in a basin of the snake river, which joins the columbia river, and flows into the pacific, forming part, therefore, of the same geographical and drainage system as the californian gravels. at this depth the borers came down to a stratum of coarse sand, mixed with clay balls at the top, and resting at the bottom on an ancient vegetable soil, and the image came up from the lower part of this coarse sand. the borer, or liner of the well, was a six-inch iron tube, and the drill was only used in piercing the lava, while the sands below it were all extracted by a sand pump. mr. king, a respectable citizen of nampa, who was boring the well, states that he had been for several days closely watching the progress of the well and passing through his hands the contents of the sand pump as they were brought up, so that he had hold of the image before he suspected what it was. mr. cumming, superintendent of that portion of the union pacific railway, a highly-trained graduate of harvard college, was on the ground next day and saw the image, and heard mr. king's account of the discovery, and mr. adams, the president of the railway, happening to pass that way about a month later, he brought it to the notice of some of the foremost geologists in the united states. the image was sent to boston by mr. king, who gave every information, and it was found to be modelled from stiff clay, like that of the clay balls found in the sand, slightly if at all touched by fire, and incrusted like those balls with grains of oxide of iron, which professor putnam considers to be a conclusive proof of its great antiquity. mr. emmons, of the state geological society, gives it as his opinion that the strata in which this image is said to have been found, is older by far than any others in which human remains have been discovered, unless it be those under table mountain, in california, from which came the celebrated calaveras skull. so much for the authenticity of the discovery, which seems unassailable, but now comes the remarkable feature of it, which to a great extent revolutionizes our conception of this early palæolithic age. the image, or rather statuette, which is scarcely an inch and a half long, is by no means a rude object, but on the contrary more artistic, and a better representation of the human form, than the little idols of many comparatively modern and civilized people, such as the phoenicians. it is in fact very like the little statuettes so abundantly found in the neighbourhood of the old temple-pyramids of mexico, which are generally believed to be not much older than the date of the spanish conquest. [illustration: front view. back view. the nampa image--actual size. (drawn from the object by j. d. woodward.)] in the face of this mass of evidence, from both the old and new worlds, it seems more like obstinate incredulity than scientific caution to deny the existence of tertiary man. indeed the objections put forward by those who still cling to the notion that any proofs of greater antiquity of man take them further back from the orthodox standpoint of genesis, are sufficient of themselves to show the straits to which they are driven to explain the facts. a conspiracy has been imagined of many hundreds of ignorant miners, living hundreds of miles apart, to hoax scientists, or make a trade of forging implements, which is about as probable as the theory that the palæolithic remains of the old world were all forged by the devil, and buried in quaternary strata in order to discredit the mosaic account of creation. it is enough to say that the great majority of the implements had been thrown away as rubbish, and that not a single instance has ever been adduced in which money was asked or offered for any of them. another equally wild theory is that gold-mining tunnels had been driven by some race of prehistoric indians through hundreds of feet of solid basalt and quicksands, who left their implements in them; and this on the face of the fact that no such tunnels or evidences of ancient mining have ever been found in california, and that gold was unknown there until its recent discovery. in accepting, however, the evidence for tertiary man, we must accept with it conclusions which are much opposed to preconceived opinions. in the two best authenticated instances in which human skulls have been found in presumably tertiary strata, those of castelnedolo and calaveras, it is distinctly stated that they present no unusual appearance, and do not go nearly as far in a brutal or pithecoid direction as the quaternary skulls of neanderthal and spy, or as those of many existing savage races. the nampa image also appears to show the existence of considerable artistic skill at a period which, if not tertiary, must be of immense antiquity. how can this be reconciled with the theory of evolution and the descent of man from some animal ancestor common to him and the other quadrumana? up to a certain point, viz. the earliest quaternary period, the evidence of progression seems fairly satisfactory. if we take the general average of this class of skulls as compared with modern skulls, we find them of smaller brain-capacity, thicker and flatter, with prominent frontal sinuses, receding foreheads, projecting muzzles, and weaker chins. the brain is decidedly smaller, the average being cubic centimètres as compared with in australians and bushmen, and in well-developed europeans; and of this smaller capacity a larger proportion is contained in the posterior part.[ ] other parts of the skeleton will tell the same story, and in many of the earliest and most extreme instances, as those of neanderthal and spy, a very decided step is made in the direction of the "missing link." [ ] quatrefages and hamy, _crania ethnica_. but if we accept the only two specimens known of the type of tertiary man, the skulls of castelnedolo and calaveras, which are supported by such extremely strong evidence, it would seem that as we recede in time, instead of getting nearer to the "missing link," we get further from it. this, and this alone, throws doubt on evidence which would otherwise seem to be irresistible, and without a greater number of well-authenticated confirmations we must be content to hold our judgment to a certain extent in suspense. this, however, it must be remarked, extends only to the type of man as shown by these two skulls, and does not at all affect the fact that man, of some type or other, did exist in the pliocene and miocene periods, which is established beyond reasonable doubt by the numerous instances in which chipped implements and cut bones have been found by experienced observers, and pronounced genuine by the highest authorities. all we can say with any certainty is, that if the darwinian theory of evolution applies to man, as it does to all other animals, and specially to man's closest kindred, the other quadrumana, the common ancestor must be sought very much further back, in the eocene, which inaugurated the reign of placental mammalia, and in which the primitive types of so many of the later mammals have been found. nor will this appear incredible when we consider that man's cousins, the apes and monkeys, first appear in the miocene, or even earlier in the eocene, and become plentiful in the later pliocene, and that even anthropoid apes, and one of them, the hylobates, scarcely if at all distinguishable from the gibbon of the present day, have been found at sansan and other miocene deposits in the south of france, at oeningen in switzerland, and pikermi in greece; while if professor ameghino's discoveries are to be credited, anthropoids already existed in the eocene, and their development may be traced from the oldest eocene forms. chapter xii. races of mankind. monogeny or polygeny--darwin--existing races--colour--hair--skulls and brains--dolichocephali and brachycephali--jaws and teeth--stature--other tests--isaac taylor--prehistoric types in europe--huxley's classification--language no test of race--egyptian monuments--- human and animal races unchanged for years--neolithic races--palæolithic--different races of man as far back as we can trace--types of canstadt, cro-magnon, and furfooz--oldest races dolichocephalic--skulls of neanderthal and spy--simian characters--objections--evidence confined to europe--american man--calaveras skull--tertiary man--skull of castelnedolo--leaves monogeny or polygeny an open question--arguments on each side--old arguments from the bible and philology exploded--what darwinian theory requires--animal types traced up to the eocene--secondary origins--dog and horse--fertility of races--question of hybridity--application to man--difference of constitutions--negro and white--bearing on question of migration--apes and monkeys--question of original locality of man--asiatic theory--eur-african--american--arctic--none based on sufficient evidence--- mere speculations--conclusion--summary of evidence as to human origins. the immense antiquity of man upon earth having been established, other questions of great interest present themselves as to the origin of the race. these questions, however, no longer depend on positive facts of observation, like the discovery of palæolithic remains in definite geological deposits, but on inference and conjecture from these and other observed facts, most of which are of comparatively recent date and hardly extend beyond the historical period. thus if we start with the existing state of things, we find a great variety of human races actually prevailing, located in different parts of the world, and of fundamental types so dissimilar as to constitute what in animal zoology would often be called separate species,[ ] and yet fertile among themselves, and so similar in many physical and mental characters as to infer an origin from common ancestors. and we can infer from history that this was so to a great extent years ago, and that the length of time has been insufficient to produce any marked changes, either in physical or linguistic types of the different fundamental races. [ ] topinard, one of the latest and best authorities, says in his book on anthropology: "we have seen the marked difference between woolly and straight hair, between the prognathous and the orthognathous, the jet black of the yoloff and the pale complexion of the scandinavian, between the ultra-dolichocephalic esquimaux or new caledonian, and the ultra-brachycephalic mongolian. but the line of separation between the european and the bosjesman, as regards these two characters, is, in a morphological point of view, still wider, as much so as between each of the anthropoid apes, or between the dog and the wolf, the goat and the sheep." was this always so, and what inference can be drawn as to the much-disputed question between monogeny and polygeny, that is, between the theory of descent from a single pair in a single locality, and that of descent from several pairs, developed in different localities by parallel, but not strictly identical, lines of evolution? this is a question which cannot be decided off-hand by _à priori_ considerations. no doubt darwinism points to the evolution of all life from primitive forms, and ultimately, perhaps, from the single simplest form of life in the cell or protoplasm. but this does not necessarily imply that the more highly specialized, and what may be called the secondary forms of life, have all originated from single secondary centres, at one time and in one locality. on the contrary, we have the authority of darwin himself for saying that this is not a necessary consequence of his theory. in a letter to bentham he says--"i dispute whether a new race or species is necessarily or even generally descended from a single or pair of parents. the whole body of individuals, i believe, became altered together--like our race-horses, and like all domestic breeds which are changed through unconscious selection by man." the problem is, therefore, an open one, and can only be solved (or rather attacked, for in the present state of our knowledge a complete solution is probably impossible) by a careful induction from ascertained facts, ascending step by step from the present to the past, from the known to the unknown. the first step is to have a clear idea of what actually exists at the present moment. there are an almost endless number of minor varieties of the human race, but none of them of sufficient importance to imply diversity of origin, with the exception of four, or at the most five or six fundamental types, which stand so widely apart that it is difficult to imagine that they are all descended from a common pair of ancestors. these are the white, yellow, and black races of the old world, the copper-coloured of america, and perhaps the olive-coloured of malaysia and polynesia, and the pygmy races of africa and eastern asia. the difficulty of supposing these races to have all sprung from a single pair will at once be apparent if we personify this pair under the name of adam for the first man and eve for the first woman, and ask ourselves the question, what do we suppose to have been their colour? but colour alone, though the most obvious, is by no means the sole criterion of difference of race. the evidence is cumulative, and other equally marked and persistent characters, both of physical structure and of physiological and mental peculiarities, stand out as distinctly as differences of colour in the great typical races. for instance, the hair is a very persistent index of race. when the section of it is circular, the hair is straight and lank; when flattened, woolly; and when oval, curly or wavy. now these characters are so persistent that many of the best anthropologists have taken hair as the surest test of race. everywhere the lank and straight hair and circular section go with the yellow and copper-coloured races; the woolly hair and flat section with the black; and the wavy hair and oval section with the white races. the solid framework of the skeleton also affords very distinctive types of race, especially where it is looked at in a general way as applicable to great masses of pure races, and not to individuals of mixed race, like most europeans. the skull is most important, for it affords the measure of the size and shape of the brain, which is the highest organ, and that on which the differentiation of man from the lower animals mainly depends. the size of the brain alone does not always afford a conclusive proof of mental superiority, for it varies with sex, height, and other individual characters, and often seems to depend more on quality than on quantity. still, if we take general averages, we find that superior and civilized races have larger brains than inferior and savage ones. thus the average brain of the european is about cubic centimètres, while that of the australian and bushman does not exceed . the shape as well as the size of the skull affords another test of race which is often appealed to. the main distinction taken is between dolichocephalic and brachycephalic, or long and broad skulls. here also we must look at general averages rather than at individuals, for there is often considerable variation within the same race, especially among the mesocephalic, or medium between the two extremes, which is generally the prevalent form where there has been much intermixture of races. but if we take widely different types there can be no doubt that the long or broad skull is a characteristic and persistent feature. the formation of the jaws and teeth affords another important test. some races are what is called prognathous, that is, the jaws project, and the teeth are set in sockets sloping outwards, so that the lower part of the face approximates to the form of a muzzle; others are orthognathous, or have the jaws and teeth vertical. and the form of the chin seems to be wonderfully correlated with the general character and energy of the race. it is hard to say why, but as a matter of fact a weak chin generally denotes a weak, and a strong chin a strong, race or individual. thus the chimpanzee and other apes have no chin, the negro and lower races generally have chins weak and receding. the races who, like the iberians, have been conquered or driven from plains to mountains, have had poor chins; while their successive conquerors, of aryan race,--celts, romans, teutons, and scandinavians,--might almost be classified by the prominence and solidity of this feature of the face. stature is another very persistent feature. the pygmy races of equatorial africa described by stanley have remained the same since the early records of egypt, while the pure aryan races of the north temperate zone, gauls, germans, and scandinavians, have from the first dawn of history amazed the shorter races of the south by their tall stature, huge limbs, blue eyes, and yellow hair. here and there isolated tall races may be found where the race has become thoroughly acclimatized to a suitable environment, as among some negro tribes, and the araucanian indians of patagonia; but as a rule the inferior races are short, the bulk of the civilized races of the world of intermediate stature, and the great conquering races of the north temperate zone decidedly tall. other tests are afforded by the shape of the eye-orbits and nasal bones, and other characters, all of which agree, in the words of isaac taylor in his _origin of the aryans_, in "exhibiting two extreme types--the african with long heads, long orbits, and flat hair; and the mongolian with round heads, round orbits, and round hair. the european type is intermediate, the head, the orbit, and the hair being oval. in the east of europe we find an approximation to the asiatic type; in the south of europe to the african." taking these prominent anthropological characters as tests, we find four distinct types among the earliest inhabitants of europe, which can be traced back from historic to neolithic times. they consist of two long-headed and two short-headed races, and in each case one is tall and the other short. the dolichocephalic are recognized everywhere throughout western europe and on the mediterranean basin, including north africa, as the oldest race, and they are thought still to survive in the original type in some of the people of wales and ireland and the spanish basques; while they doubtless form a large portion, intermixed with other races, of the blood of the existing populations of great britain and ireland, of western and southern france, of spain, portugal, sicily, sardinia, north africa, and other mediterranean districts. this is known as the iberian race, and it can be traced clearly beyond history and the knowledge of metals, into the neolithic stone age, and may possibly be descended from some of the vastly older palæolithic types such as that of cro-magnon. the type is everywhere a feeble one, of short stature, dolichocephalic skull, narrow oval face, orthognathic teeth, weak chin, and swarthy complexion. we have only to compare a skull of this type with one of ruder and stronger races, to understand how the latter must have survived as conquerors in the struggle for existence in the early ages of the world, before gunpowder and military discipline had placed civilization in a better position to contend with brute force and energy. huxley sums up the latest evidence as to the distinctive types of these historic and prehistoric races of europe as follows-- . blond long-heads of tall stature who appear with least admixture in scandinavia, north germany, and parts of the british islands. . brunette broad-heads of short stature in central france, the central european highlands, and piedmont. these are identified with the ligurian race, and their most typical modern representatives are the auvergnats and savoyards. . mongoloid brunette broad-heads of short stature in arctic and eastern europe, and central asia, represented by the lapps and other tribes of northern russia, passing into the mongols and chinese of eastern asia. . brunette long-heads of short stature--the iberian race. huxley adds, "the inhabitants of the regions which lie between these five present the intermediate gradations which might be expected to result from their intermixture. the evidence at present extant is consistent with the supposition that the blond long-heads, the brunette broad-heads, and the brunette long-heads--_i.e._ the scandinavian, ligurian, and iberian races--have existed in europe very nearly in their present localities throughout historic times and very far back into prehistoric times. there is no proof of any migration of asiatics into europe west of the basin of the dnieper down to the time of attila. on the contrary, the first great movements of the european population of which there is any conclusive evidence are that series of gaulish invasions of the east and south, which ultimately extended from north italy to galatia in asia minor." i may add, that in more recent times many of the principal movements have been from west to east, viz. of germans absorbing slavs, and slavs absorbing or expelling fins and tartars. the next question is, how far can we trace back the existence of the present widely different fundamental types of mankind by the light of ascertained and certain facts? the most important of these facts is, that egyptian monuments enable us to say, that the existing diversities of the typical races of mankind are not of recent origin, but have existed unchanged from the first dawn of history, say years ago. the egyptians themselves have come down from the old empire, through all the vicissitudes of conquests, mixtures of races, changes of religion and language, so little altered that the fellah of to-day is often the image of the egyptians who built the pyramids. the wooden statue of an officer of chephren who died some years ago, was such a striking portrait of the village magistrate of to-day, that the arab workmen christened it the "sheik-el-beled." and these old egyptians knew from the earliest times three at least of the fundamental types of mankind: the nahsu, or negroes to the south, who are represented on the monuments so faithfully that they might be taken as typical pictures of the modern negro; the lebu to the west, a fair-skinned and blue-eyed white race, whose descendants remain to this day as kabyles and berbers, in the same localities of north africa; and to the east various tribes of arabs, syrians, and other asiatics, who are always painted of a yellowish-brown colour, and whose features may often be traced in their modern descendants. the same may be said of the wild and domestic animals of the various countries, which are the same now, unless where subsequently imported, as when they were first known to the ancient egyptians. we start, therefore, with this undoubted fact, that a period of or years has been insufficient to make any perceptible change in the types of pure races, whether of the animal or of human species. and doubtless this period might be greatly extended if we had historical records of the growth of egyptian civilization in the times prior to menes, for in the earliest records we find accounts of wars both with the nahsu and the lebu, implying large populations of those races already existing both to the south and west of the valley of the nile. these positive dates carry us back so far that it is of little use to investigate minutely the differences of races shown by the remains of the neolithic period. they were very marked and numerous, but we have no evidence to show that they were different from those of more recent times, or that their date can be certainly said to be much older than the oldest egyptian records. all we can infer with certainty is, that whether the neolithic period be of longer or shorter duration, no changes have taken place in the animal fauna contemporary with man which cannot be traced to human agency or other known causes. no new species have appeared, or old ones disappeared, in the course of natural evolution, as was the case during the quaternary and preceding geological periods. the neolithic is, however, a mere drop in the ocean of time compared with the earlier periods in which the existence of palæolithic man can be traced by his remains; and as far back as we can go we find ourselves confronted by the same fact of a diversity of races. as we have seen in the chapter on quaternary man, europe, where alone skulls and skeletons of the palæolithic age have been discovered, affords at least three very distinct types--that of canstadt, of cro-magnon, and of furfooz. the canstadt type, which includes the men of neanderthal and spy, and which was widely diffused, having been found, as far south as gibraltar, is apparently the oldest, and certainly the rudest and most savage, being characterized by enormous brow-ridges, a low and receding forehead, projecting muzzle, and thick bones with powerful muscular attachments. it is very dolichocephalic, but the length is due mainly to the projection of the posterior part of the brain, the total size of which is below the average. the cro-magnon type, which is also very old, being contemporary with the cave-bear and mammoth, is the very opposite of that of canstadt in many respects. the superciliary ridges are scarcely marked, the forehead is elevated, the contour of the skull good, and the volume of the brain equal or superior to that of many modern civilized races. the stature was tall, the nose straight or projecting, and the chin prominent. the only resemblance to the canstadt type is, that they are both dolichocephalic chiefly on the posterior region, and both prognathous; but the differences are so many and profound that no anthropologist would say that one of these races could have been derived directly from the other. still less could he say that the small round-headed race of furfooz could have been a direct descendant of either of the two former. it is found in close vicinity with them over an extensive area, but generally in caves and deposits which, from their geological situation and associated fauna, point to a later origin. in fact, if we go by european evidence alone, we may consider it proved that the oldest known races were dolichocephalic, that the brachycephalic races came later, and that as long ago as in neolithic times, considerable intercrossing had taken place, which has gone on ever since, producing the great variety of intermediate types which now prevail over a great part of europe. this inference of the priority of the canstadt type is strengthened by its undoubted approximation to that of the most savage existing races and of the anthropoid apes. if we take the skulls and skeletons of neanderthal and spy, and compare them with those of modern civilized man, we find that while they are still perfectly human, they make a notable approximation towards a savage and simian type in all the peculiarities which have been described by anthropologists as tests. the most important of all, that of the capacity and form of the brain, is best illustrated by the subjoined diagram of the skulls of the european, the neanderthal, and the chimpanzee placed in superposition. [illustration: l'homme avant l'histoire. (from debierre.)] it will be seen at a glance that the neanderthal skull, especially in the frontal part, which is the chief seat of intelligence, is nearer to the chimpanzee than to modern man. and all the other characters correspond to this inferiority of brain. the enormous superciliary ridges; the greater length of the fore-arm; the prognathous jaws, larger canine teeth, and smaller chin; the thicker bones and stronger muscular attachments; the rounder ribs; the flatter tibia, and many other characters described by palæontologists, all point in the same direction, and take us some considerable way towards the missing link which is to connect the human race with animal ancestors. still there are other considerations which must make us pause before asserting too positively that in following quaternary man up to the canstadt type, we are on the track of original man, and can say with confidence that by following it up still further we shall arrive at the earlier form from which man was differentiated. in the first place, europe is the only part of the world where this canstadt type has hitherto been found. we have abundant evidence from palæolithic stone implements that man existed pretty well over the whole earth in early quaternary times, but have hitherto no evidence from human remains outside of europe from which we can draw any inference as to the type of man by whom these implements were made. it is clear that in europe the oldest races were dolichocephalic, but we have no certainty that this was the case in asia, in so many parts of which round-headed races exclusively prevail, and have done so from the earliest times. again, we have no evidence as to the origin of another of the most strongly marked types, that of the negro, or of the negrito, negrillo, bushmen, australian, or other existing races who approach most nearly to the simian type. the only evidence we have of the type of races who were certainly early quaternary, and may very possibly go back to an older geological age than that of the men of neanderthal and spy, comes from the new world, from california, brazil, and buenos ayres, and points to a type not so savage and simian as that of canstadt, but rather to that which characterizes all the different varieties of american man, though here also we find evidence of distinct dolichocephalic and brachycephalic races from the very earliest times. another difficulty in the way of considering the canstadt type as a real advance towards primitive man and the missing link, arises from the totally different and very superior type of cro-magnon being found so near it in time, as proved by the existence in both of the cave-bear, mammoth, and other extinct animals. we can hardly suppose the cro-magnon type to have sprung by slow evolution in the ordinary way of direct succession, from such a very different type as that of canstadt during such a short interval of time as a small portion of one geological period. again, it is very perplexing to find that the only tertiary skulls and skeletons for which we possess really strong evidence, those of castelnedolo, instead of showing, as might be expected, a still more rude and simian aspect than that of canstadt, show us the canstadt type indeed, but in a milder and more human form. all that can be said with certainty is, that as far as authentic evidence carries us back, the ancestral animal, or missing link, has not been discovered, but that man already existed from an enormous antiquity, extending certainly through the quaternary into the pliocene, and probably into the miocene period, and that at the earliest date at which his remains have been found the race was already divided, as at present, into several sharply distinguished types. this leaves the question of man's ultimate origin completely open to speculation, and enables both monogenists and polygenists to contend for their respective views with plausible arguments, and without fear of being refuted by facts. polygeny, or plural origins, would at first sight seem to be the most plausible theory to account for the great diversities of human races actually existing, and which can be shown to have existed from such an immense antiquity. and this seems to have been the first guess of primitive nations, for most of them considered themselves as autochthonous, sprung from the soil, or created by their own native gods. but by degrees this theory gave place to that of monogeny, which has been for a long while almost universally accepted by the civilized world. the cause of this among christians, jews, and mahometans has been the acceptance of the narratives in genesis, first of adam and secondly of noah, as literally true accounts of events which actually occurred. this is an argument which has completely broken down, and no competent and dispassionate thinker any longer accepts the hebrew scriptures as a literal and conclusive authority, on facts of history and science which lie within the domain of human reason. the question, therefore, became once more an open one, but as the old orthodox argument for monogeny faded into oblivion, a new and more powerful one was furnished by the doctrine of evolution as expounded by darwin. the same argument applies to man as to the rest of the animal world, that if separate species imply separate creations, these supernatural creations must be multiplied to such an extent as to make them altogether incredible; as for instance separate creations for the land shells alone of one of the group of madeira islands; while on the other hand genera grade off into species, species into races, and races into varieties, by such insensible degrees, as to establish an irresistible inference that they have all been developed by evolution from common ancestors. no one, i suppose, seriously doubts that this is in the main the true theory of life, though there may still be some uncertainty as to the causes and mode of operation, and of the different steps and stages of this evolution. monogeny therefore in this general sense of evolution from some primitive mammalian type, may be accepted as the present conclusion of science for man as it has come to be for the horse, dog, and so many other animals which are his constant companions. their evolution can in many cases be traced up, through successive steps, to some more simple and generalized type in the eocene; and it may be permitted to believe that if the whole geological record could be traced as far back as that of the horse, in the case of man and the other quadrumana, their pedigree would be as clearly made out. this, however, does not conclude the question, for it is quite permissible to contend that in the case of man, as in that of the horse, though the primary ancestral type in the eocene may be one, the secondary types from which existing races are more immediately derived may be more than one, and may have been evolved in different localities. thus in the case of the dog, it is almost certain that some of the existing races have been derived from wolves, and others from jackals and foxes; but this is quite consistent with the belief that all the canine genus have been evolved from the marsupial carnivora of the eocene, through the arctocyon, who was a generalized type, half dog and half bear. in fact, we have the authority of darwin himself, as quoted in the beginning of this chapter, for saying that this would be quite consistent with his view of the origin of species. now the controversy between monogenists and polygenists has turned mainly on these comparatively recent developments of secondary types. it has been fought to a great extent before the immense antiquity of the human race had been established, and it had become almost certain that its original starting-point must be sought at least as far back as in the eocene period. the main argument for monogeny has been that the different races of mankind are fertile among themselves. this is doubtless true to a great extent, and shows that these races have not diverged very far from their ancestral type. but the researches of darwin and his successors have thrown a good deal of new light on the question of hybridity. species can no longer be looked upon as separated from one another and from races by hard-and-fast lines, on one side of which is absolute sterility and on the other absolute fertility; but rather as blending into one another by insensible gradations from free intercrossing to sterility, according as the differences from the original type became more pronounced and more fixed by heredity. to revert to the case of dogs, we find free interbreeding between races descended from different secondary ancestors, such as wolves, jackals, and foxes, though freer, i believe, and more permanent as the races are closer; but as the specific differences become more marked, the fertility does not abruptly cease, but rapidly diminishes. thus buffon's experiment shows that a hybrid cross between the dog and the wolf may be produced and perpetuated for at least three generations, and the leporine cross between the hare and rabbit is almost an established race. on the other hand, we see in the mule the last expiring trace of fertility in a cross between species which have diverged so far in different directions as the horse and the ass. the human race repeats this lesson of the animal world, and shows a graduated scale of fertility and permanence in crosses, between different types according as they are closely or distantly related. thus if we take the two extremes, the blond white of north temperate europe and the negro of equatorial africa, the disposition to union is almost replaced by repugnance which is only overcome under special circumstances, such as slavery, and an absence of women of their own race; while the offspring, the mulatto, is everywhere a feeble folk, with deficient vitality, diminished fertility, and prone to die out, or revert to one or other of the original types. but where the types are not so extremely divergent the fertility of the cross increases, as between the brunet white of southern europe and the arab or moor with the negro, and of the european with the native indian of america. perhaps the strongest argument for polgyeny is that derived from the different constitutions of different races as regards susceptibility to climatic and other influences. at present, and as far back as history or tradition enables us to trace, mankind has, as in the case of other animals, been very much restricted to definite geological provinces. thus in the extreme case of the fair white and the negro, the former cannot live and propagate its type south of the parallel of °, or the latter north of it. this argument was no doubt pushed too far by agassiz, who supposed the whole world to be divided into a number of limited districts, in each of which a separate creation both of men, animals, and plants had taken place suited to the environment. this is clearly inconsistent with facts, but there is still some force in it when stripped of exaggeration, and confined to the three or four leading types which are markedly different. especially it bears on the argument, on which monogenists mainly rely, of the peopling of the earth by migration from one common centre. no doubt migration has played a very great part in the diffusion of all animal and vegetable species, and their zoological provinces are determined very much by the existence of insurmountable barriers in early geological times. no doubt also man is better organized for migration than most other terrestrial animals, and history and tradition show that in comparatively recent times he has reached the remotest islands of the pacific by perfectly natural means. but this does not meet the difficulty of accounting, if we place the origin of man from a single pair anywhere in the northern hemisphere, for his presence in palæolithic times in south africa and south america. how did he get across the equatorial zone, in which only a tropical fauna, including the tropical negro, can now live and flourish? or _vice versâ_, if the original adam and eve were black, and the garden of eden situated in the tropics, how did their descendants migrate northwards, and live on the skirts of the ice-caps of the glacial period? or how did the yellow race, so tolerant of heat and cold, and of insanitary conditions, and so different in physical and moral characters from either the whites or the blacks, either originate from them, or give rise to them? the nearest congeners of man, the quadrumana, monkeys and apes, are all catarrhine in the old world, and all platyrhine in america. why, if all are descended from the same pair of ancestors, and have spread from the same spot by migration? we can only reconcile the fact that it is so with the facts of evolution, by throwing the common starting-point or points of the lines of development much further back into the eocene, or even further; and if this be true for monkeys, why not for man? one point seems quite clear, that monogeny is only possible by extending the date of human origins far back into the tertiaries. on any short-dated theories of man's appearance upon earth--as for instance that of prestwich, that palæolithic man probably only existed for some , or , years before the neolithic period--some theory like that of agassiz, of separate creations in separate zoological provinces, follows inevitably. if the immense time from the miocene to the recent period has been insufficient to differentiate the hylobates and dryopithecus very materially from the existing anthropoid apes, a period such as , or , years would have gone a very little way in deriving the negro from the white, or the white from the negro. to deny the extension of human origins into the tertiaries is practically to deny darwin's theory of evolution altogether, or to contend that man is an exception to the laws by which the rest of the animal creation have come into existence in the course of evolution. the question of the locality in which the human species first originated depends also very materially on the date assigned for human origins. the various speculations which have been hazarded on this subject are almost all based on the supposition that this origin took place in comparatively recent times when geographical and other causes were not materially different from those of the present day. it was for ages the accepted belief that all mankind were descended primarily from a single pair of ancestors, who were miraculously created in mesopotamia, and secondarily from three pairs who were miraculously preserved in the ark in armenia. this of course never had any other foundation than the belief in the inspired authority of the bible, and when it came to be established that this, as regards its scientific and prehistoric speculations, was irreconcilable with the most certain facts of science, the orthodox account of the creation fell with it. the theory of asiatic origin was, however, taken up on other grounds, and still lingers in some quarters, mainly among philologists, who, headed by max müller, thought they had discovered in sanscrit and zend the nearest approach to a common aryan language. tracing backwards the lines of migration of these people, the sanscrit-speaking hindoos and the zend-speaking iranians, they found them intersecting somewhere about the upper oxus, and jumped at the conclusion that the great elevated plateau of pamir, the "roof of the world," had been the birthplace of man, as it was of so many of the great rivers which flowed from it to the north, south, east, and west. this theory, however, has pretty well broken down, since it has been shown that other branches of the aryan languages, specially the lithuanian, contain more archaic elements than either sanscrit or zend; that language is often no conclusive test of race; that aryan migrations have quite as often or oftener been from west to east than from east to west; and that all history, prehistoric traditions, and linguistic palæontology point to the principal aryan races having been located in northern and central europe and in central and southern russia very much as we find them at the present day. the question of the locality of human origins is now being debated on very different grounds, and although it is not denied that max müller's "somewhere in asia" may turn out to be a correct guess, it is denied that there is at present a particle of evidence to support it. for really the whole question is very much one of guesswork. the immense antiquity which on the lowest possible estimate can be assigned for the proved existence of man, carries us back to a period when geological, geographical, and climatic conditions were so entirely different, that all inferences from those of the present period are useless. for instance, certainly half the himalayas, and probably the whole, were under the sea; the pamir and central asia, instead of being the roof of the world, may have been fathoms deep under a great ocean; greenland and spitzbergen were types of the north temperate climate best suited for the highest races of man. in like manner language ceases to be an available factor in any attempt to trace human origins to their source. it is doubtless true that at the present day different fundamental types of language distinguish the different typical races of the human family. thus the monosyllabic type, consisting of roots only without grammar, characterizes the chinese and its allied races of the extreme east of asia; the agglutinative, in which different shades of meaning were attached to roots, by definite particles glued on to them as it were by prefixes or suffixes, is the type adopted by most of the oldest and most numerous races of mankind in the old world as their means of conveying ideas by sound; while in the new world the common type of an immense variety of languages is polysynthetic, or an attempt to splutter out as it were a whole sentence in a single immensely long word made up of fragments of separate roots and particles, a type which in the old world is confined to the euskarian of the spanish basque. and at the head of all as refined instruments for the conveyance of thought, the two inflectional languages, the aryan and semitic, by which, though in each case by a totally different system, roots acquire their different shades of meaning by particles, no longer mechanically glued on to them, but melted down as it were with the roots, and incorporated into new words according to definite grammatical rules. but this carries us back a very little way. judging by philology alone, the chinese, whose annals go back only to about b.c., would be an older race than the egyptians or accadians, whose languages can be traced at least years further back. and if we go back into prehistoric and geological times we are absolutely ignorant whether the neolithic and palæolithic races spoke these languages, or indeed spoke at all. some palæontologists have fancied that there was evidence for some of the older palæolithic races being speechless, and christened them "homo alalus," but this is based on the solitary fact that a single human jaw, that of naulette, is wanting in the genial tubercle, absent also in anthropoid apes, to which one of the muscles of the tongue is attached. but apart from this being a single instance, some of the best anatomists deny that this genial tubercle is really essential to speech, which the latest physiological researches show to be dependent on the development of a small tract in the third frontal convolution of the right side of the brain, any injury to which causes aphasia, or loss of the power of speech, though its physical organs of the larynx remain unimpaired. it is probable, however, that from the very first man had a certain faculty, like other animals, of expressing meaning by sounds and gestures, and the researches of romanes, and quite recently those of professor garner on the language of monkeys and apes, make this almost certain. but at what particular moment in the course of the evolution of man this faculty ripened into what may be properly called language is a matter of the purest conjecture. it may have been in the tertiary, the quaternary, or not until the recent period. all we can say is, that when we first catch sight of languages, they are already developed into the present distinct types, arguing, as in the case of physical types, either for distinct miraculous creations, or for such an immensely remote ancestry as to give time for the fixation of separate secondary types before the formation of language. thus, if we confine ourselves to the most perfect and advanced, and apparently therefore most modern form of language of the foremost races of the world, the inflectional, we find two types, the semitic and aryan, constructed on such totally different principles that it is impossible for one to be derived from the other, or both to be descended from a common parent. the semitic device of expressing shades of meaning by internal flexion, that is, by ringing the changes of vowels between three consonants, making every word triliteral, is fundamentally different from the aryan device for attaining the same object by fusing roots and added particles into one new word in which equal value is attached to vowels and consonants. we can partly see how the latter may have been developed from the agglutinative, but not how the stiff and cramped semitic can have been derived either from that or from the far more perfect and flexible type of the aryan languages. it has far more the appearance of being an artificial invention implying a considerable advance of intellectual attainment, and therefore of comparatively recent date. in any case we may safely accept the conclusion that there is nothing in language which assists us in tracing back human origins into geological times, or indeed much further than the commencement of history. we are reduced, therefore, to geological evidence, and this gives us nothing better than mere probabilities, or rather guesses, as to the original centre or centres of human existence upon the earth. the inference most generally drawn is in favour of the locality where the earliest traces of human remains have been found, and where the existence of the nearest allied species, the apes and monkeys, can be carried back furthest. this locality is undoubtedly eur-africa, that is the continent which existed when europe and africa were united by one or more land connections. and in this locality the preference must be assigned to western europe and to africa north of the atlas; in fact to the portion of this ancient continent facing the atlantic, and western mediterranean, then an inland sea. thus far central and south-western france, spain, portugal, italy, and algeria have afforded the oldest unequivocal proofs of the existence of man, and of the coexistence of anthropoid apes. accordingly darwin inclined to the view that north africa was probably the scene of man's first appearance, and the latest authority on the subject, brinton, in his _races and peoples_, gives at length reasons for assigning this to somewhere in eur-africa. but it must be remembered that this inference rests entirely on the fact that the district in question has been more or less explored, while the rest of the earth can hardly be said to have been explored at all, for anything prior to those quaternary paleolithic implements which prove the existence of man already spread over nearly the whole of the habitable globe. nor would the origin of the white race in eur-africa, even if it were established, help us to account for the existence of the negro race on the other side of the atlas and the sahara, or of the yellow race in eastern asia, or of the american race. indeed america may fairly compete with eur-africa for the honour of being the original seat of the human race, for the geological conditions and the animal fauna of the auriferous gravels of california point to the calaveras skull and other numerous human remains and implements found in them being of tertiary age, and quite possibly as old or even older than anything which has been found in europe.[ ] the wide diffusion of the same peculiar racial type over the whole continent of america down to cape horn, and its capability of existing under such different conditions of climate and environment, also point to its being an extremely ancient and primitive race, and the generic distinction between the apes and monkeys of the old and new worlds is a remarkable circumstance which is not accounted for by any monogenist theory of the origin of the order of quadrumana. [ ] if ameghino's discoveries of an anthropoid type in the lower eocene of patagonia should be confirmed, it would incline the balance of evidence in favour of south america, or rather of the temperate zone of the southern hemisphere, as the most probable scene of the evolution of the quadrumana, including the human variety, from ancestral forms allied to the marsupials of the secondary period. it is to be observed also, that although all american races have a certain peculiar type in common, still there are differences which show that secondary types must have existed from a very early period, intercrossing between which must have given rise to numerous varieties. thus, according to morton, dolichocephaly was most prevalent among the tribes who inhabited the eastern side of the continent facing the atlantic both in north and south america, while brachycephaly prevailed on the western, side facing the pacific. great differences of colour and stature are also found often among contiguous tribes, and irrespective of latitude. on the whole, however, the american type approximates in many important particulars, such as colour, hair, and anatomical structure, more nearly to the yellow races of eastern asia than to any other, though it is a fairly open question which of the two may have been the earliest to appear in the immensely remote ages of the tertiary period. another theory is that man probably originated in some continent of the arctic circle, where, as we know from fossil remains of the miocene and eocene periods, greenland and spitzbergen enjoyed a mild climate and forest vegetation, admirably adapted for the evolution of a temperate mammalian fauna, including the human species. this is a very plausible theory, but at present it is a mere theory, like that of a lost atlantis, or submerged continents in the pacific or indian oceans. the only thing approaching to evidence to support it is, as far as i am aware, that sir joseph hooker and other eminent botanists think that the diffusion of the forest trees and other flora of america can be traced along lines radiating from the extreme north, along the mountain chains and elevated plateaux which form the backbone of the continent from alaska to tierra del fuego. there seems a probability also that the evolution of the human race, which turns mainly on the development of the erect stature, which is the basis of the larger brain and other anatomical differences between man and the other quadrumana, must have taken place not in tropical regions of dense forests, where climbing would have had a decided advantage over walking in the struggle for life, but rather in some region of wide plains and open forests, where it would be an advantage to see enemies or prey at a distance, or over tall grass or ferns. it must be admitted, however, that in our present state of knowledge all these theories of the place, time, and manner of human origins are speculations rather than science. we have proof positive that man was already spread over most parts of the world in the quaternary period, and the irresistible inference that he must have existed long before, is confirmed by conclusive evidence as to the finding of his remains and implements in the earliest quaternary and latest pliocene periods, and very strong evidence for carrying them back into the miocene. anthropoid apes, which are so similar to man in physical structure, and in their ways are as highly specialized from any more general and primitive ancestral form as man himself, undoubtedly did exist in the miocene period, and have come down to us with comparatively little change. it puzzles the best anatomists to find any clear distinction between the present hylobates and the hylobates of the middle miocene, while that between the white man and the negro is clear and unmistakable. why then should "homo" not have existed as soon as "hylobates," and why should any prepossession in favour of man's recent creation, based mainly on exploded beliefs in the scientific value of the myths and guesses of the earliest civilized nations of asia, stand in the way of accepting the enormous and rapidly increasing accumulation of evidence, tracing back the evolution of the mammal man to the same course of development as other mammals? as regards the course of this evolution, all we know with any certainty is, that as far as we can trace it back, the human species was already differentiated into distinct races, and that in all probability the present fundamental types were already formed. when and where the primitive stock or stocks may have originated, and the secondary ancestral races may have branched off from it, is at present unknown. all we can say is, that the more we examine the evidence, the more it points to extreme antiquity even for these secondary stocks, and makes it probable that we must go, as in the case of the horse and other existing mammals, at least as far back as into the eocene to look for the primitive generalized type or types from which these secondary lines of quadrumanous and human evolution have taken their origin. as regards the secondary types themselves, there is no certainty as to the place or time of their origin, but the balance of evidence points rather in favour of polygeny, that is, of their having followed slightly different lines of evolution from the common starting-point, under different circumstances of environment and in different localities; so that when man, as we know him, first appeared, he was already differentiated into races distinct though not very far apart. in conclusion, i may remark that these hotly-contested questions as to monogeny or polygeny, and as to the place of man's first appearance on earth, lose most of their importance when it is realized that human origins must be pushed back at least as far as the miocene, and probably into the eocene period. as long as it was held that no traces of man's existence could be found, as cuvier held, until the recent period; or even as some english geologists still contend, until the post-glacial, or at any rate the glacial or quaternary periods, it was evident that the facts could only be explained by the theory of a series of supernatural interferences. agassiz's theory, or some modification of it, must be adopted, of numerous special creations of life at special centres, as of the esquimaux and polar bear in arctic regions, the negro and gorilla in the tropics, and so forth. this theory has been completely given up as regards animals, in favour of the darwinian theory of evolution by natural causes, and no one now believes in a multiplicity of miracles to account for the existence of animal species. is man alone an exception to this universal law, or is he like the rest of creation, a product of what darwinians call "evolution," and enlightened theologians "the original impress"? the existing species of anthropoid apes, the orang, the chimpanzee, and the gorilla, do not differ more widely from one another than do many of the extreme types of the human species. in colour, hair, volume of brain, form of skull, stature, and a hundred other peculiarities, the negro and the european stand further apart than those anthropoids do from one another, and no naturalist from mars or saturn, investigating the human family for the first time, and free from prepossession, would hesitate to class the white, black, yellow, red, and perhaps five or six other varieties, as different species. in the case of these anthropoid apes no one supposes that they were miraculously created in recent times. on the contrary, we find their type already fully developed in the miocene, and we infer, that like the horse, camel, and so many other existing mammals, their origin may be traced step by step backwards to some lower and generalized type in the eocene. who can doubt that physical man, an animal constructed almost exactly on the same anatomical ground-plan as the anthropoids, came into existence by a similar process? the only answer would be, if it could be proved, that his existence on earth had been so short as to make it impossible that so many and so great specific variations as now exist, and some of which have been proved to have existed early in the quaternary period, could have been developed by natural means and by the slow processes of evolution. but this is just where the evidence fails, and is breaking down more and more every year and with every fresh discovery. recent man has given place to quaternary man; post-glacial to inter-glacial and pre-glacial; and now the evidence for the existence of man or of some ancestral form of man, in the tertiary period, has accumulated to such an extent that there are few competent anthropologists who any longer deny it. but with this extension of time the existence of man, instead of being an anomaly and a discord, falls in with the sublime harmony of the universe, of which it is the dominant note. the end. _richard clay & sons, limited, london & bungay._ transcriber's note: the spelling of words in languages other than english, have been left as they appear in the book. minor spelling inconsistencies, mainly hyphenated words, have been harmonized. obvious typos have been corrected. an "illustration" section has been added as an aid to the reader. [illustration: ideal restoration of the neanderthal man.] a manual of the antiquity of man. by j. p. maclean. "in order to know what man is, we ought to know what man has been." --prof. max mÜller. _revised edition._ boston: universalist publishing house, _cornhill_, . entered, according to act of congress, in the year , by j. p. maclean, in the office of the librarian of congress, at washington. preface. in lecturing upon the antiquity of man i have found the minds of the people prepared to receive the evidences, and ready to believe the conclusions of the geologists. i have felt the need of a popular work to place in the hands of the public, that would be both instructive and welcome. the works of lyell and lubbock are too elaborate and too expensive to meet the popular need. my object has been to give an outline of the subject sufficient to afford a reasonable acquaintance with the facts connected with the new science, to such as desire the information but cannot pursue it further, and to serve as a manual for those who intend to become more proficient. as the unity of language and the unity of the race are so closely connected with the subject, i have added the two chapters on these questions, hoping they will be acceptable to the reader. it was my intention to have written a more extended chapter on the relation of the holy scriptures to this subject, but was forced to condense, as i had done in other chapters, in order not to transcend the proposed limits of the book. in the preparation of this work i have freely used lyell's "antiquity of man" and "principles of geology," lubbock's "pre-historic times," buchner's "man in the past, present, and future," figuier's "primitive man," wilson's "pre-historic man," keller's "lake-dwellings," the works of charles darwin, dana's "manual of geology," huxley's "man's place in nature," prichard's "natural history of man," pouchet's "plurality of the human race," and others, referred to in the margins. i am indebted to my friend, mr. frank cushing, for the ideal restoration of the neanderthal man. the engraving was made especially for this work. the references to buchner are from his work entitled, "man in the past, present and future." contents. chapter i. introduction. page interest in the subject--influence of lyell--usher's chronology--aimé boué first to proclaim the high antiquity of man--dr. schmerling the founder--boucher de perthes the apostle--classifications by lubbock, lartet, renevier, and westropp--plan of the work--no universal age of stone, bronze, or iron--epochs not sharply defined--outlines of history--superstitious notions--skull from constatt--stone hatchet from london--cavern of gailenreuth--axes from hoxne--human jaw from maestricht--skeleton from lahr-- "reliquiæ diluvianæ"--discoveries by tournal and christol-- engis and enghihoul caverns--schmerling's labors--lyell's opinions--arrow mark on skull of cave-bear--boucher de perthes and the valley of the somme--jaw of moulin-quignon-- kent's hole--fossil man of denise--remains from the manzanares--cave of aurignac--lyell declares his belief-- lake-dwellings of switzerland neanderthal skull--caverns near torquay--cave of massat--cave of lourdes--caverns of ariége--tertiary at st. prest--implements near gosport-- bones from colmar--implements near bournemouth--trou de la naulette--bones near savonia--reindeer station--foreland cliff--fossil man of mentone--other discoveries near mentone. chapter ii. glacial epoch. starting point for the investigation--advance of the ice-- fauna of europe--geological period--probable date--probable duration--evidences of the existence of man--implements from hampshire--flint tools at bournemouth--oval flint from foreland cliff--implements from the valley of the somme-- jaw of moulin-quignon--implements from the seine--axes near madrid--kent's hole--brixham cave--human jaw from maestricht--skeleton from lahr--cave of la naulette-- implements from hoxne--bones from colmar. chapter iii. glacial--continued. belgian caverns--caverns of liége--engis skull--remarks of prof. huxley--views of busk, schmerling, buchner, and vogt-- neanderthal skull--prof. huxley, dr. buchner, and dr. fuhlrott on geological time of neanderthal skull--opinions of huxley, buchner, schaaffhausen, and busk--skull from the loess of the rhine, constatt, cochrane's cave, island of moën, minsk, and plau--borreby skulls--human skulls of arno. chapter iv. pre-glacial epochs. north america during the tertiary--europe--climate--fauna of eocene--of miocene--of pliocene--traces of man--opinions of lyell, lubbock, and a. r. wallace--man in the pliocene-- hearth under osars--human bones from savonia--discoveries at st. prest--skull from altaville--prof. denton's statement-- man in the miocene--flints from pontlevoy--flint-flake from aurillac--marks on bones near pouance--implements from colorado and wyoming--eocene--glacial periods during the miocene. chapter v. condition of man in the earliest times. no knowledge of the first appearance of man--fauna of india during the miocene--intellect of man--contests with the beasts--a weapon invented--earliest type--advancement slow-- climate changes--sufferings of man--known by the remains-- structure of the neanderthal man--engis man--men both large and small--animal structure of jaws from la naulette and moulin-quignon. chapter vi. inter-glacial epoch. condition of the earth--numerous traces of man--cave of aurignac--conclusions of lartet and cartailhac--caverns of maccagnone--wokey hole--fossil man of denise--reindeer station on the schusse--dr. buchner's conclusions. chapter vii. condition of man in the inter-glacial. length of the inter-glacial--man an improvable being-- implements improved--art of engraving begun--religious nature--denton's description of primeval man--language improved. chapter viii. reindeer epoch. advance of the glaciers--fauna---reindeer epoch a distinct one--evidences of the existence of man--caves of central and southern france--implements from les eyzies--relics from la madeleine--workshops of laugerie-haute and laugerie-basse-- cave and rock shelters of bruniquel--cave of gourdan--fossil man of mentone--other remains near mentone--other bone caves of france--belgian caverns--trou de frontal--trou rosette-- trou des nutons--cave of chaleux--cave at furfooz--cave of thayngen--cave near cracow. chapter ix. man of the reindeer epoch. man under a more favorable aspect--type of--dwellings-- clothing--food--cannibalism--the arts--traffic--burial-- dupont's report. chapter x. neolithic epoch. how characterized--caves of this period--contents of--cave of saint jean d'alcas--danish shell-mounds--danish peat bogs--lake-dwellings of switzerland--enumeration of-- robenhausen--fauna and flora of--troyon and keller on-- other lake-dwellings--chronology. chapter xi. man of the neolithic. type of--advancement--habitations--clothing--food--arts and manufactures--vast number of implements discovered--war-- agriculture--burial--dolmens, tumuli, cromlechs, and menhirs-- victims, or cannibalism. chapter xii. bronze epoch. no direct relation to antiquity of man--how characterized-- type--habitation and food--clothing--implements--arts-- agriculture--fishing and navigation--burial--religious belief--stone crescents. chapter xiii. iron epoch. civilization established--swiss lake-dwellings--dr. keller's observations. chapter xiv. traces of man in america. great opportunities for the archæologist--aim of the chapter-- skull from osage mission--comstock lode--charcoal at toronto-- knife from kansas--pelvic bone from natchez--skeleton from new orleans--remains from the reefs of florida--caverns of brazil-- shell heaps--mound-builders--extent of mounds--implements of-- sacrificial--sephulchral--temple--symbolical--antiquity of-- fort shelby--how long the mound-builders remained. chapter xv. written history. mystery of ancient empires--rollin's difficulties--egypt-- manetho's list--statement of herodotus--mariette's explorations--borings in the mud deposits of the nile-- dr. schliemann's discoveries at troy--history of chaldea by berosus--astronomical calculations--chinese history-- mexican history. chapter xvi. language. a field for study--three divisions of language--rhematic period--origin of--various theories--change of--views of ancients--number of--comparative permancy of written language. chapter xvii. unity of the human race. objections to the unity of the race--anatomical-- geographical--disparity of--non-existence of medium types-- phenomena caused by two united types--objections answered-- both man and animals affected by climate, food, and condition--examples--argument from language--ocean navigated by frail crafts--examples--captain tyson and party--the two extremes exist in all nations, and even in families--people who have retrograded--races will amalgamate and perpetuate their kind--griquas--papuas--pitcairn islanders--law of hybridity--close affinity of the races--slow change of. chapter xviii. the bible. controversy--perversion of meaning--men of science branded-- design of the chapter--creation--"bara"--day--man's appearance--two accounts--case of cain--sons of god--remarks of dr. livingstone--doctrine of unity of the race-- chronology--the deluge--septuagint--monarchies--the dispersion--opinion of dr. hedge--no supernatural aid in the formation of language--what god may do does not imply what he has done--dean stanley on the biblical account of creation. a manual of the antiquity of man. chapter i. introduction. no subject, of late years, has so much engrossed the attention of geologists as the antiquity of the human race. the interest was greatly increased by the publication of sir charles lyell's "antiquity of man." this work called the attention of the public to the subject, and so great became the interest that many volumes and memoirs have been added to the list, discussing the question in various ways, and, for the most part, in such a manner as to add fresh interest and throw more light on the subject. the scientific men were slow to take advantage of the discoveries continually being made of the bones and works of man found in caves and associated with the remains' of extinct animals. it is probable, even at this late day, there would not have been so much discussion of this subject had not sir charles lyell lent the weight of his great name to it. educated men, everywhere, began to doubt the correctness of archbishop usher's chronology, and so complete has been the revolution of opinion that it is almost impossible to find an intelligent man who would limit the period of man's existence to , years. to aimé boué, a french geologist, must be attributed the honor of having been the first to proclaim the high antiquity of the human race; to dr. schmerling, the learned belgian osteologist, on account of his laborious investigations, untiring zeal, and great work on the subject, the merited title of being the founder of the new science; to m. boucher de perthes, its great apostle; while to sir charles lyell and sir john lubbock must be ascribed the honor of having made the new theory popular. the new science soon became permanently established, and the geologists at once set about classifying the facts before them, in order to assign to them their respective places in the geological epochs. all are agreed in respect to the chronological orders, but all have not used the same nomenclature, in consequence of which more or less confusion has been the result. sir j. lubbock has divided pre-historic archæology into four great epochs, as follows: "i. that of the drift; when man shared the possession of europe with the mammoth, the cave-bear, the woolly-haired rhinoceros, and other extinct animals. this we may call the 'palæolithic' period. "ii. the later or polished stone age; a period characterized by beautiful stone weapons and instruments made of flint and other kinds of stone; in which, however, we find no trace of the knowledge of any metal, excepting gold, which seems to have been sometimes used for ornaments. this we may call the 'neolithic' period. "iii. the bronze age, in which bronze was used for arms and cutting instruments of all kinds. "iv. the iron age, in which that metal had superseded bronze for arms, axes, knives, etc."[ ] these divisions are recognized by lyell and tylor. edward lartet has proposed the following classification: i. the stone age. st. epoch of extinct animals (or of the great bear and mammoth). d. epoch of migrated existing animals (or the reindeer epoch). d. epoch of domesticated existing animals (or the polished stone epoch). ii. the metal age. st. the bronze epoch. d. the iron epoch. this mode of division is adopted by m. figuier, in his "primitive man," by the museum of saint-germain in that portion devoted to pre-historic antiquities, and adhered to in essential points by troyon and d'archiac. professor renevier, of lausanne, has proposed a somewhat different scheme, founded upon the epochs of swiss glaciation. it is as follows: "i. _pre-glacial epoch_, in which man lived cotemporaneously with the elephant (_elephas antiquus_), rhinoceros (_r. hemitæchus_), and the cave-bear (_ursus spelæus_). "ii. _glacial epoch_, in which man lived cotemporaneously with the mammoth (_elephas primigenius_), rhinoceros (_r. tichorrhinus_), cave-bear, etc. "iii. _post-glacial epoch_, in which man lived cotemporaneously with the mammoth and reindeer (_cervus tarandus_). "iv. _last epoch_, or epoch of the _pile-buildings_, in which man lived cotemporaneously with the irish elk (_megaceros hibernicus_), aurochs (_bison europæus_)," etc.[ ] westropp divides the periods of man, in respect to his stages of civilization, as follows: _savagery_, _hunters_, _herdsmen_, and _agriculturists_. in the following pages a somewhat different classification has been adopted, and may be thus explained: i. _pre-glacial epoch_; that period antedating the glaciers of the post-tertiary, in which man lived cotemporaneously with the animals of the tertiary, southern elephant (_e. meridionalis_), etc. ii. _glacial epoch_; that period of the post-tertiary when man was forced to contend with the great ice-fields and the floods immediately succeeding them, when the mammoth (_e. primigenius_), rhinoceros (_r. tichorrhinus_), cave-bear, etc., began to flourish. iii. _interglacial epoch_; that period between the glacial and the second advance of the ice, in which man lived cotemporaneously with the animals of the preceding epoch, and the cave bear became extinct. iv. _reindeer epoch_; that period when the glaciers again advanced; in which man's chief food consisted of the flesh of the reindeer (_c. tarandus_), that animal having made its way in numerous herds as far south as the pyrenees. v. _neolithic epoch_; that period in which man polished his weapons of stone, and sought to domesticate certain animals, the dog, etc. vi. _bronze epoch_; that period characterized by weapons and implements being made chiefly of bronze. vii. _iron epoch_; that period in which bronze was generally superseded by iron. this classification, on the whole, seems to be the best that could be devised, for the reason it attempts to place the evidences of the existence of man in their relative geological positions. other methods have misled the student. there was no universal stone, bronze, or iron age. the classification given by lubbock applies to europe, but is too general. i have adopted the word "neolithic" for want of a better term, although the signification of the word is appropriate to the period it is intended to represent. these various epochs are not sharply defined, the one from the other; but one merges into the other by gradual progression covering a period of thousands of years. the growth of the various plants and animals, and their retreat or final extinction, have also been very slow. an outline of the history of the discoveries which led to a careful investigation of the question, and which resolved the question into a science, is not only one of interest but also of importance to the careful thinker seeking information on the subject. prior to the study of the ancient implements the "people had so little notion of the nature and signification of the stone axes and weapons of earlier and later times that they were regarded with superstitious fear and hope, and as productions of lightning and thunder. hence for a long time they were called thunderbolts even by the learned.... as late as the year when mahndel explained in the academy of paris that these stones were human implements, he was laughed at, because he had not proved that they could not have been formed in the clouds."[ ] as early as the year , a human skull was dug out of the calcareous tuff of constatt, in company with the bones of the mammoth. it is preserved in the natural history museum at stuttgart. in the year , an englishman named kemp found in london, by the side of elephants' teeth, a stone hatchet, similar to those which have been subsequently found in great numbers in different parts of the world. this hatchet is still preserved in the british museum. in , in the cavern of gailenreuth, bavaria, j. f. esper discovered some human bones mingled with the remains of extinct animals. in , unpolished flint axes were dug out in great numbers from a brick-field near hoxne, county of suffolk, where they occurred at a depth of twelve feet, mingled with the bones of extinct species of animals. they were gathered up and thrown by basketsful upon the neighboring road. in the year , before the society of antiquaries, john frere read a paper upon them, in which he stated that they pointed to a very remote period. this communication, short as it was, contained the essence of all subsequent discoveries and speculations as to the antiquity of man. but the society regarded the subject as of no importance. during the construction of a canal ( - ) in hollerd, there was found, near maestricht, in the _loess_, a human jaw in company with the bones of extinct animals. this bone is preserved in the museum at leyden. in , aimé boué disinterred portions of a human skeleton from ancient undisturbed loess near lahr, a small village nearly opposite strasbourg. these bones were placed in the care of cuvier, but, having been neglected, are now lost. in the same year, dr. buckland, an english geologist, published his "reliquiæ diluvianæ," a work principally devoted to a description of the kirkdale cave. the author combined all the known facts which favored the coexistence of man, with the extinct animals. in , m. tournal and m. christol explored numerous caverns in the south of france. in the cavern of bize, tournal found human bones and teeth, and fragments of rude pottery, together with the bones of both living and extinct species of animals, imbedded in the same mud and breccia, cemented by stalagmite. the human bones were in the same chemical condition as those of the extinct species. m. christol found in the cavern of pondres, near nimes, some human bones in the same mud with the bones of an extinct hyena and rhinoceros. in , dr. schmerling explored the two bone-caverns of engis and enghihoul (belgium). in the former he found the engis skull (now in the museum of the university of liége), at a depth of nearly five feet, under an osseous breccia. the earth also contained the teeth of rhinoceros, horse, hyena, and bear, and exhibited no marks of disturbance. he also found the skull of a young person imbedded by the side of a mammoth's tooth. it was entire, but so fragile, that it fell to pieces before it was extracted. in the cave of enghihoul he found numerous bones belonging to three human individuals, mingled with the bones of extinct animals. in these caves he noted rude flint instruments, but did not collect many of them. in the care of chokier, he discovered a polished and jointed needle-shaped bone, with a hole pierced through it, at its base. the caves of engis and chokier have been annihilated, while only a part of enghihoul remains. soon after these discoveries dr. schmerling published a work which described and represented a vast quantity of objects which had been discovered in the belgian caverns. the scientific men were not yet prepared to receive the new discoveries, and it attracted but little attention at that time. too much praise cannot be bestowed upon dr. schmerling for his unremitting labors. of these labors sir charles lyell has said: "to have undertaken, in , with a view of testing its truth (antiquity of fossil human bones) to follow the belgian philosopher through every stage of his observations and proofs, would have been no easy task even for one well-skilled in geology and osteology. to be let down, as schmerling was, day after day, by a rope tied to a tree, so as to slide to the foot of the first opening of the engis cave, where the best-preserved human skulls were found; and, after thus gaining access to the first subterranean gallery, to creep on all fours through a contracted passage leading to larger chambers, there to superintend by torchlight, week after week and year after year, the workmen who were breaking through the stalagmitic crust as hard as marble, in order to remove piece by piece the underlying bone-breccia nearly as hard; to stand for hours with one's feet in the mud, and with water dripping from the roof on one's head, in order to mark the position and guard against the loss of each single bone of a skeleton; and at length, after finding leisure, strength, and courage for all these operations, to look forward, as the fruits of one's labor, to the publication of unwelcome intelligence, opposed to the prepossessions of the scientific as well as the unscientific public;--when these circumstances are taken into account, we need scarcely wonder.... that a quarter of a century should have elapsed before even the neighboring professors of the university of liége came forth to vindicate the truthfulness of their indefatigable and clear-sighted countryman."[ ] in , m. joly, then professor at the lyceum of montpellier, found in the cave of nabrigas (lozére) the skull of a cave-bear, on which an arrow had left its mark. close by, was a fragment of pottery marked by the finger of the moulder. it was in the valley of the somme (a river in the north of france) that m. boucher de perthes found those famous flint-axes of the rudest form. his explorations had been going on for a long time. he did all he could to bring these discoveries before the public. in the year he began to proclaim the high antiquity of man, in a series of communications addressed to the société d'emulation of abbeville. to the same society, in the year , he exhibited the flint-axes he had found, but without result. in , he took these hatchets to paris, and showed them to some of the members of the institute. at first they gave some encouragement toward these researches; but this favorable feeling did not last long. in he began to form his collection, which has since become so justly celebrated. he engaged trained workmen to dig in the diluvial beds, and in a short time he had collected twenty specimens of flint wrought by the hand of man, though in a very rude state. in , he published his first work on the subject, entitled "de l'industrie primitive, ou les arts et leur origine." in the following year he published his "antiquités celtiques et antédiluviennes," in which he gave illustrations of these stone implements. this work attracted no attention until the year , when a french _savant_, named rigollot, made a personal examination and was successful in his search for these relicts in the neighborhood of amiens. he was soon followed by sir c. lyell, sir john lubbock, dr. falconer, sir roderick i. murchison, and other eminent scientists. boucher de perthes, continuing his researches, was rewarded, in the year , by finding the lower half of a human jaw bone, covered with an earthy crust, which he extracted with his own hands from a gravel-pit at abbeville. a few inches from it a flint hatchet was discovered. they were at a depth of fifteen feet below the surface. this bone has been called the jaw of moulin-quignon, and is preserved in the museum of natural history at paris. the discovery of this bone produced a great sensation among english geologists. christy, falconer, carpenter, and busk went to france and examined the locality where the bone was found. they went away satisfied with both its authenticity and antiquity. some geologists, however, doubted its authenticity; but at the present time all, or nearly all, recognize the truth of the conclusions of boucher de perthes. not far from the same locality, he was again successful, in , in finding a number of human bones presenting the same character as the jaw of moulin-quignon. in , rev. j. macenery, of devonshire, england, found in a cave, called kent's hole, human bones and flint knives among the remains of the mammoth, cave-bear, hyena, and two-horned rhinoceros, all from under a crust of stalagmite. mr. macenery began the explorations of this cave as early as . he did not publish his notes on his discoveries but they remained in manuscript until , when they were obtained by mr. vivian. mr. godwin-austen, in his communication to the geological society in the year , states, in his description of kent's hole, he found works of art in all parts of the cave. the fossil man of denise was discovered by a peasant, in an old volcanic tuff, near the town of le puy-en-velay, central france, an account of which was first published by dr. aymard, in . able naturalists, who have examined these bones, especially those familiar with the volcanic regions of central france, declared that they believed them to have been enveloped by natural causes in the tufaceous matrix in which they are now seen. in the years - , casiano de prado made discoveries on the banks of the manzanares, near madrid. they consisted of portions of the skeletons of the rhinoceros, and a nearly perfect skeleton of an elephant in the diluvial sand. lying beneath this ossiferous sand, were several flint axes of human workmanship. [illustration: fig. . sir charles lyell.] near the town of aurignac, france, a workman named bonnemaison, in the year , accidently discovered a cave containing the remains of seventeen human skeletons. these bones were taken by dr. amiel, the mayor of aurignac, who was ignorant of their value, and consigned to the parish cemetery. the spot of their re-inhumation has been forgotten, and this treasure is now lost to science. in , the cave was explored by edward lartet. after a long and patient examination, he came to the conclusion that the cave was a human burial place, cotemporary with the mammoth and other great animals of the quaternary epoch. it was at the meeting of the british association, in , that sir charles lyell declared his belief in the great antiquity of the human race. he had before opposed the idea, but was convinced of the truth by personal examination of human bones and flint hatchets, from the quarries of st. acheul. he became enthusiastic in his investigations, and, in order to present the discussion clearly to the scientific public, he published his "geological evidences of the antiquity of man," in . in the last edition of his "principles of geology," he bestows considerable space to the discussion of the subject. he was closely followed, in the same view, by other eminent geologists. the remains of the ancient lake dwellings of switzerland were discovered in the winter of - . that winter was so dry and cold that the water of the lakes fell far below its ordinary level. on account of this, a large tract of ground of lake zurich was gained by the people throwing up embankments. in the process of the work, the piles on which stood the dwellings, fragments of pottery, bone and stone implements, and various other relics, were discovered.[ ] dr. keller, of zurich, examined the objects, and at once came to a right understanding as to their signification. he carefully examined the remains, and described these lake habitations in six memoirs presented to the antiquarian society of zurich, in , , , , and . in these memoirs were translated into english by j. e. lee, together with articles from other antiquaries, under the title of "the lake dwellings of switzerland, and other parts of europe." this work contains ninety-seven plates, besides many wood-cuts. memoirs of the dwellers of different lakes have, from time to time, been published, but they are included in the translated work of dr. keller. the far-famed neanderthal skull was discovered by dr. fuhlrott, in the year , in a limestone cavern, near düsseldorf, in a deep ravine known by the name of neanderthal. this skull, with parts of the skeleton to which it belonged, was found under a layer of mud, about five feet in thickness. it is now in the cabinet of dr. fuhlrott, elberfeld, rhenish prussia. in , a bone-cavern was found near torquay, not far from kent's hole. this cave was examined by a scientific commission. at first it was undertaken by the royal society, but when its grants had failed, miss burdett-coutts paid the expenses of completing the work. in this cave, under a layer of stalagmite, were found many flint knives, associated with the bones of extinct mammals. m. a. fontan found in the cave of massat (department of ariége), in , human teeth and utensils associated with the remains of the cave-bear, the fossil hyena, and the cave-lion (_felis speloea_). in , m. a. milne edwards found certain relics of human industry mingled with the fossil bones of animals, in the cave of lourdes, france. in , dr. garrigou published the result of the researches which he, in conjunction with rames and filhol, had made in the caverns of ariége. these explorers found the jaw-bones of the cave-bear and cave-lion, which had been wrought by the hands of man. in the upper strata of the tertiary beds (pliocene) at st. prest (department of eure), in the year , m. desnoyers found the bones of extinct animals which were cut or notched by flint instruments. in the same strata abbé bourgeois discovered implements of stone. he communicated his discoveries to the international congress held at paris in . in , james brown found flint implements midway between gosport and southampton, included in gravel from eight to twelve feet thick, capping a cliff which at its greatest height is thirty-five feet above high-water mark. these flint tools exactly resemble those found at abbeville and amiens. some of them are preserved in the blackmore museum at salisbury. in , there was found in the loess of the rhine, near colmar, alsace, human bones in the same bed with bones of the mammoth, horse, stag, auroch, and other animals. in , alfred stevens first dug out a hatchet from the gravel at the top of the sea-cliff east of the bournemouth opening, southampton river. soon after, dr. blackmore, to the west of the valley, obtained two other flint implements. the spot was examined by lyell in . dr. edward dupont, an eminent belgian cave explorer, in the year , found a fragment of a human jaw in the trou de la naulette, a bone cave situated on the bank of the river lesse not far from chaleux. at the international congress of , m. a. issel reported he had found several human bones in beds of pliocene age, near savonia, in liguria. the reindeer station on the schusse, in swabia, was discovered in , during the operations undertaken for the improvement of a mill-pond. the schusse is a little river which flows into the lake of constance, and its source is upon the high plateau of upper swabia between the lake of constance and the upper course of the danube. in , thomas codrington discovered an oval flint implement in gravel at the top of the foreland cliff, isle of wight, five miles southeast of ryde. the fossil man of mentone was discovered, in , by m. riviére, in a cave near nice, france. the skeleton was almost entire, and imbedded twenty feet below the surface of the deposit. in , m. riviére discovered another human skeleton, by the side of which lay a few unpolished stone implements, in one of the caves in the same neighborhood. in and , m. riviére was again so fortunate as to discover, in neighboring caves, the remains of three persons, two of them those of children. the skeletons were in the same condition, and decked with similar ornaments, as those he had previously discovered. chapter ii. glacial epoch. happily for the archæo-geologist, there is given him a point from which to start in his researches into the antiquity of his race. without it his calculations would be very indefinite and his efforts would be shorn of much of their interest. the glacial epoch, that has puzzled the mind of both the geologist and the astronomer, is a guide-post where he may not only look both ways, but also estimate the length of ages and number the years of man. nothing, then, is of more importance, in this investigation, than an understanding of the condition of the earth prior to the glacial, and the knowledge of the date and length of this epoch. for untold ages the earth, to all appearance, had been preparing itself for the reception of man. there was an abundance of game, the forests were beautiful, the domestic animals had made their appearance, the climate was warm, the soil rich, and the coal had been formed. everything seemed to point to a bright and glorious future for man, who had already entered upon the scene. it is true there were fierce and savage beasts to contend with. these seemed but a motive power to stir man to action and develop the resources of his mind. should he fail for a time to overcome the wild beasts a retreat was provided in the hollow recesses of the earth. but nature felt her work was still unfinished. the earth had passed through the ordeal of fire, and withstood the devastations of water, and now her long summer must come to an end. the arctic regions had been growing colder and colder, and the change was felt in the countries to the south. the northern animals were being clothed with a hairy or woolly garment for their protection. the aspect began to be forbidding. the future prospect of man was not only gloomy, but foreboded he should perish along with the many species of animals that were gradually succumbing to the cold. great fields of ice were slowly accumulating at both the poles, and at last, by the power of their great weight, assisted by some geographical changes, began to move toward the equator, crushing and grinding the great rocks, and either driving before them, or else destroying, every living thing in their relentless march. slowly but surely they moved on. the mountains groaned under the enormous weight of ice. their heads were scarred, their sides bruised, torn and cut. the icy monsters listened not to the pleadings of earth, the lowing of cattle, or the cries of man. centuries elapsed before the sun re-asserted his power. the rays of the sun, the internal heat of the earth, and other causes, produced a change. the northern ice was broken up by the time it reached latitude ° north america, leaving its indelible traces in the bowlders, gravel, beds of sand and clay which mark its course. in europe this sheet of ice extended as far south as spain and corsica. the glaciers of the antarctic regions extended as far as latitude ° south. _fauna of europe._--among the fauna may be mentioned the gigantic elephants, of nearly twice the bulk of the largest individuals that now exist, which roamed in herds over england, and extended across the siberian plains and from behring strait to south carolina. two-horned rhinoceroses wallowed in the swamps of the ancient forests. hippopotamuses inhabited the lakes and rivers. the great cave-bear, which sometimes attained the size of a horse, and the cave-tiger, twice as large as the living tiger, preyed upon the animals of less strength than themselves. troops of hyenas, larger than those of south america, disputed with other beasts of prey. a species of wild-cat, lynx, and leopard found retreats in the same forests. then there was a remarkable carnivorous animal called _machairodus_, about the size of a tiger, and from the shape and size of the sword-like teeth, must have been a very destructive creature. the lemming and the musk ox found a home, and the wild horse pranced about unrestrained by the hand of man. the great irish elks swiftly moved over the ground, and must have been very numerous, as their remains occur in abundance in peat-bogs and marl-pits. nor should it be unmentioned that there was also a species of gigantic ox nearly as large as an elephant, that subsisted on the plains. all these animals followed the retreat of the glaciers and some of them were in close proximity to the ice. _geological period._--the glacial epoch occurred during the geological period known as the post-tertiary. the tertiary had gradually passed away and its time had been recorded on the pages of geological history. a new epoch began to dawn. this was the epoch of ice, the birth and almost the childhood of the post-tertiary. _probable date._--in discussing the probable date of the glacial epoch, sir charles lyell says, "the attempt to assign a chronological value to any of our geological periods except the latest, must, in the present state of science, be hopeless. nevertheless, independently of all astronomical considerations, it must, i think, be conceded that the period required for the coming on of the greatest cold, and for its duration when most intense, and the oscillations to which it was subject, as well as the retreat of the glaciers and the 'great thaw' or disappearance of snow from many mountain-chains where the snow was once perpetual, required not tens but hundreds of thousands of years. less time would not suffice for the changes in physical geography and organic life of which we have evidence. to a geologist, therefore, it would not appear startling that the greatest cold should be supposed to have been two hundred thousand years ago, although this date must be considered as very conjectural, and one which may be as likely to err in deficiency of time as in excess."[ ] sir john lubbock, in his dissent from some calculations made by mr. geikie on the general effect produced by rivers in excavating valleys and lowering the general level of the country, says, "as regards the higher districts, however, his data are perhaps not far wrong, and if we apply them to the valley of the somme, where the excavation is about two hundred feet in depth, they would indicate an antiquity for the palæolithic epoch of from one hundred thousand to two hundred and forty thousand years."[ ] dana, in his chapter on the length of geological time, says, in speaking of the time required to excavate the gorge of niagara river, that "on both sides of the gorge near the whirlpool, and also at goat island, there are beds of recent lake shells ... the same kinds that live in still water near the entrance to the lake, and which are not found in the rapids. the lake, therefore, spread its still waters, when these beds were formed, over the gorge above the whirlpool. a tooth of a mastodon (_m. giganteus_) has been found in the same beds. this locates the time in the champlain epoch.... six miles of the gorge have been excavated since that mastodon was alive.... "there is a lateral valley leading from the whirlpool through the queenstown precipice at a point a few miles west of lewiston. this valley is filled with drift of the glacial epoch, and this blocking up of the channel may have compelled it to open a new passage. "if, then, the falls have been receding six miles, and we can ascertain the probable rate of progress, we may approximate to the length of time it required. hall and lyell estimated the average rate at one foot a year,--which is certainly large. mr. desor concluded, after his study of the falls, that it was 'more nearly three feet a century than three feet a year.' taking the rate at one foot a year, the six miles will have required over thirty-one thousand years; if at one inch a year--which is eight and one third feet a century--three hundred and eighty thousand years."[ ] the calculation made by dana is for the champlain epoch. as this epoch was subsequent to the glacial, the time must be either thrown still farther back, or else allow the calculations to begin with the end of the glacial. _probable duration._--lyell has attempted to form an estimate of the duration of the glacial epoch by considering "the most simple series of changes in physical geography which can possibly account for the phenomena of the glacial period," and enumerates as follows: "first, a continental period, toward the close of which the forest of cromer flourished; when the land was at least five hundred feet above its present level, perhaps much higher, and its extent probably greater than that given in the map, fig. ." (in this map the whole of the british isles are connected with one another, and with the continent--the german ocean and the english channel constituting dry land). "secondly, a period of submergence, by which the land north of the thames and bristol channel, and that of ireland, was gradually reduced to an archipelago; and finally to such a general prevalence of sea as is seen in map, fig. ." (this map is intended to represent the british isles as they appeared above water when scotland was submerged to two thousand feet and other parts of the isles to one thousand three hundred feet.) "this was the period of submergence and of floating ice, when the scandinavian flora, which occupied the lower grounds during the first continental period, may have obtained exclusive possession of the only lands not covered with perpetual snow. "thirdly, a second continental period, when the bed of the glacial sea, with its marine shells and erratic blocks, was laid dry, and when the quantity of land equalled that of the first period.... during this period there were glaciers in the higher mountains of scotland and wales.... "the submergence of wales to the extent of one thousand four hundred feet, as proved by glacial shells, would require fifty-six thousand years, at the rate of two and a half feet per century; but taking professor ramsay's estimate of eight hundred feet more, that depression being required for the deposition of some of the stratified drift, we must demand an additional period of thirty-two thousand years, amounting in all to eighty-eight thousand; and the same time would be required for the reëlevation of the tract to its present height. but if the land rose in the second continental period no more than six hundred above the present level ... this ... would have taken another twenty-six thousand years; the whole of the grand oscillation, comprising the submergence and reëmergence, having taken, in round numbers, two hundred and twenty-four thousand years for its completion; and this, even if there were no pause or stationary period, when the downward movement ceased, and before it was converted into an upward one."[ ] lyell admits that the average rate of two and a half feet per century is a purely arbitrary and conjectural one, and there are cases where the change is even six feet a century, yet the average rate of motion, he thinks, will not exceed that above proposed. with this opinion, lubbock believes most geologists will agree.[ ] by the estimates already given a basis is formed upon which a calculation can be made as to the time when this epoch began. at the time of the most intense cold the eccentricity of the earth's orbit was . ; the difference in millions of miles between the greatest and least distances of the earth from the sun - / ; the number of days by which winter, occurring in aphelion was longer than the summer in perihelion . ; the mean temperature of the hottest summer month in the latitude of london when the summer occurs in perihelion, °; the mean temperature of the coldest winter month in the latitude of london when the winter occurs in aphelion, ° '. sixty thousand years later the eccentricity of the earth's orbit was but . ; the difference of distance in millions of miles was ; number of winter days in excess, . ; mean of hottest month in latitude of london, °, and mean of coldest month °. it is evident then at this time (one hundred and fifty thousand years ago) a "great thaw" had taken place and the glaciers driven back, although fifty thousand years later less intense cold set in again. if thirty thousand years be allowed for the "great thaw" from the extreme point of cold, and that extreme point to have been two hundred and ten thousand years ago, then one hundred and eighty thousand years ago the glaciers had become so broken up as to allow vegetation to spring up in many localities, and the wild beasts to partially reassert their dominion. if to this be added the time required for the duration of the glacial epoch (two hundred and twenty-four thousand years) then the time when the ice began to accumulate was four hundred and four thousand years ago. but if the tables of mr. croll be correct, their beginning could not have been earlier than three hundred and fifty thousand years ago, as the eccentricity of the earth's orbit varied but little from the present, and five hundred and fifty thousand years ago it was almost identical with that of the present.[ ] during the last stages of this ocean of ice it must have melted very rapidly,[ ] for great rivers were formed, and the water pouring down its icy bed sought other streams, and on the bosom of the earth swept away loose sediment, depositing it along the course of rivers and in caves of the earth, covering the remains of man along with those of animals that perished during the long winter of ice. [illustration: fig. . stream issuing from a glacier.] _evidences of the existence of man._--the traces of man in the deposits made during the glacial epoch are numerous. out of the many, the most noted will be given, with a view to their chronological order. in all probability the very oldest implements of the post-tertiary, and consequently the beginning of the glacial epoch, if not of the pliocene, are those found in the south of hampshire, between gosport and southampton. they came from a tabular mass of drift which caps the tertiary strata. "the great bed of gravel resting on eocene tertiary strata, in which these implements have been found, consists in most places of half-rolled or semi-angular chalk flints, mixed with rounded pebbles washed out of the tertiary strata.... many of them exhibit the same colors and ochreous stain as do the flints in the gravel in which they lay." west of the southampton estuary, "on both sides of the opening at bournemouth, flint tools of the ancient type have been met with in the gravel capping the cliffs. the gravel from which the flint tool was taken at bournemouth is about one hundred feet above the level of the sea.... the gravel consists in great part of pebbles derived from tertiary strata." the oval flint implement discovered in gravel at the top of the foreland cliff "is of the true palæolithic type, and the gravel in which it is imbedded at the height of about eighty feet above the level of the sea, may have once extended to the cliffs near gosport; in which case we should have to infer that the channel called the solent had not yet been scooped out when this region was inhabited by palæolithic man."[ ] it may be safely inferred that the implements in the above three enumerations were imbedded at about the same time. the flint implements from the valley of the somme, which have been of so much interest, and convinced so many sceptical geologists, belong to the early part of this epoch. this valley may be represented by fig. . [illustration: fig. . section across the somme in picardy. . peat, twenty to thirty feet thick, resting on gravel, _a_. . lower level gravel, with elephants' bones and flint tools covered with fluviatile loam, twenty to forty feet thick. . upper level gravel, with similar fossils, and overlying loam. in all thirty feet thick. . upland loam without shells, five or six feet thick. . eocene tertiary strata, resting on the chalk in patches.] in explanation of the above it may be well to remark that no. indicates the lower level gravels, and no. the higher ones, which are from eighty to one hundred feet above the river. of a later date than these is the peat, no. , which is from ten to thirty feet in thickness. underneath the peat is a bed of gravel, _a_, from three to fourteen feet thick, resting on undisturbed chalk. but between the gravel and the peat is a thin layer of impervious clay. this section of the valley of the somme is a pretty fair representation of the arrangements of the different beds at abbeville, amiens, and and st. acheul. in these beds are the records of two drift periods, marked by and . the two are separated by a layer of fresh-water deposits, which contains river shells and is sometimes as much as sixteen feet thick. the lower, or gray diluvium, (no. ), marks the glacial epoch, as distinct from the glaciers of the reindeer epoch. in the lower gravel, lying immediately upon the tertiary formation, were found the flint hatchets, together with the bones of the mammoth and fossil rhinoceros. in order to understand the deposits still more clearly, the following figure is given. [illustration: fig. . section of a gravel-pit at st. acheul. . vegetable and made soil from two to three feet thick. . brown loam from four to five feet thick, containing a few angular flints. . bed of sandy marl from five to six feet thick, with land and fresh-water shells, covered with a thin layer of angular gravel from one to two feet thick. . a bed of partially rounded gravel containing well-rolled tertiary pebbles. in this bed the flint implements are chiefly found--ten to fourteen feet thick. . formation of chalk. _a._ part of elephant's molar, eleven feet from surface. _b._ entire molar of mammoth (_e primigenius_), seventeen feet from surface. _c._ position of flint hatchet, eighteen feet from surface. _d._ gravel projecting five feet.] at st. acheul, in bed no. , were found large numbers of flint implements. some of them have the shape of a spear-head, and are over seven inches in length. the oval-shaped hatchets are so rude in some instances as to require a practised eye to decide their human origin. in the same bed are found small round bodies having a tubular cavity in the centre. dr. rigollot has suggested that these perforated stones or gravel were used as ornaments, possibly strung together as beads. in this bed, no. , seventeen feet from the surface, was found a mammoth's tooth. about one foot below the tooth, in densely compressed gravel, was found a stone hatchet of an oval form. [illustration: fig. . flint implement from st. acheul. half the size of the original, which is seven and a half inches long. _a._ side view. _b._ same seen edgewise. "these spear-headed implements have been found in greater number, proportionally to the oval ones, in the upper level gravel at st. acheul, than in any of the lower gravels in the valley of the somme. in these last, the oval form predominates, especially at abbeville."--_antiquity of man_, p. .] that this bed was formed by action of glaciers is shown, not only from the well-rounded tertiary pebbles, but also from the great blocks of hard sandstone, some of which are over four feet in diameter. these large fragments not only abound at st. acheul in both the higher and lower level gravels at amiens, and at the higher level at abbeville, but they are also traced far up the valley wherever the old diluvium occurs. all of these sandstones have been derived from the tertiary strata which once covered the chalk. [illustration: fig. . flint implement from abbeville. _a._ oval-shaped flint hatchet from mautort near abbeville, half size of original, which is five and a half inches long, from a bed of gravel underlying the fluvio-marine stratum. _b._ same seen edgewise. _c._ shows a recent fracture of the edge of the same at the point _a_, or near the top. this portion of the tool, _c_, is drawn of the natural size, the black central part being the unaltered flint, the white outer coating, the layer which has been formed by discoloration or bleaching since the tool was first made. the entire surface of figure must have been black when first shaped, and the bleaching to such a depth must have been the work of time, whether produced by exposure to the sun and air before it was imbedded, or afterward when it lay deep in the soil.--_antiquity of man._] as the flint implements of abbeville and amiens are the same as those of st. acheul, and from the same beds, what has already been said will apply to them. these implements have been found in these localities in great numbers, as several thousand of them already taken from the beds will amply testify. from the gravel-pit in which were found the flint axes, at abbeville, and close to the ancient chalk, was taken the celebrated human bone known as the _jaw_ of moulin-quignon. it was cotemporary with the axes, and undoubtedly some of the flint implements there found were fashioned by the man of whom that jaw formed so necessary a part. this jaw-bone belonged to an old man, and is described as displaying "a tendency toward the animal structure in the shortness and breadth of the ascending ramus (the perpendicular portion of the lower jaw), the equal height of the two apophyses (a process or regular prominence forming a continuous part of the body of the bone), the indication of prognathism (projecting jaw) furnished by the very obtuse angle at which the ramus joins the body of the bone.[ ] near the same locality other human bones were discovered which presented the same characteristics. boucher de perthes having pointed out that flint implements could be found in the valley of the seine, in beds similar to those of abbeville, the antiquaries were soon rewarded and boucher de perthes' prediction was fulfilled. m. gosse, of geneva, found the abbeville type of implements in the lowest diluvial deposits associated with the remains of animals of that period. the discovery made by casiano de prado, near madrid, is very similar to those of abbeville. "first, vegetable soil; then about twenty-five feet of sand and pebbles, under which was a layer of sandy loam, in which, during the year , a complete skeleton of the mammoth was discovered. underneath this stratum was about ten feet of coarse gravel, in which some flint axes, very closely resembling those of amiens, have been discovered."[ ] the remains of man are also preserved in caverns associated with the fossil bones of the mammoth, the woolly-haired rhinoceros, cave-bear, and other extinct quadrupeds. among these should be noticed kent's hole, which has furnished a mine of wealth. of his discoveries godwin-austen says: "human remains and works of art, such as arrow-heads and knives of flint, occur in all parts of the cave, and throughout the entire thickness of the clay; and no distinction founded on condition, distribution, or relative position can be observed, whereby the human can be separated from the other reliquiæ," which included bones of the mammoth (_e. primigenius_), rhinoceros (_r. tichorrhinus_), cave-bear (_ursus spelæus_), cave-hyena (_h. spelæus_), and other mammalia. these researches were conducted in parts of the cave which had never been disturbed, and the works of man, in every instance, were procured from undisturbed loam or clay, beneath a thick covering of stalagmite; and all these must have been introduced before the stalagmite flooring had been formed.[ ] these specimens of man's handicraft were found far below the stalagmite floor.[ ] closely allied to kent's hole is brixham cave. the following gives the general succession of deposits forming the contents of the cavern: . a layer of stalagmite varying from one to fifteen inches in thickness. . next below, ochreous cave-earth, from one foot to fifteen feet in thickness. . rounded gravel, in some places more than twenty feet in depth. in the second layer there were found the remains of the mammoth, rhinoceros, cave-bear, cave-hyena, cave-lion, reindeer, and seven other species. indiscriminately mixed with these bones were found many flint knives, but chiefly from the lowest part of the ochreous cave-earth, varying in depth from ten inches to thirteen feet. the antiquity of these cannot be doubted, from the simple fact, even if there was no other, that in close proximity to a very perfect flint tool was discovered the entire left hind leg of a cave-bear, and every bone in its natural position. from the bone earth there were taken fifteen knives, recognized, by the experienced antiquaries, as having been artificially formed. in the lowest gravel, underlying all, there were found imperfect specimens of flint knives. the fine layer of mud was deposited by the slow but regular action of water. since these layers were formed the stream has cut its channel seventy-eight feet below its former level.[ ] on both banks of the meuse, at maestricht (hollerd) are terraces of gravel covered with loess. below the city, on the left bank, one of these terraces projects into the alluvial plain of the meuse. during the construction of the canal the terrace was opened to a depth of sixty feet. the upper twenty feet consisted of loess and the lower forty feet of stratified gravel. great numbers of molars, tusks, and bones of elephants, together with those of other mammalia, and a human lower jaw with teeth, were found in or near this gravel. the human jaw was at a depth of nineteen feet from the surface, in a stratum of sandy loam, beneath a stratum of pebbly and sandy beds, and immediately above the gravel. the stratum from which the jaw was taken was intact and had never been disturbed. but the jaw was somewhat isolated, and the nearest fossil object was the tusk of an elephant six yards distant, though on a horizontal plane. this fossil is probably older than that discovered at lahr. it was probably covered just before the gush of the water when it first began to flow from the gorges and had washed the ground at some distance from the ice.[ ] the human skeleton from the undisturbed loess of the rhine, near lahr, was found in nearly a horizontal position, but in such a manner as to forbid the idea of sepulchre. these bones were exhumed from a perpendicular cliff of solid loess, about five feet high. the town of lahr is situated four miles from, and about one hundred feet above, the rhine, and not far from the tributary valley drained by the schutter, flowing from the black forest. in the alluvial plain into which the schutter flows the the loess is two hundred feet thick. the loess rises eighty feet above the schutter. at lahr it has been denuded so as to form a succession of terraces on the right bank. it was in the lowest of these from which the skeleton was taken. immediately below this bed there were found pebbles, and still lower down was a bed of gravel containing rounded stones of sandstone and gneiss from the black forest. there are several interesting facts connected with this discovery. m. boué considers that the loess of the lahr is continuous with that of the rhine, and before the loess had been denuded there was not less than eighty feet of loamy deposit above the human skeleton. the glaciers had deposited their great gravel beds, and had began to melt. the melting of them had formed a mixture of loam and gravel. then when the torrents poured forth from the glaciers the loam was formed without the pebbles. the unfortunate man, whose remains were found, was buried far beneath the surface, during the very first part of the course of the violent streams pouring forth from the field of ice. the glaciers were then on the retreat, and the incautious man probably fell a victim while on the chase.[ ] the cave of la naulette, belgium, afforded a jaw-bone similar to the moulin-quignon. the bone came from a river deposit of loam covered with a layer of stalagmite, and at a depth of thirteen feet from the surface. associated with it were the remains of the mammoth, woolly-haired rhinoceros, and flint implements. these implements present the same type as those of st. acheul. with this jaw were also found a human ulna, two human teeth, and a fragment of a worked reindeer born. this jaw-bone is very thick, round in form, and the projection of the chin is almost entirely absent. the chin is said to hold an intermediate position between that of the animals and those of the present race of men. the cavities for the reception of the canine teeth are very wide, and one of the most remarkable things is that the three molars are reversed, that is the first true molar is the smallest, and the last the largest. the inner surface of the jaw at the point of the suture or symphysis, forms a line obliquely directed upwards. taking the jaw all in all, it is the most ape-like human jaw ever discovered.[ ] the flint implements from hoxne were found under three different layers or beds. the first, vegetable, a foot and a half in depth. the second was clay, seven and a half feet thick. the third, a bed of sand, with shells one foot in thickness. the fourth layer, containing the implements was a bed of gravel two feet in depth. the number of these flints was so great that they were carried out by the baskets-full, and thrown into the ruts of the adjoining road. on account of the great number, this spot might have been the place where they were manufactured. their date is not coeval with the bowlder clay, but undoubtedly belong, to the last of this epoch. the human bones found in the loess of the rhine, near colmar, were two fossilized fragments of the skull. they were found in undisturbed soil along with the fossil bones of the extinct species of mammoth, horse, gigantic deer, aurochs, and other mammalia. the fragment of the skull "showed a depressed forehead, strongly projecting superciliary arches, and a type, on the whole, approaching the so-called _dolichocephalic_, or long-headed form."[ ] these remains date so near the end of the glacial as to almost enter the inter-glacial. chapter iii. glacial epoch--continued. _belgian caverns._--the relics discovered by dr. schmerling, in the caves of belgium, must be referred to the time of the retreat of the glaciers. the glaciers were still in existence, but their receding had freed immense tracts of land, and the space they now covered was small in proportion to their former extent. whether it be considered or not, that vegetation greatly nourished and the great wild beasts were rapidly increasing, one thing must be noticed, and that is, floods must have succeeded or followed closely upon the retreat of the ice. many remains, referred to the glacial epoch, may in reality, have occupied the time of the floods occurring just previous to the commencement of the inter-glacial. the belgian caverns, near liége, either belong exactly to the ice, or else to a period not far removed. lyell considers the older monuments of the palæolithic period to be the rude implements found in ancient river gravel and in the mud and stalagmite caves.[ ] caves of this description are those reported on by dr. schmerling. the caverns of the province of liége were not the dens of wild beasts, but their contents had been swept in by the action of water. the bones of man "were of the same color, and in the same condition as to the amount of animal matter contained in them, as those of the accompanying animals, some of which, like the cave-bear, hyena, elephant, and rhinoceros, were extinct; others, like the wild-cat, beaver, wild boar, roe-deer, wolf, and hedgehog, still extant. the fossils were lighter than fresh bones, except such as had their pores filled with carbonate of lime, in which case they were often much heavier. the human remains of most frequent occurrence were teeth detached from the jaw, and the carpal, metacarpal, tarsal, metatarsal, and phalangial bones separated from the rest of the skeleton. the corresponding bones of the cave-bear, the most abundant of the accompanying mammalia, were also found in the liége caverns more commonly than any others, and in the same scattered condition."[ ] in some of these caves, rude flint implements, of a triangular form, were found dispersed through the cave mud. dr. schmerling did not pay much attention to these, as he was engrossed in his osteological inquiries. the human bones were met with at all depths, in the cave mud and gravel, both above and below those of the extinct mammalia. the floors of these caverns were incrusted with stalagmite.[ ] in the cavern at chokier there occur "three distinct beds of stalagmite, and between each of them a mass of breccia, and mud mixed with quartz pebbles, and in the three deposits the bones of extinct quadrupeds."[ ] fossil skull of the engis cave near liege. the fossil skull from the cavern of engis was deposited at a depth of about five feet, under an osseous breccia containing a tusk of the rhinoceros, the teeth of the horse, and the remains of small animals. the breccia was about three and one-fourth feet wide, and rose to the height of about five feet above the floor of the cavern. in the earth which contained the skull there was found, surrounding it on all sides, the teeth of the rhinoceros, horse, hyena, and bear, and with no marks of the earth having been disturbed. there was also found the cranium of a young person, in the floor of the cavern, besides an elephant's tooth. when first observed, the skull was entire, but fell to pieces when removed from its position. besides these there were found a fragment of a superior maxillary bone, with the molar teeth worn down to the roots, indicating that of an old man; two vertebræ, a first and last dorsal; a clavicle of the left side, belonging to a young individual of great stature; two fragments of the radius, indicating a man of ordinary height; a fragment of an ulna: some metacarpal bones; six metatarsal, three phalanges of the hand and one of the foot. dr. schmerling found in this cave a pointed bone implement incrusted with stalagmite and joined to a stone. of the engis skull professor huxley has remarked, "as professor schmerling observes, the base of the skull is destroyed, and the facial bones are entirely absent; but the roof of the cranium, consisting of the frontal, parietal, and the greater part of the occipital bones, as far as the middle of the occipital foramen, is entire, or nearly so. the left temporal bone is wanting. of the right temporal, the parts in the immediate neighborhood of the auditory foramen, the mastoid process, and a considerable portion of the squamous element of the temporal, are well preserved." a piece of the occipital bone, which schmerling seems to have missed, has since been fitted on to the rest of the cranium by dr. spring, the accomplished anatomist of liége. "the skull is that of an adult, if not middle-aged man. the extreme length of the skull is . inches. its extreme breadth, which corresponds very nearly with the interval between the parietal protuberances, is not more than . inches. the proportion of the length to the breadth is therefore very nearly as to . if a line be drawn from the point at which the brow curves in towards the root of the nose, and which is called the 'glabella' (_a_, fig. ), to the occipital protuberance (_d_), and the distance to the highest point of the arch of the skull be measured perpendicularly from this line, it will be found to be . inches. viewed from above, the forehead presents an evenly rounded curve, and passes into the contour of the sides and back of the skull, which describes a tolerably regular elliptical curve. [illustration: fig. . professor t. h. huxley.] [illustration: fig. . side view of the human skull found in the cave of engis. _a._ superciliary ridge and glabella. _b._ coronal suture. _d._ the occipital protuberance.] "the front view shows that the roof of the skull was very regularly and elegantly arched in the transverse direction, and that the transverse diameter was a little less below the parietal protuberances, than above them. the forehead cannot be called narrow in relation to the rest of the skull, nor can it be called a retreating forehead; on the contrary, the antero-posterior contour of the skull is well arched, so that the distance along that contour, from the nasal depression to the occipital protuberance, measures about . inches. the transverse arc of the skull, measured from one auditory foramen to the other, across the middle of the sagittal suture, is about inches. the sagittal suture itself is . inches long. the superciliary prominences or brow-ridges (_a_) are well, but not excessively, developed, and are separated by a median depression. their principal elevation is disposed so obliquely that i judge them to be due to large frontal sinuses. if a line joining the glabella and the occipital protuberance (_a_, _d_, fig. ) be made horizontal, no part of the occipital region projects more than one-tenth of an inch behind the posterior extremity of that line, and the upper edge of the auditory foramen is almost in contact with a line drawn parallel with this upon the outer surface of the skull."[ ] some of the views expressed by professor huxley are at variance with those of other eminent scientists. lubbock reports him as saying, "there is no mark of degradation about any part of its structure. it is, in fact, a fair average human skull, which might have belonged to a philosopher, or might have contained the thoughtless brains of a savage."[ ] mr. busk agrees and partially disagrees with professor huxley, for he remarked to lyell, "although the forehead was somewhat narrow, it might nevertheless be matched by the skulls of individuals of european race."[ ] dr. schmerling, buchner, and vogt are arrayed against huxley. the first says, "i hold it to be demonstrated that this cranium has belonged to a person of limited intellectual faculties, and we conclude thence that it belonged to a man of a low degree of civilization."[ ] "from the narrowness of the frontal portion it belonged to an individual of small intellectual development."[ ] buchner says, "in its length and narrowness, the slight elevation of its forehead, the form of the widely separated orbits and the well developed supra-orbital arches, it resembles, especially when viewed from above, the celebrated neanderthal skull, but in general is far superior to this in its structure."[ ] carl vogt "regards it, with reference to the proportion of length to breadth, as one of the most ill-favored, animal-like and simian of skulls."[ ] the cause of this wide difference of opinion may arise from the failure to observe the fact that the older the formation in which a skull is found, the lower is the type. the ordinary observer, judging by the cast of the skull, would see nothing ape-like about it, and certainly would fail to see any indications of a philosopher. neanderthal skull. the neanderthal skull was taken from a small cave or grotto in-the valley of the düssel, near düsseldorf, situated about seventy miles north-east of the region of the liége caverns. the grotto is in a deep ravine sixty feet above the river, one hundred feet below the surface of the country, and at a distance of about ten feet from the düssel river. it is fifteen feet deep from the entrance (_f_), which is seven or eight feet wide. before the cavern had been injured, it opened upon a narrow plateau lying in front. the floor of the cave was covered four or five feet in thickness with a deposit of mud or loam, and containing some rounded fragments of chert. two laborers, in removing this deposit, first noticed the skull, placed near the entrance, and further in met with the other bones. as the bones were not regarded as of any importance, at the time of their discovery, only the larger ones have been preserved. [illustration: fig. . section of the neanderthal cave. _a._ cavern sixty feet above the düssel, and one hundred feet below the surface of the country at _c_. _b._ loam covering the floor of the cave near the bottom of which the human skeleton was found. _c_, _a_. rent connecting the cave with the upper surface of the country. _d._ superficial sandy loam. _e._ devonian limestone. _f._ terrace, or ledge of rock.] some discussion has arisen in respect to the geological time of these bones. there was no stalagmite overlying the mud or loam in which the skeleton was found, and no other bones met with save the tusk of a bear. there is no certain data given whereby its position may be known. professor huxley declares that the bones "indicate a very high antiquity."[ ] buchner is very positive in his statement, and declares that "the loam-deposit which partly fills the caves of the neanderthal and the clefts and fissures of its limestone mountains, and in which both the neanderthal bones and the fossil bones and teeth of animals were imbedded, is exactly the same that, in the caverns of the neanderthal, covers the whole limestone mountain with a deposit from ten to twelve feet in thickness, and the diluvial origin of which is unmistakable."[ ] dr. fuhlrott says, "the position and general arrangement of the locality in which they were found, place it, in my judgment, beyond doubt that the bones belong to the diluvium, and therefore to primitive times, _i. e._ they come down to us from a period of the past when our native country was still inhabited by various kinds of animals, especially mammoths and cave-bears, which have long since disappeared out of the series of living creatures."[ ] the diluvial or glacial origin of the neanderthal skull is still further confirmed by the discoveries made, in the summer of , in the teufelskammer. this cavern is situated one hundred and thirty paces from the one in which the human bones were found, and on the same side of the river.. in the loam-deposit of this cave were found numerous fossil bones and teeth of the rhinoceros, cave-bear, cave-hyena, and other extinct animals. "a great part of these bones, especially those of the cave-bears, agree in color, weight, density, and the preservation of their microscopic structure, with the human bones found in the feldhofner cave (in which the neanderthal man was found), and both are covered with the same _dendrites_, or tree-like markings."[ ] before entering into a description and discussion of this remarkable skull, an enumeration of the other bones will be given. all the bones are characterized by their unusual thickness, and the great development of all the elevations and depressions for the attachment of muscles. the two thigh bones were in a perfect state, also the right humerus and radius; the upper third of the right ulna; the left ulna complete, though pathologically deformed, the coronoid process being so much enlarged by bony growth that flexure of the elbow beyond a right angle was impossible; the left humerus is much slenderer than the right, and the upper third is wanting. its anterior fossa for the reception of the coronoid process is filled up with a bony growth, and, at the same time, the olecranon process is curved strongly downwards. the indications are that an injury sustained during life was the cause of this defect. there was an ilium, almost perfect; a fragment of the right scapula; the anterior extremity of a rib of the right side, and two hinder portions and one middle portion of ribs resembling more the ribs of a carnivorous animal than those of man. this abnormal condition has arisen from the powerful development of the thoracic muscles. [illustration: fig. . side view of the human skull from feldhofner cave, in the neanderthal, near dÜsseldorf. _a._ the superciliary ridge and glabella. _c._ the apex of the lambdoidal suture. _b._ the coronal suture. _d._ the occipital protuberance.] the cranium is thus described by professor huxley. "it has an extreme length of inches, while its breadth is only - / inches, or in other words, its length is to its breadth as is to . it is exceedingly depressed, measuring only about . inches from the glabello-occipital line to the vertex. the longitudinal arc, measured in the same way as in the engis skull, is inches; the transverse arc cannot be exactly ascertained, in consequence of the absence of the temporal bones, but was probably about the same, and certainly exceeded - / inches. the horizontal circumference is inches. but this great circumference arises largely from the vast development of the superciliary ridges, though the perimeter of the brain case itself is not small. the large superciliary ridges give the forehead a far more retreating appearance than its internal contour would bear out. to an anatomical eye the posterior part of the skull is even more striking than the anterior. the occipital protuberance occupies the extreme posterior end of the skull, when the glabello-occipital line is made horizontal, and so far from any part of the occipital region extending beyond it, this region of the skull slopes obliquely upward and forward, so that the lambdoidal suture is situated well upon the upper surface of the cranium. at the same time, notwithstanding the great length of the skull, the sagittal suture is remarkably short ( - / inches) and the squamosal suture is very straight."[ ] ... "the cranium, in its present condition, contains about sixty-three english cubic inches of water. as the entire skull could hardly have held less than twelve cubic inches more, its minimum capacity may be estimated at seventy-five cubic inches.... it has certainly not undergone compression, and, in reply to the suggestion that the skull is that of an idiot, it may be urged that the _onus probandi_ lies with those who adopt the hypothesis. idiocy is compatible with very various forms and capacities of the cranium, but i know of none which present the least resemblance to the neanderthal skull."[ ] professor huxley describes this skull to be the most ape-like of all the human skulls he has ever seen, and in its examination ape-like characters are met with in all its parts.[ ] buchner says that the face of the neanderthal man must have presented a frightfully bestial and savage, or ape-like expression (see frontispiece).[ ] professor schaaffhausen and mr. busk have stated that "this skull is the most brutal of all known human skulls, resembling those of the apes not only in the prodigious development of the superciliary prominences and the forward extension of the orbits, but still more in the depressed form of the brain-case, in the straightness of the squamosal suture, and in the complete retreat of the occiput forward and upward, from the superior occipital ridges."[ ] professor schaaffhausen and dr. buchner regarded this skull as a race-type, and professor huxley has said "that it truly forms only the extreme member of a series leading by slow degrees to the highest and best developed forms of human skulls."[ ] that this skull is a race-type is evident from the fact that it is not an isolated case. the fragment of the skull from the loess of the rhine (alsace), by its depressed forehead and strongly projecting superciliary arches, greatly resembles the neanderthal skull. the skull from the calcareous tuff of constatt, in its low, narrow forehead and strong superciliary arches, resembles the neanderthal.[ ] the cranium found in bone breccia, in cochrane's cave (gibraltar), "resembles, in all essential particulars, including its great thickness, the far-famed neanderthal skull. its discovery adds immensely to the scientific value of the neanderthal specimen, if only as showing that the latter does not represent, as many have hitherto supposed, a mere individual peculiarity, but that it may have been characteristic of a race extending from the rhine to the pillars of hercules."[ ] in speaking of the neanderthal skull, professor schaaffhausen says, "it is worthy of notice that a similar, although smaller projection of the superciliary arches has generally been found in the skulls of savage races.... the remarkably small skull from the graves on the island of moën, examined by professor eschricht; the two human skulls, described by dr. kutorga, from the government of minsk (russia), one of which, especially, shows a great resemblance to the neanderthal skull; the human skeleton found near plau, in mecklenburg, in a very ancient grave, in a squatting position, ... the skull of which indicates a very distant period, when man stood on a very low grade of development;" and other similar discoveries near mecklenburg, their skulls likewise presenting short, retreating foreheads and projecting eyebrows.[ ] professor huxley considers that the borreby skulls, belonging to the stone age of denmark, "show a great resemblance to the neanderthal skull, a resemblance which is manifested in the depression of the cranium, the receding forehead, the contracted occiput and the prominent superciliary ridges."[ ] _human skull of arno._--the human skull, found by professor cocchi in the valley of the arno, near florence, in diluvial clay, together with various bones of extinct species of animals, is considered by carl vogt to be of like antiquity with the engis and neanderthal skulls.[ ] chapter iv. pre-glacial epochs. the age immediately preceding the glacial, and consequently the post-tertiary, is known as the pliocene epoch, the last of the tertiary. the tertiary period began with the close of the cretaceous. a map of the early tertiary period would represent parts of maryland, virginia, the carolinas, georgia, the whole of florida, the lower parts of alabama, mississippi, texas, the whole of louisiana, and the adjoining territory on both sides of the mississippi, as far as cairo, as covered with water. also a great sea extending through nebraska and the western part of dacotah, and taking a north-westerly course until it emptied into the pacific. in europe, the great basin of paris (excepting a zone of chalk), the greater part of spain and italy, the whole of belgium, holland, prussia, switzerland, hungary, wallachia, and northern russia, as one vast sheet of water. england and france were connected by a band of rocks. about the middle of the tertiary, a tropical climate and tropical fauna and flora spread over the whole of europe. palms, cedars, laurels, and cinnamon trees flourished in the valleys of switzerland, and more than thirty different species of oak adorned the forests of that time. in europe, in the eocene, there have been found thirty species of crocodiles; many species of snakes, one twenty feet long; a dozen species of birds; tapirs (_palæothere_ and _lophiodon_), two species of hogs, some ruminants and rodents. in the miocene, among _pachyderms_ may be mentioned the mastodon, elephant, dinothere (an elephantine animal), rhinoceros, hog, horse, tapir, and hippopotamus; among _carnivores_, the machairodus, hyena, lion, and dog; among _ruminants_, the camel, deer, and antelope. there were monkeys, and many other animals. in the pliocene, besides those enumerated, are found the bear, hare, and other animals. in the tertiary beds of america have been found mastodons, elephants, rhinoceroses, deer, camels, foxes, wolves, horses, whales, and other mammalia. owing to the great lapse of time it cannot be expected that many traces of man will be discovered in this early period. upon theoretical grounds lyell thought it very probable that man lived in the pliocene; but in relation to miocene time, he says, "had some other rational being, representing man, then flourished, some signs of his existence could hardly have escaped unnoticed, in the shape of implements of stone or metal, more frequent and more durable than the osseous remains of any of the mammalia."[ ] sir j. lubbock, while admitting the existence of man in the pliocene, goes farther and says, "if man constitutes a separate family of mammalia, as he does in the opinion of the highest authorities, then, according to all palæontological analogies, he must have had representatives in miocene times. we need not, however, expect to find the proofs in europe; our nearest relatives in the animal kingdom are confined to hot, almost to tropical climates, and it is in such countries that we are most likely to find the earliest traces of the human race."[ ] alfred r. wallace out-distances any of his cotemporaries, for he says, "we are enabled to place the origin of man at a much more remote geological epoch than has yet been thought possible. he may even have lived in the miocene or eocene period, when not a single mammal was identical in form with any existing species."[ ] some of the older and some of the recent discoveries of geologists have settled the question of tertiary man; and the "signs of his existence," in the "shape of implements of stone," as demanded by lyell, have been furnished. _man in the pliocene._--it has already been intimated that the evidences of man are but few in this early epoch. the first example, in the following list, borders closely on the glacial, but far enough removed as to be referred to the pliocene. in the construction of a canal between stockholm and gothenburg it was necessary to cut through one of those hills called _osars_, or erratic blocks, which were deposited by the drift-ice during the glacial epoch. beneath an immense accumulation of osars, with shells and sand, there was discovered in the deepest layer of subsoil, at a depth of about sixty feet, a circular mass of stones, forming a hearth, in the middle of which there were wood-coals. no other hand than that of man could have performed the work.[ ] in the pliocene beds in the neighborhood of the town of savonia in liguria, m. a. issel found several bones which presented all the physical signs of very high antiquity. dr. buchner is of the opinion that before these bones can be employed as satisfactory evidence they must have a more accurate test by scientific authorities.[ ] in the upper pliocene beds at st. prest (france), m. desnoyers found traces of human action on the bones of animals belonging to the tertiary. these fractures are analogous to those of human action observed on bones from the glacial period, and identical with those made by northern tribes of the present day, on the skulls of ruminants. the marked bones found were those of the southern elephant (_e. meridionalis_), rhinoceros (_r. leptorinus_), hippopotamus major, several species of deer, and two of the ox. carl vogt states that this discovery is not only genuine, but also, the formation in which the bones were found is decidedly tertiary. it is further characterized by the presence of the southern elephant (_e. meridionalis_). as this elephant became extinct before the glacial age, the bones consequently precede the glacial, and the age of the cave-bear, the mammoth, and tichorrhine rhinoceros. the eminent french naturalist, quatrefages, confirms the testimony of desnoyers.[ ] the conclusions of desnoyers are confirmed beyond a doubt by the more recent discoveries of abbé bourgeois. in the same tertiary strata of st. prest, in which were found the marked or fractured bones, bourgeois discovered worked flints, including flakes, awls, and scrapers.[ ] a human skull, belonging to the pliocene, was found by james matson, at altaville, in calaveras county, california, at a depth of one hundred and thirty feet, under five beds of gravel separated by five layers of lava, associated with the bones of an extinct rhinoceros, camel, and horse. the base of the skull is imbedded in a mass of bone-breccia and small pebbles of volcanic rock. the shape of the skull resembles that of the digger indians, and is of remarkable thickness.[ ] _man in the miocene._[ ]--m. bourgeois has found, in a stratum of miocene near pontlevoy, numerous worked flints, and other flints which have been subjected to the action of heat. these works of man were associated with the remains of the acerotherium (an extinct species allied to the rhinoceros), and beneath five distinct beds, one of which contained the rolled bones of rhinoceros, mastodon, and dinotherium.[ ] m. tardy found a flint-flake of undoubted workmanship in the miocene beds of aurillac (auvergne), together with the remains of _dinotherium giganteum_, and _machaerodus latidens_.[ ] m. bourgeois reports that abbé delaunay had found near pouance (maine-et-loire), fossil bones of a _halitherium_ (an herbivorous cetacean of the miocene), with evident signs of having been operated upon by cutting instruments.[ ] in the miocene gravel beds of colorado and wyoming territories, chert-flakes, hammers, chisels, knives, and wrought shells have been found.[ ] _eocene._--as yet geologists have failed to discover any traces of man in the eocene epoch. chapter v. condition of man in the earliest times. of the first appearance of man on the globe there is no precise knowledge. his origin is a mystery. the place of his birth is generally supposed to be in central asia. there the geologist looks with a longing eye, and hopes ultimately to unravel, not only the hidden mystery of the birth-place of his race, but also, how or through what natural process he sprang into existence. if the miocene be the earliest point in his history, and central asia the place of his nativity, then he was ushered upon the scene of life during the period of, and surrounded by, the numerous fauna of india, at this time her mammalia included, besides the quadrumana, elephant (seven species), mastodon (three species), rhinoceros (five species), horse (three species), hippopotamus (four to seven species), hog (three species), camel, giraffe, sivatherium (an elephantine stag, having four horns and supposed to have had the bulk of an elephant and greater height), antelope, musk-deer, sheep, ox (several species), dinotherium, porcupine, species of hyena, lion, and many others. it cannot be presumed that man's intellectual faculties were ordinarily developed, as it would not be natural to suppose he was superior to that of later times. judging from the remains of later times, man could have been but very little removed from the brute. it is natural to suppose that at first he had no fire, no weapons of offence or defence. his food must have been the herbs, roots, and the fruits of the tree, possibly with an occasional morsel of raw meat. his pillow was a stone, his retreat a cave or the boughs of a wide-spreading tree, and his clothing a natural coat of hair. in the presence of the fierce beasts, man's domain might seem to be of short duration. providence has ordered all things wisely. placed low in the scale of life--brutal, selfish, prowling, yet cautious--man, by the very force of circumstances, was to develop gradually the powers of his mind. with the elephant and the mastodon he could not cope nor would they molest him. to the fierce carnivora he might fall a prey. from these he could flee, and find a shelter in the tops of the trees or some secure fastness of the earth. learning his own strength by experience, he would venture forth on excursions, and meet face to face his deadly foe. for self-defence he discovered, probably by accident, that a club was a powerful weapon with which to beat back his fierce opponent. gradually he came to learn that a sharp flint driven into the end of a club was a safer and more deadly weapon. with this he could withstand an unequal contest. the mode of life, together with the trials of his strength, developed his muscular system. his muscles became large and tough, and his bones thick and heavy. the earliest type of man is generally supposed to be _dolichocephalic_, or long-headed. the walls of the skull were thick, and the crown low. he was of ordinary stature, but built for action, and of great power. his make-up was the result of his surroundings. his advancement was very slow. throughout the entire length of the miocene and pliocene epochs it is not traceable. there was no revolution in his mind; one step in advance would have been a mighty leap. nor could it be expected that there should be rapid progress. the mind was brutal; and all the instincts sensual. but there was pending a mighty change. the tropical climate should change into a winter of snow and ice. man should feel it, and be benefited by the new danger. his sluggish mind should be quickened, and the inventive genius should be called into action. the sun no longer could give its heat. the forests grew cold, the chilling winds swept over the plains, and the retreat in the cave was damp and forbidding. the wild beasts were either dying of cold, or else becoming clothed with thick, long hair, and retreating before the accumulating snow. man earnestly looked about him. he suffered greatly, and his numbers grew less. fire had been produced. how, no one can tell; possibly by accident. he now became more careful of the fire, and with brand in hand he went from place to place kindling the fires at the various resting-places. nor was this sufficient. his ingenuity was taxed to its greatest extent. colder and colder grew the winds. the snow, coming in great flakes, was soon consolidated, and became as ice. the body could not be kept warm. clothing must be had, and this must be furnished by the wild beasts. their hides must assist in protecting the life of man. the stiffened, frozen animals would not alone furnish sufficient covering. knives must be invented. from the flint rude knives were fashioned, by means of which the skins were removed and transferred to the bodies of men. but the long winter continuing, the lives of the living animals must be forfeited, both for the flesh and and the skins. rude, almost shapeless arrow-heads were produced. wood must be had with which to warm and cook, and rude rafts formed, by means of which the swelling rivers might be crossed. then those stone hatchets of the somme were shaped, and answered the purpose. man was at last prepared to face the rigors of winter, the perils of ice, and secure himself against starvation. not content with his conflicts with nature, his brutal passion is aroused against his fellows. death-dealing blows fall rapidly upon each other, the blood flows freely, the bones give way, and the weaker one has succumbed. there are fierce contentions over the common prey, and the strong impose upon the weak. true to his instinct, he is gregarious. he lives in communities; and the more daring--the hunters--having their common places of meeting, fashion their weapons, and vie with each other in feats of prowess. during the glacial epoch the condition of man must have remained unchanged, after he had supplied himself with rude stone weapons. his time was spent, for the most part, in self-preservation. he was retreating before, yet bounding over, the frozen flood in pursuit of game. this experience must ultimately tell for good. when the glaciers began to recede, man followed closely, and forgot not the value of those stone weapons which had secured food for himself. they served against the cave-bear, cave-hyena, cave-lion, and would be of great service in the ages yet to come. by a little remodelling they could be used to greater advantage; and this change of shape was accomplished, and other uses of flint were made known. man's form, aspect, and true position are comprehended by the relics of the glacial age. the human bones tell a tale which any anatomist may read, and even one not well skilled in the art. the primitive type is no mystery, and those fossil bones tell of the terrific strifes of by-gone times. the neanderthal man has already been described. its structure is animal. its history agrees with the generally received idea of primitive man as conceived by the geologist. the illustration (frontispiece) presents him bestial and ape-like. a powerful organization, and well adapted to those times. his bones tell of fearful conflicts. he lived to an old age, as the traces of every suture are effaced. his skull was very thick. the strong, prominent superciliary arches denote large perceptives, making him watchful and always on the alert. those bones tell of a terrible conflict. the left arm was broken; who knows but in a contest with the great cave-bear. he survived the contest and lived to see that arm dwindle and become almost useless. over the right eye he received a blow, from some source, so great as to carry away a portion of the bone. the claw of a cave-bear, or a flint weapon in the hand of one of his race, may have produced that fracture. still he lived, and the wound healed. all this tells of his strength and hardihood. it gives an inside view of the wonderful hardships and vicissitudes of primeval man. the engis skull belongs to the same type, though less bestial. possibly this individual did not enter upon the chase, and engage in the manly pursuits of those times. he may have been an adviser or a dandy; or, his ingenuity may have led him to the vocation of fashioning weapons and implements from the flint. in the time of the engis man there were large as well as short, heavy-set men. in the same cavern there was found a clavicle belonging to a young person who must have been of great stature. the jaws of la naulette and moulin-quignon display a great tendency to animal structure, and confirm the impressions as given of the primitive condition of man during the glacial and pre-glacial ages. chapter vi. inter-glacial epoch. the glaciers have departed. summer comes again. the forests bloom and the wild beast roams about. many species withstood the long siege of cold; others perished; still others followed the ice as it retreated, preferring the cold to the coming heat. the floods had abated and man spread himself over the different tracts blooming with flowers and radiant with earthly splendors. the evidences of man's existence during this period are numerous, consisting in works of art and fossil remains. only a few examples are given, as not many will be required to present the evidence and show man's condition. the hyena-den at wokey hole, explored by mr. dawkins, affords specimens of the works of man. when discovered this den was filled to the roof with _débris_. under this rubbish was found several layers of the excrement of the cave-hyena (_h. spelæa_), each of which indicates an old floor and a separate period of occupation. the implements were under these layers of excrement, showing that the cave had been occupied by the hyenas after the time of the savages. these implements had not been disturbed by the action of water. in the bone earth along with the remains of the cave-hyena were found those of the mammoth, siberian rhinoceros, (_r. tichorrhinus_), gigantic ox (_bos primigenius_), gigantic irish deer (_megaceros hibernicus_), reindeer, cave-bear, cave-lion (_felis spelæa_), wolf (_canis lupus_), fox (_canis vulpes_), and the teeth and bones of the horse in great numbers. intermixed with these bones were chipped flints, a bleached flint weapon of the spear-head amiens type, and arrow-heads made of bone. [illustration: fig. . ideal scene in the post-tertiary. on the right is shown the megatherium. this animal belonged to the sloth tribe, and was a native of south america. it exceeded in size the largest rhinocerous, and the length of its skeleton sometimes attained eighteen feet. in front, near the centre, is the glyptodon another south american animal of the armadillo tribe. the length of its shell, along the curve, was five feet, and the total length of the animal, nine feet. just back of the glypodon, and holding on to a tree, is the mylodon, belonging to both north and south america, one species of which was much larger than the western buffalo. on the left, and in the rear, is the mastodon, the remains of which are found in both north and south america, though of different species. while this scene does not represent the animals with which we are dealing, yet the general features give an idea of those with which we are interested.] [illustration: fig. . section of the sepulchral grotto, in the hill of fajoles, aurignac. _a._ vault in which the seventeen human skeletons were found. _b._ layer of made ground, two feet thick, inside the grotto in which a few human bones, with entire bones of extinct and living species of animals, and many works of art, were imbedded. _c._ layers of ashes and charcoal eight inches thick, containing broken, burned, and gnawed bones of extinct and living mammalia, also hearth-stones and works of art; no human bones. _d._ deposit with similar contents; also a few scattered cinders. _e._ talus of rubbish washed down from the hill above. _f_, _g._ slab of rock which closed the vault. _i_, _f._ rabbit-burrow. _h_, _k._ original terrace. _n._ nummulitic limestone.] in the cavern of maccagnone, in sicily, there were found ashes and rude flint implements in a breccia containing the bones of the elephant (_e. antiquus_), hyena, a large bear, lion, (probably _f. spelæa_), and large numbers of bones belonging to the hippopotamus. the concrete of ashes had once filled the cavern, and a large piece of bone breccia was still cemented to the roof. the vast number of hippopotamuses implies that the physical condition of the country was different from what it is at present. the bone breccia cemented to the roof, and coated with stalagmite, testifies that the cave, at some time since the formation of the breccia, has been washed out. the exact time of the formation of this breccia cannot be given, but, in all probability, not long after the extinction of the cave-bear, if not before. the cave or grotto of aurignac, in which the seventeen human skeletons were found, was carefully examined by lartet eight years after its discovery. the recess was formed in nummulitic limestone. in front of the grotto, and next to the limestone (_c_, fig. ) was a layer of ashes and charcoal, eight inches thick, containing hearth-stones, works of art, and broken, burned, and gnawed bones of extinct and recent mammalia. immediately above this layer (_d_) was another, of made ground, two feet thick, extending into the grotto; and its contents similar to the other, save that within the grotto were found a few human bones. the grotto was closed by a slab, and the made earth without was covered by a talus of rubbish (_e_), washed down from the hill above. in these layers were found not less than one hundred flint instruments, consisting of knives, projectiles, sling-stones, chips, and a stone made for the purpose of modelling the flints. the bone implements were barbless arrows, a well-shaped and sharply pointed bodkin made of the horn of the roe-deer, and other tools made of reindeer horn. besides these there were found eighteen small round and flat plates, of a white shelly substance, made of some species of cockle (_cardium_), pierced through the middle; also the tusk of a young cave-bear, the crown of which had been carved in imitation of the head of a bird. the following is a list of the different species found in the layers, together with the approximate number of individuals belonging to each: i.--carnivora. number of individuals. . cave bear (_u. spelæus_) - . brown bear (_u. arctos_) . badger (_meles taxus_) - . polecat (_putorius vulgaris_) . cave lion (_felis spelæa_) . wild cat (_felis catus ferus_) . hyena (_h. spelæa_) - . wolf (_canis lupus_) . fox (_c. vulpes_) - ii.--herbivora. . mammoth (_e. primigenius_) two molars and an astragalus. . rhinoceros (_r. tichorrhinus_) . horse (_equus caballus_) - . ass (_e. asinus_) . boar (_sus scrofa_) two incisors. . stag (_cervus elephas_) . gigantic irish deer (_megaceros hibernicus_) . roebuck (_c. capreolus_) - . reindeer (_c. tarandus_) - . aurochs (_bison europæus_) - the bones on the outside of the grotto were found to be split open, as if for the extraction of the marrow, and many of them burned. the spongy parts were wanting, having been gnawed off by the hyenas. m. lartet came to the conclusion that this grotto was a place of sepulchre, and the broken or split bones were the remnants of the funeral feasts. this he argued from the fact that the bones within the grotto were not split, broken or gnawed, save the astragalus of the mammoth. this meat was placed in the grotto, probably as an offering to the dead. the bones without the cave were scraped, and while the men were yet engaged in the funeral feast, the hyenas prowled about the spot, and at the close of the banquet, devoured the flesh that remained. the slab in front of the cave debarred their entrance, and consequently the bones and human remains within were left untouched. the observations made by m. cartailhac, in , lead to different conclusions. on close inspection, he discovered a difference in the color of the walls of the cave, indicating that the lower deposit was of a yellow color, and the next above of a much lighter tint. in the crevices of the lower he found a tooth of the rhinoceros, one of the reindeer, and some fractured bones of the cave-bear. in the higher deposit occurred some small bones of living animals and of man, and a fragment of pottery. from these evidences, m. cartailhac inferred that the lower deposits of the grotto corresponded with that outside of it, and the layer containing human bones was formed at a subsequent time. that this grotto was a place of resort at a very early period is proven from the numerous remains of the cave-bear. this animal was one of the first of those great post-tertiary mammalia to become extinct. the exact position of the remains of the reindeer is not given. if its bones were intermixed with the others and found in the lowest as well as the other layers, it would indicate that the climate was not very warm during the deposit of the layers, but to have been similar to that of switzerland of the present day. the probability is, the reindeer bones did not occur in the lowest layer, and hence that layer was formed during the tropical climate, and the reindeer bones and human skeletons were consigned to the grotto about the close of the inter-glacial, or beginning of the reindeer epoch. the fossil man of denise, taken from an old volcanic tuff, must be assigned to this period, since there have been found, in similar blocks of tuff in the same region, the remains of the cave-hyena and hippopotamus major. this fossil man consists of a frontal part of the skull, the upper jaw, with teeth, belonging to both an adult and young individual; a radius, some lumbar vertebræ, and some metatarsal bones. the tuff is light and porous, and none of the bones penetrate into the more compact rock. in the rubbish heap, or reindeer station, at the source of the schusse, there were discovered more than six hundred split flints, with a quantity of partly worked antlers and bones of the reindeer. the bones were so numerous that mr. oscar fraas was enabled to put together a complete skeleton of the reindeer which is now preserved in the museum of stuttgart. most of the bones were split open for the purpose of extracting the marrow. there were numerous remains of fishes, and a fish-hook manufactured from reindeer horn. there were also the bones of other animals, such as the glutton, arctic fox, and other animals now living in high northern latitudes. speaking of this station, dr. buchner says, "not only the careful investigations of the geognostic conditions of the place, but also the flora of the time (for remains of mosses were found which now live only in the extreme north), leave no doubt that the reindeer station on the schusse belongs to the glacial epoch, or that it probably belongs exactly to the interval between the two glacial epochs which in all probability switzerland has experienced. mr. e. desor declared this deposit to be _the terminal moraine of the rhine-glacier_, which was formerly very large. moreover, according to him, this discovery is particularly remarkable, because it is the first example of a station of the reindeer-men in a free and open deposit, their remains having hitherto been found only in caves."[ ] from the remarks of dr. buchner, the great number of bones of the reindeer, and some show of advancement in the arts, it may be safe to conclude that this station belongs to the close of the inter-glacial. chapter vii. condition of man in the inter-glacial. the inter-glacial period continued a great length of time, covering many thousands of years. man is an improvable being, and some advancement may be expected in his condition. his mode of life, and continued conflicts with the fierce wild beasts, would tax his every device. necessity compelled him to be inventive. the limited, bestial mind which he possessed, could not grapple with the higher problems of existence. united efforts and fortified places were beyond his thoughts. those old axes of flint were great objects to his mind, and one step beyond them was a great stride in progress. that they developed but little cannot be wondered at, not only from their low type, but also from the knowledge that even in the era of history there are nations whose civilization has become fixed and stereotyped for ages; others, who, instead of advancing, have been retrograding. the impulse given by the rigors of glacial times acted beneficially throughout this period. the rude axes and flints were retained, but improvements were made in utilizing the bones and horns of animals. out of these, bodkins, fish-hooks, and arrow-heads were made. the teeth of wild animals were perforated, and, along with corals and shells, were used for ornaments. the caverns, used as dwelling-places, being destitute of water, this necessary of life was supplied and carried thither in rude vessels made of clay and dried in the sun. the arrows, flint knives, and axes were used for killing and skinning the animals, splitting the bones containing the marrow, shaping the bone implements, felling trees, and stripping the bark, which was used at times for clothing, after having been softened by beating. he commenced the art of engraving, as is witnessed by a sketch of the great cave-bear wrought on a curious stone found in the cave of massat (ariége), the bird's head formed from the bone of a cave-bear, at aurignac, and other examples. the lower jaw-bones of the cave-bear and cave-lion, in the shape of hoes, used for digging roots, were found in the caves of lherm and in bouicheta. he made hearth-stones, and on them cooked his food. that he paid honors to the dead, and sheltered them from the ravages of beasts of prey, at present, must remain an open question. if he did, it might seem to imply that he had a religious nature. but when it is considered that he was very low in the scale of existence, it may be inferred that this was done, if done at all, to propitiate an evil genius. or it may be a faint idea of a ghost state and that these feasts were made to dissuade the ghost from molesting him. that they had a conception of a supreme ruler, or a number of gods who ruled for the good of man, would be too preposterous to believe. professor denton has given a description of primeval time which, by a little change, would represent inter-glacial times: "the seasons are fairly established; and spring follows winter, and fall summer, as now; though the summer is longer and warmer than we are accustomed to see in those countries at the present time, and the winters colder. the country is covered with dense forests, through which ramble mighty elephants in herds, with immense curved tusks, coats of long, shaggy hair, and flowing manes.... shuffling along comes the great cave-bear from his rocky den--as large as a horse: fierce, shaggy, conscious of his strength, he fears no adversary. crouched by a bubbling spring lies the cave-tiger (_felis spelæa_); and, as the wild cattle come down to drink, he leaps upon the back of one, and a terrible combat ensues. it is as large as an elephant, and its horns of enormous size; and even cave-tigers could not always master such cattle as they. "are these the highest forms of life that the country contains? what being is that sitting on yon fallen tree? his long arms are in front of his hairy body, and his hands between his knees; while his long legs are dangling down. his complexion is darker than an indian's; his beard short, and like the hair of his body; the unkempt hair of his head is bushy and thick; his eyebrows are short and crisp; and with his sloping forehead and brutal countenance, he seems like the caricature of a man, rather than an actual human being. "beneath the shade of a spreading chestnut we may behold a group--one old man ... and women and children, lounging and lying upon the ground. how dirty! what forbidding countenances!--more like furies than women. one young man, with a stone axe, is separating the bark from a neighboring tree. others, agile as monkeys, are climbing the trees, and passing from branch to branch, as they gather the wild fruit that abounds on every side. some are catching fish in the shallows of the river, and yell with triumph as they hold their captives by the gills, dragging them to the shore."[ ] they have improved their language, and instead of the rude signs and undistinguishable sounds of the glacial, may now be heard short, but occasional sentences, which were the forerunners of the polished tongues of modern europe. chapter viii. reindeer epoch. the glaciers, to a limited extent, have again advanced. the gigantic animals of the past age have either disappeared or are fast becoming extinct. the great cave-bear, cave-lion, cave-hyena, mammoth, and woolly-haired rhinoceros have almost become extinct. they have given way to a less fierce and less gigantic fauna. the advance of the glaciers is announced by the numerous herds of reindeer which are overrunning the forests of western europe, and extending as far south as the pyrenees. in the forests there now existed the horse, bison, wild bull (_bos primigenius_), musk-ox, elk, deer, chamois, ibex, beaver, hamster-rat, lemming, and many others. these animals were capable of withstanding and flourishing in a rigorous climate. when the glaciers were again broken up and the climate became warmer, the reindeer, musk-ox, elk, chamois, wild-goat, hamster-rat, and lemming retired to the high northern latitudes in close proximity to the snow, or else to the lofty summits of great mountain-chains. the evidences of the antiquity of the reindeer epoch, and that it immediately followed the inter-glacial, are numerous. the vast number of the reindeer bones and horns attest to a distinct epoch, and by the remains of arctic animals, as well as the traces of glaciers, the climate must have been unlike that of the present time. the remains of the mammoth, cave-bear, and cave-lion, would not only connect this period with the inter-glacial, but also prove that a few stragglers continued to exist, at least for a short period, after the reindeer epoch had begun. that this epoch was earlier than the swiss lake-villages, or danish shell mounds, may be shown by the weapons or implements which point to a more primitive people, the absence of the remains of the dog, and, also, by the absence of the remains of the reindeer in the shell-mounds. there are no means, yet discovered, by which it can be told how long this epoch lasted. it lasted a sufficient length of time to permit the reindeer to increase greatly its species. _evidences of the existence of man._--m. christy and m. lartet examined in conjunction the caves of central and southern france. those which have been most carefully examined are ten in number, and belong to the department of dordogne. at perigord there seems to have been quite a settlement, judging by the number of caves and stations, the principal ones being les eyzies, la madeleine, laugerie-haute, and laugerie-basse. at les eyzies there were found a flint bodkin and a bone needle used for sewing, a barbed arrow made of reindeer horn and still fixed in a bone, a flint whistle made from the first joint of the foot of the reindeer, and two slabs of schist, on both of which were scratched animal forms, but deficient in any special characteristic. at la madeleine there were found a geode very large and very thick, which, it is supposed, was used for a cooking vessel, as one side of it had been subjected to fire; an engraving of a reindeer on the horn of that animal; on another horn the carved outlines of two fishes, one on either side; a representation of an ibex on the palm of a horn; on another, a very curious group, consisting of an eel, a human figure, and two horses' heads. a slab of ivory, broken into five pieces, had an outline sketch of the mammoth (fig. ). this was so accurately drawn that the small eye, curved tusks, huge trunk, and the abundant mane, could readily be distinguished. there was also found, on an arrow-head, the figure of a tadpole. there were workshops at laugerie-haute and laugerie-basse, where weapons and utensils were manufactured; and they are noted for the abundance of instruments made of reindeer horn. among the works of art found at the latter station may be mentioned, the stiletto, needle, spoon made in the shape of rods tapering off at one end and hollow in the middle, staff of authority, whistle, and harpoon, all from the horn of the reindeer. on the head of a staff of authority is carved a mammoth's head; there is a representation of the hind-quarters of some herbivorous animal, sketched out with a bold and practiced touch; an animal's head, with ears laid back, and of considerable length, is carved on a round shaft of reindeer horn. it cannot be determined for what purpose this shaft was intended, but as the other end was pointed, and provided with a lateral hook, it may have been the harpoon of some chief. on a slab of slate was drawn, in outline, a reindeer fight. on a fragment of a spear-head there is a series of human hands, provided with four fingers only, and represented in demi-relief. the delineations of fish are principally on wands of authority--on one of which is a series following one another. [illustration: fig. . sketch of a mammoth, graven on a slab of ivory from la madeleine.] the cave and _rock shelters_ of bruniquel (tarn-et-garonne) have been carefully examined by competent explorers. these relics are so numerous that m. de lastic, the proprietor of the cavern, sold to the agent of the british museum fifteen hundred specimens, of every description, which had been found on his property. in the cave there were found, engraved on a bone, a perfectly recognizable horse's head and the head of a reindeer, and daggers made of ivory and bone, on which were representations of the above-mentioned animals. the engravings are mostly on the horn of the reindeer. the cave has also furnished two almost perfect human skulls, and two half-jaw bones which resemble the moulin-quignon. the _rock-shelters_ are overhanging rocks, under the projections of which man found a shelter and built his rude dwellings of boughs and sticks. in these shelters have been found fire-hearths, fish-hooks made of splinters of bone, saws made of flint, a complete sketch of the mammoth engraved on reindeer horn, the hilt of a dagger carved in the shape of a reindeer, the cave-lion, engraved with great clearness, on a fragment of a staff of authority, and two daggers made of ivory. in the excavations which were made in the rock-shelters, was found a quantity of human bones, including two skulls--one of an old man, the other that of an adult. the cave of gourdan (haute-garonne) contained the largest collection of implements of bone and horn ever discovered. the stones and reindeer horns are carved with great care, and indicate a high degree of artistic taste. there are sketches made of the reindeer, stag, chamois, goat, bison, horse, wolf, boar, monkey, badger, antelope, fishes, and birds, and also the representations of some plants. in the lowest layer of the soil the most perfect works occur, and they grow less as the surface is approached. several of those implements called "batons of command" occurred, ornamented with animals' heads. on the rib of a horse was carved an antelope, and on the bone of a bird various figures--plants, reindeer, and a fish. this cave was made the subject of a report by m. piette before the paris anthropological society. [illustration: fig. . the fossil man of mentone.] the fossil man of mentone, found in a grotto of mentone, a village near nice, for some time past has produced much comment among scientists. the skeleton was discovered in undisturbed earth; at a depth of twenty-one feet. the cause of the discussion is that the skeleton is accompanied by a multiplicity of bone-tools, needles, chisels, a baton of command, a necklace, various species of the deer, indicating the reindeer epoch, but surrounded also by the remains of the cave-bear, cave-hyena, and woolly-haired rhinoceros. dr. garrigou arrives at the conclusion that this cave was first inhabited by men of the preceding epoch, or inter-glacial, and during the reindeer epoch was used as a place of burial.[ ] the attitude of the skeleton was that of repose (see fig. ). it was stained by oxide of iron. the tibiæ, or shin-bones, present a noticeable feature by being more flattened than in the european of the present time. in the same neighborhood there have more recently been discovered, in different caves, four other human skeletons. they were all stained with oxide of iron, and two of them surrounded with pierced sea-shells, teeth of the stag, constituting the remains of necklaces and bracelets. with one skeleton, which belonged to a large individual, were discovered implements of stone and bone, tooth of a cave-bear, bones of other animals, and shells of edible marine mollusks. the other two skeletons were those of children, and not accompanied by either implements or ornaments. the other bone caves of france, which have afforded much valuable information, and belonging to this epoch, are: la gorge d'enfer, liveyre, pey de l'aze, combe-granal, le moustier and badegoule (dordogne), cave of bize (aude), cave of la vache (ariége), cave of savigné (vienne), grottos of la balme and bethenas, in dauphiné, the settlement of solutré, the cave of lourdes (hautes-pyrénées), and the cave of espalungue (basses-pyrénées)--the last two date back to the most ancient period of the reindeer epoch. the principal objects found in these caves, and the rock-shelters are worked flakes, scrapers, cores, awls, lance-heads, cutters, hammers, and mortar-stones. these works, though unpolished, are but little ruder than those of the esquimaux or the north american indian. _belgian caverns._--under the auspices of the belgian government m. edward dupont examined more than twenty caves on the banks of the lesse, in the province of namur. among these were four, in which occurred numerous traces of the reindeer-man, namely, trou du frontal, trou rosette, trou des nutons, and trou de chaleux. the cavern trou de frontal was a place of burial, and similar to the cave of aurignac. the mouth of the cave was closed by a slab of sandstone, and within were the remains of fourteen human beings belonging to persons of various ages, and some of them to infants scarcely a year old. in front of the cave was an esplanade, where were celebrated the funeral feasts, and which was marked by hearth-stone, traces of fire, flint-knives, bones of animals, shells, etc. the human bones were intermixed with a considerable number of the bones of the reindeer and other animals, as well as the different kinds of implements. among the remains were two perfect human skulls, in a good state of preservation. the bones were discovered in a state of great confusion, which m. dupont thinks was caused by the disturbance of water. sir john lubbock regards the disturbance of the bones as due to foxes and badgers.[ ] immediately above this cave is the trou rosette, in which the bones of three persons were found, mingled with those of the reindeer and beaver. it also contained fragments of a blackish kind of pottery, which were hollowed out in rough grooves and hardened by fire. dupont is of opinion that the three men were crushed to death by masses of rock at the time of the inundation of the valley of the lesse. in the trou des nutons, situated one hundred and sixty-four feet above the lesse, were found a great many bones of the reindeer, wild bull, and many other species. in the cave, indiscriminately mixed up with these bones, were one hundred and fifty worked reindeer horns, knuckle-bones of the goat, polished on both sides, a whistle made from the tibia of a goat, fragments of very coarse pottery, and fire-hearths. [illustration: fig. . earthen vase, found in the cave of furfooz, belgium.] the cave of chaleux was buried by a mass of rubbish caused by the falling in of the roof, consequently preserving all its implements. there were found the split bones of mammals and the bones of birds and fishes. there was an immense number of objects, chiefly manufactured from reindeer horn, such as needles, arrow-heads, daggers, and hooks. besides these, there were ornaments made of shells, pieces of slate with engraved figure, mathematical lines, remains of very coarse pottery, hearth-stones, ashes, charcoal, and last but not least, thirty thousand worked flints mingled with the broken bones. in the hearth, placed in the centre of the cave, was discovered a stone, with certain but unintelligible signs engraved upon it. m. dupont also found about twenty pounds of the bones of the water-rat, either scorched or roasted. in a cave at furfooz, dupont found an urn, or specimen of rough pottery (fig. ) intermingled with human bones. it was partly broken; by the care of m. hauzeur it has been put together again. france and belgium are not alone in their monuments of the reindeer epoch, for settlements of this epoch have been discovered in germany, switzerland, and poland. in the cave of thayngen, near schaffhausen, switzerland, have been discovered a few remains of the mammoth, rhinoceros, and cave-lion; the remains of two hundred and fifty reindeer, four hundred and thirty alpine hares; also the remains of the brown bear, stag, elk, auroch, glutton, wolf, and several kinds of fox. the large bones invariably appeared in fragments, and the pebbles used for breaking them were found in the refuse. among birds, the bones of the swan, grouse, and duck predominate. the implements consisted chiefly of needles, piercers, and arrow-heads made of the antlers of the reindeer. the art of engraving and carving was carried to quite a degree of perfection. the most notable of these objects is the delineation of a reindeer in the act of browsing, drawn on a piece of the horn of that animal. not far from cracow (poland), a cavern has been recently discovered and examined by count zawisza. in the upper part of the floor (four feet in depth), consisting of vegetable earth, mould, and _débris_, occurred ashes, flint implements, and the split bones of the cave-bear, reindeer, horse, elk, and other animals. beneath this layer appeared the broken bones of the mammoth, an ornament of ivory, and the perforated teeth of the cave-bear, stag, elk, wolf, and fox. two thousand flint implements were obtained; and from the frequent occurrence of flint the cave was used by the troglodytes, or cave-men, as a dwelling; and by the remains of the fauna, it must have been occupied during the inter-glacial, and at the beginning of the reindeer epoch. chapter ix. man of the reindeer epoch. the reindeer epoch, approaching nearer the present age than those already enumerated, presents man under a more favorable aspect, and affords a better view of his traits of character and manner of living. not only the sturdy climate spurs him to action, but a higher type is supplanting the original savages. the brachycephalic, or round-headed, has penetrated the recesses of that wild country and brought with him the art of making more perfect implements. this new type was of short stature, having small hands and feet. if asia be the home of man, then from that country, advanced in civilization, came the vanguard who were destined to supplant their predecessors, tame the wild beasts, and conquer the forests. representatives of this type are found in the lapps and fins. between the two existing races--dolichocephalic and brachycephalic--there may have been a long and bitter strife. the former was large, stout, fearless, and cruel; the latter, small, hardy, and more intelligent. it was a conflict between brute force and intelligence. the more perfect weapons must have told fearfully against the rude axes and arrows of the dolichocephalic. it could not have been a war of extermination, for finally an intermixture took place, producing a medium, as may be judged from the exhumed skulls. _dwellings._--as in the past ages, man continued to dwell, for the most part, in caves. if the cave was small, he occupied every portion; but if large, only that part near the opening was used. in the centre of this dwelling he made a hearth, out of stones sunk in the floor, and with the fire placed upon it, he cooked his meals and warmed his body. this mode of life did not always satisfy him, for he ventured out, and under the projection of an overhanging rock he built him a booth, or rude hut, out of boughs, and the poles of fallen timber. these dwellings, whether in caves or under the rocks, were near some stream. _clothing._--the climate being cold, he probably ceased to use the inner bark of trees, and depended solely on the skins of animals. the skins were prepared by the flint scrapers, and then rendered supple by rubbing into them the brains and the marrow extracted from the skulls and long bones of the reindeer. these garments may have been artistically shaped, for they understood the art of sewing. with the bodkin they pierced the skin, and with the needle, end was held to end and side to side, and the same made permanent by the sinew of some animal. _food._--these people were essentially hunters, and lived principally upon the reindeer, which they attacked with their spears and arrows. the horse, elk, ox, ibex, and the chamois, formed a considerable part of their food. the meat was cooked on the rough hearths, and the skull and the long bones were split open in order to extract the brains and marrow, which formed a delicious dish. to this they also added fish and, occasionally, certain birds, such as the heath-cock, swan, and owl. the chase did not always afford them sufficient food, and at times they were forced to subsist on the water-rat. enough evidence has been produced to show that these people were cannibals. human finger-joints were discovered among the remains of cooking at solutré in mâconnais. m. issel found, at a point on the road from genoa to nice, some human bones which had been calcined, and were of a whitish color, light, and friable. the incrustations on their surface still contained small fragments of carbon, and some of them showed notches made by some sharp instrument. in one of the grottos of northern italy m. costa de beauregard found the small shin-bone of a child, which had been carefully emptied and cleansed. professor owen thinks he can recognize the trace of human teeth on some human skulls and children's bones found in scotland, and promiscuously mixed with sculptured flints and the remains of pottery. _the arts._--man had not yet discovered the value of metal, but formed his instruments out of flint, bone, and the horn of the reindeer. the hatchet was but little used, and the principal weapons were the flint-knife, arrow-heads, and occasionally the lower jaw-bone of the cave-bear, with its pointed canine tooth. the articles of domestic use were rough pottery, knives, scrapers, saws, bodkins, needles, and other wrought implements. he had articles for ornamenting his person and pleasing his fancy, such as shells for beads, and the whistle for delighting his ear. the art of engraving was practised to a great extent, and so admirably did he execute his designs that, after the lapse of thousands of years, the figures are easily recognized. the staff of authority would imply that there were certain individuals who were recognized as chiefs or leaders. some system must have prevailed, for without it the manufactories at laugerie-basse and laugerie-haute could not have been carried on. in the first of these workshops the fabrications were almost wholly spear-heads, and in the second reindeer horn was used for the weapons and implements. _traffic._--commerce was begun. the inhabitants of belgium sought their flints in that part of france now called champagne. from the same locality they also brought back fossil shells, which were strung together and used for necklaces. there can be no doubt of this, as already fifty-four of these shells have been found at chaleux, and they are not found naturally anywhere else than in champagne. _burial._--as in the previous epoch, the dead were consigned to the same kind of caves as were used for habitations, and the entombment was celebrated by the funeral-feast. these banquets afford no evidence of worship. some have thought they not only saw signs of worship in the banquets, but also in some of the carvings. no idols have been found. that they should have no notion of a future state is not surprising, for sir j. lubbock has shown that there are tribes at the present time without this belief.[ ] m. edward dupont, in his report to the belgian minister of the interior, on the excavations carried on in the caves, has concisely but eloquently given a synopsis of man of the reindeer epoch, in the following language: "the data obtained from the fossils of chaleux, together with those which have been met with in the caves of furfooz, present us with a striking picture of the primitive ages of mankind in belgium. these ancient tribes, and all their customs, after having been buried in oblivion for thousands and thousands of years, are again vividly brought before our eyes; and, ... antiquity lives again in the relics of its former existence. "we may almost fancy that we can see them in their dark and subterranean retreats, crouching round their hearths, and skilfully and patiently chipping out their flint instruments and shaping their reindeer-horn tools, in the midst of all the pestilential emanations arising from the various animal remains which their carelessness has allowed to remain in their dwellings. skins of wild beasts are stripped of their hair, and, by the aid of flint needles, are converted into garments. in our mind's eye, we may see them engaged in the chase, and hunting wild animals--their only weapons being darts and spears, the fatal points of which are formed of nothing but a splinter of flint. again, we are present at their feasts, in which, during the period when their hunting has been fortunate, a horse, a bear, or a reindeer, becomes the more noble substitute for the tainted flesh of the rat, their sole resource in the time of famine. "now, we see them trafficking with the tribes inhabiting the region now called france, and procuring the jet and fossil shells with which they love to adorn themselves, and the flint which is to them so precious a material. on one side they are picking up the fluor spar, the color of which is pleasing to their eyes; on the other, they are digging out the great slabs of sandstone which are to be placed as hearth-stones round their fire. "but, alas! inauspicious days arrive." the roof of their principal cave falls in, burying their weapons and utensils, and forcing them "to fly and take up their abode in another spot. the ravages of death break in upon them.... they bear the corpse into its cavernous sepulchre; some weapons, an amulet, and perhaps an urn, form the whole of the funeral furniture. a slab of stone prevents the inroad of wild beasts. then begins the funeral banquet, celebrated close by the abode of the dead; a fire is lighted, great animals are cut up, and portions of their smoking flesh are distributed to each. how strange the ceremonies that must then have taken place! ceremonies like those told us of the savages of the indian and african solitudes. imagination may easily depict the songs, the dances, and the invocations, but science is powerless to call them into life.... "but the end of this primitive age is at last come. torrents of water break in upon the country. its inhabitants, driven from their abodes, in vain take refuge on the lofty mountain summits. death at last overtakes them, and a dark cavern is the tomb of the wretched beings, who, at furfooz, were witnesses of this immense catastrophe."[ ] chapter x. neolithic epoch. the neolithic, or epoch of tamed animals, is characterized by stone implements, polished or made smooth by a process of grinding and cutting, the greater development attained in the art of pottery, and by the presence of the bones of the domesticated animals. this age, in which no remains of the reindeer occur, immediately follows the reindeer epoch, and to it are referred in general all discoveries made in the so called _alluvial_ soil, the most ancient remains of the so called celts, the shell-heaps of denmark, the tumuli or grave-mounds, the dolmens, the earlier swiss pile-buildings, the irish lake-dwellings, and some of the caves of france. _caverns._--the caves belonging to this period, and explored by mm. garrigou and filhol, are those of the pyrenees and the caves of pradiérs, bedeilhac, labart, niaux, ussat, and fontanel. some of these caverns have been used in earlier ages, as is shown by the remains of extinct mammals. the upper crust of the floors of the caves belong to this period, and in them are found the bones of the ox, stag, sheep, goat, antelope, chamois, wild boar, wolf, dog, fox, badger, hare, and horse, intermingled with the remains of hearths, also piercers, spear-heads, and arrow-heads, made of bone; hatchets, knives, scrapers made of flints, and various other substances, such as silicious schist, quartzite, leptinite, and serpentine stone. these implements were carefully wrought, and mostly polished. the cave of saint jean d'alcas (aveyron), explored at different times by m. cazalis de fondace, was used as a place of sepulture. it was first examined about twenty-five years ago, and at that time five human skulls, in a good state of preservation, were found, but have been lost, as their importance was not then known. intermingled with these bones were flint, jade, and serpentine implements, carved bones, remains of rough pottery, stone amulets, and the shells of shell-fish, but no remains of funeral banquets. at the mouth of the cave were two large flag-stones lying across one another. the most recent discoveries in the cave have furnished metallic substances, which would place it, as a habitation, to the last of the neolithic. _danish kjökken-möddings, or shell-mounds, or kitchen-refuse heaps._--the refuse heaps of denmark were carefully examined by professors steenstrup, the naturalist, forchammer, a geologist, and worsaae, the archæologist, commissioned by the danish government, their reports being presented to the academy of sciences at copenhagen. they are found chiefly on the north coast of denmark, and consist of the shells of edible mollusks, such as the oyster, cockle, mussel, and periwinkle. these deposits are from three to ten feet in thickness, from one hundred to two hundred and fifty feet in width, and sometimes as much as one thousand feet in length. in them are found weapons and other instruments of stone, horn, and bone; fragments of rough pottery, stone-wedges, knives, etc., in great abundance, accompanied with charcoal and ashes; no traces of coin, bronze, or iron, or domestic animals, except the dog. the bones of animals are very numerous, but no human bones have ever been discovered. professor steenstrup estimates that ninety-seven per cent. of the bones belong to the stag, the roe-deer, and the wild boar. the other remains are those of the urus (_bos primigenius_), dog, fox, wolf, marten, wild-cat, hedgehog, bear (_ursus arctos_), and the mouse, and the bones of birds and fishes. the auroch, musk ox, domestic ox, elk, hare, sheep, and domestic hog are absent. the mollusca of these shell-mounds are of a size which are never obtained by the representatives of the same species now living on the baltic. they are not more than one-half or even one-third the size. at the time of the formation of these mounds, the baltic was a true sea, or an arm of the ocean, and these mollusks were taken from it. now the baltic has not the character of a true sea, but is merely brackish, and the oyster does not occur in the baltic except at its entrance into the ocean. these deposits have been found several miles inland, which would indicate that the sea had once covered the intervening space. on the western coast they have not been found, in consequence of their having possibly been swept away by the encroachments of the sea. they are also found on the adjacent islands. these mounds are not peculiar alone to denmark; for they are found in england, scotland, france, and america. _danish peat bogs._--the peat bogs of denmark, so faithfully investigated by professor steenstrup, mark three periods of deposition. the most ancient is called the _scotch-fir_; the second, immediately above, the _oak_, and the uppermost, the _beech_. the peat is from ten to forty feet in thickness, and to form a layer from ten to twenty feet thick would require, according to steenstrup, _at least_ four thousand years, and perhaps even from three to four times that period.[ ] these three epochs denote three periods of time. the lowest belongs to the neolithic, the middle to the bronze, and the last to the iron epoch. in the lowest, or _fir_ period, have been found worked flints and bones. human bones have been found, which correspond with the bones taken from the tumuli of this epoch. _the lake-dwellings of switzerland._--dr. ferdinand keller and his associates have made known to the world the wonderful remains of villages situated in the lakes of switzerland and other countries. the villages of switzerland do not all belong to the same period, and they represent the neolithic, bronze, and iron epochs; but there was no hard line of demarcation between these three periods. these habitations are so numerous that more than two hundred settlements hare been discovered in switzerland alone. among the lakes furnishing these remains may be counted the lake of neuchâtel (forty-six settlements); lake constance (thirty-two settlements); lake of geneva (twenty-four settlements); lake of bienne (twenty-one settlements); lake of morat (sixteen settlements); lake of zurich (three settlements); lake of pfæffikon (six settlements); lake of sempach (six settlements); lake of moosseedorf (two settlements); lake of inkwyl (one settlement); lake of nussbaumen (one settlement); lake greiffensee (one settlement); lake of zug (six settlements); lake of baldegg (five settlements), and others. the habitations belonging to the neolithic are lake constance thirty, neuchatel twelve, geneva two settlements; one each at morat, bienne, zurick, pfæffikon, inkwyl, moosseedorf, nussbaumen, the settlement of concise, the bridge thiéle, the peat-bog of wauwyl, and others. these dwellings were built near the shore, on piles of various kinds of wood, sharpened by tools and fire, and driven into the mud at the shallow bottom of the lake. in some of the settlements the piles were fastened by heaping stones around them. the piles were sometimes placed together, at others apart. the heads were brought to a level and then the platform beams were fastened upon them. this basis served for the foundation of the rude rectangular huts they erected. these piles are not now seen above the water, yet they are visible above the bottom of the lake. the number of piles in some of these settlements is as high as one hundred thousand, and the area occupied, not less than seventy thousand square yards. it has been estimated that the population of the lake-villages during the neolithic was over thirty thousand. the object of these dwellings was to protect the inhabitants from wild animals, the attacks of enemies, and for the ready obtaining of food by fishing. they were not only occupied by the inhabitants, but also by their herds and the stores of fodder.[ ] _robenhausen._--it is not necessary to go into an account of a number of these settlements to represent the neolithic epoch, for the settlement at robenhausen (lake pfæffikon) takes the first rank in giving the domestic arrangements of the ancient inhabitants. this settlement covered a space of nearly three acres, and one hundred thousand piles were used in the whole structure. its form was an irregular quadrangle. it was about two thousand paces from the ancient western shore of the lake, and about three thousand from the shore in the opposite direction. with the last-named side there was a communication by means of a bridge, the piles of which are still visible. on this side were the gardens and pastures. the dwellers of this settlement were unfortunate, as their habitation was twice burned up, and each time, they rallied and rebuilt their huts. they remained a long time as would seem from the depth of the peat and the vast amount of relics found. at a depth of eleven feet were found the earliest or most ancient relics; at ten and one-half feet, the remains of the first conflagration--charcoal, stone and bone implements, pottery, woven cloth, corn, apples, etc.; at seven and one-half feet, flooring, relics of the second settlement, and excrement of cows, sheep, and goats; at six and one half feet, remains of second conflagration--charcoal, stone and bone implements, pottery, woven cloth, corn, apples, etc.; at three and one-half feet, broken stones, flooring, and relics of the third settlement; at two and one half feet, stone celts, pottery, but no traces of fire. above this was two feet of peat and one-half foot of mould. without going into detail, the objects found in these various beds are as follows: made out of wood, are knives, ladles, plates, clubs of ash, in which is fixed a socket of stag's horn containing a stone celt, a boat made of a single trunk, twelve feet long, two and one-half feet wide, and five inches deep, flails for threshing out grain, bows notched at both ends, fishing implements, floats for the support of nets, suspension hooks, tubs, chisels, sandals, yokes made for carrying vessels, and a peculiar ornament. these implements were all made out of yew, maple, ash, fir, and the root of the hazel bush. out of stag's horn--arrow-heads, daggers, piercing and scraping tools, implements for knitting and for agriculture. the implements of stone were polished, and of the usual form. the objects of clay were fragments of pottery, in the shape of urns, plates, and cups, in great abundance. there were also found spoons, and a perforated cone, supposed to have been used as a weight for the loom. several crucibles or melting pots have been found, which were used for melting copper. the third building of this village was on the borderland between the stone and bronze ages. the remains of animals found here and at moosseedorf and wauwyl, all of the neolithic, belong to the brown bear, badger, marten, pine-marten, polecat, wolf, fox, wild-cat, beaver, elk, urus, bison, stag, roe-deer, wild-boar, marsh-boar; the domestic animals were the boar, horse, ox, goat, sheep, and dog. the remains of the domestic hog are absent from all the pile works of this period, save the one at wauwyl. among cereals (robenhausen) were found several varieties of wheat and barley; fruits and berries--service-tree, dog-rose, elder, bilberry, and wayfaring tree; the nuts--hazel, beech, and water-chestnut; the oil-producing plants--opium, or garden poppy, and dogwood; the fibrous plants--flax; plants used for dying--weld; forest trees and shrubs--silver fir, juniper, yew, ash, and oak; water and marsh plants--lake scirpus, pondweeds, common hornwort, marsh bedstraw, buckbean, yellow waterlily, ivy-leaved crowfoot, and marsh pennywort. besides these there have been found many specimens of plaited and woven cloth; also ropes, cords, and a portion of a linseed cake.[ ] in the different settlements the same axes and knives abound, and are of small size. the arrow-heads and saws are an improvement on those of the preceding epoch. among domestic implements, spindle-whorls of rude earthenware were abundant in some of the villages, and corn-crushers are occasionally met with from two to three inches in diameter. about five hundred implements of stone have been found at wauwyl, consisting of axes, small flint arrow-heads, flint-flakes, corn-crushers, rude stones used as hammers, whetstones, and sling-stones. as these lake-dwellings not only belong to the last of the neolithic, but extend beyond, they naturally have a place in the close of this period. m. troyon says the dwellings of this period came suddenly to an "end by the irruption of a people provided with bronze implements. the lake-dwellings were burned by these new-comers, and the primitive inhabitants were slaughtered or driven back into remote places. this catastrophe affects chiefly the settlements of east switzerland, which entirely disappeared, and also a number of those on the shore of the western lakes. some few settlements, however--namely, those of the so-called transition period--are said not to have been destroyed by the new people till after the inhabitants had begun to make use of bronze implements."[ ] dr. keller takes exception to these views. he says there is no sudden leap from one class of civilization to another, and that the metals came gradually into use. the lake-dwellings were not burned down by the irruption of a foreign people; for at niederwyl, and several settlements of the unter-see, no traces of fire have been observed. the fact that but a very few human skeletons have been found in the whole settlements, contradicts the supposition of a battle having taken place between the aborigines and the supposed conquerors, and of the destruction of the former by the latter.[ ] lake-dwellings belonging to this age and the bronze, have been found in bavaria, northern italy, mecklenburg, pomerania, france, england, scotland, and ireland. herodotus says that the pæonians lived this way in lake prasias (thrace), and lubbock says that the fishermen of lake prasias still inhabit wooden huts built over the water. the town of tcherkask in russia, is constructed over the river don, and venice itself is but a lacustrine city.[ ] several attempts have been made to estimate the time which has elapsed since the neolithic period. the estimates of m. morlot are based on the discoveries made in a hillock formed by the river tinière at its entrance into the lake of geneva. this cone contained three distinct layers of vegetable earth placed at different depths between the deposits of alluvium. the first was at a depth of three and one-half feet from the top, and was from four to six inches thick, and in it were found relics of the roman period; the second was five and one-fourth feet lower, and six inches thick, in which were fragments of bronze; the third was at a depth of eighteen feet from the top, and varied in thickness from six to seven inches, and contained fragments of the stone age. history proves that the layer containing the roman relics is from thirteen to eighteen centuries old. since that epoch the cone has increased three and one-half feet, and if the increase was the same in previous ages, then the bed containing the bronze is from twenty-nine hundred to forty-two hundred years old, and the lowest layer, belonging to the stone age, is from four thousand seven hundred to ten thousand years old. the calculation by m. gillieron was made from the discoveries near the bridge of thièle. about one thousand two hundred and thirty feet from the present shore is the old abbey of saint jean, built in the year . there is a document which seems to show that the abbey was built on the edge of the lake. then, in seven hundred and fifty years the lake retired one thousand two hundred and thirty feet. the distance of the present shore from the settlement of the bridge of thièle is eleven thousand and seventy-two feet, and consequently the settlement is not less than six thousand seven hundred and fifty years old. m. figuier assigns to the lake-dwellings an antiquity of from six to seven thousand years before the christian era.[ ] chapter xi. man of the neolithic. from the human bones found in peat-bogs and tumuli, man is represented as having a narrow but round skull, with a projecting ridge above the eyebrows, showing he was round-headed, his eyebrows overhanging, small of stature though stout, and having a great resemblance to the laplanders. in many respects the race was much superior to that of the preceding epoch. man advanced rapidly in the arts, and made great progress in civilization. he had passed out of the barbarous, and might be called a semi-barbarian. _habitations._--man's habitation varied according to the locality. in the extreme south of france he continued for a considerable length of time to occupy the caves and rock-shelters; in switzerland, the pile-buildings, and in denmark he undoubtedly had rude huts placed close together and in proximity to the shell-heaps. _clothing._--clothing also varied according to locality. where the wild animals were numerous their skins were used--there being no incentive to substitute other material. coarse material made of fibrous plants had come into use. the lake-dwellers clothed themselves with this material, and completely protected their bodies. they also used sandals for their feet, as these have been found with the usual indications of usage. _food._--where wild animals could be obtained they were used, and the marrow of the long bones extracted. to this, fish and birds were added. in denmark the principal food was the different species of the edible mollusk. in switzerland a higher order and greater variety of food was used. the meat of the wild animals, birds, and fish was varied with bread made of barley and wheat, and fruit and berries. the meat was not only obtained from the wild animal, but they provided against the uncertainty of the chase by domesticating the boar, ox, sheep, and goat. the horse and dog were domesticated to assist in the chase, but sometimes served for food, probably during a famine. if these people were cannibals, the evidence must rest solely on the human bones discovered at a dolmen near the village of hammer, denmark, which had been subjected to the action of fire. they were found together with some flint implements. but this evidence is not sufficient to lead to the conclusion that at the funeral banquets human flesh was used along with the roasted stag. _arts and manufactures._--the flint hatchets of the refuse-heaps are generally of an imperfect type; the long knives indicate a considerable amount of skill; the bodkins, spear-heads, and scrapers are but little improved. in the latter part of this epoch, the various kinds of implements, especially in switzerland, attained to a surprising degree of perfection, in so much so, it is difficult to understand how this was achieved without the use of metal. they were made into various shapes, and with the design of pleasing the eye. besides the various types of implements common to the different countries, the tribes of denmark manufactured a drilled hatchet, which is combined in various ways with the hammer. a specimen of this type is represented in fig. , now in the museum of copenhagen. it is pierced with a round hole, in which the handle was fixed. the cutting edge describes an arc of a circle, and the other end is wrought into sharp angular edges. new inventions were brought into use. among them was a comb which, according to shape, might be compared to the dung-fork of the american stables. ornaments for the body, made of various materials were fashioned. pottery was still in a rough state, though gradually improving. the loom was invented, and various kinds of cloth were manufactured. also out of the fibrous plants cordage was made, which again was fashioned into nets for fishing. many canoes at various places have been found, showing that they were not only used for fishing but also for carrying cargoes. workshops were established, and there the stone implements were made and polished; one of these shops was at pressigny. [illustration: fig. . danish axe-hammer, drilled for handle.] some idea may be had of the vast number of stone implements which occur, when it is considered that in the museum of copenhagen there are about twelve thousand, consisting of flint axes, wedges, broad, narrow, and hollow chisels; poniards, lance-heads, arrow-heads, flint flakes, and half-moon-shaped implements. in other collections in denmark there are twenty thousand implements. the museum at stockholm contains about sixteen thousand, and the royal irish academy owns seven hundred flint-flakes, five hundred and twelve celts, more than four hundred arrow-heads, fifty spear-heads, seventy-five scrapers, and numerous other objects of stone, such as sling-stones, hammers, whetstones, grain-crushers, etc.[ ] some of these implements, however, may belong to other epochs. war must have been carried on to a considerable extent, as fortified camps have been discovered in belgium, at furfooz, and other places. their weapons were the axe, the arrow, the spear, and possibly the knife. these were wrought with great care. _agriculture._--man commenced to till the ground in this age, and thus laid the true foundation of civilization. he probably was forced to do it. the beasts of the forest were gradually decreasing. they had nourished him in the infancy of his mind, and now he should begin to look to the soil, and by the cultivation of its products he must sustain his life. his principal implement of agriculture must have been the sharpened stick, pointed with deer-horn. he cultivated the cereals, made his corn-mill, and stored the grain for winter use. _burial._--how the colonists of the lake-dwellings disposed of their dead is unknown. in denmark, and many other places, the dead were buried in dolmens or tumuli. a dolmen is a monument consisting of several perpendicular stones covered with a great block or slab. when it is surrounded by circles of stone it takes the name _cromlech_. the dolmens occur also in scandinavia, france, and brittany. they were formerly considered to have been druidical sacrificial altars. they were usually covered over with earth, and in them were buried from one to twenty persons, accompanied with their implements. when a person died, the tomb was reopened to receive the new occupant. at such a time fire was used for the purpose of purifying the atmosphere of the tomb. in brittany, in the vicinity of the tombs, there were set up in the ground enormous blocks of stone, that have received the name of _menhirs_, the most noted of which is that at carnac. when these dolmens remain in the state in which they were left, still covered with earth, they take the name of _tumuli_. comparatively few of the tumuli belong to the neolithic. in these, large numbers of bodies have been found, and none of them in a natural position, but cramped up and their heads resting between the knees. judging from the calcined bones, which are frequently met with at the tomb, it may be inferred that victims were offered during the funeral ceremonies, perchance a slave, or the widow. lubbock is of opinion that when a woman died in giving birth to a child, or even while still suckling it, the child was interred alive with her.[ ] this hypothesis is substantiated by the great number of cases in which the skeleton of a woman and child have been found together. in the ceremonies at the tomb, some read the belief in a future state of existence. the evidence, however, is no clearer than that in the previous epochs. man undoubtedly had such a belief, but science does not reveal it. chapter xii. bronze epoch. the age of bronze bears no direct relation to the antiquity of man, for it is largely embraced in written history. although history does not record the events of the age of bronze in western europe, yet history covers the time which embraces the use of bronze. this epoch has more to do with the archæologist than the geologist. it is marked by the abundance of swords, spears, fish-hooks, sickles, knives, ornaments, and other articles made of bronze. the bronze implements are principally found in england, scotland, ireland, france, denmark, norway, italy, and switzerland. the lake-settlements of switzerland known to belong to this epoch are: geneva, ten settlements; neuchatel, twenty-five settlements; bienne, ten settlements; morat, three settlements; and sempach, two settlements. to these may be added some of the crannoges of ireland; also many tumuli and mounds. _type._--the man of this epoch was not unlike that of the preceding. his head was rather broad than long, he was small, energetic, and muscular; his hands were small, as is proven by the remarkably small handles of their swords, which are too small for a hand of the present day. this type of man has maintained itself in the north of switzerland to the present time. _habitations and food._--the caves and rock-shelters gave way entirely to the rude huts which now protected man. if they were resorted to, it was only from some peculiar cause or danger. the food was the same as in the neolithic, with additions to the cereals. _clothing._--the skins of animals were used less than formerly for clothing. garments made of other material have been found, and even the whole dress of a chief. in a tumulus of jutland there were found a thick woollen cap, a coarse woollen cloak (fig. ), semicircular in form, scalloped out round the neck, shaggy in the inside, three feet four inches long, and wide in proportion; two woollen shawls, a woollen shirt, woollen leggings, and the remains of a pair of leather boots. fibrous plants also contributed to the comfort of man, and were possibly used for summer wear, and under garments in winter. [illustration: fig. . woollen cloak of the bronze epoch, found in , in a tumulus in jutland.] _implements._--the people of this age made great improvements in their weapons, tools, and ornaments. they consist of bronze celts, swords, hammers, knives, hair-pins, small rings, ear-rings, bracelets, fish-hooks, awls, spiral-wires, lance-heads, arrow-heads, buttons, needles, various ornaments, saws, daggers, sickles, and double-pointed pins. there were also ornaments of gold. only one implement, a winged celt, has been found, which bore an inscription. _arts._--progress was made in the art of weaving. soldering and the moulding of metal were practised; foundries were established, the remains of which have been discovered at devaine and walflinger in switzerland; stone moulds were used, one of which, on trial, produced a hatchet exactly similar to those which have been collected. the moulds were usually made out of sand. the crucible used for the melting of the metal was made out of pottery which was placed over a hole in the earth filled with burning charcoal; when the metal was melted, it was poured into the mould. pottery took new shapes and was adorned with various patterns. glass, which has so long been ascribed to phoenician origin, was invented in the bronze age, for glass beads, of a blue or green color, have been found in the tombs of this epoch. _agriculture._--the cereals attest to the tilling of the soil. the ground was prepared by the projecting branch of a stem of the tree, used as a plough. the grain was stored for winter use, and when required was crushed by being rubbed between two stones serving as a mortar. _fishing and navigation._--there are no distinct traces of improvement beyond the past epoch, in fishing and navigation, unless it be in the improved hooks made of bronze. _burial._--the custom of burning the dead was almost universal in denmark, and was more or less practised in other countries. the ashes and fragments of the bone were collected and placed either in or under an urn. when buried, the corpse was usually placed in a contracted position, but occasionally extended. with the dead were buried their implements and clothing. the body of the chief discovered in a tumulus in jutland, where the clothing was found, was buried in a coffin nine and two-third feet long, over two feet in breadth, and covered by a movable lid. the body was in a good state of preservation, owing to the action on it of water strongly impregnated with iron. it was wrapped in the woollen cloak, and again wrapped in an ox's hide. buried with it were the shawls, leggings, shirt, boots, and caps, two small boxes, a bronze razor, comb, a bronze sword in a wooden sheath, and a long woollen band. in other coffins have been found swords, knives, brooches, awls, tweezers, and buttons, all of bronze. in a baby's coffin was found an amber bead, and a small bronze bracelet. _religious belief._--many crescents, made of stone and earthenware, have been found which are regarded, by some archæologists, as religious emblems. dr. keller calls them "moon images," and has devoted a short chapter to their consideration.[ ] on the other hand, lubbock and carl vogt regard them as resting-places for the head at night.[ ] they carefully arranged their long hair, and evidently sacrificed comfort for vanity. they carried a long pin with which to scratch the head. this kind of a pillow is still used by the fuegeans and abyssinians, who have their hair elaborately decorated; and in some cases this is never disturbed. if the people were worshippers the crescent is the only evidence from archæology. no idols have ever been discovered. that the people were already worshippers may be learned from the traditions recorded in history. chapter xiii. iron epoch. as the _iron epoch_ fairly establishes civilization, and belongs almost wholly to the historical epoch, it will be here briefly noticed, and then dismissed after giving a quotation from dr. keller. the bronze had not only prepared the way for the iron epoch, but also gave a great impulse to succeeding ages. the art of metallurgy assumed a new importance and gave new life to every movement that tended to the assistance of man. the works of bronze gave way to those of iron. a knife made of iron is represented in fig. . knives of this pattern were, however, made of bronze, and served for the same purpose. the workshops of this age were so numerous that four hundred of them have been discovered in one province. the potter's wheel was invented; money was introduced, and agriculture greatly nourished. [illustration: fig. . a knife of the iron epoch.] some of the swiss lake-dwellings of neuchatel and bienne belong to this epoch. dr. keller, in summing up some of his observations, has made use of the following language: "the phenomenon of the lake-dwellings, so important in the history of civilization, the time of their first establishment, their original design, their development, and their final extinction, in spite of many accumulated facts, is in many respects clouded in doubt.... it is certain from the very beginning of this peculiar mode of living to the latest period of its existence, while outward circumstances remained the same, a quiet advance to a better development of the conditions of life may be observed, in which there was neither retrogression nor any sudden advance by the intervention of foreign elements. the general diffusion of metals in a country which had none, is explained simply by the barter which existed throughout europe in the very earliest ages. the question why the inhabitants of a lake-dwelling of the stone age abandoned their settlements, while those of another, not many hours' or many minutes' walk distant, remained quietly living on their platforms, is of no greater importance than the inquiry why, during the middle ages, so many localities have disappeared, the names and situations of which are known to us. the presence of objects of industry on the area of the lake-dwellings has nothing in it very surprising, if we consider what misfortunes villages of straw-covered huts were exposed to, in which not only the houses themselves, but even the platforms on which they stood, were formed of very combustible materials. it is possible, if we are to take cæsar's account literally, that when the helvetii, whose arrival in the country is neither mentioned in history nor shown by archæology, withdrew, the lake-dwellings then existing were, as a whole, burned down; but there can also be no doubt that some remained standing, or were rebuilt after the return of the population. their continuing down to the roman time is only astonishing to any one who imagines that at this time the whole population had gone over to the roman manner of life, while the proof lies before him that the lower class adhered to their own manners and customs till the entrance of the german races."[ ] chapter xiv. traces of man in america. america furnishes a better field for the antiquary than the old world. her ancient remains are not so much injured by the decay of empires and the rude hand of war. succeeding ages have not so much effaced these marks, and many of the remains still stand as left by the original occupants, save only the change and decay which time itself produces. america will yet be discovered. it is true the landmarks are known; but these have not been investigated so diligently as the remains of man in europe. the boucher de perthes and the dr. schmerling are yet to come. until they do, the history of primitive man in america must be surrounded with great uncertainty. much labor has been given to the investigation of this subject, and many works written, all looking toward an early development which must sooner or later come. in this chapter the aim will only be to point out some of these traces. _enumeration._--the implements from the gravel beds of colorado and the skull from calaveras county, california, have already been referred to (pp. , ). near osage mission, kansas, there was found a human skull imbedded in a solid rock, which was broken open by blasting. it was examined by dr. weirley, who compared it with a modern skull, and found it resembled the latter in general shape, yet it was an inch and a quarter longer. of this relic he says: "it belonged to a man of a large size, and was imbedded in conglomerate rock of the tertiary class, and found several feet beneath the surface. parts of the frontal, parietal, and occipital bones were carried away by the explosion. the piece of rock holding the remains weighs some forty or fifty pounds, with many impressions of marine shells, and through it runs a vein of quartz, or within the cranium crystallized organic matter, and by the aid of a microscope presents a beautiful appearance." in shape the neanderthal man comes nearest to it.[ ] in the comstock lode (nevada), at a depth of five hundred feet, judge a. w. baldwin found a human skull of unusual and peculiar shape. it is very short from base to summit, and exceedingly broad between the ears. the skull is entire, with the exception of the facial bones. this skull has never been examined by a competent person.[ ] in the drift-clay, in the city of toronto, at a depth of two feet from the surface, were discovered the bones and horn of a deer, amidst an accumulation of charcoal and ashes, and with them a rude stone chisel or hatchet.[ ] in the gravel of the gold-bearing quartz of the grinell leads (kansas), was found an imperfect flint knife at a depth of fourteen feet. above the implement the gravel, composed of quartz and reddish clay, was ten feet thick, and above this was four feet of rich black soil. this implement was given to dr. daniel wilson by mr. p. a. scott.[ ] dr. dickeson found, in the yellow loam of the mississippi at natchez, a human pelvic bone along with the bones of the mastodon and megalonyx. they were found at a depth of thirty feet from the surface, and the human bone had the same black color which characterized the others. sir charles lyell calculated that it required sixty-seven thousand years to form the delta of the mississippi, but admits, if the conclusions arrived at by the united states engineers be correct, in respect to the annual amount of sediment discharged at the delta, the growth would be reduced to thirty-three thousand five hundred years. taking either of these estimates, the same would give the number of years which have elapsed since these bones were deposited.[ ] in an excavation made near new orleans, at a depth of sixteen feet from the surface, beneath four cypress forests superimposed one upon the other, the workmen found a complete human skeleton, and some charcoal. the cranium is similar to the aboriginal type of the indian race. this discovery furnished the data from which dr. bennet dowler assigned to the human race an antiquity, in the delta of the mississippi, of fifty-seven thousand years.[ ] count pourtalis found some fossil human remains, consisting of jaws, teeth, and some bones of the foot, in a calcareous conglomerate forming a part of the series of reefs of florida. the whole series of reefs is of post-tertiary origin, and, according to professor agassiz, has been one hundred and thirty-five thousand years in forming. if this calculation be correct, then these bones must have an antiquity of ten thousand years.[ ] dr. lund, a danish naturalist, explored eight hundred caverns in brazil, belonging to different epochs, and exhumed in them a great number of unknown animal species. in a calcareous cave, near the lake of semidouro, he found the bones of not less than thirty persons of different ages, and showing a similar state of decomposition to that of the bones of animals with which they were associated. from the discoveries there made, lund was forced to the conclusion that man was cotemporaneous with the megatherium and the mylodon--animals belonging to the post-tertiary.[ ] the shell-heaps of america are coeval with those of denmark. those at damariscotta, maine, have been examined by professor w. d. gunning. he estimates that within, an area of one hundred rods in length, eighty in width there are piled one hundred million bushels of oyster shells. one dome-shaped hillock is nearly one hundred feet in height. the only human relics found among the shells are stone gouges, arrow-heads, bone needles, pottery, and copper knives. these shells were probably deposited by but a few individuals at a time. when formed, the oyster was a native of that coast, but within the memory of man the oyster has not lived there. _the mound-builders._--an ancient and unknown people of a certain degree of civilization have left remains of their greatness in the fortifications and mounds in the valleys of the mississippi and its tributaries. these works extend over a great extent of territory. they are found in western new york, west virginia, ohio, kentucky, tennessee, indiana, illinois, wisconsin, michigan, iowa, nebraska, missouri, arkansas, louisiana, mississippi, alabama, georgia, florida, texas, and along the kansas, platte, and other western rivers. the people appear to have originated in ohio. on the southern extremity the works gradually lose their distinctive character, and pass into the higher developed architecture of mexico; and at the north, north-east, and north-west, the population seem to have been more limited and their works less perfectly developed. the people were preëminently given to agriculture; were not warlike, and only navigated the rivers along their settlements. the fertile valleys of the scioto, two miamis, kanawaha, white, wabash, kentucky, cumberland, and tennessee rivers were densely populated, as indicated by the numerous works which diversify their surfaces. the stone and bone implements from the mounds, in their shape differ but little from those of europe. the hatchets and knives are not only made of flint but also of obsidian, and other hard stones. copper was the chief metallic substance. out of this they made various implements, and swords. it was obtained from the shores of lake superior, where they carried on extensive mining. in these mines have been found their implements, some of which are very large diorite hatchets, used as sledges for breaking off lumps of copper, and so heavy that it would require more than one man to wield them. the copper was not subjected to heat, but it was hammered cold into such a shape as was desired. some idea of the number of the mounds and fortresses may be given from the statement that in the state of ohio alone there are from eleven thousand to twelve thousand of these works. the fortresses were used for the protection of the people against the predatory warfare of the hostile tribes, or even, it may be, against the incursions made by other mound-builders. in regard to the mounds, there has been much speculation, and some archæologists divide them into sacrificial, sepulchral, temple, and symbolical. _sacrificial._--the sacrificial mounds are characterized by "their almost invariable occurrence within enclosures; their regular construction in uniform layers of gravel, earth, and sand, disposed alternately in strata conformable to the shape of the mound; and their covering a symmetrical altar of burned clay or stone, on which are deposited numerous relics, in all instances exhibiting traces, more or less abundant, of their having been exposed to the action of fire."[ ] among the most remarkable are those found on the scioto, at the place called mound city situated on the western bank. the mounds are enclosed by a simple embankment, between three and four feet high. the area occupied is about thirteen acres, and includes twenty-four mounds. one of these is one hundred and forty feet in length, and the greatest breadth is sixty feet. in this mound occurred four successive altars, a bushel of fragments of spear-heads, over fifty quartz arrow-heads, and copper and other relics. the sacrificial deposits do not disclose a miscellaneous assemblage of relics, for on one altar hundreds of sculptured pipes chiefly occur; on another, pottery, copper ornaments, stone implements; on others, calcined shells, burned bones; and on others, no deposit has been noticed. the sacrificial mounds are found at marietta and other localities. all the investigations which have been made prove that the altars were not only used for a long period, but also had been repeatedly renewed. _sepulchral._--the sepulchral mounds are numbered by the thousands. they are simple earth-pyramids, sometimes elliptical or pear-shaped, and vary in height from six to eighty feet. usually they contain but one skeleton, reduced almost to ashes, but occasionally in its ordinary condition and in a crouching position. by the side of them occur trinkets, and, in a few cases, weapons. these mounds were probably only raised over the body of a chief or some distinguished person. _temple._--the temple mounds are truncated pyramids, with paths or steps leading to the summit, and sometimes with terraces at different heights. among the most noted of these is that of cahokia in illinois. it is seven hundred feet long at its base, five hundred feet wide, and ninety feet high. its level summit is several acres in extent. _symbolical._--the symbolical mounds consist of gigantic bas-reliefs formed on the surface of the ground, representing men, animals, and inanimate objects. in wisconsin they exist in thousands, and among the devices are man, the lizard, turtle, elk, buffalo, bear, fox, otter, raccoon, frog, bird, fish, cross, crescent, angle, straight-line, war-club, tobacco-pipe, and other familiar implements or weapons. in dane county there is a remarkable group, consisting of six quadrupeds, six parallelograms, one circular tumulus, one human figure, and a small circle. the quadrupeds are from one hundred to one hundred and twenty feet long, and the figure of the man measured one hundred and twenty-five feet in length and nearly one hundred and forty feet from the end of one arm to the other. near the village of pewaukee, when first discovered there were two lizards and seven tortoises. one of the latter measured four hundred and seventy feet. in adams county, ohio, is the figure of a vast serpent; its head occupies the summit of a hill and in its distended jaws is a part of an oval-shaped mass of earth one hundred and sixty feet long, eighty wide, and four feet high. the body of the serpent extends round the hill for about eight hundred feet, forming graceful coils and undulations. near granville, licking county, ohio, on the summit of a hill two hundred feet high, is the representation of an alligator. its extreme length is two hundred and fifty feet, average height four feet; the head, shoulders, and rump are elevated in parts to a height of six feet; the paws are forty feet long, the ends being broader than the links, as if the spread of the toes were originally indicated. upon the inner side of the effigy is a raised space covered with stones which have been exposed to the action of fire; and from this leading to the top is a graded way ten feet in breadth. on examination it was discovered that the outline of the figure was composed of stones of considerable size, upon which the superstructure had been modelled in fine clay. _antiquity._--there are methods of determining the antiquity of these mounds. mr. e. g. squier has pointed out three facts which go to prove that they belong to a distant period. . none of these ancient works occur on the lowest formed of the river terraces, which mark the subsidence of the streams. as these works are raised on all the others, it follows that the lowest terrace has been formed since the works were erected. the streams generally form four terraces, and the period marked by the lowest must be the longest because the excavating power of such streams grows less as the channels grow deeper. . the skeletons of the mound-builders are found in a condition of extreme decay. only one or two skeletons have been recovered in a condition suitable for intelligent examination. the circumstances attending their burial were unusually favorable for preserving them. the earth around them has invariably been found wonderfully compact and dry; and yet, when exhumed, they have been in a decomposed and crumbling condition. . their great age is shown by their relation to the primeval forests. as the mound-builders were a settled agricultural people, their enclosures and fields were cleared of trees, and remained so until deserted. when discovered by the europeans these enclosures were covered by gigantic trees, some of them eight hundred years old. the trees which first made their appearance were not the regular forest trees. when the first trees that got possession of the soil had died away, they were supplanted, in many cases, by other kinds, till at last, after a great number of centuries, that remarkable diversity of species characteristic of north america would be established.[ ] dr. buchner assigns to them an antiquity of from seven thousand to ten thousand years.[ ] fort shelby, in orleans county, new york, was carefully examined by frank h. cushing, the archæologist. the fort was found to be composed of two parallel circular walls, with a gateway in each. the gateway in the outer wall fronted a peat-bog, the shore of which was some ten feet distant. within the enclosure he found small, flat, notched stones, used for sinking fishing-nets. into the bog he sank a shaft to the depth of seven feet, not far from the shore. at the bottom of the shaft he found the shells of living species of shell-fish. the natural surroundings show that this fort was built when the peat-bog was a lake. this is further confirmed by the fact that all ancient works are erected near a permanent supply of water. the nearest permanent supply of water is oak orchard creek, one and one-half mile distant. the formation of this peat would require not less than four thousand years, and more probably twice that number. the mound-builders must have remained a very long time. these works were formed gradually, and the population extended slowly toward the north. their corn-fields, by their raised condition, show many successive years of usage. note a.--in reference to the fossil human bones from florida count l. f. pourtales says: "the human jaw and other bones, found in florida by myself in , were not in a coral formation, but in a fresh-water sandstone on the shore of lake monroe, associated with fresh-water shells of species still living in the lake, (_paludina, ampullaria, etc._) no date can be assigned to the formation of that deposit, at least from present observation."--_american naturalist_, vol. ii., p. . note b.--besides the evidences already enumerated, col. charles whittlesey gives the following: . three skeletons of indians in a shelter cave near elyria, o., were found four feet below the surface, resting upon the original floor of the cave, upon which were also charcoal, ashes, and the remains of existing animals; estimated age, two thousand years. . several human skeletons were found in a cave near louisville, ky., cemented into a breccia. they were discovered in constructing the reservoir in . . a log, worn by the feet of man, was found in the muck bed at high rock spring, saratoga, n. y., at a depth of nine feet beneath the cave, and estimated by dr. henry mcguire to be , years old. it was discovered in . . mr. koch claims to have found an arrow head fifteen feet below the skeleton of the _mastodon ohioensis_ from the recent alluvium of the pomme de terre river, mo., and now in the british museum. his statement was, however, contradicted by one of the men who assisted him in exhuming the skeleton. . dr. holmes, of charleston, s. c., found pottery at the base of a peat bog, on the banks of the ashley river, in close connection with the remains of the mastodon and megatherium. . col. whittlesey, in , found fire-hearths in the ancient alluvium of the ohio, at portsmouth, o., at a depth of twenty feet, and beneath the works of the mound-builders.--_col. whittlesey before the american association, in ._ chapter xv. written history. it is not generally known that written history extends so far back as to make worthless the present system of chronology. the mighty empires of antiquity must have been a mystery to many a thoughtful mind. as far back as history will carry us we not only behold the world teeming with her millions of people, but also nations rising and empires crumbling. rollin felt the difficulties of the chronology which hampered him. he says the assyrian empire was founded by nimrod eighteen hundred years after the creation of man, or two hundred and twenty-four years after the deluge, or one hundred and twenty-six years before the death of noah. nimrod was succeeded by his son ninus, who received powerful succor from the arabians, and extended his conquests from egypt as far as india and bactriana. ninus enlarged his capital to sixty miles in circumference, built the walls to the height of one hundred feet, and so broad that three chariots could go abreast upon them with ease, and fortified and adorned them with one thousand five hundred towers two hundred feet high. after he had finished this prodigious work he led against the bactrians one million seven hundred thousand foot, two hundred thousand horse, besides four hundred vessels well equipped and provided. after his death, semiramis, his wife, ascended the throne. she enlarged her dominions by the conquest of a great part of ethiopia. then she led her army of three million foot and five hundred thousand horse, besides the camels and chariots of war, into india, where she suffered a severe defeat. after making these statements, rollin says, "i must own i am somewhat puzzled with a difficulty which may be raised against the extraordinary things related of ninus and semiramis, as they do not seem to agree with the times so near the deluge: i mean, such vast armies, such a numerous cavalry, so many chariots armed with scythes, and such immense treasures of gold and silver; ... and the magnificence of the buildings, ascribed to them."[ ] the difficulties presented to the modern historian never would have occurred if discredit had not been thrown on the writings of the ancients. _egypt._--the only history of egypt, written in greek, was that of manetho, a high-priest of heliopolis, who lived three hundred years before christ. only fragments of this work have been preserved. this history is taken from the ancient egyptian chronicles, and records a list of thirty dynasties reigning in one city. his "thirty-one lists contain the names of one hundred and thirteen kings, who, according to them, reigned in egypt during the space of four thousand four hundred and sixty-five years."[ ] dr. buchner says manetho "calculates for three hundred and seventy-five pharaohs a reigning period of six thousand one hundred and seventeen years, which together with the present era, makes about eight thousand three hundred and thirty years."[ ] bayard taylor makes manetho assign the first dynasty to about the year b. c.[ ] herodotus says the egyptians "declare that from their first king (menes) to this last mentioned monarch (sethos), the priest of vulcan, was a period of three hundred and forty-one generations; such, at least, they say, was the number both of their kings and of their high-priests, during this interval. now three hundred generations of men make ten thousand years, three generations filling up the century; and the remaining forty-one generations make thirteen hundred and forty years. thus the whole number of years is eleven thousand three hundred and forty." the priests "led me into the inner sanctuary, which is a spacious chamber, and showed me a multitude of colossal statues, in wood, which they counted up, and found to amount to the exact number they had said; the custom being for every high-priest during his life-time to set up his statue in the temple. as they showed me the figures and reckoned them up, they assured me that each was the son of the one preceding him; and this they repeated throughout the whole line, beginning with the representation of the priest last deceased, and continuing till they had completed the series."[ ] from the time of sethos, the priest of vulcan, to the burning of the temple of delphi, was one hundred and twenty-two years. the temple was burned b. c. . the period which, then, has elapsed from sethos to the present ( ) is two thousand five hundred and forty-five years. adding this to the time of menes we have the whole period covering thirteen thousand eight hundred and eighty-five years. but if the generation be reduced to twenty years then the period from menes to the present is nine thousand three hundred and sixty-five years. the recent explorations made by mariette among the archives of egypt have confirmed the testimony of manetho. the names of the kings, their order of succession, and the length of their reigns correspond with manetho's table. these discoveries not only testify to the great antiquity of the empire, but also throw light on the nation, its manners, and customs. there were found stools, cane-bottomed chairs, work-boxes, nets, knives, needles, toilet ornaments, earthenware, seeds, eggs, bread, straw baskets, a child's plaything, paint boxes, with colors and brushes, etc., from three thousand to six thousand years old. there were also found the jewels of queen aah-hotep, who lived b. c., consisting of exquisite chains, diadems, ear-rings, and bracelets, which no modern queen would hesitate to wear. these statements are still further confirmed by the testimony of geology. in the year borings were commenced in the mud deposit of the nile. the most important results were obtained from an excavation and boring made near the base of the pedestal of the statue of rameses at memphis, the middle of whose reign, according to lepsius, was b. c. assuming with mr. horner that the lower part of the platform or foundation was fourteen and three-fourths inches below the surface of the ground, or alluvial flat, at the time it was laid, there had been formed between that period and the year a. d. , or during the space of three thousand two hundred and eleven years, a deposit of nine feet four inches round the pedestal, which gives a mean increase of three and one-half inches in a hundred years. it was further ascertained, by sinking a shaft near the pedestal, and by boring in the same place, that below the level of the old plain the thickness of old nile mud resting on desert sand amounted to thirty-two feet; and it was therefore inferred by mr. horner that the lowest layer (in which a fragment of burned brick was found) was more than thirteen thousand years old, or was deposited thirteen thousand four hundred and ninety-six years before the year ."[ ] other excavations were made on a large scale. in the first sixteen or twenty-four feet there were dug up jars, vases, pots, a small human figure in burnt clay, a copper knife, and other articles entire. when the water soaking through from the nile hindered the progress of the workmen, boring was resorted to, and almost everywhere, and from all depths, even where they sank sixty feet below the surface, pieces of burned brick and pottery were extracted.[ ] _troy._--troy, made immortal by the poem of homer, has recently been uncovered to the eye of man, and fresh lustre has been thrown over the ancient bard. the descriptions of troy given by homer, thought to have been a mere work of imagination, are now shown to be accurate, and also that he must have been there. for the re-discovery and unearthing of troy the world is indebted to dr. schlieman. four buried cities superimposed one above the other were discovered. the third city, below the surface, is ancient troy. the house of priam, the scæan gate, the massive walls and pavements, still remained. in the house of priam dr. schlieman found a great mass of human bones, among them two entire skeletons wearing copper helmets, a silver vase, two diadems of golden scales, a golden coronet, fifty-six golden ear-rings, eight thousand seven hundred and fifty gold rings, buttons, etc. immediately beside the house of priam, closely packed in a quadrangular space, surrounded with ashes, and near by a copper key, were a large oval shield of copper, a copper pot, a copper tray, a golden flagon, weighing nearly a pound, several silver vases, a silver bowl, fourteen copper lance-heads, fourteen copper battle-axes, two large two-edged daggers, a part of a sword, and some smaller articles. the value, by weight alone, of all the gold and silver found in or near the house of priam, has been estimated at twenty thousand dollars. during the excavations, over one hundred thousand articles were found. every mark showed that troy had been suddenly destroyed. conflagration, ruin, the implements and the effects of war were visible. even the brave warriors who fell while defending the palace of their king have not yet wholly crumbled into dust. the four cities may be thus summed up: the topmost stratum is six and one-half feet in depth and covers the grecian settlement which was established about the year b. c. beneath the greek masonry are found the walls of another city, built of earth and small stones, but the abundance of wood-ashes shows that the city--or the successive cities--was chiefly built of wood. the ruins of troy, next in succession, are from twenty-three and one-half to thirty-three and one-half feet from the surface, and form a stratum averaging ten feet in thickness. troy is supposed to have been founded about b. c., and its fall and destruction by fire to have occurred about b. c. under troy there is a fourth stratum of ruins, varying from thirteen to twenty feet in depth. the most remarkable feature of these oldest ruins is the superiority of the terracotta articles. these vases are of a shining black, red, or brown color, with ornamental patterns, first cut into the pottery, and then filled with a white substance. the age of these ruins "is a matter of pure conjecture, since the vicissitudes of the city's history--frequent destruction and rebuilding--would have the same practical effect, or very nearly so, as a long interval of time. we have anywhere from two to five thousand years before christ as the date of the foundation of the _first_ troy."[ ] _chaldea._--berosus, a chaldean priest of belus, nearly three hundred years before christ, wrote in greek a regular history of chaldea, in nine books. the materials for this work were supplied by the archives then existing in the temple of belus at babylon. the work was particularly devoted to a history of the kingdom prior to the beginning of the assyrian empire. fragments of this work have been preserved by josephus and eusebius. after describing the cyclical ages of ten fabulous kings, he then comes to what he considers true history, and enumerates one hundred and sixty-three kings of chaldea, who reigned successively from the time when the list begins to the rise of the assyrian empire, about the year b. c. berosus begins with a dynasty of eighty-six kings, and gives their names, which are now lost. he had no chronology of their time, but subjected it to a cyclical calculation. his list, which has so far escaped the lapse of time and the change of hands, is thus preserved: first, eighty-six chaldean kings; history and time mythical. second, eight median kings; during two hundred and twenty-four years. third, eleven kings. fourth, forty-nine chaldean kings. fifth, nine arabian kings; during two hundred and forty-five years. the rulers of the assyrian empire were next added, as a sixth dynasty. the blank spaces in the list are doubtless the result of careless copying, or caused by imperfections in the manuscripts. in order to make the old kingdom of chaldea begin about the year b. c. the first eighty-six kings of berosus have been struck out as fabulous, and the median dynasty regarded as spurious, and this without any show of reason, save that it does not agree with the chronology which the mutilators of history accept. investigations which have been made among the ruined cities of chaldea have given great weight to the authority of berosus, and are tending to the confirmation of his history. in susiana there was found a cushite inscription, mentioned by rawlinson, in which there is a date that goes back nearly to the year b. c. the testimony of the records disentombed from the ruins, as well as berosus, contradicts the prevalent hypothesis that the magian or aryan race occupied the country before the cushites. these ruins also "confirm berosus by showing that chaldea was a cultivated and flourishing nation, governed by kings, long previous to the time when the city known to us as babylon rose to eminence and became the seat of empire. during that long time there were several great political epochs in the history of the country, representing important dynastic changes, and several transfers of the seat of government from one city to another. such epochs in chaldean history are indicated by the list of berosus."[ ] by this people, the science of astronomy was well understood. "callisthenes, who accompanied alexander to babylon, sent to aristotle from that capital a series of astronomical observations which he had found preserved there, extending back to a period of one thousand nine hundred and three years from alexander's conquest of the city.... these observations were recorded in tablets of baked clay.... they must have extended, according to simplicius, as far back as b. c., and would seem to have been commenced and carried on for many centuries by the primitive chaldean people." a lens of considerable power, used for either magnifying or condensing the rays of the sun, was found at babylon, in a chamber of the ruin called nimroud.[ ] _china._--litse, an eminent chinese historian, relates that there were long periods of time when the chinese kingdom flourished, the chronology of which is not preserved, although there is recorded some knowledge of the rulers. one of these rulers promoted the study of astronomy. next come the historical epochs. during the first, astronomy, religion, and the art of writing were cultivated. this was a great epoch, and ruled by fifteen successive kings. in the second epoch, agriculture and medical science were promoted. in the third, the magnetic needle was discovered, the written characters improved, civilized life advanced, and a great revolt suppressed. in the fourth and fifth epochs, the descendants of the previous ruler reigned. next came the period of yao and shin. after this the period of the "imperial dynasties," which began with the emperor yu, who lived two thousand two hundred years b. c. the historical work of sse-ma-thi-an narrates events chronologically from the year b. c. to b. c.[ ] _mexico._--it is known that books or manuscripts were abundant among the ancient mexicans. there were persons duly appointed to keep a chronicle of the passing events. las casas, who saw the books, says they gave the origin of the kingdom as well as the founders of the different cities, and every different thing which transpired that was worthy of note: such as the history of kings, their modes of election and succession; their labors, actions, wars, memorable deeds, good or bad; the heroes of other days, their triumphs and defeats. these chroniclers calculated the days, months, and years. nearly all these books were destroyed at the instigation of the monks, and by the more ignorant and fanatical spanish priests. a vast collection of these old writings were burned in one conflagration by order of bishop zumarraga. a few of the works, however, escaped, but none of the great books of annals described by las casas.[ ] thus mexico must be left to the archæologist unassisted by written history. chapter xvi. language. the origin and growth of language evidently afford a great field for study, in not only tracing the development of civilization, but also in confirming the testimony of the ancients and the conclusions of the geologists. if the unity of language could not be established, there would still be left a field so great as would not lessen the interest or the importance of the subject. but a new language cannot be formed. for the sake of convenience the many varieties of language have been grouped into three great divisions, _i. e._, the aryan, the semitic, and the turanian. "the english, together with all the teutonic languages of the continent, celtic, slavonic, greek, latin with its modern offshoots, such as french and italian, persian, and sanskrit, are so many varieties of one common type of speech: that sanskrit, the ancient language of the veda, is no more distinct from the greek of homer, ... or from the anglo-saxon of alfred, than french is from italian. all these languages together form one family, one whole, in which every member shares certain features in common with all the rest, and is at the same time distinguished from the rest by certain features peculiarly its own. the same applies to the semitic family which comprises, as its most important members, the hebrew of the old testament, the arabic of the koran, and the ancient languages on the monuments of phoenicia and carthage, of babylon and assyria. these languages, again, form a compact family, and differ entirely from the other family, which we called aryan or indo-european. the third group of languages, for we can hardly call it a family, comprises most of the remaining languages of asia, and counts among its principal members the tungusic, mongolic, turkic, samoyedic, and finnic, together with the languages of siam, the malay islands, thibet, and southern india. lastly, the chinese language stands by itself as monosyllabic, the only remnant of the earliest formation of human speech."[ ] anterior to these three families there was still another from which these were derived. it contained the germs of all the turanian, as well as the aryan and semitic forms of speech. it belongs to that period in the history of man when ideas were first clothed in language, and has been called the rhematic period.[ ] as regards the origin of language, three theories have been proposed: the interjectional, the imitation, and the root. the first supposes that the beginnings of human speech were the cries and sounds which are uttered when a human being is affected by fear, pain, or joy. the second supposes "that man, being as yet mute, heard the voices of birds, and dogs, and cows, the thunder of the clouds, the roaring of the sea, the rustling of the forest, the murmurs of the brook, and the whisper of the breeze. he tried to imitate these sounds, and finding his mimicking cries useful as signs of the objects from which they proceeded, he followed up the idea and elaborated language." the third theory, advanced by max müller, is that language followed as the outward sign and realization of that inward faculty which is called the faculty of abstraction, and the roots, to which language may be reduced, express a general, not an individual idea.[ ] there is more or less truth in all these theories. at the very earliest period man must have possessed some method of communicating his wants or ideas. the casual observer has noticed that animals have methods of communicating with one another. it is not improbable that at the very earliest period man's only mode was that of cries and signs. this may have lasted for a very long time. then the mimicking commenced. next, comparison was resorted to when he had so far advanced as to describe his thoughts and, finally, from these various beginnings, from necessary or forced improvement, his ideas were expressed in root words.[ ] instead of new languages originating, old languages change. they are mutable, and from them new dialects are produced. in the history of man there never has been a new language, and the languages now spoken are but the modifications of old ones. the words now used by all people, however broken up, crushed, or put together, are the same materials as were used in the beginnings of speech. new words are but old words; old in their material elements, though they may be renewed and dressed in various forms. "the modifiability of the language and its tendency to vary never cease, so that it would readily run into new dialects and modes of pronunciation if there were no communication with the mother country direct or indirect. in this respect its mutability will resemble that of species, and it can no more spring up independently in separate districts than species can, assuming that these last are all of derivative origin."[ ] there are from four thousand to six thousand living languages. the number of unspoken languages is not known. their growth has required ages, and during their development many a parent stalk has ceased to exist. the changes in a language are slowly produced. it requires centuries to so far leave a language as to need an interpreter in order to understand it. some idea of this slow change may be gained by comparing the writings in the english language of different periods. in the year appeared a poem called "piers ploughman's creed," which begins as follows: "in a summer season, when soft was the sun, i shoop me into shrowds[ ] as i a sheep[ ] were; in habit as an hermit unholy of werkes, went wide in this world wonders to hear; ac[ ] on a may morwening on malvern hills me befel a ferly,[ ] of fairy me thought." etc. written language is more permanent than spoken, but the process of either is necessarily slow. when it is remembered that a language has been derived successively through numerous others, no special limit or time can be given, although a very long period would be required. the usually accepted chronology would not allow sufficient time for the diversity in the semitic family, to say nothing of the time required for the development of the three general classes. chapter xvii. unity of the human race. the theory of the unity of the human race has caused a clash of opinions among men of science. it has been the great battle field among anthropologists, ethnologists, geologists, philologists, and theologists. men of acknowledged ability have been arrayed on either side. among the foremost in favor of a diversity of origin have been agassiz, sir roderick i. murchison, georges pouchet, a. r. wallace, and schleicher. but the weight of evidence and authority is most in favor of the unity of the human race. the advocates of the theory of the diversity of the origin of the human race have advanced many objections against the unity, and produced arguments in favor of their opinions. these may be summed up under five heads. . the anatomical differences between the different races, and especially those which distinguish the black and white. . the separation of the races from each other for unknown ages by great oceans, and by formidable and almost impassable continental barriers. . the disparity in intelligence, and the grades in civilization. . a medium type cannot exist by itself, except on the condition of being supported by the two creating types. . when two types become united, two phenomena may arise: _a_, either one of them will absorb the other; or _b_, they may subsist simultaneously in the midst of a greater or less number of hybrids. the following answers may be given to these objections, or arguments: . it is just as reasonable to suppose that man is affected, as well as the animals, by climate, food, or peculiar condition. it is well known that animals have undergone more or less change by their situation or position. elephants and rhinoceroses are almost hairless. as certain extinct species, which formerly lived under an arctic climate, were covered with hair or long wool, it would appear that the present species of both genera had lost their hairy covering by exposure to heat. this is confirmed by the fact that the elephants of the elevated and cool districts of india are more hairy than those on the lowlands.[ ] a wonderful change is wrought by the influence of climate on turkeys. in india "it is much degenerated in size, utterly incapable of rising on the wing, of a black color, and with long pendulous appendages over the beak, enormously developed." "in the english climate an individual porto santo rabbit recovered the proper color of its fur in less than four years."[ ] observers are convinced that a damp climate affects the growth of the hair of cattle. the mountain-breeds always differ from the lowland breeds; in a mountainous country the hind limbs would be affected from exercising them more, which would also affect the pelvis, and, then, from the law of homologous variation, the front limbs and head would probably be affected.[ ] one of the most marked distinctions in the races of man is that the skull in some is elongated or dolichocephalic, and in others rounded or brachycephalic. mr. darwin has observed that a change takes place in the skulls of domestic rabbits; they become elongated, while those of the wild rabbit are rounded. he took two skulls of nearly equal breadth, the one from a wild and the other from a large domestic rabbit, the former was only . , and the latter . inches in length. welcker has observed "that short men incline more to brachycephaly and tall men to dolichocephaly; and tall men may be compared with the larger and longer-bodied rabbits, all of which have elongated skulls."[ ] the argument from language is of great weight, especially in considering the differences in color. professor max müller has stated this clearly: "there was a time when the ancestors of the celts, the germans, the slavonians, the greeks and italians, the persians and hindus, were living together beneath the same roof." "the evidence of language is irrefragable, and it is the only evidence worth listening to with regard to ante-historical periods. it would have been next to impossible to discover any traces of relationship between the swarthy natives of india and their conquerors, whether alexander or clive, but for the testimony borne by language."[ ] when the great lapse of ages is taken into consideration, since man originated, it will be seen that sufficient time is given to produce the white, black, yellow, red, and brown varieties of man. . the argument from geographical distribution would hardly seem valid, as it is known that the ocean can be and has been navigated by frail crafts. lieutenant bligh, of the ship bounty, in a small boat, twenty-three feet long from stem to stern, deep laden with nineteen men and one hundred and fifty pounds of bread, twenty-eight gallons of water, twenty pounds of pork, etc., started from the island of tofoa (south pacific) for the island of timor, a distance of three thousand six hundred miles. in this voyage he encountered a boisterous sea, and great perils, but finally reached his destination.[ ] when men began to dwell on the sea-coast they made their small vessels and carried on a limited navigation. many a frail craft has been driven out to sea with its human freight, some of which landed on uninhabited islands. this has often happened among the south sea islanders.[ ] if it had been asserted, a few years ago, that man's distribution might have been partly caused by the agency of ice, it would have received no attention. and yet, captain tyson and his party, consisting of twelve men, two women, and five children, being a portion of the crew of the ill-fated polaris, drifted about from the th of october, , to the th of april, , on an ice-floe, and in the midst of an arctic winter. besides the provisions saved from the polaris they subsisted on the flesh of seals, birds, and bears that they were able to kill. every member of this party was rescued off the coast of labrador. it must be further noticed that the surface of the earth was not always the same. the continents have changed more or less, and during these changes man must have become more or less separated. . in respect to the disparity it may be replied that the two extreme points are observable in all the nations of the earth. even in single families there have been those who were highly cultured and refined, while other members have been very low in organization, habits, and tastes. in these days it is manifest that all the races are capable of a very high degree of improvement. on the other hand, nations have retrograded. the ignorant, wretched nomads who pitch their tents amid the ruins of babylon, are the descendants of the ancient mixed races who successively occupied mesopotamia: the assyrians, babylonians, medes, and persians, who were ruled by such renowned monarchs as shalmaneser, nebuchadnezzar, cyrus, and others. the wild marauding arabs are the descendants of a people who invented algebra and introduced the numerals. so the list might be extended. and . the fourth and fifth amount to the assumption that no race will amalgamate with another. the statements embraced under these two heads are not warranted by facts. dr. prichard says, "mankind of all races and varieties are equally capable of propagating their offspring by intermarriages, and that such connections are equally prolific whether contracted between individuals of the same or of the most dissimilar varieties. if there is any difference, it is probably in favor of the latter."[ ] he then gives a short account of several examples of new or intermediate stocks which have been produced and multiplied. they are griquas, descended from the dutch and hottentots, who occupy the banks of the orange river, and number five thousand souls; the cafusos of brazil, a mixture of native americans and african negroes; the papuas of the island of new guinea, a mixture between the malays and negroes. one of the best examples yet furnished is that of the pitcairn islanders. this colony originated in this way: the british government had sent a vessel, called the bounty, commanded by lieutenant bligh, to gather bread-fruit trees at otaheite and introduce them into the west indies. bligh was an overbearing, tyrannical, and cruel officer. driven to fury, and out of patience with the superior officer, mr. fletcher christian and others mutinied, and turned bligh and his eighteen companions adrift. the mutineers proceeded to tahiti; here they took on board provisions and live stock, nine tahitian men, twelve women, and eight boys who had secreted themselves, and then proceeded to toubouai, where they founded a settlement. owing to dissensions the colony broke up and removed to tahiti. but mr. christian, with eight other of the mutineers, three toubouaians, three tahitian men with their wives, and one child, and nine other women, left in the bounty and landed at pitcairn's island, and there burned the bounty on the d of january, . in less than nine years afterward, owing to strifes, the men were reduced to two in number, both whites, and one of them died the succeeding year. in the year the american ship topaz touched at the island. the colonists then numbered thirty-five. in they had increased to the number of one hundred and ninety, and as the produce of the island was barely sufficient to support them they were removed by the british government to norfolk island. there are only eight surnames among them--five of the bounty stock and three new-comers. they are a fine, healthy race of people; the men of a bright copper color, but the women are scarcely distinguishable from english women. if reports be true concerning them, they are the most remarkable people on earth. they never allow the sun to go down on their wrath, and are noted for their honesty, truth, chastity, industry, benevolence, reverence, simplicity, and all the virtues which combine to form true religion. the law of hybridity, which has been so strongly urged against the unity of the race, has proved an argument in favor. the offspring of birds as much alike as the domestic goose and the large muscovy duck will not propagate their species. mules cannot perpetuate their kind. the different varieties of the horse, such as the little black shetland pony and the tall white arabian, will not only breed together but these hybrids will continue to perpetuate their kind, thereby proving their identity of species. the same may be said of the cross between the most perfect and the lowest type of mankind. if some of these mixtures die out in a few generations, it is not owing to their hybridity, but to the plain violation of natural laws. when the contracting parties to a marriage are of the same constitution, there will be no issue; if the constitutions, or rather, temperaments, are in substance too nearly the same, the issue, if any, will be either still-born, or die very soon after birth; if the contracting parties shall have an adjunctive element, the issue will be short-lived, although they may arrive at the years of maturity.[ ] these laws apply to both the mixed and the unmixed types of mankind. the close affinity of all the races, their subjection to the same general laws, their capacity for mental and moral improvement, and the virtual unity of their languages lead to the conclusion that one birth-place was common to all. if that place be central asia, or any other locality, it must have been long before traditional times, when the one tribe was broken up and nations formed. races change so slow that they seem to be stationary. on the ancient egyptian monuments are representations of the negro, having exactly the same features which characterize that race at the present time; and some of these paintings date as far back as b. c. then from the unity of the race and the persistency in type, an almost incredible length of time must be assigned to permit of the great disparity as exhibited by the different types of mankind. chapter xviii. the bible and science. no book has caused so much controversy as the bible. it has been made to answer for the folly of both its friends and foes. the fierce assaults made by the sceptic have been the legitimate result of the preposterous claims made by its ignorant but too zealous friends. the bible makes no such claims for itself as have often been made for it. its meaning has been perverted, sentences distorted, and words changed in order to suit the caprice of its advocates. if it were a living, speaking existence, it would certainly beg to be delivered from its friends. it has been made to conflict with the investigations of science, and those engaged in interpreting the laws of nature have been branded as infidels, although they may have devout and reverent spirits. the bible is not and makes no pretensions of being a book of science. it is designed to be a book of religion, and a history of the ancient jews, and its references to scientific questions are only incidental. if the references to science, or the account of creation be radically wrong, its teachings on questions of morals and religion would not be thereby invalidated. the christian, or the jew, has nothing to fear from the results of scientific investigation. but there is a duty devolving on him, and that is to leave his fanciful interpretations and come to the true meaning of the scriptures, and there learn how the words were understood by those to whom they were originally addressed. the meaning of words, as used in the nineteenth century, is not to be connected with their signification as used in the past. there is a great distance that divides the present from the times of the hebrews, and their language and thoughts from the english language and modern thought. the ancient hebrews were not given to scientific pursuits, and could have been but comparatively little advanced in civilization. it is not the design here to enter upon an investigation of the points raised between the scriptures and science, but to confine the inquiry to such questions as the previous chapters have demanded. _creation._--the first and second chapters of genesis not only teach that god is the creator of heaven and earth, but also the order of succession is given. it is not stated that the world was created out of nothing. the word "bara," translated "created," has a variety of meanings. according to gesenius it means _to cut_, _to cut out_, _to carve_, _to form_, _to create_, _to produce_, _to beget_, _to bring forth_, _to feed_, _to eat_, _to grow fat_, _to fashion_, _to make_.[ ] the idea presented seems to be this: the author asserts that heaven and earth owe their origin to god. then he goes back and explains the successive stages of creation. at the commencement of the work the earth was formless and void, or in a nebulous condition, and from this preëxisting mass the worlds were evolved. when this mass was created, if ever, the author of genesis does not state. six periods, or "days," are given for the formation of the earth. the use of the words "evening and morning" naturally leads to the conclusion that the _days_ were each twenty-four hours in length. but doubt is thrown over this conclusion by the use of the word _day_ in the second chapter and fourth verse, where the whole creative week is called a _day_. the word translated "day" also means _time_, but it is to be generally taken in the sense of the civil day--from sun up to sun down. hugh miller held to the opinion that the creation was represented to moses in a vision. the periods passed before his mind in succession and had the appearance of days. the evening was the closing of one and the morning was the beginning of another period of time.[ ] if a description of the different orders of life had been given, it would have been beyond the comprehension of that primitive people. it was not the design to teach geology. the people were not prepared for such scientific knowledge. but the simple statement that god is the author of all things, could be and was understood by the israelites. on the sixth day man appears; but there are two records, and in them he is presented in different ways and for different purposes. in the first account man is made in the image of god, and to him is given dominion over the living things, and he is commanded to subdue the earth. the second account states that there was no man to till the ground, and the lord formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. the second account cannot be, as has been assumed, a repetition of the first. the two accounts are radically different. one account makes man to have dominion over the beasts, birds, and fishes; the other, to till or cultivate the soil. this agrees with archæo-geology. men were hunters many ages before they were agriculturists. the one account has man made in the image of god, the other, a _living soul_. the "image of god" and "living soul" may be the same, but why the change? there may be a cause for it. if the theory of the vision be the true one, then moses saw man in two capacities, differing one from the other. man may be in the "image of god," and yet in a low, savage condition--subsisting on the chase. man may be awakened from that condition, the "image of god" may assert its majesty, and make man a religious, worshipful being.[ ] that there were two classes the record implies. cain goes out into the land of nod, where his wife conceives, and he builds a city. where did cain get his wife, and why did he build a city? no account is given of the birth of his wife, but the natural inference is he obtained her in the land of nod.[ ] it has been contended that cain married his sister. if this be true it would certainly have been mentioned. it is too important a matter to have escaped notice. if he married his sister he was guilty of a heinous crime. if it was right then, it is right now. the city he built must have been more than an _encampment_, or a _small fortification_. (the word translated "city" bears this meaning also.) it would have been of no moment. it must have been a place of some consequence, and designed for more persons than cain, his wife, and son. taking all the circumstances together, including cain's dread "of every one that findeth me shall slay me," it would seem that the object of this city was to provide for individuals of the pre-adamic family dwelling on the east of eden, and possibly to ingratiate himself into their favor. then, again, in the sixth chapter, "the sons of god saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose." this was followed by great wickedness, in consequence of which the world was destroyed by a flood. who were the "sons of god," and who the "daughters of men"? why not the daughters of god? the "sons of god" must have been the lineal descendants of adam, and the "daughters of men" the offspring of the pre-adamic race. the mongrel race produced were monsters,[ ] and their minds were bent continually on doing evil. these sons of adam must have retrograded, or else they would not have sought wives from among a lower people. by the laws of nature their offspring was lower than either of the races, from the fact that to the brutish natures of the pre-adamic type would be added the natural wisdom of the adamic, thus producing cunning and craft in their wickedness.[ ] if stringent moral laws had been enforced upon them the result would have been reversed. _chronology._--the chronology given in the margins of the bible is a mere invention, and has worked much mischief. there is nothing to warrant it, and no excuse can be made for it. the bible gives no definite chronology for those early times. that no dependence can be placed in these chronologies is shown from the discrepancies between the septuagint and the hebrew texts.[ ] the septuagint dates the flood eight hundred years farther back than the common bible. "a margin of variation amounting to eight centuries between two versions of the same document, is a variation so enormous that it seems to cast complete doubt on the whole system of interpretation on which such computations of time are based."[ ] _the deluge._--allowing the date of the deluge to have been b. c. instead of b. c., still there is not sufficient time to repopulate the earth, and form those mighty empires recorded in ancient history. the duke of argyle has very justly remarked that, "the founding of a monarchy is not the beginning of a race. the people among whom such monarchies arose must have grown and gathered during many generations." the peopling of egypt is not the only difficulty. "the existence, in the days of abraham, of such an organized government as that of chedorlaomer shows that two thousand years b. c. there nourished in elam, beyond mesopotamia, a nation which even now would be ranked among 'the great powers.'"[ ] then the characteristic features of the negro, one of the most strongly marked among the varieties of man, were as greatly marked b. c. as at present. these statements lead to the conclusion that the flood was not universal. most nations have a tradition of a flood, but "the monuments of the two most ancient civilizations of which we have any knowledge--the egyptian and chinese--contain no account of, or allusion to, noah's deluge."[ ] many of these traditions doubtless refer to some local flood. the passages of scripture seem to teach the universality of the deluge, but the same expressions which convey the idea of universality, are sometimes used in a limited sense, and refer only to the holy land, and to bordering regions. the question is one of doubt whether or not the sacred historian means the noachian deluge to have been universal, or only a local cataclysm. _monarchies._--the scriptures do not state that nimrod was the first monarch, but "the beginning of his kingdom was babel, and erech, and accad, and calneh." nor is the statement made that he founded these cities. he was a mighty hunter, and these cities were the _beginning of his kingdom_. _the dispersion._--the building of the tower of babel is no myth, but a veritable reality. a portion of the mighty fabric still stands, a mountain of ruins, attesting to the vast amount of work it required in its construction. the story is told in few words, and those words cover centuries. the people engaged in its construction spoke one language, but when this language was confounded the empire was rent asunder. the narrative seems to teach the use of but one language on the whole face of the earth. dr. f. h. hedge, in his sermon on "the great dispersion," says, "moreover, the phrase 'the whole earth,' as commonly used in the bible, is not to be taken in an absolute or scientific sense. it is not intended to include the entire globe, or even the greater part thereof, but is loosely employed to designate the whole of that particular portion which the writer or speaker has in his mind at the time. in the present case it denotes the country bordering on the tigris and the euphrates."[ ] if the views of this eminent theologian be correct, then, by the same principle of interpretation the unity of language spoken of, is limited to the country bordering on the tigris and the euphrates. there is no necessity of a supernatural aid for the origination of language. under the view already advanced, when the animals were brought to adam, he readily gave them names, for he had received language from his predecessors, and now, being an especially chosen person, his endowments would lead him to a more vigorous application of its use. it is not incredible that god could have fashioned the world and peopled it with myriads of beings in a period of six days of twenty-four hours each. it is not incredible that a cataclysm could destroy every living creature, save an appointed few, and cover the remotest boundaries of the earth. it is possible for god to do anything save that which is inconsistent with his character. what is possible for god to do, and what he does, are two very different things. what he has done can only be told from the evidences which he has left. what he might have done is only speculation. man can only judge from the facts presented to him. he observes the course of nature, and from these observations his conclusions are drawn. the world of nature and the spirit of revelation, when properly understood, are seen to be in harmony. man is not to close his eyes and refuse to be guided by science, and with blind credulity accept the tales and prejudices of his grandfathers. note.--dean stanley, an eminent divine of the church of england, in his discourse at the funeral of sir charles lyell, takes unusual grounds for a theologist. he is reported as saying that there were and are two modes of reconciling the letter of scripture with geology, but each has totally and deservedly failed. one of these attempts to wrest the words of the bible from their real meaning, and force them to speak the language of science; the other attempts to falsify science to meet the supposed requirements of the bible. but there is another reconciliation of a higher kind, or rather an acknowledgment of the affinity and identity which exist between the spirit of science and the spirit of the bible. first, there is a likeness of the general spirit of the bible truths; and, secondly, there is a likeness in the methods. the frame of this earth was gradually brought into its present condition by the slow and silent action of the same causes which we see now operating through a long succession of ages beyond the memory and imagination of man. we do not expect this doctrine to agree with the letter of the bible. the early biblical records could not be literal, prosaic, matter-of-fact descriptions of the beginning of the world. it is now clear that the first and second chapters of genesis contain two narratives of the creation side by side, differing from each other in almost every particular of time and place and order. it is now known that the vast epochs demanded by scientific observation are incompatible both with the six thousand years of the mosaic chronology and the six days of the mosaic creation. the discoveries of geology are found to fill up the old religious truths with a new life, and to derive from them in turn a hallowing glory. glossary of scientific and difficult terms used in this volume. adjunctive, having the quality of joining. alluvial, pertaining to the deposits of sand, clay, or gravel, made by river action. amalgamate, to mix or blend different things or races. antero-posterior, in a direction from behind forward. aphelion, that point of a planet's or comet's orbit which is most distant from the sun. archæo-geologist, one versed in pre-historic remains, or familiar with both archæology and geology. archives, public records and papers preserved as evidence of fact. aryan, a term applied to all the nations who speak languages derived mainly from the sanskrit, or ancient hindoo. atomic, a system of philosophy which accounted for the origin and formation of all things by assuming that atoms are endowed with gravity and motion. auditory, having the power of hearing. baton, a staff used as an emblem of authority. brachycephalic, a skull whose transverse diameter exceeds the antero-posterior diameter. breccia, a rock made up of angular fragments cemented together. bronze, an alloy of copper, with from ten to thirty per cent. of tin, to which other metals are sometimes added. calcareous, consisting of, or containing, carbonate of lime. calcined, reduced to a powder, or friable state, by the action of heat. carbonate, a salt formed by the union of carbonic acid with a base. carnivora, an order of animals which subsist on flesh. carpal, that portion of the skeleton pertaining to the wrist. cataclysm, a deluge. celt, one of an ancient race of people who formerly inhabited a great part of central and western europe; an implement made of stone or metal, found in the ancient tumuli of europe. cereal, edible grain. champlain epoch, a name derived from the beds on the borders of lake champlain. the beds are subsequent in origin to the glacial epoch. chert, an impure variety of flint. clavicle, the collar-bone. conglomerate, rock made of pebbles cemented together. coronoid, the process of the ulna and lower jaw. cosmogony, the science of the origin of the world or universe. cranium, the skull. crannoges, small islets in the lakes of ireland and scotland, used by the ancients as places of habitation. crucible, a vessel capable of enduring great heat, and used for melting ores, metals, etc. cyclical, pertaining to a periodical space of time marked by the recurrence of something peculiar. data (pl. of datum), a ground of inference or deduction. debris (d[=a]-breé), fragments detached from rocks, and piled up in masses. demi-relief, the projection of one half the figure beyond the plane from which it rises. dendrites, a stone on which are tree-like markings. devonian, the geological age between the silurian and carboniferous. diluvium, the time when the glacial beds were deposited. diorite, a tough rock, in color whitish, speckled with black, or greenish black. dolichocephalic, a skull whose diameter from the frontal to the occipital bone exceeds the transverse diameter. dorsal, the name given to the second division of the vertebræ. drift, a collection of loose earth and bowlders, distributed during the glacial epoch over large portions of the earth's surface. druidical, pertaining to the religious ceremonies of the ancient celtic nations in france, britain, and germany. dynasty, a succession of kings of the same line or family. eccentricity, the distance of the centre of the orbit of a heavenly body from the centre of the body round which it revolves. edible, eatable. elliptical, having an oval or oblong figure. eocene, the oldest of the three epochs of the tertiary. epoch, any period of time marked by some particular cause or event. esplanade, a clear space, or grass plat. fauna, the animals of any given area or epoch. flora, the complete system of vegetable species native in a given locality, or period. fluor-spar, a mineral of beautiful colors, composed by fluorine and calcium. fluvio-marine, the deposits formed by the joint action of a river and the sea. foramen, a little opening. fossa, a depression in a bone. fossil, the form of a plant or animal in the strata composing the surface of the earth. genus (pl. genera), an assemblage of species possessing certain characters in common, by which they are distinguished from all others. geode, an irregular shaped stone, containing a small cavity. geognostic, pertaining to a knowledge of the structure of the earth. glabella, the middle or frontal protuberance of the superciliary arch. glaciation, the process of becoming covered with glaciers. glacier, an immense mass of ice, or snow and ice, formed in the region of perpetual snow, and moving slowly down mountain slopes or valleys. gneiss, a crystalline rock, consisting of quartz, feldspar, and mica. herbivora, that order of animals which subsists upon herbs or vegetables. homologous, having the same typical structure. humerus, the bone of the arm nearest the shoulder. hybrid, that which is produced from the mixture of two species. ilium, the upper part of the hip bone. jade, a hard and compact stone, of a dark green color, and capable of a fine polish. lambdoidal, the suture which connects the occipital with the parietal bones. leptinite, a fine-grained granitic rock. loam, a soil composed of siliceous sand, clay, carbonate of lime, oxide of iron, magnesia, and various salts, and also decayed vegetable and animal matter. loess, a term usually applied to a tertiary deposit on the banks of the rhine. lumbar, the vertebræ near the loins. mammalia, that class of animals characterized by the female suckling its young. marl, a mixed earthy substance, consisting of carbonate of lime, clay, and siliceous sand. mastoid, a process situated at the posterior part of the temporal bone. matrix, a mould; the cavity in which a thing is held. maxillary, the upper jaw bone. metacarpal, the part of the hand between the wrist and the fingers. metallurgy, the art of working metals. metatarsal, the middle part of the foot. miocene, the middle or second epoch of the tertiary. molar, a grinding tooth. mold, or mould, a prepared cavity used in casting; to form or shape; fine soft earth. mollusca, an order of invertebrate animals having a soft, fleshy body, which is inarticulate, and not radiate internally. moraine, a line of blocks and gravel extending along the sides of separate glaciers, and along the middle part of glaciers formed by the union of one or more separate ones. nebulous, having a faint, misty appearance; applied to uncondensed gaseous matter. neolithic, new stone age; a term applied to the more modern age of stone. nummulitic, composed of, or containing a fossil of a flattened form, resembling a small coin, and common in the early tertiary period. obsidian, a kind of glass produced by volcanoes. occipital, pertaining to the back part of the head. ochreous, consisting of fine clay, containing iron. olecranon, the large process at the extremity of the larger bone of the fore-arm. onusprobandi, the burden of proof. orbit, the cavity in which the eye is located; the path described by a heavenly body in its periodical revolution. osar, a low ridge of stone or gravel formed by glaciers. oscillation, the act of moving backward and forward. osseous, composed of bone. osteologist, one versed in the nature, arrangement, and uses of the bones. oxide, a compound of oxygen, and a base destitute of acid and saltish properties. pachyderm, a non-ruminant animal, characterized by the thickness of its skin. palæolithic, the ancient stone age; a term applied to the earliest traces of man when he was cotemporary with many extinct mammalia. palæontological, belonging to the science of the ancient life of the earth. parallelogram, a figure having four sides, the opposite sides of which are parallel, and consequently equal. parietal, pertaining to the bones which form the sides and upper part of the skull. pathological, pertaining to the knowledge of disease. pelvic, pertaining to the open, bony structure at the lower extremity of the body. perihelion, that point in the orbit of a planet, or comet, in which it is nearest to the sun. perimeter, the outer boundary of a body. phalanges, the small bones of the fingers and toes. philologist, one versed in the laws of human speech. pliocene, a term applied to the most recent tertiary deposits. post-tertiary, the second period of the age of mammals. prototype, a model after which anything is to be copied. quadrangular, having four angles, and consequently four sides. quadrumana, an order of animals whose fore feet correspond to the hands of man. quartz, a stone of great hardness, with a glassy lustre, and varying in color from white, or colorless, to black. quartzite, granular quartz. quaternary, same as post-tertiary. radius, the smaller and exterior bone of the fore-arm. reliquiæ, remains of the dead. rhematic, that period when men first began to coin expressions for the most necessary ideas. rodent, an animal that gnaws. ruminant, an animal that chews the cud. sagittal, the suture which connects the parietal bones of the skull. savant (sä-v[)o]ng), a person eminent for acquirements. scapula, the shoulder-blade. schist, a rock having a slaty structure. scientist, a person noted for his profound knowledge. sediment, the matter which subsides to the bottom. semitic, pertaining to one of the families of nations, or languages, and so named from its members being ranked as the descendants of shem. serpentine, a soft, massive stone, in color dark to light green. siliceous, containing silica, or flinty matter. simian, a name given to the various tribes of monkeys. squamous, the anterior and upper part of the temporal bone, scale-like in form. stalagmite, a deposit of earthy matter, made by calcareous water dropping on the floors of caverns. stratified, formed or deposited in layers. stratum (pl. strata), a bed or layer. subsidence, the act of sinking or gradually descending. superciliary, the bony superior arch above the eye-brow. suture, the seam which unites the bones of the skull. symphysis, a connection of bones without a movable joint. talus, a sloping heap of fragments of rocks lying at the foot of a hill. tarsal, relating to the ankle. temporal, pertaining to that portion of the head located to the front and a little above the ear. terra-cotta, a kind of pottery made from fine clay, hardened by heat. tertiary, the first period of the age of mammals. thoracic, pertaining to the breast or chest. troglodyte, an inhabitant of a cave. truncated, cut off. tufaceous, consisting of, of resembling, tuff. tuff, a sand rock formed by agglutinated volcanic rock. turanian, that order of languages known as monosyllabic. ulna, the larger of the two bones of the fore-arm. veda, the ancient sacred literature of the hindoos. vertebra, a joint of the back bone. index. agassiz, . agriculture, , . amalgamation, . amiel, dr., . archiac, vic. d', . arts, , , , . aymard, dr., . baldwin, a. w., . bara, . belgian caverns, , . berosus, . blackmore, dr., . bligh, lieut., , . bonnemaison, . boucher de perthes, , , , . boué, aimé, , , . bourgeois, abbé, , , . brown, james, . buchner, dr., , , , , , , , . buckland. dr., . burdett-coutts, miss, . burial, , , . busk, , , . cain, case of, . cannibalism, . carpenter, . cartailhac, . casiano de prado, , . cave of aurignac, , - . cave of brixham, . cave of chokier, , . cave of feldhofner, . cave of furfooz, . cave of gourdan, . cave of kirkdale, . cave of la madeleine, . cave of la naulette, . cave of les eyzies, . cave of massat, . cave of mentone, , . cave of saint jean d'alcas, . cave of thayngen, . cave of tron de chaleux, , . cave of trou des nutons, . cave of trou rosette, . cave of trou du frontal, . cavern of ariége, . cavern of bize, . cavern of cracow, . cavern of enghihoul, , . cavern of engis, , . cavern of gailenruth, . cavern of maccagnone, . cavern of pondres, . cavern of torquay, . caverns of brazil, . caverns of liége, . cazalis de fondace, . chaldea, - . china, . christian, fletcher, . christol, . christy, , . chronology, , . chronology, usher's, . clothing, , , , . codrington, thos., . creation, . croll, . cromlech, . cushing, f. h. . dana, j. d., . danish shell-mounds, . danish peat bogs, . darwin, charles, . dawkins, . delaunay, abbé, . deluge, . denton, w., , . desnoyers, , , . desor, , . dickeson, dr. . dolmen, . dowler, dr. bennet, . dupont, edward, , , , . dwellings, , , . edwards, m. a. milne, . egypt, - . epoch, eocene, . epoch, eocene, fauna of, . epoch, eocene, glaciers in, . epoch, miocene, fauna of, . epoch, miocene, flint flake from aurillac, . epoch, miocene, flints from pontlevoy, . epoch, miocene, glaciers in, . epoch, miocene, man in, . epoch, pliocene, . epoch, pliocene, man in, , . epochs, not sharply defined, . eschricht, prof., . esper, j. f. . falconer, dr., , . fauna of reindeer epoch, . figuier, , . filhol, , . fishing and navigation, . fontan, m. a., . food, , , . forchammer, . ft. shelby, . fossil man of denise, , . fossil man of mentone, , . fossil remains from florida, . fraas, oscar, . frere, john, . fuhlrott, dr., , . garrigou, dr., , , geikie, . gillieron, . glacial epoch, . glacial epoch, date of, . glacial epoch, duration of, . glacial epoch, fauna of, . glacial epoch, geological period of, . godwin-austen, , . gosse, . gunning, w. d., . half-castes, . hall, dr., . hauzeur, . herodotus, , . history, outline of, . horner, . human bones from colmar, , . human bones from savonia, , . huxley, prof., , , , - . hybridity, law of, . implements, , . implements, from toronto, . implements, superstitious regard for, . india, fauna of, in miocene, . issel, m. a., , . jaw from maestricht, , . jaw from moulin-quignon, , , . jaw from la naulette, , , . joly, . keller, dr., , , , . kemp, . kent's hole, , . kutorga, dr., . land of nod, . language, . language, change of, . language, divisions of, . language, number of, . language, origin of, . language, written, . lake-dwellings of switzerland, , - . lartet, edward, , , , , . las casas, . lastic, m. de, . lee, j. e. . lepsius, . litse, . lubbock, sir john, , , , , , , , , . lund, dr., . lyell, sir charles, , , , , , , , . macenery, rev. j., . mahndel before the academy of paris, . man, contentions, . man, description of, , . man, development of, , , . man, dispersion of, . man, during glaciers, . man, inventive, , . man, mode of living, , . man, origin of, , . man, type, , , , , . manetho, . marks on fossil bones, , . mariette, . matson, james, . max müller, prof., , . menhirs, . mexico, . miller, hugh, . morlot, . mound builders, - . mounds, antiquity of, . mounds, extent of, . mounds, sacrificial, . mounds, sepulchral, . mounds, symbolical, . mounds, temple, . murchison, sir roderick i., , . neolithic, . osars, hearth and wood coal beneath, . owen, prof., . pelvic bone from natchez, . piers ploughman's creed, . piette, . pliocene beds at st. prest, , , . pouchet, georges, . pourtalis, count, . pre-historic archæology, divisions of, , . prichard, dr., . quatrefages, . rames, . rawlinson, . reindeer station on the schusse, , . religious belief, . renevier, . rigollot, dr., . riviére, , . robenhausen, , . rock-shelters of bruniquel, . rollin, . schaaffhausen, prof., , . schleicher, . schlieman, dr., . schmerling, dr., , , , - , . scott, p. a., . septuagint, . shell-heaps of america, . skeleton from lahr, , . skeleton from new orleans, . skeleton from plau, . skull, engis, - , . skull, neanderthal, , - , . skull, neanderthal, race type, . skull from altaville, . skull from cochrane's cave, . skull from comstock lode, . skull from constatt, . skull from osage mission, . skull from rhine, . skull of arno, . skulls from borreby, . skulls from minsk, . skulls from moën, . somme, valley of, , . somme, valley of, implements from, - . sons of god, . spring, dr., . stanley, dean, on the mosaic record, . steenstrup, prof. , . stevens, alfred, . stone implements from bournemonth, . stone implements from colorado and wyoming, , . stone implements from foreland cliff, , . stone implements from gosport, , . stone implements from grinell leads, . stone implements from london, . stone implements from madrid, , . stone implements from seine, . stone implements near hoxne, . stone implements, number, . tardy, . taylor, bayard, . tertiary beds at st. prest, . tertiary, climate of, . tertiary, fauna of, in america, . tertiary, geography of, . tournal, . troy, , . troyon, , . traffic, . tylor, . tyson, capt., . unity of race, - , . unity of race, objections to, . vivian, . vogt, carl, , , , . wallace, a. r., , . war, . weirley, dr., . welcker, . westropp, . whitney, prof., . wilson, dr. daniel, . wokey hole, . workshops of laugerie-basse, , . workshops of laugerie-haute, , . worsaae, . zawisza, count, . zumarraga, bishop, . footnotes [ ] "pre-historic times," p. . [ ] buchner, p. . [ ] "man in the past, present, and future," p. . [ ] "antiquity of man," p. . [ ] discoveries of this kind were made in .--keller's "lake-dwellings," p. . [ ] "principles of geology," vol. i. p. . [ ] "pre-historic times," p. . [ ] "manual of geology," p. . [ ] "antiquity of man," pp. , . [ ] "pre-historic times," p. . [ ] principles of geology, vol. i. p. ; "pre-historic times," p. . mr. croll believes that, owing to variations in the eccentricity of the earth's orbit "cold periods regularly recur every ten or fifteen thousand years; but that at much longer intervals the cold, owing to certain contingencies, is extremely severe, and lasts for a great length of time; and the last great glacial period occurred about two hundred and forty thousand years ago, and endured with slight alterations of climate for about one hundred and sixty thousand years."--darwin's _origin of species_, p. . [ ] it would be plausible to assume that the ice melted much more rapidly than is generally supposed. charles darwin, in his "naturalist's voyage around the world," p. , states that "during one very dry and long summer, all the snow disappeared from aconcagua, although it attains the prodigious height of twenty-three thousand feet. it is probable that much of the snow at these great heights is evaporated, rather than thawed." [ ] "principles of geology," vol. ii, pp. - . [ ] buchner, p. [ ] "pre-historic times," p. . [ ] "antiquity of man," p. ; "pre-historic times," p. . [ ] the "science record" for , p. , in speaking of these implements says, "at the very lowest estimate, the flint weapons were made half a million years ago." [ ] "antiquity of man," p. . "pre-historic times," p. . [ ] "antiquity of man," p. ; buchner, . [ ] "antiquity of man," p. ; buchner, p. . [ ] buchner, pp. , . [ ] buchner, p. . [ ] "principles," vol. ii, p. . [ ] "antiquity of man," p. . [ ] it has been estimated by the british association that it requires twenty thousand years to produce a foot of stalagmite.--_science record._ , p. . [ ] "principles," vol. ii, p. . [ ] "man's place in nature," p. . [ ] "pre-historic times," p. . [ ] "antiquity of man," p. . [ ] "man's place in nature," p. . [ ] "antiquity of man," p. . [ ] buchner, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] "man's place in nature," p. . [ ] buchner, p. . [ ] buchner, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] "man's place in nature," p. . [ ] buchner, p. . [ ] "antiquity of man," p. . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] "antiquity of man," p. . [ ] buchner, p. . [ ] buchner, p. . [ ] denton's "our planet," p. . [ ] buchner, p. . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] "pre-historic times," p. . [ ] _ibid._, p. . [ ] wallace's "natural selection, p. ." [ ] buchner, pp. , . [ ] buchner, p. . [ ] buchner, p. ; "pre-historic times," p. . [ ] buchner, p. ; "pre-historic times," p. . [ ] denton's "our planet," p. ; "american phrenological journal, feb." . having seen the statement in one of the newspapers that this skull was not genuine, but a joke played on professor whitney, i wrote to professor w. denton of wellesley, masschussetts, on th march , inquiring about it. a few days later i received from him the statement that he had visited the place where the skull was found; that certain persons assured him that professor whitney had been the victim of a joke. yet these persons had never seen the skull, and were prejudiced against professor whitney. the persons who were best informed had every reason to believe the statements made by professor whitney were true. the skull is a very remarkable one, and stands alone for the enormous size of the orbits, and i have good reasons to believe it to have been found as stated. [ ] "several geologists are convinced, from direct evidence, that glacial periods occurred during the miocene and eocene formations, not to mention still more ancient formations."--darwin's _origin of species_, p. . [ ] "pre-historic times," p. ; buchner, . [ ] "pre-historic times," p. . [ ] buchner, p. . [ ] "american phrenological journal," feb. . [ ] buchner, p. . [ ] "our planet," p. . [ ] "science record," , p. . [ ] "pre-historic times," p. . [ ] "origin of civilization," p. . [ ] figuier's "primitive man," p. . [ ] buchner, p. . [ ] buchner, p. ; "keller's lake-dwellings." [ ] "lake-dwellings," pp. , , , . [ ] "lake-dwellings," p. . [ ] "lake-dwellings," p. . [ ] "primitive man," p. . [ ] "primitive man," p. . [ ] "pre-historic times," p. . [ ] "primitive man," p. . [ ] "lake dwellings," p. . [ ] "pre-historic times," p. ; "primitive man," p. . [ ] "lake-dwellings," p. . [ ] "science record," p. . . [ ] "american phrenological journal," february, . [ ] wilson's "pre-historic man," p. . [ ] "pre-historic man," p. . [ ] "antiquity of man," p. ; "principles of geology," vol. i. p. . [ ] "antiquity of man," p. ; "pre-historic man," p. . [ ] "antiquity of man," p. . [ ] "primitive man," pp. , . [ ] "pre-historic man," p. . [ ] "ancient monuments," p. . [ ] buchner, p. . [ ] rollin, vol. i. p. . [ ] anthon's classical dictionary, p. . [ ] buchner, . [ ] "new york tribune", june , . [ ] rawlinson's herodotus, vol. ii. p. . [ ] "principles of geology," vol. i. p. . [ ] "antiquity of man," p. . [ ] bayard taylor in "new york tribune, extra," no. . [ ] "pre-historic nations," p. . [ ] _ibid._ pp. , . [ ] "pre-historic nations," p. . [ ] "ancient america," p. . [ ] "chips from a german workshop," vol. i. p. . [ ] _ibid._ vol. ii. p. . [ ] wake's "chapters on man," p. . [ ] "diodorus siculus, lucretius, horace, and many other greek and roman writers, consider language as one of the arts invented by man. the first men, say they, lived for some time in woods and caves, after the manner of beasts, uttering only confused and indistinct noises, till, associating for mutual assistance, they came by degrees to use articulate sounds mutually agreed upon, for the arbitrary signs or marks of those ideas in the mind of the speaker which he wanted to communicate to the hearer. this opinion sprung from the atomic cosmogony which was framed by mochus, the phoenician, and afterward improved by democritus and epicurus."--pouchet's _plurality of the human race_, p. . [ ] "principles of geology," vol. ii. p. . "it is generally acknowledged that all organic beings have been formed on two great laws--unity of type, and the conditions of existence. by unity of type is meant that fundamental agreement in structure which we see in organic beings of the same class, and which is quite independent of their habits of life. on my theory, unity of type is explained by unity of descent."--darwin's _origin of species_, p. . [ ] i put myself into clothes. [ ] shepherd. [ ] and. [ ] wonder. [ ] "descent of man," vol. i. p. . [ ] mivart's "genesis of species," p. . [ ] "origin of species," p. . [ ] "descent of man," vol. i. p. . [ ] "chips," vol. i. pp. , . [ ] lady belcher's "mutineers of the bounty," p. . [ ] "captain cook found on the island of wateoo, three inhabitants of otaheite, who had been drifted thither in a canoe, although the distance between the two isles is five hundred and fifty miles. in , two canoes, containing thirty persons, who had left ancorso, were thrown by contrary winds and storms on the island of samar, one of the philippines, at a distance of eight hundred miles. in , two canoes, one of which contained twenty-four, and the other six persons, men, women, and children, were drifted from an island called farroilep to the island of guaham, one of the marians, a distance of two hundred miles." kadu, a native of ulea, and three of his countrymen, while sailing in a boat, were driven out to sea by a violent storm, and drifted about the sea for eight months, subsisting entirely on the produce of the sea, and finally were picked up in an insensible condition by the inhabitants of aur (caroline isles) one thousand five hundred miles distant from his native isle.--_principles of geology_, vol. ii. p. . [ ] "natural history of man," vol. i. p. . [ ] powell's "human temperaments," p. . [ ] the idea that "bara" meant to create out of nothing is a modern invention, and most likely called forth by the contact between jews and greeks at alexandria. the greeks believed that matter was co-eternal with the creator, and it was probably in contradistinction to this notion that the jews first asserted that god made all things out of nothing. the word, however, only calls forth the simple conception of _fashioning_ or _arranging_.--_chips_, vol. i. p. . [ ] "testimony of the rocks," fifth lecture. [ ] rev. dr. j. p. thompson represents adam as a typical man (man in genesis and geology, p. ); lubbock regards him as a typical savage (origin civilization, p. ). why not call him the first great prototype of the human race? [ ] the word _nod_ means _to wander_, _to be driven about_, etc. it appears to have been a familiar name at the time of the fratricide. it was then the name of a land or tract of country. may there not have been roving tribes there, and from them the place was designated "wandering land"? [ ] dr. livingstone, after speaking of a half-caste man on the zambesi, described by the portuguese as a rare monster of humanity, "remarks, 'it is unaccountable why half-castes, such as he, are so much more cruel than the portuguese, but such is undoubtedly the case.' an inhabitant remarked to livingstone, 'god made white men, and god made black men, but the devil made half castes.' when two races, both low in the scale, are crossed, the progeny seem to be eminently bad. thus the noble-hearted humboldt speaks in strong terms of the bad and savage disposition of zambos, or half-castes between indians and negroes; and this conclusion has been arrived at by various observers. from these facts we may perhaps infer that the degraded state of so many half-castes is in part due to reversion to a primitive and savage condition, as well as to the unfavorable moral conditions under which they generally exist."--_animals and plants under domestication_, vol. ii. p. . [ ] this view does not conflict with the doctrine of the unity of the race. the great difficulty in interpreting the scriptures is its briefness. a long period of time is comprehended in a very few words, and much is left to inference. the tenor of the scriptures favors the idea of the unity of the race, still it is not specifically declared. the strongest passage is acts chapter and verse : "hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." this does not conflict with the idea of there being more than one pair, but their _blood_ is the same. it is not declared that adam had no ancestors. when it is declared that adam was the son of god, it is only to trace man's origin to the supreme being. if adam had ancestors, the leaving of them out has no signification, as it was not uncommon to drop the name of unimportant persons. an instance of this kind is given in the genealogy of david. from the birth of obed to the birth of his grandson david (common chronology) is a period of two hundred and twenty-three years. evidently one or more members have been dropped. if adam was a prototype it was not necessary to trace the line any farther back. the forming him of the dust of the ground would give his relationship to the rest of mankind. he was chosen, endowed for the purpose of elevating the race--of becoming the head of a new type of humanity. [ ] the septuagint version is a translation of the hebrew bible into greek, made about three hundred years b. c. the oldest existing ms. of the old testament in hebrew dates back no farther than about the tenth century after the christian era--_chips._ vol. i. p. . [ ] "primeval man," p. . [ ] "primeval man," p. . [ ] "primeval world of hebrew tradition," p. . [ ] "primeval world of hebrew tradition," p. . the evolution of man a popular scientific study by ernst haeckel volume . human stem-history, or phylogeny. translated from the fifth (enlarged) edition by joseph mccabe. [issued for the rationalist press association, limited.] watts & co., , johnson's court, fleet street, london, e.c. . contents of volume . list of illustrations. index. chapter . . structure of the lancelet and the sea-squirt. chapter . . embryology of the lancelet and the sea-squirt. chapter . . duration of the history of our stem. chapter . . our protist ancestors. chapter . . our worm-like ancestors. chapter . . our fish-like ancestors. chapter . . our five-toed ancestors. chapter . . our ape ancestors. chapter . . evolution of the nervous system. chapter . . evolution of the sense-organs. chapter . . evolution of the organs of movement. chapter . . evolution of the alimentary system. chapter . . evolution of the vascular system. chapter . . evolution of the sexual organs. chapter . . results of anthropogeny. list of illustrations. figure . . the lancelet. figure . . section of the head of the lancelet. figure . . section of an amphioxus-larva. figure . . diagram of preceding. figure . . section of a young amphioxus. figure . . diagram of a young amphioxus. figure . . transverse section of lancelet. figure . . section through the middle of the lancelet. figure . . section of a primitive-fish embryo. figure . . section of the head of the lancelet. figures . and . . organisation of an ascidia. figures . to . . sections of young amphioxus-larvae. figure . . an appendicaria. figure . . chroococcus minor. figure . . aphanocapsa primordialis. figure . . protamoeba. figure . . original ovum-cleavage. figure . . morula. figures . and . . magosphaera planula. figure . . modern gastraeads. figures . and . . prophysema primordiale. figures . and . . ascula of gastrophysema. figure . . olynthus. figure . . aphanostomum langii. figures . and . . a turbellarian. figures . and . . chaetonotus. figure . . a nemertine worm. figure . . an enteropneust. figure . . section of the branchial gut. figure . . the marine lamprey. figure . . fossil primitive fish. figure . . embryo of a shark. figure . . man-eating shark. figure . . fossil angel-shark. figure . . tooth of a gigantic shark. figures . to . . crossopterygii. figure . . fossil dipneust. figure . . the australian dipneust. figures . and . . young ceratodus. figure . . fossil amphibian. figure . . larva of the spotted salamander. figure . . larva of common frog. figure . . fossil mailed amphibian. figure . . the new zealand lizard. figure . . homoeosaurus pulchellus. figure . . skull of a permian lizard. figure . . skull of a theromorphum. figure . . lower jaw of a primitive mammal. figures . and . . the ornithorhyncus. figure . . lower jaw of a promammal. figure . . the crab-eating opossum. figure . . foetal membranes of the human embryo. figure . . skull of a fossil lemur. figure . . the slender lori. figure . . the white-nosed ape. figure . . the drill-baboon. figures . to . . skeletons of man and the anthropoid apes. figure . . skull of the java ape-man. figure . . section of the human skin. figure . . epidermic cells. figure . . rudimentary lachrymal glands. figure . . the female breast. figure . . mammary gland of a new-born infant. figure . . embryo of a bear. figure . . human embryo. figure . . central marrow of a human embryo. figures . and . . the human brain. figures . to . . central marrow of human embryo. figure . . head of a chick embryo. figure . . brain of three craniote embryos. figure . . brain of a shark. figure . . brain and spinal cord of a frog. figure . . brain of an ox-embryo. figures . and . . brain of a human embryo. figure . . brain of the rabbit. figure . . head of a shark. figures . to . . heads of chick-embryos. figure . . section of mouth of human embryo. figure . . diagram of mouth-nose cavity. figures . and . . heads of human embryos. figures . and . . face of human embryo. figure . . the human eye. figure . . eye of the chick embryo. figure . . section of eye of a human embryo. figure . . the human ear. figure . . the bony labyrinth. figure . . development of the labyrinth. figure . . primitive skull of human embryo. figure . . rudimentary muscles of the ear. figures . and . . the human skeleton. figure . . the human vertebral column. figure . . piece of the dorsal cord. figures . and . . dorsal vertebrae. figure . . intervertebral disk. figure . . human skull. figure . . skull of new-born child. figure . . head-skeleton of a primitive fish. figure . . skulls of nine primates. figures . to . . evolution of the fin. figure . . skeleton of the fore-leg of an amphibian. figure . . skeleton of gorilla's hand. figure . . skeleton of human hand. figure . . skeleton of hand of six mammals. figures . to . . arm and hand of three anthropoids. figure . . section of fish's tail. figure . . human skeleton. figure . . skeleton of the giant gorilla. figure . . the human stomach. figure . . section of the head of a rabbit-embryo. figure . . shark's teeth. figure . . gut of a human embryo. figures . and . . gut of a dog embryo. figures . and . . sections of head of lamprey. figure . . viscera of a human embryo. figure . . red blood-cells. figure . . vascular tissue. figure . . section of trunk of a chick-embryo. figure . . merocytes. figure . . vascular system of an annelid. figure . . head of a fish-embryo. figures . to . . the five arterial arches. figures . and . . heart of a rabbit-embryo. figures . and . . heart of a dog-embryo. figures . to . . heart of a human embryo. figure . . heart of adult man. figure . . section of head of a chick-embryo. figure . . section of a human embryo. figures . and . . sections of a chick-embryo. figure . . embryos of sagitta. figure . . kidneys of bdellostoma. figure . . section of embryonic shield. figures . and . . primitive kidneys. figure . . pig-embryo. figure . . human embryo. figures . to . . rudimentary kidneys and sexual organs. figures . and . . urinary and sexual organs of salamander. figure . . primitive kidneys of human embryo. figures . to . . urinary organs of ox-embryos. figure . . sexual organs of water-mole. figures . and . . original position of sexual glands. figure . . urogenital system of human embryo. figure . . section of ovary. figures . to . . graafian follicles. figure . . a ripe graafian follicle. figure . . the human ovum. chapter . . structure of the lancelet and the sea-squirt. in turning from the embryology to the phylogeny of man--from the development of the individual to that of the species--we must bear in mind the direct causal connection that exists between these two main branches of the science of human evolution. this important causal nexus finds its simplest expression in "the fundamental law of organic development," the content and purport of which we have fully considered in the first chapter. according to this biogenetic law, ontogeny is a brief and condensed recapitulation of phylogeny. if this compendious reproduction were complete in all cases, it would be very easy to construct the whole story of evolution on an embryonic basis. when we wanted to know the ancestors of any higher organism, and, therefore, of man--to know from what forms the race as a whole has been evolved we should merely have to follow the series of forms in the development of the individual from the ovum; we could then regard each of the successive forms as the representative of an extinct ancestral form. however, this direct application of ontogenetic facts to phylogenetic ideas is possible, without limitations, only in a very small section of the animal kingdom. there are, it is true, still a number of lower invertebrates (for instance, some of the zoophyta and vermalia) in which we are justified in recognising at once each embryonic form as the historical reproduction, or silhouette, as it were, of an extinct ancestor. but in the great majority of the animals, and in the case of man, this is impossible, because the embryonic forms themselves have been modified through the change of the conditions of existence, and have lost their original character to some extent. during the immeasurable course of organic history, the many millions of years during which life was developing on our planet, secondary changes of the embryonic forms have taken place in most animals. the young of animals (not only detached larvae, but also the embryos enclosed in the womb) may be modified by the influence of the environment, just as well as the mature organisms are by adaptation to the conditions of life; even species are altered during the embryonic development. moreover, it is an advantage for all higher organisms (and the advantage is greater the more advanced they are) to curtail and simplify the original course of development, and thus to obliterate the traces of their ancestors. the higher the individual organism is in the animal kingdom, the less completely does it reproduce in its embryonic development the series of its ancestors, for reasons that are as yet only partly known to us. the fact is easily proved by comparing the different developments of higher and lower animals in any single stem. in order to appreciate this important feature, we have distributed the embryological phenomena in two groups, palingenetic and cenogenetic. under palingenesis we count those facts of embryology that we can directly regard as a faithful synopsis of the corresponding stem-history. by cenogenesis we understand those embryonic processes which we cannot directly correlate with corresponding evolutionary processes, but must regard as modifications or falsifications of them. with this careful discrimination between palingenetic and cenogenetic phenomena, our biogenetic law assumes the following more precise shape:--the rapid and brief development of the individual (ontogeny) is a condensed synopsis of the long and slow history of the stem (phylogeny): this synopsis is the more faithful and complete in proportion as the original features have been preserved by heredity, and modifications have not been introduced by adaptation. in order to distinguish correctly between palingenetic and cenogenetic phenomena in embryology, and deduce sound conclusions in connection with stem-history, we must especially make a comparative study of the former. in doing this it is best to employ the methods that have long been used by geologists for the purpose of establishing the succession of the sedimentary rocks in the crust of the earth. this solid crust, which encloses the glowing central mass like a thin shell, is composed of different kinds of rocks: there are, firstly, the volcanic rocks which were formed directly by the cooling at the surface of the molten mass of the earth; secondly, there are the sedimentary rocks, that have been made out of the former by the action of water, and have been laid in successive strata at the bottom of the sea. each of these sedimentary strata was at first a soft layer of mud; but in the course of thousands of years it condensed into a solid, hard mass of stone (sandstone, limestone, marl, etc.), and at the same time permanently preserved the solid and imperishable bodies that had chanced to fall into the soft mud. among these bodies, which were either fossilised or left characteristic impressions of their forms in the soft slime, we have especially the more solid parts of the animals and plants that lived and died during the deposit of the slimy strata. hence each of the sedimentary strata has its characteristic fossils, the remains of the animals and plants that lived during that particular period of the earth's history. when we make a comparative study of these strata, we can survey the whole series of such periods. all geologists are now agreed that we can demonstrate a definite historical succession in the strata, and that the lowest of them were deposited in very remote, and the uppermost in comparatively recent, times. however, there is no part of the earth where we find the series of strata in its entirety, or even approximately complete. the succession of strata and of corresponding historical periods generally given in geology is an ideal construction, formed by piecing together the various partial discoveries of the succession of strata that have been made at different points of the earth's surface (cf. chapter . ). we must act in this way in constructing the phylogeny of man. we must try to piece together a fairly complete picture of the series of our ancestors from the various phylogenetic fragments that we find in the different groups of the animal kingdom. we shall see that we are really in a position to form an approximate picture of the evolution of man and the mammals by a proper comparison of the embryology of very different animals--a picture that we could never have framed from the ontogeny of the mammals alone. as a result of the above-mentioned cenogenetic processes--those of disturbed and curtailed heredity--whole series of lower stages have dropped out in the embryonic development of man and the other mammals especially from the earliest periods, or been falsified by modification. but we find these lower stages in their original purity in the lower vertebrates and their invertebrate ancestors. especially in the lowest of all the vertebrates, the lancelet or amphioxus, we have the oldest stem-forms completely preserved in the embryonic development. we also find important evidence in the fishes, which stand between the lower and higher vertebrates, and throw further light on the course of evolution in certain periods. next to the fishes come the amphibia, from the embryology of which we can also draw instructive conclusions. they represent the transition to the higher vertebrates, in which the middle and older stages of ancestral development have been either distorted or curtailed, but in which we find the more recent stages of the phylogenetic process well preserved in ontogeny. we are thus in a position to form a fairly complete idea of the past development of man's ancestors within the vertebrate stem by putting together and comparing the embryological developments of the various groups of vertebrates. and when we go below the lowest vertebrates and compare their embryology with that of their invertebrate relatives, we can follow the genealogical tree of our animal ancestors much farther, down to the very lowest groups of animals. in entering the obscure paths of this phylogenetic labyrinth, clinging to the ariadne-thread of the biogenetic law and guided by the light of comparative anatomy, we will first, in accordance with the methods we have adopted, discover and arrange those fragments from the manifold embryonic developments of very different animals from which the stem-history of man can be composed. i would call attention particularly to the fact that we can employ this method with the same confidence and right as the geologist. no geologist has ever had ocular proof that the vast rocks that compose our carboniferous or jurassic or cretaceous strata were really deposited in water. yet no one doubts the fact. further, no geologist has ever learned by direct observation that these various sedimentary formations were deposited in a certain order; yet all are agreed as to this order. this is because the nature and origin of these rocks cannot be rationally understood unless we assume that they were so deposited. these hypotheses are universally received as safe and indispensable "geological theories," because they alone give a rational explanation of the strata. our evolutionary hypotheses can claim the same value, for the same reasons. in formulating them we are acting on the same inductive and deductive methods, and with almost equal confidence, as the geologist. we hold them to be correct, and claim the status of "biological theories" for them, because we cannot understand the nature and origin of man and the other organisms without them, and because they alone satisfy our demand for a knowledge of causes. and just as the geological hypotheses that were ridiculed as dreams at the beginning of the nineteenth century are now universally admitted, so our phylogenetic hypotheses, which are still regarded as fantastic in certain quarters, will sooner or later be generally received. it is true that, as will soon appear, our task is not so simple as that of the geologist. it is just as much more difficult and complex as man's organisation is more elaborate than the structure of the rocks. when we approach this task, we find an auxiliary of the utmost importance in the comparative anatomy and embryology of two lower animal-forms. one of these animals is the lancelet (amphioxus), the other the sea-squirt (ascidia). both of these animals are very instructive. both are at the border between the two chief divisions of the animal kingdom--the vertebrates and invertebrates. the vertebrates comprise the already mentioned classes, from the amphioxus to man (acrania, lampreys, fishes, dipneusts, amphibia, reptiles, birds, and mammals). following the example of lamarck, it is usual to put all the other animals together under the head of invertebrates. but, as i have often mentioned already, the group is composed of a number of very different stems. of these we have no interest just now in the echinoderms, molluscs, and articulates, as they are independent branches of the animal-tree, and have nothing to do with the vertebrates. on the other hand, we are greatly concerned with a very interesting group that has only recently been carefully studied, and that has a most important relation to the ancestral tree of the vertebrates. this is the stem of the tunicates. one member of this group, the sea-squirt, very closely approaches the lowest vertebrate, the amphioxus, in its essential internal structure and embryonic development. until no one had any idea of the close connection of these apparently very different animals; it was a very fortunate accident that the embryology of these related forms was discovered just at the time when the question of the descent of the vertebrates from the invertebrates came to the front. in order to understand it properly, we must first consider these remarkable animals in their fully-developed forms and compare their anatomy. we begin with the lancelet--after man the most important and interesting of all animals. man is at the highest summit, the lancelet at the lowest root, of the vertebrate stem. it lives on the flat, sandy parts of the mediterranean coast, partly buried in the sand, and is apparently found in a number of seas.* (* see the ample monograph by arthur willey, amphioxus and the ancestry of the vertebrates; boston, .) it has been found in the north sea (on the british and scandinavian coasts and in heligoland), and at various places on the mediterranean (for instance, at nice, naples, and messina). it is also found on the coast of brazil and in the most distant parts of the pacific ocean (the coast of peru, borneo, china, australia, etc.). recently eight to ten species of the amphioxus have been determined, distributed in two or three genera. (figure . . the lancelet (amphioxus lanceolatus), twice natural size, left view. the long axis is vertical; the mouth-end is above, the tail-end below; a mouth, surrounded by threads of beard; b anus, c gill-opening (porus branchialis), d gill-crate, e stomach, f liver, g small intestine, h branchial cavity, i chorda (axial rod), underneath it the aorta; k aortic arches, l trunk of the branchial artery, m swellings on its branches, n vena cava, o visceral vein. figure . . transverse section of the head of the amphioxus. (from boveri.) above the branchial gut (kd) is the chorda, above this the neural tube (in which we can distinguish the inner grey and the outer white matter); above again is the dorsal fin (fh). to the right and left above (in the episoma) are the thick muscular plates (m); below (in the hyposoma) the gonads (g). ao aorta (here double), c corium, ec endostyl, f fascie, gl glomerulus of the kidneys, k branchial vessel, ld partition between the coeloma (sc) and atrium (p), mt transverse ventral muscle, n renal canals, of upper and uf lower canals in the mantle-folds, p peribranchial cavity, (atrium), sc coeloma (subchordal body-cavity), si principal (or subintestinal) vein, sk perichorda (skeletal layer).) johannes muller classed the lancelet with the fishes, although he pointed out that the differences between this simple vertebrate and the lowest fishes are much greater than between the fishes and the amphibia. but this was far from expressing the real significance of the animal. we may confidently lay down the following principle: the amphioxus differs more from the fishes than the fishes do from man and the other vertebrates. as a matter of fact, it is so different from all the other vertebrates in its whole organisation that the laws of logical classification compel us to distinguish two divisions of this stem: , the acrania (amphioxus and its extinct relatives); and , the craniota (man and the other vertebrates). the first and lower division comprises the vertebrates that have no vertebrae or skull (cranium). of these the only living representatives are the amphioxus and paramphioxus, though there must have been a number of different species at an early period of the earth's history. opposed to the acrania is the second division of the vertebrates, which comprises all the other members of the stem, from the fishes up to man. all these vertebrates have a head quite distinct from the trunk, with a skull (cranium) and brain; all have a centralised heart, fully-formed kidneys, etc. hence they are called the craniota. these craniotes are, however, without a skull in their earlier period. as we already know from embryology, even man, like every other mammal, passes in the earlier course of his development through the important stage which we call the chordula; at this lower stage the animal has neither vertebrae nor skull nor limbs (figures . to . ). and even after the formation of the primitive vertebrae has begun, the segmented foetus of the amniotes still has for a long time the simple form of a lyre-shaped disk or a sandal, without limbs or extremities. when we compare this embryonic condition, the sandal-shaped foetus, with the developed lancelet, we may say that the amphioxus is, in a certain sense, a permanent sandal-embryo, or a permanent embryonic form of the acrania; it never rises above a low grade of development which we have long since passed. the fully-developed lancelet (figure . ) is about two inches long, is colourless or of a light red tint, and has the shape of a narrow lancet-formed leaf. the body is pointed at both ends, but much compressed at the sides. there is no trace of limbs. the outer skin is very thin and delicate, naked, transparent, and composed of two different layers, a simple external stratum of cells, the epidermis, and a thin underlying cutis-layer. along the middle line of the back runs a narrow fin-fringe which expands behind into an oval tail-fin, and is continued below in a short anus-fin. the fin-fringe is supported by a number of square elastic fin-plates. in the middle of the body we find a thin string of cartilage, which goes the whole length of the body from front to back, and is pointed at both ends (figure . i). this straight, cylindrical rod (somewhat compressed for a time) is the axial rod or the chorda dorsalis; in the lancelet this is the only trace of a vertebral column. the chorda develops no further, but retains its original simplicity throughout life. it is enclosed by a firm membrane, the chorda-sheath or perichorda. the real features of this and of its dependent formations are best seen in the transverse section of the amphioxus (figure . ). the perichorda forms a cylindrical tube immediately over the chorda, and the central nervous system, the medullary tube, is enclosed in it. this important psychic organ also remains in its simplest shape throughout life, as a cylindrical tube, terminating with almost equal plainness at either end, and enclosing a narrow canal in its thick wall. however, the fore end is a little rounder, and contains a small, almost imperceptible bulbous swelling of the canal. this must be regarded as the beginning of a rudimentary brain. at the foremost end of it there is a small black pigment-spot, a rudimentary eye; and a narrow canal leads to a superficial sense-organ. in the vicinity of this optic spot we find at the left side a small ciliated depression, the single olfactory organ. there is no organ of hearing. this defective development of the higher sense-organs is probably, in the main, not an original feature, but a result of degeneration. underneath the axial rod or chorda runs a very simple alimentary canal, a tube that opens on the ventral side of the animal by a mouth in front and anus behind. the oval mouth is surrounded by a ring of cartilage, on which there are twenty to thirty cartilaginous threads (organs of touch, figure . a). the alimentary canal divides into sections of about equal length by a constriction in the middle. the fore section, or head-gut, serves for respiration; the hind section, or trunk-gut, for digestion. the limit of the two alimentary regions is also the limit of the two parts of the body, the head and the trunk. the head-gut or branchial gut forms a broad gill-crate, the grilled wall of which is pierced by numbers of gill-clefts (figure . d). the fine bars of the gill-crate between the clefts are strengthened with firm parallel rods, and these are connected in pairs by cross-rods. the water that enters the mouth of the amphioxus passes through these clefts into the large surrounding branchial cavity or atrium, and then pours out behind through a hole in it, the respiratory pore (porus branchialis, figure . c). below, on the ventral side of the gill-crate, there is in the middle line a ciliated groove with a glandular wall (the hypobranchial groove), which is also found in the ascidia and the larvae of the cyclostoma. it is interesting because the thyroid gland in the larynx of the higher vertebrates (underneath the "adam's apple") has been developed from it. (figure . . transverse section of an amphioxus-larva, with five gill-clefts, through the middle of the body. figure . . diagram of the preceding. (from hatschek.) a epidermis, b medullary tube, c chorda, c inner chorda-sheath, d visceral epithelium, e sub-intestinal vein. cutis, muscle-plate (myotome), skeletal plate (sclerotome), coeloseptum (partition between dorsal and ventral coeloma), skin-fibre layer, gut-fibre layer, i myocoel (dorsal body-cavity), ii splanchnocoel (ventral body-cavity).) behind the respiratory part of the gut we have the digestive section, the trunk or liver (hepatic) gut. the small particles that the amphioxus takes in with the water--infusoria, diatoms, particles of decomposed plants and animals, etc.--pass from the gill-crate into the digestive part of the canal, and are used up as food. from a somewhat enlarged portion, that corresponds to the stomach (figure . e), a long, pouch-like blind sac proceeds straight forward (f); it lies underneath on the left side of the gill-crate, and ends blindly about the middle of it. this is the liver of the amphioxus, the simplest kind of liver that we meet in any vertebrate. in man also the liver develops, as we shall see, in the shape of a pouch-like blind sac, that forms out of the alimentary canal behind the stomach. the formation of the circulatory system in this animal is not less interesting. all the other vertebrates have a compressed, thick, pouch-shaped heart, which develops from the wall of the gut at the throat, and from which the blood-vessels proceed; in the amphioxus there is no special centralised heart, driving the blood by its pulsations. this movement is effected, as in the annelids, by the thin blood-vessels themselves, which discharge the function of the heart, contracting and pulsating in their whole length, and thus driving the colourless blood through the entire body. on the under-side of the gill-crate, in the middle line, there is the trunk of a large vessel that corresponds to the heart of the other vertebrates and the trunk of the branchial artery that proceeds from it; this drives the blood into the gills (figure . l). a number of small vascular arches arise on each side from this branchial artery, and form little heart-shaped swellings or bulbilla (m) at their points of departure; they advance along the branchial arches, between the gill-clefts and the fore-gut, and unite, as branchial veins, above the gill-crate in a large trunk blood-vessel that runs under the chorda dorsalis. this is the principal artery or primitive aorta (figure . d). the branches which it gives off to all parts of the body unite again in a larger venous vessel at the underside of the gut, called the subintestinal vein (figures . o and . e). this single main vessel of the amphioxus goes like a closed circular water-conduit along the alimentary canal through the whole body, and pulsates in its whole length above and below. when the upper tube contracts the lower one is filled with blood, and vice versa. in the upper tube the blood flows from front to rear, then back from rear to front in the lower vessel. the whole of the long tube that runs along the ventral side of the alimentary canal and contains venous blood may be called the "principal vein," and may be compared to the ventral vessel in the worms. on the other hand, the long straight vessel that runs along the dorsal line of the gut above, between it and the chorda, and contains arterial blood, is clearly identical with the aorta or principal artery of the other vertebrates; and on the other side it may be compared to the dorsal vessel in the worms. (figure . . transverse section of a young amphioxus, immediately after metamorphosis, through the hindermost third (between the atrium-cavity and the anus). figure . . diagram of preceding. (from hatschek.) a epidermis, b medullary tube, c chorda, d aorta, e visceral epithelium, f subintestinal vein. corium-plate, muscle-plate, fascie-plate, outer chorda-sheath, myoseptum, skin-fibre plate, gut-fibre plate, i myocoel, ii splanchnocoel, i dorsal fin, i anus-fin.) the coeloma or body-cavity has some very important and distinctive features in the amphioxus. the embryology of it is most instructive in connection with the stem-history of the body-cavity in man and the other vertebrates. as we have already seen (chapter . ), in these the two coelom-pouches are divided at an early stage by transverse constrictions into a double row of primitive segments (figure . ), and each of these subdivides, by a frontal or lateral constriction, into an upper (dorsal) and lower (ventral) pouch. these important structures are seen very clearly in the trunk of the amphioxus (the latter third, figures . to . ), but it is otherwise in the head, the foremost third (figure . ). here we find a number of complicated structures that cannot be understood until we have studied them on the embryological side in the next chapter (cf. figure . ). the branchial gut lies free in a spacious cavity filled with water, which was wrongly thought formerly to be the body-cavity (figure . a). as a matter of fact, this atrium (commonly called the peribranchial cavity) is a secondary structure formed by the development of a couple of lateral mantle-folds or gill-covers (m , u). the real body-cavity (lh) is very narrow and entirely closed, lined with epithelium. the peribranchial cavity (a) is full of water, and its walls are lined with the skin-sense layer; it opens outwards in the rear through the respiratory pore (figure . c). on the inner surface of these mantle-folds (m ), in the ventral half of the wide mantle cavity (atrium), we find the sex-organs of the amphioxus. at each side of the branchial gut there are between twenty and thirty roundish four-cornered sacs, which can clearly be seen from without with the naked eye, as they shine through the thin transparent body-wall. these sacs are the sexual glands they are the same size and shape in both sexes, only differing in contents. in the female they contain a quantity of simple ova (figure . g); in the male a number of much smaller cells that change into mobile ciliated cells (sperm-cells). both sacs lie on the inner wall of the atrium, and have no special outlets. when the ova of the female and the sperm of the male are ripe, they fall into the atrium, pass through the gill-clefts into the fore-gut, and are ejected through the mouth. (figure . . transverse section of the lancelet, in the fore half. (from ralph.) the outer covering is the simple cell-layer of the epidermis (e). under this is the thin corium, the subcutaneous tissue of which is thickened; it sends connective-tissue partitions between the muscles (m ) and to the chorda-sheath. n medullary tube, ch chorda, lh body-cavity, a atrium, l upper wall of same, e inner wall, e outer wall, lh ventral remnant of same, kst gill-reds, m ventral muscles, r seam of the joining of the ventral folds (gill-covers), g sexual glands.) above the sexual glands, at the dorsal angle of the atrium, we find the kidneys. these important excretory organs could not be found in the amphioxus for a long time, on account of their remote position and their smallness; they were discovered in by theodor boveri (figure . x). they are short segmented canals; corresponding to the primitive kidneys of the other vertebrates (figure . b). their internal aperture (figure . b) opens into the body-cavity; their outer aperture into the atrium (c). the prorenal canals lie in the middle of the line of the head, outwards from the uppermost section of the gill-arches, and have important relations to the branchial vessels (h). for this reason, and in their whole arrangement, the primitive kidneys of the amphioxus show clearly that they are equivalent to the prorenal canals of the craniotes (figure . b). the prorenal duct of the latter (figure . c) corresponds to the branchial cavity or atrium of the former (figure . c). (figure . . transverse section through the middle of the amphioxus. (from boveri.) on the left a gill-rod has been struck, and on the right a gill-cleft; consequently on the left we see the whole of a prorenal canal (x), on the right only the section of its fore-leg. a genital chamber (ventral section of the gonocoel), x pronephridium, b its coelom-aperture, c atrium, d body-cavity, e visceral cavity, f subintestinal vein, g aorta (the left branch connected by a branchial vessel with the subintestinal vein), h renal vessel. figure . . transverse section of a primitive fish embryo (selachii-embryo, from boveri.). to the left pronephridia (b), the right primitive kidneys (a). the dotted lines on the right indicate the later opening of the primitive kidney canals (a) into the prorenal duct (c). d body-cavity, e visceral cavity, f subintestinal vein, g aorta, h renal vessel.) if we sum up the results of our anatomic study of the amphioxus, and compare them with the familiar organisation of man, we shall find an immense distance between the two. as a fact, the highest summit of the vertebrate organisation which man represents is in every respect so far above the lowest stage, at which the lancelet remains, that one would at first scarcely believe it possible to class both animals in the same division of the animal kingdom. nevertheless, this classification is indisputably just. man is only a more advanced stage of the vertebral type that we find unmistakably in the amphioxus in its characteristic features. we need only recall the picture of the ideal primitive vertebrate given in a former chapter, and compare it with the lower stages of human embryonic development, to convince ourselves of our close relationship to the lancelet. (cf. chapter . .) it is true that the amphioxus is far below all other living vertebrates. it is true that it has no separate head, no developed brain or skull, the characteristic feature of the other vertebrates. it is (probably as a result of degeneration) without the auscultory organ and the centralised heart that all the others have; and it has no fully-formed kidneys. every single organ in it is simpler and less advanced than in any of the others. yet the characteristic connection and arrangement of all the organs is just the same as in the other vertebrates. all these, moreover, pass, during their embryonic development, through a stage in which their whole organisation is no higher than that of the amphioxus, but is substantially identical with it. (figure . . transverse section of the head of the amphioxus (at the limit of the first and second third of the body). (from boveri) a aorta (here double), b atrium, c chorda, co umlaut coeloma (body-cavity), e endostyl (hypobranchial groove), g gonads (ovaries), kb gill-arches, kd branchial gut, l liver-tube (on the right, one-sided), m muscles, n renal canals, r spinal cord, sn spinal nerves, sp gill-clefts.) in order to see this quite clearly, it is particularly useful to compare the amphioxus with the youthful forms of those vertebrates that are classified next to it. this is the class of the cyclostoma. there are to-day only a few species of this once extensive class, and these may be distributed in two groups. one group comprises the hag-fishes or myxinoides. the other group are the petromyzontes, or lampreys, which are a familiar delicacy in their marine form. these cyclostoma are usually classified with the fishes. but they are far below the true fishes, and form a very interesting connecting-group between them and the lancelet. one can see how closely they approach the latter by comparing a young lamprey with the amphioxus. the chorda is of the same simple character in both; also the medullary tube, that lies above the chorda, and the alimentary canal below it. however, in the lamprey the spinal cord swells in front into a simple pear-shaped cerebral vesicle, and at each side of it there are a very simple eye and a rudimentary auditory vesicle. the nose is a single pit, as in the amphioxus. the two sections of the gut are also just the same and very rudimentary in the lamprey. on the other hand, we see a great advance in the structure of the heart, which is found underneath the gills in the shape of a centralised muscular tube, and is divided into an auricle and a ventricle. later on the lamprey advances still further, and gets a skull, five cerebral vesicles, a series of independent gill-pouches, etc. this makes all the more interesting the striking resemblance of its immature larva to the developed and sexually mature amphioxus. while the amphioxus is thus connected through the cyclostoma with the fishes, and so with the series of the higher vertebrates, it is, on the other hand, very closely related to a lowly invertebrate marine animal, from which it seems to be entirely remote at first glance. this remarkable animal is the sea-squirt or ascidia, which was formerly thought to be closely related to the mussel, and so classed in the molluscs. but since the remarkable embryology of these animals was discovered in , there can be no question that they have nothing to do with the molluscs. to the great astonishment of zoologists, they were found, in their whole individual development, to be closely related to the vertebrates. when fully developed the ascidiae are shapeless lumps that would not, at first sight, be taken for animals at all. the oval body, frequently studded with knobs or uneven and lumpy, in which we can discover no special external organs, is attached at one end to marine plants, rocks, or the floor of the sea. many species look like potatoes, others like melon-cacti, others like prunes. many of the ascidiae form transparent crusts or deposits on stones and marine plants. some of the larger species are eaten like oysters. fishermen, who know them very well, think they are not animals, but plants. they are sold in the fish markets of many of the italian coast-towns with other lower marine animals under the name of "sea-fruit" (frutti di mare). there is nothing about them to show that they are animals. when they are taken out of the water with the net the most one can perceive is a slight contraction of the body that causes water to spout out in two places. the bulk of the ascidiae are very small, at the most a few inches long. a few species are a foot or more in length. there are many species of them, and they are found in every sea. as in the case of the acrania, we have no fossilised remains of the class, because they have no hard and fossilisable parts. however, they must be of great antiquity, and must go back to the primordial epoch. the name of "tunicates" is given to the whole class to which the ascidiae belong, because the body is enclosed in a thick and stiff covering like a mantle (tunica). this mantle--sometimes soft like jelly, sometimes as tough as leather, and sometimes as stiff as cartilage--has a number of peculiarities. the most remarkable of them is that it consists of a woody matter, cellulose--the same vegetal substance that forms the stiff envelopes of the plant-cells, the substance of the wood. the tunicates are the only class of animals that have a real cellulose or woody coat. sometimes the cellulose mantle is brightly coloured, at other times colourless. not infrequently it is set with needles or hairs, like a cactus. often we find a mass of foreign bodies--stone, sand, fragments of mussel-shells, etc.--worked into the mantle. this has earned for the ascidia the name of "the microcosm." (figure . . organisation of an ascidia (left view); the dorsal side is turned to the right and the ventral side to the left, the mouth (o) above; the ascidia is attached at the tail end. the branchial gut (br), which is pierced by a number of clefts, continues below in the visceral gut. the rectum opens through the anus (a) into the atrium (cl), from which the excrements are ejected with the respiratory water through the mantle-hole or cloaca (a); m mantle. (from gegenbaur.) figure . . organisation of an ascidia (as in figure . , seen from the left). sb branchial sac, v stomach, i small intestine, c heart, t testicle, vd sperm-duct, o ovary, o apostrophe ripe ova in the branchial cavity. the two small arrows indicate the entrance and exit of the water through the openings of the mantle. (from milne-edwards.)) the hind end, which corresponds to the tail of the amphioxus, is usually attached, often by means of regular roots. the dorsal and ventral sides differ a good deal internally, but frequently cannot be distinguished externally. if we open the thick tunic or mantle in order to examine the internal organisation, we first find a spacious cavity filled with water--the mantle-cavity or respiratory cavity (figure . cl). it is also called the branchial cavity and the cloaca, because it receives the excrements and sexual products as well as the respiratory water. the greater part of the respiratory cavity is occupied by the large grated branchial sac (br). this is so like the gill-crate of the amphioxus in its whole arrangement that the resemblance was pointed out by the english naturalist goodsir, years ago, before anything was known of the relationship of the two animals. as a fact, even in the ascidia the mouth (o) opens first into this wide branchial sac. the respiratory water passes through the lattice-work of the branchial sac into the branchial cavity, and is ejected from this by the respiratory pore (a apostrophe). along the ventral side of the branchial sac runs a ciliated groove--the hypobranchial groove which we have previously found at the same spot in the amphioxus. the food of the ascidia also consists of tiny organisms, infusoria, diatoms, parts of decomposed marine plants and animals; etc. these pass with the water into the gill-crate and the digestive part of the gut at the end of it, at first into an enlargement of it that represents the stomach. the adjoining small intestine usually forms a loop, bends forward, and opens by an anus (figure . a), not directly outwards, but first into the mantle cavity; from this the excrements are ejected by a common outlet (a apostrophe) together with the used-up water and the sexual products. the outlet is sometimes called the branchial pore, and sometimes the cloaca or ejection-aperture. in many of the ascidiae a glandular mass opens into the gut, and this represents the liver. in some there is another gland besides the liver, and this is taken to represent the kidneys. the body-cavity proper, or coeloma, which is filled with blood and encloses the hepatic gut, is very narrow in the ascidia, as in the amphioxus, and is here also usually confounded with the wide atrium, or peribranchial cavity, full of water. there is no trace in the fully-developed ascidia of a chorda dorsalis, or internal axial skeleton. it is the more interesting that the young animal that emerges from the ovum has a chorda, and that there is a rudimentary medullary tube above it. the latter is wholly atrophied in the developed ascidia, and looks like a small nerve-ganglion in front above the gill-crate. it corresponds to the upper "gullet-ganglion" or "primitive brain" in other vermalia. special sense-organs are either wanting altogether or are only found in a very rudimentary form, as simple optic spots and touch-corpuscles or tentacles that surround the mouth. the muscular system is very slightly and irregularly developed. immediately under the thin corium, and closely connected with it, we find a thin muscle tube, as in the worms. on the other hand, the ascidia has a centralised heart, and in this respect it seems to be more advanced than the amphioxus. on the ventral side of the gut, some distance behind the gill-crate, there is a spindle-shaped heart. it retains permanently the simple tubular form that we find temporarily as the first structure of the heart in the vertebrates. this simple heart of the ascidia has, however, a remarkable peculiarity. it contracts in alternate directions. in all other animals the beat of the heart is always in the same direction (generally from rear to front); it changes in the ascidia to the reverse direction. the heart contracts first from the rear to the front, stands still for a minute, and then begins to beat the opposite way, now driving the blood from front to rear; the two large vessels that start from either end of the heart act alternately as arteries and veins. this feature is found in the tunicates alone. of the other chief organs we have still to mention the sexual glands, which lie right behind in the body-cavity. all the ascidiae are hermaphrodites. each individual has a male and a female gland, and so is able to fertilise itself. the ripe ova (figure . o apostrophe) fall directly from the ovary (o) into the mantle-cavity. the male sperm is conducted into this cavity from the testicle (t) by a special duct (vd). fertilisation is accomplished here, and in many of the ascidiae developed embryos are found. these are then ejected with the breathing-water through the cloaca (q), and so "born alive." if we now glance at the entire structure of the simple ascidia (especially phallusia, cynthia, etc.) and compare it with that of the amphioxus, we shall find that the two have few points of contact. it is true that the fully-developed ascidia resembles the amphioxus in several important features of its internal structure, and especially in the peculiar character of the gill-crate and gut. but in most other features of organisation it is so far removed from it, and is so unlike it in external appearance, that the really close relationship of the two was not discovered until their embryology was studied. we will now compare the embryonic development of the two animals, and find to our great astonishment that the same embryonic form develops from the ovum of the amphioxus as from that of the ascidia--a typical chordula. chapter . . embryology of the lancelet and the sea-squirt. the structural features that distinguish the vertebrates from the invertebrates are so prominent that there was the greatest difficulty in the earlier stages of classification in determining the affinity of these two great groups. when scientists began to speak of the affinity of the various animal groups in more than a figurative--in a genealogical--sense, this question came at once to the front, and seemed to constitute one of the chief obstacles to the carrying-out of the evolutionary theory. even earlier, when they had studied the relations of the chief groups, without any idea of real genealogical connection, they believed they had found here and there among the invertebrates points of contact with the vertebrates: some of the worms, especially, seemed to approach the vertebrates in structure, such as the marine arrow-worm (sagitta). but on closer study the analogies proved untenable. when darwin gave an impulse to the construction of a real stem-history of the animal kingdom by his reform of the theory of evolution, the solution of this problem was found to be particularly difficult. when i made the first attempt in my general morphology ( ) to work out the theory and apply it to classification, i found no problem of phylogeny that gave me so much trouble as the linking of the vertebrates with the invertebrates. but just at this time the true link was discovered, and at a point where it was least expected. towards the end of two works of the russian zoologist, kowalevsky, who had lived for some time at naples, and studied the embryology of the lower animals, were issued in the publications of the st. petersburg academy. a fortunate accident had directed the attention of this able observer almost simultaneously to the embryology of the lowest vertebrate, the amphioxus, and that of an invertebrate, the close affinity of which to the amphioxus had been least suspected, the ascidia. to the extreme astonishment of all zoologists who were interested in this important question, there turned out to be the utmost resemblance in structure from the commencement of development between these two very different animals--the lowest vertebrate and the mis-shaped, sessile invertebrate. with this undeniable identity of ontogenesis, which can be demonstrated to an astounding extent, we had, in virtue of the biogenetic law, discovered the long-sought genealogical link, and definitely identified the invertebrate group that represents the nearest blood-relatives of the vertebrates. the discovery was confirmed by other zoologists, and there can no longer be any doubt that of all the classes of invertebrates that of the tunicates is most closely related to the vertebrates, and of the tunicates the nearest are the ascidiae. we cannot say that the vertebrates are descended from the ascidiae--and still less the reverse--but we can say that of all the invertebrates it is the tunicates, and, within this group, the ascidiae, that are the nearest blood-relatives of the ancient stem-form of the vertebrates. we must assume as the common ancestral group of both stems an extinct family of the extensive vermalia-stem, the prochordonia or prochordata ("primitive chorda-animals"). in order to appreciate fully this remarkable fact, and especially to secure the sound basis we seek for the genealogical tree of the vertebrates, it is necessary to study thoroughly the embryology of both these animals, and compare the individual development of the amphioxus step by step with that of the ascidia. we begin with the ontogeny of the amphioxus. from the concordant observations of kowalevsky at naples and hatschek at messina, it follows, firstly, that the ovum-segmentation and gastrulation of the amphioxus are of the simplest character. they take place in the same way as we find them in many of the lower animals of different invertebrate stems, which we have already described as original or primordial; the development of the ascidia is of the same type. sexually mature specimens of the amphioxus, which are found in great quantities at messina from april or may onwards, begin as a rule to eject their sexual products in the evening; if you catch them about the middle of a warm night and put them in a glass vessel with seawater, they immediately eject through the mouth their accumulated sexual products, in consequence of the disturbance. the males give out masses of sperm, and the females discharge ova in such quantity that many of them stick to the fibrils about their mouths. both kinds of cells pass first into the mantle-cavity after the opening of the gonads, proceed through the gill-clefts into the branchial gut, and are discharged from this through the mouth. the ova are simply round cells. they are only / of an inch in diameter, and thus are only half the size of the mammal ova, and have no distinctive features. the clear protoplasm of the mature ovum is made so turbid by the numbers of dark granules of food-yelk or deutoplasm scattered in it that it is difficult to follow the process of fecundation and the behaviour of the two nuclei during it (chapter . ). the active elements of the male sperm, the cone-shaped spermatozoa, are similar to those of most other animals (cf. figure . ). fecundation takes place when these lively ciliated cells of the sperm approach the ovum, and seek to penetrate into the yelk-matter or the cellular substance of the ovum with their head-part--the thicker part of the cell that encloses the nucleus. only one spermatozoon can bore its way into the yelk at one pole of the ovum-axis; its head or nucleus coalesces with the female nucleus, which remains after the extrusion of the directive bodies from the germinal vesicle. thus is formed the "stem-nucleus," or the nucleus of the "stem-cell" (cytula, figure . ). this now undergoes total segmentation, dividing into two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two cells, and so on. in this way we get the spherical, mulberry-shaped body, which we call the morula. the segmentation of the amphioxus is not entirely regular, as was supposed after the first observations of kowalevsky ( ). it is not completely equal, but a little unequal. as hatschek afterwards found ( ), the segmentation-cells only remain equal up to the morula-stage, the spherical body of which consists of thirty-two cells. then, as always happens in unequal segmentation, the more sluggish vegetal cells are outstripped in the cleavage. at the lower or vegetal pole of the ovum a crown of eight large entodermic cells remains for a long time unchanged, while the other cells divide, owing to the formation of a series of horizontal circles, into an increasing number of crowns of sixteen cells each. afterwards the segmentation-cells get more or less irregularly displaced, while the segmentation-cavity enlarges in the centre of the morula; in the end the former all lie on the surface of the latter, so that the foetus attains the familiar blastula shape and forms a hollow ball, the wall of which consists of a single stratum of cells (figure . a to c). this layer is the blastoderm, the simple epithelium from the cells of which all the tissues of the body proceed. these important early embryonic processes take place so quickly in the amphioxus that four or five hours after fecundation, or about midnight, the spherical blastula is completed. a pit-like depression is then formed at the vegetal pole of it, and in consequence of this the hollow sphere doubles on itself (figure . d). this pit becomes deeper and deeper (figure . e and f); at last the invagination (or doubling) is complete, and the inner or folded part of the blastula-wall lies on the inside of the outer wall. we thus get a hollow hemisphere, the thin wall of which is made up of two layers of cells (figure . e). from hemispherical the body soon becomes almost spherical once more, and then oval, the internal cavity enlarging considerably and its mouth growing narrower (figure . ). the form which the amphioxus-embryo has thus reached is a real "cup-larva" or gastrula, of the original simple type that we have previously described as the "bell-gastrula" or archigastrula (figures . to . ). as in all the other animals that form an archigastrula, the whole body is nothing but a simple gastric sac or stomach; its internal cavity is the primitive gut (progaster or archenteron, figure . g, . d), and its aperture the primitive mouth (prostoma or blastoporus, o). the wall is at once gut-wall and body-wall. it is composed of two simple cell-layers, the familiar primary germinal layers. the inner layer or the invaginated part of the blastoderm, which immediately encloses the gut-cavity is the entoderm, the inner or vegetal germ-layer, from which develop the wall of the alimentary canal and all its appendages, the coelom-pouches, etc. (figures . and . i). the outer stratum of cells, or the non-invaginated part of the blastoderm, is the ectoderm, the outer or animal germ-layer, which provides the outer skin (epidermis) and the nervous system (e). the cells of the entoderm are much larger, darker, and more fatty than those of the ectoderm, which are clearer and less rich in fatty particles. hence before and during invagination there is an increasing differentiation of the inner from the outer layer. the animal cells of the outer layer soon develop vibratory hairs; the vegetal cells of the inner layer do so much later. a thread-like process grows out of each cell, and effects continuous vibratory movements. by the vibrations of these slender hairs the gastrula of the amphioxus swims about in the sea, when it has pierced the thin ovolemma, like the gastrula of many other animals (figure . ). as in many other lower animals, the cells have only one whip-like hair each, and so are called flagellate (whip) cells (in contrast with the ciliated cells, which have a number of short lashes or cilia). in the further course of its rapid development the roundish bell-gastrula becomes elongated, and begins to flatten on one side, parallel to the long axis. the flattened side is the subsequent dorsal side; the opposite or ventral side remains curved. the latter grows more quickly than the former, with the result that the primitive mouth is forced to the dorsal side (figure . ). in the middle of the dorsal surface a shallow longitudinal groove or furrow is formed (figure . ), and the edges of the body rise up on each side of this groove in the shape of two parallel swellings. this groove is, of course, the dorsal furrow, and the swellings are the dorsal or medullary swellings; they form the first structure of the central nervous system, the medullary tube. the medullary swellings now rise higher; the groove between them becomes deeper and deeper. the edges of the parallel swellings curve towards each other, and at last unite, and the medullary tube is formed (figures . m and . m). hence the formation of a medullary tube out of the outer skin takes place in the naked dorsal surface of the free-swimming larva of the amphioxus in just the same way as we have found in the embryo of man and the higher animals within the foetal membranes. simultaneously with the construction of the medullary tube we have in the amphioxus-embryo the formation of the chorda, the coelom-pouches, and the mesoderm proceeding from their wall. these processes also take place with characteristic simplicity and clearness, so that they are very instructive to compare with the vermalia on the one hand and with the higher vertebrates on the other. while the medullary groove is sinking in the middle line of the flat dorsal side of the oval embryo, and its parallel edges unite to form the ectodermic neural tube, the single chorda is formed directly underneath them, and on each side of this a parallel longitudinal fold, from the dorsal wall of the primitive gut. these longitudinal folds of the entoderm proceed from the primitive mouth, or from its lower and hinder edge. here we see at an early stage a couple of large entodermic cells, which are distinguished from all the others by their great size, round form, and fine-grained protoplasm; they are the two promesoblasts, or polar cells of the mesoderm (figure . p). they indicate the original starting-point of the two coelom-pouches, which grow from this spot between the inner and outer germinal layers, sever themselves from the primitive gut, and provide the cellular material for the middle layer. immediately after their formation the two coelom-pouches of the amphioxus are divided into several parts by longitudinal and transverse folds. each of the primary pouches is divided into an upper dorsal and a lower ventral section by a couple of lateral longitudinal folds (figure . ). but these are again divided by several parallel transverse folds into a number of successive sacs, the primitive segments or somites (formerly called by the unsuitable name of "primitive vertebrae"). they have a different future above and below. the upper or dorsal segments, the episomites, lose their cavity later on, and form with their cells the muscular plates of the trunk. the lower or ventral segments, the hyposomites, corresponding to the lateral plates of the craniote-embryo, fuse together in the upper part owing to the disappearance of their lateral walls, and thus form the later body-cavity (metacoel); in the lower part they remain separate, and afterwards form the segmental gonads. in the middle, between the two lateral coelom-folds of the primitive gut, a single central organ detaches from this at an early stage in the middle line of its dorsal wall. this is the dorsal chorda (figures . and . ch). this axial rod, which is the first foundation of the later vertebral column in all the vertebrates, and is the only representative of it in the amphioxus, originates from the entoderm. in consequence of these important folding-processes in the primitive gut, the simple entodermic tube divides into four different sections:-- . underneath, at the ventral side, the permanent alimentary canal or permanent gut; . above, at the dorsal side, the axial rod or chorda; and . the two coelom-sacs, which immediately sub-divide into two structures:-- a. above, on the dorsal side, the episomites, the double row of primitive or muscular segments; and b. below, on each side of the gut, the hyposomites, the two lateral plates that give rise to the sex-glands, and the cavities of which partly unite to form the body-cavity. at the same time, the neural or medullary tube is formed above the chorda, on the dorsal surface, by the closing of the parallel medullary swellings. all these processes, which outline the typical structure of the vertebrate, take place with astonishing rapidity in the embryo of the amphioxus; in the afternoon of the first day, or twenty-four hours after fertilisation, the young vertebrate, the typical embryo, is formed; it then has, as a rule, six to eight somites. the chief occurrence on the second day of development is the construction of the two permanent openings of the gut--the mouth and anus. in the earlier stages the alimentary tube is found to be entirely closed, after the closing of the primitive mouth; it only communicates behind by the neurenteric canal with the medullary tube. the permanent mouth is a secondary formation, at the opposite end. here, at the end of the second day, we find a pit-like depression in the outer skin, which penetrates inwards into the closed gut. the anus is formed behind in the same way a few hours later (in the vicinity of the additional gastrula-mouth). in man and the higher vertebrates also the mouth and anus are formed, as we have seen, as flat pits in the outer skin; they then penetrate inwards, gradually becoming connected with the blind ends of the closed gut-tube. during the second day the amphioxus-embryo undergoes few other changes. the number of primitive segments increases, and generally amounts to fourteen, some forty-eight to fifty hours after impregnation. almost simultaneously with the formation of the mouth the first gill-cleft breaks through in the fore section of the amphioxus-embryo (generally forty hours after the commencement of development). it now begins to nourish itself independently, as the food material stored up in the ovum is completely used up. the further development of the free larvae takes place very slowly, and extends over several months. the body becomes much longer, and is compressed at the sides, the head-end being broadened in a sort of triangle. two rudimentary sense-organs are developed in it. inside we find the first blood-vessels, an upper or dorsal vessel, corresponding to the aorta, between the gut and the dorsal cord, and a lower or ventral vessel, corresponding to the subintestinal vein, at the lower border of the gut. now, the gills or respiratory organs also are formed at the fore-end of the alimentary canal. the whole of the anterior or respiratory section of the gut is converted into a gill-crate, which is pierced trellis-wise by numbers of branchial-holes, as in the ascidia. this is done by the foremost part of the gut-wall joining star-wise with the outer skin, and the formation of clefts at the point of connection, piercing the wall and leading into the gut from without. at first there are very few of these branchial clefts; but there are soon a number of them--first in one, then in two, rows. the foremost gill-cleft is the oldest. in the end we have a sort of lattice work of fine gill-clefts, supported on a number of stiff branchial rods; these are connected in pairs by transverse rods. (figures . to . . transverse sections of young amphioxus-larvae (diagrammatic, from ralph.) (cf. also figure . .) in figure . there is free communication from without with the gut-cavity (d) through the gill-clefts (k). in figure . the lateral folds of the body-wall, or the gill-covers, which grow downwards, are formed. in figure . these lateral folds have united underneath and joined their edges in the middle line of the ventral side (r seam). the respiratory water now passes from the gut-cavity (d) into the mantle-cavity (a). the letters have the same meaning throughout: n medullary tube, ch chorda, m lateral muscles, lh body-cavity, g part of the body-cavity in which the sexual organs are subsequently formed. d gut-cavity, clothed with the gut-gland layer (a). a mantle-cavity, k gill-clefts, b = e epidermis, e the same as visceral epithelium of the mantle-cavity, e as parietal epithelium of the mantle-cavity.) at an early stage of embryonic development the structure of the amphioxus-larva is substantially the same as the ideal picture we have previously formed of the "primitive vertebrate" (figures . to . ). but the body afterwards undergoes various modifications, especially in the fore-part. these modifications do not concern us, as they depend on special adaptations, and do not affect the hereditary vertebrate type. when the free-swimming amphioxus-larva is three months old, it abandons its pelagic habits and changes into the young animal that lives in the sand. in spite of its smallness (one-eighth of an inch), it has substantially the same structure as the adult. as regards the remaining organs of the amphioxus, we need only mention that the gonads or sexual glands are developed very late, immediately out of the inner cell-layer of the body-cavity. although we can find afterwards no continuation of the body-cavity (figure . u) in the lateral walls of the mantle-cavity, in the gill-covers or mantle-folds (figure . u), there is one present in the beginning (figure . lh). the sexual cells are formed below, at the bottom of this continuation (figure . s). for the rest, the subsequent development into the adult amphioxus of the larva we have followed is so simple that we need not go further into it here. we may now turn to the embryology of the ascidia, an animal that seems to stand so much lower and to be so much more simply organised, remaining for the greater part of its life attached to the bottom of the sea like a shapeless lump. it was a fortunate accident that kowalevsky first examined just those larger specimens of the ascidiae that show most clearly the relationship of the vertebrates to the invertebrates, and the larvae of which behave exactly like those of the amphioxus in the first stages of development. this resemblance is so close in the main features that we have only to repeat what we have already said of the ontogenesis of the amphioxus. the ovum of the larger ascidia (phallusia, cynthia, etc.) is a simple round cell of / to / of an inch in diameter. in the thick fine-grained yelk we find a clear round germinal vesicle of about / of an inch in diameter, and this encloses a small embryonic spot or nucleolus. inside the membrane that surrounds the ovum, the stem-cell of the ascidia, after fecundation, passes through just the same metamorphoses as the stem-cell of the amphioxus. it undergoes total segmentation; it divides into two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two cells, and so on. by continued total cleavage the morula, or mulberry-shaped cluster of cells, is formed. fluid gathers inside it, and thus we get once more a globular vesicle (the blastula); the wall of this is a single stratum of cells, the blastoderm. a real gastrula (a simple bell-gastrula) is formed from the blastula by invagination, in the same way as in the amphioxus. up to this there is no definite ground in the embryology of the ascidiae for bringing them into close relationship with the vertebrates; the same gastrula is formed in the same way in many other animals of different stems. but we now find an embryonic process that is peculiar to the vertebrates, and that proves irrefragably the affinity of the ascidiae to the vertebrates. from the epidermis of the gastrula a medullary tube is formed on the dorsal side, and, between this and the primitive gut, a chorda; these are the organs that are otherwise only found in vertebrates. the formation of these very important organs takes place in the ascidia-gastrula in precisely the same way as in that of the amphioxus. in the ascidia (as in the other case) the oval gastrula is first flattened on one side--the subsequent dorsal side. a groove or furrow (the medullary groove) is sunk in the middle line of the flat surface, and two parallel longitudinal swellings arise on either side from the skin layer. these medullary swellings join together over the furrow, and form a tube; in this case, again, the neural or medullary tube is at first open in front, and connected with the primitive gut behind by the neurenteric canal. further, in the ascidia-larva also the two permanent apertures of the alimentary canal only appear later, as independent and new formations. the permanent mouth does not develop from the primitive mouth of the gastrula; this primitive mouth closes up, and the later anus is formed near it by invagination from without, on the hinder end of the body, opposite to the aperture of the medullary tube. during these important processes, that take place in just the same way in the amphioxus, a tail-like projection grows out of the posterior end of the larva-body, and the larva folds itself up within the round ovolemma in such a way that the dorsal side is curved and the tail is forced on to the ventral side. in this tail is developed--starting from the primitive gut--a cylindrical string of cells, the fore end of which pushes into the body of the larva, between the alimentary canal and the neural canal, and is no other than the chorda dorsalis. this important organ had hitherto been found only in the vertebrates, not a single trace of it being discoverable in the invertebrates. at first the chorda only consists of a single row of large entodermic cells. it is afterwards composed of several rows of cells. in the ascidia-larva, also, the chorda develops from the dorsal middle part of the primitive gut, while the two coelom-pouches detach themselves from it on both sides. the simple body-cavity is formed by the coalescence of the two. when the ascidia-larva has attained this stage of development it begins to move about in the ovolemma. this causes the membrane to burst. the larva emerges from it, and swims about in the sea by means of its oar-like tail. these free-swimming larvae of the ascidia have been known for a long time. they were first observed by darwin during his voyage round the world in . they resemble tadpoles in outward appearance, and use their tails as oars, as the tadpoles do. however, this lively and highly-developed condition does not last long. at first there is a progressive development; the foremost part of the medullary tube enlarges into a brain, and inside this two single sense-organs are developed, a dorsal auditory vesicle and a ventral eye. then a heart is formed on the ventral side of the animal, or the lower wall of the gut, in the same simple form and at the same spot at which the heart is developed in man and all the other vertebrates. in the lower muscular wall of the gut we find a weal-like thickening, a solid, spindle-shaped string of cells, which becomes hollow in the centre; it begins to contract in different directions, now forward and now backward, as is the case with the adult ascidia. in this way the sanguineous fluid accumulated in the hollow muscular tube is driven in alternate directions into the blood-vessels, which develop at both ends of the cardiac tube. one principal vessel runs along the dorsal side of the gut, another along its ventral side. the former corresponds to the aorta and the dorsal vessel in the worms. the other corresponds to the subintestinal vein and the ventral vessel of the worms. with the formation of these organs the progressive development of the ascidia comes to an end, and degeneration sets in. the free-swimming larva sinks to the floor of the sea, abandons its locomotive habits, and attaches itself to stones, marine plants, mussel-shells, corals, and other objects; this is done with the part of the body that was foremost in movement. the attachment is effected by a number of out-growths, usually three, which can be seen even in the free-swimming larva. the tail is lost, as there is no further use for it. it undergoes a fatty degeneration, and disappears with the chorda dorsalis. the tailless body changes into an unshapely tube, and, by the atrophy of some parts and the modification of others, gradually assumes the appearance we have already described. (figure . . an appendicaria (copelata), seen from the left. m mouth, k branchial gut, o gullet, v stomach, a anus, n brain (ganglion above the gullet), g auditory vesicle, f ciliated groove under the gills, h heart, t testicles, e ovary, c chorda, s tail.) among the living tunicates there is a very interesting group of small animals that remain throughout life at the stage of development of the tailed, free ascidia-larva, and swim about briskly in the sea by means of their broad oar-tail. these are the remarkable copelata (appendicaria and vexillaria, figure . ). they are the only living vertebrates that have throughout life a chorda dorsalis and a neural string above it; the latter must be regarded as the prolongation of the cerebral ganglion and the equivalent of the medullary tube. their branchial gut also opens directly outwards by a pair of branchial clefts. these instructive copelata, comparable to permanent ascidia-larvae, come next to the extinct prochordonia, those ancient worms which we must regard as the common ancestors of the tunicates and vertebrates. the chorda of the appendicaria is a long, cylindrical string (figure . c), and serves as an attachment for the muscles that work the flat oar-tail. among the various modifications which the ascidia-larva undergoes after its establishment at the sea-floor, the most interesting (after the loss of the axial rod) is the atrophy of one of its chief organs, the medullary tube. in the amphioxus the spinal marrow continues to develop, but in the ascidia the tube soon shrinks into a small and insignificant nervous ganglion that lies above the mouth and the gill-crate, and is in accord with the extremely slight mental power of the animal. this insignificant relic of the medullary tube seems to be quite beyond comparison with the nervous centre of the vertebrate, yet it started from the same structure as the spinal cord of the amphioxus. the sense-organs that had been developed in the fore part of the neural tube are also lost; no trace of which can be found in the adult ascidia. on the other hand, the alimentary canal becomes a most extensive organ. it divides presently into two sections--a wide fore or branchial gut that serves for respiration, and a narrower hind or hepatic gut that accomplishes digestion. the branchial or head-gut of the ascidia is small at first, and opens directly outwards only by a couple of lateral ducts or gill-clefts--a permanent arrangement in the copelata. the gill-clefts are developed in the same way as in the amphioxus. as their number greatly increases we get a large gill-crate, pierced like lattice work. in the middle line of its ventral side we find the hypobranchial groove. the mantle or cloaca-cavity (the atrium) that surrounds the gill-crate is also formed in the same way in the ascidia as in the amphioxus. the ejection-opening of this peribranchial cavity corresponds to the branchial pore of the amphioxus. in the adult ascidia the branchial gut and the heart on its ventral side are almost the only organs that recall the original affinity with the vertebrates. the further development of the ascidia in detail has no particular interest for us, and we will not go into it. the chief result that we obtain from its embryology is the complete agreement with that of the amphioxus in the earliest and most important embryonic stages. they do not begin to diverge until after the medullary tube and alimentary canal, and the axial rod with the muscles between the two, have been formed. the amphioxus continues to advance, and resembles the embryonic forms of the higher vertebrates; the ascidia degenerates more and more, and at last, in its adult condition, has the appearance of a very imperfect invertebrate. if we now look back on all the remarkable features we have encountered in the structure and the embryonic development of the amphioxus and the ascidia, and compare them with the features of man's embryonic development which we have previously studied, it will be clear that i have not exaggerated the importance of these very interesting animals. it is evident that the amphioxus from the vertebrate side and the ascidia from the invertebrate form the bridge by which we can span the deep gulf that separates the two great divisions of the animal kingdom. the radical agreement of the lancelet and the sea-squirt in the first and most important stages of development shows something more than their close anatomic affinity and their proximity in classification; it shows also their real blood-relationship and their common origin from one and the same stem-form. in this way, it throws considerable light on the oldest roots of man's genealogical tree. chapter . . duration of the history of our stem. our comparative investigation of the anatomy and ontogeny of the amphioxus and ascidia has given us invaluable assistance. we have, in the first place, bridged the wide gulf that has existed up to the present between the vertebrates and invertebrates; and, in the second place, we have discovered in the embryology of the amphioxus a number of ancient evolutionary stages that have long since disappeared from human embryology, and have been lost, in virtue of the law of curtailed heredity. the chief of these stages are the spherical blastula (in its simplest primary form), and the succeeding archigastrula, the pure, original form of the gastrula which the amphioxus has preserved to this day, and which we find in the same form in a number of invertebrates of various classes. not less important are the later embryonic forms of the coelomula, the chordula, etc. thus the embryology of the amphioxus and the ascidia has so much increased our knowledge of man's stem-history that, although our empirical information is still very incomplete, there is now no defect of any great consequence in it. we may now, therefore, approach our proper task, and reconstruct the phylogeny of man in its chief lines with the aid of this evidence of comparative anatomy and ontogeny. in this the reader will soon see the immense importance of the direct application of the biogenetic law. but before we enter upon the work it will be useful to make a few general observations that are necessary to understand the processes aright. we must say a few words with regard to the period in which the human race was evolved from the animal kingdom. the first thought that occurs to one in this connection is the vast difference between the duration of man's ontogeny and phylogeny. the individual man needs only nine months for his complete development, from the fecundation of the ovum to the moment when he leaves the maternal womb. the human embryo runs its whole course in the brief space of forty weeks (as a rule, days). in many other mammals the time of the embryonic development is much the same as in man--for instance, in the cow. in the horse and ass it takes a little longer, forty-three to forty-five weeks; in the camel, thirteen months. in the largest mammals, the embryo needs a much longer period for its development in the womb--a year and a half in the rhinoceros, and ninety weeks in the elephant. in these cases pregnancy lasts twice as long as in the case of man, or one and three-quarter years. in the smaller mammals the embryonic period is much shorter. the smallest mammals, the dwarf-mice, develop in three weeks; hares in four weeks, rats and marmots in five weeks, the dog in nine, the pig in seventeen, the sheep in twenty-one and the goat in thirty-six. birds develop still more quickly. the chick only needs, in normal circumstances, three weeks for its full development. the duck needs twenty-five days, the turkey twenty-seven, the peacock thirty-one, the swan forty-two, and the cassowary sixty-five. the smallest bird, the humming-bird, leaves the egg after twelve days. hence the duration of individual development within the foetal membranes is, in the mammals and birds, clearly related to the absolute size of the body of the animal in question. but this is not the only determining feature. there are a number of other circumstances that have an influence on the period of embryonic development. in the amphioxus the earliest and most important embryonic processes take place so rapidly that the blastula is formed in four hours, the gastrula in six, and the typical vertebrate form in twenty-four. in every case the duration of ontogeny shrinks into insignificance when we compare it with the enormous period that has been necessary for phylogeny, or the gradual development of the ancestral series. this period is not measured by years or centuries, but by thousands and millions of years. many millions of years had to pass before the most advanced vertebrate, man, was evolved, step by step, from his ancient unicellular ancestors. the opponents of evolution, who declare that this gradual development of the human form from lower animal forms, and ultimately from a unicellular organism, is an incredible miracle, forget that the same miracle takes place within the space of mine months in the embryonic development of every human being. each of us has, in the forty weeks--properly speaking, in the first four weeks--of his development in the womb, passed through the same series of transformations that our animal ancestors underwent in the course of millions of years. it is impossible to determine even approximately, in hundreds or even thousands of years, the real and absolute duration of the phylogenetic period. but for some time now we have, through the research of geologists, been in a position to assign the relative length of the various sections of the organic history of the earth. the immediate data for determining this relative length of the geological periods are found in the thickness of the sedimentary strata--the strata that have been formed at the bottom of the sea or in fresh water from the mud or slime deposited there. these successive layers of limestone, sandstone, slate, marl, etc., which make up the greater part of the rocks, and are often several thousand feet thick, give us a standard for computing the relative length of the various periods. to make the point quite clear, i must say a word about the evolution of the earth in general, and point out briefly the chief features of the story. in the first place, we encounter the principle that on our planet organic life began to exist at a definite period. that statement is no longer disputed by any competent geologist or biologist. the organic history of the earth could not commence until it was possible for water to settle on our planet in fluid condition. every organism, without exception, needs fluid water as a condition of existence, and contains a considerable quantity of it. our own body, when fully formed, contains sixty to seventy per cent of water in its tissues, and only thirty to forty per cent of solid matter. there is even more water in the body of the child, and still more in the embryo. in the earlier stages of development the human foetus contains more than ninety per cent of water, and not ten per cent of solids. in the lower marine animals, especially certain medusae, the body consists to the extent of more than ninety-nine per cent of sea-water, and has not one per cent of solid matter. no organism can exist or discharge its functions without water. no water, no life! but fluid water, on which the existence of life primarily depends, could not exist on our planet until the temperature of the surface of the incandescent sphere had sunk to a certain point. up to that time it remained in the form of steam. but as soon as the first fluid water could be condensed from the envelope of steam, it began its geological action, and has continued down to the present day to modify the solid crust of the earth. the final outcome of this incessant action of the water--wearing down and dissolving the rocks in the form of rain, hail, snow, and ice, as running stream or boiling surge--is the formation of mud. as huxley says in his admirable lectures on the causes of phenomena in organic nature, the chief document as to the past history of our earth is mud; the question of the history of past ages resolves itself into a question about the formation of mud. as i have said, it is possible to form an approximate idea of the relative age of the various strata by comparing them at different parts of the earth's surface. geologists have long been agreed that there is a definite historical succession of the different strata. the various superimposed layers correspond to successive periods in the organic history of the earth, in which they were deposited in the form of mud at the bottom of the sea. the mud was gradually converted into stone. this was lifted out of the water owing to variations in the earth's surface, and formed the mountains. as a rule, four or five great divisions are distinguished in the organic history of the earth, corresponding to the larger and smaller groups of the sedimentary strata. the larger periods are then sub-divided into a series of smaller ones, which usually number from twelve to fifteen. the comparative thickness of the groups of strata enables us to make an approximate calculation of the relative length of these various periods of time. we cannot say, it is true, "in a century a stratum of a certain thickness (about two feet) is formed on the average; therefore, a layer feet thick must be , years old." different strata of the same thickness may need very different periods for their formation. but from the thickness or size of the stratum we can draw some conclusion as to the relative length of the period. the first and oldest of the four or five chief divisions of the organic history of the earth is called the primordial, archaic, or archeozoic period. if we compute the total average thickness of the sedimentary strata at about , feet, this first period comprises , feet, or the greater part of the whole. for this and other reasons we may at once conclude that the corresponding primordial or archeolithic period must have been in itself much longer than the whole of the remaining periods together, from its close to the present day. it was probably much longer than the figures i have quoted ( : ) indicate--possibly : . of late years the thickness of the archaic rocks has been put at , feet. synopsis of the paleontological formations, or the fossiliferous strata of the crust. column : groups (v. down to i.). column : systems (xiv. down to i.). column : formations ( down to ). column : synonyms of formations. v. anthropolithic group, or anthropozoic (quaternary) group of strata : xiv. recent (alluvium) : . present : upper alluvial. v. anthropolithic group, or anthropozoic (quaternary) group of strata : xiv. recent (alluvium) : . recent : lower alluvial. v. anthropolithic group, or anthropozoic (quaternary) group of strata : xiii. pleistocene (diluvium) : . post-glacial : upper diluvial. v. anthropolithic group, or anthropozoic (quaternary) group of strata : xiii. pleistocene (diluvium) : . glacial : lower diluvial. iv. cenolithic group, or cenozoic (tertiary) group of strata : xii. pliocene (neo-tertiary) : . arverne : upper pliocene. iv. cenolithic group, or cenozoic (tertiary) group of strata : xii. pliocene (neo-tertiary) : . subapennine : lower pliocene. iv. cenolithic group, or cenozoic (tertiary) group of strata : xi. miocene (middle tertiary) : . falun : upper miocene. iv. cenolithic group, or cenozoic (tertiary) group of strata : xi. miocene (middle tertiary) : . limbourg : lower miocene. iv. cenolithic group, or cenozoic (tertiary) group of strata : xb. oligocene (old tertiary) : . aquitaine : upper oligocene. iv. cenolithic group, or cenozoic (tertiary) group of strata : xb. oligocene (old tertiary) : . ligurium : lower oligocene. iv. cenolithic group, or cenozoic (tertiary) group of strata : xa. eocene (primitive tertiary) : . gypsum : upper eocene. iv. cenolithic group, or cenozoic (tertiary) group of strata : xa. eocene (primitive tertiary) : . coarse chalk : middle eocene. iv. cenolithic group, or cenozoic (tertiary) group of strata : xa. eocene (primitive tertiary) : . london clay : lower eocene. iii. mesolithic group, or mesozoic (secondary) group of strata : ix. chalk (cretaceous) : . white chalk. : upper cretaceous. iii. mesolithic group, or mesozoic (secondary) group of strata : ix. chalk (cretaceous) : . green sand : middle cretaceous. iii. mesolithic group, or mesozoic (secondary) group of strata : ix. chalk (cretaceous) : . neocomian : lower cretaceous. iii. mesolithic group, or mesozoic (secondary) group of strata : ix. chalk (cretaceous) : . wealden : weald-formation. iii. mesolithic group, or mesozoic (secondary) group of strata : viii. jurassic : . portland : upper oolithic. iii. mesolithic group, or mesozoic (secondary) group of strata : viii. jurassic : . oxford : middle oolithic. iii. mesolithic group, or mesozoic (secondary) group of strata : viii. jurassic : . bath : lower oolithic. iii. mesolithic group, or mesozoic (secondary) group of strata : viii. jurassic : . lias : liassic. iii. mesolithic group, or mesozoic (secondary) group of strata : vii. triassic : . keuper : upper triassic. iii. mesolithic group, or mesozoic (secondary) group of strata : vii. triassic : . muschelkalk : middle triassic. iii. mesolithic group, or mesozoic (secondary) group of strata : vii. triassic : . bunter : lower triassic. ii. paleolithic group, or paleozoic (primary) group of strata : vib. permian : . zechstein : upper permian. ii. paleolithic group, or paleozoic (primary) group of strata : vib. permian : . neurot sand : lower permian. ii. paleolithic group, or paleozoic (primary) group of strata : via. carboniferous (coal-measures) : . carboniferous sandstone : upper carboniferous. ii. paleolithic group, or paleozoic (primary) group of strata : via. carboniferous (coal-measures) : . carboniferous limestone : lower carboniferous. ii. paleolithic group, or paleozoic (primary) group of strata : v. devonian : . pilton : upper devonian. ii. paleolithic group, or paleozoic (primary) group of strata : v. devonian : . ilfracombe : middle devonian. ii. paleolithic group, or paleozoic (primary) group of strata : v. devonian : . linton : lower devonian. ii. paleolithic group, or paleozoic (primary) group of strata : iv. silurian : . ludlow : upper silurian. ii. paleolithic group, or paleozoic (primary) group of strata : iv. silurian : . wenlock : middle silurian. ii. paleolithic group, or paleozoic (primary) group of strata : iv. silurian : . llandeilo : lower silurian. i. archeolithic group, or archeozoic (primordial) group of strata : iii. cambrian : . potsdam : upper cambrian. i. archeolithic group, or archeozoic (primordial) group of strata : iii. cambrian : . longmynd : lower cambrian. i. archeolithic group, or archeozoic (primordial) group of strata : ii. huronian : . labrador : upper laurentian. i. archeolithic group, or archeozoic (primordial) group of strata : i. laurentian : . ottawa : lower laurentian. the primordial period falls into three subordinate sections--the laurentian, huronian, and cambrian, corresponding to the three chief groups of rocks that comprise the archaic formation. the immense period during which these rocks were forming in the primitive ocean probably comprises more than , , years. at the commencement of it the oldest and simplest organisms were formed by spontaneous generation--the monera, with which the history of life on our planet opened. from these were first developed unicellular organisms of the simplest character, the protophyta and protozoa (paulotomea, amoebae, rhizopods, infusoria, and other protists). during this period the whole of the invertebrate ancestors of the human race were evolved from the unicellular organisms. we can deduce this from the fact that we already find remains of fossilised fishes (selachii and ganoids) towards the close of the following silurian period. these are much more advanced and much younger than the lowest vertebrate, the amphioxus, and the numerous skull-less vertebrates, related to the amphioxus, that must have lived at that time. the whole of the invertebrate ancestors of the human race must have preceded these. the primordial age is followed by a much shorter division, the paleozoic or primary age. it is divided into four long periods, the silurian, devonian, carboniferous, and permian. the silurian strata are particularly interesting because they contain the first fossil traces of vertebrates--teeth and scales of selachii (palaeodus) in the lower, and ganoids (pteraspis) in the upper silurian. during the devonian period the "old red sandstone" was formed; during the carboniferous period were deposited the vast coal-measures that yield us our chief combustive material; in the permian (or the dyas), in fine, the new red sandstone, the zechstein (magnesian limestone), and the kupferschiefer (marl-slate) were formed. the collective depth of these strata is put at , to , feet. in any case, the paleozoic age, taken as a whole, was much shorter than the preceding and much longer than the subsequent periods. the strata that were deposited during this primary epoch contain a large number of fossils; besides the invertebrate species there are a good many vertebrates, and the fishes preponderate. there were so many fishes, especially primitive fishes (of the shark type) and plated fishes, during the devonian, and also during the carboniferous and permian periods, that we may describe the whole paleozoic period as "the age of fishes." among the paleozoic plated fishes or ganoids the crossopterygii and the ctenodipterina (dipneusts) are of great importance. during this period some of the fishes began to adapt themselves to living on land, and so gave rise to the class of the amphibia. we find in the carboniferous period fossilised remains of five-toed amphibia, the oldest terrestrial, air-breathing vertebrates. these amphibia increase in variety in the permian epoch. towards the close of it we find the first amniotes, the ancestors of the three higher classes of vertebrates. these are lizard-like animals; the first to be discovered was the proterosaurus, from the marl at eisenach. the rise of the earliest amniotes, among which must have been the common ancestor of the reptiles, birds, and mammals, is put back towards the close of the paleozoic age by the discovery of these reptile remains. the ancestors of our race during this period were at first represented by true fishes, then by dipneusts and amphibia, and finally by the earliest amniotes, or the protamniotes. the third chief section of the organic history of the earth is the mesozoic or secondary period. this again is subdivided into three divisions triassic, jurassic, and cretaceous. the thickness of the strata that were deposited in this period, from the beginning of the triassic to the end of the cretaceous period, is altogether about , feet, or not half as much as the paleozoic deposits. during this period there was a very brisk and manifold development in all branches of the animal kingdom. there were especially a number of new and interesting forms evolved in the vertebrate stem. bony fishes (teleostei) make their first appearance. reptiles are found in extraordinary variety and number; the extinct giant-serpents (dinosauria), the sea-serpents (halisauria), and the flying lizards (pterosauria) are the most remarkable and best known of these. on account of this predominance of the reptile-class, the period is called "the age of reptiles." but the bird-class was also evolved during this period; they certainly originated from some division of the lizard-like reptiles. this is proved by the embryological identity of the birds and reptiles and their comparative anatomy, and, among other features, from the circumstance that in this period there were birds with teeth in their jaws and with tails like lizards (archeopteryx, odontornis). finally, the most advanced and (for us) the most important class of the vertebrates, the mammals, made their appearance during the mesozoic period. the earliest fossil remains of them were found in the latest triassic strata--lower jaws of small ungulates and marsupials. more numerous remains are found a little later in the jurassic, and some in the cretaceous. all the mammal remains that we have from this section belong to the lower promammals and marsupials; among these were most certainly the ancestors of the human race. on the other hand, we have not found a single indisputable fossil of any higher mammal (a placental) in the whole of this period. this division of the mammals, which includes man, was not developed until later, towards the close of this or in the following period. the fourth section of the organic history of the earth, the tertiary or cenozoic age, was much shorter than the preceding. the strata that were deposited during this period have a collective thickness of only about , feet. it is subdivided into four sections--the eocene, oligocene, miocene, and pliocene. during these periods there was a very varied development of higher plant and animal forms; the fauna and flora of our planet approached nearer and nearer to the character that they bear to-day. in particular, the most advanced class, the mammals, began to preponderate. hence the tertiary period may be called "the age of mammals." the highest section of this class, the placentals, now made their appearance; to this group the human race belongs. the first appearance of man, or, to be more precise, the development of man from some closely-related group of apes, probably falls in either the miocene or the pliocene period, the middle or the last section of the tertiary period. others believe that man properly so-called--man endowed with speech--was not evolved from the non-speaking ape-man (pithecanthropus) until the following, the anthropozoic, age. in this fifth and last section of the organic history of the earth we have the full development and dispersion of the various races of men, and so it is called the anthropozoic as well as the quaternary period. in the imperfect condition of paleontological and ethnographical science we cannot as yet give a confident answer to the question whether the evolution of the human race from some extinct ape or lemur took place at the beginning of this or towards the middle or the end of the tertiary period. however, this much is certain: the development of civilisation falls in the anthropozoic age, and this is merely an insignificant fraction of the vast period of the whole history of life. when we remember this, it seems ridiculous to restrict the word "history" to the civilised period. if we divide into a hundred equal parts the whole period of the history of life, from the spontaneous generation of the first monera to the present day, and if we then represent the relative duration of the five chief sections or ages, as calculated from the average thickness of the strata they contain, as percentages of this, we get something like the following relation:-- i. archeolithic or archeozoic (primordial) age : : . ii. paleolithic or paleozoic (primary) age : : . iii. mesolithic or mesozoic (secondary) age : : . iv. cenolithic or cenozoic (tertiary) age : : v. anthropolithic or anthropozoic (quaternary) age : : . total : : . in any case, the "historical period" is an insignificant quantity compared with the vast length of the preceding ages, in which there was no question of human existence on our planet. even the important cenozoic or tertiary period, in which the first placentals or higher mammals appear, probably amounts to little over two per cent of the whole organic age. before we approach our proper task, and, with the aid of our ontogenetic acquirements and the biogenetic law, follow step by step the paleontological development of our animal ancestors, let us glance for a moment at another, and apparently quite remote, branch of science, a general consideration of which will help us in the solving of a difficult problem. i mean the science of comparative philology. since darwin gave new life to biology by his theory of selection, and raised the question of evolution on all sides, it has often been pointed out that there is a remarkable analogy between the development of languages and the evolution of species. the comparison is perfectly just and very instructive. we could hardly find a better analogy when we are dealing with some of the difficult and obscure features of the evolution of species. in both cases we find the action of the same natural laws. all philologists of any competence in their science now agree that all human languages have been gradually evolved from very rudimentary beginnings. the idea that speech is a gift of the gods--an idea held by distinguished authorities only fifty years ago--is now generally abandoned, and only supported by theologians and others who admit no natural development whatever. speech has been developed simultaneously with its organs, the larynx and tongue, and with the functions of the brain. hence it will be quite natural to find in the evolution and classification of languages the same features as in the evolution and classification of organic species. the various groups of languages that are distinguished in philology as primitive, fundamental, parent, and daughter languages, dialects, etc., correspond entirely in their development to the different categories which we classify in zoology and botany as stems, classes, orders, families, genera, species, and varieties. the relation of these groups, partly co-ordinate and partly subordinate, in the general scheme is just the same in both cases; and the evolution follows the same lines in both. when, with the assistance of this tree, we follow the formation of the various languages that have been developed from the common root of the ancient indo-germanic tongue, we get a very clear idea of their phylogeny. we shall see at the same time how analogous this is to the development of the various groups of vertebrates that have arisen from the common stem-form of the primitive vertebrate. the ancient indo-germanic root-language divided first into two principal stems--the slavo-germanic and the aryo-romanic. the slavo-germanic stem then branches into the ancient germanic and the ancient slavo-lettic tongues; the aryo-romanic into the ancient aryan and the ancient greco-roman. if we still follow the genealogical tree of these four indo-germanic tongues, we find that the ancient germanic divides into three branches--the scandinavian, the gothic, and the german. from the ancient german came the high german and low german; to the latter belong the frisian, saxon, and modern low-german dialects. the ancient slavo-lettic divided first into a baltic and a slav language. the baltic gave rise to the lett, lithuanian, and old-prussian varieties; the slav to the russian and south-slav in the south-east, and to the polish and czech in the west. we find an equally prolific branching of its two chief stems when we turn to the other division of the indo-germanic languages. the greco-roman divided into the thracian (albano-greek) and the italo-celtic. from the latter came the divergent branches of the italic (roman and latin) in the south, and the celtic in the north: from the latter have been developed all the british (ancient british, ancient scotch, and irish) and gallic varieties. the ancient aryan gave rise to the numerous iranian and indian languages. this "comparative anatomy" and evolution of languages admirably illustrates the phylogeny of species. it is clear that in structure and development the primitive languages, mother and daughter languages, and varieties, correspond exactly to the classes, orders, genera, and species of the animal world. in both cases the "natural" system is phylogenetic. as we have been convinced from comparative anatomy and ontogeny, and from paleontology, that all past and living vertebrates descend from a common ancestor, so the comparative study of dead and living indo-germanic tongues proves beyond question that they are all modifications of one primitive language. this view of their origin is now accepted by all the chief philologists who have worked in this branch and are unprejudiced. but the point to which i desire particularly to draw the reader's attention in this comparison of the indo-germanic languages with the branches of the vertebrate stem is, that one must never confuse direct descendants with collateral branches, nor extinct forms with living. this confusion is very common, and our opponents often make use of the erroneous ideas it gives rise to for the purpose of attacking evolution generally. when, for instance, we say that man descends from the ape, this from the lemur, and the lemur from the marsupial, many people imagine that we are speaking of the living species of these orders of mammals that they find stuffed in our museums. our opponents then foist this idea on us, and say, with more astuteness than intelligence, that it is quite impossible; or they ask us, by way of physiological experiment, to turn a kangaroo into a lemur, a lemur into a gorilla, and a gorilla into a man! the demand is childish, and the idea it rests on erroneous. all these living forms have diverged more or less from the ancestral form; none of them could engender the same posterity that the stem-form really produced thousands of years ago. it is certain that man has descended from some extinct mammal; and we should just as certainly class this in the order of apes if we had it before us. it is equally certain that this primitive ape descended in turn from an unknown lemur, and this from an extinct marsupial. but it is just as clear that all these extinct ancestral forms can only be claimed as belonging to the living order of mammals in virtue of their essential internal structure and their resemblance in the decisive anatomic characteristics of each order. in external appearance, in the characteristics of the genus or species, they would differ more or less, perhaps very considerably, from all living representatives of those orders. it is a universal and natural procedure in phylogenetic development that the stem-forms themselves, with their specific peculiarities, have been extinct for some time. the forms that approach nearest to them among the living species are more or less--perhaps very substantially--different from them. hence in our phylogenetic inquiry and in the comparative study of the living, divergent descendants, there can only be a question of determining the greater or less remoteness of the latter from the ancestral form. not a single one of the older stem-forms has continued unchanged down to our time. we find just the same thing in comparing the various dead and living languages that have developed from a common primitive tongue. if we examine our genealogical tree of the indo-germanic languages in this light, we see at once that all the older or parent tongues, of which we regard the living varieties of the stem as divergent daughter or grand-daughter languages, have been extinct for some time. the aryo-romanic and the slavo-germanic tongues have completely disappeared; so also the aryan, the greco-roman, the slavo-lettic, and the ancient germanic. even their daughters and grand-daughters have been lost; all the living indo-germanic languages are only related in the sense that they are divergent descendants of common stem-forms. some forms have diverged more, and some less, from the original stem-form. this easily demonstrable fact illustrates very well the analogous case of the origin of the vertebrate species. phylogenetic comparative philology here yields a strong support to phylogenetic comparative zoology. but the one can adduce more direct evidence than the other, as the paleontological material of philology--the old monuments of the extinct tongue--have been preserved much better than the paleontological material of zoology, the fossilised bones and imprints of vertebrates. we may, however, trace man's genealogical tree not only as far as the lower mammals, but much further--to the amphibia, to the shark-like primitive fishes, and, in fine, to the skull-less vertebrates that closely resembled the amphioxus. but this must not be understood in the sense that the existing amphioxus, or the sharks or amphibia of to-day, can give us any idea of the external appearance of these remote stem-forms. still less must it be thought that the amphioxus or any actual shark, or any living species of amphibia, is a real ancestral form of the higher vertebrates and man. the statement can only rationally mean that the living forms i have referred to are collateral lines that are much more closely related to the extinct stem-forms, and have retained the resemblance much better, than any other animals we know. they are still so like them in regard to their distinctive internal structure that we should put them in the same class with the extinct forms if we had these before us. but no direct descendants of these earlier forms have remained unchanged. hence we must entirely abandon the idea of finding direct ancestors of the human race in their characteristic external form among the living species of animals. the essential and distinctive features that still connect living forms more or less closely with the extinct common stem-forms lie in the internal structure, not the external appearance. the latter has been much modified by adaptation. the former has been more or less preserved by heredity. comparative anatomy and ontogeny prove beyond question that man is a true vertebrate, and, therefore, man's special genealogical tree must be connected with that of the other vertebrates, which spring from a common root with him. but we have also many important grounds in comparative anatomy and ontogeny for assuming a common origin for all the vertebrates. if the general theory of evolution is correct, all the vertebrates, including man, come from a single common ancestor, a long-extinct "primitive vertebrate." hence the genealogical tree of the vertebrates is at the same time that of the human race. our task, therefore, of constructing man's genealogy becomes the larger aim of discovering the genealogy of the entire vertebrate stem. as we now know from the comparative anatomy and ontogeny of the amphioxus and the ascidia, this is in turn connected with the genealogical tree of the invertebrates (directly with that of the vermalia), but has no direct connection with the independent stems of the articulates, molluscs, and echinoderms. if we do thus follow our ancestral tree through various stages down to the lowest worms, we come inevitably to the gastraea, that most instructive form that gives the clearest possible picture of an animal with two germinal layers. the gastraea itself has originated from the simple multicellular vesicle, the blastaea, and this in turn must have been evolved from the lowest circle of unicellular animals, to which we give the name of protozoa. we have already considered the most important primitive type of these, the unicellular amoeba, which is extremely instructive when compared with the human ovum. with this we reach the lowest of the solid data to which we are to apply our biogenetic law, and by which we may deduce the extinct ancestor from the embryonic form. the amoeboid nature of the young ovum and the unicellular condition in which (as stem-cell or cytula) every human being begins its existence justify us in affirming that the earliest ancestors of the human race were simple amoeboid coils. but the further question now arises: "whence came these first amoebae with which the history of life began at the commencement of the laurentian epoch?" there is only one answer to this. the earliest unicellular organisms can only have been evolved from the simplest organisms we know, the monera. these are the simplest living things that we can conceive. their whole body is nothing but a particle of plasm, a granule of living albuminous matter, discharging of itself all the essential vital functions that form the material basis of life. thus we come to the last, or, if you prefer, the first, question in connection with evolution--the question of the origin of the monera. this is the real question of the origin of life, or of spontaneous generation. we have neither space nor occasion to go further in this chapter into the question of spontaneous generation. for this i must refer the reader to the fifteenth chapter of the history of creation, and especially to the second book of the general morphology, or to the essay on "the monera and spontaneous generation" in my studies of the monera and other protists.* (* the english reader will find a luminous and up-to-date chapter on the subject in haeckel's recently written and translated wonders of life.--translator.) i have given there fully my own view of this important question. the famous botanist nageli afterwards ( ) developed the same ideas. i will only say a few words here about this obscure question of the origin of life, in so far as our main subject, organic evolution in general, is affected by it. spontaneous generation, in the definite and restricted sense in which i maintain it, and claim that it is a necessary hypothesis in explaining the origin of life, refers solely to the evolution of the monera from inorganic carbon-compounds. when living things made their first appearance on our planet, the very complex nitrogenous compound of carbon that we call plasson, which is the earliest material embodiment of vital action, must have been formed in a purely chemical way from inorganic carbon-compounds. the first monera were formed in the sea by spontaneous generation, as crystals are formed in the mother-water. our demand for a knowledge of causes compels us to assume this. if we believe that the whole inorganic history of the earth has proceeded on mechanical principles without any intervention of a creator, and that the history of life also has been determined by the same mechanical laws; if we see that there is no need to admit creative action to explain the origin of the various groups of organisms; it is utterly irrational to assume such creative action in dealing with the first appearance of organic life on the earth. this much-disputed question of "spontaneous generation" seems so obscure, because people have associated with the term a mass of very different, and often very absurd, ideas, and have attempted to solve the difficulty by the crudest experiments. the real doctrine of the spontaneous generation of life cannot possibly be refuted by experiments. every experiment that has a negative result only proves that no organism has been formed out of inorganic matter in the conditions--highly artificial conditions--we have established. on the other hand, it would be exceedingly difficult to prove the theory by way of experiment; and even if monera were still formed daily by spontaneous generation (which is quite possible), it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to find a solid proof of it. those who will not admit the spontaneous generation of the first living things in our sense must have recourse to a supernatural miracle; and this is, as a matter of fact, the desperate resource to which our "exact" scientists are driven, to the complete abdication of reason. a famous english physicist, lord kelvin (then sir w. thomson), attempted to dispense with the hypothesis of spontaneous generation by assuming that the organic inhabitants of the earth were developed from germs that came from the inhabitants of other planets, and that chanced to fall on our planet on fragments of their original home, or meteorites. this hypothesis found many supporters, among others the distinguished german physicist, helmholtz. however, it was refuted in by the able physicist, friedrich zollner, of leipzig, in his work, on the nature of comets. he showed clearly how unscientific this hypothesis is; firstly in point of logic, and secondly in point of scientific content. at the same time he pointed out that our hypothesis of spontaneous generation is "a necessary condition for understanding nature according to the law of causality." i repeat that we must call in the aid of the hypothesis only as regards the monera, the structureless "organisms without organs." every complex organism must have been evolved from some lower organism. we must not assume the spontaneous generation of even the simplest cell, for this itself consists of at least two parts--the internal, firm nuclear substance, and the external, softer cellular substance or the protoplasm of the cell-body. these two parts must have been formed by differentiation from the indifferent plasson of a moneron, or a cytode. for this reason the natural history of the monera is of great interest; here alone can we find the means to overcome the chief difficulties of the problem of spontaneous generation. the actual living monera are specimens of such organless or structureless organisms, as they must have boon formed by spontaneous generation at the commencement of the history of life. chapter . . our protist ancestors. under the guidance of the biogenetic law, and on the basis of the evidence we have obtained, we now turn to the interesting task of determining the series of man's animal ancestors. phylogeny us a whole is an inductive science. from the totality of the biological processes in the life of plants, animals, and man we have gathered a confident inductive idea that the whole organic population of our planet has been moulded on a harmonious law of evolution. all the interesting phenomena that we meet in ontogeny and paleontology, comparative anatomy and dysteleology, the distribution and habits of organisms--all the important general laws that we abstract from the phenomena of these sciences, and combine in harmonious unity--are the broad bases of our great biological induction. but when we come to the application of this law, and seek to determine with its aid the origin of the various species of organisms, we are compelled to frame hypotheses that have essentially a deductive character, and are inferences from the general law to particular cases. but these special deductions are just as much justified and necessitated by the rigorous laws of logic as the inductive conclusions on which the whole theory of evolution is built. the doctrine of the animal ancestry of the human race is a special deduction of this kind, and follows with logical necessity from the general inductive law of evolution. i must point out at once, however, that the certainty of these evolutionary hypotheses, which rest on clear special deductions, is not always equally strong. some of these inferences are now beyond question; in the case of others it depends on the knowledge and the competence of the inquirer what degree of certainty he attributes to them. in any case, we must distinguish between the absolute certainty of the general (inductive) theory of descent and the relative certainty of special (deductive) evolutionary hypotheses. we can never determine the whole ancestral series of an organism with the same confidence with which we hold the general theory of evolution as the sole scientific explanation of organic modifications. the special indication of stem-forms in detail will always be more or less incomplete and hypothetical. this is quite natural. the evidence on which we build is imperfect, and always will be imperfect; just as in comparative philology. the first of our documents, paleontology, is exceedingly incomplete. we know that all the fossils yet discovered are only an insignificant fraction of the plants and animals that have lived on our planet. for every single species that has been preserved for us in the rocks there are probably hundreds, perhaps thousands, of extinct species that have left no trace behind them. this extreme and very unfortunate incompleteness of the paleontological evidence, which cannot be pointed out too often, is easily explained. it is absolutely inevitable in the circumstances of the fossilisation of organisms. it is also due in part to the incompleteness of our knowledge in this branch. it must be borne in mind that the great majority of the stratified rocks that compose the crust of the earth have not yet been opened. we have only a few specimens of the innumerable fossils that are buried in the vast mountain ranges of asia and africa. only a part of europe and north america has been investigated carefully. the whole of the fossils known to us certainly do not amount to a hundredth part of the remains that are really buried in the crust of the earth. we may, therefore, look forward to a rich harvest in the future as regards this science. however, our paleontological evidence will (for reasons that i have fully explained in the sixteenth chapter of the history of creation) always be defective. the second chief source of evidence, ontogeny, is not less incomplete. it is the most important source of all for special phylogeny; but it has great defects, and often fails us. we must, above all, clearly distinguish between palingenetic and cenogenetic phenomena. we must never forget that the laws of curtailed and disturbed heredity often make the original course of development almost unrecognisable. the recapitulation of phylogeny by ontogeny is only fairly complete in a few cases, and is never wholly complete. as a rule, it is precisely the earliest and most important embryonic stages that suffer most from alteration and condensation. the earlier embryonic forms have had to adapt themselves to new circumstances, and so have been modified. the struggle for existence has had just as profound an influence on the freely moving and still immature young forms as on the adult forms. hence in the embryology of the higher animals, especially, palingenesis is much restricted by cenogenesis; it is to-day, as a rule, only a faded and much altered picture of the original evolution of the animal's ancestors. we can only draw conclusions from the embryonic forms to the stem-history with the greatest caution and discrimination. moreover, the embryonic development itself has only been fully studied in a few species. finally, the third and most valuable source of evidence, comparative anatomy, is also, unfortunately, very imperfect; for the simple reason that the whole of the living species of animals are a mere fraction of the vast population that has dwelt on our planet since the beginning of life. we may confidently put the total number of these at more than a million species. the number of animals whose organisation has been studied up to the present in comparative anatomy is proportionately very small. here, again, future research will yield incalculable treasures. but, for the present, in view of this patent incompleteness of our chief sources of evidence, we must naturally be careful not to lay too much stress in human phylogeny on the particular animals we have studied, or regard all the various stages of development with equal confidence as stem-forms. in my first efforts to construct the series of man's ancestors i drew up a list of, at first ten, afterwards twenty to thirty, forms that may be regarded more or less certainly as animal ancestors of the human race, or as stages that in a sense mark off the chief sections in the long story of evolution from the unicellular organism to man. of these twenty to thirty stages, ten to twelve belong to the older group of the invertebrates and eighteen to twenty to the younger division of the vertebrates. in approaching, now, the difficult task of establishing the evolutionary succession of these thirty ancestors of humanity since the beginning of life, and in venturing to lift the veil that covers the earliest secrets of the earth's history, we must undoubtedly look for the first living things among the wonderful organisms that we call the monera; they are the simplest organisms known to us--in fact, the simplest we can conceive. their whole body consists merely of a simple particle or globule of structureless plasm or plasson. the discoveries of the last four decades have led us to believe with increasing certainty that wherever a natural body exhibits the vital processes of nutrition, reproduction, voluntary movement, and sensation, we have the action of a nitrogenous carbon-compound of the chemical group of the albuminoids; this plasm (or protoplasm) is the material basis of all vital functions. whether we regarded the function, in the monistic sense, as the direct action of the material substratum, or whether we take matter and force to be distinct things in the dualistic sense, it is certain that we have not as yet found any living organism in which the exercise of the vital functions is not inseparably bound up with plasm. the soft slimy plasson of the body of the moneron is generally called "protoplasm," and identified with the cellular matter of the ordinary plant and animal cells. but we must, to be accurate, distinguish between the plasson of the cytodes and the protoplasm of the cells. this distinction is of the utmost importance for the purposes of evolution. as i have often said, we must recognise two different stages of development in these "elementary organisms," or plastids ("builders"), that represent the ultimate units of organic individuality. the earlier and lower stage are the unnucleated cytodes, the body of which consists of only one kind of albuminous matter--the homogeneous plasson or "formative matter." the later and higher stage are the nucleated cells, in which we find a differentiation of the original plasson into two different formative substances--the caryoplasm of the nucleus and the cytoplasm of the body of the cell (cf. chapter . .) (figure . . chroococcus minor (nageli), magnified times. a phytomoneron, the globular plastids of which secrete a gelatinous structureless membrane. the unnucleated globule of plasm (bluish-green in colour) increases by simple cleavage (a to d). the monera are permanent cytodes. their whole body consists of soft, structureless plasson. however carefully we examine it with our finest chemical reagents and most powerful microscopes, we can find no definite parts or no anatomic structure in it. hence, the monera are literally organisms without organs; in fact, from the philosophic point of view they are not organisms at all, since they have no organs. they can only be called organisms in the sense that they are capable of the vital functions of nutrition, reproduction, sensation, and movement. if we were to try to imagine the simplest possible organism, we should frame something like the moneron. the monera that we find to-day in various forms fall into two groups according to the nature of their nutrition--the phytomonera and the zoomonera; from the physiological point of view, the former are the simplest specimens of the plant (phyton) kingdom, and the latter of the animal (zoon) world. the phytomonera, especially in their simplest form, the chromacea (phycochromacea or cyanophycea), are the most primitive and the oldest of living organisms. the typical genus chroococcus (figure . ) is represented by several fresh-water species, and often forms a very delicate bluish-green deposit on stones and wood in ponds and ditches. it consists of round, light green particles, from / to / of an inch in diameter. (figure . . aphanocapsa primordialis (nageli), magnified times. a phytomoneron, the round plastids of which (bluish-green in colour) secrete a shapeless gelatinous mass; in this the unnucleated cytodes increase continually by simple cleavage.) the whole life of these homogeneous globules of plasm consists of simple growth and reproduction by cleavage. when the tiny particle has reached a certain size by the continuous assimilation of inorganic matter, it divides into two equal halves, by a constriction in the middle. the two daughter-monera that are thus formed immediately begin a similar vital process. it is the same with the brown procytella primordialis (formerly called the protococcus marinus); it forms large masses of floating matter in the arctic seas. the tiny plasma-globules of this species are of a greenish-brown colour, and have a diameter of / , to / of an inch. there is no membrane discoverable in the simplest chroococcacea, but we find one in other members of the same family; in aphanocapsa (figure . ) the enveloping membranes of the social plastids combine; in gloecapsa they are retained through several generations, so that the little plasma-globules are enfolded in many layers of membrane. next to the chromacea come the bacteria, which have been evolved from them by the remarkable change in nutrition which gives us the simple explanation of the differentiation of plant and animal in the protist kingdom. the chromacea build up their plasm directly from inorganic matter; the bacteria feed on organic matter. hence, if we logically divide the protist kingdom into plasma-forming protophyta and plasma-consuming protozoa, we must class the bacteria with the latter; it is quite illogical to describe them--as is still often done--as schizomycetes, and class them with the true fungi. the bacteria, like the chromacea, have no nucleus. as is well-known, they play an important part in modern biology as the causes of fermentation and putrefaction, and of tuberculosis, typhus, cholera, and other infectious diseases, and as parasites, etc. but we cannot linger now to deal with these very interesting features; the bacteria have no relation to man's genealogical tree. we may now turn to consider the remarkable protamoeba, or unnucleated amoeba. i have, in the first volume, pointed out the great importance of the ordinary amoeba in connection with several weighty questions of general biology. the tiny protamoebae, which are found both in fresh and salt water, have the same unshapely form and irregular movements of their simple naked body as the real amoebae; but they differ from them very materially in having no nucleus in their cell-body. the short, blunt, finger-like processes that are thrust out at the surface of the creeping protamoeba serve for getting food as well as for locomotion. they multiply by simple cleavage (figure . ). (figure . . a moneron (protamoeba) in the act of reproduction. a the whole moneron, moving like an ordinary amoeba by thrusting out changeable processes. b it divides into two halves by a constriction in the middle. c the two halves separate, and each becomes an independent individual. (highly magnified.)) the next stage to the simple cytode-forms of the monera in the genealogy of mankind (and all other animals) is the simple cell, or the most rudimentary form of the cell which we find living independently to-day as the amoeba. the earliest process of inorganic differentiation in the structureless body of the monera led to its division into two different substances--the caryoplasm and the cytoplasm. the caryoplasm is the inner and firmer part of the cell, the substance of the nucleus. the cytoplasm is the outer and softer part, the substance of the body of the cell. by this important differentiation of the plasson into nucleus and cell-body, the organised cell was evolved from the structureless cytode, the nucleated from the unnucleated plastid. that the first cells to appear on the earth were formed from the monera by such a differentiation seems to us the only possible view in the present condition of science. we have a direct instance of this earliest process of differentiation to-day in the ontogeny of many of the lower protists (such as the gregarinae). the unicellular form that we have in the ovum has already been described as the reproduction of a corresponding unicellular stem-form, and to this we have ascribed the organisation of an amoeba (cf. chapter . ). the irregular-shaped amoeba, which we find living independently to-day in our fresh and salt water, is the least definite and the most primitive of all the unicellular protozoa (figure . ). as the unripe ova (the protova that we find in the ovaries of animals) cannot be distinguished from the common amoebae, we must regard the amoeba as the primitive form that is reproduced in the embryonic stage of the amoeboid ovum to-day, in accordance with the biogenetic law. i have already pointed out, in proof of the striking resemblance of the two cells, that the ova of many of the sponges were formerly regarded as parasitic amoebae (figure . ). large unicellular organisms like the amoebae were found creeping about inside the body of the sponge, and were thought to be parasites. it was afterwards discovered that they were really the ova of the sponge from which the embryos were developed. as a matter of fact, these sponge-ova are so much like many of the amoebae in size, shape, the character of their nucleus, and movement of the pseudopodia, that it is impossible to distinguish them without knowing their subsequent development. our phylogenetic interpretation of the ovum, and the reduction of it to some ancient amoeboid ancestral form, supply the answer to the old problem: "which was first, the egg or the chick?" we can now give a very plain answer to this riddle, with which our opponents have often tried to drive us into a corner. the egg came a long time before the chick. we do not mean, of course, that the egg existed from the first as a bird's egg, but as an indifferent amoeboid cell of the simplest character. the egg lived for thousands of years as an independent unicellular organism, the amoeba. the egg, in the modern physiological sense of the word, did not make its appearance until the descendants of the unicellular protozoon had developed into multicellular animals, and these had undergone sexual differentiation. even then the egg was first a gastraea-egg, then a platode-egg, then a vermalia-egg, and chordonia-egg; later still acrania-egg, then fish-egg, amphibia-egg, reptile-egg, and finally bird's egg. the bird's egg we have experience of daily is a highly complicated historical product, the result of countless hereditary processes that have taken place in the course of millions of years. the earliest ancestors of our race were simple protophyta, and from these our protozoic ancestors were developed afterwards. from the morphological point of view both the vegetal and the animal protists were simple organisms, individualities of the first order, or plastids. all our later ancestors are complex organisms, or individualities of a higher order--social aggregations of a plurality of cells. the earliest of these, the moraeada, which represent the third stage in our genealogy, are very simple associations of homogeneous, indifferent cells--undifferentiated colonies of social amoebae or infusoria. to understand the nature and origin of these protozoa-colonies we need only follow step by step the first embryonic products of the stem-cell. in all the metazoa the first embryonic process is the repeated cleavage of the stem-cell, or first segmentation-cell (figure . ). we have already fully considered this process, and found that all the different forms of it may be reduced to one type, the original equal or primordial segmentation (cf. chapter . ). in the genealogical tree of the vertebrates this palingenetic form of segmentation has been preserved in the amphioxus alone, all the other vertebrates having cenogenetically modified forms of cleavage. in any case, the latter were developed from the former, and so the segmentation of the ovum in the amphioxus has a great interest for us (cf. figure . ). the outcome of this repeated cleavage is the formation of a round cluster of cells, composed of homogeneous, indifferent cells of the simplest character (figure . ). this is called the morula (= mulberry-embryo) on account of its resemblance to a mulberry or blackberry. (figure . . original or primordial ovum-cleavage. the stem-cell or cytula, formed by fecundation of the ovum, divides by repeated regular cleavage first into two (a), then four (b), then eight (c), and finally a large number of segmentation-cells (d). figure . . morula, or mulberry-shaped embryo.) it is clear that this morula reproduces for us to-day the simple structure of the multicellular animal that succeeded the unicellular amoeboid form in the early laurentian period. in accordance with the biogenetic law, the morula recalls the ancestral form of the moraea, or simple colony of protozoa. the first cell-communities to be formed, which laid the early foundation of the higher multicellular body, must have consisted of homogeneous and simple amoeboid cells. the oldest amoebae lived isolated lives, and even the amoeboid cells that were formed by the segmentation of these unicellular organisms must have continued to live independently for a long time. but gradually small communities of amoebae arose by the side of these eremitical protozoa, the sister-cells produced by cleavage remaining joined together. the advantages in the struggle for life which these communities had over the isolated cells favoured their formation and their further development. we find plenty of these cell-colonies or communities to-day in both fresh and salt water. they belong to various groups both of the protophyta and protozoa. to have some idea of those ancestors of our race that succeeded phylogenetically to the moraeada, we have only to follow the further embryonic development of the morula. we then see that the social cells of the round cluster secrete a sort of jelly or a watery fluid inside their globular body, and they themselves rise to the surface of it (figure . f, g). in this way the solid mulberry-embryo becomes a hollow sphere, the wall of which is composed of a single layer of cells. we call this layer the blastoderm, and the sphere itself the blastula, or embryonic vesicle. this interesting blastula is very important. the conversion of the morula into a hollow ball proceeds on the same lines originally in the most diverse stems--as, for instance, in many of the zoophytes and worms, the ascidia, many of the echinoderms and molluscs, and in the amphioxus. moreover, in the animals in which we do not find a real palingenetic blastula the defect is clearly due to cenogenetic causes, such as the formation of food-yelk and other embryonic adaptations. we may, therefore, conclude that the ontogenetic blastula is the reproduction of a very early phylogenetic ancestral form, and that all the metazoa are descended from a common stem-form, which was in the main constructed like the blastula. in many of the lower animals the blastula is not developed within the foetal membranes, but in the open water. in those cases each blastodermic cell begins at an early stage to thrust out one or more mobile hair-like processes; the body swims about by the vibratory movement of these lashes or whips (figure . f). we still find, both in the sea and in fresh water, various kinds of primitive multicellular organisms that substantially resemble the blastula in structure, and may be regarded in a sense as permanent blastula-forms--hollow vesicles or gelatinous balls, with a wall composed of a single layer of ciliated homogeneous cells. there are "blastaeads" of this kind even among the protophyta--the familiar volvocina, formerly classed with the infusoria. the common volvox globator is found in the ponds in the spring--a small, green, gelatinous globule, swimming about by means of the stroke of its lashes, which rise in pairs from the cells on its surface. in the similar halosphaera viridis also, which we find in the marine plancton (floating matter), a number of green cells form a simple layer at the surface of the gelatinous ball; but in this case there are no cilia. some of the infusoria of the flagellata-class (signura, magosphaera, etc.) are similar in structure to these vegetal clusters, but differ in their animal nutrition; they form the special group of the catallacta. in september, , i studied the development of one of these graceful animals on the island of gis-oe, off the coast of norway (magosphaera planula), figures . and . ). the fully-formed body is a gelatinous ball, with its wall composed of thirty-two to sixty-four ciliated cells; it swims about freely in the sea. after reaching maturity the community is dissolved. each cell then lives independently for some time, grows, and changes into a creeping amoeba. this afterwards contracts, and clothes itself with a structureless membrane. the cell then looks just like an ordinary animal ovum. when it has been in this condition for some time the cell divides into two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and sixty-four cells. these arrange themselves in a round vesicle, thrust out vibratory lashes, burst the capsule, and swim about in the same magosphaera-form with which we started. this completes the life-circle of the remarkable and instructive animal. if we compare these permanent blastulae with the free-swimming ciliated larvae or blastulae, with similar construction, of many of the lower animals, we can confidently deduce from them that there was a very early and long-extinct common stem-form of substantially the same structure as the blastula. we may call it the blastaea. its body consisted, when fully formed, of a simple hollow ball, filled with fluid or structureless jelly, with a wall composed of a single stratum of ciliated cells. there were probably many genera and species of these blastaeads in the laurentian period, forming a special class of marine protists. it is an interesting fact that in the plant kingdom also the simple hollow sphere is found to be an elementary form of the multicellular organism. at the surface and below the surface (down to a depth of yards) of the sea there are green globules swimming about, with a wall composed of a single layer of chlorophyll-bearing cells. the botanist schmitz gave them the name of halosphaera viridis in . the next stage to the blastaea, and the sixth in our genealogical tree, is the gastraea that is developed from it. as we have already seen, this ancestral form is particularly important. that it once existed is proved with certainty by the gastrula, which we find temporarily in the ontogenesis of all the metazoa (figure . j, k). as we saw, the original, palingenetic form of the gastrula is a round or oval uni-axial body, the simple cavity of which (the primitive gut) has an aperture at one pole of its axis (the primitive mouth). the wall of the gut consists of two strata of cells, and these are the primary germinal layers, the animal skin-layer (ectoderm) and vegetal gut-layer (entoderm). the actual ontogenetic development of the gastrula from the blastula furnishes sound evidence as to the phylogenetic origin of the gastraea from the blastaea. a pit-shaped depression appears at one side of the spherical blastula (figure . h). in the end this invagination goes so far that the outer or invaginated part of the blastoderm lies close on the inner or non-invaginated part (figure . j). in explaining the phylogenetic origin of the gastraea in the light of this ontogenetic process, we may assume that the one-layered cell-community of the blastaea began to take in food more largely at one particular part of its surface. natural selection would gradually lead to the formation of a depression or pit at this alimentary spot on the surface of the ball. the depression would grow deeper and deeper. in time the vegetal function of taking in and digesting food would be confined to the cells that lined this hole; the other cells would see to the animal functions of locomotion, sensation, and protection. this was the first division of labour among the originally homogeneous cells of the blastaea. (figure . . the norwegian magosphaera planula, swimming about by means of the lashes or cilia at its surface. figure . . section of magosphaera planula, showing how the pear-shaped cells in the centre of the gelatinous ball are connected by a fibrous process. each cell has a contractile vacuole as well as a nucleus.) the effect, then, of this earliest histological differentiation was to produce two different kinds of cells--nutritive cells in the depression and locomotive cells on the surface outside. but this involved the severance of the two primary germinal layers--a most important process. when we remember that even man's body, with all its various parts, and the body of all the other higher animals, are built up originally out of these two simple layers, we cannot lay too much stress on the phylogenetic significance of this gastrulation. in the simple primitive gut or gastric cavity of the gastrula and its rudimentary mouth we have the first real organ of the animal frame in the morphological sense; all the other organs were developed afterwards from these. in reality, the whole body of the gastrula is merely a "primitive gut." i have shown already (chapters . and . ) that the two-layered embryos of all the metazoa can be reduced to this typical gastrula. this important fact justifies us in concluding, in accordance with the biogenetic law, that their ancestors also were phylogenetically developed from a similar stem-form. this ancient stem-form is the gastraea. the gastraea probably lived in the sea during the laurentian period, swimming about in the water by means of its ciliary coat much as free ciliated gastrulae do to-day. probably it differed from the existing gastrula only in one essential point, though extinct millions of years ago. we have reason, from comparative anatomy and ontogeny, to believe that it multiplied by sexual generation, not merely asexually (by cleavage, gemmation, and spores), as was no doubt the case with the earlier ancestors. some of the cells of the primary germ-layers probably became ova and others fertilising sperm. we base these hypotheses on the fact that we do to-day find the simplest form of sexual reproduction in some of the living gastraeads and other lower animals, especially the sponges. the fact that there are still in existence various kinds of gastraeads, or lower metazoa with an organisation little higher than that of the hypothetical gastraea, is a strong point in favour of our theory. there are not very many species of these living gastraeads; but their morphological and phylogenetic interest is so great, and their intermediate position between the protozoa and metazoa so instructive, that i proposed long ago ( ) to make a special class of them. i distinguished three orders in this class--the gastremaria, physemaria, and cyemaria (or dicyemida). but we might also regard these three orders as so many independent classes in a primitive gastraead stem. the gastremaria and cyemaria, the chief of these living gastraeads, are small metazoa that live parasitically inside other metazoa, and are, as a rule, / to / of an inch long, often much less (figure . , to ). their soft body, devoid of skeleton, consists of two simple strata of cells, the primary germinal layers; the outer of these is thickly clothed with long hair-like lashes, by which the parasites swim about in the various cavities of their host. the inner germinal layer furnishes the sexual products. the pure type of the original gastrula (or archigastrula, figure . i) is seen in the pemmatodiscus gastrulaceus, which monticelli discovered in the umbrella of a large medusa (pilema pulmo) in ; the convex surface of this gelatinous umbrella was covered with numbers of clear vesicles, of / to / inch in diameter, in the fluid contents of which the little parasites were swimming. the cup-shaped body of the pemmatodiscus (figure . , ) is sometimes rather flat, and shaped like a hat or cone, at other times almost curved into a semi-circle. the simple hollow of the cup, the primitive gut (g), has a narrow opening (o). the skin layer (e) consists of long slender cylindrical cells, which bear long vibratory hairs; it is separated by a thin structureless, gelatinous plate (f) from the visceral or gut layer (i), the prismatic cells of which are much smaller and have no cilia. pemmatodiscus propagates asexually, by simple longitudinal cleavage; on this account it has recently been regarded as the representative of a special order of gastraeads (mesogastria). probably a near relative of the pemmatodiscus is the kunstleria gruveli (figure . , ). it lives in the body-cavity of vermalia (sipunculida), and differs from the former in having no lashes either on the large ectodermic cells (e) or the small entodermic (i); the germinal layers are separated by a thick, cup-shaped, gelatinous mass, which has been called the "clear vesicle" (f). the primitive mouth is surrounded by a dark ring that bears very strong and long vibratory lashes, and effects the swimming movements. pemmatodiscus and kunstleria may be included in the family of the gastremaria. to these gastraeads with open gut are closely related the orthonectida (rhopalura, figure . , to ). they live parasitically in the body-cavity of echinoderms (ophiura) and vermalia; they are distinguished by the fact that their primitive gut-cavity is not empty, but filled with entodermic cells, from which the sexual cells are developed. these gastraeads are of both sexes, the male (figure . ) being smaller and of a somewhat different shape from the oval female (figure . ). the somewhat similar dicyemida (figure . ) are distinguished from the preceding by the fact that their primitive gut-cavity is occupied by a single large entodermic cell instead of a crowded group of sexual cells. this cell does not yield sexual products, but afterwards divides into a number of cells (spores), each of which, without being impregnated, grows into a small embryo. the dicyemida live parasitically in the body-cavity, especially the renal cavities, of the cuttle-fishes. they fall in several genera, some of which are characterised by the possession of special polar cells; the body is sometimes roundish, oval, or club-shaped, at other times long and cylindrical. the genus conocyema (figures . to . ) differs from the ordinary dicyema in having four polar pimples in the form of a cross, which may be incipient tentacles. the classification of the cyemaria is much disputed; sometimes they are held to be parasitic infusoria (like the opalina), sometimes platodes or vermalia, related to the suctorial worms or rotifers, but having degenerated through parasitism. i adhere to the phylogenetically important theory that i advanced in , that we have here real gastraeads, primitive survivors of the common stem-group of all the metazoa. in the struggle for life they have found shelter in the body-cavity of other animals. (figure . . modern gastraeads. figure . pemmatodiscus gastrulaceus (monticelli), in longitudinal section. figure . kunstleria gruveli (delage), in longitudinal section. (from kunstler and gruvel.) figures to . rhopalura giardi (julin): figure male, figure female, figure planula. figure . dicyema macrocephala (van beneden). figures to . conocyema polymorpha (van beneden): figure the mature gastraead, figures to its gastrulation. d primitive gut, o primitive mouth, e ectoderm, i entoderm, f gelatinous plate between e and i (supporting plate, blastocoel).) the small coelenteria attached to the floor of the sea that i have called the physemaria (haliphysema and gastrophysema) probably form a third order (or class) of the living gastraeads. the genus haliphysema (figures . and . ) is externally very similar to a large rhizopod (described by the same name in ) of the family of the rhabdamminida, which was at first taken for a sponge. in order to avoid confusion with these, i afterwards gave them the name of prophysema. the whole mature body of the prophysema is a simple cylindrical or oval tube, with a two-layered wall. the hollow of the tube is the gastric cavity, and the upper opening of it the mouth (figure . m). the two strata of cells that form the wall of the tube are the primary germinal layers. these rudimentary zoophytes differ from the swimming gastraeads chiefly in being attached at one end (the end opposite to the mouth) to the floor of the sea. in prophysema the primitive gut is a simple oval cavity, but in the closely related gastrophysema it is divided into two chambers by a transverse constriction; the hind and smaller chamber above furnishes the sexual products, the anterior one being for digestion. the simplest sponges (olynthus, figure . ) have the same organisation as the physemaria. the only material difference between them is that in the sponge the thin two-layered body-wall is pierced by numbers of pores. when these are closed they resemble the physemaria. possibly the gastraeads that we call physemaria are only olynthi with the pores closed. the ammoconida, or the simple tubular sand-sponges of the deep-sea (ammolynthus, etc.), do not differ from the gastraeads in any important point when the pores are closed. in my monograph on the sponges (with sixty plates) i endeavoured to prove analytically that all the species of this class can be traced phylogenetically to a common stem-form (calcolynthus). (figures . and . . prophysema primordiale, a living gastraead. figure . . the whole of the spindle-shaped animal (attached below to the floor of the sea). figure . . the same in longitudinal section. the primitive gut (d) opens above at the primitive mouth (m). between the ciliated cells (g) are the amoeboid ova (e). the skin-layer (h) is encrusted with grains of sand below and sponge-spicules above. figures . to . . ascula of gastrophysema, attached to the floor of the sea. figure . external view, . longitudinal section. g primitive gut, o primitive mouth, i visceral layer, e cutaneous layer. (diagram.) figure . . olynthus, a very rudimentary sponge. a piece cut away in front.) the lowest form of the cnidaria is also not far removed from the gastraeads. in the interesting common fresh-water polyp (hydra) the whole body is simply an oval tube with a double wall; only in this case the mouth has a crown of tentacles. before these develop the hydra resembles an ascula (figures . and . ). afterwards there are slight histological differentiations in its ectoderm, though the entoderm remains a single stratum of cells. we find the first differentiation of epithelial and stinging cells, or of muscular and neural cells, in the thick ectoderm of the hydra. in all these rudimentary living coelenteria the sexual cells of both kinds--ova and sperm cells--are formed by the same individual; it is possible that the oldest gastraeads were hermaphroditic. it is clear from comparative anatomy that hermaphrodism--the combination of both kinds of sexual cells in one individual--is the earliest form of sexual differentiation; the separation of the sexes (gonochorism) was a much later phenomenon. the sexual cells originally proceeded from the edge of the primitive mouth of the gastraead. chapter . . our worm-like ancestors. the gastraea theory has now convinced us that all the metazoa or multicellular animals can be traced to a common stem-form, the gastraea. in accordance with the biogenetic law, we find solid proof of this in the fact that the two-layered embryos of all the metazoa can be reduced to a primitive common type, the gastrula. just as the countless species of the metazoa do actually develop in the individual from the simple embryonic form of the gastrula, so they have all descended in past time from the common stem-form of the gastraea. in this fact, and the fact we have already established that the gastraea has been evolved from the hollow vesicle of the one-layered blastaea, and this again from the original unicellular stem-form, we have obtained a solid basis for our study of evolution. the clear path from the stem-cell to the gastrula represents the first section of our human stem-history (chapters . , . , and . ). the second section, that leads from the gastraea to the prochordonia, is much more difficult and obscure. by the prochordonia we mean the ancient and long-extinct animals which the important embryonic form of the chordula proves to have once existed (cf. figures . to . ). the nearest of living animals to this embryonic structure are the lowest tunicates, the copelata (appendicaria) and the larvae of the ascidia. as both the tunicates and the vertebrates develop from the same chordula, we may infer that there was a corresponding common ancestor of both stems. we may call this the chordaea, and the corresponding stem-group the prochordonia or prochordata. from this important stem-group of the unarticulated prochordonia (or "primitive chorda-animals") the stems of the tunicates and vertebrates have been divergently evolved. we shall see presently how this conclusion is justified in the present condition of morphological science. we have first to answer the difficult and much-discussed question of the development of the chordaea from the gastraea; in other words, "how and by what transformations were the characteristic animals, resembling the embryonic chordula, which we regard as the common stem-forms of all the chordonia, both tunicates and vertebrates, evolved from the simplest two-layered metazoa?" the descent of the vertebrates from the articulates has been maintained by a number of zoologists during the last thirty years with more zeal than discernment; and, as a vast amount has been written on the subject, we must deal with it to some extent. all three classes of articulates in succession have been awarded the honour of being considered the "real ancestors" of the vertebrates: first, the annelids (earth-worms, leeches, and the like), then the crustacea (crabs, etc.), and, finally, the tracheata (spiders, insects, etc.). the most popular of these hypotheses was the annelid theory, which derived the vertebrates from the worms. it was almost simultaneously ( ) formulated by carl semper, of wurtzburg, and anton dohrn, of naples. the latter advanced this theory originally in favour of the failing degeneration theory, with which i dealt in my work, aims and methods of modern embryology. this interesting degeneration theory--much discussed at that time, but almost forgotten now--was formed in with the aim of harmonising the results of evolution and ever-advancing darwinism with religious belief. the spirited struggle that darwin had occasioned by the reformation of the theory of descent in , and that lasted for a decade with varying fortunes in every branch of biology, was drawing to a close in - , and soon ended in the complete victory of transformism. to most of the disputants the chief point was not the general question of evolution, but the particular one of "man's place in nature"--"the question of questions," as huxley rightly called it. it was soon evident to every clear-headed thinker that this question could only be answered in the sense of our anthropogeny, by admitting that man had descended from a long series of vertebrates by gradual modification and improvement. in this way the real affinity of man and the vertebrates came to be admitted on all hands. comparative anatomy and ontogeny spoke too clearly for their testimony to be ignored any longer. but in order still to save man's unique position, and especially the dogma of personal immortality, a number of natural philosophers and theologians discovered an admirable way of escape in the "theory of degeneration." granting the affinity, they turned the whole evolutionary theory upside down, and boldly contended that "man is not the most highly developed animal, but the animals are degenerate men." it is true that man is closely related to the ape, and belongs to the vertebrate stem; but the chain of his ancestry goes upward instead of downward. in the beginning "god created man in his own image," as the prototype of the perfect vertebrate; but, in consequence of original sin, the human race sank so low that the apes branched off from it, and afterwards the lower vertebrates. when this theory of degeneration was consistently developed, its supporters were bound to hold that the entire animal kingdom was descended from the debased children of men. this theory was most strenuously defended by the catholic priest and natural philosopher, michelis, in his haeckelogony: an academic protest against haeckel's anthropogeny ( ). in still more "academic" and somewhat mystic form the theory was advanced by a natural philosopher of the older jena school--the mathematician and physicist, carl snell. but it received its chief support on the zoological side from anton dohrn, who maintained the anthropocentric ideas of snell with particular ability. the amphioxus, which modern science now almost unanimously regards as the real primitive vertebrate, the ancient model of the original vertebrate structure, is, according to dohrn, a late, degenerate descendant of the stem, the "prodigal son" of the vertebrate family. it has descended from the cyclostoma by a profound degeneration, and these in turn from the fishes; even the ascidia and the whole of the tunicates are merely degenerate fishes! following out this curious theory, dohrn came to contest the general belief that the coelenterata and worms are "lower animals"; he even declared that the unicellular protozoa were degenerate coelenterata. in his opinion "degeneration is the great principle that explains the existence of all the lower forms." if this michelis-dohrn theory were true, and all animals were really degenerate descendants of an originally perfect humanity, man would assuredly be the true centre and goal of all terrestrial life; his anthropocentric position and his immortality would be saved. unfortunately, this trustful theory is in such flagrant contradiction to all the known facts of paleontology and embryology that it is no longer worth serious scientific consideration. but the case is no better for the much-discussed descent of the vertebrates from the annelids, which dohrn afterwards maintained with great zeal. of late years this hypothesis, which raised so much dust and controversy, has been entirely abandoned by most competent zoologists, even those who once supported it. its chief supporter, dohrn, admitted in that it is "dead and buried," and made a blushing retraction at the end of his studies of the early history of the vertebrate. now that the annelid-hypothesis is "dead and buried," and other attempts to derive the vertebrates from medusae, echinoderms, or molluscs, have been equally unsuccessful, there is only one hypothesis left to answer the question of the origin of the vertebrates--the hypothesis that i advanced thirty-six years ago and called the "chordonia-hypothesis." in view of its sound establishment and its profound significance, it may very well claim to be a theory, and so should be described as the chordonia or chordaea theory. i first advanced this theory in a series of university lectures in , from which the history of creation was composed. in the first edition of this work ( ) i endeavoured to prove, on the strength of kowalevsky's epoch-making discoveries, that "of all the animals known to us the tunicates are undoubtedly the nearest blood-relatives of the vertebrates; they are the most closely related to the vermalia, from which the vertebrates have been evolved. naturally, i do not mean that the vertebrates have descended from the tunicates, but that the two groups have sprung from a common root. it is clear that the real vertebrates (primarily the acrania) were evolved in very early times from a group of worms, from which the degenerate tunicates also descended in another and retrogressive direction." this common extinct stem-group are the prochordonia; we still have a silhouette of them in the chordula-embryo of the vertebrates and tunicates; and they still exist independently, in very modified form, in the class of the copelata (appendicaria, figure . ). the chordaea-theory received the most valuable and competent support from carl gegenbaur. this able comparative morphologist defended it in , in the second edition of his elements of comparative anatomy; at the same time he drew attention to the important relations of the tunicates to a curious worm, balanoglossus: he rightly regards this as the representative of a special class of worms, which he called "gut-breathers" (enteropneusta). gegenbaur referred on many other occasions to the close blood-relationship of the tunicates and vertebrates, and luminously explained the reasons that justify us in framing the hypothesis of the descent of the two stems from a common ancestor, an unsegmented worm-like animal with an axial chorda between the dorsal nerve-tube and the ventral gut-tube. the theory afterwards received a good deal of support from the research made by a number of distinguished zoologists and anatomists, especially c. kupffer, b. hatschek, f. balfour, e. van beneden, and julin. since hatschek's studies of the development of the amphioxus gave us full information as to the embryology of this lowest vertebrate, it has become so important for our purpose that we must consider it a document of the first rank for answering the question we are dealing with. the ontogenetic facts that we gather from this sole survivor of the acrania are the more valuable for phylogenetic purposes, as paleontology, unfortunately, throws no light whatever on the origin of the vertebrates. their invertebrate ancestors were soft organisms without skeleton, and thus incapable of fossilisation, as is still the case with the lowest vertebrates--the acrania and cyclostoma. the same applies to the greater part of the vermalia or worm-like animals, the various classes and orders of which differ so much in structure. the isolated groups of this rich stem are living branches of a huge tree, the greater part of which has long been dead, and we have no fossil evidence as to its earlier form. nevertheless, some of the surviving groups are very instructive, and give us clear indications of the way in which the chordonia were developed from the vermalia, and these from the coelenteria. while we seek the most important of these palingenetic forms among the groups of coelenteria and vermalia, it is understood that not a single one of them must be regarded as an unchanged, or even little changed, copy of the extinct stem-form. one group has retained one feature, another a different feature, of the original organisation, and other organs have been further developed and characteristically modified. hence here, more than in any other part of our genealogical tree, we have to keep before our mind the full picture of development, and separate the unessential secondary phenomena from the essential and primary. it will be useful first to point out the chief advances in organisation by which the simple gastraea gradually became the more developed chordaea. we find our first solid datum in the gastrula of the amphioxus (figure . ). its bilateral and tri-axial type indicates that the gastraeads--the common ancestors of all the metazoa--divided at an early stage into two divergent groups. the uni-axial gastraea became sessile, and gave rise to two stems, the sponges and the cnidaria (the latter all reducible to simple polyps like the hydra). but the tri-axial gastraea assumed a certain pose or direction of the body on account of its swimming or creeping movement, and in order to sustain this it was a great advantage to share the burden equally between the two halves of the body (right and left). thus arose the typical bilateral form, which has three axes. the same bilateral type is found in all our artificial means of locomotion--carts, ships, etc.; it is by far the best for the movement of the body in a certain direction and steady position. hence natural selection early developed this bilateral type in a section of the gastraeads, and thus produced the stem-forms of all the bilateral animals. the gastraea bilateralis, of which we may conceive the bilateral gastrula of the amphioxus to be a palingenetic reproduction, represented the two-sided organism of the earliest metazoa in its simplest form. the vegetal entoderm that lined their simple gut-cavity served for nutrition; the ciliated ectoderm that formed the external skin attended to locomotion and sensation; finally, the two primitive mesodermic cells, that lay to the right and left at the ventral border of the primitive mouth, were sexual cells, and effected reproduction. in order to understand the further development of the gastraea, we must pay particular attention to: ( ) the careful study of the embryonic stages of the amphioxus that lie between the gastrula and the chordula; ( ) the morphological study of the simplest platodes (platodaria and turbellaria) and several groups of unarticulated vermalia (gastrotricha, nemertina, enteropneusta). we have to consider the platodes first, because they are on the border between the two principal groups of the metazoa, the coelenteria and the coelomaria. with the former they share the lack of body-cavity, anus, and vascular system; with the latter they have in common the bilateral type, the possession of a pair of nephridia or renal canals, and the formation of a vertical brain or cerebral ganglion. it is now usual to distinguish four classes of platodes: the two free-living classes of the primitive worms (platodaria) and the coiled-worms (turbellaria), and the two parasitic classes of the suctorial worms (trematoda) and the tape-worms (cestoda). we have only to consider the first two of these classes; the other two are parasites, and have descended from the former by adaptation to parasitic habits and consequent degeneration. (figure . . aphanostomum langii (haeckel), a primitive worm of the platodaria class, of the order of cryptocoela or acoela. this new species of the genus aphanostomum, named after professor arnold lang of zurich, was found in september, , at ajaccio in corsica (creeping between fucoidea). it is one-twelfth of an inch long, one-twenty-fifth of an inch broad, and violet in colour. a mouth, g auditory vesicle, e ectoderm, i entoderm, o ovaries, a spermaries, f female aperture, m male aperture.) the primitive worms (platodaria) are very small flat worms of simple construction, but of great morphological and phylogenetic interest. they have been hitherto, as a rule, regarded as a special order of the turbellaria, and associated with the rhabdocoela; but they differ considerably from these and all the other platodes (flat worms) in the absence of renal canals and a special central nervous system; the structure of their tissue is also simpler than in the other platodes. most of the platodes of this group (aphanostomum, amphichoerus, convoluta, schizoprora, etc.) are very soft and delicate animals, swimming about in the sea by means of a ciliary coat, and very small ( / to / inch long). their oval body, without appendages, is sometimes spindle-shaped or cylindrical, sometimes flat and leaf-shaped. their skin is merely a layer of ciliated ectodermic cells. under this is a soft medullary substance, which consists of entodermic cells with vacuoles. the food passes through the mouth directly into this digestive medullary substance, in which we do not generally see any permanent gut-cavity (it may have entirely collapsed); hence these primitive platodes have been called acoela (without gut-cavity or coelom), or, more correctly, cryptocoela, or pseudocoela. the sexual organs of these hermaphroditic platodaria are very simple--two pairs of strings of cells, the inner of which (the ovaries, figure . o) produce ova, and the outer (the spermaria, s) sperm-cells. these gonads are not yet independent sexual glands, but sexually differentiated cell-groups in the medullary substance, or, in other words, parts of the gut-wall. their products, the sex-cells, are conveyed out behind by two pairs of short canals; the male opening (m) lies just behind the female (f). most of the platodaria have not the muscular pharynx, which is very advanced in the turbellaria and trematoda. on the other hand, they have, as a rule, before or behind the mouth, a bulbous sense-organ (auditory vesicle or organ of equilibrium, g), and many of them have also a couple of simple optic spots. the cell-pit of the ectoderm that lies underneath is rather thick, and represents the first rudiment of a neural ganglion (vertical brain or acroganglion). the turbellaria, with which the similar platodaria were formerly classed, differ materially from them in the more advanced structure of their organs, and especially in having a central nervous system (vertical brain) and excretory renal canals (nephridia); both originate from the ectoderm. but between the two germinal layers a mesoderm is developed, a soft mass of connective tissue, in which the organs are embedded. the turbellaria are still represented by a number of different forms, in both fresh and sea-water. the oldest of these are the very rudimentary and tiny forms that are known as rhabdocoela on account of the simple construction of their gut; they are, as a rule, less than a quarter of an inch long and of a simple oval or lancet shape (figure . ). the surface is covered with ciliated epithelium, a stratum of ectodermic cells. the digestive gut is still the simple primitive gut of the gastraea (d), with a single aperture that is both mouth and anus (m). there is, however, an invagination of the ectoderm at the mouth, which has given rise to a muscular pharynx (sd). it is noteworthy that the mouth of the turbellaria (like the primitive mouth of the gastraea) may, in this class, change its position considerably in the middle line of the ventral surface; sometimes it lies behind (opisthostomum), sometimes in the middle (mesostomum), sometimes in front (prosostomum). this displacement of the mouth from front to rear is very interesting, because it corresponds to a phylogenetic displacement of the mouth. this probably occurred in the platode ancestors of most (or all?) of the coelomaria; in these the permanent mouth (metastoma) lies at the fore end (oral pole), whereas the primitive mouth (prostoma) lay at the hind end of the bilateral body. in most of the turbellaria there is a narrow cavity, containing a number of secondary organs, between the two primary germinal layers, the outer or animal layer of which forms the epidermis and the inner vegetal layer the visceral epithelium. the earliest of these organs are the sexual organs; they are very variously constructed in the platode-class; in the simplest case there are merely two pairs of gonads or sexual glands--a pair of testicles (figure . h) and a pair of ovaries (e). they open externally, sometimes by a common aperture (monogonopora), sometimes by separate ones, the female behind the male (digonopora, figure . ). the sexual glands develop originally from the two promesoblasts or primitive mesodermic cells (figure . p). as these earliest mesodermic structures extended, and became spacious sexual pouches in the later descendants of the platodes, probably the two coelom-pouches were formed from them, the first trace of the real body-cavity of the higher metazoa (enterocoela). the gonads are among the oldest organs, the few other organs that we find in the platodes between the gut-wall and body-wall being later evolutionary products. one of the oldest and most important of these are the kidneys or nephridia, which remove unusable matter from the body (figure . nc). these urinary or excretory organs were originally enlarged skin-glands--a couple of canals that run the length of the body, and have a separate or common external aperture (nm). they often have a number of branches. these special excretory organs are not found in the other coelenteria (gastraeads, sponges, cnidaria) or the cryptocoela. they are first met in the turbellaria, and have been transmitted direct from these to the vermalia, and from these to the higher stems. finally, there is a very important new organ in the turbellaria, which we do not find in the cryptocoela (figure . ) and their gastraead ancestors--the rudimentary nervous system. it consists of a couple of simple cerebral ganglia (figure . g) and fine nervous fibres that radiate from them; these are partly voluntary nerves (or motor fibres) that go to the thin muscular layer developing under the skin; and partly sensory nerves that proceed to the sense-cells of the ciliated epiderm (f). many of the turbellaria have also special sense-organs; a couple of ciliated smell pits (na), rudimentary eyes (au), and, less frequently, auditory vesicles. on these principles i assume that the oldest and simplest turbellaria arose from platodaria, and these directly from bilateral gastraeads. the chief advances were the formation of gonads and nephridia, and of the rudimentary brain. on this hypothesis, which i advanced in in the first sketch of the gastraea-theory (monograph on the sponges), there is no direct affinity between the platodes and the cnidaria. (figure . . a simple turbellarian (rhabdocoelum). m mouth, sd gullet epithelium, sm gullet muscles, d gastric gut, nc renal canals, nm renal aperture, au eye, na olfactory pit. (diagram.) figure . . the same, showing the other organs. g brain, au eye, na olfactory pit, n nerves, h testicles, male symbol male aperture, female symbol female aperture, e ovary, f ciliated epiderm. (diagram.) (figures and . chaetonotus, a rudimentary vermalian, of the group of gastrotricha. m mouth, s gullet, d gut, a anus, g brain, n nerves, ss sensory hairs, au eye, ms muscular cells, h skin, f ciliated bands of the ventral surface, nc nephridia, nm their aperture, e ovaries.)) next to the ancient stem-group of the turbellaria come a number of more recent chordonia ancestors, which we class with the vermalia or helminthes, the unarticulated worms. these true worms (vermes, lately also called scolecida) are the difficulty or the lumber-room of the zoological classifier, because the various classes have very complicated relations to the lower platodes on the one hand and the more advanced animals on the other. but if we exclude the platodes and the annelids from this stem, we find a fairly satisfactory unity of organisation in the remaining classes. among these worms we find some important forms that show considerable advance in organisation from the platode to the chordonia stage. three of these phenomena are particularly instructive: ( ) the formation of a true (secondary) body-cavity (coeloma); ( ) the formation of a second aperture of the gut, the anus; and ( ) the formation of a vascular system. the great majority of the vermalia have these three features, and they are all wanting in the platodes; in the rest of the worms at least one or two of them are developed. next and very close to the platodes we have the ichthydina (gastrotricha), little marine and fresh-water worms, about / to / inch long. zoologists differ as to their position in classification. in my opinion, they approach very close to the rhabdocoela (figures . and . ), and differ from them chiefly in the possession of an anus at the posterior end (figure . a). further, the cilia that cover the whole surface of the turbellaria are confined in the gastrotricha to two ciliated bands (f) on the ventral surface of the oval body, the dorsal surface having bristles. otherwise the organisation of the two classes is the same. in both the gut consists of a muscular gullet (s) and a glandular primitive gut (d). over the gullet is a double brain (acroganglion, g). at the side of the gut are two serpentine prorenal canals (water-vessels or pronephridia, nc), which open on the ventral side (nm). behind are a pair of simple sexual glands or gonads (figure . e). while the ichthydina are thus closely related to the platodes, we have to go farther away for the two classes of vermalia which we unite in the group of the "snout-worms" (frontonia). these are the nemertina and the enteropneusta. both classes have a complete ciliary coat on the epidermis, a heritage from the turbellaria and the gastraeads; also, both have two openings of the gut, the mouth and anus, like the gastrotricha. but we find also an important organ that is wanting in the preceding forms--the vascular system. in their more advanced mesoderm we find a few contractile longitudinal canals which force the blood through the body by their contractions; these are the first blood-vessels. (figure . . a simple nemertine. m mouth, d gut, a anus, g brain, n nerves, h ciliary coat, ss sensory pits (head-clefts), au eyes, r dorsal vessel, l lateral vessels. (diagram.) figure . . a young enteropneust (balanaglossus). (from alexander agassiz.) r acorn-shaped snout, h neck, k gill-clefts and gill-arches of the fore-gut, in long rows on each side, d digestive hind-gut, filling the greater part of the body-cavity, v intestinal vein or ventral vessel, lying between the parallel folds of the skin, a anus. figure . . transverse section of the branchial gut. a of balanoglossus, b of ascidia. r branchial gut, n pharyngeal groove, asterisk ventral folds between the two. diagrammatic illustration from gegenbaur, to show the relation of the dorsal branchial-gut cavity (r) to the pharyngeal or hypobranchial groove (n).) the nemertina were formerly classed with the much less advanced turbellaria. but they differ essentially from them in having an anus and blood-vessels, and several other marks of higher organisation. they have generally long and narrow bodies, like a more or less flattened cord; there are, besides several small species, giant-forms with a width of / to / inch and a length of several yards (even ten to fifteen). most of them live in the sea, but some in fresh water and moist earth. in their internal structure they approach the turbellaria on the one hand and the higher vermalia (especially the enteropneusta) on the other. they have a good deal of interest as the lowest and oldest of all animals with blood. in them we find blood-vessels for the first time, distributing real blood through the body. the blood is red, and the red colouring-matter is haemoglobin, connected with elliptic discoid blood-cells, as in the vertebrates. most of them have two or three parallel blood-canals, which run the whole length of the body, and are connected in front and behind by loops, and often by a number of ring-shaped pieces. the chief of these primitive blood-vessels is the one that lies above the gut in the middle line of the back (figure . r); it may be compared to either the dorsal vessel of the articulates or the aorta of the vertebrates. to the right and left are the two serpentine lateral vessels (figure . l). after the nemertina, i take (as distant relatives) the enteropneusta; they may be classed together with them as frontonia or rhyncocoela (snout-worms). there is now only one genus of this class, with several species (balanoglossus); but it is very remarkable, and may be regarded as the last survivor of an ancient and long-extinct class of vermalia. they are related, on the one hand, to the nemertina and their immediate ancestors, the platodes, and to the lowest and oldest forms of the chordonia on the other. the enteropneusta (figure . ) live in the sea sand, and are long worms of very simple shape, like the nemertina. from the latter they have inherited: ( ) the bilateral type, with incomplete segmentation; ( ) the ciliary coat of the soft epidermis; ( ) the double rows of gastric pouches, alternating with a single or double row of gonads; ( ) separation of the sexes (the platode ancestors were hermaphroditic); ( ) the ventral mouth, underneath a protruding snout; ( ) the anus terminating the simple gut-tube; and ( ) several parallel blood-canals, running the length of the body, a dorsal and a ventral principal stem. on the other hand, the enteropneusta differ from their nemertine ancestors in several features, some of which are important, that we may attribute to adaptation. the chief of these is the branchial gut (figure . k). the anterior section of the gut is converted into a respiratory organ, and pierced by two rows of gill-clefts; between these there is a branchial (gill) skeleton, formed of rods and plates of chitine. the water that enters at the mouth makes its exit by these clefts. they lie in the dorsal half of the fore-gut, and this is completely separated from the ventral half by two longitudinal folds (figure . a*). this ventral half, the glandular walls of which are clothed with ciliary epithelium and secrete mucus, corresponds to the pharyngeal or hypo-branchial groove of the chordonia (bn), the important organ from which the later thyroid gland is developed in the craniota (cf. chapter . ). the agreement in the structure of the branchial gut of the enteropneusts, tunicates, and vertebrates was first recognised by gegenbaur ( ); it is the more significant as at first we find only a couple of gill-clefts in the young animals of all three groups; the number gradually increases. we can infer from this the common descent of the three groups with all the more confidence when we find the balanoglossus approaching the chordonia in other respects. thus, for instance, the chief part of the central nervous system is a long dorsal neural string that runs above the gut and corresponds to the medullary tube of the chordonia. bateson believes he has detected a rudimentary chorda between the two. of all extant invertebrate animals the enteropneusts come nearest to the chordonia in virtue of these peculiar characters; hence we may regard them as the survivors of the ancient gut-breathing vermalia from which the chordonia also have descended. again, of all the chorda-animals the copelata (figure . ) and the tailed larvae of the ascidia approach nearest to the young balanoglossus. both are, on the other hand, very closely related to the amphioxus, the primitive vertebrate of which we have considered the importance (chapters . and . ). as we saw there, the unarticulated tunicates and the articulated vertebrates must be regarded as two independent stems, that have developed in divergent directions. but the common root of the two stems, the extinct group of the prochordonia, must be sought in the vermalia stem; and of all the living vermalia those we have considered give us the safest clue to their origin. it is true that the actual representatives of the important groups of the copelata, balanoglossi, nemertina, icthydina, etc., have more or less departed from the primitive model owing to adaptation to special environment. but we may just as confidently affirm that the main features of their organisation have been preserved by heredity. we must grant, however, that in the whole stem-history of the vertebrates the long stretch from the gastraeads and platodes up to the oldest chordonia remains by far the most obscure section. we might frame another hypothesis to raise the difficulty--namely, that there was a long series of very different and totally extinct forms between the gastraea and the chordaea. even in this modified chordaea-theory the six fundamental organs of the chordula would retain their great value. the medullary tube would be originally a chemical sensory organ, a dorsal olfactory tube, taking in respiratory-water and food by the neuroporus in front and conveying them by the neurenteric canal into the primitive gut. this olfactory tube would afterwards become the nervous centre, while the expanding gonads (lying to right and left of the primitive mouth) would form the coeloma. the chorda may have been originally a digestive glandular groove in the dorsal middle line of the primitive gut. the two secondary gut-openings, mouth and anus, may have arisen in various ways by change of functions. in any case, we should ascribe the same high value to the chordula as we did before to the gastrula. in order to explain more fully the chief stages in the advance of our race, i add the hypothetical sketch of man's ancestry that i published in my last link [a translation by dr. gadow of the paper read at the international zoological congress at cambridge in ]:-- a. man's genealogical tree, first half: earlier series of ancestors, without fossil evidence. column : chief stages. column : ancestral stem-groups. column : living relatives of ancestors. stages to . protist ancestors. unicellular organisms. to . protophytes. : . monera. without nucleus. : chromacea. (chroococcus.) phycochromacea. to . protophytes. : . algaria. unicellular algae. : . paulotomea. palmellacea. eremosphaera. to . protozoa. : . lobosa. unicellular (amoebina) rhizopods. : . amoebina. amoeba leucocyta. to . protozoa. : . infusoria. unicellular. : . flagellata. euflagellata. zoomonades. to . protozoa. : . blastaeades. multicellular hollow spheres. : . catallacta. magosphaera, volvocina, blastula. stages to . invertebrate metazoa ancestors. to . coelenteria, without anus and body-cavity. : . gastraeades. with two germ-layers. : . gastrula. hydra, olynthus, gastremaria. to . coelenteria, without anus and body-cavity. : . platodes i. platodaria (without nephridia). : . cryptocoela. convoluta, proporus. to . coelenteria, without anus and body-cavity. : . platodes ii. platodinia (with nephridia). : . rhabdocoela. vortex, monotus. to . vermalia, with anus and body-cavity. : . provermalia. (primitive worms.) rotatoria. : . gastrotricha. trochozoa, trochophora. to . vermalia, with anus and body-cavity. : . frontonia. (rhynchelminthes.) snout-worms. : . enteropneusta. balanoglossus, cephalodiscus. to . vermalia, with anus and body-cavity. : . prochordonia. chorda-worms. : . copelata. appendicaria. chordula-larvae. stages to . monorhina ancestors. oldest vertebrates without jaws or pairs of limbs, single nose. : . acrania i. (prospondylia.) : . amphioxus larva. oldest vertebrates without jaws or pairs of limbs, single nose. : . acrania ii. more recent. : . leptocardia. amphioxus. oldest vertebrates without jaws or pairs of limbs, single nose. : . cyclostoma i. (archicrania.) : . petromyzonta larvae. oldest vertebrates without jaws or pairs of limbs, single nose. : . cyclostoma ii. more recent. : . marsipobranchia. petromyzonta. b. man's genealogical tree, second half: later ancestors, with fossil evidence. column : geological periods. column : ancestral stem-groups. column : living relatives of ancestors. silurian. : . selachii. primitive fishes. proselachii. : . natidanides. chlamydoselachius. heptanchus. silurian. . ganoides. plated-fishes. proganoides. : . accipenserides. (sturgeons.) polypterus. devonian. : . dipneusta. paladipneusta. : . neodipneusta. ceratodus. protopterus. carboniferous. : . amphibia. stegocephala. : . phanerobranchia. salamandrina. (proteus, triton.) permian. : . reptilia. proreptilia. : . rhynchocephalia. primitive lizards. hatteria. triassic. : . monotrema. promammalia. : . ornithodelphia. echidna. ornithorhyncus. jurassic. : . marsupalia. prodidelphia. : . didelphia. didelphys. perameles. cretaceous. : . mallotheria. prochoriata. : . insectivora. erinaceida. (ictopsida +.) older eocene. : . lemuravida. older lemurs. dentition. . . . . : . pachylemures. (hyopsodus +), (adapis +). neo-eocene. : . lemurogona. later lemurs. dentition. . . . . : . autolemures. eulemur. stenops. oligocene. : . dysmopitheca. western apes. dentition. . . . . : . platyrrhinae. (anthropops +), (homunculus +). older miocene. : . cynopitheca. dog-faced apes (tailed). : . papiomorpha. cynocephalus. neo-miocene. : . anthropoides. man-like apes (tail-less). : . hylobatida. hylobates. satyrus. pliocene. : . pithecanthropi. ape-men (alali, speechless). : . anthropitheca. chimpanzee. gorilla. pleistocene. : . homines. men, with speech. : . weddahs. australian negroes. chapter . . our fish-like ancestors. our task of detecting the extinct ancestors of our race among the vast numbers of animals known to us encounters very different difficulties in the various sections of man's stem-history. these were very great in the series of our invertebrate ancestors; they are much slighter in the subsequent series of our vertebrate ancestors. within the vertebrate stem there is, as we have already seen, so complete an agreement in structure and embryology that it is impossible to doubt their phylogenetic unity. in this case the evidence is much clearer and more abundant. the characteristics that distinguish the vertebrates as a whole from the invertebrates have already been discussed in our description of the hypothetical primitive vertebrate (chapter . , figure . to . ). the chief of these are: ( ) the evolution of the primitive brain into a dorsal medullary tube; ( ) the formation of the chorda between the medullary tube and the gut; ( ) the division of the gut into branchial (gill) and hepatic (liver) gut; and ( ) the internal articulation or metamerism. the first three features are shared by the vertebrates with the ascidia-larvae and the prochordonia; the fourth is peculiar to them. thus the chief advantage in organisation by which the earliest vertebrates took precedence of the unsegmented chordonia consisted in the development of internal segmentation. the whole vertebrate stem divides first into the two chief sections of acrania and craniota. the amphioxus is the only surviving representative of the older and lower section, the acrania ("skull-less"). all the other vertebrates belong to the second division, the craniota ("skull-animals"). the craniota descend directly from the acrania, and these from the primitive chordonia. the exhaustive study that we made of the comparative anatomy and ontogeny of the ascidia and the amphioxus has proved these relations for us. (see chapters . and . .) the amphioxus, the lowest vertebrate, and the ascidia, the nearest related invertebrate, descend from a common extinct stem-form, the chordaea; and this must have had, substantially, the organisation of the chordula. however, the amphioxus is important not merely because it fills the deep gulf between the invertebrates and vertebrates, but also because it shows us to-day the typical vertebrate in all its simplicity. we owe to it the most important data that we proceed on in reconstructing the gradual historical development of the whole stem. all the craniota descend from a common stem-form, and this was substantially identical in structure with the amphioxus. this stem-form, the primitive vertebrate (prospondylus, figures . to . ), had the characteristics of the vertebrate as such, but not the important features that distinguish the craniota from the acrania. though the amphioxus has many peculiarities of structure and has much degenerated, and though it cannot be regarded as an unchanged descendant of the primitive vertebrate, it must have inherited from it the specific characters we enumerated above. we may not say that "amphioxus is the ancestor of the vertebrates"; but we can say: "amphioxus is the nearest relation to the ancestor of all the animals we know." both belong to the same small family, or lowest class of the vertebrates, that we call the acrania. in our genealogical tree this group forms the twelfth stage, or the first stage among the vertebrate ancestors (chapter . ). from this group of acrania both the amphioxus and the craniota were evolved. the vast division of the craniota embraces all the vertebrates known to us, with the exception of the amphioxus. all of them have a head clearly differentiated from the trunk, and a skull enclosing a brain. the head has also three pairs of higher sense-organs (nose, eyes, and ears). the brain is very rudimentary at first, a mere bulbous enlargement of the fore end of the medullary tube. but it is soon divided by a number of transverse constrictions into, first three, then five successive cerebral vesicles. in this formation of the head, skull, and brain, with further development of the higher sense-organs, we have the advance that the craniota made beyond their skull-less ancestors. other organs also attained a higher development; they acquired a compact centralised heart with valves and a more advanced liver and kidneys, and made progress in other important respects. we may divide the craniota generally into cyclostoma ("round-mouthed") and gnathostoma ("jaw-mouthed"). there are only a few groups of the former in existence now, but they are very interesting, because in their whole structure they stand midway between the acrania and the gnathostoma. they are much more advanced than the acrania, much less so than the fishes, and thus form a very welcome connecting-link between the two groups. we may therefore consider them a special intermediate group, the fourteenth and fifteenth stages in the series of our ancestors. (figure . . the large marine lamprey (petromyzon marinus), much reduced. behind the eye there is a row of seven gill-clefts visible on the left, in front the round suctorial mouth.) the few surviving species of the cyclostoma are divided into two orders--the myxinoides and the petromyzontes. the former, the hag-fishes, have a long, cylindrical, worm-like body. they were classed by linne with the worms, and by later zoologists, with the fishes, or the amphibia, or the molluscs. they live in the sea, usually as parasites of fishes, into the skin of which they bore with their round suctorial mouths and their tongues, armed with horny teeth. they are sometimes found alive in the body cavity of fishes (such as the torsk or sturgeon); in these cases they have passed through the skin into the interior. the second order consists of the petromyzontes or lampreys; the small river lamprey (petromyzon fluviatilis) and the large marine lamprey (petromyzon marinus, figure . ). they also have a round suctorial mouth, with horny teeth inside it; by means of this they attach themselves by sucking to fishes, stones, and other objects (hence the name petromyzon = stone-sucker). it seems that this habit was very widespread among the earlier vertebrates; the larvae of many of the ganoids and frogs have suctorial disks near the mouth. the class that is formed of the myxinoides and petromyzontes is called the cyclostoma (round-mouthed), because their mouth has a circular or semi-circular aperture. the jaws (upper and lower) that we find in all the higher vertebrates are completely wanting in the cyclostoma, as in the amphioxus. hence the other vertebrates are collectively opposed to them as gnathostoma (jaw-mouthed). the cyclostoma might also be called monorhina (single-nosed), because they have only a single nasal passage, while all the gnathostoma have two nostrils (amphirhina = double-nosed). but apart from these peculiarities the cyclostoma differ more widely from the fishes in other special features of their structure than the fishes do from man. hence they are obviously the last survivors of a very ancient class of vertebrates, that was far from attaining the advanced organisation of the true fish. to mention only the chief points, the cyclostoma show no trace of pairs of limbs. their mucous skin is quite naked and smooth and devoid of scales. there is no bony skeleton. a very rudimentary skull is developed at the foremost end of their chorda. at this point a soft membranous (partly turning into cartilage), small skull-capsule is formed, and encloses the brain. the brain of the cyclostoma is merely a very small and comparatively insignificant swelling of the spinal marrow, a simple vesicle at first. it afterwards divides into five successive cerebral vesicles, like the brain of the gnathostoma. these five primitive cerebral vesicles, that are found in the embryos of all the higher vertebrates from the fishes to man, and grow into very complex structures, remain at a very rudimentary stage in the cyclostoma. the histological structure of the nerves is also less advanced than in the rest of the vertebrates. in these the auscultory organ always contains three circular canals, but in the lampreys there are only two, and in the hag-fishes only one. in most other respects the organisation of the cyclostoma is much simpler--for instance, in the structure of the heart, circulation, and kidneys. we must especially note the absence of a very important organ that we find in the fishes, the floating-bladder, from which the lungs of the higher vertebrates have been developed. when we consider all these peculiarities in the structure of the cyclostoma, we may formulate the following thesis: two divergent lines proceeded from the earliest craniota, or the primitive craniota (archicrania). one of these lines is preserved in a greatly modified condition: these are the cyclostoma, a very backward and partly degenerate side-line. the other, the chief line of the vertebrate stem, advanced straight to the fishes, and by fresh adaptations acquired a number of important improvements. (figure . . fossil permian primitive fish (pleuracanthus dechenii), from the red sandstone of saarbrucken. (from doderlein.) i skull and branchial skeleton: o eye-region, pq palatoquadratum, nd lower jaw, hm hyomandibular, hy tongue-bone, k gill-radii, kb gill-arches, z jaw-teeth, sz gullet-teeth, st neck-spine. ii vertebral column: ob upper arches, ub lower arches, hc intercentra, r ribs. iii single fins: d dorsal fin, c tail-fin (tail-end wanting), an anus-fin, ft supporter of fin-rays. iv breast-fin: sg shoulder-zone, ax fin-axis, ss double lines of fin-rays, bs additional rays, sch plates. v ventral fin: p pelvis, ax fin-axis, ss single row of fin-rays, bs additional rays, sch scales, cop penis. figure . . embryo of a shark (scymnus lichia), seen from the ventral side, v breast-fins (in front five pairs of gill-clefts), h belly-fins, a anus, s tail-fin, k external gill-tuft, d yelk-sac (removed for most part), g eye, n nose, m mouth-cleft.) the cyclostoma are almost always classified by zoologists among the fishes; but the incorrectness of this may be judged from the fact that in all the chief and distinctive features of organisation they are further removed from the fishes than the fishes are from the mammals, and even man. with the fishes we enter upon the vast division of the jaw-mouthed or double-nosed vertebrates (gnathostoma or amphirhina). we have to consider the fishes carefully as the class which, on the evidence of palaeontology, comparative anatomy, and ontogeny, may be regarded with absolute certainty as the stem-class of all the higher vertebrates or gnathostomes. naturally, none of the actual fishes can be considered the direct ancestor of the higher vertebrates. but it is certain that all the vertebrates or gnathostomes, from the fishes to man, descend from a common, extinct, fish-like ancestor. if we had this ancient stem-form before us, we would undoubtedly class it as a true fish. fortunately the comparative anatomy and classification of the fishes are now so far advanced that we can get a very clear idea of these interesting and instructive features. in order to understand properly the genealogical tree of our race within the vertebrate stem, it is important to bear in mind the characteristics that separate the whole of the gnathostomes from the cyclostomes and craniota. in these respects the fishes agree entirely with all the other gnathostomes up to man, and it is on this that we base our claim of relationship to the fishes. the following characteristics of the gnathostomes are anatomic features of this kind: ( ) the internal gill-arch apparatus with the jaw arches; ( ) the pair of nostrils; ( ) the floating bladder or lungs; and ( ) the two pairs of limbs. the peculiar formation of the frame work of the branchial (gill) arches and the connected maxillary (jaw) apparatus is of importance in the whole group of the gnathostomes. it is inherited in rudimentary form by all of them, from the earliest fishes to man. it is true that the primitive transformation (which we find even in the ascidia) of the fore gut into the branchial gut can be traced in all the vertebrates to the same simple type; in this respect the gill-clefts, which pierce the walls of the branchial gut in all the vertebrates and in the ascidia, are very characteristic. but the external, superficial branchial skeleton that supports the gill-crate in the cyclostoma is replaced in the gnathostomes by an internal branchial skeleton. it consists of a number of successive cartilaginous arches, which lie in the wall of the gullet between the gill-clefts, and run round the gullet from both sides. the foremost pair of gill-arches become the maxillary arches, from which we get our upper and lower jaws. the olfactory organs are at first found in the same form in all the gnathostomes, as a pair of depressions in the fore part of the skin of the head, above the mouth; hence, they are also called the amphirhina ("double-nosed"). the cyclostoma are "one-nosed" (monorhina); their nose is a single passage in the middle of the frontal surface. but as the olfactory nerve is double in both cases, it is possible that the peculiar form of the nose in the actual cyclostomes is a secondary acquisition (by adaptation to suctorial habits). a third essential character of the gnathostomes, that distinguishes them very conspicuously from the lower vertebrates we have dealt with, is the formation of a blind sac by invagination from the fore part of the gut, which becomes in the fishes the air-filled floating-bladder. this organ acts as a hydrostatic apparatus, increasing or reducing the specific gravity of the fish by compressing or altering the quantity of air in it. the fish can rise or sink in the water by means of it. this is the organ from which the lungs of the higher vertebrates are developed. (figure . . fully developed man-eating shark (carcharias melanopterus), left view. r first, r second dorsal fin, s tail-fin, a anus-fin, v breast-fins, h belly-fins.) finally, the fourth character of the gnathostomes in their simple embryonic form is the two pairs of extremities or limbs--a pair of fore legs (breast-fins in the fish, figure . v) and a pair of hind legs (ventral fins in the fish, figure . h). the comparative anatomy of these fins is very interesting, because they contain the rudiments of all the skeletal parts that form the framework of the fore and hind legs in all the higher vertebrates right up to man. there is no trace of these pairs of limbs in the acrania and cyclostomes. turning, now, to a closer inspection of the fish class, we may first divide it into three groups or sub-classes, the genealogy of which is well known to us. the first and oldest group is the sub-class of the selachii or primitive fishes; the best-known representatives of which to-day are the orders of the sharks and rays (figures . to . ). next to this is the more advanced sub-class of the plated fishes or ganoids (figures . to . ). it has been long extinct for the most part, and has very few living representatives, such as the sturgeon and the bony pike; but we can form some idea of the earlier extent of this interesting group from the large numbers of fossils. from these plated fishes the sub-class of the bony fishes or teleostei was developed, to which the great majority of living fishes belong (especially nearly all our river fishes). comparative anatomy and ontogeny show clearly that the ganoids descended from the selachii, and the teleostei from the ganoids. on the other hand, a collateral line, or rather the advancing chief line of the vertebrate stem, was developed from the earlier ganoids, and this leads us through the group of the dipneusta to the important division of the amphibia. (figure . . fossil angel-shark (squatina alifera), from the upper jurassic at eichstatt. (from zittel.) the cartilaginous skull is clearly seen in the broad head, and the gill-arches behind. the wide breast-fin and the narrower belly-fin have a number of radii; between these and the vertebral column are a number of ribs.) the earliest fossil remains of vertebrates that we know were found in the upper silurian (chapter . ), and belong to two groups--the selachii and the ganoids. the most primitive of all known representatives of the earliest fishes are probably the remarkable pleuracanthida, the genera pleuracanthus, xenacanthus, orthocanthus, etc. (figure . ). these ancient cartilaginous fishes agree in most points of structure with the real sharks (figures . and . ); but in other respects they seem to be so much simpler in organisation that many palaeontologists separate them altogether, and regard them as proselachii; they are probably closely related to the extinct ancestors of the gnathostomes. we find well-preserved remains of them in the permian period. well-preserved impressions of other sharks are found in the jurassic schist, such as of the angel-fish (squatina, figure . ). among the extinct earlier sharks of the tertiary period there were some twice as large as the biggest living fishes; carcharodon was more than feet long. the sole surviving species of this genus (c. rondeleti) is eleven yards long, and has teeth two inches long; but among the fossil species we find teeth six inches long (figure . ). from the primitive fishes or selachii, the earliest gnathostomes, was developed the legion of the ganoids. there are very few genera now of this interesting and varied group--the ancient sturgeons (accipenser), the eggs of which are eaten as caviare, and the stratified pikes (polypterus, figure . ) in african rivers, and bony pikes (lepidosteus) in the rivers of north america. on the other hand, we have a great variety of specimens of this group in the fossil state, from the upper silurian onward. some of these fossil ganoids approach closely to the selachii; others are nearer to the dipneusts; others again represent a transition to the teleostei. for our genealogical purposes the most interesting are the intermediate forms between the selachii and the dipneusts. huxley, to whom we owe particularly important works on the fossil ganoids, classed them in the order of the crossopterygii. many genera and species of this order are found in the devonian and carboniferous strata (figure . ); a single, greatly modified survivor of the group is still found in the large rivers of africa (polypterus, figure . , and the closely related calamichthys). in many impressions of the crossopterygii the floating bladder seems to be ossified, and therefore well preserved--for instance, in the undina (figure . , immediately behind the head). part of these crossopterygii approach very closely in their chief anatomic features to the dipneusts, and thus represent phylogenetically the transition from the devonian ganoids to the earliest air-breathing vertebrates. this important advance was made in the devonian period. the numerous fossils that we have from the first two geological sections, the laurentian and cambrian periods, belong exclusively to aquatic plants and animals. from this paleontological fact, in conjunction with important geological and biological indications, we may infer with some confidence that there were no terrestrial animals at that time. during the whole of the vast archeozoic period--many millions of years--the living population of our planet consisted almost exclusively of aquatic organisms; this is a very remarkable fact, when we remember that this period embraces the larger half of the whole history of life. the lower animal-stems are wholly (or with very few exceptions) aquatic. but the higher stems also remained in the water during the primordial epoch. it was only towards its close that some of them came to live on land. we find isolated fossil remains of terrestrial animals first in the upper silurian, and in larger numbers in the devonian strata, which were deposited at the beginning of the second chief section of geology (the paleozoic age). the number increases considerably in the carboniferous and permian deposits. we find many species both of the articulate and the vertebrate stem that lived on land and breathed the atmosphere; their aquatic ancestors of the silurian period only breathed water. this important change in respiration is the chief modification that the animal organism underwent in passing from the water to the solid land. the first consequence was the formation of lungs for breathing air; up to that time the gills alone had served for respiration. but there was at the same time a great change in the circulation and its organs; these are always very closely correlated to the respiratory organs. moreover, the limbs and other organs were also more or less modified, either in consequence of remote correlation to the preceding or owing to new adaptations. (figure . . tooth of a gigantic shark (carcharodon megalodon), from the pliocene at malta. half natural size. (from zittel.)) in the vertebrate stem it was unquestionably a branch of the fishes--in fact, of the ganoids--that made the first fortunate experiment during the devonian period of adapting themselves to terrestrial life and breathing the atmosphere. this led to a modification of the heart and the nose. the true fishes have merely a pair of blind olfactory pits on the surface of the head; but a connection of these with the cavity of the mouth was now formed. a canal made its appearance on each side, and led directly from the nasal depression into the mouth-cavity, thus conveying atmospheric air to the lungs even when the mouth was closed. further, in all true fishes the heart has only two sections--an atrium that receives the venous blood from the veins, and a ventricle that propels it through a conical artery to the gills; the atrium was now divided into two halves, or right and left auricles, by an incomplete partition. the right auricle alone now received the venous blood from the body, while the left auricle received the venous blood that flowed from the lungs and gills to the heart. thus the double circulation of the higher vertebrates was evolved from the simple circulation of the true fishes, and, in accordance with the laws of correlation, this advance led to others in the structure of other organs. (figure . . a devonian crossopterygius (holoptychius nobilissimus, from the scotch old red sandstone. (from huxley.) figure . . a jurassic crossopterygius (undina penicillata), from the upper jurassic at eichstatt. (from zittel.) j jugular plates, b three ribbed scales. figure . . a living crossopterygius, from the upper nile (polypterus bichir). figure . . fossil dipneust (dipterus valenciennesi), from the old red sandstone (devon). (from pander.) figure . . the australian dipneust (ceratodus forsteri). b view from the right, a lower side of the skull, c lower jaw. (from gunther.) qu quadrate bone, psph parasphenoid, ptp pterygopalatinum, vo vomer, d teeth, na nostrils, br branchial cavity, c first rib. d lower-jaw teeth of the fossil ceratodus kaupi (from the triassic).) the vertebrate class, that thus adapted itself to breathing the atmosphere, and was developed from a branch of the ganoids, takes the name of the dipneusts or dipnoa ("double-breathers"), because they retained the earlier gill-respiration along with the new pulmonary (lung) respiration, like the lowest amphibia. this class was represented during the paleozoic age (or the devonian, carboniferous, and permian periods) by a number of different genera. there are only three genera of the class living to-day: protopterus annectens in the rivers of tropical africa (the white nile, the niger, quelliman, etc.), lepidosiren paradoxa in tropical south america (in the tributaries of the amazon), and ceratodus forsteri in the rivers of east australia. this wide distribution of the three isolated survivors proves that they represent a group that was formerly very large. in their whole structure they form a transition from the fishes to the amphibia. the transitional formation between the two classes is so pronounced in the whole organisation of these remarkable animals that zoologists had a lively controversy over the question whether they were really fishes or amphibia. several distinguished zoologists classed them with the amphibia, though most now associate them with the fishes. as a matter of fact, the characters of the two classes are so far united in the dipneusts that the answer to the question depends entirely on the definition we give of "fish" and "amphibian." in habits they are true amphibia. during the tropical winter, in the rainy season, they swim in the water like the fishes, and breathe water by gills. during the dry season they bury themselves in the dry mud, and breathe the atmosphere through lungs, like the amphibia and the higher vertebrates. in this double respiration they resemble the lower amphibia, and have the same characteristic formation of the heart; in this they are much superior to the fishes. but in most other features they approach nearer to the fishes, and are inferior to the amphibia. externally they are entirely fish-like. (figure . . young ceratodus, shortly after issuing from the egg, magnified ten times. k gill-cover, l liver. (from richard semon.) figure . . young ceratodus six weeks after issuing from the egg. s spiral fold of gut, b rudimentary belly-fin. (from richard semon.)) in the dipneusts the head is not marked off from the trunk. the skin is covered with large scales. the skeleton is soft, cartilaginous, and at a low stage of development, as in the lower selachii and the earliest ganoids. the chorda is completely retained, and surrounded by an unsegmented sheath. the two pairs of limbs are very simple fins of a primitive type, like those of the lowest selachii. the formation of the brain, the gut, and the sexual organs is also the same as in the selachii. thus the dipneusts have preserved by heredity many of the less advanced features of our primitive fish-like ancestors, and at the same time have made a great step forward in adaptation to air-breathing by means of lungs and the correlative improvement of the heart. ceratodus is particularly interesting on account of the primitive build of its skeleton; the cartilaginous skeleton of its two pairs of fins, for instance, has still the original form of a bi-serial or feathered leaf, and was on that account described by gegenbaur as a "primitive fin-skeleton." on the other hand, the skeleton of the pairs of fins is greatly reduced in the african dipneust (protopterus) and the american (lepidosiren). further, the lungs are double in these modern dipneusts, as in all the other air-breathing vertebrates; they have on that account been called "double-lunged" (dipneumones) in contrast to the ceratodus; the latter has only a single lung (monopneumones). at the same time the gills also are developed as water-breathing organs in all these lung-fishes. protopterus has external as well as internal gills. the paleozoic dipneusts that are in the direct line of our ancestry, and form the connecting-bridge between the ganoids and the amphibia, differ in many respects from their living descendants, but agree with them in the above essential features. this is confirmed by a number of interesting facts that have lately come to our knowledge in connection with the embryonic development of the ceratodus and lepidosiren; they give us important information as to the stem-history of the lower vertebrates, and therefore of our early ancestors of the paleozoic age. chapter . . our five-toed ancestors. with the phylogenetic study of the four higher classes of vertebrates, which must now engage our attention, we reach much firmer ground and more light in the construction of our genealogy than we have, perhaps, enjoyed up to the present. in the first place, we owe a number of very valuable data to the very interesting class of vertebrates that come next to the dipneusts and have been developed from them--the amphibia. to this group belong the salamander, the frog, and the toad. in earlier days all the reptiles were, on the example of linne, classed with the amphibia (lizards, serpents, crocodiles, and tortoises). but the reptiles are much more advanced than the amphibia, and are nearer to the birds in the chief points of their structure. the true amphibia are nearer to the dipneusta and the fishes; they are also much older than the reptiles. there were plenty of highly-developed (and sometimes large) amphibia during the carboniferous period; but the earliest reptiles are only found in the permian period. it is probable that the amphibia were evolved even earlier--during the devonian period--from the dipneusta. the extinct amphibia of which we have fossil remains from that remote period (very numerous especially in the triassic strata) were distinguished for a graceful scaly coat or a powerful bony armour on the skin (like the crocodile), whereas the living amphibia have usually a smooth and slippery skin. the earliest of these armoured amphibia (phractamphibia) form the order of stegocephala ("roof-headed") (figure . ). it is among these, and not among the actual amphibia, that we must look for the forms that are directly related to the genealogy of our race, and are the ancestors of the three higher classes of vertebrates. but even the existing amphibia have such important relations to us in their anatomic structure, and especially their embryonic development, that we may say: between the dipneusts and the amniotes there was a series of extinct intermediate forms which we should certainly class with the amphibia if we had them before us. in their whole organisation even the actual amphibia seem to be an instructive transitional group. in the important respects of respiration and circulation they approach very closely to the dipneusta, though in other respects they are far superior to them. this is particularly true of the development of their limbs or extremities. in them we find these for the first time as five-toed feet. the thorough investigations of gegenbaur have shown that the fish's fins, of which very erroneous opinions were formerly held, are many-toed feet. the various cartilaginous or bony radii that are found in large numbers in each fin correspond to the fingers or toes of the higher vertebrates. the several joints of each fin-radius correspond to the various parts of the toe. even in the dipneusta the fin is of the same construction as in the fishes; it was afterwards gradually evolved into the five-toed form, which we first encounter in the amphibia. this reduction of the number of the toes to six, and then to five, probably took place in the second half of the devonian period--at the latest, in the subsequent carboniferous period--in those dipneusta which we regard as the ancestors of the amphibia. we have several fossil remains of five-toed amphibia from this period. there are numbers of fossil impressions of them in the triassic of thuringia (chirotherium). (figure . . fossil amphibian from the permian, found in the plauen terrain near dresden (branchiosaurus amblystomus). (from credner.) a skeleton of a young larva. b larva, restored, with gills. c the adult form, natural size.) the fact that the toes number five is of great importance, because they have clearly been transmitted from the amphibia to all the higher vertebrates. man entirely resembles his amphibian ancestors in this respect, and indeed in the whole structure of the bony skeleton of his five-toed extremities. a careful comparison of the skeleton of the frog with our own is enough to show this. it is well known that this hereditary number of the toes has assumed a very great practical importance from remote times; on it our whole system of enumeration (the decimal system applied to measurement of time, mass, weight, etc.) is based. there is absolutely no reason why there should be five toes in the fore and hind feet in the lowest amphibia, the reptiles, and the higher vertebrates, unless we ascribe it to inheritance from a common stem-form. heredity alone can explain it. it is true that we find less than five toes in many of the amphibia and of the higher vertebrates. but in all these cases we can prove that some of the toes atrophied, and were in time lost altogether. the causes of this evolution of the five-toed foot from the many-toed fin in the amphibian ancestor must be sought in adaptation to the entire change of function that the limbs experienced in passing from an exclusively aquatic to a partly terrestrial life. the many-toed fin had been used almost solely for motion in the water; it had now also to support the body in creeping on the solid ground. this led to a modification both of the skeleton and the muscles of the limbs. the number of the fin-radii was gradually reduced, and sank finally to five. but these five remaining radii became much stronger. the soft cartilaginous radii became bony rods. the rest of the skeleton was similarly strengthened. thus from the one-armed lever of the many-toed fish-fin arose the improved many-armed lever system of the five-toed amphibian limbs. the movements of the body gained in variety as well as in strength. the various parts of the skeletal system and correlated muscular system began to differentiate more and more. in view of the close correlation of the muscular and nervous systems, this also made great advance in structure and function. hence we find, as a matter of fact, that the brain is much more developed in the higher amphibia than in the fishes, the dipneusta, and the lower amphibia. the first advance in organisation that was occasioned by the adoption of life on land was naturally the construction of an organ for breathing air--a lung. this was formed directly from the floating-bladder inherited from the fishes. at first its function was insignificant beside that of the gills, the older organ for water-respiration. hence we find in the lowest amphibia, the gilled amphibia, that, like the dipneusta, they pass the greater part of their life in the water, and breathe water through gills. they only come to the surface at brief intervals, or creep on to the land, and then breathe air by their lungs. but some of the tailed amphibia--the salamanders--remain entirely in the water when they are young, and afterwards spend most of their time on land. in the adult state they only breathe air through lungs. the same applies to the most advanced of the amphibia, the batrachia (frogs and toads); some of them have entirely lost the gill-bearing larva form.* (* the tree-frog of martinique (hylades martinicensis) loses the gills on the seventh, and the tail and yelk-sac on the eighth, day of foetal life. on the ninth or tenth day after fecundation the frog emerges from the egg.) this is also the case with certain small, serpentine amphibia, the caecilia (which live in the ground like earth-worms). (figure . . larva of the spotted salamander (salamandra maculata), seen from the ventral side. in the centre a yelk-sac still hangs from the gut. the external gills are gracefully ramified. the two pairs of legs are still very small.) the great interest of the natural history of the amphibia consists especially in their intermediate position between the lower and higher vertebrates. the lower amphibia approach very closely to the dipneusta in their whole organisation, live mainly in the water, and breathe by gills; but the higher amphibia are just as close to the amniotes, live mainly on land, and breathe by lungs. but in their younger state the latter resemble the former, and only reach the higher stage by a complete metamorphosis. the embryonic development of most of the higher amphibia still faithfully reproduces the stem-history of the whole class, and the various stages of the advance that was made by the lower vertebrates in passing from aquatic to terrestrial life during the devonian or the carboniferous period are repeated in the spring by every frog that develops from an egg in our ponds. (figure . . larva of the common grass-frog (rana temporaria), or "tadpole." m mouth, n a pair of suckers for fastening on to stones, d skin-fold from which the gill-cover develops; behind it the gill-clefts, from which the branching gills (k) protrude, s tail-muscles, f cutaneous fin-fringe of the tail.) the common frog leaves the egg in the shape of a larva, like the tailed salamander (figure . ), and this is altogether different from the mature frog (figure . ). the short trunk ends in a long tail, with the form and structure of a fish's tail (s). there are no limbs at first. the respiration is exclusively branchial, first through external (k) and then internal gills. in harmony with this the heart has the same structure as in the fish, and consists of two sections--an atrium that receives the venous blood from the body, and a ventricle that forces it through the arteries into the gills. we find the larvae of the frog (or tadpoles, gyrini) in great numbers in our ponds every spring in this fish-form, using their muscular tails in swimming, just like the fishes and young ascidia. when they have reached a certain size, the remarkable metamorphosis from the fish-form to the frog begins. a blind sac grows out of the gullet, and expands into a couple of spacious sacs: these are the lungs. the simple chamber of the heart is divided into two sections by the development of a partition, and there are at the same time considerable changes in the structure of the chief arteries. previously all the blood went from the auricle through the aortic arches into the gills, but now only part of it goes to the gills, the other part passing to the lungs through the new-formed pulmonary artery. from this point arterial blood returns to the left auricle of the heart, while the venous blood gathers in the right auricle. as both auricles open into a single ventricle, this contains mixed blood. the dipneust form has now succeeded to the fish-form. in the further course of the metamorphosis the gills and the branchial vessels entirely disappear, and the respiration becomes exclusively pulmonary. later, the long swimming tail is lost, and the frog now hops to the land with the legs that have grown meantime. this remarkable metamorphosis of the amphibia is very instructive in connection with our human genealogy, and is particularly interesting from the fact that the various groups of actual amphibia have remained at different stages of their stem-history, in harmony with the biogenetic law. we have first of all a very low order of amphibia--the sozobranchia ("gilled-amphibia"), which retain their gills throughout life, like the fishes. in a second order of the salamanders the gills are lost in the metamorphosis, and when fully grown they have only pulmonary respiration. some of the tailed amphibia still retain the gill-clefts in the side of the neck, though they have lost the gills themselves (menopoma). if we force the larvae of our salamanders (figure . ) and tritons to remain in the water, and prevent them from reaching the land, we can in favourable circumstances make them retain their gills. in this fish-like condition they reach sexual maturity, and remain throughout life at the lower stage of the gilled amphibia. (figure . . fossil mailed amphibian, from the bohemian carboniferous (seeleya). (from fritsch.) the scaly coat is retained on the left.) we have the reverse of this experiment in a mexican gilled salamander, the fish-like axolotl (siredon pisciformis). it was formerly regarded as a permanent gilled amphibian persisting throughout life at the fish-stage. but some of the hundreds of these animals that are kept in the botanical garden at paris got on to the land for some reason or other, lost their gills, and changed into a form closely resembling the salamander (amblystoma). other species of the genus became sexually mature for the first time in this condition. this has been regarded as an astounding phenomenon, although every common frog and salamander repeats the metamorphosis in the spring. the whole change from the aquatic and gill-breathing animal to the terrestrial lung-breathing form may be followed step by step in this case. but what we see here in the development of the individual has happened to the whole class in the course of its stem-history. the metamorphosis goes farther in a third order of amphibia, the batrachia or anura, than in the salamander. to this belong the various kinds of toads, ringed snakes, water-frogs, tree-frogs, etc. these lose, not only the gills, but also (sooner or later) the tail, during metamorphosis. the ontogenetic loss of the gills and the tail in the frog and toad can only be explained on the assumption that they are descended from long-tailed amphibia of the salamander type. this is also clear from the comparative anatomy of the two groups. this remarkable metamorphosis is, however, also interesting because it throws a certain light on the phylogeny of the tail-less apes and man. their ancestors also had long tails and gills like the gilled amphibia, as the tail and the gill-arches of the human embryo clearly show. for comparative anatomical and ontogenetic reasons, we must not seek these amphibian ancestors of ours--as one would be inclined to do, perhaps--among the tail-less batrachia, but among the tailed lower amphibia. the vertebrate form that comes next to the amphibia in the series of our ancestors is a lizard-like animal, the earlier existence of which can be confidently deduced from the facts of comparative anatomy and ontogeny. the living hatteria of new zealand (figure . ) and the extinct rhyncocephala of the permian period (figure . ) are closely related to this important stem-form; we may call them the protamniotes, or primitive amniotes. all the vertebrates above the amphibia--or the three classes of reptiles, birds, and mammals--differ so much in their whole organisation from all the lower vertebrates we have yet considered, and have so great a resemblance to each other, that we put them all together in a single group with the title of amniotes. in these three classes alone we find the remarkable embryonic membrane, already mentioned, which we called the amnion; a cenogenetic adaptation that we may regard as a result of the sinking of the growing embryo into the yelk-sac. all the amniotes known to us--all reptiles, birds, and mammals (including man)--agree in so many important points of internal structure and development that their descent from a common ancestor can be affirmed with tolerable certainty. if the evidence of comparative anatomy and ontogeny is ever entirely beyond suspicion, it is certainly the case here. all the peculiarities that accompany and follow the formation of the amnion, and that we have learned in our consideration of human embryology; all the peculiarities in the development of the organs which we will presently follow in detail; finally, all the principal special features of the internal structure of the full-grown amniotes--prove so clearly the common origin of all the amniotes from single extinct stem-form that it is difficult to entertain the idea of their evolution from several independent stems. this unknown common stem-form is our primitive amniote (protamnion). in outward appearance it was probably something between the salamander and the lizard. it is very probable that some part of the permian period was the age of the origin of the protamniotes. this follows from the fact that the amphibia are not fully developed until the carboniferous period, and that the first fossil reptiles (palaehatteria, homoeosaurus, proterosaurus) are found towards the close of the permian period. among the important changes of the vertebrate organisation that marked the rise of the first amniotes from salamandrine amphibia during this period the following three are especially noteworthy: the entire disappearance of the water-breathing gills and the conversion of the gill-arches into other organs, the formation of the allantois or primitive urinary sac, and the development of the amnion. one of the most salient characteristics of the amniotes is the complete loss of the gills. all amniotes, even if living in water (such as sea-serpents and whales), breathe air through lungs, never water through gills. all the amphibia (with very rare exceptions) retain their gills for some time when young, and have for a time (if not permanently) branchial respiration; but after these there is no question of branchial respiration. the protamniote itself must have entirely abandoned water-breathing. nevertheless, the gill-arches are preserved by heredity, and develop into totally different (in part rudimentary) organs--various parts of the bone of the tongue, the frame of the jaws, the organ of hearing, etc. but we do not find in the embryos of the amniotes any trace of gill-leaves, or of real respiratory organs on the gill-arches. with this complete abandonment of the gills is probably connected the formation of another organ, to which we have already referred in embryology--namely, the allantois or primitive urinary sac (cf. chapter . ). it is very probable that the urinary bladder of the dipneusts is the first structure of the allantois. we find in these a urinary bladder that proceeds from the lower wall of the hind end of the gut, and serves as receptacle for the renal secretions. this organ has been transmitted to the amphibia, as we can see in the frog. the formation of the amnion and the allantois and the complete disappearance of the gills are the chief characteristics that distinguish the amniotes from the lower vertebrates we have hitherto considered. to these we may add several subordinate features that are transmitted to all the amniotes, and are found in these only. one striking embryonic character of the amniotes is the great curve of the head and neck in the embryo. we also find an advance in the structure of several of the internal organs of the amniotes which raises them above the highest of the anamnia. in particular, a partition is formed in the simple ventricle of the heart, dividing into right and left chambers. in connection with the complete metamorphosis of the gill-arches we find a further development of the auscultory organs. also, there is a great advance in the structure of the brain, skeleton, muscular system, and other parts. finally, one of the most important changes is the reconstruction of the kidneys. in all the earlier vertebrates we have found the primitive kidneys as excretory organs, and these appear at an early stage in the embryos of all the higher vertebrates up to man. but in the amniotes these primitive kidneys cease to act at an early stage of embryonic life, and their function is taken up by the permanent or secondary kidneys, which develop from the terminal section of the prorenal ducts. (figure . . the lizard (hatteria punctata = sphenodon punctatus) of new zealand. the sole surviving proreptile. (from brehm.)) taking all these peculiarities of the amniotes together, it is impossible to doubt that all the animals of this group--all reptiles, birds, and mammals--have a common origin, and form a single blood-related stem. our own race belongs to this stem. man is, in every feature of his organisation and embryonic development, a true amniote, and has descended from the protamniote with all the other amniotes. though they appeared at the end (possibly even in the middle) of the paleozoic age, the amniotes only reached their full development during the mesozoic age. the birds and mammals made their first appearance during this period. even the reptiles show their greatest growth at this time, so that it is called "the reptile age." the extinct protamniote, the ancestor of the whole group, belongs in its whole organisation to the reptile class. the genealogical tree of the amniote group is clearly indicated in its chief lines by their paleontology, comparative anatomy, and ontogeny. the group succeeding the protamniote divided into two branches. the branch that will claim our whole interest is the class of the mammals. the other branch, which developed in a totally different direction, and only comes in contact with the mammals at its root, is the combined group of the reptiles and birds; these two classes may, with huxley, be conveniently grouped together as the sauropsida. their common stem-form is an extinct lizard-like reptile of the order of the rhyncocephalia. from this have been developed in various directions the serpents, crocodiles, tortoises, etc.--in a word, all the members of the reptile class. but the remarkable class of the birds has also been evolved directly from a branch of the reptile group, as is now established beyond question. the embryos of the reptiles and birds are identical until a very late stage, and have an astonishing resemblance even later. their whole structure agrees so much that no anatomist now questions the descent of the birds from the reptiles. on the other hand, the mammal line has descended from the group of the sauromammalia, a different branch of the proreptilia. it is connected at its deepest roots with the reptile line, but it then diverges completely from it and follows a distinctive development. man is the highest outcome of this class, the "crown of creation." the hypothesis that the three higher vertebrate classes represent a single amniote-stem, and that the common root of this stem is to be found in the amphibian class, is now generally admitted. (figure . . homoeosaurus pulchellus, a jurassic proreptile from kehlheim. (from zittel.)) the instructive group of the permian tocosauria, the common root from which the divergent stems of the sauropsids and mammals have issued, merits our particular attention as the stem-group of all the amniotes. fortunately a living representative of this extinct ancestral group has been preserved to our day; this is the remarkable lizard of new zealand, hatteria punctata (figure . ). externally it differs little from the ordinary lizard; but in many important points of internal structure, especially in the primitive construction of the vertebral column, the skull, and the limbs, it occupies a much lower position, and approaches its amphibian ancestors, the stegocephala. hence hatteria is the phylogenetically oldest of all living reptiles, an isolated survivor from the permian period, closely resembling the common ancestor of the amniotes. it must differ so little from this extinct form, our hypothetical protamniote, that we put it next to the proreptilia. the remarkable permian palaehatteria, that credner discovered in the plauen terrain at dresden in , belongs to the same group (figure . ). the jurassic genus homoeosaurus (figure . ), of which well-preserved skeletons are found in the solenhofen schists, is perhaps still more closely related to them. unfortunately, the numerous fossil remains of permian and triassic tocosauria that we have found in the last two decades are, for the most part, very imperfectly preserved. very often we can make only precarious inferences from these skeletal fragments as to the anatomic characters of the soft parts that went with the bony skeleton of the extinct tocosauria. hence it has not yet been possible to arrange these important fossils with any confidence in the ancestral series that descend from the protamniotes to the sauropsids on the one side and the mammals on the other. opinions are particularly divided as to the place in classification and the phylogenetic significance of the remarkable theromorpha. cope gives this name to a very interesting and extensive group of extinct terrestrial reptiles, of which we have only fossil remains from the permian and triassic strata. forty years ago some of these therosauria (fresh-water animals) were described by owen as anomodontia. but during the last twenty years the distinguished american paleontologists, cope and osborn, have greatly increased our knowledge of them, and have claimed that the stem-forms of the mammals must be sought in this order. as a matter of fact, the theromorpha are nearer to the mammals in the chief points of structure than any other reptiles. this is especially true of the thereodontia, to which the pureosauria and pelycosauria belong (figure . ). the whole structure of their pelvis and hind-feet has attained the same form as in the monotremes, the lowest mammals. the formation of the scapula and the quadrate bone shows an approach to the mammals such as we find in no other group of reptiles. the teeth also are already divided into incisors, canines, and molars. nevertheless, it is very doubtful whether the theromorpha really are in the ancestral line of the sauromammals, or lead direct from the tocosauria to the earliest mammals. other experts on this group believe that it is an independent legion of the reptiles, connected, perhaps, at its lowest root, with the sauromammals, but developed quite independently of the mammals--though parallel to them in many ways. one of the most important of the zoological facts that we rely on in our investigation of the genealogy of the human race is the position of man in the mammal class. however different the views of zoologists may have been as to this position in detail, and as to his relations to the apes, no scientist has ever doubted that man is a true mammal in his whole organisation and development. linne drew attention to this fact in the first edition of his famous systema naturae ( ). as will be seen in any museum of anatomy or any manual of comparative anatomy; the human frame has all the characteristics that are common to the mammals and distinguish them conspicuously from all other animals. (figure . . skull of a permian lizard (palaehatteria longicaudata). (from credner.) n nasal bone, pf frontal bone, l lachrymal bone, po postorbital bone, sq covering bone, i cheek-bone, vo vomer, im inter-maxillary.) if we examine this undoubted fact from the point of view of phylogeny, in the light of the theory of descent, it follows at once that man is of a common stem with all the other mammals, and comes from the same root as they. but the various features in which the mammals agree and by which they are distinguished are of such a character as to make a polyphyletic hypothesis quite inadmissible. it is impossible to entertain the idea that all the living and extinct mammals come from a number of separate roots. if we accept the general theory of evolution, we are bound to admit the monophyletic hypothesis of the descent of all the mammals (including man) from a single mammalian stem-form. we may call this long-extinct root-form and its earliest descendants (a few genera of one family) "primitive mammals" or "stem-mammals" (promammalia). as we have already seen, this root-form developed from the primitive proreptile stem in a totally different direction from the birds, and soon separated from the main stem of the reptiles. the differences between the mammals and the reptiles and birds are so important and characteristic that we can assume with complete confidence this division of the vertebrate stem at the commencement of the development of the amniotes. the reptiles and birds, which we group together as the sauropsids, generally agree in the characteristic structure of the skull and brain, and this is notably different from that of the mammals. in most of the reptiles and birds the skull is connected with the first cervical vertebra (the atlas) by a single, and in the mammals (and amphibia) by a double, condyle at the back of the head. in the former the lower jaw is composed of several pieces, and connected with the skull so that it can move by a special maxillary bone (the quadratum); in the mammals the lower jaw consists of one pair of bony pieces, which articulate directly with the temporal bone. further, in the sauropsids the skin is clothed with scales or feathers; in the mammals with hair. the red blood-cells of the former have a nucleus; those of the latter have not. in fine, two quite characteristic features of the mammals, which distinguish them not only from the birds and reptiles, but from all other animals, are the possession of a complete diaphragm and of mammary glands that produce the milk for the nutrition of the young. it is only in the mammals that the diaphragm forms a transverse partition of the body-cavity, completely separating the pectoral from the abdominal cavity. it is only in the mammals that the mother suckles its young, and this rightly gives the name to the whole class (mamma = breast). (figure . . skull of a triassic theromorphum (galesaurus planiceps), from the karoo formation in south africa. (from owen.) a from the right, b from below, c from above, d tricuspid tooth. n nostrils, na nasal bone, mx upper jaw, prf prefrontal, fr frontal bone, a eye-pits, s temple-pits. pa parietal eye, bo joint at back of head, pt pterygoid-bone, md lower jaw.) from these pregnant facts of comparative anatomy and ontogeny it follows absolutely that the whole of the mammals belong to a single natural stem, which branched off at an early date from the reptile-root. it follows further with the same absolute certainty that the human race is also a branch of this stem. man shares all the characteristics i have described with all the mammals, and differs in them from all other animals. finally, from these facts we deduce with the same confidence those advances in the vertebrate organisation by which one branch of the sauromammals was converted into the stem-form of the mammals. of these advances the chief were: ( ) the characteristic modification of the skull and the brain; ( ) the development of a hairy coat; ( ) the complete formation of the diaphragm; and ( ) the construction of the mammary glands and adaptation to suckling. other important changes of structure proceeded step by step with these. the epoch at which these important advances were made, and the foundation of the mammal class was laid, may be put with great probability in the first section of the mesozoic or secondary age--the triassic period. the oldest fossil remains of mammals that we know were found in strata that belong to the earliest triassic period--the upper kueper. one of the earliest forms is the genus dromatherium, from the north american triassic (figure . ). their teeth still strikingly recall those of the pelycosauria. hence we may assume that this small and probably insectivorous mammal belonged to the stem-group of the promammals. we do not find any positive trace of the third and most advanced division of the mammals--the placentals. these (including man) are much younger, and we do not find indisputable fossil remains of them until the cenozoic age, or the tertiary period. this paleontological fact is very important, because it fully harmonises with the evolutionary succession of the mammal orders that is deduced from their comparative anatomy and ontogeny. the latter science teaches us that the whole mammal class divides into three main groups or sub-classes, which correspond to three successive phylogenetic stages. these three stages, which also represent three important stages in our human genealogy, were first distinguished in by the eminent french zoologist, blainville, and received the names of ornithodelphia, didelphia, and monodelphia, according to the construction of the female organs (delphys = uterus or womb). huxley afterwards gave them the names of prototheria, metatheria, and epitheria. but the three sub-classes differ so widely from each other, not only in the construction of the sexual organs, but in many other respects also, that we may confidently draw up the following important phylogenetic thesis: the monodelphia or placentals descend from the didelphia or marsupials; and the latter, in turn, are descended from the monotremes or ornithodelphia. thus we must regard as the twenty-first stage in our genealogical tree the earliest and lowest chief group of the mammals--the sub-class of the monotremes ("cloaca-animals," ornithodelphia, or prototheria, figures . and . ). they take their name from the cloaca which they share with all the lower vertebrates. this cloaca is the common outlet for the passage of the excrements, the urine, and the sexual products. the urinary ducts and sexual canals open into the hindmost part of the gut, while in all the other mammals they are separated from the rectum and anus. the latter have a special uro-genital outlet (porus urogenitalis). the bladder also opens into the cloaca in the monotremes, and, indeed, apart from the two urinary ducts; in all the other mammals the latter open directly into the bladder. it was proved by haacke and caldwell in that the monotremes lay large eggs like the reptiles, while all the other mammals are viviparous. in richard semon further proved that these large eggs, rich in food-yelk, have a partial segmentation and discoid gastrulation, as i had hypothetically assumed in ; here again they resemble their reptilian ancestors. the construction of the mammary gland is also peculiar in the monotremes. in them the glands have no teats for the young animal to suck, but there is a special part of the breast pierced with holes like a sieve, from which the milk issues, and the young monotreme must lick it off. further, the brain of the monotremes is very little advanced. it is feebler than that of any of the other mammals. the fore-brain or cerebrum, in particular, is so small that it does not cover the cerebellum. in the skeleton (figure . ) the formation of the scapula among other parts is curious; it is quite different from that of the other mammals, and rather agrees with that of the reptiles and amphibia. like these, the monotremes have a strongly developed caracoideum. from these and other less prominent characteristics it follows absolutely that the monotremes occupy the lowest place among the mammals, and represent a transitional group between the tocosauria and the rest of the mammals. all these remarkable reptilian characters must have been possessed by the stem-form of the whole mammal class, the promammal of the triassic period, and have been inherited from the proreptiles. (figure . . lower jaw of a primitive mammal or promammal (dromatherium silvestre) from the north american triassic. i incisors, c canine, p premolars, m molars. (from doderlein.)) during the triassic and jurassic periods the sub-class of the monotremes was represented by a number of different stem-mammals. numerous fossil remains of them have lately been discovered in the mesozoic strata of europe, africa, and america. to-day there are only two surviving specimens of the group, which we place together in the family of the duck-bills, ornithostoma. they are confined to australia and the neighbouring island of van diemen's land (or tasmania); they become scarcer every year, and will soon, like their blood-relatives, be counted among the extinct animals. one form lives in the rivers, and builds subterraneous dwellings on the banks; this is the ornithorhyncus paradoxus, with webbed feet, a thick soft fur, and broad flat jaws, which look very much like the bill of a duck (figures . and . ). the other form, the land duck-bill, or spiny ant-eater (echidna hystrix), is very much like the anteaters in its habits and the peculiar construction of its thin snout and very long tongue; it is covered with needles, and can roll itself up like a hedgehog. a cognate form (parechidna bruyni) has lately been found in new guinea. these modern ornithostoma are the scattered survivors of the vast mesozoic group of monotremes; hence they have the same interest in connection with the stem history of the mammals as the living stem-reptiles (hatteria) for that of the reptiles, and the isolated acrania (amphioxus) for the phylogeny of the vertebrate stem. the australian duck-bills are distinguished externally by a toothless bird-like beak or snout. this absence of real bony teeth is a late result of adaptation, as in the toothless placentals (edentata, armadillos and ant-eaters). the extinct monotremes, to which the promammalia belonged, must have had developed teeth, inherited from the reptiles. lately small rudiments of real molars have been discovered in the young of the ornithorhyncus, which has horny plates in the jaws instead of real teeth. (figure . . the ornithorhyncus or duck-mole. (ornithorhyncus paradoxus). figure . . skeleton of the ornithorhyncus.) the living ornithostoma and the stem-forms of the marsupials (or didelphia) must be regarded as two widely diverging lines from the promammals. this second sub-class of the mammals is very interesting as a perfect intermediate stage between the other two. while the marsupials retain a great part of the characteristics of the monotremes, they have also acquired some of the chief features of the placentals. some features are also peculiar to the marsupials, such as the construction of the male and female sexual organs and the form of the lower jaw. the marsupials are distinguished by a peculiar hook-like bony process that bends from the corner of the lower jaw and points inwards. as most of the placentals have not this process, we can, with some probability, recognise the marsupial from this feature alone. most of the mammal remains that we have from the jurassic and cretaceous deposits are merely lower jaws, and most of the jaws found in the jurassic deposits at stonesfield and purbeck have the peculiar hook-like process that characterises the lower jaw of the marsupial. on the strength of this paleontological fact, we may suppose that they belonged to marsupials. placentals do not seem to have existed at the middle of the mesozoic age--not until towards its close (in the cretaceous period). at all events, we have no fossil remains of indubitable placentals from that period. the existing marsupials, of which the plant-eating kangaroo and the carnivorous opossum (figure . ) are the best known, differ a good deal in structure, shape, and size, and correspond in many respects to the various orders of placentals. most of them live in australia, and a small part of the australian and east malayan islands. there is now not a single living marsupial on the mainland of europe, asia, or africa. it was very different during the mesozoic and even during the cenozoic age. the sedimentary deposits of these periods contain a great number and variety of marsupial remains, sometimes of a colossal size, in various parts of the earth, and even in europe. we may infer from this that the existing marsupials are the remnant of an extensive earlier group that was distributed all over the earth. it had to give way in the struggle for life to the more powerful placentals during the tertiary period. the survivors of the group were able to keep alive in australia and south america because the one was completely separated from the other parts of the earth during the whole of the tertiary period, and the other during the greater part of it. (figure . . lower jaw of a promammal (dryolestes priscus), from the jurassic of the felsen strata. (from marsh.)) from the comparative anatomy and ontogeny of the existing marsupials we may draw very interesting conclusions as to their intermediate position between the earlier monotremes and the later placentals. the defective development of the brain (especially the cerebrum), the possession of marsupial bones, and the simple construction of the allantois (without any placenta as yet) were inherited by the marsupials, with many other features, from the monotremes, and preserved. on the other hand, they have lost the independent bone (caracoideum) at the shoulder-blade. but we have a more important advance in the disappearance of the cloaca; the rectum and anus are separated by a partition from the uro-genital opening (sinus urogenitalis). moreover, all the marsupials have teats on the mammary glands, at which the new-born animal sucks. the teats pass into the cavity of a pouch or pocket on the ventral side of the mother, and this is supported by a couple of marsupial bones. the young are born in a very imperfect condition, and carried by the mother for some time longer in her pouch, until they are fully developed (figure . ). in the giant kangaroo, which is as tall as a man, the embryo only develops for a month in the uterus, is then born in a very imperfect state, and finishes its growth in the mother's pouch (marsupium); it remains in this about nine months, and at first hangs continually on to the teat of the mammary gland. (figure . . the crab-eating opossum (philander cancrivorus). the female has three young in the pouch. (from brehm.) from these and other characteristics (especially the peculiar construction of the internal and external sexual organs in male and female) it is clear that we must conceive the whole sub-class of the marsupials as one stem group, which has been developed from the promammalia. from one branch of these marsupials (possibly from more than one) the stem-forms of the higher mammals, the placentals, were afterwards evolved. of the existing forms of the marsupials, which have undergone various modifications through adaptation to different environments, the family of the opossums (didelphida or pedimana) seems to be the oldest and nearest to the common stem-form of the whole class. to this family belong the crab-eating opossum of brazil (figure . ) and the opossum of virginia, on the embryology of which selenka has given us a valuable work (cf. figures . to . and . to . ). these didelphida climb trees like the apes, grasping the branches with their hand-shaped hind feet. we may conclude from this that the stem-forms of the primates, which we must regard as the earliest lemurs, were evolved directly from the opossum. we must not forget, however, that the conversion of the five-toed foot into a prehensile hand is polyphyletic. by the same adaptation to climbing trees the habit of grasping their branches with the feet has in many different cases brought about that opposition of the thumb or great toe to the other toes which makes the hand prehensile. we see this in the climbing lizards (chameleon), the birds, and the tree-dwelling mammals of various orders. some zoologists have lately advanced the opposite opinion, that the marsupials represent a completely independent sub-class of the mammals, with no direct relation to the placentals, and developing independently of them from the monotremes. but this opinion is untenable if we examine carefully the whole organisation of the three sub-classes, and do not lay the chief stress on incidental features and secondary adaptations (such as the formation of the marsupium). it is then clear that the marsupials--viviparous mammals without placenta--are a necessary transition from the oviparous monotremes to the higher placentals with chorion-villi. in this sense the marsupial class certainly contains some of man's ancestors. chapter . . our ape ancestors. the long series of animal forms which we must regard as the ancestors of our race has been confined within narrower and narrower circles as our phylogenetic inquiry has progressed. the great majority of known animals do not fall in the line of our ancestry, and even within the vertebrate stem only a small number are found to do so. in the most advanced class of the stem, the mammals, there are only a few families that belong directly to our genealogical tree. the most important of these are the apes and their predecessors, the half-apes, and the earliest placentals (prochoriata). the placentals (also called choriata, monodelphia, eutheria or epitheria) are distinguished from the lower mammals we have just considered, the monotremes and marsupials, by a number of striking peculiarities. man has all these distinctive features; that is a very significant fact. we may, on the ground of the most careful comparative-anatomical and ontogenetic research, formulate the thesis: "man is in every respect a true placental." he has all the characteristics of structure and development that distinguish the placentals from the two lower divisions of the mammals, and, in fact, from all other animals. among these characteristics we must especially notice the more advanced development of the brain. the fore-brain or cerebrum especially is much more developed in them than in the lower animals. the corpus callosum, which forms a sort of wide bridge connecting the two hemispheres of the cerebrum, is only fully formed in the placentals; it is very rudimentary in the marsupials and monotremes. it is true that the lowest placentals are not far removed from the marsupials in cerebral development; but within the placental group we can trace an unbroken gradation of progressive development of the brain, rising gradually from this lowest stage up to the elaborate psychic organ of the apes and man. the human soul--a physiological function of the brain--is in reality only a more advanced ape-soul. the mammary glands of the placentals are provided with teats like those of the marsupials; but we never find in the placentals the pouch in which the latter carry and suckle their young. nor have they the marsupial bones in the ventral wall at the anterior border of the pelvis, which the marsupials have in common with the monotremes, and which are formed by a partial ossification of the sinews of the inner oblique abdominal muscle. there are merely a few insignificant remnants of them in some of the carnivora. the placentals are also generally without the hook-shaped process at the angle of the lower jaw which is found in the marsupials. (figure . . foetal membranes of the human embryo (diagrammatic). m the thick muscular wall of the womb. plu placenta [the inner layer (plu apostrophe) of which penetrates into the chorion-villi (chz) with its processes]. chf tufted, chl smooth chorion. a amnion, ah amniotic cavity, as amniotic sheath of the umbilical cord (which passes under into the navel of the embryo--not given here), dg vitelline duct, ds yelk sac, dv, dr decidua (vera and reflexa). the uterine cavity (uh) opens below into the vagina and above on the right into an oviduct (t). (from kolliker.)) however, the feature that characterises the placentals above all others, and that has given its name to the whole sub-class, is the formation of the placenta. we have already considered the formation and significance of this remarkable embryonic organ when we traced the development of the chorion and the allantois in the human embryo (chapter . ). the urinary sac or the allantois, the curious vesicle that grows out of the hind part of the gut, has essentially the same structure and function in the human embryo as in that of all the other amniotes (cf. figures . to . ). there is a quite secondary difference, on which great stress has wrongly been laid, in the fact that in man and the higher apes the original cavity of the allantois quickly degenerates, and the rudiment of it sticks out as a solid projection from the primitive gut. the thin wall of the allantois consists of the same two layers or membranes as the wall of the gut--the gut-gland layer within and the gut-fibre layer without. in the gut-fibre layer of the allantois there are large blood-vessels, which serve for the nutrition, and especially the respiration, of the embryo--the umbilical vessels (chapter . ). in the reptiles and birds the allantois enlarges into a spacious sac, which encloses the embryo with the amnion, and does not combine with the outer foetal membrane (the chorion). this is the case also with the lowest mammals, the oviparous monotremes and most of the marsupials. it is only in some of the later marsupials (peramelida) and all the placentals that the allantois develops into the distinctive and remarkable structure that we call the placenta. the placenta is formed by the branches of the blood-vessels in the wall of the allantois growing into the hollow ectodermic tufts (villi) of the chorion, which run into corresponding depressions in the mucous membrane of the womb. the latter also is richly permeated with blood-vessels which bring the mother's blood to the embryo. as the partition in the villi between the maternal blood-vessels and those of the foetus is extremely thin, there is a direct exchange of fluid between the two, and this is of the greatest importance in the nutrition of the young mammal. it is true that the maternal vessels do not entirely pass into the foetal vessels, so that the two kinds of blood are simply mixed. but the partition between them is so thin that the nutritive fluid easily transudes through it. by means of this transudation or diosmosis the exchange of fluids takes place without difficulty. the larger the embryo is in the placentals, and the longer it remains in the womb, the more necessary it is to have special structures to meet its great consumption of food. in this respect there is a very conspicuous difference between the lower and higher mammals. in the marsupials, in which the embryo is only a comparatively short time in the womb and is born in a very immature condition, the vascular arrangements in the yelk-sac and the allantois suffice for its nutrition, as we find them in the monotremes, birds, and reptiles. but in the placentals, where gestation lasts a long time, and the embryo reaches its full development under the protection of its enveloping membranes, there has to be a new mechanism for the direct supply of a large quantity of food, and this is admirably met by the formation of the placenta. branches of the blood-vessels penetrate into the chorion-villi from within, starting from the gut-fibre layer of the allantois, and bringing the blood of the foetus through the umbilical vessels (figure . chz). on the other hand, a thick network of blood-vessels develops in the mucous membrane that clothes the inner surface of the womb, especially in the region of the depressions into which the chorion-villi penetrate (plu). this network of arteries contains maternal blood, brought by the uterine vessels. as the connective tissue between the enlarged capillaries of the uterus disappears, wide cavities filled with maternal blood appear, and into these the chorion-villi of the embryo penetrate. the sum of these vessels of both kinds, that are so intimately correlated at this point, together with the connective and enveloping tissue, is the placenta. the placenta consists, therefore, properly speaking, of two different though intimately connected parts--the foetal placenta (figure . chz) within and the maternal or uterine placenta (plu) without. the latter is made up of the mucous coat of the uterus and its blood-vessels, the former of the tufted chorion and the umbilical vessels of the embryo (cf. figure . ). (figure . . skull of a fossil lemur (adapis parisiensis,), from the miocene at quercy. a lateral view from the right, half natural size. b lower jaw, c lower molar, i incisors, c canines, p premolars, m molars.) the manner in which these two kinds of vessels combine in the placenta, and the structure, form, and size of it, differ a good deal in the various placentals; to some extent they give us valuable data for the natural classification, and therefore the phylogeny, of the whole of this sub-class. on the ground of these differences we divide it into two principal sections; the lower placentals or indecidua, and the higher placentals or deciduata. to the indecidua belong three important groups of mammals: the lemurs (prosimiae), the ungulates (tapirs, horses, pigs, ruminants, etc.), and the cetacea (dolphins and whales). in these indecidua the villi are distributed over the whole surface of the chorion (or its greater part) either singly or in groups. they are only loosely connected with the mucous coat of the uterus, so that the whole foetal membrane with its villi can be easily withdrawn from the uterine depressions like a hand from a glove. there is no real coalescence of the two placentas at any part of the surface of contact. hence at birth the foetal placenta alone comes away; the uterine placenta is not torn away with it. the formation of the placenta is very different in the second and higher section of the placentals, the deciduata. here again the whole surface of the chorion is thickly covered with the villi in the beginning. but they afterwards disappear from one part of the surface, and grow proportionately thicker on the other part. we thus get a differentiation between the smooth chorion (chorion laeve, figure . chl) and the thickly-tufted chorion (chorion frondosum, figure . chf). the former has only a few small villi or none at all; the latter is thickly covered with large and well-developed villi; this alone now constitutes the placenta. in the great majority of the deciduata the placenta has the same shape as in man (figures . and . )--namely a thick, circular disk like a cake; so we find in the insectivora, chiroptera, rodents, and apes. this discoplacenta lies on one side of the chorion. but in the sarcotheria (both the carnivora and the seals, pinnipedia) and in the elephant and several other deciduates we find a zonoplacenta; in these the rich mass of villi runs like a girdle round the middle of the ellipsoid chorion, the two poles of it being free from them. (figure . . the slender lori (stenops gracilis) of ceylon, a tail-less lemur.) still more characteristic of the deciduates is the peculiar and very intimate connection between the chorion frondosum and the corresponding part of the mucous coat of the womb, which we must regard as a real coalescence of the two. the villi of the chorion push their branches into the blood-filled tissues of the coat of the uterus, and the vessels of each loop together so intimately that it is no longer possible to separate the foetal from the maternal placenta; they form henceforth a compact and apparently simple placenta. in consequence of this coalescence, a whole piece of the lining of the womb comes away at birth with the foetal membrane that is interlaced with it. this piece is called the "falling-away" membrane (decidua). it is also called the serous (spongy) membrane, because it is pierced like a sieve or sponge. all the higher placentals that have this decidua are classed together as the "deciduates." the tearing away of the decidua at birth naturally causes the mother to lose a quantity of blood, which does not happen in the indecidua. the last part of the uterine coat has to be repaired by a new growth after birth in the deciduates. (cf. figures . and . .) in the various orders of the deciduates, the placenta differs considerably both in outer form and internal structure. the extensive investigations of the last ten years have shown that there is more variation in these respects among the higher mammals than was formerly supposed. the physiological work of this important embryonic organ, the nutrition of the foetus during its long sojourn in the womb, is accomplished in the various groups of the placentals by very different and sometimes very elaborate structures. they have lately been fully described by hans strahl. the phylogeny of the placenta has become more intelligible from the fact that we have found a number of transitional forms of it. some of the marsupials (perameles) have the beginning of a placenta. in some of the lemurs (tarsius) a discoid placenta with decidua is developed. while these important results of comparative embryology have been throwing further light on the close blood-relationship of man and the anthropoid apes in the last few years (chapter . ), the great advance of paleontology has at the same time been affording us a deeper insight into the stem-history of the placental group. in the seventh chapter of my systematic phylogeny of the vertebrates i advanced the hypothesis that the placentals form a single stem with many branches, which has been evolved from an older group of the marsupials (prodidelphia). the four great legions of the placentals--rodents, ungulates, carnassia, and primates--are sharply separated to-day by important features of organisation. but if we consider their extinct ancestors of the tertiary period, the differences gradually disappear, the deeper we go in the cenozoic deposits; in the end we find that they vanish altogether. the primitive stem-forms of the rodents (esthonychida), the ungulates (chondylarthra), the carnassia (ictopsida), and the primates (lemuravida) are so closely related at the beginning of the tertiary period that we might group them together as different families of one order, the proplacentals (mallotheria or prochoriata). hence the great majority of the placentals have no direct and close relationship to man, but only the legion of the primates. this is now generally divided into three orders--the half-apes (prosimiae), apes (simiae), and man (anthropi). the lemurs or half-apes are the stem-group, descending from the older mallotheria of the cretaceous period. from them the apes were evolved in the tertiary period, and man was formed from these towards its close. the lemurs (prosimiae) have few living representatives. but they are very interesting, and are the last survivors of a once extensive group. we find many fossil remains of them in the older tertiary deposits of europe and north america, in the eocene and miocene. we distinguish two sub-orders, the fossil lemuravida and the modern lemurogona. the earliest and most primitive forms of the lemuravida are the pachylemurs (hypopsodina); they come next to the earliest placentals (prochoriata), and have the typical full dentition, with forty-four teeth ( . . . . over . . . .). the necrolemurs (adapida, figure . ) have only forty teeth, and have lost an incisor in each jaw ( . . . . over . . . .). the dentition is still further reduced in the lemurogona (autolemures), which usually have only thirty-six teeth ( . . . . over . . . .). these living survivors are scattered far over the southern part of the old world. most of the species live in madagascar, some in the sunda islands, others on the mainland of asia and africa. they are gloomy and melancholic animals; they live a quiet life, climbing trees, and eating fruit and insects. they are of different kinds. some are closely related to the marsupials (especially the opossum). others (macrotarsi) are nearer to the insectivora, others again (chiromys) to the rodents. some of the lemurs (brachytarsi) approach closely to the true apes. the numerous fossil remains of half-apes and apes that have been recently found in the tertiary deposits justify us in thinking that man's ancestors were represented by several different species during this long period. some of these were almost as big as men, such as the diluvial lemurogonon megaladapis of madagascar. (figure . . the white-nosed ape (cercopithecus petaurista).) next to the lemurs come the true apes (simiae), the twenty-sixth stage in our ancestry. it has been beyond question for some time now that the apes approach nearest to man in every respect of all the animals. just as the lowest apes come close to the lemurs, so the highest come next to man. when we carefully study the comparative anatomy of the apes and man, we can trace a gradual and uninterrupted advance in the organisation of the ape up to the purely human frame, and, after impartial examination of the "ape problem" that has been discussed of late years with such passionate interest, we come infallibly to the important conclusion, first formulated by huxley in : "whatever systems of organs we take, the comparison of their modifications in the series of apes leads to the same result: that the anatomic differences that separate man from the gorilla and chimpanzee are not as great as those that separate the gorilla from the lower apes." translated into phylogenetic language, this "pithecometra-law," formulated in such masterly fashion by huxley, is quite equivalent to the popular saying: "man is descended from the apes." (figure . . the drill-baboon (cynocephalus leucophaeus) (from brehm.)) in the very first exposition of his profound natural classification ( ) linne placed the anthropoid mammals at the head of the animal kingdom, with three genera: man, the ape, and the sloth. he afterwards called them the "primates"--the "lords" of the animal world; he then also separated the lemur from the true ape, and rejected the sloth. later zoologists divided the order of primates. first the gottingen anatomist, blumenbach, founded a special order for man, which he called bimana ("two-handed"); in a second order he united the apes and lemurs under the name of quadrumana ("four-handed"); and a third order was formed of the distantly-related chiroptera (bats, etc.). the separation of the bimana and quadrumana was retained by cuvier and most of the subsequent zoologists. it seems to be extremely important, but, as a matter of fact, it is totally wrong. this was first shown in by huxley, in his famous man's place in nature. on the strength of careful comparative anatomical research he proved that the apes are just as truly "two-handed" as man; or, if we prefer to reverse it, that man is as truly four-handed as the ape. he showed convincingly that the ideas of hand and foot had been wrongly defined, and had been improperly based on physiological instead of morphological grounds. the circumstance that we oppose the thumb to the other four fingers in our hand, and so can grasp things, seemed to be a special distinction of the hand in contrast to the foot, in which the corresponding great toe cannot be opposed in this way to the others. but the apes can grasp with the hind-foot as well as the fore, and so were regarded as quadrumanous. however, the inability to grasp that we find in the foot of civilised man is a consequence of the habit of clothing it with tight coverings for thousands of years. many of the bare-footed lower races of men, especially among the negroes, use the foot very freely in the same way as the hand. as a result of early habit and continued practice, they can grasp with the foot (in climbing trees, for instance) just as well as with the hand. even new-born infants of our own race can grasp very strongly with the great toe, and hold a spoon with it as firmly as with the hand. hence the physiological distinction between hand and foot can neither be pressed very far, nor has it a scientific basis. we must look to morphological characters. as a matter of fact, it is possible to draw such a sharp morphological distinction--a distinction based on anatomic structure--between the fore and hind extremity. in the formation both of the bony skeleton and of the muscles that are connected with the hand and foot before and behind there are material and constant differences; and these are found both in man and the ape. for instance, the number and arrangement of the smaller bones of the hand and foot are quite different. there are similar constant differences in the muscles. the hind extremity always has three muscles (a short flexor muscle, a short extensor muscle, and a long calf-muscle) that are not found in the fore extremity. the arrangement of the muscles also is different before and behind. these characteristic differences between the fore and hind extremities are found in man as well as the ape. there can be no doubt, therefore, that the ape's foot deserves that name just as much as the human foot does, and that all true apes are just as "bimanous" as man. the common distinction of the apes as "quadrumanous" is altogether wrong morphologically. but it may be asked whether, quite apart from this, we can find any other features that distinguish man more sharply from the ape than the various species of apes are distinguished from each other. huxley gave so complete and demonstrative a reply to this question that the opposition still raised on many sides is absolutely without foundation. on the ground of careful comparative anatomical research, huxley proved that in all morphological respects the differences between the highest and lowest apes are greater than the corresponding differences between the highest apes and man. he thus restored linne's order of the primates (excluding the bats), and divided it into three sub-orders, the first composed of the half-apes (lemuridae), the second of the true apes (simiadae), the third of men (anthropidae). but, as we wish to proceed quite consistently and impartially on the laws of systematic logic, we may, on the strength of huxley's own law, go a good deal farther in this division. we are justified in going at least one important step farther, and assigning man his natural place within one of the sections of the order of apes. all the features that characterise this group of apes are found in man, and not found in the other apes. we do not seem to be justified, therefore, in founding for man a special order distinct from the apes. the order of the true apes (simiae or pitheca)--excluding the lemurs--has long been divided into two principal groups, which also differ in their geographical distribution. one group (hesperopitheca, or western apes) live in america. the other group, to which man belongs, are the eopitheca or eastern apes; they are found in asia and africa, and were formerly in europe. all the eastern apes agree with man in the features that are chiefly used in zoological classification to distinguish between the two simian groups, especially in the dentition. the objection might be raised that the teeth are too subordinate an organ physiologically for us to lay stress on them in so important a question. but there is a good reason for it; it is with perfect justice that zoologists have for more than a century paid particular attention to the teeth in the systematic division and arrangement of the orders of mammals. the number, form, and arrangement of the teeth are much more faithfully inherited in the various orders than most other characters. hence the form of dentition in man is very important. in the fully developed condition we have thirty-two teeth; of these eight are incisors, four canine, and twenty molars. the eight incisors, in the middle of the jaws, have certain characteristic differences above and below. in the upper jaw the inner incisors are larger than the outer; in the lower jaw the inner are the smaller. next to these, at each side of both jaws, is a canine (or "eye tooth"), which is larger than the incisors. sometimes it is very prominent in man, as it is in most apes and many of the other mammals, and forms a sort of tusk. next to this there are five molars above and below on each side, the first two of which (the "pre-molars") are small, have only one root, and are included in the change of teeth; the three back ones are much larger, have two roots, and only come with the second teeth. the apes of the old world, or all the living or fossil apes of asia, africa, and europe, have the same dentition as man. (figures . to . . skeletons of man and the four anthropoid apes. (from huxley.) cf. figures . to . . figure . . gibbon (hylobates). figure . . orang (satyrus). figure . . chimpanzee (anthropithecus). figure . . gorilla (gorilla). figure . . man (homo).) on the other hand, all the american apes have an additional pre-molar in each half of the jaw. they have six molars above and below on each side, or thirty-six teeth altogether. this characteristic difference between the eastern and western apes has been so faithfully inherited that it is very instructive for us. it is true that there seems to be an exception in the case of a small family of south american apes. the small silky apes (arctopitheca or hapalidae), which include the tamarin (midas) and the brush-monkey (jacchus), have only five molars in each half of the jaw (instead of six), and so seem to be nearer to the eastern apes. but it is found, on closer examination, that they have three premolars, like all the western apes, and that only the last molar has been lost. hence the apparent exception really confirms the above distinction. of the other features in which the two groups of apes differ, the structure of the nose is particularly instructive and conspicuous. all the eastern apes have the same type of nose as man--a comparatively narrow partition between the two halves, so that the nostrils run downwards. in some of them the nose protrudes as far as in man, and has the same characteristic structure. we have already alluded to the curious long-nosed apes, which have a long, finely-curved nose. most of the eastern apes have, it is true, rather flat noses, like, for instance, the white-nosed monkey (figure . ); but the nasal partition is thin and narrow in them all. the american apes have a different type of nose. the partition is very broad and thick at the bottom, and the wings of the nostrils are not developed, so that they point outwards instead of downwards. this difference in the form of the nose is so constantly inherited in both groups that the apes of the new world are called "flat-nosed" (platyrrhinae), and those of the old world "narrow-nosed" (catarrhinae). the bony passage of the ear (at the bottom of which is the tympanum) is short and wide in all the platyrrhines, but long and narrow in all the catarrhines; and in man this difference also is significant. this division of the apes into platyrrhines and catarrhines, on the ground of the above hereditary features, is now generally admitted in zoology, and receives strong support from the geographical distribution of the two groups in the east and west. it follows at once, as regards the phylogeny of the apes, that two divergent lines proceeded from the common stem-form of the ape-order in the early tertiary period, one of which spread over the old, the other over the new, world. it is certain that all the platyrrhines come of one stock, and also all the catarrhines; but the former are phylogenetically older, and must be regarded as the stem-group of the latter. what can we deduce from this with regard to our own genealogy? man has just the same characters, the same form of dentition, auditory passage, and nose, as all the catarrhines; in this he radically differs from the platyrrhines. we are thus forced to assign him a position among the eastern apes in the order of primates, or at least place him alongside of them. but it follows that man is a direct blood relative of the apes of the old world, and can be traced to a common stem-form together with all the catarrhines. in his whole organisation and in his origin man is a true catarrhine; he originated in the old world from an unknown, extinct group of the eastern apes. the apes of the new world, or the platyrrhines, form a divergent branch of our genealogical tree, and this is only distantly related at its root to the human race. we must assume, of course, that the earliest eocene apes had the full dentition of the platyrrhines; hence we may regard this stem-group as a special stage (the twenty-sixth) in our ancestry, and deduce from it (as the twenty-seventh stage) the earliest catarrhines. we have now reduced the circle of our nearest relatives to the small and comparatively scanty group that is represented by the sub-order of the catarrhines; and we are in a position to answer the question of man's place in this sub-order, and say whether we can deduce anything further from this position as to our immediate ancestors. in answering this question the comprehensive and able studies that huxley gives of the comparative anatomy of man and the various catarrhines in his man's place in nature are of great assistance to us. it is quite clear from these that the differences between man and the highest catarrhines (gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang) are in every respect slighter than the corresponding differences between the highest and the lowest catarrhines (white-nosed monkey, macaco, baboon, etc.). in fact, within the small group of the tail-less anthropoid apes the differences between the various genera are not less than the differences between them and man. this is seen by a glance at the skeletons that huxley has put together (figures . to . ). whether we take the skull or the vertebral column or the ribs or the fore or hind limbs, or whether we extend the comparison to the muscles, blood-vessels, brain, placenta, etc., we always reach the same result on impartial examination--that man is not more different from the other catarrhines than the extreme forms of them (for instance, the gorilla and baboon) differ from each other. we may now, therefore, complete the huxleian law we have already quoted with the following thesis: "whatever system of organs we take, a comparison of their modifications in the series of catarrhines always leads to the same conclusion; the anatomic differences that separate man from the most advanced catarrhines (orang, gorilla, chimpanzee) are not as great as those that separate the latter from the lowest catarrhines (white-nosed monkey, macaco, baboon)." we must, therefore, consider the descent of man from other catarrhines to be fully proved. whatever further information on the comparative anatomy and ontogeny of the living catarrhines we may obtain in the future, it cannot possibly disturb this conclusion. naturally, our catarrhine ancestors must have passed through a long series of different forms before the human type was produced. the chief advances that effected this "creation of man," or his differentiation from the nearest related catarrhines, were: the adoption of the erect posture and the consequent greater differentiation of the fore and hind limbs, the evolution of articulate speech and its organ, the larynx, and the further development of the brain and its function, the soul; sexual selection had a great influence in this, as darwin showed in his famous work. with an eye to these advances we can distinguish at least four important stages in our simian ancestry, which represent prominent points in the historical process of the making of man. we may take, after the lemurs, the earliest and lowest platyrrhines of south america, with thirty-six teeth, as the twenty-sixth stage of our genealogy; they were developed from the lemurs by a peculiar modification of the brain, teeth, nose, and fingers. from these eocene stem-apes were formed the earliest catarrhines or eastern apes, with the human dentition (thirty-two teeth), by modification of the nose, lengthening of the bony channel of the ear, and the loss of four pre-molars. these oldest stem-forms of the whole catarrhine group were still thickly coated with hair, and had long tails--baboons (cynopitheca) or tailed apes (menocerca, figure . ). they lived during the tertiary period, and are found fossilised in the miocene. of the actual tailed apes perhaps the nearest to them are the semnopitheci. if we take these semnopitheci as the twenty-seventh stage in our ancestry, we may put next to them, as the twenty-eighth, the tail-less anthropoid apes. this name is given to the most advanced and man-like of the existing catarrhines. they were developed from the other catarrhines by losing the tail and part of the hair, and by a higher development of the brain, which found expression in the enormous growth of the skull. of this remarkable family there are only a few genera to-day, and we have already dealt with them (chapter . )--the gibbon (hylobates, figure . ) and orang (satyrus, figures . and . ) in south-eastern asia and the archipelago; and the chimpanzee (anthropithecus, figures . and . ) and gorilla (gorilla, figure . ) in equatorial africa. the great interest that every thoughtful man takes in these nearest relatives of ours has found expression recently in a fairly large literature. the most distinguished of these works for impartial treatment of the question of affinity is robert hartmann's little work on the anthropoid apes. hartmann divides the primate order into two families: ( ) primarii (man and the anthropoid apes); and ( ) simianae (true apes, catarrhines and platyrrhines). professor klaatsch, of heidelberg, has advanced a different view in his interesting and richly illustrated work on the origin and development of the human race. this is a substantial supplement to my anthropogeny, in so far as it gives the chief results of modern research on the early history of man and civilisation. but when klaatsch declares the descent of man from the apes to be "irrational, narrow-minded, and false," in the belief that we are thinking of some living species of ape, we must remind him that no competent scientist has ever held so narrow a view. all of us look merely--in the sense of lamarck and darwin--to the original unity (admitted by klaatsch) of the primate stem. this common descent of all the primates (men, apes, and lemurs) from one primitive stem-form, from which the most far-reaching conclusions follow for the whole of anthropology and philosophy, is admitted by klaatsch as well as by myself and all other competent zoologists who accept the theory of evolution in general. he says explicitly (page ): "the three anthropoid apes--gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang--seem to be branches from a common root, and this was not far from that of the gibbon and man." that is in the main the opinion that i have maintained (especially against virchow) in a number of works ever since . the hypothetical common ancestor of all the primates, which must have lived in the earliest tertiary period (more probably in the cretaceous), was called by me archiprimus, klaatsch now calls it primatoid. dubois has proposed the appropriate name of prothylobates for the common and much younger stem-form of the anthropomorpha (man and the anthropoid apes). the actual hylobates is nearer to it than the other three existing anthropoids. none of these can be said to be absolutely the most man-like. the gorilla comes next to man in the structure of the hand and foot, the chimpanzee in the chief features of the skull, the orang in brain development, and the gibbon in the formation of the chest. none of these existing anthropoid apes is among the direct ancestors of our race; they are scattered survivors of an ancient branch of the catarrhines, from which the human race developed in a particular direction. (figure . . skull of the fossil ape-man of java (pithecanthropus erectus), restored by eugen dubois.) although man is directly connected with this anthropoid family and originates from it, we may assign an important intermediate form between the prothylobates and him (the twenty-ninth stage in our ancestry), the ape-men (pithecanthropi). i gave this name in the history of creation to the "speechless primitive men" (alali), which were men in the ordinary sense as far as the general structure is concerned (especially in the differentiation of the limbs), but lacked one of the chief human characteristics, articulate speech and the higher intelligence that goes with it, and so had a less developed brain. the phylogenetic hypothesis of the organisation of this "ape-man" which i then advanced was brilliantly confirmed twenty-four years afterwards by the famous discovery of the fossil pithecanthropus erectus by eugen dubois (then military surgeon in java, afterwards professor at amsterdam). in he found at trinil, in the residency of madiun in java, in pliocene deposits, certain remains of a large and very man-like ape (roof of the skull, femur, and teeth), which he described as "an erect ape-man" and a survivor of a "stem-form of man" (figure . ). naturally, the pithecanthropus excited the liveliest interest, as the long-sought transitional form between man and the ape: we seemed to have found "the missing link." there were very interesting scientific discussions of it at the last three international congresses of zoology (leyden, , cambridge, , and berlin, ). i took an active part in the discussion at cambridge, and may refer the reader to the paper i read there on "the present position of our knowledge of the origin of man" (translated by dr. gadow with the title of the last link). an extensive and valuable literature has grown up in the last ten years on the pithecanthropus and the pithecoid theory connected with it. a number of distinguished anthropologists, anatomists, paleontologists, and phylogenists have taken part in the controversy, and made use of the important data furnished by the new science of pre-historic research. hermann klaatsch has given a good summary of them, with many fine illustrations, in the above-mentioned work. i refer the reader to it as a valuable supplement to the present work, especially as i cannot go any further here into these anthropological and pre-historic questions. i will only repeat that i think he is wrong in the attitude of hostility that he affects to take up with regard to my own views on the descent of man from the apes. the most powerful opponent of the pithecoid theory--and the theory of evolution in general--during the last thirty years (until his death in september, ) was the famous berlin anatomist, rudolf virchow. in the speeches which he delivered every year at various congresses and meetings on this question, he was never tired of attacking the hated "ape theory." his constant categorical position was: "it is quite certain that man does not descend from the ape or any other animal." this has been repeated incessantly by opponents of the theory, especially theologians and philosophers. in the inaugural speech that he delivered in at the anthropological congress at vienna, he said that "man might just as well have descended from a sheep or an elephant as from an ape." absurd expressions like this only show that the famous pathological anatomist, who did so much for medicine in the establishment of cellular pathology, had not the requisite attainments in comparative anatomy and ontogeny, systematic zoology and paleontology, for sound judgment in the province of anthropology. the strassburg anatomist, gustav schwalbe, deserved great praise for having the moral courage to oppose this dogmatic and ungrounded teaching of virchow, and showing its untenability. the recent admirable works of schwalbe on the pithecanthropus, the earliest races of men, and the neanderthal skull ( to ) will supply any candid and judicious reader with the empirical material with which he can convince himself of the baselessness of the erroneous dogmas of virchow and his clerical friends (j. ranke, j. bumuller, etc.). as the pithecanthropus walked erect, and his brain (judging from the capacity of his skull, figure . ) was midway between the lowest men and the anthropoid apes, we must assume that the next great step in the advance from the pithecanthropus to man was the further development of human speech and reason. comparative philology has recently shown that human speech is polyphyletic in origin; that we must distinguish several (probably many) different primitive tongues that were developed independently. the evolution of language also teaches us (both from its ontogeny in the child and its phylogeny in the race) that human speech proper was only gradually developed after the rest of the body had attained its characteristic form. it is probable that language was not evolved until after the dispersal of the various species and races of men, and this probably took place at the commencement of the quaternary or diluvial period. the speechless ape-men or alali certainly existed towards the end of the tertiary period, during the pliocene, possibly even the miocene, period. the third, and last, stage of our animal ancestry is the true or speaking man (homo), who was gradually evolved from the preceding stage by the advance of animal language into articulate human speech. as to the time and place of this real "creation of man" we can only express tentative opinions. it was probably during the diluvial period in the hotter zone of the old world, either on the mainland in tropical africa or asia or on an earlier continent (lemuria--now sunk below the waves of the indian ocean), which stretched from east africa (madagascar, abyssinia) to east asia (sunda islands, further india). i have given fully in my history of creation, (chapter ) the weighty reasons for claiming this descent of man from the anthropoid eastern apes, and shown how we may conceive the spread of the various races from this "paradise" over the whole earth. i have also dealt fully with the relations of the various races and species of men to each other. synopsis of the chief sections of our stem-history. first stage: the protists. man's ancestors are unicellular protozoa, originally unnucleated monera like the chromacea, structureless green particles of plasm; afterwards real nucleated cells (first plasmodomous protophyta, like the palmella; then plasmophagous protozoa, like the amoeba). second stage: the blastaeads. man's ancestors are round coenobia or colonies of protozoa; they consist of a close association of many homogeneous cells, and thus are individuals of the second order. they resemble the round cell-communities of the magospherae and volvocina, equivalent to the ontogenetic blastula: hollow globules, the wall of which consists of a single layer of ciliated cells (blastoderm). third stage: the gastraeads. man's ancestors are gastraeads, like the simplest of the actual metazoa (prophysema, olynthus, hydra, pemmatodiscus). their body consists merely of a primitive gut, the wall of which is made up of the two primary germinal layers. fourth stage: the platodes. man's ancestors have substantially the organisation of simple platodes (at first like the cryptocoelic platodaria, later like the rhabdocoelic turbellaria). the leaf-shaped bilateral-symmetrical body has only one gut-opening, and develops the first trace of a nervous centre from the ectoderm in the middle line of the back (figures . and . ). fifth stage: the vermalia. man's ancestors have substantially the organisation of unarticulated vermalia, at first gastrotricha (ichthydina), afterwards frontonia (nemertina, enteropneusta). four secondary germinal layers develop, two middle layers arising between the limiting layers (coeloma). the dorsal ectoderm forms the vertical plate, acroganglion (figure . ). sixth stage: the prochordonia. man's ancestors have substantially the organisation of a simple unarticulated chordonium (copelata and ascidia-larvae). the unsegmented chorda develops between the dorsal medullary tube and the ventral gut-tube. the simple coelom-pouches divide by a frontal septum into two on each side; the dorsal pouch (episomite) forms a muscle-plate; the ventral pouch (hyposomite) forms a gonad. head-gut with gill-clefts. seventh stage: the acrania. man's ancestors are skull-less vertebrates, like the amphioxus. the body is a series of metamera, as several of the primitive segments are developed. the head contains in the ventral half the branchial gut, the trunk the hepatic gut. the medullary tube is still simple. no skull, jaws, or limbs. eighth stage: the cyclostoma. man's ancestors are jaw-less craniotes (like the myxinoida and petromyzonta). the number of metamera increases. the fore-end of the medullary tube expands into a vesicle and forms the brain, which soon divides into five cerebral vesicles. in the sides of it appear the three higher sense-organs: nose, eyes, and auditory vesicles. no jaws, limbs, or floating bladder. ninth stage: the ichthyoda. man's ancestors are fish-like craniotes: ( ) primitive fishes (selachii); ( ) plated fishes (ganoida); ( ) amphibian fishes (dipneusta); ( ) mailed amphibia (stegocephala). the ancestors of this series develop two pairs of limbs: a pair of fore (breast-fins) and of hind (belly-fins) legs. the gill-arches are formed between the gill-clefts: the first pair form the maxillary arches (the upper and lower jaws). the floating bladder (lung) and pancreas grow out of the gut. tenth stage: the amniotes. man's ancestors are amniotes or gill-less vertebrates: ( ) primitive amniotes (proreptilia); ( ) sauromammals; ( ) primitive mammals (monotremes); ( ) marsupials; ( ) lemurs (prosimiae); ( ) western apes (platyrrhinae); ( ) eastern apes (catarrhinae): at first tailed cynopitheca; then tail-less anthropoids; later speechless ape-men (alali); finally speaking man. the ancestors of these amniotes develop an amnion and allantois, and gradually assume the mammal, and finally the specifically human, form. chapter . . evolution of the nervous system. the previous chapters have taught us how the human body as a whole develops from the first simple rudiment, a single layer of cells. the whole human race owes its origin, like the individual man, to a simple cell. the unicellular stem-form of the race is reproduced daily in the unicellular embryonic stage of the individual. we have now to consider in detail the evolution of the various parts that make up the human frame. i must, naturally, confine myself to the most general and principal outlines; to make a special study of the evolution of each organ and tissue is both beyond the scope of this work, and probably beyond the anatomic capacity of most of my readers to appreciate. in tracing the evolution of the various organs we shall follow the method that has hitherto guided us, except that we shall now have to consider the ontogeny and phylogeny of the organs together. we have seen, in studying the evolution of the body as a whole, that phylogeny casts a light over the darker paths of ontogeny, and that we should be almost unable to find our way in it without the aid of the former. we shall have the same experience in the study of the organs in detail, and i shall be compelled to give simultaneously their ontogenetic and phylogenetic origin. the more we go into the details of organic development, and the more closely we follow the rise of the various parts, the more we see the inseparable connection of embryology and stem-history. the ontogeny of the organs can only be understood in the light of their phylogeny, just as we found of the embryology of the whole body. each embryonic form is determined by a corresponding stem-form. this is true of details as well as of the whole. we will consider first the animal and then the vegetal systems of organs of the body. the first group consists of the psychic and the motor apparatus. to the former belong the skin, the nervous system, and the sense-organs. the motor apparatus is composed of the passive and the active organs of movement (the skeleton and the muscles). the second or vegetal group consists of the nutritive and the reproductive apparatus. to the nutritive apparatus belong the alimentary canal with all its appendages, the vascular system, and the renal (kidney) system. the reproductive apparatus comprises the different organs of sex (embryonic glands, sexual ducts, and copulative organs). as we know from previous chapters ( . to . ), the animal systems of organs (the organs of sensation and presentation) develop for the most part out of the outer primary germ-layer, or the cutaneous (skin) layer. on the other hand, the vegetal systems of organs arise for the most part from the inner primary germ-layer, the visceral layer. it is true that this antithesis of the animal and vegetal spheres of the body in man and all the higher animals is by no means rigid; several parts of the animal apparatus (for instance, the greater part of the muscles) are formed from cells that come originally from the entoderm; and a great part of the vegetative apparatus (for instance, the mouth-cavity and the gonoducts) are composed of cells that come from the ectoderm. in the more advanced animal body there is so much interlacing and displacement of the various parts that it is often very difficult to indicate the sources of them. but, broadly speaking, we may take it as a positive and important fact that in man and the higher animals the chief part of the animal organs comes from the ectoderm, and the greater part of the vegetative organs from the entoderm. it was for this reason that carl ernst von baer called the one the animal and the other the vegetative layer (see chapter . ). the solid foundation of this important thesis is the gastrula, the most instructive embryonic form in the animal world, which we still find in the same shape in the most diverse classes of animals. this form points demonstrably to a common stem-form of all the metazoa, the gastraea; in this long-extinct stem-form the whole body consisted throughout life of the two primary germinal layers, as is now the case temporarily in the gastrula; in the gastraea the simple cutaneous (skin) layer actually represented all the animal organs and functions, and the simple visceral (gut) layer all the vegetal organs and functions. this is the case with the modern gastraeads (figure . ); and it is also the case potentially with the gastrula. we shall easily see that the gastraea theory is thus able to throw a good deal of light, both morphologically and physiologically, on some of the chief features of embryonic development, if we take up first the consideration of the chief element in the animal sphere, the psychic apparatus or sensorium and its evolution. this apparatus consists of two very different parts, which seem at first to have very little connection with each other--the outer skin, with all its hairs, nails, sweat-glands, etc., and the nervous system. the latter comprises the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord), the peripheral, cerebral, and spinal nerves, and the sense-organs. in the fully-formed vertebrate body these two chief elements of the sensorium lie far apart, the skin being external to, and the central nervous system in the very centre of, the body. the one is only connected with the other by a section of the peripheral nervous system and the sense-organs. nevertheless, as we know from human embryology, the medullary tube is formed from the cutaneous layer. the organs that discharge the most advanced functions of the animal body--the organs of the soul, or of psychic life--develop from the external skin. this is a perfectly natural and necessary process. if we reflect on the historical evolution of the psychic and sensory functions, we are forced to conclude that the cells which accomplish them must originally have been located on the outer surface of the body. only elementary organs in this superficial position could directly receive the influences of the environment. afterwards, under the influence of natural selection, the cellular group in the skin which was specifically "sensitive" withdrew into the inner and more protected part of the body, and formed there the foundation of a central nervous organ. as a result of increased differentiation, the skin and the central nervous system became further and further separated, and in the end the two were only permanently connected by the afferent peripheral sensory nerves. (figure . . the human skin in vertical section (from ecker), highly magnified, a horny layer of the epidermis, b mucous layer of the epidermis, c papillae of the corium, d blood-vessels of same, ef ducts of the sweat-glands (g), h fat-glands in the corium, i nerve, passing into a tactile corpuscle above.) the observations of the comparative anatomist are in complete accord with this view. he tells us that large numbers of the lower animals have no nervous system, though they exercise the functions of sensation and will like the higher animals. in the unicellular protozoa, which do not form germinal layers, there is, of course, neither nervous system nor skin. but in the second division of the animal kingdom also, the metazoa, there is at first no nervous system. its functions are represented by the simple cell-layer of the ectoderm, which the lower metazoa have inherited from the gastraea (figure . e). we find this in the lowest zoophytes--the gastraeads, physemaria, and sponges (figures . to . ). the lowest cnidaria (the hydroid polyps) also are little superior to the gastraeads in structure. their vegetative functions are accomplished by the simple visceral layer, and their animal functions by the simple cutaneous layer. in these cases the simple cell-layer of the ectoderm is at once skin, locomotive apparatus, and nervous system. (figure . . epidermic cells of a human embryo of two months. (from kolliker.)) when we come to the higher metazoa, in which the sensory functions and their organs are more advanced, we find a division of labour among the ectodermic cells. groups of sensitive nerve cells separate from the ordinary epidermic cells; they retire into the more protected tissue of the mesodermic under-skin, and form special neural ganglia there. even in the platodes, especially the turbellaria, we find an independent nervous system, which has separated from the outer skin. this is the "upper pharyngeal ganglion," or acroganglion, situated above the gullet (figure . g). from this rudimentary structure has been developed the elaborate central nervous system of the higher animals. in some of the higher worms, such as the earth-worm, the first rudiment of the central nervous system (figure . n) is a local thickening of the skin-sense layer (hs), which afterwards separates altogether from the horny plate. in the earliest platodes (cryptocoela) and vermalia (gastrotricha) the acroganglion remains in the epidermis. but the medullary tube of the vertebrates originates in the same way. our embryology has taught us that this first structure of the central nervous system also develops originally from the outer germinal layer. let us now examine more closely the evolution of the human skin, with its various appendages, the hairs and glands. this external covering has, physiologically, a double and important part to play. it is, in the first place, the common integument that covers the whole surface of the body, and forms a protective envelope for the other organs. as such it also effects a certain exchange of matter between the body and the surrounding atmosphere (exhalation, perspiration). in the second place, it is the earliest and original sense organ, the common organ of feeling that experiences the sensation of the temperature of the environment and the pressure or resistance of bodies that come into contact. the human skin (like that of all the higher animals) is composed of two layers, the outer and the inner or underlying skin. the outer skin or epidermis, consists of simple ectodermic cells, and contains no blood-vessels (figure . a, b). it develops from the outer germinal layer, or skin-sense layer. the underlying skin (corium or hypodermis) consists chiefly of connective tissue, contains numerous blood-vessels and nerves, and has a totally different origin. it comes from the outermost parietal stratum of the middle germinal layer, or the skin-fibre layer. the corium is much thicker than the epidermis. in its deeper strata (the subcutis) there are clusters of fat-cells (figure . h). its uppermost stratum (the cutis proper, or the papillary stratum) forms, over almost the whole surface of the body, a number of conical microscopic papillae (something like warts), which push into the overlying epidermis (c). these tactile or sensory particles contain the finest sensory organs of the skin, the touch corpuscles. others contain merely end-loops of the blood-vessels that nourish the skin (c, d). the various parts of the corium arise by division of labour from the originally homogeneous cells of the cutis-plate, the outermost lamina of the mesodermic skin-fibre layer (figure . hpr, and figures . and . cp). in the same way, all the parts and appendages of the epidermis develop by differentiation from the homogeneous cells of this horny plate (figure . ). at an early stage the simple cellular layer of this horny plate divides into two. the inner and softer stratum (figure . b) is known as the mucous stratum, the outer and harder (a) as the horny (corneous) stratum. this horny layer is being constantly used up and rubbed away at the surface; new layers of cells grow up in their place out of the underlying mucous stratum. at first the epidermis is a simple covering of the surface of the body. afterwards various appendages develop from it, some internally, others externally. the internal appendages are the cutaneous glands--sweat, fat, etc. the external appendages are the hairs and nails. the cutaneous glands are originally merely solid cone-shaped growths of the epidermis, which sink into the underlying corium (figure . ). afterwards a canal ( , ) is formed inside them, either by the softening and dissolution of the central cells or by the secretion of fluid internally. some of the glands, such as the sudoriferous, do not ramify (figure . efg). these glands, which secrete the perspiration, are very long, and have a spiral coil at the end, but they never ramify; so also the wax-glands of the ears. most of the other cutaneous glands give out buds and ramify; thus, for instance, the lachrymal glands of the upper eye-lid that secrete tears (figure . ), and the sebaceous glands which secrete the fat in the skin and generally open into the hair-follicles. sudoriferous and sebaceous glands are found only in mammals. but we find lachrymal glands in all the three classes of amniotes--reptiles, birds, and mammals. they are wanting in the lower aquatic vertebrates. (figure . . rudimentary lachrymal glands from a human embryo of four months. (from kolliker.) earliest structure, in the shape of a simple solid cone, and more advanced structures, ramifying and hollowing out. a solid buds, e cellular coat of the hollow buds, f structure of the fibrous envelope, which afterwards forms the corium about the glands.) the mammary glands (figures . and . ) are very remarkable; they are found in all mammals, and in these alone. they secrete the milk for the feeding of the new-born mammal. in spite of their unusual size these structures are nothing more than large sebaceous glands in the skin. the milk is formed by the liquefaction of the fatty milk-cells inside the branching mammary-gland tubes (figure . c), in the same way as the skin-grease or hair-fat, by the solution of fatty cells inside the sebaceous glands. the outlets of the mammary glands enlarge and form sac-like mammary ducts (b); these narrow again (a), and open in the teats or nipples of the breast by sixteen to twenty-four fine apertures. the first structure of this large and elaborate gland is a very simple cone in the epidermis, which penetrates into the corium and ramifies. in the new-born infant it consists of twelve to eighteen radiating lobes (figure . ). these gradually ramify, their ducts become hollow and larger, and rich masses of fat accumulate between the lobes. thus is formed the prominent female breast (mamma), on the top of which rises the teat or nipple (mammilla). the latter is only developed later on, when the mammary gland is fully-formed; and this ontogenetic phenomenon is extremely interesting, because the earlier mammals (the stem-forms of the whole class) have no teats. in them the milk comes out through a flat portion of the ventral skin that is pierced like a sieve, as we still find in the lowest living mammals, the oviparous monotremes of australia. the young animal licks the milk from the mother instead of sucking it. in many of the lower mammals we find a number of milk-glands at different parts of the ventral surface. in the human female there is usually only one pair of glands, at the breast; and it is the same with the apes, bats, elephants, and several other mammals. sometimes, however, we find two successive pairs of glands (or even more) in the human female. some women have four or five pairs of breasts, like pigs and hedgehogs (figure . ). this polymastism points back to an older stem-form. we often find these accessory breasts in the male also (figure . d). sometimes, moreover, the normal mammary glands are fully developed and can suckle in the male; but as a rule they are merely rudimentary organs without functions in the male. we have already (chapter . ) dealt with this remarkable and interesting instance of atavism. (figure . . the female breast (mamma) in vertical section. c racemose glandular lobes, b enlarged milk-ducts, a narrower outlets, which open into the nipple. (from h. meyer.)) while the cutaneous glands are inner growths of the epidermis, the appendages which we call hairs and nails are external local growths in it. the nails (ungues) which form important protective structures on the back of the most sensitive parts of our limbs, the tips of the fingers and toes, are horny growths of the epidermis, which we share with the apes. the lower mammals usually have claws instead of them; the ungulates, hoofs. the stem-form of the mammals certainly had claws; we find them in a rudimentary form even in the salamander. the horny claws are highly developed in most of the reptiles (figure . ), and the mammals have inherited them from the earliest representatives of this class, the stem-reptiles (tocosauria). like the hoofs (ungulae) of the ungulates, the nails of apes and men have been evolved from the claws of the older mammals. in the human embryo the first rudiment of the nails is found (between the horny and the mucous stratum of the epidermis) in the fourth month. but their edges do not penetrate through until the end of the sixth month. the most interesting and important appendages of the epidermis are the hairs; on account of their peculiar composition and origin we must regard them as highly characteristic of the whole mammalian class. it is true that we also find hairs in many of the lower animals, such as insects and worms. but these hairs, like the hairs of plants, are thread-like appendages of the surface, and differ entirely from the hairs of the mammals in the details of their structure and development. the embryology of the hairs is known in all its details, but there are two different views as to their phylogeny. on the older view the hairs of the mammals are equivalent or homologous to the feathers of the bird or the horny scales of the reptile. as we deduce all three classes of amniotes from a common stem-group, we must assume that these permian stem-reptiles had a complete scaly coat, inherited from their carboniferous ancestors, the mailed amphibia (stegocephala); the bony scales of their corium were covered with horny scales. in passing from aquatic to terrestrial life the horny scales were further developed, and the bony scales degenerated in most of the reptiles. as regards the bird's feathers, it is certain that they are modifications of the horny scales of their reptilian ancestors. but it is otherwise with the hairs of the mammals. in their case the hypothesis has lately been advanced on the strength of very extensive research, especially by friedrich maurer, that they have been evolved from the cutaneous sense-organs of amphibian ancestors by modification of functions; the epidermic structure is very similar in both in its embryonic rudiments. this modern view, which had the support of the greatest expert on the vertebrates, carl gegenbaur, can be harmonised with the older theory to an extent, in the sense that both formations, scales and hairs, were very closely connected originally. probably the conical budding of the skin-sense layer grew up under the protection of the horny scale, and became an organ of touch subsequently by the cornification of the hairs; many hairs are still sensory organs (tactile hairs on the muzzle and cheeks of many mammals: pubic hairs). this middle position of the genetic connection of scales and hairs was advanced in my systematic phylogeny of the vertebrates (page ). it is confirmed by the similar arrangement of the two cutaneous formations. as maurer pointed out, the hairs, as well as the cutaneous sense-organs and the scales, are at first arranged in regular longitudinal series, and they afterwards break into alternate groups. in the embryo of a bear two inches long, which i owe to the kindness of herr von schmertzing (of arva varallia, hungary), the back is covered with sixteen to twenty alternating longitudinal rows of scaly protuberances (figure . ). they are at the same time arranged in regular transverse rows, which converge at an acute angle from both sides towards the middle of the back. the tip of the scale-like wart is turned inwards. between these larger hard scales (or groups of hairs) we find numbers of rudimentary smaller hairs. the human embryo is, as a rule, entirely clothed with a thick coat of fine wool during the last three or four weeks of gestation. this embryonic woollen coat (lanugo) generally disappears in part during the last weeks of foetal life but in any case, as a rule, it is lost immediately after birth, and is replaced by the thinner coat of the permanent hair. these permanent hairs grow out of hair-follicles, which are formed from the root-sheaths of the disappearing wool-fibres. the embryonic wool-coat usually, in the case of the human embryo, covers the whole body, with the exception of the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. these parts are always bare, as in the case of apes and of most other mammals. sometimes the wool-coat of the embryo has a striking effect, by its colour, on the later permanent hair-coat. hence it happens occasionally, for instance, among our indo-germanic races, that children of blond parents seem--to the dismay of the latter--to be covered at birth with a dark brown or even a black woolly coat. not until this has disappeared do we see the permanent blond hair which the child has inherited. sometimes the darker coat remains for weeks, and even months, after birth. this remarkable woolly coat of the human embryo is a legacy from the apes, our ancient long-haired ancestors. (figure . . mammary gland of a new-born infant, a original central gland, b small and c large buds of same. (from langer.)) it is not less noteworthy that many of the higher apes approach man in the thinness of the hair on various parts of the body. with most of the apes, especially the higher catarrhines (or narrow-nosed apes), the face is mostly, or entirely, bare, or at least it has hair no longer or thicker than that of man. in their case, too, the back of the head is usually provided with a thicker growth of hair; this is lacking, however, in the case of the bald-headed chimpanzee (anthropithecus calvus). the males of many species of apes have a considerable beard on the cheeks and chin; this sign of the masculine sex has been acquired by sexual selection. many species of apes have a very thin covering of hair on the breast and the upper side of the limbs--much thinner than on the back or the under side of the limbs. on the other hand, we are often astonished to find tufts of hair on the shoulders, back, and extremities of members of our indo-germanic and of the semitic races. exceptional hair on the face, as on the whole body, is hereditary in certain families of hairy men. the quantity and the quality of the hair on head and chin are also conspicuously transmitted in families. these extraordinary variations in the total and partial hairy coat of the body, which are so noticeable, not only in comparing different races of men, but also in comparing different families of the same race, can only be explained on the assumption that in man the hairy coat is, on the whole, a rudimentary organ, a useless inheritance from the more thickly-coated apes. in this man resembles the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, whale, and other mammals of various orders, which have also, almost entirely or for the most part, lost their hairy coats by adaptation. (figure . . embryo of a bear (ursus arctos), twice natural size. a seen from ventral side, b from the left.) the particular process of adaptation by which man lost the growth of hair on most parts of his body, and retained or augmented it at some points, was most probably sexual selection. as darwin luminously showed in his descent of man, sexual selection has been very active in this respect. as the male anthropoid apes chose the females with the least hair, and the females favoured the males with the finest growths on chin and head, the general coating of the body gradually degenerated, and the hair of the beard and head was more strongly developed. the growth of hair at other parts of the body (arm-pit, pubic region) was also probably due to sexual selection. moreover, changes of climate, or habits, and other adaptations unknown to us, may have assisted the disappearance of the hairy coat. the fact that our coat of hair is inherited directly from the anthropoid apes is proved in an interesting way, according to darwin, by the direction of the rudimentary hairs on our arms, which cannot be explained in any other way. both on the upper and the lower part of the arm they point towards the elbow. here they meet at an obtuse angle. this curious arrangement is found only in the anthropoid apes--gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, and several species of gibbons--besides man (figures . and . ). in other species of gibbon the hairs are pointed towards the hand both in the upper and lower arm, as in the rest of the mammals. we can easily explain this remarkable peculiarity of the anthropoids and man on the theory that our common ancestors were accustomed (as the anthropoid apes are to-day) to place their hands over their heads, or across a branch above their heads, during rain. in this position, the fact that the hairs point downwards helps the rain to run off. thus the direction of the hair on the lower part of our arm reminds us to-day of that useful custom of our anthropoid ancestors. the nervous system in man and all the other vertebrates is, when fully formed, an extremely complex apparatus, that we may compare, in anatomic structure and physiological function, with an extensive telegraphic system. the chief station of the system is the central marrow or central nervous system, the innumerable ganglionic cells or neurona (figure . ) of which are connected by branching processes with each other and with numbers of very fine conducting wires. the latter are the peripheral and ubiquitous nerve-fibres; with their terminal apparatus, the sense-organs, etc., they constitute the conducting marrow or peripheral nervous system. some of them--the sensory nerve-fibres--conduct the impressions from the skin and other sense-organs to the central marrow; others--the motor nerve-fibres--convey the commands of the will to the muscles. the central nervous system or central marrow (medulla centralis) is the real organ of psychic action in the narrower sense. however we conceive the intimate connection of this organ and its functions, it is certain that its characteristic actions, which we call sensation, will, and thought, are inseparably dependent on the normal development of the material organ in man and all the higher animals. we must, therefore, pay particular attention to the evolution of the latter. as it can give us most important information regarding the nature of the "soul," it should be full of interest. if the central marrow develops in just the same way in the human embryo as in the embryo of the other mammals, the evolution of the human psychic organ from the central organ of the other mammals, and through them from the lower vertebrates, must be beyond question. no one can doubt the momentous bearing of these embryonic phenomena. (figure . . human embryo, three months old, natural size, from the dorsal side: brain and spinal cord exposed. (from kolliker.) h cerebral hemispheres (fore brain), m corpora quadrigemina (middle brain), c cerebellum (hind brain): under the latter is the triangular medulla oblongata (after brain). figure . . central marrow of a human embryo, four months old, natural size, from the back. (from kolliker.) h large hemispheres, v quadrigemina, c cerebellum, mo medulla oblongata: underneath it the spinal cord.) in order to understand them fully we must first say a word or two of the general form and the anatomic composition of the mature human central marrow. like the central nervous system of all the other craniotes, it consists of two parts, the head-marrow or brain (medulla capitis or encephalon) and the spinal-marrow (medulla spinalis or notomyelon). the one is enclosed in the bony skull, the other in the bony vertebral column. twelve pairs of cerebral nerves proceed from the brain, and thirty-one pairs of spinal nerves from the spinal cord, to the rest of the body (figure . ). on general anatomic investigation the spinal marrow is found to be a cylindrical cord, with a spindle-shaped bulb both in the region of the neck above (at the last cervical vertebra) and the region of the loins (at the first lumbar vertebra) below (figure . ). at the cervical bulb the strong nerves of the upper limbs, and at the lumbar bulb those of the lower limbs, proceed from the spinal cord. above, the latter passes into the brain through the medulla oblongata (figure . mo). the spinal cord seems to be a thick mass of nervous matter, but it has a narrow canal at its axis, which passes into the further cerebral ventricles above, and is filled, like these, with a clear fluid. the brain is a large nerve-mass, occupying the greater part of the skull, of most elaborate structure. on general examination it divides into two parts, the cerebrum and cerebellum. the cerebrum lies in front and above, and has the familiar characteristic convolutions and furrows on its surface (figures . and . ). on the upper side it is divided by a deep longitudinal fissure into two halves, the cerebral hemispheres; these are connected by the corpus callosum. the large cerebrum is separated from the small cerebellum by a deep transverse furrow. the latter lies behind and below, and has also numbers of furrows, but much finer and more regular, with convolutions between, at its surface. the cerebellum also is divided by a longitudinal fissure into two halves, the "small hemispheres"; these are connected by a worm-shaped piece, the vermis cerebelli, above, and by the broad pons varolii below (figure . vi). (figure . . the human brain, seen from below. (from h. meyer.) above (in front) is the cerebrum with its extensive branching furrows; below (behind) the cerebellum with its narrow parallel furrows. the roman numbers i to xii indicate the roots of the twelve pairs of cerebral nerves in a series towards the rear.) but comparative anatomy and ontogeny teach us that in man and all the other craniotes the brain is at first composed, not of these two, but of three, and afterwards five, consecutive parts. these are found in just the same form--as five consecutive vesicles--in the embryo of all the craniotes, from the cyclostoma and fishes to man. but, however much they agree in their rudimentary condition, they differ considerably afterwards. in man and the higher mammals the first of these ventricles, the cerebrum, grows so much that in its mature condition it is by far the largest and heaviest part of the brain. to it belong not only the large hemispheres, but also the corpus callosum that unites them, the olfactory lobes, from which the olfactory nerves start, and most of the structures that are found at the roof and bottom of the large lateral ventricles inside the two hemispheres, such as the corpora striata. on the other hand, the optic thalami, which lie between the latter, belong to the second division, which develops from the "intermediate brain "; to the same section belong the single third cerebral ventricle and the structures that are known as the corpora geniculata, the infundibulum, and the pineal gland. behind these parts we find, between the cerebrum and cerebellum, a small ganglion composed of two prominences, which is called the corpus quadrigeminum on account of a superficial transverse fissure cutting across (figures . m and . v). although this quadrigeminum is very insignificant in man and the higher mammals, it forms a special third section, greatly developed in the lower vertebrates, the "middle brain." the fourth section is the "hind-brain" or little brain (cerebellum) in the narrower sense, with the single median part, the vermis, and the pair of lateral parts, the "small hemispheres" (figure . c). finally, we have the fifth and last section, the medulla oblongata (figure . mo), which contains the single fourth cerebral cavity and the contiguous parts (pyramids, olivary bodies, corpora restiformia). the medulla oblongata passes straight into the medulla spinalis (spinal cord). the narrow central canal of the spinal cord continues above into the quadrangular fourth cerebral cavity of the medulla oblongata, the floor of which is the quadrangular depression. from here a narrow duct, called "the aqueduct of sylvius," passes through the corpus quadrigeminum to the third cerebral ventricle, which lies between the two optic thalami; and this in turn is connected with the pairs of lateral ventricles which lie to the right and left in the large hemispheres. thus all the cavities of the central marrow are directly interconnected. all these parts of the brain have an infinitely complex structure in detail, but we cannot go into this. although it is much more elaborate in man and the higher vertebrates than in the lower classes, it develops in them all from the same rudimentary structure, the five simple cerebral vesicles of the embryonic brain. but before we consider the development of the complicated structure of the brain from this simple series of vesicles, let us glance for a moment at the lower animals, which have no brain. even in the skull-less vertebrate, the amphioxus, we find no independent brain, as we have seen. the whole central marrow is merely a simple cylindrical cord which runs the length of the body, and ends equally simply at both extremities--a plain medullary tube. all that we can discover is a small vesicular bulb at the foremost part of the tube, a degenerate rudiment of a primitive brain. we meet the same simple medullary tube in the first structure of the ascidia larva, in the same characteristic position, above the chorda. on closer examination we find here also a small vesicular swelling at the fore end of the tube, the first trace of a differentiation of it into brain and spinal cord. it is probable that this differentiation was more advanced in the extinct provertebrates, and the brain-bulb more pronounced (figures . to . ). the brain is phylogenetically older than the spinal cord, as the trunk was not developed until after the head. if we consider the undeniable affinity of the ascidiae to the vermalia, and remember that we can trace all the chordonia to lower vermalia, it seems probable that the simple central marrow of the former is equivalent to the simple nervous ganglion, which lies above the gullet in the lower worms, and has long been known as the "upper pharyngeal ganglion" (ganglion pharyngeum superius); it would be better to call it the primitive or vertical brain (acroganglion). probably this upper pharyngeal ganglion of the lower worms is the structure from which the complex central marrow of the higher animals has been evolved. the medullary tube of the chordonia has been formed by the lengthening of the vertical brain on the dorsal side. in all the other animals the central nervous system has been developed in a totally different way from the upper pharyngeal ganglion; in the articulates, especially, a pharyngeal ring, with ventral marrow, has been added. the molluscs also have a pharyngeal ring, but it is not found in the vertebrates. in these the central marrow has been prolonged down the dorsal side; in the articulates down the ventral side. this fact proves of itself that there is no direct relationship between the vertebrates and the articulates. the unfortunate attempts to derive the dorsal marrow of the former from the ventral marrow of the latter have totally failed (cf. chapter . ). (figure . . the human brain, seen from the left. (from h. meyer.) the furrows of the cerebrum are indicated by thick, and those of the cerebellum by finer lines. under the latter we can see the medulla oblongata. f to f frontal convolutions, c central convolutions, s fissure of sylvius, t temporal furrow, pa parietal lobes, an angular gyrus, po parieto-occipital fissure.) when we examine the embryology of the human nervous system, we must start from the important fact, which we have already seen, that the first structure of it in man and all the higher vertebrates is the simple medullary tube, and that this separates from the outer germinal layer in the middle line of the sole-shaped embryonic shield. as the reader will remember, the straight medullary furrow first appears in the middle of the sandal-shaped embryonic shield. at each side of it the parallel borders curve over in the form of dorsal or medullary swellings. these bend together with their free borders, and thus form the closed medullary tube (figures . to . ). at first this tube lies directly underneath the horny plate; but it afterwards travels inwards, the upper edges of the provertebral plates growing together between the horny plate and the tube, joining above the latter, and forming a completely closed canal. as gegenbaur very properly observes, "this gradual imbedding in the inner part of the body is a process acquired with the progressive differentiation and the higher potentiality that this secures; by this process the organ of greater value to the organism is buried within the frame." (cf. figures . to . ). (figures . to . . central marrow of the human embryo from the seventh week, / inch long. (from kolliker.) figure . . the brain from above, v fore brain, z intermediate brain, m middle brain, h hind brain, n after brain. figure . . the brain with the uppermost part of the cord, from the left. figure . . back view of the whole embryo: brain and spinal cord exposed.) in the cyclostoma--a stage above the acrania--the fore end of the cylindrical medullary tube begins early to expand into a pear-shaped vesicle; this is the first outline of an independent brain. in this way the central marrow of the vertebrates divides clearly into its two chief sections, brain and spinal cord. the simple vesicular form of the brain, which persists for some time in the cyclostoma, is found also at first in all the higher vertebrates (figure . hb). but in these it soon passes away, the one vesicle being divided into several successive parts by transverse constrictions. there are first two of these constrictions, dividing the brain into three consecutive vesicles (fore brain, middle brain, and hind brain, figure . v, m, h). then the first and third are sub-divided by fresh constrictions, and thus we get five successive sections (figure . ). in all the craniotes, from the cyclostoma up to man, the same parts develop from these five original cerebral vesicles, though in very different ways. the first vesicle, the fore brain (figure . v), forms by far the largest part of the cerebrum--namely, the large hemispheres, the olfactory lobes, the corpora striata, the callosum, and the fornix. from the second vesicle, the intermediate brain (z), originate especially the optic thalami, the other parts that surround the third cerebral ventricle, and the infundibulum and pineal gland. the third vesicle, the middle brain (m), produces the corpora quadrigemina and the aqueduct of sylvius. from the fourth vesicle, the hind brain (h), develops the greater part of the cerebellum--namely, the vermis and the two small hemispheres. finally, the fifth vesicle, the after brain (n), forms the medulla oblongata, with the quadrangular pit (the floor of the fourth ventricle), the pyramids, olivary bodies, etc. we must certainly regard it as a comparative-anatomical and ontogenetic fact of the greatest significance that in all the craniotes, from the lowest cyclostomes and fishes up to the apes and man, the brain develops in just the same way in the embryo. the first rudiment of it is always a simple vesicular enlargement of the fore end of the medullary tube. in every case, first three, then five, vesicles develop from this bulb, and the permanent brain with all its complex anatomic structures, of so great a variety in the various classes of vertebrates, is formed from the five primitive vesicles. when we compare the mature brain of a fish, an amphibian, a reptile, a bird, and a mammal, it seems incredible that we can trace the various parts of these organs, that differ so much internally and externally, to common types. yet all these different craniote brains have started with the same rudimentary structure. to convince ourselves of this we have only to compare the corresponding stages of development of the embryos of these different animals. (figure . . head of a chick embryo (hatched fifty-eight hours), from the back, magnified forty times. (from mihalkovics.) vw anterior wall of the fore brain. vh its ventricle. au optic vesicles, mh middle brain, kh hind brain, nh after brain, hz heart (seen from below), vw vitelline veins, us primitive segment, rm spinal cord.) this comparison is extremely instructive. if we extend it through the whole series of the craniotes, we soon discover this interesting fact: in the cyclostomes (the myxinoida and petromyzonta), which we have recognised as the lowest and earliest craniotes, the whole brain remains throughout life at a very low stage, which is very brief and passing in the embryos of the higher craniotes; they retain the five original sections of the brain unchanged. in the fishes we find an essential and considerable modification of the five vesicles; it is clearly the brain of the selachii in the first place, and subsequently the brain of the ganoids, from which the brain of the rest of the fishes on the one hand and of the dipneusts and amphibia, and through these of the higher vertebrates, on the other hand, must be derived. in the fishes and amphibia (figure . ) there is a preponderant development of the middle brain, and also the after brain, the first, second, and fourth sections remaining very primitive. it is just the reverse in the higher vertebrates, in which the first and third sections, the cerebrum and cerebellum, are exceptionally developed; while the middle brain and after brain remain small. the corpora quadrigemina are mostly covered by the cerebrum, and the oblongata by the cerebellum. but we find a number of stages of development within the higher vertebrates themselves. from the amphibia upwards the brain (and with it the psychic life) develops in two different directions; one of these is followed by the reptiles and birds, and the other by the mammals. the development of the first section, the fore brain, is particularly characteristic of the mammals. it is only in them that the cerebrum becomes so large as to cover all the other parts of the brain (figures . and . to . ). there are also notable variations in the relative position of the cerebral vesicles. in the lower craniotes they lie originally almost in the same plane. when we examine the brain laterally, we can cut through all five vesicles with a straight line. but in the amniotes there is a considerable curve in the brain along with the bending of the head and neck; the whole of the upper dorsal surface of the brain develops much more than the under ventral surface. this causes a curve, so that the parts come to lie as follows: the fore brain is right in front and below, the intermediate brain a little higher, and the middle brain highest of all; the hind brain lies a little lower, and the after brain lower still. we find this only in the amniotes--the reptiles, birds, and mammals. (figure . . brain of three craniote embryos in vertical section. a of a shark (heptarchus), b of a serpent (coluber), c of a goat (capra). a fore brain, b intermediate brain, c middle brain, d hind brain, e after brain, s primitive cleft. (from gegenbaur.) figure . . brain of a shark (scyllium), back view. g fore-brain, h olfactory lobes, which send the large olfactory nerves to the nasal capsule (o), d intermediate brain, b middle brain; behind this the insignificant structure of the hind brain, a after brain. (from gegenbaur.) figure . . brain and spinal cord of the frog. a from the dorsal, b from the ventral side. a olfactory lobes before the (b) fore brain, i infundibulum at the base of the intermediate brain, c middle brain, d hind brain, s quadrangular pit in the after brain, m spinal cord (very short in the frog), m apostrophe roots of the spinal nerves, t terminal fibres of the spinal cord. (from gegenbaur.) figure . . brain of an ox-embryo, two inches in length. (from mihalkovics, magnified three times.) left view; the lateral wall of the left hemisphere has been removed, st corpora striata, ml monro-foramen, ag arterial plexus, ah ammon's horn, mh middle brain, kh cerebellum. dv roof of the fourth ventricle, bb pons varolii, na medulla oblongata.) thus, while the brain of the mammals agrees a good deal in general growth with that of the birds and reptiles, there are some striking differences between the two. in the sauropsids (birds and reptiles) the middle brain and the middle part of the hind brain are well developed. in the mammals these parts do not grow, and the fore-brain develops so much that it overlies the other vesicles. as it continues to grow towards the rear, it at last covers the whole of the rest of the brain, and also encloses the middle parts from the sides (figures . to . ). this process is of great importance, because the fore brain is the organ of the higher psychic life, and in it those functions of the nerve-cells are discharged which we sum up in the word "soul." the highest achievements of the animal body--the wonderful manifestations of consciousness and the complex molecular processes of thought--have their seat in the fore brain. we can remove the large hemispheres, piece by piece, from the mammal without killing it, and we then see how the higher functions of consciousness, thought, will, and sensation, are gradually destroyed, and in the end completely extinguished. if the animal is fed artificially, it may be kept alive for a long time, as the destruction of the psychic organs by no means involves the extinction of the faculties of digestion, respiration, circulation, urination--in a word, the vegetative functions. it is only conscious sensation, voluntary movement, thought, and the combination of various higher psychic functions that are affected. (figure . . brain of a human embryo, twelve weeks old. (from mihalkovics, natural size.) seen from behind and above. ms mantle-furrow, mh corpora quadrigemina (middle brain), vs anterior medullary ala, kh cerebellum, vv fourth ventricle, na medulla oblongata.) the fore brain, the organ of these functions, only attains this high level of development in the more advanced placentals, and thus we have the simple explanation of the intellectual superiority of the higher mammals. the soul of most of the lower placentals is not much above that of the reptiles, but among the higher placentals we find an uninterrupted gradation of mental power up to the apes and man. in harmony with this we find an astonishing variation in the degree of development of their fore brain, not only qualitatively, but also quantitatively. the mass and weight of the brain are much greater in modern mammals, and the differentiation of its various parts more important, than in their extinct tertiary ancestors. this can be shown paleontologically in any particular order. the brains of the living ungulates are (relatively to the size of the body) four to six times (in the highest groups even eight times) as large as those of their earlier tertiary ancestors, the well-preserved skulls of which enable us to determine the size and weight of the brain. (figure . . brain of a human embryo, twenty-four weeks old, halved in the median plane: right hemisphere seen from inside. (from mihalkovics, natural size.) rn olfactory nerve. tr funnel of the intermediate brain, vc anterior commissure, ml monro-foramen, gw fornix, ds transparent sheath, bl corpus callosum, br fissure at its border, hs occipital fissure, zh cuneus, sf occipital transverse fissure, zb pineal gland, mh corpora quadrigemina, kh cerebellum. in the lower mammals the surface of the cerebral hemispheres is quite smooth and level, as in the rabbit (figure . ). moreover, the fore brain remains so small that it does not cover the middle brain. at a stage higher the middle brain is covered, but the hind brain remains free. finally, in the apes and man, the latter also is covered by the fore brain. we can trace a similar gradual development in the fissures and convolutions that are found on the surface of the cerebrum of the higher mammals (figures . and . ). if we compare different groups of mammals in regard to these fissures and convolutions, we find that their development proceeds step by step with the advance of mental life. of late years great attention has been paid to this special branch of cerebral anatomy, and very striking individual differences have been detected within the limits of the human race. in all human beings of special gifts and high intelligence the convolutions and fissures are much more developed than in the average man; and they are more developed in the latter than in idiots and others of low mental capacity. there is a similar gradation among the mammals in the internal structure of the fore brain. in particular the corpus callosum, that unites the two cerebral hemispheres, is only developed in the placentals. other structures--for instance, in the lateral ventricles--that seem at first to be peculiar to man, are also found in the higher apes, and these alone. it was long thought that man had certain distinctive organs in his cerebrum which were not found in any other animal. but careful examination has discovered that this is not the case, but that the characteristic features of the human brain are found in a rudimentary form in the lower apes, and are more or less fully developed in the higher apes. huxley has convincingly shown, in his man's place in nature ( ), that the differences in the formation of the brain within the ape-group constitute a deeper gulf between the lower and higher apes than between the higher apes and man. the comparative anatomy and physiology of the brain of the higher and lower mammals are very instructive, and give important information in connection with the chief questions of psychology. (figure . . brain of the rabbit. a from the dorsal, b from the ventral side, lo olfactory lobes, i fore brain, h hypophysis at the base of the intermediate brain, iii middle brain, iv hind brain, v after brain, optic nerve, oculo-motor nerve, to cerebral nerves. in a the roof of the right hemisphere (i) is removed, so that we can see the corpora striata in the lateral ventricle. (from gegenbaur.)) the central marrow (brain and spinal cord) develops from the medullary tube in man just as in all the other mammals, and the same applies to the conducting marrow or "peripheral nervous system." it consists of the sensory nerves, which conduct centripetally the impressions from the skin and the sense-organs to the central marrow, and of the motor nerves, which convey centrifugally the movements of the will from the central marrow to the muscles. all these peripheral nerves grow out of the medullary tube (figure . ), and are, like it, products of the skin-sense layer. the complete agreement in the structure and development of the psychic organs which we find between man and the highest mammals, and which can only be explained by their common origin, is of profound importance in the monistic psychology. this is only seen in its full light when we compare these morphological facts with the corresponding physiological phenomena, and remember that every psychic action requires the complete and normal condition of the correlative brain structure for its full and normal exercise. the very complex molecular movements inside the neural cells, which we describe comprehensively as "the life of the soul," can no more exist in the vertebrate, and therefore in man, without their organs than the circulation without the heart and blood. and as the central marrow develops in man from the same medullary tube as that of the other vertebrates, and as man shares the characteristic structure of his cerebrum (the organ of thought) with the anthropoid apes, his psychic life also must have the same origin as theirs. if we appreciate the full weight of these morphological and physiological facts, and put a proper phylogenetic interpretation on the observations of embryology, we see that the older idea of the personal immortality of the human soul is scientifically untenable. death puts an end, in man as in any other vertebrate, to the physiological function of the cerebral neurona, the countless microscopic ganglionic cells, the collective activity of which is known as "the soul." i have shown this fully in the eleventh chapter of my riddle of the universe. chapter . . evolution of the sense-organs. the sense-organs are indubitably among the most important and interesting parts of the human body; they are the organs by means of which we obtain our knowledge of objects in the surrounding world. nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu. they are the first sources of the life of the soul. there is no other part of the body in which we discover such elaborate anatomical structures, co-operating with a definite purpose; and there is no other organ in which the wonderful and purposive structure seems so clearly to compel us to admit a creator and a preconceived plan. hence we find special efforts made by dualists to draw our attention here to the "wisdom of the creator" and the design visible in his works. as a matter of fact, you will discover, on mature reflection, that on this theory the creator is at bottom only playing the part of a clever mechanic or watch-maker; all these familiar teleological ideas of creator and creation are based, in the long run, on a similar childlike anthropomorphism. however, we must grant that at the first glance the teleological theory seems to give the simplest and most satisfactory explanation of these purposive structures. if we merely examine the structure and functions of the most advanced sense-organs, it seems impossible to explain them without postulating a creative act. yet evolution shows us quite clearly that this popular idea is totally wrong. with its assistance we discover that the purposive and remarkable sense-organs were developed, like all other organs, without any preconceived design--developed by the same mechanical process of natural selection, the same constant correlation of adaptation and heredity, by which the other purposive structures in the animal frame were slowly and gradually brought forth in the struggle for life. like most other vertebrates, man has six sensory organs, which serve for eight different classes of sensations. the skin serves for sensations of pressure and temperature. this is the oldest, lowest, and vaguest of the sense-organs; it is distributed over the surface of the body. the other sensory activities are localised. the sexual sense is bound up with the skin of the external sexual organs, the sense of taste with the mucous lining of the mouth (tongue and palate), and the sense of smell with the mucous lining of the nasal cavity. for the two most advanced and most highly differentiated sensory functions there are special and very elaborate mechanical structures--the eye for the sense of sight, and the ear for the sense of hearing and space (equilibrium). comparative anatomy and physiology teach us that there are no differentiated sense-organs in the lower animals; all their sensations are received by the surface of the skin. the undifferentiated skin-layer or ectoderm of the gastraea is the simple stratum of cells from which the differentiated sense-organs of all the metazoa (including the vertebrates) have been evolved. starting from the assumption that necessarily only the superficial parts of the body, which are in direct touch with the outer world, could be concerned in the origin of sensations, we can see at once that the sense-organs also must have arisen there. this is really the case. the chief part of all the sense-organs originates from the skin-sense layer, partly directly from the horny plate, partly from the brain, the foremost part, of the medullary tube, after it has separated from the horny plate. if we compare the embryonic development of the various sense-organs, we see that they all make their appearance in the simplest conceivable form; the wonderful contrivances that make the higher sense-organs among the most remarkable and elaborate structures in the body develop only gradually. in the phylogenetic explanation of them comparative anatomy and ontogeny achieve their greatest triumphs. but at first all the sense-organs are merely parts of the skin in which sensory nerves expand. these nerves themselves were originally of a homogeneous character. the different functions or specific energies of the differentiated sense-nerves were only gradually developed by division of labour. at the same time, their simple terminal expansions in the skin were converted into extremely complex organs. the great instructiveness of these historical facts in connection with the life of the soul is not difficult to see. the whole philosophy of the future will be transformed as soon as psychology takes cognisance of these genetic phenomena and makes them the basis of its speculations. when we examine impartially the manuals of psychology that have been published by the most distinguished speculative philosophers and are still widely distributed, we are astonished at the naivete with which the authors raise their airy metaphysical speculations, regardless of the momentous embryological facts that completely refute them. yet the science of evolution, in conjunction with the great advance of the comparative anatomy and physiology of the sense-organs, provides the one sound empirical basis of a natural psychology. (figure . . head of a shark (scyllium), from the ventral side. m mouth, o olfactory pits, r nasal groove, n nasal fold in natural position, n apostrophe nasal fold drawn up. (the dots are openings of the mucous canals.) (from gegenbaur.)) in respect of the terminal expansions of the sensory nerves, we can distribute the human sense-organs in three groups, which correspond to three stages of development. the first group comprises those organs the nerves of which spread out quite simply in the free surface of the skin itself (organs of the sense of pressure, warmth, and sex). in the second group the nerves spread out in the mucous coat of cavities which are at first depressions in or invaginations of the skin (organs of the sense of smell and taste). the third group is formed of the very elaborate organs, the nerves of which spread out in an internal vesicle, separated from the skin (organs of the sense of sight, hearing, and space). (figures . and . . head of a chick embryo, three days old: . front view, . from the right. n rudimentary nose (olfactory pits), l rudimentary eyes (optic pits), g rudimentary ear (auscultory pit), v fore brain, gl eye-cleft, o process of upper jaw, u process of lower jaw of the first gill-arch. figure . . head of a chick embryo, four days old, from below. n nasal pit, o upper-jaw process of the first gill-arch, u lower-jaw process of same, k double apostrophe second gill-arch, sp choroid fissure of eye, s gullet. figures . and . . heads of chick embryos: . from the end of the fourth, . from the beginning of the fifth week. letters as in figure . , except: in inner, an outer, nasal process, nf nasal furrow, st frontal process, m mouth. (from kolliker.) figures . to . are magnified to the same extent.) there is little to be said of the development of the lower sense-organs. we have already considered (chapter . ) the organ of touch and temperature in the skin. i need only add that in the corium of man and all the higher vertebrates countless microscopic sense-organs develop, but the precise relation of these to the sensations of pressure or resistance, of warmth and cold, has not yet been explained. organs of this kind, in or on which sensory cutaneous nerves terminate, are the "tactile corpuscles" (or the pacinian corpuscles) and end-bulbs. we find similar corpuscles in the organs of the sexual sense, the male penis and the female clitoris; they are processes of the skin, the development of which we will consider later (together with the rest of the sexual parts, chapter . ). the evolution of the organ of taste, the tongue and palate, will also be treated later, together with that of the alimentary canal to which these parts belong (chapter . ). i will only point out for the present that the mucous coat of the tongue and palate, in which the gustatory nerve ends, originates from a part of the outer skin. as we have seen, the whole of the mouth-cavity is formed, not as a part of the gut-tube proper, but as a pit-like fold in the outer skin (chapter . ). its mucous lining is therefore formed, not from the visceral, but from the cutaneous layer, and the taste-cells at the surface of the tongue and palate are not products of the gut-fibre layer, but of the skin-sense layer. this applies also to the mucous lining of the olfactory organ, the nose. however, the development of this organ is much more interesting. although the nose seems superficially to be simple and single, it really consists, in man and all other gnathostomes, of two completely separated halves, the right and left cavities. they are divided by a vertical partition, so that the right nostril leads into the right cavity alone and the left nostril into the left cavity. they open internally (and separately) by the posterior nasal apertures into the pharynx, so that we can get direct into the gullet through the nasal passages without touching the mouth. this is the way the air usually passes in respiration; the mouth being closed, it goes through the nose into the gullet, and through the larynx and bronchial tubes into the lungs. the nasal cavities are separated from the mouth by the horizontal bony palate, to which is attached behind (as a dependent process) the soft palate with the uvula. in the upper and hinder parts of the nasal cavities the olfactory nerve, the first pair of cerebral nerves, expands in the mucous coat which clothes them. the terminal branches of it spread partly over the septum (partition), partly on the side walls of the internal cavities, to which are attached the turbinated bones. these bones are much more developed in many of the higher mammals than in man, but there are three of them in all mammals. the sensation of smell arises by the passage of a current of air containing odorous matter over the mucous lining of the cavities, and stimulating the olfactory cells of the nerve-endings. man has all the features which distinguish the olfactory organ of the mammals from that of the lower vertebrates. in all essential points the human nose entirely resembles that of the catarrhine apes, some of which have quite a human external nose (compare the face of the long-nosed apes). however, the first structure of the olfactory organ in the human embryo gives no indication of the future ample proportions of our catarrhine nose. it has the form in which we find it permanently in the fishes--a couple of simple depressions in the skin at the outer surface of the head. we find these blind olfactory pits in all the fishes; sometimes they lie near the eyes, sometimes more forward at the point of the muzzle, sometimes lower down, near the mouth (figure . ). (figure . . frontal section of the mouth and throat of a human embryo, neck half-inch long. "invented" by wilhelm his. the vertical section (in the frontal plane, from left to right) is so constructed that we see the nasal pits in the upper third of the figure and the eyes at the sides: in the middle third the primitive gullet with the gill-clefts (gill-arches in section); in the lower third the pectoral cavity with the bronchial tubes and the rudimentary lungs.) this first rudimentary structure of the double nose is the same in all the gnathostomes; it has no connection with the primitive mouth. but even in a section of the fishes a connection of this kind begins to make its appearance, a furrow in the surface of the skin running from each side of the nasal pit to the nearest corner of the mouth. this furrow, the nasal groove or furrow (figure . r), is very important. in many of the sharks, such as the scyllium, a special process of the frontal skin, the nasal fold or internal nasal process, is formed internally over the groove (n, n apostrophe). in contrast to this the outer edge of the furrow rises in an "external nasal process." as the two processes meet and coalesce over the nasal groove in the dipneusts and amphibia, it is converted into a canal, the nasal canal. henceforth we can penetrate from the external pits through the nasal canals direct into the mouth, which has been formed quite independently. in the dipneusts and the lower amphibia the internal aperture of the nasal canals lies in front (behind the lips); in the higher amphibia it is right behind. finally, in the three higher classes of vertebrates the primary mouth-cavity is divided by the formation of the horizontal palate-roof into two distinct cavities--the upper (secondary) nasal cavity and the lower (secondary) mouth-cavity. the nasal cavity in turn is divided by the construction of the vertical septum into two halves--right and left. (figure . . diagrammatic section of the mouth-nose cavity. while the palate-plates (p) divide the original mouth-cavity into the lower secondary mouth (m) and the upper nasal cavity, the latter in turn is divided by the vertical partition (e) into two halves (n, n). (from gegenbaur.)) comparative anatomy shows us to-day, in the series of the double-nosed vertebrates, from the fishes up to man, all the different stages in the development of the nose, which the advanced olfactory organ of the higher mammals has passed through at various periods in the course of its phylogeny. it first appears in the embryo of man and the higher vertebrates, in which the double fish-nose persists throughout life. at an early stage, before there is any trace of the characteristic human face, a pair of small pits are formed in the head over the original mouth-cavity; these were first discovered by baer, and rightly called the "olfactory pits" (figures . n and . n). these primitive nasal pits are quite separate from the rudimentary mouth, which also originates as a pit-like depression in the skin, in front of the blind fore end of the gut. both the pair of nasal pits and the single mouth-pit (figure . m) are clothed with the horny plate. the original separation of the former from the latter is, however, presently abolished, a process forming above the mouth-pit--the "frontal process" (figure . st). its outer edge rises to the right and left in the shape of two lateral processes; these are the inner nasal processes or folds (in). opposite to these a parallel ridge is formed on either side between the eye and the nasal pit; these are the outer nasal processes (an). thus between the inner and outer nasal processes a groove-like depression is formed on either side, which leads from the nasal pit towards the mouth-pit (m); this groove is, as the reader will guess, the same nasal furrow or groove that we have already seen in the shark (figure . r). as the parallel edges of the inner and outer nasal processes bend towards each other and join above the nasal groove, this is converted into a tube, the primitive nasal canal. hence the nose of man and all the other amniotes consists at this embryonic stage of a couple of narrow tubes, the nasal canals, which lead from the outer surface of the forehead into the rudimentary mouth. this transitory condition resembles that in which we find the nose permanently in the dipneusts and amphibia. a cone-shaped structure, which grows from below towards the lower ends of the two nasal processes and joins with them, plays an important part in the conversion of the open nasal groove into the closed canal. this is the upper-jaw process (figures . to . o). below the mouth-pit are the gill-arches, which are separated by the gill-clefts. the first of these gill-arches, and the most important for our purpose, which we may call the maxillary (jaw) arch, forms the skeleton of the jaws. above at the basis a small process grows out of this first gill-arch; this is the upper-jaw process. the first gill-arch itself develops a cartilage at one of its inner sides, the "meckel cartilage" (named after its discoverer), on the outer surface of which the lower jaw is formed (figures . to . u). the upper-jaw process forms the chief part of the skeleton of that jaw, the palate bone, and the pterygoid bone. on its outer side is afterwards formed the upper-jaw bone, in the narrower sense, while the middle part of the skeleton of the upper jaw, the intermaxillary, develops from the foremost part of the frontal process. the two upper-jaw processes are of great importance in the further development of the face. from them is formed, growing into the primitive mouth-cavity, the important horizontal partition (the palate) that divides the former into two distinct cavities. the upper cavity, into which the nasal canals open, now develops into the nasal cavity, the air-passage and the organ of smell. the lower cavity forms the permanent secondary mouth (figure . m), the food-passage and the organ of taste. both the upper and lower cavities open behind into the gullet (pharynx). the hard palate that separates them is formed by the joining of two lateral halves, the horizontal plates of the two upper-jaw processes, or the palate-plates (p). when these do not, sometimes, completely join in the middle, a longitudinal cleft remains, through which we can penetrate from the mouth straight into the nasal cavity. this is the malformation known as "wolf's throat." "hare-lip" is the lesser form of the same defect. at the same time as the horizontal partition of the hard palate a vertical partition is formed by which the single nasal cavity is divided into two sections--a right and left half (figure . n, n). (figures . and . . upper part of the body of a human embryo, two-thirds of an inch long, of the sixth week; figure . from the left, figure . from the front. the origin of the nose and the upper lip from two lateral and originally separate halves can be clearly seen. nose and upper lip are large in proportion to the rest of the face, and especially to the lower lip. (from kollmann.)) the double nose has now acquired the characteristic form that man shares with the other mammals. its further development is easy to follow; it consists of the formation of the inner and outer processes of the walls of the two cavities. the external nose is not formed until long after all these essential parts of the internal organ of smell. the first traces of it in the human embryo are found about the middle of the second month (figures . to . ). as can be seen in any human embryo during the first month, there is at first no trace of the external nose. it only develops afterwards from the foremost nasal part of the primitive skull, growing forwards from behind. the characteristic human nose is formed very late. much stress is at times laid on this organ as an exclusive privilege of man. but there are apes that have similar noses, such as the long-nosed ape. (figure . . face of a human embryo, seven weeks old, (from kollmann.) joining of the nasal processes (e outer, i inner) with the upper-jaw process (o), n nasal wall, a ear-opening.) the evolution of the eye is not less interesting and instructive than that of the nose. although this noblest of the sensory organs is one of the most elaborate and purposive on account of its optic perfection and remarkable structure, it nevertheless develops, without preconceived design, from a simple process of the outer germinal layer. the fully-formed human eye is a round capsule, the eye-ball (figure . ). this lies in the bony cavity of the skull, surrounded by protective fat and motor muscles. the greater part of it is taken up with a semi-fluid, transparent gelatinous substance, the corpus vitreum. the crystalline lens is fitted into the anterior surface of the ball (figure . l). it is a lenticular, bi-convex, transparent body, the most important of the refractive media in the eye. of this group we have, besides the corpus vitreum and the lens, the watery fluid (humor aqueus) that is found in front of the lens (at the letter m in figure . ). these three transparent refractive media, by which the rays of light that enter the eye are broken up and re-focussed, are enclosed in a solid round capsule, composed of several different coats, something like the concentric layers of an onion. the outermost and thickest of these envelopes is the white sclerotic coat of the eye. it consists of tough white connective tissue. in front of the lens a circular, strongly-curved, transparent plate is fitted into the sclerotic, like the glass of a watch--the cornea (b). at its outer surface the cornea is covered with a very thin layer of the epidermis; this is known as the conjunctiva. it goes from the cornea over the inner surface of the eye-lids, the upper and lower folds which we draw over the eye in closing it. at the inner corner of the eye we have a rudimentary organ in the shape of the relic of a third (inner) eye-lid, which is greatly developed, as "nictitating (winking) membrane," in the lower vertebrates (chapter . ). underneath the upper eye-lid are the lachrymal glands, the product of which, the lachrymal fluid, keeps the outer surface of the eye smooth and clean. immediately under the sclerotic we find a very delicate, dark-red membrane, very rich in blood-vessels--the choroid coat--and inside this the retina (o), the expansion of the optic nerve (i). the latter is the second cerebral nerve. it proceeds from the optic thalami (the second cerebral vesicle) to the eye; penetrates its outer envelopes, and then spreads out like a net between the choroid and the corpus vitreum. between the retina and the choroid there is a very delicate membrane, which is usually (but wrongly) associated with the latter. this is the black pigment-membrane (n). it consists of a single stratum of graceful, hexagonal, regularly-joined cells, full of granules of black colouring matter. this pigment membrane clothes, not only the inner surface of the choroid proper, but also the hind surface of its anterior muscular continuation, which covers the edge of the lens in front as a circular membrane, and arrests the rays of light at the sides. this is the well-known iris of the eye (h), coloured differently in different individuals (blue, grey, brown, etc.); it forms the anterior border of the choroid. the circular opening that is left in the middle is the pupil, through which the rays of light penetrate into the eye. at the point where the iris leaves the anterior border of the choroid proper the latter is very thick, and forms a delicate crown of folds (g), which surrounds the edge of the lens with about seventy large and many smaller rays (corona ciliaris.) at a very early stage a couple of pear-shaped vesicles develop from the foremost part of the first cerebral vesicle in the embryo of man and the other craniotes (figures . a and . au). these growths are the primary optic vesicles. they are at first directed outwards and forwards, but presently grow downward, so that, after the complete separation of the five cerebral vesicles, they lie at the base of the intermediate brain. the inner cavities of these pear-shaped vesicles, which soon attain a considerable size, are openly connected with the ventricle of the intermediate brain by their hollow stems. they are covered externally by the epidermis. (figure . . face of a human embryo, eight weeks old (from ecker.)) at the point where this comes into direct contact with the most curved part of the primary optic vesicle there is a thickening (l) and also a depression (o) of the horny plate (figure . , i). this pit, which we may call the lens-pit, is converted into a closed sac, the thick-walled lens-vesicle ( , l), the thick edges of the pit joining together above it. in the same way in which the medullary tube separates from the outer germinal layer, we now see this lens-sac sever itself entirely from the horny plate (h), its source of origin. the hollow of the sac is afterwards filled with the cells of its thick walls, and thus we get the solid crystalline lens. this is, therefore, a purely epidermic structure. together with the lens the small underlying piece of corium-plate also separates from the skin. as the lens separates from the corneous plate and grows inwards, it necessarily hollows out the contiguous primary optic vesicle (figure . , to ). this is done in just the same way as the invagination of the blastula, which gives rise to the gastrula in the amphioxus (figure . c to f). in both cases the hollowing of the closed vesicle on one side goes so far that at last the inner, folded part touches the outer, not folded part, and the cavity disappears. as in the gastrula the first part is converted into the entoderm and the latter into the ectoderm, so in the invagination of the primary optic vesicle the retina (r) is formed from the first (inner) part, and the black pigment membrane (u) from the latter (outer, non-invaginated) part. the hollow stem of the primary optic vesicle is converted into the optic nerve. the lens (l), which has so important a part in this process, lies at first directly on the invaginated part, or the retina (r). but they soon separate, a new structure, the corpus vitreum (gl), growing between them. while the lenticular sac is being detached and is causing the invagination of the primary optic vesicle, another invagination is taking place from below; this proceeds from the superficial part of the skin-fibre layer--the corium of the head. behind and under the lens a last-shaped process rises from the cutis-plate (figure . g), hollows out the cup-shaped optic vesicle from below, and presses between the lens (l) and the retina (i). in this way the optic vesicle acquires the form of a hood. (figure . . the human eye in section. a sclerotic coat, b cornea, c conjunctiva, d circular veins of the iris, e choroid coat, f ciliary muscle, g corona ciliaris, h iris, i optic nerve, k anterior border of the retina, l crystalline lens, m inner covering of the cornea (aqueous membrane), n pigment membrane, o retina, p petit's canal, q yellow spot of the retina. (from helmholtz.)) finally, a complete fibrous envelope, the fibrous capsule of the eye-ball, is formed about the secondary optic vesicle and its stem (the secondary optic nerve). it originates from the part of the head-plates which immediately encloses the eye. this fibrous envelope takes the form of a closed round vesicle, surrounding the whole of the ball and pushing between the lens and the horny plate at its outer side. the round wall of the capsule soon divides into two different membranes by surface-cleavage. the inner membrane becomes the choroid or vascular coat, and in front the ciliary corona and iris. the outer membrane is converted into the white protective or sclerotic coat--in front, the transparent cornea. the eye is now formed in all its essential parts. the further development--the complicated differentiation and composition of the various parts--is a matter of detail. (figure . . eye of the chick embryo in longitudinal section ( . from an embryo sixty-five hours old; . from a somewhat older embryo; . from an embryo four days old). h horny plate, o lens-pit, l lens (in . still part of the epidermis, in . and . separated from it), x thickening of the horny plate at the point where the lens has severed itself, gl corpus vitreum, r retina, u pigment membrane. (from remak.)) the chief point in this remarkable evolution of the eye is the circumstance that the optic nerve, the retina, and the pigment membrane originate really from a part of the brain--an outgrowth of the intermediate brain--while the lens, the chief refractive body, develops from the outer skin. from the skin--the horny plate--also arises the delicate conjunctiva, which afterwards covers the outer surface of the eyeball. the lachrymal glands are ramified growths from the conjunctiva (figure . ). all these important parts of the eye are products of the outer germinal layer. the remaining parts--the corpus vitreum (with the vascular capsule of the lens), the choroid (with the iris), and the sclerotic (with the cornea)--are formed from the middle germinal layer. the outer protection of the eye, the eye-lids, are merely folds of the skin, which are formed in the third month of human embryonic life. in the fourth month the upper eye-lid reaches the lower, and the eye remains covered with them until birth. as a rule, they open wide shortly before birth (sometimes only after birth). our craniote ancestors had a third eye-lid, the nictitating membrane, which was drawn over the eye from its inner angle. it is still found in many of the selachii and amniotes. in the apes and man it has degenerated, and there is now only a small relic of it at the inner corner of the eye, the semi-lunar fold, a useless rudimentary organ (chapter . ). the apes and man have also lost the harderian gland that opened under the nictitating membrane; we find this in the rest of the mammals, and the birds, reptiles, and amphibia. the peculiar embryonic development of the vertebrate eye does not enable us to draw any definite conclusions as to its obscure phylogeny; it is clearly cenogenetic to a great extent, or obscured by the reduction and curtailment of its original features. it is probable that many of the earlier stages of its phylogeny have disappeared without leaving a trace. it can only be said positively that the peculiar ontogeny of the complicated optic apparatus in man follows just the same laws as in all the other vertebrates. their eye is a part of the fore brain, which has grown forward towards the skin, not an original cutaneous sense-organ, as in the invertebrates. (figure . . horizontal transverse section of the eye of a human embryo, four weeks old (magnified one hundred times). (from kolliker.) t lens (the dark wall of which is as thick as the diameter of the central cavity), g corpus vitreum (connected by a stem, g, with the corium), v vascular loop (pressing behind the lens inside the corpus vitreum by means of this stem g), i retina (inner thicker, invaginated layer of the primary optic vesicle), a pigment membrane (outer, thin, non-invaginated layer of same), h space between retina and pigment membrane (remainder of the cavity of the primary optic vesicle). figure . . the human ear (left ear, seen from the front, natural size), a shell of ear, b external passage, c tympanum, d tympanic cavity, e eustachian tube, f, g, h the three bones of the ear (f hammer, g anvil, h stirrup), i utricle, k the three semi-circular canals, l the sacculus, m cochlea, n auscultory nerve.) the vertebrate ear resembles the eye and nose in many important respects, but is different in others, in its development. the auscultory organ in the fully-developed man is like that of the other mammals, and especially the apes, in the main features. as in them, it consists of two chief parts--an apparatus for conducting sound (external and middle ear) and an apparatus for the sensation of sound (internal ear). the external ear opens in the shell at the side of the head (figure . a). from this point the external passage (b), about an inch in length, leads into the head. the inner end of it is closed by the tympanum, a vertical, but not quite upright, thin membrane of an oval shape (c). this tympanum separates the external passage from the tympanic cavity (d). this is a small cavity, filled with air, in the temporal bone; it is connected with the mouth by a special tube. this tube is rather longer, but much narrower, than the outer passage, leads inwards obliquely from the anterior wall of the tympanic cavity, and opens in the throat below, behind the nasal openings. it is called the eustachian tube (e); it serves to equalise the pressure of the air within the tympanic cavity and the outer atmosphere that enters by the external passage. both the eustachian tube and the tympanic cavity are lined with a thin mucous coat, which is a direct continuation of the mucous lining of the throat. inside the tympanic cavity there are three small bones which are known (from their shape) as the hammer, anvil, and stirrup (figure . , f, g, h). the hammer (f) is the outermost, next to the tympanum. the anvil (g) fits between the other two, above and inside the hammer. the stirrup (h) lies inside the anvil, and touches with its base the outer wall of the internal ear, or auscultory vesicle. all these parts of the external and middle ear belong to the apparatus for conducting sound. their chief task is to convey the waves of sound through the thick wall of the head to the inner-lying auscultory vesicle. they are not found at all in the fishes. in these the waves of sound are conveyed directly by the wall of the head to the auscultory vesicle. the internal apparatus for the sensation of sound, which receives the waves of sound from the conducting apparatus, consists in man and all other mammals of a closed auscultory vesicle filled with fluid and an auditory nerve, the ends of which expand over the wall of this vesicle. the vibrations of the sound-waves are conveyed by these media to the nerve-endings. in the labyrinthic water that fills the auscultory vesicle there are small stones at the points of entry of the acoustic nerves, which are composed of groups of microscopic calcareous crystals (otoliths). the auscultory organ of most of the invertebrates has substantially the same composition. it usually consists of a closed vesicle, filled with fluid, and containing otoliths, with the acoustic nerve expanding on its wall. but, while the auditory vesicle is usually of a simple round or oval shape in the invertebrates, it has in the vertebrates a special and curious structure, the labyrinth. this thin-membraned labyrinth is enclosed in a bony capsule of the same shape, the osseous labyrinth (figure . ), and this lies in the middle of the petrous bone of the skull. the labyrinth is divided into two vesicles in all the gnathostomes. the larger one is called the utriculus, and has three arched appendages, called the "semi-circular canals" (c, d, e). the smaller vesicle is called the sacculus, and is connected with a peculiar appendage, with (in man and the higher mammals) a spiral form something like a snail's shell, and therefore called the cochlea (= snail, b). on the thin wall of this delicate labyrinth the acoustic nerve, which comes from the after-brain, spreads out in most elaborate fashion. it divides into two main branches--a cochlear nerve (for the cochlea) and a vestibular nerve (for the rest of the labyrinth). the former seems to have more to do with the quality, the latter with the quantity, of the acoustic sensations. through the cochlear nerves we learn the height and timbre, through the vestibular nerves the intensity, of tones. (figure . . the bony labyrinth of the human ear (left side). a vestibulum, b cochlea, c upper canal, d posterior canal, e outer canal, f oval fenestra, g round fenestra. (from meyer.) figure . . development of the auscultory labyrinth of the chick, in five successive stages (a to e). (vertical transverse sections of the skull.) fl auscultory pits, lv auscultory vesicles, lr labyrinthic appendage, c rudimentary cochlea, csp posterior canal, cse external canal, jv jugular vein. (from reissner.)) the first structure of this highly elaborate organ is very simple in the embryo of man and all the other craniotes; it is a pit-like depression in the skin. at the back part of the head at both sides, near the after brain, a small thickening of the horny plate is formed at the upper end of the second gill-cleft (figure . a fl). this sinks into a sort of pit, and severs from the epidermis, just as the lens of the eye does. in this way is formed at each side, directly under the horny plate of the back part of the head, a small vesicle filled with fluid, the primitive auscultory vesicle, or the primary labyrinth. as it separates from its source, the horny plate, and presses inwards and backwards into the skull, it changes from round to pear-shaped (figures . b lv and . o). the outer part of it is lengthened into a thin stem, which at first still opens outwards by a narrow canal. this is the labyrinthic appendage (figure . lr). in the lower vertebrates it develops into a special cavity filled with calcareous crystals, which remains open permanently in some of the primitive fishes, and opens outwards in the upper part of the skull. but in the mammals the labyrinthic appendage degenerates. in these it has only a phylogenetic interest as a rudimentary organ, with no actual physiological significance. the useless relic of it passes through the wall of the petrous bone in the shape of a narrow canal, and is called the vestibular aqueduct. it is only the inner and lower bulbous part of the separated auscultory vesicle that develops into the highly complex and differentiated structure that is afterwards known as the secondary labyrinth. this vesicle divides at an early stage into an upper and larger and a lower and smaller section. from the one we get the utriculus with the semi-circular canals; from the other the sacculus and the cochlea (figure . c). the canals are formed in the shape of simple pouch-like involutions of the utricle (cse and csp). the edges join together in the middle part of each fold, and separate from the utricle, the two ends remaining in open connection with its cavity. all the gnathostomes have these three canals like man, whereas among the cyclostomes the lampreys have only two and the hag-fishes only one. the very complex structure of the cochlea, one of the most elaborate and wonderful outcomes of adaptation in the mammal body, develops originally in very simple fashion as a flask-like projection from the sacculus. as hasse and retzius have pointed out, we find the successive ontogenetic stages of its growth represented permanently in the series of the higher vertebrates. the cochlea is wanting even in the monotremes, and is restricted to the rest of the mammals and man. the auditory nerve, or eighth cerebral nerve, expands with one branch in the cochlea, and with the other in the remaining parts of the labyrinth. this nerve is, as gegenbaur has shown, the sensory dorsal branch of a cerebro-spinal nerve, the motor ventral branch of which acts for the muscles of the face (nervus facialis). it has therefore originated phylogenetically from an ordinary cutaneous nerve, and so is of quite different origin from the optic and olfactory nerves, which both represent direct outgrowths of the brain. in this respect the auscultory organ is essentially different from the organs of sight and smell. the acoustic nerve is formed from ectodermic cells of the hind brain, and develops from the nervous structure that appears at its dorsal limit. on the other hand, all the membranous, cartilaginous, and osseous coverings of the labyrinth are formed from the mesodermic head-plates. (figure . . primitive skull of the human embryo, four weeks old, vertical section, left half seen internally. v, z, m, h, n the five pits of the cranial cavity, in which the five cerebral vesicles lie (fore, intermediate, middle, hind, and after brains), o pear-shaped primary auscultory vesicle (appearing through), a eye (appearing through), no optic nerve, p canal of the hypophysis, t central prominence of the skull. (from kolliker.)) the apparatus for conducting sound which we find in the external and middle ear of mammals develops quite separately from the apparatus for the sensation of sound. it is both phylogenetically and ontogenetically an independent secondary formation, a later accession to the primary internal ear. nevertheless, its development is not less interesting, and is explained with the same ease by comparative anatomy. in all the fishes and in the lowest vertebrates there is no special apparatus for conducting sound, no external or middle ear; they have only a labyrinth, an internal ear, which lies within the skull. they are without the tympanum and tympanic cavity, and all its appendages. from many observations made in the last few decades it seems that many of the fishes (if not all) cannot distinguish tones; their labyrinth seems to be chiefly (if not exclusively) an organ for the sense of space (or equilibrium). if it is destroyed, the fishes lose their balance and fall. in the opinion of recent physiologists this applies also to many of the invertebrates (including the nearer ancestors of the vertebrates). the round vesicles which are considered to be their auscultory vesicles, and which contain an otolith, are supposed to be merely organs of the sense of space ("static vesicles or statocysts"). the middle ear makes its first appearance in the amphibian class, where we find a tympanum, tympanic cavity, and eustachian tube; these animals, and all terrestrial vertebrates, certainly have the faculty of hearing. all these essential parts of the middle ear originate from the first gill-cleft and its surrounding part; in the selachii this remains throughout life an open squirting-hole, and lies between the first and second gill-arch. in the embryo of the higher vertebrates it closes up in the centre, and thus forms the tympanic membrane. the outlying remainder of the first gill-cleft is the rudiment of the external meatus. from its inner part we get the tympanic cavity, and, further inward still, the eustachian tube. connected with this is the development of the three bones of the mammal ear from the first two gill-arches; the hammer and anvil are formed from the first, the stirrup from the upper end of the second, gill-arch. (figure . . the rudimentary muscles of the ear in the human skull. a raising muscle (m. attollens), b drawing muscle (m. attrahens), c withdrawing muscle (m. retrahens), d large muscle of the helix (m. helicis major), e small muscle of the helix (m. helicis minor), f muscle of the angle of the ear (m. tragicus), g anti-angular muscle (m. antitragicus). (from h. meyer.)) finally, the shell (pinna or concha) and external meatus (passage to the tympanum) of the outer ear are developed in a very simple fashion from the skin that borders the external aperture of the first gill-cleft. the shell rises in the shape of a circular fold of the skin, in which cartilage and muscles are afterwards formed (figures . and . ). this organ is only found in the mammalian class. it is very rudimentary in the lowest section, the monotremes. in the others it is found at very different stages of development, and sometimes of degeneration. it is degenerate in most of the aquatic mammals. the majority of them have lost it altogether--for instance, the walruses and whales and most of the seals. on the other hand, the pinna is well developed in the great majority of the marsupials and placentals; it receives and collects the waves of sound, and is equipped with a very elaborate muscular apparatus, by means of which the pinna can be turned freely in any direction and its shape be altered. it is well known how readily domestic animals--horses, cows, dogs, hares, etc.--point their ears and move them in different directions. most of the apes do the same, and our earlier ape ancestors were also able to do it. but our later simian ancestors, which we have in common with the anthropoid apes, abandoned the use of these muscles, and they gradually became rudimentary and useless. however, we possess them still (figure . ). in fact, some men can still move their ears a little backward and forward by means of the drawing and withdrawing muscles (b and c); with practice this faculty can be much improved. but no man can now lift up his ears by the raising muscle (a), or change the shape of them by the small inner muscles (d, e, f, g). these muscles were very useful to our ancestors, but are of no consequence to us. this applies to most of the anthropoid apes as well. we also share with the higher anthropoid apes (gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang) the characteristic form of the human outer ear, especially the folded border, the helix and the lobe. the lower apes have pointed ears, without folded border or lobe, like the other mammals. but darwin has shown that at the upper part of the folded border there is in many men a small pointed process, which most of us do not possess. in some individuals this process is well developed. it can only be explained as the relic of the original point of the ear, which has been turned inwards in consequence of the curving of the edge. if we compare the pinna of man and the various apes in this respect, we find that they present a connected series of degenerate structures. in the common catarrhine ancestors of the anthropoids and man the degeneration set in with the folding together of the pinna. this brought about the helix of the ear, in which we find the significant angle which represents the relic of the salient point of the ear in our earlier simian ancestors. here again, therefore, comparative anatomy enables us to trace with certainty the human ear to the similar, but more developed, organ of the lower mammals. at the same time, comparative physiology shows that it was a more or less useful implement in the latter, but it is quite useless in the anthropoids and man. the conducting of the sound has scarcely been affected by the loss of the pinna. we have also in this the explanation of the extraordinary variety in the shape and size of the shell of the ear in different men; in this it resembles other rudimentary organs. chapter . . evolution of the organs of movement. the peculiar structure of the locomotive apparatus is one of the features that are most distinctive of the vertebrate stem. the chief part of this apparatus is formed, as in all the higher animals, by the active organs of movement, the muscles; in consequence of their contractility they have the power to draw up and shorten themselves. this effects the movement of the various parts of the body, and thus the whole body is conveyed from place to place. but the arrangement of these muscles and their relation to the solid skeleton are different in the vertebrates from the invertebrates. (figure . . the human skeleton. from the right. figure . . the human skeleton. front.) in most of the lower animals, especially the platodes and vermalia, we find that the muscles form a simple, thin layer of flesh immediately underneath the skin. this muscular layer is very closely connected with the skin itself; it is the same in the mollusc stem. even in the large division of the articulates, the classes of crabs, spiders, myriapods, and insects, we find a similar feature, with the difference that in this case the skin forms a solid armour--a rigid cutaneous skeleton made of chitine (and often also of carbonate of lime). this external chitine coat undergoes a very elaborate articulation both on the trunk and the limbs of the articulates, and in consequence the muscular system also, the contractile fibres of which are attached inside the chitine tubes, is highly articulated. the vertebrates form a direct contrast to this. in these alone a solid internal skeleton is developed, of cartilage or bone, to which the muscles are attached. this bony skeleton is a complex lever apparatus, or passive apparatus of movement. its rigid parts, the arms of the levers, or the bones, are brought together by the actively mobile muscles, as if by drawing-ropes. this admirable locomotorium, especially its solid central axis, the vertebral column, is a special feature of the vertebrates, and has given the name to the group. (figure . . the human vertebral column (standing upright, from the right side). (from h. meyer.)) in order to get a clear idea of the chief features of the development of the human skeleton, we must first examine its composition in the adult frame (figure . , the human skeleton seen from the right; figure . , front view of the whole skeleton). as in other mammals, we distinguish first between the axial or dorsal skeleton and the skeleton of the limbs. the axial skeleton consists of the vertebral column (the skeleton of the trunk) and the skull (skeleton of the head); the latter is a peculiarly modified part of the former. as appendages of the vertebral column we have the ribs, and of the skull we have the hyoid bone, the lower jaw, and the other products of the gill-arches. the skeleton of the limbs or extremities is composed of two groups of parts--the skeleton of the extremities proper and the zone-skeleton, which connects these with the vertebral column. the zone-skeleton of the arms (or fore legs) is the shoulder-zone; the zone-skeleton of the legs (or hind legs) is the pelvic zone. (figure . . a piece of the axial rod (chorda dorsalis), from a sheep embryo. a cuticular sheath, b cells. (from kolliker.)) the vertebral column (figure . ) in man is composed of thirty-three to thirty-five ring-shaped bones in a continuous series (above each other, in man's upright position). these vertebrae are separated from each other by elastic ligaments, and at the same time connected by joints, so that the whole column forms a firm and solid, but flexible and elastic, axial skeleton, moving freely in all directions. the vertebrae differ in shape and connection at the various parts of the trunk, and we distinguish the following groups in the series, beginning at the top: seven cervical vertebrae, twelve dorsal vertebrae, five lumbar vertebrae, five sacral vertebrae, and four to six caudal vertebrae. the uppermost, or those next to the skull, are the cervical vertebrae (figure . ); they have a hole in each of the lateral processes. there are seven of these vertebrae in man and almost all the other mammals, even if the neck is as long as that of the camel or giraffe, or as short as that of the mole or hedgehog. this constant number, which has few exceptions (due to adaptation), is a strong proof of the common descent of the mammals; it can only be explained by faithful heredity from a common stem-form, a primitive mammal with seven cervical vertebrae. if each species had been created separately, it would have been better to have given the long-necked mammals more, and the short-necked animals less, cervical vertebrae. next to these come the dorsal (or pectoral) vertebrae, which number twelve to thirteen (usually twelve) in man and most of the other mammals. each dorsal vertebra (figure . ) has at the side, connected by joints, a couple of ribs, long bony arches that lie in and protect the wall of the chest. the twelve pairs of ribs, together with the connecting intercostal muscles and the sternum, which joins the ends of the right and left ribs in front, form the chest (thorax). in this strong and elastic frame are the lungs, and between them the heart. next to the dorsal vertebrae comes a short but stronger section of the column, formed of five large vertebrae. these are the lumbar vertebrae (figure . ); they have no ribs and no holes in the transverse processes. to these succeeds the sacral bone, which is fitted between the two halves of the pelvic zone. the sacrum is formed of five vertebrae, completely blended together. finally, we have at the end a small rudimentary caudal column, the coccyx. this consists of a varying number (usually four, more rarely three, or five or six) of small degenerated vertebrae, and is a useless rudimentary organ with no actual physiological significance. morphologically, however, it is of great interest as an irrefragable proof of the descent of man and the anthropoids from long-tailed apes. on no other theory can we explain the existence of this rudimentary tail. in the earlier stages of development the tail of the human embryo protrudes considerably. it afterwards atrophies; but the relic of the atrophied caudal vertebrae and of the rudimentary muscles that once moved it remains permanently. sometimes, in fact, the external tail is preserved. the older anatomists say that the tail is usually one vertebra longer in the human female than in the male (or four against five); steinbach says it is the reverse. (figure . . three dorsal vertebrae, from a human embryo, eight weeks old, in lateral longitudinal section. v cartilaginous vertebral body, li inter-vertebral disks, ch chorda. (from kolliker.) (figure . . a dorsal vertebra of the same embryo, in lateral transverse section. cv cartilaginous vertebral body, ch chorda, pr transverse process, a vertebral arch (upper arch), c upper end of the rib (lower arch). (from kolliker.)) in the human vertebral column there are usually thirty-three vertebrae. it is interesting to find, however, that the number often changes, one or two vertebrae dropping out or an additional one appearing. often, also, a mobile rib is formed at the last cervical or the first lumbar vertebra, so that there are then thirteen dorsal vertebrae, besides six cervical and four lumbar. in this way the contiguous vertebrae of the various sections of the column may take each other's places. in order to understand the embryology of the human vertebral column we must first carefully consider the shape and connection of the vertebrae. each vertebra has, in general, the shape of a seal-ring (figures . to . ). the thicker portion, which is turned towards the ventral side, is called the body of the vertebra, and forms a short osseous disk; the thinner part forms a semi-circular arch, the vertebral arch, and is turned towards the back. the arches of the successive vertebrae are connected by thin intercrural ligaments in such a way that the cavity they collectively enclose represents a long canal. in this vertebral canal we find the trunk part of the central nervous system, the spinal cord. its head part, the brain, is enclosed by the skull, and the skull itself is merely the uppermost part of the vertebral column, distinctively modified. the base or ventral side of the vesicular cranial capsule corresponds originally to a number of developed vertebral bodies; its vault or dorsal side to their combined upper vertebral arches. (figure . . intervertebral disk of a new-born infant, transverse section. a rest of the chorda. (from kolliker.)) while the solid, massive bodies of the vertebrae represent the real central axis of the skeleton, the dorsal arches serve to protect the central marrow they enclose. but similar arches develop on the ventral side for the protection of the viscera in the breast and belly. these lower or ventral vertebral arches, proceeding from the ventral side of the vertebral bodies, form, in many of the lower vertebrates, a canal in which the large blood-vessels are enclosed on the lower surface of the vertebral column (aorta and caudal vein). in the higher vertebrates the majority of these vertebral arches are lost or become rudimentary. but at the thoracic section of the column they develop into independent strong osseous arches, the ribs (costae). in reality the ribs are merely large and independent lower vertebral arches, which have lost their original connection with the vertebral bodies. if we turn from this anatomic survey of the composition of the column to the question of its development, i may refer the reader to earlier pages with regard to the first and most important points (chapter . ). it will be remembered that in the human embryo and that of the other vertebrates we find at first, instead of the segmented column, only a simple unarticulated cartilaginous rod. this solid but flexible and elastic rod is the axial rod (or the chorda dorsalis). in the lowest vertebrate, the amphioxus, it retains this simple form throughout life, and permanently represents the whole internal skeleton (figure . i). in the tunicates, also, the nearest invertebrate relatives of the vertebrates, we meet the same chorda--transitorily in the passing larva tail of the ascidia, permanently in the copelata (figure . c). undoubtedly both the tunicates and acrania have inherited the chorda from a common unsegmented stem-form; and these ancient, long-extinct ancestors of all the chordonia are our hypothetical prochordonia. long before there is any trace of the skull, limbs, etc., in the embryo of man or any of the higher vertebrates--at the early stage in which the whole body is merely a sole-shaped embryonic shield--there appears in the middle line of the shield, directly under the medullary furrow, the simple chorda. (cf. figures . to . ch). it follows the long axis of the body in the shape of a cylindrical axial rod of elastic but firm composition, equally pointed at both ends. in every case the chorda originates from the dorsal wall of the primitive gut; the cells that compose it (figure . b) belong to the entoderm (figures . to . ). at an early stage the chorda develops a transparent structureless sheath, which is secreted from its cells (figure . a). this chordalemma is often called the "inner chorda-sheath," and must not be confused with the real external sheath, the mesoblastic perichorda. (figure . . human skull. figure . . skull of a new-born child. (from kollmann.) above, in the three bones of the roof of the skull, we see the lines that radiate from the central points of ossification; in front, the frontal bone; behind, the occipital bone; between the two the large parietal bone, p. s the scurf bone, w mastoid fontanelle, f petrous bone, t tympanic bone, l lateral part, b bulla, j cheek-bone, a large wing of cuneiform bone, k fontanelle of cuneiform bone.) but this unsegmented primary axial skeleton is soon replaced by the segmented secondary axial skeleton, which we know as the vertebral column. the provertebral plates (figure . s) differentiate from the innermost, median part of the visceral layer of the coelom-pouches at each side of the chorda. as they grow round the chorda and enclose it they form the skeleton plate or skeletogenetic layer--that is to say, the skeleton-forming stratum of cells, which provides the mobile foundation of the permanent vertebral column and skull (scleroblast). in the head-half of the embryo the skeletal plate remains a continuous, simple, undivided layer of tissue, and presently enlarges into a thin-walled capsule enclosing the brain, the primordial skull. in the trunk-half the provertebral plate divides into a number of homogeneous, cubical, successive pieces; these are the several primitive vertebrae. they are not numerous at first, but soon increase as the embryo grows longer (figures . to . ). (figure . . head-skeleton of a primitive fish, n nasal pit, eth cribriform bone region, orb orbit of eye, la wall of auscultory labyrinth, occ occipital region of primitive skull, cv vertebral column, a fore, bc hind-lip cartilage, o primitive upper jaw (palato-quadratum), u primitive lower jaw, ii hyaloid bone, iii to viii first to sixth branchial arches. (from gegenbaur.) figure . . roofs of the skulls of nine primates (cattarrhines), seen from above and reduced to a common size. european, brazilian, pithecanthropus, gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, gibbon, tailed ape, baboon.) in all the craniotes the soft, indifferent cells of the mesoderm, which originally compose the skeletal plate, are afterwards converted for the most part into cartilaginous cells, and these secrete a firm and elastic intercellular substance between them, and form cartilaginous tissue. like most of the other parts of the skeleton, the membranous rudiments of the vertebrae soon pass into a cartilaginous state, and in the higher vertebrates this is afterwards replaced by the hard osseous tissue with its characteristic stellate cells (figure . ). the primary axial skeleton remains a simple chorda throughout life in the acrania, the cyclostomes, and the lowest fishes. in most of the other vertebrates the chorda is more or less replaced by the cartilaginous tissue of the secondary perichorda that grows round it. in the lower craniotes (especially the fishes) a more or less considerable part of the chorda is preserved in the bodies of the vertebrae. in the mammals it disappears for the most part. by the end of the second month in the human embryo the chorda is merely a slender thread, running through the axis of the thick, cartilaginous vertebral column (figures . ch and . ch). in the cartilaginous vertebral bodies themselves, which afterwards ossify, the slender remnant of the chorda presently disappears (figure . ch). but in the elastic inter-vertebral disks, which develop from the skeletal plate between each pair of vertebral bodies (figure . li), a relic of the chorda remains permanently. in the new-born child there is a large pear-shaped cavity in each intervertebral disk, filled with a gelatinous mass of cells (figure . a). though less sharply defined, this gelatinous nucleus of the elastic cartilaginous disks persists throughout life in the mammals, but in the birds and most reptiles the last trace of the chorda disappears. in the subsequent ossification of the cartilaginous vertebra the first deposit of bony matter ("first osseous nucleus") takes place in the vertebral body immediately round the remainder of the chorda, and soon displaces it altogether. then there is a special osseous nucleus formed in each half of the vertebral arch. the ossification does not reach the point at which the three nuclei are joined until after birth. in the first year the two osseous halves of the arches unite; but it is much later--in the second to the eighth year--that they connect with the osseous vertebral bodies. (figure . . skeleton of the breast-fin of ceratodus (biserial feathered skeleton). a, b, cartilaginous series of the fin-stem. rr cartilaginous fin-radii. (from gunther.) figure . . skeleton of the breast-fin of an early selachius (acanthias). the radii of the median fin-border (b) have disappeared for the most part; a few only (r) are left. r, r, radii of the lateral fin-border, mt metapterygium, ms mesopterygium, p propterygium. (from gegenbaur.) figure . . skeleton of the breast-fin of a young selachius. the radii of the median fin-border have wholly disappeared. the shaded part on the right is the section that persists in the five-fingered hand of the higher vertebrates. (b the three basal pieces of the fin: mt metapterygium, rudiment of the humerus, ms mesopterygium, p propterygium.) (from gegenbaur.)) the bony skull (cranium), the head-part of the secondary axial skeleton, develops in just the same way as the vertebral column. the skull forms a bony envelope for the brain, just as the vertebral canal does for the spinal cord; and as the brain is only a peculiarly differentiated part of the head, while the spinal cord represents the longer trunk-section of the originally homogeneous medullary tube, we shall expect to find that the osseous coat of the one is a special modification of the osseous envelope of the other. when we examine the adult human skull in itself (figure . ), it is difficult to conceive how it can be merely the modified fore part of the vertebral column. it is an elaborate and extensive bony structure, composed of no less than twenty bones of different shapes and sizes. seven of them form the spacious shell that surrounds the brain, in which we distinguish the solid ventral base below and the curved dorsal vault above. the other thirteen bones form the facial skull, which is especially the bony envelope of the higher sense-organs, and at the same time encloses the entrance of the alimentary canal. the lower jaw is articulated at the base of the skull (usually regarded as the xxi cranial bone). behind the lower jaw we find the hyoid bone at the root of the tongue, also formed from the gill-arches, and a part of the lower arches that have developed as "head-ribs" from the ventral side of the base of the cranium. although the fully-developed skull of the higher vertebrates, with its peculiar shape, its enormous size, and its complex composition, seems to have nothing in common with the ordinary vertebrae, nevertheless even the older comparative anatomists came to recognise at the end of the eighteenth century that it is really nothing else originally than a series of modified vertebrae. when goethe in "picked up the skull of a slain victim from the sand of the jewish cemetery at venice, he noticed at once that the bones of the face also could be traced to vertebrae (like the three hind-most cranial vertebrae)." and when oken (without knowing anything of goethe's discovery) found at ilenstein, "a fine bleached skull of a hind, the thought flashed across him like lightning: 'it is a vertebral column.'" (figure . . skeleton of the fore leg of an amphibian. h upper-arm (humerus), ru lower arm (r radius, u ulna), rcicu apostrophe, wrist-bones of first series (r radiale, i intermedium, c centrale, u apostrophe ulnare). , , , , wrist-bones of the second series. (from gegenbaur.) figure . . skeleton of gorilla's hand. (from huxley.) figure . . skeleton of human hand, back. (from meyer.)) this famous vertebral theory of the skull has interested the most distinguished zoologists for more than a century: the chief representatives of comparative anatomy have devoted their highest powers to the solution of the problem, and the interest has spread far beyond their circle. but it was not until that it was happily solved, after seven years' labour, by the comparative anatomist who surpassed all other experts of this science in the second half of the nineteenth century by the richness of his empirical knowledge and the acuteness and depth of his philosophic speculations. carl gegenbaur has shown, in his classic studies of the comparative anatomy of the vertebrates (third section), that we find the most solid foundation for the vertebral theory of the skull in the head-skeleton of the selachii. earlier anatomists had wrongly started from the mammal skull, and had compared the several bones that compose it with the several parts of the vertebra (figure . ) they thought they could prove in this way that the fully-formed mammal skull was made of from three to six vertebrae. the older theory was refuted by simple and obvious facts, which were first pointed out by huxley. nevertheless, the fundamental idea of it--the belief that the skull is formed from the head-part of the perichordal axial skeleton, just as the brain is from the simple medullary tube, by differentiation and modification--remained. the work now was to discover the proper way of supplying this philosophic theory with an empirical foundation, and it was reserved for gegenbaur to achieve this. he first opened out the phylogenetic path which here, as in all morphological questions, leads most confidently to the goal. he showed that the primitive fishes (figures . to . ), the ancestors of all the gnathostomes, still preserve permanently in the form of their skull the structure out of which the transformed skull of the higher vertebrates, including man, has been evolved. he further showed that the branchial arches of the selachii prove that their skull originally consisted of a large number of (at least nine or ten) provertebrae, and that the cerebral nerves that proceed from the base of the brain entirely confirm this. these cerebral nerves are (with the exception of the first and second pair, the olfactory and optic nerves) merely modifications of spinal nerves, and are essentially similar to them in their peripheral expansion. the comparative anatomy of these cerebral nerves, their origin and their expansion, furnishes one of the strongest arguments for the new vertebral theory of the skull. (figure . . skeleton of the hand or fore foot of six mammals. i man, ii dog, iii pig, iv ox, v tapir, vi horse. r radius, u ulna, a scaphoideum, b lunare, a triquetrum, d trapezium, e trapezoid, f capitatum, g hamatum, p pisiforme. thumb, index finger, middle finger, ring finger, little finger. (from gegenbaur.)) we have not space here to go into the details of gegenbaur's theory of the skull. i must be content to refer the reader to the great work i have mentioned, in which it is thoroughly established from the empirico-philosophical point of view. he has also given a comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of the subject in his comparative anatomy of the vertebrates ( ). gegenbaur indicates as original "cranial ribs," or "lower arches of the cranial vertebrae," at each side of the head of the selachii (figure . ), the following pairs of arches: i and ii, two lip-cartilages, the anterior (a) of which is composed of an upper piece only, the posterior (bc) from an upper and lower piece; iii, the maxillary arches, also consisting of two pieces on each side--the primitive upper jaw (os palato-quadratum, o) and the primitive lower jaw (u); iv, the hyaloid bone (ii); finally, v to x, six branchial arches in the narrower sense (iii to viii). from the anatomic features of these nine to ten cranial ribs or "lower vertebral arches" and the cranial nerves that spread over them, it is clear that the apparently simple cartilaginous primitive skull of the selachii was originally formed from so many (at least nine) somites or provertebrae. the blending of these primitive segments into a single capsule is, however, so ancient that, in virtue of the law of curtailed heredity, the original division seems to have disappeared; in the embryonic development it is very difficult to detect it in isolated traces, and in some respects quite impossible. it is claimed that several (three to six) traces of provertebrae have been discovered in the anterior (pre-chordal) part of the selachii-skull; this would bring up the number of cranial somites to twelve or sixteen, or even more. (figures . to . . arm and hand of three anthropoids. figure . . chimpanzee (anthropithecus niger). figure . . veddah of ceylon (homo veddalis). figure . . european (homo mediterraneus). (from paul and fritz sarasin.)) in the primitive skull of man (figure . ) and the higher vertebrates, which has been evolved from that of the selachii, five consecutive sections are discoverable at a certain early period of development, and one might be induced to trace these to five primitive vertebrae; but these sections are due entirely to adaptation to the five primitive cerebral vesicles, and correspond, like these, to a large number of metamera. that we have in the primitive skull of the mammals a greatly modified and transformed organ, and not at all a primitive formation, is clear from the circumstance that its original soft membranous form only assumes the cartilaginous character for the most part at the base and the sides, and remains membranous at the roof. at this part the bones of the subsequent osseous skull develop as external coverings over the membranous structure, without an intermediate cartilaginous stage, as there is at the base of the skull. thus a large part of the cranial bones develop originally as covering bones from the corium, and only secondarily come into close touch with the primitive skull (figure . ). we have previously seen how this very rudimentary beginning of the skull in man is formed ontogenetically from the "head-plates," and thus the fore end of the chorda is enclosed in the base of the skull. (cf. figs . and chapters . and . .) the phylogeny of the skull has made great progress during the last three decades through the joint attainments of comparative anatomy, ontogeny, and paleontology. by the judicious and comprehensive application of the phylogenetic method (in the sense of gegenbaur) we have found the key to the great and important problems that arise from the thorough comparative study of the skull. another school of research, the school of what is called "exact craniology" (in the sense of virchow), has, meantime, made fruitless efforts to obtain this result. we may gratefully acknowledge all that this descriptive school has done in the way of accurately describing the various forms and measurements of the human skull, as compared with those of other mammals. but the vast empirical material that it has accumulated in its extensive literature is mere dead and sterile erudition until it is vivified and illumined by phylogenetic speculation. virchow confined himself to the most careful analysis of large numbers of human skulls and those of anthropoid mammals. he saw only the differences between them, and sought to express these in figures. without adducing a single solid reason, or offering any alternative explanation, he rejected evolution as an unproved hypothesis. he played a most unfortunate part in the controversy as to the significance of the fossil human skulls of spy and neanderthal, and the comparison of them with the skull of the pithecanthropus (figure . ). all the interesting features of these skulls that clearly indicated the transition from the anthropoid to the man were declared by virchow to be chance pathological variations. he said that the roof of the skull of pithecanthropus (figure . , ) must have belonged to an ape, because so pronounced an orbital stricture (the horizontal constriction between the outer edge of the eye-orbit and the temples) is not found in any human being. immediately afterwards nehring showed in the skull of a brazilian indian (figure . , ), found in the sambaquis of santos, that this stricture can be even deeper in man than in many of the apes. it is very instructive in this connection to compare the roofs of the skulls (seen from above) of different primates. i have, therefore, arranged nine such skulls in figure . , and reduced them to a common size. (figure . . transverse section of a fish's tail (from the tunny). (from johannes muller.) a upper (dorsal) lateral muscles, a apostrophe, b apostrophe lower (ventral) lateral muscles, d vertebral bodies, b sections of incomplete conical mantle, b attachment lines of the inter-muscular ligaments (from the side).) we turn now to the branchial arches, which were regarded even by the earlier natural philosophers as "head-ribs." (cf. figures . to . ). of the four original gill-arches of the mammals the first lies between the primitive mouth and the first gill-cleft. from the base of this arch is formed the upper-jaw process, which joins with the inner and outer nasal processes on each side, in the manner we have previously explained, and forms the chief parts of the skeleton of the upper jaw (palate bone, pterygoid bone, etc.) (cf. chapter . .) the remainder of the first branchial arch, which is now called, by way of contrast, the "upper-jaw process," forms from its base two of the ear-ossicles (hammer and anvil), and as to the rest is converted into a long strip of cartilage that is known, after its discoverer, as "meckel's cartilage," or the promandibula. at the outer surface of the latter is formed from the cellular matter of the corium, as covering or accessory bone, the permanent bony lower jaw. from the first part or base of the second branchial arch we get, in the mammals, the third ossicle of the ear, the stirrup; and from the succeeding parts we get (in this order) the muscle of the stirrup, the styloid process of the temporal bone, the styloid-hyoid ligament, and the little horn of the hyoid bone. the third branchial arch is only cartilaginous at the foremost part, and here the body of the hyoid bone and its larger horn are formed at each side by the junction of its two halves. the fourth branchial arch is only found transitorily in the mammal embryo as a rudimentary organ, and does not develop special parts; and there is no trace in the embryo of the higher vertebrates of the posterior branchial arches (fifth and sixth pair), which are permanent in the selachii. they have been lost long ago. moreover, the four gill-clefts of the human embryo are only interesting as rudimentary organs, and they soon close up and disappear. the first alone (between the first and second branchial arches) has any permanent significance; from it are developed the tympanic cavity and the eustachian tube. (cf. figures . and . .) it was carl gegenbaur again who solved the difficult problem of tracing the skeleton of the limbs of the vertebrates to a common type. few parts of the vertebrate body have undergone such infinitely varied modifications in regard to size, shape, and adaptation of structure as the limbs or extremities; yet we are in a position to reduce them all to the same hereditary standard. we may generally distinguish three groups among the vertebrates in relation to the formation of their limbs. the lowest and earliest vertebrates, the acrania and cyclostomes, had, like their invertebrate ancestors, no pairs of limbs, as we see in the amphioxus and the cyclostomes to-day (figures . and . ). the second group is formed of the two classes of the true fishes and the dipneusts; here there are always two pairs of limbs at first, in the shape of many-toed fins--one pair of breast-fins or fore legs, and one pair of belly-fins or hind legs (figures . to . ). the third group comprises the four higher classes of vertebrates--the amphibia, reptiles, birds, and mammals; in these quadrupeds there are at first the same two pairs of limbs, but in the shape of five-toed feet. frequently we find less than five toes, and sometimes the feet are wholly atrophied (as in the serpents). but the original stem-form of the group had five toes or fingers before and behind (figures . to . ). the true primitive form of the pairs of limbs, such as they were found in the primitive fishes of the silurian period, is preserved for us in the australian dipneust, the remarkable ceratodus (figure . ). both the breast-fin and the belly-fin are flat oval paddles, in which we find a biserial cartilaginous skeleton (figure . ). this consists, firstly, of a much segmented fin-rod or "stem" (a, b), which runs through the fin from base to tip; and secondly of a double row of thin articulated fin-radii (r, r), which are attached to both sides of the fin-rod, like the feathers of a feathered leaf. this primitive fin, which gegenbaur first recognised, is attached to the vertebral column by a simple zone in the shape of a cartilaginous arch. it has probably originated from the branchial arches.* (* while gegenbaur derives the fins from two pairs of posterior separated branchial arches, balfour holds that they have been developed from segments of a pair of originally continuous lateral fins or folds of the skin.) we find the same biserial primitive fin more or less preserved in the fossilised remains of the earliest selachii (figure . ), ganoids (figure . ), and dipneusts (figure . ). it is also found in modified form in some of the actual sharks and pikes. but in the majority of the selachii it has already degenerated to the extent that the radii on one side of the fin-rod have been partly or entirely lost, and are retained only on the other (figure . ). we thus get the uniserial fin, which has been transmitted from the selachii to the rest of the fishes (figure . ). (figure . . human skeleton. (cf. figure . .) figure . . skeleton of the giant gorilla. (cf. figure . .)) gegenbaur has shown how the five-toed leg of the amphibia, that has been inherited by the three classes of amniotes, was evolved from the uniserial fish-fin.* (* the limb of the four higher classes of vertebrates is now explained in the sense that the original fin-rod passes along its outer (ulnar or fibular) side, and ends in the fifth toe. it was formerly believed to go along the inner (radial or tibial) side, and end in the first toe, as figure . shows.) in the dipneust ancestors of the amphibia the radii gradually atrophy, and are lost, for the most part, on the other side of the fin-rod as well (the lighter cartilages in figure . ). only the four lowest radii (shaded in the illustration) are preserved; and these are the four inner toes of the foot (first to fourth). the little or fifth toe is developed from the lower end of the fin-rod. from the middle and upper part of the fin-rod was developed the long stem of the limb--the important radius and ulna (figure . r and u) and humerus (h) of the higher vertebrates. in this way the five-toed foot of the amphibia, which we first meet in the carboniferous stegocephala (figure . ), and which was inherited from them by the reptiles on one side and the mammals on the other, was formed by gradual degeneration and differentiation from the many-toed fish-fin (figure . ). the reduction of the radii to four was accompanied by a further differentiation of the fin-rod, its transverse segmentation into upper and lower halves, and the formation of the zone of the limb, which is composed originally of three limbs before and behind in the higher vertebrates. the simple arch of the original shoulder-zone divides on each side into an upper (dorsal) piece, the shoulder-blade (scapula), and a lower (ventral) piece; the anterior part of the latter forms the primitive clavicle (procoracoideum), and the posterior part the coracoideum. in the same way the simple arch of the pelvic zone breaks up into an upper (dorsal) piece, the iliac-bone (os ilium), and a lower (ventral) piece; the anterior part of the latter forms the pubic bone (os pubis), and the posterior the ischial bone (os ischii). there is also a complete agreement between the fore and hind limb in the stem or shaft. the first section of the stem is supported by a single strong bone--the humerus in the fore, the femur in the hind limb. the second section contains two bones: in front the radius (r) and ulna (u), behind the tibia and fibula. (cf. the skeletons in figures . , . , . , . to . , and . .) the succeeding numerous small bones of the wrist (carpus) and ankle (tarsus) are also similarly arranged in the fore and hind extremities, and so are the five bones of the middle-hand (metacarpus) and middle-foot (metatarsus). finally, it is the same with the toes themselves, which have a similar characteristic composition from a series of bony pieces before and behind. we find a complete parallel in all the parts of the fore leg and the hind leg. when we thus learn from comparative anatomy that the skeleton of the human limbs is composed of just the same bones, put together in the same way, as the skeleton in the four higher classes of vertebrates, we may at once infer a common descent of them from a single stem-form. this stem-form was the earliest amphibian that had five toes on each foot. it is particularly the outer parts of the limbs that have been modified by adaptation to different conditions. we need only recall the immense variations they offer within the mammal class. we have the slender legs of the deer and the strong springing legs of the kangaroo, the climbing feet of the sloth and the digging feet of the mole, the fins of the whale and the wings of the bat. it will readily be granted that these organs of locomotion differ as much in regard to size, shape, and special function as can be conceived. nevertheless, the bony skeleton is substantially the same in every case. in the different limbs we always find the same characteristic bones in essentially the same rigidly hereditary connection; this is as splendid a proof of the theory of evolution as comparative anatomy can discover in any organ of the body. it is true that the skeleton of the limbs of the various mammals undergoes many distortions and degenerations besides the special adaptations (figure . ). thus we find the first finger or the thumb atrophied in the fore-foot (or hand) of the dog (ii). it has entirely disappeared in the pig (iii) and tapir (v). in the ruminants (such as the ox, iv) the second and fifth toes are also atrophied, and only the third and fourth are well developed (vi, ). nevertheless, all these different fore-feet, as well as the hand of the ape (figure . ) and of man (figure . ), were originally developed from a common pentadactyle stem-form. this is proved by the rudiments of the degenerated toes, and by the similarity of the arrangement of the wrist-bones in all the pentanomes (figure . a to p). if we candidly compare the bony skeleton of the human arm and hand with that of the nearest anthropoid apes, we find an almost perfect identity. this is especially true of the chimpanzee. in regard to the proportions of the various parts, the lowest living races of men (the veddahs of ceylon, figure . ) are midway between the chimpanzee (figure . ) and the european (figure . ). more considerable are the differences in structure and the proportions of the various parts between the different genera of anthropoid apes (figures . to . ); and still greater is the morphological distance between these and the lowest apes (the cynopitheca). here, again, impartial and thorough anatomic comparison confirms the accuracy of huxley's pithecometra principle (chapter . ). the complete unity of structure which is thus revealed by the comparative anatomy of the limbs is fully confirmed by their embryology. however different the extremities of the four-footed craniotes may be in their adult state, they all develop from the same rudimentary structure. in every case the first trace of the limb in the embryo is a very simple protuberance that grows out of the side of the hyposoma. these simple structures develop directly into fins in the fishes and dipneusts by differentiation of their cells. in the higher classes of vertebrates each of the four takes the shape in its further growth of a leaf with a stalk, the inner half becoming narrower and thicker and the outer half broader and thinner. the inner half (the stalk of the leaf) then divides into two sections--the upper and lower parts of the limb. afterwards four shallow indentations are formed at the free edge of the leaf, and gradually deepen; these are the intervals between the five toes (figure . ). the toes soon make their appearance. but at first all five toes, both of fore and hind feet, are connected by a thin membrane like a swimming-web; they remind us of the original shaping of the foot as a paddling fin. the further development of the limbs from this rudimentary structure takes place in the same way in all the vertebrates according to the laws of heredity. the embryonic development of the muscles, or active organs of locomotion, is not less interesting than that of the skeleton, or passive organs. but the comparative anatomy and ontogeny of the muscular system are much more difficult and inaccessible, and consequently have hitherto been less studied. we can therefore only draw some general phylogenetic conclusions therefrom. it is incontestable that the musculature of the vertebrates has been evolved from that of lower invertebrates; and among these we have to consider especially the unarticulated vermalia. they have a simple cutaneous muscular layer, developing from the mesoderm. this was afterwards replaced by a pair of internal lateral muscles, that developed from the middle wall of the coelom-pouches; we still find the first rudiments of the muscles arising from the muscle-plate of these in the embryos of all the vertebrates (cf. figures . , . to . , . to . mp). in the unarticulated stem-forms of the chordonia, which we have called the prochordonia, the two coelom-pouches, and therefore also the muscle-plates of their walls, were not yet segmented. a great advance was made in the articulation of them, as we have followed it step by step in the amphioxus (figures . and . ). this segmentation of the muscles was the momentous historical process with which vertebration, and the development of the vertebrate stem, began. the articulation of the skeleton came after this segmentation of the muscular system, and the two entered into very close correlation. the episomites or dorsal coelom-pouches of the acrania, cyclostomes, and selachii (figure . h) first develop from their inner or median wall (from the cell-layer that lies directly on the skeletal plate [sk] and the medullary tube [nr]) a strong muscle-plate (mp). by dorsal growth (w) it also reaches the external wall of the coelom-pouches, and proceeds from the dorsal to the ventral wall. from these segmental muscle-plates, which are chiefly concerned in the segmentation of the vertebrates, proceed the lateral muscles of the stem, as we find in the simplest form in the amphioxus (figure . ). by the formation of a horizontal frontal septum they divide on each side into an upper and lower series of myotomes, dorsal and ventral lateral muscles. this is seen with typical regularity in the transverse section of the tail of a fish (figure . ). from these earlier lateral muscles of the trunk develop the greater part of the subsequent muscles of the trunk, and also the much later "muscular buds" of the limbs.* (* the ontogeny of the muscles is mostly cenogenetic. the greater part of the muscles of the head (or the visceral muscles) belong originally to the hyposoma of the vertebrate organism, and develop from the wall of the hyposomites or ventral coelom-pouches. this also applies originally to the primary muscles of the limbs, as these too belong phylogenetically to the hyposoma. (cf. chapter . )) chapter . . the evolution of the alimentary system. the chief of the vegetal organs of the human frame, to the evolution of which we now turn our attention, is the alimentary canal. the gut is the oldest of all the organs of the metazoic body, and it leads us back to the earliest age of the formation of organs--to the first section of the laurentian period. as we have already seen, the result of the first division of labour among the homogeneous cells of the earliest multicellular animal body was the formation of an alimentary cavity. the first duty and first need of every organism is self-preservation. this is met by the functions of the nutrition and the covering of the body. when, therefore, in the primitive globular blastaea the homogeneous cells began to effect a division of labour, they had first to meet this twofold need. one half were converted into alimentary cells and enclosed a digestive cavity, the gut. the other half became covering cells, and formed an envelope round the alimentary tube and the whole body. thus arose the primary germinal layers--the inner, alimentary, or vegetal layer, and the outer, covering, or animal layer. (cf. chapter . .) when we try to construct an animal frame of the simplest conceivable type, that has some such primitive alimentary canal and the two primary layers constituting its wall, we inevitably come to the very remarkable embryonic form of the gastrula, which we have found with extraordinary persistence throughout the whole range of animals, with the exception of the unicellulars--in the sponges, cnidaria, platodes, vermalia, molluscs, articulates, echinoderms, tunicates, and vertebrates. in all these stems the gastrula recurs in the same very simple form. it is certainly a remarkable fact that the gastrula is found in various animals as a larva-stage in their individual development, and that this gastrula, though much disguised by cenogenetic modifications, has everywhere essentially the same palingenetic structure (figures . to . ). the elaborate alimentary canal of the higher animals develops ontogenetically from the same simple primitive gut of the gastrula. this gastraea theory is now accepted by nearly all zoologists. it was first supported and partly modified by professor ray-lankester; he proposed three years afterwards (in his essay on the development of the molluscs, ) to give the name of archenteron to the primitive gut and blastoporus to the primitive mouth. before we follow the development of the human alimentary canal in detail, it is necessary to say a word about the general features of its composition in the fully-developed man. the mature alimentary canal in man is constructed in all its main features like that of all the higher mammals, and particularly resembles that of the catarrhines, the narrow-nosed apes of the old world. the entrance into it, the mouth, is armed with thirty-two teeth, fixed in rows in the upper and lower jaws. as we have seen, our dentition is exactly the same as that of the catarrhines, and differs from that of all other animals (chapter . ). above the mouth-cavity is the double nasal cavity; they are separated by the palate-wall. but we saw that this separation is not there from the first, and that originally there is a common mouth-nasal cavity in the embryo; and this is only divided afterwards by the hard palate into two--the nasal cavity above and that of the mouth below (figure . ). at the back the cavity of the mouth is half closed by the vertical curtain that we call the soft palate, in the middle of which is the uvula. a glance into a mirror with the mouth wide open will show its shape. the uvula is interesting because, besides man, it is only found in the ape. at each side of the soft palate are the tonsils. through the curved opening that we find underneath the soft palate we penetrate into the gullet or pharynx behind the mouth-cavity. into this opens on either side a narrow canal (the eustachian tube), through which there is direct communication with the tympanic cavity of the ear (figure . e). the pharynx is continued in a long, narrow tube, the oesophagus (sr). by this the food passes into the stomach when masticated and swallowed. into the gullet also opens, right above, the trachea (lr), that leads to the lungs. the entrance to it is covered by the epiglottis, over which the food slides. the cartilaginous epiglottis is found only in the mammals, and has developed from the fourth branchial arch of the fishes and amphibia. the lungs are found, in man and all the mammals, to the right and left in the pectoral cavity, with the heart between them. at the upper end of the trachea there is, under the epiglottis, a specially differentiated part, strengthened by a cartilaginous skeleton, the larynx. this important organ of human speech also develops from a part of the alimentary canal. in front of the larynx is the thyroid gland, which sometimes enlarges and forms goitre. the oesophagus descends into the pectoral cavity along the vertebral column, behind the lungs and the heart, pierces the diaphragm, and enters the visceral cavity. the diaphragm is a membrano-muscular partition that completely separates the thoracic from the abdominal cavity in all the mammals (and these alone). this separation is not found in the beginning; there is at first a common breast-belly cavity, the coeloma or pleuro-peritoneal cavity. the diaphragm is formed later on as a muscular horizontal partition between the thoracic and abdominal cavities. it then completely separates the two cavities, and is only pierced by several organs that pass from the one to the other. one of the chief of these organs is the oesophagus. after this has passed through the diaphragm, it expands into the gastric sac in which digestion chiefly takes place. the stomach of the adult man (figure . ) is a long, somewhat oblique sac, expanding on the left into a blind sac, the fundus of the stomach (b apostrophe), but narrowing on the right, and passing at the pylorus (e) into the small intestine. at this point there is a valve, the pyloric valve (d), between the two sections of the canal; it opens only when the pulpy food passes from the stomach into the intestine. in man and the higher vertebrates the stomach itself is the chief organ of digestion, and is especially occupied with the solution of the food; this is not the case in many of the lower vertebrates, which have no stomach, and discharge its function by a part of the gut farther on. the muscular wall of the stomach is comparatively thick; it has externally strong muscles that accomplish the digestive movements, and internally a large quantity of small glands, the peptic glands, which secrete the gastric juice. (figure . . human stomach and duodenum, longitudinal section. a cardiac (end of oesophagus), b fundus (blind sac of the left side), c pylorus-fold, d pylorus-valves, e pylorus-cavity, fgh duodenum, i entrance of the gall-duct and the pancreatic duct. (from meyer.) figure . . median section of the head of a hare-embryo, one-fourth of an inch in length. (from mihalcovics.) the deep mouth-cleft (hp) is separated by the membrane of the throat (rh) from the blind cavity of the head-gut (kd). hz heart, ch chorda, hp the point at which the hypophysis develops from the mouth-cleft, vh ventricle of the cerebrum, v , third ventricle (intermediate brain), v fourth ventricle (hind brain), ck spinal canal.) next to the stomach comes the longest section of the alimentary canal, the middle gut or small intestine. its chief function is to absorb the peptonised fluid mass of food, or the chyle, and it is subdivided into several sections, of which the first (next to the stomach) is called the duodenum (figure . fgh). it is a short, horseshoe-shaped loop of the gut. the largest glands of the alimentary canal open into it--the liver, the chief digestive gland, that secretes the gall, and the pancreas, which secretes the pancreatic juice. the two glands pour their secretions, the bile and pancreatic juice, close together into the duodenum (i). the opening of the gall-duct is of particular phylogenetic importance, as it is the same in all the vertebrates, and indicates the principal point of the hepatic or trunk-gut (gegenbaur). the liver, phylogenetically older than the stomach, is a large gland, rich in blood, in the adult man, immediately under the diaphragm on the left side, and separated by it from the lungs. the pancreas lies a little further back and more to the left. the remaining part of the small intestine is so long that it has to coil itself in many folds in order to find room in the narrow space of the abdominal cavity. it is divided into the jejunum above and the ileum below. in the last section of it is the part of the small intestine at which in the embryo the yelk-sac opens into the gut. this long and thin intestine then passes into the large intestine, from which it is cut off by a special valve. immediately behind this "bauhin-valve" the first part of the large intestine forms a wide, pouch-like structure, the caecum. the atrophied end of the caecum is the famous rudimentary organ, the vermiform appendix. the large intestine (colon) consists of three parts--an ascending part on the right, a transverse middle part, and a descending part on the left. the latter finally passes through an s-shaped bend into the last section of the alimentary canal, the rectum, which opens behind by the anus. both the large and small intestines are equipped with numbers of small glands, which secrete mucous and other fluids. for the greater part of its length the alimentary canal is attached to the inner dorsal surface of the abdominal cavity, or to the lower surface of the vertebral column. the fixing is accomplished by means of the thin membranous plate that we call the mesentery. although the fully-formed alimentary canal is thus a very elaborate organ, and although in detail it has a quantity of complex structural features into which we cannot enter here, nevertheless the whole complicated structure has been historically evolved from the very simple form of the primitive gut that we find in our gastraead-ancestors, and that every gastrula brings before us to-day. we have already pointed out (chapter . ) how the epigastrula of the mammals (figure . ) can be reduced to the original type of the bell-gastrula, which is now preserved by the amphioxus alone (figure . ). like the latter, the human gastrula and that of all other mammals must be regarded as the ontogenetic reproduction of the phylogenetic form that we call the gastraea, in which the whole body is nothing but a double-walled gastric sac. we already know from embryology the manner in which the gut develops in the embryo of man and the other mammals. from the gastrula is first formed the spherical embryonic vesicle filled with fluid (gastrocystis, figure . ). in the dorsal wall of this the sole-shaped embryonic shield is developed, and on the under-side of this a shallow groove appears in the middle line, the first trace of the later, secondary alimentary tube. the gut-groove becomes deeper and deeper, and its edges bend towards each other, and finally form a tube. as we have seen, this simple cylindrical gut-tube is at first completely closed before and behind in man and in the vertebrates generally (figure . ); the permanent openings of the alimentary canal, the mouth and anus, are only formed later on, and from the outer skin. a mouth-pit appears in the skin in front (figure . hp), and this grows towards the blind fore-end of the cavity of the head-gut (kd), and at length breaks into it. in the same way a shallow anus-pit is formed in the skin behind, which grows deeper and deeper, advances towards the blind hinder end of the pelvic gut, and at last connects with it. there is at first, both before and behind, a thin partition between the external cutaneous pit and the blind end of the gut--the throat-membrane in front and the anus-membrane behind; these disappear when the connection takes place. directly in front of the anus-opening the allantois develops from the hind gut; this is the important embryonic structure that forms into the placenta in the placentals (including man). in this more advanced form the human alimentary canal (and that of all the other mammals) is a slightly bent, cylindrical tube, with an opening at each end, and two appendages growing from its lower wall: the anterior one is the umbilical vesicle or yelk-sac, and the posterior the allantois or urinary sac (figure . ). the thin wall of this simple alimentary tube and its ventral appendages is found, on microscopic examination, to consist of two strata of cells. the inner stratum, lining the entire cavity, consists of larger and darker cells, and is the gut-gland layer. the outer stratum consists of smaller and lighter cells, and is the gut-fibre layer. the only exception is in the cavities of the mouth and anus, because these originate from the skin. the inner coat of the mouth-cavity is not provided by the gut-gland layer, but by the skin-sense layer; and its muscular substratum is provided, not by the gut-fibre, but the skin-fibre, layer. it is the same with the wall of the small anus-cavity. if it is asked how these constituent layers of the primitive gut-wall are related to the various tissues and organs that we find afterwards in the fully-developed system, the answer is very simple. it can be put in a single sentence. the epithelium of the gut--that is to say, the internal soft stratum of cells that lines the cavity of the alimentary canal and all its appendages, and is immediately occupied with the processes of nutrition--is formed solely from the gut-gland layer; all other tissues and organs that belong to the alimentary canal and its appendages originate from the gut-fibre layer. from the latter is also developed the whole of the outer envelope of the gut and its appendages; the fibrous connective tissue and the smooth muscles that compose its muscular layer, the cartilages that support it (such as the cartilages of the larynx and the trachea), the blood-vessels and lymph-vessels that absorb the nutritive fluid from the intestines--in a word, all that there is in the alimentary system besides the epithelium of the gut. from the same layer we also get the whole of the mesentery, with all the organs embedded in it--the heart, the large blood-vessels of the body, etc. (figure . . scales or cutaneous teeth of a shark (centrophorus calceus). a three-pointed tooth rises obliquely on each of the quadrangular bony plates that lie in the corium. (from gegenbaur.)) let us now leave this original structure of the mammal gut for a moment, in order to compare it with the alimentary canal of the lower vertebrates, and of those invertebrates that we have recognised as man's ancestors. we find, first of all, in the lowest metazoa, the gastraeads, that the gut remains permanently in the very simple form in which we find it transitorily in the palingenetic gastrula of the other animals; it is thus in the gastremaria (pemmatodiscus), the physemaria (prophysema), the simplest sponges (olynthus), the freshwater polyps (hydra), and the ascula-embryos of many other coelenteria (figures . to . ). even in the simplest forms of the platodes, the rhabdocoela (figure . ), the gut is still a simple straight tube, lined with the entoderm; but with the important difference that in this case its single opening, the primitive mouth (m), has formed a muscular gullet (sd) by invagination of the skin. (figure . . gut of a human embryo, one-sixth of an inch long, magnified fifteen times. (from his. showing: epiglottis, tongue, hypophysis, hepatic duct, tail, allantoic duct, tail-gut, umbilical cord, larynx, rudimentary lungs, stomach, pancreas, bladder, wolffian duct, rudimentary kidneys.)) we have the same simple form in the gut of the lowest vermalia (gastrotricha, figure . , nematodes, sagitta, etc.). but in these a second important opening of the gut has been formed at the opposite end to the mouth, the anus (figure . a). we see a great advance in the structure of the vermalian gut in the remarkable balanoglossus (figure . ), the sole survivor of the enteropneust class. here we have the first appearance of the division of the alimentary tube into two sections that characterises the chordonia. the fore half, the head-gut (cephalogaster), becomes the organ of respiration (branchial gut, figure . k); the hind half, the trunk-gut (truncogaster), alone acts as digestive organ (hepatic gut, d). the differentiation of these two parts of the gut in the enteropneust is just the same as in all the tunicates and vertebrates. it is particularly interesting and instructive in this connection to compare the enteropneusts with the ascidia and the amphioxus (figures . and . )--the remarkable animals that form the connecting link between the invertebrates and the vertebrates. in both forms the gut is of substantially the same construction; the anterior section forms the respiratory branchial gut, the posterior the digestive hepatic gut. in both it develops palingenetically from the primitive gut of the gastrula, and in both the hinder end of the medullary tube covers the primitive mouth to such an extent that the remarkable medullary intestinal duct is formed, the passing communication between the neural and intestinal tubes (canalis neurentericus, figures . and . ne). in the vicinity of the closed primitive mouth, possibly in its place, the later anus is developed. in the same way the mouth is a fresh formation in the amphioxus and the ascidia. it is the same with the human mouth and that of the craniotes generally. the secondary formation of the mouth in the chordonia is probably connected with the development of the gill-clefts which are formed in the gut-wall immediately behind the mouth. in this way the anterior section of the gut is converted into a respiratory organ. i have already pointed out that this modification is distinctive of the vertebrates and tunicates. the phylogenetic appearance of the gill-clefts indicates the commencement of a new epoch in the stem-history of the vertebrates. in the further ontogenetic development of the alimentary canal in the human embryo the appearance of the gill-clefts is the most important process. at a very early stage the gullet-wall joins with the external body-wall in the head of the human embryo, and this is followed by the formation of four clefts, which lead directly into the gullet from without, on the right and left sides of the neck, behind the mouth. these are the gill or gullet clefts, and the partitions that separate them are the gill or gullet-arches (figure . ). these are most interesting embryonic structures. they show us that all the higher vertebrates reproduce in their earlier stages, in harmony with the biogenetic law, the process that had so important a part in the rise of the whole chordonia-stem. this process was the differentiation of the gut into two sections--an anterior respiratory section, the branchial gut, that was restricted to breathing, and a posterior digestive section, the hepatic gut. as we find this highly characteristic differentiation of the gut into two different sections in all the vertebrates and all the tunicates, we may conclude that it was also found in their common ancestors, the prochordonia--especially as even the enteropneusts have it. (cf. chapters . , . and . , and figures . , . , . .) it is entirely wanting in all the other invertebrates. (figure . . gut of a dog-embryo (shown in figure . , from bischoff), seen from the ventral side, a gill-arches (four pairs), b rudiments of pharynx and larynx, c lungs, d stomach, f liver, g walls of the open yelk-sac (into which the middle gut opens with a wide aperture), h rectum. figure . . the same gut seen from the right. a lungs, b stomach, c liver, d yelk-sac, e rectum.) there is at first only one pair of gill-clefts in the amphioxus, as in the ascidia and enteropneusts; and the copelata (figure . ) have only one pair throughout life. but the number presently increases in the former. in the craniotes, however, it decreases still further. the cyclostomes have six to eight pairs (figure . ); some of the selachii six or seven pairs, most of the fishes only four or five pairs. in the embryo of man, and the higher vertebrates generally, where they make an appearance at an early stage, only three or four pairs are developed. in the fishes they remain throughout life, and form an exit for the water taken in at the mouth (figures . to . ). but they are partly lost in the amphibia, and entirely in the higher vertebrates. in these nothing is left but a relic of the first gill-cleft. this is formed into a part of the organ of hearing; from it are developed the external meatus, the tympanic cavity, and the eustachian tube. we have already considered these remarkable structures, and need only point here to the interesting fact that our middle and external ear is a modified inheritance from the fishes. the branchial arches also, which separate the clefts, develop into very different parts. in the fishes they remain gill-arches, supporting the respiratory gill-leaves. it is the same with the lowest amphibia, but in the higher amphibia they undergo various modifications; and in the three higher classes of vertebrates (including man) the hyoid bone and the ossicles of the ear develop from them. (cf. chapter . .) (figure . . median section of the head of a petromyzon-larva. (from gegenbaur,) h hypobranchial groove (above it in the gullet we see the internal openings of the seven gill-clefts), v velum, o mouth, c heart, a auditory vesicle, n neural tube, ch chorda.) from the first gill-arch, from the inner surface of which the muscular tongue proceeds, we get the first structure of the maxillary skeleton--the upper and lower jaws, which surround the mouth and support the teeth. these important parts are wholly wanting in the two lowest classes of vertebrates, the acrania and cyclostoma. they appear first in the earliest selachii (figures . to . ), and have been transmitted from this stem-group of the gnathostomes to the higher vertebrates. hence the original formation of the skeleton of the mouth can be traced to these primitive fishes, from which we have inherited it. the teeth are developed from the skin that clothes the jaws. as the whole mouth cavity originates from the outer integument (figure . ), the teeth also must come from it. as a fact, this is found to be the case on microscopic examination of the development and finer structure of the teeth. the scales of the fishes, especially of the shark type (figure . ), are in the same position as their teeth in this respect (figure . ). the osseous matter of the tooth (dentine) develops from the corium; its enamel covering is a secretion of the epidermis that covers the corium. it is the same with the cutaneous teeth or placoid scales of the selachii. at first the whole of the mouth was armed with these cutaneous teeth in the selachii and in the earliest amphibia. afterwards the formation of them was restricted to the edges of the jaws. hence our human teeth are, in relation to their original source, modified fish-scales. for the same reason we must regard the salivary glands, which open into the mouth, as epidermic glands, as they are formed, not from the glandular layer of the gut like the rest of the alimentary glands, but from the epidermis, from the horny plate of the outer germinal layer. naturally, in harmony with this evolution of the mouth, the salivary glands belong genetically to one series with the sudoriferous, sebaceous, and mammary glands. thus the human alimentary canal is as simple as the primitive gut of the gastrula in its original structure. later it resembles the gut of the earliest vermalia (gastrotricha). it then divides into two sections, a fore or branchial gut and a hind or hepatic gut, like the alimentary canal of the balanoglossus, the ascidia, and the amphioxus. the formation of the jaws and the branchial arches changes it into a real fish-gut (selachii). but the branchial gut, the one reminiscence of our fish-ancestors, is afterwards atrophied as such. the parts of it that remain are converted into entirely different structures. (figure . . transverse section of the head of a petromyzon-larva. (from gegenbaur.) beneath the pharynx (d) we see the hypobranchial groove; above it the chorda and neural tube. a, b, c stages of constriction.) but, although the anterior section of our alimentary canal thus entirely loses its original character of branchial gut, it retains the physiological character of respiratory gut. we are now astonished to find that the permanent respiratory organ of the higher vertebrates, the air-breathing lung, is developed from this first part of the alimentary canal. our lungs, trachea, and larynx are formed from the ventral wall of the branchial gut. the whole of the respiratory apparatus, which occupies the greater part of the pectoral cavity in the adult man, is at first merely a small pair of vesicles or sacs, which grow out of the floor of the head-gut immediately behind the gills (figures . c, . l). these vesicles are found in all the vertebrates except the two lowest classes, the acrania and cyclostomes. in the lower vertebrates they do not develop into lungs, but into a large air-filled bladder, which occupies a good deal of the body-cavity and has a quite different purport. it serves, not for breathing, but to effect swimming movements up and down, and so is a sort of hydrostatic apparatus--the floating bladder of the fishes (nectocystis, chapter . ). however, the human lungs, and those of all air-breathing vertebrates, develop from the same simple vesicular appendage of the head-gut that becomes the floating bladder in the fishes. at first this bladder has no respiratory function, but merely acts as hydrostatic apparatus for the purpose of increasing or lessening the specific gravity of the body. the fishes, which have a fully-developed floating bladder, can press it together, and thus condense the air it contains. the air also escapes sometimes from the alimentary canal, through an air-duct that connects the floating bladder with the pharynx, and is ejected by the mouth. this lessens the size of the bladder, and so the fish becomes heavier and sinks. when it wishes to rise again, the bladder is expanded by relaxing the pressure. in many of the crossopterygii the wall of the bladder is covered with bony plates, as in the triassic undina (figure . ). this hydrostatic apparatus begins in the dipneusts to change into a respiratory organ; the blood-vessels in the wall of the bladder now no longer merely secrete air themselves, but also take in fresh air through the air-duct. this process reaches its full development in the amphibia. in these the floating bladder has turned into lungs, and the air-passage into a trachea. the lungs of the amphibia have been transmitted to the three higher classes of vertebrates. in the lowest amphibia the lungs on either side are still very simple transparent sacs with thin walls, as in the common water-salamander, the triton. it still entirely resembles the floating bladder of the fishes. it is true that the amphibia have two lungs, right and left. but the floating bladder is also double in many of the fishes (such as the early ganoids), and divides into right and left halves. on the other hand, the lung is single in ceratodus (figure . ). (figure . . thoracic and abdominal viscera of a human embryo of twelve weeks, natural size, (from kolliker.) the head is omitted. ventral and pectoral walls are removed. the greater part of the body-cavity is taken up with the liver, from the middle part of which the caecum and the vermiform appendix protrude. above the diaphragm, in the middle, is the conical heart; to the right and left of it are the two small lungs.) in the human embryo and that of all the other amniotes the lungs develop from the hind part of the ventral wall of the head-gut (figure . ). immediately behind the single structure of the thyroid gland a median groove, the rudiment of the trachea, is detached from the gullet. from its hinder end a couple of vesicles develop--the simple tubular rudiments of the right and left lungs. they afterwards increase considerably in size, fill the greater part of the thoracic cavity, and take the heart between them. even in the frogs we find that the simple sac has developed into a spongy body of peculiar froth-like tissue. the originally short connection of the pulmonary sacs with the head-gut extends into a long, thin tube. this is the wind-pipe (trachea); it opens into the gullet above, and divides below into two branches which go to the two lungs. in the wall of the trachea circular cartilages develop, and these keep it open. at its upper end, underneath its pharyngeal opening, the larynx is formed--the organ of voice and speech. the larynx is found at various stages of development in the amphibia, and comparative anatomists are in a position to trace the progressive growth of this important organ from the rudimentary structure of the lower amphibia up to the elaborate and delicate vocal apparatus that we have in the larynx of man and of the birds. we must refer here to an interesting rudimentary organ of the respiratory gut, the thyroid gland, the large gland in front of the larynx, that lies below the "adam's apple," and is often especially developed in the male sex. it has a certain function--not yet fully understood--in the nutrition of the body, and arises in the embryo by constriction from the lower wall of the pharynx. in many mining districts the thyroid gland is peculiarly liable to morbid enlargement, and then forms goitre, a growth that hangs at the front of the neck. but it is much more interesting phylogenetically. as wilhelm muller, of jena, has shown, this rudimentary organ is the last relic of the hypobranchial groove, which we considered in a previous chapter, and which runs in the middle line of the gill-crate in the ascidia and amphioxus, and conveys food to the stomach. (cf. chapter . , figure . ). we still find it in its original character in the larvae of the cyclostomes (figures . and . ). the second section of the alimentary canal, the trunk or hepatic gut, undergoes not less important modifications among our vertebrate ancestors than the first section. in tracing the further development of this digestive part of the gut, we find that most complex and elaborate organs originate from a very rudimentary original structure. for clearness we may divide the digestive gut into three sections: the fore gut (with oesophagus and stomach), the middle gut (duodenum, with liver, pancreas, jejunum, and ileum, and the hind gut (colon and rectum). here again we find vesicular growths or appendages of the originally simple gut developing into a variety of organs. two of these embryonic structures, the yelk-sac and allantois, are already known to us. the two large glands that open into the duodenum, the liver and pancreas, are growths from the middle and most important part of the trunk-gut. immediately behind the vesicular rudiments of the lungs comes the section of the alimentary canal that forms the stomach (figures . d and . b). this sac-shaped organ, which is chiefly responsible for the solution and digestion of the food, has not in the lower vertebrates the great physiological importance and the complex character that it has in the higher. in the acrania and cyclostomes and the earlier fishes we can scarcely distinguish a real stomach; it is represented merely by the short piece from the branchial to the hepatic gut. in some of the other fishes also the stomach is only a very simple spindle-shaped enlargement at the beginning of the digestive section of the gut, running straight from front to back in the median plane of the body, underneath the vertebral column. in the mammals its first structure is just as rudimentary as it is permanently in the preceding. but its various parts soon begin to develop. as the left side of the spindle-shaped sac grows much more quickly than the right, and as it turns considerably on its axis at the same time, it soon comes to lie obliquely. the upper end is more to the left, and the lower end more to the right. the foremost end draws up into the longer and narrower canal of the oesophagus. underneath this on the left the blind sac (fundus) of the stomach bulges out, and thus the later form gradually develops (figures . and . e). the original longitudinal axis becomes oblique, sinking below to the left and rising to the right, and approaches nearer and nearer to a transverse position. in the outer layer of the stomach-wall the powerful muscles that accomplish the digestive movements develop from the gut-fibre layer. in the inner layer a number of small glandular tubes are formed from the gut-gland layer; these are the peptic glands that secrete the gastric juice. at the lower end of the gastric sac is developed the valve that separates it from the duodenum (the pylorus, figure . d). underneath the stomach there now develops the disproportionately long stretch of the small intestine. the development of this section is very simple, and consists essentially in an extremely rapid and considerable growth lengthways. it is at first very short, quite straight, and simple. but immediately behind the stomach we find at an early stage a horseshoe-shaped bend and loop of the gut, in connection with the severance of the alimentary canal from the yelk-sac and the development of the first mesentery. the thin delicate membrane that fastens this loop to the ventral side of the vertebral column, and fills the inner bend of the horseshoe formation, is the first rudiment of the mesentery (figure . g). we find at an early stage a considerable growth of the small intestine; it is thus forced to coil itself in a number of loops. the various sections that we have to distinguish in it are differentiated in a very simple way--the duodenum (next to the stomach), the succeeding long jejunum, and the last section of the small intestine, the ileum. from the duodenum are developed the two large glands that we have already mentioned--the liver and pancreas. the liver appears first in the shape of two small sacs, that are found to the right and left immediately behind the stomach (figures . f, and . c). in many of the lower vertebrates they remain separate for a long time (in the myxinoides throughout life), or are only imperfectly joined. in the higher vertebrates they soon blend more or less completely to form a single large organ. the growth of the liver is very brisk at first. in the human embryo it grows so much in the second month of development that in the third it occupies by far the greater part of the body-cavity (figure . ). at first the two halves develop equally; afterwards the left falls far behind the right. in consequence of the unsymmetrical development and turning of the stomach and other abdominal viscera, the whole liver is now pushed to the right side. although the liver does not afterwards grow so disproportionately, it is comparatively larger in the embryo at the end of pregnancy than in the adult. its weight relatively to that of the whole body is : in the adult, and : in the embryo. hence it is very important physiologically during embryonic life; it is chiefly concerned in the formation of blood, not so much in the secretion of bile. immediately behind the liver a second large visceral gland develops from the duodenum, the pancreas or sweetbread. it is wanting in most of the lowest classes of vertebrates, and is first found in the fishes. this organ is also an outgrowth from the gut. the last section of the alimentary canal, the large intestine, is at first in the embryo a very simple, short, and straight tube, which opens behind by the anus. it remains thus throughout life in the lower vertebrates. but it grows considerably in the mammals, coils into various folds, and divides into two sections, the first and longer of which is the colon, and the second the rectum. at the beginning of the colon there is a valve (valvula bauhini) that separates it from the small intestine. immediately behind this there is a sac-like growth, which enlarges into the caecum (figure . v). in the plant-eating mammals this is very large, but it is very small or completely atrophied in the flesh-eaters. in man, and most of the apes, only the first portion of the caecum is wide; the blind end-part of it is very narrow, and seems later to be merely a useless appendage of the former. this "vermiform appendage" is very interesting as a rudimentary organ. the only significance of it in man is that not infrequently a cherry-stone or some other hard and indigestible matter penetrates into its narrow cavity, and by setting up inflammation and suppuration causes the death of otherwise sound men. teleology has great difficulty in giving a rational explanation of, and attributing to a beneficent providence, this dreaded appendicitis. in our plant-eating ancestors this rudimentary organ was much larger and had a useful function. finally, we have important appendages of the alimentary tube in the bladder and urethra, which belong to the alimentary system. these urinary organs, acting as reservoir and duct for the urine excreted by the kidneys, originate from the innermost part of the allantoic pedicle. in the dipneusts and amphibia, in which the allantoic sac first makes its appearance, it remains within the body-cavity, and functions entirely as bladder. but in all the amniotes it grows far outside of the body-cavity of the embryo, and forms the large embryonic "primitive bladder," from which the placenta develops in the higher mammals. this is lost at birth. but the long stalk or pedicle of the allantois remains, and forms with its upper part the middle vesico-umbilical ligament, a rudimentary organ that goes in the shape of a solid string from the vertex of the bladder to the navel. the lowest part of the allantoic pedicle (or the "urachus") remains hollow, and forms the bladder. at first this opens into the last section of the gut in man as in the lower vertebrates; thus there is a real cloaca, which takes off both urine and excrements. but among the mammals this cloaca is only permanent in the monotremes, as it is in all the birds, reptiles, and amphibia. in all the other mammals (marsupials and placentals) a transverse partition is afterwards formed, and this separates the urogenital aperture in front from the anus-opening behind. (cf. chapters . and . .) chapter . . evolution of the vascular system. the use that we have hitherto made of our biogenetic law will give the reader an idea how far we may trust its guidance in phylogenetic investigation. this differs considerably in the various systems of organs; the reason is that heredity and variability have a very different range in these systems. while some of them faithfully preserve the original palingenetic development inherited from earlier animal ancestors, others show little trace of this rigid heredity; they are rather disposed to follow new and divergent cenogenetic lines of development in consequence of adaptation. the organs of the first kind represent the conservative element in the multicellular state of the human frame, while the latter represent the progressive element. the course of historic development is a result of the correlation of the two tendencies, and they must be carefully distinguished. there is perhaps no other system of organs in the human body in which this is more necessary than in that of which we are now going to consider the obscure development--the vascular system, or apparatus of circulation. if we were to draw our conclusions as to the original features in our earlier animal ancestors solely from the phenomena of the development of this system in the embryo of man and the other higher vertebrates, we should be wholly misled. by a number of important embryonic adaptations, the chief of which is the formation of an extensive food-yelk, the original course of the development of the vascular system has been so much falsified and curtailed in the higher vertebrates that little or nothing now remains in their embryology of some of the principal phylogenetic features. we should be quite unable to explain these if comparative anatomy and ontogeny did not come to our assistance. the vascular system in man and all the craniotes is an elaborate apparatus of cavities filled with juices or cell-containing fluids. these "vessels" (vascula) play an important part in the nutrition of the body. they partly conduct the nutritive red blood to the various parts of the body (blood-vessels); partly absorb from the gut the white chyle formed in digestion (chyle-vessels); and partly collect the used-up juices and convey them away from the tissues (lymphatic vessels). with the latter are connected the large cavities of the body, especially the body-cavity, or coeloma. the lymphatic vessels conduct both the colourless lymph and the white chyle into the venous part of the circulation. the lymphatic glands act as producers of new blood-cells, and with them is associated the spleen. the centre of movement for the circulation of the fluids is the heart, a strong muscular sac, which contracts regularly and is equipped with valves like a pump. this constant and steady circulation of the blood makes possible the complex metabolism of the higher animals. but, however important the vascular system may be to the more advanced and larger and highly-differentiated animals, it is not at all so indispensable an element of animal life as is commonly supposed. the older science of medicine regarded the blood as the real source of life. even in the still prevalent confused notions of heredity the blood plays the chief part. people speak generally of full blood, half blood, etc., and imagine that the hereditary transmission of certain characters "lies in the blood." the incorrectness of these ideas is clearly seen from the fact that in the act of generation the blood of the parents is not directly transmitted to the offspring, nor does the embryo possess blood in its early stages. we have already seen that not only the differentiation of the four secondary germinal layers, but also the first structures of the principal organs in the embryo of all the vertebrates, take place long before there is any trace of the vascular system--the heart and the blood. in accordance with this ontogenetic fact, we must regard the vascular system as one of the latest organs from the phylogenetic point of view; just as we have found the alimentary canal to be one of the earliest. in any case, the vascular system is much later than the alimentary. (figure . . red blood-cells of various vertebrates (equally magnified). . of man, . camel, . dove, . proteus, . water-salamander (triton), . frog, . merlin (cobitis), . lamprey (petromyzon). a surface-view, b edge-view. (from wagner.) figure . . vascular tissues or endothelium (vasalium). a capillary from the mesentery. a vascular cells, b their nuclei.) the important nutritive fluid that circulates as blood and lymph in the elaborate canals of our vascular system is not a clear, simple fluid, but a very complex chemical juice with millions of cells floating in it. these blood-cells are just as important in the complicated life of the higher animal body as the circulation of money is to the commerce of a civilised community. just as the citizens meet their needs most conveniently by means of a financial circulation, so the various tissue-cells, the microscopic citizens of the multicellular human body, have their food conveyed to them best by the circulating cells in the blood. these blood cells (haemocytes) are of two kinds in man and all the other craniotes--red cells (rhodocytes or erythrocytes) and colourless or lymph cells (leucocytes). the red colour of the blood is caused by the great accumulation of the former, the others circulate among them in much smaller quantity. when the colourless cells increase at the expense of the red we get anaemia (or chlorosis). (figure . . transverse section of the trunk of a chick-embryo, forty-five hours old. (from balfour.) a ectoderm (horny-plate), mc medullary tube, ch chorda, c entoderm (gut-gland layer), pv primitive segment (episomite), wd prorenal duct, pp coeloma (secondary body-cavity). so skin-fibre layer, sp gut-fibre layer, v blood-vessels in latter, ao primitive aortas, containing red blood-cells.) the lymph-cells (leucocytes), commonly called the "white corpuscles" of the blood, are phylogenetically older and more widely distributed in the animal world than the red. the great majority of the invertebrates that have acquired an independent vascular system have only colourless lymph-cells in the circulating fluid. there is an exception in the nemertines (figure . ) and some groups of annelids. when we examine the colourless blood of a cray-fish or a snail (figure . ) under a high power of the microscope, we find in each drop numbers of mobile leucocytes, which behave just like independent amoebae (figure . ). like these unicellular protozoa, the colourless blood-cells creep slowly about, their unshapely plasma-body constantly changing its form, and stretching out finger-like processes first in one direction, then another. like the amoebae, they take particles into their cell-body. on account of this feature these amoeboid plastids are called "eating cells" (phagocytes), and on account of their motions "travelling cells" (planocytes). it has been shown by the discoveries of the last few decades that these leucocytes are of the greatest physiological and pathological consequence to the organism. they can absorb either solid or dissolved particles from the wall of the gut, and convey them to the blood in the chyle; they can absorb and remove unusable matter from the tissues. when they pass in large quantities through the fine pores of the capillaries and accumulate at irritated spots, they cause inflammation. they can consume and destroy bacteria, the dreaded vehicles of infectious diseases; but they can also transport these injurious monera to fresh regions, and so extend the sphere of infection. it is probable that the sensitive and travelling leucocytes of our invertebrate ancestors have powerfully co-operated for millions of years in the phylogenesis of the advancing animal organisation. the red blood-cells have a much more restricted sphere of distribution and activity. but they also are very important in connection with certain functions of the craniote-organism, especially the exchange of gases or respiration. the cells of the dark red, carbonised or venous, blood, which have absorbed carbonic acid from the animal tissues, give this off in the respiratory organs; they receive instead of it fresh oxygen, and thus bring about the bright red colour that distinguishes oxydised or arterial blood. the red colouring matter of the blood (haemoglobin) is regularly distributed in the pores of their protoplasm. the red cells of most of the vertebrates are elliptical flat disks, and enclose a nucleus of the same shape; they differ a good deal in size (figure . ). the mammals are distinguished from the other vertebrates by the circular form of their biconcave red cells and by the absence of a nucleus (figure . ); only a few genera still have the elliptic form inherited from the reptiles (figure . ). in the embryos of the mammals the red cells have a nucleus and the power of increasing by cleavage (figure . ). the origin of the blood-cells and vessels in the embryo, and their relation to the germinal layers and tissues, are among the most difficult problems of ontogeny--those obscure questions on which the most divergent opinions are still advanced by the most competent scientists. in general, it is certain that the greater part of the cells that compose the vessels and their contents come from the mesoderm--in fact, from the gut-fibre layer; it was on this account that baer gave the name of "vascular layer" to this visceral layer of the coeloma. but other important observers say that a part of these cells come from other germinal layers, especially from the gut-gland layer. it seems to be true that blood-cells may be formed from the cells of the entoderm before the development of the mesoderm. if we examine sections of chickens, the earliest and most familiar subjects of embryology, we find at an early stage the "primitive-aortas" we have already described (figure . ao) in the ventral angle between the episoma (pv) and hyposoma (sp). the thin wall of these first vessels of the amniote embryo consists of flat cells (endothelia or vascular epithelia); the fluid within already contains numbers of red blood-cells; both have been developed from the gut-fibre layer. it is the same with the vessels of the germinative area (figure . v), which lie on the entodermic membrane of the yelk-sac (c). these features are seen still more clearly in the transverse section of the duck-embryo in figure . . in this we see clearly how a number of stellate cells proceed from the "vascular layer" and spread in all directions in the "primary body-cavity"--i.e. in the spaces between the germinal layers. a part of these travelling cells come together and line the wall of the larger spaces, and thus form the first vessels; others enter into the cavity, live in the fluid that fills it, and multiply by cleavage--the first blood-cells. but, besides these mesodermic cells of the "vascular layer" proper, other travelling cells, of which the origin and purport are still obscure, take part in the formation of blood in the meroblastic vertebrates (especially fishes). the chief of these are those that ruckert has most aptly denominated "merocytes." these "eating yelk-cells" are found in large numbers in the food-yelk of the selachii, especially in the yelk-wall--the border zone of the germinal disk in which the embryonic vascular net is first developed. the nuclei of the merocytes become ten times as large as the ordinary cell-nucleus, and are distinguished by their strong capacity for taking colour, or their special richness in chromatin. their protoplasmic body resembles the stellate cells of osseous tissue (astrocytes), and behaves just like a rhizopod (such as gromia); it sends out numbers of stellate processes all round, which ramify and stretch into the surrounding food-yelk. these variable and very mobile processes, the pseudopodia of the merocytes, serve both for locomotion and for getting food; as in the real rhizopods, they surround the solid particles of food (granules and plates of yelk), and accumulate round their nucleus the food they have received and digested. hence we may regard them both as eating-cells (phagocytes) and travelling-cells (planocytes). their lively nucleus divides quickly and often repeatedly, so that a number of new nuclei are formed in a short time; as each fresh nucleus surrounds itself with a mantle of protoplasm, it provides a new cell for the construction of the embryo. their origin is still much disputed. (figure . . merocytes of a shark-embryo, rhizopod-like yelk-cells underneath the embryonic cavity (b). (from ruckert.) z two embryonic cells, k nuclei of the merocytes, which wander about in the yelk and eat small yelk-plates (d), k smaller, more superficial, lighter nuclei, k apostrophe a deeper nucleus, in the act of cleavage, k asterisk chromatin-filled border-nucleus, freed from the surrounding yelk in order to show the numerous pseudopodia of the protoplasmic cell-body.) half of the twelve stems of the animal world have no blood-vessels. they make their first appearance in the vermalia. their earliest source is the primary body-cavity, the simple space between the two primary germinal layers, which is either a relic of the segmentation-cavity, or is a subsequent formation. amoeboid planocytes, which migrate from the entoderm and reach this fluid-filled primary cavity, live and multiply there, and form the first colourless blood-cells. we find the vascular system in this very simple form to-day in the bryozoa, rotatoria, nematoda, and other lower vermalia. the first step in the improvement of this primitive vascular system is the formation of larger canals or blood-conducting tubes. the spaces filled with blood, the relics of the primary body-cavity, receive a special wall. "blood-vessels" of this kind (in the narrower sense) are found among the higher worms in various forms, sometimes very simple, at other times very complex. the form that was probably the incipient structure of the elaborate vascular system of the vertebrates (and of the articulates) is found in two primordial principal vessels--a dorsal vessel in the middle line of the dorsal wall of the gut, and a ventral vessel that runs from front to rear in the middle line of its ventral wall. from the dorsal vessel is evolved the aorta (or principal artery), from the ventral vessel the principal or subintestinal vein. the two vessels are connected in front and behind by a loop that runs round the gut. the blood contained in the two tubes is propelled by their peristaltic contractions. (figure . . vascular system of an annelid (saenuris), foremost section. d dorsal vessel, v ventral vessel, c transverse connection of two (enlarged in shape of heart). the arrows indicate the direction of the flow of blood. (from gegenbaur.) the earliest vermalia in which we first find this independent vascular system are the nemertina (figure . ). as a rule, they have three parallel longitudinal vessels connected by loops, a single dorsal vessel above the gut and a pair of lateral vessels to the right and left. in some of the nemertina the blood is already coloured, and the red colouring matter is real haemoglobin, connected with elliptical discoid cells, as in the vertebrates. the further evolution of this rudimentary vascular system can be gathered from the class of the annelids in which we find it at various stages of development. first, a number of transverse connections are formed between the dorsal and ventral vessels, which pass round the gut ring-wise (figure . ). other vessels grow into the body-wall and ramify in order to convey blood to it. in addition to the two large vessels of the middle plane there are often two lateral vessels, one to the right and one to the left; as, for instance, in the leech. there are four of these parallel longitudinal vessels in the enteropneusts (balanoglossus, figure . ). in these important vermalia the foremost section of the gut has already been converted into a gill-crate, and the vascular arches that rise in the wall of this from the ventral to the dorsal vessel have become branchial vessels. we have a further important advance in the tunicates, which we have recognised as the nearest blood-relatives of our early vertebrate ancestors. here we find for the first time a real heart--i.e. a central organ of circulation, driving the blood into the vessels by the regular contractions of its muscular wall, it is of a very rudimentary character, a spindle-shaped tube, passing at both ends into a principal vessel (figure . ). by its original position behind the gill-crate, on ventral side of the tunicates (sometimes more, sometimes less, forward), the head shows clearly that it has been formed by the local enlargement of a section of the ventral vessel. we have already noticed the remarkable alternation of the direction of the blood stream, the heart driving it first from one end, then from the other (chapter . ). this is very instructive, because in most of the worms (even the enteropneust) the blood in the dorsal vessel travels from back to front, but in the vertebrates in the opposite direction. as the ascidia-heart alternates steadily from one direction to the other, it shows us permanently, in a sense, the phylogenetic transition from the earlier forward direction of the dorsal current (in the worms) to the new backward direction (in the vertebrates). (figure . . head of a fish-embryo, with rudimentary vascular system, from the left. dc cuvier's duct (juncture of the anterior and posterior principal veins), sv venous sinus (enlarged end of cuvier's duct), a auricle, v ventricle, abr trunk of branchial artery, s gill-clefts (arterial arches between), ad aorta, c carotid artery, n nasal pit. (from gegenbaur.) figure . . the five arterial arches of the craniotes ( to ) in their original disposition, a arterial cone or bulb, a double apostrophe aorta-trunk, c carotid artery (foremost continuation of the roots of the aorta). (from rathke.) figure . . the five arterial arches of the birds; the lighter parts of the structure disappear; only the shaded parts remain. letters as in figure . . s subclavian arteries, p pulmonary artery, p apostrophe branches of same, c apostrophe outer carotid, c double apostrophe inner carotid. (from rathke.) figure . . the five arterial arches of mammals; letters as in figure . . v vertebral artery, b botall's duct (open in the embryo, closed afterwards). (from rathke.)) as the new direction became permanent in the earlier prochordonia, which gave rise to the vertebrate stem, the two vessels that proceed from either end of the tubular heart acquired a fixed function. the foremost section of the ventral vessel henceforth always conveys blood from the heart, and so acts as an artery; the hind section of the same vessel brings the blood from the body to the heart, and so becomes a vein. in view of their relation to the two sections of the gut, we may call the latter the intestinal vein and the former the branchial artery. the blood contained in both vessels, and also in the heart, is venous or carbonised blood--i.e. rich in carbonic acid; on the other hand, the blood that passes from the gills into the dorsal vessel is provided with fresh oxygen--arterial or oxydised blood. the finest branches of the arteries and veins pass into each other in the tissues by means of a network of very fine, ventral, hair-like vessels, or capillaries (figure . ). when we turn from the tunicates to the closely-related amphioxus we are astonished at first to find an apparent retrogression in the formation of the vascular system. as we have seen, the amphioxus has no real heart; its colourless blood is driven along in its vascular system by the principal vessel itself, which contracts regularly in its whole length (cf. figure . ). a dorsal vessel that lies above the gut (aorta) receives the arterial blood from the gills and drives it into the body. returning from here, the venous blood gathers in a ventral vessel under the gut (intestinal vein), and goes back to the gills. a number of branchial vascular arches, which effect respiration and rise in the wall of the branchial gut from belly to back, absorb oxygen from the water and give off carbonic acid; they connect the ventral with the dorsal vessel. as the same section of the ventral vessel, which also forms the heart in the craniotes, has developed in the ascidia into a simple tubular heart, we may regard the absence of this in the amphioxus as a result of degeneration, a return in this case to the earlier form of the vascular system, as we find it in many of the worms. we may assume that the acrania that really belong to our ancestral series did not share this retrogression, but inherited the one-chambered heart of the prochordonia, and transmitted it directly to the earliest craniotes (cf. the ideal primitive vertebrate, prospondylus, figures . to . ). (figures . to . . metamorphosis of the five arterial arches in the human embryo (diagram from rathke). la arterial cone, , , , , first to fifth pair of arteries, ad trunk of aorta, aw roots of aorta. in figure . only three, in figure . all five, of the aortic arches are given (the dotted ones only are developed). in figure . the first two pairs have disappeared again. in figure . the permanent trunks of the artery are shown; the dotted parts disappear, s subclavian artery, v vertebral, ax axillary, c carotid (c apostrophe outer, c double apostrophe inner carotid), p pulmonary.) the further phylogenetic evolution of the vascular system is revealed to us by the comparative anatomy of the craniotes. at the lowest stage of this group, in the cyclostomes, we find for the first time the differentiation of the vasorium into two sections: a system of blood-vessels proper, which convey the red blood about the body, and a system of lymphatic vessels, which absorb the colourless lymph from the tissues and convey it to the blood. the lymphatics that absorb from the gut and pour into the blood-stream the milky food-fluid formed by digestion are distinguished by the special name of "chyle-vessels." while the chyle is white on account of its high proportion of fatty particles, the lymph proper is colourless. both chyle and lymph contain the colourless amoeboid cells (leucocytes, figure . ) that we also find distributed in the blood as colourless blood-cells (or "white corpuscles"); but the blood also contains a much larger quantity of red cells, and these give its characteristic colour to the blood of the craniotes (rhodocytes, figure . ). the distinction between lymph, chyle, and blood-vessels which is found in all the craniotes may be regarded as an outcome of division of labour between various sections of our originally simple vascular system. in the gnathostomes the spleen makes its first appearance, an organ rich in blood, the chief function of which is the extensive formation of new colourless and red cells. it is not found in the acrania and cyclostomes, or any of the invertebrates. it has been transmitted from the earliest fishes to all the craniotes. the heart also, the central organ of circulation in all the craniotes, shows an advance in structure in the cyclostomes. the simple, spindle-shaped heart-tube, found in the same form in the embryo of all the craniotes, is divided into two sections or chambers in the cyclostomes, and these are separated by a pair of valves. the hind section, the auricle, receives the venous blood from the body and passes it on to the anterior section, the ventricle. from this it is driven through the trunk of the branchial artery (the foremost section of the ventral vessel or principal vein) into the gills. in the selachii an arterial cone is developed from the foremost end of the ventricle, as a special division, cut off by valves. it passes into the enlarged base of the trunk of the branchial artery (figure . abr). on each side to arteries proceed from it. these rise between the gill-clefts (s) on the gill-arches, surround the gullet, and unite above into a common trunk-aorta, the continuation of which over the gut corresponds to the dorsal vessel of the worms. as the curved arteries on the gill-arches spread into a network of respiratory capillaries, they contain venous blood in their lower part (as arches of the branchial artery) and arterial blood in the upper part (as arches of the aorta). the junctures of the various aortic arches on the right and left are called the roots of the aorta. of an originally large number of aortic arches there remain at first six, then (owing to degeneration of the fifth arch) only five, pairs; and from these five pairs (figure . ) the chief parts of the arterial system develop in all the higher vertebrates. (figure . . heart of a rabbit-embryo, from behind, a vitelline veins, b auricles of the heart, c atrium, d ventricle, e arterial bulb, f base of the three pairs of arterial arches. (from bischoff.) figure . . heart of the same embryo (figure . ), from the front. v vitelline veins, a auricle, ca auricular canal, l left ventricle, r right ventricle, ta arterial bulb. (from bischoff.)) the appearance of the lungs and the atmospheric respiration connected therewith, which we first meet in the dipneusts, is the next important step in vascular evolution. in the dipneusts the auricle of the heart is divided by an incomplete partition into two halves. only the right auricle now receives the venous blood from the veins of the body. the left auricle receives the arterial blood from the pulmonary veins. the two auricles have a common opening into the simple ventricle, where the two kinds of blood mix, and are driven through the arterial cone or bulb into the arterial arches. from the last arterial arches the pulmonary arteries arise (figure . p). these force a part of the mixed blood into the lungs, the other part of it going through the aorta into the body. from the dipneusts upwards we now trace a progressive development of the vascular system, which ends finally with the loss of branchial respiration and a complete separation of the two halves of the circulation. in the amphibia the partition between the two auricles is complete. in their earlier stages, as tadpoles (figure . ), they have still the branchial respiration and the circulation of the fishes, and their heart contains venous blood alone. afterwards the lungs and pulmonary vessels are developed, and henceforth the ventricle of the heart contains mixed blood. in the reptiles the ventricle and its arterial cone begin to divide into two halves by a longitudinal partition, and this partition becomes complete in the higher reptiles and birds on the one hand, and the stem-forms of the mammals on the other. henceforth, the right half of the heart contains only venous, and the left half only arterial, blood, as we find in all birds and mammals. the right auricle receives its carbonised or venous blood from the veins of the body, and the right ventricle drives it through the pulmonary arteries into the lungs. from here the blood returns, as oxydised or arterial blood, through the pulmonary veins to the left auricle, and is forced by the left ventricle into the arteries of the body. between the pulmonary arteries and veins is the capillary system of the small or pulmonary circulation. between the body-arteries and veins is the capillary system of the large or body-circulation. it is only in the two highest classes of vertebrates--the birds and mammals--that we find a complete division of the circulations. moreover, this complete separation has been developed quite independently in the two classes, as the dissimilar formation of the aortas shows of itself. in the birds the right half of the fourth arterial arch has become the permanent arch (figure . ). in the mammals this has been developed from the left half of the same fourth arch (figure . ). (figure . . heart and head of a dog-embryo, from the front, a fore brain, b eyes, c middle brain, d primitive lower jaw, e primitive upper jaw, f gill-arches, g right auricle, h left auricle, i left ventricle, k right ventricle. (from bischoff.) figure . . heart of the same dog-embryo, from behind. a inosculation of the vitelline veins, b left auricle, c right auricle, d auricle, e auricular canal, f left ventricle, g right ventricle, h arterial bulb, (from bischoff) figure . . heart of a human embryo, four weeks old; . front view, . back view, . opened, and upper half of the atrium removed. a apostrophe left auricle, a double apostrophe right auricle, v apostrophe left ventricle, v double apostrophe right ventricle, ao arterial bulb, c superior vena cava (cd right, cs left), s rudiment of the interventricular wall. (from kolliker.) figure . . heart of a human embryo, six weeks old, front view. r right ventricle, t left ventricle, s furrow between ventricles, ta arterial bulb, af furrow on its surface; to right and left are the two large auricles. (from ecker.) figure . . heart of a human embryo, eight weeks old, back view. a apostrophe left auricle, a double apostrophe right auricle, v apostrophe left ventricle, v double apostrophe right ventricle, cd apostrophe right superior vena cava, ci inferior vena cava. (from kolliker.)) if we compare the fully-developed arterial system of the various classes of craniotes, it shows a good deal of variety, yet it always proceeds from the same fundamental type. its development is just the same in man as in the other mammals; in particular, the modification of the six pairs of arterial arches is the same in both (figures . to . ). at first there is only a single pair of arches, which lie on the inner surface of the first pair of gill-arches. behind this there then develop a second and third pair of arches (lying on the inner side of the second and third gill-arches, figure . ). finally, we get a fourth, fifth, and sixth pair. of the six primitive arterial arches of the amniotes three soon pass away (the first, second, and fifth); of the remaining three, the third gives the carotids, the fourth the aortas, and the sixth (number in figures . and . ) the pulmonary arteries. the human heart also develops in just the same way as that of the other mammals (figure . ). we have already seen the first rudiments of its embryology, which in the main corresponds to its phylogeny (figures . and . ). we saw that the palingenetic form of the heart is a spindle-shaped thickening of the gut-fibre layer in the ventral wall of the head-gut. the structure is then hollowed out, forms a simple tube, detaches from its place of origin, and henceforth lies freely in the cardiac cavity. presently the tube bends into the shape of an s, and turns spirally on an imaginary axis in such a way that the hind part comes to lie on the dorsal surface of the fore part. the united vitelline veins open into the posterior end. from the anterior end spring the aortic arches. (figure . . heart of the adult man, fully developed, front view, natural position. a right auricle (underneath it the right ventricle), b left auricle (under it the left ventricle), c superior vena cava, v pulmonary veins, p pulmonary artery, d botalli's duct, a aorta. (from meyer.)) this first structure of the human heart, enclosing a very simple cavity, corresponds to the tunicate-heart, and is a reproduction of that of the prochordonia, but it now divides into two, and subsequently into three, compartments; this reminds us for a time of the heart of the cyclostomes and fishes. the spiral turning and bending of the heart increases, and at the same time two transverse constrictions appear, dividing it externally into three sections (figures . and . ). the foremost section, which is turned towards the ventral side, and from which the aortic arches rise, reproduces the arterial bulb of the selachii. the middle section is a simple ventricle, and the hindmost, the section turned towards the dorsal side, into which the vitelline veins inosculate, is a simple auricle (or atrium). the latter forms, like the simple atrium of the fish-heart, a pair of lateral dilatations, the auricles (figure . b); and the constriction between the atrium and ventricle is called the auricular canal (figure . ca). the heart of the human embryo is now a complete fish-heart. (figure . . transverse section of the back of the head of a chick-embryo, forty hours old. (from kolliker.) m medulla oblongata, ph pharyngeal cavity (head-gut), h horny plate, h apostrophe thicker part of it, from which the auscultory pits afterwards develop, hp skin-fibre plate, hh cervical cavity (head-coelom or cardiocoel), hzp cardiac plate (the outermost mesodermic wall of the heart), connected by the ventral mesocardium (uhg) with the gut-fibre layer or visceral coelom-layer (dfp apostrophe), ent entoderm, ihh inner (entodermic?) wall of the heart; the two endothelial cardiac tubes are still separated by the cenogenetic septum (s) of the amniotes, g vessels.) in perfect harmony with its phylogeny, the embryonic development of the human heart shows a gradual transition from the fish-heart, through the amphibian and reptile, to the mammal form, the most important point in the transition is the formation of a longitudinal partition--incomplete at first, but afterwards complete--which separates all three divisions of the heart into right (venous) and left (arterial) halves (cf. figures . to . ). the atrium is separated into a right and left half, each of which absorbs the corresponding auricle; into the right auricle open the body-veins (upper and lower vena cava, figures . c and . c); the left auricle receives the pulmonary veins. in the same way a superficial interventricular furrow is soon seen in the ventricle (figure . s). this is the external sign of the internal partition by which the ventricle is divided into two--a right venous and left arterial ventricle. finally a longitudinal partition is formed in the third section of the primitive fish-like heart, the arterial bulb, externally indicated by a longitudinal furrow (figure . af). the cavity of the bulb is divided into two lateral halves, the pulmonary-artery bulb, that opens into the right ventricle, and the aorta-bulb, that opens into the left ventricle. when all the partitions are complete, the small (pulmonary) circulation is distinguished from the large (body) circulation; the motive centre of the former is the right half, and that of the latter the left half, of the heart. the heart of all the vertebrates belongs originally to the hyposoma of the head, and we accordingly find it in the embryo of man and all the other amniotes right in front on the under-side of the head; just as in the fishes it remains permanently in front of the gullet. it afterwards descends into the trunk, with the advance in the development of the neck and breast, and at last reaches the breast, between the two lungs. at first it lies symmetrically in the middle plane of the body, so that its long axis corresponds with that of the body. in most of the mammals it remains permanently in this position. but in the apes the axis begins to be oblique, and the apex of the heart to move towards the left side. the displacement is greatest in the anthropoid apes--chimpanzee, gorilla, and orang--which resemble man in this. as the heart of all vertebrates is originally, in the light of phylogeny, only a local enlargement of the middle principal vein, it is in perfect accord with the biogenetic law that its first structure in the embryo is a simple spindle-shaped tube in the ventral wall of the head-gut. a thin membrane, standing vertically in the middle plane, the mesocardium, connects the ventral wall of the head-gut with the lower head-wall. as the cardiac tube extends and detaches from the gut-wall, it divides the mesocardium into an upper (dorsal) and lower (ventral) plate (usually called the mesocardium anterius and posterius in man, figure . uhg). the mesocardium divides two lateral cavities, remak's "neck-cavities" (figure . hh). these cavities afterwards join and form the simple pericardial cavity, and are therefore called by kolliker the "primitive pericardial cavities." (figure . . frontal section of a human embryo, one-twelfth of an inch long in the neck, magnified forty times; "invented" by wilhelm his. seen from ventral side. mb mouth-fissure, surrounded by the branchial processes, ab bulbus of aorta, hm middle part of ventricle, hl left lateral part of same, ho auricle, d diaphragm, vc superior vena cava, vu umbilical vein, vo vitelline space, lb liver, lg hepatic duct.) the double cervical cavity of the amniotes is very interesting, both from the anatomical and the evolutionary point of view; it corresponds to a part of the hyposomites of the head of the lower vertebrates--that part of the ventral coelom-pouches which comes next to van wijhe's "visceral cavities" below. each of the cavities still communicates freely behind with the two coelom-pouches of the trunk; and, just as these afterwards coalesce into a simple body-cavity (the ventral mesentery disappearing), we find the same thing happening in the head. this simple primary pericardial cavity has been well called by gegenbaur the "head-coeloma," and by hertwig the "pericardial breast-cavity." as it now encloses the heart, it may also be called cardiocoel. the cardiocoel, or head-coelom, is often disproportionately large in the amniotes, the simple cardiac tube growing considerably and lying in several folds. this causes the ventral wall of the amniote embryo, between the head and the navel, to be pushed outwards as in rupture (cf. figure . h). a transverse fold of the ventral wall, which receives all the vein-trunks that open into the heart, grows up from below between the pericardium and the stomach, and forms a transverse partition, which is the first structure of the primary diaphragm (figure . d). this important muscular partition, which completely separates the thoracic and abdominal cavities in the mammals alone, is still very imperfect here; the two cavities still communicate for a time by two narrow canals. these canals, which belong to the dorsal part of the head-coelom, and which we may call briefly pleural ducts, receive the two pulmonary sacs, which develop from the hind end of the ventral wall of the head-gut; they thus become the two pleural cavities. the diaphragm makes its first appearance in the class of the amphibia (in the salamanders) as an insignificant muscular transverse fold of the ventral wall, which rises from the fore end of the transverse abdominal muscle, and grows between the pericardium and the liver. in the reptiles (tortoises and crocodiles) a later dorsal part is joined to this earlier ventral part of the rudimentary diaphragm, a pair of subvertebral muscles rising from the vertebral column and being added as "columns" to the transverse partition. but it was probably in the permian sauro-mammals that the two originally separate parts were united, and the diaphragm became a complete partition between the thoracic and abdominal cavities in the mammals; as it considerably enlarges the chest-cavity when it contracts, it becomes an important respiratory muscle. the ontogeny of the diaphragm in man and the other mammals reproduces this phylogenetic process to-day, in accordance with the biogenetic law; in all the mammals the diaphragm is formed by the secondary conjunction of the two originally separate structures, the earlier ventral part and the later dorsal part. sometimes the blending of the two diaphragmatic structures, and consequently the severance of the one pleural duct from the abdominal cavity, is not completed in man. this leads to a diaphragmatic rupture (hernia diaphragmatica). the two cavities then remain in communication by an open pleural duct, and loops of the intestine may penetrate by this "rupture opening" into the chest-cavity. this is one of those fatal mis-growths that show the great part that blind chance has in organic development. (figure . . transverse section of the head of a chick-embryo, thirty-six hours old. underneath the medullary tube the two primitive aortas (pa) can be seen in the head-plates (s) at each side of the chorda. underneath the gullet (d) we see the aorta-end of the heart (ae), hh cervical cavity or head coelom, hk top of heart, ks head-sheath, amniotic fold, h horny plate. (from remak.) (figure . . transverse section of the cardiac region of the same chick-embryo (behind the preceding). in the cervical cavity (hh) the heart (h) is still connected by a mesocard (hg) with the gut-fibre layer (pf). d gut-gland layer, up provertebral plates, jb rudimentary auditory vesicle in the horny plate, hp first rise of the amniotic fold. (from remak.)) thus the thoracic cavity of the mammals, with its important contents, the heart and lungs, belongs originally to the head-part of the vertebrate body, and its inclusion in the trunk is secondary. this instructive and very interesting fact is entirely proved by the concordant evidence of comparative anatomy and ontogeny. the lungs are outgrowths of the head-gut; the heart develops from its inner wall. the pleural sacs that enclose the lungs are dorsal parts of the head-coelom, originating from the pleuroducts; the pericardium in which the heart afterwards lies is also double originally, being formed from ventral halves of the head-coelom, which only combine at a later stage. when the lung of the air-breathing vertebrates issues from the head-cavity and enters the trunk-cavity, it follows the example of the floating bladder of the fishes, which also originates from the pharyngeal wall in the shape of a small pouch-like out-growth, but soon grows so large that, in order to find room, it has to pass far behind into the trunk-cavity. to put it more precisely, the lung of the quadrupeds retains this hereditary growth-process of the fishes; for the hydrostatic floating bladder of the latter is the air-filled organ from which the air-breathing organ of the former has been evolved. there is an interesting cenogenetic phenomenon in the formation of the heart of the higher vertebrates that deserves special notice. in its earliest form the heart is double, as recent observation has shown, in all the amniotes, and the simple spindle-shaped cardiac tube, which we took as our starting-point, is only formed at a later stage, when the two lateral tubes move backwards, touch each other, and at last combine in the middle line. in man, as in the rabbit, the two embryonic hearts are still far apart at the stage when there are already eight primitive segments (figure . h). so also the two coelom-pouches of the head in which they lie are still separated by a broad space. it is not until the permanent body of the embryo develops and detaches from the embryonic vesicle that the separate lateral structures join together, and finally combine in the middle line. as the median partition between the right and left cardiocoel disappears, the two cervical cavities freely communicate (figure . ), and form, on the ventral side of the amniote head, a horseshoe-shaped arch, the points of which advance backwards into the pleuro-ducts or pleural cavities, and from there into the two peritoneal sacs of the trunk. but even after the conjunction of the cervical cavities (figure . ) the two cardiac tubes remain separate at first; and even after they have united a delicate partition in the middle of the simple endothelial tube (figures . s and . h) indicates the original separation. this cenogenetic "primary cardiac septum" presently disappears, and has no relation to the subsequent permanent partition between the halves of the heart, which, as a heritage from the reptiles, has a great palingenetic importance. thorough opponents of the biogenetic law have laid great stress on these and similar cenogenetic phenomena, and endeavoured to urge them as striking disproofs of the law. as in every other instance, careful, discriminating, comparative-morphological examination converts these supposed disproofs of evolution into strong arguments in its favour. in his excellent work, on the structure of the heart in the amphibia ( ), carl rabl has shown how easily these curious cenogenetic facts can be explained by the secondary adaptation of the embryonic structure to the great extension of the food-yelk. the embryology of all the other parts of the vascular system also gives us abundant and valuable data for the purposes of phylogeny. but as one needs a thorough knowledge of the intricate structure of the whole vascular system in man and the other vertebrates in order to follow this with profit, we cannot go into it further here. moreover, many important features in the ontogeny of the vascular system are still very obscure and controverted. the characters of the embryonic circulation of the amniotes, which we have previously considered (chapter . ), are late acquisitions and entirely cenogenetic. (cf. chapter . and figures . to . .) in the selachii also we find a longitudinal row of segmental canals on each side, which open outwards into the primitive renal ducts (nephrotomes, chapter . ). the segmental canals (a pair in each segment of the middle part of the body) open internally by a ciliated funnel into the body-cavity. from the posterior group of these organs a compact primitive kidney is formed, the anterior group taking part in the construction of the sexual organs. in the same simple form that remains throughout life in the myxinoides and partly in the selachii we find the primitive kidney first developing in the embryo of man and the higher craniotes (figures . and . ). of the two parts that compose the comb-shaped primitive kidney the longitudinal channel, or nephroduct, is always the first to appear; afterwards the transverse "canals," the excreting nephridia, are formed in the mesoderm; and after this again the malpighian capsules with their arterial coils are associated with these as coelous outgrowths. the primitive renal duct, which appears first, is found in all craniote embryos at the early stage in which the differentiation of the medullary tube takes place in the ectoderm, the severance of the chorda from the visceral layer in the entoderm, and the first trace of the coelom-pouches arises between the limiting layers (figure . ). the nephroduct (ung) is seen on each side, directly under the horny plate, in the shape of a long, thin, thread-like string of cells. it presently hollows out and becomes a canal, running straight from front to back, and clearly showing in the transverse section of the embryo its original position in the space between horny plate (h), primitive segments (uw), and lateral plates (hpl). as the originally very short urinary canals lengthen and multiply, each of the two primitive kidneys assumes the form of a half-feathered leaf (figure . ). the lines of the leaf are represented by the urinary canals (u), and the rib by the outlying nephroduct (w). at the inner edge of the primitive kidneys the rudiment of the ventral sexual gland (g) can now be seen as a body of some size. the hindermost end of the nephroduct opens right behind into the last section of the rectum, thus making a cloaca of it. however, this opening of the nephroducts into the intestine must be regarded as a secondary formation. originally they open, as the cyclostomes clearly show, quite independently of the gut, in the external skin of the abdomen. (figure . . primitive kidneys and germinal glands of a human embryo, three inches in length (beginning of the sixth week), magnified fifteen times. k germinal gland, u primitive kidney, z diaphragmatic ligament of same, w wolffian duct (opened on the right), g directing ligament (gubernaculum), a allantoic duct. (from kollmann.)) in the myxinoides the primitive kidneys retain this simple comb-shaped structure, and a part of it is preserved in the selachii; but in all the other craniotes it is only found for a short time in the embryo, as an ontogenetic reproduction of the earlier phylogenetic structure. in these the primitive kidney soon assumes the form (by the rapid growth, lengthening, increase, and serpentining of the urinary canals) of a large compact gland, of a long, oval or spindle-shaped character, which passes through the greater part of the embryonic body-cavity (figures . m, . m, . n). it lies near the middle line, directly under the primitive vertebral column, and reaches from the cardiac region to the cloaca. the right and left kidneys are parallel to each other, quite close together, and only separated by the mesentery--the thin narrow layer that attaches the middle gut to the under surface of the vertebral column. the passage of each primitive kidney, the nephroduct, runs towards the back on the lower and outer side of the gland, and opens in the cloaca, close to the starting-point of the allantois; it afterwards opens into the allantois itself. (figures . to . . urinary and sexual organs of ox-embryos. figure . , female embryo one and a half inches long; figure . , male embryo, one and a half inches long. figure . female embryo two and a half inches long. w primitive kidney, wg wolffian duct, m mullerian duct, m apostrophe upper end of same (opened at t), i lower and thicker part of same (rudiment of uterus), g genital cord, h testicle, (h apostrophe, lower and h double apostrophe, upper testicular ligament), o ovary, o apostrophe lower ovarian ligament, i inguinal ligament of primitive kidney, d diaphragmatic ligament of primitive kidney, nn accessory kidneys, n permanent kidneys, under them the s-shaped ureters, between these the rectum, v bladder, a umbilical artery. (from kolliker.)) the primitive or primordial kidneys of the amniote embryo were formerly called the "wolffian bodies," and sometimes "oken's bodies." they act for a time as kidneys, absorbing unusable juices from the embryonic body and conducting them to the cloaca--afterwards to the allantois. there the primitive urine accumulates, and thus the allantois acts as bladder or urinary sac in the embryos of man and the other amniotes. it has, however, no genetic connection with the primitive kidneys, but is a pouch-like growth from the anterior wall of the rectum (figure . u). thus it is a product of the visceral layer, whereas the primitive kidneys are a product of the middle layer. phylogenetically we must suppose that the allantois originated as a pouch-like growth from the cloaca-wall in consequence of the expansion caused by the urine accumulated in it and excreted by the kidneys. it is originally a blind sac of the rectum. the real bladder of the vertebrate certainly made its first appearance among the dipneusts (in lepidosiren), and has been transmitted from them to the amphibia, and from these to the amniotes. in the embryo of the latter it protrudes far out of the not yet closed ventral wall. it is true that many of the fishes also have a "bladder." but this is merely a local enlargement of the lower section of the nephroducts, and so totally different in origin and composition from the real bladder. the two structures can be compared from the physiological point of view, and so are analogous, as they have the same function; but not from the morphological point of view, and are therefore not homologous. the false bladder of the fishes is a mesodermic product of the nephroducts; the true bladder of the dipneusts, amphibia, and amniotes is an entodermic blind sac of the rectum. in all the anamnia (the lower amnionless craniotes, cyclostomes, fishes, dipneusts, and amphibia) the urinary organs remain at a lower stage of development to this extent, that the primitive kidneys (protonephri) act permanently as urinary glands. this is only so as a passing phase of the early embryonic life in the three higher classes of vertebrates, the amniotes. in these the permanent or after or secondary (really tertiary) kidneys (renes or metanephri) that are distinctive of these three classes soon make their appearance. they represent the third and last generation of the vertebrate kidneys. the permanent kidneys do not arise (as was long supposed) as independent glands from the alimentary tube, but from the last section of the primitive kidneys and the nephroduct. here a simple tube, the secondary renal duct, develops, near the point of its entry into the cloaca; and this tube grows considerably forward. with its blind upper or anterior end is connected a glandular renal growth, that owes its origin to a differentiation of the last part of the primitive kidneys. this rudiment of the permanent kidneys consists of coiled urinary canals with malpighian capsules and vascular coils (without ciliated funnels), of the same structure as the segmental mesonephridia of the primitive kidneys. the further growth of these metanephridia gives rise to the compact permanent kidneys, which have the familiar bean-shape in man and most of the higher mammals, but consist of a number of separate folds in the lower mammals, birds, and reptiles. as the permanent kidneys grow rapidly and advance forward, their passage, the ureter, detaches altogether from its birth-place, the posterior end of the nephroduct; it passes to the posterior surface of the allantois. at first in the oldest amniotes this ureter opens into the cloaca together with the last section of the nephroduct, but afterwards separately from this, and finally into the permanent bladder apart from the rectum altogether. the bladder originates from the hindmost and lowest part of the allantoic pedicle (urachus), which enlarges in spindle shape before the entry into the cloaca. the anterior or upper part of the pedicle, which runs to the navel in the ventral wall of the embryo, atrophies subsequently, and only a useless string-like relic of it is left as a rudimentary organ; that is the single vesico-umbilical ligament. to the right and left of it in the adult male are a couple of other rudimentary organs, the lateral vesico-umbilical ligaments. these are the degenerate string-like relics of the earlier umbilical arteries. though in man and all the other amniotes the primitive kidneys are thus early replaced by the permanent kidneys, and these alone then act as urinary organs, all the parts of the former are by no means lost. the nephroducts become very important physiologically by being converted into the passages of the sexual glands. in all the gnathostomes--or all the vertebrates from the fishes up to man--a second similar canal develops beside the nephroduct at an early stage of embryonic evolution. the latter is usually called the mullerian duct, after its discoverer, johannes muller, while the former is called the wolffian duct. the origin of the mullerian duct is still obscure; comparative anatomy and ontogeny seem to indicate that it originates by differentiation from the wolffian duct. perhaps it would be best to say: "the original primary nephroduct divides by differentiation (or longitudinal cleavage) into two secondary nephroducts, the wolffian and the mullerian ducts." the latter (figure . m) lies just on the inner side of the former (figure . w). both open behind into the cloaca. however uncertain the origin of the nephroduct and its two products, the mullerian and the wolffian ducts, may be, its later development is clear enough. in all the gnathostomes the wolffian duct is converted into the spermaduct, and the mullerian duct into the oviduct. only one of them is retained in each sex; the other either disappears altogether, or only leaves relics in the shape of rudimentary organs. in the male sex, in which the two wolffian ducts become the spermaducts, we often find traces of the mullerian ducts, which i have called "rathke's canals" (figure . c). in the female sex, in which the two mullerian ducts form the oviducts, there are relics of the wolffian ducts, which are called "the ducts of gaertner." (figure . . female sexual organs of a monotreme (ornithorhynchus, figure . ). o ovaries, t oviducts, u womb, sug urogenital sinus; at u apostrophe is the outlet of the two wombs, and between them the bladder (vu). cl cloaca. (from gegenbaur.) figures . and . . original position of the sexual glands in the ventral cavity of the human embryo (three months old). figure . male (natural size). h testicles, gh conducting ligament of the testicles, wg spermaduct, h bladder, uh inferior vena cava, nn accessory kidneys, n kidneys. figure . female, slightly magnified. r round maternal ligament (underneath it the bladder, over it the ovaries). r apostrophe kidneys, s accessory kidneys, c caecum, o small reticle, om large reticle (stomach between the two), l spleen. (from kolliker.)) we obtain the most interesting information with regard to this remarkable evolution of the nephroducts and their association with the sexual glands from the amphibia (figures . to . ). the first structure of the nephroduct and its differentiation into mullerian and wolffian ducts are just the same in both sexes in the amphibia, as in the mammal embryos (figures . and . ). in the female amphibia the mullerian duct develops on either side into a large oviduct (figure . od), while the wolffian duct acts permanently as ureter (u). in the male amphibia the mullerian duct only remains as a rudimentary organ without any functional significance, as rathke's canal (figure . c); the wolffian duct serves also as ureter, but at the same time as spermaduct, the sperm-canals (ve) that proceed from the testicles (t) entering the fore part of the primitive kidneys and combining there with the urinary canals. in the mammals these permanent amphibian features are only seen as brief phases of the earlier period of embryonic development (figure . ). here the primitive kidneys, which act as excretory organs of urine throughout life in the amnion-less vertebrates, are replaced in the mammals by the permanent kidneys. the real primitive kidneys disappear for the most part at an early stage of development, and only small relics of them remain. in the male mammal the epididymis develops from the uppermost part of the primitive kidney; in the female a useless rudimentary organ, the epovarium, is formed from the same part. the atrophied relic of the former is known as the paradidymis, that of the latter as the parovarium. (figure . . urogenital system of a human embryo of three inches in length, double natural size. h testicles, wg spermaducts, gh conducting ligament, p processus vaginalis, b bladder, au umbilical arteries, m mesorchium, d intestine, u ureter, n kidney, nn accessory kidney. (from kollman.)) the mullerian ducts undergo very important changes in the female mammal. the oviducts proper are developed only from their upper part; the lower part dilates into a spindle-shaped tube with thick muscular wall, in which the impregnated ovum develops into the embryo. this is the womb (uterus). at first the two wombs (figure . u) are completely separate, and open into the cloaca on either side of the bladder (vu), as is still the case in the lowest living mammals, the monotremes. but in the marsupials a communication is opened between the two mullerian ducts, and in the placentals they combine below with the rudimentary wolffian ducts to form a single "genital cord." the original independence of the two wombs and the vaginal canals formed from their lower ends are retained in many of the lower placentals, but in the higher they gradually blend and form a single organ. the conjunction proceeds from below (or behind) upwards (or forwards). in many of the rodents (such as the rabbit and squirrel) two separate wombs still open into the simple and single vaginal canal; but in others, and in the carnivora, cetacea, and ungulates, the lower halves of the wombs have already fused into a single piece, though the upper halves (or "horns") are still separate ("two-horned" womb, uteris bicornis). in the bats and lemurs the "horns" are very short, and the lower common part is longer. finally, in the apes and in man the blending of the two halves is complete, and there is only the one simple, pear-shaped uterine pouch, into which the oviducts open on each side. this simple uterus is a late evolutionary product, and is found only in the ape and man. (figures . to . . origin of human ova in the female ovary. figure . . vertical section of the ovary of a new-born female infant, a ovarian epithelium, b rudimentary string of ova, c young ova in the epithelium, d long string of ova with follicle-formation (pfluger's tube), e group of young follicles, f isolated young follicle, g blood-vessels in connective tissue (stroma) of the ovary. in the strings the young ova are distinguished by their considerable size from the surrounding follicle-cells. (from waldeyer.) figure . . two young graafian follicles, isolated. in the follicle-cells still form a simple, and in a double, stratum round the young ovum; in they are beginning to form the ovolemma or the zona pellucida (a). figures . and . . two older graafian follicles, in which fluid is beginning to accumulate inside the eccentrically thickened epithelial mass of the follicle-cells (figure . with little, . with much, follicle-water). ei the young ovum, with embryonic vesicle and spot, zp ovolemma or zona pellucida, dp discus proligerus, formed of an accumulation of follicle-cells, which surround the ovum, ff follicle-liquid (liquor folliculi), gathered inside the stratified follicle-epithelium (fe), fk connective-tissue fibrous capsule of the graafian follicle (theca folliculi).) in the male mammals there is the same fusion of the mullerian and wolffian ducts at their lower ends. here again they form a single genital cord (figure . g), and this opens similarly into the original urogenital sinus, which develops from the lowest section of the bladder (v). but while in the male mammal the wolffian ducts develop into the permanent spermaducts, there are only rudimentary relics left of the mullerian ducts. the most notable of these is the "male womb" (uterus masculinus), which originates from the lowest fused part of the ducts, and corresponds to the female uterus. it is a small, flask-shaped vesicle without any physiological significance, which opens into the ureter between the two spermaducts and the prostate folds (vesicula prostatica). (figure . . a ripe human graafian follicle. a the mature ovum, b the surrounding follicle-cells, c the epithelial cells of the follicle, d the fibrous membrane of the follicle, e its outer surface.) the internal sexual organs of the mammals undergo very distinctive changes of position. at first the germinal glands of both sexes lie deep inside the ventral cavity, at the inner edge of the primitive kidneys (figures . g and . k), attached to the vertebral column by a short mesentery (mesorchium in the male, mesovarium in the female). but this primary arrangement is retained permanently only in the monotremes (and the lower vertebrates). in all other mammals (both marsupials and placentals) they leave their original cradle and travel more or less far down (or behind), following the direction of a ligament that goes from the primitive kidneys to the inguinal region of the ventral wall. this is the inguinal ligament of the primitive kidneys, known in the male as the hunterian ligament (figure . gh), and in the female as the "round maternal ligament" (figure . r). in woman the ovaries travel more or less towards the small pelvis, or enter into it altogether. in the male the testicles pass out of the ventral cavity, and penetrate by the inguinal canal into a sac-shaped fold of the outer skin. when the right and left folds ("sexual swellings") join together they form the scrotum. the various mammals bring before us the successive stages of this displacement. in the elephant and the whale the testicles descend very little, and remain underneath the kidneys. in many of the rodents and carnassia they enter the inguinal canal. in most of the higher mammals they pass through this into the scrotum. as a rule, the inguinal canal closes up. when it remains open the testicles may periodically pass into the scrotum, and withdraw into the ventral cavity again in time of rut (as in many of the marsupials, rodents, bats, etc.). the structure of the external sexual organs, the copulative organs that convey the fecundating sperm from the male to the female organism in the act of copulation, is also peculiar to the mammals. there are no organs of this character in most of the other vertebrates. in those that live in water (such as the acrania and cyclostomes, and most of the fishes) the ova and sperm-cells are simply ejected into the water, where their conjunction and fertilisation are left to chance. but in many of the fishes and amphibia, which are viviparous, there is a direct conveyance of the male sperm into the female body; and this is the case with all the amniotes (reptiles, birds, and mammals). in these the urinary and sexual organs always open originally into the last section of the rectum, which thus forms a cloaca (chapter . ). among the mammals this arrangement is permanent only in the monotremes, which take their name from it (figure . cl). in all the other mammals a frontal partition is developed in the cloaca (in the human embryo about the beginning of the third month), and this divides it into two cavities. the anterior cavity receives the urogenital canal, and is the sole outlet of the urine and the sexual products; the hind or anus-cavity passes the excrements only. even before this partition has been formed in the marsupials and placentals, we see the first trace of the external sexual organs. first a conical protuberance rises at the anterior border of the cloaca-outlet--the sexual prominence (phallus, figure . a, e, b, e). at the tip it is swollen in the shape of a club ("acorn" glans). on its under side there is a furrow, the sexual groove (sulcus genitalis, f), and on each side of this a fold of skin, the "sexual pad" (torus genitalis, h l). the sexual protuberance or phallus is the chief organ of the sexual sense (chapter . ); the sexual nerves spread on it, and these are the principal organs of the specific sexual sensation. as erectile bodies (corpora cavernosa) are developed in the male phallus by peculiar modifications of the blood-vessels, it becomes capable of erecting periodically on a strong accession of blood, becoming stiff, so as to penetrate into the female vagina and thus effect copulation. in the male the phallus becomes the penis; in the female it becomes the much smaller clitoris; this is only found to be very large in certain apes (ateles). a prepuce ("foreskin") is developed in both sexes as a protecting fold on the anterior surface of the phallus. (figure . the human ovum after issuing from the graafian follicle, surrounded by the clinging cells of the discus proligerus (in two radiating crowns). z ovolemma (zona pellucida, with radial porous canals), p cytosoma (protoplasm of the cell-body, darker within, lighter without), k nucleus of the ovum (embryonic vesicle). (from nagel, magnified times.) (cf. figures . and . .) the external sexual member (phallus) is found at various stages of development within the mammal class, both in regard to size and shape, and the differentiation and structure of its various parts; this applies especially to the terminal part of the phallus, the glans, both the larger glans penis of the male and the smaller glans clitoridis of the female. the part of the cloaca from the upper wall of which it forms belongs to the proctodaeum, the ectodermic invagination of the rectum (chapter . ); hence its epithelial covering can develop the same horny growths as the corneous layer of the epidermis. thus the glans, which is quite smooth in man and the higher apes, is covered with spines in many of the lower apes and in the cat, and in many of the rodents with hairs (marmot) or scales (guinea-pig) or solid horny warts (beaver). many of the ungulates have a free conical projection on the glans, and in many of the ruminants this "phallus-tentacle" grows into a long cone, bent hook-wise at the base (as in the goat, antelope, gazelle, etc.). the different forms of the phallus are connected with variations in the structure and distribution of the sensory corpuscles--i.e. the real organs of the sexual sense, which develop in certain papillae of the corium of the phallus, and have been evolved from ordinary tactile corpuscles of the corium by erotic adaptation (chapter . ). the formation of the corpora cavernosa, which cause the stiffness of the phallus and its capability of penetrating the vagina, by certain special structures of their spongy vascular spaces, also shows a good deal of variety within the vertebrate stem. this stiffness is increased in many orders of mammals (especially the carnassia and rodents) by the ossification of a part of the fibrous body (corpus fibrosum). this penis-bone (os priapi) is very large in the badger and dog, and bent like a hook in the marten; it is also very large in some of the lower apes, and protrudes far out into the glans. it is wanting in most of the anthropoid apes; it seems to have been lost in their case (and in man) by atrophy. the sexual groove on the under side of the phallus receives in the male the mouth of the urogenital canal, and is changed into a continuation of this, becoming a closed canal by the juncture of its parallel edges, the male urethra. in the female this only takes place in a few cases (some of the lemurs, rodents, and moles); as a rule, the groove remains open, and the borders of this "vestibule of the vagina" develop into the smaller labia (nymphae). the large labia of the female develop from the sexual pads (tori genitales), the two parallel folds of the skin that are found on each side of the genital groove. they join together in the male, and form the closed scrotum. these striking differences between the two sexes cannot yet be detected in the human embryo of the ninth week. we begin to trace them in the tenth week of development, and they are accentuated in proportion as the difference of the sexes develops. sometimes the normal juncture of the two sexual pads in the male fails to take place, and the sexual groove may also remain open (hypospadia). in these cases the external male genitals resemble the female, and they are often wrongly regarded as cases of hermaphrodism. other malformations of various kinds are not infrequently found in the human external sexual organs, and some of them have a great morphological interest. the reverse of hypospadia, in which the penis is split open below, is seen in epispadia, in which the urethra is open above. in this case the urogenital canal opens above at the dorsal root of the penis; in the former case down below. these and similar obstructions interfere with a man's generative power, and thus prejudicially affect his whole development. they clearly prove that our history is not guided by a "kind providence," but left to the play of blind chance. we must carefully distinguish the rarer cases of real hermaphrodism from the preceding. this is only found when the essential organs of reproduction, the genital glands of both kinds, are united in one individual. in these cases either an ovary is developed on the right and a testicle on the left (or vice versa); or else there are testicles and ovaries on both sides, some more and others less developed. as hermaphrodism was probably the original arrangement in all the vertebrates, and the division of the sexes only followed by later differentiation of this, these curious cases offer no theoretical difficulty. but they are rarely found in man and the higher mammals. on the other hand, we constantly find the original hermaphrodism in some of the lower vertebrates, such as the myxinoides, many fishes of the perch-type (serranus), and some of the amphibia (ringed snake, toad). in these cases the male often has a rudimentary ovary at the fore end of the testicle; and the female sometimes has a rudimentary, inactive testicle. in the carp also and some other fishes this is found occasionally. we have already seen how traces of the earlier hemaphrodism can be traced in the passages of the amphibia. man has faithfully preserved the main features of his stem-history in the ontogeny of his urinary and sexual organs. we can follow their development step by step in the human embryo in the same advancing gradation that is presented to us by the comparison of the urogenital organs in the acrania, cyclostomes; fishes, amphibia, reptiles, and then (within the mammal series) in the monotremes, marsupials, and the various placentals. all the peculiarities of urogenital structure that distinguish the mammals from the rest of the vertebrates are found in man; and in all special structural features he resembles the apes, particularly the anthropoid apes. in proof of the fact that the special features of the mammals have been inherited by man, i will, in conclusion, point out the identical way in which the ova are formed in the ovary. in all the mammals the mature ova are contained in special capsules, which are known as the graafian follicles, after their discoverer, roger de graaf ( ). they were formerly supposed to be the ova themselves; but baer discovered the ova within the follicles (chapter . ). each follicle (figure . ) consists of a round fibrous capsule (d), which contains fluid and is lined with several strata of cells (c). the layer is thickened like a knob at one point (b); this ovum-capsule encloses the ovum proper (a). the mammal ovary is originally a very simple oval body (figure . g), formed only of connective tissue and blood-vessels, covered with a layer of cells, the ovarian epithelium or the female germ epithelium. from this germ epithelium strings of cells grow out into the connective tissue or "stroma" of the ovary (figure . b). some of the cells of these strings (or pfluger's tubes) grow larger and become ova (primitive ova, c); but the great majority remain small, and form a protective and nutritive stratum of cells round each ovum--the "follicle-epithelium" (e). the follicle-epithelium of the mammal has at first one stratum (figure . ), but afterwards several ( ). it is true that in all the other vertebrates the ova are enclosed in a membrane, or "follicle," that consists of smaller cells. but it is only in the mammals that fluid accumulates between the growing follicle-cells, and distends the follicle into a large round capsule, on the inside wall of which the ovum lies, at one side (figures . and . ). there again, as in the whole of his morphology, man proves indubitably his descent from the mammals. in the lower vertebrates the formation of ova in the germ-epithelium of the ovary continues throughout life; but in the higher it is restricted to the earlier stages, or even to the period of embryonic development. in man it seems to cease in the first year; in the second year we find no new-formed ova or chains of ova (pfluger's tubes). however, the number of ova in the two ovaries is very large in the young girl; there are calculated to be , in the sexually-mature maiden. in the production of the ova men resemble most of the anthropoid apes. generally speaking, the natural history of the human sexual organs is one of those parts of anthropology that furnish the most convincing proofs of the animal origin of the human race. any man who is acquainted with the facts and impartially weighs them will conclude from them alone that we have been evolved from the lower vertebrates. the larger and the detailed structure, the action, and the embryological development of the sexual organs are just the same in man as in the apes. this applies equally to the male and the female, the internal and the external organs. the differences we find in this respect between man and the anthropoid apes are much slighter than the differences between the various species of apes. but all the apes have certainly a common origin, and have been evolved from a long-extinct early-tertiary stem-form, which we must trace to a branch of the lemurs. if we had this unknown pithecoid stem-form before us, we should certainly put it in the order of the true apes in the primate system; but within this order we cannot, for the anatomic and ontogenetic reasons we have seen, separate man from the group of the anthropoid apes. here again, therefore, on the ground of the pithecometra-principle, comparative anatomy and ontogeny teach with full confidence the descent of man from the ape. chapter . . results of anthropogeny. now that we have traversed the wonderful region of human embryology and are familiar with the principal parts of it, it will be well to look back on the way we have come, and forward to the further path to truth to which it has led us. we started from the simplest facts of ontogeny, or the development of the individual--from observations that we can repeat and verify by microscopic and anatomic study at any moment. the first and most important of these facts is that every man, like every other animal, begins his existence as a simple cell. this round ovum has the same characteristic form and origin as the ovum of any other mammal. from it is developed in the same manner in all the placentals, by repeated cleavage, a multicellular blastula. this is converted into a gastrula, and this in turn into a blastocystis (or embryonic vesicle). the two strata of cells that compose its wall are the primary germinal layers, the skin-layer (ectoderm), and gut-layer (entoderm). this two-layered embryonic form is the ontogenetic reproduction of the extremely important phylogenetic stem-form of all the metazoa, which we have called the gastraea. as the human embryo passes through the gastrula-form like that of all the other metazoa, we can trace its phylogenetic origin to the gastraea. as we continued to follow the embryonic development of the two-layered structure, we saw that first a third, or middle layer (mesoderm), appears between the two primary layers; when this divides into two, we have the four secondary germinal layers. these have just the same composition and genetic significance in man as in all the other vertebrates. from the skin-sense layer are developed the epidermis, the central nervous system, and the chief part of the sense-organs. the skin-fibre layer forms the corium and the motor organs--the skeleton and the muscular system. from the gut-fibre layer are developed the vascular system, the muscular wall of the gut, and the sexual glands. finally, the gut-gland layer only forms the epithelium, or the inner cellular stratum of the mucous membrane of the alimentary canal and glands (lungs, liver, etc.). the manner in which these different systems of organs arise from the secondary germinal layers is essentially the same from the start in man as in all the other vertebrates. we saw, in studying the embryonic development of each organ, that the human embryo follows the special lines of differentiation and construction that are only found otherwise in the vertebrates. within the limits of this vast stem we have followed, step by step, the development both of the body as a whole and of its various parts. this higher development follows in the human embryo the form that is peculiar to the mammals. finally, we saw that, even within the limits of this class, the various phylogenetic stages that we distinguish in a natural classification of the mammals correspond to the ontogenetic stages that the human embryo passes through in the course of its evolution. we were thus in a position to determine precisely the position of man in this class, and so to establish his relationship to the different orders of mammals. the line of argument we followed in this explanation of the ontogenetic facts was simply a consistent application of the biogenetic law. in this we have throughout taken strict account of the distinction between palingenetic and cenogenetic phenomena. palingenesis (or "synoptic development") alone enables us to draw conclusions from the observed embryonic form to the stem-form preserved by heredity. such inference becomes more or less precarious when there has been cenogenesis, or disturbance of development, owing to fresh adaptations. we cannot understand embryonic development unless we appreciate this very important distinction. here we stand at the very limit that separates the older and the new science or philosophy of nature. the whole of the results of recent morphological research compel us irresistibly to recognise the biogenetic law and its far-reaching consequences. these are, it is true, irreconcilable with the legends and doctrines of former days, that have been impressed on us by religious education. but without the biogenetic law, without the distinction between palingenesis and cenogenesis, and without the theory of evolution on which we base it, it is quite impossible to understand the facts of organic development; without them we cannot cast the faintest gleam of explanation over this marvellous field of phenomena. but when we recognise the causal correlation of ontogeny and phylogeny expressed in this law, the wonderful facts of embryology are susceptible of a very simple explanation; they are found to be the necessary mechanical effects of the evolution of the stem, determined by the laws of heredity and adaptation. the correlative action of these laws under the universal influence of the struggle for existence, or--as we may say in a word, with darwin--"natural selection," is entirely adequate to explain the whole process of embryology in the light of phylogeny. it is the chief merit of darwin that he explained by his theory of selection the correlation of the laws of heredity and adaptation that lamarck had recognised, and pointed out the true way to reach a causal interpretation of evolution. the phenomenon that it is most imperative to recognise in this connection is the inheritance of functional variations. jean lamarck was the first to appreciate its fundamental importance in , and we may therefore justly give the name of lamarckism to the theory of descent he based on it. hence the radical opponents of the latter have very properly directed their attacks chiefly against the former. one of the most distinguished and most narrow-minded of these opponents, wilhelm his, affirms very positively that "characteristics acquired in the life of the individual are not inherited." the inheritance of acquired characters is denied, not only by thorough opponents of evolution, but even by scientists who admit it and have contributed a good deal to its establishment, especially weismann, galton, ray lankester, etc. since the chief opponent has been august weismann, who has rendered the greatest service in the development of darwin's theory of selection. in his work on the continuity of the germ-plasm, and in his recent excellent lectures on the theory of descent ( ), he has with great success advanced the opinion that "only those characters can be transmitted to subsequent generations that were contained in rudimentary form in the embryo." however, this germ-plasm theory, with its attempt to explain heredity, is merely a "provisional molecular hypothesis"; it is one of those metaphysical speculations that attribute the evolutionary phenomena exclusively to internal causes, and regard the influence of the environment as insignificant. herbert spencer, theodor eimer, lester ward, hering, and zehnder have pointed out the untenable consequences of this position. i have given my view of it in the tenth edition of the history of creation (pages and ). i hold, with lamarck and darwin, that the hereditary transmission of acquired characters is one of the most important phenomena in biology, and is proved by thousands of morphological and physiological experiences. it is an indispensable foundation of the theory of evolution. of the many and weighty arguments for the truth of this conception of evolution i will for the moment merely point to the invaluable evidence of dysteleology, the science of rudimentary organs. we cannot insist too often or too strongly on the great morphological significance of these remarkable organs, which are completely useless from the physiological point of view. we find some of these useless parts, inherited from our lower vertebrate ancestors, in every system of organs in man and the higher vertebrates. thus we find at once on the skin a scanty and rudimentary coat of hair, only fully developed on the head, under the shoulders, and at a few other parts of the body. the short hairs on the greater part of the body are quite useless and devoid of physiological value; they are the last relic of the thicker hairy coat of our simian ancestors. the sensory apparatus presents a series of most remarkable rudimentary organs. we have seen that the whole of the shell of the external ear, with its cartilages, muscles, and skin, is in man a useless appendage, and has not the physiological importance that was formerly ascribed to it. it is the degenerate remainder of the pointed, freely moving, and more advanced mammal ear, the muscles of which we still have, but cannot work them. we found at the inner corner of our eye a small, curious, semi-lunar fold that is of no use whatever to us, and is only interesting as the last relic of the nictitating membrane, the third, inner eye-lid that had a distinct physiological purpose in the ancient sharks, and still has in many of the amniotes. the motor apparatus, in both the skeleton and muscular systems, provides a number of interesting dysteleological arguments. i need only recall the projecting tail of the human embryo, with its rudimentary caudal vertebrae and muscles; this is totally useless in man, but very interesting as the degenerate relic of the long tail of our simian ancestors. from these we have also inherited various bony processes and muscles, which were very useful to them in climbing trees, but are useless to us. at various points of the skin we have cutaneous muscles which we never use--remnants of a strongly-developed cutaneous muscle in our lower mammal ancestors. this "panniculus carnosus" had the function of contracting and creasing the skin to chase away the flies, as we see every day in the horse. another relic in us of this large cutaneous muscle is the frontal muscle, by which we knit our forehead and raise our eye-brows; but there is another considerable relic of it, the large cutaneous muscle in the neck (platysma myoides), over which we have no voluntary control. not only in the systems of animal organs, but also in the vegetal apparatus, we find a number of rudimentary organs, many of which we have already noticed. in the alimentary apparatus there are the thymus-gland and the thyroid gland, the seat of goitre and the relic of a ciliated groove that the tunicates and acrania still have in the gill-pannier; there is also the vermiform appendix to the caecum. in the vascular system we have a number of useless cords which represent relics of atrophied vessels that were once active as blood-canals--the ductus botalli between the pulmonary artery and the aorta, the ductus venosus arantii between the portal vein and the vena cava, and many others. the many rudimentary organs in the urinary and sexual apparatus are particularly interesting. these are generally developed in one sex and rudimentary in the other. thus the spermaducts are formed from the wolffian ducts in the male, whereas in the female we have merely rudimentary traces of them in gaertner's canals. on the other hand, in the female the oviducts and womb are developed from the mullerian ducts, while in the male only the lowest ends of them remain as the "male womb" (vesicula prostatica). again, the male has in his nipples and mammary glands the rudiments of organs that are usually active only in the female. a careful anatomic study of the human frame would disclose to us numbers of other rudimentary organs, and these can only be explained on the theory of evolution. robert wiedersheim has collected a large number of them in his work on the human frame as a witness to its past. they are some of the weightiest proofs of the truth of the mechanical conception and the strongest disproofs of the teleological view. if, as the latter demands, man or any other organism had been designed and fitted for his life-purposes from the start and brought into being by a creative act, the existence of these rudimentary organs would be an insoluble enigma; it would be impossible to understand why the creator had put this useless burden on his creatures to walk a path that is in itself by no means easy. but the theory of evolution gives the simplest possible explanation of them. it says: the rudimentary organs are parts of the body that have fallen into disuse in the course of centuries; they had definite functions in our animal ancestors, but have lost their physiological significance. on account of fresh adaptations they have become superfluous, but are transmitted from generation to generation by heredity, and gradually atrophy. we have inherited not only these rudimentary parts, but all the organs of our body, from the mammals--proximately from the apes. the human body does not contain a single organ that has not been inherited from the apes. in fact, with the aid of our biogenetic law we can trace the origin of our various systems of organs much further, down to the lowest stages of our ancestry. we can say, for instance, that we have inherited the oldest organs of the body, the external skin and the internal coat of the alimentary system, from the gastraeads; the nervous and muscular systems from the platodes; the vascular system, the body-cavity, and the blood from the vermalia; the chorda and the branchial gut from the prochordonia; the articulation of the body from the acrania; the primitive skull and the higher sense-organs from the cyclostomes; the limbs and jaws from the selachii; the five-toed foot from the amphibia; the palate from the reptiles; the hairy coat, the mammary glands, and the external sexual organs from the pro-mammals. when we formulated "the law of the ontogenetic connection of systematically related forms," and determined the relative age of organs, we saw how it was possible to draw phylogenetic conclusions from the ontogenetic succession of systems of organs. with the aid of this important law and of comparative anatomy we were also enabled to determine "man's place in nature," or, as we put it, assign to man his position in the classification of the animal kingdom. in recent zoological classification the animal world is divided into twelve stems or phyla, and these are broadly sub-divided into about sixty classes, and these classes into at least orders. in his whole organisation man is most certainly, in the first place, a member of one of these stems, the vertebrate stem; secondly, a member of one particular class in this stem, the mammals; and thirdly, of one particular order, the order of primates. he has all the characteristics that distinguish the vertebrates from the other eleven animal stems, the mammals from the other sixty classes, and the primates from the other orders of the animal kingdom. we may turn and twist as we like, but we cannot get over this fact of anatomy and classification. of late years this fact has given rise to a good deal of discussion, and especially of controversy as to the particular anatomic relationship of man to the apes. the most curious opinions have been advanced on this "ape-question," or "pithecoid-theory." it is as well, therefore, to go into it once more and distinguish the essential from the unessential. (cf. chapter . .) we start from the undisputed fact that man is in any case--whether we accept or reject his special blood-relationship to the apes--a true mammal; in fact, a placental mammal. this fundamental fact can be proved so easily at any moment from comparative anatomy that it has been universally admitted since the separation of the placentals from the lower mammals (marsupials and monotremes). but for every consistent subscriber to the theory of evolution it must follow at once that man descends from a common stem-form with all the other placentals, the stem-ancestor of the placentals, just as we must admit a common mesozoic ancestor of all the mammals. this is, however, to settle decisively the great and burning question of man's place in nature, whether or no we go on to admit a nearer or more distant relationship to the apes. whether man is or is not a member of the ape-order (or, if you prefer, the primate-order.) in the phylogenetic sense, in any case his direct blood-relationship to the rest of the mammals, and especially the placentals, is established. it is possible that the affinities of the various orders of mammals to each other are different from what we hypothetically assume to-day. but, in any case, the common descent of man and all the other mammals from one stem-form is beyond question. this long-extinct promammal was probably evolved from proreptiles during the triassic period, and must certainly be regarded as the monotreme and oviparous ancestor of all the mammals. if we hold firmly to this fundamental and most important thesis, we shall see the "ape-question" in a very different light from that in which it is usually regarded. little reflection is then needed to see that it is not nearly so important as it is said to be. the origin of the human race from a series of mammal ancestors, and the historic evolution of these from an earlier series of lower vertebrate ancestors, together with all the weighty conclusions that every thoughtful man deduces therefrom, remain untouched; so far as these are concerned, it is immaterial whether we regard true "apes" as our nearest ancestors or not. but as it has become the fashion to lay the chief stress in the whole question of man's origin on the "descent from the apes," i am compelled to return to it once more, and recall the facts of comparative anatomy and ontogeny that give a decisive answer to this "ape-question." the shortest way to attain our purpose is that followed by huxley in in his able work, which i have already often quoted, man's place in nature--the way of comparative anatomy and ontogeny. we have to compare impartially all man's organs with the same organs in the higher apes, and then to examine if the differences between the two are greater than the corresponding differences between the higher and the lower apes. the indubitable and incontestable result of this comparative-anatomical study, conducted with the greatest care and impartiality, was the pithecometra-principle, which we have called the huxleian law in honour of its formulator--namely, that the differences in organisation between man and the most advanced apes we know are much slighter than the corresponding differences in organisation between the higher and lower apes. we may even give a more precise formula to this law, by excluding the platyrrhines or american apes as distant relatives, and restricting the comparison to the narrower family-circle of the catarrhines, the apes of the old world. within the limits of this small group of mammals we found the structural differences between the lower and higher catarrhine apes--for instance, the baboon and the gorilla--to be much greater than the differences between the anthropoid apes and man. if we now turn to ontogeny, and find, according to our "law of the ontogenetic connection of systematically related forms," that the embryos of the anthropoid apes and man retain their resemblance for a longer time than the embryos of the highest and the lowest apes, we are forced, whether we like it or no, to recognise our descent from the order of apes. we can assuredly construct an approximate picture in the imagination of the form of our early tertiary ancestors from the foregoing facts of comparative anatomy; however we may frame this in detail, it will be the picture of a true ape, and a distinct catarrhine ape. this has been shown so well by huxley ( ) that the recent attacks of klaatsch, virchow, and other anthropologists, have completely failed (cf. chapter . ). all the structural characters that distinguish the catarrhines from the platyrrhines are found in man. hence in the genealogy of the mammals we must derive man immediately from the catarrhine group, and locate the origin of the human race in the old world. only the early root-form from which both descended was common to them. it is, therefore, established beyond question for all impartial scientific inquiry that the human race comes directly from the apes of the old world; but, at the same time, i repeat that this is not so important in connection with the main question of the origin of man as is commonly supposed. even if we entirely ignore it, all that we have learned from the zoological facts of comparative anatomy and ontogeny as to the placental character of man remains untouched. these prove beyond all doubt the common descent of man and all the rest of the mammals. further, the main question is not in the least affected if it is said: "it is true that man is a mammal; but he has diverged at the very root of the class from all the other mammals, and has no closer relationship to any living group of mammals." the affinity is more or less close in any case, if we examine the relation of the mammal class to the sixty other classes of the animal world. quite certainly the whole of the mammals, including man, have had a common origin; and it is equally certain that their common stem-forms were gradually evolved from a long series of lower vertebrates. the resistance to the theory of a descent from the apes is clearly due in most men to feeling rather than to reason. they shrink from the notion of such an origin just because they see in the ape organism a caricature of man, a distorted and unattractive image of themselves, because it hurts man's aesthetic complacency and self-ennoblement. it is more flattering to think we have descended from some lofty and god-like being; and so, from the earliest times, human vanity has been pleased to believe in our origin from gods or demi-gods. the church, with that sophistic reversal of ideas of which it is a master, has succeeded in representing this ridiculous piece of vanity as "christian humility"; and the very men who reject with horror the notion of an animal origin, and count themselves "children of god," love to prate of their "humble sense of servitude." in most of the sermons that have poured out from pulpit and altar against the doctrine of evolution human vanity and conceit have been a conspicuous element; and, although we have inherited this very characteristic weakness from the apes, we must admit that we have developed it to a higher degree, which is entirely repudiated by sound and normal intelligence. we are greatly amused at all the childish follies that the ridiculous pride of ancestry has maintained from the middle ages to our own time; yet there is a large amount of this empty feeling in most men. just as most people much prefer to trace their family back to some degenerate baron or some famous prince rather than to an unknown peasant, so most men would rather have as parent of the race a sinful and fallen adam than an advancing, and vigorous ape. it is a matter of taste, and to that extent we cannot quarrel over these genealogical tendencies. personally, the notion of ascent is more congenial to me than that of descent. it seems to me a finer thing to be the advanced offspring of a simian ancestor, that has developed progressively from the lower mammals in the struggle for life, than the degenerate descendant of a god-like being, made from a clod, and fallen for his sins, and an eve created from one of his ribs. speaking of the rib, i may add to what i have said about the development of the skeleton, that the number of ribs is just the same in man and woman. in both of them the ribs are formed from the middle germinal layer, and are, from the phylogenetic point of view, lower or ventral vertebral arches. but it is said: "that is all very well, as far as the human body is concerned; on the facts quoted it is impossible to doubt that it has really and gradually been evolved from the long ancestral series of the vertebrates. but it is quite another thing as regards man's mind, or soul; this cannot possibly have been developed from the vertebrate-soul."* (* the english reader will recognise here the curious position of dr. wallace and of the late dr. mivart.--translator.) let us see if we cannot meet this grave stricture from the well-known facts of comparative anatomy, physiology, and embryology. it will be best to begin with a comparative study of the souls of various groups of vertebrates. here we find such an enormous variety of vertebrate souls that, at first sight, it seems quite impossible to trace them all to a common "primitive vertebrate." think of the tiny amphioxus, with no real brain but a simple medullary tube, and its whole psychic life at the very lowest stage among the vertebrates. the following group of the cyclostomes are still very limited, though they have a brain. when we pass on to the fishes, we find their intelligence remaining at a very low level. we do not see any material advance in mental development until we go on to the amphibia and reptiles. there is still greater advance when we come to the mammals, though even here the minds of the monotremes and of the stupid marsupials remain at a low stage. but when we rise from these to the placentals we find within this one vast group such a number of important stages of differentiation and progress that the psychic differences between the least intelligent (such as the sloths and armadillos) and the most intelligent placentals (such as the dogs and apes) are much greater than the psychic differences between the lowest placentals and the marsupials or monotremes. most certainly the differences are far greater than the differences in mental power between the dog, the ape, and man. yet all these animals are genetically-related members of a single natural class. we see this to a still more astonishing extent in the comparative psychology of another class of animals, that is especially interesting for many reasons--the insect class. it is well known that we find in many insects a degree of intelligence that is found in man alone among the vertebrates. everybody knows of the famous communities and states of bees and ants, and of the very remarkable social arrangements in them, such as we find among the more advanced races of men, but among no other group of animals. i need only mention the social organisation and government of the monarchic bees and the republican ants, and their division into different conditions--queen, drone-nobles, workers, educators, soldiers, etc. one of the most remarkable phenomena in this very interesting province is the cattle-keeping of the ants, which rear plant-lice as milch-cows and regularly extract their honeyed juice. still more remarkable is the slave-holding of the large red ants, which steal the young of the small black ants and bring them up as slaves. it has long been known that these political and social arrangements of the ants are due to the deliberate cooperation of the countless citizens, and that they understand each other. a number of recent observers, especially fritz muller, sir j. lubbock (lord avebury), and august forel, have put the astonishing degree of intelligence of these tiny articulates beyond question. now, compare with these the mental life of many of the lower, especially the parasitic insects, as darwin did. there is, for instance, the cochineal insect (coccus), which, in its adult state, has a motionless, shield-shaped body, attached to the leaves of plants. its feet are atrophied. its snout is sunk in the tissue of the plants of which it absorbs the sap. the whole psychic life of these inert female parasites consists in the pleasure they experience from sucking the sap of the plant and in sexual intercourse with the males. it is the same with the maggot-like females of the fan-fly (strepsitera), which spend their lives parasitically and immovably, without wings or feet, in the abdomen of wasps. there is no question here of higher psychic action. if we compare these sluggish parasites with the intelligent and active ants, we must admit that the psychic differences between them are much greater than the psychic differences between the lowest and highest mammals, between the monotremes, marsupials, and armadillos on the one hand, and the dog, ape, or man on the other. yet all these insects belong to the same class of articulates, just as all the mammals belong to one and the same class. and just as every consistent evolutionist must admit a common stem-form for all these insects, so he must also for all the mammals. if we now turn from the comparative study of psychic life in different animals to the question of the organs of this function, we receive the answer that in all the higher animals they are always bound up with certain groups of cells, the ganglionic cells or neurona that compose the nervous system. all scientists without exception are agreed that the central nervous system is the organ of psychic life in the animal, and it is possible to prove this experimentally at any moment. when we partially or wholly destroy the central nervous system, we extinguish in the same proportion, partially or wholly, the "soul" or psychic activity of the animal. we have, therefore, to examine the features of the psychic organ in man. the reader already knows the incontestable answer to this question. man's psychic organ is, in structure and origin, just the same organ as in all the other vertebrates. it originates in the shape of a simple medullary tube from the outer membrane of the embryo--the skin-sense layer. the simple cerebral vesicle that is formed by the expansion of the head-part of this medullary tube divides by transverse constrictions into five, and these pass through more or less the same stages of construction in the human embryo as in the rest of the mammals. as these are undoubtedly of a common origin, their brain and spinal cord must also have a common origin. physiology teaches us further, on the ground of observation and experiment, that the relation of the "soul" to its organ, the brain and spinal cord, is just the same in man as in the other mammals. the one cannot act at all without the other; it is just as much bound up with it as muscular movement is with the muscles. it can only develop in connection with it. if we are evolutionists at all, and grant the causal connection of ontogenesis and phylogenesis, we are forced to admit this thesis: the human soul or psyche, as a function of the medullary tube, has developed along with it; and just as brain and spinal cord now develop from the simple medullary tube in every human individual, so the human mind or the psychic life of the whole human race has been gradually evolved from the lower vertebrate soul. just as to-day the intricate structure of the brain proceeds step by step from the same rudiment in every human individual--the same five cerebral vesicles--as in all the other craniotes; so the human soul has been gradually developed in the course of millions of years from a long series of craniote-souls. finally, just as to-day in every human embryo the various parts of the brain differentiate after the special type of the ape-brain, so the human psyche has proceeded historically from the ape-soul. it is true that this monistic conception is rejected with horror by most men, and the dualistic idea, which denies the inseparable connection of brain and mind, and regards body and soul as two totally different things, is still popular. but how can we reconcile this view with the known facts of evolution? it meets with difficulties equally great and insuperable in embryology and in phylogeny. if we suppose with the majority of men that the soul is an independent entity, which has nothing to do with the body originally, but merely inhabits it for a time, and gives expression to its experiences through the brain just as the pianist does through his instrument, we must assign a point in human embryology at which the soul enters into the brain; and at death again we must assign a moment at which it abandons the body. as, further, each human individual has inherited certain personal features from each parent, we must suppose that in the act of conception pieces were detached from their souls and transferred to the embryo. a piece of the paternal soul goes with-the spermatozoon, and a piece of the mother's soul remains in the ovum. at the moment of conception, when portions of the two nuclei of the copulating cells join together to form the nucleus of the stem-cell, the accompanying fragments of the immaterial souls must also be supposed to coalesce. on this dualistic view the phenomena of psychic development are totally incomprehensible. everybody knows that the new-born child has no consciousness, no knowledge of itself and the surrounding world. every parent who has impartially followed the mental development of his children will find it impossible to deny that it is a case of biological evolutionary processes. just as all other functions of the body develop in connection with their organs, so the soul does in connection with the brain. this gradual unfolding of the soul of the child is, in fact, so wonderful and glorious a phenomenon that every mother or father who has eyes to observe is never tired of contemplating it. it is only our manuals of psychology that know nothing of this development; we are almost tempted to think sometimes that their authors can never have had children themselves. the human soul, as described in most of our psychological works, is merely the soul of a learned philosopher, who has read a good many books, but knows nothing of evolution, and never even reflects that his own soul has had a development. when these dualistic philosophers are consistent they must assign a moment in the phylogeny of the human soul at which it was first "introduced" into man's vertebrate body. hence, at the time when the human body was evolved from the anthropoid body of the ape (probably in the tertiary period), a specific human psychic element--or, as people love to say, "a spark of divinity"--must have been suddenly infused or breathed into the anthropoid brain, and been associated with the ape-soul already present in it. i need not insist on the enormous theoretical difficulties of this idea. i will only point out that this "spark of divinity," which is supposed to distinguish the soul of man from that of the other animals, must be itself capable of development, and has, as a matter of fact, progressively developed in the course of human history. as a rule, reason is taken to be this "spark of divinity," and is supposed to be an exclusive possession of humanity. but comparative psychology shows us that it is quite impossible to set up this barrier between man and the brute. either we take the word "reason" in the wider sense, and then it is found in the higher mammals (ape, dog, elephant, horse) just as well as in most men; or else in the narrower sense, and then it is lacking in most men just as much as in the majority of animals. on the whole, we may still say of man's reason what goethe's mephistopheles said:-- life somewhat better might content him but for the gleam of heavenly light that thou hast given him. he calls it reason; thence his power's increased to be still beastlier than any beast. if, then, we must reject these popular and, in some respects, agreeable dualistic theories as untenable, because inconsistent with the genetic facts, there remains only the opposite or monistic conception, according to which the human soul is, like any other animal soul, a function of the central nervous system, and develops in inseparable connection therewith. we see this ontogenetically in every child. the biogenetic law compels us to affirm it phylogenetically. just as in every human embryo the skin-sense layer gives rise to the medullary tube, from the anterior end of which the five cerebral vesicles of the craniotes are developed, and from these the mammal brain (first with the characters of the lower, then with those of the higher mammals); and as the whole of this ontogenetic process is only a brief, hereditary reproduction of the same process in the phylogenesis of the vertebrates; so the wonderful spiritual life of the human race through many thousands of years has been evolved step by step from the lowly psychic life of the lower vertebrates, and the development of every child-soul is only a brief repetition of that long and complex phylogenetic process. from all these facts sound reason must conclude that the still prevalent belief in the immortality of the soul is an untenable superstition. i have shown its inconsistency with modern science in the eleventh chapter of the riddle of the universe. here it may also be well to point out the great importance of anthropogeny, in the light of the biogenetic law, for the purposes of philosophy. the speculative philosophers who take cognizance of these ontogenetic facts, and explain them (in accordance with the law) phylogenetically, will advance the great questions of philosophy far more than the most distinguished thinkers of all ages have yet succeeded in doing. most certainly every clear and consistent thinker must derive from the facts of comparative anatomy and ontogeny we have adduced a number of suggestive ideas that cannot fail to have an influence on the progress of philosophy. nor can it be doubted that the candid statement and impartial appreciation of these facts will lead to the decisive triumph of the philosophic tendency that we call "monistic" or "mechanical," as opposed to the "dualistic" or "teleological," on which most of the ancient, medieval, and modern systems of philosophy are based. the monistic or mechanical philosophy affirms that all the phenomena of human life and of the rest of nature are ruled by fixed and unalterable laws; that there is everywhere a necessary causal connection of phenomena; and that, therefore, the whole knowable universe is a harmonious unity, a monon. it says, further, that all phenomena are due solely to mechanical or efficient causes, not to final causes. it does not admit free-will in the ordinary sense of the word. in the light of the monistic philosophy the phenomena that we are wont to regard as the freest and most independent, the expressions of the human will, are subject just as much to rigid laws as any other natural phenomenon. as a matter of fact, impartial and thorough examination of our "free" volitions shows that they are never really free, but always determined by antecedent factors that can be traced to either heredity or adaptation. we cannot, therefore, admit the conventional distinction between nature and spirit. there is spirit everywhere in nature, and we know of no spirit outside of nature. hence, also, the common antithesis of natural science and mental or moral science is untenable. every science, as such, is both natural and mental. that is a firm principle of monism, which, on its religious side, we may also denominate pantheism. man is not above, but in, nature. it is true that the opponents of evolution love to misrepresent the monistic philosophy based on it as "materialism," and confuse the philosophic tendency of this name with a wholly unconnected and despicable moral materialism. strictly speaking, it would be just as proper to call our system spiritualism as materialism. the real materialistic philosophy affirms that the phenomena of life are, like all other phenomena, effects or products of matter. the opposite extreme, the spiritualistic philosophy, says, on the contrary, that matter is a product of energy, and that all material forms are produced by free and independent forces. thus, according to one-sided materialism, the matter is antecedent to the living force; according to the equally one-sided view of the spiritist, it is the reverse. both views are dualistic, and, in my opinion, both are false. for us the antithesis disappears in the monistic philosophy, which knows neither matter without force nor force without matter. it is only necessary to reflect for some time over the question from the strictly scientific point of view to see that it is impossible to form a clear idea of either hypothesis. as goethe said, "matter can never exist or act without spirit, nor spirit without matter." the human "spirit" or "soul" is merely a force or form of energy, inseparably bound up with the material sub-stratum of the body. the thinking force of the mind is just as much connected with the structural elements of the brain as the motor force of the muscles with their structural elements. our mental powers are functions of the brain as much as any other force is a function of a material body. we know of no matter that is devoid of force, and no forces that are not bound up with matter. when the forces enter into the phenomenon as movements we call them living or active forces; when they are in a state of rest or equilibrium we call them latent or potential. this applies equally to inorganic and organic bodies. the magnet that attracts iron filings, the powder that explodes, the steam that drives the locomotive, are living inorganics; they act by living force as much as the sensitive mimosa does when it contracts its leaves at touch, or the venerable amphioxus that buries itself in the sand of the sea, or man when he thinks. only in the latter cases the combinations of the different forces that appear as "movement" in the phenomenon are much more intricate and difficult to analyse than in the former. our study has led us to the conclusion that in the whole evolution of man, in his embryology and in his phylogeny, there are no living forces at work other than those of the rest of organic and inorganic nature. all the forces that are operative in it could be reduced in the ultimate analysis to growth, the fundamental evolutionary function that brings about the forms of both the organic and the inorganic. but growth itself depends on the attraction and repulsion of homogeneous and heterogeneous particles. seventy-five years ago carl ernst von baer summed up the general result of his classic studies of animal development in the sentence: "the evolution of the individual is the history of the growth of individuality in every respect." and if we go deeper to the root of this law of growth, we find that in the long run it can always be reduced to that attraction and repulsion of animated atoms which empedocles called the "love and hatred" of the elements. thus the evolution of man is directed by the same "eternal, iron laws" as the development of any other body. these laws always lead us back to the same simple principles, the elementary principles of physics and chemistry. the various phenomena of nature only differ in the degree of complexity in which the different forces work together. each single process of adaptation and heredity in the stem-history of our ancestors is in itself a very complex physiological phenomenon. far more intricate are the processes of human embryology; in these are condensed and comprised thousands of the phylogenetic processes. in my general morphology, which appeared in , i made the first attempt to apply the theory of evolution, as reformed by darwin, to the whole province of biology, and especially to provide with its assistance a mechanical foundation for the science of organic forms. the intimate relations that exist between all parts of organic science, especially the direct causal nexus between the two sections of evolution--ontogeny and phylogeny--were explained in that work for the first time by transformism, and were interpreted philosophically in the light of the theory of descent. the anthropological part of the general morphology (book ) contains the first attempt to determine the series of man's ancestors (volume page ). however imperfect this attempt was, it provided a starting-point for further investigation. in the thirty-seven years that have since elapsed the biological horizon has been enormously widened; our empirical acquisitions in paleontology, comparative anatomy, and ontogeny have grown to an astonishing extent, thanks to the united efforts of a number of able workers and the employment of better methods. many important biological questions that then appeared to be obscure enigmas seem to be entirely settled. darwinism arose like the dawn of a new day of clear monistic science after the dark night of mystic dogmatism, and we can say now, proudly and gladly, that there is daylight in our field of inquiry. philosophers and others, who are equally ignorant of the empirical sources of our evidence and the phylogenetic methods of utilising it, have even lately claimed that in the matter of constructing our genealogical tree nothing more has been done than the discovery of a "gallery of ancestors," such as we find in the mansions of the nobility. this would be quite true if the genealogy given in the second part of this work were merely the juxtaposition of a series of animal forms, of which we gathered the genetic connection from their external physiognomic resemblances. as we have sufficiently proved already, it is for us a question of a totally different thing--of the morphological and historical proof of the phylogenetic connection of these ancestors on the basis of their identity in internal structure and embryonic development; and i think i have sufficiently shown in the first part of this work how far this is calculated to reveal to us their inner nature and its historical development. i see the essence of its significance precisely in the proof of historical connection. i am one of those scientists who believe in a real "natural history," and who think as much of an historical knowledge of the past as of an exact investigation of the present. the incalculable value of the historical consciousness cannot be sufficiently emphasised at a time when historical research is ignored and neglected, and when an "exact" school, as dogmatic as it is narrow, would substitute for it physical experiments and mathematical formulae. historical knowledge cannot be replaced by any other branch of science. it is clear that the prejudices that stand in the way of a general recognition of this "natural anthropogeny" are still very great; otherwise the long struggle of philosophic systems would have ended in favour of monism. but we may confidently expect that a more general acquaintance with the genetic facts will gradually destroy these prejudices, and lead to the triumph of the natural conception of "man's place in nature." when we hear it said, in face of this expectation, that this would lead to retrogression in the intellectual and moral development of mankind, i cannot refrain from saying that, in my opinion, it will be just the reverse; that it will promote to an enormous extent the advance of the human mind. all progress in our knowledge of truth means an advance in the higher cultivation of the human intelligence; and all progress in its application to practical life implies a corresponding improvement of morality. the worst enemies of the human race--ignorance and superstition--can only be vanquished by truth and reason. in any case, i hope and desire to have convinced the reader of these chapters that the true scientific comprehension of the human frame can only be attained in the way that we recognise to be the sole sound and effective one in organic science generally--namely, the way of evolution. index. abiogenesis. accipenser. abortive ova. achromatin. achromin. acoela. acoustic nerve, the. acquired characters, inheritance of. acrania, the. acroganglion, the. adam's apple, the. adapida. adaptation. after-birth, the. agassiz, l. age of life. alimentary canal, evolution of the. structure of the. allantoic circulation, the. allantois, development of the. allmann. amblystoma. amitotic cleavage. ammoconida. ammolynthus. amnion, the. formation of the. amniotic fluid, the. amoeba, the. amphibia, the. amphichoerus. amphigastrula. amphioxus, the. circulation of the. coelomation of the. embryology of the. structure of the. amphirhina. anamnia, the. anatomy, comparative. animalculists. animal layer, the. annelids, the. annelid theory, the. anomodontia. ant, intelligence of the. anthropithecus. anthropogeny. anthropoid apes, the. anthropology. anthropozoic period. antimera. anura. anus, the. anus, formation of the. aorta, the. development of the. ape and man. ape-man, the. apes, the. aphanocapsa. aphanostomum. appendicaria. appendix vermiformis, the. aquatic life, early prevalence of. ararat, mount. archenteron. archeolithic age. archicaryon. archicrania. archigastrula. archiprimas. arctopitheca. area, the germinative. aristotle. arm, structure of the. arrow-worm, the. arterial arches, the. cone, the. arteries, evolution of the. articulates, the. skeleton of the. articulation. aryo-romanic languages, the. ascidia, the. embryology of the. ascula. asexual reproduction. atlas, the. atrium, the. (heart), the. auditory nerve, the. auricles of the heart. autolemures. axolotl, the. bacteria. baer, k.e. von. balanoglossus. balfour, f. batrachia. bdellostoma stouti. bee, generation of the. beyschlag, w., on evolution. bilateral symmetry. origin of. bimana. biogenetic law, the. biogeny. bionomy. bird, evolution of the. ovum of the. bischoff, w. bladder, evolution of the. blastaea, the. blastocoel, the. blastocrene, the. blastocystis, the. blastoderm, the. blastodermic vesicle, the. blastoporus, the. blastosphere, the. blastula, the. the mammal. blood, importance of the. recent experiments in mixture of. structure of the. blood-cells, the. blood-vessels, the. development of the. of the vertebrate. origin of the. boniface viii, bull of. bonnet. borneo nosed-ape, the. boveri, theodor. brachytarsi. brain and mind. evolution of the. in the fish. in the lower animals. structure of the. branchial arches, evolution of the. cavity, the. system, the. branchiotomes. breasts, the. bulbilla. calamichthys. calcolynthus. capillaries, the. caracoideum, the. carboniferous strata. carcharodon. cardiac cavity, the. cardiocoel, the. catallacta. caryobasis. caryokinesis. caryolymph. caryolyses. caryon. caryoplasm. catarrhinae, the. catastrophic theory, the. caudate cells. cell, life of the. nature of the. size of the. cell theory, the. cenogenesis. cenogenetic structures. cenozoic period, the. central body, the. central nervous system, the. centrolecithal ova. centrosoma, the. ceratodus, the. cerebellum, the. cerebral vesicles, evolution of the. cerebrum, the. cestracion japonicus. chaetognatha. chick, importance of the, in embryology. child, mind of the. chimpanzee, the. chiromys. chiroptera. chirotherium. chondylarthra. chorda, the. evolution of the. chordaea, the. chordalemma, the. chordaria. chordula, the. choriata, the. chorion, the. development of the. frondosum. laeve. choroid coat, the. chorology. chromacea. chromatin. chroococcacea. chroococcus, the. church, opposition of, to science in middle ages. chyle. chyle-vessels. cicatricula, the. ciliated cells. cinghalese gynecomast. circulation in the lancelet. circulatory system, evolution of the. structure of the. classification. evolutionary value of. clitoris, the. cloaca, the. cnidaria. coccyx, the. cochineal insect, the. cochlea, the. coecilia. coecum [caecum], the. coelenterata. coelenteria. coeloma, the. coelomaea, the. coelomaria. coelomation. coelom-theory, the. coelomula, the. colon, the. comparative anatomy. conception, nature of. conjunctiva, the. conocyema. convoluta. copelata, the. copulative organs, evolution of the. corium, the. cornea, the. corpora cavernosa, the. corpora quadrigemina. corpora striata. corpus callosum, the. corpus vitreum, the. corpuscles of the blood. craniology. craniota, the. cranium, the. creation. cretaceous strata. crossopterygii. crustacea, the. cryptocoela. cryptorchism. crystalline lens, the. development of the. cutaneous glands. cuttlefish, embryology of the. cuvier, g. cyanophycea. cyclostoma, the. ova of the. cyemaria. cynopitheca. cynthia. cytoblastus, the. cytodes. cytoplasm. cytosoma. cytula, the. dalton. darwin, c. darwin, e. darwinism. decidua, the. deciduata. deduction, nature of. degeneration theory, the. dentition of the ape and man. depula. descent of man. design in organisms. deutoplasm. devonian strata. diaphragm, the. evolution of the. dicyema. dicyemida. didelphia. digonopora. dinosauria. dipneumones. dipneusta. ova of the. dipnoa. directive bodies. discoblastic ova. discoplacenta. dissatyrus. dissection, medieval decrees against. dohrn, anton. dollinger. dorsal furrow, the. shield, the. zone, the. dromatherium. dualism. dubois, eugen. ductus botalli, the. ductus venosus arantii. duodenum, the. duration of embryonic development. of man's history. dysteleology. proofs of. ear, evolution of the. structure of the. uselessness of the external. ear-bones, the. earth, age of the. echidna hystrix. ectoblast. ectoderm, the. edentata. efficient causes. egg of the bird. or the chick, priority of the. elasmobranchs, the. embryo, human, development of the. embryology. evolutionary value of. embryonic development, duration of. disk, the. spot, the. encephalon, the. endoblast. endothelia. enterocoela. enteropneusta. entoderm, the. eocene strata. eopitheca. epiblast. epidermis, the. epididymis, the. epigastrula. epigenesis. epiglottis, the. epiphysis, the. episoma. episomites. epispadia. epithelia. epitheria. epovarium, the. equilibrium, sense of. esthonychida. eustachian tube, the. eutheria. eve. evolution theory, the. inductive nature of. eye, evolution of the. structure of the. eyelid, the third. eyelids, evolution of the. fabricius ab aquapendente face, embryonic development of the. fat glands in the skin. feathers, evolution of. fertilisation. place of. fin, evolution of the. final causes. flagellate cells. floating bladder, the. evolution of the. foetal circulation. food-yelk, the. foot, evolution of the. of the ape and man. fore brain, the. fore kidneys, the. fossiliferous strata, list of. fossils. scarcity of. free will. friedenthal, experiments of. frog, the. ova of the. frontonia. function and structure. furcation of ova. gaertner's duct. ganglia, commencement of. ganglionic cell, the. ganoids. gastraea, the. formation of the. gastraea theory, the. gastraeads. gastremaria. gastrocystis, the. gastrophysema. gastrotricha. gastrula, the. gastrulation. gegenbaur, carl. on evolution. on the skull. gemmation. general morphology. genesis. genital pore, the. geological evolution, length of. periods. geology, methods of. rise of. germ-plasm, theory of. germinal disk. layers, the. scheme of the. spot, the. vesicle, the. germinative area, the. giant gorilla, the. gibbon, the. gill-clefts and arches. formation of the. gill-crate, the. gills, disappearance of the. gloeocapsa. gnathostoma. goethe as an evolutionist. goitre. gonads, the. formation of the. gonidia. gonochorism, beginning of. gonoducts. gonotomes. goodsir. gorilla, the. graafian follicles, the. gregarinae. gullet-ganglion, the. gut, evolution of the. gyrini. gynecomastism. hag-fish, the. hair, evolution of the. on the human embryo and infant. hair, restriction of, by sexual selection. haliphysema. halisauria. haller, albrecht. halosphaera viridis. hand, evolution of the. of the ape and man. hapalidae. harderian gland, the. hare-lip. harrison, granville. hartmann. harvey. hatschek. hatteria. head-cavity, the. head-plates, the. heart, development of the. of the ascidia. position of the. helmholtz. helminthes. hepatic gut, the. heredity, nature of. hermaphrodism. hertwig. hesperopitheca. his, w. histogeny. history of creation. holoblastic ova. homoeosaurus. homology of the germinal layers. hoof, evolution of the. hunterian ligament, the. huxleian law, the. huxley, t.h. hydra, the. hydrostatic apparatus in the fish. hylobates. hylodes martinicensis. hyoid bone, the. hypermastism. hyperthelism. hypoblast. hypobranchial groove, the. hypodermis, the. hypopsodina. hyposoma, the. hyposomites. hypospadia. ichthydina. ichthyophis glutinosa. ictopsida. ileum, the. immortality, aristotle on. immortality of the soul. impregnation-rise, the. indecidua. indo-germanic languages. induction and deduction. inheritance of acquired characters. insects, intelligence of. interamniotic cavity, the. intestines, the. invagination. iris, the. jacchus. java, ape-man of. jaws, evolution of the. jurassic strata. kant, dualism of. kelvin, lord, on the origin of life. kidneys, the. formation of the. klaatsch. kolliker. kowalevsky. labia, the. labyrinth, the. lachrymal glands. lamarck, j. theories of. lamprey, the. ova of the. lancelet, the. description of the. languages, evolution of. lanugo of the embryo. larynx, the. evolution of the. latebra, the. lateral plates, the. laurentian strata. lecithoma, the. leg, evolution of the. structure of the. lemuravida. lemurogona. lemurs, the. lepidosiren. leucocytes. life, age of. limbs, evolution of the. limiting furrow, the. linin. liver, the. long-nosed ape, the. love, importance of in nature. lungs, the. evolution of the. lyell, sir c. lymphatic vessels, the. lymph-cells, the. macrogonidion. macrospores. magosphaera planula. male womb, the. mallochorion, the. mallotheria. malpighian capsules. mammal, characters of the. gastrulation of the. mammals, unity of the. mammary glands, the. man and the ape, relation of. origin of. man's place in nature. mantle, the. mantle-folds, the. marsupials, the. ova of the. materialism. mathematical method, the. mechanical causes. embryology. meckel's cartilage. medulla capitis, the. oblongata, the. spinalis, the. medullary groove, the. tube, the. formation of the. mehnert, e., on the biogenetic law. meroblastic ova. merocytes. mesentery, the. mesocardium, the. mesoderm, the. mesogastria. mesonephridia, the. mesonephros, the. mesorchium, the. mesovarium, the. mesozoic period, the. metogaster, the. metagastrula, the. metamerism. metanephridia, the. metanephros, the. metaplasm. metastoma. metatheria. metazoa. metovum, the. microgonidian. microspores. middle ear, the. migration, effect of. milk, secretion of the. mind, evolution of. in the lower animals. miocene strata. mitosis. monera. monism. monodelphia. monogonopora. monopneumones. monotremes. ova of the. monoxenia darwinii. morea, the. morphology. morula, the. motor-germinative layer, the. mouth, development of the. structure of the. mucous layer, the. mullerian duct, the. muscle-layer, the. muscles, evolution of the. of the ear, rudimentary. myotomes. myxinoides, the. nails, evolution of the. nasal pits. natural philosophy. selection. navel, the. necrolemurs. nectocystis, the. nemertina. nephroduct, evolution of the. nephrotomes. nerve-cell, the. nerves, animals without. nervous system, evolution of the. neurenteric canal, the. nictitating membrane, the. nose, the, in man and the ape. development of the. structure of the. notochorda, the. nuclein. nucleolinus. nucleolus, the. nucleus of the cell. oesophagus, the. oken. oken's bodies. oligocene strata. olynthus. on the generation of animals. ontogeny. defective evidence of. opaque area, the. opossum, the. ova of the. optic nerve, the. optic thalami. vesicles. orang, the. ornithodelphia. ornithorhyncus. ornithostoma. ossicles of the ear. otoliths. ova, number of. of the lancelet. ovaries, evolution of the. oviduct, origin of the. ovolemma, the. ovulists. ovum, discovery of the. nature of the. size of the. pachylemurs, the. pacinian corpuscles. paleontology. evolutionary evidence of. incompleteness of. rise of. paleozoic age, the. palingenesis. palingenetic structures. palaehatteria. panniculus carnosus, the. paradidymis, the. parietal zone, the. parthenogenesis. pastrana, miss julia. pedimana. pellucid area, the. pelvic cavity, the. pemmatodiscus gastrulaceus. penis-bone, the. penis, varieties of the. peramelida. periblastic ova. peribranchial cavity, the. pericardial cavity, the. perichorda, the. formation of the. perigastrula. permian strata. petromyzontes, the. phagocytes. pharyngeal ganglion, the. pharynx, the. philology, comparison with. philosophie zoologique. philosophy and evolution. phycochromacea. phylogeny. physemaria. physiology, backwardness of. phytomonera. pineal eye, the. pinna, the. pithecanthropus. pithecometra-principle, the. placenta, the. placentals, the. characters of the. gastrulation of the. planocytes. plant-louse, parthenogenesis of the. planula, the. plasma-products. plasson. plastids. plastidules. platodaria. platodes, the. platyrrhinae. pleuracanthida. pleural ducts. pliocene strata. polar cells. polyspermism. preformation theory, the. primary period, the. primates, the. primatoid. primitive groove, the. gut, the. kidneys, the. mouth, the. segments. streak, the. vertebrae. primordial period, the. prochordata. prochordonia, the. prochoriata. prochorion, the. proctodaeum, the. procytella primordialis. prodidelphia. progaster, the. progonidia. promammalia. pronephridia, the. pronucleus femininus. masculinus. properistoma. prorenal canals of the lancelet. duct, the. evolution of the. proselachii. prosimiae, the. prospermaria. prospondylus. prostoma. protamniotes. protamoeba. proterosaurus, the. protists. protonephros. protophyta. protoplasm. protopterus. prototheria. protovertebrae. protozoa. provertebral cavity, the. plates, the. pseudocoela. pseudopodia. pseudova. psychic life, evolution of the. psychology. pterosauria. pylorus, the. quadratum, the. quadrumana. quaternary period. rabbit, ova of the. radiates, the. rathke's canals. rectum, the. regner de graaf. renal system, evolution of the. reproduction, nature of. reptiles. respiratory organs, evolution of the. pore, the. retina, the. rhabdocoela. rhodocytes. rhopalura. rhyncocephala. ribs, the. number of the. rudimentary ear-muscles. organs. list of. toes. sacculus, the. sagitta. coelomation of. salamander, the. ova of the. sandal-shape of embryo. satyrus. sauromammalia. sauropsida. scatulation theory, the. schizomycetes. schleiden, m. schwann, t. sclerotic coat, the. sclerotomes. scrotum, the. scyllium, nose of the. sea-squirt, the. secondary period, the. segmentation. segmentation-cells. segmentation-sphere, the. selachii. skull of the. selection, theory of. selenka. semnopitheci. sense-organs, evolution of the. number of the. origin of the. sensory nerves. serocoelom, the. serous layer, the. sex-organs, early vertebrate form of the. evolution of the. sexual reproduction, simplest forms of. selection. shark, the. nose of the. ova of the. placenta of the. skull of the. shoulder-blade, the. sickle-groove, the. sieve-membrane, the. silurian strata. simiae, the. siphonophorae, embryology of the. skeleton, structure of the. skeleton-plate, the. skin, the. evolution of. function of the. skin-layer, the. skull, evolution of the. structure of the. vertebral theory of the. smell, the sense of. soul, evolution of the. nature of the. phylogeny of the. seat of the. sound, sensations of. sozobranchia. space, sense of. species, nature of the. speech, evolution of. spermaducts. spermaries, evolution of the. spermatozoon, the. discovery of the. spinal cord, development of the. structure of the. spirema, the. spiritualism. spleen, the. spondyli. sponges, classification of the. ova of the. spontaneous generation. stegocephala. stem-cell, the. stem-zone, the. stomach, evolution of the. structure of the human. strata, thickness of. struggle for life, the. subcutis, the. sweat glands. tactile corpuscles. tadpole, the. tail, evolution of the. rudimentary, in man. tailed men. taste, the sense of. teeth, evolution of the. --of the ape and man. teleostei. telolecithal ova. temperature, sense of. terrestrial life, beginning of. tertiary period, the. theoria generationis, the. theories, value of. theromorpha. third eyelid, the. thyroid gland, the. time-variations in ontogeny. tissues, primary and secondary. toad, the. tocosauria. toes, number of the. tori genitales, the. touch, the sense of. tracheata. tread, the. tree-frog, the. triassic strata. triton taeniatus. troglodytes. tunicates, the. turbellaria. turbinated bones, the. tympanic cavity, the. umbilical, cord, the. vesicle, the. unicellular ancestor of all animals. --animals. urachus, the. urinary system, evolution of the. urogenital ducts. uterus masculinus, the. utriculus, the. vasa deferentia. vascular layer, the. system, evolution of the. structure of the. vegetative layer, the. veins, evolution of the. ventral pedicle, the. ventricles of the heart. vermalia. vermiform appendage, the. vertebrae. vertebraea. vertebral arch, the. column, the. evolution of the. structure of the. vertebrates, character of the. descent of the. vertebration. vesico-umbilical ligament, the. vesicula prostatica, the. villi of the chorion. virchow, r. on the ape-man. on the evolution of man. virgin-birth. vitalism. vitelline duct, the. volvocina. wallace, a.r. water, organic importance of. water vessels. weismann's theories. wolff, c.f. wolffian bodies. wolffian duct, the. womb, evolution of the. yelk, the. yelk-sac, the. zona pellucida, the. zonoplacenta. zoomonera. zoophytes. the last link our present knowledge of the descent of man by ernst haeckel (jena) with notes and biographical sketches by hans gadow, f.r.s. (cambridge) london adam and charles black contents page the last link introductory comparative anatomy palÆontology other evidence stages recapitulated biographical sketches: lamarck, saint-hilaire, cuvier, baer, mueller, virchow, cope, koelliker, gegenbaur, haeckel theory of cells factors of evolution geological time and evolution note the address i delivered on august at the fourth international congress of zoology at cambridge, 'on our present knowledge of the descent of man,' has, i find, from the high significance of the theme and the general importance of the questions connected with it, excited much interest, and has led to requests for its publication. hence this volume, edited by my friend dr. h. gadow, my pupil in earlier days, who has not only revised the text, but has also enriched it by many valuable additions and notes. ernst haeckel. _jena, december, ._ the last link at the end of the nineteenth century, the age of 'natural science,' the department of knowledge that has made most progress is zoology. from zoology has arisen the study of transformism, which now dominates the whole of biology. lamarck[ ] laid its foundation in , and forty years ago charles darwin obtained for it a recognition which is now universal. it is not my task to repeat the well-known principles of darwinism. i am not concerned to explain the scientific value of the whole theory of descent. the whole of our biological study is pervaded by it. no general problem in zoology and botany, in anatomy and physiology, can be discussed without the question arising, how has this problem originated? what are the real causes of its development? [ ] see note, p. . this question was almost unknown seventy years ago, when charles darwin, the great reformer of biology, began his academical career at cambridge as a student of theology. in the same year, , carl ernst von baer[ ] published in germany his classical work on the embryology of animals, the first successful attempt to elucidate by 'observation and reflection' the mysterious origin of the animal body from the egg, and to explain in every respect the 'history of the growing individuality.' darwin at that time had no knowledge of this great advance, and he could not divine that forty years later embryology would be one of the strongest supports of his own life's work--of that very theory of transformism which, founded by lamarck in the year of darwin's birth, was accepted with enthusiasm by charles's grandfather erasmus. there is no doubt that of all the celebrated naturalists of the nineteenth century darwin achieved the greatest success, and we should be justified in designating the last forty years as the age of darwin. [ ] see note, p. . in searching for the causes of this unexampled success, we must clearly separate three sets of considerations: first, the comprehensive reform of lamarck's transformism, and its firm establishment by the many arguments drawn from modern biology; secondly, the construction of the new theory of selection, as established by darwin, and independently by alfred wallace (a theory called darwinism in the proper sense); thirdly, the deduction of anthropogeny, that most important conclusion of the theory of descent, the value of which far surpasses all the other truths in evolution. it is the third point of darwin's theory that i shall discuss here; and i shall discuss it chiefly with the intention of examining critically the evidence and the different conclusions which at present represent our scientific knowledge of the descent of man and of the different stages of his animal pedigree. it is now generally admitted that this problem is the most important of all biological questions. huxley was right when in he called it the question of questions for mankind. the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other, is as to the place which man occupies in nature and his relations to the universe of things. 'whence our race has come; what are the limits of our power over nature, and of nature's power over us; to what goal are we tending--these are the problems which present themselves anew and with undiminished interest to every man born into the world.' this impressive view was explained by huxley thirty-five years ago in his three celebrated essays on 'evidence as to man's place in nature.' the first is entitled 'on the natural history of the man-like apes'; the second, 'on the relations of man to the lower animals'; the third, 'on some fossil remains of man.' darwin himself felt the burden of these problems as much as huxley; but in his chief work, 'on the origin of species,' in , he had purposely only just touched them, suggesting that the theory of descent would shed light upon the origin of man and his history. twelve years later, in his celebrated work on 'the descent of man, and selection in relation to sex,' darwin discussed fully and ingeniously all the different sides of this 'question of questions' from the morphological, historical, physiological, and psychological points of view. as early as i myself had applied in the _generelle morphologie der organismen_ the theory of transformism to anthropology, and had shown that the fundamental law of biogeny claims the same value for man as for all the other animals. the intimate causal connection between ontogeny and phylogeny, between the development of the individual and the history of its ancestors, enables us to gain a safe and certain knowledge of our ancestral series. i had at that time distinguished in this series ten chief degrees of vertebrate organization. i attributed the highest importance to the logical connection of anthropogeny with transformism. if the latter be true, the truth of the former is absolute. 'our theory that man is descended from lower vertebrates, and immediately from apes or primates, is a case of special _deduction_ which follows with absolute certainty from the general _induction_ of the theory of descent.' the full proof and detailed explanation of this view was afterwards given in my 'history of natural creation,' and especially in my 'anthropogeny.'[ ] lastly, it has received an ample scientific and critical foundation in the third part of my 'systematic phylogeny.'[ ] [ ] see notes, pp. , during the forty years which have elapsed since darwin's first publication of his theories an enormous literature, discussing the _general problems_ of transformism as well as its special application to man, has been published. in spite of the wide divergence of the different views, all agree in one main point: the natural development of man cannot be separated from general transformism. there are only two possibilities. either all the various species of animals and plants have been created independently by supernatural forces (and in this case the creation of man also is a miracle); or the species have been produced in a natural way by transmutation, by adaptation and progressive heredity (and in this case man also is descended from other vertebrates, and immediately from a series of primates). we are absolutely convinced that only the latter theory is fully scientific. to prove its truth, we have to examine critically the strength of the different arguments claimed for it. i. first, we have to consider the relative place which comparative anatomy concedes to man in the 'natural system' of animals, for the true value of our 'natural classification' is based upon its meaning as a pedigree. all the minor and major groups of the system--the classes, legions, orders, families, genera, and species--are only different branches of the same pedigree. for man himself, his place in the pedigree has been fixed since lamarck,[ ] in , defined the group of vertebrates. the most perfect[ ] of these are the mammalia; and at the head of this class stands the order of primates, in which linnæus, in , united four 'genera'--homo, simia, lemur, and vespertilio. if we exclude the last-named, the chiroptera of modern zoology, there remain three natural groups of primates--the lemures, the simiæ, and the anthropi or hominidæ. this is the classification of the majority of zoologists; but if we compare man with the two chief groups of monkeys--the eastern monkeys (or catarrhinæ) and the western or american monkeys (platyrrhinæ)--there can be no doubt that the former group is much more closely related to man than is the latter. in the natural order of the catarrhinæ we find united a long series of lower and higher forms. the lowest, the cynopitheci, appear still closely related to the platyrrhinæ and to the lemures; while, on the other hand, the tailless apes (anthropomorphæ) approach man through their higher organization. hence one of our best authorities on the primates, robert hartmann,[ ] proposed to subdivide the whole order of the simiæ into three groups: ( ) primarii, man together with the other anthropomorphæ, or tailless apes; ( ) simiæ, all the other monkeys; ( ) prosimiæ, or lemurs. this arrangement has received strong support from the interesting discovery by selenka that the peculiar placentation of the human embryo is the same as in the great apes, and different from that of all the other monkeys. our choice between these different classifications of primates is best determined by the important thesis of huxley, in which, in , he carried out a most careful and critical comparison of all the anatomical gradations within this order. in my opinion, this ingenious thesis--which i have called the huxleyan law, or the 'pithecometra-thesis of huxley'--is of the utmost value. it runs as follows: 'thus, whatever system of organs be studied, the comparison of their modifications in the ape-series leads to one and the same result--that the structural differences which separate man from the gorilla and the chimpanzee are not so great as those which separate the gorilla from the lower apes.' if we accept the huxleyan law without prejudice, and apply it to the natural classification of the primates, we must concede that man's place is within the order of the simiæ. on examining this relation with care, and judging with logical persistence, we may even go a step further. instead of the wider conception of 'simiæ,' we must use the restricted term of catarrhinæ, and our pithecometra-thesis has then to be formulated as follows: _the comparative anatomy of all organs of the group of catarrhine simiæ leads to the result that the morphological differences between man and the great apes are not so great as are those between the man-like apes and the lowest catarrhinæ_. in fact, it is very difficult to show why man should not be classed with the large apes in the same zoological family. we all know a man from an ape; but it is quite another thing to find differences which are absolute and not of degree only. speaking generally, we may say that man alone combines the four following features: ( ) erect walk; ( ) extremities differentiated accordingly; ( ) articulate speech; ( ) higher reasoning power. speech and reason are obviously relative distinctions only--the direct result of more brains and more brain-power, the so-called mental faculties. the erect walk is not an absolutely distinguishing characteristic: the large apes likewise walk on their feet only, supporting their bodies by touching the ground with the backs of their hands--in fact, with their knuckles--and this is a mode of progression very different from that of the tailed monkeys, which walk upon the palms of their hands. there are, however, two obvious differences in the development of the muscles. in man alone the gastrocnemius and the soleus muscle are thick enough to form the calf of the leg, and the glutæus maximus is enlarged into the buttocks. a fourth glutæal muscle occurs occasionally in man, while it is constantly present in apes as the so-called musculus scansorius. concerning the muscles of the whole body, we cannot do better than quote testut's summary: 'the mass of recorded observations upon the muscular anomalies in man is so great, and the agreement of many of these with the condition normal in apes is so marked, that the gap which usually separates the muscular system of man from that of the apes appears to be completely bridged over.' [ ] see note, p. . [ ] _perfect_, in the sense of highest stage of evolution, may seem a _petitio principii_. leaving aside the consideration that no living creature is absolutely perfect, in the sense that its organization cannot become more efficient or proficient, we have here to deal with relative perfection of the whole organization. a fish or a snake is in its way more specialized than a mammal; but specialization does not necessarily mean height of development: it generally means life in a comparatively narrow groove. the acts of giving birth and nourishing the young with the mother's milk is a much higher stage than the act of laying eggs and letting them run their chance. the development of a hairy coat goes along with heightened temperature of the blood, subsequent greater independence of the surrounding temperature, and increased steady activity of the brain and other nerve-centres. the brain of the mammalia, in its minute structure, is much more complex. this rule applies to some of the principal sense organs, chiefly the nose and the ear. the skeleton, not so much as a whole as in the various bones and joints, is more neatly finished, and built up more in conformity with 'scientific principles,' than is the case even with birds, in spite of their marvellous specialization. the same is the case with the vascular system, notably the heart and the veins, and with the excretory organs. in all of these many imperfections, still to be found in the other classes, have been corrected in mammalia. the primates take an easy first by their hands, and among them the apes and man himself by their brains. [ ] 'die menschenähnlichen affen und ihre organisation im vergleich zur menschlichen.' . there are, for example, the muscles of the ear. in most people the majority, or even all of them, are no longer movable at will, while in the apes they are still in use. the important point, however, is that these muscles are still present in man, although often in a reduced condition. they are the following: ( ) musculus auricularis anterior or attrahens auris, which is frequently much reduced and no longer reaches the ear at all, being then absolutely useless; ( ) musculus auricularis superior or attollens auris, more constant than the former; ( ) musculus auricularis posterior or retrahens auris, likewise often functional. occasionally smaller slips differentiated from these three muscles are present, and as so-called intrinsic muscles are restricted to the ear itself; their function is, or was, that of curling up or opening the external ear. [illustration: outlines of the left ear of-- . _lemur macaco_; . _macacus rhesus_, the rhesus monkey; . cercopithecus, a macaque; . human embryo of six months; . man, with darwin's point well retained: the dotted outline is that of the ear of a baboon; . orang-utan (after g. schwalbe):[ ] ^x the original tip of the ear; . human ear with the principal muscles. [ ] g. schwalbe, 'in wiefern ist die menschliche ohrmuschel ein rudimentäres organ?'--in what respects is the human outer ear a rudimentary organ? (_archiv f. anatomie und physiologie_, ).] in connection with the ear, i may touch upon another interesting and most suggestive little feature which is present in many individuals--namely, 'darwin's point.' this is the last remnant of the original tip of the ear, before the outer, upper, and hinder rim became doubled up or folded in. it is a feature quite useless, and absolutely impossible of interpretation, excepting as the vestige of such previous ancestral conditions as are normal in the monkeys. in some cases the reduction of muscles has proceeded further in apes than in man--for example, the muscles of the little toe. another instance is afforded by the coccyx or vestige of the tail; this is still furnished with muscles which are now in man, as well as in the apes, quite useless, and vary considerably with every sign of degeneration, most so in the orang-utan. darwin has mentioned the frequent action of the 'snarling muscle,' by which, in sneering, our upper canine teeth are exposed, like those of a dog prepared to fight. monkeys and apes possess vocal sacs, especially large in the orang-utan; survivals of them, although no longer used, persist in man in the shape of a pair of small diverticula, the pouches of morgagni, between the true and the false vocal cords. 'in the native australians, the dental formula appears least removed from the hypothetical original type, for in it are still found complete rows of splendid teeth, with powerfully-developed canines and molars, the latter being either uniform, or even increasing in size, as we proceed backwards, in such a way that the wisdom tooth is the largest of the series. this is decidedly a pithecoid characteristic which is always found in apes. the upper incisors of the malay, apart from their prognathous disposition, have occasionally a distinctly pithecoid form, their anterior surface being convex, and their lingual surface slightly concave. the ancestors of europeans seem to have had the same form of teeth, for the oldest existing fragments of skulls from the mammoth age (_e.g._, the jaws from la naulette, in belgium) reveal tooth-forms which must be classed with those of the lowest races of to-day.'[ ] [ ] wiedersheim, 'der bau des menschen als zeugniss für seine vergangenheit.' freiburg, . translated: 'the structure of man an index to his past history.' london, . now we are able to apply this fundamental pithecometra-thesis directly to the classification of the primates and to the phylogeny of man, which is intimately connected with it, because in this order, as in all the other groups of animals, the natural system is the clear expression of true phylogenetic affinity. four results follow from our thesis: ( ) the primates, as the highest legion or order of mammals, form one natural, monophyletic group. all the lemures, simiæ, and homines descend from one common ancestral form, from a hypothetical 'archiprimas.' ( ) the lemures are the older and lower of the natural groups of the primates; they stand between the oldest placentalia (prochoriata) and the true simiæ. ( ) all the catarrhinæ, or eastern simiæ, form one natural monophyletic group. their hypothetical common ancestor, the archipithecus, may have descended directly or indirectly from a branch of the lemures. ( ) man is descended directly from one series of extinct catarrhine ancestors. the more recent ancestors of this series were tailless anthropoids (similar to the anthropopithecus), with five sacral vertebræ. the more remote ancestors were tailed cercopitheci, with three or four sacral vertebræ. these four theses possess, in my opinion, absolute certainty. they are independent of all future anatomical, embryological, and palæontological discoveries which may possibly throw more light upon the details of our phyletic anthropogenesis. ii. the next question is, how the facts of palæontology agree with these most important results of comparative anatomy and ontogeny. the fossils are the true historical 'medals of creation,' the palpable evidence of the historical succession of all those innumerable organic forms which have peopled the globe for many millions of years. here the question arises, if the known fossil specimens of mammalia, and particularly of primates, give proof of these pithecometra-theses, do they confirm directly the descent of man from ape-like creatures? the answer to this question is, in my opinion, affirmative. it is true that the gaps in the palæontological evidence, here as elsewhere, are many and keenly felt. in the order of the primates they are greater than in many other orders, chiefly because of the arboreal life of our ancestors. the explanation is very simple. it is really due to a long chain of favourable coincidences if the skeleton of a vertebrate, covered as it was with flesh and skin, and containing still more perishable viscera, is petrified at all. the body may be devoured by other creatures, and its bones scattered about; or it rots away and crumbles to pieces. many animals hide in thick undergrowth when death approaches them; and, leading an almost entirely arboreal life, the primates are especially likely to disappear without being fossilized. it is only when the body is quickly covered with sand, or is embedded in suitable lime or silica containing mud, that the process of petrifaction can come to pass. even then it is only by great good luck that we come across such a fossil. very few countries have been searched systematically, and the areas that have been searched amount to little in comparison with the whole surface of the land, even if we leave out of account the fact that more than two-thirds of the globe are covered by water. these deplorable deficiencies of empirical palæontology are balanced on the other side by a growing number of positive facts, which possess an inestimable value in human phylogeny. the most interesting and most important of these is the celebrated fossil _pithecanthropus erectus_, discovered in java in by dr. eugène dubois.[ ] three years ago this now famous ape-like man provoked an animated discussion at the third international zoological congress at leyden. i may therefore be allowed to say a few words as to its scientific significance. unfortunately, the fossil remains of this creature are very scanty: the skull-cap, a femur, and two teeth. it is obviously impossible to form from these scanty remains a complete and satisfactory reconstruction of this remarkable pliocene primate. [ ] _pithecanthropus erectus._ 'eine menschenähnliche uebergangsform aus java' ('a human-like transitional form'). batavia, . the more important points are the following: the remains in question rested upon a conglomerate which lies upon a bed of marine marl and sand of pliocene age. together with the bones of pithecanthropus were found those of stegodon, leptobos, rhinoceros, sus, felis, hyæna, hippopotamus, tapir, elephas, and a gigantic pangolin. it is remarkable that the first two of these genera are now extinct, and that neither hippopotamus nor hyæna exists any longer in the oriental region. if we may judge from these fossil remains, the bones of pithecanthropus are not younger than the oldest pleistocene, and probably belong to the upper pliocene. the teeth are like those of man. the femur, also, is very human, but shows some resemblances to that of the gibbons. its size, however, indicates an animal which stood when erect not less than feet inches high. the skull-cap also is very human, but with very prominent eyebrow ridges, like those of the famous neanderthal cranium. it is certainly not that of an idiot. it had an estimated cranial capacity of about , cubic centimetres--that is to say, much more than that of the largest ape, which possesses not more than c.c. the crania of female australians and veddahs measure not more than , , some even less than , c.c.; but, as these veddah women stand only about feet inches high, the computed cranial capacity of the much taller pithecanthropus is comparatively very low indeed.[ ] [ ] on the day after the delivery of this address dr. dubois exhibited the cranium of pithecanthropus, from which he had removed the stony matrix which filled the inside, in order to examine the impression left by the cerebral convolutions. he was able to show that they also are very human, and more highly developed than those of the recent apes. [ illustration: the upper figure represents the outlines of the skull of pithecanthropus, as restored by manouvier.[ ] the lower figure shows the comparative size and shape of pithecanthropus, the neanderthal skull, a specimen of the cro-magnon race of neolithic france, and a young chimpanzee before the full development of the supraorbital crests.] [ ] l. manouvier: 'deuxième étude sur le pithecanthropus erectus comme précurseur présumé de l'homme.' (_bulletins de la soc. d'anthropologie de paris_, .) the final result of the long discussion at leyden was that, of twelve experts present, three held that the fossil remains belonged to a low race of man; three declared them to be those of a man-like ape of great size; the rest maintained that they belonged to an intermediate form, which directly connected primitive man with the anthropoid apes. this last view is the right one, and accords with the laws of logical inference. _pithecanthropus erectus_ of dubois is truly a pliocene remainder of that famous group of highest catarrhines which were the immediate pithecoid ancestors of man. he is, indeed, the long-searched-for 'missing link,' for which, in , i myself had proposed the hypothetical genus pithecanthropus, species alalus. it must, however, be admitted that this opinion is still strongly combated by some distinguished authorities. at the leyden congress it was attacked by the illustrious pathologist rudolf virchow.[ ] he, however, is one of the minority of leading men of science who set themselves to refute the theory of evolution in every possible way. for thirty years he has defended the thesis: 'it is quite certain that man is not a descendant of apes.' he declares any intermediate form to be unimaginable save in a dream. [ ] see notes, p. . virchow went to the leyden congress with the set purpose of disproving that the bones found by dubois belonged to a creature which linked together apes and man. first, he maintained that the skull was that of an ape, while the thigh belonged to man. this insinuation was at once refuted by the expert palæontologists, who declared that without the slightest doubt the bones belonged to one and the same individual. next, virchow explained that certain exostoses or growths observable on the thigh proved its human nature, since only under careful treatment the patient could have healed the original injury. thereupon professor marsh, the celebrated palæontologist, exhibited a number of thigh-bones of wild monkeys which showed similar exostoses and had healed without hospital treatment. as a last argument the berlin pathologist declared that the deep constriction behind the upper margin of the orbits proved that the skull was that of an ape, as such never occurred in man. it so happened that a few weeks later professor nehring of berlin demonstrated exactly the same formation on a human prehistoric skull received by him from santos, in brazil. virchow was, in fact, just as unlucky in leyden in his fight with our pliocene ancestor as he had been unfortunate in his opinion on the famous skulls of neanderthal, spy, la naulette, etc., every one of which he explained as a pathological abnormality. it would be a very curious coincidence indeed if all these and other fossil human remains were those of idiots or otherwise abnormal individuals, provided they are old and low enough in their organization to be of phylogenetic value to the unbiassed zoologist. as the sworn adversary of evolution, transformism, and darwinism in particular, but a believer in the constancy of species, the great and renowned pathologist has been driven to the incredible contention that all variations of organic forms are pathological. four years ago, as honorary president of the anthropological congress at vienna, he attacked darwinism in the severest manner, and declared that 'man may be as well descended from the elephant or from the sheep as from the ape.' such attacks on the theory of transformism indicate a failure to understand the principles of the theory of evolution and to appreciate the significance of palæontology, comparative anatomy, and ontogeny. the thousands of other objections which have been made during the last forty years (chiefly by outsiders) may be passed over in silence. they do not require serious refutation. in spite of, or perhaps because of, these attacks, the theory of evolution stands established more firmly than ever. it is easy for the outsider to exult over the difficulties which our problem implies--difficulties which we who have given our lives to the study understand likewise, and try our best not only to bridge over, but also to point out. anyhow, we do not conceal them; while those who reject the explanation offered by evolution make the most of the gaps, and pass silently over the far more numerous points favourable to our theory. how fruitful during the last thirty years the astonishing progress in our palæontological knowledge has been for our pithecometra-thesis is best shown by a short glance at the growth of our knowledge of fossil primates. cuvier,[ ] the founder of palæontology, continued up to the time of his death, in , to assert that fossil remains of monkeys and lemurs did not exist. the only skull of a fossil lemuroid which he described (namely, adapis) he declared to be that of an ungulate. not until were the first fragments of extinct monkeys found in india; it was two years later, near athens, that the skeleton of _mesopithecus penthelicus_ was discovered. other remains of lemurs were found in . but during the last twenty years the number of fossil primates has been augmented by the remarkable discoveries of gaudry, filhol, milne edwards, seeley, schlosser, and others in europe; of marsh, cope, osborn, leidy, ameghino, in south america; and forsyth major in madagascar.[ ] these tertiary remains, chiefly of eocene and miocene date, fill many gaps between existing genera of primates, and afford us quite a clear insight into the phyletic development of this order during the millions of years of the cænozoic age. [ ] see notes, p. . [ ] f. ameghino: 'contribucion al conocimiento de los mamíferos de la república argentina.' in _actas de la academia nacional de sciencias en cordoba_, .--another article in _revista argentina de historia natural_. buenos aires, . a. gaudry: 'animaux fossiles et géologie de l'attique.' .--'le dryopithèque.' _mém. soc. géol. de france_: 'paléontologie.' . o. marsh: 'introduction and succession of vertebrate life in america.' address, amer. assoc. adv. sci., nashville, . h. f. osborn: 'the rise of the mammalia in north america.' address, amer. assoc. adv. sci., madison, . l. ruetimeyer: 'ueber die herkunft unserer thierwelt,' basel, . c. s. forsyth major: 'fossil monkeys from madagascar.' _geological magazine_, . m. schlosser: 'ueber die beziehungen der ausgestorbenen saeugethierfaunen und ihr verhaeltniss zur saeugethierfauna der gegenwart.' biolog. centralblatt, . the most important difference between the two groups of existing monkeys is indicated by their dentition. adult man possesses, like all the other catarrhine simiæ, thirty-two teeth, whilst the american monkeys (the platyrrhinæ) have thirty-six teeth--namely, one pair of premolars more in the upper and lower jaws. comparative odontology leads us to the phylogenetic conclusion that this number has been produced by reduction from a still older form with forty-four teeth. this typical dental formula (three incisors, one canine, four premolars, and three molars, in each half-jaw) is common to all those most important older mammals which in the beginning of the eocene period constituted the four large groups of lemuravida, condylarthra, esthonychida, and ictopsida. these are the four ancestral groups of the four main orders of placentalia--namely, of the primates, ungulata, rodentia, and carnassia. they seem to be so closely related by their primitive organization that they may be united in one common super-order, prochoriata. with a considerable degree of probability, we are led to formulate the further hypothesis that all the orders of placentalia--from the lowest prochoriata upwards to man--have descended from some unknown common ancestor living in the cretaceous period, and that this oldest placental form originated from some jurassic group of marsupials. among these numerous fossil lemures which have been discovered within the last twenty years, there exist, indeed, all the connecting forms of the older series of primates, all the 'missing links' sought for by comparative odontology. the oldest lemures of the tertiary age are the eocene pachylemures, or hyopsodina. they possess the complete dentition of the prochoriata--namely, forty-four teeth ( . . . / . . . ). then follow the eocene palæolemures, or adapida, with forty teeth, they having lost one pair of incisors in each jaw. to these are attached the younger autolemures, or stenopida, with thirty-six teeth, they thus possessing already the same dentition as the platyrrhinæ. the characteristic dentition of the catarrhinæ is derived from this formula by the loss of another premolar. these relations are so clear and so closely connected with a gradual transformation of the whole skull, and with the progressive differentiation of the primate-form, that we are justified in saying that the pedigree of the primates, from the oldest eocene lemures upwards to man, is now so well known, its principal features so firmly fixed within the tertiary age, that there is no missing link whatever. quite different, and much more incomplete, is the palæontological evidence, if we go further back into the secondary or mesozoic age, and look there for the older ancestors of the mammalian series. there we meet everywhere with wide gaps, and the scarce fragments of fossil mesozoic mammals (excessively rare in the cretaceous formation) are too poor to permit definite conclusions as to their systematic position. indeed, comparative anatomy and ontogeny lead us to the hypothesis that the oldest cretaceous mammalia--the prochoriata--are descended from jurassic marsupials, and these again from monotremes. we may also suppose with high probability that among the unknown cretaceous prochoriata there have been lemuravida and forms intermediate between these and the jurassic amphitheriidæ, and that these marsupials in their turn are descendants of pantotheria or similar monotreme-like creatures of the triassic age. any certain evidence for these hypotheses is at present still wanting. one important fact, however, is established--namely, that these interesting and oldest mammalia--the pantotheria of marsh, the triassic dromatheriidæ, and the jurassic triconodontidæ of osborn--were small insectivorous mammals with a very primitive organization. probably they were monotremes, and may be derived directly from permian sauromammalia, an ill-defined mixture of mammalia and reptilia. this generalized characteristic supports our view that _the whole class of mammalia is monophyletic_, and that all its members, from the oldest monotremes upwards to man, have descended from one common ancestor living in the older triassic, or perhaps in the permian, age. to acquire full conviction of this important conception, we have only to think of the hair and the glands of our human skin, of our diaphragm, the heart and the blood corpuscles without a nucleus, our skull with its squamoso-mandibular articulation. all these singular and striking modifications of the vertebrate organization are common to mammals, and distinguish them clearly from the other craniota. this characteristic combination and correlation proves that they have been developed only _once_ in the history of the vertebrate stem, and that they have been transferred by heredity from one common ancestor to all the members of the class of mammalia. the next step, as we trace our human phylogeny to its origin, leads us further back into the lower vertebrata, into that obscure palæozoic age the immeasurable length of which (much greater than that of the mesozoic) may, according to one of the newest geological calculations, have comprised about one thousand millions of years.[ ] [ ] see note, 'geological time and evolution' p. . the first important fact we have to face here is the complete absence of mammalian remains. instead of these we find in the later palæozoic period, the permian, air-breathing _reptiles_ as the earliest representatives of amniota. they belong to the most primitive order of that class, the tocosauria; and besides them there were the theromorpha, which approach the mammalia in a remarkable manner. these reptiles in turn were preceded, in the carboniferous period, by true amphibia, most of them belonging to the armour-clad stegocephali. these interesting progonamphibia were the oldest tetrapoda, the first vertebrates which had adapted themselves to the terrestrial mode of life; in them the swimming fin of fishes and dipneusta was transformed into the pentadactyle extremities characteristic of quadrupeds. to appreciate the high importance of this metamorphosis, we need only compare the skeleton of our own human limbs with that of the living amphibia. we find in the latter the same characteristic composition as in man: the same shoulder and pelvic girdle; the same single bone, the humerus or the femur, followed by the same pair of bones in the forearm and leg; then the same skeletal elements composing the wrist and the ankle regions; and, lastly, the same five fingers and toes. the arrangement of these bones, peculiar and often complicated, but everywhere essentially the same in all the tetrapoda, is a striking evidence that man is a descendant from the oldest pentadactyle amphibia of the carboniferous period. in man the pentadactyle type has been better preserved by constant heredity than in many other mammalia, notably the ungulata. the oldest carboniferous amphibia, the armour-clad stegocephali, and especially the remarkable branchiosauri discovered by credner, are now regarded by all competent zoologists as the indubitable common ancestral group of all tetrapoda, comprising both amphibia and amniota. but whence this most remote group of tetrapoda? that difficult question is answered by the marvellous progress of modern palæontology, and the answer is in complete harmony with the older results arrived at by comparative anatomy and ontogeny. thirty-four years ago carl gegenbaur,[ ] the great living master of comparative anatomy, had demonstrated in a series of works how the skeletal parts of the various classes of vertebrata, especially the skull and the limbs, still represent a continuous scale of phyletic gradations. apart from the cyclostomes, there are the fishes, and among them the elasmobranchi (sharks and rays), which have best preserved the original structure in all its essential parts of organization. closely connected with the elasmobranchi are the crossopterygii, and with these the dipneusta or dipnoi. among the latter the highest importance attaches to the ancient australian ceratodus. its organization and development is now, at last, becoming well known. this transitional group of dipnoi, 'fishes with lungs' but without pentadactyle limbs, is the morphological bridge which joins the ganoids and the oldest amphibia. with this chain of successive groups of vertebrata, constructed anatomically, the palæontological facts agree most satisfactorily. selachians and ganoids existed in the silurian times, dipnoi in the devonian, amphibia in the carboniferous, reptilia in the permian, mammalia in the trias. these are historical facts of first rank. they connote in the most convincing manner that remarkable ascending scale in the series of vertebrates for our knowledge of which we are indebted to the works of cuvier and blainville, meckel, johannes mueller and gegenbaur, owen and huxley. the historical succession of the classes and orders of the vertebrata in the course of untold millions of years is definitely fixed by the concordance of those leading works, and this invaluable acquisition is much more important for the foundation of our human pedigree than would be a complete series of all possible skeletons of primates. [ ] see note, p. . greater and more frequent difficulties arise if we penetrate further into the most remote part of the human phylogeny, and attempt to derive the vertebrate stem from an older stem of invertebrate ancestors. none of those had a skeleton which could be petrified; and the same remark applies to the lowest classes of vertebrata--to the cyclostomes and the acrania. palæontology, therefore, can tell us nothing about them; and we are limited to the other two great documents of phylogeny--the results of comparative anatomy and ontogeny. the value of their evidence is, however, so great that every competent zoologist can perceive the most important features of the most remote portion of our phylogeny. here the first place belongs to the invaluable results which modern comparative ontogeny has gained by the aid of the biogenetic law or the theory of recapitulation. the foundation-stones of vertebrate embryology had been laid by the works of von baer, bischoff,[ ] remak, and koelliker;[ ] but the clearest light was thrown upon it by the famous discoveries of kowalevsky[ ] in . he proved the identity of the first developmental stages of amphioxus and the ascidians, and thereby confirmed the divination of goodsir, who had already announced the close affinity of vertebrates and tunicates. the acknowledgment of this affinity has proved of increasing importance, and has abolished the erroneous hypothesis that the vertebrata may have arisen from annelids or from other articulata. meanwhile, from to , i myself had been studying the development of the spongiæ, medusæ, siphonophora, and other coelenterata. their comparison led me to the statements embodied in the 'gastræatheorie,' the first abstract of which was published in in my monograph of the calcispongiæ. [ ] wilhelm bischoff of munich: works on the history of the development of the rabbit, dog, guinea-pig, roe-deer. - . [ ] see note, p. . [ ] 'ueber die entwicklung der einfachen ascidien,' mém. acad. st. petersbourg, vii. ser., tome x. ( ). other papers in 'archiv f. mikroskop. anatomie,' vii. ( ); xiii. ( ). these ideas were carried on and expanded during the subsequent ten years by the help of many excellent embryologists--first of all by e. ray lankester and francis balfour. the most fruitful result of these widely extended researches was the conclusion that the first stages of embryonic development are essentially the same in all the different metazoa, and that we may derive from these facts certain views on the common descent of all from one ancestral form. the unicellular egg[ ] repeats the stage of our protozoan ancestors; the blastula is equivalent to an ancestral coenobium of magosphæra or volvox; the gastrula is the hereditary repetition of the gastræa, the common ancestor of all the metazoa. [ ] see note, p. --theory of cells. man agrees in all these respects with the other vertebrates, and must have descended with them from the same common root. particularly obscure is that part of our phylogeny which extends from the gastræa to amphioxus. the morphological importance of this last small creature had been perceived by johannes mueller, who in gave the first accurate description of it. it would not, of course, be correct to proclaim the modern amphioxus the common ancestor of all the vertebrates; but he must be regarded as closely related to them, and as the only survivor of the whole class of acrania. if the amphioxidæ had through some unfortunate accident become extinct, we should not have been able to gain anything like a positive glimpse at our most remote vertebrate ancestor. on the one hand, amphioxus is closely connected with the early larva of the cyclostomes, which are the oldest craniota, and the pre-silurian ancestors of the fishes. on the other hand, the ontogeny of amphioxus is in harmony with that of the ascidians, and if this agreement is not merely coincidental, but due to relationship, we are justified in reconstructing for both ascidians and amphioxus one common ancestral group of chordate animals, the hypothetical _prochordonia_. the modern copelata give us a remote idea of their structure. the curious balanoglossus, the only living form of enteropneusta, seems to connect these prochordonia with the nemertina and other vermalia, which we unite in one large class--frontonia. no doubt these pre-cambrian vermalia, and the common root of all metazoa, the gastræades, were connected during the laurentian period by a long chain of intermediate forms, and probably among these were some older forms of rotatoria and turbellaria; but at present it is not possible to fill this wide gap with hypotheses that are satisfactory, and we have to admit that here indeed are many missing links in the older history of the invertebrata. still, every zoologist who is convinced of the truth of transformism, and is accustomed to phylogenetic speculations, knows very well that their results are most unequal, often incomplete. iii. let us now recapitulate the ancestral chain of man, as it is set forth in the accompanying diagram (p. ), which represents our present knowledge of our descent. for simplicity's sake the many side-issues or branches which lead to groups not in the main line of our descent have been left out, or have been indicated merely. many of the stages are of course hypothetical, arrived at by the study of comparative anatomy and ontogeny; but an example for each of them has been taken from those living or fossil creatures which seem to be their nearest representatives. . the most remote ancestors of all living organisms were living beings of the simplest imaginable kind, organisms without organs, like the still existing _monera_. each consisted of a simple granule of protoplasm, a structureless mass of albuminous matter or plasson, like the recent chromaceæ and bacteriæ. the morphological value of these beings is not yet that of a cell, but that of a cytode, or cell without a nucleus. cytoplasm and nucleus were still undifferentiated. i assume that the first monera owe their existence to spontaneous creation out of so-called anorganic combinations, consisting of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. an explanation of this hypothesis i have given in my 'generelle morphologie.' the monera probably arose early in the laurentian period. the oldest are the phytomonera, with vegetable metabolism. they possessed the power (characteristic of plants) of forming albumin by synthesis from carbon, water, and ammonia. from some of these plasma-forming monera arose the plasmophagous zoomonera with animal metabolism, living directly upon the produce of their plasmodomous or plasma-forming sisters. this is the first instance of the great principle of division of labour. . the second stage is that of the _simple and single cell_, a bit of protoplasm with a nucleus. such unicellular organisms are still very common. the _amoebæ_ are their simplest representatives. the morphological value of such beings is the same as that of the egg of any animal. the naked egg cells of the sponges creep about in an amoeboid fashion, scarcely distinguishable from amoeba. the same remark applies to the egg-cell of man himself in its early stages before it is enclosed in a membrane. the first unicellular organisms arose from monera through differentiation of the inner nucleus from the outer protoplasm. . repeated division of the unicellular organism produces the _synamoebium_, or community of amoebæ, provided the divisional products, or new generations of the original cell, do not scatter, but remain together. the existence of such a _coenobium_, a number of equal and only loosely-connected cells, as a separate stage in the ancestral history of animals, is made highly probable by the fact that the eggs of all animals undergo after fertilization such a process of repeated self-division, or 'cleavage,' until the single egg cell is transformed into a heap of cells closely packed together, not unlike a mulberry (_morula_)--hence _morula_ stage in ontogeny. . the morula of most animals further changes into a _blastula_, a hollow ball filled with fluid, the wall being formed by a single layer of cells, the blastoderm or germinal layer. this modification is brought about by the action of the cells--they conveying nourishing fluid into the interior of the whole cell colony and thereby being themselves forced towards the surface. the blastula of most invertebrata, and even that of amphioxus, is possessed of fine ciliæ, or hair-like processes, the vibrating motion of which causes the whole organism to rotate and advance in the water. living representatives of such blastæads, namely, globular gelatinous colonies of cells enclosing a cavity, are volvox and magosphæra. . the blastula of most animals assumes a new larval form called _gastrula_, in which the essential characteristics are that a portion of the blastoderm by invagination converts the blastula into a cup with double walls, enclosing a new cavity, the primitive gut. this invagination or bulging-in obliterates the original inner cavity of the blastula. the outer layer of the gastrula is the ectoderm, the inner the endoderm; both pass into each other at the blastoporus, or opening of the gut cavity. the gastrula is a stage in the embryonic development of the various great groups of animals, and some such primitive form as ancestral to all metazoa is thus indicated. this hypothetical _gastræa_ is still very essentially represented by the lower coelenterates--_e.g._, olynthus, hydra. . the sixth stage--that of the _platodes_, or flat-worms--is very hypothetical. they are bilateral gastræads, with a flattened oblong body, furnished with ciliæ, with a primitive nervous system, simple sensory and reproductive organs, but still without appendages, body cavity, vent, and blood-vessels. the nearest living representatives of such creatures are the acoelous turbellarians--_e.g._, convoluta, a free-swimming, ciliated creature. . the next higher stage is represented by such low animals as the _gastrotricha_--_e.g._, chætonotus among the rotatoria, which differ from the rhabdocoelous turbellarians chiefly by the formation of a vent and the beginnings of a coelom, or cavity, between gut and body wall. the addition of a primitive vascular system and a pair of nephridia, or excretory organs, is first met with in the _nemertines_. . these, together with the _enteropneusta_ (balanoglossus), are comprised under the name of frontonia, or rhynchelminthes, and form the highest group of the vermalia. the enteropneusta especially fix our attention, because they alone, although essentially 'worms,' exhibit certain characteristics which make it possible to bridge over the gulf which still separates the invertebrata from the vertebrate phylum. the anterior portion of the gut is transformed into a breathing apparatus--hence gegenbaur's term of enteropneusta, or gut-breathers. moreover, balanoglossus and cephalodiscus possess another modification of the gut--namely, a peculiar diverticulum, which, in the present state of our knowledge, may be looked upon as the forerunner of the chorda dorsalis. . stage of _prochordonia_, as indicated by the larval form, called chordula, which is common to the tunicata and all the vertebrata. these two groups possess three most important features: (_a_) a chorda dorsalis, a stiff rod lying in the long axis of the body, dorsally from the gut and below the central nervous system. this latter, for the first time in the animal kingdom, appears in the shape of a spinal cord. (_b_) the use of the anterior portion of the gut for respiratory purposes. (_c_) the larval development of the tunicata is essentially the same as that of the vertebrata in its early stages. only the free-swimming copelata or appendicularia among the tunicates retain most of these features. the others, which become sessile--namely, the ascidiæ, or sea-squirts--degenerate and specialize away from the main line. . stage of the _acrania_, represented by amphioxus. the early development of this little marine creature agrees closely with that of the tunicates; but one important feature is added to its organization--namely, metamerism, segmentally arranged mesoderm. amphioxus still possesses neither skull nor vertebræ, neither ribs nor jaws, and no limbs. but it is a member of the vertebrata if we define these as follows: bilateral symmetrical animals with segmentally arranged mesoderm, with a chorda dorsalis between the tubular nervous system and the gut, and with respiratory organs which arise from the anterior portion of the gut. we do not assume that amphioxus stands in the direct ancestral line; it is probably much specialized, partly degenerated, and represents a side-branch; but it is, nevertheless, the only creature, hitherto known, which satisfactorily connects the vertebrata with their invertebrate ancestors. many other efforts have been made to solve the mystery of the origin of the vertebrata--all less satisfactory than the present suggestion, or even absolutely futile. this remark applies especially to the attempts to derive them from either articulata or echinoderms. the other great and highly developed phylum, the mollusca, is quite out of the question. we have to go back to a level at which all these principal phyla meet, and there we find the vermalia, the lower of which alone permit connection in an upward direction with the higher phyla. ancestral tree of the vertebrata. _abridged from 'systemat. phylogenie,' § ._ names underlined refer to hypothetical groups. _mammalia_ _aves_ | | _reptilia_ | | | | +----------------+ | | | +--------------+ | _proreptilia_ | _amphibia_ _pisces_ | | | | +----------+ | | | | | | _dipnoi_ | _stegocephali_ | | | | | +---------------+ | | +---------------+ | _cyclostomata_ _proselachii_ | | | _tunicata_ | +--------+ | | | | *_archicrania_* | | _acrania_ | | | | *_prospondylia_*------+ | | +----------+ | | | *_prochordonia_* . stage of _cyclostomata_. this now small group of lampreys and hagfishes represents the lowest craniota; and although much specialized as a side-branch of the main-stem from which the other craniota have sprung, they give us an idea of what the direct ancestors of the latter must have been like:--still without visceral arches, without jaws and without paired limbs; with a persistent pronephros; the ear with one semicircular canal only; mouth suctorial; cranium very primitive; and the metamerism of the vertebral column indicated only by little blocks of cartilage in the perichordal sheath. such creatures must have existed at least as early as the lower silurian epoch; but until fossil cyclostomes were unknown. their life in the mud, or as endoparasites of fishes, coupled with their soft structure, makes them very unfit for preservation. this gives all the greater importance to traquair's discovery, in , of many little creatures, called by him _palæospondylus gunni_, in the old red sandstone of caithness, which seem to be very closely allied to cyclostomata. . the _elasmobranchi_ (sharks and skates), with their immediate forerunners, the acanthodi of the devonian and carboniferous age, are the first typical fishes. that they existed as far back as the silurian age is proved by many enamelled spines of the dermal armour, chiefly from the dorsal fins. this higher stage is characterized by the possession of typical jaws, by visceral or gill-bearing arches, and by two pairs of limbs. none of the elasmobranchs, fossil or recent, stands in the direct ancestral line; but they are the lowest gnathostomata, jaw-and-limb-possessing creatures, known. . closely connected with the elasmobranchs in a wider sense are the _crossopterygii_, which begin in the devonian age as a large group, but have left only two survivals, the african polypterus and calamoichthys. they are possessed of dermal bones and other ossifications, and are characterized by their lobate paired fins, which have a thick axis beset with biserial fin rays. their gill-clefts are covered by an operculum, and they have a well-developed air-bladder. whilst they are in many respects more highly developed than the elasmobranchs, and are intimately connected with the typical ganoids and other bony fishes (all of which form a great, manifold side-branch of the general vertebrate stem), they stand in many other respects (notably, the structure of the paired fins, the vertebral column, and the air-bladder) nearer the main-stem of our own ancestral line. . this is shown by their intimate relation to the _dipnoi_, which are still represented by the australian, african, and south american mud-fishes: ceratodus, protopterus, and lepidosiren. the genus ceratodus existed in the upper trias, whence various other unmistakably dipnoous forms lead down through the carboniferous (_e.g._, ctenodus) to the devonian strata--_e.g._, dipterus. they are characterized as follows: the paired fins still retain the archipterygial form (namely, one axis with biserial rays); the heart is already trilocular, and receives blood which is mixed arterial and venous, owing to the gills being retained, while the air-bladder has been modified into a lung. in fact, the generalized dipnoi form the actual link between fishes and _amphibia_. . _amphibia._ the earliest amphibian fossils occur in the carboniferous strata. they alone--the stegocephali or phractamphibia--stand in the ancestral line, while the lissamphibia, to which all the recent forms belong, are side-branches. the stegocephali are the earliest tetrapoda, the archipterygial paired fins having been transformed into the pentadactyle fore and hind limbs, which are so characteristic of all the higher vertebrata. the cranium is roofed over by dermal bones, of which, besides others, supra-occipitals, supra-orbitals, and supra-temporals are always present. the lowest members (branchiosauri) still retained gills besides the lungs, while others (microsauri) have lost the gills. be it remembered that all the recent amphibia still undergo the same metamorphosis during their ontogenetic development. in the very important temnospondyli, a subgroup of the stegocephali--_e.g._, trimerorhachis of the lower red sandstone or lower permian--the component cartilaginous or bony units which compose the vertebræ still remained in a separate, unfused state, showing at the same time an arrangement whence has arisen that which is typical of the amniota. the same applies to the limbs and their girdles. in fact, the stegocephali, taken as a whole, lead imperceptibly to the _proreptilia_. . _proreptilia_ are represented by the permian genera eryops and cricotus. until quite recently these and many other fossils from the carboniferous strata were looked upon as amphibia, while many undoubted fossil amphibia were mistaken for reptiles, as indicated by the frequent termination '-saurus' in their names. the nearest living representative of these extinct proreptilia is the new zealand reptile hatteria, or sphenodon, close relations of which are known from the upper trias; while others--_e.g._, palæohatteria--have been discovered in the permian. anyhow, sphenodon is the reptile which stands nearest to the main stem of our ancestry. the most important characteristics of the reptilia, which mark a higher stage or level, are ( ) the entire suppression of the gills--although during the embryonic development the gill-clefts still appear in all reptiles, birds, and mammals; ( ) the development of an amnion and an allantois, both for the embryonic life only, but so characteristic that all these animals are comprised under the name of amniota; ( ) the articulation of the skull with the first neck vertebræ by well-developed condyles, either single (really triple) or double (such a condylar arrangement begins with the amphibia, but only the two lateral condyles are developed, while the middle portion, belonging to the basi-occipital element, remains rudimentary[ ]); ( ) the formation of centra, or bodies of the vertebræ, mainly by a ventral pair of the original quadruple constituents, or arcualia. [ ] similar conditions seem to have prevailed among the proreptilia; but in those of their descendants which have specialized into reptiles and birds the basi-occipital element becomes more and more predominant in that formation which ultimately leads to the apparently single condyle. hence it is misleading to divide the tetrapoda into the two main groups of amphi-and mono-condylia, and therefrom to conclude that the two-condyled mammalia are more closely related to the likewise amphicondylous amphibia than to the so-called monocondylous reptiles. . between the proreptilia and the mammalia, which latter occur in the upper triassic epoch, we have necessarily to intercalate a group of very low reptiles, which are still so generalized that their descendants could branch off either into the reptilia proper or into the mammalia. the changes concerned chiefly the brain and the heart; of the skeleton, the skull and the pelvis; and, of the tegumentary structures, the formation of a hairy covering. many such creatures existed in the triassic epoch--namely, the _theromorpha_--some of which indeed possess so many characteristics which otherwise occur in the mammalia only, that these creatures have been termed _sauro-mammalia_. however, it has to be emphasized that none of the theromorpha hitherto discovered fulfils all the requirements which would entitle them to this important linking position. they only give us an approximate idea of what this link was like. . stage of the _promammalia_, or _prototheria_. the only surviving members are the famous duck-bill, ornithorhynchus, and the spiny ant-eaters, echidna and proechidna, of the australian region. these few genera, however, differ so much from one another in various important respects that they cannot but be remnants of an originally much larger group. indeed, many fossils from the upper triassic and from the jurassic strata have without much doubt to be referred to the prototheria. the prototheria are typical mammals, because they possess the following characteristics: the heart is completely quadrilocular; the blood is warm, and its red corpuscles have, owing to the loss of their nucleus, been modified from biconvex into biconcave discs; they have a hairy coat and sweat glands, and two occipital condyles; the ilio-sacral connection is preacetabular; the ankle-joint is cruro-tarsal; the quadrate bone of the reptilia has ceased to carry the under jaw, which now articulates directly with the squamosal portion of the skull. their low position is shown by the retention of the following reptilian features: complete coracoid bones and a t-shaped interclavicle; a cloaca, or common chamber for the passage of the fæces, the genital and the urinary products; they are still oviparous; the embryo develops without a chorion, and is therefore not nourished through a placenta. even the milk glands, which are absolutely peculiar to the mammalia, are still in a very primitive stage, and do not yet produce milk proper; and there is only a temporary shallow marsupium. . stage of _metatheria_, or _marsupialia_, are direct descendants of prototheria; but they show higher development by the reduction of the coracoid bones and the interclavicle. the original cloaca is divided into a rectal chamber and a uro-genital sinus, completely separated, at least in the males; they are viviparous; the young are received into a permanent marsupium, in the walls of which are formed typical milk glands and nipples, but the embryo is still devoid of a placenta, although some recent marsupials show indications of such an organ. the corpus callosum in the brain is still very weak. most of the marsupials are extinct. they occur from the upper trias onwards, and had in the jurassic epoch attained a wide distribution both in europe and in america. since the tertiary epoch they have been restricted to america and to the australian region, and are now represented by about species. . stage of _prochoriata_, or early _placentalia_: a further development of the metatheria by the development of a placenta, loss of the marsupium and the marsupial bones, complete division by the perineum of the anal and uro-genital chambers, stronger development of the corpus callosum, or chief commissure of the two hemispheres of the brain. placentalia must have come into existence during the cretaceous epoch. up to that time all the mammalia seem to have belonged to either prototheria or to metatheria; but in the early eocene we can distinguish the main groups of placentalia--namely, ( ) trogontia, now represented by the rodents; ( ) edentata, or sloths, armadilloes, etc.; ( ) carnassia, or insectivora and carnivora; ( ) chiroptera, or bats; ( ) cetomorpha, or whales and dugongs; ( ) ungulata; ( ) primates. of these groups, the first and second, third and fourth, fifth and sixth, can perhaps, to judge from palæontological evidence, be combined into three greater groups, as indicated by the fossil esthonychida, ictopsida, and condylarthra, in addition to the ancestral primates, or lemuravida, as the fourth large branch of the ancestral-tree where this has reached the placental level. among none of the first three branches can we look for the ancestors of the primates. the lemuravida, therefore, represent a branch equivalent to the three other branches. . stage of _lemures_, or _prosimiæ_, comprising the older members of the primates, consequently approaching most nearly to the lemuravida. the limbs are modified into pentadactyle hands and feet of the arboreal type, and are protected by nails. the dentition is of the frugivorous or omnivorous type, with an originally complete series of teeth, with milk teeth and with permanent. the orbit is surrounded by a complete bony ring, posteriorly by a fronto-jugal arch, but still widely communicating with the temporal fossa. the placenta is diffuse and non-deciduous. ancestral tree of the mammalia. _'systematische phylogenie,' § ._ _perissodactyla_ _homo_ _carnivora_ | (_litopterna_) | | _pinnipedia_ | | | | | +-------+ _anthropoidae_ +------+ _artiodactyla_ | | | | | | _carnassia_ +----------+ _catarhinæ_ | | | _chiroptera_ | _proboscidea_ | | | _insectivora_ | | | _platyrhinæ_ | | | (_amblypoda_) | | | | +-------+ | | | | | | _rodentia_ +-------+ | _simiæ_ +-------+ | | | | | (_tillodontia_) +--+ | | | _cetacea_ | | | _trogontia_ | _sirenia_ | _lemures_ _*ictopsales*_ | _edentata_ | | | | | | | _cetomorpha_ | _hyracoidea_ | | _*esthonychales*_ | | | | | | +---_?_---+------+ | | | | _*lemuravidæ*_ | | _*condylarthrales*_ | +-------+ | | | | | +--------eutheria s. placentalia------------------+ | | _marsupialia polyprotodontia_ _marsupialia diprotodontia_ | | | | | +-------------metatheria--------------+ | | _monotremata_ | | (_allotheria_) | | | | +-----------------+ | | prototheria-----+ | | _*hypotheria s.*_ _*promammalia*_ _names in brackets indicate extinct groups. names *underlined* indicate hypothetical groups or combinations._ . stage of _simiæ_. orbit completely separated from the temporal fossa by an inward extension of the frontal and malar bones meeting the alisphenoid. placenta consolidated into a disc, and with a maternal deciduous portion. mammæ pectoral only. the dental formula is . . . . all the fingers and toes are protected by flat nails. the tail is long. the american prehensile-tailed monkeys are a lower side-branch. . stage of _catarrhinæ cercopithecidæ_. the dental formula is . . . , owing to the loss of one pair of premolars in each jaw. the frontal and alisphenoid bones are in contact, separating the parietal from the malar bone; this feature is correlated with the enlarged brain. the internarial septum is narrow, and the nostrils look forwards and downwards instead of sidewards--hence the term 'catarrhinæ.' the external auditory meatus is long and bony. the tail is long, with the exception of _macacus inuus_. the body is covered with a thick coat of furry hair. catarrhine monkeys have existed, we know with certainty, since the miocene. . stage of _catarrhinæ anthropoidæ_, or _apes_. now represented by the large apes--namely, the hylobates or gibbon of south-eastern asia, _simia satyrus_, the orang-utan of sumatra and borneo, _troglodytes gorilla_, _t. niger_ and _t. calvus_, the gorilla and the chimpanzees from western equatorial africa. of fossils are to be mentioned pliopithecus and dryopithecus from european miocene, and _troglodytes sivalensis_ from the pliocene of the punjaub. the tail is reduced to a few caudal vertebræ, which are transformed into a coccyx, not visible externally; but in the embryos of apes and man the tail is still a conspicuous feature. the walk is semierect; in adaptation to the prevailing arboreal life, the arms are longer than the legs. the hair of the body is considerably more scanty than in the tailed monkeys. _troglodytes calvus_, a species or variety of chimpanzee, is bald-headed. none of the recent genera of apes can lay claim to a place in the ancestry of mankind. . stage of _pithecanthropi_. hitherto the only known representative is _pithecanthropus erectus_, from the upper pliocene of java. in adaptation to a more erect gait, the legs have become stronger and the hind-hand has been turned into a flat-soled walking 'foot.' the brain is considerably enlarged. presumably it is still devoid of so-called articulate speech; this is indicated by the fact that children have to learn the language of their parents, and by the circumstance that comparative philology declares it impossible to reduce the chief human languages to anything like one common origin. . _man._ known with certainty to have existed as an implement-using creature in the last glacial epoch. his probable origin cannot, therefore, have been later than the beginning of the plistocene. the place of origin was probably somewhere in southern asia. whilst we have to admit that there are great defects in the older (invertebrate) portion of our pedigree, we have all the more reason to be satisfied with the positive results of our investigation of the more recent (vertebrate) part of it. all modern researches have confirmed the views of lamarck, darwin, and huxley, and they allow of no doubt that the nearest vertebrate ancestors of mankind were a series of tertiary primates. particularly valuable are the admirable attempts of the two zoologists, paul and fritz sarasin,[ ] to throw light upon the human phylogeny by painstaking comparison of all the skeletal parts of man with those of the anthropoid apes. they have shown that among the lower races of man the primitive veddahs of ceylon approach the apes most nearly, and that among the latter the chimpanzee stands nearest to man. [ ] 'ergebnisse naturwissenschaftlicher forschungen auf ceylon,' vols. and . (with an atlas of plates; .) the direct descent of man from some extinct ape-like form is now beyond doubt, and admits of being traced much more clearly than the origin of many another mammalian order. the pedigrees of the elephants, the sirenia, the cetacea, and, above all, of the edentata, for example, are much more obscure and difficult to explain. in many parts of their organization--for example, in the number and structure of his five digits and toes--man and monkeys have remained much more primitive than most of the ungulata. the immense significance of this positive knowledge of the origin of man from some primate does not require to be enforced. its bearing upon the highest questions of philosophy cannot be exaggerated. among modern philosophers no one has perceived this more deeply than herbert spencer.[ ] he is one of those older thinkers who before darwin were convinced that the theory of development is the only way to solve the 'enigma of the world.' spencer is also the champion of those evolutionists who lay the greatest weight upon _progressive heredity_, or the much combated _heredity of acquired characters_. from the first he has severely attacked and criticised the theories of weismann, who denies this most important factor of phylogeny, and would explain the whole of transformism by the 'all-sufficiency of selection.' in england the theories of weismann were received with enthusiastic acclamation, much more so than on the continent, and they were called 'neo-darwinism,' in opposition to the older conception of evolution, or 'neo-lamarckism.' neither of those expressions is correct. darwin himself was convinced of the fundamental importance of progressive heredity quite as much as his great predecessor lamarck; as were also huxley and spencer. [ ] 'principles of biology': 'the factors of organic evolution'; 'the inadequacy of natural selection.' three times i had the good fortune to visit darwin at down, and on each occasion we discussed this fundamental question in complete harmony. i agree with spencer in the conviction that progressive heredity is an indispensable factor in every true monistic theory of evolution, and that it is one of its most important elements. if one denies with weismann the heredity of acquired characters, then it becomes necessary to have recourse to purely mystical qualities of germ-plasm. i am of the opinion of spencer, that in that case it would be better to accept a mysterious creation of all the various species as described in the mosaic account. if we look at the results of modern anthropogeny from the highest point of view, and compare all its empirical arguments, we are justified in affirming that _the descent of man from an extinct tertiary series of primates is not a vague hypothesis, but an historical fact_. of course, this fact cannot be proved _exactly_. we cannot explain all the innumerable physical and chemical processes, all the physiological mutations, which have led during untold millions of years from the simplest monera and from the unicellular protista upwards to the chimpanzee and to man. but the same consideration applies to all historical facts. we all believe that aristotle, cæsar, and king alfred did live; but it is impossible to give a proof within the meaning of modern exact science. we believe firmly in the former existence of these and other great heroes of thought, because we know well the works they have left behind them, and we see their effects in the history of human culture. these indirect arguments do not furnish stronger evidence than those of our history as vertebrates. we know of many jurassic mammals only a single bone, the under jaw. we all believe that these mammals possessed also an upper jaw, a skull, and other bones. but the so-called 'exact school,' which regards the transformation of species as a hypothesis not proven, must suppose that the mandibula was the only bone in the body of these curious animals. looking forward to the twentieth century, i am convinced that it will universally accept our theory of descent, and that future science will regard it as the greatest advance made in our time. i have no doubt that the influence of the study of anthropogeny upon all other branches of science will be fruitful and auspicious. the work done in the present century by lamarck and darwin will in all future times be considered one of the greatest conquests made by thinking man. evolutionary stages of the principal groups of vertebrata.[ ] stages of the classes. stages of the heart. paired limbs. { . _acrania._ i. _leptocardia._ i. _adactylia_ { cold-blooded; heart s. _impinnata_. { with one chamber; without jaws { without lungs. and limbs. { { . _cyclostomata._ } ii. _ichthyocardia._ } cold-blooded; heart } two-chambered, with } one atrium and one } ventricle; heart } containing venous } blood only; without ii. _polydactylia_ { . _pisces._ } lungs. s. _pinnata_. { with two { } iii. _amphicardia._ pairs of fins. { . _dipnoi._ } cold-blooded; heart } with three complete } chambers, namely, with } two atria and one } ventricle, or (reptilia) { . _amphibia._ } two ventricles with still { } incomplete septum; heart { } containing mixed venous { } and arterialized iii. _pentadactylia_ { . _reptilia._ } blood; with lungs. s. _tetrapoda_. { with two pairs { { iv. _thermocardia._ of pentadactyle { { warm-blooded; heart limbs (unless { . _aves._ { with four complete they have { { chambers, namely, two been lost by { { auricles and two reduction). { { ventricles; right half { { of the heart with venous, { { left half with { { arterialized, blood; with { . _mammalia._ { lungs. [ ] abridged from haeckel's 'systematische phylogenie der vertebraten,' § . biographical sketches jean baptiste de monet, chevalier de lamarck, was born on august , , in picardy, where his father owned land. originally educated for the church, he soon enlisted, and distinguished himself in active service. owing to an accident affecting his health, the young lieutenant gave up the military career, and, without means, studied medicine and natural sciences at paris. in appeared his 'flore française.' in he was appointed to a chair of zoology at the newly-formed musée d'histoire naturelle. he had the misfortune to become gradually blind, and the last years of his life were spent amid straitened circumstances. he died in . in lamarck divided the whole animal kingdom into vertebrate and invertebrate animals, and founded successively the groups of crustacea, arachnida, annelida, and radiata. between and he published his celebrated 'histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertèbres.' his most famous work is the 'philosophie zoologique,' . assuming the spontaneous origin of life, he propounded the doctrine that all animals and plants have arisen from low forms through incessant modifications and changes. in this respect he was in absolute opposition to cuvier, who upheld the immutability of species, and did his best by absolute silence to suppress the spread of the new doctrine. lamarck has explained his views of transformism chiefly in the seventh chapter of the first volume of his 'philosophie zoologique.' organisms strive to accommodate or adapt themselves to new circumstances, or to satisfy new requirements--_e.g._, climate, mode of procuring food, escape from enemies. the continued function of parts of an organism changes the old and produces new organs. the acquirements are inherited by the offspring, and thus are produced the more complicated from simpler organisms. continued disuse brings about degeneration and ultimate loss of an organ. lamarck consequently sees in the adaptability, or power of adaptation, which he assumes for all living matter the ultimate cause of variation; and, as he was certainly the first to point out that acquired characters are inherited by the progeny, he has given a working explanation of evolution. but his doctrine did not spread--partly because he was misunderstood. his theory, that a new want, by making itself felt, exacts from the animal new exertions, perhaps from parts hitherto not used, until the want is satisfied--this way of putting it sounds too teleological to explain the yearned-for change in a mechanical or natural way. moreover, many of his examples lacked the exact basis of experiment and observation necessary for their acceptance. witness that of the neck of the giraffe,--a never-failing source of ridicule to men who cannot see the deeper purpose underlying the well-meant attempt at an explanation, which failed from want of complete knowledge of the intricate circumstances. however, the theory of transformism was, so to speak, in the air; and various authors have written on the subject, filling the gap between lamarck and darwin, especially goethe, treviranus, leopold von buch, and herbert spencer. but it is darwin's immortal merit to have opened our eyes by his theory of natural selection, which is, at least, the first attempt to explain some of the causes and incidents of organic evolution in a natural mechanical way. moreover, he was the first clearly to express the fundamental principles of the theory of descent, to elaborate what had been at best a general sketch of an ill-defined problem, and to enter into detail, supported by a host of painstaking observations, the making of which had taken him half a lifetime. darwin, without going further than cursorily into the causes of variation, argued as follows: we know that variations do occur in every kind of living creatures. some of these variations lead to something, while others do not. an enormously greater number of animals and plants are born than reach maturity and can in their turn continue the race. what is the regulating factor? his answer is, the struggle for existence--in other words, the weeding out of the less fit, or rather of the owners of those variations which are not so well adapted to their surroundings. for 'adapted' we had better read 'adaptable,' because a variation which does not answer, which cannot be made use of, or, still more notably, is a hindrance or disadvantage, does not become an adapted feature. there is often a confusion between adaptation as an accomplished fact, a feature, or resultant condition, and adaptation as the mode of fitting the organism to, or making the best of, the prevailing surroundings or circumstances. Étienne geoffroy saint-hilaire was born in at Étampes, seine-et-oise. he was originally brought up for the church; but when already ordained he attended lectures on natural science and medicine in paris. he managed to get the place of assistant in the musée d'histoire naturelle; he became professor of zoology in , and took the opportunity of encouraging young cuvier. later he became professor of zoology of the faculté des sciences, and in he published his remarkable 'philosophie anatomique.' he died in . he had conceived the 'unity of organic composition,' meaning that there is only one plan of construction,--the same principle, but varied in its accessory parts. in , when geoffroy proceeded to apply to the invertebrata his views as to the uniformity of animal composition, he found a vigorous opponent in cuvier. geoffroy, like goethe, held that there is in nature a law of compensation, or balancing of growth, so that if one organ take on an excess of development, it is at the expense of another part; and he maintained that, since nature takes no sudden leaps, even organs which are superfluous in any given species, if they have played an important part in other species of the same family, are retained as rudiments, which testify to the permanence of the general plan of creation. it was his conviction that, owing to the conditions of life, the same forms had _not_ been perpetuated since the origin of all things, although it was not his belief that existing species were becoming modified. cuvier, on the other hand, maintained the absolute invariability of species, which, he declared, had been created with regard to the circumstances in which they were placed, each organ contrived with a view to the function it had to fulfil,--thus putting the effect for the cause ('encyclopædia britannica,' th edition, vol. xxi., p. ). george cuvier was born in at montbéliard, in the department of doubs, which at that time belonged to württemberg. he was educated at stuttgart, and studied political economy. while acting as private tutor to a french family in france he followed his favourite pursuit, the study of natural sciences. geoffroy saint-hilaire heard of him, and appointed him assistant in the department of comparative anatomy in the musée d'histoire naturelle. in he was elected professor of natural history at the collège de france, and soon after he became perpetual secretary of the institut national. in , a year before his death, louis philippe raised him to the rank of a peer of france. cuvier was the first to indicate the true principle upon which the natural classification of animals should be based--namely, their structure. it is the study of the anatomy of the creatures and their comparison which affords the only sound basis of a classification. the work which had the greatest influence upon the scientific public is his 'règne animal distribué d'après son organisation,' . the system which he propounded in this book gradually came to have almost world-wide fame, and, in spite of its many obvious deficiencies, still lingers in some of our most recent text-books. a standard work is his 'leçons d'anatomie comparée,' and, in truth, he is the founder of that kind of comparative anatomy which was brought to such a high state by his pupil, the late sir richard owen. cuvier discovered the law of 'correlation of growth,' and was the first to apply this law to the reconstruction of animals from fragments: see his monumental work entitled 'recherches sur les ossemens fossiles,' . cuvier, however, as a strict matter-of-fact man, was incapable of appreciating the speculative conclusions which were drawn by his contemporaries saint-hilaire and lamarck. on the contrary, he firmly stuck to the doctrine of the immutability of species; and, in order to account for the existence of animals whose kind exists no longer, he invented the famous doctrine of successive cataclysms. karl ernst von baer was born in in esthonia, studied at dorpat and then at würzburg, where döllinger introduced him to comparative anatomy. for a few years he was a _privat-docent_ at berlin; then he went to königsberg as professor of zoology and embryology. in he became an academician at st. petersburg, where for many years he was occupied with the most varied studies, chiefly geographical and ethnological. the last years of his long, active life he spent in contemplative retirement on his paternal estate, and he died at dorpat in . while still at würzburg he induced his friend pander, a young man of means, to study the development of the chick; and pander was the first to start the theory of the germinal layers from which all the organs arise. baer, however, continued these researches in königsberg, and after nine years' labour produced his epoch-making work, 'ueber entwicklungsgeschichte der thiere: beobachtung und reflexion,' königsberg, . nine years later he completed the second volume. he established upon a firm basis the theory of the germinal layers, and by further 'reflexions' arrived at the elucidation of some of the most fundamental laws of biology. for example, in the first volume he made the following prophetic statement: 'perhaps all animals are alike, and nothing but hollow globes at their earliest developmental beginning. the farther back we trace their development, the more resemblance we find in the most different creatures. and this leads to the question whether at the beginning of their development all animals are essentially alike, and referable to one common ancestral form. considering that the "germ" (which at a certain stage appears in the shape of a hollow globe or bag) is the undeveloped animal itself, we are not without reason for assuming that the common fundamental form is that of a simple vesicle, from which every animal is evolved, not only theoretically, but historically.' this statement is all the more wonderful when we consider that the cells, the all-composing individual units, were not discovered until ten years later. in baer discovered the human egg, and later the chorda dorsalis. in an address delivered in , entitled 'the most universal law of nature in all development,' he explained that only from a most superficial point of view can the various species be looked upon as permanent and immutable types; that, on the contrary, they can be nothing but passing stages, or series of stages, of development, which have been evolved by transformation out of common ancestral forms. johannes mueller, born at coblenz in , established himself as _privat-docent_ at bonn, where in he became professor of physiology. in he accepted the chair of anatomy and physiology at berlin, where he died in . he was one of the most distinguished physiologists and comparative anatomists. by summarizing the labours and discoveries already made in the field of physiology, by reducing them to order, and abstracting the general principles, he became the founder of modern physiology. but he was scarcely less distinguished by his researches in comparative anatomy. his 'vergleichende anatomie der myxinoiden,' in _abhandlungen der berliner akademie_, - , and 'ueber die grenzen der ganoiden' (_ibid._, ), are standard works of lasting value. mueller exercised a stimulative influence as a teacher. many well-known men--such as helmholtz, gegenbaur, bruecke the physiologist, guenther the zoologist, virchow the pathologist, koelliker and haeckel--have been his pupils. rudolph virchow was born in at schievelbein, a small town in eastern pomerania. he studied medicine in berlin as a pupil of johannes mueller, and went in to würzburg, where, under the influence of koelliker, and leydig the pathologist, he laid the foundation of an entirely new branch of medical science--that of 'cellular pathology.' since he has filled the principal chair of pathology at berlin. in he received the copley medal of the royal society. 'his contributions to the study of morbid anatomy have thrown light upon the diseases of every part of the body; but the broad and philosophical view he has taken of the processes of pathology has done more than his most brilliant observations to make the science of disease. 'in pathology, strictly so called, his two great achievements--the detection of the cellular activity which lies at the bottom of all morbid as well as normal physiological processes, and the classification of the important group of new growths on a natural histological basis--have each of them not only made an epoch in medicine, but have also been the occasion of fresh extension of science by other labourers' (proc. royal soc., ). virchow has not confined himself to medicine. he takes the keenest interest in anthropology and ethnology, on which subjects he has contributed many papers. together with his colleagues helmholtz the physicist, and du bois reymond the physiologist, he has taken a leading place in the spreading of natural science; but, unfortunately, he did not take to the doctrine of evolution, and for the last thirty years has been its declared antagonist, rarely missing an opportunity of denouncing everything but descriptive anatomy and zoology as the unsound speculations of dreamers. this has on more than one occasion brought him into sharp conflict with haeckel. his activity is astonishing, especially if it be remembered that virchow has for many years been one of the most conspicuous leaders of the progressists and radicals in the german parliament and berlin town-council. edward drinker cope was born at philadelphia, pa. after studying at several continental universities, especially at heidelberg, he became first professor of natural science at haverford college, and later professor of geology and mineralogy. he died at an early age in . as a member of various geological expeditions and other surveys, he explored chiefly kansas, wyoming, and colorado; and he published many most suggestive papers on the fossil vertebrate fauna of north america, and on classification especially of amphibia and reptiles. among works of a more general philosophical scope may be mentioned 'the origin of the fittest,' , and his latest work, 'the primary factors of organic evolution,' . albert von koelliker, born in , became professor of anatomy at würzburg. his earlier studies and discoveries contributed considerably to the systematic development of the cell theory. in he observed the division and further multiplication of the original egg cell. next year he showed the continuity between nerve cells and nerve fibres in the vertebrata; later, that the non-striped or smooth muscular tissue is composed of cellular elements. he demonstrated that the gregarinæ are unicellular creatures. in he went with his younger friend gegenbaur to messina, where he studied especially the development of the cephalopoda (cuttlefishes and allies); and he produced a magnificent work on alcyonaria, medusæ, and other allied forms. he elucidated the development of the vertebral column, especially with reference to the notochord. in he founded, together with th. von siebold, the famous _zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche zoologie_. a standard work on mammalian embryology is his 'entwicklungsgeschichte des menschen und der höheren thiere,' a text-book of which the second edition appeared in . at the anniversary meeting of he received the copley medal, the highest honour which the royal society can bestow. carl gegenbaur was born on august , , in bavaria. he studied medicine and kindred subjects in würzburg, and as a pupil of johannes mueller in berlin. in he went with koelliker to messina to study the structure and development of the marine fauna. important papers on siphonophora, echinoderms, pteropoda, and, later, hydrozoa and mollusca, were the result. soon after his return he was offered the chair of anatomy at jena, and at this retired spot he produced his most important works, devoting himself more and more to the study of the vertebrata. since he has held the chair of anatomy at heidelberg. in he published his 'principles of comparative anatomy'; but in he remodelled it completely, the theory of descent being the guiding principle. these 'grundzüge' were followed by a somewhat more condensed 'grundriss,' the second edition of which was published in , and has been translated into french and english. in the meantime he had broken new ground by the development and treatment of certain problems concerning the composition and origin of the limbs, the shoulder-girdle and the skull, researches which are embodied in his 'untersuchungen zur vergleichenden anatomie der wirbelthiere,' - - . in he brought out a text-book on human anatomy. this also marked a new epoch, because for the first time, not only the nomenclature, but also the general treatment of human anatomy, was put upon a firm comparative anatomical basis. the success of this work is indicated by the fact that it reached the sixth edition in . lastly, in , appeared the first volume of what may be called his crowning work, 'vergleichende anatomie der wirbelthiere.' gegenbaur is universally recognised, not only as the greatest living comparative anatomist, but also as the founder of the modern side of this science, by having based it on the theory of descent. in he received from the royal society the copley medal 'for his pre-eminence in the science of comparative anatomy or animal morphology.' his marvellously powerful influence as a teacher and investigator has made heidelberg a centre whence many pupils have spread his teaching, and above all his method of research. ernst heinrich haeckel was born on february , , at potsdam. he carried out his academical studies alternately at berlin and würzburg, attracted by such men as johannes mueller, koelliker, and virchow. for years he was undecided what his career should be, whether that of botanist, collector, or geographical traveller. certainly that of medicine attracted him least, although in deference to his father's wishes he qualified and settled down for a year's practice in berlin. as he himself has told us, he might perhaps have proved rather successful as a physician, to judge from the fact that he did not lose a single patient. but 'i had only three patients all told, and the reason of this is perhaps that i had given on my plate the hours of consultation as from to _a.m._' during the year he travelled as medical man and artist in sicily. in he was induced by gegenbaur, whose acquaintance he had made in würzburg, to establish himself as a _privat-docent_ for comparative anatomy in jena. and there he has remained ever since, filling the chair of zoology, and having declined several much more tempting offers from the universities of würzburg, vienna, strassburg, and bonn. within one year, , he wrote the two volumes of his 'generelle morphologie der organismen,' as he himself relates, in order to master his sorrow over the loss of his first wife. but he broke down, and went to the canaries to recruit health and strength. the 'morphologie,' which has long been out of print,[ ] made scarcely any impression. it was ignored, probably because he had placed the old-fashioned study of zoology and morphology upon a thoroughly darwinistic basis. [ ] that this great work is now comparatively rare, although still in the second-hand market, may perhaps be urged in excuse of the fact of so many attempts made by many authors, both professional and amateur, to find fault with or to explain the principles of adaptation, variation, heredity, cænogenesis, phylogeny, etc., in complete ignorance that all these and many more fundamental questions were fully discussed more than thirty years ago in the 'generelle morphologie.' on the advice of his friend gegenbaur, he gave a more popularly written abstract of his 'generelle morphologie'--in fact, the substance of a series of his lectures--in the shape of his 'natürliche schöpfungsgeschichte.' this 'history of natural creation,' which in has reached the ninth edition (first edition translated into english in ), had the desired effect. so also had his 'anthropogenie oder entwicklungsgeschichte des menschen,' the fourth edition of which appeared in . it was a lucky coincidence that haeckel had just finished his preliminary academical studies, was entirely at leisure, and undetermined to which branch of natural science he should devote his genius, when darwin's great work was given to the world. haeckel embraced the new doctrine fervently, and, as huxley was doing in england, he spread it and fought for it with ever-increasing vigour in germany. with marvellous vigour and quickness of perception he applied the principles of evolution or the theory of descent to the whole organic world, and not only opened entirely new vistas for the study of morphology, but also worked them out and fixed them. he was the first to draw up pedigrees of the various larger groups of animals and plants, filling the gaps by fossils or with hypothetical forms (the necessary existence of which he arrived at by logical deductions); and thus he reconstructed the first universal pedigree, a gigantic ancestral tree, from the simple unicellular amoeba to man. of course these pedigrees were entirely provisional, as he himself has over and over again avowed; but they are, nevertheless, the ideal which all systematists and morphologists working upon the basis of evolution have since been seeking to establish. naturally he was vigorously attacked, not only by anti-darwinians, or rather anti-evolutionists, but also by many of those who, having accepted the principle of transformism, ought to have known better. perhaps they thought they did know better. imperfections or mistakes in details of the grand attempt,--and these, naturally, were many,--were singled out as samples of the whole, which was ridiculed as the romance of a dreamer. in the end, however, this hostility, narrow-minded and unfair in many respects, has done good to the cause. there has arisen an ever-increasing school of workers in favour of the new doctrine. owing to renewed research, criticism, corrections in all directions, we now know considerably more about natural classification (and this is pedigree) than when haeckel first opened out the whole problem. owing to his fearless mode of exposition, regardless of the indignant wrath which the new doctrine aroused in certain ecclesiastical quarters, haeckel bore the brunt of almost endless attacks, and had to write polemical essays. the result has been that friend and foe alike are now working on the lines which he has laid down; most of the ideas which he was the first to conceive, and to formulate by inventing a scientific terminology for them, have become important branches, or even disciplines, of the science. most morphologists of the younger generations now take these terms for granted, without remembering the name of their founder. it is, therefore, perhaps not quite superfluous to mention some of them: _phylum_, or stem, the sum total of all those organisms which have probably descended from one common lower form. he distinguished eight such phyla--protozoa, coelenterata, helminthes or vermes, tunicata, mollusca, articulata, and vertebrata. the phyla are more or less analogous to 'super-classes,' large branches or 'circles,' or principal groups of other zoologists. _phylogeny_, the history of the development of these various phyla, classes, orders, families, and species. _ontogeny_, the history or study of the development of the individual, generally called embryology. in reality the scope of embryology is the ontogenetic study of the various species, and this branch of developmental study alone can be checked by direct, 'exact' observation, for the simple reason that the individuals alone are entities, while the species, genera, families, etc., are abstract ideas. the _ontogenesis of any given living organism is a short, condensed recapitulation of its ancestral history or of its phylogenesis_. this is haeckel's 'fundamental biogenetic law.' a complete proof of the phylogeny of any creature would be given by the preservation of an unbroken series of all its fossil ancestors. such a series will in most cases, for obvious reasons, always remain a desideratum. in a few cases, however, the desideratum is nearly met: for example, the ancestral line of the one-toed digitigrade horse from a four-or five-toed plantigrade and still very generalized ungulate is approaching completion. phylogenetic study has to rely upon other help. this is afforded by comparative anatomy and by the study of ontogeny. if the latter were a faithful, unbroken recapitulation of all the stages through which the ancestors have passed, the whole matter would be very simple; but we know for certain that in the individual development many stages are left out (or, rather, are hurried through, and are so condensed by short-cuts being taken that we cannot observe them), while other features which have been introduced obscure, and occasionally modify beyond recognition, the original course. again, the sequence of the appearance of the various organs is frequently upset (_heterochronism_). some organs are accelerated in their development, while others, which we know to be phylogenetically older, are retarded in making their reappearance in the embryo. these disturbing or distorting newly introduced features or factors show themselves chiefly in connection with the embryonic conditions of growth--for example, yolk-sac, placenta, amnion. they all come within the category of _cænogenesis_: they are cænogenetic, while the true, undisturbed recapitulation is _palingenetic_. lastly, some features, so-called rudimentary or vestigial organs, instead of disappearing, are most tenacious in their recurrence, while others of originally fundamental importance scarcely leave recognisable traces, and are, so to speak, only hinted at during the embryonic growth of the creature we happen to study. hence arises the philosophical study of 'dysteleology.' among other terms invented by haeckel, and now in general use, are _metamere_, _metamerism_, _coelom_, _gonochorism_, _gastrula_, _metazoa_, _gnathostomata_, _acrania_, _craniota_, and _amniota_. hitherto we have dealt with his general work only, a résumé of which he gave for many years in a course of thirty lectures before an audience composed of 'all sorts and conditions of men.' students of biology and of medicine side by side with theologians, incipient and ordained, jurists, political economists, and philosophers, crowded his lecture-room during the 'seventies to hear the master explaining the 'natural history of creation' or the mysteries of anthropogenesis. another course of eighty lectures during the winter semester was, and still is, devoted to a systematic treatment of zoology, while practical classes are reserved for the more select. his winning personality and fascinating eloquence, combined with a clear and concise delivery, have gained the enthusiastic admiration of many a student who went to the quiet university town in order to learn with his own ears and eyes. _list of separate publications by professor haeckel._ 'biologische studien. i.: studien ueber die moneren und andere protisten.' leipzig, (out of print). he was the first to make observations on the natural history of the monera, living bits of protoplasm, devoid even of a nucleus--_e.g._, _protogenes primordialis_, _protomyxa aurantiaca_. 'monographie der radiolarien.' berlin, - . with plates. 'entwicklungsgeschichte der siphonophoren.' utrecht, . 'plankton-studien. vergleichende untersuchungen ueber die bedeutung und zusammensetzung der pelagischen fauna und flora.' jena, . 'metagenesis und hypogenesis von aurelia aurita.' jena, . 'monographie der geryoniden oder ruesselquallen.' leipzig, . 'generelle morphologie der organismen.' vols. berlin, . 'anthropogenie oder entwicklungsgeschichte des menschen,' ; th edition, . 'natuerliche schoepfungs-geschichte.' vols. berlin, st edition, ; th edition, . this work has been translated into most european languages (the first edition in english, under the title 'natural history of creation' in ; the eighth in ). 'monographie der kalkschwaemme.' vols. berlin, (out of print). with the subtitle, 'an attempt to solve analytically the problem of the origin of species.' in this work, illustrated by sixty plates, he showed that the calcispongia are individually so yielding, so adaptive to external influences, that it is practically impossible to break up the whole group into anything like satisfactory species or genera. according to predilection, we can distinguish either genus with only species, or , , genera, with , , , or species respectively. in this work, in , haeckel established the homology of the two primary layers, ecto- and endoderm, throughout the metazoa. the attempt to do the same for the four secondary layers, as made in the second part of his 'gastræa-theory,' failed. it caused an enormous amount of research, hitherto without a satisfactory solution of the problem. 'studien zur gastræa-theorie.' jena, . the transformation of the single primitive egg-cell by cleavage into a globular mass of cells (morula)--which latter, becoming hollow (and then known as the blastula), turns ultimately by invagination or by delamination into the gastrula--is a series of processes which applies to all metazoa. the gastrula is, therefore, the ancestral form of the metazoa; and the gastræa-theory, founded by haeckel, throws light, on the one hand, upon the mystery of the phyletic connection of the various animal groups, while, on the other hand, it connects the metazoa, or multicellular organisms, with the lowest protozoa. we come to this conclusion becaues the gastrula arises from and passes through stages which exist as independent, permanent organisms among the protozoa. needless to say this gastræa-theory has been violently attacked in detail, with the result that various modifications of the gastrula, until then undreamed of, have become known. 'monographie der medusen.' jena, - . with coloured plates. 'reports on the scientific results of the voyage of h.m.s. _challenger_.' with plates: . deep-sea medusæ. . . radiolaria. . . siphonophoræ. . . deep-sea keratosa. . a short holiday spent on the coasts of the red sea produced the volume 'arabische korallen' (berlin, ); and a longer trip to ceylon has been described in 'indische reisebriefe,' of which the third edition appeared in . the english translation ( ) is entitled 'a visit to ceylon.' 'monism as connecting religion and science: the confession of faith of a man of science.' . haeckels latest work is the 'systematische phylogenie' (berlin, ), three volumes dealing with protistæ and plants, invertebrata and vertebrata. they contain the author's views on the natural system of the organic world, both living and extinct. notable in the work are the many reconstructions of ancestral forms which, provided evolution is true, must have existed--hypothetical until they, or something like them, are found in a fossil state. everybody who works systematically, and upon the basis of evolution, does, sometimes unconsciously, reconstruct such links, although he may perhaps not see the necessity, or have the courage to fix his vision, by assigning to it all those attributes or characters which are indicated by deductions from comparative anatomy, palæontology, and embryology. theory of cells. the vegetable cell was discovered by _schleiden_, professor of botany at jena, in . next year _schwann_ found the animal cell. in _koelliker_ discovered that the egg cell, by division and multiplication, becomes an aggregation--a heap of new cells. in _huxley_ found the two primary layers (observed long before by _pander_ and _baer_ in the chick) also in certain invertebrata, the medusæ; and he called these layers 'ectoderm' and 'endoderm' respectively. in _remak_, in his 'untersuchungen über die entwicklung der thiere,' showed the egg to be a simple cell, and that from it, by repeated division or multiplication, arise the germinal layers, and that by differentiation of the cells of these layers are formed all the tissues of the body. _kowalevsky_, of st. petersburg, found the two primary germinal layers also in worms, echinoderms, articulata, and other animals. _haeckel_, in , found the same in the sponges. he stated that these two germinal layers occur in all animals, except in the protozoa; and that they are homologous, or equivalent, in all the groups of animals, from the sponges up to man. in , in his 'gastræa-theorie,' he explained the phylogenetic significance, and tried to show the homology, of the four secondary germinal layers. factors of evolution. an organism, as living matter, does not stand in opposition to, or outside of, the rest of the world. it is part of the world. it receives matter from its surroundings, and gives some back; therefore it is influenced by its surroundings. it is acted upon, and it reacts upon the latter, and if these change (and they are nowhere and never strictly the same) the organism also _varies_. it _adapts_ itself, and if it does not, or, rather, cannot, do so, it dies, because it is unfit to live in the world, or, rather, in those particular surroundings and conditions in which it happens to be. that organism which yields most easily, accommodates itself most quickly, has the best chance of existence--_survival of the fittest_. 'fitness' in this case does not mean fitness to live, but rather a particular condition which happens to fit into the new circumstances. adaptation and variation are simultaneous: they are fundamentally the same. if there were no adaptability and no variability, those simplest of organisms which we suppose to have sprung into existence in the pre-cambrian period would long ago have ceased to exist. it is the physiological momentum which models the organism, and, by causing its adaptations, has produced its organs by change of function. gegenbaur illustrates this most important fundamental truth by an excellent example. suppose that, in an absolutely simple organism, all the parts of its exterior are under the same functional conditions, so that each part of the surface can take in food, and that this is digested, assimilated, in the interior. there is, in this condition, not yet any definite organ. if this organism sinks to the bottom and becomes sessile, this part is excluded from taking in nourishing matter, while the opposite surface alone remains, or becomes more, fit for this function. thus, a simple variation and adaptation has been produced, and if the same organism continues in this position, its bottom cells will estrange themselves from their original function, while those on the top will convey the food into the interior, where a cavity will be formed, ultimately with a permanent opening, the primitive gut and mouth, both very different from the 'foot.' thus, by adaptation and variation the organism acquires new functions, organs, features, and it gives up and eventually loses others. its offspring is like it. like produces like. this is the principle of _heredity_. adaptation, when going on generation after generation on the same lines in the same direction, becomes continuous, and has an intensifying, _cumulative_ effect. by always weeding out from a flock of pigeons those birds which possess more dark feathers than the rest, we ultimately produce an entirely white race. we hurry on what nature does slowly. the inheritance of acquired characters becomes very obvious in the following example: the monera are the lowest living organisms known; they consist of a mass of protoplasm, and are still devoid of even a nucleus. they multiply simply by division; each half is like the other, and like the parent (which by this process has ceased to exist), except that each is smaller and has to grow. a certain moneron, _protomyxa aurantiaca_, is orange-coloured, and its offspring is from the beginning of the same colour, and this colour has been acquired by that kind of monera-like protoplasm which thereby has become the species called aurantiaca. we have no reason for assuming that there existed from the beginning of life not only colourless, but also red, orange, and other kinds of protoplasm. in these simplest of organisms the whole process of heredity seems very obvious; but in the higher ones, in those which propagate by eggs, the problem is infinitely more complicated. it is true that the egg is, strictly, nothing but a small part of the parental organism, and we know from everyday experience that this single egg-cell has in it all the attributes and characteristics of the parent; but these attributes and characteristics make their appearance successively, just as the egg cell of a chick has neither wings nor feathers, not even a backbone, but develops these organs because its parents have them. the theory that acquired characters are hereditary has often been vigorously attacked; but the champions of the negative position have not given us anything satisfactory instead. they question, also, the principle of adaptation as a factor in evolution, and substitute 'variation,' coupled with 'natural selection.' they point to darwin's argument: ( ) it is a fact that animals and plants produce a much greater number of young than in their turn grow up to propagate the race; ( ) no two of the frequently many individuals of the same breed are exactly alike, although the differences may be hidden to our perception (this is quite true, because no two entities can live in absolutely the same place and conditions); ( ) through heredity the offspring takes over the faculties and features of the parents; ( ) what decides which of the many individuals (each one possessing some aberration or variation) are to live and to propagate the race?--obviously those individual variations which happen to make the lucky possessors most fit for the struggle for life. so far, well; but the 'neo-darwinians' imagine that 'adaptation' is not the cause, but the result, the effect, of the formation of species. according to them, the species are neither adapted by, nor do they adapt themselves to, their surroundings. adaptation is to them an accomplished fact, a condition which a species happens to be in because its particular variation is the one which, to the exclusion of others, suits or fits into its surroundings. such a view simply takes variation for granted, and stipulates it as a something _a priori_, without raising the further necessary question, why there should be any variations at all. why, indeed, unless they are caused by external influences? haeckel elucidated this by the conception of adaptation as explained in the foregoing pages. these and kindred speculations have produced some rather curious discussions, which not infrequently end in conundrums. if we speak of a case of adaptation as a condition, a fact, we easily run the risk of getting into confusion about cause and effect. for example: is the stag swift because he has long and slender legs, or are his legs long because he is swift? in reality, swiftness and length of legs are cause and effect in one. his legs have been so modified as to make him swift, because he has put them continuously to whatever was his full speed, which in his thick-footed ancestors was probably a very slow one. the above question reads, therefore, more sensibly as follows: has the stag become swift because his legs have become long and slender, or have his legs become long and slender because he has attained swiftness? now, we see that both halves of the double question are practically the same and instantly suggest the answer. a fundamental difference between artificial machines and living organisms is that the former are worn out by use, while the latter not only repair the loss caused by use, but are also stimulated to further increase. on the other hand, organs which are not put into function, or are not used, _degenerate_. the various cells of the organ react upon external stimuli by increased activity. why this should be so is another question--perhaps because those which do not would soon be not fit to survive. each cell has a function; the more specialized the more intense it is. every external stimulus, every contact with the outer surroundings, is an insult, necessarily of detrimental effect, as it disturbs the equilibrium of the cell body. it must, therefore, be of advantage to the cells' well-being to return as soon as possible to the _status quo ante_, and this can only be done by increased activity. in the present state of our knowledge, we can approach only the simplest cases of acquisition of characteristics. mostly they are so complicated, subject to so many unthought-of conditions, that we do not know from which end to approach the problem. frequently the supposed use of certain obvious features is the merest guesswork. this applies especially to features to which we are not accustomed (although wrongly so) to assign a function--for example, coloration. a green tree-frog will with predilection rest on green leaves. the advantages of concealment are obvious, and in this case he 'adapts himself' to the surroundings by making for green localities: if he did not he would be eaten up sooner than his more circumspect comrades. but this making for, and sitting in, the green has not _necessarily_ made him of that colour. extreme advocates of one view would argue as follows: once upon a time there were among the offspring of ancestral tree-frogs some which, among other colours, exhibited green, not much, perhaps not even perceptible to our eyes. the occurrence of this colour, according to them, was spontaneous, a freak--as if in reality there were anything spontaneous in the sense of being causeless. the descendants of these more greenish creatures, provided they did not pair with frogs of the ordinary set, became still greener (by accumulative inheritance), and so on, until the green was pronounced sufficient to be of advantage when competition could set in. with this view there is always the difficulty of understanding how the initial very small changes can be useful, unless we have to deal with extremely simple organisms. is it likely in the case of our frogs that an almost imperceptible variation in colour makes them more fit to live? we have to assume that 'luck' or chance kept them for generations out of harm's reach, until the accumulation of green, hitherto quite ineffective, neither harmful nor useful, became strong enough to be effective. such cases undoubtedly happen. but we can also argue out this problem in a somewhat different way, which goes nearer to the root of the whole process. the original slight, imperceptible change in pigmentation is not a spontaneous freak; it was caused by the direct influence of the surroundings in which the particular frogs happened to live, be this factor light or temperature or food. thus it stands to reason that the offspring, living under similar conditions, will be acted upon in the same way. that factor which has added green to the parents will add green to the children, until by accumulative inheritance a more decidedly green race is produced. the offspring of green plants do not become green when grown in the dark; the young plants inherit not the green, but the capacity of becoming green when acted upon by sunlight. this as an instance of direct influence of the surroundings on a substance (chlorophyll), which has not yet performed a function. but the kittens of a pair of black cats produce black hair before they are born, and we have no reason to doubt that the black pigment in their tegumentary structures is ultimately referable to the action of the sunlight. in many instances creatures living for generations in darkness become white, pigmentless, and they regain it when exposed to light. for example, the white, colourless proteus from the caves of adelsberg becomes clouded grey, and ultimately jet black, when kept in a tank whence light is not strictly excluded. blindness is a very general characteristic of creatures which dwell in darkness. there are all stages between total blindness and weak eyes. now, do these blind creatures live in darkness because they are blind, or have they become first weak-eyed and then blind because of the continuous disuse of their eyes? the former explanation has actually been suggested! individuals not smitten, but spontaneously, as a freak, born with sore eyes, have crept into the darkness for relief and have produced a blind race! to carry such a notion to the bitter end leads to absurdities. anyhow, it is not understandable where the benefit of losing the eyesight arises. it can be explained only by continued disuse: witness _spalax typhlus_, the blind mole, and, above all, the endoparasites. let us now take an example to explain the influence of a tangible external stimulus. repeated pressure produces callosities. although they are not exactly beneficial in the shape of corns on our toes, they are so on our hands. at any rate, the morphologist can trace the development of the footpads, nails, hoofs, and horns, step by step from small beginnings. the cells of the malpighian stratum, of the inner, active portion of our epidermis, are excited to extra activity, and by continually producing more horn cells than peel off the surface of the skin in the normal process of wear and tear cause the formation of the pad. it need scarcely be mentioned that hypertrophic growths are not necessarily useful; they are often harmful, and in that case pathological. lastly, a few words about the very difficult question of _teleology_. in trying to explain evolution in a mechanical--sometimes called monistic, but in reality natural--way, we exclude anything like a set purpose, a goal, or ideal, a final condition which the organism strives to attain. unknown, however, to many morphologists, especially embryologists, their writings are full of this teleological notion. indeed, there are many cases in which an organism becomes changed, and quickly, too, in a way which cannot but be called reasonable. it starts modifications, be they outgrowths, alterations in shape or colour, or the making good of injuries received, which by 'short-cuts' produce the only advantageous result that can reasonably satisfy the new requirement or altered circumstances. trees growing in precarious positions, after part of the supporting rock has slipped away, throw out new roots, and rearrange some of the old ones in the only way which could save the tree. in animals which have lost part of a limb the wound closes up, and what is left is turned into a serviceable stump--for example, in water-tortoises (creatures in which reproduction of lost limbs does not happen). in frogs and newts the lost part is reproduced, not correctly, but in a good semblance. tortoises which have had their shell smashed can throw off an astonishingly large portion and renew the bone as well as the overlapping scutes; but this mending is not neatly done. it serves the requirement, but it is patchwork; the new shell is such as no tortoise ever possessed before. mammals transported into colder countries, or subjected to continued exposure, grow a thicker coat; and the same kind of tree which in a sheltered valley is tall, large-leaved, and soft-wooded, assumes a very different aspect, although perhaps growing into a healthy specimen, when planted on a wind-exposed hill. there is no room, or, rather, no time, to apply to these cases the principle of many variations or the long-continued accumulation of infinitely small changes. the thing is to be done quickly, or not at all. nor can we explain the mending of a wound, which implies an activity of countless cells, simply as a case of, or similar to, the reproduction of a lost part; against such an explanation militates the almost absolute unlikelihood of that precise injury having happened before to any of the creature's ancestors. still, i think we are brought near the solution of the mystery by such considerations. we see no difficulty in the regeneration of a few cells, or in the making good of the disturbance suffered by one of the most simple organisms; but we become suspicious when we see that countless cells, not of one kind, but of the most varied tissues and parts of the body, make common cause in remedying a defect in a serviceable way. we must assume that since the beginning of life organisms have been subjected to countless insults. we can scarcely speak of a wound in an amæba; but these insults have always been made good, and whenever this was not the case, that particular organism came to an end. as these organisms developed into more complicated ones, the possible insults became more serious, more complicated; and the organisms took adaptive measures so as to be superior to them. this action, i have no hesitation in declaring, became by heredity a habit. the whole creature became so thoroughly 'imbued' (for want of a better word) with the finding of ways and means for meeting sudden, serious conditions, that it now acts directly, and produces by a short-cut, with the least amount of time and with the smallest possible waste of material, that which meets the occasion, thereby saving the life of the individual and that of the race. this we cannot but call reasonable and to the purpose, although it is all carried out by _causæ efficientes_ without there being any _causæ finales_. geological time and evolution. one million years is a stretch of time beyond our conception. we can arrive at a more or less adequate understanding of what a million individuals or concrete things means. several continental nations can put more than a million men into the field. we can gaze at a building which contains as many bricks; and we know that our own body is composed of millions of millions of cells. no such help applies to time, because that itself is an entirely relative, abstract conception. we can imagine what one hundred years are like--a span of time seemingly short to the hale and hearty octogenarian, enormous to the child, totally inapplicable to certain animals whose whole life is crowded into one single day. astronomers have long ceased to reckon distances by miles or any other understandable unit. they express the distances between us and the stars and nebulæ by 'years of light.' try to imagine a unit of length equal to that which is passed through by light ( , miles per second) in one year. not so very long ago the enormous distances resulting from astronomical calculations were looked upon as the most serious objection to the correctness of the astronomers' views as to the distances which separate our globe from the nearest fixed stars. we have not yet accustomed ourselves to reckoning time by some similar broadly-conceived standard--say æons of so many thousand years each. unfortunately, we possess no data whatever for calculating the age of the successive geological strata. thanks to lyell, the theory of violent universal cataclysms has been done away with. it is more probable that the same agencies have acted which are now changing the aspect of the globe; and these changes are slow, as far as we know them--at least, as far as the formation of sedimentary strata is concerned, and these alone we have to deal with. various calculations have been made, based upon the denudation of the mountains, the filling up of the valleys by the débris, the formation of deltas, etc. the results give enormous stretches of time, but all of them unsatisfactory, because the methods are so very local in their application. the least objectionable attempt is that which, based upon astronomical calculations, tried to fix the height of the last glacial epoch[ ] at about , years ago, and asserted that since its beginning in the pliocene epoch as many as , years have elapsed. the duration of the whole tertiary period has by the same authorities been fixed approximately at , , to , , years. beyond this we cannot venture without the wildest speculation; but we know to a certain extent the thickness of the various sedimentary strata, which amount in all to from , to , feet--on the average perhaps , feet, or about twenty miles. [ ] james croll: 'on geological time, and the probable date of the glacial and upper miocene period,' _philos. magazine_, xxxv., , pp. - ; xxxvi., pp. - ; - . unless we prefer giving up all attempt at calculation as absolutely hopeless, and thus resign the whole problem, we must at least try to arrive at some results, and then see if these cannot reasonably be made use of. neither geologist nor physicist, and no zoologist, would accept the suggestion that these , feet of stratified rocks have been deposited within only as many years, although the average rate of deposit would in that case be not more than foot per year. on the other hand, an indignant protest is raised against the assumption of , , , years. lord kelvin[ ] has come to the conclusion (from data which various other authorities regard as very unsatisfactory) that not much more than , , years can have elapsed since the molten globe acquired a consolidated crust. further time must have passed before the surface had become stable and cool enough to allow the temperature of the collecting oceans to fall below boiling-point, and it is obvious that life cannot possibly have begun until after this had happened. [ ] william thomson: 'on the secular cooling of the earth,' _transact. r. s. edinb._, xxiii., , pp. - . wallace, in his 'island life,' by making use of professor a. geikie's results as to the rate of denudation of matter by rivers from the area of their basins, and estimating the average rate of deposition, concludes that 'the time required to produce this thickness of rock [professor haughton's maximum of , feet] at the present rate of denudation and deposition is only , , years.' our lower assumption of , feet thickness would give only , , years--a rate of foot in years. again, if we prefer round numbers to start with, we have only to assume that the age of the whole tertiary period, with its , feet thickness, is , , years (_i.e._, , feet in , , years, or foot in , years, surely an excessively slow rate); then , , years would bring us to the bottom of the laurentian or pre-cambrian deposits. of course, it is a pure assumption that the same rate of destruction and sedimentation applies to the whole of the strata; but we know nothing to the contrary, especially if we consider the average periods, the quick periods of extra activity, taken with the slow periods or those of standstill. dana estimated the length of the whole tertiary period at one-fifteenth of the mesozoic and palæozoic combined. if we take the duration of the tertiary period, as before, as , , to , , years, the total will amount to from , , to , , years. lastly, walcott[ ] has estimated the duration of the palæozoic, mesozoic, and cænozoic or tertiary epochs at about , , , , , and , , years respectively, giving , , years from the beginning of the cambrian; and williams[ ] has calculated the relative duration of the smaller epochs. see the table on p. . the results of all these calculations fall surprisingly well within the limits of lord kelvin's allowance. of course they are based upon assumptions, but none of them is inherently unreasonable; and it was my purpose to draw attention to the surprising coincidence in the closeness of these results, perhaps too good to be true. such calculations are considered close enough if they range within a few multiples of each other. [ ] 'geological time as indicated by the sedimentary rocks of north america.' _proc. amer. assoc. adv. sci._, xlii., , pp. - . [ ] henry shaler williams, 'geological biology.' new york, . zoologists have fallen into the habit of requiring enormous lengths of time for the evolution of the animal kingdom. we know that evolution is at best a slow process, and the conception of the changes necessary to evolve man from monkey-like creatures, these from the lowest imaginary mammals, these from some reptilian stock, thence descending to dipnoan fish-like creatures, and so on back into invertebrata, down to the simple monera--this conception is indeed gigantic. innumerable, almost endless, slow changes require seemingly unlimited time, and as time is endless, why not draw upon it _ad libitum_? huxley pointed out that it took nearly the whole of the tertiary epoch to produce the horse out of the four-toed eohippos, and that, if we apply this rate to the rest of its pedigree, enormous times would be required. this is, however, a very misleading statement, which necessitates considerable reduction, in conformity with our increased palæontological knowledge. animals of the genus equus--namely, ungulata, with one toe, and with a certain tooth pattern--from the upper miocene of india are now known. moreover, it is not simply a question of the gradual loss of the side-toes. the change from the fox-sized little eohippos and hyracotherium, so far as skull, teeth, vertebral column, and limbs are concerned (about the soft parts we know next to nothing), is a very great one indeed. elephants and mammoths seem to have developed very rapidly. none are known from eocene strata; but towards the end of the miocene they had spread over asia, europe, and north america, and that in great numbers. the eocene amblypoda are still so different that we hesitate to connect them ancestrally with the elephants. the pinnipedia (seals and walruses) are strongly modified fissiped carnivora, and have existed since at least the upper miocene; the transformation must have been accomplished within the miocene period. we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that various groups have from the time of their first appearance burst out into an exuberant growth of modifications in form, size, and numbers, into all possible--and one might almost say impossible--shapes; and they have done this within comparatively short periods, after which they have died out not less rapidly. it seems almost as if these go-ahead creatures had, by accepting every possible modification and carrying the same to the extreme, too quickly exhausted their plasticity--which, after all, must have limits--thereby becoming unable to meet successfully the requirements of further changes in their surroundings. the slowly developing groups, keeping within main lines of evolution, and not being tempted into aberrant side-issues, had, after all, a much better chance of onward evolution. a good example of the former are the dinosaurs. we do not know their ancestors; but we have here to deal only with their range of transformation. the oldest known forms occur in the upper trias; they attain their most stupendous development in the upper jurassic and in the wealden; and they have died out with the cretaceous epoch. but already some of their earliest forms had assumed bipedal gait, and the oolitic compsognathus had developed almost bird-like hind-limbs. on the other hand, there are many instances of extremely slow development--facts which raise the difficult question of 'persistent types.' are these due to a state of perfection which cannot be improved upon? or are they due to a kind of morphological consolidation (not necessarily specialization) which can no longer yield easily, so that therefore through changes in their surroundings they may come to an end sooner than more plastic groups? struthio, the ostrich; orycteropus, the cape ant-eater; tapirus, and many others, existed in the miocene age practically as they are now; but pre-pliocene dolphins, cats, monkeys, stags, all belong to closely-allied and well-defined 'genera,' but different from the living forms. alligators and crocodiles are known from the upper chalk; tomistoma since the miocene; gavialis since the pliocene. the oldest surviving reptile is sphenodon, the hatteria of new zealand, a fair representative of what generalized reptiles of the later triassic period seem to have been like; and to the same period belongs ceratodus, the australian mud-fish, hitherto the oldest known surviving genus of a very ancient and low type so far as vertebrata are concerned. now let us see if the above estimates of geological time are so utterly inapplicable to animal evolution. on purpose we take one of the lowest estimates, about , , years, and apportion them equally to the various strata or epochs. the original owner of the famous trinil skull, a _pithecanthropus erectus_, lived, according to some, in the late pliocene, according to others in the early plistocene, period--that is to say, somewhere about the beginning of our last glacial epoch, some , years ago. assuming that he and his like reached puberty at sixteen to twenty years of age, about , generations would lie between him and ourselves, or, to put it more forcibly, between him and the lowest living human races--say the ceylonese veddahs. only generations, at twenty years, carry us back to b.c. (_i.e._, beyond the ken of history); and if it be objected that the differences between the oldest inhabitants of egypt, the naquada, and the present fellahin are very slight, we are welcome to multiply these differences sixty or seventy fold, in order to arrive at the pithecanthropus level. but these naquada had no metal implements, and there cannot be the slightest doubt that the development of the human race went on by leaps and bounds after certain discoveries had been made--to wit, the use of implements and that of fire. that creature which first took up a stone or a branch and wielded it thereby got such an enormous advantage over his fellow-creatures that his mental and bodily development went on apace. the same applies to the improvement of speech. we assume the single, monophyletic origin of mankind at one place, in one district; and the differences between some of the races of man are great enough to constitute what we might call species. compare the venus of milo, that noble expression of the ancient greeks' notion of female beauty, with the 'products of art' of the veddahs or the dwarfs of central africa, or think of the beau-idéal which a michael angelo could possibly have evolved if he had never seen any but such people. _time and evolution_ ====================================================================== i. |ii.| iii. | iv. | v. |vi.| vii. | | | | | |generations. -----------+---+-----------+----------+--------------+---+------------ |} |} |} |adam and eve | | recent |} |} |} |man, contem- | | , plistocene |} |} |} , | porary with | | | |} |} | reindeer | | | |} |} | in france | | pliocene -|} |} , , | |_pithecanthro-| | , |} |} |} , | pus erectus_| | miocene -|} |} |} |anthropoid | | , |} |} |} , , | apes | | eocene -|} |} |} |lemures | | , | | | | | | cretaceous | |} | , , | | | jurassic - | |} | , , | | | rhætic -|} |} |} |prototheria, | | , , |} |} |} | or first | | |} |} , , |} | mammalia | | keuper -|} |} |} , , | | | muschel- |} |} |} | | | kalk |} |} |} | | | new red |} |} |} |theromorpha | | , sandstone| | | | | | magnesian |} |} |} | | | limestone|} |} |} | | | lower red |} |} |} |proreptilia | | , sandstone|} |} |} , , | | | coal- |} |} |} |eotetrapoda | | , measures |} |} |} | | | mountain |} |} , , |} | | | limestone | |} | | | | devonian -| |} | , , |dipnoi and | | , , | |} | |crossopterygii| | silurian -| |} | , , |first fishlike| | , | |} | | creatures | | ordovician | |} | , , | | | cambrian -| |} | , , | sum total of| | laurentian | | | | generations| | --------- archæan | | | | (about) | | , , or meta- | | | | | | morphic | | | | | | ====================================================================== explanation of the table on p. . column i. contains the names of the successive sedimentary strata. " ii. contains the percentage of the duration of the various epochs, according to _williams_, the time from the cambrian until recent times being taken as . " iii. gives the estimated duration in years of the palæozoic, mesozoic, and cænozoic periods, according to _walcott_. " iv. gives in years the duration of the various smaller epochs, as computed from walcott and williams' statements. " v. representatives of stages of the ancestral line of man. the names stand in the level of the stratum in which they have made their first appearance. " vi. contains the number of years which, in the present calculation, have been assumed necessary for the animal to reach puberty. " vii. contains the number of generations which can have elapsed from stage to stage. for example, , generations separate the earliest known anthropoid apes from pithecanthropus. let us follow the descent of man further back. the next stage, reckoning backwards, is that from pithecanthropus to _bonâ-fide_ anthropoid apes. they are represented in the miocene by various genera--_e.g._, pliopithecus and dryopithecus. according to croll and wallace, , years ago carry us into the miocene epoch. assuming that these apes lived about , years before pithecanthropus, namely, in the later half of the miocene, and taking puberty at ten years of age, a high estimate, we get not less than , generations. . from apes back to lowest lemurs in the lowest eocene. the date of eocene being fixed at , , , we have about , , years for this stage; assuming as much as five years for puberty, this results in , generations. . from lemures to prototheria. the earliest known mammalian remains come from the rhætic, or top formation of the triassic epoch; allowing for the rhætic only , years, we have to add the whole of the jurassic and cretaceous, in all about , , years. assuming three years for a generation, we get , , generations. . from prototheria to something like the theromorpha at the bottom of the triassic strata. a duration of , , years divided by four gives , generations. . from theromorpha to proreptilia, represented by eryops and cricotus from the lower permian of texas. allowing , , years, each generation at four years, we obtain , generations. . from proreptilia to eotetrapoda, the first terrestrial vertebrata, represented by something like the stegocephali, the earliest of which are known from the coal-measures. assuming them to have come into existence at the bottom of the coal-measures, for the duration of which we may guess , , years, we get, with four years' allowance for puberty, , generations. . from eotetrapoda to a not yet separated or differentiated group of crossopterygian and dipnoan fishes, both of which are known from devonian strata. the duration of the latter has been computed at , , years, which, with , , for the mountain limestone formation, gives us , , for this stage. assuming, for the sake of round numbers, as much as five years for a generation, we get , , generations. . earliest stage, down to the first fish-like creatures. teeth and spines indicating the existence of fishes are known from the upper silurian. by carrying the earliest fishes down to the bottom of the silurian, with , , years' duration, and allowing three years for attaining puberty, the calculation results in , generations. further back we cannot go. we do not know of any vertebrate remains from the ordovician and cambrian, which together represent , , years, enough for at least half as many generations of prochordate creatures. the pre-cambrian or laurentian epoch lies quite beyond the reach of calculation, nor have we any trustworthy fossil remains of living matter from these strata, to which, however, haeckel and others refer the first beginnings of life. all the above calculations are, of course, only approximate. what we do know is the existence of representatives of the stages, our proofs being the fossils; but when we refer the origin of the eotetrapoda, for example, to the bottom and not somewhere to the middle of the coal-measures, we are guessing merely. alterations in the levels assumed for the various stage-representatives will, of course, alter the result of the number of generations; but the leading idea, as a whole, is not thereby upset. the fact remains that in the upper silurian we have fishes; from the coal-measures onwards, fishes and amphibia; since the permian, fishes, amphibia, and reptiles; since the end of the trias these three classes and the mammalia; and lastly, at least since the plistocene, man himself. if evolution is true at all, the transformation from early fish-like creatures to man has come about within these epochs. being able to assign a time of duration to each of them, with an approximate total of , , years, we are also able to put the whole ancestral series to a test by expressing each great stage in generations. the result is very satisfactory. the whole enormous stretch from the lowest fish-like creatures to man has been resolved into more than , , successive generations, and each of these means a little step forwards in onward evolution. nothing is to be gained for the understanding of our problem of evolution if we multiply this enormous number of generations by ten or any other multiple. we are not able to conceive changes so small as those which necessarily have existed between pithecanthropus and man if the whole striking difference is analysed into , steps. every one of these stages in the modifications of the muscles, the skeletal framework, increase of brain, shortening of the trunk, lengthening of the legs, improvement of the hands, loss of the hairy coat, etc., is truly microscopical, imperceptible, just as the evolutionist imagines the whole process to have been. again, where is the difficulty implied by the change from an air-breathing, in many structural points half-amphibian, fish into a primitive land-crawling four-footed creature, if we are allowed to resolve the transformation into , , stages? so far from there being any difficulty, rather does it appear questionable if so many infinitely small changes have been necessary to bring about this result. one thousand years make apparently no difference in the evolution of animals, nor does one second change the aspect of the hands on the face of a clock, nor did julius cæsar's commission of scientific men appreciate the error of about eleven minutes in the length of the year beyond its real value; but now the russians are, owing to this neglect, nearly two weeks behind the civilized nations. the end. billing and sons, printers, guildford. by professor ernst haeckel monism; or, the confession of faith of a man of science. translated from the german by j. d. f. gilchrist. _crown vo., cloth. price s. d. net._ 'we may readily admit that professor haeckel has stated his case with the clearness and courage which we should expect of him, and that his lecture may be regarded as a fair and authoritative statement of the views now held by a large number of scientifically educated people.'--_times._ 'the monism, which is the substance of his faith, is thus defined by him: "our conviction that there lives one spirit in all things, and that the whole cognizable world is constituted, and has been developed, in accordance with one common fundamental law." as the confession of a distinguished man of science, this little work deserves to be read.'--_north british daily mail._ 'this "confession of faith" was delivered by the great german scientist, its author, as an extemporaneous address at altenburg rather more than two years ago. there are, no doubt, a large number of english readers who will welcome a translation, for this "connecting of religion and science" has long troubled many earnest students of modern science.'--_publisher's circular._ 'this is a little book of great daring, an example of the wild speculative flights of one of the very ablest and greatest of our contemporary men of science.'--_aberdeen free press._ 'the address, whatever we may think of its conclusions, is, however, most interesting reading, and is admirably done into english by the translator.'--_literary world._ london: adam & charles black, soho square. _demy vo., price s. d. net._ sources of the apostolic canons. _with a treatise on the origin of the readership and other lower orders._ by professor adolf harnack. translated by leonard a. wheatley. _with an introductory essay on the organization of the early church and the evolution of the reader._ by the rev. john owen, author of 'evenings with the skeptics.' 'dr. adolf harnack is at the present time undoubtedly the leading liberal authority in germany on matters connected with early christian history.'--_the times._ 'those who are interested in early church history know how to prize anything from the pen of prof. harnack. they will not be disappointed with the present paper, in which, with his accustomed learning and acute criticism, he annotates and comments upon the fragments of primitive church law which partly form the basis of the apostolic canons.'--_british weekly._ 'the wide circulation of this volume would be of the happiest augury for a more scientific and worthy conception of the organization of the primitive church.'--dr. marcus dods in _the bookman_. _crown vo., cloth, price s. d. net._ christianity and history. by adolf harnack. translated, with the author's sanction, by thomas bailey saunders, with an introductory note. 'it is highly interesting and full of thought. the short introductory note with which mr. saunders prefaces it is valuable for its information and excellent in its tone.'--_athenæum._ 'a singularly able exposition and defence of christianity, as seen in the newer light, by one of the most learned and acute "evangelical" critics of germany. the essay is a masterly one.'--_glasgow herald._ ' ... we hope the lecture will be widely read.'--_primitive methodist quarterly review._ 'the lecture itself is weighty in its every word, and should be read and re-read by those desiring to have in a nutshell the central positions of modern christianity.'--_christian world._ london: adam & charles black, soho square. _third edition. crown vo., cloth, price s._ sketch of the history of israel and judah. by j. wellhausen, professor at marburg. 'this work is now issued for the third time as an independent treatise. it admirably epitomizes the subject, and exhibits on almost every page evidences of professor wellhausen's profound study.'--_publishers' circular._ 'we would only say that those who differ from his critical views will yet do well to study them, and to read this history in which he applies them. its separate publication, in a handy form and at a moderate price, makes it generally accessible.'--_north british daily mail._ 'the publication in a separate form of professor wellhausen's article in the "encyclopædia britannica" on "israel" will be very warmly welcomed by many readers.'--_manchester guardian._ 'we are very glad to welcome an edition of professor wellhausen's "sketch of the history of israel and judah" in a convenient and handy form. this is the first time it has appeared in a separate form. it is already known to students; it ought now to become popular. it is based on the learned author's studies in hebrew literature and history, and, though not controversial in form, it differs totally from orthodox presentations of the subject.'--_westminster review._ 'a sketch which has created such widespread and profound interest as this could not be kept in the pages of a voluminous encyclopædia. wellhausen's words necessarily have exceptional importance, even in the esteem of those who differ from him _toto coelo_.'--_baptist magazine._ 'the profound scholarship of the author does not elevate his writing above the interest of the general reader, and a vivid idea of the involved jewish history is obtainable from this volume.'--_christian advocate._ london: adam & charles black, soho square. _demy vo., boards, price s. d. net._ a classification of vertebrata, recent and extinct. with diagnoses and definitions, a chapter on geographical distribution, and an etymological index. by hans gadow, m.a., ph.d., f.r.s., strickland curator and lecturer on zoology to the university, cambridge. 'at the end of his work dr. gadow adds a useful chapter on the geographical distribution of the vertebrata, with a table showing the approximate number of the known recent species. he also gives a fanciful though striking calculation to show how some groups are still in the ascendant, while others are distinctly declining. the little volume is indeed a welcome addition to the biological student's library, and it deserves the wide circulation which its author's eminence is likely to ensure for it.'--_natural science._ 'it is a book, it need hardly be said, for the student; it is simply a list of the principal sub-divisions of backboned animals, with just as much definition as is needed. it may be regarded as an exceedingly concentrated extract of a full text-book of the vertebrates.'--_daily chronicle._ _demy vo., cloth, price s._ in northern spain. by dr. hans gadow, m.a., ph.d., f.r.s. _containing map and illustrations._ 'some years back "wild spain," one of the best books of its kind, made you desirous of knowing more of the country. and hans gadow has deepened this feeling in his excellent volume "in northern spain," and that to an enormous extent. dwelling at inn or farm, or in their own tent, they saw the country as it has been seen but rarely, and they came to know the inhabitants as they can be known in no other fashion.'--_black and white._ 'to persons visiting the provinces with which the author deals, this book will be invaluable, and will do more to point their attention to objects of interest than existing guide-books of spain, most of which are out of date.'--_the field._ 'about the best book of european travel that has appeared these many years.'--_literary world._ london: adam & charles black, soho square. transcriber's notes variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained except in obvious cases of typographical errors. inconsistent hyphenation and spelling are as in the oringinal. italics are shown thus _italic_ and underline thus *underline*.